South Dakota elects first openly gay man to Legislature

The LGBTQ Victory Fund has declared Kameron Nelson as the first openly gay man elected to the South Dakota Legislature.
An opportunity for foodies and beer lovers to get lost in a world of food and drink from a hand-selected range of food trucks and breweries from around New Zealand.
NIA has filed a reply to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur's discharge application, saying it has no objection to her application.

By Vidya : As soon as Bombay High Court granted bail to 2008 Malegaon blast accused Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur last week, her lawyers filed an application in the trial court asking for her to be discharged from the case.

NIA last year filed a supplementary chargesheet in the case stating that evidence against Sadhvi could not be established and even alleged that the ATS' investigation was wrong.

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Sadhvi's lawyers then filed for bail in trial court, rejecting which, the court said, 'whether the chargesheet of ATS was right or that of NIA, was something only the trial court will determine.'

Pragya Thakur's lawyers filed an appeal against this last year in the Bombay High Court.

The court while granting her bail said,"If reports of ATS and NIA are considered conjointly, it cannot be said that there are reasonable grounds for believing that accusation made against her are prima facie true."

NIA CLEARS PRAGYA

NIA has filed a reply to Sadhvi Pragya Thakur's discharge application, saying it has no objection to her application.

Sadhvi Pragya was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) and it was the bike used in the blast, that led the investigating team to her.

ATS had said that Sadhvi Pragya Thakur had given her bike to the absconding accused Ramji Kalsangra to be used to store RDX. It was the same bike that exploded in the busy market on September 29. The blast killed four and injured at least 79.

The special NIA court is likely to pass an order on this soon.

Also read: 2008 Malegaon blast: Sadhvi Pragya Thakur gets bail, Lt Col Purohit stays in jail

Also read: Malegaon blast: Suffered for 9 years in jail because of Congress conspiracy, says Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur

Watch video here: 2008 Malegaon blast case: Bombay High Court grants bail to Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur

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Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan's Dangal has grossed over Rs.200 crore in China within the first week of its release, becoming the first Indian film to achieve the feat in the country.

The movie, released in around 7,000 screens in China as "Shuai Jiao Baba" ("Let's Wrestle, Dad"), had raked up 216 million yuan (over Rs.201 crore) by Friday evening.

The movie, which is about a gritty wrestler from small town training his daughters to become world-class wrestlers, has already broken the record of PK which earned Rs.100 crore in China.

China is still viewed to be a patriarchal society but the masses have connected with Dangal.

Aamir is among the most popular Indian actors for the Chinese who also are fans of South Koreans artistes.

"All those issues touched on in his works also exist in China, but no Chinese has ever made that type of film," Wu Qian (pseudonym), a 29-year-old fan of Aamir, was quoted as saying by Global Times.
Bollywood superstar Salman Khan didn't attend the launch of the first song from his forthcoming film Tubelight on Friday. He is busy shooting for Tiger Zinda Hai in Abu Dhabi, says director Kabir Khan.

Kabir, who has helmed Tubelight, attended the launch with composer Pritam, lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya and choreographer Remo D'souza, among others here.

Asked why Salman wasn't present on the occasion, Kabir said: "Salman is busy shooting in Abu Dhabi for his film Tiger Zinda Hai. When he will come back, we will meet again."

He added: "We will be leaving for Dubai to promote the music this month and release the trailer on May 24."

D'souza said he enjoyed working with Salman along with 1000 dancers for the song, Radio.

Pritam added: "I tried to capture the 1960s' era in the musical arrangement as the film is set in that time. I did the instrumentation of the song accordingly. Since I've been working with Kabir for quite some time, I understand his musical sensibility better."

Asked why he chose radio as an element of the song, Bhattacharya said: "Radio was a very common and an important medium during that era, and how can I write 'DJ wala babu' for a 1960s' song?"

Kabir confirmed that the film will release in China and that the team is processing for it.

He also mentioned that the film is an adaptation of the 2015 movie "Little Boy".

"Yes, it is the official adaptation of 'Little Boy'. Though the story of the boy was on a religious context, we love the seed of the idea and that is why we bought the rights of the story from the makers, and used it in our film that has war and history," said Kabir.

"Tubelight" is set to release on June 23.
Indian students, with 63 scholarships, were the second largest beneficiary of the EU-funded Erasmus Mundus Programme, to take a Joint Masters degree in Europe, a statement said.

A total of 1,345 students from all over the world have been awarded an Erasmus Mundus scholarship in 2017, with students from Brazil, India and Iran the top beneficiaries, a statement from the European Union said.

The grants will cover all the costs of their study, most of them lasting two years. Around 5,000 Indian students from all parts of India have already received Erasmus Mundus Masters scholarships between 2004 and 2016, making India the single largest beneficiary of the Programme.

The awardees for 2017 were selected from nearly 24,000 applicants. 25 per cent of scholarships go to students from the EU and five other countries that have signed up and pay to take part in the Erasmus programme, with the other 75 per cent going to students in partner countries. Students from over 120 countries will benefit from the EU-funded scholarships.

Leading the ranking of sending countries is Brazil, with 79 scholarships, followed by India (63), Iran (59), Bangladesh (58) and Mexico (49). The US, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Philippines and Ukraine also figure prominently.

Currently, there are 100 Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters degree programmes on offer, involving 513 institutions. Each programme is offered by a consortium of at least three higher education institutions, though most are larger, and participants study in at least two of the organising institutions.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has asked its affiliated schools to set up Aadhaar enrolment centres and encourage students who do not have the identification number to be enrolled.

The Board has partnered with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) as registrar to collect demographic and biometric data of residents directly or through enrolment agencies.

However, the CBSE has not mandated the schools to set up the centres and asked the schools volunteering to do so to sign an MoU with either the Board or UIDAI.

The Board, as in February 2017, has 18,546 schools in India and 210 schools in 25 foreign countries.

Schools shall set up enrolment centres to facilitate their bonafide students, teachers, staff and their family members to to enrol for Aadhar and make any updation or corrections, it said in a communication to schools.

It has also asked the schools to procure equipment for the purpose as per the UIDAI check list.

Equipment such as computer, printer, biometric devices and other such things will have to be procured by the school themselves and should be as per the UIDAI specifications, it added.

While the schools will not be charging any fees for the Aadhaar enrolment, CBSE will pay them Rs 30 for every enrolment.

The schools will also be required to adhere to all code of conducts applicable to other enrolment centres.

The move comes against the backdrop of the Central government mandating Aadhaar card for several benefits in educational institutions, including mid-day meal schemes and several fellowships.

While the government has claimed that nobody will be denied benefits for want of Aadhaar, students have been encouraged to enrol for it within a dedicated span of time.
Indian energy giant Adani on said a final investment decision on its 21.7 billion Dollar Carmichael coal mine project in Australia's Queensland state was expected within this month.

The controversy-hit Carmichael coal mine project, one of the world's largest, is expected to start construction this year after being given the green light by the federal and Queensland state governments.

Adani said a 900 million Dollar loan to build a railway line to Carmichael coal mine is now critical to the project, despite previously insisting that the company did not need the loan, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

"All commercial elements of the financial equation are regularly reviewed. They have moved from where they were some months ago," company spokesman Ron Watson was quoted as saying by the report.

Adani said a final investment decision on the Carmichael mine and rail project was expected within the next two to three weeks, opening the way for construction to start in August, the report said.

The spokesman said the details of financing were expected to be finalised by the end of the year.

The project, which involves dredging 1.1 million cubic metres of spoil near the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park to be later disposed off on land, last month received approval for a water licence from Queensland state government.

The 400-kilometre railway line would link Carmichael coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin to the port at Abbot Point, north of Bowen town.

The company signed a 74 million Dollar landmark deal with Australian steel group Arrium on 4 May to buy steel for the rail line.

In December, Adani had applied for the loan to build the line through the North Australian Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), which was set up to encourage private sector investment in the region, it said.

According to rules, NAIF can only support projects that are "unlikely to proceed or will only proceed at a much later date, or with a limited scope, without financial assistance", the report said.

Meanwhile, Adani Australia has been advised by Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten that the Australian Labor Party will offer bipartisan support to the Commonwealth government's amendments to the Native Title Act, the company said in a statement.

The amendments will be presented to the Senate next month.

"Adani Australia welcomes the bipartisan approach which will benefit Traditional Land Owners, facilitate more than 120 projects, and generate tens of thousands of jobs across Australia," the company said.

Shorten, who in the past has extended his support to the project, was opposed to the granting of a Commonwealth loan, the ABC reported.

The proposed railway line would be open to other users, with Minister for Northern Australia senator Matt Canavan saying it had the potential to spur at least another three mining ventures.

"The level of wealth that could be unlocked is comparable to that of the Hunter Valley or the Bowen Basin," Canavan said.

The Carmichael coal mine project has been dogged by delays, facing opposition from several environmentalist groups as well as members of the indigenous community.

Green groups are opposed to the project, saying carbon emitting fossil fuels should be phased out to tackle climate change.

The Adani group entered Australia in 2010 with the purchase of the greenfield Carmichael coal mine in the Galilee Basin in central Queensland, and the Abbot Point port near Bowen in the north.
Fitch Ratings on Friday said Indian authorities are making a more concerted push to clean up bad loans in the banking sector but the move would impinge on banks' profitability in the short-term.

It said that asset resolution would be a dominant theme in the sector over the next few years and further losses may push some weaker banks closer to breaching minimum capital requirements, unless they receive pre-emptive capital injections.

Recent regulatory actions in India suggest the authorities are making a more concerted push to tackle banks' bad loan problems.

In the short-term, this is likely to create provisioning costs that will mean continued pressure on bank profits, Fitch said.

Moreover, the clean-up exercise undertaken by the government may bring about consolidation in the banking space.

We believe it has become more likely that the number of state banks will fall in the medium term, it said.

Banks are straddled with anywhere between Rs.9 lakh crore and Rs.12 lakh crore of stressed assets  made up of bad loans, restructured debt and advances to companies that cannot meet servicing obligations.

The government earlier this month through an ordinance amended law to give powers to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to order banks to initiate insolvency proceedings against defaulters and create committees to advise them on recovering NPAs.

The increased powers given to the RBI to clean up asset quality, and to intervene at an early stage when risks build, represents an important positive step toward ensuring a healthy banking system in the future, Fitch said.

RBI direction that pushes banks into initiating insolvency processes against borrowers could help to break a deadlock caused by concerns among bank officials that decisions on troubled borrowers will attract investigation by anti-corruption agencies, the US-based agency said.

It also said there is a stronger intent and willingness from the authorities to address the NPA problem.

There will be significant implementation challenges, but asset resolution is likely to strengthen over the next few years.

The resolution of non-performing loans is likely to require significant haircuts if the re-priced loans are to attract attention from private investors and asset- reconstruction companies, it said.

State-run banks, which hold the bulk of stressed assets, are likely to report low returns on assets for the current fiscal.

Further losses at some of the weakest small-to-medium sized state banks could pressure them to shrink, or to eventually exit the system by entering into forced mergers, it said.

Fitch said the authorities should manage this in a way that is least disruptive for the financial system, but the process will entail risks for investors of capital securities, at least in the case of weakest banks.

Large state banks will also face higher provisioning costs, Fitch said adding these could eventually receive more capital from the government than has already been budgeted.
The Odisha Cabinet on 11 May hiked the electricity duty by 25 paise to 55 paise per unit for captive power plants (CPPs) that generate electricity for their own consumption.

A Cabinet meeting, chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, also approved two bills related to the State Goods and Service Tax (GST) and amendment to the Odisha Value Added Tax (VAT).

The state government will generate additional revenue of Rs.875 crore annually following the hike in electricity duty, said Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Minister Surya Narayan Patro.

The Odisha government has convened a two-day special assembly session from May 18 to discuss and pass the State GST Bill to switch over from the current system of levying multiple indirect taxes at the state and the central level.

"Post-GST implementation, there will be only three kinds of taxes-central GST, state GST, and integrated GST. However, six goods, including five petroleum products and alcohol, will not be under GST purview for the time being," said Finance Secretary TK Pande.

The Cabinet also approved a proposal to procure 'moong dal' at Rs.52.25 per kg through Markfed. The state government will incur Rs.2 crore on Value Added Tax waiver on the pulse.

In order to facilitate development of rail infrastructure, the state government has remitted stamp duty and registration fees for execution of lease deeds in 11 ongoing railway projects in Odisha.
A regional meeting is expected on Friday in the port city Cotonou in Benin to eliminate bottlenecks that impede the good operation of the West African gas pipeline project (WAGP).

According to an official release issued on 11 May in the economic capital Cotonou, the Committee of Ministers of WAGP and the Commissioner of Mining and Energy of Ecowas will hold the meeting, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The meeting is purposed to seek ways and means to eliminate the bottlenecks that impede the smooth operation of the project," the release said.

The WAGP is a private-public based enterprise that includes Benin, Togo, Ghana and Nigeria, which is the main provider of gas resources.

It is designed to enable a community use of the gas from Nigeria for electricity production and affordable, good quality and quantity industrial heat production.

Initiated in September 1995, WAGP commenced commercial production from March 2011 and faced several challenges.

There was weak satisfaction to the demand for gas due to vandalism on export pipelines in Niger Delta in Nigeria, financial difficulties of the West African gas pipeline company and cumulated arrears of billings of Volta River Authority (VRA) of Ghana.

In aggregate, Chevron-Texaco, Shell, NNPC from Nigeria, Volta River Authority (VRA) hold 96 per cent participation in the project, while BenGAZ SA from Benin and SOTOGAZ from Togo hold each two per cent participation.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) Despite several AIIMS departments facing shortage of nursing staff, around 100 nurses are instead working in the computer facility of the hospital, the resident doctors association (RDA) claimed today.

In a letter to the AIIMS Director, the RDA termed it as "gross misuse" of resources stating these nursing officers who draw a salary of around Rs 70,000 are doing a job for which one gets paid Rs 12,000-15,000.

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"It is quite strange that nursing officers who are not even specialised for computer operations have been deployed in the computer facility just to work as coordinators between users and engineers, a work which could have been done by data entry operators or computer operators," AIIMS RDA president Dr Vijay Gurjar said in the letter.

The RDA further sought a review of this decision citing paucity of nursing officers in various departments including in the emergency.

Ironically, the controversy comes on the occasion of International Nurses Day today which marks the contributions nurses make to society.

Dr Deepak Agrawal, Chairman of Computerisation at AIIMS, said only 80 nurses out of 6,000 have been trained to act as an interface between health care workers and the IT team.

"They have been primarily responsible for the success of the computerisation at AIIMS. This has been acknowledged by the ministry of health which has been pushing hospitals to create a similar cadre in their respective hospitals," he said.

He further said that these nurses who work as nursing informatics specialists provide training to the doctors and nurses on the various modules on computerisation in various departments and supervise to ensure successful implementation of the same.

"They do not work as data entry operators nor do they enter any data into the systems themselves," Dr Agrawal added. PTI PLB KUN

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In a shocking incident, a baby snake, also known as a 'snakelet', was found in the mid-day meal served to children in Rajkeeya Girls Senior Secondary School in Haryana.

On finding the snakelet, the children were immediately stopped from consuming the meal, but unfortunately some students had already eaten portions of it.

When the principal and other teachers tasted the food, they saw the snakelet after which they immediately intimated the other students to not eat it.

The district administration has launched a probe in the incident and sent the sample for laboratory test in Chandigarh.

The administration also stopped other schools to serve the food as the same agency Iskcon Food Relief Foundation supplies the meal in 371 schools in the district.

In past too, it was witnessed that quality of mid-day meal is always compromised in different states, but this incident shows that how the school staff and authorities were careless which did not put any check before offering the meal to children.

(With inputs from agencies)
The Delhi High Court on Friday slammed the city police over the manner of its probe into the disappearance of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmad, who has been missing since October last year.

A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Deepa Sharma said Delhi police was giving "an impression that investigation was not being done properly". The conduct of the police showed it was trying to "sensationalise the matter or looking for a way out", the bench observed.

"The status report (of police) does not show that he (Ahmad) was accessing any fundamentalist website," the bench noted when senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Ahmad's mother, contended that a newspaper had quoted a police source in a news report that claimed that before his disappearance, Ahmad had been looking for information on Islamic State (IS).

"We have to keep in mind the possibility that the police is trying to sensationalise or trying to find an escape route," the bench said.

The police should have carried out an internal inquiry as to who was the officer who had leaked or planted that information, it added.

The court also pulled up the police for not questioning the nine students suspected to be behind Ahmad's disappearance on day one and for not taking them into custody. It said: "What is the point of sending 400 men across the country to find Ahmad, when you have not probed any of the suspects.

The court, which was hearing a habeas corpus plea of Ahmad's mother Fatima Nafees, posted the case for further hearing on May 15 (Monday).
The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Friday released the posters of three militants, saying they were responsible for the killing of Kashmiri army officer Ummer Fayaz.

Police said these three militants were part of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) outfits.

The three militants whose photographs appear in the posters are Gayas-ul-Islam, Ishfaq Ahmad Thoker and Abbas Ahmad Bhat, all local militants belonging to south Kashmir.

They carried out the kidnapping and murder of the 22-year-old lieutenant who had come home to attend his cousin's marriage, an officer said.

Ummer Fayaz had been kidnapped from his maternal uncle's house in Herman village of Shopian district in south Kashmir on May 9 and his bullet-riddled body was found on May 10.

A resident of Sudsona village in Kulgam district, Fayaz had come on his military career's first leave.


An organisation of displaced Kashmiri Pandits on Friday met Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti and urged her to ensure the safety of pandits working in the valley as well as the protection of Hindu places of worship.

Chairman of the All Party Migrant Coordination Committee (APMCC), Vinod Pandita met Mufti in Jammu and conveyed to her that Pandits who have been posted under Prime Minister's Employment Package in Kashmir are afraid due to the recent increase of violent incidents in the valley.

He said employees posted in Kashmir should be called back to the valley only when the situation becomes conducive.

"We have also raised the issue of release of their salaries with the CM and demanded that till the security situation becomes conducive, they should be allowed to stay back (outside the valley)," he said.

1,700 Pandits fled the valley following violent protests after Hizbul terrorist Burhan Wani's killing in an encounter last year. As a result, locals pelted stone at the homes of such employees.

(With inputs from agencies)


A prominent trader was shot dead around midnight in Gorakhpur, the parliamentary constituency of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, police said on Friday.

Traders have threatened protests if the killers were not nabbed immediately.

All city shops will remain closed, convener of the Joint Traders Association Sitaram Jaiswal said.

Bike borne assailants of oil trader Chandra Prakash Tibdewal, also decamped with Rs 20 lakh cash that the victim was carrying.

Tibdewal, 45, owned an oil trading company at Sahebganj. He was on his way home after closing his shop when he was intercepted by the assailants.

The staff accompanying him had a bag with the cash  the sale proceeds of the day. Before the trader could do anything, the killers shot him and fled with the bag.

He was rushed to a nearby medical facility where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Police are interrogating the employees of Tibdewal. Vigil has been stepped up in the city.

Other traders associations have also expressed apprehensions over the spate of crimes under the watch of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which stormed to power in March, making poor law and order under the Samajwadi Party (SP) government its main poll plank.
The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessert  more food than an average person can eat in that time.

As soon as passengers start getting off the train, ragpickers jump in and start scrounging for waste material and leftovers samosas, biscuits, plastic bottle, wraps and so on. They are a part of India's massive reserve of ragpickers  their numbers are estimated between 1.5 million and 4 million; Delhi itself has over 500,000.

Ragpickers sustain themselves by collecting, sorting and segregating waste and then trading it. In doing so, they help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually in India.

Given that rag-picking is a totally informal sector it is hard to quantify how much waste is collected in this manner, but there are rough indicators: Only 75-80 per cent of the waste generated is collected by municipal bodies. And more than 90 per cent of India does not have a proper waste disposal system.

A lot of garbage clearing thus is the done informally, by ragpickers who work without any job security, salary or dignity. Not just that, they are regularly exposed to cuts, infections, respiratory diseases and tuberculosis  apart from poverty, humiliation, harassment, and sexual abuse on the streets.

"This informal sector has saved the country. They are doing a good job and I have decided to recognise their efforts. We will grant (a) national award," former Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar had declared in 2015 at an event on waste management in New Delhi.

It was declared that a cash prize of Rs 150,000 ($2,330) would be given to three ragpickers and three associations involved in innovative waste management. More than a year later there is no information available about the scheme.

Javadekar has stated that India will, in another couple of decades, generate nearly thrice the waste it currently does  "165 million tonnes by 2030 and 450 million tonnes by 2050". Only 22-28 per cent of the waste now collected is processed or treated.

Ragpickers actually complement the work of civic bodies, Shashi Bhushan Pandit, who runs the All India Kabadi Mazdoor Mahasangh, pointed out in a March 2016 interview.

"According to the law under which a municipality is set up, it places dustbins according to the size of the population. It is assumed that the generator of the waste will drop it in the bin. After that, it is the responsibility of the municipality to collect it from there (the transfer station) and treat it at the landfill," Pandit said. "However, it is not the responsibility of the municipality to pick up the garbage from the source. That's why the informal sector has filled this gap."

Papiya Sarkar, Senior Programme Officer (Chemicals and Health), Toxics Link, a New-Delhi based NGO, classifies waste pickers into four categories: Those who carry sacks and collect anything of resale value from open drains and bins; the kabadi or bhangar men on bicycles who collect from households and then segregate glass, paper, and bottles from plastics; those who ride tricycles and collect almost 50 kg of waste each day and travel long distances to sell them, and finally, those who work for scrap dealers.

Darkness Under the Lamps was a study undertaken by Harsh Mander and V. Manikandan in 2011 at the Centre for Equity Studies in Madanpur Khadar, an urban village in south Delhi where many ragpickers live. They complained that they were treated "with suspicion and derision, because of their extreme poverty, vocation of rag-picking, minority faith and suspicions that they are from Bangladesh by the middle-class community living around (sic)". The children of ragpickers often carry on with the same occupation and are rarely educated.

The government treats them no differently. Pandit has demanded inclusive rights, health benefits, safety gear and social security for ragpickers because they provide services that benefit the environment. "In Bogota, Columbia, every ragpicker is paid $2 per day by the municipality. In Brazil, they have made sure that only the ragpicker can pick the waste (from the source). Why can't India do it?" he asked.

In September 2016, with the support of the Kachra Kamgar Union, we visited a ragpickers' colony near Vasant Kunj, close to the Delhi airport. More than 250 families here depend on rag-picking to earn a living.

The men leave their homes early morning with their waste carts. A few of them work where the municipal corporation deposits waste, some scour the roads and others go to specific neighbourhoods looking for kabadi from homes.

Each ragpicker has a different story to tell, but they all suffered acute destitution once. Ranjit is a landless labourer from Bihar who came to Delhi seeking employment. Kundan once grazed cattle for a Chhatarpur farm in south Delhi. Another man washed toilets at the Delhi airport before settling down at the ragpickers' colony.

Most ragpickers in this colony, however, work independently. Several men we spoke to agreed that they had tried their hand at other things but came back to rag-picking because it paid better. Migrants here also help their kin to move to Delhi and join the trade. This meant that most people in the basti (neighbourhood) came from two states: Bihar and West Bengal.

The women we met do not go out for picking, but are expected to sort waste at home. Even eight- or 10-year-old children join their parents in sorting waste.

"If you work 12-14 hours a day, you can make a living. But rates have gone down significantly. A sack of rag that fetched us Rs 300 five years ago now gets us no more than Rs 175-200. See how much rice and vegetables cost now  it is impossible to survive," complained Kundan.

Police harassment is a common complaint. Young boys are picked up on false allegations and beaten up in police stations, said the residents. Sometimes they pick up mobile phones or other lost or stolen goods and then get arrested for committing a crime. However, in this colony, residents said the union ensures that they are not harassed much.

Hair and plastic fetch the best rates but sorting waste is a difficult and hazardous job. "We open sacks and there are soiled sanitary napkins in newspapers, human excreta in polythene, shards of glass, syringes or nails. We cut ourselves, develop rashes and infection. Rotten food makes us sick. But we have no pension, no recognition, no medical facilities," said a ragpicker.

We asked a few women hailing from Uttar Pradesh for the one thing they would ask from the government. Disposal bins for the waste leftover from sorting, they said. Without bins, this waste simply piles up in their homes and lanes.

"Give us that and access to water. We buy two buckets of water every other day and pay Rs 1,000-2,000 a month to the one person who has a hand pump. If we can get a tanker, we could bathe properly. Yes we deal with garbage, but we want to be able to live in a space that is clean," the women said.
Artistic director Vaibhav Arekar and Sushant P Jadav, the co-director of Sankhya Dance Company, Mumbai, celebrated the sixth edition of Sindhu in the memory of Arekars mother, at Sheila Gopal Auditorium in Bandra, Mumbai recently.

The two-day festival was one-ofits-kind  the theme was Shringar Rang or shades of love on day one while Traditions and Transitions, showcasing four classical dance styles, was the theme on the second day. Shringar Rang included Lavani, a folk dance style of Maharashtra by Sangeet Natak Akademi Awardee Shakuntalabai Nagarkar and group and Bharatanatyam by Vaibhav Arekar and group.

Arekars group opened proceedings with Madana or Panchasar coming in and shooting arrows at random to the accompaniment of swaras and chollus in stylised Natyadharmi with larger-than-life representation and movements.

Natyadharmi was contrasted with Lokdharmi Lavani, which is life-oriented and deals with the worldly activities of the people. Here Shakubai belongs to the traditional matriarchal dancing community who has gone through the ghungroo wearing ritual and so, according to custom, she cannot marry. She lives life on her own terms, earning her bread by singing and dancing. (Lavani dancers, more often than not, take partners or maliks, who look after them as long as it suits them. Their offsprings are named after the maliks. With the audience, they have a relationship that is based on providing service).

Shakubai and group indulged in a lot of hip shaking, lip biting, heaving of the breasts, naughty smiles, raising of the eyebrows alternately in quick succession and fast twinkling of the eyes, nudging along with dance steps in high tempo followed by Mohanabais Andharati Lavani, which spoke of the other woman in her husbands life.

Lavani dancers perform on sensual issues and erotic subjects as well as religious, political and social issues. Draped in nine yard-saris, bedecked and bejewelled, they wonderfully displayed the raw art of their tamasha theatre. Energetically, the performers sang and danced with the accompaniment of dholak beats, rendering romantic dialogues in the flowing voices of Sangeet Bari artists, showcasing love between man and woman.

Kharaharapriya Varnam, a composition of Dandayudapani Pillai portrays the nayika in love with Nataraja. Her yearning for him was expressed in pristine Bharatanatyam vocabulary using theatre techniques as well. She confides in her sakhi that she cannot bear his absence any longer. Bhakti Sringar was at its height. In the Javali, Yera ra ra by Patnam Subramanya Aiyyar, the nayika again beckons her lover, who is a god, to come to her. Yet in Suga suga nathe suguna, employing a sophisticated and stylised classical Bharatanatyam idiom, the nayika tells Krishna that she has to leave her parental home and go away with her husband whom she married when still a child, but she will always remember him. There is pathos in the love for her god.

On the second day, which dealt with traditions and transitions, Kathaka Gawri Diwakar took lines from Sayyad Mubarak Ali Bilgramis song Hari Ho Gati Meri, asking to be merged with the supreme. This search was basically for truth and beauty. Diwakars solo production, on the theme of Muslim bhakti poets, was in four parts through Kathak. The piece, which spoke on the eternal resonance of Krishnas flute, was based on Sayyad Fazlul Hasans poetry  a message beckoning to eternal life or the fount of ever increasing knowledge. Shadows of Each Other by Malik Muhammad Jayasi depicted the union of Radha and Krishna. The poet says, I am immersed in you like a drop of water that dissolves in the ocean. An extract from Mian Wahid Ali was equally praise worthy. Diwakar presented a splendid piece of work extracted from the choreographic oeuvre of Kathaka Aditi Mangal Das.

Odissi dancer Arushi Mudgal, a Bismillah Khan awardee, performed Aahlad, a pure dance piece in raga Sahnaa, with joyous abandon. The piece was a perfect blend of movement, melody and dance and the music was composed by Pandit Madhup Mudgal. Her dance, Sopaan was all about mans sojourn through life, which is much like that of the lotus. As the lotus emerges into pristine perfection after its journey through murky waters, an individual goes through the journey of life to arrive at the divine core. Sopaan was an abstract and philosophical piece that depicted the conflict between the transient and the eternal.

In Prana Sangini re choreographed by Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra, Arushi as Radha tells her friend that Krishna came to her disguised as a girl and offered to decorate her feet with alta and etched his name on her feet. It was a very amusing piece rendered with care. She has perfected the Odissi stance to perfection.

Possessed with a svelte physique and a good stage presence, Kuchipudi performer Amrita Lahiri came all the way from Singapore and delighted the audience with Natesha Kautuam in praise of Shiva, choreographed by Guru Vempati Chinna Satyam, followed by Durga Tarangam, choreographed by Jaikishore Mosalikanti, his disciple. Durga, as we all know, had been created by the gods to exterminate Mahisasur, who had been wreaking havoc. In popular parlance, Durga became Mahisasurmardini after killing Mahisasur. The piece ended with Lahiri executing intricate rhythms while standing on a brass plate, which is a trade mark of Kuchipudi. In Balmurali Krishnans musical melody in ragam Behag, Lahiri presented the beauty of rhythm in the tillana piece.

In the piece Sakha, talented Bharatanatyam performer Praveen Kumar who proved his mettle right from the start, chose to show the true bond of friendship between Krishna and Arjuna. Kumar called their friendship, Anupama maitreya. Unusual chollus in using neat geometric designs, which the style is known for, was loved by dance aficionados. This beautiful lyric was penned by Dr Shatavadhani R Ganesh while the music was by Janhavi Jaiprakash. The next piece, a composition of Mysore Vasudevachar, was about Krishna who is circumspect about the coldness of a gopika towards him.
It is as if the viewer has been taken on an unnerving journey through dark alleys, sombre pathways, and the much desolate architectural spaces that eventually led to the inner world of the artists mind, I wrote on the first solo exhibition of Moeen Faruqi, held in 1993 at Ali Imams Indus Gallery in Karachi. Faruqi reminisces about those days when he frequented the Indus Gallery which was housed in the understated residence of Imam Sahib. It is here that Faruqi met the Indian artist Francis Newton Souza who encouraged him to pursue his passion.

Faruqis studio today carries a sense of that past, naturally integrated into the spaces of his present paintings. The blue greens of the figures, a cat or fish, also seem to echo the jazz music one used to hear in his gatherings for artists and friends at his old Jamshed Road house. The artist, also a published poet, writes about his art in his poem, Bay Window (Published in Breakups, an anthology edited by Shandana Minhas):

Outlines of the body

Intersection of curves,

Near the door to the balcony

A blue chair varnished by the sun/

The sofa, a Matisse kind of red, envelops sounds of love,

Soon this will be a painting, a still mean in time/

The trick, say painters, is to capture this instant and never let it die,

You and I, by this window, connected in a never ending now.

It is no coincidence, then, that Faruqi seems to have just stepped out of his own canvases. I ask him if he is in fact painting his own self-portrait, as the face seems to recur in most works. Here, he talks about the artists that have influenced him and among them is Anwar Saeed whose autobiographical figurative narrative is most prominent. One sees in Faruqis work another kind of space to Saeeds, but the architectural divisions and the figures outlined in black present his story and those of people around him convey a similar sense of storytelling.

The connection of work that gives the viewer an impression of having seen this character or that in an earlier painting is due to the presence of Faruqis presence in that experience and exposes his vulnerability. He finds it difficult to relate to work where he cannot see the artist. For example, he questions the current trend of art on socio-political issues, because he feels that it is removed from the artists inner experience. That is why he feels that each painting by Tassaduq Sohail carries his signature style as: It is an outcome of his inner feeling, and each painting is unique, similar to the way sentences are formed in a unique piece of writing. That kind of work carries with it the pain that issue-based work cannot.

One can easily see the admiration for these artists, as his sitting area by the studio has a central work by him, flanked on one side by a large coloured drawing with life-sized figures by Anwar Saeed, and a large early canvas by Tassaduq Sohail with monsters and half-humans painted in his typical frenzied mark-making. There is pathos in these works, as there is in Faruqis depiction of characters showing unease in their urban setting.

There are works of seniors such as Nagori and Iqbal Hussain in his eclectic collection, a striking large figurative work by Naiza Khan, the early abstractions of Unver Shafi, and early drawings of Anwar Saeed, the late Shahbaz, Afshar Malik and many younger artists. He is drawn to the work of German Expressionists, Max Beckman, and to the Mexican artist Deigo Rivera since his early interest in painting. Being self-taught has allowed him to expand in the directions that his interest is in and reading and travel has led him to paint his story.

Dawn/ ANN
Nicole Kidman. The name conjures many images and associations: the tumble of red curls and pert, blueeyed face of the star as a young newcomer to the screen; the marriage to Tom Cruise and ensuing escape from Scientology; the lithe physique and dewy features that she wears easily to this day. But one phrase we often forget to attach to her is great actress.

Perhaps because of her demeanour of self-effacing, even demure modesty, its been easy to underestimate Kidman over the course of a career that now spans three decades. But heres a reminder of why we should prize an actress who has fashioned one of the most fascinating careers in a business notorious for pigeonholing its starlets early, keeping them boxed in and discarding them when their physical attributes show signs of sagging, bagging or otherwise naturally evolving.

Kidman has largely escaped that trap, as anyone who watched the HBO series Big Little Lies can attest. The stylish, compulsively engrossing thriller-slash-domestic-melodrama turned out to be a sleeper peak TV hit largely on the strength of its ensemble cast, which included Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Zoe Kravitz, Shailene Woodley and Kidman, who played the abused wife of a prosperous executive.

Kidman  who co-produced with Witherspoon  was a standout in the series, her portrayal of a woman fighting for her own physical and psychic survival radiating shame, ambivalence, glazed confusion, determination and barely perceptible ripples of latent power. Never showy or gratuitous, it was a performance as delicate and fine-grained as the porcelain that her doll-like character, Celeste, sometimes seemed to be made of.

No sooner had Kidman delivered a powerhouse with Big Little Lies than she whipsawed her audience into another direction entirely: In Queen of the Desert (2015), she portrays the storied explorer, writer and photographer Gertrude Bell, a contemporary of T.E. Lawrence who travelled the Arabian Peninsula in the early 20th century and helped redraw the regions national boundaries after World War I.

Written and directed by Werner Herzog with an uncharacteristically blunt and stodgily sentimental hand, Queen of the Desert isnt a great film. In fact, its often a very bad one, its strenuous efforts to be the female version of Lawrence of Arabia notwithstanding. But none of its faults lie with Kidman, who dominates the screen in nearly every shot with regal composure and restraint (and, apparently, a generous supply of SPF-50 sunscreen).

This is a familiar dynamic in Kidmans filmography: shes made some famous duds, such as the over-baked historical pseudo-epic Australia (2008), the deliciously campy The Paperboy (2012) and the ill-advised Grace Kelly biopic Grace of Monaco (2014). But even in her worst movies, Kidman is never the problem; her performances rise above whatever theyre in, as if her supreme self-possession as a performer inoculated her against the toxic material she was working with.

And the bad movies are relatively thin on the ground compared with the myriad triumphs: she won an Oscar for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours (2002), but that was a full seven years after her astonishing portrayal of a fame-hungry TV journalist in To Die For (1995), in which she permanently shut up the doubters in a triumphantly crafty, satirical turn.

One need only consider Kidmans vanity-free supporting appearance in last years Lion, alight quickly on Moulin Rouge! (2001) and The Others (2001) and go all the way back to her breakout roles in Dead Calm (1989) and Days of Thunder (1990) to appreciate the rigour and expressive range of an actress who can easily hold her own with the Meryl Streeps, Viola Davises and Cate Blanchetts of the world but is rarely mentioned in their company.

Rigour, range and  most crucially  curiosity: just as admirable as the performances have been Kidmans choices when it comes to material and the filmmakers she wants to work with. Ever since becoming a star, shes made small, artistically-risky films that may not have had an upside where finances or fame or fan service were concerned but pushed the medium in exhilarating and sometimes strange, even alienating ways. For every conventional Hollywood production such as Cold Mountain (2003) or The Interpreter (2005), shes made a chilly, Brechtian experiment in actorly submission, such as Lars von Triers Dogville (2003), or supported a stillemerging filmmaker, as in Jonathan Glazers superb spiritual thriller Birth (2004).

Not many people saw Kidmans mesmerising portrayal of the photographer Diane Arbus in the boundarybreaking film Fur (2006) or her turn as a grieving mother in Rabbit Hole (2010) or as the traumatised grownup daughter of self-involved artists in The Family Fang (2015).

But she has become one of the industrys most valuable and adventurous side players, a headliner who  Q Scores and likability be damned  leverages her gifts and box-office pull in service to pushing the art form forward.

It should surprise no one that her upcoming projects include the edgy, feminist TV mystery series Top of the Lake (2016) and films with Sofia Coppola and the Greek provocateur Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster).

Last year, writing about actress Isabelle Huppert in the New Republic, the critic Miriam Bale noted that in the movie Elle (2016), Huppert herself became an auteur, her craft and potent persona transcending the material and taking a hand in creating the movie that was every bit as crucial as the directors.

The same, writ even larger, could be said for Kidman, whose shrewd auteurist eye is revealed not just in one movie but through the arc of her career. In an industry dedicated to escapism, shallow reassurance and dumbing down, she has single-mindedly pursued thoughtfulness, intelligence and risk, as an actor and a producer. Check out the flawed, weird but wonderfully woman-centric erotic thriller In the Cut (2003) for an early example of the latter.

Its nothing new for actresses to search out envelopes to push, edges to explore or boundaries to transgress in the name of publicity, stretching or simply staying relevant. In Kidmans case, her finest performance may be a cumulative one, far outstripping the workaday job of taking a character from the page to the stage.

Her genius is just as strategic as it is technical, in how shes consistently leveraged stardom on behalf of growth, taste and sophistication. With her preternatural technical and physical gifts, she easily could have been sleepwalking through the past 30 years. Instead, shes chosen to keep her eyes wide open.

Dawn/ ANN
A Harry Potter prequel handwritten on a postcard by author J K Rowling has been stolen in a burglary in Birmingham, England, the media reported on Friday.

The manuscript was penned on both sides of an A5 card for a charity auction nine years ago and sold for 25,000 pounds ($32,130), the BBC reported.

The untitled 800-word work was taken from Howard Road, Kings Heath.

Reportedly set three years before Harry Potter's birth, it features the schoolboy wizard's father James Potter, and godfather Sirius Black, when they were teenagers.

They are confronted by two "muggle" policemen after a high-speed motorbike chase but manage to escape on broomsticks.

The manuscript was stolen during a break-in between April 13 and 24, West Midlands Police said.

The force is issuing a plea for information almost one month on, in the hope "the appeal goes far and wide among Harry Potter fans throughout the world"., reports the BBC.

"The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans," investigating officer PC Paul Jauncey said.

"We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale, to contact police."

The prequel was among several works donated by authors to an auction held in 2008 to raise funds for English PEN, which promotes understanding through literature, and Dyslexia Action.
Passengers of a New Delhi-Pune Air India flight survived a scare after their plane overshot the runway while landing at the Pune airport.

By Pankaj P. Khelkar: A major mishap was averted at the Pune airport after a domestic Air India flight over shot the runway during landing.

The incident took place at around 6.50 pm the Air India flight AI 846, from New Delhi to Pune, overran the runway and skidded after landing.

According to a senior official at the Pune airport, there were 152 passengers on board the flight. All the passengers were safely evacuated after the aircraft deployed its emergency chutes.

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The plane was then towed back on to the runway and was taken to the parking bay.

The incident resulted in delays for 10 other passengers flights that were scheduled for take off or landing.

Airport operations normalised only two hours after the incident. There was not immediate information on the cause behind the mishap.

Pune is one of the the busiest airport in Maharashtra, with over 150 domestic passenger flights taking off or landing at there every day. The airport also handles four international flights every day.

ALSO READ | Pakistan pilot sleeps for two-and-a-half-hour on flight; taken off-duty

WATCH | Air India flight overshoots runway while landing at Pune airport

--- ENDS ---
Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, the Mad Hatter and now Gellert Grindelwald. The ever experimental Johnny Depp, who will reprise his role as the dark wizard in the sequel of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, says he feels lucky to have been chosen to join the franchise.

Potter fans were in for a magical treat when Depp made an appearance as Gellert Grindelwald at the end of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first instalment of the Harry Potter spin-off franchise had ended with the big revelation that Percival Graves (played by Colin Farrell) has transformed into Gellert Grindelwald (played by Depp), the evil wizard who has been hunting for an Obscurus, a dangerous magical parasite.

The 53-year-old actor says he always believes in experimenting with his movies and Fantastic Beast is another step towards achieving it.

I made an appearance in the film. I want to experiment with new films. The idea is that. It is an amazing story. She (J K Rowling, author) is an amazing woman, So, I feel lucky to be chosen to be a part of Fantastic Beasts, Depp told reporters at the red carpet of the world premiere of Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge here on Thursday.

The fifth part of the Pirates franchise, which has Depp playing the swashbuckling pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, will release on May 26.

Gellert Grindelwald, a feared, dark wizard, and had appeared briefly in the Harry Potter franchise as Albus Dumbledore's arch nemesis.

Jude Law has been announced to take on the role of young Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts sequels, which will tell the story of his life as a professor at Hogwarts and his friendship and eventual enmity with Grindelwald.

The yet-to-be titled movie will also mark the return of Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander and Katherine Waterson. The David Yates-directed film is set for release later next year.
Socialite and former reality TV star Paris Hilton has opened up about her selfie obsession, claiming that she invented self-portrait photograph.

The 36-year-old says she has been taking selfies since she was very young, reports dailymail.co.uk.

"If a beeper had a camera, I would have taken a selfie with it. I think I have a selfie from when I was a little kid, like on a disposable camera," Hilton told W magazine.

Hilton said the rise of social media websites such as Facebook and Instagram, has made it easier for people to become famous.

"We started a whole new genre of celebrity that no one had ever seen before. Nowadays, I feel like it's so easy becoming famous. Anybody with a phone can do it," she said.


The Congress on Friday accused the central government of spreading what it claimed was "misinformation" on a Delhi High Court order in the National Herald case, saying it showed the regime's "fear, insecurity, and vindictive approach".

The party also accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of launching a "witch-hunt" in the case.

The opposition party alleged that the government was circulating unsigned press notes which said that the court had directed the Income Tax Department to initiate a probe into the matter which, the party said, was not the case.

"The amount of misinformation going on with regard to Young Indian-National Herald case makes me wonder whether the government has anything better to do than to circulate unsigned notes that are actually campaigns of misinformation and distortion," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

"We have one such note. It is a government's version of what happened regarding the judicial challenge in the Income Tax matter of Young Indian Pvt. Ltd. It's a sorry state of affairs that government agencies, by proxy, are engaging in incomplete and distorted information, possibly bordering on contempt of court," Singhvi said.

"This shows the government's fear, insecurity, and vindictive approach," he added.

The Delhi High Court on Friday declined to entertain a plea by Young Indian Pvt. Ltd. (YIL), in which Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi are the main stakeholders, challenging Income Tax Department notices served on the company, thereby clearing the decks for an I-T Department probe.

The Congress leader said the High Court observed that all the points raised in the writ petition can be raised in front of the Income Tax Department.

"The court said: 'Why did they come to HC; raise all the points in front of the department'. The court recorded my statement and gave me liberty that all points raised by me can be raised before the department, including the jurisdictional point," said Singhvi.

"Because of that, I withdrew the writ. This is the order. Is this what you have been told? Unsigned note circulated by government proxies is using all adjectives. Some are even saying there's direction by the court to the tax department to investigate the matter."

"Does the order show this? We will apologise if the order shows this. Some even ran a media report that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been asked to appear before the court. Please tell, where is it written," Singhvi asked.

Singhvi said that the Congress is proud to be associated with the National Herald which, he said, stood for free speech during the colonial period.

Another Congress spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala said that Young Indian Private Limited had raised some jurisdictional issues concerning the Income Tax Department in the High Court, but withdrew its petition after being "satisfied" with the court direction.

"Young Indian had raised certain fundamental jurisdictional issues challenging the powers of Income Tax authorities. The High Court directed these authorities to decide all the issues raised in the court petition. Being satisfied with it, Singhvi, the counsel for Young Indian, has withdrawn the petition," Surjewala said.

"Incidentally, Young Indian is a 'not-for-profit' company that only runs the National Herald paper. No one can withdraw a single rupee of profit, salary, or dividend from it or benefit from it in any manner as per the Companies Act," the Congress leader said.

"The witch-hunt or malice of the current BJP-led government will not deter us from upholding our bounden duty to the nation," Surjewala added.

The case stems from a complaint by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who alleged "cheating" in the acquisition of the Associated Journals Limited (AJL), the publisher of National Herald, by Young Indian Private Limited.

Swamy claimed that the Congress gave an unsecured loan to YIL, in which Sonia and Rahul have 38 per cent stake each, to acquire AJL.


Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces in Nowhatta area of Srinagar city and in Shopian town in south Kashmir on Friday, police said.

Groups of youth indulged in sloganeering and stone- pelting on security forces in Nowhatta here soon after Friday congregational prayers ended at Jamia Masjid here, a police official said.

He said security agencies used force including tear smoke shells in a bid to chase away the protesters.

The clashes were going on till last reports came in, he said, adding no one has been hurt in the incident so far.

Similar violent protests took place at Singlu Chowk in Shopian district, 52 kms from here, prompting security personnel to use force, the official said.

Protests also broke out in Hajin area of north Kashmir's Bandipora district.
To further enhance the Indo-Sri Lankan ties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said Air India will operate direct flights between Colombo and Varanasi from August this year.

"I have the great pleasure to announce that from August this year, Air India will operate direct flights between Colombo and Varanasi," PM Modi said while participating in the opening ceremony of the 14th International Vesak Day celebration in Colombo.

Highlighting that India has given the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, PM Modi said that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in Indian culture and philosophy.

"Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings," PM Modi said, adding, "Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy."

PM Modi, who is on a two-day state visit to Sri Lanka, on Friday was received by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for the celebration of International Vesak Day .

The visit follows an invitation from Sirisena. It is Modi's second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after March 2015.

Later in the day, PM Modi will open an India-funded 150-bed multi-speciality hospital at Dickoya in the central hill district which is home to Tamil tea plantation workers of Indian origin.

PM Modi will also pray at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic at Kandy. The golden-roofed Kandy temple houses Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relic  a tooth of Lord Buddha.

In Pallekele, PM 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.

(With inputs from agencies)
The Supreme Court on Friday said a "conscious decision" was taken by seven of its judges to sentence Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan to six months imprisonment by holding him guilty of contempt.

"The seven judges assembled to take a conscious decision," a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said.

The CJI made the remarks while he was sitting with four other judges who were hearing the issue of triple talaq.

He made the statement when advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, on behalf of Justice Karnan, mentioned the plea for recall of the May 9 order when the bench had come to the dais after lunch to hear the triple talaq matter.

The CJI told the advocate that the bench was hearing a different matter and he should not make a mention but address his grievances before the registry. "We are in a different bench," Justice Khehar said.

However, the advocate said, "I am addressing the CJI only" and added that the plea related to suspension of sentence of Justice Karnan.

The CJI shot back "why you are coming here everytime? Go and give it (original copy of petition) to the registry. You are not accepting any one-off procedure. You are only putting your 'danda' (stick) here. It does not work here".

After this observation, the advocate withdrew himself as the bench resumed the post-lunch hearing on triple talaq.

However, after the day's hearing, the counsel made another attempt to draw the attention of the bench, which left the dias without giving him audience.

Nedumpara had also mentioned the matter earlier when the bench was about to rise for the lunch break. He had asked the bench when would his matter would be listed for hearing.

The CJI said "you had said registry was not accepting it (plea). We have sent it to the registry.  You cannot keep on handing over papers to us. You give it to the registry. There are norms."

Justice Karnan had yesterday moved the apex court seeking recall of the order holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to a six-month jail term.

The seven-judge bench of the apex court had on May 9 passed the order sentencing Karnan to jail by holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to six months imprisonment, a day after he defiantly ordered eight apex court judges to be put behind bars.

It had also ordered the West Bengal police to take him into custody forthwith.

However, before the apex court had pronounced the order, Justice Karnan had left Kolkata and was reported to be staying in Chennai. The West Bengal police is yet to arrest him.

Justice Karnan, who has been on a warpath with the Supreme Court for last several months, is the first sitting judge of a high court to be sentenced. He is due to retire next month.
The Election Commission on Friday assured all political parties that it would use the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system) with EVMs in all future elections.

The use of VVPAT would not only ensure total credibility and transparency in the voting but would also put to rest all controversy relating to tampering of EVMs, the Commission said after an eight-hour meeting with all recognised regional and national political parties. The meeting of all regional and national political parties was called specially to discuss issues related to EVMs, and use of money power in elections.

On the allegations of tampering of EVMs, Chief Election Commissioner Naseeem Zaidi challenged all political parties and other stakeholders to tamper with the voting machines under control and custody of ECI. The Commission will hold a challenge and offer opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that EVMs used in the recently concluded Assemblies elections were tampered or that EVMs can be tampered even under the laid down technical & administrative safeguards, said a senior officer of the EC.

The commission will soon announce the date and communicate it to all recognised political parties. The EC also demonstrated the wide range of technical, administrative protocol and procedural safeguards that fortify the EVMs and VVPATs against any sort of manipulation or tampering.

In his concluding remarks, the CEC assured all political parties that it maintains neutral stand and equidistance from all political parties as it has no favourite which has enhanced Indias reputation in the eyes of the global community.

While most of the political parties including Congress, BJP, CPI (M), AIADMK, DMK expressed confidence in EVMs with VVPAT, Aam Aadmi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and Trinamul Congress stuck to their earlier demand of polling through ballot papers.

Trinamul Congress leader Mukul Roy said EVMs are not reliable and his party demanded paper ballots. Even most advanced countries in the world have returned to paper ballots, he said after coming out of the meeting. CPI leader Atul Anjan raised the same issue and said if all was right why were advanced countries not using EVMs. "The whole issue is about the ethos and integrity of the election process, he said. BSP leader Satish Mishra also demanded return of ballot papers.

CPI-M leader Nilotpal Basu, however, agreed to use of EVMs with VVPAT and said at least 15% VVPATs should be counted and checked with EVMs. The Congress also welcomed ECs announcement that VVPAT would be used in all future polls. This is the biggest achievement of the meeting that the commission has agreed to use VVPAT in all future elections, said Congress leader Vivek Tankha.
The Election Commission on Friday said that all future elections would be held with EVMs equipped with paper trail machines, which would enable the voter to verify their vote and also rule out possibility of tampering of machines.

After the all-party meeting, the poll panel also said it will hold a "challenge" for political parties to prove their claim that Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) used in elections to five states earlier this year were tampered with.

"The Commission has stated before the political parties that all future elections will be mandatorily held with VVPAT (Voter-verifiable paper audit trail)," Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told reporters after the meeting.

"The political parties were also informed that the Commission will hold a challenge and offer an opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that the EVMs used in the recently-concluded assembly elections were tampered or the EVMs can be tampered with even under the laid down technical and administrative safeguards," the CEC said.

Several political parties including Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Congress and Trinamool Congress had raised questions over the credibility of EVMs after the results of the February-March assembly polls.

Zaidi said that representatives of political parties have presented their detailed views and suggestions at the meeting, that stretched for more than seven and a half hours.

"The Commission has assured political parties that their concerns and apprehensions regarding EVMs have been taken note of and would be duly considered and addressed through the forthcoming challenge and further necessary action will be taken," the CEC added.

Assembly elections are due in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh later this year. Assembly polls are also due in some states including Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya and Rajasthan.
The All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) on Friday told the Supreme Court that triple talaq was not fundamental to Islamic tenets as the top court wondered how something that was ordained as "sinful" by God can be a part of Muslim personal law.

"Can something found to be sinful by God, be validated by men through law," asked Justice Kurian Joseph who along with Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice S. Abdul Nazeer is on the constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar.

The court's observation came in the course of the hearing when senior counsel Salman Khurshid assisting the court pointed to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board saying that though triple talaq was a sin but it was permitted under Shariat.

On the second day of the hearing on a batch of petitions by different individuals and organisations challenging the validity of triple talaq, the bench made a number of observations, including that triple talaq was like a "death penalty" which was abhorrent but permissible.

In another query, the court asked if triple talaq was India specific or prevalent in other countries too. The court was told that at present it was an India specific practice.

Counsel Arif Mohammed Khan appearing for AIMWPLB said that "far from being fundamental or sacrosanct", triple talaq was against everything that was good in Islam.

Explaining the procedure laid down in Islamic tenets for divorces, Arif Mohammed Khan slammed the All India Muslim Personnel Law Board for "distorting the tenets to ridiculous depths" by holding that talaq was valid even if it was pronounced under the threat of sword or in a depressed state of mind.

He extensively quoted from the Quran telling the constitution bench that divorce in Islam was a well defined procedure that included counselling, separate living by husband and wife under the same roof and arbitration, and at no stage was it instant.

He said that even after the husband has pronounced divorce, both he and his divorced wife would still live under the same roof for three months to give reconciliation a chance.

Arif Mohammed Khan, who was a cabinet minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government, said that every law has a social context and we can change laws but not the habits. In this context he referred to the law banning untouchability, saying that 70 years after its enactment untouchability persists in some parts of the country.

Senior counsel Ram Jethmalani said that leaving the choice of dissolving the marriage to man only was discriminatory to woman under Article 14 of the Constitution that prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth.

As the bench said that Article 14 bars discrimination on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth only in respect of state laws and not personal laws, Jethmalani in poser asked "Does it create a constitutional right in the favour of a husband to get rid of his wife, and if so then is it repugnant of Article 14?"

He said that due to multiplicity of religions, the promise of Uniform Civil Code under Article 44 of the Constitution could not be realised but at least there should be uniform application of law.

Saying that when you are dealing with husband and wife, there has to be a uniform application of law for both, Jethmalani said that the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act, 1939, was applicable to all Muslims irrespective of their different sects  a view not shared by the bench.

Telling the court that every religion has its "core" and the disposable parts which are rubbish, Jethmalani referring to Article 37 of the Constitution said that secularism was nothing but subjecting religion to any doctrine of the country.
Pakistan Rangers violated ceasefire on Friday in Jammu and Kashmir's Arnia sector of the International Border (IB) after which the Indian troops retaliated, sources said.

"Pakistan Rangers resorted to unprovoked firing at our troops in Jammu district at 7 a.m.," Border Security Force (BSF) sources said.

"BSF troops retaliated. The exchanges between the two sides continued till 7.30 am," they said.

Pakistan on Thursday had resorted to heavy firing and shelling on the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district.

One woman was killed in the shelling while two others, including her husband were injured.
Five men were thrashed by a mob in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh after they were caught slaughtering a buffalo.

By India Today Web Desk: Five men were thrashed by a mob in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh after they were caught slaughtering a buffalo illegally, inside the premises of a private dairy on Thursday.

The owner of the dairy, Kalu Baghel, had sold a buffalo to cattle trader Imran after it stopped yielding milk. Imran bought the buffalo on the condition that Baghel let him slaughter the animal within the dairy itself.

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Four butchers were in the process of slaughtering the buffalo when activists barged into the dairy premises. They had been alerted by the blood seeping out through the dairy gates. A huge crowd of protesters quickly reached the dairy too, and began thrashing Imran and the butchers.

In a video shared by ANI, the crowd can be seen thrashing the men around even in the presence on cops.

#WATCH: Man thrashed by locals for allegedly slaughtering a buffalo in Achal Tal area of Aligarh (UP), 5 arrested, investigation on. pic.twitter.com/ENmX7Bd91l- ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 12, 2017

The police eventually arrested the five people who were thrashed, and the dairy owner for illegally slaughtering a buffalo. No case has been registered against the assaulters, however. Station Officer in-charge of Gandhi Park Police Station said authorities are still investigating the case.

Though cow slaughter is banned in Uttar Pradesh, there is no such ban for slaughtering buffaloes. But one of the first few decisions Yogi Adityanath took after becoming Uttar Pradesh chief minister involved closure of illegal slaughterhouses and strict enforcement of the ban on cow smuggling.

But the recent the loss of lives at the hands of cow vigilantes in the state prompted even Adityanath to urge people to simply report the crime and let the law take its course.

"If you find something illegal happening around go to the police and let them act, you don't need to take law into your hand," Chief Minister Adityanath said in Meerut on Tuesday.

Cases of assault and mob violence in the name of protecting cows and buffaloes have continued to rise across the country, over the past few months.

In April a 55-year-old Haryana resident Pehlu Khan succumbed to his injuries just days after he and four others were beaten up by gau rakshaks on Rajasthan's Alwar highway. The five were transporting cows to Khan's dairy farm, who had just come to Rajasthan to buy milch cows.

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In a controversial incident, a senior Indian diplomats mobile phone was confiscated after he was caught taking photos inside the courtroom while proceedings were on in a case filed by a Pakistani man accused of marrying an Indian woman at gun point, reports said.

Piyush Singh, first secretary at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad allegedly snapped three photos inside the Islamabad High Court during the hearing of the case filed by Tahir Ali seeking the high court's intervention to meet his Indian wife Uzma. He also took a photo of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani.

When courtroom officials brought the incident to the notice of the judge, Singhs phone was confiscated and he was asked to submit a written apology by the court.

Singh, who had verbally apologised for the mistake submitted a written apology which was accepted by the court.

Uzma, a resident of New Delhi, on May 8 filed a plea with the Islamabad court against Ali, alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him.

Uzma reached Pakistan on May 1 and travelled to Buner district in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to marry Ali on May 3. The couple reportedly met in Malaysia, where Tahir worked as a taxi-driver.

The case has attracted attention on both sides of the border.

(With inputs from agencies)
Indian Naval Ships Sahyadri, Shivalik, Jyoti and Kamorta, on overseas deployment to Southeast Asia and the Southern Indian Ocean, arrived here on Friday, a navy statement said.

The ships, under the command of Eastern Fleet commander Rear Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta, will be in Singapore till May 21, the statement said .

During their stay in Singapore, the ships will participate in the International Maritime Review and Maritime Defence Exhibition & Conference IMDEX-17.

Indian Navy chief, Admiral Sunil Lanba will also be attending the events ashore.

During the port visit, various calls by the visiting Fleet would be organised in addition to those scheduled as part of IMR and IMDEX-17. Various other activities such as official calls, formal reception on board ships, tours for visitors, and professional interaction between naval personnel of both the nations have been planned.

After this, the four Indian ships and an Indian navy long-range maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare aircraft P-8l would exercise with the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) and Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) as part of bilateral exercise SIMBEX-17.

Held since 1994, this year would be the 24th edition of the annual maritime bilateral exercise, which aims to further cement their defence cooperation.

"The visit of the Indian Naval Ships seeks to underscore India's peaceful presence and solidarity with friendly and harmonious countries towards ensuring good order in the maritime domain," the statement said.

Indian Naval assets have been increasingly deployed in recent times to address the main maritime concerns of the region. Also, as part of the Indian Government's vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), the Navy has also been involved in assisting countries in the Indian Ocean Region with EEZ Surveillance, Search and Rescue, and other capacity-building and capability-enhancement activities.

Of the ships that have been deployed, INS Sahyadri, a multi-role stealth frigate, is commanded by Captain Anil Jaggi while INS Kamorta, an anti-submarine warfare corvette is commanded by Commander Vipin Gupta. Both ships are indigenously designed and built.

The last visit by an Indian Naval Ship to Singapore was by INS Satpura in September 2016.
An Indian woman who sought refuge in the Indian High Commission here after arriving in Pakistan to marry, on Friday petitioned the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for duplicate travel documents and provision of security for her journey back to India.

Uzma's lawyer Malik Shah Nawaz Noon and First Secretary at the Indian High Commission Piyush Singh filed the petition on her behalf with the Islamabad High Court.

The petition stated that her husband, Tahir Ali, had deceived her as he was already married, and that he stole her passport and other travel documents, Dawn online reported.

Uzma, 20, sought refuge at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad last week and asked to be repatriated to India after coming to know that Tahir Ali, a resident of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa whom she married, was already married and had four children.

On May 8, Uzma claimed that she was forced to marry Ali at gunpoint and was subsequently subjected to physical and sexual abuse. He also took away her travel documents, she claimed.

The claims were denied by Tahir.

The petition on Friday sought security for her journey back to India via the Wagah border and requested that her husband be restrained from harassing her.

It also sought an exemption to Uzma from reporting to police and requested her repatriation to her homeland.

"Tahir deceived me and forced me to marry him at gunpoint. He even stole my passport and travelling documents. I urge the court to ask the Foreign Office to issue duplicate travel documents so that I may travel back to India," the application stated.

The petition also urged the court for an immediate hearing in the matter.

Earlier this week, the Foreign Office (FO) said Uzma would only be repatriated back to India once all her legal requirements were completed.

Declaring her husband and the Foreign Office as parties to the case, Uzma declared the diplomatic enclave in the Indian High Commission as her residence.
An alliance of civil society groups that visited Kashmir Valley amid the 2016 unrest has in a report urged the central government to address the Kashmir issue by initiating a "healthy dialogue" and discuss the demand for the "right to self-determination" by Kashmiris.

A "Citizen's report on the violations of Democratic rights in the Kashmir valley in 2016" was released by prominent civil rights leaders, including veteran lawyer Indira Jaising, filmmaker Sanjay Kak, women's rights activist Kavita Krishnan and trade unionist Gautam Mody at an event here on Thursday.

The report was based on the visit to Kashmir valley by 25 activists representing different rights organisations, civil society groups and trade unions last November. They went to the troubled valley to know "why the people in Kashmir are protesting?".

The group stayed in the valley for 10 days and spoke to different people, including lawyers, trade unionists and business communities, state government employees, students, doctors and journalists.

The 58-page report stresses on the need to recognise the Kashmir conflict as a political issue and "find the democratic and political means to address it".

"The movement in Kashmir has gone from what was initially merely a passive support for independence to an active demand for the right to self-determination," Gautam Mody, who was also part of the group that visited Kashmir, said at the event.

Putting forward the demands of the citizen's group, Mody said: "The release of prisoners, repealing AFSPA, withdrawal of the army, and the beginning of a democratic, open and accountable dialogue by the Indian government is needed."

Filmmaker Kak, who was also part of the 25-member citizen's delegation, stressed on the need for civil society groups in India to consider the Kashmir issue as an agenda and help resolve it.

He asserted the report was "too late" as Kashmiris were "consistently feeling betrayed by the Indian civil society".

He however said the admission in the report of the word "right to self-determination  which has been a constant demand of the people of Kashmir  was an achievement".

Talking about the political conciousness of Kashmiris, Kak said: "We should not see the stone in the hands of children, there is a political conciousness in it."

The members said the report would be released across 40 cities in the country and in those parts where the "understanding of Kashmir is absent".

Khurram Parvez, Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Society Coalition (JKCCS), said Kashmiris did not expect the Indian civil society to fight for them.

"We Kashmiris do not expect Indians to fight our battle. We will fight our own. We want them to fight their own battles of poverty and posterity," Parvez, who was booked under the Public Safety Act in 2016, said.

Activist Kavita Krishnan urged the central government to initiate a "healthy dialogue" with Kashmiris and said: "We must hear what the people of Kashmir are saying. There is a need for a healthy dialogue with the Kashmiris to resolve the long-standing issue."
President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday said the complexity of medical and healthcare practices demands that nurses are fully involved in the planning, implementation, research and evaluation, that goes into the successful delivery of patient care.

He was speaking after presenting National Florence Nightingale Awards to nursing personnel at Rashtrapati Bhavan on the occasion of the International Nurses Day.

The President said the legal and policy framework of nursing protocols and standards of practice must facilitate optimal utilsation of competencies. Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century, thanks to the improving quality of nursing services, significant gains have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing child and maternal mortality in both urban as well as rural India.

It was nevertheless necessary to be conscious that while most countries had a shortage of nurses, the situation was quite acute in India, primarily due to the migration of a large number of nurses, Mukherjee said.

Indias low nurse-to-population ratio reminds us that much more capacity needs to be built with closer co-between States and the Central Government., he said.

I am glad that Government of India is addressing these concerns to strengthen the nursing sector in our country and that there has been a positive rate of growth in our training capacity over the past decade, he said.

I call upon nurse educators to inculcate ~ if not surpass ~ the worlds best, professional, nursing and midwifery educational standards. This endeavour will raise the quality of nursing education in India and also create paths for professional advancement in line with national, regional and global health needs, the President said.

Mukherjee told the meritorious nursing professionals that the nation was grateful for their services and compassionate selfless care. I am confident that the Florence Nightingale Awardees-2017 will inspire the entire nursing fraternity to rededicate themselves to quality healthcare, he said.
Even as the Triple Talaq matter is being heard in Supreme Court , Muslim organisations seem to be softening their stand on the issue. President of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and vice president of All India Muslim Personal Law Board today expressed apprehension over the banning of Triple Talaq, while earlier the organisation had vehemently opposed any move by the government to interfere in Muslim Personal Laws.

Earlier a group led by Maulana Mahmood Madany of Jamait Ulamma Hind met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discussed the issue with him. Modi reportedly asked the group not to politicise the issue and resolve it within the community. Subsequently, the groups issued a statement appreciating the Prime Minister's position on Triple Talaq.

Vice-president of All India Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umri told The Statesman": "Even if triple talaq is outlawed, those who want to trouble their wives will still continue to do so and stop giving conjugal rights to their wives. This will lead to many complications and jeopardise womens stature and dignity.

Maulana Umari also reiterated that the problem of divorced Muslim women has been blown out of proportion and statistics dont support the claim of this problem being endemic within the Muslim community.
The woes of Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her son party vice-president Rahul Gandhi wont be ending soon in the National Herald case as the Delhi High Court on Thursday gave the green signal to a Income Tax probe on the Gandhis in connection with the alleged misappropriation of funds in the case.

The latest development in the case filed by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy in 2012 has come as a major blow to mother-son duo who in December 2015 were made to appear before a judge in a Delhi court. Following is the chronology of events in the case:

* November 2012: Case filed by Swamy against Sonia and Rahul Gandhi along with their companies and people associated with them in a Delhi court.

* June 2014: Gandhis summoned as accused by a Delhi court in the criminal complaint.

* August 2014: The Delhi High Court stays proceedings against Gandhis and others in the case while the Enforcement Directorate (ED) begins preliminary examinations.

*August 2015: After a year, the ED decides to close the case due to lack of substantive evidence but days later ED director Rajan Katoch is removed.

*January 2015: Supreme Court asks Swamy to make out a case for speedy trial in HC since petition cannot be heard directly.

*December 2015: High Court reserves order on pleas while refusing to quash lower court's summons to Sonia and Rahul Gandhi.

*December 9, 2015: Sonia, Rahul, Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes and Suman Dubey appear before a metropolitan magistrate in Patiala House Courts complex and get bail.

*February 12, 2016: The Supreme Court grants exemption to all the five accused in the case from personal appearances while refusing to quash proceedings against them.

*July 12, 2016: The Delhi High Court sets aside the trial court judgment allowing examination of balance sheets and other documents of the Congress party and other two companies, the AJL and Young Indian.

*May 12, 2017: The Delhi High Court clears way for the Income Tax department to investigate the mother-son duo in connection with the alleged misappropriation of funds in the National Herald case.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a two-day state visit to Sri Lanka, on Friday participated in the opening ceremony of the 14th International Vesak Day celebration here.

Modi, who is the chief guest, arrived on Friday morning at the venue and was received by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe amid traditional fanfare.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena was also present.

The Vesak Day marks the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

The visit follows an invitation from Sirisena. It is Modi's second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after March 2015.

This is the first time that Sri Lanka is hosting the International Vesak Day, recognised by the UN. The theme of the event is "Buddhist teachings for social justice and sustainable world peace".

Later in the day, Modi will open an India-funded 150-bed multi-speciality hospital at Dickoya in the central hill district which is home to Tamil tea plantation workers of Indian origin.

Modi will also pray at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic at Kandy. The golden-roofed Kandy temple houses Sri Lanka's most important Buddhist relic  a tooth of Lord Buddha.

In Pallekele, 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.

Although no bilateral talks are scheduled, the visit is expected to give fresh boost to India-Sri Lanka ties.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had visited India in April.
The Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust chaired by Sonia Gandhi has been slapped with a notice by the Amethi district administration for using land that belongs to the state for running a vocational training centre for women allegedly without proper authorisation.

"The land (about 10,000 square feet) in Jais had been earmarked for various activities of the state government like community health centres, schools and other community facilities. But, the Trust was using it for giving training to local women," Sub Divisional Magistrate, Tiloi tehsil, Ashok Shukla said on Friday.

He said that the land should be under control of a government department or institution as per rules.

Through the notice served on April 22, the administration has asked the Trust under which order it was using the land, he said.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi is the chairperson of the Trust and party Vice President Rahul Gandhi, who represents Amethi in Lok Sabha, is one of the trustees.

"There are no papers available to show under whose authority it was being used by Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojna," Shukla said.

"So far no reply has come from the Trust," he said.

Earlier, two notices were served to the Trust by the district development officer and the chief development officer of the district, but went unreplied.

When contacted, a senior official of Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojna told PTI that the Trust has replied to the notice on April 27 saying that the land was allotted to Manuj Kalyan Kendra. "We are running the programme jointly for the last 13 years," he said, requesting anonymity.

The land was earmarked in 1982 for vocational training for women by the then district magistrate but while the Trust started work on the land under the Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojna, there has been no transfer of land.

Raebareli is the parliamentary constituency of Sonia Gandhi and the district Congress leaders say the land was given to Thakur Das Trust in 1984.


Messages, quotes, and memes acknowledging the valuable contribution of nurses to the society and the healthcare sector flooded Twitter on International Nurses Day celebrated across the globe every year on 12 May.

The hashtag International Nurses Day was among the top trending topics on the micro blogging site since morning as individuals, corporates, NGOs and government departments lauded the contribution of nurses.

May 12 is observed as International Nurses Day to commemorate the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing. Here are some of the top tweets:

All respect to the wonderful Indian nurses. True ministering angels, tweeted journalist and wuthor Nistula Hebbar.

Save one life and you're a hero, save one hundred lives and you're a nurse." Greetings to the Nursing fraternity on #InternationalNursesDay, tweeted the National Students Union of India (NSUI).

May your scrubs be comfy, your patients patient and your night shifts never on a full moon, said another Twitter user.

Nurses are God's angels here on Earth. RT if agree, was another popular tweet.

Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon, read a colourful poster by a user.

Nurses may not be angels, but they are the next best thing. A day to acknowledge their efforts, read another.

Some added a dose of humour in their tweets.

Happy nurses day to all the mean nurses too! posted a user along with a cartoon of a grumpy nurse warning patients to not press the call button again and again.

Best way to lose weight without stress, tweeted another user referring to the fact that nurses are always on their feet with no time to relax.

And then there were some who raised pertinent questions regarding the safety and well-being of the nurses themselves.

Nurses r (are) highly prone 2 (to) comm. (communicable) diseases for being in direct contact wid (with) patients & still r (are) deprived of med (medical) benefits, tweeted a user.

Taking the point further, another user said: Nurses should take care of themselves first as they are always busy taking care of us. Wishing good health to all!
By Press Trust of India: hepatitis

New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) The World Health Organisation today appointed Amitabh Bachchan as its goodwill ambassador for hepatitis in South-East Asia region to boost awareness and intensify action to arrest the epidemic.

Announcing the decision here, WHOs Regional Director for South-East Asia, Poonam Khetrapal Singh termed it a "historic association" as viral hepatitis kills 4,10,000 people in the region, which also includes India, annually.

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"This historic association is expected to help strengthen WHOs efforts in reducing the high numbers of premature deaths and illnesses from viral hepatitis which is not only causing hardships to individuals and families, but also impacting health and development across the South-East Asia region," she said.

Nearly 90 million people suffer from chronic liver diseases, which are driving rates of liver cancer and cirrhosis in the region, according to the WHO estimates released this year.

"I am absolutely committed to the cause of hepatitis. As a person living with hepatitis B, I know the pain and sufferings that hepatitis causes. No one should ever suffer from viral hepatitis," a WHO statement quoting Bachchan during an event in Mumbai said.

As WHO goodwill ambassador for hepatitis in the region, Bachchan will lend his voice and support to public awareness programmes that aim to scale up preventive measures and advocate for early diagnosis and treatment of viral hepatitis.

"Bachchans voice is one that is listened to by people across the country, regardless of cultural, social or economic background and can make real change possible. We have witnessed this in polio eradication," a statement quoting Health Minister J P Nadda said.

As per the national immunisation schedule of countries in the region, hepatitis B vaccination ? a dose within 24 hours of birth followed by three doses in the first six months of life - provides protection and prevents mother-to-child transmission of the disease, WHO said.

"Bachchans support will reinforce WHOs efforts to end hepatitis as a public health threat by 2030," Singh said.

The megastar will also be advocating for the full implementation of WHO South-East Asia Regions action plan for hepatitis which seeks to provide a road map for sustainable prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care for all forms of hepatitis within the universal health care framework.

"We can and must end hepatitis. With Bachchan on board as our Goodwill Ambassador, we are confident of reaching our goal," said Singh.

This is the first formal association between WHO and Bachchan, who had served as UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador for Polio in India. The veteran actor has been supporting and promoting various health and related issues in the country such as childhood immunisation programme, tuberculosis and Clean India campaign, the global body added. PTI TDS SRY

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Continuing the hearing in triple talaq case, the Supreme Court on Friday said that the practice is the worst form of dissolution of marriage among Muslims.

Triple talaq is the worst and undesirable form of dissolution of marriage among Muslims, the top court said on the second day of the hearing on Friday. However, different schools of thoughts in Islam term triple talaq as legal, it added.

On its first day of hearing, the Supreme Court on Thursday asked in a hypothetical manner whether there was any alternative for the Muslim man to divorce their wives if the triple talaq was abolished.

The top court is currently hearing the practice of instant divorce in Islam by saying talaq three times, known as triple talaq, whether it is fundamental to the religion.

The Constitution bench of Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, Justice Kurian Joseph, Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman, Justice Uday Umesh Lalit and Justice S Abdul Nazeer will examine the matter till 19 May.

Earlier on Thursday, the Centre told the apex court that the provision goes against the gender equality.

Want to fight for equality of women and gender justice. Triple talaq is against gender equality, the Centre had said.

It renders them unequal and vulnerable qua men belonging to their own community; women belonging to other communities and also Muslim women outside India. There are unreasonable classifications, which arise from practices such as those under challenge in the present petition, deny Muslim women the full enjoyment of fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution, the Centre had said.
A top Trump administration official has slammed Pakistan for its failure to curb support to anti-India militants and sought progress into the 2016 Pathankot attack probe.

He has warned Islamabad that ties between the two countries would deteriorate if there is another "high-profile terrorist attack in India".

Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats, during a Congressional hearing, said: "Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016."

Last year, Jaish-e-Mohamed militants attacked the Indian airbase in Pathankot on January 2 and killed seven security personnel.

Coats said easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in Pathankot investigation.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with key intelligence officials on Thursday, Coats said that New Delhi-Islamabad relations remain tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said as he presented worldwide threat assessment of the intelligence community.

The director of National Intelligence further said: "Increasing numbers of firefights along the Line of Control (LoC), including the use of artillery and mortars, might exacerbate the risk of unintended escalation between these nuclear-armed neighbours."

Coats said that Pakistani-based terrorist groups present a sustained threat to US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he said.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, Coats said anti-Pakistan groups will probably focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan's internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Ahrar, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi al-Alami," he said.

Coats said that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

On Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons, Coats said it "potentially lowers the threshold for their use".

Early deployment during a crisis of smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons would increase the time when "systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site", thus "increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon," Coats said.
Music mogul Simon Cowell, who left the American Idol in 2010, has confirmed that he will not be returning for its upcoming ABC reboot next year.

I was asked to do it, and the answer is no. I have no interest, the 57-year-old TV personality told Extra.

My memories are when we first started. It was a different time with Randy (Jackson), Ryan (Seacrest) and Paula (Abdul). You can't recreate that.

Cowell, who became a judge on the popular reality show in 2002, said, Last time I watched, it was not the same show, just the same name. I left for a reason and I never regretted that.

On Tuesday, ABC confirmed that it was rebooting the singing competition series, which aired for 15 seasons on Fox from 2002 to 2016.
Best known for his work on child development and mental disability in low-resource settings, Indian psychiatrist and researcher Vikram Patel was recently involved with the launch of an online platform ~ Its Ok To Talk ~ that deals with young peoples mental health. Currently Joint Director of the Centre for Chronic Conditions and Injuries at the Delhi-based Public Health Foundation of India, Dr Patel discusses with Ajita Singh depression, mental health and adolescence.

Q: What is the status of mental health in India? A: These days, young people are more prone to suicides due to depression; in fact suicide is the number one cause of death among young Indians. Q: How different is it from earlier times?

A: The conversation has changed. The openness to discuss depression and other mental illness has lightened the burden of the disease, and made it easier for people to reach out and get help.

Q: Given that the conversation around mental health has gained mileage, how much has the environment surrounding mental health, especially depression, changed?

A: Compared with when I started work in this sector twenty years ago, there is a much greater openness to talking about mental illness. Even the Prime Minister talked about depression in his recent radio address to the people and our government has just passed one of the most progressive mental health legislations in the world. But now, the responsibility falls on all concerned sectors, not just in the government, but also in the health professional communities and civil society, to work together and with commitment to leverage the Bill and use it to transform the lives of people affected by mental health problems in this country.

Q: Does adolescent mental health often get confused with teenage rebellion?

A: Occasionally it does, and this is not surprising. Adolescence is a period of life when dramatic physiological and psychological changes coincide with unique developmental changes in the brain and a variety of social expectations and aspirations. It is for this reason that adolescents can experience a range of emotional states and experience a range of stressors which are unique to this phase of life. Indeed, impulsivity, risk-taking and reward-seeking behaviours are considered normative in adolescents. In extreme situations, this can translate into a mental health problem; in fact, most mental health problems emerge in adolescence and young adulthood. As one example, a teenager could feel deeply unhappy if they have been denied the right to love someone of their choice, which may evolve into a clinical depression and result in selfharming behaviour.

Q: What are the signs that parents and guardians should look out for?

A: Parents and guardians should remember that everyday ups and downs in mood, impulsivity and risk taking should be dealt with maturity and understanding; this is a normal part of growing up and will ultimately pass if managed with patience, love, respect and guidance. A consistent change in harmful behaviour, deteriorating academic performance, or sustained withdrawal could be a cause for worry.

Q: Is there a relation between sexual and reproductive health and rights and the incidence of depression among adolescents and young adults?

A: Yes, and this is not surprising for two reasons: first, this is the phase in life when an individual achieves sexual maturity with the dramatic physiological and psychological changes which characterise puberty; and secondly, this maturation is accompanied by profound changes in expectations which are heavily influenced by social norms and values related to gender. All of these can interact to lead to mental health problems, for example in young women whose freedoms are denied. Further, we also know that poor mental health is associated with early marriage and child-bearing, which are more reasons why marriage and childbearing should never take place in adolescence.

Q: Recently, the Health Ministry in partnership with PFI and UNFPA launched the Saathiya Resource Kit to equip peer educators to work with adolescents under the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram (RKSK) programme. What is your professional opinion on the Saathiya Kit?

A: One of the characteristics of the adolescent phase of life is the shift in dependence from ones parents, typical of young children, to ones peers. It is for this reason that information coming from peers is expected to have a greater impact on teenagers as opposed to advice from parents or other adult figures. The Saathiya Resource Kit builds on this fundamental shift in adolescent behavior. It remains to be seen what the impact of the Saathiya programme will be. This is what we at the Public Health Foundation of India are doing in partnership with two state governments and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Describing cyber crime as a rising menace in India, experts on Thursday said proper awareness, assessment, and implementation of security policies were the way forward to fight the malady.

Discussing the nuances of cyber security threats at a seminar here, they said that with the offenders in the country constantly evolving, corporates need to sharpen their security at equal speed to overwhelm the mischief makers.

"India is called the ransomeware (a virus) capital of Asia. The cyber threats are rising to steeply here that corporate should not only enhance their security protocols but also impart security training to its employees to minimise the risk factors," said Sandeep Sengupta, chief of a city-based data security company.

"Risk assessment and risk management, implementation of security policy is a must for the corporate sector. Also a quarterly security audit of network, a software audit and data centre audit would help in preventing the hacks," he said at the seminar "Information Technology  Challenges and Opportunities" organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Echoing his statements, senior officers of state police's cyber cell said issues like debit card and credit card fraud and bank account hacking, that was not reported frequently even a few years back, have become everyday incidents now.

"In cyber crime, the criminal has an advantage of anonymity and they do not have to be physically present to harm someone. The fraudsters often get friendly and build a relationship with people to get access to personal information. As a result, sectors like banks and BPOs, dealing with valuable data are facing the heat," Bidit Mondal, Officer in-Charge, Cyber police, Bidhannagar Commissionerate said.

Cautioning against fake websites coming up with job offers and fake emails offering hefty loans, the officer said, "though there is substantial improvement in police infrastructure against cyber crime in the last few years. awareness among people is the key to fight it."

On the legal challenges against the cyber offenders, special public prosecutor Bivas Chatterjee described the proceedings as a slippery slope as collecting evidence about such crimes and authenticating it is difficult.

"In case of a cyber crime through social media, the biggest hurdle is to get the necessary data from the service provider. Unlike the telecommunication companies, the social media websites often refuse to share their user's information due to security reasons. They even decline to share the IP address used to post or share something online," said Chatterjee, who deals with Cyber and E-evidence law.

He said one should be made aware of the fine line between investigation and violation of human rights in these cases.

"I have proposed Ato the national police academy that they start a course on human rights violation during the investigation of cyber crime. One has be careful as so much of personal stuff is shared online now a days,"he said.

"Police should be 100 percent sure before arresting someone as things like IP and email and other online identities can be duplicated," he added.
Scientists have developed a new energy storage device which operates using fluids in the human body, and could lead to longer-lasting, battery-free pacemakers and other implantable medical devices.

The bio-friendly energy storage system called biological super-capacitor is powered by charged particles, or ions, from the body's fluids like blood serum and urine.

Pacemakers  which help regulate abnormal heart rhythms  and other implantable devices have saved countless lives.

However, they are powered by traditional batteries that eventually run out of power and must be replaced, meaning another painful surgery and the accompanying risk of infection.

In addition, batteries contain toxic materials that could endanger the patient if they leak.

Now, researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and the University of Connecticut in the US propose storing energy in those devices without a battery.

The super-capacitor they invented charges using electrolytes from biological fluids like blood serum and urine, and it would work with another device called an energy harvester.

It converts heat and motion from the human body into electricity  in much the same way that self-winding watches are powered by the wearer's body movements.

That electricity is then captured by the super-capacitor.

Combining energy harvesters with super-capacitors can provide endless power for lifelong implantable devices that may never need to be replaced, said Maher El-Kady, a UCLA postdoctoral researcher.

Modern pacemakers are typically about 6 to 8 millimetres thick, and about the same diameter as a 50-cent coin; about half of that space is usually occupied by the battery.

The new super-capacitor is only 1 micrometre thick  much smaller than the thickness of a human hair  meaning that it could improve implantable devices' energy efficiency.

It also can maintain its performance for a long time, bend and twist inside the body without any mechanical damage, and store more charge than the energy lithium film batteries of comparable size that are currently used in pacemakers.

The new biosupercapacitor comprises a carbon nanomaterial called graphene layered with modified human proteins as an electrode, a conductor through which electricity from the energy harvester can enter or leave.

The new platform could eventually also be used to develop next-generation implantable devices to speed up bone growth, promote healing or stimulate the brain, said Richard Kane from UCLA, who led the study published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.
Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Friday said the country is open to sending more troops to Afghanistan in response to a request by the NATO.

"We have been asked to consider sending additional resources, and we are actively considering that. We're open to that," Turnbull told the media.

Turnbull had met senior officials of the NATO and the Defence Secretary of the US, James Mattis, in Kabul during a surprise visit to the region last month, Efe news reported.

"It is very important that we continue () to work together to build up the capacity of Afghanistan's own security forces so they can keep the country secure from the threat of terrorism," Turnbull said.

Australia currently has 270 troops stationed in Afghanistan for training and technical assistance to Afghan troops.

Between 2001 and 2014, it had deployed up to 1,500 soldiers for combat missions in the conflict-torn country.
US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system, the media reported.

After signing the order on Thursday, Trump named Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as the Chair and Vice Chair of the bipartisan "Presidential Commission on Election Integrity", ABC News reported.

"The commission will review policies and practices that enhance or undermine the American people's confidence in the integrity of federal elections and provide the president with a report that identifies system vulnerabilities that lead to improper registrations and voting," deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said while announcing the executive order.

The President first raised the issue of voter fraud in a tweet late November after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes.

Shortly after his inauguration in January, Trump said he would be "asking for a major investigation into voter fraud".

Till date however, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, reports ABC News.

Membership of the commission is still taking shape but so far already includes Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and the commissioner of the election assistance commission Christie McCormick.

The commission's report on its findings is expected sometime in 2018, Sanders said.

Meanwhile, top Democratic leaders reacted with suspicion to the creation of the commission ostensibly designed to protect the "integrity" of the electoral system, reports Efe news.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that at times complaints of electoral fraud have been used as a "pretext" to deny voting rights to working families and to certain communities such as African Americans and Hispanics.

Former Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders said: "The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression."
The ten Indian-origin MPs who made it to the House of Commons in the last UK general elections are set for a tough fight in the June 8 polls as Britain's major political parties finalised their list of prospective candidates.

While many of those elected in May 2015 are defending quite comfortable margins, the changed Brexit reality since the last election means a heightened sense of uncertainty.

If the opinion polls are to be believed, the ruling Conservative party is largely forecast to have a smoother ride under Prime Minister Theresa May's leadership than the Opposition Labour.

The Liberal Democrats, which faced a severe drubbing in 2015, are hoping to revive their fortunes somewhat by focusing only on a limited number of anti-Brexit constituencies.

Among the MPs likely to ride the Brexit wave will be Priti Patel, UK secretary of state for international development the senior-most Indian-origin member of the UK Cabinet.

The Tory MP for Witham is defending a large majority of 19,554 (41.5 per cent) in a Conservative party stronghold. She was also among the MPs who campaigned vehemently in favour of Brexit and had stressed it was the best thing for Britain.

She has strong support within the Indian diaspora, having served as the Indian Diaspora Champion under the David Cameron led government.

"The Indian Diaspora in the UK are fantastic at keeping this relationship strong and work hard every day to support the UK and India reach our potential," Patel said.

Her Conservative party colleague India-born Alok Sharma, the minister in charge of India in the UK Foreign Office, faces a comparatively tougher electoral battle as he defends a majority of 6,650 (14 per cent) in his Reading West constituency.

"The UK-India ties are the 'living bridge' between our people, supported by 1.5 million British Indians who make up our successful and vibrant diaspora community. I have the honour to represent the government on UK-India affairs and am proud to see our partnership go from strength to strength," he said.

Another senior Indian-origin Tory is Shailesh Vara, who served as justice minister in the David Cameron led government and is currently the co-chair of the Conservative Friends of India (CFI). He is defending a large majority of 19,795 (32.4 per cent) in North West Cambridgeshire.

Among the Conservative party newcomers in the last Parliament, Rishi Sunak the son-in-law of Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy is in a Tory safe seat of Richmond.

The Hampshire-born, former Goldman Sachs analyst won the Richmond, Yorks, seat in 2015 by 19,550 (36.2 per cent).

Fellow newcomer, London-born and Goan-origin Suella Fernandes is also defending a comfortable majority of 22,262 (40.7 per cent) in Fareham.

The Opposition Labour party MPs include two of the longest-serving Indian-origin parliamentarians Keith Vaz and Virendra Sharma.

While Vaz had a turbulent year in 2016 with revelations around an alleged liaison with male prostitutes, his popularity in Leicester East seems to be safe with a previous lead of 18,352 (38.2 per cent). He has welcomed the chance to go back to voters in the snap poll next month.

"Theresa May was right to call a General Election. It is important any Prime Minister has a mandate from the British people before they begin the Brexit negotiations with the EU," he said.

"But this is not just about Brexit, it is about the vision of what kind of country we want to live in. This is an opportunity for the political parties to set out clearly how Britain will change for the better. I believe the Labour Party has the answer," he told PTI.

His sister Valerie Vaz has a much tougher fight at hand in her Walsall South constituency in the West Midlands, where she won the last time with a margin of just 6,007 (14.4 per cent).

Fellow Labour MP Sharma, who is defending a majority of 18,670 (43.3 per cent) in Ealing Southall, west London, also welcomed the elections.

"It will give the country a chance to have their say on the divisive policies and hard Brexit that Theresa May is pursuing. The Prime Minister has called this election because she is scared of the Opposition that the Labour Party is mounting in Parliament," he said.

"In Ealing, Southall we will speak to thousands of people, we will speak to the people that are being hurt by Tory policies and we will see that there is no support for a hard Brexit that punishes working people," he added.

The other Indian-origin Labour MPs Lisa Nandy and Seema Malhotra are defending 14,236 (31.4 per cent) in Wigan and 11,463 (23.2 per cent) in Feltham & Heston respectively.

The Tories have fielded another first-time Indian-origin candidate Resham Kotecha in Coventry North East but has come under some fire for not having enough ethnic minority candidates on its list this time.

"The Conservative Party has a proud record of ensuring candidates from all walks of life stand for Parliament," a party spokesperson said.

The Labour Party has over a dozen Indian-origin candidates on its list of prospective candidates finalised this week.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday inaugurated a multi-specialty hospital built with Indian aid at Dickoya in the central Sri Lankan hill district of Nuwara Eliya.

"Health & wellbeing of people of Sri Lanka  a shared priority. PM @narendramodi inaugurates Dickoya Glengairan Hospital in Central Province," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay tweeted.

The area where the hospital is located is home to a large number of Indian-origin Tamil tea plantation workers.

The 150-bed hospital was constructed with Indian aid of Rs.50 crore under India's developmental aid to Sri Lanka.

India has committed $2.6 billion in developmental aid to its southern neighbour and the hospital comes under this programme.

Earlier in the day, Modi was the chief guest at the inauguration in Colombo of the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

Later in the day, the Indian Prime Minister 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 arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

This is his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.


Actor Amitabh Bachchan has been living with Hepatitis B; says no one should go through that suffering.

By Indo-Asian News Service: Celebrated Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan, a Hepatitis B conqueror, was on Friday appointed the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for the Hepatitis awareness programme in southeast Asia region.

The veteran actor has been brought on board to boost awareness and intensify action to arrest the Hepatitis epidemic, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced in a statement.

"I am absolutely committed to the cause of Hepatitis. As a person living with Hepatitis-B, I know the pain and sufferings that Hepatitis causes. No one should ever suffer from viral Hepatitis," Amitabh said.

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In his capacity, the actor will lend his voice and support to public awareness programmes that aim to scale up preventive measures and advocate for early diagnosis and treatment of viral Hepatitis to reduce the disease burden.

Amitabh Bachchan with Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director for WHO southeast Asia. Photo: Yogen Shah

Announcing his association with WHO, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, regional director for WHO southeast Asia, said, "This association is expected to help strengthen WHO's efforts in reducing the high numbers of premature deaths and illnesses from viral Hepatitis which is not only causing hardships to individuals and families, but also impacting health and development across the region."

In a video message, union health minister JP Nadda said, "Mr Bachchan's voice is one that is listened to by people across the country, regardless of cultural, social or economic background and can make real change possible. We have witnessed this in polio eradication."

Amitabh had earlier served as Unicef Goodwill Ambassador for the polio eradication campaign in India, and has been supporting and promoting various health and related issues in the country such as childhood immunisation programme, anti-tuberculosis campaign and Clean India initiative.

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Nepal and China on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on bilateral cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, a media report said.

Nepal Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi and Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong signed the MoU here at a ceremony, Xinhua news agency reported.

Bairagi said the agreement is an important milestone in the Nepal-China relationship, bringing bilateral ties to a new height.

"Nepal is aspiring to benefit from the rise of China which is our close neighbour," he said.

"Nepal has just become a member of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, thanks to the Chinese leadership for introducing such a wide concept that seeks to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation between China and various countries and regions around the world," Deputy Prime Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara said.

He believed that Nepal can benefit in various sectors through the initiative in the days to come.

"Nepal is gradually moving forward from the status of least-developed country, our economic growth is rising, and is full of possibilities, so with the Chinese assistance, we can attain economic prosperity," he said.

The Belt and Road Initiative was introduced in 2013 aiming to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.


Nepal on Friday inked a major deal with China to join Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious One Belt One Road(OBOR) initiative to link Asia with Europe, a move that could raise concerns in India.

The decision to sign the agreement comes ahead the OBOR forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong and Nepal's Foreign Secretary Shankar Bairagi signed an MoU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kathmandu.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat were present during the signing ceremony.

This agreement will bring Nepal and China closer through road connectivity and bring home the Chinese investment, Mahat said.

The agreement was important for Nepal in terms of expansion of road connectivity and construction of railways, he said.

Mahat expressed hope that the deal would help in attaining economic prosperity for the country.

With the signing of the MoU, a new chapter has begun in the area of foreign investment and trade promotion, he said, adding Nepal would reap benefits from the Chinese project which would expand to Europe and Africa.

Nepal needs the maximum investment and we want Chinese investment channelled in Nepal through this new project.

Nepal would benefit from this important project initiated by China and that this should be taken as a significant achievement of Nepal's development endeavour, Bairagi said.

Yu expressed hope that the project would contribute to enhancement of China-Nepal cooperation as well as to the economic development of the South Asia region itself.

The MoU aims to forge cooperation on promoting connectivity of facilities, trade connectivity and financial integration, according to the Foreign Ministry statement.

The OBOR aims to enhance connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Asia and Europe through land as well as maritime routes.

China had sent a draft proposal on OBOR to Nepal late last year. After a month-long consultation, the Nepalese side had sent back the draft to Beijing with some changes.

Nepal signing the deal with China may cause concerns in India, which has opposed Beijing's initiative. India has reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of the OBOR, as it is proposed to pass through the Pakistan- occupied Kashmir.

India, which has traditionally enjoyed great economic and political ties with Nepal, has faced increasing competition from China in recent years.

Landlocked Nepal relies heavily on imports from India and completely on Indian ports for sea access.
Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan, Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan, Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban, he said.

Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership, Coats said.

Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean, Coats testified before the committee.
A Pakistani team will soon be visiting Nepal to probe the disappearance of a former Pakistan army officer who was last seen in Lumbini in April, and whose family alleges he has been abducted by Indian intelligence agencies, a media report said.

Col (Retd) Habib Zahir was allegedly kidnapped by Indian intelligence agencies from an area bordering Nepal and India after he was invited to the country in connection with a job opportunity, The Nation reported.

According to sources, a team comprising government officials from the Ministry of Interior will proceed to Nepal to examine the facts first-hand, take the statement of Javed Ansari, the host and airline officials/hotel management to assess as to who arranged his bookings and the like.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the Interior Ministry to nominate a team in this regard, official sources told The Nation. "The composition of the special team  so as to forward the same to the concerned authorities of Nepal  is under consideration," they added.

Muhammad Habib Zahir disappeared from Lumbini near Nepal's border with India. The Government of Pakistan had approached the Nepalese government for mutual legal assistance and arrangement for the visit of the team from Pakistan to Nepal.

The team will seek any other information from fellow passengers or any other person concerned and also take statements of the police officer in-charge of the city/town from where the Pakistani went missing. The team will also ascertain the frequency of movements across the border with India. It is likely that a team from National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) would be constituted to visit Nepal, the daily said.

Zahir had arrived in Nepal to reportedly face an interview for a United Nations job.

According to reports, Zahir arrived in Nepal via an Air Arabia flight (Call Sign WY 344), with the passport no. AJ5122964, for a UN job interview in Nepal. According to the reports, Zahir had retired as Colonel in 2014 and Mark Thomson had called him to Lumbini based on his personal details posted by him on a website.

There had been a correspondence between the two. Thomson had called him to Nepal to face interview and had himself sent an air ticket for him.

India is believed to have entrapped and kidnapped Zahir from Kathmandu to make it a case of having apprehended an "ISI spy" and equate it with the case of Indian "spy" Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Nation said.
Turkey will play a key role in the Belt and Road Initiative as its geographical and cultural bridge links with east and west, and it's an indispensable partner with China, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday.

Speaking at a press conference ahead of his visit to China and attendance of the Belt and Road International Cooperation Forum in Beijing, Erdogan said that the initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 is "highly significant and historic, aiming at establishing a comprehensive infrastructure, transportation, investment, energy and trade network," Xinhua reported.

"During this visit, we will take concrete steps, for which we have made preparations earlier, towards improving structure and context of bilateral relations and boosting cooperation," Erdogan stressed.

The efforts will definitely have an positive impact not only on Turkey-China relations, but also worldwide, he noted.

Erdogan pledged that as an indispensable participant, Turkey is providing a strong support to Beijing's initiative to revive the ancient Silk Road.

"We will start operation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project in 2017, as an important step in the Middle Corridor plan of the country," he said.

The Belt and Road International Cooperation Forum will be held on May 14 and 15 in Beijing, which will be attended by more than 1,500 delegates, including officials, academics, entrepreneurs and representatives from financial institutions and international organizations.

The initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt that links China with Europe through Central and Western Asia by inland routes, and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road connecting China with Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe by sea.

The network spreads through over 60 countries and regions, with a total population of 4.4 billion.
The US has squarely blamed Pakistan for its current state of relations with India and warned that ties between the two South Asian neighbours might worsen if another high-profile terror attack orchestrated from across the border took place in India this year.

Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan, said US National Intelligence Director Daniel Coats in his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on intelligence.

The stinging remarks against Islamabad by a top US functionary at a time when relations between India and Pakistan have hit the rock bottom is certainly not good news for Pakistan as it is high on the radar of the new Trump administration, which has been considering levying costs on Islamabad for perpetuating terrorism in India and Afghanistan.

lawmakers and officials in the US have in recent months expressed their concern over Pakistans continued support to terrorism against its neighbours and opined that the Trump administration must make it more and more costly for Pakistan to employ a strategy of supporting terrorist proxies to achieve regional strategic goals.

Coats noted that strained relations between India and Pakistan were a result of the Pathankot and Uri attacks of 2016, carried out by terrorists crossing into India from Pakistan and terror incidents along the Line of Control (LoC) might further deteriorate relations between the two neighbouring countries. His comments assume significance against the backdrop of frequent violation of the ceasefire along the LoC by Pakistani troops in recent months, resulting in the killings of Indian soldiers and innocent civilians.

Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhis growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistans investigations into the 2 January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for the deterioration of bilateral relations They (India-Pak relations) might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India, Coats told US lawmakers.

He was of the view that the reduction in tension between the two countries will largely depend on a sharp and sustained decline in cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the investigation in the Pathankot airbase attack.

Coats observed that Pakistan might turn to China due to Indias rising geopolitical status and New Dellhis good relations with the US in an attempt to offset its isolation, thus empowering a relationship that would help Beijing to project influence in the Indian Ocean. While Pakistan would be able to manage its internal security, anti-Pak groups would likely focus more on soft targets, he said.

The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistans internal security include Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ui-Ahrar, Al Qaeda in the Indian subcontinent, ISIS-K, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi ai-Aiami, Coats said.


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Rajat Das was dismissed from the Army after an inquiry found him guilty of laying anti-tank in safe mode to protect a forward base from enemy attacks.

By Ajit Kumar Dubey: A military court has upheld the dismissal of a Colonel who laid mines in safe mode in front of a forward fighting base on the Pakistan border during a war-like situation while expecting a full-fledged tank attack from the enemy.

Ex-Colonel Rajat Das was commanding officer of a Mechanised Infantry battalion deployed in Bikaner district of Rajasthan during the Operation Parakram, where India had moved forces towards Pakistan border after the October 2001 Parliament attack by Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists.

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The officer was dismissed from Army in 2006 after an Army inquiry found him guilty of laying anti-tank and anti-personal mines in safe mode to protect a forward base from enemy attacks.

As the mines were laid in safe mode, they would not have exploded even if Pakistani tanks crossed over them or its troops passed through the area and could have been detrimental to national security.

The officer had challenged his dismissal from service arguing that his dismissal was due to a conspiracy from junior officers, but the Armed Forces Tribunal bench headed by Chairperson Justice Virender Singh upheld the punishment given to him by the Army General Court Martial.

The matter had come to light after a "pseudonymous complaint was received against two officers of the Colonel's unit alleging irregularities in laying of the minefield by the troops of the 20 Mechanised infantry battalion."

COLONEL'S ACTIONS RENDERED MINEFIELD 'DEFUNCT'

Rejecting the plea by the officer, the Tribunal said, "There is no procedure of laying a minefield on safe mode. All military procedures say that minefields are laid in active mode to ensure casualties to enemy when he assaults across the minefield on defensive positions."

The court also observed that the Colonel's orders to lay mines in safe mode had "virtually rendered the entire minefield defunct."

The military court agreed with the findings of Army inquiry that the Colonel might have "possibly (laid mines) to avoid casualties while laying the minefield."

Loss of lives during such procedures is considered to have adverse effects on the career of officers in the forces. During the proceedings of the case, it also came out that when the junior officers objected to the laying of the landmines in safe mode while defending a forward base from Army base, they were told that such an action was based on a secret plan of the higher ups and they had to follow orders from superior formations.

The Tribunal also rejected the contention of the Colonel that his punishment of dismissal from service was too severe saying that "in light of the act, its circumstances and possible outcomes, which were definitely adverse to the security of the nation, we find the GCM has, in fact, already shown a fair degree of indulgence by restricting the punishment only to dismissal."

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ALSO READ | Supreme Court issues notice to Defence Ministry on Sahayak system

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Olympic gold medalist Kaetlyn Osmond can't wait to skate in front of Newfoundland crowd for her first performance since COVID

When Kaetlyn Osmond steps on the ice at the Mary Browns Centre in St. Johns next month, it will be the first time the Marystown native has performed on ice in front of an audience since before the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020. It's also the ...
No respite for the embattled Arvind Kejriwal. Having somehow wrestled a lid onto one bubbling, hissing pot - Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) founding member Kumar Vishwas's emotional criticism of the Delhi chief minister, including allegations of turning a blind eye to the corruption of favoured colleagues - Kejriwal missed disaster brewing on another burner.

Kapil Mishra, an ally of Vishwas, accused Kejriwal of being personally corrupt. AAP had sacked water minister Mishra for "poor performance", according to deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia. In response, Mishra alleged he had seen Satyendar Jain, a fellow cabinet minister with several essential portfolios, handing Kejriwal Rs 2 crore at the latter's home on May 5.

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"There is a limit to lying," Jain said in response, claiming he wasn't even in Kejriwal's house on the date in question and that he would be taking Mishra to court. Mishra, meanwhile, posted an extraordinary open letter to Kejriwal on Twitter. "I am going to file an FIR against you today," he wrote, in Hindi. "My heart is heavy... I am writing this letter to seek your blessing before going to fight my life's biggest battle against you." Now suspended from AAP, Mishra has a future writing dialogue for Bollywood potboilers.

Kejriwal responded to the accusations - including talk of a deal for a Rs 50 crore farmhouse for his brother-in-law - with uncharacteristic silence. His wife, instead, came out swinging, tweeting her disgust at "stupid" Mishra's relentless "scripted" attack on her brother-in-law. In a grim turn, said relative, 60-year-old Surendra Kumar Bansal, died just hours before Mishra made his sensational claims. Kejriwal restrained himself-suspiciously, argued some commentators-to a tweet, and later, a brief denial.

Mishra, with much fanfare, went to the CBI, filing three separate FIRs against Kejriwal and other AAP leaders. Asked for a response, AAP spokesman Ashutosh sent an incredulous text message: "No one can doubt Kejriwal's honesty. Even his opponents would swear by him on this." That evidently did not include Ajay Maken and Manoj Tiwari, the respective leaders of the Delhi Congress and BJP, both of whom have called for Kejriwal's resignation.

For the voter, it must seem scarcely believable that Kejriwal would have been so reckless, given his anti-corruption platform. Indeed, the party has been criticised for having no ideas and no ideology other than a commitment to honest governance. If so, how can the AAP possibly survive the muddying of that reputation?

After the initially muted, and perhaps stunned, response to Mishra's accusations, AAP swung back into belligerent form, staging a hammy 'hacking' of an 'EVM' machine in the Delhi assembly. Whatever the substance behind the allegations of EVM tampering, it came off as an amateur diversionary tactic. And AAP making a spectacle of itself no longer elicits more from the public than an eye roll.

Also Watch: AAP crisis: Saw Arvind Kejriwal accept Rs 2 crore in cash from Satyendra Kumar Jain, says Kapil Mishra

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A footage that is doing rounds on the internet shows a mother of two at a mental facility, naked and stumbling around, before she died. The scenes from the facility will make your stomach churn.

By India Today Web Desk: This case hails from Australia where a mentally ill woman died due to negligence of the hospital she was in. She died in 2014 and her daughter was told that the woman had slipped in the shower and died.

The daughter believed the story hospital told her but later found out that's not how her mother died.

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Ghastly footage of the woman at the hospital in Australia emerged online. The footage is of the mother of two at a hospital in New South Wales.

Before she died, a sedated Miriam Merten tripped around the facility. Miriam was covered in feces and fell at least 25 times before she died.

FYI || Had to carry her on moped, says father who lost daughter due to Karnataka hospital's negligence ||

MAY 2014

Miriam Merten was admitted to the Lismore Adult Mental Health Inpatient Unit on May 26, 2014. She was kept locked and secluded in a room for about five hours as part of her treatment on June 1, 2014.

The next morning a nurse went to the ward and unlocked the door. Miriam came out naked and stumbled in the hallway. She soon collapsed in a corner but the nurses paid no attention. However, an emergency crash cart was rushed in by staff.

Merten died two days later on June 3, 2014.

IMAGES FROM THE CCTV FOOTAGE

Following Merten's death, one of the daughters, Corina, requested CCTV footage from the hospital, and those pictures have just been released.

Screenshot: Twitter/The Daily Telegraph

According to coroner Jeff Linden, Merten died of "traumatic and hypoxic brain injury caused by numerous falls and the self-beating of her head on various surfaces, the latter not done with the intention of taking her own life," RT quoted.

Screenshot: Twitter/The Daily Telegraph

NEGLIGENCE OF THE FACILITY

The two nurses who were on duty had knowledge of Merten being on phycotropic drugs. They also knew that Miriam Merten had fallen down at least once but the medical staff didn't do anything about it.

Naked and sedated, Merten had only a mattress on the floor in the ward she was kept in secluded. She was without food or water and was covered in her own feces.

Her vitals signs were also not checked, the coroner's report concluded.

DISCOVERY OF THE NEGLIGENCE

Miriam Merten's 20-year-old daughter Corina came to know about the horrific details of her mother's death after a journalist contacted her.

Corina was initially told that her mother Miriam had slipped in the shower leading to her death.

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"I'm so disappointed that it took a reporter for me to know what actually happened to my mum. I just think it's so important that there's proper care for people in these facilities. I don't know what was going on for those nurses or why they did what they did," she said, as cited by 9 News Australia.

THE HORRORS OF THE FOOTAGE

The coroner said that the scenes from the CCTV footage were "horrific", and why the patient was "treated in such an appalling manner is really beyond comprehension."

New South Wales (NSW) Mental Health Minister Tanya Davies also said, "My stomach actually turned at one point. I got to a point where I just closed my eyes because I didn't want to see what was going to come next. I am still pretty much shaken by thinking that was happening to a lady. I was pretty disgusted," RT quoted

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard declared there would be a parliamentary inquiry into the state's mental health hospitals.

The Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the two nurses "are no longer in service", and the state government had Canberra's "full support for the strongest possible steps against what was completely unacceptable," The Guardian quoted.

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"I have (seen the footage) ... it is deeply distressing," Mr Hunt said in Sydney on Friday.

Along with that, there will be an independent review by Chief Psychiatrist Murray Wright with the help of an international expert team.

DISCLAIMER: THE VIDEO HAS SCENES WHICH MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR SOME VIEWERS. VIEWER'S DISCRETION ADVISED

Watch: CCTV footage of a mental health patient dying at Lismore Base hospital

CCTV footage of a mental health patient dying at Lismore Base hospital was released today. We meet the journalist who broke the story. pic.twitter.com/Ni01XslQG1- #TheProjectTV (@theprojecttv) May 12, 2017

FYI || Furanyl fentanyl: Drug so powerful you can die 'just by touching' it, more than 100 dead already ||

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Organisation: Catholic

Relief Services (CRS)

Duty Station: Kampala, Uganda

About US:

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) in an international non-profit

organization that carries out the commitment of the Bishops of the United

States to assist the poor and vulnerable overseas. Our Catholic identity is at

the heart of our mission and operations. We welcome as a part of our staff and

as partners people of all faiths and secular traditions who share our values

and our commitment to serving those in need.

About 4Children Project:

Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children) is a fiveyear USAIDfunded project implemented by a consortium

of organizations led by CRS with partners IntraHealth, Maestral, Pact, Plan and

Westat. 4Children is designed to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for

orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) affected by HIV and AIDS and other

adversities. 4Childrens work utilizes global evidence establishing that HIV

and other adversities are best prevented and addressed when families and

children have access to both high quality health and social welfare services.

The project supports systems and structures at country and regional levels to

implement evidence-based interventions that protect against risk, interrupt

cycles of vulnerability, and build pathways to resilience leading to an AIDS

Free Generation and contributing to overall improvements in quality of life and

productivity for vulnerable children and their families.

Job Summary: The CMMR

Response Project Assistant (PA) will support all project administrative

functions. The PA will support the CMRR Project Manager by drafting project

documents and communications; scheduling, coordinating and managing logistics

for project-related meetings and events; and monitoring the financial and

administrative needs of the project. S/he will be a dynamic person with strong

interpersonal and organizational skills who thrives in a complex, busy work

environment.

Key Duties and Responsibilities:

Conduct

administrative tasks related to all aspects of the CMMR activity.

Work

closely with the CRS Country Program to arrange all necessary logistics

for program activities, including workshops, trainings and meeting;

arranging transportation; photocopies etc.

Support

the CMRR Program Manager in tracking project activity schedules, including

monitoring progress against the project objectives, targets and timelines.

Assist

the CMRR Program Manager in the preparation of program correspondence,

reports, and other documents.

Assist

the CMRR to establish/maintain electronic files with all documents

related to activity planning, implementation, and monitoring.

Ensure

all received project materials are properly stored.

Perform

any other tasks as assigned by the CMRR Program Manager, that are

commensurate with the job level.



Experience: Qualifications, Skills andExperience:

The ideal candidate for the Catholic

Relief Services (CRS) Project Assistant, 4Children job opportunity must

hold a Bachelors degree in

Administration, Social Sciences, Business Management or equivalent.

A

minimum of two (2) years work experience in a similar position,

preferably with an international NGO or UN agency with a good

understanding of project management, administration, HR and finance.

Previous

exposure and experience supporting the planning and organizing of

high-level internal and external meetings, workshops, and events,

including the ability to plan resources and actions for timely and

efficient service delivery.

Proven

ability to work in a fast-paced office environment, ability to assimilate

and analyze situations, plus skills in handling competing work

priorities.

Excellent

interpersonal skills  ability to interact effectively with internal and

external stakeholders at various levels.

Advanced

knowledge of Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook,

and Internet) required.

Fluent

written and spoken English.

Show

desire to work effectively in a team oriented environment with minimal

supervision.

Agency-Wide Competences (for all CRS

Staff): Serves with Integrity, Models Stewardship, Cultivates

Constructive Relationships, Promotes Learning

How to Apply:



a cover letter, updated CV and three work references (names and contact

information only) to

or submit hard copy to Catholic Relief Services, Plot 577, Block 15, Nsambya

Road, P.O Box 30086 Kampala, Uganda All suitably qualified and interested candidates are encouraged to senda cover letter, updated CV and three work references (names and contactinformation only) to ug_recruitment@crs.org or submit hard copy to Catholic Relief Services, Plot 577, Block 15, NsambyaRoad, P.O Box 30086 Kampala, Uganda

rd May

2017 Deadline: 23May2017
PAUL SCHNEIDEREIT: Treatment centre for PTSD in first responders, military opens in Nova Scotia

Imagine its your job, every day, to be ready to rush to scenes where men, women or even children had been killed or badly injured, often in horrific circumstances. Really, consider what that might be like. If youre like most of us, the thought ...
Early next month, DDOT will host a meeting to present the proposed design concepts for the Pennsylvania Avenue SE and Potomac Avenue SE intersection improvement project; and to allow the public to comment on them.

The project focuses on improving pedestrian safety for residents and multi-modal transit users at the Pennsylvania Avenue SE and Potomac Avenue SE intersection. The project is one in a series of transportation, environmental, economic, community and recreation projects included in the Anacostia Waterfront Initiative (AWI) Program. From the Tidal Basin to the citys northeast border with Maryland, the 30-year $10 billion AWI Program is transforming the shores of the Anacostia River into world-class waterfront.

DDOT has been talking about reworking this intersection since at least 2005, when it was included in the Middle Anacostia Crossing Study. After a flurry of activity in the 2013-14 time range, not much has happened publicly since 2014. The website still says that the final decision would be made last summer. But it may be that the process is restarting.

Back in 2009, the preferred alternative was to combine the traffic islands into one square in the middle of Pennsylvania, sort of like Stanton Park.

2009 Preferred Alternative

In 2013, they kicked off an environmental study of the intersection with public meetings and a Pedestrian Safety Study. They then came up with two design options as well as two no-build options (that added crosswalks and such). One build option created a T-intersection and the other a traffic oval - smaller than the one seen above.

2013 T Intersection Design

2013 Oval Intersection

There were also plans to place a bikeshare station at the Metro there and extend the bike lane on 14th to Pennsylvania.

By the next year, they'd moved on to more of a park design. There were 2 oval designs and one triangles design. None of them moved the CaBi Station to the Metro Station and none have any bike facilities.









I have no idea what they will present in June. I think moving the CaBi station across the street to the Metro (or just installing a 2nd one) makes a lot of sense. And extending the bike lane on 14th to Pennsylvania, across it on another facility and then to 14th on the other side would be a good addition as well.

The meeting will be on Thursday, June 1, from 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm at the Hill Center (Abraham Lincoln Hall, 921 Pennsylvania Avenue SE/Washington, DC 20003)
But the tribe has a long way to go
A day after the Karnataka BJP released a chargesheet against the Congress government, listing down its failures, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah dismissed the charges, calling it bundle of lies and baseless allegations.

On Thursday, BJP state president B.S. Yeddyurappa and leader of the opposition Jagadish Shettar had released a 63-page 'chargesheet', listing the failures of the state government in various sectors and alleged that Siddaramaiah had failed to deliver good governance.

Hitting back at Yeddyurappa, who accused the government of being the most corrupt in the country citing an NGO report, Siddaramaiah asked, What moral right does Yeddyurappa have to talk on corruption? He has had police chargesheet him in various cases and he is out on bail. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others.

The chief minister, who released a booklet on the achievement of his government in the last four years, countered the allegations levelled by the BJP saying, BJP is misleading the public by repeating a lie several times. Yeddyurappa's allegations that Karnataka is the most corrupt is not true. The national crime records bureau statistics of 2015-16 indicate that Karnataka accounts for 4.7 per cent of all criminal cases booked in the country, which is much less compared with BJP-ruled states like MP (9.1 per cent), Maharashtra (9.3 per cent), Rajasthan (6.7 per cent) and several others like Tamil Nadu (6.4 per cent), UP (8.2 per cent), West Bengal (6.1 per cent) and Bihar(6 per cent).

BJP is desperate after its bypoll debacle as they had proclaimed the bypoll result would be a referendum. I did not badmouth them even once during the election campaign, but sought votes on account of the good work done by my government. The result is for anyone to see, said Siddaramaiah.

Interestingly, Siddaramaiah, who had declared that he would lead the party to power in the 2018 polls and become the chief minister once again, took a U-turn on the issue. Choosing the next CM is the prerogative of the legislators, and the high command needs to approve the choice as well. My immediate focus is to ensure victory of my party, he said.

Ramya to take on Saffron social media warriors

Actor-turned-politician Ramya (Divya Spandana) is the All India Congress Committee's choice for leading the party's social media campaign, even as Karnataka  the last bastion of the Congressis gearing up for the 2018 assembly polls.

Ramya (34), a former MP from Mandya replaces Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda and will head the 20-member social media team that runs the official website of the Indian National Congress www.inc.in and the Twitter handle @INCIndia.

Ramya is one of the leaders who extensively uses the social media to connect with her fans and followers and has courted controversies with her tweets. One of her tweetsPak is not a hellhad triggered a controversy. A sedition case filed against her on this count was quashed by a Madikeri court recently.

The actor-turned-politician has 483k followers on Twitter and she has so far tweeted as many as 16.7k times. She has made an impact on Facebook after she toured her former constituency to compile videos of drought-hit families, and also to document the impact of demonetisation on the lives of the common man.

Kumaraswamy biopic

If JD(S) patriarch H.D. Deve Gowda was nicknamed Mannina Maga (son of the soil) for espousing the cause of farmers, his son and former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy will soon be known as Bhumi Putra (son of the land).

Even as the JD(S) is gearing up for the 2018 assembly polls, pinning its hopes on emerging as the kingmaker, one of Kumaraswamy's fans have come up with a novel idea of making a biopic on the leader, focusing on Kumaraswamy's tenure as the chief minister for 20 months in 2007.

Bhumi Putra, a biopic to be produced by one Prabhu, will have Arjun Sarja in the lead role and will be directed by veteran film director S. Narayan.

CM braces to fight bad publicity with 'Varuna'

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah entered the election year with a bang by inaugurating a state-of-the-art studio at his home office 'Krishna'. The studio named 'Varuna' has backdrops, teleprompters and recording equipment to facilitate interviews to the television channels. However the name 'Varuna' sure rings a bell, as it is also the name of Siddaramaiah's assembly constituency in Mysuru.

For a state battling consecutive drought years, the studio has been aptly named after the rain god. The centre has been named after the rain god in the hope that the state gets good rains, clarified the CM.

Karnataka not keen on expert panel on Cauvery

The Karnataka government is most likely to reject the Centre's offer to form an expert panel to deal with the Cauvery water dispute.

Senior advocate Fali S. Nariman, who is handling the state's inter-state water disputes, has warned the state government against accepting the offer as the hearing on the state's application against the final order of the Cauvery Water Disputes' Tribunal is coming up before the Supreme Court in July.

The Ministry of Water Resources has proposed setting up of a group of experts to deal with the Cauvery dispute and sought the opinion of riparian states. The terms of reference of the group include recommending a framework for collection and dissemination of water data in the river basin and estimating the water availability each season, making suggestions on equitable distribution of water among basin states during a distress year and identifying the key reasons for the long-drawn water dispute.
An FIR has been registered against the Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Mosque, Nur-ur Rehman Barkati, for not removing the red beacon on his car.

An NGO worker lodged a complaint with the Lake Police Station in Kolkata, near Park Circus. We have received the complaint. An inquiry will be done, said an officer of the police station.

Meanwhile, Barkati told THE WEEK, What will happen if I dont remove? Will I be hanged?

The Imam had earlier issued a fatwa against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and even justified the jihad, calling it part of religious ritual. It has been going on for hundreds of years, said he.

Barkati had warned Modi on his move to ban cow meat across India saying he would then issue fatwa to make India a Muslim nation. He cautioned the Muslims of West Bengal against joining BJP saying that they would be beaten up.

The top official of the West Bengal police refused to comment as Barkati is adamant that he will not remove the red beacon. The Imam is known to be very close to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Calcutta High Court Judge C.S. Karnan, who was sentenced to six months in jail by the Supreme Court on contempt charges, seems to be evading arrest. The Kolkata police team, which arrived in Chennai on Tuesday, is still on the lookout for Justice Karnan. The belligerent judge is not at his home at Nungambakkam in Chennai. Even his family members are not to be seen at his residence. A police vehicle with a silent siren is waiting outside his house, indicating that that the judge might be arrested anytime soon.

In a related development, advocate Mathew Nedumpara, who appeared for Justice Karnan in the Supreme Court again on Friday, said, There is a provision for contemner to apologise even after the order of punishment. Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar had asked the registry to accept the petition filed by Nedumpara on behalf of Justice Karnan, seeking relief from arrest. The registry, however, had not accepted the plea, following which Nedumpara sought permission from the CJI to file another plea saying the registry not accepting it.

The CJI observed that everytime one cant come and file a case in the courtroom, instead it should be filed at the registry. Nedumpara replied saying, The registry is still not accepting the plea and Justice Karnan might be arrested anytime. However, Nedumpara appearing on behalf of Justice Karnana again seemed to have annoyed the CJI who said, Seven judges heard the matter and passed the order. If anything to be filed, the procedure will have to be followed.

However, sources close to Justice Karnan in Chennai said he might seek apology once when there is a positives sign. Sources also said he is evading arrest and might have left the country and would return only when the President of India gives him an appointment to seek Presidential pardon.

The 61-year old justice had earned the wrath of the Apex Court after he named 20 judges of the Madras High Court as corrupt judges and demanded an investigation into his corruption charges against them.

The Supreme Court, in the wake of a letter from the Madras High Court Chief Justice S.K. Kaul, transferred Justice Karnan to Calcutta High Court, which he said was a decision only to victimise him because he was a dalit. The allegations of Justice Karnan had prompted a contempt actionthe first in Indian courts history against a sitting judge.

Countering the order of a seven-judge bench headed by CJI Khehar to file an affidavit explaining his remarks and allegations against fellow judges, Justice Karnan accused the seven-judge bench of robbing him of his mental and physical balance. He also accused the bench of depriving him of his dignity and stripping him of his judicial powers. Following this, the SC ordered a medical examination of the judge to check his mental balance which he refused to undergo.

He then ordered five years rigorous imprisonment for all the seven judges including the CJI, thus inviting the wrath of the apex court. And now, the Kolkatta police is still on the lookout for Karnan in Chennai.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) The coal-based Badarpur power plant, considered a major source of air pollution in Delhi, will close by July 2018, the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution-Prevention and Control Authority (EPCA) today said.

The NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) has also prepared a remediation plan on managing the flyash, of around 250 lakh tonne, present at the site, which also adds to the level of particulate matters in the citys air.

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The plan has been submitted to the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), an NTPC official told an EPCA meeting here, which was chaired by its chairman Bhure Lal and attended by the authorities concerned.

The plan involves growing special plants (Ipomoea) to prevent the fly ash from getting airborne as has been done in the entitys Dadri thermal power plant, using it as a raw material in brick kilns and in construction of a highway.

In the meeting, EPCA member Sunita Narain, the chief of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), expressed concern on the amount of particulate matter and sulphate particles, of plumes from coal-fired plants, in the citys air.

"The IIT-Kanpur study of the citys air quality has observed that Delhis air has the presence of flyash in it," she said, while also pitching for the Bawana gas-based power plant to operate in its full capacity.

Bhure Lal also emphasised that the Bawana plant has to start operating its full capacity and directed the authorities concerned to resolve the issues hindering its functioning.

The Delhi Power Department told the EPCA the thermal plant, essentially two of its units of 210-MW each, have to function to meet the power needs of south Delhi areas and the peak demand during the summers, which may touch a high of 6600-MW this year.

The NTPC-run plant will be allowed to function till around October subject to a set of conditions including the emptying of its flyash pit within a time-frame and timely commissioning of the 400-KV Tughlaqabad sub-station by June 2018. PTI SBR TIR

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, currently on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, announced a direct Air India flight between the island country capital of Colombo and his constituency Varanasi. "From August this year, Air India will operate direct flight between Colombo and Varanasi, will ease travel to the land of Buddha," Modi said while delivering the celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day today.

"My Tamil brothers and sisters will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath," he said.

Modi further said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states but arises from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence. "Menace of terrorism in our region is a clear manifestation of this destructive emotion. Sadly these ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are not open to dialogue and hence only open to causing death,destruction," the prime minister said. "I believe that Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world."

Modi, on Thursday, met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries.

However, no MoUs were signed at the meeting.

Prime Minister Modi also met President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena.

Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations.

"The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day.

"Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added.

Prime Minister Modi also met former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa who had earlier accused President Sirisena of compromising the country's sovereignty and declared that black flags would be shown to the visiting Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, the prime minister delivered a celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day today.

The Prime Minister will then inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital.

Prime Minister Modi will also address the Indian origin Tamil community at Norwood Grounds.

He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC). Thereafter, the Prime Minister will also be holding a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBC).

The Prime Minister will also visit the hilly regions of Sri Lanka that host tea plantations and is the first Indian PM to do so.

Meanwhile, the Congress party on Friday, while drawing upon the ongoing tussle between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu over fishermen being detained said the issues needed to 'properly handled'.

"The chronic issues of fishermen being detained by the Sri Lankan authorities, presence of Tamilians in the island and other such issues need to be properly handled. I hope the Prime Minister has been briefed well by the Ministry of External Affairs prior to his meetings with the leaders there," said Congress leader Tom Vadakkan.

He further said the strengthening of bilateral relations between the two countries would be determined by the nature of dialogues taking place, given China's strong influence on Sri Lanka.

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham (DMK) also asked Modi to ensure that the Indian-origin Tamils are treated at par with the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka and no disparities emerge between the two ethnic communities.

"I don't think this visit by the Prime Minister will do any good to the Tamils living in the island until they are treated at par with the Sri Lankan Sinhalese. Since they are also natives of Sri Lanka, there should not be any disparities between two ethnic communities. Only the prime minister can ensure that all entire citizens of Sri Lanka, including Tamils are treated at par," said DMK leader T.K.S. Elangovan.
The BJP, it seems, will not have any problem in electing its own candidate for the post of the president of the country. Parties like the AIADMK and the YSR Congress have come forward with support for the BJPs candidate. YSR Congresss president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy said, We will support any candidate the BJP fields as we have very little differences in opinion. The BJP has enough support for its candidate to win. Opposing their candidate and fielding another will not make sense. Reddy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 10 to offer support to any candidate that the BJP fields.

Hectic parleys have already begun, among the opposition parties, on a suitable candidate to stand against the BJPs candidate. Congress president Sonia Gandhi is seeking the support of the opposition parties ahead of the elections in July. She has met leaders from the Nationalist Congress Party, the National Conference, the Janata Dal (United), CPI(M), CPI, the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal to build a consensus. The names of former West Bengal governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former Lok Sabha speaker Meira Kumar and JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav were, apparently, discussed. Though nothing was finalised.

The BJP is short by 25,000 votes at the moment. But support from one or two regional parties could easily cover the shortfall. It is almost sure that it will be a BJP candidate who would be the next president of India. The total value of votes in the electoral college is 10,98,882. Around 5,49,442 votes are needed to reach the majority mark. The BJP-led NDA, on its own, has around 5,31,442 votes. Support from a few smaller parties would help the NDA fetch the remaining 18,000 votes.

In the BJP, meanwhile, there is confusion as to who the candidate is. Many senior leaders stayed tight-lipped. But there is a growing chorus in favour of former deputy prime minister L.K. Advani. Said the BJP leader Vinay Katiyar to THE WEEK, Our party can still consider Advani for the post of president. There is no legal hindrance. The party has to take the final call. Katiyar was referring to the Supreme Court, recently, reviving criminal conspiracy charge against Advani in the Babri Masjid demolition case.

MP and former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Shanta Kumar said that Advanis name could be considered by the party. Said he to THE WEEK, I have given my opinion on Advanis candidature to the party leadership. But I would not like to express my views on it to the media.

It is a tricky issue and must be handled with a lot of thought and care, said BJP MP Tarun Vijay, on Advanis name being proposed for the post of the president. Said Vijay to THE WEEK, I fully trust my leadership. I am sure they will choose the right candidate from the party after deliberating on all the pros and cons.

Veterans in the BJP like O. Rajagopal, the lone MLA from Kerala, want Advani to be the next president. Said Rajagopal to THE WEEK, My personal opinion is that Advani should become the next president. The party should put forward his name. Finally, I will go by what my party decides.

Senior leader Chandan Mitra said to THE WEEK that Advanis name was not in the fray. As far as I know, Advani is not in the race. The party will choose the right candidate at the right time, he said.

BJP leader Balbir Punj refused to comment on the matter.

Said party stalwart V.K. Malhotra, 85, I am practically nobody in the party at the moment. Yes, I share a good relation with Advani. But I wouldnt like to comment on the presidential election for now.

Legal experts said the Babri Masjid demolition trial does not make Advani ineligible for the post of the president. Article 58 of the Constitution clearly states that a presidential candidate should be an Indian citizen who has completed the age of 35 years and is qualified to become a member of the Lok Sabha. He or she should not hold any office of profit under the government of India or under any other local authority.

Article 361(3) of the Constitution extends immunity to the president. So if he becomes the president, Advani cannot be arrested.

When Pratibha Patil was nominated as candidate of the United Progressive Alliance in 2007, it was pointed out that she was accused of financial irregularities. But that didnt prevent her from becoming the president.

Who knows, history could repeat after 10 years.
Blaming Pakistan for worsening bilateral relations with India, the US has warned India and Afghanistan of possible terror attacks from Pakistan-based terror groups.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

The Worldwide Threat Assessment of US Intelligence Community also blamed Pakistan's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and lack of progress in Pathankot for deteriorated bilateral relation with India.

The report warned that these might deteriorate further in 2017,especially in case of another high-profile terror attack in India from Pakistan.

Pakistan, Coats rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.
President Donald Trump on Thursday called ousted FBI chief James Comey a "showboat" and "grandstander," but its acting leader contradicted the president and promised the agency's probe into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia would proceed with vigor.

Trump, facing Democratic accusations that he fired Comey on Tuesday to hinder the FBI investigation into alleged meddling by Russia in the 2016 US presidential election, said he would have taken the action even without a recommendation to do so by the two top Justice Department officials. That ran counter to previous administration explanations of Comey's dismissal. The Republican president also gave further details of his account that Comey informed him three times that he was not under investigation.

Trump's personal attack on Comey seemed designed to underline that Comey's dismissal was about his performance at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and not a probe that has hung over Trump's presidency since he took office in January and threatens to overwhelm his policy priorities. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, testifying in place of Comey, promised to tell the panel of any White House meddling into the agency's probe.

Democrats have called for a special prosecutor to look into the Russia matter. "He's a showboat. He's a grandstander," Trump said in his first interview to the media since firing Comey. "The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that."

The White House and Vice President Mike Pence have said Trump fired Comey on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and No 2 Justice Department official Rod Rosenstein. On Thursday, Trump said: "I was going to fire Comey. My decision," Trump said. "I was going to fire regardless of recommendation." Trump said he never pressured Comey into dropping the FBI probe, adding: "If Russia did anything, I want to know that."

Trump said there was no "collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians," but added that "the Russians did not affect the vote."

McCabe's testimony contradicted Trump's appraisal of turmoil at the FBI under Comey. "I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe said. "I can tell you that I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity," McCabe added. "And it has been the greatest privilege and honor of my professional life to work with him."

Trump will not visit FBI headquarters in Washington as expected after agency officials told the White House he would not be greeted warmly following his firing of Comey.
Illustration: Job P.K.

The plot was hatched. And a poor Muslim cook was at the centre of it. The year was 1917. Mahatma Gandhi was visiting Champaran in Bihar to see for himself the plight of the farmers who were being forced by the landlords to grow indigo. During the visit, he got a dinner invitation from an Englishman, Erwin, who was the manager of an indigo plantation. Erwin had planned to eliminate Gandhi by serving him a glass of milk laced with poison, and the task was assigned to his cook, Batak Mian.

When the time came, Batak Mian presented the glass of milk to Gandhi, but he also warned him of its contents. Dr Rajendra Prasad witnessed the entire episode. Though Gandhi escaped the sinister plot and successfully led the Champaran Satyagraha, Batak Mian had to pay a heavy price for it. He was dismissed from work, put behind bars and tortured. His house and land in Siswa Ajgari, a village near Motihari, were auctioned and his family was forced to leave the village.

In 1950, after Prasad was elected as the first president of India, he visited Motihari which was the headquarters of an undivided Champaran. A crowd gathered at the railway station to welcome him. On alighting from the train, Prasad witnessed a commotion near the entrance. He saw an old man trying to make his way towards him. Prasad recognised him instantly and walked up to him and hugged him. He told the crowd that it was Batak Mian, the man who saved Gandhis life. Prasad wondered aloud what would have happened to the country if Batak Mian had given in to the plantation managers inducements and threats.

When Prasad was informed of the hardships faced by Batak Mian and his family, he ordered the collector of Tirhut division, which comprises six districts including East and West Champaran, to give 50 acres of land to Batak Mian and his three sons, Rashid Ansari, Sher Mohammed Ansari and Mohammad Jaan Ansari.

However, 100 years after the Champaran Satyagraha, Batak Mians grandchildren are still waiting for the government to honour its promise. According to Alauddin and Kalam Ansari, sons of Batak Mians youngest son Mohammad Jaan Ansari, the family got just six acres, not in Siswa Ajgari, but in Ekwa Parsauni village in West Champaran in 1958, a year after Batak Mian died. About 110 kilometres from Motihari, the land falls under the Valmiki Tiger Reserve forest area bordering Nepal. Mohammed Jaan and his family moved to Ekwa Parsauni in 1961 and have been living there since then. They live very close to a river and the fear of flooding and attacks by wild animals rattles them. Illiterate, they make a living as labourers.

Place in history: Batak Mians grandchildren with his photograph | M.S. Anoop

In 2010, after a newspaper carried a report on the pitiable plight of the family, then president Pratibha Patil ordered the district magistrates of East and West Champaran to present a report on action taken by the Bihar government to fulfil Prasads promise. But nothing came of it. We are fed up with the attitude of the authorities in sanctioning the land, says Kalam. We are planning a satyagraha at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. For years, we have been running from pillar to post to get the land.

The family is also upset that the government didnt honour Batak Mian during the 100th anniversary celebrations of the Champaran Satyagraha. Though the state government organised various functions in Patna and Motihari, we didnt get an invitation or felicitation, says Alauddin.

In Siswa Ajgari, the tombs of Batak Mian and his wife, Indira Khatoon, lie unattended to. We want the government to build good roads and other facilities in our village so that we could turn it into a memorial, say Naimudeen and Sarfullah, two locals who are pained by the governments apathy towards the legacy of an unsung hero.
The police arrested seven members of the terror organisation Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) from Chapainawabganj in the last three days and seized 22 jihadi books from them.

By Sahidul Hasan Khokon: The police in Bangladesh have arrested seven members of the banned militant organisation Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen of Bangaldesh(JMB) from Chapainawabganj district in the last three days.

Addressing a press conference today, the Chapainawabganj Police super MM Mozahidul Islam said, "The police recovered 22 kilograms of power gel, 22 jihadi books and detained seven JMB members from different parts of the district."

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The accused have been identified as Harun-Or-Rashid (25), Kamal Uddin(32), from Guthail village under Nachole upzila, Nasim Reza Sahin(20), of Barachaki village, Firoz (22) of Srirampur village, Babu (22) of Kaithapara village under Shibganj upazila, Azizul Haque (38) of Raghbpur village and Abdul Hakim (20) of village Debinagar Fatapara under sadar upazila.

Mojahidul added that the seven accused will be charged under the anti-terrorism law.

On Thursday, five militants and a firefighter were killed in suicide blasts during a security raid on a suspected militant hideout in Bangladesh's Rajshahi district. A family of five blew themselves up in the Godgari hideout when they learned about a raid.

OTHER OPERATIONS

On April 26 and 27, four militants were killed in Operation Eagle Hunt at a militant den in Shibganj upazila of Chapainawabganj district.

In March, 26 people, including women and children, were killed in a militant hideout raid at seven houses of Chittagong and Sylhet areas.

Large amount of explosives were also recently recovered from a house in Jhenaidah Sadar upazila.

--- ENDS ---
All she wanted, she has said, in the wake of the Bombay High Court decision that upheld life sentences for the rapists and murderers, was "justice, not revenge".

Bilkis Bano, still a teenager at the time and pregnant, was gangraped by a Hindu mob in the 2002 Gujarat riots. They killed her toddler daughter. Over a dozen members of her family were slaughtered.

All she wanted, she has said, in the wake of the Bombay High Court decision that upheld life sentences for the rapists and murderers, was "justice, not revenge". Police and doctors were also judged complicit in covering up the crime.

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Perhaps the Supreme Court had already acknowledged possible complicity when it agreed in 2004 that she could not receive justice in Gujarat and transferred her case to Mumbai.

The events of Bilkis's case make for horrifying reading as does the aftermath. Still, she "always had full faith in the judiciary" to do the right thing. "It's a very good judgment," she said, "and I'm very happy with it."

Photo by Bandeep Singh

Photo by Bandeep Singh

Watch: Happy with verdict; wanted justice, not revenge: Bilkis Bano

--- ENDS ---
Robert Lighthizer has long complained that the United States dithered in the face of abusive Chinese trade policies, allowing its trade gap with Beijing to explode and American factories to close.

Now, the veteran trade lawyer will get a chance to do something about it.

The Senate voted 82-14 Thursday to confirm the 69-year-old Lighthizer to serve as U.S. trade representative. The job will empower him to renegotiate and enforce trade deals, many of which the new president has condemned as destroyers of American jobs.

A fixture in Washington trade policy circles for nearly four decades, Lighthizer has built a reputation as a shrewd negotiator. And like the president who chose him, Lighthizer represents a departure for a Republican Party that for decades favored the free flow of global trade as a boon to economic growth.

I agree with President Trump that we should have an America First trade policy, Lighthizer told a Senate committee earlier this year. And that we can do better in negotiating our trade agreements and be stronger at enforcing our trade laws.

His nomination sends another signal that the Trump administration intends to upend decades of U.S. policy and act aggressively to block imports when it deems other countries to be acting unfairly.

Hes a trade realist, Paul Rosenthal, a trade lawyer at the firm Kelley Drye & Warren. He doesnt necessarily subscribe to free trade as a religion as some people do.

Lighthizers philosophy, Rosenthal suggests, essentially boils down to: How can we afford to be unilateral free traders when the Chinese dont reciprocate?

Not all Republicans are enthusiastic. On Wednesday, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Ben Sasse of Nebraska jointly wrote a letter to Lighthizer saying they would oppose his nomination, in part because he did not have an appreciation for the economic benefits of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which Trump wants to renegotiate or end.

Supporters of free trade, such as analysts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argue that a Trump-Lighthizer combative approach could backfire. Blocking or taxing imports would raise prices of imports for American consumers and provoke retaliation. The result could potentially be a trade war that would hurt U.S. farmers and companies  from Boeing to Caterpillar  that depend on exports.

Drawing from experience in trade law and his work in the Reagan administration in countering Japanese imports, Lighthizer will likely try to force China and other competitors to end what the Trump team sees as unfair trade.

Lighthizer wont be the administrations only trade policy heavyweight. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a billionaire investor, is expected to involve himself in trade issues, including an effort to renegotiate NAFTA. And Peter Navarro, a vociferous critic of China, is advising the White House on trade.

Could Lighthizer be overshadowed?

The words overshadow and Bob Lighthizer shouldnt appear in the same sentence, says Clyde Prestowitz, a Commerce official in the Reagan administration and a longtime critic of U.S. trade policy.

Lighthizer has more congressional contacts and more experience with the fine points of trade law than Navarro or Ross. In 2008, he wrote a column in The New York Times criticizing McCain, then the Republican presidential candidate, for his unstinting support of free trade. Lighthizer noted that conservative statesmen from Alexander Hamilton to Ronald Reagan sometimes supported protectionism.

They always understood that trade policy was merely a tool for building a strong and independent country with a prosperous middle class, he wrote.

Lighthizer served as a top aide on the Senate Finance Committee under Sen. Bob Dole in the late 1970s and early 1980s and later as treasurer of Doles 1996 Republican presidential campaign. (The 93-year-old Dole introduced Lighthizer at his committee hearing.)

Under Reagan, Lighthizer served as deputy trade representative. Despite Reagans reputation as a stalwart supporter of free trade, his administration seldom hesitated to pressure U.S. trade partners if it thought American manufacturers were being hurt.

Lighthizer played a key role, for example, in strong-arming Japan into limiting auto exports in the 1980s. That move eventually led Japanese automakers to open plants in the United States, thereby creating U.S. jobs, instead of shipping all its cars from Japan.

Later in private practice  he became a senior partner in international trade at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom  Lighthizer represented U.S. steel companies that complained that China and other countries were dumping underpriced steel on the U.S. market.

In 2010 testimony to U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, he lambasted U.S. trade officials as too passive in the face of Chinas economic rise. When it negotiated Chinas 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization  which sets trade rules and mediates disputes  Washington naively assumed that China was merely a more exotic version of Canada and would learn to live within WTO rules and open its market to American exports, Lighthizer argued.

Instead, he contended, China limited foreign competition, manipulated its currency and subsidized its exporters to give them a price advantage. The notion that having China in the WTO would benefit Americans, Lighthizer concluded, was simply wrong. Our trade deficit with China has exploded, millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost.

Trump campaigned on a promise to renegotiate or withdraw from agreements that he says failed American workers. But Dean Pinkert, formerly of the U.S. International Trade Commission, says he thinks Lighthizer will seek better ways to use existing agreements before tearing them up. In his 2010 testimony, Lighthizer had said the U.S. should more aggressively scour WTO rules for new ways to bring cases against China  for manipulating its currency, say.

Alan Wolff, a deputy U.S. trade representative in the Carter administration, says China and other U.S. trading partners should brace themselves.

Under Lighthizer, Wolff says, trade policy is going to get a lot more muscular.

(AP)
A judge presiding over a criminal case against a wealthy Turkish businessman said Thursday hes not sure ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani can work for the defendant while his law firm represents Turkey in other matters.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman in Manhattan asked prosecutors and a defense lawyer to submit additional information to the court before he decides if Reza Zarrab can keep his attorneys despite potential conflicts of interest. Zarrab, who has pleaded not guilty to violating sanctions against Iran, hired Giuliani and ex-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to work on a diplomatic solution to the case.

Prosecutors say he processed hundreds of millions of dollars illegally for Iranian businesses or Irans government.

I need to know who is looking out for Mr. Zarrab at any negotiation Mr. Giuliani or Mr. Mukasey might be engaged in, Berman said. Its of concern to me.

Zarrab, 33, is a well-known personality in Turkey who is married to Turkish pop star and TV personality Ebru Gundes.

Giuliani and Mukasey met with Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and have said they intend to speak with U.S. officials to see if the case can be resolved outside court.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sidhardha Kamaraju told Berman that Giuliani and Mukasey cannot claim attorney-client privilege over their negotiations because they are not representing Zarrab in court against criminal charges.

Attorney Ben Brafman, Zarrabs courtroom lawyer, said the lawyers could claim a work-product privilege that gives them a measure of secrecy. Kamaraju acknowledged that may be true.

As Brafman spoke, he created a hypothetical that referenced President Donald Trump when he said the work-product privilege could be cited if the lawyers speak with the president of the United States or the president of Turkey.

Erdogan and Trump are scheduled to meet Tuesday in Washington. Trump recently congratulated Erdogan on winning a national referendum greatly boosting the powers of his office. The praise drew sharp criticism that Trump was supporting leaders who rule through autocracy.

Giuliani, the citys Republican mayor from 1994 to 2001, served as a close adviser to Trump and frequently spoke at his campaign rallies last year.

At a bail hearing last year, prosecutors said criminal charges brought against Zarrab in Turkey in 2013 were dropped after Erdogan, then Turkeys prime minister, reportedly applied political pressure that resulted in the firing of prosecutors in Turkey who brought the charges. Prosecutors said those charges pertained to a massive bribery scheme allegedly executed by Zarrab and others involving the payment of tens of millions of dollars to cabinet-level government officials and high-level bank officers to facilitate Zarrabs transactions benefiting Iran.

On Thursday, Brafman offered to provide prosecutors more information about Giuliani and Mukaseys efforts.

The judge was critical last week of affidavits provided to the court by Giuliani and Mukasey, saying they were dismissive of the seriousness of criminal charges facing Zarrab.

Giuliani and Mukasey said none of the transactions Zarrab was alleged to have participated in involved weapons, nuclear technology or contraband. Instead, they said, the transactions involved consumer goods.

The judge said the affidavits appear surprisingly disingenuous in failing to mention the central role of Iran in the indictment and indeed failing to mention Iran at all in their affidavits.

The question of potential conflicts of interest arose weeks ago when prosecutors pointed out that Giuliani and Mukasey both worked for law firms that have represented banks considered victims in the Zarrab case.

Giulianis law firm is registered as a foreign agent for Turkey.

Brafman said neither Giuliani nor Mukasey ever individually represented Turkey.

(AP)
A federal judge decided to spare an admitted homegrown terrorist known as Bashir the American a long prison term on Thursday, agreeing he should instead receive a sentence of time served  about eight years in mostly solitary confinement  as credit for becoming a prized U.S. government cooperator.

Bryant Neal Vinas, 34, grew up in obscurity on Long Island before becoming a militant Muslim convert, relocating to an outlaw region of Pakistan and scheming with senior al-Qaida members on how best to attack the Long Island Rail Road.

To say Im remorseful would be an understatement, Vinas, his face pale, said in a flat voice in federal court in Brooklyn before hearing his sentence.

Outside court, his lawyers said he was relieved and grateful.

Vinas, of Patchogue, had pleaded guilty in 2009 to charges he tried to kill American soldiers and provide support to al-Qaida before Pakistani authorities captured him in 2008 and turned him over to the United States.

U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis ordered Vinas to remain jailed another 90 days while authorities assess his security needs as someone in likely danger for betraying the terror group and put him on probation for life. The judge also agreed with prosecutors that mental health treatment, vocational training and continued cooperation should be mandatory.

Referring to his cooperation, the judge cautioned, You have made the most out of that opportunity, and I implore you to do that now.

In a letter to the judge, prosecutors wrote that Vinas eagerly became what may have been the single most valuable cooperating witness in efforts to identify members of al-Qaida, pinpoint their hideouts and disrupt their terror plots in the late 2000s when the nation was still reeling from the Sept. 11 attacks.

The government sealed classified FBI reports it gave to the judge to show the depth of cooperation known to have prompted security alerts on mass transit systems around New York City. But in court papers, it said Vinas did 100 interviews, reviewed approximately 1,000 photographs and contributed to the opening and closing of more than 30 investigations.

Vinas also testified at the trial of one of three New York City men convicted in a foiled plot in 2009 to bomb the subway system and gave statements against French and Belgian defendants accused of going to Pakistan to join al-Qaida.

Vinas father and sister attended the sentencing but declined through his lawyers to talk about him. Court papers give some glimpses of his background  how his parents divorced when he was 10, how he washed out of the Army after only a few weeks in 2002 and how he left the Catholic faith in favor of an extremist form of Islam in 2004.

He thereafter became increasingly angered by what he perceived to be the persecution of Muslims by Western countries and decided to travel to North Waziristan in 2007 to retaliate, the papers say.

After agreeing to become a suicide bomber for a splinter jihadist group, he was introduced to al-Qaida operatives, who had him train in explosives and heavy weapons. He admitted participating in two rocket attacks on U.S. forces.

The U.S.-born recruit, nicknamed Bashir al-Ameriki, was relentless enough to catch the attention of al-Qaida leaders who wanted to draw on his knowledge as a regular rider of the LIRR and the New York City subway system, authorities said. In the summer of 2008, he recommended placing a suitcase bomb that could explode on a moving train, preferably inside a tunnel where a number of train lines converge on Manhattan, a scheme that apparently was never set in motion.

Vinas lawyers, in court papers, called him a complex individual now on the path to redemption, with hopes of becoming a counterterrorism expert.

Prosecutors sounded less hopeful. Though possibly no longer a terror threat, they wrote, it is difficult to evaluate Vinas current mindset  because he has become increasingly withdrawn and less willing to communicate.

(AP)
A Russian fighter jet approached within 20 feet of a U.S. Navy aircraft over the Black Sea on Tuesday morning  the day before Russian officials met with President Trump at the White House  U.S. defense officials told Fox News.

An Su-27 Russian jet made the close approach to the P-8A Poseidon while the Navy plane was in international airspace.

The Russian jets maneuver was safe and professional, a U.S. Navy spokesperson told NBC News.

The Su-27 was reportedly scrambled after the Poseidon appeared to be approaching Russias border. The Poseidon soon changed its course.

After approaching a plane at a safe distance the Russian pilot visually identified the flying object as a US surveillance plane P-8A Poseidon, the Russian military said.

Russian officials called the jets intercept a greeting maneuver.

U.S. officials said about 60 such incidents have occurred since 2007, RT reported.

In September, a Russian jet buzzed a Navy spy plane over the Black Sea, the aircrafts coming within 10 feet of each other.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday and also held a meeting with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

(Source: Fox News)
By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for the Five Towns Jewish Times

The answer is a resounding, Yes. Even though the Ramah (Shulchan Aruch OC 493:2) tstates that on LaG BaOmer we engage slightly in Simcha  joy, commemorating LaG BaOmer is a serious matter. The Mogen Avrohom cites the Kavanos HaArizal that discusses a certain individual who had the habit of reciting Nachem every day. He continued to do so on LaG BaOmer as well. For doing so he was punished. We see, therefore, that one should take the words of the Ramah quite seriously.

A number of reasons are cited by Torah authorities for commemorating Lag BaOmer:

 It commemorates the students of Rabbi Akiva who ceased dying during this day  although the deaths persisted between Pesach and Shavuos. (Shla Psachim 525).

 This day is the Yartzeit of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai who revealed the inner secrets of the Torah (Chayei Adam Moadim 131:11)

 This is the day that Rabbi Akiva granted ordination to his five students  among them Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai  they did not die in the plague that struck Rabbi Akivas other students (Pri Chadash OC 493)

 It also commemorates the Manna which began to fall on this day after the Bnei Yisroel left Egypt (Responsa Chsam Sofer YD #233 Amnam Yadati).

In this short essay, we will attempt to discuss each of the four reasons mentioned above.

The Students of Rabbi Akiva

The Talmud (Yevamos 62b) tells us that 12,000 pairs of Rabbi Akivas students died on account of the fact that they did not extend honor to one another. Rav Chatzkel Levenstein zatzal asks how it could be that the great students of Rabbi Akiva neglected this most basic of principles?

His answer is most illuminating. Our Rabbis teach us that Kinah, Kavod and Taavah  jealousy, the pursuit of honor, and the pursuit of desires take one out of this world. If so, Rabbi Akivas students reasoned, how can we accord each other this spiritual poison?

Rabbi Levenstein explains that they were unaware that, in fact, honor is only poisonous when one seeks it  but when one extends it to another it is not poisonous at all. When we build the self-esteem of others, it is actually quite healthy. Rav Levenstein explains that this notion is very subtle and nuanced and it could well be that the notion itself was only revealed in the world at that time. Why then were they punished? They were smart enough to have been able to figure out and contemplate this issue by themselves. Having neglected to delve into this psychological insight was their error.

Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai

Rashbi, whose Yartzeit we commemorate on this day, merited to compose two extraordinary books that form part of the Zohar. They are the Adara Rabbah and the Adarah Zutah. Rav Yoseph Chaim in his Responsa (Rav Pealim YD #156) explains why it was that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, above and beyond his masters the Tannaim, merited to write these extraordinary books. He explains that although his teachers and masters were greater than he was, he had the ability of couching these teachings in esoteric terms. Indeed, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai was so adept at obscuring the true understanding of these thoughts, that they could even be expounded upon publically  and only those that truly merit understanding it would be able to figure out the true inner meaning and import. According to this, we commemorate the fact that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai not only transmitted these remarkable teachings, but vouchsafed them in such a manner that they not be abused or taught to those who are unworthy.

Jewish Continuity

The ordination that Rabbi Akiva conducted on his five students was a heroic event that changed the course of Jewish history, and that of the world. These students were Rabbi Meir, Rabbi Yehudah, Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Elazar Ben Shamoa. Under the pressure of the dark forces of Roman tyranny and religious oppression, these valiant scholars, who were privy to the noblest ideals of the Bible, its teachings and oral traditions, knew that no matter what the cost  they must ensure the continuity of these teachings. They were the future educators of us all.

It was a point in time where the forces of evil and darkness were pitted against goodness and light.

The light of Torah ultimately won out and Torah Judaism was to effect and alter the world. We commemorate this remarkable event on this day of LaG BaOmer. The words of the Mogen Avrohom concerning the man who was punished for not commemorating this day are, therefore, well understood.

The Manna

The Manna represents the spiritual nourishment that G-d granted the Jewish people upon their departure from Egypt. Manna allowed us, the Jewish people, to develop a close bond, a Dveikus, with the Creator  that has defined who we are as a nation. Although the Manna no longer falls, the admonition that the Jewish people have to continue that bond, to continue imitating G-d and attempting to be like Him has never ceased.

The Talmud (Shabbos 133b) tells us Mah Hu Rachum af attah Rachum veChanun  just as He is Merciful, so should you be merciful. Just as He is kind so too must you be kind. Just as He clothes the poor  so should you clothe the poor. Just as He buries the dead, so should you buy the dead.

This is the message of the Manna that still exists to this day, and this is what LaG BaOmer commemorates.

Nonetheless, perhaps due to the deaths of so many of Rabbi Akivas students, the Minhag is to celebrate a little bit and not to make it into a full-fledged holiday. The Chsam Sofer points out that our Talmud does not mention it as a holiday at all.

So how do we commemorate this day? The Bnei Yissasschar states that the custom is to light a number of candles in Shul on this day. We do not fast on this day  even for a Yahrtzeit, except for a fast of a bad dream. We do not recite Tachanun on this day, nor on the Mincha before it. We get married and attend weddings. We join in with singing and dancing, and we listen to music (See Pri Magadim Aishel Avrohom 493:1).

So as we hear the song and dance of the Jewish weddings and the words, Od Yeshamah, let it still be heard in the cities of Yehudah and in the outskirts of Jerusalem, the sound of joy and the sound of happiness, the sound of the groom and the sound of the bride let us think of these four reasons: Building the self-esteem of others and according others due honor is of utmost importance; vouchsafing the teachings of the Torah is paramount; Jewish continuity and education is key; and the spiritual bond and Dveikus that we have with Hashem should be central to our lives.

May Hashem bring the Geulah Shleimah speedily in our days!

The author can be reached at [email protected]
Dozens of Kevarim at the Jewish Cemetery in Rome were found vandalized on Friday morning.

The graves are located in the Jewish section of the Verano Cemetery, located in Rome, Italy.

The vandalism was discovered on Friday morning by a cemetery employee who was making his rounds to inspect the graves.

In total, around 70 tombstones were destroyed.

The cemetery has turned over security-camera footage to police, which police are hopeful will assist them in apprehending those responsible for the crime.

(Chaim Shapiro  YWN)
By Press Trust of India: Mumbai, May 12 (PTI) The BJP in Maharashtra will launch a sanvad yatra from May 25 to reach out to the people, including farmers, and counter the Oppositions recently held sangharsh campaign.

It is going to be a 15-day-long tour of Maharashtra, state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve said today.

"Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and I will start the yatra from two different locations so that we can cover a larger part of the state," he said.

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"We will meet farmers in their fields, hold discussions and also try to answer their queries about the state governments schemes and provisions made for their benefit," he said.

Danve said all the MLAs and elected representatives of BJP will participate in the yatra in their respective areas.

"If we work hard today and establish a better communication with people, it will be easier for us in the next elections," he said.

Fadnavis had last month said that the Opposition failed to reach out to the people through its sangharsh yatra.

"The people of this state are not responding to the sangharsh yatra as they have reposed their faith in us and they are expecting communication from our side," he said.

"So, we are going to start a reaching-out campaign, wherein the party workers in the state will go to the people. There will be target of reaching out to 25 lakh farmers.

"As they (opposition) call their campaign a sangharsh yatra, we will call ours a sanvad yatra," Fadnavis had said.

The Opposition Congress and NCP recently held the sangharsh yatra to express solidarity with farmers over their demand of loan waiver.

As a part of the campaign, the leaders of the two parties held meetings with farmers at various places and addressed public gatherings.

The Opposition also criticised Danve for his alleged derogatory comments made a few days back on tur dal growers.

However, Danve yesterday expressed regret over what he said but asserted that he has always been a farmers sympathiser. PTI ND GK

--- ENDS ---
A Jewish man was viciously attacked by an ax-wielding man in the city of Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. He was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

The incident happened on Friday morning.

According to initial reports, the incident does not appear to be an anti-Semitic attack, but a dispute between neighbors.

Please say Tehillim for Avrohom ben Tziporah.

(Dov Gefen  YWN)
Dozens of activists from Im Tirtzu and other Zionist organizations demonstrated Wednesday 14 Iyar against the annual Nakba Day ceremony held at Tel-Aviv University.

Activists waved Israeli flags, chanted pro-Israel slogans and distributed booklets titled Nakba Nonsense, which were also converted into audiobooks and handed out on USB flash drives.

Im Tirtzu activists also brought a 12-by-6-foot sign upon which Nakba Nonsense was written and handed out Tortit candy bars, poking fun at terrorist Marwan Barghouti who was caught secretly eating the candy bar during his highly publicized hunger strike.

Last year, the organization brought a 15-foot tall inflatable Pinocchio doll in order to emphasize the lie of the Nakba.

Joint List MKs Aida Touma-Suleiman and Yousef Jabareen participated in the ceremony, along with convicted terrorist Muhammad Kanaaneh who sat in jail for aiding Hezbollah.

Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg said that the goal of the Nakba to undermine the existence of the State of Israel.

We cannot afford the luxury of allowing this anti-Israel propaganda to go unchallenged, said Peleg. We are here sending a clear message that we will not be silent in the face of this deceitful attempt to rewrite history.

It is important to unapologetically call the Nakba what it is: nonsense, added Peleg.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photo Credit: Odelia Setbon)
A complaint was filed with the Jerusalem Police District Commander against policemen who strip-searched an approximately 14-year old minor without cause.

The complaint stated that on Sunday, 13 Nissan, at 5:30 A.M., policemen with a preventative detention warrant arrived at the minors home. The warrant was issued due to concerns that the minor intended to sacrifice a Passover sacrifice on the following day in Jerusalem. The policemen woke up the minor, handcuffed him, and took him to the Russian Compound in Jerusalem.

At the police station the policemen allowed the minor to daven shachris while handcuffed and then strip-searched him for no apparent reason. Honenu Attorney Menasheh Yado wrote in the complaint that, A plain-clothed policeman by the name of Liron Asbag ordered the complainant to strip. The complainant stripped according to instructions and remained in his boxer shorts only. The policeman demanded that the complainant also remove his boxer shorts and he refused. Then, without cause, the policeman body-searched the complainant in front of two border policemen who were present.

Yado continued, The preventative detention was issued solely for ideological reasons and not due to violence [on the part of the complainant]. The complainant was taken from his home as he was sleeping. In this case, there was no reason or reasonable cause or even an unreasonable cause to conduct a strip-search on the complainant. Numerous courts have handed down verdicts ruling that a strip-search, even down to boxer shorts, should not be conducted if there is not a reasonable concern that the suspect is concealing objects under his clothes.

Yado mentioned in the complaint that the handcuffing of a minor in a public place is illegal: Handcuffing my client and taking him through a public place violated his rights, particularly because he is a minor. This is against orders. The Criminal Procedure Law (Powers of Enforcement  Arrests) 1996, paragraph 10b, orders against handcuffing a minor when there is an alternative. Handcuffing a minor in a public place is contrary also to Israeli Police Directive 12.03.09, the authority of a policeman to shackle a detainee in a public place.

Honenu Attorney Menashe Yado: The Israeli Police have been violating the Attorney Generals Officss 2011 directive to define clearly the criteria for conducting strip-searches. This has not been done and is a prolonged failing which starts with the high command of the police and ends with thousands of strip-searches conducted over the past few years without clear criteria.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

The following information is the result of a survey conducted by the Hiddush organization, and while Hiddush represents a non-halachic Jewishness, the data is relevant to all for it depicts a changing reality in the State of Israel today. the survey was commissioned by Hiddush but carried out by the prestigious Smith Institute.

55% of the Jewish Israeli public and 81% of the secular Jewish Israeli public are interested in alternative marriages outside the auspices of Israels Chief Rabbinate. This is the first time that a majority of the Jewish Israeli public has expressed a personal preference for marriages outside the Chief Rabbinate.

55% of the Jewish Israeli public is interested in the alternative of egalitarian Jewish marriages outside the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate, including 81% of secular Jewish Israelis. These are the findings of a survey conducted by the Smith Institute for Hiddush  for Religious Freedom in Israel, in advance of the Lag BOmer holiday, which represents the beginning of the Jewish wedding season. The survey was conducted on April 19-20 among a representative sample of Israels adult Jewish population.

This represents the first time that a majority of the Jewish Israeli public has expressed not only principled support for marriage freedom in Israel, but also personal interest in marriage outside the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate. A common argument heard in Israeli public discourse is that even if civil marriage and non-Orthodox Jewish marriage were instituted by the Government, there would not be much demand for them among the public. Now, it turns out that this assumption no longer reflects reality.

In the past, Hiddush measured support for the principle of freedom of choice in marriage and the implementation of civil marriage, as well as support for egalitarian Jewish wedding ceremonies. It is clear that a large majority of Jewish Israelis support changing the reality in Israel, which grants the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate exclusive jurisdiction over the marriages of Jews in Israel. (72% expressed support for the implementation of civil marriage and divorce in Israel in a September 2016 survey. 74% of respondents expressed an interest in having egalitarian Jewish wedding ceremonies for themselves and their children, which could include ring exchanges and wedding contracts that include equal responsibilities on the part of both partners.)

Rabbi Uri Regev, Hiddush CEO: It is becoming increasingly clear that the battle for freedom of religion and equality in Israel is not only one of principle over the values of democracy and human rights, but actually a personal and existential battle. It is important that the State of Israels leadership open their eyes and their hearts, and that they understand that the time has come to put an end to religious coercion and to allow every couple in Israel to marry in ceremonies that reflect their choices, their beliefs, and their ways of life.

The survey question was as follows: The State of Israel today recognizes and registers only marriages of Jews that are conducted within the framework of the Chief Rabbinate. A number of movements and organizations offer an alternative of Jewish egalitarian marriages outside the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate, which grant couples many rights and responsibilities that the State recognizes, just as it does for couples that marry via the Chief Rabbinate. To what degree would you be interested in such an alternative for yourself or your children who intend to get married?

As stated, 55% were very interested (27%) or quite interested (28%) in such an alternative. This included 81% of secular Jewish Israelis, 61% of traditional Jewish Israelis (not so close to religion), 40% of traditional Jewish Israelis (close to religion), 13% of Zionist Orthodox Israelis, and 0% of ultra-Orthodox Israelis.

This also included 75% of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, many of whom cannot legally marry in Israel at all, for the Rabbinate does not consider them Jewish. Among voters for the civil Government Coalition parties, 74% of Yisrael Beitenu, 57% of Kulanu, and almost half of Likud voters expressed an interest in such a marriage alternative. Among voters for the Opposition parties, 85% of Zionist Union, 80% of Yesh Atid, and 87% of Meretz voters expressed their interest.

(YWN  Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
Verizon Communications is buying Straight Path Communications for about $3.1 billion, ending a bidding war with AT&T over the wireless licenses company.

The all-stock deal was announced Thursday, one month after AT&T said that it would buy Straight Path for $1.6 billion. AT&T is declining to match that offer, and Verizon will pay a $38 million termination fee to AT&T on behalf of Straight Path.

Straight Path, based in Glen Allen, Virginia, holds spectrum licenses which the telecom companies can use to expand services, including faster 5G service.

Shares of Straight Path tumbled 20 percent before the opening bell as AT&T bowed out.

Verizon will pay $184 per share, a 400 percent premium to Straight Paths closing price of $36.48 just before AT&T made its bid in April.

That bid arrived shortly after Straight Path paid more than $100 million in a settlement with The Federal Communications Commission for squatting on wireless spectrum licenses. The FCC considers spectrum licenses a public good and requires holders of spectrum licenses to use them for their intended purpose.

Under that settlement, Straight Path also had to remit some licenses back to the FCC and sell the rest of its portfolio.

Verizon and Straight Paths boards have approved the deal and they expect it to close within nine months.

(AP)
Israels Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon called today for the Security Council to address the issue of Palestinian Authority payments to convicted terrorist. The Security Council must act immediately to put an end to the funding of terrorists by the Palestinian Authority. Aid provided by the donor countries to the PA every year ends up funding terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis, the Ambassador said.

Speaking outside of the Security Council, Ambassador Danon presented data showing PA payments to Palestinian terrorist.

Yesterday, Ambassador Danon sent an official letter to the Security Council on this topic. According to Palestinian Authority laws and regulations, every terrorist arrested, tried and imprisoned receives monthly financial payments. The more Israelis killed, the longer the terrorist is sentenced to prison, the higher payment the terrorist receives from the PA, the Ambassador wrote in his letter.

A Palestinian terrorist who murders innocent civilians and is sentenced to over thirty years in prison receives over 3,000 US dollars a month. Put simply, this is official Palestinian blood-money, rewarding terrorists who murder Jews. The State and people of Israel want nothing more than to live in peace and security with all of our neighbors. If the Palestinians seek the same goal, then their first step must be to stop the glorification of terrorists, the Ambassador concluded.

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
The Orthodox Union (OU) thanked the Florida state legislature for heeding its call for greater security funding for Jewish schools and called on other states to follow Floridas lead. On Monday, Florida allocated a first-ever $645,000 for Jewish schools to upgrade security in the FY2018 budget.

Teach Florida and its parent organization, the OU, played a pivotal role in drafting and shepherding the bill through the legislative process. This is the first security grant for nonpublic schools in Floridas history. Last month, the OU secured a record breaking $40 million in security funding for nonpublic schools in New York State  the largest security allocation anywhere in the country.

The Orthodox Union called on other state legislatures to follow Florida and New Yorks lead, particularly in California, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where the state Teach offices are drafting legislation, finding sponsors, and rallying support for security grants.

In California, Teach CA helped draft AB 927 with Assemblyman Marc Levine to establish a $10 million grant to provide security at schools targeted for hate crimes. Thanks to Teach CAs efforts, AB 927 recently passed out of the Assembly Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support. Teach CA co-chair Michael Buchman testified before the Assembly Budget Committee in support of AB 927.

In Maryland, Teach MD and Maryland Parents for Education helped draft new legislation with Maryland State Delegate Joseline Pena-Melnyk (HB 1661), which would award security grants to private schools and daycares deemed at risk of hate crimes or attacks because of their ideology, beliefs, or mission. Teach MD is leading the effort to secure passage of this bill, recently testifying before the Maryland Senate Education Committee on behalf of HB 1661.

In New Jersey, Teach NJS helped pass the first-in-the-state security program for nonpublic schools in 2015. This past year, the state allocated $50 per child for security purposes. Now, Teach NJS is ratcheting up its efforts, urging Gov. Christie and the New Jersey legislature to increase security funding to $144 per child to create parity with public schools. Teach NJS brought Jewish day school parents to testify before the state Assembly and Senate budget committees.

In Pennsylvania, Teach PA created the Safe Schools nonpublic school targeted grant program, which gives funds to nonpublic schools to hire security guards. Now, Teach PA is working with the legislature to expand the program to include the necessary security equipment to keep all children safe.

The Florida State budget is a tremendous achievement for the Jewish community, and we are very grateful to the legislature, said Allen Fagin, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union. This funding will allow Floridas Jewish schools to make important security upgrades on their campuses, making a real difference for our children.

The OU and its supporters pounded the pavement in Tallahassee for months, and we are grateful that the Florida legislature responded to our urgent request with these historic funds, said Mark Bane, president of the Orthodox Union. All children deserve to go to school in a safe environment, and we urge all states to follow Floridas lead.

There is much work to be done around the country to make sure Jewish schools have the resources they need in these frightening times to protect our children, said Maury Litwack, executive director of the OUs Teach Advocacy Network. Using Florida and New York as models, our offices will work with the local communities and legislators in each state to get the job done.

This is a historic budget for Florida day schools, said Dr. Allan Jacob, chairman of Teach Florida. Next year, children in Jewish schools across Florida will be safer and more secure. In Florida, we demonstrated what is possible when the Jewish community works with legislators on both sides of the aisle to protect our children. I hope other state legislatures will follow our example.

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
The following is via TheHill:

Former FBI Director James Comey reportedly told associates in March that President Trump was crazy for suggesting former President Obama had wiretapped him.

Comey also called the president outside the realm of normal, according to a report from The New York Times on Wednesday.

The Times said that, in return, Trump was furious when Comey publicly refused to back his claims that he was wiretapped during the 2016 campaign before the House Intelligence Committee in March.

Comey said during the March 20 hearing that the FBI had no information supporting Trumps allegations.

The Times report highlights lingering tensions between the president and Comey that led Trump to decide to fire the FBI chief on Tuesday, a decision that stunned Washington.

Trump reportedly became increasingly angered by Comeys remarks in the weeks after the March hearing and began discussing his possible firing.

The president told aides there was something wrong with Comey Sunday, two days before his ultimate ouster.

Comey reportedly, though, told associates that he thought Trump was unlikely to fire him, believing his removal would make people revisit how he handled the probe into Hillary Clintons email server  in particular the announcement days before the election that they were reopening the investigation. Comey thought that treating his decisions as wrong would call into question Trumps election victory.

Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, with the White House saying he acted on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who cited the Clinton probe.

Deputy White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday said Comey committed atrocities in his handling of the Clinton email probe.

Sanders said Comey sidestepped protocol and circumvented the chain of command with his decisions.

Democrats and some Republicans, though, have questioned the timing of Comeys dismissal.

The former FBI director announced in March that the bureau was probing Russias intrusions in the 2016 race, including possible ties between Moscow and Trumps campaign.

(Source: The Hill)
(PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE)

Teach PA organized a contingent of Pennsylvania Jewish schools to participate in the EITC Appreciation Rally on Wed., May 10th. The Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) Program provides tax credit scholarships to students in Pennsylvania to attend nonpublic schools. Every Jewish day school in Pennsylvania benefits from the EITC tax credit scholarship program.

Teach PA, a part of the Orthodox Union, advocates for nonpublic school resources and funds in Pennsylvania. In addition to attending the rally, students had meetings with their legislators, learned hands-on civics lessons, and toured the capitol building.

The students and staff came from Kosloff Torah Academy High School for Girls; Torah Academy of Greater Philadelphia; Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy; The Mesivta High School of Greater Philadelphia; Politz Hebrew Academy; The Silver Academy; Kohelet Yeshiva; Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia; and the CBS Community Center.

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
President Donald Trump, in an apparent warning to his fired FBI director, said Friday that James Comey had better hope there are no tapes of their conversations. Trumps tweet came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasnt under FBI investigation.

I said, If its possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said you are not under investigation, Trump said in an interview Thursday with NBC News. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.

Comey has not confirmed Trumps account. Late Thursday, The New York Times cited two unnamed Comey associates who recounted his version of a January dinner with the president in which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty. Comey declined, instead offering honest. When Trump then pressed for honest loyalty, Comey told him, You will have that, the associates said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the report and said the president would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty. Officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump recorded his discussions with the FBI director.

The presidents morning Twitter comments again raised the specter of Richard Nixon, who secretly taped conversations and telephone calls in the White House during the Watergate investigation that ultimately led to his downfall. Trumps firing of Comey already has left him with the dubious distinction of being the first president since Nixon to fire a law enforcement official overseeing an investigation tied to the White House.

Even before Trumps provocative tweet, the White House was scrambling to clarify why Comey was fired. Trump told NBC he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comeys handling of last years investigation into Hillary Clintons emails as the impetus for Trumps decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation  which he dismissed as a made-up story  was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a showboat and grandstander, added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

The White Houses explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White Houses assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBIs rank-and-file.

That is not accurate, McCabe said. Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.

Unfazed, Sanders insisted she had heard from countless members of the FBI who welcomed the presidents decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trumps version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not standard practice to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trumps comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

Trump and Comeys relationship was strained early on, in part because of the presidents explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.

The president was no kinder to Comey on Thursday, calling him names and saying hed left the FBI in virtual turmoil. He said that while he received a scathing assessment of Comeys performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Monday, that memo was not a catalyst for his dramatic decision as the White House had said earlier.

I was going to fire Comey, Trump said. Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey.

Thats far different that the White Houses initial account in the hours after Comeys firing. Multiple officials, including Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

But it quickly became clear that the president had been stewing for days over the Russia investigation and Comeys refusal to defend him in appearances before lawmakers. By Wednesday afternoon, the officials, like Trump, were saying he had in fact been considering ousting the FBI director for months because of a lack of confidence in his ability to lead the agency.

And the Russia investigation was still on his mind.

In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won, he said.

Sanders attributed the disconnect in the weeks explanations to the fact that she had not directly asked Trump when hed made the decision to fire Comey until shortly before Thursdays press briefing.

White House officials and others insisted on anonymity in order to disclose private conversations and internal deliberations.

The White House said Trump is weighing options for replacing Comey, a decision that could have broad implications for the future of the Russia investigation. Some senior officials have discussed nominating Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who ran the House committee that investigated Secretary of State Hillary Clintons actions in connection with the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Trumps advisers have repeatedly tried to downplay the Russia-election matter, with Sanders saying Wednesday the FBI was doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation.

But McCabe characterized the investigation as highly significant and assured senators that Comeys firing would not hinder it. He promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.

You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.

(AP)
As many as 25 people have been killed and scores injured in a blast during Friday namaz at a mosque in Balochistan's Mastung region.

By India Today Web Desk: As many as 25 people have been killed and scores injured in a blast which took place shortly after Friday namaz at a local mosque in Balochistan's Mastung region. Pakistan Senate deputy chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri has also been injured in the deadly blast.

Pakistani media reported that the blast targeted Haideri's convoy. The explosion took place just as his convoy was leaving the mosque complex. Television images showed people rushing injured to hospital and a few badly damaged vehicles.

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The blast was very powerful, Maulana Haideri told Geo News, adding that though he is not seriously hurt, he is deeply saddened by the deaths which had taken place.

The majority of those injured and killed were party workers of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Dawn reported quoting rescue officials.

Separatist militants in Balochistan have waged a campaign against Pakistan government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province's resources.

Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

More details are awaited.

ALSO READ:

Pakistan: 100 killed in bombing at Shahbaz Qalandar shrine; US, UN condemn attack

Twin blasts in Pakistan's Lahore, 8 killed, over 35 injured

Suicide blast rocks Lahore's Mall Road, 16 including 2 senior cops killed

--- ENDS ---
The following is via FOX News:

A top FBI official who came under scrutiny last year over his wifes campaign contributions from a Hillary Clinton ally did not list those 2015 donations or his wifes salary in financial disclosure forms, according to records reviewed by Fox News.

The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe left the box blank for wife Dr. Jill McCabes salary, as a doctor with Commonwealth Emergency Physicians. And there is no documentation of the hundreds of thousands of campaign funds she received in her unsuccessful 2015 Virginia state Senate race.

As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Clinton confidant and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe urged McCabes wife to run for statewide office shortly after news reports were published that Hillary Clinton used a private email server and address for all her government business while serving as secretary of State.

For the reporting period of October through November 2015, McCabes campaign filings show she received $467,500 from Common Good VA, a political action committee controlled by McAuliffe, as well as an additional $292,500 from a second Democratic PAC.

Asked why the deputy director did not list his wifes salary or the campaign contributions on the Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure Report (OGE Form 278e) for 2015, an FBI spokesman said the forms were certified as in compliance with applicable laws and regulations. The spokesman added Office of Government Ethics regulations do not stipulate that a spouses salary or contributions received by a spouses political campaign must be declared.

After this story was first published, an FBI spokesman provided an on-the-record statement to Fox News defending how McCabes disclosure forms were handled:

The rules instructing filers how to complete the OGE 278e form are published by the independent Office of Government Ethics (OGE) in a document titled The Public Financial Disclosure Form (July 2016). The form does not require that an employee spouses salary be disclosed; only the employer name and type of income required. Nor does the form require or contain a line for campaign contributions, which are not considered income. Rules governing campaign donations are overseen by the Federal Election Commission.

Each form submitted by an FBI employee to the OGE is certified by FBIs chief ethics officer, who heads the Office of Integrity and Compliance. Mr. McCabe consulted with this office upon his wifes decision to run for political office.

The document was filed by Andrew McCabe on July 8, 2016, after he received a 44-day filing extension. He filed three days after FBI Director James Comeys public statement where he recommended against criminal charges in the Clinton case.

According to the OGE website, despite the box on the form for spouse income, it is not mandatory to fill in the blank, and it is not required to include contributions to a political campaign because there is a lower level of disclosure for the spouse.

The chief of policy for Issue One, which describes itself as a bipartisan organization dedicated to reducing the influence of money in politics, said this is another example of how the disclosure system is flawed.

The OGE itself and operates as a compliance agency  taking the information given to it by the covered government official and working with that. I have not heard of the office doing any further investigation to assess whether the information provided by the official is actually correct, unless that information is uncovered by outside forces like the media, Meredith McGehee told Fox News, adding that her group is discussing possible changes with Capitol Hill offices.

There is a need to strengthen OGEs authority  from clarifying its power to conduct investigations to giving it authority to conduct random audits to having it play a larger role for matters involving high-ranking executive branch officials, she said.

If its not required, then why is there a spot on the form for spouses income? retired FBI agent Jeff Danik said. Danik filed the FOIA requests with the FBI, and shared the financial disclosure forms with Fox News.

Isnt it particularly convenient that loopholes in the ethics law are used to eliminate reporting hundreds of thousands of donated dollars benefiting the spouse of one of the most powerful FBI executives, while at the same time those laws demand that every dime in earnings on a minor stock account be disclosed? he said. That hardly seems transparent.

Andrew McCabe was at the center of the FBIs investigation into the use of Clintons use of a private, unsecured email server as secretary of state  despite his wife having run for office supported financially by a close Clinton ally.

Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, in a November 2016 letter to the Justice Department inspector general, noted that in July 2015, around the time the Clinton investigation began, Andrew McCabe was promoted to associate deputy director at FBI headquarters  the No. 3 position.

Yet, Grassley wrote, the FBI asserts that Mr. McCabe did not have an oversight role in the Clinton investigation until he became the number two in command in 2016. However, the FBIs statement does not foreclose the possibility that Mr. McCabe had a non oversight role while associate deputy director. Thus, even during the time period in which his wifes political campaign received approximately half a million dollars from Gov. McAuliffes political action committee, and over $200,000 from the Virginia Democrat Party, he may have had a role in the investigation and did not recuse himself.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz is now conducting a sweeping investigation of events leading up to the November election, including potential conflicts at the FBI, Comeys public recommendation against prosecution, and related matters  which are expected to include then-Attorney General Loretta Lynchs tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton at Sky Harbor airport in Arizona one week before Hillary Clintons FBI interview.

In his letter, Grassley noted the Journal reported 98% of the Gov. McAuliffe related donations to his wife came after the FBI launched the investigation. Given this, he wrote, the FBI must provide a more detailed explanation as to why it determined that it was appropriate for Mr. McCabe to participate in that investigation in any way.

McGehee said states like Virginia have a long tradition of very little regulation  and minimal disclosure, meaning inadequate disclosure of real and potential conflicts of interest for those individuals who are subject to financial disclosure requirements and thus by definition are taking on powerful positions in the federal government.

(Source: FOX News)
(by Dov Hikind)

My recent objections to CUNY legitimizing terrorist propagandist Linda Sarsour and her glorification of radical Islamic fanatics has caused a small stir among her supporters. Kill the messenger! they scream. One can only hope their plea is figurative. Regardless, theyve called into question, and asked like-minded reporters to delve into my own personal history. Its a shocking non-surprise. Why address the immediate issue of Sarsours hate-Tweets and anti-Semitic incitement if they can divert media attention with a sideshow?

To wit, The Huffington Post thought themselves terribly clever looking into my early life as a Jewish activistas if they were uncovering something novel. But to be quite frank, I couldnt recall those days with greater fondness.

Over 43 years ago, I was very proud to be part of the Jewish Defense League. Founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane of Brooklyn, the JDLs early exploits received a fair amount of attention. After all, the notion of Jews standing up for themselves was still rather novel to some who preferred when Jews didnt. I came late to the organization but was gratified to work on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jewry, fighting anti-Semitism and helping the Jewish poor. These were the days of the Civil Rights movement and people everywhere were awakening to the necessity of getting involved.

During those years I was arrested on numerous occasions at the Soviet mission for chaining myself to their fence. We took actions like these to bring attention to urgent matters and demand change through non-violent protest.

When Rabbi Kahane decided to emigrate to Israel, I was no longer involved with his work. I remained in Brooklyn and had work of my own. Some people have suggested that I was Rabbi Kahanes right-hand man. If so, then I resent having not been mentioned in his best seller, The Story of the Jewish Defense League.

The truth is I continued to watch and admire Rabbi Kahane from afar. Did I agree with him on everything? Alas, I dont even agree with my own wife Shonni on everything. Almost everything.

Looking back on my JDL days, Im proud of what we accomplished. Countless Russian Jews are no longer trapped behind the Iron Curtain. Natan Sharansky, the celebrated refusenik who became a prominent leader in Israel, notes how vital our civil rights protests were on behalf of our trapped and mistreated brethren.

Another time attention was vital was when Ugandan leader Idi Amin had Israelis kidnapped and held hostage. Israel was successful in rescuing everyone except Dora Bloch, a 78-year-old grandmother who had been hospitalized. When Dora went missing, we needed to bring attention to her plight even if it meant bedeviling the people at the Ugandan mission with a few pranks for which I was never charged. The story grows in the re-telling (especially by my detractors), but when we recall how Dora was finally found after being burnt to death, one can hardly blame me for trying to free her.

After Rabbi Kahane was assassinated, murdered by one of the terrorists who would attempt to blow up the World Trade Center, I was invited to speak at his funeral. It was a very sad day. Everyone who knew Rabbi Kahane recognized that he was one of the most dedicated individuals when it came to standing up for his people. He was certainly the one man most responsible for helping to free Soviet Jews.

How would Rabbi Kahane respond today hearing that two women rabbis attempted to kosher someone as transparently dangerous and anti-Semitic as Linda Sarsour?

I warned you!

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
This week, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio signed City Councilman Chaim Deutschs bill, Intro 1311, into law. Intro 1311 mandates the NYC Department of Transportation to provide advance notice of street closures to the NYPD and the FDNY.

When a police officer, firefighter, or emergency medical provider is responding to a 911 call, every second counts. When they are confronted by an unanticipated street closure, it can add precious minutes to their response time. Deutschs bill will fight this by ensuring that police, medics, and firefighters are given two days warning before a full street closure. This will offer them the opportunity to prepare routes in advance, and avoid areas with anticipated closures and congestion.

With the signing of Intro 1311, we have taken another step towards ensuring that our first responders are able to quickly answer emergency calls. An immediate response is critical in these situations  an injury could be exacerbated, a fire could spread, or a volatile situation could escalate if emergency services do not make it to the scene expeditiously, said Councilman Chaim Deutsch. My bill will require the DOT to coordinate with emergency services, so that necessary street work can be completed without impeding emergency response time.

(YWN Headquarters  NYC)
British hospitals said they were forced to divert emergencies on Friday after a suspected national cyber attack.

By Reuters: England's National Health Service (NHS) said a number of hospitals' computer systems had been hit by a 'ransomware' attack on Friday, but that so far it did not believe patient data had been accessed.

"This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors," NHS Digital, a division of NHS England which handles information technology issues, said in a statement.

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NHS Digital said the malware variant infecting computers was believed to be one known as Wanna Decryptor. Ransomware attacks typically remotely encrypt files on a computer, and charge users to decrypt them.

"NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and to recommend appropriate mitigations," the public body said.

The victims included Telefonica (TEF.MC), the nation's biggest telecommunications firm, while other Spanish firms such as power company Iberdrola (IBE.MC) and utility Gas Natural (GAS.MC) took preventive measures.

"There has been an alert relating to a massive ransomware attack on various organisations, which is affecting their Windows systems," Spain's National Cryptology Centre said in a statement.

Spain is the latest nation to warn of a global surge in ransomware. Hacks have disrupted services provided by hospitals, police departments, public transportation systems and utilities in the United States and Europe.

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'Political uncertainty' is a buzz-phrase in the world of investments following Donald Trump's surprise victory in the US presidential election and, not least, the contentious Brexit vote.

But with worries over the French election put to bed, the UK general election is not meant to be keeping investors awake at night - with most pundits claiming that it just means more of the same with a guaranteed Tory win.

But is that too complacent? With only a month to go before the UK general election, investors should at least use it as a prompt to review and in some cases reinforce their portfolios to shield against potential turbulence, says Chris Darbyshire, chief investment officer of Seven Investment Management.

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Sterling rallied but the FTSE 100, the UK's blue chip index, slumped in wake of the announcement of a snap election by Prime Minister Theresa May's (pictured) in April

He argues that British investors are already heavily exposed to the UK through their property and jobs, as well as their investment portfolios, and should seek to diversify their assets by looking overseas to root out golden nugget opportunities.

And to avoid home bias, this is something that should be the case regardless of how you think the election or Brexit will play out.

One of the reasons to do so is the role that currency movements are currently playing in UK stock market valuations.

On the day that the snap election was announced, sterling rallied from $1.25 in early trading pre-announcement to $1.28 by 6pm. Meanwhile the FTSE 100, Britain's blue chip index, slumped over the same period by around 1.25 per cent to roughly 7,158.

This is because more than 70 per cent of FTSE 100 company revenues come from overseas - particularly in the US, Jason Hollands, managing director at wealth management firm Bestinvest said.

This means that a weaker pound against the US dollar, for example, flatters the profits of firms that generate a bulk of their earnings from across the Atlantic. This factor has been credited with driving a substantial amount of the FTSE 100's post-Brexit vote gains.

A Hung Parliament would happen if Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (left) and his party's election campaign unexpectedly strikes a chord with voters and tactical voting by Remainers turns moderate Conservative voters into Lib Dem voters led by Tim Farron (right) - 7IM

Even if you think the election result is a sure thing - and there is always the possibility that it may not be - political risks lie on the horizon for British investors who rely heavily on their homeland's fortunes.

'There are many risks that can be mitigated in life, but country risk is not one of them,' Mr Darbyshire said.

'Country risk typically occurs at times of deep recession or financial crises and is particularly pernicious, not just on your investment portfolio, but also your short-term earnings, long term career prospects (what we call 'human capital') and house value. These all decline at the same time.

'Such events are expected to occur no more than once every 50 years or so but, with Brexit, the risks have become elevated.'

A lot hinges on the Government's actual plans for Brexit and its negotiation approach with representatives of the 27 remaining EU member states.

How sterling is likely to respond in different election scenarios Scenario Outcome Conservative party increases its majority to 160 seats UKIP voters flock to the government's cause and the Lib Dems are unable to inspire much tactical, anti-Brexit voting. sterling gains on a stronger mandate for the Prime Minister to face down hard-core Brexiteers. Tory majority extended to about 90 seats Tactical voting in favour of Lib Dems and Labour candidates prevents a landslide, however. In this scenario, there is no change to sterling. The Government maintains its current majority, Labour support is more robust than expected and Lib Dems gain momentum from Remain voters. In this instance, sterling reverses its recent gains on the prospect of a harder Brexit. Hung parliament The Government is deeply damaged by the expenses scandal. Labour's campaign unexpectedly strikes a chord with voters and tactical voting by Remainers turns moderate Conservative voters into Lib Dem voters. Sterling surges on the prospect of a lack of appetite for Brexit. Source: 7IM

Mr Darbyshire estimates that there is a one-in-ten chance that Brexit will lead to a 'deep' recession in the UK in the coming years.

He added: 'While we hope that this will not be the case, 'hope' is not an acceptable investment strategy.

'Investors should consider diversifying away from UK assets at this time of elevated country risk.'

To this end, 7IM is currently underweight in UK assets, while its portfolios are overweight in sterling due to, according to the asset manager, its ability to manage currencies.

For example, at present the 7IM Balanced Fund has 64.1 per cent exposure to sterling but exposure to UK equities is just 10 per cent.

7IM said the portfolio positioning is designed to reduce investors' reliance on the UK economy, while protecting portfolios against exchange rate risk.

Mr Darbyshire said international diversification and managing sterling currency risk does not have to be the same thing, adding: 'When you buy a foreign asset you create two risks in the portfolio  one is the underlying performance of the foreign asset, and one is the change in exchange rates.

'You want to add to international assets, but hedge the currency risks back to sterling. That way you receive only the foreign asset performance, and can avoid unexpected political risks that could influence the exchange rate.'

However, not every investment professional subscribes to Mr Darbyshire's school of thought.

In the longer term, what matters is the ability of companies to grow profits

Steve Clayton, fund manager of the two Hargreaves Lansdown Select Funds said that while political developments can have a big impact on stock markets in the short term, its affect peters out in the long run.

He added: 'In the longer term, what matters is the ability of companies to grow profits. On the whole, our companies continue to make encouraging progress in that regard.

Investors poured into US shares because of President Trump's rhetoric of tax cuts, big infrastructure investment and deregulation

'If we see unusual price moves as a result of political manoeuvres we will try to take advantage of them accordingly.'

Mr Hollands warns investors against making significant investment decision on the back of elections and political developments.

'Politicians typically over promise and under deliver yet global markets do not seem to appreciate that this is the inherent nature of politics,' he said.

The election of Trump is one such example. Donald Trump's rhetoric on tax cuts, substantial infrastructure spending and deregulation resulted in a influx of investment into US shares.

But there are now question marks over how much of this the Trump administration will be able to achieve in the face of Congressional resistance, Mr Hollands said.

Where to invest

For investors wary about political risk stemming from the election campaign, global equity funds could be an ideal way of achieving international diversification while still maintaining some exposure to the UK market according to Jason Broomer.

The head of investment at investment research consultancy Square Mile added: 'If you are thinking about election risk, it does not matter if you invest in the US, EU or emerging markets as long as they are not UK equities.'

He also favours exposure to funds that track the S&P indices - namely BlackRock North American Equity Tracker fund.

This is because North American equity will not be influenced by the outcome of the UK general election, Mr Broomer said, adding a rise or fall in the pound following the result would only have an auxiliary impact.

Some UK-focused 'election-proof' funds

Evenlode Income, Standard Life UK Equity Income Unconstrained and Liontrust Special Situations fit the bill of being UK funds with some election-proofing, according to Mr Holland.

The investment products, he said, they have a skewed focus on investing in quality businesses and cast their net more widely than just very large companies.

If the Tories do get a sizeable majority, there is a high chance that sterling will continue to strengthen - that would take the shine off FTSE 100 companies

'If the Tories do get a sizeable majority, there is a high chance that sterling will continue to strengthen - particularly if the Brexit negotiations go better than expected. Expectations are pretty low at the moment,' said Mr Hollands.

'That would take some of the shine off the big international companies in the FTSE 100 who have benefitted from a weaker pound. Added to which, recent renewed weakness in oil and commodity prices is a headwind to the FTSE 100.'

He added: 'Investors should pick companies that have had resilient attributes and are less sensitive to economic cycles.
When China's envoy in Delhi, Luo Zhaohui, suggested in a speech on May 5 that Beijing could "rename" the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)-which runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK)-to acknowledge India's sovereignty concerns, it appeared Luo's government, long gone tone-deaf to India's concerns about its vast projects in disputed land, was finally beginning to listen.

CPEC's very name, Delhi had argued, endorsed Pakistani claims to that territory, and went against China's avowed commitments on Kashmir. Luo's statement was therefore significant, with the envoy adding that Beijing "supported a settlement through bilateral negotiation"-thereby rebuffing Pakistan's desire to internationalise the dispute-which, the envoy added, "Indian friends... have chosen to forget".

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With China hosting the first Belt and Road forum on May 14, Luo's comments were likely aimed at India's decision to not send a high-level representative. His offer may not have entirely addressed India's concerns-delinking CPEC from the Belt and Road initiative would perhaps have been a more realistic proposal, given that China isn't going to stop its actual projects-but it was certainly welcomed by officials in Delhi.

If the Chinese ambassador was offering an olive branch, it appeared his bosses in Beijing, alas, weren't on the same page. Alarmed by his offer, Pakistan's ministry of planning and development, which is implementing the $50 billion corridor, sought a clarification from the Chinese embassy in Islamabad on May 8. By the end of the day, Luo's remark on renaming the corridor had vanished from the transcript of his speech on the Chinese embassy's website.

This small incident, Indian officials say, underlines how, despite China's claims to the contrary, its positions on Kashmir are increasingly aligning with Pakistan's. Officially, China still adheres to the commitment it made in the 1963 border agreement with Pakistan, where it noted that "after the settlement of the Kashmir dispute... the sovereign authority concerned will reopen negotiations with China". Yet, despite this commitment, which acknowledges that the territory could eventually come under India's control, China didn't consult India on any aspect of its investments, officials point out.

China's foreign minister Wang Yi told reporters in Beijing, ahead of the May 14 Belt and Road forum, that CPEC "has no relationship" to the dispute and that China had been investing in PoK "for many years". But in India's view, CPEC legitimises and endorses Pakistani claims, effectively stamping the land as Pakistan's.

In Beijing, the view is that as the scale of China's investments grows - the Karakoram highway is currently being widened, and pre-feasibility studies are ongoing for a pipeline and even a railway line - it is inevitable that China will gradually have to back Pakistan on any issue relating to Kashmir. (As one scholar candidly puts it, "Why would we want India to control the land when the first thing Delhi would do is stop our projects?")

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Wang Yiwei, professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, points out that "700 people died in building the Karakoram highway", which therefore has "a special place" in Sino-Pakistani ties. "Yes, we must pay a lot of attention to the concerns of India about CPEC. We are now invi-ting India to take part in it. We are ready to discuss and talk to India, but maybe Pakistan is not willing to do it, as all in all, the projects are being built in Pakistan. What the Pakistani people tell us is that the CPEC project goes though Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. So the Chinese government is also confused." Confused perhaps, but increasingly certain on which side their bread is buttered.

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LOBAMBA  The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has blasted the Ministry of Health for its laid-back attitude on drug-related issues.



The committee was referring to the two shipments of drugs which were detained at Oshoek Border Gate and at the OR Tambo International Airport recently.



Matsanjeni North Member of Parliament (MP) Phila Buthelezi asked the Principal Secretary Dr Simon Zwane if the drugs belonged to government or not.



However, before responding to the question, Zwane asked the committee to be specific on what shipment they were referring to because there were so many of these issues going around.



The committee then clarified that it was referring to the E1 million worth of drugs which were found to be obsolete and asked if they had not been stolen from government.



The PS assured the PAC that the drugs were not coming from the government stock, but believed that they were from the private sector.

He said when government has expired stock, they have their own method of destroying them, which was different to the private sector.

I am not sure who the drugs belonged to, but they were not ours, said the PS.



He told the PAC that they had a way in which they could make a follow-up to trace who the drugs belonged to.

This response irked the MPs, particularly Nkwene MP Sikhumbuzo Dlamini, who said the ministry was seemingly not bothered that so much drugs coming from Swaziland had been seized.



That is a very irresponsible statement and if you say they belong to the private sector, who is supposed to monitor them? asked Dlamini.

Nami ngiyajabha added MP Buthelezi, which loosely means that he was also hugely disappointed by the PSs response.



Buthelezi wanted to know if the PS had even bothered to check where they were coming from and wondered if people who were transporting drugs or medicine did not need clearance from the ministry.



PAC chairperson MP Thuli Dladla said the absolete drugs could have been bought by any Swazi person, which would make them sick. She said no matter what the value of the drugs was as long as they were expired they caused a great danger.



Manzini North MP Jan Sithole said nowadays no drug was valueless in the black market whether it was within its expiry date or not.

These days our children are driven into taking narcotics such as nyaope because there is no careful handling of these drugs, said MP Sithole.

MP Dladla said when the PS returned to the House next week he should furnish the committee with proper answers including the E20 million sex pills which were impounded at the OR International Airport. This was after the PS said they had tasked the Chief Pharmacist Fortunate Bhembe to look into the issues, but she was unfortunately not in Parliament.

He said, however, the ministry was these days tasked with registering all who imported or exported drugs into Swaziland following the passing of the Medicines and Related Substances Act.

He assured the committee that when drugs were shipped in or out of the country, there was always a letter of permission from the ministry and he suspected that was why these particular drugs were detained because there was no such authority.
MBABANE  I recall one instance where I hugged a female student congratulating her for her good performance and that student never took offence as she also viewed the hug as congratulatory and innocent.



This was the submission of Sandile Hlophe, the University of Swaziland (UNISWA) Assistant Registrar (IT), who has been charged for allegedly sexually harassing female students.



He has since approached the court seeking an order restraining the management of the learning institution from proceeding with his disciplinary hearing. Hlophe, who is based in the IT department, is alleged to have started sexually abusing the female students within the learning institution, Kwaluseni Campus, since 2013.



In their different statements, the female students alleged that when they required services from Hlophes department, he would make sexual advances. Hlophe would allegedly ask for hugs, kisses and sometimes show the students his private parts.

In his application, Hlophe alleged that this issue was concluded in October 31, 2016 after the registrar of the learning institution issued a verbal warning against him.



According to Hlophe, he once had a meeting with Dr Salebona Simelane, where he explained that he knew nothing about the sexual harassment.



He claimed that he went on to state that he recalled one instance where he hugged a female student congratulating her for her good results. The registrar admonished me for such conduct, saying it should not have happened in the first place and gave me a verbal warning in accordance with Article 5.01 of UNISWAs disciplinary code, alleged Hlophe.
LOBAMBA  There was drama at Senate yesterday when Minister of Labour and Social Security Winnie Magagula lost her cool and stormed out of the House.



This was after Senator Princess Phumelele irked the minister when she made a submission and questioned why Magagula was responding to questions that were supposed to be taken care of by the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Edgar Hillary.

This was during the meeting of the Senate portfolio committee to discuss the Correctional Services Bill, 2015.



Hillary was present at the meeting and would now and again comment but it was Magagula who responded to most of the issues that were discussed, as they touched on the administration and appointments at the Correctional Services.

Magagula had just clarified on an amendment that was made by the House of Assembly to remove the commissioner general from the function of appointing members of the Correctional Services Commission.



The amendment clause by the House of Assembly is that the members of the commission shall be appointed by the King on the recommendation of the minister, who shall consult with any other relevant authority and not the commissioner general.

Magagula was explaining that the use of the term any other was not going to work in that it would lead to a situation where the term of office would elapse and the commissioner general would not do anything about it and that it had the possibility of being challenged in court.



She mentioned that there was a need to involve the commissioner general in order to ensure certainty of the commission.

Senator Princess Phumelele said she was concerned that Magagula kept responding to most of the questions and concerns raised when the issue of the Correctional Services was not on her plate.
A massive ransomware attack affected computer systems across the world. India was among the countries worst affected by the ransomware, which uses an exploit first developed by the US NSA.

A massive ransomware attack shut down computer systems in as many as 74 countries (Reuters photo)

By India Today Web Desk: A massive ransomware attack, which security researchers say used a Windows exploit first developed by the United States National Security Agency, shut down computer systems across several countries, including India, last night.

According to anti-virus provider Kaspersky, there were at least 45,000 attacks in 74 countries, Reuters reported. The numbers were an initial estimate and were expected to go up.

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India was among the three countries worst affected by the attack, data shared by Kaspersky showed. However, there was no immediate information on what companies in India were affected in the cyberattack.

The attack made headlines for targeting hospitals in the United Kingdom. A ransomware attack infects individual computers with a malware that blocks access to all data on the system.

The malware encrypts all the data on a computer system and decrypts it only after the computer user/owner agrees to pay a ransom, usually in bitcoin.

UK publication The Guardian reported that as many as 16 National Health Service trusts, some of which oversee several hospitals, were affected in the attack and that hospital staff were unable to access patient records. (Hospitals are a common target of ransomware attacks, perhaps because their dependence on patient records makes them likely to pay up quickly and easily).

The ransomware - dubbed Wanna Cry - demanded payments between $300 (around Rs 19,000) and $600 (around Rs 39,000) in bitcoin to unlock data on a single system, news agency Reuters reported.

Click here to Enlarge The message displayed by the Wanna Cry ransomware (Image: Twitter/Matthieu Suiche)

Wanna Cry uses an Microsoft Windows exploit that was made public after a group of hackers called Shadow Brokers released files and hacking tools purportedly belonging to the American NSA, US's premier signals intelligence agency.

WHAT WE KNOW SO FAR News of the cyberattack initially made headlines after systems at hospitals across the United Kingdom were affected. Reuters reported that British hospitals and clinics were forced to turn away patients because their computers were infected by Wanna Cry. British Prime Minister Theresa May said that the hospitals weren't deliberately targeted and were simply part of a larger attack. "This (the Wanna Cry cyberattack) was not targeted at the NHS, it's an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected," May said. Anti-virus provider Kaspersky conducted an analysis of the cyberattack and noted that India was among the three countries worst affected by the attack. Around five per cent of the computers infected by Wanna Cry were in India. However, there was no immediate information on which Indian companies may have been affected due to the cyberattack. Russia was the worst affected, according to both Kaspersky and Avast, another anti-virus provider. Over 70 per cent of the computer systems affected in the Wanna Cry attack were located in Russia, Kaspersky noted. Reuters reported that around 1,000 computers at the Russian Interior Ministry were affected by the huge cyberattack. Some of the companies that were targeted in the international cyberattack included international shipper FedEx Corp, Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica and French aircraft manufacturer Airbus. The malware, Wanna Cry, uses an exploit named EternalBlue to infect computers running versions of Windows operating systems. EternalBlue was first made public last month after Shadow Brokers released a bunch of exploits and hacking tools developed by the US NSA. According to tech website Ars Techina, the NSA used EternalBlue to hack and remotely take over computers running Windows. Wanna Cry works by encrypting all the data on a computer system by changing file extension names to '.WNCRY'. The malware then displays a window informing users that their files have been encrypted and that they can be recovered in lieu of a payment made in bitcoin. The window is accompanied by two timers - one counting down to a certain time after which the ransom amount will be raised while the other warns of the time after which users' files will be gone for good. Interestingly, Microsoft released a patch for the EternalBlue exploit just a few weeks before Shadow Brokers made the NSA-developed vulnerability's existence public. However, it is possible that several computers around the world, most likely including the ones targeted in yesterday's cyberattack, had failed to update their systems with the Microsoft patch. Responding to Friday's cyberattack, Reuters reported Microsoft saying that it was pushing out automatic updates to defend Windows systems from the Wanna Cry attack. "Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt," a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement.

Click here to Enlarge A heatmap prepared by Kaspersky, showing the countries worst affected in the Wanna Cry cyberattack

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ALSO READ | India to set up new defence unit to fight cyber attacks

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ALSO READ | Indian techies hack into Pakistan government network

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ALSO WATCH | FBI Talk Encryption and Cybersecurity at SXSW

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By Gina Martinez

Queens Zoo has a new kid on the block.

The first Andean bear ever born in New York City, a black-and-white cub, made his debut last week in the zoos bear habitat with his mom. And he is already drawing excited crowds.

The cub was born in November to a 4-year-old mother, Nicole, and 6-year-old father, Bouba, who came to Queens Zoo as part of the Species Survival Plan.

The zoo in Flushing Meadows Corona Park is helping to breed Andean bears  South Americas only native bear  under the cooperative program designed to increase threatened species population in zoos and aquariums around the world.

According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, there are only 42 Andean bears in AZA zoos and only six potentially viable breeding pairs in the survival plan population, making this cubs birth special. With fewer than 18,000 Andean bears in the wild, the Queens Zoo and Wildlife Conservation Society have been working to study and conserve the bears in South America since 1977.

The bear still does not have a name. Officials say they are still trying to come up with a plan for naming him. Suggestions include a vote of the children who visit the zoo or perhaps giving naming rights to a big donor willing to support the breeding program.

In his first few days on public view, the cub has taken a liking to a jungle gym-type tree arrangement in the center of his enclosure. His mother is never far away and usually gathers him up in the afternoon to nap with her in a nearby rock recess.

The cub weighs about 25 pounds now and is still a bit unsteady on his feet. Climbing is his thing.

Queens Zoo Director and Animal Curator Scott Silver leads the national breeding program as the Species Survival Plan coordinator.

This is a significant birth for the Queens Zoo and the Andean bear SSP breeding program, Silver said. This little guy may be adorable, but more importantly, he reminds us of what we stand to lose when a species is in danger of extinction. We are excited to introduce the cub to New York and to share the work WCS and our partners are doing to save Andean bears and many other species in the wild.

Andean bears are classified as vulnerable by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

In 2010, the Wildlife Conservation Society and partners formed the Andean Bear Conservation Alliance, which funds conservation efforts and supports knowledge-sharing to improve monitoring techniques in the field, Queens Zoo said.

The zoo said exhibit times will vary until the cub becomes fully acclimated to its outdoor exhibit.
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By Mark Hallum

With candidates dropping out, the options for voters are narrowing in the upcoming mayoral elections. The most recent is state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), who suspended his campaign May 4, citing funding troubles and a formidable supply of dark money from the de Blasio camp.

Avella declined to expand on the allegations against the standing mayor, according to a spokesman, who said he would prefer the statement to speak for itself.

When I started this campaign five months ago, I knew that I was facing an uphill battle if I wanted to topple an incumbent mayor with deep pockets, Avella said in a statement. Though uphill, the battle was not impossible. If able to stay in this race the entire way, I knew that with my resume, coupled with the incumbents disrespect, disregard and disdain for the everyday New Yorkers, my message could resonate with New York.

Five months later, however, I have found that staying in this race without being beholden to dark money is becoming increasingly difficult. Therefore, it is with a somber heart that I announce that as of today I am officially suspending my campaign for mayor of New York City.

Avella announced he would challenge de Blasio for City Hall in December after gauging support from civic organizations in Queens and Brooklyn, which share similar values to those of residents in his home district, which stretches from College Point in the west to Douglaston and Little Neck in the east. He made his official announcement at a protest against the city over converting hotels into homeless shelters at the Holiday Inn in Maspeth.

Throughout my career in government, I have prided myself on being an outsider who made it to the inside and got things done. Unfortunately, in a race like this, being an outsider doesnt get you much. These days, it seems, elections are won with dollars, not votes, Avella concluded.

Avellas political allegiances have been called into question in relation to his membership in the Independent Democratic Conference, regarded as a turncoat affiliation of liberal state senators who negotiate with Republicans in the GOP-held Senate to get legislation through.

In March, protesters gathered outside Avellas Bayside office in opposition to his membership in the IDC. Organized Rise and Resist, a gender-rights group, and Indivisible, a progressive anti-Trump movement, met with about 20 counter-protesters who defended Avellas past actions and the IDCs mission.

While the protesters claimed Avella and the IDC were helping Republicans to block Democratic legislation and pass their own, the counter-protesters contended that since the GOP already holds the majority, they have no need for the IDC.

In 2009, Avella made his first bid for mayor during his final year in the City Council representing the 19th District, but lost. He has served in the state Senate since 2010.

Avellas decision to drop his bid follows that of Gristedes Foods CEO John Catsimatidis, who decided against challenging de Blasio as a Republican, claiming in a May 1 statement it would be too difficult to defeat the standing mayor.

I have often said that I have one more race left in me, Catsimatidis said. But after careful consideration  I talked to my wife, my daughter, my son  we have decided that the 2017 New Yorks mayor races was not the one that I am going to be in. My decision was based in part on the fact that the power of the incumbency in the city of New York is extremely hard to defeat.

Catsimatidis, who was defeated in the GOP primary for mayor in 2013, said he would continue to be an outspoken voice in the city for the issues he is passionate about.

Councilman Eric Ulrich (R-Ozone Park) had been considering a run for mayor, but dropped his plans in March.

Avella came into the race with a low approval rating. A Quinnipiac University poll from February landed him at 1 percent and de Blasio with a 35 percent approval rating.
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By Bill Parry

Several Queens lawmakers lent their support to the movement to end the torture of solitary confinement in New York state prisons last week.

During a rally at the state Capitol in Albany, nearly 300 activists  including Akeem Browder, the older brother of the late Kalief Browder  met with nearly 100 legislators to urge the passage of the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act in an effort to establish humane and effective alternatives.

Inhumane solitary confinement needs to stop, and it needs to stop now. We need a comprehensive statutory solution like the HALT Solitary Confinement Act to remedy this problem, said state Assembly Speaker Pro Tempore Jeffrion Aubry (D-East Elmhurst), the lead HALT sponsor.

The research is out there and the numbers are clear: Targeted rehabilitation programs are more effective at reducing recidivism, than punitive, and sometimes arbitrary, solitary confinement, Aubry said. We need the HALT Solitary Confinement Act passed into law to ensure all New Yorkers are protected from the torture of solitary confinement. This act includes essential reforms and its time that we pass these much-needed reforms into law.

Despite recent modest reforms, New York state holds nearly 4,500 people in isolation in its prisons and jails, according to Campaign for Alternatives to Isolated Confinement, the rally organizer. The United Nations recognized the need to reform these practices when it adopted the Mandela Rules prohibiting solitary confinement exceeding 15 days.

Long-term solitary confinement amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, and has been shown to cause physical, emotional and psychological damage, state Sen. James Sanders Jr. (D-South Ozone Park) said. We need to rehabilitate inmates so that they can become productive members of society and are less likely to commit future crimes. There can be no benefit to locking someone away in a cell for 22 to 24 hours a day without any meaningful human contact or therapy.

Solitary confinement is an issue increasingly on the public agenda with Pope Francis, President Obama and U.S. Supreme Court Justices Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer having all spoken out against the practice. Assemblyman David Weprin (D-Fresh Meadows), the chairman of the Assemblys Committee on Corrections, said the practice is not only inhumane, it is also bad public policy.

Removing the social aspect of an incarcerated individuals life does nothing to help that inmate re-integrate back into prison upon release from confinement or back into society upon release from prison.

Social justice advocate Akeem Browder started the Kalief Browder Foundation after his brother committed suicide in 2015. Kalief Browder suffered from depression following three years on Rikers Island, much of it in solitary confinement. While he was never officially charged with stealing a backpack at the age of 16, he went through the ordeal because his family could not afford the $3,000 bail.

With solitary confinement and its practices, specifically against those that are most vulnerable and most marginalized, he said, we must be vigilant and hard-pressed to demand justice so as to stop more tragic, disheartening loss of life like my brother, Kalief Browder.
Soldiers left their barracks and blocked streets in several towns and cities across Ivory Coast on Friday, including the commercial capital, firing gunshots into the air as their protest over a pay dispute gathered momentum.

The uprising began overnight in Bouake, the second largest city, before spreading quickly. The soldiers, most of them ex-rebel fighters who helped bring President Alassane Ouattara to power, erected improvised barricades around the national military headquarters and the defense ministry, sealing off part of downtown Abidjan.

The National Security Council held an emergency meeting, a defense ministry source said.

The soldiers were revolting over delayed bonus payments, promised by the government after a nationwide mutiny in January but which it has struggled to pay after a collapse in the price of Cocoa, Ivory Coast\s main export, hurt national revenues.

On Thursday, a spokesman for 8,400 soldiers who took part in the January rebellion said they would forego demands for more money after meeting with authorities in Abidjan.

"That\s not what they were meant to say," said one leader of the January mutiny who had remained in Bouake and asked not to be named, explaining the soldiers\ actions.

He said the mutineers would seal off access to Bouake in the evening if the authorities failed to respond.

In Abidjan, office workers fled through the streets in the city\s administrative quarter as gunfire rang out.

"This isn\t normal. If there\s a demand to be made, I think it has to be done peacefully," said Lacine Tia, who works in the city center.

A Reuters witness saw three pickup trucks carrying elite Republican Guard troops, who fired warning shots that pushed the mutineers back inside the military headquarters compound. A standoff in the heart of the city ensued.

"They\re definitely putting on a better show of force this time  They\re definitely stronger (than in January)," one Abidjan-based diplomat said, referring to the government\s response to the unrest.

President Ouattara, the defense and interior ministers and the security forces\ leadership convened an emergency meeting to discuss the uprising. Neither the defense minister nor the government\s spokesman were available for comment.

Mirroring the rapid spread of the January mutinies, troops in the towns of Odienne, Man and Korhogo also took to the streets in protest, residents and military sources said.

"We\re still hearing gunfire. They are firing in the air. To be safe we are starting to send the children home from school," said Sarah Toure, a teacher in Bouake, in the late morning.

The gunfire in Bouake later eased, residents said, but revolting soldiers remained throughout the city and on the main road leading south toward the administrative capital Yamoussoukro and Abidjan.

Ivory Coast emerged from a 2002-2011 conflict as one of the world\s fastest-growing economies. But deep divisions persist, particularly in a military assembled from ex-rebel and loyalist fighters.

The government paid the 8,400 troops behind January\s rebellion bonuses of 5 million CFA francs ($8,370) each as part of an agreement to end that mutiny.

The soldiers were due a staggered payment of an additional 7 million CFA francs. But they said the government asked for a delay in payment to ease financial pressure on the Treasury, citing a collapse in cocoa revenues.

SOURCE: REUTERS
Over the years Delhi has lost many of its buildings and landmarks constructed in the late-1960s and early 1980s. As much as our national capital needs "world-class" structures, there is a dire need to preserve our rich heritage of modernist architecture.

By Varun Shiv Kapoor: Pragati Maidan's Hall of Nations, IIT Delhi's academic block, and Chanakyapuri's Chanakya Cinema Hall, talk about these landmarks with the older generation and they will recall various incidents from their youth to tell you different tales and memories of these sites.

Now, they are a thing of the past.

Over the years Delhi has lost many of its buildings and landmarks constructed in the late-1960s and early 1980s. As much as our national capital needs "world-class" structures, there is a dire need to preserve our rich heritage of modernist architecture.

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Modernism, an overarching term given to many connected movements and iterations over the past many decades, originated in the early 20th century in Europe as a reaction against ornamental and decorative styles. In 1950s-80s, brutalism was one of the prominent movements in modernism which took the idea of unembellished and unadorned architecture.

FYI: What is Brutalism?

The movement rejected external decorative cladding and even paint and plaster, keeping the building's concrete structure exposed as the finished facade. The aim was to represent brutal honesty in architectural form.

India saw the first face of brutalism when French architect Le Corbusier designed some of the world's seminal brutalist buildings in Chandigarh and Ahmedabad in the early 1950s. But in Delhi, brutalist institutional buildings were designed and constructed between the late-1960s and early-1980s.

Today many of these buildings are part of Delhi's everyday urban landscape and the preservation of these structures has become more important than ever.

Here are 11 buildings representative of the brutalist movement which should be or should have been preserved:

AKBAR HOTEL

Architect: Shiv Nath Prasad

Year: 1969

Akbar Hotel in Chanakyapuri is an archetypal brutalist building. Its bold form, heavy massing and straight lines project the no-nonsense attitude of the movement.

IIT DELHI

Architect: JK Chowdhury

Year: 1968

The main academic block of IIT Delhi is one of the city's earliest brutalist structures. This imposing building exudes the requisite seriousness and heft to house one of India's premier academic institutions.

SRIRAM CENTER

Architect: Shiv Nath Prasad

Year: 1969

Shiv Nath Prasad worked on both the Akbar Hotel and the Sriram Center for Performing Arts at Mandi House at the same time. The Sriram Center is the smaller of the two, and plays with its bold massing while still indicating externally the functions of its different interior spaces.

CHANAKYA CINEMA HALL

Architect: PN Mathur

Year: 1970

The side facade of the once iconic and now demolished Chanakya cinema at Chanakyapuri resembled a whale held aloft on columns. This is because its exterior followed the shape of the auditorium inside, and it proudly displayed its structural components on its skin, creating an evocatively shaped building.

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HALL OF NATIONS AT PRAGATI MAIDAN

Architect: Raj Rewal

Year: 1972

The recently demolished Hall of Nations was a unique structure. It wore its three-dimensional lattice structural framework unabashedly as its skin, unhidden behind any form of covering. It was essentially a huge shed or hangar, but the aesthetics of its design and engineering elevated it to a thing of raw beauty, and at the time a symbol of India's progressive desires.

FICCI BUILDING (NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY)

Year: 1972

Not many people would call the National Museum of Natural History a thing of beauty. As an unapologetic exposed-concrete building with a severe industrial aesthetic, it fit right in with the other brutalist structures coming up in the 70s. The museum was unfortunately gutted by a fire in 2016.

POLISH EMBASSY

Architect: Witold Ceckiewicz

Year: 1973

While driving down Shanti Path in Chanakyapuri towards Moti Bagh, you might have glimpsed a modernist building whizz past you on the left, just before the last roundabout before the Moti Bagh flyover. This gem is the Polish Embassy, easily one of the most interesting modernist structures in the city.

TIBET HOUSE

Architect: Shiv Nath Prasad

Year: 1974

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Like many of the buildings on this list, the Tibet House on Lodhi Road is like a breath of unabashed modernist fresh air in the sea of ho-hum structures. It is an almost square box raised on a smaller base, and one of the more compact examples of exposed concrete, egg-crate facade structures from the 1970s.

NCDC BUILDING AND NDMC PALIKA KENDRA

Architect: Both Kuldip Singh

Year: 1980 and 1983 respectively

These are two later examples of exposed concrete structures in the city, and among the better maintained. Palika Kendra on Parliament Street is a soaring, expressive concrete structure with a curved base, and the NCDC building on Khel Gaon Marg is a quirky stepped-pyramid building. A unifying thread connecting these two buildings, as well as Akbar Hotel, Sriram Center and the Hall of Nations, is the structural engineer associated with all of them: Mahendra Raj, who deserves much credit for the design of these structures.

--- ENDS ---
A bomb exploded next to a convoy of the deputy chairman of the Pakistan Senate on Friday in the violence-plagued province of Baluchistan, killing at least 25 people, officials said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group\s Amaq news agency said a bomber wearing an explosive vest carried out the attack.

At least 35 people were wounded in the blast near the town of Mastung, 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial capital of Quetta. Television footage showed a vehicle mangled by the blast.

Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the explosion he believed he was the target and he had sustained minor injuries.

"There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone.

Haideri is a member of Jamiat e Ulema Islam, a right-wing Sunni Islamist political party that is part of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif\s coalition government.

District health official Sher Ahmed Satakzai said the death toll had risen to 25 and 10 were in critical condition in hospital.

Security in Pakistan has improved since a crackdown on militancy began in 2014, but a fresh wave of attacks that left more than 100 people dead in February has increased pressure on Sharif\s government.

Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber, adding Haideri\s driver was among those killed.

The senator, who is being treated in hospital, was on his way back to Quetta after distributing graduation certificates to students from a madrassa, or religious academy.

Separatist militants in Baluchistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province\s resources.

Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. A U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last year in Baluchistan.

The province was rocked by a series of attacks late last year that claimed over 180 lives and raised concerns about a growing militant presence.

A judicial report released after an attack on the province\s lawyers left more than 70 dead criticized security provisions in the region and called for increased clampdowns on extremists.

SOURCE: REUTERS
Times' Game of the Week Preview: No. 4 Mapletown vs. No. 5 South Side

No. 5 South Side gears up to stop the top-scoring No. 4 Mapletown Maples and star running back Landan Stevenson in the quarterfinal Class 1A matchup.
Big cash discounts are making a comeback in the car business.

Now that sales of new cars and trucks are slowing down, automakers and their dealers are starting to lop thousands of dollars off sticker prices  sometimes slashing the final cost by a third  a sales tactic that helps consumers but has led to industry troubles in the past.

Take the Nissan Altima, one of the country's top-selling cars. Dealers around the country are offering the midsize sedan for $6,000 to $8,000 below list prices. In Stafford, Va., Leckner Nissan has marked down all 59 Altimas in stock, including a black 2017 Altima SV now selling for $21,593  $7,195 below its sticker price.

Similar price cuts are being offered on the Hyundai Sonata, the Chevrolet Malibu, the Ford Fusion and many other models.

"The market is slowing down and now inventories are building up, so the manufacturers are putting money out to move these cars," said Wes Lutz, owner of Extreme Dodge in Jackson, Mich.

The hefty price cuts are the latest signs of difficulty in the auto industry. In April, sales declined 4.7 percent, to 1.4 million cars and light trucks. Forecasters expect sales of about 17.2 million vehicles in 2017, down from last year's record of 17.5 million.

While that is still a healthy level, cash discounts are one of the first tactics automakers typically turn to when they feel the need to lure more shoppers into new-car lots.

The trouble is, big price cuts, if maintained for extended periods, can hurt automakers by eating into their profit margins and lowering the value of used cars. A decade ago, offers of "cash on the hood" reached a frenzy when General Motors offered employee pricing to all customers and other automakers rushed to match the deal. Such discounting helped push the industry into crisis, and GM into bankruptcy.

Lutz's franchise is offering a gray 2017 Dodge Challenger coupe for $27,900  $6,680 under its list price  thanks to an incentive program that Fiat Chrysler Automobiles ran last month allowing dealers to discount the price on certain models by up to 20 percent.

"This is a great deal. Consumers win. Dealers win. I can sell a lot of cars if I have $7,000 discounts," he said. "It's not so great for the manufacturers, though."

There appear to be few types of vehicles without discounts. The trucks, SUVs and other roomy vehicles that Americans favor these days are also being offered at bargain prices. Bomnin Chevrolet in Miami is selling a white 2017 Colorado pickup truck for $16,481  $7,594 below its sticker price  and a 2017 Trax compact crossover for just $14,000, a discount of $7,700. AutoNation, the big dealership chain, has dozens of Ford F-150 pickup trucks reduced by 20 percent or more.

In Snohomish, Wash., near Seattle, Bickford Ford has slashed the prices of Escape SUVs. This week one front-wheel-drive model, in a brownish color known as "Canyon Ridge Metallic," was on sale at $24,645  $9,000 below the list price.

Many heavily discounted vehicles are not stripped-down, basic models, but fully loaded versions with all the bells and whistles. Leckner Nissan has cut more than $10,000 off the price of several Murano SUVs equipped with navigation systems, heated seats, all-wheel drive and other features.

Luxury brands are also cutting prices but tend to offer smaller cash discounts and limit them to certain slow-selling models. Consumers who hunt around can find deals on sedans like the BMW 320, the Cadillac ATS and the Infiniti Q50, though.

"It's a good time to buy a car. The consumer is in the driver's seat," said Mark Scarpelli, owner of Chevrolet, Kia and Chrysler Jeep franchises in the Chicago area.
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ALBANY  Albany Symphony Orchestra on Friday announced Water Music NY, a seven-day waterfront concert series in celebration of the Erie Canal bicentennial.

The free series will take place from July 2 to July 8, and with it will be seven world premieres of new compositions. The orchestra will perform either on the a barge or canal-side along the Erie. The composers who crafted the music that will be played have studied the areas through which the canal runs, worked with local artists and residents.

During Friday's announcement, members of the Albany Symphony Orchestra played for assembled guests along the Hudson River at Jennings Landing at the Corning Preserve.

"In commemorating the bicentennial of the Erie Canal, we honor those who helped construct the canal and the many communities it traverses," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. "This summer, New Yorkers and visitors can celebrate the canal's 200th anniversary with performances by the Albany Symphony while immersing themselves in the culture and history of the canal from Albany to Lockport."

More Information SCHEDULE OF EVENTS The following is a schedule for the Water Music NY concerts: Sunday, July 2 at 8 p.m.: Albany Corning Preserve/Jennings Landing Amphitheatre Composer Daniel Schlosberg (Yale University) Collaborating Arts Partner: Empire State Youth Orchestra's Jazz Ensemble and Skidmore College Storytellers' Institute Monday, July 3 at 8 p.m.: Schenectady Mabee Farm Historic Site Composer: Annika Socolofsky (Princeton University) Collaborating Arts Partner: Capital Repertory Theatre Additional performances by the Schenectady Symphony Orchestra Tuesday, July 4 at 8 p.m.: Amsterdam Riverlink Park Composer: Angelica Negron (The City College of New York) Collaborating Arts Partner: Mohawk Valley Chorus Wednesday, July 5 at 8 p.m.: Little Falls Rotary Park - Barge Performance Composer: Benjamin Wallace (Yale University) Collaborating Arts Partner: Mohawk Valley Choral Society Thursday, July 6 at 8 p.m.: Baldwinsville Paper Mill Island Amphitheatre Composer: Ryan Chase (Colgate University) Collaborating Arts Partner: Syracuse Pops Chorus Friday, July 7 at 8 p.m.: Brockport Welcome Center - Barge Performance Composer: Loren Loiacono (Cornell University) Collaborating Arts Partner: Golden Eagle String Band Additional performances by choreographers/dancers Eddie Murphy and Mariah Mahoney Saturday, July 8 at 8 p.m.: Lockport Historic "Flight of Five Locks" - Barge Performance Composer: David Mallamud See More Collapse

The celebration of the Erie Canal bicentennial falls on the 300-year anniversary of George Frideric Handel's "Water Music," a work first performed on the River Thames in London.

The collaboration of art, history and community will call attention to the revitalization along New York's waterway communities, increase tourism and leverage the power of the arts across the state and beyond, according to the organizers.

"Through unique collaborations of musicians, composers, and communities, Water Music NY will be a powerful celebration of New York State, the Erie Canal, and the vibrant communities along it," said David Alan Miller, music director for the ASO. "The bicentennial of the Canal offers us the opportunity to shine a light on these magnificent communities through the creation of new art which celebrates the richness of our shared history."

The concert series is funded by nearly $300,000 by way of Market NY grant from Empire State Development's tourism division. The symphony also worked with the New York State Council on the Arts.

"Investments and support for Market NY projects, like Water Music NY, bring more visitors into our communities, boosting tax revenues and spending at local businesses. I encourage everyone to book a trip to experience one of these unique concerts this summer and join Upstate New York as it celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal," said Gavin Landry, Empire State Development Executive Director of Tourism.
Berne

More than 50 animals from chickens to horses  are in a better place as part of an investigation and removal from a town of Berne property, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said Thursday.

On Wednesday, the sheriff's office got an anonymous tip that several animals were living in inadequate conditions at 745 Sickle Hill Road, without food and minimal shelter, Apple said.

A search warrant was used and the sheriff's Criminal Investigations Unit was joined by the district attorney's office and Mohawk Hudson Humane Society. A veterinarian from the Equine Clinic at OakenCroft assisted.

Dozens of animals were found amid deplorable conditions: Three horses, five pigs, five sheep, 17 goats, about 15 chickens, four dogs and two cats, the sheriff said.

Linda J. Mellin was arrested in connection with the case and charged with misdemeanor animal cruelty.

Apple said most of the neglected animals were successfully relocated to Camp Pinnacle in the town of New Scotland.

The 880-acre Christian Summer Camp volunteered to foster the animals until the court case is resolved.

Three horses, five sheep, five pigs, and 14 goats were taken by sheriff's investigators to the camp for temporary housing. Three goats that were in need of more supervised medical attention were turned over to Tracey Muscatello of Hearts Heard Animal Sanctuary located in Buskirk.

The Mohawk Hudson Humane Society took the dogs, cats and a rabbit.

Anyone interested in making donations to assist with the care of the animals can make checks payable to Sheriff Craig D. Apple, and mail them to the Albany County Sheriff's Office, 16 Eagle St., Albany, N.Y. 12207.
Washington

The FBI will resist any attempt to influence or hobble its investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election, its acting director pledged Thursday, seeking to provide a sober counterpoint to the political firestorm engulfing the agency since the firing of his boss, James Comey.

Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director who was thrust into the top job when President Donald Trump abruptly dismissed Comey two days earlier, also emphasized that the Russia investigation was "highly significant," sharply contradicting White House attempts to play down its importance.

"Simply put," he said, "you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing."

The unfolding saga of the dramatic firing of Comey hung over the proceeding, a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on the biggest threats facing the United States.

That McCabe felt compelled to make those assertions was itself remarkable, a product of the unusually public effort by Trump and his aides to take public focus off the Justice Department investigation and two congressional inquiries into Russia's election meddling.

The White House has offered several explanations for why Comey was dismissed, including that he poorly handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server and that agents had lost confidence in their leader.

The claims have been greeted with widespread skepticism in Washington. McCabe did not hesitate to make clear where Comey stood in the eyes of FBI agents and employees.

"Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," he said.

"The vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey," he added.

He was also adamant that the firing of Comey had not affected the Russia investigation, and he said he had not talked to anyone at the White House about the inquiry.

The top Democrat on the committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, sought assurances from McCabe that he would sound the alarm if the White House or others tried to intervene.

"While we don't know how long you will be acting as FBI director, my first questions for you, even in this public setting, will be for you to assure the committee that if you come under any political influence from the White House or others to squash this investigation, or impede it in any way, that you will let this committee know," Warner said.

Warner called the firing of Comey "a shocking development."

"It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the president's decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation, and that is truly unacceptable," he said.

"Our committee will get to the bottom of what happened in the 2016 presidential election," said Warner, who has called the committee's inquiry into Russian election interference "probably the most important thing I've done in public life."

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Republican chairman of the committee, asked whether McCabe was aware of Comey telling the president three times that he was not under investigation, as Trump claimed. McCabe said he could not comment on any conversations Comey might have had with the president.

McCabe also sought to sidestep delicate questions about the number of agents working on the Russia inquiry, assuring the committee that the bureau had the resources it needed. Days before he was fired, Comey had asked the Justice Department for more prosecutors to aid in the investigation.

The investigation, he made clear, was a priority for the FBI. A day earlier, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a White House spokeswoman, had said the investigation was "probably one of the smallest things that they've got going on."

McCabe also told senators the FBI had secured and preserved Comey's files after he was fired.

Although he is well known in the intelligence community, McCabe, a veteran FBI agent, has little name recognition outside Washington. A Duke University graduate with a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, McCabe, 49, is considered a skilled briefer. He is something of a wunderkind at the FBI, rising quickly in the organization to become deputy director in early 2016.
Washington

The House Republican campaign arm is increasingly at odds with the White House over how best to retain the party's congressional majorities and, more broadly, who is in charge of the midterm campaign effort as Republicans spend millions of dollars in special elections to retain House seats in conservative-leaning districts.

The decision by President Donald Trump to tap four House Republicans for top administration posts forced the National Republican Congressional Campaign to defend open seats amid a fierce backlash against the president from energized liberals. Two of those races, in Georgia and Montana, have been surprisingly competitive, and as Republicans scramble to hold the seats, senior Republican officials have begun sniping.

The friction came into view this week after Rep. Steve Stivers of Ohio, the National Republican Congressional Committee chairman, told The New York Times that he had lobbied the White House to appoint some House Democrats from Republican-leaning districts to the Cabinet or ambassadorial posts, in hopes that the party could flip the seats.

"They have not availed themselves of those opportunities," Stivers said of Trump's administration.

After reading the Times article, Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, angrily complained to associates that Stivers was not treating the White House with respect and should not have publicly shared his request, according to three Republicans familiar with Priebus' criticism.

Officials close to Priebus also called one of the top aides to Speaker Paul Ryan to vent about Stivers' statements.

Priebus, who is highly sensitive about press portrayals of himself and the political stewardship of the White House, saw the anecdote as an example of congressional Republicans not offering Trump the deference that he is owed as the head of the party.

Last month, Stivers asked the Republican National Committee for financial assistance with the special elections. In discussions with the RNC chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, Stivers intimated that the national party should feel partly responsible for the Georgia and Montana seats because Trump created the vacancies by appointing Tom Price of Georgia as health secretary and Ryan Zinke of Montana as interior secretary, according to Republican officials familiar with the conversations.
Nearly 60 per cent of the Capital's school students and youth using social media face the risk of cyberbullying, a Delhi Police survey has found.

By Chayyanika Nigam: Ritika Sharma (name changed), who studies in a prominent Delhi school, went to the police after being stalked by a Facebook user whom she had befriended on the site a month ago. She had given her cellphone number to the man who was later found to be using a fake name, photo and phone number.

Experts say cyberbullying and cyberstalking are increasingly becoming common nuisances for the city's schoolkids with people using electronic communication like emailing, social networking and texting to harass or pursue them.

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Nearly 60 per cent of the Capital's school students and youth using social media face the risk of cyberbullying, a Delhi Police survey has found.

According to Ritika's complaint, the two started chatting on WhatsApp after the "friend" introduced himself as Rohit Sinha, a businessman. She had also shared her residential address, school name and the tuition timings with him. Rohit then allegedly tried to force her into going on a date with him outside Delhi.

Following this, Ritika stopped taking his calls and also blocked him on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. She says Rohit then started stalking her and even issued threats.

Ritika informed her brother, who approached the police. Now cops are trying to trace the accused who has been booked under the IT Act along with the Indian Penal Code.

DELHI POLICE STUDY

The Delhi Police survey found that cyberbullying often leads to serious crimes, including stalking, molestation and rape. Most of these cases are from the Capital's private schools, where students are easily accessible in social media groups.

However, a lot of cases remain unknown as kids don't report the matter to the police or even their parents.

"More than 90 per cent of the school students are using social media and Facebook has emerged as the leader followed by WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat," said Delhi Police spokesperson Madhur Verma.

The study was part of Delhi Police's cyber safety awareness programme conducted in more than 400 schools. The kids, from the age of 12 to those in Class XII, were given questionnaires to find out if they had ever been victims of cyberbullying and how they should react in such situations.

MODUS OPERANDI

Explaining how criminals lure schoolkids, Verma said, "They often connect with them by simply sending a friend request on Facebook. Eventually, the person on the other side starts developing proximity with the student and later, they end up exchanging numbers. As a result, these schoolkids fall in the trap."

As per Delhi Police data, since 2014 till April this year, as many as 508 cyber crime cases were registered while 244 cases were registered under the IT Act with IPC. 26 cases were found to be of sexual harassment.

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Since summers vacations are here, students are more vulnerable as they will now spend more time on social media, observers say. Usage of the internet to find information for school projects, play games, read books, listen to music, watch movies, check emails and access social networking sites will increase.

A senior official in the cyber crime cell told Mail Today, "In most of the cases, it was found that the cyber criminal used to bully the victim by sending inappropriate messages, humiliating them through pictures/videos."

Experts say even if children approach their parents, nearly 70-75 per cent of the parents were not aware of the existence of the helpline for children - 1098.

To cope with such problems, Delhi Police has been launching cyber safety awareness programmes in schools in which students are informed to avoid giving personal information online to anyone they don't know.

ALSO READ | Delhi Police to now keep a tight vigil on juvenile offenders

ALSO WATCH | India Today Expose: Jamtara emerges as the biggest den of digital crime

--- ENDS ---

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Washington

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression, building upon his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

The White House said the president's "Advisory Commission on Election Integrity" would examine allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and across the nation. Vice President Mike Pence will chair the panel and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be vice chair of the commission, which will report back to Trump by 2018.

Trump has alleged, without evidence, that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in his 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He has vowed since the start of his administration to investigate voter fraud, a process that has been delayed for months.

Democrats and voting rights groups called the panel a sham, arguing there are few, if any, credible allegations of significant voter fraud. They warned that the panel would be used to lay the groundwork for stricter voting requirements that could make it more difficult for poor and minority voters to access the ballot box.

"The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression," said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer of New York said it was a "clear front for constricting the access to vote to poor Americans, older Americans, and  above all  African-Americans and Latinos."

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would be bipartisan and composed of about a dozen members, including current and former state election officials and experts.

The commission will include two Republicans, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, and two Democrats, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.
Schenectady

Mastroianni Bros. Bakery is back - sort of.

The longtime Schenectady breadmaker announced Thursday it had been bought by Utica-based Pumilia Pizza Shells, capping months of uncertainty for the brand, which filed for bankruptcy. It sold its intellectual property rights and other assets in an auction last year, with Pumilia the buyer. The bakery was founded in 1923 by the Mastroianni brothers and had grown into a venerable local business until 2008, when it was placed in a trust and run by an employee following the death of Armond Mastroianni. But sliding revenue and growing debt soon swallowed the brand, a problem the company's current leadership blamed on "fundamental issues with the vision and guidance of the how the company should be run."

Under the new ownership, the brand will scale back some of its operations in New England and western New York, instead focusing on the Capital District, said Warren Zeiser, an entrepreneur who had briefly taken over Mastroianni Bros. before its sale. Zeiser said he will continue working as a special adviser to Pumilia Pizza Shells.

"The Pumilia and Mastroianni families have a lot in common," he said. "Both are Italian immigrant families who came to the United States searching for prosperity. Both worked tirelessly to realize the American dream and provide a better life for their children. They also both had a passion for baking and chose the bread business as a way to realize that dream."

For now, the brand is also limiting its product offerings to only sliced Italian bread and some soft rolls "that made the company famous," he said, though they will likely roll out other products in the near future.

Zeiser said he hopes to hire 10 to 20 of the 50 employees who were let go when the brand initially shuttered. Mastroianni will keep its administrative, distribution, and sales and marketing operations local, he said, but will begin baking its products at a new factory in Utica.

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Some products will be available this week in Price Chopper, which Zeiser said was the first supermarket chain to agree to sell Mastroianni products.

He said the company is in talks with other supermarket chains as well. "We are very optimistic that all the other chains will welcome us back," he said. "I can't imagine any chain store that would say no to us."

rdownen@timesunion.com  518-454-5018  @RobertDownenTU
Local Tipperary Community Pharmacist Niall Morrison has been nominated for a prestigious national award.

Niall could be named the Peoples Pharmacist in Association with A. Menarini Consumer Health of the Year 2017, but he needs your help.



Pharmacists are increasingly the first point of call for the public on health issues and are often consulted before GPs or hospitals. Many pharmacists now offer more services such as delivery services, blood pressure and cholesterol testing and trusted medical advice free of charge.



The Irish Pharmacy Awards provide a unique platform from which to reward and distinguish the important role pharmacists play in the medical community. Each finalist was nominated for the award by their local community for their continued excellence of service throughout the years.



Based in Morrisons Pharmacy, Niall received multiple nominations from his community and has made it through to the final stage. Niall has been described as not only a gentleman, but extremely thorough and kind. His commitment to customer care sets him apart from the rest pharmacy of choice in Cahir. According to his customers Niall already is the winner in their eyes.

A customer told IPN: Niall takes his time to discuss each of my prescriptions with me and offers advice on how the drugs with interact with one another. He reassures me each time I visit the store and I very grateful for him taking the time with me as my own doctor is too busy to do it.



These awards are unique as they are nominated and voted for solely by the general public. The Award will be given out at the annual Irish Pharmacy Awards at a Gala Awards function in the Clayton Burlington Hotel, Dublin. You can vote for your community pharmacist by three different ways  by email, telephone or by liking and sharing their picture on facebook. Email: matt@irishpharmacyawards.ie Tel: 01 6690562

Closing date for votes is next Friday, May 18th.
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American Express Brings the Card Member Experience to the Connected Home with Launch of the Amex Skill for Amazon Alexa

American Express (News - Alert) launched the new Amex skill for Amazon Alexa today at its Innovation Showcase event in New York City. The Amex skill brings select experiences of AmericanExpress.com and the Amex mobile app to Alexa, Amazon's voice service, within devices like Amazon Echo and Echo Dot.

Starting today, the new Amex skill will be available to all eligible U.S. Consumer and OPEN (News - Alert) Card Members with an American Express ID and Password. By linking their online American Express account to the Amex skill, eligible Card Members with an Alexa-enabled device can check their account balance, review recent charges, make a payment and more through voice commands.

The Amex skill for Alexa also connects with the Amex Offers ecosystem, enabling Card Members to browse certain available limited time offers and add offers to their eligible Cards. The Amex skill will be the first financial services skill for Alexa to integrate a benefit like Amex Offers.

"We first introduced a partnership with Amazon in 2010 that enabled our Card Members to use Membership Rewards for purchases on Amazon.com (News - Alert). Today, we're bringing another element of the Card Member experience to Amazon with the introduction of the Amex skill for Alexa," said Luke Gebb, senior vice president, Enterprise Digital, American Express. "Our Card Members are redefining how they engage with our brand across the digital platforms of their choice, and we want them to have great experiences wherever they are."

"We're excited that the American Express skill is coming to Alexa," said Rob Pulciani, Director, Amazon Alexa. "American Express is known for innovating on behalf of customers and providing top-notch service, values we share at Amazon. With the Amex skill for Alexa, Card Members are just a question away from getting account information, offers, and more."

Starting today, eligible Card Members can enable the Amex skill in the Alexa app for iOS and Android (News - Alert) or on alexa.amazon.com. American Express will share account details via the Amex skill only for the purpose of responding to an eligible Card Member's requests.

To use the Amex skill for Alexa, American Express Card Members simply:

Go to "Skills" in the Alexa app and search for "Amex."

Tap "Enable Skill" and log into their American Express online account with their User ID and Password.

Create a 4-digit PIN for added security. They will use this PIN each time to open the Amex skill.

Once the skill is enabled, Card Members can access their American Express Card account by saying "Alexa, open Amex."

From here, Card Members can simply use voice commands such as "Make a Payment."

For more information, visit americanexpress.com/alexa.

About American Express







American Express is a global services company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Learn more at americanexpress.com and connect with us on facebook.com/americanexpress, instagram.com/americanexpress, linkedin.com/company/american-express, twitter.com/americanexpress, and youtube.com/americanexpress.

Key links to products, services and corporate responsibility information: charge and credit cards, business credit cards, Plenti rewards program, travel services, gift cards, prepaid cards, merchant services, Accertify, corporate card, business travel, and corporate responsibility.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170511006232/en/
[May 11, 2017] Digital, Decisive and Drone-Ready: American Express Commissioned Study Shows Gen Z's Customer Experience Expectations

Today, American Express unveiled findings from a study conducted by Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting, showing that more than any generation before them, Gen Z has distinct expectations of brands with regard to customer service and engagement through emerging channels. The study findings show that Gen Z is already financially empowered, with 81% making purchases on their own, has mobile spending power, with 59% having made a purchase via mobile app in the last year and that they have high expectations from brands when it comes to gaining their trust. 46% of Gen Z respondents said that data security and privacy is a must-have to keep their business. The study -- Raising the Bar: How Gen Z Expectations Are Reshaping Brand Experiences -- was conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of American Express (News - Alert) and surveyed 1,027 North American Gen Y (ages 23 to 37) and Gen Z consumers (ages 16 to 22). The findings were revealed at American Express' Innovation showcase today during a panel discussion moderated by Forrester, and featuring American Express and its partners: Amazon, Delta and Facebook (News - Alert). The discussion centered around how each brand is modernizing service and experiences for their current customer bases as well as the next generation of consumers. As a part of the discussion, American Express officially announced the launch of the Amex skill for Amazon Alexa and the launch of an updated Amex bot for Facebook Messenger enhanced by artificial intelligence and servicing technology. "Over the past few years we've modernized our approach to service and increased our investment in mobile technology to best serve our Card Members, including the always-on, always-connected Gen Y," said Luke Gebb, SVP, Enterprise Digital, American Express. "Our research shows that Gen Z is two steps ahead when it comes to interest in payments solutions and technology and their expectations of brands. We're focused on meeting our customers where they are as we continue to reinvent how we deliver an exceptional service experience." Starting From a Trusted Place Despite having less experience with brands, Gen Z and Gen Y have similar expectations when it comes to trust and service: When compared to Gen Y, Gen Z cares more deeply about the reputation and brand image of the brands they use (50% vs. 42%).

Gen Z was twice as likely as Gen Y to stop using a product, brand or service due to responsiveness on social media (21% vs. 9%).

The top three responses from both Gen Z and Gen Y around their sentiments of why they would stop using a product, service or brand were aligned: unexpected fees or charges, security breaches and negative news about the brand or a product. On the Go, On their Terms Gen Z interacts with the world on their mobile phones and does not find it invasive to receive texts, notifications or offers from brands via mobile: When it comes to interacting with brands or retailers to receive offers, incentives and sales notifications, Gen Z is: 22% more likely than Gen Y to prefer in app notifications to receive offers, incentives and sales notifications. 23% more likely than Gen Y to prefer interacting via social media to receive offers, incentives and sales notifications. 100% more likely than Gen Y to prefer interacting via online chat technology (i.e. WhatsApp).

Gen Z shows increased proclivity towards adopting self-service and automated resources. More than twice as many Gen Z consumers ranked using text/SMS messaging, searching online resources and talking over the phone with an automated system (i.e. not speaking with a customer service rep but rather using automated menus) as their top three preferred customer service channels to solve a problem, over Gen Y. Gen Y was twice as likely to want to use chat messaging on a company's website and 25% more likely to resolve an issue via phone.





Tech-Driven Loyalty Gen Z's brand loyalty is closely tied to seamless customer experiences:

Gen Z respondents said they were more likely than Gen Y to become disloyal to a brand due to: Poorly designed mobile features Slow response during online chat for sales or customer service issues Poor features/responsiveness on social media

Gen Z was two times more interested than Gen Y in features that embody instant gratification such as 1-hour delivery made by drones, ability to purchase products or services via chat apps or social media (i.e. making a purchase via Facebook Messenger) personalized experiences via bots and AI and the ability to pay using a watch or other wearable device. Advanced Financial Literacy and Mobile Payments Readiness Gen Z is active in managing their finances and has high expectations of financial institutions. They also show a level of readiness when it comes to mobile payments: 81% of Gen Z survey respondents report that they make purchases on their own, 77% keep careful track of finances and 72% have a checking/savings account.

43% of Gen Z respondents have used a card branded checkout solution (i.e. Amex Express Checkout) in the last three months, compared to only 29% of Gen Y.

33% of Gen Z respondents have used a device specific mobile wallet (i.e. Apple (News - Alert) Pay, Samsung Pay or Android Pay) in the last three months, compared to only 22% of Gen Y. The full "Raising the Bar: How Gen Z Expectations Are Reshaping Brand Experiences" report is available upon request. About American Express American Express is a global services company, providing customers with access to products, insights and experiences that enrich lives and build business success. Learn more at americanexpress.com and connect with us on facebook.com/americanexpress, instagram.com/americanexpress, linkedin.com/company/american-express, twitter.com/americanexpress, and youtube.com/americanexpress. Key links to products, services and corporate responsibility information: charge and credit cards, business credit cards, Plenti rewards program, travel services, gift cards, prepaid cards, merchant services, Accertify, corporate card, business travel, and corporate responsibility. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170511006511/en/

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When a 61-year-old Russian man was asked to pay Rs 37,57,91,46,369 (453 million pound) to his ex-wife, he argued that he had made a "special contribution" to the generation of wealth. But the judge refused to accept that and spoke about "equal contributions".

By India Today Web Desk: While giving judgment on a divorce settlement, a British court has asked a Russian billionaire to pay his wife Rs 37,57,91,46,369 (453 million pound).

The 61-year-old former oil and gas trader met and married his 41-year-old ex-wife in Moscow and later the couple moved to Surrey. The payment that the man is supposed to make to his ex-wife is being described as one of the biggest awards made by a UK court.

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Also read: Ending love marriage online: Maharashtra couple divorced on Skype

The judge added to the ruling that the woman's identity will not be revealed and the man have been prevented from the Caucasus. He said he has awarded the woman 41.5 percent of the 'total marital assets', as reported by BBC .

The court was told that five years ago the man had sold his shares in a Russian company for Rs 8292,14,01,500(1 billion pound). With this money he bought the couple's son two flats in a luxury London development costing 29 million pound and 7 million pound respectively.

Also read: Pyaar in Bihar returns: Man who married his mother-in-law now seeks divorce

Since the woman had been a housewife and mother to the couple's children, the judge concluded that the man and woman had made "equal contributions to the welfare of the society" and refused to accept the man's argument that he had made a "special contribution" to the generation of wealth.

The woman claimed that the "total net marital wealth" was over 1 billion pound which had been built up during the course of their marriage.

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[May 11, 2017] Noted Surgeons Dr. Raymond Douglas and Dr. Terry Smith Unveil First-Ever Non-Surgical Treatment for Graves' Eye Disease

Beverly Hills, California surgeon Dr. Raymond Douglas and Ann Arbor, Michigan's Dr. Terry Smith - two prominent physicians specializing in thyroid-associated diseases - have unveiled a dramatic new non-surgical treatment for thyroid eye disease, one of the more serious symptoms of Graves' disease. In develop for nearly 15 years by Dr.'s Douglas and Smith, Teprotumumab has been designated by the FDA as a "breakthrough" therapy, a term reserved exclusively for drugs that are destined to radically change the specific field of medicine. Profiled this month by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine in a paper co-authored by the two surgeons, Teprotumumab will make its public debut this summer for availability through approximately six medical centers in the U.S., including Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles and La Peer Health Center in Beverly Hills. Marking the first time that a medicine can replace surgery for thyroid eye disease, Teprotumumab not only acts as an antibody to block the disease from progressing, but is also shown to completely reverse the disease. A total of 22 centers nationwide were involved in the trials, making it the largest biologic trials ever for the disease. Dr. Douglas, who served as the lead investigator on the national Teprotumumab trials, will supervise the final trials, which are set to take place later this month in Los Angeles. An estimated 20 million Americans suffer from some form of thyroid disease. The most common form of hyperthyroidism, Graves' Disease causes a variety of symptoms including extreme anxiety and fatigue, hand tremors, increased sweating and weight loss. The disease is most often associated with bulging of the eyes, medically referred to as ophthalmopathy, that affects up to 50% of Graves' victims. Teprotumumab works to block molecules that target tissues in the eye that result in the bulging appearance of Graves' eye disease. "Doctors Raymond Douglas and Terry Smith's collaboration has succeeded in ushering in a truly game-changing treatment for thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy. Not only does Teprotumumab replace surgery, the drug represents the first and only medicine that has been shown to reverse the disease. Already, Teprotumumab is bing embraced by the medical profession and is destined to become embraced by those suffering from Graves' disease. Cedars Sinai Medical Center is extremely proud to serve as a center for this extraordinary therapy," said Dr. Bruce L. Gewertz, M.D., Chair, Department of Surgery and Vice-Dean for Academic Affairs, Cedars-Sinai.



About Dr. Raymond Douglas: Dr. Raymond Douglas is an experienced and board-certified oculoplastic surgeon in Beverly Hills, CA (News - Alert). He specializes in reconstructive and aesthetic surgery. Patients with thyroid eye disease, previous unsuccessful surgery (blepharoplasty), cancers of the eyelids and face, and trauma-induced injuries all seek Dr. Douglas' expert care. Dr. Douglas also has a practice in Shanghai, China, and is frequently asked to teach his novel techniques to other surgeons internationally. Prior to opening his private practice in Beverly Hills, he served as the director of the Thyroid Eye Disease Center at the University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center. His expertise in treating thyroid-associated eye diseases and cosmetic and reconstruction surgeries has made him a highly respected and sought after physician. Currently, Dr. Douglas is the Director of the Orbital and Thyroid Eye Disease program at the prestigious Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Douglas has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and textbook chapters and his special interest in thyroid eye disease has led him to lecture on the topic on a national and international basis. He is also the author of the definitive textbook on the many facets of care for thyroid eye disease. Dr. Douglas has earned a reputation for his customized approach to rehabilitation, which has led to safer treatments with less scarring and significantly faster recoveries. He sees patients in southern California, nationally and internationally, and is committed to providing each patient with an individualized treatment plan on how to best restore their health, vitality and appearance.

About Dr. Terry Smith: Dr. Terry J. Smith, the Frederick G.L. Huetwell Professor in Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Michigan, is an internationally known endocrinologist who has studied Graves' disease, its eye manifestations, and related autoimmune diseases for over 20 years. Dr. Smith's laboratory was first to describe the unique molecular attributes of tissue surrounding the eye that make it susceptible to inflammation in Graves' disease. Dr. Smith received his medical degree from the University of Missouri School of Medicine and completed his residency at the University of Illinois in Chicago and Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. He has completed fellowships in biophysics at the University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco, in molecular biochemistry at Columbia University in New York, and clinical endocrinology at the Pritzker School of Medicine, University of Chicago. Dr. Smith is the author of over 150 articles and book chapters, and has been awarded five patents for his research discoveries. He has been elected to the Orbit Society, is chief scientific officer for the National Graves' Foundation, and serves as reviewer for numerous scientific journals. Dr. Smith has been funded continuously by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration since 1983. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170511006534/en/

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[May 11, 2017] Vivo's New Flagship Smartphone V5s Enables Perfect Selfies in Low-Light Environments

SHENZHEN, China, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading smartphone manufacturer Vivo will launch its latest flagship mobile smartphone, the V5s, a new member of the V series of devices today. The V5s continues Vivo's record of delivering phones that provide users with "Perfect Selfies" with an advanced 20MP front camera and optimized Selfie Softlight feature as well as 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM. "Our focus group shows that users tend to take selfies in their everyday life," explained Alex Feng, Global Vice President at Vivo. "The V5s is a ground-breaking smartphone that aids users' pursuit of the perfect selfie in low-light environments and fulfills their desire to beautify portraits with natural effects." - High-quality images with 20MP front camera The V5s uses a 20MP front camera to take selfie technology to the next level with exquisite clarity and vivid, natural colors. The new selfie function also supports bokeh effects to deliver crystal-clear portrait focus and artistic background blurrig.



- Smooth photography experience with advanced hardware configuration The V5s is powered by an octa-core CPU, with 4GB RAM and 64GB ROM (expandable to 256GB with a microSD card). This powerful hardware configuration, together with the updated Funtouch OS 3.0 operating system (based on Android 6.0), guarantees a smoother selfie and photography experience.

- Perfect selfies under low ambient light with Selfie Softlight The optimized Selfie Softlight creates lighting effects that are comparable to professional photography studios. The function captures radiant complexions even in low-light conditions. In addition, Vivo's Face Beauty 6.0 function allows users to beautify selfies with one click. - Creative Group Selfie and 52MP Ultra HD photos Dedicated to cutting-edge smart phone photography technology, V5s also introduces the Group Selfie feature to capture every smile in a group shot without squeezing in or missing anyone. Meanwhile, the 52MP Ultra HD photo feature shoots multiple frames in quick succession and creates remarkable 52MP photos with more detail and less noise. Other features of the V5s include: 0.2s fingerprint unlocking speed

Sleek unibody design

AK4376 Hi-Fi audio chip "By launching the brand new V5s, Vivo heralds a new era of photography in the mobile phone industry," noted Feng. "It continues to offer users gorgeous selfies and an enjoyable user experience by upgrading our photography technologies as well as introducing new features." For more information about the Vivo V5s, please visit: www.vivo.com The V5s will be available in matte black, crown gold and rose gold. It will land in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines in May. About Vivo A young global smartphone brand focusing on introducing perfect sound quality and ultimate photography with cutting-edge technology, Vivo develops dynamic and stylish products for passionate young people. The company ranks among the top 5 smartphone brands worldwide according to IDC's Q4 2016 report. Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170510/1836341-7

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[May 12, 2017] Schindler Group's share of ALSO below 3 percent



Emmen, Switzerland, May 12, 2017



Schindler has disclosed that the Schindler Group's share of ALSO has fallen below 3 percent. This is due to the ongoing exchange of ALSO shares relating to the Exchangeable Bond issued by a Schindler Group company. The Special Distribution Holding GmbH remains the majority shareholder of ALSO Holding AG (SIX: ALSN) with a shareholding of 51.3 percent.



Direct link to the press release: http://www.also.com/goto/20170512en



Contact person:



Brunswick Group GmbH



Simon Hertwig



Tel.: +49 89 80 99 02 525



Email: [email protected]



ALSO Holding AG (Emmen/Switzerland) brings providers and buyers of the ICT industry together. The company offers services at all levels of the ICT value chain from a single source. In the European B2B marketplace, ALSO bundles logistics services, financial services, supply services, solution services, digtal services, and IT services together into individual service packages. ALSO's portfolio contains more than 188 000 articles from some 500 vendors. The Group has around 3 520 employees throughout Europe (annual average 2016). In fiscal year 2016 (closing on December 31), the company generated net sales of 8.0 billion euros. The majority shareholder of ALSO Holding AG is the Droege Group, Dusseldorf, Germany. Further information is available at http://www.also.com







Droege Group



(Major shareholder)





Droege Group (founded in 1988) is an independent advisory and investment company entirely family-owned. The company acts as a specialist for tailor-made transformation programs aiming to enhance corporate value. Droege Group combines its corporate family-run structure and capital strength into a family-equity business model. The group carries out direct investments with own equity in corporate subsidiaries and medium-sized companies in "special situations". With the guiding principle "Implementation - following all the rules of art," the group is a pioneer of implementation-oriented corporate development. Droege Group proves its implementation excellence daily within its own portfolio. The entrepreneurial platforms of the Droege Group are aligned to current megatrends (knowledge, connectivity, prevention, demography, shopping 4.0, future work). Enthusiasm for quality, innovation and speed determines the company's development. As a result the Droege Group has successfully positioned itself within the market, both nationally and internationally and operates in 30 countries. More information: https://www.droege-group.com



Disclaimer



This press release contains forward-looking statements which are based on current assumptions and forecasts of the ALSO management. Known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors could lead to material differences between the forward-looking statements made here and the actual development, in particular the results, financial situation, and performance of our Group. The Group accepts no responsibility for updating these forward-looking statements or adapting them to future events or developments.



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[May 12, 2017] Xirka Silicon Technology Launches Indonesia's First-Ever Home Made Chipset

JAKARTA, Indonesia, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Xirka Silicon Technology today unveiled the launch of Chipset SCard XCT136, the first local Indonesian smart card, providing multi-function purposes for student identity cards. To track student attendance, it works by using computerized fingerprint scanners to ensure a secure environment. It also offers a cashless transaction option, so all transactions related to university activities can be done by swiping the card. Supported by Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education together with Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics, the chipset currently targets educational institutions, such as University of Indonesia, Bandung Institute of Technology, Hasanuddin University, and Telkom University, and is widely applied to electronic student identity cards. "The digital economy has a tremendous potential in advancing the Indonesian economy. This sector will contribute up to 11% of economic development in 2020. If accomplished, in 2030 Indonesia will occupy the 8th position in the world economy. Therefore, it needs greater innovation to face global competitiveness and this chipset development is the answer," said Rudiantara, Minister of Comunication and Information Technology of the Republic of Indonesia at the launch ceremony of Chipset SCard XCT 136 on May 12th 2017.



Through Industrial Technology Development Program and Technology Innovation Program, Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of the Republic of Indonesia initiated the product development, involving students from state universities in Indonesia. By participating in the development process, the students are given the opportunity to showcase their ability to create and innovate, among their peers. According to research from MARS Indonesia, in 2016, state universities in Indonesia had a total of 507,000 new students. "Therefore, to answer market needs, Xirka Silicon Technology will provide up to 1 million units of Chipset SCard XCT136 per year for those universities," said Sylvia W. Sumarlin, President Director of PT Xirka Silicon Technology.

Research and production of each component of the chipset are carried out domestically in Bandung, West Java, ensuring security against data breaches and fraud from cybercriminals. The exclusive production of chipset components in Indonesia has been successful so far in preventing other countries from gaining access or gathering information about the design and architecture of these detailed components. "It ensures data confidentiality, since no other regions will have any access to its design without Xirka's permission," added Sylvia. Xirka Silicon Technology started producing chipsets in 2007 and entered into the wider APAC regional market by partnering with Siltera-Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. They won the first prize at Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Award 2008 (APICTA) for the development of WiMAX baseband chipset. In 2016, Xirka Silicon Technology completed development of its local smart card protocol, which includes Key Management System, Card Management System, and Smart Card Operating System allowing for support of multi-application features. According to Sylvia, the chipset provides several blocks of data storage memory. "Each offers different functions, such as application ID, payment, and loyalty card. Early next year, Xirka plans to launch Near-Field Communication (NFC) chipsets, which is commonly used for electronic ticket and mobile payment." Together, Xirka Silicon Technology and Microelectronics Center Bandung Institute of Technology worked to optimize security and data storage by strengthening technologies in all support systems, including card reader portable, virtual Secure Access Module (SAM), secure network, and card database. In security optimization, Chipset SCard XCT136 utilizes security engine DES and 3DES, adding 136 Kbyte to the chipsets to support more extensive data saving. About PT Xirka Silicon Technology Xirka Silicon Technology is a fabless company that focuses on the development of WiMAX baseband chipsets. Established in May, 2007, it delivers a System-on-Chip (SoC) for Broadband Wireless Access (BWA) to fulfill businesses needs, supporting everybody's dynamic lifestyle which very often requires immediate attention and action. To provide assurance, our SoC uses IEEE 802.16d-2004 standard for nomadic WiMAX and IEEE 802.16e-2005 for mobile WiMAX. Continuing its commitment as a design company, since 2011 Xirka has developed SIM cards and proceeded with smart card products and derivatives such as access cards, ID cards and secured cards for banking by utilizing Near Field Communication (NFC) and RFID technologies. A lot of IT equipment will benefit from Xirka's chipset, such as, modem cards, computers, notebooks, mobile gadgets, CPE modems, etc. Xirka also recognizes the need of our clients to have a reliable chipset at an affordable price, therefore we have built our research and design center and developed products with clients' concerns on our mind. Media Contact PT Xirka Silicon Technology

Gedung CM

Jl. Matraman I No. 9

Jakarta 13150, Indonesia

T.(+62)21-819-8700

F.(+62)21-2850-7071

Email: [email protected] Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170512/1850392-1-a

Photo - https://photos.prnasia.com/prnh/20170512/1850392-1-b

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[May 12, 2017] Edison Issues Update on SNP Schneider-Neureither & Partner (SHF)

LONDON, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SNP is acquiring BCC, one of the largest SAP partners in Central and Eastern Europe, for an undisclosed price. The deal broadens the group's customer base, widens its expertise in the areas of SAP service and cloud provisioning and brings onboard c 250 SAP and IT consultants who can be cross-trained in transformation projects. On our estimates, the deal is value creating and earnings enhancing, with our FY18e and FY19e EPS rising by c 19%. However, we have cut our FY17 EBIT forecast, which implies a 7.3% margin, or 9.7% before the 2.65m one-off items outlined in the Q1 results. Given SNP's strong market position in software-based transformation projects and assuming a sustained high level of activity, we believe the shares remain attractive on c 18x our FY19e earnings. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130417/608168 )

The stock trades on c 41x our FY17e EPS, which falls to c 21x in FY18e and to c 18x in FY19e. Our discounted cash flow (DCF) valuation rises to 47.75/sh from 46.00, which is c 21% above the current share price. However, our model is based on conservative assumptions and takes no account of any additional acquisitions.

Click here to view the full report.



All reports published by Edison are available to download free of charge from its website http://www.edisoninvestmentresearch.com

About Edison: Edison is an investment research and advisory company, with offices in North America, Europe, the Middle East and AsiaPac. The heart of Edison is our world-renowned equity research platform and deep multi-sector expertise. At Edison Investment Research, our research is widely read by international investors, advisers and stakeholders. Edison Advisors leverages our core research platform to provide differentiated services including investor relations and strategic consulting. Edison is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Edison is not an adviser or broker-dealer and does not provide investment advice. Edison's reports are not solicitations to buy or sell any securities. Contact details: Learn more at http://www.edisongroup.com and connect with Edison on:

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For more information please contact:

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Edison Investment Research

+44-(0)20-3077-5730

[email protected] SOURCE Edison Investment Research

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[May 12, 2017] Teaching More Than Just English: DaDaABC Empowers Our Children To Achieve More

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Placing importance on high exam scores over that of a quality-oriented education is an issue that is persistent across countries and cultures. In recent years, the drawbacks to this system are gradually appearing in the children who were put through this rigorous upbringing. Though these children can test well and achieve excellent scores, many of them are showing low emotional intelligence in life. Parents everywhere are starting to worry more than ever about the future of their children: whether they can live independently, confidently, and get along well with others. DaDaABC, the leading EdTech company in China, has been committed to "empowering our children to achieve more," a core philosophy since its conception. The company not only strives to provide their students with a high quality, comprehensive English learning platform, but also an environment that nurtures each students' unique personality and the development of skills. To relieve the growing concerns of parents, DaDaABC recently introduced a new series of public classes called "EQ Stories." Using simple English words and sentences, instructors in these classes work at helping their students formulate and understand interpersonal communications in their everyday life. "Bringing out the public classes is a brilliant idea, and as a DaDaABC instructor, I really think that the company cares about children. I'm really happy to be a part of the guidance of kids into their future," said Eric, a DaDaABC instructor from Santa Clara. Available as of a few months ago, some classes that the students can take include: learning English songs and handcrafting exercises. Through the arts and crafts, these classes aim to develop more than just the student's language abilities, but their cognitive, social, and practical ones as well. Because DaDaABC wants all children to be able to enjoy the benefit of these programs, the classes are completely free. Parents can simply go and download DaDaABC's App, and register. Once they have done so, their child can watch these public classes anytime and anywhere on their smart devices.



"EQ Stories"  In English and Easy to Understand The overarching theme of DaDaABC's new public classes is emotional quotient. These classes bring the students into the stories by means of clear topics, lively content, and thoughtful narratives. Such stories will inspire and train the students to learn, think, and talk about real world issues. In doing so, these students become better prepared for their future. "I like the new public classes. They are not hard to understand. Now I talk to my parents and teachers like friends, and I like to share my thoughts with them," said Sisi, a nine-year-old DaDaABC student.

Currently, DaDaABC's public class consists of two series. The older series, titled "Puppets Tell Fairy Tales," places puppets in the roles of characters from English fairy tales, and this allows the students to better understand the meaning behind these stories in an engaging and creative way. The current and newer series, titled "EQ Stories," emphasizes the student's personality, and places a focus on moral education. These stories are based closely on the little happenings of day-to-day life. For example, in the class "Respect and Take Care of Things," the instructors will begin by listing the functionality of different everyday items and objects. Then taking it beyond that, the instructors teach their students the importance in putting items back after use, and in protecting our environment and public properties. The end goal of this class is to convey the idea of respect and value that one should hold for things in their everyday life. What makes this next example unique is that it is taught from the students' perspective. Titled "When I Feel Afraid," students are encouraged to talk to their parents when they encounter fear, and to seek out help by speaking their mind. These classes are designed so that its students will learn the many ways in building trust with others and in winning their respect. Besides public classes, students can also use DaDaABC's App to practice their pronunciation. DaDaABC was the first in the industry that added intelligent voice recognition technology into pronunciation practice course. When students speak a word or a sentence, the voice recognition system is able to generate the standard pronunciation in the backstage, and compare and correct the kids' pronunciation. Students will get detailed feedback after each practice that let them know how to improve and encourage them to practice more. About DaDaABC Founded in 2013, DaDaABC is the most innovative English training institution in China, and was established to provide what has become one of China's most successful intelligent English learning platforms for children. Winner of over 15 awards and recognitions in 2016, DaDaABC developed a leading English training system focused on one-on-one online tutoring and encourage youngsters to learn and practice while having fun with instructors, and announced a total capital raising of 500 million RMB in Series B and Series B+, which will be used in market expansion, curriculum development and learning experience improvement. DaDaABC has been helping students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, France, Germany, and other non-English speaking countries. For more information, please visit: http://www.dadaabc.com/teacher/job To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/teaching-more-than-just-english-dadaabc-empowers-our-children-to-achieve-more-300456676.html SOURCE DaDaABC

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Top 5 Vendors in the Global Electric Propulsion Satellite Market from 2017 to 2021: Technavio

Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global electric propulsion satellite market report. This market research report also lists four 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/20170512005217/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global electric propulsion satellite market from 2017-2021. (Photo: Business Wire)

Competitive vendor landscape

According to the research analysis, the global electric propulsion satellite market is expected to grow at a CAGR of close to 14% during the forecast period. The market is highly competitive, where vendors compete based on the cost of developing electric propulsion technology for satellites, advancement of technologies, overall weight and size of satellite platforms, as well as the reliability of satellites.

To enhance their respective market share, prominent vendors are emphasizing on offering futuristic solutions for both orbital injection and station-keeping process, while ensuring all customer demands are met. The issue associated with the weight of a chemically powered satellite can be substantially addressed by integrating electric propulsion technology, which can theoretically reduce the overall weight of any satellite by up to 40%.

According to Moutushi Saha, a lead analyst at Technavio for space research, "The vendors should also cooperate and work together along with the space launch system developers and service providers. It will help to integrate the entire space mission and help tackle the issues of space launch delays. There is also the growing concern of space debris and respective mitigation measures that are expected to be implemented, including the requirement for deorbiting systems in the miniaturized satellites."

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Technavio market research analysts identify the following key vendors:

Airbus

Airbus designs, manufactures, and markets aircraft, helicopters, satellites, commercial space launch vehicles, defense systems, and electronics for the global aerospace and defense industries. Airbus Defence and Space, a division of Airbus, manufactures and supplies satellite and related parts and components globally. The company has a JV with OneWeb, which is currently working on the development of 900 satellites that will be forming a constellation for the provision of high-speed internet services to remote areas across the globe.

Boeing (News - Alert)

Boeing, along with its subsidiaries, manufactures and markets commercial and military aircraft, missile defense, satellites and human spaceflight, and satellite launch vehicles. The company has been assertive in developing or forwarding electric propulsion technologies, which had allowed the accommodation of more number of payloads into a single satellite.

OHB

OBH engages in the development of space technology and telematics. The company, primarily through its subsidiary, OHB System, engages in the development of navigation satellites, reconnaissance systems, environment satellites, meteorological satellites, technology testing vehicles, and telecommunications satellites.

Orbital ATK (News - Alert)

Orbital AKT manufactures and supplies aerospace, defense, and aviation-related systems and equipment for government agencies and private stakeholders across the globe. The company, through its space systems business segment, offers small and medium-class satellites that are used for global and regional communications and broadcasting networks, as well as to carry out space-related scientific research. It also develops manned space systems used in Earth's orbit and deep space exploration applications.

Thales (News - Alert)

Thales offers solutions primarily to the aerospace and defense companies across the globe. Thales, primarily through Thales Alenia Space, engages in space-related activities. Thales Alenia Space is a JV between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%). The company's Belgium unit has been engaged in designing power supply systems for over 16 years.

Browse Related Reports:

Become a Technavio Insights member and access all three of these reports for a fraction of their original cost. As a Technavio Insights member, you will have immediate access to new reports as they're published in addition to all 6,000+ existing reports covering segments like defense, aerospace, and defense technology. This subscription nets you thousands in savings, while staying connected to Technavio's constant transforming research library, helping you make informed business decisions more efficiently.

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies.

Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users.

If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected].

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005217/en/
[May 12, 2017] Minister Chagger announces Government of Canada investment in Innovative Saskatchewan Software Company

Solido Design Automation of Saskatoon receives $1.8 million for technology commercialization SASKATOON, SK, May 12, 2017 /CNW/ - Western Economic Diversification Canada The Government of Canada is providing $1.8 million through the Western Innovation (WINN) Initiative for Solido Design Automation Inc. to expand and accelerate the development and commercialization of their machine learning-based software products used to make electronic chips. The Honourable Bardish Chagger, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism, made the announcement today during a visit to Solido's new state-of-the-art software headquarters in Saskatoon's Innovation Place technology park. She made the announcement on behalf of the Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada. Machine learning is a branch of artificial intelligence. Solido's machine learning-based software, used to design chips in electronic devices, will improve chip performance, energy efficiency, size and yield in production. Customers who use this technology to build devices such as smartphones and tablets will increase productivity while also reducing costs and time required to bring new products to market. Quotes



"This investment highlights the Government of Canada's commitment to helping the development of technologies that will drive the next great wave of innovation. Businesses such as Solido Design Automation Inc. have the skilled, talented, and creative people that Canada needs to be at the heart of a more innovative future economy. They will help us build that world-leading economy and create more jobs." - The Honourable Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada "The Government of Canada is proud to support innovative western Canadian small- and medium-sized businesses, like Solido Design Automation Inc. Investments like this help these companies to invest in innovation and expand to the international marketplace. We are proud to stand behind Solido as they revolutionize electronic chip design worldwide." - The Honourable Bardish Chagger, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons and Minister of Small Business and Tourism "Canada has tremendous opportunity to advance within the high-growth machine learning and artificial intelligence areas. We are impressed with the proactive investment the Canadian Government is making to help Canada become a world leader in this important echnology sector. The funds will allow Solido to more rapidly expand our machine learning research and development hiring to support our customers around the world, who make chips for the next generation of electronic devices including smartphones, tablets, laptops, computer servers, cars and internet-of-things devices."



- Amit Gupta, President and CEO, Solido Design Automation Inc. Additional Links

Solido Design Automation Inc.

Western Innovation Initiative (WINN) Follow us on Twitter: @WD_Canada, @MinofSBT WD Homepage

WD Toll-Free Number: 1-888-338-WEST (9378)

TTY (telecommunications device for the hearing impaired): 1-877-303-3388 IF THERE IS A DISCREPANCY BETWEEN ANY PRINTED VERSION AND THE ELECTRONIC VERSION OF THIS NEWS RELEASE, THE ELECTRONIC VERSION WILL PREVAIL. Backgrounder Investing in Innovative Software Development and Commercialization May 12, 2017  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan  Western Economic Diversification Canada The Government of Canada is making smart investments that will create jobs, grow our economy, and provide more opportunities for the middle class and those working hard to join it. A $1.8 million investment for Solido Design Automation Inc. (Solido) to develop and commercialize their machine learning-based software products helps place Canada as a world-leading innovation economy. Funding provided through Western Economic Diversification Canada's (WD) Western Innovation (WINN) Initiative is a co-investment with Solido to help meet the needs of a growing electronics market. Solido develops innovative software to automate the design of electronic chips used in devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, computers and automobiles. Their customers include IBM, Broadcom, Nvidia, Cypress, Microsemi, Applied Micro and more, who supply chips used in the billions of electronic devices sold each year. New software will save significant time and money for chip design, and substantially increase productivity, chip yield and performance. This product has the potential to be 100 times faster and more accurate than existing methods of chip design, using innovative machine learning algorithms, a branch of artificial intelligence. Advantages for software customers will translate into improved products available to the public. Solido has recently moved their Saskatoon headquarters into a 13,000 square foot, state-of-the-art software facility in the Innovation Place technology park, which provides a creative, collaborative environment for Solido's team of engineers, computer scientists and mathematicians. Solido's success in the software market will lead them to grow to 105 employees in 2017, doubling their technology teams. The project funded under WINN is expected to create 15 highly qualified software engineering positions in Saskatoon, and will invest overall $3.6 million in research and development of the targeted software product. In recent months, Solido has been recognized as one of the Deloitte 2016 Technology Fast 50, as the number one fastest growing technology company in Saskatchewan and 34th in Canada. They have achieved ranking as a top five product for the fifth consecutive year by attendees of the electronic design industry's largest annual conference. President and CEO Amit Gupta was also named as a finalist for the 2016 EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Technology and Communications category, Prairies Region. WINN aims to bridge the gap identified in pre-commercialization funding for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), assisting them in the process of bringing their ideas to market-ready products, processes, and services. Announced in October 2013, WINN will invest $100 million over 5 years in the form of repayable contributions to for-profit SMEs based in Western Canada. With federal support, all projects aim to be on the market within 3 years. Additional Links Solido Design Automation Inc.

Western Innovation Initiative (WINN) Follow us on Twitter: @WD_Canada, @MinofSBT

WD Homepage

WD Toll-Free Number: 1-888-338-WEST (9378)

TTY (telecommunications device for the hearing impaired):1-877-303-3388 SOURCE Western Economic Diversification Canada

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[May 12, 2017] Global Automatic Espresso Machines Market - Drivers and Forecasts by Technavio

Technavio analysts forecast the global automatic espresso machines market to grow at a CAGR of almost 7% during the forecast period, according to their latest report. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005650/en/ Technavio has published a new report on the global automatic espresso machines market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire) The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global automatic espresso machines market for 2017-2021. The market is segmented by product (fully automatic espresso machines and semi-automatic espresso machines), by distribution channels (supermarkets, hypermarkets, mass merchandisers, and department stores, specialty stores, and online retail), and by geography (Europe, North America, APAC, and ROW). The global automatic espresso machines market is expected to reach to USD 3,210 million in 2021. The demand for coffee remains unaffected by price changes in most regions. The International Coffee Organization states that despite the volatility in the prices of coffee beans, the consumption of coffee is expected to grow by 2021. Countries like China and India largely drive this rise in the consumption of coffee. 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. Technavio consumer and retail analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global automatic espresso machines market: /p>



New product development and innovation Manufacturers of automatic espresso machines are developing new products. They are coming up with product innovations to attract a wide customer base. This enables them to attain a competitive edge in the market. They also add user interface panels that increase convenience and add to the aesthetics of the machines and focus on enabling more customization. The latest product innovations ensure that these machines produce coffee that is on par with that produced using professional espresso machines, in terms of taste and quality.

Poonam Saini, a lead retail goods and services research analyst at Technavio, says, "Vendors have also started introducing varieties in espresso machines, like the ones that are compact and do not consume space in the kitchen and dining area. Market leaders, such as Nestle Nespresso, have patented extraction technologies." Premiumization achieved through improved functionality and features along with branding Many vendors offer innovative and customizable features in their espresso machines, such as scheduling, updates, adjustable brew timings, cool-to-touch, and spill proof features. The features also give notifications when the machine needs more water or when it is running low on coffee beans. There are other value-added features, such as the self-clean function, that are integrated into many automatic espresso machines. Smart apps can also learn individual user routines and suggest the number of times they might want a cup of coffee. "One of the major players in the market, Nestle Nespresso, offers Nespresso Prodigio, which is equipped with Bluetooth connectivity. Users can control their Nespresso Prodigio remotely and can schedule their coffee at specific times," says Poonam. Growing demand for espresso coffee and increasing penetration of espresso machines The demand for espresso machines is also increasing among residential customers. Coffee aficionados are interested in different varieties of coffee. The vendors in the market are launching various espresso machines that provide varieties of coffee. For instance, Philips (News - Alert) had launched the Saeco Avanti app to cater to the demand of such customers. This app enables users to acquire knowledge about more coffee varieties and share their recipes via social media. The company has launched the Saeco Brand Ambassador Program to fortify brand engagement and retain customers. This facilitates users to enroll in coffee connoisseur classes and receive tips for maintaining their espresso machines. Top vendors: Breville

De'Longhi Appliances

Groupe SEB

Koninklijke Philips

Nestle Nespresso Browse Related Reports: Global Humidifiers Market 2017-2021

Online Retail Market in the US 2017-2021

Global Foosball Equipment 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 cosmetics and toiletry, toys and baby products, and luggage. This subscription nets you thousands in savings, while staying connected to Technavio's constant transforming research library, helping you make informed business decisions more efficiently. About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. The company develops over 2000 pieces of research every year, covering more than 500 technologies across 80 countries. Technavio has about 300 analysts globally who specialize in customized consulting and business research assignments across the latest leading edge technologies. Technavio analysts employ primary as well as secondary research techniques to ascertain the size and vendor landscape in a range of markets. Analysts obtain information using a combination of bottom-up and top-down approaches, besides using in-house market modeling tools and proprietary databases. They corroborate this data with the data obtained from various market participants and stakeholders across the value chain, including vendors, service providers, distributors, re-sellers, and end-users. If you are interested in more information, please contact our media team at [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005650/en/

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Proposed Kentucky constitutional amendment to end right to an abortion defeated in vote
In a series of tweets today, the US President Donald Trump hinted at banning all future White House press briefings, after a row erupted over FBI Director James Comey's ouster news.

By Santosh Chaubey: US President Donald Trump has indicated that he may stop the White House Press briefings altogether, a tradition that has been in place since 1929 when the first White House Press Secretary George Akerson was appointed by President Herbert Hoover.

Today morning he started a barrage of tweets, directing his ire towards media. He suggested that he would prefer sending hand-written handouts to media than briefing them in White House.

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His latest flashpoint with media was over his press office's treatment of news of FBI Director James Comey's ouster. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, deputy Press Secretary of the White House had said that Comey's firing would not affect the investigation into Russia's meddling in the US presidential election.

Then she said that Comey's removal would hasten the investigation and the White House decision was shaped by it.

Trump had later said that he fired Comey to ensure that the Russian meddling investigation is done "absolutely properly" and Comey's firing may, in fact, 'lengthen the investigation'.

The Fake Media is working overtime today!- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!....- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

But before this, several White House officials had sent out messages that Comey's ouster was done in lieu of the email leak case related to Hillary Clinton and was, in no way, related to the Russian hacking investigation.

Several US senators have criticized the decision, calling it an attempt by Trump to affect the FBI investigation into the alleged Russian hacking during US Presidential election.

Donald Trump's press wing, under his Press Secretary Sean Spicer has come under wide criticism because of its inaccurate briefings and the harsh language used by its spokespersons.

Spicer, in fact, began on a wrong note in his very first press briefing when he termed Donald Trump's inauguration as the most watched of all US Presidential inaugurations so far.

Also read: Donald Trump was looking to fire FBI chief James Comey from day one: White House

Also read: Trump fired Comey as he refused to preview planned testimony to a Senate panel

Also read: North Korea claims sovereign right to ruthlessly punish Americans

Watch video: Trump effect: Cognizant terminates 6000 Indian employees to make room for US talent

--- ENDS ---
By India Today Web Desk: Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson just might wrestle Donald Trump for the presidency in 2020.

The former wrestler has previously talked his Presidential desires, but this week, in an interview with GQ Magazine, he made his political aspirational a lot clearer. When asked whether he honestly thought he can give up his life as a celebrity to run for office, Johnson said, "I think that it's a real possibility."

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It all started last year when The Washington Post published an op-ed suggesting he would make a great President. A few days later, Johnson posted sreengrabs of the article on his Instagram account.

"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 county... 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," he wrote.

Despite talking about his political aspirations, Johnson did not go into specifying whether he would run on a Democrat ticket of Republican. Both parties reached out to him endorsements during last year's presidential campaign, but he declined them. "I feel like I'm in a position now where my word carries a lot of weight and influence, which of course is why they want the endorsement. But I also have a tremendous amount of respect for the process and felt like if I did share my political views publicly, a few things would happen-and these are all conversations I have with myself, in the gym at four o'clock in the morning-I felt like it would either (a) make people unhappy with the thought of whatever my political view was. And, also, it might sway an opinion, which I didn't want to dom," he told GQ.

When asked about Donald Trump, Johnson remained at his diplomatic best. "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. The first thing we'd do is we'd come and sit down and we'd talk about it. It's hard to categorize right now how I think he's doing, other than to tell you how I would operate, what I would like to see," he said.

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Johnson's comments come amid increasing controversy around Trump's shady firing of FBI Director James Comey. "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. Because otherwise I feel, as an American, all I hear and all I see in the example you're setting is 'Now I'm shutting you out. And you can't come.' [Disagreement] informs us. The responsibility as president-I [would] take responsibility for everyone. Especially when you disagree with me. If there's a large number of people disagreeing, there might be something I'm not seeing, so let me see it. Let me understand it,"

His thoughts on the Muslim immigrant ban were pretty clear, however. "I completely disagree with it. I believe in our national security to the core, but I don't believe in a 'ban' that bans immigrants. I believe in inclusion. Our country was built on that, and it continues to be made strong by that. And the decision felt like a snap judgment. I feel like the majority of, if not all, Americans feel that protection is of huge importance. But the ideology and the execution [of national-security initiatives] is where we really have to be careful of not making those snap decisions, because there's a tail effect," he said.

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The Election Commission, following an all party meeting, announced that new VVPAT ( voter-verifiable paper audit trail) machine will be used in all future elections. AAP and other parties had claimed that EVMs could be tampered with after the recent Assembly, municipal polls.

Election Commission says VVPAT machine will be used for all future elections. (File Photo/PTI)

By India Today Web Desk: The Election Commission of India today said it will hold all future elections using the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) with VVPAT (or voter-verifiable paper audit trail).

"The Commission has stated before the political parties that all the future elections will be mandatorily held with VVPAT," Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told reporters after the all party meeting.

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The decision was announced by the poll panel after it held an all-party meeting in New Delhi following allegations of tampering and rigging of EVMs in recent Assembly and municipal polls.

"Will offer opportunity to parties to demonstrate EVMs in recent elections were tampered or EVMs can be tampered with even with laid down safeguards," Zaidi said.

The decision to use EVMs with VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail system) came even as the Election Commission today declared to hold its hackathon, which will offer the political parties an opportunity to prove that voting machines used in the recent polls were tampered with.

A "challenge" is on the cards, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said in the meeting, going on record for the first time regarding the poll panel's proposed move to counter allegations of EVM tampering.

"Although use of VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail system) with EVMs will ensure total credibility and transparency and put to rest all controversy, the Commission will, after today's meeting, hold a challenge," he said.

Amid concerns raised by the opposition, the Union Cabinet last month cleared the Election Commission's proposal to buy VVPAT machines for the EVMs to ensure transparency in the voting process.

The proposal involves getting 16,15,000 VVPAT units for EVMs at a cost of around Rs 3,173.47 crore for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

WATCH: Election Commission extends EVM hackathon challenge to all political parties

ALSO READ:

Hack it if you can: Election Commission's open dare to parties to break into EVMs this Sunday and Monday

How so-called EVM scandals unraveled one by one. Also, how Election Commission asserted reliability

In all-party meet, Election Commission to prove EVMs are tamper-proof, brief on hackathon challenge

--- ENDS ---
Beat music never really died, it just slipped off the radio over the years.

Two-piece beat group The Naturals have just released their debut album, the storming, shimmering We Are The Naturals, a twelve-song statement of intent that brings to mind the early Beatles and Kinks records, as well as 70s power pop like The Raspberries, The Knack and Cheap Trick. The guys are brothers who hail from the Hunter Valley, although their tunes work better with beer and whiskey, rather than the wine that the region is popular for.

The first single from the record, Billy, was released in March and is a sepia-toned garage stomper, but follow-up Out Of My Head is a lush pop gem, with chiming guitars, an instant chorus, and warm production.

Check it out below, and if you dig what you hear, check out their website here, and the album on iTunes or Spotify.
Happy Friday  weve just been treated to the latest taste of Gang of Youths upcoming album, Go Farther In Lightness, and have even been dished up a full national tour as well.

The gang have just shared the politically-charged Atlas Drowned, the newest tease ahead of the albums release on August 18, joining recent single What Can I Do If The Fire Goes Out?.

While theyve been packing rooms in the U.S. and U.K. recently on their overseas tour, we get the sense theyre hanging to come back home and unleash their next slab of biting rock on Australian shores. The tour takes in all of the usual big stops throughout August and September, with the boys making the trip to Tassie as well to play for their Hobart fans, and treating Brissy to two separate dates. Underage fans havent been forgotten, either, with some all-ages dates mixed in.

Pre-sale tickets are open to any Live Nation members from 9am Wednesday May 17, with general tickets opening up at 9am the following morning  check out the dates below.

Gang Of Youths 2017 National Tour

Tickets via Live Nation

Thursday, 31st August

The Tivoli, Brisbane

Friday, 1st September

The Tivoli, Brisbane

Wednesday, 6th September

Festival Hall, Melbourne (All Ages)

Friday, 8th September

Hordern Pavilion, Sydney (All Ages)

Wednesday, 13th September

Odeon Theatre, Hobart (All Ages)

Friday, 15th September

Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide (All Ages)

Saturday, 16th September

Metropolis, Fremantle
Research increases distance at which supernova would spark mass extinctions on Earth LAWRENCE - In 2016, researchers published "slam dunk" evidence, based on iron-60 isotopes in ancient seabed, that supernovae buffeted the Earth - one of them about 2.6 million years ago. University of Kansas researcher Adrian Melott, professor of physics and astronomy, supported those findings in Nature with an associated letter, titled "Supernovae in the neighborhood."

Call it old school climate change research or just something to consider when thinking about the big picture. Take a peek:
The Wyandotte County District Attorney says a man has been charged in connection with a triple homicide in Kansas City, Kansas. Jason Tucker, 28, has been charged with one count of capital murder, one count of attempted capital murder, one count of attempted burglary, and one count of violation of a protection order in connection with Tuesday's triple homicide in KCK.
"Officers in the department explained that it means they are not allowed to stop speeding drivers, pull over people, or anything that would have them call into dispatch with information, like they would during a routine stop."

While dispatchers get familiar with new system, KC cops told to abstain from some regular tasks KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A new dispatch system is causing kinks for the Kansas City Police Department. Police sources tell FOX 4 that patrol officers have been told not to do some of their normal tasks. A source sent FOX 4 an internal email, which went out to patrol officers on Tuesday.

Community policing slow down according to this report of tech trouble . . .
WITH NEW CONFIDENCE KANSAS CITY MAYOR SLY RESTARTS HIS EFFORT TO BUILD A SINGLE-TERMINAL AIRPORT!!!

Basically, the mayor claims that private financing and the help of his pals @ Burns & Mac will finance the single-terminal effort.

Media Advisory, Office of Mayor Sly James





What: Announcement regarding innovative proposal for new single terminal airport





Who: Mayor Sly James, City Manager Troy Schulte, and guests.





When: Friday, May 12, 2017 8:30am





Where: Kansas City International Airport, Terminal A





Details





Arrive at least 15 minutes prior to start. Parking available on top level of Terminal A garage. For over-sized vehicles, parking will be available in circle drive. Mult box will be available.

###########

The local political elite claim that the Mayor's approval rating is soaring higher than ever before after stoners and special interests won a low-turnout election to pass weed reform and a lot of new taxes.To wit . . .Remember that the Mayor had toFact is, they never stopped working on this plan behind the scenes and the current scheme promises that voters won't have to pay for the "improvements" that nobody wants. We'll have more on that later but for now here's the big meetup planned since before the GO Bond vote just like our blog community said and now confirmed for the MSM.Checkit:Developing . . .
Highlighted by travelers' preferences from around the world on the European best destinations website

Five Greek beaches are among the 15 best in Europe for 2017, as highlighted by travelers' preferences from around the world on the European best destinations website.

The best beaches in Europe 2017 are the following:

1. Praia dos Galapinhos - Arrabida Natural Park - Setubal - Portugal

Portugal is extraordinary! More and more travellers from all over the world are discovering it with amazement. Do not miss the beautiful cities of Lisbon and Porto (elected best European destination three times). Plan a romantic stay in Sintra or enjoy the wild beauty of the Azores and the luxuriance of the island of Madeira.

Admire the beauty of the beaches in the Nature Park of Setubal, south of Lisbon. Travellers from around the world decided it was the most beautiful beach in Europe, the perfect beach in an unspoilt nature.

2. Canal d'Amour - Sidari - Corfu - Greece

Sidari is a pretty little seaside town that houses a beautiful secret beach, a natural curiosity called "Canal d'amour / Love Canal" due to its hollow form housing a beautiful small beach. Come discover this exceptional and hidden beach and book your hotel, guesthouse, apartment at the best price guaranteed in Sidari.

3. Porto Timoni Beach - Corfu - Greece

Porto Timoni, located near Agios Georgios, is obviously one of the most beautiful spots on the island of Corfu; it is a real paradise on earth.

Afionas village is stunning and its restaurants are very good and affordable. Walk out of the village and get to the most unique spot in the world.

4. Santa Giulia Beach - Corsica

This beautiful beach, located a few kilometres from Porto-Vecchio and Bonifacio is a real paradise on earth. It is in the image of Corsica: beautiful and wild. Enjoy its turquoise water and its white sand and book your hotel in the nice towns of Bonifacio or Porto-Vecchio.

5. Moscenicka Draga Beach - Croatia

Moscenicka Draga is a very charming little town in Croatia, one of the most beautiful countries in the world. You will fall under the charm of this small beach which is perfect for a relaxing holiday under the sun of Croatia.

6. Pregonda beach - Menorca - Spain

Come discover Pregonda Beach on Menorca island, one of the most beautiful European islands. It is great in summer but even more off season when the creek and the beach are not crowded.

Pregonda beach is considered one of the most beautiful beaches in the island. It has remained wild and secretive.

7. Monterosso al Mare - Cinque Terre - Italy

Monterosso al mare is the fifth village of "Cinque Terre", the only one with real beaches in this beautiful part of Liguria.

8. Cala Agulla beach - Mallorca , Spain

This beautiful beach is very well maintained. It is wild but you can enjoy cold drinks and ice-creams on the spot. Taste the homemade cocktails and relax while enjoying a beautiful scenery.

9. Mitjaneta beach - Menorca, Spain

The island of Menorca obviously has the most beautiful beaches in Europe.

Mitjaneta beach is just magical. Come bathe in its 29 degrees turquoise water and enjoy its fine sand and the sun of Menorca.

The beach is just like heaven but it is small, so you will have to get up early in the morning if you want to enjoy the quietness and romance of the beach.

10. Palombaggia Beach - Porto-Vecchio - Corsica

This beach is beautiful closely and remotely. Come enjoy the sun of Corsica and take shelter in its wonderful pines. Some travellers consider Palombaggia beach the most beautiful beach in Corsica, a real paradise on earth with crystal clear water, calm sea and white sand.

11. Seychelles Beach - Icaria - Greece

Your effort will be rewarded ! The access to the beach is not very easy, the beach is fairly small but it is so beautiful! Come have a swim in the clear waters of the most beautiful beach in the island. It is called "Seychelles Beach". Can you guess why ? Wear your walking shoes to get there as you will have to walk away from the beaten paths to discover this exceptional beach.

12. Ballota Beach - Asturias - Spain

Come breathe the smell of Eucalyptus and iodized sea air at Ballota beach, one of the most beautiful beaches in Europe. Asturias offers breathtaking natural, wild landscapes. It is a paradise for lovers of nature and wide open spaces.

Take your own beverages and picnic food with you ; there are no bars or restaurants and this is one of the charms of this beach.

13. Simos Beach - Elafonisos Island - Greece

Elafonisos is a 20 square kilometres Greek island with 1000 inhabitants. There are only a dozen hotels, some B&Bs and guesthouses. Book your accommodation at the best price guaranteed and enjoy one of the most beautiful beaches in Europe

14. Xi Beach - Kefalonia - Greece

Xi beach is situated on the Kefalonia peninsula. It is one of the most beautiful places in Greece and the world ! Xi beach is an amazing and blue-flag beach.

Come discover the soft orange-red colour of its sand, the quality and the pureness of its water. The beach is wild and will meet most travellers expectations. It is landscaped and comfortable

15. Playa de las Teresitas - Tenerife - Spain

Many travellers know this. Most beaches in Tenerife are volcanic: the sand is fairly dark. Las Teresitas Beach is one of the few golden beaches in Tenerife. Was it a geological accident ? Not at all ! Sahara sand was brought by man to the beach. Tenerife is also a perfect destination for sun lovers all year round, even in the heart of winter.

Read more here.

RELATED TOPICS: Greece, Greek tourism news, Tourism in Greece, Greek islands, Hotels in Greece, Travel to Greece, Greek destinations , Greek travel market, Greek tourism statistics, Greek tourism report
The all-party meeting with the Election Commission was called after a number of them, including the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, alleged widespread tampering of the EVMs in the recent Assembly and municipal elections.

By Supriya Bhardwaj, Sanjay Sharma: The Election Commission of India today asked the political parties to feel free to hack their Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) this Sunday or Monday. The decision was taken at an all-party meeting the poll panel held today in New Delhi.

The all-party meeting with the Election Commission was called after a number of them, including the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party, alleged widespread tampering of the EVMs in the recent Assembly and municipal elections.

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Representatives of seven national parties and 48 state parties were invited by the poll panel for the meeting at the Constitution Club in Delhi to reassure the parties that the EVMs cannot be tampered with and were secured. Most Opposition parties did not buy the Election Commission's argument.

Arvind Kejirwal-led AAP and Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) had alleged that EVMs were tampered with in the February-March state Assembly elections in five states and the recently-concluded Delhi civic polls.

Representatives of political parties at Election Commission meeting.

The venue of the meeting.

AAP DEMONSTRATED TAMPERING OF EVM IN DELHI ASSEMBLY

Earlier, AAP legislator Saurabh Bharadwaj, in a special session of the Delhi Assembly earlier this week, had sought to demonstrate the procedure for tampering of an EVM.

The poll panel dismissed his assertion outright saying the machine used by Bharadwaj was a "lookalike" of an ECEVM and therefore could not be used to demonstrate "any magic" or tampering.

Referring to the Supreme Court judgment, Opposition parties maintained that there was an urgent need for the implementation of the apex court's order in connection with the use of VVPAT EVM machines during upcoming elections.

The issues of electoral reforms, simultaneous elections of assemblies and Lok Sabha were also discussed in the meeting.

Also read | In all-party meet, Election Commission to prove EVMs are tamper-proof, brief on hackathon challenge

Also read | AAP demands all-party probe into EVM tampering ahead of Election Commission meet

Also read | After Election Commission rejects Delhi Assembly EVM hacking demo, AAP dares: Give a real machine

WATCH | EVM tampering: Election Commission accepts AAP's challenge, announces 2-day hackathon

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To celebrate its one-year anniversary, The Clement Palo Alto is offering reduced rates on weekends through the summer.



(TRAVPR.COM) CA - May 12th, 2017 - Palo Alto, CA, May 10, 2017  To celebrate its one-year anniversary, The Clement Palo Alto is offering reduced rates on weekends through the summer.

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 Anniversary package includes a $100 gift card to LaBelle Spa and a signature gift from Bloomingdales



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###
The Election Commission will assure representative of 55 political parties that Electronic Voting Machines are tamper-proof and brief them about its planned EVM hacking challenge.

By India Today Web Desk: The Election Commission (EC) will today meet leaders of 55 political parties to discuss the issue of tampering of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).

The poll panel has called the meeting of 7 national and 48 state parties to talk about how reliable EVMs are after 16 parties appealed to it to revert to the ballot paper system, claiming that faith of people in EVMs had been eroded. This after the parties alleged EVMs had been tampered with to benefit a particular party in recent Assembly elections and bypolls.

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The EC is also likely to brief the parties about its planned EVM hacking challenge.

The meeting becomes all the more important following the demonstration by the Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi Assembly only a few days ago showing how Electronic Voting Machines could be tampered with.

Aam Aadmi Party leader Saurabh Bhardwaj has said that it is not just his party, but even the Supreme Court that has raised questions on the authenticity of the EVMs.

Only days before the proposed meet, the Aam Aadmi Party had staged a demonstration in Delhi Assembly on how a 'voting machine' could be hacked. The AAP had used a prototype of the EVM for the demonstration.

POLL PANEL RUBBISHED AAP's CLAIM

The poll panel had rubbished AAP's claim, saying that the 'machine is a look-alike and not the ECI-EVM'. The date of the proposed challenge would be decided after the all-party meeting.

Some parties have demanded that they be allowed access to the machines that were used in the Uttar Pradesh election.

The EC is also likely to discuss bringing in of other electoral reforms, including disqualifying of candidates named in a chargesheet for bribing voters, making electoral graft a non-bailable offence and easing of rules to order counting of votes through paper trail.

"The Election Commission has convened a meeting with all recognised national and regional political parties on May 12 in New Delhi to discuss issues related to EVM and VVPAT.

"Apart from matters pertaining to EVMs and VVPATs, other issues on the agenda will also cover making bribery in elections a cognisable offence, disqualification on framing of charges for the offences of bribery in elections and suggestions in VVPAT recount rules", the poll panel had said in a statement last week.

(WITH INPUTS FROM PTI)

Also read | AAP demands all-party probe into EVM tampering ahead of Election Commission meet

Also read | After Election Commission rejects Delhi Assembly EVM hacking demo, AAP dares: Give a real machine

ALSO WATCH VIDEO

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By Press Trust of India: opposition

(Eds: Updating with reactions of anti-GM crop activists)

New Delhi, May 11 (PTI) Indias GM crop regulator today recommended the commercial use of genetically modified mustard in a submission to the environment ministry amid opposition by anti-GM groups, including RSS-affiliated bodies.

In its submission, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the nodal regulator for Genetically Modified (GM) crop, has given a "positive" recommendation-- but "with certain conditions".

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With its green signal, the GEAC has pushed the hybrid plant developed by scientists at the Delhi University closer to becoming the countrys first edible GM crop.

The environment ministry has to now take a final call on this.

RSS-affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) criticised the move saying allowing the commercial use of GM mustard would impact allied agri-activities.

Some anti-GM activists asserted that in okaying the commercial use of GM mustard, the GEAC has "yet again proven" to be "unscientific and uncaring" to the health of citizens.

They said Environment Minister Anil Madhav should uphold BJPs manifesto promise that GM foods will not be allowed and reject the GM mustard "just like the Bt brinjal variety was rejected seven years ago".

The GEAC, which is under the the ministry, today reviewed a report of a sub-committee constituted to look into the safety angle of the commercial roll-out of GM mustard.

It has also put a number of conditions while recommending its commercial use.

"The agenda of GM mustard came up in a meeting of the GEAC today. It has given a positive recommendation. It has recommended the approval of GM Mustard for commercial release," a Ministry official told the PTI.

The Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP), Delhi University South Campus, had submitted an application to the GEAC for the environmental release of GM mustard (Brassica juncea) hybrid DMH-11 and the use of parental events (varuna bn 3.6 and EH2 mod bs 2.99) for the development of a new generation of hybrids.

The environment ministry had received over 700 comments from various stakeholders, including farmers and researchers, on the Assessment of Food and Environmental Safety (AFES) report on GM Mustard, which it had earlier posted on the ministry website.

The application was submitted in 2015 after which several rounds of meeting were held by the GEAC. The sub-committee also convened meetings with experts.

The GEAC also heard the views of various NGOs not in favour of giving an approval to GM crops.

An anti-GM group had earlier alleged that sub committee, did not have any health expert and three of its members have conflict of interest.

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Coalition for a GM-Free India had questioned whether the risk assessment report given by the sub-committee, which has claimed that the hybrid does not pose any risk to biodiversity or agro-ecosystem, was even "reliable and scientific" as it had no health experts in it.

Todays decision, which many of the anti-GM activists were unaware of, got sharp reactions from Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM).

"We are against the commercial use of any genetically modified crops, including the GM mustard. And we will request that the government should not allow its commercial cultivation," SJM co-convener Ashwani Mahajan said.

The productivity of existing desi varieties are higher than this newly developed GM mustard, Mahajan claimed.

He added that the GM mustard variety would impact allied sectors such as beekeepers, orchards and ayurvedic medicine makers and practitioners.

Environment activist Vandana Shiva had also opposed GM mustard earlier, saying it is "illegal" and developers have done "fraud science".

Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) general secretary Yudhvir Singh also said the GM mustard technology would not lead to increase in productivity but "monopolise" the seed market.

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Sarson Satyagraha, a broad platform of hundreds of organisations representing farmers, consumers and scientists, said the GEAC ignored questions raised by scientists and chose to function behind a "shroud of secrecy".

"The GEAC has proven yet again that it is unscientific and uncaring to citizens health and environment. They have failed in their very mandate and purpose for which they have been created, to protect citizens from risks of GMOs.

"Earlier in the case of Bt brinjal too, they behaved irresponsibly and shamelessly unscientific. In this case, it is a hazardous herbicide tolerant food crop at that, which has direct implications for a large number of Indian farmers, agricultural workers and consumers," the body condemning the approval said in a statement. PTI JTR TDS TIR

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Guy J recently performed at Antisocial in Hauz Khas Village. In conversation, the musician talks about growing up in the Psy Trance hub, how EDM music has worked for the underground music scene and his thoughts on the budding Indian music scene.

By Karishma Kuenzang, Karishma Kuenzang: When 14-year-old Guy J started producing electronic music in Israel's Tel Aviv, he didn't know he would be touring the world playing his music. Known for his psy-influenced upbeat tunes, Guy J is now on the wishlist of every electronic music fan.

He has recently performed at Antisocial in Hauz Khas Village. In conversation, the musician talks about growing up in the Psy Trance hub, how EDM music has worked for the underground music scene and his thoughts on the budding Indian music scene.

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Guy J, brought up in a city, where techno and house were the dominant genres, said, "We had DJs performing every weekend, and Psy Trance is still very big in Israel. My parents listened to all genres of music, whatever was playing on the radio, which was on all the time.

"Towards the end of 90s, I gravitated towards electronic music, and listened to radio channels broadcasting songs from the genre, along with DJ sets. I also remember that MTV also showed some great electronic music."

Guy said he was fascinated by electronic music, and its power to move and unite people. "I wanted to try and do that. When you are young and want something, you don't think too much and just go for it. I was lucky to have a supportive enough environment, and was enrolled into piano lessons at a young age, though I don't play anymore," he says.

Speaking about his sound, he says, "Art is an endless journey and there is so much to learn. You learn something new every day and I push the limits in the studio, which makes it challenging and fun at the same time."

Speaking about his mantra and how one shouldn't be disheartened if things are slow, he says, "I had a couple of releases before my music got attention from big names like Hernan Cattaneo and John Digweed. It was only after that that I started getting a lot of gigs. I used to work on different genres just to earn enough money to buy things for my studio. I realised that as long as you are original, you can earn a living through your music,"

He also had a different take on the contribution of EDM to the music scene. "EDM has donated a lot to the underground scene. Even though there is a lack of creativity in the music, EDM has brought more people to the underground music scene because after people found EDM boring after a while," he says.

Guy J, who comes to India once a year, opines that Praveen Achary is one Indian musician to watch out for, says, "Every party is brilliant, which says a lot about the great progress the music scene in India is making. People are thirsty for good music and a good night out."

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Guy J is working on a bunch of originals at the moment, and has a remix coming out on his recording label, Lost & Found, soon. He is also in talks with John Digweed for another collaboration with Bedrock (British trance and house production duo).

ALSO READ | The verdict's out; Justin Bieber's India concert was utterly disappointing

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Vijay C Roy

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 12

Weak global prices have cast shadow over the export of major agri commodities from India. Except for non-basmati, the volume of exports of major commodities such as basmati, wheat, pulses and other cereals have witnessed a significant decline in 2016-17 as compared to 2015-16.

The export of basmati dwindled by 4.90%. The share of basmati in exports is around 20%. According to provisional data, in volume terms, basmati shipments were estimated at 40 lakh tonne against 40.46 lakh tonne in the previous year.

According to sources in Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), the lower price of basmati in export market and reduced offtake from Iran has not only resulted in lower realisation but also affected the volume. Officials said since Iran had imposed a minimum export price of $850 per tonne, many exporters were not keen to ship at that price, which resulted in decline in volume.

Similarly, other commodities have been affected by weak global prices. Though exports in value and volume terms have dwindled, the domestic prices of major agri commodities such as wheat and maize have remained higher than international market. This has also restricted the prospects of Indian commodity exports in the international market.

However, rating agency ICRA expects increase in basmati exports in 2017-18. Supported by higher paddy prices and resumption of import by Iran, the basmati industry is looking ahead for attractive growth in 2017-18, aided by export volume growth.

In fiscal 2017-18, the value of exports is expected to grow to Rs 22,000-22,500 crore, with export volumes growing to around 40.90 lakh tonne supported by an increase in average realisation. Resumption of import by Iran will be keenly watched by the industry as it has the potential to provide an impetus to exports, said Deepak Jotwani, assistant vice-president, ICRA.
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 12

After witnessing a rise in dog-bite cases in recent months, the Chandigarh Municipal Corporation has proposed that anti-rabies vaccination be provided at all civil dispensaries.

The recommendation was made by the Primary Health Committee of the MC at its meeting, which was held today, under the chairmanship of councillor Davesh Moudgil.In the meeting, the members proposed and recommended that anti-rabies vaccination be provided in all civil dispensaries under the jurisdiction of MC.

The MC panel also recommended starting of evening OPD in civil dispensaries. For the convenience of residents of Mauli Jagran and Mani majra in dog bite cases, the MC committee also proposed 24-hour treatment for dog-bite patients in Civil Hospital, Mani Majra.

Last month, Chandigarh had witnessed around 850 dog-bite cases, besides two deaths of rabid dogs were also reported in Sector 15 and Mauli Jagran.

The committee members also decided to visit all the civil dispensaries to take stock of the basic infrastructure.
Tribune News Service

Patiala, May 11

To prevent anaemia in children, Patiala Civil Surgeon Balwinder Singh organised a meeting of all programme officers and senior medical officers (SMOs) of the district.

He said National Iron Plus Initiative (NIPI) programme would cover children aged between six months and five years to prevent anaemia. He said under this programme, all children in this age group would be given iron folic acid syrup twice a week i.e. Wednesday and Saturday by ASHA in their area.

During clinical checkup and investigation, those children with severe anaemia i.e. 7 gm/dl, would be referred to higher health institution for further investigation and management.

He said ASHA would survey the area and prepare a list of children in this age group and provide them with liquid iron. He said for the prevention of anaemia in women aged between 15 and 49 years, special camps would be organised in slum and rural areas for the distribution of iron folic acid tablets to prevent and treat anaemia.
Ghulam Rasool Dehlvi

ONCE again, a few stalwarts of the Muslim community have met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an attempt to open the door for mutual communication. According to the media reports, Prime Minister Modi met a delegation of Muslim clerics led by the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (JUEH) National General Secretary Maulana Mahmood Madani, who reflected on the key current issues of the community, particularly the Triple Talaq controversy.

The recent interaction between Modi and Madani's group follows a similar meeting between 40 Sufi leaders, including heads of dargahs with the same Prime Minister in August, 2015. Modi was reported to have patiently listened to the proposal and concerns raised by the Sufis with regard to the mainstream Muslims in India, who adhere to the Sufi ideology which Modi hailed as an antidote to the extremist narrative of the terror groups like Isis targeting Indian Muslims on social media. Remarkably, he had assured active co-operation from the central government in the Sufis' battle against radicalism.

Much in the same way, as Maulana Madani avers, the Prime Minister heard his group too with passion and agreed with their concerns. Maulana Madani was quoted as saying: The executive council decided to talk head to head with the Prime Minister about the issues that have worsened the situation for large swathes of the minority to the extent that they may feel treated as second-class citizens. In one of its several resolutions, the Jamiat's executive council hinted that the Modi government's slogan of Sab ka saath, sab ka vikas will now materialise through equal treatment and justice to all the citizens of the country.

But the common Muslims, devastated by their clergy's ulterior political motives and sectarian divide, are surprised and suspicious over the fresh engagement with Prime Minister Modi. As usual, the perception is that the Modi government is trying to woo the Muslim clergy for the 2019 elections. But this time, their surprise stems from the staggering news that the delegation was led by Maulana Madani not by Maulana Hazrat Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichchawchchvi, founder-president of All India Ulama and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB).

Inevitably, the members of the Madani-led delegation were predominantly the Deobandi ulema. There was not a single cleric from among the Sunni-Sufi leaders or Barelwi ulema who met Modi in August 2015.

The Modi-Madani meet has particularly shocked those who are aware of the Jamiat's earlier stubborn stand in 2014: Muslims won't back Modi at any cost and that nothing has happened that will make one believe that Narendra Modi has changed.

So what has happened now that acquits Prime Minister Modi of all charges he faced from Maulana Madani? And more interestingly, how did the decision of meeting the Prime Minister suit the Muslim clerics who had pledged not to meet him?

One could also recall how the same Deoband clerics were angered by the former Vice Chancellor of Darul Uloom, Ghulam Mohammed Vastanvi when he endorsed Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister. Subsequently, the same clergy who sacked Vastanvi are today silent onlookers. Even Madani had then said: "A clean chit to Modi is not acceptable".

So is the leopard now changing its spots? The Muslim community's prominent newspaper, the Milli Gazette, has triggered a row on this meeting: Soon after Mr Modi came to power, at least three high-level meetings were held by Muslim community leaders, including one called by Maulana Madani, in which it was decided not to meet Mr Narendra Modi if a need arises to meet the Prime Minister, it should be a joint delegation... By meeting the Prime Minister today with only a Jamiat delegation, the Maulana Madani group has broken the Muslim ranks".

On the contrary, Maulana Madani showed great optimism about the Prime Minister who heard the delegation passionately, while nodding to their concerns. Most interestingly, he hailed Narendra Modi for his great reverence for Islam and Sufism.

Now, remember how the same Jamiat castigated the 40 Sufi clerics who met Prime Minister Modi in 2015.

Subsequently, Sufi leaders organised the "World Sufi Forum" in Delhi, with a strongly-worded counter-narrative against the Isis's brand of radical Islamist ideology. However, the World Sufi Forum was also castigated by the Deobandi and a few other clerics, only because it was inaugurated by Prime Minister Modi. At that time, Maulana Madani had proclaimed: Sufism is nothing and the World Sufi Forum was an NDA bid to divide the Muslims. Another Jamiat leading figure, Maulana Arshad Madani stated: Sufism is no sect of Islam and is not found in the Quran and accused the Modi government of trying to create acrimony in the Muslim community.

So what is the sudden stimulus behind Maulana Madni's softness for Narendra Modi and his favourite strain of Islam--Sufism? This is a tough question, considering that Jamiat leaders and other Deoband clerics have been trying to forge a victimhood narrative among the Muslims by scaring them about the RSS and the NDA government.

Tellingly, Maulana Madani has been a Rajya Sabha member with support from Ajit Singh's Rashtriya Lok Dal and has dabbled in electoral politics as well. So, many might be fascinated by his political correctness in his latest media statement: Our meeting with the Prime Minister was mainly for opening the door of mutual communication and closer understanding that would lead to further opportunities and all of us will be able to play our role in the development of our country. Talking to the media, Maulana Madani added that he asked the Prime Minister to create a mechanism for further dialogue with the Indian Muslim community.

While Narendra Modi's meeting with the clerics ideologically opposed to what he hails in Islam as Sufism is staggering, a deeper observation reveals that this meet reeks of rivalry between the ulema of different Muslim sects in drawing closer to the Modi government and, thus, securing a political space for themselves.





The writer is a classical Islamic scholar, cultural analyst and researcher in media and communication studies.
London, May 12

Ten Indian-origin MPs who made it to the House of Commons in the last UK general elections are set for a tough fight in the June 8 polls as Britain's major political parties finalised their list of prospective candidates.

While many of those elected in May 2015 are defending quite comfortable margins, the changed Brexit reality since the last election means a heightened sense of uncertainty.

If the opinion polls are to be believed, the ruling Conservative party under Prime Minister Theresa May's leadership is largely forecast to have a smoother ride than the Opposition Labour.

The Liberal Democrats, which faced a severe drubbing in 2015, are hoping to revive their fortunes somewhat by focusing only on a limited number of anti-Brexit constituencies.

Among the MPs likely to ride the Brexit wave will be Priti Patel, UK secretary of state for international development  the most senior Indian-origin member of the UK Cabinet. The Tory MP for Witham is defending a large majority of 19,554 (41.5 per cent) in a Conservative party stronghold. She was also among the MPs who campaigned vehemently in favour of Brexit and had stressed it was the best thing for Britain.

She has strong support within the Indian diaspora, having served as the Indian Diaspora Champion under the David Cameron led government.

"The Indian Diaspora in the UK are fantastic at keeping this relationship strong and work hard every day to support the UK and India reach our potential," Patel said.

Her Conservative party colleague, India-born Alok Sharma, the minister in charge of India in the UK Foreign Office, faces a comparatively tougher electoral battle as he defends a majority of 6,650 (14 per cent) in his Reading West constituency.

"The UK-India ties are the 'living bridge' between our people, supported by 1.5 million British Indians who make up our successful and vibrant diaspora community. I have the honour to represent the government on UK-India affairs and am proud to see our partnership go from strength to strength," he said.

Another senior Indian-origin Tory is Shailesh Vara, who served as justice minister in the David Cameron led government and is currently the co-chair of the Conservative Friends of India (CFI). He is defending a large majority of 19,795 (32.4 per cent) in North West Cambridgeshire.

Among the Conservative party newcomers in the last Parliament, Rishi Sunak  the son-in-law of Infosys co-founder Narayan Murthy  is in a Tory safe seat of Richmond.

The Hampshire-born, former Goldman Sachs analyst won the Richmond, Yorks, seat in 2015 by 19,550 (36.2 per cent).

Fellow newcomer, London-born and Goan-origin Suella Fernandes is also defending a comfortable majority of 22,262 (40.7 per cent) in Fareham.

Opposition Labour partys MPs include two of the longest-serving Indian-origin parliamentarians  Keith Vaz and Virendra Sharma.

While Vaz had a turbulent year in 2016 with revelations around an alleged liaison with male prostitutes, his popularity in Leicester East seems to be safe with a previous lead of 18,352 (38.2 per cent). He has welcomed the chance to go back to voters in the snap poll next month.

"Theresa May was right to call a General Election. It is important any Prime Minister has a mandate from the British people before they begin the Brexit negotiations with the EU," he said. "But this is not just about Brexit, it is about the vision of what kind of country we want to live in. This is an opportunity for the political parties to set out clearly how Britain will change for the better. I believe the Labour Party has the answer."

His sister Valerie Vaz has a much tougher fight at hand in her Walsall South constituency in the West Midlands, where she won the last time with a margin of just 6,007 (14.4 per cent).

Fellow Labour MP Sharma, who is defending a majority of 18,670 (43.3 per cent) in Ealing Southall, west London, also welcomed the elections.

"It will give the country a chance to have their say on the divisive policies and hard Brexit that Theresa May is pursuing. The Prime Minister has called this election because she is scared of the Opposition that the Labour Party is mounting in Parliament," he said.

In Ealing, Southall we will speak to thousands of people, we will speak to the people that are being hurt by Tory policies and we will see that there is no support for a hard Brexit that punishes working people," he added.

Indian-origin Labour MPs Lisa Nandy and Seema Malhotra are defending 14,236 (31.4 per cent) in Wigan and 11,463 (23.2 per cent) in Feltham & Heston respectively.

The Tories have fielded another first-time Indian-origin candidate Resham Kotecha in Coventry North East but has come under some fire for not having enough ethnic minority candidates on its list this time.

"The Conservative Party has a proud record of ensuring candidates from all walks of life stand for Parliament," a party spokesperson said.

The Labour Party has over a dozen Indian-origin candidates on its list of prospective candidates finalised this week. PTI
THERE is a conflict-of-interest situation in Uttar Pradesh akin to the one Punjab witnessed earlier during the Badal regime and is set for a repeat under Chief Minister Amarinder Singh. The UP Home Ministry has denied the CID permission to prosecute the Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, for making a hate speech resulting in anti-Muslim riots in Gorakhpur in 2007. This was conveyed to the Allahabad High Court on Thursday by the state Chief Secretary. The CID completed its investigation and submitted the draft final report to the government in April 2015. Under Section 153-A, IPC, sanction of the Principal Secretary (Law) was required to proceed against the Yogi, then an MP.

The Allahabad High Court raised the conflict-of-interest question and declined the government counsels request to close the case. How can the Home Department allow the prosecution of a Chief Minister? In the disproportionate assets case against the Badals, witnesses turned hostile and the investigating officer retracted, inviting a perjury case. Last year the Punjab Vigilance Bureau gave Capt Amarinder Singh a clean chit in the Amritsar Improvement Trust case but the Ludhiana City Centre scam case is pending and the Enforcement Directorate too has joined the investigations. Apart from the embarrassment of making U-turns to rescue their CMs, state prosecuting agencies gladly accept court strictures and do not challenge the acquittals.

It will be interesting to watch attempts of the authorities in UP to bail out Yogi Adityanath and how the Allahabad High Court is able to counter them. The Chief Secretary told the court the CD containing the Yogis hate speech was tampered with. In a TV interview the Yogi has admitted to making the controversial speech. This is another case of politicians belonging to various political parties coming to the rescue of one in the opposite camp. The successive chief ministers  Mulayam Singh Yadav, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav  did not give the CID the go-ahead to prosecute the hate-spewing Yogi. They showed little enthusiasm to put the BJP firebrand in jail. Apparently, Hindu-Muslim riots and communal polarisation are politically useful  and not just to the BJP.
Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, May 12

A local court today issued a bailable warrant against yoga guru Ramdev in a case pertaining to his beheading remark made during a speech delivered at a Sadbhavna Sammelan organised here last year.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Harish Goyal had earlier summoned Ramdev under Sections 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke the breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation), IPC, directing him to appear in the court on April 29.

The yoga guru did not appear in court despite the summons. Hence, the court today issued a bailable warrant against him in the sum of Rs 1 lakh for June 14, 2017, said OP Chugh, counsel for the complainant.

The complaint in this regard had been filed by Congress leader and former Haryana Minister of State for Home Affairs Subhash Batra, who had also sought the registration of an FIR against Ramdev.

Supporting the chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai during the RSS-sponsored Sadbhavna Sammelan organised at Rohtak on April 3, 2016, Ramdev had maintained that thousands of heads would have been cut on opposing the chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai if we were not bound by the law.

Following that, Batra lodged a police complaint against Ramdev, who has been accorded the status of brand ambassador by the BJP government. However, as the police did not register an FIR, Batra approached the court.
Sunit Dhawan

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, May 12

A local court on Friday issued bailable warrants against yoga guru Ramdev in a case for his beheading remark made during a speech delivered at a Sadbhawna Sammelan organised here last year.

Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Harish Goyal had earlier summoned Ramdev under Sections 504 (Intentional insult with intent to provoke the breach of peace) and 506 (Criminal intimidation) of the IPC.

However, Ramdev did not appear in court despite the summons. Hence, the court issued bailable warrants against him.

The complaint in this regard had been filed by Congress leader and former Haryana Minister of State for Home Affairs Subhash Batra, who had also sought the registration of an FIR against Ramdev.

Supporting the chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai during the RSS-backed Sadbhawna Sammelan organised here on April 3, 2016, Ramdev had maintained that thousands of heads would have been cut on opposing the chanting of Bharat Mata ki Jai, but we respect the countrys Constitution and law of the land.

Following that, Batra lodged a police complaint against Ramdev, who has been accorded the status of Brand Ambassador by the BJP government. However, as the police did not register an FIR, he approached the court.
Vibha Sharma

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 17

BJP chief Amit Shah will visit Haryana between July 46 as part of his countrywide vistaar yatra or expansion programme  sources said on Friday.

Sources claimed that Shahs reach-out exercise would most likely be in Rohtak.

The reason for the choice of venue is clear  to breach Congress strongman Bhupinder Singh Hoodas Jat-dominated strongholds, which gave the BJP government in the state an administrative nightmare during violent protests for reservations last year.



Party leaders in the know of Shahs ongoing 95-day programme  part of BJPs attempt to connect with cadres and electorate ahead of the 2019 general elections  said the party wanted to woo Jats with several partys plans, including the National Commission for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes. The Jat belt in Haryana was the nerve centre of last years protests, which BJP leaders claim was "handiwork of Congress leaders".



Meanwhile, despite some very visible signs of power tussle in the ruling BJPs topmost echelons in Haryana, central leaders claimed that "all is well and taken care off in the state. There have been reports of MLAs and top ministers voicing displeasure over Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattars "style of functioning and the bureaucratic stranglehold in the state" with the central leadership. BJP leaders however claim the issues were ironed out.

Shah will travelling 1,00,000 km in 95 days spread over five months under the Deen Dayal Vistarak Yojana. States that have been divided into three categories. He will spend at least three days in category "A" states.

The programme is aimed at reviewing the partys performance in state, getting feedback about alliances, strengthening its network to the grass-root levels and identify weaknesses, BJP leaders said.
New Delhi, May 12

A Delhi cour has acquitted a BJP MLA from Haryana and another man of the charges of raping a woman in a hotel after giving her sedative-laced drink.

The court absolved BJP legislator from Gurugram Umesh Aggarwal and Sandeep Luthra for alleged offences of rape, causing hurt by means of poison and criminal intimidation under various provisions of the IPC, saying the prosecution has not been able to prove its case against them beyond reasonable doubt.

Additional Sessions Judge Shail Jain said the woman had turned hostile and there was nothing incriminating against the accused. The judge also dispensed with the recording of the statements of the accused.

The court also acquitted Rekha Suri, a friend of the woman who had taken her to a hotel in Faridabad, for alleged offences of abetment to rape and causing her hurt by giving her poison. The three accused were out on bail.

The court noted that the alleged victim had deposed that Suri had not administered any intoxicated substance in her cold drink or that Aggarwal and Luthra did not rape her.

She had also told the court that on January 1, 2015, the two men had not threatened or stopped her from disclosing the incident to anyone.

The court had framed charges against the three accused and they pleading not guilty. They had claimed innocence and that they were falsely implicated.

According to the police, the woman had alleged that on January 5, 2015, at the insistence of her friend Rekha, both of them had gone to a hotel in Faridabad on January 3.

After sometime, Rekha left on the pretext of some work and later, Aggarwal came to meet Rekha and gave her a drink. After consuming it, she became unconscious, she had alleged, adding that she was raped thereafter.

Next morning, Aggarwal called Luthra, who also raped the woman, the victim alleged in the complaint, adding that Luthra later dropped her at Tilak Nagar in West Delhi.  PTI
Hydra is a Marvel Comics fictional terrorist group and a web page on the villain oraganisation redirects people to the US President Donald Trump's official White House website.

By India Today Web Desk: Internet does it again, and what a marvel it is for some.

A web page on a fictional Marvel Comics terrorist group now redirects to President Trump's official White House website page.

It was noticed first on Thursday when people who typed 'hail-hydra.com' into their web browsers were redirected and taken to the US President Donald Trump's page, The Hill magazine reported.

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The Hollywood Reporter first noticed it on Thursday. The Hollywood Reporter said that it is unclear who set up the redirect, with the last update to the site showing April 16.

The URL -- hail-hydra.com -- was originally registered back in 2014 by someone in the Australian town of Nobby Beach, Queensland.

FYI || This boy just left a cheeky message about Donald Trump on camera ||

HAIL HYDRA

Hydra is a recurring antagonist in Marvel Comics storylines and their offshoot media properties, reports The Hill magazine.

The fictional extremist organisation has repeatedly clashed with the Avengers superhero team in mediums including comics and movies.

The 2014 film "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" featured members of the Hydra group proclaiming their allegiance with the phrase "Hail Hydra".

Marvel Comics is currently publishing an ongoing storyline about Hydra called "Secret Empire".

According to Hollywood Reporter, Marvel attempts to keep itself away from its current Secret Empire Hydra comic book storyline from the parallels of the real-world.

The new prankster move came far in advance of recent political disturbance drawing a line under the popular conspiracy theory that President Trump is attempting to obstruct investigations into potential ties to Russia by firing FBI Director James Comey.

And here is the Hydra Oath: "Hail, Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off one head, two more shall take its place! We serve none but the Master-as the world shall soon serve us! Hail Hydra!"

FYI || Moments before Congress address, TV cameras captured Trump rehearsing speech ||

--- ENDS ---
Chandigarh, May 12

In the backdrop of river water sharing disputes, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Friday said that agreements arrived at in the past must be honoured by the states.

At a meeting of northern states chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh here, he complained that Haryana was suffering as Punjab was not releasing the water due to it and voiced concern over excess river water being allowed to flow into Pakistan.

Since our faith in the Constitution is full and unflinching we would never hesitate in taking legal recourse in our determination to safeguard our interests and to protect the rights of the residents of the state, Khatter said.

At the same time, the Chief Minister said his government is willing to work towards an amicable settlement of every issue.

Haryana is a water-stressed state as against the demand of 36.0 MAF water, the availability of water is only 14.7 MAF, he said at the meeting of Northern Zonal Council (NZC).

We have to give, out of our own share in the Yamuna waters, extra water to Delhi in compliance of the apex courts orders, even as Punjab is not delivering Haryanas full share of the Ravi-Beas waters, he said.

He also urged the Centre to expedite the construction of Renuka, Kishau and Lakhwar-Vyasi dams on river Yamuna.

He said it is also a matter of concern that even after the signing of the Indus Water Treaty in 1960, more than 3 MAF of water is being allowed to flow into Pakistan.

The chief minister said the supplies in the Yamuna had been dwindling over the recent years and there being no dam on it, precious water went waste during the monsoon season.

It is most unfortunate that thousands of villages in Haryana and millions of hectares of land are even today bereft of the water that is our due from Punjab, he said.

Khattar said, We are not in agreement with the Punjab government on their proposal of exclusive investment in the Bhakra Main Line Canal and exclusive utilisation of the electricity generated there.

He said that on the matter of the treatment, storage and disposal of hazardous waste from Delhi, Haryanas concerns about disposal and storage of the waste must be kept in mind, while finalising the details of the project.

He said the project should be as per norms and not detrimental to the quality of life of the residents of the area. He hoped that the deliberations held on Friday would help evolve a consensus on several inter-state and Centre-state issues.

I am sure we will never lose sight of the important aspect of promotion of cooperative federalism even as we remain engaged in the task of building a modern, strong and developed India, he said. PTI
Parveen Arora

Tribune News Service

Karnal, May 12

Amid a tussle over the distribution of private routes, Additional Transport Commissioner Satpal Sharma held a meeting with the representatives of the eight Haryana Roadways employees unions and General Managers (GMs) of all depots at Karan Lake here today. In an hour-long meeting, the employees associations raised their voice against privatisation and said they would not allow privatisation of roadways. They even threatened to go on strike if the government forcibly implements any decision.

Meanwhile, it was decided that the GMs with the consent of the representatives of the roadways employees associations, will review and decide the routes on which private buses could ply on Saturday and Sunday. A report in this regard would be submitted to headquarters on next Monday to be later sent to the government for review of routes.

I have directed all GMs to review the routes in their districts by coordinating with the unions representatives to finalise the routes, said Sharma, while talking with media persons.

Asked about the withdrawal of the new transport policy 2017, he said they were here to discuss some queries of the employees associations. The right to withdraw it or not was reserved with the state government. They were reviewing whether the finalised routes were in the favour of roadways or not, he added.

Dalbir Kirmara, president of the Haryana Roadways Sanyukt Karamchari Sangh, on the behalf of other unions, said that they were not in the favour of snatching the jobs of anyone, but they would also not allow the privatisation of the whole roadways. We are fighting to save the jobs of the employees, he added.

He said the employees observed a complete bandh in Kaithal and Jind against allotment of private routes by the government despite an assurance to the unions.

He maintained that the state government had assured them to withdraw the policy by May 1, but despite that efforts were being made to bring private buses on routes in Kaithal, Hisar and Jind districts.

He said all eight employees unions did not want the roadways to shut down, but the state government was not serious over the issue. He threatened that they would go on strike, if the state government forcefully implements any decision.

Sarbat Singh Punia, president of the Haryana Roadways Workers Union, Virender Dhankar, president of the Haryana Roadways Karamchari Union and other unions president and representatives were present in the meeting.
Tribune News Service

Kullu, May 12

The last rites of Ayurveda Minister Karan Singh were performed with state honours near Bhootnath Temple on the banks of the Beas here today.

The minister, who was undergoing treatment at AIIMS, Delhi, for one month, died last night. He was suffering from lung and liver ailment. He was 60 years old and is survived by his wife and son. His elder son had died in an accident in 2012.

His mortal remains were brought to the Bhuntar airport in a chopper from Delhi today and thereafter from Bhuntar to Kullu at his residence at Rupi Palace. People started arriving at his residence ever since the news came in.

The minister was popular among people and was representing the Banjar constituency in Kullu.

Rural Development Minister Anil Sharma, Transport Minister GS Bali and several other local leaders were present. His son Aditya Vikram Singh lit the pyre.

A scion of the Kullu Royal family and younger brother of BJP stalwart Maheshwar Singh, the former Raja of Kullu, Karan Singh was a three-time MLA. He was elected from the Banjar Assembly constituency in 1990, 1998 and 2012. He won as a BJP candidate in 1990 and 1998 and served as the Minister of State for Primary Education in the Dhumal government.

After being sidelined in the BJP, he joined the Congress ahead of the 2012 Assembly elections and was elected from Banjar. He was inducted as a minister in the Virbhadra Singh cabinet in August 2015.

Governor Acharya Devvrat, CM Virbhadra Singh, former Chief Minister Shanta Kumar, Speaker of Vidhan Sabha BBL Butail, ministers, MLAs and prominent leaders expressed grief over the demise of the minister.
Tribune News Service

Shimla May 12

Health and Revenue Minister Kaul Singh Thakur, while participating in the meeting of Northern Zonal Council (NZC) held at Chandigarh, today reiterated Himachal Pradeshs demand that the Centre should provide 7.19 per cent power in all Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) projects keeping in view the ratio of its population. The state has also demanded that arrear claims against Punjab and Haryana be calculated as per inter-state energy settlement rate.

He said the state had repeatedly been requesting for 7.19 per cent power in all BBMB projects but to no avail. Punjab and Haryana had calculated Hiamchals share at the National Fertilizers Limited rates, which was unfair. It should be charged as per inter-state energy settlement rate, he said.

He urged the Union Home Minister, who is also the chairman of the zonal council, to convene a meeting with the Union Minister of Power and the Chief Ministers of the states concerned so that Himachal Pradesh could get its legitimate share as endorsed by the Supreme Court of India without any further delay.

Thakur also requested the Union Government for funds for construction of hydro power plant at Renukaji Dam on the 90:10 Centre state sharing basis as this project was of national importance and the state was making immense sacrifice by way of displacement of large population.

Thakur demanded that the powers of diversion of forest land for development activities should be enhanced up to five hectares so that the developmental works in the state did not suffer for want of forest clearances.

He said a joint strategy should be evolved by the neighbouring states to tackle the menace of drugs and alcohol.

Thakur also underlined the need to resolve inter-state boundary disputes at the earliest. He mentioned that Himachal had an unpleasant experience of police from Jammu and Kashmir entering 15-km inside its territory in Lahaul-Spiti district claiming it as theirs.

The ITBP forces patrolling the boundaries between the two states had been withdrawn in the recent past which should be redeployed to prevent any untoward incident.

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh presided over the meeting which was attended by the chief ministers and ministers of northern region besides senior officers of the Government of India and states.
Majid Jahangir

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, May 12

Even as the Army has asked its personnel hailing from Kashmir to strictly follow the laid down guidelines during vacation, the J&K Police have gone into an overdrive and announced a bounty on the heads of three militants who they say are behind the killing of 23-year-old Lt Ummer Fayaz.

The police on Friday pasted posters in Shopian district of three Hizbul Mujahideen militants  Ishfaq Thokar, Gayas-ul Islam and Abbas Bhat, saying the trio was involved in the abduction and killing of Lieutenant Fayaz in Shopian where he had gone to attend a wedding function of a relative.

Any person providing information regarding the criminals will be suitably rewarded and his identity will be kept secret, the poster read.

Lieutenant Fayaz was abducted by two masked men from his uncles house in Shopian on May 9 evening during the wedding ceremony. His bullet-riddled body was found the next morning. Later, the police registered a case under Sections 302 (murder) and 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) of the RPC.

Superintendent of Police, Shopian, Ambarkar Shriram Dinkar said all efforts were on to track the militants involved in the killing.

We have announced rewards for those who will lead to the arrest or killing of these terrorists. We are making all efforts to neutralise them, Dinkar said.

Meanwhile, in the wake of killing of the young officer, the Army has asked its personnel and commissioned officers from Kashmir to strictly follow the laid down guidelines while on vacation.

Every soldier prior to proceeding on leave is briefed about dos and donts. After the brutal murder of the young Kashmiri officer, the soldiers hailing from the Valley have been advised to follow the guidelines strictly, a defence official said.

As per the set guidelines, the soldiers have to inform nearby Company Operating Base (COB) of the Army and a police station while at home. They also have to share their phone number so that in case there is any trouble, the COB can respond quickly after receiving a phone call, he added.

Over 12,000 Army personnel, including officers, come from Kashmir. A large number of Kashmiri soldiers also hail from four troubled districts of south Kashmir.

Last month, amid increasing incidents of militants harassing family members of police personnel, the J&K Police had asked its men, especially in south Kashmir, not to visit homes in the next few months.

Now, militants surface in Bandipora

Srinagar: In a disturbing trend, a group of suspected militants surfaced in north Kashmirs Bandipora district on Friday. Their appearance came second time in the past one week.

Sources said two to four gunmen, most probably foreigners, appeared at the Banger Mohalla Hajin mosque in Hajin Bandipora and one among them addressed the locals for at least 20 minutes. The militant asked the people to stand united. He also warned people not to inform security forces about their presence.

We are here to help, the unknown gunman, according to the sources, said.

After the Friday prayers ended, the locals took out a march and the militants were a part of the rally.

Later, clashes erupted in the area between youths and security forces.

Two gunmen had also surfaced in the area last week during a protest march. There have been several instances this year where militants, mostly in south Kashmir, have been appearing at the funerals of slain ultras.

Not involved in Lieutenants murder: United Jihad Council

Srinagar: A day after the police said Hizbul Mujahideen militants were involved in the killing of an Army officer in Shopian, the conglomerate of militant outfits based in Muzaffarabad  United Jihad Council (UJC)  said on Friday that its militants are not involved in the killing. In an email to Srinagar-based news agency KNS, UJC spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain, quoted the outfit chief, Syed Salahuddin, as saying: Our militants are not involved in the murder of Lt Ummer Fayaz. Such a killing is condemnable. An officer from a pro-freedom family was murdered by the Indian agencies and militants are being accused of it to shield the real face of the Indian agencies, he said.  TNS
Shopian, May 12

The Jammu and Kashmir Police have identified three suspected Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists believed to be involved in the killing of young Kashmiri Army officer Ummer Fayaz.

The police on Friday pasted the posters of the three terrorists in Shopian claiming that they were a part of the group, who abducted and killed the Lieutenant on Tuesday night.

Also read:LeT, Hizbul militants involved in killing of Kashmiri Army officer

Lt Fayaz wasnt studious, but an extraordinary student

Young Kashmiri army officer shot dead while home on leave

The police have also announced rewards for any information on the suspects.

Fayaz, a Rajputana Rifles officer, was kidnapped from a relative's home and killed. A resident of south Kashmir's Shopian district, he had gone to attend his cousin's wedding.

Lieutenant Fayaz, a farmer's son, was commissioned into the Indian Army in December 2016.

The police said the officer was shot by terrorists five times in an orchard. His body was found in the Harman orchard by locals. ANI
New Delhi, May 12

Adding yet another first to his huge repertoire of firsts, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan addressed the audience in a conference at TED Talks in Vancouver, Canada.

SRK's TED talks are full of inspirational instances, intelligently woven with motivational words.

The 51-year-old actor representing India at the global platform has been earlier graced by the likes of remarkable people like former US President Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, astronaut Mae Jemison, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to name a few.

In his TED Talk, the Chak De! India' star said, "My country has taught me the capacity for a human being to love is akin to godliness. It shines forth in a world, which civilization, I think, already has tampered too much with. In the last few days, the talks here, the wonderful people coming and showing their talent, talking about individual achievements, the innovation, the technology, the sciences, the knowledge we are gaining by being here in the presence of TED Talks and all of you are reasons enough for us to celebrate the future "us." But within that celebration the quest to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion has to assert itself, just as equally."

He said, "The people of this ancient land embraced me in their limitless love and I've learned from these people that neither power nor poverty can make your life more magical or less tortuous. I've learnt from the people of my country that the dignity of a life, a human being, a culture, a religion, a country actually resides in its ability for grace and compassion. I've learned that whatever moves you, whatever urges you to create, to build, whatever keeps you from failing, whatever helps you survive, is perhaps the oldest and the simplest emotion known to mankind, and that is love. A mystic poet from my land famously wrote." The King of Bollywood then proudly narrated a Sanskrit Shlok and translated it for the audience.

He said, "My country has taught me the capacity for a human being to love is akin to godliness. It shines forth in a world which civilization, I think, already has tampered too much with. In the last few days, the talks here, the wonderful people coming and showing their talent, talking about individual achievements, the innovation, the technology, the sciences, the knowledge we are gaining by being here in the presence of TED Talks and all of you are reasons enough for us to celebrate the future "us." But within that celebration the quest to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion has to assert itself, has to assert itself, just as equally."

The actor's speech was received with a standing ovation at TED. ANI
Ludhiana: The health wing of the MC issued 20 challans in Zone B for using plastic bags and serving unhygienic food. The drive was conducted under Medical Officer, Health,Dr RS Kang. Challans were served on to Toofani Chicken, Aman Chicken, Chawla Chicken, all on Chandigarh Road. Moti Mahal at Vishwakarma Chowk, Chick fi, Amit Fast Food and Chaurasia Pan Bhandar and juice bar, all at Jamalpur.

Wife, paramour held for murder

The police claimed to have solved the murder case of a Nepal-based man Mann Bahadur (50). As per the police, deceased's wife Anita connived with her paramour Jeevan Prasad of Bihar to kill her husband. Notably, Bahadur was killed at his shanty in Karamsar Colony on Thursday. After the murder, his wife told the police that they were sleeping in the shanty, and when she woke up, she found her husband in a pool of blood. When she was rounded up, she confessed to have committed the crime. She said she killed her husband because he had come to know about her illicit relationship. The accused were arrested, ADCP Jasdev Singh said.

7 booked for abetting suicide

Almost a month after a man attempted suicide by consuming some poisonous substance, the city police have booked seven persons for abetting his suicide. Deceased Gurpal Singh of Nim Wala chowk died on Thursday, after which Honey, Sahil, Raman, Varinder, Ravi, Jeevan Sharma and one unidentified person were booked by the police. Complainant Balvir Kaur said on April 14, the accused came to her husbands shop and threatened him. Next day he consumed some poisonous substance and since then he was undergoing treatment at a hospital, where he succumbed yesterday. A case was registered against the accused and raids were on to arrest them. tns
Nikhil Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 12

In a fire incident that was reported at Malika Textiles in Industrial Area yesterday, where four firemen sustained serious burn injuries, the Fire Brigade Employees Union today submitted a complaint at the Police Station Division No 2 seeking registration of FIR against the factory owner for negligence.

Union members alleged that it was due to the negligence of factory owner that four firemen sustained serious burn injuries. They said when the fire took place, they immediately reached the spot and started dousing the flames, but the factory owner, who was present at the spot, did not reveal to them that inflammable material like LPG cylinder was lying inside and the same could invite danger.

Since firemen sustained injuries when the LPG cylinder exploded, factory owner should be booked for negligence, they said. Had the factory owner informed them about the presence of inflammable substances in the factory, the firemen could have moved inside with caution, they said.

SHO Jaswinder Singh said a complaint was submitted by the union members and the police would inquire the allegation and if negligence of factory owner comes to fore, legal action would be taken against him.

The SHO said the statement of the injured was also recorded by the police and whatever statement they gave the police would corroborate the same to garner evidence.

The injured firemen are Sudagar Singh (52), Naresh Kumar (24), Lovlesh Kumar (27) and Hazura Singh (56). Sub-fire officer Hazura sustained 40 per cent injuries with serious burns on his chest, firemen Naresh, Lovlesh and Sudagar sustained nearly 30 per cent burns on the face, arms and back.
Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, May 12

International Nurses Day is celebrated across the world every year on May 12 to mark the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, founder of the modern nursing. The International Council of Nurses established the day in 1974 to be celebrated every year to highlight the importance of nurses in providing the best healthcare services. The day was celebrated in various hospitals and medical colleges here today.

Panel discussion at CMCH

College of Nursing, Christian Medical College and Hospital, celebrated the day with a programme organised by the TNAI (Trained Nurses Association) and the SNA (Student Nurses Association) on the theme, Nurses: A Voice to Lead - Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Balqis Victor, President, TNAI, CMC unit, talked about 17 sustainable-development goals. A panel discussion was also organised on the theme.

Scientific session by DMCH

The day was also celebrated at College of Nursing, Malakpur Campus, Dayanand Medical College and Hospital.

A brief scientific session pertaining to the nursing profession was organised for the nursing staff.

Nursing Superintendent Minakshi Pereira unfolded the theme of the day this year, Nurses: A voice to lead- achieving the sustainable development goals. Minakshi Pereira said the nurses needed to do their best for providing patients with quality healthcare.

Nursing students take oath

The Ludhiana Institute of Nursing celebrated International Nurses Day with zeal and enthusiasm to acquaint the students with the legacy of nursing.

An oath-taking ceremony was held for freshers and the students were inducted into the profession of nursing and told to carry out their dutie with compassion, empathy, love and devotion.

Students were motivated to serve and support the sick. A scientific session was organised by the teachers on theme Nurses: A Voice to lead: Achieving the SDGs. A variety of competitions were held such as rangoli making, poster making, mehndi drawing and declamation. Prizes were given away to the winners of various competitions and academic achievers.

Vow to follow Florence Nightingale

Mandi Ahmedgarh: Members of the nursing community at various hospitals and nursing homes vowed to follow in Florence Nightingales footsteps. Oath was taken to mark International Nursing Day. Male nursing staff accompanied their counterparts. Dr Ravinder Sharma, former president of the local unit of the Rotary Club, said members of the nursing community, including the Hind Hospital and Diagnostic Center, Sood Hospital and Makhan Memorial Hospital, had participated in the functions held at their respective medical centers. Dr Sunit Hind, Dr Sanjiv Sood and Dr Nirmal Singh said nursing staff was the backbone of any health center. OC

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Arvind Kejriwal and Mayawati were outright vocal in declaring that EVMs had been rigged in the recently-held Assembly elections

New Delhi: EVMs and VVPATs being demonstrated during an all-party meeting convened by the Election Commission to discuss the reliability of the EMs in New Delhi on Friday. PTI Photo

By Kumar Shakti Shekhar: The Election Commission (EC) is under vicious attack from some political parties and leaders, particularly Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, over the use of EVMs for elections. However, while patiently bearing the onslaughts, EC has sought to effectively counter all the charges.

Ever since the results of the recent Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur and of Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) have been declared, AAP leaders, BSP supremo Mayawati, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Congress leaders raised question mark over EVMs.

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Arvind Kejriwal and Mayawati were outright vocal in declaring that EVMs had been rigged in the recently-held Assembly elections. Congress and Mamata Banerjee too lent their support and expressed doubts over the non-tampering of EVMs.

Arvind Kejriwal went to the extent of alleging that EC was biased and was acting under the orders of the Narendra Modi government. He also accused EC of "helping BJP win elections". He charged that the software of the EVMs could be hacked and demanded the machines for 72 hours to prove the claim.

The AAP government in Delhi even convened on May 9 a one-day special Assembly session where party MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj sought to prove through demonstration on a look-alike EVM unit that the mother machines could be rigged.

However, EC has been maintaining the dignity of a constitutional body. It has been patiently putting up with all the allegations and innuendos. While the volleys of Arvind Kejriwal, Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee and some Congress leaders may be caustic, wild, irresponsible and even personal, EC's response has been quite measured and sobre but strong.

These are the manners in which EC has kept the interests of the nation above all else:

ALL-PARTY MEET

Facing criticism from AAP and some other opposition parties, EC decided to convene an all-party meeting today to elicit suggestions from them on EVMs. They invited technical experts too besides the representatives of seven national parties and 48 state parties.

Sources said, "EC would note all the doubts and concerns of the leaders and address all of them. After all, we shall ensure that the sanctity of this constitutional body remains intact. We do not want to leave an iota of scope for tampering the EVMs."

The sources in EC further said, "Our objective is to help in the progress of the nation. We want that the trust of all the political parties, politicians and the people to prevail. None of us has any personal agenda. Country comes before anything else."

FAST ADDRESSAL OF GRIEVANCES WITH FACTS AND EVIDENCES

EC officials said they seek to promptly redress the grievances by furnishing facts and evidences. EC does not address the complaints without evidences. "However, we are yet to be proven wrong. All allegations which have been made so far have vanished in thin air after verifying with facts and figures," they said.

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For instance, they said, the claims of an independent candidate who contested the February 21 BMC poll, about "disappearance of votes" cast by him and his family members have turned false. Shrikant Shirsat, who contested from the Saki Naka municipal ward (No. 164) in suburban Mumbai had said that he had voted for himself and so had his family members. However, he claimed that had he had polled zero votes

The Commission held a probe into the allegations and found that Shrikant Shirshat's allegations were far away from truth. Though Shirshat stood for election from ward number 164 in Saki Naka, he is enrolled as a voter at two polling booths. This, in itself, is illegal. Besides, contrary to his claims, he has not got zero votes at either of the two polling booths.

EC also dubbed as "baseless and incorrect" media reports that claimed there was a mismatch in the votes cast and votes registered in the Dholpur Assembly bypoll held on April 9. It refuted reports that the votes given to one party were going to another party.

The Commission said only two EVMs out of the 231 deployed had to be changed due to technical problems during the polling. Moreover, there was no complaint of mismatch in voting from anywhere.

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IMMEDIATE AND POTENT RESPONSE

The Commission has been found to be quite prompt in issuing rejoinders or clarifications to any allegations or complaints. For instance, whenever AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal has leveled any serious allegations, EC has been quick to issue a rejoinder in a bid to set the record straight.

Recently, the Commission swiftly retorted to AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj's May 9 demonstration on EVM. It released a hard-hitting statement the same day and said, "The Election Commission, through media, has learnt about a so called demonstration of tampering of 'look-alike' EVM. In this context it should be understood that it is possible for anyone to make any electronic gadget which 'looks-like' ECI's EVM and demonstrate any magic or tampering.

"Very simply put, any 'look-alike'' machine is just a different gadget, which is manifestly designed and made to function in a 'tampered' manner and has no relevance, incidence or bearing on the Commission's EVMs. It is commonsense that gadgets other than ECI EVMs can be programmed to perform in a pre-determined way, but it simply cannot be implied that ECI's EVMs will behave in the same manner because they are technically secured and function under an elaborate administrative and security protocol," it said.

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The Commission concluded that the so called demonstration on extraneous and duplicate gadgets which were not owned by it could not be exploited to influence "our intelligent citizens and electorate to assail or vilify the EVMs used by the Commission in its electoral process".

ELECTION COMMISSIONER OP RAWAT RECUSES

Arvind Kejriwal is now known for making sweeping statements, wild allegations and blunt personal attacks without verifying the truth. Recently, Kejriwal had reportedly said he did not believe in the independence of two Commissioners, AK Joti and OP Rawat.

Regarding Rawat, Arvind Kejriwal said since he came from Madhya Pradesh and has been very close to Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, he could not be trusted.

Election Commissioner Rawat immediately recused himself from cases pertaining to AAP which the Commission is hearing, one of them being the case for disqualification of 21 AAP MLAs for allegedly holding office of profit.

However, Rawat was not bound to recuse from cases of AAP because Arvind Kejriwal's allegations were baseless. Rawat is an IAS officer of the MP cadre and he retired from service in December, 2014. But he was never close to Chouhan. In fact, Chouhan was not favourably disposed towards him.

Rawat knew that Chouhan would not allow him to become chief secretary of the state and, hence, he applied for empanelment at the Centre. He also got an opportunity to come on deputation to the national capital. However, Chouhan stopped him from leaving MP saying "I have some plans for you".

Rawat stayed back thinking Chouhan had changed his mind and would promote him to the coveted post. But when time came in 2012, Rawat was superseded by his junior R Parshuram for the chief secretary's post. Peeved over the development, Rawat came down to the capital.

However, Kejriwal made a wild and baseless allegation to serve his purpose. However, he sought to defame the integrity of a government servant who could not defend himself in public.

However, in the larger interest of the Commission, Rawat recused himself so that AAP not only gets justice but is also seen as getting justice.

MAINTAINING ELECTION COMMISSION'S IMAGE GLOBALLY

For the Commission and its senior officers, the sanctity of the constitutional body is above all else. "Even we want that there should be no scope for tampering the EVMs. It is constant endeavour that the image of the Commission as an independent, efficient and unbiased election watchdog is not tarnished a bit," the sources said.

ALSO READ: EVMs with paper trail to be used in all future elections, says Election Commission

Hack it if you can: Election Commission's open dare to parties to break into EVMs this Sunday and Monday

How so-called EVM scandals unraveled one by one. Also, how Election Commission asserted reliability

In all-party meet, Election Commission to prove EVMs are tamper-proof, brief on hackathon challenge

WATCH: Election Commission extends EVM hackathon challenge to all political parties

--- ENDS ---
Islamabad, May 12

The April meeting between Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Indian-tycoon Sajjan Jindal was "part of a back-channel diplomacy", Pakistan's civil leadership informed the Army officials.

According to Geo News, Prime Minister Nawaz, during one of his recent meetings with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen Qamar Bajwa, had taken the latter into confidence over Jindal's visit to Pakistan.

Jindal went to Pakistan to reduce tension between the two neighbouring countries, Geo News quoted a BBC Urdu report, as saying. The report also stated that COAS Bajwa also took his officials into confidence over the matter.

Earlier in April, businessman and entrepreneur Sajjan Jindal made a visit to Pakistan and met Nawaz Sharif. Sajjan Jindal, along with other businessmen, met Sharif in Murree.

The meeting came at a time when the two neighbouring nations were going through turbulent times. ANI
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12

The World Health Organisation on Friday appointed Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan as its Goodwill Ambassador for Hepatitis in South East Asia Region to boost awareness around the hepatitis epidemic.

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I am absolutely committed to the cause of hepatitis. As a person living with hepatitis B, I know the pain and sufferings that hepatitis causes. No one should ever suffer from viral hepatitis, Bachchan said at a Mumbai event today.

The actor had last November associated with Indias national campaign against hepatitis by launching a film, where he spoke of his own life as a patient of liver cirrhosis.

He had picked up the hepatitis virus from infected blood administered to him post his near-fatal accident on the sets of 1982 film Coolie but learnt of it eight years later having lost 25 per cent of his liver to cirrhosis.

WHO estimates Indias national prevalence of HBV (Hepatitis B) virus at 4 per cent of the population and of HCV (Hepatitis C) at 1.2 per cent. These viruses spread through infected blood and can hide in the body for years before showing signs of damage as in Bachchans case. Liver experts say 40 million Indians are currently living with chronic HBV and 12 million with chronic HCV virus, numbers that are larger than those living with HIV.

While the HBV can be prevented through the vaccine all 270 lakh Indian newborns must get through the National Routine Immunisation which provides it free of cost, Hepatitis C has no vaccine and can be addressed by screening people and putting them on antivirals like Sofosbuvir.

Experts say everyone with a history of blood transfusion before 2002 must test for HCV because Indias National Blood Policy started HCV screening only from 2002. Everyone who got blood before 2002 is at HCV risk, says Dr SK Sarin, Head, Institute of Liver Sciences, New Delhi.

Announcing Bachchans association with WHO today, Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director SE Asia, WHO said, This historic association is expected to help strengthen WHOs efforts in reducing the high numbers of premature deaths and illnesses from viral hepatitis.

Though preventable, viral hepatitis kills 4,10,000 people in the region (11 nations, including India) every year, mostly people in their productive years. Nearly 90 million people suffer from chronic liver disease that is driving rates of liver cancer and cirrhosis in the Region, says WHO.

Health Minister JP Nadda said Bachchans voice was listened to regardless of cultural, social or economic background and will make real change possible.

As ambassador, Bachchan will lend his voice and support to public awareness programmes that aim to scale up preventive measures and advocate for early diagnosis and treatment of viral hepatitis to reduce the disease burden.
Pradeep Sharma & Rajmeet Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 12

Deadlock prevailed between Punjab and Haryana over the contentious Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal at the Northern Zonal Council (NZC) meeting presided over by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh here today, with Haryana terming the issue as non-negotiable.

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Haryana Agriculture Minister OP Dhankar, who was present at the meeting, said Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had made it clear that there was no question of any dialogue on the SYL canal issue since the Supreme Courts judgment had attained finality.

He said what all states had agreed to was the suggestion of Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to hold meetings at the level of officers and political executives on all other contentious issues of sharing power and water.

Earlier, Sanjeevani Kutty, Secretary, Inter-State Council Secretariat, and Karan Avtar Singh, Punjab Chief Secretary, told reporters that Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan agreed to Rajnaths suggestion of discussing all inter-state river issues at a meeting of CMs and chief secretaries so as to arrive at mutually acceptable solutions.

Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh said though Haryana had less land, it was given more water at the time of Punjabs reorganisation. Punjab did not get any share in the Yamuna waters, he maintained.

Khattar, however, said: Haryana is a water-stressed state. Against a demand of 36 million acre feet (MAF), the availability of water in Haryana is only 14.7 MAF. We give additional water to Delhi in compliance with the Supreme Court orders out of our share in the Yamuna waters. This, despite the fact that Punjab is not giving Haryana its full share in the Ravi-Beas waters.

Thousands of villages and millions of hectares in Haryana are bereft of water, which we are entitled to get from Punjab, Khattar said.

Capt Amarinder reiterated his demand for re-assessment and re-determination of the availability of surface water in the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. He urged the Centre to take expert advice on how to make reliable estimates of future flows in these rivers.

Khattar said, We are not in agreement with Punjab on its proposal of exclusive investment in Bhakra Main Line Canal and exclusive utilisation of electricity generated there-from by Punjab.

The Punjab CM, meanwhile, requested the J&K Government to ratify the pact for resumption of construction on the Shahpur Kandi Dam project, stalled since 2014.

With estimated 10 lakh acres in southern Punjab likely to go dry following the SYL construction, the region can become hotbed of terrorism, triggering a national problem.  Capt Amarinder Singh, Punjab CM

There is no question of any dialogue on the SYL canal issue since the Supreme Courts judgment has attained finality and Haryanas execution petition is listed for hearing in July.Manohar Lal Khattar, Haryana CM
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12

Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the opportunity of the International Vesak Day celebrations to hit out at Pakistan for its ideology of hate and violence.

In his address in Colombo during the celebrations where the PM was the chief guest, Modi said the biggest threat to world peace today came from mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

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The PM chose not to mention Pakistan by name, but it was more than evident as to where the finger was pointed.

The India-Pakistan narrative has gone from bad to worse in the last few days with New Delhi approaching The International Court of Justice over the death sentence awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav by Islamabad.

With his Lanka visit, Modi has been looking to reset ties with Colombo as the Chinese footprint in the island nation has been growing of late. The two common threads that connect Delhi and Colombo are Buddhism and the Tamil community in Lanka, who trace their roots back to India. The PM later addressed the community in Dickoya town of Sri Lankas tea-growing Central Province.

The devolution of political power to the Tamils in Lanka has been a long-standing issue between the two nations. Despite many promises, the progress has been slow with the South Block maintaining it was being done deliberately.

Modi said the Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority should try and live in harmony while he assured Indias support to the Tamils. We need to strengthen, not separate, (these) threads of unity and harmony, Modi said. The government and people of India are with you in your journey towards peace and greater prosperity, he added.

Varanasi-Colombo AI flight from Aug

PM Modi on Friday announced that Air India would begin direct flights between Colombo and the holy city of Varanasi from August. He made the announcement while inaugurating the International Vesak Day, the biggest festival of Buddhists. He said the flights will allow "my Tamil brothers and sisters" to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Vishwanath. At a distance of 10 km from Varanasi lies Sarnath, one of the most revered Buddhist pilgrimage centres. It is believed that after attaining the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, it was in Sarnath that Lord Buddha preached his first sermon, sanctified as Maha Dharm Chakra Parivartan. PTI

16,000 handcrafted candles for Lanka

The PM announced the gifting of 16,000 handcrafted candles to Sri Lanka on International Vesak Day. The first consignment will be handed over by the Indian High Commission in Colombo to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy that houses the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha. The candles have been specially handcrafted from the paraffin wax produced at the world's oldest operating refinery in Digboi, Assam. IANS

Indian artiste creates longest sand Buddha

Sudarsan Pattnaik, internationally acclaimed Indian artist, has created a 40-foot-long sand sculpture of reclining Buddha, the world's longest, in Sri Lanka. Pattnaik, who was invited by the India High Commission to participate in the 14th International Vesak Day celebrations organised by Sri Lanka, created the statue near the Parliament on May 10. PTI

Modi mentions his association with tea

"I have a special association with tea" was how Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an instant connect with the Tamil community members at Dickoya in the tea-growing Central Province of Sri Lanka. Modi, while addressing thousands of Tamils at a rally in the presence of Lankan President Maithripala Srisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, also invoked "chai pe charcha", saying it was not just a slogan but a "mark of deep respect for the dignity and integrity of honest labour". He lauded Ceylon tea, saying it was world famous but what was lesser known was the sweat and labour behind it. "If Lanka today is the third largest exporter of tea, it is because of your hard work. PTI
Kandy, May 12

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced the gifting of 16,000 handcrafted candles from India to Sri Lanka on the auspicious occasion of International Vesak Day.

The first consignment of candles will be handed over by the Indian High Commission in Colombo to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic here that houses the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha.

According to an Indian External Affairs Ministry statement here, the candles have been specially handcrafted from the paraffin wax produced at the worlds oldest operating refinery in Digboi in the Indian state of Assam.

The Digboi refinery, commissioned in 1901, is considered the birth place of the Indian oil industry. It is operated by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) which has a subsidiary in Sri Lanka, Lanka IOC.

Modi on Friday visited the historic Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic accompanied by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and offered floral tributes.

Earlier in the day, Modi was the chief guest at the inauguration in Colombo of the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of President Sirisena.

This is his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.  IANS
New Delhi, May 12

Axed Delhi minister Kapil Mishra, whose hunger strike entered day three on Friday, has been advised hospitalisation by a team of doctors who examined him.

Mishra, who is on an indefinite hunger strike, is demanding that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) divulge details of the foreign tours undertaken by five leaders of the party. The AAP has, in turn, accused him of following a script penned by the BJP.

His blood sugar level has dropped to 81 mg/dL and intravenous fluids need to be started immediately. His pulse is low. He is going into dehydration because of poor salt intake. We have thus advised hospitalisation, said Dr Javed Salam of the Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital, who examined him.

He said Mishra, who is on a hunger strike in his home in Civil Lines, may also suffer from heat exhaustion, not just because of the hot days but also because he is surrounded by many people radiating body heat.

Mishra, however, had refused to get admitted, Salam said.

Earlier on Friday morning, Mishras mother had written a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of spreading lies about her son. This was after AAP leaders tweeted a picture in which Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari and Mishra were seen in one frame.

Annapurna Mishra, a former mayor of Delhi, claimed that the picture was clicked at an event to felicitate AAP leader Kumar Vishwas father and was attended by Kejriwal and all his ministers.

She said Kejriwal had pursued her to convince Mishra to join politics despite the latter not being interested. PTI
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12

Controversial Calcutta High Court Judge CS Karnan today requested the Supreme Court to take up urgently his plea for recall its order sentencing him to jail for six months for contempt of court.

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara  who had moved the SC yesterday on behalf of Justice Karnan for recall of the sentencing order  made three attempts to seek urgent hearing before Chief Justice of India JS Khehar who is heading a five-judge Constitution Bench hearing triple talaq case.

We are a different BenchSeven judges assembled to take a conscious decision, the CJI told Nedumpara who thrice approached the court during the day. The CJI asked him to go to the court's Registry.

On Thursday, the CJI had said Justice Karnans plea for recall of the order sentencing him to six-month jail term would be considered in due course. Where is he? If he is not available how has he authorised you, if he is not available? the CJI had asked. Nedumpara had said Justice Karnan signed it in Chennai.

In an unprecedented order, the SC had on Tuesday convicted Justice Karnan of contempt of court and sentenced him to six-month imprisonment forthwith.

Taking note of his defiance and a series of orders passed by him against the SC judges, a seven-judge Bench headed by CJI JS Khehar held that his conduct amounted to "gravest" nature of contempt. "We are of the unanimous opinion that Justice CS Karnan has committed contempt of this court, of the judiciary as also of the judicial process...of the gravest nature, the Bench said.

The court directed the West Bengal DGP to execute the order forthwith. But he has gone underground since then and the police were trying to locate him to execute the court's order. Justice Karnan has earned the dubious distinction of being the first sitting HC judge to be convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to a prison term. The court had also restrained the media from reporting his orders and statements.

Earlier, it had restrained all courts, tribunals, commissions and authorities from acting on the orders passed by Justice Karnan.
New Delhi, May 12

Following the Aam Aadmi Partys (AAP) remark that Kapil Mishra is a BJP agent, the mother of the sacked Delhi minister has described Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwals movement against corruption as a farce.

Addressing a press conference, the first mayor of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation, Annapurna Mishra, said, Today my son is being accused of being an agent of the BJP. I never thought Arvind Kejriwal would behave in such a manner. I asked Kejriwal to speak out on the issue related to the alleged tanker scam. Anyway, my son was never interested in joining the AAP and it was Kejriwal who wanted Kapil to join the AAP.

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Saying how proud she was that her son was carrying out a Satyagraha, she added that he is an agent of truth and not of the BJP.

She also highlighted that by sacking Kapil, Kejriwal had proved what kind of a person he was.

Kapil Mishra has a higher stature than Kejriwals as there is no corruption allegation against the sacked water minister, she said.

Kapil, who was sacked from the AAPs primary membership, is on a hunger strike, demanding the details of the foreign trips undertaken by AAP leaders.

Earlier, Mishra submitted documents related to the tanker scam to the ACB, while saying that he had also apprised the agency of the misuse of the money by the Delhi government.

Kapil told Kejriwal, Someone told me if these details were revealed, the public wouldnt let you stay in power for another moment. What is the secret behind these trips? ANI
Satya Prakash

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12

Likening triple talaq with the pre-Islamic practice of burying infant girls alive, former Union Minister Arif Mohammad Khan on Friday requested the Supreme Court to abolish the practice, saying it was against the mandate of the Holy Quran.

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In pre-Islamic Arab society infant girls were buried alive. The practice was abolished after the advent of Islam Triple talaq is the modern version of the pre-Islamic practice, Khan told a five-judge Constitution Bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar, which is hearing petitions challenging the validity of triple talaq.

On Thursday, senior counsel Indira Jaising had contended that triple talaq amounted to civil death for Muslim women as its consequences were very harsh for them.

Khan  who quit the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1986 following differences over the passage of a law to overturn the Supreme Courts verdict in Shah Bano case on maintenance for divorced Muslim women  attacked the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) for distorting the Islamic law in India. The Shariat has been distorted beyond recognitionThey (AIMPLB) have taken the law to ridiculous levels,  Khan said, adding it has gone much beyond the limits set by the Allah in the Holy Quran.

Appearing on behalf of All Indian Muslim Women Personal Law Board, Khan sought to emphasise that the Holy Quran alone should be considered as the source of Islamic law; and Sunna and Hadith should be taken into account only if the Holy Quran was silent on a particular issue.

Advocate Farah Faiz too attacked the AIMPLB for distorting Shariat and demanded that parallel judicial system of Islamic courts (Darul-Kaza) be banned as they prevented Muslims from approaching mainstream judicial system by threatening them to declare Kafirs (non-believers).

During the hearing, the bench sought to know if something sinful and abhorrent could be part of law (Shariat).

Can something which is considered abhorrent by religion be validated by law? justice Kurian Joseph asked after senior counsel Salman Khurshid  who is assisting the court in his personal capacity  said that triple talaq was forbidden and sinful but still valid under the Islamic law.

Its like death penaltyabhorrent but still allowed under the law, the CJI commented.

Interestingly, both Khan and Khurshid did not address the Constitution Bench on the fundamental rights of Muslim women and chose to restrict their arguments to the Holy Quran and Shariat.

As Khurshid went on and on explaining the practice of talaq under various Islamic schools, Jaising told the Bench, Me lord! Your Bible is the Constitution.

However, senior advocate Ram Jethmalani  who represented Forum for Awareness for National Security (FANS) and three victims of triple talaq  based his arguments mainly fundamental rights of Muslim women.

Terming the practice of triple talaq as violative of right to equality and right against non-discrimination, Jethmalani said the practice was bad in law as it discriminated against Muslim women on the basis of sex and didnt give them equal right to divorce.

Jethmalani said secularism meant subjecting religion to rule of law. Citing Article 44 of the Constitutional that talks about Uniform Civil Code, he said it was very difficult for have such a Code for various reasons.

At least start with itby giving a uniform code to Muslim men and women, Jethmalani said.

He also commented on Khurshida arguments, saying, He (Khurshid) tried to make it (triple talaq) look reasonable though unsuccessfully.

The hearing would resume on Monday when the Centre is likely to present its case against triple talaq.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) India will host a meet of 14 Pacific Island countries in Fiji from May 25 with a focus on issues such as blue economy, climate change and international solar alliance, the external affairs ministry said today.

With an annual trade of about USD 300 million between India and these countries, the two-day meet, which is being held under the framework of the Forum for India Pacific Islands Cooperation (FIPIC), will also see participants exploring ways to enhance business ties and investment opportunities.

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Minister of State for External Affairs V K Singh will host the conference, it said, adding two presidents and three prime ministers from Pacific Island countries have confirmed their participation.

"The two-day conference will focus on issues such as the blue economy, adaptation-mitigation practices for climate change, disaster preparedness, health, the International Solar Alliance as well as finding practical solutions to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) implementation," the MEA said.

It is also expected to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience, and initiate public-private partnerships and collaborations for the benefit of all participating countries.

Business leaders, academicians, civil society members and youths from the region would also participate in the meet.

FIPIC was formed in November 2014 to strengthen Indias relationship with the Pacific Island countries.

The first FIPIC Summit was held at the level of heads of government in November 2014 in Suva, Fiji, followed by the FIPIC-II summit held in August 2015 in Jaipur. PTI PYK SMN SC SMN

--- ENDS ---
Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12



Moments after the Delhi High Court turned down the petition of Young Indian Private Limited questioning an income tax probe into its assets, Congress leader and lawyer in the case Abhishek Singhvi said the development was no embarrassment to the party and this adjective was only the medias creation.

I dont agree with the adjectives you are using. Its a free country. Anyone can say anything, Singhvi said when asked whether the development was a political embarrassment for the Congress.

Singhvi said the High Court division bench after hearing Young Indian had allowed the petitioners to raise all objections before the income tax assessing officer, including the objection that there was no reason for the I-T department to believe in the need to reopen Young Indians tax assessment.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi and party vice president Rahul Gandhi are directors in Young Indian which is under probe in the National Herald case filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy.

Singhvi said the Young Indian on Friday withdrew its petition and would now raise all objections before the I-T assessing officer. This means Gandhis will have to subject themselves to a tax probe.

The case pertains to a private criminal complaint by Swamy, who has accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh through which Young Indian Private Limited obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which Associate Journals Limited (AJL) owed to the Congress.

The other accused include Congress treasurer Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda.
Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Hoshiarpur, May 12

An 84-year-old NRI based in Hoshiarpur for quite some time has set a new milestone in philanthropy by handing over a cheque for Rs 1 crore to the Red Cross here, in what is probably the largest amount given to the charity by an individual in one go.

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Piare Lal Saini, who had moved to the UK in 1965 to work there in an industry, was impressed by the work being done by the charity and decided to donate his entire savings for the noble cause.

But before doing so, Saini thoroughly convinced himself that the amount wont be misused. For this, he donated Rs 22 lakh earlier in smaller fractions over two years and ensured it was spent judiciously.

Asked how he would meet his needs, Saini says the pension he has been drawing from the UK should be enough. My wife passed away in 1989 and I have been living alone. My children are well-settled abroad and all of them supported my decision, he says.

The grant he has given would be used for various welfare projects, including deformity-correction surgeries for foot, hand and cleft lip; funding studies of poor students, setting up a canteen for needy youth pursuing vocational courses and upgrading a Jan Aushadhi store. Besides, the dilapidated building of the Red Cross Society would be repaired and new gadgets bought for the physiotherapy centre, Naresh Gupta, Red Cross Society secretary, said.

Deputy Commissioner Vipul Ujjwal said Sainis perhaps could be the biggest amount donated by any individual to the Red Cross in one go. We are trying to verify it. But we are thankful to the man who selflessly chose to donate all his lifes savings. This will encourage more people to come forward to help the needy, Ujjwal added.
Washington, May 12

Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

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"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean, Coats testified before the committee. PTI
Simran Sodhi

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, May 12

The US today imposed sanctions on terrorist organisations based in Pakistan, including an organisation run by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeeds Jamaat-ud-Dawah.

In another development, Daniel Coats, Director of the US National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing that tension between India and Pakistan can only come down if Pakistan moves forward on the Pathankot probe.

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The developments came as a relief for India that has long been asking the world to take strict action to curtail the funding of various Pakistan-based terror groups that routinely carry out attacks.

These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have supported the Taliban, Al-Qaida, Islamic State, and LeT for recruiting and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations, said John Smith, director of treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control.

He said the US would aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and their fronts, including charities which are used as vehicles to facilitate terror activities.

The statement of Coats has given a significant backing to a demand that India has been making for a long time ---- talks and terror cannot go together and Pakistan needs to act against those who are behind the Pathankot attack.

Easing of the heightened India-Pak tension will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation, Coats said.

Both these developments also assume significance in light of the fact that the Trump administration will soon announce its Afghanistan policy. India and Pakistan have been vying for strategic influence in the region.

Security: not even a rupee sanctioned

New Delhi: The government is yet to sanction a single rupee for fortifying military bases across the country, notwithstanding the demand by the three services for Rs 2,000 crore to plug the gaps in their security in the wake of the Pathankot terror attack. A total of 3,000 sensitive bases, including 600 highly-sensitive installations of the Army, Navy and the Air Force, were identified by the forces to revamp the security infrastructure. The Army has spent Rs 325 crore from its internal funds, but the government is yet to give a rupee to the three services for it, official sources said. PTI
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, May 12

Responding to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singhs call for marathon discussions to resolve the SYL issue, Punjab and Haryana on Friday agreed to try and find a collective solution to the dispute through dialogue.

The Home Ministers plea came after Punjab Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh, hosting the 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council (NZC) here, pushed for a consensus solution of the SYL dispute, while calling for coordination by the states concerned with the Centre to find a feasible solution for optimal utilisation of river waters based on internationally accepted riparian principles.

Agreeing to Amarinders suggestion of talks to resolve the issue, the Home Minister, while chairing the meeting, said efforts should first be made to find a solution through marathon meetings, failing which the matter should be left to the courts to decide.

He suggested that the chief ministers and chief secretaries of both the states should sit and discuss the issue threadbare in order to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution. The Punjab Chief Minister suggested that the Union Water Resource Ministry convene a meeting of the CMs and CSes at the earliest to take it forward.

Amarinder pointed out that with an estimated 10 lakh acres of southern Punjab likely to go dry following the construction of the SYL, the region, which had seen the emergence of Naxalism, could become the hotbed of terrorism, triggering a national problem. Though Haryana had less land, it had been given more water at the time of Punjabs reorganisation, he said, pointing out that Punjab did not get any share of the Yamuna water.

Earlier, in his official address, Amarinder reiterated his demand for re-assessment and re-determination of the availability of surface waters in the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers. Pointing out that Punjab was suffering an ecological crisis because of depletion of ground water, he urged the Centre to take expert advice on how to make reliable estimates of future flows in these rivers.

Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the agreements arrived at in the past must be honoured by the states.

He complained that Haryana was suffering as Punjab was not releasing the water due to it and voiced concern over excess river water being allowed to flow into Pakistan.

Since our faith in the Constitution is full and unflinching we would never hesitate in taking legal recourse in our determination to safeguard our interests and to protect the rights of the residents of the state, Khatter said.

At the same time, he said his government is willing to work towards an amicable settlement of every issue.

Meanwhile, Amarinder sought the Centres help in supplementing the states efforts to check cross-border smuggling of drugs, which his government was committed to eliminating.

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Referring to the border status of Punjab, Amarinder again reiterated his demand for Central government concessions, on the lines of the fiscal and industrial concessions being given to Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, to compensate the state for the financial and economic loss already suffered by it. This, he said, was necessary to provide a level-playing field to Punjab.

Referring to the rampant drug menace in Punjab, the Chief Minister noted that since the border was manned by central security forces, the Union Home Minister, who was presiding over the meeting, should order strict vigil on the border to check cross-border smuggling of drugs.

The Chief Minister called for greater operational freedom to states, cutting across party lines, in choosing and financing their developmental properties. He cited the need for states to have more funds for their primary development needs and reiterated his demand for an increase, to at least 50%, in the percentage of devolution of central funds to the states.
Vaibhav Sharma

Unless the iPhone is the smartphone of your choice, the quarter following February is the best time for choosing your Android flagship. While some brands choose to announce their offerings at the Mobile World Congress, others wait for a few weeks to get greater press coverage and a sense of exclusivity for their premier offering. In the last few weeks, we have seen LGs G6, followed by the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+, and finally also the Xiaomi Mi 6. All three are stand-out devices that are fortunately aimed at slightly different price points, making your choice easier depending on how much you are willing to shell out for a premium design.

Galaxy S8 & S8+

This is the year that Samsung finally broke away as a design leader, not merely content on copying ideas, something it has been accused of in the past. The new flagships are downright gorgeous, and the Infinity display, as Samsung likes to call it, makes the devices look futuristic.

Pros:

The amazing display-to-body ratio lets the company pack a much larger display into an incredibly small body, making it compact.

From wireless charging to water and dust resistance, the S8 packs all the features you could hope for. It even has novelty features like iris scanning for unlocking the phone.

Cons:

The fingerprint sensor is placed on the back, right next to the camera. Not only it is awkward to reach, but you end up smudging the camera lens in the process.

The all-glass design makes the device much less durable. You will probably want to keep it secure in a case.

LG G6

This is LGs best smartphone ever. In fact, because the G6 was announced sooner than the S8, one could say that LG came to the narrow bezel game sooner that its competitor.

Pros:

The dual-camera system is a big deal. You get a wide angle lens that lets you shoot panorama like images without the need of software-based stitching, great for landscapes and groups. There is also a more traditional sensor, giving you the best of both worlds.

LGs done well to price it lower than the S8, the company also has attractive cashback schemes with online retailers, making it an attractive buy.

Cons:

When compared to the S8, the design doesnt look all that appealing despite looking good too on its own.

The device also runs the slightly older Snapdragon 821 processor, in contrast the much cheaper Mi 6 runs on a Snapdragon 835.

Xiaomi Mi 6

Despite being globally launched, the Mi 6 still does not have a launch date for India. Perhaps, the company wants to concentrate on the low-end here, but lessons from One Plus 3/3T suggest that Indians love a great value for money product, and the Mi 6 will be lapped up just as quickly.

Pros:

It might not have the bezel-less design of the G6 and S8, but other than that it is feature packed to the brim. Dual cameras like that of iPhone 7 Plus, the latest Snapdragon chip, 6 GB of RAM and more.

The price makes it a no brainer. There is no other product that comes close. Although the One Plus 5 might change that soon.

Cons:
Tribune News Service

Dehradun, May 12

Environmentalist Dr Anil Joshi has been conferred Biotechnology Social Development Award 2016. President Pranab Mukherjee presented the award to Dr Anil Joshi at a ceremony held at the Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi. He was presented with a scroll of honour and a cheque of Rs 5 lakh. Senior HESCOs scientist Dr Rakesh Kumar was also present on the occasion The award is given to personalities whose organizations have done commendable work in social development sector.

Dr Joshi, who heads Himalayan Environment Scientists Conservation Organisation (HESCO), has been particularly awarded for his contribution towards making villagers aware on importance of environmental conservation. He encouraged farmers to revive traditional agricultural practices.
New Delhi, May 12

India is likely to be represented by local embassy staff or academics this weekend at a major gathering of leaders and ministers on Chinas Silk Road initiative, reflecting deep unease in New Delhi about the far-reaching project.

Indias main objection to Chinas plan to build ports, railways and power links across Asia and on to Europe is that the $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key part of the plan, runs through disputed Kashmir.

The broader worry for India is that the Belt and Road initiative involving hundreds of billions of dollars over the coming decades will cement Chinas dominance over Asia, including Indias neighbourhood.

Leaders of 29 countries plus senior delegates from other nations gather in Beijing for a two-day summit starting on Sunday to map out a project that is seen as broad on ambition but short on specifics.

Even Vietnam, which has had rocky ties with China, will be represented by its President, while Japan, driving its own infrastructure push across Asia, is sending a deputy trade minister and the secretary-general of the ruling party.

India, meanwhile, is expected to send representatives from its embassy in Beijing, two Indian officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said that, as far as he knew, Indian academics would be participating in relevant activities at the Belt and Road Forum. He gave no other details and offered no further comment.

Indian foreign ministry spokesman Gopal Baglay said no decision had been taken on whether an Indian government delegation would attend the meeting.

The matter is under consideration, he said, a position the government has maintained since March when China extended an invitation. Since then it has stepped up efforts to get India to attend.

Baglay said India supported connectivity across the region, but there was a problem with the Pakistan end of One Belt, One Road (OBOR), a term widely used to describe the project.

As far as OBOR is concerned, you know that our position is that since the so-called CPEC forms a part of OBOR, that is where our difficulty is. It passes or proposes to pass through what is sovereign Indian territory and we have made our views in this regard very, very clear to the Chinese side.  Reuters

China ropes in US, Japan

China has managed to rope in the US at the last minute for its Silk Road summit besides South Korea, the EU and Japan, leaving India to be the only major country yet to confirm its participation in the high-profile event

The Trump administration announced that Matt Pottinger, Special Assistant to the President and senior director for East Asia of National Security Council of the White House, will lead the US delegation to the attend the One Belt and One Road Forum.

The US participation came after the two sides clinched a lucrative trade agreement which will boost shipments of American liquefied natural gas, beef and other products to China. In turn, Chinese banks and poultry will get access to the US market

Downturn in Sino-India ties: NSG and Dalai lama top list

Indias indecision over Chinas biggest summit of the year comes at a time of a sharp downturn in ties. New Delhi is smarting over Chinas refusal to allow it entry into the Nuclear Suppliers Group and over Beijing blocking a request at the UN to sanction a Pakistan-based militant blamed for attacks on India

Beijing is angry at Indias increasingly public engagement of the Dalai Lama, including hosting the Tibetan spiritual leader in a territory controlled by India but claimed by China in April. It has also grown wary of Indias military cooperation with the United States, as well as with Japan in recent months

Chinas ambassador to India, Luo Zhaohui, told an Indian military think-tank in Delhi last week that the Belt and Road initiative was good for both countries and fitted into Indias Look East policy of strengthening ties with southeast and northeast Asia

Expert warns India

Chinas economy is nearly five times the size of Indias. So at this stage, its absurd for India to pick a confrontational path, they need to first grow their economy and then come up with all these strategies to confront China.  Kai Xue, Beijing-based lawyer

India yet to confirm participation

Indian has kept mum about attending the event and any minister or official showing up could be part of a last-minute decision. The $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) could keep India away from the event

New Delhi firmly opposes the key corridor of Beijings One Belt One Road project because it passes through the Pakistan-administered Kashmir

The general view is that India attending the forum may amount to surrendering its claim over region
Rome, May 11

Two Italian climbers on Thursday made it to the top of Nepals Annapurna peak, and at the same time set a record as the first couple to conquer the worlds 14 highest mountains.

Romano Benet and his wife Nives Meroi, both 55, reached the 8,091-metre (26,545-foot) Annapurna summit on Thursday morning, without using oxygen or porters just as they have in all their ascents, according to the Italian daily Corriere della Sera.

The final climb to the top starting at an altitude of 7,200 metres was the hardest but also the most beautiful, Meroi told her sister Leila, the newspaper said.

Annapurna and K2 (8,611 metres) are considered the most difficult and most dangerous summits for climbers, apart from the worlds highest peak, Mount Everest (8,848 metres).

Before the Italian couple, only 34 mountain climbers had been able to conquer the Earths 14 highest summitsall over 8,000 metresand only half of them did it without oxygen.

The first one was the legendary Italian mountaineer Reinhold Messner who completed his climbs in 1986 before retiring.

Among women, Korean Oh Eun-sun entered the record books in 2009 after climbing Kangchenjunga (8,586 metres) in the Himalayan range.

Meroi was a contender for the female title, but she took a break in 2009 to be by the side of her sick husband.

The two resumed their quest for setting a mountain climbing record together in 2012.  AFP
The court officials took the mobile phone of the Indian official after Singh allegedly tried to click a photograph of the judge in the Islamabad High Court.

By Hamza Ameer: The mobile phone of an Indian High Commission official Piyush Singh was today confiscated by the Islamabad High Court staff. He had gone to Islamabad in context of Dr Uzma's writ petition.

The court officials took the mobile phone of the Indian official after Singh allegedly tried to click a photograph of the judge in the Islamabad High Court. However, the Indian diplomat clarified that he did not attempt to take any picture, and requested the officials to return his mobile phone.

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Uzma, an Indian national, who approached the Indian High Commission had alleged that she was forced to marry a Pakistani citizen Tahir Ali at gunpoint.

Uzma later filed a plea with an Islamabad court against Tahir alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him.

ALSO READ | Forced to marry Pakistani man at gunpoint, Indian woman to return home

ALSO WATCH | Indian woman alleges harassment by Pakistani husband, files case against him

--- ENDS ---
London, May 12

Hospitals and doctors surgeries across Britain were forced to divert ambulances, turn away patients and cancel appointments on Friday after a ransomware cyber attack crippled some computer systems in the state-run health service.

The National Health Service (NHS) said dozens of organisations had been affected by the cyber attack which was causing major disruption to IT systems.

The attack appeared to be part of a wider international hack and the NHS said it did not believe it had been specifically targeted. Spains government said a large number of companies, including telecommunications giant Telefonica, had also suffered a ransomware attack.

The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor, NHS Digital, the computer arm of the English health service, said in a statement. This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.

Prime Minister Theresa May, who was out campaigning ahead of next months national election, was being kept informed, while Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was being briefed by security experts, a spokesman for May said.

No patient data was believed to have been accessed during ransomware attack but it was unclear what its impact had been on emergency cases.  Reuters
Washington, May 12

President Donald Trump warned sacked FBI chief James Comey on Friday not to leak details of their conversations to the media, suggesting they may have been taped.

In a series of early morning tweets, Trump assailed critics and the media over their response to Comeys ouster, and threatened to cancel daily news briefings at the White House.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! fumed the president, whose dismissal of the FBI director on Tuesday has triggered days of turmoil in Washington.

Trump has revealed he asked Comey on three occasions whether he was a target in a probe into alleged Russian election meddling, stoking allegations of presidential interference.

In an interview yesterday, he insisted he always intended to fire the FBI director, undercutting the initial explanation that he acted on the recommendation of top officials who criticised Comeys handling of a probe into Hillary Clintons emails.

Apparently stung by media scrutiny over shifting accounts of how and why Comey was fired, Trump suggested he may call off daily media briefings at the White House.

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy! he tweeted.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???

Opponents have claimed that Comeys shock sacking was a bid to stall an FBI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which is also looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trumps team.  AFP
Mack Trucks in action during the U.S. Army's 1919 cross-country motor convoy experiment. Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps

Given its size and industrial output, at some point, the United States would have had no choice but to invest in and build a national highway system. But the actual story of how the Interstate Highway System came to be is amazing because it largely revolves around the unique experiences of an American hero named Dwight D. Eisenhower.

After graduating from West Point in 1916, Ike requested an overseas assignment during the First World War, but was posted instead to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and missed out on the chance for a career-enhancing combat command. But he was a capable, organized officer. And World War I was the first conflict to see the use of motorized transport, which played a decisive role in staving off a German victory at various points during the fighting.

After the Armistice, the War Department decided to study how trucks could be used to move a convoy of troops and equipment across the continental United States in the event of an invasion of the West Coast. Command of the convoy of trucks fell to young Major Eisenhower, with orders to set out from Washington, D.C. and proceed in as expeditiously a manner as possible to Oakland, California.

Lt. Col. Dwight Eisenhower during his command of the 1919 coast-to-coast motor convoy. Photo: U.S. Army Signal Corps

The convoy was impressive for the time. According to the Wikipedia entry on the event, it consisted of 81 total vehicles and trailers, including 34 heavy cargo trucks, four light delivery trucks, two mobile machine shops, a mobile blacksmith shop, one wrecker, and an "Artillery Wheeled Tractor" capable of towing nine trucks at once.

There were also two spare parts wagons, two water tanks, one gasoline tank, one searchlight with electrical power plant truck, four kitchen trailers, eight touring cars, a reconnaissance car, two staff observation cars, five sidecar motorcycles, and four solo motorcycles, as well as five ambulances with trailers, and a 4-ton pontoon trailer (which was abandoned in Omaha).

Manufacturers involved included Mack Trucks, fresh off its name-making triumphs on European battlefields, as well as GMC, Cadillac, Dodge, F.W.D., Garford, Harley-Davidson, Indian, Liberty, Packard, Riker, Standardized, Trailmobile, and White.

The journey wasnt an easy one. Its worth noting that in 1919, it had only been 20-odd years or so since the end of the last Indian Wars. So, the Western U.S. had far more in common with the Wild West of the 19th Century than the 20th Centurys ongoing Industrial Revolution.

What primitive highways existed at the time petered out far east of the Mississippi River. And things got progressively worse the farther west the convoy traveled. At times, the men were lucky to following a cattle path. More often than not, they were simply making their own road as they went.

An idea of just how brutal the whole affair was can be gleaned from these highlights: En route, Eisenhowers men found virtually no paved roads west of Illinois and often had to tear down and rebuild wooden bridges, if they werent building them from scratch while enduring 230 separate road incidents requiring vehicle repairs.

All told, the convoy covered more than 3,000 miles at an average speed of 5 mph, with average travel times of slightly more than 10 hours per day. The trip took a total of 56 days, with the troop finally arriving in Oakland six days behind schedule. Casualties included 9 vehicles that could not complete the trip, as well as 21 men unable to finish the journey out of the original contingent of 297 officers and enlisted men.

Most of the soldiers were raw recruits with little or no motor skills at the beginning of the journey, although Eisenhower noted several were really component drivers by the end of the trip.

It was a grueling affair at a time when next to nothing was known about motorized transport and logistics, and this early triumph by Eisenhower not only put him on solid footing as a capable officer with his superiors, but also impressed upon him the importance of a reliable, well-maintained road network for a modern, industrialized nation.

But it was only the first part of the future presidents thinking on modern roadways. His role in an even greater war a few years later would shape his thinking on highways in equally profound ways. More on that in my next Truck Tech blog.
The FUSO EV power charger consists of eight chargers in two locations, which provide DC 50-500 Volt, 125 Ampere via CHAdeMO, and CHAdeMO Compo charging plugs. (Photo courtesy of FUSO)

Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation (MFTBC) inaugurated the first public power charging station dedicated to trucks in Japan, directly outside its Kawasaki manufacturing facility in the presence of media and guests from the Japanese Government and local Kawasaki Administration.

The move comes in preparation for the launch of the all-electric FUSO eCanter later this year that will be the first series-produced electric truck sold in the market by an established automotive brand. Similar preparations are occurring in other key countries, including the United States, an important growth market for FUSO.

The President and CEO of MFTBC, Marc Llistosella, said at the occasion, I am convinced that electric trucks are the future of inner-city distribution. By developing and testing electric trucks since 2010, and launching our eCanter this year, FUSO becomes the frontrunner in electric trucks. Pointing out the importance of the establishment of a charging network, he continued, With the inauguration of our FUSO EV power charger, we want to highlight the need for a robust network of charging stations in mega-cities like Tokyo, to help propel the use of electric trucks. To achieve this, we will closely cooperate with the government and our progressive customers.

The FUSO EV power charger consists of eight chargers in two locations, which provide DC 50-500 Volt, 125 Ampere via CHAdeMO, and CHAdeMO Compo charging plugs. It is capable of rapidly charging up to eight electric trucks (or passenger cars) simultaneously, and will be open for public use.

Participating in the event as honorary guests, Director General of METI, Toshihide Kasutani, and Mayor of Kawasaki City, Norihiko Fukuda, welcomed the initiative of Mitsubishi Fuso.

Originally posted on Automotive Fleet
Pakistan Rangers fired few bullets along the international border in Arnia sector around 7 am, to which the Indian troops retaliated.

By Ashwini Kumar: Pakistan once again violated ceasefire along the international border in Arnia sector of Jammu and Kashmir today. Pakistan Rangers fired few bullets to which the Indian troops retaliated.

The firing began around 7 am however, no loss of life has been reported as of now.

According to sources in the Border Security Forces (BSF), few jawans were involved in some repair work of the fence on the international border to which the Pakistan Rangers objected. They then took to firing and the Indian troops retaliated with the same force.

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The exchange of fire took place for almost 30 minutes wherein one BSF jawan received minor injuries.

"Pakistan Rangers fired few bullets around 7 am, warning our troops working ahead of the fence in Arnia sector. The Indian troops retaliated with few rounds of firing," BSF spokesperson said.

Pakistan had on Thursday violated ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) at Pukharni village in Nowshera sector of Rajauri in Jammu and Kashmir, killing a woman and injuring her husband.

The Pakistan Army had initially resorted to firing by small arms, but later used heavy mortar shells.

ALSO READ | Jammu-Kashmir: Pakistan violates ceasefire in Digwar sector of Poonch, firing on

ALSO READ | Woman killed as Pakistan violates ceasefire along LoC in Jammu and Kashmir's Nowshera

ALSO WATCH | J-K: Woman killed, husband injured as Pakistan violates ceasefire along LoC in Nowshera

--- ENDS ---
A Bangkok-bound Jet Airways flight was today air turned back to Mumbai after a suspected tail strike. All passengers and crew are reported to be safe.

By Anindya Banerjee: The Mumbai-Bangkok flight of Jet Airways today had to turn back to the Maharashtra capital after a suspected tail strike.

Jet Airways said, the air turn back was executed "in the interest of safety".

The Jet Airways flight 9W 70 landed safely after it executed an air turn back. All 180 passengers and 8 crew were deplaned.

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The aircraft is currently being inspected by the Jet Airways engineering team and ground personnel. The aircraft is a Boeing 737-900

"Acting proactively in the interest of safety, the crew of our flight 9W 70, Mumbai-Bangkok of May 12, 2017 executed an air turn back to Mumbai on account of 'suspected' tail strike," the Jet Airways statement read.

It further said that the flight would resume its journey at 1245 hours.

This is the third incident of tail strike involving a Jet Airways plane this year.

More details are awaited.

ALSO READ |

Delhi: Jet Airways flight hits another aircraft before take off, major accident averted

ALSO WATCH |

Jet Airways flight collides with another aircraft before takeoff; crisis averted on time

--- ENDS ---
Shelby emotional in video

Jurors in Betty Shelbys manslaughter trial watched about 40 minutes of video Thursday afternoon of Shelby talking to lead Homicide Sgt. Dave Walker during a Sept. 19 interview for his investigation into the incident.

In the video, Shelby calmly describes arriving for work at the Gilcrease Division in north Tulsa, but she becomes emotional and ultimately yells about how she kept trying to get Crutcher to follow her commands. She stands up on several occasions as she re-enacts how Crutcher walked away from her, and how she followed him while pointing her gun at him.

She details seeing a man later identified as Crutcher in the area of 36th Street North and Lewis Avenue who appeared to be acting erratically. Although she says she thought he may have been intoxicated, she says she continued driving to back up another officer on a domestic-related call until seeing an SUV parked in the road. At that point, Shelby says she requested for another officer to go to the domestic call so she could deal with an apparently abandoned vehicle.

Shelby said she saw Crutcher walk toward her when she was near her patrol car and asked him if the SUV was his.

Hes just staring me. Its not an expression of wanting to get help, she says, adding that his responses were unintelligible. Shelby says she became more guarded and asked for backup because his behavior is not right and emphasized Crutchers size  5-foot-9 and around 250 pounds  as another reason to be fearful.

Officer Tyler Turnbough testified Wednesday that he was the first backing officer and stood to Shelbys left pointing a Taser at Crutcher. He said he announced to Shelby that he had a Taser ready and Shelby said OK, but Shelby told Walker she didnt remember seeing or responding to Turnbough.

I said stop, Shelby screams three times during the interview. Once she saw him make a move toward the vehicle, described as lunging, she says, I shot him in the side. I thought he was gonna kill me.

At that point, she breaks down in tears and collapses to the ground in the interview room. But once she is able to speak clearly, she says after the shooting that he stopped, and then he fell.

Turnbough then told her to put her gun away and walked her back to a patrol car.

She says in the video that Turnbough told her that If I had a gun, I would have shot him too had she pulled out her Taser.

Jurors see pictures of Crutchers window

A Tulsa police detective testified he was asked to examine and document Crutchers vehicle following the shooting due to public doubt about whether the window was down.

Investigators have maintained that Shelby shot Crutcher after the man reached his left hand into the drivers-side window of his SUV on the evening of Sept. 16. Days later, however, attorneys for Crutchers family alleged during a news conference that police lied about the state of the window.

The attorneys presented poster-size images from police video footage that they said showed his blood streaking down the window, indicating that it actually was up when the shooting occurred.

As a result of this controversy, Cpl. Terrence Joe Campbell said his superior instructed him to review and photograph the vehicle where it was being stored and make sure it hadnt been tampered with. Several of those photos were displayed in court during Campbells testimony and clearly showed the window half-open, coinciding with Wednesdays testimony from officers who were at the scene of the homicide.

Sgt. Marcus Harper, who heads the crime scene unit, testified that he measured the window and also found it was raised about halfway.

Comments about screwdriver produce crowd response

A wave of audible groans filled the courtroom after a defense attorney suggested that a screwdriver found in Crutchers vehicle could be considered a weapon.

During her cross-examination of Campbell, Shannon McMurray asked the detective about one of his photos that appeared to show a screwdriver in the SUVs center console. Campbell earlier told District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler he found some school books in Crutchers vehicle, but no weapons.

McMurray pointed out the screwdriver and asked whether it could be considered a weapon, to which Campbell agreed. Several spectators sitting around Crutchers family moaned at the exchange and shook their heads.

Mareo Johnson, pastor at north Tulsas Seeking the Kingdom Ministries and member of Black Lives Matter, told the Tulsa World that McMurrays line of questioning seemed desperate.

Thats why everybody on that side was like, Oh come on, now,  Johnson said. Youre picking; youre grasping. People keep screwdrivers in their vehicles. I mean, it could be a weapon, but we dont look at stuff like that as a weapon. She was trying to save face.

Professors call Crutcher a kind man

Two Tulsa Community College professors who talked with Crutcher less than an hour before he was fatally shot described him as a kind man disappointed that his class was canceled.

Sharolyn Wallace and Michelle Ogan, who teach at TCCs northeast campus, said they encountered Crutcher around 7 p.m. Sept. 16, a Friday, after he had been wandering the halls in search of his class. Crutcher told them he enrolled in a fast-track music appreciation course, and Wallace invited him into her office to look up his schedule on her computer. It turned out the class had been canceled.

Wallace said Crutcher became concerned because he already bought the required textbook, but she told him he would be able to get a refund the following week. He also reportedly told her he had been looking forward to the class but joked that his next four Friday evenings had cleared up.

Ogan said she hugged Crutcher and teased that at least he got some exercise. Both professors described him as light-hearted and well-spoken. They said he did not appear intoxicated.

Crutcher was shot about 40 minutes later. Shelby has stated he mumbled incoherently and appeared to be on PCP, for which he later tested positive.

Wallace and Ogan said they decided to report their meeting with Crutcher after recognizing him in news coverage over the weekend.
Update (10:45 a.m. Friday): Sgt. Dave Walker continued testimony Friday in the manslaughter trial of Officer Betty Shelby, saying he felt "angry" and "disrespected" over how District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler announced charges against Shelby.

Walker, who was in the process of investigating the fatal shooting of Terence Crutcher, said he learned of the charges through media reports.

He noted the slaying of Terence Crutcher was the first case in which a Tulsa Police officer was charged for an on-duty fatal shooting.

Walker said that Shelby's actions on videos of the shooting show her as being "an officer in control" because she wasn't unsteady while pointing the gun.

Also testifying for the prosecution early Friday was Crutcher's twin sister, Tiffany Crutcher, who described a photo of her brother to the jury and explained he wore glasses because he didn't like people to see his prosthetic right eye. She also testified that he was right-handed.

Officer Tyler Turnbough, who deployed his Taser against Crutcher at the same time Shelby shot him, testified Wednesday that he saw Crutcher reach into the half-open drivers side window of his SUV with his left hand.

Follow tulsaworld.com for more developments from Friday's court proceedings, in which the state is expected to rest its case.

The story below appeared in Friday's Tulsa World:

Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby collapsed on the floor in tears when telling a homicide sergeant about the moment she shot Terence Crutcher, repeatedly saying she had been afraid he was trying to get to a weapon either in his pockets or in his vehicle.

Shelby is on trial on a manslaughter charge in a case that has been subject to national scrutiny at least in part because the officer is white and Crutcher was an unarmed black man. A police supervisor testified Thursday that he knew on the night of the shooting that there was going to be a group of people that didnt like what happened simply because of the color of somebodys skin.

Jurors watched about 40 minutes of video Thursday showing Shelby talking to lead homicide detective Sgt. Dave Walker during a Sept. 19 interview. Twelve witnesses took the stand Thursday, and Walker will continue his testimony Friday morning.

I shot him in the side. I thought he was gonna kill me, Shelby can be heard saying on the video. Ive never been so scared.

Her attorney Scott Wood began to comfort her as she sat on the floor shaking and crying, telling her to just breathe, while Walker gave her a few minutes of privacy to collect herself.

He stopped, and then he fell, she said.

Walker then asked Shelby whether she had felt the need to fire a second shot, and she responded, No, because the action stopped. I only used the force that I needed to stop.

Video footage of the shooting, which the jury saw Wednesday, shows Crutcher walking with his hands up to his SUV, which was parked in the middle of the road in the 2300 block of East 36th Street North.

Officer Tyler Turnbough, prosecutors first witness, testified Wednesday that he deployed his Taser against Crutcher at the same time Shelby shot him because he saw Crutcher reach into the SUVs half-open drivers side window with his left hand.

I was in fear of my life. I thought he was going for a gun, Shelby told Walker during the interview. She also discussed her belief based on her drug-recognition expert training that Crutcher was under the influence of PCP, and she cited his repeated attempts to put his hands in his pockets as a reason for being alarmed.

Shelby looked straight ahead at the jury during the viewing, but members of her family seated in the right front row of District Judge Doug Drummonds courtroom gallery wiped away tears as they saw her re-enact her behavior and her observations of Crutcher on Sept. 16.

Crutchers family, sitting in the left front row, listened intently but seemed to mostly avoid looking at Shelby on the projector screen used to show evidence to the jury.

Walker testified that, in his view, Shelby had normal human reactions to talking about having killed someone.

Crutchers family, as well as prosecutors, allege that Shelby was overemotional and overresponded to the possibility that Crutcher was committing misdemeanor offenses of obstruction and public intoxication.

Special treatment alleged

Walker told Assistant District Attorney Kevin Gray that he showed Shelby video of the shooting from a dash camera and police helicopter before going with her and Wood into an interview room for her official statement. When asked why he did so, Walker said it was to get the most accurate statement we can about what took place.

Gray pointed out that showing Shelby the footage before taking her statement could have affected her recollection of the shooting, to which Walker repeated that he simply wanted to get the most accurate account of events from Shelby. But under further questioning, Walker said he cant recall ever doing that for a private citizen who was shown shooting someone on video.

The questioning was in line with suggestions from Gray throughout the trial that police officers who fatally shoot people are afforded privileges not given to others. To that end, he had an exchange Thursday morning with Cpl. Wyett Poth, who was a supervisor the night Shelby shot Crutcher, about why he recommended that she use her rights and that she didnt say anything to anyone before talking to an attorney.

I told her not to say a word, Poth said. I knew there was going to be a group of people that didnt like what happened simply because of the color of somebodys skin.

The comment made Gray momentarily pause before he asked Poth why he believed that would be the case, and it visibly changed the mood of spectators in the courtroom.

Poth told Gray that he knew the race of Crutcher, who was black, would be controversial because of the tone of national discussions about law enforcement officers use of force against people of color. The defense team for Shelby, who is white, did not subject Poth to cross-examination to expand or clarify his statement.

Other testimony

Officer Daniel Embrey said he helped Officer Sandra Dunn provide medical assistance to Crutcher. Dunn, who testified Wednesday, and Embrey, the first witness Thursday, said they could hear shallow breathing but little else from Crutcher.

He was unresponsive and seemed to be critical, I would say, Embrey said, adding that he saw Crutchers eyes rolling back. Embrey said he walked with Shelby back to a patrol car but did not ask her any questions.

She was upset. She was crying, he said. Although he didnt seek information from her, Embrey said Shelby said something to him along the lines of Whyd he make me do that?

Detective Scott Osborn said he went to the intersection the night of the shooting after the scene had been cordoned off with yellow tape. Osborn testified about his findings based on photographs of the interior of the SUV, which showed a pack of cigarettes and a glass vial that contained PCP.

Defense Attorney Shannon McMurray has emphasized the presence of the vial, along with Crutchers positive toxicology report, as an indication that Shelby was right to fear for her life during her encounter with Crutcher. However, she did not cross-examine Osborn about the significance of finding PCP, apparently satisfied with District Attorney Steve Kunzweilers having Campbell explain that it can be soaked into cigarettes and smoked.

Forensic pathologist Dr. Andrea Wiens, the medical examiner assigned to Crutchers case, testified that Crutcher was shot just under his right armpit. She said the wound meant he was not likely to survive under any circumstances, and despite saying Crutcher had PCP and tenocyclidine  like PCP, a dissociative drug with stimulant and hallucinogenic effects  in his system, she did not say either was a contributing factor in his death.
Four teenagers were arrested Thursday on allegations that they fired a shotgun during a home invasion and carjacked a motorist, police said.

The motorist had met a teenage girl he knew at the QuikTrip at 2749 E. Admiral Place about 12:45 a.m., police said. The girl reportedly gave him directions to drive around the corner to meet a friend and pick up some personal items.

The motorist did so and saw a man standing outside a white Cadillac.

The suspect jumped into the cars front passenger seat and sat on the females lap while holding a long-barrel shotgun to the face of the victim, police spokeswoman Jeannie MacKenzie said. Trying to escape, the victim pushes the barrel away and hits the gas.

This causes him to wreck into two parked cars. He is then able to escape from his seat and run away on foot.

MacKenzie said the assailant fired two shots at the driver as he escaped. Both shotgun shells were recovered by police.

Officers later found the Cadillac parked in front of an abandoned house at 46th Street North and Garrison Avenue, MacKenzie said.

A short time later, a home invasion with shots fired was reported to police. MacKenzie said officers believe there was a time lapse before it was called in.

She said the victims were a man, a woman and a 2-year-old child and that they reported that the intruders fired a shotgun.

As officers staked out the abandoned house at 46th Street North and Garrison, another vehicle pulled up, and a male and a female ran inside, MacKenzie said. All four of the houses occupants were taken into custody.

Police arrested Konte Thompson, 19, and Gabriel Tyler, 18, as well as a 17-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy.

Tyler is being held on two complaints of robbery with a firearm after a felony conviction. His bail is set at $200,000. Thompson is being held in lieu of $100,000 bond on two complaints of robbery with a firearm.
Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist presented her final recommendations for budget reductions for the 2017-18 school year at a special board meeting Thursday evening.

As TPS leaders continue to anticipate a $12 million reduction in state aid for next school year, the school board is expected to vote Monday on Gists recommendations to cut the districts budget to meet that funding gap.

The meeting is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. at the Charles C. Mason Education Service Center, 3027 S. New Haven Ave.

Thursdays meeting focused mostly on Gists west Tulsa school consolidation proposal that would close Remington and Park elementary schools, as well as Early Childhood Development Center-Porter, and move students from those sites into a single elementary school in the facility that currently houses Clinton Middle School.

Clinton students and staff would then move to the Webster High School campus, which would be converted to a junior-senior high school.

Gist said the recommendation comes in light of state funding reductions along with a 15-year decline in enrollment at those schools.

Gist says the school consolidation proposal would save $906,000 annually and give students in the area access to expanded programming options.

Gist first publicly introduced the school consolidation proposal along with other preliminary recommendations for budget cuts at a board meeting April 5.

TPS then held public forums at Remington, Park, Clinton and Webster to provide more information about the proposal and hear from parents, teachers and community members who would be affected.

Public comment

Two teachers and three parents from west Tulsa schools spoke to the board during the public comment portion of the meeting to express their opposition to the consolidation proposal.

Their reasons for opposing the plan included security concerns and decreased property values due to vacant school buildings; not wanting to lose their neighborhood elementary schools; and their belief that TPS cost savings could be achieved other ways that wouldnt target their community.

Melissa Reid, who identified herself as a teacher at Clinton Middle School who has taught at TPS for 24 years, described how the building was designed about 10 years ago with middle school students in mind.

She listed the various adjustments that would be needed to prepare the building for pre-kindergarten and elementary students and discussed concerns about moving middle school students to the Webster campus.

Our heart is in that building, Reid said about the Clinton facility. We want to remain in that building.

Reid said she hasnt heard one positive remark from a single parent about the school consolidation proposal.

Closing a school will be an economic disaster for our side of town, Reid said.

Sandra Crook, a parent of students who attend Park Elementary, said the only benefit of the consolidation plan that she has heard from TPS officials is that it would allow for more programming for students.

If we wanted more programming, we would send our kids to a different school, Crook told the school board.

Crook said that during each of the four public forums held to gather community feedback about the consolidation proposal, she didnt hear one parent, community member, business owner or teacher in favor of the proposal.

We voted for you guys, she told the school board. We voted for the school board. Who do you work for? Who are you listening to?

She also brought up concerns about TPS administrators salaries and asked why they are not decreased to avoid the school consolidation.

Nicole Nixon, a parent of students at Remington Elementary, discussed concerns about security of buildings after they are vacated and suggested improving programs to attract new families to the schools.

Lori Wixon, a parent of Clinton Middle School students also discussed concerns about property values decreasing due to the consolidation and security issues due to vacant school buildings.

Questions from board members

Board members at the meeting asked numerous questions about the consolidation proposal and Gists other recommendations for budget cuts.

In response to a question from board President Suzanne Schreiber about the costs of modifying the Clinton and Webster facilities to accommodate the relocated students, TPS officials said the modifications at Clinton and Webster would cost about $2 million.

There was initially $6.8 million in bond funds approved for the three school sites that would be closed under the consolidation plan, and Gist said her team would work with the TPS bond oversight committee to determine how those funds would be reallocated.

Referencing a Tulsa World article that quoted leaders of several Tulsa-area suburban school districts saying they are delaying decisions regarding budget cuts until they have more information about state funding for next year, board Vice President Shawna Keller asked why TPS isnt doing the same.

Gist explained that waiting is not an option for us for various reasons, including that school principals and talent management employees need to know the staffing plan so they can prepare for next year.

And if the school consolidation proposal is approved, TPS needs to move forward as soon as possible to notify teachers about whether they will be moving and to modify the school buildings in time for next school year, Gist said.

Gist added that based on the lack of movement at the state Capitol, she doesnt have any indication that the reduction in state aid for TPS will be less than what she anticipates.

Keller also asked when teachers at Park, Remington, ECDC Porter and Clinton would be notified if the consolidation proposal is approved and they would need to switch school sites.

Chief Talent Officer Talia Shaull explained that her team has already been meeting with teachers and documenting their placement preferences, and she is confident each teacher would have a place at TPS and the district would work diligently to accommodate their preferences.

In response to a question from board member Cindy Decker, TPS officials explained that consolidating the schools would achieve $906,000 in savings by reducing administrative and clerical staff, as well as utilities and custodial services.

State aid adjustments

Gist also discussed how TPS would prioritize budget reductions if the school district receives more state aid than she is projecting.

She said those decisions would be based upon the benefit to the greatest number of students, teachers, parents, staff and schools.

Gist said the reductions would be rolled back in the following order:

 Remove or reduce furlough days;

 Increase number of reserve teaching positions;

 Reduce cuts to instructional resources and supports;

 Decrease reductions to custodial services.
By Moeena Halim: Bangalore-based campaigning startup Jhatkaa.org has set up a dedicated people-powered platform Air A!ert to push the fight against air pollution.

"Air pollution kills two Indians every minute," says the Air A!ert home page, urging browsers to start a campaign to make a difference and demand cleaner air.

Air A!ert is set up to specifically target air pollution. "Air pollution is an issue that is not restricted to a few cities in India. It affects people young and old across the country and at all levels of society. It is one of the most important issues of our time that needs urgent and strategic action. Whether it is vehicular emissions, industrial pollution or open waste burning, these issues are common sight in most cities and towns in India," believes Divya Narayanan, a campaigner for Jhatkaa.org.

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Jhatkaa.org Campaigns Manager Bhavik Lathia points out the exponential rate at which air pollution is growing in India. "To solve it we need exponential solutions, not linear ones. A campaigner at Jhatkaa can only run X number of campaigns at any given time. If, for example, we have three campaigners focusing full time on air pollution, then the number of campaigns we can run are 3X. That, by itself, isn't enough to solve this national crisis. We need to exponentially increase the number of air pollution campaigns being run. And that's what Air A!ert does," he says.

Air A!ert puts the ability to run successful campaigns in the hands of every Indian. The website also offers resources on how to build successful campaigns. "Jhatkaa has a track record of running and winning digital campaigns. With Air A!ert, we want to take the expertise we've built since our launch and put it in hands of our members," Lathia says.

The aim is not to point fingers at the government, but urge NGOs, civil society groups, scientists, influencers, parents, children to get together and work out solutions by identifying and working towards specific, achievable goals that would eventually help reduce air pollution. For instance, Narayanan has petitioned the BBMP Joint Commissioner Sarfaraz Khan to put an end to the open burning of garbage in Bangalore. Campaigner Ankita Joshi wants Tej Pratap Yadav, Health Minister, government of Bihar, to formulate the Bihar Clean Air Action Plan to help improve the air in Patna. "It is important to translate pollution data to language that is easily understood. This will happen only when the government begins issuing regular health advisories that indicate air quality levels in the city and advise the people on reducing their exposure to pollution. Simple measures in these advisories will go a long way in protecting public health," writes Joshi.

Once someone starts a campaign on the platform, the team will do an initial screening for content. If the campaign is on air pollution and the language is not derogatory, then the campaign will go live. "We believe that every campaign, big or small, national or local, deserves every bit of attention. And hence, in most cases, we will not block a campaign. We will also do a secondary screen to help us determine the strongest campaigns so that we can throw our organisational support behind the campaigns that have the highest chance of resulting in real-world change," says Lathia.

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60 Minutes is reportedly chasing interviews in Bogota, Colombia surrounding Australian Cassie Sainsbury. Liam Bartlett has interviews with her (estranged) mother and sister, while Seven reportedly has a deal with her boyfriend.

Meanwhile here are the stories closer to home this weekend:

The Killer Storm

All Australians are used to weathering frequent and ferocious thunderstorms, but the one that raced through country Victoria and slammed into Melbourne on November 21 last year was loaded with unexpected peril. Within a matter of minutes the entire city was left gasping for air in a mass asthma epidemic. Thousands were struck down, including many who werent even asthmatic. Emergency services were unable to cope with the number of calls for assistance and hospital emergency departments were overflowing with distressed patients. Tragically, nine people died that terrible day. What caused it was a highly unusual phenomenon called Thunderstorm Asthma, but this outbreak was the most severe and catastrophic the world has ever seen. In a special 60 Minutes investigation Tara Brown reveals that what is even more frightening is that it will happen again. The problem though is that no one knows where or when.

Reporter: Tara Brown

Producer: Garry McNab, Sean Power

Helter Shelter

Confused about the property market? Cant afford to get in? Cant afford to get out? Well youre not alone. Surely, getting and keeping a roof over our heads should not be this hard. But the housing crisis continues to defy all attempts at a solution. It gets more shambolic and divisive by the day. The haves against the have-nots, rich versus poor, even old against young. This week on 60 Minutes, the Nine Networks Finance Editor, Ross Greenwood, gets some blunt advice from those who should know the answers: Australias property billionaires.

Reporter: Ross Greenwood

Producer: Jo Townsend

Impossible Choice

Like thousands of other young mums, newspaper journalist Elle Halliwell will celebrate her first Mothers Day on Sunday. Its a joyous time for Elle and her husband Nick, who welcomed a baby boy into their lives last December. But its happiness mixed with stress and fear because two days before Elle discovered she was pregnant she was told she had a rare and dangerous leukaemia. Back then she faced an awful dilemma: abort the baby and save her own life, or risk her life by delaying her cancer treatment until after the birth. Its a decision that is still causing Elle heartache.

Reporter: Allison Langdon

Producer: Stefanie Sgroi

8:30pm Sunday on Nine.
Malaysias former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has accused Australia of turning a blind-eye to corruption in his country in an interview with SBS World News.

Mahathir ruled Malaysia for 22 years before stepping down in 2003. Speaking with SBS World News reporter Jarni Blakkarly, Mahathir attacks his successor Prime Minister Najib Razak, who has been embroiled in a corruption scandal.

Since 2015 Najib has been entangled in corruption allegations relating to a Malaysian state investment fund. Over one billion dollars, allegedly siphoned from the fund, made its way into Najibs private bank accounts.

Najib denied any wrongdoing and said the money in his accounts were donations from the Saudi royal family.

Allegations of corruption relating to the fund have prompted investigations in Switzerland, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States, with over a billion in allegedly corrupt assets seized in America and several bankers jailed in Singapore, but Mahathir tells SBS that Australian law enforcement is turning a blind-eye:

Australia has been involved to a certain extent but it looks as if the government of Australia wants to avoid any involvement, Mahathir told SBS World News in regards to breaches of money laundering regulations at AmBank.

Between January 2011 and April 2013 more than one billion dollars was deposited into Najibs accounts at the Malaysian bank, AmBank. In 2015 AmBank was fined more that $16 million for breaching Malaysias anti money laundering regulations.

Australias ANZ has been the single largest shareholder in AmBank for more than a decade, holding a 24 per cent stake. That share gives ANZ the right to four of the 12 seats on AmBanks board.

ANZ also gained the right to appoint key management positions at AmBank, including Chief Risk Officer and Chief Financial Officer. However, at a parliamentary inquiry earlier this year, ANZ CEO Shayne Elliott said that didnt necessarily give them any leverage.

ANZ declined to be interviewed or comment on questions from SBS about whether senior ANZ staff working at AmBank had any knowledge of the transactions. There is no suggestion that senior ANZ staff working at AmBank had any knowledge of or involvement in the transactions.

Saturday 13 May and Sunday 14 May at 6.30pm on SBS.
On Four Corners next week Ben Knight reports on Gun Runners -the smuggling syndicate that shocked Australian law enforcement.

I think it was unprecedentedit was probably the major investigation in Australia at that time.  Detective, Organised Crime Squad

It was one of the biggest illegal firearms busts in Australian history. A criminal syndicate brazenly smuggling weapons into the country, exposing the failings in the nations border security.

It was exceptionally serious and viewed that way. Detective, Organised Crime Squad

The audacious but simple smuggling conspiracy caught law enforcement off guard and forced a major rethink in how to counteract illegal gun importations.

How can a large number of Glock semi-automatic pistolsend up in Australia? Thats the wake up call. Criminal Intelligence Officer

While the smugglers were stopped, the majority of the weapons they brought in have never been recovered, leaving them in the hands of criminals or even would be terrorists.

Think of how much crime that gun could be connected to in a hundred years. Times that by hundreds of handguns. Its staggering to think what sort of problem that could be faced by law enforcement. Detective, Organised Crime Squad

Through surveillance videos, phone intercepts and interviews with the investigating officers, Four Corners pieces together the smuggling operation and the police sting that eventually stopped them.

Youve got to get rid of it. Did you sign for it? Gun smuggler caught on surveillance

With the jailing of the groups ringleader, the story of how this group smuggled weapons into the country, fuelling drive by shootings and gang violence, can now be told.

Theyve been used in public place shootingsweve found that certain guns have been used in armed robberies and the great majority of them have been held in the hands of organised crime figures. Detective, Police Firearms Squad

Monday 15th May at 8.30pm on ABC.
On Monday night, Treasurer Scott Morrison will appear on Paul Murray Live, taking questions from over 300 voters from the Central Coast Leagues Club in Gosford NSW.

SKY News political contributors Ross Cameron, Graham Richardson and Janine Perrett will join Paul in Gosford following the Treasurers budget pitch to the people to dissect his performance and discuss the big issues of the day.

Members of the public can be part of the Live audience by registering at [email protected] (a maximum of four tickets per registration).

The broadcast continues Paul Murray Lives 2017 road show series which has seen the popular SKY News anchor highlight the ground level concerns of regional and suburban communities nationwide.

This marks the fifth road show for the year following Live broadcasts in Manilla and Tamworth, NSW, Maroochydore, QLD and Ashby, WA.

Monday 15 May at 9:00pm on SKY News.
British character actor, Geoffrey Bayldon, best known for Catweazle, has died aged 93.

Bayldon played the title role in Catweazle for two seasons from 1970 -1971, as a kooky 11th century wizard who is transported to modern day and befriends a young boy.

The series was broadcast in multiple territories including Australia on ABC.

His popularity in the role would subsequently land him the part of the sinister Crowman in the childrens sitcom Worzel Gummidge alongside Jon Pertwee. It ran from 1979  1981.

After Gummidge ended Bayldon remained a TV regular, appearing in Casualty as five different characters over the course of two decades, and guest starring on series including Wycliffe, Last of the Summer Wine, New Tricks and Waking the Dead.

He twice turned down the chance to star in Doctor Who.

His final role was in a 2010 episode of UK sitcom My Family.

Source: Telegraph
Justice CS Karan, who as been sentenced to jail, came close to getting arrested by a Kolkata police team that was camping in Chennai. Meanwhile, a petition seeking a recall of the Supreme Court order against him has been filed in the apex court.

By Pramod Madhav: Justice CS Karnan, recently sentenced to jail by the Supreme Court for contempt, came close to getting arrested this week.

But Karnan, who has called him the 'adopted son of Ambedkar', has left Tamil Nadu and Kolkata police forces guessing about his true location.

On Wednesday this week, a team from the Kolkata police reached Chennai after receiving information that Karnan was staying at a government guest house in Chepauk.

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The police team received a lead on the same day. Karnan, through his personal security officer, informed the SP of Tamil Nadu Criminal Investigation Department (CID) that he planned to visit the Kalahasti temple near the Andhra border and and that he would return by 5pm that evening.

The Kolkata police team, however, did not wait for him to come back and instead left for Kalahasti with a few Tamil Nadu police officials in tow. Their secret weapon was to track a mobile phone number belonging to someone part of Karnan's party.

Justice Karnan's arrest was almost eminent with three teams placed at strategic locations, but it all came to a nought when the Andhra police informed the Kolkata police team that they had lost the mobile phone's signal. After traveling for two hours, the cops returned back to Chennai without nabbing him.

World also spread that Karnan had fled to Sri Lanka through Madurai, but that information turned out to be false as no one by the name of Karnan had passed through the Madurai airport customs.

PETITION TO RECALL SC ORDER FILED

Meanwhile, a petition on behalf of Karnan has filed in the Supreme Court. The petition seeks to recall holding Karnan in contempt, a suspension of his jail sentence and requests interim bail on medical grounds. A mercy petition is also set to be filed with the President of India.

The petitions were filed along with an assurance that Karnan was very much in Chennai and had not fled India.

Can Karnan really be arrested? A retired judge says he can. "As per Article 124, a sitting judge can only be removed under tow conditions. Proved misbehaviour or incapacity to do his work. In Karnan's case it is no longer a removal. He has committed an offence for which he is being punished", a learned judge told India Today.

Under the Constitution only the President of India and state governors have immunity from civil and criminal proceedings, which means Karnan can be definitely arrested, the judge added.

Going on to address the media spectacle over the issue, the judge added, "When a dog bites a man it is not a news but when a man bites a dog, that become a news and that is what is happening now".

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ALSO READ | How Justice Karnan's conviction in contempt case may bring order in higher judiciary

ALSO READ | Curious case of Justice Karnan: A history of controversies and mystery

ALSO WATCH | Supreme Court vs Justice Karnan: A personal battle that could have been avoided?

--- ENDS ---
This is the third day that Mishra has been on hunger strike and he said he will continue it despite doctors saying that he needs to be hospitalised.

Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra on indefinite hunger strike at his residence in New Delhi. Photo: PTI

By Parbina Purkayastha: Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra is on an indefinite hunger strike ever since he challenged Aam Aadmi Party leaders to declare the source of funding for their foreign trips.

This is the third day that Mishra has been on hunger strike and he said he will continue it despite doctors saying that he needs to be hospitalised.

Doctors revealed that since Mishra has not been taking any meals, his blood pressure has dropped to 81 and intravenous fluids need to be started, because if his sugar level drops further, other parts of his body will be affected.

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But Mishra has refused, telling India Today he will reveal everything on Sunday.

HERE'S WHAT KAPIL MISHRA SAID: I am amazed how Kejriwal is hiding everything, how is he able to sleep peacefully after being involved in so much corruption. This has become a habit of Kejriwal to give clean chit to himself, and I am not surprised how he is reacting to this investigation. He will not be able to save himself anymore. I have also exposed these names and about fudged bills even in my expose and these are the kind of corruption I am talking about. This Sunday I will disclose big things on their foreign trips, wait for a big revelation this Sunday.

Mishra's demand for an investigation into Delhi government ministers' foreign trips funding is likely to get a boost. Sanjeev Jain, an RTI activist, who had culled out details of foreign trips by ministers has decided to hand over the details to the former minister.

Also Read:

Arvind Kejriwal sacked Kapil Mishra over water scarcity in Delhi. Ground Report presents different picture

RTI activist Sanjeev Jain to help Kapil Mishra with info on AAP ministers' foreign visits

AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Satyender Jain top list of foreign tours taken by ministers

Watch Video: AAP crisis: Former Delhi minister Kapil Mishra attacked outside his home

--- ENDS ---
Seeking shade as UNHCR's new Hasansham U2 camp opens.  UNHCR/Caroline Gluck

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, opened a new camp, Hasansham U2, in northern Iraq this week to shelter an increasing number of Iraqi families fleeing the fighting in western Mosul. First buses with newly displaced Iraqi families arrived at the camp already on Tuesday. As of this morning the new site shelters nearly 500 children, women and men - 96 families in total. The camp is located around 60 kilometres east of Mosul along the highway to Erbil.

This is the 12th camp and the latest one to be built by UNHCR and its partners in response to the ongoing Mosul emergency. Its less than four weeks since UNHCR opened the Hammam al-Alil 2 camp, with a capacity for 30,000 people. That camp is now almost full.

Each displaced family arriving at Hasansham U2 receives a tent and other basic aid items including blankets, mats, a cooker, jerry cans, plastic sheeting and a kitchen set. As of today, more than 1,000 tents are ready, enough to shelter over 6,000 people. Hasansham U2 has capacity to accommodate more than 9,000 people when fully occupied.

The risk to people fleeing Mosul is now very great, with people having to move being in grave danger. People speak of conditions that are desperate and worsening. Families arriving from West Mosul report heavy bombing and fighting. They also tell UNHCR that there are no basic services in the city, no food, no water and no fuel. Some families have told us they have been living on one meal a day; often just bread, or flour and water, sometimes supplemented with tomato paste.

UNHCR reiterates its call to all parties in the fighting to ensure civilians are not prevented from leaving areas of active conflict and are provided access to safe areas, including those currently trapped in Mosul. Equally, civilians must not be forced to return to unsafe areas.

Six months into the Mosul offensive UNHCR remains concerned about the continuing massive displacement. Despite enormous risks, the number of people fleeing West Mosul shows no sign of slowing down.

We expect more large outflows of people from the west of the city. This is why we and our partners continue to prepare new camps, ready to receive those fleeing Mosul who are desperately in need of assistance. The first phase of another camp, al Salamiya 2, with capacity for 30,000 people, is under construction. When completed, the camp will have a capacity for up to 60,000 people.

Our current humanitarian efforts to shelter and assist displaced Iraqi families and refugees who fled to Iraq are seriously challenged by waning funding support. Our programmes in support of refugees and internally displaced in Iraq are currently only 18 per cent funded (USD 105.1 million received out of USD 578 million). This situation now threatens our ability to effectively respond to the immediate and mounting humanitarian needs in Iraq this year.

According to Iraqi authorities more than 630,000 people have been displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since October 2016, when the military operation began. This includes more than 434,000 displaced from western Mosul since mid-February. Meanwhile, an estimated 141,000 people have since returned to their areas of origin.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
Nujeen Mustafa conquered more than the usual challenges when she fled the Syrian war two years ago. Born with cerebral palsy, the teenager became famous for making the hazardous journey to Europe in her wheelchair. Her defiance and resilience, recently documented in a memoir, have already inspired millions. Now a refugee in Germany, Nujeen has her sights fixed on an even brighter future.

Armed with an extraordinary brain and an iron will, 18-year-old Nujeen is determinedly adjusting to her new life in Europe. Alongside attending school for the first time and rapidly learning German, she still finds time to use her newfound prominence as a platform for positive change.

We need some optimism in the world, says Nujeen, who now lives with her family in Wesseling, a small city in western Germany. "I always believed everyones here for a mission, but I hadnt found mine yet. Now I have a voice, I can help people.

"Now I have a voice, I can help people.

Nujeen was born in Manbij, in northern Syria, into a large Kurdish family who moved to Aleppo when she was young. Her parents couldnt afford the fees for a school that could accommodate her, so she spent most of her early life inside, watching documentaries in her familys fifth-floor apartment. This month, she gave a talk at TEDxExeter in the UK and has re-released her book, "The girl from Aleppo".

Nujeen remembers watching a news report one day six years ago when the unrest in the streets outside her window heralded the start of the Syrian conflict. She never dreamed it would kickstart the series of events that led her to a new life in Europe.

Ive really grown to appreciate what I have in the last two years because I know what it means not to have these things," she says, eager to demonstrate the near-fluent German she learned in under 18 months. "If someone told me back then I was going to have this stable life, I would have said theyre crazy. I wasnt sure if I was going to wake up the next day. None of us were.

Nujeen helps her 26-year-old sister, Nisreen, with her German homework.  UNHCR/Gordon Welters

Nujeen on a visit to Cologne with her brother Shiar, 44.  UNHCR/Gordon Welters

"You're in a constant test: You want to prove to be a good ambassador of your country," says Nujeen.  UNHCR/Gordon Welters

Daily life for Nujeen centres around the flat she shares with her brother, two sisters and four young nieces.  UNHCR/Gordon Welters

As the war intensified, Nujeen and her family escaped Aleppo for northern Syria, before eventually crossing the border to Turkey. There, the family split. Nujeens brother Bland went ahead to join their eldest brother, Shiar, who had settled in Germany a decade earlier. Soon after, in September 2015, Nujeen, her four young nieces and two sisters followed, leaving their parents behind.

Nujeen remembers the moment she was photographed by UNHCR photographer Ivor Prickett, being lifted out of a flimsy dinghy after washing up on the Greek island of Lesvos. I had been in Europe five minutes and I was already famous, she laughs. Before long, her face was flashing up on news bulletins across the world.

Youre in a constant test, you want to prove to be a good ambassador of your country, Nujeen adds. People dont realize how hard were all trying to rebuild our lives from zero. Id say to them: Try to get to know us. Theres more inside us and inside you than everyone thinks.

Nujeen, then 16, is carried out of a flimsy dinghy after washing up on the Greek island of Lesvos.  UNHCR/Ivor Prickett

That process of rebuilding can be deeply frustrating. Nujeen had hoped to apply for her parents, still living in Turkey, to join her as part of the family reunification procedures. But her asylum application took so long to be approved that she is now too old to do so. Her residency came through in December, just a month before she turned 18.

Now that shes legally an adult, Nujeens parents are no longer eligible to join her. Family reunification is generally limited to members of the core family, including spouses, parents and minor children.

UNHCR calls on states to consider the individual circumstances of a refugee family and demonstrate flexibility in considering other family members eligible for family reunification, where they formed part of a household, affected by flight and separation, and are dependent on each other, says UNHCR Representative Katharina Lumpp in Berlin.

"Im going to try to make people believe in a better tomorrow.

Daily life for Nujeen now centres around the flat she shares with her brother, two sisters and four young nieces. Every day, a bus picks her up and takes her to a school for children with disabilities. There, she has physical therapy to help with her condition. Being disabled doesnt define me, what I am, who I am or what I can do," she says. "There are so many less lucky than I am now. I may have a nice flat and can go to school, but people are still suffering. What scares me the most is that me, my family, my people will just be a number on a forgotten page in history. Im going to do my best to work against that.

Nujeen hopes to study physics at university. I love space, I want to be an astronaut, she says. Id like to look for aliens. Its the biggest unsolved mystery. I want to know, are we alone?

I never give up hope. God didnt create me to be miserable. I want to find happiness in the little things I have and have others be happy, no matter how bad and dark the situation seems. Nothing lasts forever, even war. Im going to try to make people believe in a better tomorrow.
Congolese women and children arrive at a border point in Chissanda, Lunda Norte, Angola after fleeing militia attacks in Kasai Province, Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Pumla Rulashe

Some 20,563 refugees have now arrived in Angola, fleeing insecurity and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congos Kasai region since early April. A steady stream of refugees continue to cross into Dundo in Lunda Norte Province. More than 3,000 have arrived in the last few days

The Angolan army is transporting the new arrivals from border points to the two receptions centres in Cacanda and Moussunge.

The recent arrivals included people with severe wounds and burn injuries, who have been transferred to a local hospital to receive urgent medical attention. A local hospital is already assisting some 70 persons with serious wounds and burn injuries.

Refugee reception centres in Angola are already over-crowded and struggling to accommodate daily arrivals. UNHCR is currently assisting the Angolan authorities to identify a suitable site for the relocation of refugees from the temporary reception centres.

UNHCR continues to provide food and relief items to new arrivals. UNHCR partners are pitching tents and distributing plastic sheeting to provide adequate shelter, prioritizing the most vulnerable people.

UNHCR and partners, in support of the Angolan authorities, have pre-registered so far over 11,000 persons, 70 per cent women and children. UNHCR, in coordination with UNICEF, is responding to an increasing number of unaccompanied and separated children who require immediate attention.

Aid from a second UNHCR airlift arrived in Dundo on 8 May with 1,200 family tents, 1,500 plastic sheeting, 500 plastic rolls, and 3,000 solar lanterns are currently being unloaded in preparation for distribution.

UNHCR is currently assisting the Angolan authorities to identify a suitable site for the relocation of refugees from the temporary reception centres. We are advocating for a site at least 50 kilometres from the border.

UNHCR is appealing for USD 6.5 million to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, including food, nutrition, health and relief items for refugees.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
Fatuma Abdi Ali, a farmer from Dinsor Somalia weaves a cord to build her hut Dagahaley camp, Kenya as her son Jama Jalaf stands by.  UNHCR/Brendan Bannon

UNHCR, the UN Refuge Agency is revising its funding requirements for people displaced inside Somalia and for Somali refugees in the region.

We are seeking some USD 488 million to provide continued support to displaced Somalis in 2017. The update includes an additional requirement of USD 91 million for Somali refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, Yemen and those displaced inside Somalia.

More than two million Somalis are currently displaced by conflict - now lasting for more than two decades. Some 1.5 million people are internally displaced in Somalia and nearly 900,000 are refugees in the region - including some 308,700 in Kenya, 255,600 in Yemen, 246,900 in Ethiopia, and 13,200 in Djibouti.

Apart from helping refugees in the region, the UNHCR appeal aims to cover needs of some 250,000 most vulnerable among the newly displaced  including those forced to leave Somalia due to drought and continued insecurity.

UNHCR also needs resources to address return and reintegration of 50,000 returnees from Kenya and 10,000 from Yemen.

The updated funding appeal is combined with our call for continued and sustainable international engagement with the government of Somalia and also refugee hosting countries in the region.

Insecurity, capacity of government institutions, curtailed humanitarian access, limited livelihood opportunities, lack of basic services, poor infrastructure are some of the key challenges in Somalia. The current risk of famine with reports of deaths and illnesses caused by drought-related factors is further complicating daily lives of Somalis. Inside Somalia, some 6.2 million people is in need of humanitarian aid.

The ongoing drought also increases risk of famine-induced displacement in the region. Since November 2016, more than 683,000 people in Somalia have been internally displaced by drought, including more than 377,000 displaced during the first quarter of 2017. Over 126,000 of those are in the capital Mogadishu, and some 136,000 to Baidoa in the countrys southwest Bay region.

In addition to conflict and famine-induced internal displacement, some refugees are returning to Somalia - mainly from Kenya (60,800) since December 2013) and Yemen (30,600) since March 2015. At the same time, large numbers of Somalis continue to seek safety across national borders. Since the start of the year, more than 4,500 Somali fleeing drought and continued insecurity have been registered in Melkadida, Ethiopia. Approximately 75 per cent of the newly arrived children are affected by acute malnutrition.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
UNHCR's Middle East and North Africa Director, Amin Awad, met the displaced during a visit to Homs and Aleppo. Here in Homs, he witnesses signs of destruction.  UNHCR/Vivian Tou'meh

ALEPPO, Syria  Six months on from the east Aleppo evacuations  when civilians first saw a glimmer of hope after many months of miserable existence and enormous suffering  life for some is slowly restarting. But the road to recovery will be a long one. There is catastrophic damage to infrastructure, destroyed homes and shops and questions over how those returning to their former lives can earn a living.

Amin Awad is the Middle East and North Africa Director of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as well as the Regional Refugee Coordinator for the Syria crisis. He visited Homs and Aleppo earlier this month to see at first-hand not only the scale of the challenges ahead, but how people are coping and struggling to resume normal life.

Some people are restarting life against all odds and amidst immense challenges. A demonstration of their admirable resilience, said Amin Awad. I know this city well and have visited it several times before the crisis, I feel so sad at the scale of devastation, he added.

"The feeling of being home is great."

Filippo Grandi  UN High Commissioner for Refugees  visited Aleppo in January and expressed shock at the immensity of the destruction he witnessed. Awads follow-up visit comes at a time of continued uncertainty over Syrias future and amid growing humanitarian needs  with over 6.7 million Syrians internally displaced from their homes and five million refugees abroad. Including the displaced, there are now 13.5 million people within Syria in need of humanitarian assistance.

While visiting both Homs and Aleppo, Awad met Syrians who  despite all the odds and the risks to their lives  had refused to leave their homes even during the most difficult of times. Um Kinan, an 83-year-old Aleppo resident told Awad: I will never leave my home. Life is good now, I cant complain, but I need better health care. In Aleppos Sulieman Al Halabi neighborhood, two ladies who had just returned to their home told Awad, we are fixing our house with our bare hands, but the feeling of being home is great.

Um Kinan, 83, is a resident of Bab Al-Hadid which is one of the seven historical entry gates to the old city of Aleppo. She receives daily hot meals and relief through UNHCR's partners. Throughout the crisis, Um Kinan never left her home.  UNHCR/Bassam Diab

Signs of recovery across Aleppo are growing  debris is being removed, streets are being cleared and people continue to return to their ruined homes and shops. In Aleppos Seif Al Dawala district, Awad visited two schools UNHCR is quickly rehabilitating  to get them ready for the start of the school year in September. The challenges ahead however, cannot be underestimated. Thousands returned to emptied and gutted towns, facing immense challenges while millions remain displaced, said Awad.

In Jibreen, the industrial zone where tens of thousands of displaced Syrians now live, rehabilitation work continues to help improve housing conditions. Recently-installed solar-powered street lights are also transforming the city. We do not feel safe at night, we can go out after sunset, said an Aleppo resident. In east Aleppo  similar UNHCR-backed programmes have brought street lights to dozens of streets  a glimmer of hope for many who endured months of living in darkness.

The potential return of over 12 million refugees and IDPs also poses an immense challenge  with any returns being subject to political and security developments and to protection thresholds being met. So far, overall conditions cannot at all be described as conducive to return  and needs are overwhelming. Human beings cannot live on bread alone, Awad stressed.

Additional reporting and editing by Firas Al-Khateeb in Damascus
Sacked Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra's mother Annapurna Mishra has written an open letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. Annapurna Mishra has been associated with the BJP.

By India Today Web Desk: After sacked Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra, it is now turn of his mother Annapurna Mishra to seek answers from Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Kapil Mishra had already launched a teaser with his tweet this morning saying, "My mother wants to say something to Arvind ji."

Soon came out an open letter to Arvind Kejriwal from Annapurna Mishra, who has been associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

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Annapurna Mishra said, "I never thought that my son would ask you questions and you would avoid them."

"Whenever you met me, you spoke of transparency in public life. You advocated putting everything in public domain," Annapurna Mishra wrote.

'AAP SPREADING LIES'

Annapurna Mishra accused the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and Kejriwal supporters of spreading falsehood on social media about Kapil Mishra.

She said, "Today my son is accused of being a BJP agent, your closest friends are circulating misleading photographs on social media."

"How many lies, Arvind? How many," Annapurna wrote. "Lies will not help you. Be afraid of God," Mishra said while ending her letter.

Annapurna Mishra was the first mayor of East Delhi Municipal Corporation after the old Municipal Corporation of Delhi was tri-furcated.

KAPIL MISHRA ON HUNGER STRIKE

Kapil Mishra has been on indefinite hunger strike since Wednesday in a tent at his Civil Lines residence. He has demanded details of foreign trips made by five top AAP leaders be made public.

Kapil Mishra was sacked from Delhi cabinet last week under circumstances that are not clear as the two sides have put out different versions of the story.

Within 24 hours of his sacking, Kapil Mishra accused Arvind Kejriwal of accepting Rs 2 crore in cash from Delhi Health Minister Satyendar Jain.

AAP has denied the allegations leveled by Kapil Mishra, who also alleged that a land deal worth Rs 50 crore was struck by Satyendar Jain to benefit now late brother-in-law of Kejriwal, Surendra Kumar Bansal.

ANNAPURNA MISHRA'S LETTER

The entire transcript of Annapurna Mishra's letter to Arvind Kejriwal is produced here:

Dear Arvind,

I am writing first and the last letter to you.

I never thought that my son would ask you questions and you would avoid them.

Whenever you met me, you spoke of transparency in public life. You advocated putting everything in public domain.

Today my son is accused of being a BJP agent, your closest friends are circulating misleading photographs on social media.

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Yesterday evening most of the senior leaders of AAP circulated a photograph on social media of a function, where you were also present. Your entire cabinet was there. The function was organised for the father of Kumar Vishwas.

How many lies, Arvind? How many?

Remember you came to my house and said to me - 'I want to take Kapil in the party and make him contest the election but he is not listening'. He only wanted to be part of a movement, but you came to me saying you need him.

Today, your people are calling me corrupt too. And you are silent. I held the first mohalla sabha of Delhi. It was in 2007. You had also come over there in the mohalla sabha, your friends had also come there. Then there was no sign of a movement or a party. Kapil was managing that mohalla sabha.

You have written in your book, Swaraj about my style of working. Where have you come down today.

You had told me that when 28 AAP MLAs had won the election, they were shown the video of my mohalla sabha.

Arvind, you have worked with Kapil but perhaps you did not understand him. He is very stubborn. . He has not eaten anything for three days. I take pride that I have given birth to such a son.

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As a mother, I just want to say that he has sought small information, give him that. He is not an agent of anybody but of the truth.

"Lies will not help you. Be afraid of God,"

Blessings and love

Dr Annapurna Mishra

ALSO READ |

Arvind Kejriwal sacked Kapil Mishra over water scarcity in Delhi. Ground Report presents different picture

ALSO WATCH |

AAP crisis: Kapil Mishra attacked by alleged Kejriwal supporters

--- ENDS ---
Although there's been numerous anticipations regarding Microsoft's highly anticipated Surface Pro 5, but Vice President for Surface, Panos Panay, made it known that the Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is unlikely to launch anytime soon. Nonetheless, other PC manufacturers, such as HP, are stepping in to fill in the gap.

The Corporate VP for Surface Computing at Microsoft Corp., Panay, clarified that meaningful change is not necessarily a hardware change, which is what several tech fans are looking for. Panay stated that the Redmond, Washington based tech titan will only launch a Surface Pro 5 when it is able to hand over a meaningful change, CNET reported.

Panay stated that the meaningful change will come along with battery life improvement or reducing the weight of the hardware significantly. The VP for Surface is also quoted in saying that there's no such thing as a Microsoft Surface Pro 5.

Nevertheless, with the Washington based tech giant seemingly uninterested in rolling out the successor to the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, other PC manufacturers, such as HP, are stepping in to fill the void. HP's Elite x2 1012 G2 2-in-1 running Windows 10 is the latest Surface Pro clone and the device looks better compared to Surface Pro 4 in almost every way.

HP's Elite x2 1012 G2 tablet appears to be a thin and light package. HP's Elite x2 1012 G2's 0.36 inches thick is thinner than Microsoft's Surface Pro 4. The 12.3-inch touch screen of HP's Elite x2 1012 G2 tablet is larger compared to its predecessor and its resolution resembles to the Surface Pro 4, Mashable reported.

In spite of that, as Microsoft usually rolls out major products in New York, there's a possibility that the tech giant will unveil a refresh of an already existing Surface device at its upcoming event in Shanghai on May 23. Also, it's possible that the tech company might unveil new accessories for the Surface line, The Verge reported.

Watch The Video Here:
Kapil Mishra visited the Raj Ghat, the memorial for Mahatma Gandhi, where he had made startling allegations of corruption against Kejriwal on Sunday. He broke down at the memorial.

By Parbina Purkayastha: Axed Delhi minister Kapil Mishra, who is on an indefinite fast, today claimed his next "expose" will rattle the people of Delhi who "trusted the Aam Aadmi Party".

During the day, Mishra visited the Raj Ghat, the memorial for Mahatma Gandhi, where he had made startling allegations of corruption against Kejriwal on Sunday. He broke down at the memorial.

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He has been sitting on an indefinite strike since Wednesday and was advised hospitalisation be a team of doctors today.

"His blood sugar level has dropped to 81 mg/dL and intravenous fluids need to be started immediately. His pulse is low. He is going into dehydration because of poor salt intake. We have thus advised hospitalisation," said Dr Javed Salam of the Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital who examined Mishra.

He is demanding that the AAP divulge details of foreign tours undertaken by five leaders of the party.

"I am feeling very lonely, so paid a visit to the Raj Ghat. Tomorrow, I will visit a Hanuman temple. I will reveal the next batch of expose on Sunday. After that, the people of Delhi will receive a jolt, especially those who trusted the AAP," he said.

His mother Annapurna, a former BJP mayor, wrote a letter to Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of spreading "lies" that the BJP was behind her son's stinging attacks on him and the AAP.

On Thursday, several AAP leaders had tweeted a picture in which Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari and Mishra were seen in one frame.

She claimed the picture was clicked at an event to felicitate AAP leader Kumar Vishwas' father and was attended by Kejriwal and all his ministers.

ALSO READ

Kapil Mishra's mother writes to Arvind Kejriwal: Lies won't help you, be afraid of God

Arvind Kejriwal sacked Kapil Mishra over water scarcity in Delhi. Ground Report presents different picture

ALSO WATCH |

When AAP leader Kapil Mishra broke down during meditation at Rajghat

--- ENDS ---
Hughes Finalist for UWs Top Graduating Woman

Ellen Hughes

Ellen Hughes, from Elizabeth, Colo., was among seven finalists for the Rosemarie Martha Spitaleri Award as the University of Wyoming's outstanding graduating woman.

The annual award, established in 1964, recognizes a student for exhibiting the finest leadership, academic integrity and citizenship qualities.

Sarah Maze, of Ranchester, was named the Rosemarie Martha Spitaleri Award recipient, while Anthony Farmer, from Cheyenne, received the Tobin Award, as the outstanding graduating man during a recent ceremony honoring all the nominees.

Hughes will graduate with dual degrees in history, and environment and natural resources, with minors in museum studies, sustainability, statistics and the Honors Program. She says that her experiences at UW helped her realize her passion for improving the lives of others.

My experiences at UW brilliantly and unexpectedly confronted, transformed and developed assumptions I held about myself and the world, she says. I credit my undergraduate career at UW as the catalyst responsible for refining my concern for improvement of the lives of others through leadership in collaborative education, meaningful scholarship and work.

One of Hughes nominators notes that Hughes is an exceptional scholar, who is clever, vibrant and passionate.

In a nutshell, she is an exceptional young scholar, engaged in the sort of interdisciplinary, public-facing work that many humanists point to as the future of our field, the nominator writes. Her energy is a marvel and a source of inspiration to so many of us fortunate enough to know her.

Another person says that Hughes is diligent and an outstanding student.

Ellen is, in short, an outstanding student. She is exceptional among her peers for the depth of her commitment, the nominator says. She has a vision for how to fit different kinds of academic inquiry together, and she seems to approach each subject and volunteer activity with equal vigor, commitment and success.
Stein Finalist for UWs Top Graduating Honor

Sydney Stein

Sydney Stein, from Breckenridge, Colo., was among seven finalists for the Rosemarie Martha Spitaleri Award as the University of Wyoming's outstanding graduating woman.

The annual award, established in 1964, recognizes a student for exhibiting the finest leadership, academic integrity and citizenship qualities.

Sarah Maze, of Ranchester, was named the Rosemarie Martha Spitaleri Award recipient, while Anthony Farmer, from Cheyenne, received the Tobin Award, as the outstanding graduating man during a recent ceremony honoring all the nominees.

Stein will graduate with a degree in communication, with minors in history, gender and womens studies, and the Honors Program. She says that her time at UW has helped her become a leader and make the world a brighter place.

Throughout my time at the University of Wyoming, I have been privileged to take advantage of the abundant opportunities, and I have loved all my extracurricular activities, she says. The events I have been involved in have taught me that being a leader means being yourself, listening to other ideas and having fun -- but, most importantly, it means building a community and making it a brighter place. Leadership creates and relies on community: After all, teamwork makes the dream work.

A contributing nominator notes that Stein is always a joy to be around and is a true leader.

Sydney is a bright, motivated, energetic individual, who views each moment as an opportunity to improve herself and those around her through modeling excellence, leadership and good character, the nominator says. She is a joy to be around and energizes all people who come in contact with her. Sydney truly is a leader in every sense of the word. She vividly exemplifies the best of scholarship, engagement and achievement.

Another writes that Stein recognizes that she is an inspiration with a great sense of humor.

Sydney is motivated and passionate about learning and trying to benefit from the multitude of educational opportunities offered not only in my class, but also here at UW, the nominator says. She is an inspiration and, on top of it, a wonderful person with a quick wit and sense of humor.
UW Research and Economic Development Day Sets Schedule of Lightning Talks

Xiaohong Liu, a UW professor of atmospheric science and the Wyoming Excellence Chair in Climate Science, will participate in the first session of lightning talks during UWs Research and Economic Development Day Thursday, May 18. His presentation is titled Wild Fires Melt the Snow on Rocky Mountains Through Smoke Darkening Effects. (UW Photo)

Thirty-eight University of Wyoming faculty members are scheduled to participate in lightning talks, or science in five minutes, during UW Research and Economic Development Day Thursday, May 18, from 8:30 a.m.-6 p.m. in Rooms 129 and 133 of the Classroom Building.

This event is designed to celebrate the universitys history of research and economic development endeavors of its faculty and staff. At the same time, it plans to honor Bill Gern, who has been instrumental in these ventures. Gern, UWs vice president for research and economic development, will retire, after 38 years of service, at the end of June.

The event will showcase the breadth and quality of research occurring at UW, and highlight UWs efforts in developing Wyomings economy, says Bryan Shader who, along with Angela Faxon, Scott Seville and Brent Ewers, organized the event.

The event will feature four sessions of lightning talks, a poster session, a keynote speaker over lunch and a concluding reception for Gern from 4:30-6 p.m. in the west lobby of the Classroom Building.

A tentative schedule for the lightning talks -- with names of presenters, their department or specialty, and topic title -- is as follows:

Session 1 -- 8:30-9:30 a.m.

-- Brent Ewers, EPSCoR/Botany, Bill Gern and Wyoming EPSCOR: A Partnership with Lasting Impact on UW and the State.

-- Jon Benson, WTBC, Encouraging Entrepreneurship and Invention.

-- Carolyn McCracken-Flesher, English, The First Humanists on Mercury?

-- David Anderson, Chemistry, Some Like It Cold: Chemistry Near Absolute Zero.

-- Emma Jane Alexander, Shell 3-D Visualization Center, Showcase of 3-D Visualization and Virtual Reality Applications Supported by the Shell 3-D Visualization Center.

-- Jonathan Naughton, Mechanical Engineering, Experiments to Support Numerical Model Validation.

-- Ellen Currano, Botany/Geology and Geophysics, Time Travel with a Shovel.

-- Steve Buskirk, Zoology and Physiology, Explaining Evolution by Hand.

-- Xiaohong Liu, Atmospheric Science, Wild Fires Melt the Snow on Rocky Mountains Through Smoke Darkening Effects.

Session 2 -- 10:30-11:30 a.m.

-- Mike Cheadle, Geology and Geophysics, Exploring the Bottom of the Oceans.

-- Merav Ben-David, Zoology and Physiology, Who Pushed the Button?

-- Jeff Hamerlinck, Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center, Ubiquitous GIS -- The R&D of Web Mapping in Wyoming.

-- Naomi Ward, Molecular Biology/Botany, Mining the Mouse Micro Biome.

-- Jonathan Fox, Veterinary Sciences/Neuroscience, Targeting Brain Mitochondria in a Mouse Model of Huntington's Disease.

-- Al Rodi, Atmospheric Science, The Right Stuff.

-- Cynthia Weinig, Botany/Molecular Biology, TBD.

-- Lawrence Schmidt, Geoscience Library, and Chad Hutchens, UW Libraries, Making UWs Data Useful.

-- Baskaran Thyagarajan, Pharmacy, TRPV1 Fuels a Fire in Fat.

-- Michael Pierce, Physics and Astronomy, Next Generation of Really Big Telescopes and the Amazing Science We Plan to Do with Them.

Michael Pierce, a UW associate professor of physics and astronomy, will make a lightning talk presentation, titled Next Generation of Really Big Telescopes and the Amazing Science We Plan to Do with Them. (UW Photo)

Session 3 -- 1:15-2:15 p.m.

-- Brandon Gellis, Art and Art History, The Tangibility of Virtual Space.

-- Bart Geerts, Atmospheric Science, Orographic Snowfall, Snowpack and Streamflow in a Changing Climate or Else.

-- Jill Kline, Wyoming Small Business Development Center, Small Business Development Programs for Faculty and for Wyoming Citizens.

-- Nolan Goetzinger, English, From Metaphor to Metamorphosis in Willie Cole's D-Force Tiji Wara.

-- Robert Hall, Zoology and Physiology, River Ecology Meets Big Data.

-- Hannah Jang-Condell, Physics and Astronomy, Exoplanet Research Enabled by Wyoming Resources.

-- Robert Kelly, Anthropology, Finally! We Can Measure Changes in Prehistoric Populations.

-- Ye Zhang, Geology and Geophysics, New Discovery of Hydrological Connectivity and Implication for Water Resources Management in the Mountain West.

-- Snehalata Huzurbazar, Statistics, TBD.

Session 4 -- 3:15-4:15 p.m.

-- Amy Banic, Computer Science, TBD.

-- David Walrath, Mechanical Engineering, Manufacturing Works to Diversify!

-- Paul Flesher, Religious Studies, Can You Hear Me Now? Acoustical Engineering Insights into Ancient Synagogue Worship.

-- Bruce Parkinson and John Hoberg, Chemistry, A New Class of Functional Materials.

-- Eugene Watson, Innovation and Tech Transfer.

-- Mark Gomelsky, Molecular Biology, Photo-Activated Designer Cells for Cell-Based Therapies.

-- Don Jarvis, Molecular Biology and GlycoBac LLC, Virus Versus Virus: Using Insect Virus-Host Systems to Fight Human Viral Diseases.

-- Qianquan Sun, Neuroscience, Lighting the Brain with Optogenetics.

-- Dorothy Yates, Office of Research and Economic Development, Facial Similarities Among Superstars.

Each session of lightning talks will include nine or 10 discussions, and each five-minute talk will take a quick motivational peek at a research topic on which a faculty member is working. The goals of the lightning talks are to spark discussion, foster collaborations and provide an overall view of UWs research efforts. Informal, collaborative discussions for participating faculty members are scheduled 9:30-10:15 a.m. and 2:15-3:15 p.m.

Mark Gomelsky, a UW professor of molecular biology, will make a lightning talk presentation, titled Photo-Activated Designer Cells for Cell-Based Therapies. (UW Photo)

This will be a celebration of the tremendous research and economic development activities taking place at UW, says Shader, who encourages faculty, staff and the public to attend. The lightning talks will provide a fun, easily accessible way to gain an appreciation for the types of grand challenges that motivate UW faculty, and the ways that their insights and solutions into these challenges impact Wyoming and the nation.

Carlos Martinez del Rio, a UW professor and Wyoming Excellence Chair in the Department of Zoology and Physiology, will be the lunch keynote speaker. He will discuss UW research and economic development, and where it might be headed in the future. His talk, titled Research at UW: A Humboldian/Bill Gernian Model?, is scheduled from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.

A poster session also will be available for both faculty members and UW students to display and discuss their scientific research. Poster presenters and project titles are as follows:

-- Erin Bush, TBD.

-- Mary Jo Cooley Hidecker, Communication Disorders, Cerebral Palsy and the Importance of Communication.

-- Mary Samidh Chakraborty, Pharmacy, TRPV1 and Mitochondrial Quality Control: A Cross-Talk to Abate Fatty Liver.

-- Lynne Ipina, Mathematics, Beauty and Joy of Computing in Wyoming.

-- Annalisa Picorelli, Statistics, Picturing the Future: Nomograms to Predict Survival of Cystic Fibrosis.

-- Baskaran Thyagarajan, Pharmacy, TRPV1 Fuels a Fire in Fat.

-- Elizabeth Traver, EPSCoR/WyCEHG, Soil Heterogeneity on an East Versus West Facing Slope.

-- Kate Welsh, Secondary Education, Putting You in Your Place: The PLACE (Place Learning and Civic Engagement).

For more information, go to www.emailmeform.com/builder/form/508s2aw20RK31.
UW Solar Eclipse Expert to Visit Sheridan May 15

This is a photo of a total solar eclipse as observed from Africa by Tim Slater, Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Science Education at the University of Wyoming. (Tim Slater Photo)

How far would you travel to see a total eclipse of the sun?

Tim Slater, the Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Science Education at the University of Wyoming, has traveled into deeply rural Africa to catch a glimpse of the disappearing sun. In May, he will travel across Wyoming to visit schools, public libraries and community centers to build awareness, generate excitement and help children, parents, teachers and community leaders to prepare for the upcoming total eclipse of the sun.

Slater is scheduled to speak about the nature of eclipses in the Sheridan area Monday, May 15, including visiting with Sheridan High School students and teachers at 1:45 p.m., and giving a public talk from 6-7:30 p.m. at Sheridan College.

His trip is sponsored by the UW College of Education, the Wyoming NASA Space Grant Consortium and local entities.

In his lectures, he describes how to safely observe the Aug. 21 eclipse of the sun and uses scientific digital visualization simulations to explain why scientists from all over the world are coming to Wyoming to observe this once-in-a-lifetime event.

Visible from much of Wyoming and known as the Great North American Solar Eclipse, this rarely visible sky event occurs midday Aug. 21.

For several hours, the moon will slowly cover and uncover the sun, causing skies to darken dramatically. In the middle of the event -- for just about two minutes -- the moon will completely block the sun, if you are standing in the right part of Wyoming, says Slater, an internationally recognized expert on the teaching of astronomy.

Tim Slater, Wyoming Excellence in Higher Education Endowed Chair in Science Education at the University of Wyoming, will speak about the nature of eclipses in the Sheridan area Monday, May 15. (UW Photo)

Eclipses of the sun by the moon occur about twice each year. However, eclipses can only be observed from narrowly specific locations on Earth. The next grand total solar eclipse near Wyoming is actually in Denver, and does not occur until the year 2045. On the other hand, less dramatic lunar eclipses -- where the Earth blocks the suns light from reaching the moon -- are visible from many locations on Earth.

UW astronomy Associate Professor Mike Pierce is coordinating nine scientific telescopes run by high school teachers and students spread across Wyoming in a collaborative effort to carefully monitor the sun continuously.

Its awe-inspiring. You see a part of the sun that is never seen, he says. This will be something that people will tell their grandchildren about.

This August, scientists and sky-watching enthusiasts from all over the world will make Wyoming their destination, resulting in full hotels, busy restaurants and overburdened highways across the state. However, as Slater points out, It might be difficult and time consuming for families to make their way to a prime viewing location, but it is totally worth the effort to briefly stand within the dark moons shadow once in your life.

For more information, call Slater at (307) 314-9831 or email tslater@uwyo.edu.
Wyoming Business Tips for May 21-27

A weekly look at Wyoming business questions from the Wyoming Small Business Development Center (WSBDC), part of WyomingEntrepreneur.Biz, a collection of business assistance programs at the University of Wyoming.

By Kelly Haigler Cornish, program manager, Wyoming SBIR/STTR Initiative

I have a product idea and need money to pay for research and development. Where can I find funding? Mandy, Riverton

Great question. Unfortunately, research and development (R&D) activity is risky, as there is no guarantee that your idea will become a viable product. Due to this risk, a bank is unlikely to loan money to a fledgling or startup company. Additionally, if your innovation is early stage and there is no feasibility study or prototype to support it, your company will have difficulty attracting seed funding from other sources (venture or angel funds). So, where can you look for funding? One possibility may be the federal government.

The federal government tries to solve some of our nations most significant problems, and it looks to small businesses to help provide solutions. Since 1982, when President Ronald Reagan signed the first legislation creating the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, the federal government supports small business R&D. Ten years later, the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program started. The STTR program promotes the transfer of intellectual property and technical knowledge from our nations nonprofit research entities -- usually, a university or a national lab.

The key here is that there needs to be some unknown on whether or not your product will work, as SBIR/STTR supports scientific discovery. What that means is, if you know your product will work, it wont qualify for funding, because SBIR and STTR dont pay for straight product development. The first phase of funding is typically a feasibility or proof of commercial concept.

Currently, 11 federal agencies participate in the SBIR program, with the five largest also offering STTR funding. We encourage small businesses to start their search for federal research money at the five agencies that account for over 97 percent of the SBIR and STTR funds. These agencies include Department of Defense (DOD); Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH); Department of Energy (DOE); National Science Foundation (NSF); and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA and DOD are contract agencies with very specific research topics. DOE is a granting agency, but it tends to have specific areas of interests that are more narrowly defined. Other agencies are grant agencies (HHS, NSF, DOE) with broad areas of interest. It is easier for a small business to fit your product idea into a grant agency, so check there first.

Once you have looked at the five largest, take a few moments to review the broad topics at the Department of Agriculture (USDA); due to Wyomings rural nature and USDAs mission, it also is a great place to look for funding. It is important for a small business to understand the mission of each agency and learn the similarities and differences among them.

You can learn more about these and other SBIR opportunities that might be a fit for your innovative product idea by visiting the Wyoming SBIR/STTR Initiative website, www.uwyo.edu/sbir.

A blog version of this article and an opportunity to post comments are available at www.wyomingsbdc.org/blog1/.

The WSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the Wyoming Business Council and the University of Wyoming. To ask a question, call 1-800-348-5194, email wsbdc@uwyo.edu, or write 1000 E. University Ave., Dept. 3922, Laramie, WY, 82071-3922.
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The RSS worker, Biju, in his early 30s, is the 12th accused in the murder of CPM worker Dhanaraj, that took place near Payyanur, Kerala in July last year.

By Jeemon Jacob: Political violence has returned to Kannur as an RSS office bearer accused in the murder of a CPM worker last year was hacked to death near Kannur today around 4 pm.

The state BJP leadership has accused CPM activists of the crime.

The RSS worker, Biju, in his early 30s, is the 12th accused in the murder of CPM worker Dhanaraj, that took place near Payyanur, Kerala in July last year.

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The armed gang attacked Dhanaraj before his family members. He died on the way to hospital.

The police have cordoned off the area and probe has begun.

According to police, a gang of five persons traveling in an Innova car hit Biju's bike on the road and attacked him with swords.

BJP district unit has called for a total shut down in Kannur district and tension is prevailing in the area.

Police security provided to Biju, who was on bail, was withdrawn last week.

In July last year, two hours after Dhanaraj was murdered, C.K. Ramachandran, an auto driver and RSS worker was also stabbed to death. The assailants hurled crude bombs before stabbing Ramachandran.

Kannur has witnessed dozens of political murders with casualties being inflicted on both sides.

BJP has declared hartal for tomorrow.

In January this year, a BJP worker was hacked to death near Talassery in Kannur. The BJP worker was allegedly hacked inside his house at around 10.30 pm. Deceased Santhosh Kumar, 52, was declared brought dead at the hospital.

Political violence is not new to the red citadel of CPM. Killings and counter killings have been a part of Kannur's political history since 1970s.

Also Read:

Kerala: CPI(M) and RSS workers hacked to death

Kerala: BJP worker hacked to death in Kannur

Kerala: BJP worker's wife who suffered injuries after their house was allegedly burnt by CPM workers dead

Kerala: BJP worker hacked to death, his father was killed in 2002

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An FIR has been filed against Kolkata Imam Maulana Noor-ur Rehman Barkati for saying that he was not bound to follow the Centre's order to remove lal batti and that it was his right to use the same.

By India Today Web Desk: An FIR has been lodged against Maulana Noor-ur Rehman Barkati, the shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Masjid, for refusing to comply with the Centre's ban on the use of lal batti (red beacon).

The FIR was lodged by one Suraj Kumar Singh in Topsia.

Defying the government order, Barkati had yesterday said that he was not bound to follow the order and that as a religious leader, it was his "right" to do so.

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Barkati had said, "I am a religious leader and have been using the red beacon for the past several decades. I don't follow the orders of the Centre. Who are they to order me? In Bengal, only the orders of the state government are effective. I will use red beacon. In Bengal, no one has removed the red beacon", Barkati told PTI.

BAN ON LAL BATTIS FROM MAY 1

The central government's decision to have red beacons removed from all vehicles, including that of the prime minister from May 1, was aimed at seeking to end the VIP culture.

The West Bengal BJP slammed the Imam for defying the Union cabinet's order.

"From where does he get the audacity to defy the decision of the union government? The state government must take immediate action against him. Being from the minority community is no reason for him to do whatever he wants", said state BJP secretary Locket Chatterjee.

Also read | Kolkata Shahi Imam Maulana Barkati won't leave his laal batti, invokes religion

WATCH VIDEO

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SLS Las Vegas will celebrate Memorial Day weekend with updated offerings at Foxtail Pool and the new guest-only pool, Retro Pool Lounge, from Friday, May 26 through Monday, May 29 (Pictured: Foxtail Pool Cabana).

Foxtail Pool will kick off the weekend for hotel guests and locals alike with live DJs Friday through Sunday, paired with holiday-worthy food and beverage offerings. Guests can celebrate with a special cabana delivery of a Stella Artois kegerator, equivalent to 35 beers, priced at $185; and beer buckets featuring Bud Light, Michelob Ultra, Budweiser or Bud Light Lime, priced at $30.

Additionally, the resort-style oasis will feature poolside favorites including; Black and Blue Lemonade, made with Ciroc berry vodka, blueberries, blackberries and lemonade for $15; ahi poke tacos, topped with guacamole, yuzu creme and truffle soy, priced at $16.95; and chicken tenders, served with French fries, buttermilk ranch and barbeque sauce for $12.95.

Further enhancing SLS Las Vegas daytime amenities, the resort will debut its guest-only Retro Pool Lounge. Formally the LUX Pool, Retro Pool Lounge will open on Friday, May 19 and offer hotel guests a relaxing, open-air ambiance in a rooftop setting. Exclusively for guests ages 21 and older, Retro Pool Lounge is framed by premium cabanas for reservations, as well as an open cabana concept available for all guests to enjoy. Hours of operation at Retro Pool Lounge are 10 a.m. through 7 p.m.

Locals will receive admission to Foxtail Pool on weekends with the reservation of a day bed, couch, cabana or premium cabana, with an accompanying minimum food and beverage spend. Hours of operation at Foxtail Pool will be extended to 9 a.m. through 7 p.m. for the holiday weekend.


An impressive showcase of television and movie vehicles will take over Fremont Street Experience during Las Vegas Car Stars 2017 on Friday, May 19 and Saturday, May 20. This years event will celebrate the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, the 50th anniversary of the Beatles album, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Fast and Furious franchise (Photo credit: Tom Donoghue).

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue.

Featuring more than 75 iconic cars, the event will begin on Friday, May 19 with a warm welcome from Clark County Commissioner Lawrence Weekly and Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) Official Showgirls at the Welcome to Las Vegas Sign followed by a parade of cars from hit numerous shows and films.

Photo credit: Tom Donoghue.

The festivities are set to continue at Fremont Street Experience where visitors can line up to see an extensive showcase of the legendary cars. The city of Las Vegas and the LVCVA will kick off the Opening Ceremony at 5 p.m. on Fremont Street Experiences 3rd Street Stage.

Las Vegas Car Stars will pay homage to original television and movies recognized worldwide, and the event will also host a special meet and greet with various celebrities such as Spencer Wilding of Star Wars Rogue One, Back to the Future actress Tamera Carrera, actor Byron Cherry of Dukes of Hazzard, Catherine Hickland from the television series Knight Rider and many others.

Vintage, hotrod and classic car owners will be participating with Las Vegas Car Stars throughout the duration of this years event to raise money for the Childrens Miracle Network, a nationally recognized charity that assists children and their families in need.

The schedule of events is as follows:

Las Vegas Car Stars Press Conference Friday, May 19 5-6:30 p.m.  Press Conference (3rd Street Staage); City of Las Vegas proclamation, Las Vegas Car Stars line up along Fremont Street Experience, celebrity appearances.

5-6:30 p.m.  Press Conference (3rd Street Staage); City of Las Vegas proclamation, Las Vegas Car Stars line up along Fremont Street Experience, celebrity appearances. Las Vegas Car Stars Day  Saturday, May 2010 a.m.  Opening Ceremony10 a.m.  4:30 p.m.  Celebrity cars on on display, celebrity appearances and autographs (11 a.m.  1 p.m.),, Q & A session (1 p.m.  2 p.m.)

For additional information on Las Vegas Car Stars visit www.LasVegasCarStars.com. For more information on Fremont Street Experience and to view the event calendar, visit www.vegasexperience.com.
In the released consolidated financial report for the first quarter of 2017, ACV earned a revenue of VND3.9 trillion ($171.6 million).

Regarding financial expenses, ACV said that the exchange loss in this period was VND647 billion ($28.5 million). Besides, ACV also incurred interest expenses of VND31 billion ($1.36 million). Thus, ACVs total financial expenses in the first quarter of 2017 were VND682 billion ($30 million). ACV earned an after-tax profit of VND651 billion ($28.6 million).

As of the end of March 2017, ACVs long-term and short-term borrowings were nearly VND20 trillion ($880 million). A large amount of this was in Japanese Yen lent by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for the project on constructing the international passenger terminal in Tan Son Nhat International Airport and terminal T2 in Noi Bai International Airport.

This is not the first time ACV reported losses due to JPYs fluctuations. Previously, in the second quarter of 2016, the continuous appreciation of JPY had caused an exchange loss of VND1.379 trillion ($60.7 million) for the company. Similarly, in 2015, ACV suffered an exchange loss of VND666 billion ($29.3 million).

As of March 31, 2017, ACVs total assets were VND44.632 trillion ($1.96 billion). For 2017, it targets a revenue of VND15.152 trillion ($666 million) and a before-tax profit of VND3.551 trillion ($156.2 million).

ACVs biggest shareholder is the Ministry of Transport (MoT). According to the latest proposal of the Civil Aviation Administration of Vietnam (CAAV), the investment in the construction of new terminals in Tan Son Nhat Airport, including T4 and the terminal serving civil aviation on military land plots and air service works located in the north and southeast areas of the airport, will be financed from private investment. ACV will be in charge of mobilising capital contribution from investors.

ACVs process of selling stakes to strategic investors started in January 2016. ADP was the only name that was approved by MoT on the list of strategic investors. Since then, there have been three negotiation sessions, but there are several unsolved bottlenecks hampering progress.

RELATED CONTENTS: Negotiation between Airport Corporation of Vietnam and French investor hits major bottlenecks

However, in a March 2 meeting with Augustin de Romanet, ADPs chairman and general director, Minister of Transport Truong Quang Nghia said the ministry would do everything to facilitate ACV and ADP to be able to finalise the deal soon.

MoT requested ACV to submit a detailed report on all the disagreements so that the government can offer solutions soon, especially to the disagreement involving ACVs operating rights in several airports.

ACVs shareholder structure will change after the share sale to ADP. In particular, the state will own 75 per cent, strategic investors 20 per cent, and common shareholders 3.47 per cent.
Employees accept deposit at the Vietnam Joint Stock Commercial Bank for Industry and Trade office in the southern province of ong Nai.-VNS Photo Vu Sinh

Han Ngoc Vu, CEO of the Vietnam International Bank (VIB), recently said that in 2016 his bank repurchased VN1.33 trillion (US$58.3 million) of non-performing loans (NPLs) that it sold to VAMC. It will continue to buy back roughly VN1 trillion this year.

VIB is due to acquire all bad debts that it sold to VAMC by mid-2018, Vu said.

VIBs NPL ratio increased to 2.58 per cent in 2016 from 2.05 per cent in 2015.

According to Vu, the increase in the 2016 NPL ratio was due to the bank actively acquiring some debts sold to VAMC to promote the debt settlement process on finding that the process had been better than the previous period.

Even when repurchasing the bad debt from VAMC, the entire bad debt of VIB is still less than 3 per cent regulated by the central bank, Vu said.

Previously, Vietcombanks Chairman Nghiem Xuan Thanh had also said that his bank finished the repurchase of all VN4.3 trillion of NPLs that it sold to VAMC, three years earlier than planned.

Vietinbank Chairman Nguyen Van Thang said that in 2017 his bank would focus on settling bad debts and would buy all bad debts that it sold to VAMC, completely settling the bad debts in 2017 instead of 2018 as planned earlier.

Experts said that the repurchase of bad debts from VAMC was positive, proving that business performance of commercial banks is more positive.

However, according to Vu, not all banks can buy back bad debts from VAMC. He explained though some may really want to buy back the bad debts, these banks must have sufficient financial resources and the NPL ratio must be low enough to ensure that after the debt repurchase, the NPL ratio is still less than 3 percent as regulated by the central bank.

There are going to have banks that face limitations as the NPL ratio at the banks has already been too high or the banks do not have enough profits to put provision, therefore, they still have to continue leaving bad debts at VAMC, Vu told au tu chung khoan (Securities Investment) newspaper.

In fact, banks have identified VAMC as a bad debt landing as the recovery of the debts at VAMC is slow. The banks therefore must take the initiative in handling the debts by themselves.

According to VAMC, it has bought bad debts of VN262 trillion from 42 credit institutions. However, it has recovered only VN42.85 trillion of book bad debts.

Economist Vu inh Anh said that apart from the barrier regarding financial resources to purchase and dispose bad debts, legal regulations, especially procedures on settlement of collaterals, are not suitable in reality as they create an awkward situation for VAMC, and are unable to accelerate the bad debt settlement process.

VIBs Vu said the annual bad debt settlement is very good, especially the sale of bad debt. However, currently, there are still certain obstacles in selling bad debts to foreign buyers. When foreigners decide to purchase bad debt, that means they have professional perspective, they will consider bad debt quality with regard to collaterals and transparency, and see how much can be recovered before deciding to purchase.

Many foreigners have been interested in VIBs bad debts for a long time, Vu said. However, commercial conditions have been negotiated and legal obstacles remain. Therefore, if it can be solved, VIBs bad debt settlement speed will be much faster than today, he said.
Russian tourists at a coastal resort in Khanh Hoa Province

The strong growth of foreign visitor arrivals, especially from China and Russia, the provinces two largest source markets, has led to an imbalance between guest room demand and supply.

Three to four-star hotels, the favorite segment for domestic tourists, are almost fully booked in the summer. Many tour operators have had to divide large groups of tourists into smaller groups that will stay at many different hotels, or opt for outlying areas like Doc Let and Cam Ranh.

However, these solutions are ineffective, so some travel firms have asked customers to visit other coastal destinations such as Mui Ne in Binh Thuan Province, Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province and Phu Yen Province. Tourists do not prefer one to two-star hotels where rooms are still available.

Nguyen Ngoc An, deputy general director of Fiditour JSC, said that it has been hard to book hotel rooms in Nha Trang since early this year. Employees of the company have been unable to find enough rooms for large groups with each requiring about 50 rooms or so.

About half of the companys customers have changed to other destinations, An added.

Nguyen Van Thanh, vice chairman of the Nha Trang - Khanh Hoa Tourism Association, also agreed that not only travel firms from other localities but also those in Nha Trang face the same problem. At a hotel of 150-200 rooms, for example, only 15-20% are available for domestic visitors.

Thanh said that the sudden growth of international visitors has beaten all previous forecasts. Russian and Chinese tourists to the city this year may amount to 500,000 and one million respectively.

Khanh Hoa Province now has about 25,000 hotel rooms including about 14,000 three to four-star rooms.

According to data from Khanh Hoa Provinces Department of Tourism, the province lured nearly 285,000 Chinese and 127,000 Russian tourists in the first quarter, a respective increase of over 2.6 and 2.5 times over the same period last year.
The annual expo has attracted more than 150 companies showcasing a wide variety of Thai products, like food and beverages, cosmetics, health, beauty and spa products, household products, as well as automobile and motorcycle parts. There are also some pavilions promoting Thai tourism, education, and franchising.

Peraya Sophachitvatana, the representative of P. Sang Udom Trading Co., Ltd. said they are currently researching the Vietnamese market to introduce confectionery products like Hacks.

We are optimistic on our market prospects as Vietnamese consumers are keen on Thai products, he said.

Pitinun Samanvorawong, Minister Counselor of the Thai Trade Centre at the Consulate General of Thailand in Ho Chi Minh City, said that Vietnam and Thailand have deepened economic and other bilateral ties since the two countries established strategic partnership in 2013.

In 2016, the total import-export turnover between the two countries reached $12.5 billion, up 8.9 per cent against 2015. As of March 2017, the export turnover stood at $3.2 billion, an increase of 21.1 per cent year-on-year.

Thailand is currently the tenth biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, with around 453 projects worth $8.1 billion. The two countries target bilateral trade turnover to hit the $20 billion mark by 2020.

Top Thai Brands 2017 will be the best place for Vietnamese and Thai firms seeking distributors and franchisees. The expo has organised a business-to-business programme with about 1,500 scheduled appointments to facilitate cooperation between Vietnamese and Thai companies, she noted.
According to a Dunya News report, Pakistan is going to overrule the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) stay on Kulbhushan Jadhav's death sentence.

By Santosh Chaubey: According to a Dunya News report, Pakistan is going to deny the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in Kulbhushan Jadhav case, an Indian national whom Pakistan has sentenced to death alleging espionage and sabotage in Pakistan.

The Dunya News report said, "Attorney General of Pakistan was reportedly briefed today over Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav's issue and according to the sources, Pakistan will deny jurisdiction of International Court of Justice (ICJ) over cases that have Pakistan's national stability at stake."

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According to the report, the briefing states, "Pakistan does not accept International Court's jurisdiction to order the state in issue that involves its national stability."

Another report of Daily Pakistan says, "Pakistan revised its commitment to the ICJ and has withdrawn all domestic and national security related issues from the jurisdiction of the court on March 29, thus making it impossible for Modi-led India to pin down Pakistan in this case."

The Daily Pakistan report further states that Pakistan, before handing over death sentence to Jadhav, had informed the ICJ about changes it made through its UN envoy Maleeha Lodhi.

"Disputes relating to or connected with any aspect of hostilities, armed conflicts, individual or collective self-defence or the discharge of any functions pursuant to any decision or recommendation of international bodies, the deployment of armed forces abroad, as well as action relating and ancillary thereto in which Pakistan is, has been or may in future be involved", the declaration by Pakistan read.

WHAT ICJ DID AFTER INDIA'S PLEA

India had approached the International Court of Justice on May 8 with its plea to stay Jadhav's execution till it hears the matter and reaches to any conclusion. India in its plea had accused Pakistan of "egregious violations" of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations (VCCR).

Both India and Pakistan are signatory to VCCR. India had also requested consular access to Kulbhushan Jadhav 16 times but Pakistan denied it every time.

After India's application, the ICJ, using its powers under the 'Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes of 24 April 1963' stayed Jadhav's execution.

The public hearing in the case by the ICJ would be held on May 15.

KULBHUSHAN JADHAV DEATH SENTENCE

On April 10, the Pakistan Army chief confirmed Kulbhushan Jadhav's death sentence, which was handed down by a Pakistan military court that held him guilty of espionage.

Pakistan claims Jadhav, who allegedly used the alias Hussein Mubarak Patel was related to India's Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

The Indian government has maintained that Kulbhushan Jadhav is a formal Indian Naval officer turned businessman who was on a routine business trip to Iran when he was abducted by Pakistani intelligence. Reports say he was captured by the Taliban and later sold to the Pakistan Army.

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Kulbhushan Jadhav was arrested by the Pakistan authorities in March this year.

Indian authorities added that Jadhav is innocent and there is no evidence against him and that Pakistan carried out a secret trial in a military court where no evidence was given.

Also read: Is International Court of Justice stay on Kulbhushan Jadhav hanging binding on Pakistan? How ICJ works

Also read: 'Will send you Kulbhushan Jadhav's dead body': Hackers post message on AIFF website

Also read: Kulbhushan Jadhav's death sentence stayed by ICJ, Iran demands access to former Indian Navy officer

Watch video: Pakistan not to attend ICJ hearing on Kulbhushan Jadhav: What happens in The Hague now?

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The White House is left fuming after Russia publishes photos of Donald Trump meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (R) AFP/HO

"Yesterday, on the same day - I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. #LetsMakePeace!" the US president tweeted.

Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict since 2014, and Russia's annexation of Crimea has been a major point of contention between Washington and Moscow.

The tweeted photos fashion a grinning Trump as peacemaker, a day after the Republican leader gave Lavrov a rare Oval Office welcome and Ukraine's Klimkin met with Vice President Mike Pence.

A Trump-Klimkin meeting had not been on the US president's public agenda.

Trump tweeted the images after the White House had been left fuming when the Russian Embassy published photos of Trump's closed-door meeting with Lavrov, as well as the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak.

The Lavrov meeting came just hours after Trump fired his FBI director James Comey, the man responsible for investigating allegations of collusion between the Republican leader's team and Russia.

The embarrassment was compounded by the presence of Kislyak, who is at the center of a series of questions about contacts between Trump's inner circle and the Russian government.

Comey's shock dismissal ignited furor among Democrats, who suggested that the FBI's investigation into Trump's campaign and Russia could now be tainted, an idea the White House has rejected.

Shortly before his call for peace Trump sent another Twitter missive: "Russia must be laughing up their sleeves watching as the US tears itself apart over a Democrat EXCUSE for losing the election."
This is not the first time the conference was held. How is this years conference different?

This years theme is Accompanying companies in the private sector. It shows the governments determination to proactively support companies and turn them into the driver of the countrys growth. This year, 2,000 participants have registered, four times as much as last year. 1,500 of them represent the private sector. The leaders of localities and many companies from all 63 cities and provinces will gather at designated points to participate in the teleconference of a sort.

The companies will evaluate the implementation of Resolution 35/NQ-CP on developing and supporting companies between 2016 and 2020. They will have the chance to propose solutions to the difficulties they are facing. From 3 PM of the conference day, the PM and deputy PMs as well as government agencies will meet and address the complaints of companies together.

The conference is only one day long. How can it solve all problems?

Actually, many problems have been addressed and tackled throughout 2016. The Government Office has kept an open ear to complaints and directed relevant government agencies to act within their mandates. Problems under the authority of the PM were duly forwarded to his office, similar to localities leaders. The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry also did the same thing.

At the moment, 18 out of 20 government agencies and 48 out of 63 cities and provinces have submitted their reports on the implementation of Resolution 35 to the Government Office and the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI). MPI is compiling them into a report that will be read at the conference and will be uploaded to the governments portal soon.

Xin Chao Cafe (in which a cafe owner was charged with conducting business illegally) was the highlight of last years conference. What is the highlight this year? Is there a specific case study?

True, by coincidence, the Xin Chao cafe incident happened right before last years conference. This incident heated up the conference and the main discussion was on decriminalising a civil economic relationship. The business community was very happy that the topic was highlighted.

This year, we have yet to see a major incident and we hope not to, either. The conference will focus on policies to help companies develop. Of course, that includes offering solutions to existing difficulties.

As the government is working to increase the role of the private sector, is there special significance to the conference?

Last year, most participants were from private sector companies because foreign-invested companies and state-owned companies had held their own conferences already. This year, it will be the same. At the moment, the private sector has the highest number of companies, including many foreign companies, while the number of state-owned companies has decreased to only a few hundred. As to the target of having one million companies by 2020, the private sector will make up the lions share.
VinaCapital completely divested its entire holding in Quoc Cuong Gia Lai, selling its 10.69 per cent stake for VND250 billion

According to the announcement, VOF Investment Limited sold nearly 9.5 million QCG shares (equivalent to 3.45 per cent of QCGs chartered capital), Asia Investment & Finance Limited sold about 2.87 million shares (1.04 per cent), and VOF PE Holding 5 Limited sold the most, with 17.06 million shares (6.2 per cent).

Therefore, VinaCapital has fully divested its 10.69 per cent holdings in the company.

The transaction results were not released, however, based on the average share price of VND8,950 (39 US cents), the total proceeds of these sales is expected to be more than VND250 billion ($11.02 million).

At the closing of the May 10 trading session, QCG shares marked a continuous increase, reaching VND12,450 (55 cent) per share, far higher than the tickers low-point on December 14, 2016, when it was VND3,000 (13 cents).

VinaCapital invested in QCG before the company was listed on the stock market on August 9, 2010 with the price of VND45,500 ($2.022) per share. According to Quoc Cuong Gia Lais 2016 financial report, the company had a total asset value of VND8,217 billion ($365 million). Of this, the company must pay a debt of VND4.2 trillion ($187 million).

The company had gained a total turnover of VND1.507 trillion ($67 million) in 2016. After-tax profit was VND44.6 billion ($1.98 million).

VinaCapital has been continuously divesting its portfolios recently. Right last month, the company sold the large-scale Dai Phuoc Lotus to Chinese Fortune Land Development at the total value of $65.3 million.
Renovation work in progress in a railway section in Da Nang.

The North-South Railway is a single-track metre gauge line with a total length of 1,726 kilometres, an official from the corporation said, adding that since it was constructed more than eight decades ago, much of the railways infrastructure  including rail tracks, bridges, tunnels, and level crossings  is outdated or in poor condition, reducing transportation capacity and efficiency.

The old system forces passenger trains to travel at 50 km per hour and cargo trains at 35 km per hour on average.

The VNR has proposed four key projects, worth about 1.6  1.8 trillion VND (70.4 million  79.3 million USD) each, to upgrade infrastructure on the Hanoi  Vinh and Nha Trang  HCM City sections, and reinforce weak bridges and tunnels.

It is estimated that once the projects are completed, they will help the corporation increase revenue by 1 billion VND (44,040 USD) per day and reduce freight rates.
People join a drill held in northern Lang Son Province to destroy suspected poultry with H7N9 virus.-VNA/VNS Photo

The Preventive Medicine Department under the health ministry announced Wednesday that the avian influenza A (H7N9) is spreading rapidly south and southeast China, including Yunnan and Guangxi provinces--which both share borders with Viet Nam.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) detected changes of H7N9 virus from low pathogenicity to high pathogenicity in poultry and humans.

WHO found H7N9 virus with high pathogenicity in two patients in Guangdong and Taiwan. FAO found high pathogenicity of H7N9 in 41 poultry samples.

With low pathogenicity, H7N9 virus may cause mild or no illness in poultry while with high pathogenicity, the virus can lead to high bird mortality and spread 100-1,000 times faster than low-pathogenicity virus.

So far, there has not been any evidence that the new strain of H7N9 causes more rapid human-to-human transfer. Therefore, WHO have not recommended changing the flu treatment scheme.

According to the Preventive Medicine Department, the health ministry has sped up instruction and training to health officers as well as inspections on disease prevention and control in provinces.

The department recommended people not consume ill/dead poultry or unknown origin. Neither should they kill, traffic or trade unknown-origin poultry.

When detecting ill/dead poultry, people should contact authorities. When having symptoms like fever, cough, chest pain or breathing difficulty after contacting with poultry, people must go to see doctor for immediate treatment.

Flu A (H7N9) was first detected in China in March, 2013 and has surged in five epidemic waves. The fifth wave onset began in October 2016, and it has been the greatest one, with 541 human infections with avian influenza A (H7N9) in 17 provinces of China.
"The project was delayed ... but it'll open (in) 2019," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told AFP during a visit to the site beside the Red Sea. (AFP/Amer HILABI)

Jeddah Tower is to rise more than a kilometre, placing it above Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

"The project was delayed ... but it'll open (in) 2019," Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told AFP during a visit to the site beside the Red Sea.

Alwaleed chairs Kingdom Holding Co whose affiliated Jeddah Economic Company is developing the spire-topped landmark.

The project contractor Saudi Binladin Group was among construction firms in the kingdom that suffered financially after a collapse in oil revenues from 2014.

The company, which developed other prominent buildings in Saudi Arabia, was founded more than 80 years ago by the father of deceased Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Binladin Group late last year said it had completed payment to 70,000 laid-off employees.

Alwaleed first announced plans for the tower in August 2011, saying it would take 36 months to build after the start of construction.

By November 2014, a four-storey foundation was in place and Alwaleed said the building would be finished in 2018. But that was before the kingdom felt the full force of a drop in oil revenues.

In November 2015, Kingdom Holding said Jeddah Economic Company had reached a financing deal with Saudi Arabia's Alinma Investment to finish the Jeddah Tower, which then had 26 floors.

Alwaleed on Thursday rode a construction elevator about 30 floors to meet reporters in the concrete shell of the building, which already offers spectacular views over the rest of Jeddah and the adjacent sea.

Kingdom Holding has shares in the Euro Disney theme park, Apple, News Corporation and US banking giant Citigroup, among other firms.
A day-long conclave was called to refocus the government's Maoist strategy in the wake of the deaths of 37 CRPF troopers in the past two months.

At a meeting on May 8 of representatives from ten states affected by left-wing extremism, home minister Rajnath Singh asked for an escalation of the drive against Maoists. The day-long conclave had been called to refocus the government's Maoist strategy in the wake of the deaths of 37 CRPF troopers in the past two months. Unusually, Rajnath Singh also spoke of targeting the Maoist leadership through arrests.

The Maoists are manifested as a tribal army trained in infantry tactics, who ambush security forces in central India. Meanwhile, the senior leaders of the banned CPI (Maoist) - seven politburo members and 13 central committee members, mostly from united Andhra Pradesh - are underground. The leaders provide what a 2014 US military counter-insurgency manual calls, 'vision, direction, guidance, coordination and organisational coherence' for the Maoists' war against the Indian state.

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Seventeen central committee and politburo members have been neutralised since 2004, the majority of them arrested. That they were arrested individually shows that the leadership is dispersed, but where exactly is a mystery. That the few existing photographs-including of their supremo, Muppalla Lakshmana Rao, alias Ganapathy-show them in the jungles led to speculation that they are in the deep woods.

Chhattisgarh police officials, however, believe the leaders are hiding in urban areas. This would not be unusual - Osama bin Laden, for example, opted to hide in the cities of Pakistan. The pictures of the Maoist leaders, police believe, were taken at central committee meetings held at jungle redoubts. Most of the senior leaders are tech savvy and carry laptops, possibly indicating the use of online communication.

The home ministry could learn from the neutralisation of the Manipur-based United National Liberation Front (UNLF) in 2010. The leaders were arrested by the National Investigation Agency after being handed over by Bangladeshi authorities-they were located in Dhaka via a year-long intelligence operation launched by the Indian army. Without similar intelligence-based operations to tackle the Maoist 'head', the security forces could well be chasing the tail on the ground.

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The Dangerous Side-Effects of Plastics, and How to Minimize Their Toxic Impact

Plastics are not only an environmental disaster; these man-made conveniences introduced a century ago are also harming our physical and mental health. Phthalates  chemical compounds used to make plastic more flexible and durable  are found in more products than you might imagine, and have become the human bodys
Cambodia held its first financial technology (Fintech) forum last week to discuss trends in the nascent sector.

According to a report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Cambodia is facing one of the biggest windows of opportunity enabled by more than 24 billion dollars gap between financial services needs and formal supply, accelerated technological advancement and adoption, and lower barriers to entry on the supply-side.

Like we see many places in the world, people in rural areas have the wish to access [finance] Tom Moyes, project manager of the ADBs Mekong Business Initiative, told the forum.

So we have got a big job to do, to bring financial inclusion to the rural areas. Like I said, while another system is not going to do it, lets move to Fintech.

The ADB predicts that Fintech can help boost Cambodias gross domestic product by 6 percent. Its main market leaders in Cambodia are large corporations and banks, such as Acleda, RHB Group, ABA Bank, Wing, Smart and Metfone.

Sim Chankiriroth, CEO and founder of Fintech startup Banhji, told VOA Khmer that its business model was aimed at improving the financial inclusiveness of small- and medium-sized enterprises.

We see one of the national priorities is to help the SMEs access finance and have proper digital records. We cant reach the goal with only regulations and without tools, so we are providing the tools.

Employing some 10 software engineers, Banhji offers free and localized accounting software.

Chankiriroth says that the real challenge lies in building credibility with clients in a country where the majority of people exclusively rely on cash payments and paper records.

Only about 13 percent of Cambodian adults have a bank account, while only some 4 percent have savings with financial institutions.

A pervasive lack of trust also dominates the sector due to a lack of knowledge, speakers told the Fintech forum.

Gordon Peters, an analyst with Mekong Strategic Partners, said in an email that the research predicting a 6 percent boost to the economy from Fintech seems very optimistic.

It would take significant policy change and new business growth in the Fintech space, he wrote.

There is a lack of Fintech funding and a clear regulatory framework for Fintech to grow versus regional neighbors, and The Smart Digital Innovation fund that Mekong Strategic Partners manages is looking to solve some of these issues by funding top Fintech startups he added.

Chea Serey, director general of central banking at the National Bank of Cambodia, told the forum that a national policy had been drafted to deal with the shortfall and was expected to be released later this year.

We are beginning the process, she said. We need to discuss with other stakeholders and the private sector. Now we have more players who will compete in the market, which will also lower the cost of services, which is good.

Ros Khemara, the country manager for the Mekong Business Initiative, insists that now is too early to focus on strict regulations of the sector, which could stymie creativity.

There will be a certain level of impact where Fintech influences the countrys economics, and that is when the government, later, should regulate the system, for example, giving licenses for new business models.
Emmanuel Macrons victory in the French presidential elections brought a sigh of relief in many Western capitals, worried that the National Fronts Marie Le Pen if elected would pull France away from the European Union. But many analysts warn that the future of the European bloc remains uncertain. Britain, a key member of the EU, is on its way out, and the populist, anti-establishment, anti-EU wave is still on the rise across the continent. VOAs Jela de Franceschi reports.
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US RUSSIA TALKS The White House hosts high level talks with Russian officials and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson listens to climate change advocates in Alaska. VOA State Department Correspondent Cindy Saine in Alaska and White House correspondent Pete Heinlein discuss President Trumps meeting with Russian diplomats in Washington and Secretary of State Tillerson attends the Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks.
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami party is preparing to place thousands of fighters in Afghanistan's security forces, in one of the most complex parts of last year's peace deal between the Western-backed government and the former insurgent warlord.

Hizb-i-Islami has drawn up a list of 3,500 members of its militia for vetting and has handed over 80 names, mostly senior officers, to a special commission set up to oversee the integration, said Karim Amin, one of Hekmatyar's closest aides.

The move was agreed upon under the terms of the peace deal that brought in Hekmatyar, notorious for his forces' indiscriminate bombardment of Kabul during the 1990s civil war, after years of armed opposition.

While Hizb-i-Islami played little part in combat in recent years and ceased all operations since the accord, thousands of its fighters have not been disarmed, said Ahmad Farzan, the official in charge of overseeing implementation of the agreement.

Officials said the 80 names handed over were mainly those of older commanders who might be put on the payroll but who would probably go onto the inactive list.

Vetting is vital

Younger fighters present a bigger problem. Strict vetting is intended to weed out fighters who could pose an internal threat; in the first two months of 2017, at least a dozen "insider attacks" took place where service members turned on their colleagues.

Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said there would be no problem integrating Hizb-i-Islami members, provided they met selection criteria.

"Joining the national army is voluntary and anyone eligible who meets certain criteria can join to serve, and that includes Hizb-i-Islami members," he said.

However, the process, involving formal lists of fighters to be included in the army and police, goes beyond personal decisions to enlist. There is the question of how to integrate members of a militia who refuse to disarm and retain strong, personal loyalty to their leader into a NATO-trained force intended to represent the nation as a whole.

"They can be enrolled in the army, but the concern is that these guys will always be Hekmatyar's forces," said a senior official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The issue illustrates wider challenges facing the government as it seeks to implement an agreement with former insurgents that it hopes will pave the way for a broader peace deal with the Taliban, Afghanistan's dominant insurgent group.

No quiet transition

Hekmatyar, who has called for the constitution to be amended and said President Ashraf Ghani's government was not working, has already made it plain since his return to Kabul last week that he would not simply blend in quietly.

In public remarks, he called the Taliban his "brothers" and urged a peace agreement with them that would get foreign forces, which train the Afghan army, out of Afghanistan.

Amin went further this week, saying in a television interview that all combatant deaths in the war, including Taliban, should be referred to as "shaheed" or "martyred," a term currently used by the government only for its own forces and civilians.

While the Kabul government and its Western partners agree that only talks with the Taliban will end fighting, Hekmatyar's sympathetic stance risks complicating his militia's integration into forces that lost 6,785 killed last year fighting militants.

The Hizb-i-Islami militia's refusal to disarm suggested continued mutual suspicion between former insurgents and the government.

"No one can guarantee that if a commander puts down his weapon, he would survive," said Hizb-i-Islami spokesman Qareem ur Rahman. "They can't put down their weapons, but they won't fight against the government."
Malawi, in cooperation with the United States, hosted this year's African Land Forces Summit. The meeting brought together military chiefs from across the continent to work on regional cooperation and critical peacekeeping skills. For VOA, Lameck Masina reports from the summit that ended Thursday in the Salima district of central Malawi.
Life as a refugee in Jordan suddenly ended for a Syrian carpenter when he was summoned for interrogation, blindfolded and sent on a bus back to Syria with his wife and four children the next morning.

After more than four years in Jordan, the 31-year-old is back in a war zone where he fears for his familys safety and struggles to find work. He hasnt heard from parents left behind in Jordan, presumably because they fear the same fate if they make contact.

Everyone is afraid, he said by Skype from Syrias Daraa province.

Families deported

Deportations from Jordan have spiked in recent months, with entire Syrian families sent back for the first time, including large numbers of children, said two international aid officials. One official said that more than one-third of several thousand refugees who went back to Syria between January and April were forcibly deported, while others returned voluntarily.

Human Rights Watch said it has documented numerous cases since 2014 of Jordan forcibly returning Syrian asylum seekers to Syria. In many cases, the deportations violate international law, which bars returning people to situations where they face danger or persecution, said Lama Fakih, deputy director of the groups Middle East and North Africa division.

Turkey and Lebanon, two other main refugee host countries alongside Jordan, have also deported asylum seekers, she said.

A Jordanian government official confirmed that deportations have taken place, but said refugees are only sent back on security grounds, after an investigation. He would not give a total since the beginning of the year.

The official and the aid agency employees spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the deportations, a contentious issue between Jordan and the international community.

IS concerns

Eight deportees interviewed by The Associated Press on WhatsApp or Skype said they were expelled without due process or apparent reason, or were targeted because they spoke to relatives who live in areas of Syria controlled by Islamic State extremists.

The aid officials said the recent rise in deportations is apparently linked to a security crackdown launched after IS militants killed 10 people in a series of attacks in Jordan in December.

The Jordanian official said his country has the right to protect itself and to expel those it considers a security threat. He said the country is compliant with international humanitarian law.

Human Rights Watch said Jordan has illegally deported vulnerable persons, including war-wounded and children.

Even in cases where individuals are being deported on security grounds, those individuals should be afforded an opportunity to appear before tribunals so that they can raise their concerns, Fakih said. In all cases, if an individual does have a fear of persecution, he should not be returned.

Nevertheless, returning refugees to war zones violates international law, especially when it is done without due process and includes family members, said Jeff Crisp, a former official at the U.N. refugee agency.

Refugees can lose their protected status if they are involved in violent or subversive activity, but only after an investigation, Crisp said.

Some 5 million Syrians fled their country since the outbreak of conflict there in 2011. Close to 660,000 are registered as refugees in Jordan.

Deportees mystified

Two of the deportees interviewed by the AP said they had been approved for resettlement to the United States and were undergoing health and background checks. One is a 30-year-old woman who suffers from multiple sclerosis and requires medical treatment; the other a 40-year-old woman who said she was deported along with 33 relatives.

Most of the deportees insisted on anonymity because they have relatives in Jordan, and said they fear the deportation of family members. Some provided records of refugee registration and other documentation to back their stories.

A 40-year-old man said he believes he got on the radar of the Jordanian security forces because he had an argument with a mosque preacher over Iran, an ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad. He was questioned and deported in December 2015.

The mans wife and five children at first stayed in Jordan, but returned to Syria in November 2016 because they couldnt survive without him.

Life in Daraa is tough. Theres no work. Theres no money. Theres no safety, he said.

A 29-year-old woman said she was sent back to Daraa after being accused of speaking to relatives with suspected IS ties.

They dont give you a chance to prove or protest if you did or didnt do anything, she said.

Her family is constantly on the move in the rebel-held area of Daraa because of escalating airstrikes, she said. They face shortages of food, electricity and water.

We were never expecting to come back here, she said. They sent us from security to death.
As the seven other Arctic Council member nations called on the U.S. to remain a steady partner in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told his counterparts the Trump administration has not yet made a decision on its policies on the issue.

Tillerson, a former ExxonMobile CEO, spoke to the plenary session about U.S. policy on climate change going forward.

Were not going to rush to make a decision. Were going to work to make the right decision for the United States, he said. The Arctic Council will continue to be an important platform as we deliberate on these issues.

Chairmanship to Finland

At Thursdays meeting in Fairbanks, Tillerson recognized the Arctic Council as an indispensable forum for cooperation and affirmed that the United States will continue to be an active member as it transfers chairmanship of the council to Finland.

Issues of great concern, he noted, are advancing the welfare and living conditions of Arctic communities, recognizing each countrys strategic interests in the Arctic, and ensuring vigilance in protecting the fragile environment.

Tillerson passed a birchwood gavel to Finlands Foreign Minister Timo Soini, ending two years of the U.S. chairing the council.

Soini made clear Finland intends to keep the focus on climate change, saying it is the driving force behind unprecedented changes in the Arctic region, with the melting of sea ice and the thawing of the Arctic permafrost.

The Finn official said the Paris Agreement is the cornerstone of global efforts to slow the impact of climate change, and said long-term strategic planning is important for the Arctic region.

Balancing jobs, environment

Several of the foreign ministers said their goal remains to strike a balance between protecting the fragile Arctic environment while preserving and creating more jobs.

Sweden Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom said she wondered what the planet might say if it had a seat at the table at the meeting.

Wallstrom noted the Arctic Sea has long acted as a cooling agent for the rest of the planet, where temperatures last year were the hottest on record for a third year in a row, researchers reported. She warned the costs are coming due, with scientists estimating the cumulative costs of climate change in the Arctic at $90 trillion by the end of this century.

Indigenous fight for survival

Trimble Gilbert, the traditional chief of Arctic Village, Alaska, opened the plenary session to the sounds of indigenous drums and chants. He said indigenous people are fighting for the very survival of their way of life, and their young people have to be able to hunt and fish for their food.

Both Tillerson and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attended the Arctic Council meeting, as did the foreign ministers of Greenland, Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland.

Tillerson and Lavrov did not have a bilateral meeting in Fairbanks; they met in Washington Wednesday, amid the fallout over President Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey.
The parents are worried that if they don't pay the fees college won't allow their ward to appear for exams.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye: A sudden hike in medical course fee by private and deemed medical colleges across the state has left parents with no option, and now the big question confronting them is how to pay such a huge amount. Today a group of parents met Director of Medical Education and Research, but they only got verbal assurance.

The daughter of Mark Fernandis, a resident of Pune, wanted to pursue medical studies after her NEET exam and her family decided to send her to Chiplun's Walavalkar college which is far away from their home in Pune. But now Mark is worried about her next year of college, as they allege the college has hiked the fees by 85 per cent and now they will have to pay more than Rs 7 lakhs as compared to last year's fees of Rs 5 lakhs. To pay this increased fee, Mark and other parents have very little time on their hands.

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"We were shocked when college asked us to pay new fee amount which is 86 per cent more than last year's fees. Our children are also tense as their exam is nearing. Last year, college had promised us that if there will be any hike in fee it will be upto 10 per cent, but this is almost 86 per cent hike they have done," Mark Fernandis said.

Along with Fernandis other parents also met Director of Medical Education and Research who gave them only verbal assurance to resolve this issue. The parents are worried that if they don't pay the fees college won't allow their ward to appear for exams.

"We have got verbal assurance from Director Medical Education And Research. We are hoping that they should do something against this fee hike," said Rashmi Khadilkar, one of the parents of a student of Walavalkar Medical college.

This year state government is filling up NRI and Institutional Quota along with government quota. But right to decide fees of institutional and NRI quota is with medical colleges. Government feels that due to this practice, 'under the table money' will be abolished and students won't have to pay much.

"There is no fee hike that has taken place as media reported. In actual, fees have been reduced. Earlier, institution used to ask more money as fees, but now as we will be filling up all the seats including NRI quota and Institutional Quota there will be fixed fees for it. Students don't have to fetch more from their pockets," said Pravin Shinghare, Director of Medical Education & Research.

From few days Pune based SK Navale Medical University has been making headlines for its high fee of Rs 97 lakhs per annum for PG Medical course, which it has explained as being subject wise.

The government will also take strict action against medical colleges that violate fees rules.

"If someone is demanding fees by violating rules we will take strict action against those colleges. Colleges have to take fees as per rules of Fee Regularly Authority (FRA)," said Girish Mahajan, Minister for Medical Education.

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Also Read:

Delhi Police uncovers Munna Bhai-style entrance scams in medical colleges

Watch Video: Chennai: Medical students, doctors protest, demand NEET shouldn't be scrapped

--- ENDS ---
Venezuela has large caches of weapons that are at risk of falling into the wrong hands, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency told a Senate panel Thursday, adding, "It's a real threat."

CIA Director Mike Pompeo shared that assessment at a Senate intelligence committee hearing. The restive South American country is in its second month of often-violent street protests, with at least 39 deaths resulting from clashes between its socialist government's supporters and foes.

Pompeo's comment came in response to a question from U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. The Florida Republican had asked about threats posed by "groups armed by the regime of Nicolas Maduro to defend him from the protests."

Rubio has suggested that these armed groups, called "colectivos," could sell arms on the black market to drug traffickers or terrorist organizations such as FARC  which recently ended decades of war with Venezuela's neighbor, Colombia  or the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Pompeo acknowledged the threat but said the CIA had no evidence of contacts between terrorists and Venezuela's armed groups.

The groups' actions outside Maduro's control "do represent a risk, but we need more details," Pompeo said. "For now, we have no evidence that it is happening."

The CIA director said such collaborations most likely would have dangerous reverberations throughout the region.

Lost credibility

Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, told the Senate panel that Venezuela's "unpopular" government had lost its credibility after mismanaging its economy and stripping away some democratic norms. Maduro, who has jailed political opponents and delayed long-overdue elections, earlier this month called for a new constitution, fueling more anger among Venezuelans already bitter over severe and chronic shortages of food, medicine and other basics.

Venezuelan government security forces have used tear gas and rubber bullets to quell demonstrations.

"The unpopular and autocratic government of Venezuela will opt for more repressive methods to contain political opponents and discontent in the streets," Coats predicted.

The U.S. government has imposed sanctions on some individuals in Venezuela, including the country's vice president, related to suspected corruption and drug trafficking.

Last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the situation in Venezuela "a real tragedy" but said the U.S. government aimed for "working with others, including [in] interventions by others in Europe," to help resolve it.

Cuba and Mexico in focus

Given Venezuelas flailing economy, the Maduro administration has cut back on providing discounted oil to allies. That figured into Cubas economy contracting by 0.9 percent last year.

Coats predicted Cubas Communist government would "focus on preserving control while managing a recession."

He said U.S. officials also expect the Cuban government will focus on maintaining political control while transitioning to an era without a Castro in power. President Raul Castro announced several years ago that he would retire at the end of his current five-year term, which concludes in early 2018. He became president after his older brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008. The elder Castro died last November.

As for Mexico, U.S. intelligence authorities anticipate increasing political pressure on that government to combat crime and corruption as the 2018 presidential election approaches.

VOA's Spanish service prepared this report.
A court in Azerbaijan has ruled in favor of blocking several independent websites, including that of RFE/RL's Azerbaijani service.

The Sabail district court in Baku ruled Friday that the Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technology's request for the blockage of access to the websites must be met.

RFE/RL said it would appeal the ruling, which it called "another blatant attempt" at silencing its reporting in the country.

In addition to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani service, the ruling affects opposition newspaper Azadliq, Meydan TV and two other Internet TV programs.

The ministry has limited access to the sites since March 27 on the instructions of the Prosecutor-General's Office, which claimed they "pose a threat" to Azerbaijan's national security.

It accused them of "posting content deemed to promote violence, hatred or extremism, violate privacy or constitute slander."

Moves to block the websites came after RFE/RL's Azerbaijani service published investigative reports about financial activities linked to members of President Ilham Aliyev's family and his inner circle.

The investigative reports were produced by RFE/RL in cooperation with the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

"Today's ruling is another blatant attempt by Azerbaijani authorities to try to silence our reporting in Azerbaijan," RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said. "It misrepresents RFE/RL's work in Azerbaijan and violates Azerbaijan's international commitments to respect media freedom. We will appeal it."

Aliyev has ruled the oil-producing former Soviet republic since shortly before the death of his long-ruling father, Heidar Aliyev, in 2003.

He has shrugged off frequent criticism from rights groups and Western governments that say he has jailed critics on false pretenses and abused power to crush dissent.

The hearing into the lawsuit started on April 27.

Samad Rahimli, a lawyer for the Azadliq newspaper, told reporters after the ruling that the lawsuit itself contradicts Azerbaijan's constitution and the country's international obligations.

Baku-based media expert Alasgar Mammadli said the decision amounted to "censorship."

"It is a wrong step that leads to the absolute suppression of freedom of expression and imposes control over the internet in Azerbaijan," Mammadli said.

Mammadli added that the ruling might also lead to the prosecutions of individuals cooperating with the five media outlets.
Strolling through campus at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), you will notice a vivid black-and-yellow sign: Drive slowly. Ocelots.

Dont be fooled. You are unlikely to see an ocelot anywhere on campus or anywhere else in the country. While the striped-and-spotted wild cat was a former school mascot, it is also a federal endangered species. Biologists have estimated there are fewer than 50 remaining in the U.S., almost all of them in Texas.

Build a wall along the border with Mexico, and that number is likely to decrease further because the pool of U.S. ocelots has shrunk to the point where the elusive, territorial animals  ocelots range up to 90 square km  are inbreeding, weakening a population that is already suffering from loss of habitat.

Ocelots best hope

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) best hope to save the ocelot is to connect the waning population in Texas to a larger one in Mexico to provide a migratory corridor and expand the gene pool, FWS writes on its website.

But the ocelots needs are at odds with imperatives to secure the border.

The [Bush-era] wall went up; it further fragmented (ocelot) habit, said Scott Nicol, co-chair of the Sierra Club Borderlands. More walls go up, they will chop through their habitat yet again  making it even less likely that they are going to survive.

Watch: Environmentalists Worry Trumps Wall Will Spell Doom for Border Wildlife

Time running out

In a recent planning document, the Department of Homeland Security named the Rio Grande Valley a high priority area for President Donald Trumps border wall, because of the high rate of undocumented immigrants entering the U.S. here.

It is also a high priority for conservationists. Only 5 percent of the native habitat remains along the lower Rio Grande, yet FWS says it is home to 1,200 species of native plants, 700 species of vertebrates (including nearly 500 bird species), and 300 species of butterflies.

A wall would be devastating to many of them.

This is the coup de grace, said Dr. Alejandro Fierro, a restoration ecologist and assistant professor at UTRGV. A barrier, he said, could lead to the local population extinction of several species, including the ocelot.

Fierro and Nicol say its not just the larger animals that are impacted by barriers, in any forms. An array of plants, birds and ground-dwelling insects, some endangered, could be further impacted if Trumps wall is built, and especially if its made of concrete.

A concrete barrier would be far worse than a bollard wall, Nicol said. Seed-dispersers, such as javelinas  also known as skunk pigs  may eat the fruit of a prickly pear cactus, and they can no longer make it into a chunk of territory and then poop those seeds out. The plant is now being stopped, in the same way that an animal is being stopped.

All it takes is a hurricane

Nicol walks along a section of the current barrier that separates two popular eco-tourist destinations, the World Birding Center and the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The fence is north of the actual border because of its location on a flood plain.

The area, he said, is susceptible to flooding, which is why a 32-kilometer portion of the valleys barrier also serves as a levee, protecting nearby residential areas during tropical storms or hurricanes. But unlike the sloped levee of years past, Nicol said this one has had deadly consequences for smaller terrestrial animals, including the endangered Texas tortoise.

If you are any kind of terrestrial animal, youd just go up and over the levee and then you were on dry land, Nicol said. If there is a [vertical] concrete slab in your way, you can't do that anymore. That terrain is underwater for two to three or more months. Youve got no hope.

Mayor Joel Villarreal of Rio Grande City, one of few remaining border towns in the Rio Grande Valley without a barrier, is not convinced that a new wall itself could withstand the worst of South Texas hurricanes, at least not near his town.

One of the key questions engineers must ask, he said, is whether the geography could allow a wall in the first place.

In 2011, we had a flood that affected the lives of many individuals, Villarreal told VOA. If we would have had the wall at that point, I dont think [it] would have survived that flood. For a river to change its trajectory, he added, all it takes is a hurricane.

With or without a wall, withstanding a storm becomes a matter of preparedness for the towns people. But for many other species, the wall itself would be a barrier to survival.
A sweeping trade agreement, ranging from banking to beef, has been reached between Washington and Beijing, the U.S. Commerce Department announced on Thursday.

It was pretty much a Herculean accomplishment to get this done, said U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade.

The breakthrough results from an agreement U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping made during their meeting at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6.

Trump was briefed more or less every single day as negotiations progressed since then, Ross said.

Beef imports

Following one more round of technical consultations, China has agreed to allow U.S. beef imports no later than July 16, consistent with international food and animal safety standards, Ross told reporters at the White House.

The United States Cattlemens Association applauded the agreement, saying market access to China is crucial for its members.

Success in this arena will drive the U.S. cattle market and increase demand for U.S. beef in China, association president Kenny Graner told VOA.

In exchange, Washington and Beijing are to resolve outstanding issues that would allow imports to the U.S. of cooked poultry from China as soon as possible, according to the Commerce Department.

Another significant breakthrough will see American liquefied natural gas (LNG) going to China. Under the agreement Chinese companies will be permitted at any time to negotiate all types of contractual arrangement with U.S. LNG exporters, including long term contracts, according to the Commerce Department.

This is a very big change, said Ross, noting China is trying to wean itself off coal at a time it doesnt produce enough natural gas to meet its needs.

Financial, other business services

Among other action listed in the 100-Day Action Plan:

* China is to allow, by July 16, wholly foreign-owned financial services firms to provide credit ratings services and to begin licensing procedures for credit investigation.

* U.S.-owned suppliers of electronic payment services (EPS) will be able to apply for licensing in China under new guidelines.

* China is to issue bond underwriting and settlement licenses to two qualified U.S. financial institutions by July 16.

* Chinas National Biosafety Committee is to meet by the end of this month to conduct science-based evaluations of all eight pending U.S. biotechnology product applications to assess the safety of the products for their intended use. Those that pass the tests are to get certificates within 20 working days.

The outcome of the joint dialogue will also see a United States delegation attending Chinas Belt and Road Forum in Beijing next week.

A U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue will be held this summer, according to the Commerce Department, to deepen engagement on these and other issues.

There are probably 500 items you could potentially discuss in the wider one-year plan for bilateral trade, Ross added.
Chinese rights lawyer Xie Yang has been released on bail after recanting accusations of police torture during his trial on Monday. But he is still under tight surveillance by secret police, according to his wife.

A court in the central Chinese city of Changsha has yet to announce a verdict, and legal experts say a ruling may not come any time soon.

Rights groups suspect that Xies swift release is likely a trade-off and another way of controlling rights advocates without having to put them in formal detention, a tactic that will make it harder for the international community to keep the pressure on.

No genuine freedom

Xies wife, Chen Guiqiu, has fled China and is now in the United States with her two daughters.

Escorted by secret police, Xie Yang arrived home on May 9 to celebrate his mothers 80th birthday. But hours later was taken away along with his [octogenarian] parents to a residence in a remote village deep into the mountains. He still has no genuine freedom, Chen told VOA.

Chen says that when she spoke with Xie on Wednesday, her husband sounded indifferent when she shared details of the intimidation and harassment suffered by their family while in China and recounted their escape in March to the United States.

She said she thinks it was inconvenient for Xie to speak freely, but also noted that his responses were strange and abnormal. Chen said her husband demanded she and their daughters return to China from the United States, promising that Chinese authorities would keep the family safe.

Despite this, Chen said their daughters were overjoyed to learn of their fathers release.

They are thrilled, in particular, my eldest daughter burst into tears after learning of his release. [They] miss their father very much. Its been almost two years since they last saw their father, who was arrested without any warning, Chen said, adding that she holds little hope that Xie will one day be allowed to visit them in the U.S.







Trade-off

The familys lawyer, Chen Jiangang, who was denied access to Mondays trial, believes Xies release is part of a trade-off.

He insisted what he disclosed in January about Xies torture by Hunan police was based on Xies own words during their meetings, even though his client denied the allegations in court.

Now that Xie has successfully been silenced, Chen said authorities are working to shut him up as well. Chens family was briefly detained in the southern province of Yunnan last week.

Xie Yang lied and denied being tortured. That helped the Chinese government save face and, in return, the Chinese government would promise to let him keep his license. This is a trade-off, Chen told VOA.

Why are they after me? They are seeking revenge as I was the one who made public his allegations of torture, which invited criticism from 11 countries, he added.

Another show trial

Frances Eve, a researcher with Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Xies release, likely in exchange for his guilty plea, was the governments latest show trial to incriminate rights defenders.

She said as the 19th Communist Party Congress draws closer, China appears to be pushing the cases of rights lawyers through the judicial system because holding them in pre-trial detention easily becomes a lightning rod for international criticism.

Its a way to control people without having them in formal detention, which is harder for international advocacy efforts to keep the pressure on because its harder to know what is exactly happening to them when theyre kind of just being controlled in house arrest [or] surveillance, Eve said.





Keep speaking up



But such tactics are unlikely to silence the larger debate and widespread concerns about a nationwide crackdown on rights lawyers that began on July 9, 2015.



More than 300 lawyers have been caught up in the crackdown, which is aimed at those assisting dissidents and government critics. Most of those lawyers have been released, but 32 have been indicted and seven others are awaiting trial.



On Friday, Wang Qiaoling, the wife of prominent rights lawyer Li Heping, and other supporters filed a suit with the Supreme Court demanding an investigation into the polices torture of Li as well as information surrounding the disappearance of another lawyer, Wang Quanzhang.

After a 669-day detention, Li returned home earlier this week after being convicted of state subversion late last month and sentenced to three years in prison with a four-year reprieve. Lis wife insists he suffered cruel torture and urged authorities to get to the bottom of the alleged abuse of power.

Meanwhile, the Washington D.C.-based Congressional-Executive Commission on China has expressed alarm about what it called Chinas continued assault against rights lawyers.



If China persists in viewing its own citizens with suspicion and hostility and if it continues to ruthlessly disregard their most basic rights, it will never be viewed as a responsible global stakeholder, the commission said in a statement.

The international community needs to acknowledge that Xi Jinpings increasingly severe suppression of internationally-recognized civil and political right has real implications for regional stability and bilateral cooperation, it added.
The recent detention of two American educators by North Korean authorities is raising questions about whether the Christian-funded academy where they taught should be operating in this highly repressive state, where proselytizing is a serious crime.

North Korean state media confirmed this week that Kim Hak-song, a Chinese-Korean and naturalized U.S. citizen, who was working as an agriculture researcher at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), was arrested on suspicion of hostile acts against the state.

A PUST accounting instructor, Kim Sang Dok, a U.S. citizen who also goes by the name Tony Kim, was arrested in April on the same vague charges at the Pyongyang International Airport.

It is unclear if these two American citizens were apprehended for trying to spread Christian beliefs in North Korea, which is a capital crime and considered an existential threat to the unquestionable authority of the ruling Kim family. But their connections to the Christian-funded school and North Koreas precedent of charging missionaries with hostile acts suggest the pretext of illicit religious activities may be used to justify their arrests.

Constant surveillance

A spokesman for the university said the arrests of the two faculty members were not connected in any way with the work of PUST.

The school, founded in 2010 by Korean-American evangelical Christian James Kim educates the children of the North Korean elite. There are 500 undergraduate students and 60 graduate students.

Korean-American writer Suki Kim taught English at PUST in 2014 and later documented her experience in the book, Without You, There Is No Us: Undercover Among the Sons of North Koreas Elite.

During a 2015 Google Talk seminar, she described how the faculty was always under surveillance, their classes recorded, movements restricted, and how her government counterpart minder would casually refer to topics she included in personal emails.

So I would say (in an email) for example I woke up today at 4 a.m., or whatever, and then the minder would repeat that to me. He would say, Did you get up at 4 a.m. this morning? You must be tired, Suki Kim said.

Vulnerable situation

Although the school adheres to the government prohibition on proselytizing, it also attracts many evangelical Christians to become volunteer faculty members that receive no income for teaching. Kim Hak Song, who was arrested this week, had been doing missionary work in China before joining PUST.

Suki Kim recently wrote in the Washington Post that while PUST complies with the restrictions on overt religious activities, their long-term mission is to convert North Koreans, through seemingly unconditional kindness, with the hopes of those beneficiaries eventually turning to the religion out of gratitude.

She also wrote that the American evangelicals on the PUST faculty are in a particularly vulnerable situation if the Kim Jong Un government wants to send a political warning to the United States, and that, the timing of North Koreas arrest of Tony Kim is no accident.

Tensions between North Korea and the United States have risen over Pyongyangs nuclear and ballistic missile tests. U.S. President Donald Trump has been pressuring China to increase sanctions on Pyongyang to halt its nuclear program and has emphasized the United States would consider the use of military force to respond to future tests.

North Korea in the past had detained Americans to gain outside concessions for their release, which sometime involved high-profile U.S. missions sent to secure the release of detainees.

Sanctions

PUST spends roughly $2 million annually on operating expenses, the school said in a statement. Much of it comes from Korean churches in the United States and South Korea. The education is free, and the curriculum includes electronic and computer engineering, international finance, and agriculture and life sciences.

Supporters say this type of assistance and engagement will change hearts and minds over time, and foster constructive future relationships between the next generation of North Korean leaders and the outside world.

However critics like Joshua Stanton, a Washington-based attorney and author of the One Free Korea blog, has accused the school of providing vital technical training to future North Korean hackers and has called for PUST to be suspended in accordance with United Nations sanctions prohibiting activities that may contribute to the proliferation sensitive nuclear activities or ballistic missile-related programs.

One could hardly invent a better demonstration of how engagement has failed to change Pyongyang than a hostage crisis at PUST, he recently wrote in his blog.

Korean-American Kim Dong Chul is also serving 10 years on espionage charges and Otto Warmbier, a University of Virginia student, was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in 2016 for removing a propaganda poster from a hotel.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
Beer cookies, coffee flour and bananas that don't brown are just some of the innovations on offer to fight food waste.

Plus smart scales that measure exactly what chefs chuck then list the deluge of edibles they've unknowingly binned.

As the fight against climate change increasingly focuses on food waste as a source of planet-warming emissions, entrepreneurs are coming up with crafty ways to reduce the glut of produce that gets thrown.

About a third of food produced each year is never eaten either because it is spoiled after harvest and during transportation, or thrown away by shops and consumers, according to U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Discarded food ends up in landfills where it rots, releasing harmful greenhouse gasses, while the water, energy and fuel needed to grow, store and transport it is wasted.

Speaking at conference in Milan this week, former U.S. President Barack Obama said innovation was key to reduce emissions from agriculture and achieve a sustainable food future with enough for everyone to eat.

Part of this is also going to be wasting less food ... especially when nearly 800 million men, women and children worldwide face the injustice of chronic hunger and malnutrition, he said.

Obama's address was the climax of a four-day food industry conference in the Italian city.

Here are some of the best food waste innovations showcased at the event:

Demetra

Produced by Italian biotechnology start-up Green Code, Demetra is a natural post-harvest treatment that extends fruit's shelf life.

It consists of a mixture of plant extracts that stops fruit from ripening  delaying the rotting process  while retaining its nutrients, said Green Code co-founder Emiliano Gentilini.

As a consequence food can be kept much longer, Gentilini told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The mixture is applied on fruit by nebulization or immersion but the company is developing an easier, dry application method for developing countries.

Demetra was awarded a 2017 U.N. award for Innovative Ideas and Technology on Agribusiness on Wednesday.

Winnow

British start-up Winnow helps commercial chefs cut waste by measuring just what they throw from the kitchen every day.

It provides them with a smart scale connected to a tablet that weights all waste. Staff tap on the screen what is being thrown and receive detailed reports on waste patterns and costs that allow chefs to make adjustments.

Chefs systematically under-estimate how much food they waste, said Marc Zornes, co-founder of Winnow.

On average, he said large kitchens bin between 10 and 20 percent of food they buy. Zornes said restaurants using his technology could save up to eight percent on food costs and cut waste by more than half.

RISE

New York-based food tech startup RISE uses spent barley, a by-product of beer production, to make flour for bread, pizza, cookies and other baked goods.

In the United States currently $1.2 billion a year is spent to send to landfill about 5 million tonnes (5.5 million tons) of grains that are mashed and boiled to make beer, according to the company.

RISE charges a fee to collect spent barley from breweries, which it then processes into flour to sell to commercial bakers, chefs and food manufacturers, said co-founder Jessica Aguirre.

The company currently operates from a Brooklyn kitchen but Aguirre said the model could be easily replicated elsewhere.

There are breweries everywhere, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Our technology is very simple and can be easily implemented in developing countries, she added.

Other firms such as Coffee Flour and Renewal Mill use similar processes to make food from ingredients left over by the industrial production of items such as coffee and soy milk.
A report in a major U.S. newspaper late Thursday said President Donald Trump summoned Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey to the White House in January where the president asked Comey to "pledge his loyalty to him."

Comey was fired by Trump Tuesday, creating a political firestorm and raising concerns in some circles about a constitutional crisis.

The New York Times said Comey refused to make the pledge, but instead told Trump that he would "always be honest with him." Trump pressed Comey several times for his loyalty, and finally Comey told the president he would have the FBI director's "honest loyalty," according to the newspaper account.

Comey told associates about the dinner and asked them not to tell anyone while he was FBI director, but the associates feel free to talk about details of the dinner now that Comey is no longer at the FBI helm, the Times reported.



In an interview with NBC News Thursday, Trump gave a different account of the dinner. The president said Comey requested the meeting because the FBI director wanted to keep his job. The president did not mention a loyalty pledge request.

In the television interview, the president said he had asked the head of the nations prime law enforcement agency whether he was being investigated.



Trump said he asked Comey if its possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, You are not under investigation.



The president, in the television interview, repeated I am not under investigation when asked about Comeys sworn testimony that there is an ongoing probe into his 2016 president campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government.



'Highly inappropriate'

Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange "highly inappropriate" at a minimum.

There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation, Moss told VOA.



But Moss, deputy executive director of The James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability, added it is difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation.



Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor specializing in constitutional law, wrote on Twitter it is now totally clear that Trumps firing of Comey was an obstruction of justice. That was the first article of impeachment against Nixon.



That is a reference to former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 less than a month after the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump asserts in Thursdays interview he would have fired Comey even if top Justice Department officials had not recommended it, calling former President Barack Obama's appointee a showboat. He's a grandstander.

Comey was directing investigations into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, along with possible meddling by Moscow in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Rosenstein memo

The White House on Thursday continued to defend its dismissal of the FBI chief and denied it tried to put the responsibility on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo for the abrupt removal.

I dont think there was ever an attempt to pin the decision on the deputy attorney general for Comeys firing, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House principal deputy press secretary.



However, Sanders, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and even Vice President Mike Pence earlier had asserted Trumps firing decision was based on the deputy attorney generals memo.

At the center of the scrutiny is whether Rosenstein was instructed to draft a memo justifying Comey's dismissal or whether he decided to write the document without direction.

Rosenstein was upset with suggestions made by the White House that his memo suggested he called for Comeys firing Tuesday, according to The Washington Post and ABC News.

Rosensteins memo mentioned Comeys mishandling of last years investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Russian investigation

However, news media reports quote sources who assert Comey was ousted because he wanted to intensify the Russia investigation.

The firing has prompted Democrats to amplify their calls for an independent investigation of the Russia case. The attorneys general of 20 states are also calling for appointment of a special counsel.
Calling Myanmar a new democracy, the U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOA the latest manifestation of increasing anti-Muslim sentiment in the Southeast Asian nation is a problem rooted in the rule of law.

The early morning confrontation Wednesday began late Tuesday night when a group of nationalists complained to police that several Rohingya were illegally hiding in a house in a Yangon neighborhood, according to local press accounts.

Police who investigated refused to arrest the men, saying they were local, non-Rohingya Muslims allowed to be there.

Authorities in Myanmar, a Buddhist majority country, consider most Rohingya to be resident foreigners, not citizens, according to Human Rights Watch. The majority of them live in western Myanmars Rakhine State and cannot travel without special permission.

An Associated Press reporter saw approximately 30 Buddhists, including monks, in the neighborhood. Some were armed with stones, as were many of the areas Muslim residents. Police fired two warning shots to disperse the crowds, and at least one Muslim man was hospitalized with injuries.

Rule of law

To me, this is really a matter of the rule of law, the U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, told VOAs Burmese Service.

Emphasizing that the only information he had about the incident came from press accounts, Marciel said, Whats important in this case, or any other case like this, is that the law be applied fairly. He added that it is problematic to have citizens accompanying law enforcement to look into a possible crime.  It raises a lot of concerns, a lot of problems.

Calling Myanmar a new democracy, Marciel said that the hope would be that as Myanmar builds the rule of law, citizens would raise any concerns they have about illegal activities with law enforcement, and that law enforcement would take over from there so you avoid situations of crowds getting involved to enforce what they see as the law.

But, he added it takes time for societies to learn how they want their democracy to operate and what rule of law means.

The Wednesday night incident was the second one in less than a month in Yangon, Myanmars largest city. On April 28, ultranationalist monks and their supporters forced two Muslim schools to close. Police stood by as the protesters chained the doors of the schools, according to Human Rights Watch. As of May 8, the schools remained closed.

Militant monks

A militant organization of Buddhist monks known as Ma Ba Tha has spearheaded protests against Muslims. Its leaders have been accused of stirring up mob violence leading to the deaths of Muslims and destruction of their property around the country. Most of the anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar since 2012 has occurred in Rakhine State, where the Rohingya are accused of entering the country illegally from Bangladesh.

Its a tremendous concern that this is happening in Yangon, Derek Mitchell, the former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar told VOAs Burmese Service.

Although Myanmar prohibits religious discrimination its very sensitive when youre dealing with monks in this very highly Buddhist country, a very proudly Buddhist country, Mitchell said.

Mitchell, who served in Myanmar from July 2012, and departed March 2016, said that it is difficult to say why the tension is erupting in Yangon.

Broader problem

Mitchell said that while the situation in Rakhine State has attracted the most attention, the incidents in Yangon reflect a broader issue of anti-Muslim sentiment in Myanmar, something that cannot be blamed on State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who is the de facto government leader.

I think she and the NLD government are sincere and are doing everything they possibly can to try to root it out and prevent it, Mitchell said. But its very difficult to block out and change minds and mindsets.

This report originated in the VOA Burmese Service.


The European Union has demanded urgent talks with the United States over a possible extension of a ban on passengers taking laptops into the cabins of commercial aircraft to include some European countries, saying any threats faced are common.

The Trump administration is likely to extend the ban already applicable to 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, officials said.

In a letter to John Kelly, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Elaine Chao, U.S. Secretary of Transportation, and seen by Reuters, the EU executive said it was important that information concerning possible threats involving EU airports be shared.

"We therefore reiterate our willingness to pursue constructive dialogue and we propose that meetings are held as a matter of urgency, both at political and technical level, to jointly assess the risk and review possible common measures," wrote Violeta Bulc, EU Transport Commissioner, and Dimitris Avramopoulos, Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship.

While no decision has yet been taken, any restrictions could hit major European carriers such as Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France-KLM and industry sources have said airlines and airports have already been working on possible contingency measures.

The United States imposed the ban in March and was quickly followed by Britain which imposed restrictions on a slightly different set of routes.

European aviation security experts are meeting in Brussels on Thursday to consider possible responses to any extension of the ban. Two EU officials said the discussions had so far concentrated on maintaining a common front.

The EU Ambassador to the United States will meet with Kelly in the coming days to discuss the issue, one of the officials said.

"It is in our common interest that we work closely together to address developing threats in aviation, in advance of any potential applications of new security measures to air carriers operating from the EU to the U.S.," the Commissioners wrote.

Malaysia Airlines CEO Peter Bellew told Reuters on the sidelines of a CAPA Center for aviation conference near Dublin that an extension of the laptop ban would be a "pity" and make it more difficult for people to travel.

"I do think it is going to have a fundamental impact on travel to north America and I don't think that is going to go away quickly," Bellew said.

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.
By Suhani Singh: Director: Akshay Roy

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Parineeti Chopra, Rajatava Datta, Aparajita Adhya, Prabal Panjabi, Abish Mathew

Rating: (2/5)

What new can one say about love, asks Bindu (Parineeti Chopra) to Abhimanyu (Ayushmann Chatterjee) the man who has been besotted with her since he was five. The answer, after two hours of this romantic comedy, is nothing new really.

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Abhimanyu hearts Bindu. He gazes at her fondly, and smiles at her antics. After two decades of knowing her, he desperately wants to forget her. Sadly he doesn't have at his disposal the services of Lacuna Inc, the company that Joel and Clementine use in Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman's delightful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Instead Abhi writes on a typewriter no less, reminisces a lot by watching Bindu's video highlight reel in which she jumps and strikes fashion cover looks, and repeatedly listens to a mix tape of their favourite songs. This in a nutshell is Meri Pyaari Bindu with adorable Bengali parents and quirkier friends thrown in for some distraction. Shuttling between the past and present, often is slow motion, little is known about Bengali babu Abhimanyu, aka the one with the unfortunate pet name Bubla, and his South Indian muse, Bindu, other than their love for music.

Suprotim Sengupta's story tracks over 20 years in the life of neighbours turned friends turned distant friends turned couple turned estranged lovers. Director Akshay Roy is left with an overdose of nostalgia in a few memorable moments and episodes rather than a thoughtful, engaging narrative.

It starts out all hunky-dory as Abhimanyu and Bindu meet as kids. The relationship gradually evolves into Abhimanyu following his childhood crush all throughout college, seeming like a 'chamcha' in process. Eventually the two part ways and move through Australia, Mumbai, Goa and back to Mumbai. The constantly changing geographic coordinates may give a sense of time but also rob the viewers of an ability to connect with the two and their story. It explains why despite being a love story, it is Abhimanyu's few exchanges with his parents (Rajatava Datta, Aparajita Adhya) and friends (Prabal Punjabi and Abish Mathew) that really stand out. It may also do with the fact that the five chapter trailers have already spoiled the best of Abhimanyu-Bindu's adventures. Abhimanyu has no shades of grey compared to Bindu who is shown here as a restless soul, a young woman trying to figure what she wants and struggling with her singing career. Our imperfections make us more human which is why Bindu as a character resonates and Parineeti, in her first on-screen role in over two years, brings the joie de vivre necessary for the part. To show that this is not another spunky young heroine, there is an estranged father-daughter arc included which fails to deliver the dramatic potency because it comes out of nowhere.

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Ultimately the perception of Bindu viewers get is through the dreamy-eyed lens of the lovable fool Abhimanyu. Bindu may be central to his universe, but ultimately it is his universe that gets precedence in Sengupta's words. It explains why the pivotal bit about Bindu's professional pursuit is half-baked, offering little context. For all its good intent of deviating from the romcom tropes towards the end, it also feels like the titular heroine gets her sense of contentment from suppressing aspiration. Khurrana is likeable as the banker turned a pulp fiction writer who is unable to get Bindu out of his head. But still by the end of it he seems like an insensitive boyfriend than a devout lover.

This film about the eternalness of first love has its moments - the nifty use of a few old hits such as Meri Pyaari Bindu and Sapno Ki Rani - and is laden with nostalgia (Dear old Rs 500 note, how we miss you) but unlike those songs in the mix-tape, Meri Pyaari Bindu fails to be an all-time classic.

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MOVIE REVIEW: Meri Pyaari Bindu

ALSO READ: Our Pyaari Bindu

ALSO WATCH: Parineeti Chopra, the rising star of Bollywood

--- ENDS ---
Pests known as fall armyworms are destroying crops in southern Africa and have spread north to affect 20 countries.

The fall armyworm is an invasive species that is native to North and South America, said Sina Luchen, regional agronomist for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Johannesburg, South Africa.

"These types of shocks normally affect the poorest people, the most vulnerable farmers, and in [sub-Saharan Africa] up to 70 percent of the people derive their food security and livelihoods from agriculture," Luchen told VOA.

Africa has its own species of armyworm, but Luchen said that the fall armyworm has been more harmful because farmers were not aware of the pest and may have been slow in reporting it to authorities.

The fall armyworms destroy maize crops before turning into moths to travel to their next destination. To date, they have destroyed about 300,000 hectares of maize, according to the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico.

The pests have destroyed crops in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland. More recently, farmers in Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda are saying their farms have been hit by the fall armyworms.

A farmer in Kirundo, Burundi, said the local harvest has been decimated.

"If we were to show you our farms, you would be shocked to see the damage they have caused," she told VOA's Central Africa service.

In neighboring Rwanda, the military has joined the fight by airlifting pesticides to affected regions and spraying the crops.

The pests are difficult to eradicate since they have a short life cycle and procreate in abundance. During a two-week life cycle, a moth will lay up to 2,000 eggs, typically on young maize plants. When the larvae hatch, they burrow into the plant and destroy it.

"We, frankly, had no solution," said a Rwandan farmer. "We would spray the crops today, but they would resurface the next day. Now that we have pesticides, I believe this will work, although we would've preferred to have the pesticides a little early. It would have made a difference."

FAO's Luchen said pesticides are also costly. For instance, he said, Brazil has spent up to $600 million per year to manage the armyworm. These farmers do so by applying two sprayings per week while the crop is growing, a costly process that may not be affordable for African farmers.

"That is an intense use of pesticides," Luchen said. "Our farmers in Africa cannot afford the costs of such use of pesticides."

Luchen said the FAO is hoping to teach a more low-cost and eco-friendly approach to combating the fall armyworm.

"What we are advocating for is the use of an integrated approach which looks at not only chemical applications, but also looks at biocontrol. It looks at the use of surveillance systems in order to have early detections to ensure that when interventions are necessary, it will be effective, because this pest is quite tenacious," he said.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte enjoys widespread popular support nearly a year into his deadly anti-crime campaign, despite a wall of criticism from abroad over suspected extrajudicial killings.

Eighty percent of Filipinos surveyed in the first quarter of this year placed much trust in Duterte, who took office in June on pledges to eradicate crime, especially illegal drugs. The Manila-based research institution Social Weather Stations says the president has received an excellent rating in surveys for four quarters. Fellow survey agency Pulse Asia found in March that 79 percent of people polled approve of the governments effort to control crime.

Filipinos often say they feel safer now compared to the period before Duterte, former mayor of the countrys second largest city, took office. The president, known for tough language, said before taking office that he would order police to kill drug suspects.

Im happy with the curfew for minors, said Clarence Minao, a 37-year-old mother and local government employee in the southern city Cagayan de Oro. Before there was no implementation of that, so at least now there is. So its safer for the kids and also for adults, because during nighttime in the street there (are) a lot of bystanders, so you dont know if theyre on drugs or doing bad things to you.

Other Filipinos, including inhabitants of the capital, Manila, say they see drops in violent crime, theft and even illegal traffic maneuvers. Increased policing deters criminals, they say, making urban neighborhoods feel safer.

I think the reason why criminality is low is because of the fear, said Antonio Contreras, political scientist at De La Salle University in the Philippines. President Duterte came in strongly on that, being an anti-criminal.

Property crimes still rose 6.3 percent in the past quarter, while violent crime and presence of many drug addicts held steady, Social Weather Stations found in another survey.

Sentiment in the Philippines clashes with critics abroad, including officials in Europe, the United Nations and leaders in the Catholic Church. The New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch, which is also critical of the anti-drug campaign, estimates 7,000 people have died in extrajudicial killings at the hands of police or their agents who are looking for drug dealers.

In terms of any palpable change or perceived change in safety in the Philippines, the fact is the war on drugs has resulted in the extrajudicial killings of thousands of mostly urban slum dwellers, some of the countrys poorest and most marginalized and vulnerable citizens, said Deputy Asia Director Phelim Kine.

And in the areas where those people live, residents live literally in a state of fear, concerned that they too could be the next who are targeted by police or 'unidentified gunmen,' who Human Rights Watch research indicates are police in plain clothes or police agents, he said.

Philippine officials have acknowledged killings in the course of stopping trade in illegal drugs. Usage rates of shabu, a methamphetamine strain, was higher in the Philippines in 2012 than anywhere else in East Asia, according to the U.N. World Drug Report. But Dutertes government rejects claims of systematic extrajudicial killings and says foreign critics fail to see progress in easing crime.

Duterte called Barack Obama a son of a whore in September, fearing the former U.S. president would lecture him over human rights at an international event, Philippine media said. In December he called the United Nations human rights chief an idiot.

On Monday, Philippine Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano told a U.N. Human Rights Council session that his government was not sponsoring a wave of extrajudicial killings. Duterte had sent Cayetano to Geneva for a council review of his country. A U.N. special rapporteur visited Manila for a ceremony earlier in the month, but the official, who is critical of Dutertes anti-drug campaign, declined the presidents offer to debate him.

Police have arrested 64,917 drug personalities during more than 53,000 busts so far during Dutertes term, Cayetano said. Over the previous six years, 93,000 busts were made, he said. People may be killed, he said, when suspects violently resist arrest.

Some of the critics of the Duterte Administration, including our very own Commission on Human Rights, a senator critic and some local media changed the definition of extra-judicial killings, therefore deceiving the public and foreign media into believing that theres a sudden wave of state-sponsored extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, Cayetano told the review session. This is absolutely not true.

He asked the Council to interview people in the Philippines rather than accept his view or that of the presidents critics.
A much anticipated auction for one of the world's largest diamonds fizzled on Thursday when the government of Sierra Leone rejected a $7.8 million bid for the rough, egg-sized stone, saying it failed to meet its own valuation.

The 709-carat gem is the second largest ever discovered in the West African country and was unearthed in March in the eastern Kono region by a Christian pastor who gave it to the government to handle the sale.

Five bids were handed to auctioneers in a sealed brown envelope, ranging from $2 million to $7.8 million. The top bid was made by a man in a white shirt and light trousers on behalf of Belgium diamond dealer Ray Diam BVBA.

"We've decided not to sell the diamond today because the highest bid price ... does not match the government reserve price," Sahr Wonday, chief auctioneer and head of the National Minerals Agency, told a packed room.

The government now hopes to get more for the stone at an international auction in either Antwerp, Belgium or Tel Aviv in Israel, Wonday said, without giving further detail.

Diamonds fueled a decade-long civil war in Sierra Leone that ended in 2002 and killed 50,000 people. Rebels forced civilians in the east to mine the stones and bought weapons with the proceeds, leading to the term "blood diamonds."

The United Nations lifted a ban on diamond exports from Sierra Leone in 2003, though the $113 million sector is plagued by smuggling.

The diamond up for auction on Thursday is the second largest ever found in Sierra Leone after the 968.9-carat Star of Sierra Leone which was found by miners in 1972.

Other African gems are even larger, including the 3,106-carat Cullinan diamond, which was found in South Africa in 1905. It was cut into several polished gems, the largest of which are part of Britain's crown jewels.

Emmanuel Momoh, the pastor who found the new diamond in March, was happy to wait for another auction.

"I was unhappy with the highest bid price," said Momoh. His stone, he said, "is worth a lot more than $7.8 million."
Multinational military drills on Guam designed to show support for the free passage of vessels in international waters amid concerns China may restrict access to the South China Sea have been indefinitely postponed after a French landing craft ran aground Friday.

U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Grimes, chief of staff for Joint Region Marianas, told reporters he didnt know when the drills would resume.

A French catamaran landing craft ran aground just offshore, said Jeff Landis, a spokesman for Naval Base Guam.

The vessel didnt hit coral or spill any fuel, he said. No one was injured. Fridays landing was meant to be a rehearsal for a drill at Tinian island Saturday, Landis said.

Four nations participate

The exercises involving the U.S., U.K., France and Japan were expected to begin Friday and last a week.

The drills around Guam and Tinian islands were scheduled to include amphibious landings, delivering forces by helicopter and urban patrols.

Two French ships on a four-month deployment to the Indian and Pacific oceans were to be featured in the drills. Joining were Japanese forces, U.K. helicopters and 70 U.K. troops deployed with the French amphibious assault ship FS Mistral. Parts of the exercise were to feature British helicopters taking U.S. Marines ashore from a French vessel.

South China Sea

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and has aggressively tried to fortify its foothold in recent years by transforming seven mostly submerged reefs into island outposts, some with runways and radars and, more recently, weapons systems. This has prompted criticism from other nations, who also claim the atolls, and from the United States, which insists on freedom of navigation in international waters.

This week the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote President Donald Trump to express concern that the U.S. hadnt conducted freedom of navigation operations since October.

The letter from Republican Sen. Bob Corker, Democrat Sen. Ben Cardin and five other senators supported a recent assessment by the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific that China is militarizing the South China Sea and is continuing a methodical strategy to control it.

The letter, dated Wednesday and obtained by The Associated Press, urged the administration to routinely exercise freedom of navigation and overflight. The senators described the South China Sea as critical to U.S. national security interests and to peace in the Asia-Pacific.

The Guam exercises come amid modestly growing European interest in the South China Sea, said David Santoro, a senior fellow for nuclear policy at Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu think tank.

What Im hearing from the French and to some degree the British, is an increased interest in whats going on in Asia and how they can help, Santoro said. As for North Korea, Santoro said Pyongyang would likely be watching but he didnt think the exercises were intended to send any signal to the country.

Japan, which sent 50 soldiers and 160 sailors and landing craft, has been investing in amphibious training so it can defend its own islands. Tokyo is particularly concerned China might attempt to take over rocky, uninhabited outcrops in the East China Sea that it controls but Beijing claims.

Guam and Tinian are about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) south of Tokyo. Theyre about the same distance to the east from Manila, Philippines.
Armed gunmen shot and killed a prominent Mexican activist dedicated to searching for "disappeared" persons in the violent northern state of Tamaulipas, authorities said Thursday.

Miriam Rodriguez died en route to the hospital after being shot multiple times Wednesday  Mother's Day in Mexico  at her home in drug gang-ravaged Tamaulipas.

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) condemned the killing, saying it underscored the government's failure to keep the public safe and prevent rights violations of people working as human rights advocates.

After her daughter went missing in 2014, Rodriguez began a search and eventually found her remains in the Tamaulipas town of San Fernando, according to the Comunidad Ciudadana en Busqueda de Desaparecidos en Tamaulipas, a local civic society group committed to searching for the disappeared.

Months later she warned authorities about the perpetrators of the crime, the group said in a statement.

Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios said the state had been protecting Rodriguez, sending police patrols three times a day to her house. Barrios also said nine people had been put on trial for her daughter's kidnapping and murder.

The number of people in Mexico disappearing under suspicious circumstances, often related to drug violence, rose to 30,000 by the end of 2016, with Tamaulipas registering 5,563 missing, the highest state total, according to the CNDH.

Comunidad Ciudadana called on the United Nations and the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission to come to the aid of activists and human rights defenders in Tamaulipas because the state and federal governments had been unable to protect them.

Well over 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the past decade.

"Mexico has become a very dangerous place for those who have the courage to devote their lives to search for missing persons," Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International director for the Americas, said in response to Rodriguez's slaying.

"The nightmare they face, not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives, and the dangers they face in their work, which they perform given the negligent response from the authorities, is alarming," Guevara said.
A Palestinian man was killed Friday during a stone-throwing incident with Israeli soldiers in the occupied West Bank, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.

The Israeli military says about 100 Palestinians were engaging in a violent riot and throwing rocks at soldiers.

"In response to the threat, the soldiers fired riot dispersal means," a spokeswoman said.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the man was shot in the chest during the altercation.

The dead man was participating in protests that are held weekly near Ramallah in support of several hundred Israeli-held prisoners currently engaging in a strike protesting prison conditions.
Thousands of soldiers who mutinied earlier this year in Ivory Coast, paralyzing the country and dealing a blow to its post-war success story, have agreed to drop their demands for further bonus payments, a spokesman for the group said Thursday.

The pledge, if honored, would greatly ease pressure on government finances squeezed by a steep decline in world cocoa prices and earlier payments to the mutineers. But some of the soldiers criticized the agreement and said they were not informed of it in advance.

The representative for the group, whose name was given only as Sergeant Fofana, apologized on behalf of the soldiers during a meeting with President Alassane Ouattara in the commercial capital Abidjan.

He thanked the president for the earlier bonuses and the promises to improve the soldiers living conditions.

Given such sacrifices granted to us during this difficult time, we, soldiers ... definitively renounce all financial demands, Fofana said in a statement broadcast on state television.

Fast-growing economy

Ivory Coast has emerged from a 2002-2011 conflict as one of the worlds fastest growing economies, catching the eye of foreign investors. However, the mutinies showed that deep divisions persist, particularly in the ranks of a military assembled from ex-rebel and loyalist fighters.

Soldiers, mostly former rebels who battled for years to bring Ouattara to power, seized control of the second biggest city, Bouake, in a January uprising that quickly spread, forcing the government to capitulate to some demands.

The government paid the 8,400 troops bonuses of 5 million CFA francs ($8,370) each.

But citing the revenue crunch caused by the slumping price of cocoa, Ivory Coasts chief export, it asked to delay until this month the start of staggered monthly payments of an additional 7 million CFA francs, the soldiers said.

Some might reject deal

I appreciate these words of wisdom and maturity, said Ouattara, who shook hands with Fofana following his declaration. I congratulate you because Ivory Coast is experiencing a very, very difficult period.

However, other members of the mutiny who had remained in Bouake were not informed ahead of the announcement, raising the prospect that some soldiers might reject the deal.

This is not what our people should have said, said one of the mutiny leaders who was not part of the delegation that met with Ouattara. We didnt discuss giving up the money. We dont know whats happened over there, but people arent happy.
The sister of White House adviser Jared Kushner won't be attending an investor conference in China this weekend as reported after she was criticized for trying to raise money there last weekend, using the lure of a U.S. visa program.

Nicole Kushner Meyer, who had been representing her family's company in China, came under fire for what critics said was an attempt to attract investors using the family's ties to the White House.

Meyer mentioned her brother at a conference in Beijing on Saturday. Marketing materials for the event also promoted her as Jared's sister and cited the Kushner family's "celebrity" status.

The family real estate company, Kushner Cos., later apologized. It said Meyer had not meant to attract investors by using her brother's name.

The Kushner Cos. said Thursday that no representative would be attending conferences in China this weekend. The Washington Post earlier reported that a Chinese website had listed Meyer as planning to attend an event in Shenzhen on Saturday.

The family company is trying to raise money to help build a 79-story apartment building in Jersey City, New Jersey, called One Journal Square. The company is seeking 300 wealthy Chinese to invest a total of $150 million.

Anchor tenant bows out

The building is facing difficulty. Office-sharing company WeWork confirmed this week that it was canceling plans to lease space as an anchor tenant. And the Jersey City mayor recently came out against awarding a valuable tax break for the building.

The EB-5 visa program offers a path to citizenship for wealthy investors willing to put at least $500,000 in rural areas or places with high unemployment in the United States. After as little as two years, participants can then apply for a fast-track green card and later U.S. citizenship.

The Kushner Cos. has used the program to finance other projects, including another building in Jersey City. That one, Trump Bay Street, is in a licensing deal with President Donald Trump's company.

Jared Kushner, who stepped down as CEO of Kushner Cos. to assume his White House role, is married to Trump daughter and White House adviser Ivanka Trump.

Critics say the EB-5 program has not helped the downtrodden areas of the country enough and has become a way for developers to essentially sell visas in exchange cheap financing.

At a press briefing earlier this week, White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Jared Kushner had no involvement in the One Journal Square project. An attorney for Jared Kushner said he had sold his stake to a trust benefiting other members of the Kushner family and would recuse himself from related policy matters while serving as an adviser to Trump.
Participants at Thursday's international conference on Somalia say they will support a plan aimed at enabling the country's fledgling and poorly-equipped army to defeat al-Shabab militants and take over national security from African Union troops.

Troops with the AU Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), consisting of more than 20,000 soldiers from five East African countries, are due to start leaving the country next year.

In anticipation of the pullout, the Somali government recently reached agreement with the country's federal states to strengthen the national army, police and intelligence agencies.

"We want to see the integration of Somali regional forces and an increase in Somali capacity, as this will be crucial in allowing the resumption of offensives against the remaining al-Shabab strongholds in southern Somalia," said British Prime Minister Theresa May, addressing the conference in London.

As part of this pact we want to see more detailed plans for Somali security reform so that Somalia can take responsibility for its own security and enable the drawdown of AMISOM troops as conditions on the ground allow, May added.

At the conference, Somalia appealed to the United Nations to fully lift a longstanding weapons embargo so the national army can obtain heavy weapons.

"Time has come for Somalia to be able to get access to qualitatively better weapons than terrorists," Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed told the conference.



The president said his country also needs a "robust economic program" to fully recover from a quarter-century of war and chaos.

The insecurity situation cannot be changed without addressing its root causes, which is abject poverty and mass unemployment. Too many of our young generation are sitting idle, creating fertile ground for terrorists to recruit from, he said.

Now is the time for the international community to support the plan, said Djibouti's Ambassador to Somalia, Aden Hassan Aden.

"Somalis are fed up with lawlessness and its leadership is ready, and the international community is showing an interest to help Somalia. So we have to all seize the opportunity, he said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for another $900 million in aid for the drought-stricken country, reports the Associated Press.

"Somalia now hangs in the balance between peril and potential,'' Guterres said at the opening of the conference Thursday. Here in London we can tip the scales from danger to safety.''

Mogadishu residents react

In Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, where militants frequently carry out attacks, people are closely following the conference on national TV and live streams from the social media.

Abdiwali Abdullahi Husein, a resident in Mogadishu, said he thought this conference was no different from previous meetings on Somalia held abroad.

It looks to me the same as the previous conference. Of course there is a change of time and people in power at the conference, but nothing major," he told VOA's Somali Service.

But another resident, Abdurahman Ali Khaire, believes the conference heralds peace and stability for Somalia. I believe that this conference will result in better fruits than previous conferences, and it would extend an opportunity for the new government," he said.

Another resident critical to the conference says unless Somali leaders prove themselves effective and united in action, international support will not help.

If a patient goes to a doctor and the doctor does not prescribe the proper medication, that would not cure the disease. Somali leaders must fix their problems and ask the world to assist, said Salad Ilmi Ahmed. You cannot put the cart before the horse.
Authorities in Moscow have arrested five activists for gay and lesbian rights as they tried to deliver a petition calling on the government to investigate the alleged detention and torture of about 100 of gay men in Russia's southern region of Chechnya. The activists were arrested Thursday on the way to the offices of Russias prosecutor general and are expected to be charged with staging a protest without official permission. VOA's Zlatica Hoke has more.
Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav has asked son Akhilesh Yadav to step down as party president. Mulayam also said that he was not aware about the Samajwadi Secular Morcha announced by Shivpal Yadav.

By Siraj Qureshi: Samajwadi Party founder Mulayam Singh Yadav today asked his son Akhilesh Yadav to step down as the party president.

Mulayam Singh Yadav criticised the former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav for failing to keep his promise as SP president.

Mulayam Singh said that Akhilesh has not kept his promise of returning the party presidency in three months after the election.

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Speaking to India Today in Agra today, Mulayam Singh said, "Akhilesh had taken the party presidency in his hands after assuring him that he would return it me in three months. But, now he is retracting from his promise."

Mulayam Singh said that he was not hungry for the post but "the national media should ask Akhilesh why he is not keeping his promise." Mulayam Singh was in Agra to attend a private function.

WHAT ABOUT 2019?

Mulayam Singh Yadav refused to entertain questions about his party's strategy for 2019 general elections. Asked about who will lead the party in the 2019 elections, Mulayam declined to comment.

Mulayam Singh Yadav also expressed ignorance about the Samajwadi Secular Morcha, announced by his brother Shivpal Yadav. Shivpal Yadav had said that Mulayam Singh Yadav would be the chief of the Samajwadi Secular Morcha.

Mulayam Singh also refrained from making any comments on the Ayodhya issue even though he expressed regret at the loss of 16 lives in the police firing after the demolition of the Babri structure.

MULAYAM SLAMS MODI GOVERNMENT

Mulayam Singh Yadav slammed the Narendra Modi government over its Pakistan policy in the wake of increased terror attacks and brutality meted out Indian soldiers along the borders.

Having handled the defence portfolio himself in 1990s, Mulayam Singh Yadav said that the Defence Minister should have guts to give a betting reply to the enemy country.

Mulayam Singh said that during his stint as the Defence Minister, "India had effectively dealt with Pakistan inside its own borders and Indian Army had guarded the territories from Arunachal Pradesh to Punjab efficiently. Today the government is sleeping peacefully while India is losing one brave soldier after another."

UP DEPUTY CM IGNORES MULAYAM'S COMMENT

While Mulayam Singh Yadav lashed out at the Centre over its Pakistan policy, BJP leader and Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma chose to ignore his remarks.

Dinesh Sharma, who was in Agra today to take part in Swachh Bharat campaign, said that the BJP was busy making Uttar Pradesh a Uttam Pradesh (forefront province).

Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma in Agra. (Photo: Siraj Qureshi/India Today) Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma in Agra. (Photo: Siraj Qureshi/India Today)

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Addressing the party workers in the city, Dinesh Sharma said that they should 'develop respect and modesty as these are the identity of the BJP'. He said that all party workers had to work together to ensure that the party won again in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

Dinesh Sharma symbolically swept the streets at Nagla Teen in Agra. Sharma said that the BJP leaders should adopt localities and villages, and conduct cleanliness drives.

Dinesh Sharma said that the Uttar Pradesh government will take strict actions against land mafias working in the state.

ALSO READ |

Mulayam Singh Yadav blames alliance with Congress for poor state of Samajwadi Party

ALSO WATCH |

'Watch out, this is my son', When Mulayam warned PM Modi against son Akhilesh Yadav

--- ENDS ---
Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's combative testimony before a federal judge this week did little to dismantle the graft case against him and improve his chances of securing a new term in office.

Lula, a founder of the leftist Workers Party (PT) that controlled Brazil's presidency from 2003 until last year, can only run in next year's presidential election if he avoids a conviction that is upheld on appeal.

Steady questioning by crusading Judge Sergio Moro on Wednesday uncovered no bombshell revelations to shake supporters' steadfast belief that Lula is innocent and the victim of a political witch hunt. Nor did it do much to knock down corruption charges that stand between Lula and a third shot at the presidency.

"Lula left the courtroom the same size as he went in. His testimony will not legally save the former president," said the centrist Green Party congressman Alvaro Dias.

"But politically, there was a repercussion that both fuels the PT's followers and enrages his opponents, as he tried to transform a legal procedure into a political show."

In recent polling, Lula sits atop surveys of potential candidates for the 2018 election but he also has the highest rejection rate, showing strong opposition to him among many Brazilians.

Lula's case is part of an investigation known as "Operation Car Wash" which unearthed how Brazilian construction firms paid billions in political kickbacks and bribes in return for contracts at state-run oil company Petrobras and other government-controlled companies.

The investigation has seen more than 90 prominent businessmen and politicians convicted. Scores of sitting federal congressmen across the political spectrum as well as one-third of conservative President Michel Temer's cabinet are being investigated.

Prosecutors allege Lula was given a beach apartment by construction firm OAS in exchange for helping it win lucrative government contracts.

"Dead or Alive"

Lula portrayed himself during his testimony as a victim of a vengeful, elitist media that wanted to get him "dead or alive." He also said Brazil's upper class could not stomach his social welfare programs that helped lift millions out of poverty during his eight years in office.

Still beloved by many working class Brazilians, Lula stepped down in 2011 with an 83-percent approval rating.

A former union leader who led strikes in the early 1980s that helped dismantle a two-decade military dictatorship, Lula rose from poverty to the presidency on the back of his ability to electrify crowds at campaign rallies.

He convinced Brazil's legion of poor voters that one of their own could finally rule the continent-sized country.

Moro deployed calm, persistent questioning to prevent the ex-president from using his oratory skills to piece together a convincing, coherent explanation of the accusations against him.

Moro consistently interrupted to rein in Lula when his testimony veered toward what the judge labeled political stumping.

"If Lula's supporters hoped to turn May 10, 2017, into a landmark in his quest to return to the presidential palace, the repeated doubts in his testimony and the lack of an overwhelming street demonstration by supporters clouded that ambition," wrote Igor Gielow, a political analyst for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, Brazil's largest.

The uncertainty of Lula's fate as he faces five corruption trials, and the political polarization that has encompassed Brazil, demonstrate how the country's institutions have matured, said Carlos Pereira, a professor of public administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

"It's a historic moment that a Brazilian president is on trial at all, it shows the degree to which our system of checks and balances has strengthened," he said.

Pereira noted that corruption has been endemic in Brazil for hundreds of years and leaders had acted with impunity until recently. But the autonomy given to investigators and courts in the 1988 constitution as the nation emerged from dictatorship paved the way to end that.

"Politicians held great sway over the judicial system, but now they are under its thumb. That is a new twist in Brazil," he said. "It is amazing, ironic and astonishing for an emerging democracy."
Melissa McCarthy has gone into the streets of Manhattan to lampoon White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

The comedian was captured on video Friday morning riding a motorized podium in midtown while dressed as Spicer, presumably a sequence that will air when McCarthy hosts the next Saturday Night Live.

In the video, McCarthy is seen gliding in the middle of traffic in front of the Time Warner Center, not far from Rockefeller Center, the longtime home of NBC's Saturday Night Live.

Spicer has been a frequent target of McCarthy, who has mocked him in the past in skits where she fires a water gun at the press corps and uses a lectern to ram a journalist.
As national parks traveler Mikah Meyer continued exploring the numerous national park sites within the vast state of Texas, he's been overwhelmed by the beauty of Big Bend National Park and the Rio Grande Wild & Scenic River.

Located in southwestern Texas, on the U.S. border with Mexico, the huge park is larger than Hong Kong. Its 80 kilometers from east to west, and 200 kilometers of the Rio Grande River form its southern boundary.

Big Bend - named after a big bend in the river - was established as a national park in 1944, preserving the largest tracts of Chihuahuan Desert topography and ecology in the United States. Mikah spent several packed days exploring the vast terrain.

Magical landscape

I didn't have a lot of expectations going in, but it's just kind of this magical landscape, Mikah observed, one that he learned has evolved greatly over time.

Over the past two centuries, largely due to a lot of human influence, it used to be a very different climate with grass as high as a horse's head. And essentially through ranching, through farming, through human interaction, we as humans have taken away a lot of the natural, green growth.

But despite its harsh desert environment, the park boasts a spectacular landscape thats home to more than 1,200 species of plants (including 60 types of cactus), 450 species of birds, 56 species of reptiles and 75 species of mammals.

The variety of life is largely due to the diverse ecology and changes in elevation, from the dry, hot desert, to the cool mountains, and the fertile river valley.

Flirting with fossils

Mikahs first stop was the incredible dinosaur exhibit at the newly opened Fossil Discovery Exhibit.

They had these amazingly huge fossils and did a really top-notch job at showing you the history of the area that is now Big Bend National Park that goes back a hundred million years, he said.

This area used to be a shallow ocean, so there were massive gators, large fish with huge teeth that were big enough to eat sharks, and they have fossils of those fish that existed in this area that's now a desert.

Also on display at the site is an insane amount of dinosaur bones, Mikah added, including a massive T-Rex skeleton and one of the largest flying reptile skeletons in the world.

It was incredible! Mikah marveled. I mean, what little kid doesn't love dinosaurs and doesn't geek out and squeal at seeing a giant T-rex skeleton? It really puts it in perspective when you can sit in a giant alligator or T-Rex mouth that they have right on the ground at this exhibit.

Border beauty

Visitors to Big Bend can also enjoy the many recreational opportunities on and around the Rio Grande, which forms the 1600 kilometer long international boundary between Mexico and the United States.

Mikah immersed himself in nature at Rio Grande Village, the largest campground in the park, on the banks of the Rio Grande.

The campground is in a little bend of Big Bend National Park that dips down, so basically if I look to my left or to my right I'm looking at Mexico, but straight in front of the United States.

There is a little nature trail hike which is right by the campgrounds which is gorgeous and gives you stunning views of the Rio Grande River, Mikah said.

On day two of his visit, Mikah decided to cross the river into Mexico for lunch in the small border town of Boquillas in the Mexican state of Coahuila. Its shallow enough that it only goes up to your knees right now, he observed as he waded across the warm water.

Once he crossed into Mexico, Mikah headed to town -- about a kilometer and a half away down a dusty path -- on a horse. It trotted along at a leisurely pace, allowing Mikah to soak up the beauty of the stark desert around him. After checking in with Mexican customs, he stopped for a tasty lunch of tacos and cold drinks at Jose Falcons, one of the towns two restaurants.

While lunch was satisfying, he said the highlight of his little adventure was the sweeping vista around him. Youre on this horse, so youre a little higher than you get to be normally, and there's mountains everywhere and desert trees.

More to come

Mikah has many more adventures in Big Bend National Park to share with VOA. They include stops at some of the most remote areas of the park, a surprising canoe ride on the Rio Grande, a visit to the historic hot springs and an exhilarating hike up to the highest peak of Chisos Mountains.

In the meantime the young traveler, who hopes to visit all 400 plus sites within the U.S. National Park Service, invites you to learn more about his journey across the American southwest by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.
The United States Navy said Friday that a Russian jet flew within six meters of an American spy plane earlier this week over the Black Sea, but that the encounter was professional.

The Russian jet was scrambled to greet the U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon in international airspace Tuesday as the U.S. plane flew near Russian territory, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

The Russian pilot approached the spy plane at a safe distance in order to identify it as a U.S. aircraft, the statement said, noting that the U.S. plane changed its course after the encounter and the Russian jet returned to its base.

U.S. Navy spokeswoman Pamela Kunze said in a statement the encounter was conducted in a safe and professional manner, downplaying the proximity of the Russian aircraft to the U.S. aircraft.

"For aviation interactions, distance, speed, altitude, rate of closure, visibility and other factors impact whether an event is characterized as safe or unsafe, professional or not professional," she said. "Every event is unique and any single variable does not define an event."

Kunze said that Navy aircraft and ships interact with their Russian counterparts in international waters on a routine basis, but did not provide any further details about Tuesdays encounter.

The incident is the latest in a series of close fly-bys between U.S. and Russian planes. In February, four Russian aircraft buzzed a Navy destroyer in the Black Sea, flying within 91 meters of the ship.

Last month, the U.S. military intercepted two Russian bombers in international airspace off Alaskas coast. That encounter was similarly described as safe and professional by the Navy.
Much has changed since Nepal last held local elections 20 years ago: The Himalayan countrys 240-year monarchy was abolished, federal democracy was introduced and political wrangling took center stage. Earthquakes ravaged the country. A Maoist insurgency left thousands dead. And widespread poverty ensured daily life for many remained a struggle if not a misery.



Through it all, Nepals 29 million citizens have had only government-appointed bureaucrats to look to for answers or help with settling local disputes. Many voters said they were excited for the chance this weekend to choose local representatives for the first time since 1997.



We can finally get our true representatives back in our neighborhoods, said 19-year-old university student Suman Sharma of Kathmandu. The last time these elections were held, I wasnt even born.

Two rounds of voting



Nepal will hold the first of two rounds of voting Sunday, with nearly 50,000 candidates vying for 13,556 positions on village and city councils covering nearly half the country.



For weeks, campaign posters have lined village roads. Political party flags flapped in the mountain breeze. And more than 40,000 police officers were fanning out to polling stations to keep the peace.



Candidates were going door to door to greet villagers with promises of building roads and schools, improving water sanitation facilities, providing electricity or even metro systems.





This election is very important because these local bodies bring the government to peoples front yard, said Surya Prasad Sharma, spokesman for the Election Commission.



Democracy stabilizing

More importantly, analysts said the local balloting offered a signal that Nepals fractious democracy may be stabilizing.

Two years ago, lawmakers passed a new constitution to replace the old system of monarchy, and to lay out the rules for provincial and parliamentary polls. The constitution was considered a major victory, following eight years of political bickering over its terms. But not everyone was happy, and its passage sparked months of protests by ethnic groups in the south that felt shortchanged by how the document divided the countrys districts.



A lot of issues like the ethnic troubles could have been avoided if there had been continued representation in the local level, said political analyst Dhruba Hari Adhikary.



Janak Joshi, who works as a clerk in a government land registry office, agreed the lack of representative government at the local level had hurt society overall.



For the past 20 years, government-appointed officials have been functioning in these positions. They didnt represent the people or care about what was wrong or needed in city or neighborhood, Joshi said. Now we will finally get people who would at least listen and work for us.

List of needs



Many voters said they were eager for help in pressing the government to reconstruct hundreds of thousands of homes toppled in a devastating earthquake in 2015. So far, less than 4 percent have been rebuilt.



Others hoped local representatives would prioritize the need for justice after a decadelong Maoist insurgency that ended in 2006, leaving 17,000 dead. The government has yet to address more than 58,000 complaints of murder, abuse and or other human rights violations. Nor has it been able to reveal what happened to some 1,500 who disappeared during the fighting.



Some voters wondered if newly elected representatives could help revive local economies, sorely needed with some 25 percent of the population living in poverty. And some saw a chance to advance progressive policies for improving education or rights and opportunities for women.

Little trouble was expected at Sundays polls, though one small Maoist party has called a general strike, saying the country needs more political reform before it can be ready for such polls.



The second round of voting, scheduled for June 14, could see protests among ethnic groups unhappy with district boundaries in southern areas of the country, election officials said.
Large billboards at Lagos airport urge travelers to call a hotline to report officials asking for bribes. But there is a problem with this attempt to fight the corruption that plagues Africas biggest economy.

The phone number does not work, an indication of how little progress President Muhammadu Buhari has made tackling a problem he promised to address when he was elected two years ago.

The government has fired customs and immigration officers accused of corruption, introduced staff rotation at passport and customs desks at Lagos airport to disrupt cozy networks, and set up the phone number to report demands for bribes.

Culture of corruption

That didnt end a decades-long culture of corruption at the main gateway to Nigeria. But it did make officers more cautious as colleagues got fired, airport workers say.

But airlines and cargo firms say the fight against corruption has faltered and government work has slowed down while Buhari has been on and off sick leave since January.

On Sunday, the 74-year-old left again for treatment in London.

The government achieved results at first, but officers have started acting with impunity again, said the country manager of an airline with daily flights to Nigeria, asking like others not to be named.

Problem is expensive

A presidency official acknowledged problems, such as the phone line being switched off for an unknown reason. He said a new number was planned as part of a package of new measures.

Executives say authorities have inadvertently made the problem worse by asking customs officers to be more aggressive in collecting duties to offset the slump in oil revenues that has pushed the West African nation into recession.

But the results are not always as intended.

The way it works now is that a customs officer makes maximum demands but then says If you dont want to pay just give me something, said another one airline manager.

For Nigeria, corruption is a problem that could cost it 37 percent of its gross domestic product by 2030 if it is not tackled, PricewaterhouseCoopers said in a study last year.

Infrastructure plays big role

Built in the 1970s using Amsterdams Schiphol airport as a blueprint, Murtala Muhammad International Airport in Lagos has, like the rest of the country, seen little investment. There is no central air conditioning and some luggage carousels dont work.

In most of the worlds airports officers do random luggage checks, relying on dogs and X-ray machines to spot drugs or bombs.

But in Lagos officers from four state agencies search every bag, working from desks at check-in counters. To avoid searches delaying flights, some airlines say they pay officers $25 for each flight. If they airlines dont pay, they will slow down searches, sources said.

That doesnt stop officers asking passengers for bribes, exploiting a vague ban on food items, which can be resold. They have been known to confiscate a jar of jam unless money is paid.

Vice president steps in

In February, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo made a surprise visit to the airport, demanding to know why maintenance funds had not been used to fix air chillers and luggage carousels, officials said. He also raised the issue of bribes.

The next day the presidency sacked Nigerias civil aviation heads. At Lagos airport, officers were again more cautious for two weeks. But they went back to their old habits when there was no follow-up to the disciplinary blitz, airport workers said.

Two weeks later, Buhari returned from treatment in Britain, but he has not been active, and the anti-corruption drive has been taken up by his deputy, Osinbajo.

A presidency official said Osinbajo had given orders to install cameras to identify bribe-takers. Three maintenance engineers had been removed and more staff are being reviewed.

We have seen some slight improvements but its less than we expected, said Bismarck Rewane, CEO of Lagos consultancy Financial Derivatives. Its a culture change thats needed.

Bribes unabated

That can be seen at the arrivals terminal door. It is off-limits to nonairport staff but people can still enter if they hand over a small bribes to policemen or have friends to get them in.

Baggage porters ask travelers for the equivalent of $10 to get through customs without searches, a Reuters correspondent at the airport said.

Authorities have also been unable to end the practice by some cargo import firms of paying customs officers a flat fee to avoid searches, executives said.

Its a payment shared by officers who then charge less or nothing for [import] duties, said one executive. Its a win-win for officers getting cash and importers avoiding customs.
Authorities in the Philippines have rescued four girls and arrested a mother and two other women for allegedly livestreaming sexually exploitative videos of children to men paying by the minute to watch from the United States.



Three sisters ages 8, 9 and 12, and an 11-year-old found in a separate rescue, are now in a shelter for abused children while the women face prosecution.



The arrests came two weeks after Filipino authorities raided the home of an American man suspected of similar cybersex crimes, arresting David Timothy Deakin, 53. During that bust, agents from the National Bureau of Investigation rescued two girls, 10 and 12, who had spent time in Deakins home, and made one of the largest seizures of illicit digital content in the Philippines. Dozens of hard drives and a handful of computers must now be analyzed to search for other possible victims, as well as buyers.



Deakin denied wrongdoing.

Nations cooperate

The series of arrests and rescues underscore a rapidly growing crime in which children, even toddlers, are made to remove their clothes and touch themselves in obscene ways while adults, often their parents, train video cameras on them in exchange for payment from pedophiles abroad. Police in the Philippines are collaborating with their counterparts in Europe, Australia and the U.S. to investigate and prosecute.



The Australian Federal Police and U.S. FBI separately provided Filipino authorities information that led to the arrests of the mother and two other women on May 5, rescuing four girls. They were allegedly making the girls engage in sexually explicit acts while men in Australia and the U.S. watched. The women have been charged with human trafficking, child abuse, child pornography and cybercrime.



Police officer Arlyn Torrendon said she was part of a team that rescued three of the children and arrested the three women, including the mother of the siblings, Friday in a house in Bacolod city on an island about 445 miles (717 kilometers) south of Manila.



The children were innocent. They were not even aware that they were being used in a crime, Torrendon told the AP by telephone from Bacolod.



She said the children came from an impoverished family; their mother was a widow.





Cybersex crimes increasing

Gen. Liborio Carabbacan at the National Police Women and Children Protection Center said the incidents are increasing in the Philippines because many people are gaining access to the internet and English fluency is common, making it possible to communicate with would-be customers. Also, he said, parents and relatives, motivated by greed, are often not aware that it is against the law to exploit their children.



The livestream abuse happens in many of Philippines densely populated, impoverished neighborhoods, said attorney Gideon Cauton, who works with the nonprofit International Justice Mission. The organization provides social workers, shelters, lawyers and even former U.S. police detectives to local law enforcement, who dont have enough resources to tackle all cases of online sexual exploitation of children.



In metropolitan Manila, where gleaming condominium high-rises and stores selling designer clothes and cars stand in stark contrast to the squalor of the slums, Cauton pointed to Wi-Fi antennas rising from rooftops above a long stretch of shanties and rundown houses. In the past, the antennas amid crushing poverty were red flags, sparking suspicion of cybersex crimes. Today pocket Wi-Fi, cellphone internet and other technology have rendered those irrelevant, driving the crime even further behind the scenes.



This type of crime is really hidden, he said. Usually the family and community, they are complicit, and these are tight-knit communities, very dense areas.

In US, 8.2 million reports



In the U.S., the proliferation of crimes, along with new mandatory reporting, led to 8.2 million reports last year to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Childrens CyberTipline related to online child sexual exploitation. That compares with 8.3 million reports in the 17 years prior.



One of those reports led authorities in the U.S. to Karl Touset, 72, of Marietta, Georgia, who was sentenced to prison for 10 years in March after Homeland Security Investigations agents found evidence on his computers that he had paid facilitators in the Philippines more than $55,000 over three years for images of girls being sexually exploited.



Unfortunately, extreme poverty in many parts of the world affords individuals like Touset the opportunity to exploit children across national borders, said U.S. Attorney John Horn in a statement after the sentencing.
Pope Francis and pilgrims from around the world are flocking to a Catholic shrine town in Portugal to honor two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

Francis arrives Friday to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and canonize the children. He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of World War I, will resonate with the Catholic faithful today.

For days now, church groups, families and individuals have made their way to Fatima, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Lisbon, some on their knees in prayer. Carrying candles, rosaries and roses, they have made their way to the statue dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima or tossed wax body parts - ears, hearts, limbs - into a huge fire to pray for healing.

"For me it is the second time I am here with a pope, first with John Paul II and now with Papa Francisco," said pilgrim Elisabete Fradique Conceicao in between rain showers Thursday. "They are simple men and that simplicity makes sense when you think what happened here 100 years ago."

On May 13, 1917, while they were grazing their sheep, the children saw the first of a half-dozen visions of the Virgin Mary. They said she revealed to them three "secrets" - apocalyptic messages foreshadowing World War II, hell, the rise and fall of communism and the death of a pope - and urged them to pray for peace and turn away from sin.

At first doubted by the local Catholic Church and even their parents, the children's story gained believers and was eventually accepted as an authentic apparition by the church in 1930. The children being canonized, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were 9 and 7 at the time of the apparitions, died of influenza two years later. Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, at 10 the ringleader of the group and who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case couldn't begin until after her death in 2005.

Francis' deputy, Cardial Pietro Parolin, said the importance of Fatima lies specifically in the fact that poor, illiterate children - not the wealthy, learned or intellectuals - were able to convey a powerful message of love and forgiveness at a time of war when ``the talk was of hatred, vendetta, hostilities.''

Fatima has long been associated with St. John Paul II, given the Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with having saved his life in 1981 when a would-be assassin shot him on Fatima's feast day - May 13 - in St. Peter's Square. John Paul made the first of his three pilgrimages to Fatima the following May, and one of the bullets fired at him now adorns the crown of the Madonna at the shrine.

Like John Paul, the Argentinian-born Francis is exceedingly devoted to the Madonna, thanks in large part to the strong role that Marian devotions play in the popular piety of Latin American Catholics.

Before every trip he takes, Francis brings a bouquet of flowers to an icon of Mary at the Rome basilica dedicated to her name, St. Mary Major.

On his first trip as pope, to Brazil, he prayed at the shrine to the Madonna at Aparecida. He has done the same at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, at the shrine of Caacupe in Paraguay and the Virgin of the Charity of Cobre in Cuba.

One major shrine he has avoided visiting is in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six youngsters reported having had regular, repeated visions of the Virgin starting in 1981. A Vatican-appointed doctrinal commission finished its study years ago, but Francis hasn't released the results.

He has cautioned against such tales of regular visions, however, and has said Marian devotion must be to ``the real Madonna. Not the Madonna who's like the head of a post office who every day sends a different letter saying `My children, do this and then the next day says do that.'''

The church says the Fatima case is altogether different.

In a video message on the eve of his departure, Francis urged all faithful to join him, physically or spiritually, in Fatima.

``With all of us forming one heart and soul, I will then entrust you to Our Lady, asking her to whisper to each one of you: `My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God.'''
Attorney General



As the nations top law enforcement official, the U.S. attorney general oversees the enforcement of federal laws. The attorney general heads the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has evolved into the worlds largest law office since Congress created it in 1870.

The DOJs mission is to enforce the law and defend the interests of the country, protect it from foreign and domestic threats, seek just punishment for wrongdoers, and to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.

The DOJ oversees a staff of U.S. attorneys, also known as chief prosecutors, who represent the federal government in U.S. district court and the U.S. court of appeals.

U.S. Attorneys are located throughout the U.S., including Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Deputy Attorney General



The deputy attorney general is the second highest ranking official at the DOJ. The deputy attorney general manages the daily operation of the DOJ. The deputy attorney general may serve as acting attorney general when the attorney general is absent, such as when the attorney general recuses himself. The deputy attorney general heads the Office of the Assistant Attorney General (OAAG), which is responsible for the oversight of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), which includes efforts designed to prevent juvenile delinquency and sex offenses. According to OJP, it provides innovative leadership to federal, state, local and tribal justice systems by distributing state of the art knowledge and practices across America. The deputy attorney general is appointed by the president with the consent of the Senate.

The third highest ranking official in the DOJ is the associate attorney general, who assists the deputy attorney general in policies pertaining to civil justice, law enforcement and public safety. The associate attorney general also manages many offices within the DOJ, including Community Oriented Policing Services and the office of Violence Against Women. The associate attorney general is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

FBI Director



The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) manages the FBI, which describes itself as the principal investigative arm of the DOJ and a full member of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The director is appointed to a 10 year term by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The FBI says it is an intelligence-driven and threat-focused national security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities.

The agency says its investigative powers are the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies, with the legal authority to investigate a broad array of cases ranging from domestic and international terrorism, to cyber crime, civil rights and white collar crime.




Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny returned home Thursday after surgery in Spain to fix his eye that was damaged in an attack and immediately roused his supporters to action.

Navalny suffered a severe chemical burn in his right eye last month when an attacker doused him with green antiseptic. His supporters identified the attacker as a pro-government activist. Police have failed to track him down.

Navalny urged his supporters in a YouTube video broadcast Thursday to attend anti-corruption rallies next month. He said the demonstrations are planned in 147 Russian cities.

Plans bid for presidency

The charismatic opposition leader intends to run for president next year. He said he would continue to travel widely to open his campaign offices.

Navalny shot to prominence with his investigations into official corruption and was a key driving force behind massive anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow in 2011-2012.



He also organized anti-government rallies in March, Russia's largest and most widespread in years.

Trip to Spain allowed

Until his medical trip to Spain, Navalny had been denied travel documents for five years. He is serving a five-year suspended sentence in a dubious embezzlement case.



He said Thursday that after his Moscow doctor strongly recommended he to travel abroad for eye surgery, he wrote to Kremlin human rights council chief Mikhail Fedotov to demand that authorities issue him a passport.



On Fedotov's advice, he then sent the same request to Kremlin chief of staff Anton Vaino. Navalny said he also applied for a passport and received one the next day.

Navalny, who was operated on at a Barcelona clinic, said doctors expect the vision in his injured eye to be restored in several months.
After a fatal accident between two bikers on Mumbai Highway, onlookers did nothing to help and watched while one of them burnt to death.

By India Today Web Desk: In an apalling incident, passersby simply stood and watched a biker burn to death on Mumbai Highway after his bike caught fire due to a collision with another biker on Thursday. Both the bikers have died.

In a video published by NDTV, people can be seen using their phones to record the burning biker, instead of doing anything to help him. The channel reports the video was shot by one such onlooker.

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According to the report, no one tried to rush the burning biker's aid or put off the fire. Even the traffic remained unaffected by the incident.

The accident ocurred on a highway in Maharashtra's Beed district. Police say, when the two bikers collided, one of them got stuck under his bike, which in turn caught fire.

By the time the police reached the spot and put out the fire, the man had already charred beyond recognition. Authorities are yet to identify him.

"Since the number plates on the bike were burnt, we are unable to get much details about the victim. All we could tell from the plates was that the bike was registered in Parbhani (a town nearby). We have given the plate to the Regional Transport Office, which can give us details," senior police officer G Sreedhar told NDTV.

Investigators are also trying to determines if one of the bikers was carrying liquor, which possibly led to the fire.

Police say say the man didn't shout for help, possibly because he was unconscious from a head injury. The second biker succumbed to his injuries in hospital today.

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President Salva Kiir is appealing to South Sudanese to remain calm, saying there will be no outbreak of violence after he fired army chief General Paul Malong, who left the capital Tuesday night with a number of armed military officers.

Kiir called a rare news conference Friday to speak publicly for the first time since firing Malong this week. The president faulted Malong for leaving Juba before he could officially swear in his successor, General James Ajongo, but insisted that changes in army leadership are normal.

He also said he was mystified as to why Malong would be angered by his replacement.

"I didn't talk to him this morning. I found that he was resting because yesterday, his blood pressure shot up very high because when I talked to him last, he was not in a good mood. He was in a fighting mood. I tried to calm him down, but he was rather wild," Kiir told reporters in the capital, Juba.

Kiir tried to tamp down fears that Malong might be planning to mount a rebellion against the government.

"The security situation remains normal and all citizens are urged to continue with their routine duties, because there is really nothing that people should worry about. I also want to encourage you to stop inciting fear through the spread of unfounded rumors," Kiir said.

There have been unconfirmed reports that Malong was heading to his hometown of Aweil to set up a military base. Aweil residents expressed fear there could be clashes between government forces and those allied with the general. Many fled to rural areas for fear violence would break out.

Malong and his soldiers ended their journey toward Aweil in the Eastern Lakes State capital, Yirol, after local officials persuaded Malong not to proceed.

Government officials sent a plane to fly Malong back to Juba on Thursday, but the general declined the ride, seeking guarantees for his security before returning to the capital.

Eastern Lakes State Governor Bor Wutchot Bor told VOA's South Sudan in Focus that Malong was not being detained and was his guest at his state residence.

Kiir said his government would ensure that Malong and the army officers with him were safe. He said Aweil community leaders were also talking with Malong to discourage him from resorting to violence.

South Sudan is mired in its fourth year of conflict since fighting erupted between pro- and anti-Kiir factions in December 2013. The United Nations says more than 1.8 million South Sudanese have fled the country, with another 1.9 million internally displaced from their homes.
Saudi King Salman's recent decision to grant women more rights won praise in some quarters and grumbles of discontent in others. Despite the newly-won freedoms, though, Saudi women are far from enjoying the same rights as their Western counterparts.

The royal decree permits women to make a certain number of decisions without the permission of a male guardian. When Saudi TV announced it with little fanfare last week, it said the move conforms with Islamic "sharia" law.

Legal adviser Hassa al Duleimi told state TV the decision was based on a complaint over equality of the sexes in obtaining services from the government:

She said Saudi women will now be able to obtain various government services, including the right to enroll in a university, the right to open a bank account, and the right to leave prison after finishing a sentence without the agreement of a male guardian.

Other freedoms missing

Other freedoms  like requesting a passport, traveling abroad, or getting married  will still require the permission of a male family member.

Writer Maha Ba'ashan also told Saudi TV that the government, human rights groups and the media need to better educate women about their rights.

She said women often are not aware of their rights, such as the right to equal wages for the same job, or the right to work in about 30 different professions. She pointed out there are now 30 women who belong to the consultative al- Shoura council.

The decree granting women new rights followed the election of Riyadh to the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women at the end of April. Some human rights groups and activists criticized the U.N. vote. One Canadian lawmaker said she was "appalled" by the election of Saudi Arabia, calling the kingdom a "gender segregationist theocracy."

Human Rights Watch noted that three European governments voted to allow Riyadh to join the commission, but that the Belgian prime minister later regretted his government's decision.

HRW also questioned how a "repressive" Saudi government could serve on a commission whose stated goal is the "promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women."

On social media, Saudi activists continue to wage a campaign to urge King Salman to relax what they perceive as the archaic restriction preventing women from driving. A number of women have driven their cars in public in recent years to protest the ban, but so far they have failed to sway public opinion.

The king's son and Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman told journalists recently that it is a societal norm that forbids women from driving, rather than a religious restriction. He added that Saudi society is still not convinced of the merits of women being allowed to drive and that many think that there are serious negative consequences to allowing them to do so.

Conservative Saudi religious leaders frequently oppose moves to give women more rights, although the late King Abdallah decided several years ago to give women the right to vote and run for local elections. Saudi society is still gender-segregated and women are required to be covered from head to toe while in public.

Saudi Mufti Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh, nevertheless, defends the kingdom's treatment of women, maintaining that Islam gives women significant rights and has freed them from the injustices that they faced in pre-Islamic society.

Writer Ba'ashan, for her part, stresses that many sources of inequality between men and women stem from Saudi societal practices, rather than any factual basis in sharia law. "The public," she said, "needs to be told that many of these practices are wrong and that they have no basis in law."
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has directed federal prosecutors to seek the most serious charges possible against suspected offenders, a reversal of President Barack Obama's policies that could result in more convictions and much longer prison terms.

In a memo to the country's prosecutors Thursday, Sessions wrote, "This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency."

War on drugs

At a speech Friday in Washington, Sessions said the order was needed to combat an increase in violence in some large cities and the nation's opioid epidemic. "If you want to collect a drug debt, you can't file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun," Sessions said.

The order had been expected from Sessions, a former prosecutor during the height of the U.S. crack cocaine epidemic, who vowed that combating violence and illegal drugs would be the Justice Department's top priority.

Sessions' policy memo directs prosecutors to "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense." The memo acknowledges there will be cases in which "good judgment" will permit a prosecutor to bend that rule. Exceptions, however, would require approval from top supervisors.

The directive abolishes guidance by Sessions' Democratic predecessor, Eric Holder, who said prosecutors could in some cases omit drug quantities from charging documents so as to not generate long sentences. Holder's 2013 "Smart on Crime" policy initiative was aimed at encouraging shorter sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, thus freeing up resources to pursue more serious and violent criminals.

In a statement Friday, Holder said Sessions' policy is "dumb on crime" and will "take this nation back to a discredited past." Holder said Justice Department data showed last year that while the number of indictments carrying a mandatory minimum sentence declined since his policy was implemented, prosecutions of high-level drug defendants had increased.

Holder predicted Sessions' directive will be "substantively and financially ruinous" and will force the agency to revert to the days of spending "one third of its budget in incarcerating people, rather than preventing, detecting or investigating crime."

Some supporters of Obama-era policies, which eased federal prison overcrowding and contributed to a national reassessment of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced, said Sessions' order will revive the worst aspects of the government's drug war.

"It looks like we're going to fill the prisons back up after finally getting the federal prison population down," said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "The social and human costs will be much higher."

Sessions' directive counters a national trend to eliminate some of the most severe sentencing policies adopted during the 1980's era war on drugs. Many experts have maintained those laws resulted in offenders receiving very lengthy prison sentences when shorter terms would have been sufficient.

"The Justice Department's expected shift to prosecuting and incarcerating more offenders, including low-level drug offenders, is an ineffective way to protect public safety," Brett Tolman, a U.S. Attorney under President George W. Bush, said in a statement in response to the order.

"Decades of experience shows we cannot arrest and incarcerate our way out of America's drug problem," he said. "Instead, we must direct resources to treatment and to specifically combating violent crime. This will help law enforcement do our jobs better."

Obama-era policies

The Obama administration policy shift coincided with its clemency initiative that released convicts considered worthy of a second chance and U.S. Sentencing Commission changes that made tens of thousands of federal drug inmates eligible for early release. Together, those changes led to a sharp drop in the federal prison population, from 220,000 in 2013 to the current level of 190,000.

Nevertheless, some prosecutors felt constrained by Holder's 2013 directive and were concerned they would lose the ability to plea bargain without the latitude to pursue harsher punishments.
Girls being trafficked for sex in northern Mexico often have been forced into exploitation as under-age child brides by their husbands, a study showed on Thursday.

Three out of four girls trafficked in the region were married at a young age, mostly before age 16, according to Mexican and U.S. researchers in a yet-unpublished study.

Human trafficking is believed to be the fastest-growing criminal industry in Mexico, and three-quarters of its victims are sexually exploited women and girls, according to Women United Against Trafficking, an activist group.

Under a 2012 anti-trafficking law, those convicted of the crime can spend up to 30 years in prison.

380,000 people believed enslaved

Nevertheless, nearly 380,000 people are believed to be enslaved in Mexico, according to the 2016 Global Slavery Index published by rights group Walk Free Foundation.

The researchers interviewed 603 women working in the sex industry in the Mexican cities of Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez, both along the border with the United States.

Most said they had been trafficked as under-age brides, often by their husbands, said Jay Silverman, the study's lead author and a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego.

In about half the cases, the brides were pregnant, so healthcare workers could play a critical role in thwarting sex trafficking, the researchers said.

Within being provided pregnancy-related care, there's the opportunity of interviewing that girl to understand her situation, Silverman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

We can support and assist those girls to reduce the likelihood that they will become trafficked, he said.

Parents can allow young marriages

Under a 2014 law, the minimum age for marriage in Mexico is 18 but girls can marry at age 14 and boys at age 16 with parental consent.

The researchers include members of the United States-Mexico Border Health Commission, a joint effort launched in 2000 by the two nations' governments to improve health and quality of life along the border.

They also came from Mexican economic institutions, and one was a medical doctor.

Hotel group joins the cause

A recent initiative between the Citizens Council of Mexico City, a civil society group, and the Mexico City Hotel Association, which brings together 251 hotels, aims to train at least 2,000 hotel staff to spot possible signs of human trafficking.

Staff in at least six, mostly high-end hotels have been trained in trafficking since the initiative started in March, said Luis Wertman, head of the Citizens Council, which provides the training.

We view the crime of human trafficking as a chain. And every chain is made up of several links. One of the most used links  tools  that traffickers have are hotels, said Wertman.

Wertman said when hotel staff ask guests questions in the right way, it can help detect possible cases of trafficking.

Not questions like, Are you here against your will? But more like, Excuse me sir, whats the relationship between you and the guest, he said.

From those quick questions and answers you can notice when something is not right.

Hotel staff send confidential reports of suspected trafficking to the Citizens Council, which then passes them on to trusted authorities, including police and prosecutors, who investigate, Wertman said.
A suicide bomber has struck the convoy of an Islamic party in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 40 others. Most of the victims were activists with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), a religious-based political party.

Police said Friday's attack occurred in Mastung, about 50 kilometers from the provincial capital, Quetta. The blast apparently was targeted at Abdul Ghaforr Haideri, the deputy chairman of the Pakistani Senate, the upper house of parliament.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing.

The senator was slightly wounded but his driver and the director of staff at the Senate accompanying him both were killed, officials confirmed.

Haideri is a central leader of JUI-F, which is part of Pakistans ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party.

The cleric told reporters he was returning from a graduation ceremony at a religious seminary when their convoy was struck.

"It was all very sudden. I am injured but alive. God has saved my life. Broken pieces of the windscreen hit me. My driver and other people sitting next to me were very badly injured," Haideri said.

WATCH: Pakistan Reels From IS-claimed Suicide Attack

Police and witnesses said the bomber was on a motorbike and that his body parts were retrieved from the site in the province of Baluchistan. It's the largest of four provinces where a number of militant groups operate.

IS has stepped up attacks lately in Pakistan. The Syria-based terrorist group also took credit for the suicide bombing of a Sufi shrine in the southern city of Sehwan in February that killed more than 70 people. Victims were mostly members of the minority Shi'ite Muslim community.

Baluchistan borders Afghanistan and Iran, and officials in both the countries have long alleged militants waging terrorist attacks on their soils operate out of the Pakistani province. Islamabad denies the charges.
A handful of New Yorkers have gathered at New York University to practice conversing in Arabic. Their two conversation partners have joined via Skype, video images projected side-by-side on a TV monitor.



The scene would be nothing out of the ordinary, save for the fact that the conversation partners, Ghayath and Rasha, are recently displaced Syrian refugees.

They are among some 50 refugees working with NaTakallam, a New York startup that pairs Arabic language learners, most based in the U.S., with displaced Syrians for paid, one-on-one conversation practice sessions over Skype.

NaTakallam sessions have garnered more than $110,000 for refugee instructors since launching in August 2015, according to the startup. Instructors keep $10 of the $15 paid by students for a one hour session. For the many Syrian refugees who must often start over and adjust to life in entirely new countries, the earnings supplement work that is already difficult to secure.

The idea for NaTakallam (Arabic for we speak) grew out of Aline Saras desire to improve her own Arabic speaking skills as a Lebanese-American. The opportunities to practice Arabic were . . . kind of limited in New York, or extremely expensive for what I could afford at the time, said the startup founder and CEO.

Typical Arabic classes also tend to teach Modern Standard Arabic, which Sara describes as a Shakespearean version of Arabic. You dont speak that way in your day-to-day activities, she said. Conversational sessions provide the opportunity to practice regional dialects of the language. Most Syrians speak Levantine Arabic, one of the most widely understood dialects among Arabic speakers.

Instructors



For instructors like Ghayath, a Syrian refugee who has resettled in Italy, the language sessions are also an opportunity for cultural exchange. We choose to speak together about daily life, about their interests, about my life, their life ... the news.

I always say NaTakallam is my window to the world, because I travel every day through this small screen, he added.

Students sign on for a variety of reasons, whether theyre studying related subjects such as political science, history or journalism or are part of the Arab diaspora and hoping to improve their native language skills. Other students may be tourists preparing for a trip abroad. Ghayath assesses each students particular language needs and tailors lessons accordingly.

Beyond the financial independence NaTakallam offers, Sara stresses the importance of bringing awareness and understanding to refugee communities.

Were always talking about refugees en masse. We dont take the time to individualize them, to humanize them. This is a direct way, said Sara, Youre connecting in a one-on-one setting, people get to know each other. I think its very powerful.
Resettled Syrian refugees not only have to contend with a new country, culture and language, but with securing employment as well. Turns out, the ability to speak Arabic can translate to extra income. VOA reporter Tina Trinh profiles a New York-based startup connecting language students with Syrian refugee tutors.
The former captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner was sentenced to 16 years in prison on Friday by Italy's highest court for his role in the 2012 shipwreck, which killed 32 people off the Tuscan holiday island of Giglio.

Francesco Schettino was originally found guilty in 2015 of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his passengers.

Friday's ruling marked the end of the appeals process, with the court upholding the initial verdict.

Free during the prolonged legal battles, Schettino, 56, reported to a Rome prison to start his sentence as soon as he was told of the verdict, his lawyer Saverio Senese said.

"As always, Italy needs to find a scapegoat," Senese told reporters, adding that his client had waited for word of his fate alone outside the prison gates rather than stay at home with his family in southern Italy.

The Costa Concordia was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, when it hit rocks off Giglio on a chill January night, tearing a hole in its side and eventually keeling over.

Schettino was lambasted by the Italian media and branded "Captain Coward" for leaving the stricken ship while a chaotic night-time rescue operation was in full flow. Critics accused him of bringing shame to the whole country through his actions.

At his first trial prosecutors had asked for a 26-year term.

Schettino admitted some responsibility but denied blame for the deaths that occurred during the evacuation and said he was not solely to blame.

His lawyer said he might appeal to the European Court of Human Rights.

"I think there have been serious abuses here," Senese said. "I never give up."

Investigators severely criticized Schettino's handling of the disaster, accusing him of sailing too close to shore to perform a spectacular "salute" to Giglio for the benefit of the ship's head waiter, who came from the island.

Schettino was also accused of delaying the evacuation and abandoning his ship prematurely. He said he had been thrown off the vessel as it tilted and had landed on the roof a lifeboat.

Humiliatingly, a furious coast guard official had to order him to return to his ship and take charge of the rescue.

He was left alone on the stand to answer for the disaster after the ship's owner, the Costa Cruises subsidiary of Carnival Corp, paid a fine of 1 million euros ($1.3 million at the time) and prosecutors accepted plea bargains from five other officials.

The massive, rusting hulk of the Costa Concordia was left abandoned on its side for two-and-a-half years before it was towed away in the most expensive maritime wreck recovery in history. The last body was not recovered until 2014.

Schettino's defense team contended that he prevented an even worse disaster by steering the ship close to the island as it sank.
President Donald Trump has escalated his feud with ousted former FBI director James Comey, implying there are secret recordings of one of their private conversations from earlier this year.

In an early morning tweet Friday, President Trump said, "James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"





Clapper clarifies comments



In comments to MSNBC Friday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he did not know whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Nor should he have, he said, because the issue is FBI territory.

Clapper said his practice is always to defer to the director of the FBI "on whether, when and what to tell me about a counterintelligence investigation."

His comment contradicted a Trump tweet saying Clapper did not believe there was collusion.

Trump on Tuesday fired Comey, who was leading an investigation into alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 election, as well as possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

White House officials insist the firing had nothing to do with the Russia probe, though the president appears to have undermined that assertion during a televised interview Thursday.

Much of the controversy centers around a White House dinner meeting earlier this year between Trump and Comey.

A New York Times report late Thursday said that Trump asked Comey to pledge his loyalty to him during the dinner meeting.

The report said Comey refused to make the pledge, but instead told Trump that he would "always be honest with him." Trump pressed Comey several times for his loyalty, and finally Comey told the president he would have the FBI director's "honest loyalty," according to the newspaper account.

White House officials dispute the accuracy of that account, which relied on unnamed sources who reportedly have spoken with Comey about the meeting.



Comey himself has made no such allegations. In a farewell note to FBI staff, Comey played down the dispute, saying: I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for not reason at all.

The issue is unlikely to go away, however, especially in light of Trumps tweet on Friday implying that the conversation had been recorded.

In a television interview Thursday with NBC News, Trump gave a different account of the dinner. The president said Comey requested the meeting because the FBI director wanted to keep his job. The president did not mention a loyalty pledge request.



The president also said he had asked the head of the nations prime law enforcement agency whether he was being investigated.

Trump said he asked Comey if its possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, You are not under investigation.

The president, in the television interview, repeated I am not under investigation when asked about Comeys sworn testimony that there is an ongoing probe into his 2016 president campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government.

Watch: Trump Escalates Feud with Comey

'Highly inappropriate'



Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange "highly inappropriate" at a minimum.



There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation, Moss told VOA.

But Moss, deputy executive director of The James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability, added it is difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation.

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor specializing in constitutional law, wrote on Twitter it is now totally clear that Trumps firing of Comey was an obstruction of justice. That was the first article of impeachment against Nixon.

That is a reference to former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 less than a month after the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump asserts in Thursdays interview he would have fired Comey even if top Justice Department officials had not recommended it, calling former President Barack Obama's appointee a showboat. He's a grandstander.



Comey was directing investigations into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, along with possible meddling by Moscow in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Rosenstein memo



The White House on Thursday continued to defend its dismissal of the FBI chief and denied it tried to put the responsibility on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo for the abrupt removal.



I dont think there was ever an attempt to pin the decision on the deputy attorney general for Comeys firing, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House principal deputy press secretary.

Sanders, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and even Vice President Mike Pence earlier had asserted, though, that Trumps firing decision was based on the deputy attorney generals memo.



At the center of the scrutiny is whether Rosenstein was instructed to draft a memo justifying Comey's dismissal or whether he decided to write the document without direction.



Rosenstein was upset with suggestions made by the White House that his memo suggested he called for Comeys firing Tuesday, according to The Washington Post and ABC News.



Rosensteins memo mentioned Comeys mishandling of last years investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.





Russian investigation



News media reports quote sources who assert Comey was ousted, however, because he wanted to intensify the Russia investigation.



The firing has prompted Democrats to amplify their calls for an independent investigation of the Russia case. The attorneys general of 20 states also are calling for the appointment of a special counsel.

But Friday afternoon, Rosenstein said he did not see the need at this time for a special prosecutor, CNN reported.

Comey was appointed by Obama in 2013. FBI directors serve 10-year terms to insulate them from political interference, but can be removed by presidents.

Until now, the only other time an FBI director had been dismissed was in 1993 when President Bill Clinton removed William Sessions, who refused to leave voluntarily amid ethical concerns.
Lawyers for President Donald Trump said Friday that a review of his last 10 years of tax returns did not reflect "any income of any type from Russian sources," but the letter included exceptions related to previously cited income generated from a beauty pageant and sale of a Florida estate.

The letter represented the latest attempt by the president to tamp down concerns about any Russian ties amid an ongoing investigation of his campaign's associates and Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

The attorneys did not release copies of Trump's tax returns, so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions. Their review also notably takes into account only Trump's returns from the past 10 years, leaving open questions about whether there were financial dealings with Russia in earlier years.
The man assaulted the doctor after he learnt about his father's death followed by which an FIR was filed against the kin.

By Mustafa Shaikh: A resident doctor of Sion Hospital in Mumbai filed an FIR (first information report) against a patient's kin for assaulting him after he failed to save a person's life.

The doctor Ajay Athavle, 26, filed the complaint against Sunil Kale, who allegedly intimidated and threatened him. The incident took place when the doctor informed the patient's family that they could not save his life.

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Sunil Kale, 26, elder son of the deceased started shouting at Athavle after learning about his father's death. Initially, he alleged that the hospital doesn't have proper facilities and management to save a patient's life. When Athavle explained to Kale that his father's condition was critical when he was brought to the hospital, he assaulted the doctor physically.

He grabbed Athavle by his shirt and raised his hand at him but, Kale's younger brother intervened and ended the matter then. However, when Athavle was returning towards the doctor's room, Kale threatened him saying, "meet me outside the hospital, I will teach you a lesson".

Kale has been booked under section 4 of the Maharashtra Medical Act and section 353 (Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty) and 506 (Punishment for criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

This incident has only add fuel to the simmering fire among the medical fraternity over the recurrent attacks on doctors and medical establishments. In March 2017, resident doctors had gone on strike after a series of attacks on the doctors and returned to work after the High Court's intervention and Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis's assurance of providing enough security.

A senior officer from Sion police station said that the case is not of assault but of heated arguments. However, further enquiry in the matter is underway. The accused has not been arrested now given his father's demise and pending last rites.

ALSO READ | Mumbai: Resident doctors' stir enters day 4 as another Sion Hospital physician attacked

ALSO READ | Mumbai: Sion doctors hold silent protest, OPD services affected in many hospitals

ALSO WATCH | Doctors in Mumbai hold silent protest, demand security after violence in Sion hospital

--- ENDS ---
Uganda, a country known for its "progressive" refugee policy, is hosting more than 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers, with about 920,000 of them from South Sudan. And so the government is asking for international assistance.

Ugandas prime minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, said his country has been receiving an average of about 2,000 refugees per day for the last six months.

The above numbers are placing a huge strain on our already stressed ability to cater for the full water, sanitation, health and educational needs of the refugees and their host communities, said Rugunda.

So next month, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the U.N.s refugee agency are hosting the Solidarity Summit on Refugees, with the aim of securing $2 billion per year for the next four years to help meet the funding gap.

As the refugees pour into Uganda, they bring a host of medical needs, further highlighting the need for additional resources.

Dr. Martina Fuchs is the CEO and founder of Real Medicine Foundation (RMF), the humanitarian aid and development organization tasked with providing much of the health care in Ugandas Bidibidi, now the largest refugee settlement in Africa. The settlement hosts more than 272,000 South Sudanese refugees.

The largest disease burden is malaria, a very large percentage, especially in children and then also pregnant women with malaria, said Fuchs. So malaria is the highest. And then, gastrointestinal tract infections  diarrhea, watery diarrhea  then, respiratory tract infections, pneumonia. And then, in smaller amounts, HIV/AIDS.

According to RMF, malaria rates in children and adults arriving at medical facilities range from 65 percent to 80 percent, fluctuating upon whether it is the dry or rainy season.

Fuchs said severe and moderate acute malnutrition is another problem. Refugees are also dealing with mental health issues as a result of the trauma they have experienced.

There is research that trauma actually lowers your defense, your immune system," said Fuchs. "So any kind of emotional, psychological trauma will interfere with your immune system, so youre more vulnerable when you are traumatized than if you are not."

Rosa Malango, U.N. resident coordinator and the U.N. Development Programs resident representative for Uganda, said in addition to catering to the refugee population, Ugandas host communities must not be overlooked.

It is imperative to note that these 12 districts have some of the countrys highest levels of poverty and the lowest levels of human development indicators, said Malango. If we want to help ensure and maintain that asylum space in Uganda, the voices and contributions of these communities must be supported.

By the end of 2017, authorities estimate that an additional 400,000 refugees and asylum seekers will have arrived in Uganda.
The U.N. envoy for Cyprus warns that an "international crisis" over oil-and-gas drilling could cause the reunification talks to collapse.

"To see that go to waste because of an international crisis would be very sad for all of us," Espen Barth Eide said Thursday in Nicosia. "We may be looking forward to rather dramatic times."

Turkey has demanded the Greek Cypriot government suspend its search for oil and gas in the Mediterranean until there is a power-sharing deal with the Turkish Cypriots.

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said Thursday that Turkey's "threats" will not work. He accused Turkey of trying to wreck the peace talks.

Eide called on all parties to do their "utmost to reduce any kind of tension that can make the talks problematic."

Cyprus has been split between a Greek Cypriot south and Turkish Cypriot north since 1974, when Turkish troops invaded after a military coup it says was aimed at unifying the island with Greece.

Only Turkey recognizes Turkish Cypriot independence, and has tens of thousands of troops stationed there.

Past U.N. efforts at reunifying Cyprus have failed. But the current round of talks that started in 2015 brought both sides closer than ever, despite tough negotiations on several questions including property rights and security issues.
It has been three months since the top commander of U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan said he needed a few thousand more troops to break a stalemate in the war-torn country, and the Trump administration has yet to announce its policy plans.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said this week that no decision has been made, and he urged reporters not to get ahead of the policymaking process.

Military officials told VOA that policy plans could include sending a few thousand more international troops to Afghanistan.

The number of troops that the United States will add to the fight in Afghanistan will depend on how many additional forces NATO supplies to expand the battle against terrorists there, Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in Israel Tuesday.

Afghan defense plan

Officials told VOA that President Donald Trump has not yet been briefed on an Afghanistan defense plan, but experts said plans are expected to be discussed later this month.

Thomas Spoehr, director of the Heritage Foundations Center for National Defense, said he expects the new administrations policy will rely on an increase in international forces to focus on long-term goals.

This time we are directly enabling the Afghan army, so were trying to make that army more powerful, so its a different thrust than what we did in the past, Spoehr told VOA.

U.S. officials said the administrations developing policy would focus less on the international troop numbers needed and more on providing resources for increased Afghan air power and special forces.

Others argue that a potential increase of international forces wont be enough to have an immediate effect on the Afghan battlefield.

The intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.

Gaining territory

The Taliban now holds more physical territory in Afghanistan than at any time since 2001, but some within the Trump administration believe more military pressure could be a means to force the Taliban to the negotiating table with the government.

Critics in Washington have bashed the Afghan militarys stalemate with the Taliban, a fight tied to international troops advise-and-assist mission in the country. But General Raymond Thomas, the head of U.S. Special Forces Command, reinforced the success of Americas counterterror mission there.

The one objective we had for why we went there in the first place, that weve accomplished over the last 15 years, is the avoidance of another attack from that area, and that certainly is an accomplishment and something that we need to reinforce going forward, Thomas said.

The importance of the counterterror mission has increased since Islamic State fighters moved into the country.

That, coupled with supporting a long-term Afghan fight against the Taliban, leads many experts to believe that unlike the Obama administration, Trumps policy will not set timelines and troop boundaries.

The fact is theres no imminent American departure. President Trump is not looking to leave, Michael OHanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told VOA.
President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday renewed attention to allegations by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election campaign to benefit Trump.

The following describes what is publicly known and not known about U.S. investigations into meddling by the Russians, and possible collusion between Russia and members of the Trump campaign:

How did the investigations begin?

Former President Barack Obama ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to assess whether Russia tried to intervene in the election after a cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee in July 2016 and the publication of thousands of hacked personal emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in the month before the November 8 election. Obama told intelligence officials to deliver a report on possible foreign interference before he left the White House in January 2017.

What did the intelligence agencies find?

The Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency concluded in a report declassified in January that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered a campaign not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system but to try to affect the outcome.

The agencies said Putin and the Russian government had a "clear preference" for Trump to win the White House. Putin's associates hacked information, paid social media "trolls" and backed efforts by Russian government agencies and state-funded media to try to sway public opinion, the agencies said.

The report stopped short of assessing whether Russia had succeeded in swaying the election result.

Putin and other Russian officials have repeatedly denied interfering in the U.S. election.

What has Trump said about Russia's role in the election?

Trump has not taken a clear public position.

"I will tell you this, Russia: if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said at a July 2016 news conference, in reference to a FBI probe into Clinton's use of a private email system when she was secretary of state and emails that had possibly been deleted.

Trump subsequently dismissed reports, including from U.S. intelligence officials, that Russia had attempted to intervene in the election on his behalf.

The first time Trump said he accepted the findings of the intelligence agencies was at a January 11 news conference ahead of his inauguration. "As far as hacking, I think it was Russia," Trump said, although he then added: "It could have been others also."

Earlier this month, Trump said China may have hacked the emails of Democratic officials to meddle with the election, offering no evidence and countering the view of intelligence officials.

How many U.S. probes are there into Russia's election meddling?

Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate, along with the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are all known to be investigating. Some Democrats and Trump critics have also called on the Justice Department to appoint a special counsel.

Has there been any fallout for Trump associates over contacts with Russia before, during or after the election campaign?

Michael Flynn, Trump's national security adviser, was fired in February. The White House said he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the contacts he'd had with Russia's ambassador to the United States, Sergei Kislyak, before Trump took office.

On Tuesday, federal prosecutors issued grand jury subpoenas seeking business records from people who worked with Flynn when he was a private citizen.

On Wednesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee issued the first subpoena in its Russia investigation, demanding documents from Flynn after he declined to voluntarily comply with an earlier request.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from involvement in Russia-related probes at the Justice Department because he had not told Congress of his own contacts with Kislyak in 2016.

Will the FBI probe continue after Comey's dismissal?

Comey told the House Intelligence Committee on March 20 that the FBI was investigating Moscow's role in the election, including possible collusion with Trump's campaign. It was the first time he publicly acknowledged the agency was investigating the matter.

Comey's departure does not necessarily mean the FBI's Russia investigation will be disrupted or ended, because the career FBI officials Comey put in charge of it will most likely continue working on the matter even as the search for a new director begins.

The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee had raised concerns about the pace of the FBI inquiry before Comey's firing. The congressional probes are dependent on the intelligence produced by the FBI and other agencies.

FBI acting Director Andrew McCabe, who will lead the agency until a new director is hired, promised the Senate Intelligence Committee that Comey's firing would not affect the investigation and that he would notify the committee of any attempt to delay or derail it.

Why was Comey fired?

Sessions sent Trump a letter Tuesday attaching a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on "Restoring Confidence in the FBI" that recommended Comey's dismissal.

Rosenstein's memo said Comey erred in July 2016 by announcing the FBI had been examining Clinton's use of a private email server and that the case should be closed without prosecution. Rosenstein's view was that Comey's decision to make a public statement on the matter broke with long-standing FBI precedent and should have been handled by the then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Trump called Comey a "showboat" and "grandstander" in an interview with NBC News on Thursday, saying he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosenstein's recommendation.

Did Comey's firing have anything to do with the Russia probe?

The White House says Comey was dismissed because of his handling of the Clinton email investigation. But many Democrats challenged that, and some Republicans have expressed skepticism, given the delay between Trump's taking office on January 20 and Comey's dismissal.

Trump aides have told Reuters that top Justice Department officials wanted a heads-up from Comey about what he would say during a May 3 congressional hearing about the FBI's investigation of Clinton's private email system.

The hearing came just days after Clinton said at a New York event that announcements by Comey in October 2016, a week before the election, that he had reopened and then reclosed the email probe had swung the election for Trump. Comey told the congressional panel the idea that he might have affected the election result made him "mildly nauseous."

Just days before his firing, Comey asked Rosenstein for a significant boost in resources to fund the agency's Russia probe, according to media reports. The Justice Department has denied this request was made.

Is Trump being investigated by the FBI?

In the short letter Trump sent to Comey dismissing him from the FBI, he thanked Comey for informing him three times that he was not under investigation. Comey has never stated publicly whether the FBI was investigating Trump, and it would be unorthodox for him to say such a thing to the president. The White House has offered no proof to back up Trump's claim.

Trump has made clear several times that he thinks the Russia investigations have run their course and should be closed. "The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?" he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The White House declined on Friday to say whether President Donald Trump is recording conversations in the Oval Office or those with dinner guests in the White House.

Trump escalated his feud on Friday morning with fired FBI chief James Comey, tweeting an implication there are secret recordings of one of their private conversations from earlier this year.

Trump, writing on the Twitter social media platform, said, "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"



Asked by a reporter at the daily briefing about that tweet, White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly said, "The president has nothing further to add on that."

Spicer said, however, that the message was "not a threat. He simply stated a fact. The tweet speaks for itself."

WATCH: Trump Tweet Not A Threat, Spicer Says

Historians say presidents are believed to have stopped routinely recording visitors without their knowledge when the Oval Office recording system used by President Richard Nixon was exposed in 1973. A subsequent subpoena of the tapes helped to spark the unraveling of support for Nixon before he resigned a month into the impeachment proceedings over Watergate.

"I don't actually think Trump is recording his conversations. It would be a phenomenally shortsighted move, as recordings could be subpoenaed or otherwise leak out," Nicole Hemmer, assistant professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, told VOA. "The trend in the White House has been toward fewer paper trails, not more. As far as we know, recordings stopped with Nixon, and even private diaries stopped with [Ronald] Reagan after his were subpoenaed during the Iran-Contra affair."

Question of credibility

White House spokesman Spicer on Friday also answered "no" to a question about whether Trump, at a January 27 White House dinner, had asked Comey to pledge loyalty to the president.

The second-ranking Senate Democrat on Friday called Trump "dangerous because he may be obstructing justice" in the investigation of Russia's involvement in the 2016 presidential election and possible ties to the Trump campaign.

The president's "credibility has been destroyed," added Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The ranking member of the House subcommittee on government operations, Gerry Connolly, questioned whether the president was "unhinged" for issuing the tweet, saying that in addition to obstruction of an investigation, the president now was engaging in "witness intimidation."

Trump on Tuesday fired Comey, who was leading an investigation into the alleged ties between the president's campaign and Russia.

Request for recordings

Ranking members on the House Judiciary Committee and Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent a letter Friday to the White House, saying "it is a crime to intimidate or threaten any potential witness with the intent to influence, delay or prevent their official testimony."

Congressmen John Conyers Jr. and Elijah Cummings addressed it to White House Counsel Don McGahn, asking whether the recordings actually existed, and saying that if they did, "we request copies of all recordings in possession of the White House regarding this matter."

They went on to say, "We believe Congress should immediately seek the testimony of Director Comey to better understand the circumstances surrounding these events ... ."

In comments Friday to MSNBC, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he did not know whether there was any collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia. Nor should he know, he said, because the issue is the FBI's responsibility.

Clapper said his practice was always to defer to the FBI director "on whether, when and what to tell me about a counterintelligence investigation."

His comment contradicted a Trump tweet saying Clapper did not believe there was collusion.

Further criticism

White House officials insist Comey's firing had nothing to do with the Russia probe, though the president appeared to have undermined that assertion during a televised interview Thursday.

The president is also facing criticism after acknowledging in the NBC interview on Thursday that he repeatedly asked Comey whether he was under investigation.

Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange "highly inappropriate" at a minimum.

"There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation," Moss told VOA.

But Moss, deputy executive director of the James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability, added it is "difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation."

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor specializing in constitutional law, wrote on Twitter that it is "now totally clear that Trump's firing of Comey was an obstruction of justice. That was the first article of impeachment against Nixon."

Nixon resigned in 1974 less than a month after the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against him.
A person has tested positive for the Ebola virus in the northern Democratic Republic of Congo.

A spokesman for the World Health Organization says officials declared an Ebola outbreak in Bas-Uele province after laboratory tests confirmed the presence of the virus.

The spokesman, Christian Lindmeier, tells VOA English to Africa that nine people in the area fell sick with what is currently listed as hemorrhagic fever. He said three people have died.

The WHO said on its Twitter feed it is working with Congo's Ministry of Health to contain the outbreak.

The ministry says in a statement that teams of doctors, coordinators and specialists are headed to the remote area and should arrive by Saturday.

The last Ebola outbreak in Congo happened in 2014 and killed more than 40 people.

A much larger outbreak swept across Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone that year and killed more than 11,000.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross sees the U.S. semiconductor industry as still dominant globally but said he is worried that it will be threatened by China's planned investment binge to build up its own chipmaking industry.

Ross told Reuters in an interview this week that his agency is considering a national security review of semiconductors under a 1962 trade law because of their "huge defense implications"  including their use in military hardware and proliferation in devices throughout the economy. He has launched similar Section 232 reviews of the U.S. steel and aluminum sectors, where a flood of imports especially from China has depressed prices, threatening the industries' long-term health.

The probes could lead to broad import restrictions on the metals, and the Trump administration could potentially take similar actions based on the findings of a semiconductor investigation.

"Semiconductors are one of our shining industries, but they have gone from substantial surplus to the beginnings of a deficit," Ross told Reuters. "China has a $150 billion program to take that much further between now and 2025. That is scary."

The 79-year-old billionaire investor was referring to China's plans for massive state-directed investments in semiconductor manufacturing capacity under its Made in China 2025 program, which aims to replace mostly imported semiconductors with domestic products.

Ross' predecessor at Commerce, Penny Pritzker, warned last November about looming market distortions if China builds too much semiconductor capacity.

Ross added that while he understands Beijing's logic in developing its domestic chip industry, "that's going to be a struggle" from a U.S. trade standpoint.

Industry view

U.S. semiconductor makers, meanwhile, have other ideas about how to secure their future. Their major trade group, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), advocates open trade and increased access to international markets, which now buy 80 percent of U.S.-made semiconductors. U.S. chipmakers also depend on a complex global supply chain and have nearly half their production capacity located overseas.

"So while we fully support efforts to ensure trade in semiconductors is fair and market-based, we do not believe a Section 232 investigation is the right tool to be applied to our industry" SIA President John Neuffer told Reuters.

One area where there appear to be some differences is how to define the industry's trade balance.

Commerce Department trade data showed that "semiconductors and related device manufacturing" had a trade deficit of $2.4 billion in 2016, with exports of $43.1 billion and imports of $45.6 billion.

But that category includes rapidly growing imports of non-semiconductor devices including solar cells and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), as well as some raw materials.

In a new submission late on Wednesday to Commerce for a study on trade deficits, SIA said that excluding the non-semiconductor products shows the sector had a $6.4 billion trade surplus last year, with exports of $41.3 billion and imports of $34.9 billion.

Neuffer said the industry was ready to work with the Trump administration to find ways to persuade China to allow its semiconductor industry to develop in a market-driven way and not discriminate against foreign firms.

He added the government could make the United States a more competitive environment for semiconductor output through tax reform that does not penalize overseas earnings, immigration reform that allows the industry to attract new talent, improvements to U.S. education and more spending on basic research.

"The Chinese are determined to build a semiconductor industry," Neuffer said. "I think the strongest pillar of any strategy going forward has to be our government helping to create an environment where we can pedal faster and stay as far ahead as possible."
Indicted for killing thousands and kidnapping children to become soldiers and sex slaves, Joseph Kony has been Africa's most notorious warlord for three decades.

Now that the United States and others are ending the international manhunt for him and his Lord's Resistance Army, it appears Kony may never be brought to justice.



His elusiveness in the often lawless bush of central Africa is legendary. In one incident Ugandan military forces in hot pursuit raided Kony's hideout deep in a Congo wildlife park in 2008 and seized little but a wig and guitar he left behind.



Despite the millions of dollars spent to catch him, Kony has outlasted his hunters. That's a blow to victims who hoped he would stand trial at the International Criminal Court where he has been charged for war crimes and crimes against humanity.



"The yearning for justice is there," said Judith Akello, a lawmaker who represents a community in northern Uganda once hit by Kony's rebel insurgency. "Justice is what the people demand."



Kony became internationally notorious in 2012 when the U.S.-based advocacy group Invisible Children made a viral video highlighting the LRA's alleged crimes. The group is accused of killing over 100,000 people, according to the U.N.



The U.S. has offered up to $5 million for information leading to Kony's capture.



Although scores of LRA fighters have recently surrendered or been killed, the whereabouts of Kony, now in his 50s, remain a mystery. Recent defectors from the rebel group suggest he is sick and hiding somewhere in the vast, ungoverned spaces of central Africa.



In pulling out of the military mission against the LRA, the U.S. in March said the rebel group's active membership is now less than 100. The U.S. first sent about 100 special forces as military advisers to the mission in 2011, and in 2014 sent 150 Air Force personnel.



Echoing the U.S., Uganda's military last month announced it was ending the manhunt and pulling out 1,500 troops because "the mission to neutralize the LRA has now been successfully achieved."



The military withdrawal means Kony may never be caught, said some observers. Of the five LRA commanders indicted by the ICC in 2005, he is the only one still at large. One commander, Dominic Ongwen, is currently on trial at the ICC following his arrest in Central African Republic in 2015.





"Kony is the ultimate master of survival in the jungle," said Kasper Agger, an independent researcher in Central African Republic who monitors LRA activities. "He has survived three decades of warfare and evaded capture from the most powerful and expensive military in the world."



Kony's rebels may continue as a "group of bandits" in sparsely populated areas of Congo and Central African Republic, where they may link up with other armed groups, said Agger. LRA rebels trade in wildlife products to support their activities, slaughtering elephants for ivory in Congo under Kony's direct orders, according to The Enough Project.



The LRA remains a regional threat, according to a new U.N. report on sexual violence in conflict. "The Lord's Resistance Army continued its decade-old pattern of abduction, rape, forced marriage, forced impregnation and sexual slavery" in Central African Republic and has a presence in Congo and South Sudan, it says.



Kony has proved difficult to capture "mainly because he hides in Sudan-controlled territory" in which other African forces are not permitted to operate, said Sasha Lezhnev of the Enough Project. Sudan has denied allegations by Uganda's government that it actively supports the LRA.



A former Catholic altar boy whose rebel movement started as a tribal uprising with aspirations of ruling Uganda according to the biblical Ten Commandments, Kony is an almost mythical figure. LRA fighters have said he has paranormal powers to read the minds of disloyal commanders.



Under military pressure, the LRA fled Uganda in 2005, moving first to Congo and then to parts of Central African Republic in a vast jungle area about the size of France. By then vastly degraded, the LRA splintered into small groups that were constantly on the move.



The rebels were up against a poorly organized Ugandan military, whose commanders in the anti-Kony campaign were accused of creating phantom soldiers on the payroll and abusing civilians.



"Kony and LRA's nine lives were the result of their discipline," said Angelo Izama, an analyst in Uganda who runs a think tank on regional security called Fanaka Kwawote.



Although Kony could appear bizarre, "he presided over a formidable, well-armed and loyal outfit that was quite capable of running rings around the supposedly superior soldiers sent to hunt him down," said Matthew Green, author of "Wizard of the Nile," a 2008 book about the LRA.



"While many people in [northern Uganda] reviled Kony for the atrocities he ordered, they were also subject to repression and abuses by [Ugandan] President Museveni's security forces,'' Green said. "Kony survived in part because there was often a deep-seated ambiguity in attitudes toward his movement among his own people, even though they were his principal victims."
Though President Trump had plenty of not-nice things to say about Stephen Colbert, the Late Show host was elated to hear the criticism. After Trump was quoted telling Time reporters that Colbert is a no-talent guy with a filthy mouth, the comedian joyfully giggled at the top of his monologue. Mr. Trump, theres a lot you dont understand, Colbert said directly into the camera. But I never thought one of those things would be show business. Dont you know Ive been trying for a year to get you to say my name? Colbert, like Alec Baldwin and Saturday Night Live before him, finally won the presidential seal of disapproval, and he couldnt be happier about it. Colbert gloated, I win!
This episode of Fire Island opens like pretty much every other episode of Fire Island: Patrick wanders around the island, alone, talking to his dog, while Khasan is in yet another New York City dance studio. No one is expecting any of these guys to end up on Barbara Walterss list of Most Fascinating People of 2017, but surely to God, you gotta find something else for them to do at the top of a new episode.

Speaking of tops, Brandon isnt sure what to do about the My Giant guy hes been seeing. Jaylene is apparently his name, but Im not going to stop calling him My Giant because, frankly, hes enormous, and furthermore, I mean the reference as a compliment. My Giant has a 19 percent Rotten Tomatoes ranking, which is a full 12 percent higher than that Reese WitherspoonSofia Vergara movie Hot Pursuit that literally NO ONE asked for. Anyway, Brandon is torn between wanting to be single and have fun and his growing feelings for this very handsome guy hes known for barely one week.

The boys arrive on the island and go straight to tea, a.k.a. happy hour. They have all their luggage and Justin volunteers to lug it all back to the house so that, one can only assume, he can complain and victimize himself about doing so later. (Spoiler alert: He does.) At tea, Jorge invites random people to a party theyre throwing and we see a flashback of Jorges last house party where he flipped out on people for being too wild in front of girls. Cheyenne mentions that he feels bad about missing Patricks pageant the previous weekend, but he also tells us, with decidedly villainous eyes, Im not sure I missed anything. MEOW, KITTY GIRL!

Back at the house, Patrick and Justin catch up. Patrick succeeds in being the first person Ive ever seen to wear a leather strap around his bicep for absolutely no reason in broad daylight. Justin reveals hes purchased his first Speedo in an act of defiance against his insecurities and body shame. Good for him! Patrick is sweetly encouraging, but also uses the encounter to stir the pot over the whole Cheyenne feud, and Im momentarily distracted as I attempt to cast the Ryan Murphy Feud adaptation of this nonsense. Im not really sure who is who, except that I know for a fact Sarah Paulson isnt touching it with a ten-foot pole. Emma Roberts is on hold for Bodhi the dog, though. Speaking of Bodhi, we watch him hump a stuffed animal.

The boys arrive at a friend of Justins house with pizza for a pizza party. The guys know Justin from, as he puts it, the hairy-boy social scene. Imagine basing your social life on the amount of body hair you and your friends share, then once youre done visualizing that nightmare, come back to reading this.

Back at the house, Patrick and Cheyenne go head to head over Cheyenne missing Patricks drag pageant. Patrick is being extremely passive-aggressive and ends up coming across as the worst of the two feuding gays, despite the fact that they both have valid points. Patrick tells Cheyenne to have some accountability for the way he treats the people in his life, and Cheyenne retorts with the fact that they arent the people in his life, but merely the people in his share, a.k.a. the people on the reality-television show hes being paid tens of dollars to be on. The argument ends with Patrick passively leaving with a lime-green purse hanging off his shoulder, because of course he does. The reality is that these two need to get over it and have sexy times already. Its quite taxing to watch an argument between two people clearly infatuated with each other based solely on the narcissistic fact that they look vaguely similar. Honestly, 15 minutes, a jar of coconut oil, and some run-of-the-mill poppers would fix everything for these two.

They prepare for the pool party and Jorge, once again, brings up not wanting people to get their dicks out. He spares us from his previous misogynistic opinions as Patrick begrudgingly helps Cheyenne set up the drinks. Ive never seen someone so passively angry while wearing striped overalls, no shirt, and grasping a red, white, and blue bottle of Svedka. But then again, I was homeschooled.

Brandon is making the rounds, talking to all the cute boys at the party. The My Giant guy is upset because hes clearly more into Brandon than Brandon is into him. He opens up to Patrick about this before going on to have the exact same conversation with Justin, who only makes matters worse with his prying.

Meanwhile, Brandon opens up to Cheyenne about not knowing what he wants and its the first genuine conversation about this weve heard the whole episode. Despite his Backstreet Boys cosplay and mumbling diction, Cheyenne is beginning to grow on me as one of the only people on this show who isnt exhaustingly needy. Mind you, a maximum of five seconds on his Instagram proves otherwise, but thats not what were talking about here. He actually gives Brandon good insight into his deliberation as to what he wants. The consensus is that Brandon doesnt know. And he doesnt need to. Hes 22 years old and on FIRE ISLAND.

They go dancing, and Jorge runs into the caterer with the tattooed angel wings that Patrick had a thing with. The guy (who looks completely different every time we see him, except for the angel wings) tells Jorge that he and Patrick were never even together. Jorge is shocked.

After dancing and after 3 a.m., theyre back at the house, swimming and partying in the pool. Eventually, Khasan and Justin get into the ocean with Justin telling us hes not sure what came over him, but that hes just had this urge to jump in after their wild night. Ive always called that urge by its Christian name: MDMA.

Eventually, Justin opens up to Khasan and reveals how he struggled with a health crisis and attempted suicide. While I feel for him, I do have to say: This is NOT the conversation anyone wants to have at 3 a.m. Khasan gives Justin a pep talk in a scene that looks like a Norman Rockwell painting about coming down from party drugs.

Meanwhile, Jorge and Patrick talk about Jorges issues with his long-distance boyfriend and they discuss the caterer with the angel wings. Patrick tells Jorge that he sometimes feels nervous to be alone after his rough breakup a few years prior. Which is always the most awkward moment of the show to watch with my fiance, as hes talking about me once again.

Brandon and the My Giant guy have a moment on some stairs and nothing is really resolved but they both look really cute. Then its the next morning and theyre already drinking margaritas and my liver is so sore. They decide to play in the pool while Brandon lays in the lap of some nameless hot guy. Patrick arrives with the My Giant guy and Brandon is, rightfully, annoyed that Patrick brought him over. Justin then tells Brandon hes going to Mom him for a moment, a term Ive never heard and one that if I ever did hear, Id cut off all communication with the person who spoke it. Justin loves to meddle in Brandons life and complain about his own and honestly, its just, like, calm down  youre on Fire Island.

By the end of the episode, my patience with these carnies has worn just a bit thinner than it was the previous week. By feeling such, I realize this show is doing exactly what a show like this is supposed to do: make me love to despise watching it for 42 minutes (without commercials) while showcasing the largest array of novelty tank tops ever assembled on any television show in the history of cable. So on that note, congrats, Viacom!
Dipika Kakar's boyfriend and actor Shoaib Ibrahim fainted on the sets due to exhaustion.

By India Today Web Desk: Actor Shoaib Ibrahim, who is presently shuffling between the sets of Koi Laut Ke Aya Hai and Nach Baliye 8, fainted while rehearsing for the technicals of Nach Baliye. The actor collapsed on sets and had a complete blackout.

A source informed Pinkvilla, "The actor has not been sleeping for more than three to four hours a day and rehearsing for Nach post shoots hence the issue."

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Also read: Dipika Kakar and Shoaib Ibrahim's wedding plans revealed!

However, Shoaib said, "I have patiently waited to get this busy and now that I am, I am not going to complain and am enjoying this phase totally. I would welcome more work happily."

Our 'Hum dil de chuke sanam' moment on the set ??? #NachBaliye8 #StarPlus #FunTimes A post shared by Dipika (@ms.dipika) on May 10, 2017 at 1:16am PDT

Dipika Kakar and Shoaib are one of the most popular couples on the show. They are trying to give their 100 per cent on the show and it's quite sporting of him to not complain and enjoy this phase in life.

There was definitely nothing holding Shoaika back from bringing the house down on #NachBaliye8 this week. Don't you agree? @shoaib2087 @ms.dipika #Dance #Moves A post shared by STAR PLUS (@starplus) on May 9, 2017 at 6:39am PDT

Last week they gave a power-packed performance on Go Go Govinda from Oh My God and coming weekend they will be impersonating Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam's Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai.

We hope their hard work pays off on the show.

--- ENDS ---
Well, Greys fam, are your jaws nowhere near your face and instead somewhere on the floor, as promised by the ABC promo wizards? If Im being honest, my jaw was sufficiently open but not on the floor. Although the ending of True Colors was so spectacularly Greys-ish  setting us up for next weeks, ahem, explosive finale  some of the other story lines were predictable or just plain dumb. I think you all know what the latter refers to. Cripes, Jo Wilson isnt even in this episode and shes ruined my night.

Because the guy cant seem to help himself, Alex goes off to track down Jos abusive husband, Paul Stadler. Hes a doctor who moonlights as the director of a high school glee club (hes played by Glees Matthew Morrison), and he happens to be at some medical conference to give a speech. What follows upon Alexs arrival is a series of elaborate fake-out fantasy sequences in which we are led to believe Alex has beat the crap out of Dr. Glee and landed back in prison, or Alex has inadvertently tipped him off to Jos (excuse me, Brooke Stadlers) whereabouts and he watches helplessly as Dr. Glee chokes the life out of her.

Be better than this, Greys. In the end, Alex has a quick run-in with the guy in the cab line (of course the jerk steals Alexs cab), but other than a patented Alex Karev stare-down, they hardly interact. All of the buildup to Jos husband has been  for this? Im sure the guy will pop up again, but for now, this entire story line feels like a huge waste of time.

Especially when things back at home were so much more exciting! You guys, I hate to say I told you so, but I totally told you so: Owens sister Megan is alive. Of course it takes about 30 minutes for Owen to spill the beans on what those two Army officers said to him at his doorstep through his very hazy vision, but yes, Megan is alive. Owen even has Amelia call Teddy (AS IN ALTMAN, PEOPLE), who is stationed at the hospital in Germany where Megan has been taken, to confirm that its really his sister. And it really is. This throws Owen into a deep, dark tailspin over the fact that he went on living his life while his sister was being held in a hole for ten years. He stopped looking for her. He stopped thinking about her. He gave up. Now she is en route to Grey Sloan Memorial and he will have to deal with all of those demons. Finally! A juicy development.

And not just for Owen, either. If you werent on the Megan Is Totally Alive, You Dummies Bandwagon from the moment we learned of her existence, you had to suspect something was bound to happen once Meredith and Riggs started moving toward a very real and committed relationship. After Meredith sees Riggs adorably holding the hand of a small child, she decides its time Dr. Dimples meet her own kids. If their growing happiness wasnt enough to convince you, Meredith and Amelia also have a conversation about moving forward with Riggs. Amelia literally says, There is nothing in your way. Let yourself have this. Well, meet the next thing in the way. Man, does Greys Anatomy love tossing in mystery sisters at the most inopportune time to stir up some good ol fashioned drama or what?

(For what its worth: Even though she is being transferred to Seattle as we speak, something tells me we might not really get a dive deep into the Megan Hunt of it all until next season, since, like, the hospital is on fire and everything.)

Last we saw Stephanie Edwards, she was being forced off her surgical duties until she completed some counseling. Well, Stephs been to three sessions and the woman is healed. She easily convinces Webber to sign her forms allowing her to perform surgery again. That guy is such a softy. Steph quickly gets tossed onto the main case of the week, in which two victims are brought in after their car went over a cliff. The victims in question are Allison, shirtless with hardcore internal injuries, and Keith, pantless with a head injury. The good doctors of Grey Sloan begin to invent stories to explain what must have happened to these two. Is it love? It is an affair? Everyone has an explanation as to why two adults would be having sex in a car in the middle of the day. But everyone is wrong.

When Allison comes to, she wants to know if she killed the guy who was with her. Yes, she hopes that she killed him. He was holding her in her car at knife point and was going to rape her, so she fought back the only way she knew how  by driving her car over a cliff. Bailey, Jackson, and Maggie immediately go into action mode. When no one can seem to locate Keith, the hospital goes on lockdown.

Meanwhile, Keith has woken up and tells Stephanie a sob story about having to be there when Allison wakes up. He needs to be the first face she sees. Stephanie buys it and gets him into a chair to take him to see Allison. Very quickly, thanks to police running around and a doctor whispering something into Stephanies ear about a patient being assaulted and then disappearing into thin air, Stephanie realizes Keith is not who he says he is. Before she knows it, hes out of his chair and has a scalpel pressed against her throat. He demands that she get him out of here, or shes a dead woman.

Seriously, how is there suddenly no one around to see this?

Stephanie and Keith go on the hospital tour from hell. There have been a lot of horrifying things to watch on Greys, and this hostage situation easily joins the ranks. Steph and Keith end up in an empty hallway and run into  a little girl named Erin (played by Americas hardest-working child actress, Darby Camp). Erins been causing trouble the entire episode, running away from her family, playing with medical paraphernalia, pushing all the elevator buttons, and now she ends up alone with these two. Stephanie wants Erin to run, but theres nowhere to go. Because of the lockdown, they are trapped where they are standing.

As Keith grows more angry and agitated by the second, Stephanie tries to keep Erin calm. They arent going anywhere until the lockdown is lifted or theres some type of emergency. Like, say, a fire. So what does this monster do? He builds a fire. As Keith attempts to set off the sprinklers and make a break for it, Stephanie sees an opening. She tells Erin to look away, douses Keith in alcohol, and turns him into the Human Torch. Dude is lit up.

Stephanie takes Erin to hide until its over, but Steph notices Keith getting dangerously close to some highly flammable tanks. If he gets anywhere near them, theyll all be goners. So what does our fearless Stephanie do? She tells Erin to get as far away as possible, and then she goes out there to try to stop Keith from killing them all. Only, shes too late. He sets off the tanks and, well, BOOM.

If you really think about it, Grey Sloan Memorial getting set on fire was bound to happen eventually.

Laughter Is the Best Medicine, Except for Real Medicine

 Amelia Shepherd speaks perfect German. Who knew? And why?

 To Webber: You are the one true king, sir. Tell us something we dont know, Stephanie.

 Amelia talking Meredith off the Riggs ledge is delightful. Especially the part about her recognizing how completely insane she typically is. I feel like the biggest fraud for saying this but  I enjoyed Amelia in this episode? That question mark is not a typo, you guys. Im questioning everything now.

 I cant get a good read on what Greys is trying to do with Maggie and Jackson. Were they flirting in the Elevator of Sexual Tension? Are they just building a fun sibling-adjacent dynamic? Why havent Jackson and April had one scene together since their little mountain getaway? Help me, Greys Anatomy fam. Youre my only hope.

 In one of Alexs fantasies he calls himself Alex Stevens. What up, Iz?

Sob Scale: 4/10

Owens speech about leaving his sister behind is very moving, but if I shed any tears during True Colors, they were out of fear for Stephanies safety as Keith dragged her around a mystifyingly empty hospital. That got real.
I Love Dick The Conceptual Fuck Season 1 Episode 2 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * * Previous Next   Previous Episode Next Episode  Griffin Dunne as Sylvere, Kathryn Hahn as Chris. Photo: Amazon

Poor Chris Kraus. As the first episode of I Love Dick made abundantly clear, she hasnt had the easiest time of it as a filmmaker. The industry is an old boys club, and female filmmakers never get a fair shot. Thats why shes languishing in obscurity, right? As this episode opens, we get a glimpse of her latest work. Okay, so Dick was obviously way off the mark when he baldly asserted that female filmmakers just arent very good, but lets be frank: From the looks of it, Kraus isnt one of the good ones.

The clip, shot in gloomy black-and-white, looks like something Ingmar Bergman might have made, if Ingmar Bergman lacked talent. An unattractive man reads a newspaper; a woman undresses on a bed. The silences are long and meaningless; the stares are vacant; and no one appears to be having a remotely good time. This, perhaps, is what Chriss marriage was like before Dick came into it. Cut to her bedroom, post-Dick, where she and Sylvere are screwing like crazy. As it happens, this sex scene has a male director. Although hes only there in her imagination, Dick is in complete control. He even gets to tell her when to come.

Sylvere is clearly turned on by Chriss fantasy about Dick, but it doesnt take long for him to start fretting over his wifes interactions with the man. After they get out of bed, he tries to stop her from auditing Dicks seminar. Chris reassures him that her thing for Dick is just a harmless fantasy. But is she really going to his seminar just to hear him expound on art?

As she leaves the house for the seminar, she looks as put-together as weve seen her yet. Shes dressed in crisp black-and-white, her hair swept back elegantly. But shes still the same old Chris, disheveled and bumbling. When she barges into the seminar, in a warehouse gallery, her phone goes off, and Dick, never one to mince words, warns her that hell smash it. Soloway mines a lot of comedy from the physical contrast between the two leads, with Chris cast as the clumsy, fumbling clown, a type normally reserved for men (Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Louis CK), and Dick as the straight man  indeed, as a man obsessed with straightness.

A straight line is perfection, he tells Chris later in their scene, after she dismisses one of his formalist sculptures as nothing more than a brick. (Which, by all appearances, it is.) Dick presents himself as a man of firm boundaries and clear convictions. During a quiet interval, he tries to get her to leave, noting that shes not enrolled his seminar and doesnt even have a spot on the waitlist. She promises she wont be obtrusive, but Dick isnt swayed. These students, he tells her, are artists  the implication being that she isnt one. Prepared for this line of attack, she opens her laptop. The film from the opening scene is queued to play. Exasperated, Dick dismisses the class early, crouches down, and begins watching the film. Chris, meanwhile, is watching Dick.

If the episodes title, The Conceptual Fuck, refers to the heated exchange that follows, what happens next would have to be the foreplay. Twenty seconds into Dicks viewing of the film, Chris gives in to temptation and reaches down to stroke his tousled hair, almost like shes petting a dog. Its a weird, not particularly sexual move, and Dick recoils in surprise. She apologizes as though it was an accident, but Dick has seen enough. He slaps the laptop shut and hands it back to her. Its not my thing, he tells her, knocking down Chriss film and Chris herself in one efficient swipe.

Now, for the first time, the power dynamic between the pair begins to shift. Instead of crumbling under his put-down, she goes on the offensive, mocking the brick-like sculpture that stands in front of her like an erection. I love a straight line, Dick retorts, suddenly defensive, and then he says that thing about how a straight line is perfection. As Chris sees it, hes suggesting that his work itself is flawless.

Like a shark smelling blood, Chris goes into a frenzy. Dick, she points out, hasnt produced new work in seven years. This is a big reveal about him  the first hint that he, like Chris, has been struggling with some creative block. Judging by Dicks speedy retreat, it seems that Chris has found a crack in his formidable armor. After he leaves, Chris collapses against the rough metal door of the gallery. Oh my God, she murmurs, her lips grazing the metal. She looks as though she has just engaged in intercourse, and not just conceptually.

Sally Potter! Jane Campion! CHANTAL AKERMAN! That was how Chris responded to Dicks assertion in the last episode that female filmmakers arent any good. In the aftermath of their latest duel, we get to watch a clip of Chantal Akermans 1974 Je Tu Il Elle, a film in which a naked woman writes letters to an absent lover while eating an entire bag of sugar. (Feminist film critic Sophie Mayer posited that this film might be the origin of what she called the new feminist hot mess cinema  a genre that encompasses such desiring yet unmotivated female protagonists as Hannah Horvath, Rebecca Bunch, and nearly all of Soloways female characters.)

Sylvere, meanwhile, is in deep in over his head, both at home and at Dicks institute, where he struggles to come to terms with the fact that the luminous young redhead he encountered at the party, dipping her bare feet in the Koi pond, is more than just a pretty face. As it turns out, shes his colleague and fellow writing resident. The first time they met, he underestimated Toby (Transparent alum India Menuez), attempting to impress her with his knowledge of Japan. (She countered by suggesting that he visit Bali.) But now his condescension reaches new heights. He just cant understand how someone so achingly beautiful would be obsessed with porn  the subject of Tobys work at the institute. She observes him in silence for a long moment, a realization slowly dawning across her face: Youre awful, she says.

Back at home, Chris is still shaken from her latest encounter with Dick. With her neighbor Devon as a captive audience, she launches into a rant about Maya Deren, another avant-garde feminist filmmaker whose entire oeuvre Dick would surely describe as a bummer. In her intellectual tangling with Dick, she has begun to question everything she has built her identity around. Shes supposed to be the most important female filmmaker, Chris tells Devon, pounding her fist against the door frame. I think shes boring as shit.

Chris doesnt say nothing much in response when Devon tells her that she, too, is an artist. In her overwhelming self-absorption, Chris hardly sees Devon, but Devon, quietly observant, sees right through Chris. When she tells her friends that shes working on a play about a woman whos trying to become somebody, but she hates herself, she is articulating Chriss dilemma more clearly than either Chris or Dick or Sylvere have managed to do.

This theme of transformation carries over into Chriss final scene of the episode. In a spurt of creative energy, she fills a wooden box with letters to Dick, presumably in a second attempt to get into his class. Given his enthusiasm for straight lines, the box makes sense, but why the dead moth that she sticks on the package like a bow? Maybe its meant to evoke the metamorphosis she has begun to undergo. She smiles thoughtfully down at her work, content for the first time all episode.

Dick, meanwhile, has begun a metamorphosis of his own. Out in the desert, he watches a snake as it slithers across the sand, and we can imagine what he might be thinking: Straight lines are lame, curving lines are where its at. Inspired, he gathers rocks and begins to arrange them in a snaking pattern, swerving as he goes. At dinner the other night, he lectured Chris that successful art comes from pure want. If Dicks making work again after a seven-year drought, it must mean that he wants something  or someone  too.

Film clips, in order of appearance:

I Love Dick weaves short clips from avant-garde feminist directors throughout each episode. Sometimes, those clips blend into the storylines unfolding in Marfa; other times, theyre used for contrast. In each recap, well identify them.

(1) Chantal Akerman, Je Tu Il Elle
Hmm.

If youre paying through the nose for a movie star to appear in your film, what youre really paying for is that face. You need a famous mug to entice audiences to see your movie, so what does it mean when a marketing campaign obscures the face the studio spent so much for? Is it a simple case of buyers remorse?

Ive been thinking about that recently as I drive around Los Angeles, where many billboards are advertising Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales. The fifth installment in the Pirates franchise, this one arrives in theaters preceded by the worst press of star Johnny Depps career: After allegations of spousal abuse and misspent millions, Depps appeal has taken a big hit. How do you advertise a movie where your star is both the main attraction and the biggest liability? It seems that Disney has decided to literally split the difference: In most of the billboards Ive seen for the film, only half of Depps face is shown, the other half obscured by the series signature skull and crossbones.

Its a hedge I see time and time again: If youre a fan of the half-shown actor in question, youll recognize him or her immediately, and if youre not  well, at least theres not a full face there courting outright rejection. Just ask poor Ben Affleck, who starred in three films last year and spent almost as much time topping the tabloids. Nearly every movie poster that featured Affleck over that tumultuous year, including the one advertising a film he directed, simply could not cut his face a break:

Ben Afflecks face went zero-for-three in 2016.

But it isnt just tabloid-stricken stars who get the half-face treatment. When studios take a chance on an actor whos never opened a movie before, oftentimes, they get a little bit bashful about advertising that up-and-comers face. The Girl on the Train was a major solo vehicle for Emily Blunt, but her half-hidden face on the poster could have belonged to several other starry ingenues  and if you mistook her for someone more famous, all the better. Two years ago, it seemed like every poster was strategically covering someones face with hair: Bill Hader, Cara Delevingne, and Alicia Vikander all got the half-obscured treatment on the posters for Trainwreck, Paper Towns, and The Danish Girl, respectively. While all of those performers had some credits to their name, they werent yet reliable movie stars. In short, they hadnt earned full-face privileges.

You dont get your full face on the poster until youve proven you can outshine hair.

Still, there are worse things than getting the half-face treatment on your way up or down in Hollywood. For nearly his entire career, Tom Cruises distinctive face has loomed large on his movie posters; Gene Hackman was once said to be so peeved by the size of Cruises face on the one-sheet for The Firm that he pulled his name off the advertisement altogether. But even Cruise, whose well-marketed mug once seemed to be a contractual stipulation, proved not to be immune to a scandal-related demotion. In 2005, the year Cruise jumped on Oprahs couch to declare his love for Katie Holmes, Paramount declined to issue a domestic War of the Worlds poster with Cruises face on it. Their dodge worked: War of the Worlds is still Cruises highest-grossing movie ever.
Master of None Le Nozze Season 2 Episode 2 Editors Rating 3 stars * * * Previous Next   Previous Episode Next Episode  Aziz Ansari as Dev, Eric Wareheim as Arnold. Photo: Netflix

Le Nozze primarily features the return of Arnold (Eric Wareheim), as he and Dev travel to Tuscany to attend the wedding of Arnolds ex-girlfriend. However, the episode also features something else thats arguably more prominent and unique to Master of None: the most indulgent montages of food and travel porn in the series to date.

Lets be clear: Theres nothing inherently wrong with any of this. Food and fine dining clearly hold a special place in Ansaris heart, so it makes sense that Master of None would carve out time for that passion. At this point in the series, it isnt a surprise that Le Nozze contains upwards of three sequences that highlight Ansari and Wareheim going to town on Italian cuisine. If you take seriously the idea of Ansari as an auteur  and theres no reason why you shouldnt  then episodes like Le Nozze are part and parcel of Master of None.

But that doesnt mean its a seamless fit. While I dont object to the inclusion of these sequences (Ill admit that the scene at Osteria Francescana, one of the worlds best restaurants, made my mouth water), theyre just not that compelling on their own. They especially pale in comparison to the episodes main story  Arnold reckoning with a formative past relationship and the different paths he and his ex-girlfriend have taken  and cant help but feel like extra padding. Even if it looks delicious.

Arnold remains first and foremost a comic-relief character, but Ansari and Yang provide him with a solid dramatic story line in Le Nozze. Wareheim sells his more serious scenes well, and the treatment of his ex (Clara Renee) and her Arnold-doppelganger fiance (Barak Hardley) succeed comedically. Of course, Arnolds plight largely serves Devs internal conflict, as is the case with all token best-friend characters, and yet Ansari and Yang dont take Arnolds plight lightly. When your goofy friend who relishes being single starts worrying about the future, even for a moment, it forces you to worry as well.

Arnolds impromptu wedding speech functions as a more sincere riff on the classic objection speech  it starts off with Arnold confessing to his plan to stop their union and ends with a heartfelt blessing  but more importantly for Dev, it gives him the final push he needs to let go of Rachel. Its clear that they arent going down the same road, so trying to force a relationship of any kind will only lead to more pain. Dev constantly sends flirty texts to Rachel in Le Nozze, but hes never thrilled about it because hes trying to avoid the fact that they arent going to end up together. After Arnolds speech, he eventually sends her a polite text suggesting they stop texting and it feels like the genuinely right thing to do.

Arnolds trip also gives Dev the final push he needs to return to New York. He says good-byes to Francesca and Mario and promises to keep making pasta, and yet its clear Dev wasnt really serious about going into the culinary business. Was he ever? He might not be that serious about acting anymore, but the pasta venture mostly served to help him get over a breakup. When Dev arrives back in the U.S., he calls his agent to see if theres any work and he immediately lands the perfect cushy gig: the host of a cooking competition show called Clash of the Cupcakes. It essentially provides him with what he wants: exposure, money, and free time to play the field. Italy was a vacation, but New York remains home.

Jack of All Trades

 The scene when Dev and Arnold drive down a narrow alley and get stuck stands as one of the funniest in the series. It also feels very true to life, especially when they see a huge truck navigate the same alley with ease.

 Arnolds college band was called Cheesesteak Armageddon, because of course it was.

 If you dont enjoy the food/travel porn montages, youll really dislike the scenes when Dev and Arnold are just taking photos and complimenting each other. Im sure theres a way to make that stuff interesting, but here it feels a little forced.
Master of None First Date Season 2 Episode 4 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * * Previous Next   Previous Episode Next Episode  Aziz Ansari as Dev. Photo: Netflix

In 2015, Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg co-wrote Modern Romance: An Investigation, a book that explored changes in coupling and dating patterns in the most recent decade. In it, he considered the idea of overchoice in relationships, a concept first introduced in Alvin Tofflers 1971 book Future Shock, and later explored in Barry Schwartzs 2004 book The Paradox of Choice. Ansari essentially argues that having more options to meet potential mates seems superficially good, but tends to make the actual process of choice much more difficult and can ultimately lead to less romantic fulfillment.

First Date functions like a comedic offshoot of that idea, along with other insights explored in Modern Romance. The episode follows Dev on a series of first dates from the Love at First Sight app, except all the dates are edited together, creating the illusion that Dev is on one long first date with a rotating cast of women. Its an effective formal trick that facilitates a funny vignette style and dovetails well with the episodes paradox of choice theme. Dev goes out on a lot of dates, but just because he has ready access to many women doesnt inherently lead to more chances for a good time, let alone sex or even a genuine connection.

Its somewhat of a basic idea that makes intuitive sense, especially to those in Devs age demographic. Overchoice has always existed, but its more readily perceptible with the rise of the internet and other technology. If First Date has any one flaw, its that it takes the profundity of that concept as a given. Ansari and Yang thankfully dont make it explicit, but they fill the episode with plenty of thematic winking that feels heavy-handed even when its understated.

However, First Date largely succeeds because its both frequently funny and the date(s) themselves are grounded in recognizable human behavior. One woman openly admits to mooching off her parents money just to screw around, another awkwardly excuses herself at a dinner table to snort cocaine in the bathroom, and yet another openly scrolls a dating app in front of Dev under the guise of an emergency. These all feel like modern bad-date stories that occur when youre primarily meeting new people through the internet.

Lest you think the episode demonizes women by only featuring bad matches, Ansari and Yang counter those negative experiences with more positive ones. Dev has initially favorable experiences with Christine (Lauren Miller Rogen), a white employee who works at a dog hotel; Priya (Tiya Sircar), a friendly Indian woman; Diana (Condola Rashad), Devs black actor colleague previously featured in the first-season episode Ladies and Gentlemen; and Stephanie (Aparna Nancherla), a pro wrestlingobsessed ramen blogger.

Most of the fun of First Date derives from the strange interludes that occur throughout the evening: One date indifferently Snapchats a fistfight on the street while Dev calls the police, a Syrian war reporter friend of another date makes Dev feel insecure, and so on. But as the evening winds down and Dev makes a pass at each woman with whom he connected, he receives different responses. Stephanie informs him that she has a boyfriend and only uses the app to make friends. Diana says they should just remain friends. Priya and Dev politely kiss and make plans to meet up again next week. Dev and Christine passionately make out and end up sleeping together.

Of course, Christine turns out to not be a meaningful match of any kind, as she owns a racist Mammy jar. Dev tries to politely point out that its offensive and receives immediate defensive pushback, especially when Christine points out that he decided to have sex with her anyway after seeing the jar. Its a funny turn and Ansari plays it very well, like when he struggles to explain that he comes from a good place as Dev awkwardly exits Christines apartment.

In the end, Dev is alone in his apartment, generally unsatisfied with the evening, but still committed to sending his patented Going to Whole Foods line to matches on the app. There might be too many choices, but backing out entirely means no choice at all. A jungle can be adventurous and ensnaring at the same time.

Jack of All Trades

 One of the highlights of the episode is when Devs dates list the weird, usually fetish-related messages they receive on the app. One date recounted that a guy sent her a picture of a handwritten letter that read, Whaddup with them big ol titties with a supplementary drawing of two big ol titties.

 Priya and Dev discuss the concept of cliquish Indians, or Indians who only hang out with other Indians, and how theres usually a white minority in the clique. Though I personally was never a part of such a clique in college or otherwise, this is a frequent occurrence and its interesting to see it casually discussed on the series  especially the idea that white minorities sometimes overstep their bounds within the group, e.g. Priyas white friend doing the Indian head bob.

 While out at a rooftop bar, a fan of Clash of the Cupcakes approaches Dev and tells him that the show helped his friend through a round of chemotherapy, leading to a nice but uncomfortable moment between the two.
Master of None New York, I Love You Season 2 Episode 6 Editors Rating 4 stars * * * * Previous Next   Previous Episode Next Episode  Alessandra Mastronardi as Francesca, Aziz Ansari as Dev. Photo: Netflix

In New York, I Love You, Ansari extends Master of None beyond Devs life and his core group of friends. Directed by Alan Yang and written by Yang and Ansari, the episode follows three separate New York stories from characters who dont usually receive the television treatment: a doorman at a fancy apartment building, a deaf bodega clerk and her boyfriend, and a cab driver and his roommates. Its sort of like Master of Nones version of High Maintenance (minus the weed, of course) in that it treats the value of every story equally. Lets tackle each story separately, shall we?

Eddie the Doorman Gets No Respect



Eddie (Frank Harts) is very good at his job. Hes polite to the apartment tenants even when they express offensive views, like an elderly woman who bemoans that she can no longer refer to Native Americans as Indians (This guy used to fix my car. I called him Injun Larry. He loved it!). He remembers everyones name and says hello to them as they enter and exit the building. He also does his best to help the tenants out with special requests when he can, like giving diabetic medication to a womans parakeet or informing an adulterous Mr. Strickland (Joseph Adams) when his wife will be home.

Does Eddie receive recognition for these acts? No. Its simply part of the job. In fact, he only hears about it when he misses a beat. While hes away from the desk giving medicine to that parakeet, Mr. Stricklands wife catches him in bed with another woman and starts throwing all of his clothes out of a window. Furious that he didnt inform him, Mr. Strickland starts screaming at Eddie until he puts his foot down and says, With all due respect, sir, youre responsible for your own actions. If you dont walk away right now, were going to have a problem. He might be a doorman, but hes no pushover and upholds common standards of behavior.

Harts carries the story fairly well. The scenes when he talks shop with the other doormen stand out, but its all a little too compact to have that much cumulative impact. Its nice to see Eddie stand up for himself in front of a tenant taking advantage of his generosity, and yet it would have more weight if we spent even a little more time with him and his job.

Maya and Barrys Problems in Bed



As one of the other doormen goes out to buy mangoes at the local bodega, we begin to follow the deaf clerk Maya (Treshelle Edmond) and all sound immediately cuts out. We see her at work mildly struggling to understand a customer as he fuddles his way through ASL before she goes to lunch with her friend Shruti (Maleni Chaitoo). Apparently, Maya is having trouble communicating with her boyfriend Barry (Stanley Bahorek) about problems with their sex life. Shruti tells her to just bring it up in a respectful, private manner and all should be well.

Of course, Maya doesnt wait until theyre in private to broach the topic and instead starts loudly discussing it in a store where she and Barry are purchasing a gift for a not-so-close friend. As the two banter back and forth about their sex life, constantly signing phrases like lick my vagina, theyre interrupted by an angry mother who informs them that her children understand ASL. Embarrassed, the two soon reconcile and promise to discuss it later at home.

Even adjusting for the no-sound gimmick, which is legitimately jarring at first, this is the weakest of the three stories precisely because it feels so much like deaf people are people too! Maya fights with her best friend about wearing the same clothes just like you, she fights with her boyfriend about her sex life just like you, and so on. Its not condescending exactly, and the children signing vagina is pretty funny, but because the issues are so universal and bog-standard, it feels half-baked. Of course the deaf community also faces these problems, but the problems themselves arent suddenly interesting because they involve a deaf person.

A Cab Drivers Night on the Town



The final story in New York, I Love You involves Samuel (Enock Ntekereze), a cab driver who spends all day behind the wheel only to go home to his cramped apartment with his cab driver roommates. Its easily the best of the three stories, mostly because it illustrates how a bad night can turn favorable with just a little improvisation and an open mind.

Samuel and his two roommates have saved up their money to go out to a club, but the club owner rudely turns them down at the door, criticizing their fashion and lack of women. They eventually get roped into going to a shady club with a $20 cover, but find no one inside and the DJ playing We Like to Party! by the Vengaboys, a.k.a. the song from the Six Flags advertisement. Theyre tempted to bail on the whole night, but soon see a group of women desperately trying to get into a fast-food joint after hours  and it just so happens to be the place where their friend works. Samuel, his roommates, and the women all hang out in the eatery and make their own club experience.

Its a sweet, inclusive scene that features a group of people who rarely get to experience a city they drive around every day. If New York has the potential for magic on any given night, this final story demonstrates that that magic isnt guaranteed for everyone. Sometimes you have to make your own magic, even if comes with fries and the Six Flags song.

Jack of All Trades

 The recurring thread across the stories is a new Nicolas Cage film entitled Death Castle, which apparently features a twist in which Cage ends up being black and the castle is actually heaven. The ending is spoiled for Samuel, much to his anger. Everyone featured in the episode goes to see the movie by the end, along with Dev. Samuel doesnt enjoy himself much.
Master of None Thanksgiving Season 2 Episode 8 Editors Rating 5 stars * * * * * Previous Next   Previous Episode Next Episode  Kym Whitley as Joyce, Angela Bassett as Catherine. Photo: Netflix

The best episodes of Master of None concern generational divides. Earlier this season, Aziz Ansari explored his parents Muslim faith versus his own and how different people view religion based on their own personal experiences. In Thanksgiving, episode co-writers Ansari and Lena Waithe explore another topic, sexuality, from different ends of the generational spectrum through the character of Denise, Devs childhood friend.

Dev has celebrated Thanksgiving with Denises family ever since they were kids. Denises mom Catherine (Angela Bassett), her aunt Joyce (Kym Whitley), and her grandmother Ernestine (Venida Evans) help in the kitchen while Dev and Denise play upstairs. Thanksgiving follows six separate Thanksgivings  1995, 1999, 2006, then 2015 through 2017  as Denise comes to terms with her sexuality and later opens up about it to her mother, eventually bringing her dates to dinner as well.

The early years show Denise as she slowly realizes her attraction to women through clothes, music videos, and other pop-culture ephemera. While she and Dev watch the Brown Sugar video, Denises mom thinks shes eagerly staring at the hunky DAngelo when shes really checking out the ladies. She forgoes a nice Thanksgiving dress for baggy sweatpants and a huge hoodie. When shes 16, she finally tells Dev that shes gay (or Lebanese, as she says, because the word lesbian makes her uncomfortable), and Dev supports her wholeheartedly, mostly because he cant wait to stop the intense conversation and smoke weed instead, like every typical teenage stoner.

With Denises mom, its not so easy. As Denise explains, black parents view their children as trophies, and since many believe being gay is a choice, they only blame themselves. It takes Denise until shes 23 to finally come out to her mom, who quickly bursts into tears and tells her she doesnt want life to be harder for her. Catherine also tells Denise that she cant tell her grandmother because not only wont she be able to handle it, but also shes also forgetful  shed have to come out again and again. Catherine then shares the news with Joyce, who takes it in stride and tells her she raised her daughter right. Denise aint never been arrested, she in college, she keeps her job, and she respects her elders, she says. Honey, if she wanna lay around with some women, thats her business.

The situation becomes tenser when Denise starts inviting her dates to Thanksgiving. In 2015, she brings Michelle (Ebony Obsidian), a kind young woman whos very respectful and generous to Denises entire family, yet Catherine doesnt exactly warm up to her. That makes for an awkward meal, and Dev doesnt help matters by repeatedly yelling across the table to Grandma. But the next year is even worse: After breaking up with Michelle, she brings Nikki (Erica Mena), a self-involved woman who calls Denise Dee Dee and whose Instagram username is NipplesAndToes23, if thats any indication of her priorities. Catherine, Joyce, and Dev take an immediate dislike to Nikki, as any family member or friend would, inadvertently making Michelle look like a godsend in comparison.

In 2017, Denise and Michelle have reconciled and she attends Thanksgiving yet again. Though Catherine still feels a little cold toward her, Michelle bonds with her when she helps out in the kitchen and they both criticize Denises fashion sense. Catherine finally tells Denise that shes happy for her and they sit down for a nice meal.

Thanksgiving captures an evolution of perspective for both Denise and her mother as they slowly but surely warm up to each other. Catherine comes to accept that while life will always be difficult for her daughter, for any number of reasons, its important to be respectful and accepting. Meanwhile, Denise had to let her mother get there on her own and not try to force her out of her comfort zone when she wasnt ready. Year after year, Dev watches as a family learns that who a person loves doesnt change who they are at their core, and sexuality is really just another conduit to happiness. Now, lets all say grace.

Jack of All Trades

 The prologue scene features a very young Dev and Denise. Denise believes that Dev is black, but Denises mother explains that theyre both disenfranchised minorities. Denise then believes that Dev is a franchise, like McDonalds. Denise, how the hell you know what a franchise is, but you didnt know that Dev aint black?! Catherine responds incredulously.

 When asked if Devs family celebrates Thanksgiving, he responds, We have lunch together. Then my Dad watches The Godfather and falls asleep, which sounds about right.

 After Denise finally comes out to her mom, Dev asks if she responded with love and support. Denise snorts, Nah man, this aint an episode of Growing Pains. She told me none of that stuff. But she didnt disown me.

 Apparently, Denises family knew that she and Dev were getting high upstairs before Thanksgiving the whole time, including her grandmother. The whole house smelled like reefer.

 I mean, I always thought there was a good chance. You were the only girl who wore Jordans to the Spring Fling, and you have had those Jasmine Guy posters up for years. Always felt like it wasnt about her acting.
PWR BTTM. Photo: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

As more allegations of sexual assault against punk band PWR BTTMs Ben Hopkins continue to emerge, the band has now been dropped by their management company. In a statement, Salty Artist Management says, We do not take these kinds of allegations lightly and our thoughts are with victims and survivors of abuse who have been affected by this. The news comes after several people on social media accused Hopkins of assault, including assault against minors. Since then, other accusers have come forward, and some people involved with the band  including supporting acts and touring band members  now claim to have had knowledge about the bands misconduct. In the only statement PWR BTTM has made so far, the group called the allegations a surprise and claimed this was the first theyd heard of them. The bands manager previously told Jezebel that she also didnt know about the allegations until they became public.

Update, May 12: According to reporting by Jezebel, the band was well aware of the sexual-assault allegations. An anonymous women interviewed by Jezebel (called Jen) said she reached out to band member Liv Bruce and that the band knew of the allegations earlier this year.

Update, May 13: The band has been dropped by its label, Polyvinyl Record Company. Throughout our 20 years, Polyvinyl has purposefully operated on the core principle that everyone deserves to be treated with fairness and respect. There is absolutely no place in the world for hate, violence, abuse, discrimination or predatory behavior of any kind, the company said in a statement on Facebook. In keeping with this philosophy, we want to let everyone know that we are ceasing to sell and distribute PWR BTTMs music. If you have ordered PWR BTTM products from Polyvinyl and would like to receive a full refund for your purchase. Polyvinyl will also be making donations to organizations that support efforts against sexual and LGBTQ violence. The company also confirmed to Vulture that the band is no longer signed with them.


Unfortunately, Riverdales season finale fails to match the winningly bizarre penultimate episode, given that its more concerned with tying up loose ends and setting up future story lines than, you know, unraveling the mystery behind the murder at the shows heart. But hey, thats okay  at least we have future story lines to look forward to. Until then, dont change, keep in touch, love you like a sister, have a great summer!

So, Blossom Maple Farms wasnt what it seemed, to put it mildly. The family business was really a front for the late Clifford Blossom, noted son-killer, to smuggle heroin from Canada. Now, Sheriff Keller demands that F.P. Jones tell him who, exactly, was selling Blossoms drugs. But Jugheads dad denies the Southside Serpents had anything to do with it. He refuses to name names  not even for a lesser sentence  despite facing 20 years in prison.

Life at the Cooper house is seemingly back to normal, with both Hal and Polly living at home once again, but Betty doesnt buy this act for a second. How can her parents pretend everything is fine? Well, they arent the only ones. Mayor McCoy, whos eager to blame all this inconvenient unpleasantness on the Serpents, is fixated on Riverdales upcoming Jubilee celebration of the towns 75th anniversary. She invites Archie to perform with the Pussycats and Betty to deliver a speech.

But Betty, in full Holden Caulfield mode, is more interested in writing an article excoriating the towns grown-ups for refusing to acknowledge that anything has changed. When her parents refuse to print her piece in The Register  theyre afraid shell become a target for the Riverdale citizenrys anger towardsthe Serpents  she goes ahead and publishes it her damn self in the school paper.

Veronicas terrified to tell Betty about her budding romance with Archie (or, as he puts it, the fact that theyve kissed a couple of times), but her gal pal isnt bothered in the slightest. Why would she be? Shes happy with Jughead! Archie doesnt believe that Betty is really 100 percent okay, but in reality, its more like like hes not 100 percent okay that shes 100 percent okay. Young love! Veronica eventually confronts Archie for staring wistfully at Betty and Jughead, but he insists he only likes Betty as a friend. Its just that he wants to have what they have, that whole soul mates thing. This statement registers to me, an admitted old person, as bullshit, but registers to Veronica as a terribly romantic thing to say. Young love!

The elder members of the Lodge and Andrews families also face their fair share of tension. Fred is upset that Hermione fired the Serpents and hired a new construction crew, despite their loyalty  but her top priority is ensuring that Hiram, due home from prison at the end of the month, wont have to get his hands dirty when he returns. And while were on the subject anyway, she and her husband want to buy Fred out.

Meanwhile, Penelope Blossom is coping with the loss of her husband as only Penelope Blossom could. Maybe your father had the right idea: Just end it, she tells Cheryl. Better the sweet hereafter than this awful limbo. Sounds like someone should write a parenting book! Melodrama is nothing out of the ordinary for Mother Blossom, but something is seriously wrong with Cheryl. She abdicates as head cheerleader of the River Vixens, graciously handing Veronica her HBIC tee and her title. Cheryl even apologizes to Jughead for giving him a beatdown, then gifts him her iconic (shes not wrong) spider brooch as a gesture of goodwill. Giving away all her worldly possessions? Wearing 60 percent less lipstick than usual? Do we have a 13 Reasons Why situation on our hands? Because, Im sorry, I cant. Again: Protect Cheryl Blossom at all costs.

Hal and Alice were right to worry about their daughters story. Someone plasters Bettys locker with copies of The Blue & Gold, scrawled with GO TO HELL SERPENT SLUT in pigs blood. A straw effigy of Betty (really, a hopelessly generic straw effigy of any blonde woman  do better, vandals of Riverdale) hangs nearby. Back home, Alice finally, tearfully reveals the secret that F.P. had overheard her and Hal fighting about way back at their own homecoming. Alice was pregnant. She went away to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, just like Polly. There she had a son, who was adopted. Thats right: Betty has a brother. He must be in his mid-20s now. (Please mail your casting suggestions to the CW, 123 Television Street, Hollywood.)

A social worker tells Jughead that, in his dads absence, a Southside family has offered to foster him. But that means hed be in a different school district. Despite Bettys assurances that he does belong in Riverdale, Jughead takes it upon himself to enroll at Southside High. We gather from its many metal detectors, flickering fluorescent lights, and one inexplicable payphone that this is a Bad School. Betty, Veronica, and Archie dash into the building (didnt we just see that this Southside High had ridiculously intense security?) to rescue Jughead, but find him happily holding court at a table in the cafeteria.

When Cheryl shoots Veronica a troubling text (Thanks for trying. Im going to be with Jason now.), the whole gang rushes to the snow-covered shores of the Sweetwater River. There they find the twinless twin pounding her fists against the ice until she plunges through. Bloodying the hell out of his hand in the process (and actually breaking his hand!), Archie manages to successfully punch through the thick ice and pull Cheryl out. Its not only the very best scene in the finale, but its the very first useful thing Archie has done in 13 episodes.

In deference to Archies heroic rescue of Cheryl, Josie agrees to sing one of his original compositions at the Jubilee. Its a generic little ditty written for his friends that, watch, may very well be No. 1 on iTunes by sunrise. Bettys speech implores the town to face up to the ugly truths many would prefer to bury. For this, shes met with a standing ovation that is somehow even harder to believe than adult woman Alice Cooper being permitted to write for the school paper.

Fred ultimately declines to sell his business to Hermione, because she, like the town of Riverdale, is at a crossroads. Yes, Hiram is coming back, but would this really be whats best for her, wink-wink? This sure seems an elaborate and expensive method of flirting.

Penelope returns home to find Cheryl, having permanently retired her Ophelia impression, standing at their roaring fireplace. She tosses a burning candelabra on the carpet, which shes doused in gasoline. This is the only way for them to be purified, apparently. Having made it safely outside, a satisfied Cheryl  restored to her former heights of lipstick glory  and Penelope (who is really having a rough couple of weeks, huh?) watch Thornhill go up in flames.

The kids toast with milkshakes at Pops, the first of many that night  a detail that, to me, an old person who is also a semi-lactose-intolerant person, casts the following events in a different light. Jughead and Betty retreat to F.P.s newly spiffed-up trailer. They swear their love for one another, then make out. Meanwhile, Archie and Veronica sneak into her apartment for their own teen sex romp, or at least ambiguously sex-adjacent romp. Its what the MPAA would surely label a Sexual Situation. But Betty and Jughead are interrupted by a loud knock at the trailer door. Its the Serpents. They heard F.P. didnt snitch, and they want Jughead to know theyll have his back while his dad is away. They even offer him a Serpents jacket of his own (it looks great on him, not that anyone should join a gang because #fashion), as Betty looks on in dismay.

Archie, having spent the night at Veronicas, meets his dad at Pops for breakfast. He returns from the mens room to find an armed robbery in progress. (In real life, when you go to the bathroom at a restaurant, your food will often be waiting when you come out. In movies and TV, when you go the bathroom at a restaurant, someone often gets killed when you come out. Okay, I may just be thinking of The Godfather.)

Although Archie runs between the gun and his father, he cant stop the masked man from shooting Fred right in the gut. Well have to wait till next season to learn if he lives or dies, whos responsible, and exactly why Jugheads narration calls this an act of violence that was anything but random.

Now, will you sign my yearbook or what?
If you slipped into a coma (perhaps during The Box, which somehow managed to make a multicity terrorist attack boring), and Head Games was the first thing you saw upon opening your eyes, youd swear it was January 2018. The episode is such a clean reset, it feels like a season premiere in almost every way. As if by magic, Scandal makes Peus and his Mystery Henchwoman vanish, then reboots its relationships and hurtles toward a version of itself not seen since early season three. The action is concentrated in the White House and OPA, and theres even an honest-to-goodness case of the week. Its like the good old days.

Were starting anew here, and to drive the point home, the opening montage is set to Curtis Mayfields Move On Up. Marcus Walker takes to his podium and tells the press that while he cant give a single detail about the people behind the drone attacks, he can assure them the danger is over and life goes on. Olivia and Fitz are back together, or at least acting like it. Quinns preparing for her wedding, with Huck as her maid of honor. (If youre late for the rehearsal dinner, hell torture you! Kidding. No, but seriously, arrive promptly.)

But not everyone is out of the woods. Abbys still having a hard time regaining her footing within the White House, with Fitz still angry about her role in the conspiracy to assassinate Vargas. He even tells her to work from home, like shes processing accounts receivable, instead of helping to run the worlds highest-profile democracy. Compared to digging around in a dead mans chest cavity, being the target of executive shade isnt all that bad. David Rosen is nursing the love hangover he got from Mystery Henchwoman, whose name is maybe Gertrude, but now we may never know. Rosen drops in on Rowan, whos preparing to flee to some island paradise, but is kind enough to give Rosen the closure he needs.

At least, Rowan gives Rosen the raw ingredients of closure. For weeks, Rowan was manipulated with 11-pound boxes, but now its the ponytailed menace whose head is in a box, which he gives to Rosen as a DNA-laden parting gift. Rosen enlists Abbys help, not to mention her freezer, and Jake swoops in to pull the evidence needed to identify the head. Like the best Scandal scenes, the characters are the first to acknowledge the fun absurdity of the White House chief of staff, the NSA director, and the attorney general playing hot potato with a severed human head.

Quinn, Huck, and Charlie are also playing with someones life, after being tasked by Liv to find a criminal worthy of a pardon, with just nine days left in the Fitzgerald Grant presidency. They home in on Shaun Campbell, a man serving a life sentence for exacting vigilante justice against a white supremacist who killed eight people in a church bombing. The bomber is acquitted, but winds up dead, hanged from a tree, and somehow Shaun winds up taking the fall for it. The case is well-known, having been featured in a Serial-style true-crime podcast.

The Shaun Campbell case is the kind of long shot that OPA used to specialize in, but this time, Olivia is too busy to run point, or even take much of an interest. (Charlie makes waves by suggesting the new Olivia Pope wont have time for her old pet project.) Shes busy helping Mellie narrow down her cabinet choices, and strongly advising against Mellies instinct to recruit Marcus as her new communications director. Liv also has to have one last boozy dinner with Rowan, who is intent on retiring, not only because the Vargas ugliness is now behind him but also so he can avoid distracting Liv as she prepares to retake the Oval.

The last thing Olivia needs are more distractions, so shes none too pleased to find out Shaun Campbell is the man the OPA team has chosen for the president to pardon. Olivia was looking for something tidy with little chance of political blowback, not a racially charged, high-profile revenge killing for which Quinn can provide no evidence of Campbells innocence. Quinn, Huck, and Charlie already tracked down a racist barkeep who immediately confessed to the crime, but thats not even the point. Quinns gut is telling her Shaun Campbell needs their help, and shes furious when Olivia is too beholden to the White House to stick her neck out for a little guy who got a raw deal. Thats what OPA is about.

Or should I say, QPA, which certainly doesnt have the same ring to it. Quinn goes over Livs head and successfully pitches Campbell to Fitz in a terrific scene. When Olivia and Quinn debrief, Liv confesses that the whole thing was a test to see if she was ready to take the reins of the company that bears her name. Quinn passed, and the torch is formally passed down. The timing is perfect, since now theres a bigger threat bound to absorb all of Olivias mental and emotional resources.

During their quest to identify Mystery Henchwoman, Abby, Jake, and Rosen discover that Peus and Whats Her Name werent atop the chain of command. They were taking orders from someone else. Even if you missed Khandi Alexanders name in the opening credits (which is an absolutely rookie move for a show that so values surprising the audience), Head Games gives an early clue as to whos about to emerge from the shadows. If you knew how it felt to be used, says Rosen, as he pleads for Rowans help. Someone pretends to love you, then uses you to torpedo democracy. Rosen, you have no idea. Rowan knows all about being seduced and destroyed, which is why hes the only person who can help take down the resurgent Maya Pope. So much for retirement.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) The Congress today suffered a jolt in the National Herald case as the Delhi High Court refused to stay the income tax proceedings against Young Indian Pvt Ltd, whose major stakeholders are party president Sonia Gandhi and her son and vice president Rahul.

"We are not inclined to entertain your writ petition. It is better that you withdraw it and approach the income tax assessing officer," a bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Chander Shekhar said.

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The order makes it clear that the income tax proceedings will continue in the case.

The court also said that the company has not moved the assessing officer and raised its grievances, so it should first approach the IT department and submit its documents.

In case it is still not satisfied, the company can move the court thereafter, the bench added.

Sensing the mood of the bench, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the firm, withdrew the petition which was allowed by the court that termed it "dismissed as withdrawn".

Young Indian (YI), which was incorporated in November 2010 with a capital of Rs 50 lakh, had acquired almost all the shareholding of the Associated Journal Ltd (AJL), which is the owner of the National Herald newspaper.

BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, in a private criminal complaint filed before a trial court, had accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh, through which YI had obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which the AJL owed to the Congress party.

YI had approached the high court seeking a direction to stay the IT proceedings and quashing of re-assessment notice issued against it with regard to the National Herald misappropriation of assets case.

The firm had challenged a notice issued under sections 147/148 of the Income Tax Act by which the department had sought to reopen a past assessment on the ground that certain income had escaped assessment for the year 2011-12.

The counsel for the Income Tax Department had opposed the petition, saying the firm has not moved the assessing officer and hence its plea was not maintainable.

The trial court had summoned the Gandhis and others as accused persons, besides Young Indian on June 26, 2014.

The Gandhis and other accused -- Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda -- had denied the allegations levelled against them.

On December 7, 2015 the high court had rejected their pleas for quashing the summons issued against them by the trial court in the case.

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On December 19, 2015, the trial court had granted bail to Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to summons. Pitroda was granted bail on February 20, 2016 when he had appeared in the court.

Sonia, Rahul, Vora (AICC treasurer), Fernandes (AICC general secretary), Dubey and Pitroda were summoned for the alleged offences of dishonest misappropriation of property, criminal breach of trust and cheating read with criminal conspiracy of the IPC.

The IT departments move to issue the notices followed its probe on Swamys complaint alleging that the Gandhis had misappropriated AJLs assets while transferring their shares to the newly formed Young India.

According to IT records, 83.3 per cent of Young Indian was held by Sonia and Rahul, 15.5 per cent by Vohra and the remaining 1.2 per cent by Fernandes. PTI PPS HMP SKV RKS ARC

--- ENDS ---
Robert De Niro and Val Kilmer in Heat. Photo: Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc

Michael Manns broody pulp style has seeped into the groundwater of American pop culture so much that we often take for granted how influential his films are. Heat alone has influenced any number of subsequent action films, including The Dark Knight, The Town, and several others. This is partly because the film remains a creative peak for Mann, a testament to his skill as a filmmaker whose signature concerns are philosophical alienation fostered by corrupt or just ineffectual institutions, and the romanticism of being a disciplined loner in a world that encourages communal identities. Its also one of Manns most viscerally satisfying films, and features several career highlights, like the two-hander coffee-shop scene, the now-iconic bank heist, and the concluding airport shoot-out. Just in time for the Blu-ray release of the newly restored definitive directors cut of Heat, Vulture spoke with Mann about cocaine, Walter Hill, and prison.

In previous interviews, youve cited Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov as an influence. Vertov promoted a theory of cinema that goes beyond the human way of looking at things and into a mechanical, or perhaps superhuman view of events. I thought about that in relation to Heat because you do not view these characters or their behavior through a moralistic lens.

I was fascinated with a couple of things. One is human life in all of its dimensionality. Thats restricted, of course, in a drama like Heat, but its a lot more dimensional than archetypes. Im really not interested in archetypes. In my research, I met a lot of people who do what my characters are going to do. And, the dimensionality is always stunning, its always fascinating, it defines who they are I believe them as people and that allows me, as a writer/director, to access them with more intensity.

And then, of course, when youre making a film in which worlds collide, you want the best collision possible, so those characters, who are quite extraordinary at what they do, are attractive and Hanna is a great detective. Hes a great hunter, a great predator. Hes very self-aware to the point where he knows that basically thatthe cool groove of concentration of discovering, of getting to whomever hes targeted  that thats a high not quite like any other. And so, he says to Justine at the end of the film: All I am is who Im going after. And, he knows that he has deprioritized other human parts of his life and basically hes left a mess behind him and he will again. So, that concentration of purpose attracted me to him and then Neil McCauley is the only other person whos as self-aware as Hanna and in a very different world, but with a similar self-awareness and focus.

You mentioned Eady. Actress Amy Brenneman was originally reluctant to play the part of Eady because she felt like the film was not guided by morals. But thats why you thought she was perfect for the part, the fact that she had that instinctive objection. How easy was it to get your cast and collaborators on the same page as you when it came to accepting the films amoral worldview?

I dont think much of the world runs moralistically. Thats not to say characters dont have a moral compass. Hanna has a moral compass, Neil McCauley does not have a moral compass, in the kind of dialectical collision of these two characters, theyre both identical in the way that they are self-aware, they both really know their lives. But there are other components in total opposition, and that happens to be one of them. Hannanot only does he have a moral compass, but he will empathize with a mother of a girl whos been murdered because he wants to absorb, empathetically, that pain to understand it and something of who the victim was. . A very good homicide investigator will keep himself emotionally abstracted. Not Hanna. . For Hanna, doing his job, he wants to know everything and experience everything he can experience. Neil McCauleys attitude is about Cheritto (Sizemores) death, for example he knew the risks: it rains, you get wet.

You encouraged and facilitated social gatherings between actors who play policemen with real policemen, and actors who were playing criminals with real criminals and their wives. How did these social gatherings change the way the characters, as you envisioned them, behaved?

Actors are very perceptive. When you get down with some of the real people, , they see the way somebody talks, the way they walk, the clothes they wear, how the guy ties his tie, how he holds a glass and actors are sponges for this,. They pick up a lot of attitude and they can ask questions, find out: Whered you go to high school? Where did you go to grammar school? What was your family life like? Tell me about your father. What for you in what you do is the lowest point? Why do you think you do what you do?

One fascinating aspect of the research you and your cast did for the film is time spent talking to inmates in Folsom prison. That comes to mind once you know that McCauley wears an unassuming suit because he wants to blend in, or when you hear him say vocabulary words that indicate that hes well-read, like penologist and iridescent. What kind of routine would you say McCauley had when he was in prison?

When I spent time in Folsom on Straight Time and The Jericho Mile, it was the end of the line, there was no Pelican Bay, If you were in San Quentin and you committed a murder, you would then be sent to Folsom, so it was the end of the line. It had a very mature prison population, meaning it was a very dangerous place, but it was ordered. If there was a killing among prisoners, it was not because someone couldnt do time and freaked out. It was because someone had violated something known, like a drug deal or crossed gang boundaries. So, cause and effect was knowable in Folsom. That meant you could understand the system and imagine McCauley there. Men like McCauley who have a strong ego and are disciplined, will ask themselves existential question: Why dont I commit suicide? If Im not going to commit suicide, what is time? How am I going to do it? And, the strong willed amongst them will have a commitment of working on their body or their minds, so consequently, people educate themselves, some convicts you encounter are stunningly literate. But, theyre literate not because they took undergraduate philosophy. They had personal practical, fundamental questions that they wanted answered, like: How should I view my life in time? Whats property? Theyll read Kierkegaard, and Sartre and Marx and Engels,. You encounter it with people that have sixth grade educations, who become quite astute in this raw kind of way. A friend of mine, Jerry Scalise, a bank robber in his 70s, whos in federal prison, youd think is a lit professor.

In an earlier version of the script, Hanna has a cocaine habit, which sort of explains his outbursts. That seems to make his addictive personality too literal. Why was that particular trait removed from the film?

Al was edgy enough so that you didnt need to add that he was using coke, too. If I had done that, it would explain behavior that I didnt want explained chemically. So it became a crutch we didnt need. You take the crutch away, and youre better, yknow what I mean?

At one point, you offered Heats script to Walter Hill. I can see a lineage between Hills films like Hard Times and The Driver and your own style, though after a point your two personalities become distinct. When was Hill approached, and what projects or aspects of his filmmaking led you to approach him for the project?

Walter Hill and I have been friends since 1972. This is a small community and we talked to each other yesterday. Our families are close. And, he would have been a terrific choice if he wanted to direct it. It wasnt a matter of approaching a stranger. I know the way Walter thinks and I know his work very, very intimately. And, thats what that decision of approaching him was based on.

Both you and Hill refuse to take the edge off of characters that, in any other context, would obviously exhibit a pathological behavior or self-destructive attitude.

Thats a pretty astute observation, though I dont think that some of these characters are that pathological.

One of the things that makes your films so distinctive is the sound of gun violence. You can always tell youre watching a Michael Mann gunfight because gunshots are thunderous. Each spent shell has weight; theres no immaterial action. What kind of direction did you give your sound guys for Heats action scenes?

For the big shootout at the bank, I had a sound design of edited sound effects that was very elaborate for all the gunfire. It would have taken five days to mix. And, they werent as effective as the actual sound from when we shot the scene, the production tracks. And, so thats what I wound up using . We shot with full-load blanks, meaning with full charges of gunpowder in them. And, thats the sound the weapons actually made and you couldnt imitate or improve upon them. It was terrifying as hell because we were in these glass and steel canyons and the gunfire reverberated in a certain real way, so they had an authenticity to the place that really was unique.

That bank-heist scene and the ensuing chase are so iconic. Are there contemporaries whose style of action choreography you admire, or that you look to for inspiration?

I dont know. The thing Ive seen recently  Mel Gibsons film from last year had great action in it.

Hacksaw Ridge.

Those action scenes were really well done. They had a flavor and an edge that felt real. I believed in them. And it came from one scene that was used very wisely, and that had mostly to do with the speed of the scene  how fast the explosions are in the scene.

One thats always so fascinating is Danny Trejos death scene. McCauley isnt hesitant at all when he pumps Trejo for more information about who hired Kevin Gages character. Would McCauley have walked away if Trejo hadnt asked him for a mercy killing?

No, I dont think so. [Laughs.] Why would he have walked away, and let him suffer?

What comes to mind when you revisit Heat?

What do I see? Oh, I dont know. It was pretty challenging to have on a collision course two protagonists, really, as well as antagonists, at the same time. And I see long nights [laughs], a lot of long nights. And, a great time. Working with the actors was fantastic . Val Kilmer would fall by on his day off to see how Bobby and Al were going to do a scene. And, Jon Voights work was extraordinary. It was very much like a repertory company. It was really a powerful and rewarding experience.
Till BJP leader Subramanian Swamy jumped into the fray, the National Herald was considered an internal matter of the Congress. Through his complaint, Swamy has made it a national issue in which the Delhi High Court has now ordered an I-T probe.

By Prabhash K Dutta: Subramanian Swamy is a Rajya Sabha member of the BJP and he is not against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for Congress-mukt Bharat (Congress-free India).

Yet, he is raising an issue of alleged corruption wherein the Congress is said to have been cheated with crores of rupees in what is now known as the National Herald case.

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But, this is not an attempt to clean the Congress from corruption. Subramanian Swamy has taken Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi to court in the matter.

Subramanian Swamy's fight that raises the question of probity in Congress' functioning has resonated in the Delhi High Court as well. Justice Sunil Gaur of the Delhi High Court had described the case last year as 'one of its kind'.

WHAT IS NATIONAL HERALD CASE?

The National Herald case is the court trial on a petition filed by Subramanian Swamy in 2012. Swamy accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others of conspiring to cheat the Congress in a land deal involving the National Herald English daily.

The amount of alleged cheat is about Rs 90.26 crore, which was loaned to Associated Journals Private Limited (AJL), which had three publications including the National Herald - founded by Jawaharlal Nehru before he became the first Prime Minister of India.

The case is being heard at the Patiala House Court of Delhi. And, the Delhi High Court today allowed the Income Tax department to launch a probe into the allegations of corruption involving the National Herald and the Congress leaders.

WHY CRIES OF CORRUPTION

The AJL - a public limited company with immovable assets at prime location in New Delhi - was shut down in 2008 as it closed printing and publication of the National Herald. At the time of its closure the AJL owed Rs 90.26 crore to the Congress, which had given loans to the company in order to keep the National Herald running. The loans were interest-free.

The debt was an asset of the Congress, which declared the loan as negative worth when the AJL shut down operations.

Sometime later, the Congress assigned the debt owed by AJL to the Young India Private Limited (YIL) - a charitable company. Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were said to have 38 per cent shares each.

However, according to the Income Tax department's record the combined share of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi was 83.3 per cent in the YIL. Of the rest, 15.5 per cent was owned by Congress leader Motilal Vora and the remaining 1.2 per cent by Oscar Fernandes.

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Subramanian Swamy alleged that YIL was floated by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to acquire the assets of the National Herald - which, according to him, run into thousands of crores of rupees.

TRANSACTIONS BETWEEN AJL AND YIL

As per the court records, the Young India Private Limited has a share capital of Rs 5 lakh only. But, it paid Rs 50 lakh to the Congress, which transferred its debt of Rs 90.26 crore owed to it by AJL to the YIL.

Simply put the YIL got the right to recover Rs 90.26 crore debt by paying just Rs 50 lakh.

In December 2010, the AJL transferred its shares to the YIL as it failed to pay back Rs 90.26 crore debt. This also resulted in sharp reduction in the shareholding of the original 761 stakeholders of the AJL, who now owned only one per cent of the stakes in the company.

Now, the AJL became a subsidiary of the YIL, which was jointly owned by Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Motilal Vora and Oscar Fernandes. The AJL has real estate assets at prime locations in New Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Patna, Bhopal, Indore and Panchkula among others.

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WHAT IS SUBRAMANIAN SWAMY'S PROBLEM?

After acquiring the properties of AJL, YIL declared that it would not carry out any publication including the National Herald as it is not among its objectives.

This is where Subramanian Swamy entered the fray. He objected to the decision of the YIL crying scam. The National Herald House, from where the daily was published, is located on a prime land in New Delhi. It was given to the AJL at concessional rate for publication of newspaper.

Swamy alleged that the building was being used for commercial and renting purpose by company owned by individuals, who have used unfair and illegal means to acquire government's property given for a special purpose at concessional rate.

Swamy made Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Congress general secretary Motilal Vora, party treasure Oscar Fernandes - all are directors and shareholders of YIL - accused in the National Herald case. Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda - two other directors of the YIL - have also been made accused in the case.

Motilal Vora and Oscar Fernandes are also the directors of AJL. Vora is holds the position of the chairman of AJL as well.

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ALSO READ |

National Herald case: Sonia Gandhi, Rahul to be investigated by Income Tax officials

Gandhis should cooperate with Income Tax probe in National Herald case: BJP

ALSO WATCH |

Delhi High Court orders I-T probe against Sonia, Rahul Gandhi

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The downtown Tax Increment Financing Zone board struggled Thursday as an entrepreneurs vision for a cottage development on Elm Avenue collided with the citys decade-old vision for how the area should be redeveloped.

In the end, the entrepreneur, Nancy Grayson of Lula Janes bakery, got what she wanted: a TIF board recommendation for $145,384 to assist with the development of nine short-term rental cottages next to the bakery. The money would help fund sidewalks, lighting, trees and fencing in the public right of way to assist a $600,000 development of 320-square-foot cottages modeled on a development in Fredericksburg.

But to build the cottages tucked away from Elm Avenue as Grayson plans, she will have to get an official zoning variance to a downtown overlay zone that requires new structures to be built up to the sidewalk.

The variance may seem technical, but it led to a tense debate at the TIF board meeting. City Center Waco executive director Megan Henderson, who scores TIF applicants for compliance with the citys Imagine Waco Plan for Greater Downtown, recommended against the project because of the site design.

Its an exciting, ambitious and beautifully planned project, Henderson said. But we have grave reservations about a couple of aspects. . . . To fulfill Imagine Waco, it would need to have a different scale and orientation than . . . small cottages tucked away from the street.

Grayson would not budge on the design. She said rather than redesign the Cottages on Elm project, she would leave the half-block permanently undeveloped.

I would kill the whole project, she said. I plant trees, and it will go unused.

Approving a variance to the site design standard is the job of the citys Zoning Board of Adjustment, not the TIF board, which recommends incentives to the city council. The incentive money comes from a portion of property taxes paid on downtown properties.

Based on the Imagine Waco plan, the City Council in 2009 approved a zoning overlay district intended to create a better pedestrian experience in downtown and the Elm Avenue corridor. For new buildings, it regulates window and signage sizes, bars front parking lots and requires the front facade to be adjacent to the sidewalk.

City planning director Clint Peters said the success of Graysons adjacent Lula Janes bakery in revitalizing Elm Avenue could be a good argument for a variance.

Its up to the board (of adjustment), but I do think with your track record . . . theres a possibility a variance can be approved, Peters said.

Henderson said setting aside the intent of the Imagine Waco plan and the downtown overlay should not be done lightly.

Its about creating a precedent, she said. There will be other developments that want us to ignore our design standards. . . . This isnt just an aspirational design. Its not just something that would be pretty. Its about the generational development of this district and how being built to the sidewalk creates a walkable sidewalk.

TIF board member Malcolm Duncan Jr. said the request creates a dilemma for the TIF board.

Struggling with this

Im struggling with this, said Duncan, a former Waco mayor. Its a great idea, but I dont want to negate the importance of the planning work thats been done before.

Henderson, Peters and board members agreed that any variance would need to be based on a finding of special circumstances in an effort to keep future applicants from seeking to waive the requirements.

Board members said the project could be seen as an extension of Lula Janes, which itself is built to the sidewalk.

Henderson said she appreciates efforts to close the gate on future variances, but she remained concerned about the layout.

I would rather see the project happen, she said. But Im stubborn enough to cling to the hope that it could be redesigned.

Grayson shook her head when TIF board member Bob Sheehy asked if she would consider sitting down with Henderson to find a compromise.

The TIF board recommended the project with a 5-0 vote.

In a tour of the property with the TIF board before the meeting, Grayson made the case for supporting her vision.

If yall want something for Elm that is unique, that draws people, that makes Elm special, this is perfect. If you dont, and you want to wait, take a look at what were looking at, she said, referring to the slow pace of revitalization on Elm Avenue. Its not working for us, yall.

In addition to building and running Lula Janes, Grayson has built and sold a Southern-style cottage on Dallas Street and is now building another.

You may not know me that well, but for me its not about money, Grayson said to board members. My projects are never about money. My bottom line is, its OK not to make money; its not OK to lose money. Its a fine line, but thats where I sit on everything I do. Fortunately, they explode and go nuts. What we want to do is continue to stimulate community and economic development.
The Nurse-Family Partnership Program at Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center recently celebrated its one-year anniversary with a party at the Baylor Club.

The program named Jadericca Green as its first Mom of the Year. Nurse of the Year went to Shelli Ellis.

The partnership serves 150 first-time mothers in McLennan County who are living at or below 185 percent of the poverty level.

It is an evidence-based community healthcare program that empowers low-income, first-time mothers to become confident parents and strong women by partnering with nurse home visits.

Nurse home visits begin early in the mothers pregnancy and continue visitation until the childs second birthday. Nurses provide support, resource connections, education and counseling on health, behavioral and self-sufficiency issues.
A 17-year Waco Fire Department veteran suffered second-degree burns and a severe spinal cord injury in an off-duty accident Wednesday, family and authorities said.

Garth Goodwin, a firefighter at Station 9, was working an off-duty job near McGregor, performing routine maintenance on a billboard, when he came in contact with high-voltage power lines. Goodwin, 46, was electrically shocked and fell about 10 feet from the billboard.

Unable to move his legs, he laid there for an extended period of time until someone who lives close to the scene discovered him and called for help, a family post on CaringBridge.org states.

Goodwin was taken to Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Medical Center with extensive injuries and burns on his chest before he was taken by air-ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Waco Fire Chief Bobby Tatum said. Goodwin is expected to need surgery and face a lengthy road to recovery.

As firefighters, we are always going to address the needs of others, and oftentimes we dont find ourselves being that person in need, Tatum said. Its very humbling for firefighters, because normally we are the saviors as opposed to the person being saved. We are appreciative of the Waco community showing their support.

Goodwin didnt show up to pick up his son from school Wednesday afternoon, so his wife, Lisa, called trying to find him. A resident in McGregor heard the phone ringing and found Goodwin.

It appears he was laying there for at least an hour, Tatum said.

Tatum described Goodwin as a man devoted to his son and family who is well-respected firefighter with a unique sense of humor. He said he has heard Goodwin is in good spirits.

One of the guys visiting him told him to keep his head up, and (Goodwin) said, Well, thats about the only thing I can do right now,  Tatum said.

The Waco Firefighters Honor Guard is accepting donations to assist Goodwin and his family.

I got a call from Steve Cook at the fire program at MCC. He was saying that Garth was one of his guys, that he trained him and knows him fondly, Tatum said. The Dallas Department sent their chaplain to Parkland so everything would be ready when Garth and his family got there.

That just goes to show that although we wear many different badges, were all part of the same family.

To make a donation to Goodwins recovery, checks can be made payable to Waco Firefighters Honor Guard, with Movemeber/Garth in the subject line and sent to 1016 Columbus Ave., Waco, TX, 76701. Donations can also be made at any Waco fire station.
A local investigation uncovered an international human trafficking ring that has victimized about 16 Chinese women, McLennan County Sheriff Parnell McNamara said.

The offices Criminal Investigation Division opened a human trafficking investigation in the Waco area last fall. Detectives uncovered an operation that was bringing women in from China and sending them throughout the nation for the purpose of prostitution, McNamara said.

Detective Joseph Scaramucci has been investigating human trafficking in Waco and Central Texas and it has led to an international trafficking ring that goes from Waco, Houston and to New York with women from China, McNamara said. I am so proud of our CID unit and all the hard work that they have put in to fight human trafficking.

Search warrants served on residences in Houston and Austin led detectives to New York in search of their primary suspect, McNamara said.

In late September, Scaramucci reported he reached out to an online ad promoting an Asian female escort on Backpage.com, according to an arrest affidavit. He made contact with a woman in a Waco hotel and found that she had been staying in the room for a lengthy period of time after she flew from Hong Kong to San Francisco, then to Houston.

In late April, Ling Yu, 33, was arrested in New York on a first-degree felony charge of engaging in organized crime and was later indicted by a McLennan County grand jury. Hang Zheng, a Chinese citizen, was also arrested by McLennan County authorities in Austin this week on a first-degree felony charge of engaging in organized crime stemming from the investigation.

Hang is accused of transporting women, none who spoke English, across Texas for prostitution arrangements set up with co-conspirators in New York.

According to the arrest affidavit, Hang, Zhao Chen Shi, 33, and Xubin Zou, 27, committed or conspired to commit continuous human trafficking offenses between late 2016 and early 2017. McNamara said authorities have not arrested Zhao or Xubin, but warrants have been issued for their arrest.

Authorities have seized assets and identified 16 women they think were working for the suspects in Waco; Houston; Austin; Galveston; Victoria; the Brooklyn borough of New York City; the Queens borough of New York City; Indianapolis; Washington, D.C.; Boston; and New Orleans.

Hang and Zhao were actively transporting Chinese females throughout the state of Texas for the purpose of the females to engage in prostitution, Scaramucci states in the arrest affidavit.

Additional investigation indicated Xubin and Ling were responsible for placing online ads while they were living in New York, authorities said. Hang and Chen would arrange apartments or hotel rooms for an extended period of time, where the women would meet subjects for sex.

UnBound, a nonprofit group that raises public awareness and provides services to trafficking victims, provided a Chinese translator to assist authorities and work with the 16 victims, officials said.

Houston search warrant

Officers executed a search warrant at Hangs residence in Houston this week and seized additional evidence, including $20,000 in cash and a Rolex watch valued at $38,000. Total assets collected from the suspects totaled about $115,000.

McNamara said Hang and Ling were arrested and remained in McLennan County Jail on Friday with bond listed at $250,000. All four suspects may also face related federal charges, he said.

This really has snowballed into a much bigger case than we ever could have figured, McNamara said. The investigation continues, and we are not going to let up.

McNamara said local investigators worked with Department of Homeland Security investigators in Austin, the Houston Police Department, the Austin Police Department and the New York City Queens North VICE unit.
By Press Trust of India: Kathmandu, May 12 (PTI) Nepal today inked a deal with China to join Chinese President Xi Jinpings ambitious One Belt One Road initiative to link Asia with Europe, a move that may worry India.

The decision to sign the agreement comes ahead the One Belt One Road (OBOR) forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

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Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong and Nepals Foreign Secretary Shankar Bairagi signed an MoU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singhadurbar, Kathmandu.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat were present during the signing ceremony.

"The MoU is an important moment in the bilateral relation between the two countries. Roads and railways connectivity is important for us and we want investment in this sector," Mahat said.

Yu said that the Belt and Road initiative will bring new opportunities for China-Nepal cooperation and South Asias development.

"To promote Belt and Road initiative, we are committed to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. Openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit are the defining features of the initiative. The Initiative is not only open to the countries in the region, but also open to the countries outside the region who are interested in it," said Yu.

The OBOR aims to enhance connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Asia and Europe through land as well as maritime routes.

China had sent a draft proposal on OBOR to Nepal late last year. After a month-long consultation, the Nepalese side had sent back the draft to Beijing with some changes.

Nepal signing the deal with China may cause concerns in India, which has opposed Beijings initiative. India has reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of the OBOR, as it is proposed to pass through the Pakistan- occupied Kashmir.

India, which has traditionally enjoyed great economic and political ties with Nepal, has faced increasing competition from China in recent years.

Landlocked Nepal relies heavily on imports from India and completely on Indian ports for sea access. PTI NSA AKJ NSA

--- ENDS ---
Sharon Pimpton Clayton

May 29, 1962 - May 6, 2017

Sharon (Pimpton) Clayton, 54, passed away May 6, 2017. A celebration of Life will be at 11:00 a.m., Saturday, May 13, 2017, at Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist Church of Satin, Texas, with the Rev. Edward Ross officiating.

Sharon was born May 29, 1962 in Waco, Texas to Luther and Bernice (Hall) Pimpton, of Waco, Texas. The only girl of four siblings, Sharon grew up in Waco, Texas and attended Waco Public Schools. Sharon confessed her in life Christ at an early age while under the leadership of the Rev. Joe Bedford at Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist Church in Satin, Texas.

Sharon attended Richfield High, where she met and married Marvin Clayton. She delighted in family and friend gatherings and spending time with her grandkids.

Sharon worked outside the home for many years until she retired from Allergan in 2005.Sharon was preceded in death by her brother, Reginald Andre Pimpton of Waco, Texas.

Survivors include her husband, Elder Marvin E. Clayton, Pastor of Gospel Lighthouse Ministries, Waco, Texas; son, Marcus Rashad of Waco; daughter, Shauntoniqua Chemire of Kahoku, Japan; adopted daughter, Tiffany Pimpton of Waco; both parents, Luther and Bernice Pimpton of Waco.
If President Trump thinks he can fire his way out of the FBIs investigation into his campaigns ties to Russia, he is sorely mistaken  and attempting to do so makes him look weak and fearful, undermines the rule of law and diminishes what little prospects there were for bipartisan legislation. Given Democrats frequent attacks on Trump and FBI Director James Comey, only Republicans have the credibility needed to contain the damage and save Trump from himself.

Now they must show they have the backbone to do it.

A memo from the Justice Department laying out the rationale for Trumps firing of Comey mostly criticized his handling of last years investigation into Hillary Clintons email arrangement. The memo is not the issue. The issue is why Trump now claims to find it persuasive when it merely rehashes arguments that have been swirling for nearly a year  and contradicts Trumps effusive praise of Comey last fall, after he revealed that the FBI was reviewing more Clinton-related emails.

After the election, and in the months since his inauguration, Trump gave no indication that he would fire him. In fact, a few weeks ago he voiced confidence in him.

So what changed?

Well, Comey recently confirmed that the FBI was probing whether Trumps associates had colluded with Russia in trying to sway the election. Federal prosecutors have reportedly issued grand jury subpoenas in the case. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that European spy agencies had shared information about suspicious interactions between Trumps campaign and Russian agents. And so on.

If there are in fact innocent explanations for all of the above, Trump has never come close to offering one. He insists, alternately, that the episode is  a total hoax, a total scam or  FAKE NEWS.

The problem is that this supposedly fake news keeps having very real consequences. It led to the resignation of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. It led to the ouster of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. It led to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rep. Devin Nunes, a California Republican, both recusing themselves from investigations. It may have even been a factor in the firing of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.

When an elected executive fires the lead investigator in the middle of a probe into his or her activities, the implications cannot be ignored. This is especially true when the decision appears to have been reverse-engineered, as seems to be the case here, with the White House recently directing the Justice Department to produce a memo providing a rationale for the firing.

To dump Comey for his handling of the Russia probe  which Trump mentioned dismissively in his letter announcing the firing  would be a grave obstruction of justice. In any event, it is likely to obstruct whatever is left of Trumps legislative agenda. Comprehensive tax reform just got an awful lot harder, as did nearly every other challenge facing the nation, both foreign and domestic: infrastructure, health care, immigration, trade and others.

Trump either has no advisers around him with the perspective and wisdom to talk him out of such an ill-fated and grossly incompetent decision  or was unwilling to listen to them. Its hard to say which scenario is more troubling.

Comey was among the few senior members of the national-security apparatus with the independence and wherewithal to ensure the Russia investigation remained on track. Now hes been fired and Trumps surrogates are insisting that theres nothing more to say on the matter. Its time to move on, his spokeswoman said.

Actually, its time for Congress to get serious about performing its constitutional duties. It has two immediate responsibilities here. First, the Senate must insist that Trump replace Comey with an independent and experienced new director, one who will commit to completing any investigations into the president now underway. No cranks, cronies or close relatives. Encouragingly, several Republican senators, including Richard Burr of North Carolina and Bob Corker of Tennessee, have indicated that they understand this.

They should also consider  as part of their constitutional role of providing advice and consent  sending Trump a short list of highly qualified and independent law enforcement leaders, and informing Trump that any nominee not from the list will be judged with utmost skepticism.

Next, Congress must appoint an independent commission to investigate Russias interference with the election and any role Trump or his associates played in it. Americans shouldnt be left to wonder.

Such a panel, modeled on the Sept. 11 Commission, should be empowered to access classified information, hold open hearings and air its findings publicly. With the FBI potentially coming under the control of a White House ally, this will only become more urgent.

Firing Comey without recognizing the obvious conflict-of-interest inherent in the decision reflects Trumps modus operandi: refusing to release his tax returns, refusing to sufficiently distance himself from his business interests, refusing to rein in family members who are profiting from the Trump name and connections. When elected officials refuse to be bound by the ethical practices and norms that we have come to expect of them, its up to the public  and their representatives  to hold them accountable. This is only the beginning.
Last Sunday the John F. Kennedy Library presented former President Obama with the Profiles in Courage Award. While were not so sure he deserves this honor, its more important at this critical juncture to recognize the rare quality the award salutes. Its a quality that then-Sen. John F. Kennedy championed 60 years ago in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage.

Its a book every American ought to read. It tells concisely the stories of eight senators at different points of crisis who bucked their political parties to put their country first. Among stories told is that of Sam Houston trying to keep Texas from forsaking the union on the eve of the Civil War. One anecdote involves his appearance in Waco where his uphill campaign against secession met with a powder-keg blast:

Ugly crowds, stones and denunciation as a traitor met him throughout the state. At Waco his life was threatened. At Belton, an armed thug suddenly arose and started toward him. But old Sam Houston, looking him right in the eye, put each hand on his own pistols: Ladies and gentlemen, keep your seats. It is nothing but a fice barking at the lion in his den.

Our nation is again in crisis. An American president  mired in allegations that his election was assisted and enabled by covert Russian interference through our electoral process and fake news  has fired the man who till this week was overseeing the intelligence investigation into those charges. With partisanship at its height, Americans must now demand an independent commission and special prosecutor to pursue what Congress clearly cannot.

During Mondays U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing charged with getting to the bottom of Russian intrigue in the Republican White House, three Republican senators  including, unfortunately, two from Texas  spent their time trying to discredit former acting attorney general Sally Yates instead of probing her efforts to warn President Trump that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was lying to Vice President Mike Pence and others about Russia. Not only did this GOP trio fail, they demonstrated theyre incapable of handling this grave matter with any impartiality. To their credit, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ben Sasse and Charles Grassley proved above such political machinations.

Chaos reigns as several White House officials including Trump offer wildly conflicting accounts about the FBI directors firing. So which of these officials are we to believe? If the president is telling the truth, then are his aides lying? Are they ignorant? If so, why does he keep them around? Should we care? We have reached the point where one cannot believe anything coming out of this White House.

Every move this president makes now raises questions about conflict of interest and possible Russian collusion. His signing an executive order assembling a politically driven junta to investigate what he claims is massive voter fraud  all naturally benefiting his opponent  only makes the lack of any independent commission investigating the Trump campaigns ties to Russian agents an even greater outrage.

Even Republican Sen. Mike Lee, beloved by the tea party, realizes the dire need for impartiality at this stage. Lee suggests spurned federal Judge Merrick Garland be tapped to lead the FBI, given Garlands reputation would be beyond reproach. Commentator Chris Matthews, a former Capitol Hill staffer, suggested Sally Yates as a special prosecutor.

Were hardly fans of FBI director James Comey, but his firing days after testimony updating Congress on the investigation is damning and could qualify as an obstruction of justice if Attorney General Jeff Sessions was truly involved, given that Sessions was supposed to have recused himself from this because of his Trump campaign role. Its time for an independent commission and special prosecutor. And if Republican lawmakers from Texas balk in pressing for this, let no one mistake where their loyalties lay as our nation roiled in crisis.
About Emerald Cottages l Independent Senior Living l Waco TX

Wacos independent senior living lifestyle leader.

Thrive in the independent lifestyle of Emerald Cottages. Emerald Cottages of Waco is an independent senior living community that features beautifully designed and spacious 2 bedroom/ 2 bathroom cottages. We offer luxury senior living that features socially rich maintenance-free living as well as assisted living, memory care, and skilled nursing.

Floorplan for a Carefree Lifestyle.

Our cottages feature large, barrier-free living areas, beautiful kitchens and baths, private patios, and a single car garage. Amenities of this maintenance free home include: an attached garage, eat-in kitchen, walk-in closet, laundry room for full size washer/dryer, quality finishes from wood floors in the living area to granite in the kitchen, and much more!

With the security of available services through The Arbor House Assisted Living Facility, you are part of a campus style senior living community that allows you to thrive in the independent lifestyle.

A Plan for Your Future



Life at Emerald Cottages allows you to have a plan in place for your future.

The Emerald Cottages of Waco is an exclusive 32-unit community that will part of Wacos newest and most progressive senior campus community including the Arbor House Assisted Living & Memory Care Facility and a new skilled nursing facility. The city of Waco gives our residents access to first class medical across the street at the Baylor Scott & White Hillcrest Hospital, as well as educational and cultural services.

While enjoying independent living at Emerald Cottages, youll take comfort in knowing that youll have full access to all the amenities and services of the Arbor House Assisted Living Center.

The Waco community features excellent recreation and social activities, along with many other lifestyle enhancing options that are close by:

Central Texas Marketplace Shopping Center for shopping and dining,

Baylor University,

Cottonwood Creek Golf Course: 18 Hole, Par 72 course located directly across Bagby Street,

Churches, Schools, The Waco YMCA and the South Waco Senior Center

Unlike Any Other

Unlike other retirement communities, Emerald Cottages communities offer an affordable retirement, with high-quality cottage homes featuring specially designed amenities to meet the needs of independent senior adults. There is no buy-in or up-front fees and we offer competitive rental rates.
Washington D.C.  Robert C. Fricke, president of the Farmers and Merchants Bank, joined more than 100 community bankers and the independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) this week for a meeting with President Donald Trump and other top administration officials at the White House as part of the 2017 ICBA Capital Summit. In the meeting, Vice President Mike Pence, NEC Director Gary Cohn and Small Business Administration Chief Linda McMahon, Trump said the administration is focused on addressing regulatory burdens to help community banks lend to small businesses.

Farmers and Merchants Bank was deeply honored to be invited to attend todays historic meeting, where the president reiterated his support for community banking, said Fricke. Farmers and Merchants is proud to be in Washington this week to advocate on behalf of our industry so we can continue to serve our community and be a powerful job creator and economic engine right here in Ashland.

During the meeting community bankers presented President Trump with a red Make Community Banking Great Again cap. In attendance at the meeting were community bankers from ICBAs Executive Committee, board of directors, Federal Delegate Board and policy committees.

Also attending with more than 1,000 community bankers in Washington this week for ICBAs Capital Summit was Robert Fricke Jr. Discussions focused on critical issues facing community banks and their communities, such as excessive regulatory burdens that affect their ability to serve their customers, make loans and create jobs. The industrys solution to the regulatory burden problem-ICBAs Plan for Prosperity  is a pro-growth platform to eliminate onerous and unnecessary regulatory burdens that inhibit lending and innovation.

The summit features meetings with policymakers, remarks from speakers such as Secretary Mnuchin and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), and the first-ever ICBA Future of Banking Symposium, which offers insights into the future of the rapidly changing community banking industry.

The nations community banks are dedicated to fostering local economic and job growth by serving the consumers and small businesses in their communities, said ICBA Chairman Scott Heitkanp, president and CEO of ValueBank Texas in Corpus Christi, Texas,

Unfortunately, one-size-fits-all regulations are preventing community banks from lending and promoting prosperity at the local level. ICBA looks forward to continuing to work with President Trump, his administration and Congress to advance common-sense reforms that will help unleash the economic power of community banks.
ASHLAND  The Ashland VFW Auxiliary again sponsored the Americanism coloring and essay contest for Ashland-Greenwood students grade 1 through 6. The first place winners in each grade were forwarded on to the Department of Nebraska Veterans of Foreign Wars for state judging.

The Auxiliary wants to thank the Ashland-Greenwood teachers and students for their wonderful participation in this project. It is very much appreciated by the veterans and their families. We are fortunate to have such talented students and dedicated teachers at our school, said Auxiliary member Jean Stewart.

The pictures are displayed in the windows of businesses around town for the enjoyment of everyone during the month of May, which includes Loyalty Day on May 1 and Armed Forces Day on May 20. They will also be placed on the tables at the VFW Steak and Hamburger Fry on May 20. The essays can be found online at www.ashland-gazette.com.

In the coloring contest for grades 1 through 3, students colored a pre-selected picture of Uncle Sam. The winners were Evie Hofmeister (first grade), Kailin Nelson (second grade) and Zoe Lindley (third grade).

In the essay contest, students wrote about the theme American Symbols. They had to use 22 specified words in their essays. The winners were Gabriella McAdams (fourth grade), Aiden Krumwiede (fifth grade) and Ellie Whitehead (sixth grade). Ellies essay also was awarded first place overall.

Special second and third place awards were given to sixth graders Dayna Wilson and Emerson Lindley. Although their essays were over the 300 word limit, and as a result did not qualify for state competition (due to a miscommunication of the rules), they were judged as excellent in content and presentation and therefore awarded special awards by the judge and the VFW and VFW Auxiliary.
VALPARAISO  There will be a lot of letter writing at the Valparaiso Public Library this summer and early fall.

The public library in Valparaiso was recently awarded a $300 grant to host a pilot Letter Writing Clinic for area students.

With the provided funding, Valparaiso Public Library Director Lori Springer will introduce students grades four through 12 to a national writing contest, Letters About Literature, and letter writing techniques.

Theyll learn about literacy and writing techniques, which is a big thing in fourth and fifth grade, Springer said.

Springer will provide students assistance selecting a book to read of any genre and then forming a letter to the author, living or deceased.

The idea is for students to record their thoughts and emotions as they read and later draw a conclusion about the book. That conclusion will serve as the basis for forming their letter.

The students letter to the author will explain how the authors work changed the students way of thinking about the world or themselves.

Springer said writing a letter to an author about personal thoughts and feelings presents students another way to write that has limited restrictions, if any.

Its a different way to write, instead of just freezing up, she said.

The Letter Writing Clinic

is a four week session, which will occur sometime between August and September, but students can begin the book selection process and reading over the summer.

The contest has three age divisions; fourth through sixth grade, seventh and eighth and ninth through 12th.

Springer hopes that four to five students per age group will participate in the writ-

ing clinic and submit a letter to the contest.

Springer will collect the letters at the end of the clinic and submit them to the Nebraska Library Commission, which automatically enters the students into the Letters About Literature contest.

According to the Nebraska Center for the Book, the contest awards prizes on both the state and national levels. Each state center has its own panel of judges who select the top essayists in the state. State winners will receive prizes and then advance to the national competition.

Prizes may include a scholarship for students and their library that hosted the Letter Writing Clinic.

The Letter Writing Clinic grants were sponsored by Humanities Nebraska, Nebraska Center for the Book, Nebraska Cultural Endowment and Nebraska Library Commission.

Other grant recipients include Norfolk Catholic Elementary School, Lux Middle School in Lincoln, Lied Scottsbluff Public Library and Oshkosh Public Library.

For more information, contact Springer at vplibraryweb@gmail.com.
By Press Trust of India: (Eds: Updating with fresh quotes)

From Shirish B Pradhan

Kathmandu, May 12 (PTI) Nepal today inked a major deal with China to join Chinese President Xi Jinpings ambitious One Belt One Road initiative to link Asia with Europe, a move that could raise concerns in India.

The decision to sign the agreement comes ahead the One Belt One Road (OBOR) forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

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Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong and Nepals Foreign Secretary Shankar Bairagi signed an MoU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kathmandu.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat were present during the signing ceremony.

"This agreement will bring Nepal and China closer through road connectivity and bring home the Chinese investment," Mahat said.

The agreement was important for Nepal in terms of expansion of road connectivity and construction of railways, he said.

Mahat expressed hope that the deal would help in attaining economic prosperity for the country.

"With the signing of the MoU, a new chapter has begun in the area of foreign investment and trade promotion," he said, adding Nepal would reap benefits from the Chinese project which would expand to Europe and Africa.

"Nepal needs the maximum investment and we want Chinese investment channelled in Nepal through this new project."

"Nepal would benefit from this important project initiated by China and that this should be taken as a significant achievement of Nepals development endeavour," Bairagi said.

Yu expressed hope that the project would contribute to enhancement of China-Nepal cooperation as well as to the economic development of the South Asia region itself.

"The MoU aims to forge cooperation on promoting connectivity of facilities, trade connectivity and financial integration,? according to the Foreign Ministry statement.

The OBOR aims to enhance connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Asia and Europe through land as well as maritime routes.

China had sent a draft proposal on OBOR to Nepal late last year. After a month-long consultation, the Nepalese side had sent back the draft to Beijing with some changes.

Nepal signing the deal with China may cause concerns in India, which has opposed Beijings initiative. India has reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of the OBOR, as it is proposed to pass through the Pakistan- occupied Kashmir.

India, which has traditionally enjoyed great economic and political ties with Nepal, has faced increasing competition from China in recent years.

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Landlocked Nepal relies heavily on imports from India and completely on Indian ports for sea access. PTI SBP NSA AKJ NSA

--- ENDS ---
By Daniele Mattiuzzo

Although, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is technically not a warbird yet, we at WarbirdsNews feel that almost anything related to the mighty smoking Rhino deserves coverage (Click HERE for previous articles), and we felt sure our readers would be interested in hearing about events last week in Larissa, Greece. The Hellenic Air Force stood down 348 Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, their storied and sole remaining RF-4E photo reconnaissance unit, on May 5th. That same day, an RF-4E went on display at the Hellenic Air Force Museum at Dekaleias Air Force Base in Tatoi.

Titled The End of the Film, 348 TRS held a final public air display on May 4th featuring their three operable RF-4Es, the last flying anywhere in Europe. Rhino lovers poured into Larissa from all over the world to witness this event, and we are lucky to have some details and marvelous images via The Aviationist for our readers here. The three RF-4s which took part in this final display included tail number 7499 marked specially for the event (see the lead image), tail number 7450 with special markings from 348 RTS 60th anniversary in 2013, and tail number 71765 in standard HAF livery.

Interestingly, 69-7449 and 69-7450 both originally flew for the West German Luftwaffe, being 35+52 and 35+03 respectively in that service. The Germans transferred them to Greece in 1993 to supplement their fleet of new-build Phantom IIs. McDonnell-Douglas built RF-4E 77-1765 for the Greeks, handing her over in 1979. When she went into service, 348 TRS were still flying the RF-84F Thunderflash, which continued flying with the HAF until March, 1991! Of the 27 former German RF-4Es which the HAF received, 21 became operational, with the others becoming parts sources. A good number of retired RF-4Es still litter the airfield at Larissa, as you can see in the closeup aerial shot below.

The highlight of the event was seeing all three Phantoms in formation! A locally-based F-16C also joined in the flying, as did an HAF Mirage 2000EG from Tanagra. As part of the celebrations, a preserved RF-84F Thunderflash also sat on the flight line as testament to the long photo-reconnaissance history of 348 TRS, which now goes into the history books after 64 years of dedicated flying. Future Hellenic Air Force photo reconnaissance missions will now be taken up by F-16s carrying the DB-110 pod.

With the end of Greek RF-4E operations, only the Japanese and Iranian air arms still fly the type. Two Phantom II combat units linger on in Greece, 338 Fighter-Bomber Squadron and 339 All Weather Squadron, both with 117 Combat Wing at Andravida Air Base on the south western coast, though their operational days must surely be limited. Go see them while you still can!

WarbirdsNews wishes to thank the Daniele Mattiuzzo, Alessandro Fucito and The Aviationist for their invaluable contributions to this article.
As reported by EAA , the Tennessee Museum of Aviation has announced its plan to bring Hun Hunter XVI and Wicked Wabbit to be featured in the Warbirds area at AirVenture this summer.

Hun Hunter XVI is owned by Neal Melton, and honors Gil O. Wymond. This P-47 (s/n 44-90460) was delivered to the Brazilian Air Force in the late 1940s as F-47 4175. It served with the Forca Aerea Brasileira ( FAB) until it was retired from service in the early 1960s and displayed it as 226450/A1 at the Recife AB between 1970 and 1987. In 1988 it made its way to the U.S. when purchased by Airplane Sales International of Santa Monica, CA. Neal Melton purchased it in 1996 and after a three years restoration it flew for the first time in 1999.

The Republic P-47D-40-RA Thunderbolt Wicked Wabbit is owned by John Shoffner and it is based at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation as well. The P-47 44-90438 (c/n 399-55583) at the end of WWII was sold by the US government to the Yugoslav Air Force as #13021. After its service, the Yugoslav Air Force donated it to the Yugoslav Aeronautical Museum in Belgrade. In 1985 it was sold to Doug Arnold (United Kingdom), and in 1986 then sold to John Whittington of Knoxville (Tennessee, USA). In 1994 it was sold to John Shoffner also of Knoxville, TN who had the aircraft restored to flying condition. It returned to the air for the first time since WWII after restoration in 1998 in civilian registry N647D.

Thunderbolt is a 1947 film directed by William Wyler and John Sturges which documented the American aerial operations of Operation Strangle in World War II, when flyers of the Twelfth Air Force based on Corsica successfully impeded Axis supply lines to the Gustav Line and Anzio beachhead. The film was originally shot in 16mm color by members of the Army Air Forces. The 12th Combat Camera Unit recorded the combat footage using cameras mounted on some of the P-47s and a B-25 medium bomber equipped as a camera ship to accompany the fighters.

Narrated by Robert Lowery and Eugene Kern,with Lloyd Bridges portraying the thoughts of one of the pilots, Thunderbolt! purports to follow a P-47 Thunderbolt squadron of the group through an interdiction mission from the time they wake up to their return to base afterwards with one aircraft missing.[Note 1] The directors edited their footage to recreate a mission against an unidentified target in northern Italy that resembles that of a May 1, 1944, mission against a railroad tunnel at Rignano sullArno, Italy, in which Lt. Col. Gilbert O. Wymond Jr. was awarded the Silver Star for destroying an ammunition dump concealed in a house near Siena and incurred severe damage to his P-47, Hun Hunter XIV. Wymond appears prominently with his P-47 throughout the documentary.

Both John Shoffners P-47D Thunderbolt Wicked Wabbit and Neal Meltons P-47D Thunderbolt Hun Hunter XVI are based at the museum and regularly fly at airshows as a two-ship formation or they can be requested separately for airshows, flybys and film.

The Tennessee Museum of Aviation, a living museum located in Sevierville, TN and it is said to be the only place in the country to house two airworthy P-47 Thunderbolts. For more information visit www.tnairmuseum.com
Five EMRs have been set up at Dadar, Kurla, Wadala, Mulund and Ghatkopar stations, in association with city-based medical firm Magicdil Health For All Pvt Ltd.

By Mayuresh Ganapatye: To help its commuters in case of medical emergency, Central Railway along with 'Magicdil' have established 24X7 'One Rupee Clinics' at 14 different stations. These clinics will be providing timely medical assistance to rail accident victims as well as commoners at a token charge of Re 1.

After PIL filed in Bombay HC in March by rail activist Samir Zaveri on the issue of lack of prompt medical help in case of accidents on railway tracks, the Bombay High Court ordered the Railways to set up EMRs at all stations on the Central and Western Line in a phased manner.

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The five EMRs have been set up at Dadar, Kurla, Wadala, Mulund and Ghatkopar stations, in association with city-based medical firm Magicdil Health For All Pvt Ltd. While choosing the station to establish 'One Rupee Clinic', Magicdil asked for data from railway authority regarding where most number of accidents take place and which are the most crowded stations.

Doctors at the clinic. Photo: Mayuresh Ganapatye

These 24X7 EMRs will be having a team of 3 to 4 MBBS doctors. Magicdil is planning to start OPD of specialists doctors for masses at the cost of Just Re 1 as consultation charge.

"We wanted to provide affordable Medical service to common people. We came to know about railway plan to start such scheme thus we offered them our plan and idea. Railways had helped us with the infrastructure to build these clinics," said Rahul Ghule of Magicdil.

The main aim of these clinics, is to save the Golden Hour during railway accident. "During railway accident victim needs immediate medical assistance thus we have all necessary equipment and life saving tools and medicines including ECG machines, Ambu bags, Pulse-Oxymeter, Oxygen cylinders," said Dr Ghule.

"Normally I had to go to a hospital to get my BP, sugar checked, for this I used to spend Rs 200 to Rs 400. But now I am getting the same service at Re 1 here, which is very much affordable for a person like me. I thank railway authorities and doctors for providing such wonderful health services," said Pandye, who stays in Ghatkopar area.

Advert for the One Rupee Clinic. Photo: Mayuresh Ganapatye

Apart from consultation, blood pressure checkup and blood sugar checkup, are being done at very minimal charges. After Central railway and Harbour railway now Railway authorities are planning to establish such clinics on western railway stations too.

--- ENDS ---
The Manhattan lawyer representing about two dozen people in harassment suits against Rupert Murdoch's Fox News slammed 21st Century Fox's culture in a meeting with UK's media regulator, hoping to influence a review of the media mogul's $US15 billion ($20 billion) bid to buy the rest of pay-TV provider Sky.

In a meeting on Thursday with Ofcom, which must decide whether the proposed deal would benefit the British public, attorney Douglas Wigdor criticised Fox's practice of forcing people with claims of racial bias or sexual discrimination to sign confidentiality agreements to keep them from going public.

"I told Ofcom that the only way for them to get the full truth of what the Murdoch media has done to its victims, is for the company to remove the chokehold clauses that bind victims to silence," Wigdor said in an emailed statement after the meeting.

Fox's wide-ranging abuse scandal has erupted at just the wrong time for Murdoch, who has long desired Sky and whose last attempt to acquire it was torpedoed by a phone-hacking scandal at his top UK tabloid.
WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt says it's "only fair" that MP's and senior public servants have their wages frozen for the next four years to reign in Western Australian's whopping state debt.

But it won't only be politicians and public service bosses who will have their salaries frozen, the wages of judges, magistrates, the WA Governor and all local council chief executives will stay the same until 2021.

The move is expected to save the McGowan government more than $20 million.

The Premier also announced public servants would receive a capped pay increase of $1000 which will save the government $518 million over four years.
By Press Trust of India: spymaster

From Lalit K Jha

Washington, May 12 (PTI) Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

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"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United Statess interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of Indias rising international status including Indias expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee. PTI LKJ ARK

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At the occasion of the Committee on Customs of the East African Community (EAC) that took place from 25 to 27 April 2017 in Dar Es Salaam, the WCO-EAC CREATe project team reported the number of regional Authorized Economic Operators (AEO) had increased from 13 to 46. These 46 companies accounted for a record-breaking 930 000 000 USD in trade volume in March 2017, which represented over 5% of the regional trade in the EAC region according to the statistics provided by EAC Partner States (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda).

The EAC Committee on Customs encouraged the project team to continue building on the momentum gained in the first quarter of 2017 and advised that the EAC region had decided that all negotiations and signatures of Mutual Recognition Agreements with external trading partners/blocks (outside the EAC) will be undertaken as a region rather than as individual EAC Partner States.

The Chairperson of the EAC Committee on Customs, Mr. Kateshumbwa (Commissioner-Customs Uganda), welcomed the fact that through the execution of the WCO-EAC CREATe project, the WCO is supporting the regions efforts to implement Article 7 of the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade Facilitation.

The EAC Committee on Customs comprises of Commissioners Customs and EAC Secretariat representatives.

The WCO-EAC CREATe project is funded by the Government of Sweden.

For further information, please contact Mr. Richard Chopra (Richard.Chopra@wcoomd.org).
The Ghana Revenue Authority organized its Ghana National Single Window (GNSW) Conference in Accra 9 and 10 May. In the opening session of the first day of the Conference, attended by over 500 participants, Mr. Alan Kyeremanten, Minister of Trade and Industry mentioned that Trade Facilitation is a cornerstone of the Government's agenda. He lauded the inclusion of the Single Window (SW) in the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) and said it would help simplify trade processes and enhance the cooperation between Customs and other Border Agencies. In a speech read out on his behalf mr Ofori-Atta, Minister for Finance, urged the trading community to fully embrace the new transparency and compliance level developed through the introduction of the GNSW. Other keynote speakers were SG Kituyi of UNCTAD, Deputy DG Agah of WTO, Executive Chairman Banda of ICC Ghana, Customs Commissioner Crenstil and CEO ms. Mintha of Westblue Consulting. They all highlighted the importance of the GNSW programme in the context of implementing TFA.

During this day in panel sessions speakers focused on the strategic and technical aspects of GNSW Progress and its Achievements to date, GNSW in the Context of the WTO TFA and the Trade Development aspects of GNSW. On behalf of WCO Deputy Director Luc de Blieck highlighted WCOs tools and instruments to support a succesfull implementation of SW and of TFA in general. Further contributions in the panel sessions were delivered by, among others, Ghana Customs, Ghana National Trade Facilitation Committee, Rwanda Revenue Authority, WTO, Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation, Ghana Export Promotion Authority, Ghana Union of Traders Association and Ghana Investment Promotion. All speakers concentrated on aspects of the TFA implementation in general and the SW requirements in particular. Among the aspects highlighted were the further development of the digital environment GNSW requires, the strengthening of Coordinated Border Management and Stakeholder Engagement.

The second day was a Key Stakeholder Workshop where the private sector was offered the opportunity to share with governement officials their experiences with and expectations for GNSW. This workshop was attended by over 100 business representatives.
By Press Trust of India: chief

(Eds: Updating)

From Lalit K Jha

Washington, May 12 (PTI) Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to carry out attacks in both India and Afghanistan, the top US intelligence official has warned while asserting that Islamabad had failed to rein in terrorists.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, during a Congressional hearing on worldwide threats, told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Pakistan was expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

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Noting that Pakistan has failed to curb militants in its territory, Coats said, "These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan."

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," Coats said.

He said that the US assessment was that the Taliban was likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas.

Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership, Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of Indias rising international status including Indias expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States. Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats said in his testimony. PTI LKJ ARK ASK AKJ ASK

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Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan, said a US spymaster. He also said that Pakistan-based terrorist outfits are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan.

By Press Trust of India: According to reports, Pakistan-based terrorist outfits are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

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Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

SECURITY SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN TO DETERIORATE IN 2018

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.

Also Read

US says Pakistan's 'support for anti-India militants' to blame for deteriorating New Delhi-Islamabad ties

250 prominent Indians, Pakistanis demand peace, urge media to prevent militarisation of debate

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The Imam of Kolkata's Tipu Sultan mosque Mualana Noor-ur Rehman Barkati reiterated that he will continue with a red beacon on his vehicle despite the central government ban on its use.

By Indrajit Kundu: Motor mouth Kolkata cleric Mualana Noor-ur Rehman Barkati continues to remain defiant despite three separate police complaints against him for defying the law and making derogatory comments. On Friday, the Imam of Kolkata's Tipu Sultan mosque reiterated that he will continue with a red beacon on his vehicle despite the central government ban on its use. When India Today questioned him on the illegal use of the beacon, an angry Barkati retorted asking, "Why are you so concerned about my red beacon?"

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"No one has the guts to remove my red beacon. It's been with us for hundreds of years. It is the RSS which is illegal, Modi is illegal not the red light on my car. Don't try disturbing Muslims in Bengal," the controversial cleric told India Today. His response comes just a day after multiple police complaints were filed against him for illegally using the red beacon and making hate speeches. Complaints have been filed at Topsia and Gariahat police stations in Kolkata and Golabari station in Howrah district by various individuals.

Imam Barkati's vehicle with red beacon.

"Earlier he had issued a fatwa against the prime minister. Even today he has said that there is nobody who can remove his red beacon. So we asked police to arrest him and there should be legal proceeding against him as per the law of the country," said Rajarshi Lahiri, one of complainants.

"His deliberate and intentional hate speeches were only ingredients for instigation of giving rise to communal tensions and disruption of communal harmony," states one of the complaints. However, the cleric remains undeterred by all the criticism. "What's my crime? Why will I be arrested? Just because I speak the truth? Does anyone has guts (to arrest me)...I'm not scared," he hit back.

On Friday BJP Yuva Morcha supporters demonstrated in central Kolkata demanding Barkati's immediate arrest, accusing the cleric of making anti-India statements. Similar protest were held in Howrah with BJP supporters burning his effigy. "If this kind of treatment is being meted out to me, then think of what will happen to the Muslims across the country? They want to make India a Hindu rashtra! Either I will live in this country or the RSS," Barkati said.

Also Read:

FIR against Kolkata Shahi Imam Maulana Barkati for refusing to give up lal batti, says it is his 'right' Kolkata Shahi Imam Maulana Barkati won't leave his laal batti, invokes religion

How netas across India have found a way around PM Narendra Modi's VVIP red beacon ban

Punjab chief secretary found violating new rule of not using red beacon-fitted vehicle

Despite ban on red beacon, not all in Haryana are ready to give it up

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Not just red beacon: 8 other unnecessary frills VIPs in India enjoy

Red beacon ban report card: North-eastern states give thumps up to lal batti order

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by Mark Littlewood

Read the original article at the Institute of Economic Affairs here

There has been much debate over the past six years about the supposedly deep cuts in government spendingwith comparisons ranging from the policies of Adolf Hitler, to returning the UK to the world of The Road to Wigan Pier. These frankly ridiculous claims have carried on despite the level of government spending, as a proportion of GDP, still being greater in some UK regions than it was in the old Soviet Union. In reality the efforts to reduce the size of the state have been pitiful, with the government still spending around 45 per cent of GDP. For some context, this is 10 per cent higher than during the 1960s post-war consensus levels that so many on the left long to return to.

But one significant question missing from the debate has been what level of government spending maximises wellbeing, economic growth orfranklywhat level is affordable.

The Institute of Economic Affairs Tax and Growth project has looked to do just thisto robustly analyse the levels of both tax and government spending that best support economic growth, and to analyse how the tax system can best raise the necessary funds for government expenditure without distorting the market.

Unsurprisingly to anyone of the free market persuasion, the statistical results show that the implicit assumption of social democratsthat transfers from the undeserving (read the rich, smokers, or capitalists) to the deserving cause no wider burden to the economyto be incorrect. To be sure, perhaps those on the left do not want economic growth, but if we do the evidence is stark. To create growth, taxes should be radically cut.

It is estimated that for every percent removed from the tax burden on the British economy we would gain 0.1 per cent of economic growth each year. To put it another way, if we were to cut the tax burden to the levels of an anarchic, ungoverned hellhole like Australia we could hope to see almost an extra percentage of economic growth per annum. For a worker on average wage, this extra percentage of growth would be worth more than 8,000 to your pay packet over the next 20 years.

However, as you might imagine, the types of tax can have as much impact as the level of tax when it comes to the effect it has on entrepreneurship, job creation and growth. The UK tax code has tripled in length since 1997, and is more than 10 times longer than Tolstoys War and Peace (and 17 times longer than Atlas Shrugged), so there is clearly a lot of work to do to shrink it to something even close to the Hong Kong tax codewhich comes in at 276 pages.

More than this, not all taxes are created equal. Council Tax, tobacco and alcohol duties and the BBC license fee disproportionally harm low-income Britons while providing little economic (or health) advantage. Meanwhile, stamp duty, corporation tax and capital gains taxes gum up the economic works and reduce the incentives to buy and sell houses (one of the many reasons for the housing crisis in this country) and build and grow businesses.

With this in mind, the IEA has also created a Tax Death Row, a list of some 20 taxes that should be abolished. You can see a full list in our book Taxation, Government Spending and Economic Growth, but taxes slated for abolition include: corporation tax, council tax, stamp duty, air passenger duty, vehicle excise duty, and alcohol, tobacco and gambling duties.

With the UK currently in a state of political and policy upheaval, with a new ministerial team in office and the economic opportunities (and risks) of Brexit in the near future, this work is exciting and radical, a piece of research that charts both why taxes and government spending must be cut and the tax system changed beyond all recognition. If the UK is truly to have an exciting post-Brexit future, these issues must be addressed, and soon.

This article was first published in Prospect.

Mark Littlewood

Director General, IEA

Mark Littlewood is the Director General of the Institute of Economic Affairs and the IEAs Ralph Harris Fellow. Under his leadership, the IEA has continued to communicate the benefits of free markets to an even wider audience around the world. In 2014, Mark was ranked 38th on The Times Right-wing Power List, and in 2011 was named Liberal Voice of the Year by the Liberal Democrat Voice. Mark frequently comments on political and economic issues on television and radio including BBC Question Time, Any Questions, Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Sky News, Radio 4's Today Programme and LBC. Prior to the IEA, Mark was Head of Media for the Liberal Democrats before going on to found Progressive Vision, a classical liberal think tank. Mark was educated at Balliol College, Oxford.



Read the original article at the Institute of Economic Affairs here
There has been a spurt in crime in Uttar Pradesh in the last couple of months.

By Shiv Pujan Jha: For the last several days Saharanpur is simmering as the rioters run amok vandalising property and indulging in arson. High profiled visits of Director General of Police (DGP) could not bring in calmness even as dozens were rounded up. Police personnel were attacked and vehicles set on fire.

But, it is not that only Saharanpur is burning, crime graph is up in several districts including capital Lucknow, where a daring dacoity in posh Gomti Nagar area took place. Suneeta Diwakar and her family were held at gun-point and intruders decamped with valuables.

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Suneeta is still in a state of shock as she recalls her ordeal. The family members were tied-up and the dacoits looted cash and valuables. They even took along water bottles with them.

Earlier this week, another Lucknow resident Lal Bahadur lost his two daughters, who were murdered in broad daylight while he was away attending his ailing wife in a hospital. While police was busy piecing together the sequence of events of the double murder case, a businessman in Para area of Lucknow as killed.

Uttar Pradesh has seen major reshuffle in police force since Yogi Adityanath took over as the Chief Minister of the state. Yogi Adityanath has said several times that criminals would be dealt with severely. But, his warning seems to have gone unheeded.

Cases of dacoity rose from 16 in January to 23 in March and 33 in April. Cases of loot rose from 249 in January this year to 421 in March and 412 in April this year.

Number of murder rose from 286 in January to 396 in March and 399 in April this year. Cases of rape rose from 244 to 378 in March and 393 in April this year.

Talking to India today, Additional DGP of the state said that that every effort was on to control the crime graph. He said that graph was showing an upward trend because Burkina has stopped. He indicated that since illegal mining has completely been stopped so the instances of organised crime have shown a downward trend.

A yearly comparison of the crime statistics also shows an upward trend.

Till April this year, instances of dacoity were 91 as compared to 99 in 2015 and 77 in 2016. Loot cases stood at 1,352 till April this year as compared to 992 in 2015 and 1,186 in 2016. Murder cases stood at 1,364 till April as compared to 1,395 in 2015 and 1,513 in 2016.

Rape rose from 849 in 2015 to 1,030 in 2016 and 1,266 till April this year. Instances of riots have gone up from 1,608 in 2015 to 2,539 till April this year.

Also read | Saharanpur clashes: Mayawati slams BJP government's 'saffron appeasement' policy, demands stern action

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Also read | Saharanpur violence: Congress demands judicial probe, party delegation to meet CM Yogi Adityanath

Also read | One killed, houses torched as Thakurs, Dalits clash in Uttar Pradesh's Saharanpur

WATCH VIDEO

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Learn How To Rock Your Reception Like This Outdoor Arizona Wedding!

Learn How To Rock Your Reception Like This Outdoor Arizona Wedding!

So you want to have a wedding that will have your guests talking about it for years, but you aren't exactly sure how that happens... our next couple are here to help. Ryan and Christal have some great advice to help you learn how to rock your reception like this outdoor Arizona wedding. So keep scrolling to find their helpful tips and learn what this determined bride did in the face her dream wedding being rained out.

We also have tons more photos for you to get lost in thanks to the talents of Joshua Aull Photography. You can see every last sweet moment and epic desert portrait in the full gallery here.

The Outdoor Wedding Must Go On

From the Bride: I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona and all my family remains there. We also both love the desert landscape and the warm spring weather. We decided that we would begin looking for venues there, and it wasn't but our very first venue tour at the Omni Montelucia that we decided the backdrop of the picturesque Camelback Mountain would be the perfect setting for our wedding. We had already been in love with the resort as we had stayed there numerous times while visiting family. It was the perfect balance of quiet, beauty, and fun. We knew our guests would absolutely fall in love with the resort like we had, and would have a great time.

The most important thing to us when picking the wedding venue, was that our entire event be outdoors. The weather is absolutely spectacular in Scottsdale in the spring, so we wanted to use the gorgeous warm evenings and cotton candy skies to our advantage. The large grass lawn of the Camelback Villa, which was on the grounds, would allow us to have both our ceremony and dinner outdoors. ... but what do you do when your outdoor event just might get rained out?... click here find out!





I'm Dreaming Of A Desert Wedding

After Ryan's childhood Rabbi married us, our photographer, Joshua Aull raced us into the desert to snap the perfect photos as the sun set on the desert mountains, while our guests enjoyed cocktails back at the villa. For dinner, guests dined on branzino and braised short ribs, and we kept an upbeat and eclectic mix of music playing by our DJ, Drea Strickler of Desert House Productions. We wanted the atmosphere to feel relaxed and laid back, so we kept music like Michael Jackson, Arcade Fire, The Doobie Brothers, and Prince playing to encourage our guests to get up and dance between courses while mingling around.

We knew that since we were going to utilize the natural landscape, we wanted to stick with a neutral color palette of whites, creams, ivories, greenery, and natural wood. The flower arrangements were to be more natural and free flowing than "done". We also wanted the chuppah to be a main focal point and would be repurposing it for dinner as the setting for our sweetheart table. We opted for a large chuppah with a heavy layering of curly willow with white dendrobium orchids mixed in to add a natural yet romantic feeling.

We alternated large undressed wooden rectangle tables with round dinner tables covered in ivory linen tablecloths, and mixed round table centerpieces with 8 ft long eucalyptus garland and floral centerpieces. Each centerpiece was a collection of hydrangea, roses, ranunculus, eucalyptus, and calla lilies, with a layering of votives, pillar candles, and floating candles all in clear glass. White bistro lights were strung across the entire lawn to provide just the right amount of mood lighting for the outdoor space.

Tips On How To Rock Your After Party!

Do NOT have too many speeches! That is the quickest way for guests to start getting bored, tired, and checking out from your wedding. We limited the speeches to only our best friends at the rehearsal dinner, and to only our parents the night of the wedding.

Work with a wedding planner who you really like and vibe well with. I absolutely loved my wedding planner (Danielle from Outstanding Occasions) and she made the process so stress free and enjoyable.

Know that your wedding day will never ever go exactly how you've pictured it in your head, and that it's ok! I told myself from the beginning of the process that I wasn't going to stress over the small details and worry about something going wrong. I knew it would wind up being perfect for us even if it wasn't "perfect".

Don't skimp on the alcohol and music if you want to make sure the party is unforgettable! We had an awesome DJ and an unlimited bar, and all of our guests wound up making the best ever dance party into the wee hours of the morning- and our friends and family still talk about it to this day. But also, if you are having an open bar all night, make sure you do late night snacks/food so the alcohol doesn't go wrong! We had a french fry bar, mini pizzas, and sliders come out around 11:30pm and everyone loved it!
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By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 11, 2017 | 07:43 PM | MAYFIELD, KY

A Mayfield man was arrested Tuesday on methamphetamine charges.

According to the Mayfield Police Department, officers went to a home on Anderson Avenue to serve two warrants on 28-year-old Levon Whitt. Whitt was found in the attic, hiding under a pile of insulation.

Police also found a backpack in the attic that belonged to Whitt. The backpack reportedly contained methamphetamine, several items used to manufacture meth, some unidentified pills and drug paraphernalia. Police say items found in the backpack indicated that Whitt was selling meth.

Whitt was arrested and charged with possession of methamphetamine, manufacturing meth, possession of controlled substance, tampering with physical evidence, possession of drug paraphernalia, illegal possession of a legend drug and trafficking in controlled substance. He was also arrested on the two bench warrants.

He was lodged in the Graves County Jail.
A spotless record over the course of the month has seen Mauricio Pochettino named Barclays Premier League Manager of the Month for April.

Tottenham racked up six successive wins in 29 days, scoring 16 goals and conceding just once, before seeing their mini-streak halted by a 1-0 defeat against West Ham in the first league fixture of May.

For me its an award, a trophy that deserves to be shared with everyone at the club. A humble Mauricio on his manager of the month award. pic.twitter.com/W5gc8kk48U  Tottenham Hotspur (@SpursOfficial) May 12, 2017

Speaking to the Premier League website, Pochettino greeted his fourth career Manager of the Month award warmly:

I feel proud because it is a collective reward. It means a lot for everyone here. Its a trophy that deserves to be shared with all at the club.

Good on him.
By Samrudhi Ghosh: Nine years after Sarkar Raj, Ram Gopal Varma is back with Sarkar 3. Is the Amitabh Bachchan-starrer worth a watch? Here's our Sarkar 3 review.

Sarkar 3 Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Amit Sadh, Yami Gautam, Jackie Shroff, Manoj Bajpayee

Sarkar 3 Director: Ram Gopal Varma

Sarkar 3 Rating: (2/5)

Like many of his Bollywood counterparts, Ram Gopal Varma has a serious case of sequelitis - making sequels to cash in on the franchise, without much regard that the latest entry takes the franchise downhill. When the second instalment, Sarkar Raj (2008) was made, it took from where Sarkar (2005) ended. Sarkar 3, made almost a decade after Sarkar Raj, has no mention of Anita (Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), who took over the reigns from Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan) as Sarkar.

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Sarkar 3 marks the return of messiah-of-the-masses and desi Godfather, Subhash Nagre aka Sarkar (Amitabh Bachchan). Age and the loss of his successor has not affected his popularity; a mere wave of his hand still elicits cheers from the masses. Enter Shivaji Nagre (Amit Sadh), who wants a piece of the pie and expresses his wishes to join his grandfather. Sarkar's loyal aide Gokul (Ronit Roy), who himself harboured the dream of becoming Sarkar's successor, is disgruntled.

Shivaji's girlfriend, Anu (Yami Gautam), has her own vendetta against Sarkar, for he had her father killed. Incidentally, Subhash Nagre had his own son and Shivaji's father, Vishnu, killed too. Who is plotting to have Sarkar killed, and who is on his side, forms the rest of the story.

Jackie Shroff plays a laughable Dubai-based "businessman who also indulges in politics" who mouths bizarre dialogues like "Laddoo ka bada problem yeh hai ki woh bahut meetha hai." Jackie's talent is wasted, and he has little to do in the film other than stare creepily at his skimpily-clad eye-candy and give orders over the phone. Ditto with Yami Gautam, who, given her identity, is built up as someone who is keeping her cards close to her chest, but only gives deadpan expressions and once in a blue moon, smirks.

What made Sarkar work was Subhash Nagre pitted against a scheming villain. In Sarkar 3, Jackie Shroff's character, Michael Vallya, is reduced to a caricature. The writers of the film seem to have forgotten that for a protagonist to shine, you need a convincing antagonist.

Amitabh Bachchan is the highlight of this film, from his cold grey irises to his baritone that lets you know he means business. Ronit Roy and Amit Sadh hold their own in front of him. Manoj Bajpayee has an extremely interesting role in the film, but just when you think his clash with Sarkar will make Sarkar 3 worth its while, he is bumped off, without any follow-up or consequences.

Ram Gopal Varma does not believe in subtleties when it comes to the background score. Sarkar 3 either has different versions of "Govinda Govinda" blaring in the background, or "Saam Daam, Dand, Bhed." It gets quite annoying after a point.

The first half is engaging enough, but loses its way post the interval. There are loose ends which are never tied, and by the time the climax comes, you have pretty much figured out how it is going to end.

Although a maverick filmmaker, RGV has had several hits and misses in his career. The (hopefully) last film of the Sarkar trilogy, unfortunately, is one of the misses.

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ALSO READ: Amitabh Bachchan and Ram Gopal Varma are a match made in hell

ALSO READ: Ram Gopal Varma reveals why Amitabh Bachchan works with him even after Aag

ALSO WATCH: Ram Gopal Varma talks about his book, Guns and Thighs

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By Press Trust of India: Bhubaneswar, May 12 (PTI) Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today appointed Badachana MLA Amar Prasad Satpathy as ruling partys chief whip to pacify resentment in it due to non- representation of several areas in the cabinet after its recent reshuffle.

Satpathy was the BJD spokesman and would get the status of a cabinet minister as the ruling partys chief whip.

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The partys chief whip was Ananta Das, who was recently appointed as a minister of state for the higher education. Now Sathpathy would take his place.

The Badachana MLA hailed from the Jajpur district that had no representation in the ministry on Sundays reshuffle.

Pranab Prakash Das, the lone minister from Jajpur, had resigned ahead of Patnaik reshuffling his ministry.

Though Jajpur did not get a berth in the ministry on Sunday, one MLA, Satpathy now got the status of a cabinet minister.

Pradip Kumar Amat had resigned from the post of finance and health minister. He was named as the BJD candidate for the Odisha assembly speakers post. The post had remained vacant after Niranjan Pujari joined the ministry.

On the growing resentment over the non-representation of over a dozen districts in the ministry, Patnaik had earlier said that MLAs from all areas cannot be included in the council of ministers since the size of the ministry is 22 while there are 30 districts in Odisha. AAM BBN SBN RAX

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A think-tank from Union ministry is ready to begin classes on sex education for students of state-run schools in Haryana.

By Arpan Rai: Sex education has finally entered the hinterlands of Haryana as a think-tank from ministries of human resource development, women and child development and health is set to start educating students on sex, contraceptives and natural urge in the state's government schools under Centre's National Health Mission Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram.

The aim of classes on sex education in Haryana's Yamunanagar is to end the stigma around sex and prevent teenage pregnancy culture from picking momentum.

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The lessons will include treating sex as a natural desire and not an equivalent of a disorder. The educational module has a target audience of class 8th to 12th and is also expected to expand to anganwadis in Haryana.

The module will include educating students on sex education, nutrition demands of a body during adolescence, sex and reproductive health, gender violence, substance abuse.

The team members constituting representatives of state health department, WCD department and education department highlight that in some schools in Haryana, female students are attended only by male teachers, which adds to hesitation around the conversation on sex education.

FOCUS ON ABOLISHING STIGMA AROUND SEX

Aiming to establish a progressive discourse, team members and teachers are being trained to sensitise students on how the attraction to opposite sex is a very natural phenomenon. The focus will be on ensuring that sex is treated as a need without any disgust. "We cannot emphasise enough on how there is a dire need to abolish the stigma around sex," Dr Dharamveer Singh, assistant project coordinator and member of the committee told Mail Today.

The lessons, to be delivered in the government schools and anganwadis, will highlight that indulging in sex entails social and health consequences. This will precisely solve the naive conundrums in a teenagers head, said Dharamveer.

"It is currently targeting every block of Yamunanagar with a sole aim to make the teens understand that sex is acceptable but pregnancy before maturity is not," Dr Sunil Kumar, deputy civil surgeon and a member of the project from State Health Department said.

Another societal hurdle underlined by Kumar is that while some have agreed to the significance of imparting sex education, the mammoth task is to find someone who will be comfortable delivering lessons on venereal conduct.

ALSO READ | NCERT revised syllabus to include sex education for younger children

ALSO READ | Controversy sprouts over sex education illustrations in Chinese textbook

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Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The 2006 movie Bon Cop, Bad Cop may not have been an especially great movie, but one couldnt help respect how it pulled off a brilliant trick.

It was unprecedented that a Canadian movie could find both French-Canadian and English-Canadian audiences with a story told in both official languages: Scruffy Surete du Quebec cop David Bouchard (Patrick Huard) is obliged to work in tandem with straitlaced Ontario Provincial Police detective Martin Ward (Colm Feore) when a dead body is discovered straddling either side of the Quebec-Ontario border.

The movie was something of a miracle for its freewheeling approach to a culture clash that is usually framed in more sombre terms along the lines of the Hugh MacLennan novel Two Solitudes. Sure, the movie played to stereotypes with Huards cop a shaggy loose cannon and Feores cop an anal-retentive square. Nevertheless, you had to admire how it managed to engage in gentle mockery of either culture in the framework of a police procedural. It didnt hurt that the cast was headed up by deft Quebec comic Huard (Starbuck, Les Boys) and Stratford heavyweight Feore (ironically best known in Canada for his portrayal of Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the CBC miniseries Trudeau).

https://youtu.be/cxN6foqdpN0

With a script by Huard and an infusion of action-y heft from director Alain Desrochers, the sequel jettisons much of the French-English culture clash.

The end of the first movie left us with the impression of the beginning of a beautiful friendship. In the decade-later sequel, Bouchard and Ward have lost touch. Indeed, Ward, now a commander with the RCMP, is shocked to bust a Montreal car-theft ring only to discover Bouchard working deep undercover among the chop-shop miscreants.

Sebastien Raymond photo Lethal weapons: Colm Feore (left) and Patrick Huard reprise their roles a decade after first joining forces.

To preserve his old friends identity, the two stage an impromptu fight/hostage-taking. This bit pays off with Ward mystified as he is berated on-air by real-life septuagenarian TV crime reporter Claude Poirier, a guy with no love for the Mounties. (This scene will likely play better in Quebec than in English Canada, but its still pretty funny.)

Bouchards infiltration of the organized-crime ring may prove more valuable than anticipated when a plot to steal 50 cars emerges and may be linked to terrorists. Suddenly, the French cop and the English cop find common ground when they are obliged to deal with American cops with little understanding of Canada, especially French Canada.

A melodramatic turn involving Ward threatens to topple the spinning plates director Desrochers sustains through much of the film. Desrochers, the director of the fast-and-furious car movie Nitro Rush, ought to know that satiric comedy and tragedy go together like sugar and gasoline.

If the film ends up working, it owes something to the current news cycle. This time last year, the movies terrorism subplot would have seemed a little ridiculous, but since real-world politics is starting to get downright weird in the era of Trump, screenwriter Huard looks a little less fanciful and a little more prescient.

Certainly, he strikes a chord of the current Canadian zeitgeist.

In the first movie, the odd-couple cops came together with a realization of shared tribulation within their professional and personal lives.

In this movie, the English cop and the French cop share the consolation many Canadians are feeling these days as they contemplate internecine battles over health care and Russian influence south of the border:

At least were not American.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing

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By Press Trust of India: From K J M Varma

Beijing, May 12 (PTI) Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived here today to attend the high-profile Silk Road forum during which Pakistan was expected to sign pacts with China for the construction of an airport and expressway in the strategic Gwadar port.

Sharifs delegation comprised of four chief ministers, several federal ministers besides Prime Ministers Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.

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The Belt and Road Forum is being organised by China to showcase its multi-billion dollar Silk Road initiative of which the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting Chinas Xinjiang with Balochistan through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is a part.

He would be among 29 heads of state and governments taking part in the meeting from May 14-15.

During Sharifs visit here, signing of agreements on the construction of the Gwadar Airport, Gwadar expressway and upgradation of railway track ML-1 was on the agenda, Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, who is in- charge of the CPEC, was quoted as saying by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency.

All the projects were expected to be financed by China, which has already taken over the Gwadar ports handling.

Recent reports here said China has plans to station its marines in the strategic deep water port, which provides a gateway for Beijing to the Arabian Sea and to the Indian Ocean.

Iqbal said the CPEC was worlds biggest ever project of regional connectivity and a shining part of the Belt and Road initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China was aiming at establishing regional connectivity with Africa and Asia through multiple linkages through this initiative, he said.

Iqbal said that though the visit of the Chinese President faced a delay owing to the negative politics in the country, the government managed to launch projects worth over USD 50 billion, including in the energy and infrastructure sectors.

Iqbal said a distinctive aspect of the Belt and Road Forum was the participation of chief ministers of Pakistans four provinces which he asserted would give a strong message of cohesiveness among the national leadership on national security, development and particularly the CPEC.

The Chief ministers taking part were Shahbaz Sharif (Punjab), Pervaiz Khattak (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Nawab Sanaullah Zehri (Balochistan) and Murad Ali Shah (Sindh).

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Railways Minister Saad Rafique, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir, State Minister for Information Technology Anousha Rehman besides Ahsan Iqbal were accompanying Sharif.

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Iqbal said under the CPEC, railway track would be upgraded from Karachi to Landi Kotal to double the speed from existing 80 kilometers per hour to 160 km per hour.

Such an upgradation of railways would not only usher an era of economic development by enhancing local markets access to other markets but also enhance competitiveness, he said.

India is yet to confirm its participation in the Band Road Forum. The US and a number of other western countries have either skipped the summit or deputed officials to attend it. PTI KJV ASK ASK

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Design Quarter Winnipeg (DQW) is being launched Friday to encourage Winnipeggers and tourists to visit the many destinations with an edge that exist in the Exchange District, The Forks and other parts of the downtown.

Its finding out about the creative businesses and artisans and events within a particular walkable region, explained Johanna Hurme, a partner in 5468796 Architecture Inc. and chair of DQWs board of directors.

Its catering to that kind of demographic that we havent really catered much to in the past. But I think there is a global trend for this type of experience, and people more and more are seeking out whats local and whats authentic about Winnipeg.

DQW has created a website (designquarterwinnipeg.ca) where visitors can obtain information about its goals and its 47 members.

DQW has already created a website (designquarterwinnipeg.ca) where visitors can get information about its goals and its 47 members, which include the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, several hotels, and a variety of locally-owned shops, galleries and restaurants.

A non-profit organization, DQW has produced a map showing where each member is located, and will be hosting weekly walking tours this summer that will include visits to some of these establishments to learn more about them and their products.

Hurme said similar initiatives already exist in other cities, including her hometown of Helsinki, Finland.

I thought, Winnipeg already has this and then some. It has all of these amazing little entrepreneurs and organizations, so why not try to figure out something that could help them.

She said groups like The Winnipeg Foundation, The Forks, Travel Manitoba, Tourism Winnipeg and the Exchange District Business Improvement Zone embraced the idea and helped raise the seed money required to get the initiative off the ground.

Hurme said shes also pleased with the response theyve received from downtown businesses and organizations.

The long-term goal is that hopefully we can encourage more businesses that fit into this category to move into the area, she added.

Fridays launch includes a media event in the morning at her firms offices on McDermot Avenue and a public event at 5:30 p.m. in Old Market Square.

murray.mcneill@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The proposed Lowlands National Park  killed off by opposition from indigenous leader Ovide Mercredi a dozen years ago  has risen like a zombie, and people in the province are scrambling to find out what it means.

The federal government surprised everyone in its recent budget by resurrecting the proposal for a 4,400-square-kilometre Lowlands National Park on the northwest shores of Lake Winnipeg.

The massive park would protect a unique ecosystem including wetlands, forests, beaches, karst caves, sinkholes, sand spits and lakefront cliffs.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Heidi Cook a councillor with the Misipawistik Cree Nation (Grand Rapids) says instead of a national park, First Nations want an indigenous protection area model where they retain greater control, including harvesting rights.

Mining interests say the park threatens the futures of Thompson and Flin Flon because it would cover the southern extension of the Thompson Nickel Belt. Thats where those mining centres expect to obtain future feeder ore.

We know theres economic ore down there, said Ruth Bezys, president of the Manitoba Prospectors and Developers Association.

It would not only jeopardize people living and working in those cities but future royalties and tax dollars for the province, she said.

First Nations wondered why they werent consulted, although some preliminary talks have begun since the announcement, said Heidi Cook, the Misipawistik Cree Nation (Grand Rapids) band councillor in charge of its land portfolio.

Instead of a national park, First Nations want an indigenous protection area model where they retain greater control, including harvesting rights, Cook said, adding that Ottawa is starting to listen.

If its an indigenous-protected area, it puts more land and management of that land back in hands of the people who have been here for generations, Cook said.

Mercredi, now past president of the provincial NDP, deferred comment to Cook.

The park idea was last advanced in 2002 by the Liberal Jean Chretien government but was killed by First Nations opposition led by Mercredi. The park would directly affect traditional territory of Cree bands Misipawistik, Chemawawin, Mosakahiken and Norway House.

While Parks Canada said the park boundaries are negotiable, some people involved in the first go-round said theyve heard that before.

Parks Canada said its goal is to establish a system of national parks that represents each of Canadas distinct natural regions. The Manitoba lowlands is a natural region that remains unrepresented.

These are the early stages of discussions with provincial officials on the feasibility of the park and there will be consultations with the public, stakeholders and indigenous peoples, Parks Canada said in an email exchange.

The Manitoba Lowlands National Park would cover 4,400-square-kilometre on the northwest shores of Lake Winnipeg.

The government is committed to developing a system of national heritage places that recognizes the role of indigenous peoples in Canada and the traditional use of these special places, Parks Canada said.

Ron Thiessen, executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society Manitoba Chapter, said the region is very valuable in terms of indigenous culture and the environment, including wildlife populations.

Whether it is a proposal for a national park or another form of protected areas, it must be developed fully with affected indigenous nations and must have their full consent before being approved, Thiessen said in an email exchange.

No one expects a quick resolution but rather years of negotiations. Bezys said lingering uncertainty over the territory will scare off mineral exploration in the province.

If everythings preserved, youre taking away opportunity for economic wealth for this province, Bezys said. We want a lot of free health care, we want a lot of social services, but we need money, and our taxes cant carry all these things.

The provincial government did not provide a response after being contacted by the Free Press.

bill.redekop@freepress.mb.ca
Shraddha Kapoor's tee is not something we'd want to see in our wardrobes, ever.

By India Today Web Desk: Shraddha Kapoor's fashion game has not exactly been on-point of late. From messing up her promotional appearances by wearing something she'd wear to bed, to messing up prints like no one else in the past decade, Shraddha has had her share of fashion pitfalls.

And there's another one right here that she can add to that list.

Photo: Yogen Shah

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Okay, first up--Shraddha, we understand you like to keep it casual and breezy, but there's a difference between looking breezy and wearing clothes to promotional events that you would wear to bed. You're scaling heights in your career, and we hope your upcoming film, Half Girlfriend, isn't half as fluffy as the book, but please, let's not neglect style in the bargain?

Okay, with that out of the way, Shraddha Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor and Chetan Bhagat were in Delhi yesterday, to promote their upcoming film, Half Girlfriend.

At first look, it seems like Sharddha Kapoor was not in the mood to make any efforts for this appearance--fair enough, celebs are humans, they get tired too. But on a closer look, what do we see? We see Shraddha's makeup absolutely on point, replete with a green eyeliner and what not, which clearly means that she wasn't planning on being shoddy for the day.

Photo: Yogen Shah

Let's decode this look then, shall we? Shraddha wore this white tee and white pants by Edeline Lee, a London-based Canadian fashion designer. That Gabo face on that body did everything it could to divert attention from Shraddha's natural glam and radiance. To top it all, Shraddha paired up the look with golden Kohlapuri chappals.

Photo: Yogen Shah Photo: Yogen Shah

Actually, we don't think the day started out with Kohlapurri chappals, though. In the picture the actress posted on Instagram, Shraddha was in fact wearing black Steve Madden heels. Guess all the running around in Delhi made her resort to flat chappals, which is something all actresses should emulate--it's truly criminal to run around so much during film promotions in six-inch heels!

--- ENDS ---
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The status of a senior civic official is under a cloud.

City council members were told Friday that Lester Deane, the director of public works, is no longer doing that work but civic officials wont say what he is doing or why the change was made.

Winnipegs chief transportation and utilities officer, Dave Wardrop, broke the news to councillors in an email.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / FREE PRESS FILES Lester Deane has been absent all week without any explanation.

I am writing to inform you that Lester Deane will no longer be serving as the Director of Public Works for the City of Winnipeg, Wardrop wrote, adding that any questions members of council have should be directed to him.

Deane has been absent all week without any explanation. Council was notified by email each day that someone else was handling his duties.

Wardrop said that until further notice, the acting director will be Jim Berezowsky, currently the public works manager of street maintenance.

Deane appeared to be in Mayor Brian Bowmans bad book in the fall, when he told reporters it would take two years to reopen the intersection of Portage and Main to allow pedestrian traffic.

Bowman  who wanted have the barriers removed in time for the Canada Summer Games, which begin at the end of July  later said Deane was incorrect and wasnt aware of all the relevant information.

The city is preparing a report on the project but there is no timeline for its release. Its not clear yet how soon the intersection could open and what it will cost.

Deane has been an engineer for more than 30 years and has worked for the city since 2003. He took over the top post in September 2015  on an acting basis  after the sudden resignation of Brad Sacher. Deane was named director in January 2016.

The questions surrounding Deanes absence are similar to the situation involving Sachers wife Diane, the citys former water and waste director, who was on an unexplained leave of absence for 21 months. Civic officials denied repeated requests for an explanation.

She contacted the Free Press after she formally retired in November, explaining that she had been on a medical leave.

Coun. Ross Eadie said theres no justification for the manner in which city hall has handled the Deane situation.

Mr. Deane was high up in the management structure that council should be given an explanation of why, Eadie (Mynarski) said. If it was related to a project, then we should be told.

Eadie said he expects the city administration will close ranks and hide the reasons for Deanes departure as a human resources matter, adding he doesnt believe anyone on Bowmans executive policy committee will call for a public explanation.

aldo.santin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Anne Eberhard drives 45 kilometres each day to hold her baby against her skin for 10 hours in the St. Boniface Hospital neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

Thats because her son, Jeremiah, was born at 29 weeks of pregnancy  much earlier than the usual 40 weeks  and weighed just 1,290 grams. He must stay in the NICU until he is strong enough to go home.

In the meantime, Eberhard is one of more than 20 mothers in the NICU who are using Kangaroo Care  skin-to-skin contact between parents and their babies  as a way to bond with their babies and improve their overall health and well-being. Parents have 24-hour access to their babies to hold, feed and care for them. Skin-to-skin contact has been proven to also play an important role in the breastfeeding relationship between new moms and their babies.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Anne Eberhard and her baby son, Jeremiah, are taking part in the Kangaroo Challenge at St. Boniface Hospital.

It helps me bond with him and makes me so happy to see that every time I take him skin-to-skin, hes calm, he sleeps, said Eberhard, 21, as she and Jeremiah sat cosy under a blanket in an anti-gravity chair near a sunny window. Eberhard spends her whole day with her baby. Her husband joins them after work.

It also has some benefits to him. It helps with his breathing and helps keep his temperature (regulated), and it helps him with his growth, she said.

Eberhard and the other moms in the NICU are participating in the third annual Kangaroo Care Challenge, an event being held from May 1 until Monday among about 30 hospitals in Canada and the United States. The goal is for every baby to snuggle against the skin of one of their parents every day.

The amount of time mothers hold their babies skin-to-skin is recorded daily in a log book, and the tallies among hospitals will be compared at the end of the challenge. There are prizes within the hospital for moms to earn while doing what they love: cuddling with their babies.

Last year, the St. Boniface NICU recorded more than 650 hours of baby-holding during its two-week challenge.

Diane Schultz, a nurse for 28 years in the NICU, said the long list of proven benefits of Kangaroo Care for babies includes improved brain maturation and growth because they are having healing sleep, protection against skin infections, helping to stabilize their vital signs and improving breastfeeding and breastfeeding duration. Fathers are encouraged to participate because it helps both parents with attachment and bonding and has proven to prevent postpartum depression in both to create better family outcomes.

We make every effort to fully educate our parents in the benefits of skin-to-skin and why they do it, and our parents respond amazingly to it. We have parents who will hold their babies in skin-to-skin for six to eight hours, Schultz said.

She said many medical treatments and procedures can be accomplished while babies are being held, such as starting intravenous lines and doing bloodwork, because it decreases the pain response by babies, which in turn helps them remain calm.

It brings parents back to their babies. Our parents are grieving the loss of a healthy pregnancy and the loss of an uncomplicated delivery. Theyre in a difficult situation in here, with a lot of stress, and this helps decrease the stress for the baby and the parents, Schultz said, adding it is also encouraged for full-term babies.

The due date for Betty Atusasires twin babies was May 12, but Ethan and Alisha were born at 22 weeks on Jan. 12. Alisha weighed 620 grams at birth and is now up to 2,494 grams, while Ethan, who weighed just 500 grams at birth, is up to 3,175 grams.

Atusasire arrives early every morning to breastfeed the babies, and she stays until 11 p.m., only taking a break to go home for supper. Both babies are continuing to receive breathing support, but Atusasire said she believes Kangaroo Care has played a role in moving the twins closer to breathing on their own.

WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Betty Atusasire with her 23-week-old son Ethan, and his twin sister, Alisha (in the crib) at St. Boniface Hospitals Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

They were intubated for two months. With the skin-to-skin and the medication, they were able to get off (intubation), Atusasire, 42, said as she held Ethan during his turn.

Because Im doing more skin-to-skin, its helped my kids to breastfeed faster, which sometimes (premature) babies struggle (with), and it helps with their heart rates.

This is something that also helps me to cope. Because Im spending this time with my kids skin-to-skin, when I go home I dont feel as bad (that) I dont have my kids.

In the NICU, Bella Rain Bushie is the new kid on the block  she was born on May 1 at 31 weeks. Her mom, Glennis, snuggled with Bella into an anti-gravity chair with Bellas tiny hand holding her index finger, said it was a shock to have Bella come so early. The skin-to-skin contact has calmed both of them.

Theres a lot of emotions. Its hard being at home without her at home, Bushie, 42, said.

The staff here have been great, Ive been able to come all hours of the night. Im just really encouraged to know I can come and be with her like this any time.

Ive noticed she settles quickly when I hold her in skin-to-skin. Shes also breastfeeding, and I pump at home. We just want her home, but shes probably here another week or two. Knowing I can come any time to be with her calms me.

ashley.prest@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After receiving national media attention and thanks from Winnipegs leaders and citizens, the Bear Clan Patrol is being honoured with an award for community service.

The grassroots group of volunteers who hit the streets to make the city safer will be given the Ihsan Award from the Islamic Social Services Association tonight. Ihsan means excellence or perfection in Arabic.

Its extraordinary, Bear Clan co-founder James Favel said. We havent received such an honour.

TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Susan Chief, a team leader, and other Bear Clan members go on patrol on Thursday.

The city has donated $10,000 to the group, and the mayor and police chief have patrolled city streets with the Bear Clan to see the good its volunteers do first-hand, but the organization hadnt received an award since it was revived, Favel said.

Recognition is not why Im in this, the volunteer organizer said while preparing a presentation for a weekend meeting with a group that wants to start a Bear Clan chapter in the Maples. But getting some recognition for what they do feels pretty good, he said. Im thrilled to death.

The Bear Clan has grown from a few dozen local volunteers to more than 550, said Favel. The safety patrol has drawn attention across Canada, with volunteer groups in 18 communities operating on the Bear Clan model, including five new chapters in Ontario, one in Regina and ones in Brandon and Selkirk starting up.

The group organizes searches for the missing and walks with the grieving, most recently at a vigil for Christine Wood, whom police say was slain in August at a home on Burrows Avenue in the North End. The Bear Clan distributes food and hygiene products and is equipped and trained to deliver first aid, including naloxone for opioid overdoses. The Paramedics Association of Manitoba last year delivered a manufacturer-donated defibrillator to the Bear Clan to take on patrols.

The Bear Clan was first formed in the North End in 1992 and, after a hiatus, returned to the streets in 2014 after the beaten body of Tina Fontaine, 15, was found in the Red River. Favel put a call out for volunteers interested in reviving the Bear Clan to protect themselves and the most vulnerable in the community.

It was out of frustration, said Favel, who lives on Stella Avenue in the North End. At the time, someone on his street was dealing drugs, others were dealing in the sex trade, and his family members were being harassed by johns when they went outside.

My wife and daughter were victims of people whod come and try to solicit them, Favel said.

His daughter could no longer take it, he said. My daughter left home at 19, and I wanted to her her to move back. That was one of his motivations for reviving the Bear Clan.

I was trying to protect my family and make the streets safer, Favel said. Its had all these other effects, and its working for everyone.

On Friday night, a handful of Bear Clan members will take a break from patrolling to receive their award from members of the Muslim community at CanadInns Polo Park.

Our Ihsan Award is about people doing community service, and I think the Bear Clan exemplifies that, said Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association. Theyve inspired so many young people wanting to know, What can I do to make things better? They showed us.

They show us every time how to get the community engaged and how to make our community safe and help families affected by crime in such a humble way, and in the spirit of community and giving and compassion, she said.

Last years Ihsan Award recipient was Tom Denton, executive director of Hospitality House Refugee Ministry.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg will honour a number of Canadas top leaders, activists and thinkers this spring with honorary doctorates.

The University of Winnipeg will honour Cindy Blackstock, Paul Thomas and Byron Williams at its convocation June 15 and 16, while the University of Manitoba will honour Maria Chaput, Thomas Denton, Tomson Highway, Sharon Johnston, Jennifer Jones, Sandra Pitblado, Gerry V. Price and Derek Riley at a number of ceremonies beginning May 18 and running through mid-June.

Blackstock is an Gitxsan activist famous for her dedicated work pushing the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal to acknowledge the Canadian government discriminated in how it funded child-welfare services for indigenous children.

Thomas is a teacher and researcher known for establishing the universities joint master of public administration program.

Williams is a lawyer and director of Legal Aid Manitobas Public Interest Law Centre, where his victories have helped to lower payday loan rates and allowed same-sex couples to adopt.

Chaput is a Franco-Manitobaine whose advocacy was key to ensuring bilingual schooling.

Denton is a longtime supporter of refugees to Canada and is executive director of the Hospitality House Refugee Ministry.

Highway is a celebrated Cree playwright, novelist and performer and was named one of Canadas 100 most important people in 2000 by Macleans magazine.

Johnston is an advocate for people living with mental illnesses as well as the co-founder of Friends of the Neuro at the Montreal Neurological Institute.

Jones is a gold-medal Olympian in curling and a board member of the Health Sciences Centre Foundation.

Pitblado is a patron of the arts, a supporter of the National Ballet of Canada and former chairwoman of the Stratford Festival.

Price heads the Price Group Companies and has contributed significantly to the University of Manitobas scholarships for engineering and architecture students.

Riley is an Olympian, veteran and businessman whose impact can be felt in places such as the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and the Assiniboine Park Conservancy.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After a six-week retrial in a 33-year-old murder case, the Crown has conceded some of the DNA evidence used to link Mark Grant to the 1984 death of 13-year-old Candace Derksen was problematic, and Court of Queens Bench Justice Karen Simonsen should not give it any weight.

The startling admission came during Crown prosecutor Brent Davidsons closing arguments on Friday.

The DNA recovered from slightly more than four metres of twine used to bind Candaces wrists and ankles  leaving her hog-tied in a lumberyard storage shed as she froze to death after she went missing on Nov. 30, 1984  has been heavily criticized during two trials.

Mark Grant is interviewed by police in 2007.

The results of a third DNA test on twine extracts pointed to 53-year-old Grant; the first two came back inconclusive. Two internationally recognized DNA experts testified the DNA analysis  completed by Molecular World lab director Amarjit Chahal  was fatally flawed and scientifically corrupt.

Now, the Crown concedes Simonsen shouldnt arrive at a verdict based on that analysis.

These analytical concerns must play into the process, Davidson said.

If youre asking me what I would do, I can tell you. Even though I believe, based upon the evidence as a whole, that Chahals interpretation is correct, I would place no weight on the nuclear DNA result.

Grant, who is charged with second-degree murder, is being tried for the second time. The Manitoba Court of Appeal overturned his 2011 second-degree murder conviction. The Supreme Court upheld the appeal courts decision. The high court ruled the trial judge erred by not allowing the jury to hear evidence that could have pointed to another suspect.

That evidence, involving a 12-year-old girl who reported being abducted and tied up in a railway boxcar about nine months after Candaces body was found, was downplayed by the Crown Friday. Davidson argued the victim, now an adult, shouldnt be believed because she recanted her story during Grants 2011 trial, leading the trial judge to decide the incident never happened. Grants defence team urged Simonsen to believe the womans account, which was reported to police as taking place in September 1985 when Grant was in jail for a separate incident.

Davidson said despite concerns with the DNA analysis  which was scrutinized during several days of testimony from Chahal, other Molecular World employees and the two defence experts, Frederick Bieber and Bruce Budowle  the elephant in the room during Grants trial is that he had the means and opportunity to abduct Candace and leave her to freeze to death. Davidson argued there should be no reasonable doubt Grant is responsible for her death.

You cant mistake weight for reasonable doubt, he told Simonsen.

Candace Derksen

DNA tests on the twine contributed to Grants 2007 arrest after a Winnipeg police cold-case investigation. Candaces bound and frozen body was discovered inside the storage shed on Jan. 17, 1985.

Davidson said he didnt have the literary capabilities of defence lawyer Saul Simmonds, who delivered his final arguments Thursday with an Alice in Wonderland-themed twist. But he introduced a triangle metaphor when arguing the case is about more than DNA.

The case against Mark Grant has dealt with three things: it deals with science, it deals with means and opportunity and it deals with admission, Davidson said. Its not about nuclear DNA as much as Mr. Grant would like you to think. Its about evidence.

While Grants defence team has urged the judge to disbelieve a Crown witness who testified she was threatened by Grant in 1988 after she heard him confess to killing Candace, the Crown argued she is credible.

Tonia Lachance, who was then a friend of Grants girlfriend, said she heard Grant say I killed her during a group discussion about Candace.

A couple of seconds later he added, No, I didnt. Im just kidding, she testified.

Lachance said Grant later threatened her not to tell anyone about the remark, or hed do to me what he did to Candace. She didnt speak to the police about it for 19 years. The Crown said her fear of Grant explains why she didnt come forward sooner.

I cant imagine any admission stronger than this. It is credible, it is reliable, it is worthy of great weight, Davidson said.

Wayne Glowacki / Winnipeg Free Press files A student changes a missing poster of Candace Derksen on Dec. 20, 1984. Her body was found weeks later.

Throughout the lengthy, high-profile trial, Grant sat quietly in the prisoners box, shielded from the view of the often-packed public gallery. But he interrupted Friday when Davidson spoke about Lachance, getting the attention of his lawyer, who promptly shushed him.

Davidson urged the judge to scrutinize and weigh all of the evidence, not just piecemeal parts of it.

The only other person we know of who had similar means and opportunity was (Grants former girlfriend) and she was excluded after mitochondrial DNA testing, a particular type that wasnt challenged by geneticists who testified for the defence, Davidson said.

The reserved her decision on the verdict.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A Winnipeg police officer had no choice but to shoot a man holding a knife in 2008, an inquest judge has concluded.

The family of Craig Vincent McDougall hopes a judges recommendations prevent others from going through what theyve endured.

Almost nine years after McDougalls death, provincial court Associate Chief Judge Anne Krahn said Patrol Sgt. Curtis Beyak was forced to fire his revolver at the knife-wielding man at 5:19 a.m. on Aug. 2, 2008.

winnipeg free press files Craig McDougall, 26, was shot and killed by a police officer on Simcoe Street in 2008.

Krahn said McDougall had been ordered by Beyak and two other police officers to drop the knife and a Taser had been used, but it didnt work.

Krahn said McDougall was shot while heading to the front door of 788 Simcoe St., where residents were inside.

I have concluded that the officer who shot him had no other reasonable options left to him when Craig McDougall approached him and the residents of 788 Simcoe, including a young child, brandishing a knife in a threatening manner, Krahn wrote in a 78-page inquest report released Friday.

Officers tried to use a Taser, a non-lethal use of force, but this turned out to be ineffective. Police officers are required to place themselves in dangerous situations in order to protect and serve our communities. These officers responded to a 911 call of a stabbing with the intention to help, not to cause injury.

The tragic loss for the McDougall family of their son, brother, nephew, has left permanent scars on this family. It is my sincere hope that some of the recommendations made in this report will be steps towards reconciliation with the community and address important issues of transparency and accountability.

The Winnipeg Police Service said in a statement it is reviewing the inquest report and will not comment at this time.

We thank Associate Chief Judge Anne Krahn for her careful consideration of the evidence and issues raised during the hearing and for her recommendations directed to the Winnipeg Police Service, the statement says.

Once the service has the opportunity to thoroughly consider (the) recommendations, we will be in a position to comment.

McDougalls father, Brian McDougall, said in a statement through the familys lawyer Corey Shefman, he was glad he finally has answers.

He wishes he could have had this sooner. He is hopeful that, as a result of this inquest, that it never happens again to another family.

The inquest was told the shooting came after an evening of drinking by Craig McDougall and a few family members.

When everyone returned to the residence on Simcoe and went into the backyard, a fight broke out between two women, which Craig McDougall tried to break up. McDougalls father came out and ordered everyone to leave.

A couple of hours later, at about 4:30 a.m., McDougalls father phoned police saying someone was trying to break into his house. But police upgraded the call and rushed to Simcoe Street after Craig McDougall phoned on his cellphone to say he had been stabbed.

After the shooting, McDougalls autopsy found three superficial stab wounds that were possibly inflicted by himself. He had a blood alcohol level of .19, more than twice the legal limit for driving.

In the aftermath of the shooting, both Brian McDougall and Johnny McDougall, Brians brother and Craigs uncle, who had been inside the house during the shooting and pushed their way outside to see what had happened, were handcuffed for 40 minutes and detained in witness rooms at the Public Safety Building for four hours.

Krahn concluded there were missteps in the immediate aftermath of the shooting when Craig McDougalls uncle and father were left handcuffed and detained without lawful authority.

Krahn noted McDougall was indigenous and when a member of that community is killed by the police, the trust we place in our police officers is severely tested.

This is heightened in the indigenous community, where the history of this community has already created a baseline of distrust the need for all of us to continue to engage with indigenous people in this country is imperative in order to begin to regain that trust.

Krahn issued 16 recommendations, which include: having Winnipeg police set guidelines for how long witnesses should have to wait before police take their statements; ensuring anyone who witnesses a traumatic event gets access to a victim-services worker; having the province and police look into the feasibility of officers using body cameras; and instructing all police officers about the Independent Investigation Units jurisdiction and authority over reviewing police shootings.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca

Final Report
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pallister Investments 22 Ltd. has no dealings with government, and the premier and members of his family are not in a conflict of interest, Brian Pallister said Thursday.

It does no business with government, he told reporters.

But the premier said there is no reason for him to tell anyone what kind of company it is, what it does or what benefit he derives from it, if any. His office described it as a holding company and says he declared it in May 2016.

Tim Smith / The Brandon Sun Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister said there is no reason for him to tell anyone what kind of company he owns, what it does and what benefit he derives from it, if any.

Pallister said he discussed the company when he met with Manitobas conflict of interest commissioner a year ago to discuss his properties and holdings. Based on that, Pallister wont provide details on the company: No, because thats not what the conflict of interest commissioner intends us to do, Pallister said.

In what Pallister called an inquisition Wednesday during the premiers estimates, New Democrat Andrew Swan demanded to know what the company does, whether it owns property and whether it conducts any business with the government or pays Pallister any compensation or benefit. Swan says the company was first mentioned on disclosure forms in November.

Frankly, its none of your business, was the premiers response.

Thursday, the two clashed over the issue again in question period, and they went at each other again over how and with whom Pallister communicates from his vacation home in Costa Rica.

David McLaughlin, Pallisters director of communications and stakeholder relations, said Thursday morning the premier included the company a year ago when disclosing his assets to the house. He did not provide any details about the company at that time.

Later, during question period, Swan challenged Pallister over his claim Wednesday he used the same government protocols in communicating while on vacation in Costa Rica, as did previous NDP premiers.

No such protocol exists, Swan told the house.

Retorted Pallister: The member has put on the record that there were no protocols whatsoever for security.

What exactly does this premier have to hide? Swan asked.

I like the member from Minto (Swan) very much, but I dont consider him to be an expert on ethics in any way, shape or form, Pallister replied.

Speaking later to reporters, Pallister wouldnt back up his claim that he took less vacation time than NDP premiers.

Its a great question to ask Mr. (Greg) Selinger, and Mr. (Gary) Doer, too, he said.

Pallister conceded it is difficult to use access to information laws to track how and with whom he communicates while in Costa Rica if hes not using government devices.

I go overboard trying to make sure we have security. To ensure that information never gets into anyone elses hands is a big part of who I am, he said.

Conflict and confusion reigned Thursday over a scheduled hearing into the premiers estimates, officially called the committee of supplys meeting on the executive council.

McLaughlin said the Thursday session of the premiers estimates hearings was set aside in order to debate bills in the house as the NDP had requested; Mondays estimates were similarly set aside. Not so, said the NDP, demanding the meeting go ahead as scheduled.

It finally went ahead, but not with Pallister. Agriculture Minister Ralph Eichler moved into the chair normally occupied by the premier.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Pallister government could raise the minimum wage within weeks.

Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Cliff Cullen wouldnt release any details Thursday, but the name of the Minimum Wage Indexation Act speaks for itself.

Cullen has placed the bill for first reading on this Mondays order paper.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Manitoba's Growth, Enterprise and Trade Minister Cliff Cullen, is tabling a bill thought to aim at increasing the minimum wage in the province.

I cant give you specifics of the bill. Youll have to wait until Monday, Cullen told reporters.

The Tories have steadfastly ignored NDP demands they raise the $11-an-hour minimum wage since they took office just over a year ago.

Cullen said Manitobans want predictability: This will obviously identify to Manitobans and to the business community a time frame, he said.

The province needs a balance between the needs of workers and the needs of employers, he said. Cullen would not say if the proposed bill would start with $11 an hour or whether it might move the minimum wages starting point up or down.

Youll see the details on Monday on that, he said.

Cullen said the bill would be implemented the day it receives royal assent, but in order to become law when the session ends June 1, it would need the support of the NDP and Liberals to go through the process that quickly. Otherwise, the earliest it would become law is November.

Wed still have (public) hearings regardless what the opposition does, Cullen said.

New Democrats said Thursday cost of living isnt enough to give low-income workers a living wage.

I dont think its enough, said MLA Wab Kinew.

He pointed out that as the lone NDP leadership candidate, he has promised a $15-an-hour minimum wage by the end of his potential first mandate in 2024.

An NDP government would phase it in over a few years to help business adjust, Kinew told reporters. We need to have a $15-an-hour minimum wage.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Southern Manitoba is often viewed by outsiders as warm, charitable and hard-working, populated by salt-of-the-earth folks who take care of their neighbours.

The so-called Bible Belt  a label that remains in use despite the areas shifting demographics having long since rendered it obsolete  is also often seen by outsiders as being closed-minded, homogenous and intolerant and is viewed as a place people escape from, not where they choose to build lives.

But several newsmaking events have steadily chipped away at the latter, less-favourable stereotype about southern Manitoba. Census figures from 2016 showed that rural centres in Manitoba are steadily growing, with immigration a major driver of those numbers. In fact, communities in the region have been welcoming immigrants at a faster rate than Winnipeg has for more than two decades.

Trevor Hagan / The Canadian Press Files Thousands attend Steinbachs first Pride march in 2016.

Steinbachs Filipino population is now pegged at around 1,000 and refugees are also settling in places such as Altona, Morden and Winkler.

In 2016, Altona (pop. 4,500) drew the attention of national news media when it welcomed five families of Syrian Muslims  45 people in total  increasing the towns population by one per cent. Their arrival was an adjustment  its a new climate, language and culture, after all  but Altonas people made the families feel at home, helping them get around and forging bonds via Google Translate.

Morden and Winkler have also hosted refugees from Syria. In April, Winklers city council approved an application for a mosque. The vote was unanimous.

The border town of Gretna is temporarily sheltering asylum-seekers in an empty seniors facility, a plan that was met with hostility and anger when the provincial government first announced it. But many townsfolk are warming up to the idea, their compassion eventually eclipsing their uncertainty. And why not? Many of these towns were founded by Mennonites, who themselves fled other countries to escape religious persecution.

The winds of change are blowing through Steinbach, too. Last July, the famously conservative city held its first Pride march, a historic day that many in Steinbachs LGBTTQ+ community thought would never come. Though Tory MP Ted Falks refusal to attend the event resulted in simplistic, one-dimensional national criticism of the whole city of Steinbach, thousands of participants and allies from all over the province marched together in solidarity. This, many people noted, is the Steinbach they know.

From the outside looking in, the pain of progress is easily diagnosed: old-fashioned values chafing against modern, progressive ones. As we saw in Steinbach last summer or in Gretna last month, its almost always more complicated than that. True progress is gradual, and inclusive communities dont pop up overnight.

But progress is indeed happening all over southern Manitoba.

Thats not to say that oppression doesnt still happen or that bigotry, however polite, no longer exists. But hardline stances are softening. Minds are being opened. New communities are being built.

And just as those folks are opening their minds and hearts, city dwellers would do well to acknowledge that their generalizations about small-town Manitoba are also unfair and inaccurate. Stereotypes  about any group  are harmful not only because they tend to be perpetuated, but because they shut down critical conversations before they even begin.

And its in those conversations that the flickers of progress are sparked.

Theres been so much talk of building walls as of late. Its encouraging to see some being torn down.
Expelled BSP leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui hit back at party chief Mayawati, claiming that she had demanded Rs 50 crore from him, adding that he has enough phone conversations to cause an "earthquake." Maywati responded by calling Siddiqui a "big blackmailer."

By Press Trust of India: A day after he was expelled from the party, Naseemuddin Siddiqui alleged today that Mayawati had demanded Rs 50 crore from him and made objectionable remarks against Muslims, charges which the BSP supremo trashed while calling him a "blackmailer".

At a crowded press conference here, an angry Siddiqui levelled a spate of allegations against Mayawati saying he had enough material to cause an "earthquake". He also claimed that there was a threat to his life.

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Siddiqui played six audio clippings of his phone conversations with Mayawati to support his allegation that money had been demanded from him. Siddiqui claimed he had 150 such recordings.

"She (Mayawati) was sore at the dismal showing of the BSP in the recent Assembly elections and termed Muslims as betrayers for not having voted for the party," he alleged. Accusing Mayawati of having referred to "bearded Muslims as dogs", Naseemuddin said he had objected to the remark.

MAYAWATI RESPONDS

At a hurriedly convened press conference Mayawati soon hit back. "Expelled BSP leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui is a big blackmailer and earns money through it...people have complained about it. And it has been proved right today," she said.

Mayawati said she had received complaints about Siddiqui from party workers.

"One who can tape BSP national presidents conversations cannot be called a devoted and loyal worker....But he will not be able to blackmail me as what I say in private is what I say in public," she asserted.

She said the audio clippings were not played by Siddiqui in entirety and also rejected his allegation that Rs 50 crore had been demanded from him.

Mayawati claimed that when some workers were asked about the deposit of party's membership drive and they said the amount had been given to Siddiqui.

"I warned that if he cannot give proper account, he will have to pay it himself....I will not allow him to usurp party money which belongs to the poor and deprived through which we run the party...I do not want your property money...I simply want the account of poor peoples money," she said.

'DID NOT INSULT MUSLIMS'

Refuting his allegation that she had used derogatory language against Muslims, Mayawati said she cannot even repeat the word referred to.

"Muslims have faith in me that I cannot betray them...it is from the Muslims that we received maximum calls after his expulsion as he was not letting them progress in the party."

On Naseemuddin saying that his 8 year old daughter died while he was busy in Mayawatis election in Bilsi, the BSP supremo said this was it was for the first time she had heard of her. He (Siddiqui) had always mentioned that he had only two sons, she said.

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On Siddiqui's charge that BSP general secretary Satish Mishra was trying to weaken the party, Mayawati said there was no comparison between the two.

"When Mishra came to BSP, Naseemuddin was very perturbed...He (Mishra) is working with full devotion and gives me more respect than his real sisters...He has been with me through all my problems and has not taken a single paisa for the cases he contested for the party," she said.

'MAYAWATI WEAKENING BSP'

Earlier, Siddiqui had alleged that "BSP is being knowingly weakened by Mayawati and Anand Kumar (her brother) as part of a conspiracy by Satish Mishra and company"

"People are also of the view that since Mayawati has attained the height which she wanted to attain, she herself wants to end BSP so that no other person among the Dalit samaj could reach this far," Siddiqui had claimed.

Siddiqui claimed that the BSP was totally under the grip of Mishra and company and that Mayawati was being blackmailed by them.

"I know her more than anyone else...if I give the proof against Mayawati, Anand and Mishra it will be a big tamasha," he said.

However, Mayawati sought to demolish all his allegations.

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She alleged that people had told her that Naseemuddin had taken money from business houses promising to do their work once BSP came to power in the state.

She also defended her brother Anand Kumar, about whom Siddiqui had said that a class IV employee of Noida Authority was today a man worth Rs 2,000 crore, asking if he was aware of Ambanis background.

Everyone can progress in life, Mayawati said. "BSP workers say ever since I made my younger brother vice president, he (Naseemuddin) was very perturbed as he used to claim he was number two in the party...I had to bring my brother in the party as we need honest people not selfish ones. It was out of compulsion that I had to bring him," she said.

MAYA's 'CRIMINAL GANG'

Siddiqui had also alleged that Mayawati had a criminal gang who could set any leaders house on fire or even get someone murdered. He also alleged that all BSP MLAs had to pay Mayawati and even his wife, who was a BSP MLC, had given money to her.

He also claimed that during a meeting on April 19 Mayawati had tried to belittle Kanshi Ram by comparing party's showing in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab Assembly polls.

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Trashing all allegations, Mayawati said she had been warned about Siddiqui by Kanshi Ram himself, who used to say that he might prove to be a hurdle for the BSP.

Mayawati also rejected Siddiqui's claim that he has been with the movement since the past 34 years and said he had joined the BSP in 1990 after failing to win the election for Banda nagar palika chairman on his own.

Yesterday, BSP had expelled Siddiqui, its most prominent Muslim face, and his son from the party for carrying out "anti-party" activities.

The war of words gave the ruling BJP a chance to take potshots at the BSP chief, saying it was high time for Mayawati to quit politics. "Mayawati does politics just for her own sake and has lust for money and nothing else. After today's expose, she should quit politics," BJP spokesman Chandra Mohan said.

ALSO READ | Mayawati called Muslims betrayers, says Naseemuddin Siddqui as AAP bug hits BSP

ALSO WATCH | Mehbooba Mufti: Mayawati may be gone but not for good

--- ENDS ---
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WASHINGTON  For those lately bereft of leadership, the past few days have provided both a respite and a reason for hope.

Make that two reasons  two women  Sally Yates and Condoleezza Rice.

Its likely that neither would prefer to be singled out as women who are brilliant but rather as brilliant people who happen to be women. Nevertheless, Im guessing that women (and enlightened men) who heard Yates and Rice had an extra spring in their steps. I admit, they made me proud.

Yates, as most know by now, is the former acting Attorney General whom Donald Trump fired, perhaps confusing his current role with his previous gig on The Apprentice. The Donald dumped her because she refused to enforce his travel ban, which she found unlawful.

Rice, former secretary of state during the George W. Bush administration, happened to be in town the same day to promote her new book, Democracy. Watching her on MSNBCs Morning Joe Tuesday, one was reminded of her unique story growing up in the segregated South to become one of the most powerful individuals on the world stage. Responding to questions about current foreign affairs, she was characteristically reasonable and  that rarest of qualities these days  palpably sane.

As I watched both women, the word that kept coming to mind was competent. Oh, how once gone, we miss it. Other equally dusty adjectives include whip-smart, steady, unflappable, knowledgeable, focused, straightforward, correct.

Anyone watching Yates during her hearing would have been impressed with her calm, her clarity and, especially, her dominance under questioning. Notably, she schooled Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, when he tried to suggest that her legal reasoning was incorrect and that she was partisan in her decision not to enforce the travel ban.

It must have taken a supreme act of will for Yates to keep a straight face when countering his condescending reading of a statute pertaining to executive power in restricting immigrants entry into the country. First, Cruz asked if she was familiar with statute blah, blah, blah, section blah blah blah. Not off the top of her head, she said. Upon Cruzs rendering of the statute in his best GreenEggsAndHam voice, Yates said that, yes, she was familiar with that and also with a subsequently promulgated statute that she felt overrode the previous. Namely, that immigration law cant be applied either preferentially or as discriminating on the basis of race, nationality or place of birth.

But, she said to constitutional-lawyer Cruz, she was mainly concerned with the constitutionality of the presidents ban. Brief pause for relishing the moment. It was riveting theater, made all the more enjoyable because Cruz comes off as persistently arrogant. His debating skills may have been superior to other Republican primary contenders, but debates are won with arguments, not confidence.

Yates also testified on the subject of Michael Flynn, whom Trump also fired, but only after The Washington Post revealed what Trump had known  that Flynn had discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador during the transition and then lied about it. Yates said that she had warned Trump transition officials to beware of Flynn. And, apparently, President Obama personally warned Trump against hiring Flynn.

Meanwhile, Rice, who before becoming secretary of state was national security adviser to Bush leading up to the Iraq War, looked rested and radiant at the Morning Joe table and made one hope shes in close contact with the current administration. Her observations on Russia (Putin is an eye-for-an-eye guy) were especially illuminating. Validating what others had testified during the Senate hearings, she said Putin despised Hillary Clinton and leaked hacked emails from Democratic campaign computers in hopes of hurting her. It was payback, in other words, for when then-Secretary of State Clinton challenged the fairness of Russias elections in 2011.

But here Rice deviated from the popular narrative that Putin wanted Trump to win and warned against ascribing other motivations to him. Putin would have wanted anyone to win against Clinton, she said. Regarding Russias interference in the 2016 election, this has long been one of Russias goals, mainly to undermine Americans confidence in the democratic process. Hence, in part, Rices timely book.

Whatever ones political persuasion, I doubt Im alone in noting the too-rare character exhibited by Rice and Yates. Being reminded of what we once expected of leaders and leadership, maybe well insist upon better next time. As weve seen, there are other women besides Clinton who could be president.
Republican Sen. James Lankford called for clarity.

Republican Sen. John McCain pronounced himself disappointed.

And Republican Sen. Marco Rubio essentially shrugged. He said he was surprised by the sacking of FBI Director James Comey, but added that its a decision the presidents made, and well go from here.

It is not exactly a portrait of righteous indignation.

Not to paint with too broad a brush. Some GOP officials did speak more forcefully against what Donald Trump did Tuesday night (and some supported it). But there was no mistaking a certain tepid tone to many responses, and it was almost as troubling as the firing itself.

For those who just flew in from the Amazon rainforest:

In an ominous echo of Richard Nixons infamous Saturday Night Massacre, Trump fired the man who has been investigating his campaigns ties to Russia, which meddled in last years election with the goal of helping elect Trump president. Comey sought to find out whether Trump or his surrogates colluded with that effort.

Instead, he was given the ax, a fact he learned on television. The explanation for this was spectacularly risible. In a terse letter, Trump claimed he was responding to concerns from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, that Comey mishandled the investigation of the nothing burger that was Hillary Clintons emails.

Comey did, in fact, botch the investigation, violating Justice Department protocol by publicizing unsubstantiated claims against a candidate in the midst of a campaign. But this happened last summer, and if it were really the reason for his dismissal, hed have been gone right after Trump took power.

More to the point, it would require the credulity of a particularly stupid toddler to believe Trump, who loathes Clinton, just booted the FBI director because he treated her unfairly. No, it is painfully obvious that this is about Russia. Like Nixon in 1973, Trump is apparently faced with an investigation that is going places he doesnt want it to go. Like Nixon, he has responded by firing the investigator.

The stench that rises from this is unmistakable, the reek of power abused and justice obstructed. It strongly suggests that we are governed by an ongoing criminal conspiracy. The situation needs, demands and requires an independent investigation.

We cant rely on the Justice Department for that, given that its leadership is complicit in Comeys firing. That leaves Congress, which is why the anodyne Republican reactions are so worrisome. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has flatly ruled out a special prosecutor.

Shame on all of us if that is the last word here. We are supposed to be Americans first, before we are Rs or Ds. Thats a principle from which many Republicans have turned in recent years, repeatedly choosing themselves and their wealthy patrons over the greater American good. The healthcare debacle is but the latest glaring example.

But GOP leaders must stand up for the country this time or risk losing it. If they dont get that, the rest of us  liberal, conservative, American  must make unceasing noise and apply unstinting pressure until the party that launched eight investigations of Benghazi decides to treat this at least as seriously.

If you are not appalled, you are not paying attention. The Trump administration constitutes a clear and present danger to American democracy.

We need a special prosecutor and we need one now.
A statewide energy efficiency program has awarded Sauk County grants to install solar panels at government buildings.

The injection of $140,000 into the project could bolster support among members of the Sauk County Board. A committee may move forward with a proposal in which the county would partner with a private firm to install solar arrays in the coming months.

Mark Hanson of Hoffman Planning, Design and Construction, the countys consultant, said the states Focus on Energy program has awarded grants to install solar at two of the four buildings county officials have been eyeing.

If the project goes forward, the Focus on Energy program would contribute $80,000 toward solar installations at the Sauk County Law Enforcement in Baraboo, and $60,000 for the Sauk County Health Care Center in Reedsburg.

The program denied the countys applications for solar grants at two other buildings: The Sauk County Highway Department in West Baraboo and a Sauk County Human Services Department facility in Reedsburg.

The awarded funds would be used to bring down the purchase price for any third-party investor, Hanson said, which would improve the financial performance of the project for the county. He said the county must move forward with the projects before the end of 2017 in order to receive the full grant amounts.

The only implication of delay is that youd give up a fraction of the grant if you did not meet time deadlines, he said. To receive the full grant, thats the deadline were working against.

Hansons firm also has recommended smaller energy conservation measures for county buildings. And the boards Property and Insurance Committee could move forward with those projects along with the third-party solar deal.

A member of that committee, Supervisor William Hambrecht of Prairie du Sac, said the five-person panel is likely to discuss whether to seek proposals from potential investors at its next meeting. A request for proposals could then go public if the county board approves at its June meeting.

The committee would then open bids in July, and could make a recommendation to the full board later that month.

Under a third-party deal, a private investor would pay for the installation of solar arrays with the assistance of the grant money. The private firm would then be able to take advantage of solar financial incentives only available to for-profit entities and get paid for the energy it produces.

The county would benefit initially from a cheaper form of energy. The deal also may include an option for the county to purchase the solar systems at a reduced cost in the future. Thats the point at which supporters say the project would begin to generate substantial savings, because the county would be producing its own energy at the affected buildings.

The solar proposal has been controversial among competing factions of the board. Skeptics have raised concerns about whether the project makes financial sense. Supporters have accused critics of using stalling tactics and attempting to derail the project.
Senate Bill 212 is so simple that its one page.

It directs each school board in the state to adopt academic standards for financial literacy and incorporate instruction in financial literacy into the curriculum in grades kindergarten to 12.

Thats it. It sounds simple  incorporating financial literacy into each public schools curriculum  and makes so much sense.

Our high school students should graduate as financially literate young adults.

When we talk about financial literacy, we talk about having knowledge about how to budget, manage, invest and borrow money.

This type of literacy leads to a more stable community with more people in homes, said Teresa Schoffelman of Associated Bank in Green Bay.

Think about it, if youre able to establish a savings account, budget your money, and know the importance of your credit history, youll know what you realistically can afford when you go for your first home or car loan.

The best place to start this literacy is in school.

The problem is, its not required, so not everyone is getting that education. If financial literacy is not required, it becomes one of those boring courses you dont bother with.

Student loans, vehicle loans, home loans, leases for housing they all require a basic financial literacy so you dont get taken advantage of after high school.

Twenty states have adopted financial education requirements, as of 2016. Sixty-four percent of Wisconsin school districts required it. For example, the Green Bay School District requires a one-semester class in order to graduate.

For those that dont have a requirement, we urge the Legislature to create one.

We understand this would be an unfunded mandate. However, the bill gives school districts wide latitude in developing courses. And there are financial institutions in almost every community willing to help out.

The Press-Gazette Editorial Board met with three bankers and two members of the Wisconsin Bankers Association. They heartily endorse this bill and theyre will to be the resource that school districts can use as they write curriculum or instruct students.

They can tap us; were a resource, said Daniel J. Peterson, president and CEO of Stephenson National Bank & Trust in Marinette.

Many school districts already have teachers who can teach  or already are  teaching this subject matter.

Requiring students to take financial literacy courses forces those school districts that dont to offer their students skills theyll start using before even graduating.

The Senate bill and its Assembly companion have the rare kind of bipartisan support that isnt seen too often these days.

This type of knowledge is something students will use after school gets out, and for the rest of their lives.

We call on the Legislature to support this bill. Its a good investment in our future adults.
MADISON (AP)  Gov. Scott Walker joined Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald on Thursday in denouncing separating transportation funding from the state budget, saying theres no reason to take that unusual approach to break an impasse in the Republican-controlled Legislature over how to pay for roads.

The Republican co-chairs of the budget committee said Thursday they were open to that idea, which Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos discussed in a private meeting Wednesday. But Fitzgerald and Walker were quick to reject the idea.

Separating roads funding could allow Republicans to craft a transportation plan that might have support from Democrats while the rest of the budget  which is unlikely to have Democratic backing  would be voted on separately. Pulling the roads budget out into a separate bill could make it more difficult to pass because it would require lawmakers to take a stand on transportation issues separately, rather than as part of the much larger budget. But it could also make passing it easier if Republicans can convince Democrats to support their approach. Republicans control the Senate 20-13 and the Assembly 64-35.

Fitzgerald said road funding is deeply tied to the overall $76 billion budget and trying to vote on it separately will only muddy the funding picture of the budget as a whole.

It is challenging enough to gather member support for one budget bill, Fitzgerald said in a statement. If the Republicans are taking up a separate transportation package outside the rest of the state budget and relying on Democrat votes to get it passed, it clearly means were in trouble.

Walkers spokesman Tom Evenson said Theres no reason why they cant get this done through the normal budget process. He said Walker was willing to work with the Legislature on a solution as long as it doesnt raise taxes. Vos said he remained more than willing to negotiate a solution for roads, but didnt comment specifically on whether hed back taking it up separately.

Sen. Alberta Darling, co-chair of the budget committee, told reporters Thursday she hoped to come up with a road-funding plan that would win Democratic support.

Its not going to be easy, Im not going to sugar coat it, she said.

Democratic lawmakers have complained that they are not being included in talks with Republicans over how to fund roads.

Republicans who control the Legislature have not been able to agree with one another, or with Walker, on how to plug a projected $1 billion funding gap in the roads budget. Walker has proposed borrowing $500 million and delaying major highway construction projects. The Assembly plan would apply the sales tax to gas, cut the gas tax and requirement that retailers charge a certain amount for fuel, while also restructuring the income tax code. Fitzgerald and Walker have both said they oppose that plan.

Fitzgerald said Wednesday that the Senate was considering borrowing tied to the states main account, rather than the transportation fund as is done now, coupled with pursuing toll roads as a more long-term solution.

Evenson called Walkers proposal  which would increase borrowing by $500 million and delay construction projects  as a middle ground between what the Senate and Assembly want.

With numerous options now public, we have to start discussing them seriously, Darling said.
Johnnys Lounge, La Tapatia Bar & Grill and a BP gas station in Beaver Dam were assessed demerit points this week related to liquor law violations and one bar fight.

Johnnys Lounge, 519 Madison St., is being assessed 80 points for failure to maintain order/fights/disorderly conduct and the police were not notified.

According to the incident report, at 2:29 a.m. April 29, officers were dispatched to Johnnys Lounge after a 38-year-old man said he was dragged out of the bar and punched multiple times. The bartender on the scene said there was an altercation. The 38-year-old man was arguing with other patrons.

When police reviewed the surveillance footage from inside the bar, a man could be seen striking the 38-year-old man in the head. The brawl later moved outside.

The bartender said that she wasnt aware that she had to report the incident to the police.

In June of last year Johnnys Lounge was issued a warning related to exceeding noise levels that could have resulted in a 225-point demerit assessment.

La Tapatia, 1105 N. Spring St., is being assessed twice for not having a licensed bartender on the premise totaling 160 demerit points. The incidents occurred May 4 and 5 for Cinco de Mayo (celebrating Mexican heritage), which resulted in the restaurant not being able to serve alcohol for a period.

May 4 at 1:16 p.m., the incident report states that officers were doing an annual tavern review and were checking liquor establishments to see if their licenses are properly posted. When the officer arrived a licensed person for La Tapatia was not there.

The next day, an officer returned at 1:15 p.m., and found that the owner, who is licensed for La Tapatia, was at the Fond du Lac location. Deputy Police Chief Dan Schubert told the manager that the restaurant could not serve alcohol until a licensed person is on the premises.

The manager told the officer that this is a hardship for them because it was Cinco de Mayo.

The BP gas station at 201 S. Spring St. is being assessed 230 points for furnishing alcohol to a minor and for not having a licensed bartender on the premises.

The incident report says that police were conducting an undercover operation at two gas stations in Beaver Dam. Police gave an 18-year-old man $20 to buy a can of beer at each location.

At the BP location in question the 18-year-old man was able to purchase one can of beer that cost $2.

An officer later talked to the BP clerk and she told the officer that she was not licensed to sell alcohol in Beaver Dam. There was no licensed person on the premises.

The demerit point system is used to guide the Beaver Dam Administrative Committee in making possible license suspensions and revocations. In the Beaver Dam municipal code it states that for demerit points totaling 25 to 149, within a rolling 12-month period, its recommended that the licensee be warned.

If a licensee exceeds 200 demerit point violations within a rolling 18-month period the owner could lose his or her license.
After several years serving the community, the UW Health Columbus Clinic will be closing on Aug. 4. The clinic has historically offered a combination of primary care, limited specialty care and most recently sleep medicine. Its only physician Dr. Nazi Khan, after practicing in Columbus for more than 20 years, has decided to move exclusively into sleep medicine and will be relocating to UW Health at The American Center.

It has been an honor and a privilege to serve the Columbus community and work with such an amazing staff and professional colleagues for so many years. At this point in my life I have made the very difficult decision to devote my full practice to sleep medicine and will be moving to support the programs at The American Center, said Dr. Khan. I will dearly miss my relationships with my patients and their families but feel that this is best at this stage of my career.

Lori Hauschild, UW Healths vice president of primary care, said, Well be working with patients to find them a new clinic for their primary health care. Were working very closely with the Columbus Hospital leadership to offer patients primary care options in the community.

UW Health also has several primary care clinics in eastern Dane and Dodge counties that will be available.

The UW Health Columbus staff has many options to choose for other positions. The clinic has five staff members, a physician assistant and a physician.
VATICAN CITY (AP)  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.
Information is taken from the records of the Portage Police Department and does not represent a comprehensive list of police activity. Each individual named in this report is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

The Portage TRIAD is seeking donations for the groups rummage sale fundraiser June 1-3 to support spring training and senior safe night out. For more information, call Jerilyn Jerome at 742-2174. Possible pickups within city limits.

Between 6:58 a.m. Monday and 7:05 a.m. Wednesday police responded to 87 calls.

Walmart: Police on Monday at 9:22 a.m. responded to a call regarding three suspicious individuals, leading to contact between the individuals and an officer, one of the three reportedly giving a false name. The contact was followed by the three suspects running to a vehicle, which then pulled out of the parking lot and drove away at high speed, despite the emergency lights of the pursuing patrol car. The vehicle was stopped at West Slifer Street where the driver, Anthony Staples, 30, of Milwaukee, was arrested and cited for felony fleeing an officer, misdemeanor obstructing an officer and operating a vehicle with a revoked license.

West Cook Street and Lock Street: Police on Monday at 12:29 p.m. responded to an incident in which a driver reportedly pulled into an intersection to check traffic, striking a bicycle trailer carrying a 3-year-old pulled by a woman on a bike. The child received a scrape, but was otherwise unharmed by the collision. Tad Abbott, 49, of Oxford, was cited for failure to yield, causing bodily harm.

Walmart: Police on Tuesday at 12:57 a.m. issued a municipal ordinance citation to Kendall Preuss, 23, of Portage, for trespassing.
By Press Trust of India: twist to insurgency

Srinagar, May 12 (PTI) An audio slideshow in which Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander Zakir Moosa is purportedly speaking about establishing an Islamic caliphate in Kashmir has gone viral in the Valley.

The 5.40-minute long clip also warns separatist leaders of Kashmir not to meddle in the move to set up a caliphate in Jammu and Kashmir along the lines of the rule established by the ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq.

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There was no immediate confirmation about the source or authenticity of the audio.

But if the voice is that of Moosa, it may signal a worrying turn in Kashmirs insurgency. The movement so far has largely been about independence or annexation with Pakistan, without emphasising Islam or connecting it to jihad.

The Hizbul Mujahideen is nearly as old as the Kashmiri militancy which started in 1989. The group is made up almost entirely of local youths, and had always campaigned for joining Pakistan.

In the clip, the speaker asks separatists to either fight along with militants in the field or refrain from making statements about the armed struggle.

The clip surfaced after a recent move by Hurriyat leaders to downplay fears of the growing influence of the ISIS in the Valley.

Earlier this week, Hurriyat leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yaseen Malik issued a joint statement in which they claimed that the Kashmir struggle had nothing to do with the ISIS, Al-Qaida and other such organisations.

In a statement today, Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander Syed Sallahuddin also said there was no place for groups such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda or the Taliban in Jammu and Kashmir.

"This movement is purely local and indigenous. It has no international agenda. Al Qaeda,Daesh or Taliban have no involvement or role in Kashmir," he said.

The Urdu-language slideshow includes stills and quotes of jailed Indonesian national Abu Bakar Bashir and Yemeni resident Anwar al-Awlaki -- seen as the brains behind ISIS and Al-Qaeda activities.

Senior police officials believed it was Moosas voice in the slideshow and said the banned ISIS terror group could be trying to create a base in the Valley.

Last month, two masked gunmen appeared at the grave of a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist in Pulwama during which they asked the gathering to follow the rules laid down by the Taliban and ISIS, and not support or raise slogans in favour of Pakistan.

For over three minutes, they spoke about pan-Islamisation and the importance of having Shariat as a law and fled after firing shots in the air.

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Militant outfits including the United Jehad Council, a conglomerate of terror outfits based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as well as separatists were quick to downplay the incident but security officials viewed it with more seriousness.

Security agencies felt that if the growing influence of ISIS was not checked, it could adversely affect the already precarious situation in the Valley.

They said chats and contacts between Kashmiri youth and possible handlers in Syria and Iraq had grown in the last six months.

There was no specific information about the Internet users other than the fact that they were from villages in South Kashmir, Sopore in North Kashmir, Prang and Lar in Central Kashmir as well as Reasi, Kishtawar and Doda areas of Jammu region, the agencies said.

During the recent protests across the Valley, ISIS flags were waved in some areas. Slogans supporting the banned terror outfit were also up on some walls.

The Indian Army has also been worried about the growing influence of the ISIS ideology on the Valleys youth. A study last year showed that six out of 10 young Kashmiris were watching videos of controversial Islamic preacher Zaki Naik or other jehadi videos.PTI SKL MIJ VJ BDS

--- ENDS ---

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Behavior survey data in Portage Schools show declining alcohol use but an uptick in students who reported experiencing suicidal thoughts.

Portage High School counselor Tim Belleau shared Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) data with school board members Monday. YRBS is a federal survey conducted in Portage Schools every two years, free of cost to school districts. The survey is anonymous, computerized, involves more than 80 questions and incorporates historical data going back to 2001.

The survey was conducted for middle and high school students, though for the school board Belleau focused primarily on what the numbers said about high schoolers. Data is from 2015 and the next YRBS survey is planned for this fall.

Belleau began his presentation with numbers concerning alcohol use, since it is considered to be the drug of choice among teens. YRBS showed about 27 percent of 631 high school student respondents reported having alcohol in the past 30 days  a percentage that is is far lower than what it has been.

The reason we focus so much on alcohol is that is the gateway drug, he said. Ask anyone in law enforcement or schools, the kids get involved with these other drugs after they get involved with alcohol. Its very rare that they step up to the other ones first, so if we can curb that number, theres a better chance we can have an influence on the rest of these.

About 16 percent of the high school students reported using marijuana, 8 percent using prescription drugs and 5 percent using over-the-counter drugs.

Trends in alcohol use among students in 10 school districts across Columbia County have improved steadily since 2001, Belleau noted in an email Tuesday. Trend data focus on students in grades 7, 9 and 11. In 2001, for example, 51 percent of high school juniors in Columbia County reported not using alcohol in the past 30 days, a percentage that has climbed up to 68 percent in 2015.

Mental health

About 33 percent of Portage High School respondents reported feeling sad and hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more, to the point where they stopped doing some usual activities, YRBS showed. This was about 8 percent higher when compared with statewide data and 3 percent higher than the national average.

Nineteen percent of respondents seriously considered attempting suicide over a year period, and 13 percent made a plan for attempting suicide in that period. Seven percent reported attempting suicide at least once over a year, and 1.4 percent of them were treated by a doctor.

Female respondents had higher rates across every mental health question discussed Monday, a difference the district is highly aware of, Belleau said. For example, in the question about students reporting feeling sad and hopeless, females were at nearly 41 percent compared with about 25 percent for males.

The alarm bells go off for school counselors when they learn a student has made a plan for suicide, at which point schools are legally required to bring in someone else to do an assessment, Belleau noted. We would like to step in at where its 19 percent, where theyre considering (suicide), and (ask) how do we help you? Hopefully, by that time, we know about it, but we dont always.

Ive had two kids come in this last year, after the fact, Belleau continued. Wed been notified by the hospital that theyre in there for a week, and then I meet with them. I had no idea going up into that  there were no signs, there were no meetings  so its not something we can always control, but when we do have the opportunity  thats where were stepping in.

Among adults, Columbia County ranks 15th (out of 72 counties) in the state for suicides, at 17.3 per 100,000 people, Belleau noted, compared with 13.5 statewide, according to a survey conducted between 2009 and 2013. Were aware of it, were working on it, but also our community is aware of it  the (countys) suicide prevention council thats popped up over the past five years, theyre taking on the same issues, and theyre working with us also, and were going to some of their trainings.

School board member Dan Brown asked Belleau how suicide awareness factors into the issue, to which Belleau said the stigma (of mental health) is getting erased and that kids feel safe to come forward since they know its a safe place, a positive step as school and community leaders work to address the issue.

Bullying, bystanders

Thirty percent of high school students reported being bullied on school property in the past 12 months. That number is 7 percent higher than statewide results and 10 percent higher than nationwide results, both from 2013.

Twenty-three percent of Portage respondents reported being bullied electronically during the past 12 months and the numbers jump way up  to 53 percent  for those who think harassment and bullying is a problem, Belleau said. The bystander plays a huge role; theres a large number of kids who witness whats going on, and they say, yes, theres a problem.

So we say, if youre being bullied, come and talk to us, thats a lock, but we also work with bystanders: what can they do to help out? We try to work with them.

What most people dont realize, he continued, is bullying pretty much plateaus at the high school level and then starts to falter, falls back, as the kids mature, numbers that hold nationally.

Bullying on social media, despite it occurring less than face to face bullying, has been the big change for schools to consider in recent years.

Feeling safe

YRBS data show about 76 percent of high school respondents feel safe in school, either always or most of the time, and about 65 percent reported having at least one teacher or adult in their school they can talk to if they have a problem.

The number of students who report having someone to talk to grows significantly from freshmen to seniors, rising from 52 percent as freshmen to about 79 percent as seniors.

Eighty-eight percent reported they care about other peoples feelings.

About 14 percent of high school respondents described themselves as gay, lesbian or not sure.

Perhaps the most positive data, Belleau noted, was 75 percent of students reported participating in extracurricular activities.
A long-anticipated new grocery store and gas station in Lake Delton looks unlikely, after a roads upgrade requirement by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, among other unexpected costs, project and village representatives said.

A $2.5-million upgrade required by the DOT for the roadways serving the site of the proposed Viking Village store, proposed for the northwest corner of Wisconsin Dells Parkway and Wisconsin Highway 23 in Lake Delton, means the stores developer will proceed no further with the project.

The DOT requirement was really the straw that broke the camels back, Attorney John Mitby, representing project developer WP Delton Development, LLC (Viking), told Wisconsin Dells Events.

A grocery store of the size theyre talking about, with those road requirements, is not feasible, Mitby said.

The Village of Lake Delton in 2015 promised $3.5 million in Tax Increment Financing for a new, 70,000-square-foot Viking Village store, similar in size and function to the companys flagship location in Reedsburg, according to village Trustee Tom Diehl.

But those additional funds were not enough to keep the project afloat in light of the DOT requirement and other, unexpected costs that have arisen since the TIF dollars were promised, according to Mitby.

Although Viking appreciates TIF funding of approximately $3.5 million, that amount is not enough to bring the costs in line, Mitby wrote in an April 6 letter to Lake Delton Attorney Richard Cross. Additional support would be needed. Extra TIF support is needed to provide what the Village is looking for, plus help with the additional costs related to the site.

Such additional financial assistance from the village is unlikely, according to village Trustee Tom Diehl, who expressed a variety of emotions in reaction to the projects apparent demise.

Were very,very disappointed, because we really felt this would be the beginning of development in a blighted district, TIF 4, Diehl said. Its a prime location in the downtown area, and it (the store) was going to be a wonderful asset to the citizens of the village.

Meanwhile, Diehl said he was appalled by the DOT requirement that apparently arose earlier this year as an additional roadblock to the project.

Local road upgrades long-ago promised by the DOT included the Dells Parkway-Highway 23 intersection, Diehl said, and those costs should not have been foisted on a grocery store developer.

They (the DOT) want to force Viking Village to spend millions of dollars that should have been done on their (once-proposed) 2005 project, he said.

At least four years in the making, the grocery store and gas station also was delayed by Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources concerns and requirements regarding water runoff and other environmental issues endemic to the site, which is owned by Viking Village and presently occupied by a Viking Liquors store.

Addressing those issues would have included filling in a swale on the property, Mitby said. Other land preparation requirements adding to the project cost included relocating power lines and the addition of a storm sewer.

The total costs are turning out to be approximately $23-$25 million, Mitby wrote in the letter to Cross. The DOT costs and moving the power lines just add to the costs.

Mitby left open the possibility of an alternative project in both his letter and his comments to the Dells Events.

They (the developer and owner) are trying to figure out what is feasible right now, but we dont have an alternative, he said.

In spite of the recent developments, the attorney spoke highly of Diehl and his colleagues who govern the village.

I have nothing but great respect for the Village of Lake Delton, theyve been up front in how theyve operated, theyve helped and tried to push this project along, he said. They cant control the DNR and the DOT.
By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) Solar power tariff dropped further to hit a new low of Rs 2.44 per unit in the auction conducted for Bhadla solar park.

"In another auction for Bhadla Solar Park 3, solar power tariff touched record low of Rs 2.44/unit," a senior official said.

The official added that ACME Solar Holdings emerged as the lowest bidder by quoting Rs 2.44 per unit tariff for 200 MW followed by SBG Cleantech One at Rs 2.45 per unit for 500 MW capacity.

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Following this, Power Minister Piyush Goyal tweeted, "Green future: Latest solar power auction at Bhadla Solar Park 3 sets new record with electricity tariff of Rs 2.44/unit".

Ministry of New and Renewable Energy said that the Rs 2.44 per unit discovered in the auction carried out by Solar Energy Corporation of India Limited (SECI) for 500 MW capacity in Bhadla Phase-III Solar Park, Rajasthan.

The park is being set up by Saurya Urja Company of Rajasthan Ltd, a joint venture between Rajasthan and IL&FS Energy Development Company Ltd.

The ministry said that this tariff is fixed for 25 years with no escalation and the bidders have sought no VGF (viability gap funding) from the government.

It further told that the entire solar power will be consumed in Rajasthan, and power sale agreement with the state distribution companies is already tied up.

The developers are responsible to connect to the pooling sub-station of solar park. The developers will be paying solar park charges of Rs 45.2 lakh per megawatt towards land, connectivity (from pooling substation to state network) and other infrastructural facilities. The projects are likely to be completed in about 12-13 months, it added.

Earlier this week, solar tariff dipped to Rs 2.62 per unit in the auction held for Bhadla Solar Park phase 4.

Solar power tariff has been falling steadily for quite some time now.

Explaining further, the ministry said that this fall in solar tariffs is the result of combination of various factors, most important being the decision of the Government of India to cover solar power by the SECI under the ambit of Tripartite Agreement for payment security against defaults by state distribution companies.

The other factors it said, are about 7-8 per cent higher yield in Rajasthan due to better solar radiation conditions, drop in module prices in International market and strengthening of rupee against US dollar.

Under the auction, the ministry said that the bids were submitted by 24 bidders for a capacity of 5,500 MW which is 11 times of the bid capacity.

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The bid received overwhelming global response including developers from Finland, France, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Japan.

This became possible only due to constant endeavour at the SECI to streamline the bidding process with highest level of transparency and integrity under the guidance of Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the ministry said.

Last month, levelised solar power tariff had dropped to all-time low of Rs 3.15 per unit at an auction of a 250 MW project at Kadapa in Andhra Pradesh.

In February, 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 at Rs 3.30 per unit.

In January last year, solar power tariff had dropped to a new low, with Finland-based 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. PTI KKS BAL

--- ENDS ---

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Sanofi, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the research, development, manufacture, and marketing of therapeutic solutions in the United States, Europe, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Pharmaceuticals, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company provides specialty care products, including human monoclonal antibodies; products for multiple sclerosis, neurology, other inflammatory diseases, immunology, rare diseases, oncology, and rare blood disorders; medicines for diabetes; and cardiovascular and established prescription products. It also supplies poliomyelitis, pertussis, and hib pediatric vaccines; and influenza, adult booster, meningitis, and travel and endemic vaccines. In addition, the company offers allergy, cough and cold, pain, liver care, physical and mental wellness, probiotics, digestive, and nutritional products; and other products, such as daily body lotions, anti-itch products, moisturizing and soothing lotions, and body and foot creams, as well as powders for eczema. Further, it has various pharmaceutical products and vaccines in development stage. Sanofi has collaboration agreement with GlaxoSmithKline to develop a recombinant Covid-19 vaccine; and a research collaboration with Stanford University School of Medicine to advance the understanding of immunology and inflammation through open scientific exchange. It also has a collaboration and license option agreement with Prellis Biologics, Inc. The company was formerly known as Sanofi-Aventis and changed its name to Sanofi in May 2011. Sanofi was founded in 1973 and is headquartered in Paris, France.
Thomson Reuters Corporation provides business information services in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the Asia Pacific. It operates in five segments: Legal Professionals, Corporates, Tax & Accounting Professionals, Reuters News, and Global Print. The Legal Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on legal research and integrated legal workflow solutions that combine content, tools, and analytics to law firms and governments. The Corporates segment provides a suite of content-enabled technology solutions for legal, tax, regulatory, compliance, and IT professionals. The Tax & Accounting Professionals segment offers research and workflow products focusing on tax offerings and automating tax workflows to tax, accounting, and audit professionals in accounting firms. The Reuters News segment provides business, financial, and international news to media organizations, professional, and news consumers through news agency and industry events. The Global Print segment offers legal and tax information primarily in print format to legal and tax professionals, governments, law schools, and corporations. The company was formerly known as The Thomson Corporation and changed its name to Thomson Reuters Corporation in April 2008. The company was founded in 1851 and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada. Thomson Reuters Corporation is a subsidiary of The Woodbridge Company Limited.
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ICICI Bank Limited is a leading private-sector bank in India. The bank was founded in 1955 under the guidance of The World Bank, the government of India, and Indias leading businessmen. The purpose of the bank was to provide financing for industrial projects and it held to that mission until the 1990s. Reforms of Indias financial sector allowed the bank to pursue other avenues including but not limited to consumer banking and loans.

Since then, the maturing of Indias market has allowed the company to expand even further. The company was incorporated as ICICI Bank as part of ICICI Group in 1994 and went on to become the first Asian bank outside of Japan to be listed on the NYSE. Over the years, the bank has merged with several subsidiaries of ICICI Group and with ICICI Group itself as it consolidated its position as a leading bank in India.

Today, ICICI Bank provides a broad array of banking products and financial services in India and internationally including personal and business banking as well as NRI, insurance products, and corporate services. The firm is headquartered in Mumbai and is the 5th largest bank in India with operations in 17 countries including the US, UK, Singapore, and Bahrain.

The company operates its Retail Banking, Wholesale Banking, Treasury, Other Banking, Life Insurance, General Insurance, and Other segments through a network of branches, ATMs, and websites. The company listed 5,418 branches in 2022 and more than 13,340 ATMs as well. The companys services can all be accessed by phone or through the network of nine websites as well as on mobile devices.

The company offers consumer products ranging from savings to checking as well as retirement and insurance products. The companys loan products run from home, car, personal, and commercial business loans to loans for gold, loans against securities, collateral-free loans, and financing for importers/exporters, start-up businesses, and education. The bank is particularly strong with its Agri and rural business, farmer finance, and tractor loans.

Among the Other services the company provides are portfolio management, brokerage, foreign exchange, NRI banking (non-resident of India), and family wealth accounts. Business services include commercial and investment banking, access to capital markets, and an array of business finance products. In regard to the bank's health, its senior secured notes carry investment grade ratings from both major rating agencies.

ICICI Bank is committed to aiding Indias economic growth and development. The company operates the ICICI Foundation which works hard at improving financial literacy in an all-inclusive manner.










Buzz has it that Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja are planning to take their relationship to next level.

By India Today Web Desk: Sonam Kapoor and boyfriend Anand Ahuja, who recently completed a year of dating each other, are planning to take their relationship to the next level. The lovebirds, who remained tight-lipped about their relationship status all this time, have thrown caution to the wind.

From dinner dates to family outings to vacations, Sonam and Anand are busy giving their fans some major relationship goals.

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And if recent reports are to be believed, the lovebirds are planning to move in together. Buzz has it that Sonam and Anand were recently spotted hunting for some property in Bandra. However, there has been no confirmation that if they were hunting for a house together or looking for a place to set up store for her clothing brand Rheson.

Sonam and Anand might not have made it official, but their recent appearances are a validation of their relationship status. And Anand's presence at the National Awards where Sonam received a special mention for Neerja was enough proof about their closeness.

Sonam and Anand's romance came in the spotlight when they made an appearance at Akshay Kumar's Rustom success bash. When the actor was asked on Koffee with Karan about the "conjecture" that she has been dating a "business-boy from London," she laughed, "I am always dating a businessman from London." She went on to say that she likes to keep her private life private and she will never talk about it.

ALSO READ: Is this how Sonam Kapoor and Anand Ahuja celebrated their first anniversary?

ALSO READ: Sonam Kapoor and boyfriend Anand Ahuja to get engaged soon?

ALSO WATCH: I believe in ever afters and soulmates, says Sonam Kapoor

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Grieg Nominees Limited, RVH Limited, RVT CLO Investments LLP, Razzoli Investments Limited, Real Estate Participation Management Limited, Real Estate Participation Services Limited, Relative Value Holdings LLC, Relative Value Investments UK Limited, Relative Value Trading Limited, Roder Investments No. 1 Limited, Roder Investments No. 2 Limited, Ruthenium Investments Limited, SPM GP Limited, Securitized Asset Backed Receivables LLC, Servicios Barclays S.A. de C.V., Societe Civile Immobiliere 31 Avenue de la Costa, Solution Personal Finance Limited, Southern Peaks Mining LP, Standard Life Aberdeen, Surety Trust Limited, Surrey Funding Corporation, Sussex Purchasing Corporation, Sutton Funding LLC, Swan Lane Investments Limited, TPLL LLC, TPProperty LLC, Tahoe Club Company LLC, Tahoe Club Employee Company, The Logic Group Enterprises Limited, The Logic Group Holdings Limited, Third Energy Holdings Limited, US Real Estate Holdings No. 2 Limited, US Real Estate Holdings No.1 Limited, US Real Estate Holdings No.3 Limited, US Secured Investments LLC, Union Center LLC, United Counties Bank, Verain Investments LLC, Walbrook Group Ltd, Wedd Jefferson (Nominees) Limited, Wessex Investments Limited, Westferry Investments Limited, Wilmington Riverfront Receivables LLC, Woolwich Homes Limited, Woolwich Plan Managers Limited, Woolwich Qualifying Employee Share, Woolwich Surveying Services Limited, Woori BC Pegasus Securitization Specialty Co. Limited, and Zeban Nominees Limited.

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Yelp Inc. operates a platform that connects consumers with local businesses in the United States and internationally. The company's platform covers various local business categories, including restaurants, shopping, beauty and fitness, health, and other categories, as well as home, local, auto, professional, pets, events, real estate, and financial services. It provides free and paid advertising products to businesses, which include cost-per-click search advertising and multi-location Ad products, as well as enables businesses to deliver targeted search advertising to local audiences; and business listing page products. The company also offers other services comprising Yelp Reservations that provide online reservations for restaurants, nightlife, and other venues directly from their Yelp business pages; Yelp Waitlist, a subscription-based waitlist management solution that allows consumers to check wait times and join waitlists remotely, as well as businesses to manage seating and server rotation; Yelp Knowledge program that offers business owners local analytics and insights through access to its historical data and other proprietary content; and Yelp Fusion, which offers free and paid access to content and data for consumer-facing enterprise use through publicly available APIs. In addition, it provides content licensing, as well as allows third-party data providers to update and manage business listing information on behalf of businesses. Further, the company offers its products directly through its sales force; indirectly through partners; and online through its website, as well as non-advertising partner arrangements. It has strategic partnership with Grubhub for providing consumers with a service to place food orders for pickup and delivery. Yelp Inc. was incorporated in 2004 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
KeyCorp operates as the holding company for KeyBank National Association that provides various retail and commercial banking products and services in the United States. It operates in two segments, Consumer Bank and Commercial Bank. The company offers various deposits, investment products and services; and personal finance and financial wellness, student loan refinancing, mortgage and home equity, lending, credit card, treasury, business advisory, wealth management, asset management, investment, cash management, portfolio management, and trust and related services to individuals and small and medium-sized businesses. It also provides a suite of banking and capital market products, such as syndicated finance, debt and equity capital market products, commercial payments, equipment finance, commercial mortgage banking, derivatives, foreign exchange, financial advisory, and public finance, as well as commercial mortgage loans comprising consumer, energy, healthcare, industrial, public sector, real estate, and technology loans for middle market clients. In addition, the company offers community development financing, securities underwriting, brokerage, and investment banking services. As of December 31, 2021, it operated through a network of approximately 999 branches and 1,317 ATMs in 15 states, as well as additional offices, online and mobile banking capabilities, and a telephone banking call center. KeyCorp was founded in 1849 and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio.
Attending the grand Buddhism summit - International Vesak Day - on Day 2 of his visit to the island nation, Modi announced a direct flight between Varanasi and the Sri Lankan capital from August.

By India Today Web Desk: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today attended the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, the largest festival of Buddhists.

Attending the grand Buddhism summit on Day 2 of his visit to the island nation, Modi announced a direct flight between Varanasi and the Sri Lankan capital from August.

"India is the land of Buddha. From August this year, Air India will operate a direct flight between Colombo and Varanasi. This will ease travel to the land of Buddha", PM Modi said.

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HIGHLIGHTS OF PM MODI's SPEECH

Through this flight service, my Tamil brothers and sisters here will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi-Vishwanath, he added.

I believe that Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to the growing arc of violence all over the world.

Sadly these ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are not open to dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

The biggest challenge to Sustainable World Peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states. It is from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

Menace of terrorism in our region is a clear manifestation of this destructive emotion.

Most grateful to President Sirisena, PM Wickremesinghe and to the people of Sri Lanka for extending to me the honour of being the Chief Guest at the function.

Modi had yesterday hailed the shared heritage of Buddhism and the healthy relations between the two countries.

He will also address the Indian-origin Tamil community. Modi will later pay a visit to Sri Lanka's Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple in Kandy.

The Indian Prime Minister met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and Sri Lankan President Sirisena yesterday.

Modi meeting Sirisena.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's former president Rajapaksa called on PM Modi and praised bilateral cooperation over the years.

"Rajapaksa had a very cordial discussion with Modi and he was happy with India-Lanka cooperation over the years", Indian High Commissioner Taranjith Singh Sandhu told the media. Modi met Rajapaksa at the latter's request, the High Commissioner said. Rajapaksa said that New Delhi and Colombo may have signed deals on economic cooperation before Prime Minister Modi's arrival in the country.

"The information I have is that all deals have already been signed. So the Indian prime minister's arrival or non-arrival would be immaterial," Rajapaksa told reporters in the central town of Kandy, hours before Modi touched down in Colombo.

PM Modi meeting former Sri Lankan President Rajapaksa.

HOLD NOTHING AGAINST MODI's VISIT: RAJAPAKSA

The Sinhala strongman, who ruled the country for a decade, said he held nothing against Modi's visit. "The problem will be only if they sign agreements. I understand these have already been signed", he said.

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Briefing the media on Modi's engagements in Colombo, Sandhu said the prime minister would not be signing any agreements with Sri Lanka during the visit. He said the prime minister had expressed India's commitment and support to Sri Lanka and that India would be a strong development partner for the island nation's prosperity.

Modi is on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years primarily to participate in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

The two countries were set to sign an agreement to lease out oil tanks to India to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the eastern port district of Trincomalee. But Sri Lanka's opposition parties have objected to the deal, saying the government was selling state assets to India.

Rajapaksa's joint opposition has led a resistance to the Sririsena government's plan to sign economic cooperation pacts with India, more particularly the Trincomalee venture.

(WITH INPUTS FROM PTI)

Also read | Did Modi's Sri Lanka visit influence Colombo to reject China submarine request?

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Also read | PM Narendra Modi leaves for Sri Lanka, says the two nations share a rich heritage of Buddhism

Also read | India-Sri Lanka coastal belt turning into a smuggling ground?

Also read | China's media warns India not to 'meddle' as their defence minister visits Nepal, Sri Lanka

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By Press Trust of India: New Delhi, May 12 (PTI) Art of Living foundation head Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Parmarth Niketan Ashram chief Swami Chidanand Saraswati were among the new board members of a government-established body to facilitate contributions by overseas Indians for social projects in the country.

Welcoming the new members, including Indian-American Bharat Barai, at the eighth meeting of the India Development Foundation of Overseas Indians (IDF-OI), External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj sought their support and guidance in encouraging and enabling overseas Indians to make contributions, an official release said.

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Swaraj is the chairperson of the IDF-OI, a not-for-profit trust set up by the government to facilitate contributions by the overseas Indian community to social and development projects in India.

The board members discussed ways to ensure contributions by overseas Indians to implement the governments two flagship programmes -- Swachh Bharat Mission and Clean Ganga initiative, the foundation said, adding they also discussed strategy to enhance contributions.

The foundation successfully completed three Swachh Bharat Mission projects in Amritsar in Punjab and Vijayawada and Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, which are benefiting thousands of people, the release said.

The IDF-OI is currently implementing eight projects in Andhra Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Telangana, and has several projects available for funding across the identified sectors, it added.

Senior officials from ministries of home affairs, external affairs and finance were among the participants. PTI PYK SMN

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On its second week, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion netted Rs 390.25 crore, thereby becoming the highest grossing Hindi film ever.

By India Today Web Desk: When SS Rajamouli's Baahubali: The Beginning hit the screens in 2015, it posed a serious threat to Bollywood, which continues to dominate Indian cinema. With Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, it's safe to say that SS Rajamouli has broken the norm, as the highest grossing Indian film is from a 'regional' industry.

Baahubali 2, which released on April 28, has received nothing short of phenomenal response from fans worldwide. On its second week, Baahubali 2: The Conclusion grossed Rs 390.25 crore and has surpassed the lifetime collection of superstar Aamir Khan's Dangal, which netted Rs 375 crore. Going by reports, Baahubali 2 is expected to rake in Rs 400 cr in Hindi, while trade pundits predict that the film would do a business of Rs 1500 crore in the coming days.

#Dangal Hindi's lifetime Ind net was 375CR (with Tam Tel dubs added, 387CR). #Baahubali2 Hindi (385* CR net in 2 weeks) is now all-time No.1- Kaushik LM (@LMKMovieManiac) May 12, 2017

#Baahubali2 Hindi two weeks all-India net is 385 CR (245 CR in Week1 + 140 CR in Week2).Shockingly, #Baahubali2 Week2 >> #Raees lifetime!- Kaushik LM (@LMKMovieManiac) May 12, 2017

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It must be noted that Baahubali 2 has done a exceptional business in US and is the first Indian film to gross the Rs 100-crore mark. In Tamil Nadu, Baahubali 2 is inching close to Rs 100 crore, while the film collected more than Rs 250 crore in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. The film has done a fantastic business in Kerala and has collected Rs 50 crore so far.

Baahubali: The Beginning ended with Katappa revealing himself as the killer of Amarendra Baahubali. And The Conclusion takes the story forward from where its predecessor ended.

Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Anushka Shetty, Tamannaah, Sathyaraj and Ramya Krishnan star in pivotal roles in this instalment of Baahubali too.

ALSO READ: Kamal Haasan heaps praise on Rajamouli's Baahubali 2

ALSO READ: Baahubali 2 Tamil Review

ALSO READ: Baahubali 2 Hindi Review

WATCH: Everything you need to know about Baahubali

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India Today has accessed the suicide note of the contractor, which mentions the name of an I-T official who allegedly forced him to accept that he carried out benami transactions for the minister.

A suicide note that government contractor and close aide of Tamil Nadu Health Minister Vijaybaskar, KR Subramaniam wrote before ending his life reveals that a deputy director of an Income Tax department is responsible behind his extreme step. The I-T official allegedly wanted Subramaniam to accept that he carried out benami transactions for the minister.

In the suicide note, Subramaniam has also named a former AIADMK minister, an IAS official and a senior IPS officer.

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India Today has accessed the suicide note of the contractor, which mentions the name of an Income Tax official who allegedly forced him to accept that he carried out benami transactions for the minister.

In the letter, Subramaniam narrates how he started his life and reached great heights by becoming a contractor with sheer hard work. He was close to the health minister and was a contractor for hospitals. His house and other properties were also raided by the Income Tax (I-T) officials when they conducted raids at Vijayabaskar's house.

"I was treated badly. I was under mental pressure. They wanted me to accept that I am a benami of the minister. I always stand by the truth and I could not accept what was happening," read the suicide note.

Subramaniam, on Monday, went to his 10 acre farmhouse and told its supervisor that he wishes to sleep for a while. When the supervisor went to wake him up some time later, he was found unconscious. He was rushed to a hospital but the doctors couldn't save his life. The contractor ended his life by consuming rat poison.

ALSO READ | Tamil Nadu: Minister's aide found dead under mysterious circumstances

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The missile fired from the Tejas hit its target with pinpoint precision. The trial was conducted at the Interim Test Range, Chandipur in Odisha.

By Manjeet Negi: Tejas , India's indigenous Light Combat Aircraft, today successfully demonstrated an Air-to-Air Beyond Visual Range (BVR) missile firing capability by releasing Derby Air-to-Air BVR missile in RADAR guided mode.

The missile destroyed its manoeuvrable aerial target with pinpoint precision at the Interim Test Range, Chandipur in Odisha.

The objective of the test was to assess the Derby integration with aircraft systems on-board Tejas including the aircraft avionics, fire-control radar, launchers and Missile Weapon Delivery System and to verify its performance.

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A safe separation was followed by missile guidance towards RADAR acquired target.

The flawless launch was demonstrated with all on-board systems performing satisfactorily and the missile scored a direct hit on the target with complete destruction of it.

The test firing achieved all its planned objectives. The Derby firing is a major step towards clearing BVR capabilities on LCA aircraft for FOC, a statement issued by the Air Force said.

WATCH: Sky Guardians Of Tomorrow: India Today flies the LCA Tejas ALSO READ:

Onboard LCA: With Tejas, India looks to take off

Tejas makes its first appearance at Republic Day parade: Here's why Pakistan is worried

Here's how India's Tejas steals the 'thunder' from JF-17 jointly developed by Pakistan, China

--- ENDS ---
Uganda seeks Chinese cooperation in nuclear energy

12 May 2017

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A delegation from Uganda has visited China to familiarise itself with nuclear energy technology and to discuss cooperation. The African country plans to introduce nuclear into its future energy mix.

The Ugandan delegation at the construction site of a Hualong One unit at Fuqing

(Image: CNNC)

The delegation - led by Prisca Boonabantu, undersecretary in the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development - comprised representatives from the ministry, the Uganda Atomic Energy Council and from Uganda's embassy in Beijing. The visit took place on 2-5 May and was organised by China Zhonguan Engineering Corporation (CZEC), a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC). It followed a visit of Chinese officials to Kampala in March last year.

During the visit, the Ugandan delegation engaged with key Chinese nuclear energy agencies, including the national Nuclear Safety Administration and the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE). As well as visiting the China Experimental Fast Reactor, the group also visited the construction site of the demonstration Hualong One reactors at Fuqing in Fujian province.

Boonabantu noted that Uganda's Vision 2040 roadmap incorporates the development of nuclear energy as part of the country's future energy mix. "Plans have been made in Uganda to have clean and safe energy generation sources with nuclear being one of them," she said. The country, she added, welcomes partners to help construct, train and develop nuclear energy in line with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) standards.

CZEC president Yang Chaodong told the delegation China is ready to foster closer cooperate with Uganda in the area of nuclear development through partnerships and dialogue.

CNNC announced on 10 May that a memorandum of understanding on nuclear energy cooperation had been signed during the visit between China Central Plains Foreign Engineering Company, China Nuclear Manufacturing Group and Uganda's Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development.

The text of a draft MOU between the Ugandan ministry and CNNC was also agreed upon during the visit.

Last October, a framework MOU was signed between the Ugandan ministry and Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom for cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

Uganda's Atomic Energy Bill came into effect in 2008, to regulate the use of ionising radiation and provide a framework to develop nuclear power generation. In October of that year, Uganda signed up to the IAEA's Country Program Framework, which provides a frame of reference for planning medium-term technical cooperation between an IAEA member state and the Agency, and identifies priority areas where the transfer of nuclear technology and technical cooperation resources will be directed to support national development goals.

Researched and written

by World Nuclear News

Related topics
Coal has powered our lives for some time now. In the early history of cities, it played an important part in driving the Industrial Revolution.

More than 40% of global electricity is derived from coal, although some countries record higher numbers than others. Below are the world's largest coal producers.

The World's 5 Top Coal Producers

1. China

Roughly 70% of the energy consumed in China is obtained from coal, making it one of the most coal-reliant countries in the world. However, China is also the world's largest producer of renewable energy forms. Previously, the United States used to consistently rank as the world's top producer of energy. However, since the early 2000s, China has consistently outranked the United States. The reasons behind this are the fact that China has the highest population in the world, and a growing middle-class whose lifestyles are changing. However, China's one-child policy and efforts made towards reducing greenhouse emissions have both showed a step in the right direction for cutting down the harmful emissions produced by China.

2. India

India is the world's second-largest producer of coal, with 692.4 million tons produced yearly. Despite this large production, India is still required to import high volumes of coal due to the large demand for coal in the country. The main coal-producing states in the country include Odisha, Jkarkhand, and Chhattisgarh. One mine in Chhattisgarh, called the Korba Coalfield, is the largest open cast mine in Asia.

3. United States

The United States is the world's third highest producer of coal. However, the industry in the country is declining, with production down around 30% in the last decade. Coal is mined in about 25 states, including Kentucky, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Prior to the 1950s, coal was the most common source of energy in the country.

4. Australia

Australia is the world's fourth-largest coal producer. Of the coal produced in the country, just over half of it is exported. Major mines are found throughout the country, including in New South Wales and Queensland. Each Australian state has their own set of laws governing the production of coal.

5. Indonesia

Indonesia is the world's fifth-largest coal producer. Ever since coal mines first opened in the early 1990s, coal production has increased every year. Today it makes up a significant amount of the Indonesian economy. Most of Indonesia's coal-mining happens in Borneo and South Sumatra.

Positive and Negative Effects

Coal power plants are necessary for electricity generation in an era where many activities are driven by power. Coal power plants, however, contribute massively to environmental pollution while mining of the resource degrades the environment. During coal processing, a lot of water is used, which becomes polluted by heavy metals and toxic substance such as arsenic. The burning of coal is further associated with the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
Almost all countries of the world have categorized secondary school education as a prerequisite basic education. This has led to the allocation of huge budgets to meet the financial needs of this education. In some countries, a huge amount of the expenditure has been allocated to paying teachers and staff. The analysis below outlines the need for such budget allocation and the effects it has on the education system within a country.

Why do these countries spend more?

Monaco

There are a lot of factors that lead to a high expenditure on staff salaries. For instance, Monaco spends 95.75% of the schools budget on paying teachers and other staff. This is because of the level of qualification of their staff. Monacos teachers are highly qualified and such high qualification comes with a cost. The teachers and other staff in secondary schools in Monaco are compensated with large amounts in order to retain talented staff. Another factor is the caliber of Monaco in a tourist attraction. The city has become wealthy from its dependence on tourism, meaning it can allow for the allocation of large funds.

Colombia and Barbados

In Colombia, teachers are regarded as public workers. As such, they are entitled to high wages. The high spending on Barbados secondary school staff does not come as a surprise considering the level of credibility of the education system in the country. The literacy level in the country is around 100% - only beaten by the British education system. The government of Barbados also pays for the cost of tuition fees for primary, secondary, and tertiary education. All these investments in the education system require a high level of qualified personnel. To meet the demand, the government of Barbados has to spend more on the acquisition of this human resource and retaining them.

Dijibouti, Togo, and Malawi

In many African countries, the case is different than above. Many African countries find the cost of paying qualified staff unbearable due to the drain of socio-political problems that are happening within the countries. For instance, both Togo and Malawi experience a shortage of teachers. The government has been forced to use many of their resources in order to discourage the few available from quitting their jobs. Some countries such as Djibouti, Togo, and Malawi have unreliable electricity in many of their educational buildings.

Ecuador

In Ecuador, a different case is currently present. The small South American country has a high demand of skilled English teachers and considering its prospering economy, the school staffs are well paid.

Conclusion

It is evident therefore that the high demand for experienced teachers, lack of electricity, demand for English teachers, poor infrastructure, a high-cost of living, and considering secondary school teachers as public workers all contribute to the high spending on secondary school staff. A full table is available below.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus affecting the human immune system. According to the statistics presented by the non-governmental organization AVERT in 2013, the world experienced 380,000 new HIV infections among young women of ages between 15-24 years. This represented 60% of new infections globally. 80% of the total number of women infected globally were from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Which countries of the world have the highest prevalence?

The Eastern and Southern African countries of Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced the highest prevalence of HIV infection among young women. These regions continue to be the epicenter of the epidemic. According to the statistics presented by UNICEF in 2008, the number of young women compared to males that contracted HIV and Aids was 1.9 million to 780,0000. Females have been affected over two times more than their male counterparts.

In Swaziland, the number of adolescent girls infected with HIV is four times that of males at (6.2 percent versus 1.4 percent). Lesotho has a similar rate (6.1 percent compared with 1.6 percent). Some recent statistics has also shown that South Africa also poses a high ratio of HIV infection of young females to their male peers at a ratio of eight adolescent women to one male.

Why Young Women?

Lack of education access

Evidence has shown that the level of education has had a relation to the spread of HIV among young women. When young women attend school, they are able to get the education about HIV and how the disease is transmitted, treated and managed. In many Sub-Saharan countries, only 25% of women have attained sex education.

Intimate partner violence (IPV) and gender inequality

IPV and gender inequality has prevented young women from avoiding HIV infection. A study carried out in South Africa reveiled that adolescent women who were exposed to IPV were 50% more likely to be infected with HIV compared to those who did not experience violence.

Lack of access to proper health services

Many young women from some Sub-Saharan countries can not access health facilities freely. This makes taking care of their own sexual health difficult. In some countries, the providers healthcare services lack the proper training to provide youth-friendly services.

Prevention programs for young women

WHO, together with other humanitarian programs, have partnered to bring down the number of young women infected with HIV. Such programs include Cash transfers that have helped reduce poverty and hence reduce the need for young women to participate in commercial sex business among low and middle-income earners, addressing violence among young women to help reduce HIV infection, offering counseling services through school-based interventions and formulating laws that prevent gender violence.

HIV treatment for young women

WHO provided guidelines in 2013 that enabled all pregnant women living with HIV to be administered an antiretroviral treatment (ART).

Despite the 27% who lack access to ARTs, a significant step has been made in preventing mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT).

Conclusion

There is an ever-increasing need in Sub-Saharan countries to implement effective HIV prevention measures among young women who have little to no control over gender violence, abusive relationship, condom use,and general sex education. The humanitarian organizations should join forces with governments in fighting this common enemy.
Many countries in the world have shown great improvement in the rates of HIV among young women. Most of these countries have reported low rates of HIV among young women as compared to their male counterparts.

Why is the prevalence of HIV low among young women in these countries?

The majority of the countries that reported low rates of HIV among young women are from Asia and include Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Malaysia. Compared to their male counterparts and even other age groups, young women have experienced low rates of HIV infections. In these countries, the prevalence is as low as 0.1%. A lot of factors have been attributed to the low spread of HIV among this group of individuals. These are some of the contributing factors.

Religion and Cultural Behavior

Religion and culture have played a role in the low rates of HIV infection in some countries. For example, in Muslim countries like Kazakhstan and Afghanistan, virginity among young women is placed in high regards. Among all of the sins someone in these countries can commit, loosing virginity is among the worst. It is considered a sin for any adult woman to engage in premarital sex. Punishment for the loss of virginity before marriage is stoning. The fear that has been instilled in women due to the religious and cultural beliefs has lead to a low rate of HIV among young women.

Levels of Drug Use

The spread of HIV among drug addicts is high compared to those who do not take drugs. This is due to the impairment of judgement that occurs when an individual takes drugs, or the transmission through contaminated drug needles. In Kazakhstan, a high number of infections were reported among drug users who shared injection needles. Of this group of people that use drugs, the majority are young men compared to their female counterparts. Low drug use among women in Asian countries has contributed to the low HIV rates.

Conclusion

It is evident from the above discussion that adolescent men are at a higher risk of HIV infection than their female counterparts. Sexual behavior, culture, and the use of drugs have played a significant role in the difference in the spread of HIV. The governments of these countries are now turning their attention to bringing the HIV rates down among men.
Yugoslavia was a federal republic composed of several countries in which Southern Slavic languages were the most prevalent. There were six republics in the federation: Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Slovenia.

At first, Yugoslavia was a constitutional monarchy, but it then became a communist state under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito. After Tito died, the unity of the federation began to falter. In the early 1990s, the federations constituent states began breaking away, which triggered a long period of armed conflict. By 1992, the country known as Yugoslavia was reduced to only two republics, and it dissolved for good in 2003.

The Formation Of Yugoslavia

Map of the former republic of Yugoslavia.

The idea of a Southern Slavic federation began to take shape in the early 20th century, as the two empires that had dominated the region of the Southern Slavs, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, were on the decline. The last hurrah of these two empires was World War I, after which they both ceased to exist.

During the war, various Balkan exiles and Slavic members of the Austro-Hungarian government formed a committee dedicated to the establishment of a Southern Slavic federation. After WWI ended, the Council of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was set up to govern the Slavic territories that were formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This council pushed for a union with the already independent Southern Slavic country of Serbia. The victorious Allies agreed to the formation of a Southern Slavic federation, and on December 1st, 1918, the establishment of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was proclaimed, under the kingship of Serbian Prince Aleksander, who became King Aleksander I. A decade of political infighting followed the establishment of the new kingdom. Eventually, King Aleksander I shut down the parliament and ruled by himself. In 1929, he renamed the country Yugoslavia, which literally means Land of the Southern Slavs.

Two years after World War II began, Yugoslavia concluded a pact with Nazi Germany that made it part of the Axis. But just a day after this pact was signed, a palace coup took place in which the pro-Axis ruler, Prince Paul, was deposed. A day after the coup, Adolf Hitler authorized the invasion of Yugoslavia. What followed was a period of civil war that involved three main factions: The pro-fascist and pro-Axis Utasha, the royalist Chetniks, and the communist Partisans. When WWII ended, the Partisans, led by Tito, took control of Yugoslavia and proclaimed the establishment of a new Yugoslavia, called the Federal Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia. The new communist federation was comprised of 6 republics: Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Slovenia. The Serb provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina were also given autonomy as part of the federation.

Titos Yugoslavia

Josip Broz Tito, leader of communist Yugoslavia.

As the ruler of Yugoslavia, Josip Tito steered the country on a course that was independent of the Soviet Union and the other communist states of the Cold War-era Eastern Bloc. In fact, at times, his relations with the USSR were quite frosty. At the same time, Tito maintained some ties to the West, whose aid helped his regime survive. Titos regime was initially highly centralized, but under pressure from leaders of Yugoslavias constituent states, Tito was forced to give up powers. Eventually, he devolved powers to the point that the country was held together only by him and his cult of personality.

Economy Of Titos Yugoslavia

The economy of Yugoslavia under Tito functioned differently than those of other communist states. Tito put his own stamp on communism by initiating a policy known as self-management. Under this economic model, the workers themselves controlled the running of industries through workers councils. It was under this model that Yugoslavia managed its reconstruction after WWII. The result was rapid economic growth and a significant rise in the standard of living. By no means, however, was Titos model of self-management a recipe for a utopian society. Although workers controlled industries in Yugoslavia in theory, the reality was that full participatory democracy in the workplace was not able to take shape because of the monopoly of the Yugoslav Communist Party.

The Disintegration Of Yugoslavia

During his rule, Tito was able to keep nationalist sentiment under control, often using force to do so. He continuously promoted the ideology of Pan-Slavism, which the Yugoslav federation was supposed to exemplify. When Tito died in 1980, however, the nationalism that he tried so hard to suppress began rising to the surface.

In 1989, a Serb nationalist named Slobodan Milosevic became the president of Serbia. He abolished Kosovos autonomy, provoking fears in Croatia and Slovenia that their autonomy would be next on the chopping block. In response to Milosevics pro-Serb nationalist policies, Slovenia amended its constitution to allow secession from the Yugoslav federation. In the fall of 1989, Milosevic urged the Serbs to settle Kosovo en masse, in order to dilute the provinces Albanian majority.

Bullet holes from the Croatian War of Independence in Pakrac, Croatia. Image credit: Zvonimir Atletic/Shutterstock

In 1991, both Croatia and Slovenia voted to declare independence, unless a new deal could be reached on the reorganization of the federation that was amicable to all the republics. But talks to salvage the federation failed. Croatia and Slovenia declared independence, triggering intervention by the federal Yugoslav army. Hostilities ended quickly in Slovenia, and an agreement was reached that allowed the country to control its own borders, though fighting in Croatia persisted.

The Final Yugoslav Republic

In 1992, Serbia and Montenegro proclaimed the establishment of a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, composed only of their two countries. Shortly thereafter, Yugoslavia was expelled from the United Nations and suspended from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Meanwhile, in the former Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a three-sided civil war was taking place between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. The war would go on to claim the lives of some 100,000 people over the period between 1992 and 1995. Atrocities committed during the war drew the involvement of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which eventually launched airstrikes in 1994 against Bosnian Serbs to protect the countrys Muslim population. These airstrikes helped convince the Bosnian Serbs to come to the negotiating table. In 1995, the Dayton Peace Accord was agreed to by the warring sides. This agreement provided for a new political arrangement in Bosnia that saw the country split into two self-governing entities: A Bosnian Serb enclave known as Srpska and a Muslim-Croat federation. To enforce the accord, NATO troops were sent to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Kosovo War

The last conflict in the ongoing disintegration of Yugoslavia was the Kosovo War in 1999. Following the abolishment of this Serbian provinces autonomy in 1989, additional measures imposed on Kosovo forced tens of thousands of members of the provinces Albanian majority out of work and restricted the activity of their cultural organizations. Kosovo Albanians protested and rioted in response. In 1996, a militia called the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) emerged, and began launching sporadic attacks against Serb authorities in the province. The Serbian government responded with further repressive measures on the Kosovo Albanians.

Initially, the KLA was viewed in the west with suspicion. Indeed, in 1998, a US diplomat referred to the KLA as a terrorist group. Some believe that this comment encouraged Milosevic to continue his repressive measures in Kosovo. Hostilities between the Kosovo Albanians and Serbian security forces continued throughout 1998 and into 1999, despite growing diplomatic pressure from the West on Milosevic to stop Serbias campaign of repression, and attempts to negotiate a solution to the crisis.

Damage from the Kosovo War in Pec, Kosovo in 1999. Image credit: Northfoto/Shutterstock

Finally, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a campaign of airstrikes against the Serbs, hitting targets both in Kosovo and Serbia proper. The bombing campaign eventually persuaded the Serbs to withdraw their forces from Kosovo. Following the successful NATO intervention and the deployment of peacekeepers in Kosovo, the KLA agreed to disarm. Kosovo declared independence in 2008 and was subsequently recognized by the US and other countries, but to this day, Serbia has not relinquished its claim to the enclave and refuses to recognize its independence.

In the year 2000, an opposition candidate won the Serbian presidential elections, but Milosevic refused to hand over power, triggering a popular uprising that eventually persuaded the long-serving ruler to step down. The following year, he was arrested by Yugoslav authorities and turned over to the UN International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague to stand trial for war crimes. In 2003, a new federation called Serbia and Montenegro was proclaimed in an attempt to placate Montenegrins who desired independence. But this new arrangement did not last. Three years later, the people of Montenegro voted in favor of independence. Shortly thereafter, the president of the federation of Serbia and Montenegro announced the dissolution of his office. The union of Serbia and Montenegro was dissolved, thus putting an end to the last vestige of what was once Yugoslavia.

Slobodan Milosevic on trial at the UN International Criminal Tribunal at the Hague, Netherlands.

The Former Yugoslavia Today

All the former republics of Yugoslavia are now independent countries. Kosovo also has de facto independence, and is recognized by the US but is not recognized by the entire international community, nor has it been admitted to the UN. Following Yugoslavias dissolution, its former constituent republics began the process of integration with the rest of Europe.

Slovenia was the first former Yugoslav republic to become a member of the European Union in 2004. Croatia joined in 2013. Serbia, Montenegro, and Macedonia, now called North Macedonia, are on track to join the EU as well, by integrating EU legislation into their national laws. Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina are listed by the EU as potential candidates, but they do not yet fulfill the blocs qualifications for membership. Some former Yugoslav states have also joined NATO. These include Slovenia in 2004, Croatia in 2009, and North Macedonia in 2020.
Noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani is set to argue in the Supreme Court on the triple talaq, appearing for RSS-affiliated Forum for Awareness of National Security, which has filed a petition against the practice. He will be appearing pro bono.

By Siddhartha Rai: While over half a hundred petitions have been filed with the Supreme Court against the regressive practice of Triple Talaq prevalent in the Muslim society in India, the latest has a high-profile spin that promises to make the hearing of the cases in the apex court even more interesting.

RSS-affiliated Forum for Awareness of National Security (FANS) has filed the 69th petition in the apex court and none other than Ram Jethmalani would be appearing on behalf of the organisation. Jethmalanai, said Fans general secretary Lubna Asif, has accepted to fight the case pro bono or without any fees on grounds of the social relevance of the case.

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Fans is the same organisation that shot to fame after the Jamia Millia Islamia University denied permission to RSS and BJP leaders such as Shazia Ilmi from speaking at a seminar that the rightwing outfit had organised against triple talaq on the varsity campus. Fans also counts RSS pracharak Indresh Kumar as its chief patron.

Meanwhile, Fans has other plans too to put pressure on the BJP-led Union government and the legal establishment of the country to come up with a solution to the problem, obviously to abolish it.

After the Jamia incident, Fans had changed tack and has since then, been organising protest meets on legal campuses.

Asif, who runs a major Urdu news agency apart from being associated with Fans, argued that triple talaq was way more nuanced a problem than appeared ostensibly.

"While the practice does not find mention in the holy book, what intent is behind the demand of the Maulanas in India to perpetuate the practice?" Asif asked, adding, "The practice is regressive, but all the more suffocating and debilitating for the Muslim women who are living in geographically and economically backward areas such as villages of India," Asif said.

"We are asking for only gender parity,"Asif said. "Pakistan and Bangladesh that were carved out of India have abolished it, but it prevails in India. While hundreds are called to a wedding, how can a Skype call end the marriage," she said.

ALSO READ | Before triple talaq case, a look at how India's judiciary dealt with personal laws vs the fundamental rights

ALSO WATCH | Triple Talaq row: Battle in court for biggest social reform. Gender rights overshadowed by politics?

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Appeal to Trace Rogue Trader Suspects in Chirk

This article is old - Published: Saturday, May 13th, 2017

Police are appealing for information on two suspected rogue traders seen delivering leaflets for roofing works in the Chirk area earlier this week.

The appeal comes off the back of a nationwide crackdown on rogue traders in which police forces joined up with council trading standards teams.

As part of a local operation to coincide with the crackdown a suspicious vehicle in Chirk was seized by police.

Sgt Sue Richards of Eastern Community Safety Department said; We delivered awareness packs to identified areas of previous door step crime and visited former victims. This gave us the opportunity to reassure them and ensure they had adequate security measures in place.

As part of the operation a white Peugeot van was spotted in Crogen, Chirk on Wednesday May 10 at 11.55am with two males on board delivering leaflets for roofing work.

Both made off from police, leaving the vehicle behind which we seized as it was uninsured.

We suspect these males were rogue traders targeting vulnerable residents.

Both were wearing dark blue fleece jackets and spoke with Irish accents. If you have any information about this incident call 101 quoting reference V066809.

I would urge the public to continue reporting suspicious cold callers to Trading Standards and the police and to be vigilant on behalf of vulnerable and elderly family members and neighbours.

Information on genuine traders can be obtained from your local Trading Standards department under the Buy with confidence scheme.
Pub Sign Removed As Word Racist Scrawled On It  Hours After Tweets Claim Slave Issue

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 12th, 2017

A town centre pub sign was defaced with the word racist hours after it was highlighted on Twitter as being potentially problematic.

Update: We have been sent the below picture of the word rasist scrawled on the sign, appearing to be in marker pen rather than spray paint.



Original article below:

Readers will have seen us retweet several tweets last night regarding the top spoons Wetherspoons Elihu Yale pub sign, after an initial public complaint was made from a visitor to Wrexham  although there is no suggestion that he or she was involved in the subsequent incident.

In a now deleted tweet @TraxxCardiff put a picture of the pub sign up (below) last night commenting: This damn pub in Wrexham has a sign with a guy and a slave with a yoke of iron around his neck !!!! If I had a ladder Id rip it down, PRICKS, later adding Wrexham is disgusting, tagging in Wrexham Council asking for the sign to be taken down and posting a screengrab of Elihu Yales wikipedia page noting he was a slave trader.

The sign itself was based off the James Worsdale painting Elihu Yale with his Servant, the original being in the archives of Ivy League Yale University, itself named after Elihu Yale.

A spokesperson for Wetherspoons today told us that the sign had been removed by pub staff after the word racist was spray painted on it overnight by an unknown person or persons. It does not appear the incident was reported to North Wales Police.

Wetherspoons told us: The name has been used for the pub since it has been opened, around 15 or 16 years ago and has been used in good faith as it is connected to the local history of Wrexham.

Yale was born in Boston and had family connections with Llandegla, himself returning to the area in 1699 living in the Wrexham area. Yale died in 1721 in London and is buried in St Giles Church in Wrexham town centre.

The following is the painting used as the basis for the sign:

Describing the spray painting as mindless vandalism they added: If someone had an issue we would have preferred them to speak direct to us as we are an open and transparent company.

We retweeted @TraxxCardiffs picture and comment last night, that prompted a range of replies including the following:

@traxxcardiff As much as the Yale story is a part of history and has its place being told, its 2017: this imagery is unacceptable.  Chris Wood (@crwexe) May 11, 2017

@traxxcardiff Just looks like hes robbing out of his pocket to me, though Im not sure thats any better.  Jack Freeburn (@JackFreeburn) May 11, 2017

@traxxcardiff Have a go at Wetherspoons you clown not Wrexham!!!!!!!!  Barry Daniels (@BarryDaniels13) May 11, 2017

Elihu Yales history is well documented, although the Councils version does omit documenting the slave trade element and his dodgy deals outlined elsewhere, similar to the Wetherspoons summary.

Yale University have previously published this essay entitled Elihu Yale was a Slave Trader, which references the image used on the pub sign describing it as Yale with yet another collared slave this time euphemized as a servant and is well worth the time to read.

Wetherspoons told us they are not looking at changing the pub name.
The Supreme Court on Thursday began hearing a bunch of petitions challenging the validity of triple talaq. The main petition is 35-year-old Shayara Bano who endured a bad marriage and an abusive husband.

By Harish V Nair: The day-to-day hearing of a batch of petitions challenging the legal validity of instant triple talaq began in the Supreme Court with main petitioner Shayara Bano questioning India persisting with the controversial practice when almost all Muslim countries have banned it.

"If practices like triple talaq were fundamental to Islam, then many Islamic countries would not have banned it. If Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan can do away with it, then why not our country?" senior advocate A S Chadha, who appeared for Bano assisted by advocate Balaji Srinivasan, argued before a bench comprising of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, U U Lalit and Abdul Nazeer.

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After the submission was made, the SC bench said it would like to take a look at the laws passed by those countries to ban triple talaq mode of divorce.

MOST MUSLIM NATIONS HAVE RESTRICTED TRIPLE TALAQ

"20 out of 22 Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iraq, have banned or restricted such practice, while it continues to vex the Indian society in general and Indian Muslim women in particular. The practice also wreaks havoc to the lives of many divorced women and their children, especially those belonging to the weaker economic sections of the society," Chadha argued.

Thirty-five-year-old Shayara Bano from Uttarakhand, a post graduate, is spearheading the battle against triple talaq. The mother of two endured a bad marriage, an abusive husband, and physical and mental agony for over 10 years. Before giving her triple talaq, she was made to undergo as many as six abortions by her husband who forcibly administered her pills which ruined her health.

The Centre, too has in its affidavit questioned India continuing with the practice banned by Islamic countries. "The fact that Muslim countries where Islam is the state religion have undergone extensive reform goes to establish that the practices in question cannot be regarded as integral to the practice of Islam or essential religious practices," it said.

SC TO DETERMINE IF PRACTICE IS FUNDAMENTAL TO ISLAM

The bench meanwhile said it would first determine whether the practice is fundamental to Islam. The court said the issue of polygamy among the Muslims may not be deliberated upon as it is not connected with the triple talaq issue.

The apex court also said if it came to the conclusion that triple talaq is fundamental to religion, then it will not go into the question of its constitutional validity.

Another senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for one of the petitioners, said in case of divorces being granted through extra-judicial mechanism, there should be a judicial oversight to deal with the consequences.

Former Union minister and senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who is assisting the court in his personal capacity, termed triple talaq as a non-issue saying it is not considered complete without conciliation efforts between the husband and the wife. He said there was no adjudication to determine the validity of the grounds of talaq.

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ALSO READ | Before triple talaq case, a look at how India's judiciary dealt with personal laws vs the fundamental rights

ALSO WATCH | Ahead of Supreme Court hearing of triple talaq petitions, Muslim women activists recite Hanuman Chalisa

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On the second day of the hearing on triple talaq issue, the Supreme Court said that the oral divorce prevalent among Muslims was the "worst and undesirable form" of the dissolution of a marriage.

By Anusha Soni: On the second day of its hearing on the contentious issue of triple talaq, the Supreme Court today said the instant, oral divorce prevalent among Muslims is the "worst and undesirable form" of the dissolution of a marriage, even though there were schools of thought within Indian Islam which termed it as "legal".

There are "school of thoughts (which) say that triple talaq is legal, but it is the worst and not desirable form for dissolution of marriages among Muslims," a five-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar, said as the Supreme Court continued its hearing for the second straight day on the matter.

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The Supreme Court's observation is a part of its historic hearing on a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of triple talaq and 'nikah halala' among Muslims that began on Thursday with a simple question: is the practice of triple talaq fundamental to Islam?

HERE IS ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW In the hearing today, former Union Minister and senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who is assisting the court in the matter, said the Supreme Court is not interfering with Islam by discussing the matter. "Islam has been affected by the synthetic culture of India. The court doesn't have to transform Islam into a human face. It is not interfering in the religion, it is rather helping the religion," he said. Khurshid made the remarks in response to Chief Justice Khehar's queries. "Is triple talaq a customary practice or something which is fundamental to religion? The question is: is it customary or a Shariah (Islamic) law? Can something which is sinful be a part of Shariah? There are some people who consider death penalty as sinful but it's legal?", he asked. At this, Justice Nariman - one of the five judges hearing the matter - told Khurshid, "Please be careful about the difference between theory and practice. On the one hand, you say we can't reform religion, and then you ask us to reform so that you are not punished by God." Chief Justice Khehar also asked Khurshid if triple talaq exists outside India, to which Khurshid answered in the negative. A number of Muslim countries - including Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia - have abolished the practice of triple talaq. Appearing for one of the triple talaq victims, senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani called the practice unconstitutional. "We cannot enforce discrimination on women merely because of their gender. Any rule enforceable by court has to be non-discriminatory. Triple talaq is unconstitutional. Article 14 and Article 15 give protection from discrimination and right to equality. The method of triple talaq abhorrent must be done away with," he said. In its day-long hearing on Thursday, the apex court's constitution bench headed by Chief Justice JS Khehar also made it clear that the issue of polygamy among the Muslims may not be deliberated upon as it is not connected with the triple talaq issue. The government's counsel made it clear on Thursday that triple talaq as a form of divorce was against gender justice and asserted that it was not part of the religious tenets. Assailing the practise of triple talaq, senior counsel Indira Jaising said that if the free informed consent of the woman was imperative for the union of two people in marriage, then how could the unilateral act of divorce survive. Telling the bench that triple talaq was an extra-judicial act and thus unconstitutional, Jaising told the court that can the status of a woman be changed unilaterally, which she described as "civil death". Jaising, who appeared for the intervenors Bebak Collective and Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, told the bench that all the personal laws should be subject to fundamental rights and "constitution should not stop where personal law starts and all the personal laws, be it of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other, should stand the scrutiny of the fundamental rights". Another former Union Minister and counsel for All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), Kapil Sibal, called triple talaq "a non-issue, as no prudent Muslim would wake up one fine morning and say talaq, talaq and talaq". Sibal said that either Parliament can enact a law or it should be left to the community itself to deal and the court should not interfere on the issue.

Also read | Triple talaq hearing: Ram Jethmalani to argue for RSS forum in Supreme Court

Also read | Why are Sonia Gandhi, Mamata, Mayawati silent on triple talaq, asks Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

Also read | Before triple talaq case, a look at how India's judiciary dealt with personal laws vs the fundamental rights

WATCH VIDEO

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Last month Sarah Chambers, a special education teacher at Maria Saucedo Scholastic Academy in Chicago, was suspended from her position for allegedly violating state and city school board policies. Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has confirmed it is moving to fire her, but more than one month after her suspension the specific allegations against her are still not public.

The administration of Democratic mayor Rahm Emanuel is aiming to make an example of Chambers, who has vocally opposed cuts to special education and the use of high-stakes testing, to intimidate and silence teachers, as well as students and parents, who oppose education cuts and privatization. As of this writing, more than 3,800 have signed a petition to reinstate the teacher and a rally was held to call for her defense. Leading officials from the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) were noticeably absent from the event, though Chambers is a member of the unions executive board.

Other high-profile teacher activists have been targeted for firing by CPS in recent years, including Principal Troy LaRaviere in 2016. In 2011, seven of the 30 teachers at Austin Polytechnical were dismissed and blacklisted for organizing opposition to the closure of their school.

Speaking to the local CBS affiliate, Chambers said she received an email in the first days of April accusing her of encouraging a student to opt out of the PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) standardized tests that are required of students from third through eighth grade and throughout high school. Since 2014, teachers nationwide, including other teachers at Saucedo in Chicago, have participated in standardized testing boycotts though only Chambers appears to have been targeted by CPS.

She said, I was in complete and utter shock. I mean, Im a distinguished teacher. Ive been rated distinguished by all six principals Ive had. Ive never been written up in my life. They wouldnt even tell me in person.

Theres really an attack against me, because Im an outspoken union activist, and especially an outspoken special education advocate. They cut special education by $80 million at least this year alone, and its really hurting our students. Ive spoken at the Board of Education, and brought parents and students to speak at the Board of Education, and frankly they want teachers to be silent. You know, they want them to follow their orders, and I cant be silent, because it hurts my students with disabilities.

Over the last decade, CPS has made cuts of hundreds of millions of dollars to special education. In 2015, a funding formula change was implemented to sharply reduce special education staffing levels. The district has also moved to limit the number of students identified as having special needs. This has reportedly involved dragging out the time needed to determine if students qualify to be put into a special education classroom or need assistance from a teachers aide, in order to reduce expenditures. The overall impact of the cuts was worsened by the overcrowding caused in Emanuels mass closure of 50 elementary schools in 2013.

Chambers, who has taught in CPS for eight years, is a member of the executive board of the Chicago Teachers Union and co-chair of the leading CORE (Caucus of Rank and File Educators) faction of the CTU, which took control of the union in 2010. Led by Karen Lewis and International Socialist Organization member Jesse Sharkey, CORE ran on a platform of rank-and-file democracy, opposition to privatization and cuts, including the expansion of charter schools and imposition of punitive, high-stakes testing of students. These pledges were quickly revealed to be a cover for the CTUs increasingly open collaboration with the widely hated Emanuel administration.

When opposition to school cuts and closures erupted among teachers in 2012 and 26,000 teachers walked out, the CORE leadershipdetermined to prevent any political confrontation with Obama administration and its anti-public education agendashut down the nine-day strike on terms set by Emanuel. This paved the way for the mass school closures in 2013 that have degraded working and learning conditions in the schools. In return for its services, CTU and its parent union the American Federation of Teachers, was awarded the opportunity to begin collecting dues from the growing pool of low-paid charter schoolteachers.

Since 2012, the CTU has done everything it can to prevent any significant mobilization of teachers against the attack on public education being carried out by the Democratic Party in Chicago, with the support of both big business parties at the national level.

The witch-hunt against Sarah Chambers must be opposed and she should be reinstated immediately. Her planned termination is aimed at intimidating and silencing all teachers, students and parents who want to fight for public education.

No faith can be placed in the CTU, which is totally opposed to a struggle by teachers and broader sections of the working class to oppose Emanuel and the continued victimization of teachers. The CTU would be more than willing to sacrifice Chambers in their horsetrading with Emanuel and school authorities.

The targeting of teachers for opposing education inequality is a national phenomenon. Brooklyn, New York high school principal Jill Bloomberg and two teachers at her Park Slope Collegiate (PSC) school are under investigation for alleged communist activity. Bloomberg has filed a complaint with a federal court in New York stating the citys investigation is political retribution for her advocacy against unequal school funding. The New York Times reported that staff members believe that the red-baiting campaign began after the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) representative at PSC made accusations against Bloomberg and the two teachers.

The World Socialist Web Site strongly opposes the victimization of Chambers, Bloomberg and every teacher blackguarded by school administrators and union bureaucrats for defending the rights of their students. But it is teachers themselves, in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans and their lackeys in the unions, who must organize for their own defense. They can fight and win the support of students, parents and workers to reject the lying consensus that there is no money and mobilize the entire working class to defend the social right to high-quality and well-funded public education for all.
The Trump White House plunged deeper into political crisis Thursday, as President Trump and top aides gave conflicting accounts of how and why Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, and FBI and Justice Department officials flatly contradicted the White House version of events.

As the Trump administration scrambled to defend the decision to fire Comey, Democrats have seized on the firing to intensify their campaign against Trump, focused not on his right-wing social and economic policies, but on criticism for being insufficiently aggressive against Russia.

The focal point of the day was Trumps interview with Lester Holt of NBC News, conducted at the White House and excerpted in news broadcasts all afternoon and evening. Trump vilified Comey, calling him a showboat and a grandstander, strange language coming from the former host of Celebrity Apprentice.

Most remarkable was Trumps description of what he claimed were three separate conversations with Comey in which the FBI director reassured Trump that he personally was not a target of the FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Russian intelligence agencies.

Trump claimed the first such conversation took place over dinner at the White House, which he said Comey requested to press his case to be retained as FBI director in the new administration. (The FBI director serves a fixed ten-year term, but can be removed at will by the president.)

During this meeting, Trump says he asked whether he was personally a target of the FBI investigation into alleged Russian intervention into the 2016 US elections, and Comey assured him he was not. FBI officials, speaking with the press anonymously, have denied this account, pointing out that to pass such information on to someone involved in an investigation would violate longstanding protocols.

The exchange as described by Trump is extraordinary: the president as employer was interviewing Comey as a potential employee, asking to be assured that Comey as policeman was not targeting him for investigation. The implied quid pro quo is obvious: you dont target me, and I agree to keep you on as FBI director.

The allegations of Russian intervention into the 2016 US elections are both completely unsubstantiated and politically motivated. But Trumps efforts to influence or suppress the FBI investigation could become a basis for impeachment charges.

In his interview with NBC, Trump rolled out a new account of how and when he decided to fire Comey, the third or fourth version of the events leading up to Tuesdays surprise announcement that the FBI director had been removed.

Contradicting the accounts given by his own spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump said he had already decided to fire Comey when he met Monday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and asked for their recommendation. Regardless of how they responded, I was going to fire Comey, he insisted.

Huckabee Sanders has already given conflicting accounts of the events leading up to Comeys firing, after Rosenstein reportedly threatened to resign if the White House did not withdraw its first version, which placed the entire responsibility for firing Comey on Rosenstein and suggested that Trump had merely acted on the recommendations of Justice Department officials.

On Thursday morning, the acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, appeared before a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee alongside other top US intelligence officials, for a long-scheduled review of supposed threats to US national security. He was asked about the claims by White House aides that Comey had lost the confidence of rank-and-file FBI agents, and he flatly denied it. He praised Comey effusively and pledged the FBI would continue its investigation into alleged Russian intervention in the US elections.

The Senate hearing became an occasion for Democratic and Republican Senators to denounce Russia. Prompted by Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the committee, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned of Russian interference in the US and throughout Europe. The Russians have upped their game using social media and other opportunities, which he called a great threat to our democratic process.

On Wednesday, Rosenstein and Sessions were scheduled to interview four possible choices to head the FBI as interim directorin addition to McCabe. All four are career FBI officials, although one is currently serving as head of counterintelligence for the Director of National Intelligence. An interim director does not require Senate confirmation, but would be limited to six months service, pending the selection and confirmation of a permanent replacement for Comey.

Hearings on the nomination of a new FBI director would undoubtedly become the occasion for further demands from Senate Democrats for the naming of an independent counsel to oversee the investigation into the charges of Russian interference in the US elections. Warner, who had previously opposed such a move, declared that the Senate should refuse to confirm a new FBI director until Trump agreed to the appointment of an independent counsel.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network for financial information on Trump and some of his supporters relating to the Russian investigation. The request was co-signed by Warner and the committees Republican chairman, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina. And the two have invited Comey to appear at a secret session of the committee next Tuesday, in what would be his first occasion to address his firing before an official body, albeit behind closed doors.

In another breach in the wall of all-out support for Trump by the congressional Republican leadership, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acceded Thursday to the demand by Democrats that Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein be invited to brief all 100 senators on the Comey firing at a closed-door session next week. Rosenstein has not yet responded to the invitation.

Another top Republican, House Government Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, called for the Justice Departments inspector general to examine the circumstances surrounding Trumps decision to fire Comey, sending a letter to Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who is already investigating Comeys handling of the investigation of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while secretary of state.
On Wednesday, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was soundly booed by students while attempting to give the commencement address at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida, a historically black university.

In the days leading up to the event, Bethune-Cookman students sharply criticized the university administrations decision to provide DeVos a platform at the commencement ceremony.

DeVos was confirmed in the US Senate February 7 by a 51-50 vote, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote. The education secretary is widely seen as a particularly philistine and crude representative of Trumps cabinet of billionaires and multi-millionaires.

DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, the former CEO of Amway. The DeVos family is reportedly worth $5.4 billion, making them the 88th richest family in the US.

Betsy DeVos (whose brother is former US Navy SEAL and founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince) is notorious for her indefatigable opposition to public education. The wealthy, right-wing school choice advocate has bragged of her familys efforts to buy favors from politicians, writing in 1997: My family is the largest single contributor of soft money to the national Republican Party. I have decided  to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect things in return.

Betsy Devos booed by graduating students at Bethune-Cookman University

At Bethune-Cookman May 10, DeVos was jeered upon being introduced at the ceremony. Nearly half the audience of 380 students turned their back on the speaker as she made her remarks, which consisted largely of banal calls for students to dedicate themselves to the common good and other standard fare.

As the boos and heckling became louder and louder, school president Edison O. Jackson stepped in and warned students to stop their protesting, or else Your degrees will be mailed to you, i.e., the ceremony would be halted and the students dispersed. However, the booing continued as DeVos stated she planned to visit the gravesite of the schools founder, civil rights activist and daughter of parents who had been slaves, Mary McLeod Bethune.

She made racist comments about HBCUs [Historically Black Colleges and Universities], she doesnt know anything about us, and she has the nerve to come down here and speak to us  And then she has the nerve to speak about Mary McLeod Bethunes legacy. What does she know about that? commented graduating student Donjele Simpson to the Washington Post in regard to DeVoss appearance at his school. A number of students protesting DeVoss speech cited the US Education Departments recent decisions to rescind a number of Obama administration consumer protections for student loan borrowers.

DeVos drew widespread criticism in February when she referred to historically black colleges and universities, such as Bethune-Cookman, as pioneers of school choice. Such institutions were created historically out of harsh necessity, primarily in the former slave states, in response to the segregation of universities and colleges and the exclusion of black students. Whether the comment was intended as a provocation or simply displayed gross ignorance, many saw DeVoss comment as an apology for Jim Crow segregation.

Last week, President Donald Trump indicated he believed federal funding for historically black colleges to be unconstitutional. Trump was widely rebuked for this comment, and declared Sunday his unwavering support for such institutions, which, in fact, are increasingly integrated.

The protest at BCU occurred in the general context of growing hostility to the Trump administration, including from among those who voted for him. A new Quinnipiac University poll found Trumps approval ratings have fallen to 36 percent, with 58 percent of those polled saying Trumps first months in office are mainly a failure.

DeVos tried to save face after her appearance at Bethune-Cookman, releasing a statement Wednesday night which declared that [o]ne of the hallmarks of higher education, and of democracy, is the ability to converse with and learn from those with whom we disagree We can focus on differences that might divide us or we can choose to listen, be receptive and learn from other experiences and perspectives.

The statement echoed comments made by Bethune-Cookman president Jackson, who had defended DeVoss appearance days earlier in a letter, asserting, When we seek to shelter our students and campus communities from views that are diametrically opposed to their own, we actually leave our students far less capable of combating those ideas. Neither DeVos nor Jackson sought to reconcile their supposed support for the principle of the free exchange of ideas with their denunciations of the uncivil BCU students who turned out en masse to exercise their right to free speech to combat DeVoss unpopular ideas.

Among various actions as Education Secretary, DeVos has appointed far-right figures to her department, including Candice Jackson (author of Their Lives: The Women Targeted by the Clinton Machine) to the Department of Educations Office for Civil Rights. Jackson, who like DeVos has made a career of opposition to public spending for education services, is also an ideological opponent of social equality, who has denounced immigrants and other groups in recent social media comments.
The Democratic Party and its official and semi-official left-wing supporters are once again claiming that Donald Trump was elected president because white workers are racist.

The Nations Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel take up the baton this time in an article titled Economic Anxiety Didnt Make People Vote Trump, Racism Did.

The authors claim that recently released data from the American National Election Survey (ANES) definitively proves that whites were motivated by racism to support Trump.

McElwee and McDaniel pour scorn on the dubious nature of 2016 analyses that emphasize white economic anxiety. They even claim workers racism is the cause for their sense of economic insecurity: among a typical white person, anti-black and anti-immigrant attitudes feed negative perceptions of personal economic hardship.

Such stupidand yes, racistconclusions could only be reached through a toxic mixture of bankrupt politics and anti-scientific manipulation of the supposed data.

McElwee and McDaniel know what they want the data to say and they set about to prove it. They test workers racism through a pseudo-scientific racial resentment scale based on several provocative questions whose aim is to solicit a racist response, like: Agree or disagree: Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same.

As a preliminary matter, Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million and did not ride a wave of popularity from any section of the population to win the White House.

But even if one accepts the dubious racial resentment scale as a legitimate measure of social backwardness, the ANES data shows that white peoples average racial resentment score has declined for both Republicans and Democrats since 2012. In other words, Trump won in spite of declining racist sentiments among white people, not because of them. It is no major analytical breakthrough to point out that more backward elements of the population will support a candidate with a fascistic, racist, anti-immigrant program.

The ANES data, final vote tallies, and new census reports allow a clearer presentation of voter shifts by age, race, and income in 2016.

With vote counting now complete, the following totals emerge: Trump won 62.98 million votes to Clintons 65.85 million out of a total 230.59 million eligible voters. In 2012, Republican Mitt Romney won 60.93 million votes, while Obama won 65.92 million out of a total 222.47 million eligible voters. This means that as a percentage of total eligible voters, Trump and Clinton (26.32 percent and 28.56 percent, respectively) each won a lower proportion of the vote than Romney and Obama (27.39 percent and 29.63 percent).

What explains the decline in the percentage of eligible voters who supported both candidates? New US Census data shows that turnout declined among racial minorities. Among black voters, the decline was sharper than previously thought: turnout dropped from 66.6 percent in 2012 to 59.6 percent in 2016. The drop-off was sharp among black voters of all ages, including an 8.6 point decline for those 30-44 years old.

Turnout declined among Latinos except those aged 18-29. There, a slight 1.5 percent increase in voters from 2012 was half the 3 percent growth in total voting eligible population. On top of the decline in turnout among black voters, exit polls showed a significant shift away from the Democratic Party in 2016 among those who did vote:

In the key state of Michigan, black turnout fell by 2 points while Latino turnout dropped 34 points. In Wisconsin, black turnout dropped from 68 percent in 2012 to under half in 2016. In Florida, black turnout dropped 7 points. Had black turnout remained at 2012 levels, Clinton would have flipped Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, enough to secure 278 electoral votes and win the election.

White voters made up a slightly higher proportion of the vote in 2016, but contrary to the Nation s claims, exit polls show that whites of all ages shifted away from both parties and toward third party candidates:

In both 2012 and 2016, white men made up 34 percent of the electorate. The four-point decline in the Democratic vote went entirely to third party candidates in 2016 and not to an increase in the Trump vote. This holds true among white voters (both men and women) of all ages:

Regardless, McElwee and McDaniel of the Nation conclude their article with the sub-header: THE POLITICS OF THE FUTURE IS THE POLITICS OF RACE and urge the Democrats to shift their focus even more toward questions of race and identity.

They conclude with this tidbit: Another possible outcome [in future elections] would be for economic issues to simply further fall off the political map, with identity becoming the central battleground in American politics. This would involve Democrats reducing their commitments to economic equality, while Republicans embrace a sort of ethnonationalism... However, so far, nothing like this has materialized.

McElwee and McDaniel are describing a process that has already taken place.

They fail to note a key fact from the very ANES data they analyzed: for the first time since the survey collected data in 1948, the richest 5 percent of white voters by income supported the Democratic candidate while white voters in the poorest two-thirds of the population supported the Republican.

In almost every election between 1948 and 2008, the Republican won the vote of the top 5 percent of white voters by a margin of over 10 percent, while working class voters supported the Democratic candidate. The Democratic Party relied on support from broader sections of the working class of all races as an electoral base and was obliged to associate itself with social reform, even as it increasingly abandoned any genuine reform program. Through this dynamic, the Democrats were able to present their pro-capitalist, pro-imperialist party with a popular face.

Though the Democrats rightward shift was well underway in the 1970s and 1980s, a major shift took place under Barack Obama. In 2008, the top 5 percent voted by a roughly 25 percent margin for Republican John McCain, but by 2012, the margin had been cut to roughly 5 percent in favor of the Republicans. The ANES data shows that this significant element of modern American political life changed in 2016, when white voters in the 0-16 income percentiles as well as those in the 17-33 and 34-68 percentiles supported the Republican candidate. In 2016, Clinton won the top 5 percent of white voters by roughly 15 percent.

Under the Obama administration, the Democratic Party proved itself the preferred handler of the affairs of the financial oligarchy. Elected in the wake of the financial crisis and deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama helped oversee the bank bailout and the transfer of trillions of dollars of wealth from the working class to the rich.

The ruling class exploited the fact that Obama and the Democrats could cover their reactionary agenda with identity politics, using Obamas status as the countrys first African-American president to reduce social opposition and cultivate the upper-middle class as the Democratic electoral base. Clintons campaign represented the next phase in this process.

The Democrats orientation to the top 10 percent on the basis of identity politics has given the Republicans room to capitalize on opposition among the working class to plant closures and deteriorating social conditions. The Republicans attempt to direct workers general hostility to identity politics in a right-wing, nationalist direction, bringing fascists like Steven Bannon and Stephen Miller into the White House.

But the lack of increase in the Republican vote in 2016 shows that white workers oppose identity politics not primarily from a racist standpoint, but because they recognize that it has nothing to do with improving the living standards of working people of any race. This was proven in spades by the fact that Clintons strategy alienated not only white workers, but large numbers of voters of all races, who abandoned the Democratic Party in 2016, setting the stage for explosive social convulsions in the period to come.
After more information was made public Tuesday about the existence of a neo-Nazi terrorist cell in the German army (Bundeswehr), the parliamentary defence committee met Wednesday for an emergency session with Defence Minister Ursula Von der Leyen.

After the meeting of the committee, which conducts its business in secret, Von der Leyen announced a few cosmetic reforms aimed at downplaying the affair. She intended to ensure the political education of the soldiers, she stated, and make the chain of reporting incidents in the army quicker and more efficient. In addition, she intends to add an explicit distancing from the Wehrmacht, the German army under the Nazi regime, to the Bundeswehrs 1982 Tradition Directive.

The Social Democrats (SPD) also took great pains to downplay the scale of the events. SPD defence policy spokesman Rainer Arnold even attacked the Defence Minister from the right. He accused her of creating a climate of uncertainty and mistrust of the troops because she is raising the suspicion of the existence of a far-right terrorist network in the army without any concrete evidence.

Neither the SPD nor the opposition Greens or Left Party called for the resignation of the minister, who has led the defence ministry for three-and-a-half years and bears full responsibility for the army as its supreme commander.

Given the scale of the events that have taken place, Von der Leyens proposal to respond with an educational programme and a revision of the tradition directive is bizarre. It has now been confirmed that a right-wing terrorist cell existed in the army which was preparing attacks on high-ranking politicians and representatives of the state, Jewish and Muslim organisations, and left-wing activists.

Two officers and one student have been arrested thus far for hoarding weapons and munitions, preparing lists of potential targets and undertaking complex arrangements to blame the attacks on refugees. First Lieutenant Franco A., who was the first to be arrested, registered with a false identity as a Syrian refugee with the assistance of First Lieutenant Maximilian T., who is now also in custody.

One only needs to imagine what the response would have been if comparable plans for attacks by Islamist organisations had been discovered. The country would be placed under a state of emergency.

It remains entirely unclear how large the terrorist cell in the army is, whether Franco A. and Maximilian T. had other co-conspirators or accomplices, or even if they acted under the guidance of others. What is beyond doubt is that their neo-Nazi ideas had been known about for a long time and were systematically covered up by their superiors and the Military Surveillance Service (MAD). Investigations against them were frequently suspended or dragged out.

The latest information to come to light was that a superior of Franco A. requested a security check on him in February 2016 because he was being employed in a new security sensitive activity. No notice was taken of the fact that A. only provided the required declaration of understanding in November, after he had been active in his post for some time. A defence ministry spokesperson told Stern that the proceedings were not yet fully investigated.

In light of the frequency of cases in which suspected right-wing terrorists were concealed, it is no longer possible to speak of mishaps, as many media reports now do. In reality, it is becoming ever clearer that the army intelligence service, which is responsible for surveillance of soldiers, is a hotbed for right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis.

Recently a MAD officer, who is also a city councillor for the right-wing extremist Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Cologne city council, was reported to the Cologne state prosecutor because he tweeted the banned SA (Nazi paramilitary) slogan Germany awake! This occurred in January, but has not resulted in any consequences until now. The Twitter account concerned has been deleted in the meantime.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the terrorist cell was able to thrive in the army on the basis of widespread right-wing extremist networks which reach into the highest levels of the army command.

WDR conducted an interview with Christian Weigerber, who was active in the right-wing scene as part of the autonomous nationalists, and joined the army in 2008. He explained that the army was heavily populated with national conservative, racist persons. In his group of 12 recruits, there were at least three who identified as right-wing extremists.

Weigerber reported in detail about right-wing extremist tendencies in the officer ranks. He discussed with an officer about the Freemasons, Illuminati and other secret groupings steeped in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. And this was not the only incident with one of his superiors.

I had a black, white and red towel, which was also seen, stated Weigerber. But the superior simply said, Hang that up again tomorrow when the colleague takes over the barrack room. Hell be happy about that. I did it and he was actually happy. Black, white and red were the colours of the Kaisers regime and the Nazis, and are used by right-wing extremist groups.

The internet portal bento interviewed a soldier named Dominik, who was in the army from 2004 to 2013 and studied at Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg. In his masters thesis, he researched the political ideas of army officers. In essence, all of the interviews he conducted as part of his work had the same outcome, Those questioned see themselves as part of an elite, as heroes, who will go into combat and, if necessary, sacrifice their lives.

A majority of officers had an extremely conservative outlook and could easily identify with nationalist ideas, particularly in their view of history. The Blitzkrieg on Poland during World War II was praised by many of my colleagues as a great military achievement, said Dominik.

According to its own statistics, the MAD is currently reviewing 275 cases under the category of right-wing extremism. These are only those cases where the authorities could not avoid launching formal investigations. Franco A.s neo-Nazi graduation paper in 2013, which was known to his superiors and the military disciplinary official, for example, was not included in this figure.

In 2016, the research of the MAD uncovered only three instances in which it determined right-wing extremists were involved.

Questions tabled by the Left Party parliamentary group to the government in the Bundestag (parliament) during the past week revealed that several soldiers were allowed to remain in service and had access to weapons after being investigated by the MAD for shouting Siegl heil? or performing the Nazi salute.

The strengthening of right-wing extremist elements in the army is closely linked to the politics of militarism and rearmament, which have been pursued determinedly by the defence minister.

The army is to be massively rearmed in the coming years, according to the provisional outlines of the concept of the armys future capability profile drawn up by her ministry. It is to be capable of operating fully on land, at sea, in the air, in space and in cyberspace.

The armys seven brigades are to be increased to three divisions with eight to 10 brigades. Just within the past week, a contract with arms company Kraussman-Maffei Wegmann was signed for the modernisation of 104 Leopard II tanks. Over the coming six years, the total number of tanks is to rise from 244 to 328.

The air force is to have the capacity to lead a multi-national force capable of conducting up to 350 reconnaissance and combat sorties per day. To this end, Tornado fighter jets and CH53 transport helicopters will be replaced with newer aircraft. In addition, drones, C130 Hercules transport aircraft, additional A400M transport planes and heavy transportation helicopters will be purchased. New ships will also be bought for the navy.

The expansion of the Bundeswehr into an army capable of fighting and killing around the world necessarily brings with it the revival of the Wehrmachts traditions and creates ideal conditions for neo-Nazi structures.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which has long led the militarist propaganda, made this unmistakably clear. For the FAZ, even the measures proposed by Von der Leyen to cover up the affair go too far. In a comment on Tuesday, the paper described the search of all service locations for symbols which allegedly violate the constitution as an embarrassing exorcism, which will clean up the commander-in-chief, but tarnish the soldiers.

The army, according to the FAZ, was constructed by Wehrmacht officers who used and further developed its weaponry and training maxims for decades. It openly called on the generals to resist their civilian commanders: If resistance is to be the only creator of traditionwhy are the generals going along with this nonsense?
In the first quarter of 2017, the Social Democratic Party (SPD)-Left Party-Green Senate (red-red-green) in Berlin deported more people than its predecessor over the same period a year ago. The former Senate was a coalition of the SPD and the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Following a request for information from the CDU opposition in the Senate, officials revealed that Berlin, one of Germanys 16 constituent states, deported 712 refugees from January through March 2017. This is 191 more than in the same period last year. When asked whether Berlin was fulfilling the demands of the federal government for more deportations, the SPD-run interior administration replied: The number of deportations has already steadily increased.

The program agreed by the SPD, Left Party and Green coalition referred to encouraging voluntary return instead of deportation, but this policy was never aimed at protecting refugees. Although Germany has a nominal policy of banning expulsions to countries where deportees lives would be placed in danger, Interior Senator Andreas Geisel (SPD) told the media that there would not be a halt to deportations to Afghanistana country devastated by war and one of the most dangerous places on earth.

The Berlin administration is using fraudulent and reactionary claims about potential threats to security as a pretext for its deportation policy.

This is clear from a recent incident involving five young Afghans who scuffled in the subway, causing a woman to fall from her bicycle. The media and the SPD-led interior administration instantly took up the issue and spoke of a brutal act by a group of young Afghan men who attacked and injured a woman. For her part, the cyclist, who was shocked but only slightly injured, reported to a Berlin radio station that one of the men had kicked her, but the others remained in the group . had looked to see whether I was hurt and then picked up her bike for her.

Despite this, Martin Pallgren, the spokesman for the interior administration, threatened: If the men are found guilty they will be deported to Afghanistan. The Berlin Refugee Council described his reaction as double punishment: First, punishment according to the German Criminal Code, and second, a much worse punishment, deportation to a war zone where there is acute threat to life and limb, to a country full of violence, anarchy, hunger and death!

A recent report by UNAMA (UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan) pointed to the high number of war victims in Afghanistan, including increasing numbers of women and children. In the first quarter of 2017, for example, 735 children died or were injured, three percent more than in the previous quarter. From January through the end of March this year, 76,640 people fled the country due to the security threats. Some 27 of 34 provinces in Afghanistan are considered dangerous, according to the report.

The red-red-green Senate is also deporting people back to so-called safe countries of origin, especially in the Balkan and Eastern European region. Particularly affected are refugees from the former Soviet Republic of Moldova, including many members of the persecuted Roma minority.

Canan Bayram, the refugee spokesperson for the Berlin Greens, justified this policy by declaring that the city had a special authority for this refugee group. Moldovans from throughout Germany are sent to Berlin and repatriated in collective deportation actions.

Bayram added, I find every deportation wrong, but it is difficult to find a solution at a state level in the case of Moldova because Berlin assesses the security situation in the same manner as the federal government, as is also the case with Afghanistan.

In order to implement federal policy, Elke Breitenbach (Left Party), Berlins social affairs minister, has made available a run-down gymnasium in Berlins Friedrichsfelde suburb as accommodation for the refugees. It was originally set up in 2015 as a collection point for people with a little chance of obtaining residency by the then social affairs senator, Mario Czaja (CDU).

Breitenbach recently boasted that every gym in the city used to house refugees had been vacated. In fact, there are still around eighty people, including many children, residing in an old gym in Friedrichsfelde.

In response to a protest from the refugee council, Senator Breitenbach claimed on Facebook: We have first cleared those gyms that are used for sports. The social affairs department argues that the gym in Friedrichsfelde is not fit for sports. The Left Party, however, has no reservations about housing refugees destined for deportation in a gymnasium that needs repairs.

The miserable role played by the Left Party in regard to refugee policy was made particularly clear toward the end of April, when the citys social affairs department tried to expel the volunteer refugee aid group Moabit hilft [Moabit helps] from its site at the premises of LaGeSo, Berlins office for health and social affairs. The department sent a eviction notice to the organisation which has assisted thousands of refugees since 2015, and has become a symbol of the solidarity of the population of Berlin.

After public protests, the social affairs administration declared it was prepared to tolerate the presence of the organisation until the end of 2017. Christiane Beckmann, on behalf of Moabit hilft, told the WSWS that the rent payment for the premises it occupies still has to be worked out and the future beyond 2017 is entirely unclear.

Anger is growing at the red-red-green Senates refugee policy. In a May 2 Open Letter, Berlin refugee initiatives complained about the wretched conditions prevailing for refugees. The letters catalog of sixteen complaints is a severe indictment of the left Senates politics.

For example, refugees are not receiving residency permits from the authorities even if they have been officially recognized. Unable to apply for their own accommodation, refugees must continue living in emergency housing, where they receive shoddy pre-cooked food and miserly aid payments. Under-age refugees are denied official recognition, there is not enough space in supervised housing communities to accommodate them and they are not integrated into regular classes in schools. The emergency shelters are inadequately equipped and there is repeated violence by security and personnel, in addition to vindictive penalties meted out to young refugees because of petty breaches of the rules.

The initiatives called for free movement for those in emergency accommodation, no containers to be allowed on the grounds of the former Tempelhof airport and more accommodation in proper housing. In Berlin, 13,400 refugees still live in mass accommodation, some of them having lived there for more than a year. The newly built alternatives such as Tempohomes (containers) or Modular homes (MuF), which the Left Party claims are an improvement, in fact offer no relief. Recently, a family of seven was squeezed into one such MuF apartment 46 square meters [495 square feet] in size.

In conclusion, the relief organizations demanded a clear commitment by Berlin to stop deportations to Afghanistan and full rights for families to arrange for their children and relatives abroad to join them, as well as a discussion between the Senate and voluntary organisations on terms of equality.

Regarding the last point, a spokeswoman for Moabit hilft, Diana Henniges, complained in the online magazine Luxemburg.de: In the [SPD-Left Party-Green] coalition agreement a citizens dialogue was promised, an exchange ... But the sad truth is: nothing has happened.

Compared to the situation under the former SPD-CDU Senate, it was even more difficult now to talk to the authorities and get information. Previously there had been possibilities to discuss refugee issues at state conferences and with various committees. This no longer exists. Now the message is Well solve it for you, just trust us. At the same time the administration was riddled with the same people we argued with furiously two years ago.

The warnings made by the WSWS during and after the Berlin election campaign have been confirmed: the renewed involvement of the Left Party in the Berlin Senate has not led to a more social or humane policy in the interests of the population. The special role of the Left Party in the administration is to implement a right-wing, pro-capitalist policy in all spheres of policy that affect not only refugees, but every section of the working classdressed up in empty left phraseology.
Yesterday, French President-elect Emmanuel Macrons Republic on the March (REM) movement unveiled a list of most of its candidates for the legislative elections of June 11 and 18. REM named candidates for 428 of the 577 electoral districts represented in the National Assembly, with the remaining 149 to be determined later, including in talks with other political parties.

The unveiling of the REM slate was accompanied by a massive media campaign presenting Macron as leading a renewal of Frances political establishment, which is discredited by the wars, police-state measures, and austerity policies of the Socialist Party (PS) government. The media hailed points like the strict equality in the number of male and female candidates in the REM list (214 each), or the fact that 52 percent have never held office before.

The purpose of this campaign is to try to win Macron an absolute majority in the National Assembly, and to intimidate deep misgivings and opposition felt by broad masses of workers to Macrons organization. Over six in 10 voters have said that they do not want Macron to obtain a majority in the National Assembly, due to broad mistrust of Macrons warmongering and anti-worker policies.

Macrons aim is to wage a social counterrevolution in France. A former Rothschild banker and economy minister in the PS government, he plans to assemble Frances most right-wing government since World War II and the Nazi Occupation. He has called to restore the draft; massively boost military spending; maintain the PS state of emergency, which suspends basic democratic rights; and use the PS unpopular labor law to slash and rewrite contracts at workplaces across the country.

Initial details that emerged about the REM slate yesterday confirm that it is an almost chemically pure emanation of the banks and the security forces, completely divorced from the working class. The most prominent figure named so far as a REM candidate is Jean-Michel Fauvergue, the former leader of the RAID police special forces unit.

The 16 candidates who were the subject of detailed profiles in REMs press release included four business owners or CEOs, three consultancy executives, two economists, two lawyers, two academics, two officials in state or non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and a fighter pilot.

REMs aristocratic class character reflects Macrons own profound misgivings about democracy, acquired as a student of the elite National Administration School and of Christian existentialist philosopher Paul Ricur. In a 2015 interview he gave to Le un magazine as a PS minister, Macron laid out these views in some detail. He bemoaned the French revolution and the fact that King Louis XVI was found guilty of treason and guillotined in 1793 during the Terror, eliminating the absolute authority figure that Macron believes the French people wants and needs over it.

Asked by Le un if democracy is necessarily deceptive, he replied: There is an absent figure in the democratic process and its functioning. In French politics, this absent figure is the figure of the king, whose death fundamentally I believe the French people did not want. The Terror left a collective emotional and intellectual void: the King was no longer there! Then there were attempts to fill this void with other figures: these were the moments of Napoleon and De Gaulle.

Such views underlie Macrons friendly ties with monarchist politician Philippe de Villiers, who backed neo-fascist presidential candidate Marine Le Pen nonetheless, and Macrons full-throated Republican salute to Le Pen as the very first point in his victory speech on Sunday.

The media adulation of Macron and REM depends above all on the bankruptcy of forces like Unsubmissive France (UF) leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA). While Melenchon won 7 million votes and the NPA nearly 1 million in the first round of the presidential election, they abdicated their responsibility to offer a political perspective to their voters to oppose Macron. They took no clear position on the Macron-Le Pen presidential runoff, but made clear their sympathies for Macron; Melenchon even offered to become his prime minister.

The Parti de l'egalite socialiste alone called for an active boycott of the second round, to lay out for the working class a politically independent perspective from the capitalist parties and prepare it for struggle against whichever reactionary candidate won. The PES rejected the arguments of those who, downplaying the PS attacks on democratic rights under Hollande, presented Macron as a reliable defender of democracy against the FN.

The PES based its opposition on the International Committee of the Fourth Internationals (ICFI) decades-long struggle against the descendants, like Melenchon and the NPA, of petty-bourgeois forces that broke with Trotskyism and worked for decades in the orbit of the PS. These pseudo-left parties represent affluent layers of the middle class that overlap substantially with REMs social base, and that are highly susceptible to reactionary arguments that REM should be supported because it will modernize France and improve gender equality.

If the barrage of pro-Macron media propaganda faces no effective opposition from within official politics, this is largely due to the pseudo-lefts complacency and political complicity with REM and the PS, which is now in a deep crisis and considering dissolving itself into REM.

After taking just over 6 percent of the vote with its candidate Benoit Hamon in the first round of the presidential elections, the PS now faces poll results showing that it could win no more than 9 percent of the vote in the first round of the legislatives. This could produce a situation where the PS, Frances main bourgeois left party of government since the 1968 general strike, would be wiped outsending just a single deputy to the National Assembly.

This has unleashed a furious debate inside the PS, with large sections of the party machine calling to scrap the PS and rebuild an organization whose name would not make any reference, even of a completely empty and fraudulent nature, to socialism. Substantial factions of the PS are now scurrying off the sinking ship and trying to recycle themselves via the REM.

After PS First Secretary Jean-Christophe Cambadelis May 2 statement that the PS is dead and truly dead, former PS Prime Minister Manuel Valls declared on RTL radio this week that the PS is dead and behind us and sought to register as a REM legislative candidate.

While Valls maneuver has backfired for nowMacron was a rival of Valls inside the Hollande government, and REM has refused to grant him its investiture as candidate, while the PS is starting expulsion proceedings against him for leaving the PSit is clear that ever larger sections of the PS are thinking of following his path. For now, all 24 of the REM legislative candidates that have already held elected office were PS members.

The turning of the PS and its periphery explicitly and violently against socialism portends a vast and explosive social conflict that is being prepared in France and across Europe. With 70 percent of the population opposed to the PS labor law Macron will use to attack the workers, and 64 percent of youth already hostile to Macrons plans to restore the draft, a powerful constituency for socialism exists in the working class and the youth. It is to these forces that the PES is orienting its work and its struggle against the PS and its petty-bourgeois periphery.
With 13 Maruti Suzuki autoworkers languishing in jail for life after being convicted on frame-up charges, Indias Finance Minister Arun Jaitley held a meeting with Suzuki Motor Corp head Osamu Suzuki in Japan to discuss stepped-up investments in India.

Following the meeting Wednesday, that involved several other leading Japanese businessmen, Suzuki announced it would invest another 100 billion yen (US$880 million) to expand its newly built Gujarat production facilities in western India by the early 2020s. The money represented a new investment over what the company had already pledged. Suzuki alone controls about one-half of the Indian car market and it has set a goal of doubling its current sales over the course of the next 10 years.

The investment came out of talks sponsored by Jaitley over the Modi administrations Make in India campaign. The core of this initiative is to market India as a cheap labor platform for multinational corporations. In line with this the Indian government has pledged to brutally suppress workers struggles to ensure a docile and low-paid workforce.

The plans announced by Suzuki include opening a third production line at its factory in the state of Gujarat. The company recently announced the opening of a second production line at the facility set for 2019.

Suzuki had earlier announced a significant investment in India to make lithium ion batteries for electric vehicles. The joint project will include Toshiba and Denso. Suzuki will own a 50 percent stake while Toshiba and Denso will control 40 percent and 10 percent respectively.

For its part, Korean-based automaker Hyundai plans to invest $2 billion in India and has set a goal of output from India of 1 million vehicles by 2020-2021.

The Japanese government has already set up a Make in India fund of some 1.5 trillion yen (US$ 13.2 billion). India has meanwhile promised to devise special incentives for companies to invest in industrial areas.

The meeting between Jaitley, who also serves as defense minister, and Suzuki took place as part of a five-day visit to Japan to shore up investment prospects and cement Indias military ties with the East Asia nation. It included assurance by the Indian finance chief that the Indian ruling elite would ruthlessly suppress worker opposition.

In concert with Indias military strategic alliance with the United States, aimed primarily at preparing for a confrontation with China, India has strengthened its military and security ties to Japan. Japanese authorities are seeking to nullify antimilitarist provisions of the countrys post-WWII constitution as part of a campaign to significantly expand its military forces.

Jaitleys visit to Japan followed a March meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Toyota President Akio Toyoda and Osamu Suzuki to discuss plans for investment in India. Japans foreign direct investments into India currently rank third behind Mauritius and Singapore. Japan has poured some $25.2 billion into India in foreign direct investment since 2000.

In the background of the visit is Indias ongoing persecution of former workers at the Maruti Suzuki Manesar factory who were convicted earlier this year on frame-up charges of murdering a manager during a company-provoked altercation on July 18, 2012. Thirteen workers received life sentences for their alleged part in the affair. Twelve of those workers are from the leadership of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU) established by workers at the plant in opposition to the official, pro-company union, the Maruti Udyog Kamgar Union or MUKU.

Management used the events of July 18, 2012 to launch a purge of the Manesar workforce that resulted in the firing and replacement 2,300 workers at the plant. In the wake of the incident more than 150 workers were jailed and held for three years. The attack on Maruti Suzuki workers followed a series of strikes at the Manesar plant in the period 2011- 2012.

The entire proceedings against the jailed workers were a sham, aimed primarily at intimidating opposition to the sweatshop regime in the factory and reassuring investors that the Indian authorities would suppress any struggle against speedup and low wages.

A company attorney acted as co-counsel to the prosecution. No workers were allowed to testify on the spurious grounds that they would likely be biased and therefore unreliable witnesses. Further, defense attorneys were not permitted to cross-examine key prosecution witnesses, a fundamental attack on due process. Meanwhile, the judge attempted to shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the workers, essentially asserting that the victimized workers had to prove their innocence.

In spite of the blatant pro-prosecution bias on the part of authorities, the defense ultimately secured exoneration for most of the 150 jailed workers originally framed up for the July 2012 altercation. They conclusively demonstrated that the prosecution fabricated evidence and that arrests took place on the basis of company-supplied lists.

Despite this, the prosecution secured the conviction of 13 workers, who received savage life sentences.

The sentencing of the 13 workers evoked stormy protests across India. However, the official unions have done their utmost to isolate the Maruti Suzuki workers and suppress and divert opposition to the frame-up. In its annual May Day statement the pro-Stalinist Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) made no mention of the Maruti Suzuki workers.

The pro-Stalinist parliamentary political parties in India have likewise isolated the victimized Maruti Suzuki workers. The principal paper of the pro-Stalinist Communist Party of India failed to print anything about the conviction of the workers for weeks. Above all the Stalinists are fearful that the struggle of the Maruti Suzuki workers could spark a broader rebellion by industrial workers across India and threaten plans to use the country as a cheap labor platform.
Guardian journalist Paul Mason has stated that the victory of right-wing French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron should be celebrated by every globalist, leftwing and progressive voter and must be emulated by a similar movement in Britain.

What are the progressive credentials that attract Mason to Macron and make him deserving of replication?

The former Rothschild investment banker served in the first and second Socialist Party (SP) governments of President Francois Hollande from 2012 as senior adviser and economy and industry minister.

Macron played a critical role in formulating Hollandes hated austerity economic programme, as well as upholding reactionary labour laws lengthening the work week, and allowing trade unions to work with the bosses to ignore provisions of the Labour Code that protect workers rights. The laws were enforced last year in the face of mass protests.

Macron also helped formulate the pro-business Responsibility Pact deregulation package. He was an avid supporter of the authoritarian state of emergency, which has been in place since November 2015following the terrorist attacks in Paris.

In the presidential election, he ran on a pro-austerity, pro-European Union (EU) ticketreceiving the backing of virtually the entire ruling class. His programme is aimed at reinforcing austerity not only in France, but also throughout Europe and consolidating the EU as a trade and military bloc against its global rivals. His reform agenda involves strengthening anti-democratic measures and bringing forward anti-worker labour legislation to be passed by executive degree. He favours the slashing of 120,000 public sector jobs, cutting pensions and reducing state spending.

Mason presents Macron as a popular winner against his neo-fascist opponent Marine Le Pen of the National Front (FN). The reality is that Macron is so reviled that he won just 24 percent of the vote in the first round, with more than half saying that they had voted for him tactically against the far right. Of the more than 75 percent of voters who did not back him, almost 20 percent (7 million voters) supported Jean-Luc Melenchon and his Unsubmissive France movement, based on his stated opposition to austerity and war.

Despite Melenchons efforts to ensure a vote for Macron in the second round, and even though he received 65 percent of the vote against Le Pen, abstentions reached 26 percentthe highest since 1969. Fully 34 percent of voters aged 18 to 24, 32 percent aged 25 to 34, 35 percent of the unemployed, and 32 percent of manual workers abstained.

Twelve percent of voters, a record 4.2 million people, cast blank or spoiled ballots to express their hostility to both candidates. The choice of Macron or Le Pen was widely described as that between the banker and the fascist, or between the plague and cholera.

Mason does not bother to detail Macrons reactionary domestic or foreign policy, but states in passing his view that it is vacuous and unachievable. Yet he claims Macrons victory has given French democracy, Europeanism and globalism another chance.

The reality is that Macrons agenda will only fuel social discontent which, in the absence of a socialist alternative, Le Pen will appeal to in order to pose as the representative of an embattled population against the establishment.

What really animates and excites Mason about Macrons victory is that he, in Masons words, [C]onstructed an alliance of the free market elite and left voters.

When Mason speaks of the left, he is not referring to those with genuine leftist sentiment, who abstained or voted only with extreme reluctance. He means the upper middle class layers of urban professionals to whom Macron is oriented, and who have no problems whatsoever in forming an alliance with the free market elitei.e., the French bourgeoisie.

Mason too speaks for this social group, who have enriched themselves because of rising property prices, share ownership and their role in either administering, or in justifying, ideologically and politically, the constant transfer of societal wealth to the super rich at the expense of working people. Many have done very well out of direct relations with the EU and many more see it as a mechanism for maintaining a status quo with which they are more than happy.

Masons prescription is that such a pro-EU alliance with the majority of the ruling class must be set up in the UK, against the sections that favoured Brexitwho are a minority but who are able to dominate events politically in the aftermath of last Junes referendum Leave vote. He writes, Macron won because the French establishment woke up. It realised that, given the options, an alliance with the left was better than an alliance with the ultra-right.

Such a political realignment, he warns, must not be confined to pro-EU forces in the Labour Party and Liberal Democratsthe latter committed to overturning Brexit and holding a second referendumbut must involve progressive Tories. Writing that the Tories hard Brexit wing means business, Mason says that former Prime Minister David Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne should back new electoral alliances to block Brexitas championed by former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mason writes, [I]t is not enough for liberal Conservatives from the Cameron-Osborne generation simply to move on to better jobs. They should now lend their votes to the progressive parties. However, his end goal is clearly a new capitalist party similar to Macrons Republique En Marche.

Mason is also clear as to who he believes is to blame for the political domination of the hard Brexit Tory right. He sets out that his alliance of the free market elite and the left must be directed against the most oppressed layers of the working class.

He contemptuously describes those with low education, short lifespan, pessimism about the future and blue collar work as the bedrock for the votes for Le Pen, for Brexit and the nationalist right.

Millions have suffered for decades at the hands of Masons beloved free market elite with massive cuts in pay, terms and the loss of their livelihoods. In addition, the EU he wants so desperately to rescue has spent the years since the financial crash of 2008 imposing savage austerity on one country after another.

Syriza in Greece is another example of the alliance between the pseudo-left and the free market elite. Mason has functioned as the cheerleader for this bourgeois government as it betrayed its anti-austerity mandate in the name of ensuring Athens place in the EU. It is now busy imposing deeper attacks than its conservative predecessors.

Betrayals such as these are the real reason why the political right has been able to exploit social discontent among sections of workers that Mason and his milieu view with barely disguised enmity.

Mason is a former member of the defunct anti-Trotskyist Workers Power tendency, a splinter from the Socialist Workers Party. His politics today is barely distinguishable from any run-of-the-mill Blairite hack who writes for the Guardian, other than his pose as a Marxist who has seen the error of his ways.

His appeal is framed to the pseudo-left who are also careering to the right. In a previous Guardian piece he spoke of the necessity of an alliance of the left and the radical centre in defence of a humane pro-business version of capitalism, and consisting of bond traders from Canary Wharf, arm in arm with placard-carrying Trots.

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On May 1, Indian supporters of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) held a May Day public meeting on World War and the Centenary of Russian Revolution in Bangalore, the Karnataka state capital. It was the second public event in India organised by ICFI supporters focusing on the October 1917 Revolution and its contemporary significance, following a public meeting in Chennai, Tamil Nadu on March 5.

As part of their campaign to build the Bangalore meeting, ICFI supporters spoke with garment workers in Peediya and students and IT employees in different parts of the city, including Shivaji Nagar, Marathali and Electronic City. Several hundred English-, Tamil- and Kannada-language leaflets were distributed.

Campaigners discussed with workers and students the danger of another world war and the necessity for an international anti-war movement based on the working class and a socialist perspective, and promoted the World Socialist Web Site s online lecture series on the Russian Revolution.

The Bangalore meeting was chaired by Sathish Simon and addressed by Arun Kumar from the ICFI supporters group and Socialist Equality Party (SEP) (Sri Lanka) assistant national secretary Deepal Jayasekara, who travelled from Colombo to speak at the event.

Kumar referred to the Trump administrations cruise-missile attack in Syria, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) bombing in Afghanistan and Washingtons escalating military bullying of North Korea. He warned that these actions posed the danger of a new world war involving nuclear weapons. The speaker noted that over the past quarter century the US had conducted an unending series of imperialist wars under the pretext of a war on terrorism.

The attack on Syria, Afghanistan and bullying of the small state of North Korea are only manifestations of dangerously sharpening geo-political conflicts between the US and China, the US and Russia and also the US and Europe, he said.

Kumar reviewed how the South Asian region increasingly had been drawn into growing global geo-political tensions and, in particular, the US war preparations against China, which had escalated under the Trump administration.

The Modi government has transformed India into a frontline state in the US war drive against China and is strengthening military-strategic ties with the US, the speaker said. As a sign of the rapid integration of India into the USs anti-China Pivot to Asia campaign launched by former President Obama, New Delhi signed an agreement last year providing the US militarys access to Indian bases. India has now become a major service and repair hub for the US Seventh Fleet, which is central to US war preparations against China.

Kumar noted that the US military courting of India had further emboldened the Modi government to take an increasingly jingoistic stance against Pakistan. These developments, he said, posed deadly consequences for the working class and oppressed masses in the region and internationally. The speaker explained why it was necessary for the Indian working class to join with their class brothers and sisters in the region and throughout the world and fight for the anti-war, socialist movement that the ICFI was constructing.

Deepal Jayasekara spoke at length about the historic significance of the 1917 Russian Revolution. He explained that the crisis of the capitalist system that led to World War I and later World War II, had developed to a higher and more profound level. All the unresolved contradictions of the past century are reemerging with explosive force to the surface of world politics, he said. Under these conditions and on the centenary of Russian Revolution, the events of 1917 acquire a new and intense contemporary relevance.

The Bolshevik Partys struggle to lead the working class to power in the October Revolution was based on an international perspective, he said and added: Above all Lenin and Trotsky recognised that the objective basis for the socialist revolution in Russia was rooted, in the final analysis, in the international contradictions of the world imperialist systemi.e., between the outdated national-state system and the highly integrated world economy. The fate of the Russian Revolution therefore depended on the extension of workers power beyond the borders of Soviet Russia.

The speaker reviewed Lenins fight against the opportunists in the Second International, who had lined up with their imperialist ruling classes to support WWI, and explained Lenins struggle in April 1917 to reorient the Bolshevik Party and turn it to preparing the working class to overthrow the Provisional Government, take power and establish the first workers state in October.

Today, under conditions of the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s, deepening austerity and the imperialist drive toward a new world war, millions of workers internationally are being driven into a renewed upsurge of class struggles, Jayasekara said. The most advanced elements among them will inevitably turn toward the experiences of the Russian Revolution.

The speaker exposed the efforts of Indias main Stalinist parliamentary party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, which attempted to claim the legacy of the October Revolution while falsifying the basic theoretical issues underlining Russian Revolution.

A recent booklet published by the CPM on the centenary, Jayasekara said, presented the October Revolution as a national event and not as the opening shot of a world socialist revolution.

In opposition to Trotskys Theory of Permanent Revolution, which was vindicated by the Russian Revolution, the CPM repeated the anti-Marxist Stalinist two-stage theory. This nationalist perspective insisted that the bourgeois-democratic revolution was the first stage, with the working class politically subordinated to the national bourgeoisie, and the second stagethe socialist revolutionpostponed forever.

Jayasekera concluded his address by calling on everyone at the meeting to join with the ICFI and the SEP to build a section of the ICFI in India, as the revolutionary party of Indian working class.
Ummer Fayaz, who was murdered by suspected Hizbul militants, was abducted barely a kilometer away from an Army post. Sources say an operation could have been launched had the Army post been informed in time.

By Gaurav C Sawant: Blackmail, betrayal and brutality - three words to describe killing of Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz from Kashmir by terrorists.

As the Army quietly mourns the young officer's death, his brothers-in-arms and his family came together to remember him and promise retribution. Villagers found Fayaz's bullet-riddled body early on Wednesday, a day after he was snatched by terrorists at his cousin's wedding.

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"He was a role model and by his actions had inspired some youngsters to join the armed forces. Terrorists felt threatened and perhaps that was the reason he was abducted and killed,'' said Brig Adish Yadav, commandant, Rajputana Rifles.

Terrorists, separatists and Pakistan's proxies have been desperately peddling a narrative of the entire Valley being against the Indian state. But 22-year-old Lt Ummer being a part of the Army and yet flourishing defeated their narrative.

The officer of the 2nd battalion of the Rajputana Rifles had taken leave to go home to the troubled Kulgam town in south Kashmir to attend the wedding.

"He was not scared of going home. He knew all the boys. They had grown up together. In fact his personality was so pleasing that several youngsters in his locality looked up to him. He told us about them. We even had a conversation about the unrest in south Kashmir but he was confident it would blow over," said Major Yuvavir Kadyan, his instructor and company commander.

But his popularity irked the terrorists and defeated the idea of an Islamic caliphate they were so desperately trying to propagate.

BETRAYED BY HIS OWN

He was stabbed in the back by some of his own. Police sources in the Valley have been piecing together the sequence of events. Local Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists found out that he had come home.

"Three terrorists barged into the house of his relative in Shopian. He was at that time with his cousin - the bride to be. The terrorists went to the first-floor room of the house and dragged him down,'' police sources said.

"The information we have seems to indicate there was another group of armed terrorists threatening the groom. Young Lt Ummer Fayaz did not want either the bride or the groom and even their families threatened. So he went with the terrorists. The family did not immediately inform the police. They thought the terrorists would perhaps threaten or rough him up but later return him.''

There was an Army post barely a kilometre away from where the abduction of the young lieutenant took place. "We could have mounted an operation considering some of the boys were locals and were identified by the villagers. Perhaps had the family or the relatives informed us, he could have been saved," said an official.

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'MILITANTS SENDING A SIGNAL'

"The terrorists clearly appear to be sending out a signal. They are trying to intimidate people. They don't want locals to either join the Army or the police. But they will not succeed. Locals are very angry with terrorists killing the son of the soil," said Maj Avdesh Chowdhary, Lt Ummer's instructor at the Regimental Centre.

Some locals say they thought Ummer Fayaz was studying medicine and was not an Army officer. "Some did tell us that they were shocked to see terrorists pick up a doctor. His family had not told many people he was an Army officer. But most knew he was a soldier," sources added.

The Army has promised a quick but quiet retribution. "There is a plan in place. The perpetrators will be identified and neutralised. We will avenge the death of our own," promises Subedar Nazruddin and Naik Adeeb Siddique - both instructors of the young officer at the Regimental Centre.

Barely 24 hours after Lt Fayaz was killed to intimidate people against joining the security forces, thousands of youth lined up to join the Jammu and Kashmir Police - sending out a clear message to Pakistan and its proxies - they remain undeterred in their quest for employment and a better life.

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ALSO READ | Army officer Ummer Fayaz killed in Kashmir would have turned 23 in June

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ALSO WATCH | Army Lieutenant's killing in Shopian: What should Indian Army's response be?

--- ENDS ---
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is running Isaac Oseas for New York University Student Senate as part of the fight to build a socialist movement on campus and in the working class.

Oseas is a Masters student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) Near Eastern Studies program. He is a candidate for the GSAS Student Senator position, which represents GSAS students in student government. Students eligible to vote in the GSAS election will receive an email with a link to the online voting platform on May 15.

The GSAS election has been marred by repeated delays and obstacles. Oseas requested information on how to run in early April, at which point an NYU administrator informed him that the elections were delayed indefinitely. Voting in the elections was initially scheduled for May 8 to May 12when many students have finalsbut was postponed at the last minute. The voting is now scheduled to take place from May 15 to May 19, or the week after classes end.

The effect of these delays has been to make it very difficult for the IYSSE to run an effective campaign and inform students about the political issues at stake. This comes after the NYU Student Activities Board (SAB) repeatedly rejected the IYSSEs application for official club status, on spurious and anti-democratic grounds.

While only NYU GSAS students will be able to vote in the election, the IYSSE at NYU encourages all students to read our election material, distribute our election statements, join the IYSSE and take up the fight for socialism.

Below is a statement from Oseas announcing his candidacy.

***

I am running for GSAS Student Senator as a member of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) on a socialist platform. My campaign is part of the fight to build a movement of the working class against militarism and war, social inequality, and authoritarianism. Support for my campaign will provide a springboard for the development of a mass socialist movement in New York City, the world center of financial parasitism.

The political problems confronting students at NYUincluding student debt, unaffordable tuition, unemployment and the high cost of livingcannot be resolved within the limited scope of campus politics, even at a global university like NYU. It is the working class, the vast majority of the population, that has the power to bring the worlds productive forces into harmony with the needs of the human race for food and water, housing, fulfilling employment, infrastructure, health care, education, and environmental protection.

The election of Trump as US president marks a new stage in the political crisis of American capitalism. While Trump has already begun to implement policies that are devastating millions of working class families, the Democrats and a section of the Republicans have centered their criticisms on a pro-war campaign demanding greater intervention in Syria and preparations for a conflict with Russia.

Many students at NYU are outraged by the attacks on immigrants and refugees, and the NYU Board of Trustees connections with the Trump administration and Wall Street. Students have also been shocked at the extensive ties the university has with the military and intelligence agencies, which the IYSSE has sought to expose.

To fight for their interests, I call on students to join the socialist movement and reach out to all sections of workers and youth. The IYSSE demands:

No to war! For a new anti-war movement!

War is the most important issue facing the entire world. A quarter century of unending war, led by the US, is developing into a direct conflict between large, nuclear-armed powers. Whether it is in the Middle East or East Asia, the regional conflicts stoked by the US and its European allies threaten to unleash a world war, with catastrophic consequences.

A new anti-war movement must be built, connecting the fight against war with the fight against capitalism. I call for the disclosure of all NYUs military connections. I will fight to organize teach-ins on campus on the causes and consequences of war as part of a struggle to encourage and organize mass opposition to war throughout New York City and beyond.

Defend the rights of immigrants! For the international unity of the working class!

The Trump administrations attack on immigrants has impacted many NYU students and workers in New York City, but it is vastly escalating the decades-long assault, carried out by both Democrats and Republicans.

The IYSSE calls for the defense of all immigrant students, and the mobilization of students and workers across the country in defense of immigrant rights. If elected, I will fight to require that the school pay for immigration lawyers for all immigrant students to ensure that they are not touched by Trumps ICE agents. The school has enough money to spend millions renovating penthouses for former administrators, so it can afford to defend the rights of immigrant students.

Workers and young people should be able to live, work and study where they wish, without the constraints of outmoded national boundaries. Workers of all countries share a common interest in opposing war, dictatorship, unemployment, poverty and exploitation.

Oppose political censorship at NYU!

The IYSSE has applied for club status repeatedly, each time far exceeding the stated requirements. Yet its application was rejected each time on spurious grounds, including the claim that NYU, awash with money from enormous tuition costs, is not able to afford it. The SAB rejects roughly 90 percent of the groups applying for club status.

The politically-connected members of the student senate and the SAB are attempting to block the organization of a political movement on campus that is opposed to war and the Democratic Party. The IYSSE demands an overhaul of the club application process, and that the university allocate proper resources for all groups to hold meetings and events on campus. Campuses should be places for free discussion, not political censorship.

For equality and socialism! For the political independence of the working class!

New York City is one of the most unequal cities in the world. The Wall Street banks that dominate the city control the entire political system in the US and exert an incredible amount of control over politics in the US and around the world.

The United States is a society in which 20 individuals, many of them living in New York City, have more wealth than the bottom half of the population. Unimaginable sums of wealth are accumulated by a tiny aristocracy, while workers face declining wages, cuts in health care and soaring tuition.

Both the Democrats and Republicans represent the interests of the corporations and the banks. The IYSSE and the Socialist Equality Party are building an independent political movement of the working class to fight for socialismthat is, a society based on social need, not private profit. A vote for my candidacy is a vote for a socialist future.

Vote Isaac Oseas for NYU Student Senate!

To contact and join the IYSSE, visit iysse.com
In one of the latest widely publicized incidents concerning a US airline, passengers erupted in rage at a Spirit Airlines ticket counter Monday evening after flight cancellations and delays left hundreds stranded at Floridas Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.

Several passengers, including those who had waited in line for hours or had been taken off a plane due to a canceled flight, got into angry confrontations with Spirit employees.

Videos that soon went viral showed Broward County sheriffs deputies forcefully handcuffing and arresting passengers. Three travelers awaiting flights to New York were charged with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and trespassing, according to police.

The melee in Florida follows last months brutal assault, also captured on cellphone videos, of 69-year-old Dr. David Dao who was dragged from an over-booked United Airlines flight by airport police in Chicago.

Since then there have been a spate of other high profile incidents, including an altercation between passengers and an American Airlines flight attendant who took a stroller away from a mother with two small children and the expulsion of a Wisconsin man from a Delta flight because he had to use the bathroom.

Spirit Airlines executives immediately blamed the Florida incident on the airlines pilots. In a statement, company spokesman Paul Berry claimed to be shocked and saddened by what had happened but then immediately declared, This is a result of unlawful labor activity by some Spirit pilots designed to disrupt Spirit operations for our customers, by canceling multiple flights across our network. These pilots have put their quest for a new contract ahead of getting customers to their destinations and the safety of their fellow Spirit Team Members.

Hours before Monday evenings angry eruption, Spirit filed a lawsuit in US district court against the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) alleging that it was engaged in a pervasive illegal work slowdown that has caused approximately 300 flight cancellations and has disrupted the travel plans of over 20,000 customers, while causing Spirit to incur approximately $8.5 million in lost revenue and irreparable harm to its goodwill with its customers.

The lawsuit charged that pilots were refusing to take assignments during the open time left on their monthly work schedules to fill in for other pilots who get sick or cannot make a trip. It also charges that pilots not scheduled for duty have also snubbed junior assignments, which are offered to lower seniority pilots at higher pay rates.

By allegedly making concerted efforts to refuse last-minute shifts, Spirits lawsuit stated, the pilots were violating the Railway Labor Act, an anti-worker federal law used to effectively block strikes by airline and railway workers.

On Tuesday, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order preventing the union from any concerted refusal to perform normal pilot operations consistent with the status quo until a further hearing. ALPA officials, who first denied any slowdown was taking place, quickly capitulated promising to comply with the order.

The airlines supposed concern for its passengers is entirely hollow. Spirits executives were fully aware they had a pilot shortage before Monday night and did nothing to warn passengers. The airline, known as an Ultra-Low Cost Carrier (ULCC)--which regularly rates on the bottom for customer satisfaction--wants passengers to blame workers for conditions which are produced by relentless cost-cutting and the anarchy of the capitalist free market.

Rather than provide enough flights, seats or leg room for passengers, or hire enough employees and provide them with sufficient rest time, wages and benefits, airline executives are driven by what is called capacity discipline to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the existing numbers of workers and aging and over-extended airplanes and equipment. While the industrys top executives and investors are richly rewarded for slashing costs and boosting their bottom lines, workers and passengers alike are driven beyond the breaking point.

Pilots at Spirit are among the lowest paid in the industry, with starting co-pilots earning $39,000 a year, about half what is paid at large carriers like American, Delta and United. An experienced Spirit pilot reportedly makes $189,000, 35-40 percent less than a comparable pilot at a larger carrier.

Pilots have been working under a seven-year-old contract, which included major pay and benefit concessions granted by ALPA. During the time in which contract negotiations have dragged out over the last two years the company has made $642 million in profits, while paying its key executives, including CEO Robert Fornaro, nearly $20 million during the same period.

The company also dragged out negotiations with its 2,200 flight attendants for over nine years. The workers rejected two contracts backed by the Association of Flight Attendants-Communications Workers of America in 2014, before ratifying a new five-year deal last year that included wage improvements.

After decades of cost-cutting, US-based carriers scored the highest profits in the global airline industry last year, raking in $20 billion out of a total of $35 billion in worldwide profits. Despite an anticipated rise in fuel prices and labor costs--after decades of stagnant and falling wages--the US carriers are expected to make $18 billion in profits in 2017 with a whopping 8.5 percent profit margin.

Airline workers are subjected to grueling schedules while fliers are packed into planes like sardines in a can, charged for check-in luggage, a meal or a snack, and forced to compete for a place to store their carry-on bags. Conditions for passengers resemble what lower-class steerage passengers on the bottom decks of the old ocean steamships faced while those who can afford first class get expedited service, comfortable seating and other amenities.

The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, pushed by the Democratic liberal icon Edward Kennedy, was supposed to increase competition, break up the monopoly carriers and create lower prices and better traveling conditions. This was followed by Reagans smashing of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981--based on a plan drafted by the Federal Aviation Administration director under Democratic President Jimmy Carter--and decades of union-busting, wage and benefit cutting and mass layoffs.

Between 1978 and 1994, pay for airline workers fell precipitously, with flight attendants alone seeing a 40 percent decline during the period. Today labor costs are 21 percent lower in real dollars than in 1980.

Far from eliminating monopolies, the last four decades have seen the consolidation of the industry as some 200 carriers have merged, been taken over or gone out of business.

Over the last 12 years alone, the number of major US carriers has been reduced from 10 to four mega-carriers--American, Delta, United and Southwestwhich control 80 percent of the market. A 2015 Justice Department case into potential collusion by the airlines to limit the number of seats for sale and keep fares high was quickly shut down by the Obama administration.

Wall Street has no intention of letting up on its demand that the airlines continue to slash costs.

In a public relations move, American Airlines announced last month that it would raise hourly pay for its 15,000 pilots--who make 8 percent less than Delta and United pilots--and its 26,000 flight attendants who are 4 percent behind their coworkers. This led investors to drive down Americans stock by nearly 9 percent in inter-day trading, prompting Market Watch to write that the dive in share value was a stark reminder that what might be good for employees and customers can be upsetting for investors.

The Trump administration has promised to provide the airlines with more deregulation and corporate tax cuts, which will produce even greater nightmares for passengers and workers alike.
US airstrikes on a village north of the Syrian city of Raqqa killed at least 11 civilians, including four children and six women, a UK-based monitoring group reported Wednesday.

The bombing raid, which was launched just before midnight, is part of a protracted air war being waged by the US military that has killed and wounded thousands of civilians in both Syria and neighboring Iraq over the past three years.

In Syria, the airstrikes, ostensibly aimed against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), are being carried out without any authorization from either the United Nations or the government in Damascus, making them acts of aggression and war crimes.

The monitoring group Airwars has cited reports of as many as 13,407 civilians killed in both Iraq and Syria in 1,298 separate attacks by US and allied warplanes. The death toll has soared in the past few months as the Pentagon has provided massive air support to Iraqi government forces and militia groups besieging the northern city of Mosul, and carried out a parallel bombing campaign in conjunction with the advance of a force comprised primarily of the Kurdish YPG militia, backed by US special operations troops, against Raqqa in Syria.

The Pentagon has refused to acknowledge all but a handful of these killingsit recently raised its absurdly low estimate to 352while the US media, which has churned out endless war propaganda over Syrian civilians killed in attacks by government forces and their Russian allies, has virtually ignored the bloodbath inflicted by Washingtons air war.

The latest bombing, which struck the village of al-Salihiya, also severely wounded several civilians, with the death toll likely to rise. It follows by just days an earlier report of US bombs killing 10 civilians as they were driving through the desert southwest of Raqqa.

The stepped-up bombing raids have facilitated the YPGs overrunning of the town of Tabqa and a nearby strategic dam on the Euphrates River about 30 miles southwest of Raqqa, which ISIS proclaimed its Syrian capital after taking control of it in 2013, driving out or killing its substantial Alawite and Christian minority populations.

The YPGs conquest of Tabqa came just a day after the Pentagon announced that US President Donald Trump had authorized the direct arming of the Kurdish militia, a move that provoked heated protests from Turkey, Washingtons NATO ally, which views it as a branch of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has fought the government in Ankara for Kurdish autonomy for over three decades. Late last month, Turkish warplanes attacked YPG positions in Syria, killing at least 20 of the militias fighters. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is set to visit Washington beginning next Monday and has said he will appeal to Trump to reverse his decision.

Trumps meeting with the Turkish president will follow his White House talks Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. According to media reports, the substance of Trumps discussion with Lavrov centered largely on Syria, with the US president demanding that Moscow rein in both the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and its closest ally, Iran.

Moscow has attempted to secure US support for an agreement reached earlier this month in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, between Russia, Turkey and Iran on the creation of four separate de-escalation zones in Syria, to halt fighting and airstrikes in areas under the control of the so-called armed opposition, excluding ISIS and the group formerly known as the Al Nusra Front, Syrias Al Qaeda affiliate.

The Trump administration has remained noncommittal in relation to the zones, while the Pentagon has indicated that it has no intention of changing its air war because of the deal. Washington apparently orchestrated a protest and rejection of the zones by representatives of the so-called rebels, the Islamist forces armed and funded by the CIA, centering on Irans role in the agreement.

US imperialism is not interested in ending the conflict in Syria, but rather in stoking it in order to secure Washingtons original aim of regime change. The arming of the YPG is part of a steady escalation of the US intervention in Syria, which has seen the number of US troops operating in the country double over the past few months. Moreover, the Trump administration used the pretext of a chemical weapons attack, attributed without any substantive evidence to the Syrian government, to launch an attack that rained 59 cruise missiles on a Syrian government air base last month.

Meanwhile, US troops are participating in massive military exercises in Jordan, close to the Syrian border, prompting growing speculation that a US invasion may be in preparation. Photographs taken by Syrian drones have shown massed armor and large numbers of attack helicopters deployed near the border. Photographs also were posted on a rebel website appearing to show US special operations troops training a moderate rebel faction known as Mughawir al-Thowra in Syrias al Tauf region near both the Jordanian and Iraqi borders.

While Washington escalates its intervention in Syria, the bloody US-backed siege of Iraqs second largest city, Mosul, continues to grind on into its eighth month, with thousands of civilians killed and hundreds of thousands driven from their homes.

Some 600,000 Iraqis have fled the death and destruction unleashed by the offensive, while as many as 450,000 more remain trapped in the war zone, which is moving with increasing ferocity into Mosuls crowded Old City.

The International Committee of the Red Cross warned Wednesday that those still inside Mosul were facing very stark choices.

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, Peter Hamilton, the ICRC deputy director for the Middle East said Wednesday.

People dont have enough to eat, dont have water, Hamilton said. Babies, elderly and so on of course they are very vulnerable and may already be dying.
A key feature of this weeks Australian federal budget is a brutal assault on jobless workers, including an unprecedented plan to potentially cut off welfare payments to those who fail tests for certain types of illicit drug use.

As well as being targeted for invasive drug tests, the countrys nearly 800,000 unemployed workers and youth will be forced to spend many more hours per week fruitlessly looking for work and will have their benefits arbitrarily suspended for missing official interviews.

With nearly 20 jobless workers for every employment vacancybecause of the ongoing destruction of full-time jobsthese measures are blatantly aimed at humiliating, vilifying and punishing the jobless, and stripping them of basic legal and democratic rights.

The government and employers want to increasingly force the unemployed into low-paid jobs on insecure, super-exploitative conditions. This will further drive down wage levels, which are already falling in real terms, while slashing social spending in order to cut taxes for big business and wealthy individuals.

In a two-year trial, some 5,000 people receiving below-poverty line Jobseeker Payments or Youth Allowances will be subjected to testing for cannabis, methamphetamine and ecstasy use. Saliva, hair follicle and urine testing will be administered by a private contractor, during Department of Human Services interviews.

This sets a far-reaching precedent. What will be next? Drug-testing for access to the governments Medicare healthcare system? Or for other fundamental civil and political rights, such as the right to vote?

Despite the government claiming that jobseekers will be picked randomly for testing at three unnamed locations, they will be selected using a profiling tool designed to target those known to suffer from addiction and related health problems.

According to a press release by Social Services Minister Christian Porter, the program will feature a data-driven profiling tool developed for the trial to identify relevant characteristics that indicate a higher risk of substance abuse issues.

Health and welfare workers criticised the tests for targeting marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetaminescheaper drugs used commonly by people from lower socio-economic backgroundswhile not detecting alcohol, or cocaine, heroin or other drugs that are more expensive.

Drug use and mental health experts also pointed out that treatment and rehabilitation facilities for drug dependence are notoriously scarce and, where they do exist, either inadequate or expensive. People cut-off their benefits, mostly suffering from addiction, are likely to be thrown into destitution, homelessness and petty crime.

Yvonne Wilson, CEO of Griffith-based welfare support agency, the Linking Communities Network, asked: Whats going to happen to those people? Are they going to be left without an income? How are they going to pay their rent? How are they going to buy their food? How are they even going to get to the rehab centre, if thats what they want to do to turn their life around?

People who fail a first test will be placed on cashless welfare cards and have their welfare quarantined from buying drugs or alcohol. Those who test positive twice will be referred to a doctor for substance abuse treatment, as a condition for retaining access to payments. If they fail to adhere to a treatment program, they will be subjected to payment suspensions and ultimately cancellations.

In addition, so-called alcohol or drug abusers will no longer receive exemptions from mutual obligation requirements, such as turning up for appointments or looking for work, because of their dependency issues. Those receiving slightly higher Disability Support Pensions on the basis of their addiction problems will be cut-off or thrown onto the lower Jobseeker Payments.

Similar programs imposed in the US, Britain and New Zealand in recent years have been used to drive people off welfare and into marginalised existences, not decent jobs.

Knowing this, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull defended the plan in the face of widespread outrage on the day after the budget was delivered. He declared: The lesson is dont do drugs. The bottom line is if youre on welfare, what youve got to do is get off welfare and into a job.

Jobseeker Payment recipients will also have to spend much more time looking for work or toiling on work for the dole programs. Around 270,000 people aged between 30 and 49 years of age will be forced to spend 50 hours a fortnight20 hours more than they do currently.

Those aged 55 to 59 will no longer be able to volunteer for selected charities or services to meet their 30 hours of mutual obligation requirements, with some possible exemptions. The jobless over 60 will have to do 10 hours of activity, with volunteering still included.

In addition, a three strikes and youre out policy will be imposed on those who fail to meet these onerous requirements or miss appointments. After one failure, they will lose half of their welfare payment for a fortnight. After another, they will be stripped of the entire payment for a fortnight. If they fail a third time, their payments will be cancelled entirely and they will have to wait a month to apply again.

To further compel the jobless to accept low pay and poor conditions, anyone who turns down a suitable job will have their welfare cut for at least a month, and will need to reapply to reactivate their payments.

Social Services Minister Porter was asked on Thursday what he thought constituted a suitable job and whether, for example, aeronautical engineers would need to take jobs in cafes to avoid punishment.

Porter said that any job was better than welfare. This notion that theres a perfect, or better or worse job, is not one that we accept, he said. His reply was revealing. It provided a glimpse of the reality, in which highly qualified university graduates are being forced to take cheap labour jobs.

Taken together, these compliance measures are forecast to cut welfare spending by $632 million over five years.

Trials of the governments cashless welfare cards, first inflicted on indigenous people, will be extended to June 2018 and spread to two more locations. A related income management schemealso dictating what welfare payments can purchasewill be extended for three years in 14 targeted working class areas.

Another $84 million will be cut by merging seven types of welfare benefits, including Newstart jobless payments, sickness benefits, widow pensions and partner allowances, into one Jobseeker Payment. It has been set at the Newstart level, which has been frozen in real terms by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments since 1994.

As well, the Department of Human Services, which includes the Centrelink payment agency, will shed 1,188 jobs next financial year, having already suffered 5,000 job cuts since 2014. This will add to the pressures on welfare recipients, as well as the departments workers. No less than 36 million phone calls to the departments agencies went unanswered last year.

In a display of ongoing bipartisan support for the deepening war on welfare, Labor Party leader Bill Shorten backed ratcheting up the mutual obligation compliance measures, and refused to rule out voting for the drug-testing legislation. Yes to mutual obligation, but just to be demonising one group of the population, lets just wait and see, he said.

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Australian budget set to heighten social and political antagonisms

[10 May 2017]
The Indian Army has directed all soldiers to strictly follow guidelines of informing the local units before going home on leave in the Valley.

By Shuja-ul-Haq : Taking lesson from the killing of the 22-year-old Army officer Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz in Shopian, the Indian Army has directed all soldiers to strictly follow guidelines of informing the local units before going home on leave in the Valley.

Sources in the security establishment said that there is a guideline which local officers or soldiers need to follow in the Valley. As per the guidelines, the Army unit in the area is informed well in advance about officers going on leave if he is from Kashmir. This is with respect to ensuring their safety.

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"There is an existing direction to all heads of Army units across the state to ensure that no soldier/officer leaves his unit until there is a proper go ahead in terms of safety," said a source in the Army.

Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz was kidnapped and killed by gunmen in Shopian on May 10 and his bullet-riddled body was found in Harmain village. He had gone home on leave to attend a cousin's wedding.

Lieutenant Fayaz was posted in Akhnoor area of Jammu.

As per reports, many soldiers in the Army are from rural areas.

Since Fayaz's brutal killing has come as a shock to the Army and the nation, it is expected that the soldiers and officers strictly follow the guidelines.

ALSO READ | Ummer Fayaz killing: Jammu and Kashmir Police identifies 3 Hizbul Mujahideen suspects

ALSO READ | Kashmir: Army officer, who had gone to attend a wedding in Shopian district, kidnapped and killed

ALSO WATCH | Army officer Ummer Fayaz's killing: Is it a crime to join Indian Army in Kashmir?

--- ENDS ---
TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) -- In 1984, President Reagan recognized the importance of military spouses and their commitment to the readiness of their family, and made National Military Spouse Appreciation Day. The Department of Defense later standardized the date, declaring that the national day will be observed each year the Friday before mother's day.

"Flexible. Strong. Supportive. Spontaneous." Those are the words that Lisa Francis, the wife of an Air Force Veteran, used to describe what it takes to be a military spouse.

For Lisa and her husband, Billy, their story started like everyone else's...boy meets girl, and they fall in love.

"I found her three weeks later in San Antonio, Texas, and we got married a year and a half later," says Billy Francis, a U.S. Air Force Veteran. "She's been my better half now for going on 28 years."

Lisa was born and raised in a military family, but the role from daughter to wife was something new to her.

"I guess as a dependent daughter and then a dependent wife, the roles are a little bit different, but 'patriot' is a word that would sum me up pretty well," says Lisa. "Being able to hold it all together and trying to stay grounded."

Of course, holding it together isn't always an easy task. Lisa did turn to her parents from time to time, as well as the group of wives she met at each of the bases.

Lisa continues, "From just saying 'You know what I need? I need time off. I need a break. I want to go to the grocery store by myself. Can you watch the kids?' Always willing to just say 'yes, absolutely,' has always just been very comforting."

Billy knows that while it doesn't take a special type of person to be a military spouse, they are very special people.

"They are very special people, but what makes them special is not any qualifier, it's what they do and who they are," says Billy

A strong bond and an even stronger love on this Military Spouse Appreciation day.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - The Police Unity Tour rolls on into day two and riders are finishing up 65 miles.

It was a rainy today for the riders and the roads a bit tougher with all the hills.

It's may have been a soggy day for the riders, but the weather didn't hold them back. They simply pushed each other along.

Team Tallahassee shared stories with other riders at different stops along the way, cherishing the memory of fallen officers from our area and across the country.

Sergeant Gregory Hunter worked for the Grand Prairie Police Department in Texas. Denise Hunter says riding in his honor is therapeutic.

The riders say they have a sense of accomplishment to complete day two and ride for their loved ones.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - Many are warning about an app that encourages people to harm themselves. The app is called the "Blue Whale Challenge" and the fear is younger users may be drawn to it.

You may have heard about the cinnamon challenge from a few years ago. Try eating a spoonful of cinnamon without drinking anything: a harmful dare that's led to serious consequences.

Now, there's an app you probably haven't heard of but it could be dangerous.

It's called the "Blue Whale" challenge, asking users to complete a series of dares that get more intense over 50 days. The dares involve self-harm and reporting to a "Curator" with a final dare to commit suicide.

We've reached out to local school districts about the app. Leon, Gadsden and Jefferson counties say they haven't heard about it.

Parents may worry about their children downloading the app but you won't find it on Apple's iOS store or the Google Play Store. It's been removed.

The app has reportedly led to suicides in other countries. A school district in Alabama warned parents about "Blue Whale", saying it may have been introduced at two of its high schools.

While it may be more difficult to download now, "Blue Whale" has been raising eyebrows on social media, urging people to avoid the app.
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WTXL) - A viewer reached out to us after discovering "JetBlue" was an option he saw while booking a flight out of Tallahassee.

Is it true, JetBlue? Check out their website. A viewer told WTXL the airline was an option for flights from Tallahassee to Hartford, Connecticut.

When you type "TLH" as a destination, it shows up, so, what's the deal?

At Tallahassee International Airport, the list of arrivals and departures don't include JetBlue. That's because the airline doesn't fly in and out of here, but a partner airline does.

"We currently have Silver Airways in our market, and Silver over the past two years has had a co-share agreement with JetBlue," said Chris Curry, the director of aviation for the City of Tallahassee. "The cities served by Silver from Tallahassee is Tampa, Orlanda and Fort Lauderdale, which are all JetBlue cities. So, if you fly out of Tallahassee and you use the GDS system to book your reservation, you can connect with JetBlue out of those three locations, and you get all the credits associated with flying JetBlue and baggage transfers, et cetera."

Last year, the airport hosted a conference focused on airline updates. While you won't see JetBlue on this list of airlines yet, the city's director of aviation says the airport continues to work with JetBlue to make that a reality.

"We have the infrastructure in place to fit any aircraft in their inventory," said Curry.

JetBlue doesn't include Tallahassee on its map of destinations. Friday, the airline sent us this statement:

"We are always looking to expand and fly to the places people want to go. We have no decisions regarding Tallahassee to announce at this time."

Still, the goal is get JetBlue to the Capital City, an initiative started by the community. Last year, the "GetBlue" campaign raised more than a million dollars in ticket pledges to bring the airline here.

As the airport awaits additions of other airlines, it continues its renovations, adding a third lane for TSA pre-check customers. That phase is expected to be completed in October.
The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Taliban and others

Mumbai terror attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa has also been slapped with sanctions by the US. (File Photo)

By India Today Web Desk: A day after it warned India and Afghanistan of attacks planned by Pakistan-based terror groups, the United States today imposed sanction on extremists organisations, including Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD). The move is aimed at disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks

The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Taliban, Jamaat-ud-Dawa al-Quran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISIS Khorasan.

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Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan and parts of India.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

The sanctions in particular have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the Welfare and Development Organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawa for Quran and Sunnah (WDO).

"These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, Director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

"The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities," Smith said.

"The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said.

"The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added.

OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISIS Khorasan.

Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan.

Inayat-ur Rahman has been slapped with sanctions for acting for JDQ and the Taliban, and for providing material and financial support to LeT and the Taliban. A long-time leader of JDQ, he worked directly for Haji Hayatullah.

OFAC designated the WDO for being controlled by Inayat-ur Rahman. As of 2015, he was the director, chairman, and president of WDO.

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(With PTI inputs)

WATCH: Hafiz Saeed and 4 others put on house arrest in Pakistan. Who's Hafiz Saeed? ALSO READ:

Pakistan-based terrorist groups planning to attack India and Afghanistan: US

Hafiz Saeed's brother-in-law Makki gets charge of head of JuD

JuD chief Hafiz Saeed detained: Is Pakistan on Donald Trump's radar?

Hafiz Saeed asks for lifting of travel ban, says JuD never involved in terror activities

10 takeaways from JuD chief Hafiz Saeed house arrest

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India has still not taken a decision on the invite for China but the US and South Korea announced today that they will be a part of the One Belt, One Road Forum.

By Ananth Krishnan: The United States and South Korea today announced last-minute participation at China's Belt and Road Forum, while India said it had still not decided on attending.

Matt Pottinger, Special Assistant to President Donald Trump and senior director for East Asia of National Security Council of the White House, will head the US delegation. His rank is equivalent to an Additional Secretary in the Indian government.

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His announcement came as a surprise as the US had in the past indicated wariness as the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. The US had also stayed away from the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), which India joined as second-largest member, and urged its allies to do the same.

South Korea also announced today it would send a delegation, underlining a change in climate of recently strained ties with China following last week's election. This followed a telephone call between Chinese President Xi Jinping and new president Moon Jae-in.

Ties had been tense over the previous government in Seoul agreeing to host the US anti-missile system THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defence) which led to a suspension of diplomatic exchanges and South Korean companies in China being targeted by boycott calls. President Moon, however, announced he will send a delegation led by Park Byeong-seug, a member of parliament and top official of his party.

Japan has also agreed to send a delegation represented by ruling Liberal Democratic Party's secretary general Toshihiro Nikai, thought to be close to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

So far, 28 countries have said they will send heads of state, among whom are Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Ministers of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

The Germany and United Kingdom are also sending ministers.

As of today morning, India said it was still yet to take a decision on the invite for China. India has voiced its oppositions to part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor that passes through Pakistan occupied Kashmir, with CPEC being framed as a flagship of the OBOR initiative.

ALSO READ | Beijing's One Belt, One Road Summit will embarrass India, says Chinese media

ALSO READ | Ambition to meet reality as China gathers world for Silk Road summit next week

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By Press Trust of India: Itanagar, May 12 (PTI) Union Minister Kiren Rijiju today said a vibrant democracy is possible through good governance.

"A vibrant democracy is possible through good governance and good governance becomes a reality when there is accountability," Rijiju said while speaking in the pre-session meeting on the occasion of commencement of first sitting of special session in the new assembly building here.

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"A tall magnificent building will be of no use if the very essence and importance of the institution is not taken into account," the Union Minister of State for Home Affairs said.

Rijiju asked every member of the House to make meaningful use of the institution and take optimum benefit from the privilege given to them for the good of the state and its people.

He urged upon the members to maintain the traditional democratic ideals to value the parliamentary form of governance.

Chief Minister Pema Khandu called upon the members of the assembly to uphold the sanctity of the highest law making institution of the state and work towards making Arunachal Pradesh Legislature the best in the country.

While throwing light on the evolution of Arunachal Pradesh Assembly, Khandu said, "Our state assembly has traversed a glorious journey since its inception in 1975. Keeping in-stride the ups and downs we have progressed and emerged as an identity ? distinct and determined. All through these years the legislative assembly has played a pivotal role as the highest platform of decision making and shaping the future of Arunachal Pradesh. It has been aptly declared as one of the best functioning legislative assemblies of the country, a recognition well deserved."

Congratulating the members on the historic day for being part of the transitional phase, the chief minister said that this was a beginning of a new chapter in the history of Arunachal Pradesh.

He made special mention about the longest serving member of the Arunachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly ? C T Mein who is a MLA since 1978 and lauded his contribution to a roaring applause from all present.

Khandu requested the MLAs to actively participate in the discussions and put as many questions on governance.

"By doing so, our ministers including me will have to do massive exercise to meet up the questions which shall eventually give positive impact and better the governance," Khandu reasoned.

He also pointed that the questions so asked by the members in the House should not be taken personally rather should be looked as a positive step towards effective and meaningful governance.

Lauding Speaker T N Thongdok?s contribution in strengthening the legislative assembly, the chief minister exhorted the members to join hands with the speaker in his endeavour in making the state assembly lively.

Thongdok in his speech said, "The new assembly building with more modernised, more centralised and more digitised infrastructure, the voice of the people that emanates from this Assembly will surely be louder, clearer and more meaningful."

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He sought the support of the members to make the monument a hub of public interest. He further divulged on the need to bring in tangible reforms in committee system of the Assembly Committees to achieve constitutional goals. PTI UPL RG PS

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Since US President Harry Trumans support for Israeli independence, the United States has been Israels sole steadfast ally. This loyalty is based upon a number of factors: Shared democratic values, American identification with the plight of the Jewish people, fidelity to Judeo-Christian roots and a well-organized and influential Jewish electorate. These bonds will nevertheless be weakened by several trends during coming decades.

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American foreign policy has often been idealistic, as exemplified by the pushes for world peace and democratization made by Presidents Woodrow Wilson and George Bush Jr. However, as American hegemony in the 21st century is challenged by China and as the costs and failures of foreign policy idealism in the Middle East mount, American voters will be more reluctant to support a muscular pro-Israel foreign policy. This support could be fatally undermined if American public opinion starts to believe that Israels control of Palestinians is motivated by territorial expansionism rather than by security considerations.

The identification with the plight of the Jewish people symbolized by the Holocaust, was another key factor in making American public opinion support Israel in the post-World War II era. However, as memories of the Holocaust recede and as Jews continue to thrive in the US, it will be harder to argue that threats to the Jewish Diaspora legitimize support for Israel.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Chinese President Xi Jinping (Photo: Getty Images)

This factor will be aggravated by the steady secularization of the US. Surveys during recent decades suggest that younger Americans increasingly resemble Europeans in their religious views. Thus, the strong identification of mainstream Americans with Israel as the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy will weaken. This means that in a few decades from now, the ranks of Evangelical Christian supporters of Israel in the US will be thinned.

A more tepidly Christian electorate will be complemented by a Jewish-American community eroded by assimilation and intermarriage. As Israel becomes more religious, while Jewish identity abroad dilutes, a chasm between the Jewish Diaspora and Israel will be unavoidable. It is hard to foresee how this chasm can be filled in the 21st century.

Nevertheless, the outlook for Israel is bright. There are a number of seldom-discussed trends that will benefit Israel during the 21st century.

The global threat of Islamism will be a fundamental factor in shaping attitude towards Israel in coming decades. As American, European, Indian, African and Chinese non-Muslims feel increasingly threatened by Islamic jihadism, it is likely that support and sympathy for Israel on the world stage will strengthen. This phenomenon is increasingly clear as politicians as diverse as Donald Trump, Geert Wilders, Frauke Petry and Narendra Modi blend anti-Islamist rhetoric with vocal support for Israel.

Europe will be an especially interesting case-study for this phenomenon during the 21st century. Traditionally anti-Semitic Eastern European countries may become some of the strongest supporters of the Jewish State. As historical memories of Islamic aggression are revived by mass Islamic immigration to the European continent, Eastern Europeans will rediscover and cherish their historical ties to the Jewish people. In Western Europe, where Muslim communities will challenge the dominance of native Europeans, policies towards Israel will become increasingly erratic: Left-wing governments will be aggressively anti-Israeli in order to pander to Muslim voters, while right-wing governments will embrace Israel to corroborate their anti-Islamist and Judeo-Christian credentials.

Any analysis of Israels strategic situation in the 21st century must mention China. The superpower of the 21st century may well become a stalwart supporter of the Jewish state. Confucian reverence for industry, erudition and family bonds dovetails nicely with traditional Jewish values. Indeed, there is already a relatively strong interest in China for Jewish culture thanks to the shared meritocratic ethos of the two cultures. This interest could be catalyzed by the growing ranks of Christians in China. It is not implausible that the tens of millions of Christians in China during the 21st century will embrace the pro-Israel narrative that so far has been the reserve of Evangelical Christians in the United States.

Furthermore, as Islamist violence in Chinas Xinjiang region festers and fuels tensions between Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese, it is likely that mainstream Chinese public opinion will instinctively support Israel against its hostile Muslim neighbors. This sympathy will translate into government policy when China democratizes and renewable energies wean the Chinese economy from its current dependency on Middle Eastern oil imports.

In this context, India is likely to become another reliable ally of Israel. Whereas the secularist Congress Party which dominated Indian politics until the early 1990s was hostile to Zionism, the proudly Hinduist BJP sympathizes with Israels challenges and has invested billions of dollars in purchasing Israeli military and civilian technology.

It is therefore essential that Israels establishment invest all available energies in strengthening cultural, economic and political bonds with China and India. Israels success during this century will depend on its ability to persuade the elites of the East that support for the presence of the Jewish People in the Land of Israel is a smart move.

An effective means to secure this goal would be to grant scholarships to the brightest Chinese and Indian students to study humanities and social sciences in Israel. Were this to happens, the Indian and Chinese journalists, diplomats and intellectuals of the 21st century may acquire a sympathy for Israel which would be denied to them if they continue to study in European and American universities.

The age of American dominance in world business and politics will end during the next decade. This development presents great challenges and opportunities. In order to seize the opportunities offered by the emerging powers of the East, Zionist activists need to hold their breath and layout long-term plans. Taming the four-year cycle of legislative and presidential elections in the US will no longer be relevant in the 21st century. Shaping the views of emerging elites and electorates in the ancient civilizations of China and India will be far more fundamental.
Contradicting previous White House explanations, President Donald Trump declared Thursday he had planned to fire FBI Director James Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step. His assertions came as Comey's temporary replacement joined in, contradicting other administration statements on the snowballing controversy.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump also said he'd asked Comey point-blank if he was under investigation and was assured three times he was not. Trump showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in an active FBI probe into his 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia's election meddling.

"I said, 'If it's possible, would you let me know am I under investigation?' He said you are not under investigation," Trump told NBC. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.

The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigationwhich he dismissed as a "made up story"was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a "showboat" and "grandstander," added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.
Lebanese news agency Al-Akhbar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, reported Friday morning at length what they referred to as the "Israeli penetration of Lebanese communications" during the speech of Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah on Thursday.

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The news agency claimed that citizens received "tens of thousands of calls and messages" to their phone numbers, some of which "appear to come from phones belonging to Hezbollah's media relations," at a time when the head of Hezbollah was giving a eulogy to Mustafa Badreddine , Hezbollah's former head of the military wing, marking the occasion of the first anniversary of his death . Hezbollah claims he was killed by " criminal gangs ."

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah

"The Israeli-Saudi alliance is waging a media war against the Lebanese resistance, in desperate attempts to undermine the confidence of the Lebanese and to sow the seeds of discord between the resistance fighters," wrote Al-Akhbar.

The news agency wrote that the calls and messages all carried either a voice or video message that "spread the lie that was launched by Al-Arabiya TV in early March, claiming that Nasrallah ordered the assassination of the martyr Badreddine."

The Lebanese news website Al-Nashra reported that civilians in Lebanon had received a phone call from an unidentified number during Nasrallah's speech, saying: "Our martyr killer is now delivering a speech to you."

The news website claimed that the number in question allegedly belonged to Hezbollah's information department. The Lebanese news website Al-Mulhak posted WhatsApp messages received by Lebanese: "Nasrallah the murderer continues to lie."

It was claimed in Al-Akhbar's article that an "unprecedented campaign was launched in Saudi and Hebrew media outlets repeating the same lie before Israeli officials (including the chief of staff of the Israeli occupation army, Gadi Eisenkot) publically adopted the statements broadcast by Al-Arabiya."

The article continued to claim that Al-Arabiya's statements were "supported by propaganda material in which no Israeli fingerprints were hidden," adding that "Facebook and Twitter also celebrated the hundreds of pages that 'broke' on a daily basis over the past two months (pages being promoted as paid ads) to work on marketing this 'Arab' lie.

Mustafa Badreddine (R)

"The events of the past weeks, which culminated yesterday in a complex technical breach of Lebanese communications, reveal the existence of a high potential source for such organized propaganda. It is difficult, technically, to reveal the source of this campaign. The Israeli enemy is known for its ability to conduct such campaigns."

The article compared this incident to an older one, saying that it is very reminiscent of "the media security campaigns that Israel carried out against the resistance and the Lebanese during the July 2006 war, when the Lebanese received calls and text messages from foreign numbers to incite the resistance."

Thousands of Lebanese have also received calls from foreign numbers (US, Canadian, Sri Lankan and Thai), all carrying a voice message, as well as video messages via WhatsApp and Viber.

Al-Akhbar pointed to Israel as the immediate suspect, noting that Hezbollah contacted the Lebanon's Ministry of Communications and Ogero (the main telecommunications service provider in Lebanon), opened an investigation find out what had happened, how the breach took place and who was responsible for it.

Hezbollah's media relations have issued a statement denouncing the messages as fake propaganda against them, saying that the matter is under investigation.
On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee on Legislation is to consider a bill that would restrict the ability to file a petition to the High Court of Justice to those who can prove standing in the relevant matter.

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The bill is being promoted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus Likud party. From the explanatory notes, it appears that its intention is to limit the ability of human rights organizations to petition the HCJ to declare West Bank outposts illegal and order their residents expulsion.

In early February, one such outpost, Amona, was dismantled and its Israeli residents evicted after the court ruled it to had been built on privately owned Palestinian land.

A panel of the HCJ (File photo: Gil Yohanan)

The bill is an amendment to the Basic Law: The Judiciary and would require petitioning persons or organizations to justify their locus standi, showing that they either suffered or are likely to suffer damage in the subject of their petition. The bill was presented by Likud MK Miki Zohar.

His party supports the proposal, but there are fears that Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon, who heads the Kulanu party, will veto the bill.

The explanatory notes to the bill read, In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing erosion of locus standi, which limits the ability to petition the court to one who is damaged by or related to the issue of the petition only.

The result is the proliferation of petitions filed by organizations and individuals on political and economic issues where the petitioner themselves have no connection to the subject matter of the petition and do not suffer any personal injury to which they seek relief.

These petitions are intended to lead to judicial intervention in matters that are not usually within the jurisdiction of the court, thereby bypassing the authority of elected officials and the decisions of the voter.

The proposal contains examples of petitions that have been filed concerning the demolition of settlements in the West Bank that were established decades ago and constitute a home and community for dozens and hundreds of families.

The initiators of the proposal argue that while the right of a person to demand his property is a constitutional right, many petitions end with an order to demolish the settlement or the houses in it, without the petitioners proving a right or connection to the land on which the houses are located and whose demolition they seek.

The bill also claims that the natural gas deal that eventually reached and was overturned by the HCJ was an example of using the court to circumvent decisions taken by the executive and the legislature, while the petitioners did not suffer personal damage.

(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)
THESSALONIKIA Greek court has convicted two Swedish nationals of belonging to the Islamic State group, and sentenced them to 15 years imprisonment.

The men's lawyer says they were also found guilty of arms possessiona pair of hunting kniveswith the intent of supplying a terrorist group.

The men, aged 30 and 21, were convicted Friday in the northeastern town of Alexandroupoli. They were arrested in February last year at a bus stop near the Turkish border.
A day after the head of Hamas announced that the murderer of Mazen Fukha was captured, the family of the assassinated official claimed that the assassin was a man named Ashraf Abu Laila, 37, from the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

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Since the publication, it has been claimed that he was a member of Hamas' military wing in the past and was expelled for moral offenses. Later, it was claimed that he had joined one of the Salafi groups in the Gaza Strip and was recruited by the Mossad.

Ashraf Abu Laila

Other sources mentioned that he was a car dealer and that his brother was a senior member of the military wing of Hamas. It was also claimed that some of Abu Laila's family members work in various government institutions in Gaza that are subordinate to Hamas.

On Thursday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh held a press conference and announced the arrest of the man who killed Fukha, who, according to him, acted in accordance with instructions from the Israeli defense establishment. Haniyeh, who appeared alongside Fukha's widow and Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar, added that the suspect confessed to the incident.

"The murderer will be tried and punished by law. Despite the pain, we are happy at this moment and proud of our security apparatuses," said Haniyeh. The fact that the Hamas leader Haniyeh delivered the announcement proves the significance Hamas attributed to Fukha and his assassination.

Haniyeh's press conference

On Thursday, the Hamas military prosecution in Gaza carried out a reenactment of the assassination with the suspect after Haniyeh officially announced that he had been arrested along with others involved in the assassination. It was not divulged who the others were.

Fukha was assassinated at close range near his home in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood of southwest Gaza City by an assassin or assassins who used weapons with a silencer. They shot him in the head with four bullets and fled. He died immediately.

Mazen Fukha

After the assassination, Hamas pointed an accusing finger at Israel and claimed that it wanted to create fear among the other released prisoners who had been deported to the Gaza Strip and felt that they were protected against liquidation. In the context of the investigation, Hamas imposed a siege on Gaza and prohibited the entry and exit of any person except for exceptional humanitarian cases.

Fukha, a Hamas member from Tubas, was sentenced in 2003 to nine life terms after being convicted of sending a terrorist to carry out a suicide bombing attack. The terrorist blew himself up on an Egged bus near Safed and killed nine people. Fukha was released from prison in the Shalit deal in 2011 and due to the gravity of his actions, he was deported to the Gaza Strip.

(Translated and edited by N. Elias)
The UP CM had promised meeting the family after they insisted failing which they had refused cremation of the martyred jawan.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi today met the family members of BSF jawan Prem Sagar who was martyred few days back in Samba sector in Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani Army had mutilated his body.

The UP CM had promised meeting the family after they insisted failing which they had refused cremation of the martyred jawan .

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The UP CM on meeting the family gave Rs 6 lakh compensation, Rs 4 lakh in cheque and Rs 2 Lakh in cash. He promised jobs to both sons of the martyr and also better education for the children.

"We are happy that our CM has kept his promise and came to meet us. He has promised jobs and education for out family members", said Saroj Devi, daughter of the martyr.

The family demanded that a memorial should be built in the name of Prem Sagar to which the CM agreed. Yogi Adityanath also assured the family that their village Tikampaar would be developed soon on the lines of model village.

The meeting of Adityanath with martyr's family lasted for 15 minutes.

ALSO READ:BSF Head Constable Prem Sagar cremated at his native village Tikampaar

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The Ministry of Construction and Housing is working alongside the city of Jerusalem to consolidate a construction plan to build over 28,000 apartments in the capital over the next decade.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to present US President Donald Trump with the plan at the latter's visit to the city later this month.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat

The agreement grants government indemnification to construct infrastructures such as roads, education facilities and parks even before any of the apartments are populated.

About 15,000 apartments will be built beyond the Green Line in Givat HaMatos, East Talpiot, Ramot, Pisgat Ze'ev, Neve Yaakov, Ramat Shlomo, Gilo and Atarot.

Aside from the apartments, the plan includes the construction of dozens of public facilities, community centers, schools and kindergartens.

10,000 apartments are set to be built within the Green Line in Lifta, Pat, Ora, Masua, Romema, Herzog, Arnona, Malha and Reches Lavan.

The plan, which was promoted by Minister of Construction Yoav Galant, is estimated to cost around NIS 5 billion.

Minister of Construction Yoav Galant

"We are nearing a new age, the rise of which was felt since Donald Trump's rise to presidency. The days of stuttering are over," said Deputy Mayor Meir Turgeman, who helms the local planning and construction committee. "The pressure of the Obama era is no more, when every week every plan had to face 'yes and no, subtract here and add here.' In recent weeks, we authorize plans with no limitations."

The Jerusalem City Hall released a statement commenting that it "sees with great importance the continued construction and development of Jerusalem, especially in celebration of 50 years since its reunification, adding more than 7 million square meters of potential employment alongside an increase of the residential building, as a way to create jobs and lower apartment costs in the city."
LAKE SAIMAAWildlife conservationists in Finland are planning to give endangered seals a spot of online fame by streaming encounters with some of the few hundred remaining mammals in a bid to raise awareness of their plight.

The Saimaa ringed seal, named after their home in Europe's fourth-largest lake, is found only in these waters and is one of just five remaining freshwater seal species in the world. But milder winters have left few shoreline snow banks for the seals to burrow into lairs where they give birth to pups, and many get caught in fishing nets.
The Hezbollah terrorist organization transferred its military posts between the al-Jadida crossing and the hammock area along the Syrian-Lebanese border. The outposts were transferred to the army in accordance with the promise made by Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah Thursday at a ceremony marking the anniversary of the assassination of Mustafa Badr a-Din, the military commander of the organization.
Some 1,200 people took part in the march of the slut, the provocative protest march against sexual violence, rape culture and victim blaming. The parade took off from Gordon Beach in Tel Aviv to Habimah Square in the city. "The word slut is a violent social tool designed to embarrass women and cultivate violence against women," the organizers explained. "So we've claimed this word and taken away society's ability to use it against us."

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This is the sixth time the march has taken place. The protesters marched in minimal attire to drive their message home: "I have the right to wear what I want and not become a sex victim." The signs carried by demonstrators included: "Being drunk does not amount to consent," "Women want safety" and "Only when I want to."

Tel Aviv Slutwalk (Photo: Motti Kimchi)

Slutwalk participant (Photo: Ziv Shevach)

Tel Aviv Slutwalk (:  )

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Photo: Motti Kimchi

Unlike previous marches, a large percentage of the participants were girls and adolescents. "After the group rape of girls in Herzliya http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4950070,00.html and Yehud, I decided I was coming," said Sapir, 18, from Ramat Hasharon.

Photo: Motti Kimchi

Photo: Motti Kimchi

According to The Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel, one out of every three women undergoes sexual abuse during her lifetime, one out of every seven women undergoes rape, and one out of every six girls undergoes incest.

Photo: Motti Kimchi

Photo: Motti Kimchi

Orit, a resident of Tel Aviv, explained that without an initiated provocation, their message would not have been taken seriously. "This is the only way men understand that women can do what they want and that as soon as they say no, it's no."

Photo: Motti Kimchi

Photo: Motti Kimchi

Bracha Bard, one of the leaders of the march, spoke about the female lawyer of one of the suspects in the group rape in Herzliya, who used the victim's dress and behavior as part of her client's defense. "It is inconceivable that lawyers will accuse sexual assault victims of having brought the rape on themselves, because they uploaded revealing images on Facebook," she said. "A society that is paralyzed by this phenomenon allows the next rape. And while the victim is in such a difficult situation and cannot cope with the entire procedure or the harsh social reactions to her, the suspects are released home."

Photo: Motti Kimchi

The Slutwalk movement, which grew into similar protest marches around the world, was founded in Canada after a local policeman said women should stop dressing provocatively if they did not want to be raped. In Israel, sexual assault victims who come forward are often faced with accusations that what they wore had contributed to their sexual exploitation or assault.
European governments are holding urgent talks Friday with the US Department of Homeland Security, alarmed at a proposed expansion of the US ban on in-flight laptops and tablets to include planes from the EU.

Such a move, which some airline officials expect will happen, would create logistical chaos on the world's busiest corridor of air travelas many as 65 million people fly on trans-Atlantic routes a year. The current ban, in place on 10 mostly Middle Eastern cities since March, affects about 50 flights per day.

Chief among the concerns are whether any new threat prompted the proposal, said European Commission transport spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, who confirmed the talks. She said the EU had no new information about a specific security concern. US officials have said the decision in March to bar laptops and tablets from the cabins of some international flights, mostly from the Mideast, wasn't based on any specific threat but on longstanding concerns about extremists targeting jetliners.
The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that a 20-year-old Palestinian Saba Abid was killed Friday by IDF forces at a rally in the West Bank village of Nabi Salih near Ramallah, which aimed to show support of the Palestinian security prisoners currently engaged in a hunger strike.

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The ministry further claimed that Israeli soldiers had opened fire on protestors after dozens of Palestinians began hurling rocks at them, and the Abid shot in his stomach. He was treated by the Red Crescent, which rushed him to the Palestinian West Bank city of Salfit for treatment, where he eventually succumbed to his wounds.

Saba Abid, who was reported to have been killed during a Palestinian West Bank protest

The IDF, however, claimed that some 150 Palestinians had been disrupting the peace at soldiers, who aimed at their legs as part of efforts to disperse the protestors.

Hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners in Israel are currently on an open-ended strike, now in its 26th day, saying they seek to improve their prison conditions.

Israel stated that the strike's leader, convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti, is using it to raise his profile among Palestinians. Barghouti is considered a potential successor to current Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Last Sunday, Israel released video footage showing Barghouti breaking the hunger strike with cookies and salt. Palestinians say the video is a fabrication.

Barghouti is serving five life terms after being convicted of directing several deadly terrorist attacks.
Britain's National Health Service (NHS) announced Friday that hospitals across the country have been hit by a "ransomware" cyberattack but there is no evidence that patient data has been accessed. At least 16 large hospitals have been hit by the attack, with the Labour party warning of a real cause for concern for UK patients.

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NHS Digital, which oversees hospital cybersecurity, says the attack used the Wanna Decryptor variant of malware, which holds affected computers hostage while the attackers demand a ransom.

The results of the cyber attack (:)

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Photo: Reuters

NHS Digital says the attack "was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors."

The attack is causing canceled procedures and appointments at hospitals across England. NHS Digital says 16 NHS organizations report being hit.

Emergency services entry at a British hospital (Photo: AFP)

Hospitals across England have canceled appointments and turned away patients after suffering an apparent cyberattack.

Hospitals in London, northwest England and other parts of the country reported problems with their computer systems Friday. They asked patients not to come to the hospitals unless it was an emergency.

A screenshot of the cyber attack's resulting computer crash (Photo: AP)

Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of $300 worth of the online currency Bitcoin, saying: "Ooops, your files have been encrypted!"

NHS Merseyside, which operates several hospitals in northwest England, tweeted that "following a suspected national cyberattack, we are taking all precautionary measures possible to protect our local NHS systems and services."

Bart's Health, which runs several London hospitals, said it had activated its major incident plan, cancelling routine appointments and diverting ambulances to neighboring hospitals.

Earlier Friday, The Spanish government released a statement, saying that a large number of Spanish companies were hit by hackers who planted malware in their computers
Russian multinational cybersecurity and anti-virus provider Kaspersky Lab claimed Friday that tens of thousands of computers in nearly 100 countries have been hit in the cyber attack earlier this week in hospitals in the UK. According to the New York Times, the attack was carried out through hacking software leaked to the Web by a group that calls itself Shadow Brokers, which last year distributed hacking tools stolen from the US National Security Agency (NSA).

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Cyber extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments to spam emails that appeared to contain invoices, job offers, security warnings and other legitimate files.

The ransomware encrypted data on the computers, demanding payments of $300 to $600 to restore access. Security researchers said they observed some victims paying via the digital currency bitcoin, though they did not know what percent had given in to the extortionists.

Cyber attack (Photo: AFP)

Asian countries reported no major breaches on Saturday, but officials in the region were scrambling to check and the full extent of the damage may not be known for some time.

China's official Xinhua news agency said some secondary schools and universities had been affected, without specifying how many or identifying them.

The malware company MalwareHunterTeam, which tracks ransom attacks, said most of the computers affected in the attack were in Russia, and it appears that in most of the affected countries, most of the computers attacked were blocked by ransom software.

Microsoft released a security update last March following leaked hackers, but the hackers took advantage of the fact that vulnerable institutions, especially hospitals, had not yet installed the update on their systems.

Microsoft put out a statement following the attack, saying that costumers who are running free antivirus software and have Windows updates enabled are protected from ransomware.

British Prime Minister Theresa May issued a statement Friday, saying that the cyberattack that has crippled some UK hospitals is part of a wider international attack.

"This was not targeted at the NHS, it's an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected," May said.

"We're aware that a number of NHS (National Health Service) organisations have reported that they've suffered from a ransomware attack," May said. "We're not aware of any evidence that patient data has been compromised."

May (Photo: Getty Images)

May stressed that there is no evidence that patient data has been compromised.

Hospitals across the country have been hit by a "ransomware" attack that froze computers, shutting wards, closing emergency rooms and bringing treatment to a halt. The infected computer screens demand payment for the data to be released.

Similar widespread attacks have been reported in Spain and other countries.

Spain, which announced earlier Friday that several Spanish companies were hit by a cyber attack, has activated a special protocol to protect critical infrastructure in response to the "massive infection" of personal and corporate computers targeted in ransomware cyberattacks. Spain's Telefonica was among the companies hit.

The National Center for the Protection of Critical Infrastructure in Spain said Friday it was communicating with more than 100 providers of energy, transportation, telecommunications and financial services about the attack even if basic services had not suffered any disruption.

The Spanish Ministry of Energy, Tourism and Digital Agenda says the attack Friday affected the Windows operating system of employees' computers in several companies. It said the attacks were carried out with a version of WannaCry ransomware that encrypted files and prompted a demand for money transfers to free up the system.

A top Russian mobile operator says it has come under cyberattacks that appeared similar to those that have crippled some UK hospitals.

Pyotr Lidov, a spokesman for Megafon, said Friday's attacks froze computers in company's offices across Russia. He said that mobile communications haven't been affected. Lidov said that the attack involved demands of payment of $300 worth to free up the system.

He added that the company managed to restore the work of its call center but closed most of its offices for the day. Some Russian media also have reported cyberattacks on the Interior Ministry and the Investigative Committee. The committee, the nation's top investigative agency, has rejected the claim.

Romania's intelligence service says it has intercepted an attempted cyberattack on a government institution which it said likely came from cybercriminal group APT28 also known as Fancy Bear.

Cyberint, subordinated to the Romanian Intelligence Service, said Friday it thwarted a cyberattack to a government institution, without

saying when it occurred, following notification from NATO and the Romanian foreign intelligence agency. The Foreign Ministry did not confirm whether it was the institution in question.

The statement said "due to the efficient cooperation between the institutions, the attack was prevented as were damages, as the targets were identified as well as the methodology of the attack," adding that "Romania is no exception."

Meanwhile in Britain, NHS Digital, which oversees hospital cybersecurity, said the attack used the Wanna Decryptor variant of malware, which holds affected computers hostage while the attackers demand a ransom.

NHS Digital says the attack "was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors."

The attack is causing canceled procedures and appointments at hospitals across England. NHS Digital says 16 NHS organizations report being hit.

A spokesman for the European Union's police agency, Europol, says Britain and Spain have asked for its support as they investigate the ransomware cyberattacks in those countries.

The spokesman, Jan Op Gen Oorth, declined to give further details Friday so as not to jeopardize the ongoing investigations.

In a tweet, Europol Director Rob Wainwright said the cyberattack on British health care institutions "follows trend from US of ransomware attacks on health care trusts."
With Nebraskas continued issues with prison overcrowding, state government should be embracing Sen. Justin Waynes bill to do away with a two-year waiting period for convicted felons to regain their voting rights after they have completed their sentences.

LB75 is an opportunity for our state to make a strong statement to convicted criminals that they can leave their lives of crime behind them. If enacted into law, it would tell people who have served their sentences that they have paid their debt to society and are now full members of their communities.

The bill has been passed three times by the Legislature, but Gov. Pete Ricketts vetoed it last week and now Wayne is seeking to override the veto. An override vote is imminent.

Any step we can take to help people who have served their sentence return to society is worthwhile. The high percentage of criminals who return to prison is a serious problem that Nebraska must continue to work to address. If former prisoners are encouraged to speak their minds about community and state issues, that could help them find their place in society and live law-abiding lives.

Its estimated that, if this bill is passed, it would affect about 7,800 felons in the state, not counting all the prisoners to be released from state prisons in the future.

Nebraska law now requires parole after a prisoner is released with nearly all sentences, and even with this bill, they would still have to complete their parole before being allowed to vote.

If LB75 becomes law, the state would become the 25th to restore felons voting rights immediately after they have completed parole or probation. Another 13 states and the District of Columbia allow ex-cons to vote as soon as they are released from prison.

In vetoing the bill, Ricketts claimed that doing away with the two-year waiting period for felons to vote would be the equivalent of giving them a legislative pardon.

But that reasoning is flawed.

Merriam-Webster defines pardon as the excusing of an offense without exacting a penalty. This bill only applies to felons who have completed their prison sentences and completed any parole to which they were sentenced. They have already paid their penalties. They have been living and working in their communities but have no say in the local, state and federal government.

It takes 30 votes in the Nebraska Legislature to override a veto. The three times that LB75 was passed, it received 28, 32 and 27 votes, so it can be expected that the vote to override will be close. But each time the bill came up for a vote, there were several senators who did not vote.

Wayne said Wednesday that he was confident at least 30 senators will vote to override the veto.

Sen. Dan Quick of Grand Island and Sen. Curt Friesen of Henderson have both voted for the bill. We encourage them and the rest of their fellow senators to stand up for a bill that would send a clear message to convicted felons who have completed their sentences that their opinions are valued and they can return to a law-abiding life.

LB75 should become law and the Legislature can make it happen.
YORK  A York County Grand Jury has found that law enforcement officers had no fault in the death of a man who fled from a traffic stop in late February and had an accident on Interstate 80 near Waco.

The findings were released Friday afternoon, after the grand jury convened earlier in the day.

A grand jury is called anytime a person has died while being apprehended by or while in custody of law enforcement or detention personnel.

According to earlier information released by the York County Attorneys office, at approximately 5:19 p.m., on Monday, Feb. 27, the York County 911 dispatch received a report of a reckless driver weaving in the eastbound lanes on Interstate 80. A Nebraska State Patrol trooper near the area responded and located the suspect vehicle at the eastbound rest area.

The trooper made contact with the driver who was identified as Anthony Emmons, 40, of Kearney.

Before the trooper ended the contact, Emmons fled the scene in his vehicle, according to the county attorneys office. At approximately 5:45 p.m., Emmons vehicle struck a guardrail in the median near mile marker 360. Emmons was pronounced dead at the scene.

The grand jury report says, During the initial contact at the rest stop, believing Emmons may be intoxicated, the trooper decided to conduct a DUI investigation. At that point, Emmons started his vehicle and sped away traveling east on the interstate. The trooper begins to pursue the vehicle Emmons is driving, at a safe distance. The manner at which the trooper conducted the pursuit was at all times done in accordance with his training and was done appropriately during the entirety of the event.

During the pursuit, Emmons calls 911 to explain that he intended to kill himself and did not want to hurt anyone else. Emmons was driving at speeds of approximately 100 mph during the pursuit. Emmons further explained that he intended to crash into the first thing he saw. Near the Waco interchange, Emmons does crash into a guardrail and then a concrete pillar that was part of the underpass. The vehicle rolls, sustains significant damage and eventually comes to rest in the median of the interstate. During that time, Emmons, who was not wearing a seatbelt, is ejected from the vehicle and dies instantly.

An autopsy was conducted on Feb. 28, 2017, by Robert E. Bowen, MD, a pathologist in Douglas County, Nebr. A toxicology conducted determined that Emmons had amphetamines, amlodipine and alcohol (at a concentration of .289, more than 3.5 times the legal limit).

The cause of death for Emmons was blunt force to the head, chest and abdomen. The manner of death is suicide.

The grand jury finds no criminal conduct on the part of law enforcement and therefore returns No True Bill.
BSF jawan Prem Sagar's family had earlier refused to cremate his body until Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited them.

By Rohit Kumar Singh: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Adityanath Yogi will be arriving in Deoria today to meet the family of BSF jawan Prem Sagar, who was martyred in Jammu and Kashmir almost two weeks back.

Adityanath had promised the bereaved family that he will visit them after they had refused to cremate his body insisting on meeting the CM with their demands.

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Prem Sagar was one of the two BSF jawans whose body was found in mutilated condition in Krishna Ghati of Jammu and Kashmir earlier this month. Reports said that the jawans were killed by the Border Action Team (BAT) of the Pakistani army.

Adityanath's visit to Tikampaar, the village of the martyred BSF jawan coincides with his 'terehvi' function which is scheduled for today. The CM will participate in the ceremony.

The chief minister will be arriving in Tikampaar village at 5:30 pm.

The deceased BSF jawan's family has some demands for CM Adityanath:

1. Arrangement for better education of Sagar's three children.

2. A petrol pump or gas agency be allotted to the widow of the martyr.

3. A memorial should be made in the village in the name of the martyred jawan.

4. A hospital and a Kendriya Vidyalaya be opened in the village.

KRISHNA GHATI INCIDENT

Head Constable Sagar along with Punjab's Naib Subedar Paramjit Singh were part of a three-member patrol team near the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district when they were suddenly attacked by a Pakistani Border Action Team (BAT) on May 1.

Not only were Sagar and Singh killed brutally but their bodies were also mutilated. The act angered the armed forces who have since promised of a "befitting response".

WATCH: Jawans mutilated: A potboiler for netas? ALSO READ:

BSF jawan cremated in UP's Deoria after CM Yogi Adityanath persuades angry family

Jawans mutilated: Former army officers demand strong retribution for Pakistan's cross-border attacks

--- ENDS ---
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Evenimentul | Cotidian regional de stiri si anunturi din zona Moldovei
Mexico City: Mexico said on Thursday it had called US President Donald Trump`s bluff over his suggestion he only decided to stay in the North American Free Trade Agreement as a favor to the leaders of Mexico and Canada after they asked him to renegotiate the deal.



However, Mexico`s government said it had sent a very different message to the United States during a crisis over NAFTA`s future late last month, when Trump considered starting the six-month process for withdrawing from the accord.



"The message was: if you guys think we`re going to start negotiations with the trigger pulled on a US exit in six months, forget about it!" Mexican Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo told an audience at the Mexico Business Forum.



"If you do that, just get out already - because there`s no way we`re negotiating under those conditions," he said.



Guajardo said talk of the United States preparing to leave NAFTA was likely part of a strategy to press Congress to approve Trump`s pick for US trade representative.



While Mexico and Canada helped change Trump`s mind, so did members of his cabinet, US lawmakers and US producers that would be hurt by a US exit from NAFTA - showing the limits to Trump`s unilateral moves, the minister argued.



Guajardo said the plan to trigger a US withdrawal of NAFTA was done "in desperation, which occurs very frequently these days in those parts" - an apparent jab at the way Trump has rolled out some of his key policy proposals.



Mexico`s ties with the United States have been strained by Trump`s repeated pledge to dump NAFTA if he cannot secure better terms for U.S. workers and industry in a renegotiation.



The rhetoric has encouraged efforts by Mexico to diversify its economy away from dependence on the United States.



Guajardo said Mexico was tightening trade ties with China, deepening deals to get better market access to markets in Brazil and Argentina, making progress on a free trade deal with Jordan and updating an agreement with the European Union.



If the United States did withdraw from NAFTA in a "worst-case scenario," it would not necessarily mean the end of the deal, Guajardo said. Mexico and Canada could opt to make it the framework for their trade relationship, he said.
Washington: The US government has announced the arrests of almost 1,400 gang members between March 26 and May 6 in the largest ever operation undertaken by the Department of Homeland Security`s (DHS) investigation unit.



A total of 1,378 people were arrested around the country for assorted crimes, including drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, people trafficking, murder and people trafficking for sexual exploitation, DHS officials said at a Washington press conference on Thursday.



"Gangs threaten the safety of our communities, not just in major metropolitan areas but in our suburbs and rural areas, too," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Thomas Homan.



"Gang-related violence and criminal activity present an ongoing challenge for law enforcement everywhere. Our efforts to dismantle gangs are much more effective in areas where partnership with local law enforcement is strongest," he added.



Of the 1,378 arrests, 933 were US citizens, while 445 were foreigners from 21 countries in South America, Central America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean.



Those arrested are citizens of Mexico (249), El Salvador(72), Honduras (63), Guatemala (19), the Dominican Republic (10), Cuba (four), three each from Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Nicaragua, while the others come from nations as diverse as Brazil, Mauritania, Laos and Jamaica, along with other countries.



The DHS said that of those arrested, 1,095 had declared their allegiance to certain gangs, including 137 members of the Bloods, 118 affiliated with the Surenos, 104 who said they belonged to Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 104 who said they were part of the Crips.



Among those arrested were three people who benefited in the past from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme inaugurated in 2012 by former President Barack Obama for undocumented migrants who were brought to the US as children and known as "Dreamers".



The programme halted the deportations of young undocumented foreigners and granted them temporary work permits on the condition that they not commit any crimes.



According to the DHS, the three individuals were excluded from DACA protection for criminal activities.



Since DACA was implemented in 2012, DHS has denied coverage to 1,500 people because of their affiliation with criminal groups.
Islamabad: At least 25 people lost their lives while over 35 others, including Deputy Chairman Senate of Pakistan Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, were injured in a roadside blast that took place at Balochistan in Pakistan on Friday, officials said.

The blast took place in the town of Mastung, about 50 kilometers south of Balochistan's provincial capital of Quetta today afternoon. It appears to have targeted the convoy of Senate deputy chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

District Health Officer in Mastung Dr Sher Zaman said, "25 bodies have been shifted to two hospitals in Quetta," adding that 37 injured were also being transferred to Quetta.

Maulana Haideri's convoy was targeted in the blast with pictures showing the extent of damage to his vehicle. The deputy chairman was returning from an event at Ittihad Bainul Muslimeen at Jamia Masjid Hammadi when the explosion took place.

Haideri, however, survived the attempt on his life.

"He was wounded by the blast but someone who was sitting next to him, and his driver were both killed," an official said.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Beijing: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived here on Friday to attend the high-profile Silk Road forum during which Pakistan was expected to sign pacts with China for the construction of an airport and expressway in the strategic Gwadar port.

Sharif's delegation comprised of four chief ministers, several federal ministers besides Prime Minister's Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.

The Belt and Road Forum is being organised by China to showcase its multi-billion dollar Silk Road initiative of which the USD 50 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) connecting China's Xinjiang with Balochistan through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is a part.

He would be among 29 heads of state and governments taking part in the meeting from May 14-15.

During Sharif's visit here, signing of agreements on the construction of the Gwadar Airport, Gwadar expressway and upgradation of railway track ML-1 was on the agenda, Minister for

Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal, who is in- charge of the CPEC, was quoted as saying by the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan news agency.

All the projects were expected to be financed by China, which has already taken over the Gwadar port's handling.

Recent reports here said China has plans to station its marines in the strategic deep water port, which provides a gateway for Beijing to the Arabian Sea and to the Indian Ocean.

Iqbal said the CPEC was world's biggest ever project of regional connectivity and a shining part of the Belt and Road initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China was aiming at establishing regional connectivity with Africa and Asia through multiple linkages through this initiative, he said.

Iqbal said that though the visit of the Chinese President faced a delay owing to the negative politics in the country, the government managed to launch projects worth over USD 50 billion, including in the energy and infrastructure sectors.

Iqbal said a distinctive aspect of the Belt and Road Forum was the participation of chief ministers of Pakistan's four provinces which he asserted would give a strong message of cohesiveness among the national leadership on national security, development and particularly the CPEC.

The Chief ministers taking part were Shahbaz Sharif (Punjab), Pervaiz Khattak (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), Nawab Sanaullah Zehri (Balochistan) and Murad Ali Shah (Sindh).

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Railways Minister Saad Rafique, Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir, State Minister for Information Technology Anousha Rehman besides Ahsan Iqbal were accompanying Sharif.

Iqbal said under the CPEC, railway track would be upgraded from Karachi to Landi Kotal to double the speed from existing 80 kilometers per hour to 160 km per hour.

Such an upgradation of railways would not only usher an era of economic development by enhancing local market's access to other markets but also enhance competitiveness, he said.

India is yet to confirm its participation in the Band Road Forum. The US and a number of other western countries have either skipped the summit or deputed officials to attend it.
Tezpur (Assam): The banned ULFA-I is recruiting youths from different parts of Assam, its Director General of Police Mukesh Sahay on Friday said.

"ULFA-I is still recruiting youths from different parts of Assam and its commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah is conducting it from Myanmar," the DGP said while interacting with media on the sidelines of a high-level security meeting at Army's 4 Crops Headquarters here.

Referring to action against other militant outfits in the state, he said operations against National Democratic Front of Bodoland(Songbijit) is on in Sonitpur district as well as across Assam.

The combing operations against militants have been intensified ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Assam later this month, he said.

"Following anti-insurgency operations in Bangladesh extremist groups such as Jamatul Mujahaddin, ULFA-I and NDFB-S may try to create disturbance in the state. The security forces look into the matter very seriously," the DGP said adding close circuit cameras would be installed on the streets in Guwahati within two weeks.

The DGP said there were several security lapses in the M P Jewellers showroom in Guwahati where dacoits in a daring heist took away gold jewellery weighing seven to eight kg on May 9.

Chief Secretary V K Pipersenia reporters said that if any government employee is disturbed by the behaviour of their superior officials or may have been deprived of their rights, they should contact him or DGP special branch and not use social media platforms to air their grievances.

The security meeting was held in view of the May 26 visit of the prime minister and the threat perception from militants. It also discussed border-related issues between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh as well as Nagaland, official sources said.
New Delhi: With Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Chief Lalu Prasad Yadav facing a barrage of criticism with his daughter Misa Bharti embroiled in a land scam, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Friday questioned Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar`s silence over the accusations levied upon his alliance`s partner.

Taking a dig at Nitish Kumar, Paswan said that it doesn`t matter that the former is the state chief, as in reality it is Lalu Prasad who rules Bihar."At the time JD(U) allied with the RJD we knew that future of Bihar is bleak.

The reality is that Nitish Kumar is wearing the crown of a chief minister but it is Lalu Prasad who is ruling and you can very well see the result of Lalu rule," said Paswan.

Meanwhile, a leading English daily accessed papers that document land purchases in Delhi`s Tony Sainik farms and Bijwasan luxury farm enclave - two deals that point to alleged Misa Bharti is involved in money laundering matter on a massive scale.

Lalu`s daughter has bought almost 7 acres of land worth Rs 100 crores for just about 1.4 crores through mysterious business entities that have allowed her to make huge profits at their expense.
New Delhi: One of the maverick filmmakers in Bollywood, Kabir Khan is ready to present yet another amazing story before the audience. 'Tubelight' starring Salman Khan is high on buzz and there are ample reasons for it.

Firstly, it is a Salman Khan film and it can't get bigger than that. Then, it also has a Chinese actress Zhu Zhu making her debut in Bollywood opposite the 'Sultan' Khan.

Also, what's making everyone talk about the film is the fact that Shah Rukh Khan will be seen doing a cameo in it. The fans can't be happier to know that SRK and Salmanthe original Karan-Arjun will be reuniting on the big screens, even if it is not a full-fledged part.

IndianExpress.com quoted Kabir Khan as talking to a leading daily in an interview about SRK's role. He said, It was a role screaming for a superstar cameo otherwise I wouldnt have. I find it gimmicky. But when you will watch the film, you will realise the role needed a superstar. We went to him with the role and he was kind enough to agree. It is a brilliant cameo but I cant say much about it because it will take away the joy of seeing it.

Are you excited for 'Tubelight'?
New Delhi: The oil ministry on Friday warned citizens to be wary of fake websites on free-LPG scheme Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana saying they should not respond to advertisements for dealers being issued by such portals.

"Attention of Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has been drawn to a number of fake websites which have come up recently in connection with the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana.

"It is to bring to the kind notice of general public that official website of PMJY is www.Pmujjwalayojana.Com," an official statement said.

This official website contains freely downloadable forms, both in English and Hindi, to be filled by the prospective beneficiaries for new LPG connection.

"It is also noticed that the entity with the name www.Ujwalayojana.Org has issued an advertisement regarding appointment of LPG distributorship under RGGLV Yojana.

"It is clarified that this entity is not authorised by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas to appoint LPG distributorship. It is requested that general public should not respond to the advertisement or any other communication from this entity in any manner," it added.
New Delhi: The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), India's regulator for GM crops, on Thursday cleared the genetically modified (GM) mustard for commercial use in the country and recommended its approval to the environment ministry.

In a submission to the Environment Ministry, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has given a positive recommendation but with certain conditions, News agency PTI reported.

The GEAC's recommendation came amid opposition by anti-GM groups, including RSS-affiliated bodies.

If approved, mustard would be the first genetically modified direct food crop to be commercially launched in India, after the failed attempts with Bt brinjal. So far, GM cotton is the only crop which has been allowed in India.

"The agenda of GM mustard came up in a meeting of the GEAC today. It has given a positive recommendation. It has recommended the approval of GM Mustard for commercial release," a Ministry official told the PTI.

With its green signal, the GEAC has pushed the hybrid plant developed by scientists at the Delhi University closer to becoming the country's first edible GM crop.

RSS-affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), who criticised the move, daid allowing the commercial use of GM mustard would impact allied agri-activities.

Some anti-GM activists asserted that in okaying the commercial use of GM mustard, the GEAC has "yet again proven" to be "unscientific and uncaring" to the health of citizens.

They said Environment Minister Anil Madhav should uphold BJP's manifesto promise that GM foods will not be allowed and reject the GM mustard "just like the Bt brinjal variety was rejected seven years ago".

The Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP), Delhi University South Campus, had submitted an application to the GEAC for the environmental release of GM mustard (Brassica juncea) hybrid DMH-11 and the use of parental events (varuna bn 3.6 and EH2 mod bs 2.99) for the development of a new generation of hybrids.

The environment ministry had received over 700 comments from various stakeholders, including farmers and researchers, on the Assessment of Food and Environmental Safety (AFES) report on GM Mustard, which it had earlier posted on the ministry website.

The application was submitted in 2015 after which several rounds of meeting were held by the GEAC. The sub-committee also convened meetings with experts.

The GEAC also heard the views of various NGOs not in favour of giving an approval to GM crops.

An anti-GM group had earlier alleged that sub committee, did not have any health expert and three of its members have conflict of interest.

Coalition for a GM-Free India had questioned whether the risk assessment report given by the sub-committee, which has claimed that the hybrid does not pose any risk to biodiversity or agro-ecosystem, was even "reliable and scientific" as it had no health experts in it.

Today's decision, which many of the anti-GM activists were unaware of, got sharp reactions from Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM).

"We are against the commercial use of any genetically modified crops, including the GM mustard. And we will request that the government should not allow its commercial cultivation," SJM co-convener Ashwani Mahajan said.

Environment activist Vandana Shiva had also opposed GM mustard earlier, saying it is "illegal" and developers have done "fraud science".

The environment ministry has to now take a final call on this.

(With PTI inputs)
Faridabad: In a shocking incident, a baby snake, also known as a `snakelet`, was found in the mid-day meal served to students of a government school at Faridabad in Haryana.

Two teachers and six students of the Government Girls Senior Secondary School in NIT-2 complained of nausea after consuming the food. They were admitted to a hospital and subsequently discharged.

When the principal and other teachers were tasting the food, they spotted the snakelet. Albeit they immediately intimated the other students to not consume the meal, but unfortunately some students had already eaten portions of it.

The students were taken aback upon discovering the reptile in their food. They admitted that they often got a `stale smell` from the food generally, but this was something which was terrifying for them.

Braj Bala, the school`s principal, informed about the same to higher officials and Iskcon food relief foundation, the organisation supplying mid-day meals.

The other schools, where the same food was supplied, were also apprised of the same.

(With ANI inputs)
Shimla: Himachal Pradesh Ayurveda and Cooperation Minister Karan Singh, who was suffering from cancer, passed away at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi early Friday.

59-year-old Singh is survived by wife and a son. His elder son had died in an accident in 2012.

Singh was suffering from cancer from some time and he breathed his last around 1.45 am today at AIIMS, his elder brother and Kullu MLA Maheshwar Singh told PTI.

He represented the Banjar assembly constituency in Himachal Pradesh Assembly.

He was a member of the Kullu royal family and was in the BJP before he switched over to the Congress ahead of 2002 state assembly elections. He was a three-time MLA and also served as a minister twice.

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi condoled his death and termed it as a big loss for the government and people of the state.

"Karan Singhji's untimely demise is a big loss for the government and people of Himachal. His guidance and leadership will be missed. My condolences to his family," he said on Twitter.

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh also condoled his death.

The state government is arranging for taking the body to Kullu by a helicopter. He will be created later in the day in his native place, his brother said.

Former chief minister Shanta Kumar, Assembly Speaker BBL Butail, ministers, MLAs and prominent leaders have expressed grief over Singh's demise.
Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a two-day state visit to Sri Lanka, on Friday participated in the International Vesak Day celebrations here, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

PM Modi, who is the chief guest, arrived on Friday morning at the venue and was received by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe amid traditional fanfare.

While addressing the gathering, the Prime Minister announced that from August this year, Air India will operate direct flights between Colombo and Varanasi.

"My Tamil brothers and sisters will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath," PM Modi said.

I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka: PM

The PM assured the Sri Lankans that India will be great a friend and partner that will support in nation-building endeavours.

"Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago," PM Modi said, adding that "The themes of Social Justice and Sustainable World Peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings."

"The biggest challenge to Sustainable World Peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states, bit it is from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence," PM asserted.

"On Vesak let us light the lamps of knowledge to move out of darkness; let us look more within and uphold nothing else but the truth," PM Modi told the Sri Lankans.

The Vesak Day marks the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.



The visit follows an invitation from Sirisena. It is Modi's second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after March 2015.
Rohtak: A Haryana court on Friday issued a bailable warrant against yoga guru Ramdev for his remarks made here last year against those refusing to raise the slogan of 'Bharat Mata Ki Jjai'.

On March 2, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) Harish Goyal had issued summons to Ramdev after a complaint was filed by Congress leader and former Haryana minister Subhash Batra seeking registration of an FIR against the yoga guru.

"A bailable warrant has been issued by the court here today against Ramdev," Batra's counsel O P Chugh told reporters.

The ACJM has directed Ramdev to furnish Rs 1 lakh personal surety during the execution of warrant and also to appear in court on June 14.

Senior Supreme Court lawyer R K Anand had also argued the case recently on behalf of Batra.

While speaking at a function here in April last year, Ramdev had said that but for the rule of law he would have "beheaded" lakhs of people for refusing to chant 'Bharat mata ki jai'.

His remarks had drawn sharp condemnation from various quarters, including opposition parties.

Batra said he had lodged a police complaint against Ramdev last year for alleged criminal intimidation and other offences under IPC.

"However, as the police did not register an FIR, I approached the court," he said.

Ramdev is Haryana's brand ambassador for promotion of yoga and ayurveda.

He had made the remarks while addressing a large gathering here during a peace rally organised after the violent Jat agitation.
Toronto: The Indian government has taken up with Canada the issue of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's presence at an event in Toronto to felicitate two legislators who had authored a motion in the Ontario Assembly terming the 1984 anti-Sikh riots "genocide".

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Gopal Baglay said: "We have taken up such issues in the past with the government of Canada, and in this particular instance, without getting into details, I can tell you the practice has not been discontinued."

On April 30, Trudeau addressed a parade for `Khalsa Day`, which included floats glorifying Sikh militant leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Amreek Singh and former General Shahbeg Singh who were killed in the siege of the Golden Temple and Operation Bluestar in June 1984.

The procession, organised by the Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council, also felicitated the legislator from Trudeau`s Liberal Party, Harinder Kaur Malhi who had moved a resolution on "genocide" against India for the anti-Sikh riots of November 1984, that was passed by the Ontario Assembly on April 6 this year.

India has been raising the issue of emerging anti-India elements in Canada, calling it a "misguided motion based on a limited understanding of India, its constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and its judicial process,", with the government expressing its unhappiness both with the High Commission in Delhi, and with the Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan when he met with Defence Minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi on April 18.

(With ANI inputs)
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Friday said it will offer political parties an opportunity to prove that electronic voting machines used in the recent assembly polls were tampered with.

A "challenge" is on the cards, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told a meeting of political parties here, going on record for the first time regarding the EC's proposed move to counter allegations of EVM tampering.

"Although use of VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail system) with EVMs will ensure total credibility and transparency and put to rest all controversy, the Commission will, after today's meeting, hold a challenge," he said.

It will offer opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that EVM used in recent elections were tampered with or that EVMs can be tampered with even under strict technical and administrative safeguards as applicable during elections, Zaidi said.

He, however, did not give any date for the proposed challenge which he announced in his opening remarks at the meeting.

Zaidi also said the Commission has "no favourites" and it was equidistant from all parties.

"You should be convinced that EC has no favourites...We maintain equidistance from all parties and groups. It is our constitutional and moral duty to stand dead centre of the circle drawn around us by 56 political parties (seven national and 49 state recognised parties)," he said.

His remarks come against the backdrop of Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal reportedly questioning the independence of two Election Commissioners A K Joti and O P Rawat.

He had claimed in an interview that the two ECs were close to the BJP governments in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

Following the allegations, Rawat had recused himself from the cases related to disqualification of AAP MLAs the Commission is hearing.
New Delhi: The all-party meeting convened by the Election Commission to discuss the reliability of EVMs on Friday saw a debate over the definition of 'hacking'.

The AAP, which has been leading the opposition charge on this issue, claimed that its proposal of holding a 'hackathon' has been "rejected" by the Commission.

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who is among the AAP representatives in the meeting, tweeted that the EC "refused to carry out a hackathon".

The EC will only throw a challenge asking the parties to prove that machines used in the past elections were tampered with, he claimed.

However, there was no official word from the EC on Sisodia's claims so far.

AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj told reporters on the sidelines of the closed-door meeting that EC shared nothing new so far towards alleviating the fears of the parties. The meeting saw a debate over the definition of "hacking".

"They won't let us access their machines and then challenge us to prove our charge of hacking. The EC is being very smart," Bhardwaj said.

Leaders of other parties like the CPI, RJD, and RLD raised related as well as other aspects of the electoral process like corporate funding.

"The whole issue is about the ethos and integrity of the election process. Why are advanced countries in the west not using EVMs?" CPI national secretary Atul Anjan asked.

RJD spokesperson Manoj Jha said by harping on the infallibility of EVMs, the EC was acting as the custodian of just the "instruments" and not the process as a whole.

At the day-long meeting, which started with the opening remarks of Chief Election Commission Nasim Zaidi, the Commission was expected to seek views of political parties on the proposed challenge it plans to throw to hack its EVMs.

The date of the proposed challenge would be decided after the all-party meeting, it was said.

All the seven national and 35 of the 48 state recognised political parties are attending the meeting. A detailed presentation on electronic voting machines' security features will be made by the EC top brass to prove that the machines are tamper-proof -- a fear raised by the opposition parties.

Days before the meet, the Aam Admi Party had staged a demonstration on hacking voting machine' in the Delhi Assembly. The party had used an EVM prototype to make the demonstration.

The EC had trashed the AAP's claim, saying the 'machine is a look-alike and not the ECI-EVM'.

Some parties have demanded they be allowed access to the machines used in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Sixteen opposition parties had recently told the Commission that it should revert to the paper ballot system claiming that the faith of the people has "eroded" in the machines.

Several parties, including AAP, BSP and Congress had blamed tampered machines for the victory of BJP in the recently-held Assembly polls.

Disqualifying candidates named in a charge sheet for bribing voters, making electoral graft a non-bailable offence and easing of rules to order counting of votes through paper trail are some of the other issues Election Commission will discuss with political parties today.
New Delhi: In the wake of doubts repeatedly raised by many opposition parties on the reliability of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), the Election Commission on Friday convened an all-party meeting.

The EC convened the meeting, being attended by seven national and 35 of the 48 state recognised political parties, to discuss the reliability of EVMs after leaders of a few political parties met Election Commission officials in April to convey their "complete loss of faith" in the EVMs and to demand use of VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) and paper ballots in future polls.

During the much-awaited meeting, the Commission is also likely to brief the parties about its planned EVM hacking challenge. The date of the proposed challenge would be decided after the all-party meeting.

A detailed presentation on electronic voting machines' security features will be made by the EC top brass to prove that the machines are tamper-proof -- a fear raised by the opposition parties.

Some parties have demanded they be allowed access to the machines used in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Sixteen opposition parties had recently told the Commission that it should revert to the paper ballot system, claiming that the faith of the people has "eroded" in the machines.

Several parties, including AAP, BSP and Congress, had blamed tampered machines for the victory of BJP in the recently-held Assembly polls.

Disqualifying candidates named in a charge sheet for bribing voters, making electoral graft a non-bailable offence and easing of rules to order counting of votes through paper trail are some of the other issues Election Commission will discuss with political parties today.

Days before the proposed meet, the Aam Admi Party had staged a demonstration on hacking a 'voting machine' in the Delhi Assembly. The party had used an EMV prototype to make the demonstration.

The EC had trashed AAP's claim, saying the 'machine is a look-alike and not the ECI-EVM'.

On Thursday, the Aam Aadmi Party threw a fresh challenge before the poll panel and said that given a chance it could prove how voting machines used in the Assembly polls were pre-programmed to favour a particular party.

AAP lawmaker Saurabh Bharadwaj urged the Election Commission to form a panel of representatives of all political parties and experts from the poll panel to examine EVMs.

On Thursday, the Aam Aadmi Party threw a fresh challenge before the poll panel and said that given a chance it could prove how voting machines used in the Assembly polls were pre-programmed to favour a particular party.

AAP lawmaker Saurabh Bharadwaj urged the Election Commission to form a panel of representatives of all political parties and experts from the poll panel to examine EVMs.

(With Agency inputs)
New Delhi: Islamabad will overrule the International Court of Justice's order to suspend the execution of Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav who has been sentenced to death by a military court on charges of espionage, a Pakistani media report said.

The Attorney General of Pakistan was briefed on the issue on Friday and it was decided to go ahead with the execution for the shake of the country's national stability, Pakistan's Dunya News reported on its website.

Citing sources, the report said that though the CJI plans to hold public hearings of the case from May 15, Pakistan does not accept its jurisdiction since it involves national stability.

The report further claimed that after his arrest in March 2016 from Balochistan, Jadhav confessed to Pakistani authorities that he worked for India's external spy agency RAW to create unrest in the country.

The report also alleged that Jadhav was covertly operating against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

And so far, the civil leadership in Pakistan has denied the possibility of any leniency at any level to spies who work to destabilise the country, it added.

India, in its appeal to the ICJ, has 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 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.
New Delhi: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community has said that relations between India and Pakistan remain tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan, the report states.

Islamabads failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhis growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistans investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016. Increasing numbers of firefights along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might exacerbate the risk of unintended escalation between these nuclear-armed neighbours.

The report further said that Easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation.

Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats said, "Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan."

"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States."

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.
Islamabad: In a shocking incident, authorities in a Pakistani court on Friday seized the mobile phone of First Secretary at the Indian High Commission Piyush Singh.

The incident occurred during the hearing of the case of an Indian woman, who had sought refuge in the Indian High Commission in Islamabad after arriving in Pakistan to marry.

The official snapped three photos inside the court, including a picture of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, during the hearing.

When courtroom officials brought the incident to the notice of the judge, he ordered confiscation of Singh`s cellphone, PTI cited The Express Tribune as saying.

Terming it a serious violation of the court decorum, the judge ordered the Indian diplomat to submit a written apology before the court after Singh verbally apologised for the said incident. However, later the diplomat issued a written apology. The court accepted his apology and warned him not to repeat the act, the report said.



"I fully apologise for the attempt of using mobile in court by mistake. It is requested that I may kindly be pardoned for this," said Singh in his statement.

Uzma today petitioned the Islamabad High Court (IHC) for duplicate travel documents and provision of security for her journey back to India.

Uzma`s lawyer Malik Shah Nawaz Noon and First Secretary at the Indian High Commission Piyush Singh had filed the petition on her behalf with the Islamabad High Court.

The petition stated that her husband, Tahir Ali, had deceived her as he was already married, and that he stole her passport and other travel documents, Dawn online reported.

Uzma, 20, sought refuge at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad last week and asked to be repatriated to India after coming to know that Tahir Ali, a resident of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa whom she married, was already married and had four children.

On May 8, Uzma claimed that she was forced to marry Ali at gunpoint and was subsequently subjected to physical and sexual abuse. He also took away her travel documents, she claimed.

The claims were denied by Tahir.

The petition on Friday sought security for her journey back to India via the Wagah border and requested that her husband be restrained from harassing her.

It also sought an exemption to Uzma from reporting to police and requested her repatriation to her homeland.

"Tahir deceived me and forced me to marry him at gunpoint. He even stole my passport and travelling documents. I urge the court to ask the Foreign Office to issue duplicate travel documents so that I may travel back to India," the application stated.

The petition also urged the court for an immediate hearing in the matter.

Earlier this week, the Foreign Office (FO) said Uzma would only be repatriated back to India once all her legal requirements were completed.

Declaring her husband and the Foreign Office as parties to the case, Uzma declared the diplomatic enclave in the Indian High Commission as her residence.

(With Agency inputs)
New Delhi: Union home minister Rajnath Singh on Friday appeaked to the nation that students and youth of Kashmir, wherever they are in the country, should be treated nicely and decently and provided a comfortable environment.

The Home Minister was speaking at the the Northern Zonal Council meeting at Chandigarh on Friday.

Singh stressed that all the youth of India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are 'our own children' and should be treated accordingly. He advised all the state Chief Ministers, ministers and Chief Secretaries in this regard.

The 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council consisted of the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, National Capital Territory of Delhi, and Chandigarh under the chairmanship of Rajnath.

The meeting was attended by the CMs of Haryana and Punjab, administrator of Chandigarh, Lt governor of Delhi, deputy CM of Jammu and Kashmir, ministers of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi as well as the senior officers from central and state governments.
New Delhi: Ousted Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Naseemuddin Siddqui on Friday launched an attack on party supremo Mayawati saying that she is the all-time greatest blackmailer the country has ever witnessed.

"She said that I blackmailed her, but there is no greatest blackmailer than her, which is ever witnessed by the country," Siddqui said in a press briefing here.

He flatly rejected the allegations made by Mayawati, saying that the latter just got furious when he applied the trick of phone tapping on her, which was taught by Mayawati herself.

"I want to ask Mayawati that who was being blackmailed in the audio clip that was released by me yesterday," he said.

"A number of BSP leaders have been tortured. Few were humiliated and were sacked from the party. Who didn't left they were tortured to that extent that they themselves left the party," he said.

Referring to the charges levelled against him, Siddqui said that the BSP supremo has a habit of framing new stories for saving herself.
New Delhi: In a huge setback for the Gandhi family, the Delhi High Court on Friday cleared way for an Income Tax probe against Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul in connection with the alleged misappropriation of funds in the National Herald case.

The company in which Sonia, Rahul Gandhi are stakeholders will be investigated by tax officials, the Delhi High Court said in its order.

The Gandhis have been accused of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh through which Young Indian Pvt Ltd obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which Associate Journals Ltd (AJL) owed to the Congress.

Congress president and her son had earlier opposed as "vague and devoid of material particulars" BJP MP Subramanian Swamy's plea seeking summoning of witnesses in the National Herald case.

The Gandhis, who are accused in the case along with some other Congress leaders, had contended that Swamy's plea was "in the nature of a fishing and roving enquiry which is not permissible in law".

The submissions were made in the reply filed to Swamy's list of witnesses and other evidence given to Metropolitan Magistrate Lovleen in the case.

"The application preferred by the complainant (Swamy) is vague and devoid of material particulars and is in the nature of a fishing and roving enquiry which is not permissible in law.

"Swamy has proceeded to enlist the witnesses and enumerate a number of documents without divulging the dates or relevant period for most of the documents sought to be summoned through the said witnesses," the written reply filed by the accused said.

The court, thereafter, listed the matter for further hearing in April after Swamy sought time to go through the submissions made before arguments on the matter could begin.

The accused claimed, "Swamy, through this application, is seeking to summon witnesses and call for documents without divulging their necessity and desirability on the basis of the allegations made by him in the complaint.''

''The persistent attempt on the part of the complainant to have access the documents is clearly an attempt to make out a new case which is impermissible in law," they said.

Swamy, in his private criminal complaint, has accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh through which Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI) obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which Associate Journals Limited (AJL) owed to the Congress.

The Gandhis and other accused - Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda -- have denied the allegations levelled against them.

The court had summoned the accused persons, besides YI on June 26, 2014.

On December 19, 2015, it had granted bail to Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to summons. Pitroda was granted bail on February 20, 2016 when he had appeared in the court.

With PTI inputs
New Delhi: Ties between the United States and Pakistan will deteriorate if another high-profile terror attack takes place in India, the US intelligence chief has warned slamming Islamabad for its failure to curb anti-India militants.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," IANS quoted US National Intelligence Director Daniel R. Coats as saying during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

While presenting the intelligence community's 2017 assessment of threats to US national security, Coats said that he sought progress into the 2016 Pathankot attack probe from Pakistan.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," he said.

On January 2 last year, Jaish-e-Mohamed militants attacked the Indian airbase in Pathankot and killed seven security personnel.

Coats said easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in Pathankot air base attack investigation.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with key intelligence officials, Coats said that New Delhi-Islamabad relations remain tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

"Increasing numbers of firefights along the Line of Control (LoC), including the use of artillery and mortars, might exacerbate the risk of unintended escalation between these nuclear-armed neighbours," he added.

On Pakistan`s pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons, Coats said it "potentially lowers the threshold for their use".

Islamabad has developed short range tactical nuclear missiles to counter India`s Cold Start doctrine.

According to the statement, the smaller and more mobile nuclear weapons were more prone to falling in the hands of non-state actors during any crisis situation as they would be outside the relative security of a storage site.

Coats said that Pakistan-based terrorist groups present a sustained threat to US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he said.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, Coats said anti-Pakistan groups will probably focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan`s internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Ahrar, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi al-Alami," he said.

Coats said that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

Talking about Afghanistan, Coats in his statement said: "The overall situation in Afghanistan will very likely continue to deteriorate, even if international support is sustained."

"Endemic state weaknesses, the government`s political fragility, deficiencies of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), Taliban persistence and regional interference will remain key impediments to improvement," he said.

Coats expected Taliban to make gains in 2017 and worsening of the ANSF "due to a combination of Taliban operations, ANSF combat casualties, desertions, poor logistics support, and weak leadership."

(With IANS inputs)
Bengaluru: The result of Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) of Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) will be declared on Friday at 3 pm. The exams were held conducted from 30 March, to 12 April, 2017.

More than 8 lakh students appeared for the examination out of whom, 4.69 lakh were boys and 4.07 lakh were girls.

The Karnataka SSLC Class 10 Results 2017 will be available online an office website kseeb.kar.nic.in

Karnataka primary and secondary education minister Tanveer Sait tweeted, Much awaited PUC results to be announced on 11th may Thursday 2017 at 3.00 PM and SSLC results on 12th may Friday 2017 at 3.00 PM - official.

Log on to official website kseeb.kar.nic.in

- Click on the notification on the home page for the Kerala SSLC results 2017

- Enter your roll number in the fields provided

- Click to submit

- Download the Karnataka SSLC Class 10 Results 2017 and take a printout for future reference

To check the Karnataka SSLC exam result 2017, students can also visit results.nic.in, examresults.net websites.

For the academic year, 2015-2016, around 4,50,433 students appeared for the Karnataka SSLC exam. The overall pass percentage was 92.03% with the pass percentage of girls being 90.42% and that of boys was 91.32%.
Bhopal: Madhya Pradesh Minister Vishwas Sarang on Friday raked up a controversy by saying that those who love the nation would support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and would vote for them.

"There is no second thought that all those who love their nation would support the BJP and would vote for them. I said this thing and I stand by my words, that who loves BJP, loves the nation as well," Sarang told ANI.

Sarang further said that in past 70 years the Congress Party has nothing, but have betrayed the nation and have destroyed its unity and integrity.

"This is not what I am saying. India`s history supports my remark. If the BJP carries out a surgical strike and the Congress raises question on that, is that patriotism?" asked the minister.
Mumbai: A "suspected" bird hit forced a Jet Airways flight to return shortly after it took off from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport here on Friday morning.

The aircraft landed safely and all 180 passengers and eight crew have also deplaned, a spokesperson said.

The incident occurred around 8.15 a.m. on the Mumbai-Bangkok flight 9W-70 when the crew executed an air-turn following the suspected hit on the tail of the aircraft.

The aircraft is currently being examined by the Jet Airways engineering team and ground personnel.

Following the strike, the flight has been delayed by over four hours and is rescheduled to depart at 12.45 p.m. to reach Bangkok around 6.25 p.m., the spokesperson said.
Mumbai: Wholesale debt market segment of the National Stock Exchange on Friday witnessed a total turnover of Rs 2843.30 crore in 53 trades.

Top securities (non-repo) traded at the WDM were:

The 8.35 percent government securities maturing in CG2022 traded value at Rs 950.00 crore at yeighted yield of 7.02 percent, the 6.79 percent government securities maturing in CG2027 traded value at Rs 250.00 crore at yeighted yield of 6.76 percent and the 6.79 percent government securities maturing in CG2029 traded value at Rs 175.00 crore at yeighted yield of 7.02 percent

During the trading week ended today, total turnover was Rs 7,785.53 crore and the total number of trades was 178.

The highest trade volume during the week was at Rs 2,843.30 crore as on today, while the lowest was Rs 1082.65 crore as on May 8.

This week, the weighted yield on government securities with a maturity period of 0-3 years, 3-7 years, 7-10 years and more than 10 years quoted at 6.80 percent, 7.01 percent, 7.12 percent and 7.13, respectively.

The weighted yields on treasury bills maturing for 0-90 days and 183-365 days was 6.22 percent and 6.45 percent.

During the week, the cumulative value of government securities, treasury bills and state government securities trading on WDM was Rs 5,093.78 crore, representing 65.43 percent of the total traded value.

Trading in non-government securities was at Rs 2,691.75 crore, representing 34.57 percent, an NSE release said.


New Delhi: Bollywood's first family the Kapoor Khandaan is blessed with great acting skills and oodles of good looks. The blue-eyed boy of Kapoor clan, Ranbir Kapoor is the nation's heartthrob with a huge fan following.

So his recent London visit with mommy Neetu Kapoor sparked rumours of him finding his prospective soulmate in the British land. Well, according to Hindustan Times.com, when uncle Randhir was asked to comment on the same, he said, Ranbir is having a terrific time with all the success and the money hes got, and age being in his favour too. Why does he have to get married and spoil it all so soon? Shaadi ke liye bahut time hai abhi usko (Hes got enough time in hand to get married). Let him have a nice time right now, says Randhir, when asked if the Kapoor family often talks about Ranbirs marriage, adding that, Anyway, how is his relationship status anybodys concern or business?

On the professional front, Ranbir is currently working on Sanjay Dutt biopic where he plays the titular character.
Chandigarh: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday pushed for a consensual resolution of the SYL dispute by calling for coordination of the states with the Centre.

He was addressing the 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council (NZC) here, presided over by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The chief minister also sought the central government's help in supplementing Punjab's efforts to check cross-border smuggling of drugs which he said his government was committed to eliminating.

Referring to Punjab's border status, Amarinder reiterated his demand for the central government's concessions, on the lines of the fiscal and industrial concessions being given to other states, in order to compensate for the financial and economic losses already suffered by it.

This, he said, was necessary to provide a level playing field to the state, said an official release issued here.

Amarinder reiterated his demand for re-assessment and re-determination of the availability of surface waters in the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers.

Noting out that Punjab was suffering an ecological crisis because of depletion of ground water, he urged the central government to take expert advice on reliable estimates of future flows in these rivers.

On the drug menace in Punjab, Amarinder said as the border was manned by central security forces, the home minister should order a strict vigil on the border to check drugs smuggling.

He underlined the need to combat the drug problem in a systematic and organised manner, stressing on the importance of inter-state coordination. He urged the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Haryana, HP and J-K to make focused efforts to check illegal cultivation of poppy and cannabis.

The chief minister also called for effective plugging of pilferage of narcotic substances from areas where they are being cultivated legally for pharmaceutical and related purposes.

Sharing of information and initiating criminal action against the smugglers involved in this nefarious trade should be promoted, he said. He also called for shifting of poppy husk vends located in Rajasthan along the border villages of Punjab.

Amarinder lamented the growing trend of centralisation of authority and said there was a need for greater operational freedom to states, cutting across party lines, as state governments "are in a much better position to understand, address and solve the problems of their people".

"Moreover, they are directly answerable to the people for ensuring a better quality of life," Amarinder said.

He said more funds are needed by the states for their primary development needs and reiterated his demand for an increase in the percentage of devolution of central funds to the states.

Amarinder expressed concern at the "dilution", by the Chandigarh Administration, of the 60:40 ratio decided by the central government, at the time of reorganisation of Punjab, in the matter of all government posts of the Union Territory between Punjab and Haryana.

He asked the home minister to direct the Chandigarh administration to ensure strict compliance with the 60:40 principle in matters of recruitment in all departments/ categories of employees.

Amarinder asked the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister to look into the matter of Shahpur Kandi dam project which had been stalled by the state in 2014. He said it was an important project which was in the interest of the nation and Punjab as well.

Amarinder also sought his Himachal Pradesh counterpart's intervention to put an immediate stop to discharge of effluents into river Sutlej by industries/towns by various rivulets.

Noting that the water of Sutlej river was used for drinking in many parts of Punjab, he said his government had initiated an ambitious project for cleaning of rivers. He said it would also ensure that all the waste water being discharged into Punjab's rivers was treated before discharged, in the next three years.

The meeting was also attended by Punjab Governor V P Singh Badnore, who is also UT Chandigarh's Administrator, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Enivornment Minister Anil Madhav Dave, Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, Himachal Pradesh minister Thakur Kaul Singh and Rajasthan minister Ram Pratap.
New Delhi: Spacewalks are an important part on the agenda of NASA's space station missions  a regular event in support of space station assembly and maintenance.

In accordance with that, NASA scheduled its landmark 200th spacewalk for Friday, May 12. However, the milestone space event faced a glitch after NASA discovered a water leak in equipment that helps power their spacesuits, which resulted in a delay.

As per NASA, the official start time, 9:08 am (local time), was about two hours after it was supposed to begin.

The glitch affected equipment known as the servicing and cooling umbilical (SCU), which supplies power and oxygen to the spacesuits worn by veteran US astronaut Peggy Whitson, 57, and her rookie counterpart, Jack Fischer, 43.

The problem involved "a small leak of water at the connection point of the service and cooling umbilical (SCU) as it was hooked up to Jack Fischer's spacesuit in the equipment lock section of the Quest airlock," said NASA commentator Rob Navias.

It was discovered as the astronauts were seated in the airlock inside the space station, before they ventured into the vacuum of space.

"This is not the suit itself. Fischer's suit itself is perfectly fine. The crew is perfectly fine," said Navias.

"This is the connection point of the component in the airlock itself that provides power, oxygen, cooling water and communications lines to the two crew members while they are in the process of biding their time, pre-breathing pure oxygen, in the airlock itself."

According to NASA procedures, the spacewalk can go ahead with just one functioning SCU.

The plan is for the astronauts to take turns using the SCU, and alternate using battery power in their suits.

Spacewalks usually last about six and a half hours, but Friday's would be "abbreviated" due to the late start and would last about four hours, Navias said.

The astronauts will focus on one key task, to replace what is known as the ExPRESS Carrier Avionics, or ExPCA, box.

The box weighs 200 pounds (91 kilograms) on Earth, and routes data and commands to experiments inside the space station, Navias said.

"It has been exhibiting some thermal issues of late, so it is being replaced," explained Navias.

The spacewalk is the ninth of Whitson's career. She holds the record for most spacewalks by a woman.

The outing is the first for Fischer, who goes by the nickname "2Fish."

NASA has experienced a series of problems with water leaking inside the astronauts' helmets, most notably in 2013 when water began filling Italian Luca Parmitano's headpiece, forcing him to cut short his spacewalk and make an emergency re-entry into the space lab.

NASA's bulky white spacesuits are aging, and the same models have been in use for four decades.

(With PTI inputs)
Ramanathapuram: A 16-year Dalit boy has been murdered after a clash between two groups of people during the Chitra festival at Rameswaram in the district, police said on Friday.

Muniasamy succumbed to head injuries at a hospital in the clash last night, police said.

An altercation between the groups erupted over attending "mandagapadi" (temple ritual) for which Thevar community had paid fees to the temple.

The Thevars questioned Dalits turning up for the mandagapadi leading to the clash, police said.
Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Board on Friday declared the results of class 12th examination and Tharika Banu has become the first transgender of Tamil Nadu to clear the examination.

Following her achievement, Banu asked the state government to make sure that transgender community continues their studies.

Banu did her schooling from Kamarajar Girls higher secondary School in Chennai.

"After a long struggle, I was able to join a school. Many have helped with my studies," Banu said while talking about her journey.

Banu was adopted by a transgender activist Grace Banu from Chennai some two years back.

"My aim is to make her as a doctor," Banu told ANI.

Thanking the education system, Tharika's Head Mistress M Mary said, "We gave her counseling and sufficient arrangements. Because of that, she was able to perform well in the exam."

The transgender community is the least represented group in the public discourse and they continue to live with societal stigma and discrimination.

Thus providing them with educational opportunities will open will be a step towards bringing them in a more integrated society.
Lucknow: UP legislative council chairman and Samajwadi Party leader Ramesh Yadav has distanced himself from his nephew Mohit Yadav, who landed in soup after slapping a sub-inspector in a police station in Etah.

The assault was caught on camera after Mohit was held for allegedly assaulting hospital staffers who refused to give in to his demand for VIP treatment.

The SP leader strongly condemned the incident and asked for stern action against his nephew.

Averring that nothing is above law, Ramesh Yadav issued a letter and asserted that Mohit is his nephew but does not reside with him and that he has nothing to do with the hapless incident that raised eyebrows over his credibility as a law maker.

"Mohit Yadav who is the son of my brother Narendra Singh Yadav does not live with us nor do we have any relation with what they do. The way he conducted himself is condemnable.

His behaviour with the police official and the hospital staff was unpardonable and that he should be punished for his misconduct," said Ramesh Yadav"Mohit should be prosecuted. Nothing is above law, be it my son or any of my relative. I have nothing to do with the mentioned incident.

I never have and never will support such actions," he added.The nephew of Samajwadi party leader Ramesh Babu Yadav was caught on camera bragging about his association with the former ruling party before launching an unprovoked attack on a policeman standing near him.

Etah is the stronghold of Samajwadi Party patron Mulayam Singh Yadav.Mohit Yadav got in to an argument with doctors regarding an X-ray and subsequently beat up a radiologist and two technicians.

When police arrived at the location, Yadav started arguing with them and slapped senior sub-inspector Jitendra Singh and other policemen.The man kept shouting "My name is Mohit Yadav" while slapping the policeman.Yadav has been arrested and charged with assault on a policeman on duty.
Rampur: Seven people were killed and six fatally injured as a car rammed into a track near Rampur in the early hours of Friday.

The incident took place on the Delhi-Lucknow national highway, near the accident-prone Mansoorpur bypass.

The victims were returning from a wedding when the driver allegedly lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a truck.

According to Rampur Superintendent of Police KK Chaudhary, the locals assisted the police in shifting the injured to a district hospital in Meerut where they were attended to by a team of doctors.

In the aftermath of this unfortunate incident, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Baldev Singh Aulakh visited the families of the bereaved in the hospital.

Aulakh said the state government was informed of the incident, adding that a compensatory measure would soon be taken.
Kolkata: Controversial Kolkata cleric Maulana Nurur Rehman Barkati, the Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan mosque, has been booked for not removing the red beacon atop his official vehicle.

ANI on Friday claimed that a case has been registered against the outspoken cleric in Topsia police station following a complaint by a BJP leader.

Kolkata: FIR filed against Maulana Nurur Rehman Imam Barkati in Topsia for not following Central Government laws (file pic) pic.twitter.com/rPAqNMsMRb  ANI (@ANI_news) May 11, 2017

Barkati, who is known for issuing fatwas, had earlier as threatened to wage 'jihad' in the country if India is declared a 'Hindu Rashtra'.

"If namaz, azaan, Quran and Shariat law are banned then jihad will begin," Imam Barkati said while speaking to reporters.

"Why would this nation be a 'Hindu Rashtra', why can't it be a 'Muslim Rashtra'. Why can't the 25-30 crore Muslim population of India be given Pakistan, we will fight for Pakistan," the Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Mosque had said.

"If 'Hindu Rashtra' becomes a reality and azaan, cow meat, Quran are prohibited, then we will not spare you and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi," he warned.

When asked to elaborate on his 'jihad' terminology, Imam Barkati said, "In jihad everything will be finished, as it is happening in Afghanistan and across the world," adding that "we have been practising jihad for the last 100 years".

When asked to comment on West Bengal Mamata Banerjee's statement that she had never red beacon on her car, the Imam said, "During her younger days, the Trinamool Congress supremo used to eat everything; she even used to have mutton biryani. However, these days she is having cucumber and (muri) puffed rice, so shall we also eat the same."

Threatening to violate the Centre's order banning red beacon, Barkati said that he will continue to use the red beacon as permission for it was given by the erstwhile British government.

"I am a Shahi Imam and hence I won't give up red beacon despite court's order. All Shahi Imams have been using 'lal batti' and nobody has ever objected to it," Imam Barkati said.

According to the Modi government's order, after May 1, no one will be able to put red light atop his/her vehicle. Blue light will be used only for emergency vehicles in the country...Neither the states nor the Centre will have power to give any special permission (for use of beacon lights).

PM had said that every Indian is a VIP and the culture of beacons on vehicles carrying dignitaries should have gone long ago.

Earlier, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat had said that India is a Hindu Rashtra and there is a need to organise all Hindus in the country for which this is favourable time.
New Delhi: Maulana Nuruu Rahman Imam Barkati, who has brazenly refused to give up using red-light beacon on his car, on Friday once again justified his stsaying that the government has no authority to ban the use of 'lal battis' from his car.

The Shahi Imam of Tipu Sultan Masjid asserted that he has been using the red beacon since decades and he wouldn't take orders from the Centre.

He said, as a religious leader, using the red beacon is his privilege.

Training his guns on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Prime Minister, the Shahi Imam said that both RSS and Narendra modi are 'illegal'.

"If they are troubling me so much, I don't know how much common Muslims must be suffering," he said.

He further alleged that "the aim of RSS if to build Hindustan a Hindu Rashtra and I oppose it."

Earlier today, a FIR was launched against the Barkati by one Suraj Kumar Singh in Tiposia for refusing to comply with the Centre's ban on the use of 'lal batti'.

Barkati had yesterday defied the government order on the use of red beacon on his car and said that he was not bound to follow the order and that as a religious leader, it was his "right" to do so.

"I am a religious leader and have been using the red beacon for the past several decades. I don't follow the orders of the Centre. Who are they to order me? In Bengal, only the orders of the state government are effective. I will use red beacon. In Bengal, no one has removed the red beacon", Barkati had told PTI.
Islamabad: A bomb exploded by a convoy of the deputy chairman of Pakistan`s Senate on Friday, in the violence-plagued province of Balochistan, killing at least 10 people, police said.

The blast occurred the town of Mastung, 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial capital of Quetta. Television footage showed a vehicle mangled by the blast.

Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the blast that he believed he was the target and he had sustained minor injuries.

"My convoy was going to Mastung and there was an explosion. There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone.

Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber and at least 10 people were killed, including Haideri`s driver.

Separatist militants in Baluchistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province`s resources.

Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran.
Brussels: Top EU and US officials will hold talks on Friday over a possible US ban on carry-on computers on European flights to the United States, an EU spokeswoman said.

The US Department of Homeland Security sparked deep concern in Europe on Tuesday when it said was close to a decision on extending to Europeans an existing ban imposed on eight countries.

"There is a scheduled phone call later today with US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and a number of European ministers," Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told a news briefing in Brussels.

"Our interest is to stay informed so that we have a possibility to share... information with our member states," Itkonen said, adding that two EU commissioners would also take part.

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 US said airlines flying to the United States from European airports that would be involved in implementing the ban have been given a warning that it is under consideration.

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 Somali airline in February 2016, killing one person, is believed to have been built into a laptop computer carried into the passenger cabin.
SEOUL: North Korea demanded on Friday the extradition of South Korea`s spy chief, accusing him of being a mastermind of a plot to assassinate its leader, Kim Jong Un, with a biochemical weapon.

The North`s KCNA state news agency last week accused the US Central Intelligence Agency and South Korea`s National Intelligence Service (NIS) of a plot to assassinate its "supreme leadership" with a biochemical weapon.

The accusation came after weeks of tension over North Korea`s nuclear and missile development and fears it will conduct a sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions.

North Korea on Thursday demanded the handover of "terror suspects" involved in the plot but it did not identify anyone.

On Friday, its Central Prosecutor`s Office said in a statement carried by the North`s state KCNA news agency the masterminds included South Korean intelligence service chief Lee Byung-ho, two South Korean agents and a Chinese man.

"We urge the relevant authorities to immediately detect and arrest and hand over to the DPRK the masterminds of the hideous state-sponsored crime, accomplices and their followers," the office said, referring to the country by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People`s Republic of Korea.

The suspects faced heavy punishment under North Korea`s criminal law, the office said.

Lee was head of the NIS, South Korea`s main intelligence service, under South Korea`s previous conservative administration. New President Moon Jae-in has appointed a successor but Lee will remain in office until parliament approves the nomination.

The NIS said earlier the North`s accusation of its involvement in a plot was "groundless". It said on Friday it had no information about the North`s accusations and Lee had no separate comment to make.

The CIA and the US White House declined to comment on the statement from the North`s Ministry of State Security last week.

North Korea accused the US and South Korean security agencies of planning a biochemical attack on leader Kim during April 15 celebrations in the North`s capital of the anniversary of the birth of state founder Kim Il Sung.

North Korea said US and South Korean agents bribed and coerced a North Korean man into joining the plot which was foiled by its state security ministry.

North Korea`s UN mission on Thursday said the plot was a "declaration of war".

"A Korean-style, anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organisations of the U.S. and South Korea," mission said in a statement.
Tokyo: North Korea's Parliament has sent a rare letter of protest to the US House of Representatives over its new package of tougher sanctions.

The sanctions were condemned as a "heinous act against humanity" by the foreign affairs committee of the North's Supreme People's Assembly, according to a state media report today.

It's not unusual for Pyongyang to condemn moves to censure it by Washington, but a direct protest to Congress would be rare.

It was not immediately clear how the protest was conveyed since North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations and virtually no official channels of communication.

The report, carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, said the letter of protest was sent Friday.

The House passed the sanctions package bill on May 4.
Geneva: The police chief of Afghanistan's Kandahar province, General Abdul Raziq, should be prosecuted over allegations of torture and enforced disappearances, the U.N. Committee against Torture said on Friday.

The committee said it was deeply concerned at numerous reports brought to its attention about the situation in Kandahar, including the use of torture methods such as suffocation, crushing the testicles, pumping water into the stomach and administering electric shocks.

The Afghan National Police (ANP) in the province was allegedly responsible for incommunicado detention, enforced disappearances, mass arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings during counter-insurgency operations, it said.

"The Committee is particularly concerned at the numerous and credible allegations indicating General Abdul Raziq, ANP Commander in Kandahar, as being widely suspected of complicity, if not of personal implication, in severe human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and settlement of secret detention centers," the committee`s report said.

Asked if Raziq, whose name is also anglicised as Razeq, had conducted interrogations personally, the committee`s chairman Jens Modvig said: "There are reports that he has been directly involved, yes."

In January this year Raziq narrowly escaped injury when a bomb hidden under sofas in the Kandahar governor`s residence went off while officials were having dinner, killing 13 people. [nL4N1F1434]

At the time he accused Pakistan`s intelligence services and the Haqqani network, a militant group linked to the Taliban, of being behind the explosion.

Last year Raziq, a feared commander known as a ruthless enemy of the Taliban, led reinforcements, supported by U.S. air strikes, to help repel an attack by Taliban militants in neighbouring Uruzgan province. [nL3N1C7070]

A U.N. report last month said torture and mistreatment of detainees by Afghan security forces was as widespread as ever, despite promises by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and new laws enacted by the government. [nL4N1HW2AN]

The International Criminal Court in The Hague is conducting a separate review of torture in Afghanistan.

Modvig told a news conference in Geneva that he was not aware of any attempt to bring Raziq to justice.

"I think its a matter for the prosecution authorities in Afghanistan first and foremost and of course it could end up in other places. But we would expect that the local prosecution authorities, the attorney general, would react to such reports, provided they are handed in to him."

The committee called on Afghanistan to make sure all allegations were investigated promptly, thoroughly and impartially, and that Raziq and other alleged perpetrators were prosecuted.

Nobody at the Afghan diplomatic mission in Geneva was immediately available to comment on the committee`s report.
Tabqa: US-backed fighters said Friday they were preparing for a final assault on the Islamic State group`s Syrian bastion Raqa, likely next month, with new weapons and armoured vehicles promised by Washington.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) earlier this week captured the city of Tabqa and an adjacent dam, a major prize in the offensive for Raqa, the Syrian heart of IS`s self-proclaimed "caliphate".

"The attack on Raqa will take place in the beginning of the summer," SDF commander Rojda Felat told AFP in Tabqa, which lies on the banks of the Euphrates River about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Raqa.

She later specified that it would probably start in June based on "military and tactical considerations".

SDF commanders announced the looming assault at a news conference in Tabqa, which the alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters captured from IS on Wednesday along with the nearby dam in one of their most important victories yet.

On Friday, an AFP team entered Tabqa and the adjacent dam -- Syria`s largest -- and saw rows of sandbags, mangled cars and craters from heavy bombardment dotting the structure.

The battle for Tabqa was marked by fears that the dam would be severely damaged and collapse, leading to massive flooding downstream.

The body of an alleged IS fighter was seen on Friday floating in the reservoir created by the dam.The SDF fight for Raqa -- dubbed Operation Wrath of the Euphrates -- has already seen the alliance capture large swathes of the surrounding province with help from the US-led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria.

The SDF is working to tighten the noose around Raqa before a final assault.

At their closest point, the US-backed forces are just eight kilometres (five miles) from the city.

They are backed by coalition air strikes, American special forces advisers and even a US Marines artillery battery.

SDF deputy head Qahraman Hassan said: "In the beginning of the summer, we will storm and liberate (Raqa) city."

His forces would receive "special weapons and armoured vehicles" to enter the city, Hassan said, after President Donald Trump changed US policy to allow arms deliveries to the SDF`s Kurdish component.

No newly authorised aid had been delivered yet, Hassan said, but he added that "I believe this support will arrive soon."

A US defence official told AFP earlier this week that the equipment would include small arms, ammunition, machineguns, armoured vehicles and bulldozers.Inside Tabqa, AFP`s correspondent saw destroyed shops in the main marketplace, where jihadists had scrawled many of their slogans.

Signs sticking from a street post read "Know that paradise is achieved through combat," and "Prepare to fight with all your strength".

Tabqa residents began returning to their homes on Friday, but Shahhour Zuair, 46, told AFP the situation remained difficult.

As the fight around Tabqa intensified around two months ago, he fled with his six children and elderly parents. He made his way back two days ago when he heard the SDF had recaptured the city.

"The civilians are coming back but there is a lack of water, electricity, bread and food," he said, sitting in front of a pile of sandbags.

Mutia, 41, told AFP she was glad to be back in Tabqa after fleeing during the ferocious offensive.

"The fighting was really tough -- there was artillery, warplanes, snipers... We wouldn`t even know where the shelling was coming from," the mother of five said.

"We really wanted to be done with (IS). We hated them, but we`re afraid they`ll come back to Tabqa," she added.

The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish People`s Protection Units (YPG), seen by the US as an indispensable ally in the fight against IS but considered a "terrorist group" by Turkey.

The US change in policy has reignited a dispute with Ankara, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for an "immediate" reversal.

More than 320,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced since the conflict in Syria broke out in March 2011.

It began with protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but has since widened into a multi-front conflict that has drawn in world powers.

On Friday, more than 1,200 people were bused out of rebel-controlled districts of Damascus as part of a settlement bringing Syria`s government closer to controlling the whole capital.

The evacuees, both opposition fighters and civilians, left the districts of Barzeh and Tishrin.
Future Food Asia Announces 8 Finalists for FFA 2017

Asias first agritech and foodtech startup up competition will take place in Singapore later this month. Here are the eight companies that have been selected to present at the Future Food Asia Award 2017 competition on May 26:

Nonprofit Files IRS Complaint Against Whole Foods, Humane Society, GAP

The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom has filed a formal complaint with the IRS concerning Whole Foods Market, the Humane Society of the United States, and Global Animal Partnership (GAP), a nonprofit organization run by a Whole Foods employee. The complaint alleges a scheme by which the Humane Society of the United States, on whose board Whole Foods CEO John Mackey sits, is using tax-exempt charitable donations to promote GAP and Whole Foods business interests. GAP certifies meat products that are sold at Whole Foods and was founded with Whole Foods seed money. View the complaint here.

Iowa AgriTech Accelerator Seeking Applicants for 2017 Class

The Iowa AgriTech Accelerator is seeking six early-stage companies with an idea, intellectual property or prototype for agricultural innovation to participate in this years class, which begins July 10 in Des Moines, Iowa. Click here to apply before July 7.

AgLaunch Announces 2017 Accelerator Companies

The Memphis-based AgLaunch accelerator has announced its 2017 cohort. More than 125 ag startups from across the globe expressed interest in the 2017 AgLaunch Accelerator. These are the chosen three:

Microbiometer (Englewood, NJ): Microbiometer is a rapid on-site soil testing tool that measures microbial mass.

Persistence Data Mining (San Diego, CA): Using proprietary UAV technology, Persistence Data Mining rapidly develops soil nutrient maps over large tracts of farmland.

Kilimo (Cordoba, Argentina): Kilimo provides a decision support tool for irrigation management in broadacre agriculture using satellite, climate, and on a proprietary big data platform.

Applications Open for Session #2 of AcceleRise FoodTech & AgTech Acceleration Program

With its first cohort ending its acceleration phase at the end of April, AcceleRise, Frances first foodtech and agtech acceleration program, is opening applications for its second cohort. A zero equity, not-for-profit program, AcceleRise is open to mature startups at the proof of concept stage, as well as to SMEs facing a growth opportunity. Applicants with an interest to kick-start their European development can be based anywhere, with no obligation to relocate to France. Applications for the second session close on June 12, 2017. Click here for more info.

New Indiana University Grand Challenge Initiative to Tackle Major Environmental Threats to Hoosier Health, Economy

Indiana University has announced a new investment of $55 million targeted at helping the farm state develop what it calls actionable solutions that prepare businesses, farmers, communities and individual Hoosiers for the effects of ongoing environmental change. The initiative, called Prepared for Environmental Change, is the second project funded through IUs $300 million Grand Challenges Program, which launched in 2015.

AgShift Announces New Head of Technology

Dr. Amitava Bhaduri has joined AgShift, an ag data management company, as head of technology. Bhaduri will lead technology advancements and platform improvements for AgShift. According to the company, he has an extensive background leading enterprise level companies through software development, systems architecture, spearheading innovations across machine learning, data science and the Internet of Things. Read more here.

New Spending Bill Allocates $3m to Help FDA Teach Consumers about GMOs

Congress recently passed a new spending bill that allocates $3 million to the FDA to help educate consumers about GMOs. The endeavor will cover topics like food safety, economics, environmental impact, and nutrition. Read more here.

Calysta Ships First Batch of FeedKind Protein Samples



Calysta, an innovative animal feed company, announced that it successfully produced over four metric tons of commercially-representative FeedKind protein for distribution to customers and partners around the world. These samples will support market development in the EU, the US, Japan, Southeast Asia, China, and Australia. FeedKind protein is a family of natural, sustainable, and traceable feed ingredients for fish, livestock, and pets that are being developed to help meet the worlds growing demand for food.

Other News Thats Fit to Chew
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine finalized its divorce with the Russian Empire by getting the visa-free deal with the EU.

In an interview with Ukrainian media, the president said Ukraine is returning to its historic place among European countries with the visa waiver.

The EU earlier approved visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Healthcare of Armenia Levon Altunyan addressed a message on the occasion of International Nurses Day on May 12, the Ministry told Armenpress.

The message says:

Dear nurses,

Accept my warm congratulations on the occasion of International Nurses Day.

This day is a good chance to express our sincere words of gratitude to all nurses who carry out their professional duty with great devotion. You help the patient and contribute to his/her recovery with your smile and kind attitude. At the same time, no doctor can imagine his/her work without participation of nurses. With your presence you create a unique atmosphere of compassion.

Today the nurses mission is more increasing in accordance with the demand to ensure quality of medical services. I am confident that by increasing your professional skills you will continue supporting both the patient and the system.

I wish you good health, peaceful sky, family warmness and new achievements.
YEREVAN, MAY 10, ARMENPRESS. Russian businessmen are interested in establishing machine and tractor stations in Armenia, Russias commercial representative to Armenia Andrey Babko told ARMENPRESS.

Agricultural businesses cant afford to have a tow truck, a harvester and other machinery at once, while they can use several together on lease. In the given case one machine can work in several fields, Babko said.

At the initiatives of the Russian and Armenian Prime Ministers, an Armenian-Russian investment fund is being established, where average sized investment programs will be realized in the initial period.

Investments are made in Armenias energy sector. The Tashir Holding Company is especially active in this context, Babko said.

The commercial representative said PM Karapetyans policy differs by the fact that he invites all businessmen, grants maximum privileges and most importantly establishes transparent relations, which is acceptable for entrepreneurs.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The United States Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats published on May 11 the U.S. Intelligence Communitys (IC) 2017 Statement for the Record entitled Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, which includes a part on the increased tensions between Artsakh and Azerbaijan that took place in April 2016, Asbarez repored.



The statement, which is divided into global and regional threats, includes subcategories like cyber threats, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and counterintelligence.



Relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan are addressed in the Russia and Eurasia, section of the regional threats division, in a subsection entitled The Caucasus and Central Asia.



The statement provides particular attention to the escalation of tensions between Artsakh and Azerbaijan and concludes that the situation is likely to remain in 2017. It also makes a reference to Azerbaijans economic difficulties and the possibility of Azerbaijans regime being challenged as a result.



In Azerbaijan, ongoing economic difficulties are likely to challenge the regime and increase its tendency to repress dissent to maintain power while it continues to try to balance relations with Russia, Iran, and the West, the statement said.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Armenia is the only CIS country that is of increasing interest to Lithuanian businessmen, Aleksandr Izgorodin, the economic analyst at Confederation of Industrialists of Lithuania and Lithuanian Innovation Center, said in his latest presentation about Lithuanian trade tendencies and perspectives during the Competitiveness Forum, the Development Foundation of Armenia (DFA) told Armenpress.

Lithuanian businessmen consider Armenia the most effective platform through which to enter the market of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). This opens new corridors in the development of trade and attracting investments from the Baltic States to Armenia, as it is the gateway to the major CIS and six Arab markets. Despite the geographical distance, Armenia and Lithuania have a lot in common; both are small economies, place an emphasis on human capital, have a lack of natural resources and a similar country positioning, Izgorodin stated.

According to the representative of DFA in the Baltic States, Rena Saribekian, economic ties between Lithuania and Armenia in different sectors have been developing constantly since 2014. Today, the Lithuanian textile industry is looking for opportunities to outsource services; we believe that Armenia's progress in the field could meet these expectations, making it a good regional hub, Saribekian said.

Lithuanian businessmen are also interested in developing bilateral relationships in the IT, start-up, innovation and renewable energy, food and processing sectors.

Furthermore, the IT, textile, science and technology sectors have already attracted potential investors and a business delegation representing the pharmaceutical and food industry distributors will visit Armenia this autumn.

Statistics. According to the Lithuanian Department of Statistics, trade turnover between Armenia and Lithuania comprised almost 23.7 million and increased by 28.8% between 2015 and 2016. Lithuanian exports to Armenia increased by 30.2%, while Armenian exports to Lithuania increased by 16.2%, to a total of 2.1 million. Armenia mainly exports brandy, cigarettes, wine, and medicine.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The referendum on independence of Iraqi Kurdistan may be held in October-November 2017, representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Russia Hoshawi Babakr told RIA Novosti, reports Armenpress.

It will be held in autumn. The exact date is not decided yet, but it will be held in autumn, may be in November, or even in October, Babakr said when asked whether the date of the referendum is already decided.

Iraqi Kurdistan, officially called the Kurdistan Region by the Iraqi constitution, is located in the north of Iraq and constitutes the country's only autonomous region.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Seven American companies are willing to invest in Armenias renewable energy sector.

More substantial discussions on their intentions and interests will be held on May 17 during the renewable energy conference in Armenia.

Matthew Eussen, head of the political and economic department of the US Embassy in Armenia, told ARMENPRESS the renewable energy conference is the continuation of those efforts which are aimed at strengthening economic ties between Armenia and the US.

According to him, the energy sector is a growing sector in Armenia, and renewable energy  namely solar and wind energy, have great potential here.

During this conference we present 7 leading American companies, which are interested in the market, and the interest can be the foundation for establishing partnership. This conference gives practical opportunities for companies to see what potential exists, how they can work and take practical steps, in the direction of constructing 55 megawatt solar stations and installing solar batteries on rooftops. In terms of other possibilities, real and practical steps are ready to be made, he said, adding a tender process will be held for building the 55 megawatt station, and from the submissions the best design proposal will be selected, which will have the chance to carry out the work.

Eussen said an average of 200 million dollars is invested for building this kind of stations, while the construction works and new jobs bring additional benefit to boosting the countrys economy.

According to him, a greater interest exists among American companies towards Armenias energy system.

As a successful business operation of an American company in Armenia, Eussen pointed out Contour Globals acquisition of the Vorotan hydro cascade.

He also noted that Armenia is planning to carry out energy exchange with Georgia, which means the market isnt limited only with Armenia, it becomes bigger and wider.

The conference is organized by Contour Global and Ameriabank.

Matthew Eussen also added that in addition to the energy branch, US companies are also interested in the mining and agriculture branches of Armenia.

By working with the Armenian government, we try to ensure favorable conditions in order for the business environment to be interested in making investments, he said.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Newly appointed Ambassador of Peru (residence in Moscow) to Armenia Luis Benjamin Chimoy Arteaga presented his credentials to President Sargsyan on May 12.

The Presidents Office told ARMENPRESS President Sargsyan congratulated the Ambassador on starting his diplomatic mission in Armenia, wished success and expressed hope that due to the Ambassadors active work it will be possible to boost the mutually beneficial partnership of the two countries during the coming years.

The President emphasized that despite the geographic distance, Armenia has developed very warm and strong ties with several South American countries, including Peru, which was also contributed by the hospitable attitude of those countries for a part of the Armenian people who found refuge in South America after surviving the genocide in the beginning of the previous century.

The Peruvian Ambassador thanked the President for the reception and reassured that he will work diligently for the improvement and development of the Armenian-Peruvian bilateral relations.

The sides both agreed that the 25th anniversary of establishing diplomatic ties between Armenia and Peru is an important milestone for enhancing and reconsidering the friendly relations between the two countries.

The parties also discussed the possibilities of enhancing the Armenian-Peruvian partnership in various sectors.

The President and the Ambassador also exchanged views on regional issues and developments.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Speaker of the Parliament of Armenia Galust Sahakyan on May 12 received Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Peru Armenia Luis Benjamin Chimoy Arteaga, press service of the Parliament told Armenpress.

Welcoming the Ambassador in the parliament, Speaker Sahakyan congratulated him on the occasion of being appointed Ambassador in Armenia and wished him success in the implementation of the programs being designed during his mission.

Highlighting the establishment of close cooperation with Latin American countries, Galust Sahakyan underlined the importance of the development of the Armenian-Peruvian relations at inter-state and inter-parliamentary levels.

The Parliament Speaker expressed his condolence to the Peruvian people on the disastrous flood occurred recently.

Touching upon the development of the inter-parliamentary relations, the head of the parliament emphasized the significant contribution of the Friendship Groups in that matter and expressed hope that Friendship Groups will be formed in the parliaments of the two countries in future.

Galust Sahakyan expressed his satisfaction with the unanimous adoption of the Resolution on recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide by the Andean Parliament, the member of which is also Peru.

Luis Benjamin Chimoy Arteaga thanked Speaker Sahakyan for the reception and noted that during his tenure he will make all possible efforts for the rapprochement of the relations between the two countries.

In his word the Ambassador has noted that Peru and Armenia are stable democratic countries, where the parliaments have a great role. Referring to the common system of values of the two peoples, Mr. Arteaga has stated that it seems to be Peru and Armenia are considered to be cradle of civilization, and irrespective of big distance, will use the existing potential for making closer the relations and developing the cooperation. The newly appointed Ambassador has noted that Peru is also interested in the possible cooperation with Armenia within the EEC.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The serious condition of Azerbaijans bank system is discussed by not only the Azerbaijani media, but also by international press. Forbes also weighed in on the issue.

The International Bank of Azerbaijan, the largest bank of the country, is on the verge of collapse due to the currency deficit in the country, and is unable to pay foreign debt, and has launched negotiations with creditors on restructuring the debts.

On May 10, the bank officially declared that in the event of agreeing with creditors, the foreign currency debt will be substituted with the countrys sovereign bonds.

This means that as result of the manat depreciation during the previous year, the difficulties among the population in repaying loans deepened the banking system crisis even more.

Since global oil prices began to fall, more than a dozen of banks seized operations in Azerbaijan.
The push started last month, is being orchestrated mainly by accounts belonging to the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a France-based opposition group considered one of Irans most powerful opposition movements. Posts opposing the boycott have now reached over 300,000.

Three candidates lead Irans May 19th elections  President Hassan Rouhani, Ehbrahim Raisi and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.

Raisi is one of the four Sharia judges who oversaw the executions of tens of thousands of political prisoners in 1988. Qalibaf previously commanded Irans Revolutionary Guards Corps.

#Shamelections, #MyVoteRegimeChange, and other anti-election hashtags are gaining momentum on Twitter, as are slogans like, Boycott the faked election, and those that say, there is no difference between Rouhani and Raisi, The two candidates are portrayed as two sides of the same coin. What election?! Its a puppet show run by [religious leader Ayatollah] Khamenei to create the illusion of a democracy, a person purporting to be an exiled Iranian living in Europe tweeted.

Many attacked Rouhani saying he has been directly involved in all of Iran regimes crimes and has overseen the arrest, torture, and executions of hundreds of people over his four-year presidency.

The majority of the tweets seem to have originated outside of Iran, from countries including France, Germany and Albania, where the NCRI has a significant presence.

Chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committee, Senator John McCain, met with NCRI officials in Albania last month, praising them for their sacrifice for freedom in Iran, according to reports.

Videos were uploaded by NCRI users, which allegedly show Iranians in public places in Tehran and Arak holding signs against elections, or against Rouhani, or Raisi. It is said that these actions were coordinated by Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), the military wing of the NCRI.

An Iranian official said that Iranians can vote in the elections at 279 polling stations in 103 different countries, which is good news for the 5-6 million Iranians living abroad.

Rouhani is expected to be re-elected according to Reuters, because of his wide support among urban populations and women who would welcome relaxed restrictions on social behavior.

However, Irans opposition claims, the opposite, arguing that little has changed during Rouhanis presidency.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The ministry of economy of Artsakh and the Support Council for International Business Ties signed a cooperation agreement on May 10, the Artsakhi economy ministry told ARMENPRESS.

Mariam Manukyan, president of the council, highlighted the necessity of cooperation and said : Cooperation with the Republic of Artsakh is very important for us, and we wont spare efforts to implement various events and meetings for using this agreement for the benefit of developing the business environment of the country.

Andranik Khachatryan, minister of economy of Artsakh, attached importance to the cooperation and said : Cooperation with the Support Council for International Business Ties will be continuous and permanent in nature. With this, we will boost the development of Artsakhs business environment, expansion of domestic and foreign markets and attraction of investments.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Currently the priorities of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) are the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime, Russias Ambassador to Armenia Ivan Volinkin told reporters.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization is a military-political union, the priority goal of which is protecting the borders and sovereignty of its member states, the Ambassador stressed.

The Ambassador is sure that CSTO member states do not and cannot have disagreements over important issues.

Naturally each country has its interests, its own priorities, however there are no differences in important issues, the Ambassador said.

Speaking on the appointment of Armenias representative Yuri Khachaturov to the post of CSTO Secretary General, Volinkin expressed confidence that Khachaturov will display his all capabilities in office, which he had displayed as Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces.

I believe he can do many things for the organization. Overall Armenia is a very active member of this organization, it always comes up with new initiatives, which the other member states endorse, and Yuri Khachaturov, of course, will be the moving force, the Ambassador said.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) faces challenges, because the world is becoming more and more aggressive, Ambassador of Belarus to Armenia H.E. Igor Nazaruk told reporters.

Issues facing the organization are the fight against terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and organ trade. The organization is working very actively in this direction. We must always be ready in order to deliver a decisive counterblow to these challenges if needed, the Ambassador emphasized.

He added that the efforts of all CSTO member states and structures are aimed at overcoming these challenges.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijan has blocked several online opposition media outlets.

The Sabayil district court of Baku ruled in favor of the Azerbaijani transportation ministrys lawsuit against several opposition online news websites on blocking them.

Azerbaijani media reported that the Court has blocked the websites of Radio Libertys Azerbaijani Service, Radio Liberty newspaper, Turan TV channel, Times of Azerbaijan TV program and Meydan TV.

Previously the Azerbaijani communication ministry had seized the abovementioned media outlets on March 27, 2017.

Azerbaijani authorities are silencing the voice of independent media in the country, which has minor vitality, in an attempt to deprive the population from truthful information.

In 2016, The Washington Post released an article entitled Azerbaijan declares war against independent press. The article said Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev is strictly angered by criticism.

Following this, Panama Papers revealed that the number of arrested journalists in Azerbaijan is extremely high.

Dozens of bloggers, reporters and activists are jailed in Azerbaijan. Meydan TV, which operates abroad, is not intimidated in releasing stories criticizing the Aliyev regime.

The Washington Post had advised Aliyev to apply to Meydan TV to learn democracy.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Deputy Justice Minister Vigen Kocharyan hosted the representatives of observer mission of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe (CoE) led by head of the mission Liisa Ansala, the Ministry told Armenpress.

The delegation arrived in Armenia on May 11 to carry out observer mission during the Yerevan City Council election until May 15.

The observer missions representatives said they aim to observe the practical use of legal regulations set by the new Electoral Code of Armenia in the local self-governance elections.

Deputy Minister Kocharyan presented to the mission members the main innovations in the Electoral Code, mainly the control of the election process through voters fingerprints, the live broadcast of electoral process from polling stations, the publication of voters signed lists.

At the request of the mission members, the Deputy Minister talked about the parliamentary election and the experience of applying the new regulations during the election.

At the end of the meeting, Vigen Kocharyan also presented the anti-corruption works carried out by the Ministry, which are the followings: criminalization of illegal enrichment, steps aimed at creating anti-corruption independent body, improving the disclosure process, limiting the circulation of cash, installation of alert institute and etc.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Mayor of Yerevan Taron Margaryan commented on accusations by Yelk bloc Mayor candidate Nikol Pashinyan according to which the election headquarters of the Republican Party of Armenia (RPA) offers bribes ahead of the Yerevan City Council election, reports Armenpress.

In a meeting with reporters after the election campaign in Yerevans Kentron administrative district, Mayor Margaryan said the RPA central headquarters has already issued a statement which covers this issue in-detail.

Our central headquarters has already referred to this issue. Take our statement and read it. We have responded to all such statements in-detail, the Mayor said.

Commenting on the reporters note that the Central Electoral Commission is going to discuss Yelk blocs application to cancel the RPAs registration in coming hours, Taron Margaryan said it is the CECs authority that will discuss the application and will make a decision. Our authorized representative will also be present at the session, the Mayor said.

He also commented on the incident when police officer obstructed Yelk blocs election campaign. Margaryan condemned any attempt on hindering the campaign.

In response to a view that criminal proceedings may be launched based on Pashinyans statements, Margaryan said: Lets the law enforcement agencies investigate the issue. If after that questions arise, I am ready to answer.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Minister of Finance of Armenia Vardan Aramyan visited the Leadership School on May 11, the Ministry told Armenpress.

During the meeting with young leaders, issues related to the opportunities to boost Armenias economic growth, the global development threats were discussed, as well as the leaders were interested in the contemporary governance methods. The meeting was held in Q&A format.

Minister Aramyan attached importance to promoting smart negotiation in making a business, right selection of cadres. In this context, the Minister presented the priorities of steps formed based on his own experience, the governance nuances and skills. The Minister urged the school students to continue engaging in self-education.

Having prepared, educated young people is very important for our country which derives from the interests of the country and people. The youth has a great potential, and it must be utilized, the Minister said.

During the meeting he listened to the views and proposals of young leaders, gave them recommendations with practical examples, answered to their questions.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and New Zealand exchanged messages on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of establishing diplomatic relations between the two countries, press service of Armenias MFA told Armenpress.

In his message addressed to Gerry Brownlee, Armenias FM Nalbandian says from the very start of establishment of inter-state relations, the two countries managed to establish a sincere partnership based on trust and respect, adding that Armenia attaches great importance to continuous development of mutually beneficial ties with New Zealand in various fields.

FM Nalbandian highlighted with satisfaction the deepening partnership between both countries within the frames of international organizations, stating that the stances of Armenia and New Zealand in a number of internationally important issues are very close to each other.

Minister Nalbandian emphasized the significant contribution of the Armenian community of New Zealand in the development of bilateral friendly ties.

In his message the FM of New Zealand said despite the existing geographical distance between Armenia and New Zealand, the two countries maintain warm mutual relations based on international law and the general commitments deriving from membership in the international organizations.

He spoke with satisfaction about the Armenian community. He warmly remembered the Armenian FMs visit to New Zealand in 2012 after which the relations of the two states further expanded and strengthened.

Gerry Brownlee also remembers that New Zealand is grateful to Armenia for the support during the UN Security Councils 2015-2016 elections, as well as for the opportunity to closely cooperate in issues important for our region.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic) Karen Mirzoyan received students of the Diplomatic School of Armenia on May 12, who had paid a traditional visit to Artsakh, led by the Schools Director, Ambassador Vahe Gabriyelian.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of MFA Armenia, Karen Mirzoyan welcomed the guests and expressed readiness to continue the efficient cooperation with the Diplomatic School of the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Armenia. He briefed the students on the priorities of the foreign policy of the Republic of Artsakh, as well as the activities of the MFA Central Office and the Permanent Representations of Artsakh abroad. The Foreign Minister stressed the importance of cooperation between the Foreign Ministries of the two Armenian states in resolving the issues of All-Armenian significance.

The sides also touched upon the situation created in the process of peaceful settlement of the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict as a result of the military aggression launched in April 2016 by Azerbaijan against Artsakh.

In turn, Vahe Gabriyelian expressed gratitude to the Foreign Ministry of Artsakh for the warm welcome and noted that the annual visits to Artsakh gave the future diplomats an opportunity to better understand the realities on the ground and Artsakhs foreign policy agenda.

During the meeting, the Foreign Minister answered the numerous questions of the students related to the process of international recognition of Artsakh, establishment of relations on different levels, as well as a range of international and regional issues.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Foreign Minister of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic) Karen Mirzoyan received Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk on May 12.

As Armenpress was informed from the press service of MFA Armenia, during the meeting, the sides discussed a range of issues related to the current situation on the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Artsakh and Azerbaijan. In particular, In particular, Karen Mirzoyan drew attention to the cases of ceasefire violations, which have recently become frequent.

In this context, the need for the immediate implementation of the agreements reached at the Summits in Vienna, May 16, 2016, and St. Petersburg, June 20, 2016, aimed at the expansion of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office and the establishment of mechanisms for investigating the incidents on the Line of Contact was stressed.

The sides also touched upon a range of issues related to the activities of the Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office.
In an article by Amir Basiri, Iranian human rights activist and supporter of democratic regime change in Iran, for the Clarion Project he writes, It is a known fact throughout the region that the Islamic Republic of Iran founded the Lebanese Hezbollah as an offspring to expand its influence in the Middle East and gain a foothold on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Targeting vulnerable governments across the region through a variety of plots, and meanwhile, backing armed militia groups stationed in those countries, is part of a blueprint, according to Basiri.

After Michel Aoun took control over the countrys presidency last year, it seems that Hezbollah has managed to consolidate its influence in Lebanon.

The United States, despite the nuclear deal aimed at curbing Irans nuclear program, has the leverage to pressure Iran with comprehensive sanctions. Tehran knows the Trump administration can institute new sanctions whenever it deems necessary. The U.S. administration has already slapped the Iranian regime with two series of sanctions in the past three months, and more may be coming.

Trumps national security adviser referred to militias and other illegal armed groups backed by Iran and the vast variety of Shiite militias in Iraq under the Baghdad-backed umbrella of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU). These groups are similar to the situation in Yemen with the Houthis, who are focusing their efforts on ousting the Western-backed government, Basiri says.

According to Basiri, British researchers discovered evidence indicating that Tehran is running a weapons pipeline for the Houthis. As well, he says, Tehran continues to harass the Saudis from their southern border and threaten international shipping lines passing through the strategic Bab el Mandab waterway connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.

He continues, Iran has abetted the barbaric tactics of the Bashar Assad regime in Syria, further demonstrating its ill intentions across the region. The PMU and Hezbollah have boosted Tehrans efforts and role in keeping Assad in power. They have all been accused of having played atrocious roles in unspeakable war crimes, with the Khan Shaykhoun chemical attack by Assad in Idlib Province of northern Syria acting as yet another stark reminder of this reality.

News reports seen in recent months, display that Irans destabilizing role in nations across the Arab and Islamic worlds has been on the rise.

The Iraqi Parliament legitimized the PMU last November through the adoption of a law aimed at maintaining this entitys command structure and hierarchy. Iraqi Sunnis, alongside all minorities in the country including Christians, Yazidi and others, are now left extremely concerned, knowing how this measure can actually legalize the brutal retaliation measures conducted by the Shiite militias, writes Basiri.

Still, Tehran continues to deny its role of fueling Middle East conflicts.

Bahram Ghasemi, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, denied in March that there is, any intervention in the internal affairs of Arab countries.

Basiri concludes, The irony lies in the fact that despite such remarks, Alireza Zakani, known to be a close confidante of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is also known to have boasted in remarks dating back to November 2014 of Iran controlling four Arab capitals following the Houthis capture of the Yemeni capital. The list included Baghdad, Beirut and Damascus.
SAN FRANCISCOTwo thousand seventeen hasn't exactly been a good year for those who have been labeled copyright trolls; that is, companies that own the copyright to a pornographic movie, sue numerous John Does for pirating the movie from sites like BitTorrent, subpoena each Doe's ISP to find each Doe's identity, then offer not to sue them (with the accompanying major embarrassment) if Doe sends a check to make it all go away.

The description above is a close paraphrase of the findings of U.S. District Judge Otis Wright in his June 27, 2012, Order in the case of Malibu Media LLC v. John Does 1 through 10, case number 12-3632as quoted in the Order issued on Wednesday by U.S. District Judge William Alsup in the case of Malibu Media LLC v. John Doe subscriber assigned IP Address 108.228.12.17. That last number is what Malibu Media, the parent of adult site X-Art.com, wanted to use to identify its alleged infringer using geo-location software to find the ISP that serves that address, all in an effort to subpoena the ISP to find out Doe's name.

And that's exactly the process that Judge Alsup is questioning in his Order To Show Cause regarding Malibu Media's case, in anticipation of dismissing it and at least a dozen other similar cases that Malibu Media has filed.

Here's the problem, according to Judge Alsup: "Since IP addresses are not assigned geographically, Malibu Media needed to use geolocation technology that mapped each accused IP address to a region in order to determine that jurisdiction and venue were proper before filing a lawsuit. ... In this particular case, as in each case filed in this district in October 2016, counsel for Malibu Media averred in a sworn declaration that Malibu Media used a database called 'Maxmind' to map our defendants IP address to a particular district in order to determine the proper venue for this action. The declaration parroted several hearsay statements about the accuracy of Maxmind from its website, but counsel also averred that in their experience in California 'Maxmind has always been 100% accurate to the state level, 100% accurate at identifying the ISP and has predicted the correct district 146 out of 147 times.'" [Citations removed]

The key word there is "hearsay," defined as "unverified, unofficial information gained or acquired from another and not part of one's direct knowledge"and generally not admissible in legal proceedings, as Malibu Media found out in previously filed cases where it had attempted to use MaxMind's geo-location software.

Moreover, Judge Alsup apparently did his homework, citing at least a couple of examples where MaxMind had provided wildly implausible locations for some IP addresseslike mapping "more than six hundred million IP addresses to a single farm in Kansas." Indeed, cases where MaxMind's software screwed up aren't that difficult to find, like here (note comments), here and here.

The judge also made it clear that he's no fan of Malibu Media's methods, again quoting Judge Wright: "The federal courts are not cogs in a plaintiffs copyright-enforcement business model. The Court will not idly watch what is essentially an extortion scheme, for a case that plaintiff has no intention of bringing to trial. ... Evidence that a defendant copied or distributed only a single piece of a video is weak evidence that the defendant copied the whole file (especially given the complexity of the circumstances of Malibu Medias collection of that evidence). Registration of a video with the Copyright Office is only prima facie evidence of the copyrightability of that work. Moreover, the mere fact that an individual is the subscriber for a particular IP address is weak evidence that he, rather than a third party, actually committed the alleged infringement even if the alleged infringement occurred habitually."

But the reason for Judge Alsup's May 10 Order was Malibu Media's request to continue (postpone) the case management conference in the Doe lawsuit, originally set for May 18, to a later date "because it only received defendants identifying information on April 23, and has not yet had time to serve the summons and complaint, the deadline for which is May 28."

Judge Alsup denied that request, and instead ordered Malibu Media to present argument why this and future infringement cases whose defendants were located using MaxMind software should not be dismissed outright "until the accuracy of the geolocation technology is fully vetted." Malibu's attorneys have until noon on May 16 to provide sworn statements to that effector risk having all of its cases based on MaxMind locations dismissed.

"To be clear, this order applies even if Malibu Media voluntarily dismisses this action," Judge Alsup's Order states.

AVN has reached out to Malibu Media representatives for comment on Judge Alsup's ruling, but at post time, no response had been received.
DALLAS, TXU.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater on Thursday evening dismissed the lawsuit filed by Three Expo Events LLC, the company that puts on the Exxxotica Lifestyle Conventions nationwide, against the city of Dallas, which in early 2016 barred Three Expo from returning to the city-owned Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center for a reprise of its successful Exxxotica Dallas convention in 2015. The judge's excuse? Three Expo didn't have "standing" to bring the suit in the first place, because "Three Expo Events" wasn't the name of the company on the contract for the 2015 convention; "Exxxotica Dallas" was.

As AVN has previously reported, the controversy arose after oil millionaire and religio-conservative Ray Hunt and some other business/property owners in downtown Dallas pressured city council members to deny Three Expo its Exxxotica permit, even though there was no evidence that the 2015 convention had broken any laws, and even though the city had granted convention center permits to a variety of groups like the Republican Party, the National Rifle Association, the Southern Baptist National Convention and other social groups, which Three Expo had argued made the convention center a "public forum" where it had a right to rent space.

Three Expo attorneys Roger Albright and J. Michael Murray tried to "fix" the city's objection to Three Expo pressing its lawsuit by attempting, last March, to file a Second Amended Complaint, adding Exxxotica Dallas LLC as a named plaintiff, even though the company is essentially a subsidiary of Three Expo Events, though Three Expo's J. Handy described the company as an "affiliate." And considering that Three Expo Events has been putting on Exxxotica shows around the country for several years, Judge Fitzwater could have taken judicial notice of the relationship between Three Expo and Exxxotica Dallasbut this is Texas, after all, and sexual businesses have fewer rights there than some other places.

But on Thursday, Judge Fitzwater denied Three Expo's attempt to amend its lawsuit to add Exxxotica Dallas and granted the city's motion to dismiss the lawsuit (without prejudice) for Three Expo's alleged lack of standing. In so doing, the judge relied on statements Handy had given in depositions and legal filings where he said, among other things, that "[i]t is the standard business practice for Three Expo Events, L.L.C. to be the underlying management company for the various conventions conducted throughout the country while a separate ownership entity (e.g., Exotica Miami, Exotica Chicago or Exotica Dallas) is created to own the particular event," and that Three Expo "never enters into contracts with convention centers or local facilities in any location for any of the events," and that it "never intends to at all in the future."

Hence, the "logic" of Judge Fitzwater's decision, as stated in his Order of Dismissal: "According to the City, although the [City Council's] Resolution prohibits Convention Center staff from entering into a contract with Three Expo, Three Expo admits that it has never intended, and never will intend, to enter into a contract with the City. The City posits that, because the Resolution prohibits an action that Three Expo does not intend to perform at any time in the future, it does not injure Three Expo. ... The City maintains that it is immaterial that Three Expo produced, managed, and derived revenue from Exxxotica Dallas 2015 because the Resolution prohibits a contract that Three Expo was and is unwilling to enter into, so Three Expos First Amendment rights are not at stake in this litigation."

There are other, similar reasons given for the dismissalall of which imply that if the entity, whatever its name, that was going to contract with the city for the convention center's use had been the lawsuit's plaintiff, everything would have been hunky-dory, legally speaking.

Beyond that, Judge Fitzwater also ruled that Three Expo had failed to meet the legal deadline for filing its amended complaint to add Exxxotica Dallas to the lawsuit, and found that the fact that the city only filed its Motion to Dismiss the lawsuit on the basis of lack of standing on March 3, 2017 was no excuse for Three Expo not anticipating that legal strategy, and that therefore, it should have filed to add Exxxotica Dallas as a plaintiff preemptively.

"Three Expos explanation for failing to timely file a motion for leave to file a second amended complaint is unpersuasive," Judge Fitzwater claimed in his Order. "Given the essential and unchanging role that standing plays, every plaintiff who brings suit in federal court knows that it must establish that it has standing. Three Expo should have known this before it ever filed suit. And it certainly knew before the Scheduling Orders June 13, 2016 deadline for seeking leave to add parties that Exotica Dallas was the owner and contracting party for the 2015 Exxxotica expo and that Exotica Dallas would be the owner and contracting party for any future Exxxotica events held in Dallas."

Is that legal hairsplitting, considering Three Expo's ownership interest in Exxxotica Dallas? Of course! But again, this is Texasand in any case, the judge ruled that even Exxxotica Dallas wouldn't have standing, since the entity looking to hold an Exxxotica Expo in Dallas in 2016 was reportedly Exxxotica Texas LLC.

In any case, and as Three Expo's attorney Roger Albright pointed out, the judge's Order fails to make any mention of the crux of the lawsuit: the city's argument that the Hutchison Convention Center is not a "public forum" and therefore doesn't have to rent its space to an Exxxotica convention.

"Instead," Albright told the Dallas Morning News via email, "we are presumably looking at an appeal and local taxpayers like me being asked to pay even more attorney's fees to the city's outside counsel beyond the $675,000 already spent."

Yup, that's right: Dallas taxpayers have already spent more than three-quarters of a million dollars to prevent a popular (judging by 2015's attendance) sexy lifestyle convention from coming to their townand now they're going to have to pay a lot more when the judge's dismissal is appealed, and if that appeal fails, even more when a replacement suit is filed. At one point, that worked out to about $4,000 per day in legal expenses, at least some of it going to the infamous Religious Right attorney Scott D. Bergthold, who is co-counsel for the city council and some of its members.

Perhaps it's time to ask the Dallas electorate if they're happy with their city spending so much money to stop them from having a good time?
LOS ANGELESThe Association of Sites Advocating Child Protection (ASACP) has announced that LALExpo is its newest In-Kind Media Sponsor.

Set for its fourth annual show, the Latin America Adult Business Expo (LALExpo) runs from July 10-12, at the Cartagena de Indias Convention Center in Cartagena, Colombia, known as one of the largest convention centers in Latin America. According to its promoters, LALExpo attracts a growing international and Latin-American audience of approximately 1,300 business professionals from companies representing all aspects of the online and adult business world. Because LALExpo is a business-to-business, education and trade event, the general public is not permitted to attend, but a diverse range of companies from the billing, mobile tech, ad network, affiliate sector and more will be in attendance.

This executive event is capped by the LALExpo Awards, honoring excellence across dozens of industry categories and market segments.

Anthony Rivera, an organizer of the event and co-founder of AJ Studios, explains that in a global economy, there is a need for a professional-level business event that targets and serves as a resource for the Latin American and Spanish-speaking digital media markets.

Colombia has emerged as a vibrant center of the global camming community and broader digital media market, and LALExpos goal has always been to promote excellence and responsibility among the companies in this space, Rivera says. Our roots are in the camming community and we serve this group made up of countless independent performers, providing an opportunity for all adults who wish to make a living and support their families and themselves through todays technology.

Of course, with this opportunity comes a great responsibility to do the right thing, and to help ensure that only those who are legally able to enjoy camming and other adult entrepreneurial activities are doing so, Rivera adds. This is why we support ASACP and its mission to educate and professionalize the industry in the name of protecting children, as well as restrict attendance at our event to adult business professionals only.

Included in its sponsorship package, the LALExpo.com website will feature an ASACP logo along with promotion on the shows social media and industry forums. The ASACP logo will also be displayed in the show guide, which will feature a half-page ad for the association, and on the shows interview billboard; while a complimentary table at the events Meet Market will allow the association to reach out to adult business owners and operators face-to-face. LALExpos promoters have also underwritten ASACPs Executive Director Tim Hennings event admission and hotel room.

ASACP is extremely grateful to LALExpo for this outpouring of support, Henning says. The live cam industry is on the forefront of the need for online child protection to ensure that both fans and performers are of legal age, and as an industry leader, LALExpos support of the association sends a very powerful message.

Through their generosity, Henning adds, ASACP will reach countless frontline operators, providing them with the education and free resources they need to keep children out of and away from adult-oriented materials, helping to make the internet a safer place.

ASACP uses the support it receives from its sponsors to fund initiatives such as its internationally recognized Child Exploitation Tipline, which has processed more than one million CP reports since its inception; and ASACPs multiple award-winning Restricted To Adults (RTA) meta labeling system that prevents childrens access to adult-oriented web pages and mobile apps. Market-specific Best Practices and a universal Code of Ethics help guide digital media companies towards child-safe operation and are also among ASACPs tangible successes.

To learn how your company can make a real difference in online child safety by sponsoring ASACP, or to arrange a meeting in Cartagena, email [email protected].
Co Antrim-based Ashers, the Christian bakery at the centre of a landmark legal battle after it refused to bake a cake promoting same-sex marriage, has seen its profits rise.

Ashers lost a Court of Appeal case last year after it was found by the Equality Commission to have breached equality laws by refusing to bake a cake with a slogan supporting same-sex marriage.

The family-owned firm has posted profits of 1.5m for the year to 31 March 2016  up from 1.3m the previous year - in filings made at Companies House earlier this year.

Ashers, which has seven outlets across Northern Ireland and delivers throughout the UK and the Republic, is run by husband and wife Daniel and Amy McArthur.

The bakery chain was issued with legal proceedings after the Equality Commission stepped in and said it had discriminated against gay activist Gareth Lee.

The organisation argued that the business, despite being founded and run by a Christian family, had no right to refuse Lees request for a cake bearing an image of Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie alongside the message Support gay marriage.

Ashers was eventually found guilty of illegal discrimination at Belfast County Court following one of the highest-profile cases in Northern Ireland in recent times.

The McArthurs are now considering whether to make an appeal to the Supreme Court. The McArthurs and the Christian Institute, which supported them, are liable for costs that are estimated to be in excess of 150,000.

Ashers now states on its website that people must not send content or images for cakes which contain any threatening, defamatory, blasphemous or pornographic material.

The bakery hit the press again last week after refusing an online order for a cake decorated with the words Gay Marriage Rocks.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a lower courts judgement that Ashers was discriminatory  a two-day hearing for legal arguments has been listed for October.
Auntie Annes, the worlds biggest soft pretzel retailer, opened its 32nd UK store last month, at London Luton Airport (LLA).

The Luton Airport store is the brands first airport location in the UK, and is its largest store in the country to date. The kiosk is located in the airside departure lounge at LLA and will be creating around 25 jobs locally.

Founded in 1988 in a Pennsylvanian farmers market  originally as a means of raising funds for opening a local counselling centre  there are 1,750 stores globally.

All of the products are freshly made with simple, honest, wholesome ingredients, according to the company. The dough is made from scratch on site and then hand-rolled and baked.

All the pretzels come with a freshness guarantee, meaning the pretzel will have been baked within the last 30 minutes or less. The store also sells hot drinks, fresh lemonade, milkshakes and gelato ice cream.
The Democrat leadership has made constant, profound and incredible pronouncements that one's supportive vote for Republicans is tantamount to surrendering Democracy forever. Understanding their sincere thinking in their extreme position: How will you still vote on this election day?

Democrat; because the continuance of this Democracy from the existential threat of extreme Republicans is paramount.

Republican; the process of having a choice is the democratic method within what so called "Democracy" does exists.
Many readers probably have read about the New Wave of free speech suppression that has swept across campuses in the last several years. It comes on the heels of the previous era of speech codes that reigned from the late 1980s through the first decade of the 2000s.In 2005, I published the Independent Institute book Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus, which delineated the problems back then and proposed remedies based on political mobilization against campus censorship.Since that time, things got somewhat better for a while, but then took a decided turn for the worse. Today's suppression differs from the previous era in three key respects: it is more passionate and aggressive; it is more student-initiated and driven; and it extends the reach of censorship more deeply into everyday campus life and the life of the mind.The New Wave has augured in a host of policies designed to protect identity-based sensitivity through the chilling of discourse on a variety of fronts: "trigger warnings" for reading material that might be too emotionally challenging (classical literature and even The Great Gatsby have been "triggered"); "safe spaces" where students are sheltered from challenging or stressful ideas; expansive "bias reporting" policies that can cover even being exposed to ideas contrary to "social justice;" mandatory "sensitivity training;" official lists of verbal "micro-aggressions" to avoid that include such terms as "America is a land of opportunity;" and a growing list of speakers who have been "dis-invited" from speaking engagements. Such notoriously frightening people as Janet Napolitano, Michael Bloomberg, and Condoleezza Rice have found themselves on this honorable list.Such policies bring to mind Tocqueville's warning almost 200 years ago in Democracy in America that modern democracy harbors a dark tendency toward the social or political control of not just citizens' bodies, but their minds as well. That is especially true when the cause involves what Tocqueville called "equality of condition." Today that prophecy is most telling in-of all places-higher education, whose moral charter historically has been to fearlessly pursue truth while enriching the life of the mind.But such mind-smothering administrative policies are not enough for some activists who hail from both on and off the campus. How dare a campus group dare to go ahead and invite a speaker deemed insufficiently progressive, and then actually bring that person to campus? What to do if an objectionable speaker somehow sneaks through the cracks?The answer is obvious: prevent the speech from taking place "by all means necessary."So it is not surprising that this next step has erupted nationwide. Four examples stand out: Milo Yiannopoulos' disrupted speech at Berkeley; Ben Shapiro's at Wisconsin; Charles Murray's at Middlebury; and Heather MacDonald's at Claremont McKenna College. These episodes involved threatening and sometimes violent behavior that drastically disrupted the events.Activists at Middlebury even pounced on a car bearing Murray and the moderator of the event, Professor Elizabeth Stanger. Stanger was even physically assaulted and hospitalized. Disrupters included students and outside agitators, compounding the problem.Most Americans have beheld such events with a mixture of disgust, horror, and wonder. They realize that the very idea and reality of the honored principle of the "Open University" is at stake. Many astute commentators have pondered how and why this has come to pass.The best recent take on the causal background is Frank Furedi's What's Happened to the University? Furedi perceives a "prepolitical" form of "emotional correctness" that has superseded the previous "political correctness." Furedi writes, "There is an important shift from the domain of ideas to that of emotions when people state that 'I am offended' instead of 'I disagree.'"This new "weaponization of emotions" is a major aspect of the infantilization of students.An immediate question is more pressing: what to do about this unacceptable state of affairs? Three things are necessary if higher education is to restore its moral charter in deed, not just words.First, higher education must understand what is at stake and the necessity of upholding its duty to protect and nourish the life of the mind. This is an intellectual problem.Second, it must have clear rules in place that protect speakers that properly delineate the difference between rightful protest and prohibited disruption. Preventing a speaker from speaking in the forum assigned and from being able to speak in a continuous manner crosses a line. Some schools are already working on such policies, including my school, the University of Wisconsin-Madison.But none of this will matter unless the third necessity becomes a reality: sanctions for disrupters that have sufficient teeth. Disruptions of speakers strike at the very heart of the idea of an open university. Suspension from the school-the second strongest campus-based penalties-is not out of line given the problem today. And in cases of repeated offense, outright expulsion would be merited.These disruptions violate at least four levels of rights and principles: the rights of the speaker; the rights of the group or individual who brought the speaker in; the rights of those who want to listen to the speaker-as the great education and free speech philosopher Alexander Meiklejohn once wrote, the First Amendment and free speech principles are most concerned about the rights of "listeners;" and the rights of the institution itself to host speakers as part of its educational mission.I might add the right of the country to be a constitutional place.Rights and principles that lie at the foundation of our constitutional order are at stake. Thomas Hobbes once wrote that a contract not backed by the power of the sword is not a contract. Translated to the predicament at hand: unless meaningful sanctions are exercised when speakers are disrupted, disruptions will continue. School leaders need only the courage and commitment to apply them.The first step is to apply the sanctions of the criminal law to disrupters who hail from outside the university. It is up to legislators to decide on the severity of sanctions, but such sanctions must be sufficiently strong to protect the integrity of higher education and our broader commitment to an open society. Strong sanctions should include fines and even jail or prison time for violent disrupters and repeat offenders.Also, colleges and universities must apply meaningful sanctions to their own citizens who step over the line into disruption. As mentioned, violators may deserve suspension or expulsion.It is encouraging to hear that some schools are now considering applying substantial sanctions to those who disrupt speakers. For example, The Daily Signal reports that the president of Claremont McKenna has declared, "Blocking access to buildings violates College policy. CMC students who are found to have violated policies will be held accountable." Middlebury's leaders have also issued similar statements. Whether they carry through in the face of expected activist pressure remains to be seen.In the absence of institutional protection of speakers, outside political pressure is now being brought to bear. A couple of months ago the Goldwater Institute in Arizona presented a proposal for legislative protection of campus free speech. The validity of legislative intervention aside, the proposal presents policies that higher education should adopt on its own initiative.Among other things, the proposal calls for laws protecting the rights of speakers and audiences; meaningful sanctions for disrupters; prohibitions against "dis-inviting" speakers; legal remedies for those who are disrupted; and campus commissions to monitor the status of free speech on campus.It is both unfortunate and shameful that we have come to the point of having to resort to outside influence in order to right higher education's ship of state. After all, legislatures often have their own political agendas, and outside pressure always poses the potential danger of undermining the institutional autonomy that is one important component of academic freedom.But if institutions fail in upholding their end of the social contract, which dictates protecting academic freedom and free speech within their own domains, they open the door to such intervention. The spread of speech disruption threatens not only the academic and intellectual freedom of speakers and audiences. It also threatens to undermine the academic freedom of educational institutions themselves.It is time for higher education to get its own house in order.
Budget sticks to priorities and uses reserve funds and spending restraint to avoid surprises



N.C. FreeEnterprise Foundation executive director Joe Stewart, speaking in 2016 at the John Locke Foundation. (CJ file photo)

The $22.9 billion General Fund budget plan released Tuesday by Senate Republicans would increase spending over the two-year budget cycle by less than Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper's plan would in its first year alone.That's one conclusion from Joe Coletti, a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation specializing in fiscal analysis. The Senate increase is 2.5 percent over the biennium; Cooper's is 5.1 percent in 2017-18 only. Cooper's percentage increase would be even higher if things such as spending on Hurricane Matthew recovery were included in appropriations, Coletti noted. Cooper's budget would use $150 million from savings reserves for that purpose. The Senate appropriated money in the budget.The budget plan, Senate Bill 257 , is set for its initial vote Thursday on the Senate floor.Joe Stewart, executive director of North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, said Republicans were continuing a methodical approach by including its priorities into the budget. That process began in 2011, when the GOP took control of the legislative branch for the first time since the 19th century and accelerated when Republican Pat McCrory became governor in 2013.The budget plan comes well in advance of the end of the fiscal year, which is June 30.The Republican leadership made a commitment to looking at the state system of taxation and making reductions that they felt were appropriate.Stewart said. Senators say their $1 billion tax cut will benefit 99 percent of the state's residents. Both corporate and personal income tax rates would be lowered.Cooper has criticized Senate Republicans' tax cut plan. He and legislative Democrats wanted to spend more money instead of returning it to the taxpayers, especially in light of a $580 million surplus this year.said Cooper spokesman Ford Porter.Donald Bryson, state director of Americans for Prosperity, defended the tax cuts, which would total $3.5 billion over five years. Returning more money to taxpayers is the right thing to do, he said.Stewart said the real debate is not about rates but whether the tax system is structured in a way that generates sufficient revenue to provide government services taxpayers want, while not discouraging economic activity necessary for employers to continue providing meaningful jobs.Coletti said a major policy shift in the budget would eliminate retiree health benefits for state employees hired after July 1, 2018. Current state employees would not be affected. The two-tier system is a response to $32 billion in unfunded liabilities in the State Health Plan.The Senate budget splits off some functions of the Department of Public Safety beginning July 1, 2018, by creating the Department of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice. The former would focus on law enforcement; the latter on corrections and the penal system.Coletti said splitting the Department of Public Safety in two would enhance administrative efficiency by allowing them to focus on core functions. He likened it to previously placing aquariums, zoos, and parks under the Department of Natural Resources, where it was a better fit, instead of housing them under the much larger Department of Environmental Quality.For years the state's Medicaid program was the problem child of the state budgeting process. Last-minute reports of hundreds of millions of dollars in unanticipated costs annually torpedoed the spending plans of legislative budget writers. The McCrory administration worked with legislative leaders to bring that spending under control.The 2017-18 Medicaid spending increase over this year's budget is $66 million, though that would be offset with $62 million in one-time receipts, Coletti said. The increase projected for fiscal 2018-19 is $174 million, with $62 million of that offset by one-time receipts.Coletti said the smaller Medicaid increases are evidence the Department of Health and Human Services has, indeed, gotten its budget accountability and forecast mission under control.Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, chairman of the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on Medicaid and NC Health Choice, said the Senate budget sets aside $75 million each of the next two years in a reserve fund for implementing Medicaid reform.Already $225 million has been put in Medicaid reserve toward the projected $390 million needed to switch the payment system from a fee-for-service model that pays providers for every patient visit to a managed care system that pays fixed monthly amounts per enrollee. That will give providers an incentive to improve patient health.Hise said the Medicaid reserve fund would cover payment claims that can lag for up to a year as it switches to the new payment model.The budget probably will be altered in the House before going to a conference committee to reconcile differences. Senate leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, said during a Tuesday press conference he thinks the budget can be wrapped up before June 15.Stewart said he cannot imagine the governor and the legislature agreeing on the budget given their differing agendas. He predicts Cooper will veto the budget, but the General Assembly will get the 30 votes in the Senate and 72 votes in the House necessary to override the veto.
Contact: Attila Nemecz

Attila Nemecz Attila.Nemecz@beaufortccc.edu

WASHINGTON, N.C. Forty-five graduated from Beaufort County Community College's Associate Degree in Nursing program on May 11 at 11:00 a.m. The families and supporters of the graduates packed the Old Ford Church of Christ (6040 US Hwy 17, Washington, NC 27889).The graduates finished a five-semester program, including clinical experience in nursing homes, hospitals and other healthcare agencies. They are trained in general nursing, long-term care, home health, medical surgical nursing and intermediate and intensive care.Kent Dickerson, director of the nursing program, explained the difficulty of the program and how much information the students must absorb in a very short time period. Later in their classroom experience, the students are exposed to sim lab, where they interact with robot "patients" that breathe, have pulses, bleed, cry and can even die in scenarios that model on real situations. Nurses must learn to interact as a team.Among the students recognized were Matthew Anderson, who received the outstanding student award. Anderson also delivered student comments during the ceremony. Margo Brown received the Katie Paul Award for Clinical Excellence. The Outstanding Leadership Award was presented to Mollie Davis, and Betsy Farnsley received the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award. The nurses were pinned by instructor Molly Wells, and instructor Dr. Millie House led the graduates in the Nurse's Pledge.This year, two students, Elizabeth Knox and Carmela Mombraerts, were awarded the new DAISY in Training Award. This award from the DAISY Foundation is given to nursing students who exemplify the delivery of clinical care in an extraordinary and compassionate way to patients and their families, according to the foundation.Students graduating from the program must pass the nursing board exam before being employed. Four of the graduates were dual enrolled in the Regionally Increasing Bachelor's in Nursing (RIBN) program to receive their Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree one year after receiving their ADN. Alexis Bryant, Caroline James, Jenna Lamphere and Lyndsey Odom were recognized for their participation in the program. The RIBN program seeks to increase the number of nurses with four-year degrees across the state.
If you've spent much time on a college campus you've probably heard the claim that conservatives are anti-science. If you're a liberal who doesn't interact with many conservatives, you might have believed it. If you're conservative, you probably felt frustrated and misrepresented. This view of conservatives as anti-science has been broadcast beyond the college campus. We should all be concerned about the consequences of playing politics with science.Science isn't inherently associated with liberal or conservative viewpoints, but tribal politics does influence how people think about scientific issues. Consider a recent study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour that examined the kinds of nonpolitical books conservatives and liberals purchased. Conservatives and liberals were equally interested in science books. In fact, both groups similarly preferred science books over non-fiction books not related to science. This is good news. It reveals a general high level of interest in science among both liberal and conservative readers. Indeed, surveys reveal that Americans across the political divide hold scientists in high regard.The researchers did, however, detect differences in the types of scientific books conservatives and liberals purchased. Liberals were more inclined to purchase basic science books such as books on astronomy, physics, and zoology. Conservatives were more inclined to purchase applied and commercial science books such as books on medicine, criminology, and geophysics.These distinctions may be partially accounted for by natural differences in the personal interests of conservatives and liberals. But they also raise concerns about ideological echo chambers.This is where tribal politics comes into play. When liberals and conservatives read on the same topic (e.g., economics) research indicates that they are selectively consuming information (e.g., books, websites, magazine articles) that reinforces their own ideology.But why? Humans are a social species. Starting at birth we depend on caregivers to meet our basic needs. Even as independent adults we rely on others to survive and thrive. At a minimum, we need one other to reproduce and even the most individualistic folks require the help and expertise of others from time to time. Forming and maintaining more complex groups and larger societies has allowed us to dominate the planet and, using science and technology, bend nature to our will.Because humans are highly self-aware organisms capable of abstract and symbolic thought, these groups are often based on or closely tied to shared ideologies. This is all well and good but the motivation to be a good member of the tribe can mean forming opinions based on perceived group consensus as opposed to rational thought and empirical data. Thus, if a particular scientific topic becomes or is perceived as political, many will adopt the position of their political tribe, as opposed to conducting their own investigation.In the modern world, it is often hard to realize just how powerful these social motives are for our species. But imagine the high price our ancestors might have paid if they were ostracized by the group. Indeed, history is full of examples of people being punished, banished, or killed for challenging tribal orthodoxy.Even in today's society, tribal disloyalty can have dramatic personal and professional consequences. Consider, for example, the very recent case of an untenured philosophy professor being publicly ridiculed and shamed by fellow academics for publishing a paper that, in their opinion, did not sufficiently conform to far-left dogma. Our sensitivity to rejection is adaptive but it can also lead us to privilege tribal loyalty over facts.Trusting the consensus of a group is not necessarily a bad idea. People only have so much time and cognitive bandwidth to allocate to any given topic or task so we naturally assume we can rely on the knowledge of others, particularly those who share a common group identity, interest, or goal. This approach works when the shared information is accurate.And if the information we are given is incorrect but has no direct or immediate impact on us personally, maintaining our standing within the tribe may be a more valuable proximal goal than challenging its collective wisdom. Of course, this can lead to longer term consequences for us and others if the collective wisdom is wrong and dangerous.This is why it is critical to make science transcend tribal politics. Academia, which is increasingly dominated by faculty on the political left, is not immune to tribal loyalty and groupthink. As a result, it is easy for academics to identify and criticize conservatives who reject scientific findings or engage in biased reasoning but to not see their own biases and some of the pseudoscientific and even anti-science scholarship that is happening at liberal universities.This problem goes beyond the academy. It is people on the political left who often have pseudoscientific beliefs about vaccines, GMOs, and alternative medicines and healing practices. Conservatives are not the only people denying science.Likewise, liberals are not the only people advancing science. For instance, recent rankings of states on clean energy development reveal that the top ten rankings were nearly evenly divided between conservative and liberal led states. Not surprisingly, California was at the top, but states such as Wyoming, North Dakota, and Kansas also held high rankings. For Wyoming, all of the state's power plant capacity added since 2016 comes from renewable sources. Kansas has tripled its production of electricity from wind. And North Dakota is number one per capita in wind-based energy production. This is just one example.Science is not a social club or a tribe. It is way to examine and understand the natural world and the organisms that live in it, including humans. It is an effort to remove human biases, motives, and emotions in order to develop an objective understanding of reality. Scientists are humans and humans are biased so mistakes are made and science is sometimes used for personal gain or to cause harm. But this is not the fault of science. It is the fault of people. Science has no agency. Therefore, it has no agenda, ambition, or prejudice.Psychological science offers a solution to the politicization of science. Research indicates that uniting people under a common cause reduces tribal biases and intergroup conflict. Researchers call this a superordinate goal. Thus, if science is perceived as something that is superordinate to political or any other group identity, people across different groups are better able to work together. Common humanity is a similar concept. When people from different groups perceive themselves as part of a superordinate group with a common purpose, it is easier for them to perceive science as part of that shared purpose.Our nation and world have plenty of issues and concerns that divide us. We can't afford to let science be one of them. We all need science.
The BBC reports a quick outcome to a televised bout fought between Xu Xiaodong, a practitioner of modern mixed martial arts, and Wei Lei, a Tai Chi master. It was over in a few seconds, with a few more of the traditionalist, hopelessly outmatched, shielding himself on the ground.

Millions of people have since watched video footage of the competition, and it has triggered a huge discussion in China on whether traditional martial arts  or wushu  can ever truly be effective in combat. Tai chi is now associated by many with older people, who use the series of movements to improve posture and release stress and anxiety. They can often be seen in Chinese public parks in the morning, slowly stretching out their arms. But it has been part of Chinese martial arts culture since the 16th Century. Films and TV dramas have historically portrayed martial arts masters as great heroes in conflict, with almost supernatural strength.

Here's the infamous video of Aikido master and telekineticist Yanagi Ryuken, whose (partially apocryphal) $5000 challenge to fight anyone was taken up by an MMA fighter.

The website Bullshido focuses mostly on Westerners exploiting Asian concepts to sell quack fighting techniques to Americans, and has many amusing don't-read-the-comments videos of them at work. The resemblance to Christian revival shows is often uncanny.
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania should be able to convince the European Union to lift special monitoring of its justice system by the time it takes over the presidency of the EU Council in 2019, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Thursday. The EU has monitored the justice systems of Romania and Bulgaria since they joined the bloc in 2007. It has helped bolster a crackdown on high-level graft in Romania, seen as one of the EU's most corrupt states. The ruling Social Democrats have repeatedly said since coming to power in December of last year that they will work toward lifting the verification mechanism. But in February the government approved an emergency decree that would have shielded dozens of public officials from prosecution, drawing international criticism and triggering the largest nationwide protests in decades. The decree was rescinded within the week. "I will militate with Romanian authorities to guarantee the irreversibility of reforms," Juncker told Romania's parliament on an official visit. He also said the citizens who stood up for the rule of law were Romania's biggest advantage. Later, on a visit to President Klaus Iohannis, Juncker said justice monitoring should end by 2019. "One cannot preside over the EU while under the impression that one is controlled, observed," he said, adding Romania should also be allowed into the EU's passport-free Schengen zone by that time. (Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Toby Chopra)
Louisiana's death row

Louisiana's death penalty is an incredibly expensive, entirely arbitrary, and an error-prone monument to the failures of big government. The Louisiana Legislature is considering 2 bills to replace the death penalty with life without parole, saving Louisiana - under conservative estimates - at least 10 million dollars annually. Not only is Louisiana's death penalty expensive, it is particularly error-prone. As Frank Baumgartner and others have noted, some 82 % of Louisiana death sentences imposed since 1976 have been reversed. And with last month's exoneration of Rodricus Crawford, 11 individuals sentenced to death in Louisiana have been released from prison without any charges whatsoever. By any measure, Louisiana taxpayers are getting scammed.





Jeff Sadow's column of May 6 - suggesting Louisiana's death penalty might save lives by deterring capital murder - is both empirically and logically moribund, and is counter to the views of virtually all the top criminologists in the United States In 2012, the renowned National Research Council, a division of the National Academy of Sciences and composed of the foremost scholars in the United States, reviewed all the research done on the deterrence question, and concluded that there is not a shred of evidence that the death penalty has any effect on the homicide rate. Their report also discredited the small number of studies that had claimed to find a deterrent effect. And, as one of us found in a 2009 study, 95 % of the nation's top criminologists - a group to which it seems unlikely Sadow belongs - rejected the idea that the death penalty is a better deterrent than life without parole to the commission of homicide.





Over the last 25 years, the murder rate in states without the death penalty has been consistently lower than in states with the death penalty. Research in Arizona and Oklahoma suggests that having the death penalty increases rather than reduces the number of murders - indicating that it might actually have a brutalizing effect, increasing homicides and detracting from the valuing of life. There is reason to suspect that this brutalizing effect exists in Louisiana - where the state has the highest murder rate in the country. If the death penalty deterred, Louisiana would have a lower murder rate than states like New Jersey, New York and Michigan, states that have already sent their death penalty statutes to the junkyard.





But one doesn't need a Ph.D. to question the deterrent value of the death penalty. America's police chiefs identify the death penalty as the last-ranked priority in reducing crime, and the most inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. And more specifically, using the death penalty to deter murders suggests both a rational mindset and a valuing of life regularly missing from those who commit murder. The last 2 defendants on Louisiana's death row who have died did so voluntarily - one with the assistance of the state (Gerald Bordelon) and one alone in his cell (Terrance Carter). For many, life imprisonment is an even worse punishment than death on the gurney.





In the end, even Sadow must acknowledge that the death penalty that currently exists in Louisiana - with 1 (voluntary) execution in the last 15 years, and numerous errors - performs no deterrent function. Sadow suggests that the problems with capital punishment in Louisiana might be fixed, cases expedited, assurances made - and that with a few constitutional short-cuts and frequent executions it might be able to deter crime. The country that Sadow is describing, however, is not America - it's maybe Saudi Arabia. And when Sadow proposes a death penalty system that has reduced the risk of wrongful execution to zero, he is imagining a regime of perfection that does not exist.





Criminologists agree, the best way to "deter" crime is to prevent the conditions that lead to it: better education, more support from positive role models, better mental health treatment. Louisiana has to decide whether it wants to continue spending millions of dollars on a system that does not deter, that does not provide justice, and that that has a demonstrable record that it gets it wrong far more often than it gets it right. We suggest that those in favor of such system be sent the bill for it. And we also suggest that academics think twice before disseminating unsubstantiated pseudo-science, especially when millions of dollars - along with the conscience of the community - are at stake.





Source: The Advocate, Guest Column, Michael L. Radelet, May 11, 2017. Mr. Radelet, a sociologist at the University of Colorado, has published research and testified as an expert on death penalty issues. Ben Ben Cohen is of counsel at the Promise of Justice Initiative.

 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com



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As promised, President Trumps administration announced a tax plan on Wednesday that mainly revolved around cutting corporate taxes and adjusting personal tax rates. However, the document did not reveal much details and did not disclose the plans effect on budget deficit.

Though most market participants are not sure if Congress will pass any of these tax proposals, the Trump administration seems confident about the materialization of the tax plan, even if a second attempt at canceling the Affordable Care Act flops.

The administration sees the completion of the biggest overhaul of the tax code since President Ronald Reagan by the end of the year, as per Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

As per the overhaul plan, Trump has suggested a 15% corporate tax rate compared with the present 35%. The administration has proposed three tax brackets with rates of 35%, 25%, and 10%, down from the current 7 brackets, double the standard deduction that Americans can claim on their tax returns and [a] repeal [of] the estate tax and alternative minimum tax.

Below we highlight a few ETFs that stand to gain out of this tax overhaul, if it at all gets enacted.

Buyback ETF

In the face of lower corporate taxes, companies profitability would be enhanced. This higher profitability may push companies into act of enhancing shareholders wealth. As per an analyst, there is approximately $1.2 trillion held overseas that can't be brought back to the U.S. without getting hit with the 35 percent corporate tax rate.

Trump also plans to propose a tax on over $2.6 trillion in offshore earnings. Overall, tax cuts and a one-time repatriation tax could boost share repurchases by companies. PowerShares Buyback Achievers Portfolio PKW and SPDR S&P 500 Buyback ETF (SPYB) can be beneficiaries of this move (read: Buyback ETFs: Trump Beneficiary or Overhyped Bets?).

Dividend Growth ETF

Tax savings may also result in fatter and faster dividend hikes.S&P Global expects to see a clearly communicated and orderly distribution of capital through share buybacks, dividends, and to a lesser extent, debt repayments, if repatriation comes.

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This puts dividend growth ETFs like iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF DGRO and SPDR S&P Dividend ETF SDY in focus. The stocks making up these ETFs have a history of consistent dividend hikes (read: An Investor's Guide to Dividend Aristocrat ETFs).

Cash ETF

As per the report of S&P Global, the technology sector controls more than 40% of the total corporate cash and investments, much of it held overseas. So, a repatriation tax along with lower corporate tax would bring back a significant portion of that cash.

Plus, with such ease in corporate and individual tax rates, more activity in the economy and more portability and cash balances at the corporate level are expected. This makes Pacer US Cash Cows 100 ETF (COWZ) an intriguing pick. The fund looks to offer exposure to large and mid-capitalization U.S. companies with high free cash flow yields (read: 4 ETFs to Profit Out of Cash Kings).

Small-Cap Growth ETFs

As per an article published on CNBC, small companies  which are more domestically focused and have les foreign exposure  pay huge taxes in America. This is because these pint-sized companies cant pile cash in foreign lands. So, a slash in tax rates would give a big-time benefit to these companies.

Moreover, due to relaxation in individual tax structure, Americans will also be able to splurge in more economic activities. This in turn should benefit small-cap growth ETFs like iShares Russell 2000 Growth ETF IWO and Vanguard Small-Cap Growth ETF VBK.

ETFs with Exposure to Highest Tax Payers

CNBC revealed the names of some of the highest tax-paying companies of the S&P 500. These companies areAetna (AET), Anthem (ANTM),Colgate-Palmolive (CL), Hershey (HSY), Masco (MAS) and Unitedhealth Group (UNH) to name a few. So, ETFs having considerable exposure to these stocks are likely to benefit in a low tax structure.

Aetna, Unitedhealth and Anthem  the trio has considerable exposure in iShares U.S. Healthcare Providers ETF IHF. So, the fund is likely to be a clear beneficiary. Notably, HSY has a decent weight in PowerShares Dynamic Food & Beverage Portfolio ETF PBJ.

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ISHARS-RS 2K GR (IWO): ETF Research Reports



ISHARS-US H C P (IHF): ETF Research Reports



ISHRS-CORE DG (DGRO): ETF Research Reports



SPDR-SP DIV ETF (SDY): ETF Research Reports



PWRSH-DYN FD&BV (PBJ): ETF Research Reports



VIPERS-SC GRWTH (VBK): ETF Research Reports



PWRSH-BYBK ACHV (PKW): ETF Research Reports



SPDR-S&P500 BB (SPYB): ETF Research Reports



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FOUNTAIN INN, SC--(Marketwired - May 08, 2017) - AVX Corporation, a leading manufacturer and supplier of passive components and interconnect solutions, has received a prestigious 2016 Rockwell Collins Platinum Premier Award, which honors top-performing suppliers for having maintained the highest levels of quality, delivery, and business alignment over the full course of the year, and is the highest recognition a company can achieve through Rockwell Collins' Trusted Supplier Program.

Introduced in 2013, Rockwell Collins' Trusted Supplier Program fosters supplier collaboration to improve efficiencies and drive performance, and provides a formal framework to measure suppliers' achievements and celebrate collective success. The program couples quantitative performance measures, including delivery and quality, with qualitative assessments of total cost of ownership, technology, and customer support to recognize supplier contributions to the company's overall strategic success.

Suppliers that earn a Platinum Premier Award have achieved zero direct defective parts per million (DPPM) and fewer than 1,000 DPPM in purchased assemblies, 99.9 - 100% on-time delivery, and the highest levels of performance in all three Business Alignment categories: Ownership, Technology, and Customer Support.

"We are honored to have earned an apex performance award from our longtime supply chain partner, Rockwell Collins, and look forward to continuing to exceed expectations as we collaborate to deliver the highest-quality communications and avionics electronics with the utmost safety and reliability the industry has to offer," said Pete Venuto, senior vice president of sales, AVX.

For more information about Rockwell Collins' Trusted Supplier Program, please visit https://rockwellcollins.com/~/media/BCD28748BC814CCEAA9E2E68935508AB.pdf. For more information about AVX, please visit www.avx.com, call 864-967-2150, or write to One AVX Boulevard, Fountain Inn, S.C. 29644.

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About Rockwell Collins

Rockwell Collins (COL) is a leader in aviation and high-integrity solutions for commercial and military customers around the world. Every day we help pilots safely and reliably navigate to the far corners of the earth, keep warfighters aware and informed in battle, deliver millions of messages for airlines and airports, and help passengers stay connected and comfortable throughout their journey. As experts in flight deck avionics, cabin electronics, cabin interiors, information management, mission communications, and simulation and training, we offer a comprehensive portfolio of products and services that can transform our customers' futures. To find out more, please visit www.rockwellcollins.com.

About AVX

AVX Corporation is a leading international manufacturer and supplier of electronic passive components and interconnect solutions with 20 manufacturing and warehouse facilities in 11 countries around the world. AVX offers a broad range of devices including capacitors, resistors, filters, timing and circuit protection devices, and connectors. The company is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (AVX).

A member of the Kyocera Group since 1990, AVX is also the only company authorized to supply Kyocera's electronic devices to the Americas and Europe. Established in 1959 and based in Kyoto, Japan, Kyocera Corporation is a leading international supplier of connectors, capacitors, ceramic resonators, surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters and duplexers, and crystal oscillators and timing devices.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Contradicting previous White House explanations, President Donald Trump declared Thursday he had planned to fire FBI Director James Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step. His assertions came as Comey's temporary replacement joined in, contradicting other administration statements on the snowballing controversy.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump also said he'd asked Comey point-blank if he was under investigation and was assured three times he was not. Trump showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in an active FBI probe into his 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia's election meddling.

"I said, 'If it's possible, would you let me know am I under investigation?' He said you are not under investigation," Trump told NBC. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.

Comey has not confirmed Trump's account.

The New York Times late Thursday cited two unnamed Comey associates who recounted his tale of a January dinner with the president in which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty. Comey declined, instead offering "honesty." When Trump then pressed for "honest loyalty," Comey told the president, "you will have that," said the associates, who told the newspaper they agreed to keep the story confidential while Comey was FBI director.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the report and said the president would "never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty."

But the account echoed wording in a comment made a day earlier to The Associated Press by longtime Comey friend Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, who said the president had removed "somebody unwilling to pledge absolute loyalty to him."

The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation  which he dismissed as a "made-up story"  was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

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The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a "showboat" and "grandstander," added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

The White House's explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House's assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file.

"That is not accurate," McCabe said. "Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

Unfazed, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from "countless" members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trump's version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not "standard practice" to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trump's comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

Trump and Comey's relationship was strained early on, in part because of the president's explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.

The president was no kinder to Comey Thursday, calling him names and saying he'd left the FBI in "virtual turmoil." He said that while he received a scathing assessment of Comey's performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Monday, that memo was not a catalyst for his dramatic decision as the White House had said earlier.

"I was going to fire Comey," Trump said. "Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey."

That's far different that the White House's initial account in the hours after Comey's firing. Multiple officials, including Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

But it quickly became clear that the president had been stewing for days over the Russia investigation and Comey's refusal to defend him in appearances before lawmakers. By Wednesday afternoon, the officials, like Trump, were saying he had in fact been considering ousting the FBI director for months because of a lack of confidence in his ability to lead the agency.

And the Russia investigation was still on his mind.

"In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won," he said.

Sanders attributed the disconnect in the week's explanations to the fact that she had not directly asked Trump when he'd made the decision to fire Comey until shortly before Thursday's press briefing.

The White House tried to move past the controversy, announcing that the president had signed an executive order creating a voter fraud commission and another on cybersecurity. Trump signed the orders privately and was not seen in public apart from his TV interview with NBC.

Trump had kept his decision to fire Comey from all but his closest advisers. Many in the White House were ill-prepared for the outraged response from Democrats and open concern from some Republicans.

"The challenge they have is that the president sometimes moves so rapidly that they don't get a team around that gets it organized," said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally. "They need to decide what they're going to say and they need to stick with it. Random change isn't helpful."

White House officials and others insisted on anonymity in order to disclose private conversations and internal deliberations.

The White House said Trump is weighing options for replacing Comey, a decision that could have broad implications for the future of the Russia investigation.

Some senior officials have discussed nominating Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who ran the House committee that investigated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's actions in connection with the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Trump's advisers have repeatedly tried to downplay the Russia-election matter, with Sanders saying Wednesday the FBI was "doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation."

But McCabe characterized the investigation as "highly significant" and assured senators Comey's firing would not hinder it. He promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.

Days before he was fired, Comey requested more resources to pursue his investigation, U.S. officials have said. McCabe said he was not aware of any such request and said the Russia investigation is adequately resourced.

It was unclear whether word of the Comey request, said to have been put to Rosenstein, ever made its way to Trump.

The chairman and top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee abruptly left the hearing Thursday to meet with Rosenstein, who is McCabe's boss. The senators said later that the Russia investigations were discussed but Comey's firing was not.

___

Pearson reported from New York. AP writers Darlene Superville, Deb Riechmann and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
Donald Trump

For months, President Donald Trump has taken almost every possible on-the-record chance to slam news media outlets that he feels are portraying him unfairly by writing or broadcasting negative stories about his administration.

But his comments to Time Magazine in an interview published Thursday were particularly colorful and pointed. He took aim at a number of prominent critics, including "Late Show" host Stephen Colbert and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough.

And the president took precise aim at CNN, singling out anchors Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, hosts generally on television at the times of day  early morning and late night  Trump generally tunes in.

"Chris Cuomo, hes sitting there like a chained lunatic," Trump said. "Hes like a boiler ready to explode, the level of hatred. And the entire, you know the entire CNN platform is that way. This Don Lemon  whos perhaps the dumbest person in broadcasting."

A CNN spokesperson responded in a statement Thursday afternoon, saying Trump's "comments are beneath the dignity of the office of the president."

The rant didn't seem to bother Lemon  on Twitter, he retweeted and liked several articles with headlines directly calling him the dumbest person in broadcasting.

Though CNN often faced criticism during the 2016 Republican primary for saturating coverage of Trump's bid, the network has been responsible for some of the most consequential reporting about Trump's potential ties to Russia. And some of its anchors  including Cuomo and Lemon  have intensely questioned Trump White House staffers and surrogates on their programs.

Despite his former friendship with network president Jeff Zucker, Trump has frequently criticized CNN, which regularly fact-checks and responds to his own comments about the network.

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A representative for Colbert didn't respond to a request for comment.

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NOW WATCH: WATCH: Putin reacts to Trump firing FBI Director James Comey
Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite arrives at a European Union leaders summit in Brussels, Belgium, in this March 19, 2015 file picture. Lithuania launched a military exercise on May 6, 2015 to simulate an attack on its new gas terminal, a move its strongly anti-Moscow president Grybauskaite said was intended to show the Kremlin that the tiny country would defend itself. REUTERS/Yves Herman/Files

The Lithuanian president has said she wants an ongoing US troop presence in her country in light of increased Russian activity in the region and in response to Moscow's preparations for military exercises in neighboring Belarus late this year.

"We need the serious involvement of the US to not only deter but to defend," President Dalia Grybauskaite told The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, after a meeting with US Defense Secretary James Mattis. "It is important to have adequate response capabilities against possible threats."

Planned war games by Russia and Belarus slated for September could involve up to 100,000 troops and include nuclear-weapons training. Mattis has criticized the buildup ahead of the exercise, as well as Russia's deployment of missiles to Kaliningrad  its semi-enclave on the Baltic Sea.

"Any kind of buildup like that is simply destabilizing," Mattis said. Moscow said the missiles were part of routine drills, but US officials worried it was a permanent upgrade to Kaliningrad's missile capability.

The US has had 150 soldiers in Lithuania since 2014 but now plans to station soldiers from a heavy tank brigade in the country temporarily, according to The Journal. That rotation will begin in June with soldiers taking part in a multinational exercise.

Nato military exercise

"Our goal is that not only NATO troops need to be involved in deterrence in the Baltic region, but also, bilaterally, US troops, Grybauskaite told The Journal, saying that the US would likely be the first to respond in the event of a confrontation with Russia, as NATO decision-making did not move quickly.

"Having in mind the challenges we are facing and the increase in tensions in our region it would be preferable to have the US on a permanent basis," she said.

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Raimundas Karoblis, Lithuania's defense minister, has criticized NATO's reaction speed in the past and this week echoed the president's remarks. "The presence of Americans is a multiplying factor for deterrence," he told The Journal. "With Americans here it is a game changer."

The Baltic states have sounded alarm about Russia activity in Eastern Europe for several months.

Russian Parade Putin

In April, Karoblis told The Guardian that his country was "taking very seriously" propaganda efforts organized by Moscow meant to destabilize the region.

"Russia is a threat," he said at the time. "They are saying our capital Vilnius should not belong to Lithuania because between the first and second world wars it was occupied by Poland."

"There are real parallels with Crimea's annexation [from Ukraine]," he added. "We are speaking of a danger to the territorial integrity of Lithuania."

Estonia's national intelligence report for 2016 said the "Baltic Sea area is especially vulnerable to threats from Russia" and that Russian intelligence agencies were conducting operations to influence the Estonian defense forces and public.

In recent months. NATO countries have stepped up their deployments to Eastern Europe, which is already bristling with offensive and defensive weaponry.

In Lithuania, a 1,000-member NATO force of troops from Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Norway is already on site. Battle groups from the UK and Canada are also headed to Poland, Latvia, and Estonia.

More than 1,100 troops  900 of them from the US  have taken position in Poland. "This is a mission, not a cycle of training events," said US Army Lt. Col. Steven Gventer, who heads the battle group in Poland. "The purpose is to deter aggression in the Baltics and in Poland ... We are fully ready to be lethal."

US troops military Germany Poland NATO Russia

The US has deployed dozens of helicopters and thousands of pieces of military equipment to Germany in recent weeks to underscore Washington's "rock-solid commitment to Europe." Some of the US tanks recently deployed to the region have changed their camouflage scheme to better blend in with the environment.

US officials have said a long-range Patriot missile battery  purely for defensive use  could move into the Baltic region this year as part of planned military exercises but would be gone by the time the Russia-Belarus military exercise started.

Poland also plans to buy $7.6 billion worth of Patriot air-defense missiles to counter Moscow, which has been greeted with Russian ire.

patriot missile

There have been several encounters between NATO forces and their Russian counterparts in the Baltic Sea region in recent months.

French jets shadowed Russian fighters over the region earlier this year, in international airspace along NATO's northern border. Russian aircraft also did flybys of a US destroyer in February, which the US Navy called an unsafe maneuver.

This week, a Russian fighter flew within 20 feet of a Navy patrol craft  though the Navy called that encounter "safe and professional."

The Lithuanian president, like her counterpart in Estonia, has backed US President Donald Trump's calls for NATO member states increase their defense spending.

"Security of the eastern border of NATO is the security of all of NATO," Grybauskaite told The Journal. "If we fail in any of the 28 members, it will be a failure of all of NATO."

NOW WATCH: 'The money is pouring in': Trump says NATO allies are starting to pay for defense costs





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Sean Spicer

White House press secretary Sean Spicer would neither confirm nor deny during Friday's press briefing that President Donald Trump has recorded audio of his private White House conversations, including his January dinner with ousted FBI Director James Comey.

Spicer's comments came as a response to Trump's eye-opening tweet from earlier Friday, which appeared to serve as a threat to Comey.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump wrote.

The first series of questions Spicer faced in the briefing centered around the tweet.

"I've talked to the president" about that tweet, Spicer said. "The president has nothing further to add to that."

"Why did he say that?" Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason said.

"As I mentioned, the president has nothing further to add to that," Spicer said.

"Are there recording devices in the Oval Office or the residence?" Mason then asked.

"As I've said for the third time, there's nothing further to add to that," Spicer responded.

"Does he think it's appropriate to threaten someone like Mr. Comey not to speak?" Mason asked.

Spicer said he didn't the tweet was "a threat."

"He's simply stated a fact," Spicer said. "The tweet speaks for itself. I'm moving on."

Later, Spicer was asked by another reporter if Trump had a tape of his conversation with Comey in late January. Trump told NBC's Lester Holt Thursday that Comey provided him during the dinner with an assurance that the president was not under investigation. Since late July, the FBI has been conducting a counterintelligence investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials.

Additionally, the New York Times reported Thursday that during that dinner, Trump asked Comey to pledge his loyalty. He declined to do so at least twice during the dinner, The Times reported, citing two people close to Comey who had knowledge of the conversation.

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"I'm not aware of that," Spicer said of a potential tape.

Earlier Friday, a "source close to Comey" told NBC the ousted FBI director "hopes there are tapes."

"That would be perfect," the source told NBC.

The top House Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary Committees sent a letter to White House Counsel Donald McGahn to request copies of "all recordings in possession of the White House regarding this matter."

Those Democrats, Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and John Conyers of Michigan, also requested "all documents, memoranda, analyses, emails, and other communications relating to the Presidents decision to dismiss Director Comey  a decision which the president declared yesterday he planned to make "regardless of [Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's] recommendation"  and all discussions with Director Comey."

NOW WATCH: Yale history professor: Trump's path to tyranny is unfolding





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Edward S. Lampert (L) speaks at a news conference in New York in this November 17, 2004 file photograph. REUTERS/Peter Morgan/Files (Reuters)

By Tracy Rucinski

HOFFMAN ESTATES, Ill. (Reuters) - Sears Holdings Corp <SHLD.O> Chief Executive Officer Edward Lampert blasted the media on Wednesday for "unfairly singling out" the company over the past decade and blamed "irresponsible" coverage for the retailer's woes.

Sears, once the largest U.S. retailer, warned investors in March there was a chance it may not be able to continue as a going concern after years of losses and declining sales.

Lampert, a hedge fund investor who is rarely seen in public, kicked off his appearance at an annual shareholders' meeting at Sears' headquarters in Hoffman Estates with a slideshow of headlines about the company's financial distress, dating back to 2008.

"You'd think it was from a month ago, but it's literally been going on for a decade," Lampert told about 70 people in attendance.

The company has not reported a profit for six years, which Lampert compared to Amazon.com Inc's <AMZN.O> early unprofitable growth. He predicted people will look back and wonder how they missed the Sears' turnaround, which he said would be driven by the Shop Your Way loyalty program.

Last year Sears teamed up with ride-services company Uber Technologies to give members loyalty points for trips. Lampert said he was trying to strike more such partnerships to boost overall sales.

"We do believe that the more points people accumulate, the more they'll shop with us," Lampert said.

The bulk of Lampert's 90-minute appearance focused on news coverage, which he said had been "deliberately unfair."

Media coverage was "meant to scare our vendors" who then tried to negotiate better terms with the company.

"It's irresponsible and it's been irresponsible for too damn long. We're just looking for a fair chance," Lampert said of the media. "Excuse my rant but a lot of what we're doing deserves a chance to see the light of day."

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Five journalists in attendance were not allowed to speak with Lampert or ask questions.

Since its warning to investors in March, Sears has said that it was increasing its annual cost savings target to $1.25 billion from $1 billion while enhancing its customer loyalty program and maximizing value from its real estate.

Part of the cost savings have already come through the closure of 150 unprofitable Sears and Kmart stores this year.

Six shareholders questioned Lampert. One, who said he had sold men's clothing at a Sears store many years ago, asked if Lampert was in denial about the company's losses.

Lampert said his reluctance to close more stores was not about denial, but about caring.

"I'll fight like hell" to fix stores, he said, adding: "We don't want to destroy value, we want to create value."

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski; Editing by Tom Brown)
New York (Reuters)  Investors have rushed back into North American pipelines after U.S. President Donald Trump revived growth prospects in a sector that struggled to cope with a two-year oil price slump and strident opposition from environmental and Native American activists.

Investor confidence in the industry was shaken last year when the administration of former President Barack Obama halted the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline, just as Energy Transfer Partners had nearly finished building it. Protesters have rallied for months against plans to route the Dakota Access pipeline under a lake near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation in North Dakota, saying it threatened water resources and sacred Native American sites.

A year earlier, Obama rejected TransCanada's $6 billion Keystone XL project, which would ship oil from Canada to U.S. refiners.

Pipelines Part Of Infrastructure Push

Trump sought to smooth the way for both projects with executive orders last week as he made good on campaign promises to drive infrastructure investment throughout the world's largest economy.

The orders sparked a rally in indexes that track pipeline companies to a more than 14-month high.

The shares of firms that build the pipelines and storage tanks such as Magellan Midstream Partners and Enterprise Products Partners have rallied as much as 9% in the days following Trump's orders.

Those gains came on top of a rally of about 13% in these firms since Trump's surprise election victory on Nov. 8.

"Energy companies can invest more confidently over the next four years with less concern over federal delays," said Libby Toudouze, a portfolio manager at Cushing Asset Management. The firm manages around $2.7 billion of investments in pipeline and energy transport and storage firms. "I do think we are going to see a good consistent flow of new investors coming into this [pipeline] space for next 3-5 years."

MLPs Major Beneficiary

Energy infrastructure companies, once a darling of the industry, had languished in 2015 and early 2016 as oil prices plummeted to multiyear lows. These firms, often structured as master limited partnerships (MLPs), are typically the vehicles used by investors to gain exposure to the pipeline industry.

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MLPs are tax-exempt corporate structures that pay out profit to investors in dividend-style distributions. Investors have funneled billions of dollars into the infrastructure industry through them since the shale boom began. Currently in the U.S. there are nearly 30 MLP exchange-traded funds.

The Alerian MLP index, which tracks a number of pipeline firms including Magellan, Enterprise, Energy Transfer Partners and Plains All American Pipeline, has risen more than 17% since Trump's election, including a 6% rally last week to the highest level since November 2015.

The pipeline sector has outperformed oil and gas producers as well as the S&P 500 index, which have risen about 13% and 7.5%, respectively, since the U.S. election.

Interesting Time And A Unique Opportunity

"You don't have to take a lot of risk in the MLP space at this point to make outsized returns ... so it's an interesting time and a unique opportunity in the MLP space," said Matt Sallee, a portfolio manager at Tortoise Capital.

The Alerian index rose 9% in 2016, as oil prices rose, OPEC and non-OPEC exporters announced supply cuts and on Trump's election. That came after a crash of more than a third in 2015.

Mutual and exchange-traded funds' investments in MLPs crashed to $3.8 billion in 2015 before recovering to about $6.2 billion last year, according to Morningstar.

The revival in U.S. shale activity sparked by the recovery in oil prices has also given pipeline companies a boost and opened the way to further development. Significant challenges remainactivists plan to take their fight to the courts on a state-by-state basis, which could bog down future developments.

But for now, investors see room for the value of pipeline firms to go higher.

"We think drilling is going to expand in the U.S. and will need plenty of new infrastructure, particularly in the Permian Basin," said Jay Hatfield, portfolio manager of the InfraCap MLP ETF (AMZA), a fund that has been outperforming its peers. MLPs were around 60% undervalued compared with BBB bonds, which usually fetch the same yield, he added.

Already, pipeline companies such as Plains All American have announced large deals and expansions in the Permian, the biggest shale play in the United States.

"Production is getting back to the growth mode," said Toudouze. "So we need to have the infrastructure, and these are the companies that are going to build it."

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Trump's new pipelines will get a 'dog fight' in some parts of the United States

Pipeline companies can look forward to four years under a president who trumpets fossil fuels and wants billions spent on infrastructure projects. But even with Donald Trump in office, those hopeful companies will find themselves in a "dog fight" in some areas, experts say.

Firms looking to lay pipe in the South and Great Plains will face few hurdles, but efforts to transport natural gas to the Northeast will have to clear a higher bar. Meanwhile, opposition to pipelines is percolating among environmentalists and regular citizens intent on keeping them out of their neighborhoods.

That movement drew vitality from a months-long campaign by Native Americans to block Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) from completing its Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota. Thousands joined the Standing Rock Sioux at camps to oppose the project, and others took action through regional protests and divestment campaigns .

That fight had roots in a more than century-old treaty dispute, making it something of an outlier, but the movement it sparked should not be ignored, said Jay Hatfield, a portfolio manager for InfraCap's AMZA exchange-traded fund (NYSE Arca: AMZA), which tracks pipeline companies.

"It would be remiss to not recognize that there's an increasingly radical element of the environmental movement that believes that the ideal solution to the global problem is civic unrest," he said.

Before the Dakota Access standoff, Transcanada (Toronto Stock Exchange: TRP-CA)'s Keystone XL pipeline became a symbol of President Barack Obama 's environmental stance. His administration blocked the project, arguing that transporting heavy Canadian crude into the United States undercut American leadership on tackling climate change.

To be sure, the energy industry laid a tremendous amount of pipe during the Obama years. In the first six years he was in office U.S. oil pipeline mileage expanded by 26 percent.

Still, Obama's actions on the two projects came amid a raft of new rules on oil, gas and coal production, feeding the perception of an anti-fossil fuel president.

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Following Trump's approval of both projects , pipeline companies are more optimistic but still concerned after coming out of a "really tough regulatory period" for the energy industry, said Libby Toudouze, portfolio manager at Cushing Asset Management.

"It's going to slowly, I think, continue to get better. It was a hurdle and now it's a speed bump," she said.

Pipeline boom  and bust?

The portfolio managers expect the Obama-era pipeline boom to continue in western Texas and basins in central and southern Oklahoma. Drillers will need more capacity there as activity in the low-cast basins ramps up amid a sustained but tepid recovery in oil prices.

Pipelines in that part of the country also tend to run through less densely populated areas, meaning they encounter less resistance from landowners and others. There is also plentiful infrastructure already in place, so new projects tend to be relatively small connections to existing pipelines.

"If you want to find an easier place to build a pipeline in the world, it would be hard to find one better than Texas," Hatfield said. Oklahoma is second on the list, he added.

Pipeline builders won't get such a warm reception in another part of the country: the Northeast.

New England, and Boston in particular, are vulnerable to winter price shocks because they remain under-served by natural gas pipelines. Located near the natural gas-rich Marcellus shale in Pennsylvania, these densely populated areas have long been hotbeds of opposition to pipelines.

"It's going to be a dogfight in the Northeast, for sure," Hatfield said.

Pennsylvanians opposed to Williams Companies (WMB)' Atlantic Sunrise natural gas pipeline have taken a page from Standing Rock activists, erecting structures in the project's path and threatening civil disobedience.

Last year, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation blocked another Williams project, the $875 million Constitution pipeline.

Trump's election could affect such disputes. Three of the five seats on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission are currently vacant, giving him an opportunity to stack it with Republicans who represent the energy industry. The independent agency can override state decisions on interstate pipelines in some cases  though FERC has historically avoided partisan fights.

Another wildcard

Trump has created uncertainty for the industry by saying he will require pipeline makers to use only U.S. steel and American-made pipes in their projects  most recently in a high-profile address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night. But it's not clear that the U.S. steel industry can supply that much raw material, at least not anytime soon.
By Ayesha Rascoe and Michael Martina

WASHINGTON/BEIJING (Reuters) - The United States and China have agreed to take action by mid-July to increase access for U.S. financial firms and expand trade in beef and chicken among other steps as part of Washington's drive to cut its trade deficit with Beijing.

The deals are the first results of 100 days of trade talks that began last month, when a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping proved far more friendly than had been expected after last year's U.S. presidential campaign, but the immediate impact was unclear.

"This will help us to bring down the deficit for sure," U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at media briefing in Washington. "You watch and you'll see."

The United States ran a trade deficit of $347 billion with China last year, U.S. Treasury figures show.

By July 16, the 100th day after the leaders' meeting, China agreed to issue guidelines that would allow U.S.-owned card payment services "to begin the licensing process" in a sector where China's UnionPay system has had a near monopoly.

China will also allow U.S. imports of beef no later than July 16, and the United States will issue a proposed rule to allow Chinese cooked poultry to enter U.S. markets.

Foreign-owned firms will also be able to provide credit rating services in China.

"We believe that Sino-U.S. economic cooperation is the trend of the times... We will continue to move forward," Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told a Beijing media briefing.

Trump had pledged during his presidential campaign that he would stop trade practices by China and other countries that he deemed unfair to the United States. His tough talk toward Beijing had fuelled early fears of a trade war.

But Trump's rhetoric toward China has softened in the past month, expressing admiration for Xi and saying he wanted Beijing to help deal with the North Korean nuclear threat.

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Shortly after their meeting, Trump said he had told Xi that China would get a better trade deal if it worked to rein in North Korea. China is neighbouring North Korea's lone major ally.

On Friday, when asked whether the trade talks with the United States were related to North Korea, Zhu said economic issues should not be politicized.

UNCERTAIN BENEFITS

But while the world's two biggest economies agreed to take a number of steps by July 16, it was not clear how much these new deals would increase trade in the near term.

Ker Gibbs, the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai, said the measures were a good beginning but not a breakthrough.

"Past foot-dragging means we won't celebrate until these promises are executed," Gibbs said, calling the opening in the electronic payments market "mainly symbolic".

"This should have been done years ago when it would have made a difference. At this point, the domestic players are well entrenched so foreign companies will have a hard time entering the China market."

China is the top export market for U.S. agriculture products, with the total value of exports rising by more than 1,100 percent since 2000 to $21.412 billion (16.6 billion) in 2016, so beef sales are potentially lucrative for U.S. exporters.

China had conditionally lifted its longstanding import ban on American beef last year, but few purchases have been made. The ban was imposed in 2003 due to a case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease, in Washington state.

And U.S. credit card operators Visa Inc (V.N) and MasterCard Inc (MA.N) have yet to be independently licensed to clear transactions in China, despite a 2012 WTO ruling mandating that Beijing open the sector and rules issued by the central bank to let foreign firms enter the market.

Visa said in an emailed statement it looked forward to submitting an application for a bank-card clearing institution license, which, "once granted", would allow it to support economic development in China.

MasterCard welcomed the announcement, saying it looked forward "to having full and prompt market access in China".

The United States also signalled that it was eager to export more liquefied natural gas, saying China could negotiate any type of contract, including long-term contracts, with U.S. suppliers.

For U.S. gas drillers, China provides a potential customer base beyond countries such as Japan and South Korea, where the long-term demand outlook is bleak due to mature economies, rising energy efficiency and falling populations.

Potential cooperation between the United States and China on LNG would not have any immediate impact on supplies, as China currently does not need new gas supplies and the United States is not yet able to deliver more.

Randal Phillips, Mintz Group's Beijing-based managing partner for Asia, said that Washington was too focused on selling more to China and should instead seek to address structural imbalances created by Chinese industrial policies and barriers to investment.

"That's going to be the challenge, and hopefully the Trump administration doesn't start declaring victory," he said.

(Reporting by Ayesha Rascoe in Washington; Michael Martina, Kevin Yao and Matthew Miller in Beijing; and John Ruwitch in Shanghai; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Nick Macfie)
A federal judge approved a settlement that calls for Volkswagen to pay as much as $4 billion to repair or buy back about 80,000 diesel vehicles.

A federal judge on Thursday approved a settlement that calls for Volkswagen (OTC:VLKAY) to pay as much as $4 billion to repair or buy back about 80,000 vehicles caught up in the German automakers diesel emissions scandal.

Under the settlement, owners of 3.0-liter diesel vehicles from model-years 2009 to 2012 are eligible to receive buybacks, plus additional compensation of $7,755 to $13,880.

Owners of newer vehicles, which Volkswagen intends to fix, will receive approximately $7,000 to $16,000 in compensation. Those owners can choose to sell their cars back to Volkswagen if a fix isnt approved by regulators.

The plan will cost Volkswagen a minimum of $1.2 billion. Costs would hit $4.04 billion if Volkswagen has to repurchase all 3.0-liter vehicles.

Also on Thursday, Volkswagens U.S. division named KPMG director Stephanie Davis as its chief compliance officer.

Volkswagen acknowledged in 2015 that roughly 475,000 Volkswagen and Audi vehicles with 2.0-liter diesel engines included software designed to circumvent emissions standards. The company later told U.S. regulators that 3.0-liter models also had a defeat device. A settlement covering 2.0-liter diesels was finalized last fall. Volkswagen has developed fixes for some of those vehicles.

Earlier this year, Volkswagen pleaded guilty to three felony counts in U.S. court and agreed to internal reforms following the scandal.

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The Norwegian government has announced a new dividend expectation for Statkraft in the proposal for the revised State budget.

The proposed new dividend expectation entails that Statkraft shall pay a dividend of 85 per cent of realized profit from Norwegian hydropower business and 25 per cent of realized profit from other business activities. Norwegian hydropower business is defined to constitute the same activities as included in Statkraft's note 4 in the annual report for 2016.

The government explains the new dividend expectation with among other things the increasing need for reinvestments in Norwegian hydropower and that the company shall be given increased possibility for growth in other business activities.

- This is positive for the strategic development of Statkraft as a leading renewable energy company. This will increase the investment capacity and predictability for the Statkraft Group in the years to come, says CEO Christian Rynning-Tnnesen.

The new dividend expectation will be fully implemented with effect from the accounting year 2017. It is proposed that Statkraft pays NOK 2400 million in dividend for the accounting year 2016. The proposal is subject to parliamentary approval.

For further information, please contact:

Senior Vice President Thomas Geiran, tel + 47 90579979, e-mail: Thomas.Geiran@statkraft.com

Press spokesperson Knut Fjerdingstad, tel: +47 901 86 310, e-mail: Knut.Fjerdingstad@statkraft.com

Senior Vice President Bente E. Engesland, tel: +47 911 59 952, e-mail: Bente.Engesland@statkraft.com

or www.statkraft.com

Statkraft is a leading company in hydropower internationally and Europe's largest generator of renewable energy. The Group produces hydropower, wind power, gas-fired power and district heating and is a global player in energy market operations. Statkraft has 3800 employees in more than 20 countries.

This information is subject to the disclosure requirements pursuant to section 5-12 of the Norwegian Securities Trading Act.
(UPM Raflatac, Mills River, NC, USA, May 11, 2017 at 17:00 EET) - At this year's Label Summit Latin America in Santiago, Chile, UPM Raflatac will be demonstrating how its latest product innovations are a perfect fit to help companies distinguish their brands. From new thin film innovations for home and personal care applications, food containers, craft beverage and wine and spirits; to exciting developments for paper labeling, UPM Raflatac truly offers something for everyone. And with our strong commitment to sustainability, we are second to none. Find your inspiration; we have the solution.

Label Summit Latin America attendees are invited to stop by booth G12 to meet with UPM Raflatac's label experts to learn the latest information on labeling technologies and innovations and to test samples of label materials to find exactly what's right for you and your brand.

In addition to a full portfolio of wine and spirits labeling solutions, featured products at the booth include the new RR20 adhesive, providing reliable resealability for food package labels; RH04FG, a hotmelt adhesive that meets the FDA's requirements for direct contact with fruit and vegetable skin; new 60# Raflacoat Premium, which delivers high-gloss performance for maximum shelf appeal at a semi-gloss price point; and newly launched Raflex MDO films, which combine the best properties of PP and PE for conformables.

Don't miss our Wine Workshop!

On Wednesday, May 17 at 4:15 p.m., UPM Raflatac's Andreu Gombau, Director of Sales for South America, and Edmund Ayres, Country Manager for Chile, Bolivia and Peru will partner with Colorama's General Manager, Juan Felipe Correa, to present on the latest in the wine industry, including export market expectations, global wine market growth, packaging trends and innovations and much more. Be sure to stick around after for a fun conclusion to the conference with a wine tasting, featuring a selection of incredible red and white wines from Vina San Pedro.

For more information about UPM Raflatac at Label Summit Latin America, please visit http://go.upmraflatac.com/LSLA_RE.

High-res photos can be downloaded at  http://pet.upm.com/l/ZcgVrRzTQBQx

For further information, please contact:

Andreu Gombau, Director, Sales, South America, UPM Raflatac, tel. +1- 828-654-6873, andreu.gombau@upmraflatac.com

About UPM Raflatac

UPM Raflatac is one of the world's leading producers of self-adhesive label materials. We supply high-quality paper and film label stock for consumer product and industrial labeling through a global network of factories, distribution terminals and sales offices. We employ around 3,000 people and made sales of USD 1.5 billion (EUR 1.4 billion) in 2016. UPM Raflatac is part of UPM - The Biofore Company. Find out more at www.upmraflatac.com.

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DataCenter101 wrote:

Wanted to share my 8-month experience with the GMAT - hopefully this motivates those who are unhappy with their practice CAT scores:



Before any prep

Completely new to the GMAT, I decided to take GMAT Prep Exam 1 in September 2016 just to get a sense of my strengths + weaknesses:



1. GMAT Prep 1 (09/2016) - NO SCORE. Ran out of time in Quant and gave up after 15 questions. Same story with Verbal. Quit the test and as soon as I stumbled upon a lengthy Reading Comprehension passage.



Looking back, I am glad this happened to me. It made me realize I will need to take the GMAT seriously. The CR questions were particularly new and confusing; overall timing was a huge weakness of mine.



Kaplan

Wanting to tackle CR questions first, I started my prep with Kaplan's Verbal Workbook. To this day, I still prefer 's approach to CR (more to come on this) over Kaplan's approach. Kaplan's Verbal Workbook is an okay resource for practice questions in general, but I would not recommend it to someone looking to improve CR specifically.



I also purchased Kaplan's Math Workbook, which I must say is only useful if you need to go back to the basics of quant. Don't bother getting this book if you are solid on the basics - I finished the book in about a week and did not derive much value from it.



Looking for more practice, I then used Kaplan GMAT Premier solely for its online quiz bank and practice CATs. I did all the medium+hard level questions in the online bank, and I took 2 practice CATs ahead of my actual GMAT. Strangely enough, I have found the difficulty level of these questions to be rather similar to that of the actual exam. Contrary to a lot of posts here, I would consider getting Kaplan GMAT Premier if you have exhausted all your practice questions and are looking for an extra resource to leverage. I did not read the Kaplan GMAT Premier Textbook, so I can't comment on the quality of the book itself. Last thing I'll say on Kaplan GMAT Premier is that it comes with 5 CATs (Computer Adaptive Tests) and 1 paper exam. GMAT paper exams in general are not really helpful since the GMAT is an adaptive test. Know that if you are looking to purchase Kaplan GMAT Premier, you will really only get 5 (not 6) useful practice tests out of it.



2. Kaplan CAT 1 (2/18/17) - 710 (49Q, 38V, 6IR, did not do AWA)





I was still having problems with CR and timing (particularly with the quant section) at this point. Keen on crossing the 750+ threshold, I decided to sign up for a online course to get to my desired score. I'm sure every person has his/her own experience with the course, but here are my key takeaways:



1) The CAT quant difficulty level is much higher than that in the actual exam. If you are taking CATs and freaking out over your quant score, stop worrying. You will likely score much higher on the actual GMAT quant, so just focus on learning the subject matter to the best of your ability.



2) All the quant strategy guides are a must read if you are taking the course, but in my opinion, the Number Properties guide really is the best of them all. Put simply, the Number Properties question type is plentiful on the actual exam, and I would not have obtained my quant score of 50 without this guide. The GMAT is all about thinking logically and using quick tricks wherever possible - 's Number Properties guide really knocks it out of the park in this regard.



3) The verbal strategy guides are also very useful, but I have found the CR strategy guide to best most effective in raising my verbal score. While I am still not an expert at CR, 's CR guide lays out an extremely effective framework for approaching each CR question type. It takes practice to get used to this framework, but if you are struggling in CR like I was, consider adopting 's strategy to boost your verbal score.



4) If you are having timing issues, provides really helpful strategies to help you overcome this obstacle. It might not seem obvious at first (especially to those new to the GMAT), but timing is so important in this test that I could write an entirely separate post on this topic. I'm sure any GMAT course will have effective timing strategies to implement on test day, so consider taking a course in general if this is problem for you.



5) Take your 's CAT scores with a grain of salt. Most importantly, do not get beat down by your CAT scores if you are not performing as well as you'd like (remember that the quant section is much tougher than that in the actual exam). If you feel like your scores on CATs are not truly reflective of your ability, then I would recommend taking a GMAT Prep Exam, which is truly the best scoring proxy out there, as demonstrated below:



3. CAT 1 (3/4/17) - 670 (44Q, 37V, did not do essay or IR)

4. CAT 2 (4/2/17) - 640 (42Q, 35V, IR-3.94, AWA not graded)

5. CAT 3 (4/4/17) - 680 (46Q, 36V, IR-4.5, did not do essay)

6. Kaplan CAT 2 (4/29/17) - 720 (49Q, 40V, IR-7, did not do essay)

7. GMAT Prep 2 (5/2/17) - 730 (48Q, 42V, IR-5, AWA not graded)



Official GMAT (5/3/17) - 760 (50Q, 42V, IR-6, AWA-5.5)



Moral of my story? Even if you can't break 700 on the CATs, you can still get a 760 on the actual GMAT if you put your mind to it. If I can do it, so can you.

Congrats on the excellent score! From the CAT tests, I can see that there is a significant increase in the quant ( a jump from Q44 to Q50! ). Could you please let me know if you've used any other materials for quant or just the ?
UmangMathur wrote:

According to a recent study, Earth's magnetic north pole is moving away from Alaska and toward Siberia so rapidly, within 50 years, that the swirling green auroras of the Northern Lights might be visible in cities as far south as Rome, which is located at 41 north latitude.



(A) rapidly, within 50 years, that the swirling green auroras of the Northern Lights might be visible in cities as far south as Rome, which is



(B) rapidly, within 50 years, people may be able to see the swirling green auroras of the Northern Lights in cities as far south as Rome and



(C) rapidly that, within 50 years, the swirling green auroras of the Northern Lights may be visible from cities as far south as Rome,



(D) rapidly such that, within 50 years, people might be able to see the swirling green auroras of the Northern Lights from cities as far south as Rome, and



(E) rapidly that, within 50 years, the swirling green auroras of the Northern Lights might be visible by people in cities far to the south; such as Rome,

OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

within 50 years

north pole is

moving

within 50 years

Earths ... rapidly

people ... latitude

within 50 years

and

(C) CORRECT

within 50 years

As far south as Rome

so

such

visible by people

visible to people

"Be challenged at EVERY MOMENT."



Strength doesnt come from what you can do. It comes from overcoming the things you once thought you couldnt.



"Each stage of the journey is crucial to attaining new heights of knowledge."



| Please DO NOT post short answer in your post!



Advanced Search : https://gmatclub.com/forum/advanced-search/ Rules for posting in verbal forum | Please DO NOT post short answer in your post! Signature Read More

This sentence reports the striking findings of a research study: Earth's magnetic north pole is moving so fast that the Northern Lights may be visible from new locations within 50 years. The modifierdescribes something that will happen in the future, so it cannot be referring to the fact that the(now)in a certain way. Rather, it must describe the study's conclusion that the Northern Lights will be visible from other locations in future.(A) The modifierillogically describes the present movement of Earth's magnetic north pole rather than the predicted future outcome.(B) In this sentence,andare both complete sentences, creating two problems. First, the overall construction is a run-on sentence, containing no conjunction to properly connect the two sentences. Second, the placement ofbetween the two clauses makes it unclear what that phrase is intended to describe. Finally, the use ofat the end of this choice makes the meaning redundant, since "as far south as Rome" and "at the same latitude as Rome" are identical concepts.. In this sentence,is properly used to describe what will happen in the future.is idiomatically correct, and the final modifier correctly describes Rome.(D) The combination ofandis redundant and unidiomatic. The use of and at the end of this choice makes the meaning redundant, since "as far south as Rome" and "at the same latitude as Rome" are identical concepts.(E) The constructionis unidiomatic and should be phrased as. The part of this sentence following the semicolon is a modifier, not a complete sentence (independent clause), thus creating a sentence fragment._________________
The Federal High Court in Abuja has remanded a politician, Charles Eni-Umukoro, in Kuje prison over the death of his wife, Louisa Eni-Umukoro.

In February, the Inspector General of Police (IGP) charged Eni-Umukoro for allegedly causing the death of his wife after he hit her on the head.

According to the charge signed by the legal prosecution section of the force, Eni-Umukoro allegedly caused the death of his wife on Monday, April 22, 2016.

Nigerian politician accused of killing his wife remanded in prison

It was gathered that the accused had hit his wife on the head causing internal haemorrhage.

An autopsy report was also attached with the charge. The report was done at the department of morbid anatomy and histopathology of the National Hospital in Abuja (NHA).

READ ALSO: Girls ordered to remove their bras prior admission test

The report showed that the deceased died from subdural haemorrhage resulting from two bruises on both sides of her neck. Doctors at NHA reported that the bruises were products of an external force.

He allegedly hit her in the head causing internal haemorrhage that led to her death

Following the criminal charge, the family of the deceased in Eliab U.Ukponmwan of Oredo local government area, Edo state, cited complains of several incidents of violence among the two, which they alleged caused the death of Louise.

READ ALSO: Mentally challenged woman delivers a beautiful baby girl in Rivers (Photos)

Read petition by the familys counsel, Ezekiel Ugochukwu, dated August 17, 2016 by the IGP below:

Louise Eni-Umukoro was born to the family of Mr. & Mrs. E. U. Ukponmwan, in Edo State on the 27th of March 1960, Mrs. Louise Eni-Umukoro joined the Commission on 22nd October, 1986 as an Assistant Economist and rose through the rank to attain the highest career position in the Commission  Director in January 2010, the statement said. Until her untimely passing, she was one of the most experienced staff of the Commission, a consummate and hardworking professional. She made indelible contributions to the current framework for regulating collective investment schemes in Nigeria during her fruitful years as Head of that Department. Her contribution to the work of the Committee on the Review of Minimum Paid-Up Capital for Market Operators earned her Commendation from Management in 2003.

Her last posting was to Head the Zonal Office Coordinating (ZOC) Department. She was entrusted with that position as a mark of confidence in her ability to lead the transformation reforms needed at the Zonal Offices. Her demise is really sad because she was already doing a great job of introducing innovative ways to strengthen the Zonal Offices.

Mrs. Louise Eni-Umukoro was a compassionate leader, a caring mother and a mentor to many who served under her. She has left a huge vacuum and will be sorely missed by all of us.

She is survived by her son, and aged mother.

Justice Mary-Anne Aninih ordered the remand of Eni-Umukoro in Kuje Prison On Tuesday, May 9, pending the hearing of his bail application.

Watch Legit.ng's THE SCOOP on celebrities and politicians on Legit.ng TV

Source: Legit.ng
- Chibok girl rescued from Boko Haram stuns in new photo

- A photo of the young girl with her baby daughter who was born to Boko Haram fighter has surfaced online

- Some of the Chibok girls who were abducted by Boko Haram insurgents in 2014 have been rescued

A Chibok girl who was rescued from Boko Haram captivity has dazzled Nigerians in a photo that recently surfaced online.

In the photo posted on social media, the young lady, Ali Nkeki, was seen hugging her baby girl who was born to a Boko Haram fighter.

She looked gorgeous in her African hairdo which blended perfectly well with her makeup.

Ali Nkeki hugging her baby girl who was born to a Boko Haram fighter.

READ ALSO: Shock as 'Yahoo boy' runs mad after digging grave of priest for ritual

President Muhammadu Buharis administration has rescued over 100 girls from Boko Haram. Legit.ng recently reported that 82 of the girls were rescued after some negotiations with the insurgents.

Nkeki presents her baby to the president after she was born

READ ALSO: See tribe where women beg men to whip them to declare their love (photos)

It is amazing to see that the Boko Haram victims who were abducted and rescued have been able to successfully settle back into their lives.

Meanwhile Nigerians hold protests for return of Chibok girls

Source: Legit.ng
New York State Department of Health Reminds New Yorkers to Take Precautions Against Zika Virus and Other Mosquito-Borne Illnesses

Emphasizes Travel Safety; Highlights Continued Action on Zika Virus Prevention

ALBANY, N.Y. (May 12, 2017) - The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) today reminded New Yorkers that with the arrival of warm temperatures, they need to take precautions against Zika virus and other mosquito-borne illnesses. New Yorkers are encouraged to prevent mosquito bites and be especially attentive to all mosquito protection measures when traveling to areas affected by Zika.

"New Yorkers must remain vigilant to prevent the transmission of Zika and other illnesses carried by mosquitoes," said Dr. Howard Zucker, New York State Department of Health Commissioner. "Avoiding unnecessary travel to Zika affected areas and applying insect repellent are some of the most effective tools for at-risk individuals in the fight against Zika. New York State will continue our aggressive, first-in-the nation Zika Action Plan to help stop the spread of this dangerous disease and safeguard the public health."

Since last year, New York State has taken extraordinary steps to address the Zika virus, including offering comprehensive testing of both blood and urine from pregnant women anytime during the pregnancy.

These actions complement the State's ongoing aggressive commitment to fighting Zika outlined in Governor Cuomo's comprehensive Zika Action Plan. The state has made significant progress in all points of the plan:

Eliminating Zika at its source: To date, more than 44,000 mosquito dunks purchased by the state have been distributed to residents and business owners, and the NYSDOH has educated communities on the importance of reducing water sources for mosquito breeding;

Monitoring through trapping and testing: Over 20,000 Aedes albopictus mosquitoes were collected and tested with no positive tests for Zika during the most recent mosquito season;

Providing free Zika Protection Kits to pregnant women: More than 17,000 kits have been distributed to low-income women statewide;

Issuing emergency regulations and requiring local action plans: All 57 Zika action plans submitted by local health departments have been reviewed and implemented;

Deploying Zika Rapid Response Teams: Over 100 NYSDOH staff have been trained and recruited, with staff prepared for deployment wherever local transmission of the virus is suspected;

Launching a digital and billboard-based public awareness campaign this week which emphasizes travel safety and mosquito bite prevention for pregnant women and women of childbearing age who are likely to travel to Zika-affected areas; and

Providing full time medical expert phone consultation about Zika testing and prevention for the public and health care providers, and offering multiple webinars for local health departments and providers.

Although Zika virus has not been transmitted by local mosquitoes in New York State, Zika has been acquired by New Yorkers who have traveled to countries with high Zika transmission rates. Zika is particularly concerning for pregnant women due to increased risk of microcephaly, a birth defect associated with the virus.

The main species known to spread Zika is the Aedes aegypti,not currently present in New York State. However, a related species, Aedes albopictus, is found in the lower Hudson Valley, New York City and Long Island, and may also transmit Zika virus. The NYSDOH is working with local health departments to aggressively monitor the distribution and abundance of Aedes albopictus within the State.

Only one in five people infected with Zika virus will get sick, and the symptoms are usually very mild, including fever, rash, joint pain or conjunctivitis (red eyes). However, there have been infections among pregnant women and their partners, which is a serious concern for unborn babies. Zika is not spread from person to person by casual contact. To date, the only cases in New York State are in people who acquired the virus while traveling to Zika-affected areas, or through sexual transmission from someone who had traveled to those areas.

As of May 3, 2017, scientists at NYSDOH's Wadsworth Center labs have received specimens for Zika virus testing for 10,505 individuals. To date, the total number of Zika cases in New York State is 1,370. NYSDOH has also been providing information on pregnant women with any laboratory evidence of possible Zika virus infection to the CDC's Zika Pregnancy Registry. By reporting this critical information, New York State is assisting with national and international Zika response and prevention efforts.

NYSDOH also maintains a Zika Information Line (1-888-364-4723) Monday  Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for those who have questions about Zika, such as how to get tested. The hotline has received over 6,500 inquiries since being implemented in early 2016.

NYSDOH works with local health departments to identify mosquito-borne viruses that pose a risk to human health, including West Nile virus, Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) virus, and Zika virus. Activities include training personnel on mosquito trapping and species identification; testing of mosquitos, humans and animals by Wadsworth Center; identifying areas with disease risk; and providing surveillance information to guide local decision-making on prevention and control measures.

More detailed information about Zika, areas where Zika is prevalent, and how individuals can protect themselves is available at https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/zika_virus/.

More detailed information about West Nile Virus and other mosquito-borne diseases and how individuals can protect themselves and their families is available at http://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/west_nile_virus/.

Details on Governor Cuomo's Six-Step Zika Action Plan can be found at https://www.ny.gov/programs/6-step-new-york-state-zika-action-plan.
[May 11, 2017] PSC Group Team to Present Two Technical Sessions at SharePoint Cloud Saturday Chicago Suburbs on May 20

SCHAUMBURG, Ill., May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- PSC Group, LLC will deliver two exclusive technical sessions, Intro to Bots: The User Interface of the Future and Azure for Connected Xamarin Apps, at the SharePoint Cloud Saturday Chicago Suburbs at DeVry University in Addison, IL on Saturday, May 20, 2017. Complete information about the SharePoint Cloud Saturday Chicago Suburbs 2017 can be found at http://www.psclistens.com/about-psc/news-and-events/sharepoint-and-cloud-saturday-chicago-suburbs/. "We're excited to deliver technical sessions highlighting two of the latest methods to deliver apps and data that integrate with SharePoint and the Office 365 ecosystem at this year's event," said Jeff Crowell, Director Service Delivery of PSC Group. Microsoft MVP Chris Johnson and front-end, open-stack developer Adam Lepley will show attendees how to get started writing their first bot in minutes. And they'll provide demo sample bots that integrate with channels like Skype, Microsoft Teams and even text messages to call cloud apps like Trello, Nintex Workflow Cloud and more. Norm Murrin, PSC's Applications Solution Director will demonsrate how to leverage Azure cloud to scale Xamarin developed mobile applications. Tips on enabling authentication, push notifications and offline data synchronization will also be covered.



PSC Group and Nintex SharePoint subject matter experts will also be available at a booth during the event to discuss technical details and strategies for the latest SharePoint, Office 365 and Nintex features. To stay up to date on industry trends and the PSC Group visit our social channels: www.linkedin.com/company/psc-group-llc and www.twitter.com/pscgroup.

About PSC Group, Inc. Founded in 1990, PSC Group, LLC is a business technology consulting firm focused on enabling strategic technology driven tools, processes and objectives that help companies improve and grow their value. Our process begins in the way we listen and ends with our clients experiencing a greater return on their technology investment. With offices in Chicago and Kansas City, PSC has a proud history with our clientele that is based on mutual respect, integrity and honesty. For more information on PSC Group, visit: http://www.psclistens.com . Related Links

www.psclistens.com

www.psclistens.com/about-psc/news-and-events/sharepoint-and-cloud-saturday-chicago-suburbs/ To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/psc-group-team-to-present-two-technical-sessions-at-sharepoint-cloud-saturday-chicago-suburbs-on-may-20-300456230.html SOURCE PSC Group, LLC

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[May 11, 2017] Mantaro Networks to Begin Offering Sales and Support in US Market for Beeper Technologies, Ltd Advanced Cellular Bonding Technology: IE 5000

GERMANTOWN, Md., May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mantaro Networks, Inc. will formally begin to offer sales and technical support for Beeper Communication's IE-5000, a 3G/4G multi-channel bonder that acts as an SD-WAN bonding router delivering mobile bandwidth-on-demand with high-speed connectivity. The IE 5000 is among today's leading anywhere-to-everywhere wireless connectivity facilitators, which aggregates and bonds up to 4 cellular channels, Wi-Fi and even Satellite frequencies. The IE 5000 technology provides virtually instant ad hoc networking capabilities for the user, and enables secure, redundant video transmission and monitoring to and from the field of operation. Included in its many advanced features, the bonder provides link aggregation, frequency bonding, load balancing and redundancy. Enhanced security and broadband capacity are further optimized using proprietary algorithms and Deep Packet Inspection (DPI). This partnership establishes a strong initial foothold for 2017 in US markets for Law Enforcement, First Responder, HLS and commercial construction users. Already, Mantaro is seeing customer adoption in these markets where reliable critical communications are required. Mantaro Networks, an advanced engineering services and robotic design firm based in Germantown Maryland, is also integrating the Beeper technology into its existing and ongoing projects, which will be improved by the incorporation of the IE 5000 communications capabilities. Mantaro provides next generation patented UGV solutions to law enforcement and commercial construction customers in the United States. Mantaro now provides full technical support as well as complete service and enhanced solutions through Beeper's specialized software platform, cloud and broadband technology offerings, emergency messaging and early warning solutions. "The establishment of a functional engineering and sales partnership with Mantaro, further reinforces our commitment to the development of the US market for our cellular bonding and communications solutions, as well as to the integration of both our companies technologies. It stems from our strong relationship with Mantaro Networks and speaks not only to our development plans, but also to our firm belief that the technology is necessary as a "stand alone" product to best serve our Commercial and Government customers," stated Moshe Levinson, SVP Special Ventures and Business Development, Beeper Group Israel. "In the time we have worked with Mantaro, Jeremy Parsons (CEO) has proven to be an excellent partner and resource for us in the US, providing highly skilled and technical professional staff to support our collaboratio and promote our advanced technology into various US sectors. We continue to believe ourselves very fortunate to have found such a partner."



"Beeper solutions and their technology have the ability to greatly enhance solutions for many of our commercial customers and clients. Mantaro firmly believes that, aside from the integration of the Beeper technology into our robotic designs, the IE 5000 as a stand-alone solution will see fast adoption in the United States. We are very happy to be able to work with our Israeli partner and provide this industry-leading SD WAN technology," said Jeremy Parsons, CEO of Mantaro. The first new generation IE 5000 units are available for demonstration and sale through Mantaro by the end of April 2017. Learn more about our mission-critical solutions here: http://mantaro.com/downloads/PublicSafetyandDisasterResponse_WhitePaper.pdf.

About Mantaro Mantaro Networks Inc. provides a range of products and product development services to its technology clients. All of Mantaro's products can be used off the shelf (as is) or can be customized for particular applications or environments by Mantaro's technical services staff. Mantaro has been designing, manufacturing and selling telepresence robotics systems since 2010 under the MantaroBot brand. Mantaro's robotic products are targeted at commercial business, healthcare, construction and law enforcement. Details of current products and customization options may be found at http://mantarobot.com/ a website dedicated exclusively to robotic product sales. Mantaro provides a full range of product development services for IoT and robotic development. Mantaro's services include analog, digital, and RF hardware design, FPGA design, software development, and RFI/EMI mitigation. Mantaro team has extensive industry expertise with leading companies that develop telecommunications systems, software applications, semiconductors, and consumer products. Information about Mantaro's product development services can be found at http://mantaro.com/mantaro-products-telecommunication-product.htm. For information about Mantaro: Jeremy Parsons, CEO

Mantaro Networks, Inc

[email protected]

301-528-2244 About Beeper Beeper is an industry pioneer in enabling technologies that set global standards in wireless communication. Beeper specializes in the development and manufacture of advanced wireless Bonding technology modems on boards and related components for the wireless broadband communication market. The company is focusing on development of data, voice and video link aggregators, and bonding which enable operators and service providers to deliver high-speed, mobile and "ad-hoc," cost-effective Internet and telephony applications to corporate telecommuters, small businesses, home offices and residential users. Beeper provides broadband technologies and solutions, in order to enable wireless operators, NOC's and broadcasters the ability to provide high-speed, integrated video, voice and data on multiple platforms and means, to Police, FR, HLS, Military, MOD and other related "mission critical" end users. For more information: www.Beepergroup.com http://www.broadbandwirelessnetwork.info Related Images image1.png image2.png image3.png Related Links IE 5000 Data Sheet Public Safety and First Response To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mantaro-networks-to-begin-offering-sales-and-support-in-us-market-for-beeper-technologies-ltd-advanced-cellular-bonding-technology-ie-5000-300456364.html SOURCE Mantaro Networks

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Our Chicago medical malpractice attorneys understand that medical errors can often be grouped into two categories. First, there are harms that are caused simply by an
As antimicrobial-resistant bacteria can be transmitted between humans and animals, research into antimicrobial resistance must in particular investigate the mechanisms of the spread of the bacteria and the resistance genes. This is the finding that will be presented at the final symposium of the RESET and MedVet-Staph research projects from April 26-28, 2017 at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR).

"Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria pose a complex challenge. This is why Germany, with its German Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy DART2020, is making sustained efforts to protect the health of humans and animals", says BfR President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "In the spirit of the One Health strategy, this calls for interdisciplinary research by veterinarians and experts in human medicine as well as molecular biologists and epidemiologists, as successfully demonstrated by the RESET and MedVet-Staph network projects."

Since 2010, these research networks have been investigating the development, spread and mechanisms of resistance to certain antibiotics in cases of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus in humans and animals. Alongside the BfR, numerous universities and scientific institutions in Germany are involved in the network projects.

The RESET network investigates resistance to the particularly important antibiotic classes of cephalosporins and (fluoro)quinolones in intestinal bacteria such as Escherichia (E.) coli.

Some strains of these bacteria can destroy cephalosporins. In this process, they use enzymes known as "extended-spectrum beta-lactamases" (ESBLs) and AmpC beta-lactamases (AmpCs). The strains can pass on this destructive capability to other bacteria. Analyses conducted in the RESET network have shown that ESBL- or AmpC-producing E. coli are widespread in livestock. These bacteria were detected in all investigated poultry-rearing businesses. They were also found in 85% of investigated pig production and dairy cattle businesses as well as in 70% of cattle production businesses. Moreover, E. coli and Salmonella that can additionally destroy carbapenems were found in livestock in Germany for the first time. These antibiotics are used in hospitals to treat infections with multi-resistant bacteria.

The administration of antibiotics is not always responsible for the occurrence of resistant bacteria. E. coli that produce ESBLs or AmpCs also occur in groups of animals (in particular in broilers) that have had no contact with antibiotics. The bacteria and resistance genes can be transferred along the production chain and be transmitted to other foods in the kitchen.

In studies, ESBL-E. coli were found in 6.3% of the healthy general population and with similar frequency among pig farmers. In German hospitals, the share of ESBL-positive E. coli and Klebsiellae among all hospital acquired infections with these enterobacteria increased from 11.9% to 15.4% between 2007 and 2012.

Overall, the molecular biology analyses showed that various ESBL-forming bacteria possess the ability to be exchanged between humans, animals and their environment. Direct transmission of the bacteria with their resistance genes is evidently relatively seldom. Nevertheless, the resistance genes can be exchanged between different bacteria, and this makes it more difficult to trace them. It is therefore currently not possible to exactly assess the significance of livestock for the colonisation and infection of humans with ESBL- or AmpC-forming enterobacteria.

RESET coordinator Professor Dr. Lothar Kreienbrock at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover says: "Our newly created joint database enables us to perform overarching analyses of both the data on the origin of samples from humans, animals, food and the environment as well as the data on the properties of the bacteria strains. Based on this joint strain and data collection, for example, we have succeeded for the first time in detecting the transmissible colistin resistance gene (mcr - 1) in E. coli from German livestock." He adds that the task now is therefore to further extend and consolidate these options developed together with the German Research Platform for Zoonoses and the TMF (technology and methodology platform for interconnected medical research) in the spirit of the One Health strategy.

The MedVet-Staph network focuses on the importance of the transmission of antimicrobial-resistant staphylococci including the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains (MRSA) between animals and humans. MRSA colonises around 0.8% of healthy people in the general German population (mostly in the nasal or throat area). By comparing the genetic fingerprint, it is possible to distinguish livestock-associated MRSA types from MRSA typically found in hospital acquired infections. Network coordinator PD Dr. med. Robin Kock from the University of Munster says: "The findings of the MedVet-Staph network have underlined that the transmission path between animals and humans is something that it is essential to bear in mind if we want to understand the spread of MRSA. We have shown that in particular direct contact with MRSA-carrying livestock, as occurs with farmers or vets, constitutes a high risk for transmission. More than 80% of farmers involved in pig production carry the bacterium."

MRSA is found with increasing frequency as a wound infection pathogen not only in livestock but increasingly also in horses, cats and dogs. The MRSA detected in these animals differs from the MRSA in livestock, however.

During the course of the project, it was not only MRSA but also other bacteria that were detected in livestock and farmers - bacteria such as enterococci and coagulase-negative staphylococci, which are resistant to substances such as linezolid or daptomycin - which are used in human medicine as reserve antibiotics. Further research is therefore necessary on the occurrence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in livestock and food as well as in pets and the environment.

The MedVet-Staph research network also investigated the extent to which livestock-associated MRSA can lead to disease in humans. The frequency of livestock-associated MRSA clones has increased overall in Germany, although there are marked regional differences: in individual regions with intensive livestock farming (in the northern region of North Rhine-Westphalia, for example), these bacteria are responsible for over 10% of severe MRSA infections in humans.

However, not all cases of detection in humans can be attributed to direct contact with positive animals. The MedVet-Staph network proved that 38% of the people in rural regions colonised with livestock-associated MRSA types had no direct contact with livestock. It must therefore be assumed that the bacteria are also passed on via other routes (e.g. human to human). According to research findings of the BfR and from Denmark, there are similarities between MRSA from poultry meat, in particular turkey meat, and bacteria isolates from humans. This suggests that, in individual cases, livestock-associated MRSA can also be transmitted to humans via food. Experimental studies with broiler meat were conducted at the BfR in this regard. It was shown that the processing and preparation of contaminated food in domestic kitchens can result in the migration of MRSA and ESBL-forming E. coli to other foods which are then consumed by people without further heating. At the same time, however, the significance of this transmission path appears to be relatively minor.

Provided by BfR Federal Institute for Risk Assessment


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[May 11, 2017] Vantiv Executives to Present at Three Upcoming Financial Conferences

CINCINNATI, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Vantiv, Inc. (NYSE: VNTV), a leading provider of payments processing services and related technology solutions for merchants and financial institutions, announced today that its executives will attend and present at three upcoming conferences. On Tuesday, May 23, Charles Drucker, president and chief executive officer, will speak at 10:00 a.m. ET at the J.P. Morgan 45th Annual Global Technology, Media, and Telecom Conference, being held at the Westin Copley Place in Boston. On Thursday, June 1, Matt Taylor, group president, Integrated Payments and Emerging Channels at Vantiv, will speak at 9:30 a.m. ET at the Cowen Future of Payments & Commerce Forum, being held at the Lotte New York Palace Hotel in New York City. On Tuesday, June 6, Charles Drucker, president and chief executive officer, will present at 9:05 a.m. ET at the Baird 2017 Global Consumer, Technology & Services Conference being held at the InterContinental New York Barclay in New York City. Each presentation will be webcast live and can be accessed by visiting the investor section of Vantiv's website at . The webcasts will be archived and available for replay following each event.



For more information about Vantiv, please visit vantiv.com or on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube. ABOUT VANTIV

Vantiv, Inc. (NYSE: VNTV) is a leading payment processor differentiated by an integrated technology platform. Vantiv offers a comprehensive suite of traditional and innovative payment processing and technology solutions to merchants and financial institutions of all sizes, enabling them to address their payment processing needs through a single provider. We build strong relationships with our customers, helping them become more efficient, more secure and more successful. Vantiv is the largest merchant acquirer and the largest PIN debit acquirer based on number of transactions in the U.S. The company's growth strategy includes expanding further into high-growth channels and verticals, including integrated payments, eCommerce, and merchant bank. Visit us at the new www.vantiv.com, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.

 2017 Vantiv, LLC. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks, service marks and trade names referenced herein are the property of their respective owners. Vantiv and other Vantiv products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of Vantiv, LLC in the U.S. and other countries. CONTACTS

Nathan Rozof, CFA

Investor Relations

866.254.4811

513.900.4811

[email protected] Andrew Ciafardini

External Affairs & Corporate Communications

513.900.5308

[email protected]

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vantiv-executives-to-present-at-three-upcoming-financial-conferences-300456497.html SOURCE Vantiv, Inc.

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A first-of-its-kind study discovered that women and minorities who underwent a percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) are at a greater risk of experiencing recurrent cardiac events within the first year after their procedure compared to Caucasian men. Those outcomes may be attributable to their race, gender and socioeconomic status rather than the PCI procedure itself. Results from "Interaction Effects of Race/Ethnicity and Sex on Outcomes after PCI: A Subanalysis of the PLATINUM Diversity study" were presented today as a late-breaking clinical trial at the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) 2017 Scientific Sessions in New Orleans.

The trial is the first prospective study that enrolled solely women and minorities, a group that historically has been under-represented in cardiovascular clinical trials. The purpose of the PLATINUM Diversity trial was to come up with a novel way to enroll enough women and minorities to compare outcomes among different genders and race where results would be statistically valid. Wayne Batchelor, MD, MHS, FSCAI, an interventional cardiologist at Southern Medical Group in Tallahassee, Fla., along with Roxana Mehran, MD, MSCAI, Director of Interventional Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, served as the study's co-Principal Investigator. Batchelor said the impetus for PLATINUM Diversity stemmed in part from past studies that showed a higher rate of stent thrombosis in African Americans, but noted there were severe limitations of those studies.

"We wanted to design a study to prospectively examine outcomes across a large sample of women and minorities and compare that with the same stent used in recent studies of large numbers of Caucasian men," said Batchelor. "What is unique about our study is that, counter to prevailing assumptions, it shows that you can rapidly enroll women and minorities into a prospective registry and collect statistically valid data."

PLATINUM Diversity enrolled U.S. patients who received one (1) Promus PREMIER stent and self-identified as being female, black (of African heritage), Hispanic/Latino, or American Indian/Alaskan Native. To enrich the study with women and minorities and allow for comparisons to white men, PLATINUM Diversity (N=1,501) patients were pooled with the Promus-Element Plus Post Approval Study (PE PAS) patients (N=2,687) for a total study sample of 4,188 patients.

Within this large cohort, there were 1,417 white and 427 minority women and 1,635 white and 632 minority men available for analysis. The subgroup analysis evaluated one-year outcomes in both minority and white men and women and the inter-related effects of sex and race.

"What we found was that there were significant differences in adjusted outcomes between these groups, with especially higher risks of cardiac events in minority women at one year," Batchelor continued. "However, these incremental risks appeared to be related to progression of the patient's ischemic heart disease more than failure of the stent due to stent thrombosis or restenosis."

Batchelor reported consulting/speaker honoraria from Boston Scientific, Abbott Medical and Medtronic.

Mehran's disclosures are as follows: Grants/Research support: The Medicines Company, BMS, Astra Zeneca, Lilly/Daiichi Sankyo, Abbott Vascular, Boston Scientific, CSL Behring, Janssen (J+J), Claret Consulting fees: Advisory board for Janssen (J+J), Medscape, Osprey.

More information: Batchelor presented "Interaction Effects of Race/Ethnicity and Sex on Outcomes after PCI: A Subanalysis of the PLATINUM Diversity study" on Friday, May 12, 2017, 11:15 a.m. CDT.
A new study led by Elinor Amit, an affiliate of the Psychology Department, shows that people create visual images to accompany their inner speech even when they are prompted to use verbal thinking, suggesting that visual thinking is deeply ingrained in the human brain while speech is a relatively recent evolutionary development. Credit: Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Harvard scientists are beginning to provide answers to one of the thorniest questions in psychology: How do we think?

Human thought generally can be divided into two modes, the visual and the verbal. When you think about your next vacation and imagine sitting under a palm tree and sipping a cold drink, you're probably thinking visually. If you're thinking what you'll say when you make a presentation at work, you're likely thinking in words and sentences, creating inner speech.

But are the two always separate? Can you utilize one without the other popping up? A new Harvard study suggests that the answer depends on which mode of thinking you're talking about.

Led by Elinor Amit, an affiliate of the Psychology Department, and Evelina Fedorenko of Harvard Medical School, the study found that even when they were prompted to use verbal thinking, people created visual images to accompany their inner speech, suggesting that visual thinking is deeply ingrained in the brain. The study is described in a paper recently published in the journal NeuroImage.

"The question we wanted to answer was: Can you engage in one without the other modality popping up?" Amit said. "Can you use one without invoking the other unintentionally?"

To understand better how humans use each mode of thought, Amit and colleagues designed a series of experiments that began in the lab and later moved to MRI scanners.

In the first experiment, volunteers were asked to create either images or sentences based on pairs of words. The first was always an occupation, such as ballerina, policeman, or teacher. In half of the trials the second word was an object, while in the other half it was a place.

After creating an image or sentence using the words, participants were asked one of four questions: How clear were the images or sentences they were asked to create, or how clear were any images or sentences they unintentionally created?

"So in one trial you might be asked to create an image, and we would ask you how clear that image was," Amit explained. "In the next trial, we might ask you to create an image again, but then ask you how clear was the sentence you unintentionally created."

The experiment was run twice, once using volunteers in the lab, and once using online volunteers recruited through the internet labor market Amazon Mechanical Turk. In both cases, Amit said, the results were the same.

"What we found was there was no difference in the vividness of images," Amit said. "The subjects didn't care if we asked them to create an image or not; it was vivid regardless of what we asked them to do." However, the clarity of the sentence was affected by instructions. The inner speech produced by the subjects was clearer when the participants intended to create sentences than when they did not.

While those results were significant, they still relied on participants' self-reporting on the vividness of images or inner speech. To overcome this limitation, Amit and colleagues turned to functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to track subjects' brain activity.

For the fMRI test, researchers first trained participants using a series of both engaging sentences and images, each of which could be recalled using a "cue." As they recalled the sentences or images, Amit and colleagues used fMRI to monitor the brain's language network, as well as brain regions known to be involved in recognizing faces and bodies.

"We found that people generated more robust verbal representations during deliberate inner speech  but they generated visual images regardless of whether their intent was to visualize something or to think verbally."

Interestingly, Amit said, the fMRI tests also revealed that even when participants consciously tried to think visually, their brains showed relatively low levels of activity in the visual region, leading to questions about exactly what it is that people are visualizing.

"This raises an interesting question," Amit said. "It suggests that even though we visualize things all the time, it may be that they are relatively impoverished and not like a movie that runs in our heads."

Going forward, Amit said, the study poses intriguing questions about whether humans must be tied to the here and now.

In earlier research, Amit and colleagues found that people tend to think visually about things that are close to them (temporally, socially, or geographically), but use inner speech when contemplating far-off things.

"So if you think about Harvard Square versus San Francisco, you're probably visualizing the former, but thinking verbally about the latter," Amit said. "The same goes for whether you think about yourself or someone else, or in-group versus outgroup, or tomorrow versus 10 years from now."

Her new study, however, finds that even when people consciously attempt to think verbally, visual thinking nearly always intrudes, suggesting that people are grounded in the present even when they try to use a mode of thinking typically reserved for the future.

"This suggests that we can't really go beyond the here and now and think in abstract ways about other people, places, or times," Amit said. "This is the way our brains are wired, and there may be an evolutionary reason for this [because] we haven't always been verbalizers. For a long time, we understood our world visually, so maybe language is an add-on.

"That has important implications because if we are truly grounded in the here and now, what does that mean about how we develop public policy?" she added. "Do we need to help people overcome their bias to focusing on the here and now? This is something we may need to be aware of."

This story is published courtesy of the Harvard Gazette, Harvard University's official newspaper. For additional university news, visit Harvard.edu.
Opposition parties say they are consulting their lawyers to urgently interdict Brian Molefe from returning to Eskom.

Two of South Africas biggest opposition parties have confirmed to journalists on Friday that they are seeking to intervene following news that the former Eskom CEO had resigned as a member of parliament and was due back at the electricity provider on Monday.

Eskom board spokesperson Khulani Qoma confirmed that Molefe had agreed to go back to the power utility as its chief executive after it rescinded his application for an early retirement.

Molefe in February was appointed as a member of parliament under a cloud of speculation that he was destined for a role as South Africas finance minister, but instead President Jacob Zuma appointed Malusi Gigaba to the post.

In 2016, Molefe resigned from his position as Eskom CEO after being implicated by former public protector Advocate Thuli Madonsela in her state capture report  a decision which he said he made in order to clear his name.

The EFF has taken a decision to take the Brian Molefe decision to court, we think it is unacceptable. This thing is just turning our country into a banana republic, said EFF leader Julius Malema.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a media briefing held by opposition parties and civil society, ahead of the Constitutional Court hearing an application brought by the UDMs Bantu Holomisa for a motion of no confidence vote against Zuma to be done under secret ballot.

Malema said they had asked the EFFs lawyers to look into what can be done about the development.

Urgent action against Molefe

So the lawyers would advise whether we should take it on an urgent basis or not. The principle is, it is being taken to court. The decision to be made is whether it is on an urgent basis, or if it will follow normal court process, said Malema.

Copes Mosouia Lekota said it would be wise for Molefe to note that he was not CEO of Eskom yet.

He must remain in the portfolio committee until then, said Lekota.

DA leader Mmusi Maimane, who described the move as irrational, said they too were looking at taking urgent action against Molefes supposed return to Eskom.

No individual can loot state money, be found against in the state capture report, fail to appeal that state capture report, then proceed in the [act] of clearing his name, fail to do that and then go back to Eskom, said Maimane.

APCs Themba Godi, who is also the chairperson of the public accounts committee, said a confident Molefe confirmed the news to him on Friday when they bumped into each other at the airport.

He was the first to inform me that he is back at Eskom, complaining about the fact that on Wednesday the public accounts committee and treasury were discussing the Tegeta coal contracts and would like Eskom to be given a chance to clear themselves, said Godi, adding that Eskom had already been invited to do so within the next two or three weeks.

Political commentator and representative of the Freedom Movement Prince Mashele said they would bring an interdict against Molefe. He added that if anyone else brought one against Molefe, they would also support that.

News24

Now read: Brian Molefe to return to Eskom as CEO
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YEREVAN.  At the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Armenia, Minister Davit Tonoyan and Hayk Yesayan, the director general at Ucom, in accordance with the earlier agreement between the parties, on Saturday signed a contract of support. Under the contract, Ucom will provide 380 additional 2G and 3G-enabled 2-SIM card modems to upgrade the anti-hail stations that are placed and operating via mobile network throughout the country.

Based on the analysis from the previous years by Armenian State Hydrometeorological and Monitoring Service State Non-Commercial Organization, as well as by having recorded the glitches during the anti-hail stations exploitation, Ucom has invested AMD 15 million to equip the aforementioned stations with 380 new modems. The modems will be installed in the communities containing potential hail hazards.

As an Armenian company and major business in the country it was with greatest willingness that we had participated in the discussion last year, by promising at the end of it to undertake measures and offer solution to the meteorological problems, which are hindering the development of the agricultural sector. Today we are pleased to note, that the modems acquired in a result of this investment will allow to exploit the additional ones in case there are delays or failures with the main modems. Therefore they will allow sending the SMSes on time, and thus put the anti-hail stations into operating mode, said Hayk Yesayan, director general at Ucom.

The debates started around 5 years ago now have tangible results. In a result of anti-hail stations modernization the system failure probability is almost offset thus increasing the resilience to natural disasters in the rural economies. We thank you for proper and efficient cooperation with our system, said Davit Tonoyan, the Minister of Emergency Situations.

Having underlined the importance of the disaster risk reduction process, the parties have also noted other vectors of further cooperation, which are aimed at raising the population resistance level.
Poland and Slovakia will increase defense spending

Audi presents new crossovers Q8 e-tron

Benny Gantz: Israel has an opportunity to strike Iran's nuclear facilities

Samvel Babayan: Russia will withdraw peacekeepers from Nagorno-Karabakh

Hungarian government sets price ceiling on eggs and potatoes

Benny Gantz: Israel does not have the production capacity to supply Ukraine with air defense systems

Germany must adopt energy-saving measures in face of skyrocketing inflation

Beglaryan: Azerbaijan continues and will continue its policy of genocide and hatred against the Armenian people

Kiev believes it is too early to talk about withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson

Raisi: Relations between Tehran and Moscow have a bright future

Taliban virtue representative kills minor for refusing to marry

Meeting held at Ministry of Defense

Kaljurand: A fair peace agreement, that will guarantee the rights and security of the Nagorno-Karabakh people, is needed

ATMs closed at night in Germany because of increasing number of break-ins

Moldova to request 450 million from EU amid fears of stopping Russian gas supplies

Kazakhstan plans to make knowledge of Kazakh obligatory for obtaining citizenship

Vladimir Putin to visit Armenia

Ayoob Kara: Israel and Azerbaijan must act together against Iran

Macron: France ends its military mission in Africa

Military forces of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Turkey take part in Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline protection exercise

Shoigu orders withdrawal of troops across Dnieper River

Swedish parliament will vote to change constitution for NATO membership on November 16

Reactor at nuclear power plant in southern Sweden stops unexpectedly due to turbine malfunction

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Zakharova: Russia closely coordinates with Armenia and Azerbaijan on preparation of peace treaty

U.S. cut its oil production forecast in 2023

Gen. of Justice: Armenia is already going to abyss

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Australia to ban former military pilots from working in China

Ministry: 1,034 participants of 44-day Karabakh war declared disabled

Russian Security Council Secretary accuses Western intelligence services of organizing unrest in Iran

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Dollar falls, euro rises in Armenia

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Tesla recalls 40,000 electric cars because of problems with power steering

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Russia has record number of Armenia migrants outflow

Stoltenberg says NATO summit will be held in Vilnius on July 11-12, 2023

Iranian Interior Ministry: Organizers of riots in Iran were trained in 8 unfriendly countries

Europe fills its gas storage facilities almost 100% before cold season

Greece MPs visit Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan

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Copper falls in price

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[May 11, 2017] Intrusion Inc. Announces Financial Release Date and Conference Call

RICHARDSON, Texas, May 11, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Intrusion Inc. (OTCQB:INTZ), (Intrusion) will announce first quarter 2017 financial results on Monday, May 15, 2017. The press release will be published over the wire services after the market closes. The release will also be available on the companys web site at www.intrusion.com. Intrusion management will review the Companys financial and operational progress for the first quarter 2017 during a conference call later that day at 4:00 P.M., CDT.

Interested investors can access the call at 1-77-258-4925 (outside the United States, please dial 1-973-500-2152) at 4:00 P.M., CDT. For those unable to participate in the live conference call, a replay will be accessible beginning May 15, 2017 at approximately 7:00 P.M., CDT until May 22, 2017 by calling 1-855-859-2056 (if outside the United States, 1-404-537-3406). At the replay prompt, enter conference identification number 21215585. In addition, a live and archived audio webcast of the conference call will be available at www.intrusion.com.



About Intrusion Inc. Intrusion Inc. is a global provider of entity identification, high speed data mining, cybercrime and advanced persistent threat detection products. Intrusions product families include TraceCop for identity discovery and disclosure, and Savant for network data mining and advanced persistent threat detection. Intrusions products help protect critical information assets by quickly detecting, protecting, analyzing and reporting attacks or misuse of classified, private and regulated information for government and enterprise networks. For more information, please visit www.intrusion.com.

Contact Michael L. Paxton, VP, CFO 972.301.3658, [email protected]

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Armenia is the only CIS country that is of increasing interest to Lithuanian businessmen, Lithuanian analyst Aleksandr Izgorodin said during his latest presentation about Lithuanian trade tendencies and perspectives during the Competitiveness Forum.

Lithuanian businessmen consider Armenia the most effective platform through which to enter the EEU market.

This opens new corridors in the development of trade and attracting investments from the Baltic States to Armenia, as it is the gateway to the major CIS and six Arab markets. Despite the geographical distance, Armenia and Lithuania have a lot in common; both are small economies, place an emphasis on human capital, have a lack of natural resources and a similar country positioning," added Izgorodin.

According to the representative of DFA in the Baltic States, Rena Saribekian, economic ties between Lithuania and Armenia in different sectors have been developing constantly since 2014. Today, the Lithuanian textile industry is looking for opportunities to outsource services; we believe that Armenia's progress in the field could meet these expectations, making it a good regional hub, claims Saribekian.

Lithuanian businessmen are also interested in developing bilateral relationships in the IT, start-up, innovation and renewable energy, food and processing sectors. Furthermore, the IT, textile, science and technology sectors have already attracted potential investors and a business delegation representing the pharmaceutical and food industry distributors will visit Armenia this fall.

According to the Lithuanian Department of Statistics, trade turnover between Armenia and Lithuania comprised almost 23.7 million and increased by 28.8% between 2015 and 2016. Lithuanian exports to Armenia increased by 30.2%, while Armenian exports to Lithuania increased by 16.2%, to a total of 2.1 million. Armenia mainly exports brandy, cigarettes, wine, and medicine.
[May 12, 2017] Deep Instinct Named "Most Disruptive Startup" in NVIDIA's 2017 Inception Awards

SAN JOSE, California, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Deep Instinct, the first company to apply deep learning to cybersecurity, today announced it has been named the "Most Disruptive Startup" by NVIDIA. Earlier this year, Deep Instinct was selected out of hundreds of AI and deep learning startups to compete in the NVIDIA's Inception AI startup competition to find the best AI startups. The Inception Awards ceremony took place Wednesday in Silicon Valley at the GPU Technology Conference, the premiere AI event with more than 7,000 industry leaders, media, and investors in attendance. This was the inaugural year of NVIDIA's Inception Awards, which recognized startups in three categories - Hottest Emerging, Most Disruptive, and Social Innovation. Winners received significant cash prizes and graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware to further accelerate their activities. Emerging out of stealth mode in November 2015, Deep Instinct's patent-pending application of deep learning to cybersecurity results in cutting-edge capabilities of unmatched accurate detection and real-time prevention. Leveraging the capabilities associaed with deep learning, Deep Instinct provides instinctive protection on any device, platform, and operating system. Zero-day and APT attacks are immediately detected and blocked before any harm can happen to the enterprise's endpoints, servers, and mobile devices.



"Deep Instinct relies on end-to-end deep learning for all its advanced malware detection and prevention capabilities. The deep neural network is trained on hundreds of millions of malicious and legitimate files. To handle such large-scale training, Deep Instinct developed its proprietary deep learning infrastructure directly on NVIDIA's GPU machines," said Dr. Eli David, CTO of Deep Instinct. "The powerful capabilities of NVIDIA GPUs enable us to perform our training at a substantially faster speed compared to CPUs: while training the Deep Instinct brain on NVIDIA's GPUs takes a little over a single day of training, the same task on CPUs would take more than three months!" "We are thrilled to be recognized by NVIDIA for what we believe is a groundbreaking application of GPUs," said Guy Caspi, CEO of Deep Instinct. "Being able to leverage powerful technological capabilities to apply deep learning to cybersecurity empowers enterprises with unprecedented, real-time protection from the next unexpected attack."

About the GPU Technology Conference

Presented by NVIDIA, GTC is comprised of the annual conference, year-long webinar series, and workshops that connect the global community of developers, researchers, and scientists through unique educational and networking opportunities. For more information, visit http://www.gputechconf.com/. About Deep Instinct Deep Instinct is the first company to apply deep learning to cybersecurity. Leveraging deep learning's predictive capabilities, Deep Instinct's on-device, proactive solution protects against zero-day threats and APT attacks with unmatched accuracy. Deep Instinct provides comprehensive defense that is designed to protect against the most evasive unknown malware in real-time, across an organization's endpoints, servers, and mobile devices. Deep learning's capabilities of identifying malware from any data source results in comprehensive protection on any device, any platform, and operating system. Deep Instinct is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel and has offices in San Francisco, CA. To learn more, visit: http://www.deepinstinct.com Press Contacts:

Deep Instinct

Maya Schirmann, CMO, +972-3-545-6600

[email protected] or PAN Communications for Deep Instinct

Alexandra Evans, +1-617-502-4300

[email protected]

SOURCE Deep Instinct

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Sharing data, files, and other important information is a major part of todays digital business world. Between email, VoIP phone calls, cloud software programs, and everything else that your business needs on a daily basis, its impossible to avoid the exchange of information. But if you dont have a secure strategy in place, youre just asking for trouble.

What is Meant by a File-Sharing Policy?

Before we get too far into this issue, its important to explain what is meant by a file-sharing policy. While traditional peer-to-peer file sharing can be included in a file-sharing policy, the term is not used to exclusively describe this sort of behavior. A file-sharing policy deals with any exchange of private or confidential information between one party and another. This means email, SMS, and online chat logs are all examples of file-sharing behaviors.

When you develop a file-sharing policy for your company, you need to look at any and every process that involves the exchange of information. And since new technologies and processes are constantly being developed, this means youll be adding to your policy on a revolving basis. A file-sharing policy isnt something that you create and let sit. It will need daily attention.

Four Things to Consider

Now that you have a slightly better understanding of the term, lets take a closer look at some of the different elements youll want to consider as you draft and execute a file-sharing policy within your own company.

1. Crack Down on Email

If theres one area where most businesses really screw up, its email. Todays employees are so comfortable and familiar with email, they forget it can actually be a dangerous tool when used inappropriately.

The reality is that email is not a secure medium for sending, receiving, or opening confidential information. This is true for many reasons. First off, the devices of the sender and receiver arent always secure.

Your email data is stored in files on your device and there are programs that can access and read those files, these programs can even read and display attachments, IT pro Christina Harbridge explains. Rifling through email is the most common process of malware.

Then theres the fact that networks through which emails are sent can be compromised. Multiple network connections are accessed between the time an email is sent and when its received and theres no guarantee that theyre all secure.

The bottom line is that email technology does not provide a secure way to send, receive, and store sensitive documents, says Phillip Vera of XMedius, a provider of advanced file-sharing technology. Next-generation file exchange solutions have to be easy to deploy, use and manage, and must be able to integrate seamlessly with contemporary business workflows and procedures.

As you flesh out the details of your companys file-sharing policy, make sure youre doing everything you possibly can to combat the risks of email.

2. Outlaw File-Sharing Services

Consumer file-sharing services should not be allowed in the workplace. While there are people who say they can be used so long as employees are educated on proper behavior, its simply not a good idea.

The loss of sensitive or confidential business information is a huge problem for organizations. And consumer-grade file-sharing apps are inherently insecure and susceptible to data leakage, security thought leader Larry Ponemon says. Its not just a technology problem, it's also a people problem. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, most people do what's most convenient and then they repent.

3. Recognize the Risks of USB Drives

While USB drives arent used nearly as much as they were five or ten years ago, theyre still common in many organizations. But did you know that they actually pose a huge risk?

As Norton explains, criminals have developed malicious software that specifically targets these drives and can program firmware to hold malicious code. Whats even scarier is that this malicious code can be present even when the USB drive appears empty. Its best to stick to sharing files in the cloud.

4. Dont Just Implement.Educate!

If youre going to take the time to develop a strong file-sharing policy that protects your business from malicious behavior, you need to expend the same amount of energy on education. Your employees need to not only understand the rules associated with the policy, but also the why behind the policy. This will help them develop more responsible and sustainable behavior patterns.

Strict is the Word

Every file-sharing policy will look different. Much depends on the technologies and tools you use, what sort of data your company interacts with on a daily basis, and how many employees work for the organization. And while its totally fine to shape a strategy around your specific needs, theres no room for compromise when it comes to enforcing the policy.

Once you set a file-sharing policy, you must be willing to stand by it. As soon as you let something slide or turn a blind eye to a particular action, youre undermining your own authority and relaying the message that the policy doesnt really matter.

Make an example out of behavior that doesnt align with the policy and be as strict as you possibly can. This isnt about making people like you  its about protecting the best interests of the company.

Edited by Alicia Young
Court Affirms Railroad Company Must Pay $260,000 in Compensatory Damages

A federal appeals court ruled that Pan Am Railways must take corrective action for an employee who suffered retaliation.

A federal appeals court has ruled that Pan Am Railways, Inc. must pay $260,000 in damages to an employee who suffered retaliation after filing a Federal Railroad Safety Act whistleblower complaint.

OSHA investigated the complaint, which involved the company charging the employee with dishonesty after he tried to report an injury. The company was initially ordered to pay the employee $10,000 in compensatory damages and $40,000 in punitive damages.

Pan Am filed an appeal that was later upheld, and the damages were increased to $250,000.

"This case is a strong reminder that our whistleblower laws prohibit reprisals against employees who file whistleblower complaints, report workplace injuries and illnesses, or raise awareness of hazardous safety or security conditions," said Galen Blanton, OSHA's New England regional administrator.
Maison, the much anticipated French restaurant at 5921 W. Vliet St., will open its doors to the public on May 26 at 5 p.m.

The restaurant, which is owned and operated by Chef Michael Quinn, formerly of Coquette Cafe, will also feature dishes created by sous chef Joe Roethel, who worked with Quinn for the past two and a half years at Coquette Cafe. Abigail Watters will serve as bar manager.

The bar will feature classic cocktails, including the French 75, sidecar and sazerac (priced $8-10), along with a selection of French wines, with glass pours in the $7-12 range. Draft beers include Kronenbourg 1664, New Glarus Spotted Cow, Surly Coffee Bender, Milwaukee Brewing Co. Louies Demise and Bells Two Hearted Ale, along with an extended list of bottled brews.

The bar menu will include offerings like frog legs with creole sauce, green tomato jam, seared heirloom tomato and lemon ($14); a half-kilo of PEI mussels with the sauce of the day ($12); and smoked trout with mustard creme fraiche, fried caper berry, cracked pepper, grilled escarole and rye points ($14).

Salads will include selections like classic nicoise ($14) and spinach salad with balsamic, burnt sugar, forme dambert, baguette, roasted shallot and fresh currant ($10). Meanwhile, cheese and charcuterie plates will be available for $16 each with traditional accompaniments like jam, pickled vegetables and baguette. Escargot will be served with hotel butter, grilled baguette and Meyer lemon ($14).

Entrees will include two steaks, a flat iron or bone-in aged ribeye with a choice of wild mushroom demi, soubise, red wine, hotel butter, served with pommes frites ($24/32); coq au vin with roasted fingerlings, black trumpet mushrooms and caramelized shallot ($24); ragout de poisson with fish stew of clams, mussels, prawn, grilled baguette, rouille, charred orange and seared fish du jour (market price); a seasonal grilled vegetable terrine ($19); smoked leg of lamb with parsnip, tart cherry, rosemary and haricot vert ($27); and a seared fish of the day served with marinated potato, rainbow swiss chard, stone fruit and green peppercorn demi ($25).

Desserts will include orange blossom sabayon with fresh currants, black berries and chocolate; petite tarte tatin with anglaise, sea salt and chantilly; and chocolate ganache cake (all $8 each).

According to Quinn, reservations will be available via Open Table beginning Tuesday, May 16. The restaurant will be open May 26-27, but will close Sunday and Monday, May 28-29 to observe the Memorial Day holiday. Regular hours will resume on Tuesday, May 30.

Once open, Maisons hours will be Monday through Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Lunch service is slated to follow in the weeks following the opening.
Credit: Vetmeduni Vienna

Alpacas, a species of New World camelids, have very thick wool. This requires them to be shorn regularly, just like sheep. But shearing is a source of stress for the animals. This has now been confirmed for the first time by researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna based on an evaluation of clinical, hormonal and behavioural parameters. The scientists were able to show that even the act of restraining the animals in different positions released higher concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol. Shearing the animals on the floor or on a special tilt table also resulted in changed clinical parameters such as heart rate. These values remained at normal levels only when the animals were sheared in a standing position. But shearing animals in the standing position is only possible if the alpacas do not resist being restrained with a risk of injury to themselves or to their handlers. These animals should be restrained on a mattress on the ground or on a tilt table. The study was published in Veterinary Records with organisational and financial support from the Alpaca Association e.V. of Germany and the Austrian Buiatric Association.

Alpacas are members of the camel family and, like llamas, guanacos and vicunas, belong to the New World camelids. Domesticated they are of great importance in South America, especially in Peru, where they have been kept and bred for their wool for thousands of years. In Europe, on the other hand, alpaca breeding is relatively uncommon. But the number of animals and breeders has been growing for years. Just like sheep, alpacas must be shorn regularly to harvest their wool. The procedure is an unusual one for the animals and thus a source of stress. An interdisciplinary team of researchers from Vetmeduni Vienna has now investigated for the first time which shearing position produces the least amount of stress for the animals and therefore represents the least stressful method from the point of view of the animal's wellbeing.

Stress hormone detectable in saliva and faeces

Unlike sheep, which are usually turned onto their backs, alpaca breeders use several different methods of restraint. The animals are either held by assistants in a standing position, restrained on a mattress on the ground or placed on special shearing tables. Previously, there had been no studies as to which method produced the least stress among the animals. "The stress of the animals can be determined based on clinical parameters, by observing the animals' behaviour or through the laboratory analysis of saliva and faeces," explains senior author Susanne Waiblinger of the Institute of Animal Husbandry and Animal Welfare. Saliva and faeces contain cortisol, which is an important stress marker. Saliva cortisol is considered to reflect a short-term stress response, whereas faecal cortisol shows longer-lasting stress responses. Besides measuring stress-induced hormonal levels, the researchers also looked at clinical parameters, such as heart rate, respiratory rate and body temperature, as well as the animals' behaviour.

Clinical parameters nearly unchanged when shearing in standing position

To describe the impact of shearing on the alpacas, the team divided its study into two parts. Part one studied the level of stress caused by each of the restraining methods, as the shearing itself represents a separate stress factor. In part two, the animals were divided into groups and shorn using one of the methods. Animals that were restrained without shearing exhibited no significant changes in terms of the clinical parameters. Both the respiratory rate and heart rate remained at normal levels. "The body temperature was unchanged during this part of the study. But if the animals were restrained and also shorn, the clinical values changed significantly in the animals that were restrained on the floor or on the table. For all restraining methods, however, body temperature remained unchanged. This makes alpacas different from sheep or from the alpaca's relative, the vicuna," says first author Thomas Wittek of the University Clinic for Ruminants.

Stress hormone shows that alpacas are only stressed by the restraint

The analysis of the cortisol concentrations in saliva and faeces, on the other hand, showed that the animals were also stressed in the first part of the study despite the almost unchanged clinical parameters. Saliva cortisol levels were clearly higher after just 20 minutes and increased even further within 40 minutes. The cortisol concentrations then remained unchanged, although the higher levels could be demonstrated in faeces even 33 hours later. During restraint and shearing, the cortisol values also increased regardless of the shearing position. When animals were restrained on the ground, however, this led to a more significant increase of hormone levels over time compared to the other two methods. Faecal cortisol levels remained at the same high levels in all three groups.

Animal behaviour just as important for choice of restraining method

"At first glance, it appears difficult to compare or associate the two experiments," says Wittek. "But we can assume that just the sound of the shearing machine and the duration of the restraint cause stress for the animals. This means that you can practically add the values." Merely positioning the animals is a source of stress, which then increases further through the act of shearing. The standing position was tolerated the best by the alpacas in terms of the clinical parameters. Restraining the animals in the standing position, however, only makes sense and is only possible if the alpacas remain calm. If they resist from the beginning, the risk of injury to themselves or to one of the handlers is too great, says first author Wittek. These animals should therefore be restrained on a table. The handlers usually know the behaviour of their animals and can decide in advance which method to use.

More information: T. Wittek et al. Clinical parameters and adrenocortical activity to assess stress responses of alpacas using different methods of restraint either alone or with shearing, Veterinary Record (2017). DOI: 10.1136/vr.104232 Journal information: Veterinary Record
A map of ground squirrels sampling localities. Credit: Nikolai Formozov

Members of the Faculty of Biology of the Lomonosov Moscow State University have studied arctic ground squirrels in the Indigirka river basin, and found that their relatives now inhabit Kamchatka. The scientists have shared the research results in an article published in Scientific Reports.

Beringian ground squirrels are model organisms used by scientists for studies of trans-Beringian connections (namely, connections between the Old and New Worlds, established at existence time of the terrestrial Bering Land Bridge at the site of the Bering Strait). This fossil species was described by Boris Vinogradov, a Soviet zoologist. The description was made on the basis of three carcasses found in 1946 by unnamed gulag prisoners in vertical excavation shafts at a depth of 12.5 meters. Preservation of the mummified carcasses of the ground squirrels was so good that even ectoparasites (lice) were found in their hair. It's a unique find, as hair coats are rarely preserved.

Later, a biologist named Igor Gromov noticed that fossils of Citellus glacialis resemble Beringian ground squirrels inhabiting Alaska, but not northeastern Asia. It was a step up toward understanding the glacialis form with the help of molecular genetic methods. The scientists were interested in conducting this research in the 1990s, but lack of any experience with studying ancient DNA among Russian scientists at that time was a formidable obstacle.

The problem is that DNA degrades with time as a result of dehydration of carcasses, low temperatures, or strong salt content. That's why special processing of ancient DNA is necessary for study. Marina Faerman-Arkchangelskaya, who graduated from the Anthropology Department of the Lomonosov Moscow State University, currently working at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, helped the scientists to solve this problem. She showed her Moscow colleagues how to work with ancient DNA and sequenced the cytochrome b gene in the U. glacialis paratype. Samples were compared with with present-day species based on this gene. She also dated the sample using a new device, the accelerator mass spectrometer (AMS) in Novosibirsk. It allows researchers to non-destructively date tissue microsamples. In other devices, researchers need a sample of at least five grams of carbon, which means a whole skull of a ground squirrel or a dog shoulder bone. Consequently, in cases of small animals, researchers take the larger half of a sample for dating. The analysis results show that the U. glacialis form is 30,000 years old, three times older than expected.

The fox named Alisa who gathered samples for the research. Credit: Igor Shpilenok

The U. Glacialis species has proved to be very similar to present-day Beringian ground squirrels (Urocitellus parryii). However, its closest relatives were only found in the Alaska Peninsula. The scientists also established that Beringian ground squirrels colonized Eurasia at least twice. It was likely connected with glaciation, before which ground squirrels managed to distribute in Asia from America. Later they became extinct in Asia because of cooling, and after warming, ground squirrels came back from Alaska.

Nikolai Formozov, a leading researcher in the Laboratory of Vertebrate Behavior and the article author, says, "In the course of the work, we asked ourselves if there were somewhere descendants of the first colonization wave in Eurasia. Kamchatka was the most appropriate region from this point of view, but we didn't have substances from there at that time. Igor Shpilenok, a famous blogger and photographer, was busy with a months-long photographic survey of animals in the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. The Moscow researchers reached out to him, and asked to assist in gathering tissue samples of ground squirrels. Then a fox named Alisa that lived near Igor began to bring ground squirrels to the doorstep of his lodge. These samples precisely proved the hypothesisground squirrels from Kamchatka appeared to be close relatives of the glacialis form. The fox was wild, but closely interacted with people, and sometimes brought ground squirrels, as they are easy prey in that region. Probably, it's a sign of trust, like when cats bring mice to their masters and become surprised that they are reluctant to eat them."

The scientists note that their project substantially contributes to understanding trans-Beringian connections and dispersal routes of various animals in the Pleistocene in northeastern Asia.

More information: Marina Faerman et al, DNA analysis of a 30,000-year-old Urocitellus glacialis from northeastern Siberia reveals phylogenetic relationships between ancient and present-day arctic ground squirrels, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/srep42639 Journal information: Scientific Reports
This is an undated image made available by the World Wildlife Fund Finland of a Saimaa Ringed Seal as it rests on a rock in Lake Saimaa, Finland. Wildlife conservationists in Finland are giving endangered seals in Europe's fourth largest lake a spot of online famethey plan to stream encounters with some of the estimated 360 remaining seals in southeastern lake of Saimaa, in a bid to raise awareness of their plight. (Ismo Marttinen/WWF Finland via AP)

Wildlife conservationists in Finland are planning to give endangered seals a spot of online fame by streaming encounters with some of the few hundred remaining mammals in a bid to raise awareness of their plight.

The Saimaa ringed seal, named after their home in Europe's fourth-largest lake, is found only in these waters and is one of just five remaining freshwater seal species in the world. But milder winters have left few shoreline snow banks for the seals to burrow into lairs where they give birth to pups, and many get caught in fishing nets.

During the next few weeks, viewers will be able to tune into the seal watch stream known as "Norppa Live," from the Finnish name for seal, although not that much action is expected. Often the seals are difficult to spot, lying motionless on the smooth rounded rocks they resemble. Sometimes all you can see is just an empty rock.

"Not a lot happens," says Joonas Fritze, a conservationist from World Wildlife Fund Finland. "The highlights are seal climbing on a rock, seal turning on a rock, seal scratching itself, but that's the beauty of it ... I guess that's part of it, like, real slow TV. So it's kind of like an opposite of the hectic life people live."

The organization is hoping for a large audience after its successful launch last year became an online hit in Finland, where it was broadcast in offices, schools, libraries and hotel lobbies, drawing more than 2 million viewers in the Nordic nation of 5.5 million.

The irresistible seal pups, with their furry heads, often find rocks sheltered by tall reeds near the shoreline. Other, bigger specimens, sprawl out like lumps of soft rock, unaware of the hidden camera.

Last year a male seal became so popular that thousands of people sent in suggestions to name himthe winner was Pullervo, which referred to his "chubby" shape. There were hopes of a romance with a popular female seal, but that apparently didn't materialize.

As word has spread about the seals' plight, conservationists again expect millions of viewers to tune in hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the remaining 360 Saimaa sealsaccording to the latest count by Parks and Wildlife Finland.

Although the seals have a fairly carefree existence in the sprawling labyrinth of waterways that make up Lake Saimaa, dotted with more than 1,300 islands, there is one real threatfishing nets.

The lake is a popular venue for Finns, who flock to thousands of summer villas spread along the shores of the country's 180,000 lakes, where fishing plays a major role in everyday activities, including laying nets.

Young pups are particularly prone to getting caught in them and consequently drown.

This is grab taken from a World Wildlife Fund Finland live stream shows a Saimaa Ringed Seal resting on a rock in Lake Saimaa, Finland on May 18,2016. Finland. Wildlife conservationists in Finland are giving endangered seals in Europe's fourth largest lake a spot of online famethey plan to stream encounters with some of the estimated 360 remaining seals in southeastern lake of Saimaa, in a bid to raise awareness of their plight. (WWF Finland via AP)

Fritze hopes that seals online will help.

"We hope we can raise awareness of this special animal and tell people about the species and its threats," he says. "And people learn that a net fishing is a big threat to the seal."

Lack of snow is also causing a worry for conservationists.

"The ice came quite early, already in December, and there was time for the snow to accumulate and build those snow banks," said Petteri Tolvanen from WWF Finland. "And now the situation is much worse for the seals and in some years there (are) hardly any natural snow banks."

In 2016, helped by a band of volunteers, conservationists decided to build their own snow banks, creating 211 man-made snowdrifts where 40 seal pups were born. Earlier this year, they constructed 277. "The ringed seal is totally dependent on ice and snow when breeding," Tolvanen said.

Scientists from the nearby University of Eastern Finland in the city of Lappeenranta, are studying the seals with camera traps, using their unique fur patterns to identify them and produce useful data about their movements and population changes.

It's not all bad news. The population has been slowly growing since hunting them was banned in 1955.

"The population is slowly growing, the situation is getting better," said Meeri Koivuniemi, a scientist at the University of Eastern Finland, but cautions that should remain alert to the dangers facing the seals.

WWF Finland launched the live stream wwf.fi/en/norppalive/ on May 10 and is expected to continue till the beginning of June. By that time the seals will have finished malting and will retreat back into the lake's cool waters.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Physicists at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology used this capacitive dilatometer to measure the thermal expansion in cerium copper gold alloys cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero with a precision of one tenth of a trillionth of a meter, or approximately one-thousandth the radius of single atom. The precise thermal expansion measurements allowed the researchers to map out the stress dependence of entropy in materials as they were cooled to the point of a quantum phase transition. Credit: K. Grube/Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

By precisely measuring the entropy of a cerium copper gold alloy with baffling electronic properties cooled to nearly absolute zero, physicists in Germany and the United States have gleaned new evidence about the possible causes of high-temperature superconductivity and similar phenomena.

"This demonstration provides a foundation to better understand how novel behaviors like high-temperature superconductivity are brought about when certain kinds of materials are cooled to a quantum critical point," said Rice University physicist Qimiao Si, co-author of a new study about the research in this week's Nature Physics.

The experimental research was led by Hilbert von Lohneysen of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany. Lohneysen's team, including study lead author Kai Grube, spent a year conducting dozens of experiments on a compound made of cerium copper and gold. By studying the effect of stress, or pressure applied in specific directions, and by making the materials very cold, the team subtly changed the spacing between the atoms in the crystalline metallic compounds and thus altered their electronic properties.

The cerium copper gold alloys are "heavy fermions," one of several of types of quantum materials that exhibit exotic electronic properties when very cold. The best-known of these are high-temperature superconductors, so named for their ability to conduct electrical current with zero resistance at temperatures well above those of traditional superconductors. Heavy fermions exhibit a different oddity: Their electrons appear to be effectively hundreds of times more massive than normal and, equally unusual, the effective electron mass seems to vary strongly as temperature changes.

These odd behaviors defy traditional physical theories. They also occur at very cold temperatures and come about when the materials are tuned to a "quantum phase transition"a change from one state to another, like ice melting. In 2001, Si and colleagues offered a new theory: At the quantum critical point, electrons fluctuate between two entirely different quantum states, so much so that their effective mass becomes infinitely large. The theory predicted certain tell-tale signs as the quantum critical point is approached, and Si has worked with experimental physicists for the past 16 years to amass evidence to support the theory.

"Liquid water and ice are two of the classical states in which H2O can exist," said Si, director of the Rice Center for Quantum Materials. "Ice is a very ordered phase because the H2O molecules are neatly arranged in a crystal lattice. Water is less ordered compared with ice, but flowing water molecules still have underlying order. The critical point is where things are fluctuating between these two types of order. It's the point where H2O molecules sort of want to go to the pattern according to ice and sort of want to go to the pattern according to water.

"It's very similar in a quantum phase transition," he said. "Even though this transition is driven by quantum mechanics, it is still a critical point where there's maximum fluctuation between two ordered states. In this case, the fluctuations are related to the ordering of the 'spins' of electrons in the material."

Spin is an inherent propertylike eye colorand every electron's spin is classified as being either "up" or "down." In magnets, like iron, spins are aligned in the same direction. But many materials exhibit the opposite behavior: Their spins alternate in a repeating up, down, up, down pattern that physicists refer to as "antiferromagnetic."

Hundreds of experiments on heavy fermions, high-temperature superconductors and other quantum materials have found that magnetic order differs on either side of a quantum critical point. Typically, experiments find antiferromagnetic order in one range of chemical composition, and a new state of order on the other side of the critical point.

"A reasonable picture is that you can have an antiferromagnetic order of spins, where the spins are quite ordered, and you can have another state in which the spins are less ordered," said Si, Rice's Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy. "The critical point is where fluctuations between these two states are at their maximum."

The cerium copper gold compound has become a prototype heavy fermion material for quantum criticality, largely due to the work of von Lohneysen's group.

"In 2000, we did inelastic neutron scattering experiments in the quantum critical cerium copper gold system," said von Lohneysen. "We found a spatial-temporal profile so unusual that it could not be understood in terms of the standard theory of metal."

Si said that study was one of the important factors that stimulated him and his co-authors to offer their 2001 theory, which helped explain von Lohneysen's puzzling results. In subsequent studies, Si and colleagues also predicted that entropya classical thermodynamic propertywould increase as quantum fluctuations increased near a quantum critical point. The well-documented properties of cerium copper gold provided a unique opportunity to test the theory, Si said.

In cerium copper-six, substituting small amounts of gold for copper allows researchers to slightly increase the spacing between atoms. In the critical composition, the alloys undergo an antiferromagnetic quantum phase transition. By studying this composition and measuring the entropy numerous times under varying conditions of stress, the Karlsruhe team was able to create a 3-D map that showed how entropy at very low yet finite temperature steadily increased as the system approached the quantum critical point.

No direct measure of entropy exists, but the ratio of entropy changes to stress is directly proportional to another ratio that can be measured: the amount the sample expands or contracts due to changes in temperature. To enable the measurements at the extraordinarily low temperatures required, the Karlsruhe team developed a method for accurately measuring length changes of less than one tenth of a trillionth of a meterapproximately one-thousandth the radius of a single atom.

"We measured the entropy as a function of stress applied along all the different principal directions," said Grube, a senior researcher at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. "We made a detailed map of the entropy landscape in the multidimensional parameter space and verified that the quantum critical point sits on top of the entropy mountain."

Von Lohneysen said the thermodynamic measurements also provide new insights into the quantum fluctuations near the critical point.

"Surprisingly, this methodology allows us to reconstruct the underlying spatial profile of quantum critical fluctuations in this quantum critical material," he said. "This is the first time that this kind of methodology has been applied."

Si said it came as a surprise that this could be done using nothing more than entropy measurements.

"It is quite remarkable that the entropy landscape can connect so well with the detailed profile of the quantum critical fluctuations determined from microscopic experiments such as inelastic neutron scattering, all the more so when both end up providing direct evidence to support the theory," he said.

More generally, the demonstration of the pronounced entropy enhancement at a quantum critical point in a multidimensional parameter space raises new insights into the way electron-electron interactions give rise to high-temperature superconductivity, Si said.

"One way to relieve the accumulated entropy of a quantum critical point is for the electrons in the system to reorganize themselves into novel phases," he said. "Among the possible phases that ensue is unconventional superconductivity, in which the electrons pair up and form a coherent macroscopic quantum state."

More information: K. Grube et al. Multidimensional entropy landscape of quantum criticality, Nature Physics (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nphys4113 Journal information: Nature Physics
This still image provided by NASA shows astronauts Jack Fischer, left, and Peggy Whitson on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Friday, May 12, 2017. An equipment water leak has shortened the spacewalk. During preparations earlier in the morning, water leaked from the connection point between an umbilical hose and Fischer's suit. The hose is one of two that provide water, oxygen, power, cooling and communications for astronauts before they float outside. (NASA via AP)

An equipment water leak shortened Friday's spacewalk by two U.S. astronauts at the International Space Station, but they still managed to replace a faulty electronics box.

Despite the initial trouble, it was a milestone moment as Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer floated outside on the station's 200th spacewalk.

The astronauts wasted no time removing the old electronics box, their No. 1 chore, and plugging in a new unit. The devicea bit unwieldy at more than 5 feet longsupplies electricity and data to science experiments on the outside of the station.

During earlier preparations, a small amount of water leaked from the connection point between an umbilical hose and Fischer's suit. The hose is one of two that provide water, oxygen, power, cooling and communications for astronauts before they float outside.

The leaky hose had to be disconnected before the spacewalk could begin. The astronauts ended up sharing Whitson's hose while they waited, which reduced their suit battery power. As a result, Mission Control cut the spacewalk from the intended 6  hours to four hours even before it began, and ditched all but the most important chorereplacing the electronics box.

"Everyone here in Mission Control wants to thank you for the heroic work that you all have done to get us to this point," Mission Control radioed as the spacewalk finally got underway.

The electronic box change-out went so well and fast that the spacewalkers had time to squeeze in a couple other chores, most notably the addition of a special data connector to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.

Launched in 2011 on the next-to-last shuttle flight, the high-profile particle physics detector known as AMS is still working and has measured 100 billion particles. But it's in need of repairs because of failing coolant pumps; Friday's work on a bypass route for data should help future efforts.

"You guys have been trucking through these tasks," Mission Control told the spacewalkers.

This spacewalk was supposed to take place in early April, but was put on hold because of delays in launching the replacement box and spectrometer equipment. The parts finally arrived late last month aboard Orbital ATK's commercial cargo ship, the S.S. John Glenn, named after the first American to orbit Earth.

It was the first spacewalk for Fischer, who arrived at the station less than a month ago. Whitson has performed more spacewalks than any other woman. This was her ninth.

"Oh my gosh, this is beautiful," Fischer said as he worked 250 miles above the planet.

"Isn't it," Whitson agreed, chuckling.

Mission Control stressed throughout the morning that Fischer's suit was fine and that the leak was confined to the umbilical hose. Spare parts are on board to restore the system. NASA is especially wary of leaks involving spacesuits. In 2013, an Italian astronaut almost drowned during a spacewalk when water from the suit's cooling system flooded his helmet.

Astronauts kicked off space station construction in orbit in 1998. The 200 mark includes assembly and maintenance by Russian spacewalkers as well as U.S.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
A tree-climbing African lion of Ishasha. Credit: A. Plumptre/WCS.

Scientists in Uganda studying the behaviors of the country's famous tree-climbing lions have found that the home ranges of lion prides in the study areas have increased over time as they search farther for diminishing numbers of prey animals.

In the study, researchers compared recent data on the home ranges of lions living in Uganda's Ishasha district with similar research from the 1970s to measure changes in home range size over time. They discovered the region's lion populations have responded to an overall decrease in prey biomass with smaller pride sizes and larger home ranges, presumably to compensate for fewer animals to feed on.

The study appears in a full-color edition of the Journal of East African Natural History that commemorates the 80th birthday of Jonathan Kingdon, famed zoologist and illustrator of the wildlife of Africa. The study features several of Kingdon's illustrations of lions and their prey. The authors of the study titled "Home ranges of Ishasha lions: size and location in relation to habitat and prey availability" are: Tutilo Mudumba of Michigan State University; and Edward Okot Omoya, Joel Ziwa Mustafa Nsubuga, and Andrew Plumptre of WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society).

Overall, the home range sizes of Africa lions in Ishasha districtan area located in Queen Elizabeth National Parkare smaller in size (between 35 and 43 square kilometers) than the ranges of lions in places such as Serengeti National Park, where lion home ranges can extend up to 400 square kilometers.

A lion cub nuzzling its mother. Credit: A. Plumptre/WCS.

The smaller ranges of the tree-climbing lions, along with their preference for grassland and wooded grassland habitat are related to their dependence on their main prey species, the Ugandan kob. Averaging slightly over 100 pounds, Ugandan kob are known for their distinctive lekking behavior, with males staking out prime patches of territory to attract females.

The smaller lion pride size due to fewer prey numbers likely has another impact on the ability of lions to hunt larger, more challenging prey. One such prey species is the Cape buffalo. Whereas lions in other areas often prey on buffalo, one of the larger prey species for lions, the big cats in Ishasha tended to avoid buffalo, probably as a result of fewer lions in each pride to help bring the big herbivores down.

"The tree-climbing lions of Ishasha are an important ecotourism draw for the country, yet these big cats are starting to decline in number," said Simon Nampindo, Director of WCS's Uganda Program. "One way to ensure a future for lions in Uganda would be to invest in increasing prey density in Queen Elizabeth National Park while protecting the important grassland and open woodland habitat that the lions rely upon."
Fragments of extremely hot matter, produced in the collision of heavy atomic nuclei at the SPS accelerator at the European CERN centre, move away from each other at high velocities, forming streaks along the direction of the collision. Credit: IFJ PAN, Iwona Sputowska

At very high energies, the collision of massive atomic nuclei in an accelerator generates hundreds or even thousands of particles that undergo numerous interactions. Physicists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, Poland, have shown that the course of this complex process can be represented by a surprisingly simple model: Extremely hot matter moves away from the impact point, stretching along the original flight path in streaks, and the further the streak is from the plane of the collision, the greater its velocity.

When two massive atomic nuclei collide at high energies, the most exotic form of matter is formeda quark-gluon plasma behaving like a perfect fluid. These theoretical considerations show that after impact, the plasma forms into streaks along the direction of impact, moving faster the further away it moves from the collision axis. The model, its predictions and the implications for hitherto experimental data are presented in the journal Physical Review C.

Collisions of atomic nuclei occur extremely rapidly and at distances of merely hundreds of femtometres (i.e. hundreds of millionths of one billionth of a metre). The physical conditions are exceptionally sophisticated, and direct observation of the phenomenon is not currently possible. In such situations, science copes by constructing theoretical models and comparing their predictions with the data collected in experiments. In the case of these collisions, however, a huge disadvantage is that the resulting conglomerate of particles is the quark-gluon plasma. Interactions between quarks and gluons are dominated by forces that are so strong and complex that modern physics is not capable of describing them precisely.

"Our group decided to focus on the electromagnetic phenomena occurring during the collision because they are much easier to express in the language of mathematics. As a result, our model proved to be simple enough for us to employ the principles of energy and momentum conservation without too much trouble. Later on, we found that despite the adopted simplifications, the model predictions remain at least 90 percent consistent with experimental data," says Dr. Andrzej Rybicki (IFJ PAN).

Massive atomic nuclei accelerated to high velocities, observed in the laboratory, are flattened in the direction of motion as a result of the effects of the theory of relativity. When two such proton-neutron 'pancakes' fly toward each other, the collision is generally not centralonly some of the protons and neutrons of one nucleus reach the other, entering into violent interactions and forming the quark-gluon plasma. At the same time, some of the external fragments of the nuclear pancakes do not encounter any obstacles on their way, and continue their uninterrupted flight; in the jargon of physicists, they are called "spectators."

"Our work was inspired by data collected in earlier experiments with nuclear collisions, including these made at the SPS accelerator. The electromagnetic effects occurring in these collisions that we examined showed that the quark-gluon plasma moves at a higher velocity the closer it is to the spectators," says Dr. Rybicki.

In order to reproduce this course of the phenomenon, the physicists from IFJ PAN decided to divide the nuclei along the direction of movement into a series of strips'bricks'. Each nucleus in cross section thus looked like a pile of stacked bricks (in the model, their height was one femtometre). Instead of considering the complex strong interactions and flows of momentum and energy between hundreds and thousands of particles, the model reduced the problem to several dozen parallel collisions, each occurring between two proton-neutron bricks.

The IFJ PAN scientists confronted the predictions of the model with data collected from collisions of massive nuclei measured by the NA49 experiment at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS). This accelerator is located at the CERN European Nuclear Research Organization near Geneva, where one of its most important tasks now is to accelerate particles shot into the LHC accelerator.

"Due to the scale of technical difficulties, the NA49 experiment's results are subject to specific measurement uncertainties that are difficult to completely reduce or eliminate. In reality, the accuracy of our model can even be greater than the already mentioned 90 percent. This entitles us to say that even if there were any additional, still not included, physical mechanisms in the collisions, they should no longer significantly affect the theoretical framework of the model," says doctoral student Miroslaw Kielbowicz (IFJ PAN).

After developing the model of collisions of 'brick stacks,' the IFJ PAN researchers discovered that a very similar theoretical structure, called the 'fire streak model,' had already been proposed by a group of physicists from the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (USA) and the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre in France in 1978.

"The previous model of fire streaks which, in fact, we mention in our publication, was built to describe other collisions occurring at lower energies. We have created our structure independently and for a different energy range," says Prof. Antoni Szczurek (IFJ PAN, University of Rzeszow) and emphasizes: "The existence of two independent models based on a similar physical idea and corresponding to measurements in different energy ranges of collisions increases the probability that the physical basis on which these models are built is correct."

The Cracow fire streak model provides new information on the expansion of quark-gluon plasma in high energy collisions of massive atomic nuclei. The study of these phenomena is being further extended in the framework of another international experiment, NA61/SHINE at the SPS accelerator.

More information: Antoni Szczurek et al, Implications of energy and momentum conservation for particle emission incollisions at energies available at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron, Physical Review C (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.95.024908

Provided by The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics Polish Academy of Sciences
The structure of berkelium in oxidation state +IV is pictured here. First observed in experiment, the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility has enabled scientists to explore this unexpected oxidation state in the rare, radioactive element. Credit: Bert de Jong, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) has enabled scientists to explore an unexpected oxidation state in the rare, radioactive element berkelium that was first observed in experiment. The OLCF is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility.

An atom's oxidation state is characterized by the number of electrons it exchanges to form a compound and provides information on how an element interacts with the surrounding environment. Published in April in Nature Chemistry, the study is helping to fill in gaps in the fundamental understanding of berkelium and could have future applications for low-toxicity separation in nuclear waste management.

Scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) acquired a minute sample of the most common berkelium isotope, Bk-249, from DOE's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) through the DOE Isotope Program. Incidentally, the element and Berkeley Lab are namesakes of Berkeley, California where the element was discovered in 1949.

At ORNL, radioactive isotopes for research, including Bk-249, are produced and purified with support from the DOE Isotope Program, which recently contributed to a separate and highly publicized studythe discovery of element 117. The new element was officially named "Tennessine" thanks, in part, to ORNL's role in synthesizing the berkelium required for its creation.

Although berkelium was first synthesized over 60 years ago, its isotope is produced in such small amounts and remains stable for such a short time (less than a year) that its fundamental structure and properties are rarely studied. Producing Bk-249 is also a lengthy undertaking that includes many precise steps and the expertise of an entire staff of scientists and engineers, said Julie Ezold of ORNL's Nuclear Materials Processing Group.

A rare look at berkelium

However, scientists do know many properties of berkelium. With an atomic number of 97, it occurs in a class of elements known as the actinides, which are metallic, radioactive elements with atomic numbers between 89 and 103. Uranium and plutonium are also actinides, yet most of their respective isotopes have much longer half-lives than Bk-249 and emit high-energy alpha particles, whereas Bk-249 emits lower energy beta particles. Researchers at Berkeley Lab are using high-powered X-ray crystallography and mass spectrometry to study the chemical structure of Bk-249 and how it may interact with the environment.

"We've been investigating the spectroscopic properties of the heavier actinides to gain a more fundamental understanding of these elements, which have applications in the nuclear fuel cycle and waste management," said Rebecca Abergel, research scientist and principal investigator at Berkeley Lab and a 2014 winner of a DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program award.

Abergel's team of actinide chemists, including Gauthier Deblonde, worked closely with protein crystallographers from Roland Strong's laboratory at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

In the course of their experimental work, Abergel's team noticed something strange. Previous research has shown all trans-plutonium actinides (those with atomic numbers greater than plutonium, or 94) to stabilize in a +III oxidation statea property that describes how the element makes chemical bonds. To explore its chemical boundaries, scientists have tried to push berkelium into the +IV oxidation state using highly acidic chemicals, but the effect, though possible, is fleeting.

In this study, Abergel's team bound the Bk-249 to a synthesized organic ligand, which is a molecule that binds to a central metal ion (in this case Bk-249) to form a compound. The team has previously used this ligand on actinides for its ability to bind with that class of elements. By capturing the structure of the Bk-249 while bound to the ligand, researchers expected to learn more about berkelium's structural and chemical properties, including its +III oxidation state.

"We use natural molecules, or ligands, made from bacteria to bind to actinides. A couple of those molecules are bound by proteins, so you end up with a system including a protein, ligand, and metal (the actinide) bound together," Abergel said. "In this case, the protein did not bind to the metal-ligand complex, indicating a +IV oxidation state."

Unlike acidic chemicals, an organic ligand could offer a more natural and easier alternative for waste management applications.

Simulation confirms experiment

To help shed more light on the interesting experimental results, Abergel's team turned to computational scientist Wibe (Bert) de Jong, Computational Chemistry, Materials and Climate group leader at Berkeley Lab. As part of a large-scale Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment project focused on fundamental actinide chemistry led by David Dixon at the University of Alabama, de Jong used the 27-petaflop Titan system at the OLCF to simulate Bk-249 binding to the ligand then generated corresponding spectroscopy data.

"Actinide chemistry is a difficult field in general with very little experimental data available," de Jong said. "Computing is helping a lot by verifying experimental results, informing the design of new experiments, or serving as a replacement for experiments so researchers don't have to deal with the radioactivity."

Simulations on Titan and the OLCF's 736-node Cray XC30 Eos included about 100 atoms, capturing how Bk-249 binds to the ligand in both +III and +IV oxidation states. The computational study used NWChem, a scalable computational chemistry code that can run efficiently on thousands of computer processors. To compute the large number of excited states present in molecular systems like the metal and ligand compound in this study, the team relied on significant advances in NWChem that were developed as part of a Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) project led by Chris Cramer at the University of Minnesota, for which de Jong is a co-principal investigator.

"After we did the calculations, we generated spectra that we could directly compare to those generated by Abergel's experiments," de Jong said.

By translating the computational data into what it would look like as experimental data, researchers were able to confirm that they had indeed observed a +IV oxidation state in experiment.

"The ligand actually allows the berkelium to oxidize from +III to +IV, so this tells us a lot about how environments can change the physics and chemistry of actinide elements," de Jong said.

Researchers are planning to use more computational modeling and simulations in extensions of this study.

"We've been extending it to the whole series of actinides to understand the systemic trend for bonding in this series," Abergel said. "We're just at the beginning of this, but it means we're getting a better understanding of how chemistry affects how the element interacts with the environment."

More information: Gauthier J.-P. Deblonde et al. Chelation and stabilization of berkelium in oxidation state +IV, Nature Chemistry (2017). DOI: 10.1038/nchem.2759 Journal information: Nature Chemistry
Carbon nanobelt. Credit: Nagoya University

Chemists have tried to synthesize carbon nanobelts for more than 60 years, but none have succeeded until now. A team at Nagoya University reported the first organic synthesis of a carbon nanobelt in Science. Carbon nanobelts are expected to serve as a useful template for building carbon nanotubes and open a new field of nanocarbon science.

The new nanobelt, measuring 0.83 nanometer (nm) in diameter, was developed by researchers at Nagoya University's JST-ERATO Itami Molecular Nanocarbon Project, and the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM). Scientists around the world have tried to synthesize carbon nanobelts since the 1950s and Professor Kenichiro Itami's group has worked on its synthesis for 12 years.

"Nobody knew whether its organic synthesis was even possible or not," says Segawa, one of the leaders of this study who had been involved in its synthesis for 7 and a half years. "However, I had my mind set on the synthesis of this beautiful molecule."

Carbon nanobelts are belt-shaped molecules composed of fused benzene rings, which are aromatic rings consisting of six carbon atoms. Carbon nanobelts are a segment of carbon nanotubes, which have various applications in electronics and photonics due to their unique physical characteristics.

Current synthetic methods produce carbon nanotubes with inconsistent diameters and sidewall structures, which changes their electrical and optical properties. This makes it extremely difficult to isolate and purify a single carbon nanotube that has a specific diameter, length and sidewall structure. Therefore, being able to precisely control the synthesis of structurally uniform carbon nanotubes will help develop novel and highly functional materials.

Figure 1. Carbon nanotubes that have different diameters and sidewall structures. Credit: Nagoya University

Carbon nanobelts have been identified as a way to build structurally uniform carbon nanotubes. However, synthesizing carbon nanobelts is challenging due to their extremely high strain energies. This is because benzene is stable when flat, but becomes unstable when they are distorted by fusion of the rings.

To overcome this problem, Guillaume Povie, a postdoctoral researcher of the JST-ERATO project, Yasutomo Segawa, a group leader of the JST-ERATO project, and Kenichiro Itami, the director of JST-ERATO project and the center director of ITbM, have succeeded in the first chemical synthesis of a carbon nanobelt from a readily available precursor, p-xylene (a benzene molecule with two methyl groups in the 1,4- (para-) position) in 11 steps.

The key to this success is their synthetic strategy based on the belt-shaped formation from a macrocycle precursor with relatively low ring strain. In their strategy, the team prepared a macrocycle precursor from p-xylene in 10 steps, and formed the belt-shaped aromatic compound by a coupling reaction (Fig. 3). Nickel was essential to mediate the coupling process.

"The most difficult part of this research was this key coupling reaction of the macrocycle precursor," says Povie. "The reaction did not proceed well day after day and it took me three to four months for testing various conditions. I have always believed where there's a will, there's a way."

Figure 2. General strategy for carbon nanotube growth using a carbon nanobelt as a template. Credit: Nagoya University

In 2015, Itami launched a new initiative in his ERATO project to focus particularly on the synthesis of the carbon nanobelt. At the so-called "belt festival," various new synthetic routes for the carbon nanobelt were proposed and more than 10 researchers were involved in the project. On September 28, 2016, exactly a year after the start of the festival, the carbon nanobelt structure was finally revealed by X-ray crystallography in front of the Itami group members. Everyone held their breath while staring at the screen during X-ray analysis, and cheered when the cylindrical shape image of the carbon nanobelt appeared on the screen. Itami, Segawa and Povie expressed their joy with a high five.

"It was one of the most exciting moments in my life and I will never forget it," says Itami. "Since this is the result of a decade-long study, I greatly appreciate all the past and current members of my group for their support and encouragement. Thanks to their skill, toughness, sense and strong will of all members, we achieved this successful result."

Figure 3. Synthetic approach towards the carbon nanobelt from p-xylene in 11 steps. Credit: Nagoya University

The synthesized carbon nanobelt is a red-colored solid and exhibits deep red fluorescence. Analysis by X-ray crystallography revealed that the carbon nanobelt has a cylindrical shape in the same manner as carbon nanotubes (Fig. 4). The researchers also measured its light absorption and emission, electric conductivity and structural rigidity by ultraviolet-visible absorption fluorescence, and Raman spectroscopic studies, as well as theoretical calculations.

"Actually, the synthesis part was finished last August but I could not rest until I was able to confirm the X-ray structure of the carbon nanobelt," says Povie. "I was really happy when I saw the X-ray structure."

Figure 4. From the left: X-ray structure of carbon nanobelt, crystals of carbon nanobelt under room light, and under UV light. Credit: Nagoya University

The carbon nanobelt will be released to the market in the future. "We are looking forward to discovering new properties and functionalities of the carbon nanobelt with researchers from all over the world," say Segawa and Itami.

More information: Guillaume Povie et al. Synthesis of a carbon nanobelt, Science (2017). DOI: 10.1126/science.aam8158 Journal information: Science
MATTOON  First Mid-Illinois Bank & Trust announced that Chad Altadonna has joined the trust and wealth management division as a financial adviser. In this role, he will work with First Mid customers, exploring investment and brokerage services offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. in Mattoon.

Chad is an experienced Financial Advisor, and Im extremely pleased to have him assume an integral role with our trust and wealth management division, said Brad Beesley, executive vice president, trust and wealth management. He has a track record of pursuing growth and providing high-level customer service to his customers. This commitment enables him to make significant contributions to the future success of First Mid.

Prior to joining First Mid, Altadonna served as a financial advisor with Altadonna Wealth Management and was a financial representative with Country Financial. He earned a bachelor's of science degree from Illinois State University and holds Series 7, Series 65 and 63 licenses.

Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services, Inc., member FINRA/SIPC, and are not insured by any financial institution insurance, the FDIC/NCUA or any other government agency, are not deposits or obligations of the financial institution, are not guaranteed by the financial institution, and are subject to risks, including the possible loss of principal. Raymond James is not affiliated with the financial institution or the investment center.

First Mid-Illinois Bank & Trust is not a registered broker/dealer and is independent of Raymond James Financial Services. Investment Advisory Services are offered through Raymond James Financial Services Advisors, Inc.

First Mid-Illinois Bancshares, Inc. is the parent company of First Mid-Illinois Bank & Trust, N.A. (First Mid Bank), Mid-Illinois Data Services, Inc., and First Mid Insurance Group.
Rice University sedimentologists Hongbo Ma (left) and Jeff Nittrouer. Credit: Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

U.S. and Chinese geologists studying China's Yellow River have created a new tool that could help Chinese officials better predict and prevent the river's all-too-frequent floods, which threaten as many as 80 million people. The new tool, a physics-based formulation to calculate sediment transport, can also be applied to study the sustainability of eroding coastlines worldwide.

Known in Chinese as the Huanghe, the Yellow River holds a central but dichotomous place in history. As the cradle of Chinese civilization, it is often called the "mother of China." But its floods, including several of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history, also have earned it the name "China's sorrow." Each identitythe fertile nurturer and the wanton killerderives from the same feature: The Yellow River washes about a billion tons of sediment each year from the Loess Plateau to the Bohai Sea, and in so doing, it has a tendency to become so clogged that it not only floods but literally changes course, jumping to a new channel miles away.

"The Huanghe is probably the most-studied fine-grained river in the world," said Rice University sedimentologist Jeffrey Nittrouer, a primary author of the new study about the Yellow River that appears online this week in Science Advances. "Despite that, the typical formulae and relationships that are used to describe sediment flux in most other rivers simply do not work for the Huanghe. They consistently underpredict the sediment load of the river by a factor of 20."

In the study, Nittrouer and lead author Hongbo Ma, a postdoctoral researcher from China who joined Rice in 2014, used the latest techniques in sediment sampling and 3-D river-bottom mapping to create a "universal sediment transport formulation." The formulation is the first physics-based sediment transport model capable of accurately describing how the Huanghe carries sediment.

"In terms of sediment transport, the Haunghe is almost the perfect river," Ma said. "Its bottom is nearly flat and featureless, which means it can use almost all of its energy for moving sediment."

Nittrouer, an assistant professor of Earth science who has studied dozens of rivers on three continents, said he has not seen anything like the Huanghe. "In typical lowland sand-bed rivers - like the Amazon, the Mississippi, you name it - only about 40 to 60 percent of the energy is used to transport sediment downstream. In the Yellow River, well over 95 percent of the energy is available to move sediment."

Nittrouer and Ma first visited the Huanghe in summer 2015 as part of a four-year, $2 million study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Their intent was to examine the geological, socio-economic and engineering lessons from China's decadeslong effort to control the Huanghe and direct the growth of its delta into the Bohai Sea.

"The Haunghe moves so much sediment that it is extremely efficient at generating new land each year and is therefore the best place for us to learn about how to use sediment from rivers to enhance delta sustainability," Nittrouer said. "The example closest to home is the Mississippi River, where there are significant efforts to replenish coastal Louisiana. But an even more pressing reason to study the Yellow River is that 80 million people live in its floodplain and are threatened by its floods. The potential for human suffering is enormous. The aim of our work is to mitigate Huanghe floods, while developing techniques through research that are transferable so as to evaluate river systems worldwide."

Ma and Nittrouer said they will never forget their first attempt to create a 3-D map of the Huanghe bottom. They were planning to make a detailed picture of the river bed using a sonar system that Nittrouer had previously used to map several other rivers systems. In all previous studies, he'd found that the channel contained bedform features similar to sand dunes of deserts.

"I took one look at the readout on the boat and thought the instrument was broken," Nittrouer said. "The bottom looked flat as glass."

Ma said, "Only when we brought the data back to the lab did we see that there were features, but the aspect ratio was such that we could not see them on the boat."

For example, when Nittrouer imaged the bottom of the Mississippi River, he typically saw bedforms up to 10 meters tall and spaced about 200 to 300 meters apart. In contrast, the data from the Yellow River showed 1-meter-tall dunes every 500 to 2,000 meters.

Using that data and other measurements from the lower Huanghe, including from its sprawling delta, Ma created a physics-based formulation capable of accurately predicting the fluxthe volume of sediment transported for a given time periodin the Huanghe.

"The aim is to look at the connectedness, in terms of sediment movement and water flow, among the river, the delta and the near-shore marine region," said Ma, who chose to become a sedimentologist following the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China.

While still an undergraduate at Tsinghua University, Ma joined a lab that was studying the potential flooding that could result from dam breaches caused by landslides in the 2008 quake. The potential loss of life from the floods was greater than the 90,000 people killed or injured by the quake itself, and Ma became fascinated with creating technologies that could help prevent such large floods.

"I was born and grew up far from the Haunghe in the northeastern Heilongjiang Province, but I, like many Chinese, deeply feel the sorrow of the Huanghe, which has killed millions over the past 2,000 years, and I bear the sorrow of all the flooding hazards in mind in conducting my research," he said.

Ma said he hopes the new formula may prove useful to Chinese engineers who manage the flow of water and sediment from dams along the Huanghe. For example, engineers have for decades tried to reduce the risk of Huanghe floods by periodically scouring the river bottom with massive releases of sediment-depleted lake water.

Ma said one finding from the new model is that such scouring may inadvertently increase the risk of flooding in certain parts of the river because although it clears silt, it also creates a rough-textured riverbed that reduces the amount of energy the river can use to move sediment.

"Our formula indicates this will lower sediment transport efficiency by an order of magnitude," he said. "Additionally, the added drag produced by dunes could increase water stage and leave the system prone to levee overtopping during flood events. This threat may be unique to the case of the Haunghe."

Judy Skog, program director in the NSF's Directorate for Geosciences, which funded the research through its Coastal Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Program, said, "Understanding the flow of sediment in rivers is important to the large number of people around the world who live near rivers. This study can lead to predictions of when and where rivers transport sediment, and to an understanding of how that sediment flow is affected by conservation and management efforts, such as the removal of dams."

More information: "The exceptional sediment load of fine-grained dispersal systems: Example of the Yellow River, China," Science Advances (2017). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1603114 , advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/5/e1603114 Journal information: Science Advances
COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/  IDGs CIO recently ranked Alliance Datas card services business (www.knowmoresellmore.com), a premier provider of private label, co-brand and business credit programs, among the 2017 CIO 100. The 30th annual award program recognizes organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology (IT).

Technology innovation and business value have always been at the heart of our CIO 100 awards, which honor the IT organizations thriving on the front lines of the digital revolution, said Maryfran Johnson, editor-in-chief, CIO Events. This years winning companies are outstanding examples of how IT leadership, business collaboration and customer engagement are shaping the future.

Alliance Datas card services business received this honor for its proprietary Frictionless Mobile Credit capability. This first-of-its-kind credit card acquisition capability allows shoppers to apply for a store-branded credit card in a matter of seconds from the privacy and security of their mobile device anywhere in their shopping journey. Frictionless Mobile Credit reduces application time by more than 25 percent and the application abandonment rate by more than 95 percent.

Frictionless Mobile Credit requires a simple text and a few keystrokes, and shoppers are on their way to applying for credit. Through Alliance Datas patent-pending process, a credit application is automatically populated using information from our vast data resources, explained Mike Rosello, chief information officer of Alliance Datas card services business. This fast, simple, and customer-friendly innovation benefits customers and retailers by adding convenience and saving time. And, because customers know their credit limit earlier in the shopping process, it has been shown to significantly increase first-time purchases.

Were especially proud of this achievement, as the development of this capability represents the broad customer-focused thinking of our combined marketing and IT teams as part of our ongoing commitment to delivering innovative digital and mobile capabilities that put the customer experience first, building deeper brand loyalty and meaningful value for brand partners, added Jami Dewolf, chief marketing officer of Alliance Datas card services business.

Recipients of this years CIO 100 Award were selected through a three-step process. First, companies completed an online application form detailing their innovative IT and business initiatives. Next, a team of external judges (many of them former CIOs) reviewed the applications in depth, looking for leading-edge IT practices and measurable results. Finally, CIO editors reviewed the judges evaluations and selected the final 100.

Alliance Datas card services business will accept the award at the CIO 100 Symposium and Awards Ceremony on August 16 at the Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

About CIO:

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About Alliance Datas card services business

Alliance Datas card services business is a leading provider of tailored marketing and loyalty solutions, delivered through branded credit programs that drive more profitable relationships between our brand partners and their cardmembers. We offer private label, co-brand, and commercial products to many of the worlds most recognizable brands across a multitude of channels. http://www.alliancedataretail.com read more

Other POS news:
NEW YORK, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/  Brooks Brothers recently became aware of a security incident that could affect the payment card information of some customers who made purchases at certain Brooks Brothers and Brooks Brothers Outlet retail locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico only between April 4, 2016 and March 1, 2017. It is important to note that no sensitive personal information, such as Social Security numbers or personally identifying information, was affected in this incident. As a precaution, we are providing this notice to make potentially affected customers aware of the incident and provide information on steps they can take to help protect themselves. We take the security of our customers information very seriously and value the trust you place in us to protect your information. We deeply regret any inconvenience or concern this may cause you.

What Happened

Brooks Brothers was recently alerted to a potential security incident. Based upon an extensive forensic investigation, it appears that an unauthorized individual was able to gain access to and install malicious software designed to capture payment card information on some of our payment processing systems at our retail and outlet locations. To find out if your Brooks Brothers or Brooks Brothers Outlet location was impacted, please visit www.brooksbrothers.com/incident-locations for a list of affected locations. Please note that this incident did not affect any purchases made on the BrooksBrothers.com website nor does it affect any transactions at Brooks Brothers airport locations.

What Information Was Involved

Based on our investigation to date, we believe the malicious software could have affected payment card data  including name, payment card account number, card expiration date, and card verification code  of some customers who used a payment card at affected Brooks Brothers or Brooks Brothers Outlet locations in the U.S. and Puerto Rico only. The incident did not affect Social Security numbers, customer addresses, or any other sensitive personal information. Although not all transactions were affected, the forensic investigation has indicated that this incident may have impacted certain individuals who made payment card purchases between April 4, 2016 and March 1, 2017. Please visit www.brooksbrothers.com/incident-locations for a listing of the affected locations and additional information on steps consumers can take to help protect themselves.

What We Are Doing

We take the security of our customers information very seriously and, once we learned of this incident, we took immediate action including initiating an internal review, engaging independent forensic experts to assist us in the investigation and remediation of our systems and alerting law enforcement. While we are continuing to review and enhance our security measures moving forward to help prevent a future incident, we can confirm that this issue has been resolved and is no longer impacting transactions.

What You Can Do

In order to help protect themselves, we recommend that customers review credit and debit card account statements as soon as possible in order to determine if there are any discrepancies or unusual activity listed. We urge customers to remain vigilant and continue to monitor statements for unusual activity going forward. If they see anything they do not understand or that looks suspicious, or if they suspect that any fraudulent transactions have taken place, customers should immediately notify the issuer of the credit or debit card. In instances of payment card fraud, it is important to note that cardholders are typically not responsible for any fraudulent activity that is reported in a timely fashion.

Although this incident did not include Social Security numbers, addresses, or other sensitive personal information, as a general practice, we recommend that you carefully check your credit reports for accounts you did not open or for inquiries from creditors you did not initiate. If you see anything you do not understand, call the credit agency immediately. As an additional precaution, we are providing information and resources to help customers protect their identities. This includes an Information About Identity Theft reference guide, available on our website at www.brooksbrothers.com/incident, which describes additional steps customers can take to help protect themselves, including recommendations from the Federal Trade Commission regarding identity theft protection.

For More Information

For more information about this incident, or if you have additional questions or concerns about this incident, you may contact us directly at 888-735-5927 between 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM Eastern time, Monday through Friday. In addition, the call center will be available this weekend, May 13th and 14th, between 9:00 AM and 9:00 PM Eastern time. Again, we sincerely regret any concern this event may cause you.

SOURCE Brooks Brothers read more

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PURCHASE, N.Y.  May 11, 2017  Mastercard [1] is joining forces with payments industry leaders to enhance and expedite the consumer checkout experience leveraging the companys M/Chip Fast [2] technology. M/Chip Fast prioritizes the parts of a transaction critical to security to speed chip checkout times.

Verifone [3] intends to incorporate M/Chip Fast into its products deployed in the United States. Verifone products, including the FIPay line, are used by most of the top 200 U.S. retailers and will help drive greater adoption of faster EMV technology.

Verifone is committed to creating faster and easier payment experiences for merchants and their customers. This collaboration with Mastercard covers a myriad of different use cases across a range of retail verticals, said Paul Galant, chief operating officer of Verifone.

Global Payments [4] will make the faster EMV technology available to key merchants in the fast food, grocery, transit and other retail environments, where speed is critical to the consumer experience.

David Mangum, president and chief operating officer of Global Payments said, Global Payments is continually looking for ways to drive better, faster point-of-sale experiences to its merchants and we are pleased to work with Mastercard to deliver this technology.

Mastercard Vision for Enhanced EMV

Mastercard unveiled its vision for enhanced EMV chip technology at TRANSACT [5] , a payments conference hosted by the Electronic Transaction Association. In his keynote address, Craig Vosburg, president of North America for Mastercard remarked, EMV is an essential upgrade to the payments infrastructure in the U.S., which is now the largest chip market in the world and still growing. Great collaboration is happening within the industry and progress is being made in the fight against counterfeit card fraud.

M/Chip Fast also helps move checkout lines as it is built on nearly two decades of contactless or tap-and-go convenience and security. Aligning with Verifone and Global Payments supports our desire to get this tool in the hands of more merchants, concluded Vosburg.

About Mastercard

Mastercard [6] (NYSE: MA), www.mastercard.com [7] , is a technology company in the global payments industry. We operate the worlds fastest payments processing network, connecting consumers, financial institutions, merchants, governments and businesses in more than 210 countries and territories. Mastercard products and solutions make everyday commerce activities  such as shopping, traveling, running a business and managing finances  easier, more secure and more efficient for everyone. Follow us on Twitter @MastercardNews [8] , join the discussion on the Beyond the Transaction Blog [9] and subscribe [10] for the latest news on the Engagement Bureau [11] .

About Global Payments

Global Payments Inc. (NYSE: GPN) is a leading worldwide provider of payment technology services that delivers innovative solutions driven by customer needs globally. Our technologies, partnerships and employee expertise enable us to provide a broad range of products and services that allow our customers to accept all payment types across a variety of distribution channels in many markets around the world.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with more than 8,500 employees worldwide, Global Payments is a member of the S&P 500 with merchants and partners in 30 countries throughout North America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region and Brazil.
Inventory needs to be managed and managed well, or you are going to get in recurring trouble, and lose your credibility and hard-earned conversions, whether 

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By Prak Chan Thul and Matthew Tostevin PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - As a political crackdown intensifies in Cambodia ahead of elections, critics of veteran strongman Hun Sen fear a change in U.S. priorities under President Donald Trump will reduce pressure to respect human rights. Although not a top U.S. concern, the Southeast Asian country of 15 million people offers a window into the shift to an "America First" foreign policy that Washington says could put its traditional values behind security and trade. "Trump is lowering the bar for authoritarian behavior around the world and it has affected us in Cambodia," said Naly Pilorge of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights. Activists said fresh concern had been raised by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent comment that promoting U.S. values such as freedom, human dignity and "the way people are treated" can get in the way of policy on security and economic interests. That marked a shift towards the non-interference stressed by China, which has courted Cambodia with billions of dollars in infrastructure loans - with no political conditions - and has made Hun Sen one of Beijing's closest allies in the region. Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister since 1985, railed against lectures from the Obama administration on rights, democracy and corruption. And the former Khmer Rouge guerrilla openly favoured Trump for election, has sympathised with Trump's antipathy to the media and drawn comparisons with his own rule. "The months since Trump's inauguration have coincided with a precipitous and severe deterioration in the human rights situation," said Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights said. "Changes in policy and rhetoric in Washington are not going unnoticed." Opponents accuse Hun Sen of stepping up political attacks ahead of local elections in June and a general election next year, while the 64-year-old strongman has said rights must be balanced against stability. CIVIL WAR THREAT During his rule, Cambodia has emerged from one of the 20th century's most murderous conflicts to clock annual growth rates above 7 percent. Life expectancy has risen from 50 years to 70. This week, Hun Sen told soldiers that if his Cambodian People's Party doesn't win elections it would mean civil war. He told them to be prepared to crack down on any election protests. Demonstrations have been suppressed; defamation cases have targeted opposition members; activists have been detained; a legal change has cleared the way for the state to shut down parties at will. Saying he feared his party would be dissolved if he stayed on, opposition leader Sam Rainsy resigned. Rainsy already lives in exile to escape a defamation conviction. The State Department has voiced concern at the political party law and the prolonged detention of five high-profile activists. "Support for human rights, democracy, and rule of law remains an important component of the U.S.-Cambodian relationship, which also includes trade, development, security cooperation, people-to-people ties, and much more," U.S. Embassy spokesman Jay Raman said in an email to Reuters. "The United States regularly discusses these issues in public and private at all levels of government and with a range of civil society voices." But Hun Sen's critics believe less overt attention is being paid to human rights than under President Barack Obama. Comparing postings on the U.S. embassy's Facebook page from the period since Trump's inauguration with the same period a year earlier, there are markedly fewer mentions of human rights or of meetings with activists. "The new U.S. administration have been very quiet. Perhaps they are not organized as yet," said Son Chhay, a parliamentarian from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. "Trump doesnt seem to care much about human rights and democracy anyway." A government spokesman said that during a recent visit by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State W. Patrick Murphy, human rights had not come across as a top priority. "They talked about their own interests," Siphan Phay told Reuters. To the fore was stopping North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programme, he said. Despite Hun Sen's professed admiration for Trump, there has been no sign of relations improving rapidly. In fact, Cambodia this year cancelled an exercise with U.S. forces, expelled a U.S. military aid unit and said it wanted to renegotiate a deal that has allowed the United States to repatriate hundreds of Cambodians convicted of offences there. Hun Sen has also frequently emphasised what a good friend Cambodia now has in China. (Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
By Brenda Goh and Andrew R.C. Marshall BOKEO, Laos (Reuters) - Kongkaew Vonusak smiles when he recalls the arrival of Chinese investors in his tranquil village in northern Laos in 2014. With them came easy money, he said. The Chinese offered villagers up to $720 per hectare to rent their land, much of it fallow for years, said Kongkaew, 59, the village chief. They wanted to grow bananas on it. In impoverished Laos, the offer was generous. "They told us the price and asked us if we were happy. We said okay." Elsewhere, riverside land with good access roads fetched at least double that sum. Three years later, the Chinese-driven banana boom has left few locals untouched, but not everyone is smiling. Experts say the Chinese have brought jobs and higher wages to northern Laos, but have also drenched plantations with pesticides and other chemicals. Last year, the Lao government banned the opening of new banana plantations after a state-backed institute reported that the intensive use of chemicals had sickened workers and polluted water sources. China has extolled the benefits of its vision of a modern-day "Silk Road" linking it to the rest of the world - it holds a major summit in Beijing on May 14-15 to promote it. The banana boom pre-dated the concept, which was announced in 2013, although China now regards agricultural developments in Laos as among the initiative's projects. Under the "Belt and Road" plan, China has sought to persuade neighbours to open their markets to Chinese investors. For villagers like Kongkaew, that meant a trade-off. "Chinese investment has given us a better quality of life. We eat better, we live better," Kongkaew said. But neither he nor his neighbours will work on the plantations, or venture near them during spraying. They have stopped fishing in the nearby river, fearing it is polluted by chemical run-off from the nearby banana plantation. CHINESE FRUSTRATION Several Chinese plantation owners and managers expressed frustration at the government ban, which forbids them from growing bananas after their leases expire. They said the use of chemicals was necessary, and disagreed that workers were falling ill because of them. "If you want to farm, you have to use fertilizers and pesticides," said Wu Yaqiang, a site manager at a plantation owned by Jiangong Agriculture, one of the largest Chinese banana growers in Laos. "If we don't come here to develop, this place would just be bare mountains," he added, as he watched workers carrying 30-kg bunches of bananas up steep hillsides to a rudimentary packing station. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he was not aware of the specific issues surrounding Chinese banana growers in Laos, and did not believe they should be linked directly to the Belt and Road initiative. "In principle we always require Chinese companies, when investing and operating abroad, to comply with local laws and regulations, fulfil their social responsibility and protect the local environment," he told a regular briefing on Thursday. Laos' Ministry of Agriculture did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment for this article. China is the biggest foreign investor in Laos, a landlocked country of 6.5 million people, with over 760 projects valued at about $6.7 billion, according to Chinese state-run media. This influence is not only keenly felt in the capital Vientiane, where Chinese build shopping complexes and run some of the city's fanciest hotels. It also extends deep into rural areas that have remained largely unchanged for decades. BANANA RUSH Lao people say Chinese banana investors began streaming across the border around 2010, driven by land shortages at home. Many headed to Bokeo, the country's smallest and least populous province. In the ensuing years, Lao banana exports jumped ten-fold to become the country's largest export earner. Nearly all of the fruit is sent to China. For ethnic Lao like Kongkaew, Chinese planters paid them more for the land than they could earn from farming it. For impoverished, hill-dwelling minorities such as the Hmong or Khmu, the banana rush meant better wages. At harvest time, they can earn the equivalent of at least $10 a day and sometimes double that, a princely sum in a country where the average annual income was $1,740 in 2015, according to the World Bank. They are also most exposed to the chemicals. Most Chinese planters grow the Cavendish variety of banana which is favoured by consumers but susceptible to disease. Hmong and Khmu workers douse the growing plants with pesticides and kill weeds with herbicides such as paraquat. Paraquat is banned by the European Union and other countries including Laos, and it has been phased out in China. The bananas are also dunked in fungicides to preserve them for their journey to China. SWITCHING CROPS Some banana workers grow weak and thin or develop rashes, said Phonesai Manivongxai, director of the Community Association for Mobilizing Knowledge in Development (CAMKID), a non-profit group based in northern Laos. Part of CAMKID's work includes educating workers about the dangers of chemical use. "All we can do is make them more aware," she said. This is an uphill struggle. Most pesticides come from China or Thailand and bear instructions and warnings in those countries' languages, Reuters learned. Even if the labelling was Lao, some Hmong and Khmu are illiterate and can't understand it. Another problem, said Phonesai, was that workers lived in close proximity to the chemicals, which contaminated the water they wash in or drink. In a Lao market, Reuters found Thai-made paraquat openly on sale. However, some workers Reuters spoke to said they accepted the trade-off. While they were concerned about chemicals, higher wages allowed them to send children to school or afford better food. There is no guarantee the government's crackdown on pesticide use in banana production will lead to potentially harmful chemicals being phased out altogether. As banana prices fell following a surge in output, some Chinese investors began to plant other crops on the land, including chemically intensive ones like watermelon. Zhang Jianjun, 46, co-owner of the Lei Lin banana plantation, estimated that as much as 20 percent of Bokeo's banana plantations had been cleared, and said some of his competitors had decamped to Myanmar and Cambodia. But he has no plans to leave. The environmental impact on Laos was a "road that every underdeveloped country must walk" and local people should thank the Chinese, he said. "They don't think, 'Why have our lives improved?'. They think it's something that heaven has given them, that life just naturally gets better." (Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING and Amy Sawitta Lefevre in BANGKOK; Editing by Mike Collett-White)
Just outside the southernmost settlement in the world, an 89-year-old woman is the last native speaker of her people's ancient language and struggling to ensure she does not take it to her grave. Cristina Calderon, known locally as "Grandma Cristina," lives among her fellow Yaghan in Chile's "End of the World" region of Tierra del Fuego, close to Cape Horn. "I'm the last speaker of Yaghan. Others can understand it but don't speak it or know it like I do," Cristina said in Villa Ukika, where the approximately 100 remaining Yaghans live, less than a mile (1.5 kilometers) outside Puerto Williams, the southernmost settlement on the planet. The Yaghan once lived off fishing, paddling their canoes along coastal waterways, but mostly live off tourism now, making handicrafts and working as seasonal laborers. After her sister Ursula died, Cristina was recognized in 2009 by the Chilean government as "living human treasure" for her work in preserving an indigenous culture at risk of extinction. Cristina spends her days making reed baskets and other handicrafts and imparting as much of the language and culture of her people as she can to her grandchildren and a niece. The melodic language has no written form, and is at risk of vanishing when she dies. "The younger generation know the language but not to the same degree that Cristina does," said Maurice van de Maele, an anthropologist living in Puerto Williams. The Yaghan have lived here for some 6,000 years and numbered around 3,000 people before the arrival of Europeans. They fished the region's notoriously dangerous waters, wearing little clothing and smearing their bodies in seal fat, only donning seal skins when temperatures plummeted. European settlers only arrived in the area about 150 years ago. Their presence slowly changed the Yaghan, causing them to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle and to start wearing clothes. While they retain some of their traditional customs, such as weaving baskets with reeds, they are gradually losing their tribal legends, as well as knowledge of ancient trails through the mountains and the places their people once frequented.
One of the benefits of Mattoon Chamber membership is recognition and promotion of new and expanding businesses. We are proud to welcome innovative new developments and expansion of current businesses. The Chamber is always eager to host open house and ribbon cutting events for new Chamber members along with members who are expanding based on increased business opportunities and services.

We always invite city officials, chamber board members, chamber ambassadors, and other chamber members to welcome these new business opportunities to our area. The great news is in the past few months, the chamber has been involved in multiple events. Mattoon Mayor Tim Gover has been attending many of these events, and we both discussed how thrilled we are that so many great new ventures are coming to our community. The mayor mentioned that at conferences he attends across the state he hears many communities express their concerns over lack of business growth. He is always proud to discuss our continued growth.

Examples of recent ribbon cutting events include Wireless Mike's newly expanded location on Dettro Drive. They have developed a bright new open concept that offers more customer interaction. Copper Creek Cottages Memory Care just had its ribbon-cutting event and open house. It is a beautiful facility that provides an open yet cozy memory care location for senior citizens at the corner of Dettro Drive and Country Club Road. Village Square Real Estate also recently put its "shingle" up locally and held its ribbon cutting here in Mattoon on Charleston Avenue.

We also have multiple ribbon cuttings and open houses in the next few months. Sarah Bush Lincoln will be opening its new freestanding Walk-In Clinic on Dettro Drive on May 22. The new clinic is twice the size of its current facility. The current site was initially designed to treat approximately 5,000 patients a year, but visits have grown to nearly 20,000 a year, which created the need to grow and expand. The First National Bank has now opened its new Wealth Management Center at 1117 Broadway Ave. East here in Mattoon. They will be providing full-service banking along with complete trust and investment services to new and existing customers. Planet Fitness is up and running on Richmond Avenue East and will be hosting a ribbon-cutting event next month.

Many new small businesses have also opened in the last few months, including Dogs 24/7 located at 6040 Lerna Road, which will be having a ribbon-cutting event next month. They offer doggie daycare, boarding, grooming and training services. Scheff's Supplies and Row and Table are examples of new businesses that recently opened that do not have traditional walk-in locations. Scheff's Supplies offers products to businesses for restaurant and office supply needs. Row and Table offers custom software solutions for small to medium sized businesses.

Seeing the continued growth in our community is one of the best benefits of leading the Mattoon Chamber of Commerce. We also have many new business prospects on the horizon and look forward to welcoming them to Mattoon.
Gambians want swift justice for the crimes of fallen dictator Yahya Jammeh's regime but the new government faces an uphill battle to jail the most prolific abusers. Silenced for 22 years, victims shot or tortured by Jammeh's security services are now speaking out, along with families whose loved ones have been pulled from recently found unmarked graves. But the cash-strapped government refuses to put anyone else in the dock, burnt by a high-profile, politically charged case this year that has run into procedural and systemic problems. "In terms of prosecutions, we are not at that stage yet," Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told AFP in his dimly-lit office in central Banjul, reams of paperwork covering his desk. An overhaul of The Gambia's beleaguered courts, where judges were long accused of following the will of the president, not the law, is needed to ensure "successful prosecutions", the softly-spoken Tambadou said. Thanks to his previous experience at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), he is part of a global network of transitional justice experts, whose skills he now wants to call on as he embarks on reforms. "We have inherited a broken criminal justice system and we need to fix that before we can move forward with any other plans," he stressed. - 'NIA Nine' - The case of the "NIA Nine" -- the trial of the former head of the Jammeh-controlled National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and eight subordinates from the feared security service -- is seen as a warning against haste. A lack of evidence and calls for more time by lawyers have repeatedly delayed the case against the men accused of killing opposition political activist Solo Sandeng last year. His death sparked a reform movement that eventually unseated Jammeh, who was forced from office in January by west African powers after he refused to accept defeat in a December election. "It doesn't seem like the judicial system is ready for serious trials," said Reed Brody, a US-based lawyer, who helped the victims of Chad's former dictator Hissene Habre prosecute him successfully more than a quarter century after leaving power. "It's not enough to have victims. You need to have people who can prove the individual responsibility of a higher-up," he added, after a recent visit to Banjul, saying this was doubly important if the state ever decided to prosecute Jammeh himself. Switzerland has extended the detention of former Gambian interior minister Ousman Sonko over a crimes against humanity probe, but has ruled out extradition on the grounds the country maintains the death penalty and lacks the legal capacity to try him. Souleymane Guengueng, a Chadian who campaigned for almost 25 years before seeing Habre convicted in 2016, travelled with Brody to advise the Gambian victims. "Even if you have all the right conditions, the documents, everything, you have to consider the political aspect. You have to look at the economic aspect," he told AFP, warning it could be a long process. - Lives destroyed - But tensions are rising over when justice will be delivered and the pressure on Tambadou and President Adama Barrow grows by the day, as those with a newfound right to exercise their freedom of speech hold press conferences and marches for justice in a country where, until January, protests were all but illegal. For some, the urgency is not for psychological closure but something more practical: constant medical bills to manage a permanent disability dealt them by the security forces. Yusupha Mbye was just 18 when he was shot in the spine by a soldier as he passed a student march in 2000 that was brutally put down by Jammeh's forces, killing 14. He has constantly struggled to pay his medical expenses and provide for his family, with his legs paralysed. "My life was destroyed because that was when my schooling stopped," he told AFP, at a march organised by the newly formed Committee for Victims of Jammeh's Atrocities. "I didn't get anything from the government. I want the new government to help me get my treatment. I want my health first, and then justice," he added. - Family persecution - Others want to turn the page after years of horrors. At his compound in a Banjul suburb, Malleh Jagne describes meeting other victims and helping raise awareness for their plight through media appearances, although he has yet to win justice for his family. In March, Jagne found himself standing over the hastily dug grave where his brother was thrown after being accused by the regime of involvement in a December 2014 coup attempt. "I straight away identified him because he was in the uniform trousers", Jagne said, referring to the US army fatigues his brother Lamin was given while serving as a captain. Since then, he has pushed for answers. "I wanted to know how my brother was killed: was he shot? Was he beaten to death? The question wasn't answered. It's something that's disturbing my mind," he said. Jagne himself was detained by the NIA for 35 days once he was identified as a close relative of Lamin, and recalls being whipped, slapped, refused permission to relieve himself, and given dry rice to eat until he was weak from illness. Another of Jagne's brothers was shot in the stomach by Jammeh's men and survived and his wife died while he was living in exile in neighbouring Senegal. "If justice is delayed, the pain is still there," he said. "My brother (Lamin) has two kids in the United States and they keep on asking me 'When is my daddy coming'?"
Guatemalan security forces launched a search for the female leader of a hit squad for hire after she escaped the prison where she was serving a 94-year sentence. The head of the national police force, Nery Ramos, said police stations across the country were on alert looking out for Marixa Lemus, 45, following her jail break from a military penitentiary north of Guatemala City. "An alert has gone out nationally and operations are underway to locate her," he said. Nicknamed "The Boss" ("La Patrona" in Spanish), Lemus started her lengthy sentence in March 2015 after being convicted of heading up the gang that carried out contract killings and kidnappings. The group was notably accused of carrying out a bomb attack on December 13, 2013 against the mayor of the southeast town of Moyuta, which failed to harm its target. Lemus had tried to escape once before, from a women's prison in the capital in May last year, but police caught her hiding in woodland near the penitentiary.
Disgruntled Ivorian soldiers took to the streets of Abidjan and two other cities on Friday, firing angrily into the air a day after publicly apologising for a string of recent uprisings. Rebellious troops surrounded the military's headquarters in Abidjan after a spokesman for the protesters publicly apologised to the president for a January mutiny which triggered months of unrest. At the heart of the matter is an unresolved dispute over pay, with the soldiers demanding hefty pay rises in a protest which has found echoes across the country. Troops took up position in front of the sprawling Gallieni military camp in the Plateau neighbourhood of Abidjan, the country's economic capital, as other soldiers and police set up a security cordon, an AFP journalist said. With ammunition belts slung round their chests, berets or camouflage caps on their heads, they fired sporadically into the air, blocking off access to the surrounding area. "Money or death!" roared one of the soldiers, as the noise of the gunfire sent a colony of bats nesting in the nearby trees shooting into the air. One soldier could be seen wandering around with a rocket launcher, another carried a machinegun with a string of bullets looped around his shoulders, Rambo style. The renewed shooting which also affected two other cities, began hours after national television broadcast a ceremony in which a soldier presented as a spokesman for the rebellious troops said they wished to apologise to President Alassane Ouattara for the mutiny. "This is our answer to yesterday's announcement," one of the rebel soldiers told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We're not like teachers who express themselves with pens, our profession is guns." - 'Very frightened' - Among those stranded in Abidjan was a school teacher who had come to the area to collect a document from a nearby administrative building. "It's not good for the country, we don't know what's going to happen and everyone is very frightened," he said, without giving his name. A handful of civil servants could be seen hiding behind walls, watching the situation as the soldiers let off sporadic rattles of gunfire to keep the curious at bay. "They began to shoot at around 8:00 am, military trucks drove past and soldiers got out. They've been firing in the air every couple of minutes," one civil servant told AFP, whose offices overlook the camp. Shooting was also heard overnight in Korhogo, a town in the north, witnesses told AFP. And in Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city where the protest movement began in January, angry soldiers could be seen driving round in trucks or wandering the streets, firing potshots into the air. Most of the city's shops were closed along with its university. - 'Ouattara must pay us' - January's uprising saw former rebels who had been integrated into the army's ranks staging a mutiny over their demand for bonuses. The troops, one-time rebels who backed Ouattara and controlled the northern half of the country between 2002 and 2011, were demanding the government pay them 12 million CFA francs (18,000 euros) per soldier. They received five million francs (7,500 euros) in January and had been due to receive the rest this month, rebel sources say. "Twelve minus five is seven! They still owe us seven. There is nothing to discuss," said one of the soldiers. "Ouattara must pay us. The fact he's still in power is down to us," explained another. Thursday night's ceremony, which was organised without knowledge of the press, appeared to signal a dramatic end to the protest movement. As well as apologising, a spokesman for the former rebels, identified as Sergeant Fofana, said they were giving up all their financial demands "We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands," he said, in remarks hailed by Ouattara as "sincere". The world's top cocoa provider, Ivory Coast has an army numbering around 22,000 soldiers, among them many former rebels who were integrated into the armed forces after years of conflict. Last year, the government unveiled an ambitious plan to modernise the military, part of which would involve the departure of several thousand men, particularly ex-rebels, who will not be replaced.
By Tim Cocks and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin DAKAR (Reuters) - In an upmarket suburb of Senegal's seaside capital, a branch of Iran's Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students Shi'ite Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on his office wall. The teaching includes Iranian culture and history, Islamic science and Iran's mother tongue, Farsi; students receive free food and financial help. The university is a Shi'ite outpost in a country where Sufism, a more relaxed, mystical and apolitical form of Sunni Islam, is the norm. Two miles away, the Islamic Preaching Association for Youth (APIJ) teaches the strand of Islam that predominates in Iran's great religious, political and military rival, Saudi Arabia. The APIJ funnels cash from donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai and Kuwait to mosques run by Salafists - conservative Sunni Muslims who are sworn enemies of Iran. The APIJ's shelves are stacked with Salafist theology texts adorned with gold-leaf Arabic inscriptions - texts its imams use to preach in some 200 mosques across Senegal. The two institutions embody a contest for influence in Senegal, and more widely in Africa, between Iran-backed Shi'ites and Saudi-funded Sunnis. It's one strand of a broad power struggle in which each side is spending millions of dollars to win converts. At stake is huge political influence, on a resource-rich continent that has often served as the theatre for rivalries between world powers. Interviews with teachers and converts on both sides shed light on the depth of the divide and the ways both sides try to gain an edge. The Iranian director of Dakar's branch of Al-Mustafa makes no secret of his concerns over his Saudi rivals. "The Salafists came to Africa to destroy ... Islam," said Chiekh Abbas Motaghedi in February. Up the road, in the APIJ building, the Salafists show equal passion. "We cannot accept the Iranian influence in Senegal, and we'll do everything to fight it," said Chiekh Ibrahima Niang, the imam, sitting legs crossed in a silky white robe. "We need to show the world that Shi'ism is wrong." But for Senegal, either influence would be a disruption. It's a society that has always leaned towards political moderation, thanks largely to a tradition of tolerance espoused by its Sufi orders or "brotherhoods." "Where the brotherhoods are weak, as in eastern Senegal, is where the threat of radicalisation is highest," said Bakary Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute and a coordinator for the Observatory on Religious Radicalism and Conflicts in Africa. Iran has often been a destabilising influence: In 2010, an Iranian arms shipment was intercepted in the Nigerian port of Lagos which Senegal suspected were destined for rebels in its southern Casamance region. Dakar briefly cut ties with Tehran over it. Salafism is the more troubling strand, Sufis say: It is largely free of political interference, but has shared cause with violence that Senegal has so far escaped. "Salafists in Senegal are cousins of those making jihad in Mali," Ahmed Khalifa Niasse, son of a deceased powerful Sufi Imam and vocal critic of Gulf Arab religious influence, told Reuters at his palace in Dakar. "They see themselves as soldiers of God purifying Islam." Salafists vehemently deny that link. "Salafism has nothing to do with terrorism," says Niang. "Yes, there are people who want to use force to impose the Salafist way, but we are very much against them. We are against violence." TRAINING LOYALISTS Iran's supreme leader Khamenei supervises the activities of Al-Mustafa, which is based in the Iranian city of Qom and has branches in 50 countries. Thousands of students from across Africa receive enough Iranian money to enable them and their families to visit Qom while finishing their studies, said the son of a cleric based there who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Al-Mustafa in Dakar receives 150 students a year and gives them free tuition, a stipend and breakfast, its director of studies Chiekh Adrame Wane told Reuters. Graduates repay the generosity by promoting Iran online or in books, said a professor based in Qom. In countries like Somalia, Iran pays for weddings and home furniture, including a TV and a fridge, if both couples are Shi'ite or newly converted to Shi'ism. Al-Mustafa is now Iran's main tool for promoting Shi'ism, said the professor, who also declined to be named. Its aim is "to train people to be loyal to the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader." A top official at Al-Mustafa in Qom, also declining to be named, gave a different view. "Our goal is purely cultural and educational. We want to promote higher education in Africa," he said. "Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and many other countries have built their religious schools in Africa. Alongside them, there are many American and British Christian schools, and even Hindu schools. So there is a rivalry in Africa and if we do not establish our presence there, we would fall behind." Two senior Al-Mustafa officials said students and teachers at Al-Mustafa are routinely vetted by the Ministry of Intelligence or the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Reuters was unable to independently verify this. Motaghedi, the Al-Mustafa director in Dakar, said the university had no involvement with the intelligence services or Iranian politics. "We're a private university ... Our only mission is to teach, nothing else," he said, adding that Khameni was merely a patron and adopting Shi'ism was not a requirement for study. In the 2016 Iranian budget, Al-Mustafa received 2,390 billion rials ($74 million). But the university receives more funding from the office of the Supreme Leader and other conglomerates under his command, one official said. Neither Motaghedi nor Wane would comment on financial flows to the Dakar branch. "SIMPLE MESSAGE" At the APIJ in Dakar, Imam Niang extolled the virtues of Sunni Islam. "Salafism ... has a simple message," he said as he scanned an ornate Koran through reading glasses. "To be a good Muslim, you must follow the practices of the Prophet Mohammed." Niang went to Koranic schools from age 6 until 27 and later studied in Saudi Arabia. Immediately after he returned in 1989, he and fellow conservatives set up the APIJ in Senegal. Since then, hundreds of modest mint-green and sky-blue mosques financed by the APIJ have sprung up in suburbs of Dakar and fishing villages across the country. A success for the Salafists was when they gradually took over worship at the main mosque at Dakar's Anta Diop University in the 1990s. Imam Ismaila Ndiaye, coodinator of Senegal's Salafist movements and preacher at the university, said his strand of Sunni Islam offered an alternative to Sufism, asserting that Senegal's secular state and liberal values were imposed on it by French colonisers. But he said Salafist mosques were not turning Senegalese youth towards jihad. "If the Catholics can finance projects in Senegal aimed at evangelising at people, then why shouldn't Saudi Arabia do the same thing?" he said. He said Gulf businessmen had committed only small sums to Sunni movements in Senegal  $20 million in total over several decades  but a steady stream of funds continues to what he identified as three main pillars of Salafism: the APIJ, al Falah, which was founded in 1975, and a movement on outskirts of Dakar led by firebrand cleric Ahmed Lo, who spent 17 years in Saudi Arabia. "THE RIGHT PATH" Judging who is winning the contest for influence is tricky. Imam Sherif Mballo, secretary general of the League of AhlulBayt, a pan-African Shi'ite movement founded last August, says there are between 30,000 and 50,000 Shi'ites in Senegal, where the population is 15 million. Mballo converted to Shi'ism after watching the Iranian revolution on TV, then worked with the Iranian embassy for 25 years, making several visits to Iran. But when it came to establishing his own pro-Iran Shi'ite group, after an initial injection from an Iranian businessman - he declined to say how much - he said he received nothing more. There are no reliable figures on the numbers of Salafists in Senegal, said the Timbuktu Institute's Sambe. However, he said Salafists control several hugely popular mosques. Peter Pham, Africa director of the Atlantic Council in Washington, said traditional Senegalese Sufi brotherhoods have more in common with the conservative Sunni strand prevalent in Saudi Arabia than they do with Shi'ites, because Sufism is already part of the Sunni religion. Some Senegalese find the Sufi traditions of their ancestors old hat and stifling. The opportunity to adopt other versions of Islam is liberating. Maths teacher Souleymane Sall, 38, converted to Salafism while at school. He liked the pure focus on the prophet's acts, and he was weary with what he saw as the lack of intellectual rigour in the Sufi faith he grew up with. But after university, a friend lent him a book on Shi'ism and, after doing more research, he started to suspect a lot of bad things the Salafists were saying about it were false. "Eventually, I concluded that Shi'ism was the right path for me," he told Reuters. "At least for the moment." (Cocks reported from Dakar, Sharafedin from Dubai; Edited by Sara Ledwith and Richard Woods)
AFP News file photo

Two universities in Singapore were targeted by advanced hackers in separate attempts to steal government or research-related information.

The intrusions into the IT systems at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) were detected last month, said the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA) and the Ministry of Education in a joint statement on Friday (12 May).

NTU detected the intrusion when it was running its regular check on its systems on 19 April. NUSs breach was discovered on 11 April, after external consultants engaged to strengthen its cybersecurity had conducted an assessment and found the intrusion.

Both universities had informed CSA after discovering the breaches. CSA has been conducting forensic investigations to understand the nature and extent of the attacks.

Affected desktop computers and workstations at both universities have been removed and replaced.

According to CSA, the breaches were carefully planned and were not the work of casual hackers. They were classified as Advanced Persistent Threats, in which hackers gained access to the networks and stayed in them undetected for a long period of time.

CSA said that there is no evidence that student data was targeted, adding that as the universities systems are separate from government IT systems, the extent of attacks appeared to be limited. The daily operations of both universities IT systems were not affected by the attacks.

NUS said in a statement it is working with CSA with ongoing investigations.

In parallel, NUS is working with our cyber security consultants to further enhance the surveillance and defense of our systems. NUS takes cyber security matters and the integrity of its IT system very seriously. However, this incident highlights the rising sophistication of cyber security attacks, and the need for heightened vigilance.

NTU said in a statement it is working with CSA to enhance security control measures at all levels.

These measures will be further enhanced over the long term. The university will also continue communication efforts to its employees and students so they understand the importance of remaining vigilant about cybersecurity.
A few weeks ago, Salvador Sobral, a 27-year-old crooner tipped as a favourite for Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest, was an unknown artist waiting for a heart transplant. But with his intimate rendering of the melancholic "Amar Pelos Dois" (For the Both of Us) written by his older sister Luisa -- a success in her own right -- Sobral is hoping to chart an unconventional route to Eurovision gold. At first glance, his decision to forgo the elaborate choreography and heavy dance tempos favoured by most contestants would make him a long shot. Shunning English to sing in a Portuguese tremolo that reflects a severe heart condition would also seem to bode ill for the Lisbon native, whose beard and ponytail make him look more of a hipster than a budding pop star. "I don't like pointless 'fast food' music, my songs have to have meaning, I sing with my heart," he said recently. - Something to say - Sobral has become the bookmakers' top contender after the Italian Francesco Gabbani and his "dancing naked ape", and a favourite of fans, with huge crowds welcoming his arrival at the Eurovision venue in Kiev, Ukraine. "I felt as popular as Cristiano Ronaldo," said Sobral, who added that he was not making the trip only to sing. After the Eurovision semi-finals Sobral held a press conference wearing a sweatshirt calling attention to the plight of refugees. "When I learned that I was going to participate at Eurovision I first thought about the refugees, because they leave their country to escape death. These people are not just simple immigrants," he said. Sobral, for his part, cannot go anywhere for more than two weeks without his medicines, and he did not attend the rehearsals earlier this week in Kiev because of health worries. But he plays down his heart ailment, even though he is still waiting for a transplant. "The disease is a small problem, really, certainly the only one I have in my life." - Highs and lows - Discovered in 2009 while competing in Portugal's version of "American Idol" -- as his sister had a few years previously -- Sobral was barely 18 and had a hard time adjusting to his sudden popularity. He quit singing shortly afterwards, and in 2011 he left Portugal for Spain's Balearic Islands, where he studied psychology during an Erasmus programme. It was during this time Sobral fell into heavy drug use, including regular use of psychedelic mushrooms. But he gradually cleaned himself up and started singing in the bars and hotels on Mallorca. "It was hard to sing every night until midnight, but it was worth it," he said recently. "I thought about staying on the island, but when I saw that nothing happens there in winter, I knew I had to make a decision." So he left for Barcelona to study jazz and work on his voice, and it was in the Catalan city that he discovered Chet Baker, the trumpeter Sobral now calls his biggest musical inspiration. And as the Eurovision final approaches, Sobral says he's not nervous, displaying a confidence few would expect of a shy performer who often seems to want to apologise when appearing in front of a microphone. But the emotional force of his singing has touched a nerve in Portugal, which has never won higher than sixth place in the Eurovision contest, in 1996, since it first started competing in 1964.
South Sudan's president insisted Friday that the security situation was "normal" and that people had no reason to worry, three days after dismissing powerful army chief Paul Malong. President Salva Kiir's dismissal of Malong on Tuesday night has raised concern among the population who fear confrontation between soldiers loyal to each man. Speaking at the presidential palace in Juba, Kiir presented Malong's dismissal as "routine work". However, Kiir berated Malong who he said had erred by failing to thank him for the job he held and by not congratulating his successor, James Ajongo, on his new appointment. "I was talking to him, I said, Malong, you did a mistake: the first thing that you should have done was to thank me personally for the period I have given you to serve the people of South Sudan. Secondly you are supposed to call James Ajongo and also congratulate him for his new assignment," Kiir said. Kiir said that when he last spoke to Malong he was "in a fighting mood". "I tried to calm him down but he was rather wild," said Kiir adding that the situation would be "contained". Malong was due to return to the capital Juba later Friday. The general is widely regarded as 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.
BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand's new King Maha Vajiralongkorn attended an annual ploughing ceremony on Friday where sacred oxen predicted a bountiful harvest, auguring well for the world's second largest rice exporter's hopes of selling more this year. The royal ploughing ceremony is an ancient Brahminical rite which heralds the start of the new rice growing season. Broadcast on national television, the rite is celebrated in Thailand as a holiday for state employees. Thailand is the world's second-largest rice exporter and the grain is a staple food in the Southeast Asian country. King Vajiralongkorn was accompanied by his eldest daughter as he presided over the ceremony, during which oxen draped in red and gold circled a ceremonial ground nine times. The number nine is considered a very lucky number in Thailand where it is pronounced "Gao" which rhymes with a word meaning to move forward or progress. A similar ceremony was held in neighbouring Cambodia watched by King Norodom Sihamoni. There, royal oxen predicted a good harvest this year for rice, bean and corn. In Thailand, Thanit Anekwit, deputy permanent secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture, read the prediction after the ceremony, which marks the start of the new rice-planting season. "This year there will be enough water, and grains, fruits, food, meat will be abundant," Thanit said. "There will be ample rice in the fields." In the deeply superstitious country, an auspicious start to the harvest season will be seen by some as a good omen for the new king's reign. Thailand aimed its paddy rice production this year at 25-26 million tonnes for 2017 to 2018, down from 30 million tonnes in the last crop year. The country also aims to export 10 million tonnes of rice in 2017, a little more than the 9.63 million tonnes it was able to export in 2016. It has exported 3.87 million tonnes so far this year. Thai benchmark 5-percent broken rice was quoted as high as $387-$392 a tonne, free-on-board (FOB) Bangkok, on Thursday, and was being undercut by rice from Vietnam, Thailand's main competitor. Similar grade rice from Vietnam was trading at $355-360 a tonne, FOB Saigon. Cambodia's rice exports last year were 542,144 tonnes, according to government data. Up until April this year, Cambodia has exported 166,678 tonnes of rice, a 3 percent increase compared to the same period last year. With sufficient rain, this year harvests could see paddy production increase by 1 million tonnes, said Moul Sarith, Secretary General at Cambodia Rice Federation. ($1 = 34.6900 baht) (Reporting by Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Patpicha Tanakasempipat in BANGKOK; and Prak Chan Thul in PHNOM PENH; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Citizens Climate Lobby - Pushing for a price on carbon globally

Posted on 12 May 2017 by BaerbelW

This blog post provides an update to Dana Nuccitellis article from June 2013 about Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) as a lot has happened in the almost four years since it was published.The basics about CCL as explained in Danas post havent changed and because of that wont be repeated here.

In 2013, CCL had been active mostly in the U.S. and Canada and the rest of the world didnt yet play much of a role as shown in this snippet from Danas article:

CCL is also exploring the possibility of launching some UK chapters. Although the UK is part of the European carbon cap and trade system, that system is experiencing difficulties, and CCL aims to maintain UK support for carbon pricing.

Worldwide presence and impressive number

But, as this current map illustrates, CCL has by now gone global and has chapters on all continents except Antarctica:

Blue pins designate active chapters and yellow pins show chapters in development. Link to live map

The following video is a snippet from last years CCL conference in Washington D.C. and gives a glimpse of why people from around the world are joining this effort to get a meaningful price on carbon:

And its not just the number and locations of chapters! CCL has grown in leaps and bounds since Dana published his article in 2013. Here are some numbers to illustrate this point:

In 2013 about 375 people had joined the 4th annual conference. Therell be more than 1,200 in this years conference (the 8th), happening in Washington D.C. from June 11 to 13, 2017

There were 711 citizen-led meetings with Congress in 2013, compared to 1,390 in 2016

6,991 letters to Congress were written in 2014 vs. 40,195 in 2016

Published media went from 1,670 in 2013 to 2,918 in 2016

The number of CCL volunteers rose from a couple of hundred in 2013 to 58,000 in April 2017, with 18,000(!) joining since the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States (details of this amazing growth can be found here)

The group shots on Capitol Hill from the annual conference in Washington D.C. have become quite impressive:

Source: CCL homepage

Climate Solutions Caucus in the U.S.

One achievement of CCL in the U.S. is the helping hand CCL volunteer Jay Butera gave to establish the Climate Solutions Caucus. It is a bipartisan group in the US House of Representatives which will explore policy options that address the impacts, causes, and challenges of our changing climate. The caucus was founded in February of 2016 by two south-Florida representatives Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) who now serve as co-chairs of the caucus (Read the back story of how this caucus came about). Recently the number of caucus members has grown to 38 - at the end of March 2017 the number was 34 who are pictured here:



Source: CCL homepage

This caucus is a sign that bipartisan collaboration regarding climate change still seems to be possible in the U.S. even if the current administrations main thrust is to deny the overwhelming scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. It however remains to be seen if this caucus will actually have an effect on how Congress votes on any contentious upcoming climate-related legislation.

Lobby days in Canberra, Australia

Just a few weeks ago, CCL in Australia organised Lobby Days in Canberra and met with more than 30 MPs. Here is a group shot - admittedly not quite the crowd as in D.C.  but just as committed a group assembled at the top of the marble stairs outside the parliament building (and if you look closely, youll spot fellow SkS team member Glenn Tamblyn among them):

Source: CCL Australia homepage

Developments in Europe and Germany

In Europe we currently have groups in Sweden (5 active, 1 in development), in the U.K. (1 active, 3 in development), in Germany (3 active, 2 in development), as well as 1 each in development in Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, France, The Netherlands, Poland and Serbia. To co-ordinate CCL work in Europe we have a weekly conference call to keep each other updated about happenings in each of our countries and to learn about new developments from across the globe. We are in regular contact with CCLs Global Strategy director Joe Robertson who keeps us in the loop about activities in the U.S. and globally. Joe tries to join our weekly EU-wide calls whenever his time allows.

For my part, I first became involved with CCL in Germany when Dana e-introduced me to Nils Petermann in April 2014. Nils had brought the idea of CCL with him when he moved back from Washington D.C. to Germany a couple of years ago and was keen to find likeminded people to help spread the idea of carbon pricing in Germany and Europe. Since then, weve established three active chapters in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg and currently have some others still in development.

We organise a monthly video-call for CCL in Germany and we will meet for our 3rd annual conference in Berlin at the end of May. We have workshops planned for the weekend and have already scheduled about a dozen meetings with members of our German parliament, their staffers or some other relevant groups for May 29 and 30.

Here is a picture from our meeting in May 2016 taken in front of the German Reichstag, our parliament building in Berlin:

Credit: CCL Germany

What makes Citizens Climate Lobby quite unique is that it gives people like you and me a chance to get actively involved with climate change legislation in our countries. Its also not just about interacting directly with politicians to get them at the very least interested in putting an effective price on carbon emissions. We for example also practice how to effectively write letters to the editor (LTEs) which in turn have a much higher chance of getting published. This is a surprisingly good means to make ourselves heard as e.g. MPs do read those letters to get an idea of the topics which are of interest to their constituents.

Further information

For further information about the group, see CCL's About page, follow its local chapters on Facebook and the main group on Twitter, and consider attending its annual conference in Washington D.C. in June.
The growing number of men in Slovakia stay home with their children. But are the current rules sufficient?

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It was really a great time which cannot be bought or acquired in any other way, says Peter Biely from Pezinok, who works in marketing, about the time he spent with his son on maternity leave.

Though Slovakia has no official paternity leave, its legislation allows men to stay home with their child for 28 weeks until the child reaches three years old, while receiving the maternity benefit. The official statistics of the state-run social insurer Socialna Poistovna suggest that the number of men using this possibility is increasing, though former labour minister Jozef Mihal, who introduced this change, claims the number would be even higher if the awareness was better.

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And while the Labour Ministry first claimed that the current rules are sufficient, Prime Minister Robert Fico introduced planned changes to the Labour Code on May 1, part of which includes the introduction of paternity leave for men. Not everyone, however, considers the proposal a sufficient solution.

Interest is growing

The amendment to the law on social insurance, allowing men to draw maternity benefits, came into force in 2011, initiated by Mihal, who now serves as non-affiliated MP.

Men had to pay sickness insurance just as women but unlike them, they could not draw the maternity benefits, Mihal told The Slovak Spectator, when explaining the main reason for the change.

While in 2012 Socialna Poistovna registered only 208 men drawing maternity benefits, in 2016 it was 3,076. In the end of February 2017, altogether 1,707 men drew the benefits.

One of the reasons for the growing interest of men in this kind of leave is the increasing sum provided in the form of the maternity benefit, says Michal Stuska, spokesperson for the Labour Ministry.

Currently, the maternity benefit equals 70 percent of the salary, but it increases to 75 percent as of May. This means that people drawing the benefits will receive nearly all of their net salary.

The fathers thus have a good opportunity to stay at home with their child for a relatively long time, while the family will not see a considerable loss of income as if the father received only parental allowance, Stuska told The Slovak Spectator. The parental allowance currently amounts to 203.20, but increases by 10 as of May 2017.

Another positive feature is flexibility as men can decide to draw the benefits after the women stop drawing them, Stuska added.

Money is not the main reason

The number of men on maternity leave might have been even higher if the awareness about this possibility was better, Mihal opines. According to him, men are able to work alongside the maternity leave, though only under some specific conditions, which can even increase the family budget.

Though money is a strong motivator, fathers addressed by The Slovak Spectator agree that it was more important for them to spend time with their children and take care of them.

From the viewpoint of a father, it is great as I can spend a nice time with my child, says Tomas Kubica, a lawyer from Trstena, adding he would recommend it to everybody who has the possibility to do so. A person can build a relationship with the child and help the family, and also society.

Also Daniel Grigar from Bratislava, who works as a manager at 3T  Tri Tvorive Tvory theatre, praises the time he can spend on maternity leave with his son.

A person needs to prepare for many changes to his life, but I certainly recommend it, he added.

Janka Debreceniova from the non-governmental organisation Citizen, Democracy and Accountability, however says that the system should be more flexible and parallel than it is now. Currently, it works in a way that first, it is the mother who takes care of the child, and then after some time she can be exchanged by the father. During the first months, however, mothers acquire more skills in childcare and develops a deeper relationship with the child, which may be very hard for fathers to catch up with, she said.

Moreover, there is no relevant data on how the system actually works among families and how caring for the child and also the household is distributed, Debreceniova added.

The state should invest into making it possible for both parents to learn about and acquire relevant skills, share responsibilities equally, and spend everyday time together and enjoy parenthood, she told The Slovak Spectator, adding that the current model does not allow it.

All can be found on the internet

One of the basic conditions for men who want to stay on maternity leave is to pay the sickness insurance for at least 270 days at least two years before submitting an application.

Moreover, the men need to claim in writing that they take the child into their care, and the women need to agree with it. The law also prohibits men from receiving a salary for active work while being on maternity leave.

Men receive the maternity benefits for 28 weeks (unlike women who usually receive the sum for 34 weeks). Moreover, women can ask for the benefits six-eight weeks before the child is born, while men are entitled to do so only six weeks after the child is born, Peter Visvader, spokesperson for Socialna Poistovna, told The Slovak Spectator.

Fathers addressed by The Slovak Spectator say there is no problem finding relevant information about maternity leave for fathers and documents they need to submit to respective authorities. All of them also praise the help from their employers and Socialna Poistovna in providing them with the necessary information.

Though the whole process is more or less trouble-free, Grigar pointed to one absurdity of the system. Men starting the maternity leave have to report this to the respective labour office. The office, however, has one month to decide whether to accept it or not.

A situation arose when a mans wife had already started working, he was staying home with their son, but still lacking the official document from the labour office stating that he is on maternity leave.

I think about what would happen if the office did not approve it, Grigar said.

EU seeks a binding principle

The European Union, meanwhile, is discussing the possibilities of introducing rules for paternity leave that would be binding for all of its member states.

The European Commission introduced a proposal suggesting at least 10-day leave for men after their child is born and the possibility to transfer all four months of parental leave from one parent to the other, the CTK newswire reported in late April.

Moreover, several EU countries also offer the paternity leave during the first weeks after a child is born. The Czech Republic, for example, has recently approved the proposal to introduce one-week paternity leave during which men will receive 70 percent of their salary.

Most recently, Fico introduced the planned changes to the Labour Code, proposing a 10-day paid paternity leave after the child is born. Thus men can receive the benefit within the first month after the child is born.

As for the payment, the government expects that men will receive a sum equivalent to 10 days of their average salary. The condition is that they have to live in one household with the mother of the child, regardless if they are married or not, the Sme daily reported.

Smer proposal not enough

There have been several proposals aimed at introducing the principle to the Slovak legislation. Back in 2015, the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) came up with a proposal to allow men to draw the benefits for one week within the first month after childbirth. The change sought to improve the atmosphere in families and help women when they come back from maternity hospitals, which in the end improves the situation in the society, the party claimed, as reported by the SITA newswire. The parliament failed to approve the change, however.

Also Mihal together with other non-affiliated MPs Miroslav Beblavy and Simona Petrik submitted in mid-April 2017 a proposal to the parliament, introducing a two-week paternity leave after a child is born, with men receiving 75 percent of their salary.

It is proven that paternity leave leads to higher engagement of fathers in childcare, reads the press release sent to the media.

The proposal will be discussed at the May parliamentary session, and Mihal hopes it will be approved.

Before Fico introduced the planned changes, Stuska told The Slovak Spectator that the ministry was not planning any changes in this field, calling the current system flexible and motivating enough.

Conversely, our system is also interesting for other EU countries as a model of equal parenthood and a non-discriminatory approach to childcare, Stuska said.

Debreceniova notes that the recent governmental proposal is not a systemic and efficient measure either.

Although 10 days is better than nothing, fathers are not here to help mothers with care for their own children, as the prime minister indicated, but to share the caring and household responsibilities equally, she added.

She suggests that this should start in maternity hospitals, where fathers are, however, usually not allowed to stay and care for the child, and should last throughout the childs earliest months or years when parents predominantly provide the care.

Both parents have the right to perform a paid job if they choose so, and at the same time they both have the right but also the duty to provide personal care for their child, Debreceniova continued. There is no rational reason why the state should insist on the model of one parent exercising a full time paid job and the other parent exercising full time care for a child.
The most endangered are households with three and more dependent children and single parents with at least one child.

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Altogether 12.7 percent of Slovaks were were threatened by poverty last year. In absolute numbers, this accounts for 670,000 people. Compared with 2015, the number increased 0.4 percentage points, or 30,000 people, according to the EU SILC 2016 report published by the Statistics Office.

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The poverty level for a one-member household in Slovakia is set at 4,171 a year, or nearly 348 a month. In 2015, the level was 4,158 a year, the SITA newswire reported.

The groups most threatened with poverty last year were the unemployed. This was the case of 48 percent of the total number of jobless, which is an increase by 2.5 percentage points year-on-year, said Ludmila Ivancikova of the Statistics Office.

Regarding the number of household members, the most endangered are those with three and more dependent children (34.8 percent) and single parents with at least one child (33.6 percent). The risk of poverty for households with three and more children increased 1.9 percentage points compared with 2015.

Presov Region registered the highest share of people endangered by poverty last year: 18.6 percent of the total number of its inhabitants. It was followed by Banska Bystrica Region (15.3 percent), Nitra Region (14.6 percent), Zilina Region (14.1 percent), and Kosice Region (13.8 percent). The best situation was in Bratislava Region (5.4 percent), Trencin Region (7.8 percent), and Trnava Region (9 percent), SITA reported.

Except for Slovakia, only three EU countries have already provided the data about the risk of poverty for their inhabitants. In Latvia, 21.8 percent of the total population is endangered, while in Hungary it is 14.5 percent and in Finland 11.6 percent.
ISTE | Q & A

Leslie Fisher Thinks Augmented Reality First, Then VR in the Classroom

An interview with the former Apple K12 systems engineer, who will participate in multiple sessions during ISTE.

Leslie Fisher. Photo by Nick Didlick.

She's a big fan of Twitter, and encourages everyone to have fun with Flippity.

Leslie Fisher has turned her name and talents into her own successful ed tech consulting company. The director of Fisher Technologies, Inc., and the creator and operator of lesliefisher.com, the former K12 systems engineer for Apple now consults, trains and presents to K12 educators for a living.

Fisher, who lives in San Dimas, CA, will present at seven different sessions during the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, June 25-28, in San Antonio, TX. Her presentations include Dive into Google Classroom, G is for Gadgets, Google Cardboard AKA Virtual Reality, and Apps, Tools, Methods and Practices for Leading With Technology.



THE Journal caught up with Fisher, who keeps a busy schedule flying to and from ed tech conferences and sharing her passion for education technology, cool gadgets and fun, engaging things teachers can do with tech in their classrooms.

THE Journal: What are your thoughts on education technology today, and what do you talk about when you go to ed tech conferences?

Leslie Fisher: Weve always been surrounded by technology. If you look back, people were looking at what early technology could do in the classroom. Weve always had it. Its always going to change.

In one hour, I can talk about the tools you can use tomorrow. The tools teachers could deploy in their classrooms that enhance student engagement, and even teacher engagement.

Ill talk about something that I think could make a good, quick, positive impact. I just talked to a conference today in Ohio. And I recently talked to another group  they need virtual reality. I got to smaller conferences and do consulting, even professional development.

THE Journal: How would you describe ISTE to someone whos not that familiar with the conference?

Fisher: What I would say is, ISTE is the closest thing you can get to an education technology rock concert. Youre not going to get any more choices than ISTE. There are tons of presenters, educators and vendors. Its a big deal. And for the attendee, you are not drinking through a fire hose, youre drinking through a fire hydrant. Its a great chance to hang out with other educators and learn what theyre doing. Its a wonderful opportunity for varied learning.

THE Journal: Chromebooks have been steadily gaining popularity in the K12 classroom. Which do you prefer  the iPad or the Chromebook?

Fisher: If I had a dollar every time people asked me that. Its a tough one for me. I prefer a keyboard, and I prefer something affordable. Its true that younger hands work best with the iPad. But it gets down to the individual learner. With the Chromebook, be prepared to put something on there that makes it more dynamic. On the creativity side, its a little lacking with the Chromebook. But Adobe recently made some of their apps available to the Chromebook, so those are definitely worth checking out.

THE Journal: What do you think about virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) in the classroom? Is the cost point for VR prohibitive?

Fisher: For book creators, theyre game changers. For me, I think augmented reality first, and then virtual reality. I know technology can really help kids learn. Im a little dyslexic, so augmented reality allows me to be a visual learner. You can design lessons with a couple of augmented reality glasses and really enhance things.

In virtual reality, one of my favorite apps is CoSpaces. It allows anyone to design a 3D space, and then interact with it in virtual reality.

Virtual reality can be quite affordable with Google Cardboard. We can get into basic interaction in VR with Cardboard. There are 40 or 50 VR apps where you can simply use Cardboard and explore. Google Street View allows you to do virtual viewing of many different locations. That technology augments what the teacher is doing.

Most kids cant afford to buy their own Oculus headset. That price point is quite a bit higher. But we dont need to have 30 kids using Oculus all of the time. Two or three might work. So we can sit there and have that moment of Ah, cool! without breaking the bank.

THE Journal: There are new ed tech products and gadgets coming out all the time. How do you decide whats good and useful for the classroom and whats not?



Fisher: I look at whats having a good impact in the classroom. Its a matter of balance  we need to create a balanced student. Tech is part of that balance.

Were looking at the first fully mobile generation. We may be over-technology-ing it. Youre talking to a former music major. I dont want to know what Id be like if I didnt have music.

My ah-ha moment came when I started using mobile technology. Knowing the technology and putting it in my backpack in the real world. But we also need to teach social skills, communication skills, and prepare the students for the real world.

THE Journal: Is there a session that you are looking forward to at ISTE?

Fisher: Well you know what? I very rarely have a chance to hang out in a session. If [attendees] didnt get to see me in a conference, Ill be hanging out in the vendor hall. Ill go to one of my favorite vendor booths and sit there and go, Guys, Im here for the next two to three hours. Ill also interface with them.
BERLIN (Reuters) - German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told a magazine he shared French president-elect Emmanuel Macron's view that financial transfers from richer to poorer states are necessary within the euro zone. Macron, who is due to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Monday, has promised to press ahead with closer European integration. Asked whether Macron was right in believing Europe and the euro zone need a "transfer union", Schaeuble told Germany's Der Spiegel magazine: "You can't build a community of states of varying strengths without a certain balance." "That's reflected in the European budget and bailout programmes, for example, and that's why there are net contributors and net recipients in Europe. A union can't exist if the stronger members don't vouch for the weaker ones," he added in an interview to be published Saturday. Some conservatives around Merkel worry the euro zone could develop into a "transfer union" in which Germany is asked to pay for struggling states that resist reforms. Schaeuble, a veteran member of Merkel's party, said if countries wanted to make Europe stronger, it was necessary for each individual country to become stronger first - including France and Italy but also Germany. Schaeuble also signalled he would not object if the European Commission gave its blessing to possible French budget deficits: "It's up to the European Commission to design the budget rules." He added: "The German government and I have never objected to a ruling of the Commission on how the deficits of countries like France should be judged." The European Commission estimates France's deficit will be 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) this year, from 2.9 percent previously forecast, and 3.2 percent in 2018 from the previous forecast of 3.1 percent. EU rules say countries should keep their deficits below 3 percent of GDP. Schaeuble expressed hope that Macron would reduce the deficit, saying: "France can do it." The Commission expects Germany's trade surplus, an indicator that has often caused conflicts with Brussels for being excessive, will slow to 8.0 percent of GDP this year from 8.5 percent in 2016. Schaeuble told Der Spiegel he considered Macron's criticism of the high German trade surplus to be justified, but said it would decline in coming years, and its size was not the result of politics "It's right that the German current account surplus is too high at just over 8 percent," he said. "It's due to the high competitiveness of the German economy but also due to the fact that we are part of a currency union." (Reporting by Michelle Martin)
GENEVA (Reuters) - An attack on Yemen's Hodeidah port would displace more than 400,000 people, the U.N. International Organization for Migration said on Friday, doubling its previous minimum estimate. "A minimum of 400,000 people will flee the city eastwards, once Al Hudaydah is under attack," IOM's Director of Operations and Emergencies Mohammed Abdiker said in a statement, using a different English spelling for the port's name. The U.N. has previously warned against any attack by Saudi-led coalition forces on the Houthi-held port, the aid lifeline for millions of people in desperate need of food, saying that 200,000-500,000 people could be displaced. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
By Ange Aboa and Joe Bavier ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Soldiers left their barracks and blocked streets in several towns and cities across Ivory Coast on Friday, including the commercial capital Abidjan, firing gunshots into the air as their protest over a pay dispute gathered momentum. The uprising began overnight in Bouake, the second largest city, before spreading quickly, following a course similar to a mutiny in January by the same group that paralysed parts of the country and tarnished its image as a post-war success story. In Abidjan, the soldiers, most of them ex-rebel fighters who helped bring President Alassane Ouattara to power, erected improvised barricades around the national military headquarters and the defence ministry, sealing off part of the city centre. The National Security Council held an emergency meeting, a defence ministry source said. The soldiers were revolting over delayed bonus payments, promised by the government after the January mutiny but which it has struggled to pay after a collapse in the price of cocoa, Ivory Coast's main export, caused a revenue crunch. On Thursday, a spokesman for 8,400 soldiers who took part in the January rebellion said they would forego demands for more money after meeting with authorities in Abidjan. The decision was rejected by at least part of the group. "The (defence) minister doesn't want to negotiate. We've understood and we're waiting for him to come and dislodge us. We're ready," said one leader of the January mutiny who had remained in Bouake. "We don't want to negotiate any more either." Troops in the towns of Odienne, Man and Korhogo also took to the streets in protest, residents and military sources said. "THIS ISN'T NORMAL" Office workers fled through the streets of Abidjan's administrative quarter as gunfire rang out in the morning near the military headquarters and defence ministry, which were seized by the mutinying troops. "This isn't normal. If there's a demand to be made, I think it has to be done peacefully," said Lacine Tia, who works in the city centre. A Reuters witness saw three pickup trucks carrying elite Republican Guard troops, who fired warning shots at the mutineers. A standoff in the heart of the city ensued with around 100 elite soldiers and armoured vehicles surrounding the camp. Before nightfall, a delegation including the Military Chief of Staff General Sekou Toure and the heads of the Republican Guard, Special Forces and National Gendarmerie briefly entered the camp before leaving around 20 minutes later. "They're definitely putting on a better show of force this time ... They're definitely stronger (than in January)," one Abidjan-based diplomat said, referring to the government's response to the unrest. President Ouattara, the defence and interior ministers and the security forces' leadership convened an emergency meeting to discuss the uprising. "Of this group of 8,400, some have understood the message. Others haven't understood the message. We're not negotiating," Defence Minister Alain-Richard Donwahi told Reuters. "Those who don't accept this decision must simply leave the army." Ivory Coast emerged from a 2002-2011 conflict as one of the world's fastest-growing economies. But deep divisions persist, particularly in a military assembled from ex-rebel and loyalist fighters. The government paid the 8,400 troops behind January's rebellion bonuses of 5 million CFA francs ($8,370) each as part of an agreement to end that mutiny. The soldiers were due a staggered payment of an additional 7 million CFA francs. But they said the government asked for a delay in payment to ease financial pressure on the Treasury, citing a collapse in cocoa revenues. (Editing by Janet Lawrence)
KIGALI (Reuters) - A prominent Ugandan gay rights activist was arrested upon her arrival at the airport of the Rwandan capital Kigali on Friday on suspicion of "drunkenness and gross misconduct", police said. Kasha Jacqueline Nabagesera is known for her struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights in Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal. She arrived at Kigali's international airport to meet American filmmakers, according to her Twitter account. "Jackline N. Kasha is temporarily held at the airport over drunkenness and gross misconduct. Appropriate actions will be taken on her case," Rwandan police said on an official Twitter account. They did not give further details. Police were not immediately available for comment The arrest of Kasha, a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award known as Sweden's alternative Nobel prize, was denounced by the foundation that gives the award. "We are looking into disturbing reports of Alternative Nobel and Uganda LGBT leader Kasha Jacqueline arrested in Rwanda last night," the Right Livelihood Award Foundation said on Twitter. (Reporting by Clement Uwiringiyimana; Editing by Aaron Maasho and Tom Heneghan)
LIMA (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition is asking other Latin American countries to pressure President Nicolas Maduro's government into implementing a "democratic agenda," opposition leader Julio Borges said on Thursday. Borges, the president of Venezuela's opposition-led National Assembly, travelled to Lima to meet with Peruvian legislators and President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who has been one of Maduro's most vocal critics among Latin American leaders. He said the humanitarian crisis and strong protests against Maduro's socialist government had crossed Venezuela's borders because of a wave of refugees across the region. "It's important - fundamental - that we get several governments in the region to unite in the short term to make sure in Venezuela there exists nothing other than a popular and democratic agenda," Borges told Reuters. Venezuela has suffered through more than five weeks of violent anti-government protests in which 39 people have died. The opposition has decried Maduro as an autocrat who has wrecked the OPEC member's economy, and demanded elections to resolve the political crisis. Peru recalled its ambassador to Caracas in late March. Appearing together with Borges in the Presidential Palace later on Thursday, Kuczynski said he had "no desire to interfere in the internal matters of other countries" but that countries in the region must support the wellbeing of Venezuela's people and provide "humanitarian assistance." Kuczynski said he told Borges that "we're prepared to help with this, to help as part of a group of American countries that are worried about an important neighbour. Venezuela is the number one issue in America." Borges said the aim of the strategy of street protests and calls for international pressure was to "break the conscience of the armed forces and the political groups" that still support Maduro, and to avoid more deaths. He told Peruvian reporters after his speech to Peru's congress that he would travel to Brazil next week to convene a summit with congressional leaders from across the region to push for a "democratic transition" in Venezuela. Socialist Venezuela has lost many regional allies as several Latin American countries have moved to the right in recent years. "There's a new map in Latin America that I'm sure will strongly support this democratic agenda for Venezuela," Borges said. Last week, Borges met with U.S. President Donald Trump's national security advisor H.R. McMaster, where they agreed on the need to bring Venezuela's crisis to a quick and peaceful conclusion. (Reporting by Reuters TV and Marco Aquino; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)
By Aidan Lewis TUNIS (Reuters) - Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar, a figurehead in the east of the country, and Fayez Seraj, the head of a U.N.-backed government in Tripoli, appeared at ease as they broke more than a year of deadlock between them at talks in Abu Dhabi last week. The meeting may have been amicable but it is unclear if either man will sway a complex array of factions on both sides of Libya's divide towards compromise. Also unclear is whether foreign states with divergent strategies in Libya will help them do so -- especially as U.S. President Donald Trump has yet to spell out a policy on Libya. At stake are the prospects for stabilising and unifying Libya, which splintered into competing fiefdoms after the NATO-backed uprising that toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Western powers had hoped Seraj's Government of National Accord (GNA) would play that role. But though oil production has risen and Islamic State was defeated in its stronghold of Sirte under its watch, the GNA has been unable to extend its authority or resolve acute security and economic crises since arriving in Tripoli in March last year. Haftar, meanwhile, built his power base in the east, spurning the GNA as his self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) took control of most of Benghazi and oil facilities to the southwest. As the international community pressed to reset the U.N.-mediated deal that created the GNA, Haftar shunned dialogue, refusing at the last minute to meet Seraj in Cairo in February. "The fact that they met this time was important," said a senior Western diplomat. "Haftar has moved...he is now sounding more amenable to compromise." STRONGMAN IMAGE Last month there was also a meeting in Rome between the heads of two parliaments based in Tripoli and the east, one aligned with the GNA and the other with Haftar. Both are naming delegations to negotiate the details of a deal. But there are few obvious signs of convergence. A statement from the Haftar camp in Abu Dhabi stressed support for the military, battling terrorism, and "addressing the proliferation of armed formations"  mirroring the image Haftar projects as a strongman who can crush extremism and curb militias. Seraj's statement reflected conditions that could contain Haftar -- placing the military under civilian authority, building a democratic state, and preserving "the principles of the 17 February (2011) revolution". Haftar is said to want a three-member ruling council that includes himself and Aguila Saleh, head of the eastern parliament, alongside Seraj. But that would leave out key constituencies represented in Seraj's current leadership council, including southern Libya and the city of Misrata, whose powerful military brigades have been broadly aligned with the GNA and against Haftar. Some more radical Misrata militias that still back an ousted, Islamist-leaning government, and have recently lost ground in Tripoli, are vehemently anti-Haftar. But even more moderate armed factions aligned with the GNA in the capital reacted with unease after the Abu Dhabi meeting they saw as unfairly bolstering Haftar's strongman position. "We have said numerous times no to military rule and Tripoli is a red line, whether for Haftar or anyone else," Hashem Bisher, a prominent commander, wrote on his Facebook page. The reaction became wider and angrier when Seraj's Foreign Minister Mohamed Siyala made comments on Monday that suggested acceptance of Haftar as the head of a national army. One brigade said it had shut the foreign ministry, where pictures of Haftar were posted captioned: "No to the war criminal Khalifa Haftar". The Benghazi Defence Brigades (BDB), which includes fighters who have been battling LNA forces as they push west and south, condemned Siyala's comments and questioned the GNA holding "suspicious conferences and meetings". Seraj did not travel to Egypt for a follow-up meeting with Haftar originally expected on Thursday. DISJOINTED DIPLOMACY Western diplomats say foreign mediation has to be synchronised for a political deal to be reached. The Abu Dhabi meeting was brokered by Haftar's two most prominent foreign backers, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. Both share the Haftar camp's distaste for the Muslim Brotherhood and back his military campaign against Islamist militants. Algeria, which hosted a round of talks this week, and Tunisia, are pushing a more inclusive approach. But diplomacy has been disjointed, in part because of uncertainty over U.S. policy under the Trump administration and a delayed leadership change at the United Nations' Libya mission. That has left a vacuum that medium-sized players with different approaches have been battling to fill, said Jalel Harchaoui, a geopolitics researcher at Paris 8 University specialising on Libya. "If the U.S. takes a keen interest in Libya again, they would be the only player that could unify these efforts," he said. (Additional reporting by Ahmed Elumami; Editing by Patrick Markey)
SANTA FE  Gov. Susana Martinez is headed to the nations capital to attend a law enforcement memorial and meet with officials in President Donald Trumps administration.

The two-term Republican governor left New Mexico today and will represent the state at a vigil for officers who died in the line of duty. She attended the event last year too, when two Albuquerque-area officers were honored.

While in Washington D.C., Martinez will also meet with senior Trump administration officials to discuss infrastructure, energy and job-related issues, according to the Governors Office.

Specific details on the meetings, including which officials the governors would be meeting with, were not immediately available.

Martinez criticized some of Trumps comments on the campaign trail last year and did not attend either of his campaign rallies in New Mexico.

However, she participated in a meeting with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and other Republican governors in February, and has expressed optimism about working with the Trump administration.

The governor is scheduled to return to New Mexico on Sunday, her spokesman said. Her travel expenses for the trip will be paid for with state funds.

Per the state Constitution, Lt. Gov. John Sanchez serves as acting governor while Martinez is traveling out of state.
While Hollywood is looking to get more women into the directors seat, Catharine Pilafas is blazing her own trail.

The New Mexico resident has been a staple in the local film and TV scene for years.

As her acting career has grown, shes taken a slight turn into directing.

And it all started with directing the her husbands book trailer for Vendetta of Felipe Espinosa.

Im an actor and Im a director, she says. When Im directing, I can feel the creativity channeling through me. Its like divine guidance. And when you open yourself up, you just want more of it.

Last spring, Pilafas again sat in the directors chair and created Pinky Promise, for the international Flicks4Chicks contest.

My team, Lumos Productions  Amy Baklini, Lauren Myers, and Elizabeth Dwyer Sandlin  had a month to make a film, with this following prompt provided by F4C: two co-workers of different ethnicity learn something new about each other at an office work party, she says. And the story needed to pass the Bechdel test, which is two named women on screen not talking about a man.

She won best director.

The accolades keep rolling in for the filmmaker.

Pilafas won first place for the In (H)er (D)irection Film Competition from the Chimaera Project.

The organization created a contest for female filmmakers to make a two-minute film about why they direct, what unique qualities they bring to directing and challenges they have faced as a female filmmaker.

The Chimaera Projects advisory board includes Anjelica Huston and Octavia Spencer.

Im pretty floored by the whole thing, she says. Its important for female directors to get some recognition.

Pilafas won a cash prize, which she is putting toward another project with Glamour magazine.

Her second film, Seagull, is gearing up for the festival circuit.

The film is an all-female World War II drama that once again passes the Bechdel test, she says.

It will screen at the Albuquerque Film & Music Experience Women Who Rock block on June 10, she says. Ultimately, my on-set experiences on set, and working alongside male but most predominantly female crew, I have come up with a mantra for my projects: to champion female creative energy at every turn. 

SEND ME YOUR TIPS: If you know of a movie filming in the state, or are curious about one, email film@ABQjournal.com. Follow me on Twitter @agomezART.
WASHINGTON  The deputy attorney general at the center of former FBI Director James Comeys firing made a surprise appearance on Capitol Hill Thursday, arriving as Senate Democrats were demanding a reckoning over his role in the ouster but leaving more questions than answers in his wake.

Less than two weeks ago, Rod Rosenstein earned the bipartisan confidence of the vast majority of the Senate during his confirmation as deputy attorney general. But a memo he drafted this week that has served as President Donald Trumps public justification for firing Comey has all but eviscerated that trust.

Led primarily by Democrats, senators are now asking Rosenstein to come back to Capitol Hill next week to explain his role in Comeys dismissal. A senior Republican, too, declined to defend Rosensteins actions after meeting with him behind closed doors.

Rosenstein was tight-lipped as he entered and emerged from a secure facility Thursday on Capitol Hill, where he huddled with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va. The senators said the meeting had been scheduled before Comeys ouster to discuss deconfliction  keeping the FBIs and committees investigations of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government from stepping on each others toes.

Nonetheless, the arrival of Rosenstein and his entourage  during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that dealt extensively with Comeys firing  served only to heighten the political intrigue surrounding the deputy attorney generals enigmatic role in the controversial Comey affair.

Following the meeting, Warner said he still has concerns about Rosenstein, while Burr refused to say whether he has confidence in Rosenstein to oversee the Justice Departments Russia-related investigations.

I dont think thats up to Sen. Warner and myself to make, Burr said. The presidents made a determination . . . we dont have the luxury of picking who we work with.

Trump initially pointed to Rosensteins May 9 memo, in which the former prosecutor criticized Comeys handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server, as justification for Comeys firing. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerging from the White House casting him as a prime mover of the decision. Senators said Thursday that they did not discuss that point with him.

Meanwhile, as Rosenstein huddled with Intelligence Committee leaders, NBC released an interview in which Trump said the decision to oust Comey was his. He said he would have found a reason to fire Comey regardless of Rosensteins recommendation.

Later Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., excoriated the Trump administration for the mixed messaging surrounding Comeys firing and Rosensteins role in it, noting on the Senate floor that the story coming out of the White House about why Mr. Comey was fired continues to change, and there are no good explanations for the changes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is trying to schedule an all-senators briefing with Rosenstein on Capitol Hill as soon as next week. Democrats want to hold a similar meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Schumer said Thursday. The need for these briefings is even greater now than it was this morning, given what the president said this afternoon, he said.

Rosenstein has not responded publicly to the presidents shifting claims about his role in Comeys firing. Nor has he addressed Senate Democrats warnings that his reputation as an independent, apolitical actor is imperiled, as Schumer wrote to him in a letter. Schumer also asked for details on any meetings Rosenstein had with Trump before drafting the memo  and with Comey about requests for additional resources to aid the FBIs Russia investigation. Schumer asked for answers to the questions by Monday.

Comey requested such resources from the Justice Department, according to several people familiar with the discussion. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, McCabe said he was unaware of the request  and that he believed the FBI had adequate resources for the investigation.

Senior Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats Patrick Leahy and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., who oversee funding for the Justice Department, are also trying to clarify that point with Rosenstein. On Thursday, they asked the deputy attorney general to specify the circumstances surrounding Comeys request.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) should dedicate the needed personnel and resources to the investigation without hesitation, Leahy and Shaheen wrote in a letter to the deputy attorney general, adding that they want the details of any request for increased resources made by the FBI to DOJ and how this request was communicated from the FBI to DOJ, and whether similar requests were made to the White House.

Unclear is whether senators will get the opportunity to hear from another key player who could set part of the record straight: Comey.

Burr and Warner invited Comey to address the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, but as of Thursday afternoon, they had not received a response, Burr said.

In the absence of answers, some senior Democrats are casting doubt on the entire foundation of their once-positive impression of him, suggesting that it was an amateurish piece of work.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and a top member of the Intelligence Committee, said she has now read Rosensteins memo three times. She remains incredulous, she said, that he wrote it  and that it may have served as the basis for Comeys firing. She pointed to the second page, which is filled with quotes from opinion pieces and news clippings about former Justice Department officials critiquing Comeys handling of the Clinton investigation.

That surprised me, that a guy as highly prized as Rosenstein, on the basis of legal talent, professionalism in the department, would pull things out of a newspaper and quote them, in terms of somebody elses opinion of Comey, Feinstein said. It means to me we really have to have him in and talk to him, because, wow, I mean, I could have written it.
WASHINGTON  The news that President Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey left me  it should leave all Americans  feeling more than mildly nauseous.

That was the memorable phrase Comey used last week to describe his feeling that his fateful letter to Congress about Hillary Clintons emails might have influenced the election. Then, it was infuriating. Mildly nauseous? Some of us  maybe thanks to you  have woken up feeling that way every day since the election.

But firing an FBI director  now? With the bureau in the midst of an investigation that could determine the destiny, political if not criminal, of the president who canned him?

To be clear: Like many people, I once was and no longer count myself a Comey fan. Reasonable people can differ about Comeys July news conference, when he took it upon himself to state that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton but also to chide her for extreme carelessness in her handling of classified material. I thought the extraordinary circumstances of Bill Clintons tarmac visit with then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and the need to reassure the public of the completeness and impartiality of the investigation, justified Comeys equally extraordinary public statements.

But Comeys pre-election letter was nothing short of outrageous. It seemed more aimed at insulating Comeys agency from criticism and  more to the point  burnishing his well-polished reputation for probity, all at the expense of electoral fairness. If I were president, I might have considered firing Comey myself.

Thus, the newly installed  and by all accounts, resolutely nonpartisan  deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, had some undeniable points in his memorandum advocating Comeys dismissal. Indeed, the FBIs reputation and credibility have suffered substantial damage from Comeys actions. As Rosenstein pointed out, there was nearly universal judgment among former Justice Department officials  Democratic and Republican appointees alike  that Comeys intervention was an appalling departure from standard practice.

So if, say, President Barack Obama had fired Comey after the election, maybe even if Trump ousted him immediately after taking office, that would have been huge news. But not nauseating news. Not news that prompted, as did Tuesdays action, words like Nixonian and cover-up. Those were from Democrats, but, notably, some key Republicans were unwilling to simply salute. They included Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr, who said he was troubled by the timing and reasoning of the action.

Because firing Comey now is different. It is different because nothing significant has changed since Inauguration Day in terms of the reason cited for Comeys firing  his handling of the Clinton emails. (Seriously, we are supposed to believe that the straw that broke Trumps back was that Comey was inaccurate in his recent testimony and unfair to, of all people, Huma Abedin?)

What has changed is that we now know the FBI is pursuing a serious investigation into Russian intervention in the election and potential entanglements with the Trump campaign, an investigation that could pose a mortal political, if not criminal, threat to Trumps presidency.

Trump faced an unavoidable and escalating conflict in deciding Comeys fate  a conflict that deepened with every presidential tweet dismissing the inquiry into Russian hacking and denigrating, explicitly or implicitly, the intelligence and law-enforcement agents who work for him. Tweets such as this, from Monday: The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end? Remind me, who was overseeing this alleged charade? 

Trumps priority is, first and always, Trump. Which raises the question: Knowing, as he must have, that dismissing Comey would set off a firestorm, why did he calculate this move was in his self-interest?
It can be easy to forget the sacrifice police officers make on our behalf  even when that sacrifice is the ultimate one.

So it is fitting the city of Albuquerque has opened a childrens park in the Northeast Heights named for slain officer Daniel Webster and begun construction on a West Side park honoring fallen officer Shawn McWethy.

Webster was shot during a traffic stop Oct. 21, 2015, as he tried to handcuff a suspect near Central and Eubank and died about a week later. McWethy was murdered Feb. 1, 1986, when a man got out and fired nine rounds into his patrol unit.

Davon Lymon, 36, has been charged with first-degree murder in Websters death and is set for trial in March 2018. He is serving 20 years for two federal felon in possession of a firearm convictions. Vincent Paul Candelaria was tried twice in McWethys death; both ended in hung juries. Candelaria was convicted of armed robberies before and after McWethys death and died in prison of cancer in 2002.

Officer Daniel Webster Childrens Park is near Wyoming and Copper NE and built to be inclusive and accommodate children in wheelchairs and those on the autism spectrum. APD Chief Gorden Eden said Tuesday that Webster just loved this community, loved working Southeast (Albuquerque), loved working with the kids. Having this honor his legacy is the best thing that could happen.  Its going to bring people together. This $1.2 million first phase was paid in part by discretionary funds pledged by former City Councilor Rey Garduno and current Councilor Pat Davis.

Shawn McWethy Park will be on Casa Verde off Ladera, also serving as a salute to a fallen officer while filling a community need. Councilor Ken Sanchez, who designated some of his districts discretionary money for the project, says families and children will be able to enjoy their time at this park while remembering officer McWethy.

It is appropriate residents remember Webster and McWethys service and sacrifice and take a moment to reflect on the fact all our police officers put their lives on the line for us every day.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
A stroll through Cathedral Park in Santa Fe this summer or fall to view reproductions of 93 masterpieces in the collection of Museo del Prado in Spain should be on your to do list.

And on your do again list, too.

Beginning this week, the park near the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis becomes the exhibits first North American showplace. Free and open to the public, the all-outdoor show promises to be an egalitarian experience until it closes Oct. 29.

Were hoping for a real turnout of people from all walks of life  from near and far, said David Setford, executive director of the Spanish Colonial Arts Society of Santa Fe, the exhibits lead sponsor.

I think it will be a wonderful thing, he said.

Outside the box of a museum building, at the hour of your choosing  within the parameters of park hours and available daylight, of course  youll be able to walk among 4-foot-by-6-foot frames displaying copies of work by the 14th- to 19th-century masters of European art.

The work presented includes iconic paintings like Diego Velazquezs 1656 Las Meninas (The Ladies in Waiting) and Francisco de Goyas work The 3rd of May 1808 in Madrid.

A reproduction of the Museo del Prado's "Las Meninas" by Diego Velaquez is part of Prado in Santa Fe at Cathedral Park. "The Annunciation" by Fra Angelico. "The Descent from the Cross" by Rogier van der Weyden. Francisco de Goya's "The Parasol." "The Third of May, 1808" by Francisco de Goya from Madrid's Museo del Prado. Prev 1 of 5 Next

Expect a broad selection of art that represents much of what the Spanish conquistadors and Catholic priests may have had in their imaginations while they made their way up the Camino Real, Setford said. Also included are reproductions of Fra Angelicos The Annunciation, 1425-28, and Rogier van de Weydens Descent from the Cross, 1435.

The shows depth represents an exciting element of the Museo del Prado  the intense interest Spanish kings had for collecting art and supporting artists, Stetford said.

It has, pound for pound, more masterpieces than other worlds-best museums, such as the Louvre, he said.

Organized by the Museo Nacional del Prado and American Friends of the Prado Museum, other sponsors include the New Mexico Multi-Cultural Foundation, New Mexico True, city governments Tourism Santa Fe, and Heritage Hotels and Resorts, Inc.

Similar outdoor exhibits of masterpiece reproductions were held in Central America in 2011 and 2015.

The frames and pedestals for the reproductions were designed and manufactured in New Mexico. Designer Chris ODonnell and metal manufacturer Taycar Enterprises in Albuquerque created frames that could withstand the kind of hell or high water New Mexico weather can deliver, Setford said.

The art is reproduced in a one-to-one scale, said Christina Simmons, of the American Friends of the Prado Museum. Not all the artwork fits within the 4-foot-by-6-foot frames so, in some cases, the reproduction crops the work a bit.

The reception for the educational component of the show in Santa Fe, with its many roots in Spain and Latin America, has been warm, Simmons said.

In Santa Fe and New Mexico, there is a very strong interest in Spain and a strong appreciation for their Spanish heritage, said Simmons, an American who has lived in Spain for 20 years.

Santa Fe as a crossroads for a continent  and many cultures  is heavily in evidence this summer. Santa Fes Celebration of Global Art and Culture 2017 features several events, including the ongoing show of photos of Frida Kahlo on exhibit at the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art at 750 Camino Lejo. Setford, who will offer ticketed guided tours of the Prado in Santa Fe show for small groups, noted that original drawings from several master artists  Picasso, Cezanne, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo  are featured as part the Global Art events at the New Mexico Museum of Art downtown.

If You Go

WHAT: Prado in Santa Fe

WHERE: Cathedral Park, 131 Cathedral Place, next to the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis.

WHEN: Seven days a week, daylight hours, through Oct. 29

ADMISSION: Free

WHAT: Prado Grande Gala

WHERE: Eldorado Hotel and Spa, 309 W. San Francisco St.

WHEN: May 20, 6:30-9:30 p.m.

More information regarding tours, sponsorships and gala tickets is available at www.santafe.org/The_PRADO_in_Santa_Fe.
In 1967, a young man used his inheritance to buy 92 acres in Arroyo Hondo, north of Taos, to found New Buffalo, one of the early examples of the communal living experience in the West.

Rick Klein, 75, reflecting on those days in a recent interview, said time has now proven his group of pioneers prescient.

We were naive and foolish and all these things, but we were right about things like the environment, and thats becoming apparent to people now, and maybe the times have caught up with us, he said. But that free-spirited, sometimes drug-infused era also left him conflicted.

I have been really confused about my feelings over the years, he said. Was I some kind of spiritual person for starting New Buffalo or was I just a drugged-out young man? I really feel that the money that I used  I dont think it could have had more of an effect. It really, really affected a lot of people, and I feel good about that.

Now, New Buffalo and other communes of that era are part of the focus of Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest, a 10-month exhibit at the New Mexico History Museum.

The show is part of Be Here Now: Summer of Love Santa Fe, a collaborative effort that also includes exhibitions by the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Art, the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, and the Santa Fe Desert Chorales 2017 Summer Festival Season.

Voices is co-curated by Meredith Davidson, curator of the 19th- and 20th-century Southwest Collection at the New Mexico History Museum, and Jack Loeffler, a Santa Fe-based aural historian, radio producer, writer and musician.

"Kitchen at New Buffalo," a photo by Seth Roffman, is part of the New Mexico History Museum's "Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest" exhibit. "Interior of a Home in Placitas" by Roberta Price. "Reno Meyerson and Steve Samuels Erecting a Tipi, Northern New Mexico, 1967" by Lisa Law (Courtesy of Lisa Law Production Archives) "Further, Summer Solstice 1969" by Roberta Price. "Solstice Lovers" by Douglas Magnus. (Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Archives) Santa Fe's Jack Loeffler, left, and poet Gary Snyder will talk onstage at the Lensic Sunday afternoon as part of the opening festivities for the New Mexico History Museum's exhibit "Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest." "Hippie Dining Table" by Douglas Magnus (Courtesy of the Palace of the Governors Archives) Prev 1 of 7 Next

Voices documents this time of cultural upheaval with numerous spoken histories, photography, ephemera and artifacts. The exhibit was originally envisioned over two years ago as a celebration of the 1967 Summer of Love, but the focus narrowed.

We immediately really got a sense that the story worth telling in New Mexico is not a Summer of Love story, said Davidson.

The story thats worth telling is the really powerful efforts of back-to-the-land movements and of relationships between young people coming here in the 60s and 70s, and developing these very meaningful relationships with Native American communities and with the cultures that are here, and the sort of classic New Mexico culture clashes that happened.

Klein remembers that he was on a John Birch Society hit list.

There was a lot of harassment of people, he said. They would be arrested for wearing their knives or something like that.

But now, he points out, the Taos Chamber of Commerce tries to promote the Summer of Love up here  there was a parade and all that stuff.

Another example of how things have changed: The late actor Dennis Hopper, himself a 1960s icon for his film Easy Rider, is now honored with an annual day in Taos, where he lived, was famously once jailed and where parts of Easy Rider were filmed (although New Buffalo wouldnt let him use the commune for the movie). This years Dennis Hopper Day  Wednesday, May 17  features an Easy Rider Rally for motorcyclists and a buffalo barbecue.

Early counterculture days

Loeffler, 80, who is friends with opening day speaker poet Gary Snyder and will interview him at the Lensic on Sunday, knew Edward Abbey and others in the early days of the environmental movement and the beat scene in San Franciscos North Beach neighborhood.

I have spent my entire adult life in one aspect or another of the counterculture, Loeffler said.

So few people alive today who are in their younger to middle-aged years have any notion as to how much effect the counterculture had on mainstream culture, and continues to have.

In parallel with the breakthrough 1962 book Silent Spring, in which author Rachel Carson documented the impact of pesticides, counterculture was fermenting.

The one (impact) that is huge is the counterculture movement very much helped to spawn the modern environmental movement  that is with us big time, Loeffler said.

The counterculture also merged with the civil rights and American Indian rights movements, womens lib, the Black Panthers and the Chicano movement, Loeffler said. There was infinitely more to the counterculture movement than sex, drugs and rock n roll, he said

Loeffler, Klein and Lisa Law, whose photographs from the time are part of the exhibit, all credit members of the Peyote Church of the Taos Pueblo for spiritual guidance.

Law writes in her book Flashing on the Sixties: The Native Americans of the Taos Pueblo helped the New Buffaloers by being friends and teachers, and the young people of the pueblo in turn gained self-respect when they saw other men with long hair.

Psychedelics are nothing new to the Natives. They use them for healing and bringing the family closer together, Law wrote.

Loeffler said poet Snyder and others formulated the notion of bioregionalism  the idea of regions defined by their geographical features, environment, flora, fauna and local human cultures  which is a huge factor today in modern environmental thinking, and a huge cue for that came from the Native American input when a bunch of people began to move into New Mexico.

Spiritual connection

The connection between spirituality and the physical world was a key concept that Klein retains from that era.

The spiritual thing going on back then, my contact with the Native American people, that realization that this creation of the natural world and our own spirituality were intimately connected, he said. Not just the spirituality, but the way you live, (how) we treat our fellow creatures.

Curator Davidson said events in other parts of the country influenced the establishment of counterculture outposts in the Southwest and that an era of easier travel translated to migration. Forty-five recordings of people from the era tell the story in Voices of Counterculture.

There came a tipping point, she said, where people realized they no longer craved the urban scene. There were pulls to the Southwest that the urban experience was no longer addressing, Davidson said.

In later years, New Buffalo became a bed and breakfast. Klein sold it in 2002 and he now summarizes what it meant in simple terms.

I think it was a courageous act, he said. In retrospect, it was an act of faith  these good things that people could get together, and in a peaceful way and in a nonharmful way. I think it proved itself.

If you go

What: Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest

When: Sunday through Feb. 11, 2018, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Where: New Mexico History Museum, 113 Lincoln Ave. on The Plaza

Museum admission: $12/free for children 16 and under. For New Mexico residents, admission is $7; free on the first Sunday of each month and Fridays 5-7 p.m. New Mexico senior citizens also get free admission on Wednesdays.

Opening talk

An Evening with Gary Snyder, hosted by Jack Loeffler, 5 p.m. Sunday at The Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.

There will be a book-signing in the Lensic lobby afterwards with Snyder, and with Loeffler, Meredith Davidson and several contributors to the new book, Voices of Counterculture in the Southwest, a companion to the exhibit, published by the Museum of New Mexico Press.

Tickets: $25 at the Lensic box office, www.ticketssantafe.org or 505-988-1234.
The attorney representing Santa Fe Public Schools and Superintendent Veronica Garcia on Wednesday fired off a scathing letter to state Public Education Secretary Hanna Skandera, accusing her of spreading false and reckless claims and threatening the superintendent with legal consequences.

By continuing to threaten Dr. Garcia, publicly impugning her, singling her out for enforcement actions, and continuing to allege, without legal authority, a violation of law, you (Skandera) are far outside your limited authority, said the letter from SFPS attorney Tony Ortiz.

The fight is over Garcias closing Santa Fe schools for a half day March 16 to allow school district personnel, students and their parents to attend what the school district described as a nonpartisan Save Our Schools rally at the Roundhouse to push for more education funding.

Lida Alikhani, a spokeswoman for the PED, provided a brief comment Thursday: Ensuring that school districts are using taxpayer dollars appropriately  for educating our kids  is one of our top priorities. Were continuing to investigate this, she said.

The latest SFPS letter also says that Skandera herself participated in a charter schools rally at the Roundhouse in which charter school students and teachers were released for a full day. Skandera spoke at a Roundhouse rally in celebration of National School Choice Week in January.

If an emergency was not required to close charter schools for a rally, then why is it needed in this situation? Ortiz asks. Again, it appears to be an arbitrary and capricious standard you are enforcing.

Thursdays letter was in response to a letter of concern sent by Skandera to Garcia on April 21. She said that Garcia failed to adequately respond to allegations that tax dollars were used inappropriately to organize the rally.

A week after the rally, Skandera had sent a letter to Garcia saying that the PED had received complaints about the potential misuse of public funds for the event and was launching an investigation. It also asked Garcia to conduct an internal investigation of her own and report findings back to the PED within 30 days.

The school districts attorney did provide a response within that time frame, but it didnt satisfy Skandera, who responded that it was an attempt to deflect attention from what appears to be a misuse of public funds, facilities, and assets, as well as teachers inappropriately influencing students in the classroom with their personal political opinions. Skandera said the PED would determine whether there were violations of law, rules or standards.

Wednesdays letter from SFPS attorney Ortiz accuses Skandera of overreach, saying the secretary does not have the authority to demand an open and unlimited investigation.

Make no mistake: the New Mexico constitution and case law do not support the unlimited scope of investigatory power that you seem to assume exists, Ortiz wrote. However, the Secretary cannot act in a way that abuses her power, selectively enforces that power, pursues investigations without authority, or otherwise acts in a manner that is arbitrary and capricious.

It says that Garcia is not a subordinate of the PED but instead answers to the local school board, which has jurisdiction to determine whether the superintendent is in compliance with the Public School Code. Ortiz maintains that Skanderas interpretation of the law is incorrect and suggests it could potentially impact all superintendents in the state.

Ultimately, NMPEDs potential misuse of funds argument amounts to little more than a suggestion that school superintendents do not have the authority to shorten school days, make determinations about educational activities, or allow participation by students/staff in civic opportunities. Such a position by you fundamentally misstates the authority of school districts and suggests a violation of the law where none exists, the letter says.

The Journal invited Skandera to respond to the new SFPS letter, listing some of the statements in the letter. Only spokeswoman Alikhanis brief statement was provided in response.

While the Santa Fe district says the rally for more school funding was nonpartisan, it did take place as the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Republican Gov. Susana Martinez, Skanderas boss, were locked in a budget stalemate, which continues. The Legislature eventually approved a set of tax increases in order to boost spending, but Martinez vetoed them. A special session on the budget is now scheduled for later this month.

Inaccurate statements

Ortiz begins his letter by saying its purpose is to clarify and correct your continuing string of inaccurate statements the PED made about Garcia and the actions of SFPS relating to the rally. Among the statements the districts attorney takes issue with is that SFPS staff inappropriately influenced students about the rally, that teachers were forced to participate, and that the rally was a waste of public funds.

It asks that Skandera and the PED stop making such unsupportive and reckless claims.

Out of courtesy to PED, Ortiz wrote, Garcia did go through with an investigation and found the allegations to be unfounded. It says teachers were not forced to attend the rally, pointing to a memo from Garcia that indicated attendance was voluntary. It disputes that the use of robocalls and emails alerting families of the shortened day cost the district extra money, because those services are paid for at a flat rate. The district also says that employees fulfilled their contract requirements under the collective bargaining agreement and that an emergency was not required for Garcia to call for a shortened day of school as long as the district met its minimum instructional hours requirement, which it did.

In an interview Thursday, Garcia, who served as the states first secretary of education under former Gov. Bill Richardsons Democratic administration, was asked whether she felt the whole matter was politically motivated. Im not going there, she said.

Instead, Garcia said, she wanted to work collaboratively with Skandera to improve education in New Mexico. This has been a distraction and continuing with this is counterproductive, she said. We want to move forward to improve teaching and learning and improving outcomes four our kids. That needs to be our priority.
SANTA FE  New Mexico and other states stand to lose some federal funding under the Republican health-care plan passed by the U.S. House last week.

But Gov. Susana Martinez isnt eager to comment on it yet. She told reporters Wednesday that its premature to weigh in on a proposal that hasnt made it through the Senate, where it may undergo significant changes.

To give an opinion on that at this point would be irresponsible, Martinez said when asked about the Republican plan. Its going to change and change over and over in many ways. We are keeping an eye on it.

Indeed, some Republicans in the Senate have already expressed skepticism about the measure, which narrowly passed the House amid unanimous opposition from Democrats. The proposal could be rewritten entirely before the Senate takes final action.

The stakes are high for New Mexico, which opted under Obamacare to expand Medicaid coverage to more people. The Republican plan would repeal and replace much of Obamacare.

Martinez, a Republican, said she supports health-care changes that would lower premiums while still taking care of the most vulnerable.

FOOD TAX FLIP? : Martinez made some news this week when she said shed be open to reimposing the food tax, as long as its part of a broader effort to overhaul New Mexicos tax code.

It was a surprise in some ways because she has so consistently opposed bringing back the tax on food, which was abolished in 2004.

In March, in fact, she slammed Senate Democrats and accused them of pushing massive tax increases on food and gas. And in 2013, her spokesman flatly told the Journal she didnt support reimposing the food tax.

On the other hand, the governor this year has consistently supported broad changes to the gross receipts tax system  with a push to eliminate the deductions, exemptions and credits that make it so complicated.

And the exemption on taxing food, of course, falls into that category.

In any case, it doesnt sound like the food tax is likely to come back soon. Neither Democrats nor Republicans seem to like the idea much, and the tax-overhaul proposal that moved the farthest in the last session left food exempt from gross receipts taxes, while focusing on other exemptions.

Dan McKay: dmckay@abqjournal.com
Copyright  2017 Albuquerque Journal

The University of New Mexico Foundation says a computer server breach may have compromised the financial and other personal information of approximately 22,000 donors.

In addition, the Social Security numbers, birth dates and banking information for more than 750 employees, vendors and others may have been illegitimately accessed.

In a May 10 memo addressed to the foundations board of trustees and obtained by the Journal, foundation leaders say the organization on April 17 learned that an unauthorized individual gained access to a file server through an account with our security services provider.

The individual may have had access to systems that contained personal information, the memo says.

The memo states that the breach did not impact the Advance donor database, which includes 300,000 individuals, but rather a server that contained human resource data and archive financial data.

The foundation is the nonprofit entity that raises money for the University of New Mexico. It originated within the university but became a standalone organization in 2008.

The UNM Foundation takes the security and confidentiality of personal information seriously and sincerely regrets any inconvenience caused by this incident, spokeswoman Jennifer Kemp said in a written statement to the Journal on Thursday.

Kemp said the foundation has never experienced a cyber breach before and that an early evaluation indicates the perpetrator is from outside the United States.

According to the security breach memo, details about nearly 22,000 donors may have been available to the intruder, including names, contact information, donation amounts and checking and routing information.

The breach could also have compromised data on more than 750 employees, annuitants and foundation vendors that includes their Social Security numbers, birth dates and bank account information.

As soon as we discovered the issue, the Foundations IT staff and our system security provider secured the system and blocked the unauthorized individuals access. While our investigation is ongoing, it appears this breach was caused by an error on the service providers system and only impacted a server that contains a small amount of archived financial information and employee information, Kemp wrote.

The foundation has alerted employees, and none has reported any possible related issues, she added.

It plans to notify all those affected by mail on May 15 and will provide a years worth of credit reporting and repair services to affected individuals, Kemp said.

The memo states that the foundation has contacted the FBI, retained outside legal counsel with experience in such matters, and hired a third party to conduct a comprehensive electronic forensic investigation of the incident, which should provide  additional information about the incident to identify ways to reduce the chances of similar future incidents.

Kemp said the foundation has cyber security insurance coverage which should cover most of the costs associated with this breach.

She would not speculate as to how it could affect future fund-raising efforts.

No organization is immune to these types of cyber security issues, however we have taken and continue to take every precaution possible to ensure the security and confidentiality of our donor, annuitant, vendor and employee information, she said.
SANTA FE  Gov. Susana Martinezs decision to include regent confirmations on the agenda of a budget-balancing special session has been dismissed as a distraction by the chairwoman of the Senate panel that vets gubernatorial nominees.

However, Sen. Linda Lopez, D-Albuquerque, would not say whether she intends to hold confirmation hearings for Martinezs university regent appointees during the special session, scheduled to start May 24.

The governor should be ashamed that after hearing the pleas from our institutions of higher learning and the students they serve she still continues to try to divert attention from the financial crisis she created by asking legislators to instead focus on her political appointments, Lopez told the Journal earlier this week.

The Governors Office has accused Lopez and other top Senate Democrats of stalling on key confirmations, as the Senate Rules Committee did not get through the full backlog of gubernatorial appointees during the 60-day legislative session that ended in March.

Two appointees to the University of New Mexico Board of Regents  Alex Romero and John Ryan, who were nominated by Martinez earlier this year  were among those not confirmed during this years regular session.

As a result, two current UNM regents are still serving on the seven-member governing council despite having expired terms.

In all, the governors special session proclamation asserted that 8 of the 18 regent nominees the Governors Office submitted to the Senate Rules Committee  including the two UNM regent nominees  were not acted upon during the 60-day session.

The other unconfirmed regent nominees include two sitting UNM regents, two New Mexico State University regent appointees, and one each at New Mexico Tech and Northern New Mexico College.

All gubernatorial appointees are typically subject to background checks, and Lopez has previously said her committees work was delayed this year after the governor vetoed a feed bill funding session expenses. A separate bill was later signed.

The special session was called last week by Martinez to resolve a budget standoff between the executive branch and the Democratic-controlled Legislature. The governor vetoed all proposed funding  roughly $779 million  for legislative branch agencies and colleges and universities, prompting top legislators to file a court challenge with the state Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, its rare, if not unprecedented, for a governor to include confirmations on special session agendas.

Thats partly because the Senate Rules Committee can hold hearings between regular legislative sessions. However, nominees are approved only with the consent of the full Senate  meaning the 42-member chamber must be in session to vote.
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP)  Malaysian firefighters have rescued a 60-kilogram (132 pounds) turtle found firmly stuck to a flood gate at a power station near the Malacca Strait.

District Fire Chief Razif Mohamad Haris says firefighters heeded an emergency call Thursday and found the turtle, believed to be a hawksbill, trapped in the barrier gate used to filter foreign objects from entering the power station in northwestern Negeri Sembilan state.

He says the turtle's front right flipper was missing and it was believed to have swum during high tide when the gate was opened.

Razif said Friday two firefighters waded into the water and battled strong currents to free the turtle, which was hauled to safety and released back to the ocean.

 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
WASHINGTON  Lawyers for President Donald Trump said Friday that a review of his last 10 years of tax returns did not reflect any income of any type from Russian sources, but their letter included exceptions related to previously cited income generated from a beauty pageant and sale of a Florida estate.

The letter represented the latest attempt by the president to tamp down concerns about any Russian ties amid an ongoing investigation of his campaigns associates and Russias meddling in the 2016 election.

The attorneys did not release copies of Trumps tax returns, so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions. Their review also notably takes into account only Trumps returns from the past 10 years, leaving open questions about whether there were financial dealings with Russia in earlier years.

The lawyers offered no supporting documents to back up the claims made in the letter.

Trump has refused to release his income tax records, despite pressure from Democrats, breaking with a practice set by his predecessors. The president has said he would release his returns when the Internal Revenue Service completes an audit. The tax returns, the attorneys say, largely reflect income and interest paid by the web of corporate entities that made up The Trump Organization prior to Trump taking office.

Joseph Thorndike, a tax historian and contributing editor to an accounting trade publication, Tax Analysts, said he still believes Trump should release his tax returns like other presidents have and questioned the value of the letter released Friday.

Im not sure it does what the president thought it would do, Thorndike said of the letter. It rules out some of the most obvious things, but it leaves plenty of room.

Thorndike said in general theres no reason to assume that Russia connections, if they existed, would appear on Trumps personal tax returns. Its not going to be as transparent as that. His financial life and business structure are complicated, he noted.

In the letter released to the AP and dated March 8, the attorneys said Trumps last 10 years of tax returns dont reflect equity investments by Russians in entities controlled by Trump or debt owed by Trump to Russian lenders. Under U.S. tax law, not all financial ties would be required to be reported on a personal tax return.

The letter said the returns do reflect some income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

The White House said Trump asked his lawyers for the letter to outline information on any ties Trump might have to Russia. The letter was then provided to Sen. Lindsey Graham. Graham leads one of the congressional committees investigating Russias interference in last years election.

The letter came amid an active FBI probe into the Trump 2016 campaigns possible ties to Russias election meddling and days after Trumps stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey.

I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever, Trump said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. I dont have property in Russia. A lot of people thought I owned office buildings in Moscow. I dont have property in Russia.

The president said he had dealings over the years, including the Miss Universe pageant and the sale of a home to a very wealthy Russian. I had it in Moscow long time ago, but other than that I have nothing to do with Russia, he said, referring to the pageant.

Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said Trumps attempt to hide his Russia connections is misleading and pathetic.

The unnamed Russian billionaire cited by the Trump companys lawyers is Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose financial empire springs from his companies production of potash, often used for fertilizer.

Trump had purchased the 62,000 square-foot estate for $41.35 million in 2004 and he sold the mansion to Rybolovlev in July 2008 for $95 million. The deal was widely reported at the time, including by The Associated Press.

When Trump was pressed during a campaign conference last year about his ties to Russia, he said: You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach, adding that I sold it to a Russian for $100 million.

The letter, written by attorneys Sheri Dillon and William Nelson from the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, simultaneously leaves open the possibility of other Russian ties while attempting to dismiss them.

The letter doesnt vouch for any of Trumps personal federal tax returns that predate the past decade. The attorneys also write that over the last 10 years, it is likely that the Trump Organization sold or rented condos, or other products, that could have produced income attributable to Russian sources.

With respect to this last exception, the amounts are immaterial, the attorney wrote.

Dillon worked with the Trump Organization to develop plans for the organizations future and addressed reporters in January at a New York news conference before Trumps inauguration. Her law firm was honored by Chambers & Partners 2016 Chambers Europe guide as Russia Law Firm of the Year.

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Associated Press writers Chad Day and Stephen Braun contributed to this report.

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View the letter: http://apne.ws/2r1WBX6
Saturday is Stamp Out Hunger day throughout the US and in the greater Albuquerque area and your chance to join the nations largest single-day food drive.

All you have to do is fill a bag with non-perishable food items and leave it near your mailbox. Local letter carriers will pick it up for a hunger-relief organization near you, organizers said in a news release.

In Albuquerque, Roadrunner Food Bank will benefit as will hundreds of similar operations nationwide. The food drive is taking place in 10,000 communities in the U.S. and communities throughout New Mexico.

Visit www.rrfb.org for a list of non-perishable food items requested including canned meats, fruits, vegetables, cereal, beans, rice, condiments, boxed pastas, sauces, shelf stable milk, peanut butter, jelly, and any pop-top single serve items.

The Roadrunner Food Bank in a news release wanted to thank New Mexicans ahead of time for their participation.

Residents of other communities throughout the state likely received a post card in their mail earlier this week indicating announcing the nationwide food drive and that their local town or village also is participating.

In related news, a special honor was recently given to Roadrunner Food Bank president and CEO Melody Wattenbarger. She was recognized as this years John van Hengel Fellow.

Van Hengel is credited as the father of food banking. He founded the worlds first food bank in Phoenix, AZ and helped grow the food bank concept into what is now a national network of food banks, according to a news release.

We welcome suggestions for the daily Bright Spot. Send to newsroom@abqjournal.com
PHOENIX  Phoenix have identified a man fatally shot inside a gasoline station bathroom as 42-year-old Mario Ramos.

Sgt. Mercedes Fortune says the Thursday afternoon incident of a QuikTrip at Camelback Road and 27th Avenue remains under investigation.

Fortune says witnesses reported seeing and hearing a fight between two men in the bathroom.

As the two were fighting in the bathroom, police say one man shot the other.

Police say the alleged shooter told officers that the other man was physically assaulting him and he fired in self-defense.
PHOENIX  A Phoenix woman accused of fatally shooting her husband has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for second-degree murder.

Maricopa County Superior Court officials say Amanda Lynn Miller was sentenced Friday after previously pleading guilty.

The 31-year-old woman was arrested in January 2016 after emergency crews were dispatched to the couples home on a medical call.

Authorities say the front door was found open and there was a haze of smoke from an extinguished fire.

Police say Miller told officers she shot her husband.

They say 36-year-old Jesus Nevarez-Galindo had gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators say there was a history of domestic violence between Miller and her husband.

Miller says she and her spouse argued over money and lack of food in their home.
Fountainhead Digital MKTG, the digital and experiential innovation division from Fountainhead MKTG, a Dentsu Aegis Network agency, has appointed Dheeraj Dhawan as Vice President - Brand Solutions. He will be based in Mumbai and will lead the business development and client servicing function of the division.

Having spent more than a decade in the communications industry, Dheeraj comes with rich experience with both major global brands as well as medium sized businesses across categories such as FMCG, food, beverages and automobiles. He has worked both on the brand side with IFB Home appliances, JK Tyres, Toyota and the Times Group as well as with agencies such as Publicis (Experiential Marketing & Digital), Iris Worldwide, and Hungama Digital where he was AGM - Experiential Marketing.

His most recent stint was as AVP - Business Development at the UK-based augmented reality product company, Blippar. Dheeraj has worked on communication strategies for a variety of campaigns for brands such as Coke, AVIVA, Pepsi, International Olive Oil Council, Beam Inc., Sony Ericsson, Google and Nestle.

Speaking about his new role, Dheeraj said, In the last couple of years, I have mostly been working with specific brands and products, but at Fountainhead MKTG, the universe is open. Im looking forward to working on projects that are experiential, digital and everything in between! Its going to be both very challenging and very exciting!

Commenting on Dheerajs appointment, Thapas Joseph, President - Digital at Fountainhead MKTG said, We are very excited to have someone like Dheeraj join us. He comes with a very rich background in experiential marketing and technology and has been involved in some of the most pioneering work in this fast growing domain.
Rajnigandha Silver Pearls, has launched a new video titled Acha hai #Maa Kehti Hai on 11 May, paying tribute to all the loving and caring mothers on the occasion of International Mothers Day.

Carrying forward the success of the #Maa Kehti Hai campaign of past, the new video with an emotional storyline will be released on Facebook followed by an audience engagement exercise across social media channels, where users will be invited to share their mothers story and tell us about their greatest hero; Your story begins with your mothers story and that story is the greatest of them all! This #Mothers Day! #MaaKehtiHai. The campaign highlights the inherent goodness that resides in every mother and connects with the brand proposition Achchai Ki Ek Alag Chamak Hoti Hai.

This film is based on the insight that mothers are taken for granted and their advice & instructions are not always appreciated by the kids. This video shows how difficult it is to manage a day without your mother. The video opens to a couple of shots where children are cribbing about their mother. The next day morning, kids find a note from their mother informing that she wont be home the entire day and then everyone from the father, who is trying to make breakfast for the kids to the children who are trying to get ready for the School start struggling & missing her; after initial delight of being able to do their thing.

The next shot showcases that the kids are back from school and are delighted that their mother is not around to stop them from watching TV. However, they soon get bored and switch it off. No one says a word but their facial expressions clearly portray, how much they miss their mother. The mother returns home in the evening and finds the house in a mess. The younger daughter runs to the mom and hugs her tightly and says, Aap kahan chale gaye thay? The elder one also adds, acha hai aap chali gayi thi, aaj humein pata chala ki Mom banna kitna mushkil hai. The mom also gets teary eyed and kisses her children. The film ends with a warm family moment as they all cuddle up and the tagline -Kitna accha hai ki maa humare liye har pal maujood hai. Iss mothers day, shukriya adaa kare uss mom ka. AcchaHai #MaaKehtiHai.

Commenting on the campaign, Mr. Rajeev Jain, Associate VP, Marketing, DS Group said,  The core essence of Rajnigandha Pearls, is Achchai, the inner goodness, which is an integral part of the brands communication. Rajnigandha Silver Pearls is celebrating Mothers Day by releasing a video titled Acha hai #Maa Kehti hai because mothers have abundant inner goodness that makes them stand out and shine. The video emphasizes not only on a mothers importance and existence in our lives but also highlights her sacrificing and giving nature. The campaign is in sync with the brands proposition of Achchai ki ek alag chamak hoti hai.

Rajnigandha Silver Pearls has been running this campaign successfully for two years now. Last year too, the campaign received a great response. The video generated total 90 mn+ impressions on various platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.
Imagine a time where just one wrong decision can endanger your life. Starting May 15th, Sony BBC Earth will showcase astonishing stories of 4 families who battle to survive the extreme winter of Alaska. Watch an eye opening series of courage and hardships - Life Below Zero - premiering on May 15th, 10 PM in Earth Explorers.

The show takes you to the exquisite locales of Alaska  a state known for extreme cold weather with temperatures plummeting to a lethal -62 Degrees! Yet, some of the most resilient, determined and isolated people in the world call it home. Life Below Zero follows their story as they strive to make through a long dark freezing winter against unrelenting weather, scarce resources and man-eating carnivores.

Starting this Monday, some inspiring and mind-blowing survival stories await you on Sony BBC Earth #FeelAlive.
Four major vulnerabilities have been identified by Aleph Security in the OTA upgrade process of all OnePlus devices but the Chinese company has yet to address any of the issues. The group reported the vulnerabilities to OnePlus back in January but OnePlus hasnt patched any of the reported vulnerabilities three and a half months later. The delay in releasing the much-needed fixes prompted Aleph Security to publicize its findings, the firm said. The cyber security research team highlighted the need to patch these security flaws as soon as possible since malicious individuals could hack the system update process and even exploit some of the previously patched vulnerabilities. Another security risk is the ability to install ROMs not officially released to the device even with a locked bootloader, which runs the risk of installing malicious ROMs filled with spying apps.

Aleph Security, the security research group of HCL Technologies, identified the four major security flaws as the sending of OTA system updates through unencrypted channels, the ability to downgrade the operating system installed in the device, the ability to replace OxygenOS with HydrogenOS and vice versa even with locked bootloaders, and the ability to install either OnePlus One or OnePlus X ROMs on either of the two devices. Sending system updates unencrypted allows hackers to execute Man-in-the-Middle attacks. The exploitation of the other three vulnerabilities, meanwhile, could result in the hijacking of the system upgrades by hackers, made possible by the lack of verification done during the update process. Downgrades are possible due to the lack of verification between the OTA upgrade date and the installed build date. Downgrading the operating system installed in the devices exposes the handsets once again to previously patched vulnerabilities. The last two bugs, meanwhile, are made possible due to the lack of binding between the OTA update and the target device, experts claim.

The hacking of the OTA upgrade process is possible on all devices released by OnePlus. However, those who own the OnePlus 3 and the OnePlus 3T may be less exposed to its risks since they have the option to enable Full Disk Encryption. Encryption effectively protects device owners from hackers attempting to exploit the vulnerability. Users, however, should be reminded that employing a lock screen does not equate to enabling Full Disk Encryption and device owners should instead enable the Secure Startup option in the Settings app of their devices.
A Lenovo-made tablet bearing the model number TB-8704V has been certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance (WFA), possibly hinting that the device may be launched fairly soon. As youd expect from listings on the WFA website, not much is revealed about the hardware specs of the upcoming device, but on the software side of things, the listing does reveal that the tablet was running Android 7.1.1 at the time of testing. The rest of the info are mostly technical details about the tablets Wi-Fi hardware and firmware, which doesnt really provide any real insight into the new device. It remains to be seen how long it takes for Lenovo to make this device official.

Lenovo is currently the fifth-largest tablet vendor in the world after Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and Amazon. The latest tablets announced by the company are all mid-range devices called the Tab 4 8, Tab 4 8 Plus, Tab 4 10, and the Tab 4 10 Plus which were unveiled last February at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain. However, none of those are available for purchase just yet but are expected to be launched by the end of this month. Its currently unclear whether the Wi-Fi-certified TB-8704V is one of these upcoming tablets or if its a completely new device that has yet to be unveiled.

The global tablet market has been shrinking pretty steadily over the past few years even as the smartphone industry keeps growing on an annual basis. It was just last week that IDC published its latest Quarterly Tablet Tracker that claimed the global tablet market had shrunk for the tenth consecutive quarter during the first three months of this year even as global PC shipments actually made a small recovery after five successive years of precipitous decline. Those results dont correspond with numerous post-PC era talks that were happening at the start of this decade, with many market analysts, industry insiders, and even tech enthusiasts predicting that its only a matter of time before traditional computers are replaced by tablets. While tablets are unlikely to push out traditional PCs from the market anytime soon, manufacturers are certainly hoping that the industry gets back to growth sooner rather than later.
The Nokia 3, Nokia 5, Nokia 6, and the Nokia 3310 (2017) will be hitting India in early June, sources close to HMD Global said on Friday. The three Android-powered Nokia devices and a refresh of the popular 2000 feature phone are scheduled to be released in the South Asian country in the first week of June, people with knowledge of the matter claim, adding that the Finnish phone maker will be hosting an official launch event in India next month thats expected to be announced soon. According to the same report, while the company is now less than a month away from launching its latest offerings in India, the management still hasnt decided on whether to release all four of its new devices at the same time or host multiple events.

Regardless, the company previously confirmed that its entire product lineup that was unveiled at Mobile World Congress (MWC) earlier this year will eventually be launched in India. If the firm opts to hold two or more product launch events, its possible that not all of its upcoming devices will hit the market in India at the same time, though all are expected to be available for purchase in the near future. Sources say that Nokia may only introduce two of its new devices in early June while releasing the other two later this year, but its currently unclear which devices will be prioritized and whether that possibility is based on some concrete information or is simply speculation. However, most industry watchers agree that the Nokia 3310 (2017) will likely be among the first Nokia-branded devices to launch in India given how popular this particular device used to be among Indians.

Nokia talked about its ambitions in India on numerous occasions, claiming that the South Asian country is imperative for its future prospects to the point that its local performance will likely forecast its global success. Apart from the brands popularity in the country, India is also an attractive market for Nokia due to the fact that its the only remaining massive phone market in the world that still isnt showing signs of slowing down due to saturation.
Sprint and its parent company SoftBank have opened unofficial merger talks with T-Mobile, sources with knowledge of the situation said on Friday. The companies have reportedly approached T-Mobiles owner Deutsche Telekom AG and have started informal negotiations on the matter, though its currently unclear when the initial contact was made. Both parties have previously reiterated that theyre open for mergers in the near future, with many industry watchers pairing them together due to SoftBanks previous attempts to merge Sprint and T-Mobile in an effort to more efficiently compete with Verizon and AT&T.

The merger talks would have likely started sooner had it not been for the ban on such negotiations imposed by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) almost a year ago due to the nation-wide spectrum auction that was concluded earlier this year. Regardless, the talks are still in extremely early stages and only include officials of SoftBank, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Deutsche Telekom, sources claim, adding that numerous banks and other financial institutions are already testing the waters in hopes of securing a role in the potential transaction thats expected to be worth tens of billions of dollars. The German mobile service provider isnt the sole owner of T-Mobile, but seeing how the firm holds a 65-percent stake in the third-largest wireless carrier in the country, buying out the majority of its share in the company is the most straightforward method of acquiring T-Mobile for SoftBank.

The Japanese conglomerate already tried acquiring T-Mobile in 2014 but was effectively stopped from doing so by the FCC and the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the former Obama administration. However, following the recent arrival of the new, Republican-led government, the regulatory scrutiny of the telecommunications industry in the country is loosening and many analysts believe that this is the optimal time to attempt a major merger. Regardless, the deal itself will likely prove to be challenging to structure due to T-Mobiles growing valuation that currently sits at around $55 billion, as well as Sprints recent financial issues that could prompt the company to speed up merger talks despite the fact that its management claims the Kansas-based wireless carrier can afford to be patient with any potential M&As.
It seems like Sharp is planning to release a new bezel-less smartphone in China on May 24, at least according to the latest info. This report comes from China, and not only did CNMO shared Sharps launch teaser with us, but we also get to check out a leak of the companys upcoming smartphone. Now, Sharps devices were mostly limited to Japan thus far, as Sharp is a Japanese smartphone manufacturer, but the company was acquired by Foxconn a while back, and it seems like well see Sharps phones launched elsewhere in the future.

If you take a look at the gallery down below, youll get the aforementioned teaser, and the companys leaked smartphone. Now, as you can see, this device has quite a bit of chin below the display, while its bezels on the sides and above the display are quite thin, but theyre still there, so this wont exactly be a bezel-less smartphone, at least if this leak is to be believed, but it still looks interesting. The upper side of the device resembles the Galaxy S8 a bit due to thin bezel, and rounded display corner. Based on the provided images, this smartphone wont exactly be extremely thin, and it will sport a fingerprint scanner below its display, though we still dont know if this is a physical home key as well, or just a capacitive home button, well just have to wait and see. The devices volume up, volume down and power / lock buttons can be found on the right-hand side of the devices body, and the phone will sport a single rear-facing camera.

That being said, we do not know what will this phone be called, nor what specs will it ship with, but truth be told, wed expect it to sport less bezel. Sharps teaser suggests that the phone will ship with really thin bezels, and that chin on the bottom of the leaked device is quite big, which would be okay if bezels werent present elsewhere. The companys Aquos Crystal 2 and Aquos Xx smartphones were really interesting to look at, and one would think Sharp will release a phone similar to those two devices in China. It is, however, possible that the leaked devices is only a concept phone, maybe Sharp is planning to release something completely different on May 24, who knows.
Sonys newest offering for those looking for a device on a budget, the Xperia XA1, is now available through Freedom Mobile. Customers can buy the phone for $320 out the door, or opt to use one of Freedom Mobiles MyTab offerings to pay it off over the course of two years of service. The $15 MyTab option will cover the phone alongside just about any plan, and the $200 MyTab bonus that comes with plans that cost $40 or more will bring that down to only $5. The phone comes in a glossy piano black, or a silvery white, which includes the front bezels and sides for an all-over color. Unfortunately, the gold option seen at the phones debut is not on the menu.

The phone has all the usual hallmarks of a Sony device, and most of the usual polish that goes into Sonys flagships. The software is Sonys usual, mostly a stock take on Android 7.0 (Nougat), with its own apps bundled in for extra features, like PlayStation compatibility. On the camera front, you get Sonys 23-megapixel unit on the back, with an 8-megapixel selfie snapper up front. The looks and cameras may say flagship, but the specs beyond that are nothing to write home about, though quite serviceable. You get a fairly powerful MediaTek Helio P20 alongside 3GB of RAM, with 32GB of internal storage. A microSD card can be used here, which can boost storage up to 256GB. The 5-inch screen is a 1,280 x 720 affair, so while it may be plenty sharp in daily usage, dont expect outstanding performance in viewing highly detailed media or using it for VR. Thanks to the power-efficient processor and low screen resolution, however, the 2,300 mAh non-removable battery should give fairly good runtime.

Unlike most Sony devices, this one wont take too well to water exposure, and the side-mounted power button does not house a fingerprint sensor. Sonys normal audio chops are in full effect here, though, so audiophiles and even casual music lovers may want to give this phone a hard look. The Sony Xperia XA1 also comes packaged with Sony-branded earphones. While not the best quality out there, they should easily do the job.
A Carphone Warehouse system has been spotted listing a Vodafone-bound HTC U 11 earlier today, which is another clue that points to an imminent release of the highly anticipated handset from the Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer. However, no price accompanied the listing, but it should be in line with other high end Android-powered smartphones. The HTC U 11 listing also strengthens the case for the devices official name, as opposed to carrying code names like HTC Ocean or HTC U. After all, HTC is all set to unveil the HTC U 11 officially in less than a weeks time on May 16th. Vodafones recent tweet of the HTC U 11s arrival on the same date also lends additional credibility to the device name.

The HTC U 11 is expected to bring a slew of new features to the table that will help it be competitive in the flagship smartphone market. The Edge Sensors have been confirmed as a feature, allowing users to gain access to select functions of the HTC U 11 through a simple squeeze of the handsets sides, right where the sensors are placed. It will likely involve a moderate learning curve to make use of the Edge Sensor correctly and efficiently, since the amount of pressure in the squeeze as well as length of time will influence the function of the Edge Sensor. With the tagline Squeeze for the Brilliant U being put forward by HTC in its marketing material, mastering the Edge Sensor is expected to increase efficiency when using the device. As to whether the Edge Sensor will be praised as an innovation in user-device interaction or perceived as a short lived gimmick, largely depends on the user base when it arrives.

Other rumored specifications of the HTC U 11 include a 5.5-inch WQHD display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor paired to an Adreno 540 GPU underneath the hood, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of internal memory, a 16-megapixel front-facing camera, a 12-megapixel shooter at the back, a 3,000 mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0 support, and Android 7.1.1 Nougat that has been layered with HTCs latest Sense Home UI. The fingerprint sensor is expected to be integrated within the physical home button in front, while an IP57 rating against dust and water should help keep it abreast with its rival flagship smartphones.
Nebraska's farmers and cattlemen cheered a new China-U.S. trade deal announced Friday that will help sate the growing Chinese appetite for beef.

Jordan Dux, Nebraska Farm Bureau's director of National Affairs, saw the move as a sign Trump is paying attention to agriculture's calls for expanding world markets and a positive turnabout in what has been a rocky relationship between the president and agriculture when it comes to issues of trade.

"This administration has certainly made the agricultural community fairly nervous when it comes to its positions on trade," Dux said.

"This is a little bit of a change and is something that calms our community down because it is clear the administration is looking to find markets and work out some of these issues that have been a problem for a long time."

In addition to ending the beef ban China imposed in 2003 over mad cow disease by July 16, the trade deal also would allow more natural gas imports to fuel China's expanding economy and allow China to send cooked poultry to the U.S. once the two sides resolve "outstanding issues"  mostly related to concerns over safety and hygiene.

The agreement appears a step toward easing discord between the world's two largest economies, but it steers clear of bigger issues that would have more substantial impact on the U.S. trade deficit. Tensions have been stoked by President Donald Trump's aggressive rhetoric against Chinese exports and barriers to U.S. goods and investment.

It also suggests still wider room for compromise. The last item of 10 listed in a joint statement says a U.S. delegation will attend an international gathering in Beijing, beginning Sunday, that will showcase a plan by President Xi Jinping to invest in vast networks of ports, railways and roads in a bid to expand China's trade with Asia, Africa and Europe..

The market for beef in China is estimated to be worth $2.6 billion, a potential goldmine for Nebraska, the nation's top state for cattle on feed with $1.126 billion in beef exports last year alone. Total global beef exports from the U.S. totaled $6.6 billion in 2016, according to the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

"The Asian markets love a grain-finished product, which is what we do in Nebraska,"Dux said.

"You've got more cattle coming into feedlots to meet that demand, they have to eat the corn product we have. ... It will help the corn farmers and it will help the communities they live in and all the businesses that exist in those areas."

China's 1.37 billion residents are projected to eat roughly 17.6 billion pounds of the meat this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service. That's up more than 40 percent in the past five years.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, welcomed the trade announcement. Ricketts has long had his eye on China, visiting in both 2015 and 2016 in hopes of smoothing the way for Nebraska beef.

We have been anticipating this announcement and have already been working to build key partnerships in China for Nebraska, Nebraska Department of Agriculture Director Greg Ibach said in a statement. We will be reaching out to our states beef community to ensure that we continue to position Nebraska to play a key role in the Chinese market.

On a more symbolic level, the deal reflects the positive tone of relations between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Trump since their first face-to-face meeting last month in the U.S.

The new deal does not touch on issues such as Chinese exports of steel and aluminum that are a growing source of discontent over trade.

America's trade deficit in goods and services with China totaled $310 billion last year, by far the largest imbalance with any country. The deficit with China represented about 60 percent of last year's total deficit of $500.6 billion.

For exports of gas, the U.S. will now treat China "no less favorably" than other countries for which is does not have a free trade agreement, according to a joint statement released by the sides.

Lack of infrastructure along U.S. coastlines to allow for overseas gas shipments means it could take time for economic benefits to U.S. energy companies to materialize, said Jake Parker, vice president of the U.S.-China Trade Council.
Federal appellate judges focused their questions this week on an attorney for the state, asking why Nebraska is pushing to put a 15-year-old boy on the state's public sex offender registry rather than use "good old police discretion."

Judge William Jay Riley of Omaha said making the boy's name public seems contrary to policies in Nebraska, where the boy lives now, and Minnesota, where he's from.

Nebraska's registry excludes juveniles unless they were prosecuted criminally in adult court. Minnesota's juvenile registry isn't public.

"I just wonder ... why the state of Nebraska is pushing this and just not looking the other way. Good old police discretion," Eighth Circuit Judge William Jay Riley of Omaha asked in oral arguments Wednesday.

Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Ryan Post conceded that if the boy had done in Nebraska exactly what he did in Minnesota, he wouldn't have been required to register as a sex offender.

But, the way the Nebraska law is written, all sex offenders who move here must register, regardless of age.

Post said the State Patrol is just trying to apply the plain language of the law as written.

"We don't believe we can just unilaterally disregard that provision that requires registration in this instance," he told Judges Riley, C. Arlen Beam of Lincoln, and Bobby Shepherd of Arkansas.

Post said when state lawmakers were crafting the bill the State Patrol superintendent told them this was going to happen.

"They actually left it in the bill and passed it," he said.

Attorney Joshua Weir, who represents the boy and his family, pointed out that lawmakers had an opportunity for thousands of dollars in federal funding to create a juvenile registry. And they rejected it.

"Minnesota and Nebraska have both chosen to treat juvenile delinquents different (than adults)," he said.

The boy at issue was 11 when he was adjudicated for criminal sexual conduct in juvenile court in Minnesota. A judge there ordered him to complete probation, counseling and community service, and his name went on a part of that state's predatory offender list that is visible only to police.

When he moved to Nebraska to live with relatives he registered with the State Patrol, which determined he should be on the public registry, according to state law.

Weir sued before that happened.

Last year, Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf banned the state from adding him to the registry, writing in his order that it made no sense to believe Nebraska statutes were intended to be more punitive to juveniles adjudicated elsewhere than those that go through the system here.

The state appealed.

On Wednesday, Riley said he was troubled by the same thing that troubled Kopf: that to put the boy on the registry is contrary to both states' policies.

Post told the judges the reason the state's asking for Kopf's order to be reversed is "we're not just talking about one juvenile."

While this case is about a specific boy, there are about 175 juveniles on the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry, he said. They aren't all in the same situation as A.W., the boy in this case, Post said. But there are about 30 who are.

Weir said Friday it just doesn't make sense for the state to use a catch-all provision to add juveniles to the registry who wouldn't be on it if they did the same thing here, adding that it would be an easy fix for lawmakers.

The three-judge panel took the case under advisement.
STEPANAKERT, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Azerbaijani troops violated the Artsakh ceasefire over 90 times in the past 24 hours, firing more than 1750 shots from various caliber firearms at Artsakhs forces.

The defense ministry of Artsakh told ARMENPRESS the Azerbaijani forces also fired 60mm and 82mm (22 shells) mortars and anti-tank, automatic grenade launchers (12 shells) in the southern and northern sections of the line of contact.

The Defense Army of Artsakh took countermeasures and continued monitoring the borders.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Hosts of Armcomedy, an Armenian comedy show, Narek Margaryan and Sergey Sargsyan, made an appearance on the American late-night talk show Conan.

The Armenian showmen helped Conan OBrien, who visited Armenia previously, to learn a few new phrases and expressions in Armenian. The talk-show turned hilariously funny as Conan was trying to learn Armenian idioms like May I go blind instead of you and May I die for your height  which are endearing expressions translated literally.

Conan OBrien also learned the two other popular expressions  stop ironing my head, and I die on your body.

Conan said this kind of expressions sound rather odd, while Sergey recommended him to say them correctly.

A part of the interview is available online, while the other part will be released later.

Armcomedy hosted Conan OBrien in Armenia during his 2015 trip to Armenia.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. President Serzh Sargsyan on May 12 hosted Archbishop Marek Solczynski, Apostolic Nuncio of the Holy See to Armenia (residence in Tbilisi) on the occasion of completion of his diplomatic mission, press service of the Presidents Office told Armenpress.

The Armenian President thanked Marek Solczynski for his work of the last 5 years, for the efforts and great personal contribution on strengthening the relations between Armenia and the Holy See.

The sides agreed that the last 5 years gave new impetus to Armenia-Vatican inter-state relations, strengthening the high level political dialogue and the existing mutual understanding. According to the President, the historical events happened in this period, such as the establishment of Armenias Embassy in Vatican, the high level mutual visits, including the visit of Pope Francis to Armenia, Visit to first Christian nation, the ecumenical mass delivered by Pope for the memory of the Armenian Genocide victims, enriched the inter-state agenda with new content and opened additional opportunities for further deepening the cooperation.

Serzh Sargsyan expressed hope Archbishop Marek Solczynski will remember Armenia during his future missions and will remain good friend of Armenia and its people.

In his turn Archbishop Marek Solczynski thanked President Sargsyan for the assistance shown during his entire activity and said he is grateful that he had a chance to take part in historical events aimed at strengthening and deepening the bilateral ties.
LegalVision has opened an office in Brisbane, tapping an experienced commercial lawyer to lead the office as the newest practice leader of the firm.Helen Kay, who has more than 15 years experience working in corporate and commercial law, was most recently head of corporate and commercial at Perth boutique firm Panetta McGrath Lawyers. Her career includes stints as senior solicitor at Freehills and Allens Arthur Robinson. She also ran her own legal practice in Perth.The opening of the new office is a response to the growing needs of its clients, particularly because Queenslands start-up and SME sectors are thriving, the firm said. It bolsters the firms east coast footprint and comes after the opening of a Melbourne office early last year.Last August, LegalVision secured $4.2m in capital after a Series B financing round led by Gilbert + Tobin.Queensland is one of our most important markets so expansion was a natural fit. The state is exploding with start-ups and SMEs, and many of our enterprise clients are located in Brisbane. In particular, the citys $5m investment into innovation and the Brisbane 2022 New World City Action Plan brings exciting opportunity for collaboration and partnerships, said Lachlan McKnight, LegalVision CEO.The NewLaw firm, which serves clients across Australia through its technology-driven model, said that the physical presence in Brisbane is an important move to meet client demand. LegalVision now has offices in the capital cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.LegalVision originally started as an online documents business before pivoting to become a legal marketplace. About two and a half years ago, the firm added an incorporated legal practice to the business. The NewLaw firm now has more than 80 lawyers, developers, and strategy and marketing professionals.
The Darth Vader-themed Rennsport Neunelfer was gifted with a set of Turbofan wheels, while the rear-engined delight was also brought extremely close to the surface underneath it (we're talking about pixels here). Khyzyl Saleem , the young British artists behind this render, also dropped a brief description of his work: "Having fun modeling my own Turbofan wheel designs, can't wait to experiment more,"Unlike the Star Wars anti-hero, this Porscha can breath rather well. Factory intakes aside, the turbofan wheels were born for the purpose of sucking air from under the car and from inside the wheel well. As such, this 1970s innovation brought benefits in terms of both downforce and brake cooling.The Turbofan talk above means we have to remind you what happens when such retro-inspired rollers land on a 991 in the real world.And to (partially) stick with the GT3 RS theme, we'll bring the 911 GT Turbo back under the spotlights.We met the crossbreed back in November, at the Essen Motor Show, being amazed by the Turbo S trying to pass as a GT3 RS. Put together by German tuner JP Performance, the GT Turbo also throws in a host of other iconic Porscha elements, such as the said Turbofan wheels (not functional elements, but graphic ones) or the Apple Computer "tattoos" found on its white body. And you can check out this after-market-tastic Neunelfer in the image gallery to your right.P.S.: Given the timing of the rendering, it's impossible to discuss the GT3 RS without thinking of the upcoming 991.2 incarnation of the track tool. And if the 2018 GT3 has managed to lap the Nurburgring in 7:12.7, we can't wait to get our hands on the stopwatch number of the 2018 Porsche 911 GT3 RS
Unfortunately for them, importing their cars from the USA or applying the American style of tuning on German soil has not worked out so well for some service persons. Apparently, the local police force has been applying fines to those who drove cars that had modifications that are not allowed by German law.While it is easy to understand the frustration of someone who invests over $20,000 in a car that he or she bought for $30,000, but keeps getting fines from police officers, you must also look at the law enforcements point of view.A story in Stars and Stripes magazine told the tale of American service personnel stationed at the base that is near the town of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Several hundred people from the base frequently gather in public places to enjoy their hobby and passion for cars.It all seems like something normal, like a Cars And Coffee meet, but all of those vehicles are modified, which attracts the attention of local law enforcement. Police officers have fined the Americans for mods that were not legal in the country, which range from tinting tail lights red or dark with paint, loud exhausts, and tinted windows.German legislation is known for its strict restrictions on modifications for a vehicle, and earning the TUV-approved badge for aftermarket components is a reason of pride for many new companies in the field.The clash between law enforcement and American service personnel happens because the latter group has not taken the time to adapt their cars to the local legislation.Some of them even fit stock components to pass the countrys strict technical inspection, and then turn back to the modified parts for day-to-day driving. You can imagine that the police officers have caught up with this, which lead to a long article in the magazine about the situation.Evidently, some misunderstandings have slipped through, which include the driver of a Dodge , presumably a one of the SRT variety, who has been pulled over several times to explain the vents in his hood. One each of the three occasions, the soldier had to show stock images of the car on his smartphone to prove that it was a stock vehicle, thus avoiding a ticket.
SUV

You know, the 928 revival, a model that got the rumor mill into a frenzy last year. In fact, 2016 even brought us a few prototype sightings showcasing what appeared to be a Panamera with a shorter wheelbase (you can check out a series of spyshots in the gallery to your right).Truth be told, we never expected the German to removed the rear doors of the Panny and call it a day - that's simply not the way to return to the Grand Tourer market.Instead, we saw the test cars as potential mules for an upcoming front-engined large coupe. And given the MSB platform underneath the second generation Panamera, which will also underpin the next Bentley Continental GT, the tech premises for the model are there.Until we get more clues on the new-age 928 matter, we've brought along a rendering that might just quench our thirst for long-distance trips with a Porsche crest on the nose of the car.Delivered by pixel wielder Yasid Oozeear , the render brings more visual changes (compared to the Panamera) that one might've expected, while somehow dropping a hint of Mission E styling.And while we're talking Porsche spy material, we'll remind you of all the prototypes that are currently out there, testing.For the 2018 model year, we expect Porsche to deliver the facelifted GT3 RS , which, given the 7:12.7 time of the new GT3, will be nothing short of a Nurburgring animal. Speaking of which, the GT2 badge is also ready to be taken out of the oven.By the end of the year, we should also get to meet the third incarnation of the Cayenne . Following the footsteps of the new Panamera, thehas already been confirmed to receive a 680 hp Turbo S E-Hybrid range-topper.When it comes to the Porsche Macan mid-cycle revamp and the next Cayman GT4 , we're not sure whether 2018 or 2019 is the correct MY label.Looking to what expects us for the 2019MY and beyond, we find the Cayenne Coupe and, of course, the next-generation Neunelfer Oh, and let's not forget the Mission E test car . After all, Porsche doesn't miss any occasion to talk about its partially electric future...
Despite the wall-to-wall media coverage, most Americans  according to Facebook interactions  cared less about James Comey being fired than other big moments so far in the Trump administration. SocialFlow evaluated the Facebook reach of articles on major flashpoints by more than 300 news organizations within a few days of the event. Here's what they found:

Data: SocialFlow; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios
President Trump's lawyers have released a letter stating that the last decade of his tax returns do not include "any income of any type from Russian sources," per the AP. The White House said the letter was in response to a request from Sen. Lindsey Graham regarding Trump's potential income from Russia.

Some exceptions: The letter notes that Trump received income from holding the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow as well as $95 million from a property sale to a Russian billionaire in 2008.

Blind trust: Without a release of Trump's returns, it's impossible to know with certainty if Trump's lawyers are presenting an accurate representation of his finances.
NHS hospitals across England were hit by a major cyber attack Friday that shut down staff computers and forced medics to send ambulances elsewhere, per the U.K. Evening Standard. Doctors were unable to access patient records, and some hospitals even warned patients to stay at home.

The attack: IT systems across the country were all hit with messages demanding ransom money in exchange for access to the computers. One NHS IT worker told The Guardian, "This is the largest outage of this nature I've seen in the six years I've been employed with the NHS."

What they know so far: NHS' digital branch confirmed to the Standard that 16 NHS organizations were affected; but they don't believe the attack was specifically aimed at the NHS, as it also hit a series of other sectors. So far there has been no evidence that any patient data was compromised.

Update: Per AP, UK Prime Minister Theresa May says the hospital cyber attack was part of a wider international attack.
12 May 2017 14:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Giles Merritt

The writing is on the wall: After six decades, Frances Fifth Republic looks set to give way to a sixth. Sooner or later, such an upheaval could become the chief outcome of Emmanuel Macrons election victory.

The arrival of a centrist, pro-Europe technocrat in Frances powerful presidency is being widely hailed as auguring a turnaround in the European Unions fortunes. In fact, it may turn out to be anything but, with serious consequences for France itself and for hopes of a revival of the EUs popularity.

Even while the votes were being counted and the scale of Macrons win was becoming clear, the noisy election night debates between Frances warring politicians pointed to an increasingly uncertain future. Macrons presidency will rely on the degree of consensus within the National Assembly, and that has been in short supply in recent years.

Macron has no clearly defined political constituency of his own, and unless he can create one in the space of a single month, his five years in the Elysee Palace will be hostage to struggles among the left, right, and extreme right. Macrons resounding defeat of the National Fronts Marine Le Pen has led to many an epitaph for Frances major political parties. But next months parliamentary election will put this to the test, and the institution of the presidency itself may well be the main loser.

Macrons movement, La Republique En Marche!, is so new that it has no parliamentary seats at all, and it probably lacks the political machinery needed to win many. So far, La Republique En Marche! has mobilized anti-Le Pen votes just as much as it has won pro-Macron ones.

Yet the notion has taken root that Macrons win shows a fundamental shift in French politics. The compelling legend is that within the space of a year, La Republique En Marche!, headed by a virtually unknown figure, has humiliated established leaders and swept to power on a wave of popular enthusiasm for a political outsider.

There is some truth in this, but not much. While it is true that presidential elections in an age of social media and infotainment are as much about personalities as they are about party loyalties, perhaps more so, parliamentary elections are much less likely to follow this template.

The presidential candidates of the traditional center-left Socialist Party and the center-right Republicans were indeed trounced by Macron, but that doesnt necessarily mean the grassroots appeal of either party has suddenly evaporated. The Socialists are certain to lose their substantial parliamentary majority  280 of the National Assemblys 577 seats  next month, and the Republicans may well lose some of their 194 seats. But both parties have the muscular local political machinery needed to win parliamentary seats. They may be down following their presidential candidates defeat in the first round of the presidential election, but they most definitely are not out.

How many seats either will have after the mid-June parliamentary elections is anyones guess. Benoit Hamon, the Socialists hapless presidential candidate, crashed out of the first round with just over 6% of the vote. The Republicans Francois Fillon, at one point the frontrunner before being brought down by scandal, did better, with about 20%.

The message being emphasized by Macrons supporters is that, historically, incoming presidents have been able to convert their electoral support into parliamentary seats. That, of course, is because all were candidates of the left or the right.

It remains to be seen whether Macron can cobble together a cross-party parliamentary coalition and avoid cohabitation with a cabinet that answers to a hostile majority. It seems unlikely that the Socialists and Republicans could be coaxed into joining forces, and if Macron has to rely on a left-wing coalition of some sort, the outlook for the Fifth Republic as an institution will be in doubt.

The Fifth Republic was introduced by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 to end the fragmentation and chaos of the post-World War II Fourth Republic, which over 12 years produced 24 governments and 16 prime ministers. The Fifth Republic has, however, since come to be seen by many as enshrining an unsatisfactory concentration of powers.

Politicians on the left have long urged moving to a Sixth Republic, a goal that topped the manifestos of both Hamon and the far-left presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon. Ten years ago, the unsuccessful Socialist presidential candidate Segolene Royal backed the idea, and so, too, had Francois Mitterrand in the early 1980s, though he dropped it on becoming president, and ruled in as haughty a manner as de Gaulle.

Institutional reform is still very much in the air. Both Macron and Le Pen pledged themselves to a radical streamlining of the bloated National Assembly. Le Pen said she wanted to pare the parliament to 300 seats and reduce the number of Senate seats from 348 to 200. Macron has committed to a similar culling.

Frances new president has lost no time in acknowledging voters dissatisfaction and the continuing lure of populism. But now, as Macron attempts to translate his victory into a viable government, the fates of the National Assembly, the Senate, and the Fifth Republic itself may well be at stake. And unless he consolidates power quickly and durably, Europe, which is running out of time, will have to wait.

Copyright: Project Syndicate: Macron and a Sixth Republic

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A state lawmaker says there's no "malice" intended in his plan to study a possible merger of Omaha's two University of Nebraska campuses.

Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston proposed the study this week without consulting or notifying university President Hank Bounds or members of the NU Board of Regents.

The move prompted Bounds to email faculty, staff and students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and University of Nebraska Medical Center on Thursday to inform them the study wasn't brought at the university's request.

"I didn't intend to stir the beehive quite as much as I guess I have," Riepe said Friday. "This is not intended to be a hostile thing."

The proposal was prompted by Bounds' decision last month to put Dr. Jeff Gold in charge of both Omaha campuses, Riepe said. Gold, chancellor at UNMC since 2014, is expected to lead UNO as its interim chancellor for the next two years.

This year's budget talks have nothing to do with it, Riepe said, although merging the campuses would almost certainly provide cost savings.

Lawmakers struggled with a billion-dollar budget shortfall this year, and the two-year budget they adopted this week includes about $13 million in cuts for the university system. Gov. Pete Ricketts could make additional cuts in the coming days through line-item vetoes.

Riepe, a retired hospital administrator who earned his undergraduate degree at UNO, said he's considered the possibility of a merger for "years and years" since attending graduate school at the University of Iowa, where the medical school and other programs share the same campus.

Any decision on merging the two NU campuses should ultimately be made by the Board of Regents, Riepe said.

"Our intent is to try to simply look at this thing."

Bounds wrote in his email that Gold's appointment "opens exciting opportunities for student and faculty collaborations, that we think can find additional fiscal efficiencies ... (and) while it makes sense for our Omaha-based campuses to work more closely together, UNO and UNMC also each have distinct and important missions to serve our state."

The two cosponsors of Riepe's proposed study, Sens. Steve Erdman of Bayard and Mike Groene of North Platte, have been critical of university spending.

Riepe, chairman of the Legislature's Health and Human Services Committee, said he invited Groene to sign on to the proposal because Groene is Education Committee chairman. However, Riepe said his own office will probably handle the study because he has "good staff ... (and) my legal counsel is very eager to engage in a number of studies."

Erdman added his name to the study without Riepe's knowledge, Riepe said: "I don't know that we have the same interests."

Both UNO and UNMC were founded as private colleges. UNMC became part of the University of Nebraska in 1902. UNO spent several decades as a municipal university before joining the NU system in 1968.

Legislative studies are often informal and conducted by individual staff at the Capitol. A public hearing is not required, and Riepe said he was unsure if he would seek one for this study.

Any official proposed merger or law changes to force a merger would need to be introduced separately and discussed in a public hearing.

Riepe said his staff had to submit the study resolution before a Tuesday deadline or he would have called NU leaders as a courtesy: "We were under a bit of pressure to get going."
12 May 2017 12:53 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

The International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA) plans to complete the transfer to the state its distressed assets that remained on the balance sheet of the bank, restructure liabilities and determine the strategy of the activities of affiliated banks.

The plan on the IBA restructuring was coordinated with the Financial Market Supervision Body of Azerbaijan.

The IBA affiliated banks operate in Russia since 2002 and in Georgia since 2007. In the framework of voluntary restructuring of obligations, a certain part of the foreign currency debt, attracted from state and foreign creditors, will be voluntarily transferred to the state.

In July 2015, President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on the measures for rehabilitation related to the preparations for privatizing the state-owned shares of the IBA.

The shortcomings in the management, investment and loan policy of the IBA, as well as financing of less efficient, risky investment projects worsened the Bank's financial state, caused increase in the share of distressed assets and reduced its liquidity.

The IBA has been working closely with the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Market Supervision Body (FMSB) and the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) to address issues relating to IBAs financial position and the sufficiency of its regulatory capital in accordance with the objectives of the Presidential Decree.

The FMSB states that the restructuring plan covers only certain obligations to foreign creditors and the state and does not cover all other obligations of the IBA. To fulfill these obligations, the bank has enough free funds.

The restructuring plan contemplates a restructuring process to be effected through an exchange of IBAs senior and junior foreign currency obligations for direct sovereign obligations of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Pending the implementation of the planned restructuring process, and to ensure equal treatment of all affected creditors, IBA has suspended payments of principal and interest with respect to all obligations to be included in the operation (other than interest under trade finance facilities).

The process will lead to a meeting of all creditors affected by the restructuring plan. If approved by two-thirds of the affected creditors by value the plan will be accepted and become binding on all of them.

Before the transfer of debts to the government is completed, the implementation of foreign creditors' foreign currency liabilities (with the exception of payment of interest on transactions for trade financing) is suspended.

The bank has been operating since 1992 and is one of the country's two state banks.

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12 May 2017 17:19 (UTC+04:00)

By Sara Israfilbayova

Milli Majlis [Parliament] of Azerbaijan has launched discussions on the draft law On unemployment insurance.

Under the bill, which was considered at a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Labor and Social Policy on May 12, the main principles of unemployment insurance will be obligatoriness, legal equality of unemployment insurance subjects, differentiation of insurance payments depending on the length of insurance and duration of unemployment.

The insurance premium will be equal to 1 percent of the amount of the insured's salary, of which half will be paid by the employer and the other half by the employee, in accordance with the draft law. This is the lowest figure in the world, as in some countries the contribution is up to 3-5 percent of wages.

Monthly contributions must be paid by the insured at the same time as monthly wages paid, but not later than the 15th day of the next month.

The amount of payments will be differentiated depending on the length of service and time spent without work. If the insured's work experience is more than 10 years, the payment will be equal to 65 percent of the salary that he received during the last 12 months, if the experience is less than 3 years, the insurance payment will be minimal.

The payment is scheduled for 6 months. If during this time the insured has not found work, then the payments are extended for 3 months, and the amount of payment is reduced every month to the minimum level.

More than 26,700 people got new jobs in the first quarter of 2017. Unemployment rate in Azerbaijan is 5 percent, while the poverty level equals to 5.3 percent.

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12 May 2017 18:22 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Azerbaijan Trade House will be opened in Minsk, Belarus on May 26.

The Trade House is created to support the promotion of Azerbaijani goods under the Made in Azerbaijan brand in Belarus, and engage in marketing research, participation in exhibitions and other activities related to the promotion of Azerbaijani goods.

The Minsk City Executive Committee registered the Trade House on February 21. The entity in Belarus became the first Trade House established as part of the state policy to encourage export of Azerbaijani production.

The ceremony will be held as part of the visit of a delegation led by Economy Minister of Azerbaijan Shahin Mustafayev to Belarus.

For now, the trade house was established in the capital city, but Azerbaijan intends to set up sales outlets throughout Belarus.

In late 2016, with a view to bring the economy to a new level Azerbaijan started promoting the Made in Azerbaijan brand in foreign markets and developed a number of promotional mechanisms.

The country seeks to open trade houses in foreign countries to facilitate the export process, promote an export of competitive Azerbaijani production and enable the countries to expand trade operations.

Analogous houses are also expected to be opened in Ukraine, United Arab Emirates and China.

Moreover, the Economy Ministry will appoint trade representatives in embassies and consulates abroad to facilitate business ties and increase the effectiveness of export promotion measures.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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12 May 2017 17:31 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazari

Azerbaijan and China will sign an agreement that will simplify export of Azerbaijani goods to this huge market through eliminating obstacles related to standardization.

Chairman of Azerbaijans Standardization, Metrology and Patents Committee Ramiz Hasanov, talking to reporters on May 11, said that a document on recognition of standards will be signed with the relevant Chinese agency.

The deal is planned to be signed during Azerbaijani delegations visit to China on May 13. The document is expected to contribute to export of Azerbaijani goods to China.

The Chinese market is new for Azerbaijan. The national production entered the Chinese market just about a year ago, and experts say that the dynamics is good enough.

Last year, the country sent trade missions to China (Hong Kong and Guangzhou), where certain agreements had been reached.

The country reached an agreement on the wine supply to China and delivered the first batch of supplies earlier this year. Under the deal, Azerbaijan will supply some 500,000 bottles of wine to the world's second-largest economy.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



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12 May 2017 10:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

The State Philharmonic Hall will host a concert of People's Artist of Azerbaijan Lale Mammadova on May 25.

The project is implemented by Mdniyyt TV channel, Azerbaijan radio channel and the State Philharmonic Hall with support of Azerbaijan's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Trend Life reported.

Accompanied by the symphonic orchestra of Azerbaijan State Televisionnamed after Niyazi, Lale Mammadova will perform retro-compositions of Azerbaijani classics. The orchestra will be conducted by Honored Art Worker, artistic director Nazim Hajialibeyov.

Tickets are available at all ticket offices of the city website: http://iticket.az/

Media partners of the event are Trend.az, Day.az, Milli.az, Azernews.az

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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12 May 2017 15:18 (UTC+04:00)

By Laman Ismayilova

Tasting of Hungarian dishes and drinks will take place in Baku.

The event will be held in the Hungarian Embassy on May 18, Report. az informed.

During the event, guests will be invited to taste Hungarian national dishes, beverages and other Hungarian food products of premium class.

In March, Baku hosted Days of Hungary that was aimed at familiarizing Azerbaijanis with the country, its history and traditions.

The Days, organized by the Hungarian Embassy in Baku featured a wide range of events, including exhibition, concert, fashion show and much more.

Hungary recognized Azerbaijan's independence in 1991, and diplomatic relations between the two countries were established in April 1992.

The two countries enjoy a huge capacity for the development of trade and economic cooperation. Hungary is also a good platform for Azerbaijani investors.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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12 May 2017 10:55 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Jordan supports Azerbaijan's fair position in settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and resolution of the conflict only on the principles of territorial integrity and inviolability of borders of Azerbaijan, said Prime Minister Artur Rasizade on May 11.

He was addressing a meeting with a delegation headed by Speaker of the House of Representatives of the parliament of Jordan Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh.

Rasizade noted that Azerbaijan and Jordan cooperate in tourism, trade, culture, investment and other spheres.

Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh, in his turn, noted that Jordan attaches great importance to the relations with Azerbaijan and shows particular interest to cooperation with this most developed country in the region.

Jordan has always supported Azerbaijans just stance over settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In 2013, the Jordanian Senate adopted a resolution on the Armenia-committed Khojaly genocide. The document condemned aggression against the Azerbaijani Muslim nation, gross violation of human rights, and called on Armenia to fulfill resolutions of the UN Security Council demanding unconditional withdrawal of all its forces from the occupied lands of Azerbaijan.

The conflict between 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 regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia still controls fifth part of Azerbaijan's territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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12 May 2017 12:02 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh flared up in April 2016, and both sides unwillingness to compromise and mounting domestic pressures suggest that the potential for large-scale hostilities will remain in 2017, stated Daniel Coats, the Director of U.S. National Intelligence.

Azerbaijan will continue to try to balance relations with Russia, Iran, and the West, reads Coatss report entitled Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Earlier, the writer and analyst on the Caucasus, Russia and the Black Sea region and a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Thomas De Waal noted that 2016 was a very dangerous year for settlement of the Karabakh problem and this year can be more dangerous in terms of engaging new armaments.

The expert also noted that is necessary to review the agreements reached after the April fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in 2016 in order to prevent resumption of the conflict.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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12 May 2017 12:40 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit the South Caucasus region in June or early July, said Richard Hoagland, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

He made the remarks on May 12 in Washington at the conference entitled The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict.

The United States, along with Russia and France, is a co-chair country of the Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Last time the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group visited the region in March 2017 to get acquainted with the real situation on the ground. The co-chairs met with the presidents and foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia and also visited territories around Nagorno-Karabakh.

While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict for over two decades, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims to Azerbaijan. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the occupied lands of Azerbaijan, but they have not been enforced to this day.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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12 May 2017 15:10 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have common interests to help Azerbaijan and Armenia reach a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Richard Hoagland, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

He made the remarks on May 12 in Washington at the conference entitled The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict.

There are documents already on the table and the challenge is to help the sides find political will to take a step forward to deliver the peace and stability that the populations deserve, Hoagland said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict 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 regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia still controls fifth part of Azerbaijan's territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

The diplomat noted that generations of young people have grown up in Armenia and Azerbaijan and they have no first hand contact with the other side.

We focus on the principles and commitment that pertain to non-use or threat of force, territorial integrity and equal rights and self-determination of peoples, Hoagland said, adding that the Minsk Group co-chairs constantly work to bring the sides of the conflict together and develop new approaches for the peace process.

We havent given up, no one has given up, the diplomat said, adding that everyone is still looking for that final peace.

We would like to see the [Azerbaijani, Armenian] presidents get together again, Hoagland said.He added that when such top level negotiations commence, the parties should reconfirm how they will implement the confidence building measures agreed about in 2016 at meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg.

Following the meeting in St. Petersburg in June 2016, the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents confirmed in a joint statement the agreements reached during the previous Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Vienna. These agreements are aimed at stabilizing the situation in the conflict zone and the creation of an atmosphere conducive to advancing the peace process.

"Once we get into such peaceful negotiations, there is a much broader range of practical issues that we can put on the table to begin to benefit all sides immediately, including economic and commercial issues," the diplomat noted.

Hoagland also said the U.S. remains ready to help in any way it can, but it is up to the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan to take the steps necessary for the lasting peace.

"They should consider measures, even unilateral ones, that will demonstrate their strong commitment to making progress, reducing tensions and improving the atmosphere for negotiations, and prepare their populations for peace not war," Hoagland said, adding that he continues to be optimistic.

The United States, along with Russia and France, is a co-chair country of the Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In his remarks at the conference in Washington Hoagland informed that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit the South Caucasus region in June or early July.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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12 May 2017 12:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Rashid Shirinov

Today, Azerbaijan manufactures 1,200 types of defense-related products, said Yavar Jamalov, the Minister of Defense Industry.

Jamalov, talking to APA, noted that since the establishment of the Defense Industry Ministry 12 years ago, it began production of arms and ammunition that meet modern international standards.

Apart from the countrys Defense Ministry, Internal Troops, Border Troops, and other bodies, we have begun to export arms to approximately 10 countries around the world, Jamalov said, adding that the total amount of the contracts signed so far reaches nearly $101 million.

Currently, Jamalov heads the Azerbaijani delegation in Istanbul at the IDEF 2017, 13th International Defense Industry Fair. A total of 260 kinds of local defense production, designed and produced by enterprises of the Defense Industry Ministry, are being presented at the exhibition.

The main essence of our participation in international exhibitions is to increase our export opportunities. We have already participated in tenders in Turkey. The tender that we won recently is worth approximately $9 million, Jamalov noted.

The minister added that the Defense Industry Ministry is trying to take part in tenders not only in Turkey but also in other countries. This allows us to increase our export opportunities. Were working on the issue of exports.

Jamalov also noted that the ministry is exporting weapons to some American, African and European companies.

Speaking of the production of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), Jamalov said that the ministry has already achieved good results in this area.

Along with reconnaissance UAVs, we have started the production of next-generation UAVs capable of destroying the enemys military equipment and manpower, the minister said. We are currently working on another project and will soon begin the production of drones with cumulative warhead, which will allow us to conduct reconnaissance flights and destroy an enemys shelter, equipment and manpower at any time.

Jamalov also said that the Azerbaijani Army has already put into service the Zarba unmanned aerial vehicles.

Our first UAVs are capable of conducting reconnaissance flights and destroying the enemys manpower and light military vehicles. We will launch the production of drones with cumulative warhead within three or four months, the minister noted.

Jamalov also spoke about the cooperation between Azerbaijan and Turkey in the acquisition of weapons: Since 2009, we have been jointly manufacturing five types of pistols. We also signed a protocol with ASELSANCompany for joint manufacture of night vision scopes.

Moreover, the Defense Industry Ministry produces automatic rifles together with Turkeys Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation, and has already agreed on implementation of four projects with ASELSAN.

We have purchased raw materials and finished products from Turkeys relevant companies. This is indicative of high-level relations between the two fraternal countries, Jamalov said.

Azerbaijan leaves behind many CIS and regional countries to take its place among the first 60 strongest militaries of the world, according to the U.S.-based Global Firepower survey center.

The country, which is in war with neighboring Armenia over the latter's groundless territorial claims during more than 20 years, keeps in focus the armament. Azerbaijan creates its own armament and works closely with leading companies and firms in various fields of military industry.

The country's Defense Industry Ministry has increased the volume of defense industry products in 2016 by 1.6 times compared to 2015, while the product assortment rose by 1.8 times. Currently, twenty-eight military factories are operating within the Defense Industry Ministry.

---

Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
12 May 2017 09:59 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

The Heydar Aliyev Foundation has arranged another meeting with residents of a nursing home for the war and labor disabled in Bilgah.

Vice-President of the Heydar Aliyev Foundation Leyla Aliyeva attended the meeting. Leyla Aliyeva met with residents of the nursing home and spoke with them.

The residents were presented with gifts by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation.

Starting its activity since 2004, the Heydar Aliyev Foundation has been actively participating in building a new society and contributing to the social and economic development of Azerbaijan, by implementing various projects in spheres such as education, public health, culture, sports, science and technology, environment, and social and other spheres.

The major mission of the Foundation is to support socio-economic and humanitarian development within the country and abroad.

---

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12 May 2017 18:55 (UTC+04:00)

By Trend

Goodwill Ambassador of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Leyla Aliyeva has been a great supporter of FAOs work and an advocate for enlightening policies and messages, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia Vladimir Rakhmanin said in an interview with Trend.

We have strategic collaboration with the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and International Dialogue for Environmental Action (IDEA), through which we will be able to deliver still more  in Azerbaijan and around the world, he said. We are grateful for this. Recently, working with IDEA, we established orchards in 16 schools in Azerbaijan. Joint projects will continue in the future.

Rakhmanin pointed out that FAOs partnership with Azerbaijan has great potential as a model for FAO assistance across the world.

He said the FAO Partnership and Liaison Office and Azerbaijans Ministry of Agriculture have already launched the FAO-Azerbaijan Partnership Program and will soon finalize the first programming cycle with the following program areas: sustainable development of agriculture through an improved seed sector, sustainable livestock production and management, breeding work in apiculture and pollinators.

These programs will soon be operational, Rakhmanin added.

Rakhmanin noted that the Partnership and Liaison Office will continue to support the endeavors of Azerbaijani government in line with the Strategic Road Map on agriculture and the agricultural products processing sector.

FAOs assistance will help the country achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) on poverty alleviation in rural areas, food security, gender equality, responsible consumption (no food waste) and production, and sustainable management of natural resources, he added.

We are ready to support Azerbaijans Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the Statistics Committee, and the National Coordination Council for Sustainable Development in monitoring, implementation and reporting on SDG targets, said Rakhmanin.

---

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12 May 2017 17:00 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Despite many considered the recent meeting of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov untimely, both sides described it as positive.

Trump called his talks with Russian top official as "very, very good," while Kremlin also highly assessed this meeting.

The talks were the highest-level public contact between Trump and the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin since the Republicans took office on January 20.

It was expected that the latest U.S. missile attack against Syria would close the possibility of further dialogue between the two world powers, as both sides commented on their ties and described them as "at an all time lowest level".

However, the U.S. made their first step in an attempt to normalize the relations and find common ground by sending U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to Moscow for talks with Lavrov and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The recent meeting held between Russian top official and Trump revealed the desire of both sides to have better relations and cooperate on international stage.

The talks mentioned Syrian issue, the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, the situation in Afghanistan, and also the fulfillment of the Minsk accords on the political settlement in east Ukraine.

Although, discussions were "positive", the U.S. still has to form its administration completely and clear up its position and political course with regards to Russian Federation.

Nevertheless, this meeting gives hope that in future relations can be normalized. It is not a secret, the reasons for such low level of relations lies in actions of the previous administration which did everything possible to undermine the basis of our relations so now we have to start from a very low level."

Even, a bilateral commission that served as a cornerstone for U.S. President Barack Obama's "reset" policy with Moscow, facilitating cooperation on issues such as arms reductions and counterterrorism, has suspended its work following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea territory.

The U.S.Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission was created as a way to improve communication and cooperation between the governments of Russia and the United States. Since the rapid deterioration of relations between Russia and the United States since 2012, the commission has largely curtailed its activities and is essentially defunct.

The resumption of activities of this commission has not been discussed at the talks, but Russia leaves the question on the formats for the development of bilateral relations to the discretion of President Trump and his team, and is ready to move as much as it is convenient for the new administration of the White House.

"It is known that the Presidential Commission was a useful tool, but given that now U.S. has the new administration, we leave it at the discretion of Donald Trump and his staff to decide on the most convenient ways to develop relations with the Russian Federation. At a meeting yesterday at the White House, Donald Trump confirmed his mindset - he then wrote it on Twitter - to normalize relations," Lavrov told reporters in Alaska on May 12, Interfax reported.

Lavrov also said that during the visit, the dispatch of U.S. observers to de-escalation zones in Syria was not discussed.

"We did not discuss this, we said that we would welcome any U.S. contribution to the implementation of this concept, especially since it was originally Donald Trump who spoke about the creation of safe zones where the population can breathe freely," Lavrov said.

Currently, talks are underway with potential participants in this process, according to minister.

He recalled that the memorandum, which was signed in Astana, stipulates that to ensure the functioning of these zones, observers from third countries may be attracted, of course, in agreement with all interested parties, and this should be, first of all, acceptable for the Syrian government.

In the United States, Trump's meeting with Lavrov may only strengthen the attention of Congress to the administration's attitude toward Russia, increase the popularity of the idea in both parties that the investigation of Russia's actions should be transferred to the control of an independent prosecutor, and also activate calls for additional sanctions, according to some experts.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
12 May 2017 13:47 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

Russia is making great efforts to convince the U.S. to accept Iranian role in a plan for foreign troops to police safe zones in Syria as a step toward ending the six-year war.

Moscow is already working as an intermediary in the settlement of relations between the U.S. and Iran, Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, TASS reported.

It's hard, of course, there are no illusions here, Bogdanov said adding that Americans generally welcomed the talks in Astana; they said that Astana is good and Iran is bad.

Of course, there is a contradiction and a problem here, Bogdanov stated, noting that this requires additional political and diplomatic efforts.

Does anyone think Iran is going to leave this region and Syria, as if you could wave a magic wand and Iran would disappear? Bogdanov said. Thats not going to happen.

He drew attention to the fact that the new administration and U.S. President Donald Trump are "businesslike and love practical results."

"Of course, it is very difficult, but there is no other way," he added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington that he hoped the U.S. would make an active contribution to securing the safe zones. Lavrov suggested the U.S. may initiate the process in southern Syria near the borders with Israel and Jordan.

Russia, Turkey and Iran signed a memorandum on creating four zones at talks involving the Syrian government and opposition groups in Kazakhstans capital, Astana, last week.

Trumps campaign pledge to cooperate with Putin on defeating Islamic State has met resistance from Republicans and Democrats, who are pushing for a harder line toward Moscow over its supposed interference in the U.S. election, support for Assad and actions in Ukraine.

The civil war in Syria between government and opposition with various terrorist groups involved, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), began back in March 2011.

Syrian President Bashar Assad managed to turn the tide of war in his favor after Russia started an air campaign in September 2015, while Iran is an uncompromising supporter of the Syrian leader.

According to a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the countrys pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
12 May 2017 12:56 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reiterated its pledge to protect Turkey, as the country opposes a recent U.S. decision to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters in an attempt to oust Islamic State militants from Raqqa during the meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in London, where a conference on Somalia held.

The talks lasted for about half an hour and became the highest level contacts between the two countries since Washington announced its plans to provide arms to the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds, also known as the YPG.

Earlier, the Pentagon announced that President Donald Trump had approved the transfer of weapons to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) dominated by the YPG. The YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, which is recognized as a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S. and EU.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has demanded the U.S. to refrain from arming terrorists, is scheduled to visit Washington on May 16.

Erdogan has said he would discuss the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump when they meet, adding the same issue would also be brought up at the NATO summit to be held in Brussels on May 25.

Turkey considers that this decision will threaten the countrys national security.

Growing U.S. support for the YPG is a major collision point which negatively affects the traditionally strong U.S.-Turkish relationship.

Turkey has offered to work directly with the U.S. and the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition to remove IS from Raqqa in Syria, but only if the U.S. stops working with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which is mainly comprised of YPG fighters.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
12 May 2017 17:50 (UTC+04:00)

By Kamila Aliyeva

The seventh meeting of the Joint Turkmen-German Working Group, the agenda of which included issues of increasing partnership in the trade and economic spheres, was held in Ashgabat.

The Deputy Minister and Head of the Foreign Economic Policy Department of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy of the Federal Republic of Germany Eckhard led the German delegation.

The two sides exchanged views on prospects for cooperation in the oil and gas, chemical and energy sectors, construction, transport and communications spheres, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry reported.

A discussion was held on the development of ties between the chambers of commerce and industry, the legislative regulation of business activities, holding of business forums and exhibitions.

The parties exchanged views on the prospects for the development of long-term cooperation, as well as the implementation of previously reached agreements, including the ones formed during the previous meeting held last April in Berlin.

They noted that among the key partnership vectors are the fuel and energy complex, where Turkmenistan, enjoying a huge resource potential, implements the strategy of radical modernization of the material and technical base of the industry, diversification of export routes for energy supplies, including in the European direction.

Among the issues of the meeting also was cooperation in the field of transport. In order to optimize the mutually beneficial partnership in this strategic area, initiatives are being taken to form transit and transport corridors North-South and East-West, as well as ongoing work in Turkmenistan to modernize the corresponding infrastructure and create a combined transport communications system.

Representatives of the German side expressed the desire of their companies to participate in major infrastructure projects, in particular, the reconstruction of the seaport in the city of Turkmenbashi and the creation in the Caspian of the national tourist zone Avaza.

In Turkmenistan, as of 2016, 167 investment projects and contracts involving German capital were registered for a total of $540 million and about 555 million euro.

German companies make a significant contribution to the implementation of long-term projects in Turkmenistan. Among them are such companies as Siemens, Daimler, Claas, Rohde & Schwarz, Dresser-Rand.

In October 2016, the Mejlis (Parliament) of Turkmenistan ratified the agreement with Germany on avoidance of double taxation with respect to taxes on income and property.

The document was approved at the fifth meeting of National Parliament. The signing ceremony was held within the framework of the two-day working visit of President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov to Germany.

---

Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
12 May 2017 15:30 (UTC+04:00)

By Amina Nazarli

Many travelers and sport fans are in a hurry to visit Azerbaijan, as its capital city is hosting the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games. Some have already accommodated in various hotels and hostels of Baku, while for those, who are still looking for accommodation, the below list by Milli.Az will allow to find the best option.

Today, the country can accommodate about 40,000 tourists in its 535 hotels, which include a series of luxury hotels  Excelsior, Hilton, Four Seasons, Fairmont, JW Marriott, Kempinski  as well as several budget hotels for cost-conscious travelers. Moreover, 25 hostels and 92 apartments for tourists operate in Baku.

Hotel prices

Lets start with hotel prices. Bulks of the hotels located in the country are 5-4-3 stars, which sometimes creates inconvenience for low-budget tourists.



"Qafqaz Baku City Hotel & Residences" (address: Nasimi district Tbilisi avenue 34)

Singe standard room -123 manat ($73)

Double standard room - 156 manat ($92)

Breakfast and gym are included.

"12 Inn Bulvar" (address: Uzeyir Hajibeyov street 27)

Singe standard room -130 manat ($77)

Double standard room - 150 manat ($89)

Double luxury room - 250 manat ($148)

Breakfast and Internet are included. By the way the prices a little increased in connection with the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games.

"ABU Arena" (address: Koroglu Rahimov street 15)

Singe standard room - 60 manat ($35)

Double standard room - 90 manat ($53)

Breakfast included.

"Absheron Hotel Group" (address: Azadlig square, block 674)

Single standard room with sea panorama (without breakfast + VAT) - 602,90 manat ($359)

Single standard room with sea panorama (with breakfast + VAT) - 641,84 manat ($382)

"Baku Palace Ascot Inn Hotel" (address: Icheri sheher, Islam Safarli street 15)

Single standard room - 50 manat ($29)

Double standard room - 70 manat ($41)

There is no restaurant in the hotel.

"Excelsior Hotel & Spa BAKU"(address: Heydar Aliyev avenue 2)

Single standard room - 160 manat ($95)

Double standard room - 185 manat ($110)

Breakfast included.

"Grand Hotel Europe" (address: Tbilisi avenue 1025/30)

Single standard room - 130 manat ($77)

Double standard room - 130 manat ($77)

Breakfast, swimming pool, SPA and fitness are included

"Hyatt Regency Bak" (address: Bakikhanov street 1)

Single standard room - 343 manat ($204)

Double standard room - 366 manat ($218)

Breakfast, swimming pool and fitness are included

"Hilton Baku" (address: Azadlig avenue)

Single standard room (without breakfast + VAT)  384 manat ($228)

Single standard room (with breakfast + VAT)  422 manat ($251)

Double standard room (without breakfast + VAT) - 386 manat ($230)

Double standard room (with breakfast + VAT) - 456 manat ($270)

"Four Seasons Hotel Baku"

Single and double standard room (without breakfast) -760 manat ($450)

Single and double standard room (with breakfast) - 825 manat ($489)

Hostels

"Hostel Land of Fire" - 17 manat ($10)

"Baku Old City Hostel" - 18 manat ($11)

"Caspian Hostel" - 16 manat ($9)

"Sport Hostel Baku" - 8 manat ($4)

"Guest House Inn and Hostel" - 12 manat ($7)

"Baku Hostel On Gesr" - 17 manat ($10)

"Calipso Hostel"- 14 manat ($8)

Rooms in these hostels vary from 4 to 10 persons. Parking, internet, hairdryer, iron and TV are included in the fee.

Apartments

Such types of accommodation are mostly preferred by Iranian, Ukrainian and Turkish tourists. Depending on condition and state of the apartments the prices vary from 20 to 120 manats ($11-$71).

--

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli



Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
There was much to celebrate Friday at the 10th annual Chief Standing Bear Breakfast Commemoration.

A recent decision by the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission to deny the liquor licenses for four beer stores was hailed Friday, as was the Thursday completion of a 12-day, nearly 280-mile walk by members of the Ponca Tribe retracing their peoples forced 1877 march south to Oklahoma.

And lets not forget the signing of a deed to the 19.5-mile Chief Standing Bear Trail that stretches from Beatrice to Barneston, giving that land to the Ponca Tribe.

I dont know when the last time was that we gave them some land instead of taking it away, said Ross Greathouse of the Nebraska Trails Foundation, which gave the land to the tribe.

From giving thanks to storytellers and benefactors to honoring Native leaders long past, the breakfast brought together state and tribal leaders to commemorate the contributions of two especially inspiring Native figures: Ponca Chief Standing Bear and Susan La Flesche, the nations first Native woman doctor.

The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs hosted the event, which had a theme of Warriors for Their People. The breakfast honored numerous people for helping Native people, including Sens. Tom Brewer of Gordon and Patty Pansing Brooks, who have championed several bills related to Native issues during this years legislative sessions. Among those bills was the establishment of a task force to study public health issues related to alcohol sales in Whiteclay.

Brewer said he was hopeful the state would continue to seek major changes in Whiteclay.

The events of Whiteclay are not happenstance, he said. Were going to see an end to that, but thats not the end.

The events keynote speaker, Native actress and activist Irene Bedard, spoke about the need for Native people to become leaders in the fight against global warming and about the need to harness new technologies in that fight.

We have a voice, she said. Every day people have the power.

The Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs chose Joe Starita as the winner of its Humanitarian Award. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Laurie Smith Camp introduced Starita, author of biographies about Standing Bear and La Flesche, describing him as a verb, a man of action.

Starita, wearing a Pendleton blanket over his left shoulder as a gift from the commission, responded: I may be a verb, but it also must be noted that Ive been called many adjectives.
WASHINGTON -- "But what good came of it at last?"

Quoth little Peterkin.

"Why that I cannot tell," said he,

"But 'twas a famous victory."

-- Robert Southey, "The Battle of Blenheim" (1798)

Southey, a pacifist, wrote his anti-war poem long after the 1704 battle for which the Duke of Marlborough was awarded Blenheim Palace, where his great-great-great-great-great-great grandson Winston Churchill would be born.

We, however, do not need to wait 94 years to doubt whether the Trump administration's action against "sanctuary cities" is much ado about not much. Four months have sufficed to reveal it 'twas a constitutionally dubious gesture.

The executive order was perpetrated in a helter-skelter, harum-scarum, slapdash manner five days after the Inauguration, before the administration was humming like a well-tuned Lamborghini. The order says sanctuary cities have caused "immeasurable harm" to "the very fabric of our republic," a thunderous judgment offered without evidence of the shredded fabric or even a definition of "sanctuary city."

They are cities that limit the cooperation of local law enforcement personnel with federal immigration enforcement efforts. There are defensible reasons for some non-cooperation: e.g., preserving cooperative relations between local police and immigrant communities, which facilitates crime-fighting. But many such cities anoint themselves sanctuaries as an act of self-congratulatory virtue-signaling and to pander to immigrant communities.

The executive order is either a superfluous nullity or it is constitutional vandalism. It says cities "that fail to comply with applicable federal law" shall "not receive federal funds, except as mandated by law."

A U.S. district judge in Northern California has held that the executive order is "toothless" if it pertains to merely a few federal grants, and even they do not unambiguously state in their texts that funding is conditional on active cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. If, however, the order extends to other federal grants, it violates the separation of powers: The spending power is vested in Congress, so presidents cannot unilaterally insert new conditions on funding.

Several senior White House officials, operating in pre-Lamborghini mode, denounced this judge's decision as another excess by the much-reversed 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Actually, although this court might hear an appeal of the judge's decision, it had nothing to do with the decision.

It is federal law that a state "may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual." This does not, however, prevent any government entity from voluntarily withholding information.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the 10th Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people") means that the federal government may not "commandeer" state and local officials to enforce federal laws. The function of the anti-commandeering doctrine is, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, the "preservation of the states as independent and autonomous political entities."

Last Sunday, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation setting criminal and civil penalties for state and local officials who refuse to comply with federal immigration laws and detention requests. As policy, this may or may not be wise; as an exercise of the state's police power, it is not constitutionally problematic.

But, regarding the federal executive order, professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University's Antonin Scalia Law School says: "Trump's order is exactly the kind of high-handed federal coercion of states and undermining of separation of powers that outraged conservatives under [President] Obama. In fact, Obama did not go as far as Trump seems to do here. Obama never claimed sweeping authority to impose new conditions on federal grants beyond those specifically imposed by Congress."

Neither the Trump administration's semi-demi-ukase against sanctuary cities, nor the judge's ruling against it, has significant discernible consequences. The executive order illustrates the descent of American governance into theatricality.

In the satirical British television series "Yes, Prime Minister," a politician exclaims: "Something must be done -- this is something; therefore we must do it." The executive order is barely anything at all, beyond, in the words of the Cato Institute's Ilya Shapiro, "just one more episode of Trumpian signaling."

It is government inspired by "Animal House," a movie in which the character Otter says: "I think this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part!"
Republican Sen. James Lankford called for clarity.

Republican Sen. John McCain pronounced himself disappointed.

And Republican Sen. Marco Rubio essentially shrugged. He said he was surprised by the sacking of FBI Director James Comey, but added that, Its a decision the presidents made, and well go from here.

It is not exactly a portrait of righteous indignation.

Not to paint with too broad a brush. Some GOP officials did speak more forcefully against what Donald Trump did Tuesday night (and some supported it). But there was no mistaking a certain tepid tone to many responses, and it was almost as troubling as the firing itself.

For those who just flew in from the Amazon rainforest:

In an ominous echo of Richard Nixons infamous Saturday Night Massacre, Trump fired the man who has been investigating his campaigns ties to Russia, which meddled in last years election with the goal of helping elect Trump president. Comey sought to find out whether Trump or his surrogates colluded with that effort.

Instead, he was given the ax, a fact he learned on television. The explanation for this was spectacularly risible. In a terse letter, Trump claimed he was responding to concerns from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, that Comey mishandled the investigation of the nothingburger that was Hillary Clintons emails.

Comey did, in fact, botch the investigation, violating Justice Department protocol by publicizing unsubstantiated claims against a candidate in the midst of a campaign. But this happened last summer, and if it were really the reason for his dismissal, hed have been gone right after Trump took power.

More to the point, it would require the credulity of a particularly stupid toddler to believe Trump, who loathes Clinton, just booted the FBI director because he treated her unfairly. No, it is painfully obvious that this is about Russia. Like Nixon in 1973, Trump is apparently faced with an investigation that is going places he doesnt want it to go. Like Nixon, he has responded by firing the investigator.

The stench that rises from this is unmistakable, the reek of power abused and justice obstructed. It strongly suggests that we are governed by an ongoing criminal conspiracy. The situation needs, demands and requires an independent investigation.

We cant rely on the Justice Department for that, given that its leadership is complicit in Comeys firing. That leaves Congress, which is why the anodyne Republican reactions are so worrisome. Indeed, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has flatly ruled out a special prosecutor.

Shame on all of us if that is the last word here. We are supposed to be Americans first, before we are Rs or Ds. Thats a principle from which many Republicans have turned in recent years, repeatedly choosing themselves and their wealthy patrons over the greater American good. The health care debacle is but the latest glaring example.

But GOP leaders must stand up for the country this time or risk losing it. If they dont get that, the rest of us  liberal, conservative, American  must make unceasing noise and apply unstinting pressure until the party that launched eight investigations of Benghazi decides to treat this at least as seriously.

If you are not appalled, you are not paying attention. The Trump administration constitutes a clear and present danger to American democracy.

We need a special prosecutor, and we need one now.
Photo: Central Okanagan Emergency Operations The latest high water advisory covers large sections of Kelowna.

UPDATE: 6 a.m.

While the flood focus remains on those living near creeks and streams, lakefront property owners are advised of the potential of flooding from rising lake waters over the coming week.

The Emergency Operations Centre has now published lake level flood watch maps for Kelowna, West Kelowna, Westbank First Nation, Okanagan Centre, Carrs Landing, Oyama, Peachland and Westside Road.

View all the maps here.

Based on current projections, these maps indicate the longer-term possibility of flooding due to rising lake levels over the next week or weeks.

Meanwhile, there has been a steady rise in Okanagan Lake and other lakes across the region.

Area lakes are at or above full pool, and are continuing to receive more water  and will for some time.

Residents are advised conditions can change quickly.

UPDATE: 12 a.m.

Despite rains tapering off to light showers in downtown Kelowna Thursday night, residents and businesses near Okanagan Lake, and across much of Kelowna, have been warned about the potential for flooding.

Central Okanagan Emergency Operations issued the high water advisory just after 11 p.m. for areas that could potentially flood.

These areas include:

Areas adjacent to Okanagan Lake

Lower Mission - Kelowna

Mill Creek - Kelowna

McKinley Landing & Okanagan Centre  Kelowna/Lake Country

Pritchard Drive - West Kelowna

Green Bay - West Kelowna

Gellatly - West Kelowna/West Bank First Nation

Jennens Road - West Kelowna

Casa Loma - West Kelowna

low lying areas near Kalamalka, Ellison/Duck and Wood Lakes

Maps of the all the areas covered in the warning can be found here, here, and here.

While this is not an evacuation alert, Emergency Operations says conditions can change quickly, and those in the advisory areas should take precautionary measures to protect their homes and businesses.

In downtown Kelowna, which is covered under the new high water advisory, Plan B Headquarters Hair Salon and Barbershop has sandbags lining their doors.

Shelly Clark, a resident of Peace Valley Mobile Home Park located right beside Mission Creek in East Kelowna, says she is concerned for her safety.

She says the Creek has becoming a "raging river" and has concerns the homes in the park could be "carried away in the current" if the creek continues to grow.

UPDATE: 10:40 p.m.

As the rains continue to fall in Kelowna, Marshall Street, which was dry about two hours ago, now has a large lake growing in the centre of it.

The residential street, just south of downtown near Mill Creek, was completely submerged during the widespread flooding last Friday, and was one of the first roads in the city to close.

A photo of a man canoeing down the Marshall Street was taken last weekend.

Residents along the road have been piling up sandbags along their property, in anticipation of tonight's rain.

The large body of water is about as deep as the curb, but it appears to be quickly growing.

Castanet has received no reports of any local creeks overflowing into properties at this time.

ORIGINAL: 9 p.m.

As night falls in Kelowna, the forecasted rain has finally begun to fall, stoking flooding fears across the city.

While the brunt of the forecasted thunderstorm has yet to hit Kelowna, thunder, lightning and heavy rain have been hitting parts of Vernon and in the Coldstream area.

Heavy rain and wind have hit Kelowna's Black Mountain, and rain is also falling in Penticton.

Earlier Thursday, residents on Marshall Street, near downtown Kelowna, looked like they were preparing for a war.

The residential road, which was closed and fully submerged last weekend, had sandbags lining every property, three bags high in some areas.

People were still out filling sandbags until the last of the light remained.

Many downtown businesses were skeptical the flooding would impact them, but some were still nervous.

We've had a bunch of people come in and tell us it's going to flood down here, said Tiffany at Plan B Headquarters Hair Salon and Barbershop on Water Street. Everyone's a little bit freaked out for sure.

Meanwhile, Matt at Fernando's Pub says he's more concerned with losing power than with flooding downtown.

Earlier in the day, Kelowna Mayor Colin Basran released a video warning residents to expect water levels that we have never seen before.

Castanet will be updating flood conditions throughout the evening.

Castanet readers can send flood pictures and updated local information to [email protected]
Carnival Corporation & plc is a leisure travel company operating a fleet of cruise ships, hotels, and resorts with international destinations. Brands under the Carnival Corporation umbrella include Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America, P&O Cruises, Seaborn, Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, and Cunard. The companys goal is to provide extraordinary vacations at an exceptional value. As of 2022, the company laid claim to nearly half of the global cruising market share with several new ships in the works.

Carnival Cruise Line was launched in 1972 with one second-hand ship and a tank of fuel. The first port of call was San Juan, Puerto Rico, but soon more were added. The original growth strategy included a festive atmosphere, features and amenities unlike any other cruise line at the time. Slow to start, the growth strategy shifted into overdrive in 1980 when Carnival shocked the world by building its own ship. The Tropicale became an iconic name in the cruising industry and sparked a wave of shipbuilding that is still underway.

The companys growth hit a new stride in 1987 following the IPO which floated 20% of the company on the open market. The proceeds from the IPO allowed the company to embark on a voyage of acquisition and now Carnival is the worlds largest travel and leisure business.

Today, Carnival Corporations 87 ships visit approximately 700 ports worldwide and employ more than 120,000 people while serving more than 13 million guests annually for a total of 85 million passenger cruise days per year. Net revenue, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, peaked out at over $6.5 billion annually.

Carnival Cruise Line is the companys largest brand serving guests on all coasts of North America. The brand's 22 ships make 1500 voyages per year with trips ranging from 2 days to 3 weeks and ports of call from the Caribbean to Alaska. The company's largest ship is named Panorama and can accommodate more than 4,000 passengers.

Carnivals 9 brands provide access to a wide range of cruising styles and destinations including the Caribbean, Alaska, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, England, and ports in Asia. The company is headquartered in Miami, Florida and has offices around the world. The company also has the distinction of being the only company included in both the S&P 500 and FTSE 250 indices.
Alien: Covenant rejects evolution and asks, how did we get here?

The first few moments of the latest chapter in the Alien film series could almost be a promotional video for a Christian apologetics conference. Android David (Michael Fassbender), talks in a sterile room with his creator, a genius inventor who instructs David to refer to him as 'Father.' The robot is being activated, perhaps for the first time, and almost immediately asks his creator: 'You created me... who created you?' This, affirms his human maker, is the great question, and the precursor to one of the most important questions of all: 'How did we get here?'

Ridley Scott's expanding series of Alien prequels, which began with 2012's Prometheus, are increasingly concerned with the question of Genesis  how life began. In fact, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), the brilliant scientist and CEO involved in that opening exchange, even affirms the idea that simple evolutionary theory is a deeply unsatisfying explanation. And by telling its story of human-built robots who question their purpose, and genetically-engineered aliens who prove the folly of playing God, these films are able to pose big questions that are not only relevant to a sci-fi fantasy, but to the watching audience. How did we get here? What happens when we try to replace God with science? And do we really have any hope of a future? It's fascinating, in a culture which appears to have lost sight of these big questions, to see a major Hollywood film tackle them so directly.

Alien: Covenant will satisfy fans of the series and the genre. Like most of the other films in the series, it contains plenty of impressive action sequences, and creates a brilliantly-drawn near-future setting which is both immersive and claustrophobic. As ever, the film is at its best when human and monster are trapped at close quarters and it includes some heart-stopping encounters when the two inevitably converge. In that context, Katherine Waterston is particularly impressive as Daniels, faithfully treading the familiar ground of the female hero who ends up face-to-face with terror.

Yet despite all the effects, action and considerable gore, the film is always at its most interesting at calmer and more thoughtful moments. It's illuminated throughout by the brilliant Fassbender, playing two robotic roles which are sometimes placed in innovative juxtaposition to each other. One scene, where Fassbender's David teaches Fassbender's Walter to play a flute, is a staggering work of technological trickery and screenwriting all at the same time. It's through these characters that we frequently return to those big philosophical questions, as writers John Logan and Dante Harper throw in all manner of theological references, including nods to great cultural works by Wagner, Shelley and Michelangelo, as well as Piero della Francesca's Nativity.

The film is packed with theological themes, in fact. Another key character, thrown into leadership by the death of the titular starship's captain, suggests that he won't be trusted in his new role because of his judgment-influencing religious faith. The idea that in the near future, Christianity will be looked down upon as a sign of weakness, is an interesting theme for science fiction to explore. Yet in another moment, the Captain is affirmed for his ability to lead his crew out of a partially dark moment specifically because of his faith. As it dances around questions of theology, the film refuses to nail its colours to an atheist  or religious  view of the universe. Although while perhaps I'm reading just a little bit too much into this, at one point a key character does definitely shout 'Try Alpha...'*

Be warned, Alien: Covenant is violent, sweary, and very, very gory. Yet by choosing his subject matter, and exploring it through characters who share his interest in the biggest questions of all, Ridley Scott is creating films which manage something that the Church often can't: they spark a real interest in what we might call apologetics, and what culture has more recently deemed irrelevance. I'm not suggesting we should all flock to cinemas  it's pretty scary stuff after all  but Christians should affirm the fact that Hollywood movies are prepared to engage with the big questions of life and faith, and perhaps even be ready to use the film as a reference point to explain our own answers to them.

*This does happen, and someone really should tell the Alpha people. It's not actually a reference to them though.

Martin Saunders is a Contributing Editor for Christian Today and the Deputy CEO of Youthscape. Follow him on Twitter @martinsaunders.
America is that 'shining city on a hill' where people of faith can worship freely  Vice President Mike Pence

America can be proud to be that 'shining city on a hill' where men and women of faith can worship freely without fear of persecution, according Vice President Mike Pence.

Pence, a devout evangelical Christian, was speaking on behalf of President Donald Trump at the first-ever World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians.

He also tweeted:

America was, & is, & ever will be that gleaming city on a hill  where men & women of faith can walk openly & worship freely.  Vice President Pence (@VP) May 11, 2017

Pence reaffirmed the President's commitment to defending Christians and all who suffer for their beliefs across the wider world.

'America was and is and ever will be that shining city on a hill where men and women of faith throughout our history have been able to walk and openly worship their faith in God to the glory of God,' he wrote afterwards.

He said the faith of those gathered at the summit inspired and humbled him.

'The reality is, across the wider world, the Christian faith is under siege. Throughout the world, no people of faith today face greater hostility or hatred than the followers of Christ.'

He said that in more than 100 countries spread to every corner of the globe  from Iran to Eritrea, Nigeria to North Korea  more than 215 million Christians confront intimidation, imprisonment, forced conversion, abuse, assault, or worse, for holding to the truths of the Gospel.

'And nowhere is this onslaught against our faith more evident than in the very ancient land where Christianity was born.'

Pence continued: 'President Trump sees these crimes for what they are: vile acts of persecution animated by hatred  hatred for the Gospel of Christ. And so too does the President know those who perpetrate these crimes. They are the embodiment of evil in our time and he calls them by name  radical Islamic terrorists.'

The suffering of Christians in the Middle East has stirred America to act, he said. 'This President knows the terrorists will not stop until we stop them. And, under President Donald Trump, we will stop them.

'Under President Donald Trump, America will continue to stand for religious freedom of all people, of all faiths, across the world. And I believe that all God's children, no matter their country or their creed, can know with confidence that God will continue to guide this nation, to play our unique role on behalf of freedom in the world.'
Can a pacifist ever be Britain's prime minister?

Reuters

It's been an awfully long time since a frontline politician had to clarify whether he was, in fact a pacifist. It's taken as read that, should the need arise, political leaders will put British (or American) troops into harm's way.

Jeremy Corbyn is not a consensus politician, though. His previous campaigning efforts made the clarification necessary. The Labour leader, hoping to be elected as prime minister in under a month's time, needed to let the electorate know if they were voting in someone who wouldn't ever use violence.

'I am not a pacifist,' Corbyn said, 'I accept that military action, under international law and as a genuine last resort, is in some circumstances necessary.'

Going on to suggest that he would have endorsed the Second World War, Corbyn insisted however, 'that is very far from the kind of unilateral wars and interventions that have almost become routine in recent times'.

So, can a prime minister ever be a pacifist? And surely being a pacifist is a good thing? Well...

Christian teaching has broadly fallen into one of two camps. The first is Christian pacifism. Arguably the mode modelled by the early Church, pacifists draw their inspiration from Jesus' teaching in the sermon on the mount.

In Matthew 5 Jesus says, 'I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.' Taking this teaching literally, the Christian pacifist tradition was adopted by Anabaptists after the Reformation and is expressed most strongly today by Quakers, Mennonites, Amish and other related groups.

Probably the leading exponent of this tradition today is the theologian Stanley Hauerwas. He argues 'that Christians are called to nonviolence not because our nonviolence promises to make the world free of war, but because in a world of war we, as faithful followers of Jesus, cannot imagine being other than nonviolent'.

The other tradition is known as Just War theory. Formulated via two of the Church's most important theologians, St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, the theory survives into the modern day.

It suggests a tight range of criteria on which a war may be permissible according to Christian doctrine. In a recent piece for the Catholic Herald, theologian Matthew A Shadle said, 'The Church's ethic of war and peace is not fundamentally about using technology in the right way, but about devoting our energies to promoting peace, even if that means that in the worst situations we resort to arms.'

While some theologians have backed many of the recent American and British overseas interventions, including the disastrous invasion of Iraq, on the basis of Just War theory, proponents of both positions have been heavily critical too.

It's important not to think Just War advocates as warmongers, and pacifists as peace lovers. Both traditions strive for peace, but differ in how it should be achieved.

With these two traditions being debated and refined in light of the end of the Cold War, the rise of international terrorism, and the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the question remains, can a prime minister be a pacifist?

Put another way, the question is really  should we expect secular political leaders to be able to follow the demands of Christian pacifism?

Greg Boyd, an Anabaptist theologian and pacifist says Christians should behave differently to the secular authorities. 'I don't believe Jesus' and Paul's teaching on the need for disciples to adopt an enemy-loving, non-violent lifestyle was ever intended to serve as a mandate for how governments are supposed to respond to evil,' argues Boyd.

Those critical of the pacifist position would argue that Christians who swear off all violence aren't merely being neutral or prophetic, though. George Orwell was scathing when writing of pacifism during the Second World War. 'Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist,' wrote the man who had put his own convictions on the line while fighting in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. 'This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side you automatically help that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one.'

While Christians disagree on whether violence is ever justified, it would seem unlikely that the Church is ever going to speak with a unified voice to politicians, such as Jeremy Corbyn. And can a pacifist ever be Prime Minister? Possibly not.
'God has spoken to me and called me to serve.' 12 inspiring Florence Nightingale quotes to mark her birthday

Florence Nightingale, who was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence in Italy, was known as 'The Lady With The Lamp' after a report from the Crimean War in The Times described her as a 'ministering angel', making her rounds late at night, 'with a little lamp in her hand'. She had taken a group of nurses to Ukraine to minister to the French and British soldiers wounded in the war against Russia. Profoundly changed by her experiences in the field, when she returned to England she set up the Nightingale School for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital, London, and thus laid the foundations of modern professional nursing. She also worked with the Liverpool merchant and philanthropist William Rathbone, a Quaker who became a Unitarian, to set up district nursing with the founation of a nursing school in Liverpool. He is reported to have written: 'In any matter of nursing Miss Nightingale is my Pope and I believe in her infallibility.'

From an upper class family, she defied their expectations when she did not marry, and decided to spend her life in service and ministry to the sick and poor. This decision was rooted in the Gospel. She survived many serious episodes of illness herself, and lived to the age of 90.

1. 'God has spoke to me and called me to His service.' Writing in February 1837 when she began to understand the direction her life would take.

2. 'It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a Hospital that it should do the sick no harm.' First sentence of her preface to 'Notes on Hospitals', written in 1859.

3. 'I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions, and into actions which bring results.' Letter to Mary Clarke in 1844, quoted by Sir Edward Tyas Cook, 'The Life of Florence Nightingale'.

4. 'No man, not even a doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than this  "devoted and obedient." This definition would do just as well for a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman.' Notes on Nursing, written in 1860.

5. 'Beggars in the streets of London were at that time leading the lives of princes, compared to the life of our soldiers in the Crimea when I arrived on the scene with thirty-six nurses.' 'Little Chats With Big People', The Scrap Book, from 1908.

6. 'The account he gives of nurses beats everything that even I know of. This young prophet says that they are all drunkards, without exception, Sisters and all, and that there are but two whom the surgeon can trust to give the patients their medicines.' Writing about a young surgeon in a letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, cited by Edward Tyas Cook, 'The Life of Florence Nightingale'.

7. 'The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.' From: 'Tea, Coffee, and Cocoa for the Sick', Scientific American, 1860.

8. 'The true foundation of theology is to ascertain the character of God. It is by the aid of Statistics that law in the social sphere can be ascertained and codified, and certain aspects of the character of God thereby revealed. The study of statistics is thus a religious service.' Cited in 'Games, Gods, and Gambling: A History of Probability and Statistical Ideas', 1962.

9. 'What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.' Letter from the Crimean war to her family.

10. 'The good of an organisation depends on every individual who is in it. School, hospital, coffee-rooms, institutions, district nursing must depend on the living life and love which are put into them.' From her introduction to 'The History and Progress of District Nursing' by William Rathbone.

11. 'It is such a blessing to have been called, however unworthy, to be the handmaid of the Lord.' One of many references to Luke 1:38 about her calling to nursing. Museum of the Bible.

12. 'Unless I am, a fellow-worker with Divine Power, who is working up all our poor little puny efforts into a whole  a whole of which our efforts are only parts, and worth anything only in as much as they are parts  shall I work at all?

To be a fellow-worker with God is the highest inspiration of which we can conceive man capable. But how can we be fellow-workers with God if we do not know His plan?' Note of Interrogation by Florence Nightingale.
How should Christians vote? A guide to #GE2017

In the highly unlikely event you are signed up to the mailing lists of all major Christian charities, you will have been inundated with general election guides, 'our priorities' emails and suggested questions for your local candidates.

For the rest of you, I have saved you the bother.

Below is a summary of what the main Christian groups are urging voters to think about with less than a month to #GE2017.

Strict rules bar any direct support for a political party and charities must be careful to remain independent during the election campaign.

But that does not stop some, as you will see, steering pretty close to the mark.

Joint Public Issues Team

A network of the Baptist Union, the Church of Scotland, the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church, JPIT is asking voters not to have election fatigue and make sure they register to vote.

Perhaps offering a direct challenge to Theresa May's justification for the election that she needed a strong mandate, the team at JPIT say that 'strong government' and 'strong leadership' are not necessarily good things.

In what comes close to a political intervention they argue for restraining any large parliamentary majority: 'In modern democratic systems overwhelming Parliamentary majorities reduce the need for Government to listen and respond to other opinions.'

The Evangelical Alliance

Focusing on the theme of love, truth, justice and freedom, the EA asks voters to think 'What kind of society do we want?'

Careful to be seen as not leaning to the left or right politically, it has a helpful list of pressing questions to ask your local candidate under each theme.

CARE

The Christian lobbying group CARE has an equally comprehensive election website entitled Engage.

Looking at family, life and justice, the Westminster-based charity has expertise in different policy areas that is in-depth and superior to most others.

Quakers

Known for its historic political activism, QuakerVote has put together an in-depth briefing on the movement's four key topics of concern  climate change, nuclear weapons, forced migration and economic inequality.

It also has a particularly useful guide for how to run a hustings if that is something you are considering.

Salvation Army

The Salvation Army is calling for a priority towards the most vulnerable with a particular focus on supported housing, residential care of older people and areas of high deprivation in the UK.

In a dig at the Tory's current plans for housing the denomination warns that 'many supported housing services, including our own residential centres for people experiencing homelessness, may be forced to close, with residents left to find alternative accommodation in an increasingly competitive rental market and without the additional support their needs require'.

It calls on the next government to provide 'stability for residents' in supported housing.

Christian Aid

Quoting its chair Rowan Williams' words about this election being a choice over 'the soul and future of our nation', Christian Aid has four key focus points for this election.

The commitment to our foreign aid budget looks settled, but the charity also asks for the UK to play a leading role on climate change, to make tax more transparent, particularly in developing countries and to support the 65million refugees and people displaced within their own country.

Children's Society

The Children's Society is unsurprisingly rather more focused in its remarks, asking parties address concerns about young people's mental health and make counseling provision compulsory in schools.

In particular it also focuses on a legally binding 'breathing space' to give families time and space to repay their debts, with no rising fees or visits from intimidating bailiffs.

Know an organisation that isn't on here but should be? Contact Harry Farley on hfarley@christiantoday.co.uk or on Twitter @harryfarls
Is a shift in theology enough to stop mainline decline?

There is no denying the importance of firm, central beliefs in determining the vitality of a religious group. A recent study in Canada has drawn increased attention to the link between growing churches and the importance of a foundation in Christian orthodoxy. Meanwhile, mainline churches, which tend to be less dogmatic compared to conservative denominations, have declined from 16.1 per cent of the population to 14.7 per cent of the US population between 2007 and 2014.

Is there hope for the mainline Church in America? Or is it possible that the decline is so great that mainline Protestants won't last much longer than '23 Easters'? It's likely that mainline churches may need more than theological renewal in order to survive.

Theological decline and social institutions

The decline of the mainline Church in America has been well-documented for decades. Back in 1993 experts were noting the lack of theological vitality in many mainline churches. This tendency among lay Christians at mainline churches to pick and choose may have correctly identified the dogmatism of more fundamentalist Churches, but ultimately left too much room for members to abandon Christian orthodoxy.

As theology became less important to members of mainline churches, it's natural that other issues became the glue that held these congregations together. Activism and the cultural expectations of church attendance all factored into the past stability of the mainline Church. However, as these causes and expectations shifted, mainline members no longer felt a strong need to sustain their limited Christian beliefs within aging congregations.

There is no doubt that theological renewal is essential for the future of mainline churches. While each denomination will disagree about the boundaries or core tenets of this shift, affirming the Apostles Creed is an essential starting point that distinguishes the Christian tradition from others. In many cases this theological foundation is already present, but there is a greater need for stronger discipleship and teaching of these beliefs so that members are on the same page.

However, in the particular case of American mainline churches who have a history of activism and social justice work, rediscovering these traditions may prove to be a key factor in helping these Churches sustain their place in the American religious landscape.

Revitalizing an activist faith

Growing up in the conservative evangelical tradition, I frequently heard that mainline churches were 'distracted' by social justice causes and activism, losing their grip on the gospel in the process. Ironically, one could argue that while leveling this claim about the mainline, many conservatives in my own tradition were 'distracted' by activism in the Moral Majority, linking conservative Christianity with conservative politics.

In the case of mainline churches, there are many opportunities to find revitalization around gospel-focused social justice causes. These justice issues are hardly a distraction from the gospel message, and, in fact, conservative evangelicals are shifting toward a more activist faith in their work against human trafficking, involvement in prison ministry, and advocacy for creation care. There is a growing awareness in evangelical circles about how far many need to go in addressing racism and LGBT concerns.

Mainline churches already have a history of activism and social justice work, and this activism could provide yet another point of cohesion for these congregations striving to rediscover their relevance and vitality today. For instance, Rev. William Barber is now leading a national moral movement that will work toward voting rights and justice for all. Barber has avoided partisan labels, working across party lines with broad coalitions. However, the former North Carolina NAACP leader has consciously used religious terminology to drive his moral movement.

Barber can provide a template for activism that is grounded in religious conviction, and he may prove especially helpful in revitalizing the mainline churches of America. However, Barber's message may be amplified because of its context, which is another key factor to consider.

The mainline surge afer Trump's election

While white evangelical Christians voted for Trump in large numbers in the 2016 election, mainline Christians on the political left returned to church in search of comfort and answers. Seminars and events hosted by Union Theological Seminary in New York City swelled with hundreds of attenders. Mainline leaders reported higher church attendance throughout November and December in 2016.

While this Trump 'bump' may not last long, it may provide a needed boost to many mainline churches that could help over time. Combining a renewed emphasis on the theological particulars of Christianity with an energized base that has been nurtured with clear tactics and messages for social justice and morality could prove pivotal in slowing down the decline of the mainline and helping it sustain a powerful Christian presence in America.

Ed Cyzewski is the author of 'A Christian Survival Guide' and 'Pray, Write, Grow'. He writes at www.edcyzewski.com and is on Twitter as @edcyzewski.
Is Franklin Graham selling #FakeNews on Christian persecution?

Is Franklin Graham selling #FakeNews about Christian persecution?

It's a serious question on a serious issue, prompted by a recent statement by evangelist and conservative Christian commentator Franklin Graham.

He was speaking at the World Summit in Defense of Christians, a four-day conference in Washington, DC aimed at highlighting the plight of the persecuted Church.

'It is safe to say over 100,000 a year are killed because of their faith in Christ. In the last 10 years that would be close to a million people. It's the equivalent of a Christian genocide,' he said on Wednesday.

'I am sure the number of Christians who are in prison or martyred each year would stagger our mind if we really knew what the total number really was. And it would send us to our knees in sorrow and in prayer.'

The problem is, it's not clear what Graham's statistic of 100,000 annual Christian killings is based on. That's problematic because compared to all other statistics on the matter, his figure is highly dubious.

In its 2016 review (covering a 12 month period ending 31 October 2015), Open Doors, a charity that advocates for the persecuted church, estimated that over 7,000 Christians were killed because of their faith.

Open Doors' director of research Dr Ron Boyd-Macmillan spoke about persecution statistics in January on Radio 4's More or Less programme. Describing its 2017 review, he said that just 1,207 Christians had been killed for faith-related reasons in 12 months  a dramatic reduction from the previous year, and a far cry from Graham's statistic.

Why the discrepancy? The figure of 90-100,000 Christians killed annually for their faith is one not exclusive to Graham. In 2013, the Vatican called it a credible number. As research by BBC News shows, the figure derives from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC) at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts.

As journalist Ruth Alexander wrote: 'Its researchers started by estimating the number of Christians who died as martyrs between 2000 and 2010  about one million by their reckoning  and divided that number by 10 to get an annual number, 100,000.'

The decade-spanning one million estimate is largely drawn from the death toll of the Democratic Republic of Congo's civil war. Of the four million estimated to have been killed in that war, the CSGC reckons 20 per cent (900,000) to be martyrs. Divided by 10, that provides the statistic of 90,000 annually.

There are several problems with the extrapolation: firstly, it can't be guaranteed that the Christians killed in the DRC's civil war were killed because of their faith. Even if it were true, it's still a distortion of the global picture, and since the DRC's civil war ended in 2003, can hardly be described as accurate for the year 2017.

Todd Johnson, director of the CSGC says it has now abandoned that statistic, aware of its flaws, though it still estimates a million martyrs from 2000-2010 on its website.

Professor Thomas Schirrmacher from the International Society for Human Rights argues that highlighting the figures on global persecution is essential, but admits that specific statistics on annual martyrdom are hard to reach. In recent years he says, there's no chance that the number has been higher than 10,000.

Dr Boyd-Macmillan said: 'There is unfortunately a lot of exaggeration in this area. This is why we opt for a statistic that we know is lower than it probably should be, but you've got to give figures you can absolutely verify.

'Preferably we're talking to someone who has witnessed it or has been quite close to the killing and make sure that it really happened.'

Open Doors only include cases where it can be sure that religion was cause of killings. How does it explain a figure of just 1,207 martyrs in the 2017 review?

Boyd-Macmillan explains: 'Usually half of all killings come in Nigeria. That's mainly because of very extremist movements like Boko Haram. But this year they've actually been pushed out of a lot of the territory that they held or terrorised before.'

Likewise, in regions like Syria and Iraq, where many Christians have been killed 'the Christians have largely fled, so they're not there to kill any more'.

As that sobering analysis shows, the reduction in actual deaths is hardly good news. As Boyd-Macmillan explains, merely analysing deaths isn't the best way to analyse actual persecution. There are more subtle and effective ways to suppress Christian witness than simply killing believers, which often has the unintended effect of making martyrs and galvanising the Christian community.

It's why Open Doors' World Watch List is so helpful: it's a thorough analysis of the places in the world where its hardest to live freely as a Christian  where the threat is far more cunning and insidious than the prospect, grave though it is, of simply being killed. As Boyd-Macmillan puts it: 'You've got to understand how Christians are squeezed as much as how they're smashed.'

The idea that anyone would be killed for their faith is horrific: the conservative statistic of 1,207 martyrs in the past year is still tragic. But when influential voices repeat misleading statistics like 100,000, it actually undermines their important message.

None of this should be taken as a suggestion that Christians should calm down because global persecution isn't that bad. It is terrible, and on the rise, but that means those who speak about it need to be more vigilant than ever in what they actually say. It undermines the suffering of the persecuted when you blow the tragic truth out of proportion.

You can't promote misleading figures just because they 'feel' like they should be true, or as a rhetorical flourish to make a point. This isn't a time for the Church to join in with 'alternative facts' and 'post-truth' politics.

Christians can't condemn #FakeNews when they don't like it, and sell it when they do. The global Church deserves better.

You can follow @JosephHartropp on Twitter
Is homosexuality the worst sin? Pastor John Piper shares his thoughts

John Piper, founder of DesiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minnesota, was confronted with a question many have asked amid the debate on homosexuality: Is homosexuality truly more detrimental to a society than other sins?

On the face of it, Piper acknowledged that other sins such as greed and pride are much more widespread than the sin of homosexual behavior.

"I do not doubt that millions more people are ruined in this life and the next through greed and covetousness, through pride, through selfishness, through excessive anger than are ruined through same-sex orientation or through homosexual behavior," the well-known Reformed theologian said.

Piper gave two main reasons for his position:

"On the one hand, the sins of greed and pride and selfishness and anger are more widespread than either same-sex attraction or homosexual behavior," he said.

"On the other hand, the sins of greed and pride and selfishness and anger are more subtle and disguise themselves more easily as acceptable. Yes, the number of people who are ruined in this life and the next by the sins of greed, pride, selfishness, and anger is vastly greater than the number of people ruined by same-sex orientation or sinful homosexual behavior."

He also stressed that "homosexuality is no more deadly a sin and certainly no more widespread than greed and pride and selfishness and anger.

"The people that I function among are keenly aware of this and are eager to make it plain as I am now."

But Piper went further to answer what he felt was an implied question: Why then is so much attention paid to homosexuality?

Outlining three reasons, Piper noted that the media has a big part to play in which topics are highlighted and which are not.

"It isn't Christians who put homosexuality in the news," he said. "Christians are drawn to explain our position in public through preaching and writing as often as we do these days because the media have made the issue so public that we feel we need to serve Christians with careful, biblical answers, and we need to clarify for non-Christians how we think."

Second, he said that unlike other sins, such as greed and stealing, homosexual behavior "has articulate and forceful advocates and defenders. This is one of the things that makes the sin of homosexual intercourse stand out today," he noted.

"If there were strident and articulate and forceful publishing advocates for greed and stealing and pride and humiliating others and selfishness and the exploitation of others and anger and abusiveness, if these sins were being publicly advocated, then they would probably get more press as well," he positioned.

Third, homosexual behavior goes against nature, and that is why it gains an "unusual status in our moral discourse," Piper argued.

He concluded by emphasizing that Jesus Christ came into the world "to save sinners  heterosexual sinners and homosexual sinners, greedy, proud, selfish, angry sinners and sinners who commit homosexual acts."

"We all need the same Savior, and the blood of Christ is sufficient to wash away every sin and remove all judgment and bring us to everlasting healing and joy," Piper added.

Some conservative Christians, such as author and speaker Francis Chan, have in the past expressed concern about treating homosexuality as worse than other sins.

When asked how he ministers to gay people, Chan said last year that he points to one driving question:

"Are you willing to surrender to God no matter what He says?"

But Robert A. J. Gagnon, associate professor of New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, suggested that people who claim homosexuality is no worse than other sins are aiming to soften the gravity of the sin.

"There is a mountain of evidence from Scripture (in addition to reason and experience) that shows (1) sins do differ in significance to God and (2) God regards homosexual practice as a particularly severe sexual sin," Gagnon argued in a 2015 article on his website.
#JusticeForAhok: Mass protests mark jailing of Jakarta's Christian governor for blasphemy

There has been flood of anger and upset in Indonesia and across the world following its imprisonment of a Christian politician for blasphemy.

Night-time candlelit vigils have been held in cities across Indonesia in support of Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama, who this week was sentenced to two years in prison on the charge of blasphemy.

Indonesians also participated in vigils across the world, in cities such as Amsterdam, Toronto and Melbourne, Australia, according to Associated Press. Many have publicised their vigils online with the hashtag #JusticeForAhok.

Ahok was Jakarta's Christian governor until last month when he lost the latest election to a Muslim candidate.

Mass demonstrations were sparked against Ahok in September last year, when he made reference to a verse in the Quran during his re-election campaign. His opponents had used the verse to argue that Muslims should not be led by non-Muslims; Ahok said they had used it to trick people into voting against him.

Following the sentence, one judge, Abdul Rosyad, told the court that Ahok had 'caused anxiety and hurt Muslims' and had felt no guilt.

The months of campaigns against Ahok and this week's severe sentence have challenged the reputation of a country broadly known for its tradition of religious pluralism and moderate Islam.

The judgement was criticised by the US state department, Amnesty international, the UN's human rights office and the UK's ambassador to Indonesia.

Andreas Harsono, an Indonesia researcher at Human Rights Watch, previously told the Guardian the verdict was 'a sad day for Indonesia'.

'Ahok's is the biggest blasphemy case in the history of Indonesia,' he said. 'He is the governor of Indonesia's largest city, an ally of the president. If he can be sent to jail, what could happen to others?'

Ahok has been moved to a detention centre outside of Jakarta. His lawyers plan to appeal his sentence.

Harsono said more than 100 Indonesians have been convicted of blasphemy in the past decade and acquittals were extremely rare.
Justin Welby is a heretic, say breakaway conservative Anglicans

Justin Welby is a 'heretic' and a 'wolf in sheep's clothing', according to the conservative Church responsible for consecrating a breakaway bishop in Newcastle outside the authority of the Church of England.

An explosive lecture delivered at the Jesmond Conference for conservative evangelicals earlier this year further reveals the depth of division and distrust as traditionalists plot a splinter Anglican Church in the UK.

Highlighting the level of concern over the CofE's teaching on homosexuality, Bishop Martin Morrison of the conservative breakaway Anglican Church in South Africa that oversaw the consecration of Jesmond's senior minister as a bishop, accused the archbishops of an ancient Christian heresy called Arianism.

'It is quite obvious that the establishment of the Church of England is at the very least heretical,' the conference of church leaders was told. 'They are wolves, they are false teachers, they are hired hands. We get pretty much common agreement on that.'

Describing the Church's debate around transgender people as a 'tidal wave which will engulf us', Morrison went on to advocate 'different ways of opposing the establishment'.

In the February 28 lecture he went on: 'The stakes cannot be higher.'

He added: 'In my opinion the Archbishops of York and Canterbury can no longer be trusted.'

He said the best way would be to consecrate 'irregular bishops' to work in England without the permission of the official Church of England.

'We are not looking for the authority of Canterbury or York. In my opinion you don't ask the wolf if you can look after the sheep,' he said.

Pitting conservative evangelicals as on the right side of a 2,000 year old theological controversy, he said 'ordaining ministers and consecrating bishops without the permission of the local diocesan bishops' was 'a great model' to follow.

Morrison argued the CofE was guilty of the ancient hersey which teaches that Jesus was not fully God because, he said, they thought Jesus was 'wrong' when he quoted Genesis 1:27, which says God created humans as 'male and female'.

'As I understand it here in England there is just no way the system will allow you to depose of evil ministers.

'I think one of the key alternatives is therefore to consecrate valid, legal Anglican bishops. They will be irregular but both legal and valid,' he said.

'I cannot see any other way than consecrating bishops who are orthodox without the authority of the diocesan bishops or [the Archbishops of] York or Canterbury because they cannot be trusted.'

It comes after a document seen by Christian Today reveals extensive plans by conservative evangelicals to form a rival Anglican structure to the Church of England in the UK.

The proposals, born out of concerns about teachings on homosexuality, include suggestions for a new synod, new liturgy, an appointments system for new bishops, new church canons and new statements of belief.
Over 8 in 10 Americans reported to be concerned about nation's moral decline

More than eight out of 10 Americans are concerned about the direction of moral behaviour, according to LifeWay Research.

LifeWay found that 81 per cent of people who responded to its survey agreed with the statement.'I am concerned about declining moral behavior in our nation.'

There is some variation in how strongly held this belief is, though. Nearly half (46 per cent) of respondents said they 'strongly agree', while 35 per cent said they 'agree'.

LifeWay is part of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention and regularly polls Americans about their views on social, political and economic issues.

There are seveal other findings in the research which point to differences among different groups of Americans on the topic. For example, the research says that on the issue of declining moral standards, 'Christians (85 per cent) are more likely to agree than Other Religions (70 per cent) and Nonreligious (72 per cent).' It also points out that, 'Protestant Christians (89 per cent) are more likely to agree than Catholics (82 per cent). Meanwhile, those with evangelical beliefs (91 per cent) are more likely to agree than those without evangelical beliefs (79 per cent).

Lifeway spokesperson Scott McConnell told the Christian Post: 'We are shifting very fast... We are not all on the same page when it comes to morality. And we haven't reckoned with what that means.'
Pirate Bay most popular torrent site since KAT shut down; Torrent sites now blocked in Australia

The Pirate Bay has taken the number 1 spot in torrent downloads since Kickass Torrents (KAT) was shut down. Meanwhile, torrent sites will now be banned in Australia.

In July 2016, Reuters reported that the owner and runner of Kickass Torrents, 30-year-old Artem Vaulin, was indicted in the United States for copyright infringement. Vaulin is tied to the distribution of films, video games, music, and other content of more than $1 billion worth.

Since then, torrent sites run by Vaulin, such as KickAssTorrents, Torrentz, and TorrentHound ,have been shut down. However, reports say the team behind KickassTorrents is now back in running these sites.

Unfortunately, since its shutdown from the web, The Pirate Bay has been the most popular torrent site. Even when domains under the KickassTorrents returned, The Pirate Bay only grew in clicks.

Although KickassTorrents and its domains build on regaining their massive number of visitors, The Sydney Morning Herald reports that all torrent sites will now be blocked in Australia.

The Federal Court in Australia handed down the verdict that internet providers must "take reasonable steps to disable access" to torrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and SolarMovie.

The verdict includes that all rights holder will have to pay internet providers in blocking these torrent sites of up to $50 per site. Village Roadshow and Foxtel will also pay for legal costs involved internet service providers blocking torrent sites.

Foxtel chief executive Peter Tonagh shared that piracy resulting from torrent sites greatly damages the creative industries in Australia.

"This judgment is a major step in both directly combating piracy and educating the public that accessing content through these sites is not OK, in fact it is theft," Tonagh added.

Tonagh added that they are also contributing in eliminating piracy by making content more available.

"We are playing our part to reduce the attractiveness of piracy by making content available in a timely manner, at different price points, and on multiple devices and. More broadly, the content creation industries will continue to educate the public on the harm piracy does and how to get access to content in a legitimate manner," explained Tonagh.
Sudan Christians jailed with Czech aid worker have been released

A jailed Sudanese pastor and geologist have received a presidential pardon and been released from prison.

Abdumonem Abdumawla and Pastor Hassan Abduraheem Taour, jailed with the Czech aid worker Petr Jasek, were released from prison in Khartoum yesterday, World Watch Monitor reports.

Abdumawla and Taour were arrested in December 2015 for 'aiding and abetting' Jasek in allegedly spying. All three men were convicted of inciting hatred and propagating false news earlier this year and sentenced to 12 years in prison in total.

Jasek has already been released, having been pardoned by President Omar Bashir in February.

WWM reports that Jan Figel, the EU Special Envoy for the Promotion of Freedom of Religion or Belief outside the EU, called for the pardon to be extended to the other two men after Jasek's release.

Abdumawla was arrested after trying to help a friend who had been injured and burned during a demonstration. He was put in touch with Pastor Abduraheem and Jasek, who then donated money towards the friend's treatment.

Christians have suffered growing persecution in Sudan since the secession of South Sudan in July 2011. Sudan is designated a Country of Particular Concern by the US State Department. Sudan has been on the Open Doors World Watch List since 1993, almost always been ranked in the top 20 over the years. 'Persecution in the country is systematic and reminiscent of ethnic cleansing,' says Open Doors.
Why are evangelicals in Italy having to fight to keep their churches open?

Evangelical Christians in Italy are fighting to defend their churches after more than 20 have been shut down in the last three years.

Local authorities are closing evangelical worship centres in northern Italy because they are not technically authorised to function as churches, Evangelical Focus reports.

In the Lombardy region alone, 27 places of worship have been closed. This affected around 40 Christian communities because some were used by more than one.

Pastor Daniel Magnin, leader of a church in Milan, said: 'Some communities that lost their meeting houses, now gather in private houses, but many have directly disappeared.'

New evangelical churches tend to rent premises licensed as perhaps a restaurant, or formerly used as a warehouse or for storage.

If the buildings have not been explicitly approved to be churches, they risk being closed at any time.

'There have been cases of communities that bought a building with a loan, remodeled it to adapt it to their needs, and now they are still paying the fees, but they cannot use it. They lost everything they have invested,' said Magnin, who managed to get his own church authorised a few months ago.

He said that in Milan, there are more than 100 evangelical churches and very few have a legally recognised place of worship. The problems have arisen after new regulations on the opening of places worship in Italty were introduced.
Why Is The Christian Jakarta Governor On Trial For Blasphemy?

Weeping in court is not the ideal pre-election build up for a politician seeking re-election.

But through a determined campaign assisted by crude blasphemy laws, that is where Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, the governor of Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, found himself on Tuesday.

Known as Ahok, the popular leader is both Chinese and Christian, making him an unusual fit to be a politician in the world's most populous Muslim country that is in the midst of brokering a tense stand off in the South China Sea.

He is the first Christian governor of Jakarta in nearly 50 years and was a strong favourite to win the upcoming election in February.

But conservative Islamic groups have seized on comments he made in a campaign speech in September where he referenced a Qur'anic verse that some see as prohibiting Muslims from living under non-Muslim rule.

Hardliners accused him of blasphemy, a criminal offence, in Indonesia, and pressurised police into investigating the incident.

His comments were circulated on social media, whipping up a frenzy of outrage. But Purnama's supporters say the video being shared is heavily edited with subtitles changing what he actually said to appear more inflammatory.

He insists his comments were aimed at politicians "incorrectly" using the verse against him and were not aimed at the verse itself. He has apologised on a number of occasions for any offence caused while denying he committed blasphemy.

"There was no intention to insult religion," he said. "I am sending my message to all offended Muslims: I sincerely apologise."

But in an extraordinary display of public pressure, hundreds of thousands of Muslims marched through the streets of Jakarta in early November demand Ahok, as he is commonly called, be arrested. "If police cannot do it we will," one chanted as the protest ended in violence and scuffles with police.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo, who preceeded Purnama as Jakarta governor and is a close ally, accused "political actors" of "exploiting the situation", according to Reuters.

But the campaign has intensified and on 16 November police caved in and named Purnama as a suspect, clearing the way for him to be tried. Human rights groups warned this sets a dangerous precedent where outspoken hardliners can interfere with the legal process.

Indonesia technically protects freedom of religion in its constitution. But in reality only six faiths are recognised and strict blasphemy laws surround all of them. Critics say these laws are actually used to target minority groups and are not applied fairly.

The majority of Indonesia's 203 million Muslims, which make up 87 per cent of the population, come from the relatively tolerant Nusantara brand of Islam. But an increasingly vocal minority of hardline conservatives are threatening a peaceful consensus.

Open Doors, the Christian persecution charity, notes that despite the religious freedom guarantee in the constitution, "a plethora of by-laws and rules in various provinces can override this".

Aceh, a province north of Jakarta, is ruled under strict Sharia law and 8,000 Christians have been forced to flee their homes. Some cite Purnama's case as a sign that the previously tolerant Muslim nation is becoming radicalised.

The trial began on Tuesday and will adjourn until December 20. If convicted he faces a maximum five-year jail sentence.

Outside the court hundreds of demonstrators chanted: "Jail Governor Ahok now." They punched their fists in the air and shouted: "We must defend Islam from those who insult the holy book," according to the BBC's Rebecca Henschke.

But he is not yet barred from standing in next year's election, where despite the trial, he remains a strong contender.

That election and this trial is a key test of Indonesia's attitude towards freedom of belief. A Purnama victory would be a sure sign radical Islam does not have a strong foothold, at least in the capital. But if jailed the already vocal extremists would be emboldened.

The protesters are already threatening to take matters into their own hands if he is not jailed. Anything less than innocent on all charges would be a terrifying prospect for Indonesia.
Whatever FBI director James Comeys alleged failings in regard to the investigation of Hillary Clintons email server and Russian election interference, his precipitous sacking is a loss for Americas police officers and public order.

The man whom President Donald Trump now calls a showboater and grandstander gave candidate Trump the most powerful message of his campaign: policing matters. Months before Trump decried the medias false narrative about policing, Comey had warned that the chill wind blowing through American law enforcement was resulting in a rising homicide toll among black people. Comey was virtually the only official within the Obama administration to acknowledge publicly the disastrous impact that the Black Lives Matter movement was having on public safety; Obama contemptuously rebuked him for doing so.

Comey delivered one of the most eloquent defenses of proactive policing ever penned in a speech at the University of Chicago law school in October 2015. The speech punctured the lies about the criminal-justice system being spread by the criminology profession, activists, and the media. Comey described working as a prosecutor in Richmond, Virginia, during the height of the 1990s drug wars. Drug violence affected black neighborhoods exclusively, Comey observed; white people could simply drive around the problem. But for blacks living under the thrall of open-air dealing, violence was everywhere, Comey said. A resident of such a neighborhood would have responded with a tired laugh to the Lefts favorite conceit of the nonviolent drug dealer, Comey noted.

Back in the 1990s, activists were already criticizing police officers and prosecutors for locking up black men instead of whites. Comey refused to take the racial bait. Law enforcement targeted neighborhoods where people were dying, he said; race had nothing to do with it.

No one has better refuted the mass incarceration idea popularized by Michelle Alexanders factitious book, The New Jim Crow. There was nothing mass about incarceration: Each drug dealer, each mugger, each killer, and each felon with a gun had his own lawyer, his own case, his own time before judge and jury, his own sentencing, and, in many cases, an appeal or other post-sentencing review, Comey observed. If these individualized cases resulted in large numbers of black men being sent to jail, that was because there were a very large number of young men of color involved in criminal activity in Americas cities. In other words, America doesnt have an incarceration problem, it has a crime problem.

When FBI SWAT teams and their law-enforcement partners arrested 70 black drug traffickers in northwest Arkansas in August 2015, they were met by applause, hugs, and offers of food from the good people of that besieged communityall black themselves, Comey said. He might have added that no Black Lives Matter activists had bothered to help rid the community of its predators.

The press ignored the speechs unflinching honesty about the vast racial disparities in criminal offending and victimization and its account of how policing and incarceration had revitalized neighborhoods. But the media did rouse themselves to notice Comeys observations about rising street crime in black areas. The last two decades progress against crime was at risk, Comey observed, because officers were reluctant to get out of their cars and do the proactive work that prevents drive-by shootings. They were answering 911 calls but avoiding the informal contact that deters bad guys with guns, he said. Such discretionary police work was precisely what the Left incessantly criticized as racial oppression. Comey recounted a conversation with officers in a big-city precinct who described being surrounded and taunted the moment that they got out of their cars. Because of officers growing hesitation about engaging with potential suspects, cities across the country were seeing an explosion in senseless violence, Comey posited.

Comeys Chicago speech was a direct rejection of the Obama administrations line that the criminal-justice system is racist. Acknowledgment of rising crime rates challenged Obamas warm embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement. Nothing other than proactive policing had changed in criminogenic environments that could explain the increase in crimeeconomic conditions, demographics, and poverty rates were all stable. And so within days of Comeys speech, Obama himself went to Chicago and issued a scathing put-down. Obama accused Comey of cherry-pick[ing] data and using anecdotal evidence to . . . feed political agendas. Even though violent crime was rising in American cities both large and small, Obama dismissed the homicide numbers as an insignificant aberration. The press echoed Obamas contempt. The New York Times called his speech incendiary and said that it plays into the right-wing view that holding the police to constitutional standards endangers the public. There was no data suggesting that depolicing was contributing to an increase in crime, the Times said.

But the bad news kept coming in. In May 2016, after a meeting with the Major Cities Chiefs Association, Comey again went public with his concerns. The [violent crime] numbers are not only going up, theyre continuing to go up in most of those cities faster than they were going up last year, he said in a press conference. And again he articulated the most likely cause for this reversal of the two-decades-long crime decline: Police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crimethe getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, Hey, what are you doing here?

The Obama White House struck back swiftly against this latest refutation of its narrative of police-driven racial oppression. This administration makes policy decisions that are rooted in evidence, that are rooted in science, sniffed Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary. We cant make broad, sweeping policy decisions or draw policy conclusions based on anecdotal evidence. Thats irresponsible and ultimately counterproductive. Earnests condescension was sickening, especially because the Obama administration routinely accused the police of an epidemic of racially biased shootings, without any regard to data. Had they bothered to look, Obama and his analysts would have found that the data demonstrate conclusively that police activity, including the use of lethal force, is determined by crime, not race.

When the final tally came in, reported homicides in 2015 had risen nearly 12 percent, the largest one-year increase in nearly 50 years. In cities with large black populations, the homicide increase ranged from 54 percent in Washington to 90 percent in Cleveland. An additional 900 black males were murdered in 2015 compared with the previous year. The 2016 increase looks to be almost as bad, though the Left continues to downplay the ongoing loss of black lives.

Comeys dissent from the party line was evident in the FBIs investigation of the Michael Brown shooting, the event that jumpstarted the Black Lives Matter movement in August 2014. Working in conjunction with the Justice Departments Criminal Section and the U.S. Attorney in Missouri, the FBI exposed the hands-up, dont-shoot hoax that had depicted a peaceful Michael Brown being gunned down in cold blood by Officer Darren Wilson. The FBIDOJ report on the Brown shooting, released in March 2015, fully supported the November 2014 decision of the St. Louis grand jury not to indict Wilson (a verdict that set off a second round of riots in Ferguson). Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder were clearly furious at the FBIs exculpation of Wilson, and they groused that the decision not to bring civil rights charges against him was the product of a standard for culpability that was prohibitively high. In fact, under no standard of culpability could Wilson have been found guilty.

Comeys FBI also defied attorneys in the Justice Departments Civil Rights Division, who have been pressing for a criminal indictment against New York police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the 2014 death of Eric Garner in Staten Island. The FBI agents and federal prosecutors who were actually analyzing the case, however, had found little ground to indict. Attorney General Loretta Lynch then removed the New York team of FBI agents and investigators, replacing them with Civil Rights Division lawyers.

Comey anticipated Trumps rightful focus on the Chicago carnage. In his October 2015 Chicago law school speech, he pointed out that more than 50 people had been shot in the city in one weekend the previous month; the next weekend, the toll was higher. The victims included an 11-month-old boy shot in the hip and his mother and grandmother, who were killed right next to him. And Obamas dismissal of Comeys crime warnings was a warmup for his disregard of Trumps similar observations. Trump decried the spike in urban violence in his Republican Convention acceptance speech. In response, Obama again rationalized the 2015 homicide surge as a mere uptick in murders and violent crime in some cities. Comeys defiance of the Obama White House narrative on crime and policing showed a streak of independence now being characterized as self-centered and capricious. Perhaps this independence crossed the line into insubordination in the FBIs election investigations, but it was sorely needed during the Obama years and provided the only honest official voice with regards to law enforcement. Attorney General Jeff Sessions recognizes the destruction wrought by the Black Lives Matter movementnow Sessions and the president together must find a replacement for Comey who shares the ousted directors deep understanding of how crucial policing is to public safety.

Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor of City Journal, and the author of the bestselling The War on Cops.

Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images
Being a medium-sized charity with income of 1.3m, the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust knows the importance of raising awareness of its cause to gain supporters. To this end, the charity is organising the Round Britain 2017 initiative, sailing round the country in a national relay.

Starting this summer, the trust is taking a total of 100 young people, who have all previously sailed with the charity during their recovery from cancer, on an epic 2,000-mile, 17-leg challenge of a lifetime sailing round the UK.
The UNL Alzheimers Association has agreed to provide free assistance with chores around the homes where someone is caring for those with a dementia.

Project spokesman Stephen Kotopka said clicking on the following link will bring you to the sign-up page, where caregivers can select the time that they would like volunteers to come to their house: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090549a8a82aa2fc1-thelongest

The type of work is up to the caregiver requesting volunteers, Kotopka wrote in a note to the Lincoln Caregiver Education Group. I think outdoors work is preferable  there are often plenty of outdoors chores like raking leaves, mowing grass, weeding, organizing the shed.

More details are also available from Suzy Campbell, spokeswoman for the Lincoln Caregiver Education Group, at (402) 802-2309.

I hope the UNL Alzheimer's Association can get a lot of work done for caregivers, Kotopka noted.
Homelessness charity St Mungos has become the first charity to use a platform with blockchain technology to fundraise transparently.

It is using Alice, a donation transparency tool, to raise money for a project helping vulnerable people in London.

When people give, the charity only receives their donation if and when it achieves specific goals. These are listed on the appeal page and donors are kept informed of the progress the charity is making.

Rebecca Sycamore, executive director of fundraising at St Mungos, said: People who have been sleeping rough for a long time often have complicated histories and issues they need help to tackle.

This pilot gives us more flexibility than usual commissioned services do. It allows us to give these people the personalised support that we know will help them rebuild their lives away from the streets.

St Mungos is aiming to raise 35,000 through Alice to help 15 people sleeping rough in London. So far it has raised 12,000.

St Mungos lists a number of goals it needs to achieve in order to receive donations, such as helping individuals find and then stay in a new home. One-to-one support is provided for up to six months after individuals move in, in order to help them adapt.

Alice takes 3 per cent of donations to cover running costs, and a further 1.6 per cent of donations made by card go towards debit/credit card fees. St Mungos receives the full amount of Gift Aid. So in total, a 10 donation with Gift Aid results in St Mungos receiving 12.04.

Smart contracts

The platform works by creating smart contracts between donors and the charity. Alice is built on a public blockchain called Ethereum, and has been supported by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Alice has also worked with Tramonex Labs, a fintech startup that issues e-money on the blockchain.

Potential to rebuild public trust

The pilot is being delivered using grant funding from Nominet Trusts Social Tech Seed programme.

Vicki Hearn, director of Nominet Trust, said: Alice has real potential to rebuild public trust in charities thanks to its innovative use of blockchain technology. Nominet Trust is proud to support Alice in piloting this platform, helping to lift people out of homelessness, and raising the bar for the transparency, accountability and security of charitable giving.

Alice hopes that if the pilot is successful it will be able to scale up.

Raphael Mazet, chief executive of Alice, said: The charity sector is currently going through a crisis of public trust. We want to address that by helping trailblazing organisations like St Mungos, who are committed to transparency, to raise more funds for the amazing work they do.

Were excited to be launching this first pilot with an appeal that will make a really positive difference to the lives of 15 people. We hope to scale the project to help many more people if its successful.

Report: Losing the Middle but Keeping the Heart: Blockchain, DAOs and the future decentralisation of charity

Elsewhere, the Charities Aid Foundation has published its fourth report on blockchain technology and charities, entitled Losing the Middle but Keeping the Heart: Blockchain, DAOs and the future decentralisation of charity.

The latest paper explores how charities could take advantage of technology that reduces the number of intermediaries when transferring money overseas.

It also looks at how the governance of civil society organisations could be disrupted by using blockchain technology and the impact that the convergence of artificial intelligence technology and blockchain technology could have.

Civil Society Media is hosting its Charity Technology Conference on 9 November 2017. For more information, and to book, click here
Short Video Demonstration of the issue(s)



I have developed a recipe search application that obtains data from an API and it allows the user to view and save the data.

My android application uses multiple fragments within one activity. They share one container and when a new fragment is loaded it replaces the old fragment.



My application has the following fragments: Home, Search, Filters, RecipeView and more.



I am experiencing multiple issues with popping the fragment back stack once a search has been carried out or a favourite recipe has been displayed. The search fragment is a grid view that uses a custom adapter, and to perform a search the user uses a toolbar search view which executes code upon pressing the submit (return) button.



The home fragment is displayed first allowing a user to click a quick search button such as breakfast, clicking the button displays the search fragment with results from the API. The user can then click on an item which opens the RecipeView fragment, pressing the back button on these fragments does not cause an issue and a user can navigate back to the previous fragments including the home one that was displayed initially.



Additionally, a user can navigate to the search fragment using the navigation drawer. The search fragment allows the user to perform a search or click a filter via buttons on the toolbar. Clicking the search icon/button allows a user to enter text and once they press enter/return the search is perform and the grid view is populated.



Prior to performing a search or clicking the search button, pressing the filter button displays the filters fragment and from there, pressing the back button will allow a user to navigate back to the search view fragment.



If the user presses the search button which will open the search view menu item (allowing text input on the toolbar) and then presses the filters button, the filters activity is displayed. However, pressing the back button does not navigate to the previous fragment, it removes the focus from the toolbar. Pressing the back button again still does not navigate back and changes the toolbars text back to the search fragments specified title ("Recipe Search"). Pressing the back button again will then navigate back to the search fragment, removing the filters fragment from sight.



I have tried removing the focus from the toolbar so that pressing back is not removing toolbars focus and the app still requires three back button presses.



Furthermore, I am having another issue with fragments overlaying each other. From the home fragment that is loaded on create, if a user navigates using the side menu to the favourites fragment, a list of the saved favourites in a grid view are shown using the search fragment. Pressing the back button from the search fragment does not cause any issues and the app will navigate back to the home fragment; additionally, clicking a recipe will open the RecipeView fragment displaying a recipes information.



The issue arises from here. If the back button is pressed the app will navigate backwards loading the home fragment not the search fragment and the recipe fragment stays on screen causing both fragments to overlap. Pressing the back button again will remove the home fragment and leave the recipe fragment in the container; pressing the back button again will close the application (The search fragment is not shown and the order is incorrect).



Attempts

1. I have tried implementing this ([Avoid fragments overlapping][2])

2. I have tried calling classes using a new instance method rather than creating new ones in the MainActivity

3. I have tried to add fragments rather than replace them

4. I have tried overriding the back button press

5. I have tried addToBackStack(null) & addToBackStack(FragmentTag)

6. I have tried to remove all views from the frame layout within my fragment handler method



Thank you for taking the time to read my post



java - (Short Video Demo) Fragment back navigation issue and overlapping fragments using a frame layout - Stack Overflow[^]

Daniel Ali



delete.Thanks



modified 17-May-17 4:55am.



I have created android application to stream online radio stations but when I click start button to play radio it won't start.In service I read ip address of file from url and add it to string.When user selects radio station I add port to string with ip address.



Java public class BackgroundService extends Service implements OnCompletionListener { MediaPlayer mediaPlayer; private String STREAM_URL; final String textSource = " http://audiophileradio.stream/Ip.txt" ; @Override public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) { return null; } @Override public void onCreate() { } @Override public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) { new MyTask().execute(); return START_STICKY; } public void onDestroy() { if (mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) { mediaPlayer.stop(); } mediaPlayer.release(); } public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer _mediaPlayer) { stopSelf(); } @Override public boolean onUnbind(Intent intent) { return super .onUnbind(intent); } private class MyTask extends AsyncTask<Void, Void, String> { String textResult; @Override protected String doInBackground(Void... params) { URL textUrl; try { textUrl = new URL(textSource); BufferedReader bufferReader = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(textUrl.openStream())); String StringBuffer; String stringText = " " ; while ((StringBuffer = bufferReader.readLine()) != null) { stringText += StringBuffer; } bufferReader.close(); textResult = stringText; return textResult; } catch (MalformedURLException e) { e.printStackTrace(); textResult = e.toString(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); textResult = e.toString(); } return null; } @Override protected void onPostExecute( String result) { Log.d( " DebugTag" , " Value: " + textResult); super .onPostExecute(result); SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(BackgroundService. this ); String radio = sharedPreferences.getString( " station" , " 8000" ); if (radio != null) { STREAM_URL += " :" + radio; } mediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer(); if (!mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) { try { mediaPlayer.reset(); mediaPlayer.setDataSource(STREAM_URL); mediaPlayer.prepareAsync(); mediaPlayer.setOnPreparedListener( new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() { @Override public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) { mediaPlayer.start(); } }); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } mediaPlayer.setOnCompletionListener(BackgroundService. this ); } } }



Main.java



Java public class Main extends Fragment { private ImageButton buttonPlay; private MediaPlayer mPlayer; Intent playbackServiceIntent; private SeekBar volumeSeekbar = null; private AudioManager audioManager = null; View view; @Nullable @Override public View onCreateView(LayoutInflater inflater, @Nullable ViewGroup container, @Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) { view = inflater.inflate(R.layout.fragment_main,container,false); buttonPlay = (ImageButton) view.findViewById(R.id.buttonPlay); mPlayer = new MediaPlayer(); initControls(); buttonPlay.setTag( 1 ); buttonPlay.setImageResource(R.drawable.play); buttonPlay.setOnClickListener( new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View view) { if (Integer.parseInt(buttonPlay.getTag().toString()) == 1 ) { buttonPlay.setImageResource(R.drawable.stop); view.setTag( 0 ); getActivity().startService(playbackServiceIntent); Log.e( " Play" , " onStop" ); Toast.makeText(getActivity(), " Play" , Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } else { buttonPlay.setImageResource(R.drawable.play); view.setTag( 1 ); mPlayer.stop(); getActivity().stopService(playbackServiceIntent); Log.e( " Stop" , " onPlay" ); Toast.makeText(getActivity(), " Stop" , Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } } }); playbackServiceIntent = new Intent(getActivity(), BackgroundService. class ); return view; } @Override public void onViewCreated(View view, @Nullable Bundle savedInstanceState) { super .onViewCreated(view, savedInstanceState); getActivity().setTitle( " Audiophileradio" ); } private void startService() { getActivity().startService( new Intent(getActivity(),BackgroundService. class )); } private void stopService() { getActivity().stopService( new Intent(getActivity(),BackgroundService. class )); } private void initControls() { try { volumeSeekbar = (SeekBar) view.findViewById(R.id.seekBar); audioManager = (AudioManager) getActivity().getSystemService(Context.AUDIO_SERVICE); volumeSeekbar.setMax(audioManager .getStreamMaxVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC)); volumeSeekbar.setProgress(audioManager .getStreamVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC)); volumeSeekbar.setOnSeekBarChangeListener( new SeekBar.OnSeekBarChangeListener() { @Override public void onStopTrackingTouch(SeekBar arg0) { } @Override public void onStartTrackingTouch(SeekBar arg0) { } @Override public void onProgressChanged(SeekBar arg0, int progress, boolean arg2) { audioManager.setStreamVolume(AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, progress, 0 ); } }); } catch (Exception e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }



modified 13-May-17 9:54am.



I created android application to stream online radio stations but it doesn't work.I want to read ip address from url and assign it to string and when user selects radio to listen I should add port to that string!!!



Java public class BackgroundService extends Service implements OnCompletionListener { MediaPlayer mediaPlayer; private String STREAM_URL; @Override public IBinder onBind(Intent intent) { return null; } @Override public void onCreate() { final StringBuilder text = new StringBuilder(); new Thread( new Runnable() { public void run() { try { URL url = new URL( " http://audiophileradio.stream/Ip.txt" ); HttpURLConnection conn=(HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection(); BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(conn.getInputStream())); String str; while ((str = in.readLine()) != null) { text.append(str); } in.close(); text.insert(text.length(), " :8000" ); } catch (Exception e) { Log.d( " MyTag" ,e.toString()); } } }).start(); SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences( this ); String radio = sharedPreferences.getString( " station" , " 8000" ); if (radio != null && radio.equals( " 8000" )) { text.append( " :8000" ); STREAM_URL = text.toString(); Toast.makeText( this ,STREAM_URL,Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); } if (radio != null && radio.equals( " 8010" )) { text.append( " :8010" ); STREAM_URL = text.toString(); } if (radio != null && radio.equals( " 8020" )) { text.append( " :8020" ); STREAM_URL = text.toString(); } if (radio != null && radio.equals( " 8030" )) { text.append( " :8030" ); STREAM_URL = text.toString(); } mediaPlayer = new MediaPlayer(); try { mediaPlayer.setDataSource(STREAM_URL); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } mediaPlayer.setOnCompletionListener( this ); } @Override public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) { if (!mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) { try { mediaPlayer.reset(); mediaPlayer.setDataSource(STREAM_URL); mediaPlayer.prepareAsync(); mediaPlayer.setOnPreparedListener( new MediaPlayer.OnPreparedListener() { @Override public void onPrepared(MediaPlayer mp) { mediaPlayer.start(); } }); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } return START_STICKY; } public void onDestroy() { if (mediaPlayer.isPlaying()) { mediaPlayer.stop(); } mediaPlayer.release(); } public void onCompletion(MediaPlayer _mediaPlayer) { stopSelf(); } @Override public boolean onUnbind(Intent intent) { return super .onUnbind(intent); } }



05-12 10:35:48.625 17340-17340/? I/SELinux: Function: selinux_android_load_priority [0], There is no sepolicy file. 05-12 10:35:48.625 17340-17340/? I/SELinux: Function: selinux_android_load_priority [1], There is no sepolicy version file. 05-12 10:35:48.625 17340-17340/? I/SELinux: Function: selinux_android_load_priority , priority version is VE=SEPF_GT-I9301I_4.4.2_0055 05-12 10:35:48.625 17340-17340/? I/SELinux: selinux_android_seapp_context_reload: seapp_contexts file is loaded from /seapp_contexts 05-12 10:35:48.625 17340-17340/? D/dalvikvm: Late-enabling CheckJNI 05-12 10:35:48.835 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.view.Window.setStatusBarColor, referenced from method audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio.MainActivity.onCreate 05-12 10:35:48.835 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 21917: Landroid/view/Window;.setStatusBarColor (I)V 05-12 10:35:48.835 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6e at 0x0081 05-12 10:35:48.865 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.view.Window$Callback.onProvideKeyboardShortcuts, referenced from method android.support.v7.view.WindowCallbackWrapper.onProvideKeyboardShortcuts 05-12 10:35:48.865 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve interface method 21896: Landroid/view/Window$Callback;.onProvideKeyboardShortcuts (Ljava/util/List;Landroid/view/Menu;I)V 05-12 10:35:48.865 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x72 at 0x0002 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to find class referenced in signature (Landroid/view/SearchEvent;) 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.view.Window$Callback.onSearchRequested, referenced from method android.support.v7.view.WindowCallbackWrapper.onSearchRequested 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve interface method 21898: Landroid/view/Window$Callback;.onSearchRequested (Landroid/view/SearchEvent;)Z 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x72 at 0x0002 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.view.Window$Callback.onWindowStartingActionMode, referenced from method android.support.v7.view.WindowCallbackWrapper.onWindowStartingActionMode 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve interface method 21902: Landroid/view/Window$Callback;.onWindowStartingActionMode (Landroid/view/ActionMode$Callback;I)Landroid/view/ActionMode; 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x72 at 0x0002 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.content.res.TypedArray.getChangingConfigurations, referenced from method android.support.v7.widget.TintTypedArray.getChangingConfigurations 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 505: Landroid/content/res/TypedArray;.getChangingConfigurations ()I 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6e at 0x0002 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.content.res.TypedArray.getType, referenced from method android.support.v7.widget.TintTypedArray.getType 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 527: Landroid/content/res/TypedArray;.getType (I)I 05-12 10:35:48.875 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6e at 0x0008 05-12 10:35:48.965 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.content.Context.getColorStateList, referenced from method android.support.v7.content.res.AppCompatResources.getColorStateList 05-12 10:35:48.965 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 316: Landroid/content/Context;.getColorStateList (I)Landroid/content/res/ColorStateList; 05-12 10:35:48.965 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6e at 0x0006 05-12 10:35:49.175 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.content.res.Resources.getDrawable, referenced from method android.support.v7.widget.ResourcesWrapper.getDrawable 05-12 10:35:49.175 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 468: Landroid/content/res/Resources;.getDrawable (ILandroid/content/res/Resources$Theme;)Landroid/graphics/drawable/Drawable; 05-12 10:35:49.175 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6e at 0x0002 05-12 10:35:49.175 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.content.res.Resources.getDrawableForDensity, referenced from method android.support.v7.widget.ResourcesWrapper.getDrawableForDensity 05-12 10:35:49.175 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 470: Landroid/content/res/Resources;.getDrawableForDensity (IILandroid/content/res/Resources$Theme;)Landroid/graphics/drawable/Drawable; 05-12 10:35:49.175 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6e at 0x0002 05-12 10:35:49.185 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/dalvikvm: Could not find class 'android.graphics.drawable.RippleDrawable', referenced from method android.support.v7.widget.AppCompatImageHelper.hasOverlappingRendering 05-12 10:35:49.185 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve instanceof 150 (Landroid/graphics/drawable/RippleDrawable;) in Landroid/support/v7/widget/AppCompatImageHelper; 05-12 10:35:49.185 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x20 at 0x000c 05-12 10:35:49.315 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: setProgressDrawable drawableHeight = 24 05-12 10:35:49.335 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/AbsSeekBar: AbsSeekBar Constructor: misSeebarAnimationAvailable = false 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: setProgressDrawable drawableHeight = 24 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: setProgressDrawable getHeight() = 0 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: left = 0 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: top = 0 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: right = -64 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: bottom = 0 05-12 10:35:49.345 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: mProgressDrawable.setBounds() 05-12 10:35:49.365 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer-JNI: native_setup 05-12 10:35:49.365 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: constructor 05-12 10:35:49.365 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: setListener 05-12 10:35:49.365 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/MediaPlayer-JNI: QCMediaPlayer mediaplayer NOT present 05-12 10:35:49.405 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer-JNI: native_setup 05-12 10:35:49.405 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: constructor 05-12 10:35:49.405 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: setListener 05-12 10:35:49.405 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/MediaPlayer-JNI: QCMediaPlayer mediaplayer NOT present 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: DexOpt: couldn't find field Landroid/app/Notification;.headsUpContentView 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve instance field 14 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x5b at 0x005d 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: DexOpt: couldn't find field Landroid/app/Notification;.headsUpContentView 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve instance field 14 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x5b at 0x004c 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: DexOpt: couldn't find field Landroid/app/Notification;.headsUpContentView 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: DexOpt: unable to optimize instance field ref 0x000e at 0x54 in Landroid/support/v7/app/NotificationCompat;.addHeadsUpToBuilderLollipop 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: DexOpt: couldn't find field Landroid/app/Notification;.headsUpContentView 05-12 10:35:49.415 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: DexOpt: unable to optimize instance field ref 0x000e at 0x61 in Landroid/support/v7/app/NotificationCompat;.addHeadsUpToBuilderLollipop 05-12 10:35:49.485 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/Adreno-EGL: <qeglDrvAPI_eglInitialize:410>: EGL 1.4 QUALCOMM build: () OpenGL ES Shader Compiler Version: E031.24.00.07 Build Date: 01/27/14 Mon Local Branch: base_au149_adreno_au169_patches Remote Branch: Local Patches: Reconstruct Branch: 05-12 10:35:49.605 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/OpenGLRenderer: Enabling debug mode 0 05-12 10:35:49.615 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: left = 0 05-12 10:35:49.615 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: top = 0 05-12 10:35:49.615 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: right = 568 05-12 10:35:49.615 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: bottom = 68 05-12 10:35:49.615 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/ProgressBar: updateDrawableBounds: mProgressDrawable.setBounds() 05-12 10:35:49.625 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/dalvikvm: Could not find method android.support.v7.widget.LinearLayoutCompat.drawableHotspotChanged, referenced from method android.support.design.internal.ForegroundLinearLayout.drawableHotspotChanged 05-12 10:35:49.625 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/dalvikvm: VFY: unable to resolve virtual method 18400: Landroid/support/v7/widget/LinearLayoutCompat;.drawableHotspotChanged (FF)V 05-12 10:35:49.625 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/dalvikvm: VFY: replacing opcode 0x6f at 0x0000 05-12 10:36:19.895 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/Play: onPlay 05-12 10:36:19.955 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer-JNI: native_setup 05-12 10:36:19.955 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: constructor 05-12 10:36:19.965 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: setListener 05-12 10:36:19.965 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/MediaPlayer-JNI: QCMediaPlayer mediaplayer NOT present 05-12 10:36:20.005 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/MediaPlayer: Unable to create media player 05-12 10:36:20.005 17340-17352/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: message received msg=8, ext1=0, ext2=0 05-12 10:36:20.005 17340-17352/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: notify(8, 0, 0) callback on disconnected mediaplayer 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: java.io.IOException: setDataSource failed.: status=0x80000000 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.media.MediaPlayer._setDataSource(Native Method) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.media.MediaPlayer.setDataSource(MediaPlayer.java:1317) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.media.MediaPlayer.setDataSource(MediaPlayer.java:1240) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio.BackgroundService.onCreate(BackgroundService.java:107) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.handleCreateService(ActivityThread.java:2736) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1900(ActivityThread.java:169) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1359) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:136) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5476) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:515) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1283) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1099) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at de.robv.android.xposed.XposedBridge.main(XposedBridge.java:132) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: isPlaying: no active player 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer-JNI: isPlaying: 0 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer-JNI: reset 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: reset 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17352/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: message received msg=8, ext1=0, ext2=0 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17352/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio V/MediaPlayer: notify(8, 0, 0) callback on disconnected mediaplayer 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio E/MediaPlayer: Unable to create media player 05-12 10:36:20.015 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: java.io.IOException: setDataSource failed.: status=0x80000000 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.media.MediaPlayer._setDataSource(Native Method) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.media.MediaPlayer.setDataSource(MediaPlayer.java:1317) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.media.MediaPlayer.setDataSource(MediaPlayer.java:1240) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio.BackgroundService.onStartCommand(BackgroundService.java:124) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.handleServiceArgs(ActivityThread.java:2883) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2200(ActivityThread.java:169) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:1374) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:102) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:136) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:5476) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:515) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:1283) 05-12 10:36:20.025 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:1099) 05-12 10:36:20.035 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at de.robv.android.xposed.XposedBridge.main(XposedBridge.java:132) 05-12 10:36:20.035 17340-17340/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio W/System.err: at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 05-12 10:36:20.195 17340-19228/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/System.out: Thread-66912(HTTPLog):isShipBuild true 05-12 10:36:20.195 17340-19228/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio I/System.out: Thread-66912(HTTPLog):SmartBonding Enabling is false, SHIP_BUILD is true, log to file is false, DBG is false 05-12 10:36:20.425 17340-19228/audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio D/MyTag: java.lang.RuntimeException: Can't create handler inside thread that has not called Looper.prepare()



http://audiophileradio.stream/Ip.txt, your preferences/append code is also accessing the text variable. What's the possibility of that happening out of order?



Pavlex4 wrote: mediaPlayer.setDataSource(STREAM_URL); Have you tried hard-coding the value passed to setDataSource() to see if the reset of your player-related code is correct?





This is unrelated to the problem you are having, but the four if() tests are not as efficient as they could be. You are checking radio 's value four more times than is necessary. Consider:

if (radio != null ) { text.append( ' :' ).append(radio); STREAM_URL = text.toString(); Toast.makeText( this , STREAM_URL, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT).show(); }

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson



"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons



"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles



Hello Regards,

How to Develop Shopping cart in Android,With PHP MYSQL Database Connectivity,and After that it will redirect to the payment module.

As i am doing Payment with Instamojo the Payment app is ready as well as static Shopping Cart is ready...But How to Connect with Database...

Kindly Help Me,I am Working On this Project Since last two weeks but nothing is fruitful.

Help me.

Thanking You,

Bhrugesh Shah



Bhrugesh Shah





Member 13196220 wrote: How to Develop Shopping cart in Android,With PHP MYSQL Database Connectivity... That's at least three separate items (that can come together to eventually make your desired app). Have you tried to get each one working independently of the other?



Member 13196220 wrote: I am Working On this Project Since last two weeks but nothing is fruitful. So which part is troubling you, specifically?

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson



"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons



"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles



Hi Sifu..



I need some advice to properly implement MVVM with what I'm trying to do.

1) I have a WebView control in a View because I need user to manually login to a website.

2) Once login, it will set a flag to indicate that user has logged in. It will then go to another link in the website and periodically read a html element value.

3) The values read will then be displayed in a table in another View.

4) In the scenario when the user is logged off from the website, it will show the website login page again. And then it will continue to Step 2 and Step 3.

5) The View that has the WebView control only need to be shown for the user to log in to the website. After logging in, the View can be hidden, and only showing the table which contains the values read, which are periodically updated.



I have few ideas on how to implement it but I am not sure if my idea is correct or not.

Idea 1:

Have 2 View/ViewModel pair. 1 View/ViewModel (VM1) to display out the readings read. Another View/ViewModel (VM2) which contains WebView control for the user to login. VM1 will periodically trigger VM2 (by using mediator pattern) to read from the website. As VW2 tries to read from the website, if the user is not logged in to the website, it will go to the log in page. Once the user has logged in, it will go to the webpage that contains the html element and read the value. It will stay in that webpage so that the next time VW1 triggers VM2 to read the value, it can readily do so without user intervention.

Eventhough user may close the VM2's View, the View is not really closed. It is just hidden and the program is still able to read from the webpage in the background.





Idea 2:

Have View/ViewModel (VM1) to display out the value in the table. VM1 calls a service that does the reading of webpage. The service has a WebView control. If the user is not logged in, the service will instantiate a View/ViewModel (VM2) and passing in the WebView control which the user can use to log in. Once the user has logged in, the WebView control is passed back to the service so that the service can continue to read the html element. The service then triggers the ViewModel (VM2) to close the View.



Please advice on what is the correct MVVM way to do what I'm trying to do.

Thanks.



modified 10-May-17 18:00pm.



JoJo82 wrote: Hi Sifus Who is Sifus, and why do you think he/she will see this message?





Sifus is referring to Teacher/Master in Chinese because I'm still learning and there are a lot of very experienced people in this forum.

Actually, it is Sifu.. I just use Sifus to make it plural..



I have created android application with navigation drawer and when I click item from navigation drawer old fragment is not replaced,I can still see the old fragment under the new fragment.How to fix this issue?



Java private void displaySelectedScreen( int id) { Fragment fragment = null; switch (id) { case R.id.home: fragment = new Main(); break ; case R.id.settings: Intent intent = new Intent( this , Settings. class ); startActivity(intent); break ; case R.id.about: Intent intent1 = new Intent( this , About. class ); startActivity(intent1); break ; case R.id.share: try { Intent i = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND); i.setType( " text/plain" ); i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, " Audiophileradio" ); String sAux = "

Let me recommend you this application



" ; sAux = sAux + " https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=Orion.Soft



" ; i.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, sAux); startActivity(Intent.createChooser(i, " choose one" )); } catch (Exception e) { } break ; case R.id.send: fragment = new Feedback(); break ; } if (fragment != null) { FragmentManager fragmentManager = getSupportFragmentManager(); fragmentManager.beginTransaction() .replace(R.id.contentFrame, fragment).commit(); } DrawerLayout drawer = (DrawerLayout) findViewById(R.id.drawer_layout); drawer.closeDrawer(GravityCompat.START); } @SuppressWarnings ( " StatementWithEmptyBody" ) @Override public boolean onNavigationItemSelected(MenuItem item) { int id = item.getItemId(); displaySelectedScreen(id); return true; }



content_main.xml



XML =" 1.0" =" utf-8" < android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout xmlns:android =" http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:app =" http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" xmlns:tools =" http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width =" match_parent" android:layout_height =" match_parent" app:layout_behavior =" @string/appbar_scrolling_view_behavior" tools:context =" audiophileradio.example.com.audiophileradio.MainActivity" tools:showIn =" @layout/app_bar_main" android:background =" @drawable/backg1" > < FrameLayout android:id =" @+id/contentFrame" android:layout_width =" match_parent" android:layout_height =" match_parent" > < /FrameLayout > < TextView android:id =" @+id/textView3" android:layout_width =" 13dp" android:layout_height =" 21dp" android:layout_marginBottom =" 8dp" android:layout_marginLeft =" 8dp" android:layout_marginRight =" 8dp" android:layout_marginTop =" 8dp" android:text =" +" android:textSize =" 18sp" app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias =" 0.977" app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintVertical_bias =" 0.13" android:layout_marginStart =" 8dp" android:layout_marginEnd =" 8dp" / >



feedback.xml



XML =" 1.0" =" utf-8" < android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout xmlns:android =" http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" xmlns:app =" http://schemas.android.com/apk/res-auto" xmlns:tools =" http://schemas.android.com/tools" android:layout_width =" match_parent" android:layout_height =" match_parent" > < TextView android:id =" @+id/textView4" android:layout_width =" wrap_content" android:layout_height =" wrap_content" android:layout_marginBottom =" 8dp" android:layout_marginLeft =" 8dp" android:layout_marginRight =" 8dp" android:layout_marginTop =" 8dp" android:text =" Title :" android:textSize =" 18sp" app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias =" 0.103" app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintVertical_bias =" 0.081" / > < EditText android:id =" @+id/editText" android:layout_width =" 218dp" android:layout_height =" 35dp" android:ems =" 10" android:inputType =" textPersonName" android:text =" Name" app:layout_constraintBottom_toBottomOf =" parent" android:layout_marginBottom =" 8dp" app:layout_constraintTop_toTopOf =" parent" android:layout_marginTop =" 8dp" android:layout_marginLeft =" 8dp" app:layout_constraintLeft_toLeftOf =" parent" android:layout_marginRight =" 8dp" app:layout_constraintRight_toRightOf =" parent" app:layout_constraintHorizontal_bias =" 0.593" app:layout_constraintVertical_bias =" 0.084" android:background =" @drawable/border" / > < /android.support.constraint.ConstraintLayout



here.

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson



"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons



"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles



Hello everyone i need to hashed my password when i put it in my login application android and then i need to compare it with my password in my table fos_user of symfony and the password in fos_user is encoders:bcrypt

This is my code:

<?php include ' config.inc.php' ; if (isset($_POST[ ' username' ]) && isset($_POST[ ' password' ])) { $result= ' ' ; $username = $_POST[ ' username' ]; $password = $_POST[ ' password' ]; $hash = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_BCRYPT); $sql = " SELECT password FROM fos_user WHERE username = '$username' AND password = '$hash'" ; $test = mysql_query($sql) or die( mysql_error() ); $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($test); if ($hash == $row[ ' password' ]) { $result= " true" ; } else { $result= " false" ; } echo $result; } ?>

My file config.inc.php is this code

<?php $servername = " localhost" ; $username = " root" ; $password = " " ; $dbname = " projet_grh" ; try { $conn = new PDO( " mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$dbname" , $username, $password); $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION); } catch (PDOException $e) { die( " OOPs something went wrong" ); } ?>





"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson



"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons



"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles



Member 13023118 wrote: ...i thnik there are a problem in my code php but i don't find it Perhaps you'd be better served here. Once your PHP code is returning the proper credentials, then you can come back to this forum and focus on your Android code.

"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson



"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons



"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles


On the 828th Hamburg Port Anniversary, AIDA Cruises celebrated one year of the AIDAprima with music and a light show. During the two days last weekend, more than a million people enjoyed Northern Germany's largest maritime festival live in Hamburg, on television, or on social media, according to a press release.

On Saturday evening, the AIDAprima left its dock at Cruise Center Steinwerder, passed by Hamburg's waterfront and the Elbphilharmonie, and took its exclusive position at Harbor Piers. After a light show and fireworks, the AIDAprima departed from the port and headed for the North Sea. The floating landmark has already set out from Hamburg 52 times for seven-day round-trip cruises to various cities in Western Europe, including London, Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

With 82 stops by six AIDA ships this year, AIDA Cruises has a strong presence in Hamburg and continues to be an important economic factor for the city.

Next year's celebrations for the Hamburg Port Anniversary will include the AIDAperla, sister ship to the AIDAprima. Starting in March 2018, during a seven-day metropolis cruise, Hamburg will be the departure and destination port for AIDAperla. Model Lena Gercke will christen AIDA's twelfth ship in Palma de Majorca on June 30.
Port Tampa Bay said it was pleased with Royal Caribbean Internationals decision to bring the Empress of the Seas back to Tampa for the summer cruise season in 2018, according to a press release.

On April 30 of this year, the Empress of the Seas began sailing during the summer season for the first time from Tampa with visits to Havana, Cuba, and will have 42 homeports in Tampa.

The ship will be back in Tampa for the 2018 summer season, offering four- and five-night voyages to Key West, Costa Maya, Cozumel and Havana.

Todays announcement to continue summer cruises to Cuba from Tampa through 2018 is a big feather in our cap, not only for the port but for all of Tampa Bay, which is a major gateway to the Western Caribbean, Paul Anderson, port president and CEO, said. We are delighted to work with our partners at Royal Caribbean International for many years to come.
The brand-new TUI Mein Schiff 6 has arrived in the port of Kiel, the first port call for the ship in her home market of Germany.

The ship was recently delivered to TUI Cruises from Meyer Turku in a handover ceremony in Finland.

The ship arrived in Kiel on May 11 with a water-fountain-style welcome from a local tug boat.

On Friday, the port welcomed the ship officially with a plaque exchange ceremony onboard that included TUI Cruises CEO Wybcke Meier and Captain Kjell Holm.
OPENING FRIDAY

AFTER THE STORM. A failed novelist tries to get his life and family together in this character study set before, during and after a Tokyo typhoon. Not Rated. (Ross) Grade: B+

GRADUATION. Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu presents another examination of moral choices in a corrupt society with this story of a doctor who is forced to decide how to help is his daughter when she is attacked and could lose the future he has worked to ensure. R. (Ross) Grade: A

KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD. Director Guy Ritchie's King Arthur superhero origin story is strange, invigorating, often outright bad, confusing, totally wild and edited to within an inch of its life. PG-13. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe in 3-D and 2-D). Grade: C

SNATCHED. This mother-daughter kidnapping comedy starring Schumer and Hawn is a huge disappointment, and for Schumer, a low moment of a career thats been peaking. R. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe). Grade: D+

NOW SHOWING

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Director Bill Condon's film  let's call it "Beauty and the Beast 2.0"  often feels in search of a purpose beyond the all-but-certain dollar signs. PG. (Grand, East Park) Grade: C+

THE BOSS BABY. The talented voice cast and some good pointed jokes can't overcome the thin premises of this animated feature about a talking, suit-wearing baby voiced by Alec Baldwin. PG. (East Park, SouthPointe) Grade: C

THE CIRCLE. This dull, dated thriller about the loss of privacy starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson that's set inside an evil social media company never fully connects and rapidly falls apart. PG-13. (Grand, SouthPointe). Grade: D

THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS. Fate of the Furious doesnt achieve anything new for the franchise, and even seems to downshift a bit, but there are a few exceptional action sequences, some laughs, and a barbecue at the end with a toast to family. PG-13. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe) Grade: C+

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY, VOL. 2. This silly, soupy sequel explores the nature of family while telling a goofy space epic story filled with the same off-beat characters and '70s songs that made the original a hit. PG-13. (Grand, East Park, Edgewood, SouthPointe in 3-D and 2-D) Grade: B

GOING IN STYLE. Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine and Alan Arkin are old friends who decide to rob the bank that absconded with their pension funds in this remake of the 1979 comedy. PG-13. (Edgewood) Grade: C+

HOW TO BE A LATIN LOVER. Eugenio Derbez is an aging gigolo forced to regenerate his powers as a Latin lover in this rags-to-riches too broad comedy that tries to turn into a family picture. PG-13. (Grand) Grade: C-

NOTE: Theaters are for Friday only and are subject to change the other days of the week.
RACINE  With House Speaker Paul Ryan as their special guest, InSinkErator and Emerson executives Thursday shared plans and drawings of the new $34 million headquarters and laboratory soon to go under construction in Mount Pleasant, as well as other area investments Emerson is making.

In January, InSinkErator, now based at 4700 21st St., where it also manufactures food waste disposers, announced the new project to be built at the southwest corner of Highway 20 and International Drive. The 85,000-square-foot building will house about 175 engineers and professional staff.

The initial stated cost was about $24 million  including more than $5 million in economic incentives  but the $34 million number given Thursday is an updated figure. It includes all equipment and other costs associated with the project, explained Emerson spokesman David Baldridge.

Thursday, at the headquarters, executives also announced that InSinkErators parent company, St.Louis-based Emerson, will make an additional $29.1 million investment in the present headquarters building following the opening of the new headquarters, which is expected in about July 2018.

The 21st Street building will be reconfigured and an internal three-story structure demolished to increase manufacturing capacity and improve efficiency. Emerson expects to complete that work by fall 2019.

Our new modern headquarters and state-of-the-art lab space will facilitate continued InSinkErator innovation and growth, enabling us to showcase the leading technologies that were developing here in Wisconsin, ISE President Chad Severson said. With the expansion to Mount Pleasant, we can optimize the layout of the Racine facility for improved product flow and additional capacity.

Severson said the new headquarters building, designed by Fox Architects of St. Louis, and 11.5-acre campus will help the company with employee retention and recruiting. It will be built to qualify for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, certification and to enhance human productivity with lots of natural lighting and walking paths, for example.

I believe its very important to have the right kind of environment for our people, said Bob Sharp, executive president of Emerson Commercial & Residential Solutions.  This will be an absolutely first-class facility.

InSinkErator, the worlds largest manufacturer of food waste disposers for home and commercial use, employs about 1,200 people in southeastern Wisconsin.

Ryan: Change tax system

Ryan used the occasion to underscore his previous calls for changing U.S. tax laws for businesses and manufacturers. He called the U.S. tax system the worst in the industrialized world, one that penalizes American businesses.

Ryan called for allowing manufacturers to write off 100 percent of their investments in their factories in the first year to stimulate those investments.

He also fingered the skills gap as one of industrys largest problems. He advocated for regulatory changes because too many agencies are administering too many training programs now. Ryan also said employers should be allowed to set up curriculum, do in-house training and then certify those people.

More investment

Emerson and ISE executives said the investments in southeastern Wisconsin, including the Kenosha manufacturing operation, will actually total close to $150 million from 2015-19. That will include about $60 million in smaller projects to sustain their sites.

The companys economic impact goes well beyond capital investments. According to a fact sheet provided by Emerson:

ISE paid its U.S. employees $103 million in wages and benefits last year.

It annually spends more than $195 million with its U.S. suppliers.

ISE generated an estimated 357 jobs and $12.7 million payroll with those U.S. suppliers.
The Communications Authority of Kenya has hit back at accusations that it issued a 4G licence to Jamii Telecom for an extremely low rate.

The regulator is alleged to have accepted KES100,000 (US$970) for a 4G licence worth KES2.5 billion ($24 million). Jamii, which provides carrier infrastructure and corporate data transfer services, would also have been required to pay a further KES2.5 billion in fees which the regulator has not collected.

After national media brought the story to prominence, the regulator stated at a press conference that no money had been lost, claiming that Jamii Telecom was provided with a trial licence that was only valid for one year. Communications Authority chairman Ngene Gituku noted that the regulator would hold an emergency board meeting to address the issue before disclosing any more information.

The newspaper reported that the Communications Authoritys director general Francis Wangusi had queried the decision, demanding to know why the 700MHz licence was not being put to auction.

Responding to accusations by The Daily Nation that it had been gifted a licence by the regulator, Jamii Telecom took out a newspaper advertisement stating that it paid all necessary fees. It additionally claimed that the allegations were being made by Kenyas market leading wireless operators, who were merely keen on protecting their monopolistic dominance.
The GSMA has expressed concerns about the Bangladesh Governments plan to impose higher fees for 4G licensing ahead of the next round of spectrum auctions.

The decision would pose a significant challenge to the fulfilment of the Digital Bangladesh objectives and impact the future of mobile broadband services in Bangladesh. According to the GSMA, there is instead a need to lower the burden of levies in order to facilitate the deployment of affordable voice and data services for the people of Bangladesh. Mobile operators are already currently liable for multiple taxes and fees that affect growth.

New research links high spectrum prices with lower quality mobile services. In short, mobile operators have less capital left for new networks and services, said Brett Tarnutzer, Head of Spectrum, GSMA. Reasonable spectrum fees are key to achieving the Digital Bangladesh objectives. Operators should be able to use their resources to build networks for high-quality mobile services.

Spectrum delivers the most value when used by mobile technology and devices to provide social and economic opportunity for all of Bangladeshs citizens. In 2015 alone, the mobile industry contributed 6.2% to Bangladeshs GDP.

The proposal of imposing incremental fees on top of the already-high fees risks deterring operators from acquiring much-needed spectrum. India, Ghana, Mozambique and Senegal all provide recent examples of countries where 4G spectrum has gone unsold, added Tarnutzer. This would be extremely damaging not only for the Bangladesh mobile industry, but also for the countrys economy overall, depriving citizens and businesses in India to the full potential of high quality mobile broadband services.

Given the high levels of infrastructure and technology service investments already committed by operators, the GSMA has urged Bangladeshs government to reconsider the 4G spectrum licensing price proposal in order to reflect local market realities and government goals. Doing so will be essential to facilitate the further investment and infrastructure development necessary to achieve a digital Bangladesh.
RACINE  Prosecutors say the 3-month-old baby who died last month after being in his fathers care suffered traumatic brain injuries as a result of being shaken or struck against a soft surface.

But the mans public defender argued Thursday that the childs death could have easily been caused by a seizure.

Josue Santiago-Vasquezs attorney, Mindy Nolan, raised the issue during a preliminary hearing, asking that the reckless homicide charge against her client be dismissed. She contended that the state had not provided sufficient evidence that the childs injuries were caused by the defendant.

Following testimony Thursday, Nolan said there is a lot that officials still dont know.

The investigator testified that she had no knowledge of all of the other types of internal factors that could lead to the internal injuries that were discussed by the doctor, Nolan said. There was no (indication) of external trauma, there was no (indication) of any type of abuse toward this child.

Racine County Court Commissioner Stephen Simanek, however, ultimately found that the state, through the testimony of Racine Police Investigator Sarah Zupke, had presented enough evidence to bind Santiago-Vasquez, 30, over to stand trial for the death of his son.

The court must consider the facts, along with any reasonable inferences from those facts, which would lead a reasonable person to conclude that a crime has probably been committed and that the defendant probably committed the crime, Simanek said. There may be seizure disorder issues in the defendants family. But the court, under the circumstances, needs not consider those  the state has presented today what I believe to be a reasonable inference that this child suffered death through non-accidental means.

Charges and testimony

Thursdays preliminary hearing comes a month after police and rescue personnel were called to Santiago-Vazquez home in the 1000 block of Park Avenue, on a report that the mans infant son was not breathing. Santiago-Vazquez reportedly told police that the child had fallen and stopped breathing, but investigators became concerned when the defendant was overheard speaking with his girlfriend, who reportedly told him to stick with his story, his criminal complaint states.

When the child was first examined at Ascension All Saints Hospital in Racine, his condition was believed to be due to natural causes. But a doctor at Childrens Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, who examined the child the next day, stated the child had suffered severe subdural hematoma and retinal hemorrhaging  injuries consistent with violent shaking or rapid acceleration and deceleration.

They had reviewed a CAT  and described his injuries as being bleeding on the brain, and that the bleeding was in several different areas, Zupke testified Thursday.

After reviewing photos of the infant taken at about 2:29 p.m. on April 11, the doctor reportedly determined the injury occurred between 2:29 p.m. and the time in which Santiago-Vazquez called 911 about three hours later. During that time period, Santiago-Vazquez was reportedly the primary caregiver of the child.

The infant died from his injuries on April 16.

Santiago-Vazquez remained in custody in the Racine County Jail as of Thursday afternoon, court records showed.
AIM-quoted mineral exploration and development company Beowulf Mining has more than halved its full-year pre-tax loss.

"The company is in a stronger position than it was 12 months ago and we look forward to 2017 being a pivotal year for the company," said non-executive chairman Bevan Metcalf.

Beowulf expected the Exploitation Concession would be awarded for its Kallak North iron ore project, conceding this was the "most significant risk currently facing the group".

The company further expected to advance its exploration programme on its graphite projects in Finland, and on its Atvidaberg licence in Sweden.

Beowulf's pre-tax loss for the 12 months was 633,229, from 1.8m.

At 12:31 BST, shares in Beowulf were down 3.95% to 9.12p.
Gemfields issued an operational update for the three months ending 31 March on Friday - the third quarter of the financial year.

The AIM-traded firm said that, in its emeralds arm, production totalled 4.5 million carats of emerald and beryl with an average grade of 193 carats per tonne, versus 7.1 million carats with an average grade of 297 carats per tonne in the quarter ending 31 March 2016, with the difference being attributable to the varied nature of the emerald mineralisation, exceptionally high rainfall combined with a renewed focus on opening new areas for future production.

Total operating costs were $9.6m, against $11.2m in the quarter to 31 March 2016, supported by improved efficiencies and ongoing cost saving initiatives.

Unit operating costs were $2.13 per carat, compared to $1.58 per carat in the quarter to 31 March 2016, while on a cash basis, unit operating costs were $1.73 per carat , against $0.96 per carat in the quarter to 31 March, with the difference being attributable to the lower number of carats recovered in the quarter.

Cash rock handling unit costs were $3.55 per tonne, compared to $2.62 per tonne in the quarter to 31 March 2016, primarily due to the reduction in total rock handling on account of the higher rainfall experienced.

An auction of predominantly higher quality rough emeralds extracted from the Kagem mine was held in Lusaka, Zambia in February 2017.

The company said the auction generated revenues of $22.3m, at an average realised value of $63.61 per carat, which the board said was the third highest price achieved to date.

It said the next auction of predominantly commercial quality rough emeralds from Kagem was scheduled to take place in Jaipur, India, from 15 to 18 May.

The lower production achieved to date at Kagem was expected to reduce the targeted total production for the 2017 financial year to between 20 and 25 million carats.

Gemfields said it remained confident that it would deliver on the longer-term production ramp up over the coming years.

For rubies, production totalled 1.2 million carats of ruby and corundum with an average grade of 7.0 carats per tonne, versus 2.0 million carats with an average grade of 30 carats per tonne in the quarter ending 31 March 2016, largely as a result of the lower grade but higher value ore being processed, with the quantity of premium quality rubies recovered increasing by 92%.

Total operating costs were $6.5m, compared to $5.8m in the quarter to 31 March 2016.

Unit operating costs were $5.42 per carat, compared to $2.90 per carat in the quarter to 31 March 2016, which the board said was a direct result of the decrease in carats produced.

On a cash basis, unit operating costs were $4.08 per carat, versus $2.40 per carat in the quarter ending 31 March 2016.

Cash rock handling unit costs were $5.37 per tonne, compared to $10.18 per tonne in the quarter ending 31 March 2016, mainly attributable to the almost doubling of total rock handling while costs were maintained at similar levels as comparative period.

The next mixed quality auction of rough rubies and corundum from Montepuez was expected to take place in June 2017, in Singapore.

Gemfields said that, given the production focus would be on processing predominantly lower grade but considerably higher value ore for the remainder of the financial year, the targeted total production was now estimated to be between eight and 10 million carats of rough rubies and corundum, compared to previous guidance of 10 to 12 million carats.

The emeralds production summary was from its 75%-owned Kagem Mining in Zambia, while the rubies production summary was from the 75%-owned Montepuez Ruby Mining in Mozambique.

At Faberge, Gemfields said the number of pieces sold during the quarter increased by 63% when year-on-year, supported by an 18% increase in the number of sales transactions during the same period.

Sales orders agreed during the quarter declined by 39%, and total operating costs fell by 13%.

Faberge launched its third men's timepiece in the Faberge Visionnaire collection during the period, the board highlighted, further cementing its position within the highly profitable sector.

It said the Visionnaire Chronograph was showcased alongside new jewellery pieces at Baselworld 2017, the World Watch and Jewellery Show, and had already received considerable acclaim.

On the corporate front, Gemfields said cash and cash equivalents stood at $4.6m as at 31 March, and total debt outstanding was $60.1m.

From an operational perspective the quarter under review delivered mixed results but we remain delighted that demand for coloured gemstones continues to increase as the sector strengthens, said CEO Ian Harebottle.

Montepuez has once again performed extremely well, with a significant increase in the quantity of ore and the quality of the gemstones produced.

The inclement weather during the period, varied nature of the mineralisation and a focus on opening new areas for future mining have resulted in Kagem delivering lower volumes of production.

Harebottle said that the lower production experienced during the quarter at both Kagem and Monetpuez, and the changes to the targeted total production figures for financial year 2017, would not impact on the company's upcoming auction schedule.

Post an internal review Gemfields has made the decision to withdraw from the Coscuez transaction in Colombia and its operations in Sri Lanka.

The company truly believes that its portfolio of high quality assets in Africa, as well as other potential expansion opportunities within Zambia, Mozambique and Ethiopia, are all likely to deliver considerably higher returns, with shorter payback periods, than some of the other jurisdictions it had previously been evaluating.
UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn rejected suggestions that he was a pacifist, insisting on Friday that he would approve military action as a last resort.

In a speech to the Chatham House think tank Corbyn, a well known opponent of past military interventions in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, said he would make the safety of Britain a priority if elected at the June 8 General Election.

If elected prime minister, I will do everything necessary to protect the safety and security of our people and our country, he said.

"The bomb first, talk later approach to security has failed. To persist with it, as the Conservative government has made clear it is determined to do, is a recipe for increasing not reducing threats and insecurity."

Corbyn also said there would no more "hand holding" with US President Donald Trump - a reference to an embarrassing moment for Prime Minister Theresa May when the American leader took her by the hand during a visit to the White House.

"When Theresa May addressed a Republican Party conference in Philadelphia in January she spoke in alarmist terms about the rise of China and India and of the danger of the West being eclipsed. She said America and Britain had to stand strong together and use their military might to protect their interests," he said.

"Britain deserves better than simply outsourcing our countrys security and prosperity to the whims of the Trump White House."

Corbyn insisted that wars that sought regime change in Afghanistan Iraq, Libya, and Syria  and Western interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen - "have failed in their own terms, and made the world a more dangerous place".

"The fact is that the war on terror which has driven these interventions has failed. They have not increased our security at home  just the opposite, and they have caused destabilisation and devastation abroad," he said.

"The best defence for Britain is a government actively engaged in seeking peaceful solutions to the worlds problems."

"But I am not a pacifist. I accept that military action, under international law and as a genuine last resort, is in some circumstances necessary."
US telecoms firm Sprint Corp has entered preliminary talks with T-Mobile over a possible merger between the two companies, according to a report from Bloomberg.

T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom is said to have entered the discussions on an informal basis, amidst intense scrutiny of mergers and acquisitions in the industry in recent times.

Sprint's largest shareholder SoftBank Group has also been involved in the preliminary talks.

In the last week both Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son and Deutsche boss Tim Hoettges told investors that they are both open to the potential merger.

"It is not only permitted and possible, but now very likely that discussions will get under way concerning various potential strategic combinations of businesses in our industry," Hoettges said. "That includes our company, T-Mobile US."

Washington is already looking at the possible deal for AT&T to purchase Time Warner Inc, and all eyes will turn to Donald Trump and how his youthful administration looks at the telecoms deals.

Speculation has been rife about a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile, even after a previous attempt of the former to acquire the latter in 2014.
Markets in Asia finished mixed on Friday, taking their cue from a red Thursday overnight on Wall Street as focus turned towards the G7 finance ministers meeting in Italy.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 finished 0.39% lower at 19,883.90, as the yen strengthened against the greenback.

It was last ahead 0.07% at JPY 113.78 per $1.

On the mainland, the Shanghai Composite finished in the green, adding 0.71% to 3,083.36, while the smaller, technology-focussed Shenzhen Composite was 0.06% higher at 1,820.20.

South Koreas Kospi was off 0.45% at 2,286.02, while the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong added 0.12% to 25,156.34.

Retail stocks were higher in Seoul, as traders brushed off the poor results for the sector in the US on Thursday, with Lotte Shopping 2.34% higher.

Mobile gaming company Netmarble Games made its debut in Korea, opening above its IPO price after raising $2.3bn in what was the countrys second largest IPO ever.

It finished 1.82% lower, however.

Attention was turning towards the meeting of finance chiefs from the worlds seven largest economy over the weekend, at the G7 meeting, with trade currencies expected to be high on the minutes.

Oil prices rose for the third straight day, though they weakened as Europe took the trading baton, with Brent crude last down 0.06% at $50.74 and West Texas Intermediate losing 0.15% to $47.76 per barrel.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.7% to 5,836.90, with retailers in the sunburnt country taking their cue from their US counterparts, which were down overnight on disappointing results from heavyweights Macys and Kohls.

Department store Myer was off 3.57%, while electronics and furniture peddler Harvey Norman was off 2.68%.

New Zealands S&P/NZX 50 was 0.5% softer at 7,452.38, led lower by dairy products and baby food exporter A2 Milk, which lost 6.8% on what local analysts described as profit taking.

One of the benchmarks largest companies, Fletcher Building, lost 2.9% after fresh data suggested the heat in the housing market might be cooling, particularly in the countrys largest city Auckland.

The down under dollars were mixed, with the Aussie last 0.06% stronger on the greenback at AUD 1.3544, while the Kiwi was 0.08% weaker at NZD 1.4610 per $1.
European stocks are holding onto slight gains with pharma among the top performers amid mixed economic data and as they brace for the release of a slate of US economic data later in the session.

At noon the Stoxx 600 was up by 0.06% to 394.61 as the Dax gained 0.15% to 12,729.14 and the Cac-40 another 0.07% to 5,387.03.

The Stoxx 600 sub-index for pharmaceutical companies was among the top performing groups, rising 0.85% to 797.56 with AstraZeneca leading the advance.

Miners were weaker, weighed down by another retreat for iron ore futures.

Euro/dollar is up by 0.11% to 1.0874 as front month Brent crude oil futures were drifting lower by 0.12% to $50.71 a barrel on the ICE.

Commenting on the situation in markets at the end of the week, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK said: "Stocks had a disappointing day yesterday with a weaker bias across the board, despite further gains in the oil price, as a lack of positive drivers weighed on sentiment.

"It would be ironic in the extreme now that the worst of the political fog appears to have cleared, that we could well see stock markets post their first negative week since early April."

Helping stocks along and acting as a backdrop, Asian bourses were mostly higher in late trading with some traders referencing talk of receding trade tensions between China and the US as the main catalyst.

Also worth noting, overnight Morgan Stanley trimmed the odds it assigns to a US recession scenario this year form 30% to 25%, although it should be noted that the latter continues to be high by historical standards. In July 2016 the investment bank pegged the chances of a downturn this year at 40%.

Back in all things Europe, French nominal wage gains accelerated to a 0.6% quarter-on-quarter clip at the start of 2017, easily outstripping forecasts for a rise of 0.2%.

However, at the wider euro area level industrial production dipped by 0.1% month-on-month in March (consensus: 0.4%), according to Eurostat.

Earlier in the session, Germany's Finance ministry announced that real German gross domestic product grew by 0.6% quarter-on-quarter over the first three months of 2017, as expected.

That came alongside figures showing a rise of 2.0% in harmonised consumer prices in the euro area's largest economy.

AstraZeneca announced its durvalumab immuno-oncology drug has become the first such medicine to successfully treat advanced lung cancer patients who had not had success with chemotherapy, sending its shares bounding 5% higher.

Shares in Richemont were still among the worst performers on the Stoxx 600 come midday after the Swiss luxury goods maker reported a 4% drop in annual sales.

French media group Vivendi on the other hand was moving higher on that same pan-European gauge after offering to take Group Bollore's near 60% stake in Havas off its hands.
European stocks have started the day slightly higher with investors brushing off sharp falls in the likes of Richemont amid strong economic data out of France and as they brace for the release of a slate of US economic data later in the session.

As of 0838 BST the Stoxx 600 is up by 0.20% to 395.11 as the Dax gains 0.19% to 12,735.22 and the Cac-40 another 0.17% to 5,392.48.

Euro/dollar is down by 0.04% to 1.0859 as front month Brent crude oil futures edge higher by 0.138% to $50.82 a barrel on the ICE.

Commenting on the situation in markets at the end of the week, Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets UK said: "Stocks had a disappointing day yesterday with a weaker bias across the board, despite further gains in the oil price, as a lack of positive drivers weighed on sentiment.

"It would be ironic in the extreme now that the worst of the political fog appears to have cleared, that we could well see stock markets post their first negative week since early April."

Helping stocks along and acting as a backdrop, Asian bourses were mostly higher in late trading with some traders referencing talk of receding trade tensions between China and the US as the main catalyst.

Also worth noting, overnight Morgan Stanley trimmed the odds it assigns to a US recession scenario this year form 30% to 25%, although it should be noted that the latter continues to be high by historical standards. In July 2016 the investment bank pegged the chances of a downturn this year at 40%.

Back in all things Europe, French nominal wage gains accelerated to a 0.6% quarter-on-quarter clip at the start of 2017, easily outstripping forecasts for a rise of 0.2%.

In parallel, Germany's Finance ministry announced that real German gross domestic product grew by 0.6% quarter-on-quarter over the first three months of 2017, as expected.

That came alongside figures showing a rise of 2.0% in harmonised consumer prices in the euro area's largest economy.

Shares in Richemont are pacing declines on the Stoxx 600 after the Swiss luxury goods maker reported a 4% drop in annual sales.

French media group Vivendi was moving higher on that same pan-European gauge after offering to take Group Bollore's near 60% stake in Havas off its hands.
NHS services throughout England were thrown into disarray on Friday when IT systems were disrupted by what is believed to be a large-scale cyber-attack.

Hospitals in London, Nottingham and Cumbria, among others, were simultaneously affected by the coordinated failure, with several reports of pop-up messages on computers demanding ransom money.

Cyber-security has become a significant issue in recent months and years as both states and private entities become more aware of tactics aimed to disrupt networks across the globe.

In a statement released by NHS Digital, it said that the attack was not only focused on the NHS and it was working with other affected organisations to identify the source of the issue.

"At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed. We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this.

"NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and to recommend appropriate mitigations."

The ransomware attack involved a demand for affected users to deposit 230 worth of digital currency bitcoin in order to regain encrypted files.

Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, the owner of O2, was also subject to a massive ransomware attack on Friday.

Employees at the firms headquarters were instructed to shut down their computers when the attack materialised.
The Serious Fraud Office has launched a criminal investigation into Petrofac , its subsidiaries and its employees, which the agency confirmed was over suspicions of bribery, corruption and money laundering.

The SFO said the probe was related to the SFOs ongoing investigation into the activities of Unaoil, a Monaco-based consultancy that worked with Petrofac, primarily in Kazakhstan between 2002 and 2009.

Petrofac's chief executive Ayman Asfari and chief operating officer Marwan Chedid have both been questioned under caution by the SFO.

"The company is cooperating with the authorities," Petrofac said in a short statement on Friday afternoon.

The SFO confirmed that it "is investigating the activities of Petrofac Plc, its subsidiaries, and their officers, employees and agents for suspected bribery, corruption and money laundering"

Last summer, the FTSE 250 company commissioned an investigation into media allegations that Unaoil had made bribes on Petrofac's behalf.

Lawyers Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, with the support of forensic accountants at KPMG, reported no evidence of misconduct.

The announcement sent shares in Petrofac down 9% on Friday.
Relations between the worlds two largest economies have hit a new high, Donald Trumps commerce secretary has claimed, announcing a herculean trade deal between Washington and Beijing in the latest sign of warming ties. Trump frequently lashed out at China on the campaign trail, describing Beijing as an enemy of the United States. - Guardian

Deliveroo, the takeaway delivery company that relies on 15,000 self-employed couriers, has made changes to its contracts for riders following pressure from parliament. The gig economy company has removed a controversial clause in its supplier agreement that couriers could not challenge their self-employed status at an employment tribunal.  Guardian

The chief executive of Barclays, Jes Staley, has fallen victim to an email prankster pretending to be the banks chairman. In an embarrassing development, Mr Staley, who is under investigation from City regulators for twice trying to uncover the identity of a whistle-blower in contravention of bank rules, replied to emails pretending to be from chairman John McFarlane.  Telegraph

British virtual simulation firm Improbable has raised $502m (390m) in a funding round led by Japan's SoftBank, in one of the largest investments ever made in an early stage European tech firm. Improbable said the investment would give SoftBank a "non-controlling" stake, meaning the funding round values Improbable at more than $1bn. - Telegraph

Lloyds Banking Group is set to pay millions of pounds in compensation to thousands of customers who were mis-sold investment products as low risk that turned out to be highly complex. The lender is writing to more than 7,000 customers of the bank and Scottish Widows, its investment arm, offering money to those who bought structured investments, which have been the subject of growing anger among consumer groups because the products were said to be too complex and performed poorly.  The Times

House of Fraser has picked the man behind the Goodwood Revival and Festival of Speed to run the department store business in an effort to boost the experience of shopping at its stores. In a surprise appointment, Alex Williamson, chief executive of the Goodwood Estate in West Sussex, will join House of Fraser in the same role at the end of July.  The Times
London's FTSE 250 was down 0.3% in afternoon trade to 19,731.38 on what has turned out to be a quiet end to the week.

Ibstock was the standout gainer as Berenberg initiated coverage of the stock at 'buy' with a 310p price target saying it was an unmissable play on clay. It said that as the leading manufacturer of bricks in the UK, Ibstock is well placed to take advantage of strong fundamentals.

"Its new SM3 plant should help the group take market share and lower its cost base while its US exposure will continue to be supportive to growth. Strong free cash flow generation will aid its bolt-on strategy and increase the probability of further shareholder returns."

On the downside, Petrofac gushed lower after the Serious Fraud Office launched a criminal investigation into the company, its subsidiaries and its employees, which the agency confirmed was over suspicions of bribery, corruption and money laundering.

The SFO said the probe was related to the SFOs ongoing investigation into the activities of Unaoil, a Monaco-based consultancy that worked with Petrofac, primarily in Kazakhstan between 2002 and 2009.

Petrofac's chief executive Ayman Asfari and chief operating officer Marwan Chedid have both been questioned under caution by the SFO.

Other oilfield services groups were also on the back foot, with Tullow, Amec and Wood Group all lower.

Elsewhere, Ferrexpo was weaker as iron ore prices declined, while Paragon Group of Companies retreated ahead of its interims on Tuesday.

Risers

Ibstock (IBST) 239.40p 3.64%

Allied Minds (ALM) 150.80p 3.57%

Just Eat (JE.) 578.00p 3.12%

Renishaw (RSW) 3,631.00p 2.95%

Man Group (EMG) 162.50p 2.72%

Go-Ahead Group (GOG) 1,898.00p 2.59%

Metro Bank (MTRO) 3,563.00p 2.41%

Dechra Pharmaceuticals (DPH) 1,790.00p 2.34%

B&M European Value Retail S.A. (DI) (BME) 360.10p 1.75%

Inmarsat (ISAT) 766.50p 1.52%

Fallers

Petrofac Ltd. (PFC) 739.50p -9.21%

Evraz (EVR) 192.10p -4.43%

Ferrexpo (FXPO) 159.70p -3.09%

Softcat (SCT) 435.30p -2.96%

Savills (SVS) 925.00p -2.84%

Tullow Oil (TLW) 198.80p -2.79%

Amec Foster Wheeler (AMFW) 545.00p -2.50%

Wood Group (John) (WG.) 760.50p -2.31%

Paragon Group Of Companies (PAG) 472.70p -2.23%

Carillion (CLLN) 202.00p -2.18%
University of Toronto and Baycrest Rotman Research Institute (RRI) scientists have discovered a potential brain imaging predictor for dementia, which illustrates that changes to the brain's structure may occur years prior to a diagnosis, even before individuals notice their own memory problems.

The joint study, published in the Neurobiology of Aging on May 8, looked at older adults who are living in the Toronto community without assistance and who were unaware of any major memory problems, but scored below the normal benchmark on a dementia screening test.

Within these older adults, researchers also found evidence of less brain tissue in the same subregion of the brain where Alzheimer's disease originates (the anterolateral entorhinal cortex located in the brain's temporal lobe).

This U of T-Baycrest study is the first to measure this particular brain subregion in older adults who do not have a dementia diagnosis or memory problems that affect their day-to-day routine. It is also the first study to demonstrate that performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) dementia screening test is linked to the volume (size) of this subregion, along with other brain regions affected early in the course of Alzheimer's disease.

"This work is an important first step in determining a procedure to identify older adults living independently at home without memory complaints who are at risk for dementia," says Dr. Morgan Barense of U of T's Department of Psychology and senior author on the study.

The team studied 40 adults between the ages of 59 and 81 who live independently (or with a spouse) at home. All participants were tested on the MoCA. Those scoring below 26 - a score that indicates a potential problem in memory and thinking skills and suggests further dementia screening is needed - were compared to those scoring 26 and above.

"The early detection of these at-risk individuals has the potential to facilitate drug developments or other therapeutic interventions for Alzheimer's disease," says Dr. Rosanna Olsen, first author on the study, RRI scientist and assistant professor in U of T's Department of Psychology. "This research also adds to our basic understanding of aging and the early mechanisms of Alzheimer's disease." Scientists were able to reliably measure the volume of the anterolateral entorhinal cortex by using high-resolution brain scans that were collected for each participant.

The strongest volume differences were found in the exact regions of the brain in which Alzheimer's disease originates. The researchers are planning a follow-up study to determine whether the individuals who demonstrated poor thinking and memory abilities and smaller brain volumes indeed go on to develop dementia.

"The MoCA is good at diagnosing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) (a condition that is likely to develop into Alzheimer's) and we are seeing that it may identify MCI in people who are not aware of a decline in their memory and thinking skills," said Dr. Barense.

Alzheimer's disease is a devastating neurodegenerative illness with widespread personal, societal and economic consequences. Currently, 564,000 Canadians currently live with dementia and 1.1 million Canadians are affected by the disease, according to the Alzheimer Society of Canada. There are 25,000 new cases of dementia diagnosed every year in Canada and it costs $10.4 billion to care for those living with dementia.

"A key take-away from the study is that it highlights the utility of the MoCA test in identifying individuals who are at-risk for dementia," said Dr. Olsen.

Adults who are 40+ and interested in testing their memory and attention prior to raising concerns with their doctor can consult Baycrest's scientifically-validated, online brain health assessment tool, Cogniciti at http://www.cogniciti.com.

###

Research for this study was conducted with support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada Research Chairs program, the James S McDonnell Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and an Early Researcher Award from the Ontario Government.

The research team included RRI senior scientist Dr. Jennifer Ryan, former RRI post-doctoral fellow, Dr. Maria D'Angelo, and graduate students, Lok-Kin Yeung, Alix Noly-Gandon, and research assistants, Arber Kacollja and Victoria Smith.

About the University of Toronto

Established in 1827, the University of Toronto is Canada's largest university, recognized as a global leader in research and teaching. The university consistently ranks among the top 25 universities in the world. Its distinguished faculty, institutional record of ground-breaking scholarship and wealth of innovative academic opportunities continually attract outstanding academics and students from around the world.

About Baycrest Health Sciences

Baycrest Health Sciences is a global leader in geriatric residential living, healthcare, research, innovation and education, with a special focus on brain health and aging. Fully affiliated with the University of Toronto, Baycrest provides excellent care for older adults combined with an extensive clinical training program for the next generation of healthcare professionals and one of the world's top research institutes in cognitive neuroscience, the Rotman Research Institute. Baycrest is home to the federally and provincially-funded Canadian Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation, a solution accelerator focused on driving innovation in the aging and brain health sector, and is the developer of Cogniciti - a free online memory assessment for Canadians 40+ who are concerned about their memory. Founded in 1918 as the Jewish Home for Aged, Baycrest continues to embrace the long-standing tradition of all great Jewish healthcare institutions to improve the well-being of people in their local communities and around the globe. For more information please visit: http://www.baycrest.org

About Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute

The Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest Health Sciences is a premier international centre for the study of human brain function. Through generous support from private donors and funding agencies, the institute is helping to illuminate the causes of cognitive decline in seniors, identify promising approaches to treatment, and lifestyle practices that will protect brain health longer in the lifespan.

For media inquiries:

Sean Bettam

University of Toronto

416-946-7950

s.bettam@utoronto.ca

Jonathan MacIndoe

Baycrest Health Sciences

416-785-2500 ext. 6579

jmacindoe@baycrest.org
"Antimicrobial-resistant bacteria pose a complex challenge. This is why Germany, with its German Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy DART2020, is making sustained efforts to protect the health of humans and animals", says BfR President Professor Dr. Dr. Andreas Hensel. "In the spirit of the One Health strategy, this calls for interdisciplinary research by veterinarians and experts in human medicine as well as molecular biologists and epidemiologists, as successfully demonstrated by the RESET and MedVet-Staph network projects."

Since 2010, these research networks have been investigating the development, spread and mechanisms of resistance to certain antibiotics in cases of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus in humans and animals. Alongside the BfR, numerous universities and scientific institutions in Germany are involved in the network projects.

The RESET network investigates resistance to the particularly important antibiotic classes of cephalosporins and (fluoro)quinolones in intestinal bacteria such as Escherichia (E.) coli.

Some strains of these bacteria can destroy cephalosporins. In this process, they use enzymes known as "extended-spectrum beta-lactamases" (ESBLs) and AmpC beta-lactamases (AmpCs). The strains can pass on this destructive capability to other bacteria. Analyses conducted in the RESET network have shown that ESBL- or AmpC-producing E. coli are widespread in livestock. These bacteria were detected in all investigated poultry-rearing businesses. They were also found in 85% of investigated pig production and dairy cattle businesses as well as in 70% of cattle production businesses. Moreover, E. coli and Salmonella that can additionally destroy carbapenems were found in livestock in Germany for the first time. These antibiotics are used in hospitals to treat infections with multi-resistant bacteria.

The administration of antibiotics is not always responsible for the occurrence of resistant bacteria. E. coli that produce ESBLs or AmpCs also occur in groups of animals (in particular in broilers) that have had no contact with antibiotics. The bacteria and resistance genes can be transferred along the production chain and be transmitted to other foods in the kitchen.

In studies, ESBL-E. coli were found in 6.3% of the healthy general population and with similar frequency among pig farmers. In German hospitals, the share of ESBL-positive E. coli and Klebsiellae among all hospital acquired infections with these enterobacteria increased from 11.9% to 15.4% between 2007 and 2012.

Overall, the molecular biology analyses showed that various ESBL-forming bacteria possess the ability to be exchanged between humans, animals and their environment. Direct transmission of the bacteria with their resistance genes is evidently relatively seldom. Nevertheless, the resistance genes can be exchanged between different bacteria, and this makes it more difficult to trace them. It is therefore currently not possible to exactly assess the significance of livestock for the colonisation and infection of humans with ESBL- or AmpC-forming enterobacteria.

RESET coordinator Professor Dr. Lothar Kreienbrock at the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover says: "Our newly created joint database enables us to perform overarching analyses of both the data on the origin of samples from humans, animals, food and the environment as well as the data on the properties of the bacteria strains. Based on this joint strain and data collection, for example, we have succeeded for the first time in detecting the transmissible colistin resistance gene (mcr - 1) in E. coli from German livestock." He adds that the task now is therefore to further extend and consolidate these options developed together with the German Research Platform for Zoonoses and the TMF (technology and methodology platform for interconnected medical research) in the spirit of the One Health strategy.

The MedVet-Staph network focuses on the importance of the transmission of antimicrobial-resistant staphylococci including the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus strains (MRSA) between animals and humans. MRSA colonises around 0.8% of healthy people in the general German population (mostly in the nasal or throat area). By comparing the genetic fingerprint, it is possible to distinguish livestock-associated MRSA types from MRSA typically found in hospital acquired infections. Network coordinator PD Dr. med. Robin Kock from the University of Munster says: "The findings of the MedVet-Staph network have underlined that the transmission path between animals and humans is something that it is essential to bear in mind if we want to understand the spread of MRSA. We have shown that in particular direct contact with MRSA-carrying livestock, as occurs with farmers or vets, constitutes a high risk for transmission. More than 80% of farmers involved in pig production carry the bacterium."

MRSA is found with increasing frequency as a wound infection pathogen not only in livestock but increasingly also in horses, cats and dogs. The MRSA detected in these animals differs from the MRSA in livestock, however.

During the course of the project, it was not only MRSA but also other bacteria that were detected in livestock and farmers - bacteria such as enterococci and coagulase-negative staphylococci, which are resistant to substances such as linezolid or daptomycin - which are used in human medicine as reserve antibiotics. Further research is therefore necessary on the occurrence of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in livestock and food as well as in pets and the environment.

The MedVet-Staph research network also investigated the extent to which livestock-associated MRSA can lead to disease in humans. The frequency of livestock-associated MRSA clones has increased overall in Germany, although there are marked regional differences: in individual regions with intensive livestock farming (in the northern region of North Rhine-Westphalia, for example), these bacteria are responsible for over 10% of severe MRSA infections in humans.

However, not all cases of detection in humans can be attributed to direct contact with positive animals. The MedVet-Staph network proved that 38% of the people in rural regions colonised with livestock-associated MRSA types had no direct contact with livestock. It must therefore be assumed that the bacteria are also passed on via other routes (e.g. human to human). According to research findings of the BfR and from Denmark, there are similarities between MRSA from poultry meat, in particular turkey meat, and bacteria isolates from humans. This suggests that, in individual cases, livestock-associated MRSA can also be transmitted to humans via food. Experimental studies with broiler meat were conducted at the BfR in this regard. It was shown that the processing and preparation of contaminated food in domestic kitchens can result in the migration of MRSA and ESBL-forming E. coli to other foods which are then consumed by people without further heating. At the same time, however, the significance of this transmission path appears to be relatively minor.

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The RESET and MedVet-Staph research networks are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and are each made up of scientists from the fields of human and veterinary medicine, basic research and applied research.

You can find more information (in German) about RESET and MedVet-Staph at

http://www.reset-verbund.de http://www.medvetstaph.net
NSF's Office of Polar Programs led US delegation for group that developed the accord

On May 11, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed an agreement to promote Arctic scientific cooperation by breaking down barriers to scientific research and exploration.

The signing took place at the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation and the United States are parties to the agreement.

The "Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation" is the product of three years of work by the Arctic Council's Task Force for Enhancing Science Cooperation. The U.S. delegation to the task force, led by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Office of Polar Programs, represented several U.S. science agencies.

This is the third legally binding agreement the parties have negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council.

The agreement ensures scientists from the eight Arctic nations have access to the Arctic areas that each state has identified, including "entry and exit of persons, equipment, and materials; access to research infrastructure and facilities; and access to research areas." The agreement also calls for the parties to promote education and training of scientists working on Arctic matters.

The agreement entered into force upon its signature.

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When Northwestern Engineering's Erik Luijten met Zbigniew Rozynek, they immediately became united by a mystery.

Presenting at a conference in Norway, Rozynek, a researcher at Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna?, Poland, demonstrated something that looked almost like magic. When he poked a needle-shaped electrode into a mixture of micron-sized, spherical metal particles dispersed in silicone oil, a sphere stuck to its end. As Rozynek pulled the electrode out of the dispersion, another sphere attached to the first sphere, and then another to the second sphere, and so on, until a long chain formed.

"The spheres behaved like magnetic beads, except no magnetism was involved," said Luijten, professor of materials science and engineering and of engineering and applied mathematics at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. "The particles have no tendency to cluster. I realized that something more complicated was happening."

Rozynek, along with his collaborators Filip Dutka, Piotr Garstecki, and Arkadiusz Jozefczak, and Luijten joined their teams to understand the phenomenon that caused these chains to form. Their resulting discovery could lead to a new generation of electronic devices and a fast, simple method to write two-dimensional electronic circuits.

"Our scientific results could open up other areas for future research -- both fundamental and applied," Rozynek said. "We are already working on follow-up projects based on our discovery."

Supported by the Foundation for Polish Science, Polish National Science Centre, and the US National Science Foundation, the research was published online today in the journal Nature Communications. Rozynek and Luijten are co-corresponding authors. Rozynek is also co-first author with Ming Han, a PhD student in Luijten's Computational Soft Matter Lab.

Rozynek and Han performed multiple calculations, showing how the electrode's electric field changed the particles' properties. When the electrode is dipped into the colloidal solution, its charged tip polarizes each sphere. These induced dipolar interactions cause the spheres to link together. A resulting chain could contain hundreds of thousands of spheres, reaching up to 30 centimeters in length.

After the team solved the mystery of how the chains formed, it had a second mystery to tackle. "Another fascinating part is that once we pulled the chain out of the liquid, we no longer had to apply an electric field to hold the chain's structure," Han said. "After the field was turned off, the stable particle chain remained stable."

Following months of investigation, Luijten and Rozynek's teams discovered that the chains maintained their structures due to liquid "bridges" between adjacent particles. As researchers pulled the chain out of the liquid, silicone oil clung to the sides of each particle, forming a case around the entire chain and keeping it intact.

"Surface tension plays a big role here," Han said. "The liquid bridge made the particles stick together. The physics here is really interesting. Most people would think that if you wanted to hold the structure, then you would need to apply the electric field. But that is not needed in our system."

Once the flexible chain is pulled out of the liquid, it can be immediately dragged along a surface and deposited to create a pattern. The researchers believe this method could be used as an alternative way to create simple, two-dimensional electronic circuits. If molten wax is used instead of silicone oil, then the method could also be used to build three-dimensional structures that hold their shapes when the wax cools and hardens.

"Though simple, our method for fabricating colloidal structures is very elegant and can be used for many applications," Rozynek said, "including fabrication of conductive paths on different substrates to be used, for example, in electronic applications."

Luijten and Rozynek believe that solving this mystery could potentially open the door for applications that they cannot predict today. By understanding how the method works, they can better assess how different types of fluids or voltage levels could affect the chains and change the outcome.

"Understanding how it works makes it so much easier to manipulate and optimize," Luijten said. "We can say if the method will work better or worse if the particles are larger or if the electric field is stronger. That's only possible because we understand it. Otherwise, you would have to examine an endless set of combinations."

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CORVALLIS, Ore. - Research using time-lapse photography in the Galapagos Marine Reserve suggests the presence of a key multilevel "trophic cascade" involving top- and mid-level predators as well as urchins and algae.

The findings are important because they include detailed information about interactions in a complex food web. Such information is crucial to knowing how to cause, prevent or reverse population changes within the web.

In the rocky, species-rich subtidal area off the Galapagos Islands, scientists from Oregon State University and Brown University examined the relationships among predatory fishes, urchins, the algae that the urchins graze on, and how the interactions among them were influenced by sea lions and sharks at the top of the food chain.

The key question: Do predators high up in the chain affect the abundance of the "primary producers" at the bottom - in this case algae - thus causing a trophic cascade?

Trophic level refers to a species' position in the chain, and the cascade describes the series of effects that can occur.

Using GoPro cameras, the researchers made a number of key findings regarding triggerfish, Spanish hogfish, pencil urchins, the larger green urchins and algae, including:

Among a diverse guild of predatory fishes, triggerfish can control the abundance of pencil urchins and thus also the abundance of algae the urchins eat; the experiments showed grazing on algae was eliminated when the pencil urchins were exposed to triggerfish predation, meaning triggerfish are a candidate for protection because of their strong effects on ecosystem function.

Green urchins eat more algae than pencil urchins yet are not the urchin prey of choice for predatory fish. That suggests those fish aren't controlling green urchin populations and thus that green-urchin barrens in the Galapagos - areas where the urchins have stripped the sea floor of algae - are not the result of the overfishing of predatory fish.

Spanish hogfish are not major predators of urchins as earlier, survey-based research had suggested. Hogfish mainly eat the smaller pencil urchins and also interfere with triggerfish feeding on large pencil urchins; the hassling hogfish cause triggerfish to spend more time to eat an urchin and in some cases force a fumble.

Statistical modeling of predation on pencil urchins indicates that two types of interference behavior - the hogfish harassing the triggerfish, and sea lions and sharks startling the triggerfish - could slow the rate of triggerfish predation on pencil urchins.

The researcher who did the modeling, Mark Novak of the College of Science at Oregon State, noted that historically, ecologists believed complex food webs typical of the tropics were more immune to trophic cascades than the simpler food webs of higher latitudes; the Galapagos straddle the equator.

Studies such as this one now suggest that is not the case, and that the dynamics of complex food webs can be as predictable as simpler ones provided you understand who the relevant players are.

"When the backbone of the system is strong, you can connect the top of the food chain to the bottom despite all of the indirect effects and the complexities of the system," said Novak, assistant professor of integrative biology.

"It's important to know individual species identity when you've got a suite of consumers," Novak said. "The hogfish, the triggerfish, they all feed on very similar things, yet one of the two is most important, the one that drove that first link. And an urchin isn't just an urchin - one was more immune to consumption from triggerfish, the other more susceptible. And one urchin was important for grazing, and another was not."

Merely lumping species together at trophic levels would have caused researchers to miss a lot of the subtleties that the photographic study uncovered.

"If you just put urchins out and see how quickly they disappear, you can't attribute that to any given predator," Novak said. "We were able to identify those species that were responsible for transmitting the cascade."

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Findings were recently published in PLOS One. The National Science Foundation supported this research.
HOUSTON -- (May 12, 2017) -- U.S. and Chinese geologists studying China's Yellow River have created a new tool that could help Chinese officials better predict and prevent the river's all-too-frequent floods, which threaten as many as 80 million people. The new tool, a physics-based formulation to calculate sediment transport, can also be applied to study the sustainability of eroding coastlines worldwide.

Known in Chinese as the Huanghe, the Yellow River holds a central but dichotomous place in history. As the cradle of Chinese civilization, it is often called the "mother of China." But its floods, including several of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history, also have earned it the name "China's sorrow." Each identity -- the fertile nurturer and the wanton killer -- derives from the same feature: The Yellow River washes about a billion tons of sediment each year from the Loess Plateau to the Bohai Sea, and in so doing, it has a tendency to become so clogged that it not only floods but literally changes course, jumping to a new channel miles away.

"The Huanghe is probably the most-studied fine-grained river in the world," said Rice University sedimentologist Jeffrey Nittrouer, a primary author of the new study about the Yellow River that appears online this week in Science Advances. "Despite that, the typical formulae and relationships that are used to describe sediment flux in most other rivers simply do not work for the Huanghe. They consistently underpredict the sediment load of the river by a factor of 20."

In the study, Nittrouer and lead author Hongbo Ma, a postdoctoral researcher from China who joined Rice in 2014, used the latest techniques in sediment sampling and 3-D river-bottom mapping to create a "universal sediment transport formulation." The formulation is the first physics-based sediment transport model capable of accurately describing how the Huanghe carries sediment.

"In terms of sediment transport, the Haunghe is almost the perfect river," Ma said. "Its bottom is nearly flat and featureless, which means it can use almost all of its energy for moving sediment."

Nittrouer, an assistant professor of Earth science who has studied dozens of rivers on three continents, said he has not seen anything like the Huanghe. "In typical lowland sand-bed rivers - like the Amazon, the Mississippi, you name it - only about 40 to 60 percent of the energy is used to transport sediment downstream. In the Yellow River, well over 95 percent of the energy is available to move sediment."

Nittrouer and Ma first visited the Huanghe in summer 2015 as part of a four-year, $2 million study funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Their intent was to examine the geological, socio-economic and engineering lessons from China's decadeslong effort to control the Huanghe and direct the growth of its delta into the Bohai Sea.

"The Haunghe moves so much sediment that it is extremely efficient at generating new land each year and is therefore the best place for us to learn about how to use sediment from rivers to enhance delta sustainability," Nittrouer said. "The example closest to home is the Mississippi River, where there are significant efforts to replenish coastal Louisiana. But an even more pressing reason to study the Yellow River is that 80 million people live in its floodplain and are threatened by its floods. The potential for human suffering is enormous. The aim of our work is to mitigate Huanghe floods, while developing techniques through research that are transferable so as to evaluate river systems worldwide."

Ma and Nittrouer said they will never forget their first attempt to create a 3-D map of the Huanghe bottom. They were planning to make a detailed picture of the river bed using a sonar system that Nittrouer had previously used to map several other rivers systems. In all previous studies, he'd found that the channel contained bedform features similar to sand dunes of deserts.

"I took one look at the readout on the boat and thought the instrument was broken," Nittrouer said. "The bottom looked flat as glass."

Ma said, "Only when we brought the data back to the lab did we see that there were features, but the aspect ratio was such that we could not see them on the boat."

For example, when Nittrouer imaged the bottom of the Mississippi River, he typically saw bedforms up to 10 meters tall and spaced about 200 to 300 meters apart. In contrast, the data from the Yellow River showed 1-meter-tall dunes every 500 to 2,000 meters.

Using that data and other measurements from the lower Huanghe, including from its sprawling delta, Ma created a physics-based formulation capable of accurately predicting the flux -- the volume of sediment transported for a given time period -- in the Huanghe.

"The aim is to look at the connectedness, in terms of sediment movement and water flow, among the river, the delta and the near-shore marine region," said Ma, who chose to become a sedimentologist following the devastating 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China.

While still an undergraduate at Tsinghua University, Ma joined a lab that was studying the potential flooding that could result from dam breaches caused by landslides in the 2008 quake. The potential loss of life from the floods was greater than the 90,000 people killed or injured by the quake itself, and Ma became fascinated with creating technologies that could help prevent such large floods.

"I was born and grew up far from the Haunghe in the northeastern Heilongjiang Province, but I, like many Chinese, deeply feel the sorrow of the Huanghe, which has killed millions over the past 2,000 years, and I bear the sorrow of all the flooding hazards in mind in conducting my research," he said.

Ma said he hopes the new formula may prove useful to Chinese engineers who manage the flow of water and sediment from dams along the Huanghe. For example, engineers have for decades tried to reduce the risk of Huanghe floods by periodically scouring the river bottom with massive releases of sediment-depleted lake water.

Ma said one finding from the new model is that such scouring may inadvertently increase the risk of flooding in certain parts of the river because although it clears silt, it also creates a rough-textured riverbed that reduces the amount of energy the river can use to move sediment.

"Our formula indicates this will lower sediment transport efficiency by an order of magnitude," he said. "Additionally, the added drag produced by dunes could increase water stage and leave the system prone to levee overtopping during flood events. This threat may be unique to the case of the Haunghe."

Judy Skog, program director in the NSF's Directorate for Geosciences, which funded the research through its Coastal Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Program, said, "Understanding the flow of sediment in rivers is important to the large number of people around the world who live near rivers. This study can lead to predictions of when and where rivers transport sediment, and to an understanding of how that sediment flow is affected by conservation and management efforts, such as the removal of dams."

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Additional co-authors include Rice's Andrew Moodie, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Kensuke Naito and Gary Parker, Tsinghua University's Xudong Fu and Baosheng Wu and the Yellow River Institute of Hydraulic Research's Yuanfeng Zhang and Yuanjian Wang. The research is supported by NSF and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

VIDEO is available at:

https://youtu.be/CMb_u4ILqdo

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:

CAPTION: China's flood-prone Huanghe, or Yellow River, washes about a billion tons of sediment each year from the Loess Plateau to the Bohai Sea. The sediment-laden river not only floods but literally changes course every few years, jumping to a new channel miles away. (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

CAPTION: The mouth of the Huanghe, or Yellow River, in China's Bohai Sea, as seen from NASA's Landsat satellite in 1999. The river's sediment constantly rebuilds the delta, which is extensively engineered to control flooding and protect coastal development. U.S. researchers hope lessons from the Huanghe could aid efforts to rebuild coastal Louisiana. (Image courtesy of NASA and Wikimedia Commons)

http://news.rice.edu/files/2017/05/0512_YELLOW-jnhm08-lg-22lavts.jpg

CAPTION: Rice University sedimentologists Hongbo Ma (left) and Jeff Nittrouer. (Photo by Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

A copy of the paper is available at: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/5/e1603114

For more information, visit:

Nittrouer lab home page: http://www.sedimentology.rice.edu/

NSF grant page: http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1427262

Related research from Rice:

River of many returns -- Sept. 10, 2014 http://news.rice.edu/2014/09/10/river-of-many-returns/

Study: Centuries of sand to grow Mississippi Delta -- April 20, 2014http://news.rice.edu/2014/04/20/study-centuries-of-sand-to-grow-mississippi-delta/

This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,879 undergraduates and 2,861 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for happiest students and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Personal Finance. To read "What they're saying about Rice," go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.
Imagine waiting months for a colorectal cancer screening, only for the appointment to fall between the cracks because of poor communication or, worse, being diagnosed with more advanced disease because of a long delay or lack of access to health care.

Unfortunately, vulnerable minority populations on Chicago's South Side, in Cook County and beyond face these problems routinely. As a result, many people suffer unnecessarily from colorectal cancer.

The University of Chicago Medicine is hoping to lead the way in addressing this issue through ILColonCARES.org, a new website being launched as part of an innovative partnership designed to help health care providers directly schedule colorectal cancer screenings for Cook County residents ages 50 to 75. The web portal, known as Illinois Colon CARES, also seeks to enhance communication across health systems and provide timely results to patients and their doctors.

Inaugural partners for the initiative, in addition to UChicago Medicine, include Rush University Medical Center, Heartland Health Centers, Community Health, Friend Family Health, Asian Human Services Family Health Center, and Swedish Covenant Hospital. They are donating a total of nearly 100 screenings for the launch. The potential to expand and scale this model across the state will reach 6,000 a year.

The portal will be unveiled Friday, May 12, 2017, at the Midwest Health Equity Conference in Chicago. The conference brings together community and health professionals who are focused on preventing hepatitis, liver cancer and colorectal cancer among minority populations.

In its initial stages, Illinois Colon CARES (Colorectal Cancer Alliance to Reinforce and Enhance Screening) will target uninsured and vulnerable populations who are most at risk for developing the disease. The Center for Asian Health Equity (CAHE), which received a $3.5 million federal grant to increase colorectal cancer screening rates in Cook County, wants to bring the technology to other communities across the country.

"If we find colon cancer early, nine out of 10 people will have a long-term survival and can be cured from the disease," said Karen Kim, MD, professor of medicine and director of CAHE, a partnership between UChicago Medicine and the Asian Health Coalition. "Unfortunately, about 40 percent of people diagnosed with colon cancer are found in late stages when the survival rate is very low. This is a disease that needs special attention because we can prevent it with screening."

Fewer than half of Illinois residents who should be screened for colorectal cancer have access to such services. The tragedy of this situation is that, unlike most cancers, colorectal cancer often starts as a benign growth that can be identified and removed during screening, before cancer forms.

Most federally funded health clinics provide screening to patients. However, when there is a positive result, it is very difficult to access timely and high-quality colonoscopy follow-up. Illinois Colon CARES was developed to address this gap in services, especially for vulnerable populations who are at high risk for colorectal cancer. "Federally qualified health centers are faced with challenges in communicating with hospital systems that do not shared similar electronic medical record platforms," Kim said.

This portal creates a process to eliminate these gaps in needed services and follow-up care by partnering with hospitals to donate colonoscopy services for use by health centers through a single accessible, online portal.

"The beauty of Illinois Colon CARES is the broad partnership and win-win-win situation. Hospitals provide community benefit to their surrounding community, federally qualified health centers have access to needed services and the community gets screened," Kim said.

Kim said she hopes the effort will eventually provide access to care for vulnerable populations in every state. She has already introduced the model to colleagues across the nation, including Dennis Ahnen, MD, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado, Denver, and steering committee member of the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable.

"The Illinois Colon CARES website is both novel and an elegant way to bring hospitals and practices who wanted to reach out to the community to a population in need of that outreach," said Ahnen. "The website and the work behind it have made it easy for the hospitals and the clinics taking care of the population in need to get colonoscopies completed and provides a simple and consistent source of donated colonoscopies."

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Dramatic drops in oceanic oxygen, which cause mass extinctions of sea life, come to a natural end - but it takes about a million years.

The depletion of oxygen in the oceans is known as "anoxia", and scientists from the University of Exeter have been studying how periods of anoxia end.

They found that the drop in oxygen causes more organic carbon to be buried in sediment on the ocean floor, eventually leading to rising oxygen in the atmosphere which ultimately re-oxygenates the ocean.

Scientists believe the modern ocean is "on the edge of anoxia" - and the Exeter researchers say it is "critical" to limit carbon emissions to prevent this.

"Once you get into a major event like anoxia, it takes a long time for the Earth's system to rebalance," said lead researcher Sarah Baker, a geographer at the University of Exeter.

"This shows the vital importance of limiting disruption to the carbon cycle to regulate the Earth system and keep it within habitable bounds."

The researchers, who also include Professor Stephen Hesselbo from the Camborne School of Mines, studied the Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, which took place 183 million years ago and was characterized by a major disturbance to the global carbon cycle, depleted oxygen in Earth's oceans and mass extinction of marine life.

Numerical models predicted that increased burial of organic carbon - due to less decomposition and more plant and marine productivity in the warmer, carbon-rich environment - should drive a rise in atmospheric oxygen, causing the end of an anoxic event after one million years.

To test the theory, the scientists examined fossil charcoal samples to see evidence of wildfires - as such fires would be more common in oxygen-rich times.

They found a period of increased wildfire activity started one million years after the onset of the anoxic event, and lasted for about 800,000 years.

"We argue that this major increase in fire activity was primarily driven by increased atmospheric oxygen," said Baker.

"Our study provides the first fossil-based evidence that such a change in atmospheric oxygen levels could occur in a period of one million years."

The increase in fire activity may have also helped end ocean anoxia by burning and reducing the amount of plants on land.

This is because plants can help to erode rocks on the land that contain nutrients needed for marine life - therefore with fewer plants, fewer nutrients are available to be carried to the sea and used to support marine life in the oceans.

Less marine life - that would use oxygen to breathe - would mean less oxygen being used in the oceans, and could therefore help the oceans to build up a higher oxygen content, ending anoxia.

It may therefore be essential to maintain the natural functioning of wildfire activity to help regulate the Earth system in the long-term, the researchers say.

The charcoal sediment tests were carried out at Mochras in Wales and Peniche, Portugal.

The paper, published in the journal Nature Communications, is entitled: "Charcoal evidence that rising atmospheric oxygen terminated Early Jurassic ocean anoxia."

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The research was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 12, 2017) -- It's a material world, and an extremely versatile one at that, considering its most basic building blocks -- atoms -- can be connected together to form different structures that retain the same composition.

Diamond and graphite, for example, are but two of the many polymorphs of carbon, meaning that both have the same chemical composition and differ only in the manner in which their atoms are connected. But what a world of difference that connectivity makes: The former goes into a ring and costs thousands of dollars, while the latter has to sit content within a humble pencil.

The inorganic compound hafnium dioxide commonly used in optical coatings likewise has several polymorphs, including a tetragonal form with highly attractive properties for computer chips and other optical elements. However, because this form is stable only at temperatures above 3100 degrees Fahrenheit -- think blazing inferno -- scientists have had to make do with its more limited monoclinic polymorph. Until now.

A team of researchers led by University of Kentucky chemist Beth Guiton and Texas A&M University chemist Sarbajit Banerjee in collaboration with Texas A&M materials science engineer Raymundo Arroyave has found a way to achieve this highly sought-after tetragonal phase at 1100 degrees Fahrenheit -- think near-room-temperature and potential holy grail for the computing industry, along with countless other sectors and applications.

The team's research, published today in Nature Communications, details their observation of this spectacular atom-by-atom transformation, witnessed with the help of incredibly powerful microscopes at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After first shrinking monoclinic hafnium dioxide particles down to the size of tiny crystal nanorods, they gradually heated them, paying close attention to the barcode-like structure characterizing each nanorod and, in particular, its pair of nanoscale, fault-forming stripes that seem to function as ground zero for the transition.

"In this study we are watching a tiny metal oxide rod transform from one structure, which is the typical material found at room temperature, into a different, related structure not usually stable below 3100 degrees Fahrenheit," said Guiton, who is an associate professor of chemistry in the UK College of Arts & Sciences. "This is significant because the high-temperature material has amazing properties that make it a candidate to replace silicon dioxide in the semiconductor industry, which is built on silicon."

Watch through the microscope's lens as hafnia atoms rearrange themselves at nanoscale levels in this video showing the same raw data seen by the team, courtesy of the UK Guiton Group.

The semiconductor industry has long relied on silicon dioxide as its thin, non-conductive layer of choice in the critical gap between the gate electrode -- the valve that turns a transistor on and off -- and the silicon transistor. Consistently thinning this non-conductive layer is what allows transistors to become smaller and faster, but Guiton points out there is such a thing as too thin -- the point at which electrons start sloshing across the barrier, thereby heating their surroundings and draining power. She says most of us have seen and felt this scenario to some degree (pun intended), for instance, while watching videos on our phones and the battery simultaneously drain as the device in our palm noticeably begins to warm.

As computer chips become smaller, faster and more powerful, their insulating layers must also be much more robust -- currently a limiting factor for semiconductor technology. Guiton says this new phase of hafnia is an order of magnitude better at withstanding applied fields.

When it comes to watching hafnia's structural transition between its traditional monoclinic state and this commercially desirable tetragonal phase at near-room temperature, Banerjee says it's not unlike popular television -- specifically, the "Hall of Faces" in the HBO show "Game of Thrones."

"In essence, we have been able to watch in real time, on an atom by atom basis, as hafnia is transformed to a new phase, much like Arya Stark donning a new face," Banerjee said. "The new phase of hafnia has a much higher 'k' value representing its ability to store charge, which would allow transistors to work really quickly while merely sipping on power instead of sapping it. The stripes turn out to be really important, since that is where the transition starts as the hafnia loses its stripes."

Arroyave credits real-time atomic-scale information for enabling the group to figure out that the transformation occurs in a very different way at nanoscale levels than it does within the macroscopic particles that result in hafnia's monoclinic form. The fact that it is nanoscale in the first place is why he says the transition occurs at, or much closer to, room temperature.

"Through synthesis at the nanoscale, the 'height' of the energy barrier separating the two forms has been shrunk, making it possible to observe tetragonal hafnia at much lower temperatures than usual," Arroyave said. "This points toward strategies that could be used to stabilize a host of useful forms of materials that can enable a wide range of functionalities and associated technologies. This is just one example of the vast possibilities that exist when we start to explore the 'metastable' materials space."

Banerjee says this study suggests one way to stabilize the tetragonal phase at actual room temperature -- which he notes that his group previously accomplished via a different method last year -- and big implications for fast, low-power-consumption transistors capable of controlling current without drawing power, reducing speed or producing heat.

"The possibilities are endless, including even more powerful laptops that don't heat up and sip on power from their batteries and smart phones that 'keep calm and carry on,'" Banerjee said. "We are trying to apply these same tricks to other polymorphs of hafnium dioxide and other materials -- isolating other phases that are not readily stabilized at room temperature but may also have strange and desirable properties."

###

The team's research was supported in part by the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA Kentucky, the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Their Nature Communications paper, "Real-Time Atomistic Observation of Structural Phase Transformations in Individual Hafnia Nanorods," can be viewed online here along with related figures and captions: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15316

To learn more about Guiton's research at UK, visit http://www.chem.uky.edu/research/guiton/. To learn more about Banerjee's research at Texas A&M University, visit http://www.chem.tamu.edu/rgroup/banerjee/.
Over the last few months, a stack of new books has accumulated on my desk. Here are a few of the titles I recommend.

Lets begin with a childrens book.

Fire Bird: The Kirtlands Warbler Story, by Amy Hansen (2017, $18.95, Arbutus Press) explains how fire is essential to the life cycle of this endangered species that nests in young jack pine forests in north central Michigan and winters in the Bahamas.

Kid test

I read Fire Bird to my five-year-old grandson just a few days ago. He sat quietly engrossed for the entire 32 pages, so it passed the kid test. And he loved the colorful artwork by Janet Oliver that illustrates the story.

The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World, by Abigail Tucker (2016, $26, Simon & Schuster) is an easy to read natural history of domestic house cats. It covers everything from the threat domestic cats pose to birds, small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians to misguided efforts to control feral cat populations with trap, neuter, and release (TNR) programs.

It also points out that while populations of most cat species around the world are plummeting rapidly, domestic cat numbers have exploded.

I enjoyed Lion immensely, and I recommend it to cat lovers, cat haters, and ecologists everywhere. And by the way, the cover art featuring an oversized kitten perched on an undersized living room sofa says it all.

Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, by Katie Fallon (2017, $27.95, University Press of New England) is a love letter from an ardent admirer to an ugly bird with some disgusting habits. Vulture follows a year in the life of a turkey vulture, from its food habits which cleanse the landscape of dead stuff to its breeding, parenting and migratory habits.

Fallon truly loves these skillful gliders, and she hopes that readers will see the light. Every time Ive seen a vulture this year, this book has come to mind, so I guess Im hooked.

Raptor lovers

If you love diurnal raptors, Birds of Prey: Hawks, Eagles, Falcons, and Vultures of North America by Pete Dunne (2016, $26.00, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) was written for you. Dunne is a master birder and lifelong raptor enthusiast.

He loves all diurnal raptures as much as Katie Fallon loves vultures. From American kestrels to zone-tailed hawks, each species including the endangered California condor gets a complete species account.

Birds of Prey is destined to become the go-to reference anytime anyone needs natural history facts about any of these 34 species. Kevin Karlson is one of 20-plus photographers whose work illustrates the book.

Karlson is credited with photo research and production. I dont know exactly what this means, but I do know that the visual imagery throughout the book is stunning.

Raptor fans will want to own this book just for the color photos.

Good Birders Still Dont Wear White: Passionate Birders Share the Joys of Watching Birds, Lisa White and Jeffrey Gordon, editors (2017, $13.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is a lighthearted collection of short essays about birding by some of the best-known names in the business.

Birding location

Pete Dunne, for example, writes about where and when to bird; Marie Reed writes about photographing birds; Richard Crossley explains how failure can lead to discovery, and Carlos Bethancourt tells why being a bird guide in Panama is the best job ever.

(Ive birded with Carlos, and I can tell you that he is one of the best bird guides ever.) If this title sounds familiar, its a follow-up to Good Birders Dont Wear White (2007). Books like these make great bedtime reading.

Each essay is independent and just a few pages long.

Finally, Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians, by Joe Quirk, with Patri Friedman (2017, $27, Simon & Schuster) is a wake-up call for all who doubt the reality of climate change. The title is self-explanatory.
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A cross-industry focus group has met to discuss the challenge of attracting new consumers for lamb in the UK market.

Hybu Cig Cymru  Meat Promotion Wales (HCC) marketing executives met with representatives of Waless food innovation centres to discuss ways in which new product development could boost the red meat industry.

Research undertaken by HCC and consumer specialists Kantar Worldpanel last year suggested that developing new convenient options for customers could be worth 85 million to the lamb industry overall, particularly boosting the sales of premium PGI Welsh Lamb.

Of course, most new product development which consumers see is funded by suppliers and retailers, said HCCs Marketing Manager Rhys Llywelyn.

However HCC, working with partners across the industry, has a role to develop ideas at a pre-competitive stage which can help the whole red meat industry to attract new customers.

For lamb in particular, sales are higher among over-55s than the younger age groups, added Mr Llywelyn.

'Ready to cook'

Consumers are apparently moving to more quicker and convenient choices for cooking.

Research into the potential value of convenience meal options for attracting young consumers to lamb was undertaken by HCC last year, and work on developing Ready to Cook and similar options is ongoing.

But we need to explore a wide range of options and co-ordinate work thats happening across the industry, so it was very useful to hold this meeting with a range of partners.

We will take this work forward over the next few months, looking at how we can identify funding for developing new types of lamb products, and showcasing some of the new ideas that are already in development at the Royal Welsh and other events, he added.

Campaigns such as #WhamBamLamb, a recent Scotch Lamb PGI advertising campaign, delivered strong results, with Scottish origin sales of lamb in Scotland increasing by 10.5% in value.
Two lambs and two sheep died because of out-of-control loose dogs over last weekend in three separate incidents.

An ewe was killed on Sunday (7 May) in an attack on British Camp, Herefordshire leaving two young lambs orphaned and needing to be bottle fed.

In a separate attack on the same day, and a few miles from the first incident, a lamb was killed on Castlemorton Common, Worcestershire.

And at least two lambs died and a dog had to be put down after a series of sheep worrying incidents in North Devon.

Bideford Police issued the following warning on Facebook yesterday: "Last weekend we had a number of calls regarding dogs down on Northam Burrows worrying livestock.

"This has resulted in at least two lambs being killed and one of the owners responsible choosing to put their dog down. Allowing your dog to worry livestock is a criminal offence. Please keep your dog on a lead when walking around livestock."

'Heart-breaking'

Dog owners have been urged to keep their pets under control around livestock as the lambing season reaches its peak.

Kathy Peebles, NSA Scotland vice-chairman, said: For farmers, as well as lost income, it is heart-breaking to witness horrendous injuries in the sheep they work hard to look after.

For pregnant ewes, the result of being hounded by dogs can be miscarriage of unborn lambs and for ewes with young lambs at foot the result can be offspring getting separated from ewes and dying of hypothermia or starvation."

Earlier this month, out of control dogs massacred thirty lambs on farm in Wales, prompting the farmer to share a picture of the incident as a warning to others.
The National Farmers' Union is reminding livestock farmers to remain vigilant to the risk of ragwort poisoning.

Ragwort is a toxic plant and has gained significant media coverage in the past about its hazardous capabilities to livestock.

Ragwort poses a risk to animal health, with potentially fatal consequences if it is ingested by horses or livestock, either in its green or dried state.

The NFU is urging farmers to be careful with the plant. They urge that grazing land should be regularly inspected when animals are present and the plant should be pulled, removed and disposed of responsibly.

The Weed Act 1959

Five weeds are classified as 'injurious' under the Weeds Act 1959 - common ragwort (Senecio jacobaea), spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare), creeping or field thistle (Cirsium arvense), broad-leaved dock (Rumex obtusifolius) and curled dock (Rumex Crispus).

It is not an offence to have these weeds growing on land and species such as ragwort have significant conservation benefits.

However, ragwort must not be allowed to spread to agricultural land, particularly grazing areas or land which is used to produce conserved forage.

For ragwort, the legal framework is supported by a Defra Code of Practice. How to Prevent the Spread of Ragwort was introduced in 2003 to promote good practice.

NFU's advice

 Where ragwort is found the first step is to identify the land owner or manager. Then contact them directly to resolve the issue.

 If this approach doesn't work, complaints can be made to Natural England and enforcement notices can be issued requiring landowners to take action to prevent the spread of these weeds.

 Natural England will investigate complaints where there is a risk that injurious weeds might spread to neighbouring land. It gives priority to complaints where there is a risk of spread to land used for grazing horses or livestock, land used for forage production and other agricultural activities.
A retiring Scottish farm family has put their land up for sale in the Highlands with a price tag of just under 8.5million making it one of the largest sales in Scotland for the past 10 years.

The trio of farms, owned and run by the Whiteford family, are situated in the Fear Peninsula, near Tain in Easter Ross.

Shandwick Mains, Wester Rarichie and Castlecraig are described by selling agents Strutt and Parker as 'one of the finest collections of farms in Scotland.'

Castlecraig

"It is the single largest farm instruction in Scotland for many years and, as such, will command a great deal of attention in the agricultural industry," said Strutt and Parker's Scottish chairman Andrew Rettie.

"I anticipate we will attract buyers from Scotland, the rest of the United Kingdom and Europe."

'Wonderful environment'

Shandwick

Stewart Whiteford said his he and his brothers reached the collective decision to retire from farming.

"It has been an honour and a privilege to farm and live in this vibrant community.

"It has also been a wonderful environment in which to bring up our families and we have no hesitation in recommending this beautiful part of the world to any prospective buyers."

Extending to 2,397 acres, the farms are offered for sale as a whole, as three individual farms, or 13 sub-lots.

Shandwick Mains is described as an 'exceptional arable farm' with with 327 ring-fenced acres. It includes a 1,200t grain store with drying facilities, two cattle courts plus storage and a large farmhouse.

Wester Rarichie is a large arable and stock farm extending to 1,094 acres. Grass is grazed by 190 head of Stabiliser cross Angus plus a 700-strong Blackface breeding flock

Castlecraig is an arable and livestock-rearing farm stretching across 933 acres. The farm's livestock currently includes 110 suckler cattle and 700 Scotch Mules.

It includes a 350-sow indoor pig unit, cottages and a seven-bedroom period farmhouse.
The issue of cashflow was top of the agenda when a farming union met with the Committee of Scottish Bankers (CSCB).

With average farm incomes falling and ongoing concerns over delivery of agricultural support, cashflow dominated talks when NFU Scotland met with the CSCB.

Poor farmgate prices, rising input costs and falling support levels have been blamed as figures show Scottish farm incomes halved in a year.

The meeting took place at the Rural Centre, near Edinburgh this week (10 May).

NFU Scotland met with the banking delegation which included Sandy Hay (Bank of Scotland), Brian Murphy (RBS), Alex Young (Clydesdale), Neil Wilson (HSBC), Wilma Low (TSB) and Michael Downey (CSCB).

'Uncertainties'

Speaking after the meeting, President Andrew McCornick said Scottish agriculture has 'challenges and uncertainties' facing the industry  both currently and in the months and years ahead.

Higher costs, volatile commodity prices and support payments delays are creating cashflow problems and a greater reliance on a host of creditors to help farmers and crofters through difficult times. These uncertainties have a clear impact on confidence and farm businesses planning.

The need for clarity and certainty going forward, specifically in the context of Brexit, is crucial as it will allow businesses to work with the banking sector to plan ahead.

There was an agreement round the table that change is inevitable, but for all businesses, there is recognition that change must be managed.

Overall, this was a very useful and constructive meeting with the industrys main banking providers, and there was a willingness to work together to secure a more profitable future for farmers and crofters.
A report on Wales future landscapes has been published, urging Welsh Government to help landowners and farmers on issues of biodiversity, access and protection.

A review of Wales National Parks and Areas of Outstanding National Beauty (AONBs) has been published by the Future Landscapes Working Group, chaired by Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas.

The Group was established to explore the recommendations of the Marsden Report into the future of Wales designated landscapes, which provided 69 recommendations, the range and scope of which were considerable.

The report says designated landscapes should be the leaders of the sustainable management of natural resources in their areas and emphasises the importance of joint-working to achieve this.

It recommends the Welsh Government, Natural Resources Wales and all designated landscapes provide assistance and support to other landscape managers across Wales, including landowners, farmers and the wider rural community, on issues such as biodiversity, access and protection, in order for the whole society to benefit fully from landscapes.

The report acknowledges the challenges the UKs exit from the EU poses, with so much of Wales environmental legislation tied into EU laws and the uncertainty over future funding for agriculture, at a time when action is needed to build the resilience of eco-systems.

'Good practice'

The report concludes that 'genuine partnership' is needed to ensure the best outcome for Wales.

Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas said: From the start the main feature of the working group was partnership, including everyone from national park authorities and areas of outstanding natural beauty, from agricultural and tourism businesses, voluntary organisations and trusts contributing equally to the discussions.

The basic principle guiding our work is seeing and understanding the role of designated landscapes not as separate excluded areas, but as a distinctive part which could contribute to good practice for the rest of our countrys landscape.

The Welsh Government will now look at whether legislation needs to be changed to support the recommendations of the report.

This includes looking at whether greater weight should be given to the importance of these areas and their ecosystems in decision making and whether governance arrangements should evolve to reflect local circumstances, rather than the current one-size-fits-all system.
Kinder Morgan (KMI -3.99%) scrapped plans to joint venture its Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project this week, choosing instead to raise cash for the project via an IPO. It's a decision that has ramifications for investors in both the short and long term because it might alter the company's dividend growth potential. However, with this decision settled, investors now have a better idea of what might lie ahead.

Going public with its decision

Kinder Morgan initially filed the preliminary prospectus for an IPO of its Canadian assets last month. At the time, the company detailed that if it proceeded with an IPO, it would not only package its Trans Mountain Pipeline in the deal, but it would carve out the rest of its Canadian assets and house them in this entity. Those assets include several terminals and other product pipelines in the western half of the country.

Those assets will now form the backbone of a larger Kinder Morgan Canada, which the company will sell a piece of to the public by the end of this month. The pipeline giant plans to offer between 79.5 million and 92.1 million restricted voting shares of this entity at a price between 19 Canadian dollars and CA$21 per share, according to the filing. That would raise around CA$1.7 billion ($1.3 billion) for the company to help finance its CA$7.4 billion ($5.4 billion) Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. If it's successful in raising the full amount, Kinder Morgan's Canadian IPO would be one of the five largest in that country's history.

Why this route?

There are several reasons why the company decided to proceed with an IPO instead of a joint venture. First, by moving ahead with the IPO, Kinder Morgan will retain a greater interest in its largest expansion project, which will enable it to collect a higher portion of the significant cash flows it should generate when it enters service in late 2019. In addition, the company will also retain a more favorable governance structure and greater certainty on the timing of the project.

Another reason it chose an IPO is that it just didn't get a better offer from any of the parties interested in forming a joint venture to finance a portion of the project's costs. According to a report by Bloomberg last week, several private equity companies, including ArcLight Capital Partners, Brookfield Asset Management (BAM -1.77%), and IFM Investors were among the final bidders for a stake in the project. However, Australia's IMF Investors reportedly decided to pull out of the bidding. Meanwhile, Brookfield Asset Management, which through its infrastructure arm co-owns the Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America with Kinder Morgan, is more of a value-based investor. That's not exactly what Kinder Morgan was looking for in a partner, considering that it was hoping to get paid a hefty premium on top of the financing commitment to compensate it for the value created in progressing the project thus far.

Finally, British Columbia, which is the Canadian province where Kinder Morgan will construct the bulk of its expansion project, recently held elections. While the Liberal Party that supports the project narrowly won the election, it no longer holds the balance of power. Because of that, it will need the support of the minority Green Party, which is not in favor of new energy projects in British Columbia. That election result could have swayed the remaining joint venture bidders that the risk was too high for the potential reward, especially when adding in the cost of any premium paid to Kinder Morgan.

What lies ahead for Kinder Morgan

With its mind made up, Kinder Morgan's next step is to launch its IPO and hope demand is high enough that it can raise the full amount it's seeking. That would give the company a good head start on the financing it needs to begin construction. It's also worth noting that it has already secured a CA$4 billion ($3.2 billion) credit facility to help finance construction. That means it will still need to come up with about CA$1.7 billion ($1.3 billion) in cash over the next two years to finance the balance of the construction costs, assuming there are no additional changes or delays to the project as a result of the election.

For a company that expects to generate $4.46 billion in distributable cash flow this year, or $3.3 billion after its current dividend, it shouldn't have any problem financing that capital internally. However, that could mean it won't be able to allocate as much excess cash toward a dividend increase unless it raises additional money in the future via secondary offerings on the Canadian market.

For investors, this is a glass-half-full outcome. On the positive side, by holding on to a larger interest in the project, Kinder Morgan will retain more of its future cash flow, which potentially sets it up to pay higher dividends once the project enters service. However, the trade-off for that upside is that company might need to allocate more of its cash flow over the next two years toward capex, which might mean a smaller dividend increase in 2018 than investors had hoped. We'll know more about those plans when Kinder Morgan unveils its revised dividend policy later this year.
Carburators often get blamed for ignition and timing issues. Running poorly? Must be the carb!



First thing I'd check is the vacuum advance. With the engine off, pop off the distributor cap, attach a length of vacuum hose to the vacuum advance can on the distributor and suck on it. If you can draw air though the hose the vac advance diaphragm is shot and it needs to be replaced. Otherwise you should witness the pick up plate inside the distributor rotate as vacuum is applied.



And while you're in there, check the function of your mechanical advance by giving the rotor a little twist and seeing if it snaps back freely when you let go.



Next, pull the rotor and felt puck from the top of the distributor shaft and put a couple drops of oil down the shaft to lube the mechanical advance, and you should also lube the vacuum advance pivot for good measure.



Now the rubber center of the balancers on these old truck can deteriorate over time and cause the balancer to rotate throwing off your timing marks, so playing with the timing may be necessary. Personally I'm inclined to advance the timing until it pings and then back it off until it doesn't.



More ignition advance should improve power and mileage. Up to a point.
A round-up of the opening day's events from the Formula 1 Gran Premio de Espana Pirelli 2017at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya... Mercedes Hamilton said he was very happy with his W08 in FP1, when it felt exactly as he had expected it to with slightly lower weight, revised weight distribution and revised aerodynamics and suspension settings. In the afternoon, however, he like all of the other drivers reported that changed track conditions had reduced grip. Bottas was similarly satisfied with his first days work and the progress the team made. Lewis Hamilton - FP1: 1:21.521, P1; FP2: 1:20.802, P1 First practice was very, very good but in second practice the track changed and shifted quite a lot, so it was slippery and quite a lot slower for everyone - especially with the gusts of wind. It was massively challenging but still fun nonetheless. The team has done an amazing job with the upgrades and the car is working just as we expected. Its been a much better start to the weekend for me than in Sochi, so Im very happy. Weve just got to keep our heads down and keep working, we want to be number one. Valtteri Bottas - FP1: 1:21.550, P2; FP2: 1:20.892, P2 Today was an important one for us with the new upgrade package on the car. Our target was to evaluate if the new upgrades are working well and it seems like they are. At this time its way too early to tell exactly where we are, but everything seems to be working well so far. Its always nice to start the weekend in a positive way, but the main days are Saturday and Sunday. As always we will work hard to find any performance. I really enjoyed it out there today so I hope we can squeeze some more performance out of the package. James Allison, Technical Director It was a pretty good day for the team. We have some new bits on the car for this weekend that we wanted to try out and ensure everything was working well with those and it seems like it is. At a track that can suffer from high tyre degradation were keen to ensure that our car is good on both the long-runs and the short-runs. We feel like were in better shape in that compared to winter testing. Weve definitely made some progress and well be in with a shout if we keep up the good work this weekend.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Lewis Hamilton (GBR) Mercedes-Benz F1 W08 Hybrid at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Valtteri Bottas (FIN) Mercedes-Benz F1 W08 Hybrid at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Info Close

Ferrari Ferrari struggled slightly, with Vettel having a momentary gearbox problem in FP1, and Raikkonen being warned to watch his engine in FP2. The German reported that he did not feel like 'the captain of his ship' in FP2, but said he still believes that the SF70H is the same quick car it was here in testing and that they just need to unlock a bit more of its potential overnight. Sebastian Vettel - FP1: 1:22.600, P4; FP2: 1:21.220, P4 Today the conditions seemed to be quite challenging, but we can improve. I wasnt totally happy as I think a lot was left in the track and I didnt find it at the end. At the same time I feel the car is quick so I just need to get it right. Overall, the atmosphere is good, but obviously now I am more focused on what happened today. I think everybody struggled today. I dont know who brought more updates but I think what really matters is who brings the best ones. Kimi Raikkonen - FP1: 1:22.456, P3; FP2: 1:21.112, P3 It was pretty windy and slippery out there today. I think it was the same for everybody; the first day you find out how the track is and you go from there. The lap times from todays practice dont tell a lot, we were able to follow our programme and try different things. Compared to winter testing, its pretty normal to find different conditions, because temperatures are higher and the track status changes. As on any other Friday, there is some work to be done, so well see what we come up with for tomorrow.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Sebastian Vettel (GER) Ferrari SF70-H at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Kimi Raikkonen (FIN) Ferrari SF70-H at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

Red Bull Both drivers were cautiously optimistic about the progress the RB13 made with its new upgrade. They said there was an increase in grip, which was the primary aim, but that the team were still feeling their way with the revised set-up. Max Verstappen - FP1: 1:22.706, P5; FP2: 1:21.438, P5 I think it looks like we have closed the gap a little bit to Ferrari so this is a big positive, but it looks like Mercedes have brought a good update package as well so they are still quite far ahead. We are still the third team but the changes are taking us in the right direction and we have found an increase in grip. We still have a lot of work to do to improve the pace of the car and also the performance of the engine so we will keep pushing. There was a lot of unexpected wind out there which caused a few issues. I was at full lock in turn 9 and suddenly a gust caught the rear and forced me off the track and through the gravel, luckily there was not much damage. I saw a few guys get caught out by the wind. This circuit is always quite hard on the tires so the last sector is usually quite tricky but the wind definitely did not help. Daniel Ricciardo - FP1: 1:23.084, P6; FP2: 1:21.585, P6 There were times today where the car felt pretty good but at times we were still trying to find our way with the new package. The car was starting to come alive on the soft tyre this afternoon which was nice, but with the harder compounds we still have some improvements to make. I do see a step forward and we arent looking too bad against Ferrari but Im sure they will also have more to bring tomorrow. We need to keep evolving with this new package now and fully understand it. We didnt come here expecting to be as quick as Mercedes but we are feeling a bit of progress and now we just need to keep fine tuning everything to get a few more tenths out of the car. I think we are in line with what we predicted and tomorrow we will have a much better idea about whether the gap to the leaders has been closed.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Daniel Ricciardo (AUS) Red Bull Racing RB13 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Max Verstappen (NED) Red Bull Racing RB13 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

Renault Hulkenberg was happy with what he achieved, while Palmer was relieved to get his best practice session of the year under his wheels, though he still has some fettling to do overnight with his engineers. Yet again Sirotkins run in FP1 was foiled. This time, in Palmers car, he was restricted to only 10 laps because of a relatively minor water leak. Nico Hulkenberg - FP1: 1:23.993, P9; FP2: 1:21.687, P7 A solid Friday for us. We completed our usual programme and there were no dramas with the car. As usual, there are areas we are working on to improve for qualifying tomorrow and we know where some extra pace can be found. It was a real struggle to find grip today so I was presently surprised that we showed reasonable relative pace. If we can carry this through to tomorrow and the race it could be a decent weekend. Jolyon Palmer - FP2: 1:21.992, P8 It was good to get out in the car for the afternoon after sitting out in the morning. The car feels a lot better when using the Soft tyre as the balance on the Medium wasnt too great. We had a productive session with a strong tally of trouble-free laps. Ive got a few areas to work on with my engineers but overall its been a solid afternoon. Sergey Sirotkin - FP1: 1:26.293, P19 It was a short run for me in FP1, but thats motor sport and its better to have an issue with the car in practice than in qualifying or the race. At least this time I ran further than in Sochi! The car felt good and I was able to do what was required whilst I was out on track. Obviously, Im hopeful that next time I get a clean session, but I know everyone in the garage is working hard to ensure this is the case. Bob Bell, Chief Technical Officer Overall it was a reasonably good day for us. The Soft tyre suited us best today with the underlying performance of the car demonstrated by both Nico and Jo in the afternoon FP2 session. In the morning, we struggled more for pace with the harder compounds which werent particularly friendly to our car balance. It was also a disappointing morning for Sergey who suffered from a water leak stopping his session prematurely. Fortunately, he did get sufficient track time to gain a feel for the car and his feedback was consistent with that of Nicos on the other side of the garage.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 3 Nico Hulkenberg (GER) Renault Sport F1 Team RS17 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Jolyon Palmer (GBR) Renault Sport F1 Team at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Sergey Sirotkin (RUS) Renault Sport F1 Team RS17 Test Driver at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

Williams Massa was quite happy as Williams focused more on race runs in FP1 and FP2 with both the hard and the medium tyre compounds, but Stroll admitted that he really struggled on the latter and has a lot of homework to get through tonight. Felipe Massa - FP1: 1:24.618, P14; FP2: 1:22.015, P9 The session was a good one I would say. The medium and the hard tyres were quite tricky to run, and we did struggle with them a bit, especially with overheating. But, many others were struggling to make these tyres work too, so its not so bad. On the whole it was quite a positive day. Lance Stroll - FP1: 1:25.919, P18; FP2: 1:23.221, P17 It was a tough day for me just putting everything together and getting everything to work. I didnt get the medium working very well, and it was particularly difficult to find grip and stability in the car. It was quite easy to miss corners, have snaps and make mistakes, especially when you lose the temperatures in the tyres, so I have to look tonight to try and make it better for the race. I made a mistake on my first lap on the softs, then did two more laps and I finally did a lap time, but the tyre was gone at the end. Not the end of the world, as it is only practice. Paddy Lowe, Chief Technical Officer Today we did some test work for new aerodynamic parts, and various other settings on the car. We also looked at the different tyres for the weekend. We ran a different programme to normal, with more focus on the medium tyre on race fuel loads in FP1 and FP2. The medium tyre has proved to be a difficult tyre to work with, both in pre-season testing and in Bahrain. We gathered all the data that we needed today and we had no problems, aside from disruptions to the track running with the red flags. Felipe set a good pace, which looks competitive. Lance struggled with the tyres today. But were optimistic that hell be on the pace of the car tomorrow. There's lots of analysis for us to do tonight and we look forward to the excitement of qualifying tomorrow.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Felipe Massa (BRA) Williams FW40 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Lance Stroll (CDN) Williams at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

Toro Rosso Sainz said the track condition was a surprise after pre-season testing, but that he got some sort of direction going with the set-up by the end of FP2. Kvyat said he was still working his way through myriad handling problems associated with weather, tyres and track. Daniil Kvyat - FP1: 1:24.642, P15; FP2: 1:23.236, P18 The car has quite a few handling issues at the moment We need to be patient and try to do things overnight for the car to suit me better because, at the moment, it wasnt in the correct window for my driving style. Carlos Sainz - FP1: 1:24.004, P10; FP2: 1:22.265, P10 Its been quite a tricky first day here in Barcelona. I think the track conditions surprised us quite a bit, as it was much slower out there today compared to winter testing; there was also a lot of wind, which complicated things even more. It wasnt easy to find the right balance, but overall Id say we ended the day in a decent way, making some improvements and we can approach tomorrow in a positive way. James Key, Technical Director We have brought a lot of new development parts to Barcelona, both on the aero and mechanical side. There was an awful lot to learn today regarding these parts, how they were working and how best to set-up the car around them. FP1 was therefore dedicated to a lot of that work and we did a few runs on the Medium tyre as part of this to get initial balance data, which needed some work after the first runs. We made a bit of a step forward for FP2, even though theres still work to do. Generally, weve got a direction which is emerging now and this is allowing us to tune the car into where we think we need it to be. Id say its been a learning day and now theres clearly some work to do overnight to extract a little bit more out of the car. Carlos was generally happy and clear on what was going on from his side; the longer run for him looks quite promising too. Regarding Daniil, we had a few issues on the shorter runs today, where we couldnt quite get the balance together. Unfortunately he missed a part of FP2 after damaging the floor, which put his programme a bit behind schedule. However, he was happier with the long-runs and we now need to look into the shorter run performance, specifically on his car. I think weve got some good data to work with now, but theres certainly quite a bit still to find.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Daniil Kvyat (RUS) Scuderia Toro Rosso STR12 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Carlos Sainz jr (ESP) Scuderia Toro Rosso STR12 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

Haas Haas looked strong in FP1, with Grosjean right on Magnussens tail despite losing the toss of the coin which saw the Dane getting the sole new front wing and other new aero goodies. But in the afternoon both struggled to get the Pirellis switched on. Romain Grosjean - FP1: 1:23.758, P8; FP2: 1:22.371, P11 Its not been an easy day. Weve been dealing with a lot of things. I think the tires are struggling a bit here to work, or at least were struggling to get the tires to work. I dont think were the only ones  a lot of cars have been running wide. So thats going to be key, getting those correct. If we can do that, we can gain a lot of lap time. We just focused on more work this afternoon, seeing what other tools could be available so we can put everything together for tomorrow. Kevin Magnussen  FP1: 1:23.670, P7; FP2: 1:23.007, P15 We had a good morning and got some good data on the car. There wasnt really much useful learning in FP2. The track was very different and the car wasnt behaving as expected. Well look into that and hopefully improve it for Saturday. Its not quite clear yet why we were happy this morning and not in the afternoon. It was a lot windier this afternoon, but then that was the same for everyone. We looked less competitive and we need to try and understand that. Hopefully, we can get back to where we know we should be. Guenther Steiner, team principal It was a good first session this morning. We got a lot of data, which we still need to go through. It was a more difficult one in the afternoon with the higher temperatures. On the long runs we had challenges. We need to analyse what is next. Theres a lot of work to do this afternoon. Again, we need to go through the data and understand why. We also need to get more data on the new floor. Romain running the new floor tomorrow morning will hopefully help us, and then after that we can make a decision about which one to use going forward.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Romain Grosjean (FRA) Haas VF-17 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Kevin Magnussen (DEN) Haas F1 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Info Close

Force India Both drivers worked hard gathering data with the VJM10s new aero package - especially the revised floor - and like everyone else the tyre and track situation didnt help their quest for knowledge. Perez, no lover of the hard Pirelli, suggested that it wont be seen again this weekend, but added that he felt they had plenty of information to process as they focus on set-up directions this evening. Sergio Perez - FP1: 1:24.188, P11; FP2: 1:22.722, P14 The grip levels were low and it was very difficult to get the hard tyre compound to work. I suspect we will not see much of it on track for the rest of the weekend as the medium and soft compounds are much more representative of what we need for qualifying and the race. We have a lot to do to understand the data we collected today. Of course, when you are testing a lot of different things, its tricky to set the car up, but I think we now have a good base on which to build. Esteban Ocon - FP1: 1:24.324, P12; FP2: 1:22.520, P12 Its been a fairly routine Friday, going through our programme without any dramas. We were able to cover a lot of ground and test some development items. Now our focus goes back to the task of preparing for tomorrows qualifying. The conditions out there werent ideal today: it was very windy and the tyres are very hard, meaning it was difficult to find grip. The soft compound is the one that works best on this track and its going to be a challenge to work with the others. We have some work to do tonight, but I am confident well be well prepared for the rest of the weekend. Robert Fernley, Deputy Team Principal We had a very busy day, with a full testing programme and several new parts to evaluate between the two cars throughout the sessions. Things have gone to plan and we managed to gather all the essential data that we needed. From now on, its a standard race weekend: we will need to make all the right decisions overnight and put the best car on track for FP3 and qualifying. This is a track we know very well from winter testing, but the temperatures are much higher now compared to February. Understanding the performance of the tyres has been an important factor during the day so completing our long runs in the afternoon was very important. Qualifying tomorrow will be crucial because it is very hard to overtake here and your starting position is vital.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Sergio Perez (MEX) Force India VJM10 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Esteban Ocon (FRA) Force India VJM10 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close

McLaren McLaren had yet another disaster when Alonsos Honda engine broke quite spectacularly after only a lap of FP1. The Spaniard went off to play tennis, but managed a handful of laps in FP2 when a new power unit had been fitted to his MCL32. Vandoorne, however, was well in the midfield in both sessions, which was a small consolation. Fernando Alonso - FP1: No time, P20; FP2: 1:24.077, P20 Obviously, its not an ideal start to the weekend as we completely missed the first practice session because of an engine problem. At least I managed to get some training done  when I heard I had two hours before the next commitment I decided to do just that. Ive had very little time in the last few weeks to train, and my dedication is still 100 per cent on my fitness and my preparation. The poor show in the afternoon session was due to the fact that first of all, you need to calibrate the engine when you put in a new power unit, so in the first couple of runs the power was a little bit inconsistent. We ran out of time, so we put on a new set of tyres even though not everything was calibrated. Towards the end of the session, when we put in more fuel and we were running in similar conditions to everyone else, we were doing more or less the lap time we were expecting, close to our main competitors for the race. I feel confident that tomorrow, when well put everything together, well be in a more or less competitive position and hopefully we can be close to the others. Stoffel Vandoorne - FP1: 1:24.400, P13; FP2: 1:22.693, P13 Ive definitely had one of my best Fridays so far. Its the first time that Ive had a Friday this season without any big problems  we ran through our programme without any big issues, so that was good. Everything ran smoothly on my side, however, we saw that on Fernandos side it was a bit more complex. Unfortunately, he missed FP1 and didnt do so many laps in FP2, so it still shows that reliability is one of the key issues we have to work on for the next few races. Weve brought quite a few upgrades to this race, but at the moment its different to judge any of them individually. At the moment, everything is working pretty much as expected, and tonight theres a lot to analyse to see exactly how the day ran. Hopefully tomorrow we can fine-tune everything a bit, and extract a little bit more. Eric Boullier, Racing Director Today wasnt a great day, obviously, especially for the local hero, Fernando, whose running was truncated by an oil leak whose causation were still in the process of trying to determine. However, Stoffel had a trouble-free day, and consequently put in a decent number of laps in both FP1 and FP2, ending up 13th-quickest in both sessions. Friday lap-times are rarely a reliable barometer of actual relative performance, of course; but, even so, were pleased that we now have data sufficient to do the necessary number-crunching prior to FP3 tomorrow morning and quali tomorrow afternoon. Yusuke Hasegawa, Honda R&D Co. Ltd Head of F1 Project & Executive Chief Engineer Today was unfortunately a tough day for Fernando at his home grand prix. Shortly after exiting the garage in FP1 a mechanical issue caused an oil leak forcing him to stop out on track. We opted to change the PU before the start of FP2, and we are still investigating the root cause of the problem. The team worked incredibly hard to get him back out on track and maximise data collection for tomorrows FP3 and qualifying. On the other side of the garage, Stoffel completed 60 laps, and we were able to run through his programme without any problems, which included confirming the effectiveness of the small update installed this weekend, and I think it worked well to improve his performance. "Despite having a disappointing day today, we still think we have chance to recover the situation in the coming qualifying and race. Our team will have to make another hard effort tonight to send our drivers back on track for tomorrows sessions with the best settings, and we hope to have a better day.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Fernando Alonso (ESP) McLaren MCL32 stops on track in FP1 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Stoffel Vandoorne (BEL) McLaren MCL32 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images/Kym Illman Info Close

Sauber Ericsson said he had a positive day trying new parts, but Wehrlein said his C36 had issues which need to be rectified in the handling department. Marcus Ericsson - FP1: 1:24.966, P16; FP2: 1:23.082, P16 It has been a positive day. We have introduced some new parts today which have worked as expected. Furthermore, we have tested different set-ups that helped us to make the car a bit more competitive. The runs on the medium and hard tyres felt rather difficult, but on the soft tyres we could improve, especially in FP2, which is positive for tomorrow. We need to keep pushing in order to make more steps. Pascal Wehrlein - FP1: 1:25.182, P17; FP2: 1:23.599, P19 A typical Friday practice session, on which we were able to collect some valuable data from the car, especially with regard to the new parts. It is difficult to make predictions yet as we also had some issues with the car today. We still need to fully understand why this was the case. However, I am optimistic that we can improve the car for tomorrow.

Next Previous Enlarge 1 / 2 Marcus Ericsson (SWE) Sauber C36 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Pascal Wehrlein (GER) Sauber C36 at Formula One World Championship, Rd5, Spanish Grand Prix, Practice, Barcelona, Spain, Friday 12 May 2017.  Sutton Motorsport Images Info Close
The sale of several large-scale agricultural enterprises was a notable feature of the 2016 land market.

Although few in number, the size of some operations launched attracted significant attention from farmers and investors alike.

Farmers Weekly spoke to the agents involved in five of 2016s large-acreage launches to find out what happened next.

Goxhill Estate

Location: Hornsea, East Yorkshire

Guide price: 13.24m

Launched: May

About 1,250 acres of predominantly arable land with grassland, woodland and several farmhouses and equipped farm yards.

See also: Why the CIL planning tax is costing farmers thousands

Interest came from both local and international buyers, said Brown and Cos partner James Walton.

The property was offered for sale in up to five lots, but a sale was agreed in three lots. All the successful purchasers were local farmers and landowners in East Yorkshire.

Compton Farms

Location: Newbury, Berkshire

Guide price: 25m

Launched: September

A large commercial operation set across farmsteads with extensive modern farm buildings and 2,000 acres of predominantly arable land. Included 18 houses.

Demand was huge and the guide price was eventually exceeded, Savills rural director Giles Wordsworth told Farmers Weekly. Interest came in the farm as a whole and in lots.

Abbots Court Farm

Location: Burmarsh, Kent

Guide price: 11.15m

Launched: October

Situated on the Romney Marshes the farm has 1,016 acres of predominantly Grade 2 arable land with modern buildings and three houses.

Interest was hugely diverse, from local farmers and rollover buyers to international investors, which resulted in the guide price being exceeded, according to Chris Spofforth, Savills farm agency director.

Braida Garth

Location: Ingleton, North Yorkshire

Guide price: 2.2m

Launched: June

A well-equipped 1,268-acre hill farm comprising moorland, rough grazing, pasture and mowing land, running a flock of 700 sheep with a good range of livestock buildings plus farmhouse.

This was a well-known farm in an area where its unusual to get anything over 500 acres, said Will Parry, partner at Strutt & Parker. It was bought by a farmer at just under the guide price.

Farcet Farms

Location: Yaxley Fen near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire

Guide price: 12.5m

Launched: June

About 1,265 acres of irrigated Grade 1 soils split over three sites growing onions, sugar beet and cereals. Some refrigerated storage and a total capacity for 1,900t of onions and 1,300t of on-floor grain.

Strutt & Parkers farm agent Sam Holt said: We received interest in the three lots from farming buyers, with mainly tax driven buyers looking at the whole. After a period of negotiation, the farm was sold as a whole to a European investor.
Racines legacy as home to the Wright stuff was further cemented this week with the dedication of the Frank Lloyd Wright Trail in a ceremony at the SC Johnson world headquarters. The trail, which connects nine Wright-designed architectural sites, has already been marked with 115 signs to guide tourists and Wright fans and more signs will soon be added. Gov. Scott Walker spoke at the dedication at SCJs famous Wright-designed Great Workroom, which is the first stop on the trail, saying This will make us yet another destination for tourists from around the Midwest, across the country and, really, around the world. Its a tribute to the vision and talent not only of the celebrated architect, but also of H.F. Johnson Jr., who commissioned the work and gave Racine a centerpiece of beauty and function to serve through the ages.

Transferring from one college to another has long been a trying process for students who  at least in the past  often faced the loss of credits when one institution didnt honor coursework from another. That often meant taking additional courses, paying additional fees and delaying completion of a degree. Gateway Technical College has been in the forefront of reducing those credit transfer problems and has forged reciprocal agreements with 45 universities around the country. Carthage College was added to the list this week with the signing of another such transfer agreement that allows the transfer of up to 68 credits. A student completing a Gateway degree will then have a clearer path to attending Carthage to receive a four-year degree. Just as importantly, the pact allows Gateway students with 24 credits to meet with Carthage academic advisers to help chart a course toward that degree.

Big Box stores are sometimes derided for the competition they pose for smaller, locally-owned stores, but theyre part of the retail landscape across the country (and face their own competition from web-based giants). What is worse for a community is an Empty Box store that sits vacant for years, so we understand the excitement out in Burlington that an agreement was reached this week for Big R, a farm and ranch store headquartered in Watseka, Ill., which will be dusting off the shelves and moving in to the former Kmart store at the Fox River Plaza Shopping Center. The Kmart store closed six years ago and, hopefully, the advent of Big R will help rejuvenate the mall.

Bad optics are always a problem  especially for politicians. The sad thumb this week looked like it was going to go to House Speaker and Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan, who was photobombed at the Kiwanis Pancake Day. Ryan was pouring coffee when he stopped to pose for a photo with an attendee who was wearing a T-shirt that read, Repeal and go (expletive) yourself, a reference to the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare. The photo quickly went viral. But, no, that bad optic didnt hold up. After sacking FBI director James Comey, who had been pushing to expand a probe into alleged Russian interference in the U.S. elections, President Donald Trump the next day met in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. No U.S. news photographers were present, but a Russian state news media photographer was there and the Russian news agency Tass posted a photo of a smiling Trump shaking hands with Lavrov. The Russian foreign ministry also posted a video of Lavrov joking about Comeys firing. They tricked us, a fuming White House official said, Thats the problem with the Russians, they lie. Thats a thumb, all right. A thumb in the eye.

It may not be in the same class as the Wright buildings, but the Mosquito Inn has been a popular Caledonia landmark at Four Mile Road and North Green Bay Road for more than 70 years  and that was after it was moved from Highway 31. The tavern closed a year ago, but new owners are looking at getting it up and running again. Tucked close to the busy roadway, its always been a concern for drivers on Four Mile who have to watch for cars backing out. That problem will likely be remedied by addition of a new parking lot on the west side of the building, with a walkway to a back deck and the rear entrance  at least we hope thats the case.
I recently attended a presentation where the presenter used a hamburger as an analogy for a cost-segregation study. While most people just see a hamburger, he sees a beef patty, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and a bun. That is to say, he doesnt see a single piece of real estate, but numerous smaller assets that comprise the larger asset. The same can be said of a purchase price allocation (PPA).

Introduction to Purchase Price Allocations

As the name implies, the objective of a purchase price allocation is to allocate the purchase price of an asset to its component parts. Unlike a cost-segregation study, which allocates cost for tax purposes, PPAs allocate fair value for financial reporting purposes. More specifically, PPAs are performed for companies complying with Accounting Standards Codification Topic 805, Business Combinations (ASC 805) under US GAAP. Unlike appraisals for financing purposes, which are governed by the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act of 1989 (FIRREA), PPAs are performed in accordance with the Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) promulgated by The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB); therefore, PPAs have intended uses and intended users that are distinct from financing appraisals.

The fundamental objective of a PPA is to allocate the entitys purchase price to its tangible and intangible components for US GAAP basis reporting (not income tax reporting). The acquiring company will use the PPA to place the acquired assets on their US GAAP basis fixed asset register and balance sheet. With the exception of land, which does not depreciate, the allocated tangible and intangible asset values will serve as the basis of the assets depreciation schedules for US GAAP reporting.

Before the allocation can begin, the appraisers must determine whether the purchase price is consistent with fair value. If the purchase price is below the entitys fair value, then the sale is classified as a bargain purchase, which FASB describes as an unusual and infrequent event. Assuming that the purchase price is consistent with fair value, the next step is to determine the fair value of each of the entitys tangible and intangible components.

The Finer Points

For some hotels, the purchase price can simply be allocated to tangible assets, such as land, personal property, and real property improvements. These assets can be valued using the sales comparison approach, income capitalization approach, and cost approach, as applicable. Land can be valued using the sales comparison approach or ground-rent capitalization approach, depending on market norms. Due to a dearth of comparable dark hotel sales, the real property improvement value is often ascribed based upon the depreciated replacement cost new (DRCN). Likewise, the personal property is often valued using the DCRN.

For more complex hospitality assets, additional tangible or intangible asset (or liability) allocations may be necessary. These additional assets and liabilities might include in-place leases, favorable/unfavorable leases, advanced bookings, assumed debt, and goodwill.

If a portion of a hotel is leased to third party, such as a restaurant or retail shop, that agreement should be analyzed. Lease agreements can create an asset, in the case of an abovemarket lease rate, or a liability, in the case of a belowmarket lease rate. Additionally, a lease that is in place at the time of the acquisition can have an intangible value to the buyer because that space produces a cash flow immediately, and there is no loss of rent or expense reimbursements while a tenant is found. Unamortized leasing commissions and tenant improvement allowances associated with tenant leases should also be analyzed. Additionally, if the hotel is situated on a ground lease, that lease agreement must be analyzed to determine if it is favorable (an asset) or unfavorable (a liability) to hotel ownership.

The hotels advanced bookings, management agreement, and franchise agreement should also be analyzed to determine whether these agreements are material to the acquisition, thereby creating an identifiable intangible asset or liability. For example, if the hotel has an agreement to host a large meeting on a long-term recurring basis, it might be necessary to ascribe value to that agreement. Similarly, the hotels management agreement might create an asset or liability if the management fee results in an operating expense that is above or below the market norm. When the management agreement is terminable upon sale, there is neither an asset or liability. While the existing franchise agreement should be examined, the franchisor needs to approve the buyer upon a sale, and if the buyer is approved, a new agreement will be written between the buyer and the franchisor at the franchisor's current fee structure.

Goodwill arises when the total fair value of the hotel exceeds the total value of identifiable tangible and intangible assets and liabilities. Goodwill is only observed in rare cases for hotels, primarily in situations where a hotel has an iconic status that results in an outsized purchase price. In addition to the tangible and intangible assets discussed in the preceding paragraphs, other potential assets or liabilities are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Wrap-Up

Given the unique nature of both hospitality assets and ASC 805 PPAs, it is important to engage a valuation firm with experience in both areas. No two hotels, or PPAs, are identical; therefore, HVS professionals are happy to discuss the intricacies of a potential hotel PPA project with both the client and their audit partner. Additionally, HVS can often complete the PPA in tandem with the financing appraisal, creating a more streamlined closing process for the buyer because there is only one data request and one site inspection.

About Tim Sauer

Tim Sauer, MAI, a Senior Project Manager with HVS St. Louis, has spent years in management and analysis roles in the field of commercial real estate. He works extensively on assignments for hospitality-focused mixed-use assets in St. Louis and throughout the United States. St. Louis is one of over 30 cities across North America where HVS has experts living and working, providing insights and solutions to clients. In the Midwest, HVS leaders are located in Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Nashville, Cincinnati, and Omaha, in addition to St. Louis. Tims prior industry experience includes appraisals, market studies, and rent comparability studies for properties in the U.S., Canada, Central America, and Europe, informing clients on purchase-price accounting, goodwill impairment, litigation, and financing. Tim graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Economics from The Ohio State University. He is a Designated Member of the Appraisal Institute (MAI). For more information, contact Tim at (314) 922-6734 or tsauer@hvs.com.

This article originally appeared on HVS.
Empyrean Benefit Solutions Celebrates Strong Growth to Kick Off 2017

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 05-12-2017 8:56 am

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Company Surpasses Client Growth Goals, Continues Its Visionary Product Development to Amplify Momentum from 2016s Record YearHOUSTON, TEXAS (PRWEB) MAY 10, 2017Empyrean Benefit Solutions, Inc., the Hi-Touch Benefits Administration company, today announced that it reported a record start in 2017 revenue, continuing the strong progress from the end of 2016. The record revenue reflects strong market adoption of Empyreans health and welfare benefits technology and administration services, including successful entry into the small/mid-size business (SMB) market where increasingly complex needs drive demand for better technology solutions.Weve deliberately set our product vision to be the trusted go-to-place for an individuals health and wealth related benefits. We believe every employee should have a personalized experience to help determine their outcomes and goals related to their health and wealth benefits, said Richard Wolfe, Empyreans co-founder and CEO. Our growth is reflect...

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Rideaus Vistanceis recognized with honors for HR solutions and technology innovation

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 05-12-2017 7:15 am

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Rideau, Inc. was declared the winner of HRO Today North America Forum iTalent competition held in Chicago, IL. The iTalent competition is part of the annual HRO Today North America Forum and showcases the newest and most innovative HR solutions from around the world. Rideau, Inc. was one of eight finalists and its patent-pending Vistance solution was declared the top recognition solution.Each year, HRO Todays North America Forum encourages companies to submit their latest HR technology to the competition.  The entries are reviewed and the top candidates are invited by HRO Today to present their solutions at the conference to a panel of judges which included past iTalent winners, financial analysts and business owners. The HR solution who most exemplified the support of HR through the use of technology was proclaimed the iTalent winner.In addition to the iTalent win, Rideaus Vistance also was also chosen as HRO Today North American Forums TekTonic recognition winner. The TekTonic...

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Those close to the president (Flynn, Sessions, Page, Manafort and Kushner) all have ties and/or pay-offs from the Russians. And President Trump has only praise for dictator Vladimir Putin. He congratulated Turkish despot Erdogan for his unlimited power grab. He began a new friendship with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and just this week he endorsed Nationalist candidate Marine Le Pen in France. Instead of "making America great," he is dragging our democracy down and becoming more like the dictators he admires.
Survey Says Small Businesses Hit Employee Happiness Out of the Park

Posted by Joanne Burton on Friday, 05-12-2017 11:07 am

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Small business owners have one less thing to worry about their employees are happier than those at medium- and large-sized companies. Aflac recently announced results from its 2017 Small Business Happiness Report, which found that small-business employees are among the happiest people in the workforce, with 84 percent of small-business employees stating they are happy with their current job. Nearly half of those employees attribute most, if not all, of their happiness to working for a small business.  The survey also found that: 67 percent of small-business employees say small businesses make them feel more appreciated.72 percent of small-business employees say an improvement in their benefits offerings would make them even happier. The survey results, along with AflacsSmall Business Hub, are designed to serve as a resource for small-business owners looking for information on how to best support their employees and manage their business. Further details regarding the survey ar...

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Total Costs per Workers Compensation Claim in Florida Grew Moderately, Finds WCRI Study

Posted by Press Releases on Friday, 05-12-2017 3:27 am

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This WCRI study provides meaningful comparisons between Florida and 17 other workers compensation systems (Arkansas, California, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin) on key performance measures. The average total cost per workers compensation claim in Florida grew moderately from 2010 to 2015, according to a study by the Workers Compensation Research Institute (WCRI). Total costs per claim in Florida grew 3 percent per year from 2010 to 2015 for claims with more than seven days of lost time and 12 months of experience, said Ramona Tanabe, WCRIs executive vice president and counsel. The study, CompScope" Benchmarks for Florida, 17th Edition, reflects research in the period before the following Florida Supreme Court decisions, both of which were expected to increase workers compensation system costs: The Castellanos decision in April 2016 declared ...

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In Person TNLA Vice Chairman: Political Process for Peace is Almost at an End

Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) Brig-Gen Tarr Jode Jarr. / The Irrawaddy

The National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government has yet to reply to a proposed meeting with a Wa-led political negotiation committee to discuss their participation in the countrys peace process, vice chairman of the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA) Brig-Gen Tarr Jode Jarr said in an interview with The Irrawaddy.

The Wa-led committee is formed of seven ethnic armed groups based in northern Burma and along the China-Burma borderthe United Wa State Army (UWSA), the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army-North (SSPP/SSA-North), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the Taang National Liberation Army (TNLA), and the Arakan Army (AA).

It was formed at the fourth Panghsang Summit hosted by the UWSA in April. All members have rejected signing the governments nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA). The Burma Army has said it would not hold talks with the MNDAA, TNLA, and AA, unless they disarmed first.

Chinas Special Envoy for Asian Affairs Sun Guoxiang met with representatives of the UWSA, the KIA, the MNDAA, the TNLA and the AA in Kunming of Chinas Yunnan Province on Wednesday and Thursday.

The Irrawaddys Nan Lwin Hnin Pwint spoke to vice chairman of the TNLA Brig-Gen Tarr Jode Jarr about the meeting with Sun Guoxiang.

What was the discussion with Sun Guoxiang about?

He wanted to know about the papers we submitted to the fourth Panghsang summit. We didnt talk much because we feel the political path is almost at an end now. If the government doesnt accept the agreements we reached at the Panghsang Summit, the political path is finished. So, we asked him [Sun Guoxiang] to help start political negotiations.

The governments peace commission said on May 6 that it would meet the Northern Alliance, but only about the NCA. Also, the Burma Army refuses to change its stance regarding three members of the Northern Alliance [MNDAA, TNLA and AA].

Did you talk about these issues with Sun Guoxiang?

No, we barely discussed it because the NCA doesnt work. He [Sun Guoxiang] urged us to meet the government and the military. And we are willing to meet them if they invite us as a whole groupall seven members. But we wont meet them if they invite us separately.

Is the Burma Amy not willing to meet the Northern Alliance together with the UWSA?

We [MNDAA, TNLA and AA] met with government peace negotiator Dr. Tin Myo Win once. But, as Ive said, we will only meet with the government when they invite all seven members. This is what we agreed at the Panghsang Summit.

Did you tell Sun Guoxiang that political dialogue is over if the government does not meet all seven members collectively?

Yes. But he urged us to meet [with the government]. The government wants to meet us separately, but we only want to meet as a group. The military has always met ethnic groups separately in order to prevent them from uniting. It is their tactic. It is quite obvious. Sun Guoxiang said he would try to help.

What does Sun Gunxiang think about the recent Panghsang Summit agreement?

He has not read it thoroughly. We have read it to him, and he said he would review it but that he was surprised by some parts [of our policy]. He, however, thought the points would contribute to the peace process and he said he would properly explain them to the government.

What has your meeting with Sun Guoxiang contributed to the peace process?

We expect that he will convey our feelings and our stance to the government and the military so that they can better understand us.
Asia China Gathers World for Silk Road Summit

People take pictures in front of a Golden Bridge on Silk Road installation, set up ahead of the Belt and Road Forum, outside the National Convention Centre in Beijing, China May 11, 2017. / Reuters

State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will attend a meeting of 28 nations in Beijing next week, where a summit to map out Chinas ambitious new Silk Road project will likely have attendees asking  what exactly is the Belt and Road Initiative?

Proposed in 2013 by President Xi Jinping to promote a vision of expanding links between Asia, Africa and Europe underpinned by billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, the project is broad on ambition but still short on specifics.

China has earmarked $40 billion for a special fund for the scheme, on top of the $100 billion capitalization for the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), many of whose projects will likely be part of the initiative.

But with a confusing name, that officially refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, added to myriad economic and security risks, clouds hang over the plan.

Despite aggressive promotion of the May 14-15 summit in China, including media carrying positive comments from Western leaders, some diplomats are suspicious about Chinas aims.

Theres a lot of scepticism about Chinas plans. Yes it is the kind of infrastructure that sounds attractive for parts of Europe, but we all know this is about China gaining influence, said a senior European Union diplomat.

One diplomatic source familiar with discussions on the forums communique said: The forum is downright glorification of Xi Jinping and One Belt, One Road, using the straight Chinese translation of the projects title.

However, with Donald Trump in the White House pursuing an America First agenda, more countries may be pushing for inclusion in Chinas grand scheme.

Countries have actually been pressuring China to get an invite rather than the other way around, said a senior Asian diplomat, referring to the summit.

China says that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion in Belt and Road countries. Some of the projects could be in development for years.

Confucius and Win-Win Thinking

China has taken umbrage at suggestions that the new Silk Road is about it trying to dominate the world and mould it to Beijings liking, saying it is good for all and anyone can join.

Western skeptics have failed to see the fact that the Chinese dont harbor a zero-sum mentality, but encourage win-win thinking, Xinhua news agency said in an English-language commentary.

As Confucius once said: He who wants success should enable others to succeed.

China has, though, outlined its ambitions in Chinese language pieces.

This is the China solution for global economic revival, Xinhua said last month of the new Silk Road, in a commentary blazed across the front page of the official Peoples Daily.

There are risks involved, however.

In Sri Lanka, there have been public protests against projects linked to the Belt and Road, and in Pakistan, where Islamist militants pose a security threat, the government has set up a new army division to protect the $57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key part of the new Silk Road.

The corridor also runs through disputed Kashmir, meaning India has rebuffed Chinas attempts to get it onto the Belt and Road.

We have some serious reservations about it because of sovereignty issues, Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said in Japan last week.

With China saying the Belt and Road is open to everyone, at least one country not widely seen as a safe investment choice is expected to show up  diplomatically isolated and nuclear-armed North Korea.

The government of Syria is also sending a Cabinet-level minister, the Syrian ambassador to China told Reuters this week.

Politics Before Economics?

There has been almost relentlessly upbeat coverage in China ahead of the Belt and Road Forum, including documentaries on state television and smiling citizens in project countries praising the changes it has brought.

During the meeting, more than 50 memorandums of understanding, plans, cooperation letters and cooperation projects in transportation, energy and communications will be signed, Chinese government officials say.

This  will be a jointly consultative document by all parties to reflect their shared consensus on advancing the Belt and Road, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters on Wednesday, referring to the summit communique.

Some Chinese experts say politics are being put ahead of economic factors.

I believe that the national strategy is the top priority; economic considerations are secondary, said an economist at the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, a Beijing-based think-tank which made initial proposals to set up the AIIB.

He asked not to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the topic.

There is caution, too, from some Asian countries.

Speaking last week at a meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Japan, Philippine Deputy Central Bank Governor Diwa Guinigundo said it was hard to pre-judge the new Silk Road.

It is still a vision. You have to translate that into some working parts, Guinigundo said.

Some Western diplomats have expressed concern in private at the high billing at the summit given to countries with poor human rights records, like Russia and the Philippines.

The diplomatic source familiar with the communique discussions said those talks had been tough, as everyone wanted a say. There had been at least three drafting sessions, one of which lasted 13 hours this week.

The original plan was for a host country press statement, but China changed that to a joint communique, the source said.

The only explanation that one could give is that they want to add weight to this meeting.
Burma New Mon State Party to Sign Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement

New Mon State National Party troops parade on Mon National Day. / Hintharnee / The Irrawaddy

MOULMEIN  The central executive committee (CEC) meeting of the New Mon State Party (NMSP) agreed to sign the nationwide ceasefire agreement (NCA), but will only sign together with other ethnic armed groups, CEC member Nai Win Hla told press on Friday.

What I can say definitely is wed sign it, he said. But it is difficult to predict for others as they are still holding meetings.

We learnt that the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and the Wa National Organization (WNO) will resign [from the United Nationalities Federal Council]. So, they are unlikely to sign, he told press.

Nai Win Hla said other groupsincluding the Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the Arakan National Council (ANC), and the Lahu Democratic Union (LDU)may sign.

The decision to sign the NCA was reached at the regular CEC meeting of the NMSP, held from April 23 to May 8. Nai Win Hla said NMSP had yet to meet with other groups likely to sign the NCA to announce a date for the group signing.

Dr Sui Khar, assistant general secretary 1 of the Chin National Front (CNF), an NCA signatory, said the NMSP signing would contribute to the peace process because both the government and the military prefer adhering to NCA in their approach.

If they are involved, the peace discussion will be wider both in terms of race and region in the peace process. It will bring benefits to groups which have not yet joined the peace process, said Dr Sui Khar.

Deputy Speaker of Mon State Parliament Dr Aung Naing Oo told The Irrawaddy that he is not pleased with certain provisions in the NCA, but hoped that a solution can be found through political dialogue.

Signing is not the end of the journey, but it is the first step, and if they can get to the next step which is political dialogue, a better way may emerge for all of us, said Dr Aung Naing Oo. I view [NMSPs decision to sign NCA] as a good prospect.

NMSP signed a truce with the then ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1995, but the truce broke in 2010. It signed state and Union level ceasefire agreement with the former President U Thein Seins government in February 2012.
Burma Ethnic States Win Right to Draft Constitutions

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC) in Naypyidaw on Friday. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYIDAW  Burmas seven ethnic states have won the right to draft their own constitutions, an unprecedented breakthrough in their fight for equality and self-determination, according to the leader of an armed ethnic group.

After the Friday morning meeting of the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC), Col. Hkun Okkar of the Pa-O National Liberation Organization (PNLO) told reporters the government has acknowledged the right to self-determination for the state as we are allowed to draft the state constitution.

We were able to agree that we could draft our own state constitutions, which has never been done in Burmese history, he said. The states under the Union have never had such rights as to draft their own constitutions, but we have earned it today.

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads the UPDJC, joined the meeting on Friday. On May 7-9, the UPDJC held a working committee meeting and a secretariats meeting on May 9-11.

The meeting on Friday approved the basic principles covering political, economic, social, security, and land and environment sectors.

The UPDJC has so far agreed to six of seven principles of the federal Union to be negotiated in the second round of the 21st Century Panglong peace conference to begin on May 24. These principles are: sovereignty, the practice of sovereignty, equality, self-determination, federal Union principles, and a multi-party democratic system.

It was decided the seventh principlethe relationship between religion and politicsneeded to be discussed further.

UPDJC participants had to agree that their state constitutions do not contradict the Unions military-drafted 2008 Constitution, which would take precedence in any possible disputes.

Pado Saw Kwe Htoo Win, vice chairman of the Karen National Union (KNU), said in his opening speech: I am delighted to say that we, the ethnic minorities, could draft a constitution for our state and region. It is a step forward as in the composition of the federal union and I am thankful.

The state parliaments, governments, and courts will come under the state constitutions, whose authority will be protected from Union government interference.

If the mandates are unclear, our country could not develop any further. If the states mandates are clear, the Union level governance cannot revoke it, said Col. Hkun Okkar, referring to a time when his group asked the Shan state government to regrow trees, but the state told them to ask the Unions forestry ministry.

On the topic of self-determination, the Burma Army requested to add the words no secession from the Union. The meetings participants said no secession shared the same meaning as non-disintegration of the Union.

The meeting agreed the Burma Army would continue upholding its position of protecting the three main national causesnon-disintegration of the Union, non-disintegration of national solidarity and perpetuation of sovereignty.

When we can build a federal union that fully guarantees national equality and self-determination, no one will leave the Unioneven under force, said Col. Hkun Okkar.

He said the new name of the country could be the Federal Union of Burma and the Burma Army could still be called the Union Tatmadaw to avoid any issues with it being named the Federal Army.

Burmas ehtnic states are Kachin, Karen, Arakan, Mon, Shan, Chin, and Karenni.
Burma India Seeks Deportation of Rohingya Refugees as Kashmir Boils

People belonging to Rohingya Muslim community sit outside their makeshift houses on the outskirts of Jammu, India. / Mukesh Gupta / Reuters

JAMMU, India  It was around 3 a.m. when Abdul Kader was awoken by his childrens screams as flames spread through their corrugated iron and wood shack and dense smoke filled the air.

The 37-year-old burkha seller and his family escaped last months blaze unhurt, as did the six other Muslim Rohingya refugee families living there, but it has left the community in Indias northern city of Jammu fearful and on edge.

The police said it was an electrical short circuit, but we think it wasnt an accident, said Kader, sitting on the floor of a madrasa in a slum in Jammus Narwal area.

They dont like us here and want us to leave. We were driven from Burma, then Bangladesh and now they want us to leave India. The situation is bad for us wherever we go.

For almost a decade, India has been a safe haven for thousands of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Burma. Around 14,000 Rohingya live here, with half residing in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

But rising tensions with bordering Pakistan and a spike in separatist violence in neighboring Kashmir, coupled with nationalist anti-Islamic sentiment globally, are threatening the Rohingya once again as demands grow for their eviction.

Right-wing political parties, including Prime Minister Narendra Modis party, blame them for crime in Jammu, straining public resources, and claim they pose a threat to security.

As a result, India has started registering and monitoring the Rohingya, a move which activists fear could eventually force them back to Burma where they face atrocities, including murder, rape and arson attacks.

Indian authorities know very well the abuses the Rohingya community have been facing in Burma, said Amnesty International Indias Raghu Menon. Deporting them and abandoning them to their fates would be unconscionable.

Most Persecuted Community

Often described as the most persecuted community, the minority Rohingya have for years faced discrimination, repression and violence in northwestern Burma.

Denied citizenship by the largely Buddhist government since the 1990s, they face apartheid-like conditions. Hundreds have died in communal violence, and thousands have sought refuge in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Bangladesh.

Around 75,000 people have fled to Bangladesh just since October as the military cracks down on Rohingya insurgents.

Mass killings and gang rapes by the army in recent months have been documented, prompting the UN to claim this could be seen as crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Some 7,000 Rohingya refugees live in Jammu, mostly residing in urban slums, eking out a meager living selling garbage or doing manual work for Indians, often underpaid and exploited.

They are extremely poor and settle wherever they find safety, said Suvendu Rout from ACCESS, a Delhi charity providing Rohingya refugees with literacy and skills training.

Many are construction workers and are contributing to building Indias infrastructure, while others collect rubbish which helps keep our cities clean.

Parasites, Criminals, Security Threat

But a contrasting narrative is being spun in J&K, a troubled state which is disputed by bordering Pakistan, and where a separatist insurgency has simmered for almost three decades.

Over the last six months, Jammu has witnessed a string of anti-Rohingya public protests by political parties, Hindu groups, student bodies and the business community.

Billboards demanding refugees Quit Jammu have been put up, local media have branded them parasites, Rohingya effigies torched on the streets, and a petition filed in the High Court seeking their eviction from J&K.

Arun Gupta, spokesman for Modis Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is also part of J&Ks coalition government, says public hostility towards them is growing.

Jammu is a small place, and with this kind of influx, it is problematic. They are into a lot of illegal activities and since they are poor and idle, they are easily accessible to anti-national elements seeking to destablise Jammu, said Gupta.

Kashmir is already on boil. We do not want this to spread to Jammu. People here have started to realise this and believe these refugees should leave as of yesterday.

Many advocating for the eviction even suggest rival Pakistan may be behind the Rohingya migration here, with the aim of stoking trouble but evidence to support these claims is scarce.

Police in Jammu, for example, say only 11 cases against Rohingya refugees have been registered in the last six years. These include illegal border crossing, rape and theft.

They also been no cases or evidence to suggest links to separatist militancy in Kashmir, connections with Pakistan, or their involvement in Islamic radicalisation, the police add.

Political analysts say the Rohingya are getting caught up in two different, yet equally nasty undercurrents: a global wave of xenophobic sentiment and the local Indian and Pakistan dispute.

Pakistan certainly has a history of meddling in Kashmir, and we cant rule out the possibility that it would want to use the Rohingya to serve its interests in Kashmir, said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the South Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre.

But even if theres something to these allegations, this doesnt justify the draconian measures being called for against the entire Rohingya community, most of whom we can safely assume are perfectly law-abiding folks simply trying to make a living.

Little Protection for Refugees

The home ministry has responded positively to the eviction demands and last month directed all states to register and identify Rohingya refugees as a first step.

A home ministry official said after this identification process they would decide on the next step.

Cant really say at this stage if it will be deportation. They are Burma nationals who have come to India from Bangladesh. Diplomatic consultations are on with both Burma and Bangladesh about this, the official said.

Those backing the deportation stress India is under no legal obligation to provide the Rohingya refuge.

India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which spells out refugee rights and state responsibilities to protect them. Nor does the country have a domestic law to protect the almost 210,000 refugees it currently hosts.

They also argue Rohingya are technically illegal, pointing to Article 370 of the constitution which gives J&K special status and prevents outsiders from permanent settlement.

Human rights groups disagree, saying deporting the refugees to Burma violates the internationally recognised principle of non-refoulement that forbids forcibly returning people to a country where they are at risk.

In the Rohingya slum in Jammus Narwal area, many feel the intensifying anti-Rohingya rhetoric is leading to hate crimes such as assaults or suspicious fires in their settlements.

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says while India has not informed them of any change in policy towards the Rohingya, there are signs the space in Jammu is shrinking for them.

A few Rohingya families have informed UNHCR they had to leave Jammu due to fear, said the UNCHR in a statement, adding it was helping them resettle in other parts of India.

Madrasa teacher Kafayat Ullah Arkani, 32, say most have no choice but to stay in Jammu for the time being.

If Rohingya commit crimes, then lock them up. Dont punish an entire community by sending them to be massacred, said Arkani. We want to go home, but we can only go when its safe.
Burma Ma Ba Tha Denies Involvement in Recent Anti-Muslim Violence

Ma Ba Tha members gather at Thuwunna Stadium in Rangoon to commemorate the enactment of protection of Race and Religion Laws. / Hein Htet / The Irrawaddy

RANGOON Burmas leading nationalist group denied involvement in a recent midnight confrontation between Buddhist nationalists and Muslim residents near downtown Rangoon that prompted authorities to issue arrest warrants for the alleged perpetrators.

The Association for Protection Race and Religioncommonly known by its Burmese acronym Ma Ba Thareleased a statement on Thursday after it attracted accusations that it was behind a nationalist mob in Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township on Tuesday night claiming ethnic Muslim Rohingya were in Rangoon illegally.

The statement argued people who dont like Ma Ba Tha just blame us whenever something bad happens.

Ashin U Sopaka, a leading member of Ma Ba Tha, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that the group behind the Tuesday night confrontationthe Patriotic Monks Union was not connected to his association.

We have nothing to do with them. As both are run by Buddhist monks, people confuse Ma Ba Tha and the Patriotic Monks Union as the same group, he said.

The Patriotic Monks Union attracted attention in the last few years for their attacks on Muslim vendors doing business near Buddhist pagodas. They were also involved in staging demonstrations in collaboration with other nationalist groups against ethnic Muslim Rohingya.

Their most recent actionsand probably the biggest yetwere to organize the shutdown of two madrasas in Rangoons Thaketa Township last month and Tuesdays violence.

The unions leader and following is unknown, but monk U Thuseitta, who has had a warrant issued for his arrest, is known to be secretary of the group.

[The union] only work for nationalism, said U Sopaka. They have their own approaches and we have our own, he added.

During a press conference held by the union on Thursday, U Thuseitta said the Patriotic Monks Union and other nationalist forces were behind Tuesdays actions. It was not by Ma Ba Tha. We did it, he admitted.

Founded in 2014two years after Burma had been plunged into religious conflict between Buddhists and Muslims, and with sub-chapters across the countryMa Ba Tha has become virtually synonymous with nationalism.

Some of its leading members, including U Wirathu, preached anti-Muslim sermons, claiming that the countrys Buddhist foundations are under assault, the Muslim population is outpacing the Buddhist one and that Burma needs to be vigilant against fundamentalist influences.

The association was criticized at home and abroad for lobbying for the controversial race and religion laws. Despite their anti-Muslim preaching and activities, Ma Ba Tha outlived the previous Thein Sein government, which was criticized for turning a blind eye on the associations actions.

The association was outlawed last year a few months after the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-led government came to power as it was not formed in accordance with the countrys monastic rules.

Since then, Ma Ba Tha has been low key, focusing more on charity work.

In late April, however, they reorganized one of their subchapters Dhamma Wunthanu Rakhita as a vigilance societyled by senior Ma Ba Tha monks mostly with laymen to protect race and religion when it comes to cases in which Buddhist monks cant be involved.
Burma USDP Will Disclose Wealth if NLD Does: USDP Secretary

USDP press conference in Naypyidaw on May 12, 2017. / Pe Thet Htet Khin / The Irrawaddy

NAYPYIDAW  The Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) will disclose its assets if the government and lawmakers of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party also disclose their personal financial holdings, said U Tin Aung Chit, USDP secretary.

Will the organizations, parties, and government members who were vocal [in demanding the previous USDP-led government disclose its holdings] now disclose their assets? If so, we will not hesitate to disclose our own, he said, at a press conference at the USDP headquarters in Naypyidaw on Friday.

As no existing law requires lawmakers to disclose their personal financial holdings, the NLD has no plan for financial disclosure, U Nyan Win, an NLD central executive committee member, told The Irrawaddy.

No law prescribes the disclosure of assets. According to the law, lawmakers have to file asset reports, which are retained. Why should we disclose these? There should be a reason, but as of now, I see no reason, said U Nyan Win.

When The Irrawaddy asked what the NLD would do if the public wanted it to disclose its assets, U Nyan Win said: People have to demand what is in line with the law.

Speaker of Burmas Lower House U Win Myint earlier said that Parliament would not disclose the personal assets of lawmakers in consideration of their security.

USDP officials also denied the partys involvement in the alleged embezzlement of public funds by former divisional governments in Magwe and Irrawaddy divisions.

USDP spokesperson Dr. Nandar Hla Myint said punitive actions could be taken against members of the former government if they violated the law.

Taking advantage of these cases, groups that are lobbying against us have called our party a thief. It tarnishes the image of our party to muddle it with individual party members. This not only harms the dignity of the party but also affects its future. We deny any involvement in these cases, said Dr. Nandar Hla Myint.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko.
DELAVAN  U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, touring his home district Friday, did his best to sidestep the news roiling Capitol Hill: President Donald Trump issuing a Twitter threat to former FBI Director James Comey, who the president abruptly fired this week to widespread controversy.

Ryan defended Trumps authority to fire Comey while insisting FBI and congressional investigations into Russian meddling in last years U.S. election wont be affected by Comeys departure.

Trump tweeted early Friday that James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Ryan, speaking to reporters at a Delavan business, Prestige Paints, said he wouldnt comment on the tweet of the day.

Im going to leave it to the president to talk about and defend his tweets, Ryan said.

Trump acknowledged in a TV interview Thursday that the FBIs investigation into Russian meddling in last years election  including whether the Trump campaign was linked to the effort  contributed to his decision to fire Comey. That contradicted the explanation for the firing given by Trumps surrogates.

Some Democratic critics say Trumps actions could constitute obstruction of justice. They say top Republicans, including Ryan, are enabling that by refusing to call for an independent investigation into the Trump campaigns alleged ties with Russia.

Ryan said Friday that there have been no allegations that theres been collusion between Trumps campaign and Russia.

The president made his decision; theres nothing I can do about that. I think he has every right to do it, Ryan said.

Ryan said Trump never asked him for a pledge of loyalty, as The New York Times reports Trump privately requested of Comey before firing him. Comey reportedly declined Trumps request. The White House has denied the Times report.

Ryan also responded to criticism from Democrats and some constituents that he hasnt held recent town halls in the southern Wisconsin district he represents. Ryan said he has other ways of staying in touch with constituents, including telephone town halls.

Im getting around seeing constituents all the time, Ryan said. Im doing it in such a way where constituents dont go into a harassing environment.

Earlier Friday, Ryan fielded questions from students at Badger High School in Lake Geneva. Ryan also took a few questions from Delavan-area high schoolers at Prestige Paints.

At Badger High School, Ryan, responding to questions that a school official said were submitted in advance, talked about the workings of the federal government and Congress. He urged students to do their homework and meet deadlines.

The amicable setting was far removed from the scene on Capitol Hill, where Trumps sacking of Comey  and the White Houses shifting explanations for it  were the dominant topic all week.

Ryan, explaining his job to the students, likened it to being a traffic cop in Congress. Responding to a students question about how to succeed in life, Ryan appeared to reference the Twitter-loving Trump with a response that urged the student to manage his time wisely. That includes time spent on social media, Ryan added.

I try not to look at Twitter too often these days, Ryan said, chuckling.

A statement from Ryans office said he held the events to discuss his tax agenda and education. Both are areas in which the Janesville Republican hopes to enact sweeping conservative change with his party now controlling Congress and the White House.

But it may prove difficult in the near term, due in part to the Trump-Comey controversy enveloping Capitol Hill.

Meanwhile, a liberal group in Ryans district, Forward Kenosha, said its disappointed Ryan wont field questions from its members while in the district. The group invited Ryan to a town hall Friday but his staff declined, according to one of the groups board members, Charlie Breit.

I get it: Hes speaker; hes got a lot of stuff hes got to do,  Breit said. All I would ask is: Take a couple of these (congressional) recesses and stop here.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Black Earth, attended the town hall instead. Pocan represents the Madison area as part of Wisconsins 2nd Congressional District, which abuts Ryans 1st District to the west.

Some 200 to 250 people attended the forum, said Breit, who has considered running against Ryan as a Democrat. Many came to talk about the health care bill that recently passed the U.S. House under Ryans leadership, Breit said.
Editorial Where Does Burma Stand on Chinas One Belt, One Road?

Oil tanks are seen at Chinas oil pipeline project on Madae island, Kyaukpyu Township, Arakan State, in Burma on October 7, 2015. / Soe Zayar Tun / The Irrawaddy

Chinas One Belt, One Road initiative is new to many of the Burmese public, though the magnitude of the massively ambitious project would need a specialized task force to understand.

Burmas Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will soon visit China to attend a two-day summit on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), referring to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road

China is building a network of highways, railroads, and maritime routes, known as the modern Silk Road, which will link it to Central Asia, South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.

Burmas official position on the initiative is unclear, but the developing nation is likely to play a role in the grand scheme. How Burmese leadership will handle the impact of the far-reaching project is also unclear. Are they well equipped enough to understand BRI and enter into negotiations with the Chinese, who have major business and strategic interests in Burma?

There has been no public debate on Chinas deep sea port in Kyaukphyu, Arakan State, but Reuters reported last week that China is looking to take a stake of up to 85 percent in the strategically important port, which is part of two projects: an industrial park and a special economic zone.

Kyaukphyu is key to the BRI as it sits on the Bay of Bengal and will provide strategic geo-economic access to the Indian Ocean, where China wants to develop maritime infrastructure.

Burma wont reject the BRI; the interesting element is how the countrys leadership deals with the initiative. It is time to negotiate from a position of strength.

A few weeks ago, news emerged that China was willing to abandon the suspended and controversial US$3.6 billion Myitsone Dam project, but would be looking for concessions in return on other strategic opportunities in Burma, including Kyaukphyu.

Reports citing leaked documents from the negotiations said that a consortium led by Chinas CITIC Group had proposed to take a 70-85 percent stake in the $7.3 billion deep sea port, as there had been talks between Chinese state-owned conglomerate and the Burmese government.

Alarmingly, there has been no discussion on this project in parliament. We need to hear voices from the local communities that will be affected by the deep sea port.

More focus should be put on the opposition to the Kyaukphyu port and economic zone. Activists and local communities say the project lacks transparency and would have a negative impact on local people. It is believed that more than 20,000 people are at risk of losing their livelihoods due to land acquisition for the zone.

Since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi came into power, Beijing has swiftly moved in to build stronger relations with the first new majority civilian government in decades. When China was re-asserting its role and forming friendships with the new administration in Naypyidaw, the West has faced its own issues: Brexit and the business tycoon-cum-45th US President Donald Trump.

Under the de facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the relationship with the West seems to be stable but strained on the issues of the Muslim Rohingya in Arakan State and peace in the Union. She encountered protests during stops on her recent European tour and her rejection of the international fact finding mission to look into human rights abuses by the Burma Army against the Muslim population in Arakan State has only put more distance between Burma and European leaders.

Amid the unpredictable challenges of this democratic transition, Western influence on Burma is waning, while Beijing is becoming more assertive, reassuring the status quo in the country.

Beijing has offered to play peace broker between ethnic armed groups and the government, expanding its influence among Burmese stakeholders in the peace process and holding confidential meetings with powerful leaders from the government, parliament, and the armed forces. China even extended its clout to the Burma-Bangladesh border with Chinese special envoy Sun Guoxiang recently visiting the area.

Sun Guoxiang offered to mediate a diplomatic row between Bangladesh and Burma over the flight of the minority Rohingya Muslims, who have faced persecution from Arakanese Buddhists and the military. Like in the past, China is undoubtedly exercising its political and economic power over Burma.

How the Burmese leadership counters Chinas ever-prominent role in its affairs is opaque, and further hindered by Burmas need for Chinese help in seeking peace with armed groups along the countries shared border. These groups remain an important bargaining chip to China.

The Burmese are understandably wary of their huge and important neighborand they should be. Many question Chinas intentions in Burma, as well as its geo-political interests and economic sway.

Unlike the West, China is next door; its resourceful and prepared to play the long game. With this in mind, we will soon see how Burmas negotiation skills rate with China and be prepared to hold the Burmese leadership accountable if there are huge consequences to the deals. This is in the countrys national interest because, ultimately, its sovereignty that matters.
Guest Column New Fissures in Myanmars Peace Process

A UPDJC meeting held in Naypyidaw to discuss the 21st Century Panglong Conference. / Htet Naing Zaw / The Irrawaddy

Less than a month before the commencement of the second 21st Century Panglong Conference (21CPC), the Union government of Myanmar faces an unprecedented situation. Both the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the Wa National Organisation (WNO) have resigned from the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC). Another Ethnic Armed Organization (EAO)  the Shan State Progressive Party (SSPP)/Shan State Army-North (SSA-N)  is at the threshold of exiting this crucial alliance.

So far, the dealings between the government in Nay Pyi Taw and those EAOs that had not signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Accord (NCA) were fairly single-track, courtesy of the UNFC. The existence of this influential cluster of non-signatories made the dialogue process convenient for the governments Peace Commission, in a situation where the latter had to talk to almost ten core negotiating parties in order to expand the ceasefire. The situation now appears to have radically changed, with the definitive entry of the United Wa State Army (UWSA). This powerful group recently instituted a separate dialogue channel known as the Union Political Negotiation Dialogue Committee (UPNDC), bringing on board six other non-signatory EAOs.

How decisive or significant is this new approach to reconciliation?

It is worth noting that the EAOs that are a part of the UPNDC, particularly the KIO/KIA, MNDAA, and UWSA, are all heavily armed and command strong influence in their respective ethnic quarters. In fact, the UWSA happens to be the largest EAO in the country. Moreover, the Union governments reputation among the frontier populations has only waned over the past six months, thanks to relentless offensives by the military and a perception of political isolation from the revamped Panglong process. State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyis recent visit to IDP camps in Kachin State was a half-drawn attempt to rebuild this lost trust. A new dialogue process that is based locally is expected to draw greater attention and significantly erode the limited credibility that Nay Pyi Taw currently enjoys with respect to the frontier ethnic constituencies.

In a situation where the governments peace bureaucracy is already dealing with structural deadlocks and lax implementation of its own obligations (as mandated by the NCA), a bifurcation of the non-signatory cluster is expected to cause even more delays and lapses. The split might not only deepen the existing communication gap between Nay Pyi Taw and EAOs based in the northern states, but also expedite the dire need for effective mediators who can seamlessly pass on accurate and consistent information between the civilian government, the Tatmadaw, and the noncompliant EAOs.

The new committee also opens up newfound space for China to influence the peace process, by virtue of the UWSAs deep-seated links with Beijing. In the past few months, China has pulled the strings on the peace process in decisive ways, mostly through backchannel negotiations with both the union government and EAOs like the Karen National Union (KNU). At the moment, Beijings top priority is to ensure stability along the border region so as to allow its own developmental agenda in Myanmar to flourish without disruption. To this end, the UWSA, with whom China maintains strong ties, is a potentially effective channel for conflict management.

Clearly, the most powerful EAOs in Myanmar now stand for an alternative prognosis to reconciliation that Nay Pyi Taw cannot ignore. Some questions emerge almost immediately in this regard: what to make of the governments promise to eventually expand the NCA through the Panglong process? How would the negotiations pan out in the upcoming iteration of the 21CPC and to what end? Even if the conference makes considerable headway with respect to the NCA signatories, would not the absence of the crucial conflict actors render the whole exercise redundant? Does the government plan on establishing a permanent dialogue channel with the UWSA-led UPNDC?

For now, Myanmars peace process hangs in a precarious limbo.

Angshuman Choudhury is a researcher at the South East Asia Research Programme (SEARP) of New Delhi-based think tank, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS). He is currently conducting research on Myanmars ethnic peace process and has previously written about this subject for his institute. A collection of the commentaries can be found at his blog, Eleventh Column. He is also an independent journalist and filmmaker, and has written on political and conflict-related issues in South Asia Journal, Firstpost, The Huffington Post India, The Citizen, The Quint, etc. Angshuman holds a M.Sc. in Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding from Durham University (UK).

Angshuman ChoudhuryThis article originally appeared in Tea Circle, a forum hosted at Oxford University for emerging research and perspectives on Burma/Myanmar.
There has never been a more important time for students in public policy, said alum Zeke Cohen, MPP '12 (right) at a seminar moderated by Keshia Pollack, PhD, MPH (left).

Academics, Activism and Improving Baltimore

Baltimore City councilman Zeke Cohen, MPP 12, has a message for students of public health: remember how much power you have.

Cohen, 31, who is serving his first term on the Council, reminded students at a Q&A last month at the Bloomberg School that they are the future workforce, taxpayers, homeowners, activists and parents of children who may one day attend city schools. Officials care about what you have to say, he emphasized.

There has never been a more important time for students in public policy, he told his audience at a public seminar sponsored by the Schools Institute for Health and Social Policy. As policy scholars, you are on the front line of defending the ideals of the people most in need.

Cohen has a strong sense of optimism that institutions like Hopkins can help lead the way in advancing equity in cities like Baltimore, where stark divisions exist between the haves and the have-nots.

Baltimore remains the most segregated city in America through a series of policy decisions, he said. The crime and violence that people experience is a product of concentrated poverty.

Cohen moved to Baltimore from Massachusetts over a decade ago as a college student and found not only a home but a cause and a career.

After graduating from Goucher College, he took a teaching job at George G. Kelson Elementary Middle School in Sandtown-Winchester through the Teach for America program. The West Baltimore neighborhood, where, Cohen says, some schools lack heat and drinkable running water, would become known as a site of turmoil and unrest in the days following the arrest and death of Freddie Gray just over two years ago.

Cohen earned a masters in public policy from the School in 2012 and launched a nonprofit organization, The Intersection, which works with Baltimore City high school students to promote leadership skills and civic action. In working with these students and their families, Cohen further realized his path of civil service and in 2015 announced a bid for Baltimore City Council which has become his full-time endeavor.

Equity is at the heart of Cohens ethos both academically and professionally. His desire to build community and empower people with the tools to self-govern and hold their government accountable was central to his platform in his run for a council seat in Baltimore Citys first district, a diverse collection of neighborhoods along the southeast waterfront.

Cohen is one of eight new council members who took office in 2016. Its the largest turnover on the governing body since 2003, which he considers both advantageous and a worthy challenge.

[Theres a] renewed sense of activism throughout the city, he said. Elected officials must match that courage and do the hard work of rebuilding public trust.

As Chairman of the Education Committee, Cohen holds hearings not at City Hall but in public schools and community rec centers to combat the notion that government is somehow disconnected from the people. In his view, the Councils work needs to start where the children and families already are.

Cohen credits his degree in public policy as sound preparation for municipal service. "My masters has enabled me to read research with clarity and precision. The tools I gained at Hopkins have been enormously helpful in my first few months at City Hall."

- Lindsay Smith Rogers

See the full video
By Danny Sjursen | ( Tomdispatch.com) |  

More, more, more.

I was guilty of it myself. Commanding a small cavalry troop of about 85 soldiers in southwest Kandahar Province back in 2011, I certainly wanted and requested more: more troopers, more Special Forces advisers, more Afghan police, more air support, more supplies, more money, more everything. Like so many others in Afghanistan back then, I wanted whatever resources would protect the guys in my unit and fend off the insurgent threat. No one, of course, asked me if the U.S. military should even be there, nor did I presume to raise the question. I was, after all, just a captain dug into a tough fight in a dangerous district.

Its funny, though, people sometimes ask me now, Whats really going on in Afghanistan? They ask the same question about Iraq, where I led a unit back in 2006-2007. I mean, the implication is: If you served over there, unlike those (liberal!) pundits and politicians who regularly mouth off on the subject, who would know better? But Ive learned over the years that what they dont want to hear is my real answer to such questions, so I rarely bother to tell them that historians, analysts, and thoughtful critics, even ones who havent been within thousands of miles of our war zones, probably understand the big picture better than most soldiers.

Thats the dirty little secret of Americas wars: despite the omniscient claims of some veterans, most soldiers see their version of war as if gazing through a straw at 30,000 feet. Combat and dedication to your unit and mission naturally steer you toward such tunnel vision. And heres the sad thing that no one wants to admit: that mantra applies as strongly to generals as to sergeants (and if you dont believe that, just check out our wars of the last 15 years). So its worrisome when president after president defers to and all too often hides behind the supposed wisdom of active and retired three- and four-star flag officers.

Dont get me wrong, some of these guys can be impressive. No one is perfect, but former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey was a gem with genuine scholarly and combat bona fides. But consider him and a few others the exceptions that prove the rule. Which is why civilian control of the military, and of the policymaking process that goes with military action, is not just a constitutional imperative but desirable for thoroughly practical reasons. Which, in turn, is why the makeup of the current administration  with an unprecedented number of generals in key positions  raises some serious questions.

And yet the problem is so much bigger than that. Somehow  and this should be truly unnerving  Americans have gotten to a place where, it seems, they trust only soldiers. In June 2016, for instance, a Gallup poll found that 73% of Americans had quite a lot of confidence in the military, versus 36% for the presidency and 6% for Congress. Such disparities ought to inspire distress about the direction of our public institutions, but rarely do.

Where the nation puts its money both reflects this reality and aggravates it. Consider that in this fiscal year military spending exceeded $600 billion, or 12 times the State Departments budget. Worse still, the new presidents proposed budget would cut State by more than one-third  despite former Secretary of Defense Bob Gatess quip that there are already more members of military bands than Foreign Service officers.

The Myth of (Infallible) Military Judgment

By now, its part of American lore that, facing a thorny problem or potential conflict abroad, a president should throw some stars at it. If only generals were indeed pixie dust. Historically speaking, though, since World War II, calling on the generals has often resulted in abject failure. Theres plenty of evidence of that in the last 15 years of, at best, inconclusive war in the Greater Middle East, but first, lets take a brief tour of military advice from the previous centurys crises.

MacArthur in Korea

In October 1950, just months after the Korean War began, President Harry Truman met General Douglas MacArthur, commander of the coalition forces in Korea, on Wake Island. There, MacArthur assured the president of two things: that the Chinese would not intervene in the war and that the fighting would be over by Christmas. A month later, hundreds of thousands of Chinese volunteers streamed across the Yalu River into northern Korea, sending MacArthurs troops into headlong retreat. Wrong once, the general promptly called for a massive U.S. troop escalation and the bombing of China, perhaps even nuclear attacks on that country. Truman recoiled, fired the general, and opened negotiations, all while avoiding nuclear war. And what happened to the twice-wrong MacArthur? In April 1951, with the war still underway  an armistice wouldnt finally come until July 1953  he received a record-breaking 19-mile-long ticker-tape parade through New York City in which 3,249 tons of paper rained down on him.

Ike vs. the Generals

President Dwight Eisenhower so loved the Army that he asked his successor to return him to his five-star rank. That way hed be addressed as General rather than Mr. President in retirement. Yet no president was more dismissive of the notion that military men, rather than civilians, know whats best. When a senator contended that the Air Force was better positioned than politicians to assess its own needs, Ike snapped back, Bunk! (He knew the Pentagon regularly overstated its case.) As for sage military advice, Eisenhower dismissed General Mark Clarks plans for an all-out assault in Korea as madness and sacked all his service chiefs after they revolted over a truncated defense budget he proposed. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Arthur Radford, even hinted that it might be high time to reexamine the taboo against using nuclear weapons in that war. Despite significant saber-rattling, Ike ultimately chose restraint.

In fact, he was notoriously skeptical of his generals advice and left office famously warning Americans about a growing military-industrial complex. The result of his presidency: the commanding general and hero of World War II held down defense spending, never used nukes, ended the bloody stalemate of a war in Korea, and  most importantly  avoided World War III.

Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs Deal With Cuba

The U.S. high command, like much of the American public, was obsessed with newly Communist Cuba. In April 1961, after the Bay of Pigs, a disastrous CIA-sponsored invasion by Cuban emigres, the generals proposed a new plan, Operation Northwoods. Approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it called for false-flag terrorist attacks on emigres in Miami or on U.S. ships off the coast to drum up public support for a war against Cuba. President John F. Kennedy refused.

Soon after came the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought humanity as close to extinction as its ever come. When U.S. intelligence learned that the Soviet Union had stationed nuclear missiles on that island, just 90 miles from Florida, the government entered full-scale panic mode. During deliberations on how to proceed, the Joint Chiefs  to a man  recommended air strikes against Cuba and a possible follow-on invasion. Later, in a memo, they declared that they were prepared to use nuclear weapons for limited war operations in the Cuban area.

Instead, Kennedy chose a blockade and negotiations. The Russians responded by pulling their missiles out of Cuba and humankind lived to fight another day. After one of those meetings, Kennedy remarked to an aide, These brass hats [generals and admirals] have one great advantage. If we do what they want us to do, none of us will be alive later to tell them that they were wrong. Deeply disturbed by the advice of the Chiefs during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy later confided to some White House guests that the first thing Im going to tell my successor is to watch the generals, and to avoid feeling that just because they were military men, their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.

The Generals Grapple With Southeast Asia

In April 1961, the Joint Chiefs recommended that President Kennedy intervene to stop a North Vietnamese-sponsored Communist offensive in Laos through the use of air strikes and the introduction of U.S. ground forces in that country. When Kennedy asked the military chiefs what to do if the North Vietnamese Communists bombed Laotian airports as the U.S. flew in troops, one replied: You [drop] a bomb on Hanoi, and you start using atomic weapons! In fact, Army General Lyman Lemnitzer assured the president that if we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee victory. Kennedy ruled against his generals on both counts.

Nevertheless, Kennedy and then President Lyndon Johnson foolishly agreed to escalate U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In that war, admittedly, civilian policymakers were often the chief villains. However, the generals were anything but blameless. In 1967, as U.S. casualties increased and many Americans began to question the countrys involvement in the conflict, the senior commander, General William Westmoreland, assured Congress that there was, in a phrase that became infamous, light at the end of the tunnel. When Vietcong guerillas attacked nearly every American base in South Vietnam in the January 1968 Tet Offensive, he had only one answer, a solution once again all-too-familiar to twenty-first-century Americans: more. He requested 206,000 additional U.S. troops on top of the half-million-plus already in Vietnam. President Johnson balked and began negotiations with North Vietnam. It took  tragically  seven more bloody years, but eventually U.S. troops were extracted from what a near consensus of credible historians now conclude was an unwinnable war.

These examples obviously dont imply that no general ever gave solid advice or that civilians werent perfectly capable of concocting their own hare-brained war-making schemes. Rather, the point is to deflate  just a bit  the present all-too-popular notion of American military infallibility, or at least superiority.

Above Scrutiny?

Its dangerous to deify any public institution, let alone the countrys bureau of violence. Thats not, in itself, a knock at the military to which Ive dedicated my adult life, but a basic recognition of the gravity of all martial exertions. No government agency is so holy that it shouldnt be scrutinized, not in a real democracy. Yet American society is headed in that very direction, along with its new president. On Inauguration Day, finding himself in a crowded room with all the generals he had appointed to key positions in his administration around him, he declared emphatically, I see my generals, generals that are going to keep us so safe.

We usually imagine the threat of military control over decision-making as an aspect of opaque autocracies, but it can also stem from the excessive exaltation of a warrior class in a democracy. Consider the chilling comments of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer after a controversial raid in Yemen in January left Ryan Owens, a Navy SEAL, several al-Qaeda fighters, and a number of civilians, as well as several children, dead.

Spicer took umbrage after a number of people, including the notoriously hawkish, wildly pro-military, former POW Senator John McCain, questioned the operations value. The press secretarys statement, however, went beyond standard partisan defensiveness and into genuinely treacherous territory when he asserted that anyone who would suggest [the raid] is not a success does disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens. That represents a new standard for public debate on military operations. Think of the implications: if a single serviceman dies, then all critical scrutiny of such actions is off the table, being by its very nature disrespectful and unpatriotic. Taken to its logical conclusion, such an approach would leave no room for public protest or even the vestiges of an antiwar movement in response to future American war making.

Lest anyone imagine that Spicer simply misspoke, President Trump promptly upped the ante. He tweeted: Sen. McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy our hero died on a winning mission. Take a moment to let that sink in: to question the effectiveness of a raid in a country with which the U.S. is not at war, which resulted in multiple military and civilian deaths  even when the critic is the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services committee  should now be considered emboldening the enemy. Somebody pinch me.

Generally, however, that raid led mainly to endless praise for both Chief Petty Officer Owens and the U.S. military. In fact, no matter the situation, the carnage involved, or the decision-making behind it, the rhetoric of praise for Americas warriors has become a commonplace of our national life.

In fact, we military professionals ought to be confident enough to weather genuine scrutiny of both our decision-making and our acts. The danger is this: while were caught up in the countless thanks-for-your-service platitudes, upgraded airline seating, ever larger flags flying oer sporting events, and other forms of hollow soldier-worship and militarized patriotism, the nation may be losing something precious: the right to dissent.

Bogus Options

In nearly every recent instance when military commanders were asked for a strategy review, the response was the same. What was needed, swore the generals repeatedly, were more troops, more airstrikes, more bases, more money, and more time. A rare exception to this litany of more came from former Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey who laid out not just the options, but also the potential costs of a Syrian intervention.

Presidents deserve and require such real options. Too often, however, especially in this countrys 15-year war on terror across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa, senior military leaders have failed to present plausible, achievable choices to the commander-in-chief. Nearly all of them have proved to be more guys.

Consider, for instance, Afghanistan in 2009. Things had been going poorly indeed in what was already an eight-year-old war. And so our nation turned its lonely eyes to him  General Stanley McChrystal, a special operator fresh off a tour tracking down and killing al-Qaeda in Iraqs leadership, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

Asked to conduct a strategic review and present Barack Obama with military options in Afghanistan, McChrystal instead offered the new president a Goldilocks dilemma. He submitted what were, in essence, three versions of the same option: surge big, surge little, or surge just right. Those options failed the Armys own doctrinal course of action test  solutions must be suitable, feasible, acceptable, and distinguishable. Since all three of McChrystals choices involved counterinsurgency and troop escalation, they were hardly distinguishable.

Instead, they did what they were meant to do and boxed the young president into an escalatory corner, a more decision being not just the commanders favored but only course of action. Obama grumbled and then sent McChrystal his reinforcements. It sounded like Iraq 2006-2007 all over again. Only this time  the president and Americans more generally were assured  the ensuing surge would be even better, involving a supposedly comprehensive, interagency approach to the Afghan War.

Before he used his new troops to launch his first major offensive into largely Taliban-controlled, opium-poppy-rich Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan, McChyrstal proudly announced that he not only had a military force ready to go, but a government in a box, ready to roll in, too. Seven years later, with more American soldiers once again being sent back into Helmand Province and the Taliban ascendant in significant parts of it, can there be any question how badly McChrystals strategy failed? Today, in fact, more of Afghanistan is under Taliban control than at any time since 2001. As retired army colonel and Professor Gregory Daddis observed, Looking back, the logic flaws become clear. After all, Daddis continued, how could counterinsurgents provide security if the population too often saw U.S. soldiers as anti-bodies invading their body politic?

Perhaps at this point it wont surprise you to learn that two civilians on the Obama team  Vice President Joseph Biden and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan (as well as ex-lieutenant general) Karl Eikenberry  doubted from the start the U.S. militarys ability to impose an external solution on Afghans via such a surge. They were ignored. After all, who knows better than the guys overseeing the actual fighting?

Which raises the question: How will the Trump administrations generals, now in crucial government positions, counsel the president regarding Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and North Korea? Predictions are always a dicey matter, but recent history suggests that we can expect military escalation, which already seems to be underway in at least three of those countries. More, after all, remains the option of choice for Americas generals almost 70 years after MacArthur went head to head with his president over Korea.

What then is to be expected when it comes to the conflict with ISIS in Iraq, the complex, multi-faceted Syrian civil war, and Americas longest war of all, in Afghanistan? All signs point to more of the same. Open up a newspaper or check out a relevant website and youll find, for example, that U.S. Afghan commander General John Nicholson wants a new mini-surge of American troops dispatched into that country, while the U.S. commander in the fight against ISIS, General Stephen Townsend, may require yet more ground troops to win in Iraq and Syria.

After much positive and often fawning news coverage in the wake of his recent Tomahawk missile strike in Syria, its hard to imagine that the president wont grant the generals wishes. In fact, he has already reportedly turned over decision-making on U.S. troop levels in Syria and Iraq to them. And yet it should be obvious enough that more of the same, without even the semblance of credible alternatives or dissenting voices, is an innovation-stifling loser of an option. Fifteen years later, it doesnt take a genius to know that something about U.S. strategy hasnt been and isnt working.

The Choice

So, isnt it well past time for the generals and civilian leaders to ask the obvious question: Does the U.S. even have the ability to improve such societies via military power? These days, unfortunately, such thinking rings heretical to martial ears. Yet not to raise such questions is to ensure that Americans will experience a kind of endless deja vu in their wars.

What this country needs right now are civilian leaders who think strategically, exude confidence, and arent afraid to challenge military advice. Appropriate respect for senior servicemen shouldnt mean either impulsive adulation or timid apprehension. Civilian policymakers havent always been right, but since World War II, the generals have the weaker (and far more hair-raising) record.

Republics are imperiled when a military caste diverges from civil society. Despite the glowing (if shallow) praise heaped on Americas all-volunteer force, it is increasingly distant from the population in whose name it theoretically fights.

For those of us still in uniform, thoughtlessly soldiering on may sound both stalwart and romantic, but it rarely amounts to a sagacious strategy. Dont take my word for it, consider the climactic scene in Once an Eagle, a legendary novel within the American officer corps and long a staple on every generals recommended professional reading list. This highly touted, if ill-understood, book ends as its protagonist, an aged, decorated general, slowly dies from wounds inflicted by a Vietnamese terrorist bomber. Gasping his final breath, the old soldier dispenses his last pearl of wisdom to a junior officer: Remember, Joey, if it comes to a choice between being a good soldier and a good human being  try to be a good human being

In war, as in much else, theres often wisdom in abstention. And when it comes to war, sometimes less is more.

Major Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular, is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives with his wife and four sons near Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

[Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author, expressed in an unofficial capacity, and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.]

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Dowers The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, as well as John Feffers dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turses Next Time Theyll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardts Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2017 Danny Sjursen
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By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) |  

CNN says White House officials were furious on Wednesday when the Russian press (the only journalists invited to the meeting of Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak) abruptly released the pictures. Apparently White House staff thought there was an understanding that they would be kept quiet. One White House staffer complained, thats the problem with the Russians, theyre dishonest.

The meeting with Russian officials on Wednesday, in the wake of Trumps firing of FBI director James Comey, apparently in part because of Comeys investigation of the Trump campaigns ties to Russia, was widely seen as inappropriate and tone deaf. That only Russian media were invited was a further kick in the gut to America. But then to have the Russian wire services gleefully release the pictures thats priceless.

Here are some of Lavrovs comments to the press after the meeting:

Question: You have just learnt that FBI director James Comey was fired. Considering the accusations made by the FBI against your country, were you happy to hear that news? Sergei Lavrov: Im not the one you should be asking. I can give you examples of people being hired and fired in Russia, France, Great Britain. These are internal matters for you.

Translation: Effing da, were happy! Also, apparently Lavrov has people fired in France and Great Britain.

On the charges that Russia is running the Trump administration:

 Sergei Lavrov: Regarding the talk and clamour around our relations, fictional narratives about us allegedly controlling their domestic politics: Of course, we notice the absolutely abnormal background against which relations are developing. I think it is demeaning for the American people to hear that the Russian Federation controls domestic politics in the USA. I believe that politicians severely damage the US political system when they try to act like America is being governed externally.

So which would be more humiliating? For us to hear the charge, or for it to be true?

Question: Much has happened in international relations since Donald Trumps inauguration. Can you say that the way the US and Russia speak to each other has changed, especially after a missile strike on Syria? Sergei Lavrov: The dialogue between Russia and the US is now free from the ideology that characterised it under the Barack Obama Administration. US President Donald Trump, his Administration, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are the kind of people who want to maintain a dialogue not as a means of demonstrating what they can achieve in the area of ideological preferences, but rather as a means of solving particular issues

Well, I dont know if the Russians put Trump in, but they sure are happy with him. An end to ideology actually seems to mean rolling over and playing dead. Also the praise of Tillerson is pretty fulsome; remember that as CEO of Exxon-Mobil he was about to do a $500 bn deal in Russia before the Obama sanctions blocked it. Tillerson also had business dealings with Russia of his own.



Related video:

TV2 Africa: 

Syria Tops Agenda in Trump-Lavrov Meeting
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 12, 2017) - Pretium Resources Inc. (TSX:PVG) (NYSE:PVG) ("Pretivm" or the "Company") is pleased to report highlights from the first quarter of 2017 and that initial ore has been introduced to the mill at the high-grade gold Brucejack mine in northern British Columbia.

Highlights

On February 3, 2017, we announced the acceleration of mine commissioning with dry commissioning scheduled to commence in March 2017 and wet commissioning scheduled to commence in early April 2017. We also announced an updated forecast of the capital cost to complete construction of the Brucejack Mine, with capital cost including working capital estimated to be US$811.1 million.

On February 7, 2017, we announced the offering of US$90 million of unsecured convertible senior subordinated notes, with an over-allotment option of US$10 million. On February 14, 2017, we announced that the offering was completed for total gross proceeds of US$100 million which included the exercise of the full amount of the over-allotment option of US$10 million.

On March 31, 2017, we announced the Brucejack Mine transmission line was energized and dry commissioning was underway. Additionally, we announced that wet commissioning remained on schedule to begin in early April with the first ore expected to be introduced to the mill in mid-April.

Working capital at March 31, 2017 was US$88.1 million.

Subsequent to the end of the quarter, on May 1, 2017, we announced that wet commissioning was nearing completion at the Brucejack Mine, the commissioning process was initiated in April and the first ore had been introduced to the surge bin in the mill building.

Advancing the Brucejack Mine - Commissioning Progress

Initial ore has been introduced to the mill and concentrate to the thickener. Concentrate production is expected to start shortly. The gold room is planned to be commissioned in the coming days and dore production will follow.

Underground development continues to advance. Over 198,000 tonnes of ore have been stockpiled on surface and underground. Two long-hole drills are currently drilling off stopes. The slot raise and slot have been blasted in the test stope. There are two stopes ready for production blasting and three other stopes are being drilled.

Construction Financing

On February 14, 2017, we completed an offering of US$100 million aggregate principal amount of 2.25% unsecured convertible senior subordinated notes due 2022. The use of proceeds for the offering is working capital during start-up of the Brucejack Mine and general corporate purposes.

With the available cash on hand and the proceeds from the convertible senior subordinated notes, the project capital costs and initial working capital for the Brucejack Mine are expected to be fully funded.

Brucejack Mine Capital Cost Forecast

On February 3, 2017, we announced that the total project capital cost forecast to complete construction of the Brucejack Mine, including contingencies, was US$811.1 million, an increase of 16% from the February 2016 capital cost estimate of US$696.8 million. The February 2017 forecast includes US$68.8 million of working capital for the first three months of production, but does not take into account any revenue generated during this period (see news release dated February 3, 2017).

Lyle Morgenthaler, B.A.Sc., P.Eng., Chief Mine Engineer, Pretium Resources Inc. is the Qualified Person ("QP") responsible for Brucejack Mine development.

On January 1, 2017, the presentation currency was changed to the United States dollar.

Our unaudited condensed consolidated Financial Statements and Management Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2017 are filed on SEDAR and available on our website at www.pretivm.com.

About Pretivm

Pretivm is commissioning the high-grade underground Brucejack gold mine in northern British Columbia with commercial production targeted for 2017.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwired - May 11, 2017) - Timmins Gold Corp. (TSX:TMM)(NYSE MKT:TGD) ("Timmins Gold" or the "Company") is proposing to change its name to Alio Gold Inc. at its upcoming Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. If approved, the Company expects to begin trading on both the TSX and the NYSE MKT under the ticker ALO on May 16, 2017.

The Company announces the results for the first quarter 2017 ("Q1"). Production results were previously released on April 4, 2017. All results are presented in United States dollars ("US Dollars") unless otherwise stated. Readers should refer to the Q1 management discussion and analysis and condensed interim consolidated financial statements available on the Company's website or www.sedar.com for complete information.

The Company will host a conference call at 11:00am EST today, Thursday, May 11PthP. Please see details at the bottom of this news release.

Q1 HIGHLIGHTS

Strengthening balance sheet with $39.2 million in cash and working capital of $41.0 million.

Metal revenues of $32.3 million from 26,048 ounces of gold sold at $1,232/oz.

Cash provided by operating activities of $9.7 million after changes in non-cash working capital.

Earnings and comprehensive income of $6.0 million ($0.02/share).

Cash costs1 of $735/oz and All-in Sustaining Costs1 P11 of $848/oz.

Commenting on the Company's performance, Chief Executive Officer, Greg McCunn, said, "The first quarter of 2017 was a strong quarter in which the San Francisco mine exceeded production guidance by a significant margin. The continued focus on maintaining our cost structure has resulted in another strong quarter of cash flow generation which more than funded the Company's development expenditures at our high-grade, high-margin Ana Paula project and continued to allow us to build cash on the balance sheet. With our revitalization plan now complete, we expect to start executing the plan in the second half of this year which will allow the mine to continue to perform at these levels out until at least 2023."

Financial performance

Metal revenues were $32.3 million compared to $28.6 million during Q1 2016. This represents a 12.9% increase from the prior year. The increase was a result of both an increase in gold ounces sold (26,048 compared to 24,667 ounces during Q1 2016) and an increase in the average realized gold price ($1,232 per ounce compared to $1,160 during Q1 2016).

Earnings from operations were $9.8 million compared to a loss of $8.6 million during Q1 2016. The difference was due to an impairment of $12.8 million that was recognized during Q1 2016 related to the Caballo Blanco asset sale. In addition, there were improved earnings from mine operations during Q1 2017 of $11.1 million compared to $6.3 million during Q1 2016. Corporate and administrative expenses decreased to $1.3 million compared to $2.1 million during Q1 2016.

Earnings and comprehensive income were $6.0 million or $0.02 per share compared to loss and comprehensive loss of $10.7 million or $0.03 per share during Q1 2016.

Cash provided by operating activities was $9.7 million or $0.03 per share compared to $2.4 million or $0.01 per share during Q1 2016.

Cash and cash equivalents at March 31, 2017, were $39.2 million. During the quarter, the Company generated $9.7 million from operations, invested $1.6 million on sustaining capital expenditures, $0.4 million on exploration and evaluation projects, and $2.8 million on the Ana Paula gold project ("Ana Paula" or "the Project"). Also, the Company received $3.6 million of its VAT receivable in cash. Subsequent to March 31, 2017, the Company received $0.6 million of the $3.5 million VAT receivable.

Cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash at March 31, 2016, were $9.7 million and $1.0 million, respectively, after investing $0.1 million on exploration, $0.2 million on sustaining capital, and $2.7 million on the Ana Paula property.

Working capital at March 31, 2017, was $41.0 million, an improvement of $38.4 million from March 31, 2016. This increase is a result of cash provided by operating activities of $9.7 million compared to $2.4 million during Q1 2016. Additionally, during the prior fiscal year, the Company: Sold the Caballo Blanco Property increasing cash by $9.2 million; Completed a bought deal financing increasing cash by $13.8 million; and, Settled the loan facility and debenture decreasing cash by $10.2 million and $1.5 million, respectively.



Operating performance

The Company produced and sold 26,048 ounces of gold, compared to 25,120 and 24,667 ounces of gold, respectively, during Q1 2016. The production increase was due to improved recovery, offset by a decrease in average processing grade of 0.48 g/t Au compared to 0.62 g/t Au during Q1 2016.

The Company's cash cost per ounce on a by-product basis was $735 (all-in sustaining cost per ounce on a by-product basis - $848) compared to $761 (all-in sustaining cost per ounce on a by-product basis - $848) during Q1 2016. This decrease in cash cost was due to a lower strip ratio and increased production.

Q1 results conference call and webcast:

Date: Thursday May 11, 2017 Time: 11:00 a.m. ET Live: 1-855-427-9509 (Canada and U.S. toll free) 1-201-229-8822 (Outside North America) Conf ID: 7736649

Webcast: http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/x79rj9k2

Replay: To be available on the Timmins Gold website at http://www.timminsgold.com/

SUMMARIZED QUARTERLY FINANCIAL STATEMENTS AND OPERATING RESULTS

US dollars (thousands) except where noted Q1 2017 Q1 2016 Gold ounces sold (ounces) 26,048 24,667 Silver ounces sold (ounces) 11,899 14,671 Metal revenues 32,306 28,609 Production costs, excluding depreciation and depletion 19,362 18,993 Earnings (loss) from operations 9,780 (8,585 ) Earnings (loss) 6,042 (10,720 ) Earnings (loss) per share, basic and diluted 0.02 (0.03 ) Cash flows from operating activities 9,743 2,373 Total cash and cash equivalents, end of period 39,194 9,641 Total assets, end of period 173,492 138,741 Total cash costs per gold ounce on a by-product basis1 735 761 All-in sustaining cash cost per ounce gold1 848 848 Average realized gold price per gold ounce 1,232 1,160

Notes:

1 Non-GAAP Financial Measures - please refer to page 10 of the Company's Q1 Management's Discussion and Analysis for more information.

Technical Information & Qualified Person Notes:

This news release was reviewed and approved by Taj Singh, M.Eng, P.Eng of the Company, who is recognized as a Qualified Person under the guidelines of National Instrument 43-101.

About Timmins Gold / Alio Gold

Timmins Gold / Alio Gold is a Canadian gold mining company engaged in exploration, development and production in Mexico. Its principal assets include the producing San Francisco Mine in Sonora, Mexico and the development stage Ana Paula Project in Guerrero, Mexico. The Company also has a portfolio of other exploration properties, all of which are located in Mexico.
VANCOUVER, May 12, 2017 /CNW/ - Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (TSX: NDM; NYSE MKT: NAK) ("Northern Dynasty" or the "Company") announces that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Alaska-based Pebble Limited Partnership ("Pebble Partnership" or "PLP"), and the US Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") have reached a settlement agreement with respect to the parties' longstanding legal dispute over the federal agency's pre-emptive regulatory action under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, EPA has agreed the Pebble Project can proceed into normal course permitting under the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act. In particular, EPA has agreed it will not file a Recommended Determination under CWA 404(c) until a final Environmental Impact Statement ("EIS") for the Pebble Project has been completed by the US Army Corps of Engineers (the "Corps")  so long as that occurs within a period of four years following the settlement agreement and PLP files permit applications within 30 months of the date of the settlement agreement. EPA has further agreed to initiate a process to propose to withdraw the Proposed Determination it issued under CWA 404(c) in July 2014. In return, the Pebble Partnership has agreed to terminate permanently and with prejudice two lawsuits it brought against EPA: an action under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and an action under the Freedom of Information Act.

"From the outset of this unfortunate saga, we've asked for nothing more than fairness and due process under the law  the right to propose a development plan for Pebble and have it assessed against the robust environmental regulations and rigorous permitting requirements enforced in Alaska and the United States," said Ron Thiessen, President & CEO. "Today's settlement gives us precisely that, the same treatment every developer and investor in a stable, first world country should expect."

Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Partnership expressed their gratitude to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and President Trump for their commitment to the rule of law, and the fair and equal treatment of those who would invest in job-creating industries in America. The Company also thanked members of US Congress and the Alaska State Legislature who helped in achieving the goal of due process for Pebble  in particular, members of the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology, House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform and Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

"The Pebble Partnership will advance a progressive mine plan, including mitigation, to be assessed by objective, expert regulators at the US Army Corps of Engineers and a raft of other federal and state agencies  including EPA", Thiessen said.

"Not only are we no longer facing extraordinary development restrictions at Pebble, we will also be assured a fair and predictable permitting review of our proposed development plan. The Corps-led EIS will be prepared by independent, third party experts to ensure that decisions are based on objective science, and that public and stakeholder participation is comprehensive and meaningful."

Thiessen said the Pebble Partnership has been advancing planning for a smaller project design at Pebble than previously considered, and one that incorporates significant environmental safeguards.

"It will be a busy and exciting year for Pebble and Alaska," confirmed Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier. "Not only will we be rolling out a project that is smaller, with demonstrable environmental protections, we will also be announcing a number of new initiatives to ensure our project is more responsive to the priorities and concerns of Alaskans.

"We know the Pebble Project must not only protect the world-class fisheries of Bristol Bay, it must also benefit the people of the region and the state in a meaningful way. It is our intent to demonstrate how we will meet those goals in the period ahead."

Collier said a return to an objective, science-based and predictable permitting process at Pebble will bode well for future resource investment in Alaska and the US.

"Resource investors do not have an expectation that we will always receive development permits or always receive them on the terms we would prefer, but we do have an expectation of fair treatment under the law, and that science, not politics, should guide permitting decisions," Collier said.

Investor Conference Call Details

Northern Dynasty will host a conference call today, May 12, 2017, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time to discuss the EPA settlement and the Pebble Project.

Investors can participate in the conference call by:

Webcast: http://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1427716-1/555FD3FD583595BBA5220FB0C9D12EF6

Telephone: (877) 245-7303 in Canada and the USA or (478) 219-0731 international.

Passcode for the call is 22904301.

A presentation will also be available by going to the Northern Dynasty's corporate website at www.northerndynastyminerals.com.

Please go to the website at least 15 minutes prior to the call to register, download and install any necessary audio software.

A replay of the webcast will be available on the Investors page of Northern Dynasty's website beginning at 2:00 PM Eastern Time on May 12, 2017, through 11:59 PM Eastern Time on June 12, 2017.

About Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

Northern Dynasty is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, Canada. Northern Dynasty's principal asset, owned through its wholly-owned Alaska-based US subsidiary Pebble Limited Partnership and other wholly-owned subsidiaries, is a 100% interest in a contiguous block of 2,402 mineral claims in southwest Alaska, including the Pebble deposit. The Pebble Partnership is the proponent of the Pebble Project, an initiative to develop one of the world's most important mineral resources.

For further details on Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Project, please visit the Company's website at www.northerndynasty.com or contact Investor services at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114. Review Canadian public filings at www.sedar.com and US public filings at www.sec.gov.
Stewart, BC / March 28, 2018 / JMN Wire / Decade Resources Ltd (Decade) reports that it is finalizing exploration plans for 2018 on four of its properties. Three properties are in the Stewart area and one in the Terrace BC area. The property areas are in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia... Read More
The North Korean embassy has been raking in 38,000 euros per month by leasing out the unused areas of its building to local hostel and conference center operators since 2014. / Yonhap



The German government will soon ban the North Korean embassy here from leasing out part of its building for profit in accordance with a latest U.N. resolution against the reclusive country's nuclear test, local news media reported Tuesday.

The chancellor's office and justice and economy ministries are in consultation on the punitive step in order to implement the international community's economic sanctions against the North's nuclear program, the daily Suddeutsche Zeitung and public broadcasters NDR and WDR said.

U.N. Resolution 2321, adopted in late November in the wake of the North's fifth nuclear test in September, forbids member countries from allowing North Korean missions on their soil to make commercial use of their structures.

The North Korean embassy has been raking in 38,000 euros per month by leasing out the unused areas of its building to local hostel and conference center operators since 2014, the daily said.

The embassy is located between two famous city tourist destinations -- the Brandenburg Gate and Checkpoint Charlie.

German State Secretary Markus Ederer stressed the German government persistently put U.N.- and EU-imposed sanctions against the North into practice in order to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear development and return to the negotiating table, the daily said.

In doing so, what is particularly important is to block a source of funds that can be used for nuclear development, Ederer was cited as saying.

The North stationed some 100 diplomats in the embassy in East Berlin during the Cold War, and operates with some 10 at present, according to the daily. (Yonhap)
Geoje Mayor Kwon Min-ho visits merchants at Okpo Central Market on Mar. 2 after sales fell due to a depressed local economy. / Korea Times file



By Eom Da-sol

A flea market with foreign sellers will be held in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, on May 13.

"Geoje International Market" is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Okpo Central Market. Foreign residents who live near the venue will participate as sellers.

Visitors will be able to try dishes from about 10 countries, including an Italian pizza baked at the site by an Italian cook. Handmade accessories and baby clothes will be available while there will be information booths on education opportunities for foreigners in Korea. Visitors can also watch K-pop dance performances.

Okpo Central Market is the region's famous traditional market but there has been a decrease in visitors recently due to a depressed local economy heavily reliant on the ailing shipbuilding industry, according to News1 Korea.

Inviting foreign residents as sellers is part of the market's plan to invigorate sales. "There are relatively more foreign residents in Geoje than the neighboring cities," a market official said, adding that the international market will help attract customers.

"Okpo Central Market is too small to hold a wide promotion campaign," an official from the Korea Offshore and Shipbuilding Association said. "The market will do its best to search for new customers and sellers, starting with foreigners this time."

For more information, call 055-688-2855.
By Kim Mi-kyoung





The international community is placing China under mounting pressure by calling for a more active role in controlling North Korea. Beijing is regarded as North Korea's only remaining ally as they avoid adding their voice of denouncement in the international arena. However, China's involvement in North Korean affairs is limited to a superficial level of engagement. Chinese officials are often quoted as expressing their frustration with the Kim regime, and recent polls show that majority of Chinese hold negative views towards North Korea.

The rationale behind the international pressure lies with geographical proximity, economic interdependence and a historical alliance. China shares its borders with 14 countries, and North Korea happens to be one of them, although its trade dependence on Pyongyang totaling $6.86 billion vis-a-vis other trading partners is relatively insignificant. Given North Korea's Juche ideology which indoctrinates the principles of chaju (independence), charip (national economy) and chawi (self-defense), its reliance on China is exaggerated. While the list of causes for mutual dependence seems sufficient, it is missing one crucial condition: trust.

The world wrongfully overestimates Beijing's ability to modify Pyongyang's behavior. Unless the agent for change and its recipient click in mutually meaningful chemistry, behavioral modification will not happen. Mutuality demands the crucial element of trustworthiness where Sino-North Korean relations are concerned. The Chinese government's detachment from North Korean affairs needs a heuristic analysis. Neither the perspective of normative appeal nor cost-and-benefit calculations will be helpful in explaining Sino-North Korea relations. In addition, we need to factor in the element of trust as an outcome of the psycho-historical process.

Unless the combined elements of norms, strategic calculations and trust are balanced and factored into our thoughts, China's thin engagement of "half-in and half-out" is hard to explain. Unless China has enough of a convincing motive it will not give in to international pressure. North Korea, on the other hand, will not change its isolationist Juche trajectory lest the shifts in the internal as well as the external environments persuade it to do so. North Korea is a category of its own.

Beijing's policy priorities in the domestic realm include dealing with rampant corruption, rising discontent, a rebellious Tibet, environmental degradation, "floating" migrant workers, the rising gap between the haves and have-nots, and uneven development between coastal areas and inlands. As for foreign policy agendas, its preoccupation lies with a multitude of on-going territorial disputes, energy diplomacy with African countries, rivalry vis-a-vis Japan in Asia and the U.S. in the world and the smooth launching of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). North Korea's supreme priority, on the other hand, lies with its survival in its own way.

Beijing's inertia to international pressure had to change substantially following Pyongyang's 5th nuclear test on September 6, 2016. The enhanced nuclear capability was translated into an excuse to install a terminal high altitude area defense (THAAD) capability in the southern part of the peninsula. Since THAAD cannot be effective in surveying North Korea given its technical attributes, the intention behind it is clearly to monitor China's nuclear development program thus providing a U.S. strategic advantage.

China reacted to this movement with speed and determination. It signed UNSCR 2270 adopted by the Security Council of the United Nations on March 2, 2016. That was to denounce North Korea's nuclear test and sanction its trade activities. As a result, North Korea was banned from exporting coal, iron ore and other materials. It also put a stop to the docking of North Korean vessels at some of its ports. It went on to penalize Hongxiang Industrial Co. located in Dandong along the Sino-DPRK border for having supplied sensitive material for North Korea's nuclear development program.

Is this a meaningful shift in China's stance toward North Korea? It seems unlikely. China will continue to maintain its thin engagement given Pyongyang's peripheral importance. It will alternate between keeping its distance while reacting to situational contingencies. North Korea will also stay on its usual Juche trajectory where China is kept at bay.





Mikyoung Kim is International Political Science Association (IPSA) Human Rights Section Chair. She can be reached at mkkim_33@hotmail.com.
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Citizens in 20 localities rejected wind-power expansion.

Big Winds lobbyists and promoters love to claim that their projects are being welcomed by rural communities everywhere. The reality is rather different. Last Tuesday, voters in 20 rural towns in Michigan went to the polls and rejected or restricted the expansion of wind energy.

Furthermore, those same Michigan voters soundly rejected two projects being promoted by the worlds largest producer of wind energy, NextEra Energy  which, as I discussed on this site last week, has been suing rural governments in multiple states (two of them in Michigan) while at the same time collecting billions of dollars in federal tax subsidies.

Big Winds worst drubbing occurred in Sand Beach Township, in Huron County, where voters approved modifications to a township ordinance that will effectively ban wind development. The vote tally: 41380. In addition, Lincoln Township voters approved an initiative that will allow it to form its own planning commission, a move that will make it far more difficult for wind projects to be developed in the township. Sand Beach and Lincoln were among 18 townships in Huron County that gunned down Big Winds expansion plans. (Huron County is about 130 miles due north of Detroit.) Voters in the other 16 townships went to the polls as a group and rejected two projects, including a 60-turbine project proposed by NextEra and a 70-turbine project being pushed by DTE Energy. Both proposals lost by a margin of 63 to 37 percent.

I recently talked to Kevon Martis. He is the founding director of the Interstate Informed Citizens Coalition, a group based in Blissfield, Mich., that works with rural governments in the Midwest that are resisting the encroachment of Big Wind. He was exultant. Huron County has more than 400 turbines, Martis said. If wind energy is so great, why didnt the county voters choose to have more of them? Martis went on, saying that NextEra and DTE probably spent more than $500,000 on their efforts to get voters to approve their projects while the anti-wind forces might have spent $3,000 or $4,000.

Big Wind also lost on ballot questions in Marlette Township in Sanilac County and in Almer Township in Tuscola County. In Marlette, voters approved, by a margin of 53 to 47 percent, a zoning amendment that will toughen an ordinance governing wind-energy projects.

To be sure, these results havent been reported by mainstream media. But then, the fact that rural communities from Maine to California are rejecting Big Wind doesnt fit the popular medias narrative that wind energy is green. The Michigan results expose the fictions being peddled by Big Winds multitude of lobbyists. Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, who has refused to answer my e-mailed questions regarding the backlash against the wind industry, recently claimed that wind energy boosts rural American economies in unmatched ways and that 83 percent of Americans support more wind. In March, Kiernans AWEA colleague Susan Sloan claimed that the idea that rural America doesnt want wind power, thats just not what weve experienced.

The fact that rural communities from Maine to California are rejecting Big Wind doesnt fit the popular medias narrative that wind energy is green.

Perhaps Kiernan and Sloan should visit Almer Township, where voters rejected a NextEra-backed ordinance that would have weakened the towns zoning ordinance. As I noted in these pages last week, Almer is one of five rural governments that have been sued by NextEra since last October. Almer residents, who are defending themselves against NextEras lawsuit in federal court, voted against the wind giants proposal by a margin of 55 to 45 percent.

NextEra can afford its courthouse mugging of small towns like Almer and Hinton, Okla. (population: 3,000), because it is gorging on federal tax subsidies. Between 2008 and 2015, according to a recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, NextEra accumulated profits of $21.5 billion but didnt pay a dime in federal income taxes. Nor does it appear that NextEra will be paying federal taxes anytime soon. In its 2016 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company reported $3 billion in tax-credit carryforwards, an increase of $143 million over its 2015 numbers.

Norm Stephens, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Almer and opposed the project, told me of the vote total, Its huge. We are sending a message. But he quickly added, NextEra is not going away. Theres too much money involved.

The vote totals in Michigan add to my ongoing tally of the rural backlash against Big Wind. Thus far this year, 37 government entities in ten states have moved to reject or restrict wind-energy development. More rejections and restrictions are coming.

This piece originally appeared on National Review Online

______________________

Robert Bryce is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.
Page 5 of 5

[Part 4]

The dictatorship of the proletariat

In describing the transitional state between capitalism and socialism Marx spoke of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This term has led to a serious misunderstanding. Nowadays, the word dictatorship has connotations that were unknown to Marx. In an age that has known the horrific crimes of Hitler and Stalin, it conjures up nightmarish visions of a totalitarian monster, concentration camps and secret police. But such things did not yet exist even in the imagination in Marxs day. For him the word dictatorship came from the Roman Republic, and referred to wartime emergencies in which the normal rules were temporarily set aside.

The Roman dictator (one who dictates), was an extraordinary magistrate (magistratus extraordinarius) with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the normal authority of a magistrate. The office was originally named Magister Populi (Master of the People), that is to say, Master of the Citizen Army. In other words, it was a military role which almost always involved leading an army in the field. Once the appointed period ended, the dictator would step down. The idea of a totalitarian dictatorship like Stalins Russia, where the state would oppress the working class in the interests of a privileged caste of bureaucrats, would have horrified Marx.

In reality Marxs dictatorship of the proletariat is merely another term for the political rule of the working class or a workers democracy. Marx based his idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat on the Paris Commune of 1871. The Commune was a glorious episode in the history of the world working class. Here, for the first time, the popular masses, with the workers at their head, overthrew the old state and at least began the task of transforming society.

Marx and Engels drew a thorough balance sheet of the Commune, pointing out its advances as well as its errors and deficiencies. These can almost all be traced to the failings of the leadership. It is true, as Black Flag states, that the supporters of Marx in the Commune were a small minority. The leaders of the Commune were a mixed bunch, ranging from a minority of Marxists to elements that stood closer to reformism or anarchism.

One of the reasons the Commune failed was that it did not launch a revolutionary offensive against the reactionary government that had installed itself at Versailles. This gave time to the counterrevolutionary forces to rally and attack Paris.

With no clearly-defined plan of action, leadership or organization, the masses displayed an astonishing degree of courage, initiative and creativity. Yet in the last analysis, the lack of a bold and far-sighted leadership and a clear programme led to a terrible defeat. Over 30,000 people were butchered by the counter-revolution. The Commune was literally buried under a mound of corpses.

Violence and Socialism

What is the anarchist position on the question of revolutionary violence? Here again our friend tries to confuse the issue by telling us something that we already knew: that there are as many theories of anarchism as there are people claiming to be anarchists:

Throughout history, in fact, there were some insurrectionary anarchists who defended the use of terrorism as a means of social transformation. But they were always minority. Most libertarian forces dedicated themselves to building of broad mass movements, such as Syndicalism, and to strengthen it until the conditions to trigger a revolution. The use of violence as a revolutionary tool for social transformation has never been denied.

So where do we stand then? Are anarchists in favour of a revolutionary violence or are they not? We are as wise now as what we were to start with. But one thing is crystal clear, and it was already stated by Bakunin: the working class must not take power, because if it does so it will invariably fall into the trap of authoritarianism:

Let us ask, if the proletariat is to be the ruling class, over whom is it to rule? In short, there will remain another proletariat which will be subdued to this new rule, to this new state. For instance, the peasant rabble who, as it is known, does not enjoy the sympathy of the Marxists who consider it to represent a lower level of culture, will probably be ruled by the factory proletariat of the cities. Or, if this problem is to be approached nationalistically, the Slavs will be placed in the same subordinate relationship to the victorious German proletariat in which the latter now stands to the German bourgeoisie. (Statism and Anarchy, Bakunin, 1873)

Now it stands to reason that when the working class takes power, it will be impossible for each and every worker to exercise that power directly. This, however, does not present insurmountable problem, on one condition: that we accept the principle of democratic elections, in which the minority accepts the decisions of the majority. Admittedly, this democratic principle is far from perfect. But it is the best solution that has been historically evolved, and nobody so far, and least of all Bakunin and his supporters, have ever proposed any better solution.

Black Flag urges us to seek the institutionalization of a face-to-face direct democracy." It would be useful if he would write in plain English (or Portuguese) for a change, so that we ordinary mortals might understand what is being said. What does this wonderful face-to-face direct democracy" consist of? Presumably, it means that individuals must talk to each other.

We have nothing whatsoever against this idea, which has actually been around for quite a long time. But having exercised face-to-face direct democracy" for a reasonable space of time, how does one then resolve differences of opinion? Sadly, we have no alternative but to raise our hands for or against. And the majority must decide.

By the same token, since everyone cannot directly participate in governing society, in the end we are obliged to elect people we trust to represent our interests. That there is always a risk that these people will not do this adequately is self-evident. But there are concrete steps that can be taken to limit this risk to a minimum.

Firstly, all positions must be elected for restricted periods with right of recall. Secondly, the remuneration received by elected officials must be no higher than the wage of a skilled worker. There must be no standing army or police force, but the armed people: i.e. a workers militia. Last but not least, to the degree that it is possible, the tasks of administering society should be performed by everyone in turn. This last condition, however, will depend upon the development of the productive forces and the raising of the cultural level of society.

To return to the question of revolutionary violence, Black Flag complains bitterly that the program of Lenin's State and Revolution is plagiarized out of Anarchism. And he protests that the people in arms was an anarchist position. If that is so, then surely our anarchist friend should be pleased. In fact, at every step he seems to be saying: look, there is really no difference between us; you say we need a revolutionary party  so do we! You say we need a disciplined organisation  so do we! You say the CNT leaders in Spain should not have joined a bourgeois government  so do we! And as for Lenins State and Revolution  that is pure anarchism!

And yet despite all this agreement, Black Flag is still not contented. He insists that there is a fundamental disagreement between Marxism and anarchism. And he is not mistaken. The problem arises because he is playing a game of hide and seek with ideas. Far from clarifying the differences between Anarchism on Marxism, differences which are very clear and known to everyone, except Black Flag it seems, he attempts to confuse the issue by covering up the differences instead of bringing them out sharply. The result is a real ceremony of confusion. With this method nobody can ever learn anything.

To carry his ceremony of confusion still further along its merry way, having told us that Lenins State and Revolution has been copied word for word from anarchist texts, he now informs us that in reality the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky have nothing to do with anarchism, that what they really stood for was  wait for it!  an authoritarian state:

The rotative character of administrative tasks and the election of delegates with a revocable mandate were anarchists guidelines, as Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and Marx and Engels themselves always favoured the centralization of power in a bureaucratic and authoritarian caste.

Incidentally, Black Flag is not even factually correct when he says that the idea of an armed people was taken from the anarchists. As a matter of fact, this idea was present before 1914 in the program of the International Social Democracy, where it figures as a democratic demand. It was realised in practice by Trotsky after the October revolution when he formed the Red Army, which represented the armed forces of the workers and peasants of the Soviet Republic.

Incidentally, during the Spanish Civil War Durruti, that great revolutionary hero, himself organised a Red Army along lines very similar to that organised by Trotsky. Durruti waged a revolutionary war, sweeping through Aragon, seizing the land, shooting the priests and landlords, collectivizing and arming the peasants. His conduct was therefore authoritarian in the extreme. In short, he acted like a Bolshevik, not an anarchist.

Naturally, the bourgeois historians hate both Trotsky and Durruti for exactly the same reason. They were revolutionaries and acted as such. They led a successful military struggle against the class enemy and dealt blows against the counter-revolution. That is why Durruti is always described as a violent thug and Trotsky as a bloodthirsty monster.

We expect the bourgeois reactionaries to write in this way about revolutionary leaders, but it is a little bit disheartening to find the same kind of slanders against Trotsky in the writings of people who describe themselves as revolutionaries. Black Flag cannot resist the temptation of repeating the calumnies against Trotsky that he has picked up from bourgeois historians.

Since we have no room to deal with any more of Black flags slanders, we refer the reader to the book which I wrote many years ago together with the late Ted Grant, Lenin and Trotsky, what they really stood for, where I answer these slanders in detail.

Marxism and the state

The modern state is a bureaucratic monster that devours a colossal amount of the wealth produced by the working class. Marxists agree with the anarchists that the state is a monstrous instrument of oppression that must be eliminated. The question is: How? By whom? And what will replace it? This is a fundamental question for any revolution.

In a speech on anarchism during the Civil War that followed the Russian Revolution, Trotsky summarized very well the Marxist position on the state:

The bourgeoisie says: dont touch the state power; it is the sacred hereditary privilege of the educated classes. But the Anarchists say: dont touch it; it is an infernal invention, a diabolical device, dont have anything to do with it. The bourgeoisie says, dont touch it, its sacred. The Anarchists say: dont touch it, because its sinful. Both say: dont touch it. But we say: dont just touch it, take it in your hands, and set it to work in your own interests, for the abolition of private ownership and the emancipation of the working class. (Leon Trotsky, How The Revolution Armed, Vol. 1, 1918. London: New Park, 1979)

Generalising from the experience of the Paris Commune Marx explained that the working class cannot simply base itself on the existing state power, but must overthrow and destroy it. The basic position was outlined in State and Revolution, where Lenin writes: "Marxs idea is that the working class must break up, smash the ready-made state machinery, and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it."

Against the confused ideas of the anarchists, Marx argued that the workers need a state to overcome the resistance of the exploiting classes. But that argument of Marx has been distorted by both the bourgeois and the anarchists. The working class must destroy the existing (bourgeois) state. On this question we agree with the anarchists. But what then? In order to bring about the socialist reconstruction of society, a new power is required. Whether you call it a state or a commune is a matter of indifference. The working class must organize itself and therefore constitute itself as the leading power in society.

The working class needs its own state, but it will be a state completely unlike any other state ever seen in history. A state that represents the vast majority of society does not need a huge standing army or police force. In fact, it will not be a state at all, but a semi-state, like the Paris Commune. Far from being a bureaucratic totalitarian monster, it will be far more democratic than even the most democratic bourgeois republic  certainly far more democratic than Sweden is today. Leon Trotsky

Commenting on Lenins State and Revolution in his book The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky wrote:

This same bold view of the state in a proletarian dictatorship found finished expression a year and a half after the conquest of power in the program of the Bolshevik party, including its section on the army. A strong state, but without mandarins; armed power, but without the Samurai! It is not the tasks of defense which create a military and state bureaucracy, but the class structure of society carried over into the organization of defense. The army is only a copy of the social relations. The struggle against foreign danger necessitates, of course, in the workers state as in others, a specialized military technical organization, but in no case a privileged officer caste. The party program demands a replacement of the standing army by an armed people.

The regime of proletarian dictatorship from its very beginning thus ceases to be a state in the old sense of the word  a special apparatus, that is, for holding in subjection the majority of the people. The material power, together with the weapons, goes over directly and immediately into the hands of the workers organizations such as the soviets. The state as a bureaucratic apparatus begins to die away the first day of the proletarian dictatorship. (The Revolution Betrayed, Chapter 3, Socialism and the State)

The Russian Revolution

For Marxists, the October Revolution of 1917 represents the most important event in human history. For the first time ever, with the exception of the brief but heroic episode of the Paris Commune, the working class laid hold of the reins of state power, threw aside capitalist property relations, and began the process of socialist transformation. The revolution represented a huge victory for the working class, as the factories passed into their hands; for the peasants, as the land passed into theirs; for women, who saw full legal equality for the first time in Russia; for national and ethnic minorities, particularly Jews, who had suffered greatly under Great Russian chauvinism of the autocratic tsarist regime.

The workers state established by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was neither bureaucratic nor totalitarian. On the contrary, before the Stalinist bureaucracy usurped control from the masses, it was the most democratic state that ever existed. The basic principles of the Soviet power were not invented by Marx or Lenin. They were based on the concrete experience of the Paris Commune, and later elaborated upon by Lenin.

The Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies were elected assemblies composed not of professional politicians and bureaucrats, but of ordinary workers, peasants and soldiers. It was not an alien power standing over society, but a power based on the direct initiative of the people from below. Its laws were not like the laws enacted by a capitalist state power. It was an entirely different kind of power from the one that generally exists in the parliamentary bourgeois-democratic republics of the type still prevailing in the advanced countries of Europe and America.

Engels long ago explained that in any society in which art, science and government is the monopoly of a minority, that minority will use and abuse its position in its own interests. Lenin was quick to see the danger of the bureaucratic degeneration of the Revolution in conditions of general backwardness.

Lenin was the sworn enemy of bureaucracy. He always emphasised that the proletariat needs only a state that is so constituted that it will at once begin to die away and cannot help dying away. A genuine workers state has nothing in common with the bureaucratic monster that exists today, and even less the one that existed in Stalinist Russia. The basic conditions for workers democracy were set forth in State and Revolution:

Free and democratic elections with the right of recall of all officials. No official to receive a higher wage than a skilled worker. No standing army or police force, but the armed people. Gradually, all the administrative tasks to be done in turn by all. Every cook should be able to be Prime MinisterWhen everyone is a bureaucrat in turn, nobody can be a bureaucrat.

These were the conditions which Lenin laid down, not for full-fledged socialism or communism, but for the very first period of a workers' statethe period of the transition from capitalism to socialism. This programme of workers' democracy is directly aimed against the danger of bureaucracy. This in turn formed the basis of the 1919 Party Programme.

The transition to socialism  a higher form of society based on genuine democracy and plenty for all  can only be accomplished by the active and conscious participation of the working class in the running of society, of industry, and of the state. It is not something that is kindly handed down to the workers by kind-hearted capitalists or bureaucratic mandarins. The whole conception of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky was based upon this fact. Anybody can see that this programme is completely democratic and the very antithesis of bureaucratic dictatorship. Socialism as understood by Marxists is democratic or it is nothing.

Marx explained long ago that in any society where want is general, all the old crap revives. It was these conditions that gave rise to Bureaucracy  a thick layer of officials and careerists who elbowed the workers to one side and grabbed privileged positions in the State and in industry. Lenin warned repeatedly against the dangers of Bureaucracy  not only in the State but in the Party itself.

The real reason for the bureaucratic degeneration of the Russian Revolution was not some "original sin" of Bolshevism, but the isolation of the Revolution in conditions of material and cultural backwardness. This, in turn, was the result of the betrayal of the leaders of European Social Democracy. But to deal with this in detail wold carry us far beyond the limits of the present polemic.

Under conditions of frightful backwardness, the Russian revolution suffered a process of bureaucratic degeneration. The Stalinist counter-revolution destroyed the democratic regime established by Lenin and Trotsky in 1917. Contrary to the myth assiduously spread by the bourgeois reactionaries and also the anarchists, Stalinism and Bolshevism are two mutually incompatible phenomena. The proof of this was the fact that Stalin, in order to consolidate his bureaucratic and totalitarian regime, had to physically exterminate all the leaders of Lenins Party.

What failed in the Soviet Union was not socialism or communism in any sense that would be recognised by Marx, Lenin or Trotsky, but a bureaucratic and totalitarian caricature of socialism. This certainly failed, and was bound to fail. The demise of the Soviet Union was predicted as early as 1936 by Trotsky in his book The Revolution Betrayed. He pointed out that the Stalinist bureaucracy would not be satisfied with their bloated salaries and privileges, but would inevitably take the road to capitalist restoration. That is precisely what occurred.

Anarchism today

Anarchists imagine that they are more revolutionary because they call for a social revolution here and now. But dialectically, in their impatience to carry out a social revolution when the conditions for it are absent, they actually find themselves reduced to impotent direct actions of small minorities isolated from the mass of the working class that lead nowhere, combined with the advocacy of small deeds on a local level and pseudo-revolutionary tokenism.

Under the influence of bourgeois post-modernism, they are obsessed with language, trying to make sure they all speak with no trace of oppression or hierarchy in their language. Thus, social revolution is reduced to empty tokenism and terminological radicalism. By abolishing hierarchy in language they imagine that they have abolished it in fact, while the real world passes them by without even noticing this remarkable revolution and hierarchy, exploitation and oppression carry on quite happily, just as before.

For anybody like myself who has a sincere respect and admiration for the old anarchist workers like the old CNT worker militants who were genuine revolutionaries, betrayed by their anarchist leaders, modern day anarchism presents a truly depressing spectacle. The old anarchist workers may have been mistaken in some of their ideas, but they were revolutionaries and class fighters to the very core of their being. What we have today is only a caricature of the genuine item, a thing without any real substance, with no roots in the workers movement, no clear ideas, no notion of tactics or strategy, whose only role is to spread confusion in the minds of a layer of radicalised youth that is trying to find the revolutionary road. Anarchism is not the road to revolution but only a blind alley. Militants from the CNT

In the absence of a strong revolutionary party, a layer of young people who wish to change society, initially fall under the influence of anarchist ideas. Most of them soon come to understand the limitations of anarchist ideas and tactics. For them, anarchism is a kind of preparatory school that will eventually lead to Marxism. We Marxists hold out our hand in friendship to those young people. We will fight together with them against the common enemy. But we will also explain patiently the difference between anarchism and Marxism and polemicize against incorrect ideas and tactics that cannot lead the workers and youth to a victorious socialist revolution.

With regret, we must end this interesting encounter with anarchism by quoting the words of the old Bakunin: "Whoever wants not freedom, but the state, should not play Revolution". But that is precisely what anarchism signifies. Anyone who wishes seriously to carry out revolutionary work must pass beyond the limitations and confusions of anarchism and adopt the only consistent revolutionary standpoint  the standpoint of Marxism.

We are firmly convinced that there are many young people who consider themselves to be anarchists who have a serious attitude towards revolution and wish to learn. But revolution is both a science and an art that must be studied with the same painstaking attention that the officers in a bourgeois army study the history of war in order to develop tactics and strategy.

We Marxists are striving for the creation of an international army of the proletariat. The International Marxist Tendency is continuing the great revolutionary traditions of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. Our programme is the program of the Bolshevik Revolution and of the Communist International.

We also lay claim to that great Spanish revolutionary and martyr of the working class, Buenaventura Durruti who represented the best element in anarchism  that element that stood close to Bolshevism and in effect was indistinguishable from it. We call upon all serious anarchists who wish to fight for world socialism to join with us, debate and discuss with us, and finally to fuse together in one powerful proletarian revolutionary tendency on a world scale.

The only road to revolution is the road that leads to the building of a revolutionary workers organization, a Marxist party and an International. That is what is offered to the workers and youth of Brazil by the International Marxist Tendency.
MDCalc, makers of popular online clinically useful calculators, has been around for over 12 years, and is still owned and run by the two practicing docs who founded it, Dr. Graham Walker and Dr. Joe Habboushe.

Interestingly, MDCalc has seen its largest growth in the past three years, adding dozens of new calculators and swelling its number of users. As the founders quickly pointed out, while speaking with Medgadget, they have traditionally included only the most reliable and validated scores, knowing full well that other services often include everything under the sun, which may be confusing to doctors.

The iOS version of the MDCalc medical calculator was released last year, and recently its companion Android app was released on the 15th of April. This web-based and smartphone calculator has become a steadily improving staple of use while on the clinical wards, and continues to be further refined, updated, and improved with new features and novel new scores. Examples of MDCalc use cases include calculating the osmolar gap or predicting the risk of pulmonary embolism through the Wells score.

Even their newly launched discussion platform, Paging MDCalc, is focused squarely on exposing medical evidence, hosting a very heated debate on the new vitamin C study in sepsis, including impassioned criticisms of the study and replies from the studys primary investigator, Dr. Paul Marik. This is all in the name of MDCalcs mission: educating physicians about decision support and evidence-based medicine.

We had a chance to speak with Dr. Joe Habboushe, a co-founder of MDCalc to understand how the product came to be, how its being developed, and what the future holds.

Alice Ferng, Medgadget: Tell me about yourself. Whats your background, and at what point in your career did you decide to start doing things related to med tech?

Dr. Joe Habboushe, MDCalc: Im am an academic emergency physician at NYU/Bellevue. Originally, Im from Philly but moved to NYC 16 years ago to study medicine at Weill Cornell, and received an MBA in Healthcare Finance from Columbia, before training in emergency medicine at St. Lukes-Roosevelt Hospital where I met Graham. Graham is also a practicing emergency physician in San Francisco, who completed medical school at Stanford where he later returned for fellowship. Both Graham and I love to see patients  and we think our passion and excitement for medicine can be seen in MDCalc. There are so many advantages to MDCalc being run by practicing physicians. We know how doctors think, and are connected in the field. We recently realized that we are the largest medical reference owned and run by physicians. Thats very neat  very motivating.

I wasnt always pre-med! Back in undergrad, I was a math and physics major. My parents are both physicians from Iraq, and I came from a long line of docs  Im actually a 7th generation physician. I was different from the rest of my family because I was much more mathematical and more entrepreneurial. Going into medicine was therefore the less science-y thing for me to do. MDCalc is the perfect marriage of my passions: (1) medicine (including seeing patients & teaching residents), (2) applying science and statistics, and (3) entrepreneurship. Im lucky to have a career that mixes what I love to do  and in a way that does so much good for our field and our patients.

Medgadget: Tell me about the conception of MDCalc and your co-founder.

Dr. Habboushe: Graham had first come up with MDCalc while he was a medical student as a pet project, a couple years before we trained together. He was a year underneath me in residency and I was so impressed by his initiative: he saw a problem [too many calcs that docs were trying to memorize] and came up with a simple solution [a clean, easy to use, doc-friendly site]. We joined forces and built the site out  added more scores, as well as content around the scores  so we didnt just serve as a resource for those who knew the scores well, but also for those who needed a bit of help understanding how best to use them.

MDCalc met a true need and quickly became the website that doctors were using to look up scores.

Medgadget: What were the major challenges when initially creating MDCalc? How about validation of the calculators and updating equations and/or algorithms?

Dr. Habboushe: MDCalc is 12 years old, but in the last few years it has grown a ton. Over the last three years, we have gone from about 80 scores with about 15% of U.S. doctors using them, to almost 300 scores with 55 to 60% of doctors using our calculators every month. I should point out, many other medical references do NOT quote their monthly use numbers  but rather the % of docs who ever used their service  because there are so few references that so broadly apply to physicians practices.

And this big recent growth comes from a few different places: first of all, more and more docs are using the internet in general; secondly, medicine has created more and more clinical tools, allowing a better evidence-based backbone for clinical decisions; and finally, MDCalc has now reached many specialties which we werent as established in five years ago  for example, psychiatry and oncology. Clinical scores are becoming more common as diagnoses becomes increasingly complex and requires robust scores that allow for more informed and data driven decisions. Weve actually seen a very cool impact of MDCalc: as weve made scores more accessible to physicians, and reduced the burden of physicians needing to memorize calcs, the more recently developed calcs are often more sophisticated than ones in the past. It used to be that a calculator creator had to sacrifice accuracy for memoriazibility  an insane concept, if you think about it: patients have less accurate evidence based treatment based on docs having trouble remembering long scores. This tradeoff is no longer a big issue when docs dont need to memorize scores.

We are super lucky in that, as we add new scores in nearly any medical field, Google and the other search engines recognize us as the experts in this area and we quickly [within weeks or months] become one of the first search results. So, we have been able to support specialties that are relatively new to us.

We recently partnered with the American College of Emergency Physicians and American College of Gastroenterology, and are in talks with several others. Our hopes are to partner with one of the top medical societies in each specialty. They help keep us stay close to cutting edge research and guidelines.

Weve also partnered with several peer reviewed medical journals in different specialties, who are publishing clinical reviews  this gives another level of legitimacy to our work, and provides an opportunity for our contributors to get Pubmed IDs. Its so nice to get close to big academic institutions and work hand in hand with them  as we typically share the same goals and mission.

Sometime soon we hope to launch MDCalc Ratings  a scoring system similar to a Yelp rating but by distinguished experts in the field. MDCalc Ratings will have subcategories such as evidence supporting use of the score, the clinical utility, popularity, etc., so that the value of a score can very quickly be assessed.

Medgadget: How was MDCalc funded as a company and what is its business model?

Dr. Habboushe: We have been approached  unsolicited  at least a dozen times by funders, venture capitalists, and those interested in acquiring us. We decided to not take any outside funding, as our core mission of providing the best quality for physicians and their patients has always been our highest priority. I worked previously in a venture capital firm and know how such funding can often shift a companys priorities a bit more towards the financial bottom line, more so than we felt comfortable. We wanted to be owned and run by us: academic and practicing physicians; nerdy, academic docs who really know and care about what is going on in our fields  this describes everyone at MDCalc! For example, when we sell advertising we have very strict divisions between church and state: what looks like an ad is an ad, and what does not look like and ad is not an ad. It surprised me to learn how often medical references can blur this line. We wanted to avoid anything that would put pressure on us to stray from this principle, which funding may have done. Of course, in the future as things change, we may need to change parts of our current business model. Things are always evolving, especially in tech.

Medgadget: Will you be creating other apps or expanding into other spaces as the company advances?

Dr. Habboushe: We want to focus on what we do best: medical calculators and clinical decision scores. The way I look at this is that we are the best medical calculator and decision making tool in the field, and we want to continue leading in this field. I think theres a lot more that we can do in this space: we are constantly developing more content and adding scores  trying to reach doctors wherever and whenever they need support in making clinical decisions. We are partnering with medical societies, peer reviewed journals, top academics in our field, and other great medical references. We would rather be the best providers of clinical decision tools than try to go too far beyond what we know best. For example, we arent trying to be an online version of a medical textbook, like UpToDate or Medscape has done. That is far from what we are and where we excel.

We recently began hosting TheNNT.com  another evidence-based medicine (EBM) site thats aimed for quick, point-of-care support like MDCalc. TheNNT.com stands for the number needed to treat, a way to quantify the benefit of a treatment, and does Cochrane-like reviews that are easy to use when seeing patients. We have a great partnership with the AFP (American Family Physician) journal, which has a Medicine by the Numbers section publishing our reviews.

Medgadget: What makes MDCalc unique? What are some key and interesting upcoming features?

Dr. Habboushe: We are constantly finding new ways to make MDCalc more useful for the millions of physicians who use us around the world, and the tens of millions of patients they take care of. It is a ton of fun.

The way we look at it, there are at least four use cases for our calculators.

Use Case #1: The Doc knows the calculator name and how to use it.

They simply need to look it up as a reference. Five years ago, that was the only way you could really use a calculator  and it took a while for docs to get there.

They simply need to look it up as a reference. Five years ago, that was the only way you could really use a calculator  and it took a while for docs to get there. Use Case #2: The Doc knows the calculator name but arent 100% confident to use it clinically.

A few years back we started building out reliable and concise content for each score, written by unbiased experts in the field, making it easy to read and apply while seeing a patient. This allows for folks who may know the name of a score, but not really know all the details. The content for each of these scoresis written by experts who are not the original creator of the score and quickly explains when to use it (correct indications), how to properly apply it, what works well and does not work well, and what evidence is behind the score  how robust it is. It also includes what to do next after you get the score. In addition to that we separately interview the calculator creator for their specific input.

A few years back we started building out reliable and concise content for each score, written by unbiased experts in the field, making it easy to read and apply while seeing a patient. This allows for folks who may know the name of a score, but not really know all the details. The content for each of these scoresis written by experts who are not the original creator of the score and quickly explains when to use it (correct indications), how to properly apply it, what works well and does not work well, and what evidence is behind the score  how robust it is. It also includes what to do next after you get the score. In addition to that we separately interview the calculator creator for their specific input. Use Case #3: The Doc wonders could there be a useful calc for this case?. The 3 rd use is for folks who dont even know the name of the score! Were really excited about this new function: a way to present a clinical scenario to MDCalc and receive a list of calculators that should apply  along with the content explaining each score. We just launched this discovery feature this year (and filed a patent on it). For an example, go to the MDCalcs search bar and select that you are looking for calculators related to PEs that help with diagnosis  and you get scores such as Wells, Geneva, and PERC. After you diagnose a PE, search for those related to PEs and prognosis, and you get a whole new list (PESI, POMPE-C, Khorana, etc). Each score will have a quick 1-liner about the score, and you can click on the score if you want to learn more about it and how to use it. Our users love this  and somewhat surprisingly, its not only medical students and residents. So many practicing docs dont have great ways to about new scores. Maybe they stumble upon them in a conference or podcast, or hear from colleagues, but this is haphazard and inconsistent, at best. On top of that, the world of clinical scores is evolving so rapidly, its hard to keep up even for those at big academic centers. We believe this new search tool has already made a huge difference and will continue to be useful as the number and complexity of scores continues to grow.

The 3 use is for folks who dont even know the name of the score! Were really excited about this new function: a way to present a clinical scenario to MDCalc and receive a list of calculators that should apply  along with the content explaining each score. We just launched this discovery feature this year (and filed a patent on it). For an example, go to the MDCalcs search bar and select that you are looking for calculators related to PEs that help with diagnosis  and you get scores such as Wells, Geneva, and PERC. After you diagnose a PE, search for those related to PEs and prognosis, and you get a whole new list (PESI, POMPE-C, Khorana, etc). Each score will have a quick 1-liner about the score, and you can click on the score if you want to learn more about it and how to use it. Our users love this  and somewhat surprisingly, its not only medical students and residents. So many practicing docs dont have great ways to about new scores. Maybe they stumble upon them in a conference or podcast, or hear from colleagues, but this is haphazard and inconsistent, at best. On top of that, the world of clinical scores is evolving so rapidly, its hard to keep up even for those at big academic centers. We believe this new search tool has already made a huge difference and will continue to be useful as the number and complexity of scores continues to grow. Use Case #4: Teaching patients what comes next.

The last use case is to show your patients, and best explain your clinical decisions to them. To this end, we are working on pilot projects to help docs best communicate results with their patients  and where appropriate, have effective shared decision making conversations with them. Recently, we published an article on Paging MDCalc that explored how to discuss surgical risk with your patients and the role that clinical decision tools can play when presenting and quantifying those risks.

Finally, we are in the process of building out a great Scientific Advisory Board of the best known calculator creators and physicians  folks like Dr. Steven Stack, the most recent AMA president, and calculator creators such as Chads-VACSs Greg Lip, GCSs Graham Teasdale, Canadian and Ottawa Scores Ian Stiell, and many more. It is incredible for all of us at MDCalc to be able to interact with and get guidance from these giants and celebrities of our field, who have made medicine so much better for all of us, so that we can make it better for our patients. Which in the end, is what all of this is about.

Product page: MDCalc Apps
by Thom Forbes @tforbes, May 12, 2017

SoftBank Group has taken a big stake in the virtual future with a very tangible $502 million investment in the five-year-old British VR gaming company Improbable Worlds Ltd.

SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is making another big bet  this time on a nascent technology that might take years or decades to bloom, writes Stu Woo for the Wall Street Journal.

The deal fits broadly into Mr. Sons recent interest in artificial intelligence. He has said that the promise of AI and the Internet of Things  the idea that everyday items such as sneakers and refrigerators will be connected to the Web  has underpinned some of the big and surprising deals that SoftBank has pulled off in the past year, Woo continues.

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Improbable uses cloud-based computing to create virtual worlds for use in games as well as large-scale simulations of the real world, reports Mark Sweney for the Guardian. The business was co-founded in 2012 by Herman Narula, 29, and Rob Whitehead, 26, who met while studying computer science at Cambridge University, and Peter Lipka, 28, an Imperial College graduate who worked at Goldman Sachs prior to launching Improbable.

They retain a majority stake in the company and will keep their present responsibilities: Narula is CEO, Whitehead is CTO and Lipka is COO. SoftBank managing director Deep Nishar will join Improbables board.

Its ultimate goal: to create totally immersive, persistent virtual worlds, and in doing so, change how we make decisions, writesWireds Oliver Franklin-Wallace. Or more simply, as Narula often jokes, Basically, we want to build the Matrix.

The companys key innovation is a platform called SpatialOS. Crucially, if the computation is too much for one Worker to handle, or a server crashes unexpectedly, SpatialOS will dynamically bring up additional servers and distribute the load across them in real time, explains Franklin-Wallace. Narula describes this as a giant game of musical chairs.

SpatialOS enables highly detailed modeling of lifelike situations, such as a marine ecosystem, report Madhumita Murgia and Arash Massoudi for Financial Times. Although Improbable is currently focused on gaming, it has already garnered customers addressing real-world problems, including academics, local governments such as the city of Cambridge, and private companies, they continue.

Improbables promise is that SpatialOS will handle all the heavy lifting in terms of server support and technical infrastructure, allowing even small games studios to build sprawling, ambitious titles, writes James Vincent for the TheVerge. The real prize, though, is creating simulations of more complex systems  anything from the infrastructure needs of a large city, to the interactions of different drugs in the human body.

It operates over the Google cloud computing platform and has been put to the test in several non-gaming situations.

Immense Simulations, which is building software to manage fleets of driverless cars, has experimented with SpatialOS to create simulations of an entire citys road network and traffic patterns. The British government has used Improbables software to create a simulation of the whole Internet to look for bottlenecks and points of vulnerability to help better guard against cyberattacks, reports Jeremy Kahn for Bloomberg Technology.

Narula tells the New York Times Michael J. de la Merced that Improbable had always set high ambitions for fund-raising targets, because it needed plenty of cash to build its systems and the roughly monthlong process included Mr. Narula flying to Tokyo to present Improbables technology to Mr. Son.

This investment is not part of the yet-to-be-launched $100 billion technology-investment Vision Fund, the Japanese Internet and telecommunications company is establishing with a Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, the WSJs Woo reports. But the FT says it is expected to offer the stake to Vision Fund after it launches.

Existing Series A investors Andreessen Horowitz and Horizons Ventures are also making follow-on investments, according to Improbable, and will continue to offer advice and guidance to Improbable, along with Temasek, the Singapore investment company, which was also involved in the Series A funding.

In the release announcing the funding, Narula says: We believe that the next major phase in computing will be the emergence of large-scale virtual worlds which enrich human experience and change how we understand the real world.

Thats a dose of reality we could certainly use.
by Larissa Faw , May 12, 2017

The Tourism Authority of Panama (ATP) and its new agency VML are introducing a new advertising campaign with a unique selling proposition for a country trying to attract visitors: the country isnt set up well for tourists.
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AXIS Capital Holdings Limited, through its subsidiaries, provides various specialty insurance and reinsurance products worldwide. It operates through two segments, Insurance and Reinsurance. The Insurance segment offers property insurance products for commercial buildings, residential premises, construction projects, and onshore energy installations; marine insurance products covering offshore energy, cargo, liability, recreational marine, fine art, specie, and hull war; and terrorism, aviation, credit and political risk, and liability insurance products. It also provides professional insurance products that cover directors' and officers' liability, errors and omissions liability, employment practices liability, fiduciary liability, crime, professional indemnity, cyber and privacy, medical malpractice, and other financial insurance related coverages for commercial enterprises, financial institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and other professional service providers. In addition, this segment offers accidental death, travel, and specialty health products for employer and affinity groups. The Reinsurance segment offers reinsurance products to insurance companies, including catastrophe reinsurance products; property reinsurance products covering property damage and related losses resulting from natural and man-made perils; professional lines; credit and surety; and motor liability products. This segment also provides agriculture reinsurance products; coverages for various types of construction risks and risks related to erection, testing, and commissioning of machinery and plants during the construction stage; marine and aviation reinsurance products; and personal accident, specialty health, accidental death, travel, life and disability reinsurance products. The company was founded in 2001 and is headquartered in Pembroke, Bermuda.
BT Group plc provides communications services worldwide. Its Consumer segment sells telephones, baby monitors, and Wi-Fi extenders through high street retailers, online BT Shop, and Website BT.com; and offers home phone, copper and fiber broadband, TV, and mobile services in various packages. The company's EE segment offers 2G, 3G, and 4G mobile network services; broadband, fixed-voice, and TV services; and postpaid and prepaid plans, and emergency services network. This segment also sells 4G mobile phones, tablets, connected devices, and mobile broadband devices from various manufacturers. Its Business and Public Sector segment provides fixed voice, mobility, fiber and connectivity, and networked IT services to retailers, utilities, public sector, healthcare, sports, construction, finance, and educational sectors. The company's Global Services segment offers business communications and ICT services comprising BT Connect, BT Security, BT One, BT Contact, BT Compute, BT Advise, and BT for financial markets. This segment serves approximately 5,500 customers in 180 countries. Its Wholesale and Ventures segment enables communications providers and other organizations to provide fixed or mobile phone services. Its ventures provide mass-market services, such as directory enquiries and payphones; and enterprise services comprising BT Fleet and BT Redcare. This segment also provides broadband and Ethernet, voice, hosted communication, mobile virtual network operator, managed solutions, machine-to-machine, roaming, and media services. The company's Openreach segment engages in the provision of services over the local access network; and installation and maintenance of fiber and copper communications networks that connect homes and businesses. The company was formerly known as Newgate Telecommunications Limited and changed its name to BT Group plc in September 2001. BT Group plc was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in London, the United Kingdom.
AmerisourceBergen Corporation sources and distributes pharmaceutical products in the United States and internationally. Its Pharmaceutical Distribution segment distributes brand-name and generic pharmaceuticals, over-the-counter healthcare products, home healthcare supplies and equipment, and related services to various healthcare providers, including acute care hospitals and health systems, independent and chain retail pharmacies, mail order pharmacies, medical clinics, long-term care and alternate site pharmacies, and other customers. It also provides pharmacy management, staffing, and other consulting services; supply management software to retail and institutional healthcare providers; and packaging solutions to various institutional and retail healthcare providers. In addition, this segment distributes plasma and other blood products, injectable pharmaceuticals, vaccines, and other specialty products; provides other services primarily to physicians who specialize in various disease states, primarily oncology, as well as to other healthcare providers, including hospitals and dialysis clinics; and offers data analytics, outcomes research, and additional services for biotechnology and pharmaceutical manufacturers. The company's Other segment provides integrated manufacturer services, such as clinical trial support, product post-approval, and commercialization support; specialty transportation and logistics services for the biopharmaceutical industry; and sells pharmaceuticals, vaccines, parasiticides, diagnostics, micro feed ingredients, and various other products to customers in the companion animal and production animal markets, as well as demand-creating sales force services to manufacturers. AmerisourceBergen Corporation was incorporated in 2001 and is headquartered in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.
GSK plc, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the creation, discovery, development, manufacture, and marketing of pharmaceutical products, vaccines, over-the-counter medicines, and health-related consumer products in the United Kingdom, the United States, and internationally. It operates through four segments: Pharmaceuticals, Pharmaceuticals R&D, Vaccines, and Consumer Healthcare. The company offers pharmaceutical products comprising medicines in the therapeutic areas, such as respiratory, HIV, immuno-inflammation, oncology, anti-viral, central nervous system, cardiovascular and urogenital, metabolic, anti-bacterial, and dermatology. It also provides consumer healthcare products in wellness, oral health, nutrition, and skin health categories. The company offers its consumer healthcare products in the form of nasal sprays, tablets, syrups, lozenges, gum and trans-dermal patches, caplets, infant syrup drops, liquid filled suspension, wipes, gels, effervescents, toothpastes, toothbrushes, mouthwashes, denture adhesives and cleansers, topical creams and non-medicated patches, lip balm, gummies, and soft chews. It has collaboration agreements with 23andMe; Lyell Immunopharma, Inc.; Novartis; Sanofi SA; Surface Oncology; Progentec Diagnostics, Inc.; Alector, Inc.; and CureVac AG., as well as strategic partnership with IDEAYA Biosciences, Inc. and Vir Biotechnology, Inc. The company was formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline plc and changed its name to GSK plc in May 2022. GSK plc was founded in 1715 and is headquartered in Brentford, the United Kingdom.
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Under Armour, Inc., together with its subsidiaries, engages in the developing, marketing, and distributing performance apparel, footwear, and accessories for men, women, and youth. The company offers its apparel in compression, fitted, and loose fit types. It also provides footwear products for running, training, basketball, cleated sports, recovery, and outdoor applications. In addition, the company offers accessories, which include gloves, bags, headwear, and sports masks; and digital subscription and advertising services under the MapMyRun and MapMyRide platforms. It primarily offers its products under the UNDER ARMOUR, UA, HEATGEAR, COLDGEAR, HOVR, PROTECT THIS HOUSE, I WILL, UA Logo, ARMOUR FLEECE, and ARMOUR BRA brands. The company sells its products through wholesale channels, including national and regional sporting goods chains, independent and specialty retailers, department store chains, mono-branded Under Armour retail stores, institutional athletic departments, and leagues and teams, as well as independent distributors; and directly to consumers through a network of 422 brand and factory house stores, as well as through e-commerce websites. It operates in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. Under Armour, Inc. was incorporated in 1996 and is headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland.
Williams-Sonoma, Inc. operates as an omni-channel specialty retailer of various products for home. It offers cooking, dining, and entertaining products, such as cookware, tools, electrics, cutlery, tabletop and bar, outdoor, furniture, and a library of cookbooks under the Williams Sonoma Home brand, as well as home furnishings and decorative accessories under the Williams Sonoma lifestyle brand; and furniture, bedding, lighting, rugs, table essentials, and decorative accessories under the Pottery Barn brand. The company also provides home decor products under the West Elm brand; kids accessories under the Pottery Barn Kids brand; and an organic bedding to multi-purpose furniture under the Pottery Barn Teen brand. In addition, it offers made-to-order lighting, hardware, furniture, and home decors inspired by history under the Rejuvenation brand; and women's and men's accessories, travel, entertaining and bar, home decor, and seasonal items under the Mark and Graham brand, as well as operates a 3-D imaging and augmented reality platform for the home furnishings and decor industry. The company markets its products through e-commerce websites, direct-mail catalogs, and retail stores. It operates 544 stores comprising 502 stores in 41states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico; 20 stores in Canada; 19 stores in Australia; 3 stores in the United Kingdom; and 139 franchised stores, as well as e-commerce websites in various countries in the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico, South Korea, and India. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in San Francisco, California.
An innovative technological platform has been launched to expand the marketing of locally produced movies, whilst offering movie lovers a variety of choice.

The 'Kumawood App' is a digitised movie content created for subscribers of telecom network, MTN. The mobile platform hosts local movie content, short and funny video clips and celebrity news as a one-stop shop for customers.

Noel Kojo-Ganson, General Manager in-charge of Consumer Marketing at MTN Ghana, described the local film making as a 'green industry' which will find the app a useful platform to launch them into the digital world.

The provision of the Kumawood App will make access to local movies even more convenient and enjoyable because movie lovers now have unlimited access to local movies, music and comedies in different local languages; Twi, Hausa, Dagbane, Ga and Ewe, he said.

Movie producers and directors on the app have direct access to market their products without the hassle of going through distributorship. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kumawood Multimedia, Samuel Darko, explained that over 200 movies are on the app for a start, with an increasing interest among producers and directors to get on the platform.

He believes the app offers an opportunity to kill piracy, whilst leveraging the business advantage of premiering movies.

People don't even have time to sit behind their television sets to watch but with this you can enjoy it anywhere you areIt's very easy, convenience and affordable, he stated.

MTN subscribers with smart phones can easily enjoy this service anytime, anywhere at their convenience.

They have opportunities to preview movies, subscribe to daily, weekly, monthly and year-long packs or access movies on the go.

The application was developed by MTECH Communications, whose CEO, Chimere Mbonu, reiterated that the user-friendly app will be extended to the music industry for artistes to market their works through the platform.
As an activist and a radical constituent of Assin South, I can't pretend I don't know what is actually transcending recently in a Constituency I have lived for almost 23 years now. I feel ashamed about the Satanic cybercrime some of the youth have taken to as their well paid venture.

In fact, I grief, descerning the actions of my co-youth. "I don't hate the youth, but I hate their trickery immoral actions for overnight riches".

I know very well that elders and leaders are concerned about the cybercrime by the youth in Assin south constituency. To be precise, I can perceive they are extremely worried about such an ungodly trending evil.

"Cybercrime, or computer related crime, is a crime that involves a computer and a network to defraud people of their monies."

he publicity of this piece from GOODNUFF lacuna seeks to add a voice to the ones already being drummed to call for immediate measures of extirpating this growing evil.

I am not a spectator, I am a citizen not to slander or defame, but to adorn something to our advantage. I have no intent to calumniate my people but to extol them.

In our local areas, cybercrime has grown unrestraindly among the youth. This has created a scene of terror and fear in the constituency. The deceit of people for money is becoming impairing to say the least.

Sometime ago, when technology was still green, people who were involved in cybercrime were criminals who used the programing talents to glean millions of cash from banks. These crooks were so ingenious in their schemes that many banks cut deals, to hire them as security consultants rather than sending them to prison.

2005 through to 2011 saw the era of "sakawa", cybercrime. Agona Swedru, was then the hub of such an act. Today, the same people who are now standing as the youth, who frowned against this act now upholds it as tho they never chastised it sometime ago.

This satanic mechanism must stop!

What at all are the causes of this malevolent? Through my scrutiny, it is soo obvious that laziness and casualness is one of the causes of this nefarious.

We find ourselves in difficult times. Things are exceedingly difficult. The hopes entrusted in the government has also birthed no developments in the lives of people.

People are left to becoming beggers and armed robbers while some abhors laziness and reap the fruits of their hard work.

It is rather sad that most of our youth today are not creative to meet the challenges of life. The era of depending on Government and individuals is long gone and we must face the realities of time so that we can survive.

We must as the youth seek counsel from the elders so that we can be properly guided as we journey in this difficult times.

Though everybody is born to be great in life, sadly enough, very few achieve true greatness. Why?

"Quick money" as it has been termed, is the song of the youth. Passing through right ways to become successful, is seen as an endless fruitless journey. So deciept is thier priorship instead.

Engaging in agriculture to help produce food for the country and exportation(farming) is regarded as a curse. Pride is rather taken in demonstrations against government when the government is not providing the required social amenities for their villages by the youth.

Lack of parental control is another cause of cybercrime in our constituency.

Few parents have been able to perform their responsiblities as parents, most parents have less time for their offsprings and some even don't see to the growing their wards spiritually, by putting the fear of God into their hearts. No wonder as young as age 13, some children are easily influenced by peers to involve themselves in criminal acts. Parents failure to control their children has lead to the conflicts of Proverb 1:8 "Listen, my son, to the discipline of your father, and do not forsake the instruction of your mother". Parents have failed instilling discipline and the youth has gone recalcitrant.

In the absence of parental authority and guidance, children act on their impulses, leading to devastating consequences like "Sakawa".

On 07.04.2015 a criminologist Prof. Ken Attafuah said "the failure of families and societies is the cause of increasing crimes among the youth in Ghana which is due to lack of parental control" and this is manifesting in Assin South Constituency.

The perils of this cybercrime has lead to high drop out rate of students. They believe it is time wasting to spend years on circular education to prosperity. Agricultural products are declining.

Even mental incompetencies knows, cybercrimes are not performed in an honourable manner, it alleges, spiritual sacrifices which needs to be done in order to make the process successful.

Killing of virgins, teenagers, removal of human body parts and removal of dead bodies from tombs are becoming very usual.

It seems my constituency is under curfew, since they go to bed early and wake up late in the morning. The fear is becoming horrible. Earnestly, the need for fighting cybercrime is necessarily; of neccessity.

GOODNUFF takes a bow to summon; Hon. JOHN NTIM FORJOUR(Member of Parliaments'), ELDERS, CHIEFS, ASSEMBLY, PARENTS', ALL PROTOCOLS AND STAKE HOLDERS observed to take immediate measures to stamp out the backfriend, Cybercrime "Sakawa" hiding in Assin South Constituency.

THE WRITER IS A CONSTITUENCY ACTIVIST

 [email protected]

http://goodnuffblog.wordpress.com
Trade and Industry Minister, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, has said that aside the one district one factory policy, the government is looking forward to establishing a new vehicle assembly and automotive industry.

This industry, among others, is captured under an industrial expansion initiative dubbed, 'Strategic Anchor Industries.'

Apart from the one district one factory initiative, we are also embarking on what we call Strategic Anchor Industries. So hopefully, within the next five years, we will be diversifying our economy away from cocoa and gold and we will be looking at the petrochemical industry and integrated iron and steel industry, aluminium and bauxite industry which then leads us on to a new vehicle assembly and automotive industry, he said.

He said all these at the National Single Window Conference held yesterday at Kempinski hotel, Accra.

The minister dropped his original speech and ceased the opportunity to market the arrangements and policies of the government for which the UNCTAD must consider and support.

He further indicated that the government will rekindle the garment and textile industry.

We are bringing back the garment and textile industry, creating Ghana as a pharmaceutical hub particularly to exploit the African market and many other things which then provides the basis for us to take trade facilitation seriously, he stated.

The minister revealed government's intention to establish industrial parks in each of the 10 regions, citing that as a reason for the progress made in China and Asia.

Ghana has been working on the National Single Window for some time, and the minister believes it the time has come for it to be elevated to another level by making it a national priority.

GNA


11.05.2017 LISTEN

Accra, May 11, GNA - The Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) is in the process of soliciting views and ideas from the diplomatic community and foreign business associations towards the review of the current GIPC Acts 2013.

The event forms part of a series of strategic stakeholder's engagement, the GIPC has scheduled for the year to solicit views on ways to make the Ghanaian business environment most competitive among its peers through legislation.

Mr Yofi Grant, the Chief Executive Officer, GIPC was speaking at the 2017 edition of the Economic Counsellors Dialogue with Foreign Missions and Business Associations in Ghana on the GIPC Act and possible collaboration with the Centre.

'We will be reviewing the GIPC law to make ourselves more attractive and competitive on the global investment horizon. The impact would be significant, because we want to attract the biggest companies globally to come to Ghana to do business,' he added.

The Dialogue an initiative of the GIPC to attract Foreign Direct Investment was on the theme: 'Ghana on the Go: Enhancing the Ghanaian Business Environment.'

The GIPC Act 2013, (Act 865) was enacted to phase out and replace the previous GIPC Act 1994 (Act 478).

He said to make Ghana the best place to do business, the country needed to create a good business environment to promote investment opportunities.

He said Ghana being a signatory to the Trade Facilitation Agreement and because of the some of the things the Centre had done, there was an improvement in trade relations with other countries.

'We at GIPC are looking at other measures to attract the investor community and business to invest in the country and also address some of the challenges that face business growth in Ghana.

'We are constantly engaging with the investor public, foreign missions and with local business people to see how best we can make this country investment and business-friendly,' he added.

He said it was imperative for Ghana to reposition itself in a way that it could still play the leading role in the renaissance in the African economy and serve as regional hub and also open up the business environment for investors.

The event brought together members of the Diplomatic Community including Commissioners, Ambassadors and Trade Counsellors as well as Heads of Foreign Business Associations in Ghana to dialogue on measures to enhance the Ghanaian business environment.

GNA

By Morkporkpor Anku/ Elizabeth Tetteh, GNA
11.05.2017 LISTEN

Accra, May 11, GNA - The Ministry of Energy will hold the Ghana Energy Summit from June 13 to 14 in Accra, as part of efforts to open the sector to both local and international investors.

Mr Ken Wellington, the Public Relations Officer of the Ministry, said the summit on the theme: 'The Future of Energy in Ghana,' aims at bringing together local and international business leaders, investors, policy makers, civil society organisations, development partners and industry leaders to exchange ideas.

He said participants would also share experiences that would culminate into comprehensive energy sector policies and strategies to effectively govern and ensure co-ordinated investments and sustained growth of the sector.

He said the summit would also discuss investment opportunities available in the sector and provide avenues for targeted and strategy driven investments rather than the current deal driven approaches.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, Mr Wellington said Ghana had made tremendous efforts at securing adequate energy for national economic development over the years, both with respect to power and petroleum, driven by a mosaic of policy and institutional reforms.

He said the Petroleum Downstream subsector had seen a strong regulatory role by the National Petroleum Authority, spearheading the gradual removal of subsidies, liberalisation and engendering healthy competition in the sector.

He noted that the summit would also discuss investment opportunities available in the sector and provide avenues for targeted and strategy driven investments rather than the current deal driven approaches.

'The Petroleum Upstream subsector, although very nascent, has equally witnessed ample progress. Within less than a decade of first oil from the Jubilee field, the country can boast of two offshore producing fields and a third scheduled to come on stream in the third quarter of 2017.

'This is supported by a buoyant service industry with great potential for growth,' Mr Wellington added.

He said the power subsector, on the other hand, although significant progress had been made with respect to shoring up generation capacity, modernising transmission and distribution infrastructure and increasing citizens access to electricity, the sector was still beset with challenges.

These include a huge debt overhang that threatens the survival of the power utilities.

He said the Ministry was working with stakeholders to address these urgent challenges, including a moratorium on new thermal capacity additions, and exploring more transparent and competitive procurement processes for renewable energy capacity additions.

Mr Wellington said the Summit would provide a platform for stimulating discourse among key stakeholders leading to elaboration of practical solutions to the sector challenges.

He said it was envisaged that these prescriptions would find expression in the policies and strategies of the sector and the investment opportunities they present.

GNA

By Iddi Yire, GNA
22 years ago today, on May 11th, 1995, 4 Ghanaians were murdered during the "Kume Preko" demonstration organized by the Alliance for Change" to protest the imposition of VAT. They included Kwabena Asante, Jerry Opey and Richard Aminga. The last of the quartet was a 14 year-old bystander. They never got JUSTICE. None of the vigilantes who killed them or the big men behind them was ever charged.

Today, I am sure they walk amongst us as pillars of our society.

Of course, they were not the first martyrs to our democracy. Tommy Thompson, the Kunbungu 4, Mobilla , Seargeant Adjetey and J.B. Danquah all died for our freedom. Other Ghanaians suffered imprisonment or exile or injuries. If I forgot those you know, pardon me. My mind grows frail with age. I was almost one of them.

Today, I call on all Ghanaians to pause for a moment in memory of our martyrs. Whether they were killed by official security forces or vigilantes, they are victims of our democracy.

I make the following call, not for their sake but for our sake.

A nation that does not remember its heroes will ultimately run out of heroes.

Let us never abandon the pursuit of justice for those who died unjustly.

Let us never stop naming and shaming those who have the blood of these innocents on their hands.

Let comfort and support their widows and their offspring.

Let us always, in opposition or in government, be against vigilantism and lawlessness.

Finally, let us immortalize them with monuments.

Americans remember Emmitt Till. The Jews remember the concentration camps and the Warsaw ghetto.

Tarzan, Kweku Baako and Your Excellency, President Nana Akufo-Addo, lead us to find justice for these victims, so that their deaths will sit on our consciences like sentinels in the night, saying , "Never Again" and giving meaning to our motto, "FREEDOM AND JUSTICE".

God bless Ghana.

Arthur K
Bomb found at NC mayor candidates house in Syangja

A socket bomb has been recovered at the residence of Nepali Congress (NC) mayor candidate from Galyang Municipality-11 in Syangja district.
Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom, Chairperson of Groupe Nduom and prolific Ghanaian businessman will be honoured with the GUBA 2017 Black Star Award for Excellence In Business at the Intercontinental Hotel in London on Saturday the 3rd of June 2017. The Excellence in Business award sponsored by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, recognises leading outstanding businesses that best demonstrate exceptional financial returns, strong growth, innovative strategies, and market leadership in their sector.

The GUBA Awards, now in their sixth year, seek to celebrate exceptional talent and commitment to advancement within the Ghanaian and British community. The prestigious GUBA Black Star Award will be awarded to thirteen outstanding members of the Ghanaian, UK and African community, honouring them for their consistency, dedication to excellence and longstanding contributions to society.

A product of Elmina, Central Region of Ghana, Dr Nduom is an esteemed academic who holds a Bachelors of Arts Degree in Economics, a Master of Science Degree in Management and a Doctorate Degree in Service Delivery Systems, in addition to other qualifications. He joined Deloitte & Touche in 1981 and became a partner in Milwaukee, USA in 1986. He became the Chairman of the Board of Deloitte & Touche Africa Region in 2000. Co-owner of Nduom (an international conglomerate with close to 60 companies in countries across Africa, the UK and the United States), Dr Nduom has an impeccable record as an economist & management analyst.

Dr Papa Kwesi Nduom has also made a considerable mark in Ghanaian politics. He has been elected an Assembly Member and also a Member of Parliament. He has been a three-time presidential candidate. Dr Nduom has also had the privilege of serving as minister of state for Economic Planning, Energy and Public Sector Reform between 2001 and 2007.

The GUBA Black Star award is in recognition of Dr Nduoms exceptional business acumen in establishing and sustaining various successful ventures across numerous sectors. Tickets for the award can be purchased at www.gubaawards.co.uk/ticket/

GUBA 2017 SPONSORS  Title Sponsor: ECOM Ghana. Category Sponsors: uniBank Ghana, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Imperial Homes, ABN TV and Radio. CEO Dinner Sponsor: PayAngel.

Media Partners: ROK TV, VOX Africa TV, Starr Radio UK, Hot Digital Online FM, Rising Africa, Afropulp Magazine, The Voice Newspaper, Glam Africa, ABN TV and Radio, GHOne TV, Starr FM, OK FM, Peace FM, Adom TV, UTV, Hot Digital Online FM, Ahomka FM, FAB Photography, AKLASS photography, SWAG of Africa, Screen Nation, Inspirational You,

Partners: Final Effects Studios, NAS Studios, Anita Erskine Media, Precise Marketing, E-Volution International, Plant It Events and MakeUp Ghana. Material Sponsors: Vlisco, Kente Queen. Outfit sponsors: A-COTE Collections, Jay Renkyi. Travel Sponsor: Faze 2 Services
For me, it is all about people having jobs, and that is why I make no apology for having focused relentlessly on employment and job creation. Enda Kenny

Decent Work Agenda (DWA) has become increasingly recognized as a key approach to global and national development and the global financial crisis has also underscored the critical response measures that focuses on decent job creation and social job protection by intervening in the labour market to protect workers and promote better employment out-comes in both developed and developing countries including Ghana.

In recent related development, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in Ghana has also underscored the need for the government to create decent jobs to move the nation out of poverty and according to the Secretary-General of the TUC, Dr Yaw Baah, also stated that We need jobs to take us out of poverty. We can get out of poverty only when we manage to create decent jobs for our people,

Poverty, as others will define as a general scarcity or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money, is a multifaceted concept, that includes social, economic, and political elements that has been a danger to socio economic development globally and the weapon at which can used against this global phenomenon involves full employment and decent work creation especially in Ghana to fight against poverty as we are fighting against Galamsey now.

I can now recall the pre-celebration event which was also organized by the TUC and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Director of labour Policy and Research at the Labour College and labour market specialist Mr. Kwabena Nyarko-Otoo, noted that after 60 years of independence, there is very little to celebrate since thousands of workers in the country still remain without social protection.

The Labour expert pointed out that even though the country has clocked 60 years of independence, decent jobs, employment opportunities, workers rights, and social protection are still a mirage to workers in the country.

Moreover, according to Dr Baah the figures emanated from Ghana statistical Service indicated that only about 1.5 million out of working population of 13 million Ghanaians, between the ages of 15 and 60 years were engaged in what could be termed as decent jobs.

The figures further also specified that 10 million out of the working population of 13 million are also engaged in what they described as bad jobs, while the remaining 1.5 million were jobless.

Dr. Baah reiterated that when he say bad jobs he refers to workers who are even not sure about their salaries, when they are going to be paid; even when they are sick they have to go to work or they could still be fired. These are jobs that do not guarantee the future of a person. These are not jobs that will guarantee your social security when you retire at the age of 60.

Guy Ryder, ILO Director-General once stated that It doesn't matter whether you do small or big Job; what matters is job Contentment. It means workers in Ghana should have job satisfaction irrespective of the job sizes whether big or small and the labour law of Ghana should also be a guide to the employers to entreat their workers equally fairly and legitimately.

It is very imperative for employers to do so in a sense that the figures from Ghana Statistical service shows that majority of the able working population in Ghana now, does not have decent work in which decent work should be created and the one already there, should be also upheld to serves as a weapon against Ghanas poverty.

It also means that the government and private establishments should be expand their employment opportunities to absorbed the rest of the larger population who are actively ready for jobs but are not getting to reduce the poverty rates in the country.

The well-being of the Ghanaian workers should be top priorities by their employers in order to satisfy them as International Labour Organization defined decent work as productive work for women and men in conditions of freedom, equality, security and human dignity. It also involves opportunities for work that deliver a fair income; provide security in the workplace and social protection for workers and their families. It offers better prospects for personal development which also encourage social integration; give people the freedom to express their concerns, to organize and to participate in decisions that affect their lives; and guarantee equal opportunities and treatment for all.

Local government service for example, certain category of workers is more respected than others and instead of the government to make all category or classes of the workers attractive, it is rather creating excessive competition and therefore workers want to join certain classes and leave the others while all the classes are very imperative to implement government policies locally as decentralization demands.

Productive employment is one of the key mechanisms for ensuring effective distribution of economic development since a major portion of family income, and the livelihood of individuals, essentially stems from earnings generated in the labour market depends on decent job.

(ILO) report depicts that decent and productive jobs, sustainable enterprises and economic transformation play a key role in reducing poverty. While development assistance remains important, countries that managed to pull themselves out of poverty were those that were able to move from low to higher productive activities, while strengthening institutions for governance and social protection for workers and their families.

On a more serious note that is what is expecting from the government by the Ghanaian citizens to create more decent jobs, reduce utility bills and taxes, improve electricity power, pay workers well, promotion should be done on time, provision of all required resources for workers among others in order to attract and motivate workers to also go to work on time and work efficiently and with this Ghanas poverty will be eradicated as Jim Clifton once said  The demands of leadership have changed. The highest levels if leadership requires mastery of a new task: job creation. Traditional leadership through politics, military force, religion, or personal values won't work in the future like it has in the past.

By: Abraham Frank Eshun

Public Relations Officer

Cape Coast Metropolitan Assembly

[email protected]
A diplomat in the Mahama administration and a failed parliamentary candidate for Abuakwa North, Victor Smith, believes that an overhaul of the NDC's executive structure is non-negotiable following the partys overwhelming defeat in the 2016 elections.

Everyone from the General Secretary, Johnson Nketia to the NDCs Chairman, Kofi Poturphy, must be kicked out at the partys next congress in favour of what Mr. Smith called new die-hard selfless people.

Speaking on the Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News, Mr. Smith emphatically that, we should change the whole guard. We should start with some die-hard selfless people I think he [Asiedu Nketia] has been there long enough. We should just clean the stables.

This is in spite of the fact that he sees nothing wrong with maintaining former President John Mahama, who led the NDC to its monumental defeat from a position of incumbency.

He maintained that if we [the NDC] want to be the ones in the driving seat in 2020, our best bet is the one we put out there already. He [Mahama] did so well but there were some hiccups and that probably led to us losing the elections.

Mr. Smith however suggested that, President Mahama may have lost his way when he said the partys executives should have helped him [Mahama] more than they did. They had the power as a political party to reign in on the President. I think the party was weak in dealing with him.



By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifmonline.com/Ghana
The 2016 HIV sentinel survey report has revealed that Volta and Brong Ahafo Regions jointly top the list of prevalence rate.

According to the report, the two regions recorded the highest prevalence rate of 2.7 per cent for 2016 which is above the national HIV prevalence of 2.4 per cent.

The Northern Region registered the lowest prevalence rate, recording 0.7 per cent prevalence rate.

Figures for other regions

The prevalence rate for the other regions are:

Eastern 2.6 per cent,

Ashanti a 2.6 per cent,

Western -2.5 per cent,

Upper West 2.5 per cent,

Greater Accra 2.4 per cent,

Central 1.8 per cent and

Upper East 1.7 per cent.

HIV prevalence was higher in urban areas hitting 2.5 per cent, compared to 1.9 per cent for rural areas.

The 2016 HIV sentinel survey report revealed that the young population between the ages of 15 and 24, a proxy for new infections remained unchanged at 1.1 per cent.

HIV among pregnant women increase

The National AIDS Control Programme said the report shows an increase in prevalence rate among pregnant women representing a second consecutive time of rising incidence among the Ghanaian pregnant women.

Second consecutive upsurges

According to the report, the HIV prevalence for 2016 of 2.4 per cent represents a second consecutive upsurge from the 2014 prevalence of 1.6 per Cent and 1.8 per cent in 2015.

HIV prevalence among ages 45-49 highest

It revealed that HIV prevalence by age group 45-49 is highest at 5.69;?) followed by 35-39 with 15-19 being the lowest at 0.6 per cent.

Agormanya, Sunynai top urban sites

The highest prevalence within urban sites was 4.2 per cent in Agormanya in the Eastern Region and Sunynai in the Brong Ahafo Region with Wa in the Upper West Region with 3.7 per cent.

Rural prevalence highest at Fanteakwa

Rural prevalence ranged from 0.5. per cent in Builsa in the Upper East Region, Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region and Salaga in the Northern Region to 3.3 per cent in F anteakwa in the Estem Region.

Types of HIV recorded in 2016

According to the report, the proportion of HIV subtype 1 is 98.5 per cent compared to 1.5 per cent for dual HIV type 1 and 2 infections while there was no HIV type 2 infection.

Syphilis figures

It said median syphilis prevalence for 2016 is 0.2 per cent and the regional syphilis infections ranged from zero in Brong Ahafo and Upper East regions to 0.8 per cent in the Central Region.

The HIV sentinel survey is a cross sectional survey targeting pregnant women attending antenatal clinics in selected areas in the country.

In the last 11 years, health officials say, the HIV Sentinel Survey data have been used as the primary data source for the National HIV and AIDS estimates.
Analysts in the e-crime space have impressed the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to strengthen its collaboration with security institutions such as Interpol to stop the operations of ponzi scheme, MMM.

They admit that the complex condition under which the company operates would require effective collaborations to be able to clamp down such operations.

According to the Principal Consultant at the e-Crime bureau, Albert Antwi Bosiako, partnerships between Ghanaian regulators and international agencies will facilitate the halt in MMM's operations.

In terms of going after them if they are not legally registered to operate as a business, Interpol system provides a good platformthere has been a bit of work and certain protocols that different countries could follow and bring the perpetrators to book, Mr. Antwi Bosiako suggested.

The activities of the ponzi scheme has already commenced in Ghana.

This comes at a time that Nigerian authorities have been facing a tough time controlling the operations in that country.

Already, some 3 million Nigerians are reported to have lost 18 billion Naira to the scheme.

But a statement by the Bank of Ghana on Wednesday, warned the public not to conduct any business with MMM.

The central bank argued that the scheme's operations flout provisions of the Banks and Specialized Deposit Taking Act.

Mr. Antwi Bosiako who is also however says the legality of the scheme in some jurisdictions will require that Ghana courts the assistance of such states to deal with the situation.

Some of these operations are registered and legally they are active in some jurisdictions so you will also expect some kind of collaboration between the Bank of Ghana and that of other jurisdictions to monitor and eventually bring the activities of these organisations under some control, he asserted.

About MMM

The ponzi scheme which was founded some twenty-eight years ago in Russia, currently operates in one hundred and eighteen (118) countries including five African countries.

MMM entices people by promising them a 30 percent return after giving out an amount of money to support others.

This, the scheme says is to 'destroy the world's unjust financial system.'



By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
The Ghana COCOBOD has ruled out any significant impact of the army worm infestation on the output for cocoa for the 2016/2017 crop season.

COCOBOD explains to Citi Business News it has managed the situation to prevent a widespread infestation.

The Public Affairs Manager of COCOBOD, Noah Amenyah however admitted that the pests have affected some cocoa farms in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions.

Because we have been treating the condition from time to time, we have that strategy to deal with the worms so the areas that have been affected have been treated and the team is standing by to address any new indication of the disease, he told Citi Business News.

He added, About three weeks ago, it was reported to us that the pests have surfaced in areas in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions.

Already, some farmers have begun counting their losses following the infestation of army worms on crops.

The Agric Ministry has since allocated funds for the spraying of affected farms to avert a disaster upon a further spread of the disease.

Despite some concerns from industry on the possible impact of the infestation on the cash crop, Mr. Amenyah reassured that the intervention should avert any such occurrences.

He was confident the affected areas would not escalate into proportions to cut down the production target for the 2016/2017 crop season.

It has not gotten to damaging stages and not at a stage that you could quantify their damage to affecting our total production and subsequently to our loan intake.

COCOBOD to meet target

Meanwhile the COCOBOD is highly confident that its 850,000 metric tonnes target is on course as the end of the heavy crop season has shown promising signs of attaining the target.

Our production target is on course and we hope we will be able to pay back any loan that we may have taken to purchase cocoa, Noah Amenyah said.



By: Pius Amihere Eduku/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
Secret video recordings and photos purported to be the sexual encounters between the Chinese galamsey queen, and some top security officers and politicians in the country have popped up.

The release of the sex tapes and photos follows the locking up of the galamsey kingpin, Aisha Huang (a Chinese) and four of her assigns in custody, awaiting trial, by an Accra High Court on Tuesday

The Chinese woman is perceived untouchable, having built a network of influence in high places in the country with her 'woman power.' She and her gang of illegal miners (galamseyers) purportedly rely on that for protection whilst engaging in illegal gold mining activities, popularly known as galamsey.

Despite government's moratorium on galamsey operations across the country, the lady continuously carried on her illegal gold mining activities with impunity because she was said to be holding secret sexual video tapes of some power brokers in the security services and some politicians which she was using for blackmailing.

Veteran journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr of New Crusading Guide newspaper, had revealed on Joy FM's 'News File' programme last Saturday that three women of Chinese extraction were involved in the supposed sex tape.

In the said sex videos  which are in circulation on social media  a woman purported to be among the Chinese illegal miners  is seen being bonked in different positions by a man whose face has been buried.

In one of the videos, a woman is seriously doing a blow job on a man whose face is not shown, but could be heard making hissing sounds in ecstasy.

According to some concerned people, the sex tapes and photos have exposed the vulnerability of the country as men charged with the responsibility to protect it are so sentimental and prepared to trade off the nation's wealth  gold  for sex.

It has become talk of the town that the release of the tapes and photos is aimed at disabling the state authority from prosecuting the said ring leader of the galamsey group (Aisha Huang) and her assigns.

Aisha Huang was arrested last Saturday night for allegedly flouting mining laws with impunity when she was left off the hook in August last year following her arrest over a similar offence.

She had been freed and her excavators that were seized by operatives of the National Security, released following an order by the then Ashanti Regional Security Council (REGSEC) under Alexander Ackon, the then regional minister.

The arrest of the woman last Saturday came shortly after the apprehension of four other Chinese nationals who confessed working as illegal miners at Bepotenten in the Amansie West District of the Ashanti Region, for Aisha Huang.

The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) said Aisha was the kingpin of a Chinese galamsey gang, with other members being Gao Jin Cheng 45, Lu Qi Jun 39, Haibin Gao 26 and Zhang Zhi Peng 23.

The Comptroller General of the Ghana Immigration Service, Kwame Takyi, explained yesterday that following the revelations made by Kweku Baako, his men moved in to effect Aisha's arrest after receiving authorisation from the Interior Minister.

Mr Kwame Takyi said the galamsey suspects had been brought to Accra and were assisting in investigations.

Previous Arrest

Some national security operatives on July 30, 2016, raided various gold mining sites to impound excavators and a pickup vehicle belonging to the Chinese woman that were being used for the illegal mining operation.

She and her assigns had degraded lands, destroyed cocoa farms and polluted water bodies in several communities in the Amansie area, and the national security, in an attempt to clamp down on her activities, raided the sites.

At Gyaaman village, the activities of the Chinese galamsey operator allegedly left six children dead when the victims drowned in open pits.

However, the Ashanti Regional Security Council found it expedient to release the four excavators and the Toyota pickup to the galamsey miner to the chagrin of the local residents and owners of the mining concessions  Volta Resources Limited.

Minister's Explanation

The action followed a decision arrived at by members of the Security Council to correct and streamline what they considered to be a breach of orthodox way and acceptably recognized rules of the REGSEC in relation to anti-galamsey operations.

Even though the region's former security liaison officer in the person of Enoch Amoako Nsiah, authorised the seizure of the excavators, the minister returned them to Aisha.

The former minister explained that the Security Council in an attempt to establish leads, found it necessary to release the excavators to the owners in order to conduct proper investigation towards the clamp-down of the illegal mining activities in the region.

On July 30, 2016, some operatives of the National Security  with assistance from officers at the Asokwa Divisional Police Command in Kumasi raided the Manso Tontokrom gold field to clamp down on activities of galamseyers.

The illegal miners, including members of Aisha's group, reportedly fled the scene upon seeing the police, leaving behind mining equipment and tools.

Two Chinese galamseyers, Chen Bingin 30 and Wu Xing Qiang 36, who were said to be working for the 'untouchable' woman, were also arrested after a chase, while ten excavators which they were using for the mining operation were seized by a combined team of security personnel.

From Ernest Kofi Adu, Kumasi
President Akufo-Addo has settled on Justice Sophia A.B. Akuffo as the next Chief Justice. She takes over from Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, a choice which continues a record of firsts  the first being the assumption of the position by the outgoing Chief Justice when she was picked by former President John Agyekum Kufuor.

Ms Georgina Wood is the first female Chief Justice to hand over to a female Supreme Court judge.

The choice makes good the prediction of DAILY GUIDE yesterday that Justice Sophia Akuffo would win the day, in spite of the heightened jostling for the topmost judicial position.

Justice Akuffo slipped past all other contenders for the chief justice position, with some of the judges allegedly hiring publicists to hype their profile, and some of them whipping tribal sentiments.

She holds an LLB in Law from the University of Ghana, Legon, Accra and an LLM Master degree in Law from Harvard Law School, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA.

Even before exhausting the requirements prior to the eventual swearing-in of the next Chief Justice, the president, DAILY GUIDE can confirm, would present the new CJ to the nation today, barring unforeseen alterations in arrangements.

President Akufo-Addo would present the name of the next Chief Justice to the Council of State for advice  a constitutional requirement prior to moving to the next stage, which is parliamentary vetting and approval before the swearing-in function.

This notch was preceded by media manouvres and analysis, one of which presented Justice Sophia as a grey horse who could spring a surprise. By this development, Justice Sophia Akuffo has really sprung a surprise, having beaten Justice Jones Victor Dotse and Justice Kwasi Anin-Yeboah to it.

In their analysis, commentators had alluded to regionalism and ethnocentrism  both of which do not have a place in judicial convention and precedence.

Indeed, it has been established that there has been an instance when the president and the chief justice hailed from the same region.

The choice of a chief justice by the President and Commander-In-Chief is guided by the choice's seniority at the bench, appreciation of the law and competence, all other considerations only secondary and of no major importance.

President Akufo-Add, being a lawyer of long standing  his law practice boasting of an outstanding pedigree from which hordes of new lawyers, including the incoming chief justice received their critical tutelage  understands more than many others what to look for in a chief justice.

Another first is the fact that this is the first time that a president is picking a chief justice who passed through his tutelage at the bar.

Justice Sophia Akuffo is touted as a disciplined personality whose stint with the African Court of Human Rights stands her apart from others.

For those who tipped Justice William Atuguba  the most senior  their positions fell short of the realities. He is close to retiring with less than a year to go.

President Akufo-Addo, DAILY GUIDE has learnt, would want to obviate the inconveniences of seeking a replacement for a person who would hold the position for barely a year, the procedures being too cumbersome for comfort and convenience.

Justices Atuguba and Sophia Akuffo have one professional feature in common  they were both picked from the bar for the bench appointments and sworn in on the same day as justices of the Supreme Court. Both were appointed by former President Jerry John Rawlings in May 1997.

By A.R. Gomda
A FORENSIC AUDIT will soon be undertaken to determine the actual cost of the Rattray Park in Kumasi, as available financial records at the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) indicates that US$1,267,241.00 was used in the construction instead of the staggering US$4.5 million which was quoted as the project cost.

The Kumasi Mayor, Osei Assibey Antwi, stated, Obviously, this is about US$3.2 million far less than the US$4.5 million declared as the cost of construction. There is certainly the need for a forensic audit to establish the actual cost of the project.

Delivering his maiden sessional address to the packed-to-capacity house on Thursday, the mayor said some contractors, with no formal contracts, had been trooping to the KMA recently for the payment of goods supplied/works done, in connection with the Rattray Park project.

The Kumasi Mayor said it therefore goes without saying that the cost of some of the works might not have been formally captured, proposing that the only means to clear the doubts about the exact cost of the project, is a forensic audit, which will be done soon.

Rattray Park History

The Rattray Park was built by the erstwhile National Democratic Congress (NDC) government under the supervision of Kojo Bonsu, the then Kumasi Mayor, who whilst addressing a section of the media in Kumasi, quoted a whopping US$4.5 million, as the cost of the project.

This figure was met with instant protests by some of the assembly members, notably, Abraham Boadi aka Opooman, the Ridge/Nhyiaeso Assemblyman, who is now the Presiding Member of the KMA. He argued that the amount quoted was bloated.

KMA Financial Records

Mr Osei Assibey stated that the KMA financial records that he came to meet show that the overall budgetary allocation for this project for the period, 2013-2016 was GH5,278,674.40 and that total payments made in respect of various lots of the project as at 31st December, 2016, was GH5,068,964.01 or $1,267,241.00, using a conservative rate of GH4 to a dollar.

Obviously, this is about $3.2 million far less than the $4.5 million declared as the cost of construction. He added that the CCTV cameras installed at the facility are not working; equipment at the gym are exposed to the vagaries of the weather, among a host of challenges.

The mayor stated that the children's playground lacks the variety of materials and space to accommodate the different age ranges and some of the facilities that would attract more patronage are not installed or are inadequate in number to satisfy the demands of the patrons.

He assured that We shall have to develop a strategy, including a marketing plan, that will turn around the fortunes of the park and make it more viable, adding that his administration, which would be transparent, would seek to expedite the growth of the city.

Huge Debt

Mr Osei Assibey announced that the KMA is currently indebted to the tune of GH119,213,333.22, accumulated over several years, claiming that the financial status of the assembly, which is also saddled with judgment debt to the tune of GH6,427,287.75, is not encouraging at all.

Giving details of the KMA's debt stockpiled over the years, he said the assembly owes Common Fund contractors and suppliers GH321,550.59; IGF suppliers GH3,599,717,05; IGF contractors GH855,564.42, waste management service providers GH63,833,626.73 and judgment debt creditors GH50,602,874.43.

Focus Areas

Mr Assibey noted that settlement of legal disputes and related debts, efficient and effective waste and sanitation management, decongestion of human and vehicular traffic in the central business district, relocation of traders to the Kejetia and other satellite markets, creation of enabling business environment and development of car parks, are some of his core focus areas.

FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi




The ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has asked all current executives of the party who have been given appointments in the new government to resign without delay.

With this decision by the National Council of the party, leading executives like National Women's Organizer, Otiko Afisa Djaba, who is the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection; Volta Regional Chairman John Peter Amewu, Lands and National Resources Minister as well as Kwaku Asomah-Kyeremeh, Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, who doubles as the Regional Chairman, will all have to decide whether to leave their ministerial appointments and do party work or abandon party work and concentrate on their respective appointments.

Others likely to be affected include Central Regional Minister Kwamena Duncan, who is the NPP Regional Secretary; Volta Regional Minister Dr. Archibald Letsa, First Vice Chairman; Ishmael Ashietey, Greater Accra Regional Minister who doubles as the Regional Chairman; Nii Adjei-Sowah, Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive who is the Regional Organizer as well as many other MMDCE nominees.

A statement issued in Accra and signed by the Acting General Secretary John Boadu, said the decision was taken at the NPP's National Council Meeting which was attended by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and former President J.A. Kufuor, with Acting National Chairman Freddie Blay, chairing the meeting.

Apart from the decision for asking officers to resign, the release stated that the meeting expressed strong disapproval and regret against the actions and utterances of the Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Otiko Afisa Djaba and the Northern Regional Chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu.

The two party stalwarts have hit the media spotlight of late following the trading of accusation and counter accusation over the handling of certain matters in the party.

Even though the two apologized profusely, the meeting severely reprimanded them and bonded them to be of good behaviour. They were also asked to put their apologies into written statements, Mr John Boadu said.

He said the party fixed its National Delegates' Conference for the 25th to 27th of August, 2017 to be held in Cape Coast, the Central Regional capital, and also approved the party's hosting of the International Democratic Union's (IDU) 2017 executive meeting in Accra from the 18th to 21st of June, 2017.

According to Mr John Boadu, President Akufo-Addo briefed the meeting on the government's programmes of 'Planting for Food and Jobs,' Establishment of the Development Authorities, the One District, One Factory Project, the Establishment of the Office of the Special Prosecutor and the sustenance of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

The president reiterated that the 'Planting for Food and Jobs' program has already engaged 200,000 farmers and would eventually engage 2.5 million farmers. The Agric Extension Programme has been revived and 1,200 trained officers have been engaged, according to the release.

It further indicated that the president had said, The One District, One Factory will kick off in 51 districts and launched in June 2017. Government has also set aside a stimulus package of $100 million to revive distressed but strategic and viable Ghanaian industries.

The president affirmed Government will soon retire the huge debt of 1.2 billion owed the National Health Insurance providers to put this major social intervention on a new course, adding that Legislation will be introduced in the next meeting of parliament to establish the 3 development authorities to set the stage for the implementation of the $1m per constituency per year development programme.

Mr Boadu also said that President Akufo-Addo had told the council that Legislation will also be introduced in the next meeting of parliament to set the Office of the Special Prosecutor as a foremost public institution in the fight against corruption. The meeting ended with assurance from the president that all remaining government appointments will be completed by the end of May 2017.

By William Yaw Owusu
Cylinder bomb goes off near RPP leader's residence in Duwakot

An unidentified group detonated a cylinder bomb at Duwakot of Changunarayan Municipality  2, Bhaktapur on Friday.


Nana Donkor Okyere Siabuor III, a 58-year-old divisional chief in the Sefwi Ahwiaso area of the Western Region, has been arrested by the Bibiani police for allegedly masterminding the killing of a retired educationist in the area.

Four other suspects who allegedly aided in murdering the educationist  Samuel Benson Kwakye, 68  have also been arrested.

They are Adu Yaw, 35; Kweku Ntim, 38; Kofi Mduro, 57 and Kofi Jamal Attah, 26.

According to eyewitnesses, two pieces of rope were used to tie the neck and the feet of the man and was buried in a shallow trench in his farm on April 21, 2017.

The Western Regional Police Public Relations Officer (PRO), ASP Olivia Ewurabena Adiku, told DAILY GUIDE that one Thomas Nsiah, assembly member for Sefwi Ahwiaso electoral area, reported the case to the police.

Thomas Nsiah told the police that on April 20, 2017, Samuel Benson Kwakye, aged 58 years, went to his cocoa farm at Sefwi Ahwiaso, but did not return home.

The following day, a search party, including policemen from Bibiani district and some civilians found Samuel Benson Kwakye killed, with multiple injuries on the body at the farm.

The body was removed and deposited at the Bibiani Government Hospital pending autopsy.

Later the Bibiani police had a tip-off of the whereabouts of the five suspects allegedly involved in the murder of Mr Benson Kwakye at a location at Agona Ashanti.

ASP Olivia Adiku said that four of the suspects admitted their involvement in the murder.

However, the divisional chief, who was implicated as the alleged contractor for the murder with the sum of GHc5,000, is yet to open up.

The suspects, the police officer indicated, are in custody pending further investigations.

Form Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi


NPP member of Parliament for Gomoa Central constituency in the Central Region, Hon. Naana Eyiah Quansah says there is the need for civil society to intensity public education on the need for the Rights of Persons With Disabilities (PWDs)

According to the MP, Persons With Disability should benefit from all forms of Human Rights as enshrine in the constitution of Ghana to better their livelihood.

She noted that the time has come to ensure that special schools in the country were fully resourced so that children with various disabilities could access formal education and were disability friendly to them.

Hon.Naana Eyiah Quansah noted this when she donated food items to suschool topupils of the Agona Swedru Salvation Army School for the Deaf in the Agona West Municipality of the Central Region.

The item include bags of rice and sugar, boxes of Tin Tomatoes, gallons of cooking oil, and others associated with cooking food for the pupils.

She disclosed that the donation came as a results of an appeal made by the authorities of the school to come to their aid.

Most of the pupils hails from the Gomoa Central constituency such as Gomoa Aboso, Ekroful, Ekwamkrom, Afransi, Osamkrom, Brofoyedur, Kwameadwer and Benso among others.

The Gomoa Central Member of Parliament stated that she would continually support Persons With Disability ( PWDs) and the valuable in the society to benefit from the national cake adding that such people should not be marginalized in the disbursement of the national cake.

She therefore called on various civil society groups Hunan Rights activists to include the Rights of Persons With Disability in their public educations, seminars.and programs.

" It's unfortunate that people with special needs have been left to their own plight ,We all have to do our best to support our brothers and sisters who have found themselves in such unfortunate situation.

As a mother, I want to encourage parents who have such children with various forms of disabilities such as blindness, deafness or physically challenged to do all they can to invest in their education "

Presenting the item on behalf of the MP, the Gomoa Central constituency Organizer of the NPP, Mr. Philimon Darko said the President of the Republic of Ghana, H. E Nana Addo Dankwa Akuffo Addo led NPP government has rolled various programs and policies to support Persons With Disabilities.

He commended teachers in the school for their sacrificial work adding that teaching deaf students was tedious task that needs recommendations.

Mr. Evans Awuah Ninsin, the Gomoa Central NPP Communication officer, noted that plans were far advanced for the party in collaboration with the Gomoa East District Assembly to support disabled perons to improve their living conditions.

According to him,society should not see persons with disabilities as outcast but partners in national development.

Receiving the items, the Headteacher of the Swedru Salvation Army School for the Deaf, Mr. Emmanuel Nutakor expressed his gratitude to the MP for her kind gesture saying it would be put into good use to benefit the students.
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Successive governments at all levels had raised the issue of opening local production of vaccines many times that never saw light of the day. However, with the outbreak of meningitis and the recent call by health workers for vaccine production in the country, the government may not turn a new leaf given its antecedents,Odimegwu Onwumere writes

What will it cost Nigeria to produce vaccines?

This Meningitis outbreak shows that the Ministry of Health has no solid plan of action to help prevent such widespread outbreaks. It is disheartening that here in Nigeria, we wait until there is an epidemic or an outbreak before we start running helter-skelter to try to manage it, cried out Dr. Nini Iyizoba, a contributor to national and international health discourses.

Iyizobas thoughts came when over 8,000 cases of Cerebro Spinal Meningitis, CSM, and about 800 deaths were reported in Nigeria by April 17 2017, amidst were 336 children. This precarious disease that was reported late 2016 with the authorities showing lackadaisical attitude, escalated this year, especially in the North-west and North-central zones, compelling the once ostensible lame-duck authorities to pronounce it as contagion in six states of Katsina, Kebbi, Zamfara, Niger, Sokoto and Yobe  informed the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN).

According to science, meningitis is a serious disease in which there is inflammation of the meninges, caused by viral or bacterial infection, and marked by intense headache and fever, sensitivity to light, and muscular rigidity; and most affected age group is 5-14 years of age. The source added that those in whose hand its to handle such a case were motiveless given that, Meningitis is quite common in sub-Saharan Africa and countries like Nigeria, Senegal, Niger, Chad, Benin, Mali, Burkina Faso etc which make up the Meningitis Belt.

Apart from the 2016-2017 presence of the disease, health establishments educated that this is not the first time that the country was experiencing meningitis. In 1996 alone, Meningitis killed more than 11,000 people in Nigeria. In 2009, almost 600 people died. In fact, just two years ago, a meningitis epidemic affected almost 10,000 people and killed over 1,000 people in Nigeria. And now, again, in 2017, its happening all over again, enthused Iyizoba, adding, How can we not be prepared? Why should we be caught unawares? It is occurrences like these that make people theorise about the lack of empathy for the poor or average Nigerian life.



Failed promises on vaccines

Experts have judged that if there were local vaccine production plants in the country, it is apparent that the number of the affected would not have risen as drugs would be at doorsteps to help in the outbreak. But over the years the authorities have deafened peoples ears that they would be building drug plants and manufacture vaccines in Nigeria that never come to be. Hence, Nigerians have taken the governments overtures on production of vaccines in the country aftermath of the epidemic as a tale by moonlight.

Many believed that what the authorities have always preferred was what it did recently: Buy and share drugs. In the voice of Iyizoba, About 500,000 doses of Meningitis C vaccine have been distributed to affected areas in the North for immediate vaccination. Approximately, another 800,000 doses are being expected from United Kingdom to help support the ongoing vaccination programmes. That brings the total to about 1.3m vaccine doses for a country that has a population of over 180m people.

In several occasions, individuals and organisations such as the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN) have pleaded with the federal government to redirect its focus on local production of vaccines. But the government wouldnt do this given the many years it had been clamouring for erecting vaccines and drug production plants in the country.

The government would always prefer to import vaccines even when there were suggestions that the Federal Vaccine Laboratory, Yagba, can help Nigeria vaccines-wise go a long way if reinvested in. Before its comatose condition, this outfit produced vaccines that were sent to foreign countries.



Many failed calls on local vaccines

In July 2013, the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA), had called on the federal government to gear up in producing domestic vaccines, but that call seemed unattended to.

NMAs call was in order to curtail the sprinting of hepatitis in the country, which was viral. It was the then President of the association, Dr. Osahon Enabulele who made the call on the occurrence of the 2013 World Hepatitis Day. It is evident that the call died immediately it was made.

Even when Dr. Enabulele made it known at the occasion that hepatitis virus A, B, C, D and E were accountable for the millions of death in the country, because they caused sensitive and unremitting infections and inflammation of the liver, the government did not bellyache.



Failed attempts to produce vaccines

In June 2012, ex-President Goodluck Jonathan had approved the local production of vaccines with an aim tailored towards everyday accessibility of routine vaccines in the country. While Jonathan might have meant well for the health sector with his government taking-off with Biovaccines Nigeria Limited, which was a joint project company between Federal Government and May and Baker Nigeria Plc, that project did not meet the direction it was intended to reach. If it had reached, the health sector and the government wouldnt be gasping for air on where to get vaccines for the control of outbreak of meningitis in the country as they are doing today.

At the opening of the Health Canada-NAFDAC Mentorship Launch aimed at building the Agencys capacity in the area of vaccine regulation on March 26, 2013, the then Director General of National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Dr. Paul Orhii said that the country was ready to start local production of routine immunisation vaccines for tuberculosis, hepatitis B, diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis/whooping cough (DPT), polio, measles and yellow fever. With these words by Orhii  We want to start manufacturing vaccines. We are starting on a right footing of vaccine production in Nigeria by beginning with capacity building of NAFDAC officers  up till now, there is nothing on ground to show for the mouthing.

From the month of June 2012, there was expectancy that Nigeria would have a world-class vaccine plant where the production of Yellow Fever vaccines would be fad in 18 months, but this expectation also bit the dust.



Lying on vaccines

Opinions were that the government has been toying with the hope of Nigerians of benefitting from a well designed local vaccines production, given the statement by the MD/CEO, May and Baker Plc, Mr. Nnamdi Okaforthat could not have come to pass till date.

Our job is to revive that entity using our knowledge, expertise and resources to produce and distribute vaccines in Nigeria once again and consequently end the era of 100 per cent dependence on foreign vaccine producers to immunise our citizens against vaccine preventable diseases that ravage our society.

Okafor made it known that the requisite industrial capability had been attained. But Nigerians have been wondering why they still gasp for local vaccines today, if that target has been met. Hear Okafor again, Our major priority now is to commence local vaccines production as soon as possible. The Biovaccines business plan is being reviewed and will be presented to the Board as soon the latter is constituted. We plan to commence construction of a new vaccine plant at the new site in Ota, Ogun State with a view to starting production of Yellow Fever vaccines within 18 months.



Millions of money that never produced vaccines

The initial plan for the vaccines plant in Ota was to give hope in Nigeria that there would be enough and quality vaccines that are also secure and inexpensive, and create job opportunities for Nigerians.

Okafor even captured it thus: By going into local vaccine production, Nigeria will be putting the health security of her citizens in its hands. Immunisation is a national health security issue. No country can afford to leave the health security of her citizens in the hands of foreign organisations.

The venture would also save Nigeria substantial savings in foreign exchange and logistics costs of vaccine importation. Currently, the federal government spends over N6 billion to import vaccines every year, excluding what is imported by states and local governments.

Local vaccine production will ensure Nigerias participation in an industry that is at the cutting edge of science by helping to transfer technology to Nigeria and build capacity for primary healthcare delivery.

It is hoped that the federal government would stop making further overtures on local production of vaccines but just go into action.

Odimegwu Onwumere is an award-winning writer based in Rivers State. He contributed this via [email protected]


The Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana (CLOGSAG) is mounting a serious challenge against the government's position that there are 26,000 ghost names on the public sector payroll.

According the Executive Secretary of CLOGSAG, Isaac Bampoe Addo, the introduction of the Electronic Salary Payment Voucher (ESPV) since 2014 should never give rise to the presence of ghost names since every worker is supposed to have been validated.

Reacting to the unending issue of ghost names on the government's payroll at a news conference in Accra yesterday, Bampoe-Addo revealed that he, together with other top CLOGSAG executives have seen their names in the ghost payroll and asked sarcastically are we ghosts?

Sectional heads are supposed to validate every government worker monthly before the salaries are released. They continue to tell us that there are ghost names yet nobody has been held culpable or prosecuted for his or her actions.

We all went for our bio data to be captured yet they are saying that there are still ghost names. It means that those running the software are milking the state.

He said that one of the controls prior to the preparation of vouchers was the validation of the names on the pay voucher saying what is intriguing about the ESVP is the never-ending control of the public service data and information.

According to the CLOGSAG boss, It has been the practice since IPPD 1 in the 1990s to IPPD 3 initiated and terminated in 2016 that that consultant's software is installed on servers of the Controller and Accountant General's Department, adding these servers are housed at the Controller and Accountant General's Department.

However, we stand to be corrected, the Controller and Accountant General server on ESPV has been placed at the services of the company running the ESPV and housed at the company's premises, and wondered what made a private company host data/information on public servants.

CLOGSAG Boss said the linkage of public sector pay system with SSNIT Biometric Data needs further explanation and described the situation as public sector payroll games.

They called on the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to investigate the situation and bring the ghost names issue to bed.

By William Yaw Owusu




Alan Kyeremateng, Minister of Trade and Industry says Trade Facilitation is a cornerstone of the governments trade and economic development agenda.

According to him government believes that Trade Facilitation will greatly assist Ghana in reaching her full potential as a leading trading nation, both regional and globally.

This in turn will create strong earnings and employment growth within the country, Mr. Kyeremateng said when speaking at the recent Stakeholder Conference on Ghanas National Single Window project which is being spearheaded by West Blue Consulting.

He lauded West Blue Consulting for the introduction of the Ghana National Single Window which is facilitating the ease with which Ghanaian companies compete in global and regional markets.

It reduces the time and cost of trading across borders and ensures predictability in delivering goods to markets. It also promotes transparency and enhances government revenue mobilization through increased compliance and enhanced economic performance. This is mutually beneficial for both government and business, Mr. Kyeremateng said.

WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement

He welcomed the entry into force of the WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, stating Ghana is one of the original signatories to the agreement and we believe it will have a tremendous impact on enhancing global trade.

WTO estimates that the agreement will generate over one trillion dollars in benefits annually and that the majority of these benefits will accrue to developing economies. It is the intention of the government of Ghana to fully capitalize on this opportunity and we are committed to the implementation of this agreement to develop a truly open, transparent and dynamic trading economy in our country.

We will redouble our efforts in export development and will use the advent of the WTO Trade Agreement to develop new market opportunities and support programmes for our traders, Mr. Kyeremateng said.

He said as the Ghana National Single Window unfolds over the next three years, we expect to achieve an overall reduction in the administrative time and cost of trading internationally by 50 percent and 25 percent respectively.

In addition to the positive impact on competitiveness and employment growth that I have already mentioned, this will make Ghana more attractive to foreign investment as transparency, predictability, time and cost are the key factors in the location decisions of export-oriented business, he emphasised.

[email protected]

By Cephas Larbi


President Akuffo Addo in a group picture with management of Fidelity and other dignitaries

The largest privately owned Ghanaian Bank in Ghana, Fidelity Bank has treated its customers and partners to a grand ball as part of its 10th anniversary celebration.

The grand ball which was attended by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and wife Rebecca was in honour of its cherished customers and partners for their loyalty and commitment to the bank for the last ten (10) years.

The Group CEO and Chairman of Fidelity Bank, Edward Effah, in his speech, expressed his deepest appreciation to clients and partners of the Bank for believing in the Fidelity brand and supporting the bank this far.

We started this journey in 2006 as the 22nd bank but today we are the largest privately owned Ghanaian bank, the 6th largest bank with 75 branches, 110 ATMs and over 900 agents. We owe our successes to you our loyal clients because you believed in us and have stayed with us all these years.

Achievement

Mr. Effah said Fidelity Bank has stayed true to its promise of supporting the growth of the national economy.

We have been able to make contributions towards Ghana's socio-economic development over the last ten years.

In the power sector, we have financed six out of the last 10 power projects. These include the Kpone Thermal Power Plant, the Tema Orsono Plant, Atholl Siemens, Karpowership and Genser Power Plants, contributing over 700MW to the power grid etc. In the area of financial inclusion, we have pioneered agency banking in Ghana with over 1000 agencies.

In the area of health, we have financed the procurement of specialized equipment, including the MRI scan at the 37 Military Hospital, the CT scan at Akai house etc.

The Managing Director of Fidelity Bank, Mr. Jim Baiden, pledged the Bank's continued support for the Ghanaian populace, promising that the next ten years of the Bank will see a phenomenal growth and expansion in terms of its technological infrastructure, branch network, products and services.

Other dignitaries who attended the event include the 2nd Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Johnson Asiamah, Chief of Staff, Mrs. Fremah Osei Opare, Former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman-Rawlings, Ministers of State, Parliamentarians and CEOs of various institutions.

Fidelity Bank was issued its universal banking license on June 28, 2006, making Fidelity Bank Ghana Limited, the 22nd bank to be licensed by the Bank of Ghana under the new Banking Act, 2004 (Act 673).
12.05.2017 LISTEN

The Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC) says it will soon publish details of its review of criteria and requirements for foreigners who wish to invest in the country.

As part of the new rules, GIPC is looking at offering citizenship or a 'Green Card' to foreign investors in return for capital.

Chief Executive of the Center Yoofi Grant who disclosed this said the move is part of several reforms that the Center is implementing to improve investment into the country.

He added that it is part of several options being considered to help improve capital attraction in Ghana.

This is also part of the Centres four-year plan to make Ghana the best place to do business and most investment friendly country in the sub-region.

Mr. Grant said, on one side we would be pushing investment attraction and on the other side we will be marketing the country and advocating for reforms.

The Center is also considering some sought of tax reliefs for these investors to help make the country the most competitive in Africa.

Again, Currently foreign investors who wish to invest in Ghana are required to provide a capital limit of $200,000 for joint ventures with Ghanaian companies, while foreign companies that are fully owned by non-Ghanaians must provide 500,000 dollars in capital.

Speaking to journalists after a breakfast meeting with investors and heads of missions in Ghana, the Chief Executive Officer of the GIPC, Mr. Yoofi Grant hinted that the new laws will look at the impact Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) on local companies.

The review of the GIPC [law] is a very interesting. There are many parts of the law which we think we could look at again to attract investors into the market. One that is a bit controversial is the capital limit, that says that if you are in joint venture with a foreigner the foreigner needs to demonstrate a minimum inflow of $200,000 and if it is a foreign company that wants to be 100 percent owned, we should bring a minimum capital inflow of $500, 000 and for trade $1,000,000. It has a reason for being there, but is that reason still valid? Has it been helpful in getting our companies to grow up and become as big? he asked.

Mr. Grant was of the view that it will be prudent to fully assess the impact of the laws over the years to redirect its focus.

My belief, and from the literature and the research we are doing it is not. So we need to take a relook at that law and open up and say that, no we will still say that if you can invest here, bring in the minimum in whatever figure it is. Let the companies come and invest in the country. There are companies that may come with the minimum investment of say $100,000 for example in the IT business but they come and employ 200 people, but because they will not meet the minimum capital, they will not come, he observed.

Recommending some measures, Mr. Grant maintained that the issue must be thoroughly discussed and addressed to provide a win-win situation for both foreign investors and Ghanaian business owners.

He reiterated the need to always consider global trends when formulating laws to make Ghana competitive since investors will move to alternative countries that provide cheaper cost of doing business.

So those are the kind of things we need to talk about. Bear in mind we are also comparing ourselves to our neighbours, Cote d'Ivoire, Nigeria, how can Ghana best position itself to be the main attraction center for West Africa, he said.
It is sad to come to terms with effect of government decision to push for the resignation of the former Governor of Bank of Ghana due to political vindictiveness.

Information gathered by the Economy Times indicates that the negotiated resignation of Dr. Abdul-Nashiru Issahaku, as Governor, three years ahead of his four-year mandate caused the taxpayer GH3,204,000 million.

The source of our information confirms that, the Akufo-Addo government, has since effected the mouthwatering payment to the ex-Governor of the Central Bank, who was forced to leave office effective April 1, 2017, and hand over to Dr. Ernest Kwamina Yedu Addison, same day.

Dr. Issahakus monthly salary was given as GH89,000 of which he was paid three years upfront advance payment to facilitate his resignation to the desire of the government.

Baring any increment, his successor, Dr. Addison is also to be paid the same salaries and allowances. In totality, it is estimated that, his 48-month term of office will cost the people of Ghana GH4,272 million extra.

This means the removal of the Governor of Bank of Ghana as a result of the change of government, has led to the country paying double what it would have paid had Dr. Issahaku remain in office as happened in the case of Dr. Paul Acquah in 2009 under the John Evans Atta Mills administration.

The replacement of the BoG boss is going to cost the nation GH7,476 million in the next 4 years. It is unclear, if Dr. Issahaku, was entitled to an end of service benefit and if the Akufo-Addo government has given him that package as well.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Old Tafo in the Ashanti Region and Minister of Monitoring and Evaluation, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, had claimed that ideological and political differences made Dr. Issahaku unfit to remain in office as Governor under an Akufo-Addo administration.

Council of State member and former President of the Ghana Bar Association, Lawyer Sam Okudzeto and Chief Executive Officer of Dalex Finance and Leasing Company Limited, Ken Thompson, had both kicked against the sacking Dr. Issahaku, but Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, who once served as Minister of Finance in the Kufuor administration, thinks otherwise.

Paa Kwesi Ammissah-Arthur, took over the governorship from Dr. Acquah ten months into the John Mills administration.

He served for eight years as governor and ensured a smooth transition before going on retirement.

Replacing the Central Bank boss, Mr. Thompson had warned, will have dire implications for the economy, as the incoming government, will have to dole out huge sums of money as a payoff to the governor and this is likely to affect investor confidence.

It is very sad because this whole debate that has been ignited, I believe, has to do with some individuals personal interest. But Akufo-Addo the President-elect must allow the institutions to work which I think will be to his advantage as well, Mr. Thompson has said.

Sam Okudzeto at the time of the controversy, also stated that the day of appointment of a governor is not the same as the day of appointment of the government so we must allow the law.

According to the law, the four-year term of a Governor of the central bank is protected and cannot be dismissed, even by the president unless on stated grounds.

Article 183 (4) (d) of the 1992 Constitution states that He shall not be removed from office except on the same grounds and in the same manner as a Justice of the Superior Court of Judicature other than the Chief Justice, may be removed.

Dr. Issahaku, first served as Deputy Governor from July 2013 to March, 2016 and as Governor from April, 2016 to April, 2017.

He left exactly a year after his appointment by President John Dramani Mahama.

Dr. Issahaku was an International Development Economist with several years of experience in economic policy management and development, having worked with reputable international and local institutions.

He worked with the World Bank as a Senior Public Sector Specialist; the African Development Bank (ADB) as a Principal Governance Expert and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa as a Development Management Officer.

Also, Dr. Issahaku was a Socio-Economic Advisor and Project Coordinator for the Canadian International Development Agency, as well as working as a Senior Planning Analyst with Ghana National Development Planning Commission (NDPC).

Before his appointment as Governor, he was the Second Deputy Governor and Executive Board member with oversight responsibilities of nine departments, including Economics, Statistics, Finance, Legal, Banking Supervision and Financial Stability.

He was also the Chairman of the Investment Management Committee of the Central Bank and a member of the Banks Monetary Policy Committee.

Dr. Issahaku was a member of Ghanas Economic Management Team. He chaired the Finance and Administration (F&A) Committee of the Ghana Cocoa Marketing Company and he is the Commissioner and Chairman of the F&A Committee of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He was previously the Chief Executive Officer of the Export Development and Agriculture Investment Fund (EDAIF), which he restructured and helped restore to operational effectiveness before his appointment to the central banking in 2013.

Dr. Abdul-Nashiru Issahaku, has a Doctorate in International Affairs and Development from Clark Atlanta University, MBA in Finance and Strategic Management from Maharishi University of Management, USA, and Bachelors in Business Administration from the International Islamic University, Malaysia.

He has a certificate in Public Financial Management from Harvard University Kennedy School.

Dr. Issahaku, has effectively managed and supervised complex projects of international proportions. He was the Task Manager for Gambias Economic Management Programme (2004  2009).

He also spearheaded the Institutional Budget Support Programme for Tanzania (2005  2009).

From the Royal Zambang family of Kunbungu, Dr. Issahaku started his education in Tamale and attended Tamale Secondary School where he obtained his GCE O and A levels. He is a lifelong friend of Vice President Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
Lee Kuan Yew

When the government gives you a black goat, say it was a white cow

NDC propaganda message

There is a worrying trend which is taking its roots in the country. This is scant regard for law and order in every aspect of our national life. Naked corruption, legalised corruption, grand and petty corruption, gross impunity on the part of persons in entrusted positions towards state property are steadily becoming part of our national life. Skewed, shameless and unintelligent discussions on our media platform with the sole objective of scoring political points with scant regard for the truth and the effect on the security of the nation is a common occurrence. Uncontrolled street trading, selling on pedestrian walkways and bus stops and reckless disregard for traffic rules on the part of both pedestrians and drivers all result in numerous senseless and unnecessary deaths. Deliberate filth creation and littering of the environment, construction of buildings on waterways and inside mangroves and irrigation sites, galamsey activities which pollute our water bodies and destroy our agricultural lands provide an undignified eyesore of sore thumb to the visitor to the country.

Lack of trust of the general citizens in the ability of the security services to provide justice and security, the attack and vandalisation of police stations, unruly mob besieging law courts to intimidate judges, unprofessional practices in the recruitment of security personnel leading to criminals finding their way into the security services and many more such wanton, unpatriotic and undignified behaviour in both public and private life are destroying the country and leading the country back to the stone age at geometric progression at a time when other nations are moving towards the stars in arithmetic progression. In 1969, the Americans landed on the moon. Today after almost fifty years, we as a nation cannot even feed ourselves without handouts from our colonial masters, people we voluntarily threw out because we felt we could manage our affairs better.

Ghana started life ahead of both Singapore and Malaysia. Today, both Singapore and Malaysia are first world countries with zero poverty and zero unemployment with residential accommodation available even for the unborn citizen. Today, Ghana is wallowing among the league of despicable poor third world countries, a country which can neither feed her citizens nor collect the garbage she produces from uncouth lifestyle of her citizens, a country where expensive national assets like imported agricultural machineries and uncompleted and abandoned buildings meant to house members of the security services are abandoned in the thick forest where reptiles of the earth and birds of the air spend their honeymoons, a country where office holders spend more time fighting turf wars than serving the public. Singapore and Malaysia are where they are principally because they imbued the idea of the Singaporean patriot Lee Kuan Yew that: law and order provide framework for stability and development.

The destruction of the public service, especially the security services through its politicisation and unconventional way of appointing persons into positions of authority has rendered otherwise dedicated public servants lame horses, henpecked husband waiting for crumbles from the dinner tables of their masters. It is a sad reflection on the psyche of the nation that persons who have provided dedicated service to the nation in one state department and are transferred to another state department are summarily dismissed rather than posting them back to their mother departments or retiring them honourably if their loyalties cannot be guaranteed. It also shows that many public servants have lost touch and instead of serving the state, they prefer to serve the government of the day, a sad reflection on the immaturity and lack of growth of our political dispensation, despite 60 years of independence. Was Kwame Nkrumah right when he proclaimed that the blackman is capable of managing his own affairs? I doubt it.

When along the life of the nation, a lean and hungry looking misguided individual with features of a Somali refugee appeared on the scene to spot a lot of patriotic flavor but misguided ideology took hold of the political landscape and forcefully fostered himself and his marauding band of equally misguided bootleggers on people and insanely proclaimed that: we no go sit down make them cheat we everyday and declared positive defiance as national ideology and holy war with an unidentified enemy, this country has never been the same again. Law and order has been on the benson burner ever since. Today unemployed youth who constitute potential suicide bombers openly indulge in acts of illegality like smoking marijuana in public places, committing street crimes, riding on unregistered motorcycles, house breaking and car snatching. They have created an independent republic for themselves and they have re-written the criminal code. Once one member of their clan is touched, the next course of action is to stage an attack on and the burning of police stations.

When we were fighting for independence from our colonial masters, they felt we were not adequately prepared for independence. One of the litmus tests they used to judge us was our tolerance towards our political opponents. They allowed the two political parties, the CPP and UP to form vigilante troops now referred to as foot soldiers. The colonial masters allowed the constituted security forces standby while the vigilant troops of the two political parties fought street battles which resulted in mayhem, destruction and death of unimaginable proportion. Ghana was on the path of progress when some faceless armed robbers with a lot of cowardice in their blood waited for the midnight hour to stuck and seized the opportunity offered by darkness to overthrew the Third Republic and instituted lawlessness and caused the breakdown of law and order and constituted authority. Today illegal vigilant troops have become part of our political landscape.

E-mail [email protected]

By Kwame Gyasi
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Government stands to fail in its agenda to produce more power for local consumption and export the excesses to neighboring countries.

This is due to the high tariff of power charged by the power producers in the country. This makes the cost of electricity relatively expensive compared to that of neighboring countries.

The World Bank Country Director, Mr Henry Kerali, who spoke on the subject matter at a press conference in Accra said, the countrys attempt to export power to its neighbouring countries will suffer a major setback if tariff differentials between independent power producers (IPPs) signed in Ghana and those in the export destinations in the sub-region are not addressed.

Mr Kerali noted that, despite an anticipated excess supply of about one-and-a-half gigawatts of electricity in the next four years, the high cost of kilowatt per hour in the country relative to those in the sub-region meant that power deficit countries in West Africa would struggle to patronise power from Ghana.

The result can end the countrys export dreams, which has been touted for years.

The neighbouring countries will not opt to buy electricity from Ghana if the tariff level is higher than what they can buy from other countries, he warned.

While lauding the country for achieving excess supply, the World Bank Country Director for Ghana told journalists in Accra that the high tariff regime was the consequence of too many power purchase agreements (PPAs) signed within the past eight years.

Data available to the World Bank indicates that there are over 40 PPAs, majority of which have tariffs above the average in the sub-region.

Our view is that the previous administration had too many PPAs; many more than is needed to satisfy the demand for electricity in Ghana, Mr Kerali explained.

We also believe from the figures we have seen from government that the tariffs signed for those PPAs were higher than similar tariffs in neighbouring countries. While the World Bank is not party to the contracts signed between government and the promoters of the energy projects, the tariff levels that we know are significantly higher, he added.

Already, Mr Kerali said the situation had forced the World Bank to cancel a programme that was meant to provide guarantees for IPP projects in Ghana. The cancellation was to help reduce the quantum of excess supply in the midst of costly tariffs, he said.

When we looked into the details, we found that the contracts that had already been signed without any of our guarantees were already leading to an oversupply of electricity, he added.

Mr Kerali advised that, the excess power could be exported at tariff levels that pertained on the regional market.

Another option is to subsidise any export and bring them down to the level of the regional market or find ways to reduce the tariffs, he said.

In Cote dIvoire, where Ghana exported power to before, tariffs are averaging nine cents and 11 cents compared to Ghana, where they are significantly higher.

To help address the issue, the President Akufo-Addo-led administration said earlier this year that it was reviewing the various agreements to help get value for money for the country.

The review, it said, included limiting tariffs on all new power agreements to 11 cents per kilowatt hour.
Prithvi Man Shrestha is a political reporter for The Kathmandu Post, covering the governance-related issues including corruption and irregularities in the government machinery. Before joining The Kathmandu Post in 2009, he worked at nepalnews.com and Rising Nepal primarily covering the issues of political and economic affairs for three years.
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Despites, governments hints by the Akufo-Addo government to issue a US$2.24billion bond in the coming days to pay the huge debt burdening the countrys energy sector.

Banks that are exposed to the Bulk Oil Distribution Companies (BDCs) debts want government to draw out a plan to facilitate payments from the Energy Sector Levies Act [ESLA].

They argue that the plan will facilitate payments and help them make the necessary provisions accordingly.

However, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, deputy Information Minister disclosed fortnight ago that, the issuance of the bond is part of efforts by government to raise money over a long profile to pay the energy sector debt off out-rightly.

But, he failed to disclose whether the bond will be issued domestically or otherwise.

We have just successfully done a $2.25billion bond and we are looking at how to raise an extra of about $2.24billion to pay off that debt in a single bullet and to have that single bullet amortized with the energy sector levies that are still existing, he said.

Meanwhile, explaining the impact of the absence of a detailed plan on the repayment scheme for banks, the Executive Director of CAL Bank, Philip Owiredu said the banks have been finding difficulty adjusting for the unpaid debts.

Unfortunately, government has not been able to put any structure round the regular cash flow coming out from this levy to be able to model anything and determine how much to be disbursed every month, he asserted.

Mr. Owiredu was responding to questions during the banks fact behind the figures session for its first quarter performance for 2017.

According to him, even though some payments are being effected, an agreed plan should help both government and the affected banks.

Claims accruing to the BDCs for 2014 and the first half of 2015, amounted to GHC2.5 billion.

Although accurate figures are yet to be reported on their claims post 2015, the banks are projecting the figure to increase to about GHC4.0 billion.

Government has since made payments totaling GHC1.5 billion with an outstanding amount of GHC1.9 billion.

Philip Owiredu further stated that the model should help reduce the rising NPLs of banks. The law says the levy shall be in place for ten years and on an annual basis, out of the levy, at least about GHC90 million is going to be used to pay the BDCs,

So the cashflow is coming in and it is being held by banks including CAL bank and that is what we want to engage government on to ensure that at least we agree on what we are supposed to do whether it is going to take a year or ten to get it through, he observed.

President Akufo-Addo revealed in his maiden State of the Nation Address that the countrys energy sector is saddled with huge debts threatening reliable power supply if immediate measures are not taken.

He said attempts by the former administration to solve the debilitating power crisis that hit the country led to a debt of over US$2billion.

The attempts by the previous government to resolve the dumsor crisis have led to a gargantuan debt overhang in the sectorwe have inherited a heavily indebted energy sector, with the net debt reaching US$2.4 billion as at December 2016, he stated.
12.05.2017 LISTEN

The Minority in Parliament says it will push for a bi-partisan investigation into bribery and murder claims made by some senior members of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).

Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba and NPP Northern Regional Chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu were caught up in a war of words over a misunderstanding in the selection of the Coordinator of the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP).

The Minister had alleged Mr Naabu was receiving goats, cows and other items from people with the promise of giving them jobs at the GSFP. She made the claim after her meeting with some women in the Region was disrupted by the party's Northern Regional Chairman and his supporters.

Related Article: 'My husband told me Afoko poured the acid' - Adams Mahama's wife testifies

NPP Northern Regional Chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu

A displeased Mr Naabu also attacked the Gender Minister and Upper East Regional Minister, Rockson Bukari, claiming they had knowledge about the death of late NPP Upper East Regional Chairman, Adams Mahama in 2015.

Related Article: Otiko Djaba apologises for Bugri Naabu fight

Mr Mahama was attacked with an acid while he was entering his house from a function in the Region. He later died in the hospital.

Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba and Mr Naabu

The case is before an Accra High Court and a suspect Gregory Afoko, brother of suspended NPP National Chairman, Paul Afoko is standing trial with another person, Asabke Alangbi for the murder.

Related Article: Photos: Otiko Djaba, Bugri Naabu 'severely reprimanded' as NPP 'half-night' ends

Mr Naabu's murder claim has revived discussions about the murder with sections of Ghanaians calling for the three persons named by Naabu to be invited by the police for investigation.

Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba

At the NPP National Council Meeting Wednesday, Mr Naabu and Otiko Djaba were reprimanded for dragging the party's name into disrepute and were asked to apologise.

In a letter addressed to the acting NPP General Secretary, John Boadu, the Northern Regional Chairman apologised for the inconvenience his battle of words with the Minister had caused the party.

Acting NPP General Secretary, John Boadu

He explained his comments to Otiko Afisa Djaba were triggered by "extreme anger and provocation."

But the NDC MPs said the apology from Mr Naabu and the Gender Minister will not wash away the allegations they have made.

NDC MP for Sagnerigu, A.B.A Fuseini told Evans Mensah on Joy FM's Newsnite Thursday, the decision by the NPP's National Council is laughable.

He said no one put a gun to the heads of the two senior members of the NPP to attack each other. "It is their own public confession."

He said it will be inadequate for the issue to be settled by mere apology when an investigation could be conducted to arrive at the truth.

"A situation where allegations have been made, one-goat, one-DCE and one-cow, for public positions should not be treated lightly," he said.

Mr Fuseini said the President should not allow the issue to be swept under the carpet after he swore to protect the public purse and be fair to the people of this country.

"You can be sure that we in the Minority are going to ensure investigation into the matter," he said.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brako-Powers | [email protected]
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) is calling for police investigations of the murder claim made by Northern Regional NPP Chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu against some members of his party.

Member of NDC legal team, Victor Adawudu told Evans Mensah on Joy FM's Top Story Wednesday, the murder of Upper East Regional NPP Chairman, Adams Mahama in 2015 remains a national issue and any information from anyone should not be treated lightly.

Mr Naabu had told some media houses Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba and Upper Regional Minister, Rockson Bukari had knowledge of the gruesome murder of Adams Mahama in 2015.

Related Article: Bugri Naabu vows to drag Otiko to NPP disciplinary committee

Northern Regional NPP Chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu

He had alleged the two were part of the people who plotted the acid attack on the NPP Upper East Regional Chairman which resulted in his death.

The Gender Minister had previously accused Mr Naabu of receiving goats, sheep and other things from people with the promise of giving them jobs at the Ghana School Feeding Programme.

Related Article: Otiko accuses Bugri Naabu of taking cows, goats for School Feeding jobs

Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba

The war of words between the two leading members of the governing NPP was necessitated by a misunderstanding over the choice of candidate for the Coordinator position of the School Feeding Programme.

Gender Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba has apologised to Ghanaians and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for the exchange during an interview with Joy News Tuesday.

Related Article: Otiko Djaba apologises for Bugri Naabu fight

However, after a stern warning letter from lawyers of Mr Bukari for a retraction to be made failing which a suit would be brought against him, Mr Naabu apologised for the comments.

In a letter addressed to Mr Bukari's lawyer, Samson Lardy Anyenini, the tough-talking NPP Chairman said, I do not have any facts beyond what we know about the police investigations on the matter [murder of Mr Mahama].

The Gender Minister and Mr Naabu

Related Article: Bugri Naabu apologises; retracts claims against U.E minister

I am truly sorry to the Minister, his family and all those I have hurt by those comments, he said.

But Victor Adawudu said in spite of Mr Naabus apology, the claims have to be probed.

"The murder of Adams Mahama was a national issue and it should not be taken on the surface," he said. "The police has to invite them."

Mr Adawudu said it will be in the interest of the government to ensure that the Upper East Regional Minister and Gender Minister are interrogated over the murder claim.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Austin Brako-Powers | [email protected]
The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has inaugurated a 10-member committee to review the partys participation in the 2016 general elections which it won.

The 10-member committee is led by a member of the party's legal team Dr Opoku Adusei.

Nana Akufo-Addo then the opposition leader, surprisingly secured a resounding one-touch victory by polling 53.85% of total valid votes cast against incumbent John Dramani Mahama who managed 44.40%.

The party also outperformed the governing National Democratic Congress in the parliamentary election by increasing its seats from 122 to 169 to form the majority, while the NDC saw its representation drop from a majority 148 to 106.

The NPP has been consistent with setting up committees to review elections since 1992 when the country returned to multiparty democracy. The committees recommendations over the years, have formed the basis for some strategic decisions on the conduct of internal elections and amendments of the partys constitution.

Briefing the media in Accra on Wednesday, May 10, 2017, General Secretary for the NPP, John Boadu noted that the party takes cognizance of the fact that every political programme requires a critical review after the expiration of the execution period.

The Dr. Opoku-Adusei Committee is a 10-Member Committee consisting of men and women who are true party members of credibility, Mr. Boadu added. The committee is tasked among others to to provide a detailed and honest analysis of 2016 elections country wide; on structures and operations at all levels.

Campaign 2020

The Committee is to produce a clear, concise, but detailed report to form basis for the partys campaign to win 2020 presidential and parliamentary elections, i.e. a strategy for 2020 elections; and, to provide objective review of the current state of the party.

The Addo Kufuor Committee has been given 6 weeks to submit its report to the leadership of the party.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Jerry Tsatro Mordy
A nasty public feud between Gender minister Otiko Djaba and NPP Northern Regional chairman, Bugri Naabu has landed on the table of the NPP National Council.

Expected to meet Wednesday morning, the elders of the party are keen to resolve the impasse between the two who share a common trait of a brutal frankness.

This trait was at open display last Saturday when Bugri Naabu disrupted a meeting chaired by Otiko Djaba.

The NPP Northern regional kingpin felt disrespected that a meeting of NPP women could happen under his political jurisdiction without his knowledge.

Bugri Naabu

He courted legal action after he fingered Otiko Djaba and Upper East regional minister in the death of a colleague regional chairman Adams Mahama in 2015.

The disruption and accusation was not without response from the fiesty minister who is also the National Womens' Organiser.

Noted for jabs, Otiko Djaba accused him of collecting goats and cows to give out jobs.

The Gender minister feels her gender is at the heart of Bugri Naabu's bullishness. Because I am a woman he feels he can bully me" she said last Tuesday on The Pulse, a Joy News program.

A public relations nightmare has descended into the party as the discordant relationship between the president's two darlings plays out.

President Akufo-Addo and Otiko Djaba

The National Council, a 30-member body is expected to stamp some PR order into the fracas that will only throw arms into an opposition NDC hungry for NPP dirt.

Ahead of the meeting, the Gender minister has tried to de-escalate the tension by rendering an apology to the Ghanaian public over her comments.

"...I apologise to all Ghanaians for what happened, she told Joy News last Tuesday.

"We need to respect women...if we learn to treat one another with respect we will avoid these unpleasant things"

Otiko Djaba has had her turn meeting the President over the issue and Mr. Naabu has been summoned before President Akufo-Addo later Wednesday when the Council sits.

Otiko Djaba, the NPP prayer warrior in the run-up to the 2016 elections is expected to make peace with Bugri Naabu, the president's warrior in the North who is believed to have driven the last nail into the coffin of 2016 NDC presidential chances.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|EA
Constituency Women Organisers of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the Northern Region have cautioned the Northern Regional Chairman of the party, Bugri Naabu, to stop peddling lies against the Gender Minister.

They say they are solidly behind Otiko Afisa Djaba will not agree for any individual who will undermine and disrespect her.

In a press statement issued Saturday, they corroborated Otiko Afisa Djaba's earlier statement to Joy News that she was in the region to represent the First Lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo.

"The Gender Minister was in the region to represent the first Lady Mrs. Rebecca Akuffo Addo on the celebration of International Midwives day, the being the national women organizer of NPP Madam Otiko Afisah Djaba decided to meet her women organizers," they said.

"We want to state categorically clear that the meeting was only for Minister to thank her women for working very hard to achieve a resounding victory and moreover to assure us of her commitment to see to the welfare of the women," they added.

Their comment follows the disruption of Madam Djaba's meeting in the region with them by the Regional Chairman with the explanation that the Minister failed to inform him of the meeting since she was in his territory.

Gender and Social Protection Minister, Otiko Afisa Djaba

Mr Naabu also claimed that Madam Djaba was plotting to scuttle the Presidents appointment of the regional head of the School Feeding programme.

But in a press statement, they described the assertions by Mr Naabu as falsehood.

"We want to clear the air on the purported lies in the news by the regional chairman that the minister came to introduce School Feeding coordinators to them," the women added.

The Gender Minister has alleged that Mr Naabu has collected peoples monies, goats, cows and other things from people and promised them jobs with the School Feeding programme.

Madam Djaba stated that it is not the mandate of the regional chairman to decide who is a caterer [to the School Feeding programme]."

She stated she has the mandate to make appointments to the program and sees no reason why Bugri Naabu has described her meeting with the women organisers in the region as illegal.

The national school feeding program is one of the flagship social protection programs under the Gender Ministry.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Abubakar Ibrahim
Communications Director of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has parried criticisms of the government by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) predicting that Ghana will experience the best governance under President Akufo-Addo.

Nana Akomea was reacting to former Roads Minister, Alhaji Inusah Fuseinis claim that Ghanaians were already wishing for a change in government because they are disillusioned barely four months into the administration's tenure.

Speaking on Joy FM/Multi TVs Newsfile news analysis programme on Saturday, Alhaji Fuseini said due to lack of policy direction and indecisiveness by the current administration, Ghanaians have been looking forward to the return of the NDC to power in 2020.

Alhaji Inusah Fuseini

However, Nana Akomea, who was also a panelist on the show, thinks Alhaji Fuseini and the NDCs claim is a joke.

Ghana is going to see a government never seen before in this Fourth Republic and clearly the signs are there for all to see, Nana Akomea said.

The opposition NDC is confident of returning to power in 2020 because Ghanaians are disappointed in the New Patriotic Party government.

Speaking at a news conference in Accra on Wednesday 12 April, the chairman of the party, Kofi Portuphy, said the NDC would reorganise to wrest power from the NPP in the 2020 polls.

Nana Akomea on Newsfile advised the NDC against complacency, urging the party to deal with its current leadership problems instead of hoping for a return to power.

The President [Akufo-Addo] has shown a certain decisiveness that we havent seen in the Fourth Republic in dealing with the critical issues that affect us as a nation; that all of us have cried about but we are not able to do because of political indecisiveness, he said.

The President, Nana Akomea reminds the NDC, has shown that political leadership is going to be taken to a new level.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Tamale Central Member of Parliament, Inusah Fuseini, is certain the four-month-old government of the New Patriotic Party is failing.

This failure, he believes, explains the excitement in the race for the elections 2020 presidential nomination of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC).

Many NDC stalwarts are believed to be lacing their boots to challenge former president John Mahama for the presidential slot of the NDC.

Mr. Mahama failed miserably in his bid to secure a second term in the 2016 elections.

He earned the unenviable record as the first sitting president to lose an election.

His appointees are lining up and piling pressure on him to seek the partys nomination for the 2020 presidential election.

Despite his familys admonition that he should not seek any public office again, Mr. Mahama is certain to run.

So too are former Vice-Chancellor of the University for Professional Studies  Accra (UPSA), Prof. Joshua Alabi, former Trade Minister, Ekwow Spio-Grabrah, 2nd Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Bagbin, and former head of the National Health Insurance Scheme, Sylvester Mensah.

Posters of Mr. Bagbin, NDC MP for Nadowli-Kaleo, emerged this week generating loud media discussions.

His aides said the NDC urgently needs a break from the leadership that inflicted on it, its most embarrassing defeat since it was formed in 1992.

The party lost spectacularly in both the presidential and parliamentary elections last December.

Whilst conceding that it is too early for people to be jockeying for the flagbearer slot, the Tamale Central MP says the opposition party is upbeat about returning to power very soon.

He said members of the NDC had observed policy incoherence and backtracking on the part of the government which is proof that the NPP might leave power so soon.

NPP Communications Director, Nana Akomea who was also on the show scoffed at Mr. Fuseini's argument, insisting it was foolhardy for a party that suffered its biggest loss to be hoping to return to power very soon.

He said the Akufo-Addo government was on course to become the most successful government in a generation.

Nana Akomea advised the NDC to focus on rebuilding its structures and obtaining an understanding of why it performed so poorly at the polls.

The fact that the NDC lost heavily despite incumbency advantages and abuses should concern the party leadership.

He, however, believes Mr. Mahama has an edge over the other contenders in the NDC's race.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
After 47 years of public service, the Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood, will retire from office next month.

Although there are speculations in the media that Justice Wood will stay on until the end of the year, the experienced Judge says she has no such intention.

In about four weeks I will be retiring. Specifically, on the 8th of June, I will no longer be in service. I should say this because I see all sorts of things. Some even say I am staying up till the end of the year. That is not accurate, she said at a Justice For All Programme at the Nsawam Prisons.

Until her appointment to the position of chief Justice, Mrs Georgina Wood worked as Public Prosecutor with the Ghana Police Service and later joined the judicial service where she rose through the ranks until she was appointed Chief Justice by former President John Kufuor in 2007.

Speaking on Friday at the Justice For All Programme, which is an initiative to hear cases of remand prisoners whose cases had been pending for a long time, she said she is leaving office confident that she has served Ghana faithfully.

Spearheaded by Justice C.K. Honyenugah and a team of Judges, the initiative is also intended to decongest the countrys prisons and to free inmates who should not be in prison.

Last Friday's event, which was the last for the Chief Justice, freed some seven inmates.

Mrs Georgina Wood, who has been an active campaigner for the right of prisoners said Ghana needs to do more to improve the rights of prison inmates.

It is the states duty to their rights as prisoners, whether on remand or as convicts are protected and it is unfortunate that we as a country have not been able to achieve this, she said.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | George Nyavor | [email protected]
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Some Youth groups and individuals in the Northern Region have applauded President Nana Akufo Addo for appointing Felicia Tetteh as the Northern Regional Director of the Ghana School Feeding Programme.

Addressing a press conference in Tamale, one of the groups, the United Patriot, described the appointment as well deserved and called on all to support Madam Felicia Tetteh to deliver on her mandate.

The United Patriot said President Nana Akufo-Addo had rekindled the hopes of the people in the region that hard work pays and that if people are committed and serve the party they will be rewarded.

Mr Issahaku Ibrahim Baba also known as Azobangli described Madam Felicias appointment as putting a round peg in a round hole.

He however condemned attacks on Madam Felicia by the coalition of NPP Youth Groups Tamale that she is not a native of the region and so does not deserve the appointment.

He also rubbished claims that she is not known by the grassroot of the party and questioned where they were when Madam Felicia joined in the door to door campaign and used her resources for the partys activities.

Meanwhile the Chairman of the Coalition of Youth groups Abdul Shakur Ali has distanced the coalition from the press conference held by the NPP Youth groups.
Dozens of Nepalis stranded after Rasuwa border closure

Dozens of Nepalis have been stranded on the Chinese side after the local administration sealed the Rasuwagadhi border point for 96 hours from Wednesday night in view of Sundays vote.
President Nana Akufo-Addo arrived in Ouagadougou, the capital of the Republic of Burkina Faso, on Thursday to begin his 2-day tour of that country.

He is looking forward to executing his agenda to develop the initiatives that will bring prosperity to Ghanaians.

At a State Dinner held in his honour, and in responding to the remarks made by the Burkina Faso President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, President Akufo-Addo indicated that the most important of the initiatives are the regional projects in the area of infrastructure, and especially transportation.

According to President Akufo-Addo, it would be, for me, perhaps, the highlight of my presidency if, indeed, I was able, together with you [President Kabore], to launch the beginning of the Accra-Ouagadougou railway project.

His commitment to this project, he told the Burkinabe leader, is evidenced by the fact that right at the beginning of my government, I decided to establish a special Ministry for Railways Development in Ghana. In fact, the Minister himself is here to give testimony to the seriousness with which we look at this project."

I will be very disappointed if the two sides are unable to find a solution to how we can get the Accra-Ouagadougou railway going, he added.

By the same measure, President Akufo-Addo stated that the concern we have in Ghana, that you know about, is about the control of the water resources of our two countries, adding that these are matters that we are going to be able to address.

The President's comments were in reference to the yearly opening of the Bagre Dam spillway, which causes flooding in the three Northern Regions of Ghana, resulting in the destruction of farmlands, livestock, and property and sometimes causing death.

It is for this reason that the Minister for Sanitation and Water Resources, Kofi Adda; the Minister for Works and Housing, Atta Akyea, and the Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, accompanied President Akufo-Addo on his visit to Burkina Faso to find lasting solutions, with their Burkinabe counterparts.

They are discussing ways of channelling the water spilt from the dam into productive ventures for the mutual benefit of the two countries.

Africa must stand together

President Akufo-Addo noted that the new crop of African leaders have come into office at a critical time in the lives of the African peoples, where old alliances are having to be reshaped.

He said Africa has to look for new sources and new areas of enhancing the development of the continent.

The most important thing is to recognize the need for us to stand on our own two feet and resolve African problems with African resources and African personnel.

"We cannot and will not accept that other people can come and develop the continent of Africa for us. It will not happen, and the sooner all of us worked together and recognized the necessity of collaborating on a platform that will lead to the prosperity of our peoples, the better, he added.

Touching on the fight against terrorism, President Akufo-Addo assured President Kabore that in Nana Akufo-Addo and in his government, the people of Burkina Faso have a strong and steadfast friend.

He expressed the appreciation of the peoples of West Africa for the sacrifices the Burkinabe people, who are in the frontline of the fight against terrorism, are making to guarantee the peace and security not just of their own country, but the region as a whole.

To this end, he reiterated Ghanas commitment to standing beside you in that fight and want you to know that whatever, within our modest means, we can do to promote the success of that struggle, you can count on us.

With relations between the peoples of Ghana and Burkina Faso dating back to several centuries, President Akufo-Addo stressed that even though there has been a change in direction and leadership in Ghana.

"Our fundamental commitment to a close and sustaining relationship with the people of the Republic of Burkina Faso remains unchanged. Ghana continues to be by your side and continues to seek a relationship of intimacy and friendship.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
Ghana and Togo have resolved to deepen cooperation as well as strengthen the ties of friendship that exist between the two countries.

Some of the areas of cooperation are security, immigration, agriculture and water, health, trade, digital economy, environment, energy, transport and the issue of maritime borders.

At the end of the official visit of President Nana Akufo-Addo to Togo, together with President Faure Gnassingbe, both leaders indicated their willingness to activate the high level of permanent joint commission of cooperation between the two countries.

On Wednesday, the two leaders visited the Joint Border Post at Noepe and Akanu which is yet to function despite the commissioning of the post some 3 years ago.

To this end, the two Presidents instructed their respective Ministers to speed up the interconnection of Customs IT systems so as to operationalize the Post and aid in the free movement of goods and persons across the Ghana/Togo border.

With reference to agriculture, the single largest occupation of the populace of both countries, the two leaders called for the intensification of technical cooperation, and the exchange of experience between the two countries, particularly in aquaculture, and the development of coffee, cocoa and cashew nuts.

On the Sogakope-Lome drinking water supply project, the two Heads of State stressed the need to speed up the implementation of the project, as the ripple effects of this project will be of immense benefit to the two countries.

President Akufo-Addo and President Gnassingbe also expressed their determination to strengthen actions to combat illegal timber trade and tasked their respective ministers to put in place the appropriate mechanisms to this end.

Touching on the continuation of the programme of electrification of the localities along the borders of their respective countries, the two countries renewed their commitment to ensuring the completion of the joint hydroelectric dam project in Juale.

In the area of road infrastructure, the two Presidents again instructed their respective Ministers to seek funding in the ECOWAS framework for the construction and rehabilitation of the roads linking Kemerida-Kara-Nachamba, in Togo, and Tatale-Yendi, in Ghana.

Addressing the issue of common borders between the two countries, President Gnassingbe and President Akufo-Addo agreed to give priority to high-level dialogue, instead of resorting to the courts to answer the delimitation of their maritime boundaries, on the basic of the principle of equity and the right of each country to have a sea front.

At the end of his visit, President Akufo-Addo expressed his deepest gratitude to President Faure Gnassingbe for the warm and fraternal welcome extended to him and his delegation.

He extended an invitation to his Togolese counterpart to pay a reciprocal visit to Ghana, an invitation which was accepted by President Gnassingbe.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com
President Akufo-Addo says his government will be working with the Electoral Commission to ensure the law allowing Ghanaians abroad to vote in the country's elections becomes fully operational.

Addressing the Ghanaian community in Togo, President Akufo-Addo expressed disbelief that ten years after the Representation of People Amendment Law was passed, it is yet to be implemented.

"We passed the law and I can't understand why 10 years later it is dormant on the statute books," he said reiterating an NPP 2016 campaign promise to revive ROPAL.

EC chair Charlotte Osei

Ghana has organised three general elections since the law was passed in 2007. But at each election, the elections governing body, the Election Commission, has signalled it is not ready to implement the law.

The then Electoral Commissioner Dr. Afari-Gyan remarked in 2007, "ROPAL is in stages and....we are in the preparatory stages."

A decade later, the Electoral Commission's 2016-2020 strategic plan states there is currently no plan to implement the law.

Nonetheless, the Commission has set a 2018 deadline to clearly define a roadmap for ROPAL implementation. The document mentions staffing and funding as some of the barriers to its implementation.

The signal from the President that "there is going to be an engagement by this govt" on ROPAL, is likely to renew public discussion on the controversial law.

It became a source of acrimonious opposition when the bill was first introduced into Parliament on June 14, 2005 under the former NPP government of President John Agyekum Kufuor.

President John Agyekum Kufuor

Three parties, the main opposition NDC, the CPP, PNC and a pressure group Committee for Joint Action were in vehement opposition to the law.

The CJA, led by veteran journalist Kwesi Pratt organised street protests to rally public disapproval of the law. A placard during one of the demonstrations called ROPAB, 'Robbery of People Abroad Bill'.

The NDC in parliament led by Alban Bagbin, boycotted debate on the legislation.

ROPAL and matters arising

ROPAL amended Section 7 and 8 of PNDCL 284 which states that Ghanaians abroad are allowed to vote except they should have continuously stayed in the country at least six months to the elections.

It meant that interested citizens should have returned to Ghana by July ahead of the December general elections.

The EC only makes provision for persons who work in diplomatic missions or international organisations of which Ghana is a member. Their spouses are also allowed to vote. Students on government scholarship and members of the Army and Police on peacekeeping duties are eligible to vote.

The commission has said administrative challenges such as mode of voting, either by proxy, mail or at an embassy would have to be resolved.

Opposition parties are sceptical about having the vote conducted at the embassies fearing incumbency could interfere with the process.

Opposition position on ROPAL

Critics of the law have said, ROPAL is not a priority for the ordinary Ghanaian looking to government to resolve 'bread and butter issues'.

They pointed out that for a country that relies on donor partners to fund its elections, extending the process to cover citizens outside Ghana is an unnecessary burden.

The General Secretary of the Peoples National Convention Bernard Mornah described it as "an inimical law that should not find space in our political system."

Some argued that if Ghanaians in the Diaspora are interested in voting, travelling to Ghana to do so should not be too much to ask.

Founder of the NDC and former President Jerry Rawlings accused the government then, of planning to use the law to rig the 2008 elections.

The NDC also felt the NPP government was in a haste to pass the law and warned of possible conflict if ROPAL was used in the general elections in 2008.

NPP position

The NPP pointed out other countries in Africa such as Mali, Senegal, Cape Verde and Botswana which allowed their citizens in the Diaspora to vote.

Advocates for the bill argued that Ghanaians abroad contribute to the growth of the economy through remittances and should be given the opportunity to vote.

Remittances to Ghana was estimated at about two billion dollars in 2015.

Majority Leader at the time Felix Owusu Agyapong criticised the NDC for opposing the bill for opposition sake.

"What we have observed is that whenever a bold decision is taken by this government to move the country forward the Minority always drag their feet. It happened with HIPC. It happened on the National Reconciliation Commission. We saw it with the National Health Insurance. And we are seeing it with the Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill".

The EC in 2008 doused the controversy somewhat after its chairman Dr. Kwadwo Afari-Gyan stated the law was not going to be applied in the 2008 elections. He blamed partisan gridlock as part of the commission's reasons for deciding to shelve the law.

"The voting rights of citizens abroad became an issue a long time ago during the NDC; at that time the NPP sang "over our dead body; now NPP says ROPAL is the best policy and the NDC is singing 'over our dead body,'" he said.

Any effort by the current government to ressurect the law is certain to reignite debates over its necessity.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com
Madrid, Spain, hosted the 105th meeting of the Executive Council of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) between 11 and 12 May. The Meeting focused on current trends and challenges facing the tourism sector and on the three priorities of the Organization - safe, secure and seamless travel; the impact of technology in the tourism sector and sustainability.

The Executive Council, attended by some 250 representatives from 59 countries, focused on these priorities as well as on the UNWTO programme of work for 2018-2019 and the agenda of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017.

The 105th session of the UNWTO Executive Council also recommended Zurab Pololikashvili, from Georgia, as the nominee for the post of Secretary-General for the four-year-period starting January 2018. This recommendation will be submitted to the 22nd UNWTO General Assembly for ratification (11-16 September 2017, Chengu, China).

We predict that 1.8 billion international tourists will travel across borders by 2030. We must ensure that such growth goes hand-in-hand with sustainability. We must embrace the opportunities created by innovation and new technologies. We must continue to make travel safer, but also more seamless and accessible for all. And we must ensure that our sector serves the planet as well as its people said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, opening the meeting.

UNWTO is a privileged forum where all countries discuss the main challenges facing our sector, share experiences and build common solutions. Tourism is about building bridges said the Secretary of State of Tourism of Spain, Matilde Asian.

The Chair of the Council, the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan, Abulfas Garayev, recalled the importance of the declaration by the United Nations General Assembly of 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development This is a unique opportunity to raise awareness of the contribution of sustainable tourism to development among public and private sector decision makers and the public, while mobilizing all stakeholders to work together in making tourism a catalyst for positive change, he said.

The 106th and 107th sessions of the UNWTO Executive Council will take place in September 2017 in Chengdu, China in the framework of the 22nd UNWTO General Assembly.
12.05.2017 LISTEN

The Presidents nominee as District Chief Executive (DCE) for the Gushiegu District Assembly in the Northern Region has been rejected on first round of voting by assembly members for the area.

Abdulai Yakubu, a teacher by profession polled 9 votes against and 23 dissenting making him unfit for a second chance unless he is re-nominated by the president who has the executive powers.

Prior to voting, Deputy Northern Regional Minister Solomon Boar went into closed door meeting with the 32 assemblymen with the hope of convincing them to vote for the nominee but this appeared to have yielded little effort.

Some of the assemblymen who spoke to mynsewsgh.com on grounds of strict anonymity indicated that the nominee was imposed on them by the Northern Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Daniel Bugri Naabu threatening to reject even if he is brought back again.

There is no way we can accept him as the DCE for the area. This is someone who was imposed on us despite several resistances. Our rejection is to show them that our choice must superintend anyones interest, one of them stated.
Former President John Mahama has said there is no need for Africans to celebrate the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the other, because it must be the norm.

He said although the African continent may not have a perfect situation, there is evidence that democratic transitions are gaining roots on the continent.

I find it surprising because I think it should be the norm. I dont think we should be celebrating each time a peaceful transition takes places. This is what is supposed to happen.

And I think this is increasingly happening in Africa. It happened in Nigeria when President Jonathan stepped away and it happened here in Ghana, Mr. Mahama who lost elections last year told Aljazeera in an interview.

Mr. Mahama who is first Ghanaian president to be defeated in an election added that even though Ghana may not have reached its economic destination, he is confident that the oil producing West African country is on the path to achieving greatness.

I believe that in 60 years one would expect us to have made more progress than we have. But considering the continent we come from, even maintaining Ghana as a united entity, not in conflict and posting positive development is an achievement.

I think that today Ghana is positioning itself as one of the potential emerging countries on the continent.
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Kwabena Danso, the taxi driver in the dreadful incident of police brutality at Anyaa in Accra has condemned the hierarchy of the Ghana Police Service for exonerating its officer who inhumanely treated him.

According to him, the outcome of the police investigation into the misfortune that befell him is a charade.

Dasnso on May 2, 2017 was sadistically manhandled by Gabriel Tabiri, stationed at the Anyaa Police Station. Pictures of the incident went viral on the social media.

Distraught by the news, first reported by StarrFMonline.com, the Inspector General of Police, David Asante-Apeatu on May 3, 2017 ordered immediate investigation into the incident.

The police Friday May 12, 2017 challenged the veracity of the report of alleged police brutality in the Anyaa incident.

According to the outcome of the investigation, the taxi driver stripped himself naked in his bid to avoid arrest.

The findings read in part that: The taxi driver drove through a red light at Anyaa Market junction on 2nd May, 2017.

The Taxi driver resisted lawful arrest, struggled with arresting officer, tearing his own trousers and dress to free himself from the grips of the arresting officer.

The Taxi driver assaulted the police officer in uniform as corroborated by witnesses.

However, in his reaction to the outcome of the investigation Friday May 12, 2017 in an interview on Starr Midday News, Danso said he is extremely disappointed by the turn of events.

Now I know that there is no truth in this country, he told Kweku Obeng Adjei the host of Starr Midday News adding, I have lost hope.

Background

A policeman stationed at the Anyaa police station in Accra, Gabriel Tabiri, went berserk Tuesday May 2, 2017 by physically assaulting a taxi driver for allegedly jumping red traffic light.

The cab driver Kwabena Danso, who is traumatized, was disgraced in the open by the peacemaker with service number 36832. The officer allegedly accosted him at a Fuel Station after allegedly jumping the light and ended up tearing apart his clothing.

Frequent users of that Anyaa stretch of the highway know that particular traffic light is faulty. It is usually on amber or switches to red and within a blink of an eye it turns green then amber then red, Danso explained to Starrfmonline.com and has been corroborated by drivers who use that road often.

I was surprised the police officer came all the way to the filling station and said I was under arrest. I explained to him that the light doesnt work and its a fact and even pointed it to him, but he insisted I have flouted traffic regulations..
The Principal of E.P College of Education (AMECO) has been summoned to Accra to answer questions as to why a bus donated to the school by government less than a year ago, is being used to cart firewood.

The Eicher Bus with registration number GV 158-16, was one of the 500 buses presented to schools across the country in June 2016 by then President John Dramani Mahama.

But this week, images of the bus belonging to the EP College of Education fully loaded with firewood flooded social media and drew concerns over how the vehicles were being used. AMECO is a mixed teacher training institution located at Amedzofe in the Ho West Municipality in the Volta Region.

Myjoyonline.com has gathered that the Principal of the school, Rev. Sylvanus K. Tettey, has been hauled to a meeting with Education Minister Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh today, Friday, May 12, 2017, over the use of the bus.

The school bus with the firewood inside.

Officials at the Ministry are unhappy at the development.

Disciplinary action could be taken against Rev. Tettey if he is unable to give a convincing explanation at the meeting with the Minister, Dr. Opoku Prempeh.

Story by Ghana | Myjoyonline.com | Jerry Tsatro Mordy
Hweehwee (E/R), May 12, GNA - Farmers at Hweehwee in the Kwahu East District, participating in the government's 'Planting for food and jobs' programme have appealed to the government to act decisively to stop the destructive activities of Fulani herdsmen, who have invaded the area with their cattle.

They said any inaction could ruin the programme, adding that, the seeds supplied to them were yet to be planted because of the fear that the herdsmen and their animals would come to destroy these.

Their spokesperson, Mr. Charles Danquah, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the herdsmen remained a big threat to the success of the programme.

He said improved seeds and fertilizers had already been distributed to farmers at Hweehwee, Atta-Ne-Atta, Oboyan, Asesieso and Mepemasem but the presence of the Fulani and their cattle had become a big disincentive.

The fear of losing their crops was holding many of them back, he added.

Mr. Solomon Aboagye, the assembly member for Hweehwee, hailed the support given to the farmers under the 'Planting for food and jobs' programme and asked the government to go the extra mile to find lasting solution to the destruction of food crop farms and water sources by the herdsmen.

It should be tackled with the same energy and fearlessness as being done with illegal mining (galamsey).

GNA

By Eunice Tekie Tei, GNA
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Accra, May 12, GNA - President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has nominated Justice Ms Sophia Akuffo as the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana.

Justice Ms Akuffo will take over from current Chief Justice Mrs Theodora Georgina Wood who retires on June 8, 2017, if successfully approved by Parliament.

Article 144 (1) of the 1992 Constitution provides that 'the Chief Justice shall be appointed by the President, acting in consultation with the Council of State and with the approval of Parliament'.

The constitutional process will be concluded after Parliament's Appointments Committee is done with the vetting of the nominee for subsequent approval by the plenary session.

President Akufo-Addo will then swear her in after Parliament sends its report about the approval of the nominee.

Justice Sophia Akuffo is one of the longest serving Supreme Court judges in the country and her approval by Parliament will make her the 13th person to occupy the enviable position.

Justice Akuffo was appointed to the country's apex court 22 years ago by former President Jerry John Rawlings on November 30, 1992.

The nominee has been one of the leading voices in the country on issues of human right, rule of law and child's rights.

She had served on the continent's judicial bodies such as the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, where she ended up as its President.

Ms Justice Akuffo has served as a justice of the Supreme Court for the past two decades.

She has been a member of the Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Task Force.

In January 2006, she was elected as one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and was re-elected until 2014 when she served as the Vice-President.

She is the immediate past President of the African Court on Human and People's Rights.

She is on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and has held membership of several organisations, including the Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute.

Her publications include The Application of Information & Communication Technology in the Judicial Process - The Ghanaian Experience, presented to the African Judicial Network Ghana (2002).

Ms Justice Akuffo is the second most senior judge on the highest court of the land after Mr Justice William Atuguba, who is billed to retire next year.

She holds a master's degree in Law (LLM) from the University of Harvard in the United States of America (USA), and has been a justice of the Supreme Court since 1995.

The office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana will become vacant with effect from June 9, 2017, when Mrs Justice Wood leaves office after 40 years of service to the nation.

GNA
Global changes, local responses

District and village level leaders will have a key role in helping vulnerable communities deal with climatic changes
Konongo (Ash), May 12, GNA - The Asante-Akim Central Municipal Assembly has voted to reject the nomination of Mr. George Baffour Kyei as the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE).

He managed to poll 17 votes out of the 36 cast, while 18 of the members voted no. There was one rejected ballot.

The election was supervised by the Electoral Commission (EC) and there to observe things were the Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr. Simon Osei-Mensah, and his Deputy, Madam Elizabeth Agyemang.

Addressing the members later, Mrs. Agyemang appealed to them to overcome their differences and to give their backing to Mr. Kyei, if re-nominated by the President.

GNA

By Yussif Ibrahim, GNA
Accra, May 12, GNA - The Goenergy Company Limited (Goenergy) subsidiary of Ghana Oil Company Limited (GOIL) has deflated cartels in the downstream petroleum sector saving the country from artificial fuel shortages.

Ghana has not experienced any fuel shortage since Goenergy took control of the Bulk Distribution sector in September 2014 serving major Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) in the country.

Ghana News Agency observation of the trend in the downstream petroleum sector revealed that Goenergy supplied petroleum products to GOIL, Total Petroleum Ghana, Vivo Energy Ghana, Allied Oil Company, Star Oil Company, Engen Ghana Limited, Alinco Oil Company Limited, Petroleum Solutions Limited and Glee Oil Limited.

The National Petroleum Authority (NPA) statistics based on the total number of products distributed across the entire industry indicated that within the top seven Bulk Distribution Companies (BDCs) Goenergy controls 22.14 per cent of the market shares in 2016 up from 19.60 per cent in 2015.

Chase Petroleum Ghana Limited market shares moved up from 9.30 per cent in 2015 to 10.44 per cent in 2016; and Blue Ocean Investment Limited also moved up from 5.20 per cent in 2015 to 8.18 per cent in 2016.

The statistics indicated that Ebony Oil and Gas Limited dropped from 11.10 per cent in 2015 to 10.07 per cent in 2016; and Fueltrade Limited plunged from 12.10 per cent in 2015 to 8.46 per cent in 2016; Cirrus Oil Services Limited slumped marginally from 5.40 per cent in 2015 to 5.23 per cent in 2016; and Vihama Energy Limited also dropped from 7.60 per cent in 2015 to 6.25 per cent in 2016.

The NPA statistics further revealed that the seven top BDCs control 69.4 per cent of the market whilst the remaining 32 BDCs control 30.6 per cent.

Commenting on the progressive development of Goenergy, Mr Gymafi Amanquah, Chief Operating Officer of Goenergy told the GNA that the company's objective is to continue to maintain dominance and increase its market share in order to save Ghanaians from unnecessary and artificial fuel shortages which was the order of the day in the past.

He explained that Goenergy was born to offer solutions; recounting that in the beginning of the third quarter of 2013, the nation witnessed series of fuel supply shortages which persisted till the first quarter of 2014.

Mr Amanquah explained that most BDCs at the time resorted to selling on cash basis, 'almost all the BDCs withdrew credit and demanded cash payment for products from OMCs including GOIL.

'However the BDCs who were willing to trade with GOIL on credit, could not guarantee uninterrupted supplies. This new model of cash transactions for products put a heavy toll on GOIL's finances'.

He said in order for GOIL business to survive and to ensure regular supply of fuel products to the public, there was the need to secure a continuous supply of petroleum products to feed GOIL's numerous retail service outlets and meet existing contractual agreement with her consumer businesses.

The Board of Directors and Management of GOIL took a pragmatic action by setting up Goenergy Company Limited in February 2014 as Bulk Distribution Company and a wholly-owned subsidiary of GOIL.

Mr Amentor Aziakor, Goenergy Operations and Marketing Manager noted that the company's business operations had grown substantially and currently it is the major supplier of Gasoline, Gasoil, Marine Gasoil and LPG to GOIL and other OMCs and BDCs in the country.

GOIL was incorporated as a private limited liability company on June 14, 1960 as AGIP Ghana Company Limited with the objective of marketing petroleum products and related products particularly fuels, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), lubricants, bitumen, and Specialty products in Ghana.

The Government of Ghana in 1974 acquired the shares of AGIP SPA and Hydrocarbons International Holdings in AGIP Ghana Company Limited and by a special resolution in 1976 changed the name of the company to Ghana Oil Company Limited.

By a shareholders resolution passed on 1st August, 2007 the Company adopted new regulations and was converted into a public company.

Between the year 2010 and 2012 the Company underwent a transformation process aimed at changing its logo, station outlook, and most importantly the corporate culture which was dubbed 'Good Energy comes with a Smile'. The launching of the New GOIL took place on the 18th May 2012.

Though the Company's main business is marketing and distribution of petroleum products in Ghana, one of the tenets of the New GOIL is to move beyond the current frontiers to marketing and distribution of energy products in general.

GOIL therefore, welcomes partners who are interested in helping us drive our business in this direction.

GNA

By Francis Ameyibor, GNA
Accra, May 12, GNA - Two persons were on Friday sentenced to 10 years imprisonment each by an Accra Circuit court for conspiring and robbing one Theophilus Odotei of his Itel mobile phone worth GHE250.00.

Rudolph Yankah, and Kwasi Debrah both unemployed pleaded not guilty to the charges but were found guilty by the court presided by Mr Aboagye Tandoh.

They are both to serve 10 years each for conspiracy and 10 years each for robbery both to run concurrently.

Earlier the prosecution, Police Chief Inspector Kwabena Adu told the court that the complainant is a Student, while the convicts are both unemployed and resides at Numgua.

He said the convicts together with some accomplices have been on the police wanted list for some time now, however on September 12, the complainant and some witnesses in the case visited the Nungua Junction Mall to buy some items.

On their way home, at about 23:30 hours, and on reaching Nungua Kantamanto, the convicts and one other now at large attacked them and snatched the complainants Itel mobile phone worth GhE250.00.

The prosecution, said the complainant and the witnesses attempted to chase them to collect the phone, but all of a sudden, Rudolf pulled out a knife and threatened to harm the complainant, so they retreated.

Police Chief Inspector Adu said a report was made to the police and while the case was under investigation, the two convicts went to commit another offence and were apprehended to the station.

The complainant and his witnesses identified them during an identification parade. Kwasi however stated that even though they snatched mobile phones from people at Nungua Kantamanto, they cannot identify the victims.

GNA

By Hafsa Obeng, GNA
12.05.2017 LISTEN

Accra, May 12, GNA - President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, on Friday announced the nomination of Ms Justice Sophia Akuffo as Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana.

The President described her as an "extraordinary" woman, who distinguished herself at the Supreme Court with over two decades' legal career.

Ms Justice Akuffo, should she be approved by Parliament, would take over from current Chief Justice Mrs Justice Theodora Georgina Wood, who retires on June 8, 2017.

The President said: 'In order to ensure a smooth succession to the office and preserve the integrity of the Judicial arm of government, I have decided to initiate the constitutional processes for the appointment of her successor, so as to preclude any undue vacuum in the office'.

The President made the announcement at a short ceremony at the Flagstaff House, in Accra.

He said the nominee was a worthy successor to Chief Justice Wood and would uphold jealously the independence of the Judiciary.

President Akufo-Addo said he had known Justice Akuffo for more than 40 years and lauded her hard work, capacity for detailed research, independence of mind and spirit, as well as her honesty and integrity, deep-seated respect for the rule of law and abiding belief in the sovereignty of Almighty God.

The President said he expected discipline, fairness, integrity and the continuing modernisation of Judicial Service to be her hallmarks during her tenure as Chief Justice.

President Akufo-Addo lauded the outgoing Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Theodora Wood, describing her 10-year career as extraordinary.

'I pay warm tribute to her distinguished service to our nation, and wish her a well-earned retirement, even though her public service will not be over as her place on the Council of State awaits her,' he said.

Article 144 (1) of the 1992 Constitution stipulates that 'the Chief Justice shall be appointed by the President, acting in consultation with the Council of State and with the approval of Parliament'.

Justice Sophia Akuffo is one of the longest serving Supreme Court judges in the country and her approval by Parliament would make her the 13th person and second woman to occupy the enviable position.

She holds a master's degree in Law (LLM) from the University of Harvard in the United States of America (USA), and has been a justice of the Supreme Court since 1995.

GNA
Yendi, (N/R) May 12, GNA - One of the Yendi Municipal Assembly government appointees, Mr Andrews Manu 53 years of age passed on Thursday, May 11, 2017 at about at Yendi in Northern Region.

Mr Manu left behind a wife and three children.

He was the Yendi Constituency New Patriotic Party Financial Secretary.

He was also working with Bumco of Assemblies of God Relief and Development Agency as Accounts officer until Bumco collapsed.

According to the Land Lord Alhaji Wahabu Gbangbau Wura Mr Manu was pronounced dead at about when he was rushed to the Yendi Municipal hospital.

He said his wife Mrs Elizabeth Num Fremah told him that the husband was complaining of heart pains and he should assist her to send him to the hospital and when they got to the hospital he was pronounced dead.

The elder brother of the deceased Mr Paul Achine who led the family to convey the body to his home town Wenchi Ewisah in Brong Ahafo region Said the entire family would decide on burial and arrangements when they get home.

The Yendi Municipal Chief Executive Alhaji Hamed Abubakar Yussuf, the Yendi Municipal Coordinating Director Mr Sarfo Kantanka, the Yendi New Patriotic Party (NPP) Constituency Chairman Alhaji Inusah Amadu Dagomba Boy and other NPP Executive Members said they made all the necessary arrangements for the body to be conveyed to his hometown.

Alhaji Inusah appealed to the family to inform them when the burial and funeral would be done.

GNA
Accra, May 12, GNA - Staff of Standard Chartered Bank engaged residents in the Weija and Kasoa environs in preparation for the opening of a new smart branch at the West Hills Mall.

An official statement issued by the Bank and copied to the Ghana News Agency said: 'The new branch is hinged on the Bank's ongoing investment into digital infrastructure, while aligning with its focus on supporting the rapid expansion in key cities like Accra across its global footprint in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

'In 2016, Standard Chartered Bank announced more than USD 3bn investment into strategic opportunities, delivering new technology, and upgrading regulatory and conduct systems over the next three years.'

To the Bank, 'Digitization' is about cost savings, operational efficiencies, and convenience to clients and reducing operational risks for the benefit of Africa's growth and economic development.

The statement said: 'Standard Chartered is changing its branch network to reflect how people are living.

'It aims to be able to provide utmost convenience for clients, whiles they enjoy the very best of Standard Chartered' suite of banking services.

'This ongoing digital revolution by Standard Chartered Bank is here for good.'

GNA
More tax on you. Thats the core of the budget this week. Theyll do it via an additional 0.5% on the Medicare levy. Theyll sting you with a $6.2 billion tax on the banks.

Its a budget trying to get votes. And boy does the current government need those votes. Its under fire from Labor. Its suffering in every opinion poll. Heck, Turnbull is even still under threat from Tony Abbott.

Its quite a shambles of government right now. And somehow, they think more taxes on you will help dig themselves out of this epic hole.

What makes it all worse is that under a Liberal government, youll end up being worse off. And if it changes to a Labor government, guess what?

Thats right  youll still be worse off. No matter whos running the show, youll be worse off. Thats through no fault of your own. You didnt run up half a trillion dollars in debt.

Crypto expert reveals the five things you must know to profit from the coming crypto revolution. Get the free report now.

But youll pay for it. Now with the new spate of taxes, the effective top marginal tax rate is 49.5%. Thats right. If you happen to be a high-income earner (over $180,000), kiss half of your income goodbye.

No wonder high-income earners try and head offshore to places like Singapore or Dubai.

You only need to look at Frances 75% supertax. Instead of pulling in more revenues from the wealthy, it pushed them out of the country.

All it did was discourage investment and see tremendous capital flight. Completely counterproductive to what they were trying to achieve. Instead, the wealth went offshore.

Infamously, French actor Gerard Depardieu became a Russian citizen and moved to Moscow.

And Australia is on a tax increase spree.

So what can you do to keep some wealth outside of the grubby mitts of government?

Bitcoin to buy thingslots of things

Right now, the government has decided to align the GST treatment of digital currency (such as Bitcoin) with money from 1 July 2017.

Purchases of digital currency will no longer be subject to GST. Score! What does that mean for cryptocurrency?

Well, it means the only time youll get taxed on your digital currency is when you spend it. And you simply pay GST on the goods or services you purchase with it.

If you own bitcoin and use it to buy things, then you only pay GST when you spend it. Bitcoin is money.

Now, as we understand it, that means that if you own bitcoin today and can buy $2,000 worth of goods with it, then you pay GST on the goods you buy. Again, just like money.

Also, lets hypothetically say that your bitcoin is worth the equivalent of $20,000. And you use your bitcoin to purchase $20,000 worth of goods and services. Well, in that case, you pay GST on the goods you buy. Again, just like money.

Our interpretation is if you own bitcoin today, and its value goes up tomorrow, thats fine. If you use it as a method of payment, then you will only pay GST when you spend it.

Free Report: The crypto revolution is just beginning and the biggest gains could actually be available right now. Learn more.

From the very beginning weve always said bitcoin  at its core  should be used as a method of payment for goods and services. Weve always stood by the fact that once you buy bitcoin, you shouldnt aim to convert it back to fiat currency at any point.

Our view is that if you have it, hold it. We think the long-term purchasing power of that bitcoin will increase over time. Think of it like holding Aussie dollars and that, instead of buying a litre of milk with your $1, in the future youll be able to buy 10 years worth of milk with that $1. Sounds incredible, really.

Is this really a super tax haven?

The core premise, though, is to use it as a unit of exchange in the future. Not as an asset to convert back to fiat money.

In that sense, yes, the government will take its clip  10% in GST, which you pay for goods and services. But remember, you also dont have to use bitcoin or even store it in Australia.

You can own and hold a bitcoin wallet in any country you like. Thats the beauty of it. Its borderless and the government cant take it from you  as it wont ever know where you keep it.

Omri Y. Marian, from the University of California, published a paper last year titled Are Cryptocurrencies Super Tax Havens?

In his paper, he points out:

that some evidence suggests that Bitcoin may already be used for tax-evasion purposes. One study found that many owners of Bitcoin wallets use them as savings accounts. Such wallets are used only to receive but never to send Bitcoins. Earnings in such wallets, unless voluntarily reported, are beyond the reach of taxing authorities. In addition, researchers have discovered that many Bitcoin users employ fork and merge patterns. Large amounts of Bitcoins are split into multiple small accounts, apparently owned by the same user, or large amounts are bought in small batches using multiple wallets. Tax-evaders and money launderers regularly use these tactics to attempt to hide the sources, as well as the destination, of funds. Moreover, some taxpayers have openly acknowledged that they have considered using Bitcoins to avoid tax-reporting requirements.

We certainly dont advocate any of these measures. But we do make note that these are methods some people currently use. Its a grey area, and one we dont think government truly understands.

Again, we stand by our reasoning that bitcoin and cryptocurrency have long-term potential to increase in value. And that the idea is to one day use that cryptocurrency to buy goods and services.

Free Report: The crypto revolution is just beginning and the biggest gains could actually be available right now. Learn more.

How you choose to go about that is your call. And you should always get the advice of a professional tax agent. Although we think its going to be hard to find an accountant with a clue about bitcoin and cryptocurrency

Ultimately, while the government has little idea about it all, now might be the best time to get your share of it. And as it becomes more widespread and mainstream, youll ideally be able to use it to buy more as the purchasing power skyrockets.

Of course, we could be wrong about bitcoin and other cryptocurrency. And in that event, you want to have some other measures in place to protect your wealth.

We think the best preparation you can do is to get your hands on Vern Gowdies book, The End of Australia.

All of his protection measures are easy to implement. And as a basic wealth protection strategy, considering his methods is simply the smart thing to do.

Even just taking on board what Vern has to say is worth the minimal outlay for his book. Its not that you should read it  you must read it. In our view, it contains the kind of information and strategy every Australian should be thinking about.

Regards,

Sam Volkering,

Editor, Money Morning

PS: Fund manager David Tice is known as the wildly successful manager of the Prudent Bear Fund. He sold the fund to Federated Investors just as the 2008 financial crisis was unfolding.

Tice recently told CNBC: The market has tended to go down about every seven years. It went down in 1987, 1994, 2001 and 2008. During these periods after the declines, it rallies like crazy. But now bad things are about to happen again.

Vern Gowdie agrees. He shows you how to bunker down and prepare for those bad things today. And how you can capitalise on the coming downturn once the dust settles. To find out more, go here.
Industry Ministry seeks more funds

Industry Ministry has sought an additional budget of Rs6.35 billion to implement various programmes which the ministry failed to accommodate within the budget ceiling of Rs8.26 billion set by the National Planning Commission.
This weekend is Mothers Day but before that it is the Mother Lode Round-Up Parade and Rodeo weekend. This Saturday is also Second Saturday Art Night in Downtown Sonora, and there are several live theatre performances to watch.

The next Round-Up event will be the Calcutta at 6pm this evening at the Sheriffs Posse Grounds in Jamestown. Then Saturday is the parade and rodeo click here for more information.

Sierra Repertory Theatre has its last weekend of performances of NOISES OFF, a comedy about an acting troupe details are here.

The Fantasticks opens up this weekend at the East Sonora Sierra Repertory Theatre. The event listing about the romantic comedy is here.

Murphys Creek Theatre continues performing Speed-the-Plow which was selected from from four other choices by a poll of audience and community members. More about the fast-talking, quit-witted satire of Hollywood here.

Mother Lode Christian School (MLCS) invites you to their Spring Musical STAR QUESTSearch for the Stolen Scriptures and also a performance by the MLCS Cougar Band to start off the free open house event. The event listing is here.

If you are feeling more active head to Mountain Ranch and take on the Stop, Drop & Mud 5K. The first of its kind event plans to have 16 obstacles along the route ranging from fire fighter skills to strength and endurance tests. Details are here.

On Mothers Day enjoy a breakfast with the La Grange Odd Fellows, as detailed here or visit Railtown 1897 for a special Mothers Day event as detailed here. Up in Calaveras if you have sent in an RSVP for this Sunday enjoy the Dogwood Festival. The festival features music, hors doeuvres, wine tasting, quilt raffle and a private Walk Among the Dogwoods before the concert for ticket holders only. Ticket details are here.
McClintock's Town Hall in Sonora View Photos

Sonora, CA  Congressman Tom McClintock weighs in the on the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and whether an independent prosecutor is needed regarding the Russian interference in the nations presidential elections.

McClintock cited Comeys gross misconduct as a key reason for his ousting and the highly politicized circumstances surrounding the Russia inquiry as a need for an independent prosecutor. However he made sure to include a few political jabs while making his points that can be read in his entire statement below:

I strongly support President Trumps decision to fire James Comey for gross misconduct during his tenure, and only wish he had done so on January 20th. Because of the highly politicized circumstances involving the Russian inquiry, I think an independent prosecutor would be advisable to place the inquiry above reproach. I believe it is equally important to appoint an independent prosecutor to purse the investigations that were swept under the rug during the Obama administration, including the use of the IRS to intimidate Tea Party members, the Clinton email scandal and how much top secret intelligence was lost to our enemies, and the unfolding scandal involving use of the NSA to spy on political opponents.
Equipment ready to remove portions of Bonds Flat Road View Photos

Sonora, CA  Ongoing closures of damaged major rural routes continue to cause significant concerns in the aftermath of the winters disastrous storms.

Today, Tuolumne County Administrative Officer Craig Pedro shares with Clarke Broadcasting that county engineering staff is tasked with providing a show-and-tell pictorial presentation at next Tuesdays board of supervisors meeting. The goal is to literally give the supervisors and public a clearer picture of engineering and road crew challenges while addressing efforts towards getting the more challenging roads repaired.

Pedro reports that the Turlock Irrigation District (TID), which removed part of Bonds Flat Road back in February, as reported here, in order to open the Don Pedro reservoir spillway, has taken the lead in restoring that section. They are as motivated as we are to get that open for everyone who relies upon it, which includes [TID] for their operation of the reservoir, he states. At last check with TID, he indicates estimated repair costs were thought to run in the $300,000 range. Qualifying that number, he adds, I would not hold them to that but it is their responsibility to get that road repaired  and they are trying to do that as quickly as they can.

An Emergency Response Workaround

Aside from recreational and commuting traffic, Pedro admits that emergency response time is a concern with the Bonds Flat Road closure. To address that, the county has coordinated with CAL Fire to ensure that the Blanchard Fire Station on Highway 132 in La Grange is fully staffed and backfilled.

Currently, Pedro says that county officials and other stakeholder agencies, in tandem with U.S Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris, are pondering possibility of seeking funding through President Donald Trumps proposed infrastructure program to potentially pay for a bridge.

TID has floated the figure of $5 million as an estimated cost for a structure that would be able to successfully withstand in the event of flooding such as back in 1997, which required TID to open all three spillway gates, causing even more significant roadway damage. The spillway opening back in February required one gate to open halfway.

Focus On Other Rural Routes

Pedro evokes a few of the other roads that are chief among the countys concerns. There is Italian BarMarshes Flat, an important backdoor to the Don Pedro subdivision, a steep road on a hillside that requires engineering. Italian Bar Road is in similar category, with significant damage where significant repairs are needed. For every one we will use federal and state funding available under the disaster declarations. While planning and work are underway Pedro makes this request: I just need to beg peoples patience, as a pretty much overwhelmed roads and maintenance staff take care of those things on top of already being stretched thin. It is going to take time but we are very proud of the work the engineering and road maintenance crews are doing to get the roads all back in shape as quickly as possible.

He also stresses that motorists need to be very cautious and respectful of all the road closures across the county. Any of the roads we have closed with barricades and signs that say Road Closed there is a reason for it. Recently, he shares that a motorcyclist who cut past a barricaded forest road was seriously hurt, stressing, We cannot emphasize this enough  to acknowledge those barriers and signs because they are there for peoples safety. Some of these roads are just gone..it may not be apparentuntil you are right on it.
They say God is everywhere, however, not everyone has a strong connection to reach him.

We live in a world laden with cares, many people are burdened and frustrated, thus, they need solution at all cost.

From bareness to poverty and down to spiritual maladies, below are 8 "saacred places" where people run to get help for their problems.

1. Olumo Rock (Ogun state)

Olumo Rock is one of the tourist destinations in the West African country where some indigenes of Egbaland hid during a civil war which broke out in the 19th century.

The rock served as a shelter for many of the survivors, who were said to have hidden in specific areas inside the caves located inside the rocks to evade attacks from enemies.

It is claimed that "the god of the mountain has kept protecting his people over the years".

The Egba people who own the land which the rock sits, say they get everything they want from the rock. "Anything you want in life, just ask," many claim.

2. Source of River Ethiope (Delta state)

Even the huge foliage kind of shy away from muddying the water with dead leaves

From the foot of the huge silk tree and other smaller ones, tiny sprout of crystal clean water flow out. From this tiny sprout of clean water, a little pond is formed all within the grove.

The water is sparkling clean. Even the huge foliage kind of shy away from muddying the water with dead leaves.

This is the source of River Ehiope, a unique river reputed to be the deepest inland waterway in Africa.

The claim of Umuaja pond to being tourists site is not just about the eco-tourism and cultural setting of the place. It is the source of one major river in Delta state that has been part of the history of the area.

Beyond tourism, however, people come to Ethiope to get solutions to the mysteries of their lives.

There is a shrine at the head-stream, people travel from far and wide to meet with the chief priest. It is believed that the waters of Ethiope have healing potentials.

3. Okija shrine (Anambra state)

Okija made the news some years back, when the community housing the forest was invaded by the Nigerian police.

This was during the days of Tafa Balogun as Inspector General of Police, the town was unknown to many Nigerians prior to that raid.

The shrine still operates even after the massive raid which took place in 2004.

Located in Ihiala local government area of Anambra state, Okija is said to have four shrines spread across various parts of the community.

Okija used to be a hive for power seeking politicians

One is located in the centre of the community while the others are in the forest.

They include Ulasi, Ogwugwu-Akpu, Ogwugwu-Isiula and Ogwugwu-Mmili. Of these four, Ogwugwu-Mmili is said to be the least known to members of the Nigerian public.

But generally, the Ulasi deity is regarded as the father of all the Okija deities. It has its shrine in the towns market square, known as Nkwor-Okija.

It is believed that the other three deities took their roots from the Ulasi and as such, they are subject to it and thus do its bidding.

People from all works of life go to Okija to seek justice for evils done against them.

4. Oke-Idanre Hill (Ondo state)

Idanre Hills consists of spectacular valleys with a high plain and the valleys are interspersed with magnificent inselberlgs that is about 3,000 feet above the sea level.

It was listed in 2007 on the tentative list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.

There are attributes such as the old court, Owas Palace, Agbooogun foot print, shrines, burial grounds and mounds and the Omi Aopara which is the thunder water.

It is a tourist attraction center that brings thousands of visitors all through the year.

5. Synagogue Church Of all Nations (Lagos)

Synagogue cannot be classified as strange, though there used to be a time when its founder, Prophet TB Joshua was seen a strange person.

Located in Ikotun area of Lagos state, Synagogue is one of the churches with a daunting crowd. People come to service from different parts of the world, to get a dose of TB Joshua's anointing.

READ ALSO: Kaduna massacre: Buhari, El-Rufai have a secret agenda - SOKAD

The Federal Government says if TB Joshua leaves Nigeria, then the tourism sector will really be affected

To show the magnitude of influence Synagogue has, Prophet TB Joshua recently threatened to leave Nigeria for Europe, that threat really shook the nation.

The federal government even made an appeal urging the cleric to remain in Nigeria.

6. Osun/Osogbo river

This sacred forest is situated along the banks of the Oshun River, on the outskirts of the capital city of Osogbo, which is regarded as the home of the goddess of fertility  Osun.

There are shrines, art works, sculptures and sanctuaries that dot the river in honour of the goddess and other local deities.

It is considered as the last of the Yorubas sacred forests that is still standing.

In 2005, it was listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

The Osun/Osogbo grove is where the dreaded Osun goddess, known as Yeye Osun resides and where the annual Osun/Osogbo festival takes place.

This early festival brings thousands of spectators, tourists and Osun worshippers from around the world.

READ ALSO: REVEALED! Real reason Emir of Kano is under investigation - Kano state Speaker

7 places in Nigeria where people go in search of God

However, beyond the festival period, there is a shrine which many still come from time to time to seek solutions to their problems.

The Osun goddess is also known to be a mother of many children as the "Osun Olomoyoyo" image inside the shrine depicts.

Many barren women have reportedly visited to have the river goddess help them with child bearing with several promises made to bring something back for the deity.

While many of them have remembered to fulfill their promises, some others forgot in transit and have been dealt with by the Yeye Osun.

7. Redemption camp

Redemption camp needs no introduction,, it is fabled as the largest city of God on earth.

The camp serves as home and headquarters for the Redeemed Christian Church of God, as led by Pastor Enoch Adeboye.

As massive as the capacity of the camp is, it still does not properly contain the number of faithfuls that troop down from around the country and beyond.

On certain occasions, the space is so tight that the highways bear the brunt and terrible traffic leave many stranded.

It is believed by some Christians, that once their foot touches the soil at the camp ground, they have been made whole. So they will do anything to get to camp, especially for the "Holy Ghost Congress".

The Legit.ng video below shows a former driver to renowned Living Faith Church Bishop, David Abioye who converted from Christianity to Islam at Games Village, Abuja.

Source: Legit.ng
Are you hoping to start your own business and still haven't decided which field to choose? Have you ever tried cassava farming? Its time to try and see how profitable it can be! Cassava business plan is HERE.

According to the an Indian legend, the gods honoured one of the aboriginal tribes with a tiny sprout of an unknown plant. It struggled to rise toward the sun through the dense undergrowth of tall grass. The little plant won its place under the sun and turned into a flowering bush.

It grew so quickly that the ground was covered with cracks through which ancient tribes could see tender white oblong tubers. In honor of tribe leader's daughter, perfect white Mani, the natives called this miracle plant Manihot. It was edible and very tasty. Different tribe called the plant by various names, one of them is Cassava. Today it is an amazing shrub with rich tasty tubers, which do not require special care and it feeds over 500 million people on Earth.

Simple business ideas for cassava farming in Nigeria

Cassava production in Nigeria is extremely simple. The plant is to be placed in trays filled with soil. This is where you stick the cuttings (stems) of the plant and within six months they will grow and turn into pretty big bushes. When the leaves on the bushes start to turn yellow, this means that the harvest is ripe. You can dig bulbs from the soil for eating or selling.

Cassava care is minimal, the plants only need to be watered from time to time. Cassava harvest can reach up to 50 tons per one hectare. The price of root crops in Europe is around 3 dollars per kilo. In addition to cassava tubers, cassava green leaves can be consumed as spices.

Main required conditions for cassava farming:

- Air temperature - not less than +25  +30 C;

- Absence of long drought period;

- Abundance of Sunny days;

- Warm weather;

- Loose soil;

- Good drainage;

- Flat or gently sloping land.

Reasons to start growing cassava?

The root system is represented by a long thick root with a length of 1 m and diameter of 8-10 cm. The core of the tuber is rich in starch (20-40% of its weight). After cassava heat treatment or drying, it is completely safe and has the following effect on the body:

- Enhances immunity;

- Has an anti-inflammatory effect;

- Normalizes blood sugar level;

- Removes excess cholesterol from the body;

- Strengthens bones;

- Prevents Alzheimer's disease and other CNS diseases;

- Normalizes blood pressure and heart function;

- Slows down the aging process.

Cassava farming business in Nigeria

Preparation of planting specimen

Cassava is propagated only vegetatively; You should use cuttings harvested from the middle part of well-developed stems, aged 6-12 months; 15-20 cm cuttings are stored in a cool place for 2-3 months;

The position of the cutting when planting doesnt play any role (vertical, inclined, horizontal). Main requirement: at least half of the cutting should be in the soil. If you choose horizontal planting, the cutting should be covered with 8-10 cm layer of soil. Otherwise, the planting material will become dry. If it has sufficient moisture, the cutting quickly forms adventitious shoots and tubers.

READ ALSO: Maize farming in Nigeria

Cassava planting

Cassava is quite easy to grow. Beginning from autumn, soil should be enriched with humus and herbicides (4.5 liters per hectare).

In open and protected soil, cassava is better planted on ridges with a width of 40 cm and a height of 40-60 cm in 1 row, which creates the desired porosity of the soil and facilitates plants care.

Harvesting

Cassava harvest readiness is determined by the yellowing, falling of leaves and ripening of seeds. If you gather too immature tubers, they will be too tough.

First, cut down the stems of plants, leaving 30-40 cm of the plant. Use the cut down stems for making cuttings. In 2-3 days they need to be planted in a prepared soil. After cutting the stems, underground cassava tubers are to be pulled out completely.

You may sell cassava raw material or already processed cassava.

Cassava processing

If you are interested in selling processed cassava, you will need to acquire a cassava processing machine.

Tapioca

You can make tapioca, a starch made from cassava. It is used in the thickening of sauces, soups, porridges, puddings, jellies, cakes, biscuits. Also, cassava is a raw material for starch balls. This is one of the most popular uses of the starch. The small white balls look like pearls or caviar. After they are boiled, their color changes to black. They are usually mixed with powdered sugar and served as dessert. Also, cassava balls can be made into different colors and added to cakes or drinks.

Cassava flour

It can replace flour made of cereals. It is used to bake cakes or bread and is an alternative to traditional bread for people who suffer from allergy to grain.

Cassava farming business plan: Main calculations

One acre of farmland will approximately cost you N150,000  N250,000 Preparation of one hectare of land  N10,000  N30,000 One liter of herbicide  N1,000 (4.5 liters for 1 ha) Optimal number of cassava bundles  60-65 per hectare Price of one stem  N300  N500 Wage for workers for planting of one hectare of land  N20,000 (N1,000 a day for one worker, its better to hire 4 workers)

If everything is done correctly you can get 25 tons of cassava roots per one hectare.

Simple calculations: initial sum, minimum  nearly N350,000 (not including money for workers wages).

So, as you can see, cassava farming business is rather profitable as it doesnt require a lot of expenses and cassava is always in demand in this region.

READ ALSO: Irrigation farming in Nigeria

Source: Legit.ng
- Reno Omokri has schooled Nigerians on the need to be independent and objective

- He uses Kaduna state as an example to show Nigerians how much they can achieve

- He also pointed out the fact that opportunities abound in Nigeria

Reno Omokri, the spokesperson to former President Goodluck Jonathan has taken his time to reach out to Nigerians who are depending heavily on the President Muhammadu Buharis administration.

Legit.ng gathered that Omokri who is presently in the United States judging by the location set with the Facebook post he shared with people on Wednesday, May 10.

Omokri schooled Nigerians telling them how blind they are to the resources around them and the things they could achieve by making adequate use of those things.

Screenshot showing how Reno Omokri aired his opinion about Nigerians.

His Facebook page is where he constantly shares his opinions about sensitive issues.

READ ALSO: Woman allegedly runs mad after spending time with man in a Malaysia hotel

He noted that people have not stopped complaining about the inability of the government to provide jobs. Yet, the price of rice in Kaduna is twice the amount it is being sold in Lagos.

Having established that fact, Omokri went on to talk about the governments effort in providing a railway in Kaduna. He also mentioned that it would take less than N2000 to travel from Kaduna to Lagos by rail to sell the rice.

Omokri who was obviously bitter about the issue laid emphasis on this by saying Nigerians do not need a visa to travel to Lagos for business purposes.

At that point, Omokri who is also a pastor quoted the bible to substantiate his point. He acknowledged the fact that the President Muhammadu Buharis administration is inept, he asked Nigerians not to dwell on that fact as it is not their problem.

There, he stated the problem most Nigerians have: Your problem is expecting manna from heaven. Your problem is mental laziness. Your problem is YOU.

READ ALSO: Meet 64-year-old wife of newly elected French President who is 24 years his senior

To this honest observation, another Facebook user identified as Olarewaju Icecream Fagbemi replied him by asking how safe the train is. Omokri who was not ready to let anyone render his opinion useless replied by saying Nigerians are always looking for excuses.

Omokri went further to breakdown how Nigerians can make use of the opportunities that abound in the country. He said:

What is your take on this? Talk to us in the comment section.

Watch the Legit.ng TV below to see the tips you need to save more and spend less:

Source: Legit.ng
What is a queerplatonic relationship? The modern term explained

Do you know what a queerplatonic relationship is about? Keep reading to find out what this modern term means and how different it is from other relationships.
Let the people decide

This election is not just another election; it heralds the start of a new era of politics
Veteran Nollywood actress, Bukky Ajayi has passed on. Here are some memorable things you need to know about the late star.

Bukky Ajayis three sons Olakunle Fawole, Alfred Oluwole Shoga, Claude Akinwande Peter Thomas recount their fondest memories. All of them have joined the platoons of those paying tributes to the adored Nollywood star actress.

Her dearest sons, Alfred Oluwole Shoga, 61-year-old, Claude Akinwande Peter Thomas, 52-year-old, and Olakunle Fawole, 41-year-old recently gave her a torrent of eulogies.

Alfred Oluwole Shoga (Son) said:

A hardworking and disciplined mother. Mummy, as I fondly call you, words fail me as I write. You were a great, hardworking and disciplined mother. You were able to handle your career and family without issues. You will be missed not just by us but by all.

My mom, Alhaja Zainab Bukola Ajayi, was born Patience Olubukola Ajayi, a Christian, later converted to Islam in the early 80s to Zainab Bukola Ajayi. A devoted mother of three boys, she was a grandmother of 8 and a great grandmother of 5. Mum started out as a journalist/presenter, trained in England and became a newscaster.

She was also a model who got loads of interests from the likes of Drum Magazine, etc. Acting was a natural transition for her. She was committed to her job and the roles she played. She was also on the radio for voice over and presenting. As a mother, she was a strict but fair disciplinarian, stern but friendly. She was not just a mother but also a friend, sister, aunt, grandma to all around her. She touched a lot of lives because she radiated love. We have lost an icon". - Claude Akinwande Peter Thomas said (Mamas second son).

Tajudeen Olakunle Fawole (Mamass last son):

I will miss her for everything that she was. My mother, Zainab Bukola Ajayi (Iya Abounce), was a blessing from the Almighty Allah, not just to me but to many, who lived with her, worked with her or knew her one way or another. She single-handedly taught me how to be a man, a real person, we would have our occasional fights, but we would settle for a bottle of Pepsi. When I worried and cried to her she always had her way of calming me down; she had a big heart filled with love, I will miss her for everything that she was.

Bukky Ajayi biography

READ ALSO: Fathia Balogun biography: 10 facts you didn't know

- She was born a Christian but converted to Islam in the early eighties and chose the name Zainab.

- Her love for the theater started as a young girl when her father used to take her to the cinemas.

- She studied in England. She was abroad for six years, as a Federal government scholar.

- She left England and came back to Nigeria after her education in 1965 and started working in Nigeria Television Authority(NTA) as a presentation assistant in 1966.

- Afterward, she became a presenter and then a news reader. She presented a couple of childrens programmes like Nigerians Sketches, a programme which was all about Nigerian culture. Diran Ajijedidun of blessed memory was its producer.

- She was later transferred to Port Harcourt and later back to Lagos, and it was at that time she started her acting career.

- She started with the Village Headmaster in the 70s, and she later got a role in Amaka Igwes Checkmate.

- She had featured in so many home videos that she had lost count. The shooting of international film Critical Assignment in South Africa, is one of the events of her life that she could never forget. It gave her a chance to ascertain how it was done elsewhere, other than Nigeria, where a film could be shot within 5 days.

- Bukky Ajayis popular movies include Mother of George, Indecent Girl, Diamond Ring, Witches, Thunderbolt among others.

- Shes Jazzman Olofins grandmother-In-law.

Bukky Ajayi was a phenomenal actress when compared with other Nollywood actresses, a good mother and a public figure. Every one who watches her films thinks about about Bukky Ajayi life, about Bukky Ajayi children and Bukky Ajayi husband. We all know that the next step of her career could be the Hollywood. Unfortunately, the star actress didn`t manage to reach this step. However, she remains one of the most hardworking persons we have ever known.

READ ALSO: Omotola Jalade biography

Source: Legit.ng
- Detectives have traced $3million of the controversial London-Paris Club loan refund to a governor

- The cash is believed to be part of the N19billion illegally deducted from the refund by the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF)

- This is according to Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) sources

A report by The Nation indicates that eagle-eyed EFCC officials have traced $ 3 million of the controversial London-Paris Club loan refund to a governor.

According to the report, the cash is believed to be part of the N19billion illegally deducted from the refund by the NGF.

Legit.ng gathered that the cash was found in the account of a member of the House of Representatives who got it through a proxy, the lawmakers brother.

The $3million is being spent on building a 100-room hotel in Lagos, which the governor may forfeit to the federal government.

EFCC close in on governor who allegedly used $3m Paris Club refund cash to build a hotel

READ ALSO: Governor Amosun escapes death in a major accident

Also, the EFCC has placed a restriction on N8billion and $80million in the naira and dollar accounts of the NGF.

A source quoted in the report, said: The EFCC is still investigating the N19billion allegedly diverted from the loan refund. The commission has so far interrogated 15 companies, more than 10 individuals and over eight bureaux de change used to divert the cash.

The latest bend of the investigation is the discovery of $3million linked with another governor who benefited from the illegal deduction. The governor had engaged a member of the House of Representatives(who was also a former commissioner) to launder his share.

The lawmaker was said to have wired the $3million into his brothers account before moving it into his own.

Upon interrogation, one of the suspects admitted that the cash was for the ongoing construction of a 100-room hotel for the governor.

About $500,000 of the $3million has been recovered by the EFCC. It is a scam in which many people benefited and a sizeable number of proxies used to launder the funds.

We will do our best to recover the already diverted part of the $3million. We may also apply for the forfeiture of the hotel to the federal government.

The source added that the EFCC has placed a Post No Debit restriction on the NGFs account with N8billion and domiciliary account with $80million.

Out of the $86million, $3million was wired to the governor through a proxy and another $2million shared out.

The EFCC is ready to lift the restriction on the two accounts of the NGF on a condition that the consultants and legal advisers who deserve to be paid will be given what they are entitled to in line with the agreement signed with the NGF.

We want the NGF to involve the EFCC in the disbursement to avoid another diversion of the cash. As it is now, consultants and legal advisers are complaining that they are being shortchanged by the governors, the source said.

READ ALSO: Abba Kyari wants to cut off these 7 ministers from Buhari? (SEE LIST)

It is now a common sight for EFCC officials to recover monies looted by politicians and public officials

The EFCC had earlier traced about N500million, which was meant for a consultant, to the account of a governor. The cash has been retrieved.

Recall that the presidency has released N1. 266.44trillion to the 36 states in the past one year. The cash includes N713.70billion special intervention funds to states.

Finance minister Mrs Kemi Adeosun had said the payment would enable states to offset outstanding salaries and pension which had been causing considerable hardship.

Source: Legit.ng
The Emir of Bauchi is said to have rejected Pastor Adeboye's evangelic visit to his palace.

Legit.ng gathered that the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG)'s general overseer in his evangelic mission to the Northern states in Nigeria visited Bauchi state which he as only visited twice before now in 1999 and in 2004.

Unlike his visit to Adamawa where both the governor and his deputy were present at the airport to welcome Daddy G.O. and received his prayers and blessings, the Bauchi state governor wasn't available for prayers.

RCCG's general overseer worldwide, Pastor E. A. Adeboye

READ ALSO: I came to Lagos a sinner - Pastor Enoch Adeboye

Also, his request to meet with the Emir of the Bauchi, Rilwanu Suleimanu Adamu was allegedly rejected by the palace.

This didn't deter Pastor Adeboye as he still used the opportunity to touch two churches within the state and even attended a wedding.

See photos below:

Source: Legit.ng
- Boko Haram terrorists from Sambisa attacked soldiers in three locations

- The soldiers were able to repel the attack killing some of them

- They also recovered weapons and ammunition

Boko Haram terrorists coming out of Sambisa forest from Damboa, Tokumbere and Pulka axis launched series of attacks against troops of 114 Task Force Battalion.

According to an exclusive report from a soldier to Legit.ng, he said two terrorists were killed in the first attack while several others sustained gun-shot wounds.

READ ALSO: Abba Kyari wants to cut off these 7 ministers from Buhari? (SEE LIST)

In the attack in Pulka, it was reported that 16 terrorists were killed while one of them was captured alive.

Some of the weapons and vehicle recovered from Boko Haram terrorists

The soldiers also recovered weapons and ammunition belonging to the terrorists.

Read the statement below:

"Today, troops of 114 Task Force Battalion came under three-pronged attack by Boko Haram terrorists fanning out of Sambisa forest from Damboa, Tokumbere and Pulka axis.

"In the first attack 2 Boko Haram insurgents paid for their atrocities with their lives while several others sustained gun shot injuries.

"But the fate that befell those that attacked Pulka was more dreadful. The ever ready and vigilant troops rose to the occasion by repelling the attacks and killing all the 16 attackers and captured one of them alive during the exploitation.

READ ALSO: EFCC closes in on governor who used $3m Paris Club refund cash to build a hotel

"The gallant troops also recovered 11 AK-47 rifles, 3 General Purpose Machine Guns (GPMGs), 1 Browning Machine Gun (BMG) and 2 Toyota Hilux vehicles.

"Others are a 60mm Mortar tube, 7 boxes of 12.7mm ammunition and 1 belt of 12.7mm ammunition. 3 soldiers that sustained minor injuries".

Watch a NAIJ.com video of the Nigerian Air Force operation against Boko Haram terrorists below:

Source: Legit.ng
Maoist Centre cadre shoots at UML cadre in Bhojpur

A CPN-UML cadre has been shot at by a CPN (Maoist Centre) cadre at Helaucha in Bhojpur municipality-1 on Thursday evening.
- Vice President Yemi Osinbajo's comment regarding his relationship with President Buhari, has brought some backlash

- The VP had said that Buhari treats him like a son

- Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has said that the VP's statement is highly disappointing

Chief Femi Fani-Kayode has lashed out at Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, for comments regarding his relationship with the president.

The former minister of aviation and chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), took a swipe at Osinbajo, after the VP said Buhari treats him like his son.

Fani-Kayode said it was disappointing for a 60-year-old to publicly make such statement.

Osinbajo made the now controversial statement during his visit o the palace of the Emir of Katsina, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Abdulmumin Usman.

READ ALSO: Osinbajo is Nigerias Acting President, Buhari has committed no crime - Senator Gbolahan

FFK says Vice President Osinbajo's statement on his relationship with Buhari, is shameful

The vice president visited the royal father on Thursday, May 11.

Osinbajo said: I feel very much at home in Katsina. Moreso, because this is the State of the President who has taken me as a brother; in fact the President has taken me as a son in the way he treats me.

I pray the Lord will preserve our President to continue to lead, as the nation has voted him to do. He seriously believes in Nigeria unity.

Reacting via a tweet Thursday night, Fani-Kayode said Nigeria was in serious trouble.

The President treats me like his son and his brother- VP. A 60 year old man can say this? We are in trouble, he tweeted.

Meanwhile the recent victory of Emmanuel Macron in France, has caused Nigerians to start nursing the thoughts about the nation being led by a youth.

Legit.ng was on the street recently to interact with Nigerians, below is a video of their views on the development.

Source: Legit.ng
Nepal, China sign deal on OBOR

Nepal and China on Friday signed a framework agreement on Chinas One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, days ahead of a summit in Beijing where an ambitious plan to build a modern-day Silk Road trade routes and lead a new era of globalisation would be unveiled.
Nepal, China to ink deal on OBOR today

Nepal and China are set to sign a framework agreement on Chinas One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative on Friday, days ahead of a summit in Beijing
- The DSS has been made to tender an unreserved apology to the son of the South-South chairman of CAN

- He was also awarded N250,000 damages against the DSS director-general and the Delta state director of the organisation

- His arrest was deemed unlawful by the court in the Apostle Suleman case

A Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta state, has asked the Department of State Services (DSS) to apologize to Mr Tareri Avwomakpa for unlawfully arresting him.

Mr Avwomakpa is the son of the South-South chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), who was illegally arrested by DSS operatives in February 2017.

Justice T.B. Adegoke who gave the ruling on Tuesday, May 9, ruled against the Director-General of the DSS and the Delta state director.

Mr Tareri Avwomakpa made a Facebook post about the issue

He was arrested and detained over a message in which he called for support for the General Overseer, Omega Fire Ministries, Apostle Johnson Suleman.

The message which he reportedly sent over social media platform, Whatsapp, called on Christians in the country to support and accompany Suleman to honour the invitation by the DSS at its head office in Abuja.

READ ALSO: Apostle Suleman flies private jet to South Africa

The man who is a son of Archbishop God-do-well Avwomakpa's arrest was ruled as unlawful and unconstitutional and he was awarded N250,000 damages against the DSS director-general and the Delta state director of the organisation.

Also, the court ordered the DSS authorities to write a formal letter of apology to him for a breach of his constitutional human rights.

READ ALSO: Apostle Suleman flies private jet to South Africa

According to Punch, Tareri also confirmed the ruling when contacted on Thursday, May 11 and dedicated the judgment to Nigerians who had been killed and were currently suffering oppression for being Christians across the country.

Meanwhile, Apostle Suleman, seems not to be bothered anymore about the scandal surrounding him.

Legit.ng earlier reported that the man of God was recently spotted in a private jet on his way to South Africa for this year's edition of 'Help from Above'. Apostle Suleman will be in Johannesburg from May 2 to May 4.

CAN has consistently supported Apostle Suleman even despite the scandals. Watch a Legit.ng video on the Suleman travails:

Source: Legit.ng
Nepals licence Raj

The telecom regulator can impose rigorous conditions to bar entry of unprofessional firms
New agreement to reconstruct Kasthamandap in 2 yrs

An agreement has been reached on Friday to reconstruct the ancient old architectural wonderKasthamandap Temple that was damaged by the catastrophic earthquake of April 25, 2015.
- Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau has released a new video on the 82 Chibok girls that were recently swapped with his fighters

- In the new video Shuaibu Moni, one of the swapped Boko Haram commanders was seen issuing threats to bomb Abuja

- The commander also declared that it is not true that only 5 commanders were released

- For more reports on Boko Haram, please visit: https://www.legit.ng/tag/boko-haram.html

Ahmad Salkida, a top Nigerian journalist, says Abubakar Shekau has released a new video on the 82 Chibok girls that were recently swapped with his commanders.

Legit.ng gathered that in the new video Shuaibu Moni, one of the swapped Boko Haram commanders was seen issuing threats to Nigerian authorities and President Muhammadu Buhari.

Salkida in a series of tweets on Friday, May 12, said the commander, in the video, declared that it is not true that only 5 commanders were released, warning of imminent bombing of Abuja.

READ ALSO: Nigeria police looses N11.2million to Peace Corps in human rights suit

Boko Haram commander making fresh threats to bomb Abuja in new video

He further said that there's been no 'sulhu' dialogue with government and there won't be. Only war is between us, he declared.

Read the tweets below:

Watch the video containing the threats below:

On May 7 the Nigerian government confirmed the release of 82 Chibok girls after they have spent three years in captivity of the dreaded Boko Haram.

Legit.ng previously reported that federal government swapped five Boko Haram militants for the 82 Chibok schoolgirls recently released.

This is contrary to some media reports that just two Boko Haram commanders were released in the swap deal. At the same time some of the kidnapped girls got radicalised.

READ ALSO: Muslim cleric wants Christian players banned from making sign of the cross

According to negtiator of the swap deal, the outcome should be seen as a favourable bargain, considering what obtained in other climes when it comes to prisoner swap of innocent citizens with suspected terrorists.

Watch this Legit.ng video below of kids that survived Boko Haram attacks.

Source: Legit.ng
Its often said that the most important qualities in a chief executive are character and judgment. So what are shareholders, directors, customers and the public to make of the Barclays chief executive, James E. Staley, the subject of shareholder protests and multiple investigations on both sides of the Atlantic after little more than a year in the executive suite?

Everyone I spoke to this week described Mr. Staley, a 34-year investment banking veteran of J. P. Morgan, as warm, likable and much appreciated for bringing some vitality to Barclays. The bank is desperate for stability after years of executive turmoil, the boards ouster of its previous two chief executives, the Libor interest-rate manipulation scandal, and continuing fallout from the financial crisis.

And then, in the next breath, nearly everyone mentioned the same word: judgment.

Thats a quality thats central to the issues that have enveloped Mr. Staley, which include a campaign to unmask a whistle-blower that Mr. Staley publicly acknowledged this week was a mistake.

I have apologized to the board, and I would today like to apologize to you as well, for that error, Mr. Staley said on Wednesday at Barclays annual shareholders meeting in Royal Festival Hall in London.
A lawyer who spent much of his career protecting banks is now in charge of regulating them.

And last weeks appointment of the lawyer, Keith A. Noreika, to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is unusual because it does not require him to sign the ethics pledge that President Trump is forcing on other appointees.

Mr. Noreika, who is signaling plans to unwind some Obama-era banking regulations, got the job after the Trump administration removed Thomas J. Curry, an Obama appointee, as the comptroller. Mr. Currys term expired in April. On Thursday, Mr. Noreika told employees that Mr. Currys chief of staff was also leaving the agency, according to an internal email and two people briefed on the matter.

The chief of staff, a Democrat and a supporter of bank regulation, announced plans to step down after Mr. Noreika indicated that he wanted to hire his own top adviser, one of the people said.

Unlike Mr. Curry, a longtime regulator, Mr. Noreika joined the agency from the prominent law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he represented an array of banks. Many of his former clients are regulated by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, including at least one bank that may need the agencys blessing for a merger, a matter on which Mr. Noreika worked.
SAN FRANCISCO  Masayoshi Son, the Japanese technology billionaire, has never been known to think small. That includes leading enormous investments in fledgling software companies.

Mr. Sons company, SoftBank, said on Thursday that it was leading a $502 million investment in Improbable, a British start-up focused on creating expansive virtual worlds.

The investment, which will be for a minority stake, will value Improbable, which is five years old and has offices in London and San Francisco, at more than $1 billion.

It is one of the biggest early-stage venture deals for a start-up in Europe, which is striving to produce tech companies that can compete with Silicon Valleys.
The president went on to lament the plight of Jeffrey Lord, his stalwart on-air defender on CNN, saying: Poor Jeffrey Lord. I love Jeffrey Lord. But sometimes hes sitting there with eight unknown killers that nobody ever heard of.

CNNs public-relations team issued a blunt riposte to Mr. Trump on Thursday: His comments are beneath the dignity of the office of the President.

Mr. Trump told Time that he had installed a new 60-inch television in his dining room, and he showed off his prowess with the units DVR, on which he compiles cable news clips. The president often reacts on Twitter in real time to cable-news segments that he deems critical or ungenerous.

Once a frequent guest on the airwaves, Mr. Trump now appears most regularly on Fox News, speaking with opinionated hosts like Jeanine Pirro, who will run an interview with him on Saturday, and Sean Hannity. He has also granted interviews to the major broadcast networks, including a session with NBCs Lester Holt on Thursday in which the president said he had long planned to fire James Comey, the director of the F.B.I., who was dismissed on Tuesday.

The president said he enjoyed watching Fox News in the mornings, and their ratings have gone through the roof because everyone knows Im watching Fox. He called MSNBCs coverage of him ridiculous.
The Bombardier family was once corporate nobility in Quebec, with patriarchs who became folk heroes in the province.

Now, after a string of setbacks that required government bailouts, followed by a decision to increase executive pay, Bombardier, the airplane and train manufacturer that bears the family name, is a target of protests on the streets of Montreal and the proxy forms of major investors.

On Thursday, the family, which controls Bombardier through special voting shares, responded to the growing criticism. Shortly before the companys annual meeting, Pierre Beaudoin, a Bombardier scion, announced that he would resign as executive chairman. Mr. Beaudoin will continue as chairman, but he will no longer work full time or perform any management duties at the company, which was started by his grandfather Joseph-Armand Bombardier.

The resignation followed an unusual agreement reached before the meeting by several of Canadas major pension funds. The Quebec pension fund, which invested $1.5 billion in Bombardier in exchange for a one-third stake in the companys rail unit, said it would not support Mr. Beaudoin. The fund, Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec, criticized the company for raising executive pay after accepting government aid and announcing 14,000 job cuts.
As payment, Hasbro offered him $75,000 or a tiny royalty fee that was below the industry norm because he was new to the toy business, his daughter said. Eventually, he asked for $100,000, and Hasbro agreed.

When he saw the line at the 1964 Toy Fair, she said, he knew he had made a mistake.

Mr. Levine, a Korean War veteran, told NPR that he named the doll after watching the 1945 film The Story of G.I. Joe, and that it was his way to honor the armed forces. Manufacturing of the G.I. Joe figures, 12 inches tall, began in 1964, before American involvement in Vietnam had swelled and public faith in the government and the military had begun eroding.

Hasbro advertised G.I. Joe in a commercial with a martial-sounding song with the lyrics, G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe, fighting man from head to toe, on the land, on the sea, in the air.

Vincent Santelmo, who has written several books about G.I. Joe, recalled seeing displays of the action figure in a toy store in the Bronx when he was growing up. My mother wasnt fond of the war-toy thing, but she let me have them, and after that, my relatives purchased anything that had to do with Joe for me as gifts, he said in a telephone interview. Once in a while, an unsuspecting aunt would slip in a Ken. I could just tell by the style of the book that he wasnt a G.I. Joe, and I put him to the side someplace.

G.I. Joe was a breakthrough: a boys doll, only in battle dress, with a footlocker full of accessories that kept young fans hungry for more. More than 400 million G.I. Joe action figures had been sold in the United States by 2009, according to Toys and American Culture: An Encyclopedia (2010). And hundreds of G.I. Joe characters have been produced by Hasbro.

It defined the beginning of the action figure category, said Steve Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Toy Association, the trade group for manufacturers.
BEIJING  The United States has reached a set of trade deals with China covering areas like electronic payment services, beef and poultry, compromising on some Obama administration stances but leaving untouched bigger issues that could still complicate relations between the two major trading partners.

The disclosure of the deals on Thursday evening  which included an announcement that the United States would be represented at a forum in Beijing devoted to President Xi Jinpings ambitious One Belt, One Road international investment initiative  suggests that the Trump administration is trying to smooth relations with Beijing despite President Trumps harsh anti-China language on the campaign trail.

Under the newly announced deals, China set a deadline for fulfilling its promises to allow American beef and said it would speed up consideration of pending American applications to offer bioengineered seeds in China. It will also allow foreign-owned firms to provide credit-rating services in China, publish guidelines to let American firms offer electronic payment services there, and issue licenses to two American financial institutions to underwrite bonds.

The United States, in turn, said that Matthew Pottinger, a National Security Council official who plays a central role in White House policy making on Asia, would travel to Beijing with one or more Commerce Department officials for the forum this weekend. Sending a delegation recognizes the importance of Mr. Xis signature foreign policy to build Chinas economic, financial and political ties across Asia, the Mideast, Eastern Europe and East Africa.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska  Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson said on Thursday that the United States would continue to be vigilant in protecting the Arctic, a region that is undergoing rapid change linked to global warming. But he gave no signal as to whether his government would remain in the Paris climate accord, the international agreement that would go furthest in ensuring that protection.

Mr. Tillerson, speaking at a meeting of the Arctic Council that marked the end of the United States two-year chairmanship of the intergovernmental organization, reaffirmed that the United States would stay involved in Arctic issues, including safeguarding what he termed the regions fragile environment.

He also signed, along with his counterparts from Russia, Canada and the five other nations with Arctic territory, a closing statement that mentioned the impacts of climate change on the region and took note of the Paris agreement.

But Mr. Tillerson was noncommittal in addressing the Trump administrations views on the Paris accord, in which the United States and most other nations have pledged to reduce carbon emissions with a goal of keeping global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius.
Normal monsoon likely this year, says Sascof

Nepal is likely to get a normal monsoon, signaling hopes of good harvests of key crops in 2017-18 in a country largely dependent on agriculture, as per the consensus statement of the 10th session of the South Asian Climate Outlook Forum (Sascof) released last month.
But in the end Mr. Ponte was undone not by the ingrained challenges of Rikers, but by problems that appeared to be of his own making.

On April 28, the citys Department of Investigation issued a report that found the commissioner had used his city vehicle to take extended trips to his home on the coast of Maine, and had spent a total of 90 days outside of the city last year while violence at Rikers surged.

Several days after that report was released, the Department of Investigation sent a letter to City Hall accusing Mr. Pontes head of internal affairs of overseeing an effort to spy on the investigations agency by listening in on one of its investigators phone conversations with confidential inmate informants. Rather than inform the investigations agency or City Hall, as municipal rules require, Mr. Ponte told no one and took no action against the internal affairs heard, Gregory Kuczinski, the agency said in a statement.

Image Mayor Bill de Blasio has called Mr. Pontes misuse of the city car an honest mistake. Credit... Sam Hodgson for The New York Times

After the vehicle report was released, Mr. Ponte acknowledged taking his sport utility vehicle out of state but claimed that two top aides and his driver had told him  erroneously, it turns out  that he was allowed to use it for out of state travel. The two aides denied so advising him; the driver has not responded to several interview requests.

The Department of Investigation commissioner, Mark G. Peters, wrote to the mayor last week about the spying accusations, requesting that Mr. Kuczinski, whose formal title was deputy commissioner of the Investigation Division, be removed from the internal affairs post. On Monday, Mr. Ponte did so, placing him on modified duty. But the commissioner also defended him, saying he had had a limited role in overseeing the phone surveillance unit responsible for the eavesdropping.

Through it all, Mr. Ponte never appeared to have lost the confidence of the mayor. Indeed, at roughly half a dozen public appearances over the last several weeks, Mr. de Blasio spoke of him effusively, apparently in a last-ditch attempt to save Mr. Pontes job  and perhaps, when it comes to Rikers, his own political legacy.
A Manhattan restaurateur who bilked investors out of more than $12 million in a Ponzi scheme involving a fictitious wholesale liquor business pleaded guilty on Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan to one count of wire fraud.

The restaurateur, Hamlet Peralta, who owned the Hudson River Cafe in Harlem, which is now closed, used the money he misappropriated to pay off debts to other investors and to fuel a luxurious lifestyle that included expensive clothing, spas and restaurant meals, prosecutors have said.

The initial investigation into Mr. Peralta gave rise to a large anticorruption inquiry centered on the New York Police Department.

Among Mr. Peraltas victims was Jona S. Rechnitz, a businessman who pleaded guilty as part of that investigation. Mr. Rechnitz was expected to be a prime witness in the Peralta trial, which had been scheduled to begin on Monday.
In 1865, Col. Egbert L. Viele, a West Point graduate who served as the chief engineer for Central and Prospect Parks, charted every existing waterway in Manhattan, and laid the map across the street grid. It records a city that had not yet been topographically reshaped to make room for its explosive growth in the second half of the 19th century; today, very little of those waterways can be seen without intrepid exploration in sewer lines.

But the map is digitally rendered online in the collection of David Rumsey at davidrumsey.com. It is still used by developers in Manhattan.

In pursuit of one stream, Ms. Levy is running a sidewalk workshop at 4:30 that begins at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, followed by a lecture under the sponsorship of NYC H2O, a nonprofit that provides education on city water and ecology.

We are going to meet at Hunter College and walk the path of a tributary, Ms. Levy said. Actually, roughly the path. It would be winding through lobbies and entryways of buildings, but we will be on the sidewalk. We are going to be painting with blue chalk paint, iterating its passages.

Image A detail of Egbert L. Viele s map of New York Citys waterways shows De Voors Mill Stream, in dark green, running into the East River.

The stream being traced made its way along the east side of Manhattan, with some of it captured in a pond in the southeast corner of Central Park, and other branches eventually flowing into the East River at 47th Street. Historical texts show that a kissing bridge crossed it around 50th Street, and the name of the waterway appears to have been De Voors Mill Stream, said Steve Duncan, who has explored and documented the citys watercourses, past and present.
You have seen them on high, scurrying with great urgency between columns of marble, the clicks of Armani-heeled favor seekers never far behind. You have heard them in the past few days, saying they are troubled or disappointed about the latest assault on democracy from the White House.

They know enough history to get this: Donald Trump is the first president in history whose campaign has come under F.B.I.-initiated investigation for collusion with a hostile foreign power. And now the person heading that investigation, the F.B.I. director, has been fired.

Were looking for a few good men and women in Congress to understand the gravity of this debasement. We dont need more parsing about the bad optics or timing of Trump firing the man who could have ended his presidency. We need a Republican in power to call it what it is: a bungled attempt to obstruct justice.

And the tragic part is that Trump is likely to succeed, at least in the short term. The person he chooses for F.B.I. director will never assemble a prosecutable case of treason that leads to the doorstep of this White House.
Remember Monday? It was four days ago, but it could just as well be four years. That day, in what was expected to be the big news story of the week, former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified before a Senate subcommittee about her knowledge of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Ms. Yates recounted how, only days after President Trump took office, she rushed to the White House to inform Mr. Trumps counsel, Donald McGahn II, that the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and others about his conversation with the Russian ambassador. Ms. Yates testified that Mr. Flynns behavior exposed him to blackmail.

To state the obvious, she said, you dont want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians. Despite the warnings, Mr. Flynn kept his job for 18 more days and was forced to resign only after The Washington Post reported his lies to the vice president.

Other events have since taken over the national consciousness. But in the aftermath of President Trumps stunning move on Tuesday to fire the F.B.I. director, James Comey, its worthwhile for Ms. Yatess successor  Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein  to recall the courage and integrity she showed in those chaotic days of late January, when her superiors demanded only loyalty.
SAN FRANCISCO  A day after Snap posted a $2.2 billion loss and decelerating user growth in its first earnings report as a public company, the repercussions started spreading through the technology start-up ecosystem.

In venture capital offices and at some start-ups across Silicon Valley, investors and entrepreneurs made Snaps performance a subject of much talk  and their conclusions were not particularly positive. At Canvas Ventures, a venture capital firm in Portola Valley, Calif., one investor, Rebecca Lynn, said that Snaps disappointing report was a powerful lesson to other start-ups.

Companies who are thinking about going public will see what happened and make sure that their is are dotted and their ts crossed, Ms. Lynn said. We tell our companies all the time that they need to be prepared to meet expectations.

This year was supposed to be one in which technology start-ups would easily go public. Silicon Valley had boomed in recent years with a collection of rapidly growing companies that were highly valued by private investors, and many of those companies appeared ready to graduate onto public stock exchanges. Snap, the parent company of the messaging app Snapchat, was exhibit A in that trend  a hip social media service that went public in March in the biggest tech offering in several years.
Only a few hours after the officials testimony, the White House said the dismissal on Tuesday of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, should help the bureaus investigation of the Russian hacking come to a speedy conclusion. The intelligence officials, by contrast, said the inquiries into the matter must delve deeply into the question of how to prevent future attacks.

Mike Pompeo, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the Russians and others would try to meddle again in future elections and added, I hope we learn from it as well and will be able to more effectively defeat it.

Also on Thursday, Mr. Trump signed a long-delayed executive order on cyberissues, one that places more responsibility on cabinet officials to secure their agencies systems but also sets up a series of rapid-fire reviews of the federal efforts. Among them is a study of how to deter cyberattacks  an issue that has confounded the Pentagon, the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, among others, and was the focus of extensive, if inconclusive, efforts by the Obama administration.

At the heart of the problem, as Russias hacking showed, is that few of the techniques used to deter either nuclear or conventional armed attacks work in cyberspace, where both the identity and the location of the attacker are often hidden for long periods of time. President Barack Obama used a variety of methods to respond to attacks  indictments of Chinese and Iranian hackers, counterattacks on North Korea, the expulsion of diplomats and relatively mild economic sanctions against Russia  but none proved especially effective.

The new order creates a certain sense of urgency, said Stevan Bunnell, a former general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security. But though the executive order  which Mr. Trump had planned to issue shortly after taking office  was drafted and redrafted for months, there is nothing much new here, Mr. Bunnell concluded.
WASHINGTON  Some critics of President Trump have accused him of obstruction of justice in his firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, amid the bureaus investigation into the Trump campaigns contacts with Russia. Here is a look at the complex legal concept.

What is obstruction of justice?

Several federal statutes criminalize actions that impede official investigations. While some examples of illegal ways to thwart the justice system are specific  like killing a witness or destroying evidence  the law also includes broad, catchall prohibitions. For example, Section 1512 of Title 18 makes it a crime if someone corruptly obstructs, influences or impedes any official proceeding, even if the proceeding was not yet pending at the time of the act. A conviction under that provision can be punished by up to 20 years in prison.

Could that cover firing the F.B.I. director?

In theory. Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor who now teaches criminal law at Duke University, said statutes like Section 1512 were drafted broadly to cover all possible means of obstruction of justice, because there are so many ways to thwart the legal system. So in theory, he said, firing an investigator could fit. But there would be significant practical obstacles to bringing such a case.

Did Mr. Trump have lawful authority to fire Mr. Comey?

Yes. But courts have ruled that otherwise lawful acts can constitute obstruction of justice if done with corrupt intentions. Mr. Buell pointed to a 1998 case in which a federal appeals court upheld the conviction of a lawyer who had filed legal complaints and related motions against a government agent who was investigating an illegal gambling operation. The court ruled that the defendants nominally litigation-related conduct was unlawful because his real motive was to safeguard his personal financial interest in the corrupt enterprise.
WASHINGTON  What is it about Sergey V. Lavrov that always makes high-ranking American officials look hapless?

In 2006, Mr. Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, put Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in an awkward position when technicians did not turn off the microphones at a lunch in Moscow. Reporters overheard the two of them bickering over American policy in Iraq. What does that mean? she said at one point. I think you understand, he replied.

Three years later, Hillary Clinton commemorated her first meeting with Mr. Lavrov after she became secretary of state by presenting him with a gag gift, a bright red button, stamped with what she said was the Russian word for reset. You got it wrong, he scolded, pointing to the faulty translation as cameras flashed. It means overcharged.

On Wednesday, he put Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson in a bad spot after a reporter asked if President Trumps dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, hours earlier would cast a shadow over their meeting. Mr. Tillerson turned away without answering, but Mr. Lavrov wisecracked: Was he fired? Youre kidding! Youre kidding!
WASHINGTON  Only seven days after Donald J. Trump was sworn in as president, James B. Comey has told associates, the F.B.I. director was summoned to the White House for a one-on-one dinner with the new commander in chief.

The conversation that night in January, Mr. Comey now believes, was a harbinger of his downfall this week as head of the F.B.I., according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner.

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trumps rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.
Police alerted by recent acts of violence

In view of the incidents of violence occurring in the run-up to the local level elections, the Ministry of Home Affairs has instructed its subordinate units to heighten security for Sundays vote while bringing in forces from the provinces where the polls are scheduled to be held in the second phase on June 14.
VENICE  Damien Hirsts Treasures From the Wreck of the Unbelievable is the most talked-about art show on earth. And all of it is for sale.

The numbers boggle. Two museums; 54,000 square feet of exhibition space; 189 artworks, including more than 100 sculptures (one of them almost 60 feet high); 21 cabinets filled with smaller objects.

Occupying the Punta della Dogana and the Palazzo Grassi, museums run by the French billionaire Francois Pinaults foundation, until Dec. 3, this privately financed exhibition purports to display artifacts that were once owned by the second-century collector Cif Amotan II and that have been salvaged, at vast expense, from the depths of the Indian Ocean. Mr. Hirst told the BBC that he had sunk probably more than 50 million pounds, or about $64.5 million, of his own money into the project.

The visitor soon discovers  maybe when seeing a coral-encrusted bronze self-portrait of the artist as a collector holding Mickey Mouse by the hand  that the shipwreck is an elaborate shaggy dog story. Treasures is Mr. Hirsts latest body of work that aims to astound with the scale of its ambition and commercial success, like his $200 million Beautiful Inside My Head Forever auction at Sothebys in 2008.
In Somnolence, the dancers certainly look human, but not serious. They are dressed in sleepwear; theres a hill of pillows at the back of the stage; and most of the dancing  dottily  shows the performers with more pillows (sliding on them, wearing them as hats, carrying them as cargo). The stage action responds to the music (by Vivaldi) only with surreal dream logic. This keeps verging on being poetic, funny, jolly; absurdly solemn processions, nonsense trios and lingering tableaus all variously overlap. At the end, one performer drops not a pillow but a porcelain dish, as if to break the dream. The fantasy, however, has never really taken off; Somnolence stays just an array of odd antics.

When first announced, the centerpiece of this Re/Action program was to have been three Balanchine pas de deux: the familiar Tarantella (1964) and Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960), but also a rarity, Sylvia Pas de Deux (1950). At some point, however, Sylvia was replaced by the Rubies pas de deux (1967) from Jewels, as a farewell to Ms. Aldridge and Alexander Peters (promoted to principal under Corella, he is now leaving for Miami); on Thursday this was canceled at short notice, as Ms. Aldridge continues to suffer from a foot injury. (Its still hoped that she will dance her farewell on Sunday.)

Two 19th-century pas de deux were added, to Tchaikovsky music and with choreography attributed to Marius Petipa; theyre called Pas de Deux Previews, as foretastes of the complete Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty productions to be presented in the 2017-18 season. But all the so-called Black Swan choreography that was presented departed even further than usual from Petipa (who never dressed this ballerina in black, anyway); the biggest imposition was the dully showy female variation (pirouettes galore), danced to oboe music that Petipa never choreographed from Tchaikovskys 1877 version of the score.

It was good to see Sterling Baca (a former member of American Ballet Theater) bringing such princely grace to the Sleeping Beauty item; his partner, Oksana Maslova, has an appealing delicacy. But Dayesi Torriente and Arian Molina Soca gave a coarse Black Swan. Musically, its a bad idea to program that so close to Balanchines Tchaikovsky pas de deux, whose music was composed as an alternative account of the same situation in Swan Lake. And its a worse idea to program four showy pas de deux in quick succession: Ballets vocabulary starts to look pitifully thin when were given an overdose of turns, jumps, lifts and catches.
Deventer, The Netherlands  The small boy, all in white, lies still, his tiny hands cupped together, his eyes serenely shut. A wooden torch lies across the bedsheets, its flame conspicuously snuffed out.

This striking painting, Little Boy on His Deathbed, by the 17th-century Dutch master Bartholomeus van der Helst, was among more than 1,200 artworks seized by the Nazis from an Amsterdam gallery during World War II. Recovered by the Allies, the 1645 picture should have been returned to the family of Jacques Goudstikker, a well-known Dutch art dealer. Instead, it hung in a Dutch museum for a half century until the family won a restitution battle.

The journey of van der Helsts work is emblematic of a period in Dutch history when a cold cynicism toward Holocaust survivors meant that thousands of masterly works were rescued from the Nazis only to end up as Dutch national property.

It was a lack of compassion, said Rudi Ekkart, an art historian the government hired in 1997 to track looted art and help find the rightful owners.
New York is not usually considered a naturalists paradise. But John Luther Adams, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and former environmental activist, did not have to walk far from his Harlem apartment this week to be serenaded in Morningside Park and Central Park by choirs of robins, sparrows, flickers, catbirds and, finally, a wood thrush, with its poignant ee-o-lay song.

Thats the one that started it all for me, 40-however-many years ago, Mr. Adams, 64, said as he paused in a sun-dappled spot in Central Parks North Woods to savor the wood thrushs melody.

Bird song is a crucial element in the music of Mr. Adams, whose acclaimed works (Become Ocean, from 2013, won a Pulitzer and a Grammy) confront climate change head-on in their evocations of the natural world. We are apparently running out of time as a species, he said. And yet what choice do we have but to keep trying, and to stay in touch with those older, deeper rhythms that remind us of where we are and how we fit into the whole community of life on the earth.

This is a big New York moment for two of his more recent ornithologically inspired pieces: Ten Thousand Birds, which evokes the species of each region where it is performed, will have its New York premiere on Sunday in a free performance in Morningside Park, the culmination of Mr. Adamss weeklong residency at Symphony Space. And a recording of Canticles of the Holy Wind, his ethereal choral work based on thrushes, sparrows, owls and a virtuosic mockingbird, was released by Cantaloupe Music on Friday.
As advocates for out-and-proud queer visibility, they have been embraced but also criticized for behavior at odds with their message. Some fans were rattled when, in December, a photo surfaced of a young Mx. Hopkins beside a swastika drawn in sand at the beach. (Mx. Hopkins apologized publicly and said it was taken in 2011, a time in my life where I thought being politically incorrect was really funny and had literally no concept of my actions, adding that it did not represent who I am today.)

After the print version of this article went to press, additional questions about Mx. Hopkinss behavior began to circulate online, spurred by postings on social media accusing Mx. Hopkins of sexual misconduct and boundary-crossing behavior. These allegations are shocking to us and we take them very seriously, the band wrote in a statement that was posted to social media on Thursday, adding that they are trying to address them with openness and accountability. The band announced it would set up an email address through which allegations could be discussed and was seeking a mediator to monitor it.

Since the allegations, initially posted to a private Facebook group and later on Twitter by a user known as Kitty Cordero-Kolin, several companies and musicians affiliated with the band have ended their relationships. An album-release show at Rough Trade in Brooklyn was canceled, and several artists who were slated to support PWR BTTM on its coming United States tour announced they will no longer participate. The band was also dropped by its management agency, Salty Artist Management.

Polyvinyl, which put out Pageant, announced on Saturday it would no longer work with PWR BTTM, or sell or distribute its album, in hard copy and on streaming services. It will offer refunds to those who purchased Pageant from the label, and plans to make donations to two organizations that combat sexual and anti-LBGT violence.

The band declined to comment further.

Mx. Bruce and Mx. Hopkins met as students at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. Mx. Hopkins was escaping a small-town public school in South Hamilton, in eastern Massachusetts; Mx. Bruce attended a slightly more forgiving private school, Concord Academy, not far away. They arrived at Bard to find a campus far more open to the varieties of identity.
Its a card, with 800 words written on it, and the police want to know who made it disappear.

These are no ordinary words, scrawled by the hand of an ordinary author: Theyre a brief prequel to the Harry Potter series written by J.K. Rowling, and their theft prompted the police in central England to call on Friday for the return of the stolen manuscript.

The card was taken last month during a burglary in Birmingham, England, the West Midlands Police said in a statement that asked for anyone with information about the theft to contact them.

The manuscript was auctioned in 2008 to raise money for literacy causes, selling for 25,000 pounds, or about $32,100 at current exchange rates, according to the BBC. Police said that burglars had also taken jewels from the property. The police did not say why they were making the theft public now, nearly three weeks after the manuscript was taken.
ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE

By Elizabeth Strout

254 pp. Random House. $27.

Anything Is Possible might look like a sequel, since it takes place after the action of Elizabeth Strouts best-selling 2016 novel, My Name Is Lucy Barton, and portrays many of the same characters. But its actually something far more complex, reaching across space (think of Faulkners work, or Louise Erdrichs) and through layers of memory. Where the earlier book turned on the crystalline austerity and reserve of its narrative voice, guided by Strouts unerring sense of what Lucy would omit, the new work almost literally undoes the older one. What Lucy omitted, we learn  what Lucy hid?  radically alters our understanding of what Lucy said.

On its own, this volume of nine linked stories offers pleasures akin to those of Sherwood Andersons Winesburg, Ohio, to which it pays clear homage, and to Strouts own collection of linked stories, Olive Kitteridge  but youd be missing a lot to read it that way. In the novel Lucy narrates, she takes center stage and describes writing a book successful enough to land her a television appearance and a book tour. Here, seldom physically present but considered through the viewpoints of her siblings and former neighbors, shes the emblematic writer whose work reflects their own lives back to them. You need both to appreciate Strouts most striking effect, a stereoscopic view that makes Lucys rural hometown, Amgash, Ill., seem unusually vivid and Lucy herself truly three-dimensional.

Our familiarity with these stories central characters  Lucys brother, Pete, and sister, Vicky; the janitor who let Lucy study after school in heated classrooms; the sisters known as the Pretty Nicely Girls; Abel Blaine, who taught Lucy to search in the Dumpster behind the bakery for food; and more, all known to us from Lucy Barton  enhances the illusion. In the novel, Lucy and her mother gossiped about those characters, swapping stories about their lives as tokens for the feelings they were too reserved to state directly. Here, in their own stories, the tokens reveal their complex pains and desires and then, appearing as minor characters in other stories, subside once more into the background. Object, subject, object again.

Image Credit... Patricia Wall/The New York Times

Tommy Guptill, the janitor in The Sign, sees Marilyn Macauley in a store just before he passes a display of Lucy Bartons new book and then thinks of Marilyns husband, Charlie, damaged by his military service like Tommys own brother. Charlie reappears in Windmills as the person Patty Nicely loves and later gets his own very moving story, The Hit-Thumb Theory. And so on. A web of allusions, partial memories and teasingly Cubist fragments weaves through the stories and into the earlier novel, fortified by recurring images and memories. Look! Heres the homely Sewing and Alterations sign at the end of the driveway at Lucys family home. Theres the single tree in the endless fields of corn and soybeans, the truck in which Lucy was locked as a little girl, the series of childrens books still cherished by Lucys brother. And, crucially, theres a question raised earlier by Lucy: We think, always we think, What is it about someone that makes us despise that person, that makes us feel superior? 
My Beautiful Birds

Written and illustrated by Suzanne Del Rizzo.

If youve been wondering how to present the refugee crisis to children without losing faith in humanity, take a look at this graceful, even uplifting book. Del Rizzos stunning dimensional art, made mostly of clay, cant help feeling playful, and the story brims with hope. We see Sami, a Syrian boy, on the roof of his house, where he lovingly tends his pigeons. But soon his family is walking away from their burning city to a refugee camp. He can barely speak, until he begins painting his birds, then meets new ones, and a new friend.

32 pp. Pajama Press. $17.95. (Picture book; ages 6 to 10)
BRONZE AND SUNFLOWER

By Cao Wenxuan

Translated by Helen Wang

Illustrated. 386 pp. Candlewick Press. $16.99.

(Middle grade; ages 9 to 12)

China has a literary canon at least 2,000 years old filled with fables and myths, fox spirits and dragons, but a minuscule tradition of books specifically for children. For much of Chinas history, books were a luxury reserved for the elite, and children learned to read by reciting the classics. After Mao Zedong founded the Peoples Republic of China in 1949, he initiated a nationwide literacy campaign. Boys and girls  and their parents  learned to read, but the country was still so poor that buying books for reading at home, apart from the Little Red Book, was beyond the reach of the masses. Then, between 1981 and 2008, as more than 500 million people in China moved out of extreme poverty as defined by the World Bank and began to pursue the deeply held belief that education is the primary tool to move up in society, families began to purchase books for their children. It is within this new atmosphere that Cao Wenxuan has become one of Chinas most prolific and popular authors, publishing over 100 works, including novels, short stories, essays and picture books. Last year, he won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the most prestigious international honor for childrens literature. His 2005 novel Bronze and Sunflower is his first to be published in the United States.

Sunflower, age 7, and her father, an acclaimed artist known for his sculptures of sunflowers cast in bronze, are living at a so-called cadre school deep in the countryside. The time period isnt stated, but the details of what happens to the city people are hinted at: Its the Cultural Revolution, and artists, professors and other educated people have been sent to the middle of nowhere to do hard labor during the day and attend political indoctrination meetings at night. This leaves Sunflower, the only child in the compound, to fend for herself. The landscape Cao describes is beautiful  reed marshes stretching as far as the eye can see, a meandering river, a pretty village on the opposite bank  but Sunflower is alone and lonely, like a solitary bird in a vast blue sky with nothing for company but the sound of its own beating wings.

One day Sunflower climbs into a boat to see if she can pole across the river to the village from which she can hear children singing and laughing. Things go wrong, and shes rescued by Bronze, the only child of the poorest family in the village. A devastating trauma has left him mute, so he, too, is as lonely as the only bird in the sky, the only fish in the river, the only horse on the steppes.
Rachmans wisdom about global history precludes cartoonish characterizations of East versus West. Western nations spent more blood and treasure fighting one another, especially in two massive world wars, than they did colluding to dominate others. Similarly, mistrust among Asian states today outstrips mistrust among them and the United States or Europe. Nor do political ideas provide a clear border between East and West. Europe has had more than its share of authoritarian regimes, so it is a stretch to consider the recent rise of illiberal nationalism in Europe as somehow a move eastward. Mainland Chinese propagandists rail against the Western values of multiparty democracy, a free press and independent courts, but some of the nations largest and most successful Asian neighbors  South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia and India  are no less Eastern for enjoying all of those institutions. No one, including Rachman, really knows how to categorize Russia. Moscow has tried with limited success to cobble together a Eurasian union with former Soviet republics in Central Asia, but it sees itself as the European part of such a union. Russias recent diplomatic lean toward China has more to do with energy markets and the two authoritarian regimes shared aversion to American support for color revolutions and regime change than it does with either realpolitik alliance formation or Sino-Russian cultural affinity.

Image

Changes within the East itself are as important to Rachmans analysis of war and peace as the global shift of power eastward. The prospect of a Sino-American war provides the most likely scenario for a direct conflict between Rachmans rising East and declining West, but it is harder to imagine such a conflict occurring without a prior clash between China and one of its neighbors. The good news ends there. Chinas growing offshore military and civilian presence in the maritime sphere has exacerbated tensions over longstanding sovereignty disputes with its Asian neighbors, including American allies and security partners. The Obama administrations self-styled pivot to Asia ensured that American forces and diplomats remained actively involved in addressing these regional tensions.

Rachman gets the big picture in Asia right, but he sometimes gets important details wrong. For example, Chinas recent military modernization means forward-deployed American forces and bases in the region are vulnerable to attack in ways they were not during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 199596. It is incorrect and somewhat dangerous, however, for him to argue that Beijing backed off after the Clinton administration sent two aircraft carrier battle groups toward Taiwan in early 1996. Beijing apparently had no plan to escalate anyway. Nationalism is indeed an important part of the Chinese Communist Partys domestic legitimacy that influences Beijings foreign policies, but that phenomenon long predates the brutal crackdown on protesters on June 4, 1989. Beijing and Washington have worked out peaceful methods to handle their difference over Taiwan since 1972, but the United States never formally accepted Beijings One China policy, as Rachman states. Instead Washington adheres to its own version, with intentional ambiguity in regard to Taiwans legal status in relation to mainland China.

Like many, Rachman sometimes seems hamstrung by historical knowledge. In 1914 an archdukes murder in Sarajevo caused economically interdependent states in Europe to fight a giant war of survival, so why cant disputes over Asian rocks, reefs and artificial islands create a massive conflagration today? This is a good question, but many differences exist between these two worlds. There are no tightly knit alliance blocks in contemporary East Asia. Today all great powers have either nuclear weapons or nuclear-armed allies, a deterrent to massive conventional escalation. Perhaps most important, globalization in the past few decades has produced fundamentally different and deeper economic interdependence than in the past. The massive investment flows between the industrial economies, the rise of intra-industry trade and the creation of complex transnational production chains are all forces for peace today that were missing in 1914 Europe.

Rachmans Easternization process matters, but so far mainly as a subset of the larger process of globalization that enabled it in the first place. The growing pains of the East pose threats of instability to a highly integrated global system, not directly to the West itself. No Asian actor can currently project military power other than ballistic missiles and cyber volleys very far from home. Serious East-West military clashes, then, would have to occur in the East. Unfortunately, Rachman is correct that Western comfort stops there. Asia is now a vital organ in the globalized system on which we all depend; challenges to Asian stability are real, and Western actors have less wherewithal than in the past to contribute actively to maintaining stability there.
SURVIVORS CLUB

The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz

By Michael Bornstein and Debbie Bornstein Holinstat

Illustrated. 348 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.99.

(Middle grade; ages 10 to 14)

During the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of children were transported to the murder mill that was Auschwitz. It is estimated that in 1945, only 52 under the age of 8 were liberated. Michael Bornstein was one of them.

Born in 1940, Michael was the son of an accountant and one of 3,000 Jews living in Zarki, Poland. He was among the few to survive. Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz chronicles the harrowing experience of Michaels extended family during the Holocaust, its aftermath and into the postwar years of immigration. The arc of their journey is both moving and memorable, combining the emotional resolve of a memoir with the rhythm of a novel.

The first half of the book recounts the Bornsteins devastating experience in the Jewish ghetto of their hometown, followed by their internment in Treblinka, Pionki, and their eventual arrival and separation at Auschwitz. Upon arrival at the camp, Bornstein becomes B-1148, a series number he later learns was possibly recycled by the Nazis to avoid an excessively high death toll. The second portion of the book poignantly depicts the unfathomable challenges faced afterward by young survivors like Michael.
One of those places is a little scary. As the book progresses it gets wilder and darker. Our hero encounters birds with secrets and an imperturbable fox, animals nestled in their woodland burrows, nightfall and the wide eyes of an owl in a dim, piney tableau. He retreats indoors and watches the night woods from the safety of his window. Youll go there tomorrow, Dek concludes, when youre older.

Image The owl surveys the forest: From Deep in the Woods.

Forest animals are the main characters of Deep in the Woods, a vibrant modern retelling of a classic Russian folk tale from Christopher Corr. Rendered in electric hues  neon coral, Starburst pink, Jolly Rancher orange  against cool, unusual grounds of lilac, aqua, violet and periwinkle, the book looks more like a delectable candy box than anything photosynthesis would produce. Deep in the Woods is alluringly strange. It tells the story of a white, wooden house in a forest, with nine neat windows and a red front door. The house stands empty, cold and sad  until some woodland creatures happen along and make it their own.

A mouse, a fox, a lavender bunny, a swooping speckled owl: Most of the animals have eyes shaped like human ones, which make them look more sophisticated  knowing, mischievous, sometimes sad  than your average picture-book fauna. This diverse menagerie keeps house together until a big orange bear ambles along and wants in on the action, causing first strife and heartbreak and then  after some light woodworking to make a house that will fit his lumbering frame  rejoicing.

There is a lesson here  about friendship, and sharing  but the book never feels plodding or pedantic. Its rhythms are as surprising as its vivid hues, full of small but powerful subversions of kid-lit logic: The animals show up in bunches, not page by page; there are a dozen or so creatures crammed into those nine neat windows. Whats more, there are no grown-ups here. The animals are peers: They create their own society, and resolve their own conflict. Which may be why the lesson just goes down like the truth.
While attendees of the 57th Venice Biennale appreciate the art from around the globe, they may also want to note an adornment on some shop windows: a blue line.

The line signifies where floodwaters rose in the Piazza San Marco on Nov. 4, 1966.

Acqua alta, or high water, is the phrase used in the city of canals to describe unusually high (though not uncommon) tides.

In addition to flooding, Venice also faces a potential threat as the ground under the city sinks, research shows. (The pumping of groundwater, which contributed to the process, has been stopped, but the ground still gives way.)

Acqua alta, pictured above in 2012, is a phenomenon that occurs predominantly in the winter months, so the biennale, which runs from May 13 to Nov. 26, will  most likely  not be affected.

Besides, no flood or rising tide, unlike a world war or two, has ever stopped the art exhibition.

Thomas Lotito contributed reporting.

_____

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Good morning.

Heres what you need to know:

 Political whiplash.

President Trump threatened James Comey with retaliation if he leaked anything negative about him, saying in a series of early-morning tweets today that the former F.B.I. director he fired this week better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations.

On Thursday, the president offered a new version of his decision to dismiss Mr. Comey, explaining that he would have done so regardless of what advisers recommended, and referring to the F.B.I.s investigation of Russia ties.

Heres a timeline of the events leading to Mr. Comeys firing dismissal, and of the White Houses shifting explanations for it.

We also learned about a dinner at the White House in January during which the president asked for Mr. Comeys loyalty. The F.B.I. director offered only honesty.
Were basically building an R&D center here in China, and test track, that is on par with other parts of Ford, in North America, Europe and Australia, said Mark Fields, the chief executive of Ford Motor. At the same time, he said, the company would protect its intellectual property.

Robots perform tasks like welding in exactly the same way every time, improving quality control. But they require a lot of fine-tuning along the way.

The painting process is also mostly automated. Elaborate spraying robots, their joints covered in many layers of plastic so that they do not become clogged with paint mist, snake back and forth across each car body. Workers still apply protective sealant to the vehicles interiors and underbodies, as Ford has been leery of depending entirely on robots for this step until it is sure they work well. More robots are scheduled to be installed in August, replacing manual labor for the protective sealant step as well.
This interview with Autumn Manning, chief executive of YouEarnedIt.com, a provider of software to encourage employee engagement, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Q. What were your early years like?

A. I actually was raised in California and Arkansas. My parents divorced when I was 3, and my mother really liked to move a lot. She was looking to go to new places to experience new things and new people. We probably moved every seven to eight months when I was growing up.

I have four siblings, and three younger sisters who I was primarily responsible for until I went away to college. My mother was a nurse and she worked double shifts every day almost my whole life.

And how did you feel about having to move all the time and care for your siblings?

You learn to be really adaptable, go with the flow, and figure out a way to solve whatever situation youre in, whether youre at a new school or taking care of the girls. I also never really unpacked. When I became an adult, it took me a long time to realize, oh, Im going to be staying in this house so I can actually hang curtains.
But Update 2016-01 could significantly affect  and distort  the way companies like Alphabet, Intel, IBM and Salesforce.com, which make a lot of small investments in other companies, report their earnings. It could also curtail such investments from being made in the first place, because some businesses say the costs of complying with the rule are too high.

Heres how things would change with the new rule: Now, when a company buys a stake of less than 20 percent in another company, it usually accounts for the investment on its balance sheet at cost  the price it paid for it. Over time, under the old rules, if the value of the investment goes down, the rules required a corresponding write-down of the value, both through the companys income statement and on its balance sheet. But if the value increases over time, the investment can still be kept at cost.

While investors were fully informed when an investment lost value, there was less transparency for them when an investment increased in value. What investors lost in transparency on the upside, it has been argued, was gained in not requiring corporate executives to place a number on these often difficult-to-value investments every quarter.

Thats what is going to change after Dec. 15. From then on, each minority investment a public company makes will have to be valued quarterly, whether that value has increased or decreased. That potential volatility will soon be required to flow through a companys income statement, with the possibility of causing fluctuations to earnings per share from something that is not even a core business.

Corporate executives will have two choices on how to go about valuing these investments.

They can either spend the time valuing these investments themselves (or hire an accounting firm or a valuation firm like Duff & Phelps), or they can choose to wait until there is a market-driven valuation event and then mark up the value of the investment accordingly. How a company chooses to value these investments  whether every quarter or when there is a market event  has to be selected soon, and then cannot be changed. This, too, has added to the corporate executives concerns.
Chinas deal makers edged out their American counterparts in their first round of trade talks.

United States beef producers and financial firms will get more access to Chinese markets in exchange for chicken imports and a potential opening for Chinese banks. Its a good start, but Beijing didnt give up much.

President Trumps administration was quick to crow about trade concessions wangled from Beijing. The deal is part of a 100-day plan hashed out when Mr. Trump met President Xi Jinping of China in April.

American companies like Visa and MasterCard will get access to the Chinese market, and two banks will get bond underwriting licenses.

I have a new boss whos very demanding that things get done on time, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC. So Im quite relieved that we had tangible achievements.
Still, the experience of Mr. Paulino, the guild member, highlights the way the group may be susceptible to Ubers influence.

Mr. Paulino said that at the first meeting organized by the guild between drivers and Uber, the drivers challenged the company on issues like tipping and fare cuts. Their aggressive stand made Uber management visibly flustered, he recalled.

Several participants say company officials pointed out that some drivers had not worked on the platform recently. After the meeting, the company suggested that attendance should be limited primarily to those who regularly drive for Uber. Mr. Paulino, who had all but stopped driving for Uber after the recent fare cuts, said the guild later told him he would not be invited to future meetings, citing his infrequent driving. A second driver, Steven Savader, said the guild told him he could not attend subsequent meetings because he did not drive for Uber enough.

(The guild said that it had hundreds of drivers volunteer to participate and wanted to give others an opportunity, and that less-active Uber drivers had attended other meetings.)

Other guild moves, like the attempted work stoppage at Lyft, suggest the relationship with Uber could sway the groups thinking even if Uber exerts no direct control over it or refrains from providing input.

The guild says that it is taking aim at Lyft because the company refuses to bargain with drivers the way Uber has and that the decision came about through a survey of its dues-paying members. But only a small portion of members appears to pay dues  the guild concedes it is just beginning outreach in this area. In arriving at other decisions, like its tipping campaign, the guild has surveyed its entire membership.

Uber said it had nothing to do with the stoppage. We learned about this when we saw it publicly and dont know why they chose to take this action, Mr. Gold of Uber said.
But that comparison is imperfect, because the dosage of the heart drug is so much lower in Nuedexta than it is in the generic prescription drug. And concocting a mixture at home is potentially dangerous, said Dr. Aiesha Ahmed, a neurologist at Penn State Hershey Medical Center who has researched the prevalence of PBA and its treatment options. Youd have to get the exact doses right, and that would be tricky, she said.

Nuedexta doesnt cure PBA, but it must be taken for the rest of a patients life to help reduce episodes of laughing or crying. While its the only drug approved specifically for PBA by the Food and Drug Administration, doctors have successfully used several less expensive treatments, all antidepressants, to treat the condition.

The cost for mixing two old drugs together is unconscionable, said Dr. Jerome Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School and the chief of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Womens Hospital.

The strategic marketing of Nuedexta is part of a trend in which even small pharmaceutical firms turn to the airwaves to encourage use of their products. Pharmaceutical industry spending on television ads has been on the rise  up 62 percent since 2012 to an estimated $6.4 billion  even as TV advertising for other product types has stayed flat, according to Kantar Media, a firm that tracks multimedia advertising.

By last year, drug ads were the sixth-most-common category of television advertisement  behind cars and restaurants  up from 12th just five years ago. A number of the ads, like Nuedextas, promote medication for unusual conditions, such as a sleep disorder that affects only people who are blind. Others target more common conditions, such as opioid-induced constipation.

Drug makers defend such advertisements as a way of educating patients who may not understand that they have a disease or that they have symptoms that can be treated. The uncontrolled laughing or crying of PBA is quite debilitating, and Nuedexta provides substantial relief for many, said Dr. Richard Malamut, Avanirs chief medical officer, a neurologist who recently joined the company.

Avanir declined to say how much it is spending to market Nuedexta. In justifying the drugs price, Dr. Malamut said the company had invested hundreds of millions of dollars over 10 years on research before securing F.D.A. approval in late 2010. More is now being spent to research whether it, or other Avanir products, could help with other neurological conditions.
President Bhandari off to Bangkok for five-day official visit (In photos)

President Bidya Devi Bhandari left for Bangkok, Thailand en route to Colombo as part of her five-day official visit to Sri Lanka on Friday.
The daily briefing is a way for the White House to communicate to the public via the news media. That the White House couldnt get its story (or stories) straight about something as important as the firing of the F.B.I. director, during an investigation into ties between the presidents campaign and a foreign power reportedly trying to sway a United States presidential election, once again breaks the mold of whats normal in United States governance.

Yes, were in a time of deep partisan divide, and that includes, very centrally, the news media. A Pew research report this week showed that 89 percent of Democrats say that the news media plays an important watchdog role with top government leaders while only about 42 percent of Republicans say the same.

That divide should never extend to the reliability of information put forth by the United States government. But the seeds of this weeks informational disarray have been there since the start: The very first words to come from the White House briefing room under this administration  over the size of the inauguration crowd  were false. This time the subject was far more important.

On Friday morning, President Trump appeared to defend his press team, and his own credibility, with a lowering of the bar for accuracy. As a very active President with lots of things happening, he wrote amid his stream of Twitter posts, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!

It was an acknowledgment that he would not expect or demand precision from the people he puts forward to represent not only him, but also the country he leads. He has given his press team a say anything hall pass.
FRANKFURT  German prosecutors said on Friday that they were investigating possible fraud in connection with expense money paid by Volkswagen to a labor representative on the companys supervisory board, raising the specter of another scandal at the carmaker.

Volkswagen confirmed in a statement that the investigation, by prosecutors in Braunschweig, near company headquarters in Wolfsburg, involved Bernd Osterloh, the chairman of the carmakers works council and one of the most powerful labor leaders in Germany.

The company said it had already commissioned a review by an outside expert, who concluded that money paid to Mr. Osterloh complies with all legal requirements in every respect. A spokesman for Mr. Osterloh did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The latest investigation comes only two months after Volkswagen pleaded guilty in the United States to charges related to its attempt to dupe regulators about the emissions of diesel cars.
In another reversal of Obama administration policy, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday that it had settled a lawsuit over a mine near Alaskas Bristol Bay, one of the worlds most productive salmon fisheries.

Pebble Limited Partnership, the sites developer, sued the agency, claiming that the Obama administration had colluded with the projects opponents to block copper, gold and silver extraction at the site. An E.P.A. review found no evidence of such collusion.

Fridays settlement allows the company to file a new application for a permit, which it has said it will do. That effectively undercuts the E.P.A.s previous determinations, based on years of scientific study, that the proposed mine on state land would be a risk to the long-term health of the fishery and wider ecosystem.

In a call with shareholders on Friday, executives for Pebble Limited Partnership and Northern Dynasty Minerals, the partnerships parent company, thanked Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the E.P.A., for the favorable treatment under the new administration and his commitment to the rule of law.
The designer, however, would beg to differ.

I was thinking about women, and nature, Ms. Chiuri said in a phone call before the event. (Most brands fly members of the press to their far-flung cruise shows, acknowledging that traveling for what is essentially a 20-minute experience does not really make sense. But The New York Times does not accept press trips, so I had this experience remotely, at my computer.)

She said the companys executives had told her they wanted to hold the show in Los Angeles  why, she was not sure. But odds are, I would guess, it was because they were actually supposed to have a cruise show in Los Angeles two years ago, under the previous artistic director Raf Simons, but it was switched unexpectedly to the south of France, and this was the rain check. So from there she had thought of the remote environment, because most people, when they think of L.A., think of Hollywood and celebrities, but there is another element to this city, which is the way you live in contact with the outdoors.

Then Ms. Chiuri said, apropos of the place (which required guests to be shuttled-in and wear flat shoes, and came complete with Dior Sauvage hot air balloons) but also the reactions to her work thus far: People can like it or not like it, and I respect their opinions, but its not possible to please everyone. I do what I feel is right for me.

What is right for her when it comes to Dior has been, in part, heavy on grab-bag feminism, and the cruise show on Thursday was no exception; Ms. Chiuri name-checked Georgia OKeeffe in her notes as well as Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves (likewise an inspiration for Ms. Chiuris debut), the Willendorf Venus, and Vicki Noble, author of Shakti Women: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World. (Ms. Noble was due to be in the audience, along with Charlize Theron, Nick Jonas and Rihanna.) Also the Lascaux cave paintings and a Dior collection from 1951.
Ms. Donaldson said yes. But even so, she was preoccupied with doubts. I said the reason you dont really believe in marriage is because for so many years you werent allowed to get married, Ms. Wheatley said. It didnt mean anything. Well, she said, Be careful what you wish for because when I turn the corner, Im really turning the corner and I may be more than you want. And I was, like, bring it on.

A month later, on Dec. 25, Ms. Donaldson and Ms. Wheatley unwrapped their Christmas gifts from Charlotte: a set of Mrs. and Mrs. hand towels, a present that didnt go over well.

I was feeling: Hey. Hey. Everybody cool it, Ms. Donaldson said. But it was important to Sharon that she be married. And I was, like, we can be together forever. Then we got into an argument about whether we were going to get married. She said, Im going to take a bath. I said, Im going to take a walk. And as I was walking I thought: What am I waiting for? What is the difference? For her, there was this fear that I was going to leave. And, for me, there was comfort that I could leave at any moment.

Ms. Donaldson roamed the streets of Toronto for more than an hour and returned home. I was yelling at myself: Dont screw this up. Its the best thing that ever happened to you, she recalled. It is by far the most mature relationship I have ever been in. But I had to talk it out. There was nothing else I was waiting for. The next morning, Ms. Donaldson got down on one knee and proposed to Ms. Wheatley. Charlotte and Beatrix squealed with delight.

During the wedding ceremony  which was officiated by the actor B. D. Wong, who was ordained for the occasion by American Marriage Ministries  Beatrix wore a white dress and a crown of posies, and carried a rainbow-colored lollipop with Sharon taped to one side, Martha on the other. Charlotte also opted for white, and a flower crown, while Ms. Wheatley wore a blue floral dress from Lord & Taylor.

Ms. Donaldson beamed as she looked at Charlotte and Beatrix. As part of the ceremony, she agreed to marry them too. Thank you for welcoming me into your life and for allowing me and encouraging me to marry your mom, she said.
2. What is the Trump administration continuing to debate? What individuals and groups want the United States to stay in the deal, and why? What does chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon want to do, and why?

3. What did David G. Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego, say about the Paris accord and how it will be tested?

4. How is the Paris deal intentionally structured? Describe the ways nations can submit plans tailored to their domestic circumstances, and explain why that is an advantage in the agreement.

5. What did the recent study from the Grantham Research Institute find? What does the Trump administration aim to dismantle from the Obama-era climate policies?

What Do You Think?

What do you predict will happen if the United States leaves the Paris deal? Explain your answer.
The center sees about 10 patients on a typical day. While there are no statistics on ownership of exotic pets in New York (especially illegal ones), Ms. Tibbetts said that more owners seemed to be seeking medical care.

In the past, they were just considered caged pets and most people didnt even consider taking them to the vet, she said. Most owners do not carry insurance, though it is available, Dr. Pilny said.

Dr. Pilnys next surgery was an ovariohysterectomy on a guinea pig. Her owners had brought her in because she was losing fur on her flanks. Dr. Pilny noticed that the fur loss was identical on both sides. Symmetrical alopecia is caused by a hormonal imbalance, which was probably in turn caused by ovarian cysts. Cut, snip, slice, sew, done. Fifteen minutes.

Ms. Tibbetts poked her head in again. What did you find? she asked.

Nothing too exciting, Dr. Pilny said. A little cyst on the left ovary, a little inflammation. He admired his handiwork.

The thing that matters most to the owners is how they look when they pick them up from surgery, Dr. Pilny said. No matter how lifesaving or complicated the surgery, what matters is when they pick the pet up and say, Look at that incision.

Dr. Pilny ate lunch at his desk. He called the ducks owner and told him the surgery had gone reasonably well.

Maybe it buys her a good eight months or a year or something, he told Mr. Orbe. I dont necessarily think shes cured, but I think this helped a lot.
Robert L. Forbes had an answer for the question about selling that rather large and expensive wedding present. Its not the sort of thing we hung in the house, he said, and for the last couple of years, it had been in storage.

On the day of Mr. Forbess wedding in 1981, his father, the magazine publisher Malcolm S. Forbes, spent $90,000 on eight glass panels from the Grand Salon of the Normandie, the glittering ocean liner that defined luxury, along with size and speed. The panels went to the Forbeses galleries in the headquarters of the familys financial magazine, which were also home to their collections: a farms worth of Faberge eggs, several brigades worth of toy soldiers and an armada of model boats.

But the Forbes galleries closed in 2014, and now the panels are to be sold again, in an auction on June 6 at Sothebys. Jodi Pollack, a senior vice president and co-worldwide head of 20th-century design, said she expected the sale price for the panels to be in the region of $1 million.
His prominent headstone is already planted, his lifelong distinction chiseled in the blue-black granite:

Witness to the Apparition at Knock.

What you choose to believe is up to you. This is merely the story of an Irish immigrant who died without means in Gotham obscurity, then rose to such postlife prominence that, amid considerable pageantry, the archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, will celebrate his requiem Mass and pray over his new earthly home.

The Knock of 1879 was an out-of-the-way Irish village, where people managed on potatoes and a porridge called stirabout; meat and tea on special occasions only. With Ireland still under British rule, the question of Irish self-governance burned hot, and matters did not cool when the local Catholic pastor sided against tenant farmers in their disputes with landlords.

On the evening of Aug. 21, with the rain lashing, 15 villagers claimed to see holy apparitions on the side of the Catholic church, suddenly aglow. In the center appeared the Virgin Mary, her eyes trained heavenward, and, by her side, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist. The images neither moved nor spoke.

The oldest witness was a woman of about 74; the youngest was a child, John Curry. The boy had been lifted up by an 11-year-old cousin so that he could see over a wall and admire what he called the grand babies of an apparition that was said to last two hours.
Prez hopeful of successful elections

President Bidya Devi Bhandari held talks with leaders of major political parties, including Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, on Thursday, a day before embarking on a visit to Thailand and Sri Lanka
After several days of painful subway delays in New York City this week, there was more turmoil during the commute on Friday morning.

Signal problems in Queens. Reports of a sick passenger in the Bronx. A train breakdown in Manhattan.

Over the course of the morning rush, nearly a dozen lines suffered delays. At 9:05 a.m., the official subway Twitter account sheepishly acknowledged the mounting problems by posting a link to the website where riders can request a late note.

If service delays caused you to be late for work, school or appointments, the post said. Request subway delay verification here.
She has recently been hosting interfaith events between Syrian Jews and Syrian Muslim refugees, eager to explore their shared heritage. Out of her own interest in understanding people, she had met someone.

Ms. Nasar was one of about 100 guests at a series of intimate Jewish-Muslim dinners that took place last weekend around Manhattan and Brooklyn to build interfaith understanding. Lonnie Firestone, a modern Orthodox Jew and freelance writer from Brooklyn, came up with the idea for dinners after President Trumps victory. She wanted to bring Muslims and Jews together in a spirit of friendship, so they could work together against anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.

When you have a natural affiliation with people, you can advocate for them effortlessly, she said. Its like you dont think about advocating for a relative. And I really liked the idea that friendship and common ground naturally emerges from sharing food together.

With two rounds of dinners so far, the project is one of many interfaith efforts going on in the New York area and nationally to promote Jewish-Muslim relations. But unlike a large event at a synagogue or mosque, these meals distinguish themselves by their intimacy, with no more than six guests in a Muslim or Jewish home. Guests can linger over dessert and tea as they move from easy conversations to more sensitive themes.

My hope was if you were to look at New York City from above, there would be a constellation of homes where these dinners were all happening, and like a secret sense of unity between people who are all taking part, Ms. Firestone said.
BANDUNG, Indonesia  The reports are greatly exaggerated: Liberal, multicultural democracy in Indonesia isnt dead yet.

Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, who is commonly called Ahok, recently lost the gubernatorial election in Jakarta, the capital, after his rivals waged an ugly campaign against his ethnicity and his religion: Indonesia is a majority-Muslim country, and Ahok is ethnic Chinese and Christian. Then this week he was handed an especially harsh prison sentence for a dubious charge of blasphemy.

Ahoks loss at the polls came as a surprise. Jakartas governor since 2014, he was well known and well liked for his administrations efforts to fix the citys failing infrastructure, among other things. Some credible surveys placed his approval rating at an enviable 70 percent or more. But his being Chinese and Christian apparently began to matter after he challenged an interpretation of a Quranic verse that claims Muslims shouldnt be led by non-Muslims.

Firebrand preachers seized on his comment to declare  including, illegally, during Friday sermons  that anyone who voted for him would face dire consequences on Judgment Day. Others accused him of being an agent of China, an inflammatory claim given the history of anti-Communist violence in Indonesia.
MacArthur then put the issue in deeply personal terms: His 11-year-old daughter, Gracie, had died from cancer 20 years ago. She had over $1 million in medical bills, he said. So I know what this is like.

Moran, as it happens, had lost a son to cancer. The politician and the journalist lived in the same circle of hell, as Moran later wrote. After their conversation turned personal, MacArthur asked his aides to leave the room, and the two men sat alone talking about the unique horror of losing a child.

Last week, MacArthur switched his position on the Republican health care bill, from opposition to support. Not only that, he wrote a provision that helped the bill win enough support to pass. Without Tom MacArthur, Trumpcare might not have passed in the House.

Yet the bill would do precisely what MacArthur had previously vowed to to oppose. It would pull the rug out from 20 million people, leaving them without health insurance by cutting subsidies and shrinking Medicaid. It would also worsen the quality of other peoples insurance. The bill would then take the savings from these cuts and shower them on wealthy households.

By now, youve probably read a fair amount of commentary about the bill. But I encourage you to take a few minutes and read Morans agonized column about MacArthurs change of position.
PARIS  This is a city of stolen moments, its romance tied to realism about the vagaries of the heart. Nothing surprises. Little is judged. In the realm of sex and coupling, a shrug of the shoulders is what you get from the French. Or as they would put it with dismissive bluntness: Bof.

Intimacy, for the French, is nobody elses business. A strong respect for privacy prevails. It is combined with reluctance to attach any moral baggage to peoples love lives. The effect is liberating. France does sex and food with aplomb. Guilt is not really its thing.

People come to France for its beauty, but what finally beguiles them is its civilization, at once formal and sensual, an art of living and loving.

I have been thinking of this non-judgmental French gift as the newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, and his wife, Brigitte, prepare to move into the Elysee Palace next week. They are an unusual couple. He is 39; she is 64. They met, as everyone knows by now, when he was a teenager and she was his drama teacher, a married woman with three children. Macron, through her, now has seven grandchildren whom he embraces as his own.
For generations, African-American parents have borne a special burden in mentoring their teenage children as they begin driving, having to say, be calm and extra polite when stopped by the police, and do nothing unexpected that could get you killed.

Its horrifying that any parent has to have that conversation. But racial profiling by the police is a reality, and in these days of repeated and sometimes fatal highway confrontations, captured by cellphone videos, such warnings can be a matter of life and death.

Delegate Jeion Ward of the Virginia General Assembly is an African-American grandmother who has long heard her husband and three grown sons pass on sage guidance to the younger generation about what to do if stopped. When Ms. Ward heard her 39-year-old son telling her 17-year-old grandson the facts of real life for traffic stops, her concern grew and it ultimately resulted in a simple bill that was enacted into law this week.

Her measure requires that drivers education courses for public schools specifically teach how to behave and interact with police officers in traffic stops. Illinois has enacted a similar measure, and Ms. Ward has heard from a half-dozen other states where lawmakers are considering her approach. The Virginia protocol is to be detailed after consultations involving motor vehicle, education and police officials.
To the Editor:

Now that weve passed Donald Trumps 100th day in office, I am struck by what his presidency has done to me, a working mother of five children and lifelong Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton. I have Mr. Trump to thank for awakening the political activist within. Before his election, I was too busy to pay attention to politics, to attend rallies or to engage in civic issues.

That all changed when Mr. Trump took office. Now, I call Congress on a regular basis, read The New York Times every day and listen to political podcasts. I attended the Womens March in Washington, I go to local political meetings and I dragged my children to our citys Science March. Ive taught my father how to use an app to contact his legislators. Ive donated money to political campaigns for the first time in my life.

If Hillary had been elected, I probably would not have undergone this political metamorphosis. I just hope I can make a difference.

ANDREA WATSON, DULUTH, MINN.
For scholars of democracy who have kept anxious watch over the tumultuous first months of this presidency, this weeks firing of James Comey set off a new round of alarm bells.

As President Trump attacked judges, intelligence agencies, the press, even the Congressional Budget Office  all potential independent constraints on presidential power  they constantly adjusted their scorecards, trying to sift the alarming from the merely noisy. But firing the official who heads an investigation into possible collusion between a presidential campaign and a foreign power crossed a line, they agreed.

My alarm-o-meter definitely jumped, said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Id say I went from a 4 to a 7 out of 10.

Few argue that the United States is in imminent danger of becoming an autocracy, a term much chewed over by pundits these days, including some conservative ones like David Frum, President George W. Bushs former speechwriter. But in conversations over the past few months, scholars moods and assessments have soared and plummeted.
To the Editor:

Re We Must Support Human Rights (Op-Ed, May 8):

Senator John McCains plea against a purely transactional foreign policy would have carried more weight if he had cited a stark example of how such dealings have threatened both our values and our security.

Modern Muslim extremism has deep sources in Saudi Arabias promotion of its fanatical version of Islam through the many mosques and madrassas it funds and in Pakistans direct sponsorship of militants across its region.

Such creeds of hatred and intolerance spread while Washington held these countries as key allies during the Cold War. Because of the American refusal to critically examine this tragic legacy after 9/11, either marginal groups of terrorists or Islam itself are blamed for a threat that in fact emanates from regimes this country supports.

Mr. McCain is right that we must see the world as it is. But to truly make it better, we must accept our own complicity in that reality.
Women and shoes, huh? But to dismiss any discussion of Mrs. Mays careful cultivation of image as trivializing or gender-biased is to miss how strategic she is. Her famous leopard-print heels have long been a form of camouflage, usefully diverting attention when she has unpalatable things to say (which isnt very often). They made one of their first outings at the Conservative Party Conference in 2002, when Mrs. May told activists they needed to stop earning their reputation as the nasty party. She discovered just how easy it is to distract Britains popular press with an unexpected choice of accessory.

In the opening weeks of this election campaign, all we learned about the countrys second female prime minister is that she utters the words strong and stable at every opportunity. Public appearances have been carefully choreographed: typically, a tour of a factory filled with supporters, with the media kept well away.

And it has worked. Mrs. Mays personal popularity is at stratospheric levels, with some opinion polls suggesting she is even more popular than Mrs. Thatcher was in her heyday. Perhaps the prime minister was channeling her inner Iron Lady when she stood at a lectern in Downing Street recently and scolded the leaders of the European Union, demonstrating how effectively she hid her true colors in the past: She, too, can be nasty when she needs to be.

It is becoming clear that Mrs. Mays political views are farther to the right than her reassuring presence  the head teacher who always has time to discuss little Johnny or Jessicas problems  would have us believe. When Mrs. May was home secretary and in charge of the countrys borders, she supported a wildly optimistic policy of Prime Minister David Cameron, who wanted to reduce immigration to a few tens of thousands a year. That undertaking was an abject failure by any standards  net immigration last year was just under 275,000  but it doesnt seem to have done her much harm.

Mrs. May has corrected course by adopting an even tougher stance on the international refugee crisis than Mr. Cameron. In February, she canceled the governments commitment to allow 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children into Britain after only about 350 had arrived.
Rights group concerned over use of schools, kids

The Centre for Awareness Promotion (CAP) Nepal, an NGO working for women rights, has urged the government and the political parties not to use schools and children for polls.
Wealthy people are selfish jerks. So are their children.

That is the implication, at least, of a batch of recent psychological studies. In a 2015 study, for example, preschoolers were told that they had earned enough tokens for a really great prize. They could keep the tokens for themselves or share the tokens with children at a local hospital who were too sick to come to the lab. Children from wealthier families kept more tokens for themselves.

Likewise, in 2010, researchers found that college students willingness to give to charity was tied to their wealth: Students from well-off families thought people should donate a smaller percentage of their annual income. And across a wide range of ages, wealthy adults tended to share less of what they had with others.

Why is this? One explanation is that because money allows people to achieve their own goals without depending on others, it cultivates a mind-set of self-sufficiency that is at odds with a charitable outlook.

Consider: If you dont have much money, you have to ask your friends and family to help you move your belongings from one apartment to another  which means you will probably have to help them when they move. But if you have money, you are likely to leave your friends and family out of it and hire professional movers. Over time, such experiences enable wealthier people to more easily embrace notions of independence and personal control over life. Less affluent people, meanwhile, must stay attuned to others needs and goals in order to satisfy their own.
If there was one principle that used to unite conservatives, it was respect for the rule of law. Not long ago, conservatives would have been horrified at wholesale violations of the norms and traditions of our political system, and would have been appalled by a president who showed overt contempt for the separation of powers.

But this week, as if on cue, most of the conservative media fell into line, celebrating President Trumps abrupt dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James Comey, and dismissing the fact that Mr. Comey was leading an investigation into the Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. Dems in Meltdown Over Comey Firing, declared a headline on Fox News, as Tucker Carlson gleefully replayed clips of Democrats denouncing the move. Its just insane actually, he said, referring to their reactions. On Fox and talk radio, the message was the same, with only a few conservatives willing to sound a discordant or even cautious note.

The talk-show host Rush Limbaugh was positively giddy, opening his monologue on Wednesday by praising Mr. Trump for what he called his epic trolling of liberals. This is great, Mr. Limbaugh declared. Can we agree that Donald Trump is probably enjoying this more than anybody wants to admit or that anybody knows? So he fires Comey yesterday. Whos he meet with today? Hes meeting with the Soviet, the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov! I mean, what an epic troll this is.

Given the enthusiasm of the presidents apologists, it is likely that much of Mr. Trumps base will similarly rally to him as it has in the past.
During the campaign, I admit, I laughed about Donald Trump a lot. I laughed at his bizarre Twitter language, his obsession with winning and his seeming lack of understanding of the basics of governing. Somewhere around October, I stopped laughing. Mr. Trumps lack of regard for basic facts and conventions of public speaking, which had once seemed merely absurd, now felt insulting. Whats more, especially after the election, I recognized that laughter from the left fed Mr. Trumps appeal, that it was all too easy to cast jokes about him as mockery of his supporters, or as an elitist dismissal of those who dont speak in a particular way.

And its been hard to laugh at Mr. Trump since he attained the power of life and death over many Americans. Much of what Mr. Trump says has always been deeply unfunny: that Mexico sends rapists to the United States, that when youre a star, women let you assault them. Now that he has the ability to put his views into practice, even his more ridiculous traits, like his tendency to put certain words in quotes apparently for no reason, seem a lot less funny.

So the catapults took me by surprise. Digging into the issue only made me laugh harder. USNI News, a website maintained by the United States Naval Institute, addressed the matter under the headline, President Trump Wants Gerald Ford Carriers to Use Goddamned Steam Catapults Instead of No Good Electromagnetic Launchers. The site explained that returning to steam might in fact be quite difficult: The Mk 13 steam catapult used on Nimitz-class carriers is no longer in production, and if the service elected to return to steam launching it would likely have to design a new system, with the Navy incurring an unknown level of additional expense.

Laughing at the president can be a coping mechanism  we laugh so we dont cry. But its also a recognition of the way things are. In the last few days, its become abundantly clear that its not just Mr. Trumps style of speaking thats absurd  absurdity is a defining feature of his administration. When the president publicly proclaims that he fired the director of the F.B.I. for investigating his ties with Russia, thus torching in seconds the story his aides spent several days painstakingly constructing, thats absurd. When the president says the public cant possibly expect accurate information out of the White House, thats absurd. Mr. Trumps free association about the benefits of steam versus digital is not merely a sideshow; its a hallmark of a presidency based on not just nonsense, but anti-sense.

It is possible that the presidents absurdity is strategic. For some of Mr. Trumps supporters, behaving in ways that defy convention is appealing; he did, after all, campaign on the promise not to do business as usual. And Sam Stein at the Huffington Post has written that Mr. Trump aims to exhaust everyone else with constant chaos.
In October, Ms. Diakite and Mr. Haidara signed a 100,000-euro contract with a Dutch foundation, the Prince Claus Fund, to transport 200 more lockers of privately owned manuscripts south. This shipment contained roughly half of the 160,000 that still needed to be removed from Timbuktu, the Dutch were told. More money was raised from the Ford Foundation, the Al Majid center in Dubai, the German foreign ministry and a second Dutch charity, DOEN. Toward the end of the 2012, staff members at the German Embassy in Bamako were told that between 80,000 and 120,000 manuscripts had been moved south.

By early 2013, however, the Malian crisis was approaching a denouement. In January, the jihadists began to push south, and President Francois Hollande of France responded by ordering a military intervention. Under a French air assault, the Malian rebels were soon forced to retreat. Ms. Diakite and Mr. Haidara began a new fund-raising round among the European embassies in Bamako. The threat to the collections was extreme, diplomats were told: The French action had angered the occupiers of Timbuktu, who had ordered that the citys manuscripts be gathered together on Jan. 24, the day of the festival of the Prophet Muhammads birthday, to be burned.

The Dutch foreign trade minister, Lilianne Ploumen, was persuaded, and approved a new donation of 323,475 euros for the evacuation of 136,000 manuscripts. The overall cost of the private evacuation was approaching $1 million.

The renewed fighting in the north meant the land route from Timbuktu was now too dangerous; instead, Mr. Haidara and Ms. Diakite told their donors, the couriers would use the Niger. Ms. Diakite later related dramatic stories about how great fleets of boats carried the lockers upstream. At one point, 20 were hijacked by bandits, but Mr. Haidara calmly ransomed them. On another occasion, French military helicopters threatened to sink the manuscript boats until the couriers waved their documents, at which point the pilots saluted and pulled away. When the manuscripts reached Djenne, about 300 miles southwest of Timbuktu, they were loaded onto a hundred bush taxis for the final 350 miles to Bamako by road.

On Jan. 28, Timbuktu was liberated by French and Malian forces. According to Mr. Haidara, the private evacuation had moved 377,491 manuscripts in almost 2,500 lockers, which represented more than 95 percent of the Timbuktu manuscripts. It was an extraordinary story  too extraordinary for some among the small cadre of international academics who had actually worked with the manuscripts.

For Bruce Hall, a professor at Duke University who lived in Timbuktu for several years while conducting research, the giant claims being made about the evacuation of the private libraries were red flags. In his view, 300,000 was a best guess for the total number of Arabic manuscripts that existed in the whole of northern Mali. How could Mr. Haidara claim to have moved almost 400,000?

There were other problems with the Haidara-Diakite narrative. One was that many of Timbuktus more famous collections never left the city. The claim that the jihadists had threatened to burn all the documents during the festival of the Prophets birthday also seemed shaky; no one I interviewed in Timbuktu recalled this moment. The grand imam, Abderrahmane Ben Essayouti, who led negotiations with the jihadist leadership over the festival, said simply, They did not threaten to burn the manuscripts of Timbuktu.
To the Editor:

Re Loyalty Vow Sought at a Private Dinner (front page, May 12):

It explains a good deal to recognize that President Trump understands no principle other than naked self-interest. He doesnt comprehend the notion of rule of law, or the independence of the branches and institutions of government. Thats why he can ask for James Comeys loyalty. As Mr. Trump repeatedly points out, the Democrats lost the election. He won. That makes him the boss, and all elected and appointed officials, certainly all of us as citizens, are his subordinates. He decrees; we obey.

In the same way, Mr. Trump, quite extraordinarily, doesnt understand the difference between truth and lie. What he says on any given occasion is whatever he perceives to serve his interest on that occasion. When the next day he says something else, that's because his perception of the circumstances or his self-interest has changed. Inconsistency? Contradiction? Those are meaningless concepts.

The sooner the media, public servants and the citizenry in general understand this, the better.

ARNOLD KRUPAT

HASTINGS-ON-HUDSON, N.Y.

To the Editor:

Re President Shifts Rationale For Firing F.B.I. Director, Calling Him a Showboat  (front page, May 12):

It wasnt enough for President Trump to simply fire James Comey. He had to take it one step further by accusing of him of being a showboat and grandstander. Mr. Trump seems never to be able to take action against people without also attacking them personally, calling into question either their patriotism or professional competence, or both.
If that is all that Mr. Trump demanded, and if he actually delivered results, the answer might be yes. But the events of this week have made clear that the price of an accommodation with Mr. Trump is higher. Much, much higher.

Like other conservatives, I care about tax cuts and military spending increases. But I care even more about the rule of law  the only thing that prevents our country from going the way of Venezuela, Russia or Zimbabwe.

In office less than four months, Mr. Trump has already undermined the rule of law in myriad small ways. He allowed his daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House in arguable violation of an anti-nepotism statute. He did not divest himself of his business holdings and did not release his tax returns. His sons have continued pursuing deals with jillionaires closely linked to unsavory foreign regimes. He and his daughter have accepted valuable trademark protections from China. His son-in-laws family sought to trade on their connections to sell American citizenship to rich Chinese.

But all of that is inconsequential compared with the flagrant assault on the rule of law represented by the firing of the F.B.I. director. The initial cover story for this act was Mr. Comeys improper conduct last year in publicly discussing the F.B.I. investigation of Hillary Clintons emails. But that masquerade crumbled when the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who wrote a memo laying out legitimate concerns regarding Mr. Comeys actions last year, contradicted the White Houses suggestion that he had initiated the firing. Mr. Trump now says he was determined to dismiss Mr. Comey before he received Mr. Rosensteins recommendation, rendering the initial White House explanation inoperative.

Why did President Trump want to get rid of Mr. Comey? Numerous news outlets have described how furious he was about the F.B.I. investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia. The president made clear his intent to shut down the investigation on Monday when he tweeted, The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?
When Education Secretary Betsy DeVos delivered a commencement address this week at Bethune-Cookman University, a historically black institution in Florida, she was greeted with a predictable chorus of boos.

One of the hallmarks of higher education, and of democracy, is the ability to converse with and learn from those with whom we disagree, she said, lecturing the graduating seniors like a school principal in a John Hughes film. While we will undoubtedly disagree at times, I hope we can do so respectfully. Lets choose to hear each other out.

Of course, Ms. DeVos wasnt there to hear out any criticism of her education policies. She was there to have students hear her out, on their graduation day.

Free and open debate is indeed one of the hallmarks of democracy. But its not one of the hallmarks of commencement addresses. This is something I wish college administrators would get through their thick heads.
Two Sundays ago, The Times introduced a feature in the Sunday Review that has raised a number of eyebrows: a regular column that says something nice about President Trump.

The columnist, Michael Kinsley, most notably of Crossfire fame, explained that The Times was looking for a few positive words about the president, and were asking for your help. Kinsley prompted readers to write to somethingnice@nytimes.com, and noted:

This is not about Trump the family man. Its not another forum for debating the issues. It is a place to point out positive things Mr. Trump has said or done from the viewpoint of The New York Times and its readers.

One good thing Trump has done for the country, Kinsley claimed in the debut column, has been to allow the average citizen a view straight into the presidents id, through his personal Twitter feed. In his second column, Kinsley pointed to Trumps decision to skip one of the most repulsive social events in Washington, the White House Correspondents Association dinner.

Responses started coming in after the columns debut and continued this week. Many readers wondered if The Times had ever solicited positive words about any other prominent figure for publication. Others said the column gave the impression that the paper is cozying up to a president who has called the press the enemy of the American people.

The column reads as if The Times is attempting to curry favor with the administration by printing puff pieces glamorizing him or his opponents. This isnt journalism. While I understand that the column runs in the Opinion section, I would argue that a regular feature with a specific, stated intent of saying something positive about our political leader has no place in a mainstream newspaper. When the man does something good, cover it as news. When he does something bad, cover it as news. Please reconsider this column. It cheapens the paper and leads readers like me to question your news reporting. Jesse Vincent, Oakland, Calif.

A Times spokeswoman, Danielle Rhoades-Ha, explained that currying favor with Trump is far from the columns aim.

This feature is media criticism and satire by the veteran journalist and commentator Michael Kinsley. He is assessing the president and the mainstream medias coverage of the administration for the Times Opinion pages. The first installment of the column outlines the media criticism aspect of the column more fully. It is entirely separate from our newsroom coverage.

The public editors take: If this fell more into the category of press criticism, Id buy into the idea. Only thats not how it reads to me. I cant tell if the column is tongue-in-cheek or a serious effort to balance out the negative with a little positive. Right now, it seems perched in the middle, precariously. I think the readers weve heard from, and the discussion on social media, raise good questions about why theres a platform dedicated to patting a president on the back.

One not nice thing that happened last weekend was an oil spill in New Yorks East River after more than 30,000 gallons of the synthetic mineral variety leaked from a Con Edison power transformer. According to a company spokesman, though the oil is nontoxic, it can harm fish and birds and cause skin and eye irritation in people. The only mention of the spill in The Times, though, was a link to a Gothamist story in the New York Today newsletter, with the line, Con Edison spilled gallons of oil into the East River.
In New York City, living alone for the first time can seem a revelation, and laying claim to a few hundred square feet of personal space a minor miracle. But for Tamantra Bowen, getting her own apartment last year meant more than freedom from roommates: It was also the first place she could truly call home in a decade.

Ms. Bowen moved into the spacious one-bedroom on the ground floor of a condo building in Coney Island in Brooklyn last July, after spending the previous year in homeless shelters.

I was pulling my hair out when they called me, she said, explaining that the apartment became available just two weeks before her 21st birthday, when she would have had to move from an adolescent shelter to an adult one. She was hesitant to let her excitement show.
Open a New York City apartment door and you may be opening a portal to the past. The history of the city lives and breathes in the walls, floorboards and fireplaces of old buildings, some with well-known histories and others with hidden secrets.

When Amber Gallaty, 37, took up residence at a former tuberculosis sanitarium on the Upper East Side, she didnt realize that her new home would be a restorative place for her, too.

I was going through a divorce when I moved here, said Ms. Gallaty, the founder and chief executive of the Gallavant Group, a communications agency. Maybe its the light or the open courtyards. It just felt like a healing place for me.

The Cherokee Apartments, between East 77th and 78th Streets, and York Avenue and Cherokee Place, opened in 1912 as the Shively Sanitary Tenements. The development was conceived by Dr. Henry L. Shively, the head of the tuberculosis clinic at Presbyterian Hospital, and designed by the architect Henry Atterbury Smith for low-income tuberculosis patients and their families. Financed by Anne Harriman Vanderbilt, the four buildings in the complex were designed to be filled with light and air. The floor-to-ceiling windows, balconies and open stairwells all had a curative purpose.
Tribeni point along Nepal-India border to be closed for polls

The Tribeni checkpoint along the Nepal-India border in Nawalparasi district is to be closed in view of the May 14 local level elections.
The closing of a medical center often incites controversy and litigation, as community members worry about the loss of services. The buildings are often converted to residential spaces that take advantage of the original design.

455 Central Park West

Between 105th and 106th Streets

The nations first cancer hospital, the New York Cancer Hospital, opened here in the 1880s. The building was declared a landmark and was converted to condominiums in the 2000s.

Riverside Towers

263 West End Avenue, between 72nd and 73rd Streets

Intended to be a hospital hotel called Hudson Towers in the 1920s, the building stood vacant on the Upper West Side until it was bought and opened as a residential building after World War II.

Rutherford Place

Second Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets

Opened as the Lying-In Hospital in the early 1900s, this maternity ward was redeveloped as an apartment building in the 1980s.
In most mammals, us included, biological sex is determined by a lottery between two letters: X and Y, the sex chromosomes. Inherit one X each from mom and dad, and develop ovaries, a womb and a vagina. Inherit an X from mom and a Y from dad, and develop testes and a penis.

But there are rare, mysterious exceptions. A small number of rodents have no Y chromosomes, yet are born as either females or males, not hermaphrodites. Now, scientists may be one step closer to figuring out how sex determination works in one of these rodents.

In a study published in Science Advances on Friday, Japanese scientists suggested that cells of the endangered Amami spiny rat, from Japan, are sexually flexible and capable of adapting to either ovaries or testes. When the researchers injected stem cells derived from a female rat into male embryos of laboratory mice, the cells developed into and survived as sperm precursors in adult males. The result was surprising since scientists have never been able to generate mature sperm from female stem cells, largely because sperm production normally requires the Y chromosome.

Found only in the subtropical forests of an island in Japan called Amami Oshima, Amami spiny rats are threatened by habitat destruction, competition with black rats not native to the island and predation by mongooses and feral cats and dogs. Their range has been reduced to less than 300 square miles, an area smaller than New York City.
A rare white female wolf that hikers found as she lay dying last month on the north side of Yellowstone National Park near the Montana border, was shot illegally, officials have determined.

The wolf had to be euthanized by park officials because of the severity of her wound.

She was the only white wolf living in the park, though there had been two others before her. She was 12 years old when she was killed, twice the average age of wolves in Yellowstone.

She was the alpha female of the Canyon Pack, one of 10 packs in the park, and she had paired with the alpha male for nine years. Over that period, biologists say, she whelped 20 pups, 14 of which lived to be adults.

After she was euthanized, the white wolfs carcass was sent to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service forensics lab, and the preliminary results of the necropsy were released on Friday. Park officials are treating the shooting as a crime.
He had, almost without my realizing it, become my best friend, and I couldnt fathom or remember why or how I had been so wrong about him at the beginning. He had become more confident, assertive and emotionally transparent, and I was calmer, not so judgmental and considerably less manic about rules.

There are a lot of rules on Mormon missions: Stay with your companion at all times, dont call home except for Christmas and Mothers Day, exercise for 30 minutes every morning, etc. Following them is almost always a good idea, but obedience for the wrong reasons can be toxic. Missions are supposed to be difficult; theyre supposed to change you. But I wanted my mission to make me straight and believed that, if I worked as hard as I could and followed every rule, it would.

Every time I woke up late, or let someone walk by me on the sidewalk without stopping to share my message, or hummed a song from the radio instead of the hymnbook  every time I broke a rule  I felt as if I was not keeping my end of the deal, as if I was going to be gay for the rest of my life and it would be my own lazy fault.

When I was 13, I came out to my local bishop, and we agreed that I should see a therapist. I made my bishop promise to not tell my parents why they had to drive me all the way to Houston (two hours from the coastal, Cajun bedroom community in southeast Texas where I grew up) every Tuesday evening, and my parents reluctantly cooperated with my desperate insistence that they not ask questions. The therapist, my bishop assured me, would help me get my sexuality under control.

He did not. He didnt even try.

Nothing is wrong with you, he said. He told me that I would always be gay (not at all what I wanted to hear) and that homosexuality didnt have to stop me from doing and having everything I wanted in life, including Mormonism. Our sessions were always positive and validating, which was cool (and probably lifesaving), but they were never interventional or transformative. I was more than a little disappointed.

The acceptance that I really would be gay forever did not come until seven years later, and was accompanied by the liberating realization that I was O.K. with that. I became, instantly, happy. The second year of my mission will always be one of the most magical times of my life, and not just because I spent most of it with Elder Ellsworth. I finally liked myself. I finished my mission triumphantly, and just as gay as the day I was born.
At first sight, Alana Wilsons vases, jugs and chalices look about 3,000 years old. Inspired by Neolithic Japanese, Cycladic and African traditions, her ceramics have the pockmarked surface of bleached-out brain coral and the faint hue of artifacts that have been buried in the ground for millennia. The Australian artist, who works in a small studio outside Sydney overlooking Tamarama beach, near the famous swells of Bondi, achieves this distinctive look with a mixture of modern and ancient methods. She eschews an electric potters wheel for the coiling method, an antediluvian technique in which small bands of clay are slowly stacked on top of one another to create a shape. Wilson then coats them, rather unorthodoxly, with an arsenal of naturally toxic chemicals  lithium, barium and silicon carbide  that slowly eat away at the special kind of terracotta clay she employs; and bits of paper embedded in the material burn during the firing process, creating her works signature porosity. Ive been experimenting with sea salt recently, says the 28-year-old mischievously. It melts and practically destroys everything it touches which I quite like.

Wilson is part of a group of female ceramists from all over the globe who are meditating on the beauty of imperfection, age and artlessness, borrowing ideas from the past, including the Zen Buddhist philosophy of wabi-sabi. Such blurring of the lines between functional objects and art first touched Japanese ceramics in the 16th century, when tea ceremony masters, aesthetes of the highest order, shifted their tastes from polished antique Chinese bowls to the rustic, unglazed stoneware vessels made for Korean and Japanese farmers. Romy Northover, an English potter who lives and works in Brooklyn under the label No., experiments with similar inspirations. She categorizes the look of her humble whitewashed pieces as ancient future: pinch pot-esque tea bowls and plump ruddy flower vases drizzled in layers of messy milky glaze. To achieve her naive yet refined aesthetic, she plays tricks on herself: The Japanese tea bowls I made most recently were looking too straight and perfect, so I spun my wheel in the opposite direction than Im used to, to throw off the muscle memory in my hands. I had less control which renders these great offbeat shapes.
A federal judge denied a motion to move a legal showdown between Uber and Waymo into private arbitration, according to a court document filed Thursday evening, a decision that sets the stage for a public, bare-knuckle trial between the two companies.

It was a setback for Uber, which has been accused of stealing valuable technology from Waymo, the self-driving-automobile unit spun out of Google. Uber had pushed for arbitration, usually a less expensive and faster process  and one that neither takes place in front of a jury nor becomes part of the public record.

At the heart of the suit is Anthony Levandowski, a star engineer and a veteran of self-driving technology who Waymo has claimed stole technology from Google before leaving to form Otto, his own autonomous-vehicle start-up. Waymo has argued that Uber conspired with Mr. Levandowski to use those stolen files in Ubers self-driving-car designs after Uber purchased Mr. Levandowskis start-up for $680 million. Uber has denied the accusation.
On the Town Hall stage, which was fitted with tables draped in red cloth and two abashed-looking American flags, the first three scenes were trimly organized. Mr. Tillersons hearing spotlighted his ties to Russia. Mr. Prices focused on a number of questionable stock deals, and Mr. Pruitts examined his ties to the fossil fuel industry.

But the fourth scene, the confirmation hearing of Mr. Sessions, was a trickier affair. Mr. Sessions, back in the news with the firing of James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, is a man with a long career of public service and a grab bag of complicating stances. His sequence was more diffuse, with part of the hearing devoted to questioning his closeness to President Trump and another part discussing his views on immigration and abortion rights.

While the other nominees dodged uncomfortable questions, Mr. Sessions mostly answered them. He owned up, with some qualifying, to past controversial statements, which is integrity of a kind. It was also surprising to learn that he and Senator Richard J. Durbin, a Democrat, both pushed for passage of the Fair Sentencing Act, which softened penalties for crack cocaine possession.

Details like these helped to make the real Mr. Sessions something other than a cartoon villain  or the malign elf he resembles  even while accentuating his views on civil liberties. The scene ended with a withering speech in which Senator Dianne Feinstein (Ms. Taylor) implacably detailed what she considered Mr. Sessionss grave unsuitability for the job as attorney general.

Verbatim theater of the kind that Mr. Kent practices is rigorous in its form. Only actual words are quoted, typically in the order they were spoken. Of course, C-Span doesnt become drama without intervention, so the very act of editing means that choices of emphasis and exclusion have been made. Actors make other choices: Its unlikely that the real Mr. Tillerson paused for a laugh after championing his honesty by saying, You are aware of my longstanding involvement with the Boy Scouts of America.

In performance, the play is respectful of the confirmation process itself and the level of discourse it encourages (at least among the lawmakers), even as it stresses the profound, almost comical impropriety of the nominees assuming the positions they hold. This is the best of America here, Senator Bob Corker (Mr. Irwin) said as he opened the first hearing. Really?
Which spring hotel openings are worthy of global acclaim? According to Ignacio Maza, the executive vice president of Signature Travel Network, a group of travel agents and hotels, this spring is especially significant when it comes to new accommodations because several highly anticipated hotels are making their debuts. Some, such as the Hotel Eden in Rome and the Gran Hotel Manzana Kempinski La Habana in Havana, were bogged down by multiple delays. Were finally going to see these and other big projects that have been in the works for years come to light, Mr. Maza said.

Below, six properties to consider checking into this spring.

Palacio Tangara, Sao Paulo

Opening scheduled for this month

Set in Sao Paulos lush Burle Marx Park, this 141-room hotel aims to give guests a sense of tranquillity in the midst of a dense urban environment. Draws include a spa from the upscale beauty line Sisley-Paris and a Brazilian-inspired restaurant from the renowned chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Shelby Donley, the owner of Camelback Odyssey Travel, a travel consultancy in Phoenix, said that Sao Paulo is primarily a destination for business travelers, but the Palacio Tangara has enough to entice the leisure set, too. The hotels nature setting gives it a very getaway feel, she said.

Nightly rates from $450

Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club, Surfside, Fla.

Opened in March

Notable guests including Winston Churchill and Frank Sinatra visited the Surf Club, just outside of Miami Beach, during its heyday for much of the 20th century. Now, Four Seasons is trying to create a better version of its original glory. The architect Richard Meier is behind the sleek design, which includes 77 guest rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows. Other amenities include three pools, 900 feet of beachfront and standout dining options: Thomas Keller and Antonio Sersale, owner of the Le Sirenuse hotel on Italys Amalfi Coast, are each running a restaurant. Jean Pickard, a travel consultant at SmartFlyer in Atlanta, said that the hotel not only represents the revival of a distinguished property but also speaks to a new direction for Four Seasons. The brand is moving away from cookie-cutter properties and opening ones with distinctive voices, she said.

Nightly rates from $899

At Six, Stockholm

Opened in March

With an eye-catching design sensibility that mixes blackened steel and gleaming granite, along with vintage and contemporary furnishings and modern artwork, At Six made a splashy debut in a city where accommodations veer toward the traditional. Stockholm has been a struggle for travelers looking for a fun, yet polished place to stay, Ms. Donley said. The property has 343 rooms, and its social spaces, including a restaurant and lounges, are spread out over two floors; its on Brunkebergstorg Square, a favorite hangout in the 19th century for the citys high society.
President Trump had the legal authority to fire James B. Comey on Tuesday, and he originally said that doing so was necessary because, in his view, Mr. Comey committed serious violations of law-enforcement norms during his investigation of Hillary Clinton last year.

But critics say that Mr. Trump has himself violated a longstanding norm of American politics: the unwritten rule that presidents should not remove the F.B.I. director without extreme justification, in order to avoid politicizing law enforcement. Before Tuesday, only one F.B.I. director had ever been fired, and that was after an investigation found he had committed egregious ethical violations  and after he refused entreaties to resign.

That has left many wondering how to evaluate Mr. Trumps actions. Was his firing of Mr. Comey a necessary decision? Merely a minor disturbance of political etiquette? A catastrophic blow to democracy?

Political scientists who study democracy and authoritarianism know the answers will be long debated. The true significance of Mr. Comeys firing, they say, is that it presents a kind of stress test for American democratic institutions. In unhealthy systems, norm violations can spiral into tit-for-tat retaliation, ultimately tearing democracies apart. But in strong democracies, institutions will step in to enforce vital norms, preventing escalation and protecting the democratic system.
The Trump administration trade agenda took a big leap forward Thursday when the presidents nominee for the job of lead negotiator was confirmed by the Senate. Now we will start to find out what the Trump trade agenda really is.

You need a United States Trade Representative to renegotiate trade deals. This is true in a general sense, in needing empowered negotiators to do the nitty-gritty work, and in a legal sense because of the insistence of the Senate that a trade representative be confirmed before talks on reworking the North American Free Trade Agreement begin.

Now that Robert Lighthizer has been confirmed, by a Senate vote on Thursday of 82 to 14, the administration is in position to act. Yet nearly four months into the presidency, we dont know exactly what acting will mean. We can only read the tea leaves, extrapolating from the relatively limited action we have seen thus far, including an agreement with China announced Thursday evening that will give American beef exporters access to the Chinese market.

At times during last years presidential campaign, Mr. Trump seemed ready to blow up the entire system of global trade. His conviction that trade deals are unfair to the United States is a rare common thread in his decades in public life.
Two dead, 35 injured in bus accident

Two persons were killed and 35 others injured, nine critically, in a bus accident at Tinkilo near Khadichaur Bazaar in Sindhupalchok district on Thursday.
Good morning.

(Want to get California Today by email? Heres the sign-up.)

After the Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, gave his State of the City last month, he descended the stage and gave big two-armed hugs to each person  men included  in the front row.

Mayor Garcetti isnt the only Californian prone to bro hugs. Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom gives them. So do Stephen Curry, the rest of the Warriors, the typical college-aged man and seemingly every guy in Hollywood.

In California, a male hug among friends is arguably the standard greeting. But it wasnt always so.

In the 1800s, American men were surprisingly affectionate with one another, said John Ibson, author of Picturing Men: A Century of Male Relationships in Everyday American Photography.

But starting in the 20th century, as homosexuality became pathologized, male affection became verboten.
One day in 1964, Nicholas Sand, a Brooklyn-born son of a spy for the Soviet Union, took his first acid trip. He had been fascinated by psychedelic drugs since reading about them as a student at Brooklyn College and had experimented with mescaline and peyote. Now, at a retreat run by friends in Putnam County, N.Y., he took his first dose of LSD, still legal at the time.

Sitting naked in the lotus position, before a crackling fire, he surrendered to the experience. A sensation of peace and joy washed over him. Then he felt himself transported to the far reaches of the cosmos.

I was floating in this immense black space, he recalled in the documentary The Sunshine Makers, released in 2015. I said, What am I doing here? And suddenly a voice came through my body, and it said, Your job on this planet is to make psychedelics and turn on the world. 

Like Moses receiving the tablets, Mr. Sand took this commandment to heart. After being trained by the lab partner of Owsley Stanley, Americas premier LSD chemist, he set about producing vast quantities of the purest LSD on the market. His most celebrated product, known as Orange Sunshine for the color of the tablets it came in, became a signature drug of the late 1960s.
WASHINGTON  Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered federal prosecutors to pursue the toughest possible charges and sentences against crime suspects, he announced Friday, reversing Obama administration efforts to ease penalties for some nonviolent drug violations.

The drastic shift in criminal justice policy, foreshadowed during recent weeks, is Mr. Sessionss first major stamp on the Justice Department, and it highlights several of his top targets: drug dealing, gun crime and gang violence.

In an eight-paragraph memo, Mr. Sessions returned to the guidance of President George W. Bushs administration by calling for more uniform punishments  including mandatory minimum sentences  and instructing prosecutors to pursue the harshest possible charges. Mr. Sessionss policy is broader than that of the Bush administration, however, and how it is carried out will depend more heavily on the judgments of United States attorneys and assistant attorneys general as they bring charges.

The policy signaled a return to enforcing the laws that Congress has passed, Mr. Sessions said Friday at the Justice Department, characterizing his memo as unique for the leeway it afforded prosecutors.
WASHINGTON  President Trump has broadened his search for a new F.B.I. director in recent days, moving to install a leader who would be viewed as independent from the White House amid the backlash over his abrupt dismissal of James B. Comey.

Four candidates will be interviewed Saturday, according to a person familiar with the meetings: Andrew G. McCabe, the acting director of the F.B.I.; Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas; Judge Michael J. Garcia of the New York State Court of Appeals and the former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York; and Alice Fisher, a former top Justice Department official who would be the first woman to run the agency.

The timing of a nomination is far from clear; the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, provided no firm timeline on Friday.

The candidate list is also said to be broader than those four. Mr. Trump has a long history of tossing names out as chum for public consumption, in part to throw people off the scent of what he is doing, and in part to test various options.
Although David Harsanyi doesnt believe were in a constitutional crisis (yet), hes willing to be open to the worst case scenario, and thus he backs an independent prosecutor to cover the Russia investigation. However, he would like to use this episode to remind his readers of the importance of checks and balances, regardless of which party occupies the executive branch. Read more 

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 Jonathan S. Tobin in National Review:

The last thing the country needs is another out-of-control probe that wont give us the answers we need about Russia and Trump.

Jonathan Tobin explains why, historically, the appointment of a special prosecutor is a bad choice. Noting that special prosecutors tend to become attached to the extraordinary power theyve been given, Mr. Tobin argues that their investigation becomes not a means to the end for which they were purposed, but an end in itself. If we really want to get to the bottom of any ties between the president, his orbit and Russia, a bipartisan special commission or joint congressional committee would be much more effective. Read more 

Inflation F.A.Q. Card 1 of 5 What is inflation? Inflation is a loss of purchasing power over time, meaning your dollar will not go as far tomorrow as it did today. It is typically expressed as the annual change in prices for everyday goods and services such as food, furniture, apparel, transportation and toys. What causes inflation? It can be the result of rising consumer demand. But inflation can also rise and fall based on developments that have little to do with economic conditions, such as limited oil production and supply chain problems. Is inflation bad? It depends on the circumstances. Fast price increases spell trouble, but moderate price gains can lead to higher wages and job growth. How does inflation affect the poor? Inflation can be especially hard to shoulder for poor households because they spend a bigger chunk of their budgets on necessities like food, housing and gas. Can inflation affect the stock market? Rapid inflation typically spells trouble for stocks. Financial assets in general have historically fared badly during inflation booms, while tangible assets like houses have held their value better.









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 Seth Mandel on Twitter:

Dont indulge pure conspiracy theorism. But also dont just wave it all away dismissively. Dems arent imagining all this.

Not all partisan writing worth your time is found in article form. Sometimes, a series of tweets  brief but thoughtful  do the trick. Seth Mandel, an opinion editor for The New York Post, deploys 12 140-character missives to speak to his Republican friends who feel inclined to dismiss the lefts reaction to Mr. Comeys firing: What if the shoe were on the other foot? Read more 
WASHINGTON  President Trump on Friday warned James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director whom he fired this week, against leaking anything negative about him, saying that Mr. Comey better hope that there are no secret tapes of their conversations that the president could use in retaliation.

The suggestion that the president may be surreptitiously recording his meetings or telephone calls added a twist at the end of a week that roiled Washington. The president and his spokesman later refused to say whether he tapes his visitors, something Mr. Trump was suspected of doing when he was in business in New York.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter.

Mr. Trump appeared to be referring to an article in The New York Times that said he had asked Mr. Comey to pledge loyalty during a dinner at the White House shortly after the inauguration, only to be rebuffed by the F.B.I. director, who considered it inappropriate.
The statues are intended to send a message to black folks to stay in their places. We dont see the time, energy and resources going into promoting the kind of images, the kinds of systems that people need to really thrive.

This art is not reflective of the majority of people in the city. The majority of the people in this city are black folks, and it doesnt reflect them.

When people say, This is a topic thats just come up, its absolutely inaccurate. This is a fight thats been going on for decades.

New Orleans is a liberal city in a conservative state. Are you surprised to see the monuments actually being removed?

I think that Im always cautiously optimistic, and I say that because no matter what breakthroughs we have, were clear that our work is never done. Even though we can have an appreciation that the mayor finally gave in to an ordinance for four of these monuments to white supremacy, the reality is that theyre all over the city. You should take down these four, and you should take down the others.

But are you surprised to see even these four coming down?

Weve always believed it was possible. It required will.

The mayor has talked about how he thinks the removal of the monuments will foster reconciliation. How will that happen?
Our introduction to Mr. Wednesday (Ian McShane) comes in the airport, when we see him in grifter mode, pretending that he needs to get to his sons christening. Later, when he and Shadow Moon (Ricky Whittle) properly meet for the first time, Wednesday demonstrates knowledge for which there is no explanation: He knows that Shadow just got out of prison and that the job Shadow thinks awaits him is no more.

When pressed for his name, he asks what day it is  Wednesday, it seems. Todays my day, he says. Lets go with that. Mythology plus etymology tells us that Wednesday equals Odin. Thanks to the Coming to America prologue to Episode 1 (nothing to do with the movie starring Eddie Murphy), we learn a little about Odin, the All-Father in Norse mythology. Dont confuse him with Anthony Hopkinss portrayal in the Marvel films  this is a war god, with a taste for blood sacrifice. Odin gouged out one of his eyes in exchange for a drink from the Well of Wisdom; Wednesday has a glass eye.
NDJAMENA, Chad  In an unusual joint counterterrorism operation recently, troops from Mali, Mauritania and France seized a large cache of weapons and ammunition from a suspected Qaeda camp in a forested area along the border of the two African countries.

The raid provided a glimpse of an expanding and often violent multifront campaign that France has joined here in the Sahel, a vast area on the southern flank of the Sahara that stretches from Senegal to Sudan. Over the past several years, French troops have battled Al Qaedas North Africa affiliate and other Islamist extremists in Mali and have helped African troops thwart Boko Haram, a violent militancy that has spilled from Nigeria to attack Chad, Niger and Cameroon. The Islamic State is also a looming threat.

In the latest sign of an emerging regional collaboration, five countries within the Sahel  Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad  announced recently that they would create three border areas for military patrols and operations. French troops are advising and assisting these units.

The Trump administration, which is already fighting the Islamic State in both Iraq and Syria and weighing whether to send several thousand more American troops to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban, has been only too eager to continue Obama-era policies of providing financial, logistical and intelligence support to France in this region. By doing so, it hopes to avoid having to put American combat forces on the ground in yet another global hot spot.
NAIROBI, Kenya  An Ebola outbreak has been declared in northern Democratic Republic of Congo and has killed at least three people in the past three weeks, the World Health Organization said on Friday.

The affected zone is in a forested area of Lower Uele Province, and it is close to the border with the Central African Republic, the W.H.O. said.

The outbreak is not linked to previous Ebola flare-ups in Congo, nor the one that tore through West Africa in 2014, killing more than 11,000 people, said Tarik Jasarevic, a W.H.O. spokesman. That outbreak was significant because it reached major cities and began in a part of Africa that had never seen Ebola before.

Mr. Jasarevic said that there had been a number of Ebola outbreaks in the Lower Uele region since 2000. Congo has had eight outbreaks of Ebola since 1976, according to the W.H.O.
Unidentified groups detonate explosive devices in three districts

In an apparent attempt to disrupt local elections slated for May 14, Improvised Explosives Devices (IEDs) were detonated in Nawalparasi, Makwanpur and Siraha districts on Thursday.
We want them to accept Islam, she added, according to local media.

In another video, Boko Haram purported to show the five commanders who were swapped for the girls. The clip issued imminent threats to bomb Abuja. The authenticity of the videos could not be verified.

Last October, Boko Haram released 21 other girls to the government. Officials this week said three more schoolgirls kidnapped in the same abduction had been recovered since then.

Mr. Pogos anxieties echo those of the relatives of the first group of released girls. They, too, have complained that the Nigerian government has restricted their access to their daughters and nieces who are living in government custody in Abuja. The issue was amplified over Christmas when the government shuttled the girls to their hometown for a family visit. Parents visited the girls but had expected they would spend the night in their homes and attend church services with them. Instead government officials kept them elsewhere, saying security was an issue.

This week, officials said they could not reunite the newly released girls with their families until they verified the girls identities and matched them with their relatives. They were circulating photos to family members, many of whom were scattered across the rural countryside of the northeastern part of Nigeria where both internet service and smartphones are rare. Officials also were organizing transportation for 82 families to Abuja, about a four-hour drive from Chibok.

Officials said they were trying to avoid a scenario that played out in October when some families traveled to Abuja only to learn that their loved ones were not among the group.

The government is now trying to meticulously match families with girls, some of whom use nicknames or share last names with other hostages. During the three years of captivity, many of the girls have gone through adolescence and may appear different than when their parents last saw them.

One lucky relative of the girls, Yakubu Nkeki, has already seen his niece, Maimuna Nkeki, who was among the newly freed girls. As a member of the Abducted Chibok Girls Parents Movement for Rescue, he was allowed to visit the students this week.
MEXICO CITY  A Mexican woman who became an activist for parents of missing children after her daughter was kidnapped and murdered five years ago was fatally shot by gunmen who broke into her home this week, the authorities said Thursday.

The woman, Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez Martinez, who lived in the municipality of San Fernando, was killed late Wednesday  Mothers Day in Mexico. She died on the way to a hospital.

San Fernando is in the state of Tamaulipas, which runs along the Gulf Coast up to the jagged southeastern border of Texas. It is among the most violent regions of Mexico. According to government figures, it has the highest number of disappeared people in the country. So many journalists have been threatened into silence by gangs there that the stranglehold of organized crime goes largely unreported.

Karen Alejandra Salinas Rodriguez, Ms. Rodriguezs daughter, vanished in 2012. Ms. Rodriguez began a search that lasted two years, until her daughters body was discovered in an unmarked grave. Afterward, she told the authorities who she believed was responsible for the murder.
BOGOTA, Colombia  Cheers erupted as the protesters toppled the statue of former President Hugo Chavez, the metal cracking against concrete. The scenes, distributed around Venezuela on social media, showed a crowd smashing the sculpture on a curbside as others came to set a fire inside its shattered belly.

But when the authorities rounded up suspects for the vandalism, they were not taken to an ordinary court. Instead, they were hauled off to a military base, where they faced the judges of a military tribunal this past week.

President Nicolas Maduro, beleaguered by a second month of protests against him, has prosecuted political rivals under terrorism laws and expanded his powers by emergency decrees. His backers on the Supreme Court have even tried to dissolve the national legislature, which is led by the political opposition.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan  At least 25 people were killed and 30 others were wounded when the convoy of a senior Pakistani politician was hit by a bomb in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, officials said.

The politician, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the Senate, survived with minor injuries. But his driver and an aide were killed in the explosion, in Mastung, a remote district in Baluchistan Province. Mr. Haideri told Reuters soon after the explosion that he believed he was the target of the attack.

Police officials said it was not immediately clear whether the blast was the work of a suicide bomber or the result of a timed device planted by the road.

Through its Syria-based Amaq news agency, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. But Pakistani officials have generally been skeptical, saying that local militant cells who swear allegiance to the Islamic State but have little or no operational link to the main group have been behind most of the attacks.
SEOUL, South Korea  South Koreas president, Moon Jae-in, on Friday ordered his government to abolish state-issued history textbooks for middle and high school students, his first move to erase the unpopular legacies of his impeached and ousted predecessor, Park Geun-hye.

Mr. Moons order was largely symbolic. The three history textbooks prepared by Ms. Parks government have been so unpopular that only one of the countrys roughly 5,500 middle and high schools has adopted one of them. But even that school was temporarily barred from using the book after parents filed a lawsuit.

In 2015, Ms. Park, the daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee, announced that all middle and high schools would be required to abandon the privately published textbooks they used and adopt the new government-issued books beginning this year. She said the left-leaning private textbooks tainted the minds of young children.

In what was billed as one of her signature policies, her government worked with a secretly selected panel of scholars to write new textbooks that it said would instill students with a sense of patriotism.
Around the world, specimens of plants mounted on what are known as herbarium sheets are routinely lent among researchers and shipped with the care and protection of a jeweler sending an emerald necklace.

So when a package of more than 100 specimens  some of them irreplaceable and rich in scientific value  survived a 10,200-mile trip only to be mistakenly incinerated because of communication and paperwork mistakes, the plant research community was aghast.

The French museum that sent the specimens quickly suspended further loans to Australia, where the material was destroyed after the authorities there said it did not meet biodiversity security rules.

The episode made headlines on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation this week and quickly reverberated among researchers.
The next day Ms. Kantor, Ms. Einhorn, and their editor, Rebecca Corbett, reunited with some of the refugees and sponsors featured the series. Ms. Kantor and Ms. Einhorn offered this description of the experience:

We came to Toronto one last time  not to report on the Canadian sponsors and Syrian refugees whose stories we told but to present our work in person.

Many of you have asked us whether we will continue to chronicle these sponsors and families. Perhaps well return to them in the future. But on this trip, we were able to spend some quiet time catching up with them.

More than a year in, the milestones continue.

Mouhamad al-Hajj, who worried in our final story about the end of the sponsorship year, seemed more at ease: His employer has offered him more hours than he can accept, and he caps his work days at four per week so that he can continue to study English full-time. His youngest child, Julia, whose birth we chronicled in our first story, is now toddling around their apartment.

Remember Bayan Mohammad, the subject of our third story, bursting with desire to be Canadian? She has a new best friend, a girl of Korean descent; is still blowing past other students on the school track; and has convinced her parents to let her take swimming lessons. Her younger sister, Batoul, showed off new Rollerblades and chatted nonstop in English. Their father, Abdullah, is beginning to try out different jobs  and Eman Mohammad, her mother, is applying for a job helping other newcomers.

In fact, Mrs. Mohammad may have been the star of our event on Tuesday evening in Toronto. She only landed in Canada 15 months ago. But when we asked her a question from the stage, she brushed off an interpreter and addressed the crowd of hundreds in her newly learned English.
BRUSSELS  When Regina L. Hayes, a retiree in Roebuck, S.C., a small town outside Spartanburg, transferred $75,000 from her savings to an investment fund, she thought she was helping Christian miners in Africa fend off competition from conglomerates. She was promised a return of 10 percent a year.

But before long, she and fellow investors learned that they had become victims of a Ponzi-like scheme  one, it turns out, that leads back to a former high-ranking European Union official.

The former official, John Dalli, 68, is a longtime power broker in Malta, the tiniest of the 28 countries of the European Union. In 2012, he was forced out as the European Unions health commissioner in a case involving alleged kickbacks.

It was a big scandal at the time. But European investigators now believe that Mr. Dalli was linked to a separate fraud scheme  one that reached from Malta to the Bahamas to South Carolina, and that bilked investors including Ms. Hayes of at least $1.5 million.
What Is Ransomware?

 In a typical attack, hackers send their victims an email that includes a link to what appears to be for an innocuous web address or email attachment. In this case, attackers appear to have sent their victims encrypted .zip file attachments intended to make it more difficult to detect their nefarious purpose.

 Victims who click on that attachment soon find their computers infected. The program encrypts files, folders, and drives on the computer  and potentially the entire networks to which they are connected. Users and organizations are generally not aware they have been infected until they can no longer access their data or until they begin to see computer messages advising them of the attack and demands for a ransom payment in exchange for a decryption key, according to the F.B.I.

 The messages that victims receive include directions for paying the attackers a ransom. Payment is typically demanded, as it was in the most recent string of attacks, in bitcoin.

 A hospital in Los Angeles was similarly attacked in February of last year, paying a bitcoin ransom equivalent to about $17,000 to hackers who used malware to hold its computer system hostage.

How Was the Attack Curbed?

 The attackers, who have yet to be identified, had included a kill switch in their attack, a way of disabling the malware in case they wanted to shut down their activities. To do so, the assailants included code in the ransomware that would stop it from spreading if the virus sent an online request to a specific website, such as one created by the attackers.

 When the 22-year-old British researcher whose Twitter handle is @MalwareTechBlog saw during the attack that the kill switchs domain name had not been registered, he bought it himself. By making the site go live, the researcher inadvertently shut down the attack before it could fully spread to the United States, experts said. (He confirmed his involvement and wrote a blog post about it but insisted on anonymity because he did not want the public scrutiny.)

 The kill switch is why the U.S. hasnt been touched so far, said Matthieu Suiche, founder of Comae Technologies, a cybersecurity company in the United Arab Emirates. But its only temporary. All the attackers would have to do is create a variant of the hack with a different domain name.
She wrote about her laptop  the Dell that she got free from the school as a full-ride scholarship student, and the Mac she didnt realize she wanted until she discovered that most of the full-paying students had one.

That Dell was a tell, giving her away as an outsider. But she hadnt arrived at Andover with nothing, as her parents had gone to college and provided plenty of cultural capital. So when she finally did get a Mac during her senior year, it didnt quite sit right, either.

My hyperawareness of how my Dell hid my privilege and how my Mac hid my financial need pushed me to be aware of what complicated stories were hiding behind my classmates seemingly simple facades, she wrote.

That almost aching self-awareness spoke to Jessica Marinaccio, dean of undergraduate admissions at Columbia. It really showed a window into the way I would think she would approach challenges and questions academically  with great consideration, depth and fairness, she said.

Admissions officers aim to fill beds, but theyre also trying to craft a well-rounded class filled with individuals who will meet the facultys high standards. So a good essay will prove that the writer belongs around the seminar table, mixing it up on social class or whatever the big issue of the day is.

There are people who might be 40 years old and wouldnt be able to articulate this view, Ms. Marinaccio said of the Mac vs. Dell essay. It only underscores the tremendous promise of who she could become.

Another student, Jonathan Ababiy, rose above the crowd in describing how far he has come already. The son of Moldovan refugees, he eloquently describes the intellectual artifacts in the professors house that his mother cleans. He tagged along to help quite often over the years, and the newspapers, magazines, books and photos in the house were a celebrity-endorsed path to prosperity that opened a window to new worlds.
Woman burns self; four homes destroyed

A 19-year-old women apparently committed suicide by burning herself inside her bedroom and in course burnt down four houses at Jhagarupuruwa in Gulariya-10, Bardiya, on Thursday. Police identified the woman as Punam Mallaha.
Individual stocks can be hazardous to your financial health.

You may not want to hear that right now, with the stock market regularly hitting new highs.

The Standard & Poors 500-stock index set another record on Wednesday after reaching a new high on Monday. It set records on two days the previous week, too. Counting dividends, it has returned more than 6 percent this year and more than 15 percent in the last 12 months.

Whats more, big bets on hot stocks are generating enormous gains. So far in 2017, for example, two companies in the S.&.P. 500  the biotechnology company Vertex Pharmaceuticals and the video game developer Activision Blizzard  have each returned more than 50 percent to their fortunate shareholders. No question about it, if you pick a sizzling stock at just the right time, you can become rich. Some stock pickers have done well over long periods, too.

But before you jump headlong into stock picking, you may want to consider the odds. Its not just that bull markets like this one eventually come to an end. Its that over the long run, while the total stock market has prospered, most individual stocks have not.
When we started doing castles four years ago, we started with 20 or 30, said Michael Braunholtz, sales director of Prestige Property Group, a realty firm in London. We could not believe the number of people who hit our page. It beat chateaus, Monaco, St.-Tropez, Venice by a factor of two. The number of people looking for castles was colossal.

He said his firm sometimes gets as many as 200 requests a week.

While castles like Mr. Declementss in the Pacific Northwest can be had for the price of a one-bedroom condo in Manhattan, Mr. Lavenders lifes work, known as Highlands Castle, is listed for sale at the royal price of $12.8 million.

Mr. Declements said he sold his last castle, on Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho, for about $1 million, which he said was above the value of other homes in the resort area. He is building two new ones now, he said.

This not the first castle boom in the United States. In the early 20th century, men like William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper publisher, and Raymond Pitcairn, heir to a glass company fortune, built castles to house their collections of medieval art and tapestries.

A lot of monuments in Europe were in ruins and easily exported, because there were no export duties, said Martha Easton, assistant professor of art history and museum professions at Seton Hall University in South Orange, N.J. They wanted to put them in medieval castles, not any old house.
After asking others to leave the room, Mr. Trump asks Mr. Comey to drop the F.B.I. investigation into Mr. Flynn, according to two people who read a memo that Mr. Comey wrote after the meeting. Mr. Flynn is being investigated for his communications with the Russian ambassador, as well as for his business dealings with people associated with the Russian and Turkish governments.
1. Why was Comey fired?

May 9 I cannot defend the directors handling of the Clinton email investigation. Rod J. Rosenstein May 11 Comeys a showboat, hes a grandstander, the F.B.I. has been in turmoil. President Trump

White House officials said the decision was based on a recommendation by Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who wrote a memo raising concerns about Mr. Comeys handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. But days later, President Trump went further, criticizing Mr. Comey as a showboat  apparently referencing a Senate testimony the week before that reportedly left the president fuming.

2. Who wanted the memo?

May 9 No one from the White House. That was a D.O.J. decision. Sean Spicer May 10 Trump asked for their recommendation in writing. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

On May 9, the day of the firing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said that the Department of Justice drafted the memo without any influence from the White House. By the next day, the deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that Mr. Trump had requested the memo based on what the officials told him in the meeting.

3. When was the decision made?

May 9 Rosenstein made a determination and Trump followed it. Sean Spicer May 11 Trump had already made that decision before Rosenstein. Sarah Huckabee Sanders

A White House official said President Trump had been dissatisfied with Mr. Comey for months. But the precise moment when he decided to fire him has shifted. Mr. Spicer first said the president responded to Mr. Rosensteins memo, which came after a meeting on May 8. Ms. Sanders said the president decided before that meeting took place.

4. Was the Russia investigation a factor?

May 9 This has nothing to do with Russia. Kellyanne Conway May 11 When I decided to just do it, I said to myself that Trump and Russia is a made-up story. President Trump

Mixed up with the controversy over Mr. Comeys ouster is a continuing F.B.I. investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. While President Trumps surrogates, including the White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, indicated the firing was unrelated, he said days later that the investigation was on his mind when he decided to fire Mr. Comey.

The next week, the Times reported that according to an American official, Mr. Trump told Russian officials visiting the White House that Mr. Comey was a real nut job and that he faced great pressure because of Russia, but that it had been relieved.

5. Had Comey lost support from the F.B.I. rank and file?

May 10 The rank and file of the F.B.I. had lost confidence. Sarah Huckabee Sanders May 11 Comey has broad support and still does to this day. Andrew G. McCabe

An early justification for firing Mr. Comey was the loss of confidence he faced among rank-and-file members of the F.B.I., a claim Ms. Sanders repeated on May 11. But during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee, held later that same day, the agencys acting director, Andrew G. McCabe, said that Mr. Comey was held in high regard.

On May 12, Mr. Trump and Mr. Spicer each gave explanations for recent contradictions. The president said on Twitter, As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!


Whom did this doll belong to?

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It doesn't matter where on the political spectrum any of us are, one thing we can all agree on is that things aren't quite right, and haven't been for some time. While I have no all-encompassing solution to our ills (and I'm skeptical of any who claims they do), my military and post-military experiences have given me a unique perspective that I'd like to share with you.

I've served in two branches of service (active duty), USMC and Army, and deployed with both. My first deployment was to Fallujah for the second assault on the city with 31st MEU (SOC). The bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. My second was with the Army to Kirkuk with 212th MP Co., which was also a hotbed of activity during our time there (08-10). This is not me "tooting my horn", this is me validating my perspective to you. I am not proud.

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Keith Olbermann reaches out to the intelligence agencies and journalists of the world to help the United States take down Donald Trump, who characterizes as a dictator in training.

"I appeal to the intelligence agencies and the governments of what is left of the free world ... We the citizens of the U.S. are the victims of a coup," Olbermann says in the GQ video above.

"We need your leaks, your information, your intelligence, your recordings, your videos, your conscience," Olbermann says. "The civilian government and the military of the United States are no longer in the hands of the people, nor in the control of any responsible individuals on whom you can rely."

Olbermann called on journalists and intelligence agencies in including Britain, France, Germany, Australia and even Russia to release intelligence they hold on Trump.

Olbermann finishes his monologue saying, "We need your help. Whatever there is on Trump, reveal it, What you have we need, and we need it now ... If we go under, you are next."


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I attended a meeting in Moscow on Friday with Vladimir Kozin, longtime member of Russia's foreign service, advisor to the government, author, and advocate for arms reduction. He handed out the list of 16 unresolved problems above. While he noted that the United States funds NGOs in Russia, as well as Ukraine, to influence elections, and described that as a reality in contrast to U.S. stories of Russia trying to influence a U.S. election, which he called a fairy tale, the topic did not make the top-16 list.

He added to the top of the list as something that could be obtainable, and something he considers very important, the need for an agreement between the U.S. and Russia on no first use of nuclear weapons, an agreement that he thinks other nations would subsequently join.



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Then he stressed what he's listed as the first item above: removing what the U.S. calls missile "defense" but what Russia views as offensive weaponry from Romania, and ceasing the construction of the same in Poland. These weapons combined with no commitment to no first use, Kozin said opens up the possibility of an accident or a misinterpretation of a flock of geese leading to the destruction of all human civilization.

Kozin said that NATO is encircling Russia, creating wars outside of the United Nations, and planning for first use. Pentagon documents, Kozin accurately stated, list Russia as a top enemy, an "aggressor" and an "annexer." The U.S. would like, he said, to break Russia apart into small republics. "It will not happen," Kozin assured us.

Sanctions, Kozin said, are actually benefitting Russia by moving it from importation to domestic production of goods. The problem, he said, is not sanctions but the total lack of action on arms reduction. I asked him if Russia would propose a treaty to ban weaponized drones, and he said that he favored one and that it should not cover only fully automated drones, but he stopped short of saying that Russia should propose it.

Kozin supported the proliferation of nuclear power, without explaining away the problems of accidents like Fukushima, the creation of targets for terrorism, and the moving of any nation that acquires nuclear power closer to nuclear weaponry. In fact, he later warned that Saudi Arabia is acting with just that intention. (But why worry, the Saudis seem very reasonable!) He also noted that Poland has asked for U.S. nukes, while Donald Trump has talked of spreading nuclear weapons to Japan and South Korea.

Kozin would like to see a world free of nuclear weapons by 2045, a century since the defeat of the Nazis. He believes that only the U.S. and Russia can lead the way (though I believe the non-nuclear nations are right now doing so). Kozin would like to see a U.S.-Russia summit on nothing but arms control. He recalls that the U.S. and Soviet Union signed six arms control agreements.

Kozin defends weapons sales as long as they are legal, without explaining how they are not destructive.

He also defends holding out optimism that Trump might meet some of his pre-election promises regarding better relations with Russia, including a commitment to no first use, even while noting that Trump has gone back on most such promises since the election. Kozin noted that what he called the Democratic Party's promotion of fairytales has been very damaging.

Kozin spent some time on the usual fact-based response to the as-yet-unproven U.S. accusations of election interference, as well as providing the usual reality-focused response to accusations of invading Crimea. He called Crimea Russian land since 1783 and Khruschev's giving it away as illegal. He asked the leader of a delegation of Americans that visited Crimea if she had found a single person who wanted to rejoin Ukraine. "No," was the response.

While Russia had the right to keep 25,00 troops in Crimea, he said, in March 2014 it had 16,000 there, even as Ukraine had 18,000. But there was no violence, no shooting, just an election in which (perhaps disturbingly to Americans, I guess) the winner of the popular vote was actually declared the winner.


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The Trump/Russian story is very important. But my fear is that Progressives massive concentration on Russia, a delightful topic for the Liberal Intelligensia is leaving our working class and poor brothers and sisters no better off for yet another election cycle. It is time to win them over, and Russia isn't it. This is what we should be doing.

I am tired of the hyperventilation by the media and specifically Progressives over the likely collusion between Trump and Russia at the expense of all else. Did you know that HHS Secretary Tom Price attempted to bring the Trump authoritarianism to the entire staff till two Republicans called him out? Did you know that the bridge that collapsed in Atlanta 45 days ago was rebuilt and opening next Monday, while for the past five years people in Flint Michigan have died and are still being poisoned by their tap water? Did you know that Trump intends to sabotage Obamacare in an attempt to force a tax cut bill with the facade of a health care bill?

Folks what we have in this country is news malpractice. Our brothers and sisters are not dumb. They are ill and misinformed. And that is why we must be here. That is why the alternative community supported radio must be here to be the voice of the people and the voice to inform the people.

We better remember that while Republicans have nothing to offer the poor and the working class, they know how to sell a bad product much better than we know how to sell a darn good product.

Watch the entire Politics Done Right show or get the podcast here. The callers to the show were extraordinary and engaged. Not all agreed but we had great exchanges.

Please LIKE the Politics Done Right Facebook page to get notifications when the show goes live on Facebook Live.
Congress Switchboard: 202-224-3121

"In Bottom-Up, Rob Kall offers important insights on why our society is in such disarray and what we must do to change it. He demonstrates how "top down" thinking is what has produced our current mess, and how bottom up thinking is much more efficient for solving problems and producing change. Rob shows how lasting change must come from the people themselves and not from the leaders. This was as true in the days of the Magna Carta as it was for the Bill of Rights as it was for the Union movement that first gave workers' rights and protection in this country, as it is today. Indigenous elders have told me, "if you want to change the world, start talking and keep talking." Rob is doing this with this book and with his OpEdNews, and he is making a difference. I recommend this book to all who wish to see lasting, human-friendly, compassionate change that will sustain humanity is this crazy world of today."



Lewis Mehl-Madrona, MD, author of the Coyote trilogy that discusses healing practices from Lakota, Cherokee, and Cree traditions and how they intersect with conventional medicine


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I met my guide Natalia outside of the apartment at 10:00 am to begin our all-day tour of Moscow. We went around the corner to the bus stop across the street from the American Embassy. The bus took us close to our first destination of the day: the Gulag Museum.

The Gulag Museum is a large red rectangular building with numerous windows covered with closed wooden shutters. This is the first unsettling clue of what awaits inside.

The Museum, which was moved to this area from its former location closer to central Moscow a couple of years ago, is now open to individual visitors for self-guided tours, whereas before only group tours were accommodated. Natalia explained to me that this new iteration of the Museum was more elaborate, having been designed by professionals for a more realist atmosphere and the addition of more artifacts from the actual prison camps.

The atmosphere, including dim lighting and dirge-like music in some areas, was certainly evocative and creepy. In the first room was a large four-sided frame with about 8 to 10 actual doors from Gulag cells affixed to three of the four sides. Each door included a card, in both Russian and English, stating which camp the door was from. The worn and pock-marked doors were made of wood, metal, or a combination of both. Most had a small square window that opened out in the middle, presumably for the passing of food. All had sliding bars and heavy locks. The fourth side of the frame was open and I could see the interior of the doors - the side the prisoners saw for hours, months or years - that is, when they weren't toiling in the extreme cold.

Standing in that dark entryway and gazing into the enclosed space with those doors, I was overcome with a sudden wave of nausea and had to sit down for a minute before continuing on with the exhibit. I had requested to visit this museum for educational reasons but wondered how much of this I'd be able to get through before wanting to bolt. Ultimately, I was able to push myself on for about an hour.

Various artifacts from the Gulag prisons could be seen hanging on the walls of this same room, such as a prisoner's shirt, a small lantern from a cell, metal beds and benches, and a pair of handcuffs.

On one wall was a schematic illustration of one of the gulag prison camps before it was constructed.

In the next room were several glass cases. One displayed fragments of letters written by the prisoners on cloth, typically parts of clothing, as they were provided no paper. Another displayed pieces of wood with messages written on them by the prisoners, demonstrating their need to communicate with anyone who might see it. One case had items that had been made by some female prisoners, such as a utility box and shoes, constructed from whatever materials they could get their hands on.

In another room was a long table with photos and biographies of prisoners who survived the camps and wrote about it. A copy of some of the books written appeared in front of the author's picture. Of course, the most recognizable was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The second to last room I was in had 3 video screen displays on one wall. The middle screen had a continually scrolling list in white against a black background of the names of those who'd been executed directly during the Great Purge of 1936-38. This would have been 700,000 to 750,000 people out of the 1.5 million that were arrested during that period.

The screen on the left had photos and a brief description of certain prisoners along with the dates of their arrest and execution. These people were engineers, teachers, military officers and other average people - all of whom had been declared "enemies of the people." I stopped to study the faces of a few of these individuals - one man in particular stood out to me because of his sad eyes. I wondered if the photos were taken at the time of arrest (did he know his fate?) or if they were just everyday photos that may have been available.

The screen on the right had portions of actual lists of those to be arrested and executed projected on to it.

The last room I was in had a large television with video interviews playing of several elderly people who'd survived the prisons, discussing their ordeals, particularly their feelings about what life was like after they were released, including the process of becoming "rehabilitated." After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin and gradually released all of the prisoners, shutting down the Gulags and implementing a program of re-integration. Khrushchev later admitted that he'd had much blood on his hands from the Stalin era, but that he and many others knew that if they resisted they would have also been executed without a second thought.

I remembered one of the explanatory panels in the exhibit stated that Stalin's goal was to "destroy the possibility of political opposition, to nip non-conformity in the bud."

Natalia and I sat on the bench in front of the television talking about the video when a young man from Kazakhstan briefly joined in our discussion. Upon realizing that I was American he politely asked me some things about the United States, including Guantanamo prison. I answered his questions as best I could. He also mentioned that there were people in Kazakhstan - a part of the Soviet Union at the time - who lived in the old buildings there that had constituted some of the Gulag prisons. When Natalia and I expressed surprise at this, he simply replied that the buildings were sturdy so people put them to use.

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This article is not meant to diagnose or provide medical advicethat responsibility lies with physicians. The author is not a licensed medical professional.

Hold on, just texting my therapist

For over 60 years, May has been designated as National Mental Health Awareness Month, an issue of widespread importance given that one in five, or nearly 40 million Americans suffer from a mental illness, and more than half of them56 percentdont receive any kind of treatment, according to Mental Health America. Researchers and experts cite intersecting factors of affordability, accessibility and not least of all stigma, which still prevent or deter tens of millions of Americans suffering from mental health illnesses from getting treatment.

But now, new technology is pointing to new ways of overcoming some of these deterrents and providing more people in the United States and around the globe with access to mental health care. A number of online services and apps provide professional therapy, listening support, emotional support, counseling and self-help courses, which the companies and users alike say make mental health care or care for their mental well-being more accessible, financially and practically. Apps and online anonymous and private settings subvert stigma. And for many people who are running from one job to the next, from work to home, taking an hour or more a week to go to a therapists office isnt nearly as feasible as texting or calling someone when they need support. Not to mention that many of the online therapy and emotional support/listening services and apps provide a weekly or monthly rate that is a fraction of the cost of one hour of face-to-face traditional therapy.

Here is a look at a few of the apps and online sites at the forefront of digital-based emotional support and therapy.

Launched in 2012, Talkspace has gained traction by offering text therapy, among other options, and allowing the consumer to be anonymous, even to their own therapist.

The mission of Talkspace, as described by co-founder Roni Frank, is to make therapy affordable and accessible to all. Frank founded the company with her husband Oren after discovering a passion for psychology when marriage counseling helped her marriage survive and thrive after a rough period. Frank quit her job and studied to become a therapist, but while she was studying she realized that the mental health system in America is completely broken.

Cost, stigma and access are the three factors that Frank cited as the barriers to mental health care, which she and her company are looking to solve using a digital platform that they invented to address each of the barriers.

Now serving 500,000 clients with thousands more customers signing up every month, Talkspace is a digital platform that connects customers to licensed therapists and allows customers to have unlimited messaging, along with some video and audio messaging, for $32 a week.

Frank said the messaging format is successful for many people because therapy should be made to fit how we live today, and messaging is a form of communication that is second-nature to most people today.

Its normalizing the therapy, Frank said. [Patients realize that] I communicate this way with my friends. Its not like going to a private office, a private practice. It feels less heavy and so reduces stigma.

Frank said that most of Talkspace clients, the majority ranging in age from their late 20s to early 50s, are receiving professional help for the first time in their lives, and have never been in traditional therapy, usually due to cost. Frank said that Talkspace is able to offer a price lower than the standard $120 for a 50-minute session of traditional therapy due to the mobile format, which eliminates the cost of running and maintaining a physical space, which in cities like New York drives the price of therapy up even farther.

In Franks view, its not just money that Talkspace is saving, but also time.

Traditional therapy requires time commitment, travel, you have to find a baby sitter, she said. [With Talkspace], users are communicating anytime and anywhere, so its very flexible and convenient.

Were taking a very traditional profession and delivering it in a modern way.

Similar to Franks personal experience serving as the catalyst for her and her husbands decision to found Talkspace, Twisha Anand, Ph.D., director of operations, notes that the idea for 7 Cups of Tea was born when the founder and CEO, Glen Moriarty, was having a tough day and ended up talking to his wife.p> 

According to Anand, the interaction and support he received in that moment spurred the question of what people do when they dont have someone there to listen to them and support them, which led to the bigger question at the heart of the companys purposewhat if we have a listener for every person?

7 Cups of Tea has grown from 20 listeners when they first started in June 2013 to a current listener staff of 195,000 people, providing their several million plus users with the choice to either pay the monthly fee for traditional, professional therapy or speak for free with a listener who has been selected by the company and gone through a specific training process. The app provides self-help guides, listeners and group listening options for free, in an anonymous, confidential setting, which appeals to many of the users from 189 countries worldwide speaking to counselors in 140 different languages.

We have a huge community of listeners who consider 7 Cups of Tea their home. Its like coping together, Anand said.

Anand notes that the app is particularly helpful for people who have accessibility problems, and dont have the time, physical ability or financial resources to invest in traditional therapist appointments. The anonymous and confidential setting of the app also serves to lessen the stigma associated with therapy present both in the United States, and perhaps to an even greater degree, Anand notes, in various other countries and cultures throughout the world.

Our No. 1 goal is that no one should feel unheard, Anand said, adding that the company is reaching out to partner with schools and different agencies to reach wider audiences.

Happy is distinct from Talkspace, 7 Cups of Tea and Better Help, another online therapy service thats been around since 2013, in that its purpose is not to offer professional help or therapy. Instead, according to CEO and founder Jeremy Fischbach, the goal of Happy is to provide support on demand from everyday people who are extremely good at providing emotional support, adding that emotional support is a basic human need often lacking in many Americans lives. The Happy Givers as theyre called, are individuals who are screened and trained to provide emotional support.

Happy focuses more on individuals who may not have a mental illness or be in need of professional treatment, but are people suffering from every day stressors, Fischbach said, such as work-related issues or natural life transitions such as going to college, retiring or moving.

The roster of Happy Giverscurrently includes 2600 people, which the company plans to grow as they also work on developing their client base since their launch in December of last year.

Fischbach says that Happy is in a sense aiming to create an online community of readily available emotional support to make up a lack of physical community and a proliferation of empty calories of social media that most Americans experience, leaving them with little real emotional support and substantive sources of listening and encouragement.

Happy is obviously based in the modern age, using the format of Uber or Seamless to instantly connect people with what they want or needin this case, a kind, supportive, listening person. But though the technology is modern, Fischbach says that theres also something very ancient about it, likening it to the way that people used to communicate more directly, and have more profound emotional connections within their communities.

Because Happy does not provide therapy, its mission in terms of mental health care is more in preventative care, enabling people to seek and find emotional support before their issues worsen. It also has a promoting quality, a boosting quality, Fischbach said, but is not in any way associated with traditional behavioral health therapy.

Happy is currently working with various prestigious national mental health organizations, such as Mental Health America, and forming relationships with well-known psychiatrists in order to ensure the quality of their services. Fischbach said that they are now available in the United States and are looking to expand to Canada eventually. They also hope to provide services in Spanish as they continue to grow, Fischbach noted.

Emily Neil is a freelance journalist from Baltimore, Maryland currently based in Antigua, Guatemala, where she works for a local nonprofit organization.
Our Mission

The Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator and Global Health Diplomacy leads, manages, and oversees the U.S. Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Through PEPFAR, the U.S. government has invested nearly $100 billion in the global HIV/AIDS response, the largest commitment by any nation to address a single disease in history, saving 21 million lives, preventing millions of HIV infections, and accelerating progress toward controlling the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in more than 50 countries.
Cash Game Festival Heads to Gibraltar May 17-21

May 12, 2017 Jason Glatzer Editor

After successful stops this year at Aspers Casino Westfield Stratford City in London in February, Perla Casino on the border of Italy in Slovenia in March, and Olympic Park Casino in the Estonian capital of Tallinn in April, the Cash Game Festival is about to head to Gibraltar at Sunborn Casino for the first time in its festival history May 17-21.

As is always the case, the festival will feature five days and more than 120 hours of nonstop poker along with many events off the felt for players to enjoy.

Each day during the Cash Game Festival Gibraltar, there will be two televised feature tables hosted by Cash Game Festival commentator Brandon Allen and guest co-hosts. Those with the hospitality package will also be able to enjoy a variety of activities planned including welcome drinks, a sporting activity, a world-class dinner, a VIP party and a city tour.

The difference between the Cash Game Festival and tournament festivals is that players can enjoy all of the activities; there are no time clocks as far as when players need to be at the tables. Of course, if players are at a table that is too good to leave, they can still opt to skip any activities and see the sites and sounds of Gibraltar and nearby Spain when they wish to take a break from the poker action.

Those interested in appearing at the feature table, reserving a spot at any cash game table or purchasing the hospitality package should visit the Cash Game Festival website.

The poker room at Sunborn Casino is one of the biggest in Europe and is expected to attract many recreational and professional players. While most of the tables will likely be no-limit hold'em and pot-limit Omaha, any game requested will be catered to by the festival's organizers and casino's staff.

Past festivals have included super dealer's choice where any game goes, open-face Chinese Poker, Sviten Special (also known as Drawmaha) and variations of super stud high-low which have included wild cards. There have even been games played where players put cards on their heads and can only see their opponents' cards and not their own.

Thanks to the great action both on and off the felts, many that have attended previous Cash Game Festivals feel like family with other players looking forward to seeing them again. It is expected that the family will grow even more in Gibraltar.

Sometimes this leads to some crazy prop bets, including one during the Cash Game Festival Bulgaria where the loser of best-of-three heads-up matches will be spending a month in a village in Poland.

Whether or not there will be other prop bets during Gibraltar is yet to be seen, however, there has been some chatter between some of the Cash Game Festival regulars that something might pop up during the festival.

Sunborn Casino provides a great and luxurious environment for poker players with a big poker room. The casino manager, Georg Tsnoulis, shared his excitement about the upcoming event with PokerNews.

"We at Sunborn Casino are truly excited to be one the destinations of the Cash Game Festival," said Tsnoulis. "With less than three weeks to go, there is a vibrant atmosphere among poker players in Costa Del Sol and they look forward to fill up the tables. Our luxurious ballroom offers a truly unique setting, with unmatchable comfort and feeling!

"Sunborn Casino introduced international poker tournaments last year for the first time ever in the history of Gibraltar. Now it's time for the next step, the CGF. We are sure it will be a resounding success."

In case you missed it, here is a look at some of the great action both on and off the felt during the three Cash Game Festivals this year.

Head to the Cash Game Festival website for more information about the stop in Gibraltar and to register for televised feature tables and side tables.
Five Reasons You Shouldnt Miss the Poker King Cup

May 12, 2017 Jason Glatzer Editor

The Poker King Cup Macau at the Poker King Club at The Venetian Macao May 18-26 is a nine-day poker festival expected to attract poker players from around the globe to compete for huge prize pools.

This event will be the largest poker festival ever held by the Poker King Club.

Not only does it have the support of international players, local players and poker media alike, but it also boasts great tournament structures and event setup. Full details of the event can be found on the Poker King Club website.

Here are five reasons why you shouldnt miss the biggest poker tournament festival in Asia this summer:

1) Huge Guaranteed Prize Pools

The biggest highlight of Poker King Cup Macau is undoubtedly the six-day HK$16,500 Poker King Cup Macau Main Event, which boasts a huge HK$5 million guaranteed prize pool. The Main Event kicks off with three opening days on May 21-23. Players bagging chips will compete for three more days on May 24-26 until the winner lifts the trophy.

Also slapped with a huge guarantee is the HK$8,000 Poker King Cup Warm-Up, an event with a HK $1 million guaranteed prize pool. Action in this tournament begins with two opening days on May 19 and May 20 followed by a single final day on May 21.

2) Wide Variety of Events

Aside from the Main Event and the Warm-Up, the Poker King Cup features many other side events with a broad range of buy-ins to accommodate all types of players. The schedule features 12 side events with a few key events to note, including the two-day HKD 80,000 Poker King Cup High Roller on May 19-20, the HK $3,000 Poker King Cup Queens Event for ladies on May 23 and the HK $20,000 Poker King Cup King Size Stack on May 25-26.

With a full nine days packed with events, poker players will never run out of options.

3) Professional and Experienced Tournament Team

In addition to offering a wide variety of events, the Poker King Club proudly presents a group of seasoned professionals and a well-experienced poker tournament team.

Since its inauguration, the Poker King Club continues to provide premium poker services to poker enthusiasts and strives to improve the quality of its events to satisfy each and every players needs, ensuring that poker players get the best event experience.

4) Organizer Credibility and Charity

The Poker King Club is well-known for hosting the worlds biggest cash games. In addition to successfully running live poker rooms in prime destinations and casinos in Asia, it has also worked with a number of world-renowned tournament brands including the Asian Poker Tour (APT), the World Poker Tour (WPT) and Boyaa Interactive Ltd (BPT).

As of 2017, the Poker King Club has hosted more than 40 poker tournaments in the Asian region.

For the Poker King Cup Macau, the Poker King Club has partnered with the THC Charity Group, which is composed of notable businessmen, poker pros and semi-pros from Mainland China. With their participation and support, the Poker King Club has agreed to donate 50 percent of the entry fees from each member who participates in the event to the THC Charity Group, for the benefit of childrens education in the poor areas of Mainland China.

5) Global Poker Index Accredited Event

The Poker King Cup is listed on the Global Poker Index (GPI) website, which means that points will be added into the profiles of players who participate in Poker King Cup events, thus increasing their rank. The Poker King Cup is also listed in the popular Chinese version of a GPI.
Sergio Alonso Camunas Leads After 888Live Barcelona Opening Event Day 1

May 11, 2017 Christian Zetzsche Contributor

After 14 levels of 30 minutes each, the big field at the 2017 888Live Poker Festival Barcelona 220 Opening Event was whittled down to just 34 players and Sergio Alonso Camunas ran very hot to bag up 455,000 after Day 1a.

Once the cards went in the air, almost 80 players had already taken their seat. In the previous 45+5 Turbo Satellite, another 13 hopefuls earned their entry and further tables were opened quickly.

At the end of level 11, when registration had officially closed, the tournament screens showed 194 entries - which included 35 re-entries - putting the tournament well on track to not only meet but smash the guarantee of 100,000.

Jaime Victor Soler Puig claimed 389,000 and Giovanni Cauteruccio avoided an all-Spanish podium at the top of the counts after Day 1a.

Other big stacks through to Day 2 include Flavio Damian Ibanoff (260,500), Sergio Costa Carrasco (244,500) and Francois Evard (209,000). Harcharan Dogra Dogra, who finished seventh in the EPT13 Barcelona 5,300 Main Event for 230,950 here at Casino Barcelona less than one year ago, bagged up just shy of the average with 163,000.

Notables eliminated on the first of four starting days include Nicola Grieco, Ekaterina Kolmakova, Josep Maria Galindo Lopez, Matteo Leoni, Robert Cazali, Jeroen Aarts and Joachim Lob.

The latter got it in good with pocket tens versus pocket sevens only to see his opponent flop quads. Galindo Lopez lost a flip with pocket sixes versus ace-king during the last hands of the night, and just before that, Kolmakova took two beats to also run out of chips.

Among the late casualties was also Carlos Avila Ortega, who got it in with ace-jack suited against the ace-queen suited of Christophe Suter. The turn and river changed nothing to let the kicker play.

Jon Ignacio Chipongian was the first player to hit six digits after running extremely well early on and the Spaniard was soon joined by Cauteruccio.

Alonso Camunas was below the starting stack mid-way through the day, but then scored two double ups in quick succession before sending several opponents to the rail in the last two levels. Cauteruccio took a beat in level eight after losing a four-way showdown with the best hand preflop, but quickly recovered the losses the next hand after finding pocket jacks in back-to-back hands and busting an opponent with pocket sevens.

After the cards and chips were flying in the last levels of the night, only 34 players bagged up and they will be back on Sunday for Day 2 as of 1 p.m. local time.

Another 11 levels of the festival remain in the Spanish metropolis and 700,000 in guaranteed prize pools are offered with plenty of big names expected for the 2,200 Main Event and 1,100 High Roller next week.

The PokerNews Live Reporting Team will be the one-stop-shop for all you need to know, so tune back in regularly to find out who shines in sunny Barcelona.

Sharelines Sergio Alonso Camunas ran very hot to bag up 455,000.
Billy is an Australian stud. But his accent only gets him as far as a bunch of failed relationships with women. Even after submitting to the "swipe-left" culture of dating apps, he only ended up with silicone-filled bimbos. Maybe it was his smoking, so he gave up cigarettes to gain some more eligibility points. But all that did was leave him with a self-proclaimed "oral fixation." Dude, never say the words "oral fixation" around a therapist, unless you're ready for some very shocking news. Watch below.

I would have never thought that behind his charming heterosexual-seeming ways, this guy would have a secret so powerful that his entire love life would be upended upon visual contact with one fateful image. But it makes sense, right? The $200 jeans, the toothpicks and gum, the high school wrestling team, the defensiveness at seeing those thoughtfully censored dick pics before finally caving into a look of pure desire. Usually in these cases, the writing's on the wall. The problem's not you, Billy, but that you weren't born to love those Tinder babes. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Even straight man Louis CK felt something special every time he watched Magic Mike.

Word associations are never just an innocent activity to pass the time, but a calculated move by therapists to uncover a truth. In Billy's case, the truth of his homosexuality. Sock Monkee, who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University, was always lauded for his skills of astuteness. As the first sock monkey therapist, his techniques have been known to bridge the gap between Freudian traditions and "New Wave Sapien" technique. The result? James is now finally able to live the life he's always been meant to live. (With a hulking Channing Tatum-esque 100% human male. Delicious.)

We're wishing Billy the best of luck with his newfound sexual freedom. Gay bars everywhere, get ready for this Bloomin' Onion.

Join us next week when we nurture more of our Sock Monkee fixation.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 01:12:14

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FSCwire / Press ReleaseThe following press release was disseminated by FSCwire for ATI Airtest Technologies Inc.--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---Delta, British Colombia (FSCWire) - ATI Airtest Technologies Inc. (TSX Venture:AAT). has issued a press release with the following headline:AirTest Announces Suspension of TradingTo view this press release on the FSCwire website, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:If you would prefer, you can also view this press release as a PDF file, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser:For more information on ATI Airtest Technologies Inc., or to see additional press releases issued by this company, please either click on the link below, or copy and paste the link into your browser: http://www.fscwire.com/public-company/ATI Airtest Technologies Inc.Source: ATI Airtest Technologies Inc. (TSX Venture: AAT)Date: May 11, 2017Time: 7:12 PM EDT--- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---The story mentioned above was issued on behalf of ATI Airtest Technologies Inc. and disseminated through FSCwire.About FSCwireFSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.), is a global newswire dissemination, SEDAR, SEDI, and EDGAR / XBRL service provider.FSCwire is a full service global newswire dissemination company and is fully approved by all exchanges in Canada and the U.S. Press releases can be distributed for all sizes of public, private or not for profit companies and any other organization requiring news distribution. In addition to individual companies; public relations, communications and investor relations firms trust FSCwire to distribute press releases for their respective clients.In addition to newswire dissemination FSCwire also offers EDGAR, XBRL, SEDAR, SEDI, and additional services for publicly traded companies. For more information, please go to our website: http://www.fscwire.com Maximum News Dissemination by FSCwire. http://www.fscwire.com Copyright 2017 - FSCwire (a division of Filing Services Canada Inc.)
PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 19:15:01

Citi Belfast Wins Placement Employer of the Year at the Ulster University Excellence Awards

Media Contact:

Citi

Susan Monahan

+44 (0) 20 7508 0786

susan.monahan@citi.com

Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C)

Ulster Universitys Impact Excellence Awards celebrated the transformational impact its students, graduates and research are having on societies and economies across the globe. The Awards, which took place at the Belfast Harbour Commissioners Office yesterday evening, recognised the Universitys collaborations with partners in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors, both locally and globally.

As the winner of the Placement Employer of the Year, Citi was acknowledged by Ulster University for its role in supporting the next generation of highly skilled, industry-ready graduates, as the number one employer for graduates in the region.

Citi Country Officer UK, James Bardrick, said Citi is honoured to accept the award for the Placement Employer of the Year from Ulster University. We continue to be committed to our presence in Northern Ireland and as part of this; were dedicated to enhancing and positively impacting local communities and institutions. We believe this to be an integral part of our business in the region and creating opportunities for young people is really laying down the foundation for both Citis and Northern Irelands future success and development.

Citi was specifically highlighted as being extremely proactive in supporting work-based and placement learning, by the university. Each year Citi provides a significant number of 6 and 12 months placements within their Technology and Operations divisions. Through its continual strive for diversity and inclusion, Citi also offers a specific mentoring programme for female computing students called CitiSpire.

Maria Curran, Employability Manager at Ulster University said Citi has been innovative in the opportunities for students to learn more about the different roles available to them in the financial services sector. The induction and one point of contact for new placement students receives excellent feedback. The buddy system, training and line manager support is often cited as exemplary.

The above employability initiatives support the students' journey to achieve the Ulster EDGE Award, an extra-curricular award students are encouraged to complete in addition to their degree.

#####

Citi

Citi, the leading global bank, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, transaction services, and wealth management.

Additional information may be found at www.citigroup.com | Twitter: @Citi | YouTube: www.youtube.com/citi | Blog: http://blog.citigroup.com | Facebook: www.facebook.com/citi | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/citi

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201705120055
PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 11:59:15

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Seeking professional medical help for curing cold, cough or sore throat is become a rare practice, let alone getting admitted in a hospital. Prevalence of cold, cough & sore throat problems through the ages has made people more independent in terms of treating them. In the years to come, effective home remedies will continue to gain traction and people will be taking care of their cold or sore throat through such easy-to-treat remedies.Future Market Insights latest report delivers such discernments that are expected to leave a considerable imprint on the global market for cold, cough & sore throat remedies. Based on the report, the global cold, cough & sore throat remedies market is presently valued at US$ 32.4 Bn, and is anticipated to incur sluggish growth at 3.2% CAGR to bring in just over US$ 45.4 Bn by the end of 2026. The report distinctly indicates that rising adoption of self-medication practices and effective home remedies is restraining the markets overall growth.In the report, titled Cold, Cough and Sore Throat Remedies Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2016-2026, affordability of OTC drugs, rising economic burden of respiratory diseases, availability of medications in variable dosages, and fast & instant relief delivered through such cold, cough & sore throat remedies are driving the markets growth. Nevertheless, the demand for cold, cough & sore throat remedies is less likely to soar at a healthy rate.Request For Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-1292 Product Recalls & Low Entry of New Players Impacting the Markets GrowthFirstly, the global cold, cough & sore throat remedies market is projected to witness umpteen product recalls. Global leaders in pharmaceuticals industry such as Novartis AG, Pfizer Inc., Bayer AG, GlaxoSmithKline plc., and Reckitt Benckiser Group plc are key players in the global market for cold, cough & sore throat remedies. Despite, there are several newly-launched products that have been recalled after FDAs censure. Besides, even consumer goods behemoths such as Procter & Gamble Co. and Johnson & Johnson Services Inc. are partaking in the markets growth. This has resulted in a lowering entry of emerging drugmakers, which has further distorted the markets growth. Other leading manufacturers of cold, cough & sore throat remedies include AstraZeneca plc, Prestige Brands Inc., and Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.The report highlights how Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will remain the largest market for cold, cough & sore throat remedies. The regions proximity to environmental pollution makes its residents more prone to respiratory diseases. With over 30% stake in global revenues, the APEJ cold, cough & sore throat remedies market will global dominate through 2026. North America and Europe will also remain at the forefront, by collectively accounting for nearly half of the global revenues throughout the forecast period.Send An Enquiry@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/askus/rep-gb-1292 The report further reveals that in 2017 and beyond, the demand for antihistamine drugs, expectorants and decongestants will remain considerably high as these revenues from sales of these drugs will showcase growth at more than 3% CAGR. Tablets or pills and nasal drops will also dominate as dosage types, accounting for over 40% share of market value through 2026. The report also predicts retail pharmacies & drug stores as the largest distribution channels for cold, cough & sore throat remedies. Together, these channels will bring in nearly US$ 30 Bn by the end of 2026.
PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 14:32:01

Europe announced as the location for the sixth Annual Global Summit taking place in 2018

Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Global Summit 2017 Successfully Concludes Following Discussion on Investment in Broadband Infrastructure

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Sian Borrill

sian.borrill@proactive-pr.com

+44 1636 704888.

Establishing regulatory frameworks for enabling investment in broadband infrastructure across Africa was the key discussion as the fifth annual Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA) Global Summit 2017 concluded yesterday in Cape Town, South Africa.

The three-day event brought together representatives from five continents and 21 countries around the world, including policy makers, regulators, academia, and public and private sector representatives with first-hand experience developing and implementing a range of spectrum sharing regimes.

Research from A4AI notes only half of the world (53%) will be connected by 2020, which leaves almost half of the world unconnected, and the United Nations Broadband Commission says being connected is now a basic human right, commented Professor H Sama Nwana, Emeritus Executive Director, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, who moderated the panel with senior experts from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the National Communications Authority (NCA), Ghana and Ultimate Internetworking Solutions (UltiNetS).

Nwana continued: Investment in infrastructure, unlicensed spectrum and dynamic access technologies remain a barrier to connectivity. It is a challenge of both affordability as well as accessibility, placing the problem squarely with communications policy makers and regulators worldwide. The Global Summit provided a great opportunity to bring together regional policy makers and regulators to share data from their area and explore dynamic spectrum access policies that are already in place and working.

This years Global Summit had high quality presentations resulting in deep discussions on all aspects of spectrum policy, including the challenges around spectrum for Wi-Fi, 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), closing the digital divide, and satellites. In addition to this, nine regulators came together to share best case practices from around the world.

For the first time this year the DSA formally recognised and celebrated the achievements of its members through an awards ceremony. Dr David Crawford, Head of the Centre for White Space Communications at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, was the recipient of the Award for a Student-Led Initiative or Research on New Opportunities for Dynamic Spectrum Access.

Following the Summit, Crawford commented: It is clear that the dynamic management of spectrum is increasingly being recognized as a key important factor for future wireless connectivity solutions, facilitating more efficient and effective use of spectrum. This will ultimately lead to better and more far-reaching connectivity for a range of applications, including affordable access to the Internet for people in hard-to-reach geographic locations, as well as new IoT and 5G applications and use cases.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance also announced that for the first time it will host the 2018 Global Summit in Europe.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance is focused on encouraging policy changes to enable dynamic spectrum access technologies to help make spectrum available in low-, mid-, and high-band spectrum to satisfy the requirements of densification and coverage, and do so in cost effective ways to enable successful and sustainable network deployments. During my first Global Summit as President of the DSA, Im proud of what we have achieved and look forward to seeing the outcomes and progress in the year ahead until we come together again in Europe in 2018, commented Kalpak Gude, President, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance.

For further information about the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance and the Global Summit 2017, please visit www.dynamicspectrumalliance.org/ or follow @dynamicspectrum and #DSA17GS on Twitter. Alternatively join the Alliance on Facebook or LinkedIn.

ENDS

About the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance is a global organization advocating for laws and regulations that will lead to more efficient and effective spectrum utilization. The DSAs membership spans multinationals, small- and medium-sized enterprises, and academic, research, and other organizations from around the world, all working to create innovative solutions that will increase the amount of available spectrum to the benefit of consumers and businesses alike. Visit http://www.dynamicspectrumalliance.org/.

About the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Global Summit

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance returns to Africa for its Fifth Annual Global Summit. The Global Summit brings together policy makers, regulators, academia, and public and private sector representatives with first-hand experience developing and implementing a range of spectrum sharing regimes, from exclusive use licensing to unlicensed spectrum allocations to various kinds of spectrum sharing regimes across a variety of complementary spectrum bands, including those that will enable 5G to come to life. In a world with tens of billions of wirelessly connected devices, spectrum sharing is a must for any policy maker looking for innovative ways to close the digital divide and enable the Internet of Things.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliances annual Summit is the premier event for policy makers and regulators to share best practices, learn about the latest spectrum sharing policies, and participate in discussions on how to maximize social and economic impact in urban cities and remote regions across the Globe.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/201705120050

DSA Global Summit Successfully Concludes Following Discussion on #Investment in #Broadband Infrastructure #DSA17GS
PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 23:44:01

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

12 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 despatch of Definitive Proxy Statement and details of Scheme Meeting

ATHLONE, Ireland, May 12, 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 its wholly owned subsidiary Lough Ree Technologies Limited ("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 it has today mailed to Innocoll Shareholders a proxy statement, which also constitutes a scheme circular, relating to the Acquisition (the "Definitive Proxy Statement"). The Definitive Proxy Statement sets out, amongst other things, the full terms and conditions of the Acquisition, information required under Section 452 of the Companies Act 2014, an expected timetable of principal events and details of the action to be taken by Innocoll Shareholders.

Furthermore, notices convening the scheme meeting (the "Scheme Meeting") and the related extraordinary general meeting are contained in the Definitive Proxy Statement. 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 Shareholders should carefully read the Definitive Proxy Statement in its entirety before making a decision with respect to the Acquisition. Innocoll Shareholders are strongly urged to complete, sign and return the proxy cards enclosed with the Definitive Proxy Statement as soon as possible. Innocoll Shareholders whose shares are held in "street name" should instruct their brokerage firm, bank, dealer or other similar organisation how to vote using the voting instruction form provided by such brokerage firm, bank, dealer or other similar organisation.

ENQUIRIES

Innocoll Holdings plc

Anthony Zook, Chief Executive Officer

TZook@innocoll.com

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements included in this document are forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can typically be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, such as "expects", "believes", "may", "will", "could", "should", "intends", "plans", "predicts", "envisages", "estimates", "forecast", "outlook", "guidance", "possible", "projects", "potential" or "anticipates" or other similar words and expressions and include, without limitation, any projections relating to results of operations and financial conditions of either Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or the Company and their respective subsidiary undertakings from time to time, as well as plans and objectives for future operations, expected future revenues, financing plans, expected expenditures, expected synergies and divestments relating to Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or the Company and discussions of Gurnet Point's, Gurnet Bidco's or the Company's business plans. All forward-looking statements in this document made by Gurnet Point and / or Gurnet Bidco are based upon information known to Gurnet Point and / or Gurnet Bidco on the date of this document and all forward-looking statements in this document made by the Company are based upon information known to the Company on the date of this document. Except as expressly required by law, Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco and the Company disclaim any intent or obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. None of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or the Company undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, save as may be required by law. Although none of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or the Company undertake any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, you are advised to consult any additional disclosures that any of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or the Company may make directly to you or through reports that any of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or the Company, in the future, may file with the SEC. Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this document is as of May 12, 2017.

Important Additional Information about the Acquisition and Where to Find It

The Company, Gurnet Point and Gurnet Bidco are parties to a Transaction Agreement, dated April 4, 2017 (the "Transaction Agreement"). In connection with the Acquisition, on May 12, 2017, the Company filed the Definitive Proxy Statement with the SEC and began mailing the Definitive Proxy Statement to Innocoll Shareholders. The Company may also file other documents with the SEC regarding the Acquisition. SECURITYHOLDERS ARE URGED TO READ THE DEFINITIVE PROXY STATEMENT (INCLUDING THE SCHEME DOCUMENT) AND OTHER RELEVANT DOCUMENTS FILED OR TO BE FILED WITH THE SEC AS WELL, AS ANY AMENDMENTS OR SUPPLEMENTS, THERETO CAREFULLY WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE COMPANY, THE ACQUISITION AND RELATED MATTERS. Security holders may obtain free copies of the Definitive Proxy Statement (including the Scheme Document) and other documents filed by the Company with the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, investors and shareholders may obtain free copies of the Definitive Proxy Statement (including the Scheme Document) as well as other documents filed by the Company at www.innocoll.com.

Participants in the Solicitation

The Company, Gurnet Point and Gurnet Bidco and certain of their respective directors and executive officers and employees may be considered participants in the solicitation of proxies from the shareholders of the Company in respect of the transactions contemplated by the Scheme Document/Definitive Proxy Statement. Information regarding the persons who may, under the rules of the SEC, be deemed participants in the solicitation of the shareholders of the Company in connection with the proposed transactions, including a description of their direct or indirect interests, by security holdings or otherwise, are set forth in the Definitive Proxy Statement. Information regarding the Company's directors and executive officers is contained in Amendment No. 1 to the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016 (the "Form 10-K/A"), which is filed with the SEC. Information concerning the interests of the Company's participants in the solicitation, which may, in some cases, be different than those of the Company's shareholders generally is contained in the Company's Form 10-K/A as well as the Definitive Proxy Statement, which have been filed with the SEC.

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.

No Offer or Solicitation

This announcement is not intended to, and does not, constitute or form part of any offer to purchase, sell, subscribe for, exchange or otherwise dispose of, or the solicitation of an offer to purchase, sell, subscribe for, exchange or dispose of, or an invitation to purchase, sell, subscribe for, exchange or otherwise dispose of, 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, invitation 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.

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: Innocoll Holdings plc via Globenewswire


PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 13:46:02

TORONTO, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mandalay Resources Corporation ("Mandalay" or the "Company") (TSX:MND) announced today that Gold Exchange Limited ("GEL"), an unaffiliated special purpose vehicle incorporated in Jersey, has issued the announcement attached as Schedule "A" to this press release (the "Announcement") in respect of GEL's repurchase offer (the "Repurchase") and consent solicitation (the "Consent Solicitation") in respect of its U.S.$60,000,000 principal amount 5.875% secured exchangeable bonds due 2019 (the "Bonds") that was launched on April 19, 2017.

As indicated in the Announcement, Mandalay understands that:

the meeting of Bondholders in respect of the proposed amendments to the Bonds that were the subject of the Consent Solicitation has been adjourned indefinitely;



the Repurchase has been withdrawn; and



GEL has entered into discussions with Bondholders with respect to implementing alternative arrangements in respect of the Bonds which are substantially similar to those that were originally proposed pursuant to the Repurchase and Consent Solicitation (the "Alternative Arrangements").

Mandalay has been advised that to date GEL has received unanimous support from Bondholders in respect of the Alternative Arrangements. Mandalay will provide a further update on the Alternative Arrangements once GEL has determined whether or not they will be implemented.

For Further Information:

Mark Sander

President and Chief Executive Officer

Greg DiTomaso

Director of Investor Relations

Contact:

647.260.1566

About Mandalay Resources Corporation:

Mandalay Resources is a Canadian-based natural resource company with producing assets in Australia, Sweden and producing and exploration projects in Chile. The Company is focused on executing a roll-up strategy, creating critical mass by aggregating advanced or in-production gold, copper, silver and antimony projects in Australia, the Americas and Europe to generate near-term cash flow and shareholder value.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the Company's production of gold, silver and antimony for the 2017 fiscal year. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, changes in commodity prices and general market and economic conditions. The factors identified above are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect Mandalay. A description of additional risks that could result in actual results and developments differing from those contemplated by forward-looking statements in this news release can be found under the heading "Risk Factors" in Mandalay's annual information form dated March 31, 2017, a copy of which is available under Mandalay's profile at www.sedar.com. In addition, there can be no assurance that any inferred resources that are discovered as a result of additional drilling will ever be upgraded to proven or probable reserves. Although Mandalay has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Schedule "A"

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, ITS TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS, ANY STATE OF THE UNITED STATES OR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (THE "UNITED STATES")

12 May 2017

GOLD EXCHANGEABLE LIMITED ANNOUNCES ADJOURNMENT OF MEETING AND WITHDRAWAL OF REPURCHASE OFFER

Notice is hereby given that the Meeting of the Bondholders convened by Gold Exchangeable Limited (the "Issuer") in relation to its U.S.$60,000,000 5.875 per cent. Secured Exchangeable Bonds due 2019 (the "Bonds") (ISIN: XS1061459381) by the notice dated 19 April 2017 as notified through the clearing systems to holders of the Bonds ("Bondholders") was adjourned indefinitely at the request of the Issuer.

Notice is also hereby given that the repurchase offer made by the Issuer in relation to the Bonds, which was made on the terms, and subject to the conditions, contained in the repurchase and consent solicitation memorandum dated 19 April 2017 (as amended on 27 April 2017) (the "Repurchase and Consent Solicitation Memorandum"), has been withdrawn by the Issuer. Capitalised terms used in this announcement have the same meaning ascribed to them in the Repurchase and Consent Solicitation Memorandum.

The Issuer has entered into discussions with Bondholders on alternative arrangements in respect of the Bonds which are substantially similar to those contained in the Proposal. The Issuer intends to implement these arrangements as soon as possible, and to date has received unanimous indicative support in respect of these arrangements from the Bondholders (subject to completion of the necessary documentation).

Given the intention to amend the Conditions in a manner similar to those contained in the Proposal, the Issuer will not comply with the requirements of Condition 3.2 of the Bonds to register Gold Shares (as defined in the Conditions) in the Custody Accounts (as defined in the Conditions) on 14 May 2017.

To the extent a Bondholder had submitted an Electronic Instruction prior to the Expiration Deadline, it may request the relevant clearing system to unblock the Bonds from its account.

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: Mandalay Resources Corporation via Globenewswire


Real-Time E-Healthcare System Market Value

PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 14:07:03

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# 547 Words

Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United States3479183531Abhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Real-time e-healthcare system is one of the best ways to keep your health records and track it anytime, without any geographical constraint. Patients can always stay in touch with their doctors and communicate with them about any health issue. They can self-check also for an immediate result without any third partys dependence. With advanced technology and rapid innovation, these days products are being made in such a way that it should be more consumer friendly and easy to use. Real-time e-healthcare system fulfills all the above criteria and hence, the market is growing at a positive rate.Recently, Kaiser Permanente implemented an EMR protocol in Community Health Centres in Oregon, US, to improve clinical decision support for patients with diabetes, which can remind them to prescribe hypertension medications to reduce heart attack and other strokes. iPatientCare EHR, Praxis, EMR, Insta HMS, e-MDs Chart, WRS Health, AccuMed, WEBeDoctor, A.I.med are some of the top Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software products.Real-Time E-Healthcare System Market: Drivers & RestraintsTechnological advancement, increasing disposable income, increase use of online services, increase use of mobile devices, increased health cost and expenditure, increasing need of an integrated healthcare system are the most important driving factors in real-time e-healthcare system market. Sine real-time e-healthcare system reduces medical errors and easily accessible information, the demand for real time e-healthcare system has increased regardless of the geographical location.Request Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-593 Lack of inexperienced professionals, high maintenance and service cost, privacy concerns, the complexity of systems, less presence of real-time e-healthcare system in rural areas including developed nations like Europe and are acting as a barrier for real-time e-healthcare system market.Real-Time E-Healthcare System Market: SegmentationReal-time e-healthcare system is broadly classified on the basis of the following segments By Product:Fitness Bands/wristband deviceClip on monitor devicesThermometerBlood-pressure monitor deviceM-health applicationsBlood glucose monitor devicesBy End-user:Public/Private HospitalsPharmacyIndividualsOthersReal-Time E-Healthcare System Market: OverviewThe real-time e-healthcare market has grown substantially at a healthy CAGR due to rising disposable income, increasing health awareness by consumers, ageing population and increasing healthcare expenditure. With rapid technological advancement and variety of options available in the market, real-time e-healthcare market is expected to grow globally. North America represents the largest market for this product category. Asia Pacific will emerge as the fastest growing region in real-time e-healthcare market.Request For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-593 Real-Time E-Healthcare System Market: Region-wise OutlookThe real-time e-healthcare market is expected to register a double-digit CAGR for the forecast period. Depending on geographic regions, real-time e-healthcare market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is the fastest growing market due to the improved healthcare infrastructure and high healthcare cost and rising disposable income. Increase demand of cloud computing from the developed nations like Europe and North America may also increase the demand for real-time e-healthcare systems by the end of forecast period.Real-Time E-Healthcare System Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in real-time e-healthcare market are Fitbit, Garmin, Jawbone, Misfit Wearables, DexCom, Medtronic, Abbott, Cerner Corporation, GE Healthcare, Epic Systems Corporation, Medical Information Technology Inc. (MEDITECH).
Tissue Engineered Skin Substitute Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 11:37:33

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# 428 Words

616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Tissue engineering is a technique that engage the practice of combining scaffolds, biologically active molecules and cells to develop functional tissues as an alternative to natural ones. The main objective of tissue engineering is to make use of functional construct that can ultimately restore, maintain and improve damaged tissues and organs through improving the recovery process and chances of survival.Tissue engineering substitute are of two types, acellular and cellular. Cellular products comprises living cells such as fibroblasts and keratinocytes enclosed within a matrix. Acellular products include matrix composed of materials such as hyaluronic acid, collagen, and fibronectin.According to the American Burn Association (ABA), about 1 million burn injuries occur annually in the United States, burn injuries result in approximately 4500 deaths.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-781 Tissue Engineered Skin Substitute Market: Drivers and RestraintsPresently, tissue engineered skin substitute global market is driven by the technological advancement in healthcare industry, increasing research funding, inclination of researchers towards development of tissue engineered skin, increase in the incidence of burn injuries and other skin diseases. However, inability of reproducing skin appendages, and lack of capability to replace the lost tissue especially the dermis are some major barriers for this market.Tissue Engineered Skin Substitute Market: SegmentationTissue engineered skin substitute global market is segmented into following types:By Product TypeSynthetic Skin SubstituteBiosynthetic Skin SubstituteBiological Skin SubstituteAllograftCellular AllograftAcellular AllograftXenograftBy ApplicationsChronic WoundsBurns CasesTraumatic WoundsDiabetic Foot UlcersBy End UsersHospitalsOther Healthcare FacilitiesTissue Engineered Skin Substitute Market: OverviewWith rapid technological advancement, increasing research funding, and increase in the incidence of burn injuries and other skin diseases, the tissue engineered skin substitute global market is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR in the forecasted period (2015-2025).Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-781 Tissue Engineered Skin Substitute Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, tissue engineered skin substitute global market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe is expected to capture the largest market shares followed by Asia Pacific countries where the market is expected to grow due to rapid technological innovations, large consumer base, and high disposable income.Tissue Engineered Skin Substitute Market: Key PlayersSome of the key participating players in tissue engineered skin substitute market are Organogenesis, Inc., Smith & Nephew Plc, BSN medical GmbH, Covidien Plc., Regenicin Inc., Integra LifeSciences Corporation, Shire Plc., Molnlycke Health Care AB and others.
Refractive Surgery Devices Market

PR-Inside.com: 2017-05-12 11:36:40

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# 404 Words

616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite: www.futuremarketinsights.comAbhishek Budholiya+1-347-918-3531

Refractive Surgery is the process of correcting or improving your vision affected by refractive error such as Myopia, Hyperopia, and Astigmatism. The most common procedure for correcting the refractive error is LASIK.Myopia is the most common refractive error in the global population. This indication varies across populations of different regions and ethnicities. It is estimated that 1.45 billion people had myopia in 2010 and it is predicted this number will continue to increase as the worlds population grows. The prevalence of myopia is most common among young adults in South- East Asian countries which is around 80-90% of the population completing high school.Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Drivers and RestraintsAdvancement in Refractive Surgery treatment have provided patient with a number of option to reduce and eliminate their dependency on glasses and contact lenses and take corrective measures for refractive errors. With the rapid increase in procedure volumes since last few years, there is an increase adaptation of laser devices for refractive surgery in healthcare facilities. The technological improvements in LASIK surgery in last few years is acting as a key driver for ophthalmic laser market.Request For Report Sample@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/sample/rep-gb-780 Low patient awareness of procedures safety, a limited pool of qualified refractive surgeons, unpredictable regulations are acting as a barrier for this market.Refractive Surgery Devices Market: SegmentationGlobal vascular market is further segmented into following types:Ophthalmic LasersEximer LasersFemtosecond LasersYAG LasersMicrokeratomeRefractive Surgery Devices Market: OverviewWith the increase in patient population suffering from refractive errors and an increased awareness in the treatment options, the global market for refractive surgery devices is expected to witness and healthy growth in the forecast years (2015-2025)Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Region- wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global vascular stents market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific excluding Japan, Japan and Middle East & Africa.Visit For TOC@ http://www.futuremarketinsights.com/toc/rep-gb-780 North America represent the largest market in ophthalmic lasers followed by Europe. In Asia Pacific, China dominates the refractive surgery devices market.Refractive Surgery Devices Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market players in global refractive surgery devices market are Abbott Medical Optics, Inc., Carl Zeiss AG, Alcon, Inc., Bausch & Lomb Incorporated, Nidek Co., Ltd., Ziemer Ophthalmic Systems AG, SCHWIND eye-tech-solutions GmbH & Co. KG, Lumenis Ltd. and Ellex Medical Lasers Limited.
For the New World Order, a world government is just the beginning. Once in place they can engage their plan to exterminate 80% of the world's population, while enabling the "elites" to live forever with the aid of advanced technology. For the first time, crusading filmmaker ALEX JONES reveals their secret plan for humanity's extermination: Operation ENDGAME.

Jones chronicles the history of the global elite's bloody rise to power and reveals how they have funded dictators and financed the bloodiest warscreating order out of chaos to pave the way for the first true world empire.

Watch as Jones and his team track the elusive Bilderberg Group to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III.





to Ottawa and Istanbul to document their secret summits, allowing you to witness global kingpins setting the world's agenda and instigating World War III. Learn about the formation of the North America transportation control grid, which will end U.S. sovereignty forever.





Discover how the practitioners of the pseudo-science eugenics have taken control of governments worldwide as a means to carry out depopulation.





View the progress of the coming collapse of the United States and the formation of the North American Union.

Never before has a documentary assembled all the pieces of the globalists' dark agenda. Endgame's compelling look at past atrocities committed by those attempting to steer the future delivers information that the controlling media has meticulously censored for over 60 years. It fully reveals the elite's program to dominate the earth and carry out the wicked plan in all of human history.

Endgame is not conspiracy theory, it is documented fact in the elite's own words.




JLL summarizes the conditions on Poland's industrial market at the end of Q1 2017. Interestingly, almost 70% of demand was attributable to two developers - Panattoni and Prologis. As per usual, the three sectors which had the greatest share in Q1 take-up were retailers (including e-commerce), which signed lease agreements

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Rabobank and Banco FIE join forces to foster rural development in Bolivia

Rabobank, through its subsidiary Rabo Partnerships, and Banco FIE started a 3-year strategic cooperation focused on fostering rural development, strengthening Banco FIEs operations and outreach, and professionalizing the agricultural value chains in Bolivia.

Rabobank, through its subsidiary Rabo Partnerships supports Banco FIE by providing access to its (agricultural) banking knowledge, experience and networks. Rabo Partnerships has a track record in contributing to the development of well-functioning and inclusive financial systems in emerging markets through a long-term perspective. This is accomplished by building strong locally rooted financial service providers serving (M)SMEs, the rural sector and clients who have not previously had access to financial services.

The global food and agriculture sector faces a huge challenge: how to provide a growing, aging and on average, wealthier world population with sufficient, healthy and sustainably produced food. Rabobanks commitment to invest and build strong financial service providers in emerging economies is in line with its Banking for Food strategy, which is aimed at providing access to its knowledge, finance and networks, says Mr. Frank Nagel, managing director of Rabo Partnerships.

The agricultural potential in emerging countries is significant. The Latin American region is an important net exporter of food and agricultural commodities, accounting for 16% of the total global food and agriculture exports and 4% of the total food and agriculture imports. The region is one of the few parts of the world with significant resources of unexploited agricultural land, suggesting the region will continue to play a pivotal role in future global food production . To help unlock that potential, Rabobank aspires to provide support to financial institutions and other players in agricultural value chains worldwide to enable them to increase the production, efficiency and to become more sustainable, according to Mr. Nagel.

The Bolivian economy is mainly based on the exploitation and export of its natural resources. Since a few years the agricultural sector has had a strong impact on the economic growth of the country. This is mainly due to technological innovations and an optimized production of soy beans, corn, sugar, rice, quinoa and chestnut. In particular quinoa and chestnut showed an increase in export due to the high quality.

In line with Bolivias development agenda, Banco FIE has the objective to contribute to the improvement of the economic conditions in rural zones, by promoting food security and sovereignty for the Bolivian people. The bank has introduced agricultural credit technology to support the Bolivian agricultural industry. It has also designed strategies for agricultural sub-sectors and tools for credit evaluation. Both are adjusted to the productive cycles and particular needs of the Bolivian producers. In this regard the bank focuses on reaching the smallest entities of the productive value chain, with an average credit in the sector of 6.128 USD dollars. One of the purposes of our cooperation with Rabobank is to improve financial inclusion and food security while at the same time strengthening our organization to support these improvements sustainably, according to Mr. Adres Urquidi, general manager of Banco FIE.

Rabobanks roots are in Dutch agriculture, a sector that today has an excellent reputation worldwide. The Netherlands is considered to be one of the most productive and efficient food producers in the world, often taking the lead in innovation. Despite its small size, the country is among the worlds largest exporters of agricultural products and a leader in food quality. Rabobank has played an important role in the development of Dutch agriculture and horticulture and has been leveraging its experience and expertise for international food and agri chains for decades.
Emmanuel Macron's victory in the French presidential elections has thwarted the revolution that his rival Marine Le Pen promised. Le Pen effectively sought an end to the European Union, a move that would likely have resulted in far-reaching economic turmoil. Meanwhile, her ties to the Kremlin could have greatly weakened NATO unity in the face of future Russian aggression. Domestically, her election could have created mass upheaval from those who opposed her.

The very fact that Le Pen did as well as she did is a sobering statement about the state of affairs in the country of the French Revolution.

But the very fact that Le Pen did as well as she did is a sobering statement about the state of affairs in the country of the French Revolution.

Macron now faces an immense challenge. France will need adroit political skill at the helm to mend the wounds the election has exposed in the French body politic and create a governing coalition from among France's now-weakened centrist parties.

In 1962, French President Charles de Gaulle famously quipped about how hard it was to govern a country "which has 246 types of cheese." The French populace is no less fractious today. In Sunday's election, for example, many supporters of the candidate of the left, Jean-Luc Melenchon, refused to join Macron to help defeat Le Pen.

At their root, France's problems are economic.

The country has suffered for over a decade from the crumbling of the generous social and economic contract the French hammered out in the decades after World War II. Efforts at financial and structural reform have failed or been too limited to create jobs and overcome the unemployment generating discontent nationwidein marginalized Muslim communities, the troubled suburbs of France's metropolitan centers and working-class neighborhoods fallen on hard times.

Macron will need to tackle these economic problems head-on. His experience with public and private finance may come in handy here. But ultimately his background is that of a technocrat rather than a politician, and these are political, not technical, problems.

Macron may have won a significant portion of the popular vote, but his legitimacy will be tested no sooner than the French parliamentary elections scheduled for next month.

Macron's election is evidence that support remains for liberal-democracy and the European Union. But the struggle over its future is far from over.

On the wider European stage, Macron's election is evidence that support remains for liberal-democracy and the European Union. But the struggle over its future is far from over.

Whereas Jacques Chirac defeated Le Pen's predecessor Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002 by a margin of 64 percent, Macron won by only 32 percent. In the Dutch parliamentary elections in March, far-right politician Geert Wilders did not emerge at the head of the pack, as some had feared, but did make significant gains. Right-wing nationalism is strengthening in Central Europe, especially in Hungary, but also in other countries. Meanwhile, in Germany, the "Alternative for Germany" party is looking more and more like a right-wing nationalist party.

Europe still faces a massive migrant crisis that will require decades of European social and economic adjustment. Russia's pursuit of a multifaceted campaign of active measures and subterfuge designed to disenfranchise democratic sentiment across the continent shows no sign of relentingand could well have been involved in the hack of Macron's campaign emails last week. Many European economies beyond France are not growing fast enough, and Britain's impending exit from the European Union may hurt the French economy and Europe's resource base.

The French Revolution was in many ways the birthplace of modern European democracy. After World War II, France was a pioneer of European integration and the theory and practice of social welfare. But, like many of its European neighbors, French history since 1789 is checkered with bouts of fascism and communism. Optimism about Europe's liberal-democratic foundations shouldn't be overdone. Vigilance must not wane.

Christopher S. Chivvis is associate director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center and author of The Monetary Conservative: Jacques Rueff and Twentieth Century Free Market Thought and The French War on Al Qa'ida in Africa.

This commentary originally appeared on U.S. News & World Report 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.
As Colombia prepares to privatise Bogotas public telco, ETB, Telefonica and Millicom have been flagged up as potential buyers.





This isnt the first time that the telcos have shown interest in the fibre operator, which offers services including IPTV and high-speed broadband. When Bogotas Government initially considered whether to sell off the public company, Millicom stated that ETB would complement its Colombian telecom and pay-TV business Telefonicas interest goes even further back, as the Spanish telco sounded out the authorities seven years ago, before the public telco was for sale.Now, local analysts are highlighting the possible interest of both companies, as ETB officially enters a privatisation process that will be decided by July.The telco, Colombias seventh largest operator with 700,000 clients and a newly-launched IPTV service, may be a small business, but it holds a strong position in the countrys capital and has the most up-to-date fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network.Bogotas local Government has stated that it expects to get over $800 million , a price decided upon according to an analysis by the investment banks JP Morgan and BTG Pactual.
EBS has been contracted by distributer Japan International Broadcasting Inc to supply EPG services across Europe for NHK World, the global channel from Japans national broadcaster.





The organisation is now providing scheduling information and EPG metadata to the PCCW, Sky UK, Freesat, Yes, OSN, and DSmart platforms via its scheduling software Pawa. In addition, EBS is sending an EPG feed to satellite operator SES, in what is a first for the service. SES is uplinking the EPG data via an event information table (EIT) stream direct to its satellite, which is then distributed across Europe to viewers set-top boxes.The fight for viewers is getting tough, said Keith Bedford, managing director, EBS . Theres so many options, so much content choice. In this kind of market, presentation must be perfect. With Pawas robust functionality and bespoke capabilities, JIB can be confident that their European operations with NHK World TV are in safe hands.Yoshihiko Shimizu, CEO, Japan International Broadcasting Inc, said: Elegant delivery of EPG information is a key element to improving our channel awareness around the world. We are delighted to work with EBS in providing this critical service.Pawa provides a one-stop database for organizing and distributing schedules and metadata, but can also provide separate libraries for each channel a broadcaster operates. Data can thus always fit a channel identity, and allows operators to manage tailored workflows for both linear and non-linear services. It also allows for video-on-demand (VOD) attributes, image enhancements and alterations, and translation services to be generated within a centralised database.The deal with Japan International Broadcasting shows, said EBS, that Pawa can be used to meet any workflow requirements.
Expanding its television distribution across the UK and Ireland, Turkeys first English language international news platform, TRT World, is now available from the Sky satellite service.





TRT World is owned by the Turkish national public broadcaster TRT, and comprises a platform of news outlets that is said to inspire change within the world through diverse reporting. It is headquartered in Istanbul, Turkey and has three broadcast centres located in London, Washington DC and Singapore.In March 2017, TRT World began broadcasting over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) on Arabsats Badr-6 satellite at 26E, following a deal by the channels worldwide distributor Globecast.The channel is now available to all the pay-TV giants 11.5 million standard and high definition subscribers, a milestone achievement, said TRT deputy director general Ibrahim Eren. Since its launch, TRT World has achieved more than any other network has achieved in the same amount of time, he remarked. Our international news content brings new perspectives from a unique point of view and we will continue to expand our reach to be present wherever news is consumed, on both television and digital platforms.
Mexicos pay-TV market has stabilised at around the 21 million-subscriber mark, according to telecom authority IFT.





After seven years of continued growth, which drove Mexico to lead the Latin American pay-TV industry, the market seems to have come to a standstill. According to data released through the IFT platform Banco the Informacion de Telecomunicaciones , the market has remained almost flat through 2016, ending the year with 21.04 million subs.Reaching its peak in Q2 2016 with 21.87 million pay-TV households and its lowest point three months later at 20.56 million, the markets ups and downs are far from the boom periods experienced in the past.In January 2015, there were 17.81 million subs and by December 20.23 million, in the strongest year ever for the Mexican industry The stagnant figures arrive at an unstable moment for Latin America, where telecoms services are being greatly affected by the financial crisis.Regarding technology, satellite lost almost a million subscriptions during 2016, while cable and fibre showed net additions even though convergent packages are still uncommon across the country.In terms of media and telecom groups, Televisa maintains its reign through both satellite (SKY) and cable, owning over six in ten subscriptions. Dish (with 21.5% of the market) maintains second place followed by Megacable (14.6%).
BAKU -- A court in Azerbaijan has ruled in favor of blocking several independent websites, including that of RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service.

The Sabail district court in Baku ruled on May 12 that the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and High Technology's request for the blockage of access to the websites must be met.

RFE/RL said it will appeal the ruling, which it called "another blatant attempt" at silencing its reporting in the country.

In addition to RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service, the ruling affects opposition newspaper Azadliq, Meydan TV, and two other Internet TV programs.

The ministry has limited access to the sites since March 27 on the instructions of the Prosecutor-General's Office, which claimed they "pose a threat" to Azerbaijan's national security.

It accused them of "posting content deemed to promote violence, hatred, or extremism, violate privacy, or constitute slander."

Moves to block the websites came after RFE/RL's Azerbaijani Service published investigative reports about financial activities linked to members of President Ilham Aliyev's family and his inner circle.

The investigative reports were produced by RFE/RL in cooperation with the Sarajevo-based Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

"Today's ruling is another blatant attempt by Azerbaijani authorities to try to silence our reporting in Azerbaijan," RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said.

"It misrepresents RFE/RL's work in Azerbaijan, and violates Azerbaijan's international commitments to respect media freedom. We will appeal it."

Aliyev has ruled the oil-producing former Soviet republic since shortly before the death of his long-ruling father, Heidar Aliyev, in 2003.

He has shrugged off frequent criticism from rights groups and Western governments that say he has jailed critics on false pretenses and abused power to crush dissent.

The hearing into the lawsuit started on April 27.

Samad Rahimli, a lawyer for the Azadliq newspaper, told reporters after the ruling that the lawsuit itself contradicts Azerbaijan's constitution and the country's international obligations.

Baku-based media expert Alasgar Mammadli said the decision amounted to "censorship."

"It is a wrong step that leads to the absolute suppression of freedom of expression and imposes control over the Internet in Azerbaijan," Mammadli said.

Mammadli added that the ruling might also lead to the prosecutions of individuals cooperating with the five media outlets.
French intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy said on May 11 after left-wing activists threw a pie in his face in Serbia that the incident illustrates the Balkan country is far from having democracy.

Levy, a philosopher known for his criticism of Serbian nationalist policies during the 1990s Balkan wars, was in Belgrade for the showing of his documentary film about the Kurds fighting the Islamic State extremist group.

A young man chanting "Murderer, leave Belgrade!" threw a pie at his face while he was presenting his film, called Peshmerga, on May 10.

Another man climbed the stage with a banner bearing a communist hammer and sickle that read, "Bernard Levy advocates imperialist murders."

Levy reacted by shouting "Long live democracy!" in French. He later said that "this incident illustrates what democrats face" in Serbia.

Serbian nationalists see Levy as one of the main advocates of the NATO bombing in 1999 over the country's crackdown against Kosovar Albanian separatists.

"He deserved much worse than a cake in his face," Serbian ultranationalist official Vojislav Seselj said in parliament on May 11.

Based on reporting by AP and AFP


Kyrgyz President Almazbek Atambaev has asked the Prosecutor-General's Office to drop its defamation lawsuits against RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service, known locally as Azattyk (Liberty).

In a statement on May 12, Atambaev's press service said he had proposed that prosecutors withdraw the lawsuits. The statement underscored what it said was Kyrgyzstan's "adherence to the fundamental principles of freedom of speech and respect for responsible journalism."

"RFE/RL is pleased at the decision to drop the lawsuits against our Kyrgyz Service," RFE/RL President Thomas Kent said. "Radio Azattyk plays an important part in Kyrgyzstans media. We look forward to continuing our mission to provide accurate, independent coverage of the news in that nation."

The Prosecutor-General's Office filed the lawsuits after Atambaev accused RFE/RL's Kyrgyz Service of slander over reports about allegations made by the opposition Ata-Meken (Fatherland) party following the arrest of its leader, Omurbek Tekebaev, in late February.

The statement from Atambaev's office made no mention of the independent Kyrgyz news sites Zanoza.kg, and 24.kg, which were also sued on similar grounds.
The new speaker of Macedonia's parliament, Talat Xhaferi, has said that he expects the president to approve a controversial governing coalition by a May 19 deadline. The country has seen months of protests over the proposed coalition. (RFE/RL's Balkan Service)
Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny returned home on May 11 after surgery in Spain, which he said is restoring vision to his injured eye, and quickly returned to work on planned demonstrations.

"I'm back," Navalny wrote on Twitter, while urging his supporters in a YouTube video to attend anticorruption rallies next month, which he said are planned in 147 Russian cities.

He said that a presidential decree issued while he was in Spain to tighten the rules on holding such protests would not stop the planned events from going ahead.

Navalny intends to run for president next year. He said he would continue to travel widely throughout Russia to open campaign offices.

Navalny organized antigovernment rallies in March that were Russia's largest and most widespread in years.

The activist suffered a severe chemical burn in his right eye last month when an attacker doused him with green antiseptic. His supporters identified the attacker as a pro-government activist, but police have not apprehended anyone.

After surgery at a Barcelona clinic, Navalny said doctors expect the vision in his injured eye to return within several months.

Based on reporting by AP, Reuters, Interfax, and TASS


Officials say an explosion has hit the convoy of Pakistan's deputy leader of parliament as it traveled in the southwestern province of Balochistan, killing at least 25 people and injuring more than 30 others.

Pakistani Senate Deputy Chairman Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri told journalists that he suffered minor injuries in the May 12 blast.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack on Haideri.

The Islamic State (IS) extremist group claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred in the Mastung district as Haideri was coming out from a mosque.

District health official Sher Ahmed Satakzai said that at least 25 people were killed and 10 were in critical condition in the hospital.

The senator, who is being treated in hospital, was on his way back to Quetta after distributing graduation certificates to students who had graduated from a madrasah, or religious academy.

"I am alive. Allah has saved my life. It was a sudden blast. Broken pieces of the windscreen hit me. I am injured but safe," Haideri said on private TV channel SAMAA. "The driver and other people sitting next to me were badly injured."

The IS group's Amaq news agency said a bomber wearing an explosive vest was responsible for the attack.

Earlier, government spokesman Anwarul Haq Kakar said the explosion was caused by a roadside bomb, which he said wounded some members of Haideris Jamiat Ulema-e Islam religious political party.

Party leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman is known for his pro-Taliban and anti-U.S. stances.

Resource-rich Balochistan has been plagued by sectarian violence, Islamist militant attacks, and a separatist insurgency that has led to thousands of casualties since 2004.

With reporting by dpa, Reuters, AP, and AFP
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says a visa-liberalization deal with the European Union marks his country's "divorce from the Russian Empire."

Poroshenko spoke on May 11, after the deal that will enable Ukrainians to travel to EU Schengen Area countries without a visa cleared a key hurdle in Brussels.

"Today, Ukraine has finalized its divorce from the Russian Empire," he told 1+1 television in an interview, in a remark that was posted on his website on May 12.

"This is precisely how we should view this in philosophical terms," he said. "It is an exit from a more than 300-year history...and today Ukraine is returning home."

European Council and European Parliament representatives are expected to rubber-stamp the long-awaited visa-liberation decision on May 17, and the visa-free regime is expected to enter into force on June 11.

Large portions of present-day Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire beginning in the 17th century, and Ukraine was under Moscow's thumb as a Soviet republic for most of the 20th century. It gained independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been severely strained since Russia seized Crimea in March 2014 and fomented unrest in eastern Ukraine, where a war between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 9,900 people.

The Ukrainian military said on May 12 that two of its servicemen were killed and six wounded in the previous 24 hours. It said government positions were attacked more than 50 times by the separatists, mostly between 6 p.m. and midnight on May 11.

Also on May 11, U.S. President Donald Trump posted photos of his separate meetings with the top diplomats of Ukraine and Russia on Twitter and urged the two nations to "make peace."

"Yesterday, on the same day -- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin," Trump tweeted under separate photos of himself smiling broadly by each minister in the Oval Office.

"LETS MAKE PEACE!" he wrote.

Trump met with Klimkin after a meeting with Lavrov, who earlier on May 10 met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the State Department.

Russia's interference in Ukraine, where Kyiv and NATO say it has supported the separatists with troops, weapons, and other backing, prompted the European Union and the United States to impose sanctions on Moscow.

The State Department said that in their meeting, Tillerson told Lavrov that "sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them."
At least 11 activists have been detained on Moscow's Red Square as they were reading Russia's constitution out loud, a group that monitors protest activity says.

Among the activists detained on May 12 was Ildar Dadin, according to OVD-Info, a website that tracks the detention of activists.

Dadin was the only person in Russia to have served prison time for contravening a tough law clamping down on protests in the country.

The activists were taken to a nearby police station, OVD-Info said. It remains unclear whether they could face charges.

"A police officer approached us and warned us that if we don't leave, they will detain us," Dadin was quoted by TASS news agency as saying. "Ten minutes later police detained us."

Lawyer Aleksei Lipster told RIA Novosti news agency that Dadin was still in police custody but that officers had not written up a report.

Dadin, 35, held repeated peaceful demonstrations against Russian President Vladimir Putin's rule without official permission.

He was convicted and sentenced to prison in December 2015 under a controversial law that criminalizes participation in more than one unsanctioned protest in a 180-day period.

He was released on February 26 after the Supreme Court threw out his conviction and ordered the case closed.

Dadin's plight attracted additional attention last autumn, when he alleged he and other inmates had been tortured and abused at a prison in Karelia.

Based on reporting by AFP and TASS
With each passing year, the so-called Immortal Regiment procession marking the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany becomes larger and more widespread.

This year's event on May 9, Victory Day, saw an estimated 750,000 people out on the streets in Moscow and more than 8 million in cities across the country, according to Russian state media. Prompted by Russian embassies and Kremlin-friendly nongovernmental organizations, the Immortal Regiment movement this year also organized processions in more than 60 countries around the world, Rossia-1 television reported.

Since 2015, top Russian officials from President Vladimir Putin on down have participated in the procession, which is meant to evoke and honor the estimated 27 million Soviets who died during the war and those who lived to see victory.

But the Immortal Regiment has come under criticism by many who charge that people are participating without really understanding its meaning, carrying photographs of unknown people handed to them by organizers and quickly discarded after the event.

"The Immortal Regiment was doomed from the moment of its birth," prominent blogger and former Duma Deputy Igor Yakovenko wrote on May 10. "The likelihood that the authorities would tolerate an independent grassroots movement that was becoming national and even international was precisely zero. The transformation of a grassroots initiative into a state ritual and part of the quasi-religious cult of 'victory' began already in 2014.... That was the end of the human story of the Immortal Regiment and the beginning of the story of a state ritualistic cult."

Show Of Gratitude

Over the last few years, Putin's government has increasingly staked its domestic prestige on a seemingly narrow and strictly controlled vision of patriotism, and the interpretation of the Soviet experience of World War II has become the cornerstone of that effort.

The Soviet Union and Russia have long had a difficult time figuring out how to remember the war against Nazi Germany. Under dictator Josef Stalin, the official death toll was placed at just 7 million. Victory Day was not marked as an official holiday until 1965, after the number of people with direct memories of the conflict had fallen significantly. Issues such as the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the horrendous Soviet losses in the early days of the war, the significance of British and U.S. assistance provided through the Lend-Lease program, atrocities committed by the Red Army in Germany, Stalin's policy of sending many returning prisoners of war off to the GULAG, and many other facts complicate the telling of a somber story.

The idea of the Immortal Regiment was born among three friends sharing a solemn moment near the Eternal Flame monument in the Siberian city of Tomsk in 2011.

"The idea occurred to my colleague Igor Dmitriyev, who now lives in St. Petersburg," one of the men, Tomsk journalist Sergei Lapenkov, told RFE/RL's Russian Service. "[Victory Day] was always really important for us. We were all the grandsons of soldiers; all our grandfathers fought. And Igor noticed what the passage of time was doing -- there were fewer and fewer veterans and more and more pompous speeches. So he said, 'Next year let's organize a parade with portraits of our grandfathers.' We wanted to return the holiday to the main hero -- to the person who experienced the war and to whom we are ultimately grateful for the fact that we are alive today. That may sound a little pathetic, but that's exactly how we felt."

Lapenkov's grandfather, Ivan Lapenkov, fought in both the Winter War against Finland and the war against Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. He was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union medal and returned home disabled.

"Thanks to my grandfather, for a long time I thought it was normal that if a man is a soldier and comes back from a war, then he has either no legs or no arms," Lapenkov says. Ivan Lapenkov died in 1974, when his grandson was 6 years old.

The purpose of the procession from the beginning was to pay tribute to the generation that endured the war.

"It wasn't about the history, in the direct sense, of the army and the navy," Lapenkov says. "For us it was a generational history, the history of all the people who went through the 1940s. It was about human memory.... Every grandfather had a grandmother. She waited. She raised the children. When you get down to it, he mustered himself to attack for her sake."

From Grassroots Movement...

The next year, 2012, the three men took their idea public and it clearly struck a chord. About 6,000 locals turned out with portraits.

"The first year, we had 2,000 official placards made up," Lapenkov says, "plus a lot of people came with their homemade placards or just carrying photographs. I saw one guy who made a placard out of a child's shovel. He glued a laminated photograph to it and it worked out very nicely for him."

Over the next few years, the Immortal Regiment movement spread to other Russian cities as a genuine grassroots movement. As a rule, Lapenkov recalls, local authorities were supportive and did not interfere. In the city of Kemerovo, officials told organizers that they had to march with the banner of the ruling United Russia party -- a condition that was rejected.

In other cities, officials denied permission for the procession because organizers were unable to predict in advance how many people would show up. Generally, local processions were organized by independent regional journalists through networks tied to the original Tomsk organizers.

The only condition, Lapenkov says, was that the local organizations follow the Tomsk lead and remain "noncommercial, apolitical, and nongovernmental."

"This is aimed at preventing the regiment from becoming a promotional tool for any force or personality," he says. Shortly after the 2012 debut, United Russia approached Lapenkov's group with a proposal to create a national project. Lapenkov was able to put them off, and nothing came of the proposal.

...To 'Mandatory Patriotism'

In 2013, the Immortal Regiment procession was held for the first time in Moscow. One of the local organizers, Nikolai Zemtsov, independently registered a new organization called Immortal Regiment-Moscow. The following year, an order emerged from then-Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov, instructing all local officials across the country to support Zemtsov's movement.

In 2015, Zemtsov's group was renamed Immortal Regiment-Russia. "At some point, apparently, they made a decision not to have anything to do with a grassroots organization," Lapenkov says. "They just built their own organization."

"Through the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation [a Kremlin-organized advisory body] and the All-Russia People's Front [a political movement set up by Putin], some activists appeared in the regions; and these people created the Immortal Regiment-Russia," he explains. "Our coordinators were not included. Not one volunteer from the grassroots organizations. And that is how Immortal Regiment-Russia appeared -- a completely artificial organization."

Immediately, Lapenkov says, his volunteers noted concerning trends. In Samara, schools were presented with quotas of required participation in the march. In Nizhny Novgorod, students reported being forced to carry photographs of unknown people. In far eastern Krasnoyarsk, the procession was held at the same time as the Moscow event, apparently so marchers could participate "together" with Putin.

In Arkhangelsk, officials barred activists from carrying the photographs of British and U.S. sailors who died providing Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union, citing the current "political situation."

"It became a case of the very 'mandatory patriotism' to which Immortal Regiment was created as an alternative," he says.

The new state-controlled movement was also responsible for the dramatic increase in the use of Soviet and Stalinist symbols and for the mass distribution of the orange-and-black St. George's ribbon.

At the same time, the original Immortal Regiment organizers have been regularly denounced in nationalist media as "foreign agents," a label with echoes of Soviet-era repression that has been used against select NGOs since 2012.

"[Victory Day] always had a lot of official pomposity," Moscow journalist Boris Minayev tells RFE/RL, "but we were always able to separate our personal feelings from that pomposity.... Now it has become harder to do that because the holiday has become suffused with something else. It was always a holiday of memory, of mourning. A holiday full of pain, a holiday with tears in our eyes, as the poet said so well. But now it is full of aggression."
A top Kremlin foreign-policy adviser has threatened retaliatory measures against U.S. officials in response to Washington's closure of Russian diplomatic property in the United States last year.

Yury Ushakov's comments on May 12 signaled a possible reversal in policy by the Kremlin regarding the closure, which was announced in December by then-President Barack Obama.

Obama ordered two diplomatic compounds in Maryland and New York closed, and the expulsion of 35 Russian personnel as retaliation for Russia's alleged hacking during the 2016 presidential election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin surprised most observers a day later, when he said Russia would not do any tit-for-tat expulsions. That move was later praised by President Donald Trump.

Earlier this week, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov met in New York with his U.S. counterpart, acting Deputy Secretary of State Tom Shannon. The two discussed, ways to improve strained relations between the two countries, including lifting the closure order on the diplomatic compounds, according to a post on the Foreign Ministry Facebook page.

On May 12, Ushakov told reporters in Moscow that Russia might retaliate against U.S. personnel if the compounds weren't released.

"We are demonstrating patience," Ushakov was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. Obama's order, he said, "simply does not lend itself to any sort of understanding, but our president has reacted calmly and carefully."

"We decided not to respond immediately to this escapade, but no one has yet abolished the principle of reciprocity in diplomacy.... Our patience is not without limits," he said.

"The improvement in the atmosphere of bilateral relations largely depends on the removal of the numerous irritants set up by Washington in recent years; in particular, we are waiting for the return of Russian diplomatic property," he said.

Ushakov did not specify what measures Russia might take. In the past, however, the U.S. State Department has frequently complained about its diplomats being harassed in Russia.

Ushakov also said the issue was raised by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in his White House meeting with Trump on May 10.

With reporting by TASS and Interfax
A senior Russian Orthodox Church official says he met with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and told him that the United States and Russia should fight terrorism together.

Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Russian church's External Relations Department, said he spoke with Pence for a few minutes ahead of the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians, which they both attended in Washington on May 11.

"I told him about what [Russian Orthodox Patriarch] Kirill often says: 'To defeat terrorism, we need a single counterterrorist coalition,'" Russian state news agency TASS quoted Hilarion as saying. "Not many coalitions struggling against each other but one coalition in which the United States and the Russian Federation should play a leading role."

Hilarion's remarks were in line with repeated statements by Russian officials, who have long accused the United States of applying double standards in its fight against terrorism and urged closer cooperation.

The United States rejects the allegations.

President Donald Trump has voiced the hope that the two countries can cooperate more closely against Islamic State (IS) and other extremist groups, and the issue has been a major focus of conversations between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

But there have been few signs of increase cooperation and the two countries are conducting separate air strike campaigns in Syria.

U.S. official say the Russian operations have mainly targeted armed opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government rather than IS.

With reporting by Time, TASS, and RIA Novosti
On May 10, French writer and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy was hit by a pie thrown from the audience as he was being interviewed by Serbian director Goran Markovic at the Belgrade Cultural Center. The group of youths responsible then stormed the stage and ordered Levy to "get out of Belgrade." They reminded attendees that Levy had supported the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999.

Aside from the ineffective security, what is striking about the incident is what it reveals about Serbia's continuing inability to come to terms with its recent past. Even though it was the last act -- and a direct consequence -- of a series of conflicts that preceded it, during which Serbian forces occupied parts of neighboring countries, committing atrocities and war crimes along the way, the NATO intervention dominates the collective memory of the 1990s.

When the suffering of others -- Croats, Bosnians, and Kosovars -- is acknowledged, few are prepared to offer unconditional apologies, and any admission of guilt is immediately qualified by the assertion that "Serbs suffered, too!"

There are exceptions to this rule: a few brave NGOS and human rights activists who buck the trend. But overall, a pervasive culture of impunity (characterized by allowing war criminals to promote their books through public forums and institutions) may well be empowering individuals and groups eager to terrorize those with whom they disagree (in this case, Bernard-Henri Levy).

Belgrade is currently hosting an international documentary film festival, Beldocs (May 8 to 15), where two of Levy's features are due to be screened.

One of them, Peshmerga, premiered in Paris in June 2016. It follows Levy and his crew, who were embedded with Kurdish troops fighting the militant group Islamic State (IS) in Iraq. They managed to film major battles in and around Kirkuk, Mosul, and Sinjar.

The second Levy documentary at Beldocs is essentially a continuation of Peshmerga titled The Battle Of Mosul, featuring fighting in Iraq .

Levy has made a reputation as a politically engaged intellectual, and he sees the job of a philosopher as being on the front line.

Levy has been politically active since his 20s. He is a longtime supporter of and campaigner for the Kurdish cause and is thought by many to have been an influential factor in instigating France's intervention in Libya. He was a founder of the Nouveaux Philosophes movement in 1976.

In the 1990s, he was a passionate advocate for Western intervention in the Bosnian war, arguing that it was Europe's duty to stop the massacres of Bosnian Muslims given the continent's failure to prevent the systematic murder of its Jewish population in the Holocaust.

His attackers in Belgrade called him "an imperialist," among other things, and some carried communist symbols. Levy was ready to fight back as they swarmed the stage, taking off his coat and grabbing one of his attackers, as seen in a video published by Belgrade daily Blic.

He was separated at the last moment from his attackers by the studio cameramen, as security was slow to respond. An opportunity for discussion was lost. Levy was not given a chance to explain his position on the NATO intervention of 1999.

The festival issued a short statement expressing regret for the incident, calling on the city and the Serbian state "to protect the festival guests and defend freedom of speech."

Levy left the stage following the attack, but he returned soon thereafter to inform the audience that his attackers -- who also pelted him with eggs -- were not anti-imperialists, as they purported, but fascists whose aim was to prevent his discussion with the public. He thanked all who had watched his films, and added that Serbia "had not changed as its friends had hoped it would."

"Democracy has not triumphed in Belgrade yet," Levy said. "Not everyone is ready to hear the truth in this city. Long live Europe, and long live a democratic Serbia in the EU. I am proud to be defending Europe's antifascist heritage here, in front of you today."

He later addressed an open letter "to my Serbian friends" in which he criticized Serbia's "regime" as one that "calls itself by a new name  a "democrature.'" He added, according to the Huffington Post, "It is a dictatorship that makes use of universal suffrage and the appearance of democracy to bring civil society to heel and stifle Serbians' aspirations to freedom."

It was not the first time Levy has had a pie thrown at him -- he has been a favorite target of Noel Godin -- but it may have been the first one that was not thrown in jest.

The views expressed in this blog post do not necessarily reflect those of RFE/RL
Russia has launched multiple suicide drones on Ukraine's southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, wounding people and damaging civilian facilities, the head of the regional military administration said, as fierce battles are under way in the eastern Donetsk region and in the south.

"The occupiers attacked the area massively with kamikaze drones, said Governor Valentyn Reznichenko. Ukrainian air defense destroyed some of the drones, but others hit targets. The Russian forces also used drones in an attack on the city of Dnipro, targeting a logistics enterprise. Reznichenko said four employees were wounded, and three of them are in serious condition in hospital.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's ongoing invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.

Russian forces also bombarded the Nikopol district in the region with Grad missiles and heavy artillery. Reznichenko said the shelling damaged private houses, a factory, and a power line, but no one was injured.



A fire spread over more than 3,000 square meters but was extinguished, Reznichenko said.



Russian troops regularly shell the Dnipropetrovsk region with various types of weapons, in particular the Nikopol, Kryvorizky, and Synelnyk districts.

In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy vowed Ukraine will not "surrender a single centimeter of our land" in Donetsk, and he thanked Ukrainian troops who are holding positions in the Donbas region.



The epicenter of the battle for the industrial region of Donetsk is around the towns of Bakhmut, Soledar, and Avdiyivka.



"The activity of the occupiers remains at an extremely high level -- dozens of attacks every day," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address late on November 8.



"They are suffering extraordinarily high losses. But the order remains the same: to advance on the administrative boundary of Donetsk region. We will not yield a single centimeter of our land," he said.



Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions Russia said it annexed in September following referendums considered a sham by Kyiv and its Western allies.



Fighting has taken place there between Ukrainian military and Kremlin-backed separatist forces since 2014, the same year Russia illegally annexed Crimea in the south.

Zelenskiy said the goal of the Russian troops is to push to the administrative border of the Donetsk region.



"We clearly understand the enemy's plans, so we act accordingly: carefully, thoughtfully, and in the interests of the liberation of our entire territory. We are strengthening our positions, breaking Russian logistics, and consistently destroying the potential of the occupiers to keep the south of our country under occupation," Zelenskiy added.



Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said the most intense battles were taking place in Bakhmut and Soledar where the Ukrainian military repels dozens of Russian attacks per day.



Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the region's military administration, said the city of Bakhmut was badly damaged, and there is not a single surviving house in Avdiyivka, Maryinka, or Krasnohorivka. Russian troops are trying to wipe the cities "off the face of the Earth," he said.



Fierce fighting was also going on on the edge of the town of Snihurivka, in the southern Mykolayiv region, according to Yury Barabashov, the town's Russian-appointed mayor, as cited by Russia's RIA Novosti news agency.



Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the Russian-installed administration in the southern Kherson region, said on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had tried to advance on three fronts, including Snihurivka.



Vitaly Kim, the Ukrainian governor of the Mykolayiv region, apparently quoting an intercepted dialogue between Russian troops, suggested Ukrainian forces had already pushed the Russians out of the area.



"Russian troops are complaining that they have already been thrown out of there," Kim said in a statement on his Telegram channel.



The information could not be independently verified.



The Ukrainian military said it destroyed two Russian ammunition depots in southern Ukraine on November 8, one in Snihurivka, and one in Kostromka, in the neighboring Kherson region.

WATCH: Paratroopers with Ukraine's 79th Air Assault Brigade say they're holding positions around the small city of Maryinka in eastern Ukraine despite daily Russian attacks.

Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists in recent months seeking to stave off an offensive launched by Ukraine to regain Russian-occupied territories.



Kyiv-based military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said on November 8 that 21 Russian conscripts had surrendered to Ukrainian forces around Svatove in the eastern Luhansk region.



"These poor mobilized men -- really poor, they had had nothing to eat or drink in three days -- of course they decided to surrender," Zhdanov said on his YouTube channel.



In the southern Kherson region, a battle between advancing Ukrainian forces and the Russian occupiers has been looming for weeks in the city by the same name, the only regional capital Russia has captured intact since its unprovoked invasion in February.



Kherson is arguably the most important of the four partially occupied Ukrainian regions that Russia says it annexed. It controls both the only land route to the Crimean Peninsula and the mouth of the Dnieper River that bisects Ukraine.

Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, also commented on the fighting in eastern Ukraine on November 8. He was quoted by TASS as saying that information released about casualties among Chechen fighters near Lysychansk, a city in the eastern Luhansk region, was false.



"Not a single fighter of ours was killed in the aforementioned area," Kadyrov wrote on his Telegram channel, adding that he didn't want to comment on "such falsehoods" but found it necessary "to reassure all sane and concerned people."



Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, released video footage that it said showed a drone strike obliterating a Ukrainian tank that was hiding in an urban area and shelling Russian troops.



"A Russian squad of unmanned aerial vehicles spotted the Ukrainian tank and destroyed it using a precision strike," the ministry said on November 8, according to TASS.



The Ukrainian military's General Staff said Russian troops used drones and artillery on November 8 to shell communities along the Sumy region's border with Russia in northeastern Ukraine. The only damage reported was to utility poles.



Sumy borders three regions of Russia: Bryansk, Kursk, and Belgorod. The border regions of Ukraine are regularly shelled by Russia.



Neither side's battlefield claims could be independently verified.



The Ukrainian military has accused Russian troops of more looting and destroying infrastructure in Kherson.



"A convoy of trucks passed over the dam of the Kakhova hydroelectric station loaded with home appliances and building materials," the military said.



Russians were dismantling mobile phone towers and taking equipment, it said, adding that near the city of Beryslav, Russian forces "blew up a power line and took equipment from a solar power station."

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and CNN
The British government says it does not yet know who was behind a massive global cyberattack on May 12 that disrupted Britain's health-care services and targeted vital computer systems in as many as 100 other countries.

British Interior Minister Amber Rudd said on May 13 that Britain's National Cyber Security Center was working with the country's health service to ensure the attack was contained and limited.

She said Britains National Crime Agency was still working with her ministry to find out where the attacks came from and that the British government did not know if the attacks had been directed by a foreign government.

What appeared to be the biggest cyberextortion attack in history exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was identified in leaked documents by the U.S. National Security Agency earlier this year.

With more than 75,000 attacks launched on May 12, cybercrime experts around the world were investigating a concentration of attacks in Russia, Ukraine, and India -- countries where the use of older, unpatched versions of Microsoft Windows is widespread.

The hackers attempt to trick victims into opening malicious attachments to spam e-mails by saying they contained invoices, job offers, security warnings, and other seemingly legitimate files.

The extortionists demand payments of $300 to $600 to restore access once computers are crippled by the scam. Cybersecurity firms said criminal organizations were probably behind the attack.

Russia's Interior Ministry, Emergencies Ministry, and biggest bank, Sberbank, were all targeted, officials said.

The Interior Ministry said on its website that around 1,000 computers had been infected, but it had localized the virus. Russia's Investigative Committee denied reports that it was attacked.

Russia's Health Ministry and Emergencies Ministry told Russian news agencies that they had repelled the cyberattacks, while Sberbank said its cybersecurity arrangements had prevented viruses from entering its systems.

Russias Central Bank said on May 13 that it detected massive cyberattacks on domestic banks, but the resources of the Central Bank itself were "not compromised."

Megafon, a top Russian mobile operator, said it had come under attacks that appeared similar to those that crippled U.K. hospitals. A spokesman said mobile communications weren't affected but the attacks interrupted the work of its call centers.

Hospitals 'Crippled'

Spain and the United Kingdom were hit particularly hard. Hospitals across Britain found themselves without access to their computers or phone systems. Many canceled routine procedures and asked patients not to come to the hospital unless it was an emergency.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said that, while some hospitals were crippled, there was no evidence patient data had been compromised.

Spain's giant Telefonica telecommunications company was hit, prompting Spanish authorities to take measures to protect critical infrastructure in transportation, energy, telecommunications, and financial services.

Only a small number of U.S. organizations were hit because the hackers appear to have begun their campaign in Europe, cybersecurity firms said.

By the time the hackers turned their attention to the United States, spam filters had identified the new threat and flagged the ransomware-laden e-mails as malicious.

The security holes exploited by the hackers were disclosed several weeks ago by TheShadowBrokers, a mysterious group that has published what it says are hacking tools used by the White House security agency as part of U.S. intelligence-gathering.

Microsoft said it was pushing out automatic Windows updates to defend clients from the virus.

With reporting by AP, BBC, AFP, Reuters, TASS, and Interfax


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European Union member states have endorsed visa-free travel for Ukrainian citizens entering the EU's Schengen Area. The new visa regime is set to come into effect on June 11. RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service asked residents of Kharkiv to share their reactions to the decision.
U.S. President Donald Trump posted photos of his separate meetings with the top diplomats of Ukraine and Russia on Twitter and urged the two nations to "make peace."

"Yesterday, on the same day -- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin," Trump tweeted late on May 11 under separate photos of himself smiling broadly by each minister in the Oval Office.

"LETS MAKE PEACE!" he wrote.

Trump held a rare, unannounced Oval Office meeting with Klimkin after a meeting with Lavrov, who earlier on May 10 met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the State Department.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been severely damaged since Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in March 2014 and fomented unrest in eastern Ukraine, where a war between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 9,900 people.

Russia's actions prompted the European Union and the United States to impose sanctions on Moscow. The State Department said that in their meeting, Tillerson told Lavrov that "sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them."
U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster says President Donald Trump has not yet decided whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan to support the fight against the Taliban and other Islamist militants.

McMaster on May 12 said the president will have a chance to get the views of allies during his upcoming foreign trip, which will include stops at a NATO summit on May 25 in Brussels and a meeting of Group of Seven (G7) industrial nations in Sicily on May 26-27.

U.S. media reports have said the White House is considering increasing the size of its force in Afghanistan by up to 5,000 soldiers, adding to the 8,400 U.S. troops now there.

The total international force in Afghanistan is about 13,000, down from around 100,000 during the peak of the 16-year U.S. military presence in the country that drove the Taliban from power.

The Taliban has been resurgent in recent years and now controls large portions of the country.

"We are working with our allies to figure out what more we can do to have a more effective strategy in Afghanistan," he told a White House briefing.

"What options we can bring to the president to be more effective in meeting our objectives in Afghanistan, and what more can we ask our allies to do which we're asking them now," he said.

Trump is also scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican during the trip.

Based on reporting by dpa and AP
The U.S. national intelligence director says the security situation in Afghanistan will "almost certainly" continue to "deteriorate" over the next 18 months.

Dan Coats' comments on May 11 to the Senate Intelligence Committee come as the U.S. military has announced plans to send 3,000 additional troops to bolster the fight against the Taliban and other Islamist militants in Afghanistan.

U.S.-led forces have been fighting in Afghanistan for 16 years after driving the Taliban from power.

U.S. combat operations officially ended in 2014, with a smaller force of 13,000 NATO troops, including about 8,400 Americans, remaining.

But the Taliban has been resurgent in recent years and controls large portions of the country.

"The political and security situation in Afghanistan will also almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in the military assistance by the U.S. and its partners," Coats told senators.

In another regional matter, Coats said it appears Iran is respecting the terms of the nuclear agreement it struck with six world powers in 2015.



He said the deal -- under which Iran significantly limited its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief -- extended the amount of time Iran would need to produce sufficient material for a nuclear weapon and increased the transparency of its nuclear activities.

Coats also said Russia and other countries, including China, North Korea, and Iran, are using cyberspace to target the United States and its allies and will do so in future.



Coats said Russia is a threat to U.S. government, military, diplomatic, business, and critical infrastructure.

Coats said Iran also is making use of its high-tech capabilities, and China is targeting the U.S. government and American businesses. He says such activity has diminished since U.S.-China cybercommitments in 2015.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and AFP
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during a trip to Alaska, has visited a monument to a crucial World War II program under which the United States aided the Soviet Union and other Allies.

Lavrov laid a wreath at the Lend-Lease Monument in the Alaskan capital, Fairbanks, on May 11. He was followed by Russia's ambassador to Washington, Sergei Kislyak.

They were in the U.S. state for a meeting of the Arctic Council that was also attended by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Amid ties that remain badly strained, Lavrov met with Tillerson and President Donald Trump in Washington a day earlier.

The United States sent millions of dollars' worth of aid and weapons, including warplanes, to the Soviet Union and other allies during the war through the Lend-Lease program. Soviet pilots flew the planes to Siberia from an airfield in Fairbanks.

"Being here and not to visit this memorial would have been a shame," Lavrov said in English. "We highly appreciate the way the Alaskans keep the memory of our fight against fascism during World War II alive."

The visit came two days after Russia held massive annual Victory Day celebrations marking the defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945.

In his address to a military parade on Red Square, Putin said that it was Soviet soldiers who "prevailed to bring freedom to Europe and long-awaited peace on the planet," and made no specific mention of the U.S. contribution.

Based on reporting by Alaska Dispatch News and Interfax
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WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a comment on Twitter apparently warning former FBI Director James Comey against "leaking to the press," suggesting there might be "tapes" of their private conversations.

Trump's comments came in a series of Twitter posts early on May 12 in which he also suggested he might cancel daily White House press briefings.

Trump fired Comey on May 9, and later in an NBC News interview called him "a showboat" and a "grandstander" and stating that the FBI was in "turmoil."

U.S. media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have reported differing accounts of meetings between Trump and Comey before his firing.

The FBI and at least two congressional committees are probing allegations of Russian interference into the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign team.

Trump has said that Comey on three occasions -- during one meeting and two phone calls -- told him he was not personally the subject of an investigation.

Meanwhile, U.S. media, citing unnamed FBI sources, reported that Trump pressured Comey to pledge his personal loyalty to the U.S. president, which the reports say Comey refused to do.

During a press briefing, White House spokesman Sean Spicer denied that Trump had asked for Comey's personal loyalty and said the only loyalty required was to the country.

Trump issued a comment on Twitter in apparent response to the news leaks, which CNN, The Washington Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post, and other media, characterized as a "threat" to Comey.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" he wrote.

Representative Gerry Connolly (Democrat-Virginia) accused Trump of witness intimidation after the Comey tweet.

"First obstruction of an investigation. Now witness intimidation from the Highest Office. A sad moment for even this White House. Unhinged?" he tweeted.

Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat-California), a vocal critic of Trump, said in a tweet said that the president should release any tapes that might exist.

"Mr. President, if there are 'tapes' relevant to the Comey firing, it's because you made them and they should be provided to Congress," Schiff wrote.

The White House said Trump declined to comment further on the suggestion of recordings of the conversations, and Spicer denied that the tweet was a threat to Comey.

Cancel Press Briefings?

Trump also issued a tweet about White House press briefings, suggesting he might end the daily event that has been accused by some of providing misleading information.

Brian Fallon, a former Justice Department spokesman who also served as press secretary to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, told Politico that the briefings had "become a forum for exposing the absurdity and falseness of claims made by the president."

Trump wrote on Twitter that "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"

"Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" he added.

The president of the White House Correspondents Association, Reuters reporter Jeff Mason, told MSNBC that his association would object to any move to cancel the press briefings.

"Having regular press briefings is key to giving journalists the ability to do their jobs," Mason said. "It is also key to allowing there to be transparency at the highest levels of government, whether that's the president of the United States or the people who work for him."

In a separate development, the Associated Press is reporting that Trump's lawyers have released a letter saying a review of his tax returns over the past 10 years did not show "any income of any type from Russian sources," with two major exceptions.

The exceptions listed are income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that Trump organized in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

Trump has come under pressure to release his tax returns amid questions about his connections to Russian government or business officials.

With reporting by AP, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Times, CNN, BBC, Politico, and The Hill
Benelli Imperiale 400 BS6 prices apparently shot up due to high US dollar exchange rates

Indias automotive industry will make a shift to BS6 emission standards by 13 May 2020 with adherence to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown protocols. The deadline to meet BS6 norms was previously set as 1 April 2020 but the Supreme Court of India recently extended this date on a conditional basis. However, this might not be of much help to struggling dealerships who have got a vast inventory of unsold BS4 units.

Considering the current state of affairs, several automakers in India, as well as outside, have started focusing on online platforms to make sales or host important events. Owing to this, we have witnessed a range of products being unveiled online over the past few weeks. Certain launches have also taken place rather silently. Now, the prices of Benelli Indias upcoming Imperiale 400 BS6 have been leaked online. Sources tell that the figures have gone up by almost Rs 40,000 to hit Rs 2.20 lakh ex-showroom.

The Benelli Imperiale 400 (read our review) hit the Indian market back in October 2019 as a strong rival to Royal Enfields Classic 350 and the new-gen Jawa siblings. Prices initially started at Rs 1.69 lakh ex-showroom and the classic motorcycle instantly proved to be a good choice. In February, the company had introduced a price increase of about Rs 10,000 (twice as high for certain colour choices).

However, a hike of Rs 40,000 is unreasonably high if an update to higher emission norms is the only change for 2020MY. Reports state that high US dollar exchange rates are the reason behind such a substantial price jump. Benelli India is expected to roll out its BS6 Imperiale 400 units in about a months time after the nationwide lockdown measures are withdrawn.

In its outgoing BS4 format, the Benelli Imperiale 400 is powered by an air-cooled FI SOHC 374cc single-cylinder engine. Output figures stand at 20.7bhp and 29Nm of torque while mated to a 5-speed transmission. With BS6 update, these figures could see a minor difference (the trend is usually downwards).

On the international market, Benelli is planning an aggressive product strategy. The popular TNT600i inline-4 naked sports motorcycle could be replaced by the all-new Benelli 600N, with fresh styling, more features and better performance characteristics. In fact, Benelli is also working an Imperiale 530 model  which, as the name suggests, might sport a 500cc single-cylinder engine (also air-cooled). Could this price hike apply for an India-bound BS6 Imperiale 530 model?

Source
Analyses of environmental gases which previously required months of laboratory work can now be carried out rapidly in the field. A group of Eawag scientists have developed a portable mass spectrometer allowing on-site measurements -- and a spin-off has been created to commercialize the new system.

What are the effects of volcanic gases accumulating in Lake Kivu in central Africa? How does the Rhine's groundwater system function near Pratteln? What is the best way of controlling greenhouse gas emissions from a landfill in northeastern Switzerland? Answers to questions like these can be provided by a newly developed portable mass spectrometer -- by the researchers named "miniRuedi" -- which allows gas and water samples to be analysed on site and in real time. For example, the concentrations of different gases were determined at a landfill during a one-day measurement campaign. This study supports the optimisation measures to aerate the landfill in order to reduce the formation of methane, a strong greenhouse gas.

System in a suitcase

Eawag environmental physicist Matthias Brennwald, who developed the portable mass spectrometer, explains: "Our instrument, weighing 13 kilograms and mounted in a wheeled suitcase, can be taken to the most remote locations. Once it's been installed on site, the Mini-Ruedi can immediately and efficiently measure gases using very small samples, so it doesn't interfere with the natural dynamics of the environment." The system, which can operate autonomously, provides continuous measurements of a wide range of gases. The most suitable sites and times for sampling can thus be identified immediately. Long-term operation is also possible. As Brennwald points out, "Analyses which in the past would have been inconceivable -- partly for financial reasons, as they'd have involved months of laboratory work -- are now suddenly possible."

Two weeks instead of six years

For example, using the Mini-Ruedi, the Eawag team only needed two weeks to complete a groundwater analysis project in Australia. With conventional methods and instruments, Brennwald estimates, the team would have required about six years in the lab. Nonetheless, the precision of the new system's measurements is remarkable, with an analytical uncertainty of one to three per cent (versus one to one-and-a-half per cent for a much more expensive, laboratory-based spectrometer). Other advantages offered by the system are its low power consumption (50 watts, no more than a traditional light bulb) and maintenance-free operation. Brennwald emphasizes that "for people used to working with measurement instruments, it only takes a day to learn how to handle the portable system."

Off-the-shelf components

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Although the portable mass spectrometer may look complex at first glance, it actually consists of just four main elements. The incoming gas passes slowly through a ten-metre-long capillary tube, reminiscent of an elephant's trunk (hence the system's name, "Ruedi Russel" being a well-known chain of petrol stations in Switzerland). Two pumps generate the requisite vacuum in the chamber where the composition of the gas mixture and the abundances of the various gases are measured. The system's electronic "brain" is controlled by software developed by Brennwald himself. From here, the results are transferred to a computer.

If gases are to be analysed in water samples (e.g. from lakes), a membrane is used to separate the gases from the water, so the system's delicate components are not exposed to moisture.

Gasometrix spin-off established

Just two years after the Mini-Ruedi was first deployed in a project, another eight instruments are now in use -- a total of five at Eawag and four at the Universities of Geneva and Tubingen and the Mont Terri rock laboratory. As Matthias Brennwald has received numerous enquiries (not connected with Eawag projects) about purchasing the system, he decided -- in consultation with Eawag -- to establish a spin-off. Since April, he has been developing the portable systems under the name of Gasometrix; as a loyal Eawag employee, he adds, this is merely a sideline. The first client acquired for his own company is the University of Oxford.

Mini-Ruedi applications all over the world

The Mini-Ruedi can quantify numerous gases -- currently including helium, argon, krypton, nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane -- in environmental systems. Measurements of specific gases can help researchers to understand the underlying processes of gas formation. As this compact system (60 cm x 40 cm x 14 cm; 13 kg) can analyse various gases in less than a minute and can be deployed at remote locations, it is already widely used (for examples of applications in Eawag research projects around the world, see: http://gasometrix.com/map/). It has been used, for example, for water analyses to assess groundwater systems or to investigate anthropogenic effects on waterbodies. In a recent project in the Czech Republic, soil samples were analysed to study gas exhalations from springs. Also planned are analyses to be conducted for an oil and gas company in Norway: here, gas flows are to be monitored so that methane or carbon dioxide leaks can be detected.
Edmonton International Airport in Canada will become the first airport in the world to use the Robird on a daily basis. The Robird is produced by Clear Flight Solutions, a University of Twente (The Netherlands) spinoff company. It's a lifelike robotic bird that will scare real birds away from the airport, starting at the end of May.

Edmonton International Airport ("EIA") will be the first ever airport in the world to integrate a full suite of unmanned aerial system ("UAS") services into their daily airport operations. Starting in Q2 of 2017, Clear Flight Solutions ("CFS") and AERIUM Analytics ("AERIUM") will focus on safely integrating UAS technology at EIA. The primary focus will be on enhancing EIA's Wildlife Management Plan while supporting continued growth of the Edmonton Metro Region's aerotropolis.

The Wildlife Management Plan will integrate CFS's Robird technology to guide birds safely away from air traffic, while discouraging nesting near airside operations and glide paths. The Robird has been proven around the globe to be an effective, ecologically-friendly method of bird control. The high-tech Robird mimics the flight of an actual falcon in realistic fashion, making its flight behavior so indistinguishable from its natural counterpart that other birds believe that their natural enemy is present in the area.

"This is truly a historic moment for our company but especially for the entire aviation industry," says Nico Nijenhuis, CEO of Clear Flight Solutions. "We currently operate our Robirds in a variety of places, but taking the step towards full integration within daily operations at an airport is huge. For years, there has been a lot of interest from airports. To now officially start integrating our operations at a major Canadian airport is absolutely fantastic."

As part of the integrated suite of services, CFS AERIUM will be providing UAS mapping and inspections services to support EIA's maintenance programs and future economic development efforts. These operations will continue from the flight missions that have been diligently conducted prior to this release. The missions were completed to satisfy Safety and Hazard Identification Risk Assessments requirements in addition to demonstrating competency. UAS missions have been conducted under tight supervision within 400m of active runways. CFS AERIUM will continue working awards full integration into airside operations in a professional, safe, and effective manner.

"The Robird was the missing link in our integrated service model," says Jordan Cicoria of AERIUM. "Our relationship with Clear Flight Solutions has created an opportunity to have a positive ecologically-friendly impact on local industries at and surrounding the airport. In a world so focused on innovation Edmonton International Airport is an industry front runner and we are proud to have a partnership with Clear Flight Solutions that allows us to actually translate innovation into value," says Tim Bibby of AERIUM.
Research published online in The FASEB Journal shows that the improper methylation of a protein called "Septin2," which regulates the structure of cilia, was associated with an increased risk of having a neural tube defect (NTD) and confirms that cilia are important factors in determining susceptibility of NTDs.

"NTDs are devastating birth defects that compromise multiple aspects of a child's development," said Richard H. Finnell, Ph.D., DABMGG, a researcher involved in the work at the Department of Pediatrics, Dell Medical School, University of Texas at Austin (Austin, Texas). "Preventative methods, while remarkably effective, are not perfect. Efforts must be taken to understand leading developmental pathways that are amenable to modifications that offer hope for correcting the deficits secondary to failure of the neural tube to close properly during early embryogenesis."

Finnell and colleagues used genetically modified mice in which a gene involved in folic acid transport, called "slc19a1," was conditionally inactivated. The deactivated gene allowed the scientists to analyze whether the folic acid transport mechanism functions properly in certain cells of the developing embryo. They found that embryos without a functional slc19a1 gene had neural tube defects. The scientists then used pharmacological methods in these mice to reveal the methylation defects of the cilia protein.

"Despite their impressive name, primary cilia are sometimes not accorded the high stature they should have in both embryonic development and in adult organs," said Thoru Pederson, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "The same might be said of the field of protein methylation. This work brings the two together in a most interesting case."
As the rate of Lyme disease grows rapidly across the United States, new research offers veterinarians a forecasting map that tells them which parts of the country are most at risk of Lyme disease infections in dogs, which could also help track and predict Lyme disease in people.

The forecast map, created by Michael Yabsley, a parasitologist at the University of Georgia, and Christopher McMahan, an assistant professor of mathematical sciences at Clemson University, shows the predicted Lyme disease prevalence -- the percentage of dogs who are likely to test positive -- by county in each of the 48 contiguous states. It draws on monthly test data from veterinarians, providing the most timely picture of Lyme disease cases available.

"Our research into modeling disease in space and time shows us how dynamic canine Lyme disease is on an annual basis. It's our hope that these maps can be used to optimize patient care by veterinarians and public health officials or physicians," McMahan said.

Ticks that carry the disease-causing bacterium, Borrelia burgdorferi, were once thought to be limited to northern parts of the United States, but recent research shows they are now in half of the counties across the country, including Southern states.

Yabsley and McMahan combined factors associated with Lyme disease -- forestation, surface water area, temperature, population density and median household income -- with nearly 12 million Lyme disease test results collected between 2011 and 2015 in dogs, by county, in the contiguous United States, provided by the veterinary diagnostic company IDEXX Laboratories Inc.

The research is "a call to action for people to protect their dogs and for veterinarians to engage in conversations with their clients about risks to their pets and options for prevention, including vaccination and tick preventatives," said I. Craig Prior of the VCA Murphy Road Animal Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, and president of the Companion Animal Parasite Council board of directors.

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Ticks feed throughout the year, Prior said. As mice and other animals that ticks feed on move into new habitats, the ticks, and Lyme disease, move with them. "Awareness is the key, and forecasting helps people and veterinarians know the potential risk in their county," he said.

The research also has implications for Lyme disease in people.

"Dogs really are the canary in the coal mine for human infection. Our research team has evidence that the relationship between canine disease and human disease is strong," Yabsley said. "Because dogs are being tested for exposure during annual exams, these data are available on a national scale, something that is difficult to get when studying the ticks and environment directly."

McMahan and Yabsley are expanding this analysis and plan to release additional data on the relationship between human and canine disease later this year.

The research was originally conceptualized by the CAPC, which assembled a team of scientists from a variety of disciplines and institutions to address a major gap in the understanding of parasitic disease prevalence. CAPC is a nonprofit that works closely with academia and the animal health industry to provide veterinarians with up-to-date information on parasitic infections in pets.

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Veterinarians have typically relied on a preconceived understanding that Lyme disease was endemic in the Northeastern and Mid-Central United States.

"Integrating data on a national level allows for a more advanced view of the variables impacting Lyme disease prevalence, and expands our understanding of the true prevalence of disease across the U.S.," said Chris Carpenter, chief executive director of CAPC. "The scientists observed an apparent convergence of Lyme disease infection of dogs from the Northeastern and Mid-Central United States in the Great Lakes region, encompassing Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky and Michigan, all of which is supported by recent studies and CDC reports of expansion of the ticks that carry the pathogen into this region."

Initial symptoms of Lyme disease, which appear between five and 30 days in humans and two to five months in dogs, are flu-like: fatigue, low fever, achy muscles and joints. But if left undiagnosed or untreated, Lyme disease can cause long-term complications of the heart, nervous system and muscles.

"The research conducted by doctors Yabsley, McMahan and their interdisciplinary team has been instrumental in helping CAPC fulfill our mission to protect pets against vector-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease, and in helping us create the 2017 Lyme disease forecast," Carpenter said. "We are pleased to have funded this research effort and we look forward to expanding this research in support of human health as well."

Other research collaborators were epidemiologist Jenna Gettings, recipient of the Boehringer Ingelheim-CAPC Infectious Disease Postdoctoral Fellowship, mathematicians Robert Lund, Stella Watson and Yan Liu from Clemson, and immunologist Shila Nordone from North Carolina State University.

Further information: https://www.capcvet.org/articles/heartworm-disease-and-lyme-disease-are-forecasted-to-be-highly-problematic-in-2017/
The first analysis of how proteins are arranged in a cell was published today in Science, revealing that a large portion of human proteins can be found in more than one location in a given cell.

Using the Sweden-based Cell Atlas, researchers examined the spatial distribution of the human proteome that correspond to the majority of protein-coding genes, and they described in unprecedented detail the distribution of proteins to the various organelles and substructures of the human body's smallest unit, the cell.

Within a cell, the organelles create partitions that form an enclosed environment for chemical reactions tailored to fulfill specific functions in the cell. Since these functions are tightly linked to specific sets of proteins, knowing the subcellular location of the human proteome is key knowledge for understanding the function and underlying mechanisms of the human cell.

The study was led by Emma Lundberg, associate professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology and responsible for the High Content Microscopy facility at the Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) in Stockholm, Sweden. The team generated more than 300,000 images to systematically resolve the spatial distribution of human proteins in cultivated cell lines, and map them to cellular compartments and substructures with single cell resolution.

The Cell Atlas is the result of more than 10 years of research within the Human Protein Atlas program, and was launched in December 2016. The article in Science describes the detailed analysis of hundreds of thousands of images created as part of this international effort, which also involved groups in China, South Korea, India, Denmark, and Germany.

"Only by studying the molecular components of the body's smallest functional unit -- the cell -- can we reach a full understanding of human biology," says KTH Professor Mathias Uhlen, director of the Human Protein Atlas. "The Cell Atlas provides researchers with new knowledge that facilitates functional exploration of individual proteins and their role in human biology and disease."

The published article also includes a comparative study performed by Kathryn Lilley, director of the Cambridge Centre for Proteomics, at Cambridge University, UK, which enabled the antibody-based immunofluorescence (IF) microscopy analysis to be validated by an alternative mapping strategy that used mass spectrometry.

A total of 12,003 proteins targeted by 13,993 antibodies were classified into one or several of 30 cellular compartments and substructures, altogether defining the proteome of 13 major organelles. The organelles with the largest proteomes were the nucleus (6,930) and its substructures, such as bodies and speckles, and the cytosol (4,279).

Interestingly, about one-half of the proteins are found in more than one compartment revealing a shared pool of proteins in functionally unrelated parts of the cell. This finding sheds new light on the complexity of cells.

The Cell Atlas is an open access resource that can be used by researchers around the world to study proteins or organelles of interest. Lundberg says. "The Atlas enables systems biology and cell modeling applications, and it is also a highly valuable resource for machine learning applications in image pattern recognition."
Around 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, a giant asteroid crashed into the present-day Gulf of Mexico, leading to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. How plants were affected is less understood, but fossil records show that ferns were the first plants to recover many thousands of years afterward.

Now, a team including Cornell researchers reports the discovery of the first fossilized flowers from South America, and perhaps the entire Southern Hemisphere, following the extinction event. The fossils date back to the early Paleocene epoch, less than one million years after the asteroid struck. They were discovered in shales of the Salamanca Formation in Chubut Province, Patagonia, Argentina.

The researchers identified the fossilized flowers as belonging to the buckthorn family (Rhamnaceae). Today, the family is found worldwide.

The study was published May 10 in the online journal PLOS One. "The fossilized flowers provide a new window into the earliest Paleocene communities in South America, and they are giving us the opportunity to compare the response to the extinction event on different continents," said Nathan Jud, the paper's first author and a postdoctoral researcher in Maria Gandolfo's lab, a senior research associate at the L.H. Bailey Hortorium and a co-author of the paper.

The finding also helps resolve an ongoing debate in the field of paleobotany on the origin of the Rhamnaceae plant family. Scientists have argued about whether early buckthorns originated in an ancient supercontinent called Gondwana, which later split and includes most of the Southern Hemisphere landmasses today; or whether the family originated in another supercontinent called Laurasia that accounts for most of today's Northern Hemisphere landmasses.

"This, and a handful of other recently-discovered fossils from the Southern Hemisphere, supports a Gondwanan origin for Rhamnaceae in spite of the relative scarcity of fossils in the Southern Hemisphere relative to the Northern Hemisphere," Jud said.

Fossils found in Colombia and Southern Mexico offer evidence that plants from the Rhamnaceae family first appeared in the Late Cretaceous epoch shortly before the extinction event, Jud said.

Though there was likely some extinction when the asteroid struck, especially near the crater where everything was destroyed by impact-generated wildfires, he added.

One scenario is that Rhamnaceae first appeared in the tropics of Gondwana, but survived the extinction in Patagonia, and then spread from there after the extinction event as plants re-colonized the most affected areas, Jud said.

The Salamanca Formation is among the most precisely-dated sites from that era in the world. The age of the fossils was corroborated by radiometric dating (using radioactive isotopes), the global paleomagnetic sequence (signatures of reversals of Earth's magnetic field found in the samples), and fossil correlations (age of other fossils).

"These are the only flowers of Danian age [an age that accounts for about 5 million years following the extinction event] for which we have good age control," said Jud. Researchers have discovered other fossilized flowers in India and China from around the Danian age, but their dates are not as precise, he said.

To determine that the fossilized flowers from Argentina belonged to the Rhamnaceae family, the authors noticed that the organization of the petals and stamens in the fossil is found in Rhamnaceae and a few other families. They found examples of 10 of the 11 living Rhamnaceae tribes in the L.H. Bailey Hortorium Herbarium at Cornell University, which then were compared with morphological features in the fossil flowers to identify them.
Nestling blue tits can discriminate between the smell of other nestlings and adapt their begging behaviour accordingly. This is the outcome of the latest study by Dr. Barbara Caspers and Dr. Peter Korsten from Bielefeld University to be published today on the 12th of May in the journal Functional Ecology.

In this subproject, Dr. Barbara Caspers and Dr. Peter Korsten from Bielefeld University and Marta Rossi from the University of Sussex in Brighton (Great Britain) examined the begging behaviour of seven-day-old blue tit nestlings from a population near the Dutch city of Groningen. 'Blue tit nestlings beg to obtain food from their parents and may have to compete with as many as ten peers in the nest that are not all necessarily full siblings,' explains Dr. Peter Korsten. In earlier studies of other songbirds, it was already found that this competition intensifies when nestlings are competing with non-kin. Then nestlings beg even more intensively for food.

In the present study, the research team presented nestlings of blue tits with two different smells: an familiar smell of siblings from their own nest and an unfamiliar smell of unrelated nestlings from another nest. In both experimental situations, the biologists then measured how much the nestlings begged. Results showed that blue tit nestlings beg longer and more intensely after being exposed to the smell of the unfamiliar nestlings compared to the familiar smell of their own nest mates. 'Up to now, we did not know how songbird nestlings were able to discriminate between the smell of close kin and less related individuals when competing for food from their parents. Our study shows that they may well smell this difference,' says Caspers.

Science had long assumed that birds cannot smell at all. Behavioural researchers together with Dr. Barbara Caspers at Bielefeld University have already been able to disprove this in earlier studies on zebra finches.
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The U.S. Army recently completed field testing the MEHEL (Mobile High Energy Laser) Syryker, yet another American AUD (Anti UAV Defense) weapon. This 18 ton wheeled armored vehicle is equipped with a 5 KW laser and a 12.7mm machine-gun. The machine-gun has a range (against small targets) of 2,000 meters. The laser has about the same range but is more accurate and makes no sound and that is important in preventing the enemy from finding out where the MEHEL vehicle is. In addition to the laser the MEHEL vehicle carries a number of electronic systems for detecting and jamming commercial UAVs.

The MEHEL is the latest of many responses to the growing (since 2016) number of Islamic terrorists in Iraq and Syria using commercial UAVs, especially quad-copters, on a large scale. Some of these UAVs have been equipped with an explosive payload and sent on one-way trips to attack a target. But most of them were used for reconnaissance and surveillance and in that role they were expected to come back. As American countermeasures for this began arriving in Iraq the Islamic terrorists tried to adapt and often succeeded briefly.

The jammers and other electronic detection devices used by AUD systems have been showing up in Iraq and Syria since 2014. Some AUDs mainly detect UAVs and either jam or take over the control signal and capture (by making it land) the UAV. What troops were asking for were AUD systems that used lasers and better UAV detection systems as well those with jammers to disable UAVs. These AUDS can be defeated if a user sends a small UAV off on a pre-programmed mission. This can be to take photos or deliver a small explosive. Usually it is to take photos and return. MEHEL is equipped to detect and locate UAVs operating in pre-programmed mode and destroy or disable them quietly with the laser.

American forces have already been using an older technique to locate where the UAV operators are and hit them with artillery or an airstrike. This meant using a system they developed back in 2005. That involved a JSTARS radar aircraft tracking where the attackers went after an attack or setting up a roadside bomb. This was often easy to do because many of the attacks took place in sparely populated places and bombs were placed at night. JSTARS could track vehicles on the ground over a wide area and record that information. For example, a single JSTARS can cover all of central Iraq, although its ground radar can only track a smaller area. The JSTARS radar has two modes: wide area (showing a 25 by 20 kilometer area) and detailed (4,000 by 5,000 meters). The radar can see out to several hundred kilometers and each screen full of information could be saved and brought back later to compare to another view (to see what has moved). In this manner operators could track movement of ground units over a wide area. Operators could also use the detail mode to pick out specific details of what's going on down there, like tracking the movement of vehicles fleeing the scene of an ambush or after setting up a roadside bomb. JSTARS is really good at picking up trucks moving along highways on flat terrain. JSTARS can stay up there for over 12 hours at a time, and two or more JSTARS can operate in shifts to provide 24/7 coverage. Until U.S. troops left in 2011 there was always at least one JSTARS operating in Iraq. Islamic terrorists never came up with a successful counter for this particular technique and the existence of this capability severely limited Islamic terrorist bomb planting operations.

A variant on this was applied in Iraq and Syria when the Islamic terrorist UAVs were sent out on automatic. There are other ways to spot and track these small UAVs and with that the UAVs could be tracked to where they came from and that location was then either put under surveillance or bombed. It didnt take ISIL veterans (especially those who had been active during the earlier 2005-8 campaign) to figure out why their UAV bases were being discovered and attacked. So new techniques were developed, at least by the few ISIL groups still operating.
The Chinese L-15 (or JL-15) jet trainer never achieved much popularity (sales) as a trainer so the manufacturer has introduced an upgraded L-15B version that is more capable as a combat aircraft, especially for ground attack and reconnaissance while also being more useful as for training pilots. The two-seat 9.5 ton, twin engine L-15 can achieve supersonic speeds and has the kind of high-tech cockpit found in modern fighters. The L-15 was designed to be produced in several versions, all of them two seat aircraft. The different versions are modified slightly to equip the aircraft for various types of pilot training (advanced trainer or initial fighter trainer) as well as combat tasks.

The L-15A is equipped with AI-222 jet engines made by the Ukrainian firm Motor Sich which also supplies AI-25 engines for the older 4.3 ton L-8 trainer that entered service in 1994 and has sold quite well.

The L-15B uses a more powerful version of the AI-222 as well as improved electronics. L-15B has nine hard points for carrying up to 3.5 tons of bombs and missiles. The L-15A sells for about $15 million each and the L-15B is expected to sell for nearly $20 million depending on accessories.

The L-15B appears to be influenced by the success of the T-50. The FA-50 is the combat version of the South Korean designed and manufactured T-50 jet trainer. China appears embarrassed by their smaller neighbor surpassing them with several new weapons systems and the T-50 has been a popular export item. South Korea began working on the T-50 after 2000 and spent over two billion dollars on the effort. The first test flight took place in 2002. The 13 ton aircraft is actually a light fighter and can fly at supersonic speeds. With some added equipment (radars and fire control) the T-50 becomes the FA-50, a combat aircraft. This version carries a 20mm auto-cannon and up to 4.5 tons of smart bombs and missiles. The T-50 can stay in the air about four hours per sortie and has a service life of 8,000 hours in the air.

The main use of both the T-50 and L-15 is preparing new pilots for high end aircraft. But the L-15 proved too expensive (compared to existing jet trainers). The L-15 first flew in 2006 and the L-15A was available by 2008. The Chinese Air Force only bought about a dozen L-15As for evaluation and decided that it was cheaper and easier to stick with the older L-8 as well as the similar L-9. The L-9 is less expensive because it is based on the MiG-21 fighter design or, rather, the Chinese clone the J-7.

For the L-15 Export sales have been hard to come by, with only about 24 such sales confirmed. Ukraine, which supplies the engines, was expected to be a customer but because of the Russian invasion that is not a priority. Actually Ukraine is more interested in building the L-15 under license. Pakistan, another potential export customer, is also attracted to the local construction option.

The Chinese can take comfort in the fact that its booming economy produces so many new (and financially successful) engineering and aeronautical firms that these private companies can afford to develop new designs and the Chinese military, and potential export customers, can select the ones they prefer.
The Philippines has decided to equip the two British made AW159 Wildcat helicopters it ordered in 2016 with the Israeli Spike NLOS missile. These missiles would be used against surface targets. These two helicopters will operate from the two new frigates the Philippines also ordered from South Korea in 2016. Each of these frigates will carry one AW159, which is also used by the South Korean Navy and Britain (army and navy). Similar in size and capability to the U.S. SH-60 Seahawk, the six ton Wildcat has a normal endurance of 90 minutes (270 minutes carrying max fuel) and a top speed of 290 kilometers an hour. For naval service the Wildcat can carry dipping sonar and one or two anti-submarine torpedoes. In cargo mode it can carry seven passengers or half a ton of cargo.

The Spike NLOS (Non Line-Of-Sight) is a long-range (25 kilometers) version of the Israeli Spike guided missile. Each one weighs 70kg (155 pounds), twice what the next largest Spike version. Spike is a series of anti-tank (or whatever) missiles with ranges from 200-25,000 meters. Spike NLOS can be fired at a target the operator cannot see (but someone else, with a laser designator, can see). Spike NLOS is usually fired from helicopters, which can also carry the laser designator. The Philippines wants to use Spike NLOS off their west coast, to help block Chinese efforts to take possession of Filipino islands and reefs. The Wildcats can carry four Spike NLOS missiles. A helicopter only has to be about 40 meters (122 feet) above the water to spot something 25 kilometers away. The Spike NLOS has multiple guidance systems, including a live video feed that allows the pilot to fly the missile into to the target, or use the image of the selected target to have the missile home in by itself (fire and forget). On the downside Spike NLOS is expensive, costing over $250,000 each.
A U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 169th Fighter Wing deploys flares over McEntire Joint National Guard Base, South Carolina, May 6, 2017 during the South Carolina National Guard Air and Ground Expo. This expo is a combined arms demonstration showcasing the abilities of South Carolina National Guard Airmen and Soldiers while saying thank you for the support of fellow South Carolinians and the surrounding community. (U.S. Air National Guard photo/Tech. Sgt. Jorge Intriago)

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The key crises of the moment is North Korean defiance and nukes. This is a situation that is unpopular with Chinese in general (based on the tone of the chatter on the Chinese Internet) and even more so with Chinese leaders who find themselves under pressure from popular opinion as well as the rest of the world (especially South Korea and the United States) to act decisively. Historically Chinese leaders have learned to avoid acting decisively because the results tend to be unpredictable and usually bad. Thus the Chinese curse may you live in interesting times.

The sanctions imposed so far have hurt North Korea and crippled their armed forces. Yet the Kim dynasty is still in power. But North Korea is increasingly vulnerable to sanctions that reduce access to imports essential for nukes, missiles and other military efforts. The United States, South Korea and even the UN have managed to obtain details of how North Korea partially overcomes sanctions and that indicated what additional sanctions would do the most damage, especially to North Korea military and government officials directly involved with forbidden programs (nukes, missiles and evading sanctions.) Any new sanctions will only work if China (and to a lesser extent Russia) cooperates. Russia appears ready to follow the Chinese lead in this area. China is undecided on how far to go in this direction.

North Korea is now extremely vulnerable to China halting all oil exports. China is the only source of petroleum for North Korea and China has already cut the tonnage over the last year but is reluctant to halt all shipments. In response to that North Korea has, for years, been converting thousands of trucks to run on coal gas. This sort of thing was popular in Japan and Germany during World War II because of oil shortages but largely disappeared after 1945. In North Korea these coal powered trucks are an increasingly common sight. But coal gas is half as efficient as petroleum fuels, and vehicles using it are slower, have less range and require more maintenance. Thus coal gas is not suitable for most military vehicles or combat operations. The sluggish and smoky coal powered trucks remind North Korean that their war is not over yet.

Even though China now prosecutes and punishes some businesses that take bribes to help North Korea evade sanctions there are a few sanctions, like no oil at all, that would be much more difficult to evade. If North Korea persisted the next step would a ban on North Korea commercial and military aircraft using foreign airports. Same with North Korean ships. Rail and road traffic into North Korea can be monitored because it can only enter via a few Chinese and Russian border crossings.

Finally there is the possibility of doing fatal damage to North Koreas illegal banking network. The U.S. has been successful at hunting down and punishing major banks and financial institutions that help North Korea move cash to fuel the illegal trade and this would be more effective if China cooperated. But North Korea has access to many financial institutions in China that are protected by powerful local officials. With the backing of the Chinese government the banking sanctions could then be more thorough and be extended to hundreds of individuals (most of them North Koreans) who make the illegal banking network work.

Another North Korean export that could be banned is slave labor. Most of what North Korean workers overseas are paid is taken by an unofficial agent of the North Korean government and then the cash is transported back to North Korea. These legal North Korean migrant workers are part of what amounts to a slave labor program that has become a major (up to $2 billion a year) source of foreign exchange for North Korea. The export of North Korean workers has gone from 60,000 men and women in 2014 to over 100,000 in 2016. The number of workers outside the country is nearly triple what it was before Kim Jong Un took over in 2011. The government takes up to 90 percent of the wages these men and women earn outside the country (mainly in Russia and China) and holds the workers families hostage in case the worker does not return home when ordered. If someone does not come back, their families are sent to prison camps. If North Korea cannot afford to import luxuries and consumer goods for the few percent of families that run the police state there will be greater opportunities for China to quietly offer Kim subordinates a lucrative way out. This is right out of the ancient Chinese playbook for dealing with troublesome neighbors.

South China Sea Blowback

The Philippines have defied China by moving troops and construction equipment to Pagasa, a disputed island in the Spratlys. This particular incident got started in early 2016 when China was seen making preparations to build an artificial island at Jackson Atoll, install a small military garrison and declare the area part of China. Nearby Pagasa is the second-largest (37.2 hectares/93 acres) of the Spratly Islands and is inhabited by 200 Filipinos civilians and a few military personnel. China has been increasingly belligerent in its claims to Pagasa and threatens to take it back by force. Chinese military and civilian ships are showing up near Pagasa with increasing frequency and sometimes the Chinese vessels try (by getting in the way) to prevent non-Chinese vessels from getting too close to the island. The Philippines often has a coast guard patrol boat off the island (which is 480 kilometers from the nearest Filipino territory China does not claim) and that provides the possibility of a violent military encounter. China is also concerned with the increasingly frequent visits of American warships to the Philippines (for leave and maintenance) and the South China Seas (to challenge Chinese claims.) So far China has not been violent but with more and more Chinese warships, warplanes and troops showing up in the South China Sea there appears to be increased risk of someone opening fire. There are a growing number of offenders for the Chinese to shoot at. In addition to ships from the nearest countries (mainly Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan) there are the more powerful allies of these countries (mainly Japan and the United States). Now the Philippines is daring China to make an aggressive move at a time when China is busy with several similar situations from Africa to Korea and the Japanese islands.

May 10, 2017: Government controlled mass media featured stories about new combat UAVs and ballistic missiles with an emphasis on being able to destroy large enemy warships and evade defenses. That means the main target is the U.S. Navy. This media effort included mention of a jet powered UAV similar to the American Sea Avenger and a DF-26 ballistic missile that can find and hit large warships over a thousand kilometers away. Neither of these systems is known to work, even though the carrier-killer ballistic missile has been under development for over a decade. This sort of media offensive is usually aimed at American efforts to dispute Chinese claims in the South China Sea. But this time its mainly about American naval forces headed for Korea and the implied threat to North Korea and its nuclear program. Its also about the South Korea anti-missile systems, which the new Chinese systems were described being able to defeat. China is sending a message to the new South Korean president that took power today. Since 2010 (when North Korea actually attacked South Korea but tried to deny it) South Korean leaders have been less willing to follow the Chinese lead on North Korea and demanded that North Korea back off on its nuclear and other military threats to South Korea. China prefers both Koreas do what China wants and for South Korea this means no anti-ballistic missile systems. The new South Korean leader is believed to be less hardline and has agreed to meet with Chinese leaders to discuss the North Korean threat, and whatever else China is concerned about.

May 9, 2017: Satellite photos reveal that China has installed more missile systems at its newly expanded Yulin naval base in the south (Hainan Island). The Yulin base has been there since 1955 but after 2000 China decided to expand it and by 2006 satellite photos showed new tunnels into coastal mountains that submarines could be sheltered in. Yulin was recently revealed to be the main base for Chinas aircraft carriers as well as SSBNs (ballistic missile carrying subs). These days Yulin is the main base for operations in the South China Sea, which it is adjacent to.

May 8, 2017: Four Chinese coast guard vessels entered Japanese territorial waters (within 22 kilometers of land) around the Senkaku islands. One of the four ships clearly had a gun turret, which most Chinese coast guard vessels sent near the Senkakus lack. A growing number of Chinese coast guard ships are actually older warships with some of their weapons removed. In this case Japan issued an official protest which China dismissed because China does not recognize Japanese claims to Senkaku. There have been a growing number of such incidents since 2015. So far in 2017 there have been 43 similar incidents compared to 30 for all of 2016 (plus 91 incursions in other areas). In early 2016 Japan announced the creation of a new naval task force to patrol and defend the Senkakus. This force consists of ten new 1,500 patrol ships and two older vessels carrying helicopters. Japan has controlled the Senkakus for over a century and says it will use force to retain possession. China has challenged Japan and its allies to do just that. Aircraft incursions (nearly all from China and Russia) into Japanese airspace also hit record highs in 2016.

May 7, 2017: Japan is changing its laws to make it easier to donate retired military equipment to other countries. One of the first neighbors to benefit from this is Malaysia which is interested in receiving some of the used, but well maintained and modernized P-3C maritime patrol aircraft Japan is retiring (and replacing with a more modern aircraft). Japan and South Korea have been joining the United States in making these donations to local allies. The U.S. has been doing this for decades. China is doing the same but recipient nations prefer the higher quality Western tech that Japan and South Korea are passing out. Both nations have a reputation for creating world-class tech, both commercial and military.

May 6, 2017: Off Taiwan the coast guard seized a Chinese fishing boat caught poaching. It was night and the Chinese boat tried to run for it but was stopped by warning shots and some rubber bullets that hit two crewmen. This poaching is a problem China refuses to deal with because China considers Taiwan part of China. Thus in 2016 Taiwan caught 1,376 Chinese fishing boats poaching and seized 94 of them. China shows its displeasure in other ways, like discouraging Chinese tourists from visiting Taiwan. So far this year Chinese tourism has been down 50 percent (to about 150,000 a month. After 2008 China began making it easier for Chinese tourists to visit Taiwan and soon millions were doing so each year. Many Taiwanese saw this as another ploy to take over their island nation one way (economically) or another (militarily). In response to that Taiwan has been expanding and upgrading its armed forces. This annoys the Chinese leaders who are seen (by Chinese able to get around the Internet censors) as all talk and little more.

May 5, 2017: The Chinese designed and built C919 commercial airliner made its first flight. It was a success and made it clear the C919 could be a competitor to the Boeing 737 and AirBus 320. But in terms of tech the C919 is at least a decade behind the most recent 737s and 320s. No problem, as China knows it has to develop new skills and industries one at a time if they want to become a manufacturer of world class commercial aircraft. The Chinese airlines (many of them state owned) can be ordered to buy the C919, which will make that aircraft profitable as it catches up with the rest of the world. Meanwhile there are many military uses for the C919. This is partly because the twin-jet 737 is the most widely used commercial aircraft in the world, closely followed by the 320 (built to take advantage of the 737 success and to get AirBus going). Since the 1990s China has been a major customer for the 737 but after 2000 it appeared China wanted to build its own 737 for civilian and military uses. In 2010 photos began to appear of Chinese Air Force radar aircraft based on Boeing 737s. This is illegal, as China has to obtain permission. However, the 737 in question appears to be equipped to track missile tests, which can be explained away as a scientific, not military, purpose. The same explanation was given, and accepted, in 2005 when Chinese 737s were seen being fitted with military grade radar.

May 4, 2017: American and South Korean intel analysts believe North Korean air defenses are largely obsolete and vulnerable. Most of the North Korean air defenses are Cold War era systems but there is some newer stuff like the KN-06. This was believed to be a clone of the Chinese FT-2000 (which is a clone of the Russian S300). China may have quietly provided some data on KN-06 recently along with other intel on the capabilities of North Korean air defenses. Meanwhile South Korea has begun production of its new KM-SAM (Iron Hawk) surface-to-air missile systems. The first batteries would deploy in 2018. KM-SAM is what North Korea implied they had with KN-06 but KM-SAM is real and developed in South Korea.

May 3, 2017: The government announced additional restrictions on what Chinese news media can post to the Internet as well as what appears in social media and so on. This new order arises from the fact that there are few Chinese publications now that lack an Internet presence. While China has long tolerated some unregulated discussions in print publications (often to get a debate started over controversial proposals) it is nearly impossible to hide anything on the Internet because of automated search tools and the fact that there are over 700 million Chinese Internet users and non-Chinese can use free translation tools to turn Chinese language Internet content into something readable (and potentially embarrassing to powerful people). So China has ordered more censors hired so that everything coming from Chinese media gets reviewed before appearing. Editors will be held personally responsible. This follows a mid-2016 Chinese ban on what it described as fake news and the spreading of rumors especially if the details are obtained from social media on the Internet. This also meant more work for the many people who work (full or part time) for the Chinese Internet censorship organization. This Great Firewall of China has had some success but unlike pre-Internet media, the Internet cannot be completely purged of news the government does not want freely available. The 2016 announcement was not a surprise. It came after a rare event in which Chinese leaders criticized, in public, their own Propaganda Department for not doing its job. The Propaganda Department is the several hundred people who direct the vast censorship operation that is supposed to block inappropriate messages (that make the Communist Party look bad) and encourage approved ideas. In addition to controlling most mass media in China the Propaganda Department supervises how more than $10 billion a year is spent on pro-China publicity outside the country. Inside China this media manipulation effort employs millions of full time and part time personnel who, since the 1990s, have concentrated more on the Internet. Over a decade ago the rulers of China (which remains a communist police state) noted that they were losing control of their media, which had long been a key component of maintaining a dictatorship. The effort to regain the pre-Internet media monopoly has not been going well and until recently received little official notice. The recent criticism concentrated on failures to keep the traditional mass media (radio, TV, newspapers) in line. This is not unexpected because the massive efforts to censor the Internet have only been partially successful and the disturbing (to the Communist Chinese Party that rules China) new ideas that began spreading in the Internet have spread to the traditional mass media, despite the fact that most media personnel in China are government employees.

May 2, 2017: The United States confirmed that the first THAAD battery in South Korea was operational already. In the waters off Korea an American carrier group was joined by South Korea, Japanese and other warships for joint training. The Japanese contingent included one of its two Izumo class destroyers These 27,000 ton ships first entered service in 2015 and are officially for anti-submarine operations. The Izumos can carry up to 28 aircraft and are armed only with two 20mm Phalanx anti-missile cannon and launcher with sixteen ESSM missiles for anti-missile defense. The Izumos can also carry vertical takeoff jet fighters like the F-35B.

April 30, 2017: In the Philippines five Chinese warships visited (at Davao city in the south). This is the first such visit to the Philippines since 2010. But the newly improved relationship between China and the Philippines is not likely to last since most Filipinos are opposed to it. While the new Filipino leader has tried to develop better relations with China he is disappointed at the lack of tangible results.

April 25, 2017: China announced that coal imports from Russia were up nearly 20 percent (to 2.3 million tons). This is a level not seen since 2014 and is largely because China is now blocking North Korea coal imports. Russia is sending coal used to produce steel and China actually bets most of this anthracite coal from Australia, Mongolia and Indonesia. These three countries sent some 12 million tons of anthracite to China in March. Overall China cut imports from North Korea by 35 percent in March. But exports were not reduced.

April 24, 2017: Thailand announced that it had approved a deal to buy three Chinese submarines for $393 million each. The military government got a lot of criticism for this deal, especially from retired generals and admirals who were unafraid to point out that the military had more pressing and practical needs (like new patrol boats and helicopters for the navy) than submarines. Officially the navy defends the purchase as necessary because Thailand has to defend its Andaman Islands and all its neighbors have submarines. But Thai naval officials admit that most Thai coastal waters are too shallow for most submarine operations. Historians point out that every time there is a military government the military takes advantage of it to get major purchases made. This often involves corruption opportunities because buying stuff that is not needed is nothing new. In the 1990s a military government approved the purchase of an aircraft carrier that became infamous for never having anything to do and absorbing so much of the navy budget to maintain that the admirals gradually diverted money away from the carrier and the expensive ship spent most of its career (which has not ended get) tied up in port without any aircraft or even a full crew. In the spirit of that carrier the navy has long sought money for submarines. In mid-2016 the navy revived its plan to buy three submarines from China. The navy had first proposed this in June 2015 but withdrew the proposal a month later because of so much opposition. Most Thais oppose the navy submarine proposal and believe that the billion dollars needed to buy the three Chinese subs would be better spent on updating the rest of the navy and buying for patrol boats to improve security along the coasts. The sad shape of many Thai warships, especially the sole aircraft carrier, is a national embarrassment. Each of the three Chinese submarines costs more than the carrier did. Another factor (that can get you arrested if discussed openly in Thailand) is the Chinese frequently using bribes to expedite major weapons sales.

April 22, 2017: In North Korea an American citizen of Korean ancestry was arrested as he was about to board a flight out of the country. The arrested man is an accounting expert who was teaching at a North Korean university. The U.S. warns its citizens to stay away from North Korea because in times of crises North Korea will arrest foreigners, especially Americans, and use them as hostages for blackmail. China has been quietly giving its citizens the same advice because this time the North Koreans are calling China the enemy as well. North Korea later seized another U.S. citizen who did not get out in time.

April 20, 2017: : China and Pakistan finally signed the agreement that grants China a 40 year lease on new facilities China is building in the southwestern port of Gwadar. The lease grants China most (over 80 percent) of the revenue brought in by port and free trade zone operations. Gwadar is a key part of the $55 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). This project began in 2013 when China agreed to spend $18 billion to build a road from Gwadar into northwest China. This will require drilling long tunnels through the Himalayan Mountains on the border (in Pakistani controlled Kashmir.) The road and a natural gas pipeline are part of the larger CPEC project. This will make it much easier and cheaper to move people, data (via fiber optic cables) and goods between China and Pakistan. India fears Gwadar will serve as a base for Chinese warships. Pakistan has no problem with Chinese warships using Gwadar as it helps keep local troublemakers out. The thousands of Chinese coming into Pakistan for this project are prime targets for Islamic terrorists and tribal separatists in Baluchistan. The people in Gwadar will benefit greatly from the construction and the expanded port but the lease agreement provides no payments to the government of Baluchistan. Because of the threats from locals and Islamic terrorists in general Pakistan has formed a special security force, currently 20,000 strong, dedicated to keeping the foreign (mainly Chinese) workforce safe. China has helped with security effort. For example in January the Pakistani navy put into service two 600 ton, Chinese built, patrol ships to help protect the newly expanded port. A third one of these arrived today. At the end of 2016 the Pakistani navy officially established Task Force 88 in Gwadar, a city of 100,000 and site of one of the biggest construction projects in the country. The new naval task force will use warships, maritime patrol aircraft and UAVs to guard the coastal areas from any Islamic terrorist attack against ships, especially Chinese ones. Pakistan has assured China that there would be no terrorist violence against Chinese working on upgrading the port of Gwadar and land links north to China. Pakistan is willing to pay a high price to get CPEC done because it means Pakistan has an ally against Iran and even Western powers that might have some violent disagreement with Pakistan.

April 19, 2017: Russia blocked a UN vote to censure North Korea for its latest ballistic missile test. China backed the measure, continuing its abandonment of voting with Russia to block UN measures hostile to North Korea.

April 16, 2017: China joined Russia is sending intelligence collecting ships to shadow the American carrier task force approaching Korea.

Nepal, which has long maintained close economic and political ties with India, held its first joint military exercises with China. Nepal has also had problems with communist (Maoist) rebels over the last two decades and China made itself useful in dealing with that situation. China is trying to increase its presence in Nepal.

April 15, 2017: North Korea celebrated the 105th anniversary of founder Kim Il Sungs birth. Since the founder died in 1994, just as the post-Cold War economic collapse was beginning to kill many North Koreans (from starvation) and the economy was collapsing, commemorating his passing has become a big deal. This year the parade in the capital was exceptionally large. But one thing was missing; an official delegation from China. That had never happened before and it convinced many people that the rumors of Chinese displeasure with the Kim government were indeed true. Most North Koreans also know that China was the only major ally they had left and source of key imports like food and oil.

April 13, 2017: China is openly offering North Korea a renewal of their mutual defense treaty if North Korea will drop its nuclear weapons program. China has quietly cancelled the decades long defense agreement over the last few months. North Korea did not respond to this new offer.

Japan has quietly issued instructions to citizens on how to respond to a warning of an imminent North Korean missile attack. The instructions pointed out that there would be as little as ten minutes warning and that citizens should immediately take cover, get their vehicles off the road and be prepared to follow any orders by security forces. Although Japan has a formidable anti-missile defense system they like to prepare for every contingency.

April 12, 2017: A Chinese daily newspaper (Global Times) known for being a state-controlled media outlet used to test new ideas published an item today pointing out that if North Korea does not abandon its nuclear weapons program (which is seen as a threat to China) then China will bomb the nuclear facilities and North Korea will have to live with that or suffer further military and economic consequences they cannot respond to (by attacking China). This article also warned the United States not to contemplate doing this, as North Korea was for neighboring China to deal with, not some distant superpower. Within hours the article was removed from the Global Times website, but many people had seen it and it still existed in Google cache. In other words, China was telling North Korea that stronger measures from China were now a possibility. At the same time the U.S. was making it clear that the kind of attack on Syria the U.S. recently carried out could be tried on North Korea. China agrees that it might come to that but they insist that the bombs or missiles be Chinese.

For the first time China refused to join Russia in blocking a UN resolution criticizing the Syrian government. This time it was about the recent use of nerve gas, which Russian insists did not happen. China was never an active participant in the Syria war and went along with Russia because the two nations see themselves as united to oppose American domination. But now the U.S. and China are negotiating a new relationship and Russia fears that means less support from China. While China is backing away from supporting Russia in Syria the same cannot be said for other common problems, like North Korea. China and Russia are still coordinating moves when it comes to North Korea.
There have been about a hundred terrorism (Islamic or tribal) related deaths so far in 2017. Its not always clear which incidents are about Islamic terrorism and which are about clan or tribal feuds or simply banditry. Even with that there is more violence this year and Islamic terrorists are the main cause. This is a trend as Islamic terrorist violence was up nearly 50 percent (to 257 clashes) in 2016 for Mali and its neighbors Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Niger. Yet the violence does not appear to be escalating rapidly. In part that is because the Islamic terror groups are generally unpopular. So far in 2017 the incidence of Islamic terrorist violence is about the same in these countries. The local Islamic terror groups have responded by forming JNIM (Jamaah Nusrah al Islam wal Muslimin, or Group for the support of Islam and Moslems). In part this is a reaction to the growing threat from ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) which is hostile to everyone who is not ISIL and will attack or recruit from the JNIM members AQIM (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), Ansar Dine, FLM (Macina Liberation Front), and al Mourabitoun.

A major reason for the formation of JNIM was the ability of experienced al Qaeda media experts to help the African coalition set up and sustain an effective and robust (resistant to attack) media operation. Al Qaeda has a large following among educated (media and Internet savvy) young Moslems in the West. Local JNIM groups have access to the Internet and know that al Qaeda and ISIL have been successful in exploiting local and international media. So although some JNIM members have had bad relationships with al Qaeda in the past they are all willing to give unity a chance. There is also the desperation angle because the French led counter-terrorism campaign is also quite effective and has access to international allies and assets. For JNIM it was really a matter of unify or die.

The side-effects of more JNIM activity may look good in the Internet but are bad news to the locals, especially when it comes to education. The Islamic terrorist groups are particularly hostile to education (other than Islamic religious indoctrination and basic literacy). So far this year JNIM operations against schools have deprived over 150,000 children of education. The parents are not happy with this and many are as angry at the government for not dealing with the problem as they are at the Islamic terrorists who are the problem. The government was never known for efficiency or honesty and the politicians and government workers they hire have a hard time giving up their corrupt (and lucrative) ways.

In central Mali (near the junction of the Niger and Bani rivers) violence between Peul (Fulani) and Bambara tribesmen has gotten worse in 2017 and the tribes are angry at the government for agreeing that this is terrible and then doing nothing. One of the worst incidents was in February when some Bambara attacked a Peul village and killed at least 30 people and wounded many more. More than 500 villagers fled their homes to avoid the violence. That violence has continued and so far this year has forced over 10,000 people from their homes. This tribal feuding has been going on for years but got worse since 2015 when the Peul became widely known as a source of recruits for Islamic terrorist groups and for generally supporting JNIM. The more numerous Bambara (who tend to be pro-government) live north of the Niger and are about a third of the Mali population. The Fulani (who tend to be more rebellious) are largely from south of the Niger. This is not just a Mali problem as Nigeria complains that armed Fulani herders from Mali have showed up in northeast Nigeria and joined local Islamic terrorist groups.

The neighbors are alarmed at how the Islamic terrorist attitudes are spreading. The best example is how the oldest Islamic terror group in Mali (Ansar Dine) quietly helped create an increasingly active branch in Burkina Faso called Ansarul Islam. Ansar Dine began in the north near Timbuktu (because many of its leaders and members came from the area). Ansar Dine was unique in that it was the only Islamic terrorist group from Mali and was formed in 2012 by Tuareg Islamic radicals who were formerly secular rebels. Ansarul Islam came along in 2015, composed largely of Burkina Faso natives and was not really active (as Islamic terrorists) until 2016. From the beginning Ansar Dine saw itself as the only Malian group in the region and many Malians considered foreign Islamic terrorists (like al Qaeda) a bunch of gangsters, dependent on its relationship with drug gangs (al Qaeda moves the drugs north to the Mediterranean coast) and kidnappers (who hold Europeans for multi-million dollar ransoms). All this cash gave al Qaeda a lot of power, both to buy weapons and hire locals. After France chased most Islamic terrorists out of the north in 2013 Ansar Dine became the main AQIM representative in Mali because it was not considered foreign and thus able to survive among kinsmen. This was noted by Islamic radicals in neighboring Burkina Faso and this eventually led to Ansarul Islam. These two groups often share bases and other resources on both sides of the border. For this reason there have been several major counter-terror operations in that border region this year.

UN peacekeeping operations in Mali has suffered highest casualty rate of all UN peacekeeping missions. UN peacekeepers in Mali suffered 26 dead during 2016, the highest number of any UN peacekeeping operation and 90 percent of the UN peacekeeper deaths in 2016, even though the Mali force comprises less than 15 percent of all UN peacekeepers. The Mali peacekeepers have been in this situation for three years in a row. So far 116 peacekeepers (mostly UN, but some French) have died in Mali since they arrived in 2013. This was the result of 72 violent incidents. This is the highest casualty rate of all current UN peacekeeping operations.

May 7, 2017: In the north (outside Gao) Islamic terrorists attacked an army base by first disabling a communications tower to delay calls for reinforcements. Then a suicide care bomb was used against the main entrance followed by several gunmen who attacked people inside the camp. Seven soldiers died and about 30 were wounded or missing. The Islamic terrorists loaded three trucks with weapons, ammunition and equipment and fled.

May 3, 2017: In the north (near Timbuktu) Islamic terrorists fired six rockets into a peacekeeper camp killing one peacekeeper and wounding eight others.

May 2, 2017: In central Mali (Segou) ten soldiers were killed and nine wounded when their vehicle ran over a mine, apparently placed by Islamic terrorists, and the survivors were fired on by nearby gunmen.

April 29, 2017: In the north (southwest of Gao near the Burkina Faso border) French troops led a multiday operation that killed or captured twenty Islamic terrorists using airstrikes and ground forces.

April 28, 2017: Down south parliament approved extending the state of emergency another six months. The state of emergency has been in force since November 2015 and makes it illegal for crowds to assemble and demonstrations to take place without permission. The security forces can ignore some legal procedures when making arrests and holding people in custody. The state of emergency was first enacted, for ten days at a time, after the November 2015 terror attack but later extensions were longer. Before 2015 a previous state of emergency ended in July 2013.

April 21, 2017: Intelligence indicates that the February 8 kidnapping of catholic nun Gloria Cecilia Argoti may have been a case of mistaken identity. She was taken by local men who have since been arrested. But the captive was sold to, or taken by Fulani Islamic terrorists and may have been moved to neighboring Burkina Faso to evade the intense hunt for her. The kidnapping occurred in the south (300 kilometers east of the capital near the Burkina Faso border) when four armed men kidnapped a Catholic nun (from Colombia) who provided health care from a clinic in a parish compound. At first it was feared the kidnappers were Islamic terrorists, who prefer to attack non-Moslems (especially clergy) and kidnap foreigners. There has not yet been a ransom demand and may not be one involving cash because no one (family, Catholic Church, foreign government) is willing to pay a ransom (which just encourages more kidnappings). Instead the JNIM group that holds her will probably try to get a swap (for a jailed Islamic terrorist) deal.

April 20, 2017: In the north (Timbuktu) local Tuareg groups settled their differences with the government and allowed officials from the south to re-establish government operations. Since early March angry local militiamen have surrounded government buildings and prevented southern officials from reestablishing themselves in the area. The militias insist that should not happen until everyone agrees to the 2015 peace deal. The rest of the north settled this in February but the Tuareg around Timbuktu took longer to convince.

April 10, 2017: A combined force of 1,300 French, Malian and Burkina Faso troops completed a two week sweep of the border region between Mali and Burkina Faso. Some weapons and equipment were found but the Islamic terrorists normally resident largely moved out. Apparently a lot of useful information was obtained for use in later counter-terror operations.

April 8, 2017: In the north (270 kilometers west of Timbuktu) pro-government Tuareg militia were attacked by Islamic terrorists. Four of the militiamen were killed as well as a village chief. The militia casualties occur several times a month in the north, plus violence related to clan disputes.
IT Nightmare: Top IT companies cutting jobs in India to hire in US

Top IT firms in India are currently in a phase being termed as the biggest retrenchment drive in recent years. The top IT firms in the country are expected to release about 56,000 engineers this financial year. This number is almost double the number of engineers released in the previous year, which reflects how unprepared the industry as a whole is in regards to the ever increasing protectionist environment emerging across the western world and adapting to the ever evolving world of technology.

Big 7

The companies in reference here include major organizations of the country and abroad whove set up development branches in the country including Infosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, US-based Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and DXC Technology Co., and France-based Cap Gemini SA. These companies employ around 1.24 million individuals cumulatively and are expected to let go of around 4.5% of them in this year.

Even though most if not all of these firms are still recruiting fresh talent, they will end this year with fewer employees than the began with according to HR heads of 2 of these 7 firms. In preparation, most of these firms have already put a higher than usual number of employees on notice already by different ways. Cognizant has placed more than 15,000 employees in the lowest category (bucket IV), and Infosys has placed more than 3,000 senior managers in the category of employees needing improvement.

DXC Technology is in the middle of their 3 year plan to reduce the number of offices in the country to 26 from the current 50. 5.9%, or 10,000, of its 170,000 of its employees will be asked to leave this year.

Denial or Cover up ?

The statements from these companies however, seem to point to exactly opposite to what reports claim. All seven companies have attributed the lay offs to increase in the number of poor performing employees rather than the companies shortcomings. Cognizant has not conducted any layoffs, said a representative, also adding that the performance-based review for this year was consistent with the ones conducted previous years.

Our performance management process provides for a bi-annual assessment of performance, a spokeswoman for Infosys said, declining to share the number of employees asked to leave in the current quarter. We do this every year and the numbers could vary every performance cycle

Spokespersons from some of these companies have cited the numbers mentioned in reports such as this one as speculative.

Performance appraisal may also lead to the separation of some employees from the company and these numbers vary from year to year, said a Wipro spokesperson. A Tech Mahindra spokesperson said the company has a process of weeding out bottom performers every year and this year is no different. A spokesperson for HCL said that the company does not have any plans to ask more employees to leave in the current year.

Past Record

In the past few years, large IT firms would generally release around 1-1.5% of their work force every year with the number being a little higher at 3% for countries based abroad with India operations. This year however, the number is expected to be 2% at minimum. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), the largest IT employer with close to 390,000 employees, does not have any plans to ask anyone to leave this year, said a spokeswoman.

At the root of all this, is the change in the business model that these companies are still wrestling with. Most of the world, has turned to digitization and automation but Indian IT firms are yet to make that jump.

Digital revenue is still less than a fourth of traditional business. Meanwhile, traditional business is slowing. All of us have to re-look at the existing talent pool to make sure it is aligned to future needs, one of the HR heads cited above said on condition of anonymity. What required 50 programmers, analysts or accountants 5 years ago can be done by a handful of smart thinkers and much smarter systems, said Phil Fersht, CEO of US-based HfS Research, an outsourcing-research firm. If I were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I would be very concerned that a whole workforce generation needs reorienting to address work activities that are growing in demand.

As more companies move towards newer technologies such as cloud computing and automation, the number of physical employees required to carry out these tasks have begun reducing. Tasks that needed a whole pyramid of employees earlier can now be done with just a handful of them. With companies facing this reality as a sudden jolt instead of a foreseen outcome has resulted in the soon to come mass layoffs. The entire pyramid structure (organizational structure) is getting disrupted, the second HR head cited earlier added.

The jolt has also resulted in these firms having to cut back on costs for the first time since the recession almost a decade earlier. In the financial year ended in March 2017, TCS, Infosys and Wipro  the big 3 in Indian IT  grew slower than the industry bodys projected growth of 8.6%. They also saw a decline in their profitability.

Outcome of protectionist policies

IT industry grew on the twin premise of talent and mobility. Now both these are being questioned. Because of protectionist policies across the world, we have to go for more localization. And the business requirements of clients are in newer areas such as data analytics. Traditional maintenance work is getting automated. So we are seeing a more stringent appraisal process and more people being asked to go, the first HR head cited above said

On the other hand, as a by product of the protectionist policies of the Donald Trump administration, most of these companies will see their workforce in countries getting localized further. Infosys has already announced that its plans to hire 10,000 US citizens over the next two years. Wipro has hired over 2,800 Americans over the last 18 months and expects half of its total workforce in the US to be locals by the end of June 2017.

Source: livemint
After news reports that Steven W. Chase  the 58 year old owner of the Dark Web website hosting child pornography  PlayPen was sentenced to prison for 30 years, another news has emerged that Michael Angelo Savinelli,49, owner of a restaurant in Florida Keys has been found guilty for possession of child pornography.

Multiple Felony Charges

Michael Angelo Savinelli was arrested after law enforcement authorities discovered child pornographic material on his personal computer. He was arrested few months back on 17th of November 2016. He was initially handed 6 third-degree felony charges as per the law. On further investigations however, the authorities found even more material on his personal computer that has resulted in an additional 70 felony charges.

As per Monroe County State Attorneys Office, the additional charges were framed when the authorities uncovered 69 pictures and videos of the accused depicting sexual conduct with children as young as 5. As per the reports, the authorities have found multiple images and videos of preadolescent females in explicit poses showing their genitalia and involved in sex acts. The girls in them had child-like features, child-siz ed arms, legs, torso, and abdomen

The Conviction

If convicted of all the charges, the accused could send up serving upto 1140 years on consecutive felony convictions. For those unfamiliar with how consecutive sentences work, if an accused gets bail or acquittal on a single charge, he will be released from prison. With consecutive terms however, the min the first term ends, the next one begins. Meaning the accused will need to be acquitted on every individual charge before being let out of prison.

As per reports Savinelli has admitted keeping the pornographic material on his personal computer. He said he would get the content through chat rooms. He would receive the content from other people in the chat rooms and at times would share material. He has also admitted that there might be even more child pornographic content on his machine.

Source: HackRead
WestRock Company, together with its subsidiaries, provides fiber-based paper and packaging solutions in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia. It operates through two segments, Corrugated Packaging and Consumer Packaging. The Corrugated Packaging segment produces containerboards, corrugated sheets, corrugated packaging, and preprinted linerboards to consumer and industrial products manufacturers, and corrugated box manufacturers. It also provides structural and graphic design, engineering services and custom, and proprietary and standard automated packaging machines, as well as turn-key installation, automation, line integration, and packaging solutions; distributes corrugated packaging materials and other specialty packaging products, including stretch films, void fills, carton sealing tapes, and other specialty tapes; operates recycling facilities that collect, sort, grade, and bale recovered paper; and provides lithographic laminated packaging products, as well as contract packing services. The Consumer Packaging segment manufactures and sells folding cartons that are used to package food, paper, beverages, dairy products, tobacco, confectionery, health and beauty, other household consumer, and commercial and industrial products; and express mail packages for the overnight courier industry. It also offers inserts and labels, as well as rigid packaging and other printed packaging products, such as transaction cards, brochures, product literature, marketing materials, and grower tags and plant stakes for the horticultural market; and secondary packages and paperboard packaging for over-the-counter and prescription drugs. In addition, this segment manufactures and sells solid fiber and corrugated partitions, and die-cut paperboard components principally to glass container manufacturers and the automotive industry, as well as producers of beer, food, wine, spirits, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. WestRock Company is based in Atlanta, Georgia.
The following companies are subsidiares of Illinois Tool Works: A V Co 1 Limited, A V Co 2 Limited, A V Co 3 Limited, ACCU-LUBE Manufacturing GmbH - Schmiermittel und -gerate -, AIP/BI Holdings Inc., Accessories Marketing Holding Corp., Advanced Molding Company Inc., Allen France SAS, Alpine Engineered Products, Alpine Systems Corporation, Anaerobicos S.r.l., AppliChem GmbH, Avery Berkel France, Avery India Limited, Avery Malaysia Sdn Bhd, Avery Weigh Tronix, Avery Weigh-Tronix Finance Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix International Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix LLC, Avery Weigh-Tronix Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Properties Limited, Avery Weigh-Tronix Suzhou Weighing Technology Co. Ltd., Azon Limited, B.C. Immo, Beijing Miller Electric Manufacturing Co. Ltd., Berkel Ireland Limited, Berrington UK, Brapenta Eletronica Ltda., Brooks Instrument B.V., Brooks Instrument GmbH, Brooks Instrument KFT, Brooks Instrument Korea Ltd., Brooks Instrument LLC, Brooks Instrument Shanghai Co. Ltd, Buell Industries Inc., CCI Realty Company, CFC Europe GmbH, CS Australia Pty Limited, CS Mexico Holding Company S DE RL DE CV, Calvia Spolka z Ograniczona Odpowiedzialnosci, Capital Ventures Australasia S.a r.l, Capmax Logistica S.A. de C.V., Celeste Industries Corporation, Coeur, Coeur Asia Limited, Coeur Holding Company, Coeur Inc., Coeur Shanghai Medical Appliance Trading Co. Ltd, Compagnie Hobart, Compagnie de Materiel et d'Equipements Techniques-Comet, Constructions Isothermiques Bontami C.I.B., Crane Carrier Company, Denison Mayes Group Limited, Despatch Industries, Diagraph Corporation Sdn. Bhd, Diagraph ITW Mexico S. de R.L. De C.V., Diagraph Mexico S.A. DE C.V., Dongguan Ark-Les Electric Components Co. Ltd., Dongguan CK Branding Co. Ltd., Duo Fast de Espana S.A.U., Duo-Fast Korea Co. Ltd., Duo-Fast LLC, E.C.S. d.o.o., E2M Production B.V.., E2M Technologies B.V.., E2M Technologies Inc.., ECS Cable Protection Sp. Zoo, ELRO Grosskuchen GmbH, ELRO Holding AG, ELRO-WERKE AG, Elro Group, Eltex-Elektrostatik-Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Envases Multipac S.A. de C.V., Eurotec Srl, Exhibit 21, FEG Investments L.L.C., Filtertek De Mexico Holding Inc., Filtertek De Mexico S.A. de C.V., Filtertek SAS, GC Financement SA, Gamko B.V., Gun Hwa Platech Taicang Co. Ltd., HOBART Gesellschaft mit beschrankter Haftung, Hartness International, Hobart Andina S.A.S., Hobart Belgium B.V., Hobart Brothers International Chile Limitada, Hobart Brothers LLC, Hobart Dayton Mexicana S. de R.L. de C.V., Hobart Food Equipment Co. Ltd., Hobart International Singapore Pte. Ltd., Hobart Japan K.K., Hobart Korea LLC, Hobart LLC, Hobart Nederland B.V., Hobart Sales & Service Inc., Hobart Scandinavia ApS, Hobart Techniek B.V., Horis, ILC Investments Holdings Inc., ITW AEP LLC, ITW AOC LLC, ITW Aircraft Investments Inc., ITW Ampang Industries Philippines Inc., ITW Appliance Components EOOD, ITW Appliance Components S.A. de C.V., ITW Appliance Components S.r.l.a, ITW Appliance Components d.o.o., ITW Australia Holdings Pty Ltd, ITW Australia Property Holdings Pty Ltd., ITW Australia Pty Ltd, ITW Automotive Components Chongqing Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Components Langfang Co. Ltd., ITW Automotive Japan K.K., ITW Automotive Korea LLC, ITW Automotive Parts Shanghai Co. Ltd, ITW Automotive Products GmbH, ITW Automotive Products Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Bailly Comte, ITW Befestigungssysteme GmbH, ITW Belgium B.V., ITW Brazilian Nominee L.L.C., ITW Building Components Group Inc., ITW CER, ITW CP Distribution Center Holland BV, ITW CS UK Ltd., ITW Canada Inc., ITW Celeste Inc., ITW Chemical Products Ltda, ITW Chemical Products Scandinavia ApS, ITW China Investment Company Limited, ITW Colombia S.A.S., ITW Construction Products AB, ITW Construction Products AS, ITW Construction Products ApS, ITW Construction Products CZ s.r.o., ITW Construction Products Italy Srl, ITW Construction Products OU, ITW Construction Products OY, ITW Construction Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Construction Products Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW Construction Services Manila Inc., ITW Contamination Control B.V., ITW Contamination Control Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Covid Security Group Inc., ITW DS Investments Inc., ITW DelFast do Brasil Ltda., ITW Denmark ApS, ITW Deutschland GmbH, ITW Diagraph GmbH, ITW Dynatec, ITW Dynatec Adhesive Equipment Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Dynatec GmbH, ITW Dynatec Kabushiki Kaisha, ITW EAE B.V., ITW EAE Mexico S de RL de CV, ITW EF&C France SAS, ITW EF&C Selb GmbH, ITW EU Holdings Ltd., ITW Electronic Business Asia Co. Limited, ITW Electronic Components/Products Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Electronics Suzhou Co. Ltd., ITW Epsilon Sarl, ITW Espana S.L., ITW European Finance Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance II Co. Ltd., ITW European Finance III Co. Ltd., ITW FEG Hong Kong Limited, ITW FEG do Brasil Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW Fastener Products GmbH, ITW Fluids and Hygiene Solutions Ltda., ITW Food Equipment Group LLC, ITW GH LLC, ITW GSE ApS, ITW GSE Inc., ITW Gamma Sarl, ITW German Management LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings LLC, ITW Global Investments Holdings Y Compania Sociedad en Comandita por Acciones, ITW Global Investments Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Europe GmbH, ITW Global Tire Repair Inc., ITW Global Tire Repair Japan K.K., ITW Graphics Asia Limited, ITW Graphics Thailand Ltd., ITW Great Britain Investment & Licensing Holding Company, ITW Group France Luxembourg S.ar.l., ITW HLP Thailand Co. Ltd., ITW Holding Quimica B.C. S.L. Sole Shareholder Company, ITW Holdings Australia L.P., ITW Holdings I Limited, ITW Holdings II Limited, ITW Holdings III Limited, ITW Holdings IV Limited, ITW Holdings IX Limited, ITW Holdings Inc., ITW Holdings V Limited, ITW Holdings VI Limited, ITW Holdings VII Limited, ITW Holdings VIII Limited, ITW Holdings X Limited, ITW Holdings XI Limited, ITW ILC Holdings I Inc., ITW IPG Investments LLC, ITW Imaden Industria e Comercio Ltda., ITW India Private Limited, ITW International Holdings LLC, ITW Invest Holding GmbH, ITW Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company, ITW Ireland Unlimited Company, ITW Italy Holding Srl, ITW Japan Ltd., ITW Korea LLC, ITW LLC & Co. KG, ITW Limited, ITW Lys Fusion S.r.l., ITW Materials Technology Shanghai Co. Ltd., ITW Meritex Sdn. Bhd., ITW Metal Fasteners S.L., ITW Mexico Holding Company S. De R.L. de C.V., ITW Mexico Holdings LLC, ITW Morlock GmbH, ITW Mortgage Investments II Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments III Inc., ITW Mortgage Investments IV Inc., ITW Netherlands Administration BV, ITW Netherlands Beta B.V., ITW Netherlands Finance Alpha BV, ITW New Universal LLC, ITW New Zealand, ITW Ningbo Components & Fastenings Systems Co. Ltd., ITW Novadan Sp. Z.o.o., ITW PPF Brasil Adesivos Ltda., ITW Packaging Technology China Co. Ltd., ITW Participations S.a r.l., ITW Pension Funds Trustee Company, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Japan Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids Korea Limited, ITW Performance Polymers & Fluids OOO, ITW Performance Polymers ApS, ITW Performance Polymers Wujiang Co. Ltd., ITW Performance Polymers and Fluids Group FZE, ITW Peru S.A.C., ITW Poly Mex S. de R.L. de C.V., ITW Polymers Sealants North America Inc., ITW Pronovia s.r.o., ITW Pte. Ltd., ITW Qufu Automotive Cooling Systems Co. 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De C.V., ITW Welding Products Italy Srl, ITW Welding Products Limited Liability Company, ITW Welding Produtos Para Solgdagem Ltda., ITW Welding Singapore Pte. Ltd., ITW de France, ITW do Brasil Industrial e Comercial Ltda., Illinois Tool Works Chile Limitada, Illinois Tool Works ITW Nederland B.V., Illinois Tool Works Inc., Impar Comercio E Representacoes Ltda., Industrie Plastic Elsasser GmbH, Inmobiliaria Cit. S.A. de C.F., Innova Temperlite Servicios S.A. de C.V., Innovacion y Transformacion Automotriz S.A. de C.V., Instron Brasil Equipamentos Cientificos Ltda., Instron Foreign Sales Corp. Limited, Instron France S.A.S., Instron GmbH, Instron Japan Company Ltd., Instron Korea LLC, Instron Shanghai Ltd., Instron Thailand Limited, International Leasing Company LLC, Isolenge - ITW Sistemas de Isolamento Termico Ltda., Itw Spraytec, KCPL Mauritius Holdings, Kester, Kleinmann GmbH, Krafft S.L., Loma Systems, Loma Systems BV, Loma Systems Canada Inc., Loma Systems sro, Lombard Pressings Limited, Lumex Inc., Lys Fusion Poland Sp. z.o.o., M&C Specialties Co., MAGNAFLUX GmbH, MEHB Holdings Limited, MGHG Property LLC, MTS 2 LLC., MTS 3 LLC., MTS China Holdings LLC, MTS Europe Holdings LLC, MTS Holdings France S.a.r.l., MTS Japan Ltd.., MTS Korea Inc.., MTS Systems China Co. Ltd., MTS Systems Corporation, MTS Systems Danmark ApS., MTS Systems Europe B.V., MTS Systems Finance C.V.., MTS Systems Germany GmbH, MTS Systems Holding B.V.., MTS Systems Hong Kong Incorporated, MTS Systems Limited, MTS Systems Norden Aktiebolag, MTS Systems S.r.l, MTS Systems., MTS Systems.., MTS Sytems Do Brazil, MTS Testing Solutions India Private Limited., MTS Testing Systems Canada Ltd., Manufacturing Avancee S.A., Meritex Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd., Meurer Verpackungssysteme GmbH, Miller Electric Mfg. LLC, Miller Insurance Ltd., NDT Holding LLC, NOVADAN APS, North Star Imaging Inc., Nova Chimica S.r.l., Orbitalum Tools GmbH, PENTA-91 OOO, PR. A. I. Srl, PT ITW Construction Products Indonesia, Pacific Concept Industries Limited Enping, Panreac Quimica S.L., Paslode Fasteners Shanghai Co. Ltd., Peerless Machinery Corp., Polyrey, Premark FEG L.L.C., Premark HII Holdings LLC, Premark International, Premark International LLC, Prolex Sociedad Anonima, QSA Global Inc., Quimica Industrial Mediterranea S.L., R&D Engineering A/S., R&D Prague s.r.o., R&D Steel ApS., R&D Test Systems A/S., R&D Tools and Structures A/S., RDGDK Engineering Private Limited, Ramset Fasteners Hong Kong Ltd., Rapid Cook LLC, Refrigeration France, S.E.E. Sistemas Industria E Comercio Ltda., ST Mexico Holdings LLC, Sealant Systems International Inc., Sentinel Asia Yuhan Hoesa, Shanghai ITW Plastic & Metal Co. Ltd, Simco Japan Inc., Simco Nederland B.V., Societe de Prospection et dInventions Techniques  SPIT, Speedline Holdings I Inc., Speedline Holdings I LLC, Speedline Technologies GmbH, Speedline Technologies Mexico S. de R.L. de C.V., Speedline Technologies Mexico Services S. de R.L. de C.V., Stokvis Celix Portugal Unipessoal LDA, Stokvis Danmark ApS, Stokvis Holdings S.A.R.L., Stokvis Promi s.r.o, Stokvis Prostick Tapes Private Limited, Stokvis Tapes B.V., Stokvis Tapes Benelux B.V., Stokvis Tapes Deutschland GmbH, Stokvis Tapes France, Stokvis Tapes Hong Kong Co. Limited, Stokvis Tapes Italia s.r.l., Stokvis Tapes Limited, Stokvis Tapes Limited Liability Company, Stokvis Tapes Norge AS, Stokvis Tapes Oy, Stokvis Tapes Polska Sp Z.O.O., Stokvis Tapes Shanghai Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Sverige AB, Stokvis Tapes Taiwan Co. Ltd., Stokvis Tapes Tianjin Co. Ltd., Stolvis Holdings II S.A.R.L., Subsidiaries, Technopack Industria Comercio Consultoria e Representacoes Ltda., Teknek China Limited, Teknek Japan Limited, Teksaleco Ltd., The Miller Group Ltd, Thirode Grandes Cuisines Poligny, Tien Tai Electrode Co. Ltd., Tien Tai Electrode Kunshan Co. Ltd., Unichemicals Industria e Comercio Ltda., VR-Leasing Sarita GmbH & Co. Immobilien KG, VS European Holdco BV, Valeron Strength Films B.V., Veneta Decalcogomme S.r.l., Versachem Chile S.A., Vesta, Vesta Global Limited, Vesta Guangzhou Catering Equipment Co. Ltd, Viltronics Soltec, Vitronics Soltec B.V., Wachs Canada Ltd., Wachs Subsea LLC, Weigh-Tronix Canada ULC, Weigh-Tronix UK Limited, Wilsonart International Holdings LLC, Wynn Oil South Africa Pty Ltd., Wynn's Automotive France, Wynn's Belgium BVBA, Wynn's Italia Srl, Wynn's Mekuba India Pvt Ltd, and Zip-Pak International B.V..

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Military officials explicitly warned Michael Flynn against accepting payments from foreign governments after he left the Pentagon, and instructed him to disclose any such payments if they occurred.

But the retired general subsequently took such a payment and failed to disclose it, according to documents released by congressional investigators on Thursday.

Documents released by the House Oversight Committee show that the Defense Intelligence Agency, which Flynn directed before joining the White House in January, has no record of him disclosing a $33,750 payment from state-sponsored Russian broadcaster Russia Today. Flynn traveled to Moscow in Dec. 2015 to give an address for the networks tenth anniversary gala. Months later Flynn joined Donald Trumps presidential campaign as an adviser and was served briefly as National Security Adviser before he was fired in February .

The Republican chairman of the committee, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, asked the Army to issue a final determination on whether Flynn had illegally failed to disclose the RT payment, citing the documents released on Thursday.

"By all appearances, Lt. Gen. Flynn violated [federal law] by accepting compensation from entities associated with foreign governments without obtaining consent to do so, Chaffetz wrote.

Financial disclosure documents released by the White House early this month showed that Flynn had initially failed to inform federal ethics officials of the payment after taking his White House post.

If he also failed to inform DIA of that payment, Flynn likely ran afoul of federal laws requiring former government officials to seek approval from the State Department and the agencies that once employed them before accepting a payment from a foreign government.

These documents raise grave questions about why General Flynn concealed the payments he received from foreign sources after he was warned explicitly by the Pentagon, Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a Thursday statement.

Flynns attorney Rob Kelner said this week that Flynn had informed DIA that he would travel to Moscow for the RT event, but would not say whether he had disclosed his payment for speaking at it.

In an emailed statement Kelner disputed Cummings characterization of DIAs letter, saying it was actually exculpatory.

DIAs letter actually confirms, in a terse section that is partly redacted, that General Flynn provided information and documents on a thumb drive to the Department of Defense concerning the RT speaking event in Moscow, including documents reflecting that he was using a speakers bureau for the event, Kelner wrote. We urge DIA and the Committee to release the full, unredacted letter, along with the documents that General Flynn provided to DIA during the briefings and details concerning the in-person briefings provided by General Flynn to DIA.

The versions of the documents that were released on Thursday show that DIA has no record of Flynns payment from a Russian government-linked entity.

DIA did not locate any records referring or relating to LTG Flynns receipt of money from a foreign source or seeking permission or approval for the receipt of money from a foreign source, the documents state.

Flynns foreign payments are currently the subject of an investigation by the Pentagons inspector general, according to additional documents released by the oversight committee.

Those documents also show that Flynn was explicitly reminded to seek permission from his former federal employers before seeking or accepting foreign government payments. He was advised of the legal restrictions concerning foreign compensation and instructed to report any potential receipt of compensation in advance, according to the DIA letter.

The Emoluments Clause of the Constitution prohibits receipt of consulting fees, gifts, travel expenses, honoraria, or salary by all retired military personnel, officer and enlisted, regular and reserve, from a foreign government unless congressional consent is first obtained, DIA told Flynn after his resignation.

The White House has refused to provide the oversight committee with documents relating to Flynns brief employment, including a questionnaire in his security clearance application that required him to disclose foreign government payments.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Tuesday that the committees request for Flynns communications with foreign governments was too voluminous to satisfy. The Pentagon had already provided the questionnaire regarding foreign government payments, he said.

Other documents, Spicer insisted, the White House can't provide because of its sensitive nature.

In a press conference announcing the document release on Thursday, Cummings said that the committee has reviewed additional information that raises further concerns about Flynns foreign government payments.

That information, Cummings said, remain under lock and key for now. He urged the White House to declassify them so the American public can see them for themselves.

Democratic members of the oversight committee accused the White House on Thursday of attempting to stonewall their investigation.

There is obviously a paper trail that the White House does not want our Committee to follow, they wrote in a joint press release that raised the prospect of employing compulsory measures to force the White Houses hand.

Thursdays revelations sent ripples through the other investigations currently looking into Trump-Russia ties. Some members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, such as Sen. Ron Wyden and Sen. Martin Heinrich, Democrats who have been urging an aggressive inquiry into the Trump orbit, saw the Flynn news as further evidence that they need to be looking at the financial ties between Trump associates and the Russian government.

"Every day that goes by, the more I am convinced at the follow-the-money aspect of this, Wyden said. I just cant begin to count the number of news stories that have highlighted the kind of allegations, the inquiries with respect to the money trail.

There is absolutely no logical or appropriate excuse for [an incomplete SF-86]. Its a little mind-bongling, added Heinrich. The money here is what we need to get to, and I think if we understand some of the financial relationships, we may well understand the nature of what was really going on.

But Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the committee, however, had another viewthat the Flynn mess was the responsibility of the Pentagon to investigate, not his panel.

A majority of Mike Flynns problems right now probably are more DoD-related Im going to let the Department of Defense handle that, he told reporters after a classified briefing Thursday afternoon. Were going to stay focused on questions and concerns as it relates to Mike Flynns contacts with or without consent of a campaign or the White House, and well continue to go down that path, that is jurisdictionally, our responsibility.

Tim Mak contributed to this report.
Increasingly tight profit margins have restaurant owners seeking creative ways to compensate staff, but one Toronto eaterys small surcharge to help pay for health and dental benefits has customers split.

The owners of Emmas Country Kitchen recently announced they would include an optional 3 per cent surcharge on customers cheques to go toward benefits for full-time workers. They argued the fee  which would amount to less than 50 cents on the average bill  would be more transparent than raising prices.

Instead of taking responsibility they are just downloading it to their customers, Karen Hanna wrote on the restaurants Facebook page, while Jeff Herrle countered, Wow, truly remarkable commitment to a laudable ideal . . . and for this to happen in a time when many employers are contributing to the problem of precarious work under the auspices of savings and competitiveness. Well done!!!

Server Agnes Ramos, who has worked at the brunch diner since September, is cheering the idea.

Ive been serving since I was 18 and Ive never been able to receive benefits so its a great idea. I totally support it, says the 27-year-old, who ultimately wont be able to take advantage of the plan until she increases her hours from part-time.

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Ramos was on her mothers benefits plan until a few years ago.

Now that I dont receive benefits Im less likely to go to the dentist or get my eyes checked. I actually just came back from the dentist a month ago and my bill was $400 and it was a bit hard for me to swallow, so its definitely a great addition and I hope that other people feel the same way about it.

While some customers may gripe about the paying the surcharge, others could see value in a company that provides benefits, says Mike von Massow, a professor in the department of food, agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph.

We care about child labour in other countries. We care about animal welfare. We care about a whole bunch of things, but why might we not patronize a company that provides benefits to their employees?

In an industry where the average pre-tax profit is 4.3 per cent, absorbing additional labour costs could be difficult for restaurateurs.

But trying to pass those costs to patrons can be risky, von Massow says. It might result in customers nixing an appetizer, dessert or alcoholic beverage, reducing overall revenue for owners, or less tips for staff.

The Nook Creperie in Pembroke, Ont., recently began contributing to benefit plans for full-time staff after employees voted for that compensation over raises, owner Joanna Els.

She covers 40 per cent of the cost of the benefits package employees choose  which includes dental, eyewear, prescriptions and life insurance  and they cover the rest. The benefits also cover massages and a portion of shoe insoles, which Els thought necessary in an industry requiring people be constantly on their feet.

Its definitely a large cost for everyone involved unfortunately, says Els, who doesnt believe her customers would appreciate paying a special surcharge.

I think its necessary and it also gives us a bit of an advantage in an area where its very hard to find quality staff. And we hope when we invest the time and money into training them that we are going to retain them.

Bill Pratt, owner of Chef Inspired Group of Restaurants and Trucks in Dartmouth, N.S., began paying half the health and dental premiums for his full-time managers and supervisors, who number about 30, in February because its the right thing to do and he wants them to continue working for him.

But he wasnt able to make the move until his fifth year in business.

In the restaurant game youve got to get through your first three years to see if youre even going to last and its an expensive burden where youre trying to manage your food costs and your labour costs and your overhead and pay your rent and keep your head above water  and then pay yourself on top of all that stuff, Pratt says.

So its just too much of a burden for a start-up restaurant to take on another cost because its pretty substantial to set it up.

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Ive had Cott up there. Ive had Clearly Canadian. Made a killing. I go back with Kevin OLeary  Learning Co. and Softkey before that. I had a double dip with Garth and Cineplex Odeon and Livent. Melnyk with Biovail. Canada is great. Canada has been wonderful.

This is Marc Cohodes running through his set list of Canadian stocks he has shorted  that is, bet against  at various stages of his career, stages that have taken him through fame, great fortune, an alleged short-selling conspiracy, liquidation of his hedge fund, a period of what reads like self-imposed exile raising chickens in California and now a very public one-man attack on Home Capital Group Inc., and by extension Home Capitals subsidiary, Home Trust.

The Toronto-based alternative mortgage lender is at the epicentre of a confidence-draining, deposit-shrinking, liquidity crisis maelstrom that has the potential, as the company admits, to negatively effect the Canadian financial system.

Everybody is interested in trying to do the right thing systemically for Canada, new board member Alan Hibben said in a conference call with analysts Friday. If this company were to not succeed it would have significant knock-on effects, particularly to new Canadians and others who this company services.

The companys niche is the non-prime mortgage market not conventionally serviced by the Big Five banks. On Friday, a Home Capital executive said that between 25 and 30 per cent of the estimated $1.4-trillion dollar Canadian mortgage market is composed of consumers who fall out of the prime lending space. And Home Capital says it has roughly 5 per cent of that.

Clearly the high calibre of incoming management and new members to Home Capitals board of directors  a not yet complete refresh, as the company calls it, that includes the highly respected Claude Lamoureux, past CEO of the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan  reflects a broad-based concern throughout the financial system that the company cant be allowed to fail.

Marc Cohodes is betting that it can and will. I think when the chapters are written somewhere down the line of exactly what went on, people are going to be absolutely aghast as to what went on here, he says. Just absolutely floored. When the stories are finally told. When the autopsy is done on this thing. When its in the morgue.

The potential victims here are not the richly departed Home Capital executives, but the fragile mortgage holders wondering if their mortgages will be renewed and if so by whom. It is these home owners who were promised the fulfillment of what board chair Brenda Eprile calls the dream of home ownership.

As we now know, that dream was in many cases fraudulently fulfilled via dozens of now ex-communicated mortgage brokers who submitted bogus employment income documentation for borrowers in order to secure those mortgages.

It is this that gives the Home Capital crisis a whiff of the U.S. sub-prime, no-doc mortgage crisis of a decade ago. And it is the lack of timely disclosure of these matters, and the negative impact on new mortgage originations, that underpin Ontario Securities Commission allegations that Home Capital breached its disclosure obligations under the securities act. Home Capital says that those allegations are without merit.

Marc Cohodes didnt have a clue about the income fluffing. As a veteran short-seller he listens to the calls of other short sellers, and when famed short-seller Steve Eisman presented Home Capital as a short idea at a New York investor conference in the spring of 2013, Cohodes started paying attention.

According to one account, Eisman defined Home Capital to the crowd as the largest non-prime mortgage originator in Canada that could have serious problems if housing rolls over.

Except housing in Canada showed no signs of rolling over. Still, it was the same Steve Eisman who famously bet against the squirrely U.S. mortgage market and then more famously became one of the subjects of Michael Lewiss The Big Short, followed by a more famous still characterization by Steve Carell in the movie of the same name.

Cohodes watched. While Eisman went short, Cohodes didnt until 2014, when the company reported consistent  a.k.a., flat  results for the third quarter over the prior quarter. He recalls the stock was $53 at the time.

The brakes appeared to be on mortgage origination. But Cohodes had no idea why. Other short plays involve incredibly detailed forensic examination of the numbers. In the early 90s, the shorts, including Cohodes, were all over Gerry Pencers Cott Corp., picking through such areas as the pop makers deferred development costs, which the shorts said was just a technique to inflate profits.

Most famously, Jim Chanos took on Enron Corp., shorting what turned out to be a massive fraud. To those who castigated short sellers as a blight on the system, Chanos defined short sellers as detectives and regulators as expert in archeology. Enron proved him right.

In the case of Home Capital, Cohodes appears first to have moved on gut instinct rather than details. I had zero inkling, he says of the internal troubles. So I would say that my timing was very lucky. But Ill take it. Ill take it.

But then there was a wave of departures  a big tell for me, he says. Enough people left, I got a hold of enough people, and started piecing together the back story, and the back story was horrifically ugly.

He wont say which Canadian authorities he has been in touch with, if any. Theres a soup of people up there, he says. Im not going to kiss and tell, but I view myself as a whistleblower in a few matters.

He has received unsigned mail at his California chicken farm encouraging him to keep pushing on the Home Capital story. Except theres really nothing more for the shorts to say. By Friday Cohodes was lining up his next short and readying for a European getaway, while Home Capital was studying what a board member called scenarios out the ying yang for the companys salvation.

jenwells@thestar.ca

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WASHINGTONMercedes-Benzs decision to pause its U.S. diesel plans represents another blow to the technologys already small and diminishing share of auto sales in the country.

Daimler AGs luxury car brand cited the tiny share of the market diesels occupy and the increased effort needed to obtain approvals from U.S. environmental regulators as the reasons why it halted efforts to obtain certification to sell 2017 model year diesel versions of its C-Class sedan, GLE SUV and other cars. It said it may return to the market in the future.

The explanation highlights the mounting struggle for automakers in the U.S. trying to sell diesels, a technology once prized for fuel efficiency and seen as a promising way to meet federal standards. The outlook is now growing cloudier as scrutiny from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) keeps models off the market and the costs rise to meet toughening pollution rules. Mercedes says that fewer than one out of every 100 cars sold in the U.S. is a diesel.

Diesels future has been relegated back to what it was about 20 years ago  an engine choice for pickup trucks, said Dave Sullivan, an industry analyst with consultancy AutoPacific Inc.

The future is not much brighter in Europe, where favourable tax treatment has helped the technology gain dominance. Diesel demand is projected to shrink to around 30 per cent of the regions auto sales by 2020 from around 50 per cent today.

Worldwide, the diesel market share is projected to fall to 4 per cent by 2025 from 13.5 per cent today, according to a December 2016 report by UBS Group.

While diesels have long held a niche role in the U.S. auto market, it is fading fast. Just 28,604 diesels were sold in the U.S. this year through April, down 35 per cent from the prior-year period, according to data from HybridCars.com. Automakers are also offering fewer diesel models in the U.S. than they were just two years ago, in large part due to growing demands from regulators.

Nine diesel models are available from five auto brands for the 2017 model year in the U.S., according to the EPA. That compares to 22 models from 8 brands in model year 2015.

Much of the decline in sales and choice stems from the scandal at Volkswagen AG, which pulled 12 diesel models sold by its Audi, Porsche and namesake VW brand off the market after it admitted in 2015 that it had been cheating to pass emissions tests in the U.S.

That was a big change in strategy for VW, which had invested heavily in diesel. From 2009 through 2015, Volkswagen made high-torque, fuel-sipping clean diesel engines a pillar of its U.S. brand identity, deploying them widely across its lineup as a fun-to-drive alternative to sluggish gasoline-electric hybrids.

That strategy has been all but abandoned in the wake of its emissions scandal. The company wont offer new diesel models through at least the 2018 model year and if VW eventually does bring diesels stateside once again, company executives have said the engines are unlikely to be used as widely as before.

After VW admitted to cheating, the EPA began subjecting all diesel passenger cars to a new battery of tests designed to ensure there was no other wrongdoing elsewhere in the industry.

The tests led EPA to accuse Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV in January of installing diesel Jeep SUVs and Ram pickups with emission controls without the proper disclosures. The agency has since refused to certify that Fiat Chryslers diesel Jeep Grand Cherokee and Ram 1500 pickup variants conform to U.S. tailpipe rules amid talks with the company to resolve the issues.

Daimler had been working for months to get its diesels approved by EPA, but put that process on hold as the 2017 model year enters its final months.

In a statement, Mercedes spokesperson Rob Moran said the company has not decided to exit the diesel market for good, adding the company is leaving the door open for future diesels with the understanding they will continue to occupy a small niche within our U.S. lineup.

Daimler will continue to use diesel engines in its Sprinter commercial vehicles.

Among the challenges is U.S. tailpipe pollution standards set to increase in stringency over the next several years. The rules mean automakers must resort to ever more expensive technologies to scrub harmful pollutants from diesel exhaust.

Theres too much hardware and theyre very expensive to maintain, Sullivan said. Once 2020 hits, its going to be cost-prohibitive or the business case just wont be there.

Stephanie Brinley, senior automotive analyst at IHS Markit Ltd., cautions not to write off the U.S. diesel market. She said the viability of diesels hinges on how easily automakers can offer the technology in other parts of the world.

There are clearly headwinds for diesel, she said. You may see it in reduce strength in certain markets where it was really strong, but you wont see it go away suddenly.

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MONTREAL PokerStars owner Amaya Inc. is renaming itself The Stars Group Inc. and relocating to Toronto, part of CEO Rafi Ashkenazis efforts to transform the online gambling company after a difficult period.

Promoted after founder David Baazov stepped down amid insider trading charges and poor earnings performance, Ashkenazi is working to pay down debt, install a new management team and lessen the companys exposure to the unstable online-poker business. Amaya just hired an industry veteran from William Hill Plc to focus on mergers and acquisitions, which Ashkenazi has said could play a central role in the second half of the year.

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PokerStars owner misses fourth-quarter sales estimates

Deals could help Amaya diversify beyond poker, which made up 69 per cent of the companys total revenue in the first quarter, compared with 75 per cent a year earlier. In a sign Ashkenazis efforts may be working, online casino games and sports-book accounted for 27 per cent of sales, up from 21 per cent.

The company also managed to post its first increase in revenue from poker in three quarters, fuelling earnings that topped analysts estimates. The poker business has been in decline since the U.S. outlawed online-gaming companies and professional card players started elbowing out amateurs.

Amaya will seek shareholder approval for the name change at its annual meeting, according to a statement Friday. The company is currently based outside Montreal.

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Last week, I spent four days in hospital for a surgical procedure (dont worry, nothing life-threatening). When I was discharged, I was presented with a bill for $1,055. That covered semi-private accommodation (the hospital had no facilities that qualified as wards) and some recommended post-op massage therapy. None of the expenses were covered by OHIP.

I have a family member who suffers from a rare and debilitating disease. His specialists have prescribed a very rare drug, which costs about $3,000 a month. It is not covered by OHIP.

A friend of mine has a very serious eye condition. He requires monthly shots just to maintain the limited vision he has left, at a cost of $1,500. Since he is under age 65, he has to pay for these out of his own pocket. OHIP doesnt cover it.

Sometime this year, I am going to need new hearing aids. The cost will be upward of $6,000. Ontarios Assisted Devices Program will pay up to $500 per aid, every three years. I have to cover the rest.

The point of all this is that health care in Canada is not free  only certain procedures, devices, and services are covered. Youre responsible for everything else, and if youre unlucky the costs can run into many thousands of dollars.

Im sure many of you have seen Jimmy Kimmels heart-wrenching story of his baby boy who was born with a defective heart (if not, check out YouTube). As a star, he had the money to pay for the childs life-saving surgery. But many people wouldnt, and his message was that no one should be put in a position of seeing a loved one die because of a lack of funds.

His comments were clearly directed toward Washington, where the Republicans are determined to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a plan that will probably result in millions of Americans losing their medical coverage.

But his point is valid here in Canada, too. If my family member didnt have private insurance coverage that picked up his $3,000-a-month prescription tab, he would probably be dead by now. If my friend with the bad eyes couldnt pay for his monthly shots, he would likely be totally blind today.

Governments are gradually increasing the free services that our health care system provides. The extension of free prescription drugs to people under 25 that was announced in the recent Ontario budget is one example.

But Ottawa and the provinces cant pay for everything. Talk about denticare and pharmacare for all are pipe dreams. The costs would drive up taxes to intolerable levels. We need to live in the real world.

So what should you do to protect your finances in this situation? Here are my suggestions.

Review your employer health coverage. Most large employers and some smaller ones offer group health insurance plans. However, they vary in terms of the services they cover. Many, for example, do not pay for eye care. Some plans place strict limits on the dental procedures they will cover  my own plan does not pay for bridges, as I recently found to my dismay.

If you have an employer- or union-sponsored health plan, review the details carefully. Find out what is covered and what isnt. Check the restrictions  some plans have limits on how much they will reimburse you for certain procedures or devices. See if there is a co-pay arrangement, which requires you to pick up a percentage of the cost. It will take a little time to read through all the details, but if a medical crisis arises you will need to be prepared.

Buy private coverage if needed. If youre self-employed or your employer doesnt have a health insurance plan, go shopping. Many companies offer personal plans, including Manulife, Sun Life, Blue Cross and CAA. Do an on-line search for providers and dont focus solely on costs. Review all the plan details and know whats covered and whats not before making a decision.

Consider catastrophic insurance. These policies cover you in the event of a serious accident or a major illness like cancer, heart attack, and stroke. They often come with high deductibles  one plan I looked at only covered prescription drugs once the total annual bill exceeded $4,500; another set its deductible at $10,200. But the cost is usually low, especially for young people.

Budget more as you age. The latest census showed the number of seniors in Canada (65-plus) exceeds the number of children (15 and under). As a country, were aging, and the older you get the more likely you are to suffer health problems. A study published in 2014 by the BMO Wealth Institute found that Canadians over 65 without private coverage can expect to spend $5,391 a year on medical costs. The figure is undoubtedly higher now.

In my experience, most people do not budget anything near that amount when preparing for retirement. If anything medically bad happens  and it probably will as you age  the financial consequences can be very serious.

The bottom line is that we live in a country where basic health care is available to all, and thank goodness for that. But when you get beyond the basics, the price tag can rise very quickly. Be prepared.

Gordon Pape is editor and publisher of the Internet Wealth Builder and Income Investor newsletters. His website is www.BuildingWealth.ca

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To the world, Rebecca Laurelson, narrator of The Dhow House, is a serious and sensitive doctor who sets bones and stitches ruptured bodies in a dusty field hospital in East Africa. But Rebecca has a secret. She has been recruited by British intelligence to report on the progress of a militant Islamic group terrorizing the country.

She uses medical terminology as code: Carotid artery presents oxygenated blood flow, means that Al-Nur insurgents are advancing from the interior.

This is not her first job in a war zone  shes worked in Afghanistan and Kurdistan  though its her first as an informer. And she may be good at it, possessing a talent for emotional quarantine, a cultural knack for treachery.

Author Jean McNeil, raised in Nova Scotia but now living in England, has also lived in East Africa. The great joy in The Dhow House, her eleventh book, is her exceptional ability to illuminate setting and the natural world. Rebecca studies birding, an extension of her role as a watcher.

As the novel opens, Rebecca has left her desert posting to recuperate  she wont say whats happened  with her aunt and her family, whom she doesnt know, but live nearby on the coast. If they lived in England they would be ordinary, but behind their walled compounds along the Indian Ocean, they took on the sheen of demigods. How her uncle makes his money is not clear  businesses are mysterious entangled  though Rebecca has read intelligence files on him

The tension is immediate. They are family, but eye each other with coolness and suspicion. Rebecca falls in love with her much younger cousin, Storm, but their affair is strange and hidden.

With elections looming and the threat of violence, Rebeccas purpose is shadowy  is it to report or to recover? This duality has many threads: the place of the lost tribe of white people in a black Africa, the healer who may also betray, the beautiful lover with a skeletal heart, the loyalty to family who are really strangers.

Rebecca must discover the exact grain of her soul. Is she a good person, or a bad one?

None of this is revealed in linear storytelling. The plot moves back and forth in time, the narrators voice changes and some rereading is necessary. Yet, the effect is haunting.

Though sometimes overwrought, McNeils writing is as lush and vivid as the changing hues of the Indian Ocean. While the reader may at times feel bewildered, the sense of place and insight into the mysterious inclinations of the heart linger long after the last page.

Leslie Scrivener is a Toronto writer.

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OTTAWACanadas high-profile military mission to Africa appears off the radar for now with a decision on a deployment delayed, perhaps until fall, the Star has learned.

Political upheaval among key allies  notably the United States, France and Great Britain  is cited as the reason why Justin Trudeaus government has pushed back its high-profile pledge to return Canada to international peacekeeping efforts.

The federal government does not want to deploy soldiers on a potentially dangerous mission only to find other nations have decided their priorities lie elsewhere, leaving Canada stuck with a legacy mission, one source told the Star.

One official at defence headquarters offered a blunt assessment of where the peace mission currently stood on the list of priorities. Its not on the radar, said the source.

When asked about the delay, officials point to the political shake-ups around the globe, notably in Washington, where the unexpected election of Donald Trump as president and his unpredictable tenure in office so far has forced Ottawa to rethink priorities on issues from defence to trade.

But political change bubbles in other capitals too. Britons go to the polls in a general election in June. France just saw the election of a new president, Emmanuel Macron, who beat out right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen. That country has a significant military mission ongoing in Mali, one nation cited as the likely destination for the Canadian deployment.

At home, other issues are competing for attention. Next week, the Liberal government will unveil its defence policy review that will lay out a new vision for the armed forces and the promise of additional funding to pay for it.

That vision, expected to provide policy guidance for the coming two decades, will almost certainly include a nod to the record of Canadian peacekeeping around the globe. But its not expected to include any new details of forthcoming missions.

The governments attention has also been distracted on the political front as the man tasked to sell that new vision  Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan  is fighting for his credibility after being forced to apologize for inflating his role as an officer during an Afghanistan offensive.

And within defence headquarters, the fallout from the surprise January ouster of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, the second-in-command of the military is still being felt.

All that means that a decision on a peace support mission is now not expected for months yet. That timing means it could be more than a year since the Liberal government laid out its promise of personnel and funding for a mission  600 troops, 150 police officers and $450 million over three years for a new Peace and Stability Operations Program.

An announcement on exactly where Canada would deploy those personnel on a peace mission had been expected by last Christmas. But there was no word and nothing yet in the months since.

Trudeau said in March that his government would not be pushed into making a decision, saying that any deployment had to be done responsibly and thoughtfully.

But months later, the government seems no closer to a decision.

I dont have a timeframe on that, Sajjan told the Star in a recent interview.

All I can tell you is we will make that decision as a government when we feel comfortable that we have all the necessary information, that we have a whole of government approach and definitely from the military side, one that is going to have an impact on the ground, Sajjan said.

He conceded that the changes around the globe were, in part, the reason for prolonged discussions about Canadas role in a UN mission.

We do need to look at... the changing environment. We have to make sure that when we add in and say were going to do X, we have to make sure that X is actually going to provide added value to the UN, Sajjan said.

In the January cabinet shake-up that made Chrystia Freeland foreign affairs minister, one of the tasks handed the Toronto MP was to increase Canadas support for United Nations peace operations.

Alex Lawrence, her spokesperson, told the Star that the peace deployment remains under active consideration. Our government is committed to international peace operations, and we are currently considering what precise role Canada can play, Lawrence said.

But Canadas hand could be forced when Sajjan hosts an international summit on peacekeeping at the end of the year.

Sajjan used last years summit in London to herald the willingness of the Liberal government to re-engage in peace missions, declaring that, Canada is committed to leading international efforts in peace support operations.

Conflicts today are more complex than ever before and were serious about being part of the solution  thats the reason were bringing our resources and skills to the table, Sajjan said in a statement issued for the 2016 summit.

It could be awkward for the Liberal government to go into this years summit with nothing to show for the statements it made more than a year earlier.

Defence analyst Dave Perry says the delay in deciding a mission has already likely forced military officers and diplomats back to the drawing boards to update the proposals they first presented to the government.

I would imagine given how long it has taken since some of those initial inputs were provided that revisiting some plans because events and things on the ground have changed significantly would be part of the delay now, said Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Some of the plans would have been submitted a half year ago. Hard to think they would still be viable today, he said in an interview.

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OTTAWAThe Communications Security Establishment has begun a promised review into the risks of foreign interference in the 2019 election, the Star has learned.

CSE, Canadas signals intelligence and cyberdefence agency, is conducting a risk assessment into how vulnerable Canadian elections are to foreign hacking and information operations.

The timeline for the review, and its eventual public release, appears to have been largely left up to the spy agency.

The review was ordered by the Liberal government in February, as the scope of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election was being made public by American intelligence agencies.

CSE has been asked to provide a threat assessment of the cyber threat environment as it relates to the Canadian democratic process, including the electoral system, wrote Ryan Foreman, a spokesperson for CSE, in a statement Wednesday.

CSE will also provide Elections Canada and Canadas political parties with advice and best practices on cyber security to help ensure the integrity of the Canadian democratic process and electoral system.

The review is unlikely to focus on the security of the actual vote, which still relies on pens and paper rather than electronic voting. The greater risk is likely the kind of information  and disinformation  campaigns seen in the U.S. and the recent French presidential election.

In both countries, Russian-backed hackers have been accused of releasing damaging information about candidates in support of rivals friendlier to the Kremlin.

U.S. intelligence officials have publicly asserted that the information campaign was an explicit attempt to discredit Hillary Clinton and support President Donald Trump.

In France, newly-elected President Emmanuel Macrons team told the New York Times they experienced similar hacking attempts  but set up dummy email accounts with fake documents to confuse the hackers. A cache of nine gigabytes worth of Macrons teams documents, with mundane authentic documents mixed in with the fakes, did not prevent Macron from handily winning Sundays election.

Sources in Ottawa told the Star they want to try and address the issue before the country is in the midst of a general election. To do that, CSE will need buy-in from political parties typically very protective of their internal communications and networks.

One source told the Star that Democratic Institutions Minister Karina Gould has taken a personal interest in the file and has been discussing the issue with both cabinet colleagues and the other major parties.

In a statement Wednesday, Gould simply said the government is taking the threat seriously.

CSE is currently assessing the risks of cyber hacking to Canadas political parties and will report publicly, read a statement attributed to Gould.

The assessment will help guide further actions we will consider to address the cyber threats facing Canadas democratic process.

Seva Gunitsky, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, said it will be difficult to combat microtargeted information campaigns from Kremlin-friendly sources.

How do we actually counter these kinds of attacks? Its very difficult to put up any kind of credible defence, Gunitsky said in an interview Thursday.

Theres no easy answer that I can see. But that said, were really in the very early stages (of sophisticated information campaigns) 2011, the protests against (Russian President Vladimir) Putin were a big turning point. Thats when the Russian government realized they cannot just resist against social media but co-opt social media for their own purposes.

Neither Goulds office nor CSE could say when the agencys report will be released to the public. But with the clock ticking down to the 2019 election, it likely has to come sooner rather than later.

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Successive provincial governments have failed to make the major change that is needed to combat sexual abuse of patients at the hands of health professionals, says Marilou McPhedran.

She would know  she has chaired three task forces on the issue over the last 25 years.

McPhedran, now a senator, was testifying before Ontarios standing committee on the legislative assembly Wednesday on Bill 87, the Protecting Patients Act.

The truth is, that the most bold, most necessary recommendations for systemic change have been ignored, McPhedran told the committee of the governments response to her third task forces 300-page report.

(When she asked the committee members, who come from all three major parties, for a show of hands to indicate whether they had read it, it was clear that most had not.)

Bill 87 is the governments attempt to strengthen the law around sexual abuse of patients. It comes in the wake of McPhedrans latest task force report, made public last September after extensive legal wrangling, she told the committee.

The task force, established by Health Minister Eric Hoskins in 2014, comprised McPhedran and Sheila Macdonald, provincial co-ordinator of sexual assault and domestic violence treatment centres in Ontario. It was sparked by a Star investigation on physicians still practising after they were found to have sexually abused their patients.

Testimony before the committee was expected to wrap up this week, and the bill will now undergo a clause-by-clause analysis. It is likely to pass as the government holds a majority in the legislature. It comes as self-regulating colleges continue to face criticism for bungling cases involving health professionals accused of sexual abuse.

The bill has also divided members of the health professions; the association representing registered nurses loves it, while the association representing doctors hates most of it.

McPhedran, for her part, cant help but be dismayed at the lack of acknowledgement of the centrepiece of her task forces recommendations: the creation of an independent body to investigate, prosecute and adjudicate sexual abuse cases involving health professionals.

Hoskins, who has stated that eradicating sexual abuse in the health professions is a priority for him, did not immediately commit to the creation of an independent body last September when the task force report was released.

He has now engaged a special advisory team to further study that recommendation as well as others, his office said Friday, although its unclear when it was formed. The team includes three members of the Premiers Roundtable on Violence Against Women.

McPhedran, a human rights lawyer, didnt leave the committee room Wednesday feeling overly confident that the committee would recommend putting the independent oversight body in the bill.

When the questions are very specific, I can tell if they are going to go for major change and make major amendments. I couldnt tell that today, she told the Star after her testimony. That doesnt mean some of them are not thinking of it.

McPhedran is adamant: there is now more than 25 years of work to show that the current system of self-regulation is not working when it comes to handling sexual abuse cases. As it stands now, the cases go before discipline panels, where the majority of members are from the same profession as the accused health professional.

The cases that we reviewed in 2015, those cases are identical to the cases that we were reviewing in 1991, she said, comparing discipline cases examined by her third task force to the first one, which was conducted for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

We have more than adequate evidence to reach the conclusion that no matter what the government tries to do in fine-tuning definitions, fine-tuning support to patients  all of which are good things  as long as governments, as they have all done for more than 20 years, continue to put public investment into only the professional side, of course that imbalance is going to create inaccessibly and injustice. Of course.

Bill 87 comes as the College of Physicians is battling its own discipline committee in court for handing a Toronto doctor a six-month suspension last year for groping four female patients, rather than revoke his licence.

The college, which had requested that the independent discipline committee strip Dr. Javad Peirovy of his licence, was successful on its appeal to Divisional Court earlier this year, but Peirovy has since been granted leave to appeal that decision to the Court of Appeal. In the Divisional Court ruling, the three-judge panel had harsh words for the committees ability to deal with sexual abuse cases.

The facts of these cases are base. It is depressing to review them, Justice James Ramsay, writing for the panel, said of prior sexual abuse cases.

They do little to encourage confidence in the committees approach to eradicating sexual abuse in the profession. Consistency in the imposition of sentence is a proper consideration, but a litany of clearly unfit penalties does not justify the penalty imposed in the present case.

Bill 87 would add to the list of acts of sexual abuse requiring mandatory revocation of a health professionals licence. Currently, the list contains sexual intercourse, oral sex and masturbation, and groping will now be included.

McPhedran said the existence of a list speaks to the inability of the disciplines committees at the various colleges to properly exercise their discretion in imposing penalties.

Nothing has ever stopped any college discipline body to find that the offence was so egregious and damaging to the patient that they could revoke, she told the Star. Theyve always had that authority. And they continue, consistently in case after case after case, with the odd exception . . . the pattern is they find ways to avoid (revocation).

McPhedran also spoke of the difficulties she experienced in her work on the third task force, and of the disputes she had with Ministry of Health officials over the contents of the final report.

As the Star revealed last year, the government was keeping the task force report secret over concerns it defamed top organizations, including the College of Physicians. The extensive legal wrangling McPhedran referred to on Wednesday were the outside lawyers the government hired to go through the document.

The final report was delivered in December 2015, she told the Star, after she convinced the government to extend the deadline from July following the resignation of her co-chair, former Ontario chief justice Roy McMurtry. She said she encountered pushback, and offered to do the work from July to December for free.

After back-and-forth with outside lawyers for months, the report came back and was 90 per cent redacted, she said.

I said this is completely unacceptable, you figure this out, or Im going to do something, she said, mentioning that she ended up releasing her second task force report on her own in 2000. So they knew it wasnt an empty threat.

To his credit, McPhedran said, Hoskins himself called her up in early September 2016 and said after reviewing the report, he was ready to release it almost completely intact, which is what ended up happening. Within three months of the task force reports release, Hoskins introduced Bill 87 in the legislature.

While no health professional association has publicly taken issue with the provisions around sexual abuse in the bill, there are other parts that have drawn a huge amount of criticism.

The Ontario Medical Association, which has been engaged in a tense contract dispute for years with Hoskins, has been vocal about its objections to a provision that would grant the minister power to compel colleges to turn over personal information about their members, including health information.

Certainly we think that physicians and other health-care providers should be entitled to the same expectation of privacy, said newly elected OMA president Dr. Shawn Whatley, who denounced the governments lack of consultation with his association on the bill.

Doctors are patients too, they need to have that same privacy dealt with, and the issue the bill raises is that not only is it an infringement of privacy rights, theres a concern that doctors wont seek necessary treatment in fear that their personal health information could be shared inappropriately.

The government has said it consulted with the Information and Privacy Commissioner on Bill 87, although critics have said Hoskins has never explained why this particular provision is in the bill.

A spokesperson for Hoskins told the Star this week that the government has heard concerns about the provision and that they are considering this feedback as we enter the clause-by-clause phase of the committee process.

The OMA also takes issue with the provision that would allow the minister to create regulations to set the composition of committees and panels, meaning discipline panels could one day be comprised of mainly public members, rather than members of the profession.

Critics have said this displays a lack of faith on the part of the government in the self-regulation of health professions, and is a way for it to develop a larger role for itself in the system without completely taking it over.

We believe in self-regulation and that requires clinical input, said Whatley. There are nuances that need to be brought to bear from a clinical perspective, and self-regulation demands professional representation on committees.

Over at the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario, its a much different stance than the OMA. Polar opposite, in fact. The RNAO not only supports every provision in Bill 87, but they also support McPhedrans call for an independent body to prosecute sexual abuse cases.

Something is deeply wrong when we put out report after report after report and we continue to leave (sexual abuse cases) basically in the hands of a non-neutral body, said the associations CEO, Doris Grinspun. That to us is our issue at RNAO, that the public deserves a neutral body to look at something as serious as sexual abuse, which is very impactful on peoples lives.

I think if there was a separate body, likely the number of complaints would increase at the beginning, because people would feel freer and safer to bring those complaints forward, knowing that there will be a fair, neutral process.

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VANCOUVERAnimal rescuers at the Vancouver Aquariums marine mammal centre say theyre trying to save a California sea lion that was shot in the face.

The adult male, which the team named Senor Cinco after he was found on the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo, was spotted on the beach at Spanish Banks, emaciated and unresponsive.

The aquarium says in a news release that it took several days to stabilize the animal, and on Tuesday a team was able to give him a full examination under a general anaesthetic where they discovered he had been shot at least twice in the face.

Dr. Martin Haulena, the aquariums head veterinarian, says the sea lions teeth are shattered, he is blind in one eye and the injuries indicate hes been in distress for weeks.

Haulena says its too early to tell if Senor Cinco will be a candidate for release, but he has a long road to recovery ahead.

California sea lions breed off the coast of Southern California and the Baja Peninsula, but during non-breeding season a large number of males migrate north to B.C.

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There is no evidence to indicate criminality in the death of a 17-year-old First Nations girl who was found in a Thunder Bay waterway on Sunday, Thunder Bay police say.

Tammy Keeash is the sixth First Nations student to be found dead in the waters surrounding Thunder Bay since 2000.

Keeash, who is remembered as an artist from North Caribou First Nation, was living in a Thunder Bay group home when she missed her curfew last Saturday evening. Her body was discovered in the Neebing-McIntyre Floodway on Sunday and Thunder Bay Police Services say the post mortem results indicated that her death is consistent with drowning.

A high profile inquest into the deaths of seven indigenous high school students living in Thunder Bay from 2000 to 2011 concluded last June. Five of the students were found dead in the water while two, Robyn Harper and Paul Panacheese, died at their respective residences. The inquest made 145 recommendations including the development of an improved missing persons protocol, especially when dealing with indigenous youth, and, improving safety down by the rivers.

Four of the students deaths were ruled undetermined by a coroners jury.

A provincial watchdog, the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, has been investigating the Thunder Bay Police Service for the last several months concerning allegations of systemic racism when dealing with the deaths and disappearance of indigenous people. Their report is forthcoming.

Keeash was the fourth indigenous girl to die while under provincial care in the last six months. Amy Owen, 13, took her life on April 17 while in an Ottawa group home, and Courtney Scott, 16, died on April 21 in a suspicious fire in an Orleans group home that is now under investigation. Scotts family says they have many unanswered questions as to what happened and why their daughter was unable to escape the blaze. On Oct. 29, 2016, Kanina Sue Turtle, 15, died in Sioux Lookout and her family is still waiting for answers.

All four girls belonged to First Nations that are a part of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, a political organization of 49 northern First Nations covering a territory the size of France. NAN is calling for an inquest into the girls deaths. Due to a lack of mental health and child protection services in northern Ontario, many youth are taken out of their communities and placed in group homes hundreds of kilometres away from their families. But when the children are removed, NAN has no idea where they go, if they have been assessed or have treatment plans.

Thunder Bay Police Services say an extensive investigation discovered Keeash was last seen near the shore of the McIntyre Floodway at 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 6, and that investigators have spoken to those who were with her at the time.

All individuals were known to each other. At this point, there is no evidence to indicate criminality in this tragic death, said a police press release issued on Friday.

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The owners of a Willowdale rooming house are accused of multiple violations of Ontarios fire code after a blaze last fall killed a woman.

Firefighters pulled the 47-year-old woman from a burning bungalow at 177 Elmhurst Ave., a residential street near Yonge St. and Sheppard Ave. W., on Nov. 30.

The woman, who was not identified, received CPR but was later pronounced dead at hospital.

Toronto Fire Service announced Friday that, after an investigation into the blaze and other properties owned by Thevathurai Akilan, Balatharshini Akilan and AKS Rental Management Inc., will face provincial charges.

If convicted of failing to have a fire alarm system, failure to have an approved fire safety plan, breaches in fire separations and other infractions, the individuals could face hefty fines and/or jail time. The corporation could be fined up to $100,000 per violation. Judges rarely hand out, however, penalties near the maximum.

After the fire, inspections were conducted of 45 Irvington Cres., a house near Sheppard and Highway 401, and 57 Farmcrest Dr., a house near Pharmacy Ave. and Sheppard Ave. E., owned by the same people.

The fire safety inspections confirmed the buildings were occupied as multi-unit residential buildings and revealed numerous violations of the Ontario Fire Code, a Toronto Fire news release states.

A man who answered the phone at AKS Rental Management Inc. told the Star: I think you have the wrong number. When the reporter noted a photo of the home that caught fire is featured on the AKS website with the word Rented, he hung up.

The website says the company, started in 1988, is based in Toronto and also owns properties in Ottawa.

We also offer our best service to the students, professionals and foreign nationals who like to secure an accommodation before they arrive here in Ontario, Canada, the website says.

City staff have identified hundreds of illegal rooming houses in North York, East York and Scarborough, where local rules prohibit them opening. In the old city of Toronto and Etobicoke, where they can be licensed and regulated including fire inspections, more than 400 are registered.

Rooming houses can operate without a licence in former York.

City staff last year proposed expanding parts of Toronto where rooming houses can be legal, and subject to regulation and inspection. Some suburban councillors, however, oppose the idea.

John Filion, who represents Willowdale on city council, said two types of illegal rooming houses are a problem in his ward  older homes bought as an investment and chopped into rental rooms for quick income, and newer, often larger homes subdivided primarily for rental to college and university students.

I would guess that, of all the basement (units) in my ward, less than 10 per cent would be meeting fire code requirements, he said.

The councillor said city staff tell him they have limited powers, under provincial law, to gain entry to suspected rooming houses. Fire officials tell him they need good reason to investigate a suspected fire code violation.

A 2014 report by the Wellesley Institute said the stereotype of the rooming house as a downtown issue has overshadowed the fact that this is a form of affordable housing that exists across Toronto.

As rooming houses have surfaced in suburban communities, their legal status has left them unregulated and has prevented them from being seen as an affordable housing option, states Torontos Suburban Rooming House: Just Spin on a Downtown Problem?

The focus needs to shift from the imagined geography of a 1970s skid row neighbourhood and into a contemporary vision of affordable housing options for all.

With files from Betsy Powell

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Torontos newest tourism star is getting a facelift after emerging from winter worse for wear.

City staff were busy Friday removing a frayed 17-month-old vinyl wrap from the TORONTO sign in Nathan Phillips Square and replacing it with a new one celebrating the city and Canadas 150th birthday.

The colourful cladding for the big climbable letters features the word love in 60 languages.

Also prominent are raccoon faces representing Toronto, maple leaves for Canada and hearts representing love.

While not everyone celebrates raccoons and their foraging habits, the city says in a news release it is an animal whose abundance across the city has made it synonymous with T.O. life.

The theme of the new wrap for the Toronto sign is TO Canada with Love which ties in with the City of Toronto's year-long program of celebrations, commemorations and exhibitions honouring Canada's 150th birthday, the release states.

The title can be read as T.O. Canada with Love  a nod to one of the city's most popular nicknames, and a sign-off expressed with endearment from residents to visitors. Or, it can be read as "To Canada with Love," a more active address from the city to the rest of the country, proudly sharing the city's cultural offerings with the rest of the nation.

The Star reported in early April that the sign, photographed and shared by visitors from around the world, was looking shabby, scuffed with wrap unevenly worn away in heavily trod spots to reveal black rubbery padding.

The 2015 Pan Am Games spirit booster, kept in the square by popular demand, has no official permanent status, no guidelines for which events merit notice by its multihued lights, and no ongoing maintenance funding.

City councillors rejected a staff request for $150,000 in sign maintenance funding, meaning new wraps and other work are paid from other budgets. The signs future will be back before council later this year.

Andrew Weir, executive vice-president and chief marketing officer at Tourism Toronto, said city residents and tourists do not seem to be tiring of the three-metre illuminated letters.

The sign instantly became one of our most recognizable icons, and is now featured, along with the CN Tower and other landmarks, in materials the not-for-profit agency uses to promote Toronto tourism around the globe.

It really does seem to have lasting power because new people are always encountering it . . . If you walked by Nathan Phillips Square now and didnt see it, the square would look funny. Its become ingrained.

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A man wanted for first-degree murder in a Toronto shooting last year has been arrested in Aruba.

Police in Toronto issued an arrest warrant for Michael Teddy Gibson in April 2016 after 27-year-old Julian Weekes was found shot to death at a gas station parking lot near Parliament St. and Richmond St. E.

Gibson, 30, was last seen in Toronto that month.

He was arrested by police in Aruba two months ago on unrelated charges.

Toronto police Const. Caroline de Kloet said Gibson will be arrested for first-degree murder after the investigation in Aruba is finished.

Police said both Gibson and Weekes were from the Regent Park neighbourhood and knew each other.

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Halton drug prosecution cases are in jeopardy after an internal police audit found dozens of exhibits stored in an evidence vault may have been compromised, the Star has learned.

An external police force is now investigating.

The Halton Regional Police Service audited the secured storage bunker in November and discovered 36 drug exhibits where the packaging or contents may have been tampered with, according to a summary of the internal audit obtained by the Star.

Halton police Chief Stephen Tanner said he considers this a very serious situation but would not comment on specifics  including the names and ranks of any Halton officers who may be under investigation  until the external probe is wrapped up.

I expect their investigation is nearing completion and that may lead to charges being laid in the next couple of weeks, Tanner said.

He would not identify the external force conducting the investigation.

The chief said some criminal court proceedings have already been stayed pending the outcome of the investigation, adding that a number of Haltons drug cases may now be compromised.

That is certainly a ramification that I expect will occur down the road and will be a part of how seriously we view this, he said.

Once we know what exhibits were tampered with or not tampered with and what the investigation showed, then the prosecution office can certainly address that.

The Halton Regional Police Association did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson from the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, a federal agency that handles drug prosecutions, said she was unable to speculate about the outcome of the investigation, or comment on any cases that may have been affected.

Crown lawyers prosecuting drug charges in the region have sent out boilerplate letters to defence lawyers explaining that the issue is being investigated.

But without specific details, the courts have been wary of proceeding with drug cases that rely on evidence stored in the same drug vault.

Presiding in January over a drug case in Milton that ultimately was found not to be affected, Judge Stephen Brown said the uncertainty potentially taints every investigation.

This is about the faith in the administration of justice in the system, Brown said, according to a transcript of the proceeding. Is there a compromise (in an) essential feature of the evidentiary backbone of drug trials?

Halton lawyer Brendan Neil, who represented the defendant in that case (a man charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking cocaine and fentanyl), has been petitioning for months for more information, since he received a letter from federal prosecutors late last year flagging the potential problems at the drug vault.

Because of the lack of disclosure, we dont know if exhibits have been mixed, if things have been taken out of exhibits. We dont know how much has been taken out. We dont how many people are involved, he said in an interview.

Theres a huge transparency issue. I want to know, good, bad or ugly, how deep this problem is, Neil said.

Concerns about the drug vault surfaced in mid-November, when senior police were alerted that something was amiss. Halton police conducted an audit of its drug vault, shutting it down for 10 days so only the forces audit co-ordinator and an assistant could access the 2,185 drug exhibits on site.

The physical examination of exhibits identified 36 drug exhibits where the integrity of exhibit packaging or the drugs contained within the packaging indicated that the chain of custody and continuity of the exhibit may have been compromised, the forces audit co-ordinator said in a summary obtained by the Star.

There was no problem with the vast majority of drug exhibits, the audit co-ordinator said.

In the Milton case, Justice Brown also raised concern about a possibly lengthy drug vault investigation, saying there is an increased risk that affected cases may be subject to the Supreme Courts ruling in R v. Jordan, which set specific time limits on how long trials can take.

Released last year, R v. Jordan stipulates that a case will be thrown out if the time between arrest and the conclusion of the trial exceeds 18 months in provincial court and 30 months in Superior Court.

Neil said the Milton case was resolved in March, after the Crown provided assurances that the drug evidence was not among the exhibits pinpointed for further scrutiny. Before questions about the drug vault emerged, his client, Jaccob Bodanis-Rhule, 23, was facing charges of possession of fentanyl and cocaine for the purpose of trafficking. But after several months of delay and numerous appearances before Brown, the Crown accepted a guilty plea to simple possession, a lesser charge.

I dont think it would have been a joint position in court if it had not been for the drug vault issue, Neil said.

Jesse McLean can reached at 647-215-4370. Rachel Mendleson can be reached at rmendleson@thestar.ca .

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A contentious article encouraging writers to imagine other cultures and to set your sights on the big goal: Win the Appropriation Prize is finding support from high-profile Canadian journalists who are raising money to create the controversial award.

Hal Niedzviecki resigned this week as editor of The Writers Union of Canada magazine after his opinion piece sparked outrage with a member of the magazines editorial board calling it clueless and thoughtless.

Late on Thursday night, a conversation on Twitter began when Jonathan Kay, editor-in-chief of The Walrus magazine, called the outrage over Niedzvieckis article a mobbing that was sad and shameful.

In response, former National Post editor-in-chief Ken Whyte tweeted that he would donate $500 to fund the appropriation prize mentioned in the opinion piece.

The tweet began a stream of pledges from high profile Canadian journalists to create the prize.

Others were quick to condemn this drive.

Niedzviecki responded Friday with a note on Facebook.

Calls for an actual appropriation prize are extremely unhelpful. They do not represent me in anyway. In the short article I wrote, the satiric notion of the prize was brought up in jest  ie. how can we encourage writers of all backgrounds to explore points of view other than their own? Thats all I meant. I agree that the timing of the article was poor, and I feel terribly that writers whose beautiful and important words were featured in that issue were hurt. As I wrote in the piece, Indigenous writing is the most vital and compelling force in writing and publishing in Canada today. 

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Sometimes, social change occurs so slowly you could spend a lifetime and not notice it. At other times, it can rush through with the swiftness of a whirlwind, leaving you dazed in its wake.

One such disruptive force hit the Toronto Star recently, bringing the old order up against a confrontational, anti-establishment millennial wave of activism. In my view, the establishment came up short.

On May 4, columnist Desmond Cole, also a noted black activist, gave up his bi-weekly freelance writing gig at the Star in a very public fashion  in a blog and then a tweet that directed his considerable following to the blog.

Then he sat back and watched.

You cant make news and cover the news: DiManno

The Twitter post elicited a reaction ranging from solidarity to outrage. It sparked a debate among Torontos decidedly non-black journalistic circles about whether a journalist could also be an activist.

Was Coles particular brand of activism incompatible with column writing in the Star? Public editor Kathy English quickly wrote up an explanation of the Stars policy, and her own unease with Coles actions  and the fury spilled over.

For Coles readers, the policy wasnt the point  they saw its application as inconsistent.

This was not an academic discussion about journalism and policy but about the implementation of that policy in the messy and viscerally emotional context of race and racism.

Quick recap: On April 20, Cole who is noted for his opposition to carding  the police system of stopping, questioning and documenting information of mostly black and brown-skinned citizens, even if they are not suspected of criminal activity  went to a Toronto Police Services Board meeting and refused to leave the speakers chair until the board agreed to destroy the carding data. The board cancelled the meeting. A photograph of Cole with his fist raised in a Black Power salute flashed across news sites including the Star.

Did his act of resistance and rebellion  that his readers saw as naming the perpetrators of their injustice  cross a journalistic line? Some in the Star thought so, and editorial page editor Andrew Phillips, who oversees Coles work, called him in to tell him about a policy that states, It is not appropriate for Star journalists to play the roles of both actor and critic.

In Coles place, I, too, would have taken that pointing out of a policy to mean, Dont do it again.

Cole opted out. If I must choose between a newspaper column and the actions I must take to liberate myself and my community, he wrote in his blog, I choose activism in the service of Black liberation.

Adding fat to the fire, Cole wrote: In April of 2016, John Honderich, the chair of Torstar Corp., who was also serving as the Stars acting publisher at that time, asked to meet with me. Honderich suggested I was writing about race too often, and advised me to diversify my topics.

When I put that to Honderich, he denied it, saying he had instead asked Cole to diversify from writing solely about carding.

He was writing about carding all the time. So the idea was in a constructive way to say broaden the palette. It wasnt race, Honderich said. He saw it as journalistic guidance.

I think for any columnist to be successful, you cant be predictable. You cant always be writing on the same subject.

Both Honderich and Phillips say a previous cutting of Coles column from weekly to biweekly  something that Cole and his readers viewed as a clipping of wings  was part of a general shuffle at the time.

What about an uneven application of policy?

Remember all we said to him was here is our policy, Honderich said. Advocacy, absolutely. Activism in terms of becoming the story yourself  that is against our policy.

Was that the line in the sand? I asked.

That was the line in the sand, he said.

We took a deeper dive into journalism and policy, and how the actor and critic rule had been applied to various columnists at the Star.

The Stars legendary womens rights activist/columnist Michele Landsberg? She was a ferocious and great advocate. She never became the story, Honderich said.

Naomi Klein? David Frum? If they contribute, well run them.

Wait, what?

A distilled version of our discussion revealed this: A columnist  but not a reporter  can be an advocate.

There are three kinds of columnists at the Star: a staff columnist working in the newsroom, like I am, a regular columnist, like Cole, whose work appeared on the opinion pages, was; and an occasional op-ed columnist or contributor. The last two are freelance, but the policy on not mixing activism and writing applies only to the first two.

A regular columnist ends up representing the Star, Honderich says, and so the policies apply.

Asking a regular freelance columnist  one who gets paid per column and is not on salary  to behave as a staff columnist does not make sense to me. Is someone who is paid two days a month really expected to live by the Stars rules for the other 28 days?

It also bothers me that Cole was called in and shown the policy not for what he wrote in the Star (he did not write about his protest) but for what he did outside it.

The question here was that he took that action and it was public, Honderich says.

He has since discovered that Cole had disrupted other meetings. There were other cases where he acted out. For example at the York (Region District School) Board where he started yelling. And I got a note about that.

The report there was that there was considerable unease there among the people on the board and the people around as to exactly what role was Desmond playing.

If the public needed clarification on his position  or if the Star needed to create a little distance from his activism  a tagline at the end of each column could have sufficed. Desmond Cole is a freelance contributor who writes bi-weekly would establish to readers that he is not a representative of the organization.

Im not convinced, though, that the public was confused about Coles role. He is a known activist, and readers look to him to lead the discussion on anti-black racism, particularly with regard to policing.

Honderich himself recruited Cole because, Like others, I was dazzled by his Toronto Life column on carding. He was an incredibly effective voice. Young, attractive, good writer, well-spoken. This would be a great voice for the Toronto Star to have.

Coles rejection of the Star strikes at the heart of establishment liberalism.

The Stars opinion pages are by far the most diverse in the country in terms of who writes, Phillips wrote in his email. Surveys of other comparable pages have shown that and our own periodic counts confirm it. The Star is the leader in this area and will continue to be.

If the Star, which has seriously invested in investigating and exposing the shortcomings of carding, and also espousing its termination, can appear to be rattled by black activism, how will other media fare?

The fight for equality is changing its tone and without adequate representation in their newsrooms, traditional media are not keeping up. Digital platforms created change, giving voice to the marginalized. Insecurity fuelled by Donald Trumps election in the U.S. just accelerated the desire for that change.

Where the liberal establishment offers limited advances, the new wave of activists want fundamental transformation. Where their predecessors tried to effect change from within the system, these advocates are done with the politics of respectability. They are done waiting for equality on someone elses timeline.

Carding is a crusade for social justice at the Star, but for thousands of others, its a daily indignity that they dont have the privilege of escaping at the end of a work day. Civil disobedience has long been a tool in the fight for social justice. By showing its discomfort with it, the Star came across as intolerant of black activism.

Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar

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KINGSTON, ONT.A 37-year-old transport truck driver from Quebec is facing a number of charges in connection with a major highway crash in Ontario that killed four people.

Ontario Provincial Police say theyre still working to identify the victims of Thursdays crash, which took place along Highway 401 near Kingston, Ont.

Read more:Four killed in Hwy. 401 crash near Kingston

They previously said four people in the same car died when their vehicle caught fire during the crash.

Theirs was one of seven vehicles involved in the pileup, which sent two people to hospital with serious injuries and involved another car, a commercial vehicle and four transport trucks.

Police say truck driver Dunhill Tabanao of Vaudreuil-Dorion, Que. has been charged with four counts of dangerous operation of a vehicle causing death and two counts of dangerous operation causing bodily harm.

Police say theyre continuing to investigate the crash.

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Picture this scenario:

A pro-life columnist attends a city hall meeting where the subject under discussion is a proposal to fund abortion clinics.

The columnist stands up and disrupts the meeting, shouting: Fetuses are babies and all abortions kill babies! Stop the murder of the innocent! Stop the funding or I wont leave!

Now, its unlikely that the Star would be publishing, as a regular freelance contributor, an anti-choice columnist. But this is an imagining, to make a point about where the radical intersects with the professional.

Im certain this newsroom would be appalled and many would be clamouring for the columnist to be ditched.

Read more: It was wrong to rein in Desmond Cole: Paradkar

Activism is usually supported and defended only when that particular value is shared. When we vehemently disagree, its deplored.

I would have fired this fictitious columnist.

The Star did not fire Desmond Cole.

As Cole made clear in his own blog he was merely called in by the editorial page editor and reminded about the papers policy, which states: It is not appropriate for Star journalists to play the roles of both actor and critic.

This is a fundamental journalistic divide. Cross it at your peril.

You cant make the news and cover the news, not with aforethought and deliberate intent. Because sometimes reporters do become the news, such as a war correspondent friend of mine who was three times abducted in combat zones, on one of those occasions rescued in a Royal Marines operations that resulted in the deaths of a soldier and interpreter.

Cole, who has passionately advocated for the complete abandonment by police of carding  the stopping, questioning and documenting of individuals when no specific offense is being investigated, a practice which inordinately targets black civilians  brought a police board hearing to a halt last month after he took the speakers chair and demanded that all information which had been collected in this matter be destroyed.

There is no disagreement between the Star and Cole on this point. No media in Toronto has been more muscular in denouncement of carding than this newspaper, both in its editorials and in the investigative series which contributed to the Toronto Police Services recalibrating its policy  albeit not to the extent that either Cole or the Star would like.

So far, no problem.

But Cole, by taking the police board meeting hostage, went well beyond activism and into the realm of compromised crusading. Thats fine for a self-described activist; its not fine for a journalist. Because even columnists must adhere to basic tenets of arms-length involvement.

Real journalism matters. Stunts, as this was, matter less and are not journalism. True civil disobedience is vital for social justice and has changed the world. But its not journalism.

Cole subsequently wrote in his blog: If I must choose between a newspaper column and the actions I must take to liberate myself and my community, I choose activism in the service of Black liberation.

His editor, as Cole made clear, did not directly instruct him to cease and desist in the future. There was no disciplining. And it was Coles choice to vacate his freelance gig, although not without (in the blog) a preening and pious departing shot: I doubt any freelance columnist in the recent (or even not so recent) history of the Star has consistently generated more interest and readership, and consequently more revenue, than I have. Few of the Stars full-time columnists cannot (sic) claim the following I have built as a freelancer and, with the very notable exception of Washington correspondent Daniel Dale, no regular Star columnist or reporter can match my success in aggressively marketing my work on social media.

Well, theres a rub right there. Most of us arent, or shouldnt be, in the business of self-promotion. As for the validity of Coles claims, Ive no way of knowing and neither does he.

From my four-decades plus as a journalist, two-decades plus as a columnist, the one thing I know as intrinsic truth is that you cant suck and blow at the same time. Cant observe, deduce and explain whilst participating in the story unfolding.

Many years back, I attended a rally for Dr. Henry Morgentaler, not in a professional capacity but as a civilian. When an editor learned of it, he tore a strip off me. I could no longer, he declared, report on Morgentaler, who was at the time embroiled in judicial battles over his freestanding abortion clinics.

I took the rebuke deeply to heart, to the extent that I will not even vote in any election, at any level of government, because that would be tacitly aligning myself with a political party.

Read more:

Activists protest against practice of carding derails Toronto police board meeting

Journalists shouldnt become the news: Public Editor

Journalistic advocacy, with the intent of changing political policy and social attitudes, is a crucial underpinning of media that leads instead of follows, from the intrepid Nellie Bly, who had herself committed to a lunatic asylum in the 1880s and then revealed her shocking expose (Ten Days in a Madhouse) for New York Citys The World, to the Stars recent investigative series on indefinite immigration detention.

It can be, I will concede, a fine distinction. There have been times when Ive shuddered at what passes for news and is palpably (to my mind) partisan crusading. The Star, steered by its Atkinson principles  the pursuit of social, economic and political reforms as a progressive newspaper  holds these values to be essentially true.

Columnists, particularly, have wide latitude to express opinion, even when theyre diametrically in conflict with the papers position. That makes for robust debate.

But you cant generate the news and comment on it. Just as I, charged last summer with assault, did not for a moment even consider writing about the incident (and, by the way, would slug that person again if the same situation arose because children must always be protected.)

I loathe identity politics, which have made a mess of our institutions and governance. Even more so, I loathe identity journalism in a new age media world where just about everybody is allowed to write with a columnist bent, which is an earned privilege. And I know from personal experience  when columns have been spiked  that its a privilege with boundaries.

Sometimes we fall in love with our words, our own perceived integrity, our ardently held convictions. A mass circulation newspaper is a big tent operation. But you cant  shouldnt function as ringmaster and audience simultaneously.

And you dont get a pass because youre black or racialized (an invented word) or female or transgendered or  by all outward measurement  part of a marginalized group.

The best journalists have empathy, try to walk in another persons shoes, tell compelling stories. The columnists I admire have a strong sense of outrage.

But we have to step back, if only a prudent half-pace. Or give up the conflict and run for political office, align publicly with a social cause, raise a placard or a fist.

Im dismayed this even needs saying. Im dismayed any journalist would say different.

Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.

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Cornell Belcher, a former pollster for the U.S. Democrats, said this week that he was seriously thinking about relocating to Toronto.

He was on a swing through Canada, promoting his book A Black Man in the White House, and from what he was seeing, this country looked a lot more sane than his own.

Belcher was sitting directly in front of the stage on Wednesday night at the annual Politics and the Pen dinner in Ottawa when the Shaughnessy Cohen prize was awarded for the best political book of the past year.

The prize went to Ryerson professor Kamal Al-Solaylee for his book Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone). It was a neat coincidence  two authors, one Canadian, one American, drawing acclaim in Canadas capital this week for their books on what its like to be non-white.

One might be tempted to call it a post-racial moment for the Canadian book-publishing industry.

Belcher was also impressed that the co-hosts for the evening came from two different political parties  Treasury Board President Scott Brison, a Liberal, sharing the podium with interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose.

Can you imagine Paul Ryan and Nancy Pelosi doing that in Washington? Belcher said as he was leaving. I may be looking for a place in Toronto.

But Belcher would not have been using words like post-racial to describe his day in Ottawa (which included a public interview with me before the Politics and the Pen event). He is acutely aware of declaring victory too soon.

Much of Belchers book is about how Barack Obamas election as president in 2008 was not the moment when the United States shed its problems with race relations. In fact, Belcher writes, Obamas time in the White House may have made things worse, and created a racial-aversion crisis that helped to elect Donald Trump.

Its a sobering read, filled with statistics (as youd expect from a pollster) and cool-headed analysis of Americas continuing race-relations problems. Trump, who wasnt even elected when Belcher finished his book, is blamed for whipping up white nationalism by expanding American whites view of the others to include Hispanics and Muslims.

He talks about how racism wears a thin disguise under slogans such as take our country back.

When you get to the heart of it, what  or who  are they taking their country back from? Belcher asks in his book. They want to take their country back from former minorities who are in the process of finding their power in growing numbers and exercising it in the voting booth.

Rapid diversification means that minorities are becoming the majority in the United States, Belcher documents, and wishing for the America depicted in Leave it to Beaver or I Love Lucy wont make it so. Though the United States was never an all-white nation, we played one on TV.

Al-Solaylees book casts a more global view on colour differences, but if he and Belcher had a chance on Wednesday night to compare their home countries, both would have had some uncomfortable truths to trade, coloured black or brown.

In my own Canada, I saw how a decade of Conservative rule tore apart the countrys reputation as a fair and progressive society, largely by casting its Arab and Muslim populations as enemies of the state, Al-Solaylee writes in Brown.

Born in Yemen, raised in Beirut and Cairo, Al-Solaylee describes how the 2015 election, with its ugly debates over refugees and the niqab, felt too personal, too close to the skin. Justin Trudeaus victory came as a relief, he writes: I felt better that night about my future in Canada than I had for the previous decade.

Al-Solaylee was feeling pretty good on Wednesday night, too, after the prize was awarded, as well he should have been.

But Belchers book warns that racial aversion (a term he prefers to simple racism) doesnt go away with simple declarations or even political victories (presumably book prizes either). Obamas victory lulled many Americans into complacency and halted some difficult conversations that the country still needs to have, Belcher says. He wonders why theres never been serious talk, for instance, about a national apology for slavery or segregation laws and policies.

Al-Solaylees book also warns against complacency, saying that some of the uglier sentiments whipped up during the last federal election are not an aberration in Canada, but an indication of a specific, anti-brown feeling that has been gaining momentum, even in liberal Canada.

So while that was a good moment on Wednesday in Canadas capital, one that may have tempted a lifelong Southern American to move north, wed be wise not to consider Canada post-racial yet.

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An upscale family home in North York was turned into an illegal rooming house and crammed with as many as a dozen international students without the owners knowledge, a Star investigation has found.

The man who ran the house is Michael Ryan, who represented himself as the homeowner but is not the rightful tenant. He informally sublet the property from an ex-girlfriend, who is the only occupant listed on the lease but hasnt lived at the house in more than a year.

These people have taken our family home and used it illegally for their own profit to take advantage of us and the students, said Douglas Melville, who owns the six-bedroom house with his wife, Gailina Liew. The couple bought the property in 2014, but two years ago moved to the Channel Islands, where Melville was hired as the financial ombudsman for the British archipelago.

We feel very sorry for the students who have found themselves in this situation, Melville wrote in an email to the Star.

In addition to misrepresenting himself as the owner of the house, Ryan was also not the kind of landlord expected by the tenants, a mix of young people from overseas attending college, university or taking English-language courses.

The Star spoke to two former and one current tenant, who said they lived, at various times, with between nine and 12 other people and each tenant paid their own rent. They said Ryan routinely and arbitrarily withheld security deposits, enforced what they considered draconian rules and, in general, ignored tenants rights. Ryans house rules included barring overnight guests and issuing $20 fines if he was unsatisfied with cleaning efforts. Tenants were not given keys to the house or their rooms.

In an interview with the Star, Ryan disputed some of the allegations. He said he had as many as nine students in the house at one time, but never more than that, saying the tenants who spoke to the Star are lying. Unknown guests presented a safety issue, he said, while the threat of fines was just to keep you honest.

He said he provided a unique, multicultural experience to international students with better living conditions than most homestay programs.

Im proud of what I do.

Rooming houses, which are illegal in North York, consist of any property in which four or more people share a kitchen or washroom and pay separate rents, according to city bylaws. Rooming houses are only permitted in the former cities of York, Toronto and Etobicoke, but they must be licensed and subject to regular inspections. They are illegal in Scarborough, East York and North York.

The house is on Elmwood Ave., a leafy side street just north of Bayview and Sheppard Aves. It is approximately 4,500 square feet and includes soaring 18-foot ceilings, a winding staircase and three fireplaces, according to an online rental listing.

Melville and Liew purchased it in 2014 for $1,549,000.

Before they left Toronto, Melville, the former chief executive of Canadas Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, found a single tenant and employed a property management company to collect the rent and maintain the house, where he and his family intended to live again in the future.

So he was shocked to learn from the Star that Ryan, whom he has never met, had taken over the house and was renting out every possible living space.

Melville and Liew signed a lease in January 2016 with Mary Sharleen McDowall, a Toronto psychologist. The lease and rental application list no other tenants or occupants and prohibit any sub-tenancies. Melville said they only became aware McDowall was living with someone else when their alarm company referred to a male occupant at the house.

McDowall told the Star she went to high school with Ryan and they reconnected toward the end of 2015, rekindling a past relationship. They decided to look for a house to rent together and used a real estate broker to find a property. She said she knew Ryans main source of income would likely be from hosting one or two international homestay students, but she didnt think that would contravene her lease.

Just a couple months into the lease their relationship fell apart and she decided to move out, while Ryan agreed to keep paying the rent to the property manager. McDowall did not inform the owners or the property managers of her decision and continued to be the only legal occupant on paper.

Its so stressful to deal with him that I kind of just wanted to zone out of the situation, McDowall told the Star. I have other issues with him. I just dont want to be involved in it . . . Its kind of like putting my head in the sand a little bit  well, a lot.

McDowall said she had no idea what was going on at the house.

I thought everything was going OK. Rent was being paid.

The issue came to the Stars attention when a former tenant, Jaehyun Kim, a 23-year-old Korean woman visiting Canada on a six-month working holiday visa, complained that she had been ill-treated by Ryan, whom she believed was the owner and landlord.

Kim was upset that Ryan abruptly evicted her in February with only a few weeks notice and withheld her $150 security deposit. She also says she was misled by Ryan when she signed her rental agreement and did not expect to have to share a kitchen with 12 other people.

It was terrible, said Kim, adding that she was shocked to learn Ryan wasnt the owner of the house. Everybody thought he was the owner.

Rents in the house ranged from $450 for a shared bedroom to $800 for a private room, according to the former tenants who spoke to the Star, as well as advertisements posted on a Korean website. At times 12 tenants shared the same kitchen, while as many as six shared a washroom, according to former tenants. Ryan lived in the basement.

The monthly rent paid to the homeowners was $4,300, so based on advertised rents and what tenants said Ryan charged, he could have collected about $2,500 on top of what he paid the property managers.

Ryan, who said he has been stressed out since being contacted by the Star and recently developed shingles, said that while he may not have followed all the appropriate landlord-and-tenant rules, he never missed a monthly rent payment and did not damage the house.

The homeowner has not been hurt in any way, shape or form, he said. We dont miss payments. The house is pristine. Were perfect tenants.

Ryan said he provided a full suite of services to international students, including language tutoring, nutrition advice, fitness training and counselling. He is not formally trained in any of those areas.

This whole thing that I do is supposed to be helping students.

The tenants who spoke to the Star say they simply rented a room and did not receive any other services from Ryan.

Ryan said the majority of the students he hosted had positive experiences at the house. The Star asked more than two weeks ago if he could provide contact information to any of those tenants; he declined. The Star also asked Ryan to encourage former tenants with positive experiences to contact the Star themselves. None did.

Melville, the homeowner, said he has served McDowall with the required 60 days notice to end the tenancy.

McDowall, meanwhile, told the Star she will be very pleased to be rid of the situation.

April Stewart, a paralegal who specializes in helping landlords with problem tenancies, saw the situation as a cautionary tale for homeowners who live abroad.

Its a lesson for a far-removed landlord to make sure they employ the services of a property manager who is very present and active in terms of the day-to-day operation of the house. You need eyes and ears.

Licensed rooming houses are an important part of the citys affordable housing stock, said Mark Sraga, director of investigations for the citys licensing department. But illegal rooming houses can pose problems for fire safety, parking and noise, not to mention potential damage to the property itself, he said.

We cant ignore the fact that these types of housing forms are necessary and they exist. We just have to make sure theyre in the right places and theyre not having a negative effect on their neighbours.

Last year the city inspected 901 suspected illegal rooming houses, of which just 78 merited violation notices and only two led to charges. Tenants and neighbours can report a suspected rooming house by calling 311.

If a property is found to be operating as an illegal rooming house the onus is on the owner to make the necessary changes or face fines of up to $50,000, Sraga said. But if owners deal with the issues when they are notified and comply with the citys orders they typically are not fined.

Stewart said that if a property owner can prove to the Landlord and Tenant Board that the original tenant was running an illegal rooming house he should be able to obtain an eviction order. The young people living at the house would then be considered unauthorized tenants, Stewart said.

Theyre nice people caught in the crossfire, unfortunately.

Brendan Kennedy can be reached at bkennedy@thestar.ca or 416-869-4192.

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FATIMA, PORTUGALThe parents of a Brazilian boy whose recovery from a severe brain injury is being cited by the Vatican as the miracle needed to canonize two Portuguese children broke their silence Thursday to share the story.

Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yurie, appeared before reporters at the Catholic shrine in Fatima, Portugal, on the eve of Pope Franciss arrival. Francis will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the so-called Fatima visions of the Virgin Mary by canonizing two of the three Portuguese children who experienced them.

Read more:

Pope Francis is canonizing saints at a rate not seen since John Paul II

Pope Francis: A man of the people with an intellectual side

The miracle required for the canonization concerns the case of little Lucas Baptista, whose story has to date been shrouded in secrecy.

His father said Thursday that in 2013, when Lucas was 5 years old, the boy fell 6.5 metres from a window at the familys home in Brazil while playing with his infant sister, Eduarda.

The ambulance to the hospital took an hour, and when Lucas arrived, he was in a coma and had suffered two heart attacks, Baptista said. During emergency surgery, doctors diagnosed a severe traumatic brain injury and a loss of brain material from the childs frontal lobe.

Doctors said Lucas had little chance of survival, and if he did live, would be severely mentally disabled or even in a vegetative state, the father recalled.

Baptista said he and his wife, as well as Brazilian Carmelite nuns, prayed to the late shepherd children who said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in visions in 1917. Two of those children, siblings Francisco and Jacinta Marto, will become the Catholic Churchs youngest-ever non-martyred saints on Saturday.

The third child, Lucia dos Santos, Francisco and Jacintas cousin, became a Carmelite nun. Efforts are underway to beatify her, too, but couldnt begin until after she died in 2005.

Joao Baptista, wearing a blue shirt and tie as he read a statement at the Fatima shrine and took occasional pauses to compose himself, said doctors removed tubes from his son six days after Lucas fall.

He was fine when he woke up, lucid, and started talking, asking for his little sister, Baptista said. After another six days, Lucas was released from the hospital.

Hes completely fine . . . with no after-effects. Lucas is just like he was before the accident, his father said. The doctors . . . said they couldnt explain his recovery.

Journalists were not allowed to ask questions.

Sister Angela Coelho, the Portuguese postulator who led the project to canonize the shepherd children, said her office was informed of the Brazil story about three months after it happened.

She said officials had to wait and see whether the boys recovery was complete before presenting the case to the Vaticans Congregation for the Causes of Saints. The recovery must be medically inexplicable.

We thank God for Lucas cure and we know in all faith from our heart that this miracle was obtained with the help of the little shepherd children Francisco and Jacinta, Baptista said. We feel immense joy to know that this was the miracle that led to this canonization, but mostly we feel blessed by the friendship of these two children that helped our boy and now help our family.

Jacinta Marto was 7 years old and Francisco Marto was 9 when they first witnessed the apparitions on May 13, 1917, along with their 10-year-old cousin. They both died two years later during the Spanish flu pandemic.

The Fatima basilica and the vast square in front of it, where some 1 million people are expected to attend the canonization mass, were filling up with pilgrims Thursday as rain fell. Huge images of the future saints hung from the sides of the basilica.

The pontiff is due to arrive in Fatima on Friday afternoon.

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For Mothers Day, KFC has released a steamy romance book, Tender Wings of Desire.

Its about two people from different parts of the world who leave home, breaking their mothers hearts in the process.

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One of them is the Colonel. The other, Lady Madeline Parker, is a runaway teen bride.

The ebook, which can be downloaded free, is dedicated to mothers everywhere as a brief escape from motherhood into the arms of your fantasy Colonel.

KFC says Mothers Day is its bestselling day of the year. The book is part of an advertising campaign to promote the chains $20 Fill Up meal.

The only thing better than being swept away by the deliciousness of our Extra Crispy Chicken is being swept away by Harland Sanders himself, George Felix, director of advertising for KFC U.S., said in a statement. So this Mothers Day, the bucket of chicken I get for my wife will come with a side of steamy romance novella.

A video ad for the book  which some may find cheeky, others distasteful  features a long-haired, shirtless man and the message: This Mothers Day, let Colonel Sanders take care of dinner and Moms fantasies.

The shirtless man, straining to be sexy, reads from the book, stopping to turn the pages by looking into the camera and slowly licking his thumb as soft music plays in the background.

OK, the chicken may or may not be finger-lickin  good, but the book?

As she lied in Colonel Sanders arms, she could not help but feel that she finally belongs somewhere, the man reads. (In addition to bad grammar, there are typos in the book.)

Although the campaign sounds like a commercial for Valentines Day, KFC insists it is all about female parents.

Dont you wish you were a mom? the shirtless man asks.

And now to the books story line, which goes something like this:

A rich woman has two daughters. She arranges to have her older daughter marry a duke, which, the book suggests, was the younger daughters fantasy. But not Lady Madeline, who would be perfectly happy to be a spinster all of her life.

(In addition to the derogatory term spinster, the derogatory old maid is also bandied about.)

Before the marriage can take place, Madeline runs away without leaving even a goodbye note to her mother.

She ends up in a harbour town, takes a job at a local tavern  the Admirals Arms  and falls head over heels in love with Harland, a customer who is tall, dressed like a sailor with a striped linen shirt and woollen peacoat crusted with sea salt. His hair was light and fair, framing his head in airy curls.

And he wore glasses, apparently a source of passion for her. Madeline had never seen a sailor wear glasses before; somehow it made him seem all the more handsome.

KFC, of course, was founded by glasses-wearing Colonel Harland Sanders, who remains the face of the fast-food chain, even after his death in 1980. Most of the enduring images of Sanders are from his twilight years.

He was never accused of being a sex symbol, though KFC has tried giving him a more hip image with saucy ads featuring a string of celebrities, including actor George Hamilton as the Extra Crispy Colonel and Billy Zane as Georgia Gold Colonel

In a recent campaign, actor Rob Lowe played the colonel wearing a spacesuit, all to promote KFCs Zinger chicken sandwich.

In the book, Madelines first kiss with Harland is depicted as sort of the beginning of her personal womens liberation movement. Unfettered by the life that was expected of her, she was technically unfettered from the expectations of her place in society.

Or, depending on your view, its her downward spiral toward embracing casual sex.

No longer did she have to maintain her modesty; on the contrary, she was free to be with whomever she desired, regardless of whether they were going to end up being her husband.

She decides to sleep with Harland, who is mighty accommodating. And then, by accident, she learns that hes the wealthy owner of a restaurant empire that he built from scratch. And his mother is very, very sick and needs him in Kentucky.

Soon they are engaged. The book leaves the rest of their story to the imagination, ending with the couple on a boat sailing off into their own private happily ever after.

It doesnt say whether they ever have children.

Happy Mothers Day.

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PITTSBURGHA Pittsburgh restaurant is causing a stir after serving horse meat.

KDKA-TV reports that Cure Restaurant hosted a special dinner with Canadian chefs Monday. The Quebecois-themed fare included horse tartare.

Horse welfare advocate Joy Braunstein says she was outraged to hear that horse was served. Braunstein says that there are no American slaughter plants that handle horses. She says that horses are given medication that is toxic to humans if ingested.

Cure chef and co-owner Justin Severino released a statement explaining that the meat was sourced from a sustainable horse farm in Canada. Severino says that the dish is not part of the regular menu.

Horse is served in Canada and other countries.

Braunstein has started an online petition to ban horse meat from being served in Pennsylvania restaurants.

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The Texas House of Representatives has approved a bill that would allow foster care and adoption agencies that receive state funding to refuse to place children with families they disapprove of on religious grounds, including families headed by gay or transgender people, atheists and others.

The bill, which was approved Wednesday and will now be considered by the Texas Senate, would allow agencies to cite religious beliefs when making other decisions as well, including whether to provide teenagers in their care with access to contraception and abortion.

Supporters of the measure said it would uphold the religious freedom of social service providers and allow organizations to follow faith-based policies without having to worry about potential discrimination lawsuits.

Read more:New Texas bill could allow adoption agencies to reject Jewish, Muslim, LGBT parents

The measures approval by the House was celebrated by the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, which explicitly said in a statement that it would allow agencies to refuse to help teenagers obtain abortions or refuse to place children in the homes of same-sex couples.

We look forward to a swift approval by the Senate and the governors signature, as this is a critical element of the foster care system reform, said Jennifer Carr Allmon, the groups executive director.

If the bill becomes law, the state would be forbidden from penalizing an agency  declining to renew a contract or license, for example  that cited religious objections when denying service to someone. Advocacy groups said it might affect a wide range of prospective parents, including non-Christians, people in interfaith marriages or those who have been divorced and remarried.

A similarly far-reaching bill was signed into law in March in South Dakota. And just six days before the Texas bill was approved by the House, a similar but more narrowly focused bill that did not cover publicly funded agencies was signed into law in Alabama.

Texas is grappling with a long-running crisis in its Child Protective Services division, which a federal judge ruled in 2015 had violated the constitutional rights of children under its care by exposing them to an unreasonable risk of harm. The bills author, Rep. James Frank, said in a statement that it would help address the crisis by ensuring that faith-based adoption agencies are free to do their work without fear of litigation.

At a time when we need all hands on deck, we face the real risk of seeing a large number of these providers leave the field, as they are forced to make the choice between devoting a substantial amount of resources in fighting litigation and other adverse action, or using those resources on other services to fulfil the tenets of their faith, the statement said.

Frank, a Republican, said the bill would not keep anyone from providing a foster home for a child under state care. He said it would require the states Department of Family and Protective Services to ensure alternative providers are present to offer any service denied for reasons of sincerely held religious beliefs.

Roughly 22,000 children in Texas are currently awaiting placement in foster homes, according to Rebecca Robertson, a critic of the bill and the legal and policy director for the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said that 252 children in the system died of neglect or abuse last year.

The latest fatality happened last week when a 15-year-old girl was struck by a car and killed as she fled employees of the Child Protective Services division, according to The Dallas Morning News. She and a second child had been living in a division office because foster homes could not be found for them.

Cathryn Oakley, senior legislative counsel at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, said the measure posed a special danger for gay and transgender children, who make up a disproportionate share of the foster care system, by forbidding the state to penalize an agency that subjected them to conversion therapy, a set of discredited pseudo-therapeutic practices meant to change a persons sexual orientation or gender identity.

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FATIMA, PORTUGALPope Francis and pilgrims from around the world are flocking to a Catholic shrine town in Portugal to honour two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

Francis departed from Romes Leonardo da Vinci airport on Friday afternoon to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and canonize the children. He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of World War I, will resonate with the Catholic faithful today.

Thousands of pilgrims, waving flags from as far as Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba, braved a steady cold rain Friday as they waited for him, many spending the night outdoors to make sure they had a good spot.

Read more:

Pope wraps up two-day Egypt visit comforting grief-stricken Christians

Pope Francis urges Egypt imams to teach and preach tolerance, peace

Pope Francis laments Syrian attack, other world conflicts in Easter address

Over the past several days, church groups, families and individuals have made their way to Fatima, about 150 kilometres north of Lisbon, some completing the final leg of the pilgrimage on their knees in prayer.

Carrying candles, rosaries and roses, they have made their way to the statue dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima or tossed wax body parts  ears, hearts, limbs  into a huge fire to pray for healing.

For me it is the second time I am here with a pope, first with John Paul II and now with Papa Francisco, said pilgrim Elisabete Fradique Conceicao in between rain showers. They are simple men and that simplicity makes sense when you think what happened here 100 years ago.

On May 13, 1917, while they were grazing their sheep, the children saw the first of a half-dozen visions of the Virgin Mary. They said she revealed to them three secrets  apocalyptic messages foreshadowing World War II, hell, the rise and fall of communism and the death of a pope  and urged them to pray for peace and turn away from sin.

At first doubted by the local Catholic Church and even their parents, the childrens story gained believers and was eventually accepted as an authentic apparition by the church in 1930. The children being canonized, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were 9 and 7 at the time of the apparitions, died of influenza two years later. Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, at 10 the ringleader of the group and who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case couldnt begin until after her death in 2005.

Francis deputy, Cardial Pietro Parolin, said the importance of Fatima lies specifically in the fact that poor, illiterate children  not the wealthy, learned or intellectuals  were able to convey a powerful message of love and forgiveness at a time of war when the talk was of hatred, vendetta, hostilities.

Fatima has long been associated with St. John Paul II, given the Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with having saved his life in 1981 when a would-be assassin shot him on Fatimas feast day  May 13  in St. Peters Square. John Paul made the first of his three pilgrimages to Fatima the following May, and one of the bullets fired at him now adorns the crown of the Madonna at the shrine.

Like John Paul, the Argentinian-born Francis is exceedingly devoted to the Madonna, thanks in large part to the strong role that Marian devotions play in the popular piety of Latin American Catholics.

Before every trip he takes, Francis brings a bouquet of flowers to an icon of Mary at the Rome basilica dedicated to her name, St. Mary Major.

On his first trip as pope, to Brazil, he prayed at the shrine to the Madonna at Aparecida. He has done the same at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, at the shrine of Caacupe in Paraguay and the Virgin of the Charity of Cobre in Cuba.

One major shrine he has avoided visiting is in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six youngsters reported having had regular, repeated visions of the Virgin starting in 1981. A Vatican-appointed doctrinal commission finished its study years ago, but Francis hasnt released the results.

He has cautioned against such tales of regular visions, however, and has said Marian devotion must be to the real Madonna. Not the Madonna whos like the head of a post office who every day sends a different letter saying My children, do this and then the next day says do that.

The church says the Fatima case is altogether different.

In a video message on the eve of his departure, Francis urged all faithful to join him, physically or spiritually, in Fatima.

With all of us forming one heart and soul, I will then entrust you to Our Lady, asking her to whisper to each one of you: My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God.

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LONDONHackers exploiting data stolen from the U.S. government conducted extensive cyberattacks on Friday that hit dozens of countries around the world, severely disrupting Britains public health system and wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of computers elsewhere, including Russias Ministry for Internal Security.

Hospitals in Britain appeared to be the most severely affected by the attacks, which aimed to blackmail computer users by seizing their data. The attacks blocked doctors access to patient files and forced emergency rooms to divert people seeking urgent care.

Corporate computer systems in many other countries  including FedEx of the United States, one of the worlds leading international shippers  were among those affected.

Kaspersky Lab, a Russian cybersecurity firm, said it had recorded at least 45,000 attacks in as many as 74 countries.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the attacks, but the acts deeply alarmed cybersecurity experts and underscored the enormous vulnerabilities to Internet invasions faced by disjointed networks of computer systems around the world.

When people ask what keeps you up at night, its this, said Chris Camacho, chief strategy officer at Flashpoint, a New York security firm tracking the attacks.

Russias powerful Interior Ministry, after denying reports that its computers had been targeted, confirmed in a statement that around 1,000 computers were infected, which it described as less than 1 per cent of the total. The ministry, which oversees Russias police forces, said technicians had stopped the attack and were updating the departments anti-virus defence systems.

The attacks were reminiscent of the hack that took down dozens of websites last October, including Twitter, Spotify and PayPal, that exploited devices connected to the Internet, including printers and baby monitors.

The hacking tool used Friday was ransomware, a kind of malware that encrypts data, locks out the user and demands a ransom to release it. Security experts say the tool exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft systems that was discovered and developed by the National Security Agency of the United States.

The ransomware, known as WannaCry, was leaked by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, which has been dumping stolen NSA hacking tools online since last year. Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability in March, but hackers apparently took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets  particularly hospitals  had yet to update their systems or had ignored advisories from Microsoft to do so.

The malware was circulated by email. Targets were sent an encrypted, compressed file that, once loaded, allowed the ransomware to infiltrate its targets.

Reuters reported that employees of Britains National Health Service (NHS) had been warned about the ransomware threat earlier Friday.

But by then it was already too late. As the disruptions rippled through at least 36 hospitals, doctors offices and ambulance companies across Britain on Friday, the health service declared the attack a major incident, a warning that local health services could be overwhelmed.

Britains health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was briefed by cybersecurity experts, while Prime Minister Theresa Mays office said she was monitoring the situation.

May said later on television that were not aware of any evidence that patient data has been compromised.

Among the many other affected institutions were hospitals and telecommunications companies across Europe and Asia, according to MalwareHunterTeam, a security firm that tracks ransomware attacks.

But the extent of the ransomware attacks could be much broader, as the MalwareHunterTeam said it tracks only attacks that have been reported by the victims. Spains Telefonica and Russias MegaFon were among the largest of the businesses targeted.

Other countries where attacks were reported included Japan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam.

The computers all appeared to be hit with the same ransomware and similar messages demanding about $300 (U.S.) to unlock their data.

Camacho noted that security detection technology could not easily catch the ransomware attacks, because the attackers encrypted the malicious file in email attachments. When employees at victim organizations clicked on the attachments, they inadvertently downloaded the ransomware onto their systems.

Security experts advised companies to immediately update their systems with the Microsoft patch.

Until organizations use the Microsoft patch, Camacho said, they could continue to be hit  not just by ransomware, but by all kinds of malicious tools that can manipulate, steal or delete their data.

There is going to be a lot more of these attacks, he said. Well see copycats, and not just for ransomware, but other attacks.

The attack on Britains NHS appeared to be the most brazen because it had life-or-death implications for hospitals and ambulance services.

Tom Donnelly, a spokesperson for NHS Digital, the arm of the health service that handles cybersecurity, said in a telephone interview that 16 organizations, including hospitals and other kinds of clinician services, had been hit. Officials later updated that number to at least 25.

The services digital arm said in a statement that the attack involved Wanna Decryptor, a new variant of the WannaCry ransomware.

The user is asked to pay a ransom to unlock the computer  an increasingly prevalent problem. Last year, a Los Angeles hospital paid $17,000 after such an attack; in January, hackers targeted the electronic key system at a hotel in Austria, locking dozens of guests out of their rooms.

On social media, several images circulated Friday showing computer screens bearing a message that the user could not enter without first paying a $300 ransom in Bitcoin. Many doctors reported that they could not retrieve their patients files.

The National Cyber Security Centre, an arm of the GCHQ, the British electronic surveillance agency, said it was investigating the attack. It was unclear whether any of the targeted users paid the ransom.

Also affected were NHS institutions in Scotland, where Health Secretary Shona Robison said officials were taking immediate steps to minimize the impact of the attack across NHS Scotland and restrict any disruption.

According to the BBC, hospitals in London and Nottingham, the town of Blackburn and the counties of Cumbria and Hertfordshire were affected.

In the northwestern seaside town of Blackpool, doctors resorted to pen and paper, with phone and computer systems having shut down, according to the local newspaper, the Blackpool Gazette.

A bit to the south, in the seaside town of Southport, images on Twitter showed ambulances backed up outside the towns hospital. In Stevenage, a town in Hertfordshire, north of London, the health service postponed all non-urgent activity and asked people not to come to the accident and emergency ward at the Lister Hospital.

Less was known about the scope of the attacks in Spain and Portugal, which affected companies such as Telefonica.

Spains national cryptology centre said it was dealing with a massive ransomware attack affecting Windows systems used by various organizations, without naming them.

Later on Friday, Portugal reported a similar attack. Carlos Cabreiro, director of a police unit that fights cybercrime, told the newspaper Publico that the country was facing computer attacks on a large scale against different Portuguese companies, especially communication operators.

Spains Industry Ministry said in a separate statement that the attack had not affected networks or customers using services offered by the companies targeted. Telefonica also indicated that the attack had targeted its internal network rather than its millions of customers. On Twitter, Chema Alonso, Telefonicas chief data officer, called initial news reports exaggerated.

Several employees of MegaFon, one of the largest cellphone operators in Russia, said its systems had been attacked Friday by malware like that used against the NHS, the news website Meduza.io reported.

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I am so in love with being Canadian right now. I have a crush on my own country. Patriotism has always seemed a bit silly but in the Canadian nations 150th year, look at the American catastrophe and take a little comfort. Come to us, good Americans. We will welcome you.

We Could Have Been Canada was an actual headline in the New Yorker this week, with Adam Gopnik taking regret to its very roots and writing an essay suggesting the American Revolution might have been a bad idea. Canada took the path less violent.

But of course thats smug. The prime minister has been adept at coping personally with this mentally deteriorating president but the peace wont last. Remember how relieved we were when 2016 ended? That was a thing. It is now dawning on us that the emergency will be continuous.

As well, Trumpism is infectious and Canada has already contracted the virus.

I can smell something in the open air these days, something I thought had been banned long ago like leaded gasoline. Its the fumes of American extremism, with Canadian misogynists and racists emboldened by President Trumps victory. Attitudes to womens rights, money, race, any issue related to status anxiety, are very Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III right now. The dog is off his leash.

Look at the increasingly vile comments on CBC.ca. Is this Canadian public life in 2017 or a dirt road in Alabama in 1937? Some of these remarks are fit only for the wall of a gas station toilet. If comments cant be properly moderated  and it is expensive to do this  it might be time for the principled CBC to admit defeat and kill the comments.

Public life has been coarsened too. What a shame to see American-style identity politics take over the landscape, with Canadians declaiming about the colour of other peoples skin in the U.S. manner, an angle of approach that is neither workable or polite in a multicultural nation.

It is now considered normal in Canadian journalism to use white as an epithet, just as commenters might use native or Indian. I dislike it, and not just because I am of mixed race. Instantly reducing all issues to race is simplistic, a gunshot instead of a conversation.

Copying U.S. battles over black and white, Muslim and non-Muslim, etc. has crowded out news about Canadas indigenous peoples who continue to be tormented and brutalized. U.S. and Canadian racial inequalities are not identical. I sometimes wonder if we jump on the Republican race bandwagon because it deflects attention from our own national shame.

Equally, Republicans have a history of extreme misogyny that has burst into the open as if its suddenly been given an official licence. Its like those weirdly trending YouTube popping videos of cysts being squeezed out of the skin, a repellent once-private task now trying for respectability. Republicans dont have to pretend not to detest women any more. They have made their loathing explicit, and some Canadians are mirroring this.

Take abortion rights: on Thursday, the city of Ottawa allowed an anti-abortion March for Life rally to raise an actual flag at dawn at city hall.

At a time when The Handmaids Tale is unspooling on TV and illegal protests right outside the doors of the Morgentaler abortion clinic near Parliament Hill are becoming intolerably intrusive, Ottawa encouraged this very American kind of rally, with young teens bused in and old men holding up signs with bloody photos plus attacks by name on clinic staff members.

The police and the mayor have essentially given them the keys to the city. They are fearless, non-apologetic, aggressive, mean-spirited and relentless in the sense of self-entitlement that the city and the police department have created for them, and it will be near-impossible to claw that back, says Shayna Hodson, the clinics director of operations.

People in Ottawa were startled and angry. City councillors complained in writing and some terrific NDP MPs showed up with pro-choice signs. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson got the online complaints fast.

And in a matter of minutes, the flag vanished. Watson tweeted, I am pleased to report that the anti-abortion flag has been taken down. I have asked staff for a complete review of the citys flag policy. My personal opinion has always been that women have the right to choose.

What? I was genuinely shocked. After a year of watching male Republican politicians talk about the female reproductive system as if it were a colonial uprising, it was strange to see a politician openly admitting a mistake and doing the decent thing. He even said anti-abortion instead of the absurd pro-life, and he has asked for legal advice regarding the flag and the ongoing clinic protest.

Heres hoping he puts a stop to it. U.S. political life is so savage and immersive that it draws us in, making us forget its abnormality.

Trump tickles the bellies of foolish people and brings out their inner monsters. But not in Canada. Peace, order and good government is a declaration, a public statement that Canada is a foreign country. We do things differently here.

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Re: A welcome end to charity audits, Editorial, May 8

A welcome end to charity audits, Editorial, May 8

I totally disagree with your editorial on charity audits. There are seven definitions of charity in the dictionary, none of them mention political advocacy.

Political advocacy should not be paid for by the taxpayer. Organizations such as David Suzukis Foundation have nothing charitable about them, they are purely political.

It is OK to support true charitable activity with tax breaks, as this is usually directed to things the taxpayer would need to support anyway if the charity did not. Potentially, this saves taxpayers money. Auditing of charities is in the public interest.

As for your claim, Not coincidentally, it appeared the charities targeted under the 2012 program were the ones speaking out against government policies at the time, this is gratuitous. Public advocacy at any given time is likely to be against policies of the government of the day.

Andrew Hallett, Burlington

In your continuing efforts to paint the Stephen Harper government in the worst possible light, your editorial conveniently failed to ask the (tax-deductible) million-dollar question: Why the political advocacy of the groups you mention should qualify for special tax treatment?

Its a free country and those groups are welcome to their views. But its a big stretch to equate David Suzukis organization with groups that do real charitable work.

As for those free-speech advocates at PEN Canada, I wonder how many of those folks publicly object every time a conservative speaker is shut down on a campus somewhere in North America? Im guessing not many.

Jeff Barker, Mississauga

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Re: Senator resigns in disgrace, May 10

Senator resigns in disgrace, May 10

The Senate has forced Don Meredith to face public disgrace. In addition, it has supported Ms. M and countless others who have been hurt at the hands of sexual predators. While Ms. M will have the opportunity to pursue her life with the public unaware of what she has survived, she will spend the rest of her life privately healing the wounds inflicted. The message from the Senate, and from the country, that it is not her fault will support her healing process. Let every perpetrator of sexual crime know, the shame is yours alone.

Sharon Craigen, Toronto

Why should Canadian taxpayers be on the hook for Don Merediths Senate pension to the tune of $25,000 per year for probably 25 or more years? Im a member of the federal public service and when I was hired I was informed that if my employment ended within 10 years, I would have my pension contributions returned. This should be done for Mr. Meredith in order to take him off the books permanently.

Phil Coughlin, Georgetown

Ah, Senator Meredith; protecting himself to the bitter end with a faux front to make it look like he cares about others when his track record speaks to the opposite. The day before the Senate was set to expel him, Meredith quasi-resigned so that his pension remained intact. Quasi, because his letter doesnt say he resigns, just that he will be absent.

Another peachy result of his resignation is that the current probes about workplace sexual harassment and some of his business dealings with an alleged conflict of interest will be dropped. Meredith certainly knows how to play the system.

Two points about the Senate: Why did this take two years to deal with? And shame on Senator Anne Cools, who was ready to protest the process to remove Meredith. How could anyone support him? Who do we have in our Senate?

Mike Faye, Toronto

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As the May flowers begin to bloom, students in Durham Region schools have begun to notice a new addition to their daily announcements. On top of the national anthem, daily announcements and, in Catholic schools, the morning prayer, schools have now included a line that respectfully acknowledges that we are on the traditional lands of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island.

This is a nice gesture that reminds students of Canadas indigenous roots. Many students are unaware that we in Durham Region reside on aboriginal land, so this small gesture does help educate students.

Nonetheless they are also misinformed about the torment that aboriginal children endured at the hands of the Canadian government less than a century ago, and this is an issue that has to be addressed. There has to be more awareness about the events that occurred, as well as how the government is repairing the damage.

Megan Andersonand Tamara McElroy, Whitby

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For working journalists, the global trust crisis that has resulted in trust in media dropping to all-time lows often feels personal.

We know many people distrust journalists because so many people in both our professional and personal lives do not hesitate to tell us so. We understand there is a credibility crisis in media overall and that individual journalists and news organizations must answer for the shortfalls  both real and perceived  in journalism.

Recently, in response to yet another dismal study about plunging media trust, I asked readers to tell me what you want to know about the Stars journalism. That resulted in more than 200 thoughtful responses that pointed to a significant gap in understanding and many good questions about what the Stars journalists do daily to bring you news, commentary and other credible information.

While I will continue to address these vital media literacy matters in future columns, I am pleased to tell you that the Stars newsroom has stepped up with an important new initiative aimed at increasing the trust readers have in the Star and creating greater understanding of the Stars journalism.

Managing Editor Irene Gentle has initiated an interdepartmental trust committee to look into how the Star can foster greater reader trust and develop journalistic and technological tools to bridge the trust and media literacy gap. As the Stars reader advocate, I am happy to have opportunity to participate in the committee to share the ongoing reader concerns that come to the public editors office.

The committee, chaired by senior editor Mary Vallis, held its first meeting last week. The first order of business? Rightly, ask readers themselves: What do you think the Star should do to create a stronger bond of trust in its journalism?

We have set up an email address  trust@thestar.ca  and encourage your thoughts.

Gentle believes this focus on reader trust will be among the most important work we do this year.

This initiative is the next step to deepen that commitment with Star readers and discover new ways to give the skeptical good reasons to believe in our work too she said. It starts with us learning the various ways people are losing faith with what we do and addressing it.

We feel strongly in the newsroom that we have a responsibility to address this credibility gap, transparently and non-defensively. It starts with us, whether it means telling the story behind the story in a clear and open way, or addressing the small errors, such as typos or a missed street name, that make people doubt our accuracy on the larger issues.

There is a real disconnect between the lengths we go to at the Star  to verify sources, confirm facts, ensure people have the right to respond to allegations about them, to be fair and accurate, legally and ethically onside  and what some people see and believe.

Anyone in a newsroom knows how hard journalists work to get great stories, and get them right. And anyone who works in a newsroom also knows how completely inadequate we have been in telling that part of our story, she added. We know this because people are telling us: In our own personal lives, with friends or family or neighbours, we hear the distrust in our industry, in general, and sometimes with our organization specifically.

Trust in a news organizations journalism is at the heart of the relationship between it and its readers. As I have often said, our core product is not the news, it is credibility. Who are you going to trust to tell you what happens in your world, what matters and why it matters are essential questions of our digital era and its disruption of journalism and the media industry.

Indeed, a report released last year by the Media Insight Project  an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, indicates trust may well be a key factor forward in the survival of the media business.

Its not only a journalistic aspiration, but a business imperative, the report on what makes people trust and rely on news stated. People who put a higher premium on trust related factors are more engaged with news, are more likely to pay for it, install news apps, or share and promote news with their friends.

So, tell us: What would enhance your trust in the Stars journalism  in the newspaper, on its website and its news apps? What is the Star doing right to build trust? What can it do better?

Send your responses to trust@thestar.ca . As always, please be constructive and civil.

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Whole Foods Market (WFM) has struggled to revive its business for years, so nominating new board members, no matter how impressive they are, will likely not keep its founder and CEO John Mackey safe from activist investor Jana Partners.

"They definitely found very noteworthy and respected members to become a part of the new board," Karen Short, managing director of equity research at Barclays, told TheStreet.

In addition to nominating five new board members on Wednesday, Whole Foods appointed Keith Manbeck as its new CFO and elected Gabrielle Sulzberger to replace long-time Chairman John Elstrott, a move urged by Jana and seen by many as Mackey's ploy to try to save himself from being ousted.

But, Short said the board shakeup, plus its new strategic initiatives aimed at returning Whole Foods back to same-store sales growth by 2020, was just a forced reaction to Jana's activist campaign, seeing as Whole Foods lacked a "sense of urgency for the past five years."

"I think [Mackey's] view is that he outsmarted [Jana]," Short said. "I wouldn't make the bet that you outsmarted a highly intelligent investor."

The new board appointees include Ken Hicks, the former chairman, president and CEO of Foot Locker (FL) - Get Free Report ; Joe Mansueto, founder and executive chairman of Morningstar (MORN) - Get Free Report ; Sharon McCollam, former executive vice president, chief administrative and chief financial officer of Best Buy (BBY) - Get Free Report ; Scott Powers, who held leadership positions at State Street Corporation (STT) - Get Free Report from 2008 to 2015; and Ron Shaich, founder, chairman and CEO of Panera Bread (PNRA) .

Coinciding with its tepid second-quarter earnings release and board overhaul Wednesday evening, Whole Foods launched strategic initiatives aimed at driving 2 percent same-store sales growth, total revenue of $18 billion and an EBITDA margin greater than 9.5 percent by 2020. The plans are also estimated to realize $300 million in additional cost savings.

Short advised not to count on that outlook, seeing as it was endorsed by the old board, not the new. The old board was the same that provided guidance in 2014 for EBITDA of $2.2 billion by full-year 2018, which Barclays predicts will only come to $1.34 billion, 40 percent lower than the plan.

"Mackey refers to this company as his baby and he will not let it go without a fight," Short said. But as for that guidance, it's just not realistic.

Short has estimated that Whole Foods, once the "creator and owner" of the organic grocers market, has lost a "staggering" nine to 14 million customer visits over the past eighteen months to competitors like Kroger (KR) - Get Free Report , Trader Joe's, Costco (COST) - Get Free Report , Sprouts Farmers Markets (SFM) - Get Free Report and Natural Grocers (NGVC) - Get Free Report .

After Wednesday's market close, Whole Foods reported second-quarter earnings of 37 cents a share on revenue of $3.74 billion, almost exactly in line with Wall Street's expectations. But, the company posted a same-store sales decline of 2.8 percent, a concerning trend for the organic grocer, as this is one of the main reasons Jana has been pushing Whole Foods to either sell itself or overhaul its board.
South Korea officials have ordered Hyundai Motor and its affiliate Kia Motors to recall over 240,000 vehicles due to safety defects that a whistleblower had leaked. This is a bad mark against the automaker that will only increase reputation problems with consumers.

This move is the first recall ordered by the South Korea transportation ministry for the two automakers, which resisted a request earlier to hold a voluntary recall, and it gives new credence to the allegations Kim Gwang-ho, the engineer for Hyundai for 26 years, made about vehicles.

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The ministry also has asked Seoul prosecutors to investigate whether the two automakers covered up five flaws, which affected 12 models that include the Sonata, Elantra, Genesis and Santa Fe.

Previously the two automakers argued that the different flaws did not present any danger to driving safety. In a prepared joint statement the two on Friday said they accepted the transport ministry order.

The statement added that there were no reports of accidents or injuries due to the flaws, which included defects in the warning lights for the parking brake, and denied any type of cover up, had existed.

In the first case involving a whistleblower to hit the auto industry in South Korea, Kim made allegations involving 32 problems to regulators. The most recent recalls cover five of the 32 alleged problems.

Kim flew to the U.S. in 2016 to report lapses in safety to authorities and since then the automakers have issued recalls on a voluntary basis for 1.5 million vehicles across North America as well as in South Korea over a possible defect that could cause the stalling of engines.

An auto analyst in Seoul said the allegations made by the whistleblower were true.

He added that it was a negative for the brand image of Hyundai after taking a hit from the engine issue recall of a month ago. However, the automakers reputation is looked at as being at rock bottom and there does not exist much space for a bigger fall.

Both Hyundai as well as Kia are the two dominant brands in South Korea with the two holding a combined two thirds of the auto market.

Nevertheless, customer ire increased due to perceptions that automakers in South Korea have not been working quickly enough to address concerns over quality and safety.

The recall by Hyundai for the problem in the engine was made in April a full year after the automaker recalled vehicles for the same issue in the U.S.
Alaska Airlines yesterday inaugurates nonstop daily service between Seattle and Indianapolis, Indiana. This new service to Indianapolis is the only nonstop service offered from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Alaska Airlines yesterday inaugurates nonstop daily service between Seattle and Indianapolis, Indiana. This new service to Indianapolis is the only nonstop service offered from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

"Alaska Airlines continues to meet the needs of valued Seattle guests with new service to the Circle City," said John Kirby, vice president of capacity planning at Alaska Airlines. "We're pleased to add Indianapolis to our growing list of nonstop destinations from our hometown of Seattle, now at 89 nonstop destinations served  more than twice as many as any other airline."

Summary of new service:

Start Date City pair Departs Arrives Frequency Aircraft May 11 Seattle-Indianapolis 9:55 a.m. 5:19 p.m. Daily B737 May 11 Indianapolis-Seattle 6:20 p.m. 8:16 p.m. Daily B737

Flight times based on local time zones.

"The Indianapolis community is excited to welcome Alaska Airlines and their nonstop connections to the West Coast," said Mario Rodriguez, executive director of the Indianapolis Airport Authority. "Travelers know that Indy is the racing capital of the world, but it's also a destination with a nationally recognized food scene and a cultural trail that connects the best restaurants, craft distilleries, and boutique hotels via a walkable and bike-friendly route."

With these new routes, Alaska and Virgin America operate more than 30 daily flights to 10 Midwest cities including: Chicago; Detroit; Indianapolis; Kansas City, Missouri; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; Oklahoma City; Omaha, Nebraska; St. Louis and Wichita, Kansas. New Virgin America service between San Francisco and Indianapolis will begin on Sept. 26.

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 2022 Travel Industry Wire
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The Opposition has threatened to take the Government all the way to the Privy Council over o
Ukraine takes measures to attract low cost airlines to the country. In particular, a relevant program is being elaborated in Ukraine.

President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko said this in an interview with 1+1 TV Channel.

"We are elaborating an absolutely coordinated program to attract a large number of low cost airlines to Ukraine, which would allow buying a round trip ticket for several dozens of euros," he said.

According to the Head of State, many low cost airlines see Ukraine as a promising market with cheap tickets.

As reported, March 15, Irish Ryanair low cost airline announced launch of flights to Krakow, Budapest, Berlin, Wroclaw, Memmingen, London and Eindhoven from Lviv and to London, Manchester, Stockholm and Eindhoven from Kyiv.

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The Ukrainian side has invited the US Congressmen who arrived in Kyiv to visit Donbas and see with their own eyes the consequences of Russian military aggression.

First Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Iryna Gerashchenko wrote this on Facebook.

"I took part in the meeting of the President of Ukraine with the delegation of the US Congress ... We invited our American partners to visit Donbas to see with their own eyes the consequences of Russian military aggression," she wrote.

According to Gerashchenko, the parties discussed the security issues during the meeting, including the situation in Donbas in the context of Russian military aggression, the continuation of sanctions against the Russian Federation until the full implementation of the Minsk agreements, the human rights situation in annexed Crimea, where everything belonging to Ukrainians and Crimean Tatar people is destroyed.

In addition, she said that the President paid special attention to the hostage issue and urged the Congressmen to increase pressure on the Russian Federation to solve humanitarian problems, in particular, the release of hostages.

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Russia's strategic objective in Ukraine in 2017 is to frustrate its attempts to integrate into western institutions.

This has been stated by Daniel Coats, the director of the National Intelligence of the United States, The Economic Times reports.

"We assess at Moscow's strategic objectives in Ukraine, maintaining long-term influence over Kyiv and frustrating Ukraine's attempts to integrate into western institutions, will remain unchanged in 2017," Coats said.

In addition, Coats said that "Russia is likely to be more aggressive in global affairs, more unpredictable in its approach to the US."

He has stressed that Russia will continue to leverage its military support to the Bashar Al-Assad regime to drive a political settlement process in Syria "on their terms".

ish
PANAMA CITY, 12 May 2017 - Data on infant and maternal deaths released last week by the Ministry of Health in Venezuela provides stark evidence of the impact of the prolonged crisis on women and children in the country.

Despite the efforts of the Government and other stakeholders, the data indicates that 30 per cent more children died before their first birthday and 64 per cent more women died during pregnancy or within 42 days after giving birth in 2016 compared to 2015. More than 240,000 people were infected with malaria in 2016, up 76 per cent from 2015. Cases of diarrhea, pertussis, pneumonia, HIV, and measles all potentially deadly for children also show marked increases.



The publication of the data by the Ministry of Health is a crucial step in addressing health challenges in Venezuela. UNICEF is deeply concerned about the situation and stands ready to strengthen its ongoing support to partners in government and civil society, which has included the provision of medicine for the treatment of malaria, diphtheria and other diseases, within the framework of agreed cooperation priorities.

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Nearly 1,500 alumni and guests came home for ReUnion 2017
Bladder cancer (BC) has varied clinical behavior in terms of recurrence and progression. Current pathological characteristics are insufficient to prognosticate the outcome of a given treatment. Cellular metabolic regulatory molecules, such as micro RNA (miRNA), could be a potential biomarker to prognosticate the treatment outcomes.

PubMed and Google Scholar databases were searched for publications from 1990 to 2016, related to miRNA biogenesis, its function, and role in the pathogenesis of bladder as well as other cancers. Articles were searched using MeSH terms micrornas, micrornas AND neoplasm, and micrornas AND urinary bladder neoplasm. Out of the 108 publications reviewed 75 references were selected based on the clinical relevance. Articles were reviewed to assess the role of miRNA in various cancers and those in BC as a diagnostic or therapeutic tool.

More than 35 miRNAs were found to be associated with different pathways of cellular dedifferentiation, proliferation, and progression of BC as well as other cancers. A normal looking mucosa may show molecular changes preceding phenotypic changes in the form of varied expression of miR-129, miR-200a, and miR-205. miR-214, miR-99a, and miR-125b have been shown to be potential urinary biomarkers of BC. miRNAs could act as a repressor for protein molecule functioning or activator of different pathways to be used as a therapeutic target too.

Despite certain limitations, such as instability, rapid plasma clearance, and targeting antagonist proteins of cellular metabolic pathways, miRNAs have potential to be studied as a biomarker or a therapeutic target for BC.

Indian journal of urology : IJU : journal of the Urological Society of India. 0000 Jan [Epub]

Nilay Mitash, Swasti Tiwari, Shalini Agnihotri, Anil Mandhani

Department of Urology and Renal Transplantation, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India., Department of Molecular Medicine and Biotechnology, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India.

PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28469300
Stephanie McMahon has established herself as one of professional wrestling's most powerful females and the heiress to WWE has always maintained that she will do what is "best for business".

However, the subject of a potential pay-per-view taking place in the United Kingdom is a tricky one that has attracted attention in recent years and the 40-year-old talks about the possibility.

UK PPV

Over the years WWE has ventured to the British Isles and Europe hosting SmackDown and RAW as well as many house shows to provide the 'limies' with a taste of the stars of the biggest wrestling company in the world.

Despite this gracious honour, fans in the UK have developed a craving for WWE and the demand for a whole platter of PPV's is becoming insatiable so much so that Stephanie McMahon was questioned on the possibility of WWE looking at an event in the future by the Daily Mirror.

She said "Yes, I know, I keep wondering that myself. I think they are because WWE always listens to our fanbase and the UK fans are pretty loud, pretty rowdy in a great way, and you know we are constantly evaluating that. Personally I would love to see it. I know it would be incredible.

While the talk may just be basic response to the question, the UFC have in the past taken note of the attention from the fans in the United Kingdom hosting UFC 204 in Manchester.

The event started at 3am UK time to enable the wider portion of the United States and beyond to follow along and it had a buy-rate of 290,000 with 16,000 fans in attendance.

Think WWE could stage a WrestleMania sometime soon? Check out this promo for a potential Showcase of the Immortals at Wembley Stadium in 2019.

Stephanie getting back in the ring?

Currently McMahon has been absent from WWE since WrestleMania 33 where her husband Triple H inadvertently sent her crashing through a table - but has the former women's champion regained her appetite for in-ring action?

She said "I absolutely love the in-ring performance aspect to what we do. Its such an honour to be able to get in there with some of those performers and actually take bumps or tell a story of the match. Im not necessarily the best but I do love to get in there, so if theres ever an opportunity again to do that and to help make somebody else then I would absolutely welcome it."

The last time that McMahon stepped foot in the squared circle was in 2014 at SummerSlam as she defeated Brie Bella thanks to Nikki Bella's betrayal of her twin sister.

Of her 23 matches over the course of her career with her first coming in 1999 she has won 12 of them, lost eight and drawn three, impressive stats for a woman with her mind on business rather than competition.

Having witnessed McMahon's tyrade on Raw including many superstars in recent years such as Bayley, Sasha Banks and Charlotte the list for future and possible last opponents may be a long one with her punishment still pending.
An American-born al-Qaida member turned informant will be freed from federal prison after providing valuable information to U.S. authorities.

A federal judge in New York sentenced Bryant Neal Vinas on Thursday to the time he has already served  more than eight years  plus three months. The 34-year-old native New Yorker will be on probation for the rest of his life.

"To say that the defendant provided substantial assistance to the government is an understatement," prosecutors wrote in court filings. "He may have been the single most valuable cooperating witness" in several al-Qaida-related cases.

The information Vinas provided about al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan helped identify suspected terrorists, their hideouts and disrupted plots.

Vinas was in the U.S. Army for a few weeks in 2002, two years before he converted to Islam. He traveled to a lawless part of Pakistan in 2007 and signed on with militant groups, since he had become "increasingly angered by what he perceived to be the persecution of Muslims by Western countries," his lawyers wrote in court papers quoted by The Associated Press.

After briefly being considered as a suicide bomber by a splinter extremist group in North Waziristan, Vinas joined al-Qaida, the terrorist group responsible for the 2001 attacks on the United States. He was captured by Pakistani authorities in 2008, who turned him over to the United States, and he quickly became a willing informant.

Vinas admitted taking part in a rocket attack on U.S. soldiers across the border in Afghanistan, and prosecutors said al-Qaida leaders used his knowledge of New York City to plot an attack on the Long Island Rail Road. The plan to detonate a bomb as a train traveled through a tunnel beneath a river was never carried out.

Much of what Vinas told U.S. intelligence about al-Qaida remains secret, but his testimony as a witness helped convict three terror suspects who plotted to bomb the New York City subway in 2009, U.S. officials said.

Defense attorneys said Vinas "will spend the rest of his life with a target on his back" as a result of information he divulged about terrorist activities. Prosecutors agreed his cooperation put his life at risk, and they asked the judge to reward him with a minimal sentence. They added, however, that Vinas still needs supervision, mental health care and vocational training.
Bulgaria is seeking private investors to build a nuclear power plant on the Danube River, which was canceled five years ago, Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.

Sofia canceled the Belene project in 2012 after failing to find foreign investors and facing pressure from Brussels and Washington to limit its energy dependence on Russia.

Since then Bulgaria has opened a gas link with neighboring Romania and is working to connect its gas network with neighboring Greece, Turkey and Serbia to diversify its suppliers.

It hopes to privatize the nuclear plant project after it paid more than 600 million euros ($652 million) in compensation to Russia's state nuclear giant Rosatom when it canceled the 10 billion euro project. Rosatom had agreed to provide the nuclear reactors.

Bulgarian authorities have already said that Belene could be built without state guarantees or obligatory long-term contracts for the government to purchase power from it.

"Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said the government is looking for a strategic private investor to develop the project," the government's press office said in a statement.

In December, the Bulgarian government said that Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), China's biggest lender by assets, was ready to finance the Belene nuclear power project. China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) has also expressed an interest in investing in the project.

During their phone call, Borisov and Putin also underlined their mutual interest in the construction of the natural gas hub on Bulgarian territory, the government's press office said.

Plans for a hub at the Black Sea port of Varna, which would store and transport gas from Russia and the Caspian Sea to southeastern and central Europe, follow the cancellation of Russian gas giant Gazprom's South Stream gas pipeline project, which would have shipped Russian gas under the Black Sea via Bulgaria to central Europe.
Colombia's second biggest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), said on Thursday it did not expect to have reached a peace agreement by the 2018 elections and criticized the government for failing to tackle right-wing paramilitary groups.

The ELN and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) held a joint news conference on Thursday in the Cuban capital after meeting in Havana with the government's approval to discuss their respective approaches to ending a half-century of civil war in the Andean country.

This was their first public meeting since the FARC signed a peace agreement with the government last November, after four years of talks in Havana. Its fighters have begun to disarm and reintegrate into civilian life.

Meanwhile, the ELN is also holding peace talks with the government in Quito, Ecuador, which it will renew on Tuesday, May 16.

Asked if the ELN expected to reach a peace deal before the 2018 presidential and legislative elections, ELN Commander Nicolas Rodriguez, known as "Gabino," said: "The truth is we do not think so."

In a joint statement with the FARC, the ELN said it was committed to creating a more democratic country in Colombia and taking the violence out of the political fight.

More than 220,000 people have died in the conflict between the government, the ELN, the FARC and right-wing paramilitaries, while millions have been displaced from their homes.

"We have to say with regret that we do not see the government's will to tackle, as it should, paramilitaries as a phenomenon that threatens peace," said Rodriguez.
U.S. President Donald Trump and new South Korean President Moon Jae-in agreed in a phone call Wednesday to closely cooperate in dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons development program.

South Korean officials said that Trump, in the call on Moon's inauguration day, described issues involving Pyongyang's military ambitions as complicated, but ones that could be resolved.

Trump said the U.S.-South Korean relationship, long a bulwark against North Korean threats, was strong and invited Moon to visit Washington, the South Korean presidential office said.

The new South Korean leader, however, has taken a more conciliatory approach toward North Korea than Trump, who has dispatched a naval strike group to the waters off the Korean peninsula as a warning to the North against its nuclear missile development. Trump wants new sanctions against the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and further isolation for the reclusive communist nation.

Moon's assumption of power ends nearly a decade of hardline conservative rule in South Korea, with Seoul focused in years past on pressuring North Korea to curb its weapons development.

Moon, in his inaugural address, said, "If needed, I will fly directly to Washington. I will go to Beijing and Tokyo. And if conditions are met, I will go to Pyongyang. In order to bring about peace and security on the Korean Peninsula, I will do everything that I can."

The new South Korean leader has also been reluctant to support the deployment of the U.S. THAAD missile defense system, for which Trump recently demanded $1 billion in added defense costs. China also opposed the advanced weapons system as a threat to the region and has retaliated against South Korea with limits on tourism and imports.

Moon has played down policy differences with Washington. He has emphasized the importance of the U.S. alliance with South Korea and voiced confidence that Seoul and Washington ultimately want the same thing: to bring North Korea to the negotiating table to peacefully resolve the nuclear threat.

North Korea has yet to comment on Moon's election.
Germany's federal cyber agency on Thursday said that Yahoo Inc had not cooperated with its investigation into a series of hacks that compromised more than one billion of the U.S. company's email users between 2013 and 2016.

Yahoo's Dublin-based Europe, Middle East and Africa unit "refused to give the BSI any information and referred all questions to the Irish Data Protection Commission, without, however, giving it the authority to provide information to the BSI," Germany's BSI computer security agency said.

A BSI spokesman said it decided to go public after Yahoo repeatedly failed to respond to efforts to look into the data breaches and garner lessons to prevent similar lapses. BSI also urged internationally active Internet service providers to work more closely with it when German customers were affected by cyber attacks and other computer security issues.

Yahoo did not respond to requests for comment, while Ireland's data protection agency was not immediately available.

The BSI's statement comes at a time of heightened German government concerns about Russian meddling in national elections in September, after cyber attacks on the French and U.S. presidential elections which have been linked to Russia.

The U.S. Justice Department in March charged two Russian intelligence agents and two hackers with masterminding the 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts, marking the first time the U.S. government had criminally charged Russian spies for cyber offenses, while U.S. officials have charged Russian intelligence agents with involvement in at least one of the hacks that affected Yahoo.

Moscow has denied any involvement in hacking.

The BSI said it did not yet have any concrete information about the data breaches because of Yahoo's lack of cooperation.

"Users should therefore be very careful about which services they want to use in the future and to whom they entrust their data," BSI President Arne Schoenbohm said in a statement.

The BSI chief reiterated his recommendation that German consumers consider switching to other email service providers, adding that certifications such as those offered with C5-class cloud service security were valuable for customers.

C5 is a German government scheme to encourage cloud-based internet service providers to attest they use various safeguards against cyber attacks.

Late last year Yahoo, which has agreed to be acquired by U.S. telecoms giant Verizon and is set to be merged with AOL to form a new business known as Oath, revealed a data breach dating back to 2013 of one billion user accounts.

The various disclosures led Verizon to cut the amount it was willing to pay for Yahoo by $350 million on its previously agreed $4.83 billion deal. Yahoo has said it expects the merger into Verizon to close in June.

BSI said an additional 32 million Yahoo users were affected by cyber breaches in 2015 and 2016. A spokesman for the agency said he was unaware of any additional breaches in 2017.
Pakistan's government is pushing ahead with its anti-blasphemy campaign, which critics claim is really an attempt to quash dissent and intimidate opponents.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, the government-run communications regulatory agency, has sent text messages to millions of mobile phone subscribers, warning them against sharing or uploading "blasphemous" content online. The same message was posted on its website.

"Uploading and sharing of blasphemous content on the internet is a punishable offense under the law," the message says in Urdu. "Such content should be reported on info@pta.gov.pk for legal action."

The government, reflecting a growing conservative movement in the overwhelmingly Muslim country, has been pushing for tight enforcement of blasphemy legislation, even seeking assistance from internet providers such as Google to delete such content.

Critics claim the real target is silencing dissent that has flourished online on everything from politics and the military to freedom of speech and women's rights. Being labeled as "blasphemous" in Pakistan can make a person the target of violence.

Farhan Hussain from Bytes for All, a digital rights organization, worried about the impact of the government's warning.

"This kind of message to mobile users may fuel hatred in society," Hussain told VOA. "By doing this, in fact, the issue was further highlighted."

A university journalism student was recently beaten and shot to death by an angry mob over allegations that he had posted blasphemous content on social media. An investigation later found the allegations to be false, and the attack sparked protests against the law.

Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir, spokeswoman for the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, questioned why the message was issued.

"There are 95 percent Muslims in the country, and the other 5 percent non-Muslims have no interest in blasphemy," Jahangir said. "The PTA's message is not understandable, and I do not know why it feels every person is committing blasphemy."
A massive cyberattack that has hit hospitals in Britain and businesses in Spain appears to be spreading to other organizations around the world.

A large number of hospitals across Britain were hit by a cyberattack Friday, shutting down their computer systems and forcing the cancelation of patient appointments.

According to Britains National Health Service (NHS), hospital computers were infected with a type of ransomware that blocks the use of a computer system until victims agree to pay the attacker a ransom to free it up.

Similar incidents now have been reported in the United States, China, Russia, Portugal, Italy and several other countries.

Costin Raiu, the director of Global Research and Analysis for Russian anti-virus software-maker Kaspersky Labs, said he had recorded more than 45,000 attacks in 74 different countries using the ransomware.

Another malware researcher, Jakub Kroustek of Avast Software, said his company had detected 57,000 attacks using the ransomware.

This attack once again proves that ransomware is a powerful weapon that can be used against consumers and businesses alike, Kroustek wrote in a blog post on the Avast website. Ransomware becomes particularly nasty when it infects institutions like hospitals, where it can put peoples lives in danger.

Photos posted on social media show infected computers with some variation of the message Ooops, your files have been encrypted, and a demand for $300 worth of Bitcoin, an anonymous online currency.

At least 16 NHS organizations reported being affected by the ransomware attack.

While the affected hospitals were forced to turn away patients and divert ambulances to other facilities, the NHS said the attackers hadnt breached any patient data.

NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Center, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organizations and to recommend appropriate mitigations, the health agency said in a statement.

The NHS said it was not attacked specifically, and the attack is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors.

Around the same time Friday, the Spanish energy ministry reported various cyberattacks aimed at Spanish companies, including telecom giant Telefonica, using ransomware software.

Telefonica said in a statement it was aware of the cybersecurity incident but that none of its clients or services had been affected.

Portugal Telecom also was hit by a cyberattack, but no services were affected, a spokeswoman for the company said.
The U.N.'s human rights chief urged Uzbekistan on Thursday to avoid "repressive policies" in its fight against Islamist radicalization, a growing threat throughout Central Asia, while welcoming a rapprochement with Tashkent.

Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the first United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Uzbekistan since the post was created in 1993, said the former Soviet republic had agreed to work with his office after previously refusing to do so.

Commenting on President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's reform plans, which include an overhaul of the judicial system and measures to tackle religious extremism, Hussein said it was crucial to balance the latter with ensuring individual rights.

"As in other countries, I have emphasized that the answer to the risk of radicalization is not simply heavy-handed security measures and repressive policies which breed resentment and frustration, thereby making it easier for extremists to recruit new supporters," he said.

President Islam Karimov, who died in September after 27 years in power, had been widely criticized for his government's human rights violations, and Tashkent's ties with the West hit their lowest point after troops violently suppressed unrest in the city of Andijan in 2005.

Hussein, describing the Andijan events as "terrible," told a briefing: "While it is important to look forward, it also important to come to terms with past events and ensure that victims are not forgotten and their grievances are addressed."

Hussein said he had had an hour-and-a-half meeting with Mirziyoyev, "in which we found much common ground and reached agreements on a number of concrete steps."

Uzbekistan found itself in a global security spotlight after an Uzbek man living in Sweden was identified as the main suspect behind the deadly truck attack in Stockholm last month. Hundreds of Uzbeks are also believed to have joined the Islamic State militant group based in Syria and Iraq.


Workers at Laiwu Manhing Vegetables Fruits in Chinas Shandong province prepare to pack and ship ginger last June. The crop, though grown organically, doesn't meet U.S. organic standards, because of pesticide residue left after washing. Its not sold as organic in the United States or Europe, the company said. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

A shipment of 36 million pounds of soybeans sailed late last year from Ukraine to Turkey to California. Along the way, it underwent a remarkable transformation.

The cargo began as ordinary soybeans, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Like ordinary soybeans, they were fumigated with a pesticide. They were priced like ordinary soybeans, too.

But by the time the 600-foot cargo ship carrying them to Stockton, Calif., arrived in December, the soybeans had been labeled organic, according to receipts, invoices and other shipping records. That switch  the addition of the USDA Organic designation  boosted their value by approximately $4 million, creating a windfall for at least one company in the supply chain.

After being contacted by The Post, the broker for the soybeans, Annapolis-based Global Natural, emailed a statement saying it may have been provided with false certification documents regarding some grain shipments from Eastern Europe. About 21 million pounds of the soybeans have already been distributed to customers.

The multimillion-dollar metamorphosis of the soybeans, as well as two other similar grain shipments in the past year examined by The Post, demonstrate weaknesses in the way that the United States ensures that what is sold as USDA Organic is really organic.

The three shipments, each involving millions of pounds of organic corn or soybeans, were large enough to constitute a meaningful proportion of the U.S. supply of those commodities. All three were presented as organic, despite evidence to the contrary. And all three hailed from Turkey, now one of the largest exporters of organic products to the United States, according to Foreign Agricultural Service statistics.

Agriculture Department officials said that they are investigating fraudulent organic grain shipments. But the agency declined to identify any of the firms or shipments involved.

We are continuing the investigation based on the evidence received, it said in a statement.

The imported corn and soybean shipments examined by The Post were largely destined to become animal feed and enter the supply chain for some of the largest organic food industries. Organic eggs, organic milk, organic chicken and organic beef are supposed to come from animals that consume organic feed, an added expense for farmers that contributes to the higher consumer prices on those items.

While most food sold as USDA Organic is grown in the United States, at least half of some organic commodities  corn, soybeans and coffee  come from overseas, from as many as 100 countries.

USDA officials say that their system for guarding against fraud is robust.

Under USDA rules, a company importing an organic product must verify that it has come from a supplier that has a USDA Organic certificate. It must keep receipts and invoices. But it need not trace the product back to the farm. Some importers, aware of the possibility of fraud, request extra documentation. But others do not.

Regardless of where organics come from, critics say, the system suffers from multiple weaknesses in enforcement: Farmers hire their own inspection companies; most inspections are announced days or weeks in advance and lack the element of surprise; and testing for pesticides is the exception rather than the rule.

These vulnerabilities are magnified with imported products, which often involve more middlemen, each of whom could profit by relabeling conventional goods as organic. The temptation could be substantial, too: Products with a USDA Organic label routinely sell for twice the price of their conventional counterparts.

In recent years, even as the amount of organic corn and soybeans imported to the United States has more than tripled, the USDA has not issued any major sanctions for the import of fraudulent grain, U.S. farmers said.

The U.S. market is the easiest for potentially fraudulent organic products to penetrate because the chances of getting caught here are not very high, said John Bobbe, executive director of the Organic Farmers Agency for Relationship Marketing, or OFARM, a farmer cooperative. In Europe and Canada, he said, import rules for organics are much stricter.

Moreover, even when the USDA has responded to complaints of questionable imports, action has come too late to prevent the products from reaching consumers.

Four months after the soybeans arrived in California and after The Post began making calls about the shipment, county officials acting on behalf of the USDA showed up at the warehouse where the soybeans were being stored. The officials took samples to test for exposure to pesticides.

By that time, about 21 million pounds of the 36 million-pound shipment had already reached farms and mills. The customers who have purchased the soybeans said they were unaware there may have been a problem until a Post reporter called.



An entrance at the port of Stockton in California. (Noah Berger for The Washington Post)

Gauging the extent of fraud in imported organics is difficult because there is little incentive for organic companies to advertise their suspicions about suppliers.

To test USDA claims that organic imports are rigorously monitored, The Post examined pesticide residue testing conducted on organic products in China.

China is the leading source of organic tea and ginger in the United States, and its food exports have drawn repeated scrutiny.

In China, farmers have trouble following their own laws, said Chenglin Liu, a professor at St. Marys University School of Law in San Antonio.  So how can Americans expect Chinese farmers will follow U.S. organic rules?

As in the United States, farmers in China seeking the USDA Organic label hire an inspection agency to certify that they meet the organic rules.

Using public-records laws, The Post obtained the results of pesticide residue tests conducted on farms with USDA organic certification in China. Although pesticide tests are not mandatory, inspection agencies are required to take samples from 5 percent of their clients, and The Post requested the results from the three most active inspection agencies overseeing Chinese farms.



Workers for the Laiwu Manhing Vegetables Fruits Corp. in Chinas Shandong province clean and cut ginger root last June. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

The pesticide results showed very high levels of pesticide residue on some organic Chinese products. They also showed that the pesticide residue tests are applied unevenly.

One of the largest inspection agencies, a German company known as Ceres, appears to do rigorous testing.

Ceres conducts most of its tests on plant leaves, rather than on fruits, a method that can be more likely to detect pesticide use.

Their results from China, as a Ceres official said, were quite shocking.

Of 232 samples that Ceres tested from the Chinese organic farms, 37 percent showed more than traces of pesticide residue.

This is the reality we are battling with in China, said Albrecht Benzing of Ceres.

Some of the problem arises from pesticides from neighboring farms drifting over, experts said, and some is contamination from Chinas polluted soil and water.

For example, in Shandong province, the Laiwu Manhing Vegetables Fruits Corp. harvests ginger that has been grown organically. But the water available for washing the ginger is so polluted that it leaves pesticide residue.

After the ginger is washed, the water leaves behind pesticide residues too high to be considered organic in the United States, said Li Hongtao, a sales manager at the company. He said the ginger is sold as organic in some countries but not the United States or Europe.

The pesticide residue results that were obtained by The Post also indicate that enforcement of USDA Organic rules for pesticides are uneven and possibly arbitrary, with results depending on the inspection agency.



Workers wash ginger grown organically by the Laiwu Manhing Vegetables Fruits Corp. in Shandong province. (Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

While Ceres found remarkably high levels of pesticide residue, others reported extremely low levels.

For example, Ecocert, a French inspection agency, reported pesticide residue on about 1 percent of 360 samples from China in 2015  a level of cleanliness remarkable for any country, let alone China and its well-documented pollution.

This wide range of pesticide use detected by organic inspectors in China  nearly 40 percent at one company and 1 percent in another  suggests a variety of methods and standards at work. Ecocert said their results may be low because they chose samples from a large number of farms. Different firms may also use different thresholds for what constitutes a positive result. The next year, Ecocert said, its testing criteria changed slightly, and the percentage of samples with pesticide levels rose to 8 percent.

Critics say the disparity in results shows that certifying agencies can make any farm look organic.

The certifying agencies can choose who and when they test, said Mischa Popoff, a former USDA organic inspector turned critic. Thats why the results they can get are completely arbitrary.

Each of the questionable organic shipments of corn and soybeans examined by The Post passed through Turkey, a country whose organic exports have provoked criticism from international authorities.

In 2013, for example, a report by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture found that half of European importers and Turkish handlers had detected pesticide residue on organic products from Turkey.

The United States has seen large spikes in the amount of organic corn and soybeans entering from Turkey, according to USDA statistics. Between 2014 and 2016, the amount of organic corn arriving from Turkey rose from 15,000 metric tons to more than 399,000 metric tons; the amount of organic soybeans coming from Turkey rose from 14,000 metric tons to 165,000. (The three shipments examined by The Post represent roughly 7 percent of annual organic corn imports and 4 percent of organic soybean imports.)

Such sudden jumps in organic food production draw scrutiny because the organic transition process is slow  it can take three years for conventional land to be converted into organic farmland.

Where did all this big production come from? Where are these organic farmers? Miles McEvoy, chief of the USDAs organic program, said to a group of U.S. organic farmers earlier this year.

The rise of imports has helped drop prices by more than 25 percent, hurting U.S. organic farmers, many of them small operations.

My neighbor, small farm, lost $30,000 last year on 100 acres of organic corn, said OFARMs Bobbe. In fact, theres so much coming in, were finding buyers who wont take any corn.

To piece together the three questionable shipments, The Post was given records of the transactions by an industry expert who requested anonymity because they may conflict with the mandates of his employer. The documents included company invoices, shipping records and health certificates accompanying the shipments. Warehouse operators, importers, exporters and Ukrainian officials verified key documents and added details.

The first of the shipments arrived at the port of Wilmington in Delaware a year ago. It consisted of 46 million pounds of organic corn.

The Romanian company that provided the corn is not a certified organic company, and receipts show that the corn was initially purchased at the conventional price, not the organic one.

The shipper is listed as Hakan Organics, a Dubai-based company with operations in Turkey.

Hakan Organics is listed as an organic handler in good standing with the USDA.

The first intended customer for the corn, Perdue Agribusiness, asked for additional paperwork and then refused to accept the shipment, because we could not confirm all the proper documentation that Perdue requires, a company spokesman said.

The Post could not determine who ended up purchasing the organic corn.

Since then, Perdue has not received any shipments from Hakan Organics, a Perdue spokesman said.

Hakan Organics continued to ship agricultural products to the United States.

Hakan Bahceci, the chief executive of Hakan, indicated by email that he would answer questions but then did not respond further.

The second shipment, the soybeans from Ukraine and Turkey, arrived aboard the Four Diamond at the port of Stockton in December 2016.

A set of health certificates that accompanied the soybeans allowed The Post to trace the soybeans from California back to Turkey and to their origin in Ukraine.

The health certificates and associated receipts indicate that they were not really organic. For one thing, the soybeans were fumigated with tablets of aluminum phosphide, a pesticide prohibited under organic regulations; some of the soybeans originated from ADM Ukraine, a company that does not produce or trade organic soybeans and did not sell or label them as such, a company spokeswoman said; and finally, the soybeans were originally priced at the level of conventional soybeans.

Invoices and other documents for those soybeans showed that they were originally priced at about $360 per ton. By the time they reached the United States, the price reached almost $600 per ton.

Global Natural, the Annapolis-based firm that was marketing the soybeans in the United States, said it has stopped selling all potentially affected product. Company officials declined to answer further questions.

The importer of the soybeans is Agropex International.

Ashley Anderson, who is listed as the president of Agropex International, insisted that the soybeans that arrived in Stockton are legitimately organic.

The third shipment involved 46 million pounds of organic corn that sailed from Romania to Turkey and then to Baltimore, arriving in March.

The Romanian producers of the corn, a company called Belor, is not a certified organic company and sold the corn at conventional prices, according to receipts. But by the time the corn from Romania reached the United States, it was labeled organic. Its price had risen 72 percent. As with the cargo aboard the Four Diamond, the value of the shipment increased by millions.

Dennis Minnaard of DFI Organics said his company had been set to buy some of the corn but rejected the shipment because the broker did not take away our doubts about its authenticity.

Yet that organic corn continued to be marketed to other customers, according to industry officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the private nature of the deals.

With the complex supply chain of organic grain, McEvoy, the USDA official, told concerned farmers at the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service conference earlier this year, there are challenges.
Kim Do-hee, an employee of Kakao Friends Shop, uses a smartphone beside its goods in Seoul. (Ahn Young-joon/Associated Press)

Hwang Yun-ik would never think to call his co-workers or boss by their first names. Most Koreans wouldnt.

For Hwang, that changed recently. Kakao, one of South Koreas largest Internet companies, decided three years ago that all employees would go by English nicknames. Hwang works at Kakao as a director in business development.

The strange part wasnt being called an English name. It was being called, well, a name.

The norm in South Korea is to call your colleagues or superiors not by their given names but by their positions. Its the same for addressing your older friends or siblings, your teacher or any person on the street. So if your family name is Johnson and you were to be hired in a Korean company as a manager, your co-workers would call you Johnson-boojang. To get the attention of your older female friend, you would call for eunni, or older sister.

This is a language where verb conjugations are based not on I, they, we and so on, but on formality levels. The younger person must use honorific to the older person, Hwang said. If not, that makes a lot of conflict.

Employees assemble vehicle chassis on a production line at a Hyundai Mobis factory in Asan, South Korea. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg News)

One popular Korean blog was more explicit on shirking honorifics in the workplace: Dropping your pants and [urinating] in the persons briefcase would be only a little ruder than calling him/her by his/her first name.

But some companies are looking to eliminate some of this hierarchy. The best way to do that, it seems, is dictating that employees take English names. Using the actual name of your boss or co-workers feels impolite. But, hopefully, calling him or her an English nickname taps into a different cultural mind-set.

That has ushered Koreans to take on typical English names such as Sophie or John. Or, in Hwangs case, atypical ones: He chose Unique.

Why Unique? He responded simply and with a smile, I am unique.

Unique has embraced English nicknames, though folks elsewhere feel uneasy about it. Hwang Hye-rim, who previously worked at a translation company, said she always attached position names to her co-workers English names. I was concerned that omitting job position names would be really offensive, she said.

Hong Yun-ji likes the lack of hierarchy at the Seoul office of SABIC, a Saudi manufacturing company. But, in an office full of Esthers and Michelles, she stuck with Yun-ji.

I prefer to use my Korean name because I am a Korean person, Hong said between sips of an iced coffee at a stylish cafe in Seoul one recent Saturday. Using an English name even though you are not American is a little bit strange. Your name is from your own mother and father.

Companies in English education, tourism, trade or other globally focused industries typically have English nickname policies. They want to accommodate foreign business partners who cant decipher between Lee Ji-yeong and Lee Ji-yeon. Theyre thoughtful people, Hong said. Its to be kind to foreign people.

She added with a laugh, Its too thoughtful thinking sometimes.

The larger reason is a desire for a horizontal workplace as more employees, particularly younger ones, are educated or work outside Korea. Younger generations think somethings wrong with it, and we all feel the need to fix this culture, Hwang Hye-rim said.

In the hierarchical structure, employees cannot follow or share their own ideas. Decision-making is usually stymied by going through many chains of hierarchy. And projects are not necessarily led by expertise but by who has the highest title.

 You should, you must follow my commands over your own thinking,  Hong said. Its like theyre soldiers. They are not working together.

While start-ups such as Kakao have rejected that quasi-military structure, its protected at chaebol  the massive, family-owned companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai that essentially run Korea. Samsung alone accounts for one-fifth of Koreas gross domestic product.

Chaebol are infamously rigid, as are the many Korean companies made in their image. People receive raises and promotions on the same schedule, according to age; desks are arranged according to position; and hiring occurs no more than twice a year, often according to test scores. Its comfortingly logical.

So when a company instills English nicknames along with a more horizontal culture, it is removing the backbone of an organization.

Many Koreans, who often work 12-hour days at a single company for most of their lives, feel that their life identity is taken, as well.

At first, we felt emotionally deprived, one employee at SK Telecom, which removed most job titles in 2006, told the New York Times in 2008.

Younger Koreans and foreign workers hoping for a quicker overhaul of the hierarchical office are likely to be disappointed. This country spends more time at work than nearly any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development  on average every year, 323 hours more than Americans and 394 hours more than the Japanese. Theres little reason to want to be called Fred or Sally rather than the director title you have dedicated your life to achieving.

Even Hong, who lived in Canada and dislikes many of Koreas Confucian aspects, still accidentally calls her boss by the traditional title.

Sometimes it comes out, Hong said. Its a foreign company, but the people working there are totally Korean. They never discard their own essential personality.

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Pardon the interruption.

But may I have your attention for a moment about some serious legislative business that affects family finances? It hasnt gotten much attention during the chaos involving the Russia investigation, the White House and the now-fired FBI director.

Across the country, there are households headed by grandparents or other relatives taking care of 7.8 million children whose parents may be absent for any number of reasons. These caregivers need our help because, on a real economic level, they save all of us hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The majority of these caregivers are women. And as we pause to celebrate Mothers Day, we should keep in mind the struggles that many of them face.

Before Congress now is the Family First Prevention Services Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.) and co-sponsored by Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) and nearly a dozen other members of Congress. If enacted  and it should be  the legislation would allow states to use federal foster-care funds to pay for up to 12 months of family services, including mental-health care, family therapy and parenting-skills training. This broad range of support could make the difference between children being placed in foster care and getting to stay with their grandparents or other family members.

[Twin reports by Pew show many families are economically fragile]

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) have introduced the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act, which would create a federal task force to coordinate a one-stop shop of resources needed by seniors. Figuring out where to go for help is often an issue for grandparents who are suddenly thrust into caring for their grandchildren.

While grandparents have long stepped in to care for children, the current opioid crisis is straining the child welfare system and increasingly calling on relatives to raise children whose parents cannot, said Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United. They do this with little or no warning or support. Grandparents and other relatives who raise children save our country more than $4.5 billion a year and help the children thrive.

Last week, I had the pleasure to serve as the emcee for a rally to support grandparents and relatives who provide a home for children who need care.

For every child in foster care, nearly 20 children are being raised by relatives outside the child welfare system and are receiving little to no support, Butts said.

Mothers Day is a tough time for me. Every year it reminds me that my own mother wasnt there. I went to live with my grandmother when I was 4. It has taken me most of my adult life to reconcile being abandoned. But amid that pain was the safety of my grandmother, Big Mama.

During the GrandRally, a choir from the Pittsburgh-based group A Second Chance, which includes grandparents raising grandchildren, sang Grandma Hands, a soulful song made iconic by Bill Withers. The first part of the song goes:

Grandmas hands

Clapped in church on Sunday morning.

Grandmas hands

Played a tambourine so well.

Grandmas hands

Used to issue out a warning.

Shed say, Billy dont you run so fast.

Might fall on a piece of glass.

Might be snakes there in that grass.

My grandmothers hands saved me.

Big Mama wouldnt let me and my siblings  there were five of us  be placed in foster care, a system that could have entailed multiple moves or a group home.

We surely would have been split up. My grandmother didnt ask for much from the state, and what she did ask for she needed.

Every Mothers Day, I think of Big Mama and Im grateful for the priceless care she gave me. She managed with so little, like so many others who choose to do what she did.

We cant stay so distracted with the high-profile political fights and controversies that we dont push Congress to focus on the legislation that would assist caregivers like my grandmother.

[If youre 50 or older, your health insurance may get more expensive]

The advocacy groups that sponsored the GrandRally  including Casey Family Programs, the Childrens Defense Fund, AARP, FosterClub, GrandFamilies of America, the National Kinship Alliance for Children and Generations United  and others like them need our support. They need your advocacy.

While Washington is a mess, putting families first is an issue that can unite across the aisle, Butts said. The challenge is elevating and making grandfamilies a priority.

Last week, I met so many grandmothers who reminded me of Big Mama, who passed away in 1995. They hugged me for her.

There are a lot of caregivers who cant get what they need to care for the children under their protection. Long past Mothers Day, lets keep the focus on them. They need and deserve our helping hand.

Write Singletary at The Washington Post, 1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 or singletarym@washpost.com. To read more, go to http://wapo.st/michelle-singletary.

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(Erin Patrick O'Connor/The Washington Post)

That day in the summer of 1967, Richard Goldstein walked into the New York Times offices in midtown Manhattan wearing a dark blue cape. He was 22, a hippie and a freelancer. And he was about to deliver a scathing review of the most important album of the year, perhaps the most important album in rock history.

Goldstein had been thrilled when Sy Peck, a veteran Times editor who wore a tie, handed him the bands new record, Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Growing up in the gritty Bronx, Goldstein identified with the lads from working-class Liverpool. Those red-hot early Beatles sides were a natural link to the driving rock of the 1950s. And the Fab Four were true artists. Approaching Sgt. Pepper, they had branched out into the baroque pop of Eleanor Rigby and psychedelic tape loops of Tomorrow Never Knows. They had quit touring so they could concentrate on the studio. Sgt. Pepper would be their masterpiece.

Goldstein rushed home to the Upper West Side apartment he shared with his wife, Judith. He slipped the vinyl onto his turntable. He took his customary listening position, head back on the rug with a floor speaker aimed on each ear. He turned up the volume as the chugging guitar of the albums opener kicked in. Thats when the trouble started.

Goldstein hated Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Busy, hip and cluttered, he called the record in a review that ran in the Times on June 18, 1967.

He blasted the Beatles for a surprising shoddiness in composition and declared the album, ultimately, fraudulent.

Sgt. Pepper, of course, was an immediate hit, No. 1 on the Billboard charts for months. It also was critically acclaimed, eventually topping Rolling Stone magazines list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. This month, the Beatles eighth studio album will get the anniversary treatment with a six-disc box set that includes dozens of demos and alternative mixes of songs now considered part of the pop canon, including With a Little Help From My Friends, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds and the groups greatest pocket symphony, A Day in the Life.

But at least one person still remembers Goldsteins slashing review. Paul McCartney.

A few months ago, McCartney, in an interview with The Washington Post, was asked about dealing with criticism during his post-Beatles career. In answering, he referenced Goldsteins take.

What I do with that, as distressing as it is, I try to rationalize whats going on, McCartney said of being panned in the 1980s. Well, wait a minute, the music critic of the New York Times hated Sgt. Pepper. And we had to sit through that.



Writer Richard Goldstein at his home overlooking Manhattan's West Village. (Jesse Dittmar For The Washington Post)

Deeply driven, deeply tortured

You may not have heard of Richard Goldstein, but at one time, he was almost famous. He interviewed a paranoid Brian Wilson in the Beach Boys leaders smoke-filled living room, sadly watched Jim Morrison slur through an aborted recording session and shared an awkward kiss with Janis Joplin.

He was the original rock critic as misfit. Actually, he was the original rock critic.

Back in 1966, when Goldstein began writing for the Village Voice, there was no Rolling Stone, no Spin, no full-time music critic at the Times.

So it made perfect sense for Peck to assign Sgt. Pepper to this 22-year-old freelancer.

Richard Goldstein invented rock criticism, says Robert Christgau, the legendary Village Voice writer who became friendly with him in those days. He was the first rock critic. I mean, it turns out Paul Williams was publishing his zine [Crawdaddy] and there were other things happening, but without question, he was the most visible.

He may have looked confident enough to let his freak flag fly, but Goldstein was also driven by a deep sense that he didnt quite fit in.

As an overweight kid growing up in the projects, he would walk down the streets of the Bronx with a transistor to his ear, blasting Little Richard. Later, he had his cape to codify his outsider status. He was a hippie in Straightville, a kid from the projects in Uptown Manhattan. In photos from that time, he looks happy-go-lucky. He was anything but.

One of the most deeply tortured people I knew, remembers Judith Hibbard-Mipaas, who married Goldstein in 1967 and, despite their eventual split, remains friends with him. He has a very Eastern European, Slavic face, and its very round, and very, very dark eyes. Plus, he was short and people would yell at him. And this is even in Manhattan. On the one hand, you were forced to flaunt this long hair and hippie clothes and satin lace. But on the other hand, he was being challenged: You dont look like a guy. You dont look macho. 

Richard Goldsteins 1967 New York Times review of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. (New York Times)

Goldstein agrees. You know, I just saw The Hairy Ape by Eugene ONeill, and the line that keeps recurring in this lumpenproletariat protagonist in the play is I dont belong,  he says. When he goes to Fifth Avenue, he keeps saying, I dont belong here. Thats what I felt like in Manhattan.

There was one place where, even if he still didnt feel at ease, Goldstein could at least rub elbows with other angst-ridden eccentrics. The music world was filled with brash, talented, insecure, confused and doomed figures. He felt duty-bound to define what they did as art. His approach was both egalitarian and egomaniacal. He believed his reviews were speaking directly to his musical heroes, offering them direction, but he also wanted to be viewed as less an authority, more a fan.

Americas single greatest contribution to the world has been her Pop (music, cinema, painting, even merchandising), he wrote in the forward to his 1969 anthology, The Poetry of Rock. It is with this sense of America, as clown-guru to the world, that I offer the premise of rock poetry. I am aware that certain aspects of pop walk a delicate line between camp and revelation. But I set out to edit this book as a participant, not an authority. So, I welcome your derision  and your heads.

By Sgt. Pepper, things were changing, and no more so than in the Beatles camp.

The days of the mischievous mop tops slapsticking their way through the streets were over. Screaming girls werent just a drag  they kept the Beatles from hearing their instruments at gigs. So on Aug. 29, 1966, the Beatles played their final concert, at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. In November, they headed back into the studio.

John came into the control room and said, You know, were never going to perform live again, recalls Geoff Emerick, the famed engineer who worked with producer George Martin on Sgt. Pepper. Were going to create something thats never been heard before, a new kind of record with new sounds.

The record they delivered did that and more, from the tamboura opening on Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and George Harrisons Hindustani-inspired Within You Without You to the largely improvised, orchestral crescendo in A Day in the Life. It was a concept record, with the songs presented as the work of the mysterious, satin-uniformed Lonely Hearts Club Band. When Pepper came out, Time magazine declared it a historic departure in the progress of music  any music, while the London Times called the release a decisive moment in the history of Western civilization.

The critics also took on Goldstein. The Village Voice, his own paper, ran a retort from another critic. Pete Johnson, the rock critic at the Los Angeles Times, remembers also being annoyed.

No question the guy could write, but I thought it was bad-tempered grandstanding, he says today.

Emerick recently read the review again. He has a theory as to what led Goldstein to attack Pepper.

There was nothing to compare it to, Emerick says. I know that was the feeling when wed finished it. It was a piece of art, and he was challenged and he wanted to win.



I remember being sort of horrified by the album, Goldstein says, being determined with that sort of narcissistic frenzy that young men can have. To, you know, shake them up and force them to actually make rock and roll again. (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)

You dont review a record on a stereo that isnt working

This may be as a good a time as any to offer Richard Goldsteins confession. It isnt anything he has tried to hide, and, in fact, he mentioned it briefly in his 2015 memoir, Another Little Piece of My Heart. But the revelation may be startling to Beatles fans, who have devoted their lives to interpreting every lyric, recording flourish and photograph presented by their band.

The stereo Goldstein used for his review was broken.

Repeat. The guy who slammed Sgt. Pepper in the New York Times had a busted speaker.

Christgau has never heard that.

Thats f---ed up, he says. You dont review a record on a stereo that isnt working, certainly not a record of that consequence.

Giles Martin, son of producer George and the man overseeing the new Pepper reissue, first questions whether Goldstein was making that up as an excuse for his review. The original stereo mix of Pepper was quite lopsided.

Youd know if your stereo was broken, Martin says.  Lovely Rita has bass and vocals on one side, all the bands on the left-hand speaker. On A Little Help From My Friends, youd have no bass. And I think Ringos in the center but the bands on one side, the backing vocals.

Fair enough. This is where the critic speaks up. Hes not defensive. He doesnt raise his voice. He just doesnt agree.

So, yeah, I f---ed up, but these people who will now say, Oh, you know why that guy gave a bad review in the New York Times? He didnt have a left speaker. Okay. Thats their problem, though. Because theyre wrong.

He is 72, with a thin beard and easy laugh, and lives with his husband, Tony Ward, in a 14th-floor apartment Greenwich Village. He stopped writing about music in the late 60s, but he never left journalism. For decades, Goldstein covered the arts and gender identity issues at the Village Voice, where he eventually served as executive editor. These days, he teaches Pepper in a course on the 60s at his alma mater, Hunter College. Now comfortable in his own skin, Goldstein can explain why he feels he rejected Pepper all those years ago. The broken stereo, he says, had nothing to do with it.

The rejection boils down to two reasons. He didnt understand Pepper musically when it was released, and he found his turmoil over his sexuality  he wouldnt come out until the 1970s  didnt allow him to embrace the attitude of the record, which he says defied the aggressive, masculine approach of so much rock.

I remember being sort of horrified by the album, he says, being determined with that sort of narcissistic frenzy that young men can have. To, you know, shake them up and force them to actually make rock and roll again. Like they would be listening. That the Times was all powerful and therefore they would say oh weve made a mistake, were going to go back to singing Long Tall Sally or now Ill never dance with another. I wasnt really interested in the prophetic aspect of Sgt. Pepper. I was interested in the violation of the rules and I didnt like it, and thats what I look back on with a lot of reflection.



Cover art for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Press Association via AP)

Another listen to Sgt. Pepper

On a recent weekday, Goldstein agreed to revisit his review in the most direct terms.

He would listen to the record with the speakers adjusted to provide the full mix, and also with the left channel turned off to try to re-create what he experienced on his broken system.

Goldstein doesnt have a turntable anymore, so The Post had a Crosley turntable sent to his apartment. We provided the 2009 reissue of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band on vinyl.

The listening session began with Getting Better because its one of the most rock-driven on Sgt. Pepper and also a song ignored in Goldsteins review. With the left speaker disconnected, the jagged guitar can be heard but McCartneys bass  which drives the song  is gone.

True, its different, Goldstein says. This is not a song I would have paid a lot of attention to, and maybe this is why.

Other moments lead to confusion. When Im Sixty-Four, with one speaker out, completely loses McCartneys lead vocal and becomes an instrumental. But Goldstein clearly knew the vocal when he wrote his review, which makes him wonder whether the speaker on his system wasnt completely blown, just damaged.

He listens to Within You Without You. Back then, he dismissed Harrisons lyrics as dismal and dull. Today, he considers the song one of his favorites on Sgt. Pepper.

When its over, Goldstein agrees that the broken stereo changed his listening experience. But hes not sorry. He says that even the best system wouldnt have changed his review back in 1967.

Goldstein laughs and relates another take from the 60s:

I was the first critic to review the Doors first album. And I gave it a rave review. I said great album. One bad cut on this album  Light My Fire. What can I say? If youre not embarrassed by your youth, what good are you?


Robert Wiedmaier wants to demystify caviar at his new restaurant, Siren, which features visually arresting dishes such as a grilled fish causa with potatoes and flying fish roe. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

When the owner of the new Darcy hotel approached Robert Wiedmaier about creating a restaurant for the boutique property, the veteran D.C. chef asked, What are you looking for?

What do you want to do? replied KHP Capital Partners, the San Francisco-based real estate private equity firm.

Seafood from around the world, Wiedmaier told the company. And vegetables and jazz, he added, taking into account not just his personal taste, but what the chef says he hears from his customers.

[Tom Sietsemas 2017 Spring Dining Guide]

The result, introduced in Logan Circle in April, goes by Siren by Robert Wiedmaier and it finds John Critchley, formerly of Brine in Fairfax, as the chef de cuisine behind an eye-catching seafood bar. (Brian McBride, Wiedmaiers corporate chef and business partner, helped write the menu and gave the restaurant its name, a nod to the mythological sea creatures who lured sailors to their deaths.) Located off the lobby of the 226-room hotel, which has erased any sign that it used to house a DoubleTree, the dining room is a cocoon awash in navy blue, decorated with mermaid art outfitted on one side with a row of booths set in curtain-framed alcoves.

Siren, says Wiedmaier, hits a sweet spot between two of his best-known businesses, not as expensive as Marcels, his high-end French restaurant, nor as casual as Brasserie Beck, his modern European outpost.



Chef de cuisine John Critchley plates a dish behind the raw bar, where diners can watch their dishes come together at the new Logan Circle restaurant. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Like a lot of places, Siren, Wiedmaiers first new D.C. restaurant in 10 years, cant resist a long introduction. The chef wants to take you on a journey, a server greeted us on a recent visit. Dishes in the new establishment are arranged not as appetizers or entrees but in categories that spell out how theyre prepared or where they come from. Raw to slightly cooked, for instance, includes ribbons of fluke and pickled vegetables in a puddle of yellow pepper juice shot through with horseradish, a small plate garnished with smoked trout roe. Warm & Crispy embraces two of my favorite combinations: fried soft-shell crabs served upright in a bowl with a tangy citrus-tamarind jus and slivered green almonds and a showy causa. The latter brings a cake of spicy mashed potatoes supporting grilled mashed halibut and fluke, punched up with preserved limes and Thai chiles and sporting a halo of phyllo for texture.

[At Le DeSales, classic French cooking receives a creative jolt]

Fava beans and Israeli couscous tossed with fresh mint, sheeps-milk cheese and citrus make a better impression than totems of warm eggplant, glossy and oversweetened with honey. One of a handful of meat choices is lamb served three ways  as a roseate rack, shoulder meat and grilled sausage  and circled in an intriguing cinnamon-hibiscus jus.

Initial dinners reveal a kitchen that has a liberal hand with salt and sometimes overdoes accessories while also offering a few novelties to set Siren apart from a pack of new restaurants. Seafood platters feature shellfish that dont require dunking because theyre pre-dressed. The application on clams, for instance, mimics cocktail sauce with its moistener of tomato water and horseradish, while prawns get brushed with a crab-infused ponzu.



Chef de cuisine John Critchley pours shellfish broth over salmon and roasted maitake mushrooms. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Fried soft-shell crab is presented with a citrus-tamarind jus and slivered green almonds. (Deb Lindsey /For The Washington Post)

Wiedmaier says he wants to demystify caviar, although $125 for an ounce of osetra is probably not a worker bees idea of everyday dining. A more approachable way to explore fish roe is via a sampler of three different savory cookies for $20. Macarons become vehicles for white chocolate creme fraiche and domestic hackleback, or sturgeon roe.

[Mirabelle is the new crown jewel of downtown dining]

Bread intentionally shows up after youve been eating awhile, in part to surprise diners, says Wiedmaier. The composition is unusual, too: thin slices of flatbread presented with what a server announces as tuna ganoush whipped up from fish belly poached in olive oil.

Daily specials net some treasures. The best so far have been baked oysters and meaty bites of eel, caught in the Chesapeake Bay, sauced with Riesling, cream and lemon grass and set off with bright sun daisies. One oyster is not enough.

Live jazz enlivens the late-night scene Thursdays through Saturdays. Occasionally, a chip off the old block makes an appearance. The guy on the bass is Wiedmaiers son, Marcel, 18, the recent recipient of a jazz scholarship to New York University.

1515 Rhode Island Ave. NW. 202-779-9957. sirenbyrw.com. Large plates, $32 to $58.
The Potter prequel, written by J.K. Rowling on a postcard, before it was sold in a 2008 charity auction. (Joel Ryan/AP)

A rare Harry Potter prequel handwritten by author J.K. Rowling on a postcard has been stolen, police said Friday as they appealed for help from fans across the world.

The 800-word story, set three years before Harry Potter is born, sold for about $32,000 at a charity auction in 2008. The story, along with some jewelry, was stolen from the auction-winners home in central England in mid-April, police said.

Please dont buy this if youre offered it, Rowling wrote on Twitter. Originally auctioned for @englishpen, the owner supported writers freedoms by bidding for it.

The proceeds of the auction were donated to English PEN, an organization which champions freedom of expression, and to Dyslexia Action, which supports students with reading and learning difficulties.

The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans. We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale, to contact police, said Constable Paul Jauncey from West Midlands Police.

Rowling, seen here in November, has asked fans not to purchase the stolen story if offered the opportunity. (Charles Sykes/AP)

[How well do you know the Harry Potter books? Take our quiz to find out.]

The untitled prequel  really a short story  features the characters Sirius Black and Harrys father, James. It opens with a young Sirius and James cornered by two angry policemen at the end of a high-speed motorcycle chase.

After an exchange of words with the policemen, the two teenagers make their escape using a touch of magic. The postcard ends with a note from Rowling, who said she wrote the story only to raise money for charity: From the prequel I am not working on  but that was fun! The full text of the story is available online.

The Potterverse expanded in August with the premiere of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part play set 19 years after the series seventh book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The play will make its North American premiere in New York City on April 22, 2018.

Asked last fall whether the plays marked the first of several new Potter stories, Rowling insisted that the series was finished.

He goes on a very big journey during these two plays and then, yeah, I think were done. This is the next generation, you know, Rowling told the news service Reuters. So, Im thrilled to see it realized so beautifully but, no, Harry is done now.
Dear Heloise: I recently returned from my honeymoon and wanted to get my wedding dress dry-cleaned and prepared for storage in the hope that one day I might have a daughter whod want to wear it. After doing some research, I learned some very important things about preserving a wedding dress:

 Only use a dry cleaner that specializes in wedding gowns. Theyre usually more expensive, but compared with what you paid for the dress, its well worth the expense.

 Store in a pH-neutral, opaque, breathable cloth bag, in the darkest place possible (not an attic, and not a basement).

 Make sure the dress is hung by the hanger straps sewn inside the dress.

 Never use a plastic bag, and never fold or crease the dress.

 If the dress is to be boxed, use acid-free tissue to stuff the dress and keep its form. All of the above apply to boxed dresses, too.

Melissa T., Santa Rosa, Calif.

Dear Readers:

 Its believed that Shakespeare invented the word assassination.

 What was the first product to have its bar code scanned? Chewing gum!

 A snail can sleep for up to three years.

Dear Heloise: My sister and I are debating whether sugar is bad for children. She believes that giving her young son honey is okay because, in her mind, its not real sugar. Any suggestions on what we can use to substitute for sugar or honey?

Etta K., Cicero, Ill.

Etta K.: There are any number of sugar substitutes on the market, but the best thing to do is wean him off sweets. Instead of candy, give him fruit; instead of a soft drink, give a small glass of fruit juice that has no added sugar. Be sure to read the labels on food, because so many processed foods contain added sugars. Since sugar can lead to health problems, its better to help this young boy develop healthful eating habits early in life.

Dear Heloise: My favorite facial is simple and approved by my dermatologist: I mix one egg white with 1-2 tablespoons of powdered milk, then take a wide artists brush and paint my face and throat with this mixture. Afterward, I lie down to relax, about 30 to 45 minutes, and let the facial do its work. The drying egg white tightens the skin, and the powdered milk leaves it smooth and soft. Makeup just glides over my skin!

Tina W., Bayonne, N.J.

Dear Heloise: If you miss your flight and discover that you have just enough time to catch another flight out, go to the other airlines departure gate rather than the ticket counter. The other airline may honor the ticket for the missed flight if it happens to have an empty seat.

Shawna G., Dover, Del.

Heloises column appears six days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Send a hint to Heloise , P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, or email it to Heloise@Heloise.com.
A few dozen mothers pushing strollers and carrying toddlers delivered boxes of miniature Statue of Liberty replicas to the Trump International Hotel, the Justice Department and the Senate on Friday, urging the federal government to act justly and compassionately for the sake of the nations children.

The demonstration  organized by a handful of progressive groups, including MomsRising  was timed to coincide with the start of Mothers Day weekend.

The demonstrators mostly derided the president and his administration for what they called cruel immigration and deportation policies that separate mothers and fathers from their children. Some also decried Attorney General Jeff Sessionss announcement directing federal prosecutors to charge defendants with the most serious provable crimes carrying the most severe penalties  a reversal from the Obama administrations approach.

Symbols are important, Clarissa Martinez-de-Castro, deputy vice president at the National Council of La Raza, a national Latino advocacy organization, said at the protest. The Statue of Liberty is one of those symbols, her torch pointing toward justice.

Most of the people in attendance were affiliated with advocacy organizations. A 12-piece marching band accompanied the protesters, playing patriotic songs such as This Land Is Your Land and Youre a Grand Old Flag along the way.

[Amid questions about Russia-Trump ties, protesters rally in front of the White House]

Sarah Dachos, president of the D.C. chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, attended the protest with her 19-month-old son.

This administration is not compassionate at all. Theyre not just, Dachos said. And were out here to tell Trump and Sessions that we are concerned, we are concerned about their actions.

Donna Norton, executive vice president of the national advocacy organization MomsRising, said the group came with thousands of Statue of Liberty figurines to deliver, including at the Trump hotel. At the Justice Department, Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesman with the agency, briefly met the protesters and accepted a Statue of Liberty.

Hornbuckle didnt immediately reply to an inquiry about whether he relayed the protesters messages to Sessions and other officials in the Justice Department.

Our moms are here to deliver statues to remind them that diversity and caring about each other is what makes the country great  not the opposite, Norton said. We wanted to draw attention to these polices that are dividing families.
D.C. Deputy Mayor Courtney Snowden, seen making a presentation, received preferential school placement for her child from Kaya Henderson when Henderson was chancellor of D.C. Public Schools. This allowed Snowden to circumvent the citys schools lottery, according to an investigation by the Districts inspector general. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

Not many topics in local government grab James Hunters attention, but the Districts public-school lottery is one of them. And he says that what he saw and heard from Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) last week about allegations that a member of her cabinet bypassed the lottery to enroll her child in a top school made him livid.

Hunter, 38, a Capitol Hill resident whose daughter was matched through the lottery with a pre-K program at Miner Elementary School, said he was upset to learn that Deputy Mayor Courtney Snowden had her son specially placed at Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan, which has a waiting list of more than 1,000 families.

But what added insult to injury, Hunter said, was Bowsers insistence this week that Snowden had done nothing wrong.

Im very puzzled that the mayor doesnt seem to understand that this is wrong and unacceptable, he said. If it turns out that this really is a type of cronyism, and she knew about it and didnt do anything about it, shes lost my vote.

Hunter was among a half-dozen parents interviewed by The Washington Post who said they were troubled  and in some cases deeply angered  by revelations last week that seven people improperly received preferential treatment from then-D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, including at least one member of Bowsers cabinet.

A common theme in their complaints was that while the underlying behavior looked bad, Bowsers reaction was worse. The mayor has asserted that Snowden did not err by asking Henderson for a special school placement, and that the fault  if any  was Hendersons for saying yes.

After days of media attention, Bowsers spokesman said late Friday that she would issue a temporary moratorium on special or discretionary school transfers while Chancellor Antwan Wilson, Hendersons successor, is allowed 30 days to craft new rules for such transfers.

Bowser will also require that mayoral appointees consult with the citys Board of Ethics and Government Accountability before asking for special placements for their children, and that the chancellor likewise contact the ethics board whenever a public official requests a placement. Kevin Harris, the mayors spokesman, said the new guidelines will help to bring more accountability and transparency around the school chancellors authority.

However, the mayor has shown no sign that she sees a problem with Snowdens role in the schools scandal, which was investigated by the D.C. inspector general.

The deputy mayor did what was available to her, and the chancellor made the decision, Bowser said at a news conference Thursday. The chancellor is the educator in this equation and in the best position to make that decision.

Kristene Blake, 32, a Capitol Hill resident who tried but failed to win a preschool spot for one of her two children through the lottery, called Bowsers reasoning ridiculous.

I dont buy that at all, said Blake, who works for the federal government. Thats infuriating.

Nothing seems to surprise me anymore, so I wasnt surprised, she said. But Im deeply angered, because I went through and followed all of the rules.

The extent to which Bowsers top aides are involved in the lottery case is unknown. A report by D.C. Inspector General Daniel W. Lucas found that Henderson had misused her authority to make school transfers by giving preferential treatment to seven government officials and members of the public, including two Bowser appointees.

The Post reported last week that the inspector general delved into how the child of Snowden, Bowsers deputy mayor for greater economic opportunity, was placed at Capitol Hill Montessori at Logan. Snowden confirmed that she requested a special placement but said she was merely taking advantage of an option available to every parent.

On Thursday, Bowser said she believed the inspector general had wrongly concluded that City Administrator Rashad M. Young, her most powerful appointed cabinet member, also received a special school placement. In fact, Young participated in the lottery and enrolled his children at a school where they were selected from a waiting list.

The inspector general has refused to make his report public, but has shared it with Bowser and with D.C. Council member David Grosso (I-At Large), chairman of the councils Education Committee. Grosso said that in addition to two Bowser appointees, the report stated that five other people  a former District elected official, a former Obama White House staffer, the director of a nonprofit organization that works with the school district, a school principal and a former classmate of Hendersons  secured preferential treatment for children.

Grosso and the mayor have declined to release the report, saying the inspector general asked them to keep it confidential. The report does not identify those Henderson helped by name, they said, although their identities can be inferred from other details.

Wilma R. Harvey, a past president of the D.C. Board of Education, said the reports findings have already undermined confidence in the Districts lottery process.

Its unfair for one group to have an advantage over another, no matter who you are, Harvey said. When you start picking and choosing, it does give cause for pause about the integrity of the system.

She added, Ive been around long enough that, unfortunately, I think this kind of thing is the norm, not the exception, if we are going to be honest.

Conor Williams, a senior researcher at New Americas Education Policy Program and father of two children who were placed at their school through the Districts lottery, said the disclosure of special treatment for the politically connected was particularly unfortunate in the District, whose lottery has been held up as a national model.

That system works well and is a force for equity when theres no way to game the system and get your way in, Williams said. If favoritism pollutes the process, he said, it just does huge damage to the presumption of fairness that underlies the system.

Its just extremely dispiriting, he said.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), here at the Peace Ball on the night before Donald Trumps inauguration, has authored a bill that would invoke a never-before-used part of the 25th Amendment to determine whether the president is capable of doing his job. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

In the nearly four months since Donald Trump took office, many Democrats have questioned his ability to run the country. But only Rep. Jamie B. Raskin has authored legislation to address those concerns.

The Maryland Democrats bill, called the Oversight Commission on Presidential Capacity Act, would invoke a never-before-used part of the 25th Amendment to determine whether the president is capable of doing his job.

Raskin, a constitutional law professor, said he started thinking about the bill as soon as he was elected to his first term in November. He said the issue has become increasingly relevant as constituents in his liberal Montgomery County district clamor for action in the Trump administrations bumpy first months.

This is a president who has insisted that Ted Cruzs father was involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that Barack Obama was born in Indonesia, and he has uttered blatant lies and never retracted them, Raskin said in an interview Friday. And that is a sign of a serious mental disturbance.

White House spokesman Michael Short declined to comment on Raskins bill, saying in an email that he was not going to dignify this with an official response.

Raskin filed the bill in early April but alerted reporters to it Friday, hours after President Trump, in a tweet, implied to fired former FBI director James B. Comey that he had tapes of their private conversations.

This is a president who seems increasingly at odds with everyone and everything around him, said Raskin, who skipped Trumps inauguration.

In the GOP-controlled House and Senate, the bill has little chance of passing or getting a hearing, but Raskin said he filed the bill to put a framework in place in case Trumps party turns on him.

The bill has 20 Democratic co-sponsors, including Rep. Anthony G. Brown (Md.) and the Districts nonvoting delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Rep. Andy Harris, the only Republican representing Maryland in Congress, called the bill a cheap shot at Trump.

To properly evaluate someones mental and physical health requires years of schooling, and it is an insult to the entire medical profession to assume that unqualified, agenda-pushing, partisan politicians would be able to make such a critical professional judgment, said Harris, an anesthesiologist who specializes in obstetrics. This legislation is a thinly veiled attempt by Democrats to undermine a legislative agenda they disagree with.

Parts of the 25th Amendment that provide for temporary transfer of power from the president to the vice president have been invoked when Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush underwent surgeries.

But Raskins bill would activate Section 4 of the 25th Amendment to create an independent, nonpartisan commission to determine whether the president is physically or psychologically unfit for office.

Once created, the 11-member commission would be permanent. But it would not have roving power to diagnose the president. Congress would have to pass a resolution empowering the commission to examine the president and his conduct and report its findings. If the president were found to be incapacitated, the vice president would immediately become acting president.

Under Raskins bill, the speaker of the House, House minority leader, Senate majority leader and Senate minority leader would each select one physician and one psychiatrist to serve on the commission. The Republican and Democratic parties would each select a retired statesperson. And those 10 appointees would choose an 11th member to lead the commission.

It certainly doesnt feel like the ship is on an even course right now, Raskin said. We are careening all over the place.
While working at a branch of the Department of Defense that secures weapons of mass destruction, a contractor was stealing her co-workers credit cards to shop online, court documents stated.

Lakeisha Bradshaw pleaded guilty in Alexandria federal court Friday to a single fraud charge. The soft-spoken 28-year-old from Temple Hills, Md., could go to prison for 10 years, although her sentence is likely to be much lower.

A contractor with Veteran Solutions Inc., Bradshaw was assigned to the Defense Threat Reduction Agency at Fort Belvoir in July 2016. For the next six months, according to court documents, she charged thousands of dollars to her colleagues credit cards.

From the co-worker who shared her cubicle, Bradshaw stole three credit card numbers, making nearly $4,000 in purchases at Amazon.com and Express.com. She had the purchases shipped to her home, using the alias Serena Mills.

After that, Bradshaws attempted purchases were blocked as fraudulent. But along with her credit card and drivers license, Bradshaws cubemate kept her Social Security card in a purse under her desk. Bradshaw used the other womans Social Security number to attempt, unsuccessfully, to open a credit card account at Victorias Secret.

The co-worker traced the theft back to Bradshaw when she got a copy of the credit card application and paid $20 to Whitepages.com for information on the phone number listed. It came back as registered to Bradshaw.

Bradshaw also tried to use two other co-workers credit card numbers to spend more than $2,000 at Express.com, but those purchases were also blocked as illegitimate.

As part of her plea agreement, Bradshaw has agreed to pay $1,496.26 to Discover Bank, $1,413.46 to American Express and $882.02 to Wells Fargo. She also owes forfeiture of $3,791.74 to government.

Veteran Solutions did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Typhani Wilkerson, 32, left, and Tameika Curtis, 35, were killed in the Oct. 10, 2014, crash. (Courtesy of family)

A warrant has been issued for the man who killed three women and two children in a 2014 drunken driving crash in Oxon Hill, Md., after he didnt show up for his sentencing hearing Friday.

Kenneth Kelley, 27, was out on a $100,000 bond under GPS monitoring ahead of his sentencing in Prince Georges County Circuit Court. The GPS device was removed earlier this week for an unknown reason, said John Erzen, spokesman for the Prince Georges County States Attorneys Office.

When Kelleys hearing started at 1:30 p.m. Friday, he was not in court, and his absence visibly upset the family of the women and children who died in the crash, causing relatives to scream, burst into tears or storm out of the courtroom in anger.

My concern is hes going to be out there getting drunk again and kill another family, said Michael Wilkerson, the brother of two sisters killed in the crash who left behind 10 children.

Kelley faces up to 50 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to 28 counts connected with the crash, including negligent manslaughter and drunken driving.

Kelley, of Southeast Washington, was driving a Mercedes-Benz on Oct. 10, 2014 when the vehicle rear-ended an Acura stopped at a red light at Livingston Road and Livingston Terrace in Oxon Hill, police said.

[Fathers helping 10 kids cope with grief after their mothers die in Maryland crash]

The crash, which Prince Georges fire officials said was one of the worst the county has seen in decades, killed five. Four in the Acura died: Typhani Wilkerson, 32; Tameika Curtis, 35; Hassan Boykin, 1; and Khadija Ba, 13.

Dominique Green, 21, who was a passenger in the Mercedes, also was killed in the crash.

The Mercedes was traveling well above the 30 mph speed limit, causing the Acura to spin into a utility pole on the rainy night of the crash, prosecutors said. Prosecutors said Kelleys blood alcohol level of 0.14 that evening was nearly double the 0.08 legal limit for driving in Maryland.

Kelley was initially held in jail without bail, but at a review hearing, Judge Albert W. Northrop allowed Kelley out on a $100,000 bond. The judge then ordered GPS monitoring.

Erzen said Prince Georges County Sheriffs deputies are searching for Kelley.

Kelleys GPS monitoring was not through the jail, said Yolanda Evans, a spokeswoman for the Prince Georges County Department of Corrections. Some private companies administer GPS monitoring, but the department of corrections wouldnt know what agency was responsible for tracking him, Evans said.

Kelleys attorney, Antoini M. Jones, could not be immediately reached for comment.

Racquel Brown, the niece of Wilkerson and Curtis, said the family had worried Kelley might flee if out on bail.

We knew something like this was going to happen, Brown said. We just pray that we get justice for our family.
A man has been arrested in a series of car break-ins on two streets over two days this week in Northwest Washington's Chevy Chase neighborhood, according to D.C. police.

DAngelo George, 20, of Northwest, was charged with two counts of theft from auto and two counts of unlawful entry to a motor vehicle. The incidents occurred Sunday and Monday. Police said the three of the vehicles were left unlocked.

Police said one of the break-ins occurred between 8:20 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday in the 2900 block of Kanawha Street NW. Police said two garage door openers were taken from a locked Mercedes-Benz 350 parked in a driveway.

The other incidents occurred in the 5500 block of 33rd Street NW, between about 5:15 a.m. Sunday and 5 p.m. Monday. In one, police said $2 in quarters, dimes and nickels, along with prescription sunglasses, were taken from a Subaru Outback parked in front of a house. In two other incidents, police said two unlocked cars were broken into but nothing was taken.
Robert McCamish was driving to the doctors office when a young woman came running down the street of his Bowie, Md., neighborhood screaming for help.

The woman had just fled her house after her ex-boyfriend broke in and yanked her down a set of stairs and she told McCamish she was afraid for her life, according to his and prosecutors accounts.

The then-79-year-old Air Force veteran did not hesitate, immediately letting her jump into his car and speeding away, he said in court. But within minutes after he drove off, the ex-boyfriends car came into view alongside McCamishs vehicle. The ex-boyfriend started cutting off McCamish before he rammed the veterans car and physically attacked him while McCamish was still strapped in his seat belt.

The assault left McCamish with a concussion, a split chin, a mangled ear and possible neurological damage. And for now, it has ended his decades-long love of flying and volunteer work as a pilot transporting people to medical care far from their homes.

If he is allowed to run free in society, his next victim may not survive, McCamish said Thursday in court at the sentencing for the man convicted of assaulting him.

A judge sentenced Robert Mallette, 23, of Upper Marlboro to seven years in prison for the September attack  two years more than the recommended maximum of five years set by state sentencing guidelines.

Prince Georges County Circuit Court Judge John P. Davey said the tough sentence was necessary because the injuries to McCamish were so severe.

This is certainly an extraordinary event, Davey said before imposing the sentence. When someone assaults a good Samaritan, you clearly wonder what our world and our community are coming to.

[Im not fighting you! Jury awards $100,000 to family of girl in school-bus assault.]

A jury convicted Mallette of two counts of second-degree assault last month.

According to testimony:

Mallette went to his ex-girlfriends house Sept. 2 during the day to confront her after she had recently broken up with him in a text message. He got in using a garage code and attacked her before she managed to escape.

McCamish was driving in his neighborhood to a medical appointment about 11 a.m. when a young woman in hysterics flagged him down, screaming that she was worried she was going to be killed. The woman turned out to be his neighbor.

He was trying to be a good citizen and help, McCamish said, adding that it did not occur to him that he would be pursued. The two darted through traffic in Bowie, through two intersections, as Mallette tried to cut off McCamishs car. McCamish was then forced to stop at a busy crossing. Thats when Mallette rear-ended McCamish. Mallette jumped out of his car, then pulled open the driver-side door and pummeled McCamish. The woman ran from the scene after flagging down another passing driver.

During his sentencing hearing, Mallette stood before the judge and apologized to McCamish and his own family. He called his actions an inexcusable mistake.

I never meant or planned or intended for anyone to be hurt, Mallette said. I really thought thousands of times how easily this could have been avoided.

McCamishs injuries were so severe, he had to be airlifted to the shock trauma center in Baltimore and underwent multiple surgeries. He spent four days in the hospital and had his mouth wired shut for 28 days.

[Tracking D.C.-area homicides]

McCamish testified that his injuries caused severe physical and emotional pain for him and his wife. And the physical damage also jeopardized his ability to enjoy his love of piloting planes.

He has flown since 1959, when he began his military service, and has spent the past 23 years as a volunteer pilot for Compassion Airlift, a nonprofit group that provides free flights to people who need specialized medical care that is not immediately available to them close to their homes. Ive not been able to fly anymore since I was assaulted, because of my concussion, McCamish said.

McCamish said he is awaiting word from the Federal Aviation Administration to find out whether he will be able to fly again. If that approval falls through, he said, my lifetime passion for flying will come to an abrupt end.
Authorities released several images taken from surveillance video footage at Crofton Middle School. (Anne Arundel County Police Department)

Authorities are searching for two suspects in connection with a noose that was found hanging outside a Maryland middle school.

The noose was discovered by a teacher at Crofton Middle School in Crofton, Md. Police said it was spotted on a outside light fixture just before 11 a.m. Thursday.

[Bananas hanging from string in the shape of nooses investigated at American U.]

Anne Arundel County police officers were called to the school, which is nestled on Davidsonville Road, and the noose was removed by a district custodian.

Detectives investigating how the noose ended up at the middle school reviewed surveillance video and determined that two people gained access to the roof early Thursday morning. The pair then placed the noose on the light fixture, according to a department press release.

Authorities released several images taken from the video footage and asked that anyone who can identify the suspects to contact Detectives Dutton at (410) 222-8772.
Prince Georges County Council member Mel Franklin (Upper Marlboro-D) pleaded guilty Friday to driving under the influence in a crash that wrecked a government vehicle and injured two people.

Circuit Court Judge Vincent J. Femia sentenced him to probation before judgment and ordered him to pay a $645 fine.

Franklin appeared in court for the first time since he was arrested in November, after he rear-ended a Mercedes stopped at a red light in Upper Marlboro.

The crash was not the first time Franklin damaged a county car.

Franklin damaged another government vehicle in a distracted-driving crash in 2012, public records show. Two months before that, he had banged up the same SUV in a crash that he didnt report to police.

Prince Georges County Council member Mel Franklin gave remarks after he took the oath of office in December 2014. (Mark Gail/For The Washington Post)

[Md. politician Mel Franklin has wrecked a government vehicle before]

It is not clear what impact the plea will have on Franklins political aspirations for 2018.

The drunken driving incident for which he was sentenced Friday occurred shortly before midnight Nov. 21 near Pennsylvania Avenue close to Dower House Road.

Franklin rammed into the back of Teresa and Matthew Collins' car at 50 mph, said Kyle O'Grady, a prosecutor for Montgomery County who handled the case on behalf of the Prince George's County State's Attorney's Office.

[Pr. Georges council member charged with DUI after crashing county vehicle]

Authorities administered a breath test, which measured Franklins blood alcohol concentration at 0.10, according to a copy of a police report obtained by The Washington Post. A blood alcohol concentration of 0.08 or more supports a DUI charge in Maryland.

The impact of the collision was severe, totaling the couple's car and putting them both in the hospital and with some injuries from which they said they still are recovering.

Three seconds before the impact I remember my husband screaming, 'Oh my god!'" Teresa Collins said.

Matthew Collins said that the fine and sentence didn't seem adequate. No matter if someone is hurt or not hurt, you pay a fine and move on with your life, he said. I don't feel it's fair but that's the law.

After the hearing, Franklin publicly addressed the incident for the first time, saying he would work doubly hard to earn back the trust of constituents and the public.

I take full responsibility for the accident and I'm very very sorry to the victims of the accident, Franklin said The bottom line is whenever you get in front of the wheel of a vehicle, you need to be in the right shape to drive.

Franklin, a longtime community activist and lawyer, was first elected to the County Council in 2010 to represent some of the most rural parts of southern Prince Georges County. He said Friday that he is very seriously focused on filling one of two at-large seats on the Prince Georges County Council. Franklin is term-limited in his district seat and has not made a formal announcement.

In the November incident, Franklin was charged with driving while impaired by alcohol, driving while under the influence of alcohol, negligent driving and failure to control speed on a highway to avoid collision, police said. He pleaded guilty Friday to driving while impaired and failure to maintain control of a vehicle and speed.

O'Grady asked the judge to sentence Franklin to something beyond probation before judgment.

The judge replied that he's been handling drunken driving cases for more than 40 years and long ago gave up the idea of weighing how severe the impact of a crash was in misdemeanor cases, opting simply to give everyone the maximum sentence. Femia said a drunk is a drunk on the road and he saw no difference between a fender bender or a crash that totaled a car.

Throughout the morning in the dozens of cases that were called before Franklin's, Femia took a very formulaic approach, sentencing virtually every person to probation before judgment, a fine or a night in jail, regardless of the circumstances behind each case.

The judge had told Franklin that instead of a fine, he had the option of spending the night in jail. From his position he can see how he's spending our money, Femia said about the possibility of Franklin spending a night in jail. Franklin opted for the fine. The council member could have been ordered to use an interlock device that restricts access to the ignition under a Maryland law that recently toughened the standards for the devices from 0.15 to 0.08 blood alcohol concentrations. In a statement after his plea, Franklin said he had voluntarily enrolled in the interlock program on December 9, 2016 and will be in it for the rest of the year. He also said he had completed a 12-week alcohol education program earlier this year.

After the crash, Franklin was not in the immediate area of the county SUV he was driving when troopers arrived to investigate the collision, police said. Shortly after, a trooper spotted him about 70 yards away walking back toward the crash, but it is unclear why Franklin was away from the SUV, police said. Franklin had access to the SUVs through a county vehicle program that is the most generous in the area, and since his November crash, has come under scrutiny. A county task force is reviewing the take-home car policy for elected officials.

There's a lot of disorientation right after the impact of the accident but there was definitely no fleeing of the scene, Franklin said.

[Prince Georges to create panel to oversee lawmakers use of vehicles.]

I don't believe that there's a need for county cars, and certainly I'll never step foot in one if I can avoid it, Franklin said.

Franklin said his case serves as a cautionary tale. With the prevalence of taxis and ride sharing services, there's really no excuse to get behind the wheel if you're not fully prepared to drive.

(Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Franklin's drunken driving conviction could be expunged. It cannot be expunged. This version has been updated with the change.)

Arelis R. Hernandez contributed to this report.
The 20-year-old man charged in connection with the brutal slaying of an American University graduate on a crowded Metro train nearly two years ago is criminally responsible, doctors at the Districts psychiatric hospital determined this week.

During a hearing Friday in D.C. Superior Court, Judge Judith Bartnoff read parts of a 72-page report authored by psychiatrists at St. Elizabeths Hospital. They determined that although the suspect, Jasper Spires, may have suffered from mental illness at the time he allegedly stabbed 24-year-old Kevin Sutherland on July 4, 2015, the illness was not so severe that it should have prevented him from conforming his behavior. And, they determined, Spires is now competent to assist in his own defense.

Prosecutors said that Spires, who is charged with first-degree murder, stabbed Sutherland as Spires tried to rob him of his cellphone. The horrific attack shocked the District as about a dozen Metro passengers en route to enjoy holiday festivities in the nations capital watched the assault unfold. The attack occurred around 1 p.m. during an estimated three-minute ride as the Red Line Metro train passed between the Rhode Island and No-Ma/Gallaudet Metro stations.

Court documents said Sutherland was cut or stabbed 30 or 40 times in the chest, abdomen, back, side and arms. Police said Spires then threw Sutherlands cellphone and returned to stomp on Sutherlands body.

[Horrified passengers watch brutal slaying on Metro train]

Spires initially was represented by an attorney who said his client was not involved in the attack. Spires then hired attorneys from the Districts Public Defender Service, who argued that their client was mentally incompetent and requested multiple psychological evaluations.

In 2015, just three months after his arrest, doctors at St. Elizabeths determined that Spires was competent. Prosecutors later requested additional evaluations.

[Suspect in July 4 fatal stabbing of American University graduate found competent]

A week after his arrest, Spires showed bizarre signs of behavior in the courtroom as he laughed and interrupted a judge.

But in court Friday, Spires was mostly quiet, saying, Good morning to the judge, then asking her, How are you doing?

Bartnoff tentatively set the trial for May 2018. Spiress public defenders said that they may need more time to review their clients latest psychological evaluation before they determine their next step, including pursuing an insanity defense. Attorneys said that they expect the trial to last about a month. Prosecutors said that at least three people who they say also were attacked on the train by Spires are expected to testify at the trial.

Sutherlands parents and other family members filled nearly two rows of the courtroom Friday. Doug Sutherland, his father, said the family was pleased with the doctors findings. He said the family believes the attack was calculated. He was in control of his actions, Sutherland said.

But while wearing a lapel pin that displayed his sons picture, Sutherland said it would be difficult to wait at least another year before the case goes to trial.

I knew the wheels of justice were slow, but I didnt know they would grind this slowly, he said.


Jose and his youngest daughter talk as the family prepares a barbecue at the home they share with extended family in Northern Virginia. He and his wife are undocumented, and they recently arranged guardianship for their children, ages 7 and nearly 2, who are U.S. citizens. (Allison Shelley/for The Washington Post)

In a church hall in Northern Virginia, a father of two named Jose sat at a long table and stared at the legal document before him. It was a road map for life without him.

He initialed the clause that said that if he and his wife were arrested or deported, the person they were choosing as a guardian for their girls would make decisions about their schooling.

With his index finger tracing each line, he read how the guardian would bring the girls to school and day care, decide who will pick them up, and have the power to book airline tickets on their behalf so the children could reunite with their parents in Central America.

The next line highlighted the power to make decisions if either girl was hospitalized. At this, Jose froze.

Thats when they need me, he said to himself. What if Im not there?

It is a question thousands of undocumented immigrants are asking across the United States, in the apple orchards outside Spokane, Wash., the blueberry fields near Grand Rapids, Mich., and at churches and community centers in Maryland and Virginia.

On Spanish-language television and online, immigration lawyers and foreign consulates are responding to a widely publicized immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, and urging undocumented parents who could be deported to leave clear instructions for their bank accounts, real estate holdings and  most of all  their children.

About 5.1 million children in this country have a parent who is here illegally, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute. Nearly 80 percent of those children are U.S. citizens.

Hector Quiroga, a Spokane immigration lawyer, said that after Trump took office his call volume peaked at 300 calls a day from people seeking to protect their children and assets. He hired three new secretaries, but could not keep up. Then he posted the instructions for selecting a guardian online. The video had been viewed more than 35,000 times.

People are petrified, Quiroga said. Theyre desperately trying to get these documents.



Sisters battle with skewers as they help prepare dinner at the home they share with extended family in Northern Virginia. (Allison Shelley/for The Washington Post)

Lawyers caution that custody rules vary by state, and they are urging parents to consult with nonprofits and family lawyers before signing any documents. In Virginia, for instance, immigrants can assign temporary caretakers for their children by signing powers of attorney documents before a licensed notary. But in Maryland, someone designated by the parents would have to go to court to seek guardianship.

Even in states where the laws are complex, lawyers say parents should craft an emergency plan that appoints someone to take charge if they are detained.

I would definitely say to take the safety precautions, said Michelle Mendez, an attorney with Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., based in Baltimore. Anybody can get detained and deported right now.

That was clear to Jose and his wife, GG, as they watched news footage of immigration arrests in the weeks after Trumps inauguration, sitting on pushed-together couches in the living room of the tidy Northern Virginia colonial they share with their daughters, Joses parents and his sister and her family.

Jose is a welder from El Salvador. GG, from Honduras, works at McDonalds. The couple asked that their full names not be published, out of fear that such exposure would make it easier for deportation agents to find them.

Although the Obama administration deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants in some years, the former president said he prioritized security threats, not families. Under President Trump, those rules are gone. In February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, the mother of two children who were born in the United States and therefore have citizenship. On April 19, the agency deported Maribel Trujillo Diaz, a mother of four U.S. citizens.

Longtime proponents of reducing illegal immigration have applauded the Trump administrations efforts, saying that stepping up deportations will deter others from crossing the border without permission.

Jose and GG deliberated late into the night about how, if the worst happened, they would make sure that their 7-year-old and almost-2-year-old were well taken care of.

Finally, Jose asked a friend, a Panamanian-born woman who is now a U.S. citizen, to become the girls temporary guardian if needed. The two friends had met years ago, in English class. She introduces me like Im her brother, Jose said.

And she agreed to take care of the girls if their parents were taken away. It was settled. All the grown-ups had to do was sign the papers.

On a recent Sunday, sun streamed through the tall windows in the church hall as Jose, GG and a couple dozen other immigrants listened to a lawyer give instructions.

Jose, second from right, with his mother, left, two of his five siblings and his father, holding a packed duffel bag, in a rare family photo from the 1980s in El Salvador. It was taken the day Jose's father left to fight in the civil war. (Family photo)

Joses older daughter nibbled on a muffin. His toddler, wearing a red hoodie that said I am a giggle monster, bounced in her grandmothers arms.

Its like temporary custody, Robert K. Lacy, a Fairfax immigration lawyer explained to the parents before they examined the records. Like you went on a trip. Its not for tomorrow. I hope its for never.

But Jose knew that families can splinter at any time.

When he was 5 years old, , his father joined one of the leftist guerrilla movements fighting the U.S.-backed army in El Salvadors brutal civil war.

Five years later, Joses mother went to fight also, leaving a network of friends to care for Jose and his sisters.

Sometimes his mother visited them. Other times he watched the war from the yard. Bombs lighted the night sky, helicopters fired into the trees, and he wondered if his parents were somewhere down below.

Eight years after the war ended, Joses father mortgaged their house and bought a bus to start a transport company. Days later, it was stolen. With debt and no livelihood, he joined thousands crossing illegally into the United States. Jose, his mother and one of his four sisters eventually followed. Back home, gang violence soared.

That family history  the loneliness of separation, the relief at being back together  was on Joses mind that day in the church hall, as he signed the papers.

We had the luck to find each other, he said. Many never had that chance. I know what it is like to lose your dad.
Another candidate has joined the crowded field of Democrats seeking the partys nomination to challenge U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) in next years midterm elections.

David B. Hanson, a retired Naval intelligence officer from Clifton, said Friday he will run for the Northern Virginia seat and plans to file the paperwork to begin fundraising this month.

Hanson is the fifth Democrat to jump into the race. State Sen. Jennifer Wexton, a former prosecutor; Lindsey Davis Stover, a former Obama administration official; Dan Helmer, an Army veteran; and Kimberly Adams, past president of the Fairfax teachers union, have announced their campaigns, and more hopefuls are expected to join them.

[Dorothy McAuliffe, wife of Virginia governor, says she will not run for Congress]

The early attention on the 2018 race is an indication that Democrats think they have a chance to unseat Comstock, who overcame Trumps unpopularity in the 10th Congressional District last year to win a second term by six points.

David Hanson, a former Navy intelligence officer from Clifton, Va., is seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Rep. Barbara Comstock (R) in 2018. (Courtesy of David Hanson)

There are only three GOP-held seats where Trump performed worse than he did in her district, according to the Cook Political Report, which considers the contest a toss-up.

The University of Virginia Center for Politics on Thursday also rated the race a toss-up, despite Comstocks recent vote against the American Health Care Act, which experts say could help her woo the districts moderate and independent voters.

Hanson, a political newcomer, said he was inspired to run after watching President Trump win the election and his transition team install leaders seemingly at odds with the missions of their agencies, from education to environmental protection.

The results of the election, I think, are a challenge to American democracy, he said in an interview Thursday. I cant stand by and watch what is happening right now from the sidelines.

Hanson, 59, had a 24-year career in intelligence from 1984 to 2008, including deployments to the Persian Gulf, Britain, Kosovo, Honolulu and other locations. During the Cold War, he developed an expertise in Russian linguistics and went on to run counterterrorism and intelligence programs for large sections of the globe after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He has an MBA from Oxford University, and masters degrees from the Naval Postgraduate School and the Naval War College, he said.

[Virginia and Maryland lawmakers split over Trumps firing of Comey]

Hanson said he could win the support of intelligence officers, many of whom live and work in the 10th District. He announced his candidacy two days after Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, whose agency is probing Trump officials ties to Russia.

[Trump said he was thinking of Russia controversy when he decided to fire Comey]

Its kind of serendipitous, he said. Whats going on right now with the Russia investigation is of transcendent importance to our democracy, and we have to get this on track in a way thats fair but does get to the bottom of it.

A native of Wisconsin who grew up in Minnesota, Hanson said he and his wife bought a house in Fairfax County about 20 years ago and lived there in between assignments until moving to Clifton full time at the end of his Navy service. They have three children.

Hanson said he finished hiking the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail in 2010, is a member of the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club and volunteers with Fairfax Countys Community Emergency Response Team.
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the GOP legislature are arguing over the status of his veto of budget language blocking Medicaid expansion. (Andre Teague/Associated Press)

Gov. Terry McAuliffe and the Republican legislature have escalated a long-running fight over whether a handful of his vetoes are valid  a battle that could determine whether the Democrat is able to pull off his marquee campaign pledge to expand Medicaid before leaving office in January.

McAuliffe on Friday issued an executive order directing state agencies to recognize the state budget as he sees it  including five vetoes he made to various parts of the two-year spending plan.

One of those vetoes, issued a year ago, rejects language that the General Assembly had inserted to prevent him from expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act without its permission.

Republicans said at the time that the governor lacked the power to strike that language, known as the Stanley Amendment for the legislator who authored it, state Sen. William M. Stanley Jr. (R-Franklin). The House Clerks Office, which prints the final laws, ignored the veto, as it had when he vetoed similar language in the budget passed in 2014.

While McAuliffe and the legislature have sniped in the past over the disputed vetoes, the sharply worded executive order  which accused the House clerk of a profound abuse of authority  and the furious GOP response  which blasted the move as a stunt meant to advance McAuliffes potential 2020 presidential bid  suggested the stakes were higher than ever.

Republicans saw the order as a sign that McAuliffe was laying the groundwork to circumvent a General Assembly staunchly opposed to expansion. The governors spokesman confirmed that he was, once again, exploring that possibility.

The governor is committed to this, McAuliffe spokesman Brian Coy said. Weve never stopped looking for a way to bring these taxpayer dollars home. There are obstacles that we are working to overcome there, but we dont view the Stanley Amendment to be one of them.

McAuliffe won the governorship in 2013 on a promise to expand the federal-state health-care program under the Affordable Care Act. He said expansion would provide care to 400,000 uninsured Virginians, boost the state economy and create tens of thousands of health-industry jobs.

Republicans have opposed expanding what they say is a wasteful program and questioned whether Washington can afford to keep its promise to foot most of the bill  potentially leaving Virginia on the hook for the $2 billion-a-year tab.

The timing of the order surprised some, given McAuliffes diminished push for expansion in recent years and the ACAs imperiled status in Washington, where the House of Representatives has passed a plan to repeal key parts of the law. McAuliffe took Virginia to the brink of a state government shutdown over the issue in his freshman year but has since focused on economic development, a goal with bipartisan appeal.

Should McAuliffe pull it off, expansion would substantially bolster the legacy of a politician mentioned as a potential Democratic contender for president in 2020. McAuliffe has said he has not ruled out a run but will remained focused on his job as governor until his term is over.

Frustrated by my successful veto of 120 of their bills, General Assembly members have resorted to legislating through the budget, using the appropriations power to change existing law in Virginia, McAuliffe said in his order. This is an abuse of legislative power and a violation of the Constitution of Virginia. Moreover, the House Clerks refusal to publish actions taken by the Governor is a profound abuse of authority, purporting to endow an unelected ministerial officer with some extra-constitutional power to override the Governors vetoes based on his own legal opinions.

House Clerk G. Paul Nardo declined to comment.

The clerks actions were consistent with past practice under both Republican and Democrat speakers with both Republican and Democrat governors over the past 21 years, House Speaker William J. Howell (R-Stafford) said in a written statement. The [state] Supreme Court is abundantly clear about the limits of the governors line-item veto authority and there is no doubt Governor McAuliffe exceeded that authority.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R-James City) called McAuliffes order a case study in executive arrogance and suggested that it amounts to a thinly veiled press release to promote his 2020 presidential ambitions.

Virginias governor enjoys a line-item veto, but Republicans note that state Supreme Court rulings require that he strike a budget item in its entirety when he vetoes it and that he lacks the power to strike out conditions or restrictions that apply to an item.

In 2014, Republicans contended that McAuliffe could not veto the Stanley Amendment without striking the entire Medicaid program. McAuliffes office disagreed but never challenged the House clerks decision to leave his veto out of the final law.

Last year, Republicans structured the anti-expansion amendment to apply to the entire state budget, not just the Medicaid program. McAuliffe contends that approach unconstitutionally limits his line-item authority.

The difference of opinion could be the basis for a legal challenge by Republicans, particularly if McAuliffe moves ahead with expansion.
Seated Ballerina, an inflatable public art project by artist Jeff Koons, sits in New York Citys Rockefeller Center. Presented by the Art Production Fund, the new piece is on view until June 2. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

OHIO

Gunman, police chief, two others found dead

A gunman shot and killed an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees Friday morning in a small village 25 miles from Columbus, authorities said. The suspected shooter was also found dead.

Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario was responding to a call about a man with a gun Friday morning.

When deputies arrived on the scene, they discovered him out in the street and then found the gunman and two nursing home employees dead inside the Pine Kirk Care Center, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said at a news conference.

Thorp said Disario responded to the call about 8 a.m. and his last radio transmission was that he had the suspect in sight.

He said investigators do not yet know whether there was an exchange of gunfire between the police chief and the gunman.

Thorp said that after the deputies discovered Disario, they received information that a shooter was in the nearby nursing home.

There, deputies found three deceased people  the gunman and two employees, he said. The three people have not yet been publicly identified. No injuries were reported among the nursing homes 23 residents.

Disario, 36, had been serving as the Kirkersville police chief for only about three weeks.

He had six children and a seventh was on the way, according to the Associated Press.

 Lindsey Bever

CALIFORNIA

Former L.A. County sheriff sentenced

Former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran.

Baca, 74, who is in the early stages of Alzheimers disease, was sentenced by a judge who has shown little leniency when it comes to Bacas role atop a department rife with corruption.

The lawman who worked his way up from guarding inmates to running the nations largest jail system  and largest sheriffs department  was convicted in March of obstructing justice, conspiring to obstruct justice and lying to federal authorities.

Baca abruptly resigned in 2014 as the probe netted several underlings who plotted to hide an inmate informant from his FBI handler when they learned the jails were being investigated.

Baca, who jetted around the world to speak about his approach to law enforcement, denied any involvement in the scandal, but acknowledged he had fallen out of touch with what was happening in his department.

Prosecutors also won convictions against 20 other members of the department. The departments second-in-command, Paul Tanaka, who oversaw efforts to derail the federal probe, was sentenced to five years in prison.

 Associated Press

COLORADO

Immigrant mom gets deportation reprieve

A Mexican immigrant who lived in a Denver church for three months to avoid deportation walked away on Friday after her supporters said immigration officials gave her two more years to resolve her effort to stay in the country.

Jeanette Vizguerra left the First Baptist Church near the state Capitol surrounded by her children and supporters.

Speaking to the crowd while holding her daughters hand, she said she is happy to be with her family for Mothers Day.

Vizguerra first moved into the basement of the First Unitarian Church after skipping a check-in with immigration officials Feb. 15 out of fearing they would deport her after previously granting delays as she pursued a visa given to crime victims. She later moved to the Baptist church.

Activists said another immigrant who had taken refuge in a Denver church in 2014 and 2015, Arturo Hernandez, was also granted a two-year delay in deportation proceedings on Thursday.

Hernandez was arrested by immigration agents on April 24, but he was later released after Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) intervened.

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment on their status.

Bennet introduced bills to legalize the immigration status of both Hernandez and Vizguerra under a procedure that ICE recently announced it is changing.

 Associated Press
FBI Director James B. Comey leaves a closed-door meeting with senators about President Trumps allegations of wiretapping at Trump Tower during the 2016 election at the Capitol in Washington.

March 15, 2017 FBI Director James B. Comey leaves a closed-door meeting with senators about President Trumps allegations of wiretapping at Trump Tower during the 2016 election at the Capitol in Washington. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

James B. Comey, the head of the bureau since 2013, was dismissed by President Trump on May 9, 2017.

James B. Comey, the head of the bureau since 2013, was dismissed by President Trump on May 9, 2017.

James B. Comey, the head of the bureau since 2013, was dismissed by President Trump on May 9, 2017.

It was implausible that FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017 for actions committed in July 2016  the rationale contained in the memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

It was implausible that Comey was fired by President Trump for having been too tough on Hillary Clinton, as when, at a July news conference, Comey publicly recited her various email misdeeds despite recommending against prosecution.

It was implausible that Trump fired Comey for, among other things, reopening the Clinton investigation 11 days before the election, something that at the time Trump praised as a sign of Comeys guts that had brought back his reputation.

It was implausible that Trump, a man notorious for being swayed by close and loyal personal advisers, fired Comey on the recommendation of a sub-Cabinet official whom Trump hardly knew and whod been on the job all of two weeks.

It was implausible that Trump found Rosensteins arguments so urgently persuasive that he acted immediately  so precipitously, in fact, that Comey learned of his own firing from TVs that happened to be playing behind him.

(Bastien Inzaurralde,Alice Li,Jayne Orenstein/The Washington Post)

These implausibilities were obvious within seconds of Comeys firing and the administrations immediate attempt to pin it all on the Rosenstein memo. That was pure spin. So why in reality did Trump fire Comey?

Admittedly, Comey had to go. The cliche is that if youve infuriated both sides, it means you must be doing something right. Sometimes, however, it means you must be doing everything wrong.

Over the past year, Comey has been repeatedly wrong. Not, in my view, out of malice or partisanship (although his self-righteousness about his own probity does occasionally grate). He was in an unprecedented situation with unpalatable choices. Never in American presidential history had a major party nominated a candidate under official FBI investigation. (Turns out the Trump campaign was under investigation as well.) Which makes the normal injunction that FBI directors not interfere in elections facile and impossible to follow. Any course of action  disclosure or silence, commission or omission  carried unavoidable electoral consequences.

Comey had to make up the rules as he went along. He did. That was not his downfall. His downfall was making up contradictory, illogical rules, such as the July 5 non-indictment indictment of Clinton.

A series of these  and Comey became anathema to both Democrats and Republicans. Clinton blamed her loss on two people. One of them was Comey.

And theres the puzzle. There was ample bipartisan sentiment for letting Comey go. And there was ample time from Election Day on to do so. A simple talk, a gold watch, a friendly farewell, a Comey resignation to allow the new president to pick the new director. No fanfare, no rancor.

True, this became more difficult after March 20 when Comey revealed that the FBI was investigating the alleged Trump campaign-Russia collusion. Difficult but not impossible. For example, just last week Comey had committed an egregious factual error about the Huma Abedin emails that the FBI had to abjectly walk back in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The scene in Washington after FBI Director Comey was fired View Photos President Trumps firing of James B. Comey consumed Capitol Hills attention. Democrats slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and Republicans saw rifts emerge as more questioned the presidents decision. Caption President Trumps firing of James B. Comey consumed Capitol Hills attention. Democrats slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and Republicans saw rifts emerge as more questioned the presidents decision. May 9, 2017 White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after President Trump dismissed James B. Comey from his position as FBI director. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Here was an opportunity for a graceful exit: Comey regrets the mistake and notes that some of the difficult decisions he had previously made necessarily cost him the confidence of various parties. Time for a clean slate. Add the usual boilerplate about not wanting to be a distraction at such a crucial time. Awkward perhaps, but still dignified and amicable.

Instead we got this  a political ax murder, brutal even by Washington standards. (Or even Roman standards. Where was the vein-opening knife and the warm bath?) No final meeting, no letter of resignation, no presidential thanks, no cordial parting. Instead, a blindsided Comey ends up in a live-streamed O.J. Bronco ride, bolting from Los Angeles to be flown, defrocked, back to Washington.

Why? Trump had become increasingly agitated with the Russia-election investigation and Comeys very public part in it. If Trump thought this would kill the inquiry and the story, or perhaps even just derail it somewhat, hes made the blunder of the decade. Whacking Comey has brought more critical attention to the Russia story than anything imaginable. It wont stop the FBI investigation. And the confirmation hearings for a successor will become a nationally televised forum for collusion allegations, which up till now have remained a scandal in search of a crime.

So why did he do it? Now we know: The king asked whether no one would rid him of this troublesome priest, and got so impatient he did it himself.

Read more from Charles Krauthammers archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
WE WILL be the first to acknowledge that reporters can be persistent  sometimes even obnoxious  in asking questions. But that, at least in the United States, has not generally been considered a crime. So its more than a little troubling that a reporter in West Virginia was handcuffed, placed under arrest and put in jail after trying to ask a question of Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

The events unfolded Tuesday in the State Capitol in Charleston when Dan Heyman, a journalist with Public News Service, pestered Mr. Price as he walked through a hallway with questions about whether domestic violence would be considered a preexisting condition under the health-care legislation passed last week by the House to replace the Affordable Care Act. You refuse to answer? Tell me no comment, Mr. Heyman said moments before officers of the West Virginia Division of Protective Services, also known as the Capitol Police, pulled him aside and arrested him.

Mr. Heyman was charged with a misdemeanor count of willful disruption of state government processes. The complaint alleges he was aggressively breaching the Secret Service agents who were with Mr. Price and White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on their listening tour about efforts to fight opioid addiction. A spokesman for the Capitol Police insisted the arrest was not about his questions but his physical actions.

Why then did the complaint note the defendant was causing a disturbance by yelling questions at Ms. Conway and Secretary Price? Mr. Heyman, 54, regularly covers the Capitol. He had been cleared through security to enter the building and was displaying his credentials. He says his only physical action was to hold out his phone to record Mr. Price. Mr. Heymans lawyer observed at a news conference Tuesday night, Ive never had a client get arrested for talking too loud or anything similar to that.

We would like to think Mr. Heymans arrest was simply an overreaction  or misunderstanding  by police unaccustomed to press scrums that have become routine in news coverage. We would have hoped that Mr. Price and Ms. Conway would have thanked the police for their devotion but made clear that no reporter should be arrested for doing his job. No such luck: On Wednesday, Mr. Price commended police and justified their actions since that gentleman was not in a press conference. Also on display Wednesday was President Trumps disdain for Americas independent press as he allowed Russian media but not the American press into his Oval Office meeting with Russian officials.

(Valerie Woody/West Virginia Citizen Action Group)

Whatever the outcome of charges against Mr. Heyman  and we would urge West Virginia officials to use some common sense and drop them  a chilling message has been sent.
On Tuesday night, a few hours after President Trumps sudden announcement that he was firing FBI Director James B. Comey, a prominent Republican politician gave me this simple, blunt assessment of the Trump White House: These guys scare me.

Trumps impulsive, vengeful decision to dump Comey has scared a lot of people. It suggests a pent-up anger and lack of judgment that would be worrisome in anyone, let alone the commander in chief. Worse, as has become too familiar with this White House, the decision to sack Comey was initially surrounded by a smokescreen of obfuscation that attributed the firing to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, rather than Trump himself.

The Post and the New York Times captured the pique that underlay Trumps decision to purge the FBI chief, which had been building since before the inauguration. The Times described Trump as brooding over festering grievances and obsessed with loyalty. The Post said he was increasingly agitated, with a brewing personal animus toward Comey, and infuriated that the FBI kept investigating Russia rather than chasing leaks.

Normally, its wise not to overstate the importance of particular events. Theyre rarely as earthshaking as they initially seem. But this may be one of those moments when the worst-case situation is actually happening: The president really did just fire the person who was running an investigation in which he is a possible target. How should conscientious citizens respond to that?

An Arab friend told me years ago that for every question, there is a right answer and a real answer. The right answer here is to trust in the rule of law and the institutions that maintain it. The Constitution was designed to withstand political stress, and it has worked pretty well.

(Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

The real answer is that we depend, ultimately, on the political leaders who have taken an oath to uphold that Constitution. Otherwise, the vaunted institutions are just pieces of paper. Do our politicians and government officials have the guts to make hard decisions? Will they say no to improper orders and resign rather than carry them out? Can they escape the straitjacket of party loyalty?

The real answer, alas, is that we dont know. The Trump presidency is a test. Well find out how strong our institutions are and, even more, whether this generation of leaders is worthy of our Founding Fathers. So far, the evidence is mixed. Trump still fires off tweets such as The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, and many GOP officials give him a pass.

The first big test ahead is whether Rosenstein will call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the Russia matter. Given the way Rosenstein was used by Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions as cover for firing Comey, his credibility and reputation are at stake. Without a special prosecutor, much of the public will doubt that this is truly an independent investigation.

The White House should calm its jitters by remembering that this is a broad counterintelligence investigation of Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. Any examination of possible collusion with the Trump campaign would be folded in to that larger probe, stresses John Carlin, who oversaw the investigation as head of the Justice Departments National Security Division until last October, when he left to join Morrison & Foerster, a private law firm.

The second big test is the nomination of a new FBI director. Trump is certainly capable of making good decisions in the public interest: Look at his national security team of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. He needs a similar pick for FBI director.

The FBI agents will be watching, Carlin told me. They need to know that at the top of the chain, theyre reporting to someone who shoots straight.

The United States has seen erratic presidential behavior before. Franklin Roosevelts court-packing scheme was a reckless power grab. Harry Truman composed dark letters about his enemies, which he mostly didnt send, and ordered an illegal seizure of Americas steel mills. Lyndon Johnson brooded obsessively about leaks and sometimes deceived and manipulated his friends and enemies alike. And of course, Richard Nixon enabled the bugging of the Democratic National Committee and lied about it in the Watergate scandal.

Abuse of power isnt new. But the United States has survived intact because our institutions constrained presidential authority, and good men and women made sure the system worked. Thats how well get out of this mess, too.

Read more from David Ignatiuss archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Richard L. Revesz and Jack Lienke are co-authors of Struggling for Air: Power Plants and the War on Coal. 

For many in the Northeast, May is a hopeful time, promising longer, warmer, brighter days ahead. But for public-health advocates, the month marks a darker turning point: the start of ozone season.

Ground-level ozone, the primary ingredient in urban smog, contributes to a variety of respiratory woes, including premature death. Ozone is of greatest concern in the summer months, because hot, sunny days are especially conducive to its formation.

Residents of the D.C. and Baltimore areas are no strangers to summer smog. But this year, they might be able to breathe easier. Under Gov. Larry Hogan (R), Maryland has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for help bringing ozone pollution in the state to a safe level. Granting this request should be a no-brainer for EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who has spent recent weeks touting a Back-to-Basics agenda for his agency that prioritizes helping states achieve high air quality targets.

Since the 1970s, the EPA has set nationwide limits on the permissible concentration of ozone in the air we breathe, but many states, including Maryland, do not consistently achieve the agencys standards. Several Maryland counties have yet to satisfy ozone standards established by the George W. Bush administration in 2008, much less the more stringent limits issued by the Obama administration in 2015.

The problem isnt that Maryland has failed to reduce ozone-forming emissions within its borders. The problem is that a great deal of Marylands ozone pollution  as much as 70 percent on some days  originates in other states. Thats why, last November, Marylands Department of the Environment formally petitioned the EPA to force 36 coal-fired power plant units in five upwind states  Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia  to reduce their emissions of ozone-forming nitrogen oxides.

Maryland is legally entitled to this relief. The Clean Air Act explicitly requires states to ensure that no pollution sources in their jurisdiction contribute significantly to another states inability to meet federal air-quality standards. When states dont live up to this responsibility, the EPA must step in and control the offending sources itself. In 2011, the EPA made a major effort to reduce interstate ozone pollution when it issued the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, which the Supreme Court upheld. But as Maryland makes clear, additional cuts are needed to protect the public.

Furthermore, Marylands demands are far from burdensome. It doesnt expect the power plants named in its petition to install expensive new pollution-control technology. The plants have the necessary equipment. Maryland just wants them to use it more often. Specifically, it wants the plants to operate emissions controls every day from May through September. Maryland knows that running controls this frequently is feasible; its own plants have been required to do so since 2015.

In Washington, environmental debates tend to split along party lines, with Democrats supporting stronger protections and Republicans opposing them. But Hogan is hardly the first state official to put public health ahead of partisanship when it comes to interstate pollution. In one memorable example, Kentuckys Jefferson County petitioned the EPA in 1979 to control emissions from a coal-fired power plant in neighboring Indiana. Jefferson Countys judge-executive at the time was Mitch McConnell, now the Senate majority leader.

Pruitt has characterized many of the EPAs past efforts to reduce air pollution as impermissible intrusions on state sovereignty. Indeed, when he was Oklahomas attorney general, he sued to block at least 11 separate EPA regulations from taking effect. But even Pruitt has conceded that, when a pollution problem crosses state lines, federal intervention is sometimes the only viable solution. In this case, coal plants in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia are hurting the people of Maryland, and Marylands elected officials do not have the power to stop them. Scott Pruitt does. He should use it.
Nazila Fathi was a correspondent for the New York Times based in Tehran from 1999 to 2009 and is the author of The Lonely War: One Womans Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran.

In 2006, when American doctor Dilan Ellegala arrived in Haydom, on the edge of Tanzanias Great Rift Valley, he uncovered a shocking reality: This country of more than 40 million people had only three neurosurgeons. All of them were in the capital, Dar es Salaam.

Ellegala, who had recently graduated from Harvard Medical School, was the first brain surgeon at Haydom Lutheran Hospital, a medical center that depended on volunteer doctors from Europe and the United States. The facility lacked the most basic surgical tools. Patients with head injuries or brain tumors healed on their own or died. The operating theater did not have a functional microscope; the light was too dim; patients under anesthesia were ventilated by an assistant squeezing an oxygen bag by hand. Every bed in the hospital was occupied. Some patients slept two to a bed; some slept on floors or benches outside the rooms.

In A Surgeon in the Village, journalist Tony Bartelme recounts Ellegalas efforts to improve the medical system in Tanzania. Bartelme followed Ellegala for four years, staying at the hospital where he worked, witnessing the dire conditions that made his mission so difficult. The result is a harrowing and important book that captures the tremendous health-care challenges facing East Africa and opens our eyes to a complicated global health problem: lack of access to safe, affordable surgery and anesthesia. Bartelme says an estimated 17 million people die every year from conditions that could have been treated surgically.

"A Surgeon in the Village: An American Doctor Teaches Brain Surgery in Africa," by Tony Bartelme (Beacon)

Early on, Ellegala was forced to make some difficult decisions. One day, for example, an unconscious man was brought to the hospital; cerebrospinal fluid was leaking from his ear. Ellegala needed a Gigli saw, a $20 instrument used for cutting bones, to open the mans skull and save his life. The only one at the hospital was rusty and broken. Defeated, Ellegala decided to go out for a run to clear his mind. On his way, he came across a farmer who was cutting a tree limb with a wire saw. Ellegala bought the tool and rushed back to the hospital, where he sterilized it and used it to perform the surgery.

Ellegala saved the mans life, but a question haunted him: What happens after visiting doctors leave Haydom?

[The scientist known as Dr. Condom shares her adventures in the field]

Ellegala couldnt cure every Tanzanian with his own two hands, so he tried the next best thing: training other surgeons. His first student was a Tanzanian medical assistant, Emmanuel Mayegga, whose education was comparable to that of a high school graduate in America. Over a few weeks, Ellegala taught Mayegga some brain surgery techniques and built his confidence to perform surgeries. It was a risky move, Bartelme admits, but, given that millions of people had no access to even the most basic forms of neurosurgery, the options were limited. Was it ethical, he asks, to wait until a country built a stable of experienced surgeons, a process that might take decades, if it would happen at all?

After Ellegala left Tanzania a few months later, Mayegga began operating on patients with head wounds. He helped another health-care worker, Emanuel Nuwas, to master the techniques and perform neurosurgery. Nuwas would also, as part of Ellegalas train-forward philosophy, teach others.

Ellegala, who also practiced in Portland, Ore., and later in Charleston, S.C., founded a nongovernmental organization called Madaktari Africa. It sends hundreds of doctors around the world to serve as mentors and to create a sustainable model for global health. To address concerns about instructing clinicians to perform complicated brain procedures, Ellegala encouraged Mayegga and Nuwas to attend medical school in Dar es Salaam. Both men returned to Haydom after completing their studies to advocate Ellegalas teach-first philosophy  a testimony that empowering people turns them into agents of change.

[Measuring the wonders of an empathetic ear in the doctors office]

Teaching has the power to change peoples internal wiring, help them do things they never thought possible. And teaching is a universal value, as basic as a father teaching a son to tie his shoes, which means it can be a unifying force, Bartelme writes.

Bartelme argues that Ellegalas effort to build a functional health system, even though it means relying on locals who lack credentials required in the West, is more important than the humanitarian aid that has poured into Africa for decades. Such programs are well intentioned but keep low-income countries dependent.

The Ebola crisis in West Africa in 2014 underlined the importance of a health-care system that can stand on its feet. Nearly 95 percent of foreign health-care workers packed their bags after the Ebola outbreak, and the locals were left on their own to fight the deadly virus. Hospitals and clinics closed; the disease spread to Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and then the United States and Spain. West Africas problem became the worlds problem, Bartelme writes.

It wasnt until thousands had died that governments and humanitarian aid groups stood together to stop the disease. If African doctors had been empowered to fight it in the first place, Bartelme argues, the scale of the crisis would have been different.

In a world of trauma and disease, he concludes, destinies are often shaped by access to healers. And without this access, ripples of suffering can become waves. Training healers can stop that wave.
Rod Rosenstein: Save yourself.

For years, the man who just became the No. 2 official in the Justice Department painstakingly built a reputation as a gifted prosecutor and an above-the-fray lawman, serving Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Now, just over two weeks into his new job, he has become a national joke.

He has destroyed his credibility by giving cover and legitimacy to Trumps decision to fire FBI Director James B. Comey, the man overseeing the agencys probe of the Trump campaigns possible collusion with Russia in tilting the 2016 election Trumps way.

Rod J. Rosenstein. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

The Post reported that Rosenstein threatened to resign because the White House was turning him into a stooge. Others matched the Post report. But Rosenstein says: No, he made no such threat.

So he therefore must be content in the work environment he just joined. In case he missed it, this is what weve seen from that administration this week:

The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, hiding among the bushes on the White House north lawn and demanding that journalists turn off their camera lights before he would speak to them about the Comey affair.

Comey learning that he had been fired when he saw it on TV on a West Coast swing; he thought it was a prank.

The White House offering a profusion of conflicting accounts about Comeys dismissal, culminating in Trump contradicting his own aides by saying he would have fired Comey even if Rosenstein hadnt written that preposterous memo citing the Clinton email case.

The White House blocking American reporters and photographers from covering Trumps meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov but admitting a photographer from the Russian state news agency Tass, which published photos of the meeting.

The president going on Twitter to attack, again, a Democratic senator for mischaracterizing his military service years ago and to renew his long-standing feud with Rosie ODonnell.

The very same president registering the approval of just 36 percent of the country in a new Quinnipiac University poll. When Americans were asked to volunteer a word that comes to mind when they think of Trump, the top answer was idiot.

But the most surreal happening this week was none of the above. It was the Wall Street Journals report that Rosenstein pressed White House counsel Don McGahn to correct what he felt was an inaccurate White House depiction of the events surrounding FBI Director James Comeys firing. The Journal reported that Rosenstein left the impression that he couldnt work in an environment where facts werent accurately reported.

Rosenstein cant work in an environment where facts arent accurately reported? And yet he goes to work for the alternative-fact president, who, by The Posts Fact Checkers tally, churned out 492 false and misleading claims in his first 100 days?

Rosenstein is either the most naive man in town, or hes not the honest man we all thought him to be. Lets give him the benefit of the doubt and assume hes an ingenue who was chewed up and spit out by the Trump White House, which commandeered his unsullied reputation to justify its Comey sacking and left his once-vaunted standing in tatters.

In that case, Rosenstein needs to wake up to the reality that he has been  and continues to be  used by Trump and his defenders to provide a veneer of legitimacy to the presidents decision to eliminate the head of the Russia probe.

Trump may now say he would have fired Comey anyway, but everybody else has used Rosenstein, and his three-page memo justifying Comeys dismissal, as cover.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) : Mr. Rosenstein recommended Mr. Comeys removal.

Spicer: It was all him. . . . No one from the White House. That was a DOJ decision.

Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune (S.D.): They decided to take this action, based upon a recommendation from Rob Rosenstein, who was just confirmed by the Senate, 94-6, a couple of weeks ago, and a man who people have a tremendous amount of confidence in.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Tex.): Democrats who were praising Rod Rosenstein and saying he was exactly the kind of person we needed . . . seem to forget their very own conviction and vote on Rod Rosenstein and say he cant be fair.

Rosenstein now makes Comey look like Solomon. If he cares at all about rehabilitating the reputation he built, Rosenstein has one option: He can appoint a serious, independent and above-reproach special counsel  the sort of person Rosenstein was seen as, until this week  to continue the Russia probe.

Rosenstein may never recover his honor. But this is his only chance.

Twitter: @Milbank

Read more from Dana Milbanks archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
Construction near the intersection of Routes 7 and 123 in Tysons Corner, one of the busiest areas in the region. (Shamus Ian Fatzinger/Fairfax County Times)

A just-released annual report card gave the Chesapeake Bay a C grade, noting that the bays overall health remained steady despite many pressures . . . across its watershed. This tenuous condition is threatened by President Trumps proposal to eliminate federal funding for the Chesapeake Bay cleanup. But thats only part of the problem when it comes to protecting this national treasure, and sometimes local officials dont seem to be doing their part.

Several years ago, when Fairfax County Transportation Department staff started planning the street grids for the transformation of Tysons Corner into a modern urban center (repeatedly promised by officials to be a green city of the future), it drew in a new ramp from Route 267 and an extension of Boone Boulevard that would plow right through a Chesapeake Bay Resource Protection Area.

Resource Protection Areas are buffers ideally kept pristine from auto pollution and other runoff that could enter the bay. They are a key part of the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act enacted by the Virginia General Assembly and established to create a cooperative relationship between the commonwealth and local governments in reducing and preventing non-point source pollution. Shockingly, however, it seems that local governments can easily claim exemptions for building roads through protected areas under current law.

With the Boone Boulevard plan, a coalition of area communities decided to appeal to logic. After a long, hard-fought battle by the Save Tysons Last Forest movement, of which I was a part, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (and other politicians) appeared to have an epiphany. In early 2013, it voted against the RPA-encroachment plan. We thought we had won.

But that didnt deter transportation officials. The road warriors are now planning to drive four-plus lanes of Boone Boulevard alongside a stream valley east of the original RPA, then plow them right through the other side of the forest, over the stream and through loopholes in Virginia law. All of this is being proposed without any serious environmental study.

This year, my neighborhood, the Greater Tysons Green Civic Association, reached out to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. DEQ officials responded: First and foremost, neither the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act or the Chesapeake Bay Preservation Area Designation and Management Regulations require that decisions regarding RPA encroachments, exceptions or exemptions made by a local government be approved by DEQ, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) or EPA.

It seems that Fairfax County can do whatever it pleases in a Resource Protection Area  and it is.

Because all this made little sense, our civic association filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the county to find out more about the Boone Boulevard decisions. The document dump we received included an email from a branch chief in the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services saying that the proposed Boone alignment results in a significant impact to the Old Courthouse RPA and stream channel, would conflict with the restoration plans underway and would likely require that the stream be relocated when the road is built at a cost in current dollars of $1,300 per linear foot of stream impacted.

A Fairfax County senior transportation planner forwarded that email to colleagues, writing that it doesnt seem we can get the blessing . . . from storm water perspective given the fact that [the current plan] does cross the wetlands and stream. We can propose some mitigation measures in this feasibility study but we will not commit to any of them.

Thats just a small example of the dismissiveness the documents revealed. And while our community has repeatedly tried to bring this to Fairfax County leaders attention again, the same supervisors who were so environmentally concerned just a few years ago approved the first piece of the Boone Boulevard extension, which takes new aim at a Resource Protection Area.

It is clear that for the long-term health of our environment, we need to eliminate or revise exemptions for public roads that cut through protected areas. And, even if exemptions rules arent changed, developers and local officials should do the right thing. Our politicians need to reconnect with their consciences. We in the public must hold them accountable.
AS NEWS of one federal bureau directors firing consumed Washington on Tuesday, another departure went mostly unnoticed: Census Bureau Director John H. Thompson resigned unexpectedly, a week after telling lawmakers in a hearing that the price tag on the 2020 decennial head count would be even higher than advertised.

Whatever the reason for Mr. Thompsons early exit  his term expired in December, but he was expected to stay on through the end of the year  it is more bad news for an operation that was already in trouble. The Government Accountability Office added the 2020 Census to its annual list of high-risk federal areas in February, citing unreliable cost estimates and untested technologies, among other dangers. It is those IT systems that Mr. Thompson testified last week would be far more expensive than planned.

It is possible that new leadership could provide valuable new perspective to the Census Bureau. But Mr. Thompsons departure and the instability that will follow it could not come at a worse time. The bureau must conduct a field test in spring 2018 to ensure its systems are up to snuff, and to do that it needs someone who can negotiate for fuller funding on the Hill. If Mr. Thompson had waited until winter to pack his bags, he could have led the charge. Now there will be no one: Selecting a nominee and shepherding him or her through confirmation could take months. Worse still, the deputy director post remains vacant.

The census plays an essential role in a fair and functional democracy by making sure communities get the right number of representatives in government  and that government builds schools and roads in the right places. The surveys current woes are an entirely predictable, and predicted, result of congressional shortsightedness. Congress told the bureau it must spend no more on the 2020 operation than it spent in 2010  $12.5 billion. With a bigger population to count, a better compensated workforce to pay and an outmoded pen-and-paper operation to reinvent, any director would have struggled with that mandate. It does not help that, so far this cycle, Congress has been funding the survey at historic lows.

President Trump must now step in, name a high-quality director and insist that Congress provide the Census Bureau the money it needs. The 2020 Census will begin in April of that year  right in the middle of primary season. The bureaus troubles pre-date Mr. Trumps ascension, but the census is happening on his watch. If it fails, he will own it.
Paul Kennedy is a professor of history at Yale University and author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. He is completing his new book, Victory at Sea, 1936-1946.

On June 18, 1940, a day after Marshal Petains France surrendered, with a battered British army home from Dunkirk and the first German armored columns reaching the Channel, the great political cartoonist David Low sketched a wonderful image of a defiant British soldier standing on the rocky shores of Kent, fist in the air, daring the Third Reich to advance and be pounded. The title of this classic picture was Very Well, Alone. It was a hugely popular cartoon in a nation bruised by so much bad news yet also brought up on a long history of fighting larger foes  Philip II, Louis XIV, Napoleon, the Kaiser  and prevailing. Isolated, defiant, still dangerous, come the four corners of the world in arms, Britain could take it.

But neither the defiant British soldier, nor Britain itself, stood all alone in that summer of 1940. Not only was the island-state to be joined and reinforced by the soldiers, ships and air squadrons of the British Empire-Commonwealth, but it was also joined, almost immediately, by an unusual flood of smaller European allies. The latter, as the author Lynne Olson shows in Last Hope Island, were a very mixed bag indeed; they included European monarchs, governments, political outsiders, soldiers, pilots, cryptographers, merchant skippers and their ships, all of whom had escaped to Britain after their countries were conquered by the Nazis and now wished to stand and fight. Among them could be counted the gallant King Haakon of Norway, a group of motley Free Czech pilots, and Polish professors of mathematics and engineering, unified only by their desire to continue to battle, their loathing of Germans and of any of their countrymen who collaborated with them, and their deep gratitude to Britain.

[How an unlikely hero changed the nature of war]

Enjoying Winston Churchills political protection  the prime minister was way ahead of his advisers in seeing these survivor groups as potentially invaluable assets  they were variously settled into empty barracks, elegant townhouses, seaside hostels and places in the country while they recovered and tried to find their feet again.

"Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War," by Lynne Olson (Random House)

Certain of these refugee groups have had their stories told before. Charles de Gaulles testy four years of exile in Britain is the best-known of these tales, and certain European countries cherish the stories of their national resistances London links, but Olsons book is the first to weave this all together. A passionate anglophile and London-lover, Olson is thrilled by the individual heroism, spunk and sheer ingenuity of so many of these survivor organizations, and marvels at the efforts each made in the common struggle. Its a well-written and well-illustrated book, and deeply researched. It hops from one vignette to another, from a social account of a London reception of Polish aviators to a gripping story of some bloody resistance in France.

Given the liveliness and occasional breathlessness of Olsons account, it may be sometimes difficult for the reader, or even the military historian, to understand what exactly these varied bodies of French, Belgians, Danes, Dutch, Norwegians, Czechs and Poles did that helped turn the tide of war (as the books subtitle has it). Boosting British morale on the home front, to be sure, and later blowing up a railway bridge in France, maybe; but is there a better and more solid measure of how the exiled forces contributed, some small, some rather more, to the eventual victory?

[Review: Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power And Helped Save England, by Lynne Olson]

Well, yes. The Norwegians brought a resistance that stretched the German army across Norway, plus a vast merchant navy of 1,300 vessels, the fourth-largest in the world. The French not only brought the nearly insufferable de Gaulle but also the later Free French Army, and in time an even larger resistance movement. The Poles brought a double benefit: the inestimable value of the early Enigma machines and cryptologists who (scarcely known even to British intelligence) helped crack German codes, and hundreds of Polish airmen, including those redoubtable Hurricane squadrons that performed so well in the Battle of Britain. None of this, individually or collectively, turned the tide of the war  thats an incorrect way to think of it. What they did, in small though critical ways, was to assist Churchills Britain during that critical period after the fall of France when its most important strategic task was simply to continue to fight and not to fall. Within another year, Hitler had committed the colossal blunder of also going to war against Russia; six months later, he rashly declared war on America.

From January 1942 onward, Churchills many little European allies fought on, in the air, at sea, in the hedgerows of France and the mountains of Greece, even if the prime minister paid ever less attention to them (or so they felt) and more to Stalin and Roosevelt. And when the fighting ended, they returned home, restored their monarchies or suffered communist takeovers, savagely punished collaborators, and sought to preserve their wartime affection for a British nation that had taken in strangers.

Its a lovely story, fondly told by Olson. It is true that she often makes the various wartime contributions weightier than they actually were. And she pushes it too much by hinting that a future European union came out of this wartime bonding. She is sad  which is also true of this reviewer  that much of the tale is now lost and, worse still, that in this age of Brexit, an ignorant nationalism has replaced this earlier generosity and steadfastness. Once again, it seems, Britain stands in some awkward and fearful relationship to its European neighbors, even to Dutchmen and Poles who were its greatest admirers. Maybe, perhaps, in another decade, this will turn again. In the meantime, Last Hope Island is a book to be welcomed, both for the past it recovers and also, quite simply, for being such a pleasant tome to read.
THE FBI is in trouble and must be protected  from the White House, first and foremost.

Last years Hillary Clinton email investigation put the agency in the middle of a political fight. President Trump raised even bigger concerns for the agencys independence when he fired Director James B. Comey on Tuesday.

At first Mr. Trump and his staff claimed he moved against Mr. Comey based on a Tuesday memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein condemning Mr. Comeys handling of the Clinton email probe. On Thursday, Mr. Trump admitted in an NBC interview that I was going to fire regardless of recommendation, calling Mr. Comey a showboat and a grandstander. Reports suggest that Mr. Comey infuriated Mr. Trump with his investigation and discussion of Moscows meddling in the 2016 election, which helped Mr. Trumps campaign.

Mr. Trump also claimed Thursday that he asked Mr. Comey at one point if he was the subject of an FBI investigation, and that Mr. Comey said no. If true, both the question and the answer ring alarm bells: Federal law enforcement should be insulated from all political interference and, when the administration is a subject of a probe, walled off from the White House. But Trump administration officials reportedly have prodded the FBI to prioritize investigations of alleged leaking over Russias hacking.

The disorderly firing process and shifting rationales have shredded what was left of this White Houses credibility. A strong chief of staff or White House Counsels Office would have insisted on a well-prepared and carefully defended process to remove the FBI director if that were necessary  and would have counseled against doing it at all while the director was ramping up an investigation of Mr. Trumps campaign. Instead, Mr. Trumps worst instincts were enabled by everyone around him.

It is essential that this White House not be allowed to export its credibility-destroying dysfunction to the Justice Department and the FBI. Attorney General Jeff Sessions promised in March not to be involved in any matters related in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States, a commitment already called into question by his involvement in Mr. Comeys termination, as The Posts Jennifer Rubin outlined Thursday. It must be clear that Mr. Rosenstein will have final say on the FBIs Russia inquiries. The deputy attorney general was reportedly chagrined that the White House attempted to pin Mr. Comeys firing on him. Burned once, he must protect federal law enforcement from the White House. The best way to do so in the Russia investigation would be with the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Mr. Rosenstein and the Senate, meanwhile, must ensure that those chosen to lead the FBI  either on an interim or a full-time basis  are committed to preserving the agencys independence. During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Thursday, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe presented a baseline of integrity against which to judge a future nominee. Mr. McCabe said that the FBI will not update the White House on the Russia investigations and promised to tell Congress if the White House tries to interfere. By insisting that FBI staff respected Mr. Comey and that the Russia probe is highly significant, he implied by example that a good FBI director should have the confidence to contradict administration spin. Protecting the agencys independence must be the next directors mission.
I have tried to evaluate Donald Trumps presidency fairly. Ive praised him when he has appointed competent people to high office and expressed support for his policies when they seemed serious and sensible (even though this has drawn criticism from some quarters). But there has always been another aspect to this presidency lurking beneath the surface, sometimes erupting into full view as it did this week. President Trump, in much of his rhetoric and many of his actions, poses a danger to American democracy.

The United States has the worlds oldest constitutional democracy, one that has survived the test of time and given birth to perhaps the most successful society in human history. What sets the nation apart is not how democratic it is, but rather the opposite. U.S. democracy has a series of checks intended to prevent the accumulation and abuse of power by any one person or group. But there is one gaping hole in the system: the president.

During his famous interviews with David Frost in 1977, Richard Nixon made a statement regarding Watergate that has been mockingly quoted ever since. When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, he said to Frost. Nixon was a smart lawyer and a close student of the Constitution. He was basically right. The president, in effect, sits above the law. The Justice Department, after all, works for him. Refusing to follow certain ethical guidelines in separating himself from his business empire, Trump told the New York Times, The law is totally on my side, meaning, the president cant have a conflict of interest. Most lawyers say he is right. The rules dont really apply to the president.

There is just one real check on the president  impeachment  and it is political, not legal. Since Trumps own party controls both chambers of Congress, there has been little resistance to him there. One might have hoped for more, and perhaps we will see it. So far, it appears that the Republican Party is losing any resemblance to a traditional Western political party, instead simply turning into something more commonly found in the developing world: a platform to support the ego, appetites and interests of one man and his family.

There are other, less potent checks on the power of the president. Some are structural, others simply a matter of morality or precedent. Trump has sought to weaken many of these, both before the election and now in the White House.

(Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

During the campaign, Trump said that he would like to change laws to make it easier to sue journalists. He announced that he hoped to jail his opponent. He spoke approvingly of the mass deportation of Mexicans in the 1950s. He proposed a travel ban on an entire religion, to bar all Muslims from entering the United States. He advocated that the U.S. military torture prisoners. And he called into question the integrity of a judge because of his Mexican heritage.

Once in power, Trump has continued in this vein, taking actions that weaken all sources of resistance. He summarily dismissed FBI Director James B. Comey, reportedly over his investigation into the Trump campaigns ties with Russia. If true, the firing would be a shattering blow. The nonpartisan agencies of the executive branch are jewels of the modern U.S. system. They were not always impartial, and they are certainly not perfect, but in recent decades they have acquired a deserved reputation. When I travel from Eastern Europe to China to Latin America, democratic reformers tell me that they look to these agencies as models when trying to strengthen the rule of law in their own countries.

There are only two forces left that can place some constraints on Trump  the courts and the media  and he has relentlessly attacked both. Every time a court has ruled against one of his executive orders, the president has ridiculed the decision or demeaned the judges involved. To their enormous credit, the courts have not been deterred from standing up to the president.

That leaves the media. Trump has gone at them (us) like no president before, smearing news organizations, attacking individual journalists and threatening to strip legal protections guaranteed to a free press. We will survive, but we must recognize the stakes.

The media should cover the administrations policies fairly. But they must also never let the public forget that many of the attitudes and actions of this president are gross violations of the customs and practices of the modern American system  that they are aberrations and cannot become the new norms. That way, after Trump, the country will not start the next presidency with tattered standards and sunken expectations. The task is quite simply to keep alive the spirit of American democracy.

Read more from Fareed Zakarias archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.
In a May 9 PostPartisan blog excerpt, Ed Rogers accused Democrats of being dishonest, displaying faux anguish in their reaction to the American Health Care Act [Democrats arent being honest about health care, op-ed]. My anguish at reading this piece was entirely genuine.

I am an emergency-medicine physician with a masters degree in public health, and I can tell you what happens when people dont have access to health insurance. I recently cared for a woman with severe abdominal pain and a high fever, complications from aggressive metastatic cancer. She told me that her cancer treatment was delayed for months and that she had to move to another state to get insurance coverage. Should I have told her to drop the faux anguish when she cried while telling me this story? Any bill that cuts more than $800 billion from Medicaid over the next 10 years will cause real harm to real people.

Dont tell me Im feigning anger when House Republicans pass a bill that will reshape one-sixth of our economy without understanding it, without waiting to see an estimate of its effects. Dont tell me Im being dramatic when I point out that millions of people will lose health insurance if this bill becomes law. The outrage you hear is very real, and it is completely justified.

Ian Warrington, Washington
Below the May 11 front-page headline Comey sought more resources for Russia probe was a photograph of President Trump, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at the May 10 meeting at the White House. Ask a fifth-grader what all this suggests and say bingo when the obvious answer is given.

Before evidence dispositive of the truth about any nefarious collusion with Russians by Mr. Trumps staff to sway the election is established, The Post reached its own conclusion about why FBI Director James B. Comey was fired: He was digging too deeply, needed more resources and had to be stopped.

There are clearly alternative explanations of why Mr. Comey was fired, specifically those focused on the directors discharge of his duties in the past several months. As to the matter of adequate resources, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe stated more than once before the Senate Intelligence Committee that resources for a Russia probe were indeed adequate. Furthermore, he was clear that the probe will continue in the absence of Mr. Comey, thus gainsaying any idea that the firing of Mr. Comey would short-circuit the probe.

Robert E. Klein, Gainesville, Va.
Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly said that Isabel Wilkersons The Warmth of Other Suns was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. It won the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. This version has been corrected.

Trumpeter Clark Terry walks with his son Rudolph under the Apollo Theater, in Harlem. The resettlement of black Americans from the South to the north in the 20th century, led to a flourishing of culture in many cities, including New York. (G. Marshall Wilson/Ebony Collection via AP)

Krissah Thompson is a features writer for The Washington Post.

The newspapers at the time largely overlooked the massive movement of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers in the North. The Great Migration, as it would come to be known, began in the early 1900s and lasted decades as more than 6 million blacks left their homes for the seeming promised land of big cities.

Among them were the ancestors of Bruce D. Haynes, who explores the social and cultural implications of the exodus in Down the Up Staircase, a family memoir and social history written with his wife and co-author, Syma Solovitch.

Haynes traces his roots from the farming South to bustling Harlem, where his paternal grandparents settled and played important roles in the civil rights movement and broader efforts to uplift their race.

Haynes takes great pride in his familys story, rifling through old papers to fill in the biography of his grandfather, George Edmund Haynes, a man of significant achievement whom history has nearly forgotten.

"Down the Up Staircase: Three Generations of a Harlem Family," by Bruce Haynes and Syma Solovitch (Columbia/Columbia)

George Haynes was mentored and befriended by famed scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, helped found the National Urban League and was an adviser on race to President Woodrow Wilson. If W.E.B. DuBois was the great agitator and visionary of the New Negro movement, George Haynes  his protege  was its architect, forging critical partnerships and building the infrastructure to support these new artists, the authors write.

George died in 1960, 10 months before Bruce Haynes was born, but he remains the pride of the family. More than once, the authors note that George was one of the African Americans included in a series painted by Laura Wheeler Waring called Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin, which highlighted important figures in the Harlem Renaissance and was later exhibited at the Smithsonian.

[For blacks, the Great Migration north was a declaration of independence]

As Isabel Wilkerson did expertly in The Warmth of Other Suns  her epic tale of the Great Migration  Haynes and Solovitch follow their relatives through decades, revealing the impact of public policy and social change on the family from generation to generation.

The family memoir serves to underscore the still-tenuous position of black families in the middle class. As a whole, the wealth of African Americans is less solidly established than that of white families and can be swiftly washed away, as seen through the familys story.

George Haynes  who migrated to New York from Pine Bluff, Ark., and bought a stately home in Harlem  represents an upward leap in class and education, but the family struggles to keep climbing. Bruce Hayness father, George Edmund Jr. (known as Edmund), lived in the shadow of his prominent father. Edmund was also college educated and trained as a social worker. He and Bruces mother, Daisy, raised three sons in Harlem in the large family home purchased by George Haynes.

[Life in a world of black accomplishment, money and position]

The home is a potent symbol of the Haynes familys social status. While living there, Edmund and Daisy sent their sons to the best schools the city had to offer, including Horace Mann, the Ivy League preparatory school. But while the familys public face seemed to continue to reflect middle-class respectability, life inside began to fray. Edmund and Daisys marriage hit a rocky patch and never quite recovered. She took out her unhappiness by an excessive use of her husbands credit cards.

Grief and emotional challenges took their toll. Despite excelling at elite private schools, Bruces eldest brother, George Haynes, became a drug addict and confronted mental health challenges. The second Haynes son, Alan, was a promising artist before he was shot on the street the outside a bike shop in the Bronx. The murder went unsolved.

The familys grand home slowly deteriorated. The roof needed patching, old appliances stacked up, the plumbing stopped working and was left unrepaired. Like the house, the neighborhood declined and became rife with crime.

The author and youngest son, Bruce, was caught between his complicated home life and his privileged schooling. The dissonance between the two left him feeling like a man without a community. He graduated from Manhattanville College, then earned a doctorate from the City University of New York and became an assistant professor of sociology and African American studies at Yale University. The Haynes family migration then took another turn when Bruce moved to what he had always considered the promised land: California, where he is now a sociology professor at the University of California at Davis. Through his studies, Bruce has uncovered more of his familys story and discovered his own link to his grandfather: His pioneering ancestor George Haynes, like Bruce himself, was trained as a sociologist.
Trump signs an executive order for border security and immigration enforcement improvements at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington.

Jan. 25, 2017 Trump signs an executive order for border security and immigration enforcement improvements at the Department of Homeland Security in Washington. Chip Somodevilla/Pool photo via Bloomberg News

Possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign was once little more than a conspiracy theory, but not anymore. The only way to make sense of this weeks stunning events is to conclude that there is something that President Trump desperately wants to hide.

The party-line explanation of why Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey  that it was all about the way Comey handled the probe of Hillary Clintons emails  crumbled within hours. Press secretary Sean Spicer comically ducked behind shrubbery on the White House grounds, hiding from television cameras, to give reporters a confused and disjointed account of the dismissal. Efforts to blame the whole thing on Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein ceased after Rosenstein reportedly threatened to resign.

Well-sourced reports in The Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and other news outlets agreed on a very different explanation: Trump had grown increasingly angry at the doggedness with which Comeys FBI was investigating how and why Russia meddled in the election. The president decided to fire Comey, then had Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Rosenstein come up with a rationale.

If this were a criminal trial, prosecutors would allege that the president was displaying consciousness of guilt  that he was acting in a way no innocent person would act. Indeed, the only other president to try to head off an investigation by firing the chief investigator was Richard Nixon.

Of course, Trump is not accused of anything at this point. And it may be just a coincidence that on Wednesday, a day after firing Comey, the president met in the Oval Office with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Photographers from the White House press corps were barred from the meeting, but one who works for the Russian news agency Tass was allowed in. Perhaps Trump only thinks of U.S. journalists as the enemy.

(Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

I do believe in mere coincidences, up to a point. And I know that conspiracy theories usually turn out to be wrong. But I can see no explanation for Trumps bizarre attitude toward the allegations of Russian meddling other than a desire to conceal something.

For months, Trump dismissed the conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia was ultimately responsible for hacking into computer systems and email accounts associated with the Democratic Party, then leaking information that was damaging to Clintons campaign.

Trump named Michael Flynn  a controversial figure, partly because of his ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin  as his national security adviser. And when Sally Yates, then serving as acting attorney general, told the White House that Flynn had lied when he denied discussing U.S. sanctions with Kislyak, and thus could be vulnerable to Russian blackmail, Trump waited 18 days to fire him. The president acted only after Flynns deception became public knowledge.

And Flynn had been a prominent Trump adviser during the campaign. Experts say he might be in legal jeopardy, which makes him someone an aggressive investigator such as Comey would likely squeeze for information about others.

During the campaign, Sessions, who was then a U.S. senator, and Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page also met with Kislyak  as did Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner. It is possible that these were nothing more than courtesy calls. But given the backdrop of a Russian effort to boost Trumps prospects of winning the election, all meetings between senior campaign figures and Russian officials deserve scrutiny.

In an interview Thursday with NBCs Lester Holt, Trump said that Comey told him once over dinner and twice in phone calls that he was not personally being investigated. Trump described one of the exchanges this way: I said, If its possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, You are not under investigation. 

Trump apparently thinks this means something, but of course it does not. Typical investigative procedure is to start at the bottom of an organization and work your way up. You are not under investigation does not mean you will never be under investigation.

1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The scene in Washington after FBI Director Comey was fired View Photos President Trumps firing of James B. Comey consumed Capitol Hills attention. Democrats slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and Republicans saw rifts emerge as more questioned the presidents decision. Caption President Trumps firing of James B. Comey consumed Capitol Hills attention. Democrats slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and Republicans saw rifts emerge as more questioned the presidents decision. May 9, 2017 White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after President Trump dismissed James B. Comey from his position as FBI director. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Trump claims to have no business ties with Russia. But in the past, his sons have reportedly bragged about a flood of Russian money boosting the Trump Organizations fortunes. Trump could settle the question by fully disclosing his finances, including his tax returns. Why the secrecy?

If Trump wanted to end this scrutiny by firing Comey, he may have had the opposite effect. Ask yourself one question: Have you ever seen a coverup with no underlying crime? Neither have I.

Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A.
Michael Waldman is president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law and author of The Fight To Vote.

Amid the crisis precipitated by President Trumps firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, the White House on Thursday announced the launch of a new investigative commission on election integrity. The commission wont probe the real problem of Russian interference but an imaginary one: Trumps claims of widespread illegal voting.

This news is both bizarre and alarming.

Bizarre, because the whole effort flowed from Trumps insistence that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in 2016. His pronouncements have been roundly mocked. Noncitizen voting is vanishingly rare. Overall, you are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter-impersonation fraud in the United States. Historians will note that this is the first commission, paid for with taxpayer money, that flows directly from a presidents overheated tweets.

The commission is alarming, too, because it gives every indication of being part of a more serious long-term drive to restrict voting. After all, Trumps claims are a cartoon version of the fraud arguments often deployed to justify new voting laws. Charges of mythical misconduct can lead to very real restrictions on core democratic rights.

Start with the commissions membership. Previous panels aimed for bipartisanship. A 2013 commission was chaired by Robert Bauer and Benjamin Ginsberg  the election lawyers for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, respectively. Former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James A. Baker III led the commission before that.

By contrast, this commission is led by two staunch Republicans. It is chaired by Vice President Pence. More telling is the choice of the vice chair: Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), an architect of restrictive voting and immigration laws around the country. Kobach cheered Trumps claims, calling them absolutely correct and estimating that 3.2 million aliens voted in the presidential election. He has pushed for laws to require that individuals show a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers in order to register to vote  laws that could disenfranchise millions of eligible citizens and that have been blocked by courts.

Another commissioner, Ken Blackwell, a Republican who served as Ohio secretary of state in 2004  and co-chair of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign in the state. Among other things, Blackwell first insisted that voters could not register unless they did so on super-thick 80-pound card stock, preventing thousands from signing up. Thousands more waited for up to 10 hours to vote. Democrats howled, with a Democratic congressional task force concluding that in many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior by Blackwell. He heatedly denied the Democrats charges.

The commissions scope, too, should prompt worry. Early news reports said the panel would examine voter suppression and other practices that curb voting by eligible citizens. But by the time of the executive order and the White House press briefing, that balancing mission had vanished. Its charged most specifically with finding improper voter registrations and improper voting, including fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting.

Why now? Lurid fraud claims always are used to justify voting law restrictions. Already, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department has pulled back from the challenge to the Texas voter-ID law, with more such moves likely elsewhere. But with this ramshackle panel, the push for restrictions may have gone too far. Since Trump began to claim rigged elections and millions of illegal voters, public support for the idea of widespread fraud actually has dropped. A recent Politico-Morning Consult poll showed that 43 percent believe fraud is very or somewhat common  down from 64 percent in a 2015 CBS News poll.

Much needs to be done to improve our elections and ensure voting rights. The voter-registration system often is a mess, rife with mistakes, while tens of millions of eligible voters are simply not on the rolls. The adoption of automatic voter registration across the country would solve many real problems. Encouragingly, last week the Illinois Senate unanimously backed a registration reform bill  a strong sign it will become law with bipartisan support. That would make it the ninth state, plus the District, to embrace automatic registration, from California and Oregon to West Virginia and Alaska.

But the presidents panel packed with partisans, on the hunt for evidence of a virtually nonexistent problem, wont fix U.S. elections  and would only do more to undermine confidence in democracy.
Sarah Jaffe is a Nation Institute reporting fellow and the author of Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt.

In the hectic first days after the election of Donald Trump, a series of documents began to circulate on social media among newly motivated activists seeking inspiration and strategy for the fights ahead. One of those documents, called the Indivisible Guide, was put together by former congressional staffers who had survived the tea party onslaught early in the Obama administration and who had written down the tactics that had proved successful in pressuring members of Congress to stymie the agenda of a then-popular new president. The guide went viral and evolved, becoming first a website and then a series of organizations around the country, collaborating with progressive groups such as the Working Families Party and MoveOn.

The tactics in the guide are nothing revolutionary: They are basic civics in action, lessons in finding members of Congress, calling their offices, attending their town hall meetings. But in a country where only a slim majority bothers to vote in presidential elections, and where local elections see turnout of sometimes 10 to 20 percent, the guide was the first introduction for thousands of people to political engagement beyond the voting booth.

[The crucial fight that the anti-Trump resistance is forgetting]

Eric Lius new book, Youre More Powerful Than You Think: A Citizens Guide to Making Change Happen, has a similar feel. As an adviser to President Bill Clinton, he is, like the Indivisible writers, a former political insider. And in a country where so many are flummoxed by politics, the insights he offers may come as a surprise to many.

"You're More Powerful than You Think: A Citizens Guide to Making Change Happen," by Eric Liu (PublicAffairs)

Liu has written sort of a self-help book for the would-be activist, packed with pithy, common-sense aphorisms such as: Those for whom the system works will tend to defend it. Drawing on an array of references, from pragmatist philosophers to billionaire stock traders to evolutionary biology to the U.S. Marines manual, Liu assembles an argument that anyone can organize their community and be a civic catalyst. He gives perhaps the best description of his own book by citing Walter Isaacson on Benjamin Franklins enterprising individualism and earnest communitarianism.

His well-known cast of characters, from Barney Frank to Bill McKibben to Gloria Steinem to DeRay Mckesson, is dotted with more surprising examples  such as Missouri public defender Michael Barrett, who invoked a little-used regulation in an effort to draft the states governor, Jay Nixon, into defending an alleged criminal; Barretts ploy was meant to highlight cuts to public defenders that Nixon had just signed.

At the heart of Lius book is the question of power, something that he correctly notes is deeply obscured in American society. Power, Liu writes, is the capacity to ensure that others do as you would want them to do. If that sounds menacing or distasteful, or makes you feel squeamish, I understand. And I invite you to get over it. Instead of worrying that the possession of power, or the use of it, makes you a bad person, he argues that power is something we all have and need not be shy about using  after all, the people in charge certainly arent.

Though Liu determinedly draws his examples from bipartisan campaigns, he is at his strongest when he puts aside the need to speak to both sides and makes a serious case for his own values in the face of legitimate outrages  such as the aforementioned lack of public defenders. Unfortunately, this is all too rare in this book. More often he relies on somewhat simplistic definitions of left and right that draw false equivalencies between the two, such as: There are some on the left who think only business has power and some on the right who think only government has power.

[Yes, Trump is a populist. But what does that mean?]

In part, this is a problem because a book purporting to teach skills for gaining power ought to acknowledge that goals and values will shape tactics: Conservatives and progressives alike may delight in disrupting a town hall meeting, but beyond that they often diverge. In one section, Liu jumps from a group of conservative campus free speech activists hosting a Disinvitation Dinner to organizer Bree Newsome taking down the Confederate flag in South Carolina. Despite both being examples of theatrical symbolic protest, the contrast between a bunch of well-heeled right-wing celebrities being feted at a black-tie gathering and a black woman scaling a flagpole to take down a symbol of slavery, and being taken away in handcuffs, could not be more striking. These are not both tactics for people with equivalent levels of power. As Liu himself notes, Power, then, is an expression of our moral mindset.

At times, for an author taking power as his subject, Liu seems naive about how it works. The chapter on using narrative for organizing makes little attempt to analyze the success of symbolic fights, cheering them more for their creativity than for concrete gains. Narrative victories are important, and symbols do matter, but without a bigger, broader power analysis, as scholar and organizer Jane McAlevey notes in her recent book No Shortcuts, real gains can be minimal.

By optimistically declaring that power is infinite, that no one need lose power when another person or group gains it, Liu posits a kind of power that avoids direct conflict, that when it wins does not cause anyone else to lose. This can be true when talking about something like Giving Tuesday or an advocacy group for people with Tourettes syndrome, two of Lius examples and organizations that even the hardest-hearted Ayn Rand devotee would have a hard time opposing. But he avoids the subject of what happens if two diametrically opposed groups  say, the campus-carry advocates he describes and his own Alliance for Gun Responsibility  use the tactics he teaches in a head-to-head clash. The argument that power can always be gained without causing anyone else a loss is itself ideological. To create a more equal society, it is a fact that those who hoard power and wealth will have to give some of it up.

In exhorting the currently powerless to get involved, Liu therefore sometimes slides into into bootstrap rhetoric. While it is deeply important to recognize that even the most exploited people in society  like the immigrant Immokalee workers, whose organizing efforts Liu describes  have agency and should direct their own struggles for justice, it is simply wrong to state: This means we are all complicit in every inequity we experience. Language like this lets the already powerful off the hook.

Ultimately, Lius is still a great-man narrative of history, designed to persuade the reader not to view the world differently but to aspire to become one of those great men. Encouraging people to act as if you already had the social and civic power you seek is well and good, but power is not, in fact, all in our heads. Liu knows this  it is evident when he writes about the need for new systems and that getting these new systems will take a conceptual revolution no less significant than the ones that attended the birth of this nation. But like the Indivisible Guide, his book is less advice for that revolution than it is an introduction to the basics of civic engagement.

If you are just beginning your journey into troublemaking for a cause, this book will provide you with plenty of ideas. But if youre seeking a hard-nosed look at how power operates, I might recommend that you also pick up some of the classics of the genre  even a few by a man named Marx.
THE NEWS this week emerged in such fits and starts, and with such shifting explanations, that its grave implications may not have sunk in for many Americans. It is worth reviewing what we know:

(1) President Trump fired the director of the FBI, in the fourth year of his 10-year term, because the president was upset that Mr. Comey was leading an FBI investigation of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. The investigation was gaining momentum as Mr. Trump struck.

(2) Mr. Trump initially misrepresented the reason for the firing and allowed other members of his administration, including Vice President Pence, to grossly misinform Congress and the public. Mr. Trumps initial letter gave the impression that he was acting on a recommendation from the Justice Department and that Mr. Comey was fired for mishandling the investigation of Hillary Clintons emails. It was all him, spokesman Sean Spicer said, referring to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein. That was a DOJ [Department of Justice] decision, he said. Mr. Pence portrayed Mr. Rosenstein as initiating the action  he came to work, sat down and made the recommendation  and Mr. Trump as simply accepting it.

By Thursday, in his interview with NBCs Lester Holt, Mr. Trump was acknowledging that he decided to fire Mr. Comey before soliciting and receiving any recommendations and that the Clinton emails were not his motivation. When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.

(3) In January, according to Mr. Trump, the president dined privately with Mr. Comey at Mr. Comeys request and asked the FBI director to tell him whether he was under investigation. That would be troubling. In a more troubling  and, in our view, more plausible  version provided by Mr. Comeys associates, the president initiated the dinner and used the occasion to demand the FBI directors loyalty.

(4) On Friday, as the contradictory versions of that dinner added to Mr. Trumps political difficulties, he issued a menacing tweet  James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  and threatened to cancel the daily press briefings through which presidents normally communicate their plans and policies to the American people.

Some of what we learned from this series of events is only a matter of relearning. Mr. Trumps inconstant fidelity to truth, for one example: Just think back to the thousands of Muslims he claimed to see celebrating the 9/11 attacks. His breezy contempt for the rule of law, for another: Recall his attacks on Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel during the campaign and on the so-called judge who blocked his visa ban. His personalization of every issue is hardly news either.

But this week he wielded these traits in a manner that threatened the independence of federal law enforcement and sullied key institutions of U.S. democracy. The White House Counsels Office, which is meant to defend the presidency and not just the president, failed to rise to the occasion. A half-dozen administration officials knowingly or unwittingly spoke falsehoods. The attorney general arguably violated his pledge to recuse himself from all matters related to Russia and the election, and the newly installed deputy attorney general found himself compromised. The president injected himself into an investigation where he has absolutely no right to interfere.

We have said for months that that investigation  into Russian meddling in the U.S. election  must be a priority for both the executive and legislative branches. We need to know what the Russians did and take steps to prevent a recurrence. To that urgent inquiry now must be added an investigation into the events and disclosures of this week. Congress and the American people must hear from Mr. Comey and Mr. Rosenstein, and Congress must ensure that the Russia investigations proceed, unfettered.
Alex Shoumatoff argues that the plundering of Borneos rain forests is worse than that of the Amazons, with a deforestation rate unparalleled in human history. This has horrible consequences for animals, such as orangutans, that live in Borneos forests. (BARBARA WALTON/EPA)

Dennis Drabelle is a former contributing editor of Book World who writes frequently on the environment.

In approaching Alex Shoumatoffs impassioned new book, The Wasting of Borneo, dont overlook its subtitle, Dispatches From a Vanishing World. Shoumatoff has taken the occasion to examine his whole crusading career, starting with an elegiac reprise of his childhood  a surprisingly outdoorsy one, given that it took place in Westchester County, about 40 miles north of New York City. Thats because much of the county was still forested in the 1950s, and Shoumatoff and his best friend at the time were allowed to explore it at will. They also had someone to emulate: Shoumatoffs father, a mainstay of the local Audubon Society who as a young man had gone butterfly hunting in Jamaica.

Six decades later, we find the two old pals about to renew their friendship by visiting Borneo together, a journey that will also be a milestone for Shoumatoff, completing what he calls my tour of the worlds great rain forests. In the interim, hed roamed the wild world, chronicling the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Smithsonian magazines, and in such books as The Rivers Amazon (1978) and In Southern Light: Trekking Through Zaire and the Amazon (1986).

[The Sixth Extinction, by Elizabeth Kolbert, how humans are causing a mass die-off]

The worlds third-largest island, Borneo is divided politically; the smaller, northern portion is Malaysian, the remainder Indonesian. On both sides of the border, however, the story is much the same: promiscuous logging of some of the oldest and most species-rich and spectacular rain forest on Earth and its replacement by a monoculture of palm trees whose oil is used, Shoumatoff writes, in cookies, lipstick, dishwashing detergent, margarine, biodiesel, you name it. . . . Forty to 50 percent of household products in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and England contain palm oil, and 80 percent of the stuff comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. Its a $40-billion business.

"The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches from a Vanishing World," by Alex Shoumatoff (Beacon)

Before shoving off, Shoumatoff consults experts on how to mingle with the animals and indigenous peoples he is likely to meet. He tunes up his empathy at a South Carolina preserve for wounded or orphaned animals. On an earlier visit, Shoumatoff had bonded with Bubbles, the resident elephant. This time around, Bubbles not only picks her buddy out of a crowd; she wraps her trunk around me and pulls me to her breast and raises her right foot for me to rest on. In an epic humblebrag, Shoumatoff notes that the Dalai Lama didnt remember me when I went to see him again several years after a two-hour private audience with him in 1990 . . . but Bubbles did, right away, and I was with seventy other people.

This isnt the only time in The Wasting of Borneo that Shoumatoff is a bit full of himself, but thanks to his obvious gusto for his work and causes, he can get away with it. Also, his wide knowledge, based on years of globetrotting and reporting, enables him to make comparisons that others might miss. For example, colossal as the loss of Amazonian rain forests has been, Shoumatoff argues that in a way, the lesser-known plundering of Borneo is worse, with a deforestation rate unparalleled in human history.

[In the last 25 years, the world lost a forested area the size of South Africa]

One of Shoumatoffs objectives in Borneo is to spend time with Birute Galdikas, an authority on orangutans (and recently featured in a PBS Nature series about studying wild animals by infiltrating their habitats with camera-toting robots that look and move just like them). Shoumatoffs most fascinating encounters, however, are with the indigenous people being stripped of their hunting and gathering grounds as forests are felled and rivers are dammed. Many groups have had no choice but to adopt Western ways, and its not uncommon to come upon a longhouse where, two generations after headhunting was last practiced, the inhabitants gather at night around a communal TV set.

Seeking out elders who are still conversant with their groups mythology, Shoumatoff places high value on origin stories. Among many recounted in the book, one stands out for its simplicity and beauty. The story, which comes from the Penan, who live near Malaysias Mulu National Park, concerns the tajem tree, source of the poison in which darts are dipped before being inserted into blowguns:

According to legend, Tajem was an extremely beautiful and clever woman. Many men fell in love with her. She felt pity for all of them, and thought that if she became close to one of them it would not be fair to the others, so she decided to become something useful for all of them and transformed herself into the tree whose blood they could use for hunting. Such tales contribute to a human cultural diversity that falls victim to indiscriminate logging and river-tampering as surely as biological diversity does.

Though by no means a cheerful book, The Wasting of Borneo ends on a moderately encouraging note. Local and international nonprofits appear to be making headway with the Malaysian and Indonesian governments (which can grant or deny permits for disruptive projects), and some of the families who have reaped immense profits from deforestation are now facing charges of illegal money laundering. Shoumatoff urges that its time to do our part at the consumer end. . . . An alternative to palm oil must be found so this holocaust ends.

For readers willing to do their part immediately, this reviewer has checked the household larder and found one kind of cookie that does not contain palm oil: Fig Newtons.
For decades, the White House daily briefing has been a chance for the president and his staff to broadcast a coherent, unified message of the day, signaling their administrations priorities to Congress, the American people and foreign capitals.

For the Trump White House, however, the briefing devolved this week into a guessing game for a staff struggling to speak on behalf of a president who spends much of his time airing thoughts  on Twitter and in interviews  that directly contradict them.

On Friday, under mounting pressure to square his conflicting rationales for the abrupt firing of James B. Comey as head of the FBI, President Trump appeared to reach a breaking point. In a morning tweet, he declared it was essentially impossible for those charged with speaking for the White House to get things right all the time.

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy! Trump wrote on the social media service. In a follow-up message, he suggested doing away with the daily briefings entirely and handing out written statements instead.

We dont have press conferences . . . unless I have them every two weeks and I do it myself, Trump ruminated in an interview with Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News Channel personality, that is set to air Saturday. I think its a good idea. First of all, you have a level of hostility thats incredible, and its very unfair.

(Peter Stevenson/The Washington Post)

Trumps frustration with the political fallout from the Comey firing and his inability to control the media narrative reflected a deepening sense of crisis that has enveloped the White House amid its chaotic handling of the affair.

[Trump threatens to cancel briefings because it is not possible for aides to speak with perfect accuracy]

The president  already seething over the ongoing FBI investigation into his campaigns alleged contacts with Russian government operatives  has been angered further by what he sees as his communication teams hapless rollout of news of the Comey firing late Tuesday. Surrogates were slow to appear on cable news outlets to defend Trump.

Once his team, which learned of Trumps decision to oust Comey just an hour before it happened, finally settled on a message  that Trump relied on a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein recommending the firing because of Comeys handling of an investigation last fall into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server  the president promptly undercut them. Trump told NBC News in an interview that he dismissed Comey because of this Russia thing, leading to new accusations from his political rivals that the president had acted to impede the FBI investigation in a coverup that had undertones of Watergate.

Presidents often think they have a press problem, when in fact what they have is political problems, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a presidential historian who focuses on White House communications. They are confusing the two. The president is shifting what he has said so many times about why Comey was fired. . . . Its not a press problem. Its his own political problems and his shifting views.

But as Trump scrambled to stanch his political wounds, he may have inadvertently shone a spotlight on a mounting credibility problem for the White House that could pose as significant a threat to his agenda as the outcome of the Russia investigation.

Former White House aides who have served past presidents of both major parties said the daily briefings are watched closely by lawmakers and foreign governments for signals about where the administration stands on the issues of the day and about the presidents state of mind.

If the president himself does not expect his surrogates to be able to accurately reflect that, the former aides asked, how can anyone outside the West Wing?

Theyre sending a message to the world that it cant believe what the White House says, said Jennifer Psaki, who served stints as White House communications director and as State Department spokeswoman in the Obama administration. This week, it is a head-scratching, concerning development. But in a week when there is an inevitable national security emergency, when communications need to happen about troubling events in the world, it becomes an emergency  a dire emergency.

In the halls of the West Wing, anxiety among the staff has mounted as the presidents mood has darkened, contributing to ever-present rumors of a pending shake-up at the White House lectern. Adding to the uncertainty this week, press secretary Sean Spicer  who struggled to explain Trumps actions in the immediate aftermath of Comeys firing late Tuesday  spent two days midweek participating in Navy Reserve service, leaving the cleanup to deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

[The Fix: Spicer is still contradicting the president]

Her performance left more questions than answers about the timeline of Trumps decision-making process. After insisting Wednesday that Trump had relied on Rosensteins advice, she was forced to change her answers after the president said he had already made up his mind to fire Comey before hearing from the deputy attorney general.

Asked by a reporter Thursday whether the president had left her in the dark, she responded: I know youd love to report that we were misled. . . . I went off of the information that I had when I answered your question.

By Friday, Spicer was back in the briefing room, arguing that the real problem is not the conflicting White House statements but rather a press corps that delights in using the administrations own words to embarrass the president.

The president is a little dismayed, Spicer said when asked about Trumps threat to kill the briefings. We come out here and try to do everything we can to provide you and the American people with what hes doing on their behalf, what hes doing to keep the nation safe, what hes doing to grow jobs, and yet, we see time and time again an attempt to parse every little word and make it more of a game of gotcha. 

As the briefing progressed, it was clear that the spokesman was striving to be more careful in his answers.

Asked about Trumps statements in the NBC interview that he had received assurances from Comey on three occasions that he was not directly under investigation by the FBI, Spicer demurred: I havent spoken to him on it about the reason, but I think he answered it yesterday very clearly. And so I can get back to you, but thats the answer.

And when a reporter wanted to know why Trump said in a tweet that Comey had better hope there are no tapes of their conversations, Spicer again avoided trying to interpret the presidents motives.

The tweet speaks for itself, he said. Im moving on.
Once again, Vice President Pence was out on a limb.

A day after President Trump fired FBI Director James B. Comey, his vice president stared into a television camera, surrounded by a gaggle of reporters on Capitol Hill, and cited the presidents decision to rely on the counsel of his advisers as proof of his strong leadership.

President Trump made the right decision at the right time to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to ask for the termination of Comey, Pence said.

But that wasnt true.

Trump told NBC News in an interview the next day that he had not relied on the lengthy letter written by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein to make his decision, but rather that his mind had been made up before the letter existed.

(Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

Pence also had insisted that Trumps decision was not influenced by his disapproval of the ongoing investigation into the Trump campaigns ties to Russia  another statement contradicted by Trump in the NBC interview.

In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,  the president said.

Aides declined to comment about when the vice president learned that Trump had decided to fire Comey.

Since his selection as vice president, Pence has been unflagging in his loyalty and deference to Trump. But in return, the president and White House aides have repeatedly set Pence up to be the public face of official narratives that turn out to be misleading or false.

It is a risk that comes with this high-wire presidency, where talking points and game plans nearly always have an unknown expiration date and where missing meetings can mean being out of the loop when critical decisions are made. The greatest disrupter of all is the president himself, who regularly  and without warning  throws out the communications playbook in favor of his own approach.

Hes obviously been playing a Mike Pence, cleanup on Aisle 5 role quite a bit, said Doug Heye, a Republican strategist. When Trump won, we had a sense that things like this might happen, and we have now had 111 days of crises du jour.

On Capitol Hill, Pence  a former House member  is still viewed as a steady hand in an unstable situation. He regularly attends the weekly Senate Republican lunch and can often be seen coming and going from his office in the Capitol.

The vice president has obviously been playing a Mike Pence, cleanup on Aisle 5 role quite a bit, one GOP strategist said. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Republicans involved in health-care talks said Pence emerged as a key point of contact when Trump and some House Republicans jump-started negotiations over the replacement bill that passed the House this month. They say he worked the phones and served as a salesman for the plan the White House and GOP lawmakers were pushing.

In the lead-up to Trumps inauguration, Pence likewise became something of an ambassador to skittish Capitol Hill Republicans who had apprehensions about Trumps management and governing style.

But Friday, Trump essentially acknowledged in a series of tweets that his surrogates had at times gone public with false information  in part because he is a very active President with lots of things happening.

Where that leaves the No. 2 guy is, hes following the talking points, and the No. 1 guy is using his own talking points, said a Republican strategist who has worked with Pence for more than a decade. His understanding of how they were going to explain the background leading up to the decision was different from how Donald Trump decided to explain it.

In the end, the president knows whats in his head, and not everyone else does, the strategist added.

Like most White House aides who flock to meetings and photo-ops with the president so they wont miss out when critical decisions are made, Pence has made a habit of having a regular presence in the West Wing. Being physically absent from meetings in the Trump White House can mean being locked out of key decisions.

I have spent a fair amount of time in the West Wing in the last three-plus months  I have never seen a vice president who was in the West Wing going in and out of meetings as much as Ive seen Mike Pence, said a prominent conservative who works closely with Pence and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss Pences role.

Pence communications director Jarrod Agen said the vice president was simply applauding Trumps decisive action and highlighting how the decision aligned with the recommendations of senior Justice Department officials.

The Vice President values his close relationship with the President and considers it the greatest privilege of his life to have such a strong working relationship with President Trump, Agen said in a statement.

But this is the second high-profile instance in which Pence has found himself out front with comments that dont stand up to scrutiny.

In January, Pence repeatedly denied that then-national security adviser Michael Flynn had spoken to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, statements that turned out to be false.

After White House counsel Donald McGahn and Trump learned that Flynn had misled the vice president, Pence was kept in the dark for weeks, until just before media reports about the misrepresentations were published.

People close to Pence say he has developed a relationship of trust with Trump in part because he has used his proximity and influence sparingly. He has learned to avoid agitating the president with public stories about his influence and has maintained an unflappable attitude when Trump leaves him exposed.

The thing that Pence has figured out is, the thing that gives him the influence is the fact that we dont know it, said the conservative with close ties to the White House. This guy is discreet in a town where everybody promotes themselves. . . . Hes playing to an audience of one.

Sean Sullivan and Robert Costa contributed to this report.
New York police detective Keith Schiller was at the Manhattan prosecutors office for a meeting one day more than 18 years ago when he spotted a local celebrity: Marla Maples, Donald Trumps second wife, who was there to discuss an alleged theft by a former employee.

A guy sat down next to him and was introduced as Mapless bodyguard.

I looked at him, totally not impressed by his stature, physical stature, Schiller recalled in a 2015 videotaped interview about how he came to work as a security officer for Trump. . . . A light goes off. I said: Bodyguard, I can do this . . . Im no stranger to putting my hands on people.

Now with Trump in the White House, Schiller sits at a desk just steps from the president as director of Oval Office Operations. He serves as one of Trumps most trusted aides  as well as a key player in this weeks controversial firing of FBI Director James B. Comey.

On Tuesday, the president personally dispatched Schiller to FBI headquarters to deliver a letter informing Comey he was terminated  a moment that was recorded and broadcast by CNN. Trump chose Schiller for the task over a more junior staffer, one White House official said.

Keith Schiller with White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday, April 18, 2017. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

That a person with Schillers profile is now a senior White House aide with near-round-the-clock access to the president is just one more way in which the Trump White House has broken with norms set by previous administrations.

The president has exceptional confidence in Keith. If he asks him to do something, he knows it will get done, said Corey Lewandowski, Trumps former campaign manager who worked closely with him.

Schiller has long been critical of Comey, telling those around him that the FBI was not aggressive enough in its investigation of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server and his views helped shape those of his boss, according to a person close to Trump who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk about internal deliberations. Schiller remains in touch with many law enforcement officers and has often served as Trumps liaison with police departments.

He has also repeatedly gotten physical on Trumps behalf, punching a protester outside of Trump Tower, forcibly removing a reporter from a news conference and confronting many who interrupted Trumps campaign rallies.

In a young White House that is considered one of the leakiest in history, Schiller has become one of the few people that the president can talk with and know that their conversation will not be repeated to others. White House officials often look to Schiller for tips on the presidents mood or how best to approach him.

Keith Schiller is not just some bodyguard, said Michael Caputo, a political adviser who worked with Trump between 2013 and 2016. Nobody knows the score among the advisers better than Keith Schiller. . . . Keiths always known whats what among the people who are in Donald Trumps orbit.

When Trumps son-in-law, Jared Kushner, traveled to Iraq in April, Schiller came along  getting a seat at the table during talks with the Iraqi government, standing in group photos and hovering in the background of photos of Kushner. Iraq specialists who typically would participate in such trips were not included, being told there wasnt enough room for them on the plane.

1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad  The scene in Washington after FBI Director Comey was fired View Photos President Trumps firing of James B. Comey consumed Capitol Hills attention. Democrats slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and Republicans saw rifts emerge as more questioned the presidents decision. Caption President Trumps firing of James B. Comey consumed Capitol Hills attention. Democrats slowed committee business in the Senate to protest the lack of an independent investigation into Russias election meddling, and Republicans saw rifts emerge as more questioned the presidents decision. May 9, 2017 White House press secretary Sean Spicer speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after President Trump dismissed James B. Comey from his position as FBI director. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue.

Schiller turns down most interview requests  including one for this report  although he agreed to be interviewed on New Years Eve 2015 at Trump Tower by Rich Siegel, a high school friend. The 55-minute conversation was posted on Facebook and provides a rare narrative of Schillers years-long relationship with Trump.

After seeing Mapless bodyguard at the Manhattan district attorneys office, Schiller reached out to Trump and started working for him part time in 1999. In 2004, after his retirement from the police department, Schiller became the Trump Organizations director of security. Schiller followed Trump onto the campaign trail, providing security in the months before the Secret Service took over  and then continuing to provide an added layer of protection, not hesitating to keep reporters away from the candidate or venture into rally crowds to confront protesters, sometimes physically.

Some who have worked with Schiller gushed as they described him, painting a softer portrait than the image of the imposing 6-foot-4 bodyguard with closed-cropped hair and an often-stern demeanor.

Eric Trump, one of the presidents sons who worked with Schiller for years at the Trump Organization, described the bodyguard as someone who has always demonstrated incredible work ethic and loyalty. Lewandowski described Schiller as the guy you want next to you in the foxhole when things go badly.

In the 2015 conversation with his high school friend, Schiller explained that his pre-Trump years prepared him for a career that has taken him into exclusive nightclubs, skyboxes at sporting events, business meetings overseas and all over the United States as Trump campaigned for president.

David E. Chong, who served as Schillers boss for eight years on a New York City police task force on high-intensity drug-trafficking areas, said Schiller loved the aura of being a New York City detective that was attacking the biggest and baddest drug cartels.

Schiller  who grew up in New Paltz, N.Y., and is married with two children  was known among his fellow police officers for his size and strength, Chong recalled. When his unit would raid apartments up many flights of stairs, Schiller would volunteer to carry the 60-pound battering ram. At the top of the stairs, instead of handing it off to men with fresh arms to break through the door, Schiller would slam the ram himself.

He was strong as an ox, said Chong, who now serves as the public safety commissioner in White Plains, N.Y., adding that above all Schiller was known for extreme loyalty to his boss.

When Schiller went to work for Trump, he was given a Trump Tower office on the same floor as the celebrity and at times spent as much of 90 percent of his time in Trumps presence.

In 2007, Schiller briefly stepped into the spotlight, as his boss took part in a staged WWE event with the wrestling organizations chief, Vince McMahon. As part of the act, Trump slapped McMahon, who acted stunned and then began to charge at Trump  only to be stopped by Schiller, who stepped forward to block McMahon, pushing the wrestling executive repeatedly backward before throwing him to the ground.

In one incident in September 2015, Schiller grabbed a sign from a protester outside Trump Tower. As Schiller marched back toward the building holding the sign, the man rushed at his back. Schiller whirled  and punched the man in the face.

Protester Efrain Galicia and other demonstrators from that day are suing Schiller and Trump over the incident. Schiller testified in a sworn deposition in December that he believed Galicias sign was creating a safety hazard by impeding access to the sidewalk and that he punched him in self-defense, believing the protester was reaching for a gun hidden under his suit jacket.

Schiller acknowledged in his testimony that at the time of the incident, he did not hold a valid New York state security guard license. He said he had allowed his license to lapse, believing that a different federal license that allowed him to carry a gun on private airplanes was sufficient.

In another incident a few days earlier, in August 2015, Schiller removed Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a Trump campaign news conference after Ramos repeatedly questioned Trump about immigration.

Sit down! You havent been called. Go back to Univision, Trump told Ramos, as the reporter continued to press. Then, video of the incident shows that the presidential candidate turned to his left, appearing to lock his gaze at something in his field of vision.

Schiller then immediately appeared, crossing behind Trump and approaching Ramos, quickly grabbing Ramoss shoulder with one hand and placing the other on the reporters chest before pushing him backward toward the exit, the video shows.

Asked in his December deposition if he had put his hands on Ramos, Schiller responded, No, I dont believe so.

In the New Years Eve conversation with Siegel, Schiller spoke about some of the most difficult moments in his life: the death of his mother when he was 17 and being in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001, events that he recounted emotionally.

Asked if he ever has these sorts of conversations with Trump, Schiller replied: Its a business relationship.

Karen DeYoung, Ashley Parker, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.
Throughout Donald Trumps business career, some executives who came to work for him were taken aside by colleagues and warned to assume that their discussions with the boss were being recorded.

There was never any sense with Donald of the phone being used for private conversation, said John ODonnell, who was president of the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in the 1980s.

For ODonnell and others who have had regular dealings with Trump through the years, there was something viscerally real about the threat implied by the presidents tweet Friday morning warning that fired FBI director James B. Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Talking on the phone with Donald was a public experience, said ODonnell, author of a book about his former boss, Trumped: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump. You never knew who else was listening.

The presidents tweet remained something of a puzzle Friday, as White House press secretary Sean Spicer rebuffed questions about whether Trump had indeed recorded the three conversations in which he says Comey assured him that the president was not under investigation.

(Peter Stevenson,Thomas LeGro/The Washington Post)

The president has nothing further to add on that, Spicer said three times. He refused to say whether the White House still has an active taping system.

It has for most of the past 70 years. In the popular imagination, White House taping started and ended with President Richard M. Nixons incriminating recordings of his plotting to cover up the Watergate burglary and other crimes. Nixons presidency was ultimately undone in 1974 by the revelation of Oval Office recordings.

But tape recording has been an important and aboveboard part of presidential procedure since a voice-recording system was first installed under President Franklin D. Roosevelt to capture the content of news conferences. The recording mechanism was disabled under Dwight Eisenhower and reinstalled by John F. Kennedy, who recorded Oval Office conversations with hidden microphones, securing intimate exchanges about the Cuban missile crisis and other signal moments of those years. Oval Office recordings of Lyndon B. Johnsons colorful, cursing chatter and Nixons dark scheming have entertained and appalled generations of history students.

More recently, the White House did not have recording devices automatically taping Barack Obamas phone calls or private meetings, according to a former Homeland Security official familiar with White House security and audio countermeasures. The source said it was unlikely that the Trump administration has changed this, but verbatim records of some private presidential meetings and phone conversations are nonetheless kept in two ways.

The White House Communications Agency, a military office that works with the Secret Service to assure secure communications for the president, video-records some closed presidential meetings and events. And the presidents phone calls have been transmitted since 2011 using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), an Internet technology that sends voice messages as packets of digitized data. The technology allows for retrieval of a text record of presidential conversations.

Trump may have been referring to that technology when he put the word tapes between quotation marks in his tweet. The president has sharply criticized people who take literally the words he surrounds with quotation marks in his tweets. When Trump accused Obama of wire tapping his Trump Tower office, Spicer said that the presidents use of quotes implied that he was talking about a whole host of surveillance types of options.

Two House Democrats on Friday sent a letter to White House counsel Donald F. McGahn, seeking the release of any tapes or other communications between Trump and Comey. Trumps tweet raised the specter of possible intimidation and obstruction of justice, wrote Reps. John Conyers Jr. (Mich.) and Elijah E. Cummings (Md.). Under normal circumstances, we would not consider credible any claims that the White House may have taped conversations of meetings with the president. However, because of the many false statements made by White House officials this week, we are compelled to ask whether any such recordings do in fact exist.

A post-Watergate reform measure, the Presidential Records Act of 1978, requires presidents to preserve and archive recordings made in the White House. The act is built on the 1974 U.S. Supreme Court decision that led to Nixons resignation. The justices unanimously ruled that the president could not claim executive privilege against a subpoena seeking audiotapes made in the Oval Office.

Trumps warning tweet to Comey appeared to be a response to a New York Times report that said Trump had twice asked the FBI director at a White House dinner for the two men if he would promise the president his loyalty. Comey reportedly said that he would offer the president only his honesty.

Trumps fascination with recording his conversations reaches back to the early years of his real estate career, when he installed in his 26th-story office in Trump Tower a system for surreptitiously tape recording business meetings, according to an eyewitness account in Harry Hurts 1993 biography, Lost Tycoon. And BuzzFeed News reported last year that Trump listened in on calls made by staff at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Trump sometimes informed reporters who were interviewing him by phone that he was recording their conversation.

By the way, you dont mind that Im taping this conversation? Trump asked a Washington Post reporter last spring.

No, were taping it as well, the reporter replied. Thats fine.

Okay, good, Trump said. And so we are all on this, because Im taping it also.

Through the decades, Trumps top secretaries, Norma Foerderer and Rhona Graff, were upfront about the fact that they listened in on conversations taking place in Trumps office.

Last May, as three Washington Post reporters interviewed Trump by phone about his finances, Trump pushed back against a question regarding his use of the pseudonym John Miller when he talked to some reporters in the 1980s.

Suddenly, the line went dead. The Post reporters called back and reached Graff, Trumps executive assistant.

Yeah, I heard you got disconnected, Graff said. I heard some of it, though. Boy, those were really negative questions. Do you have any good questions to ask him?

The continuation of the interview was scheduled for another day.

Visitors to Trumps office have often recounted moments that indicated that someone outside the office was listening to their conversations.

Last spring, when two Post reporters visited Trump in his office for another interview, Trump, in the middle of telling a story about how he demolished the Manhattan landmark that had stood where Trump Tower is now, asked his guests if they would like something to drink.

In the same quiet voice in which hed been conducting the interview, Trump said, Okay, two waters and a Coke. The interview resumed and less than a minute later, a secretary walked in with the drinks. No one other than the reporters and Trump had been in the office. And Trump never signaled the drink request to anyone outside the office.

Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report.
Mary Grice of Takoma Park, Md., talks with her attorney Robert Vogel. Grice is one of 200,000 Americans who have had their tax refunds taken by the federal government without notice because of decades-old family debts. (Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post)

After three years of complaints and pressure from taxpayers, the federal government will stop seizing the tax refunds of Americans whose long-dead parents had incurred debts to Social Security many years earlier.

In an emergency message to its staff late Friday, the Treasury Department announced that it will immediately stop confiscating money from hundreds of thousands of people whose forebears had been overpaid by Social Security decades earlier.

The change, which applied only to debts from 2002 or earlier, follows Washington Post articles that chronicled the impact of the seizures on taxpayers who never knew that their parents had had debts to the government.

Im glad the government is stepping up to the plate to give back the money to tens of thousands of people, even though they were taking the position in litigation that they didnt have to give it back, said Robert Vogel, the Washington lawyer who represented a number of the affected taxpayers in a years-long lawsuit aimed at reversing the collection policy. About 65,000 people will be eligible for a total of about $56 million in refunds.

The confiscations began after a one-line change in the farm bill in 2008 allowed the government to take tax refunds from citizens whose parents had incurred debts to Uncle Sam at least 10 years earlier.

Mary Grice has lived in the same apartment in Takoma Park, Md., since 1984 but had never received any notice about a debt. Then, in 2014, the U.S. government intercepted Grices federal and state tax refunds and sent her a letter saying it was keeping the money to pay off her late fathers $2,996 debt.

Grice was 4 years old when her father died. Grice has four siblings, but the government went after her money because its policy is to start with the oldest sibling and work down through the family until the debt is paid.

Grice was one of six people whose refunds were seized who filed suit against the government in 2014. The government fought hard to get the case dismissed, granting most of the plaintiffs waivers from the collection program and refunding their money. Government lawyers then argued that the case should be thrown out because the plaintiffs had no further grounds for complaint.

They were picking off the clients to moot the entire case, Vogel said.

Despite repeated demands for a halt to the collection efforts from Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress, the government insisted that it had an obligation to current and future Social Security beneficiaries to attempt to recoup money that people received when it was not due, as a Social Security spokesman said at the time.

The agency did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

The effort to collect old debt reached across many government agencies and hauled in more than $400 million in its first three years. But it was Social Securitys collection efforts that got taxpayers howling, mainly because very few of those who had their money seized ever knew that their parents had had any debt.

In Grices case, Social Security had sent notice of the debt to a post office box in Roxboro, N.C., where she had lived from 1977 to 1979 and never since. Of course, Social Security had Grices current address; every year, it sent her a statement about her benefits.

After The Post wrote about Grices case, the government returned her money. But four months later, she got a new bill from Social Security, demanding the same $2,996 that it had just given her back. DID YOU FORGET? the letter said, demanding full payment right away.

Many of the taxpayers whose money was confiscated were able to win back refunds over the past couple of years because they could show that Social Security had sent notice to badly outdated addresses.

Most of those whose money was seized first learned of the old debts when their tax refund checks never showed up.

The federal government went after the children of those who owed the money even though the Federal Trade Commission said that family members typically are not obligated to pay the debts of a deceased relative.

Brenda and Mike Samonds of Glenarm, Ill., spent many months trying to get back the $189.10 tax refund the government seized because it said that Mikes mother, who had died 33 years earlier, had been overpaid on survivors benefits after Mikes father died in 1969.

It was never Mikes money, it was his mothers, Brenda Samonds said soon after the seizure. The government took the money first and then they sent us the letter.

The government mailed its notice about the debt to the house Mikes mother lived in 40 years earlier.
Lawmakers announced a bipartisan deal on a measure that would allow the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire employees, clearing a path for its passage. Here a sign announces the postponement of a Veterans Affairs Senate Committee hearing in May. (Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press)

Top lawmakers on Capitol Hill have reached a bipartisan deal on legislation to allow the Department of Veterans Affairs to take swift action to fire employees, an overhaul of long-guaranteed civil service protections that President Trump promised he would enact to bring accountability to the troubled agency.

The agreement announced Thursday by key senators led by Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) clears a path for passage of a dramatic change that has stalled in Congress for three years following a scandal over waiting times for medical appointments at VA hospitals.

Few managers or their staffs were let go for falsifying appointment records to look like they were meeting goals set by the agency, and the real delays resulted in the deaths of dozens of sick veterans as they waited to see a doctor. The episode embarrassed the Obama administration and cost the former presidents VA secretary his job.

While House Republicans, after the scandal, sought to let VA officials quickly terminate poor performers or employees involved in misconduct, federal employee unions and their Democratic allies in Congress resisted what they viewed as a move to undercut due-process rights the civil service was built on. Action in Congress was stalled.

But the issue has gained new momentum with GOP control of the White House and Congress. The politics also have changed in the closely divided Senate, where a group backed by the conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch is targeting vulnerable Democrats in states that Trump won.

The bill could be an early test of how far Congress is willing to go to erode job protections for 2 million civil servants across the government. With a president who promised to shake up a system that is awash in waste, fraud and abuse, conservatives see an opening to take on a bureaucracy they view as too slow to jettison poor performers and too coddled by unions.

To fully reform the VA and provide our nations veterans with the quality care they were promised and deserve, we must ensure the department can efficiently dismiss employees who are not able or willing to do their jobs, Rubio said in a statement. The bill is expected to clear a key committee within two weeks.

The new Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act would shorten appeal times that now can drag out for years for employees facing discipline for performance or misconduct. It tones down language in a bill that cleared the House in March on largely party lines. But while the co-sponsors in the Senate, Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.)  the ranking Democrat and the chairman on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee  agreed to changes that would give employees 180 days to appeal disciplinary actions from the 30 in the House version, the change still would be a watershed for civil service protections.

Employees would not be paid while they appeal, as they are now. And senior executives, the leaders who make up the top 500 or so VA employees, would be held to a tougher standard than the rank-and-file, getting just 21 days to appeal to an internal board.

We negotiated a bill that will meet the needs of our veterans, Tester said in an interview. In the end, I think this bill fully respects workers protections.

He pushed back at the suggestion that new accountability rules for VA employees will be a model across the government.

VA has a unique responsibility for administering health care, and these employees can do things that result in life-or-death situations, he said. Its unique.

The deal came after warnings from the agencys inspector general of severe problems with patient safety at the VA Medical Center in Washington, where investigators found patients were at risk from poor medical oversight.

House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), sponsor of the House measure, supports the changes, congressional aides said.

VA Secretary David Shulkin, the sole Obama holdover in Trumps Cabinet, has made regular appearances on conservative media outlets to emphasize that holding employees accountable is his top priority. He said in a recent interview that his team has worked with lawmakers to balance employees rights with the need to take fast action against them where it is warranted.

The big issue is, is there a way to ensure that the right people can be removed but you can still maintain due process for all employees? Shulkin said.

He cited as Exhibit A the recent case of an employee at the VA Medical Center in Houston who was caught watching pornography with a patient in the patients room. The employee was given notice of his termination  but has 30 days on paid leave to appeal it, Shulkin said, a loophole that seems ridiculous given the seriousness of the infraction.

Problem employees represent a small minority of employees, Shulkin said. But bad apples who linger on the payroll, either at work or getting paid at home, are hurting morale and recruitment at the governments second-largest agency, which is short of thousands of doctors, nurses and other medical staff.

Shulkin acknowledged that managers do not always lay out a case for firing an employee, applying inconsistent standards on performance evaluations. He said leaders who should hold management jobs at VA hospitals are often moved around because its too difficult to remove them.

The union that represents more than 230,000 VA employees pledged a battle to stop the momentum in Congress.

This legislation is the antithesis of accountability because it would allow corrupt or incompetent managers to get away with firing anyone who challenges them, J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement.

Cox said the bill abrogates workplace protections designed to protect government workers from disciplinary action thats politically motivated, and called it a dangerous precedent just as the former FBI director, James B. Comey, became the latest casualty of an administration that is summarily firing public officials.

Many of the employees who blew the whistle on waitlists and other abuses at the VA faced retaliation for coming forward, Cox said, but they were protected by civil service rights and their union contract. This legislation would eliminate the only true protections they have.

The bill has broad support, though, from the large veterans service organizations, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, who hear their constituents complain of substandard medical care in many states.

But it was the political advocacy group Concerned Veterans for America, part of a network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the industrialist Koch brothers and other wealthy conservative donors, that is pushing hardest for change. In recent months CVA spent more than $100,000 targeting red-state Democrats and moderate Republicans in digital ads, phone calls and emails in 18 states, officials said.

The constant drumbeat of concerns from veterans gives those members a choice, said Dan Caldwell, the groups policy director. They can listen to D.C. special interests and entrenched bureaucrats or they can listen to veterans groups.

The scandal over manipulated wait times led to vows from the Obama administration that the employees at fault would be held accountable. Congress passed a law in 2014 giving the VA greater power to discipline senior executives. But the agency stopped using its new authority after the Justice Department said it was probably unconstitutional, and now a federal appeals court has overturned the termination of the key figure in the wait-times case.

Sponsors of the new Senate bill say they have crafted it in a way that would avoid the legal issues in the other case.Sponsors of the new Senate bill say they have crafted it in a way that would avoid the legal issues in the other case.

Then-secretary Robert McDonald also was criticized for giving wildly inflated estimates of how many employees had been removed from their jobs; it turned out to be just a handful.

Read more at PowerPost
The deputy attorney general at the center of former FBI director James B. Comeys firing made a surprise appearance on Capitol Hill on Thursday, arriving as Senate Democrats were demanding a reckoning over his role in the ouster but leaving more questions than answers in his wake.

Two weeks ago, Rod J. Rosenstein received the bipartisan confidence of the vast majority of the Senate during his confirmation as deputy attorney general. But a memo he drafted this week that has served as President Trumps public justification for firing Comey has all but eviscerated that trust.

Led primarily by Democrats, senators are now asking Rosenstein to come back to Capitol Hill next week to explain his role in Comeys dismissal. A senior Republican, too, declined to defend Rosensteins actions after meeting with him behind closed doors.

Rosenstein was tight-lipped as he entered and emerged from a secure facility Thursday on Capitol Hill, where he huddled with Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark R. Warner (D-Va.). The senators said the meeting had been scheduled before Comeys ouster to discuss deconfliction  keeping the FBIs and committees investigations of alleged ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government from stepping on each others toes.

Nonetheless, the arrival of Rosenstein and his entourage  during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that dealt extensively with Comeys firing  served only to heighten the political intrigue surrounding the deputy attorney generals enigmatic role in the controversial Comey affair.

Following the meeting, Warner said he still has concerns about Rosenstein, while Burr refused to say whether he has confidence in Rosenstein to oversee the Justice Departments Russia-related investigations.

I dont think thats up to Senator Warner and myself to make, Burr said. The presidents made a determination . . . we dont have the luxury of picking who we work with.

As justification for Comeys firing, Trump initially pointed to Rosensteins May 9 memo, in which the former prosecutor criticized Comeys handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server. The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerging from the White House cast him as a prime mover of the decision. Senators said Thursday that they did not discuss that point with him.

Meanwhile, as Rosenstein huddled with Intelligence Committee leaders, NBC released an interview in which Trump said the decision to oust Comey was his. He said he would have found a reason to fire Comey regardless of Rosensteins recommendation.

Later Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) excoriated the Trump administration for the mixed messaging surrounding Comeys firing and Rosensteins role in it, noting on the Senate floor that the story coming out of the White House about why Mr. Comey was fired continues to change, and there are no good explanations for the changes.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is trying to schedule an all-senators briefing with Rosenstein on Capitol Hill as soon as next week. Democrats want to hold a similar meeting with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Schumer said Thursday. The need for these briefings is even greater now than it was this morning, given what the president said this afternoon, he said.

Rosenstein has not responded publicly to the presidents shifting claims about his role in Comeys firing. Nor has he addressed Senate Democrats warnings that his reputation as an independent, apolitical actor is imperiled, as Schumer wrote to him in a letter. Schumer also asked for details on any meetings Rosenstein had with Trump before drafting the memo, and with Comey about requests for additional resources to aid the FBIs Russia investigation. Schumer asked for answers to the questions by Monday.

Rod J. Rosenstein during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill last month for deputy attorney general. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

Comey requested such resources from the Justice Department, according to several people familiar with the discussion. In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday, McCabe said that he was unaware of the request, and that he believed the FBI had adequate resources for the investigation.

Sens. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the senior Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committees, which oversees funding for the Justice Department, are also trying to clarify that point with Rosenstein. On Thursday, they asked the deputy attorney general to specify the circumstances surrounding Comeys request.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) should dedicate the needed personnel and resources to the investigation without hesitation, Leahy and Shaheen wrote in a letter to the deputy attorney general, adding that they want the details of any request for increased resources made by the FBI to DOJ and how this request was communicated from the FBI to DOJ, and whether similar requests were made to the White House.

Unclear is whether senators will get an opportunity to hear from another key player who could set part of the record straight: Comey.

Burr and Warner invited Comey to address the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, but as of Thursday afternoon, they had not received a response, Burr said.

In the absence of answers, some senior Democrats are casting doubt on the entire foundation of their once-positive impression of him.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and a top member of the Intelligence Committee, said she has read Rosensteins memo three times. She remains incredulous, she said, that he wrote it  and that it may have served as the basis for Comeys firing. She pointed to the second page, which is filled with quotes from opinion pieces and news clippings about former Justice Department officials critiquing Comeys handling of the Clinton investigation.

That surprised me, that a guy as highly prized as Rosenstein, on the basis of legal talent, professionalism in the department, would pull things out of a newspaper and quote them, in terms of somebody elses opinion of Comey, Feinstein said. It means to me we really have to have him in and talk to him, because, wow, I mean, I could have written it.

[Inside Trumps anger and impatience  and his sudden decision to fire Comey]

Read more at PowerPost
Soldiers left their barracks and blocked streets in several towns and cities across Ivory Coast on Friday, including the commercial capital, firing gunshots into the air as their protest over a pay dispute gathered momentum.

The uprising began overnight in Bouake, the second-largest city, before spreading quickly. The soldiers, most of them ex-rebel fighters who helped bring President Alassane Ouattara to power, erected improvised barricades around the national military headquarters and the Defense Ministry, sealing off part of downtown Abidjan.

The National Security Council held an emergency meeting, according to a Defense Ministry source.

The soldiers were revolting over delayed bonus payments, promised by the government after a nationwide mutiny in January but which it has struggled to pay following a collapse in the price of cocoa, Ivory Coasts main export.

On Thursday, a spokesman for 8,400 soldiers who took part in the January rebellion had said they would forgo demands for more money after meeting with authorities in Abidjan.

Thats not what they were meant to say, said one leader of the January mutiny who had remained in Bouake and spoke on the condition of anonymity, referring to the Thursday statement.

He said the mutineers would seal off access to Bouake in the evening if authorities failed to respond.

In Abidjan, office workers ran through the streets in the citys administrative quarter as gunfire rang out.

This isnt normal. If theres a demand to be made, I think it has to be done peacefully, said Lacine Tia, who works in the city center.

A Reuters witness saw three pickup trucks carrying elite Republican Guard troops, who fired warning shots that pushed the mutineers back inside the military compound. A standoff in the heart of the city ensued.

Theyre definitely putting on a better show of force this time. . . . Theyre definitely stronger [than in January], one Abidjan-based diplomat said of the governments response to the unrest.

Ouattara, the defense and interior ministers and the security forces leadership convened an emergency meeting to discuss the uprising. Neither the defense minister nor the governments spokesman was available for comment.

Ivory Coast emerged from a conflict that ran for much of 2002 to 2011 as one of the worlds fastest-growing economies. But deep divisions persist, particularly in a military assembled from former rebel and loyalist fighters.
A flower display has been set up ahead of the Belt and Road Forum starting May 14, 2017, in central Beijing. (Thomas Peter/Reuters)

When President Trump withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal in January, critics said he was leaving a vacuum at the heart of the Asia-Pacific region, ceding the United States role as regional economic leader.

On Sunday, China plans to show how it is filling that vacuum.

At a major set-piece event in Beijing, President Xi Jinping will project himself as the leader of a new economic order, and extol an ambitious global trade and infrastructure development plan known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Some 28 leaders from Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America  including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte  are scheduled to attend the two-day summit.

They will be hoping to land a share of hundreds of billions of dollars in promised Chinese lending and investment dedicated to the building of ports and railways, power plants and pipelines across the globe.

Banners are displayed along a Bejing street ahead of the forum, a two-day event that will be attended by some 28 world leaders. (Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images)

The plan, launched by Xi four years ago on a visit to Kazakhstan, initially was modeled on the ancient Silk Road, a network of trading routes that spread from China across Asia to the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Today, the initiatives scope has grown to cover almost the entire world  although not the United States.

Xi announced Sundays Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation during a well-publicized speech in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in which he cast China as a champion of globalization and himself as a guardian of the liberal economic order.

So far, the Belt and Road plan is more rhetoric than reality, experts say, more a repackaging of existing projects than new money on the table. Still, the message is coming through loud and clear, and Xis flagship foreign policy venture  which he also is using to consolidate his strongman image at home ahead of a key Communist Party congress in the fall  cannot be written off.

This is another chance for Xi Jinping to strut his stuff on the global stage and burnish his leadership credentials, said Tom Miller, author of Chinas Asian Dream: Empire Building Along the New Silk Road. But, he added, it also relates to Trump. Withdrawing from the TPP left a void at the heart of economic leadership in Asia, and Xi Jinping is trying to jump into that void, Miller said, referring to the Pacific trade deal.

Chinas state media have lauded the plan as globalization 2.0, a new model for the world economy driven from the East rather than the West, but also an exemplar of win-win cooperation.

Yet there is no doubt that Xi is at the helm, and the plan has generated suspicion as well as enthusiasm outside China.

India is unhappy that one of the flagship projects is a $50 billion economic corridor to the Arabian Sea traversing the territory of its archrival, Pakistan, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will stay away Sunday.

[From the mountains to the sea: A Chinese vision, a Pakistani corridor]

The leaders of Germany, France and Britain will not be there either, mainly because of domestic elections, but also because Europes core nations are wary of any attempt by Beijing to undermine regional unity by showering poorer European countries with cash. The leaders are also unhappy that China is not doing more to open up its own markets and encourage foreign investment.

Putin is equally wary of Chinas influence in Central Asia, a region that Russia considers its back yard, and is embracing the Chinese plan with gritted teeth, said S. Frederick Starr, chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and Silk Road Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University in Washington.

Chinas motives for the plan are primarily economic, as it looks for new drivers for growth and seeks markets abroad to counter a slowdown at home. Construction projects may help relieve overcapacity in industries such as steel and cement, while Chinas underdeveloped and troubled west could  in theory, at least  benefit economically from closer links with the rest of Asia.

The plan also offers the countrys vast state-owned enterprises a global testing ground, according to Jan Gaspers at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, based in Berlin.

There is a security dimension, too  an attempt to stabilize Chinas near abroad with economic opportunity, potentially countering the spread of radical Islamist ideas in Central Asia.

But it also is impossible not to see the project through a geopolitical lens, a Chinese effort to build a sphere of influence, said Paul Haenle of the Beijing-based Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy.

Smaller nations that become dependent on Chinese money may feel obliged to support Chinas stance on international issues. In addition, the infrastructure being built, such as ports, could have a dual use, one day helping China to project its military power.

But will any of it work?

I am a bit skeptical, said Matthew P. Goodman, who has been tracking efforts to reconnect Asia at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. Not only does China have many challenges of its own, he said, but the infrastructure business is very difficult: everything from geography to land rights, from political, social and environmental issues to making it a viable investment proposition.

Commerce Ministry data shows that foreign direct investment from China to countries identified as part of the Belt and Road Initiative fell 2 percent in 2016 and has fallen an additional 18 percent in 2017. Overall, outbound investment to 53 Belt and Road countries reached $14.5 billion last year, less than 9 percent of the global total.

And when projects have started, not all has been smooth sailing. Thats partly because Chinese firms have a habit of striking deals with countries political elites and being insensitive to ordinary peoples concerns  a blind spot perhaps developed in an authoritarian state.

[Chinese companies face culture shock in countries that arent like China]

Protests broke out in January over a Chinese-built port and industrial park in Sri Lanka. There also have been concerns in the past about dams in Burma (also known as Myanmar) and Cambodia, as well as fears about potential Chinese immigration and land grabs in Central Asia.

Railway projects connecting Thailand and Laos and in Indonesia have run into delays and disagreements over costs, while a flagship project in Europe  a railway to connect Budapest and Belgrade, Serbia  is under investigation by the European Commission over possible breaches of public procurement rules.

But China is learning from some of its missteps, experts say, with its new Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank hiring Western experts, studying global best practices and pledging to be lean, clean and green.

It is also infinitely more committed to its Belt and Road project than the United States was to a New Silk Road plan launched by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011 to revitalize Afghanistan as the link between Central and South Asia.

Clintons idea never really got off the ground, and the Obama administration was criticized by experts for responding negatively to Chinas new bank. The Trump administration is sending a delegation to the Belt and Road Forum led by Matthew Pottinger, special assistant to the president and National Security Council senior director for East Asia. But it may also need a long-term regional plan of its own.

This is a major challenge to the United States, Goodman said. If not through the TPP, we need to reengage, to figure out another way to play in the Asia-Pacific arena. There is so much at stake for us economically and politically. We dont have an economic strategy, and we need one.

Read more:

In Cambodia, the push and pull of Chinas orbit

In Central Asia, Chinese inroads in Russias back yard

Chinas assertiveness pushes Vietnam toward an old foe, the United States

Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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President Trump has not yet made a decision on whether to approve a military proposal to expand the U.S. role in Afghanistan with more troops, and may not do so until after his upcoming foreign trip, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said Friday.

In a briefing on the nine-day, four-country tour, McMaster said that the President wants to hear from our allies about the plan, and hell have an opportunity to do so at the NATO summit, on May 25 in Brussels, and at a meeting the next day with Group of Seven partners in Sicily.

What well have at the end of this next few weeks . . . is an opportunity for a much more effective strategy for the problem set in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the region broadly, McMaster said.

The proposed new strategy, which has been the subject of a lengthy White House review and is backed by top Cabinet officials and McMaster himself, would also give the military far broader authority to use airstrikes against Taliban militants in Afghanistan and potentially move U.S. troops aiding the Afghan army closer to the battlefield. It also anticipates that NATO members will increase their own troop presence in Afghanistan.

[U.S. poised to expand military effort against Taliban in Afghanistan]

Some Trump advisers, however, see the plan as out of step with Trumps campaign pledge to lessen U.S. military involvement overseas, and question whether it would be any more successful than earlier, failed efforts to defeat the Taliban or bring them to the negotiating table.

Overall, McMaster characterized Trumps first overseas trip as a reaffirmation of U.S. global leadership, as well as a chance to solidify the Presidents personal relationships with world leaders and to reiterate his burden-sharing message.

President Trump understands that America First does not mean America alone, McMaster said.

The trip will also provide a distraction from the turmoil surrounding Trumps firing of FBI Director James B. Comey and ongoing investigations of any contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

It takes Trump out of the domestic spotlight as a number of troublesome issues, including federal court consideration of his blocked travel ban and Senate efforts to come up with a viable health-care plan.

Trump departs Washington next Friday for Saudi Arabia, where he will spend three days holding separate summits with Saudi King Salman, the Gulf Cooperation Council of Persian Gulf states, and an invited selection of leaders from Muslim-majority countries.

He will encourage our Arab and Muslim partners to take bold new steps to promote peace and confront extremist organizations, McMaster said. Trump expects to have a galvanizing effect on bringing them together and increasing their contributions  monetary and otherwise  to stopping the spread of radical violence.

Saudi Arabia has issued invitations to the larger meeting, including a number of countries that have widely differing views and policies, such as Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, Egypt and Yemen.

From Riyadh, the Saudi capital, Trump will travel to Jerusalem. In addition to visits with Israeli leaders, he plans to meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, most likely in nearby Bethlehem in the West Bank. Asked to comment on reports from the region that Trump would try to arrange a meeting between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, McMaster declined to respond.

Itll be whatever the president wants to do. . . . The final plans arent set yet, he said. McMaster also said that no final decision has been made on Trumps campaign pledge to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a highly controversial act that Arab allies have advised against. The president has until June to decide whether to sign a six-month waiver of a law ordering the move, as every president has done since Congress passed a law ordering the move in 1995.

On May 24, Trump will meet in Rome with Pope Francis, completing a trifecta that McMaster called truly historic.

No president has ever visited the homelands and holy sites of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faiths all on one trip. . . . He will bring a message of tolerance and of hope to billions, McMaster said.

From Rome, Trump travels on to NATO and then to the G-7.
It was March 2020, and the world was closing down as the COVID-19 pandemic spread. At first, the news of...
Almost 2,000 people have been evacuated from their homes this week following intense floods that hit more than 170 municipalities, mainly in Quebec, but also in Ontario and in New Brunswick. About 3,000 homes have been flooded across Quebec, from the border of Ontario to the Gaspe Peninsula.

Ten cities have declared a state of emergency, including Montreal, and have extended it for five days in the most affected boroughs and kept a number of schools, roads and bridges closed. While authorities said the situation is now stabilized in the lakes and tributaries of the St. Lawrence River, water levels remain extremely high and the extent of the damage will be revealed only when the floodwaters fully recede. Government officials admitted that it would take weeks if not months before affected peoples lives return to normal.

A naval frigate was sent to the port of Trois-Riveres to assist with the construction of flood defences, as more heavy rain is anticipated over the coming days.

The flooding has been linked to at least one death, that of Mike Gagnon, a 37-year-old man from Gaspe region whose car was swept into the water by a strong current on Monday. A two-year-old girl who was also in the car has not yet been found.

Meteorologists and experts all agree that the latest floods are the result of unusually persistent rainfall, melting snow, and global warming. Normally in April the rainfall average is around 80 millimetres, but this year twice that amount fell in Quebec. The first week of May alone saw the quantity of rain that would usually fall during the entire month. This comes on top of all the melting snow from March snowstorms that hit eastern Ontario and western Quebec.

A Concordia University professor and climatologist, Jeannine St-Jacques, explained that with climate change, not only Canada but the entire globe will see more of such phenomena. We have what we call 100-year floods and 1,000-year floods, said St-Jacques. Its the sort of the worst flood youd expect in 100 years. In a lot of places worldwide, were exceeding our 100-year floods, our 1,000-year floods, our 2,000-year floods. As things become more extreme, we will be seeing more.

The floods in Quebec have exposed the gap between the courage and generosity of ordinary people and the utter indifference and hypocrisy of the ruling class. The Federal government deployed about 2,250 members of the Canadian Armed Forces to assist overwhelmed responders, but flooded residents are largely left alone, forced to rely on themselves, neighbours, volunteers and the Red Cross.

The provincial government announced it would contribute $500,000 to a relief fund, while the City of Montreal is to give $250,000 and the City of Laval, $50,000. This is a drop in the ocean, however, considering the extent of the damage.

This is in addition to the fact that many flooded people, impacted both economically and psychologically, could lose their houses and personal belongings. Insurance experts explained that most people (about 90 percent) are not covered for floods in Quebec. Following the 2013 floods in Toronto and Alberta, insurance companies created a new insurance product in relation to floods, which they see as a new source of profit. Individuals have to buy the product separately, but are apparently often not informed of its existence.

The media has published interviews with people affected by the floods who expressed strong criticism of the insufficient aid provided by provincial as well as local and federal governments. While abnormal levels of water have been observed for weeks in certain regions, the federal government only intervened when the situation got out of control and hundreds of houses were flooded.

Montreals West Island residents explained they have been requesting sandbags for weeks to protect their homes from rising floods, but they came too late. Those who received sandbags had to fill them all themselves.

CBC reported on Raymond Stelmashuk, who had to fill 600 sandbags during a sleepless week to try to save his 93-year-old grandmothers house, but to no avail. Theres not a city person around, nobodys around. They keep coming and going, but theyre not helping anybody, he said, adding, this shouldnt be happening and the city should be way more organized.

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made their pro forma visits to flooded areas and helped fill sandbags before the cameras. As always, such hypocritical gestures only serve to cover the fact that the extent of the catastrophe is in large part due to government policies.

Concordia professor St-Jacques declared that budget cuts were an important cause behind the extent of the flood damage. In the early 2000s, a lot of watershed management got delegated down to municipalities, and municipalities just dont have the expertisetheyre not set up to deal with it, she explained.

This occurred during the massive budget and tax cuts made by the federal Chretien-Martin Liberal government and the Parti Quebecois provincial government of Lucien Bouchard in the 1990s. These cuts, which were in response to growing demands by big business for a massive redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top, have created a deep public health crisis, and also affected transport, health care and infrastructure.

This has had consequences not only in Quebec. Last year, residents of Fort McMurray, Alberta, were largely left to fend for themselves as a wildfire raged through the city. The disaster, which was entirely predictable due to the effects of climate change, was exacerbated by the disorganized and inadequate preparations and responses by the federal Liberal and provincial New Democratic Party government.

While the media gave widespread coverage to the Fort McMurray fire, as it is now doing for the floods in Quebec and Ontario, this will rapidly subside. The empty promises of politicians will never materialize and the governments will pursue their agenda of spending cuts to fund wars abroad and the enrichment of the ruling elite at home.

The extent of the flood damage and the inaction of governments at all levels have once again exposed the bankruptcy of capitalism, a system based on private profits and the domination of a thin layer of super-rich over every aspect of social life.

While heavy rains result from natural forces, the catastrophe in Quebec, predictable as it was, could have been prevented, and hundreds of people would still have their homes today.

What is currently and immediately needed in Quebec, Ontario and in other flooded regions across the country are billions of dollars and the mobilization of all available resources to help people affected by the flood as part of a massive program of infrastructure investment.

But such efforts are incompatible with the capitalist profit system, which seeks at every level to slash public spending for social services so as to boost the profits of the corporations and the financial elite. A planned response to the floods in Ontario and Quebec, and to other natural disasters around the world, is conceivable only as part of a socialist program which places the social needs of the vast majority above the profit interests of the super-rich.

The author also recommends:

Canadian capitalism and the Fort McMurray wildfire

[10 May 2016]
A 12-year-old girl in Cheshire County, England, has scored 162 on an IQ test, putting her in the top 99.998 percentile of test takers.

So what does it mean to be that bright?

IQ, or intelligence quotient, is a score of mental ability relative to one's peers of the same age. IQ scores are normalized so that 100 is average. About two-thirds of the population scores within 16 points of 100 in either direction, so between about 84 and 116, said Robert McCall, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh's Office of Child Development. Roughly 2.5 percent of the population scores above 130, McCall told Live Science, though the precise numbers depend on the exact test taken. (There are many variations.) [Creative Genius: The World's Greatest Minds]

What is an IQ score?

Rajgauri Pawar achieved her high score on British Mensa's IQ test. Mensa is an organization for people who score within the top 2 percent of the population on IQ tests. Pawar's score easily qualified her for admission.

Many news organizations led Pawar's story by saying she scored higher than Albert Einstein or cosmologist Stephen Hawking. Those comparisons are flawed, however, because IQ tests are limited to comparisons within age groups. A 5-year-old who scores a 130 on a youth IQ test is in approximately the top 2.5 percent of 5-year-olds, and a 45-year-old who scores a 130 on an adult IQ test is in approximately the top 2.5 percent of all adults, but there is no absolute measure of intelligence that can compare a 5-year-old's intelligence with a 45-year-old's.

For most people, IQ remains relatively stable, McCall said, but for some people, it can change "very substantially" over time.

"It is not necessarily fixed," he said. "It depends on your experience, the environment in which you live, your parents and other significant others, and how they interact with you, your opportunities."

Intelligence and success

IQ is predictive of success in school and, to a lesser extent, success in the work world, McCall said. That's not because it measures every sort of intelligence in a purely objective way, he said, but because the test is biased in the same ways that school and work are biased: They tend to reward verbal abstract thinking and a particular range of knowledge.

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"The bias is in the whole system," McCall said.

But even so, IQ does not cover every type of intelligence or competence, and IQ test scores are not perfectly predictive of success in various areas of a person's life.

"There are lots of people who succeed who don't have a particularly high IQ, and there are lots of people with high IQ who don't particularly succeed," said Robert Sternberg, a professor of human development at Cornell University. Success depends on a variety of factors, including emotional stability, motivation and common sense, he said.

Because of IQ's limitations, it has attracted its share of detractors, and its prominence in psychology and education has decreased. Schools rarely give IQ tests as a matter of course, Sternberg told Live Science, and even admittance to gifted programs typically requires consideration of a student's grades and talents, with IQ as one potential factor to take into account.

Some researchers  including Jack Naglieri, a professor at the University of Virginia and a senior research scientist at the Devereux Center for Resilient Children  have called for IQ to be scrapped.

"These intelligence tests that we have used, especially the Mensa ones, measure more knowledge than raw intelligence based upon brain function," Naglieri told Live Science. "To me, it's a misleading indicator."

Pawar is no doubt very smart, Naglieri said, but she was also able to succeed on a Mensa-style IQ test because she has a lot of knowledge, particularly in vocabulary and math. He and his colleagues have developed a "cognitive assessment system," which tests people on problems that are not knowledge-based but that also require cognitive ability. The idea is to test things such as how well a person can summon attentional resources or reason through problems, rather than how much math or vocabulary experience they've had.

"Somebody can be smart and not knowledgeable," Naglieri said.

Original article on Live Science.

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Andrew McCabe tells Senate the White Houses assertion that fired director James Comey had lost the confidence of the FBI rank and file is not accurate

The acting head of the FBI has said that James Comey, the bureaus director fired by Donald Trump, enjoyed broad support among its staff  directly contradicting the White Houses assertion that he had lost the confidence of the FBI rank and file.

When confronted with the Trump administrations claim of Comeys unpopularity, Andrew McCabe  who has been the FBIs acting director since the sacking  told the Senate intelligence committee: That is not accurate.

I can tell you that I worked very, very closely with Director Comey, McCabe said on Thursday, pointing out he had worked as his executive assistant director of national security and then his deputy.

I hold Director Comey in the highest regard for his considerable abilities and his integrity. It is the greatest honour of my professional life to have worked with him. He enjoyed broad support in the FBI and he still does to this day ... The vast majority of FBI staff enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.

Trump continued his attacks on Comey on Thursday, telling NBC News: Hes a showboat, hes a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil.

Once more the presidents remarks were quickly contradicted  this time by the Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Richard Burr, and his Democrat counterpart, Mark Warner.

I found [Comey] to be one of the most ethical, upright, straightforward individuals Ive had the opportunity to work with, Burr said.

Warner added: I trusted Jim Comey ... I thought he was a straight shooter and frankly Im offended at the presidents comments today. This is a continuing pattern of disrespecting the men and women who serve in our intelligence community.

The Senate committee said it had invited Comey to testify on Tuesday but had not received a response so far.



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Making his first public appearance since Comeys firing on Tuesday, McCabe promised to tell the Senate committee if he came under pressure to shut down the investigation into possible links between Trumps associates and Russia during last years election campaign. He said he had met Trump this week but the Russian investigation did not come up in that meeting.

When asked by Senator Marco Rubio whether Comeys abrupt dismissal would impede the work of the FBI, McCabe was adamant.

You cannot stop the the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing and upholding the constitution, he said.

Later he added that the Russian investigation would be pursued vigorously and completely.

McCabes testament to the high esteem Comey was held in within the FBI came a day after the White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: The rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director.

McCabe also contradicted the White House on the scale of the Russia investigation. Huckabee Sanders had said it was probably one of the smallest things on the FBIs plate. McCabe denied that, calling it a highly significant investigation.

Comey  who found out he had been fired when the news flashed up on a screen behind him when he was addressing staff in California  sent a farewell letter to FBI staff on Wednesday.

It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing, Comey wrote. My hope is that you will continue to live our values and the mission of protecting the American people and upholding the constitution.

Widespread reports in the US media suggested that Comey was asking for more resources for that investigation. McCabe said he was not aware of any such request and insisted that the Russian investigation had the resources it needed.

Opening the hearing on global threats that heard evidence from the heads of the main US intelligence agencies, Burr, insisted that it would not be solely focused on the Trump-Russia enquiry. However, Democratic senators repeatedly returned to the issue, arguing that Comeys sacking made it even more relevant.

It is impossible to ignore that one of the leaders of the intelligence community is not here with us today. The presidents firing of FBI director Comey Tuesday night was a shocking development, Senator Warner, said.

The timing of director Comeys dismissal to me and many committee members on both sides of the aisle is especially troubling, Warner said. For many people, including myself, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the presidents decision to remove director Comey was related to this investigation. And that is unacceptable.

Burr pledged that the Senate investigation of the Trump campaigns Russia links would not be disrupted.

Regardless of what happens in the justice department and the FBI ... the investigation that is being done by the intelligence committee will continue on its current course as aggressively as we are able to, the Republican senator said.

Toward the end of the hearing, the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, arrived at the Senate building and entered its secure conference room. Burr and Warner abruptly left the open hearing to meet Rosenstein there. Later, the senators said the meeting was about de-conflicting the Senate investigation into Trump-Moscow links with the one being carried out by the FBI.

Rosenteins critique of Comeys handling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons private email server was used by the White House as a justification for sacking the FBI director. Rosenstein was reportedly angry about the president using his report in that way.
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday he is considering a NATO request for more troops in Afghanistan, as U.S. President Donald Trump considers whether to expand the NATO-led mission there by several thousand. Turnbull did not specify the details of the request from NATO's military authorities, which he received during a visit to Afghanistan late last month, although he said he was "open" to the idea. "We are certainly open to increasing our work there, but we've obviously got to look at the commitments of the Australian Defense Force in other parts of the region and indeed in other parts of the world," Turnbull told reporters in Sydney. "It is very important that we continue - we and our other allies in the effort in Afghanistan - continue to work together," he said. Australia currently has nearly 300 troops stationed in Afghanistan, training and advising Afghan forces. The top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday security in Afghanistan would deteriorate even further without a modest increase in troops from the United States and its allies for the NATO-led force. Afghan forces being trained by their NATO allies have only tenuous control in Afghanistan almost 16 years into the intractable war against the Taliban, the remnants of al Qaeda, Islamic State and other Islamist groups. In February, U.S. General John Nicholson, commander of foreign troops in Afghanistan, told a Congressional hearing he needed several thousand more international troops to break a stalemate with the Taliban. Reuters reported in late April that Trump's administration was carrying out a review of Afghanistan and that conversations were revolving around sending between 3,000 and 5,000 more U.S. and coalition troops to Afghanistan. U.S. and NATO allies have since been receiving requests for more troops to boost the Resolute Support mission, which currently stands at about 13,450 troops, including about 6,900 U.S. military personnel training and advising the Afghan armed forces to take over Afghanistan's defense and security. The United States also has about 1,500 more troops as part of a counter-terrorism unit that mainly targets the Islamic State militant group and remaining pockets of al Qaeda. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said this week the alliance was considering a request for more troops, although NATO member Germany ruled out sending more of its forces back to Afghanistan. (Reporting by Colin Packham; Editing by Paul Tait)
The case of an 8-year-old Ohio boy who killed himself earlier this year is being reopened amid claims that the young boy was bullied prior to his death.

An attorney for Gabe Taye's family claims video proves he was knocked unconscious by a fellow Carson elementary school student two days before he hanged himself from a bunk bed with a necktie in January.

Read: Mom Says 11-Year-Old Son Took His Own Life After Being Pressured to Sell Drugs

This week, the Hamilton County Coroner said she is reopening the investigation because of what the video reportedly shows.

Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco says she wants to see the video, according to WKRC. Should it show something that would force her to amend the death certificate, the case could end up in the hands of prosecutors.

Attorney Jennifer Branch said the video, which had yet to be made public as of Friday morning, shows a boy in the school bathroom assaulting other children when Gabe walks in.

Gabe leans in to shake the alleged assailant's hand when the boy is pulled forward and slammed into a wall, according to Branch.

Branch said Gabe was knocked unconscious and remained so on the bathroom floor for more than seven minutes. The boy then reportedly appears to celebrate as Gabe lies motionless on the floor.

If the school had told mom that your son was assaulted [or] your son had lost consciousness for seven minutes, she would have immediately taken him to the hospital and had him examined, Branch said. "She's devastated that her son's second to last day was so painful for him and that she didn't know and that she couldn't protect him."

No charges have been filed against any student.

Cincinnati Public Schools said in a statement that while they are concerned about the lack of adult supervision at the scene, a nurse checked Gabe and called his mother.

"A recent story in the Cincinnati Enquirer recounted an email written by a Cincinnati Police Department detective about an incident at Carson School during which Gabriel Taye collapsed and lay motionless for several minutes. The article suggests that other students were beating Gabriel during this incident, a description that video evidence does not support. The article also portrays other students in the video as 'aggressors.' Video evidence does not support this characterization," the statement reads in part.

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"While we are concerned about the length of time Gabriel lay motionless and the lack of adult supervision at the scene, when school administrators became aware of the situation, they immediately followed protocol by calling the school nurse to evaluate Gabriel," the statement went on.

The school system said Gabe's vital signs were deemed normal.

Watch: 11-Year-Old Kills Himself After Thinking Girlfriend Committed Suicide: Cops

Cincinnati Public Schools did not specifically address whether a single assailant caused Gabe to lose consciousness.

While the school system maintained the video of Gabe was mischaracterized by police and the Cincinnati Enquirer, officials said, "Our thoughts and prayers remain with his family."

Watch: Woman Saves Man's Life on Their First Date When He Stopped Breathing

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There's a hidden danger lurking in your produce section -- though it doesn't become dangerous until you take it home.

That danger is your precious avocado and your attempt to slice it open (i.e. holding it in your hand while trying to take out the pit with a knife may not be the safest bet).

"Avocado hand," as doctors call it, has prompted the British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons to warn people about the practice. Improper slicing could lead to nerve and tendon damage. Not even three-time Academy Award-winning actress Meryl Streep is immune to "avocado hand."

"People do not anticipate that the avocados they buy can be very ripe and there is minimal understanding of how to handle them," Simon Eccles, a former Royal Society of Medicine president of plastic surgery told The Times of London. Eccles added that his hospital endures a Saturday "post-brunch surge" of such injuries, and he sees four patients each week due to the practice.

The British Association of Plastic Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons isn't suggesting safety labels for avocados, it told HuffPost, just letting people know of the possible danger. This contradicts reports that say otherwise, including an article the organization retweeted someone else tweeting.

So, how are you supposed to cut an avocado?

Place the avocado down horizontally and slice into it the same way, with your hand on top. Next, twist the avocado to get two halves. You then remove the pit by putting the avocado in a towel and cutting into it to get it stuck on the knife, followed by twisting it to get it out.

Stay safe out there.

Unusual Uses for Avocados

9 Foods That Can Keep Your Brain Sharp

David Oliver is Associate Editor, Social Media at U.S. News & World Report. Follow him on Twitter, connect with him on LinkedIn, or send him an email at doliver@usnews.com.
The average American drives about 30 miles (48 kilometers) per day, according to AAA , 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.

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"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. 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.

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By Meng Meng and Josephine Mason TIANJIN, China/BEIJING (Reuters) - On a recent visit to the area around Tianjin Port Co Ltd, there were more than one hundred empty trucks parked at the coal storage center run by Ningdong Logistic Co. Once one of the busiest places close to Tianjin's sprawling port, the storage facility was now silent as activity had ground to a halt after the port operator last month announced a ban on trucking in coal or storing it there. The announcement was sooner than expected. It is a sign that Beijing's years-long war on pollution is disrupting the logistics of the market for coal - one of China's crucial commodities - as well as the lives of what trucking industry insiders estimate are 60,000 drivers who carry coal to and from the port. The central government has said it may extend the measure to ports in heavily industrialized Hebei province by September as it tries to combat choking pollution that often blankets the north of the country, including nearby Beijing. "I was sending coal from Inner Mongolia to the port and carrying imported iron ore from the port to other places. The government has completely cut my livelihood," said Wang Fangyuan, who was based in Tianjin but has left with a fleet of 40 trucks and their drivers to ply the trade in Erdos, 800 miles to the northwest in Inner Mongolia. "I have been working in this tough business for more than six years. What they have done is just adding more difficulty to our harsh life," he said by phone. CLEANER AIR Until now, Beijing's efforts to cut overcapacity and pollution had little impact on the output of the country's favorite fuel. Outdated, inefficient mines were shut, only to be replaced with production from leaner, cleaner ones. The ban has helped knock about 20 percent off Tianjin Port's shares but had its desired effect on air quality, at least locally. "The air is so much cleaner now," said Wang Di, 29, who lost his job driving a coal truck and lives next to what had until recent weeks been a main trucking route near the port. "It used to be very dirty. We couldn't even keep the windows open for more than five minutes. Otherwise, my face would be covered in coal dust." A key coal hub, Tianjin Port last year handled about 110 million tonnes of coal arriving by truck and rail. The port has said it is taking measures to increase rail freight to help offset the loss of trucked coal. "The ban is aimed at reducing pollution from trucking coal, but they can use railways instead," said an analyst at Lianxun Securities who asked that his name not be used. Total coal stocks at the port dropped to 1.9 million tonnes on May 8, from 2.82 million tonnes on April 21, according to data provided by consultancy China Sublime Information Group. "The ban has sharply weakened Tianjin port's role as a leading trade port in China," said Zhang Min, a coal analyst with Sublime, putting it at a disadvantage to other ports such as Tangshan and Caofeidian. It has also created traffic jams at nearby Huanghua port in Hebei province, and threatens to increase the cost of moving coal as traders shift to rail, which is more expensive. Inside the port's own coal storage area, around 600,000 tonnes of coking coal is covered in green plastic webbing since the start of May to reduce dust. Sprinklers are used to keep the dust down. At a parking lot outside the port, driver Zhao Haidong is looking to sell his treasured Dongfeng Motor Hercules for just 40,000 yuan ($5,793) to 50,000 yuan ($7,240) after waiting around the port area for more than two weeks without work. Six years ago, Zhao paid 160,000 yuan for the vehicle, and since then had been trucking the black stuff the short distance from a bulk commodities center in Tianjin to the port. A migrant from northeast China with two children in school in Tianjin, Zhao won't consider moving to Huanghua port. "Drivers at the nearby port are underpaid and overworked because of a large group of drivers flooding into that port. I can only earn less than half of my current rate if I move." (Reporting by Meng Meng and Josephine Mason; additional reporting by Beijing newsroom and Samuel Shen in Shanghai.; Editing by Tony Munroe and Martin Howell)


Inside a 3,800-year-old pyramid at the site of Dahshur in Egypt, archaeologists have discovered a burial chamber that may have held the mummy of a princess named Hatshepset. A wooden box inscribed with hieroglyphs was also found within the chamber.



The discoveries provide clues that may help archaeologists determine why a pharaoh named Ameny Qemau has two pyramids at Dahshur.



The wooden box is inscribed with "Hatshepset," which likely does not refer to the pharaoh Hatshepsut but rather someone else with a similar name, the researchers said. Last month, another inscription, written on an alabaster block, was also found in the pyramid. That inscription bears the name of pharaoh Ameny Qemau (also spelled Qemaw), who ruled Egypt for a brief period around 1790 B.C. It's the second pyramid that has an inscription bearing the name Ameny Qemau that is known from Dahshur. The other Ameny Qemau pyramid was discovered in 1957 and is located nearly 2,000 feet (about 600 meters) away from the recently discovered pyramid.



People at the time would have used the newly discovered wooden box to hold canopic jars, which would have stored the inner organs of a mummy, officials with the Egyptian antiquities ministry said in a statement. The jars are now gone, and the archaeologists found only a few mummy wrappings inside the box, the ministry said. The ministry also noted that the box has three lines of hieroglyphic inscriptions that may refer to a daughter of Ameny Qemau. [In Photos: See Another Egyptian Pyramid That Predates Giza]





This wooden box was discovered inside the burial chamber of a 3,800-year-old pyramid and is inscribed with hieroglyphs that may mention the name of the daughter of pharaoh Ameny Qemau. The box once held the remains of jars containing the internal organs of a mummy. Courtesy of Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities



Live Science showed a photo of the inscriptions to James Allen, an Egyptology professor at Brown University, and he deciphered them. "It's a box for canopic jars. The inscriptions are typical for such boxes in the Second Intermediate Period [which lasted from about 1640 B.C. to 1540 B.C.] and belong on the side [of the box] facing east," Allen wrote in an email. The top line reads, "Neith, extend your arms over the Duamutef who is in you," according to Allen.

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"Duamutef is the god associated with the canopic jar for the stomach," while "Neith is the goddess charged with protecting it [the jar]," Allen noted.



To the left of the top inscription, there is another inscription that runs vertically down the box. It reads, "Venerated with Neith, Kings daughter Hatshepset," Allen said. To the right of the top inscription there is another inscription that runs vertically down the box that reads "Venerated with Duamutef, King's daughter Hatshepset," Allen said, adding that, "I presume Hatshepset was a daughter of Ameny Qemau," and that she was buried in her father's pyramid.



The name Hatshepset "is similar to that of the later royal wife Hatshepsut, who served as co-pharaoh with Thutmose III," Allen said. The royal wife Hatshepsut reigned around 3,500 years ago, about three centuries after Ameny Qemau's reign.



Aidan Dodson, a research fellow at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, also examined a photo of the wooden box for Live Science. Dodson co-authored a 1998 paper on the artifacts from the Ameny Qemau pyramid discovered in 1957. "The canopic box definitely belongs to a king's daughter, but I'm having difficulty reading the name. It gives no indication of her parentage," he said. "The pyramid is not of a type appropriate to a princess. It must therefore have been built for a king, but then usurped for her burial."



The "presence of the Ameny Qemau text suggests that he may have usurped the pyramid built for his predecessor for the interment of one of his daughters, as there is no reason why he should have built two pyramids of his own."



A team with the Egyptian antiquities ministry is excavating the pyramid. In addition to the wooden box, the researchers announced that they had discovered the remains of a poorly preserved sarcophagus in the burial chamber. Excavations are ongoing, and new discoveries possibly await, the ministry said.

Original article on Live Science.

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Gabourey Sidibe arrives at Glamour Women of the Year 2016. (Photo: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)

If you mess with Gabourey Sidibe, she will (politely) call you out. On May 9, the Empire star penned a Lenny Letter about a recent experience at a Chanel store, for which the iconic brand has since sent its sincerest regret. Spoiler alert: It wasnt the best experience. In the post, the 34-year-old actress described being profiled at Chanel, either for being black or being fat  she wasnt sure which  and only helped after someone recognized that she was actually famous. (This happened once to Oprah at a fancy boutique in Switzerland too.)

I needed new eyeglasses. My friend has a really cute pair of frames from Chanel that Id been coveting, so I decided to try to buy a pair for myself at the Chanel store near my apartment, Sidibe explained before noting that her friend, Taraji P. Henson, had requested that she also pick her up a pair of sandals.

According to Sidibe, whose new book, This Is Just My Face, was just released, as soon as she walked through Chanels doors, A saleswoman and I locked eyes immediately. I said Hello before she did. She greeted me, but the look on her face told me that she thought I was lost. The unnamed saleswoman then informed Sidibe that they didnt actually sell glasses there, only sunglasses, and directed her to a discount eyeglass store across the street. As Julia Roberts famously once said, Big mistake.

ATTN: I will officially be pretending to be in a Mary J Blige video until 2017. Thank you for your patience. -Management A post shared by Gabby Sidibe ???????? (@gabby3shabby) on Nov 20, 2016 at 10:57am PST

Sidibe was poised about the situation, however, and recounted, I knew what she was doing. She had decided after a single look at me that I wasnt there to spend any money. Even though I was carrying a Chanel bag, she decided I wasnt a Chanel customer and so not worth her time and energy. The star added that this happens a lot. While she admitted that she did steal a few things here and there in her youth, the number of times shes been suspected versus the number of times she was guilty is far from even.

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It happens so much that Sidibe claimed, Honestly, if I walked out of every store where someone was rude to me, Id never have anything nice. She added, No matter how dressed up I get, Im never going to be able to dress up my skin color to look like what certain people perceive to be an actual customer. Depending on the store, I either look like a thief or a waste of time. There doesnt seem to be a middle ground between no attention and too much attention. (Coincidentally, Sidibes new memoir touches on these topics.)

I have been having the best time ever with #thisisjustmyface !! I've loved meeting fans and book lovers alike. It's also been so amazing to have so many interesting conversations with brilliant women about finding safety and joy in being exactly who we are. #BooksYo Dress by @universalstandard A post shared by Gabby Sidibe ???????? (@gabby3shabby) on May 9, 2017 at 6:29pm PDT

The Oscar nominee noted, To be fair, I dont know why that saleswoman didnt want to help me. I suspect its because Im black, but it could also be because Im fat. Maybe my whole life, every time I thought someone was being racist, they were actually mistreating me because Im fat. That sucks too. Thats not OK. Ive felt unwelcome in many stores throughout my life, but I just kind of deal with it.

Ultimately, another sales associate recognized the star and stepped in to redirect the tone of the encounter, but the damage was done. Sidibe did end up making her purchases and provided her email address so she could later fill out a customer survey about her experience. In the end, however, she couldnt bring herself to threaten the saleswomans career and penned a Lenny Letter instead  which soon crossed the desk of the PR department at Chanel.

Chanel expresses our sincerest regret for the boutique customer service experience that Ms. Sidibe mentioned in this essay. We are sorry that she felt unwelcome and offended, the brands statement began. We took her words very seriously and immediately investigated to understand what happened, knowing that this is absolutely not in line with the high standards that Chanel wishes to provide to our customers. The letter ended by noting that the brand hopes Sidibe will choose to come back to a Chanel boutique and experience the real Chanel customer experience.

In other words, please keep spending your money at our stores.





Read more from Yahoo Celebrity:
Beijing (AFP) - Beijing and Washington announced Friday an agreement giving US beef, natural gas and certain financial services access to China's massive market in a deal highlighting the warm ties nurtured by their presidents.

The US in exchange will allow cooked Chinese poultry to enter US markets.

The agreement marked one of the first concrete results of trade discussions that began a month ago, when Chinese President Xi Jinping and Donald Trump launched a 100-day action plan on economic cooperation during their meeting at the US leader's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Trump lashed out at Beijing throughout his presidential campaign, vowing to crack down on trade policies that he deemed hurt American workers.

But relations between the two governments have been friendlier than expected since his inauguration, and the president trumpeted the new deal Friday on twitter.

"China just agreed that the U.S. will be allowed to sell beef, and other major products, into China once again. This is REAL news!" Trump said.

The US administration was "excited" about Washington's trade policies, said US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin as he arrived for a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Italy.

"I think we're very happy with how we're proceeding with the Chinese," he added.

US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told reporters at the White House that the deal will help reduce the US trade deficit with China, which reached nearly $350 billion last year.

"This was pretty much a herculean accomplishment to get this done," Ross said, according to Bloomberg News.

"This is more than has been done in the whole history of US-China relations on trade," Ross said.

- 'Paltry benefits' -

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the two countries "enjoy very close economic cooperation".

"The nature of this relationship is mutually beneficial. The two sides decided to press ahead with this economic plan and the fact that much progress has been made in a short amount of time shows... we can establish more cooperation for the joint benefit of the people," he said.

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During last year's campaign, Trump had threatened to impose trade tariffs and label Beijing a currency manipulator, neither of which he has done.

But his tone changed after he took office and met with Xi in April, calling the Chinese leader a "good man" who was trying to help Trump rein in North Korea.

But a report by Capital Economics consultancy saw "paltry trade benefits" from the deal because it would amount to "just a few billion dollars".

The agreement "won't make any meaningful difference to the bilateral trade imbalance, which could still trigger a flare-up of tensions between the two sides in the future," it said.

- Ending beef ban -

Under the agreement announced by both nations, China will authorise US beef imports by July 16 while the United States will lift barriers on Chinese cooked poultry exports "as soon as possible".

China banned US beef following a case of mad cow disease in the United States in 2003.

Beijing had announced an end to a 14-year embargo on American beef last year, but the decision has yet to be implemented.

Regaining access to China, the world's most populous country with 1.4 billion people, has been a key goal of American cattle farmers.

"It's impossible to overstate how beneficial this will be for America's cattle producers, and the Trump Administration deserves a lot of credit for getting this achieved," National Cattlemen's Beef Association president Craig Uden said in a statement.

The deal will also allow Chinese companies to buy US liquified natural gas.

"This will let China diversify, somewhat, their sources of supply and will provide a huge export market for American LNG producers," Ross said.

China will also give permission to wholly foreign-owned financial services firms to provide credit-rating services in the Asian giant.

And it will give "full and prompt market access" to US-owned suppliers of electronic payment services, including credit and debit card transactions -- something China had already said it would do in 2015 after losing a case at the World Trade Organisation.

The joint statement said the United States would send a delegation to China's One Belt, One Road summit -- Xi's signature project -- on Sunday and Monday.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's President Xi Jinping initiated the ambitious "Belt and Road" development plan but it has become a world plan not tied to his presidency, the Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday, days before Xi hosts a global forum on the initiative. The forum in Beijing next week will draw heads of state to discuss Xi's plan to expand trade links between Asia, Africa and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment. Representatives from more than 100 countries will attend China's biggest diplomatic event of the year, though only one leader from the Group of Seven (G7) industrialized nations, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, is set to join. China says between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9 billion along inland and maritime corridors of the plan, also known as the New Silk Road. But some of the projects could be in development for years. Judging by recent precedent in China's political system, Xi is slated to step down from the presidency in early 2023 at the end of his second five-year term. Asked what guarantee the world had that the initiative would go on after Xi's second term, Vice Minister of Commerce Qian Keming told a news briefing that its vitality lay in countries' hopes for development and not in the idea of "who proposed it or what term in office there is later". "The Belt and Road initiative was proposed by President Xi in 2013, but this initiative is not an individual proposal, or merely left at a proposal level. Rather it is an initiative that has been widely received by the whole world. It is jointly owned by everyone," Qian said. China has repeatedly rebuffed concern that the plan is part of a grand strategy to expand its economic interests for selfish gain and to seek global dominance, saying that anyone can join the plan to boost common prosperity. Xi has used the initiative to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism. However, the government has faced criticism from foreign business groups and governments alike, who say it has done little to remove discriminatory policies and market barriers that favor Chinese companies. Foreign business groups have questioned whether multinational companies would be able to compete with Chinese firms through the plan in transparent bidding processes. Zhang Xingfu, an official from the Commerce Ministry's cooperation department, played down such concerns. "Chinese enterprises conducting investment and cooperative business in countries along the Belt and Road initiative will ... actively participate in project bidding, and cooperate and compete with international enterprises in the same industries on the same platform," Zhang said. (Reporting by Michael Martina; Editing by Robert Birsel)
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Friday he doesnt know whether evidence exists of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the presidential election, contradicting President Trumps tweeted claim that Clapper and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt said there is no collusion.

I dont know if there was collusion or not, Clapper said in an interview on MSNBC. I dont know if theres evidence of collusion or not, nor should I have.

Earlier Friday, Trump tweeted, When James Clapper himself, and virtually everybody else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?

When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Trumps tweet was evidently prompted by Clappers testimony to a Senate judiciary subcommittee this week regarding Russias attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election. During questioning, Clapper insisted that he was not aware of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. During a sit-down with journalists from Time magazine this week, Trump played them clips of Clappers testimony.

He was choking on that, Trump said then. Is there any record at all of collusion? He was head of the whole thing. He said no. Thats a big statement.

Actually, Clapper explained on MSNBC that in his role as head of the U.S. intelligence community, it was standard practice that he would not have been informed about the existence of an FBI investigation if it was the bureaus judgment that the investigation may evolve from a counterintelligence probe to a criminal one.

The former intelligence chief also dismissed Trumps assertion that the Russia investigation is fake news, and indirectly issued some advice to the White House to cooperate with the inquiry.

What needs to happen here is to clear this cloud, the cloud thats hanging over the administration, over the president, over the White House, and it would be in everyones best interest to get to the bottom of this.




It looks as though even as I was writing about President Donald Trumps bizarrely gratuitous swipe at Stephen Colbert during an interview with Time magazine yesterday, Colbert and his staff were busy writing as well: lots of jokes about Trumps attack, along with a call to the President to resign. Colbert came onto the Late Show stage on Thursday night and put Trumps quotes to Time on the screen, including these words: You see a no-talent guy like Colbert, says the President. Theres nothing funny about what he says. And what he says is filthy. And you have kids watching By the way they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better. But his show was dying. Ive done his show But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high  highest rating. The highest rating hes ever had.

Once the audience had beheld this barrage of halting syntax, Colbert paused to clap his hands and cackle maliciously, like an evil baby. He was relishing the moment: Ive been trying for a year to get you to say my name! he crowed. Colbert went on: There are many things you dont understand, Mr. President, but I didnt think show business was one of them. As if to a child, Colbert explained to Trump that this is what comedians do  needle people in power. As to the accusation of filthy language, Colbert conceded, I do occasionally use adult language, and I do it in public, not in the privacy of an Access Hollywood bus.

Then Colbert went in for the kill. Youre right, making jokes about you has been good for ratings. Its almost as if the majority of Americans didnt want you to be President If you want to take me down, theres an obvious way: Resign.

Colberts suggestion is one that has been floating around the edges of current analyses of Trumps firing of FBI chief James Comey. By introducing the subject of resignation into the bloodstream of late-night comedy, he may be infecting his medium with a new strain of a virus that might spread. For now, rest assured that Colbert seems to be in positively glowing health in direct proportion to the more negative the President goes with him.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.

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Donald Trump took to his favorite social media platform early Friday morning to vent his frustration at some of the current events his name has been attached to.

Read: Trump Calls Comey 'a Showboat' in First Interview Since Firing Former FBI Director

Calling himself a very active president with lots of things happening, he said the fake media is working overtime today and threatened to cancel all future press briefings.

The Fake Media is working overtime today!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Trump also slammed former FBI Director James Comey, whom he fired earlier this week.

Sources close to Comey told The New York Times that the president asked the former FBI director for a pledge of loyalty during a dinner at the White House. Comey declined, telling Trump he would be "honest" with the president.

In an extraordinary tweet, Trump warned: "James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

The president ripped Comey Thursday while speaking with NBC News anchor Lester Holt in the White House.

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He is a showboat, he is a grandstander, he said of the ousted former bureau boss. The FBI has been in great turmoil  you know that, I know that, everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was virtual turmoil  less than a year ago. It hasnt recovered from that.

Read: Sean Spicer in the Hot Seat as Trump Fumes Over Comey Backlash: Report

He was also asked about his letter firing Comey in which he wrote, I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.

"I had a dinner with him, he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on," Trump said. "A dinner was arranged  I think he asked for the dinner. He said it once at dinner, and then he said it twice during phone calls."

Watch: Putin Comments on Comey Firing in Full Hockey Gear: 'We Have Nothing to Do With That'

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Conrad Hilton at a party of MCM Flagship Store on March 23, 2016, in Hong Kong. (Photo: VCG/VCG via Getty Images)

Conrad Hilton appeared in court on Wednesday to be arraigned for his May 6 arrest in the Hollywood Hills  but Hiltons bizarre behavior led the judge to delay the arraignment and send the 23-year-old to receive psychiatric care instead. Hilton was arrested last Saturday when he allegedly violated ex-girlfriend Hunter Salomons restraining order and stole her fathers Bentley. He had been housed in an L.A. county jail since his arrest.

Hilton arrived in court on Wednesday sporting an outfit designed to prevent self-harm and appeared to be extremely agitated. As the judge explains the terms of his release namely, that if he leaves the clinic before his new June 29 court date, he will be taken back into custody  the hotel heir angrily mumbles to himself. Though his attorney, celebrity lawyer Robert Shapiro, does his best to block his client from view, video clearly shows Hilton acting very strangely.

At one point, Hilton even winks directly at a camera that is filming him and gives a little smile.

At one point, the judge asks Hilton a question directly. Shapiro turns around and says something to Hilton (probably directions on what to say), and Hilton replies, Yes, your honor. The rest of the time the heir is seen rolling his eyes and making general facial expressions of disgust.

Socialites Conrad Hilton, Paris Hilton, Kathy Hilton, and Rick Hilton at the 35th Annual Peoples Choice Awards after-party in 2009. (Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for PCA)

The judge released Hilton on $90,000 bail into the custody of his father, Rick Hilton, and his wife, Kathy. They were both in the courtroom, along with their other son, Barron. (Conrads older sister Paris was not present.) Hilton also received two more bail amounts Thursday  for $10,000 and $40,000  tied to his pending misdemeanor cases with the city attorney.

This is hardly the socialites first run-in with the law. In 2015 he also agreed to plead guilty to assaulting two flight attendants (during a rant in which he allegedly called other passengers peasants) on a July 2014 flight from London to Los Angeles. Later in 2015 he also turned himself in to police for another 2014 incident  this one related to a high-speed car chase that ended when he crashed his BMW and had to be extracted from the vehicle by firefighters.

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Hilton is now heading to the Menninger Clinic in Houston.





Read more from Yahoo Celebrity:
A look by Sylvie Rood, graduating student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Roods design was featured at the schools annual Future of Fashion runway show. (Photo: Slaven Vlasic, Getty Images)

At a recent student showcase at New York Citys Fashion Institute of Technology  which counts Calvin Klein and Nanette Lepore as alumni  the runway looks were far from amateurish. Many, in fact, were on the frontier of fashions latest trends.

Take, for example, one by Sylvie Rood, a senior specializing in sportswear who will graduate this year. At the May 8 Future of Fashion Runway Show, Rood presented a charcoal-color wool coat with neon detailing that was reminiscent of lingerie, including both underwire and panty outlines. The design was inspired by surrealist artist Rene Magritte, Rood says, and was meant to be a vehicle for female empowerment.

Photo: Getty Images

I hope that in this look a woman truly feels that she is owning her sexuality and embracing her curves, Rood tells Yahoo Style in an email. There are other aspects of the coat that I believe hold much more symbolic meaning, such as the two intertwining female figures on the back of the coat. Here, there are two torsos but only one set of legs. I think that in this day and age, all people need to unite and come together and especially as women we need to become one and use our voice to create change.

Other designers have picked up on the underwire-as-outerwire trend too. Bella Hadid was recently photographed wearing an Orseund Iris sweater, created by the young brands designer, Alana Johnson. Johnsons work has become incredibly popular with the Instagram fashion set, with her structured corset tops seen on Influencers like Leandra Medine and Emily Ratajkowski.

As a woman, I personally believe in empowering others, and I believe from the feedback I have received from my customers, they do feel more confident in my clothing, Johnson tells Yahoo Style (see her initial prototype here). I love the subtle detail of accentuating the bust without sexualizing the female body.

Bella Hadid photographed wearing an Orseund Iris knit top, featuring the popular underwire-as-outerwire trend. (Photo: Getty Images)

If statement T-shirts were winters sartorial feminist statement of choice, the underwire-as-outerwire look must be the latest iteration, moving beyond the corset belt and top trend that emerged over the last year (and may be an evolution of the social media waist-trainer craze of 2014). According to Polyvore, searches for corset belts have skyrocketed 1,033 percent since November 2015.

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Now we have the off-the-shoulder Orseund Iris knit; the Sylvie Rood coat; the Norma Kamali underwire dress; the Frolov hook-and-eye corset top.

For all the talk of underwire and corsets, the trend is remarkably freeing.

Read more from Yahoo Style + Beauty:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.

Alexandra Mondalek is a writer for Yahoo Style + Beauty. Follow her on Twitter @amondalek.
Following a meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in which only Russian press was allowed to attend, several former intelligence officials have raised the possibility that surveillance equipment may have been smuggled into the White House.

The possibility a Russian bug may have made its way into the White House with the Russian media member was raised by former Deputy CIA Director David S. Cohen, who was asked on Twitter if it was a good idea to let a Russian government photographer and their equipment into the Oval Office. Cohen responded to the question by saying, No, it was not.

Read: Who Is US Spying On? Russian Ambassador, Flynn Wiretapped, Moscow's Top Diplomat Claims

The photographer who accompanied the Russian diplomats was the official photographer for Lavrov, but also a journalist for Russian state-owned media outlet Tass.

While it may seem brazen for a foreign nation to sneak surveillance equipment into the offices of another nations highest political officials, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Vice President James Lewis told International Business Times such surveillance efforts are common.

This is standard practice. Lots of countries do it, said Lewis, a former officer at the Department of State and Department of Commerce.

Yolonda Smith, the director of Product Management at cybersecurity firm Pwnie Express, told IBT with the accessibility of internet-connected devices including smartphones, a foreign actor wouldnt have to smuggle or hide listening devices to spy. She said a temporary bug is definitely in the realm of the possible.

Read: Russian Spying: U.S. Officials Concerned Kaspersky Lab May Be Compromised By Russian Government

Lewis described the devices that could be used to bug an office as pretty small and said they can easily be stuck under a table like a piece of gum. The devices have technical limitations, including signal range and battery life, but can be effective in providing an ear in areas where potentially sensitive conversations take place.

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Smith said that even relatively simple tools like pin and button cameras can collect video and audio, and many include cellular and Wi-Fi radios that can instantly send the feedback over the internet to a file server or website.

Jayson Street, an information security ranger at Pwnie Express, told IBT spy equipment is relatively easy to afford and conceal. You can find a hidden camera pin on eBay for under $50, he said. If you have a budget of hundreds of thousands, can you imagine what kind of things you can find?

Street even suggested the camera used by the Russian photographer could be used for more than filming and photography. It could be wired to look for thermal or infrared signals as well, which would be able to help assess what is going on behind those wood panels, he said, though he noted its "a very rare occurrence for a camera of possible or questionable origin to have that kind of access to the Oval Office.

He suggested an actor may want to use a secondary piece of equipment, such as a camera attachment, to house spying equipment. Street said a battery case or lighting attachment could be equipped with a Pineapple device  a penetration tool that can be used to target insecure wireless connections.

I would primarily focus on smart TV's in the area with open Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections, Street said. But, printers with wireless interfaces would also be good targets.

Bugs have been discovered at a number of U.S. agencies, Lewis said, and have originated from a number of nations, not just Russia. Lewis said it is advisable to always do a sweep after a meeting in any place where you let the Russians, the Chinese or a few other friends pay a visit.

The White House employs Technical Surveillance Countermeasures Offices to conduct regular bug sweeps, Smith said, but noted those sweeps are point in time assessments  they may prevent long-term spying efforts, but would not be able to pre-emptively stop a short-term bug.

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The Justice Department official whose recommendation has been cast as the main reason why President Donald Trump decided to fire FBI director James Comey, reportedly threatened to resign.

According to one report, Mr Trump had long questioned Mr Comeys loyalty and judgment, and was unhappy by what he viewed as the directors lack of action on leaks from within the federal government. Mr Trump officially decided to dismiss Mr Comey based on comments from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to documents released by the White House.

In a memo to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Mr Rosenstein said he could not defend Mr Comeys refusal to accept the nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken in the way he handled an investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

Read more

Comey firing 'worse than Watergate', says former White House lawyer

But the Washington Post said Mr Rosenstein was deeply upset about taking the blame for the president's decision and threatened to quit. ABC News also reported that Mr Rosenstein was on the verge of resigning, upset that the White House had pinned him as the reason for the Comey firing.

On Capitol Hill, Vice President Mike Pence said that when Mr Rosenstein brought the recommendation to the president that the director of the FBI should be removed, President Trump provided the kind of strong and decisive leadership the American people have become to be accustomed from him.

Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said during a White House press briefing that Mr Trump had been contemplating firing Mr Comey for awhile.

Mr Comey, an Obama administration appointee, was also leading a probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election and alleged links between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

Democrats, as well as few Republicans, have criticised the abrupt firing, saying they are troubled by the reasoning and timing of Mr Comeys termination.

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On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell noted that Democrats had repeatedly condemned Mr Comey in the past, even calling for his removal. He pointed out that current Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer said last year that Mr Comeys handling of the email investigation appeared to be an appalling act, one that he said goes against their tradition of prosecutors at every level of government.

Its also clear what my Democratic colleagues think of the man who evaluated Mr Comeys professional conduct and concluded that the bureau needed a change in leadership, Mr Connell said. The Democratic leader just a few weeks ago praised Mr Rosenstein for his independence and said he had developed a reputation for integrity.

The Senate voted 94-6 to confirm Mr Rosenstein as deputy attorney general in April.

Mr McConnell said the Democrats are complaining about the removal of an FBI Director who they themselves criticised. That removal being done by a man, Rod Rosenstein, whom they repeatedly praised. Mr Rosenstein recommended Mr Comeys removal for many of the very reasons that they consistently complained about.
Donald Trump has issued an astonishing apparent threat to James Comey, implying recordings of the pair's conversations could be released if the FBI director he fired "starts leaking to the press".

The last in a series of early-morning tweets, the President said: "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

The tweets immediately drew comparisons to former President Richard Nixon, who secretly taped all meetings in his Oval Office before he was impeached in 1974.

Read more

Trump says he fired Comey because 'the Russia-Trump thing is made-up'

Mr Trump's comments seemed motivated by recent reports of a post-inauguration meeting with Mr Comey, in which Mr Trump is said to have demanded his FBI director's loyalty. Mr Comey is said to have declined.

Associates of Mr Comey said they felt comfortable revealing the details of the dinner meeting to The New York Times now that Mr Comey had been fired. Rank-and-file members of the FBI are reported to be upset by the unexpected dismissal.

Mr Trump, in his first interview after the firing, described the dinner meeting differently. The president told NBC's Lester Holt that Mr Comey used the meeting to request to keep his job as FBI director  a 10-year appointment of which he had served four years. Mr Trump said Mr Comey also reassured him during that meeting that he was not under investigation by the FBI.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Trump would "never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people."

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

The online tirade suggests the leader has become increasingly agitated by the fallout from his controversial dismissal of Mr Comey, who had been overseeing the FBI's investigation into Russian collusion with his campaign team during his election.

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The White House maintains that Mr Comey was fired because of his improper handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons private email server. Leaks from inside the White House and FBI - and public contradictions from the White House itself  have cast doubt on this narrative.

Mr Trump's tweets followed previous posts in which he complained about what he described as "fake news", before making an unprecedented threat to cancel all future White House press briefings and only issue written statements.

Mr Trump followed his apparent warning to Mr Comey with another tweet referring to former national intelligence chief, James Clapper.

"When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" he said.
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.

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

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:

trump-russia-james-comey.jpg

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.

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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.

sally-yates-0.jpg

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.

preet-attorney-0.jpg

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.
Donald Trump has said that he "was going to fire" former FBI Director James Comey regardless of input from the Department of Justice  contradicting claims from his own White House staff.

"Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey," Mr Trump, said in an interview that marked the president's most extensive comments since the firing of the former FBI Director, whom he referred to as a "showboat" and a "grandstander".

"The FBI has been in turmoil, Mr Trump claimed. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that.

BREAKING: I was going to fire Comey anyway, Pres. Trump tells @LesterHoltNBC in exclusive interview at White House https://t.co/MAmo1PE1RL  NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) May 11, 2017

The comments, in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, departed from the White House line: that a meeting with the Justice Department convinced Mr Trump to dismiss Mr Comey. Deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had claimed that advice and letters from two Justice Department officials swayed Mr Trump's hand.

I think also having a letter like the one he received and having that conversation that outlined the basic, just, atrocities in circumventing the chain of command in the Department of Justice ... When he saw that, he had to speak up on that action, and I think that was the final catalyst," Ms Huckabee Sanders said earlier this week.

Read more

Acting FBI Director refuses to comment on what Comey told Trump

The letters, from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, faulted Mr Comey for his handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server. In his letter, Mr Rosenstein said he "cannot defend" Mr Comey's handling of the situation, citing a "nearly universal judgment that he was mistaken."

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In his dismissal letter to Mr Comey, the president said he had "accepted the recommendation" of Mr Rosenstein and Mr Sessions. A timeline of the decision compiled by the White House said Mr Trump was "strongly inclined" to dismiss Mr Comey before the Justice Department meeting, but not that he had already made the decision.

In the interview on Wednesday, however, Mr Trump said he was going to fire Mr Comey "regardless of recomendation." He emphasised that the directors firing was my decision.

Trump said he planned to fire Comey regardless of DOJ reco. Question: did he mislead @VP @SarahHuckabee who said DOJ initiated Comey firing?  Glenn Thrush (@GlennThrush) May 11, 2017

Democrats  and some Republicans  have accused Mr Trump of making his decision first, and going to the Justice Department for a justification second. Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein called the Justice Department letters a political document used to justify a preordained outcome".

At a press conference on Wednesday, Ms Huckabee Sanders was asked whether Mr Trump had already decided to fire James Comey and asked the Justice Department to put together the rationale.

"No," she replied simply.
Donald Trump has admitted the FBI's investigation into alleged Russia ties among his associates was a factor in his firing of director James Comey.

At first, a Justice Department memo released by the White House suggested Mr Comey was fired for his poor handling of the bureaus investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server.

But the President told NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday night he had already decided to sack Mr Comey before his deputy attorney general recommended it, adding by way of explanation that "this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story".

Read more

Donald Trump tries to explain economics to 'The Economist'

Mr Trump, speaking about the Russia probe, also said Mr Comey was "the wrong man for that position" and "I want that thing to be absolutely done properly".

Mr Comey had been leading the investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the presidential election and claims of ties between Mr Trump's associates and the Kremlin.

He had also led the probe into the email practices of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who blamed him in part for her defeat.

Mr Trump told NBC: "When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.

"And the reason they should have won it is the electoral college is almost impossible for a Republican to win. Very hard. Because you start off at such a disadvantage. So everybody was thinking, they should have won the election. This was an excuse for having lost an election."

Asked whether he was "angry" with Mr Comey because of the Russia investigation, Mr Trump said: "I just want somebody that's competent. As far as I'm concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly."

He added: "Look, I want to find out if there was a problem with an election having to do with Russia. Or, by the way, anybody else. Any other country. And I want that to be so strong and so good. And I want it to happen. I also want to have a really competent, capable director. He's not. He's a showboat."

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Mr Trump reiterated his position that there was no collusion between his campaign and the Kremlin.

Mr Holt asked the President whether he had considered the "optics" of firing the man leading a probe into alleged Russia links the day before that country's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was due to meet him in the Oval Office.

Mr Trump said: "I never thought about it.It was set up uh a while ago and frankly, I could have waited but what difference does it make? I'm not looking for cosmetics. I'm looking to do a great job for the country."

The President also re-stated what he had told the outgoing FBI director in his termination letter  that Mr Comey had told him three times he was not personally under investigation.

He and Mr Comey "had a very nice dinner, and at that time he told me, You are not under investigation, which I knew anyway," he said in the NBC interview. "Then during a phone call he said it, and then during another phone call he said it. In one case I called him, and in once case he called me."

Mr Trump claimed Mr Comey asked to have dinner "because he wanted to stay on" as director. People close to the now-ex director denied this was the case in interviews with NBC.

During a White House briefing, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she did not view it as a conflict of interest that Mr Comey told the President he was not under an investigation at a meeting where the FBI director was also asking to remain head of the bureau.

In the NBC interview, Mr Trump also defended his decision to wait 18 days to fire former national security adviser Mike Flynn after he was warned over the general's contact with Russia's ambassador to the US. He said: "This man has served for many years, hes a general, Hes, in my opinion, a very good person.

"I believed itd be very unfair to hear from somebody we dont even know and immediately fire them."

That unknown person was acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was herself later fired for failing to defend and implement the first of Mr Trump's executive orders relating to a Muslim travel ban.
Billionaire activist investor Carl Icahn and President Trump. (Photos: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images, Alexander Shcherbak/Tass via Getty Images)

Experts in government accountability, including President George W. Bushs former White House ethics counsel, warn that billionaire investor Carl Icahns status as an unpaid White House adviser represents a serious conflict of interest and a possible violation of federal law.

In particular, they say Icahns company raised red flags with a successful bet on falling prices for biofuel credits that may be linked to his influence at the White House.

The story begins in December, when Donald Trumps transition team announced that his friend Icahn would serve as a special advisor to the President on regulatory reform. In that role, Icahn has urged Trump to make changes to the federal renewable fuel (better known as ethanol) standards that would benefit one of Icahns companies, CVR, which owns two oil refineries. The Trump administration leaked in February that it is actively considering the rule changes Icahn advocates, such as shifting the obligation to buy biofuel credits from the refiner to the companies that actually blend ethanol into gasoline. Freeing refineries of that burden would be a boon to their bottom lines. Thanks to Icahns influence in the White House and the possibility of such helpful policy changes, CVRs stock price has surged, benefitting Icahn, the majority stakeholder.

But a Reuters report last week added an even more confusing  and, good-government advocates say, improper  wrinkle. Thanks to the threat of Icahns desired regulatory changes, the value of tradable renewable fuel credits has taken a nosedive. And guess which company recently bet $50 million on shorting renewable fuel credits: Icahns CVR.

Trump administration opponents have taken notice: On Tuesday, eight Democratic senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, sent a letter to the heads of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency asking them to investigate Icahns potential market manipulation or insider trading.

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We are writing to request that your agencies investigate whether Carl Icahn violated insider trading laws, anti-market manipulation laws, or any other relevant laws based on his recent actions in the market for renewable fuel credits, the senators wrote. (The agencies have not yet responded to the senators and they have no legal obligation to do so.)

While the senators were careful to couch their concerns as being about merely potential misbehavior, government watchdogs that spoke to Yahoo News are unequivocally alarmed by the actions of Icahn and the Trump administration. As a special adviser, it is an enormous conflict of interest for Icahn to be moving the administration in a way that directly benefits him financially, says Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group. Financially self-interested parties cannot be put in charge of dictating regulatory policy.

Government ethics experts say that, as an unpaid but regular adviser, Icahn is what is called a Special Government Employee, who should either have to divest his holdings that could be affected by his work in the White House or resign his role.

I think hes got serious problems with ethics law and insider trading, says Richard Painter, a Trump critic who was the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration from 20052007 and now teaches law at the University of Minnesota. We went through this with Ivanka Trump: [The administration] said she was going to be a volunteer and not a federal employee. I said, This is ridiculous. She has a West Wing office, security clearance, shes an employee. With Icahn, its a little different because he has no office or security clearance. But if you give someone a title you give them what we call apparent authority.

Carl Icahn gives an interview on the Fox Business Network. (Photo: Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

A White House spokeswoman told Yahoo News in an email that Icahn does not have a title in the administration. But that is contradicted by the press release from December announcing his role on the official Trump transition website, GreatAgain.gov. It begins, President-elect Donald J. Trump today announced that Carl Icahn has agreed to serve as a special advisor to the President on issues relating to regulatory reform, and it goes on to quote Icahn saying, I am proud to serve President-elect Trump as a special advisor on regulatory reform. The average reader would likely infer that special advisor on regulatory reform is indeed Icahns title. CVR declined to comment, and Icahn Enterprises did not respond to multiple queries from Yahoo News.

The White House denies that there is anything improper about Icahns influence and downplays its significance, arguing that he is not a federal employee and therefore not subject to any ethics rules. Mr. Icahn will be speaking with the President solely in his individual capacity and will not be serving as a federal employee nor as a Special Government Employee and will not have any specific duties, a White House official, who communicated on the condition of anonymity when discussing personnel matters, emailed Yahoo News. He is simply a private citizen whose opinion the President respects and whom the President speaks with from time to time.

That statement also echoes a disclaimer in the original press release: Carl Icahn will be advising the President in his individual capacity and will not be serving as a federal employee or a Special Government Employee and will not have any specific duties.

But experts say that, even without a title, whether Icahn meets the criteria for a government employee is determined by how he interacts with the administration. Hes not just an outside adviser, says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan government accountability advocacy organization. He has been given the aura of the presidency, of the White House behind him. Its not like the president calling a banker in New York and getting advice on banking policy. [The banker] would not have the power and influence to go into the White House and EPA and lobby for policies. In that position, according to Wertheimer, its unethical for Icahn to promote policies that help his own business. Instead, he is supposed to advance the national interest, regardless of its impact on his own bank account.

To outside critics, the Icahn situation embodies the degradation of governance that Trump represents. This whole thing is unseemly, Wertheimer concluded. Its not the way government is supposed to run.

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Ben Adler is a journalist in New York. He is a former reporter for The Nation, Newsweek, and Politico and he has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic and The Washington Post, among other publications.

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Former Democratic Rep. Corrine Brown, who represented Florida for 25 years, was found guilty Thursday of taking money from charity donations that was meant to fund student scholarships. She was convicted in a Jacksonville, Florida, federal court, on 18 of a total of 22 charges against her, including lying on tax and financial disclosure forms.

CBS affiliate WJAX-TV in Jacksonville obtained a statement from FBI's Jacksonville division about the verdict, which said: "Former Congresswoman Brown took an oath year after year to serve others, but instead she exploited the needs of children and deceived her constituents to advance her own personal and political agendas.

We thank our law enforcement partners at the IRS-CI and U.S. Attorney's Office for their efforts to hold Brown and her associates accountable for their inexcusable actions, the statement read.

The charges were filed against her after accusations that she illegally transferred thousands of dollars from her charity into her own bank for lavish trips, shopping and parties.

Browns conviction came after an investigation into the charity One Door for Education Foundation Inc., which federal prosecutors said was set up to give scholarships to poor students. Instead, the money was unlawfully used by Brown and her associates.

Former Congresswoman Corrine Brown violated the public trust, the honor of her position and the integrity of the American system of government when she abused one of the most powerful positions in the nation for her own personal gain, Kenneth A. Blanco, the acting assistant attorney general, said in a statement, according to the New York Times.

Federal prosecutors alleged that Brown and her associates used the One Door for Education to cash in more than $800,000 between the years 2012 and 2016. Brown's conviction said the Virginia-based charity gave out only one scholarship for $1,200 to an unidentified person in Florida.

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Read: Congresswoman Who Secretly Visited Syria Blasts Trump's 'Short-Sighted' Airstrike

Brown served Florida in the United States House of Representatives from 1993 until 2017, but did not win in the 2016 primary race. She pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against her, including fraud. Her former chief of staff, Elias "Ronnie" Simmons, who was also the charity's president, pleaded guilty following the accusations about illegally using the charitys funds for their personal needs and he testified against Brown.

The former Congresswoman, however, denied the allegations and said she was left in the dark about what was going on with One Door's money, and blamed the theft on Simmons and her other staffers. She said she should have paid more attention and been involved with the dealings of her professional and personal finances.

On Thursday, Brown's attorney James Smith provided WJAX-TV a statement on her behalf which said:

I did not commit these crimes, and I intend to file a motion for a new trial, she said. This fight is not over, and as Im sure you know, I will continue to fight to clear my name and restore my reputation.

Reports said Brown would not be sent to prison immediately, but she is expected to be sentenced in about three months.

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Fatima (Portugal) (AFP) - Pope Francis called for harmony "among all people" Friday after arriving at Portugal's holy site of Fatima where he was greeted by thousands of pilgrims gathered to mark 100 years since child shepherds had visions of the Virgin Mary.

The Argentine pontiff flew into the central Portuguese town on board a helicopter, circling twice over a giant, 400,000-capacity, esplanade that faces the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima to enthusiastic cheering.

Disembarking in a nearby stadium, he set off in his "Popemobile" for a journey through town followed closely by hovering helicopters, ending up at the sanctuary where pilgrims from all over the world had been waiting eagerly for hours.

The giant esplanade fell silent while he prayed privately in the Chapel of the Apparitions, built on the very spot where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared six times between May and October 1917 to three impoverished, barely-literate children.

"I implore for concord among all people," he then said in Portuguese, in comments broadcast across the holy site.

Pilgrims from countries as varied as China, Venezuela and East Timor listened intently, some crying, the flags they had been waving enthusiastically just moments before standing motionless.

"In the joy of the Gospel, we will be the Church robed in white, the whiteness washed in the blood of the Lamb, blood that today too is shed in the wars tearing our world apart," he added.

- Candle-lit blessing -

"The pope is incredible -- the way he talks and brings so many people together. It's really moving," said Mariana Teixeira, a 20-year-old student from Lisbon as the pontiff stepped into the Popemobile again.

As night fell, the esplanade and neighbouring streets lit up with candles held by the faithful as the pope blessed the crowd.

Unity and peace were the day's themes in Fatima, where some Catholic faithful sought solace from the stress or violence of their daily lives.

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"We are going to pray to Fatima and Pope Francis so that they can intervene for a peaceful solution for Venezuela," said Jose Ornelas, a 59-year-old librarian who came all the way from Caracas, which along with other cities has been wracked by deadly anti-regime protests.

"We are living in a violent spiral with so much hate and so much helplessness."

- 'Miracle' boy -

Fatima has become a major holy site since the Virgin is said to have appeared in 1917 to Jacinta, seven, Francisco, nine, and their cousin Lucia, 10.

She apparently shared three major prophecies with them at a time marked by the ravages of World War I and persecution of the Church in a relatively new Portuguese republic.

These reportedly included a warning of a second war.

On Saturday -- the 100th anniversary of the first reported apparition -- Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco, who have officially been credited with two miracles.

- Tears and joy -

Many pilgrims trekked to Fatima for days on foot -- some finishing the last few metres on their knees.

And while the atmosphere was one of joy, emotions ran high and difficult memories bubbled to the surface.

Dung Lu, a refugee from Vietnam living in Denmark, said she and her mother fled their country in the late 1980s, partly because they were unable to practise their religion under the communist regime.

With tears in her eyes, she remembered praying to the Virgin Mary when she was still in Vietnam and her father was jailed after the war and then fled the country, leaving them behind. They were later reunited.

Standing nearby, her young daughter interrupted her, asking why she was crying.

"It's difficult to tell them how hard it was. They (were) born in freedom," she said.

Pope Francis is the fourth pontiff to make a pilgrimage to Fatima in half a century.

Arguably the most devoted was the late Pope John Paul II, who attributed his narrow escape from an assassination attempt at St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981 -- the anniversary of the first reported apparition -- to the intervention of the Virgin Mary.
Fatima (Portugal) (AFP) - Thousands of police on alert, border controls tightened, anti-drone measures: Portugal is taking no chances with security ahead of a pilgrimage by Pope Francis to the famous shrine of Fatima.

The head of Roman Catholic Church will arrive on Friday at the site where 100 years ago apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported by two child shepherds who the pope will canonise as saints.

Pilgrims began arriving Thursday for the event, going through security controls at various access points to the giant esplanade facing the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima.

The security operation which runs through Sunday is deploying some 6,000 members of security and emergency services, the government said, while adding the security alert level remains at "moderate".

While Portugal has not been a target in the wave of attacks by extremists in Europe, the country has special reason for concern over the pontiff.

On May 12, 1982, there was an attempted attack on then pope John Paul II on his pilgrimage to Fatima by a fundamentalist Spanish priest armed with a bayonet.

Border controls have been reinstated in the EU country through the weekend and airspace over the area is closed. Measures for jamming electronic signals have been established to prevent any flights of drones.

Other popes have been drawn to the Fatima shrine, including Benedict XVI in 2010 who was met there by half a million people.

More than a million pilgrims are expected to come see Pope Francis and to mark the centenary of the apparitions in a country that is 89 percent Catholic.

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.

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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.

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FBI decision to withhold records suggests Trumps provocative election-year comments are being seen as relevant to its own ongoing investigation

I will tell you this, Russia: If youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump said in July. Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

The US justice department is refusing to disclose FBI documents relating to Donald Trumps highly contentious election year call on Russia to hack Hillary Clintons emails.

Senior DoJ officials have declined to release the documents on grounds that such disclosure could interfere with enforcement proceedings. In a filing to a federal court in Washington DC, the DoJ states that because of the existence of an active, ongoing investigation, the FBI anticipates that it will  withhold all records.

The statement suggests that Trumps provocative comment last July is being seen by the FBI as relevant to its own ongoing investigation.

In March, the then director of the FBI, James Comey, confirmed the existence of that investigation in a congressional hearing. On Tuesday, Comey was summarily sacked by Trump in a move that sent shockwaves across the capital and provoked widespread calls for an independent inquiry into allegations of collusion between Russia and Trump associates.

In his dismissal letter to Comey, Trump wrote: I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation. But the FBIs refusal to hand over the documents implies that it believes Trumps call on Russia to hack Hillary Clintons emails was at least relevant to their ongoing inquiries.

The then Republican presidential candidate ignited an instant uproar when he made his controversial comment at a press conference in Florida on 27 July. By that time Russia had already been accused by US officials of hacking Democratic National Committee emails in a bid to sway the election.

I will tell you this, Russia: if youre listening, I hope youre able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, Trump said, referring to a stash of emails that Clinton had deleted from her personal server dating from her time as US secretary of state.

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Later that day, the Republican candidate posted a similarly incendiary remark on Twitter: If Russia or any other country or person has Hillary Clintons 33,000 illegally deleted emails, perhaps they should share them with the FBI!

The FBIs refusal to disclose documents relating to Trumps Russia hacking invitation was made in response to a freedom of information lawsuit lodged by Ryan Shapiro of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard and the journalist Jason Leopold. They jointly submitted a Foia request last August requesting from the FBI disclosure of any and all records, including investigative records, mentioning or referring to Donald Trumps statement on 27 July 2016.

The FBI initially declined either to confirm or deny the existence of any documents on this matter, but later reversed its position, in effect admitting that records relating to Trumps provocative remark were in the agencys possession.

A joint status report, prepared by counsel for both the defendants and the plaintiffs in the freedom of information case, said: Although initial searches began only as recently as the week of March 20, 2017, and definitive information is not yet available, the FBI expects that it possesses at least some records that are responsive to Plaintiffs Russia Request and subject to FOIA.

Shapiro said: The DoJ/FBIs latest filing makes plain that Donald Trumps campaign trail call for Russian hacking of Secretary Clintons emails is of investigative interest to the FBI. He added: In light of Trumps sudden termination of Director Comey, this fact should significantly reinforce the widespread perception that the president of the United States is unabashedly seeking to cover up his and his associates crimes.


Abu Zubaydah to waive immunity to speak publicly about his torture for the first time, at a hearing as a precursor to the trial of men accused of the 9/11 attacks

Abu Zubaydah was not charged by the US despite being held captive for 15 years at Guantanamo Bay. Photograph: Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images

Abu Zubaydah, the Guantanamo detainee who endured some of the most brutal CIA interrogation techniques in the post-9/11 era including waterboarding, has waived his immunity in order to testify at an upcoming hearing at which he will seek to expose the unspeakable torture of an innocent man.

Zubaydah is set to testify at a pre-trial hearing of the Guantanamo war court that is scheduled to open on 19 May as a precursor to the long-delayed military trial of the five men accused of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Previous attempts to hear from the prisoner were frustrated by a legal dispute over whether his testimony could be later used to incriminate him at his own military trial.

Abu Zubaydah. Photograph: MCT/Getty Images

But Zubaydah has now agreed to waive all immunity and has promised, through his lawyer, to give a fiery account to the Guantanamo court of his treatment at the hands of CIA agents who waterboarded him at least 83 times at a secret black site following his capture in Pakistan in 2002. Should the hearing go ahead next week, it would mark the first time that Zubaydah has publicly talked about his torture by the US government.

Unlike the CIA, [Zubaydah] has nothing to fear from the truth, the detainees leading civilian lawyer, Mark Denbeaux, writes in a letter to the department of defense. Abu Zubaydah will take the stand, unafraid of the truth that will emerge, confident that the world will come to know that he has committed no crimes and that the United States has no basis to fear him and no justification to hold him for 15 years, much less to subject him to the torture that the world has so roundly condemned.

Zubaydah has been called to testify next week at the military commission war court in Guantanamo over the treatment of fellow captive Ramzi bin al-Shibh, one of five detainees charged with committing the 9/11 attacks. Al-Shibh has long complained that he is subjected to psychological torture at Camp 7, including the beaming of sounds and vibrations into his cell to disturb his sleep.

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Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian, has indicated that he is prepared to discuss in detail the conditions that he personally endured at Camp 7. He is prepared to testify to all issues, including the sights, smells, sounds and other conditions within Camp 7, Denbeaux writes.

But the prisoner also wants to address the US governments failure to charge him after holding him captive for 15 years. He claims that that the US government is fearful that if it did so it would expose the creation and extent of Americas torture program.

The letter says: The single most important reason for Abu Zubaydah to waive immunity and to testify is to challenge the military commission prosecutor to charge him or to confess that there is no basis for doing so and finally release him.



Zubaydah lost an eye while being held captive by the CIA in Thailand, at a time when he underwent extreme enhanced interrogation techniques that have been denounced as torture. His interrogators pushed him so hard, including sleep deprivation and physical abuse, that at one point they feared he might die, and sent a cable instructing CIA bosses that if he died in the course of an interrogation he should be cremated immediately.

In a separate cable to CIA headquarters, interrogators said that if he survived the experience they should be protected from recriminations by ensuring that he was in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.

The CIA claimed that Zubaydah was the third highest-ranking member of al-Qaida and that he had been involved in every major terrorist operation carried out by al-Qaida. But those descriptions of him were later debunked, and he was found to have been a relatively lowly operative.

Zubaydahs lawyer accuses the CIA of deliberately lying over the detainees significance as a captive. The information provided by the CIA used to justify torturing him was worse than false  it was non-existent.

Zubaydah, whose full name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammad Husayn, is legally represented by Denbeaux along with a fellow civilian lawyer, Charles Church, and the lead military commission lawyer, Commander Pat Flor.

Denbeaux told the Guardian that the full extent of the torture used against his client would only become clear when charges were brought against Zubaydah and a trial held. He said: My endless goal is to force the US to bring charges against him so that he can be tried and the truths will become obvious. It is clear that the refusal to charge him is to protect the CIA  thereby making the military commission prosecutor complicit in the CIA cover up.
Irene Nkosi educating women in Pretoria, South Africa, as part of her job with Mother2Mother. (Photo: Courtesy of m2m)

When Irene Nkosi of South Africa was just 15 years old, she gave birth for the first time. But it was not the young womans first hardship she had already been raped, contracted HIV, and been largely shunned in her community because of it  and it would not be her last. Soon she would give birth a second time, to a daughter, but the child would die before reaching her first birthday.

Her name was Mbali. It means flower, Nkosi, 32, told Yahoo Beauty on a recent morning in New York City. She was beautiful.

Nkosi had just spoken onstage at the annual U.N.s Mom + SocialGood Summit about her quietly revolutionary job with Mothers2Mothers (m2m) in her home city of Victoria. Through its determined army of 1,700 Mentor Mothers like Nkosi, who lend sister-like support to pregnant women and educate them about HIV, m2m aims to end the transmission of mom-to-baby pediatric AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa  where 300 infants are born with HIV each day, compared with the 200 per year in the United States.

Baby Mbali was not HIV-positive  nor is her older sister  but those who knew Nkosis status assumed that both children were. And they held that perceived status against the children  particularly Mbali, who died at just 8 months old as the result of her neglect at daycare.

Irene Nkosi, left, and Robin Smalley, both of Mothers2Mothers, which aims to end the transmission of pediatric AIDS. (Photo: PMK)

That morning she was bubbly, laughing, but later on the principal came to me and said my daughter was not well, Nkosi recalls. When she met her daughter and a staffer at a medical clinic, she was told her daughter was sleeping. But she was not moving, and when I looked at her, I could see her lips had turned blue, she says. The adult who had taken her in for care did not treat the situation as an emergency, choosing instead to stand in a long queue.

But when Nkosi held her daughter, she felt that she was cold and lifeless. The doctor, she recalls, told her, The child died eight hours ago. It turns out that shed been lying underneath a blanket and had suffocated to death, as everyone was afraid to touch her because of fears that she was HIV-positive.

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It was a persistent stigma that had ultimately killed Mbali  something confirmed when the head of the daycare showed up at Nkosis home to offer condolences but instead delivered harsh words. I remember she came to me and said to me, You knew you were HIV-positive. Why were you bringing the child to daycare? Did you want to infect other children? I felt I want to beat this woman up because of what she said, Nkosi says. But my mom said, Forgive them. God will answer for you.'

It was not long, though, before Nkosi started to answer for herself, through her work as a mentoring mother at m2m  an opportunity she found out about during a prenatal checkup when she was still pregnant with Mbali, feeling suicidal because of the stigma against her. She was incredulous that anyone would value an HIV-positive woman, let alone hire her for a job, but she applied and began a training program, soaking up the knowledge about transmission and slowly regaining her life and sense of worth.

Nkosi and a fellow Mentor Mother in South Africa. (Photo: Courtesy of m2m)

Mothers2mothers was a lifesaver for me, because they came through while I was in a tough time, and I decided I should be the living example for other women through the pain Im feeling, she explains. I dont want to see another woman in the same pain that Im feeling, losing her child because of HIV and lack of knowledge.

For organization co-founder Robin Smalley, who gave birth to the idea along with ob-gyn Mitch Besser in 2001, m2m also provided purpose for her at a difficult period. It also saved my life, she tells Yahoo Beauty.

Thats because Smalley, a TV producer at the time, was hit with a quick succession of devastations  the death of the stepfather who raised her, a breast cancer diagnosis, the sudden death of her mother, and then the loss of her best friend from college, who had gone into a coma during minor surgery.

While sitting at her friends hospital bed with Besser  the friends brother  she learned about the overwhelming problem of pediatric AIDS in South Africa, which is where Besser was working as a doctor. And Smalley, who had recently made the transition into nonprofit work, was intrigued. Still, when her friend wound up dying, she recalls, I went into a tailspin. I was basically pulling the covers over my head. And Mitch said, Come to Cape Town and see what Im doing.'

She made herself go and spent a day going on rounds with him as he treated HIV-positive mothers, and that was it.

I fell head over heels for the women I met  the grace and the courage and the humor and spirit, Smalley recalls, and for me, it was like a bucket of cold water to get over my self-pity. I called my husband that night and said, I want to do this, and  four weeks later we picked up the kids [4 and 12 at the time] and dogs and moved to Cape Town, and started this out of the back of his car.

Nkosi, right, mentoring a mother-to-be. (Photo: Courtesy of m2m)

Mothers2Mothers is, she says, a very simple solution to what was considered a complicated problem, which was ending pediatric AIDS. And its been successful, in that the program has gotten the transmission rate down to 2.1 percent  well below the 5 percent thats mandated by the World Health Organization for the elimination of pediatric AIDS, she says. Daily treatments keep down viral loads during pregnancy and breastfeeding, when transmission from mother to baby is, contrary to popular belief, far from a given.

The organization has gone about its mission by hiring new mothers who are HIV-positive to go through a training program and then sending them into the field to empower other pregnant HIV-positive women through mentoring and education. That, in turn, spreads awareness that is slowly ending the stigma that led to the death of Nkosis daughter.

We realized theres no better resource in Africa than the mothers themselves, Smalley notes, explaining that the countries suffer from a dangerous lack of medical care. Its nothing like here  Mozambique has three doctors and 21 nurses for every 100,000 people, she says. Clinics and hospitals can be very scary places. The first time I ever saw a woman deliver, she was in heavy labor and the nurse hauled off and whacked her across the head! They call it a klop  its common; its like, hurry up I need the bed. So its not like, Do I want Bach or Beethoven at my birth?'

While mentoring mothers arent allowed in the birth rooms at clinics because of the lack of space, they provide a feeling of support and security leading up to the birth and right after. Immediately, says Smalley, theres a Mentor Mother there to put her arms around you to say, Youre not alone; Im HIV-positive too, and well get through this together.'

Smalley is emphatic when she says, We know how to end pediatric AIDS. Theres not a reason why any child anywhere in the world should be born HIV-positive. Where you live should not determine if you live.

As for Nkosi, she feels blessed to have found m2m and has come a long way from when the stigma of being HIV-positive felt crippling. When I passed by people on the street and they were laughing, I would think they were laughing at me, she recalls. When she was welcomed by the women at m2m, she thought, How can they be hugging and kissing me? Do they want to die? When she learned the facts about transmission  that it is not spread by hugging or kissing or sharing food but through bodily fluids including blood and semen  she was eager to share that knowledge with everyone she knew. Then they started preaching the word outside, and everyone started understanding, and the stigma slowly but surely started to end, Nkosi says.

She has also met an understanding man, also HIV-positive, and together theyve had a child, now 4, who is healthy and HIV-negative. Nkosi and her partner support each other in staying healthy, she says, adding, Its rare to meet a man like that. Smalley agrees, noting, This is a particularly happy ending.

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Abidjan (AFP) - Some 8,400 Ivory Coast soldiers who mutinied in January apologised to President Alassane Ouattara in an orchestrated ceremony that was aired on national television.

Organised without the knowledge of the press, the event -- broadcast after it took place at the presidential palace -- signalled a dramatic end to the protest movement.

As well as apologising the rebels said they were giving up all their financial demands.

Ouattara said of the rebels that he "believed their words were sincere" and they would now be "exemplary soldiers".

A spokesman for the rebels, named as Sergeant Fofana said: "We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands."

He then, in a sign of allegiance, saluted the president, the images showed.

At the start of January, former rebels integrated into army ranks staged a mutiny that paralysed activity in several towns of the west African country while they pressed for bonuses.

In meeting the demands of the ex-rebels, who controlled the northern half of Africa's biggest cocoa producer between 2002 and 2011, the authorities provoked a fresh mutiny by other troops and paramilitary gendarmes.

Clashes claimed four lives in the political capital Yamoussoukro.

The mutineers, who demanded 12 million CFA francs (18,000 euros) in payments for each soldier, obtained 5 million francs (7,500 euros) in January and had been due to receive the rest of the sum this month, the rebels had told AFP.

The government had refused to give details of the negotiations.

Ouattara said Thursday the country was going through a "very, very difficult time" after a fall in the price of cocoa led to "a net loss of 150 billion francs CFA (230 million euros)" to the state budget.

The mutiny had "scared Ivorians, as well as those who want to invest in and visit the country," he said.

He also announced that the government had given up plans to build new schools, a health centre and cultural centres across the country, as well as the delay to 2018 of a key election promise -- bringing electricity to every village with more than 500 inhabitants.

Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel as well as purchases of materiel worth 1.2 billion euros.

Part of the plan provides for the departure of several thousand men, particularly ex-rebels, who will not be replaced.
A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to hand over a memo drafted with guidance from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani outlining a proposed new travel ban designed to be more palatable to the public as well as legally sound.

The latest draft is designed so that it does not obviously target Muslims, in the way that the first controversial ban  ruled unlawful by several judges  was considered to do.

Mr Giuliani, a lawyer, is currently an informal adviser on matters of security to the White House and played a leading role in Donald Trumps presidential campaign.

Read more

The block on Trumps latest travel ban is testing the US constitution

He was reportedly instructed during the campaign to form a commission tasked with drawing up a Muslim ban that appeared legally sound, according to papers filed in court by the Arab American Civil Rights League.

The commission recommended that nationality be used as a proxy for religion according to the filing in Detroit by the group.

During his campaign, Mr Trump was accused of Islamophobia when he called for "a complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our countrys representatives can figure out what the hell is going on".

Detroit District Judge Victoria Roberts has now ordered that the latest draft be turned over by Friday 19 May, just as the Presidents Justice Department lawyers are preparing to defend his latest travel ban in a federal appeals court on Monday 15 May.

Ms Roberts said she could see no reason to delay ordering the sharing of relevant evidence with the Arab-American group, given what she termed the unmistakable and impermissible message that the United States Government disapproved of Islam and Muslims in the text and history of the revised ban.

The latest executive order seeks to bar citizens of six Muslim-majority countries from entering the US. One issue to be examined by the three-judge appeals court in Seattle is whether public comments made by Mr Trump before his inauguration are relevant when evaluating the legality of his executive order, or whether the review should be limited to the contents of the document itself.

Story continues

Read more

Trump comments on Muslims key as latest battle over travel ban begins

A federal judge in Hawaii blocked the original order in March, ruling that it amounted to an unlawful, discriminatory ban on Muslims.

It had sparked widespread protest and caused chaos at airports throughout the US in January after it barred entrance to citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.

The latest order did not bar citizens of Iraq, who were included in the original ban.

Following the backlash, Mr Trump turned to loyalist Mr Giuliani to ask him how he could achieve his aim without falling foul of laws governing race relations and equality.

The Detroit case - Arab American Civil Rights League versus Trump - will be heard in the US district court in the eastern district of Michigan.
Pristina (AFP) - President Hashim Thaci of Kosovo on Thursday called for a snap parliamentary election on June 11, a day after the government lost a confidence vote in parliament after a year of political crisis.

Kosovo's ruling coalition had been strained by growing discord between its two main parties, Thaci's centre-right PDK and the conservative LDK of Prime Minister Isa Mustafa.

The main trigger for the confidence vote, held Wednesday, was a border demarcation deal with neighbouring Montenegro, the final condition for obtaining visa-free travel in the European Union.

The opposition strongly opposes the deal, claiming that it gives to Montenegro several thousand hectares of land that has traditionally been used by Kosovo's shepherds.

Kosovo's parliament has yet to ratify the deal, and the opposition has fiercely protested the plan, releasing tear gas in parliament on several occasions and organising street protests, some of which were marred by serious violence.

"The work the EU has started with Kosovo institutions should not stop because of upcoming elections," the bloc's representative in Pristina, Nataliya Apostolova, told local TV, urging the new parliament to approve the deal.

The crisis was also fuelled by an agreement reached with Serbia, its former enemy, in August 2015 that envisages political autonomy for the Serb minority in the Balkan territory.

The plan is also sharply contested by the opposition.

Thaci's PDK eventually joined with other opposition parties to push for a snap parliamentary election, which was originally scheduled for next year.

Western analysts say the move could reflect a bid by the PDK to boost its popular legitimacy while a new special tribunal at The Hague prepares to try former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for alleged war crimes.

Thaci, a PDK founder and its longtime leader, is one of several former guerrillas cited as potential indictees.

The 1998-1999 conflict between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian forces was the last of the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

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The war ended after a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, which led to the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo.

Kosovo, with a mainly ethnic Albanian population of about 1.8 million, unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

The move has been recognised by more than 110 countries, but Serbia, supported by its traditional ally Russia, still rejects it.
Associated Press

There has already been two coaching changes halfway through the NFL season with Indianapolis firing Frank Reich this week four weeks after Carolina did the same to Matt Rhule. The NFL had a record-tying 10 coaching changes last offseason and three-quarters of the teams have changed head coaches at least once in the past five years. Here's a look at some coaches who figure to be on the hot seat if things don't turn around in the second half of the season and some assistants who could be in line for head coaching jobs.
(Getty Images)

Could land owned by Pocono Raceway be home to a medical marijuana farm?

A hearing was held Wednesday night regarding the possibility of a farm near the track. Natural Care, the company who wants to build the farm, would lease the land from Pocono Raceway according to the details at the hearing. And while Pocono declined comment on the possible project to the Pocono Record, people who live by the track werent exactly thrilled at the hearing.

From the Record:

I live on Cartwright Road, Cathy Fanelli said. Im worried about the security of my property from the hundreds of employees and my home. There will be a 10 foot fence with barbed wire on top, Walsh said. This will be more secure than your local CVS where someone can steal opioids and die, Natural Care President Ashley Walsh said. The plans include three 10,000 square foot greenhouses in phase one of the project, with future expansion options of an additional three 10,000 square foot greenhouses in phase two.

In 2010, Pocono built a solar farm to help power the track. If the medical marijuana project happens, itd be another progressive move from the speedway. While some are understandably apprehensive about marijuana, moves by states like Colorado and Washington are proof that it can be successfully legal and regulated by the government.

Pot can provide a nice tax boost to governments when its legalized too. Just because a drug is illegal doesnt mean people dont use it. The Prohibition Era is a great example.

Neighbors at the hearing were also upset that the farm could also impact the noise levels in their neighborhoods and reduce property values. A decision could be made regarding the possible operation in the next two months.

And as the hearing was held regarding the proposed operation at Pocono this week, Carl Long made his return to the Cup Series at Kansas Speedway with a Colorado-based marijuana vaping company on the hood of his car.

Picture proof that Carl Long is sponsored by a weed vaping company this weekend.https://t.co/w3s63QhQ95 pic.twitter.com/2ceuCjnfME  Nick Bromberg (@NickBromberg) May 12, 2017

Long is attempting a race for the first time since 2009 when he was fined $200,000 by NASCAR for having an illegal engine. He said hes reached an agreement with NASCAR to return to the Cup garage  he couldnt step foot in it until he paid his fine  and is using a car he purchased from the now-defunct HScott Motorsports.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of Dr. Saturday and From the Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah (Photo: Getty Images)

For Sophie Hopkins, co-starring in the Doctor Who spinoff Class was surreal. After all, the long-running show is a national treasure in its native Britain, and Class delves into the goings-on at Coal Hill Academy, where kids battle their own demons, plus alien issues (show airs Saturdays on BBC America).

Hopkins fit right in, given that shes a sci-fi nerd who digs the Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars franchises.

I used to have regular light saber battles with my dad around the house, she says.

Hopkins plays April MacLean, an ordinary student dealing with otherworldly issues. She studied musical theater and drama before landing her breakout role. Both she and April are very creative, says Hopkins, but their attire is vastly different.

Aprils style changes throughout the series as she transforms. Shes in her own bubble, she says. My style in my day-to-day life reflects the skate scene. Im a lot more androgynous in real life.

Hopkins wears lots of loose clothing, not because she has anything to hide but because shes more comfortable that way.

Im happy with my body. It took a long time. Ive always been a beanpole. After years of battling that  now Ive gotten to a place where I love who I am. I like the way clothes fall on me, says Hopkins.

For her, the most important aspect of Class is being a role model for young girls and women, and proving that science and smarts are sexy.

They can see themselves represented. Yes shes kind and puts others first, but it doesnt diminish her strength. Thats her most wonderful quality. You can get ahead and you can lead a group without this need be a bitch, she says.

Vivian Oparah plays her fellow student Tanya, a child prodigy with fearsome intelligence. Oparah landed the role after attending an open casting call. She studied acting at the National Youth Theatre in the U.K. and says that being a woman of color on a major BBC production isnt something she takes for granted.

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I grew up going to white schools. I didnt have people around me who looked like me. For me its a big deal, she says. Now more than ever, women and minorities are coming into their own. We dont have to be subservient and quiet. You can embrace being intelligent and not be scared to speak up. Being smart is cool. Knowledge is so empowering. You can own your womanhood if you know your rights.

Her style on the show is laid-back; Tanya has two older brothers and likes to wear their clothes. Shes sporty and trying to fit in. Oparah, meanwhile, loves being daring.

My style is vast and eclectic. I love crazy looks. I like old music. The golden era of R&B glam and the girl bands. The Marc Jacobs 2017 collection, I want every piece from that, she says.

Sophie Hopkins and Vivian Oparah (Photo: Getty Images)

She wasnt always so sure of herself, especially in grammar school.

I felt a bit alien. I was riddled with insecurities. My hair was annoying. I remember looking at my nose. You champion your flaws and they become the bits you love the most. Im so confident with myself now, says Oparah.

Read more from Yahoo Beauty + Style:



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 Madam Secretary Star Patina Miller on Her Pregnancy: I Love My Belly

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 Real-Life Superhero Chris Pratt Makes Sick Kids Dreams Come True  and Unwinds With Caviar Facials
A Mexican activist who pioneered a support network for the parents of missing children has been murdered by gunmen who invaded her home.

Miriam Rodriguez Martinez founded a local group of 600 families searching for their relatives five years ago after her daughter Karen was kidnapped and killed by the Los Zetas drug cartel.

Mrs Rodriguez lived in the municipality of San Fernando, one of the most crime-ridden areas in Mexico with the highest rate of kidnappings.

She was shot multiple times as she tried to escape the gunmen and died on the way to hospital.

In 2012 she provided police with information which allowed them to successfully capture her daughters killers, but reportedly began to receive death threats after one of the convicted gang members escaped from prison in March this year.

On one occasion she was forced to alert the federal army after Los Zetas attempted to kidnap her husband.

Mrs Rodriguezs friends from the support group claim she had asked for protection from the police but was ignored, an allegation denied by the state which said police patrols guarded her house three times a day.

Mexicos National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) condemned the murder of Mrs Rodriguez, claiming it was another example of the Mexican governments failure to protect its citizens, particularly its human rights advocates who were putting themselves in danger for the good of others.

Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International director for the Americas, said Mexico had become a very dangerous place for those who devote their time to searching for kidnapped people.

The nightmare they face not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives and the dangers they face in their work, which they perform given the negligent response from the authorities, is alarming, she said.

According to figures released by the CNDH, the number of missing persons in Mexico rose to 30,000 last year, the majority of which are thought to be related to the cartels.

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Michelle Kwan and Clay Pell in happier times. (Photo: Demis Maryannakis/Splash News)

Olympic figure skater Michelle Kwan has filed for divorce from her husband of four years, Clay Pell, who made the first move with his petition for divorce. The trouble is that she filed in Rhode Island and he filed in California. You know, which is a community property state.

According to the Providence Journal News, Kwan learned of Pells filing without warning via a tweet that was soon followed by an online article in the New York Daily News.

The two-time Olympic medalist, 36, says that they last lived together in November, they had tried to resolve this amicably until he blindsided her by filing in March, and she tried to serve him divorce papers 10 times in April. She eventually had to post the documents on the front door.

The couple have no children, but among their assets is the $1.5 million estate they bought in 2014. The four-bedroom home on 1.9 acres hasnt exactly been moved into yet  its waiting for a certificate of occupancy  though Pell, 35, has placed an air mattress at the residence and suitcases clearly marked Pell.

Residency will be a key issue, as Kwan, a California native, claims that she lived in Rhode Island for the year prior to her filing, having stayed at a motel in Newport since they stopped cohabitating, and is a registered voter there. They did lease an apartment in Brooklyn together while she worked on Hillary Clintons presidential campaign, but she says she spent a good portion of that time with Pell at their Providence pad and that she considers their Newport and California homes vacation properties.

Pell, a lawyer and former White House staffer for Barack Obamas administration who unsuccessfully ran for Rhode Island governor in 2014, wants the matter to be heard in California, according to reports.

At the time of his filing, Pell issued a statement saying, It is with deep regret that I share that Michelle and my marriage is coming to an end. This is a sad and difficult turn of events for our family. I love Michelle, and wish her the very best as her life takes her in a new direction.

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Theres been no statement from Kwan, but the retired skater hasnt appeared to be drowning in her sorrows, at least per her social media accounts. There has been the occasional look back at her many wonderful performances as she revels in the good memories, like this clip from her lovely 1999 World Figure Skating performance skating to Jewels Hands.

Good memories @jewel #Hands #feelslikeyesterday @theskatinglesson  thanks for sharing???? A post shared by Michelle Kwan (@michellewkwan) on May 4, 2017 at 2:13am PDT

And as she recently showed off in this impressive twist dive into the pool, the Olympians got some serious moves!

Twisting into Sunday Funday???? A post shared by Michelle Kwan (@michellewkwan) on Mar 26, 2017 at 2:21pm PDT

And for all we know, this lighthearted yoga pose she posted a few weeks ago could have been a nod to fans that not only was she hanging in there, but shed be all right.

Hanging in there.???? A post shared by Michelle Kwan (@michellewkwan) on Apr 26, 2017 at 7:18am PDT





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India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi heads to Sri Lanka on Thursday on a charm offensive as New Delhi seeks to reassert its influence on the island amid signs of a Chinese comeback.

Sri Lanka's President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in January 2015 promising to loosen ties with China after a decade of hefty funding by Beijing under his predecessor.

When Modi visited the island shortly afterwards, he promised to "script a golden chapter in the history of India-Sri Lanka relations".

Just two years later, analysts say Beijing's influence is on the rise again as Colombo struggles to find alternative sources of foreign capital.

For India, which wants to keep Sri Lanka within its sphere of influence, that is a worrying sign.

"For Modi to visit again so soon is clearly an expression of India's concerns about China's deepening economic roots in Sri Lanka and the potential strategic, even military, advantages this might ultimately bring," said Alan Keenan of the International Crisis Group.

Sirisena halted all Chinese-funded infrastructure projects when he swept to power in 2015, ousting the island's strongman leader Mahinda Rajapakse, who had aggressively courted Beijing.

Now these projects, which included new highways, railway lines and a telecommunications tower, are back on track.

A $1.4 billion Chinese-funded land reclamation project outside Colombo harbour has also been relaunched.

New Delhi has long been nervous of a Chinese presence at the Colombo port, a key transshipment point for Indian cargo.

Even more controversially, Colombo is trying to sell a controlling interest in a strategically-located deep-sea port in the south to China.

Shortly after hosting Modi, Sri Lanka's Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe will travel to China, where he is expected to try to finalise that sale.

- Black flags -

Experts say India simply doesn't have deep enough pockets to take over China's place as the country's main financial backer.

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"The new government realises that its Western allies have not delivered and only China has the deep pockets to invest," said Sri Lankan political analyst Kusal Perera.

"The new government has understood this reality and they are wooing China while keeping India on board."

Last time Modi visited Sri Lanka, he made a highly symbolic trip to the war-ravaged north in a demonstration of support for Sri Lanka's mostly Hindu Tamil minority, who share close cultural and religious ties with counterparts living in southern India.

This time, he will be guest of honour at a major Buddhist festival -- a move seen as aimed at winning the support of the Sinhalese majority, many of whom are suspicious of India.

Former leader Rajapakse's political allies among the Sinhalese community this month called for a black flag protest during Modi's visit.

Manoj Joshi of the Observer Research Foundation think tank in Delhi said Modi would likely use the visit to deepen economic ties with Sri Lanka.

But he cautioned against overly high expectations.

"Everyone in New Delhi has realised that the new Colombo government isn't going to abandon China just like that. It has certain big infrastructure investments," he told AFP.

"When confronted by a big neighbour like India, they can leverage China, just like other countries in the neighbourhood like Nepal and Bangladesh."
An Ohio womans intimate photo shoot unveils a reality not many moms are willing to discuss.

Kathy DiVincenzo, a new mom and doula, has postpartum depression.

Read: Chrissy Teigen Reveals She Suffered From Postpartum Depression After Giving Birth

"This isnt just a messy playroom, or my daughters messy room behind me, DiVincenzo told InsideEdition.com. "This is a mental, physical, emotional anguish that goes alongside the mental, just normal motherhood struggles."

She said she was venting to photographer friend Danielle Fantis about her exasperation over new moms who appear to be in perfect shape on social media, when they decided to put together a photo series that would depict what many new moms experience, but hate to discuss.

Moms, in general I think, were just constantly competitive, she explained. [It] was powerful for me saying, Right now, Im not okay. And I shouldnt be afraid to share that.

DiVincenzo, mother to a 4-year-old daughter and 3-month-old son, said the negative feedback to the photo shoot only proves her point.

This is why we dont speak out," she said. "Because people may think were whining, or this is what motherhood looks like. Not only should this be the happiest time of your life, but you definitely shouldnt have a mental illness. Both of those things tied together [becomes] this overwhelming pressure.

For her, postpartum depression started as anxiety and OCD after she gave birth to her son.

[I was] hyper aware of everything that could possibly harm my son, she said. Other things like, just not enjoying things that I used to enjoy, or the normal signs of depression. It was consuming me. If I didnt have an almost 4-year-old, I would literally be in bed all day.

Read: Mother of Stillborn Son Donates 16 Gallons of Breast Milk: 'It Gave Me A Purpose'

DiVincenzo, who continues to battle postpartum depression, said she wanted to share the photos to help address the stigma surrounding the mental illness, and let other women know they are not alone.

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This is something all moms go through, she said.

Read: Woman Posts Video of Psychotic Episode to Raise Awareness: 'Seeing It Is So Different'

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North Korea has said it has the right to ruthlessly punish American citizens it has detained for allleged crimes against the government.

The East Asian nation announced over the weekend that it had detained a fourth American, bring to four the number of US citizens it is holding.

Citing North Koreas KCNA news agency, Reuters said the government had declared the crimes the Americans had been accused of would soon be announced.

The CIA has established a Korea Mission Center to address the "serious threats" emerging from North Korea https://t.co/lbcKWUJosv pic.twitter.com/CZFsoeFrN9  CNN International (@cnni) May 11, 2017

North Korea, or properly the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), said it had detained Kim Hak Song, who worked for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, last Saturday. Officials in the Communist state said he had been held on suspicion of hostile acts.

A relevant institution of the DPRK detained American citizen Kim Hak Song on May 6 under a law of the DPRK on suspension of his hostile acts against it, KCNA said.

A third US citizen, Kim Sang Dok, who was associated with the same school, was detained in late April for alleged hostile acts, according to Norths official media.

http://players.brightcove.net/624246174001/default_default/index.html?videoId=5427221550001

North Korean artist Song Byeok: from propaganda painter to political refugee

The US State Department said it was aware of the latest reported detention.

The security of US citizens is one of the departments highest priorities, said a spokesperson. When a US citizen is reported to be detained in North Korea, we work with the Swedish embassy in Pyongyang.

The reported detention comes as tensions on the Korean peninsula run high. Both sides have been engaging in sabre-rattling and Washington has said it is determined to halt North Koreas nuclear weapons program.

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Experts said they believed the series of detentions may be an attempt at hostage diplomacy on the part of North Korea.

Kim Jong Un is using hostage diplomacy as a part of his military and defence strategy with focus on preventing the US from removing him from power as well as to prevent the US from taking military options against North Korea, An Chan Il, president of the World Institute for North Korea Studies and a former defector, told NBC News.

Koh Yu Hwan, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, said that taking hostages remained a valuable activity.

Although such hostage talks dont usually lead to negotiation over missile or nuclear weaponsthe added numbers can certainly hamper and limit options the US can take over North Korea, he said
Lisbon (AFP) - A few weeks ago, Salvador Sobral, a 27-year-old crooner tipped as a favourite for Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest, was an unknown artist waiting for a heart transplant.

But with his intimate rendering of the melancholic "Amar Pelos Dois" (For the Both of Us) written by his older sister Luisa -- a success in her own right -- Sobral is hoping to chart an unconventional route to Eurovision gold.

At first glance, his decision to forgo the elaborate choreography and heavy dance tempos favoured by most contestants would make him a long shot.

Shunning English to sing in a Portuguese tremolo that reflects a severe heart condition would also seem to bode ill for the Lisbon native, whose beard and ponytail make him look more of a hipster than a budding pop star.

"I don't like pointless 'fast food' music, my songs have to have meaning, I sing with my heart," he said recently.

- Something to say -

Sobral has become the bookmakers' top contender after the Italian Francesco Gabbani and his "dancing naked ape", and a favourite of fans, with huge crowds welcoming his arrival at the Eurovision venue in Kiev, Ukraine.

"I felt as popular as Cristiano Ronaldo," said Sobral, who added that he was not making the trip only to sing.

After the Eurovision semi-finals Sobral held a press conference wearing a sweatshirt calling attention to the plight of refugees.

"When I learned that I was going to participate at Eurovision I first thought about the refugees, because they leave their country to escape death. These people are not just simple immigrants," he said.

Sobral, for his part, cannot go anywhere for more than two weeks without his medicines, and he did not attend the rehearsals earlier this week in Kiev because of health worries.

But he plays down his heart ailment, even though he is still waiting for a transplant.

"The disease is a small problem, really, certainly the only one I have in my life."

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- Highs and lows -

Discovered in 2009 while competing in Portugal's version of "American Idol" -- as his sister had a few years previously -- Sobral was barely 18 and had a hard time adjusting to his sudden popularity.

He quit singing shortly afterwards, and in 2011 he left Portugal for Spain's Balearic Islands, where he studied psychology during an Erasmus programme.

It was during this time Sobral fell into heavy drug use, including regular use of psychedelic mushrooms.

But he gradually cleaned himself up and started singing in the bars and hotels on Mallorca.

"It was hard to sing every night until midnight, but it was worth it," he said recently.

"I thought about staying on the island, but when I saw that nothing happens there in winter, I knew I had to make a decision."

So he left for Barcelona to study jazz and work on his voice, and it was in the Catalan city that he discovered Chet Baker, the trumpeter Sobral now calls his biggest musical inspiration.

And as the Eurovision final approaches, Sobral says he's not nervous, displaying a confidence few would expect of a shy performer who often seems to want to apologise when appearing in front of a microphone.

But the emotional force of his singing has touched a nerve in Portugal, which has never won higher than sixth place in the Eurovision contest, in 1996, since it first started competing in 1964.
Photo credit: Getty

From Redbook

When it comes to inducing labor on your own, there are a lot of old wives' tales - and many women swear eating something spicy will bring on delivery. And one pizza place in Charlotte, North Carolina might have the magic food: buffalo pizza.

Ali Aldrich thought it was just a one-off when, at 38-weeks pregnant, she went into labor shortly after eating the spicy pizza from Hawthorne's New York Pizza and Bar at her husband's suggestion. "I had always heard spicy foods could do it, so we ordered the pizza at 6 p.m. and by 10 that night, I was in labor," the now-mom-of-two told People. But a few weeks later, her pregnant neighbor ordered the same pizza and her water broke soon after.

Six years after that quirky coincidence, Henley Schmeidel decided to try her friends' method of getting things started when she was pregnant with her daughter Madelin. She went into labor just four hours after eating the pizza.

Photo credit: Henley Schmiedel

Photo credit: Henley Schmiedel

"There are a lot of wives' tales that have to do with pregnancy and this is a fun one," says Schmiedel, a pediatric nurse. "Go eat a good pizza and see if you can get your baby out!"

A mom blogger posted about the funny trend, and five more women shared their stories about their own buffalo wing pizza-induced labor. The manager at Hawthorne's told People that a woman came from two hours away to give it a try, and another woman traveled all the way from Texas.

Hawthorne's co-owner John Adams admitted that the restaurant is down the street from the hospital, which may be part of what brings people in, but he's convinced it's the homemade medium-hot buffalo sauce that helps women about to give birth get things started. In addition to mozzarella and chicken, that ingredient seems like the magic touch. "It's not too spicy, but it's spicy enough to induce a baby," Adams says.

Before you book a ticket to Charlotte in hopes of employing this delicious method of inducing, know that local ob-gyn Dr. Alyse Kelly Jones told People that there's no medical proof that this pizza has any special birth powers. "There is no evidence to support that eating spicy food will do anything to bring on labor," says Dr. Jones. "Women have been trying many things for decades  sex, spicy foods, walking - and none of those things have proven to work."

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Despite the scientific claims to the contrary, the Hawthorne's team is leaning into the reputation. When they open their second location, they plan to add another name to the buffalo wing pizza option on their new menus: "The Inducer."

[h/t People]

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Quantum entanglement is just one of the many weird things that pop up when you try to understand the laws governing the world of subatomic particles. The phenomenon of entanglement  wherein two particles can be separated by billions of light-years and yet be instantly affected by changes to the quantum state of one another  seems so outlandish that even Albert Einstein (the essence of intelligence anthropomorphized) had trouble wrapping his head around the concept.

Despite Einsteins reservations, though, quantum entanglement has been empirically observed several times over the past few decades. The spooky action at a distance  as the famed physicist once derisively called it  is very real.

Read: Schrodingers Cat Is Now Dead And Alive In Two Boxes

In a series of experiments  described in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications  a team of researchers has now shown that quantum entanglement persists even at high accelerations. The experiments not only help scientists deepen their understanding of quantum mechanics, they also help them take a step toward the holy grail of particle physics  the unification of quantum mechanics and relativity.

In their experiments, the researchers subjected pairs of entangled photons to accelerations of up to 30g (or 30 times the acceleration due to gravity a free-falling object experiences on Earth) in centrifuges.

Detectors mounted on the crate monitored the photons' entanglement during the experiments. Analysing the data, the physicists could calculate an upper bound of disadvantageous effects of acceleration on entanglement, the University of Vienna explained in a statement. The data showed that entanglement quality did not significantly exceed the expected contribution of background noise.

Not only do the experiments prove that the phenomenon of entanglement is strong enough to persist even in experiments that may one day be carried out on a satellite or an accelerated spacecraft, they also suggests quantum mechanical entanglement of photon pairs can be tested while the particles undergo relativistic acceleration  conditions under which attempts to unify quantum mechanics and relativity into an overarching theory of everything can be made.

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Currently, the universe we live in obeys two seemingly incompatible laws  quantum mechanics, which governs the behavior of subatomic particles; and relativity, which describes how clumps of atoms, such as humans, stars and galaxies, behave. Formulating an all-encompassing theory of everything, one that resolves the apparent contradictions between quantum mechanics and relativity has, for the longest time, been the main goal of particle physicists.

This, however, is easier said than done. The seemingly insurmountable problem is that gravity, which is a product of massive objects warping space-time  as explained by Einsteins theory of general relativity  does not follow the laws of quantum physics.

As long as these descriptions of nature remain confined to their own scope of application, they cannot contribute to a unified theory that captures physics at the boundary between these specialized regimes, the researchers wrote in the study.  Our experimental platform represents a testbed that can readily be upgraded for measurements with higher precision, by using a ultra-bright source of entangled photons, and higher-dimensional degrees of freedom, such as energy-time entanglement.

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A Russian fighter jet came within 20 feet of a US Navy aircraft in the Black Sea, according to a Navy spokesperson.

The Russian Su-27 approached the P-US 8A Poseidon aircraft that was conducting routine operations in international airspace, US Naval Forces Europe spokeswoman Captain Pamela Kunze said.

Capt Kunze said the interaction had been considered safe and professional by US Navy commanders in charge of the mission.

Russias defence ministry confirmed the aircraft had approached the US Navy pilots on Tuesday, and had executed a greeting manoeuvre.

The fighter jet had been deployed after "an air target approaching the Russian state border had been located, the spokesperson said.

According to Russian reports, the US reconnaissance plane changed its course to move away from the Russian border" after the interaction.

It comes after four Russian warplanes buzzed a US Navy ship in an unsafe and unprofessional manner in the Black Sea in February.

The Pentagon said an armed Russian Su-24, a supersonic attack aircraft, flew within 200 yards of the ship, a distance much greater than 20 feet.

Capt Kunze: US Navy aircraft and ships routinely interact with Russian units in international seas and water and most interactions are safe and professional.

Distance is only one of many variables considered when defining what is safe and professional.
Photo credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/ARMS/Joy Ng, producer

From Popular Mechanics

The sun regularly shoots material out into the void of space, and the largest of these blasts are known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. A team of scientists led by the Space Sciences Laboratory at University of California, Berkeley has developed a model that simulates the evolution of stealth CMEs, which explode into space with no warming.

CMEs are usually telegraphed in advance. The warning varies; sometimes there's a bright flash of a flare, other times a burst of heat or a flurry of solar energetic particles. A standard CME also moves fast, with a speed of 1,800 miles per second leaving the sun. NASA describes stealth CMEs as having a "rambling gait" in comparison, flying at 250 to 435 miles per second, roughly the same speed as the constant stream of charged particles that flows from the sun known as solar wind.

Using the space agency's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), the scientists made a model of the sun's magnetic fields. They discovered that the sun's rotation is crucial to the mystery of stealth CMEs.

A star like the sun is not a solid body of mass like Earth or Mars. It rotates unevenly, faster at the equator than the poles. That differential in rotation makes the sun's magnetic fields stretch and spread at varying rates. This pulling and stretching creates enough energy to produce a stealth CME in about two weeks, the scientists discovered. The rotation stresses the magnetic fields until they are warped into a strained coil of energy. "When enough tension builds," NASA says, "the coil expands and pinches off into a massive bubble of twisted magnetic fields - and without warning - the stealth CME quietly leaves the sun."

A stealth CME can moderately disturb the Earth's magnetic fields, but it's unlikely that we'll ever be directly affected by one. But understanding the weather of the sun -beyond "always hot"- can help us predict space weather elsewhere, which will come in handy as we look past the Moon and start traveling deeper into the solar system.

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Source: NASA

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The Doctors and Prevention magazine are announcing the winner of the search for Americas Most Amazing Nurse. The submissions and finalists proved that America is full of outstanding nursing professionals  but only one can be named Most Amazing of them all!

Preventions editor-in-chief, Barbara ODaire, joins ER Physician Dr. Travis Stork. I love honoring nurses, he tells her. So do we, at Prevention! she responds. Think about it. Nurses are there the day youre born, often the day you die, and so many milestones in between.

Nurse Laura Clary has been selected as Americas Most Amazing Nurse! Nurse Clary is the manager of the Sexual Assault Forensic Examination & Domestic Violence Programs for Greater Baltimore Medical Center. Shes an amazing woman. Shes a passionate advocate for her patients. She deals with both psychological problems and physical problems, Barbara explains.

Watch: America's Most Amazing Nurse Search

I care for victims of sexual assault, child abuse, rape, domestic violence, Nurse Clary explained when she was named one of the five finalists. Ive definitely found my passion in forensic nursing, and working with patients who have been victims of these crimes.

Nurse Clary is backstage at The Doctors right now  but, Dr. Stork reveals, She has no idea shes here as the winner! She thinks shes here as one of the five finalists. The Doctors and audience welcome Nurse Clary to the stage.

It feels absolutely incredible to be a finalist, she tells Dr. Stork. As a nurse, I see patients on some of the worst days of their lives. And often  I see people when they come in alone. So to be able to hold their hand, provide some comfort and support them, I think is very special and rewarding.

Watch: America's Most Amazing Nurse Finalists

I have to tell you, youre not just a finalist, Dr. Stork replies. You were chosen  as Americas Most Amazing Nurse! Nurse Clary receives an ovation from the audience. Her husband, Joseph, is present  and was the one who nominated her. Shes amazing! he tells The Doctors. I thought once I saw this contest, it would be an amazing way to show my appreciation for everything shes accomplished.

Nurse Clary is receiving a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Iceland, courtesy of Blue Lagoon and WOW Air! Have fun in Iceland  doctors orders! Dr. Stork tells her.

I feel like Ive made some lifelong friends just from participating in this, Nurse Clary tells Dr. Stork and Barbara, So thank you for that. Dr. Stork responds, What I like the most about this competition is, there are no losers. Everyone in the nursing profession, in my opinion, is a winner.
cameronabadi

With Adam Rawnsley

Trump flips. Thursday was another confused and contradictory day in Washington, as President Donald Trump offered a new explanation for why he fired FBI director James Comey.

The president told NBC News he was thinking of this Russia thing with Trump when he decided to dump Comey, who was leading the investigation into Moscows interference in the 2016 election. This new account directly contradicts the White Houses previous version of how the president came to the decision, sweeping away days of public denials by aides that the move had anything to do with the Russia probe. In the interview, Trump also claimed Comey had told him several times that the president was not under investigation, an account that some in the bureau, and legal experts, said sounded unlikely.

The bureaus acting director on Thursday vehemently defended the agencys Russian counterintelligence investigation before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Andrew McCabe shot down Trumps rationale for firing Comey, and defended the agencys significant Russian counterintelligence investigation before a Senate panel, writes FPs Jenna McLaughlin.

Afghan troubles. Defense and intelligence officials are warning that the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan is likely to get worse before it ever gets better, despite the presence of thousands of U.S. troops and tens of billions invested in building and funding the faltering Afghan security forces.

The intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a Senate hearing Thursday. The Pentagon is looking to add another 3,000 troops to the effort there in the coming months, pushing American advisors closer to the front lines to work directly with Afghan forces in the fight. Washington is also trying to enlist NATOs help, and is preparing to ask the Atlantic alliance to send more trainers, as well.

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Turkey. In remarks made after attending a conference in London meant to build international support the Somali government, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the U.S. and Turkey  despite their differences over American support for Kurdish YPG fighters in Syria  are on the same page when it comes to the Kurdish PKK, considered a terrorist group by both countries.

We agree 100 percent with Turkeys concern about PKK, the secretary said. And we support Turkey in its fight against PKK as a fellow NATO member, just like all the NATO countries stand with Turkey against the PKK.

What is Digital? President Trump also made some interesting comments about a new Navy technology in his NBC interview. The service has been working on a new catapult system to launch aircraft from its Ford-class aircraft carriers, ditching the old steam-powered system for the the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which costs more during the building process, but promises to shave tens of billions off maintenance costs in the decades to come.

Trump told NBCs Lester Holt, it sounded bad to me. Digital. They have digital. What is digital? And its very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said  and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said, What system are you going to be Sir, were staying with digital. I said, No youre not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and its no good.

Several Navy and Defense officials declined to comment to SitRep on the presidents statement, citing confusion over what his comments meant to convey. But Acting Navy Secretary Sean Stackley did chat with USNI News on Thursday afternoon, saying, we have not briefed the president on the Ford program. He did go down to Newport News and visited the ship, was onboard the ship. And so I wasnt present for that visit, I dont know what his source of information was.

FPs Robbie Gramer adds that Trumps criticism is a bit too late. Experts say its virtually impossible to sort out how to replace the existing EMALS system with the old steam-powered system, and that could cost billions of dollars.

Stealthy. During the interview, Trump also claimed that the U.S. flew 35 of its F-35 joint strike fighters over Tokyo in early February, and they were so stealthy, nobody knew they were coming. But no one at the Pentagon is sure where that story came from. The president said the demonstration occurred during Defense Secretary Mattis visit to Tokyo, but at the time, the U.S. Marine Corps only had 10 F-35s deployed to Japan, about 500 miles south of Tokyo, and we could find no record of a Tokyo flyover.

Ghost in the machine. President Donald Trump signed a long-awaited executive order on cybersecurity on Thursday, which aims to hold agency heads more accountable for digital security and orders several reviews of cybersecurity issues. The order requires government agencies to adopt the cybersecurity framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Among the reports commissioned by the order are examinations of how to deter American adversaries in cyberspace, how to plug critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, and how to better combat botnets.

The order tasks Jared Kushners American Technology Council with drafting a report addressing how to move the federal government toward more consolidated network architectures. By pooling resources and security features, the order tries to create efficiencies, eliminate outdated technologies, and plug the gaping gaps in the federal IT system.

Experts are applauding the order but say it breaks little new ground. I dont see anything unusual or that really goes in a different policy direction, said Michael Daniel, former President Barack Obamas top cybersecurity adviser. This order is more of a plan for a plan.  Elias Groll

Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley.

Love buzz. The delicate dance of airborne diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia continues, once again over the Black Sea. The Washington Examiner reports that a Russian Su-27 Flanker buzzed a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft on Tuesday, closing to within 20 feet. Despite the proximity, Navy officials say the engagement was safe and professional but the U.S. has been more critical of other Russian close encounters, such as when another Flanker barrel rolled over an Air Force RC-135 over the Baltic in April of last year.

Nein thanks. The U.S. might want more troops from NATO for the war in Afghanistan or even an alliance role in the anti-Islamic State fight, but theyre not going to get any more soldiers or equipment out of Germany, says Chancellor Angela Merkel. Merkel made an appearance alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Thursday, telling reporters that Germany is happy to continue training Afghan forces in northern Afghanistan but wont be plussing up its contribution in response to reports that the U.S. is looking to surge forces there. Merkel also went out of her way to state very clearly that Germany wont be expanding its contribution to the anti-Islamic State fight if NATO takes on a more direct role in the conflict.

Cybersecurity. Americas top spies say theyre keeping a wary eye on a popular Russian cybersecurity firms software in response to questions from Congress. Reuters reports that both National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart both testified that theyre monitoring the use of security software made by Kaspersky Lab on U.S. government networks. The questions were prompted by reports released this week suggesting that government officials, including the Department of Homeland Security, are worried that Russian intelligence services could leverage the use of Kaspersky software for hacking. Kaspersky company officials, however, strenuously deny the allegations, telling the wire service that the company has never helped, nor will help, any government with espionage.

Blood bots. Army drones are about to get kinda metal, raining blood from the sky onto needy troops down below. Well, sort of. Flight Global reports that the Army is looking for a cargo drone that can ferry blood and other crucial supplies to troops in the field. The program, dubbed the joint tactical autonomous resupply system or JTARS, will be built or a medium-sized drone that can carry a payload of 300-800 lbs to distances as far as 100 kilometers. The goal is to allow soldiers to travel farther and faster while, unencumbered by the need to haul all of its supplies with it on the ground.

Mission Accomplished. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is declaring mission accomplished in Syria, or at least a part of it. The terrorist leader made an appearance to followers via videoconference, according to the AP, telling them that the groups work securing Lebanons eastern border with Syria is complete. Nasrallah also took the opportunity to threaten Israel, saying Israel is fearful about the next war with Hezbollah because it knows that it could be inside the occupied Palestinian territories.

Fake news. The U.S. and Jordan are about to kick off on their annual Eager Lion as social media and propaganda outlets have tried to gin up fake reports about a U.S. invasion of Syria. Military Times reports that both Jordan and U.S. Central Command is tamping down rumors that the build-up for the exercise is a prelude to an invasion. Rumors spread as imagery from a hobby drone, purportedly taken above U.S. and Jordanian forces in the Kingdom, spread on social media, later amplified by Irans Fars News. All speculation on social and traditional media are completely false and without merit, a Central Command spokesman tells the news outlet.

Photo Credit: PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty Images
If you dont know who Brett Conti is, just wait. At 24 years old, this skateboarder turned entrepreneur has built a budding clothing brandnot with a deep marketing budget, but with the power of social media.

Sales of his skateboard gear and apparel line, Fortune NY, spiked from $8,000 in his first year to hundreds of thousands of dollars this year. (Conti didnt disclose exact sales figures.)

Its crazy that Im competing with these huge brands that have millions of dollars in marketing budgets, and I have zero, he tells me in the video above. I have social media. Thats all you need.

Skateboard culture

I caught up with Conti at one of his favorite spots, Tribeca Skatepark in Lower Manhattan, where star-struck skateboarders were thrilled to take selfies with him, and Conti was happy to oblige.

I have YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, he says. I just leverage that as highly as I can, and its been working pretty well.

When he started his business in 2013, Conti couldnt afford to pay influencersbloggers and celebrities to use his merchandise and then talk it up on social media. So, he become his own influencer.

Nearly four years later, his Big Apple-based lifestyle brand is sold in several brick-and-mortar retailers nationwide, including dozens of Zumiez, Blades and Underground Skateshop locations. This year, he added Fortune NY skateboards to his product lineup.

Hes part of a growing industry that is capitalizing on skateboard culture. The global skateboarding equipment market is expected to top $5 billion by 2020. That includes skateboards, footwear and protective gear.

Conti says many of his customers dont even own a skateboard; they simply want to adopt a skateboarders attitude and style.

Flipping to sewing

My dream was always to become a professional skateboarder, Conti says, but then I got hurt skateboarding at 20 years old, during my junior year at college.

Thats when Conti turned to his other passion, sewing. Inspired at a young age by his grandfathers textile business, Conti put some classes he had taken at New Yorks Fashion Institute of Technology to good use. He started making T-shirts and beanies out of his dorm room at Manhattan College, where he was studying finance.

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He used the $2,500 he earned as an intern at Morgan Stanley as seed money for his business. Companies that had sponsored him as a skateboarder, including Nike and Red Bull, helped connect him with suppliers and manufacturers.

Fast forward to 2017: Conti no longer makes the clothing himself. He has a California manufacturer for that. His pinch-me moment came when rapper Kendrick Lamar requested some Fortune NY loot to wear at a Grammys after-party. When I got that email from Lamars record label, I thought it was fake, Conti says with a smile.

While Conti is focused on growing Fortune NY, he predicts that in five years hell probably own another company. Said like a true entrepreneur.

Watch for a few more of Contis favorite things:


President Donald Trump recently made some comments about Stephen Colbert in an interview with Time magazine. One of the things Trump said: You see a no-talent guy like Colbert. Theres nothing funny about what he says.

So on The Late Show, a giddy Colbert went on to say some more things that Trump definitely wont find funny. Colbert said to Trump: Theres a lot you dont understand, but I never thought one of those things would be show business. Dont you know Ive been trying for a year to get you to say my name? And you were very restrained, but now you did it. I won!

Stephen gets specific

Colbert went on to specifically address a few things Trump said, like, What he says is filthy. And you have kids watching. Colbert admitted to using adult language, adding, And I do it in public, instead of in the privacy of an Access Hollywood bus.

Trump also took credit for Colberts high ratings, especially the time that he appeared on The Late Show. Trump said: By the way, they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better. But his show was dying. Ive done his show  but when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was the highest rating. The highest rating hes ever had. Colbert responded to that statement: And its true, the night you appeared on was very highly rated. In fact, the only episode that got better ratings was the night I had Jeb Bush on. Thats right. You got beat by low-energy Jeb.

Stephens advice for Trump

While Colbert loved getting under Trumps skin, he gave the president a way to end the constant ridicule. Colbert said, But since all of my success is based on talking about you, if you really want to take me down, theres an obvious way  resign.

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on CBS.

Watch: Top 5 Donald Trump Punch Lines of the Week: Health Care to Comey

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Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below.
Looking to book a vacation? Wondering what the prime time for airfare deals is? A massive study published this week reveals the best time to buy tickets  including premier travel destinations outside the United States.

The CheapAir.com study was published Thursday and examines the best times to purchase discounted airfare for both domestic and international flights. The study looked at 351,568,000 airfares for 1,098,650 international trips over the last year across 3,010 international markets. It found that rather than planning too early or booking last-minute, travelers should be purchasing airfare somewhere in the middle.

Savvy flyers should reportedly be booking their domestic flights between three weeks to three and a half months in advance. International flights, however, are generally a steal if bought at least two months ahead of the desired travel date.

The study gave a rundown of the best times to book ahead of travel, right down to the day. Per CNBC:

Canada: 59 days

Mexico: 61 days

Asia: 90 days

Europe: 99 days

Africa: 119 days

Middle East: 119 days

Central America: 61 days

Caribbean: 76 days

South America: 81 days

Flights between the US and Asia should be booked three months in advance, according to the study. Why?

There is an excess capacity on trans-Pacific flights (especially China), CheapAir.com CEO Jeff Klee told CNBC. If there are more seats available at the lower price point at dates closer to travel, the over-supply might explain this phenomenon, at least in part.

The study does, however, provide a caveat to their cheaper-than-normal estimations: They exclude major holidays. As International Business Times previously reported, booking flights to premier destinations during peak tourism seasons will almost certainly guarantee surge pricing. That especially goes for summertime months.

Don't travel when everyone else is. Go to Disneyland or Las Vegas after Thanksgiving and before Christmas, recommends KAYAKs Low Fare Tips page. Not only will the flights be cheaper but the lines shorter, too. Or fly on Christmas Day when everyone is there already (and the flight attendants are extra nice).

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However, for those looking to book summertime European travel, Travel and Leisure reported Wednesday that round-trip tickets can be purchased to major cities across Europe for as low as $304 for those who act fast.

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Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hamas has arrested the suspected murderer of one of its key military commanders in Gaza, the Palestinian Islamist movement's leader said Thursday, while maintaining Israel was behind the March assassination.

"We announce that the killer and criminal that carried out the orders of the officers of the Zionist security services is in the hands of the (Hamas) security services," Ismail Haniya told journalists in the Gaza Strip, referring to Israel.

"He has confessed to the crime."

No details were provided on the suspect's identity, though Hamas has previously suggested Palestinian collaborators worked with Israel on the assassination.

Mazen Faqha was shot dead on March 24 near his house in Gaza City.

He had been in charge of forming cells for the movement's military wing in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas immediately blamed its arch-enemy Israel, with which it has fought three wars since 2008, and implemented strict border restrictions on those seeking to leave the Palestinian enclave.

The press conference was held outside Faqha's house in Gaza City and attended by his widow and Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's Gaza chief.
This teen is speaking out against sexual harassment at high school. (Photo: Courtesy of Alyssa Wilson)

A 16-year-old high school student isnt pleased about the way her school handled her recently reported incident of on-the-premises sexual harassment  and took to Twitter to make her feelings known.

So you get sexually harassed at school and all you get is a contract?? Alyssa Wilson, a junior at Las Vegas High School in Nevada, tweeted on Tuesday, along with a photo of the No Contact Contract she says she was asked to sign by the school as a solution. Her tweet has sparked comments of empathy and curiosity and more than 800 likes, and has been shared more than 600 times.

So you get sexually harassed at school and all you get is a contract???? pic.twitter.com/zJ8cLa0BGL  alyssa???? (@_alyzzle) May 9, 2017

There is no way a contract is going to help me and keep me safe, or the other girls that attend Las Vegas High School, Wilson told Yahoo Beauty through Twitter messaging about the incident. There needs to be more actions done than just a piece of paper.

Wilson alleges that on the morning of May 8, a male student approached her at school, asked her if she was cold, lifted up her dress and inquired, repeatedly, What do you have on under? It left her rattled and struggling to focus, and eventually crying in the middle of class.

After her concerned teacher wondered what was wrong, she recounted what had happened, prompting the teacher to note that shed heard of problems with the alleged harasser before and to then accompany her to the office to fill out an incident report. According to Wilson, the schools dean of students, Colin Purcell, pulled security-camera footage to confirm the allegations were accurate, but found that camera footage glitches right at the moment of the dress lift-up left Purcell to determine there was no evidence.

As a result, the administrator offered to have Wilson and the male student both sign the contract  basically agreeing to stay away from each other and not speak about the incident  and then required that the young mans parents come in for a conference.

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Dave Sheehan, spokesperson for the Clark County School District, tells Yahoo Beauty that he is unable to comment on specific students or incidents in the school, but says, All [Clark County] schools take sexual harassment and bullying very seriously. We follow all regulations by the state and the school district very seriously. We follow to the letter all regulations to ensure the safety and well-being of our students.

Sheehan adds that the signing of no-contact contracts are completely voluntary, and that a student may choose to have a parent present for the signing. The purpose of such pacts, he explains, are to have students say they will keep things to themselves so that it doesnt become a big, schoolwide issue. You know how things travel, words get twisted, rumors fly  it can create a big issue for the school.

He adds that, by signing the contract, the involved students are basically saying they will stay away from each other and keep this to ourselves, not talk about this with our friends. This is a standard thing at the school, and its just a form youre asked to sign with the hope that the student will honor what theyve signed and agreed to do.

Sejal Singh is a policy organizer with Know Your IX, an advocacy group that trains and educates student activists on their Title IX rights and protections  including protection for high school students from sexual harassment. She says that although such contracts have become commonplace at schools facing these situations, for the most part, they should be just one part of a broader package designed to make sure a student who experiences harassment can still continue their education.

Still, she adds, Although theres no question that high schools are covered by this decades-old civil rights law, high schools across the country are still failing to address gender-based harassment and violence. Last year, around 100 were under federal investigation for violating Title IX in their handling of sexual assault alone, and even more schools may be under investigation for complaints related to sexual harassment that does not rise to the level of assault. Singh stresses that high school students have rights, including to have their complaint promptly and equitably investigated.

Accommodations provided by a school under Title IX in such instances often include ensuring that a student who experiences harassment is never in the same class as the harasser. How is a student supposed to focus in math class if someone who harmed them sits two rows behind them? Singh says.

She adds, Mutual no-contact orders are actually very common, both in high school and in college.  They can definitely be extremely unfair to victims, who then have to abide by the terms of the order even though they did nothing wrong.

Unfair is exactly how Wilsons mother, Sonja Palmer, feels about the schools handling of the situation.

The biggest problem is that youre asking my daughter to sign a contract that requires a parents signature, but I was never called to the school; I was never called in for a meeting to go over the contract with my daughter, Palmer, a special-education teachers assistant for the school district, tells Yahoo Beauty. She adds that emails she has sent to various administrators have yet to be answered. She was initially contacted by the school about the incident, she says, with a female administrator telling her, I have daughters of my own  I understand. But now, she adds, theyre not following up with me.

Palmer says she takes issue with the no-contact contract for the way it positions Wilson as if shes the aggressor, when shes the victim. Likewise, she says she fears such a contract does nothing to protect her daughter  who has a class with her harasser  from further harassment or potential retaliation for having reported her harasser.

What have they done to make my daughter feel protected? she asks. She doesnt feel protected.

Wilson says she understands she violated her contract by going public with the story but that she has no regrets. I will probably be suspended, she says, but adds, Reporting it was the right choice, and I may be able to help other young ladies who have also been harassed to report it.

The teen believes that the contract is not enough of a solution when it comes to sexual harassment. There needs to be a talk about sexual behavior just the way they constantly talk about tardies being a problem, she says. Im tired of schools sexualizing students and making it seem like harassment isnt a real problem.

Read more on Yahoo Style + Beauty:

Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day. For Twitter updates, follow @YahooStyle and @YahooBeauty.
President Trump is interviewed by NBCs Lester Holt on Thursday. (Photo: Joe Gabriel/NBC News via AP)

Just hours after White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Trump had received assurances from a key senator that the idea of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was a hoax, a spokesman for the senator, Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, denied any such conversation.

Sen. Grassley has not spoken to President Trump about what he has learned in briefings related to investigations into Russian interference in our elections, and he has never referred to the notion of collusion as a hoax, Grassleys spokesman, Taylor Foy, emailed Yahoo News. Grassley is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and together with ranking minority member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., has been briefed on details of the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in last years presidential election.

Foys statement seemed to directly contradict Spicers remarks earlier Friday, raising new questions about the credibility of White House accounts of the firing of FBI Director James Comey. I think the presidents comments about Russia and collusion have been very clear with respect to some of the charges that have been made, Spicer said. Hes been very clear that he believes that the notion theres collusion is a hoax. Its been reaffirmed by several people, including Sen. Grassley and others who have spoke to him.

The dispute grew out of comments the president made in an interview this week with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, that he knew he was not under criminal investigation because it was stated at the committee, at some committee level, that I wasnt.

But Comey, when he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, had specifically declined to say whether President Trump was under investigation, saying only that he had briefed Grassley and Feinstein behind closed doors about who the bureau had opened cases on. When asked by Yahoo News earlier Friday whether Grassley had shared any of that information with Trump or anybody at the White House, spokesman Foy had emailed: The answer to your question is no.

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Feinsteins spokesman made a similar denial; so did the offices of Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who also received classified FBI briefings.

In his second emailed statement late Friday, Foy went on to say: In fact, just today, he [Grassley] and Senator Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, called on the Justice Department and the FBI to brief the full committee on the investigation into Russian interference. The bipartisan request is intended to ensure that all Judiciary Committee senators, both Republicans and Democrats, have a better understanding of what went on and where the investigation stands.

In his interview with Holt this week, Trump repeated a claim he had first made in his letter firing Comey Tuesday night  that the former FBI director had assured him on three separate occasions that he was not being investigated as part of the Russia probe. One of those occasions was at a dinner during which, in Trumps account, Comey asked to be allowed to stay on his job.

A different account was given to the New York Times by associates of Comey, who said the FBI director had recounted that the president had asked for his loyalty, and that Comey instead offered only his honesty.

It was unclear what committee or testimony Trump was referring to when he said at the committee, at some committee level. The question of whether the president himself was under investigation did not directly come up when Comey first testified in public about the Russia probe before the House Intelligence Committee on March 20. But in his May 3 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Comey was pressed by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to say whether the FBI had ruled out the president of the United States as a subject of the investigation.

I dont  I dont want people to over-interpret this answer, Im not going to comment on anyone in particular, because that puts me down a slope of  because if I say no to that, then I have to answer succeeding questions, Comey replied.

Comey at that point did mention that he had, in a separate closed-door meeting, briefed the chairman and ranking member of the committee on who the U.S. persons are that weve opened investigations on. And thats  thats as far as were going to go, at this point.

Comey has been invited to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee to discuss the circumstances of his firing, but he declined to testify.

Read more from Yahoo News:
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The Trump administration parked its get-tough rhetoric on trade with China to trumpet an agreement on beef and energy exports with Beijing, even as the White House continues to rail against supposed abuses by friendly countries like Mexico and Canada.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross touted the deal, which would open Chinas market to U.S. beef exports after years of restrictions as a herculean accomplishment.

President Donald Trump tweeted the virtues of the deal, calling it real news! And White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer started a contentious news briefing Friday by touting the merits of what he called the presidents fight for American jobs.

In truth, the trade wins build on market openings already under way. Last fall, the Obama administration secured preliminary access to the Chinese market for U.S. beef exports, which had been disrupted for more than a decade because of the mad cow scare, but hadnt finished the technical trade talks. And the new agreements also formalize the ability of China to import natural gas from the United States; China already imports significant volumes of U.S. liquefied natural gas.

Whats more, the new agreements depend on highly undependable Chinese cooperation, one reason similar accords have been struck in vain in the past. However, the quick progress signals a more pragmatic approach by the administration to dealing with trade tensions between the two countries, after months of saber-rattling and talk of a trade war.

The administration said the agreements were the fruit of a review carried out as a result of the meeting between Presidents Trump and Xi Jinping. The speedy conclusion heralds a welcome shift from the obsession with trade deficits that has defined the administrations trade policy so far, said Derek Scissors, an expert on Chinas economy at the American Enterprise Institute

The problem is, the administration isnt applying this approach across the board: Its still haranguing key U.S. allies over negative trade balances. On May 4, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross called out Mexico and Japan for their trade surpluses with the United States, which he said were growing at an alarming rate. (Mexicos trade surplus with the United States has widened in part because Trumps Mexico-bashing rhetoric has lowered the value of the peso, which in turns boosts its exports and squeezes its imports.)

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The United States can no longer sustain this inflated trade deficit with our closest trading partners, Ross said in a press release.

But Scissors said that hammering friends and neighbors over trade balances while glossing over it with rivals could be counterproductive.

If you think the problem is the trade deficit, you cannot chicken out on China and go after the small countries, he said. That is terrible policy  both in terms of trade and in terms of our diplomatic policy.

Last month, Trump vowed to terminate or renegotiate the South Korea free trade deal, which took effect just five years ago, calling it a horrible deal for the United States. And he came close to pulling the United States out of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, before backing down after calls from Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The administration doesnt seem to understand the context of the relationships, Scissors argued. Canada and Mexico are friends of the United States, and their trade practices are better than Chinas.

Aside from easing restrictions on American beef and liquefied natural gas, Thursdays agreement would lift restrictions to allow U.S. electronic payment processors to operate in China. Beijing would also grant licenses to two U.S. banks seeking to underwrite stock or bond offerings in China.

On the Chinese side, the deal would open the U.S. market to cooked poultry imports from China and give Chinese banks operating in the U.S. the same regulatory and supervisory treatment as other banks. The agreement also says the United States welcomes investment from Chinese entrepreneurs  language important to Beijing amid rising concern in America that such investments could pose a national security threat.

The issue now will be follow-through. China has a long history of formally granting market access but then effectively blocking it by controlling how Chinese firms conduct business, or by other informal restrictions on how foreign companies can operate.

A case in point: Telecom ventures. In the negotiations leading to Chinas accession to the World Trade Organization more than a decade ago, the United States fought for access to Chinas telecom industry. To date, there have been no joint ventures of any significance between Chinese and American firms, according to Scissors.

Photo credit: LAURENT FIEVET/AFP/Getty Images
President admits the allegations of collusion between his advisers and Russian officials played into sacking of FBI director

Donald Trump has said he was thinking of this Russia thing when he decided James Comeys fate  contradicting the White House rationale that he fired the FBI director for mishandling the Clinton email investigation.

Comey had been leading an investigation into possible collusion between Trump advisers and Russian officials when he was dismissed by the president. Defending that decision in an interview on NBC News on Thursday, Trump said: And, in fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said: You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they shouldve won.

Trump also said there were three occasions on which Comey assured him he was not under investigation. The president said he called the director of the FBI to ask for an update on a possible criminal investigation into his ties with Russia.

In the NBC interview Trump also flatly contradicted his own vice-president and spokesman by saying he decided to fire James Comey before receiving a recommendation from the deputy attorney general.



Trump recalled three conversations with Comey about the FBI investigation into Russian interference in last years presidential election. First, he said, there was a dinner which was also about Comeys future, raising the prospect that Trump could threaten his job.

He wanted to stay on at the FBI, Trump said, and I said Ill, you know, consider and see what happens  But we had a very nice dinner, and at that time he told me, You are not under investigation.

Then there were two phone calls, one made by Trump, another by Comey. The president admitted: I actually asked him, yes. I said, If its possible would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said: You are not under investigation.

The revelations are likely to trigger a fresh storm of criticism. Perceptions that Trump fired Comey because of the Russian investigation have been central to the controversy surrounding the dismissal. Meanwhile, Trump asking whether he was under investigation would not be illegal, but highly irregular. On Thursday, Trumps words earned immediate comparisons with then attorney general Loretta Lynchs controversial meeting with Bill Clinton last June, during the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private email server while secretary of state.

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Matthew Miller, a former spokesman for the Department of Justice, told MSNBC: Its completely inappropriate for [Trump] to ask that question  It would also be a violation of DoJ rules for James Comey to answer it.



Asked at Thursdays White House press briefing if it was inappropriate for Trump to have asked Comey if he was under investigation, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said: No, I dont believe it is.

She added: I dont see it as a conflict of interest and neither do many of the legal scholars whove been commenting on it over the last hour. Sanders did not identify which legal scholars that she was referring to.

Hes a showboat, hes a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that Donald Trump on James Comey

When the president fired Comey on Tuesday, the White House released a memo from deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein that criticised Comey for mishandling last years investigation into Hillary Clintons emails. Press secretary Sean Spicer claimed it was this memo that prompted Trump to remove Comey, a position backed by vice-president Mike Pence on Wednesday.



Pence said in an interview with CNN that Trump had made a decision to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to remove Director Comey.

But in the NBC interview, Trump said of Comey: Hes a showboat, hes a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasnt recovered from that.

He explained: I was going to fire Comey. My decision. I was going to fire Comey. Theres no good time to do it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.

The revelation came amid a flurry of reports suggesting that Trump had grown increasingly irate with Comey in recent weeks because of his high profile, his failure to stop leaks, his pursuit of the Russia investigation and his lack of support for the presidents claim that he was wiretapped by Barack Obama.

In the end, he fired Comey late on Tuesday afternoon, a move that seemed to take many White House staff by surprise. The official reason given was the FBI directors mishandling of the investigation into Clintons emails.

The acting head of the FBI, meanwhile, said on Thursday that Comey enjoyed broad support among its staff  directly contradicting the White House assertion that he had lost the confidence of the FBI rank and file.

Confronted at a Senate intelligence committee hearing with the claim of Comeys unpopularity, Andrew McCabe said: That is not accurate.

I can tell you I worked very, very closely [with Comey] from the time we started at the Washington field office, he said. I hold Director Comey in the highest regard for his considerable abilities and his integrity. It is the greatest honour of my professional life to have worked with him. He enjoyed broad support in the FBI and he still does to this day  the vast majority of FBI staff enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey.

In contrast, Sanders told reporters on Thursday that she had been in contact with countless FBI agents via text and email who expressed their support for the decision. She did not identify them or explain why a White House press staffer would be in contact with FBI agents.

Earlier on Thursday, Sanders told CBS News Trump was very likely to visit FBI headquarters in the next few days. But later the MSNBC network reported that the visit would not be happening after agency officials told the White House that Trump would not be greeted warmly.

Making his first public appearance since Comeys dismissal, McCabe promised to tell the Senate committee if he came under pressure to shut down the investigation into possible links between Trumps associates and Russia during last years election. He said he had met Trump this week but the Russian investigation did not come up.

Asked by Senator Marco Rubio if Comeys abrupt dismissal would impede the work of the FBI, McCabe was adamant.

You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing and upholding the constitution, he said. Later he said the Russian investigation would be pursued vigorously and completely.

To reports of Comey having asked for more resources for the investigation, McCabe said he was not aware of any such request and insisted the Russian investigation had the resources it needed.

Opening the hearing on global threats that heard evidence from the heads of the main US intelligence agencies, the committees Republican chairman, Richard Burr, said it would not be solely focused on the Trump-Russia enquiry. However, Democratic senators repeatedly returned to the issue.

It is impossible to ignore that one of the leaders of the intelligence community is not here with us today, said the top Democrat on the committee, Mark Warner. The presidents firing of FBI director Comey  was a shocking development.

The timing of Director Comeys dismissal to me and many committee members on both sides of the aisle is especially troubling. He was leading an active counterintelligence investigation into any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government or its representatives, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russias efforts to interfere in our election.

For many people, including myself, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the presidents decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation. And that is unacceptable.

It emerged on Wednesday evening that the committee had issued a subpoena for the presidents former national security adviser Michael Flynn, requesting documents relevant to the committees investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election.

Comey  who found out he had been fired when the news flashed up on a screen behind him when he was addressing staff in Los Angeles  sent a farewell letter to FBI staff on Wednesday.

It is very hard to leave a group of people who are committed only to doing the right thing, he wrote. My hope is that you will continue to live our values and the mission of protecting the American people and upholding the constitution.
Amid backlash over his firing of FBI director James Comey, President Donald Trumps approval rating dipped yet again. In a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, 58 percent of voters said they disapproved of Trumps job performance, while 36 percent said they approved.

The same poll showed Trumps approval rating stood at 40 percent in mid-April.

There is no way to spin or sugarcoat these sagging numbers, Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University poll, told The Hill. [These] are red flags that the administration simply cant brush away.

Read: Professor Who Predicted Trump's Presidency Weighs In On His Future

The latest approval poll shows the lowest numbers Trump has seen since taking office. His previous low was recorded in January, when only 39 percent of voters said they approved of the job he was doing. Trumps average approval rating for his first 100 days in office was around 41 percent, according to Gallup.

While his approval rating has dipped, the odds of Trump getting impeached have risen, according to betting site Predictit. Predictit showed Trumps odds of staying in the White House fell by six percent, with the odds of him remaining in office until 2019 only 68 percent following his firing of the FBI director.

Trump fired Comey Tuesday after reports emerged that the FBI director made misstatements while discussing the investigation of Hillary Clintons emails. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said the decision was made based on the advice of those in the administration.

President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Spicer said in a statement. 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.

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Read: How Much Does It Cost To Protect The Trumps?

Comeys sudden firing prompted a quick backlash from those in the opposite party. Though they had decried Comeys handling of the Clinton investigation and his decision to re-open the investigation at the eleventh hour of the 2016 campaign, many took issue with the presidents firing of the director.

While I had deep reservations about 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, said Rep. Adam Schiff.

The Presidents sudden and brazen firing of the FBI Director raises the ghosts of some of the worst Executive Branch abuses, said House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. We cannot stand by and watch a cover-up of the possible collusion with a hostile foreign power to undermine American democracy.

Democratic Rep. John Conyers said the actions reek of a cover-up 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.

Even before Comeys firing, some experts predicted Trump wouldnt last as president. Allan Lichtman, a professor at American University and the man who accurately predicted Trump would become president, predicted Trump would be impeached before his term was over.

Justice will be realized in todays America not through revolution, but by the Constitutions peaceful remedy of impeachment, he wrote in his book The Case for Impeachment.

But only if the people demand it."

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Photo: Getty Images

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Concerns about independence grow after statement by Mitch McConnell suggests only option to lead inquiry is special counsel  in this case, the man who wrote the letter leading to Comeys dismissal

Following the Trump administrations shock decision to sack FBI director James Comey on Tuesday, demands for the appointment of a special prosecutor to lead an investigation into Russias interference in the 2016 election have intensified.



If we dont get a special prosecutor, every American will rightfully suspect that the decision to fire #Comey was part of a cover-up, Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, tweeted shortly after Comey was fired.

But options for placing an independent official in charge of such an investigation are limited, and narrowed even further on Wednesday morning after the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, made clear he did not support Schumers demands.

McConnell told the Senate that such an appointment would only serve to impede the current work being done by congressional committees and law enforcement already investigating, probably taking two of three possible options off the table. Congress could have passed legislation to appoint an independent prosecutor to a new investigation, or it could have created a special congressional committee to start up a new probe. After McConnells remarks, both seem unlikely.

What seems like the only remaining option  the appointment of a special counsel  now lies solely in the hands of the US Department of Justice (DoJ) and the same man, deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who authored the letter that led to Comeys sacking in the first place.

After the Watergate scandal, legislation governing the appointment of independent counsel was passed which allowed the attorney general to request a panel of three judges to appoint a special counsel, and then allowed that special counsel the ability to continue any investigation until they deemed it complete. This was introduced in part to prevent a future president from sacking a special prosecutor, as Richard Nixon had done in 1973.

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But in 1999 this legislation was allowed to lapse by the Clinton administration.

The system now is far less independent. Any federal special counsel is appointed by the attorney general, who then retains the ability to decide whether criminal charges are pursued after the investigation concludes. Given that the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has already recused himself from any investigations into Russias involvement in the 2016 election, the official who would be placed in charge of appointing such a special prosecutor would be Rosenstein.

While Democrats have started to demand Rosenstein be removed from such duties, due to his involvement in Comeys sacking, career DoJ officials including former acting attorney general Sally Yates had earlier expressed confidence in his impartiality.

Former assistant attorney general Laurie Robinson also expressed confidence in Rosensteins judgement in an interview with the Guardian on Wednesday.

My guess is that he has been a bit surprised by the tremendous reaction, as the White House apparently was, to Comeys firing and that he is going to see that theyre going to have to take strong steps to ensure the aggressive follow-through on this investigation, said Robinson, who served under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

She added that it would be logical for Rosenstein to appoint a special prosecutor under these exceptional circumstances for one specific reason: The appearance of justice is a very important factor, and the appearance of justice would tend to speak in favour of appointing a special counsel.

Nonetheless, even before Trump moved to sack Comey, the investigation already being run by the DoJ appeared to be taking steps toward prosecutions.

Late on Tuesday, CNN reported that federal prosecutors had issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of Michael Flynn, Trumps disgraced former national security adviser, seeking business records. Grand juries examine potential criminal misconduct and determine whether charges should be brought, and operate in secrecy.

The subpoenas were reportedly issued by the US attorneys office for the eastern district of Virginia. Comey told Congress last week that the FBI was coordinating its Trump-Russia inquiries with that US attorneys office and the national security division at DoJ headquarters.

Unusually, these offices are led by the same person: Dana Boente, who is both the acting assistant US attorney general for national security and the US attorney for Virginias eastern district.

Boente was given the national security role after briefly serving as Trumps acting US attorney general between the firing of Sally Yates and the Senates confirmation of Sessions. A spokesman confirmed on Wednesday that he also remains the US attorney in eastern Virginia.
The White House press briefings during the Trump era have become major events on cable news, but President Trump is now threatening to cancel them as his own spokespeople struggle to keep up with his narrative for firing James Comey as FBI director.

Trump argued on Twitter Friday that its unreasonable to expect perfect accuracy from his White House press office because hes a very active president with lots of things happening.

Thanks to this supposedly high bar, Trump suggested it might be worthwhile to call off all future White House press briefings and instead hand out written responses to make sure they are accurate.

Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

This was an apparent reference to Wednesdays press briefing, where White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Trump fired Comey at the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

And she wasnt alone. This version of events conforms to what Trump wrote in his letter dismissing Comey. Vice President Mike Pence and Spicer had also cited Rosenstein as the driving force behind the decision.

Trump promptly contradicted this sequence of events the following day in an interview with NBC News by saying that he intended to fire Comey regardless of Rosensteins opinion.

What I did was I was going to fire Comey. My decision, Trump told NBCs Lester Holt. Theres no good time to do it, by the way. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.

Shortly after the interview was published, Jonathan Karl, the chief White House correspondent for ABC News, asked Sanders if she, Spicer and Pence had been left in the dark about Trumps decision making or had been misled. Trumps spokeswoman replied by saying she hadnt spoken to Trump about when he decided to fire Comey.

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I think its pretty simple. I hadnt had a chance to have the conversation directly with the president. I had several conversations with him, but I didnt ask that question directly: Had you already made that decision? I went off of the information that I had when I answered your question.

Sanders, the daughter of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, said she has since had that conversation with Trump, and he laid out his decision-making process clearly.

He had already made that decision. Hed been thinking about it for months, which I did say yesterday and have said many times since, she said.

Sanders again suggested that any Democrats critical of Trumps decision are hypocrites because they would have welcomed Comeys termination if it had come from a hypothetical President Hillary Clinton. She dismissed the notion that White House staff presented contradictory storylines as mere semantics.

But Democrats argue that they are concerned that Trump dismissed Comey in order to quash the FBIs investigation into Russias meddling in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates are involved. Shortly before Trump fired Comey, the president tweeted, The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?

Sanders insisted that Comey was terminated because he mishandled the investigation into Clintons email server  an inquiry that Trump cheered during the campaign.

Its somewhat ironic that Trump proposed written statements for the sake of accuracy because a statement from the White House Press Office on Tuesday evening supported what Sanders said during the initial briefing.

President Trump acted based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the statement read.

Read more from Yahoo News:
President Trump threatened former FBI Director James Comey around the possibility that their private conversations were recorded.

In a tweet Friday morning, Trump wrote, James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

[ Related: Five big questions about Trumps decision to fire Comey ]

Trump said in an interview with NBC News Thursday that Comey told him once at dinner and twice over the telephone that he wasnt under investigation. A New York Times story published Thursday evening reported that Trump had asked Comey at a private January dinner to pledge loyalty to the new president. Comey declined and said that he would be honest with the president.

Trump and Comey. (Photos: Evan Vucci/AP, Susan Walsh/AP)

The series of tweets come as the White House scrambles to deny that it intentionally misled Americans over the series of events that led to Comeys termination on Tuesday. Administration officials initially said Comey was terminated on the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, but Trump contradicted that message himself on Thursday by saying that he was going to fire Comey regardless of Rosensteins opinion.

The Comey comments were part of a longer series of tweets sent out Friday morning as the president vented on social media, and included a suggestion that he could cancel all future White House press briefings.

Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

The Fake Media is working overtime today!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017
ABUJA (Reuters) - The 82 girls freed by Boko Haram on Saturday after being held captive for three years are still waiting to be reunited with their families, while all the girls found last year will be heading back to school in September, Nigerian officials said. Twenty four girls, who were among around 270 kidnapped by the Islamist militant group from the town of Chibok in northeast Nigeria in April 2014, are to return to school in September, the president's spokesman said on Thursday. Those going back to school include the 21 girls freed last October in a deal brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross and three others who escaped or were rescued. "Government is preparing the girls to go back to school in September this year because they have lost so much academically," said presidency spokesman Garba Shehu. "It is not all the 103 so far released, but 24 of them," he added. None of the girls released on Saturday were among those returning to school in September as they were still undergoing medical and psychological treatment in the capital, Abuja, that should last two to three weeks, the government's Twitter feed stated. On Saturday, 82 girls were released in exchange for members of the jihadist group that has killed 15,000 people since 2009 in an insurgency aimed at creating an Islamic caliphate in the northeast. Aisha Jummai Alhassan, the minister of women affairs, told reporters on Thursday that photographs of the girls had been sent to families in Chibok for identification. The minister said the government was careful about who was granted access to the 24 girls who left captivity last year. They are in Abuja taking part in a rehabilitation programme. "The parents of the #Chibokgirls are free to visit them at any time. We will never prevent them from seeing their daughters," a government tweet quoted Alhassan as saying. Three years ago, the abduction of the girls from their secondary school by Boko Haram sparked global outrage and a celebrity-backed campaign #bringbackourgirls. For more than two years there was no sign of the girls. But the discovery of one of them with a baby last May raised hopes for their safety, with a further two girls found in later months and a group of 21 released by the Islamist militants in October. Mediator and lawyer Zannah Mustapha said some of the abducted girls refused to be freed with the 82 girls last weekend, fuelling fears that they have been radicalised by the jihadists, and may feel afraid, ashamed or even too powerful to return to their old lives. (Reporting by Felix Onuah and Alexis Akwagyiram in Lagos, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
United Nations (United States) (AFP) - Expressing deep concern over political gridlock in Guinea-Bissau, the UN Security Council on Thursday urged President Jose Mario Vaz to appoint a prime minister who enjoys broad political support.

In a unanimous statement adopted after a closed-door meeting, the council said it was ready to "take necessary measures to respond to further worsening of the situation in Guinea Bissau."

The tiny west African state has been in the grip of a power struggle since August 2015, when Vaz sacked then-premier Domingos Simoes Pereira, leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

A new prime minister, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, was sworn in last December but PAIGC rejected him, accusing Vaz of breaching an agreement calling for a consensual choice of prime minister.

The council "invited President Vaz to appoint a prime minister whose selection respects the provisions of the Conakry agreement" that calls for a consensus candidate.

Council members said the crisis was "as a result of the inability of political stakeholders to reach a lasting and consensual solution, leading to the current gridlock".
Following allegations that it forced a woman to urinate in cups after refusing to let her use the lavatory, United Airlines made headlines yet again this week after a video surfaced of an airline employee canceling a mans flight from New Orleans to San Francisco for recording a heated exchange over his baggage. The airline has since issued a public apology to the man, who says he was forced to pay for another ticket home on a different carrier.

Fremont, California resident Navang Oza posted a video of the altercation at Louis Armstrong International Airport to his Facebook page shortly after it occurred Saturday. In the 13-minute video  which had been viewed more than 30,000 times by Thursday  Oza can be heard arguing with an airline employee who cancels his flight seconds after he begins recording. The argument allegedly began over the charges for his oversized bag, which Oza says in the videos caption were going to to be more than $300 even though it only cost him $125 on his initial flight.

You do not have my permission to videotape, the woman says before adding, What's his name? Cancel the reservation.

When Oza proceeds to ask why his reservation is being canceled, the woman turns to another agent and says, I need you to a) call the cops because this will be confiscated or b) cancel the reservation.

The woman then proceeds to begin recording Oza, asking him if he would like to pay for his oversized bag. Oza replies that he would like to speak to her manager.

Read: Woman Forced To Pee In Cup During United Airlines Flight, Was Humiliated By Attendant

Holding up her phone toward Oza, the agent can be heard saying, Customer is willing to pay, however, he refuses to stop taping. This is insubordination. This is what we have to go through as agents.

Oza is later approached by a Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputy, who asks Oza if he has been drinking. Oza replies, Obviously, but wrote in the videos caption that they said I was drunk when I only had 2 beers before getting to the airport.

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When asking the deputy if he can continue recording, the officer tells him that he can indeed continue taping, as the airport is a public space. The deputy noted that Oza smelled like alcohol and told him he could either leave the terminal peacefully or be arrested for public intoxication.

I personally feel like I did nothing wrong and was kicked out only because I started recording the lady as she was being rude and I asked to speak to the manager as to why I had to pay more than what they charged me on my flight from SFO to NOLA, he wrote on Facebook.

Oza added, I need to share this with everyone as I really don't feel like I did anything wrong and the lady at the counter was just being rude and not willing to help me as I inquired why it was costing more than what I paid on my way from SFO to NOLA.

In a statement to International Business Times, a spokesperson for United Airlines said, 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.

According to Oza, he had to pay more than $550 to take a flight home on American Airlines.

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Dana Shell Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Qatar, expressed frustration Wednesday after President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey. Trump fired Comey amid the latter's probe into alleged ties between Trump associates and the Russian government.

Smith, a holdover from the Barack Obama administration, tweeted: Increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home, knowing I will spend today explaining our democracy and institutions.

It remained unclear what prompted Smith to post the tweet. She wrote another tweet saying: Diplomats explain & defend our political system. Can be tough when partisan acrimony so high, but there is still no greater country.

She also appeared to show support to former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who was fired by Trump late January for not complying with an executive order temporarily banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries. Smith retweeted MSNBC analyst Rick Stengels tweet praising Yates for her testimony before the Senate earlier this week.

Dana Shell Smith retweet

Photo: Twitter

Smith was nominated by Trumps predecessor Obama in May 2014 and was confirmed by the Senate in July 2014.

Prior to her assignments in the Bureau of Public Affairs, Ambassador Smith was the Department's Regional Arabic Language Spokesperson in Dubai. She served in a number of positions including as Senior Advisor to the Director General and overseas tours of duty in Taipei, Amman, Tel Aviv/Gaza, and Cairo, the Department of States website said of Smith.

Ambassador Smith is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, and speaks Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and Hebrew. She is a graduate of the University of California at San Diego.

On Tuesday, Trump fired Comey over the way he managed the inquiry into Democrat Hillary Clinton's emails, according to the White House. Comey was removed from his job after he wrongly testified on Capitol Hill on May 3 that former Clinton aide Huma Abedin forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, including some classified information, to her husbands laptop.

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But FBI told the Senate judiciary committee Tuesday only a small number among the thousands of emails found on the laptop were sent to Abedins husbands laptop.

"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 White House said.

A May 9 letter by Trump to Comey stated the director was 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 Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the Bureau, Trump wrote.

After Comeys dismissal, many Democrats speculated Trump fired him due to his investigation into the links between the presidents associates and Russia during the 2016 election.

Some Republicans also voiced concern over Comeys removal. However, the White House denied the directors removal had anything to do with his Russia probe.

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By Sarah B. Boxer

Its really, really bad when you have your intelligence apparatus and president at odds. And theres a lot of distance between them.

President Trump has been at odds with members of the intelligence community since the day he was elected  bemoaning leaks, asserting wiretaps, calling for heads to roll and just this week, firing the director of the FBI.

But there is almost no one in this country who has faced the consequences of a warring intelligence community and White House than former CIA officer Valerie Plame.

In 2003, when working as a covert operative specializing in nuclear proliferation research, Plames true identity was unmasked when administration officials leaked her name to the press. Plames husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, had been one the most vocal critics of the Bush administrations claim that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling weapons of mass destruction  a claim that was the basis for invading Iraq. When Plames cover was blown, it was widely believed that senior White House officials had done it in retaliation.

Now, with news surrounding President Trumps relationship with the intelligence community reaching a fever pitch, Plame is speaking out. She says in the wake of FBI Director Comeys abrupt firing, the Republicans must call for a special prosecutor to look into the president and his advisers ties and business interests in Russia. Or they risk losing all credibility with the American public.

In an interview with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric, Plame says that many of her former colleagues have been wrestling with how to handle this administration.

I have to tell you, after the election, there was grave concern over: What now? says Plame. The question was, for them, do we stay with our jobs, or do we quit? What is the moral, ethical thing to do? Because there is no coherent strategy. I think there is a high level of apprehension.

Plame says that even before the Comey fallout, she knew of people in the intelligence community left their jobs due to President Trumps election, in part due to fear that he would politicize the CIA. I think everyone there would rather chew off their right arm than be accused of putting in any sort of partisan analysis [or] political overtones to what they were doing.

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Couric asked Plame if she thinks that President Trump or his team colluded with the Russians during the 2016 U.S. election.

I think there is significant circumstantial evidence of unprecedented contacts, says Plame. She went on to say that she finds it terribly alarming that Gen. Michael Flynn, Trumps former NSA director, failed to disclose financial links that tied him to countries like Russia and Turkey. At the time of his firing, the White House said Flynn had forgotten to mention critical details of his dealings with the Russian government.

Forgot? Are you kidding me? says Plame, incredulous. I think theres definitely more to come.

When Plame was in the CIA, her main focal point was nuclear weapons  finding out who was amassing them, and how. She still follows related issues keenly  but has deep concerns about President Trumps understanding of the gravity of whats at hand.

I want this administration to be successful and to keep us safe. But I am not very sanguine that that is actually whats going to happen. Because he is inexperienced. His ignorance, particularly on my area of expertise, nuclear issues, is vast. Its hard to keep up.

Where we are now  these are really uncharted territories, she tells Couric. And the administration lacks, in my view, any coherent strategy on almost anything. Whether it is toward Russia, whether it is toward what we are doing in the Middle East, how were dealing with nuclear threats around the world, and we are, Im afraid, very vulnerable.

Plame says shes gravely concerned about North Koreas nuclear proliferation and its global implications. I always think of North Korea as a cult masquerading as a state.

Couric asked Plame what she thought of Trumps recent comments in which he described North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a smart cookie.

Plame says she wasnt sure what to make of the remarks. Youre never quite sure where hes coming from. Was that laudatory? I do not subscribe to the Trump is crazy like a fox thing. I think thats being too generous.

Plame says that while shes enjoying private life in Santa Fe  raising her teenage twins, giving talks about espionage, and binge-watching The Americans  she very much misses her old job.

If you had a chance to talk to Lewis Scooter Libby, Richard Armitige, Karl Rove  the people who discussed your name with members of the press  if you had a chance to be face-to-face with them today, what would you say? asked Couric.

Id probably ask them: What were you thinking? smiles Plame. I was working on the very thing you said was so important: our primary national interest. And you undermined my true CIA identity for your partisan agenda. And I dont think theyd have a very good answer for that.

She does not think the revelation of her identity  and the resulting criminal charges brought against some involved  is analogous to the scandal of a similar nature unfolding right now involving former national security adviser Susan Rice.

What Susan Rice did, to the best of my knowledge that Ive seen available in the public domain, was absolutely legal and appropriate. Plame says that when senior officials are looking at redacted reports and request that names be disclosed in order to put things into context, there is a rigorous process to ensure proper protocols are in place.

Im not in the business of defending Susan Rice one way or another, but from my understanding and my experience, nothing was inappropriate about Rices actions, says Plame.
LIMA (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition is asking other Latin American countries to pressure President Nicolas Maduro's government into implementing a "democratic agenda," opposition leader Julio Borges said on Thursday. Borges, the president of Venezuela's opposition-led National Assembly, traveled to Lima to meet with Peruvian legislators and President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who has been one of Maduro's most vocal critics among Latin American leaders. He said the humanitarian crisis and strong protests against Maduro's socialist government had crossed Venezuela's borders because of a wave of refugees across the region. "It's important - fundamental - that we get several governments in the region to unite in the short term to make sure in Venezuela there exists nothing other than a popular and democratic agenda," Borges told Reuters. Venezuela has suffered through more than five weeks of violent anti-government protests in which 39 people have died. The opposition has decried Maduro as an autocrat who has wrecked the OPEC member's economy, and demanded elections to resolve the political crisis. Peru recalled its ambassador to Caracas in late March. Appearing together with Borges in the Presidential Palace later on Thursday, Kuczynski said he had "no desire to interfere in the internal matters of other countries" but that countries in the region must support the wellbeing of Venezuela's people and provide "humanitarian assistance." Kuczynski said he told Borges that "we're prepared to help with this, to help as part of a group of American countries that are worried about an important neighbor. Venezuela is the number one issue in America." Borges said the aim of the strategy of street protests and calls for international pressure was to "break the conscience of the armed forces and the political groups" that still support Maduro, and to avoid more deaths. He told Peruvian reporters after his speech to Peru's congress that he would travel to Brazil next week to convene a summit with congressional leaders from across the region to push for a "democratic transition" in Venezuela. Socialist Venezuela has lost many regional allies as several Latin American countries have moved to the right in recent years. "There's a new map in Latin America that I'm sure will strongly support this democratic agenda for Venezuela," Borges said. Last week, Borges met with U.S. President Donald Trump's national security advisor H.R. McMaster, where they agreed on the need to bring Venezuela's crisis to a quick and peaceful conclusion. (Reporting by Reuters TV and Marco Aquino; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)
Caracas (AFP) - Venezuelan protesters hit the streets on Wednesday armed with "Poopootov cocktails," jars filled with excrement which they vowed to hurl at police as a wave of anti-government demonstrations turned dirty.

"We are using those 'poopootov' bombs as we call them because they repress us with Molotov cocktails, with pellet guns and everything, and this is our only way to throw something at them," one protester told AFP, displaying a jar of brown liquid.

"The government is arbitrarily attacking us, whereas we are seeking a way to protest that we need a change of government -- and that is not the same thing."

Clashes between protesters and riot cops have left 36 people dead and hundreds injured since unrest erupted on April 1, according to authorities.

A group of young protesters took excrement bombs from their backpacks as a crowd of some 3,000 protesters set off from a square in eastern Caracas heading for the Supreme Court in the center.

Demonstrators blame socialist President Nicolas Maduro for an economic crisis in the oil-rich state that has caused shortages of food and of basic supplies -- such as toilet paper.
WASHINGTON  The White House on Friday refused to say whether President Trump recorded conversations with fired FBI Director James Comey or whether he regularly records exchanges in the Oval Office or his residence.

Ive talked to the president. The president has nothing further to add on that, press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters his daily briefing.

Are there recording devices in the Oval Office or the presidential residence? a reporter asked. There is nothing further to add on that, Spicer said.

Asked whether anyone in the White House had a recording of a January dinner between Trump and Comey, Spicer said he was not aware of that.

Former President Richard Nixon notoriously recorded conversations with senior aides and advisers in the Oval Office. The existence of the tapes became public during the Watergate scandal that led Nixon to resign.

The peculiar exchanges with Spicer came after an early-morning tweet in which Trump seemed to threaten the ousted investigator, saying: James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Spicer disputed that Trump was looking to intimidate Comey: Thats not a threat. He simply stated a fact. The tweet speaks for itself, Spicer said. Im moving on.

Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday that Comey told him once at dinner and twice over the telephone that he wasnt under investigation. A New York Times story published Thursday evening reported that Trump had asked Comey at a private January dinner to pledge loyalty to the new president. Comey reportedly declined and said that he would be honest with the president.

Asked whether that description was accurate, Spicer replied, No.

The president wants loyalty to this country and to the rule of law, the spokesman added.
(This May 10 story corrects headline and paragraph one to show that not all of the accused paid fines for price gouging, corrects paragraph two to clarify allegations of price gouging)

By Melissa Fares

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three Plattsburgh, New York, taxi cab companies will pay financial penalties for taking advantage of illegal immigrants fleeing the United States for Canada, the New York Attorney General's office said on Wednesday.

It said in a statement the fines came as part of a settlement after the three companies, Northern Taxi, Town Taxi and C & L Taxi, "admitted to not posting rates as required by law." A driver from Northern Taxi was also accused of charging an undercover investigator $300 for a fare that should cost no more than $77.50. The same investigator was charged $100 by a C & L Taxi driver, while a Town Taxi driver charged $85, the attorney general said in a statement.

Illegal crossings from the United States into Canada have become increasingly common in the months since U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to crack down on undocumented immigrants, took office in January.

Its no secret that weve seen intense fear in immigrant communities across New York in recent months. To take advantage of that fear for financial gain is simply unconscionable, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in the statement.

My office wont hesitate to crack down on those seeking to take advantage of this climate of fear.

As part of the settlement, the Plattsburgh companies will pay penalties ranging from $350 to $2,500.

Northern Taxi did not immediately respond to phone calls seeking comment. The owner of C&L Taxi said she was not aware of the allegations. The operator of Town Taxi told Reuters they had not publicized fares.

On Wednesday, Reuters published a report about asylum seekers traveling to the Canadian border, based in part on an interview with C&L Taxi driver Curtis Seymour.

Seymour voted for Trump partly because of his immigration policies, but said he had grown increasingly sympathetic to his immigrant passengers.

(Reporting by Melissa Fares in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website.

Hospitals and other healthcare providers across England were forced to cancel countless appointments and divert ambulances on Friday after a massive ransomware attack crippled their computer systems. In the hours that followed, the crisis spread to facilities in at dozens of other countries, according to news reports.

FedEx was one of the big corporations affected by the attack, telling NBC News that "like many other companies, FedEx is experiencing interference with some of our Windows-based systems caused by malware. We are implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible. We regret any inconvenience to our customers.

Although this latest attack was massive in scope, ransomeware threats often strike the personal computers of individual consumers, too.



Heres what you need to know and how to protect yourself.

What is ransomware?

Ransomware is a form of malware designed to steal money from individuals, businesses and other organizations by holding their data hostage. Imagine coming home to find a big padlock on your front door and a criminal standing next to it, demanding money to let you in. That's ransomware. Only instead of being locked out of your house, you're locked out of all your personal files. The next time you log on, your computer displays a ransom note saying your data has been encrypted, with instructions on how to pay to unlock it.

Can hackers really make money doing this?

Oh, yes. Ransomware is big business. Ransoms can range from a few hundred to thousands of dollars and are usually paid in the "virtual" currency Bitcoin, which is nearly impossible to trace. In some cases, the longer you wait to pay, the higher the ransom becomes.

According to cybersecurity firm Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report released in April, the number of new ransomware strategies uncovered during 2016 more than tripled to 101, while the number of ransomware infections the company spotted jumped 36 percent. Verizon's recently released 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report notes that ransomware accounted for 72 percent of the malware incidents involving the heathcare industry last year.

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Why is this particular ransomware attack significant?

Friday's attack affected at least 25 of the UK's National Health Service's hospitals and other organizations. But NHS says it was not the specific target of the attack. It does not appear that patient information was accessed, according to the organization, but its investigation into the matter is still in the early stages. Barts Health, which manages a handful of major hospitals in London and elsewhere, also confirmed it was experiencing a "major IT disruption."

The malware arrived in encrypted files distributed by email. Once a computer was infected, the user received a note demanding $300 in bitcoin to restore access to patient information and other data on the device.

The attack quickly spread to other countries. CNN put the figure at 74.

Has this ever happened in the US?

Yes. One of the best known examples involved L.A.'s Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, which in February 2016 said it paid a ransom of $17,000 to get its computer systems unlocked.

Because of the large amount of personal information collected about patients, hospitals and other healthcare providers are prime ransonware targets. If a doctor can't access information about a patient's medications and pre-exisiting conditions, it's virtually impossible to provide treatment, forcing the doctor and patient to reschedule appointments. And that can result in millions of dollars in lost productivity.

So, even though medical computer systems are routinely backed up, and nearly all that data can be recovered and restored, hospitals often pay the ransom in an effort to speed things up and minimize financial losses.

How do you get infected?

Whether they involve a computer nework run by a business or hospital, or just an average person's personal PC, most ransomware infections happen when a user is lured by a bogus phishing email to a site that infects his or her computer, or by clicking on an attached file that secretly installs it.

How can you avoid having your data taken hostage?

You avoid ransomware the same way you avoid any malware infection: By being careful. While that's not always easy, there are things you can do to steer clear of problems.

Dont casually click a link inside an email; instead, type the web address directly into your browser.

Never open an attachment unless you were expecting to receive it and you're certain of what it is.

Don't spend time in the disreputable corners of the internet that specialize in risque content or pirated movies; you can get infected simply by visiting a dodgy site.

Never install software just because a web site tells you to do it.

And always keep a backup copy of all your personal files on a separate drive or with a "cloud"-based backup service. That way, if the worst happens, you'll always have access to your most important data.





More from Consumer Reports:

Top pick tires for 2016

Best used cars for $25,000 and less

7 best mattresses for couples





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By Costas Pitas and Carlos Ruano LONDON/MADRID (Reuters) - A global cyberattack leveraging hacking tools widely believed by researchers to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency hit international shipper FedEx, disrupted Britain's health system and infected computers in nearly 100 countries on Friday. Cyber extortionists tricked victims into opening malicious malware attachments to spam emails that appeared to contain invoices, job offers, security warnings and other legitimate files. The ransomware encrypted data on the computers, demanding payments of $300 to $600 to restore access. Security researchers said they observed some victims paying via the digital currency bitcoin, though they did not know what percent had given in to the extortionists. Researchers with security software maker Avast said they had observed 57,000 infections in 99 countries with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets. The most disruptive attacks were reported in Britain, where hospitals and clinics were forced to turn away patients after losing access to computers. International shipper FedEx Corp said some of its Windows computers were also infected. "We are implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible," it said in a statement. Still, only a small number of U.S.-headquartered organizations were hit because the hackers appear to have begun the campaign by targeting organizations in Europe, said Vikram Thakur, research manager with security software maker Symantec. By the time they turned their attention to the United States, spam filters had identified the new threat and flagged the ransomware-laden emails as malicious, Thakur said. Telecommunications company Telefonica was among many targets in Spain, though it said the attack was limited to some computers on an internal network and had not affected clients or services. Portugal Telecom and Telefonica Argentina both said they were also targeted. Private security firms identified the ransomware as a new variant of "WannaCry" that had the ability to automatically spread across large networks by exploiting a known bug in Microsoft's Windows operating system. "Once it gets in and starts moving across the infrastructure, there is no way to stop it," said Adam Meyers, a researcher with cyber security firm CrowdStrike. The hackers, who have not come forward to claim responsibility or otherwise been identified, likely made it a "worm," or self spreading malware, by exploiting a piece of NSA code known as "Eternal Blue" that was released last month by a group known as the Shadow Brokers, researchers with several private cyber security firms said. "This is one of the largest global ransomware attacks the cyber community has ever seen," said Rich Barger, director of threat research with Splunk, one of the firms that linked WannaCry to the NSA. The Shadow Brokers released Eternal Blue as part of a trove of hacking tools that they said belonged to the U.S. spy agency. Microsoft on Friday said it was pushing out automatic Windows updates to defend clients from WannaCry. It issued a patch on March 14 to protect them from Eternal Blue. "Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt," Microsoft said in a statement. It said the company was working with its customers to provide additional assistance. SENSITIVE TIMING The spread of the ransomware capped a week of cyber turmoil in Europe that kicked off a week earlier when hackers posted a huge trove of campaign documents tied to French candidate Emmanuel Macron just 1-1/2 days before a run-off vote in which he was elected as the new president of France. On Wednesday, hackers disputed the websites of several French media companies and aerospace giant Airbus.Also, the hack happened four weeks before a British parliamentary election in which national security and the management of the state-run National Health Service (NHS) are important campaign themes. Authorities in Britain have been braced for possible cyberattacks in the run-up to the vote, as happened during last year's U.S. election and on the eve of this month's presidential vote in France. But those attacks - blamed on Russia, which has repeatedly denied them - followed an entirely different modus operandi involving penetrating the accounts of individuals and political organizations and then releasing hacked material online. On Friday, Russia's interior and emergencies ministries, as well as the country's biggest bank, Sberbank, said they were targeted. The interior ministry said on its website that around 1,000 computers had been infected but it had localized the virus. The emergencies ministry told Russian news agencies it had repelled the cyberattacks while Sberbank said its cyber security systems had prevented viruses from entering its systems. NEW BREED OF RANSOMWARE Although cyber extortion cases have been rising for several years, they have to date affected small-to-mid sized organizations, disrupting services provided by hospitals, police departments, public transportation systems and utilities in the United States and Europe. "Seeing a large telco like Telefonica get hit is going to get everybody worried. Now ransomware is affecting larger companies with more sophisticated security operations," Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer with cyber security firm Veracode, said. The news is also likely to embolden cyber extortionists when selecting targets, Chris Camacho, chief strategy officer with cyber intelligence firm Flashpoint, said. "Now that the cyber criminals know they can hit the big guys, they will start to target big corporations. And some of them may not be well prepared for such attacks," Camacho said. In Spain, some big firms took pre-emptive steps to thwart ransomware attacks following a warning from Spain's National Cryptology Centre of "a massive ransomware attack." Iberdrola and Gas Natural, along with Vodafone's unit in Spain, asked staff to turn off computers or cut off internet access in case they had been compromised, representatives from the firms said. In Spain, the attacks did not disrupt the provision of services or networks operations of the victims, the government said in a statement. (Additional reporting by Jim Finkle, Eric Auchard, Jose Rodriguez, Alistair Smout, Andrea Shalal, Jack Stubbs, Antonella Cinelli, Dustin Volz, Kate Holton, Andy Bruce, Michael Holden, David Milliken, Rosalba O'Brien, Julien Toyer, Tim Hepher, Luiza Ilie, Patricia Rua, Axel Bugge and Sabine Siebold; Writing by Mark Trevelyan and Jim Finkle; Editing by Ralph Boulton and Grant McCool)
By Stephen Jewkes and Oleg Vukmanovic MILAN/LONDON (Reuters) - Suspected Russia-backed hackers have launched exploratory cyber attacks against the energy networks of the Baltic states, sources said, raising security concerns inside the West's main military alliance, NATO. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, all members of NATO and the European Union, are on the political front line of tensions between the West and Moscow. The Baltics are locked into Russia's power network but plan to synchronise their grids with the EU. Interviews with more than a dozen law-enforcement and private investigators, insiders and utility officials show hackers have quietly made incursions into Baltic networks over the past two years, in parallel with more serious attacks in Ukraine that plunged swathes of that country into darkness. They say Russian state organisations are suspected of being behind the campaigns. Reuters could not independently verify the sources' allegations. At the end of 2015, hackers attacked an Internet gateway used to control a Baltic electricity grid, disrupting operations but not causing blackouts, a source familiar with the matter said. He declined to give details due to ongoing private investigations into the incident, which has not been previously reported. The attack was a distributed denial of service (DDoS), where Internet gateways are bombarded with large amounts of data, a blunt but sometimes effective technique in an age when energy networks are being modernised with digital technology. The source also said suspected Russia-backed hackers had targeted a Baltic petrol-distribution system at around the same time in an unsuccessful denial of service attack that aimed to cause widespread disruption in petrol deliveries. The system coordinates deliveries from storage tanks to a network of petrol stations, the source added. In a separate malware attack on another undisclosed Baltic grid, also around end-2015, hackers targeted network communication devices, serial-to-ethernet converters (STEC), which link sub-stations to central control, two other sources said. The attack did not cause service disruption, they added. Though these three incidents date back 18 months or so, cyber security consultants are still investigating some of them. They say hackers can remain dormant and undetected inside systems. In Ukraine, hackers had infiltrated the grids there for about six months before the lights went out in December 2015, consultants said. STECs were also targeted in Ukraine by the so-called Sandworm team, a Russia-backed group that had attacked energy companies in Western Europe and the United States in a campaign in 2014, several sources said. The two sources with knowledge of the STEC attacks said they had detected the presence of Sandworm in the Baltics, but they did not give evidence for their suspicion. One of them said Sandworm was still active in the Baltic states. "It's the same kind of slander as all the other similar accusations," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked by Reuters about the possible hacks. Russia has never cut power flows to the Baltic states or threatened to do so. TESTING TIMES The NATO sources and utility officials said the Baltic attacks raised concerns that hackers could disable the region's energy networks just as they had done in Ukraine, where government troops have been battling pro-Russian separatists since 2014. The first Ukraine attack caused crippling blackouts in some parts of the country lasting several hours. NATO and cyber security experts believe hackers are testing the Baltic energy networks for weaknesses, becoming familiar with how they are controlled in order to be able to shut them down at will. "On a daily basis there are DDoS attacks designed to probe network architecture, so it could well be possible that something (serious) could take place later on," a Brussels-based NATO official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorised to speak publicly on the matter. Lithuanian grid operator Litgrid said attacks on IT systems and the grid were constant but it had not seen DDoS attacks. Litgrid maintains constant monitoring and runs regular tests to detect any cyber break-ins as part of its network defences, the utility said in an emailed statement. Latvia's grid operator, AST, said it had not seen incidents in the last year. Estonia's Elering said only that it had not seen any attacks at the time of the Ukraine incursions in 2015. A security official based in the Baltics said cyber attacks usually increased when Russia carried out large military exercises near its borders with the Baltic states. Last month, NATO helped stage a cyber-security exercise in Estonia in which hundreds of cyber experts from around the world competed in teams to protect a fictitious military air base from attacks on, among other things, a power grid system. In its 2017 national security threat assessment, Lithuania said hackers had launched large-scale DDoS attacks in April last year against state ministries and institutions, Vilnius airport, media and "other important Lithuanian cyber infrastructure". "A major part of executed cyber attacks against the state sector of Lithuania in 2016 were associated with Russian intelligence," the report said, without giving details. Lithuania's state-owned energy holding group, Lietuvos Energija, said it had encountered untraceable attacks like zero-day viruses, among others, which exploit hidden vulnerabilities. Lietuvos's businesses include power distribution. "We do assume that we have adversaries who want to harm us," said Liudas Alisauskas, information security chief at Lietuvos. Lietuvos runs drills to prepare for cyber attacks, including switching to manual operation of the grid, Alisauskas said. In Ukraine, operators of older and technologically simpler networks were able to send workers out into the field to manually bring grids back up. This would be more difficult to achieve in modern, digitised networks, cyber consultants said. (Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in VILNIUS, David Mardiste in TALLINN and Jack Stubbs in MOSCOW; Editing by Mark Bendeich and Andrew Roche)
- Government has appointed Eva Mends to head the budget division of the finance ministry

- She remains the first ever female to take such a position

- Click here for the latest stories in Ghana

Call it a womens affair because the finance ministry has got a female to head its budget division. The public affairs unit of the ministry confirms that Eva Mends will now be the acting director of budget.

READ ALSO: Archbishop Duncan Williams turns 60 today

Gov't has just appointed Ghana's first female director of budgets (Photo: Citifonline)

Eva Mends brings on board a wider sense of experience after holding position as head of the America Desk in 1998, head of the budget development in 2006 and Group head of public financial management reforms in 2013.

The appointment of Eva Mends follows the reappointment of Sampson Asare Fianko who has being reappointed as deputy controller and accountant general.

Ghana seems to be making headway in the appointment of women into top ministerial and institutional positions. The latest appointment was involving that a woman was that of the Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo who succeeds Georgina Wood who exits the Supreme Court due to her retirement come June 9.

Talk of the ministerial positions and you would also find the likes of Ursula Owusu head of the communications ministry, Cecilia Dapaah for aviation; Adjoa Sarfo for procurement the list goes on and on.

The New Patriotic Party is best known for its commitment to affirmative action and placing the rights of women first  a move which has seen the current administration celebrated for its resolve to keep women first in the call for gender equity.

Do you have any story to share with YEN? We are available on Facebook and email via info@yen.com.gh

Source: YEN.com.gh
By Benjamin Jumbe

The Chairman of the Peace and Security Council of the African Union, has told members of the Pan African Parliament meeting in Midrand, South Africa that heavy reliance on donor funding is affecting peace efforts on the continent.

Presenting a paper on the status of peace and security in Africa to MPs, Amb. Mull Katende has urged them to make use of the available tools for structural conflict prevention by ensuring that African governments are more transparent, accountable and responsive to the legitimate demands of the people.

Our major challenge is donor dependence, and this defeats the whole idea of African solutions to African problems, Katende said adding that the decision by the EU to reduce funding for AMISOM troops allowances by 20 percent, was having a negative impact on troop morale and instead boosting the resolve of Al Shabaab to continue undermining the AMISOM gains, he said.

Currently, there is conflict and instability in South Sudan, Somalia, Mali and the Sahel, Libya, Burundi, Sudan, Djibouti, the Gulf of Guinea, Gambia and Western Sahara among others.

Katende hopes that the implementation of the funding formula adopted by the AU in the July 2016 Summit held in Kigali, Rwanda, would improve the funding challenges.

Reacting to the report, Prof. Ogenga Latigo one of Ugandas representatives has urged the Peace and Security Council of the AU to address the root causes of conflict in Africa and the supply of arms.

He noted that the challenge that Africa faces is corruption and providing leadership for posterity rather than for self.

We should invest more in ensuring that elections are free; not repetitive but free of mischief and when you are in governance, you govern for all the country and the continent, Prof. Latigo said.

Honourable Okot Ogong (Uganda) was dismayed to note that PAP was talking about security and peace and yet the continent had no stand-by force to manage its own security challenges.

In the DRC, Darfur and other conflict areas, it is the UN keeping the peace. The AU is acting on behalf of UN Security Council. We have therefore left the agenda of Africa in the hands of other people, he said.

Other legislators opined that Africas target of silencing the guns by 2020 cannot be guaranteed in an atmosphere of intolerance and oppression of the minority.

African politics has now become a business of patronage and cronyism. We have become more tribalistic and intolerant of each others religion, said Mohammed Mubarak Muntaka from Ghana.

The fourth ordinary session of the Pan African Parliament is meeting in its headquarters in Midrand, South Africa, from 8th  19th May 2017.

Ugandas delegation to the PAP includes Hon. Jacqueline Amongin (NRM, Ngora), also leader of the delegation; Prof. Morris Ogenga-Latigo (FDC, Agago North); Hon. Anifa Bangirana Kawooya (NRM, Sembabule); Hon. Felix Okot Ogong (NRM, Dokolo South) and Hon. Babirye Kadogo (Ind. Buyende).
Economists have lashed out at government for deliberately not letting Ugandans own their economy.

Speaking during a symposium themed; who owns the economy Dr. Fred Muhumuza a renowned economic analyst said currently the service sector takes up 50% of the economy yet this is purely in the hands of foreigners

Dr.Muhumuza says for several years members of the local business community have not been regarded as investors and have been denied privileges that are normally accorded to foreign investors.

He said that many service sector businesses like banking, insurance, telecoms and other utility companies are in the hands of foreigners who simply repatriate all profits.

He says a lot has been invested in facilitating the services sector and creating an investor friendly environment leaving out agriculture which employs upto 83 % of Ugandans.

Dr. Muhumuza is now calling for re-designing of Ugandas economic structure.
By Catherine Ageno

President Yoweri Museveni and the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres are asking the world leaders to help raise the over US$2billion needed in emergency funds to handle the humanitarian crisis caused by the South Sudan conflict.

Uganda is now host to over 1.2 million refugees, about 800,000 of them South Sudanese who have fled the violence and famine with more than 2000 refugees coming in daily, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

In a one to one meeting with Mr. Guterres at the sidelines of the International Conference on Somalia at Lancaster House in London, president Museveni said that as a mediator in the conflict, he would use the IGAD monitoring report and work with the IGAD chairman, Ethiopias Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalgn to see that those who abuse the ceasefire are talked to.

I have been allowed by President Salva Kiir to mediate the warring factions in South Sudan. I will use the IGAD monitoring report and work with the IGAD chairman, Ethiopias Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalgn to see that those who abuse the ceasefire are talked to, he said.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres has confirmed his participation in the June 2017 Refugees Solidarity Conference to be held in Uganda which 30 other heads of State and stakeholders will attend.

In 2016, the Government and the United Nations each spent USD 150 million responding to the needs of refugees and the communities hosting them in 12 districts. However, the raising huge numbers are placing a huge strain on the already stressed ability to cater for the food, water, sanitation, health and education needs of the refugees and their host communities.

The Refugee Solidarity conference was mooted in January during a meeting between President Museveni and Mr Guterres, at the sidelines of 28th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Uganda is currently ranked as the second-largest refugee-hosting country in the world after Turkey with a refugee population nearing to one million.

Relatedly, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reechoed he is call for urgent response to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia.

He has told the London Conference on Somalia that the country now hangs in the balance between peril and potential.

Mr Guterres however says world leaders can tip the scales from danger to safety.

He says although political stability is gradually gaining ground, capacity to govern is increased, and foundations for improved stability are in place, all these gains that the President and the government have managed are fragile.

He thus says there is need for investments that preserve progress while urgently addressing the growing food insecurity crisis affecting millions of Somalis.

Mr. Guterres also appealed for additional assistance to address the drought in Somalia, describing it as the most pressing priority.

The drought is the most pressing priority. This morning, we presented a revised Humanitarian Response Plan seeking an additional $900 million through the end of the year. We also need to address the damage caused by climate change and conflict.

This crisis has left 6.2 million severely food insecure.
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Two or more serious bouts

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A $500,000 Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. grant will help the owners of the former La Crosse Plow Co. building reopen it to residential and retail use, after more than two decades of standing empty.

The contract was approved by the Finance and Personnel Committee during a special meeting and approved by the Common Council afterward Thursday evening.

The city applied for the grant to help fund the estimated $32.8 million renovation the property at 525 N. Second St. The money will be paid out to the appropriate parties upon completion of the project.

According to city economic development planner Andrea Schnick, the demolition the grant will help fund is, in the case of the historic Plow Company building, rehabilitation and redevelopment.

The contracts cites a goal of finishing the project by Dec. 31, 2018, but Schnick said the city recognizes the project could continue into 2019.

Terms of the grant forbid the city from using the funds to cover more than 30 percent of its project cost  meaning La Crosse must come up with at least $1,666,666 in non-WEDC funding.

According to Schnick, the Cleary family  the owners of the property  and the city are working on a tax incremental financing loan agreement with the city.

Estimated costs of the project include about $10.4 million for building improvements, more than $3 million for demolition, and more than $13.7 million in infrastructure work, totaling just more than $27 million. Other estimated costs that were ineligible for the grant include about $5.7 million for permits and contingencies.

Schnick said the city is excited to see the project moving forward, with an anticipated start date this year.

Also Thursday ...

The council approved the city performing traffic-calming measures on Losey Boulevard. Repairs of the boulevard were stressed as high importance at the May 4 Finance and Personnel Committee meeting, to be pushed to the top of the project lists for 2018 and be fully repaired by 2019. Legislation to lower the speed limit on Losey to 25 mph was referred for consideration.

The council approved mayoral appointments to committees and a 90-day referral of the rezoning of 410 Wood St. to heavy industrial to accommodate expansion by Craigs Towing and Repair.

Committee and council meetings were also set to be begin at 6 p.m., effective July 1.
WINONA, Minn.  Saint Marys University of Minnesota on Friday opened the doors of its new Science and Learning Center  a state-of-the-art facility, officials say, that will modernize and enrich the experience of university science students.

Today is one of the great, great days in the history of Saint Marys, said university president Brother William Mann, speaking to a crowd of dozens that gathered along the south side of the glistening new building. Were educating people for the science and business of tomorrow.

The Science and Learning Center, which adjoins the longstanding Adducci Science Center, spans more than 50,000 square feet.

It has 13 labs with sleek equipment and adjoining prep rooms  and a ventilation system designed to funnel out unwanted odors. It has 11 classroom with Smart Boards and mobile furniture. And it has two large lecture halls, including a third-story hall with a panoramic view of the campus grounds.

The best view on campus, said Adam Stasica, a university development director.

The center is Saint Marys most ambitious construction project in years and the most expensive such project in university history, costing roughly $20 million.

We did this without taxpayer money and without government funding, said Audrey Kintzi, vice president of development and alumni relations. This is solely through the generosity of benefactors and friends of Saint Marys University.

Those donors had a chance Friday to tour the result of their gifts, to explore the nooks and crannies of a building that almost wasnt ready in time.

Saint Marys officials said the building was originally scheduled to open in June, and as recently as Thursday the center did not have grass around its perimeter or a sign above its door.

According to Kintzi, workers also put fake stone on the exterior walls because the real stone hasnt arrived yet.

Its somewhere between New York and Winona, she said.

Todd Reinhart, dean of sciences and health professions at Saint Marys, said the center will help students realize their aspirations in an array of scientific fields.

And that will begin sooner than later.

The center will host its first classes May 29 at a workshop in regenerative medicine for undergraduate students.

I was drawn to Saint Marys because of its strong reputation in the science program, said student Bailey OHare, who plans to work in emergency medicine or pediatrics. Being able to study in this new facility will give Saint Marys students even more of an advantage.
Brad and Lynn Sturm will receive The Salvation Armys 2017 Community Red Shield Award during the La Crosse agencys ninth annual Civic Event from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday in the Cargill Room of The Waterfront Restaurant and Tavern at 328 S. Front St.

The event has two purposes, as a major fundraiser for the corps and to honor people who have made contributions throughout the community, not just The Salvation Army.

The Sturms, who moved to the Coulee Region in 1985, lived in Coon Valley for about two decades and now live in La Crescent. Both have contributed hundreds of hours to a host of nonprofits.

Brad began working at Coulee Bank in 1993 and now is its CEO, while Lynn is a retired nurse who worked in the pediatric neonatal intensive care unit at Gundersen Health System and now is a board member for the Gundersen Medical Foundation.

In 2012, Brad and Lynn were named Festmaster and Frau for Oktoberfest, serving as Coulee Region ambassadors at other festivals throughout the country and in Canada.

The Sturms, who have been married for 39 years, also have double-teamed as campaign co-chairs for Great Rivers United Way and the United Fund for the Arts and Humanities.

Brads philanthropic endeavors have included working with the La Crosse Community Foundation and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. He also is active with Gundersen Health System and Catholic Charities of the Diocese of La Crosse.

Lynns in on the boards of the La Crosse City Vision Foundation and the Western Wisconsin Chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

The event, which costs $50 a person, with proceeds going to support the corps emergency shelter, will include a dinner and presentation on the history and vision of The Salvation Army of La Crosse. The Third Relation Jazz Quartet will provide music.

The event is part of National Salvation Army Week next week, with other local events including the following:

Monday  Maj. Jeff Richardson will work during rush hour in the drive-thru, behind the counter and out on the floor of Cool Beans Coffee Shop at 1221 La Crosse St., at the streets intersection with West Avenue. Cool Beans will donate tip money from the event to The Salvation Army. A limited number of Salvation Army mugs will be handed out.

Tuesday  Mayor Tim Kabat will sign a proclamation recognizing the week for The Salvation Army.

Wednesday  For Walk-Through Wednesday, the public is invited to visit the corps emergency shelter at 223 N. Eighth St. from 9 to 10:30 a.m. for a tour and presentation. The tour will include a walk-through of the emergency canteen and a meet-and-greet with Majors Jeff and Deb Richardson.

Friday  Salvation Army workers and volunteers will staff the Festival Foods Brat Barn at 30 Copeland Ave. from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with proceeds benefiting the corps.

For more information on events throughout the week, go to the corps website or call 608-782-6126.
UTICA, Minn.  The congressman came from Washington to talk farming in Utica.

U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Mankato, met with about 60 local farmers and land conservationists to discuss how they could put their mark on the 2018 Farm Bill.

Concerns for beginning farmers, small farmers and conservation-minded farmers dominated the discussion at the Utica school building Thursday afternoon. Local farmers and Land Stewardship Project members pressed Walz, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, on how best to bring their priorities  promoting conservation, risk management and helping new generation of farmers  to Washington.

Tom Nuessmeier, a Land Stewardship Project staff member and farmer from Le Sueur, Minn., said the projects goal is to address the crises facing smaller farmers. Small farmers face a number of obstacles, ranging from a lack of government support and corporate farm consolidation of land to a lack of incentives for sustainable practices. Nuessmeier argued that the farm bill is the way to make needed changes.

Its going to impact our farms and communities for the next five years and beyond once its passed in 2018, Nuessmeier said. Rural communities and farmers cannot wait.

Among the Land Stewardship Projects top proposals are restoring and expanding the Conservation Stewardship Program to increase payments to farmers and encourage conservation practices.

They are also seeking to reform subsidy programs and crop insurance  revising policies to reward diverse crop rotations and require adoption of approved conservation plans to be eligible for public subsidies from the crop insurance program.

The Land Stewardship Project is also pushing for a $50 million increase in funding for the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and increased access to Farm Service Agency loans to help beginning farmers establish themselves and respond competitively to land opportunities.

Bryan Crigler of Winona said he began farming around 10 years ago, motivated by a disconnect between people and the food their food.

Crigler said the help from Land Stewardship and the Beginning Farmer Program was key to getting the ground and setting up business plans.

It was immensely valuable, Crigler said. There are a lot of challenges for people to get into farming.

Walz was positive about the speakers goals, but realistic about the challenge of selling them to other legislators. Some members of Congress, he said, wouldnt look at a bill or idea if it wasnt a tax cut or a benefit to corporate farming.

Walz said that one of the ways to move the ideas forward  whether promoting soil conservation tactics, crop diversity incentives or appropriating money to bolster beginning farmers  was to emphasize that all those things have positive economic impacts on rural communities and foster entrepreneurship and competitiveness.

I still think our strongest arguments are based on economics, Walz said.

Walz said that hes promoting the goals of his constituents in southern Minnesota and will work to negotiate for their inclusion at the federal level.

Its our time to write it, Walz said.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will tell Republican supporters this weekend that he's "ready" to run for re-election, but will stop short of announcing an official campaign effort.

"I'm ready to help lead Wisconsin forward for four more years. But I need your help," Walker is set to say in a speech on Saturday at the Republican Party of Wisconsin state convention in the Wisconsin Dells, according to excerpts released Friday.

Walker has said he won't officially announce his intentions until after the state budget is complete, but he's been dropping hints left and right signaling that he will seek a third term.

Also on Friday, Walker named Joe Fadness as his campaign manager. Fadness, who served as executive director of the state GOP from 2013-2015, has worked with Walker since his time as Milwaukee County Executive.

Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch both tweeted hints at a re-election bid on Thursday.

"We've come a long way. We're not done yet," Walker tweeted.

"I'm as proud to stand with Governor @ScottWalker today as I was then," Kleefisch tweeted with a photo of the pair from the night they beat back a recall attempt. "Can't wait for what comes next!"

Walker's speech will highlight the Republican electoral successes that have followed his 2010 election and subsequent re-elections, including U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson's 2016 race coupled with President Donald Trump's victory in Wisconsin.

The governor will cite the state's 3.7 percent unemployment rate, the lowest since November 2000, as he makes the case for why he would seek a third four-year term.

"People often ask me if I am going to run again in 2018," Walker will say, according to speech excerpts released Friday. "Well, with record levels of employment in the State of Wisconsin, the better question is, 'Why wouldn't I run for re-election?'"

He'll also point to the labor participation rate, the state's ACT scores and high school graduation rate, along with steps he's taken to cut income and property taxes.

The 2018 election is eighteen months away. So far, just one Democrat  25-year-old Stanford graduate Bob Harlow  has announced his candidacy, but several others have voiced interest in running.

Walker's approval rating reached 45 percent in March, the highest it's been since just before he won re-election in 2014.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Brandon Weathersby said earlier this month the party views Walker as "vulnerable" in 2018.

"We are always speaking with potential candidates who have any interest in running for Governor next year. Our process will continue and we'll field a top-notch candidate to take back the Governor's mansion, turn our state around, and give every Wisconsinite a fair opportunity to achieve the American Dream," Weathersby said.

The new fiscal year begins July 1, but lawmakers working on the state budget haven't guaranteed it will be completed by then. The biggest holdup comes from an ongoing debate over how to fund the state's roads.
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The Keeping Up With The Kardashians house is up for sale. That's right, for $9 million (well, $8,995,000, to be exact) you can buy 36 million meals with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank or save over 69,816 acres of the Amazon rainforest purchase the 7,800-square-foot home in Studio City's "prestigious celebrity enclave of Fryman Estates."

The 7-bedroom, 8-bath estate on nearly an acre of land is said to be based on Italy's Medici Castle (in that both have four walls and a roof).

Beyond the Kardashians, the Palazzo dei Sogni (it has a name?!) was featured in True Blood and Rome. Oh, and there plenty of vanity mirrors throughout the houseas well as a saltwater pool, wine cellar and tasting room, vaulted ceilings, stone columns, hand-painted frescos and murals throughout, and 17th-century chandeliers.

If you're not yet sold on the property's proximity to the hollow promise of celebrity, your neighbors include George and Amal Clooney, Miley Cyrus, and Bruno Mars. Cheers to a life spent maintaining outward appearances and associating value with the approval of others!
A Baalat Teshuva graduate of Lander College of Arts and Sciences (LAS) in Flatbush will be spending next year as a kiruv educator.

Belarus-born Natalia (Nechama) Khazanovich grew up in a small village called Kalinkovichy. After attending a religious Jewish camp in her hometown, Nechama slowly found herself being drawn back to her Jewish roots.

I loved the life, she recalled. I loved Shabbat and keeping kosher.

When she turned 12, she began dorming at the Yad Yisroel school in Pinsk and after graduation, she was given the choice of going to seminary in England, Israel or participating in Touros Open Curtain program where she would be in both seminary and college. The program allows young women from Russia and Belarus to receive a full tuition scholarship. She chose Touro and arrived in 2010.

I chose America, because I wanted to get an education and be religious, she stated. It was a perfect match.

The Open Curtain Program at LAS has been operating for over a decade. It was launched by Dr. Bernard Lander, zl, Touro's founding president, with the encouragement of Harav Shmuel Kaminetsky, shlita. More than 20 women from the program are currently enrolled in LAS.

With this unique program, where all students receive full tuition Touro scholarships, Touro is educating young women from Russia and Belarus to raise religious families, while preparing them to earn a parnosah with dignity in various professional fields, said LAS Dean Robert Goldschmidt.

In Belarus, it was almost impossible to be religious, in Flatbush, Nechama says, it was almost natural with shuls, stores and kosher restaurants everywhere. The first year was the most difficult for her as she adapted to a new language and a new culture. Fortunately, Nechama had several friends from her high school with her as part of the Open Curtain program and the many new friends she met at Touro. Her host family, the Egerts, became her second family.

I enjoyed all of my classes, said Nechama, adding her favorites were Sign Language and the myriad of psychology courses she took in LAS.

No ones scared to be Jewish in America, she added. In Russia, you keep your Judaism hidden.

After she graduates this year with a degree in psychology, Nechama will be working at a Chabad preschool in Brighton Beach that caters to the non-Orthodox population. Several of her Touro peers worked there and told her about an opening for a bilingual educator. She jumped at the chance.

I love working in kiruv, because I became religious through Kiruv, stated Nechama. There are stories of families becoming religious after sending their kids to this school and I wanted to help and be a part of that.

Nechamas brother is currently a student in the Open Curtain program for men at Lander College for Men (LCM). Nechama said this is all a dream for her.

Touro gave me the biggest opportunity: they gave me an education and the freedom to be who I want to be, she said.
Friday, May 12, 2017

The American Immigration Council has announced that we will honor Andrei Codrescu at the American Heritage Awards next month in New Orleans.

Codrescu is a Jewish, Romanian-American, homme-de-lettres who became nationally recognized through his many years of thoughtful commentary on National Public Radio.

Condrescu was raised in Romania. He escaped as a young man to Israel, and then landed in the United States in the late 1960s. Codrescu was the Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009 and still considers New Orleans his home turf.

KJ

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2017/05/we-are-pleased-to-announce-that-we-will-honor-andrei-codrescu-at-the-american-heritage-awards-next-month-in-new-orleans-cod.html
Friday, May 12, 2017

The Nebraska Supreme Court has held

In this direct appeal, Bashir V. Loding challenges his conviction for first degree sexual assault of a child. He alleges that he received ineffective assistance of counsel, that there was insufficient evidence to support his conviction, and that he received an excessive sentence. He presents one issue of first impression: whether representation by a former senior certified law student, who was not yet an admitted member of the Nebraska bar, although accompanied by an admitted lawyer, constitutes per se ineffective assistance of counsel. We conclude that it does not. The record is insufficient to address two claims of ineffective assistance. Because we find no merit in Lodings other claims, we affirm the judgment of the district court.

The story

Loding was represented at trial by a licensed attorney, James Schaefer, and the attorneys son, Robert Schaefer. At one point, Robert had been certified to practice law under James supervision pursuant to our rules authorizing limited practice of law by senior law students. Believing that he was still certified to practice, Robert participated during voir dire and gave the opening statement and closing argument at Lodings trial in April 2016. But Roberts status had changed. He graduated from law school in the spring of 2015. After graduation, he took both the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) and the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE). He passed the UBE but failed the MPRE. And the record is clear that he was notified of this failure prior to the April 2016 trial.

The MPRE

As we have already explained, a passing score on the MPRE is a substantive requirement for admittance to the Nebraska bar. The MPRE measures examinees knowledge and understanding of established standards related to the professional conduct of lawyers. These standards guide the Nebraska Rules of Professional Conduct to which all licensed attorneys within Nebraska are held accountable. Violations of these standards and rules of professional conduct can subject an attorney to disciplinary proceedings.

In sum, our standards and rules emphasize the importance of the ethical practice as indicative of an attorneys legal ability. An applicant for admittance to the Nebraska bar who has demonstrated that he or she lacks the required knowledge of his or her ethical obligations is incompetent to act as counsel.

Having found that Robert lost his status as a senior certified law student and failed to meet the substantive requirements to be a licensed attorney at trial, we now consider the effect of his participation at trial...

We concede that if Loding had been represented only by Robert, he would have been completely denied the right to assistance of counsel. A complete denial of assistance of counsel is a per se violation of his right to counsel. However, other jurisdictions have declined to find per se ineffective assistance of counsel when there has been active participation of a licensed attorney throughout a defendants trial. As the Eighth Circuit explained, [i]f co-counsel provides petitioners with effective assistance at all critical stages of the proceedings, [a defendants] Sixth Amendment rights have been protected. The theory is that effective assistance of licensed cocounsel would include correcting any error by the unadmitted cocounsel. And, in finding no per se violation in circumstances quite similar to those before us, the Eighth Circuit relied on its earlier decision in U.S. v. Rosnow.

James, a qualified, licensed attorney in Nebraska, was the lead attorney for Lodings trial. It is undisputed that he was present at all times throughout the trial and for all interactions between Loding and Robert. Thus, there was no per se violation of Lodings constitutional right to counsel. We now turn to consider whether Loding is entitled to relief on his claims under Strickland...

Loding alleges that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because James did not secure his written consent to be represented by Robert. While this alleges a very serious violation of our court rules, there is a disciplinary process established to adjudicate rule violations. But that is not the matter before us in this appeal. The question here is whether James (and Robert, under James direction) provided ineffective assistance of counsel under Strickland. We conclude that the record is not adequate to address this matter on direct appeal.

The court gave a passing grade to the closing argument

During their closing argument, Lodings counsel discussed the States burden of proof, the presumption of innocence, perceived conflicts in the States evidence, A.B.s lack of credibility, the defenses theory of the case, the function of the criminal justice system, the significance of the jurys role, the magnitude of the charge, and the standard for reasonable doubt. Because there was no deficiency in this argument, the record establishes that Lodings counsel were not ineffective.

Conclusion

We emphasize that we take very seriously Lodings complaint that James failed to obtain Lodings written consent to Roberts participation in the conduct of his trial. Although we decline to find a per se violation of the right to effective assistance of counsel, it deserves careful scrutiny under Strickland. And we conclude that the record is insufficient to do so. Lodings allegation regarding counsels actions regarding A.B.s mother also raises a serious claim of ineffective assistance of counsel. But here again, the record is insufficient.

As to Lodings other allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel, the record affirmatively refutes them. And we find no merit to his assignments of insufficient evidence and excessive sentence. We therefore affirm the judgment of the district court.

The case is State v. Loding and should be found at this link. (Mike Frisch)

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/legal_profession/2017/05/in-a-decision-vindicating-the-use-of-law-student-counsel-the-nebraska-supreme-court-has-held-in-this-direct-appeal-bashir.html


China is extending its Belt and Road Initiative to include Afghanistan.

The development plan refers to the historic Silk Road between China and the West. It aims to link more than 60 countries from Asia to Europe, through land and maritime trade routes.

Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the plan in 2013.

The extension plan would involve extending the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, known as CPEC, to neighboring Afghanistan. The CPEC is a program within the larger Belt and Road Initiative.

China is now preparing for the first Belt and Road Forum, a meeting of countries involved in the development project. The two-day event begins Sunday in Beijing. More than 25 heads of state will attend the meeting.

The Unites States also is sending a delegation to the meeting. It will be led by Matthew Pottinger, an adviser to President Donald Trump and a National Security Council official for East Asia.

China welcomed the move, which was first planned when Trump met with Xi last month in Florida.

China expanding its Belt and Road project

The decision to include Afghanistan has caused some observers to question whether China is trying to expand its influence in this area of Asia.

Ahmad Bilal Khalil is a researcher with the Center for Strategic and Regional Studies in Kabul, Afghanistan. He recently spoke with VOA about Chinas development plans.

He said that the aim is to create a road linking Pakistans Peshawar to the Afghan capital of Kabul and to Kunduz, and then deeper into Central Asia.

Khalil said having projects in Afghanistan will help China with its $50 billion project in Pakistan. He says the effort will bring more Pakistani and Chinese economic interests into Afghanistan.

"If there is insecurity in Afghanistan, (it) can also affect CPEC and One Belt, One Road, Khalil said. One Belt, One Road is another name for the Belt and Road Initiative.

David Kelly is with China Policy, a consulting company based in Beijing. He said that China hopes its investments in Afghanistan will reduce tensions there.

However, he said that reducing the religious and ethnic conflict in the country has been, in his words, something that the Americans and before them the Soviets were unable to do.

China has invested in the copper mines of Afghanistan. It wants to improve access to the countrys mineral resources.

M.K. Bhadrakumar is an author and an Indian diplomat. He said that extending the Belt and Road project to Afghanistan will help China in those efforts.

"One trillion dollars worth of mineral resources are available in Afghanistan, he said.

Some observers note that China also may aim to be involved in Afghanistans building industry in the future.

But Chinas main goal, some experts say, is to improve regional security through development and economic cooperation.

That is a difficult task. Recent clashes on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan killed more than 50 people in two days.

Ahmad Bilal Khalil said, There is also a huge possibility that terrorism and extremism will also be exported to central Asia.

Researchers at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute noted in a recent report that the Belt initiative can do little to improve relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But, they wrote, there may be prospects for this over the medium to long term.

David Kelly with China Policy said China believes it can reduce religious extremism through offering economic benefits.

However, this policy has been proven wrong in the past, he said.

Saibal Dasgupta reported this story for VOA News. Ashley Thompson adapted it for Learning English. Mario Ritter was the editor.

____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

maritime adj. having to do with sea travel

route n. a way to get from one place to another

regional adj. having to do with a large area within a country or including several countries

prospect n. the possibility that something will happen


The Supreme Court in India has opened hearings on an Islamic custom for ending a marriage.

The high court is considering the legality of immediate, or instant, divorce in Islam. Muslim men are able to end their marriage by saying or writing the word talaq -- or divorce -- three times.

Muslim womens rights groups hope the court will rule against instant divorce. They say such a ruling will correct what they call a long-pending injustice to Muslim women.

Many groups debated the issue before the hearing on Thursday. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has supported calls to end the practice. But conservative Muslim religious leaders strongly oppose a ban. They accuse the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of using political tricks to take away Muslim identity.

The case was brought to the high court by 35-year-old Shayara Khan. Her marriage came to an end after she received a letter from her husband that had the word 'talaq' three times. Those words have been heard or read by thousands of other Muslim women.

In India, each religion has separate laws that govern marriage and adopting someone elses child as a family member. They also affect maintenance -- the custom that enables a Muslim man to end his marriage without his wifes approval in just a few seconds.

Shayara Khan says she wanted a voice in the decision that changed her life. She says the Islamic tradition of triple talaq violates the Indian constitution -- which protects equality for both sexes.

In her request to the court, Shayara noted that the tradition leaves women weak and defenseless. The request noted that some women have been divorced through Skype and text messages. Several others have joined her appeal to the court.

Activists for women expressed hope as the court considers the legality of the custom. Zakia Soman is with the Indian Muslim Womens Movement. She said she is 100 percent optimistic that the court will correct a long-pending injustice against Muslim women in India.

We want a Muslim personal law that enables equality in marriage and family matters, she said.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board wants the court to continue to permit triple talaq. It says the custom cannot be banned because it is permitted under Sharia, or Islamic, laws.

The group said it has begun teaching Muslim men that the custom should only be used when all attempts at saving the marriage have failed.

Kamal Farooqui is a member of the board. He says the religious laws of Islam cannot be rewritten by governments.

He told VOA, "The whole jurisprudence is a God-gifted one -- it is not a man-made constitution and these laws are the laws of the divine which cannot be changed. Those honorable judges who do not know anything about Islam, who do not know the background of Quran, how can they interpret it?

Womens groups say the practice is a misinterpretation of Islamic law. They note that Indias neighbors Bangladesh and Pakistan do not permit the triple talaq.

Hasina Khan works at the Bebaak Collective, a womens organization. She says Muslim religious leaders in India have failed to listen to the concerns of women.

Khan says Muslim women have asked Muslim organizations for help, but they have not listened, not given priority for the Muslim womens struggles. That is why we had to come to the court.

Prime Minister Modis government told the court that the custom denies Muslim women the full enjoyment of fundamental rights under the constitution. And it said triple talaq should not be considered an important part of Islam.

Some Muslims fear that the Hindu nationalist BJP is using the issue to create support for a common family law for people of all religions. The possibility of doing so has been debated for many years in India, but political parties have yet to take action.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Correspondent Anjana Pasricha reported this story from New Delhi. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted her report for Learning English. George Grow was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section, or visit our Facebook page.

_______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

divorce  n. the ending of a marriage by a legal process

Sharia  n. the religious laws based on the Koran that Muslims follow

jurisprudence  n. the study of law

divine  adj. relating to or coming from God or a god

interpret  v. to understand (something) in a specified way

misinterpretation  n. to understand or explain (something) incorrectly; to interpret (something) incorrectly

Quran  n. Islams holy book
3 An elderly woman and a child are pulled on a cart as civilians the flee heavy fighting between Islamic State militants and Iraqi special forces in western Mosul, Iraq, May 10, 2017.
Cloe Gray watches a computer screen most of the day, sitting in her pink bedroom surrounded by stuffed animals, books and photos on the wall.

The 11-year-old is not able to go to school. She is at home in the U.S. state of Maryland, recovering from surgery. The computer is there to control a robot that goes to school in her place.

The robot comes from a company called Double Robotics. It is officially called a telepresence robot, but her friends at school like to call it the Clo-bot.

The robot is an iPad tablet connected to a long pole on a set of wheels. Cloe can control the robot using her home computer.

The tablet has a camera with a special lens that allows Cloe to see most of the classroom. She can speak to the teacher and her classmates using a microphone. A speaker allows them to hear her.

If she wants to answer a question, she presses a button that makes the robot taller. That allows her teacher, Mary Fucella, to see her.

Its just like having the normal Cloe in the classroom, Fucella said.

Cloe likes it so much better than having a special teacher, called a tutor, come to her home for one-on-one instruction. It allows Cloe to interact with her friends and teachers. It is almost like going to school.

Cloes school district has six of the robots, and each costs about $3,000. Cloes robot was donated by a local charity.

Patrick Malone works in the school districts technology office. He said the six robots make a big difference for kids who cannot come to school.

Every kid that uses this technology starts to smile again, he said. They start to feel like a regular kid again, and I cannot put a price on that.

David Cann is the head of Double Robotics. He knows these robots are important for students who are sick and cannot regularly go to school. He is happy his company can provide a way for all students to attend school, no matter their situation.

There are about 300 Double Robotics robots in schools in the U.S. Schools in China, Japan, Australia and Canada are also using them.

While they seem to be a success, the robots do take some getting used to.

Kyla Jones is Cloes friend. They walk to lunch together in the schools cafeteria.

At first, it was kind of weird, Jones said of walking around with a robot.

But now the girls act as if nothing has changed. They have their normal conversations and Cloe has lunch at home while her friends have lunch at school.

It can be hard for the Clo-bot to move in a crowded lunchroom. But once Clo-bot is at her favorite table with her friends, it is almost as good as being there in person.

Cloe said, however, she will be happy when she is able to go back to school, and she will not miss the Clo-bot at all.

Im Dan Friedell.

Carolyn Presutti wrote this story for VOANews.com. Dan Friedell adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.

Do you know someone who could be helped by a robot? We want to know. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

pink  n. a pale red color : a color that is a mixture of red and white

lens  n. a clear curved piece of glass or plastic that is used in eyeglasses, cameras, telescopes, etc., to make things look clearer, smaller, or bigger

cafeteria  n. a place (such as a restaurant or a room in a school) where people get food at a counter and carry it to a table for eating


Arctic nations called for the world to address climate warming at a meeting Thursday in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Members of the eight-nation Arctic Council, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, signed the Fairbanks Declaration 2017. It noted that the Arctic is warming much faster than other parts of the world. And it said that action is needed to reduce the effects of climate change.

But, Tillerson also told the council that the Trump administration has not yet decided on its climate change policy.

Were not going to rush to make a decision. Were going to work to make the right decision for the United States.

Tillersons message was similar to what the White House said earlier this week: President Donald Trump has delayed his decision on the Paris climate agreement.

It is the second time Trump has put off making a decision.

During the election, Trump said he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris agreement on climate change. He has said it is bad for the U.S. economy and hurts the coal industry.

Pressure has been building, however, on the U.S. administration to remain a part of the Paris climate change agreement. It was signed by 195 nations -- including the U.S.-- in Paris in 2015.

The treaty seeks to reduce global warming by cutting greenhouse gases around the world.

China, the United States and the European Union are the worlds worst polluters. If the United States pulls out of the climate change agreement, it would slow the progress towards cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini spoke Tuesday at the United Nations in New York City.

"Everything is linked. So we continue to expect that the United States will find a way to remain committed to the Paris agreements. I know there is a debate ongoing, and we respect it very much, but 195 countries have signed a deal on climate change, and there will be 195 different paths to meeting the Paris goals and honoring the agreement. And I am sure there is room for the U.S. administration to find its own path."

Trump has often said that there is no proof of global warming. But on Tuesday, the White House said that the president has again delayed the decision on whether he will follow the Paris agreement.

Divided viewpoints

His top officials have appeared divided over what to do about the deal.

Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said Trump wants to have more discussions on the issue with his advisers.

"The president has been meeting with his team for quite a while on this matter, and he will not be making an announcement regarding that agreement until after he returns from the G7."

The G7 meeting of countries will take place later this month in Italy. Spicer said Trump is seeking advice from both economic and environmental viewpoints as he works to reach a decision.

The Paris accord was signed by former President Barack Obama. He supports environmental protection. At a meeting in Milan, Italy, on Tuesday, Obama said he believes the U.S. will move in the "right direction."

"The good news is that in part because of what we did over the past eight years, the private sector has already made a determination that our future is in clean energy. Investments are already moving into clean energy."

Protests and political plans

Trumps views on climate change have led to protests. Environmental activists, scientists and average citizens marched in many cities in the U.S. and around the world last month to protest his positions.

A political group called 314 Action helps people with science and math backgrounds run for political office. The group reports that, since January, 5,000 people across the U.S. have said they want to run for public office to protect and support science research.

Im Anne Ball.

Zlatica Hoke wrote this story for VOA News. Anne Ball wrote it for Learning English with information from the Associated Press. Ashley Thompson was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section and visit us on our Facebook page.

______________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

put off  phrasal verb. to delay

greenhouse gases  n. harmful gases like carbon dioxide that absorb radiation and trap heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet

pull out  v. to withdraw

emission  n. the act of producing or sending out something (such as energy or gas) from a source

sector  n. an area of an economy : a part of an economy that includes certain kinds of jobs
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A proposal for a debate with the government to discuss the immediate commencement of tenders for public housing and the implementation of a permanent application mechanism was passed yesterday at the Legislative Assembly (AL).

The proposal gathered 17 votes in favor, seven against and two abstentions on the specialty and 18 in favor, seven against and one abstention at the first reading. The proposal was brought to the plenary for deliberation by lawmaker Ella Lei, who explained that the real estate market is too expensive and the residents long for a public house to have a stable home, she said.

Lei said that the government could not claim that there were no land plots or houses available since the last time a similar tender opened was back in 2013.

It was also mentioned that people who are already on the list to receive a house are entitled to a housing subsidy from the government, situation that can ease the difficult situation on such families.

Lei concluded the presentation by expressing her hopes that her colleagues would support her proposal for a debate.

The first person to respond affirmatively was lawmaker Melinda Chan who said, I think the proposal can be done, adding, the government needs to review its housing policy. Only with a permanent mechanism (that should be extended to the economic housing too) can the government have a clear picture of the populations real needs and to plan accordingly.

Chan concluded by saying, the current regime of lucky draw is like a casino bet in that it is dependent only on luck. She also remarked that people with special needs should have a priority access to public housing.

Lawmaker Au Kam San was also in favor of the debate.

I think we have enough conditions to make this tender now and so this debate makes sense at this time, he said, although he also noted that social and economic housing are not the same thing and that this distinction should be kept. The vice presidents of the AL, Lam Heong Sang, Kwang Tsui Hang, Leong Veng Chai, Ng Kuok Cheong, Zheng Anting and Ho Ion Sang also expressed their support.

Lam noted that the government during the policy address had already said it would work towards establishing a permanent mechanism for public housing, remarking that lawmakers have the duty to suggest policies and solutions to the government.

Lawmaker Ng said, the government has to transfer resources to support people and I hope during the debate we can convince them to do so. Ng further remarked that it was precisely because we have different opinions that we should hold a debate. This sentiment was also shared by Kwan.

On his part, lawmaker Zheng went further, saying that debate has the ability to push the government and its departments to work faster, adding that without people waiting in line there is no pressure to conclude the projects.

Lawmakers Tsui Wai Kwan and Chan Chak Mo had a contrary view. Tsui noted that it is a realistic measure of the government to refrain from opening a tender until it has housing units to deliver, otherwise the line will be long and lengthy.

Chan Chak Mo emphasized the need to plan everything first before opening any tender.

We cant start to evaluate candidates without first having houses, because changes might occur in the conditions [to access the units] before anything is finalized, he said expressing the opinion that lawmakers should allow the government to set up new requirements to access public housing first.

At the end of the session, the president of the AL, Ho Iat Seng, noted that the date for the debate would be confirmed shortly.

On the LawmakersAgenda

NEW RULES ON HELMETS Melinda Chan, Song Pek Kei and Chan Iek Lap addressed the plenary before the agenda to criticize the newly implemented rule that threatens to fine residents who do not possess a sticker on the back of their helmets with the homologation information. The lawmakers said that the policy is hard for residents to abide by and is likely to cause harm to the population.

BETTER GOVERNMENT After this weeks visit by the chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress, Zhang Dejiang, lawmaker Si Ka Lon said that Zhang remarked on the need of public administration improvement. According to Si, the central government demands more action from Macau government, directing that the government cannot disregard the problems of daily life of the population or treat them as minor. He recalled problems such as the old buildings and leaking water infiltration systems on the buildings. Sio noted, to elevate the government capability it is urgent to adopt an innovative mentality. This would require approaching existing problems with more creativity and innovation and abandoning the old ways of doing things.

HOUSING SPECULATION Ho Ion Sang remarked on the recently approved measures to deter housing sector speculation. Such measures result in curbs to the ratio ceilings for housing loans for non-residents and residents acquiring a second house or more. Ho said that the government should go deeper on the problem and implement measures to control the prices based on possession instead of transaction, noting also that exemption of property tax as well as the subsidies for the electricity and water bills should apply only for one house per resident. The lawmaker urged the government to raise the costs of owning several houses, not only when acquiring them. Another measure to implement would be to raise the transparency on the information of real estate market.

TWO KNIFES According to Au Kam San, the CE has not been using well its two knifes, namely the Commission of Audit (CA) and the Commission Against Corruption (CCAC). He gave as example the recently reported case of the staff hiring by the Cultural Affairs Bureau. The lawmaker also noted that reports requested by the government secretaries when some problem arises are only delivered after a long period of time when the problems have already dissipated and them nothing is really done, not resulting in any effectiveness. Au called on the CE to take action.
Chinas government has made preparations to support the Hong Kong stock market if needed to create a positive atmosphere before July 1, when Xi Jinping is expected to visit the city for the first time as president to mark 20 years of Chinese rule.

State-backed institutions have set aside funds to ensure stable trading before the anniversary of Hong Kongs 1997 handover, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter, who asked not to be named as the information isnt public. Its unclear how much money has been earmarked or what market conditions would trigger government action. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of Chinas State Council didnt immediately reply to a faxed request for comment. The office of Hong Kongs Chief Executive declined to comment.

While state-directed funds intervene regularly to manage swings in Chinas USD6.6 trillion equity market, the government hasnt been known to take an active role in Hong Kong. The former British colony, which sits near the top of global free-market rankings, is supposed to enjoy a high degree of autonomy under the one country, two systems principle enshrined in Chinas power-transfer agreement with the U.K. Any attempt to influence Hong Kong stock prices risks provoking critics who say China is interfering too much in the citys affairs under Xis leadership.

It could also add fuel to the debate over Hong Kongs future as a financial center. Much of the citys appeal to international investors and businesses comes from its strong rule of law and minimal government interference, attributes that set it apart from mainland China. Lines between the two markets have blurred in recent years with the introduction of cross-border exchange links and cooperation agreements between the Chinese and Hong Kong securities regulators.

The stock connect has already brought mainland markets closer to Hong Kong, but there will be a lot of people who will be dissatisfied with this, at least in principle, said Peter Garnry, head of equity strategy at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen. Expect some political noise.

China has a history of influencing domestic markets during important political events. In the latest example, regulators have stepped up scrutiny of local stock traders as the government prepares to host representatives from more than 100 countries at a summit attended by Xi this weekend, according to people with direct knowledge of the matter. Policy makers were said to intervene during the last two annual meetings of Chinese lawmakers in Beijing.

Authorities may be especially keen to project an image of stability in 2017 as they prepare for a twice-a-decade Communist Party leadership reshuffle toward year-end.

China hasnt confirmed that Xi will visit Hong Kong, but past leaders have tended to make the trip for every fifth year of the handover anniversary. Xi is expected to make a three-day visit for this years celebrations, the South China Morning Post reported this month.

The anniversary comes against a backdrop of elevated political tension in Hong Kong. The Occupy protests paralyzed parts of the city in 2014 and many residents are still angry over the lack of a direct election for their chief executive. Behind-the-scenes backing from China helped Carrie Lam win a resounding victory among the business and political elites who picked the citys leader in March. She beat an opponent more popular with the general public.

Not all Hong Kong markets have been insulated from Chinese interference. When the yuan sank in offshore trading in January 2016, intervention by Chinas central bank led to a short squeeze in Hong Kong. The episode dented the yuans appeal as an international currency, but criticism of the governments actions was limited because influencing foreign-exchange markets is a common economic-management tool for governments around the world.

Meddling in Hong Kongs stock market may be a different story. Aside from a Hong Kong government rescue package during the Asian financial crisis in 1998, shares in the city have been thought to be largely free of official interference.

If Chinas government were to intervene, the purchases could run contrary to Hong Kong regulations on maintaining an orderly market, Low Chee-keong, an associate professor at the CUHK Business School and a former member of the Hong Kong exchanges listing committee, said before Bloomberg News reported on Chinas preparations. Low said that proving market manipulation is often difficult.

A Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing Ltd. spokeswoman said the bourse doesnt comment on market rumors, adding that market manipulation is an offense under Hong Kong law. The citys Securities and Futures Commission didnt immediately reply to an emailed request for comment.

The governments intervention is unwelcome in Hong Kong as it could boost risk premiums and pressure the valuation of stocks in the long term, Daniel So, a Hong Kong-based strategist at CMB International Securities Ltd., said by phone. Though it could boost stock prices in the near term.

The government may decide it doesnt need to intervene. Hong Kongs benchmark Hang Seng Index is trading at the highest level since July 2015 after climbing 14 percent this year, outperforming the MSCI All-Country World Index by about 5 percentage points. The Hong Kong gauge is valued at 14 times trailing 12-month earnings, the most expensive level since December 2010, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gauge rose 0.4 percent yesterday.

I dont think anyone needs to support Hong Kong shares or the Hang Seng Index, said Sandy Mehta, chief executive officer of Value Investment Principals Ltd. in Hong Kong. Its one of the worlds top-performing markets. Bloomberg




A group of approximately 60 children and parents from the Association for the Parents of the Mentally Handicapped celebrated the upcoming Mothers Day with close to 40 Sands China Care Ambassadors on Saturday afternoon.

The group visited Ice World together at The Venetian, according to the gaming operators press release.

Sands Chinas celebration also featured flowers and a donation to the association.

The Care Ambassadors also helped the children gift flowers to their parents in honor of the holiday, courtesy of the companys in-house floral department.

In addition, Sands China has purchased handmade flowers made by members of the association to give to female diners at selected Sands China restaurants on Mothers Day  which has been a tradition at Sands China since 2012.

This Sunday, the handmade flowers will be distributed during lunch and dinner hours at several restaurants within Sands China.

MGM signs occupational safety and health charter

To further promote occupational health and safety (OHS), MGM signed the Occupational Safety and Health Charter, witnessed by the Labour Affairs Bureau (DSAL). The signing ceremony was held at MGM Macaus back-

of-house area on May 10.

Meanwhile, an OHS game fair was held on the same day in the back-of-house area to raise awareness of OHS issues among team members through interactive and educational games.

Grant Bowie, CEO and executive director of MGM China Holdings, said, The Occupational Safety and Health Charter is an important pledge an employer makes to its employees. [] As we expand our Golden Lion Team with the opening of MGM Cotai, we will continue to promote a positive health and safety culture with the support of DSAL.

MGMs OHS approach is guided by the Occupational Health and Safety Policy and Manual, which aligned with the OHSAS 18001 Occupational Health and Safety Standard. Its performance is monitored by our Board-level Risk and Safety Committee.
The trial of the citys former top prosecutor Ho Chio Meng has reached its last stage, with closing submissions being made. The prosecution has priority in delivering the closing speech.

The two prosecutors, Chan Tsz King and Kuok U Man, began the speech with a statement that they were gloomy in proceeding with the closing submission because the defendant, Ho, was formerly the highest official of the Prosecution Office (MP).

The prosecutors said the MP was sad and ashamed by Hos conduct, with the prosecution stating their hope that this case would highlight to society the principle that every person is equal before the law, and the foundations of the rule of law would not be shaken because of this case.

At the beginning of yesterdays session, which commenced at 9.30 a.m., prosecutor Kuok reiterated that Wang Xiandi, said to have been an MP employee, rarely appeared at the MP facilities.

Ho said that Wang previously assisted Ho in recovering money sent overseas by the first Secretary for Transport and Public Works, Ao Man Long. Ao was the first Secretary for Transport and Public Works after the handover and he was reappointed in 2004. He is currently serving 28-and-a-half years in prison after being convicted in 2008 and 2009 of taking bribes, money laundering, and abusing his power to grant lucrative public contracts.

During yesterdays trial, it was submitted that Ho eventually abandoned efforts to recover the money Ao illicitly sent abroad. Prosecutor Chan said that Hos decision harmed the states interests.

Kuok alleged that Ho cheated his boss and concealed the truth from his subordinate, and contravened legal regulations. Gods mill grinds slowly but surely, and past crimes leave marks.

Regarding the MP Teachers Resting Room at the 16th floor of the Hotline Center, which Ho allegedly used for his personal needs, Ho defended his actions saying that the allegations against him were purely absurd and chicanery. The resting room was apparently paid for by MP.

The prosecution revealed that the room was never used for Ho to host guests from work, but rather to host non-local people for purposes unrelated to MP.

In addition, Ho was alleged to have made an attempt to become chairman of a mainland Chinese culture association, without obtaining approval from mainland authorities.

Ho, himself, cannot provide evidence, declared prosecutor Chan.

It was purely Hos personal interest and reputation, it was nothing related to the Office of the Prosecutor General, said Chan.

The prosecutor questioned Hos previous claim that he had hosted MP guests there.

During previous trial sessions, witness Lai Kin Ian, former chief of the Office of the Prosecutor-General who was the previous director at his office, was said to have assisted Ho in misusing the place as his personal space. Many of the previous witnesses were unaware of the real utility of the teachers resting room.

Ho ordered his previous subordinates to handle business concerning the resting room, explaining that it was confidential. Prosecutor Chan queried this, saying, teachers need to face students, how can it be confidential?

Chan also said that he could not perceive the relationship between a mainland culture association and Ho to be confidential.

The prosecutor also pointed out the dubiousness of MPs employees not having the keys for the room, although Hos brother and other defendants had them.

It proves that Ho Chio Meng does not want other people to know what really is going on at this place, remarked Chan.

Ho is also accused of having rented a Cheoc Van villa with MPs public money, which he used for his own personal benefit.

At previous trials, Ho claimed that he would take his wife and offspring to the villa while meeting with guests, because he was simultaneously taking care of both his family and his work. Chan disputed Hos defense, describing it as consisting of lies.

Chan noted that regardless of what kind of guests were hosted at the villa, there were no records within MP nor with Ho personally.

The villas key was also found in Hos fathers house. Chan said that Ho used confidentiality as a reason for not permitting MP employees to ask questions about the villa.

Over a period of 10 years, MP spent slightly more than MOP 5 million renting the villa.

Ho was also charged for fraud, in which he used MPs money to pay for personal trips to North Europe. For this, prosecutor Chan said that Ho should be found guilty of serious fraud.

The prosecution also argued that Ho should be sentenced for organizing criminal groups, referring to the 10 shelf companies.

Chans submissions stated that the shelf companies in the case had only one client, which turned out to be the office of the Prosecutor General.

The companies have no human resources, no regulations, and no equipment, said Chan, who deemed the operation of the shelf companies to be a form of organized crime. It is not a common crime, concluded Chan.

Yesterdays trial finished at 12.30 p.m. and no sessions were carried out in the afternoon as the court had other arrangements.

The trial resumes today, with both the prosecution and the defense sides proceeding with their closing remarks.
Workers and volunteers have collected four tons of garbage from the Chinese north side of Mount Everest in the first five days of a cleanup operation, state media reported yesterday.

Hoping to find a more permanent solution, the local government in the Tibet region is setting up stations to sort, recycle and break down the garbage, which includes cans, plastic bags, stove equipment, tents, oxygen tanks and other mountain climbing paraphernalia, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The nine-day cleanup that began Saturday targets climbing trails and campsites between 5,200 and 6,500 meters (17,000 and 21,300 feet).

Parts of Everest are in China and Nepal. Each year, about 60,000 climbers and guides visit the Chinese north side of the mountain, which China refers to by its Tibetan name, Mount Qomolangma.

On the Nepalese side, mountaineering expedition organizers have begun sending huge trash bags with climbers during the spring climbing season to collect trash that then can be winched by helicopters back to the base camp. AP
The Central District Advisory Committee for Community Services revealed that the government is considering a permanent ban on tour buses in the vicinity of the Ruins of St. Paul, according to a report by Cheng Pou.

The government disclosed this on Wednesday, during a meeting with the Civil and Municipal Affairs Bureau, the Transport Bureau and the Macao Government Tourism Office.

Last August, a serious accident involving a tour bus took place near the St. Pauls Ruins, injuring 11 tourists onboard. After the accident, the local government issued a temporary tour bus restriction around the area.

Specifically, the government reduced in more than 50 percent the bus passage time allowed in the morning period around these areas.

According to several commentators, the restrictions led to more tour buses passing quickly through the region to drop off and pick up tourists, which led to an unexpected increase in traffic jams during rush hours.

The committee suggested that the government should divert these tour buses to the Tap Seac parking lots, an operation that would involve approximately 200 to 300 vehicles.

The government is expected to have another meeting today to discuss these issues.
A Hong Kong study conducted by students has revealed that over 70 percent of recruitment agencies in Hong Kong charge excessive fees to domestic helpers, withhold their passports or engage in other illegal practices.

A group called Students Against Fees and Exploitation (SAFE) conducted a seven-month undercover investigation in the territory and revealed its findings this week.

Seventeen students worked together with 3,000 Filipino and Indonesian domestic helpers during the investigation, which examined over 100 recruitment agencies.

The study showed that the two largest groups of domestic helpers in Hong Kong do not have access to proper resting places, and are often reduced to sleeping in storage rooms, balconies and even toilets.

SAFE discovered that more than 70 percent of recruitment agencies broke the law either by overcharging clients or withholding personal documents such as passports as leverage to make them pay their debts.

On average, the agencies that engaged in illegal practices in Hong Kong charged between HKD6,000 to HKD8,000 in placement fees, Siya Kulkarni, a student of economics and finance from India who is aged 20, was cited in a report by the South China Morning Post as saying.

Under Hong Kong law, agencies can charge workers 10 percent of their first months salary. Hong Kong has set the minimum wage of these helpers at HKD4,310 per month.

As a result of these policies, some domestic workers are already eyeing on moving to counties such as Japan  which recently opened its market to this sector  Australia and New Zealand. Yet some choose to stay, hoping to raise awareness of workers rights.

Shiella Estrade, chairwoman of the Progressive Labour Union of Domestic Workers in Hong Kong, said a friend of mine was trying to convince me to go to Japan, because they can get better wages, work eight hours and receive overtime. I am not going because I still believe that raising awareness of workers rights in Hong Kong is more important.

Domestic workers in Macau also suffer from this kind of exploitation.

As reported by the Times, Indonesian domestic helpers complain of paying placement fees between MOP2,500 and MOP3,000 a month  totaling almost MOP24,000 for an eight-month period  while Filipino helpers reportedly fork out a one-time payment of up to MOP5,500.
The capture of a key Syrian town and a nearby dam from Islamic State group militants by Syrian Kurdish-led forces undermines the ISs ability to defend its de facto capital, Raqqa and disrupts its ability to plan attacks in Western countries, the U.S.-led international coalition said yesterday.

Tabqa and the nearby dam, Syrias largest, were seized a day earlier in an offensive that lasted nearly seven weeks, with the backing of airstrikes from the international coalition. The Kurdish-led forces were clearing the town and the dam of land mines, the militants favorite weapon.

The fall of Tabqa also denies militants a key coordination hub that had been used by the groups foreign fighters since 2013 to plan attacks against the West, the coalition said in a statement. Tabqa had served as a base for the planning such operations after the militants lost other territories in northern Syria.

The capture of Tabqa sets the stage for an advance on Raqqa, some 25 miles to the east.

Coalition spokesman Col. John Dorrian said the capture of Tabqa is yet another victory for the Kurdish-led forces, the U.S.s most effective partner on the ground in Syria fighting IS. He earlier said that after Tabqa is secured, the Syrian Kurdish-led forces will continue operations to isolate and seize Raqqa.

The capture of Tabqa came a day after the Trump administration announced it will supply the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces with heavier weapons, a decision that infuriated Turkey, which views the main Kurdish militia in the group as an extension of an outlawed rebel movement fighting an insurgency in its southeast. The SDF, which also includes Arab fighters, has captured large swathes of land in northern Syria from IS with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes.

The spokesman for the Kurdish militia that forms the backbone of the fighting force known as the Peoples Protection Units, or YPG, told The Associated Press yesterday that his group will seek neighborly relations with Turkey.

From our side, we want to keep good neighborly relations with Turkey, Redur Khalil said in a series of messages from Syria.

He called on Turkey to let go of its unjustified fears of the group.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the U.S. to reverse its decision, saying weapons in the hands of the Kurdish-led forces are a threat to his country. Unnerved by the Kurdish advances along the border, Turkey sent troops into Syria last year to help allied Syrian forces battle IS and block the SDF.

The Trump administration says it will supply the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG is the main component, with heavier weapons ahead of a push on the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the IS groups de facto capital. Talal Sillo, a commander with SDF, said no weapons have yet been delivered to the group but that the US-led coalition had said that fast delivery was expected from weapons already in Syria with the international coalition.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has been waging a decades-old insurgency in Turkey. The U.S. and other Western nations also view the PKK as a terrorist group.

Khalil dismissed the label, saying the U.S. would not supply arms to terrorists. Sarah El Deeb, Beirut, AP
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 childrens reported visions would go on to strengthen the faith of Portugals persecuted Catholics and make the small farming town of Fatima one of the worlds 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 two-day visit, Francis will also likely seek to make Fatimas 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 dont 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 couldnt 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 Franciscos older brother.

Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, the retired head of the Vaticans saint-making office, said the childrens 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 couldnt even talk about the beatification of children in the history of the church because the principle prevailed that they didnt 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 childrens 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 Churchs 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 wasnt revealed until 2000. The mystery furthered Fatimas 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 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 childrens parents didnt seek out celebrity and were reluctant centers of attention. Lucias parents complained that pilgrims trampled their crops.

Life didnt 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 shrines 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. Whod have guessed that Fatima would turn out like this?
Chinese President Xi Jinping called his new South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in yesterday to congratulate him on his inauguration, the first time such a call has been made from Beijing to Seoul and one that raises the prospect of a thaw in relations between the Asian neighbors.

Chinese leaders dont often make congratulatory telephone calls to new foreign leaders right after they take office, normally sending envoys days or weeks later carrying personal letters instead. The call to Moon took place just a day after he took office and comes amid increased regional tensions over North Korea as well as the deployment of a U.S. missile-defense shield in South Korea.

Moon told Xi during the 40-minute call that he plans to send a special delegation to Beijing for talks on both topics, Moons office said in a statement. China has been upset by the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system that was approved by Moons conservative predecessor as a hedge against North Korea, placing Seoul in a difficult spot between its closest military ally in Washington and its largest trading partner in Beijing.

China has already taken commercial retaliation against South Korean business interests on its soil, but will be hoping Moon follows through on his campaign pledge to review the missile systems deployment if elected. Beijing sees the system as a threat to its own security.

During yesterdays call, Xi reaffirmed Chinas opposition to the THAAD deployment, Moons office said. Moon responded that hes aware of Chinas concerns and asked Xi to help resolve the difficulties facing South Korean businesses in China, it said.

Moon told Xi that it would be easier to settle the missile-defense issue if North Korea wasnt engaging in provocations, the statement said.

Moon said he hopes to meet Xi at an early date and Xi formally invited Moon to visit Beijing, it said.

While Moon may try to soothe Chinese anger over the missile-defense system, many observers say it appears too late to call for its withdrawal, which would greatly undermine South Koreas relationship with Washington.

Given that, the prospect for improved ties between Seoul and Beijing isnt clear, with some saying China wont back down until it gets a major concession on the systems deployment and others saying China is also eager for improved ties and will settle for less as long as it can save face on the missile-defense issue.

Moons conversation with Xi came a day after he spoke with President Donald Trump, who in the phone call congratulated Moon on his election win and invited him to visit the White House. The two leaders also agreed to strengthen their alliance, the White House said.

While taking the oath of office this week, Moon said hes open to visiting North Korea under the right conditions. Conservative critics have worried Moons rise to power might cause a friction with Trump, who wants to increase pressure on North Korea with the help of China, the Norths largest trading partner and aid benefactor.

Moon also received similar congratulatory calls from Japanese and Indian leaders yesterday.

During his call with Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe, the two leaders agreed that their countries must not let their difficult history hamper co-operation in dealing with North Koreas nuclear program, Moons office said.

The call also touched on a controversial 2015 agreement over compensating South Korean women forced into sexual slavery by Japans military in World War II, Moons office said. It said Moon told Abe that it was emotionally difficult for South Koreans to accept the agreement.

It wasnt clear whether Moon used the conversation to call for a renegotiation of the deal. He had promised during his campaign to renegotiate it.

Japanese officials have described the call as positive and meaningful, with the two agreeing to cooperate closely to deal with North Korea. AP
In a mountain valley in Kashmir, plans are under way for Chinese engineers guarded by Pakistani forces to expand the lofty Karakoram Highway in a project that is stirring diplomatic friction with India.

The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. The Asian Development Bank says the region, home to 60 percent of the worlds people, needs more than USD26 trillion of such investment by 2030 to keep economies growing.

The initiative is in many ways natural for China, the worlds biggest trader. But governments from Washington to Moscow to New Delhi worry Beijing also is trying to build its own political influence and erode theirs.

Others worry China might undermine human rights, environmental and other standards or leave poor countries burdened with debt.

India is unhappy Chinese state-owned companies are working in the Pakistani-held part of Kashmir, the Himalayan region claimed by both sides. Indian leaders see that as an endorsement of Pakistani control.

We have some serious reservations about it, because of sovereignty issues, said Indias finance and defense minister, Arun Jaitley, at an Asian Development Bank meeting this month in Yokohama, Japan. China has previously said its highway work targets no third country.

Chinas initiative is ramping up as President Donald Trump focuses on domestic issues, downplaying foreign affairs.

American officials say Washington wants to work with China on infrastructure. But some political analysts say Beijing is trying to create a political and economic network centered on China and push the United States out of the region.

Trumps decision to pull out of the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deprives Chinas neighbors of a tool they hoped would counter its rising influence, said Max Baucus, the U.S. ambassador to Beijing until January.

Southeast Asian countries would tell me we want you, we want the TPP, then we can balance China with the United States, Baucus told The Associated Press.

Dubbed One Belt, One Road after ancient trade routes through the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, the initiative is Chinese President Xi Jinpings signature project.

Details such as financing are vague. But since Xi announced it in 2013, Beijing has launched dozens of projects from railways in Tajikistan, Thailand and Kenya to power plants in Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan.

Countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty. India, Indonesia and others want investment but are wary of Chinese strategic ambitions.

Indonesias political elite have a fear of regional hegemony by China, said Christine Tjhin, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.

Moscow worries Beijing is diluting Russian influence in Central Asia by linking Uzbekistan and other countries more closely to Chinas more dynamic economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has responded by proposing a Great Eurasia Project, with Beijing leading on economics and Moscow on politics and security.

This vision enables the Kremlin to maintain an appearance that it retains the political initiative in its neighborhood, said a report by the Center for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw think tank.

In a possible effort to defuse unease, China has invited governments to a two-day forum starting Sunday and led by Xi. Leaders from 28 countries including Russian President Vladimir Putin are due to attend, but none from major Western countries.

Chinese officials reject suggestions the initiative is a power play by Beijing.

The Chinese government has never wished to control any other countrys government, a Cabinet official, Ou Xiaoli, told The Associated Press. We feel in contacts between countries, we need to talk about studying benefits, studying mutual profit.

The bulk of Chinese financing is to be loans, which Ou said will be mostly on commercial terms based on market principles. That might add to debt burdens in countries where dealing with Beijing can be politically sensitive.

The state-run China Development Bank announced in 2015 it had set aside $890 billion for more than 900 One Belt, One Road projects across 60 countries in gas, minerals and other sectors. The governments Export-Import Bank of China said it would finance 1,000 projects in 49 countries.

In Pakistan, the proposed $1.3 billion effort to expand the Karakoram Highway is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which involves dozens of projects including power plants, roads and railways.

Pakistani officials say much of the Chinese money for power projects is investment, not loans but have given few details, raising questions about whether other projects can pay for themselves.

I feel that our several generations will have to repay these Chinese loans for decades, said Azeem Khalid, a lecturer at the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South, a non-government group in Islamabad. Joe McDonald, Munir Ahmed & Gillian Wong, Beijing, AP
Uber Technologies Inc. suffered a legal setback in its fight against being regulated as a traditional taxi service, after an adviser to the European Unions top court rejected the argument that the car-hailing application is just that, an app.

The question has vexed regulators and lawmakers across the region for years and yesterdays non-binding opinion gives an indication that Uber might not be able to shake off national restrictions, such as the obligation to get a license or other authorizations.

The Uber electronic platform, whilst innovative, falls within the field of transport, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar, of the EU Court of Justice, said in a statement on his opinion in Luxembourg on Thursday. Uber can thus be required to obtain the necessary licenses and authorizations under national law.

The car-hailing application accessed via smartphones and tablets has faced roadblocks, real and regulatory, across Europe, amid complaints brought by taxi drivers who say the company tries to unfairly avoid regulations that bind established competitors. Uber sees itself as an app, and defended that position last month again in the EU court in a separate, French case, which continued to puzzle the EUs top judges.

Uber claims it should be exempt from the obligations normal transportation operators face under EU rules. Its lawyers told the court last year that the companys activities cant be reduced to a mere transport activity.

In a statement yesterday, Uber said it will now wait for the final decision. The EU courts decision, expected in a few months, will be binding and cant be appealed. Bloomberg
GOODING  The man accused of organizing a cockfight March 25 on a Gooding farm will stand trial on a felony charge, though his attorney will likely seek to have his confession from the night of the fight kept out of evidence.

Jose Rosario Miramontes-Tostado, 44, of Gooding is the first person in Idaho to face a felony for organizing rooster fights under a state law passed in 2012. Hes charged with one count of exhibition of cockfights, and a magistrate judge bound him over to district court Thursday after a preliminary hearing.

In order to gain a felony conviction for organizing a cockfight, prosecutors must prove the presence of drugs and gambling at the fight, and Gooding County Prosecutor Matt Pember called three witnesses Thursday who testified there was cockfighting going on, there was marijuana found at the scene and there was evidence of gambling.

In the middle of the shop was a makeshift, wooden-sided arena with dirt on the inside, Sheriffs Detective Derek Walker testified. We saw numerous, numerous pieces of paraphernalia  the spurs and the cages they were tied to at the edge.

Deputy Nick Thiemann, one of the first officers to respond to the scene, testified he walked in as two roosters fought. Thiemann and Walker both testified law enforcement found a small plastic bag of marijuana, and the detective said he found a ledger with a tournament-style bracket that he considered to be evidence of gambling.

Miramontes-Tostado also admitted there was gambling, Thiemann testified, though the deputy said he was surprised at the small wagers. It wasnt to the amounts I would have thought it was, Thiemann said.

But the key testimony for Miramontes-Tostado and his attorney, Doug Nelson, was that all three officers who testified said they did not read Miramontes-Tostado his Miranda rights before he confessed to organizing the fight.

I can see where this is going, Magistrate Judge Casey Robinson told Nelson after the hearing ended. Youre going to file a motion to suppress; even I can see that.

Indeed, Nelsons questions during the hearings centered not on the cockfighting but the circumstances in which law enforcement investigated the incident. In a sworn affidavit, Thiemann wrote that when he and two other officers responded to the farm for a noise complaint, they entered and told everyone to put their hands up.

So as soon as you said, everyone stay where you are, hands up, nobody was free to leave that place? Nelson asked Thiemann.

Not at that time, no, Thiemann answered.

So even though you say you didnt arrest Mr. Tostado, he was not free to leave and his liberty was restrained at that point? Nelson asked.

Yes, Thiemann said.

Nelson appears set to argue that any confession made by his client under those circumstances should be barred from evidence. Pember countered by asking Thiemann if Miramontes-Tostados confession was made voluntarily, which the deputy said it was.

After the hearing, Pember told the Times-News that Miramontes-Tostado is the only person who will face a felony in the case, but several misdemeanor charges stemming from the fight will soon be filed against some of the more than 150 people in attendance.

All 80 roosters seized were euthanized by the Idaho Humane Society.

The misdemeanor charges against others, including a man who was asked to leave the courtroom Thursday because he could be a co-defendant and witness, are expected over the next week or so, Pember said.

Miramontes-Tostado, in custody in lieu of $1,000 bond, is next scheduled to appear for a district court arraignment to enter a plea on May 23.
TWIN FALLS  The suspected shooter in the drive-by murder of 15-year-old Canyon Ridge freshman Vason Lee Widaman last year has a new trial date scheduled for September.

Gerardo Raul Chavez, 19, of Buhl waived his right to have a trial within six months of his arraignment. He was arraigned in district court Feb. 13, and his trial was set for July 11 along with his co-defendant, Jose Daniel Alvarez, 20, of Buhl.

Both men are charged with committing or aiding and abetting first-degree murder and intimidating a witness. Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty, but both face life in prison if convicted of the May 7, 2016 slaying of Widaman.

During a status conference for Chavez on Thursday, District Judge Richard Bevan said he was unable to hear the trial in July, so Chavez decided to push back his trial date rather than ask that a different judge be assigned to the case.

Because Bevan is unavailable in July, Alvarez now must also choose whether to waive his right to a speedy trial or have a different judge hear his case. Alvarez and Chavez had a joint preliminary hearing, but the last time Alvarez appeared in court in March, his attorney said he might seek separate trials.

Alvarez is scheduled for a status conference May 19 at which time it will likely be decided what to do about his trial. Chavez is now set to stand trial in late September, with jury selection set for Sept. 15 and the trial expected to last two weeks from Sept. 18 to Sept. 29.
JEROME  Deputies serving a warrant for a zoning issue Thursday came across about 170 malnourished and neglected roosters, chicks and hens, some of which are believed to be used in cockfights, a sheriffs detective said.

The discovery was made the same day a Gooding man was in court for a preliminary hearing on a felony charge of organizing a cockfight earlier this year in Gooding County. Jose Rosario Miramontes-Tostado, 44, was bound over to district court to stand trial in that case.

The Jerome County Sheriffs Office is withholding most details about Thursdays discovery as they continue to investigate the situation.

We do have suspects, Detective David Olson said. But nobody is in custody.

Its unknown if the discovery is connected in any way to the Gooding County case, Olson said.

Eighty roosters were found and later euthanized at the cockfight uncovered March 25 at a Gooding farm. More than 150 people were in attendance there, and Gooding County Prosecutor Matt Pember plans to file misdemeanor charges against some of those attendees and participants in the coming weeks.

Jerome deputies determined the roosters found Thursday were used for cockfighting due to other things found on scene, Olson said, though he declined to elaborate. He said it looked like roosters were kept at the residence but did not fight there.

Olson did not have a timetable for when he expects arrests to be made or charges to be filed.

We just have to see what happens as we process the evidence, the detective said.

Participating in cockfights is a misdemeanor, according to Idaho law, and organizing a cockfight when drugs or gambling are involved is a felony.

But raising roosters for fighting may not be criminal.

According to the state statute: Nothing in this section prohibits any customary practice of breeding or rearing game fowl, regardless of the subsequent uses of said game fowl.
BURLEY  A cold, powerful storm will arrive in central Idaho Friday afternoon bringing windy conditions along with some snow, the National Weather Service in Pocatello reports.

The snow level will eventually lower to around the 5,500 feet.

Mini-Cassia and east to Rexburg and Idaho Falls will be affected.

A wind advisory is in effect from 1 p.m. Friday to 4 a.m. Saturday. Winds will increase during the early afternoon and peak around 7 p.m. Friday night. Winds will be strong enough to bring down branches and weakened trees, taking with them power lines or damaging structures.

Driving high-profile vehicles will be difficult. Blowing dust near agricultural fields can reduce visibility suddenly to zero with no warning, making driving at normal highway speeds dangerous.

Winds will be 30 to 40 mph with peak gusts up to 50 mph.
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MISSOULA, Mont. (AP)  A new report suggests state agencies should take advantage of social media to inform younger residents of the threat that invasive aquatic species pose to Montana waterways.

A University of Montana study found that while nearly three-fourths of state residents participate in outdoor water recreation activities, just 21 percent knew about water closures last fall due to aquatic mussels or parasites.

The Institute for Tourism and Recreation Research surveyed nearly 12,000 adults at gas stations and rest areas and found less than half of those between the ages of 18 and 25 knew about the November closures at Tiber and Canyon Ferry reservoirs due to mussel larvae or the Yellowstone River closure due to a parasite that was killing fish in August.

Institute director Norma Nickerson says if young people dont know about the threats, the spread of invasive aquatic species is more likely.
SALT LAKE CITY (AP)  Utah authorities are warning about the increasing presence and potency of so-called designer drugs that mix several compounds into one pill, a dangerous trend that led to the death of two Park City teenagers and nearly killed another teen.

Drugs such as pink, which killed the two teenagers, and other synthetic opioids fit under an overarching trend of designer drugs. After the teens deaths, the DEA classified pink as a Schedule 1 Drug, which means it has no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse, the Salt Lake Tribune reported.

Authorities held a press conference Wednesday to deliver their warning.

Officials are working to determine the compounds being created and sold, Utah Crime Lab Director Jay Henry said.

One pill can contain multiple compounds, such as methamphetamine and Fentanyl. Officials said some of the compounds have the potential to be 100 times more potent than morphine, the Deseret News reported.

Analysts have identified 70 to 80 new street drug compounds since 2010, Henry said. Some are filled with really nasty stuff and disguised to look like legitimate pharmaceuticals, he said.

If officials can classify more designer drugs as scheduled, it might drop the drugs street sales, Henry said.

When a compound is identified, the crime lab submits an analysis to the Controlled Substance Advisory Committee, which decides whether to schedule it, pending a vote in the Utah Legislature, Henry said.

The sale of that drug then tends to drop off, creating relatively quick spikes of dealers moving on from one substance to the next, Utah Highway Patrol spokesman Todd Royce said.

Officers say they hardly see spice  a synthetic compound that was added to the list of banned substances in 2011  anymore, ever since it was added to the scheduled-drugs list, Royce said.

We used to see it everywhere, he said. Bath salts was the same thing. As soon as it was scheduled, it dropped off.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Shiite movement Hezbollah Thursday indicated any future fight with Israel will take place in the Israel territory as both enemies renew animosity.

Speaking to movement members in a televised speech, the Shiite leader indicated that Hezbollah soldiers and rockets can reach all the positions across the Zionist entity during any upcoming war, reports say.

The Shiite leader also rebuked Israel for the construction of border wall between Israel and Lebanon. Israel has initiated the building of a seven-meter high wall near the border town of Metulla. The over one kilometer-long wall has been outfitted with sophisticated cameras and sensory equipment aimed at preventing infiltration.

Israel erected last year another wall Kibbutz Misgav Am in the north, Time of Israel notes.

For Nasrallah, the walls imply defeat for Israel.

This border wall is an acknowledgment of Lebanons massive victory and Israels defeat. It is a defeat of Israels schemes and ambitions and an acknowledgment of the fall of the Greater Israel project, which wanted to establish a state from the Nile to the Euphrates, he said.

When Israel hides behind high walls, it means that it is weaker than a spiders web, he added.

Israel and Hezbollah engaged in 2006 in a war known as Second Lebanon War. Around 1,300 people, mostly Lebanese civilians, died in the conflict which lasted for 34 days.

Tension flared up again between the two archenemies in recent weeks, after Israeli missiles targeted Hezbollah position in Syria.

The Shiite movement is backing Syrian leader Bashar Assad in the Syria conflict. The movement has sent thousands of soldiers to fight on the side of the Syrian army against rebels and Daech.
The Hamas movement controlling the Gaza Strip announced Thursday it captured the killer of leader Mazen Faqha, adding that Israel was the mastermind of the killing.

Newly elected political leader of the movement Ismail Haniyeh said at a press conference that the killer, whose name was not revealed, has been captured and is in the hands of security forces.

We announce to the Palestinian people that the one who carried out this crime upon orders of Israeli security officers is now in the hands of (Palestinian) security services, he said.

The occupier bears responsibility for (Mazen Faqhas death) because the confession (of the killer) is clear; the master who gave the orders was the occupier, the Zionist enemy.

Mazen Faqha, leader of the Qassam Brigades and former detainee in Israeli cells, was assassinated in March in the South of Gaza city by unknown men.

Faqha was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2003 for allegedly planning attacks against Israel. He was released in 2011 as part of prisoner swap deal reached between Hamas and Israel, which involved the liberation of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit against 1,047 Palestinian detainees.

Israel attributed the assassination to internal power rivalries in the Hamas group.

Israel is known for carrying out undercover assassinations of Palestinian militants.
International Monetary Fund Managing Director, Christine Lagarde on Thursday proposed a visit of IMF officials in Democratic Republic of Congo to check the state of the central African nations economic crisis, the finance minister told Reuters.

According to Finance minister Henri Yav, the head of the international lender addressed a letter to the Head of state Joseph Kabila himself. However, Congo had been waiting for the formation of a new government before responding.

The IMF visit could help the country attract donors who have been put off in recent years by a tense political climate and reports of human rights violations, Reuters reported.

Congo, Africas biggest copper producer, relies heavily on raw materials, which account for 98 percent of export earnings. After bouncing back at the start of the year, copper on the London metal exchange fell by a quarter last year, and has fallen further in 2016.

The IMF said in March that it was prepared to provide financial support once the political situation is clarified and stabilized.

Close aides of Kabila, who has been in power since 2001, claim logistical difficulties mean it would be impractical to hold any polls before 2018.

The president has been accused of trying to cling to power by postponing elections indefinitely  a charge denied by spokesmen and supporters.

Despite vast mineral and other resources, the DRC is one of the worlds poorest states.
Sudanese Prime Minister Hassan Saleh on Thursday reshuffled his cabinet with a massive shake-up of the economic ministries. Thirty-one ministers and 44 ministers of state were appointed in the new national unity government.

This government comes to implement the recommendations of the national dialogue, the countrys largest political event after independence in 1956. The governments priorities are to increase production and peoples livelihoods and achieve peace, Saleh who was appointed prime minister on March 1 told a press conference on Thursday.

Mohamed Osman al-Rikabi, a former director of administrative affairs at the countrys Defence Ministry was appointed Finance Minister and the leader of the opposition Umma party, Mubarak al-Fadil grabbed the Investment portfolio.

Sudan has about 1.5 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, according to BP Plc statistics, even after losing three-quarters of its crude when South Sudan seceded in 2011. Gold output was on target for 75 metric tons last year, the government said.

The war-stricken nations new government comes after months-long discussions as 90 different political parties and armed movements sought representation in the new cabinet.

Sudans constitution was amended in December to introduce the position of Prime Minister following demands from opposition parties that took part in national dialogue sessions with the government.
Sierra Leone government on Thursday fails to sell one of the worlds largest diamonds at an auction in Belgium.

The large stone of 706-carat was discovered by a Christian pastor, one of thousands who work in the informal mining sector dominating the diamond-rich West African country.

The chief auctioneer and head of the National Minerals Agency, Sahr Wonday said the highest bid of $7.7 million at Thursdays auction was turned down.

The government plans to hold another transparent auction for the gem in Belgium.

The reserve price, which is the minimum amount that the diamond can be sold for and which was set by the Sierra Leonean government, is kept secret, the BBC reports.

In 1972, a 968.9-carat diamond of Sierra Leone, a country once tainted by so-called blood diamonds, was found by miners and sold for about $2.5 million.

Diamond sales partly fuelled the countrys decade-long civil war when rebel groups exchanged them for weapons.

Sierra Leone largely depends on its mining industry for its export income, although the majority of those employed in the country are believed to be working in the agriculture sector.
Five peacekeepers of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) were killed in an attack by the Anti-Balaka rebels, and 10 others, 9 Moroccan and a Cambodian, were injured and evacuated.

Four Cambodian peacekeepers were killed on the spot, while the fifth victim, a Moroccan who has previously been reported missing was found dead later.

The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) has confirmed the death of the Moroccan peacekeeper after it

retrieved his body and transferred it to the Royal Armed Forces stationed in Bangui.

The attack against the MINUSCA convoy was executed on May 8 on the Rafai-Bangassou axis, in the countrys south east by the Anti-Balaka rebels.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Gueterres, the MINUSCA and the UN Security Council have all strongly condemned the attack against the peacekeepers, extended condolences to the families of the victims and expressed solidarity with Morocco and Cambodia.

Attacks against United Nations peacekeepers may constitute a war crime, Guterres said through his spokesperson when condemning the deadly attack.

The UN Chief and the Security Council have both called on the CAR authorities to investigate the attack in order to bring those responsible to justice swiftly.

The Secretary-General also reiterated his support to the actions of MINUSCA to protect civilians and stabilize the Central African Republic, and called on all parties to heed President Faustin Archange Touaderas call to cease violence and work together towards the stability of the country.

President of the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson flew to CAR to show solidarity with our United Nations people on the ground, particularly our peacekeepers, a UN release said.

The MINUSCA will hold a memorial ceremony for its fallen members. The ceremony will be presided over by UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix in the presence of the highest Central African authorities.

Clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, plunged the country of 4.5 million people into civil conflict in 2013.
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Education and Agriculture ministries may deal

By Messenger Staff

Georgias Minister of Education, Aleksandre Jejelava, who quite often attracts media interest with his extraordinary statements and modern views about education and upbringings, says he dreams about introducing healthy food to schools.The Minister says his body is in communication with the Ministry of Agriculture about providing secondary education institutions with healthy products.Jejelava said this while commenting on the availability of fruit and vegetables at school: It was in one of the Scandinavian countries, maybe in Sweden. There was a bowl at the entrance of the school with apples if you want you can eat the fruit, if not, no but in the end most children ate it, the Minister says.The Education Ministry has already announced that a list of the junk food that will be prohibited at schools has already been drawn up.Meanwhile, the Minister does not exclude the possibility that after prohibiting unhealthy snacks, food at schools may get more expensive.To address this, Jejelava advised parents to make healthy sandwiches at home and give them to their children with fruit to eat at schools.It is of course a good thing that unhealthy foods will no longer be sold at schools and that schools may have healthy fruit and vegetable in the future.However, prices must remain available at schools, as otherwise the children may continue to buy cheaper, unhealthy products from nearby shops.The prohibition of unhealthy food may partially settle the problem of avoiding future, health-related complications in the younger generations.However, the government still needs to provide strict food controls.Unhealthy and genetically modified food is still being sold in Georgia as healthy food, and without relevant indications they are unhealthy, and both the old and the young continue to buy and eat unhealthy products.
The News in Brief

Georgias rugby captain leaves national team



Georgian rugby player Mamuka Gorgodze has decided to leave the National Team, which he captained in the last 10 games. According to the Rugby Federation, Gorgodze has made this decision after a year of thinking.



According to Gorgodze, he will play his last match in the Georgian national team and afterwards will say goodbye to the team.



He says his age became the reason for making such a decision.



Mamuka Gorgodze is 33 years old.



Gorgodze started playing rugby in 2000, when he was 16 years old. In 2012-2013 he was named the best players of top 14 and Heineken Cup.



Gorgodze has conducted 69 matches in total as a member of Georgias national rugby team. 11 matches were held when he was the captain. In 2011 Gorgodze became the best sportsman of Georgia. (IPN)







Giorgi Mghebrishvili opened the annual international conference of the Association of European Police Colleges in the MIA Academy



The Minister of Internal Affairs, Giorgi Mghebrishvili opened the annual conference Future of Migration  Challenges and Responses of the Association of European Police Colleges in the MIA Academy. The opening of the conference was attended by AEPC President Norbert Leitner, Rector of the MIA Academy Givi Mikanadze and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia, Vakhtang Makharoblishvili. The development of international police cooperation, as well as working out joint approaches and strategies with partner countries is of great significance for fighting against global challenges in order to provide an effective fight against crime. Close cooperation between educational institutions and sharing experience is one of the ways to fulfill this task that helps us to train competent professional police officers. The highly trained and educated police officer is always one step ahead of the criminal. The strengthening of the Academys capabilities, as well as promotion of high and western standards of police education is a priority for me. We want the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to become a regional education center that will contribute to raise standards of police education in Georgia and throughout the region. Also, it will enhance cooperation, stability, security and development in the field of law enforcement between the regional countries, said Giorgi Mghebrishvili. The representatives of the training centers and academies of law enforcement structures from 17 countries, as well as various international organizations including the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, will participate in the AEPCs conference this year. They will discuss the successful practice of different European countries concerning migration in connection of police training. The conference aims to develop international cooperation between training centers and academies of law enforcement structures of partner countries and share experience, as well as develop common approach and strategy to increase the effectiveness of fighting against crime. Within the framework of the conference, a meeting of the Board of the Association for European Police Colleges is to be held. The Board will announce the results of the vote concerning the elections of the MIA Academy of Georgia as a permanent executive member of the Association. In parallel to the event, the rector of the MIA Academy and the rector of Estonian Academy of Security Sciences signed a Memorandum of Cooperation. The document will contribute to enhance close cooperation between the MIA Academy and Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, which will facilitate the coordinated activities between the parties, as well as professional development of the students and personnel. The subject of the Memorandum is organizing joint workshops, seminars and educational projects; conducting exchange programs and training visits for the trainees/students, as well as sharing experiences and cooperating for institutional capacity development. (police.ge)







New Taxi Company Ibery Appears on Georgian Market



Ibery, a new taxi company, has launched operations in Georgia. At the first stage, the company made investments of 6 million USD and offers comfortable services with Haval and Great Wall new vehicles.



Our objective is to change service standards in this sector and make taxi services more comfortable, safer and faster. To this end the company has invested 6 million USD in business development, Mariam Toidze, head of the company marketing and PR department, noted.



At this stage the company offers several types of services  economic class, premium class, business class and so-called pickup services, as well as corporate services.



Our vehicles are equipped with engines with high ecology standards and so give off a minimum of emissions. The company plans to use electric taxis too. We have already launched negotiations and in about 6 months we will introduce our electric taxis, Mariam Toidze said.



Currently, the company fleet consists of 200 new vehicles. (cbw.ge)







Georgia Is a Very Important Partner of US



"The US congresspersons' recent letter in support of our country clearly demonstrates that Georgia is an important partner of the US. This has been the case over the past 25 years, and I certainly hope that in the next 25 years, we will further cement our partnership as a guarantee of Georgia's development into a stable democratic country," the Prime Minister of Georgia said while commenting on a letter of support for Georgia from US congresspersons to US President Donald Trump.



Giorgi Kvirikashvili is convinced that President Trump shares the stance and determination of the American congresspersons.



"Importantly, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of our diplomatic relations, and boost our partnership, thirty American congresspersons, members of the House of Representatives, addressed US President Donald Trump with a letter in support of Georgia. This address emphasizes the importance of our partnership and the great achievements in building democratic institutions and ensuring economic growth. It also points out that Georgia, despite facing occupation-related problems, remains a staunch supporter of antiterrorism measures and operations. The letter reflects support for initiating free trade agreement negotiations, which is commendable indeed. Lately, the US Congress has adopted several important resolutions, such as those supporting our territorial integrity and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. All this testifies that Georgia is a very important partner of the United States. I am convinced that the Senate seconds this attitude, and there is no doubt that the same is true of US President Donald Trump," the Prime Minister stated at today's Government meeting. (Prime Minister's Press Office)




via @learyreports

WASHINGTON  Gov. Rick Scott has pressed the Trump administration to back off on timeline that could result in the deportation of thousands of Haitians, many living in Florida.

Scott raised the issue in a meeting Thursday with Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly. Temporary protected status for Haitians expires in July and they could be expelled in January.

"The secretary has not made a decision on TPS for Haiti, spokesman David Lapan told the Tampa Bay Times. He and Gov. Scott did have a conversation about the program and the secretary listened to the Governors points about his desire for DHS to extend TPS.
With the results coming from the Crooked Creek Walleye Classic out of Fort Peck Reservoir this past weekend, I believe the walleye bite might just be on.

Kennie Williams from Lewistown and Travis Scott from Harlowton dominated the 59-team field with amazing back-to-back days. They caught and released 51.61 pounds of walleyes on the first day and came back the second day with a weight of 31.24 pounds. That is a total of 82.81 pounds of walleyes that were caught for the two days with an average of a little over 8 pounds a fish.

Their winning weight was almost double the weight of the second-place team  Bob Hickey from Kalispell and Jason Mundel from Coram  who had a respectable 45.17 pounds for the two-day tournament that was held on of the west end of the reservoir at Crooked Creek.

The tournament formally called the Fall Classic was moved from August up to May this year. What might be even more impressive than the huge weight of the winners is that out of the 59 teams, at least 25 teams caught at least 20 pounds over the two days.

If you are a walleye angler like me, that is a sign that the walleye bite has begun, at least on the west end of the 134-mile reservoir. I spoke to Eddie Mindt from the Lakeridge Lodging and Bait Shop, on the east end of the reservoir by the dam, last Saturday and he reported that the walleye bite hadnt quite kicked in on that side of the lake.

Bill Heinrich from Rock Creek Marina, on the Dry Arm of Fort Peck and a popular May walleye fishing destination, reported that anglers who were fishing in that area of the lake had started to catch walleye, so I think that it is just a matter of time before the walleyes start to bite consistently all across Fort Peck.

Some more good news for smallmouth bass anglers came from Scott Collinsworth from Anaconda last week. Collinswoth reported that his son Hunter caught and released a 7.2-pound smallmouth bass, just off the current Montana state record weight of 7.4 pounds, which was caught out of Flathead Lake by Jacob Fowler last May.

The father-son team were pre-fishing for the Crooked Creek Walleye Classic on Thursday on Fort Peck when Hunter hooked the monster fish. Collinsworth added that the smallmouth bass were biting like crazy that day.

Trap shooters will be heading to Missoula for the annual Ron Hoppie Memorial Trap Shoot this weekend. The three-day event is held at the Missoula Trap and Skeet Club and attracts more than 200 shooters from around the United States and Canada.

Those 200 shooters, including some All Americans, will attempt to hit more than 200,000 targets that will be thrown over the weekend. The 35th annual event will also employ more than 40-plus high school kids to keep score.

The Missoula Trap and Skeet Club is an all-volunteer club with 18 trap fields, five skeet fields, a five-stand/sporting clays field, and an Olympic/bunker trap field. They are open to the public. Their 500 members pay an annual $40 membership fee, according to member Larry Flanagan.

For more information on how to join go to their website: missoulatrapandskeet.com.
Leading up to the start of the Special Olympics Montana State Summer Games next week, the Law Enforcement Torch Run will bring the Flame of Hope to Missoula on Saturday.

The torch will make its way to town from Drummond over the course of the day, and is scheduled to arrive at the Orange Street exit of Interstate 90 shortly before 5 p.m., when the run will stop for the day.

The torch will be brought to Ogren Park Allegiance Field on Tuesday before the final leg on Wednesday, when officers will carry the flame the last mile to Washington-Grizzly Stadium for the 7 p.m. opening ceremonies.

This year will be the last of three in which Missoula has hosted the State Summer Games. Events will be held throughout the day on May 17-19.

The Law Enforcement Torch Run is a fundraising and awareness campaign involving officers from across the state that benefits Special Olympics Montana, raising more than $4.8 million since 2005. In the months before this years State Summer Games, officers carried the Flame of Hope more than 2,700 miles around Montana.
STEVENSVILLE  Teachers and students in the Stevensville School District are protesting the school board's decision not to renew school counselor Stephen Coop's contract.

He always puts the needs of the students first, and a vast majority of Stevensville High Schools student body relies on him for much more than just educational needs, read a petition signed by 140 students.

He provides a safe place and a listening ear for students to talk, a shoulder to lean on and a helping hand up," said the petition, which praised Coops efforts in class scheduling, college and career preparation, and test score follow-up.

The school board also received a letter signed by 30 teachers in the junior high and high school.

Mr. Coop has performed all of the duties outlined in Board Policy 2140 effectively and successfully, it read. "Stevensville High School cannot afford to lose quality educators.

Students held a day of silence on Thursday, after about a dozen students held protests outside the school on Wednesday, the day after the board voted not to renew Coop's contract.

Board chairman Greg Trangmoe said the law supports the board's decision.

When it is non-renewal without cause there are circumstances we dont discuss, Trangmoe said. It comes down to whether or not I trust the professional administrators that evaluated him.

Nancy Fisher, in her 39th year of teaching third and fourth grade in Stevensville, wrote a personal letter supporting Coop.

I have heard nothing but very positive comments from my former students, Fisher said. I have heard several say over many times that Mr. Coop really listens to me. Our high school students need and deserve a counselor that they know and can depend on.

Stevensville parent Linda Page said she attended the school board meeting on Tuesday.

It was packed, Page said, adding that alumni at the meeting shared stories about the counselor helping them focus on their grades and college.

We want to keep Coop because hes really, really good, Page said. Hes helped my older daughter find scholarships, loans and helped her find a way to get to college. Hes talked kids down from suicides, one of them my daughter. The kids trust him.

Coop said Thursday that he regrets the effect the board's decision has had on students, teachers and the community.

After three years living and working in the Stevensville community, I have grown increasingly fond of the students and staff with whom I have had the pleasure to work.

Coop said he is proud of his work including helping students through social and emotional challenges like suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, and divorce, to providing guidance on college and career opportunities."

The students in Stevensville are why I come to work and they will be why I continue to give 110 percent to them until my current contract expires June 30 of this year, Coop said.

Trangmoe said the school board would not revisit its decision.

The board had the full information to make the decision when it was made, so I dont see the point of having another meeting to reconsider the exact same information and expect a different outcome, Trangmoe said.
I was asked about gangs in Montana the other day. How bad is the gang activity, how many gang members are in our state, what are some of the gang names, and what are gangs involved in? Some may be surprised by the answers.

First, there are over a thousand gang members in Montana as you read this. The number depends on how you define a gang member, what time of year it is, and even what is happening in Montana at any one time.

The gangs go by various names, including: Bloods (Piru Bloods, Neighborhood 5 Star Bloods, Rez Bloods), Crips (Mockpaw Crips, 18th St. Crips, 300 Block Crips), Nortenos (North Side Locos, Northern Barrio Locos, Varrio Catorce), Surenoes (Little Valley Locos or LVL, MS-13), Latin Kings, Juggalos, Modern Outlaws, Folk Nation-Gangster Disciples, MT Front Working Class Skins, White Supremists (Peckerwoods, Skinheads) and the Mexican Mafia.

Some of these gangs are hybrids (a cross between gangs and neighborhood cronies), some are junior-high kids claiming colors, some are gang wannabees and some are genuine bad guys looking to make money in a place they see as open due to opportunity, lack of police manpower and lack of competition. All are looking for a sense of belonging. Most will end up incarcerated.

Some gangs are into graffiti, some participate in petty crime such as vandalism and theft, and many are looking to make money in the drug trade, particularly meth. Most gangs wear colors, often bandannas hanging out of their pockets. Most gangs also have symbols such as a star, crown, numbers, a pitchfork or a pyramid.

We have gang members from other states, often California, who move here or transfer their probation here to start a business such as drug trafficking, prostitution or something similar. One in 14 inmates in the Montana prison system has gang ties. The problem is growing, unfortunately.

I recall about two decades ago when gangs such as the Bloods and Crips first came to Billings, law enforcement would arrest them if they jaywalked, littered or had a tail light out. They got the picture that they were not welcome, and many left. Law enforcement is currently having a hard time keeping up due to stretched resources. The jail is well over capacity, so where to put criminals is an issue. This opens up our city to gang exploitation.

Lest I not leave you with all bad news, we do have a Regional Gang Task Force which meets regularly to strategize on how to use the resources available to combat the gang problem. These unsung heroes make a difference. While this picture of gangs in Montana is not a pretty one, and may even come as a shock to some, forewarned is forearmed, and it is better to be aware of what is occurring so we can have a statewide discussion on how to deal with this gang issue we all face, directly or indirectly.
Huckleberries to this years batch of University of Montana graduates, who will participate in the 120th year of commencement ceremonies at UM starting at 10 a.m. tomorrow in Washington-Grizzly Stadium. Wherever they take their degrees next, we hope these graduate use their new knowledge and skills to live richer, fuller lives, that they continue learning and gaining new experiences, and that they always consider Missoula home. Congratulations, class of 2017!

Chokecherries to Montana legislators who failed to take a vote on a proposal to update voting equipment used by those with physical disabilities. Montanas current stock of machines is aging, with many in too poor condition to function. However, elections officials cannot replace them until state law is updated to allow the secretary of state to certify new voting machines. Montanas legislators voted to adjourn for the 2017 session without deciding on the elections bill that contained the provision. Counties may now have to wait another two years for the next Legislature to convene and resolve the problem. In the meantime, they may want to brace for lawsuits; Missoula County was slapped with a lawsuit back in 2008 after one voter with disabilities complained that the county did not have a backup machine for disabled voters, as required by federal law.

Huckleberries to Montanas attorneys for collectively providing more than 120,000 hours of pro bono services, according to the latest Montana Pro Bono Report. The Montana Supreme Court and the State Bar of Montana announced this week that nearly 1,600 attorneys in Montana donated services worth nearly $18 million to low-income residents throughout Montana in 2016. These services were offered in a wide variety of legal areas, but most often in family law matters, including adoptions, divorces and domestic violence.

Chokecherries to the latest evidence confirming the sad fact that the glaciers in Glacier National Park are rapidly melting away. This week, the U.S. Geological Survey published new data in conjunction with Portland State University titled Glaciers Rapidly Shrinking and Disappearing: 50 Years of Glacier Change in Montana. The data shows that since 1966, Montanas glaciers have diminished in size by nearly 40 percent, and some have decreased by as much as 85 percent. Only 26 of the 39 glaciers included in the study are still larger than 25 acres and therefore large enough to still be considered glaciers.

Huckleberries to the rescue of an Arizona woman who was lost for six days in the Great Bear Wilderness. Madeline Connelly, 23, and her dog went missing last Saturday. Many feared the worst after search crews found bear tracks in the same area as Connellys footprints. Fortunately, she was spotted by a Glacier National Park trail crew about five miles from her parked car, hungry but otherwise healthy, and airlifted out by helicopter.
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High school graduates from Butte striving to be first-generation college graduates have Montana Tech on their side.

The Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation and Montana Resources announced Friday a $597,000 gift to Tech to create a four-year academic scholarship for three high school graduates from Butte over the next three years: 2018, 2019, and 2020.

The Montana Resources Opportunity Scholarship  worth $16,600 every year over four years  will go toward tuition, books, room and board, and fees for a needs-based student who wants to be the first in their family, including parents, to earn a college degree.

Butte High and Butte Central High graduates are eligible to apply for what amounts to a renewable full-ride scholarship.

Built into the scholarships is plenty of hands-on, personable, one-on-on support, Amy Verlanic told The Montana Standard. She is executive director for the Institute for Educational Opportunities at Tech.

We know that 77 percent of families in Butte do not have a college education, Verlanic said at the announcement ceremony Friday.

Also, 23 percent of Butte families live in poverty, so Butte has a "significant number of low-income, first-generation students," according to Upward Bound data.

Those moms and dads who live in Butte are tough, and theyre strong, and they care greatly about their kids future, but academic lingo and the timeline for college-prep activities can be daunting to them because its something theyre not experienced at," she said.

Enter the federally funded TRiO Upward Bound and Talent Search programs, which provide ongoing extra support for such students in grades seven through 12 whose parents worked the mines, for example, and who were not required to pursue higher education for a job.

Collectively, those two programs have served first-generation students at Butte High now for about 10 years, so we have a built-in way to identify the students who receive these scholarships  and to make sure we are meeting students their senior year, added Verlanic.

She said she and her staff are grateful to Montana Resources and the Washington Foundation for bringing money to something that has been a problem that Tech has been preparing for and addressing for a long, long time.

Part of the puzzle is figuring out which students meet the needs-based criteria.

For example, TRiO Coordinator Matt Sargent works daily at Butte High and East Middle School instructing eligible students in how to prepare for college.

We work with them starting in sixth grade, said Verlanic. Matt works to identify the best and brightest first-generation students in Butte.

Theresa Rader, who runs the Student Success Program in Verlanics department, zones in on increasing retention and graduation rates, too.

We provide strategies for students and make them proud of who they are, added Verlanic. We celebrate their origins and bring them into the Montana Tech community with a sense of inclusiveness.

Joe McClafferty, president of the Montana Tech Foundation, who opened the press conference, said the endowment will grow, as it already has $300,000 set aside for future scholarships beyond the initial $597,000 allotted.

Were going to build on this, McClafferty said. This is the genesis of it. We have plenty of supporters who have already sponsored and donated to the fund. We are going to build it to have 20 or 30 Butte kids coming up here to Montana Tech.

He referenced EDsmarts 2016 report that ranked Tech the number-one college of 40 in advancing Americas economic progress  based on alumni salaries and tuition fees, percentage of graduates, and percentage of low-income students, among other markers.

If we can advance the U.S. economy, we sure as spitfire can advance Montana Techs economy  and we can do that through education, added McClafferty.

Montana Resources has been a staple of the Butte economy since 1986, continuing the copper and molybdenum mining tradition.

MR employs about 350, including many Tech graduates, according to a Tech press release announcing the scholarships.

"Montana Resources wouldn't be what it is today without the support of the Butte community," said MR President Rolin Erickson. "And we are honored to have the opportunity to help open the door to college for Butte youth."
An author with Butte roots has written a new book Copper Sky, set in Butte in 1917, a time when mining accidents were common.

Milana Marsenich will be at Books and Books, 206 W. Park St., Uptown Butte, from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, May 20, to sign her book. Marsenich lives near Flathead Lake at the base of the Mission Mountains. For the past 20 years she has worked as a mental health therapist.

Copper Sky tells the fictional story of two women with opposite lives. Kaly Shane, mired in prostitution, struggles to find a safe home for her unborn child. Marika Lailich, a Slavic immigrant, dodges a prearranged marriage to become a doctor. As their paths cross, and they become unlikely friends, neither woman knows the family secret that ties them together.

Orphaned, alone, and running from love, Kaly asks her old matron, Coral Anderson, to raise the baby for her. The past intrudes and Kaly is haunted by memories of her sisters murder under Coral Anderson's care. She wants to know who killed her sister and why their own mother didnt raise them. When all working girls get run out of town, Kaly lags behind and faces disaster.

Marika wants to study medicine and repeatedly defies her fathers old world plans for her. Through sheer determination and constant pestering, she convinces the local doctor to hire her. When her father dies unexpectedly she is plagued by guilt and Marika tries, too late, to please her father.

A cable catches fire in the Speculator mineshaft, where over 500 men are on shift. Marika tends to the injured and faces her husband. Kaly, called in to identify the unknown dead, faces her mother and the only safety she can guarantee for her unborn child.

Portraying the feminine soul of the west, both women find their way to love  disturbed, loyal and fierce lovelove that is ultimately a reconciling force in a community laced with tragedy, Marsenich said.

She explained why she wrote the book: I love Butte and still think of it as my home. My father was a storyteller and I grew up listening to his stories about Butte, and about Montenegro and Serbia. The kernel for Copper Sky began with those stories and grew into my own fascination with Buttes history. I wanted to write something that honored the courage and resilience that I first witnessed there. In the end, the story just wouldnt let me go.

Marsenich has a M.Ed. in Mental Health Counseling from Montana State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. She has previously published in Montana Quarterly, Big Sky Journal, The Polishing Stone, and Feminist Studies. She has a short story included in the Montana Quarterly book Montana, Warts and All, The Best From Our First Decade.

Copper Sky is her debut novel. It will be released May 15.
DEER LODGE  Montana State Prison inmate Odyssey Ardene, 28, died on Wednesday, May 10, at St. Patricks Hospital in Missoula, according to a news release from the prison.

An autopsy will be performed to determine the cause of death.

Ardene was sentenced out of Orange County, Florida, on Nov. 3, 2014, for the crimes of manslaughter by culpable negligence, two counts of drug charges, and possession of firearm. Ardene was serving four concurrent 10-year sentences.

Ardene was a Florida state inmate who was housed at Montana State Prison as an Interstate Compact Transfer. He was placed in the Deer Lodge prison on July 21, 2015.
WASHINGTON -- It had the makings of a Cold War whodunit: The attorney general tells the White House that the Russians have "kompromat" on the president's national security adviser -- but the president, for reasons unclear, stands by the compromised official.

On the morning of Jan. 26, acting Attorney General Sally Yates called White House counsel Don McGahn with a matter so sensitive it couldn't be discussed by phone. They met that afternoon at the White House, and Yates, accompanied by the top career official in the Justice Department's national security division, dropped a bomb: President Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, had lied to Vice President Pence about Flynn's contacts with Russia. This had left Flynn vulnerable to Russian blackmail, the Justice Department officials said -- and Yates, an Obama administration holdover, said she was sharing the information so the White House could take action.

But McGahn had an odd response. He called the DOJ officials back to the White House the next day and asked them a perplexing question, Yates recounted to a Senate Judiciary subcommittee Monday afternoon: Why does it matter to DOJ if one White House official lies to another White House official?

Yates explained what should have been self-evident: Not only were Pence and the American public entitled to know the truth, but the Russians also knew that Flynn had lied to the vice president -- so the Russians had the goods on him. "To state the obvious, you don't want your national security adviser compromised with the Russians," Yates testified.

But Trump didn't move to fire Flynn. He fired Yates instead.

At the White House counsel's request, Yates had arranged for him to see the evidence against Flynn on Monday, Jan. 30. But he didn't come that day, and that night Yates was sacked for refusing to implement Trump's order banning travelers from several majority-Muslim nations.

Flynn remained on the job, sitting in on highly classified sessions including a phone call between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Had The Washington Post not broken the story on Feb. 9 about Flynn's contacts with Russia, he might still be on the job today. Trump reluctantly pushed out Flynn on Feb. 13 while insisting he'd done nothing wrong.

Three months later, Trump is still blaming Yates, not his mendacious former aide. "Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Council," he tweeted Monday, before correcting the spelling of "counsel." (Republicans on the panel dutifully asked her, and former national intelligence director James Clapper, whether they had anything to do with such leaks; they said they did not.)

Where there is smoke there is not necessarily fire. But there is so much smoke from the Trump-Russia probe that you can't get near it without a respirator. Monday's hearing further pumped the bellows.

Clapper qualified his earlier statement that he knew of no collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia -- a point House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has used to exculpate Trump. Clapper acknowledged Monday that he was "not aware of the counterintelligence investigation" the FBI was conducting on the matter.

Clapper rebutted the Trump argument that Obama officials (particularly Susan Rice, who declined to appear Monday) had improperly "unmasked" Flynn or others. Clapper said he was not "aware of any instance" of unmasking being used for political purposes.

Clapper confirmed, as well, that British intelligence and other European allies passed information to the United States in late 2015 and early 2016 about Trump campaign ties to Russia.

What's known publicly about those ties is damning enough that the Trump response has been less a head-on refutation than complaints about the way the information came out -- through "unmasking," leaking or imagined wiretapping of the Trump campaign.

Though some Republicans on the panel engaged in such diversions, the subcommittee chairman, Lindsey Graham, rose above partisanship. "When a foreign power interferes in our election, it doesn't matter who they targeted," he said. "We're all in the same boat."

The Trump White House, alas, takes a different view.

Yates, a career prosecutor until Barack Obama tapped her to be the No. 2 at the Justice Department, recalled the questions the White House counsel had about Flynn: Why did DOJ care? Would DOJ pursue a criminal case? Wouldn't taking action against Flynn interfere with an investigation? And could he see the evidence?

After those skeptical questions, Trump took no visible action against Flynn until a public outcry forced him to. You don't have to be Tom Clancy to wonder why.

Follow Dana Milbank on Twitter, @Milbank.

(c) 2017, Washington Post Writers Group
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.
I am an independent voter; I was encouraged when the Montana Democratic party selected a new face to run for the Representative position vacated by Zinke.

However, after looking at all the facts and getting to the bottom of the attack ads, I am very disappointed in Rob Quist. He is claiming he paid every dime of his debt, and I don't find it a terrible thing that he had tax debt, sometimes if you fall on hard times you delay somethings.

However, even National Public Radio ("Capitol Talk'" Analyzes The Attacks In The House Race) said that he still owes on the $10,000 default he had with a bank loan. I would find it more honest to say that he is still working on it. He is also repeating the false claim, (again according to multiple sources) that Gianforte had 22 tax liens.

I can forgive honest debt, but as a contractor's business ourselves, having someone not pay you hurts your business and you still pay the costs, and payroll, and payroll taxes on that job. You don't have a contractor come and do work for you if you can't pay them.

I find this all very troubling, and think that people should think about his priorities before they vote.

-- Nancy Sacry, Cardwell
MISSOULA  U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders will hold a free public rally in the Butte Civic Center on Saturday, May 20, in support of Democratic U.S. House candidate Rob Quist.

The rally runs 3 to 4 p.m.

Sanders will also campaign from 11 a.m. to noon Saturday at the Wilma Theater in Missoula and at the Billings Depot from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.

On Sunday, he will appear at the Union Building Ballroom in Bozeman from 11 a.m. to noon.

Quist, a musician from the Flathead Valley, is running against Greg Gianforte, a Republican businessman from Bozeman, and Mark Wicks, a Libertarian farmer from Inverness.

They are campaigning to replace former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, who was tapped by President Trump to be Interior Secretary earlier this year.

Sanders is an Independent from Vermont. He won Montana's Democratic primary election last year, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton with a populist message that he brought to Missoula for a rally that drew thousands to Caras Park.
MISSOULA  Back in the days when trout were carried in milk cans to stock high mountain lakes, no one considered there might be a difference between the cutthroats that lived on either side of the Continental Divide.

Turns out they were wrong.

Since 1990, fisheries biologists in Montana and Wyoming have tried to turn back the clock 103 times by removing non-native trout from lakes and streams where they dont really belong.

Up until this summer, none of those projects has taken place on the Bitterroot National Forest.

Thats about to change.

Over the last decade or so, local fisheries biologists have discovered nearly 200 miles of streams filled with genetically pure westslope cutthroat in the Westfork Bitterroot drainage above Painted Rocks Dam.

Its not that often you find large intact populations of pure westslope cutthroat trout that have a good chance of staying that way, with little threat from non-natives, said Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks fisheries biologist Chris Clancy.

The main threat to that purebred population lives in a 15-mile stretch of creek just above a remote 100-foot-tall waterfall in southwest Bitterroot Valley.

The 15-mile stretch of Overwhich Creek above the falls has a population of Yellowstone cutthroat that are not native to this part of the world.

Some of those Yellowstone cutthroat trout have apparently washed over the falls in the last few years, and the resulting hybridization is a cause of concern.

Right now, we have a real gold mine of native westslope cutthroat trout above Painted Rocks, Clancy said. It amounts to very significant population of westslope trout that we would love to maintain for the long term if we can.

FWP proposes to remove all the fish above the falls this summer with the use of the fish toxin rotenone.

Our goal is eliminate that source of hybridization, Clancy said.

No one is really sure how the Yellowstone cutthroat got there in the first place. With the falls as a barrier, Clancy guesses that upper reach of Overwhich was probably fishless before the cutthroat arrived.

There are no real records of them being stocked up there, he said. There are Yellowstone cutthroats in Capri Lake in the upper Warm Springs drainage. Its logical that whoever put those fish in that lake could have used the Overwhich trail.

Capri Lake was probably stocked in 1950s or '60s.

Theres a good chance that someone just threw some fish in the creek after they saw that it had none, he said. In those days, no was thinking much about hybridization. They may not have even known there was a different species of cutthroat on the east and west side of the Divide. It was a different era.

If the proposal is approved, Clancy said the department will bring in experts to both apply the poison and the compound that neutralizes it.

The action would take place in August and last a day. It would probably be repeated the following year to ensure that all the fish are killed.

There are no plans to replant the stream with native cutthroat.

Well let it go back to its native state, Clancy said. It will be a refuge for amphibians and invertebrates.

One of the challenges the biologists face is that there is a population of endangered bull trout just below the falls.

Clancy said the proposal calls for applying the neutralizing agent upstream of the falls in hopes that it wont affect bull trout living immediately downstream.

In addition to that precaution, biologists will use electro-fishing to capture bull trout and move them downstream. There will also be people on hand to net whatever fish that might pop to the surface and put them in a bucket of fresh water.

They can be revived if theyre netted early enough, he said. Even with all that, there will probably be some loss of bull trout as part of this operation.

The trail will be closed on the day of the fish removal operation.

A draft Environmental Assessment (EA) has been prepared for this proposal. Find the EA online at fwp.mt.gov, under News, and Recent Public Notices; by mail from Region 2 FWP, 3201 Spurgin Rd., Missoula 59804; phone 406-542-5540; or email shrose@mt.gov.

FWP will hold a public hearing in Hamilton on Tuesday, May 23, at 7 p.m. at the Bitterroot National Forest Headquarters, 1801 North First St., to discuss the proposal, answer questions, and take public comment.

Comments may also be submitted online or directed to Sharon Rose by mail to the address above, phone to 406-542-5540, or email to shrose@mt.gov by 5 p.m. on June 9.
LAS VEGAS (AP)  A 55-year-old man was declared unfit Friday to face criminal charges in the killing of a tourist from Montana and the wounding of another man in a March shooting on a double-decker bus on the Las Vegas Strip that prompted an hours-long standoff.

Rolando Cardenas said nothing in court as a Nevada judge ruled him mentally incompetent and suspended his prosecution on murder, attempted murder, weapon and other charges.

The judge ordered him sent to a state mental health facility in Las Vegas for treatment that could lead to a competency finding and prosecution later.

Cardenas' lawyer, Will Ewing, declined to comment after the court hearing.

Authorities have said Cardenas showed signs of mental problems before and after his arrest March 25.

The shooting killed Gary Breitling, 57, of Sidney, Montana, and wounded Jason Ellis, 39, of Las Vegas.

Police said Cardenas threw a SWAT team robot from the second level of the bus during the standoff, saying later he thought it was a bomb. He also shot twice at a camera that police affixed to a bus window.

Cardenas finally tossed a .40-caliber handgun out a window and surrendered.

Cardenas told investigators he was unemployed and homeless and opened fire because he felt threatened and wanted to scare a man who sat near him.
HAMILTON  Ravalli County Sheriff Steve Holton has released the names of the victim and suspect in a murder and suicide that occurred last weekend.

Wesley H. Coffin, 75, shot and killed his wife, 69-year-old Kaylin Ray, before committing suicide at the couples home on Hamilton Heights Road east of Corvallis.

Holton said investigators were pretty confident the incident occurred sometime Saturday.

The Ravalli County sheriffs office responded to a request for a welfare check on Ray on Sunday, May 7 at about 9:30 p.m.

Deputies found both people inside the home. Each of them had a small caliber gunshot wound that caused their deaths.

The subsequent investigation of forensic evidence conducted by the State Medical Examiners Office determined conclusively that Ray was the victim of a homicide and Coffin committed suicide shortly after Rays death.

This tragedy has affected the entire community and especially the families and friends of the deceased, Holton said. At this point, our goal as investigators is to discover information and share it with our partner agencies in Ravalli County in a manner that will allow the community to intervene before tragedy strikes a family.
MUSCATINE  In a meeting that lasted less than three minutes, the Muscatine City Council voted unanimously Thursday to remove Mayor Diana Broderson.

A silence swept over the room as residents, members of the media and city officials filed into the Council Chambers and Broderson called the meeting to order. With no discussion, Alderman Allen Harvey, fifth ward, said "after having accepted and reviewed the evidence, exhibits and arguments on both sides ... I move that the Council execute Mr. Nahra's proposal order and remove the mayor from office."

In Prosecutor John Nahra's written proposal, he ordered "the Mayor be immediately removed from office of the mayor of the city of Muscatine," and ordered Broderson to "immediately relinquish all city property to the city clerk."

Alderman Santos Saucedo seconded the motion, and with a seven-to-zero vote, aldermen agreed to remove Broderson.

Residents mumbled "that's it" and asked if "there's no discussion from the audience" once Broderson adjourned the meeting.

After Broderson consulted with her attorney, William Sueppel, she agreed to speak to members of the media.

"Obviously we're disappointed, but we're not surprised," Broderson said. "When the person that's accusing you is also the one that's deciding the final decision, it's obvious what that decision is going to be."

Broderson said she will appeal the decision to district court. She said the papers are ready and will be filed Friday morning.

"We're hoping [the case] would be expedited," she said. "There's only five months left in my term and there would be another election in November, so it doesn't make sense for it to be drug out in court. How could that possibly work?"

In the meantime, Broderson said she is not positive who will replace her as mayor. Alderman and city officials have yet to comment.

"It is my understanding that the process is, if there is more than six months remaining, that they would [hold] a special election, and if there is less than six months they can appoint anybody that they like," Broderson said. "That is my understanding. I would not swear to that."

Broderson said she is considering running for re-election, but has not made a final decision yet.

"I do not feel at this time that I have been able to properly serve the people as mayor," she said. "I feel that my process and my agenda, the things I wanted to do for my community, have been thwarted and I have not been able to do the things I wanted to do and to make the impact that I wanted to make."

Broderson said she is "confident" she will "prevail" in court, and looks forward to receiving a "fair trial."

"We're disappointed in the process," she said. "All the people that came out to vote, they had an understanding when they voted that things would be a certain way and it's not happening for them."

Broderson said she needs her supporters to "not take this as a backward step even though it feels like it is."

Some residents applauded and offered Broderson encouragement as she exited the room.

City Council members have been advised to not comment on the vote until Friday.
MUSCATINE  When he was in fourth or fifth grade, Scout Schmelzer, 13, was fascinated with the military. He came home from school one day with an unusual idea.

Id really like to send packages to the military, his mom, Wendi Schmelzer, recalled him saying.

Wendi looked for ways to send packages to soldiers, but couldnt find anything. Finally, she emailed Scouts teacher, Angie Curtis, whose son was serving in Afghanistan at the time.

Scout and his twin sister, Jaiden, knew Curtis son, Bryan Clark. They, along with other students in the gifted and talented program, had written him letters. They had also Skyped with him during class time, asking him questions about his life in the military.

Around Christmas, Wendi took the twins to Target, and they picked items they thought Clark might need: socks, toothbrushes and deodorant.

On top, we put Hawkeye napkins, because were from Iowa, Jaiden said.

They packed the items into three large boxes and shipped them to Clark.

I think it was cool to show that every day they are overseas, (they do it) so that we can go to school and go to sleep and do all the fun things that we wouldnt be able to do if it wasnt for them fighting, Jaiden said.

That April, the children sent a second shipment, this time with marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate for Smores.

I was stoked about it, Clark said. But I had gotten so many there was no way I was going to be eating these all by myself, so I was kind of like instead of me eating stuff and holding it all for myself I ended up making  as many as I could and had three or four of them myself and started passing them out to the dudes in my platoon.

Clark and other soldiers made a bonfire out of documents and old wood and roasted the Smores together.

A lot of them were like, oh, this is really cool, were having a bonfire just like back home, he recalled.

For Clark, the Smores, care packages and letters he received were a pleasant break from his day-to-day life in Afghanistan. It was nice to be appreciated.

Fast-forward to present day.

Clark retired from the military. Several years passed since the night of the bonfire. But he remembered Scout and Jaiden and the packages they sent. So when he came home to visit his mom a couple of weeks ago, he had something special for the twins: his old uniform, which he dropped off with his mom. Curtis gave the uniform to Scout after school one day. Neither Scout nor Jaiden expected anything from Clark, and they were excited to receive the uniform.

I was kind of surprised because it seems like it is something important for someone in the military to keep (their uniform) and I thought it was really nice that he gave us his uniform, Scout said.

Though he is not as interested in the military right now, Scout said he wants to frame the uniform. He said he likes the idea of having a piece of clothing that was overseas.
The Trump administration's reorganization of the U.S. Department of Agriculture got varying marks this week from Quad-City lawmakers.

Republicans praised creation of a new undersecretary's position for trade and foreign agriculture affairs. But the elimination of a similar position overseeing rural development was panned by Democrats.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue unveiled the changes Thursday in Cincinnati.

On Friday, U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Illinois, called eliminating the rural development post a "gut punch to rural America."

Bustos, who is a member of the House Agriculture Committee, said the programs are vital to growing rural areas. "Today's news is a gut punch for anyone in rural America who wants to see small businesses succeed on their Main Streets, new opportunities in their communities and better jobs for them and their neighbors," Bustos said.

Since 2009, the Rural Development program has helped about 112,000 small communities and saved or created 450,000 jobs, according to her office. The programs include funding opportunities for development of housing and utilities, as well as for job training and business creation. Jo-Carroll Energy, an electric cooperative in the northwest part of the state, has received funding, for example.

Asked his opinion Friday, Rep. Dave Loebsack, D-Iowa, called it a slap in the face to eliminate the position whose "sole focus" is rural economic well-being. "In order for rural communities to succeed, we must have a seat at the table and removing this position takes away that voice," he said.

The USDA responded to the criticism Friday by saying rural development efforts are now gaining power and influence, and that they will fall under Perdue.

"The agencies contained within Rural Development will remain as currently constituted and be led by an Assistant to the Secretary, who will have rural prosperity as a sole focus," USDA said.

The trade post that was announced Thursday was part of the 2014 farm bill, and Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst both praised Perdue for following through on its creation. The Iowa Republicans joined Perdue when he made a stop in central Iowa on Thursday. The senators say the new post will help rural communities by improving trade prospects.

USDA says the new undersecretary will work closely with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who also is the government's top trade official.

"Today, Secretary Perdue made good on his commitment, and through this move, he acknowledged how vital trade is to our farmers and ranchers, and that he is prepared to step up and fight for their interests," Ernst said. She also praised the changes the department made to rural development, saying they highlight the commitment to rural America.
Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi []
Les blattes ou cafards (Blatta orientalis) sont des insectes qui appartiennent a la famille des Blattoptera. Ils se caracterisent par leur forme allongee, leurs ailes []
President Uhuru Kenyatta has been invited to address the G7 summit later this month.

The exclusive summit of the worlds most powerful countries is set to take place on May 26 and 27 in Taormina, Sicily, in Italy.

According to reports, Uhuru is the only African leader to be invited in a meeting set to be attended by all G7 leaders, among them US President Donald Trump, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President-elect Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the UKs Teresa May.

This is a continuation of the trend by the G7 Summit to extend an invite to Africans.

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In 2015, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, Liberias Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn attended the summit in Germany.

This years summit will focus on global economy, foreign policy, security of citizens and environmental sustainability.

This is the first time a Kenyan President has been invited, and marks a remarkable transformation for a man once dragged to the International Criminal Court.

The President will honour the invitation because it is a great opportunity to place Kenya on the global stage yet again, State House spokesman Manoah Esipisu confirmed on Thursday.
A 27-Year-Old woman died on Thursday while participating in the recruitment of police officers in Webuye East, Bungoma county.

Nepher Wamocho, from Lutacho village, was among hundreds of youths who turned up for the interviews for AP, GSU and general police posts at Webuye Pan Paper Grounds.

She collapsed while participating in the physical exercise and was rushed to Webuye Sub County Hospital where she succumbed as medics tried to resuscitate her.

Wamochos uncle, Jesse Wasike, said the second-year Kisii University education student had no history of medical complications.

We are saddened by what has happened. My niece had only come to try her luck and was not sick at all, he said.

National Police Service Commission chairman Johnston Kavuludi said it was unfortunate that a person had died while trying to get into the service.

He regretted that medics were not available to provide first aid to the deceased.

It was sad that the woman lost her life while trying to join the service, he said, adding that applicants should not be discouraged.
The day after her 3-year-old daughter was found dead in her east Napa apartment, her mother, Sara Lynn Krueger, admitted to a Napa Police detective that she and her boyfriend, Ryan Scott Warner, were using drugs daily in the days leading up to Kayleigh Slushers death.

She didnt get medical help for Kayleigh, who was displaying symptoms of illness, because she had been using methamphetamine and feared authorities finding out, Krueger said in a video filmed on Feb. 2, 2014.

Footage of her interview was shown to the jurors assigned to her case in Napa County Superior Court on Wednesday morning.

Krueger, 26, and Warner, 29, are being tried for murder with a special allegation of torture as well as child abuse resulting in death. They are being tried simultaneously in the same courtroom, but different juries will be deliberating their cases.

After being taken into an interview room, Krueger is seen putting her head down on the table, her arms folded around it, and beginning to sob loudly. Napa Police Officer Keri Sedgley brings her water and Sgt. Andrew Hess, who was the lead detective on the case, begins to question her.

We actually found your daughter  Hess says.

I know, Krueger replies, her head still on the table. She mentions something about it being an accident. Krueger, whose voice varied in pitch and audibility throughout the interview, tells Hess that Kayleigh had become ill after possibly drinking a mixture of Windex and tobacco that Warner had been using to clean his pipe.

I thought she had swallowed a little bit of tobacco because she was throwing up, Krueger says. When she woke up the next afternoon, she found Kayleigh on the bathroom floor. I thought she was sleeping ... she was dead, Krueger says, wailing.

We know Kayleighs with God, so how did we get to that point? asks Hess.

Krueger said that her relationship with Warner was complicated, but that he was helping her with Kayleigh.

She was an angel on Earth, Krueger said. She also said that Kayleigh was brilliant  that she could write her name and the word yellow.

Kayleigh and Warner were close, she said.

She used to ask me all the time if Ryan could be her dad because her dads (in prison), she said.

When Hess asked why she hadnt called the paramedics on Jan. 29 when she learned Kayleigh may have gotten sick from the mixture, Krueger said that she didnt want to get in trouble since they had been smoking meth.

I wanted to call Poison Control, she said, but was dissuaded when Warner told her that Kayleigh was doing what she needed to do by throwing up.

When she found Kayleigh dead on the afternoon of Jan. 30, Krueger said that she began screaming.

I wanted to call, she said. I wanted to f***ing kill myself.

Warner told her that she shouldnt call the police because they wouldnt believe us, Krueger told Hess. In response, she said she told Warner to leave the apartment so he could be gone when she called. He refused to leave, she said.

I grabbed her and held her, she said, crying. Ill never forget that day  This is the worst nightmare ever and I cant wake up from it.

Sara, youre not going to, Hess told her.

Around 1 a.m. on Feb. 1, Krueger said that Warner put Kayleighs body in the freezer in order to preserve evidence. He was afraid he was going to get in trouble for something he didnt do, she said. Krueger eventually moved Kayleighs body from the freezer and put her into bed.

I couldnt let her stay in there, she said, panting between each word. I read her a book  Goodnight Moon, she said. Around 9:30 a.m., she said, she and Warner left the apartment, got a ride to the bus stop in Vallejo, took BART to San Francisco and just walked around until 1 p.m.

I looked at him. I said, I dont want to do this. Im done, Krueger said.

Warner agreed that they should call the police. The plan was to go to Warners old elementary school, a church school, pray for Kayleigh and get the pastor or whoever to help them call the police.

It was closed, though, so they went to the airport and ended up back on BART, she said.

When Hess asked Krueger about the bruising all over Kayleighs body, Krueger said that she had fallen off her bike. Hess also asked her if she thought Warner had ever hurt Kayleigh.

I had my suspicions sometimes but I never saw it, Krueger said. Id confront him but then hed get pissed off.

Kayleigh had a black eye one time, which Warner said was from the two of them bumping heads, Krueger told Hess. Warners eyebrow was swollen, so she had no reason not to believe him, she said.

Kayleigh missed her dad, Jason Slusher, but never said anything about Warner hurting her, Krueger said.

Krueger said that she started using methamphetamine regularly when Warner moved in, which was six months prior to Kayleighs death. They were using it almost daily, she said. It got to the point where when she saw meth, she couldnt say no to it, Krueger said.

But they never used in front of Kayleigh, she said.

My baby needs, I shouldnt have been so  I shouldve been braver, Krueger said.

When the video ended on Wednesday, Deputy District Attorney Kecia Lind asked Hess whether or not Krueger had access to her cellphone in the days following Kayleighs death. She had, he said.

Surveillance video from the South Napa Marketplace Target and the San Francisco International Airport was shown to Kruegers jury separately as it had been shown to Warners jury on Tuesday afternoon.

By mid-morning, both juries were back in the courtroom to hear testimony by Leslie Severe, an investigator with the Napa County District Attorneys Office and the DAs lead investigator on the case.

Severe testified that Krueger had taken Kayleigh to Queen of the Valley Medical Centers Emergency Room seven times between July 2010 and January 2013. Each time, it seemed that Kayleigh was only suffering from a minor ailment, she said, such as a fever, coughing, diarrhea or rash. Krueger had contacted Kaiser Permanente approximately 11 different times for similar ailments, Severe said.

Text messages from Kruegers phone records showed that she had told Robin Slusher, Kayeighs paternal grandmother, that Kayleigh had been sick in mid-December as well as in mid-January, Severe testified. Kruegers phone records, however, indicated that she had not contacted any medical professionals during either incident, Severe said.

The week before Kayleighs death, Severe, who looked into Kruegers Internet searches and web browsing history, said that Krueger had looked up things like Is Vitamin E good for bruises? and How to get rid of bruises now?

On Jan. 25, Severe said, an article about a woman who had been booked on suspicion of child abuse had also been accessed.

On Jan. 31, she added, after Kayleighs death, there had been a search on Kruegers phone on U.S. cities with high populations. That same day, she said, Slusher received a message from Kruegers phone saying that she couldnt see Kayleigh that day because they were going to Santa Cruz.

Severe said that that was the last conversation via text between Krueger and Slusher.

Wednesdays proceedings ended early just before noon. Dr. Joseph Cohen of the Napa County Sheriffs Coroner Office is expected to testify on Thursday morning. Photos of Kayleighs autopsy will be shown.
After a year and a half in hibernation, The Pathway Home is reaching out to military veterans again.

The innovative treatment center for former soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and war-related brain injuries has begun taking applications for its revamped program, which will concentrate on those enrolling in college to launch their civilian careers. Pathway, which went on hiatus in September 2015 due to funding difficulties, announced its impending return in a statement last week.

Since graduating its last class of recovering veterans, Pathways leaders have outlined plans to link its inpatient mental health and counseling center in Yountville with Napa Valley College, in a mission to provide a protective cocoon around those coping at once with the aftereffects of battle and adjusting to life on the home front.

We learned veterans were having a harder time than their just-out-of-high-school peers finishing their education or vocational programs, Christine Loeber, who became Pathways executive director in September, wrote in the nonprofits announcement.

Pathway is taking applications for its program on a rolling basis and will accept up to 14 veterans enrolling at NVC or other colleges and vocational programs within commuting distance of Yountville, Loeber said Tuesday. The program is open to male veterans of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The program, located on the grounds of the Veterans Home of California, remains licensed by the state to serve up to 34 clients at a time, although funding difficulties had led it to reduce enrollment to 15 before it suspended operations.

Five full-time and three part-time workers will staff Pathway, according to Loeber. Among them will be a psychologist supplied by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, who will spend 20 hours per week at NVC and also will be available at the Pathway facility in Yountville.

No date for Pathways reopening was immediately announced in its statement. Loeber said each therapy program would overlap two college semesters, although the length could be modified to match the schedules of different schools or work training programs.

Directors also are teasing out the cost of the program, added Dorothy Salmon, chairwoman of the NVC board, who said the cost per client was about $130 per day when the most recent class graduated two years ago.

The new direction for Pathway began taking shape in April 2016, when Salmon floated the idea to NVC trustees of housing student veterans at the Yountville home while providing wraparound counseling and support services, including a VA-supplied psychologist, at both locations.

NVC leaders supported the idea, saying Pathway could provide a valuable safety net beyond the mental health services already offered at the two-year school. There is a therapist on campus, but one therapist to serve all the students is obviously not enough, trustee Amy Martenson said at the time. To have someone on campus just to serve the veterans is critical.

Having Pathway-style counseling as a backstop can be crucial to the success of many former soldiers struggling to balance life responsibilities and recovery with the loneliness left behind by the loss of battle camaraderie, according to Cassidy Nolan, who served two tours in Helmand Province in Afghanistan for the Marine Corps before forming NVCs Veteran Student Organization in 2013.

For me, when I joined the Marines at 18, I was in no relationships, I lived with my parents, I had no responsibilities; life was very easy, he said Tuesday. When I got out, I was married with a daughter, TV, couch, a car and household duties, all the things you accumulate as you get older.

Even at 23, and after two combat deployments, I was very much a young man. In part, a lot of it was thinking, I cant fail; I cant make any mistakes because if I do, its not just me I have to worry about, its my wife and my daughter too.

Pathways partnership with the college will include a decade-long evaluation by the VA to track the recovery of veterans both before and after their treatment, and the program eventually will publish a handbook based on its results as a guide for similar therapy programs at other colleges, Salmon said last year.

The Pathway Home opened in early 2008 under the leadership of Fred Gusman, a longtime VA clinical social worker from Menlo Park who had developed treatment programs for soldiers afflicted with PTSD. Over the next seven years, some 450 fighters in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars spent nine months at a time at Pathways residential center.

But money remained a constant struggle for Pathway, which leaned on private donations to meet its annual expenses of $1.2 million. The absence of coverage through the VA or the federal insurance program for military members eventually led the home to cut back on the number of beds, and finally to stop taking clients altogether. Gusman left the organization after its last group of veterans finished treatment in 2015.
Employment in the tourism industry increased 14.1 percent to 11,766 jobs since 2014, according to the Napa Valley Visitor Industry Economic Impact article in the May 5 newspaper. Several new hotels will be built in the next few years increasing the number of low-paying jobs. In addition, the Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) revenues for the City of Napa increased from $11.5 million in 2012 to $18.2 million in 2016.

Unfortunately, the tourism industry has taken no steps to address the issue of housing for their workers through a dedicated stream of revenue.

The Napa wine industry, which is also a major employer in our county, has stepped up to support their workers by providing farmworker housing, assessing themselves $10 per planted acre to help fund the farmworker housing program and are advocating that it be raised to $15 over a few years.

In addition, the wine industry supported increased fees in the county for building wineries, with those funds going into the countys affordable housing trust fund.

The tourism industry fought the city of Napas proposed rate increases for impact fees for new hotels for over a year while several new hotels were approved at the existing, lower rate. Ultimately, impact fees were increased, but at a lower rate than the countys.

How can we encourage the tourism industry to step up and participate in housing in Napa? An increase in the TOT is the most sensible way to ensure that the tourism industry helps fund housing for their employees. Although the industry has said that an increase in the TOT will have a negative impact on people vacationing in Napa, there are no statistics statewide to support the concept that as TOT increases, tourist select other cities to visit based on the local TOT.

The tourism industry should demonstrate their concern about the housing crisis in Napa and not just their bottom line by supporting an increase in the TOT to be dedicated to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. The tourism industry is fiscally healthy and can afford to help house their low-wage employees who struggle to find decent housing in Napa.

It is time to have a dedicated stream of revenue to assist with housing that is affordable. If you agree, please contact our council members to encourage them to ensure our tourism industry is a partner in solving the housing crisis in Napa.

Grania Lindberg and Sharon Macklin

Napa
Say Flora Springs Winery, and many people will think of the distinctive tasting room on Highway 29, just south of St. Helena, the one inspired by the imaginative Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi that looks a bit like a soft-swirl ice cream cone, chocolate and vanilla.

But theres a story behind the unusual tasting room  about a mile behind it, at the end of West Zinfandel lane in a stone ghost winery that is, literally, the roots of Flora Springs, celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, as well as the 30th anniversary of its celebrated red wine, Trilogy.

Travel down this road to taste a few wines. And if you chance to meet John Komes, proprietor, you will hear stories about everything from how each wine in the Flora Springs portfolio got its name to why there is a statue of a wild boar greeting visitors on the grounds.

Some people say I saved this property, Komes remarked with chuckle as he surveyed the vineyards in front of the winery. My dad was a gin drinker. If wed left it to him, hed have replanted everything in juniper.

That was in 1977 when his parents, Jerome and Flora Komes, were looking for a place to retire after Jeromes long, successful career with Bechtel Corporation. He wasnt that interested in wine, Komes said. A lot of his friends were retiring up here, just for the climate and the life. I think he thought hed be a gentleman farmer.

Its well documented what happens to people who purchase land in Napa Valley, intending to retire. It this case, however, it was son John Komes who inspired  and took the lead on turning his dad into a vintner.

This was because just a few years earlier, John Komes wife, Carrie, had signed them up for a wine appreciation class. I said OK, Ill do my social duty and go with you. They were living in Lafayette at the time, where John was a building contractor. He was in for a surprise.

I loved the stuff. Id never really tasted wine, he said. I was the kind of guy who went three times to the buffet and said thats dinner. But I loved this. We tasted Burgundy, Bordeaux, Italian wines.

Then came the real coup de foudre. He said, A couple of people in the class said, Wow, you are really enthusiastic. Would you be interested in joining our home-winemakers group?

He joined. We really had fun making the wine. And it served a good purpose: I gave it to family and friends, and they never bothered me again.

But when John Komes saw the property his father was going to buy, he decided they had to take it back to its original purpose  a winery.

The stone winery on the grounds had been built in 1885 by two brothers, James and William Rennie, immigrants from Scotland. They were in the building trade too, Komes said. They built the winery and planted 60 acres of grapes.

Then the brothers hit a patch of bad luck: phylloxera in the vines, and a fire in 1900 destroyed their wine press and cooperage. In 1904, they sold the winery, and 15 years later it was hit by an even greater calamity: Prohibition. The winery was closed until 1933. That year, Louis Martini, one of the valleys wine-making legends, sensed the approaching collapse of the governments experiment in teetotalism and bought the Rennie property. He built a new stone house, and made a reserve wine from the hillside vineyards but the old winery remained a ghost until the Komes bought the property, 325 acres, an old farm house, the newer stone house, and 60 acres of vineyards.

Komes said he originally thought hed persuade his dad to restore the old winery by proposing to name it Chateau Jerome; but although it had been designed by Hamden McIntyre, the architect of other classic 19th-century Napa wineries, by 1977, the fire-scarred ghost was in all but a wreck. The tin roof of the building had a million holes in it, Komes said; so many we called it the starlight roof. My dad looked at it and said,  Ive worked all my life for my good name. I dont want to squander it now.

Johns mother, Flora, however, sided with her son on the potential of the property. And Carrie Komes suggested they could name the winery for her mother-in-law. Combined with the abundant springs on the land, they decided the name would be Flora Springs.

That was the sure way to my moms heart and my dads pocketbook, Komes said. Flora Komes, born and raised in Hawaii, had come to San Francisco during the Depression to study nursing at St. Marys College. There, she met Jerome. He was a Fresno boy, Komes said. My dad was a tough old German. My mom was perfect, a great lady. My dad traveled a lot for his work, so she was the one who really raised us. We were a really happy family.

Komes put his construction expertise to work to renovate the old winery, which still had scorch marks on the walls. So skeptical was his father about his sons wine-making project, they divided the winery building and John rented half where he put his first fermenting tank, which he named R2D2.

He invited a couple of friends from his wine-making class to help make wine at the new place. He also hired MaryAnn Graf, who in 1965 had been the first woman to graduate from the viticulture and enology department at UC Davis to help manage the project. She told me, John, if you dont hire a winemaker, Ill quit. He did, and the 1979 Flora Springs chardonnay won a gold medal at the Los Angeles County Fair.

In those days, it was fairs, not ratings, that made the difference, Komes said. This was my first lesson in marketing. Wed sold the wine before we won the medal.

Their 1981 cab they submitted to eight fairs and won seven gold medals.

From there, the winery just kept growing. We were the 67th winery in the county, Komes said. My sister, Julie, was a big part of building the winery. Later she left to go religious school, but I like to say shes still in the spirits business.

Julie Komes Garvey earned a degree in spiritual studies from the San Francisco Theological Seminary and the Franciscan School of Theology and now works in St. Helena. Her husband, Pat Garvey, and son, Sean, are the vineyard managers for the Flora Springs vineyards.

Weve had our ups and downs, Komes said. But we kept growing. We started small, but kept moving ahead. We were pretty much self-schooled.

One highlight was the creation of Trilogy, one of the first meritage blends in the valley. By 1984, Komes said, theyd planted the Bordeaux varietals, malbec, merlot, cab franc, cabernet sauvignon, petit verdot. They wanted to create a blend by taste, not by formula for a nice smooth wine that goes deep into the palate. he said. We want a little of this, a little of that. What God forgot, we added.

The first Trilogy was cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cab franc was soon dubbed velvet in the mouth. A lot of what we do is taming the tanins, Komes said. One man who buys Trilogy by the case said its the only red wine his wife will drink young. From the leftovers, they began making single-varietal estate wines.

Another highlight was the discovery of a unique clone of sauvignon blanc in vineyards his dad bought in Oakville. UC Davis could identify nothing like in in their vast library of clones. We were a bit ahead of the times, but this clone showed us what sauvignon blanc could be. It takes all the grassiness out of sauvignon blanc.

It took eight years to register and then propagate the clone, an effort Komes said was well worth it. We paid UC Davis $7,000-$8,000 to keep the clone so we are the only ones that have it. They named the clone  and the wine it creates  Soliloquy because of its uniqueness.

Weve gone through some difficult stages, too, Komes said. In the 2000s, they spent three years cleaning up a brettanomyces taint in the winery, which rigorous cleaning and replacing all of their barrels. But we got through it, Komes said, Our winemaker, Paul Steinauer, is producing great wines. I think youll be amazed by them.

John and Carrie also lost a son to cancer, but their other son, Nat, is increasingly taking a leadership role in the winery, and they are spending winters at their second home in Arizona.

Today, the Flora Springs portfolio is as rich as its history, and the labels tell its stories: The Rennie Reserve Cabernet, the Holy Smoke Cabernet (named for exclamations of Carrie Komes German father as he inspected the Flora Springs vineyards) and the Ghost Winery malbec. The expansive list includes luscious bargains like a $40 estate cabernet sauvignon and as $25 estate sauvignon blanc. Library wines are being made available for this 40th anniversary celebration.

Flora Komes died just three months short of her 101st birthday; her husband had died 10 years earlier. We had a great 100th birthday party for her and she shook everyones hands, Komes said. Floras legacy lives on, not only name of a winery and the larger-than-life-size portrait in the tasting room of Flora arriving from Hawaii at the age of 23, but in her own label, the Floras Legacy wines.

There are, in all, too many wines for one article to describe, although this writer attempted to taste as many as possible and thoroughly enjoyed them all. The best way to discover them is to make an appointment, and drive down Zinfandel Lane and into Napa Valleys history. Youll meet the wild boar statue, and just in case John Komes is not on hand to tell you the story, here it is:

My dad was a great businessman, and when he came to the valley, land was selling for as much as $25,000 an acre. He thought that was shocking, so he decided when he was going to buy land in Pope Valley. He found 500 acres for sale that had 10 acres of grapes. He bought it for $1,000 an acre.

Then he called me up. John, he said, I found an old house on the property I didnt know it was there. A strange house, it had nine bedrooms and eight bathrooms and no living room. And there were a lot strange tales about that house.

I asked him, What do you want me to do? He said, I want you to come over and build a living room so I can sell it.

So Komes built the living room and sent a plasterer to finish the project. Then I get a call from him, John, John, theres a wild boar in the yard.

The upshot was the plasterer wanted Komes permission to shoot it. I said I was a city boy; I didnt know about wild animals, but then I said, OK, as long as I can have the hind quarter. So the guy left to go get his gun, and then I got a call from the ranch foreman. John, he said, you wont believe whats going on here. Your workman just shot the neighbors pig.

So now we have the statue here so everyone knows what a wild boar looks like.

And the wild boar has a wine label too. Wild Boar Cabernet Sauvignon.
NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller began a two-day visit to Estonia on Friday (12 May 2017), stressing that Allied forces in Estonia are at the heart of NATOs collective defence. Visiting British infantry troops at a training range in Tapa, the Deputy Secretary General said that all Allies stand united against any threat. The British army is leading a battlegroup of about 1,000 NATO troops in Estonia. NATO is expanding its presence in the region in response to Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and its military build-up in the Baltic region.

Addressing engineers, anti-tank troops and snipers at the Tapa training range, the Deputy Secretary General welcomed that troops from the United Kingdom stand side-by-side with their colleagues from Estonia, making clear this sends a strong message of unity. At Tapa, the Deputy Secretary General also received briefings by military officers on exercise Spring Storm, which is currently taking place in Estonia with 9,000 troops from several Allied countries taking part. Also on Friday, Ms. Gottemoeller held talks with Estonian Defence Ministers Margus Tsahkna on the current security environment and progress in the deployment of NATO troops to the Baltic States.

On Saturday, the Deputy Secretary General is scheduled to participate in the annual Lennart Mari Conference, where she will speak on the importance of NATO-EU cooperation for European security. Ms. Gottemoeller will wrap up her visit to Estonia by seeing NATO naval forces in Tallinn harbor, where she will thank sailors onboard the Norwegian navy frigate Roald Amundsen for their service in the defence on the Alliance.
(Natural News) A recent study published in the journal Current Biology revealed that peoples brain waves exhibit remarkably similar patterns when they belong in a group that was more engaged with each other and the world around them. As part of the study, a team of researchers from the New York University and the Max Planck Institute of Empirical Aesthetics used portable electroencephalogram technology to simultaneously monitor and record brain activity from an entire class of high school students. The experts kept track of the students brain activity as they went through their usual classroom routine over the course of a semester. The students were asked how they liked each other and their teacher. The participants were also asked how much they liked group activities in general.

Researchers at the University of Florida then used novel analyses to determine the extent of brain synchrony among students. The scientists also measured how the level of synchrony differed with class engagement and social dynamics. We found that students brainwaves were more in sync with each other when they were more engaged during class. Brain-to-brain synchrony also reflected how much students liked the teacher and how much they liked each other. Brain synchrony was also affected by face-to-face social interaction and students personalities. We think that all these effects can be explained by shared attention mechanisms during dynamic group interactions, co-lead author Suzanne Dikker reported in ScienceDaily.com. Dikker currently serves as a Research Scientist at New York Universitys psychology department and Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

According to the research team, a well-known phenomenon called neural entrainment may play a role in the level of brain synchrony among the students. Your brainwaves ride on top of the sound waves or light patterns in the outside world, and the more you pay attention to these temporal patterns, the more your brain locks to those patterns. So, if you and the person next to you are more engaged, your brainwaves will be more similar because they are locking onto the same information, Dikker explains.

Engagement plays a role in brain synchrony

The research team identified a positive correlation between the students overall course rating and their brain synchrony with each other as a group. According to the experts, the students were more likely to give the course a favorable score when their brain waves are in-sync with the rest of the participants in the classroom. The study also found that the students were more likely to give their teacher a favorable rating if their brain waves were in-sync with each other.

The research team also assessed whether brain-to-brain synchrony reflected how the students liked each other. According to the experts, students who reported being close to each other showed better brain synchrony during class. However, this only happened when the students were able to interact with each other personally before the start of the class. This suggests that having a face-to-face interaction is essential in brain synchrony, the researchers said. The study revealed that students who considered group activities as important displayed greater brain synchrony with their classmates. The findings may have significant implications for social science and education as the study examined how the brain reacts in a reality-based setting and not in a well-controlled laboratory environment, said researcher Mingzhou Ding, Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Florida. (Related: Follow more news about the mysteries of the brain at Brain.news.)

According to the researchers, brain synchrony may influence synchronized behavior during human interaction. The results suggest that social dynamics is a key factor in brain synchrony, even in seemingly simple activities such as listening to a lecture or watching the same video, the researchers said. (Related: New Research In Mind-Body Medicine Shows That Social Interaction Accelerates Healing).

Sources include:

ScienceDaily.com

Reliawire.com

LiveScience.com
"The tender procedure is at the final stage. I believe that well learn about the result of this tender in May. Of course, we understand that our hardware is better than its foreign rivals by performance characteristics," he said.



In case Russia wins the tender with its shipborne Ka-52K helicopters, the arms trader Rosoboronexport will start negotiating the price of the deal in late May 2017, he said.



The Ka-52K is based on a range of shipborne helicopters operational in the Russian Navy. They include Ka-25, Ka-27, Ka-29 and Ka-31 helicopters. The Ka-52K is designed for patrol missions, fire support for amphibious assaults, and anti-amphibious assault defense at the forefront and in tactical depth.



The Ka-52K differs from the baseline version by its shortened folding wing specifically upgraded to carry heavy weapons and the mechanism of folding rotor blades allowing it to compactly fit into an under-deck compartment. The smaller size of seaborne Ka-52 increases the number of the helicopters onboard. The crews armored cockpit and the ejection system allow pilots to safely leave the helicopter. The Ka-52 shipborne version also features a rescue system for people in distress at sea.



 Copyright 2017 TASS. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


Gilbert P. Felongco, May 9, 2017 (Gulf News)

Small islands detached from large electricity grids could be better off setting up their own renewable energy systems than relying on diesel or other fossil fuels for power generation, scientists in the Philippines sayThe Philippines is made up of more than 7,000 islands. Many island provinces and towns detached from the national grid generate their own power using diesel[But new research suggests Filipinos can fight climate change and save billions each year with] wind and solar powered small island grids[The] cost of generating power from solar and wind energy has declined significantly, making systems more suitable for small islands which are outside the electrical grid[The Philippines creates almost] no incentives for the smaller electric cooperatives to procure cheaper sources and reduce costs[The report proposes requiring electric cooperatives and private distribution utilities alike to optimise procurement, helping level the playing field for renewable power generators and reducing taxpayer costs by phasing out subsidies for imported diesel fuel click here for more

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Binod Tiwari receives applause and a standing ovation from colleagues at the May 11 Academic Senate meeting on his selection as the recipient of the 2017 Outstanding Professor Award.

Civil engineer Binod Tiwari is described as a remarkable educator, trusted mentor to students and faculty, and a respected colleague and friend. His accomplishments in research and in teaching cannot be captured by words on paper, his colleagues point out.

For his array of achievements as an inspiring, caring and approachable teacher, his scholarly contributions in geotechnical engineering, his passion for student involvement in research and never-ending support and leadership to his profession, Tiwari has been selected as this years Outstanding Professor. This award is Cal State Fullertons highest faculty honor.

President Mildred Garcia announced Tiwaris selection for the award at todays Academic Senate meeting, which was followed by a standing ovation from faculty and staff members.

Since joining Cal State Fullerton in 2006, Tiwari was hailed by Garcia as someone who continually strives to reach higher to help the Universitys diverse students  from orientation to graduation and beyond. This professor has reached higher in everything he has done.  Yet of all his accolades for reaching higher, hes most proud of helping students do the same, both in their studies and their profession.

Taken aback by the honor, the professor of civil and environmental engineering stood before his colleagues and declared that he was at a loss for words. He thanked his colleagues from across colleges and disciplines for supporting his nomination.

Dr. Tiwari has always been a highly energetic and dynamic faculty member who not only excels in teaching, but also has been equally exceptional in research and professional service at the University and to professional societies, said Susan Barua, interim dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. Dr. Tiwari is highly deserving of this honor.

Mathematics professor Scott Annin, the 2015 Outstanding Professor, called Tiwari a champion when it comes to leading students in research and in the classroom: He has mentored a whole host of them, and he has bolstered his students futures through the papers, presentations and grants that he has involved them in.

His former student, and now colleague, Beena Ajmera, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, noted that her mentor has a desire to see students succeed and goes the extra mile to make it happen.

He is constantly looking for ways to showcase his students and help them build a bright and successful future, Ajmera said.

Many current and former students also cast their support for his nomination, including alumnus Michael C. Hillman 08 (B.S. civil engineering).

I believe my success in life is a testament of the ability of great teachers like Dr. Tiwari to make a substantial positive impact on students lives, said Hillman, an assistant professor of environmental engineering at Pennsylvania State University.

Tiwari has secured nearly $1.6 million in research grants from such agencies as the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education. Tiwaris research focuses on soil and rock slope stability, natural disaster mitigation and geotechnical earthquake engineering. The researcher has a global reputation, having conducted research in Japan and Nepal, and serves as a board member of the International Consortium on Landslides.

Over the last decade, Tiwari has mentored nearly 200 students, many of whom have gone on to graduate school, with six earning doctorates. His students have won over 35 regional and national engineering competitions, and every summer, he leads an engineering program for high school students. He has authored nearly 150 publications, about half co-authored by his students.

He also is no stranger to winning accolades from industry and University peers, and was last years recipient of CSUFs Carol Barnes Excellence in Teaching Award. He earned his doctorate and masters degree, specializing in geotechnical engineering, from Niigata University in Japan, and his bachelors degree in civil engineering from Tribhuvan University in Nepal.

Tiwari will lead the academic procession at this years May 20-21 commencement ceremonies and deliver an Outstanding Professor Lecture during the next academic year.
Geography-Environmental Resources students honored

by Andrea Hahn

CARBONDALE, Ill.  Students in the Department of Geography and Environmental Resources at Southern Illinois University Carbondale received year-end awards last week during a pre-finals reception. The scholarships and honors are the most prestigious the department awards.

Here are some highlights:

Kayla Newsomes Analysis of Polystyrene Foam Food Containers in Downtown Carbondale, helped her earn the David and Carol Christensen Award for Undergraduate Research. Christensen, professor emeritus, established the award to encourage research on the relationship between the Earth and people. Newsome is from River Grove, Ill. The honor includes a $500 cash prize.

Aleesandria Gonzalez, a graduate student from Philadelphia, Pa., accepted the David G. Arey Memorial Award, presented to a student engaged in innovative environmental thesis research. Gonzalez thesis is Evaluating the Cognitive Drivers and Deterrents of Adaptation in the Iowa-Cedar Watershed. She is interested in a career in environmental consulting and dual enrollment education. The award includes a $1,000 cash award.

Two students won the Benedykt Dziegielewski Scholarship: undergraduate Luca Palasti, from Szeged, Hungary, and Mark Healy from Carmi. The scholarship honors the emeritus professor, well-known in his field for his contributions to water resources research. The scholarship winners will both receive a cash award of $1,000.

Katherine OKeefe, a senior from Cantrall, Ill., accepted the Priscilla Anne Moulton Award, presented to an outstanding senior in geography. The award includes $1,000 and, like many of the departments awards, inclusion on a plaque kept in the department bearing the names of previous winners.

Several students received Geography Scholastic Achievement Awards of $750 each. They are: Andrew Foy (senior, Elkhart, Ind.); Taylor Rich (junior, Mattoon, Ill.); and Holiday Wagner (junior, McHenry, Ill.).

Two students earned inaugural Graduate Student Teaching Excellence Awards, each with a $500 award. They are Kemar Jones, from St. Philip, Bridgetown, Jamaica; and Julia Sanabria from Deerfield, Ill.

Here are the Geography Outstanding Student Award winners, listed by hometowns:

ILLINOIS

Bartlett: Beverly Dial, senior

Cantrall: Katherine OKeefe, senior

Carbondale: Julia Castle, freshman; Nora Jacobs, junior; Jonathan Nelson, senior

Chicago: Mia Boatright, senior

Grafton: Katelyn Toigo, sophomore

Gurnee: Connie Kaniewski, sophomore

Lisle: Brittni Wagner, senior

Marion: Courtney Nichols, senior

Mattoon: Taylor Rich, junior

McHenry: Eric Jamnik, senior; Holiday Wagner, junior

Morton Grove: Noah Scalero, senior

Neoga: Anna Frailey, senior

Peoria: Kathyn Parrish, sophomore

Prospect Heights: Jeremy Schultz, junior

River Grove: Kayla Newsome, senior

Roscoe: Makenzee Loft, sophomore

Trenton: Jordan Henss, senior

INDIANA  Elkhart: Andrew Foy, senior

WISCONSIN - Eu Claire: Emily Bethke, junior

INTERNATIONAL - Szeged, Hungary: Luca Palasti, junior
The trooper was injured in unprovoked firing by the Pakistan Rangers here when he was cutting tall grass on the Indian side of the IB, a BSF source told IANS.

"After the BSF retaliated, firing from Pakistani side stopped," the source added.

The firing went on for 30 minutes.

Pakistan on Thursday had resorted to heavy firing and shelling on the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district.

One woman was killed in the shelling while two others, including her husband were injured.

--IANS sq/in

( 126 Words)

2017-05-12-10:58:09 (IANS)
A Pakistani team will soon be visiting Nepal to probe the disappearance of a former Pakistan army officer who was last seen in Lumbini in April, and whose family alleges he has been abducted by Indian intelligence agencies, a media report said. Col (Retd) Habib Zahir was allegedly kidnapped by Indian intelligence agencies from an area bordering Nepal and India after he was invited to the country in connection with a job opportunity, The Nation reported. According to sources, a team comprising government officials from the Ministry of Interior will proceed to Nepal to examine the facts first-hand, take the statement of Javed Ansari, the host and airline officials/hotel management to assess as to who arranged his bookings and the like. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked the Interior Ministry to nominate a team in this regard, official sources told The Nation. "The composition of the special team - so as to forward the same to the concerned authorities of Nepal - is under consideration," they added. Muhammad Habib Zahir disappeared from Lumbini near Nepal's border with India. The Government of Pakistan had approached the Nepalese government for mutual legal assistance and arrangement for the visit of the team from Pakistan to Nepal. The team will seek any other information from fellow passengers or any other person concerned and also take statements of the police officer in-charge of the city/town from where the Pakistani went missing. The team will also ascertain the frequency of movements across the border with India. It is likely that a team from National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) would be constituted to visit Nepal, the daily said. Zahir had arrived in Nepal to reportedly face an interview for a United Nations job. According to reports, Zahir arrived in Nepal via an Air Arabia flight (Call Sign WY 344), with the passport no. AJ5122964, for a UN job interview in Nepal. According to the reports, Zahir had retired as Colonel in 2014 and Mark Thomson had called him to Lumbini based on his personal details posted by him on a website. There had been a correspondence between the two. Thomson had called him to Nepal to face interview and had himself sent an air ticket for him. India is believed to have entrapped and kidnapped Zahir from Kathmandu to make it a case of having apprehended an "ISI spy" and equate it with the case of Indian "spy" Kulbhushan Jadhav, the Nation said. --IANS rn/vm ( 421 Words) 2017-05-12-22:32:15 (IANS)
Kerala Police has landed in a fresh controversy, this time over an order from former police chief Loknath Behra directing all police stations in the state to use the product of a particular paint company for colouring. The matter came up before the Vigilance Court here on Friday, on a petition filed by P. Nawaz against the order. After accepting the petition, the court posted the case for May 20 for further hearing. The case comes at a time when Director General of Police T.P. Senkumar, after an 11-month legal battle, managed to get an order from the apex court last month reinstating him as the state police chief. Senkumar had to wait till last week, when he finally got back his seat replacing Loknath Behra, who has since been moved to head the Vigilance Department. The court, while hearing the petition on Friday, came down heavily on the direction given by Behra directing all 470 police stations to use the paint of a particular company. In the course of hearing the petition, the court asked if Behra had the powers to give the direction, as it was made after the apex court on April 24 had directed Senkumar to be reinstated. The petitioner alleged that a probe should be conducted into Behra's order. The court will now decide on it, after hearing all versions on May 20. A miffed Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who also holds the Home portfolio, had conducted a reshuffle of the middle and top level police officials a few days before Senkumar was given his posting. The 'paint' controversy has surfaced on account of the cold war between top officials who owe allegiance, respectively, to Senkumar and Behra. --IANS sg/rn/dg ( 296 Words) 2017-05-12-16:06:10 (IANS)
It comes after the streaming giant refused to screen two of its films in this year's competition in French cinemas.

Although the two movies, 'The Meyerowitz Stories,' starring Adam Sandler and Ben Stiller, and the Korean-American thriller 'Okja' will be allowed to compete next week for the top prize at Cannes and now, the festival's organisers said that they were changing the rules so it can never happen again.

In a statement, the organisers said that they had "asked Netflix in vain" for the films to be released in France as well to its 86 million subscribers.

"From now on every film wishing to be in competition at Cannes must be shown in French cinemas afterwards," the statement further read.

The row comes as Netflix is locked in a bitter conflict with the big US cinema chains.

The crux of the Cannes row turns on the French law, which restricts online streaming until three years after a movie is put on the general release.

However, Amazon, on the other hand, is giving its film, 'Coppola's The Beguiled,' a proper cinematic release in France.

The Cannes film festival is all set to begin next week in the French Riviera resort. (ANI)
The teaser of the upcoming episode of 'Keeping Up With The Kardashians' reveals that the 38-year-old goes naked for a photoshoot, while her sisters Kim, Khloe and Kylie Jenner were all on hand to watch, reports news.com.au.

During the photo-shoot in the evening session, 38-year-old Kourtney throws sultry looks at the camera while skinny dipping and her three siblings looking on.

The mum-of-three looked incredible in her birthday suit - to the point where her 19-year-old sister Kylie actually said "What the f***? I want to get in. I am so jealous."

Previously, their half-sister Kendall posted an arty black-and-white nude photograph on Instagram in 2015, which later she deleted. (ANI)
"Thirty, flirty and thriving" -- that's what the younger version of actress Jennifer Garner's character wished for in the 2004 film "13 Going on 30". If one wishes similarly, marriage and children will take a back seat at 30. Though there are risks attached to late pregnancy, embracing motherhood even at 40 or later is not such a bad idea, say doctors. Looking at the glamour world, celebrities like Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, Celine Dion, Farah Khan and Diana Hayden became doting mothers after hitting 40. But the trend is not restricted to the stars. "Women opting for pregnancy in their 40s is on the rise, to the extent of about 20 to 30 per cent as compared to previous years. Most of them belong to the upper middle class and are career-oriented women," Amita Shah, Obstetrician and Gynaecologist at Gurugram's Columbia Asia Hospital, told IANS. Gursimran Dhaliwal, Consultant, Gynaecology, at Amritsar's Fortis Escorts Hospital, also agreed, saying, interestingly, that late pregnancies are no more perceived as a "western phenomenon" as "more and more Indian women are opting for it". It's not just education or careers that lead women to make such choices. "Not meeting the right guy... Even after they meet the right guy, waiting till comfortable in the relationship or marriage can also lead to having children late," said Rajalaxmi Walavalkar-Dalvi, Consultant, IVF and Reproductive Surgery, at Thane's Cocoon Fertility. Devikarani, a Manipur government official, could also enjoy the joys of motherhood late as she never wanted to get married. "I stayed single till 37. But then I had to fulfil my mother's dying wish -- to get me married -- and so, I got hitched. Since I got married late, I had a daughter at 39 and a few years later I gave birth to twins," she said. Tough pregnancy? "No, it was a normal delivery. But in the future it would be a little tough as they are still in primary school and I am almost 50. Had I become a mother on time, they would have been financially helping me," said the government official. The problems with late pregnancy don't end here. "Chances of a high-risk pregnancy are more. There are more chances of miscarriages, down syndrome, hypertension, gestational diabetes and low-weight babies," said Sarita Sabharwal, Senior Consultant, Obstetrics and Gynaecology, at Dwarka's Venkateshwar Hospital. Walavalkar-Dalvi added that it's harder to get pregnant the longer you wait. "Egg supply decreases significantly as you age, and the risk of miscarriage and birth defects is higher. They are more likely to require IVF treatments and to achieve pregnancy using donor egg treatments." But there's a bright side to becoming a mother at 40. "Parents in their 40s are ready, patient and self-assured. They are more experienced, more financially secure and comfortable in their career. It's likely that it is a settled marriage, thus giving a good foundation for starting a family. Also, they are wiser, better educated and better equipped to make wiser parenting decisions," said Walavalkar-Dalvi. Dhaliwal believed that if late pregnancies have many biological disadvantages, they seem to be balanced by social advantages. "For older mothers, being more educated, financially secure, prepared to make the necessary sacrifices that having a baby brings... more mature and understanding all the complexities associated with birth of a baby in late life, is a huge plus," she said. "So a healthy 40-year-old mother can have a much less risky pregnancy than one who is a healthy 28 if she prepares her body for pregnancy with a healthy lifestyle. Once pregnant, eating well, gaining the right amount of weight, being more vigilant can cut down the vast biological disadvantages of late motherhood," she added. Dhaliwal has the last word: "Every woman has to make her own decision, but having a healthy lifestyle, undertaking regular exercise, genetic counselling and testing for abnormalities in early pregnancy, and booking in early for antenatal care can help in being a mother at any age." (Natalia Ningthoujam can be contacted at natalia.n@ians.in) --IANS nn/rb/vm ( 687 Words) 2017-05-12-11:56:10 (IANS)
Indian High Commisioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu told reporters, while briefing them about the Prime Minister's itinerary over the day, that the meeting was held at Rajapaksa's request.

The meeting comes days after Rajapaksa called for a black flag protest around Prime Minister Modi's visit.

Rajapaksa had earlier accused Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena of compromising the country's sovereignty and declared that black flags would be shown to the visiting Prime Minister.

In a recent media interview, however, Rajapaksa said that he admired Prime Minister Modi, years after blaming India for his defeat in the January 2015 Presidential polls.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Modi also met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries.

Prime Minister Modi also met President Sirisena.

Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations.

"The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day.

"Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries. However, no MoUs were signed at the meeting. Prime Minister Modi also met President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena. After their meeting, President Sirisena took to Twitter to praise Prime Minister Modi and said it was "wonderful" to meet him. "It is wonderful to meet this great human being @narendramodi in Colombo again. Thank you for gracing #InternationalVesakDay," he tweeted. Prime Minister Modi also took to Twitter to post pictures of his meeting with President Sirisena. Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations. "The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day. "Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added. Throwing light on Prime Minister Modi's schedule over the day, Panda shared that the former was received by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and other senior ministers at the airport. Upon arrival, Prime Minister Modi went straight to the Gangaramaya temple to light the illuminations. Following that, President Sirisena hosted a private dinner in his honour. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, Leader of the Opposition, R. Sampanthan, Chief Minister of the Northern Province, C.V. Wigneswaran, Ministers Mangala Samaraweera, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, and others participated in the dinner. Prime Minister Modi also met former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa who had earlier accused President Sirisena of compromising the country's sovereignty and declared that black flags would be shown to the visiting Prime Minister. Prime Minister Modi is expected to deliver a celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day today (May 12). The Prime Minister will then inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital. Prime Minister Modi will also address the Indian origin Tamil community at Norwood Grounds. He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC). Thereafter, the Prime Minister will also be holding a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBC). The Prime Minister will then arrive at the President's Palace for a lunch hosted by the Sri Lankan President. Prime Minister Modi will also visit Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple (The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), where he will sign the visitor's book and interact with Mahanayaks. Just before returning to India, the Prime Minister will meet Sri Lankan Leader of Opposition at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo. The Prime Minister will also visit the hilly regions of Sri Lanka that host tea plantations and is the first Indian PM to do so. (ANI)
With the Muslim community's practice of triple talaq being discussed in the Supreme Court, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday dubbed the issue as one that breaches gender equality. "Triple talaq is not about religion or politics. It is a matter of gender inequality. The sentiment of crores of Indian women has led to the issue being taken up in the Supreme Court. I'm sure the verdict taken by the court will empower women," BJP leader Shaina NC told ANI. Meanwhile, the apex court ruled out hearing cases of polygamy and nikah-halala along with TripleTalaq. To this regard, women activist and member of the National Commission for Women (NCW) Shamina Shafiq, while supporting the apex court's stance, said the focus on triple talaq was the need of the hour. "Polygamy, although prohibited by religions other than Islam, exists in the society. The Supreme Court must focus on triple talaq, since Muslim women are facing the brunt of this. We are looking forward to a just ruling so that the Muslim women can be relieved," she said. Earlier on Thursday, the apex court observed that it would examine whether the issue was fundamental to religion or not. The five-judge Constitution Bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar and four other judges, namely Justices Kurian Joseph, Rohinton Fali Nariman, Uday Umesh Lalit and S. Abdul Nazeer aksi also observed that it would not hear polygamy issue along with the triple talaq petitions. Relentless debates on the validity and plausibility of this practice were instigated soon after one petitioner, Shayara Banu, challenged the Muslim personal law over instantaneous application of triple talaq (talaq-e-bidat), polygamy and nikah-halala. Supporting the stance of ending the practice of triple talaq, the Allahabad High Court had earlier asserted that the rights of any person, including Muslim women, could not be violated in the name of 'personal law'. The court further said basic and human rights could not be exploited on the basis of gender. In December last year, the Allahabad High Court termed the Islamic practice of divorcing a woman by uttering the word "talaq" thrice "unconstitutional". The court further observed that triple talaq sanctioned under Muslim Personal Law that governs marriage, property and divorce violates the rights of the Muslim women. "Triple talaq is unconstitutional. It violates the rights of Muslim women," ruled the high court, adding that no personal law board was above the Constitution. (ANI)
As a consequence of the high speed, the rickshaw toppled leaving the driver seriously injured. He was then shifted to a nearby hospital.

Locals gathered at the spot took the deer to a nearby hospital. However, the deer that was profusely bleeding from its mouth succumbed to its injuries.

According to the locals, there are many animals in the deserted forest area near the express highway. The deer suddenly entered into the highway from the forest area and was hit by the auto rickshaw, causing grave injuries to its mouth and nose. (ANI)
The incident took place on the Delhi-Lucknow national highway, near the accident-prone Mansoorpur bypass. The victims were returning from a wedding when the driver allegedly lost control of the vehicle and crashed into a truck.

According to Rampur Superintendent of Police K.K. Chaudhary, the locals assisted the police in shifting the injured to a district hospital in Meerut where they were attended to by a team of doctors.

In the aftermath of this unfortunate incident, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Baldev Singh Aulakh visited the families of the bereaved in the hospital.

Aulakh said the state government was informed of the incident, adding that a compensatory measure would soon be taken. (ANI)
Sharma, earlier was serving as the mayor of Lucknow, but resigned the post after becoming the Deputy Chief Minister.

He has been given the ministries of Higher and Secondary Education, Science and Technology, Electronics and IT departments.

Sharma began his political career with the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP).

Sharma was elected as Mayor of Lucknow in 2006.

The minister was then named the state President of the BJP's Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (Youth Wing).

Following his contribution to the party's victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, Sharma became the National Vice President of the BJP.

He took oath as the Deputy Chief Minister in March 2017, following the saffron party's enormous win in the Uttar PRadesh Assembly elections.

BJP had bagged 312 seats, and its allies 13, taking the alliance's tally to 325 in the 403-member Assembly. (ANI)
Predicting the further worsening of ties between India and Pakistan, the United States has said that reduction in cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Islamabad and 'progress' in the 2016 Pathankot attack investigation can probably ease the tension between the hostile neighbours. The Donald Trump Government also noted that Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and India's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016. "Increasing numbers of fire-fights along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might exacerbate the risk of unintended escalation between these nuclear-armed neighbours," the statement of the US Intelligence Community Senate Select Committee on Intelligence read. United States also assumed that the "easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation." (ANI)
West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) is now going to visit other countries to meet potential investors. The schedule till next November has already been decided. In this endeavour, industry associations like Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Associated Chambers of Commerce of India (ASSOCHAM) are lending their expertise to WBIDCtoo. The WBIDC is going to write monthly reports on the progress made and present it to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The reports would contain the progress made in drawing in investments to Bengal, including the amount of investments made. Every month, State Government representatives would hold meetings with industry bodies and potential investors of three countries to impress on them the industry-friendly climate of Bengal and the presence of all manner of infrastructural facilities. It must be mentioned in this regard that trade representatives from 29 countries participated at the 2017 Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS). They have promised investments in transnational waterways, coastal zonal infrastructure, civil defence, transport, sports, heavy industry, electricity generation, non-renewable energy, food processing, health, education, information technology, urban infrastructure, hospitality, tourism and some other sectors. A total investment of Rs 2.35 lakh crore was committed. At BGBS 2017, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose brainchild the annual trade summit is, told business representatives from around the world, "If you invest in Bengal, you would get access to north-eastern India too. Not just that, you would be able to link up to markets in neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and other Asian countries. We have 6 lakh acres of land in industrial parks. You would also be able to tap a skilled and trained labour force; you would be able to access the best brains of Bengal. " The industrial development that the State is seeing in recent times is the result of untiring efforts led by Ms Banerjee over the last six years. Last year, she and her team visited Germany and met leading industrialists. Prior to that, she had visited London and Singapore. More such business visits are being lined up. Bengal is on its way to becoming one of the leading industrial states of the country.UNI SJC KK -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-890405.Xml
Factional feud between two groups of tribal based opposition Indigenous Peoples' Front of Twipra (TPFT) last night at lefunga in Northern Agartala left at least 13 activists injured including some leaders, which triggered tension in tribal belt across the state. Superintendent of Police (West) Abhijit Saptarshi told media besides, police, paramilitary forces were deployed in the area to maintain peace and amity among the political groups and parties while investigation has been started into the incident. According to police, IPFT has been suffering from factional squabble for past few months, as a large number of the party supporters went against the President N C Debbarma for his alleged involvement in corruption and unethical activities and they expelled him and a few of his followers. Subsequently, both the groups have been involved to establish their supremacy against each other that hostile the tribal people of the state. The biggest anti-left tribal force in the state IPFT has reduced to minority by now, which has given an opportunity to CPI(M)'s tribal front Gana Mukti Parishad (GMP) to re-gain it's foothold besides, BJP. To restore the lost base of IPFT, the faction led by former MLA Rajeswar Debbarma organised a party convention at Lefunga community hall yesterday where they slam N C Debbarma and his group while branded him as agent of 'CPI(M)". Meantime, more than a hundred of N C group supporters armed with lethal weapon attacked leaders and supporters of Rajeswar group, which left at least 13 injured in both the group. They also ransacked the stage by breaking table and chairs. Police later rescued the injured and shifted them to hospital. UNI BB AKM 1029 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-890399.Xml
Three students of a premier college of Guwahati have been reported missing from the city since yesterday. Parents of the three boys have lodged separate police complaints in this connection, police sources said here today. The three boys -- Wahidur Rahman, Partha Pratin Mali and Tonmoy Kathar, had reportedly left for college yesterday morning. When they did not return in the evening and their families could not contact them, the families approached the police. The trio was students of higher secondary second year in Cotton College. All are residents of Guwahati. Police have launched investigation to find the whereabouts of the students.UNI SG AKM 1047 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-890412.Xml
Sushil and Gopal Ansal had approached the High Court challenging the charges framed against them for tampering with evidence.

The district court earlier had ordered framing of charges against seven accused for abetment of offence, causing disappearance of evidence, criminal breach of trust by public servant and criminal conspiracy.

All the accused had denied allegations against them but the court dismissed their petition.

Earlier in April, Gopal Ansal surrendered before the Tihar jail authorities after the Supreme Court refused to grant him more time.

The apex court also refused Ansal's plea, for more time to surrender and ordered the real estate baron to undergo the rest of his jail term.

The apex court directed senior lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who appeared for Ansal, to ask the real estate baron to complete the rest of his jail term.

The apex court sentenced Ansal to one-year jail term on February 9, while, his elder brother Sushil was ordered to skip his prison term citing old age and ill-health.

At least 59 people died of asphyxia and over 100 others were injured in the stampede after fire broke out in Uphaar cinema on June 13, 1997, during the screening of J.P. Dutta's film 'Border'.

This court case continued for 20 years. (ANI)
The bandh call given by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and BJP in protest against the death of a Dalit youth in police firing evoked mixed response here today. The Bandh protagonists stopped the movement of several long distance and passengers trains by squatting on tracks at Darbhanga railway station. Sources said that Darbhanga-New Delhi Sampark Kranti Express and several other passenger trains were stranded at the railway station due to the agitation. The VHP and BJP activists also blocked major roads at the district headquarters and raised anti-government slogans to vent their ire against the death of the 23-year old dalit youth Vijay Ram in police firing at Hawidih village under Baheri police station area in the district on May 8. Office goers and school children were the worst affected due to the agitation. BJP MLA Sanjay Sarogi and party MLC Arjun Sahni told newspersons that the politics of appeasement was going on in the state as the district administration was harassing people on the indication by the state government. They demanded a high level probe into the death of the dalit youth in the police firing and also action against guilty officers. UNI XC-DH AKM 1257 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-890543.Xml
Ahead of municipal board polls in Murshidabad, Trinamool Congress student activist Asadul Sheikh was gunned down by the miscreants last night, triggering political blame game between the ruling party and opposition Congress in West Bengal. Two Congress activists, close to PCC chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury have been arrested in relations to bombing and gunning down of the Trinamool Congress student wing leader Asadul Sheikh. The political murder happened when the victim was returning home last night on a motorbike at Bhakuri, closed to NH 33. Babul Sheikh, a pillion rider was critically injured when the miscreants stopped them and hurled socket bombs at them and opened firing to ensure death of the TMCP leader. Two Congress activists- Shiladiya Haldar and Hiru Haldar, said to be close associates of state Congress president, have been arrested. Trinamool Congress leader Soumik Hossain blamed PCC chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was behind the murder and warned if the " killing politics" was not stopped then they would retaliate. Mr Chowdhury said the murder was the result of infighting between the TMC factions and demanded police should arrest the killers. " If police toe the TMC line then it is unfortunate," Mr Chowdhury added. He said, in no way the Congress has hand in the crime. May 14 is poll for Domkol municipal board in Murshidabad district and the situation was heating day by day.UNI XC-PC AKM 1320 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0213-890567.Xml
Following her feat, Tharika appealed to the state government to make sure that transgender community continues their studies.

She did her schooling from Kamarajar Girls higher secondary School in Chennai.

Talking about her journey so far Tharkia said, "After a long struggle I was able to join school. Many have helped for my studies".

She was adopted by a transgender activist Grace Banu from Chennai two years ago. "My aim is to make her as a doctor". Banu told ANI.

Thanking the education system Tharika's Head Mistress, M Mary said, "We gave her counseling and sufficient arrangements. Because of that she has passed today".

The transgender community is the least represented group in the public discourse and they continue to live with societal stigma and discrimination. Thus providing them with educational opportunities will open will be a step towards bringing them in a more integrated society. (ANI)
A Sri Lankan boat left after disembarking four people at an islet near Dhanushkodi, Tamil Nadu. The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is reaching the spot to rescue and investigate. Further details are awaited. (ANI)
Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi told ANI, "The land has been purchased under the name of Lalu Yadav's daughter under highly suspicious circumstances. I suggest, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), ED should take strict against Bharti. Nitish Kumar who has kept silence on the issue should also come out openly and take strict action her in connection with the matter."

Echoing similar sentiments, BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav said the latest reports over the dealings of Misa Bharti has proved that she has accumulated illegal fund from anonymous companies.

"Now, the Bihar Chief Minister has to break his silence on the issues related to his Cabinet Ministers, adding that the government should take strict action against Misa Bharti," Yadav told ANI.

A leading English daily accessed papers that document land purchases in Delhi's Tony Sainik farms and Bijwasan luxury farm enclave - two deals that point to alleged Misa Bharti is involved in money laundering matter on a massive scale.

Lalu's daughter has bought almost 7 acres of land worth Rs 100 crores for just about 1.4 crores through mysterious business entities that have allowed her to make huge profits at their expense. (ANI)
"We have said that EVMs are not at all reliable and strongly demanded (that) the EC start using paper ballots in all future polls," Trinamool Vice President Mukul Roy said after attending an all-party meeting here convened by the Election Commission.

"Our party chief Mamata Banerjee had in 2004 raised questions about reliability of EVMS. Even most advanced countries now have gone back to using ballot papers. We must also go back to the old system of using ballot papers," said Roy.

He said the party has also advocated state funding of elections.

"The only way to ensure transparency and free and fair polls is state funding of elections. Our party has been demanding this for long and we today raised this with the EC," added Roy.

--IANS and/ruwa/

( 168 Words)

2017-05-12-15:34:11 (IANS)
Counsel for Calcutta High Court sitting Judge, Justice C S Karnan, today requested the Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI), to stay the arrest order against his client. CJI Jagdish Singh Khehar asked him to file an application for relief. Justice Karnan, the CJI said, can be heard only when seven judges of the Apex Court bench would be available for the hearing. Lawyer for Justice Karnan told the apex court that he wanted to tender an unconditional apology.The Supreme Court registry, counsel for Justice Karnan said, had not accepted his application.Yesterday also, Justice Karnan had moved the apex court seeking recall of its order which had convicted and sentenced him to six months imprisonment. UNI XC RP1511 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0100-890754.Xml
The Pastor Sanil K James is already serving a 40-year sentence for raping a 12-year old twice during December 2013.

The pastor was initially convicted in March 2016 under the POCSO Act.

He is currently lodged at the Viyyur Central Jail. (ANI)
As the Delhi High Court gave its nod for an income tax probe of the National Herald case, Congress Party's lawyer Abhishek Manu Singhvi said on Friday that they would assess the officer's decision as per law. Singhvi said that the Young Indian Company has been given full liberty to object to the reopen of the case. "We will now await the assessing officer's decision in accordance with law and, in those proceedings, will be raising all the objections that we have raised today in the writ petition, that the IT department had absolutely no reason to believe in reopening the assessment," said Singhvi. He said all jurisdictional questions raised in the writ petition were kept alive and allowed to be raised by the party before the assessing officer. Earlier in the day, in a development bound to trouble the Gandhi family, the Delhi High Court gave its nod for an income tax probe in the in the National Herald matter. Earlier, the Patiala House Court had allowed the income tax authorities to investigate the Gandhis, which was challenged in the Delhi High Court. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy had filed an application in 2012, accusing Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, her son Rahul and others associated with the Congress of conspiring to cheat in the case. In his complaint, Swamy had alleged that the Congress granted an interest-free loan of Rs. 90.25 crore to the Associated Journals Pvt. Ltd (AJL), the owner of the National Herald newspaper, established by Jawaharlal Nehru, which was either not repaid or repaid in case, which was in violation of Section 269T of the Income Tax Act, 1961. In August, the court issued notices to Sonia, Rahul and five others on Swamy's application seeking presentation of certain documents from AJL and Indian National Congress (INC) in connection with the National Herald case. (ANI)
BSF sources said that one of their personnel was injured during the cease-fire violation by the Pakistan Rangers early on Friday morning.

The BSF retaliated to the violation and said that there was no loss of life.

The BSF said in a statement that the Pakistani Rangers had fired a few bullets warning troops working ahead of the fence in Arnia area in Jammu.

He said that BSF troops counter fired. The exchange of fire also included the firing of mortar shells.

Friday's ceas-fire violation came a day after a woman was killed and her husband injured during a cease-fire violation by Pakistan in the Nowshera sector of Rajouri district.

The deceased was identified as Akhtar Begum and the injured as Mohammad Hanief.

The couple was hit by a mortar shell. They were taken to the local hospital, but the woman died.

Further details are awaited. (ANI)
The three day Moatsu festival was celebrated post seed sowing and marks a time of relaxation after the toil and labour of the sowing season in Dimapur.

The Ao Naga community is one of the prominent tribes of Nagaland. The celebration was marked by numerous traditional Ao folk songs, dances and short play based on Ao folklores. The festival highlighted the traditional and cultural aspects of Moatsu festival through various forms of vigorous folk dances and traditional songs.

The men dressed up in traditional gears and performed traditional warrior dances during the celebrations.

Moatsu festival remains one of the premier festivals of the Ao Nagas and highlights the exquisite practices and values of the people of Nagaland. (ANI)
Defending champion Novak Djokovic reached the semi-finals of the Madrid Open without hitting a ball on Friday when his quarter-final opponent Kei Nishikori withdrew minutes before the match was due to start with a wrist injury.The same injury forced world number eight Nishikori, seeded sixth in Madrid, to miss the Barcelona Open last month. He said he aimed to be at next week's Rome Masters."Unfortunately I'm still not 100 percent so I'd prefer not to take a risk," the Japanese player told reporters."I'm going to take a couple of days to see how the injury evolves but I hope to be in Rome."In Saturday's semi-final, Djokovic will play the winner of Friday's match between Belgian David Goffin and four-time winner and home favourite Rafael Nadal.Also on Friday, Croatian Borna Coric, conqueror of world number one Andy Murray in the third round, plays Dominic Thiem of Austria, with the winner meeting either German Alexander Zverev or Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay in the other semi-final. REUTERS SW 1712 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-891059.Xml
Oil prices on Friday were on track for their biggest weekly gain in five weeks, helped by expectations of an extension of OPEC-led output cuts and buoyed by falling U.S. crude inventories.Benchmark Brent was trading 5 cents higher at $50.82 per barrel at 1141 GMT, on target for a 3.5 percent rise on the week. U.S. light crude oil was up 2 cents at $47.85.A larger-than-expected fall last week in U.S. crude inventories < C-STK-T-EIA >, which dropped 5.3 million barrels, suggested cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers were tightening the market, analysts said.OPEC members and other producers including Russia pledged to reduce their output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of the year, but the impact of the initiative has been slow to show up in global inventory data."The (U.S. crude) inventories turned the heads of market participants towards the more positive side of things," said Eugen Weinberg, Commerzbank head of commodities research."But nevertheless the problem remains that the oil supplies are still there, the overcapacity is still there, the stocks are still quite high," he added.OPEC and other producers meet on May 25 to decide whether to extend cuts. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's de-facto leader, has said it expects an extension to the end of 2017 or possibly beyond.Commerzbank said in a note it was sceptical about OPEC's ability to support prices in the long term."Owing to the rapid recovery in U.S. oil production OPEC obviously only has limited influence on prices via supply curbs," it said, adding an extension "is unlikely to be more successful than the cuts implemented so far in the longer-term."U.S. crude production < C-OUT-T-EIA > has risen more than 10 percent since its mid-2016 trough to more than 9.3 million bpd, close to the levels of top producers Russia and Saudi Arabia.A weekly report by Baker Hughes monitoring U.S. rigs drilling for new production is due on Friday. < RIG-OL-USA-BHI >Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy said U.S. output had gained "significant momentum". Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, it said output from the other 48 states would expand by 390,000 bpd from May 2017 to December 2017 assuming a U.S. light crude price of $50.REUTERS SW 1746 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-891150.Xml
High Court Judge Baskaran granted bail with condition that Reddy should furnish sureties of Rs.10 lakh and two of his associates P Kumar, K Sreenivasulu have to furnish sureties of Rs. five lakh each and should appear and sign paper at Delhi's Enforcement Directorate (ED) office.

Earlier in March, the Enforcement Directorate had arrested Reddy and his two associates post demonetisation.

The trio was arrested under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after they were called for questioning by the Enforcement Directorate.

Reddy and his two associates were later produced in a court which had sent them to jail till March 28. (ANI)
Textile experts from QTEC- Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Center interacted with local textile manufacturers and exporters at an industry capacity building programme for quality compliance to have a good share of Japanese textile import business here today. It is the fourth in a series of nine such programmes being organised by Textiles Committee of the Union Ministry of Textiles throughout the country with an aim to increase India's share in textiles export business at Japan, which presently is not even one percent of the total Japanese textile import market. This was stated by Dr. K.S. Muralidhara, Joint Director (Laboratories) of the Textiles Committee. He further explained, "Japan imports 97 percent of its textiles, mostly in readymade garments sector, from foreign countries. Although Indian textiles are majorly exported to the US and Europe, it is failing to pass the quality standards of Japan. The Japanese market is presently dominated by China and even Bangladesh lies ahead of India." Hence, Textiles Committee has entered into an MoU with QTEC in order to organize collaborative capacity building programmes for improving and complying with the highly quality conscious Japanese market. Mr. Kei Funaki and Mr. Toshiki Tasaka are leading the QTEC team in guiding the garments manufacturers of the country in this regard. Their focus areas will be pointing out the difference in quality requirement between Japanese and western buyers as also providing information about banned substances in Japan. The Japanese will also visit 8 out 19 laboratories of the Textiles Committee to streamline the testing requirement that needs to be developed. These activities are in accordance with an agreement signed in course of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan in 2016 to have technical experts from both the countries' visit to each other's industrial clusters. India stands to tap a considerable portion of the Japanese textile import market worth 38 billion dollars on meeting expected standards. Other than Kolkata, the other cities chosen by Textiles Committee for the programme are New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Ludhiana, Coimbatore, Ahmedabad and Varanasi. The Textiles Committee works to provide various useful services ranging from laboratory based research and development to market survey from its 30 offices around the country for textile trade and industry. UNI SJC BM -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0212-891238.Xml
Rounding off his two-day state visit to Sri Lanka on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in New Delhi. Before his departure, he tweeted "I thank President @MaithripalaS, Prime Minister @RW_UNP, the Government & warm-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka for their hospitality." <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I thank President <a href="https://twitter.com/MaithripalaS">@MaithripalaS</a>, Prime Minister <a href="https://twitter.com/RW_UNP">@RW_UNP</a>, the Government & warm-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka for their hospitality. <a href="https://t.co/GyG69r0wA8">pic.twitter.com/GyG69r0wA8</a></p> Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/863016715378020352">12 May 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> "Thank you Sri Lanka! This was a memorable visit, in which I got to take part in various programmes, including Vesak Day celebrations," Prime Minister Modi added. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Thank you Sri Lanka! This was a memorable visit, in which I got to take part in various programmes including Vesak Day celebrations. <a href="https://t.co/DgZlsL0GLu">pic.twitter.com/DgZlsL0GLu</a></p> Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi/status/863016647417774081">12 May 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> During his visit, Prime Minister Modi held meetings with the Sri Lankan leadership, including President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Leader of Opposition R. Sampanthan and other leaders of his Tamil National Alliance (TNA) party. Discussions were focused on issues of bilateral, regional and international interest to both New Delhi and Colombo. Prime Minister Modi also inaugurated and attended the International Vesak Day celebrations, where he offered India's continued support to Sri Lanka, whom he described as a 'friend'. "We are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. For us most relevant benchmark for success of our friendship is your progress and success," he said. "As you make important choices for harmony and progress of our society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building efforts. I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka," he added. Talking about the Buddhist links between India and Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister said that the friendship between India and Sri Lanka was etched in time by the "Great Master- Buddha". "Buddhism imparts an ever present radiance to our relationship. Vesak is an occasion for us to celebrate the unbroken shared heritage of Buddhism. Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy," said the Prime Minister. He said the countries of South, Central, South East and East Asia were proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha. He further lauded Sri Lanka's Buddhist connection and said, "Sri Lanka takes pride in being among the most important nerve centres of Buddhist teachings and learning." Talking about the bilateral and economic relations, Prime Minister Modi said that "economic and social well being of people of Sri Lanka is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians and security of our societies is indivisible". He further mentioned India's aid to Sri Lanka for the development projects. "India's development cooperation with Sri Lanka amounts to USD 2.6 billion and its aim is to support Sri Lanka in realizing peaceful, prosperous and secure future for its people," said Prime Minister Modi. Prime Minister Modi also soothed the emotions of Indian origin Sri Lankan Tamils through what has been described as his 'medical diplomacy' through the inauguration of the Dickoya Glengairan super-specialty hospital built with Indian assistance of Rs. 150 crore. Prime Minister Modi said the health and well being of the people of Sri Lanka "is a shared priority". He also addressed Sri Lankan Tamils in the presence of President Maithripala Sirisena and community leaders, saying that he was aware of the Government of Sri Lanka's active steps to improve the living conditions of Tamil through various schemes, including a five-year National Plan of Action. He hailed the spirit of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka and announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas and the extension of the emergency ambulance service. Prime Minister Modi assured Tamils that the government and people of India are with them in their journey towards peace and greater prosperity. He also announced a series of sops for the Sri Lankans like setting up of vocational training centres, ten engineering training centres and labs to impart suitable skills, computer and science labs in plantation schools. On Friday, Prime Minister Modi also visited the Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is a Buddhist temple and is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which is said to house the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha. The Prime Minister arrived in Colombo on Thursday evening for a two-day visit. He was received by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and several other senior ministers. Soon after his arrival, he visited one of Sri Lanka's oldest Buddhist temples, the Seema Malaka Temple and took part in the traditional lamp-lighting ceremony. Prime Minister Modi, accompanied by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, prayed and offered flowers at the altar of the temple, which is a part of the more-than-120-year-old Gangaramaya Temple. The temple's chief monk received the two leaders. This was Prime Minister Modi's second visit to Sri Lanka in the last two years, and will be returning home this evening. (ANI)
As India is looking forward to increase the capacity of renewable energy in the power sector to 225 Giga Watts by 2022, the government's main thrust would be to promote indigenous manufacturing of high quality solar equipments, Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal said. "Wind - we are manufacturing in India; hydro equipment is largely indigenous, and coal based thermal plans are mostly indigenous. The missing link in the entire valley chain is solar manufacturing and the government is very seriously looking at ways and means to promote Indian manufacture of high quality solar equipments," Goyal told ANI. "So, effectively, we will already be 40 percent of our install capacity roughly by 2022, coming from its renewable sources. This will significantly up the ante on availability of low cost power for several years to come," he added. In order to reduce carbon footprint in India, Goyal said the government was working on alternative modules to keep less dependency on coal in the upcoming years. "One, we are looking at super critical thermal plants replacing the old age plants, which are inefficient so that the coal consumption falls, pollution level falls," he said. "Second, we are looking at the gasification of coal in a big way. So underground coal gasification, coal to syngas also. We are looking at coal bed methane to be promoted in a big way. Thus, coal, which will remain a national asset for many years, can be used in a more significantly less polluting manner," he added. Expressing apprehension at the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) giving energy access to everyone by 2030, Goyal said, "It's too long a period. The Prime Minister has committed to India that we will take power to every home and we will ensure power for all by 2022, when we celebrate 75 years of Independence. On a personal note, I would love to put by 2019." Goyal further said India's leadership role in terms of pushing energy efficiency in renewable sector was being appreciated in the Vienna Summit for its initiatives. "The fact that India and Indians have replaced incandescent bulbs with the LED bulbs in the last two years is testimony to our collective effort to improve our utilisation of electricity. 23 crore (bulbs) have been sold by EESL, the government company alone, rest by the private sector," he said. Goyal added that the Indian expertise and innovative solution for energy efficiency was being sought by the International community. "This is the first step. Swedish Prime Minister (Stefan Lofven) has welcomed the ESL to Austria and also give the benefit of our innovative methods of promoting energy efficiency to all people of Austria. I think time has come for a large country to lead the world," he said. (ANI)
"When I did this now I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people," CNN quoted Trump as saying to NBC News.

But he said he did it anyway "to do the right thing for the American people."

Trump said he wanted the FBI's investigation into Russia's election meddling to be "absolutely done properly," adding Comey's firing might "lengthen out the investigation."

The statement is in clear contrast with White House deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders' who said Comey's firing might fasten up the agency's investigation into Russian meddling.

Sanders said, "We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," while referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's presidential polls, CNN reported.

"And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen."

President Donald Trump would "love nothing more for this investigation to continue to its completion," she added.

The statement came after other officials insisting that Comey's termination happened because of his handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server, and was unrelated to his oversight of Russia's election hacking. (ANI)
In what can be termed as one of the biggest payments ever to be ordered by a judge in an open court hearing, a British court on Thursday ordered a Russian billionaire to pay his wife $584 million in a divorce settlement. The judge, Justice Haddon-Cave, said the couple met and married in Moscow before moving in a home in Surrey in southern England, Xinhua news agency reported. According to a Sky News report, the award -- which amounts to 41.5 per cent of the couple's "marital assets" -- could be the biggest ever ordered in Britain. The judge said the couple met in 1989 while the woman, from eastern Europe, was studying in Moscow. They married four years later and went on to have two children. The couple moved to London in 1993 and had lived together in Surrey, he said. Nearly five years ago the man had sold shares in a Russian company for $1.3 billion. A year later he bought his children flats in a luxury London development costing $37.3 million and $9 million. The judge also made a ruling preventing the 61-year-old man from the Caucasus, and the woman who is in her 40s and was born in eastern Europe, from being identified. The woman became a British citizen more than 15 years ago. The man argued that he had made a special contribution in the generation of wealth, but the judge said the man and woman had made equal contributions to the welfare of the family. --IANS sku/ ( 263 Words) 2017-05-12-03:16:10 (IANS)
According to Geo News, Prime Minister Nawaz, during one of his recent meetings with Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen. Qamar Bajwa, had taken the latter into confidence over Jindal's visit to Pakistan.

Jindal went to Pakistan to reduce tension between the two neighbouring countries, Geo News quoted a BBC Urdu report, as saying.

The report also stated that COAS Bajwa also took his officials into confidence over the matter.

Earlier in April, businessman and entrepreneur Sajjan Jindal made a visit to Pakistan and met Nawaz Sharif.

Sajjan Jindal, along with other businessmen, met PM Nawaz Sharif in Murree.

The meeting came at a time when the two neighbouring nations were going through turbulent times. (ANI)
The US government has announced the arrests of almost 1,400 gangmembers between March 26 and May 6 in the largest ever operation undertaken by the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) investigation unit. A total of 1,378 people were arrested around the country for assorted crimes, including drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, people trafficking, murder and people trafficking for sexual exploitation, DHS officials said at a Washington press conference on Thursday. "Gangs threaten the safety of our communities, not just in major metropolitan areas but in our suburbs and rural areas, too," said Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Thomas Homan. "Gang-related violence and criminal activity present an ongoing challenge for law enforcement everywhere. Our efforts to dismantle gangs are much more effective in areas where partnership with local law enforcement is strongest," he added. Of the 1,378 arrests, 933 were US citizens, while 445 were foreigners from 21 countries in South America, Central America, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Caribbean. Those arrested are citizens of Mexico (249), El Salvador(72), Honduras (63), Guatemala (19), the Dominican Republic (10), Cuba (four), three each from Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia and Nicaragua, while the others come from nations as diverse as Brazil, Mauritania, Laos and Jamaica, along with other countries. The DHS said that of those arrested, 1,095 had declared their allegiance to certain gangs, including 137 members of the Bloods, 118 affiliated with the Surenos, 104 who said they belonged to Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 104 who said they were part of the Crips. Among those arrested were three people who benefited in the past from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme inaugurated in 2012 by former President Barack Obama for undocumented migrants who were brought to the US as children and known as "Dreamers". The programme halted the deportations of young undocumented foreigners and granted them temporary work permits on the condition that they not commit any crimes. According to the DHS, the three individuals were excluded from DACA protection for criminal activities. Since DACA was implemented in 2012, DHS has denied coverage to 1,500 people because of their affiliation with criminal groups. --IANS ksk ( 366 Words) 2017-05-12-09:36:09 (IANS)
On the second day of his Sri Lankan tour ,Prime Minister Narendra Modi today participated in the International Vesak Day celebrations, which is observed as one of the biggest festivals among Buddhists. Prime Minister Modi joined the celebrations along with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Minister for Justice N Buddhashasana said "Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of Sri Lanka's own and his presence today speaks of deep reverence for Buddhism." <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi">@narendramodi</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MaithripalaS">@MaithripalaS</a> Minister for Justice N Buddhashasana says PM <a href="https://twitter.com/narendramodi">@narendramodi</a> one of their own for ????, his presence today spks of deep reverence for Buddhism</p> Gopal Baglay (@MEAIndia) <a href="https://twitter.com/MEAIndia/status/862889593175015424">May 12, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> He said both "Sri Lanka and India are working to create a peaceful region and that coincides with the goals of the United Nations of making harmony in the world." Following the event, the Prime Minister will then inaugurate the Dickoya Hospital, which has been built with India's assistance and will late proceed to address the Indian-origin Tamil community at Norwood Grounds. He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC). Thereafter, the Prime Minister will also be holding a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBC). He will then arrive at the President's Palace for a lunch hosted by the Sri Lankan President. This is Prime Minister Modi's second bilateral visit to Sri Lanka in two years. Yesterday, he visited the Seema Malaka at the Gangaramayya temple where he took part in the traditional lamp-lighting ceremony. Prime Minister Modi will also visit Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple (The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), where he will be signing the visitor's book and interact with Mahanayaks. Before returning to India, the Prime Minister will be meeting the Sri Lankan Leader of Opposition at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo. India will be giving an aid of $2.6 billion for the hospital. Sri Lanka's hilly regions home Indian Tamil people who work in tea plantains. (ANI)
Social networking giant Facebook will appeal a court order that requires the company to globally impose an Austrian law to curb hate speech against the country's Green Party. Critics see the controversial order as a threat and a new challenge to free speech on the Internet, a report in Fortune on Thursday said. "There is no place for hate speech on Facebook and this post was removed from our platform last year as requested. However, we will appeal this particular case before the Austrian Supreme Court to have better legal clarity around this specific post and the categorization as 'unlawful' as the new decision substantially reversed the original court decision," the report quoted a Facebook spokesperson as saying. An Austrian court has ruled that Facebook must remove the posts against Greens leader Eva Glawischnig in Austria as well as other parts of the world. The court case involves comments posted to Facebook about the leader of Austria's Green Party, which the party claims are illegal under the country's hate speech laws. That means Facebook will have to prevent and remove such posts in places where there are no European-style hate speech laws. Critics termed the Austrian ruling as "dangerous and short-sighted", arguing that it could embolden other countries to impose local laws everywhere on Facebook. "Should Facebook comply globally with Russia's anti-gay laws, or Thailand's laws against insulting the king, or Saudi Arabia's blasphemy laws? Would Austria want those laws to dictate what speech its citizens can share online? This ruling sends a signal to courts around the world that they, too, can enforce their national laws to ban speech around the world," Daphne Keller, a lawyer at the Centre for Internet and Society at Stanford University, was quoted as saying. The appeal against the court order would put the Facebook and Google on the same front in a legal battle whether national courts should be able to impose their law everywhere on the Internet. --IANS qd/ruwa/vm ( 338 Words) 2017-05-12-11:52:10 (IANS)
Trump said his decision of firing Comey might confuse people but he termed this exercise as a "right thing for the American people."

He dismissed the notion that with Comey's dismissal the agency's investigation into Russian meddling will be affected.

Rather he wanted the FBI's investigation into Russia's election interference to be "absolutely done properly," CNN quoted Trump as saying.

FBI has been investigating Russian influence in the US elections and the contact of Moscow with Trump campaign officials.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Comey firing may hasten the agency's investigation into Russian meddling.

"We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," she said, referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's election. "And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen."(ANI)
A Chinese official told local reporters on Friday to focus on the inclusiveness of China's Belt and Road initiative and refrain from reporting the amount of Chinese investment in specific countries along the route.Leaders from 29 nations will gather in Beijing this weekend for China's ambitious new Silk Road initiative that aims to develop economic links between Asia, Africa and Europe. Chinese investment could reach up to $130 billion annually over the next five years.A provincial official told a group of Chinese reporters after a press briefing that they should not report on China's investment in countries along the Belt and Road routes, an instruction that is different from past practices, due to the sensitivity of the matter."You reporters should focus on the theme of developing together, not what we (China) do with certain countries, because that could make other countries uncomfortable," said the official from the eastern province of Fujian.China has long used references to countries along the Belt and Road routes in its official communiques about the initiative.Chinese media coverage of the two-day Belt and Road Forum, due to kick off on Sunday, has been relentlessly upbeat. China has also rejected suggestions that the new Silk Road is about Beijing trying to dominate the world and mould it to its liking, saying it is good for all and anyone can join.Keeping the rhetoric on an initiative that is open to all nations, some officials at the Fujian press conference denied that there were just 65 countries under the Belt and Road initiative, saying there was no such specific number."What I can tell you is that we have repeatedly said the Belt and Road is an open and inclusive proposal," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday."The Belt and Road does not have this concept of members. Anyone can join it."Even countries not situated on the Silk Road - old or new - have been welcome to join the initiative. The leaders of Chile and Argentina will be attending the summit, as well as representatives from the United States.President Xi Jinping first proposed the Belt and Road initiative in 2013. Since then, he has used it to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.The Belt and Road initiative should not just be a "China solution" for the world, a Chinese think tank said on Wednesday."Belt and Road when it first started was a China solution. Afterwards it became that all solutions from any country are fine," said Wang Huiyao, head of the Centre for China and Globalization."Developed countries can also make suggestions - any country can create a solution for Belt and Road." REUTERS SW 1541 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-890848.Xml
A bomb exploded by a convoy of the deputy chairman of Pakistan's Senate today, in the violence-plagued province of Baluchistan, killing at least 10 people, police said.The blast occurred the town of Mastung, 50 km from the provincial capital of Quetta. Television footage showed a vehicle mangled by the blast.Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the blast that he believed he was the target and he had sustained minor injuries."My convoy was going to Mastung and there was an explosion. There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone.Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber and at least 10 people were killed, including Haideri's driver.Separatist militants in Baluchistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province's resources.Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. REUTERS SW 1548 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-890868.Xml
When the frustration of youths in this Guinean mining town finally erupted, they looted shops, pillaged government buildings and smashed up dozens of vehicles, dispersing only when police opened fire."It was an immense crowd," said Lieutenant Souare Abdoul, a fireman who had to shelter in a council building in Boke while young men tore out furniture, emptied a safe, stole computers and scattered hundreds of files across the floor."You could see they were angry and they wanted to destroy this place," he added, walking on a carpet of papers and shattered glass. Only after gendarmes opened fire were the council staff able to escape.Security forces shot dead one protester and wounded several.The riots at the end of April paralysed Boke, a bauxite-mining hub in Africa's top producer and home to Societe Miniere de Boke (SMB) and Compagnie des Bauxites de Guinee (CBG), which each export around 15 million tonnes of aluminium ore annually.They were the latest symptom of the "resource curse", the paradox that nations with plentiful mineral resources, especially in Africa, are often poorer, more unequal, less stable and less democratic than others.Academics attribute the "curse" to several factors, but say easy revenue from resources tends to weaken democratic accountability and breed corruption, as has been evident in Guinea.The West African nation sits atop some of the world's richest iron ore and bauxite deposits, and has proven reserves of gold and diamonds. But despite decades of mining, last year it was sixth from the bottom of the U.N. Human Development Index."Guinea has huge potential," said Nava Toure, a senior government adviser and former mining secretary general. "Unfortunately, it hasn't benefited the population."Across Africa tensions over how the benefits from subterranean riches get shared have sometimes stoked violence. Last year, AngloGold Ashanti's head of corporate affairs in Ghana was killed during a riot involving illegal miners at its Obuasi mine, after a spate of layoffs. Fifty people died in unrest at platinum mines in South Africa in 2012.POWER CUTS AND POLLUTIONBoke residents say little of the wealth from bauxite mining trickles down to them, but the associated problems - such as pollution from dust blowing off the back of trucks as they head through town - do.It was a five-day power cut, water shortages and, residents said, a fatal accident involving a bauxite truck that ignited the April riots.Mohamed Camara, 29, said he bore little resentment towards the looters who cleaned out his roadside shop because "this is the fault of the state"."We have all this mining, and no electricity. We have rivers everywhere, and there's no water."The biggest frustration, however, is the dearth of jobs.The two bauxite companies between them employ about 2,000 people, officials in the ministry of mines say. Some are foreign workers, and Boke people say too many of the rest are brought from other parts of Guinea.Lamine Banoro, 28, was so convinced education would get him a job that after his parents died he foraged for sellable wood in the forest to earn enough money to pay his school fees. Now armed with a baccalaureate and a diploma in welding, he has sent his CV to the mining companies, but they told him there were no vacancies."I was sad at first and then angry," he told Reuters at a roadside eatery, where he and other young men loitered in the shade of mango trees."There are big mining companies here, yet no one who is a native to Boke can get a job. Even the Guineans getting jobs come from outside Boke," he lamented.President Alpha Conde's government is pinning high hopes on mining the country's rich mineral resources to lead broader economic development, such as the railway it wants to build from the coast to the Simandou iron ore project in the remote interior. But if benefits fail to materialise quickly, more unrest could follow."There is an understandable impatience," Mines Minister Abdoulaye Magassouba told Reuters in Conakry, Guinea's traffic-choked capital."Our challenge is to reassure people that every job that can go to a Guinean will. We also plan ... to better use our revenues to develop these zones, so people can see the impact."REUTERS SW 1604 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-890899.Xml
Russia's President Vladimir Putin told his newly elected South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, in a phone call today that he is ready to play a constructive role in resolving North Korea's nuclear threat, the South's presidential office said.The two invited each other for state visits, the Blue House presidential office said, while Moon said he would send a special envoy to Russia soon whom Putin said he would welcome personally. REUTERS SW 1753 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-891180.Xml
The service was made available to passengers on a Manchester-bound flight early on Friday, reports Anadolu news agency.

Business-class passengers will hand over their laptops to a Turkish Airlines employee and request a computer from the cabin crew to use in-flight.

Turkey's flag-carrier previously introduced a similar service for U.S.-bound customers.

The dual-functionality devices provided by the Turkish Airlines' can be used as both a laptop and a touchscreen tablet. Passengers will be able to save their personal information on a USB memory stick.

All personal data will be deleted after the device is shut down to protect users' privacy.

In March, the U.S. and U.K. banned some selected electronic devices by the passengers in cabins of flights from certain countries in the Middle East and Africa saying the move was made considering a previously undisclosed terrorists' plot involving explosives hidden in an electronic device.

The ban in the U.K. applies to inbound flights from six countries that are Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Turkey. (ANI)
The Independent quoted police as saying that there was no immediate suspicion of Islamist terrorism linked to the blast and officers believe the blast was an "act of protest".

An explosion had occurred outside a post office and close to a United Nations building in Rome on Friday, Italy, local media reports said.

The blast occurred on the Via Marmorata in Rome's Aventino district.

A car has reportedly been damaged in the blast.

However, there are no reports of any casualties or any one injured.

Initial reports suggest that the explosion might have been caused due to a parcel bomb.

The post office was open at the time of the explosion and filled with people.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack so far.

Police have cordoned off the area near the blast. (ANI)
A Russian photographer, who shot the meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, criticised American media for its 'hysteria' over the photoshoot. There was much furor in the U.S. media after the White House blocked U.S. reporters from photographing the meeting, opting to allow only the White House and a sole Russian photographer to capture the images of the two officials. Alexandr Scherbak, who shot the meeting for Russian state news agency TASS, posted a Facebook post that urged U.S. journalists "not to lose their professional dignity." "I would like to address the U.S. media. Honestly, this is nonsense to me. I am an individual who is not in the public eye and I've never commented on my work before, but, this hysteria around my photoshoot at the White House, has forced me to write this post," read the post. "Under the terms of the collaborative work between the Russian Foreign Ministry and TASS news agency, I provided some of my photo materials for free publications on the foreign ministry's official page and to other sources. Some photographs are distributed by TASS as with any other news agency," he said, adding that there was nothing unusual about the photoshoot with Trump and Lavrov. "I am urging U.S. journalists not to lose their professional dignity and not to pin the blame on other people for their failure in organizing the photoshoot and the failure to provide access to their media. I have worked as a professional photo correspondent for many years and I am facing such absurd and ludicrous charges for the first time," he added. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Sri Lanka's Leader of Opposition R. Sampanthan and other leaders of his Tamil National Alliance (TNA) party here on Friday. The meeting was described as a courtesy call as per protocol. Both leaders reportedly discussed issues of mutual interest to India and Sri Lanka, according to reports. Prime Minister Modi, who will be rounding off his two-day visit to the island nation later this evening, had earlier in the day, inaugurated International Vesak Day celebrations, where he offered India's continued support to Sri Lanka, whom he described as a 'friend'.. "We are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. For us most relevant benchmark for success of our friendship is your progress and success." "As you make important choices for harmony and progress of our society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building efforts. I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka," he added. Talking about the Buddhist links between India and Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister said that the friendship between India and Sri Lanka was etched in time by the "Great Master- Buddha". "Buddhism imparts an ever present radiance to our relationship. Vesak is an occasion for us to celebrate the unbroken shared heritage of Buddhism. Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy," said the Prime Minister. He said the countries of South, Central, South East and East Asia were proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha. He further lauded Sri Lanka's Buddhist connection and said, "Sri Lanka takes pride in being among the most important nerve centres of Buddhist teachings and learning." Talking about the bilateral and economic relations, Prime Minister Modi said that "economic and social well being of people of Sri Lanka is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians and security of our societies is indivisible". He further mentioned India's aid to Sri Lanka for the development projects. "India's development cooperation with Sri Lanka amounts to USD 2.6 billion and its aim is to support Sri lanka in realizing peaceful, prosperous and secure future for its people," said Prime Minister Modi. Prime Minister Modi also soothed the emotions of Indian origin Sri Lankan Tamils through what has been described as his 'medical diplomacy' through the inauguration of the Dickoya Glengairan super-specialty hospital built with Indian assistance of Rs 150 crores. Modi said the health and well being of the people of Sri Lanka "is a shared priority". He also addressed Sri Lankan Tamils in the presence of President Maithripala Sirisena and community leaders, saying that he was aware of the Government of Sri Lanka's active steps to improve the living conditions of Tamil through various schemes, including a five-year National Plan of Action. He hailed the spirit of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka and announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas and the extension of the emergency ambulance service. Prime Minister Modi assured Tamils that the government and people of India are with them in their journey towards peace and greater prosperity. He also announced a series of sops for the Sri Lankans like setting up of vocational training centres, ten engineering training centres and labs to impart suitable skills, computer and science labs in plantation schools. On Friday, Modi also visited the Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is a Buddhist temple and is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which is said to house the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha. The Prime Minister arrived in Colombo on Thursday evening for a two-day visit. He will be returning home this evening. (ANI)
The decision to enter into a bilateral cooperation arrangement between the Transport For London (TFL) and the Indian Ministry of Road Transport and Highways on a wide range of transport mobility solutions and associated activities in urban environments was taken during the three-day official visit of Minister of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping Nitin Gadkari to Britain.

Duirng his visit to the headquarters of Transport For London (TFL) here, Gadkari was given a presentation on strategy and policy reforms, customer experience and data analysis in respect of London buses and other integrated modes of public transport in the Greater London area.

Under the proposed MOU, the TFL will share with the Ministry of Road Transport, Highways and Shipping its expertise on the mobility and efficiency of transport system and methodologies to facilitate the planning and delivery of mobility solutions, including ticketing , passenger information, major project financing, infrastructure maintenance strategies and behavioural change and public transport promotion.

Gadkari later said signing of the MOU will be done through diplomatic channels shortly.

Possibilities of further cooperation on electric buses . bus innovation and capacity augmentation and water transport were also explored during his interaction with the TFL authorities.

The TFL provides world class services that keep the British capital better equipped with public transport.

The TFL virtually coordinates all the London transport, including London metro, the bus network, Dockland Light Rail, water transport and cable car etc. (ANI)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was seen off the Bandarnaiyke airport today by his Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe, after concluding a whirlwind two-day visit to Sri Lanka. He was seen off at the airport by Mr Wickremesinghe on the concluding day. Tweeting about his visit, Mr Modi wrote in the micro blogging site: ''I thank President @MaithripalaS, Prime Minister @RW_UNP, the Government & warm-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka for their hospitality. ''Thank you Sri Lanka! This was a memorable visit, in which I got to take part in various programmes including Vesak Day celebrations.'' Among the highlights of his visit were the International Vesak Day celebrations in Sri Lanka, where he wasthe chief guest. He also took time out from his hectic schedule to visit the Sri Dalada Maligawa temple in Kandy. Earlier, addressing Tamils of Indian origin at Dickoya here, the PM said the Indian Government will support efforts by the Sri Lankan Government towards the socio-economic development of the Tamil community in the country.Lauding the efforts by Sri Lankan Tamils to keep their bonds with India alive, said, ''I assure you that India will support Sri Lanka's efforts towards your socio-economic development. He announced that under the Indian housing project in Sri Lanka, India would construct an additional 10,000 houses under the Indian housing project in Sri Lanka to the 4000 houses being constructed in up country areas. UNI SD RJ SHK 1900 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0005-891343.Xml
A Red Cross team comforts an injured man at a hospital in Taiz, Yemen March 20, 2017. (Reuters photo)

SANAA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- War-torn Yemen has become a place where a child dies every 10 minutes of preventable causes such as conflict, hunger and disease, according to the chief of the United Nations.

Providing aids to victims during the Yemeni civil war has been a real challenge for humanitarian organizations that sometimes have to deal with inflexible government officials, rebel groups or even terrorists.

On the other hand, such humanitarian organizations sometimes face campaigns of criticism from war rival forces and either lose their legitimacy or become unwelcome in many conflict-stricken areas in the country.

One of such world humanitarian organizations working in Yemen is the renowned International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which has recently referred to Yemen as "the world's single largest humanitarian crisis."

Stationed at the heart of the Yemeni capital Sanaa, the ICRC says it continues working to protect and assist victims of the Yemeni conflict despite the accusations of rival parties.

Beside its branches across major Yemeni cities, the humanitarian organization's headquarters in Sanaa has a very large building with several offices specializing in collecting information on war prisoners, war casualties and victims, domestically displaced people and missing ones during the armed conflict.

The chaotic, impoverished Arab country in the southern tip of Arabian Peninsula is facing a humanitarian catastrophe and a threat of an imminent major famine.

More than two years of civil war have ruined Yemen, left over 20 million people in need of emergency humanitarian aid and created the largest food insecurity crisis in the world.

The ICRC's director for the Middle East, Robert Mardini, said a couple of weeks ago that the humanitarian situation in Yemen is deteriorating fast and a massive international effort is needed to relieve the suffering of Yemenis.

"It's estimated that 70 percent of the population in Yemen is in need of some form of humanitarian aid," Mardini said, announcing that his organization is intensifying its operations and doubling its budget for the country this year to reach 90 million U.S. dollars.

The UN says that more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and nearly 42,000 others injured since the war between coalition-backed forces loyal to Yemeni exiled President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi and those allied with the Yemeni Houthi rebel movement escalated in March 2015.

Ground fighting and the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on rebel-held areas have displaced more than three million people so far, whereas seven million Yemenis do not know how to secure their next meal.

Then UN's World Food Programme warned in March that "only three months of food stored inside Yemen," adding that aid workers were racing against time to prevent a famine.

The ICRC said it's surgical team has been deployed to the port city of Hodeidah and another one is due to arrive in Aden, noting the number of ICRC's international workers in the country is being doubled and the number of national staff is increasing by a third.

"The needs are massive and time is short. Famine threatens. At the root of the suffering is the ongoing conflict. It's ripping the heart out of the country. Only 45 percent of medical facilities are functioning. International humanitarian law is being flouted with civilians and civilian infrastructure paying the price," the ICRC chief for the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Yemen depends on imports of 90 percent of its food, medicine and fuel.

"Another major issue that needs to be dealt with are the severe restrictions placed on the import of goods and the movement of such goods and medicines within the country," Mardini said.

The ICRC says it has been denied access to detainees being held by all warring sides, showing concerns over reports of deteriorating detention conditions. It also urges all rival parties to allow ICRC staff to visit people arrested over the conflict and to reconnect them with their families.

"The ICRC remains ready and willing to assist in this area. All people detained in connection with the current conflict should be visited. This could make a strong contribution to the building of mutual trust between the different sides," said the ICRC official.

The UN co-hosted in late April with the governments of Switzerland and Sweden a major international conference in Geneva to appeal for 2.1 billion dollars to avert famine in Yemen this year.

The donor countries pledged only 1.1 billion dollars for humanitarian aid in Yemen, according to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Earlier, the UN warned against an attack by Saudi-led coalition forces on the rebel-held Yemeni port city of Hodeidah, the only aid lifeline for millions of Yemeni people who are in desperate need of food and medicine.
Photo taken on April 30, 2017 shows a train of Istanbul-Ankara high-speed railway in Ankara Station, Turkey. The second phrase of the principal project of Ankara-Istanbul high-speed railway, built jointly by Chinese-Turkish consortium, was completed in July 2014. (Xinhua/Qin Yanyang)

By Burak Akinci

ANKARA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Turkey has much to offer and also gain from the Belt and Road Initiative which can reshape China's growing influence in the region and link European countries to the Asian markets, according to Turkish experts.

"Unfortunately, Turkey has discovered China much too late, but we are now narrowing gradually the gap with giving all of our support to this project which is bringing together two important countries in their regions, the Crescent (Turkey) and the Dragon (China)," said Ersin Ercin, General Director of Asia Pacific Affairs of Turkish Foreign Ministry.

"China is the roaring engine of the world economy and this project is very much in line with the strategic cooperation agreement that Turkey and China signed in 2010," said this high-ranking official during a panel organized in Ankara on Sino-Turkish relations.

The Belt and Road Initiative, comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, was first proposed by China in 2013. It is expected to include more than 60 percent of the world's population and over one third of global economic output through 65 countries.

The initiative comes as Turkey has already built significant and costly projects to integrate itself with the route, namely the Euro-Asia tunnel, the Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge, the third bridge on the Bosphorous strait connecting the European and Asian continents, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will participate the Belt and Road Forum, Beijing's ambitious logistics and trade plan, on May 14 and 15, responding to an invitation of Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The two leaders will meet on the sidelines of the forum to discuss "further enhancing of the already satisfactory relations," according to presidential sources in Ankara.

Turkey's diplomatic relations with China were established in 1971. Both counties have proven to be the rising stars of the world economy towards the end of the first decade of the 21th century.

The bilateral trade volume was 27 billion U.S. dollars in 2016, mostly Turkey's imports from China. Ankara is seeking for a more balanced trade partnership and inciting Chinese investors to be implicated in major infrastructure schemes.

China made also some serious breakthroughs in Turkey's high-speed railway, building a major line between Istanbul and Ankara, a project worth 1.2 billion dollars.

"Obviously, this ambitious project is one of the instruments for China's drive to be in favor of open global trade. Turkey and China can find a joint cause in defending free trade and globalization," wrote international affairs expert Unal Cevikoz in his column in Hurriyet Daily News.

"Turkey's opening to China and China's integration with the world play an important role in development of the world economy in general," said Cevikoz, a retired ambassador.

A visitor walks past a Turkish booth during the 21st Lanzhou Investment and Trade Fair in Lanzhou, northwest China's Gansu Province, July 7, 2015. The fair kicked off here Tuesday. (Xinhua/Fan Peishen)

The expert also believed that the initiative would lead to further integration and connectivity between the countries in the region in the fields of trade, production and infrastructure, making it possible to create more jobs and benefits for people.

At the platform, all participants could discuss the joint development of the project and share the benefits of win-win cooperation, said Guven Sak, the executive director of the Economic Policy Research Foundation (Tepav), a respected thinktank based in Ankara.

The expert noted that the world is facing the challenges such as Brexit, the refugee crisis, regional conflicts, terrorism. But he was confident that the initiative would continue to make progress and facilitate the recovery of economies.

"China has a role to play in international crisis as a source of moderation, which stems from her very old culture .... and Turkey has to take a lesson from the (economic) transformation of China," indicated this economist.

With relations with Europe at all time low and Turkey willing to decrease its dependence on western allies, some fear that a NATO country such as Turkey, traditionally and historically turned on towards the West, is making a mistake trying to establish more profound links with powers of the East, such as Russia and China, but analysts think that in this global world this is inevitable.

President Erdogan made state visits recently to Russia and India, another economic powerhouse of the region.

"Turkey is certainly not shifting its policy in international relations from the West towards the East. It is only natural that countries which have a lot to offer to each other come together and work on shared interests on a win-win basis," argued Ersin Ercin.

This view is also shared by Bahadir Pehlivanturk, professor of international relations department at TOBB University. He told Xinhua that it will be "unrealistic" for Turkey to turn its back to the East and in this particular case to a project that will bring her even closer to the nations of Asia with whom she has close cultural ties.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 01:45:57|Editor: yan

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DAR ES SALAAM, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Tanzania and South Africa on Thursday agreed to focus on economic cooperation by encouraging private sector investments, infrastructure development, agro-processing, beneficiation and joint venture projects.

South African President Jacob Zuma said the two countries inaugurated the Bi-National Commission (BNC) at state and government levels to supervise growth on the new economic relations.

The visiting President Zuma was speaking at State House in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam after bilateral talks with President John Magufuli.

President Zuma said the BNC will provide the required impetus to the two countries' relations by expanding the areas of cooperation to include the political, economic, security and cultural fields.

"Added to this, we have directed our ministers and officials to finalize all outstanding agreements and memoranda of understanding," said Zuma who was on a two-day official visit to the east African country.

President Zuma and President Magufuli witnessed the signing of an agreement and Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on co-operation in transport, bio-diversity and conservation.

He said he was happy with the signing of the MoUs and called for their full implementation.

On the political front, President Zuma thanked Tanzania for the role it played towards the liberation of Africa, including South Africa.

"Tanzania continues to fight for peace in Africa, continuing her earlier contribution to decolonization and the ending of apartheid colonialism," said the South African leader.

He said South Africa was ready to work with Tanzania as the biggest troop contributors to the UN peace keeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"We share the concern over the continued political and security challenges in some of our sister countries on the continent," said Zuma.

For his part, President Magufuli appealed to South Africa to help Tanzania in investing in the construction of standard gauge railway (SGR) as a way of cementing historic relations between the two countries.

Magufuli also asked President Zuma to help Tanzania secure soft development loans from the New Development Bank (NDB) which his country co-owns with other BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, China and India.

"We call upon investors from South Africa to come and inject their resources by establishing mineral processing industries, tourist hotels, pharmaceutical industries, construction projects, agro-processing industries and so many other sectors," said Magufuli.

On Wednesday, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and East African Co-operation, Augustine Mahiga, underscored the need to turn the historic relations between Tanzania and South Africa into co-operation and partnership for prosperity of the two countries.

"We have enjoyed cordial and historic relations dating back to founding fathers of Tanzania's Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela of South Africa," Mahiga told a news conference at the end of a ministerial session with South African Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Relations, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, ahead of President Zuma's visit.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 01:46:00|Editor: yan

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BRUSSELS, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road Initiative will be able to attract those countries which promote free trade and stimulate cooperation between them, a European Union expert has told Xinhua.

"If China and the EU can strengthen their common understanding on free trade, this will help further their cooperation," said Jing Men, professor of the College of Europe.

The Belt and Road Initiative was brought up by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 with an aim to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient Silk Road routes.

The following is the Q&A version of Xinhua's interview with prof. Men, ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing.

Q: The College of Europe is an educational institute that specializes in postgraduate studies and training in European affairs. Does the College of Europe have exchanges with think tanks in China?

A: The College of Europe is the world's first university institute focusing on European affairs. We have a lot of graduates working in European institutions and member states' governments. In 2014, during his visit to Belgium, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a very important speech on topics including EU-China relations to the professors and students of the College of Europe, as well as officials and diplomats from other countries. On the same day, the EU-China Research Center was established at the College of Europe. I have worked here since 2008. I believe that the Belt and Road Initiative will have a great impact on EU-China relations, and thus we have conducted research on this topic in recent years and developed exchanges with research institutes in China.

Q: It is understood that Belgium is interested in joining the Belt and Road Initiative. In which area do you think Belgium and China can develop cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative?

A: The EU's overall awareness about the Belt and Road Initiative is increasing, in particular, the officials and businessmen who have close contacts with China are learning more about the Belt and Road Initiative. Belgium has recently joined the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and is a country that relies heavily on trade and advocates trade liberalization. Foreign trade accounts for nearly 80 percent of its GDP. Belgium's Antwerp Port was the first to respond to the Belt and Road Initiative, hoping to cooperate with China, in particular, in the port infrastructure construction.

Q: It is said that DG MOVE of the European Commission reached an agreement with China that some projects will be implemented under the Belt and Road Initiative framework. What is the current progress?

A: Seven projects from each side have been selected. But it will take some time for these projects to be completed, at least ten years. While all these projects are in the Central and Eastern European countries, some Western European countries are also interested in getting these projects. These countries want to understand the Belt and Road Initiative more clearly so that solid and effective cooperation can be developed with China.

Q: Do you have any ideas about how the Belt and Road Initiative can promote economic globalization?

A: The Belt and Road Initiative will be able to attract those countries which promote free trade and stimulate cooperation between them. In the European Union's official documents, fair trade is mentioned alongside free trade. If China and the EU can strengthen their common understanding on free trade, this will help further their cooperation.

Q: How can the Belt and Road Initiative be understood and supported by more countries?

A: I think it is important for other countries to understand the benefits that "five links" can bring. In order to do so, China should promote the Belt and Road Initiative by thinking from the position of others, using the language of others, elaborating it in ways that are comprehensible to others so that the other side can understand and accept these new concepts and ideas. I think this will be a challenge. China's think tank institutions have a lot of work to do -- they should establish a good communication mechanism with European government agencies and think tanks in order to find a better way for cooperation proposals to be understood and explored jointly.

Q: How do you understand the relationship between the Belt and Road Initiative and the building of a community of common destiny for mankind?

A: From a philosophical point of view, the building of a community of common destiny for mankind is a good concept. But in bilateral cooperation, one party may get more and the other get less. In this unbalanced situation, how to deal with the gap of benefits is a challenge. For example, in EU-China trade relations, the EU cannot understand why China cares so much about the issue of anti-dumping since this only affects 1 percent of the total bilateral trade. But for China, this 1 percent of trade volume involves a lot of businesses and a lot of jobs, and for these people, it is the issue of their livelihood. At the fundamental level, people's livelihood, economic development and social needs have to be taken into consideration. And at a higher level, the development of specific countries as well as the development for mankind need to be considered and to reach consensus.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 02:16:24|Editor: An

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CHICAGO, May 11 (Xinhua) -- General Motors Co. (GM) plans to launch 10 "new energy" vehicles including hybrid electrics, plug-in hybrids and pure electrics in China by 2020.

Besides Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid electric that has already been in sale in China, GM's Buick will have a pure battery-electric for China by 2020, the Detroit News reported in a news released Thursday.

"New energy" vehicles are now the focus of the Detroit-based automakers. Months ago, GM launched its new 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, a pure electric with an estimated 380 kilometers of range and equipped with a 60-kwH battery pack. Recently, it debuted the Buick Velite 5 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle based on the Chevrolet Volt.

Available at a price around 30,000 U.S. dollars after a federal income tax credit, GM sold 4,384 Bolt EVs in April this year in the United States.

A McKinsey & Co. study in January found the cost of an average battery pack has dropped from more than 1,000 dollars per kilowatt hour to an estimated 227 dollars per kilowatt hour in 2016. The research firm predicts that the cost could fall to less than 190 dollars per kilowatt hour by the end of 2020 and further to less than 100 dollars by 2030.

Statistics provided by the federation show that U.S. sales of EVs and plug-ins in 2016 totaled about 159,000 units, up 37 percent from 2015.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 02:16:31|Editor: yan

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VIENNA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern on Thursday once again spoke out against early elections, this time in light of Wednesday's resignation of Vice-Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner.

Austria Press Agency reported on Kern's comments made during a school visit on Thursday, where he reiterated his stance that an early election would not solve any problems.

"No salespeople will earn a euro more, no unemployed person will get a job, no child will enter a better school," he added.

Important instead is what people in Austria are expecting from the government, and that means tackling future issues.

He is expecting to make quick progress with Mitterlehner's replacement as head of the centre-right People's Party along with the rest of its new leadership as soon as it has been decided upon, anticipated to happen by Monday at the latest.

He was non-commital about who should succeed the outgoing Mitterlehner, but said when it is confirmed he will meet with them and aim to carry on with the government's program quickly.

Reinhold Mitterlehner, also leader of the People's Party, Wednesday announced he would resign from all political positions.

"It's enough," he told reporters in a news conference on Wednesday. He said he made his decision after having failed to quell in-fighting and speculation about the party's leadership in the future.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 02:46:51|Editor: yan

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VIENNA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- An Austrian research expert has been anticipating an early election following the resignation of vice chancellor and head of the People's Party, Reinhold Mitterlehner, on Wednesday.

Wolfgang Bachmayer from market research institute OGM told the Austria Press Agency in an interview on Thursday that Mitterlehner's resignation "automatically means new elections."

"Everything else is unthinkable," he added.

He said likely replacement for Mitterlehner, the current Minister for Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz, will probably want early elections as "the longer it takes, the more risks could occur."

Chancellor Christian Kern reiterated on Thursday that early elections would not solve anything.

Bachmayer for his part said he believes a "quick new election date" will soon be decided for September or October.
China's instant messaging app WeChat is seen on a phone in Moscow, Russia, May 6, 2017. (Xinhua/Shi Hao)

MOSCOW, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Russian telecommunication watchdog Roskomnadzor said Thursday that it has allowed access to Chinese instant messaging app WeChat after the service was first blocked last week.

Roskomnadzor said it has received the necessary information needed to properly register the app.

Last week, Roskomnadzor blocked WeChat, saying its operator failed to provide the contact information necessary for registration with authorities.

As a result, some WeChat users in Russia were unable to log in or send messages, while others were not affected.

WeChat is the most popular messenger app in China and is widely used by Chinese living overseas. It is developed by IT giant Tencent Holdings.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 04:22:55|Editor: yan

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ARUSHA, Tanzania, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The incessant rains have wreaked havoc in eastern and coastal areas of Tanzania due to flooded roads, which in some areas has destroyed people's properties and some people are forced to close business.

Tanga is one of the regions which are highly affected with rains in the east African nation.

Reports said that some districts like Lushoto in Tanga Region have no connection with the regional headquarters as the roads are impassable due to floods, caused by fast-flowing water from mountains that end up turning the road into a river.

Frasser Kashai, Tanga Regional Police Commander admitted that Lushoto-Mombo road in the region is one of the highly affected roads.

According to him, apart from floods, some of the road sections are covered by fallen trees.

The regional police chief said travelers from the country's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam to northern tourist capital of Arusha and vice versa were on Wednesday and Thursday stranded after water overflowed the road around Mombo and Mkumbala sections in Tanga region.

"We have stopped buses on both sides of the flooded section to avoid any risk," Kashai said.

Later in the day (Thursday) when water began to recede, Kashai said police permitted the traffic to flow in the style of one bus at a time in slow speed.

But the regional police chief said the road will remain closed during the night for security reason.

"For security reasons, no passenger or private motor vehicles will be allowed to move across the flooded area after 7 pm (local time)," he said, adding that the decision was made to avoid catastrophe in case the downpour intensified through the night as has been the case in recent days.

In Coastal Tanzania's district of Rufiji, heavy rains have destroyed swathes of rice farms within five wards in Rufiji river delta, posing serious food security concerns in the area.

Khatibu Chaurembo, Kibiti District Council chairman identified the affected wards as Mpakakioni Kongoloni, Mtunda, Mbuchi, and Salali.

He said the council had already sent a team of experts to conduct evaluation exercise on how to assist the victims who need assistance.

"Rice farmers always celebrate pours but we have never experienced destructive rains like this for the past 10 years," he said.

The chair added that the council would meet the district and regional disaster coordination committees to see how to bring assistance to farmers who have suffered huge losses after investing fortunes that have now gone with the floods.

In Tanzania's eastern region of Morogoro, reports cited three districts of Kilombero, Mahenge, and Malinyi as the highly affected with floods, where some places rendered people homeless and roads impassable.

Ulrich Matei, Morogoro Regional Police Commander admitted on the impacts of floods, though he had no figures of people who are homeless and those who have died across the region.

The Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) has said that periods of heavy rainfall are likely to continue in some parts of the country especially the coastal strip during the month of May.

According to its monthly forecast, showers with occasional thunderstorms are expected over some areas in the regions of Tanga, Dar es Salaam, Morogoro and Coast as well as in Unguja and Pemba Islands.

Ladislaus Chang'a, TMA Director of research and applied meteorology has urged the public to take precautions ahead of the rains that may lead to another wave of water-related diseases.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 04:48:46|Editor: yan

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BRASILIA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Brazil's Health Ministry declared on Thursday that the country's public health emergency as a consequence of the Zika virus is over.

The combination of actions to eliminate the Aedes aegypti mosquito by the government and the population is attributed for the reduction in cases.

However, Brazil's Secretary of Health Vigilance, Adeilson Cavalcante, highlighted that the fight will continue against the Aedes aegypti.

"The end of the emergency does not mean the end of vigilance and assistance. The Health Ministry and other relevant bodies will continue their policy to fight Zika, dengue and chikungunya, across all states and municipalities," he said.

By April 15, 7,911 cases of Zika had been registered across Brazil this year, compared to 170,535 cases throughout 2016.

In 2017, Brazil has confirmed 230 cases of microcephaly and associated nervous disorders in children linked to Zika, for a total of 2,653 since November 2015.

While 80 percent of Zika sufferers present no symptoms, the infection can cause fever, a rash and headaches in adults. The larger risk is for pregnant women as their infection can lead to microcephaly and other conditions in fetuses, sometimes leading to death.

The epidemic in Brazil, which spread to other countries, also sparked a scientific rush of cooperation to respond to this health emergency.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 04:58:55|Editor: yan

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BANJUL, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The delegation comprising UNICEF and UNFPA regional officials on Thursday urged the Gambian President Adama Barrow to invest in children and youth by providing employment as well as to continue fighting against malaria, end child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), a statement from the presidency said on Thursday.

The UNICEF West and Central Africa Regional Director, Marie-Pierre Poirier reaffirmed UNICEF's commitment to continue to support the new government's agenda.

"On behalf of UNICEF, I urge the Gambia government to invest in children and youths and provide employment creation that will strengthen social protection as well as promote youth empowerment," she said.

Poirier commended the Gambia for meeting the target in controlling open defecation but emphasized the need to consolidate the gains made. She reiterated the importance of continuing the fight against malaria, end child marriage and Female Genital Mutilation.

Gambian President Barrow informed the UN team that his government will embark on sectoral reforms but added that good laws will be maintained.

President lamented on the negative consequences of Child Marriage and FGM, from a health point of view but noted that these are culturally sensitive issues. He called on the population to be encouraged to end the practices. Barrow also asserted that the government will cooperate with UN bodies and come up with laws that will be sustained.

On youth business, Barrow said "The Gambia has changed and youths, who form 60 percent of population, were active in the change process in bringing in the new government".

"The government needs partnership to create employment for youths, and I urge the partners to move from commitment to action for youths to realize their contribution in political affairs," he said.

The former Gambia president Yahya Jammeh already banned the practice of FGM and child marriage in the country in 2015 and vowed to arrest any person caught practicing the hazardous tradition.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 05:33:44|Editor: yan

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OUAGADOUGOU, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Burkina Faso's national gendarmerie on Thursday alerted on massive mail account hacking on social networks in the country.

Over social networks, it has called on social network users for great prudence and a quick change of pass words as there is a wide range of threat on mail accounts.

"We strongly recommend that, as soon as possible, you change your pass word on social networks due to several hacking threats and actions on mail accounts," the gendarmerie disclosed in a release on Thursday.

However, the security and defense forces provided no further details about the scale of the threat in Burkina Faso.

The West African country has been amidst full expansion of social networks over the past few years.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 06:09:27|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Representatives of the Libyan High Council of Reconciliation on Thursday paid a visit to the eastern city of Derna and met with officials there.

Mohammed Al-Housh, the head of the delegation, told a local TV channel the the visit aims to "pave the way for the national reconciliation."

"All concerned military, political and social parties of Derna, will be present in the upcoming meetings and we hope that they will come into agreement." Al-Housh revealed.

Derna is a coastal city located in eastern Libya. It is the home of the Derna Shura Council, a coalition of extremist militants who oppose General Khalifa Haftar and the eastern-based authorities.

Libya suffers a political division despite signing a UN-sponsored peace deal and appointing a unity government. The country is plagued with insecurity and unrest.
Aerial photo shows a view of Guoyuan port on the Yangtze River in Chongqing, southwest China, April 7, 2017. (Xinhua/Liu Chan)

NEW YORK, May 11 (Xinhua) -- With the increasingly important place of digital in the global economy, the Belt and Road initiative will evolve into a "smart highway carrying information, knowledge, and services across continents, not just goods," predicts a U.S. expert.

"These technologies will certainly transform cities in the next decades...we expect there will be a similar transformation in infrastructure around the world, including the Belt and Road initiative, "Jerry Hultin, co-founder of Global Futures Group (GFG), a consulting firm on creating Smart Cities, told Xinhua at a recent meeting hosted by the World Trade Week New York City.

Hultin was referring to 21st century technologies such as broadband and wireless, mobile phones, global location services (like GPS), big data, the Cloud, autonomous vehicles and predictive analytics.

He said that the use of such technologies will show up from start to finish in the Belt and Road Initiative: In its design and construction, using geo-data and computerized design; in its operation and maintenance, using sensors to monitor its performance; and in the transportation systems that travel across it, such as driver-less trucks.

The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China in 2013 consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. It aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along and beyond the ancient Silk Road trade routes.

A smart city is an urban development vision to integrate information and communication technology (ICT) and Internet of things (IoT) technology in a secure fashion to manage a city's assets.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 06:24:38|Editor: yan

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TRIPOLI, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Libyan-Italian joint committee held a meeting in Tripoli on Thursday to discuss illegal immigration and southern Libyan border security.

The meeting took place in the headquarter of the Libyan general department of coastal security.

The meeting was attended by the head of the department, Tareq Shanbur, and the Italian Ambassador to Libya, Giuseppe Perrone.

According to the media office of the department of coastal security, the discussion included "means to implement the Libyan-Italian memorandum of understanding of 2008-2017, as well as fighting illegal immigration in southern Libya to prevent immigration from northern Libya towards Europe."

The officials discussed mechanisms for joint cooperation in maritime patrols and security of Libya coast, the media office said.

"Joint committee focuses on concrete steps to curb migrant smuggling. Applauding Libyan Coast Guard (for) rescuing 500 people off Sabrata," the Italian embassy tweeted on Thursday.

Due to the insecurity and chaos, thousands of migrants depart from Libya towards Europe, many of whom drown in the Mediterranean before reaching European shores.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 06:54:50|Editor: An

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SAN JOSE, the United States, May 11 (Xinhua) -- "It's really a great opportunity to learn about AI. We are doing the self-driving cars. It's pretty cool!" 10th grader William told Xinhua Thursday at the eighth annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California.

Aimed at exposing underrepresented youth to cutting-edge technologies and encouraging them to explore careers in science, technology, engineering and math, NVIDIA and Iridescent, a global STEM education nonprofit, launched Thursday an educational initiative, NVIDIA Techsplorer.

William is one of 200 middle and high school students from Bay Area learned from NVIDIA engineers about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its applications in healthcare and automotive, participated in hands-on activities on the initiative.

"The goal with NVIDIA Techsplorer program is to get youth exposed to Artificial Intelligence concepts. Because everyone will be working with AI in the future. So it's not too soon for someone who is in elementary, middle or high school to start thinking about what their careers might look like in the Artificial Intelligence world," Tonie Hansen, Senior Director, Corporate Responsibility, NVIDIA, told Xinhua.

During the event, NVIDIA engineers introduced fundamental AI concepts, like parallel processing and the underpinnings of neural networks, which are then brought to life through hands-on design challenges.

The AI design challenges introduce complex topics in a fun, engaging and collaborative way and replicate a real-world engineering design cycle. Because students use everyday materials, such as rubber bands, paper clips and aluminum foil, the lessons are affordable, making them accessible to everyone.

"AI is taking over every field in engineering, technology and beyond, creating a tangible risk of a disconnect between underserved communities and AI that will result in a fear that machines and technology are a threat to livelihoods and well-being. Therefore, we are addressing the core problems AI is solving," said Tara Chklovski, CEO and Founder, Iridescent.

Following the launch of Techsplorer at GTC, the AI design challenges, explanatory videos and supporting educational materials will be made available on Curiosity Machine, Iridescent's online platform that reaches about 1 million students, parents and educators annually, according to the education nonprofit organization.

"The best we to do that is to bring children to understand how these technologies are changing this world and they have to be part of that," Chklovski told Xinhua.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 06:54:53|Editor: An

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ATHENS, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Greek officials and scholars on Thursday hailed the results of Greek-Chinese cooperation at Piraeus port in recent years, and expressed confidence of more remarkable benefits for Greece and China in the future under the Belt and Road Initiative.

As Beijing prepares to host the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation from May 14 to 15, a two-day Greek-Chinese economic conference under the theme of the Belt and Road opened in Athens.

The conference offered a platform to state officials, entrepreneurs and academics to express their views on the prospects of expanding and deepening bilateral collaboration in the sea, tourism, new technologies, renewable energy and other sectors.

The success story of COSCO SHIPPING's investment at Piraeus, Greece's largest port, since 2010 was highlighted by most attendees as a great example of fruitful, mutually-beneficial cooperation.

Within a few years, the number of containers passing through its subsidiary Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) has quadrupled, the piers are upgraded, and the terminal's link to the railway network has made many multinationals choose Piraeus as a key transport hub for their products.

"COSCO SHIPPING at Piraeus has upgraded and modernized the port, has given a new breath of life to Piraeus, and of course has also helped significantly in the cruise industry sector," George Tziallas, General Secretary of Greece's Tourism Ministry, said at the conference.

"The investment is progressing very well. It is progressing well both for China and Greece, because it provides added value and dynamism in the economy and our country's geopolitical position," main opposition New Democracy party MP Yorgos Koumoutsakos told Xinhua.

Koumoutsakos said Greece is emerging as an international trade hub, and he is very happy that Greece foresaw this a decade ago by entering into a strategic partnership with China.

"We are following with great pleasure the progress in COSCO SHIPPING's investment at Piraeus which benefits both peoples, creating job positions and growth. Today Piraeus port is the gateway of Chinese trade into Europe and we hope that in the future we will witness further growth," Emmanuel Giakoumakis, rector of the Athens University of Economics and Business, told Xinhua.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is a very promising policy for the promotion of international collaborations based on mutual respect and mutual benefit. Our country participates in this policy and our university supports entrepreneurism in this context," added the rector.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is very important for peaceful development, for trade in Asia, Europe and Africa. When President Xi Jinping talked about this in 2013, we couldn't expect so many tangible and practical results. We are experiencing them now," said George Tzogopoulos, International Relations Lecturer at Democritus University in northern Greece.

On behalf of the Chinese side, Gao Wenqi, Charge d' affaires from the Chinese Embassy in Greece, reiterated China's optimism that Sino-Greek friendship and cooperation will further flourish under the Belt and Road Initiative.

"I am sure our confidence will prove well founded," Gao said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 06:59:55|Editor: xuxin

Rodrigo Londono (R), who is also known as Timoleon Jimenez, leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and Nicolas Rodriguez (L), commander of the National Liberation Army (ELN), attend a joint press conference in Havana, Cuba, on May 11, 2017. Colombia's top guerrilla groups on Thursday called for an end to political violence in the South American nation as well as the complete implementation of a peace process that will end over 50 years of armed conflict. (Xinhua/Joaquin Hernandez)

HAVANA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Colombia's top guerrilla groups on Thursday called for an end to political violence in the South American nation as well as the complete implementation of a peace process that will end over 50 years of armed conflict.

In a joint press conference in Havana, Cuba, the top leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), Rodrigo Londono and Nicolas Rodriguez, respectively, said Colombia must undergo a "real democratic" process that includes an end to political violence.

"Both guerrillas have the common will to build a lasting peace in Colombia. It will be with combined efforts that deep transformations of our society based on social justice and dignity can take place," said Londono while reading a joint statement.

Both organizations also pledged to reach a political solution to the armed conflict.

Londono, also known as Timochenko, urged Colombia's poorest communities to continue "defending" the peace pact and their territory against persecution by alleged government security forces and paramilitary groups.

"We truly believe the majority of Colombians support the end to the conflict as we continue to advance in the implementation of the peace agreement signed last year as well as the talks being held between the ELN and the government," added Londono.

The ELN and FARC also demanded Bogota show its political will to put an end to irregular or paramilitary groups which, according to the guerrillas, have killed several social organization leaders in the last few months.

"Until now, we do not believe the Colombian government has the will to confront these groups. It is definitely an issue that threatens the peace of our country. Peace cannot only be rhetoric, it has to be demonstrated with facts and actions," said Rodriguez.

Both guerrillas have held several meetings in Havana this week with the permission of the Colombian government in order to discuss the peace process in the South American nation, including joint strategies to further advance a political solution to the armed conflict.

In September 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and top FARC commander, Rodrigo Londono, signed a peace deal in Cartagena in front of 15 Latin American presidents and then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.

However, the agreement was rejected by over 50 percent of Colombian voters in a referendum.

After two months of further discussions, both sides changed several issues of the initial peace agreement and had it approved by the Colombian Parliament.

By the end of May, FARC members are expected to have finished handing over their weapons to UN officials and will continue the process of reinserting themselves into society and political life.

Currently, the ELN is set for a second round of discussions with Santos' government in Ecuador on May 16.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 07:25:27|Editor: liuxin

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MINSK, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko confirmed on Thursday its country's readiness to discuss the resumption of cooperation with Russian partners in the potash sector.

The Belarusian leader made the statement during a meeting here with the governor of the Rostov region of Russia Vasily Golubev.

Lukashenko reminded that earlier the cooperation between the Belarusian Belaruskali and the Russian Uralkali has collapsed not through the fault of the Belarusian side. He added that he has proposals to resume the cooperation.

The president stressed that the Belarusian side is ready for competition and doing business in a humane way or even in a brotherly way. He specified that such agreements can be concluded only on an honest and principled basis.

Earlier, Lukashenko announced his readiness to cooperate with Uralkali. He said that the representatives of this company repeatedly applied for the resumption of work with Belaruskali in production and sales of fertilizers. At the same time, he noted that the interests of the Belarusian side should be observed by 200 percent.

Uralkali severed relations with Belarus in July 2013. Almost a month later, the head of Uralkali was arrested in Minsk. These events caused a collapse in the global potash market.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 07:56:12|Editor: liuxin

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SAN JOSE, the United States, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Nvidia launched Volta, it's seventh-generation GPU architecture that delivers 5x the performance of its predecessor, this week at the annual GPU Technology Conference, which attracted a record of more than 7,000 scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs and global press.

"Volta is definitely a game changer, especially in deep learning, but also for general parallel computing work with," Will Ramey, Nvidia director of developer programs, told Xinhua on Thursday at the eighth annual GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California.

"It has a new tenser core inside of it to help it accelerate deep learning applications across a wide range of scientific domains and industry segments," Ramey said.

According to the company, the new GPU architecture is built with 21 billion transistors and delivers the equivalent performance of 100 CPUs for deep learning. It provides a 5x improvement over Pascal, the current-generation NVIDIA GPU architecture, in peak teraflops, and 15x over the Maxwell architecture, launched two years ago. This performance surpasses by 4x the improvements that Moore's law would have predicted.

"When we introduce a new GPU architecture, like Volta, it becomes available across our entire product line," Ramey said.

Over the two hours' GTC keynote on Wednesday, Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, introduced a lineup of new Volta-based AI supercomputers including a powerful new version of DGX-1 deep learning appliance. Huang also announced the Isaac robot-training simulator and unveiled the NVIDIA GPU Cloud platform and a partnership with Toyota to help build a new generation of autonomous vehicles.

The company also announced its first Volta-based processor, the NVIDIA Tesla V100 data center GPU, which brings "extraordinary speed and scalability for AI inferencing and training, as well as for accelerating HPC and graphics workloads".

"Artificial intelligence is driving the greatest technology advances in human history," said Huang, "It will automate intelligence and spur a wave of social progress unmatched since the industrial revolution."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 09:28:01|Editor: ying

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SYDNEY, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Domestic violence cost Australia's Victoria state more than 3.9 billion U.S. dollars in Financial Year 2016, according to a government report released on Friday.

The report, released by independent auditing firm KPMG on behalf of the government on Friday, found that 160,000 people were victimized by family violence in 2015-16.

Domestic violence in Victoria cost the state and federal government 1.32 billion U.S. dollars while the cost worn by victims and their families was 1.9 billion U.S. dollars, the report said.

The combined cost of lost income and property damage was 283 million U.S. dollars and the cost of pain, suffering and premature death was 1.62 billion U.S. dollars.

"This includes costs associated with the long-term health impacts of family violence, and the increased risk of mental ill-health," the report said.

"This therefore includes long-term physical impacts as well as psychological impacts and non-physical effects. These impacts may extend well beyond experiences of violence, with increased feelings of fear and anxiety among victim survivors.

"The impacts can also be more significant where victim survivors may not have adequate financial means to replace or repair damaged property, thus contributing to further impacts to people's standard of living."

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people were found to be at a higher risk of domestic violence than others, with the number of police reports of family violence within that group increasing 100.6 percent between 2008 and 2014 compared to 53.6 percent for the rest of the population.

The report came a week after the Victorian state government announced an unprecedented 1.4 billion U.S. dollars in the state budget to combat domestic violence.

It was one of 227 recommendations of a Victorian royal commission into family violence which handed down its findings in 2016.

Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria, said while the report estimated the financial cost of family violence, "it can't show us the pain and suffering caused by deaths every week of a woman killed at the hands of a current or former partner."

"We can't just let this go on," Andrews said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 10:19:07|Editor: An

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BUJUMBURA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese and Burundian leaders on Thursday pledged to dovetail the two countries' development strategies and deepen their cooperation, with a focus on areas such as agriculture and infrastructure.

The pledge was made during a meeting between Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza and visiting Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao.

The Burundian president praised the ongoing cooperation between China and Burundi as being smooth and dynamic.

Nkurunziza also reiterated Burundi's support for the one-China policy, as well as China's stance on the South China Sea issue and the Korean Peninsula issue.

Hailing the deep-rooted friendship, mutual understanding and support between China and Burundi, Li said his trip was aimed at implementing the consensus reached by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Nkurunziza during their meeting on the sidelines of the second Summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, capital of east China's Jiangsu Province, in 2014.

China will work with Burundi to consolidate the basis of political mutual trust, deepen pragmatic cooperation and people-to-people exchanges, enhance coordination on international affairs to vitalize bilateral friendly and cooperative relations, Li said.

China is delighted to see the improving situation in Burundi and supports related parties to solve differences via dialogue and consultation, Li said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 10:52:41|Editor: ying

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CANBERRA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- One of Australia's most notorious Islamic State (IS) terrorists, Neil Prakash, is expected to be extradited to Australia "within months," Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday.

Prakash, 23, was captured by Turkish officials in October last year when he attempted to enter the country with forged documents and has been housed in a maximum security prison near the Syrian border since.

Speaking on the Seven Network on Friday morning, Turnbull said he expects the extradition process to occur "within months" pending cooperation by Turkish authorities.

"We have an extradition treaty with Turkey and it's just as well we do because otherwise we wouldn't be able to get him back and ensure this man faces justice in Australia," Turnbull said on Friday.

"We should be getting him back within months but it's obviously got to go through the Turkish processes, but we are satisfied that Neil Prakash, who has been one of the key financiers and organizers in IS, this barbaric terrorist group, will be brought back to Australia and will face courts."

Prakash is likely to be charged with a number of offences, including "doing an act in preparation or planning for a terrorist attack," "providing material support for a terror organization," "entering a foreign state with the intent to engage in hostile activities" and "recruiting for a terror organization."

It is also believed that Prakash was involved with a number of foiled terror plots which would have taken place on Australian soil.

In 2015, police disrupted a plan by a "lone wolf" to kill a police officer on Australia's day of remembrance, Anzac Day, while he was also said to have contacted Numan Haider, who stabbed two police officers in Melbourne in 2014.

In May, the government announced that Prakash had been killed in an air strike. However, it was later revealed Prakash was only wounded and had made his way to Syria. He was arrested in Turkey using forged documents and a fake name.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 11:10:51|Editor: ying

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CARACAS, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Members of the Presidential Commission for the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) in Venezuela and government officials see a new constitution as a way out from the violence-gripping the country.

During a rally to support the ANC in Caracas, constitutional lawyer Hermann Escarra said Venezuela is in "a delicate situation of possible uncontrollable violence," pointing to the many clashes seen during protests since early April.

President Maduro has signed an executive order that will form the ANC -- a body that could make changes in the constitution and allow for the reshaping of the current legislative body, as well as redefine the president's executive powers.

"Dialogue has run out as it is stalled and we must take this to the next stage, namely the ANC," he said.

For Escarra, the ANC has emerged as an answer to the impasse between the government and the opposite Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

He said that the ANC will take dialogue "to the next level" as the electorate will choose new political representatives who will help to draft the new constitution. They will be elected through universal, direct and secret ballot.

"We need to take dialogue to the next level and the people need to pick the representatives," explained Escarra.

He also hailed the fact that the Venezuelan army is joining the ANC talks, as recently announced by President Nicolas Maduro.

"I applaud and support the proposals. Soldiers are citizens in uniform and play a role in the country's democratic development," said Escarra, adding the ANC was the chance to listen to and revise the projects of all political parties to define common goals.

On May 1, Maduro announced the creation of a 500-member constituent assembly, which will draft the new constitution in a bid to break the political deadlock between his ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the opposition-controlled Congress, where the MUD holds a decisive majority.

However, the MUD has rejected any chance of joining the ANC, seeing it as a violation of the constitution and a power grabbed by Maduro.

The opposition bloc continues to demand general elections, the release of over 100 political prisoners and the opening of a humanitarian channel into Venezuela.

On Sunday, its leader Henrique Capriles said in a video address that "the Democratic Unity...will not go to Miraflores (the presidential palace)."

He attacked the president and said that "there is a constitution here. If the government wants to overrule it through forces, it is wrong."

"If Maduro insists on calling for a constitutional process, the Venezuelan people must decide in a referendum," he added.

In an interview with Xinhua this week, Education Minister Elias Jaua said that the government's goal is to overcome the deep political divisions that have polarized the country.

Jaua, who also heads the Presidential Commission, said that the process of electing the constituents and drafting the new constitution should "generate a great national debate on how to overcome the hostilities that exist in our society, and establish the minimum bases for political and social coexistence (and) mutual recognition."

He also said that the government would respect the public will, adding that "the plurality of the National Constituent Assembly will be guaranteed."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 11:30:59|Editor: ying

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Visiting Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao (2nd L,front row) meets with Burundian First Vice-President Gaston Sindimwo and Second Vice-President Joseph Butore in Bujumbura, Burundi, May 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Lyu Tianran)

BUJUMBURA, May 11 (Xinhua) -- China supports Burundi's pursuit of independent and sustainable development, and seeks to upgrade bilateral friendly and cooperative relations, visiting Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao said here Thursday.

Li made the remarks when meeting with Burundian First Vice-President Gaston Sindimwo and Second Vice-President Joseph Butore.

Li said the China-Burundi relationship is at its best time in history, enjoying high political mutual trust, fruitful economic and trade cooperation as well as close people-to-people exchanges.

China would like to turn the three advantages into an impetus for advancing pragmatic cooperation with Burundi and bringing fruits to benefit the two peoples by working together with Burundi to deepen cooperation and dovetail their development strategies, Li said.

China will make great efforts to help Burundi solve its three development bottlenecks, namely, food shortages, underdeveloped infrastructure and a lack of skilled workers, the vice president added.

Following its African policy of sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith, as well as the correct viewpoint of righteousness and benefit, China will work with Burundi to implement more outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, he said.

For their part, the Burundian vice presidents said they appreciate China's support for Burundi's sovereignty and territorial integrity and Burundi agrees with China's stance on many global and regional issues.

Burundi hopes to strengthen cooperation with China in such areas as personnel training, medical treatment and construction of hydropower stations, they said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 11:31:01|Editor: ying

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SYDNEY, May 12 (Xinhua) -- A Melbourne council has taken to rolling out micro-chipped rubbish bins to monitor what people are throwing away, it was revealed on Friday.

The Manningham Council, which governs a group of suburbs 25 km northeast of Melbourne, has rolled out the bins at a cost of 4.5 million U.S. dollars.

As well as micro-chipping the bins, garbage trucks in the area have been fitted with cameras to capture footage of what everyone is throwing away.

If the cameras or micro-chips find items being thrown away that shouldn't be, such as large metal objects, liquids, toxic or corrosive substances and asbestos, a sticker will be put on the offender's bin reminding them of what you can and can't put in regular bins.

"In cases where minor visible contamination is found, a warning sticker is placed on the bin lid to educate residents on what can and can't be placed in the bin," Leigh Harrison, the council's director of assets and engineering, told News Limited on Friday.

Residents caught repeatedly violating the rules of what can be thrown away will be hit with a 150 U.S. dollar fine.

Harrison said the cameras were installed to identify any waste that was obviously dangerous or inappropriate.

"Waste disposal facilities do not accept hazardous or inappropriate waste and council is subject to penalties if recyclable materials are contaminated," he said.

The chips in the bins are being used to identify what property they belong to as well as to help find missing or stolen bins.

The Metropolitan Waste and Resource Recovery Group, which is in charge of rubbish collection in 31 Melbourne councils, said the technology was being used by councils to "improve their waste management services."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 12:01:20|Editor: liuxin

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WASHINGTON, May 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats warned on Thursday that the security situation in Afghanistan would most likely deteriorate in the future even if the United States and its allies offer more military aid.

"The intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners," he said at a Senate hearing on the U.S. global threats.

According to Coats, the Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas, while the Afghan government is undermined by the dire economic situation.

"Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

As for the Afghan security forces which are fighting the Taliban, Coats said their performance would probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertions, poor logistic support and weak leadership.

Coats' warning came as U.S. President Donald Trump was reportedly considering whether or not to send additional hundreds of U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama had planned to reduce the current number of 9,800 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to some 5,500 by the end of 2015 and withdraw all troops by the end of 2016 when his presidency came to an end.

However, given the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan, the Obama administration repeatedly postponed the withdrawal.

Currently, there are about 8,400 U.S. troops and another 5,000 forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on the ground in Afghanistan to train and assist the Afghan forces against the Taliban, and conduct counter-terrorism missions.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 12:16:24|Editor: liuxin

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PHNOM PENH, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Cambodia on Friday observed its ancient royal ploughing ceremony in southeastern Prey Veng province under the auspices of the nation's King Norodom Sihamoni.

The ritual, broadcast live on the state's National Television of Cambodia, was to mark the annual start of farming season in the Southeast Asian country.

At this year's event, King Sihamoni assigned Prey Veng provincial governor Chea Somethy as the King of the ploughing ceremony and the governor's wife as the Queen of sowing ceremony.

The assigned King ploughed the rice field by using royal oxen and the designated Queen sowed seeds on the furrow as the symbol of planting.

After three rounds of ploughing across the field, the oxen were offered seven plates of food: rice, corn, green bean, sesame, water, fresh-cut grass, and wine.

If the oxen eat a lot of agricultural items, it is thought that agricultural crops will give good output in the year, but if they eat little, it is believed that the yields will be low.

If the oxen eat grass and wine, it is predicted that cattle will be plagued by epidemics, and if they drink a lot of water, floods will be expected.

At the ceremony, the oxen ate about 90 percent of rice, 95 percent of corn and 90 percent of green bean, Kang Keng, chief of the soothsayers at the Royal Palace, announced.

"This is just the prediction based on the custom of the royal ploughing ceremony in old times," he said. "This ceremony is also to notify farmers that farming season has come."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 12:16:25|Editor: liuxin

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WASHINGTON, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The nuclear program of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) posed a "potentially existential threat" to the United States, U.S. National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said on Thursday.

"It's clear that we have assessed this as a very significant, potentially existential threat to the United States that has to be addressed," said Coats at a U.S. Senate hearing on world threats.

Calling the DPRK "an increasingly grave national security threat" to the United States, Coats said the DPRK had taken "initial steps" toward fielding a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile.

However, Coats refused to reveal the U.S. intelligence community's estimation about when the DPRK would have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of taking a nuclear warhead.

Tension has remained high on the Korean Peninsula over the past months between the United States and the DPRK over the U.S. threat to stage military attacks against Pyongyang in response to its nuclear and missile programs.

The United States and South Korea also held their largest ever joint military exercises in the past two months. At the end of April, the USS Carl Vinson nuclear aircraft carrier task group arrived in the waters off the Korean Peninsula for a separate joint naval exercise with South Korea.

However, a joint statement by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis and Coats said last month that U.S. President Donald Trump aims to use economic sanctions and diplomatic measures to pressure the DPRK to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs.

The statement also said that the United States remained "open to negotiations" toward peaceful denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula while staying "prepared to defend ourselves and our allies."

The DPRK said early this month that the current crisis on the Korean Peninsula is the most dangerous in half a century since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

"If the DPRK had not had access to the powerful nuclear force and had not gotten itself ready to counter the U.S. and its vassal forces' provocation with merciless military counteraction, the U.S. would have committed without hesitation the same aggression act in Korea as what it committed against other countries," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying on May 1.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 13:01:08|Editor: ying

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by Liang Hui, Zheng Shibo

JAKARTA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road Initiative is very important for maritime nations such as Indonesia, as the country and most of other ASEAN members are located on the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, an Indonesian scholar has said.

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, with its broad prospects, will definitely push the world economy forward and help Indonesia's economic development, Jusuf Wanandi, senior fellow and co-founder of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a policy research organization, told Xinhua in an interview.

Indonesia and other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries could make policies and principles for embracing the initiative, he said.

As for Indonesia, the maritime part of the Belt and Road Initiative is more important, said Wanandi, who is also the vice chair of the Indonesian National Committee for the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council.

"I think that the first thing we should do is the connectivity between regions. Infrastructure construction is fundamental for economic development. Therefore, Indonesia and China can work together in infrastructure construction. At the same time, contacts in economy, trade and finance also should be strengthened," he said.

"Indonesia and China have complementary advantages in the fields of economy and trade, and both can strengthen win-win cooperation in infrastructure constructions," he added.

Wanandi also emphasized the need to boost mutual understanding between both countries by encouraging more people-to-people exchanges.

Noting that economic globalization is showing a backward tendency, Wanandi said Indonesia, China and other ASEAN member nations should work together to enhance economic cooperation and make progress in globalization, adding that efforts are needed to upgrade the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area.

Amid the ongoing global economic recovery, enhancing global mutual cooperation becomes more important than ever before, thus the Chinese-advocated notion of "creating a community of shared future for mankind" can play a great role to unite the world based on common interests, he said.

The notion, which stresses that countries should promote common development and establish more equitable and balanced development partnerships, was first proposed in a report by the Communist Party of China in November 2012.

The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14-15 in Beijing, is an important event to enhance international cooperation, as a fixed platform for mutual cooperation is needed for the Belt and Road Initiative that involves so many countries, said Wanandi.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 13:21:16|Editor: Hou Qiang

Dato' Muhammad Shahrul Ikram Yaakob (C), Malaysia's permanent representative to the United Nations, speaks during an interview with Chinese media in New York, the United States, May 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

NEW YORK, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, once fully implemented, will enhance regional connectivity and economic development, and thus help achieve the implementation of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a Malaysian envoy to the United Nations (UN) said Thursday.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is massive," said Dato' Muhammad Shahrul Ikram Yaakob, Malaysia's permanent representative to the UN, in an interview with Chinese media in his office.

He said the six economic corridors under the Belt and Road Initiative, namely, the New Eurasian Continental Bridge, the China-Mongolia-Russia corridor, the China-Central Asia-West Asia corridor, the China-Indochina Peninsula corridor, the China-Pakistan corridor, and the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar corridor, are closely related to regional infrastructure construction and economic development.

Talking about the two projects in Malaysia linked to the initiative -- the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park and the Melaka Gateway project, Yaakob noted that projects like these have created jobs, promoted the transfer of expertise and technologies, and spurred economic exchanges.

"When you have the six corridors fully functioning, it will benefit not only the connectivity in the area, but also the economy and the well-being of the people," said the ambassador.

It is "significant" that the UN Security Council and General Assembly have both adopted resolutions incorporating the Belt and Road Initiative and the gesture shows the initiative has got general support from UN member states, he said.

Yaakob also noted that the initiative is closely related to the implementation of the SDGs, especially the first, eighth and ninth goals, which all aim to end all kinds of poverty around the globe and promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14-15 in Beijing.

This will provide an opportunity to share Malaysia's view at the forum on how to facilitate cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative for common prosperity, especially with regard to infrastructure development, trade promotion, financial integration and people-to-people bonds, the envoy noted.

It will also boost the efforts to further enhance the relations and cooperation between China and Malaysia, he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 13:26:44|Editor: ying

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HANOI, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam gained some 12,200 billion Vietnamese dong (some 540 million U.S. dollars) through state divestment from state-owned enterprises (SOE) in the first four months of this year, the country's finance ministry has said.

Specifically, national wealth fund State Capital Investment Corporation (SCIC) sold some 1,353 billion Vietnamese dong (59.9 million U.S. dollars) worth of shares at 16 companies.

In April alone, nine firms were approved for equitization with total value of 2,470 billion Vietnamese dong (109.3 million U.S. dollars), of which the state capital stood at 546 billion Vietnamese dong (nearly 24.2 million U.S. dollars).

According to their equitization plans, the charter capital of the nine companies total 878.5 billion Vietnamese dong (38.9 million U.S. dollars), of which the state holds 413 billion Vietnamese dong (18.3 million U.S. dollars) and the stakes sold to strategic investors are worth 347.3 billion Vietnamese dong (15.4 million U.S. dollars).

Last month, SCIC announced the list of 100 SOEs to be equitized this year, including telecoms giant FPT where the state currently holds 6 percent of its stake, being its second largest shareholder.

Last year, 56 SOEs were approved for equitization with total value of 34 trillion Vietnamese dong (1.5 billion U.S. dollars), of which the state capital stood at 24.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (nearly 1.1 billion U.S. dollars).
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 13:31:47|Editor: ying

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FAIZABAD, Afghanistan, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Government forces after recapturing Zebak district in the northern Badakhshan province launched fresh operations in the neighboring Yamgan district to evict militants and restore law and order there, a senior police official Shir Mohammad Kamaqwal said Friday.

"A well-coordinated offensive launched late Thursday night against enemies in Yamgan district to smash rebels and restore law and order there," Kamawal told Xinhua.

Government forces after days of fierce fighting recaptured Zabak district Thursday morning and the Taliban fighters, after suffering huge casualties, fled the area, according to officials.

A total of 85 Taliban militants had been killed in fight for the control of Zebak district, officials said.

Taliban militants have yet to make comment on the situation in Zebak and Yamgan districts.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 13:56:27|Editor: Yamei

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Jargaltulga Erdenebat is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that Mongolia is welcome to actively participate in construction of the Belt and Road.

China supports Mongolia's efforts to be a bridge linking Europen and Asian continents, Xi told Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 to 15.



The two countries should cooperate on areas including trade and investment, connectivity, agriculture and animal breeding, industrial capacity, and energy, so that the Belt and Road Initiative and Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative can be effectively dovetailed, Xi said.

He called for efforts to promote the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor to boost the common development of the three nations.

Xi said the Chinese side attaches great importance to the development of China-Mongolia ties. Both sides should uphold the principles of mutual trust, cooperation and win-win outcome, and take opportunities to broaden exchanges and cooperation in various fields and push forward their comprehensive strategic partnership.

He stressed that the developmental prospects for China-Mongolia ties are broad, adding that the two sides should care for each other's core interests and major concerns and deepen mutual trust to ensure that the development of bilateral ties will not deviate from the right track.

The president called for facilitating the study of a free trade zone and cross-border economic cooperation, and promoting cooperation on major mineral industry programs and infrastructure connectivity.

Efforts should also be made to increase exchanges between youth, media and local authorities, Xi said.

Erdenebat said carrying out friendly cooperation with China is a priority for Mongolia. The country adheres to the one-China policy, and is willing to strengthen bilateral high-level exchanges, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

The prime minister said Mongolia understands the significance of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is open and inclusive, in solving the unbalanced and unstable development of mankind and boosting world peace and development.

Mongolia is willing to be a bridge linking Europen and Asian continents and will actively participate in mutually beneficial cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, Erdenebat said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 13:56:28|Editor: ying

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HANOI, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Vietnamese government has approved an action plan to conserve primates in the country, Vietnam News Agency reported on Friday.

The plan calls for strengthening law enforcement to combat the hunt and illegal trade by 2025, towards reducing hunting by 70 percent, as well as building three rescue centers to save and release primates back into the wild.

The plan requires building an inter-sectoral cooperation mechanism and confiscating shotguns in residential areas where endangered primates in need of protection live.

National parks and sanctuaries home to rare and endangered primates are also urged to use spatial monitoring and reporting tools to prevent hunting. State budget funds will be earmarked for them to study, protect and monitor primates while expanding forestation to create more living spaces for primates.

Awareness campaigns will be launched to minimize the consumption of products originating from primates. Meanwhile, lectures on primate conservation will be added to school and tertiary curricula.

According to the United States-based Wildlife Conservation Society, Vietnam has 25 taxa (species and subspecies), the highest number of primate taxa of the countries located on the Southeast Asian mainland.

Following the phylogenic species concept, there are 24 species recognized, and one species, the long-tailed macaque with two subspecies in Vietnam. Five of the species are endemic to the country, and they are also listed among the 25 world's most endangered primates.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 14:02:03|Editor: An

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NANNING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The bodies of all six drowned children had been recovered Friday, after they disappeared while swimming in a river in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Wednesday.

The primary school students from the city of Beiliu had gone swimming after school Wednesday.

Divers recovered two of the bodies while searching Wednesday night, a third body was located on Thursday and the final three were found Friday morning.

The local government has asked schools to warn students of the dangers of strong river currents.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 14:12:10|Editor: An

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by Xinhua writers Han Qiao and Qu Ting

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Wang Cunjin, 61, a farmer from a village in north China, never thought he would go abroad and help discover a lost ancient city, thousands of miles from home.

For the past two years, Wang has joined a Chinese archaeological team in Uzbekistan each fall and spent more than two months there digging at the Mingtepa ruins in the Fergana Valley.

His unique skill of digging underground with a traditional Chinese tool called a Luoyang shovel has amazed local archaeologists, who have less experience doing archaeological work where there are no signs on the ground surface.

The joint archaeological team from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and its Uzbekistan counterpart has made significant finds as they unearthed an ancient city, almost the size of Monaco.

They found that about 2,000 years ago, Mingtepa was an important city in the Dayuan state, a state known for the precious Fergana horse breed and a key hub on the ancient Silk Road.

Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned the joint archaeological work last June, when he published a signed article in Uzbek media ahead of his state visit to the Central Asian country.

"The State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Northwest University of China have worked actively with Uzbekistan on joint archaeological research and restoration, making important contributions to restoring the historical sites of the Silk Road," Xi wrote.

This January, the project won a Major Overseas Archaeological Discovery of 2016 award from the CASS.

SEEKING A BREAKTHROUGH

The ancient Silk Road was a conduit for trade and exchange about 2,000 years ago. It is drawing more attention nowadays, as the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by China in 2013 as a trade and infrastructure network to better connect Asia with Europe and Africa.

China will host the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation on May 14 and 15 in Beijing.

"Culture exchange and cooperation consist an important part of the Belt and Road Initiative," said Chen Xingcan, director of the Institute of Archaeology with the CASS. "Evidence from the archaeological work will help countries along the ancient route learn more about the history."

Today, Chinese and foreign archaeologists are teaming up to rediscover the history in the ancient Silk Road.

The Mingtepa ruins have seen intermittent excavations for decades. Part of the city walls have been unearthed, circling an area 500 meters by 800 meters.

But there have been guesses that the city could be larger and there were undiscovered outer walls.

In 2011, the Institute of Archaeology of the Uzbekistan Academy of Social Sciences and the Institute of Archaeology with the CASS signed a deal to jointly excavate the site.

The work started the following fall, but the Chinese team did not rush to dig.

The team, headed by Zhu Yanshi, a specialist in the archaeology of ancient capitals, spent three years drawing a digital map of the site, with the help of drones, and using technology of precision measurement and computer mapping.

In 2015, Zhu invited his old partner Wang Cunjin, who is skilled in using the traditional Luoyang shovel, to the site.

A U-shaped cylinder four to six centimeters in diameter, the Luoyang shovel is widely used in Chinese field archaeology. It lets the user extract a section of earth while preserving the soil structure.

Researchers can analyze the color, texture and intensity of soil for any evidence of underground structures, to find if it is soil from a road, a tomb or a city wall. Usually, the soil of a city wall is hard and firm.

At the Mingtepa site, archaeologists started to look for the outer walls of the city, but with no signs on the surface. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

The Chinese team recruited 12 Uzbek farmers, and Wang taught them how to use the shovel.

Every day the farmers dug small holes, and Wang examined the extracted soil from each hole.

Another colleague put the position information of the holes and soil information into the digital map previously drawn. The position data was collected using the Real Time Kinematic technique, which provides centimeter-level accuracy and is more precise than GPS.

Wang found the texture of the soil was quite different from that in China.

"Some soil is very soft. In China, you would not think it is soil on the city wall. But here as we made more comparisons between different soil samples, we found some soft soil was a bit unusual and it might be what we were looking for," Wang said.

Every evening, Wang and his colleagues compared soil samples from different holes and discussed possible locations of the city walls.

A breakthrough was made in the fall of 2016. Signs indicated that there might be a city wall in the eastern part of the ruins.

Zhu decided to dig a small pit in the area - and they found the outer walls.

"Once we made the breakthrough, it became easier to trace the wall," Zhu said.

The outcome amazed the Uzbekistan team.

"You are not only a technician. You are a real expert," Bokijon Matbabaev, leader of the Uzbekistan team, told Wang.

Following excavations found outer walls of the city in the other three directions. It broadened the site size from 500 by 800 meters to 2,100 by 1,300 meters, meaning that about 2,000 years ago it was the largest city in the Fergana Valley.

The team also unearthed a craft workshop and a graveyard. There have been guesses that Mingtepa was simply a temporary garrison fort for nomads. The workshop and graveyard came as proof that Mingtepa was an ancient settlement.

"With such a large area and the structure of both the inner city and external city, Mingtepa must have been an important city in the Dayuan state around 2,000 years ago," Zhu said.

"The outcomes of the excavations in the past five years were more than we achieved in recent decades," Matbabaev said.

"China' s cultural heritage is rich, so Chinese archaeologists have accumulated great expertise and experience in field archaeology," said Wang Wei, then director of the CASS Institute of Archaeology.

RESPECTED TALENT

Working in Uzbekistan is a unique experience for Wang, who never had the chance to mingle with foreigners at home.

"I find Uzbekistan farmers are very, very polite and good mannered," Wang said. "They often hug each other. They greet me politely every day. That really impressed me."

Wang did not go to college and was a farmer until he learned his Luoyang shovel skills at the age of 27. His skills have been honed over years of excavation work.

In Uzbekistan, as he made important discoveries, he was seen as a talented person and became famous. The excavation site was open to local people and students. Once, a college student even asked for his signature.

"I never had that experience before. I did not know what to write. Finally, I wrote 'study hard,'" he said.

Wang has few hobbies, and in Uzbekistan he rarely went shopping, but he did buy one item to take home.

"It was a plate. It had beautiful patterns. The local culture is admirable," Wang said. "Now I serve fruits on the plate when guests come to my home."

MORE COOPERATION

"In 2011, Mingtepa was the first foreign project of China's state-level archaeology institute," said Wang Wei.

"Since China's reform and opening-up policy was adopted, archaeological teams from about a dozen countries have come to China for more than 70 collaborative projects. But this is the first time a state-level archaeology agency had gone abroad."

Five years on, the project showcases the strength of Chinese archaeology.

China now has several archaeological teams engaged in overseas joint projects, such as in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Pakistan, Uzbekistan,Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Egypt, Kenya, and Honduras.

The CASS established a research center focusing on archaeology work abroad in March.

"China has advantages in archaeological work along the Silk Road," said Wang, director of the newly-established center.

"Chinese books have historical records on many countries on the route. Civilizations influenced each other along the road. Some antiques unearthed are very strange to European archaeologists, but Chinese experts recognize them easily," Wang said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 14:21:55|Editor: ying

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Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong (2nd L in front) and Foreign Secretary of Nepal Shanker Das Bairagi (2nd R in front) sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Kathmandu, Nepal, on May 12, 2017. Nepal and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on bilateral cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative here on Friday. (Xinhua/Zhou Shengping)

KATHMANDU, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Nepal and China signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on bilateral cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative here on Friday.

At a ceremony held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Friday morning, Foreign Secretary of Nepal Shanker Das Bairagi and Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong signed the MoU.

Bairagi told the ceremony that the cooperation agreement is an important milestone in the Nepal-China relationship, bringing bilateral ties to a new height.

"Nepal is aspiring to benefit from the rise of China which is our close neighbor," he said.

The MoU aimed at enhancing cooperation on promoting connectivity of facilities, trade connectivity, financial integration and connectivity of peoples.

"The Belt and Road Initiative will bring Nepal within a group of many other countries working for a new economic order. Nepal can be connected with China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and Central Asia for our trade," a Kathmandu-based professor of international law Yubaraj Sangroula told Xinhua.

"Nepal has just become a member of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, thanks to the Chinese leadership for introducing such a wide concept that seeks to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation between China and various countries and regions around the world," Deputy Prime Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara told Xinhua following the ceremony.

The deputy prime minister believed that Nepal can benefit in various sectors through the initiative in the days to come.

"Nepal is gradually moving forward from the status of least-developed country, our economic growth is rising, and is full of possibilities, so with the Chinese assistance, we can attain economic prosperity," he added.

The Belt and Road Initiative was introduced in 2013 aiming to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 14:36:58|Editor: ying

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PYONGYANG, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Friday demanded foreign governments arrest and extradite some suspects involved in an alleged assassination plot against its top leader Kim Jong Un.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 15:18:08|Editor: xuxin

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WASHINGTON, May 11 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that firing the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was his "own decision," reversing a White House statement that the decision was based on recommendations from the Justice Department.

"I was going to fire him regardless," Trump told NBC, offering his account of the events leading up to the shocking dismissal of James Comey.

"The FBI has been in turmoil...You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil -- less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that," Trump explained why he wanted to fire Comey.

"I was going to fire regardless of recommendation," Trump said, in contrast to a statement from the White House Wednesday which said he made the decision after he was recommended to do so by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

In a letter to Comey on Tuesday, Trump said the decision was made based on recommendations from Sessions and Rosenstein. The saying was backed by White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders who said Wednesday that Trump had met with Sessions and Rosenstein on Monday to discuss Comey's role in the FBI, and asked them to submit a written recommendation.

Trump fired Comey Tuesday after receiving recommendations from Session and Rosenstein.

"I just want somebody that's competent. I am a big fan of the FBI. I love the FBI," Trump said, when asked whether firing Comey had anything to do with an ongoing probe into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

"This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should've won," Trump said.

Despite insisting that there was no wrongdoing by the Trump campaign in regard to Russia, Trump said that he wanted things to be "absolutely done properly."

"I might even lengthen out the investigation," Trump said.

Trump said he had never asked Comey to drop the Russian investigation, nor had anyone from the White House.

In a Congress hearing earlier Thursday, FBI acting Director Andrew McCabe confirmed that the FBI had not felt any interference and promised to inform Congress should it happen.

Trump also clarified the circumstances under which Comey informed him that he was not personally under investigation by the FBI, as mentioned in his letter to Comey Tuesday.

Trump said he had asked Comey whether he was under investigation and Comey denied it.

"He wanted to stay on as the FBI head, and I said I'll, you know, consider. We'll see what happens," Trump said.

The interview was the first time Trump spoke to the press at length about the firing of Comey, after the White House had released mixed signals and narratives on the episode.

Sanders, the White House spokeswoman, said Trump had been considering letting Comey go since coming into office, while Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told a press briefing last week that the president "had confidence" in Comey.

So far, the episode has attracted a wave of fiery criticism from Democrats, who maintained that firing Comey was part of Trump's plan to undercut the FBI investigation and called for an independent prosecutor to take over the investigation.

Even some Republican Congress members are baffled by Trump's choice.

Only 12, or about a quarter of Senate Republicans explicitly backed Trump's decision, while 15 voiced concerns over the move.

John McCain, a Republican senator who chairs the Senate Military Services Committee, has called for stepping up the inquiry about the Trump campaign's ties with Russia.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 15:53:39|Editor: xuxin

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by Jose Aguiar

CARACAS, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's call to form a constituent assembly and draft a new constitution is not an attempt to seize power, but to end political divisions, a senior official said.

The government expects to overcome the deep political divisions that have polarized the country, said Education Minister Elias Jaua, who also heads the presidential commission overseeing the election of the constituent assembly, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Jaua said he was confident that the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) would gain a majority in the assembly.

The government has the political and democratic maturity not to abuse the advantage to seize absolute power, he added.

The government seeks "to create a space that can break the polarization" in the country, he added.

The South American country saw frequent protests launched in April by the right-wing opposition coalition known by its Spanish acronym MUD to demand early general elections. The protests have killed nearly 40 people.

The process to elect the constituents and draft a new constitution should "generate a great national debate on how to overcome the hostilities that exist in our society, and establish the minimum bases for political and social coexistence (and) mutual recognition," Jaua said.

The MUD fears that the government will attempt to "modify" the new constitution for its own interests if the ruling party dominates the assembly.

On May 1, Maduro announced the decision to create a 500-member constituent assembly, which will draft the new constitution in a bid to break the political deadlock between his ruling PSUV and the opposition-controlled Congress, where the MUD holds a decisive majority.

The president called for a constituent assembly to maintain the country's stability as the MUD refused to hold dialogue with the government, he added.

On Monday, some 17 Venezuelan political opposition parties met with the presidential commission overseeing the election of the constituent assembly to discuss the process of electing the constituents. The MUD was not present.

"Even as the MUD's leadership refused to participate in the initiative, we have already seen how it has begun to cut through the polarization," Jaua said.

To allay those fears, Jaua said, the government has proposed an open candidacy process which is expected to be dominated "not by political parties, but by individual initiative."

"Any citizen who wants to run" can participate in the election as long as he has enough support from the community, Jaua said. The national electoral body will determine the signature threshold.

Members of the assembly would represent either a sector of the population or a region, he said.

"The plurality of of the National Constituent Assembly will be guaranteed," he added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 15:53:42|Editor: ying

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Beata Szydlo is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on China and Poland to increase cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15.

Noting that Poland was among the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, Xi said China views Poland as an important partner for cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and within the European Union.

China is willing to work with Poland to further enrich their comprehensive strategic partnership, by maintaining high-level exchanges between the two countries, and expanding dialogue between their governments, legislative bodies and political parties, Xi said.

They should base bilateral ties on mutual respect and equality to make sure that China-Poland relations continue healthy and stable development, he said.

The Chinese president highlighted environmental protection, finance, high-tech industries, infrastructure and logistics as areas where China and Poland could step up collaboration.

Both sides should foster more balanced development in bilateral trade, enhance cooperation in sectors such as culture, education and tourism, as well as between local governments, and boost people-to-people exchanges between the two countries, he said.

Xi went on to say that China appreciates Poland's active support and participation in building the Belt and Road, and said both countries should identify more areas where their respective development strategies converge.

He also expressed hope that Poland will play a positive role in promoting China-EU relations.

According to Xi, China sees the 16+1 cooperation between China and 16 CEE countries as an important gateway to incorporate the Belt and Road Initiative into the European economic community, a priority platform to step up China-EU ties, as well as a new engine to drive China-EU cooperation.

China hopes Poland will continue its work to help expand the 16+1 cooperation, build the Belt and Road and boost China-EU cooperation in the CEE region, he said.

For her part, Szydlo said Xi's visit to Poland in June last year had significantly promoted bilateral ties and win-win cooperation between the two sides.

She said the Belt and Road Initiative is of key importance to not only Poland's, but also the world's balanced and sustainable development.

Poland is willing to actively cooperate under the Belt and Road framework in areas such as infrastructure, and to collaborate with relevant parties in cultural, investment, high-tech and tourism sectors, Szydlo said, adding that all these will contribute to trade and inter-connectivity between China and Poland as well as Europe at large.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 16:08:51|Editor: ying

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WARSAW, May 12 (Xinhua) -- With increasing amounts of European agricultural foods being served on Chinese dining tables, Europe expects to see more and more local produces enter the world's biggest market by boarding the Europe-China freight trains.

"We deeply hope to step up trade cooperation and export healthy and safe Polish food products to China to serve quality-minded consumers," Monika Tyska, director of Export Support Office of Agricultural Market Agency, Poland, told Xinhua.

She said that the regular and fast Europe-China cargo train service "may be a drive to establish new, fruitful business relationships by a greater number of entities whose maritime transport was too long or whose goods did not qualify for this type of transport."

In the Polish city of Lodz, a stop along a cargo train route linking China's Chengdu city, the first cargo trains arrived three-and-a-half years ago.

The rail cargo service between Chengdu and Lodz has become a popular logistics route for Chinese trade with Europe.

Krzysztof Piatkowski, deputy mayor of Lodz, said the Chengdu-Lodz connection contributed to his city becoming an important hub.

"The train connection is perceived as an opportunity by local food producers of juices, sweets, alcohol, including our famous Lodz cider," he said.

The District Cooperative dairy Plant in Lowicz (OSM Lowicz), created some 110 years ago, is a leading Polish diary producer.

Located only 50 km away from the Lodz railway station, the company exports 500 tonnes of milk powder monthly to China.

Last year, OSM Lowicz exported about 600 containers of milk products, worth about 10 million euros (10.8 million U.S. dollars), to China.

"We do hope it will continue to rise, as we are capable to produce much more," said Szymon Makos, export Specialist form OSM Lowicz.

Allegro, a leading Polish e-commerce platform, is seeking Chinese partners to tap the Chinese market, hoping to bring Polish specialty products to China via sea and rail links.

Major logistics and trade platforms, like DHL and Amazon, also have entered into cooperation with the China-Europe cargo train services in a bid to broaden their services.

According to Su Penghui, a Warsaw-based businessman specialized in transport services through the China-Europe freight trains, European-produced olive oil, wine and milk powder are popular among Chinese consumers.

More than 3,500 cargo trains have run since the regular China-Europe freight train service was launched in 2011, the service operator China Railway reported in April this year.

So far, the regular cargo train service linking Europe is available in 27 Chinese cities, and can reach 28 cities in 11 European countries, China Railway said.

In recent years, China has overtaken Russia to become the European Union's second largest export market for agricultural products.

European Union statistics showed that the past three years saw steady and continuous growth of European agricultural exports to China.
Fred Dufour/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- If the name McAfee rings a bell, it should. Theres a chance that McAfee anti-virus software is on your home computer right now.



John McAfee, the man who created the software in the 1980s, became a household name for his anti-virus software and the millions of dollars he made when he sold his security software firm McAfee Associates.



But after he moved to Belize in 2009, McAfee made headlines again for his alleged connection to the murder of his neighbor Gregory Faull.



In a recent interview with ABC News 20/20, McAfee denied having any involvement in Faulls death and showed off his latest cybersecurity venture.



Here is a timeline of the major events of John McAfees life since the software founder first introduced the world to McAfee Associates.



Late 1980s and early 90s



John McAfee pioneers anti-virus software bearing his name that is still used by millions of computers today. The software was created in less than two days, McAfee said.



Four million people were using it within a month, he said.



He made his fortune when he sold his security software firm. His reported worth was $100 million, though he later claimed it was more. Over the years, he spent millions on properties, art and cars.



2009



After the financial crisis in 2008, McAfee let it be known in 2009 that he had lost most of his money. He sold a property in Rodeo, New Mexico -- the last of his major real estate holdings -- at an auction in August 2009.



Recently, McAfee told 20/20 that he was just using the media when he said he lost his fortune.



Ive had 200 lawsuits because my name is John McAfee. No, I did not lose everything. I wanted to stop people trying to sue me, McAfee said. No, I did not lose my fortune. Im not that stupid.



Later in 2009, McAfee took his remaining money and moved to Belize, where he had purchased a property on an island called Ambergris Caye. He purchased a second property in the interior of the country and moved deep in the jungle to a place called Orange Walk, where he had set up a lab to create plant-based antibiotics.



McAfee said he was helping the locals by feeding poor families and providing them with jobs.



April 2012



McAfee claimed his refusal to pay bribes to the Belize government caused a raid on his lab in 2012, which Belize authorities said was brought on by suspicions that he was manufacturing methamphetamine.



I was on the verge of something ... when I refused to pay an extortion for $2 million," McAfee said. "A week later, that gang suppression unit destroyed my lab."



No methamphetamine was found, and McAfee abandoned the jungle and moved back to Ambergris Caye. One of his neighbors was Gregory Faull, a builder from central Florida who wanted to spend his retirement in Belize.



Nov. 2012



According to friends, Faull had a problem with McAfees pack of aggressive dogs and told friends he was going to take care of the problem.



Greg had told them he was going to poison the dogs, Eileen Keeney, Faulls mother, told 20/20.



One evening in November 2012, some poisoned meat was thrown over McAfees fence, and all nine of his dogs were killed.



The next night, police said an intruder snuck into Faulls home and shot him with a stun gun several times. Faull was then shot in the head and died.



Belize police called McAfee "a person of interest" in connection with Faulls death and sought to question him. As news of the murder broke, McAfee disappeared into the jungle. McAfee contacted journalists while on the run.



As long as the world was paying attention, they couldnt actually shoot me in the street, McAfee said.



McAfee then traveled to Guatemala.



Dec. 4, 2012



Immigration officials in Guatamala arrested McAfee in Guatamala City for entering the country illegally on Dec. 4, 2012.



In an exclusive interview with ABC News Matt Gutman, McAfee claimed he was innocent of the murder.



Dec. 12, 2012



Before Guatemalan authorities could put him on a plane back to Belize, McAfee collapsed and was rushed to the hospital on Dec. 12, 2012. McAfee later admitted to faking a heart attack.



The delay allowed his lawyer to file an appeal, and McAfee was granted a stay of deportation to Belize.



McAfee was eventually deported to Miami, Florida.



While in Miami, McAfee met his current wife Janice Dyson, who was a prostitute at the time.



June 2013



McAfee posted a parody video online explaining how to uninstall McAfee Anti-Virus in June 2013. At the time, the company that owned the software called the video "ludicrous."



Sept. 28, 2013



McAfee spoke at the C2SV conference in Silicon Valley, announcing plans for a new company, Future Tense Central.



August 2015



McAfee was pulled over and arrested by Tennessee state troopers for DUI and gun possession in August 2015. He pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and has yet to get his license back.



He claims he wasnt drunk but that he was high on Xanax, which he said a doctor had just prescribed him.



2016



Nanette Bursteins documentary Gringo is released in September 2016. The film includes interviews where people implicated McAfee in Faulls murder for the first time .



McAfee's beachfront caretaker, Cassian Chavarria, alleged in the film that McAfee paid someone to have Faull killed.



He said, 'Take this $5,000 and go put it in this guys account,'  Chavarria said in an interview in Gringo.



Chavarria said the man who got the money called him late the night of the murder. The supposed killer denied killing Faull and said Chavarrias story was untrue.



McAfee recently laughed off the documentary and accused Burstein of paying Chavarria and others who appear in the film to tell lies.



He posted multiple videos online where Chavarria and others took back what they said in the documentary.



Burstein denied paying for any interviews, though she did pay for some photos. She claims McAfee was the only one who paid for a story, pressuring Chavarria to recant.



[Chavarria] said, Someone showed up at my house who works for John, and they offered me thousands of dollars to say this,'  Burstein told 20/20.



McAfee denies paying Chavarria and others to recant their interviews with Burstein. McAfee also denies hiring a hit man to kill Faull.



An attorney for Chavarria and three others featured in the film held a press conference in Belize City shortly after the film was released, in which they all claimed they had lied in the documentary to get money from filmmakers for their interviews. Chavarria also denied that McAfee had paid him to recant.



This same year, McAfee ran to become the Libertarian Party candidate for president, finishing as the runner-up to Gary Johnson.



May 2017



McAfee is the CEO of MGT Capital, a company that invests in cybersecurity. He spoke to ABC News Matt Gutman in an interview that will air on ABC News 20/20 on Friday, May 12, at 10 p.m. ET.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 16:24:04|Editor: ying

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WASHINGTON, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States is to send delegates to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing scheduled for May 14-15, the U.S. government said on Thursday night.

The United States "recognizes the importance" of China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and it will send delegates to attend the forum, according to a statement released by the U.S. Commerce Department.

At the upcoming forum, all parties will identify major cooperative projects, set up working groups and establish an investment cooperation center. They will also sign financing agreements to support their cooperative projects.

During a meeting at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump that China welcomes U.S. participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.

In about one month following the meeting between the two leaders, the United States and China have also reached consensus on initial commitments in areas such as agricultural trade, financial services and energy to boost economic cooperation under a 100-day plan, according to the Commerce Department.

Under the agreement, the United States welcomes China to receive imports of liquefied natural gas from the United States, and the two countries will work to resolve outstanding issues for the import of China origin cooked poultry to the United States "as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, U.S. federal regulatory authorities remain committed to apply in the United States the same bank prudential supervisory and regulatory standards to Chinese banking institutions as to other foreign banking institutions, the Commerce Department said.

Currently, more than 100 countries and international organizations have voiced their support for the Belt and Road Initiative, among which more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013 and comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along, and beyond, the ancient Silk Road trade routes.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 16:43:49|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Rising numbers of people are being infected with a parasitic worm known as anisakis after eating seafood that hasn't been frozen or heated properly, local media reported Friday.

Reported cases of anisakis infection surged to 124 in 2016 from six in 2007, according to figures from the health ministry, with the results leading to the ministry urging consumers to heat or freeze properly seafood before consuming it and to carry out visual inspections for the existence of the parasitic worm.

The worm itself can grow to be as long as 2 to 3 cm long, the ministry said. Its larvae infect the intestines of such fish as mackerel, bonito, salmon, squid and saury, before moving into the fish's muscles when they die.

The affects of anisakis infection can manifest as acute abdominal pain as anisakis invades the host's digestive system.

But the larva die when cooked properly or frozen for more than a day at minus 20 degrees Celsius, the health ministry said.

A spokesperson from the the National Institute of Infectious Diseases said that an increase in raw seafood being transported across Japan rather than being transported in a frozen state, was likely the cause of the spike in cases of anisakis infection.

The spokesperson said that around 7,000 people were likely being infected with anisakis a year, based on medical bills examined from between 2005 and 2011.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 16:53:55|Editor: xuxin

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MOSUL, Iraq, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi paramilitary units of Hashd Shaabi units launched an operation on Friday to free areas near the Iraqi-Syrian border from Islamic State (IS) militants, the Iraqi military said.

"The predominantly Shiite units, backed by the army's helicopters, advanced at 5:30 a.m. local time (0330 GMT) from several directions to the west to free the vast IS-held areas near the border with Syria, including the towns of al-Qairawan and Baaj," Abdul-Amir Yarallah from the Joint Operations Command said in a statement.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Hashd Shaabi units, said in another statement that the paramilitary units are still surrounding the IS-held town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, and part of the units headed to the west in carrying out the first phase of a major offensive that aims at securing the border areas with Syria.

The paramilitary units freed at least four villages and are fighting at the edges of two others around the IS-held town of al-Qairawan, which locates in the rugged sprawling area west of Tal Afar, according to the Hashd Shaabi statement.

The units and the army's helicopters destroyed at least five suicide car bombs trying to hit the advanced units, and two IS vehicles during sporadic fierce clashes with IS militants, the statement said.

The operation would enable the Hashd Shaabi units to secure the border areas between Iraq and neighboring Syria and cut off the IS supply routes between Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of IS self-declared caliphate.

The operation came as the Iraqi security forces, backed by anti-IS international coalition, are carrying out a major offensive to dislodge IS militants from their major stronghold in the western side of Mosul in northern Iraq.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 17:09:30|Editor: ying

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Beata Szydlo is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on China and Poland to increase cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15.

Noting that Poland was among the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China, Xi said China views Poland as an important partner for cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and within the European Union.

China is willing to work with Poland to further enrich their comprehensive strategic partnership, by maintaining high-level exchanges between the two countries, and expanding dialogue between their governments, legislative bodies and political parties, Xi said.

They should base bilateral ties on mutual respect and equality to make sure that China-Poland relations continue healthy and stable development, he said.

The Chinese president highlighted environmental protection, finance, high-tech industries, infrastructure and logistics as areas where China and Poland could step up collaboration.

Both sides should foster more balanced development in bilateral trade, enhance cooperation in sectors such as culture, education and tourism, as well as between local governments, and boost people-to-people exchanges between the two countries, he said.

Xi went on to say that China appreciates Poland's active support and participation in building the Belt and Road, and said both countries should identify more areas where their respective development strategies converge.

He also expressed hope that Poland will play a positive role in promoting China-EU relations.

According to Xi, China sees the 16+1 cooperation between China and 16 CEE countries as an important gateway to incorporate the Belt and Road Initiative into the European economic community, a priority platform to step up China-EU ties, as well as a new engine to drive China-EU cooperation.

China hopes Poland will continue its work to help expand the 16+1 cooperation, build the Belt and Road and boost China-EU cooperation in the CEE region, he said.

For her part, Szydlo said Xi's visit to Poland in June last year had significantly promoted bilateral ties and win-win cooperation between the two sides.

She said the Belt and Road Initiative is of key importance to not only Poland's, but also the world's balanced and sustainable development.

Poland is willing to actively cooperate under the Belt and Road framework in areas such as infrastructure, and to collaborate with relevant parties in cultural, investment, high-tech and tourism sectors, Szydlo said, adding that all these will contribute to trade and connectivity between China and Poland as well as Europe at large

In a separate meeting with Szydlo also on Friday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged China and Poland to make full use of regular meetings between the Chinese premier and Polish prime minister and other mechanisms and platforms, to dovetail their development strategies and boost connectivity and bilateral trade.

The two countries should work together in areas such as infrastructure and energy, and seek collaboration with third-party markets, Li said, adding that efforts should also be made to foster new growth engines in emerging sectors.

Szydlo said Poland is willing to maintain its close high-level exchanges with China, and to achieve mutual benefits via infrastructure construction, industrial and agricultural cooperation, as well as expanded cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

A series of bilateral cooperation documents covering environmental protection and tourism were signed after the meeting.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 17:14:34|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Haidian district in northwest Beijing sees opportunity in China's Belt and Road infrastructure project and wants companies based in its hi-tech park to get in on the action.

Yu Jun is the head of the Haidian district that hosts Zhongguancun, a National Innovation Model Park with more than 7,500 high-tech firms.

Ahead of the two-day Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation to be opened on May 14 in Beijing, Yu told Xinhua in an interview that his local government has been focused on supporting the overseas ventures of some companies under the initiative.

The Belt and Road Initiative includes the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. It was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013 with the aim of building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along ancient trade routes.

According to Yu, Haidian has set up the Zhongguancun Belt and Road Industrial Promotion Association, and is trying to build it into a service platform to boost international cooperation and help businesses tap into global markets.

Haidian is also building links between its high-tech firms and commerce departments at foreign embassies in China as well as overseas financial and legal bodies in the form of forums and seminars.

So far, the district has held 19 such events in areas like design and innovation, international technology transfer, energy conservation, environmental protection, and bio-pharmaceutical, Yu said, adding that these events have helped many companies find foreign partners on belt and road projects.

Yu's package of proposals also attaches great importance to training and recuiting talent.

He said the district holds training sessions annually for its firms. Recently, it has put forward a program called the "Cirrus Project" to provide talent for Chinese enterprises, and to offer foreign students jobs and internships.

Haidian also seeks to offer financial support for the Chinese firms trying to do business in countries along the Belt and Road.

Yu said his district also holds information sessions on managing external debt, foreign currencies, and acquisitions in foreign lands.

Yu said Shengjing360 Science and Technology Co. Ltd, a Chinese enterprise services platform based in Haidian, has set up a 1.5 billion-U.S.-dollar innovation investment fund in Israel to promote future cooperation between Chinese and Israeli companies regarding industry tie-in, markets and capital.

"We hope to build Haidian into a bridgehead to better serve its high-tech firms in their participation of the Belt and Road Initiative," Yu said.

He also hoped his district's efforts can benefit more countries along the Belt and Road and bring companies fresh opportunities to gain market access and grow.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 17:34:52|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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SINGAPORE, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China has made innovations to the mode of economic globalization, said a renowned scholar here in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The initiative has a wide-ranging influence, not limited in the economic aspect, said Zheng Yongnian, professor and director of East Asian Institute at National University of Singapore.

It can also be conducive to stablizing the ties between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), he said.

For China, the Belt and Road Initiative is a public property, by the running of which big countries offer more, while small countries are welcome to join in, he said.

The initiative also features the notion of openness, inclusiveness and creativity, Zheng said.

"We can say that the initiative has made innovations to the mode of economic globalization. The past mode of economic globalization created wealth but led to imparity of social allocation. The China-proposed initiative pays attention to infrastructure construction, which can promote social economic development and bring benefit to many people," Zheng said, adding this is a new approach of economic globalization different from old ways.

Due to the concept of openness and inclusiveness the Belt and Road Initiative upholds, it has been echoed and joined by an increasing number of countries, he said.

Those who have not get included in the initiative are getting nervous, hoping to align with it, he said.

Zheng also noted that Singapore can play an big role in the initiative.

"It can be the gate that China approaches ASEAN and other countries and vise versa," he said, adding that Singapore enjoys broad prospects of cooperation with China within the Belt and Road framework.

As a financial center of Southeast Asia, Singapore also has many things to do since the Belt and Road Initiative will necessarily involve huge amounts of funding which can be a breakthrough of China-Singapore cooperation, he said.

The scholar expressed the hope that the initiative would become a role model for new-type economic globalization as well as a major platform for regional and global cooperation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 18:00:13|Editor: xuxin

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LANZHOU, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Global warming may affect the grasslands on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, says a study by researchers from China and the United States.

Warming could also threaten the ability of farmers and herders to maintain the animals that are key to their existence, while upsetting the ecology of an area where important river systems rise, according to the study, published in the journal Nature Communications.

The study involved factors likely to vary with higher temperatures and unpredictable rainfall, over a five-year period.

"Our results suggest that with a warmer climate, the ecosystem would provide less forage in drought years, and more biomass production in wet years, which is undesirable," said Jin-Sheng He, a professor in the Department of Ecology, College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University.

Reduced stability could mean the alpine ecosystem is not able to provide stable forage for livestock, he said, Reduced stability may also have consequences for climate regulation and water conservation.

While the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is uniquely large and high, there are other areas of the world with similar conditions, said professor Lin Jiang of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"If these findings can be applied to other alpine ecosystems. We need to be concerned about large variations in biomass production in these areas," Jiang said.

The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau covers an area of about 2.5 million square kilometers with summer highs seldom rising above 25 degrees Celsius and night temperatures often below freezing. About 9.8 million people live there.

The research was conducted by Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Georgia Institute of Technology, supported by the National Basic Research Program of China, the National Nature Science Foundation of China, and U.S. National Science Foundation.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 18:15:23|Editor: xuxin

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SINGAPORE, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Singapore shares closed 0.48 percent lower on Friday, after U.S. stocks fell on Thursday amid political uncertainty in Washington.

Wall Street was also dragged by drops in share prices of several large department stores which reported worse-than-expected sales declines.

The political drama in Washington continued as U.S. President Donald Trump called ousted Federal Bureau Investigation(FBI) chief James Comey a "showboat" and a "grandstander." But his attack was swiftly met with resistance from acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who pledged that an investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia would proceed.

Maybank Kim Eng Research said "the Straits Times Index has rallied 4.6 percent almost uninterruptedly over the past three weeks and a pause is overdue. Immediate resistance for the index is at 3,290 points with underlying support at 3,212 points."

Singapore's benchmark Straits Times Index fell 15.82 points to 3,255.29 points. Trading volume was 2.18 billion shares worth 1.44 billion Singapore dollars. Decliners outnumbered advancers 307 to 168.

OCBC Bank fell 0.1 percent to 10.55 Singapore dollars. It announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire National Australia Bank (NAB)'s Private Wealth business in Singapore and Hong Kong.

As at end February 2017, the business comprises a mortgage portfolio amounting to about 2.39 billion Singapore dollars worth of mainly residential mortgage loans, and a deposit portfolio made up of about 4.28 billion Singapore dollars worth of deposits of a mix of currencies.

The business serves a total of about 11,000 customers across the two markets, primarily from the affluent segment. The purchase consideration will be at around the book value, or net asset value, of the business at the date of completion.

Wilmar International jumped 9.6 percent to 3.76 Singapore dollars. It reported first-quarter core net profit jumped 40.5 percent to 312.6 million U.S. dollars on improved performance across most key segments except sugar. Its quarterly revenue also grew 17.4 percent to 10.6 billion U.S. dollars from higher commodity prices and stronger volumes by its tropical oils and sugar businesses.

Among top gainers, Jardine Strategic rose 0.5 percent to 42.38 U.S. dollars, whereas Jardine Cycle and Carriage became one of the top losers by falling 0.9 percent to 46.49 Singapore dollars. (1 U.S. dollar equals to 1.41 Singapore dollars)
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 18:15:27|Editor: xuxin

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BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- As the popularity of the Belt and Road (B&R) grows, so do the attendant misconceptions and occasional outright lies.

One of the the most popular myths is that of China's "chequebook diplomacy."

A recent article in the Deccan Chronicle suggested that "China is using 'cheque book diplomacy' to make friends and also acquire real estate in strategically-located foreign lands" as part of the B&R strategy.

The comment comes as China begins to flex its considerable economic muscles and play a more central role in global economic affairs and governance, as it rightly should, given its status as the world's second largest economy and a driving force behind world growth.

It is not the first time the phrase has been aired, with Reuters describing the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in 2015 as the time when "China's chequebook diplomacy came of age," and the Financial Times reporting in 2016 that "China tries chequebook diplomacy in Southeast Asia."

"Chequebook" invokes the feeling of money that can be disposed of at the government's discretion or whim, without any real expectation of a return. In this sense, that could describe almost all international aid whereby the haves gift or loan some of their national wealth to the have-nots.

But unlike traditional aid from the West, China seldom gives budgetary support or other forms of monetary donations to foreign governments. Suitcases bulging with cash are not the Chinese way. China prefers to see itself as a country that "teaches men to fish" rather that one which simply dishes up plates of fish and chips.

B&R deals are predominantly cooperation projects, but not grandiose development plans, which with an accompanying nudge and a wink, foisted on recipients with a "nanny knows best" attitude. China first finds out what recipient countries need, and then works with those countries to help them, as far as possible, to fulfill their own goals, under their own steam, with China's support.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE CRONIES GONE?

Secondly, chequebook diplomacy implies dangling some vague economic benefit in front of a needy country's eyes and expecting to curry diplomatic favor in return.

China is not trying to buy friends.

This is no Marshall Plan.

China does not have a clique of allies to cajole or enemies to coerce. The Belt and Road is open to all. The benefits are open to all. Investment is open to all. What is good for one's neighbor, generally, is good for oneself.

The B&R is not some geopolitical Mexican stand-off. No participating country, for example, has been asked to choose sides. B&R countries cooperate for mutual economic benefit, not to forge alliances, nor to separate insiders from outsiders.

NO FREE LUNCH

Finally, chequebook diplomacy is a denial of the profitability of most B&R projects. The B&R is not a philanthropic fiction. It is a sound business project created with the intention of making profits for investors and stake-holders.

Loans and investment are not aid. Loans need to be serviced and repaid. Even policy banks are not inclined to lend money to non-bankable projects.

A development bank is still a bank, not a charity or a protection racket. Some large infrastructure projects lose money at the beginning, but banks do not lend to projects that do not have capacity to turn a profit in the long run.

This is also the case with investment, which cannot be forced on a company. It is China's private companies which are leading the investment drive, running ahead of state firms in outbound investment.

Companies invest because they see opportunities, not because the government asks them to do so. They use their shareholders' money to make the best, sustainable return for them as they can.

What is wrong with countries striking mutually beneficial deals? Perhaps the problem is that the deals China strikes nowadays are often quite big. But are not the problems the developing world faces "quite big"?

Many rich, developed countries in the West have had ample opportunities to solve the massive problems which beset poor countries, but for whatever reasons, these problems persist.

Should the world's second largest economy -- so recently a genuinely poor nation itself -- not be applauded for trying to use some of its new-found wealth to help build a better world?

China is not coming to solve the problems of others, but stands ready to help others solve their own.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 18:45:49|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Senior Chinese leaders on Friday met separately with visiting Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, pledging to boost the bilateral "comradely and brotherly" ties.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said China-Vietnam relations have shown positive signs as the two countries are committed to long-term friendship.

During Quang's visit to China, the two presidents have met, a number of bilateral agreements have been signed, and a joint communique issued, noted Zhang, who urged the people of both countries to advance all-around strategic cooperation.

Quang said Vietnam is willing to consolidate Vietnam-China comradely and brotherly friendship to ensure healthy, stable and lasting bilateral relations.

Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said China and Vietnam are good neighbors, have the same political system, face common development challenges and have positive cooperation prospects.

Yu said the two countries should seize the opportunity of building the Belt and Road Initiative to expand bilateral cooperation. He said the CPPCC will continue to work closely with Vietnam Fatherland Front to share ideas on political consultation and promote people-to-people exchanges.

Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said China and Vietnam have a shared future and the two countries should help each other through good and bad times.

Liu also mentioned the need to promote people-to-people exchanges to increase the understanding and relations between the two peoples.

Quang is on a state visit to China from May 11 to 15, and will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 18:50:54|Editor: Zhang Dongmiao

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VIENTIANE, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative has been providing new impetus for the China-Laos economic cooperation.

"The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative plays a significant role in promoting economic development and enhancing the China-Laos relations," Economic and Commercial Counselor of Chinese Embassy in Laos Wang Qihui told Xinhua on Friday.

According to the statistics from Chinese government, in 2016, the import and export volume between China and Laos was 2.34 billion U.S. dollars, with which China has become Laos's second largest trading partner.

Last year, Chinese companies signed 6.7 billion dollars worth of construction project contracts in Laos, with an increase of 30.1 percent, which made Laos rank China's third largest market among ASEAN countries.

By the end of 2016, China remained Laos's largest foreign investor with 5.4 billion dollars direct investment. At the same time, China has become the largest donor in laos.

Specifically, Counselor Wang said, the initiative receives positive response and support from the people and government of Laos and has yielded fruitful results.

Firstly, the two sides have made effective cooperation in regard to interconnection. The China-Laos railway has been constructed in full swing since last December, while China helped Laos successfully launched its first satellite in November, 2015.

Secondly, the two sides actively promote industrial capacity investment, energy exploration and infrastructure building. The Nam Ou Cascade Hydropower Projects, with a total investment of 1.698 billion dollars and a total installed capacity of 1,272 MW, is the first project that Chinese enterprises have obtained the whole basin development right for planning and development.

Thirdly, the two sides actively promote cooperation in economic development parks, such as the Saysettha Comprehensive Economic Development Zone in capital Vientiane and the Mohan-Boten cross-border economic cooperation zone.

"As an old saying in China goes like 'good timing, geographical convenience and support of people', which is exactly how the Belt and Road Initiative has fits in the Laos," when referring to the achievement and the prospects of the Initiative in Laos, Counselor Wang explained.

The good timing means the Belt and Road Initiative highly fits Lao policy of changing a "land-locked" country into a "land-linked" country. What's more, the two economies are mutually complementary since Laos is in needs of funding, technology and talents which China is ready to provide, Wang said.

The Geographical convenience means China and Laos are good neighbors as the China-Laos railway will further improve traffic conditions and economic ties between the two countries.

In addition, the two nations enjoy comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership since 2009. In recent years, leaders of the two countries have exchanged frequent visits and deepened friendly exchanges and cooperation in political, economic, cultural and other fields.

"We believe that the Belt and Road Initiative will boost Lao economic development and benefit the two peoples," Wang said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:06:15|Editor: Hou Qiang

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BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States will send representatives to the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told a press conference Friday.

The forum, scheduled for May 14-15 in Beijing, will be a high-profile international meeting on the Belt and Road Initiative since China proposed it in 2013.

"The United States has recognized the importance of the Belt and Road Initiative," said Zhu.

China welcomes all countries, including the United States, to take part in the open and inclusive initiative, which will be conducive to the people's well-being and the world's peace and development, said Zhu.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a broad road in building "a community of common destiny for mankind," a goal that requires efforts from all countries, he said.

Both China and the United States should make their own contributions, he added.

Zhu also confirmed the initial results of a 100-day action plan for China-U.S. comprehensive economic dialogue, covering agriculture, financial services, investment and energy.

Some highlights of the outcome are that China will allow imports of U.S. beef; the United States is to import poultry from China. The United States expects China and other partners to import liquefied natural gas and China will allow wholly foreign-funded financial services to provide credit ratings in China.

Most of the agreements are expected to be implemented by July 16, Zhu said.

The two sides will begin discussion of a one-year plan on bilateral economic cooperation, according to him.

"The 100-day action plan's transformation from concept to practice shows the plan is feasible." Yu Jianhua, vice commerce minister, told the press conference.

Calling for extensive consultation, joint contributions and shared benefits, the Belt and Road Initiative focuses on promoting policy coordination, connectivity of infrastructure and facilities, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and closer people-to-people ties.

A total of 29 heads of state and government leaders will attend the forum.

More than 1,500 delegates, including officials, academics, entrepreneurs, representatives of financial institutions and media organizations from 130 nations, as well as representatives from more than 70 international organizations, will also attend.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:06:20|Editor: Hou Qiang

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Jargaltulga Erdenebat is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that Mongolia is welcome to actively participate in construction of the Belt and Road.

China supports Mongolia's efforts to be a bridge linking European and Asian continents, Xi told Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 to 15.

The two countries should cooperate on areas including trade and investment, connectivity, agriculture and animal breeding, industrial capacity, and energy, so that the Belt and Road Initiative and Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative can be effectively dovetailed, Xi said.

He called for efforts to promote the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor to boost the common development of the three nations.

Xi said the Chinese side attaches great importance to the development of China-Mongolia ties. Both sides should uphold the principles of mutual trust, cooperation and win-win outcome, and take opportunities to broaden exchanges and cooperation in various fields and push forward their comprehensive strategic partnership.

He stressed that the developmental prospects for China-Mongolia ties are broad, adding that the two sides should care for each other's core interests and major concerns and deepen mutual trust to ensure that the development of bilateral ties will not deviate from the right track.

The president called for facilitating the study of a free trade zone and cross-border economic cooperation, and promoting cooperation on major mineral industry programs and infrastructure connectivity.

Efforts should also be made to increase exchanges between youth, media and local authorities, Xi said.

Erdenebat said carrying out friendly cooperation with China is a priority for Mongolia. The country adheres to the one-China policy, and is willing to strengthen bilateral high-level exchanges, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

The prime minister said Mongolia understands the significance of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is open and inclusive, in solving the unbalanced and unstable development of mankind and boosting world peace and development.

Mongolia is willing to be a bridge linking European and Asian continents and will actively participate in mutually beneficial cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, Erdenebat said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with his Mongolian counterpart later Friday. Li said China is willing to invest more in the construction of China-Mongolia border ports, cross-border economic and trade cooperation, and work on a joint feasibility study on a China-Mongolia free trade zone.

Li said the cooperation consensus reached by the two sides on housing construction, processing of agricultural and animal products and use of energy should be implemented to achieve a win-win outcome and common development.

Erdenebat said Mongolia respects China's core interests and appreciates its good-neighborly and friendly diplomacy.

He added that Mongolia is willing to strengthen practical cooperation with China on areas including minerals, agriculture and animal breeding, housing, construction of border ports, cross-border trade, environmental protection, and renewable energy.

After their meeting, Li and Erdenebat witnessed the inking of documents related to areas including bilateral economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:16:26|Editor: xuxin

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JAKARTA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The governments of Indonesia and Chile on Friday expected to complete the negotiation of comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA) between the two nations at the end of this year.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo met with his Chilean counterpart Veronica Michelle Bachelet at the State Palace on Friday, pledging to bring bilateral cooperation on trade, investment and maritime to a higher level.

"We expect the negotiation on CEPA cooperation, particularly on trade and goods can be concluded this year," President Widodo said.

The president disclosed that Chile is the third biggest trade partner for Indonesia in South America, which is a potential non-traditional market for Indonesia's products.

Chile is a hub for Indonesia's products to enter the markets in the Latin America, according to Indonesian trade ministry.

"The issues of trade and investment are the major topic in our meeting. Currently Indonesia is attempting to boost trade and investment, Chile is one of the priorities," President Widodo said.

Michele kicked off her two-day visit in Indonesia on Thursday by bringing scores of heads of business organizations and businessmen.

The trade volume between Indonesia and Chile was 227.15 million U.S. dollars in 2016 with Indonesia's total export 143.81 million dollars, according to data from Indonesian trade ministry.

Indonesia exports footwear, automotive products, derivative product of crude palm oil and vegetable oil to Chile, and imports coppers and foods for fish from the country, according to the ministry.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:21:08|Editor: xuxin

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ISLAMABAD, May 12 (Xinhua) -- At least 17 people were killed and 30 others including deputy chairman of Pakistan's Senate injured when his convoy came under attack in the Mastung district of the country's southwest Balochistan Province on Friday afternoon, local media and officials said.

The deputy medical superintendent of the Mastung Civil Hospital, where all the victims were initially shifted to, confirmed that they have received 17 bodies, according to local reports.

Local Urdu TV channel Geo said that 30 people have been injured in the attack, and out of them, the seriously wounded victims were referred to hospitals in provincial capital of Quetta.

A state of emergency has been declared in all state-run hospitals in Quetta, located some 50 km away from Mastung.

Deputy Inspector Police of Quetta said that Molana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the Pakistan's Upper House, got slightly injured after being hit by glass of broken windows of his car.

He said that the senator was on his way to attend some function in a seminary when his convoy came under attack.

Deputy Police Officer of Mastung Ghazanfar Ali said that Haideri's vehicle got completely damaged and his driver and personal assistant were also killed in the attack.

He said that the senator remained safe, as he was not sitting in his own car.

Ali said that the blast seems to be carried out by a suicide bomber, however, further investigations are being made into the incident.

No group has claimed the attack yet.
A worker shows the 101.73-carat diamond to the media at the Christie in Geneva, Switzerland, April 30, 2013. (Xinhua/Wang Siwei)

FREETOWN, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Sierra Leone government, through the Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources, on Thursday rejected bids tendered by potential buyers for the 709.41-carat uncut diamond discovered in March.

Five bidders were announced with the highest bid tendered by Raydiam B.V.B.A with 7,077,777 U.S. dollars.

The ceremony took place at the Bank of Sierra Leone Complex, Kingtom in Freetown.

The gem, weighing 709.41 carats, is the second largest precious stone ever found in Sierra Leone and put on the market for international competitive bidding.

Director General of the National Minerals Agency Sahr Wonday said the bids submitted were below the government's reserve price.

"I regret to announce that none of these bids met government's reserve price. Similar bidding exercise would be reopened in due course and the public would be informed accordingly. We encourage all today's bidders to review their bids and participate in the next round," he said.

The diamond was discovered by Pastor Emmanuel A. Momoh in Koryardu village, Tankoro chiefdom Kono district, eastern Sierra Leone, on March 14, 2017.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:36:16|Editor: xuxin

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TOKYO, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party's coalition Komeito ally on Friday expressed reticence to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent push to amend the nation's pacifist constitution to be ratified by 2020.

Yoshihisa Inoue, Komeito's Secretary General, told a press conference on the matter that there are no immediate security-related reasons why a key pacifist clause in the constitution should be revised.

"We're not in a situation in which we will face immediate problems in our security due to the lack of reference to the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in Article 9 of the Constitution," Inoue said, adding that a time frame on revising the constitution should not be set.

Abe in a video message last week said he wanted to revise Japan's supreme charter to specifically mention the Self-Defense Forces in Article 9 and for this to be enforced form 2020.

The move sparked widespread controversy, with both ruling and opposition party members, civilians here and the international community voicing concern that any revision to Article 9 could lessen constraints on the SDF and see their use of force legitimized in overseas missions for the first time since World War II.

Abe said he partly intended the proposal to trigger debate on the controversial topic in parliament which has made little progress and seen a meeting of the Constitution Commission of the House of Representatives postponed due to the ongoing contention.

But the prime minister's suggestions that he wants to legally clarify the existence of the SDF without changing the pacifist nature of the constitution has been called into question by civic groups and constitutional scholars, as well as party members, who have voiced concern that the prime minister is attempting to "steamroll" the issue.

Article 9 of Japan's pacifist Constitution states that "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."

It goes on to state that... "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

To date since it being sanctioned at the end of WWII, the pacifist charter has been interpreted by the government as not prohibiting Japan from maintaining forces of strictly a defensive nature. But further interpretations during Abe's tenure have led to new, controversial security legislation which allows for an expanded operational scope of the SDF.

Increased defense spending of late and the deployment of Japanese military hardware for joint drills outside of Japan's territory has caused great consternation to the people of Japan who for seven decades have enjoyed peace ensured by the pacifist charter.

Any amendments or revisions to the pacifist constitution could lead Japan into war, scholars have attested, and along with the majority of the public, have called for the charter and its current pacifist clauses to be upheld and the SDF to have their activities restricted as per the war-renouncing constitution.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:41:45|Editor: liuxin

Photo taken with mobile phone shows people gather at the blast site in southwest Pakistan's Mastung, on May 12, 2017. A deadly attack targeted on the country's Senate's deputy chairman's convoy in southwestern province of Balochistan, leaving least 25 dead and 35 others injured, according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office. (Xinhua/Stringer)

ISLAMABAD, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday condemned the deadly attack targeted on the country's Senate's deputy chairman's convoy in southwestern province of Balochistan, leaving least 25 dead and 35 others injured, according to a statement by the Prime Minister's Office.

The statement said that Sharif wished a speedy recovery to the Senate's deputy chairman and other wounded people. He also directed hospital administration to provide best possible medical treatment to the injured.

Deputy chairman of the Senate were slightly injured but in safe conditions, according to local reports.

The attack took place when Molana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman, was on way to some function and his convoy came under attack in the Mastung district the day afternoon, local media and officials said.

Dr. Sher Zaman, the Health officer of Mastung, said that the killed people included people of all ages and at least 10 among the injured victims are in critical condition.

Deputy Inspector Police Quetta, said that Haideri got slightly injured in the attack after being hit by glass of broken windows of his car.

Local Samaa News said that the senator's convoy was targeted at the main highway shortly after it left a mosque after Friday prayers.

Most of the victims belonged to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUIF), a religious political party Haideri is associated with.

The JUIF spokesperson said that the senator and his party members were returning after attending an event at Ittehad Bainul Muslimeen seminary at Hammadia mosque.

Deputy Police Officer at Mastung Ghazanfar Ali said that Haideri's vehicle got completely damaged and his driver and personal assistant were also killed in the attack.

He said that the senator remained safe, as he was not sitting in his own car.

Ali said that the blast seems to be carried out by a suicide bomber, however, further investigations are being made into the incident.

The injured people were shifted to Mastung Civil Hospital from where the seriously wounded victims were referred to hospitals in provincial capital of Quetta, located some 50 km away from Mastung.

The country's President Mamnoon Hussain also condemned the attack.

A state of emergency has been declared in all state-run hospitals in Mastung and Quetta.

No group has claimed the attack yet.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:46:48|Editor: Hou Qiang

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FUZHOU, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Serving kung fu tea and speaking a south Fujian dialect, Guo Jingzhuan, 52, a ship owner from Shiyu village in east China's Fujian Province, is proud of his seafaring ancestry.

Almost all the residents in his village are descended from Arabian merchants, who travelled to Quanzhou hundreds of years ago, when the city was one of the world's most vibrant ports. Guo is planning to buy another 10,000-tonne freighter later this year to join what he calls the "100,000 tonnes shipping club."

Quanzhou's shipping industry is booming. As one of the original starting points of the ancient maritime shipping routes, it wants to become an important point along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

SEA WATER IN BLOOD

Located at the estuary of Quanzhou Bay, Shiyu is next to the historical Shihu port, also known as Lin Luan wharf, after the voyager who built it in the eighth century.

Abandoned many years ago, the historic wharf was the first in Quanzhou to accommodate foreign trade ships. Pointing at two islets in the distance and the 800-year-old Liusheng Tower on a nearby hill, Guo Zhimeng, the village Communist Party chief, proudly explained how they have served as navigational marks for centuries.

The ancient maritime Silk Route was a crucial network for trade and cultural exchanges between China's coastal regions and countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.

According to Ding Yuling, curator of Quanzhou Maritime Museum, a large number of Arabian and Persian merchants sailed to Quanzhou via the route in the eighth century.

During its heyday from the 11th through the 14th centuries, the city grew into the largest settlement of Arabians and Persians in Far East. Some of them stayed permanently, married local Chinese, and integrated into the community. Most of the residents of Shiyu are descended from these seafarers.

"My family has been in the shipping business for centuries; there must be sea water in my blood," said Guo Jingzhuan.

His great-grandfather spent most of his life at sea, and as a child Guo heard about his ancestor's many adventures including being raided by pirates in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and loosing a cargo of tea seed and soil destroyed by Japanese invaders in the 1940s.

Inspired by those stories, Guo Jingzhuan became a sailor at the age of 17 and dreamt of building his own shipping empire. He borrowed money to buy several village-owned boats and start his own shipping company in 1996.

Like their seafaring forefathers, Shiyu residents are born sailors. Eighty percent of the 5,000 villagers are in shipping industry. According to Ding, today some 50,000 Quanzhou residents are descended from Arabian merchants, especially those with the surnames Ding, Guo and Pu.

REVIVE THE ANCIENT PORT

In 1417, Chinese explorer Zheng He stationed his formidable fleet in Quanzhou waiting for wind to begin another expedition. He visited Guo Zhongyuan, a local businessman of Arabian descent for advice.

Some 600 years after the hustle and bustle of Zheng's fleet, the modern port of Quanzhou remains a hive of activity.

Guo Jingzhuan's childhood dream has come true: through 20 years of hard work he has grown his company of small bulk cargo boats.

There are over a dozen shipping companies based in Shiyu, accounting for two thirds of Quanzhou's shipping capacity. The most successful is Quanzhou Ansheng Shipping, owned by brothers Guo Dongze and Guo Dongsheng. The company now ranks the third largest in China and 24th largest worldwide.

The booming shipping industry offers a glimpse of a thriving city endeavoring to revive itself as an internationally important port. The port's annual throughput has surpassed 100 million tonnes for five consecutive years, and it has grown into an important point of transit for ships bound for and coming from Southeast Asia.

On Tomb Sweeping Day, a traditional Chinese festival to pay respect to ancestors, Guo Jingzhuan and other villagers visit the Guo family shrine in nearby Baiqi, where some Arabic inscriptions detailing their family's origins have been preserved.

Apart from these inscriptions there are few cultural traces of the villagers Arabic ancestry which have been replaced over time by regional dialects, and Chinese customs.

"But our seafaring spirit will never change; we are proud of our merchant ancestors," said Guo Jingzhuan.

The next generation is continuing the connection to the seas. Guo Jingzhuan's son is now getting hands on experience on ships and hopes to inherit the family business someday.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 19:56:26|Editor: xuxin

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MOSUL, Iraq, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi forces battling Islamic State (IS) militants on Friday seized new areas at the ninth day of a new push that initiated new fronts in the northwestern edge of IS stronghold in the western side of Mosul, the Iraqi military said.

The special forces of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) took control of the first part of Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood after defeating IS militants in heavy street-to-street clashes during the past 24 hours, the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.

During the day, the troops crossed the main road that divides the Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood to al-Oula in the south and al-Thania in the north and started new push into the Islah al-Ziraie al-Thania or the second, it said.

On Thursday, the CTS Commander Abdul Ghani al-Asadi told reporters that the CTS troops made a significant progress in Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood, located at the edge of several adjacent IS-held neighborhoods.

"The troops recaptured large part of Islah al-Ziraie (al-Oula) neighborhood, and we could have recaptured the whole neighborhoods, but the presence of civilians forced us to stop the progress, to make it safe for the families to leave their homes in the battlefield," Asadi said.

Meanwhile, the elite forces of the federal police, known as Rapid Response, backed by the army's armored and infantry forces cleared Harmat neighborhood from IS militants and continued house-to-house battles as they push into the adjacent neighborhoods of Iqtisadiyn and 17th July, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarallah, from the Joint Operations Command (JOC), said in a separate statement.

On May 4, the Iraqi army and Rapid Response special forces pushed on the new front from the northwestern edge of Mosul toward the areas of Mushairfah, Kanisah and Harmat in the northern part of the western side of the city.

The new push was aimed at helping the special forces of the CTS and the interior ministry federal police, who are making slow progress in the southern part of Mosul's western side because of the stiff resistance of the militants in the densely-populated areas of the old city center, where roughly 400,000 residents are believed to still be trapped under IS rule.

The troops are now pushing to seize the remaining neighborhoods in north and northwest of the city center to tighten noose around the IS redoubt in the city center in the western side of Mosul, including the old areas around the historical al-Nuri Mosque in the middle of Mosul's old city center.

Late in January, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, declared the liberation of Mosul's eastern side, or the left bank of Tigris, after over 100 days of fighting IS militants.

On February 19, Abadi announced the start of an offensive to drive extremist militants out of the western side of Mosul, locally known as the right bank of the Tigris River, which bisects the city.

However, the western part of Mosul, with its narrow streets and heavily populated neighborhoods, appears to be a bigger challenge to the Iraqi forces.

Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) attends a welcoming ceremony held by Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw, Poland, June 20, 2016. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

WARSAW, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Our 24 hour trip along the Belt and Road now comes to Poland. Let's look at some facts and figures of the cooperation between China and Poland.

Poland was among the first countries to establish diplomatic ties with the People's Republic of China.

China views Poland as an important partner for cooperation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and within the European Union, said Chinese President Xi Jinping when meeting with Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15.

Xi also highlighted environmental protection, finance, high-tech industries, infrastructure and logistics as areas where China and Poland could step up collaboration.

"Poland is a "gate to Europe" as far as the Belt and Road Initiative is concerned," said Chinese Ambassador to Poland, Xu Jian, adding between 2013 and 2016, Chinese-Polish trade volume rose from 14.8 billion U.S. dollars up to 17.6 billion U.S. dollars, with a 6 percent average annual growth rate.

The first international freight train from Zhengzhou to Europe prepares to leave the Zhengzhou Railway Container Center in Zhengzhou, capital of central China's Henan Province, July 18, 2013. (Xinhua)

In the Polish city of Lodz, a stop along a cargo train route linking China's Chengdu city, the first cargo trains arrived three-and-a-half years ago.

The rail cargo service between Chengdu and Lodz has become a popular logistics route for Chinese trade with Europe.

Krzysztof Piatkowski, deputy mayor of Lodz, said the Chengdu-Lodz connection contributed to his city becoming an important hub.

"The train connection is perceived as an opportunity by local food producers of juices, sweets, alcohol, including our famous Lodz cider," he said.

With increasing amounts of European agricultural foods being served on Chinese dining tables, Europe expects to see more and more local produces enter the world's biggest market by boarding the Europe-China freight trains.

Photo taken on April 19, 2017 shows dairy products in the village of Lipnice, near the Polish capital of Warsaw. Never before has Mariusz Marczak, who owns a cow farm in the Polish city of Lodz, showed so much interest in the Chinese market half a world away from Poland. (Xinhua/Chen Xu)

According to Polish official data, the value of Polish agri-food exports to China has grown dynamically in 2014. Dairy products consist of more than 30 percent of Polish agri-food export to China in 2015.

"The Belt and Road Initiative is an opportunity to improve the bilateral trade cooperation in agri-food sector. We are convinced that the Polish food products can be attractive to the Chinese in terms of price and quality," says Katarzyna Szymanska, head of Unit of Export Support Office of Agricultural Market Agency of Poland.

In addition, Szymanska believes that Poland can become the regional center of trade exchange between China and Central and Southeast Europe.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 20:27:02|Editor: Hou Qiang

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BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- China's banks issued a combined 1.1 trillion yuan (about 160 billion U.S. dollars) in new yuan loans in April, mostly for housing purchases, according to the latest data from the central bank.

April's new yuan loan growth represented an increase of 542 billion yuan year on year, the People's Bank of China said Friday.

By the end of last month, total outstanding yuan-denominated loans stood at 112 trillion yuan, up 12.9 percent year on year.

The rise was mainly attributable to lending to the household sector, which reached 571 billion yuan, with medium and long-term loans mainly used for home purchases standing at 444 billion yuan in April.

M0, the amount of cash in circulation, was up 6.2 percent to 6.8 trillion yuan by the end of April.

M1, a narrow measure of money supply which covers cash in circulation plus demand deposits, rose 18.5 percent from a year earlier to 49 trillion yuan.

M2, a broad measure of money supply that covers cash in circulation and all deposits, grew 10.5 percent to 160 trillion yuan.

China's M2 target this year is set to grow by around 12 percent, one percentage point lower than the 2016 target.

The central bank data also showed newly added social financing, a gauge of funds that firms and households get from the financial system, increased by 613 billion yuan from the same period a year ago to 1.4 trillion yuan.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 20:36:40|Editor: Mengjie

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Jargaltulga Erdenebat is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that Mongolia is welcome to actively participate in construction of the Belt and Road.

China supports Mongolia's efforts to be a bridge linking European and Asian continents, Xi told Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 to 15.

The two countries should cooperate on areas including trade and investment, connectivity, agriculture and animal breeding, industrial capacity, and energy, so that the Belt and Road Initiative and Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative can be effectively dovetailed, Xi said.

He called for efforts to promote the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor to boost the common development of the three nations.

Xi said the Chinese side attaches great importance to the development of China-Mongolia ties. Both sides should uphold the principles of mutual trust, cooperation and win-win outcome, and take opportunities to broaden exchanges and cooperation in various fields and push forward their comprehensive strategic partnership.

He stressed that the developmental prospects for China-Mongolia ties are broad, adding that the two sides should care for each other's core interests and major concerns and deepen mutual trust to ensure that the development of bilateral ties will not deviate from the right track.

The president called for facilitating the study of a free trade zone and cross-border economic cooperation, and promoting cooperation on major mineral industry programs and infrastructure connectivity.

Efforts should also be made to increase exchanges between youth, media and local authorities, Xi said.

Erdenebat said carrying out friendly cooperation with China is a priority for Mongolia. The country adheres to the one-China policy, and is willing to strengthen bilateral high-level exchanges, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

The prime minister said Mongolia understands the significance of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is open and inclusive, in solving the unbalanced and unstable development of mankind and boosting world peace and development.

Mongolia is willing to be a bridge linking European and Asian continents and will actively participate in mutually beneficial cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, Erdenebat said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with his Mongolian counterpart later Friday. Li said China is willing to invest more in the construction of China-Mongolia border ports, cross-border economic and trade cooperation, and work on a joint feasibility study on a China-Mongolia free trade zone.

Li said the cooperation consensus reached by the two sides on housing construction, processing of agricultural and animal products and use of energy should be implemented to achieve a win-win outcome and common development.

Erdenebat said Mongolia respects China's core interests and appreciates its good-neighborly and friendly diplomacy.

He went on to say that Mongolia is willing to strengthen practical cooperation with China on areas covering minerals, agriculture and animal breeding, housing, construction of border ports, cross-border trade, environmental protection, and renewable energy.

After their meeting, Li and Erdenebat witnessed the inking of documents related to areas including bilateral economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang also met with Erdenebat separately, saying the two countries should enhance mutual trust, seize the fresh opportunity of joint Belt and Road construction, and increase the volume of bilateral trade and investment.

Wang called for quickening the pace of the study and building of a free trade zone, jointly promoting cooperation on major projects, and deepening people-to-people exchanges.

For his part, Erdenebat said Mongolia is willing to strengthen practical cooperation with China on various fields.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 20:52:16|Editor: xuxin

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BERLIN, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The German Bundesrat (Federal Council) passed a wage transparency law Friday, which serves as a step toward equal wages for men and women for comparable working activities.

The law includes the right to information on the average wages of colleagues with similar work in larger companies.

Employees in companies with more than 200 colleagues will be able to access information on the average wages of those with comparable work activities.

The law, proposed by Federal Minister of Family Affairs Manuela Schwesig in June 2016, impacts around 14 million employees in Germany.

Companies with over 500 employees will have to implement an operational procedure to assess their wage structure regarding equal pay. The companies will also have to present reports concerning the advancement of gender equality.

Though slightly decreased, the gender pay gap has not significantly improved over the past 10 years, according to the Federal Statistical Office. In 2006, female employees earned 23 percent less than their male counterparts.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 21:32:36|Editor: xuxin

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KHARTOUM, May 12 (Xinhua) -- After almost three months of waiting, Sudan announced the new government of national consensus on Thursday, but Sudanese political analysts say there is no essential change to the government system.

At a press conference in Khartoum on Thursday, Sudan's First Vice President and Prime Minister Bakri Hassan Saleh announced the country's new government which includes two vice presidents, four presidential assistants, 31 federal ministers and 45 state ministers.

"After all this delay, we have been expecting essential change in the formation of the new government, but the change was very limited," Abdul-Rahman Ibrahim, a Sudanese political analyst, told Xinhua on Friday.

"There has been no change at the presidential level except for decreasing the number of presidential assistants from five to four. Besides, most of the sovereign ministries remain in the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), which earlier said it would give up 50 percent of its share in the government," he noted.

According to Ibrahim, the major faces in the government have not changed.

"Out of a total of 31 federal ministers, 17 remain in their posts, and though the new government has new faces, they come from marginal ministries excluding the finance minister," he said.

The two vice presidents have kept their posts, where Bakri Hassan Saleh remains as First Vice President and Hasabo Mohamed Bdul-Rahman as Vice President.

Four old presidential assistants, Mohamed al-Hassan al-Merghani, Ibrahim Mahmoud, Musa Mohamed Ahmed and Abdul-Rahman Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdiin, have kept their posts in the new government, while Jalal Yousif Al-Digair, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, lost his post as presidential assistant.

The ruling NCP continues to dominate the majority of sovereign ministries of defense, interior, foreign affairs, presidency, oil, finance, higher education and electricity and dams.

"Many expected the new government to be totally different because it is the outcome of participation of more than 90 political parties and around 34 armed movements in the national dialogue conference, but what it has been announced does not consist with that vision," Abdul-Ghafar Ali Sheikh Nour-Eddin, a Sudanese political analyst, told Xinhua.

"There was no big change in the share of the ruling party which have kept the majority of sovereign ministries with the involvement of some parties and armed groups," he added.

A total of 17 ministers in the old government have kept their posts, and 65 parliamentary members were appointed from the parties participating in the national dialogue.

The new government was scheduled to be announced in February but was delayed because of differences within the parties.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 21:47:17|Editor: Lu Hui

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Hailemariam Desalegn is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on China and Ethiopia to elevate bilateral relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation.

Xi made the remarks while meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 and 15.

Xi said the cooperation between China and Ethiopia plays a leading role in China-Africa cooperation.

He proposed the upgrading of bilateral ties to reflect the "strategic aspect and the high level of political mutual trust of the bilateral relations".

Xi asked the two countries to promote cooperation in such areas as connectivity, production capacity, trade and economy, people-to-people exchanges, as well as aviation.

He said China welcomes Ethiopia's participation in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and supports its role as a bridge between the Belt and Road Initiative and Africa's development.

China is willing to deepen all-round cooperation with Ethiopia, a highly influential nation in Africa, in the process of implementing the outcomes of the Johannesburg summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and building the Belt and Road, Xi said.

Hailemariam said, Ethiopia and China have achieved significant improvements in cooperation in areas including trade and economy, investment, industrial capacity and infrastructure construction.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a farsighted initiative with global implications, which will promote connectivity and cooperation in trade and investment. Ethiopia will actively join in the construction of the Belt and Road, he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 21:47:23|Editor: Hou Qiang

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SOFIA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- China Development Bank (CDB) here on Friday granted a loan of 80 million euros (about 86.88 million U.S. dollars) to support projects in Bulgaria, including those within the Belt and Road Initiative.

The loan agreement was signed by Angel Gekov, executive director of Bulgarian Development Bank (BDB), and Peng Jianxun, Vice President of CDB Chongqing Branch, BDB said in a statement on its website and confirmed in a phone conversation with Xinhua.

Chinese Ambassador to Bulgaria Zhang Haizhou and Bulgaria's Deputy Minister of Finance, Marinela Petrova, attended the signing ceremony.

The contracted funds would be used for providing investment and working capital loans as well as credit lines for Bulgarian companies, the statement said, adding that "resources can also be used by BDB to support strategic projects" within the the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative.

The cooperation between the two banks dates back from 2009 when BDB received a 5-million-euro loan. This was the second loan extended by CDB to BDB.

BDB is a financial institution owned by the Bulgarian state. Its focus is to support small and medium-sized enterprises.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:03:03|Editor: xuxin

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PARIS, May 12 (Xinhua) -- French president-elect Emmanuel Macron showed his absolute support for the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Bid in a talk with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach, Paris bid said in a communique on Friday.

In a phone talk with Bach on Thursday, Macron, who was elected as French president on May 7, expressed his full support to the French capital's bid. He also shared with Bach his attachment to the bid work, and stressed France's long-term commitment to the Olympic Movement.

"Emmanuel Macron has been a supporter of the Paris 2024 bid since the very beginning," said Tony Estanguet, Paris bid co-chairman and three-time Olympic champion, adding that the bid was delighted to see that Macron has already found time to speak to the IOC president to reaffirm his full support for Paris 2024 before his inauguration as new president of France.

Paris and Los Angeles of the United States are two remaining candidate cities for the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. IOC members will vote for the host city at the General Assembly in Lima, Peru on Sept. 13.

The IOC Evaluation Commission delegation will arrive in Paris for the inspection on the bid work this weekend after spending three days in Los Angeles.

According to Estanguet, Macron has confirmed a meeting with the IOC Evaluation Commission while they are in Paris.

"The whole France is coming together to support Paris 2024 and is ready to welcome the world for a unique celebration of sport, inclusion and friendship," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:18:16|Editor: Mengjie

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Quang is on a state visit to China from May 11 to 15, and will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Friday met with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang on strengthened ties.

Li said China is willing to keep bilateral relations moving in the right direction with Vietnam, increase high-level exchanges, synchronize development between the Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's Two Corridors and One Economic Circle schemes, and promote cooperation overland, on the sea and in financial sectors.

Li said China will continue to boost border economy and jointly combat cross-border crimes with Vietnam to promote peace and prosperity in the border regions.

Quang said Vietnam will push for cooperation with China in trade, investment, agriculture, infrastructure, high technology, finance, renewable energy, and people-to-people exchanges.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:22:52|Editor: xuxin

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THIKA, Kenya, May 12 (Xinhua) -- At least six people have been hospitalized and slaughter houses closed indefinitely in Kiambu County, eastern Kenya after a suspected outbreak of anthrax in the region.

Kiambu County Director of Clinical Services Kiambu County Jacob Toro said that six people, who are all meat loaders at a slaughter house, are currently admitted with suspected Anthrax at Thika Level Five Hospital.

"They were admitted with coetaneous lesions and samples were taken on Wednesday to the Vet lab in Kabete by the disease surveillance team," said Toro.

He however assured the public that the situation is under control, noting that the treatment is ongoing and the patients are all stable in the isolation ward.

Toro cautioned the public against consuming meat which is not inspected by the authorities.

He said the county government has dispatched public health and veterinary officers to all abattoirs in the area to establish the source of the disease and take precautionary measures to curb the spread of disease.

It is suspected the patients were infected after they came into contact with infected meat during the course of their work.

Anthrax, a life-threatening disease that normally affects animals especially ruminants, is spread by contact with the spores of the bacteria, which are often from infectious animal products.

Animals killed by anthrax must be buried in a deep pit and the area burnt in order to kill the germs. Toro appealed to livestock traders to be more vigilant to curb the spread of the disease.

Vaccines against Anthrax for use in livestock and humans have had a prominent place in the history of medicine. It can be transmitted to humans by contact with infected animals or their products.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:38:24|Editor: yan

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JUBA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- South Sudanese President Salva Kiir urged on Friday his sacked army Chief General Paul Malong to desist from rebellion.

President Kiir revealed that Malong was still very angry to return to Juba, raising suspicion of his next move given the fact he left on Tuesday for his home area of Aweil North West of the capital with a sizable number of his loyal body guards.

"Yesterday (Thursday) when I talked to him (Malong) last, he was not in good mood. He was in a fighting mood. I tried to calm him down but he was rather wild," Kiir said in Juba.

According to officials, the former Chief of General Staff, who was replaced by General James Ajongo, was expected back in Juba on Thursday, but he is in Yirol, Eastern Lakes state located some 307 km northwest of the capital.

"I am aware that these changes always take place, but this last change has made everybody very apprehensive. And many speculations are being promoted around that there is going to be armed confrontation," Kiir said.

He revealed that on Friday morning he tried to talk to Malong but found out that he was resting because on Thursday the former army chief's blood pressure showed up very high.

The president moved to quash any public fear of any armed confrontation with his former army chief. Malong's helm at the South Sudan army (SPLA) amid ongoing conflict left the army's image tainted with allegations of mass civilian killings, rapes, looting amid defections of senior army officers who accused Malong of favouring his fellow Dinka officers.

The president also added that he was still in communication with Malong and assured the former army chief and his body guards' safety upon their arrival in Juba.

"Personally I am still in communication with General Malong and I have assured him of his safety as soon as he arrives in Juba. I have given the security organizations all the necessary orders ensuring that Malong and his people are safe," he disclosed.

The withdrawal of the former army chief from Juba has also dragged in influential community leaders from largely the various Dinka clans to organize flights to Yirol in a bid to cajole Malong to abandon any plans of rebellion.

"Now the community leaders have mobilized themselves. The people of Yirol who were in Juba here were at the airport looking for a flight to Yirol to meet him there. There are other community leaders coming from Aweil his home area coming to meet him," Kiir added.

President Kiir cautioned Malong to desist from any temptation of wrecking havoc with the help of what he termed "foreign hands."

"There are so many foreign hands being seen behind General Paul (Malong) pushing him. But I told him this morning that your family needs you more than us and therefore you should not accept to go into these problems," Kiir said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:53:38|Editor: yan

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Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) and Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev sign a joint declaration to deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership after their talks in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. (Xinhua/Wang Ye)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called for expanding cooperation with Uzbekistan to achieve new progress in carrying out the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

Xi said that over the 25 years since the two countries established diplomatic relations, bilateral ties have achieved "leapfrog development" and the two countries have forged a comprehensive strategic partnership with sincerity, mutual trust, mutual benefits and win-win cooperation.

The two countries have cooperated closely under the Belt and Road framework and implemented a series of major projects, delivering tangible benefits to the people of both countries, Xi said.

He called for continued mutual support on issues concerning each other's core interests and major concerns, consolidating and deepening political and strategic mutual trust for common development and prosperity.

Xi said China is willing to maintain close communication and coordination with Uzbekistan on issues including international affairs, situation in Central Asia and development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

He urged the two countries to dovetail their development strategies, outline priorities for cooperation, explore potential to enhance economic and trade cooperation, boost bilateral trade, optimize trade structure, and ensure the long-term and stable growth of bilateral trade.

China would also like to expand cooperation with Uzbekistan on industrial capacity, investment as well as the building of industrial zones and infrastructure based on equality, voluntariness, mutual benefits and win-win cooperation, he said.

Calling China a great neighbor of Uzbekistan, Mirziyoyev said Uzbekistan appreciates China's support for the country in taking a development path in line with its national conditions.

He said China's role in promoting world peace, stability and development is crucial.

He noted Uzbekistan will continue adhering to the one-China policy and support China's efforts in combating the "three evil forces" of terrorism, separatism and extremism.

Mirziyoyev also called for deepening cooperation with China in areas including economy and trade, investment, industrial capacity,infrastructure and water conservation.

After the meeting, the two leaders signed a joint declaration to deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership.

The two countries will continue to support each other on issues of core interests including national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity, according to the declaration.

Neither side will allow a third country, any organization or group to commit activities on its soil that will damage the other side's national sovereignty, security and territorial integrity.

In the joint declaration, the two sides agreed on the necessity of constructing an efficient and convenient railway passage between China and Uzbekistan, and they will step up coordination on the China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway project.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:53:43|Editor: yan

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MANILA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Armed Forces of the Philippines said on Friday that troops killed at least 20 Abu Sayyaf militants on Thursday in Basilan, a southern island in the Philippines.

The military said in a statement that the operations featured the Philippine Air Force's FA-50 fighter jets that dropped bombs on the lair of Abu Sayyaf leader Furuji Indama in Basilan before dawn on Thursday.

"Heavy bloodstains were found in the vicinity, with intelligence reports rounding no less than 20 ASG (Abu Sayyaf Group) fatalities from the combined airstrikes and indirect fires," said the military statement.

Two soldiers are also wounded by the improvised explosive device detonated by the militants, the military statement added.

Lt. Col. Andrew Bacala, commander of the 4th Special Forces Battalion, said the troops were able to "inch within a hundred meters of the enemy under the cover of darkness" through the use of "night fighting capabilities."

Finally, he said the troop managed to seize the makeshift bandits' camp around 10 a.m. local time.

Bacala said the troops also recovered three live IEDs and several explosive components.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 22:58:16|Editor: Mengjie

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Chinese President Xi Jinping(R) meets with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Hailemariam Desalegn is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called on China and Ethiopia to elevate bilateral relations to a comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation.

Xi made the remarks while meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 and 15.

Xi said the cooperation between China and Ethiopia plays a leading role in China-Africa cooperation.

He proposed the upgrading of bilateral ties to reflect the "strategic aspect and the high level of political mutual trust of the bilateral relations".

Xi asked the two countries to promote cooperation in such areas as connectivity, production capacity, trade and economy, people-to-people exchanges, as well as aviation.

He said China welcomes Ethiopia's participation in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and supports its role as a bridge between the Belt and Road Initiative and Africa's development.

China is willing to deepen all-round cooperation with Ethiopia, a highly influential nation in Africa, in the process of implementing the outcomes of the Johannesburg summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, and building the Belt and Road, Xi said.

Hailemariam said, Ethiopia and China have achieved significant improvements in cooperation in areas including trade and economy, investment, industrial capacity and infrastructure construction.

The Belt and Road Initiative is a farsighted initiative with global implications, which will promote connectivity and cooperation in trade and investment. Ethiopia will actively join in the construction of the Belt and Road, he said.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang also met with Hailemariam Desalegn on Friday.

Li said upgrading the China-Ethiopia relationship will help the two countries consolidate political mutual trust, expand cooperation, and advance major China-Africa cooperation plans and production capacity cooperation.

Li expressed his hope that Ethiopia will use passenger and general-purpose aircraft designed and manufactured by China, for the development of Africa's aviation industry.

Hailemariam positively echoed Li's proposal, saying that Ethiopia is building itself into a regional aviation center.

China supports Ethiopia's industrialization and agricultural modernization, and is willing to offer help in areas such as human resources development and finance to assist the independent and sustainable growth of Ethiopia, Li said.

Hailemariam said, the two countries' production capacity cooperation had greatly promoted Ethiopia's industrialization and agricultural modernization causes.

Li and Hailemariam later witnessed the signing of bilateral cooperation agreements in such fields as economic and technological cooperation and human resources development.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Friday met with his Ethiopian counterpart Workneh Gebeyehu in Beijing.

The two sides agreed to enhance communication and coordination in bilateral and international affairs, understand and support each other in significant issues concerning their core interests, and safeguard common interests of themselves and other developing countries.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 23:08:21|Editor: yan

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VILNIUS, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Lithuanian foreign minister Linas Linkevicius praised Poland's active participation in NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission and said he sought greater security cooperation with the country, after meeting Friday with Polish National Security Bureau (NSB) chief Pawel Soloch.

"Close cooperation with Poland is important for enhancing Lithuania's security and defense," Linkevicius was quoted as saying in a ministry's statement.

In early May, the Polish Air Force took over the lead in the NATO mission for the seventh time, showing the country was willing to engage in regional security affairs, Linkevicius said.

The meeting with Soloch also focused on the NATO summit to be held on May 25. The two underlined the importance of strong transatlantic relations.

Meanwhile, Soloch was quoted as saying to Polish news agency PAP earlier that the purpose of his visit to Lithuania was to emphasize the importance of Polish-Lithuanian relations in security and defense matters in the context of the intensified NATO presence in the region.

The Polish NSB provides aid and support to the President of Poland in executing security and defense tasks.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 23:13:52|Editor: Mengjie

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Quang is on a state visit to China from May 11 to 15, and will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing. (Xinhua/Li Tao)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese leaders and senior officials on Friday met separately with visiting Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, pledging to boost the bilateral "comradely and brotherly" ties.

Premier Li Keqiang said China is willing to keep bilateral relations moving in the right direction with Vietnam, increase high-level exchanges, synchronize development between the Belt and Road Initiative and Vietnam's Two Corridors and One Economic Circle schemes, and promote cooperation overland, on the sea and in financial sectors.

Li said China will continue to boost border economy and jointly combat cross-border crimes with Vietnam to promote peace and prosperity in the border regions.

Quang said Vietnam will push for cooperation with China in trade, investment, agriculture, infrastructure, high technology, finance, renewable energy, and people-to-people exchanges.

Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said China-Vietnam relations are positive and the two countries are committed to long-term friendship.

During Quang's visit, a number of bilateral agreements have been signed, and a joint communique issued, noted Zhang, who urged the people of both countries to advance all-around strategic cooperation.

Quang said Vietnam is willing to consolidate Vietnam-China comradely and brotherly friendship to ensure healthy, stable and lasting bilateral relations.

Yu Zhengsheng, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), said China and Vietnam are good neighbors, have the same political system, face common development challenges and have positive cooperation prospects.

Yu said the two countries should seize the opportunity of the Belt and Road to expand bilateral cooperation. He said the CPPCC will continue to work closely with the Vietnam Fatherland Front to share ideas on political consultation and promote people-to-people exchanges.

Liu Yunshan, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, said China and Vietnam have a shared future and the two countries should help each other through good times and bad.

Liu also mentioned the need to promote people-to-people exchanges to increase the understanding and relations between the two peoples.

Quang is on a state visit to China from May 11 to 15, and will attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

This is Quang's first visit to China since he took office in April 2016.

The Vietnamese leader on Friday attended a China-Vietnam economic forum in Beijing together with Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang.

Wang said China is keen to upgrade bilateral trade, and expand investment and production capacity cooperation with Vietnam while pushing for progress in education, health, culture, agriculture and tourism.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 23:18:56|Editor: Mengjie

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CHENGDU, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in southwest China's Sichuan Province have dug 554 deep wells in the past five years in areas subject to a fatal parasitic disease, providing clean drinking water to 57,000 residents, according to local land and resources department.

The wells are at least 30 meters deep, which can avoid spreading of echinococcosis, a type of tapeworm infection, which mainly affects herding areas in Sichuan, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, Tibet and Xinjiang.

Humans can be infected with the disease through contact with infected animals and contaminated food, water and sand.

Shiqu County in the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Garze, Sichuan, is among the hardest-hit regions. Last year, 150 wells, costing nearly 43 million yuan (6.2 million U.S. dollars) from the provincial government, were finished in the county.

In 2012, about 50 million Chinese people were under threat from the disease. The government aims to have the disease under control by 2020.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-12 23:43:42|Editor: liuxin

Jin Liqun(2nd L), president of the Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), attends the World Economic Forum on ASEAN on May 12, 2017 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), said here Friday that the multilateral development bank is committed to lending strong support to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for infrastructure development. (Xinhua/Sovannara)

PHNOM PENH, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), said here Friday that the multilateral development bank is committed to lending strong support to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for infrastructure development.

"We're in the AIIB very much supportive of the economic and social progress in ASEAN countries," Jin said during the closing plenary of the World Economic Forum on ASEAN in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia.

"We are committed to providing strong support, financially or technically, to the infrastructure development in your region, and we are very much committed to working not only with the governments, but also with the private sectors," he said.

He said that ASEAN was the first group of countries that participated in the establishment of the AIIB.

"Our job is to work with you to promote the investment in infrastructure and other productive sectors," he said, adding that infrastructure investment was crucial to ensure sustainable socio-economic development.

Expressing his view on ASEAN's future, Jin said he believed that the future for the ASEAN countries will be brighter and economic growth will be higher thanks to political and economic stability.

The three-day World Economic Forum on ASEAN came to an end on Friday afternoon.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 00:09:22|Editor: yan

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TIKRIT, Iraq, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Four civilians from one family were killed on Friday when a mortar barrage by Islamic State (IS) militants hit their house in the town of Shirqat in Iraq's northern central province of Salahudin, a provincial security source said.

IS militants fired several mortar rounds on the western side of Shirqat, some 180 km north of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, from their stronghold in the eastern side of the town across the Tigris River, the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The mortar barrage destroyed a house, and killed a man, his wife and two of their children, along with damaging several nearby houses, the source said.

In September last year, the security forces and allied Sunni and Shiite paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units retook control of the western bank of Shirqat, but left eastern side of the town in the hands of the extremist militants, as the troops continued their push northward to the IS major stronghold in Mosul.

The Sunni-dominated province of Salahudin has witnessed a series of deadly attacks since security forces and allied paramilitary Hashd Shaabi units retook the province from IS militants who seized a large part of it in June 2014.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 00:19:31|Editor: yan

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BANGKOK, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Thailand has said recently its development needs to be linked up with the Belt and Road Initiative for a better future as the initiative will benefit Thailand and the whole world.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha said Monday that Thailand is ready to promote win-win cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative.

Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aiming at building a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes of Silk Road.

"The world is now stuck in uncertainty ... free trade is being challenged," said Thai Deputy Prime Minister Somkid Jatusripitak at a seminar with Chinese entrepreneurs on Monday.

"So the Belt and Road Initiative is becoming a new hope for countries seeking cooperation," he said.

He said that Thailand welcomes the Belt and Road Initiative and both the public and private sectors of the country will support and catch up with "the new hope."

Somkid, during the seminar, described a vivid picture of linking the Belt and Road Initiative with Thailand's project of Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).

According to Somkid, a high-speed train between Bangkok and Rayong will be built to link with the planned China-Thailand railway project, which will link China-Laos railway to reach China's Kunming.

Somkid also invited Chinese entrepreneurs to help Thailand realize the EEC project.

Thai Deputy Prime Minister Prachin Chantong told Chinese media on Thursday that the Belt and Road Initiative is sure to benefit countries in Southeast Asia.

The project of China-Thailand cooperation in railway construction is a good example, Prachin said.

According to Thai Commerce Minister Apiradi Tantraporn, both Thailand and China emphasize innovation now, so the two countries can make something together.

There will be new cities and new markets growing along the Belt and Road, giving Thai products more chances, Apiradi said earlier this month.

"We always support the Belt and Road Initiative as it is consistent with our strategies and policies," she added.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 00:29:39|Editor: yan

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TEHRAN, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Three major Japanese banks have started doing business with Iran after the removal of the western sanctions against the Islamic republic in 2015, an Iranian economist was quoted as saying by semi-official Fars news agency on Friday.

"Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (BTMU), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mizuho Bank have already started transactions with the Iranian banks," senior associate to the head of the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) Farhad Taqizadeh Hesari said.

Other signs also showed that Iran's banking relations with Japan have returned to normalcy, Taqizadeh Hesari said.

"Those signs include launching a credit line worth 10 billion U.S. dollars between Iran and Japan, a whopping increase of 130 percent in Japan's imports of oil products from Iran, and the signing of an agreement to support mutual investments and bilateral trade," he elaborated.

Taqizadeh Hesari also said that the risk for financial transactions between Iran and Japan has decreased after the two countries were able to establish banking transactions based on Japan's national currency, the yen.

BTMU, Japan's largest bank that handled most of Japan's payments for Iranian oil prior to the sanctions in mid-2012, announced in early 2016 that it had resumed transactions with Iranian banks, including payments for Iranian crude oil bought by Japanese refiners.

Banking cooperation sanctions with Iran were lifted as a result of the implementation of a nuclear deal between Iran and the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany in January 2015.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 00:49:49|Editor: yan

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ABUJA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Nigerian government on Friday said it aims to launch "cultural diplomacy" with the South African government to end incessant xenophobic attacks on citizens of the west African nation in that country.

Minister of Information and Culture Lai Mohammed in a meeting with the South African High Commissioner to Nigeria, Lulu Mnguni, said cultural diplomacy was in line with President Muhammadu Buhari's recommendations for people-to-people relations between both countries in ending xenophobia.

He described Nigeria and South Africa as "two brotherly nations," noting, in spite of occasional disagreements, both had enjoyed long-standing relations.

More than 100 citizens of Nigeria had been killed or injured in xenophobic attacks across South Africa since 2013, according to the Nigerian government.

The government spokesman said cultural diplomacy was an effective tool that would end xenophobia and strengthen the understanding between the two countries.

Among programs lined up to strengthen the cultural diplomacy, Mohammed said, include joint musical concerts and co-production of films.

"The activities would kick-off in the weeks ahead and would not be a one-off event," he added.

The South African envoy, while acknowledging the efforts of the Nigerian government toward the peaceful solution to xenophobic attacks, said there was need to deploy programs that would educate the people on the time-tested relations between both countries.

"We believe that using culture, music, poetry and many other forms of cultural relations will help to strengthen our cohesion," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 00:59:55|Editor: Mengjie

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MINSK, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will pay a working visit to China from May 13 to 16, Belarusian presidential press service said on Friday.

During the visit, Lukashenko will attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, where he will outline proposals on deepening and expanding cooperation on the Eurasian continent with an emphasis on joint peaceful mutually beneficial development.

Lukashenko will hold talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the two leaders are going to discuss ways to further improve bilateral relations in various fields, the press service said.

He is expected to have a number of bilateral meetings with foreign leaders on the sideline of the forum to be held on May 14-15 in Beijing.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 00:59:57|Editor: yan

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LONDON, May 12 ((Xinhua) -- Britain's National Health Service (NHS) was hit by a wide scale cyber attack on Friday, causing failures of IT systems across the country.

Officials described it as the worst ever attack on the NHS.

Hospitals affected are believed to have lost the use of phone lines and computers, with some diverting all but emergency patients elsewhere.

Early reports said 16 NHS health trusts, including trusts and hospitals in London, Blackburn, Nottingham, Cumbria and Hertfordshire had been affected by the attack.

The NHS was considered in 2015 to be one of the biggest organisations in the world, employing around 150,000 hospital doctors and 315,000 nurses and thousands more in community health services.

Some general practitioner (GP) surgeries had to shut down phone and IT systems while emergency rooms at some major hospitals told people not to attend casualty departments except in urgent emergencies.

Some hospitals cancelled non-urgent operations.

Officials at NHS England said they were looking into the situation.

Simon Enright, director of communications for NHS England, said: "This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors."

The Patients Association said the attack appeared to have been "highly co-ordinated and aggressive."

"A police investigation will no doubt be required," it added.

"Though today's may be the largest attack of this sort, it is not the first -- yet the lessons from earlier incidents have not been learnt."

NHS Digital said there was no evidence that patient data had been accessed.

A spokesman said: "A number of NHS organisations have reported to NHS Digital that they have been affected by a ransomware attack which is affecting a number of different organisations. The investigation is at an early stage, but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor. At this stage, we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed."

"NHS Digital is working closely with the National Cyber Security Centre, the Department of Health and NHS England to support affected organisations and to recommend appropriate mitigations. Our focus is on supporting organisations to manage the incident swiftly and decisively."

There were posts circulating on social media sites of screen-shots demanding ransoms of several hundred U.S. dollars to remove the malware.
File photo taken on Jan. 29, 2017 shows demonstrators participating in a protest against U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order temporarily barring all refugees and seven Mideast and North African countries' citizens from entry into the U.S. in front of the White House in Washington D.C., the Unite States. April 29, 2017 marks the 100th day of Donald Trump's office as the 45th president of the United States. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu)

NAIROBI, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Five Kenyans and 67 Somalis who were deported from the U.S. over immigration issues have arrived in the country.

Police and immigration officials said a private plane carrying the 72 deportees landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) in Nairobi early Friday.

Kenyan officials said deportations were likely given the ongoing operations in the United States targeting illegal immigrants.

This is the second batch of immigrants deported from America in five months.

In January, Kenyan officials said they were aware of the planned deportation of two of its nationals and 90 Somalis who arrived in the country on Jan. 26.

The East African nation has also clarified that the deportation of the Somalis and Kenyans from the U.S. had nothing to do with planned crackdown on illegal immigrants by the new administration.

The deportees who arrived in Nairobi and later to Mogadishu in Somalia said they were arrested and detained for a while in various U.S. cities over a number of issues including rejected asylum and criminal activities before they were deported.

The deportation came after President Donald Trump's signed executive orders that include a temporary ban on most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries.

But a U.S. judge issued a stay temporarily halting the deportation of visa holders or refugees under the executive order.

The judge's stay prevents those "caught up" in the aftermath from being deported. Countries affected by the executive orders are Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir (L front) and Army Chief General Paul Malong (R front) walk on a red carpet at the presidential palace in Juba, South Sudan, Oct. 28, 2016. (Xinhua/Gale Julius)

JUBA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- South Sudanese President Salva Kiir urged on Friday his sacked army Chief General Paul Malong to desist from rebellion.

President Kiir revealed that Malong was still very angry to return to Juba, raising suspicion of his next move given the fact he left on Tuesday for his home area of Aweil North West of the capital with a sizable number of his loyal body guards.

"Yesterday (Thursday) when I talked to him (Malong) last, he was not in good mood. He was in a fighting mood. I tried to calm him down but he was rather wild," Kiir said in Juba.

According to officials, the former Chief of General Staff, who was replaced by General James Ajongo, was expected back in Juba on Thursday, but he is in Yirol, Eastern Lakes state located some 307 km northwest of the capital.

"I am aware that these changes always take place, but this last change has made everybody very apprehensive. And many speculations are being promoted around that there is going to be armed confrontation," Kiir said.

He revealed that on Friday morning he tried to talk to Malong but found out that he was resting because on Thursday the former army chief's blood pressure showed up very high.

The president moved to quash any public fear of any armed confrontation with his former army chief. Malong's helm at the South Sudan army (SPLA) amid ongoing conflict left the army's image tainted with allegations of mass civilian killings, rapes, looting amid defections of senior army officers who accused Malong of favouring his fellow Dinka officers.

The president also added that he was still in communication with Malong and assured the former army chief and his body guards' safety upon their arrival in Juba.

"Personally I am still in communication with General Malong and I have assured him of his safety as soon as he arrives in Juba. I have given the security organizations all the necessary orders ensuring that Malong and his people are safe," he disclosed.

The withdrawal of the former army chief from Juba has also dragged in influential community leaders from largely the various Dinka clans to organize flights to Yirol in a bid to cajole Malong to abandon any plans of rebellion.

"Now the community leaders have mobilized themselves. The people of Yirol who were in Juba here were at the airport looking for a flight to Yirol to meet him there. There are other community leaders coming from Aweil his home area coming to meet him," Kiir added.

President Kiir cautioned Malong to desist from any temptation of wrecking havoc with the help of what he termed "foreign hands."

"There are so many foreign hands being seen behind General Paul (Malong) pushing him. But I told him this morning that your family needs you more than us and therefore you should not accept to go into these problems," Kiir said.
Gholamali Khoshroo, Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations, speaks during an exclusive interview with Xinhua News Agency in New York, the United States, on May 10, 2017. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

by Xinhua writer Wang Jiangang

UNITED NATIONS, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Iranian envoy to the United Nations Gholamali Khoshroo, a seasoned diplomat, on Wednesday warmly praised the Belt and Road Initiative, saying it is good for Iran, the Middle East and the rest of the world.

The Initiative would also dramatically boost the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), said Khoshroo, the Iranian permanent representative to the United Nations, in an exclusive interview with Xinhua while citing the initiative's characteristic of connectivity.

CONNECTIVITY BENEFITS ALL

"China is a great power, but this initiative is not based on interference, and not based on colonialism," said the ambassador, "it is based on mutual benefit."

Having visited China for many times, Khoshroo said he loves China, and believes the Belt and Road Initiative would benefit all the countries involved.

"If we look in a comprehensive manner, it should be science and technology, investment, trade and people-to-people relationship -- all these benefit all countries in one way or another," he said.

"We are living in a world that is so interconnected, so we need this connectivity" offered by the Belt and Road Initiative, said the Iranian ambassador.

"Because in the era of globalization, no country is isolated, and no country can have walls around itself," he explained.

Emphasizing that Iran was a very important country on the ancient Silk Road and is also a very important country in the Belt and Road Initiative, the country takes an important strategic position by connecting the East with the West, linking Asia to Europe, the ambassador said.

He is contented with his country's active involvement in the Initiative. "Iran is a great country, culturally, economically and strategically, and this connectivity brings it development, prosperity and jobs."

Speaking about the initiative-based interaction between China and Iran, the ambassador said, "This can be a good solution for both sides."

"Iran can benefit from this interaction, which may be in different fields, such as energy, transportation, science and technology and investment," he said.

Khoshroo stressed that the two countries should strengthen cooperation in the energy sector so as to make the initiative more meaningful and constructive.

Statistics show that more than half of China's total imports from Iran are oil and the rest are mineral and chemical products.

"Energy is the advantage of Iran, and China has many advantages (like huge market) as well, so we will exchange these advantages in a way that is beneficiary for both sides," he said.

REDUCING TENSIONS

Highlighting poverty, underdevelopment, foreign intervention and other issues as major causes for tensions and turmoils in the Middle East, Khoshroo stressed that the Belt and Road Initiative "would help reduce tensions in the Middle East through economic development, economic cooperation and creating jobs."

"We need (the initiative) for development, for trade and for investment, and we need security, China can play a role through this cooperation," said the ambassador.

Furthermore, the initiative is "not only good for the Middle East," but also helps fight against terrorism around the world, Khoshroo noted.

"We are facing an international terrorism network," he said, "we need international cooperation" to develop economy and uproot terrorism.

The initiative can help reduce these tensions "through cooperation and development."

"I look at the initiative in a more comprehensive way, and in cultural, economic and political ways, it will surely bring peace and development to the world," the envoy said.

"If all countries take it seriously, everybody will benefit from that," he noted.

Speaking of the benefits that the initiative will bring to the UN SDGs, Khoshroo said it "can strengthen the 2030 development goals of the United Nations, as the initiative can improve the economic situation in many poor areas if economic projects are beneficial for all."

The SDGs, officially known as Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, includes 17 global goals with 169 targets to achieve.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 03:31:27|Editor: yan

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ADEN, Yemen, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Yemeni government on Friday rejected the formation of new "transitional political council" that seeks the secession of southern Yemen.

On Thursday, Aidarous Zubaidi, a former governor of Aden, Yemen's main southern city, declared in a speech that the council consists of 26 southern senior tribal, military and political leaders including former Cabinet minister Hani Bin Braik.

The new council would represent and administer the south, as Zubaidi said.

An official statement issued after Yemen's President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi met his advisors in the Saudi capital "categorically rejected" the move that seeks the secession of southern Yemen.

"Such moves remain baseless and will never be accepted," the presidency statement said, adding the new council only served the Houthi group.

It urged those listed as council members "to declare a clear position towards the new body."

Hadi, whose government is internationally recognized, has been based in Riyadh since March 2015, when the Shiite Houthis forced him out after seizing the capital Sanaa.

Hadi sacked Zubaidi on April 27 along with Bin Braik, which provoked thousands of southern Yemenis demonstrating last week in Aden to urge setting up a new leadership body to represent the south.

Yemen has been suffering from a civil war for around two years. The civil war began after the Houthi militants with support from forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh ousted the UN-backed transitional government and occupied the capital Sanaa militarily in September 2014.

The legitimate government controls the south and some eastern parts, while the Houthi-Saleh alliance controls the remaining areas including Sanaa.

The civil war, ground battles and airstrikes have already killed more than 10,000 people, half of them civilians. Such conflicts also injured more than 35,000 others and displaced over two million, according to humanitarian agencies.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 03:46:37|Editor: yan

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BEIRUT, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon has a bigger role to play in the Belt and Road Initiative due to its advantages of location, human resources and relatively high-level security in the Middle East region, president of the Lebanese Economic Organizations Adnan Kassar said.

Kassar made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua ahead of the Belt and Road International Cooperation Forum to be held on May 14 and 15 in Beijing.

"Chinese delegations visiting Lebanon last month confirmed this," Kassar said, saying the visit serves as a momentum for China-Lebanon cooperation boosted by the visit of Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming to Lebanon last January.

On Belt and Road Initiative, he labeled it as "an important economic development project for the world," saying that it will bring benefits to all participant countries.

Kassar will join the Lebanese official delegation headed by the Minister of Culture Ghattas Khouri to take part in the upcoming forum.

Kassar stressed the forum is important as it brings together the heads and officials of states to discuss strategic guidelines and vision aiming to connect Asia, Europe and Africa.

"The forum will improve global understanding of the Belt and Road Initiative as well as allowing corporations and industry leaders to discuss closer connectivity and partnerships," he added.

On trade ties between Lebanon and China, he believed Chinese companies will benefit from partnerships with Lebanese companies, saying "we have already seen the success of Chinese and Lebanese groups working together in Algeria, in Iraq, in the Gulf and other countries."

Kassar also highlighted the "comparative advantages of the geographic location of Lebanon, its free market principles, free repatriation of funds and low tax rates."

"We are promoting Lebanon and Tripoli's roles as a logistic and trade hub for China in the Middle East region, particularly in view of the predominant role of China in the reconstruction of Iraq and Syria. We welcomed Chinese investment in infrastructure projects in Tripoli, the second largest city in Lebanon," Kassar said.

As for the future of the Lebanese-Chinese relations, Kassar pointed that Lebanon is committed to strengthening ties with China.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 04:06:55|Editor: yan

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MOSUL, Iraq, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi forces battling Islamic State (IS) militants on Friday seized new areas in the northwestern edge of IS stronghold in the western side of Mosul, while the paramilitary units of Hashd Shaabi launched an operation to free areas near the Iraqi-Syrian border from the extremist militants, the Iraqi military said.

The special forces of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) took control of Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood after defeating IS militants in heavy street-to-street clashes during the past 24 hours, the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.

An earlier JOC statement said that the troops recaptured Islah al-Ziraie al-Oula or the first neighborhood, and crossed the main road that divides the Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood to al-Oula in the south and al-Thania or the second in the north amid heavy clashes.

On Thursday, the CTS Commander Abdul Ghani al-Asadi told reporters that the CTS troops made a significant progress in Islah al-Ziraie neighborhood, located at the edge of several adjacent IS-held neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, the elite forces of the federal police, known as Rapid Response, backed by the army's armored and infantry forces cleared Harmat neighborhood from IS militants and continued house-to-house battles as they push into the adjacent neighborhoods of Iqtisadiyn and 17th July, Lt. Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarallah, from the Joint Operations Command (JOC), said in a separate statement.

On May 4, the Iraqi army and Rapid Response special forces pushed on the new front from the northwestern edge of Mosul toward the areas of Mushairfah, Kanisah and Harmat in the northern part of the western side of the city.

The new push was aimed at helping the special forces of the CTS and the interior ministry federal police, who are making slow progress in the southern part of Mosul's western side because of the stiff resistance of the militants in the densely-populated areas of the old city center, where roughly 400,000 residents are believed to still be trapped under IS rule.

The troops are now pushing to seize the remaining neighborhoods in north and northwest of the city center to tighten noose around the IS redoubt in the city center in the western side of Mosul, including the old areas around the historical al-Nuri Mosque in the middle of Mosul's old city center.

Also in the day, the predominantly Shiite Hashd Shaabi units, backed by the army's helicopters, advanced in the early morning from six directions to the west to free the vast IS-held areas near the border with Syria, including the towns of al-Qairawan and Baaj.

Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy commander of Hashd Shaabi units, said in another statement that the paramilitary units are still surrounding the IS-held town of Tal Afar, some 70 km west of Mosul, and part of the units headed to the west in carrying out the first phase of a major offensive that aims at securing the border areas with Syria.

During the day, the paramilitary units fought sporadic fierce clashes with IS militants and managed to free a total of 21 villages in north, east and south of the town of al-Qairwan, which locates in the rugged sprawling area west of Tal Afar, according to the Hashd Shaabi statement.

The units and the army's helicopters killed some 77 IS militants and destroyed 15 suicide car bombs trying to hit the advanced units, the statement said.

The operation would enable the Hashd Shaabi units to secure the border areas between Iraq and neighboring Syria and cut off the IS supply routes between Mosul and the Syrian city of Raqqa, the capital of IS self-declared caliphate.

The operation came as the Iraqi security forces, backed by anti-IS international coalition, are carrying out a major offensive to dislodge IS militants from their major stronghold in the western side of Mosul in northern Iraq.

Late in January, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, declared the liberation of Mosul's eastern side, or the left bank of Tigris, after over 100 days of fighting IS militants.

On February 19, Abadi announced the start of an offensive to drive extremist militants out of the western side of Mosul, locally known as the right bank of the Tigris River, which bisects the city.

However, the western part of Mosul, with its narrow streets and heavily populated neighborhoods, appears to be a bigger challenge to the Iraqi forces.

Mosul, 400 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, has been under IS control since June 2014, when government forces abandoned their weapons and fled, enabling IS militants to take control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions.
Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters warm themselves by a fire on the bank of the Euphrates river, west of Raqqa city, Syria April 8, 2017. (Xinhua/Reuter photo)

DAMASCUS, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said it has received light weaponry from the United States, not heavy ones as circulated by some media outlets.

Talal Silo, the military spokesman of the SDF, told Xinhua on Friday that the SDF, backed by the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition, has not yet received heavy weaponry.

He said the group received only light military gears, such as mortar shells and machine guns.

This comes three days after President Trump approved a plan to arm Syrian Kurds so they can participate in the battle to retake Syria's northern province of Raqqa from the Islamic State (IS) group.

Speaking of Raqqa, the de facto capital of IS, Silo said his group is bracing to unleash operation against Raqqa after isolating it completely.

The SDF has recently captured the city of Tabqa and its strategic dam, east of Raqqa, as part of the operation to isolate IS in Raqqa as a prelude to take it.

Silo said the SDF is combing the city in search of explosive devices the IS may have left behind.

Meanwhile, the SDF said in a statement on Friday that it will hand the control of Tabqa over to a civil council in the city, adding that the handover will be done after clearing the city off of the explosives.

It added that the Euphrates Dam in Tabqa is a Syrian institution that will serve all Syrian areas without exceptions.

The statement said that the SDF succeeded to capture the city after a joint airdrop of forces with the coalition near Tabqa on March 21, which was followed by a "precise" operation to capture the city.

For her part, Rojda Villat, another SDF official, reportedly said in a press conference that the military campaign against Raqqa could begin as soon as next month.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:12:53|Editor: liuxin

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HELSINKI, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Former Finnish President Mauno Koivisto died in Helsinki at the age of 93 on Friday, the Finnish presidential office announced.

Koivisto died in the Meilahti hospital in Helsinki at 21:14 local time Friday, said the presidential office in a statement. Koivisto had been suffering from Alzheimers.

He was last seen in public on Dec. 6, 2016 when he attended the official church service of the Finnish Independence Day.

Born in 1923, Koivisto was first in office in 1981 serving the remainder of the tenure of Urho Kekkonen, who resigned for health reasons.

Koivisto became elected president in 1982. He was reelected in 1988 and stayed in office until 1994.

During his two terms, Koivisto continued the foreign policy keeping Finland outside great power conflicts of interest.

He underlined good relations with the Soviet Union, and meanwhile widened the relationship with the United States. During Koivisto's presidency, Ronald Reagan visited Finland as the first U.S. president in office in 1988.Also during his presidency, Finland began talks for joining the European Union.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:28:02|Editor: yan

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ADEN, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Dramatic developments in south Yemen, mainly the formation of a supreme political leadership to represent south Yemen internally and externally, add to challenges faced by the legitimate government and a Saudi-led coalition backing it.

Observers said the latest move by the southern movement is a very dangerous rebellion if not a coup against the legitimate government at a very sensitive time.

It will have an impact on the government's performance and the efforts to end the Houthi-Saleh coup, observers said, with some suggesting it is rather serving the Houthi-Saleh alliance.

Yaseen Al-Tamimi, a political writer and analyst, said the latest move by the southern movement will threaten the project of a new united, federal Yemen which the government is seeking to establish by all means including regional and international support.

It is just one of fragmentation projects at this very crucial turning point and a major blow to the entire political process, Al-Tamimi said.

The latest developments in the south were triggered by Hadi's decrees firing ex-Aden governor who is now head of the supreme southern leadership and another senior official. Both men are reportedly receiving support from the UAE, a member of the Saudi-led coalition.

It is obvious some members of the coalition are involved in chaos in the south and "this makes the credibility of the coalition at stake," Al-Tamimi added.

"The Arab coalition intervened militarily to restore the legitimacy of the government of a united Yemen. If the southern movement goes ahead with its plans successfully, that means the coup on the legitimacy represented by Hadi's government will continue with support from parts of the coalition. But objectively, this is not correct," he said.

The southern leadership's top responsibility will be finalizing the formation of a transitional council within the movement's ambition to separate the south from the north.

The public in the south are angry over the performance of Hadi's government amid deteriorating basic services and security incidents and that boosts chances of the movement to push ahead with its plans.

However, observers argued there is no way for separation--not now, not later.

Actually, what is happening is that this movement is just taking advantage of the government being in exile and the failure to end a two-year war that has taken the country to the verge of total collapse, observers said.

Ahmed Noman, an expert at the Red Sea and East Africa Research Center, said it is not possible to declare or arrange for separation because the international community will not back such a move.

"The international community is offering all support to the government either directly or through the Saudi-led coalition. It will not accept any attempts to undermine its legitimacy or to threaten the national unity," Noman said.

Adil Al-Shuja'a, a politics professor at Sanaa University, said the southern movement is mixing cards.

"The UAE is there. But it is a political stupidity to believe the UAE has all decision in the south. Well, undermining the legitimacy of the government backed by the Arab coalition in which the UAE is a key member is self-contradiction--that will mean the legitimate reason for the Arab military intervention has ended," Al-Shuja'a said.

"Thus I think it is just a small but dangerous political fight at this time," Al-Shuja'a added.

Al-Shuja'a expected Hadi to face the move with some decisions in coming days in a way that will prevent any political escalation or social unrest.

President Abd Rabbuah Mansour Hadi held a meeting with advisors following the declaration of the southern movement and rejected the move.

Hadi, according to a statement published by the government-run Saba news agency, urged the members named for the southern leadership to declare a clear stance toward what is happening in the south.

If the southern leadership takes an effective shape, Yemen will then have three leaderships at the same time: Hadi's government residing in Riyadh and receiving international support, the Houthi-Saleh alliance in Sanaa and this southern leadership.

The continuing war gives each side an opportunity to play their own cards, but in the end foreign players or rather the international community should intervene and do something before Yemen slips into worst scenarios, observers said.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:32:38|Editor: Mengjie

Syrian refugee children have a class at a school in Bekaa town, Lebanon, on May 12, 2017. China's ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian delivered Friday school supplies valuing 1 million U.S. dollars in aid to the Syrian refugee students in Lebanon. (Xinhua/Li Liangyong)

BEIRUT, May 12 (Xinhua) -- China's ambassador to Lebanon Wang Kejian delivered Friday school supplies valuing 1 million U.S. dollars in aid to the Syrian refugee students in Lebanon.

"As part of China's pledge during the last year's UN General Assembly to assist humanitarian cause with 100 million dollars, the supplies will be distributed by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) to help the refugee students overcome difficult situation," Wang said while delivering the supplies at Bekaa town of Saadnayel.

The supplies include stationary, which Wang said would help the students go back to school as soon as possible and relieve them from the negative effects of the war.

UNICEF country office deputy representative Luciano Calestini said that "We are extremely happy that China has joined in helping refugee children because it is a work that has to continue not only for the next few months but for many years to come."

Lebanese teacher Manal Absi working with UNICEF mentioned the sense of solidarity, and how the world's people help each other.

"This shows how the crisis brings people together. This is what we should seek and what UNICEF is seeking," she added. "This aid would affect the students and the feedback about their appreciation for China would be shown in the future."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:32:39|Editor: MJ

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by Stefania Fumo

VENICE, Italy, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The core theme of the China Pavilion at this year's Art Biennale in Venice is that individual acts of creation take place in a communal context that stretches across the dimensions of both space and time.

Four artists -- two folk and two contemporary -- have been invited to extend and interpret Chinese artistic traditions in a show titled "Continuum -- Generation by Generation".

The show mixes embroidery and sculpture, painting and performance, video and puppetry, installations and photography to explore the notion that artists stand in an unbroken line from antiquity to now.

The scale of the work ranges from small piles of red stones on the floor, to free-standing copper sheets cut and molded into mythological tree-like shapes standing over five metres tall.

Each artist is rooted in the teachings of those that came before and will in turn provide fertile ground for those that are to follow.

This is shown in a piece titled "Map of Succession of Teachings", in which photos and images of artists past and present are pinned to the wall spanning several meters in every direction, and are connected to each other by different-colored threads to symbolize mentor-disciple relationships across generations.

"Chinese art is a communal act across five thousand years of our collective history," wrote curator Qiu Zhijie, a Venice Biennale veteran who has been a participating artist three times.

When Qiu was asked if there wasn't the danger that in being so busy looking back, one might forget how to move forward, he said:"We are moving forward while looking backward."

Born in 1968, Qiu told Xinhua he spent ten years just grinding ink for his calligraphy master.

It was his chance to learn from one of the last pure traditional scholars, and it brought him to the notion at the core of the Continuum show.

"Artists die, but art doesn't. Energy passes from one to another. Even in Europe, the old masters spoke of their teachers -- we know Michelangelo's master was Donatello," said Qiu.

"Every artist is a small part of creation. This energy is greater than any individual, and all the teachers of the past are spiritual presences that nurture the artists of the future," he said.

"We need to recall this notion, to bring it back to the present time," said Qiu, a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

He was given the task of curating the China pavilion.

The idea of national pavilions "is very outdated," Qiu said.

The Art Biennale in Venice (Venice Biennale) itself was founded in 1895, based on nationalist ideas that are becoming obsolete, Qiu pointed out. How to explain China, and what is China? "My map of teachers shows my professor, and his teacher, and his teacher -- on that map you can find connections with German philosophers, French thinkers, Japanese artists," he explained.

"All these connections go beyond national borders," he said. "It's like a fire -- it can go out very quickly, and you need to keep feeding it, bringing outside energy to keep it alive."

"Every country's art is one point in a web of connections," he continued. "We are talking about contribution -- what can we give to the world. You are not creating anything by yourself," Qiu told Xinhua.

The China Pavilion is one of 86 national pavilions at the 57th Art Biennale, which opens to the public on May 13 and runs through Nov. 26.

Next year, the Continuum exhibit will travel to the Ming Contemporary Art Museum in Shanghai and the Times Art Museum in Beijing, to coincide with the 2018 Lantern Festival, according to Qiu.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:38:12|Editor: yan

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LOS ANGELES, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Yellowstone National Park announced Thursday that it offered a reward of up to 5,000 U.S. Dollars for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who killed a rare white wolf in the park.

According to the press release of Yellowstone, the first national park of the United States, National Park Service law enforcement believed that the well-known female white wolf was shot on the north side of the park, near Gardiner of Montana and the incident likely occurred sometime between April 10 at 1 am and April 11 at 2pm.

Hikers discovered the mortally wounded wolf on April 11, Yellowstone National Park said, due to the severity of the wolf's injuries, it had to be euthanized. The deceased wolf was sent to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory in Ashland, Oregon for a necropsy. The lab transferred the preliminary results to Park Thursday.

"Due to the serious nature of this incident, a reward of up to 5,000 U.S. Dollars is offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the individual(s) responsible for this criminal act," said Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Dan Wenk.

The 12-year old alpha female, one of only three white wolves known to reside within the iconic wilderness park, was also one of the park' s most popular animals, who were sought after by visitors to view and photograph.

Yellowstone National Park, widely held to be the first national park in the the world, located in the U.S. states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho. The latter two states allowed wolf hunting and Wyoming was scheduled to renew the hunting since from this fall.
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:48:20|Editor: MJ

Palestinians attend the opening ceremony of the Red Carpet Festival in Gaza City, on May 12, 2017. The Red Carpet is a festival for short and long narrative and documentary films. (Xinhua/Wissam Nassar)

GAZA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Palestinians walked Friday evening on a 100-meter-long red carpet, rolled out on the floor of Gaza fishermen's dock at the opening ceremony of a 6-day annual film festival held in the Gaza Strip for the third year in a row.

The festival's organizers said that the festival with the title "We want to return" shows the Palestinian cause is still alive.

The text of the Belfour Declaration was printed on the 100-meter-long red carpet, marking the one hundred years for the declaration. The attendants, who are ordinary people, walked on the carpet reaching a large cinema screen.

The declaration was actually a letter written on November 2, 1917, by the then foreign secretary of Britain, Arthur James Balfour, in which he promised the Jews a "national home" in Palestine, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire but was soon to be ruled under a British mandate.

The Palestinians are demanding Britain to apologize to the Palestinian people "for the historic injustice they have been living through over the past hundred years," said Yosor Abu Medein, one of the festival organizers, adding "the Palestinians are peacefully addressing the world through cinema."

She said that dozens of films will be screened this year in two Palestinian cities, Gaza and Ramallah, as well as the city of Haifa in Israel, adding that one the festival's films named The Ambulance will be screened in five Arab capitals in solidarity with the Red Carpet Film Festival and with the Gaza Strip.

The audience walking on the red carpet expressed happiness for having the festival in the Gaza Strip that has been under a tight Israeli blockade for ten years, causing hard living condition, high rates of poverty and unemployment.

"Our first film we screened tonight is directed by the Palestinian director Ra'ed Andoni, and it is called Ghost Hunting," said Abdul Rahman Husein, one of the festival's organizers, adding that the film talks about the suffering of Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israeli jails.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners have been going on a hunger strike for 26 days in a row, demanding to improve conditions in the jails.

"We choose the fishermen's dock for the opening ceremony of the festival in order to send a message to the world that 2 million people in Gaza have been living under a tight Israeli blockade for ten years and that they love life," said Hussein.

He added that "last year's message of the festival was to tell the world that Gaza Strip populations don't like to die, they love life and in spite of the mass destruction caused by the Israeli wars, they can find a space to enjoy watching films."

The opening ceremony of the third film festival attracted hundreds of men, women and children. They walked on the red carpet that was rolled out on the floor, made out of the rubble of destroyed Palestinian homes.

"Our message this year is to tell the world that Gaza Strip populations want to end the blockade and end the internal Palestinian division," said Hussein, adding "the festival aims at showing the world that there is another beautiful face for Gaza."

The festival will screen about 25 films made by Palestinian, Arab and international artists, including short and long narrative and documentary films and animations. The films will be screened at different theaters as well as dozens of schools and cultural centers in the Gaza Strip.

Hanan al-Khawaja, a 32-year-old Palestinian woman from Gaza, said she came to the festival because she wanted to join this annual event, to be happy with it and watch the movie on the prisoners.

"I came here today with my friends because this event is different for me. It helps people get out of the horrible and miserable situation that the people here in Gaza are passing through."

The Islamic Hamas movement violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007. Over the past ten years, Israel waged three wars on the enclave.

Thirty years ago, there were ten cinema theaters in the Gaza Strip, but since the beginning of the first Palestinian Intifada or Uprising against Israel, which broke out in 1987, these cinema theaters were closed. However, some movie directors are trying to revive the cinemas in Gaza.

Sa'ed Sweirki, one of the festival's organizers, said "Our message is so clear that Gaza has the ability to live in peace far from wars and misery."
Source: Xinhua| 2017-05-13 05:53:26|Editor: xuxin

Members of the new government swear in before Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir (C) in Khartoum May 12, 2017. The members of the new government on Friday took the constitutional oath before Omar al-Bashir. It is composed of two vice-presidents, four presidential assistants, 31 federal ministers and 43 state ministers. (Xinhua/Mohamed Babiker)

KHARTOUM, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Ministers of Sudan's new government on Friday took the constitutional oath before Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, marking beginning of its tasks.

The new government is composed of two vice-presidents, four presidential assistants, 31 federal ministers and 43 state ministers.

"The responsibility of this government is to translate the national dialogue document into reality," said al-Bashir when addressing the oath taking ceremony Friday.

At a press conference in Khartoum on Thursday, Sudan's First Vice President and Prime Minister Bakri Hassan Saleh announced the country's new government.

The ruling National Congress Party (NCP) continues to dominate the majority of sovereign ministries of defense, interior, foreign affairs, presidency, oil, finance, higher education and electricity and dams.

A total of 17 ministers in the old government have kept their posts, and 65 parliamentary members were appointed from the parties participating in the national dialogue.

The new government was scheduled to be announced in February but was delayed because of differences within the parties.
Suspended cop held after fatal shooting

According to police reports, the officer was at his Macoya home at 8 am when he was confronted by five men including 24-year-old Raj Singh, a relative of the officers common-law wife.

Newsday understands that the officers was engaged in a land dispute with Singh and others.

The officer reported that Singh and four men arrived and began to throw stones at his house.

The constable said he was attacked and in self-defence, drew his licensed firearm and fired a shot. Singh slumped to the ground.

He was rushed to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex in Mt Hope where he died at 10 am.

The officer himself had to be treated at hospital for injuries.

The land dispute, Newsday was told, is currentl before the courts. Snr Supt Mc Donald Jacob along with ASP Dillon and others visited the scene and enquiries are continuing.
Murder in Laventille

According to reports, Dubari was at a parlour on Fort Chacon in Laventille at about 8 am when he got into an argument with a man from the area. The argument got physical and Dubari was shot multiple times. He slumped to the ground while the gunman ran off. Police were called in and Dubari was rushed to the Portof- Spain General Hospital but died while undergoing emergency surgery.

Police later set up roadblocks in Laventille and hours later, the suspect was arrested. An autopsy will be done today at the Forensic Science Centre in St James.
ROWLEY THE WOODSMAN

It is understood that Rowley gave Minister of Agriculture, Land and Fisheries Clarence Rambharat a mandate to have a million saplings ready for planting in time for the rainy season. And yesterdays tour was to allow Rowley to see what progress was made on this initiative.

He then made his way to Ecclesville in Rio Claro, where the PM viewed facilities at the Ministry of Agricultures forestry division branch.

At Maper Farm, Rowley was warmly greeted by workers who seemed very eager to display the healthy-looking saplings which will be used in the reforestation drive.

Rowley thanked them for their commitment in having the plants ready in time and asked that they to do him a favour, by ensuring another million plants are available for the rainy season next year.

Rowley, a former agriculture minister, who at a recent cottage meeting said if he is no longer wanted to lead government he would gladly go back to the Tobago to plant the land and rear animals, told the workers at Maper Farm that he very concerned about the wanton slashing and burning of the Northern Range for farming purposes.

This he said has made it easy for forests fires to ravage the hillside and leave areas vulnerable to major flooding and landslides during the rainy season. The reforestation drive is to ensure that the Northern Range can have green cover once again. Even in his own constituency of Diego Martin West, Rowley said, he is very concerned about destruction of the vegetation on the hills, recalling that some constituents had lost their homes as a result of heavy flooding.

The Prime Minister also asked for fruit trees to be planted alongside the soft and hardwood trees so that wildlife could benefit throughout the year. He believed the fruit would also be of use to the public and added that ensuring the countrys return to greenery would redound to the benefit of all.

The Prime Minister said that contrary to what some may believe, he is genuinely interested in ensuring that all home owners benefit from having fruit trees on their premises so people can return to the good old days of having freshly squeezed orange, lemon and lime juices with their lunch.

He joked that he grew up drinking freshly squeezed citrus juice and still enjoys them.

Yesterday, Minister Rambharat praised the effort of the farm workers adding the was very pleased to be able to carry out the mandate given him by the Prime Minister, because he too is of the belief that reforestation should be a national priority. He added that some of the fruit trees would go on sale to the public from Monday. The reforestation drive also starts on Monday.
Mini-mart murder was a hit

Alexander, owner of LA Mini Mart on the Eastern Main Road, Arouca, reportedly had an argument with a woman who took her grouse to a man she is romantically involved with.

Police were told the man then hired a 24-year-old from Morvant to kill Alexander. The suspect, who was held by Alexanders customers after the shooting, has been co-operating with investigators, telling them he was paid to kill Alexander. Police are expected to detain a woman in her 20s and another man for questioning.

At about 11.30 am on Tuesday, Alexander of Back Street, Arouca was at his mini-mart when the suspect entered, announced a hold-up and shot Alexander twice in the chest.

He fell to the ground as the gunman ran out of the parlour and into the hands of customers and residents who put a sound and sustained beating on him.

Police were called in and arrested the semi-conscious man.

A revolver loaded with four rounds of ammunition and two spent casings was seized by officers. The suspect was beaten so severely that he had to be taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex for treatment.
Killed for refusing to make up

Vasquez, who lived in Piparo, had been romantically involved with Ramdeen for the past 17 years.

However, a month ago she ended the relationship.

Vasquez appeared initially to be handling the separation well.

However, he began visiting Ramdeen every other day begging and pleading with her to reconcile.

On each occasion, she refused, and relatives told Newsday she had said at her age, she was content to mind her grandchildren.

Vasquez, Newsday was told, became depressed when he realised his attempts to woo Ramdeen back were unsuccessful.

On Wednesday, Ana Vialva left her mother (Ramdeen) at home to go pay a bill.

She said her mother went to work at the Forestry Division, and was expected home by 11 am.

Vasquez reportedly picked up Ramdeen at her workplace that day and they both went to her Mayaro home, where it is believed they had a heated argument and he slit her throat.

He died moments later when his car crashed head-on into a Jusamco truck.

Relatives said Ramdeens two grandchildren were asleep when she was murdered.

Vasquez was described as being very close to Ramdeens children.

He and Ramdeen had no children together, but she had five children and six grandchildren
Garcia insists No special treatment for contractor

Gopeesingh yesterday wrote the Integrity Commission on this issue and called on the Commission to investigate it. Contrary to articles published in the Sunday Express and the Trinidad Express on May 7 and 9 respectively, Garcia said, investigations by his permanent secretary have found claims to be baseless.

The sum involved as payment was $510,000, not $2 million. He said Wilkinson was given the cheque by the ministrys director of finance and accounts, to take to the EFCL in order to facilitate timely payment to the contractor as had been promised by both the ministry and EFCL. Garcia said the contractor was the first to complete his assignment at the Malick Secondary School and, was entitled to payment for this job done. The minister said this project fell under the Morvant Laventille Initiative for which there is a separate fund to, facilitate timely payments where work has been completed. He added that the contractors involved in this initiative reside in the Laventille/Morvant district.

In his letter to the Commission, Gopeesingh claimed this transaction was a breach of Section 24 of the Integrity in Public Life Act.

He said the contractor was incorporated in 2014 and was a sham company. Gopeesingh was education minister in former Peoples Partnership government in 2014.

Speaking with reporters before the sitting, Gopeesingh said ministers advisors are not covered by the Act. There is no statutory or fiduciary responsibility for a ministers advisor, he stated. Asked if he expected the Commission to resolve this matter expeditiously, Gopeesingh replied,You cant force them in terms of their timing but I guess they will sense the necessity of looking after it at the appropriate time.
Seabridge woes 300 passengers stranded for 10 hours

One of the stranded passengers, Julius Kennedy, 87, said he never thought when he arrived at the port at five oclock in the morning, he would be embarking on the trip after an excruciating wait of ten long hours.

Kennedy said he and others boarded the TT Express at 6.30 am only to be ordered to disembark after it was discovered that the vessel was experiencing mechanical difficulties.

After 7 am we were advised that the sailing would be cancelled and the next available sailing would be a little after 4 pm, Kennedy said. Another woman, who declined to give her name, said she was sailing to the sister isle to attend a funeral. Thank God its tomorrow (today). We were told there were some technical problems. We were told to check in at 6.30 am. Passengers were on the boat already and then we had to disembark.

This is damn nonsense. Every sailing there has been a delay.

I have some stuff that I need to take by boat. It was not convenient for me to fly, the woman said. Kennedy, with soft drink in hand, took it all in stride.

They say something wrong in the engine room. I am here since five this morning, he said.

Contacted yesterday on the issue, Vilma Lewis-Cockburn, manager of public relations at the Port Authority, said that traditionally, June and September have been the months where there is low utilisation of the vessels and therefore this was the time when they are serviced.

The vessels would be dry docked between June and September.

Lewis-Cockburn said like with any vehicle, these vessels need to be serviced. These vessels are entitled to these kinds of breakdowns, she said.

Lewis-Cockburn said that the authority would be enlisting the assistance of the fast ferries to help with the transportation.
Sinanan: Priority for Tobago food

Asked by Couva North MP Ramona Ramdial whether a third vessel would be rented or leased to supplement the Trinity Transporter barge and the Atlantic Provider, Sinanan replied, The management of the Port as we speak, are evaluating all proposals that is put to them for the replacement of the cargo vessel. He disclosed, It does include the replacement of the barge and there are options on the table and I expect a recommendation by Monday. Sinanan reminded MPs that because the Galicia was pulled, Government had to see what was immediately available to replace it. Later in the sitting, Speaker Bridgid Annisette-George rejected a request from Ramdial to debate the issue of Tobagos food supply and the seabridge as a matter of definite, urgent public importance. In a subsequent statement, Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar charged that Government has failed the people of Tobago by removing the Galicia and not making adequate provision for alternative cargo arrangements.

She said, People living and working in Tobago are in desperate need of basic food supplies and Government seems to be unaware of the urgency of the situation.
SEA student goes missing

Bahadurs mother Sharon Narine said that after writing the SE A examination last week Thursday, she gave her daughter permission to spend time with relatives in Chaguanas.

The worried mother said her daughter left the family home shortly after 4 pm with another relative. I did not want her to travel alone so her elder cousin went with her.

The arrangement was that my daughter was to return home on Monday. She was allowed to spend two days by family in Chaguanas, Narine said. The mother of 15, said that later on Friday night she telephoned her daughters aunt to see if Jilliana had arrived safely, but was informed that her daughter and the cousin never showed up.

I could not believe what I hearing. My little girl is out there.

I do not know what to think...I am afraid for her. I have not heard from the cousin who was supposed to be with her, Narine said. She said that her daughter was not the type to run away from home.

She is not that type of girl, she was studying hard at school to write the SE A, she said.

Narine said she is praying her daughter is safe. There is no sign of her cousin who went with her as well. My daughter is a primary school child and cannot fend for herself. Please, if someone has her just send her home and dont harm her...I am begging you. She is just a little girl, the weeping woman cried.

A Missings Person report was made to the St Margarets Police Station. In a media release Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) said the teenager is of mixed descent, five feet six inches tall, brown in complexion and has brown shoulder length hair.

The release said she was last seen wearing a pink dress and a pair of slippers. Anyone with information on the teens whereabouts is asked to call 800-TIPS or any police station
New AmCham TT president advises on forex allocations

At the end of the day you have to decide what you want to have, a market driven economy or one that is directed by the state. When things are directed by an entity thats not an actor in the system, distortion is created and you have to be very careful of this. But we do accept that there is a need to make some decisions, to make a change and frankly, some of our membership benefit from what the minister has done. During his delivery of the Mid-Year Review on May 10, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said he had requested that the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago (CBTT) give priority to trade and manufacturing regarding access to foreign exchange.

From our perspective, De Silva said, this direction of foreign exchange to three priorities, trade, education and health care (is) already happening. Clearly those are critical areas and fundamentally, its the CBTTs injections, so its the countrys reserves and I assume its within the ministers right to direct (the bank) but in a free market its not always best to do those kind of things...because it disrupts, it creates distortion.

As a business chamber, we are very much in favour of as free a system as can possibly exist. De Silva was speaking with reporters following AmCham TTs 2017 Annual General Meeting (AGM), held yesterday at Hilton Trinidad, Port-of- Spain.

Prior to his election to the post of president, De Silva served as AmCham TT vice-president for the period 2015 - 2017.
UTT signs education MOU

Speaking at the signing ceremony at the National Academy for the Performing Arts in Port-of-Spain, Education Minister Anthony Garcia said this consortium will provide a pipeline to channel collaborative activities including the recruitment and exchange of students between participating Caribbean institutions and the Medgar Evers College and other US institutions.

The other universities involved include University of Guyana and EGC Martinique Business School. Garcia said the consortiums objective is to foster and promote academic collaboration aimed at addressing the economic and social challenges affecting historically disadvantaged people and developing countries.

And explore and develop new curricula to address the challenges of the changing global environment to serve as a centre for harmonising the efforts of member institutions in the obtaining of the objectives set out and a key driver in all of this is to ensure a Caribbean diaspora fund to invest in education opportunities, he said.

The minster said the aim of consortium is to establish new programmes relevant to the development of the Caribbean community and the diaspora allowing for articulation student and staff mobility and joint awards.

It is our desire to ensure that every citizen is afforded the opportunity to improve himself. Be it in the traditional academic areas or the technical vocational field. When our citizens thrive our societies will do well.

This is why it is with great pleasure that we welcome initiatives of this nature which support the development of our human capital.

As we scan the region, this collaboration will benefit the wider Caribbean as more institutions align themselves to the Consortium creating opportunities for citizens across the region and contributing to its growth as well, he said. UCIEC Chairman and President of Medgar Evers College Rudy Crew said the consortium was about committing to a set of strategies that are intended to engage and build human capital and share that human capital across the border.
Volunteer network goes national

Conceptualised and implemented under the leadership of Local Government and Rural Development Minister Kazim Hosein while he was Mayor of San Fernando, the idea of volunteer network is being expanded to a national level under his direction.

On Tuesday, the concept was presented to Mayor Gopaul Boodan and the Council of the Chaguanas Borough Corporation by Matthew Kailah, a representative of the Ministry.

Kailah said each corporation is being asked to amass a database of at least 200 volunteers over the next six months. The database would store volunteers basic profile information as well as their occupations, skills, areas of interest, and their preferred days for volunteering. The database would also keep record of the hours logged by volunteers which, Kailah said, would favour students who are seeking to add civic duty to their university applications.

The corporations are being encouraged to perform at least one project per month using the volunteer network which could range from the usual beautification projects to the provision of professional services like legal aid clinics and medical check-ups. Volunteers could even be called upon during and in the aftermath of future national disasters, be it to offer professional help or just their able bodies.

As was done in San Fernando, after the networks are functioning like well-oiled machines, each corporation is being asked to elect a board to an NGO dedicated to managing the work of the various networks within their communities.

Kailah said the networks would create a space for citizens to develop a sense of civic duty while acting as a deterrent to crime for young people.
Couple may not return to Trinidad

Irwin was left nursing second degree burns to his back after angry bandits doused him with a pot of hot water when they couldnt get more valuables. The Seenaths returned to Florida yesterday.

A police report stated that at 8 am on Tuesday, the couple were at their home on Southern Main Road, La Romaine when two masked men entered and announced a hold-up. The couple was robbed of cell phones and $750. According to reports, the robbery turned violent when the couple resisted the bandits attempts to get more valuables.

The robbery occurred during peak morning hours and unaware to those passing on the busy main road, inside the downstairs apartment, the bandits bound the victims hands and feet with tie straps.

They ripped a blanket and gagged Judy before making them lie on the floor. One of them then removed a pot of boiling water and doused Seenath down his back.

When they were finally rescued Irwin was rushed to the San Fernando General Hospital where he was treated and later discharged.

When reporters visited the familys home, Irwin whose neck was heavily bandaged said he was in fear of his life and did not wish to speak. A female relative however spoke on his behalf.

What shocked me about this is that they (Seenaths) dont go out anywhere, they dont draw attention to themselves and they are not flashy. I am surprised that they were targeted like that. She added, People must know how dangerous crime is here. You read it in the papers and you think it wouldnt affect you, but it happens and it is really bad. I hope they catch the persons. The relative said, Imagine one of them whispered instructions to ransack the house.

When they didnt get what they wanted, they tied them up with those tie straps, cut a blanket and gagged his wife and put them on the ground and then threw the hot water down Irwins back. All his neck was burnt. He was burnt pretty badly. Right now, I am telling you, they dont think they will ever come back Trinidad. No one has been arrested for the robbery.
Chairman: Put off Property Tax for 3 years

In Awongs contribution to the debate on Wednesday, he said between 2003 when he entered local government and 2010, 36 communities in his region were dependent on truck-borne water. He said within that period, despite the existence of land and building taxes, only one pavilion and no play parks were built, forcing him to take his children to Chaguanas for them to enjoy the privilege of a play park.

This changed between 2010 and 2015, he said, when 23 pavilions and 14 play parks were built, and the number of areas dependent on truckborne water reduced from 36 to 13. All this was done while the Property Tax and Valuation of Land Acts 2009 were suspended by the PP government.

Awong acknowledged the urgent need to raise revenue as the recession deepens, but said he had little reason to trust that their taxes would filter back into their communities based on the PNM governments history of rural neglect during times of plenty.

Awong welcomed the concept of Local Government Reform as campaigned for by the PNM during the last local government election. The reform promised greater autonomy for corporations including the ability for them to collect and use taxes in their municipalities.

However, he said he has little faith in the implementation of reform as its concept has been touted on political platforms for as long as he could remember.

Awong supported the motion on the grounds that this was not the best time for the implementation of a property tax.

The motion calling for the government to suspend the tax for three years was put forward by Alderman Ravi Ratiram in a special statutory meeting of the council yesterday afternoon. All councillors, aldermen, the Chairman and the CEO were in attendance as the motion was passed with only one abstention from the lone PNM Councillor for Las Lomas/ San Raphael, Candida Pathron.

In his closing remarks before the vote, Ratiram ripped up a Property Tax valuation form as was done by UNC Political Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar on April 30 in Debe. Ratiram echoed Persad-Bissessars argument that there was no legal obligation to fill out the form.

Newsday asked Chairman Awong whether he supported the call for citizens in disagreement to not fill out the valuation forms. Awong said, Yes.
Never send a cop to do a man's job
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The UN Security Council issued a statement strongly denouncing the attack perpetrated by a rebel group against a convoy of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) which resulted in four Cambodian peacekeepers killed, 10 wounded, including nine Moroccans and one Cambodian. One Moroccan peacekeeper is reported missing in action.

The members of the Security Council condemned in the strongest terms the attack on a Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) convoy near Bangassou (Mbomou) on 8 May 2017 by alleged anti-Balaka elements, President of the UN Security Council Uruguayan Elbio Rosselli said in the statement.

The members of the Security Council expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy to the families of the victims, and their deepest sympathy to the families of the peacekeepers injured and the peacekeeper missing, as well as to the Kingdom of Cambodia, the Kingdom of Morocco, and to MINUSCA. They wished the injured a speedy recovery, the statement said.

The Security Council urged authorities of the Central African Republic to bring the perpetrators of this attack before justice, saying that such raids on peacekeepers amount to war crimes.

A Moroccan peacekeeper remains missing since the ambush laid by the anti-Balaka rebel group. A firefight sparked between the MINUSCA convoy and the rebel group causing the death of eight fighters from the Anti-Balaka rebel group.

Following the attack on the MINUSCA convoy, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres offered his deepest condolences to the bereaved families and the Governments of Morocco and Cambodia and wished a swift recovery to the wounded.

The President of the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson arrived in CAR to show solidarity with the MINUSCA peacekeepers.

Clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, plunged the country of 4.5 million people into civil conflict in 2013.
Mauritanian authorities were strongly criticized in a UN report for discriminating against the Haratins and Afro-Mauritanians who remain excluded from all positions of power coupled with economic and social marginalization.

Haratines and Afro-Mauritanians are excluded from almost all positions of real power and many aspects of economic and social life, which has the consequence of condemning them to poverty, said the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, in a report following his mission to Mauritania.

The report, drafted in May 2016 and sent to the 35th session of the UN Human Rights Council, notes that a large part of the population continues to live in multidimensional poverty, deprived of access to adequate food, education, water and sanitation, and health care.

The report added that eliminating poverty in the West African country faces several challenges, notably the lack of recognition of social and economic rights, the absence of accurate and disaggregated data and shrinking civil society space.

The Special Rapporteur put forward recommendations in the report echoing the demands of several civil society bodies, particularly the National Agency for the Eradication of the Vestiges of Slavery.

Besides tough enduring economic and social exclusion, Black Mauritanians continue to endure political oppression and violence. Several members of the anti-slavery movement, the Initiative for the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement (IRA), were arrested last July for calling for an end to slavery in the country.

IRA is the largest anti-slavery organization in Mauritania, with members throughout the country who regularly mobilize to protest slavery and state endorsed discrimination based on race, caste and gender.

Mauritania was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1981 and it was not until 2007 when it passed a law criminalizing the act of owning another person. Yet, enslavement continues to be practiced with estimates of enslaved people ranging from 10% to 20% of Mauritanias 3.4 million strong population.
The United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) has confirmed the death of the Moroccan peacekeeper previously reported as missing following an ambush by the Anti-Balaka rebels on May 8, 2017 in southeastern CAR.

The MINUSCA retrieved the fallen soldiers body and transferred it to the Royal Armed Forces stationed in Bangui.

The attack on the MINUSCA convoy left a total of five peacekeepers dead, 4 Cambodians and 1 Moroccan, following a firefight between them and the anti-Balaka rebels. Ten peacekeepers were injured in the attack, 9 Moroccans and 1 Cambodian.

The UN Secretary General, Antonio Gueterres, the MINUSCA and the UN Security Council have all strongly condemned the attack against the peacekeepers, saying that such an aggression amounts to war crime. They also extended condolences to the families of the victims and expressed solidarity with Morocco and Cambodia.

In this regards, they called on authorities of Central African Republic to bring the perpetrators of this heinous attack before justice.

The President of the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson arrived in CAR and showed solidarity with the MINUSCA peacekeepers in a hospital in Bangui.

The MINUSCA will hold a memorial ceremony for its fallen members. The ceremony will be presided over by UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix in the presence of the highest Central African authorities.

Clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, plunged the country of 4.5 million people into civil conflict in 2013.
ABC/Randy HolmesCold War Kids frontman Nathan Willett has recorded a new song for Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, based on the popular children's novel series. The track is called "Saturday," and will appear on the movie's soundtrack, due out June 2.

In addition to Willett's recording of the song, Captain Underpants cast members Kevin Hart and Thomas Middleditch perform a rendition of "Saturday" on the soundtrack.

Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, which also features the voices of Ed Helms, Jordan Peele and Kristen Schaal, will hit theaters on June 2.

Willett and Cold War Kids recently released their new album LA Divine, which includes the lead single "Love Is Mystical." They'll kick off a North American tour with Young the Giant in support of the album in August.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
Mark Bertolini. Photo: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Democratic leadership does not want Medicare for all to be the partys official vision for the American health-care system. Many progressives believe that this is because Team Blue sold its soul to the insurance industry. But what if the Democrats actually oppose single payer because they havent sold out enough?

Normally, it would take a family-size portion of hallucinogenic drugs (and/or an especially desperate Slate columnist) to generate such a question. But on Friday, Vox obtained private remarks by Aetnas CEO that suggest we could bring socialized medicine to the United States  if only the insurance industry exercised more control over our politics.

In the news media, it is reporting that the Republican health plan is paving the way to a single-payer system, an Aetna employee asked Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini at a meeting Thursday. What are your thoughts on that, and how would it impact Aetna?

Here was Bertolinis response:

Single-payer, I think we should have that debate as a nation. But let me remind everybody that Aetna was the first financial intermediary for Medicare. We cut the first check for Medicare in 1965 to Hartford Hospital for $517.57.



The government doesnt administer anything. the first thing theyve ever tried to administer in social programs was the ACA, and that didnt go so well. So the industry has always been the back room for government. If the government wants to pay all the bills, and employers want to stop offering coverage, and we can be there in a public private partnership to do the work we do today with Medicare, and with Medicaid at every state level, we run the Medicaid programs for them, then lets have that conversation.



But if we want to turn it all over to the government to run, is the government really the right place to run all this stuff? And thats the debate that needs to be had. They could finance it, and if there is one financer, and you could call that single-payer.



 Were going to pay for it one way or another. What we have to do is we have to get the costs right. We have to get people healthy. Its not about who is paying the bill. Its about what were doing to get the costs down. The Democrats are now saying that with the new Republican bill, wait there is nothing in here about getting costs down. Thats the point. And so thats the place were headed as a company. Its not just about paying the bills.

Okay: This isnt actually an endorsement of single payer, so much as a strategy for preempting investor freak-out if such a policy were ever to gain steam in D.C.

Still, we should have a debate as a nation about single payer is a shade to the left of Nancy Pelosis recent comments on the matter. And Bertolini actually makes a worthwhile point about the critical importance of cost control.

As Ezra Klein has long argued, the greatest enemies of socialized medicine in the United States arent actually the insurance companies  theyre big pharma, the medical-device industry, and doctors. This is because all of those entities enjoy rates of compensation that would be impossible to sustain if our nation actually guaranteed basic medical services to all of its citizens:

[I]nsurers arent where the big profits in the health-care system go. In 2009, Forbes ranked health insurance as the 35th most profitable industry, with an anemic 2.2 percent return on revenue. To understand why the U.S. health-care system is so expensive, you need to travel higher up the Forbes list. The pharmaceutical industry was in third place, with a 19.9 percent return, and the medical products and equipment industry was right behind it, with a 16.3 percent return. Meanwhile, doctors are more likely than members of any other profession to have incomes in the top 1 percent.



 There are few truly single-payer systems in the developed world. Canada has one, as does Taiwan. Most countries rely on many, many insurers. Germany, for instance, has more than 150 sickness funds. The Swiss and Dutch health systems look a lot like Obamacares health-insurance exchanges. In France, about 90 percent of citizens have supplementary health insurance. Sweden has moved from a single-payer system to one with private insurers. Yet all these countries pay vastly less for drugs, surgeries or doctor visits than Americans do.



Why? Because in every case the government sets prices for health-care services and products. Insurers in Switzerland dont negotiate drug prizes with Pfizer. The Swiss government simply sets its drug prices and lets Pfizer decide whether to sell in Switzerland  or not.

To be sure: Bertolinis suggestion that an efficient single-payer system would require the government to partner with Aetna seems dubious. Historically, the use of private contractors has not been an effective means of government cost control. Further, the insurance industry as a whole has not  and will not  be a friend to the movement for Medicare for all.

But Bertolinis remarks are still a useful reminder that insurers arent that movements only enemy.
The attorney general promised not to get involved in investigations stemming from the 2016 campaign, the source of both reasons commonly cited for Comeys dismissal. Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

As you may recall, in March, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, having suddenly remembered he had some meetings with the Russian ambassador to the United States that he had earlier denied, recused himself from involvement in any existing or future investigations of any matter relating in any way to the campaigns for president of the United States.

So to those who have concluded that the Comey firing was at least partly about angst over his investigation of the Trump-Russia campaign, Sessionss involvement in said firing would seem to violate his recusal pledge. And as Jennifer Rubin points out, that is an act with consequences:

Refusing to recuse oneself from a conflict or breaking the promise to recuse from a conflict is a serious breach of legal ethics. Someone could file a bar complaint, and/or one with DOJs office of professional responsibility, if Sessions had a conflict of interest when it came to the firing decision, and if he did not follow the ethics rules, including those of DOJ by acting when he had a conflict of interest, legal ethics expert Norman Eisen tells me. The fact that he broke his recusal commitment, if he did, would be relevant context, and violating an agreement can sometimes in itself be an ethics violation. In sum, Sessions has risked his law license, whether he realized it or not. He needs to testify immediately under oath; if there is no satisfactory explanation, he must resign. The alternative could be impeachment proceedings.

Democrats on Capitol Hill have been raising alarms about the issue, with Senator Ron Wyden calling on Sessions to resign over the breach of the recusal pledge.

The immediate counter from Team Trump, of course, is that Sessionss letter recommending Comeys firing didnt mention or even allude to the Russian investigation. So whatever was in Trumps mind, it wasnt necessarily in Sessionss mind, so he should be in the clear, right?

No so fast, say Susan Hennessey and Quinta Jurecic at Lawfare Blog:

[E]ven if we accept the White Houses stated rationale that the Director was fired because of his controversial conduct surrounding the Clinton email investigation, this might still fall within the scope of Sessions expansive pledge to recuse himself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States.

The Clinton email saga was about matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States, if anything on earth is so related. And though Sessions doesnt specifically mention it in his letter recommending Comeys firing, it is the entire basis for Rod Rosensteins evaluation of Comeys performance, which Sessions says he relied on in deciding Comey should hit the bricks. So Sessions clearly waded into a high-profile dispute of a sort that he promised to avoid, even if it wasnt about Russians.

Hennessey and Jurecic suggest this isnt an open and shut case because its always possible Sessions was relying on issues beyond either the Clinton email or the Trump-Russia investigations in deciding to recommend Comeys firing on general grounds stemming from the attorney generals supervision of the FBI. But he sure doesnt go out of his way to mention any.

In any event, the possibility that Sessions broke his vow in his haste to help his boss get rid of this troublesome subordinate is worth further inquiry. And maybe the attorney general should get himself some high-life legal representation, since aside from the risk of disbarment, he shares the presidents vulnerability to a charge of obstruction of justice, if it turns out the whole thing was an effort to stop investigations into suspicions about collusion between Team Trump and Team Putin.
The FBI raided a GOP consulting firm in Maryland on Thursday. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

FBI agents executed a search warrant at a GOP consulting firm in Annapolis, Maryland, Thursday afternoon, setting off alarms for liberals and conservatives online who were convinced it was related to the Russia investigation.

The firms is called Strategic Campaign Group and it bills itself as a Republican campaignwinning operation that has helped Republican candidates run for office at every level. The Washington Post spoke to the firms president, Kelley Rogers, and he said agents collected documents related to its direct-mail and fundraising operations.

Windows covered w/black plastic at Strategic Campaign Group in Annapolis near where @FBI are investigating a political group. @capgaznews pic.twitter.com/Y9vuuHaSP1  Joshua McKerrow (@joshuamckerrow) May 11, 2017

The lack of information in initial reports, combined with the FBIs involvement, had the rumor mill churning on Twitter.

On the left, a connection was quickly confirmed between Strategic Campaign Group and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

BREAKING:



The GOP Fundraising Firm in Annapolis is called 'Strategic Campaign Group'



We have confirmed They Have Ties to Paul Manafort  Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) May 11, 2017

On the right, it was initially seen as a sign of a coup.

FBI raided a GOP fundraising office, reports are saying. Deep state is making its move, a coup.  Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 11, 2017

Cernovich walked back the claim after reading the Post article linked above. It outlines Strategic Campaign Groups fraught legal past. In 2014, the firm was sued by former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli. He said it ran a PAC that raised over $2 million dollars for his gubernatorial campaign but spent little of that money in support of him. The firm settled the civil suit for $85,000.

Indeed, Rogers, the firms president, confirmed in an interview with Capital Gazette that the FBI raid was related to the Cuccinelli allegations, not the tenuous-at-best links to Manafort. While the FBI confirmed it conducted a raid in Annapolis, it would not say where or the reasons why.
The kids are all left. Photo: Zach Gibson/Getty Images

The president of the United States has called for the abolition of legal abortion. His second-in-command opposes sex-same marriage, stem-cell research and any limitation on the right of employers to fire people for being gay. And in state houses all across America, the peoples elected representatives are pushing new restrictions on reproductive rights.

It would be easy to read these developments as testaments to the resilience of American puritanism  but, in truth, theyre testaments to the undemocratic nature of American democracy.

On Thursday, Gallup released a new poll on our nations moral sentiments. It reveals that Americans have never been as socially liberal in their attitudes as they are today: On the 19 moral issues in Gallups survey, Americans are now more left-wing than theyve ever been on 10  and have moved significantly in the conservative direction on none.

To be sure, the pro-human-cloning movement still has its work cut out for it. And all of this years new highs are just one or two points above records set in 2015 and 2014  which is to say, we arent seeing a significant acceleration in Americas descent into Satanism, just continuous movement in that direction.

Still, the new records offer an opportunity to reflect on the significant changes in Americas moral sensibilities since the turn of the century. Since the early 2000s, the publics views on sex and marriage have changed drastically, as the percentage of Americans who say gay relations, conceiving a child outside of wedlock, extramarital sex, and divorce are morally acceptable have all increased by double digits.

These shifts have been powered by the growing liberalism of Americas elderly  itself a product of the success of social movements and, well, father time thinning the ranks of more conservative generations. By contrast, Americas growing intolerance for cruelty to animals is driven by the sensitivities of those under 50.

So: Why dont our state and federal governments affirm the ascendency of American social liberalism? One answer, of course, is that they actually do. Gay marriage is legal in all 50 states; your employer-provided health care must cover birth control (for now); blue states are steadily expanding employment and civil-rights protections for gays, lesbians, and the gender nonconforming; pornography remains legal (despite the ongoing moral opposition of a majority of Americans); and even with full control of the federal government, Republicans still cant seem to defund Planned Parenthood.

Nonetheless, it remains the case that Americas dominant political party boasts a radically reactionary platform on social issues that is increasingly out of step with majoritarian moral sentiment.

This fact is, in large part, a product of our nations abysmal turnout rate. In a country where only 60 percent of the electorate shows up for general elections, well-organized communities and institutions can punch above their weight at the ballot box. And white evangelicals are very well-organized: In many of last years swing states, such Christians accounted for a fifth of the voting public  and cast their ballots in a block for Republican candidates.

Americas libertines simply dont vote as reliably as its promise-ring enthusiasts. And this has allowed our government to slouch back towards theocracy, even as the American people have made excellent headway down the road to perdition.
Could be worse. Photo: Juan Monino/Getty Images

If Russia elected me Americas next president, I would move immediately to ban two pundit cliches: America is a failing state and the solution is to put country before party. Not because theyre lazy writing  though they are  but because they suggest the writer needs to get out and see the world. Instead of a travel ban, my platform would include forced international travel for pundits and political writers  to see how the troubles were having fit into democracys global discontents.

Yes, a president firing the FBI Director who is leading an investigation of his presidential campaign is deeply problematic. It suggests the rule of law is compromised. The appearance that Comey was fired to block or slow the FBI probe into Russias role in the 2016 elections  and prevent damage to the presidents administration and his allies  smacks of using national institutions for personal gain. Social scientists who study democracy highlight those as two big warning signs on the path to democratic collapse. So yes, you should be really worried. But no, were not there yet.

Freedom House, a watchdog group that ranks democracy in every country every year, has been warning since 2005 of a trend among governments in established democracies tweaking existing law and procedures to illiberal ends. The Trump administration brings Washington to this party, but late. Were joining countries like Poland, where the incumbent government has used dubious measures and constrained transparency to assert control over the media, allow civil servants to be fired without cause, and curtail parliamentary debate over the budget.

Retired General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, wrote this week, Its beginning to feel a little bit like Nicaragua around here. Why Nicaragua? Because last fall the president ran unopposed for a third term, with his wife as his VP. Because the state is consistently ranked among the worlds most corrupt. Were also following in the tracks of richer nations like Israel, where the incumbent government has undercut civil-society groups and dismantled state-owned media, and Hungary, where the government is working aggressively to close a private university. Were lagging far behind Turkey, where a democratically elected president has presided over a series of executive reforms that systematically sideline his opposition  and enshrined those undemocratic measures with popular votes held under progressively less open conditions. In Thailand, the urban elite has been able to team up with the army to overturn election results it doesnt like over the course of a decade  while international commerce and tourism continue largely undisturbed. And who could forget the Philippines, where the president brags about extrajudicial killings.

To see what an actually failing state looks like in 2017, come closer to home  to Venezuela. Its government came to power in elections two decades ago and has steadily closed the democratic space and eroded the rule of law since. By every measure, Venezuela is now failing, and catastrophically  its citizens are losing an average of 19 pounds a year through malnutrition, its institutions have collapsed, and violent deaths of protestors are a daily occurrence.

No one intends to end up like Venezuela. No, not even the leadership of the other political party, whichever one you despise.

So it is fair to ask the experts and pundits, How do we fix this while our state is not failing, while our legislature is still functional, our military is not subordinate to our politics, and our medias voice is still loud? What we know from the history of healing divided societies, from success stories like postwar Germany and Japan, to the former Warsaw Pact nations, to abject failures like Iraq, is that the engine of progress is enlightened self-interest.

Rwandan or Kentuckian, human beings seek outcomes that give their self-defined communities a future within a broader nation. Politics shift, and problematic rulers lose their footing, when leaders of factions, tribes or parties signal to their supporters that their parochial interests will be served within rules and structures that also serve the larger population. Thats putting party within nation, not before it, and its why that cliche is so misleading. Thats the heart of the negotiating processes that ease out long-serving dictators and successfully end election standoffs. In our two-party system, a president can be checked only when his own party is willing to participate actively in the checking  because its members believe they have a political future afterward.

But the other lesson to take from overseas  which Americans, ironically, often miss  is that were not powerless until our leaders change their minds, or nation-builders arrive from outer space. What makes political elites decide that they have better futures with the rule of law than with personalized authoritarian rule? It would be nice if the answer were prayer and contemplation, or snarky tweets. But its angry voters  usually from the middle class, and often women. The good news about not being a failed state is that American mothers need not live up to the courage of West African women who marched naked to curse their warrior sons. The definitive study of the last century of nonviolent social movements concluded that a tipping point comes when 3.5 percent of the population engages. So this Mothers Day, give your mom a guide to civic activism  or let her give you one  instead of that flower bouquet.

Heather Hurlburt (@natsecHeather) directs New Americas New Models of Policy Change initiative and has held foreign-policy positions in Congress, the White House, and State Department.
Nicole Kushner Meyer, third from the left, at a promotional event last weekend. Photo: Albee Zhang/AFP/Getty Images

Jared Kushners family company has scrapped plans to pitch wealthy Chinese investors on the so-called golden visa this weekend. The decision comes after a similar event last week resulted in criticism that the company was trying to profit off of Jareds White House role.

No one from Kushner Companies will be in China this weekend, company spokeswoman Risa Heller told the Washington Post on Thursday.

Last weekend, Nicole Kushner Meyer, Jareds sister, pitched a group of wealthy Chinese investors on a luxury-apartment-building project in New Jersey. She emphasized that if they put in half a million dollars they could a receive EB-5 investor visa, or golden visa, which allows wealthy foreigners easier access to residency in the U.S. Promotional materials for the event played up the companys proximity to the White House and encouraged attendees to invest under the old rules, an apparent nod to the Trump administrations plans to overhaul the program.

Turns out, Meyers presentation might accelerate that overhaul. On Thursday, Republican Senator Charles Grassley called on Homeland Security head John Kelly to expedite the revisions in the investor visa program. He cited Meyers pitch, which he said suggested special treatment and expedited approval for those investing in the New Jersey high-rise.

It is appropriate for the Department to clarify and affirm that no foreign investors will receive preferential treatment, that applications will be processed in the order in which they are receivedsubject to any existing backlogand that future applications will be subject to the proposed regulations, when approved, Grassley wrote in a letter to Secretary Kelly.

The regulations to which Grassley refers were introduced by the Obama administration shortly before Trumps inauguration. As it stands, the EB-5 program is only supposed to make visas available to those who invest in job-creating projects in locations in need of economic activity. But there are loopholes that allow developers such as Kushner Companies to use the program on luxury buildings in high-income areas.

The proposed changes to the program would increase the amount that must be invested in order to get a green card. In high-unemployment areas, it would jump from $500,000 to $1.35 million, and in low-unemployment areas, it would go from $1 million to $1.8 million.

Trump has already renewed the program without any changes this year, but the White House also told the Times this month that it is evaluating wholesale reform of the EB-5 program.
Representative Mike Ritze is probably headed back to the drawing board. Photo: Sue Ogrocki/AP

President Trump has taken a lot of flak for pushing to build a wall along the southern border and assemble a nationwide deportation force, but this week an Oklahoma lawmaker illustrated how things could be worse.

Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature need to find a way to fill a $900 million hole in the state budget, and on Wednesday Representative Mike Ritze floated a novel proposal: Round up 82,000 public-school children who dont speak English. Identify them and then turn them over to ICE to see if they truly are citizens, and do we really have to educate non-citizens? Ritze suggested in an interview with News9.

Ritze said the newly created Republican Platform Caucus had estimated that the move could save $60 million, but as the Associated Press notes, there are a number of problems:

 We really do have to educate non-citizens. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that children living in the United States cant be barred from public education due to their immigration status.

 The United States doesnt have an official language.

 According to the states Department of Education, there are about 50,000 English learners enrolled in Oklahomas public-school system, not 82,000.

 Some of those English learners are U.S. citizens.

 Its unclear if Ritze was proposing turning over the childrens names to Immigration and Customs Enforcement or actually rounding them up. The latter move would be expensive, even without factoring in money for the inevitable legal challenges.

 Even members of Ritzes party think the proposal is inhumane. Oklahoma schools superintendent Joy Hofmeister, a Republican, called it utterly shameful, adding, There is no benefit to floating outrageous ideas that seek to punish kids.

Thankfully, the members of the Republican Platform Caucus have some other money-saving ideas  such as eliminating non-essential employees in higher education and doing away with a film tax credit  which dont target children or tear families apart.
Sessions fought criminal-justice reform in Congress. Now hes in a position to make sure it is reversed throughout the Department of Justice. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

You would think Attorney General Jeff Sessions might be a bit distracted by the chaos erupting in the federal criminal-justice community over the FBI directors abrupt firing for potentially scandalous reasons. The incident has, after all, raised the specter of obstruction of justice by the president and even the possible disbarment of Sessions for violating a recusal pledge.

But whatever else is going on, Sessions has found time to use his powers to pursue a pet project that is confounding Republicans and Democrats alike  taking the country right back into the War on Drugs as it existed before its horrors began to convince experts across the ideological spectrum that it had failed, at enormous human and financial cost. Sessions took a big step in that direction today, as the Los Angeles Times reports:

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions has ordered federal prosecutors to return to tough policies against drug abusers, ending a push by the Obama administration to clear prisons of lower-level criminals serving long, mandatory minimum sentences.

He rescinded two policy memos signed by a predecessor, former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., that told prosecutors to be cautious in their use of methods that can produce dramatically harsher jail terms.

In a memo released Friday, Sessions instructed Justice Department lawyers to charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense.

This represents an important landmark in Sessionss battle against the bipartisan drive for criminal-justice reform. As a senator, he was instrumental last year in blocking Senate action on a bill  supported by House Speaker Paul Ryan and the Republican chairs of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, among many others  giving federal judges more discretion in imposing sentences for drug offenses. Indeed, when Donald Trump nominated him as attorney general, there was some happy talk that without him botching up the works in Congress, the odds of reform legislation passing might actually go up. But that no longer seems to be a lively prospect.

During his confirmation hearings, Sessions and his allies made a very big deal out of his support for 2010 legislation eliminating the disparity in sentencing guidelines for crack and powder cocaine. This was supposed to demonstrate his openness to criminal-justice reform despite his opposition to the actual ongoing effort in Congress. It seems now that a much better indicator of the direction he intended to follow was his hiring of federal prosecutor Steven Cook, probably the nations most visible supporter of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses, as the director of a new Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety. Cook spent a lot of time on television attacking the Obama policies Sessions reversed today.

Sessionss directive affects only federal, not state, prosecutorial policies, but as part of a Trump administration about-face based on rhetoric suggesting the country is awash in a crime wave (despite crime rates that are a fraction of what they were several decades ago), it could be very persuasive to Republican pols across the country. It seems clear that the attorney general happily envisions an actual increase in the federal prison population. Americas reputation as the worlds most atavistic gaoler seems safe.
Trump just got scarier.

The disorienting quality of the Donald Trump administration lies in the tension between the vastness of the threat it poses to the health of the republic and the smallness of the president himself. That juxtaposition of the terrifying and the ridiculous has been on display from the very beginning, when Trump personally attempted to bully the acting director of the National Park Service into vouchsafing obviously fake estimates of attendees at his inauguration. Every week brings new confusing episodes that could signal either a tantrum or a coup, and this has had a numbing effect on all of us observing his recent assault on the integrity of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. And yet for all the farcical qualities on the surface, Trumps bid to manipulate the nations highest law-enforcement agency presents a true crisis on a scale not seen since Watergate.

The president has the legal right to fire the FBI director. But there is a reason why FBI directors receive ten-year terms, as opposed to the normal at-will service of other Executive-branch officials, who customarily depart when the president who appointed them leaves office. The office holds vast powers, and if it is not walled off from a presidents interests it can provide almost limitless potential for abuse. A vital, bipartisan norm of American politics holds that the president can only fire the FBI director for cause  not to install a loyalist, and certainly not to influence an investigation into the president or his associates.

On May 9, the administration announced that Trump had fired James Comey at the urging of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, allegedly on account of Comeys unfair treatment of Hillary Clinton during the campaign. The pretext that Trump had decided, ten months after the fact, to dismiss Comey for speaking too harshly about the misdeeds of a woman whose imprisonment Trump had repeatedly demanded was so transparently farcical that even the most competent administration would have had difficulty selling it. Trump compounded the difficulty by failing to prepare his blindsided staff. A panicked Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, hid among bushes in full view of reporters. Total and complete chaos  even by our standards, one White House staffer told a reporter.

The old Washington cliche  the cover-up is worse than the crime  presumes that the officials in question understand the severity of the crime they are covering up. This assumption apparently did not pertain, as the administrations preposterous cover story quickly disintegrated in a hail of public statements by Trump and his own loyalists. Two days after Spicer had insisted, It was all [Rosenstein]  No one from the White House. That was a DOJ decision, Trump told NBCs Lester Holt. I was going to fire regardless of recommendation.

Trump and his staff proved either too incompetent or too irrepressibly goonish to conceal their true intentions. Deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced, We want this to come to its conclusion; we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity. And we think that weve actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen. Astonishingly, Trump confessed to Holt that he fired Comey in order to stop the Russia investigation: When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. 

Here Trump and his people have exploded not only the norms that protect American democracy from authoritarian abuse but the governing playbook of how scandals are supposed to work. At the moment, there are no unearthed tapes, no secret memos, no shocking testimony delivered under the pressure of a Senate panel. Trump is simply boasting in public about his obstruction of justice.

The most revelatory detail from the past few days concerned a meeting in January during which the president demanded the FBI director pledge his loyalty to him. Comey recounted this disturbing incident to two other people contemporaneously. The White House issued a formal denial that this conversation took place. But Trumps own account of the dinner is hardly exculpatory. In his interview with Holt, Trump depicted himself as dangling the possibility of firing Comey as leverage over the Russia probe. (He wanted to stay on as the FBI head. And I said, You know, well consider, well see what happens. But we had a very nice dinner, and at that time, he told me, You are not under investigation. ) Kellyanne Conway, the aide who most closely channels the presidents impulses, defended the Comey firing specifically as a matter of loyalty (The president expects people who are serving in his administration to be loyal to the country and to be loyal to the administration).

Attempts to understand Trumps long history of outrageous actions have often come down to the question of malevolence versus ignorance. A competent authoritarian would not have followed his assault on the FBIs integrity by inviting the Russian ambassador to the Oval Office for a smiling photo session the next day, renewing his social-media feud with Rosie ODonnell, and then publicly threatening Comey with the insinuation that Trump possesses secret tapes of their conversations.

But the best explanation for Trumps behavior is that the ignorance is the malevolence. Trump gives every indication that he literally does not understand the concepts of popular sovereignty and rule of law. He has treated the presidency as a continuation of his business career, and the election as the sanctification of it, the final proof of his triumph over his critics. When asked about his conduct, he returns obsessively to the glories of Election Night. Trump grew especially furious at Comeys confession of being mildly nauseous at the thought he might have swayed the election, which Mr. Trump took to demean his own role in history, the Times reported.

He continues to surround himself with family and personal loyalists, and judges his and his employees performance by the quality and (especially) quantity of free media they generate. That he is leveraging the office to enrich himself and his family strikes him as a perfectly obvious course of action. He casually refers to my generals and my military. He sent his longtime personal bodyguard to fire Comey. To Trump, the notion that his FBI director would investigate him and his associates is as outrageous as having a doorman at Mar-a-Lago greet him with insults.

What has enabled Trump to persist in this belief is a government controlled by a party willing to accommodate his vision. Whether or not Trump asked for the same kind of loyalty oath of the congressional leadership that he demanded of Comey, they have acted as though they have given one. The Republican Congress has quashed demands for his tax returns, blocked independent investigations of Russian hacking, and mostly refrained from condemning his firing of Comey. So deeply have Republicans internalized their dereliction of the traditional oversight function that New Jersey Republican representative Tom MacArthur recently told a gathering of upset constituents, We dont oversee the Executive  Congress is not the board of directors of the White House.

Trump has governed like a child monarch. The only clear detail in his mind from the night he ordered a military strike is the cake he was eating at the time. He watches far too much television, sometimes shouting angrily at the screen. His butlers are instructed to give him two scoops of ice cream while White House guests receive just one. He is captive to simplistic notions and ignorant of the extent of his own ignorance. He is surrounded by patronizing advisers who fearfully monitor his turbulent moods, please him with flattery, steer clear of upsetting news, and try to talk him out of impulsive actions. Since January, his immaturity has been most in evidence. Now he is acting not only like a child but also like a monarch.

*This article appears in the May 15, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
Trump has admitted to disregarding basic norms surrounding law enforcement. Photo: NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

It seemed for a while that, while Donald Trumps presidency has proven less competent and more right-wing than expected, it has also defied the fears of authoritarianism that circulated after the election. But the importance of the two newest revelations from the Comey episode change that fundamentally.

First, Trump boasts to NBCs Lester Holt not only that he decided to fire Comey himself, regardless of the advice from the Department of Justice, but that he did it specifically to strike back at the FBIs Russia investigation. (When I decided to [fire Comey], I said to myself, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, Trump said.) Reports from numerous media organizations have confirmed the centrality of the Russia investigation in Comeys firing. Now Trump is admitting it in public.

Second, the New York Times reports that Trump, in January, asked Comey to promise his loyalty. (Comey said he could only offer honesty.) Two Comey friends heard this account at the time, and have felt free to share it since. This is not only wildly improper, it is a window into Trumps disregard for basic democratic norms surrounding law enforcement. If the FBI is operating out of loyalty to the president, then one of the most important barriers between a democratic government and an authoritarian one has fallen.

Donald Trumps most consistent belief  even more consistent than his skepticism of international trade, which has waned on occasion  is his worship of power. He is not merely willing to do business with despots, as most presidents have been. He admires them because of, not despite, their despotism. His repeated refusal during the campaign to accept the legitimacy of the election (rigged), his promises to jail his opponent, and his intermingling of state power and personal profit all suggested a threat to the health of the republic. Now that threat has arrived. And if Republicans in Congress continue to cover for his actions, the damage to the health of American government may be longstanding.
Trumps actions this week are simply unacceptable. Photo: Alexander Shcherbak/TASS

At the center of the Comey firing is, it seems to me, a simple question. Is the presidency of Donald Trump a threat to liberal democracy? This has always been the question. Its why his presidency is different than any other. Yes, there are policy goals that can be debated  health care, foreign policy, mass immigration, etc  and he can be opposed or supported on those grounds. There are appointments  or a stunning lack of them across the executive branch  that reflect amateurishness and incompetence outside the norm. There are habits  like Trumps tweeting  that degrade the office of the president. There are skills  such as shepherding legislation through Congress  that may be absent, and their absence might even be a cause for relief. There is evidence that the president knows close to nothing about the world  see this latest jaw-dropping interview with The Economist, where he imagines you can buy health insurance for $15 a month. And there are clear indications he is off his rocker  see this staggering exchange about steam, digital, and aircraft carriers in an interview with Time. These are horrifying indications he is unfit for the office he holds. But they can all be handled within the boundaries of democratic electoral accountability  and, with any luck, will be in 2018 and 2020.

The core concern was always deeper than this. It was that Trump doesnt understand the Constitution he has sworn to protect; that he would abuse his executive power, to lash out at enemies; that he would undermine the rule of law by trying to get his way, consequences be damned; that he would turn vital democratic institutions, such as the Justice Department and the FBI, into mere handmaidens of his own interest, rather than guarantors of the publics. And it is clear to me that the firing of Comey  while within the presidents Constitutional powers  falls squarely into this category. To fire someone who is conducting an investigation into your own campaign cannot help but be seen as an interference with the rule of law. It is to cast doubt on the integrity of that investigation, and its future. It undermines public confidence that the executive branch can enforce the law against itself. It politicizes what should not be politicized. It crosses a clear line.

And it also crosses a line when you keep lying brazenly about why you did it. You dont pin it on Rod Rosenstein. You dont pretend its about showboating. You dont ludicrously argue that youve just finally realized that Comey did Hillary wrong. You dont also say that you were going to fire him anyway. You dont say the FBI was in turmoil under Comey, when it wasnt. And you dont say you want to get to the bottom of the matter when you have already declared the entire story a hoax. More to the point, you dont lie about all these things and then go on television and blurt out the truth: When I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russian thing with Trump and Russia  is a made up story, its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election. Read that again. The president has just said on national television that the Russia investigation was in the front of his mind when he decided impulsively to fire Comey. He has admitted he wanted to remove the FBI director because his investigation  which is fast intensifying  was targeting his campaign. That is called obstruction of justice. His spokeswoman yesterday reiterated that, after the Comey firing, the administration hoped the Russia investigation, which was trivial, would be wound up soon.

We also learned overnight that, according to sources close to Comey, just seven days after his inauguration, Trump invited the former FBI director to a private dinner. At the dinner, he twice asked him for his personal loyalty. Comey demurred, as any decent FBI director should. But the very idea that a president should ask the FBI director this is astonishing and deeply disturbing. Its an attempt  just a week into his presidency  to control an agency he absolutely must not control.

All of this is simply unacceptable. An attempt to obstruct justice is an impeachable offense. And Trump has just openly admitted to such a thing. When, one wonders, will the patriots in the Republican Party stand up and confront this? If Clinton had done such a thing, the House would be drawing up articles of impeachment right now. We saw their pusillanimity last spring as this malign buffoon manhandled his way to the nomination. It has not abated. Comey may have made mistakes; he may have had a Messiah complex; he may go down in history as a self-righteous prick who interfered in an election. But he is obviously and transparently independent  the key criterion for any FBI director. He has angered both Democrats and Republicans over the years  and this very ability to stand up to the Bush administration and the Clinton campaign at critical moments made him someone you could count on to get to the bottom of the Russia affair. I might add: Im a skeptic about whether theres anything there on the Russia stuff that directly implicates Trump in criminal dealings. But Comey was my reassurance that someone would have the tools to get to the bottom of it, whatever it was. Now, if I am not to be stupefyingly naive, I have to assume the president is guilty of something and is busy rigging the system to stymie any attempt to bring potential traitors to justice. And yes: This is about the possibility of treason against our democratic system. And the president, chumming it up with Lavrov and Kislyak the next day, seems incensed that there is even an investigation at all.

If this is swept under the rug, we take one giant step toward the authoritarianism Trump has always threatened. When a democracy believes its own president can put his finger on the scales of justice whenever his own interests are at stake, and get away with it, it is on its way to disintegration. I hope the Senate understands that this is not a drill. There needs now to be an independent prosecutor to take charge of the FBI case. If there isnt, the checks in our system will have failed.

At the beginning of last week, we were all waiting for a religious freedom executive order that would destroy any remnants of gay rights in America. At least, thats what you were expecting if you were cursorily scanning the press, or getting emails from various lobby groups. Slates Mark Joseph Stern laid out the potential terrifying consequences a few days before: A homophobic government employee could refuse to process a same-sex couples tax returns or Social Security benefits; federally funded religious charities could refuse to serve transgender people or women whove had abortions; and government contractors could fire all LGBTQ employees, as well as any workers whove had sex outside of marriage. It looked grim. Mike Pence had apparently learned nothing from his religious-liberty fiasco in Indiana last year. Gay groups and the ACLU were on high alert.

And then it didnt happen. In fact, the executive order was a nothingburger for the Christianist right. It merely reiterated support for political sermons  but in bland generalities. It contained no broad measures that would encourage discrimination against gay or trans people. It couldnt actually repeal the Johnson Amendment, forbidding such sermons, because thats a law and the president cant just erase it with a pretty piece of paper. He simply ordered the IRS not to enforce it, which it doesnt in practice anyway. Much of the Christianist right was therefore rightly despondent. Heres Rod Dreher, addressing the true believers: Religious conservatives, weve been had. Who can plausibly deny it now? Ryan Anderson, the most prominent writer in favor of maximal religious freedom said simply: Trumps election was about correcting problems of the last administration, including religious liberty violations and the hostility to people of faith in the United States. This order does not do that. National Review called the executive order worse than useless. Mark Joseph Stern was forced to follow up with a new story: Trumps Executive Order Spared LGBTQ People. Trumpcare will kill them. Nice try.

The remarkable truth is that Trump is not anti-gay. For all his general hideousness, he has  so far  been the least anti-gay Republican president in history. Not exactly a high standard, but consider the following. He retained Obamas executive order banning discrimination against gay federal employees. Ending it would have been an easy, early gift to the Christianists, but he punted. (An unrelated loosening of labor laws undermined that order and much else, but even gay activists conceded that was not the intent.) He believes marriage equality is the law of the land. He has no personal issue with where trans adults go to the bathroom. He was the first Republican nominee to mention and defend the LGBTQ community in his acceptance speech. He has held up a LGBTs for Trump rainbow flag. His nominee to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, described marriage equality as settled law in his hearings. Gay and trans people will continue to serve openly in the military. No additional executive order on gay-discrimination issues is coming, according to the White House.

But none of this is supposed to count. Massive, historic achievements for gay rights gained only in the last few years have now been accepted by a new Republican administration  the true sign of political success  but were all still allegedly under imminent assault. The administration has, in fact, been a catastrophe for gays, according to one activist. The New York Times thundered against the fallacy that Trump is somehow pro-gay. Heres their evidence: a Republican president, elected by a huge majority of evangelicals, has appointed several officials who hold views on gay issues that are in line with orthodox Christianity. The Census Department wont count gays in 2020. And the Justice Department has withdrawn a year-old advisory asserting that Title IX mandates that trans kids in high school can go to whatever bathroom or locker room they choose. This was rightly seen at the time as a very aggressive federal stance on a highly controversial subject. Reversing it is not a radically reactionary act. And, er, thats it.

I know there could be worse to come. But you get the sense from many in the gay-rights movement that the greater the success we have achieved in the last decade the more intolerable the remaining injustices become. The rhetoric ratchets up past 11, whatever progress is made. The hysteria never abates. I know thats how you raise funds, get on TV, and rack up the page views. But sometimes, a historic shift really is durable. And at some point, you have to consider taking yes for an answer.

If you want to understand how deeply polarized this country is right now, I recommend watching the new Netflix series Dear White People. Its about how black students at an Ivy League college who have a black student body president and an African-American dean are constantly struggling against white supremacy. All the reviews have been raves. Rotten Tomatoes critics score is 100 percent  a very rare achievement.

And its so bad you begin to wonder if youre hallucinating. The cliched set and model-beautiful actors look like they belong on a daytime soap opera. The crude didacticism of the script sinks whatever nuances there are in the performances. Each character is a cartoon figure designed to make a blunt and relentless points. The dialogue reads like a print-out from a p.c. speech generator. No one talks this way. The humor exists the way it does in, say, a mass-produced movie for evangelicals. Its painful and always a form of instruction.

The idea of the series is a great one. Its intriguing, even necessary, in theory, to have a show almost exclusively featuring African-American actors, with whites as crude stereotypical bit parts. (One white and appealing jock actually gets killed off right away, in a nice touch.) And the series has its moments. In one scene, for example, you see a gay kid masturbate to his straight roommates loud and wild hetero sex in the next room  and, for once onscreen, you actually witness a black man fucking. That kind of honesty is almost worth enduring the corniness of it all. Episodes two and three punctuate the propaganda with some nuanced, moving performances, but the actors cant conjure what isnt there, or escape the dreadful script. This is a huge missed opportunity. If the various character types had been written with any sophistication, rather than as two-dimensional stick figures created to make another intersectional point, and if the plot had not been such melodrama, it could have been fascinating, important viewing.

But rather than introducing us to a complicated world, with the standards of most Netflix series, it bangs us repeatedly over the head with crude lessons about systemic oppression, delivered with the tone of an afternoon special, urging the kids off white supremacy. Its plot is about as subtle as a Rob Lowe movie from the 1980s. And it simply doesnt feel faintly real, or even contemporary. It comes off rather as desperate to be seen as hip, which is why its knowing references, like using Miley Cyrus as a transitive verb, come off as so contrived  and dated. The attempt to include hashtags and DMs is just lame. Reviewers hint at all this dreck  usually in an aside  but rave nonetheless. It reads to me as virtue signaling, or the soft bigotry of low expectations. And the show has no interest in persuading anyone not already firmly in the SJW tent. If youre already woke, its an exercise in self-satisfaction. If youre not, you find yourself either immediately switching back to the Netflix home page, or cringing with embarrassment. If we are learning more and more that the last election was fueled by a backlash against the endless p.c. lectures delivered by the elites, then this series is more fuel on the populist fire. Its almost designed to get voters out to reelect Trump. It would more honestly have been called Dear Deplorables.

Which is why its interesting to me to find that the actual audience reviews on Rotten Tomatoes gave it a mere 57 percent. Almost half the audience ratings are five stars; the other half are the lowest score you can get  a mere half-star. Theres almost nothing in between.

See you next Friday.
Hospitals across England were hit this morning by a rapidly spreading ransomware cyberattack that by the afternoon was affecting computers around the world. At least 16 hospitals in the National Health Service have reported being hit with a ransomware strike, which appears to encrypt computer files  think everything your doctor needs to effectively treat and monitor you  unless the hospital pays a fee, about $300 in bitcoins, to the hackers.

Here's what a London GP sees when trying to connect to the NHS network pic.twitter.com/lV8zXarAXS  Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) May 12, 2017

The NHS issued a statement on the attack earlier on Friday, noting it does not believe any patient information has been compromised. A number of NHS organisations have reported to NHS Digital that they have been affected by a ransomware attack, the statement said. The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor. If the hackers are not paid, or a fix is not found, the ransom will increase until, ultimately, the hacked files are erased. Hospitals in the East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust  which are among the affected  are asking patients not to go to emergency rooms, unless it is truly, well, an emergency.

A ransomware spreading in the lab at the university pic.twitter.com/8dROVXXkQv   (@dodicin) May 12, 2017

But its more than just the NHS. By early afternoon, the hack had spread beyond England, affecting computers at hospitals and telecommunication companies throughout Asia and Europe. Thus far, 99 countries have been impacted, CNN reports. All of the attacks appear to have been mounted using a security vulnerability developed by the National Security Agency, the New York Times reports. The vulnerability was leaked by the Shadow Brokers, a group that often steals and posts NSA hacking information online. The issue, the Times also reports, was fixed last March, but the computers affected today had yet to be updated, so they were still open to attack. British cybersecurity authorities are still investigating the incident, while the NHS works to bring its computers back online.


This weeks bizarre news cycle has now reached its zenith: the Rosie ODonnell phase. This afternoon, President Trump dug up a December tweet from the actress and poet, in which she called for FBI Director James Comey to be fired over his intrusion into the 2016 election. Trump quote-tweeted ODonnell  a longtime nemesis he once called a fat pig, and said hed need to be paid at least a trillion dollars to consider making out with  to say, well, finally we agree on something. (If youve slept through most of this week, Trump fired Comey on Tuesday.)

We finally agree on something Rosie. https://t.co/BSP5F3PgbZ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017

It is, to be fair, a pretty good drag  if not exactly a relevant one. But it also raises several important questions, chief among them: Was the president spending his Thursday afternoon scrolling through Rosie ODonnells old tweets? Did he do an advanced search for her handle and tweets containing the name Comey? Was it just luck?

Another theory presents itself: Did he  or, more likely, White House social-media director Dan Scavino  happen to see the news on Reddits infamous /r/The_Donald, where ODonnells tweet was posted shortly before the president tweeted?

The Rosie O'Donnell tweet was posted on the Trump subreddit about 20 minutes before the president tweeted it pic.twitter.com/xGuuwCFVK7  Brandon Wall (@Walldo) May 11, 2017

Or did Trump, or someone on his team, read Twitchy, the Twitter news aggregator founded by right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin?

That Rosie O'Donnell tweet Trump just RT'd approvingly was posted on Twitchy yesterday https://t.co/mf8TVgptgr  Liam Stack (@liamstack) May 11, 2017

It wouldnt be the first time a Trump tweet originated on Reddit  a photo of Chuck Schumer and Vladimir Putin wound its way from the news-sharing site to the First Twitter back in March. POTUS cant get all his news from cable, after all.
Mitch McConnell. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

After receiving criticism from women senators of both parties, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reassured his colleagues that women would be allowed to help rewrite the American Health Care Act, according to the Hill.

The original 13-person group working on the bill  which McConnell later denied was a thing  contained zero women senators, despite the fact that the health-care bill could disproportionately affect women. But on Tuesday, reporters spotted at least one woman, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, in a health-care meeting. And McConnell has since offered behind-the-scenes assurances that at least one of the women will attend all of the meetings going forward, one GOP lawmaker said.

He basically told the lunch that everyone in the caucus was invited, added a member of the original working group. He told the lunch that everyone in the caucus, including the women, can come.

But Senator Joni Ernst, one of just five Republican female senators currently serving, said theres no guarantee one of them will be present at every single health-care meeting  We all have schedules that change, she said. And Senator Deb Fischer said her attendance will [depend] on what the topic is going to be specifically within health care.

Although there are currently 21 women in the Senate  an all-time high  more than three-quarters of them are Democrats. Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, told the New York Times that the disparity is more obvious now the GOP is running things. Women are so underrepresented in the Republican conference that with Republicans controlling Congress, their numbers are so paltry they dont register in that power hierarchy, she said.

But even if the five Republican women are included in meetings, theres no guarantee theyll stand up for the issues liberal women want addressed. Senator Susan Collins tends to vote along pro-choice lines, but Senators Murkowski and Moore Capito both have mixed records when it comes to abortion and Planned Parenthood  two things potentially on the chopping block under the AHCA. (Fischer and Ernsts remarks on the topics skew anti-choice.) Its harder to say whether the bill would change things like maternity coverage, but in January Collins co-authored a health-care bill that would let states opt out of covering Obamacares Essential Health Benefits, one of which is maternity care.

So by promising to include Republican women, McConnell is addressing the optics without doing anything crazy  like, say, inviting Kirsten Gillibrand to chime in.
The value of the crude oil production alone is worth a staggering $1.7 trillion each year. Add downstream fuels and other services to that, and oil is a money-making machine. As VisualCapitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, both companies and governments take advantage of this resource wealth. More of the worlds largest companies work in the oil patch than any other industry. At the same, entire government regimes are kept intact thanks to oil revenues.

The only problem when an industry becomes this lucrative? Eventually, everybody wants a piece of the pie  and theyll do anything to get their share.

The Black Market In Fuel Theft

Todays infographic comes from Eurocontrol Technics Group, and it highlights the global problem of fuel theft.

(Click to enlarge)

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

While pipeline theft in places like Nigeria and Mexico are the most famous images associated with the theft of hydrocarbons, the problem is actually far more broad and systematic in nature.

Fuel theft impacts operations at the upstream, midstream, and downstream levels, and it is so entrenched that even politicians, military personnel, and police are complicit in illegal activities. Sometimes, involvement can be traced all the way up to top government officials. Related: Russian Producers Fall Behind As Big Oil Booms

E&Y estimates this to be a $133 billion issue, but its also likely that numbers around fuel theft are understated due to deep-rooted corruption and government involvement.

How Fuel Theft Actually Happens

Billions of dollars per year of government and corporate revenues are lost due to the following activities:

Tapping Pipelines: By installing illicit taps, thieves can divert oil or other refined products from pipelines. Mexican drug gangs, for example, can earn $90,000 in just seven minutes from illegal pipeline tapping.

Illegal Bunkering: Oil acquired by thieves is pumped to small barges, which are then sent to sea to deliver the product to tankers. In Nigeria, for example, the Niger Deltas infamous labyrinth of creeks is the perfect place for bunkering to go undetected.

Ship-to-Ship Transfers: This involves the transfer of illegal fuel to a more reputable ship, which can be passed off as legitimate imports. For example, refined crude from Libya gets transferred from ship-to-ship in the middle of the Mediterranean, to be illegally imported into the EU.

Armed Theft (Piracy): This involves using the threat of violence to command a truck or ship and steal its cargo. Even though Hollywood has made Somalia famous for its pirates, it is the Gulf of Guinea near Nigeria that ships need to be worried about. In the last few years, there have been hundreds of attacks.

Bribing Corrupt Officials: In some countries  as long as the right person gets a cut of profits, authorities will turn a blind eye to hydrocarbon theft. In fact, E&Y says an astonishing 57.1 percent of all fraud in the oil and gas sector relates to corruption schemes.

Smuggling and Laundering: Smuggling oil products into another jurisdiction can help to enable a profitable and less traceable sale. ISIS is famous for this  they cant sell oil to international markets directly, so they smuggle oil to Turkey, where it sells it at a discount.

Adulteration: Adulteration is a sneaky process in which unwanted additives are put in oil or refined products, but sold at full price. In Tanzania, for example, adding cheap kerosene and lubricants to gasoline or diesel is an easy way to increase profit margins, while remaining undetected.

The Implications Of Fuel Theft

The impact of fuel theft on people and the economy is significant and wide-ranging:

Loss of corporate profits: Companies in oil and gas can lose billions of dollars from fuel theft. Case in point: Mexicos national oil company (Pemex) is estimated to lose $1.3 billion per year as a result of illegal pipeline tapping by gangs.



Loss of government revenues: Governments receive royalties from oil production, as well as tax money from finished products like gasoline. In Ireland, the government claims it loses 150 to 250 million in revenues per year from fuel adulteration. Meanwhile, one World Bank official pegged the Nigerian governments total losses from oil revenues stolen (or misspent) at $400 billion since 1960.

Funds terrorism: ISIS and other terrorist groups have used hydrocarbon theft and sales as a means to sustain operations. At one point, ISIS was making $50 million per month from selling oil. Related: Why Goldman Thinks You Should Go Long On Oil



Funds cartels and organized crime: The Zetas cartel in Mexico controls nearly 40 percent of the fuel theft market, raking in millions each year.



Environmental damage: Not only does fuel theft cost corporations and governments severely, but there is also an environmental impact to be considered. Fuel spills, blown pipelines, and engine damage (from adulterated fuel) are all huge issues.



Leads to higher gas prices: Unfortunately, all of the above losses eventually translate into higher prices for end-customers.

How To Stop Fuel Theft?

There are two methods that authorities have been using to slow down and eventually eliminate fuel theft.

Fuel dyes are used to color petroleum products a specific tint, so as to allow for easy identification and prevent fraud. However, some dyes can be replicated by criminals  such as those in Ireland who launder the fuel.



Molecular markers, which are used in tiny concentrations of just a few parts per million, are invisible and can also be used to identify fuels.

In Tanzania, the initiation of a fuel marking program using molecular markers led to significant increases of imported petrol and diesel for the local market, and a decrease of kerosene.

At the retail level, product meeting quality standards increased from 19 percent in 2007 to 91 percent in 2013. Ultimately, this resulted in an increase of tax revenue of $300 million between 2010 and 2014.

By Zerohedge

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Oil prices appear to have recovered from last week's flash crash following a significant draw in U.S. inventories and bullish rumors surrounding the OPEC deal.

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Friday, May 12, 2017

Oil prices showed some life this week after an encouraging drawdown in inventories in the U.S., sparking large gains on Wednesday. Crude stocks dropped by a sizable 5.3 million barrels last week, and importantly, there was not a corresponding uptick in gasoline inventories, confirming a significant reduction in storage. WTI and Brent jumped up from their six-month lows.

OPEC ponders deeper cuts. We are roughly two weeks away from OPECs official meeting in Vienna, which is expected to result in a six-month extension of the production cuts. But now top OPEC officials are wondering if it will be enough. OPECs monthly report revised expected U.S. shale growth sharply upwards, predicting output to increase 64 percent more than originally expected. That equates to projected growth from U.S. shale of 950,000 bpd this year. OPEC fears that an extension will boost prices just enough to allow shale companies to lock in hedges once again, ensuring another wave of supply.

2018 supply balance now a concern. U.S. shale is coming back so quickly that market analysts see additional production posing a threat to oil prices next year as well. "Risks are emerging to 2018 balances," said Martijn Rats, oil analyst at Morgan Stanley, in a Bloomberg interview. "The U.S. is set up for strong supply growth next year, that could exceed one million barrels per day. The Rapidan Group, an energy consultancy, also sees problems looming next year. "The supply and demand balance for 2018 looks very bad, said Fared Mohamedi, chief economist at consultant The Rapidan Group. Several top shale players, including Pioneer Natural Resources (NYSE: PXD) have breakeven costs that are down around $20 per barrel, so even in a $40 world, in a $50 world, we are making good returns, Pioneers senior vice president, Frank Hopkins, told Bloomberg.

Amid bearish calls, Goldman sticks to bullish outlook. Goldman Sachs reiterated its belief this week that the oil market is already in a supply deficit. Goldmans head of commodities, Jeff Currie, said at a London Conference that oil investors should be betting on higher prices. Do I want to be long oil? The answer is absolutely yes because we are going into a deficit market, Currie said at the S&P Global Platts Global Crude Summit in London on Wednesday. With demand continuing to surprise to the upside, the oil market could find itself short on oil by some 2 million barrels a day by July. Related: Why Goldman Thinks You Should Go Long On Oil

IEA to review oil demand scenarios after EV push by China and India. China and India recently announced major initiatives to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles. Because they are two of the most important sources of oil demand growth going forward, any efforts to cut into oil demand will have global implications. China said in April that it will aim to have EVs make up one-fifth of its car fleet by 2025. India is considering a plan to have its entire auto fleet electrified by 2032. As a result, the IEA said it would review its oil demand projections as part of its World Energy Outlook to be released later this year.

China suspends coal-fired power plants in 29 provinces. Chinas central government will bar new coal-fired power plants in much of the country because of overcapacity. Many coal plants have lower and lower utilization rates, due to an overbuild in power plant capacity and slowing growth in consumption. The government hopes to cancel or slow the construction of more than 50 gigawatts of coal capacity this year.

Repeal of methane emissions fails in Senate. An attempt to rollback Obama-era methane regulations failed in the U.S. Senate this week, as three Republican Senators crossed the aisle to help derail the effort. It was the first failed vote in the Senate so far this year. The rules require oil and gas companies to capture methane rather than flare it into the atmosphere during the drilling process. It only applies to drilling on federal lands. The failed effort might not be the end of the saga  the Department of Interior, which wrote the rule during the Obama years, can now undo it. But that is a long drawn-out legal process with an uncertain outcome.

Trump admin to consider seismic testing in Atlantic. The Department of Interior scrapped decisions dating back to 2014 that shot down applications for seismic testing in the Atlantic. Seismic testing is a crucial precursor to oil and gas drilling, and although further permitting reviews are needed, the latest move could eventually pave the way for seismic testing. Related: Oil Edges Higher As OPEC Reaches Consensus On Cut Extension

Occidental Petroleum to dock large supertanker at Texas port. Occidental Petroleums (NYSE: OXY) plan to try to dock an enormous oil supertanker at the Corpus Christi Bay port could allow for greater volumes of crude exports from U.S. shores, if successful. The tankers could take U.S. crude to Asian markets.

U.S. and China come to terms on trade. The U.S. says that a new agreement with China could pave the way for greater access for U.S. LNG to be exported to China. The deal outlines trade sectors beyond energy, including beef and financial services, but U.S. Secretary of Commerce said it will also boost gas exports. However, it should be noted that the announcement does not offer any concrete detail on how the latest move will actually lead to more gas exports.

By Tom Kool of Oilprice.com

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Canadas Enbridge Inc reported on Thursday first-quarter earnings halved compared to the same period last year, but said that it expects full-year adjusted earnings before tax to jump following the stock-for-stock deal to buy Houston-based Spectra Energy.

Enbridges earnings attributable to common shareholders dropped to US$465 million (C$638 million) in Q1, compared to US$884 million (C$1.213 billion) for the first quarter of 2016, due to decreased earnings before tax at the Liquids Pipelines segment, on the back of a lower effective foreign exchange rate and the sale of some assets.

Following the deal to buy Spectrafirst announced in September 2016 and completed in February 2017Enbridge expects full-year 2017 and adjusted earnings before interest and taxes of US$5.246 billion to US$5.537 billion (C$7.2 billion to C$7.6 billion). For 2016, Enbridges adjusted EBIT was US$3.397 billion (C$4.662 billion).

Following a quarterly increase in dividend in January, Enbridge is now raising its quarterly payout to shareholders again, for a total increase of 15% above the prevailing quarterly rate in 2016.

During Q1, Enbridge closed the US$1.5 billion acquisition of a 27.6-percent interest in the Bakken Pipeline System that consists of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Energy Transfer Crude Oil Pipeline projects. The pipelines are expected to go into service in the second quarter of 2017, Enbridge said.

The Bakken Pipeline System enhances our presence in the Bakken and the United States Gulf Coast and will be accretive to ACFFO [available cash flow from operations] immediately in 2017, said Al Monaco, President and Chief Executive Officer of Enbridge.



Related: Can Teslas Solar Roof Smash The Competition?

Last November, Canadas Prime Minister Justine Trudeau conditionally approved Enbridges Line 3, despite environmentalist opposition to the project. Trudeau, however, rejected Enbridges Northern Gateway, because of what he deemed were excessive risks.

Commenting on the decisions, Enbridge said back then that it was pleased by the Federal Governments decision to approve the Line 3 Replacement Program, and added that the anticipated in-service date for the project is 2019, contingent upon U.S. regulatory approvals.



By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The first quarter of the year turned out good for Brazils embattled state energy major Petrobras. The company reported a net profit of US$1.417 billion, up from a net loss of US$318 million for the year-earlier period.

Adjusted EBITDA came in at US$8.03 billion, up 48 percent on the year, and free cash flow jumped to US$4.25 billion at end-March 2017, seven times higher than the figure for end-March 2017. Operating profit surged by 118 percent to US$4.538 billion.

The company attributed the positive performance to 72-percent higher exports, at 782,000 bpd, at higher prices, as well as to lower oil and gas import costs. The latter were a result of higher production of oil and gas at home, which led to a 40-percent decline in imports.

Domestic oil production rose 10 percent on the year to 2.182 million bpd, and overall output went up 9 percent to 2.248 million bpd. Asset sales also contributed to the results but they also accounted for a reduction in income from international operations, notably the sale of Petrobras Argentine and Chilean operations.

As a result, Petrobras managed to slim down its debtstill the highest in the global oil industryby 3 percent on a gross basis, to US$115.124 billion, from US$118.37 billion at the end of 2016. Net debt went down by 1 percent to US$94.99 billion.



Related: Can Teslas Solar Roof Smash The Competition?

CEO Pedro Parente said the first-quarter results allowed the company to continue with its cost-cutting activities and reduce its debt burden to 2.5 times its annual EBITDA, from 3.2 times at the end of the first quarter ahead of schedule. Originally, the company aimed to achieve the 2.5x ratio by the end of 2018.

On the news of the best financial performance in two years, Petrobras stock added 3 percent in after-hours trading, recouping some of the losses incurred since the start of the year.

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Facebook is planning to intensify its crackdown on so-called clickbait websites, saying it will begin giving lower prominence to links that lead to pages full of deceptive or annoying advertisements.

The downgrade of the links was expected to take effect beginning on Wednesday on News Feed, the home page of Facebook where people go to see posts from friends and family.

Facebook said it wanted to downplay links that people post to websites that have a disproportionate volume of ads relative to content, or that have deceptive or sexually suggestive ads along the lines of "5 Tips to be Amazing in Bed" or "1 Crazy Tip to Lose Weight Overnight!"

Links to websites with pop-up ads or full-screen ads also would be downplayed, it said.

People scrolling through their News Feed are often disappointed when they click on such links and do not find valuable information, Andrew Bosworth, Facebook's vice president of ads and business platform, said in an interview.

"People don't want to see this stuff," he said. "We're just trying to figure out how to find it and rank it further down News Feed when possible."

Facebook uses a computer algorithm to determine which posts people see first from friends and family, and it frequently refines the algorithm to keep up with spam or other concerns.

The company said in August it was adjusting the algorithm to downplay news stories with clickbait-style headlines, a style of headline that intentionally withholds information or misleads people to get them to click on them.

In December, facing criticism that hoaxes and fake news stories spread too easily on Facebook in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 8, the company made it easier for people to report those kinds of posts.

Facebook, the world's largest social media network with 1.9 billion monthly users, has enormous power with its algorithms to potentially drive traffic to media publishers or stymie it.

The company said it reviewed hundreds of thousands of websites linked to from Facebook to identify those with little substance but lots of disruptive or shocking ads.

Bosworth declined to name any websites Facebook wants to target. He said only publishers of spam needed to worry about seeing less traffic, and other publishers could see their traffic go up.

"This is a small number of the worst of the worst," he said.
Indias intrusiveness in Pakistans internal affairs 12 May, 2017 By Asif Haroon Raja

Related News Govt finalises draft of national security policy: Nisar Govt okays targeted action in Karachi Related Articles Horde of Enemies surrounding Pakistan

By By Asif Haroon Raja Dirty role of International NGOs in Pakistan

By By Asif Haroon Raja Related Speakout More on this View All Govt determined to transform Pakistan into truly democratic society: Rasheed

Govt finalises draft of national security policy: Nisar

Govt okays targeted action in Karachi

Karachi violence: 10 more killed

Int'l aid can help Pakistan be anchor of stability: FoDP

Pakistan's existence not jeopardised at all: FM Qureshi

Pakistani state is not going to collapse, says Zardari Related News Poll Are you in support of amending the law to raise the strength of the Supreme Court to 27 from 17? Indias Invasive Acts after Partition



When Pakistan came into being on August 14, 1947 under the sagacious leadership of Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Indian leaders didnt reconcile with moth eaten Pakistan that had been treacherously slashed by the conniving Mountbatten and Radcliffe. They considered it as vivisection of Mahabharata. Believing in Chanakyan tactics of telling lies, indulging in intrigues and deception, befriending enemies of the enemy, and the policy of cloak and dagger, they initiated multiple prongs to keep Pakistan politically unstable .and economically weak with the ultimate aim of undoing it or making it a vassal state of India.



Indian Congress leaders also supported Kabul when it raised the issues of Durand Line and Pashtunistan. They kept instigating Afghan rulers as well as National Awami Party led by Ghaffar Khan in Frontier Province to keep drumming up these issues. Rebellious Baloch leaders desiring independent Baluchistan and GM Sayed in Sindh having separatist tendencies were also kept in the loop of Indian intelligence agencies.



After cutting Pakistan into two in 1971 under an international conspiracy, and subjecting Pakistan armed forces to worst ignominy, India has been making use of same tools of military/economic/political/diplomatic coercion coupled with sabotage and subversion to further unravel Pakistan. To this end, RAW was again mandated in 1973 to subvert people of Sindh and Baluchistan as it had successfully subverted the minds of Bengalis in erstwhile East Pakistan with the help of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his cohorts to create Bangladesh.



In Sindh, GM Sayed and his ilk were extended full support in their Jeeay Sindh movement directed towards the creation of Sindhu Desh. Later on, new Sindhis (Mohajirs) were instigated to chant socio-economic grievances. When ZA Bhutto as the PM made Sindhi a compulsory subject and introduced quota system in Sindh, Indian psy operators further fueled the Mohajirs perceived grievances. With the emergence of MQM in 1984, by late 1980s the old and new Sindhis were locked in an everlasting ethnic war and led to rural-urban divide. Sindh became a wounded province of Pakistan. The MQM supremo Altaf Hussain wanted to gain complete control over port city of Karachi and Hyderabad as well as other urban centres of Sindh. He and his confidantes aspired to detach urban Sindh and make it into a separate State for the Mohajirs (Urdu speaking community). Others who opposed this concept formed MQM Haqiqi under Afaq Ahmad and Amer Khan in 1991. Two major operations had to be launched in 1990s to rein in the militancy of MQM. In Baluchistan, the rebellious Baloch Sardars grousing over socio-politico-economic grievances were given full support by RAW as well as KGB and KHAD, the three conniving partners, during the insurgency in 1970s.



Like the Bengalis who were brainwashed to hate the Biharis, the minds of Sindhis and Mohajirs were conditioned to hate each other. The Baloch were indoctrinated to hate the settlers in Baluchistan. Similar to the Bengalis, the minds of Sindhis, Mohajirs and the Baloch were poisoned against the State in general and Punjab and Army in particular. Their antagonism was further stoked in the wake of Baloch insurgency in which the army was used by ZA Bhutto to quell it, and in the aftermath of hanging of ZA Bhutto in April 1979 during Gen Ziaul Haqs regime.



India increased its influence in Afghanistan during its occupation by Soviet forces from 1979 till the ouster of Karmal Babrak regime in 1991 and takeover by the Mujahedeen. Between 1991 and 2001, while ethnic fault lines in Afghanistan deepened, the influence of India in Afghanistan waned radically, but it got closer to enervated Afghan Northern Alliance holding a toe hold in Panjsher Valley and its patron Iran.



Pakistans influence in Afghanistan also expanded after 1979 when Gen Zia decided to support the Afghans resistance war against the Soviets. All the seven Mujahedeen groups leaned heavily upon Pakistan. Once the Taliban took over power in 1996, relations between the two neighbors warmed up further. This equation of friendship remained till the ouster of Taliban regime from power by the US led coalition forces in November 2001.



Indias Role after 9/11



After 9/11, the dynamics of Afghanistan-Pakistan region underwent a dramatic change. With the coming of pro-India Afghan Northern Alliance into power, Pakistans influence in Afghanistan began to decline rapidly and Indias presence increased substantially. The US, India, puppet government in Kabul installed by USA became strategic partners, while Pakistan was outwardly befriended by USA to fight war on terror, but in reality was a target of the trio.



Pakistan Specific Objectives. Destabilize, secularize, denuclearize and balkanize Pakistan.



Covert War



In accordance with an already well-prepared long term plan, RAW in collusion with other anti-Pakistan intelligence agencies based in Kabul converted Afghanistan into a training ground and a springboard for training, equipping, brainwashing saboteurs and then launching them into Pakistan for carrying out sabotage and subversion at a massive scale. Huge funds were allocated and even drug money was used to conduct a hybrid war against Pakistan. Proxies were cultivated in FATA, Baluchistan and urban Sindh to fight and pin down maximum numbers of security forces in the three conflict zones. Pakistan media which suddenly became the 4th pillar of the State during Gen Musharrafs tenure, was taken on board.



RAW has been and is still making full use of Afghan and Iran soils to carryout covert operations in the selected combat zones of Pakistan that were peaceful till 9/11. Besides the propaganda/psychological war to defame Pakistan, India is leaving no stone unturned to scuttle CPEC, paint Pakistan as terrorism abetting State, isolate it diplomatically, and strategically



encircle it so as to enable Indian armed forces to unleash Cold Start doctrine that was made operational by 2008.



Indias Strategic Encirclement Plan. The plan to encircle Pakistan was based on following parameters:-



Keep the eastern border and Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir heated up.



Retain Indian militarys presence in Siachen to not only have an additional route of invasion but also to subvert the minds of people of Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.



Make people of Afghanistan friendly to India and hostile to Pakistan, establish strategic partnership with Kabul and pose a twin threat to the security of Pakistan.



Sow seeds of distrust in Pakistan-Iran relations and possibly heat up the southwestern border, become a strategic partner of Iran by helping it develop Chahbahar seaport and undermine Gwadar seaport.



Connect Chahbahar with Afghanistan through Zaranj-Delaram Highway and rail network thereby giving access to India and Iran to Central Asian Republics (CARs).



Reduce dependence of landlocked Afghanistan on Pakistan and bring Kabul and Tehran in its loop to form an alliance.



Develop economic ties with CARs and make them wary of Pakistan by projecting it as an unstable and insecure State.



Exploit the opportunity in the wake of Yemen crisis to fuel mistrust between Pakistan and Saudi led Gulf States and get closer to them.



Keep widening the gulf between the US led west and Pakistan with the help of Israel.



Demean Pakistan among SAARC States with the help of Bangladesh.



While enhancing its trade ties with China, continue poisoning the mind of China against Pakistan.



At the same time, launch a vitriolic campaign against CPEC with the help of its pawns in Pakistan and build an impression that CPEC is Punjab specific and that it will wholly benefit China only and lead to erosion of Islamic culture of Pakistan.



Indias Successes. In the last 15 years, India has been able to make successes against Pakistan:-



It succeeded in maligning the image of Pakistan among the international community to quite an extent owing to its diplomatic clout and economic strength.



Indias psychological operators have successfully stimulated antagonism between the two brotherly Muslim neighbors. Like Karzai regime, Ashraf Ghani - Dr. Abdullah regime also sit in the lap of India and is pursuing pro-India and anti-Pakistan policies.



The two successive Afghan regimes have been actively conniving with the ones engaged in undoing Pakistan from Afghan soil. Whatever little doubts lurking in the minds of Pakistan about RAW-NDS collaboration and their support to terrorist groups TTP and Jamaat e Ahrar, based in Kunar and Nangarhar, have been dispelled after the revelations made by Ehsanullah Ehsan, a key leader of TTP, who voluntarily surrendered himself.



Iran is much more close to India and has been tacitly allowing RAW to use its soil for conducting terrorism in Baluchistan and Karachi as was disclosed by serving naval officer, Commander RAW agent Kalbushan Yadav. After his confessions, he has been awarded death sentence by a military court.



Success of Indian diplomacy can be judged from the fact that the US has all along been on the side of India and has treated Pakistan unfairly despite its huge sacrifices in the US imposed war on terror. All its acts favored India and disfavored Pakistan. As if the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal and giving India access to Nuclear Suppliers Group was not enough, the US has now audaciously signed three military oriented agreements (Logistics, Maritime and Communication). Easy availability of US, Israeli, western and Russian weapon systems and technology, particularly Israeli made anti-missile system, have heavily tilted the tenuous strategic military balance in South Asia in favor of India.



Besides buying the loyalties of proxies and using them against Pakistan, India has been successful in taming some political and nationalist parties and in using them to serve its agenda. It has economically charmed one political party to an extent that it chooses to ignore Indias unrestricted anti-Pakistan activities and maintains a soft stance irrespective of internal remonstrations made by civil and military circles.



India has also succeeded in buying the loyalties of Pak media and segment of liberals and seculars who dance to the tunes of India and USA and are helping the duo in the accomplishment of their sinister agenda.



India has succeeded in creating a water specter for Pakistan by building over 60 small, medium and large dams over the three Pakistan specific rivers flowing down from Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK) in violation of 1960 Indus Basin Treaty and is in a position to flood Pakistans rivers/canals in flood season and to close the water flow during crops sowing season.



India has succeeded in keeping IOK in its illegal occupation for the last 70 years and in stymieing all efforts to resolve the Kashmir dispute in accordance with UN Resolutions.



Indo-US-Afghan failures. Following are the failures of the trio assisted by other allies against Pakistan:



Despite spending billions of dollars, the trio has utterly failed to trigger chaos and a civil war and to ultimately breakup Pakistan.



The proxies that were and still are being heavily funded and equipped have been thoroughly battered by Pak security forces, all their bases and hideouts eliminated and the terrorists flushed out.



FATA is almost free of foreign sponsored terrorists and is being reformed and brought into mainstream by integrating it into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.



Wind has been taken out of the sails of sponsored separatist movement in Baluchistan and Baloch rebels are surrendering arms in droves, and the province is being developed at a fast pace.



Karachi that had been darkened and bloodied is now stable and normalcy has returned to the city of lights. Indias pawn MQM is split into 4 factions and its militancy perforated.



India or USA have not been able to penetrate and exploit the trunk of armed forces and the ISI. But for their strategic defiance and heroic fight back against all odds, Pakistan by now might have met the fate of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Somalia, Sudan and Lebanon.



Much hyped Cold Start doctrine for all practical purposes has died its death.



Pakistan Army is now rated among the best, if not the best in the world and is the most battle inoculated Army after successfully fighting and pushing the foreign backed terrorists of all hues on the back foot and without resorting to proxy war in Afghanistan or India.



While India tried hard to make Pakistan irrelevant, Pakistan has improved its stature at the international level and has become relevant and is seen with admiration and respect.



Pakistan has safeguarded its nuclear and missile programs and has made its nuclear deterrence more credible by notching up the level from minimum deterrence to full spectrum deterrence.



CPEC as well as Gwadar seaport have been made operational and Pakistan has become the hub of this corridor, which is attracting large numbers of countries to draw benefits from it.



CPEC has demolished the encirclement plan of India.



India failed to move its goods by road to Afghanistan and CARs through Wagah border.



Indias massive covert war, media war, false flag operations, heavy firing across the LoC from August 2014 till to date, water terrorism and threats were aimed at maximizing pressure on Pakistan and forcing it to withdraw its support to the Kashmiris in distress. All its offensive moves have backfired.



Liberation movement in IOK has reached a critical point and has flabbergasted India. It is slipping out of Indias hands.



Pakistan is intact, it has not been branded as a terror abetting state, and it is not isolated and is on its way to economic recovery and become an Asian Tiger.



Pakistan has improved its democratic credential, retains its Islamic identity and has not been secularized as desired by the enemies.



The other front which the enemies of Pakistan have failed to breach is that of the people of Pakistan, particularly the Islam loving conservatives that are in majority. They refused to fall in the trap of conspirators and have full trust in their armed forces. They hate India as well as USA and Israel and in their view the trio is partners in crime and solely responsible for the chaos and bloodshed of the Muslim world. They are the ones who genuinely feel the pain of the oppressed Kashmiris and openly express their support for them. They condemn the Government for not doing enough to mitigate their sufferings and in exposing the ugly face of India.



Despite spending $ 1.3 trillion, Afghanistan is slipping out of the hands of USA, India and unity government in Kabul. Pakistan and Afghan Taliban hold the key to durable peace in Afghanistan and none else.



Reservations of people of Pakistan



The people have little confidence in sham democracy, in Westminster democracy, Anglo Saxon laws and the British tailored criminal justice system, all being pro-rich and anti-poor.



They feel that the ruling elites are string puppets of the US, West and India and have purposely not reformed the defective systems so as to retain their monopoly over power and to keep the downtrodden suppressed.



They strongly feel that Pakistan was pushed into the inferno of war on terror to please their patrons and are still not prepared to get out of the magic spell of USA even after suffering massive human casualties and economic losses and having learnt about the dangerous agenda against Pakistan.



They see Islamic system as the panacea for their predicaments. They wonder as to why the successive regimes having tried out all possible systems, have not experimented the Islamic system based on Quran and Sunnah as enshrined in the Constitution of Pakistan.



They resent the self-destructive policy of appeasement pursued by the rulers well knowing that the enemies of Pakistan that are being appeased are hell bent to destroy Pakistan.



Conclusion. The sooner our civilian leaders realized that India is Pakistans arch enemy and will never reciprocate our appeasement policy, better it is for Pakistan. Peace in Afghanistan will remain elusive as long as the villains of peace, India and USA continue playing the spoilers game. Contemplated troop surge by USA in Afghanistan will further compound Afghan imbroglio, particularly if Russia decides to intrude as in the case of Syria. Peace in the region is not possible until and unless the Kashmir dispute is amicably resolved. India and not Pakistan is the problem.



The writer is retired Brig, war veteran, defense analyst, columnist, author of five books, Vice Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Reseach Centre. Takes part in TV talk shows, takes part in seminars and delivers talks. asifharoonraja@gmail.com
The Negative Politics of the Opposition Parties in Pakistan

12 May, 2017

By Saeed Qureshi

The next general elections in Pakistan are due to be held within three months after June 4, 2018. It means that hardly a year is left for the incumbent government of the PMNL to remain in governance. Right or wrong the PMNL came into power through an established democratic process. Let is complete its constitutional tenure in office for the remaining period. It is certain that the incumbent prime minister of Pakistan Mian Nawaz Sharif would not contest elections in 2018.



If the opposition is so committed to root out corruption from Pakistan and arraign Mian Nawaz Sharif and his two sons as a result of Panama leaks then the best time would be to win elections against the PMNL and initiate legal inquiry against the familys offshore accounts. Similar action can then be taken against Mian Shahbaz Sharif the younger brother of the prime minister and incumbent chief minister of Punjab province.



Although Imran Khan has been targeting solely Mian Nawaz Sharif and his family for the past several years for one misdeeds or the other as witnessed by his fiery speeches and prolonged Dharnas (sit ins) in Islamabad. Imran Khan has made several attempts to dislodge Nawaz Sharif or to force him to resign. But somehow Mr. Khans campaigning didnt click in his favor. In the local elections and those in Azad Kashmir PTI lost badly. It demonstrated that notwithstanding his tall claims and impracticable revolutionary slogans, the people didnt vote for Imran Khan,



The latest divided verdict of the supreme court allowing Mian Nawaz Sharif to remain in his seat is another setback for Imran Khan to force the prime minister to resign. Overall it looks as if Imran Khan has personal grudge or vendetta or some hidden agenda against Mian Nawaz, his brother and even the entire family.



But while Imran Khan has come to be known as a stubborn and unbending foe of Mian Nawaz Sharif, the other political parties of late have also joined the fray and started harping on the anti-PMNL and anti- Mian Nawaz tunes for resignation on the basis of corruption.



The PPP whose whole lot is composed of corrupt individuals both morally and financially is also demanding prime ministers ouster for bad governance and for financial malpractices. This demand has come particularly from Asif Ali Zardari the co-chairman of the PPP who himself is known as the embodiment of corruption and hoarding wealth through every conceivable means. Someone has so aptly remarked recently that if Mr. Zardari is raising voice against corruption the it is the sure sign of the imminent coming of the Dooms Day.



The religio-political party Jamaat-Islami has always remained a sidelined political outfit. It has been variously indulging in street politics and pursuing a political culture of denial. It opposed the creation of Pakistan and has never accepted its existence. Its present leadership has fallen back on the old tunes.



Its leaders are making fiery speeches against the federal government and highlighting peoples day to day problems such as water and power shortage and bribery etc. Someone may ask them is this corruption created by PMNL or the socio-economic problems have never there in Pakistan?



If the JI holds the PMNL responsible for peoples sufferings because of poor governance and shortage of basic amenities then it is merely a blame game and fishing in the troubled waters. Otherwise the fact is that the PMNL despite its shortcomings has been going extra mile to improve the living conditions of the people.



The religious and sectarian parties and groups are also accusing the PMNL government for all unethical and unislamic demeanors and thus demanding its way-out. On top of it the Dawn Leaks issue has surfaced. Even if Dawn issue has some truth then it doesnt mean that the federal government was responsible. It seems as if the entire political lot of opposition wants the army rule or martial law to be imposed. They dont seem to care that as a result of that happening a political culture and the democratic process that started after the exit of Pervez Musharraf would be nullified. That would be a bad bargain.



Let the judicial system take its course as far as Panama Leaks and Dawn Leaks issues are concerned. Pervez Rashid the PMNL information minister and Tariq Fatimi the advisor on foreign affairs have been removed. The necessary action against other officials and journalists responsible for this fiasco has been taken.



The point that I want to emphasize is that because of these peripheral issues, the ongoing process of democratization should not be derailed. It would be a colossal loss and a grievous set back to the democratic and political process that is somehow in place for several years and should be allowed to remain on the track.



In the meantime, let the inquiry committee ordered by the supreme court should further probe about the wealth and belonging and properties of not only Sharif family but others publicly known corrupt people. Thereafter depending upon the outcome, the prime minister may step down. But while such an inquiry is essential in case of Sharif family then it should also probe the corruption and offshore assets of all the politicians to clear the country of such a curse.



The next general elections must be held on schedule. If in the meantime army steps in the efforts starting from PPP government to the present one with uninterrupted march of democratic culture would be nullified. The country would again come under the military boots and no one knows how long that army rule would continue.



As such the best and legitimate option for the politicians in the opposition of PMNL is to prepare for the nationwide elections due to be held in 2018 and try to come into power from the democratic door and not from the backdoor.



In the meantime, let CPEC be completed. No party or any government is more earnest and desirous about the completion of this milestone project than the PMNL. I would reproduce from the Wikipedia the summary of the benefits that would accrue to Pakistan once this gigantic project is completed:



ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor also known by the acronym CPEC) is a collection of infrastructure projects currently under construction throughout Pakistan. Originally valued at $46 billion, the value of CPEC projects is now worth $62 billion. CPEC is intended to rapidly modernize Pakistani infrastructure and strengthen its economy by the construction of: modern transportation networks, numerous energy projects, and special economic zones. On 13 November 2016, CPEC became partly operational when Chinese cargo was transported overland to Gwadar Port for onward maritime shipment to Africa and West Asia.



A vast network of highways and railways are to be built under the aegis of CPEC that will span the length and breadth of Pakistan. Inefficiencies stemming from Pakistan's mostly dilapidated transportation network are estimated by the government to cause a loss of 3.5% of the country's annual gross domestic product.[7] Modern transportation networks built under CPEC will link seaports in Gwadar and Karachi with northern Pakistan, as well as points further north in western China and Central Asia. A 1,100 kilometer long motorway will be built between the cities of Karachi and Lahore as part of CPEC, while the Karakoram Highway between Rawalpindi and the Chinese border will be completely reconstructed and overhauled. The KarachiPeshawar main railway line will also be upgraded to allow for train travel at up to 160 km per hour by December 2019. Pakistan's railway network will also be extended to eventually connect to China's Southern Xinjiang Railway in Kashgar. The estimated $11 billion required to modernize transportation networks will be financed by subsidized concessionary loans



The writer is a senior journalist, former editor of Diplomatic Times and a former diplomat. This and other articles by the writer can also be read at his blog www.uprightopinion.com
Time to Revise our Afghan Policy 12 May, 2017 By Asif Haroon Raja

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Afghan schools shut down over swine flu Unprovoked Afghan Aggression



On May 5, 2017, Afghan border security forces carried out unprovoked firing across the Chaman border in Baluchistan on two Pakistani villages namely Kili Luqman and Kili Jahangir, martyring 11 Pakistani civilians including one Frontier Corps (FC) soldier and injuring 50 people. The merciless act was undertaken when national census teams accompanied by FC troops were busy carrying out national population census in the two Pakistani villages in Chaman area, about which Kabul was informed one week in advance. Kabul government had given full assurance of cooperation. The clearly demarcated border runs between the Pakistani villages and Afghan villages. The firers made use of houses of Afghan villages to fire at census teams and villagers and use Afghan villagers as human shields. The shelling continued for 10 hours.



As if this provocative act was not enough, Afghan forces repeated the offensive act across Torkham border in Khyber Agency by firing for one hour on two Pakistani posts. Pakistan has closed the Bab-e-Dosti Chaman border gate as well as Torkham gate and the situation is still tense.



This is the second time that Afghanistan has resorted to aggression in less than one year time. Last was on Torkham crossing point on June 13, 2016 in which one Major succumbed to injuries and 16 were injured in the whole night duel. Reason for unprovoked aggression was construction of border gate well inside Pak territory to check flow of terrorists. Pakistan had retaliated strongly by not only launching a tough counter military action but also closed the two major crossing points for a month.



Pakistans Counteraction. After the unprovoked firing, the aggression was fully responded by Pakistan forces causing huge loss on the Afghan side. To start with, civilians from affected villages and adjacent areas were evacuated. Troops were dispatched and Air Force was put on high alert. Pakistan responded effectively. About 7 posts of Afghan Border Police were destroyed and around 30 Afghan soldiers were killed and over 50 injured in counter fire by Pakistan Forces. Pakistan used heavy artillery to pound the Afghan posts. Baab-e-Dosti gate was closed. The counter fire was so devastating that Afghan forces had to wave frantically white flags and pleaded for cease fire. Before cease firing, one suspicious village on the Afghan side was taken under the control by the forward moving troops of Pakistan Armed Forces.



Reason behind Aggression



There are total of 288 crossing points along the 2640 km long Durand Line. Among them, Torkham and Chaman border crossings take major flow of road traffic. Other two important points are Spin Boldak in Balochistan and Angoor Adda in South Waziristan. All crossing points are in use of pedestrians and animal transport since villages are located on both sides of the border at each



crossing site. In many cases the villages are divided, half this side and half across the border. These divided villages house majority of agents of NDS and RAW working as saboteurs, handlers and informers.



Registration of all residents of border villages would certainly help in identifying the intelligence and drug smuggling network operating on both sides of Chaman and Spin Boldak areas. It was therefore natural for the NDS and drug mafias to get upset over the planned population census and hence decided to disrupt it.



The two colluding partners NDS-RAW tasked notorious drug baron Gen Abdul Razaq Achakzai to undertake the disruption plan. He was more worried about the two villages in Chaman since his handlers were residing there and his smuggling route passed through these villages. He gladly accepted the responsibility. As per rough estimates, his drug smuggling network based in border villages and Afghan refugee camps earn a profit of $ 6 million annually.



NDS-RAW joint Plan



It has now been gathered that NDS and RAW had prepared this plan four days prior to the attack. RAW joined the show since it had failed to prevent population census process in the Azad Kashmir villages situated along the LoC on account of heightened uprising in Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK) and Indian forces breaking all records of barbarism against Kashmiris and the world focus on IOK. It decided to place its gun on the shoulders of Afghanistan and fire the gun to kill two birds in one go  avenge Indian Armys helplessness and to further up the ante on western border.



For the planned attack, light weapons, artillery guns, ammunition and explosives were stored in the houses of the villages opposite the two target villages well before hand. Those houses were used as bunkers from where firing was done and residents were used as human shields to prevent the other side to retaliate with full force. However, Pak forces struck back at Afghan check posts in which the Militia men of Razaq were resting in peace.



Background of Lt Gen Razaq



It will be worthwhile to shed light on so-called Gen Abdul Razaq Achakzai. He was made police chief of Kandahar 6 years ago when Hamid Karzai was in power. Later on, he was given this post on permanent basis as well as the rank of Brig Gen by Karzai as a reward for the exploits of his private Militia against the Taliban. Like many others, this illiterate man who had spent his time in refugee camps before and during the Taliban rule, and he also worked in a shop, is now a Lt Gen. His fortunes soared after 9/11, when he offered his Militia to the Americans to fight the Taliban. His Militia took active part in 2010 operation in Kandahar. Most of his Militia men are trained from American private companies such as DynCorp and Black water. They received training from the American funded Black Water Centre established in Kandahar. He is infamous for mercilessly torturing Taliban captives and for carrying out extra judicial killings.



He is also a blue eyed boy of the US military and like Rashid Dostum maintains a private Militia. Like late Wali Muhammad Karzai, foster brother of Hamid Karzai, who was supervising drug trade



of Afghanistan from Kandahar, Razaq has taken over the drug business. From Spin Boldak route alone, 40 maunds of opium is smuggled under his supervision every month. Once inside Baluchistan, his handlers transport the opium in jeeps and major part of it is handed over to Iranian Baloch.



Birdseye view of Pak-Afghan Turbulent Relationship



Despite being a landlocked country and mainly dependent upon Pakistan for its imports and exports, Afghanistan has all along remained an unfriendly country. Pakistan came closer to Afghanistan when it decided to support the Afghan Mujahideen against the occupying Soviet forces in 1980 and hosted well over 3 million Afghan refugees. Gen Ziaul Haq pursued an upright and correct Afghan policy and was instrumental in winning the hearts and minds of the Afghans. His sudden death under mysterious circumstances in August 1988 and the US deciding to abandon Afghanistan and Pakistan in 1989 led to power tussle between the seven Mujahedeen groups. Civil war erupted between the groups under Gulbadin Hikmatyar and Northern Alliance (NA) under Ahmad Shah Masood, which raged till the eruption of Taliban movement from Kandahar in 1994. They captured power in October 1996 and pushed NA to Panjsher Valley comprising about 9% of Afghan territory. NA patronized by Iran, India, US and the West became hostile towards Pakistan since it considered Pakistan responsible for its woes.



Pakistan and Afghanistan enjoyed best of relations during the five years rule of Taliban from 1996 till their ouster in November 2001 by the US led western forces and NA. During the Taliban rule, Pakistans western border had become safe in true sense. Poppy growing, arms trade and war lordism had ceased in Afghanistan. Both had pledged to provide strategic depth to each other in times of crisis. However, Pakistan was gifted the cancers of drugs and Kalashnikovs as well as sectarianism during and after the Afghan Jihad. The successive civilian governments in the 1990s did nothing to cure the perforating cancers which had militarized the society or to return the Afghan refugees.



Pakistans decision to ditch Taliban regime at the behest of Washington in September 2001 and to provide air bases from where the US bombers destroyed Afghanistan, and then providing logistics supply routes to NATO forces from Karachi seaport to Afghanistan via Chaman and Torkham shocked the Taliban. Having experienced the golden era of Gen Zia, they could never imagine that another Pakistani General would treacherously stab them in the back to win the affections of a super power. Pakistan also helped in netting runaway Al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders and handing them over to CIA for onwards transfer to Guantanamo Bay Prison. Since then Pakistans Afghan policy has remained in confusion and in doldrums thereby accumulating distrust and widening the distance between the two countries.



The hey days of brotherly and blood relations have now become history and today Afghan government as well as the people of Afghanistan have become averse to Pakistan. Indian psychological operators have penetrated in each and every government department and have succeeded in influencing the minds of Afghans. Their minds have been systematically



brainwashed to hate Pakistan and to see India as their friend and benefactor. Afghan society had been Sovietized by the former USSR during its 10-year occupation and now India has Indianized Afghan society.



Afghans have been told repeatedly that Pakistan is a betrayer; it had first betrayed NA and then the Taliban; and that its an enemy of Afghanistan and wants to make it its colony. In actuality, Afghanistan for all practical purposes has become a colony of India. The two have become strategic partners, and RAW-NDS backed by USA are working against Pakistan in unison since 2002. In fact, RAAM and NDS were established by RAW. All what Pakistan had done for Afghanistan in its testing times has been washed down the drain.



While NA has not forgotten and forgiven Pakistan for its support to the Taliban, The Taliban have out of expediency overlooked Pakistans betrayal and has thus far not picked up arms against Pak security forces or indulged in acts of terrorism in Pakistan. They have confined their resistance war against the occupying forces and the collaborators inside Afghanistan and have let the TTP to bleed Pakistan. The US, NATO, Afghan government and India have been persistently trying to create a wedge between the Taliban and Pakistan security forces and pitch them against each other.



The US to some extent achieved this objective after it forced Pakistan to launch an operation in North Waziristan in June 2014 and flush out Pak-friendly so-called Haqqani network (HN), then playing up death of Mulla Omar in July 2015 to scuttle Afghan peace talks, then pressing it to force the Taliban to lay down arms and come to negotiating table, or else fight the HN and so-called Quetta Shura, and then droning Mulla Mansour on May 22, 2016 when he was about to join peace process, and then abruptly discarding Pakistan from Quadrilateral peace talks forum and adding India.



While Pakistan exerted pressure on the Taliban to agree to talks, it couldnt win any concession for them from Washington and Kabul. Pakistans efforts to convince the Taliban to accept the US dictated peace agreement and the US tailored constitution has not been well received among the rank and file of Taliban. They view it as another betrayal to please USA and to earn its kudos. For them, it amounts to disregarding their huge sacrifices and abandoning liberation movement at a time when victory is in sight, merely to share power as a junior partner.



This is naturally unacceptable to the Taliban under Haibatullah, since they have sacrificed their three generations and have gained control over 60% of Afghan territory and restricted the writ of inept, corrupt and unpopular ruling regime of Ashraf Ghani to Kabul only, entirely dependent upon $8.1 billion annual foreign aid.



While Trump has acknowledged that terrorism cannot be defeated with any sort of finality, he has given his nod to induct of 3-5000 additional troops to beef up US 8400 troops in Afghanistan in coming June. It amounts to reinforcing the failure. As had happened after the two troop surges in 2009, casualty rate of occupiers and collaborators as well as of civilians will jump up. Overall



security situation will worsen and may trigger another round of civil war as had happened in 1991.



The situation is getting ripe for such a gory scenario in the wake of enhanced economic stakes of China and its concerns about ETIM; Russias deepening interest in the affairs of Afghanistan in order to ward off the emerging threat of Daesh, and to gain access to warm waters; Iran wanting to retain and possibly expand its sphere of influence in Western and Central Afghanistan; Uzbekistan concerns about IMU; landlocked Central Asian States quest to join CPEC and have peaceful Afghanistan; Qatar desiring to retain its diplomatic clout over Taliban owing to their political office in Doha; and USA and India having no intention to abandon Afghanistan.



As can be seen, there are too many external players having their fingers in the pie of Afghanistan. Pakistan has suffered the most because of continuous instability in Afghanistan since 1978 and none can match its sacrifices. It shares 60% of border with Afghanistan. And yet Pakistan is the only country which is being repeatedly pressed to stay out of Afghanistan. On one hand it is coerced to make the Taliban agree to talk, and in the same breath it is told to sever ties with them.



Sadly, our leaders with feet of clay and devoid of clear cut Afghan policy, have been ceding to wrongful demands of USA and its puppet regime in Kabul, well knowing that Afghan soil has been and still is in use for cross border terrorism to destabilize Pakistan. They obsequiously sing the tutored song that Afghan peace process should be Afghan owned and Afghan led, and it will only assist the peace process. How can this formula work when the biggest stakeholders Taliban are kept out of the loop. Russia has now taken the initiative and demanded their inclusion in future peace talks. But why we are shy of taking them on board when all other stakeholders are secretly in contact with them?



Ground Realities



1. The string-puppet regime in Kabul is wholly sold to USA and India and so is NDS to CIA and RAW.



2. Whatever actions taken by Ashraf Ghani and Dr. Abdullah or NDS are dictated by USA and India. Friday attacks were directed by India and had the approval of USA.



3. Song of cross border terrorism by Pakistan sung by Karzai regime and now by Ghani regime was composed by India; its the same song which India sings with regard to IOK.



4. By virtue of heavy presence and influence of India in Afghanistan, Pakistans western border have become insecure and cannot be termed as friendly or neutral.



5. Pakistan is faced with a twin threat both from eastern and western borders.



6. This threat will remain viable as long as Northern Alliance remain in power and the US and India are present in Afghanistan.



7. India will keep using Afghanistan as a launching pad for cross border terrorism as long as USA stays there.



8. Afghan unity government installed by USA is unnatural, highly unpopular, bunch of collaborators and illegal, and has no right to decide the future course of Afghanistan and to oppress the great majority of Afghan Pashtuns and keep them out of power.



Recommendations



1. Pakistan will have to reconfigure its force goals and deploy its troops and radars to grapple with the twin threat.



2. It has become all the more essential to effectively seal the western border through fencing, towers/pickets and floodlights at the earliest.



3. Population census of all border villages must be completed expeditiously and saboteurs/drug pushers taken to task.



4. All the 288 crossing points including the main points of Angoor Adda, Torkham, Chaman and Spin Boldak that are in use of terrorists, saboteurs and smugglers need to be fully guarded.



5. The two main crossing points of Chaman and Torkham should be kept closed for next three months if not more, irrespective of hue and cry made by vested groups and USA whose supply routes for increased numbers of troops would also get affected. This time we must remain firm and treat Afghanistan as India treats Nepal or Bangladesh.



6. Pakistan should recall its ambassador in Kabul and give a marching order to Afghan ambassador in Islamabad.



7. No further contact should be made with illegal unity regime in Kabul.



8. Return of Afghan refugees must be accelerated.



9. Operation Raddul Fasaad should intensify its combing operations to nab handlers, facilitators, financiers and to demolish sleeping cells in all urban centres.



10. Joint Intelligence Directorate must become fully operational and stretch its tentacles to the eastern, western and southern vulnerable border belts.



11. Armed drones should be used to target hideouts of Fazlullah and Khalid Khurasani.



12. A case should be taken up in the UN about the aggression of Afghan forces in Chaman and Torkham and told that it was a combined Indo-Afghan attack.



13. India should be warned that all attacks and terror attacks emanating from Afghanistan are wholly Indian sponsored and it should refrain from it or else be prepared for the consequences.



14. Pakistan should stop relying on USA and hoping that it will rein in Kabul or New Delhi since it is the chief master mind behind the Pakistan specific covert war.



15. Instead, Pakistan should now rely more on China and Russia and with the help of the two, involve SCO and possibly Iran and Turkey in Afghan peace process and should boldly propose Taliban as stakeholders.



16. The emerging alliance should exert pressure on USA to quit Afghanistan.



17. Pakistan must immediately revise its foreign and defence policies related to Afghanistan, which are entirely based on one-sided policy of appeasement and make it more aggressive and dynamic.



18. Offensive defence is the only way to ward off such like offensive acts by a landlocked state.



The writer is a retired Brig Gen, war veteran, defence and security analyst, author of five books, Vice Chairman Thinkers Forum Pakistan, Director Measac Research Centre. Takes part in TV talk shows, delivers talks and take part in seminars. asifharoonraja@gmail.com












Nawaz Sharif to attend two-day international gathering in Beijing

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is traveling to Beijing to attend a two-day international gathering promoting China's plan for a vast trade network, a spokesman said Friday.



The Prime Minister's Office said in a statement that the premier leaves for China later Friday at the invitation of the President Xi Jinping to attend the event which is part of Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road initiative, which was launched by Xi in 2013.



Sharif will be accompanied on the visit by a high-level delegation and chief ministers of the four provinces, the statement said.



The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation opens Sunday and will be attended by 27 countries.



During the summit, Sharif will address a high-level dialogue and the 'leaders' roundtable', the PM Office said. Besides attending the forum, the prime minister will hold bilateral meetings with President Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang.



"A number of agreements/ MoUs related to CPEC projects are also expected to be signed on the occasion," the statement said.



Sharif will also hold bilateral meetings with several other heads of state on the sidelines of the forum. He will also visit Hangzhou and Hong Kong where he will interact with business leaders and attend investment conferences.



Xi has championed what China formally calls the One Belt, One Road or OBOR initiative to build a new Silk Road linking Asia, Africa and Europe, a landmark programme to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects including railways, ports and power grids.



China has dedicated $40 billion to a Silk Road Fund and the idea was the driving force behind the establishment of the $50 billion China-backed Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).



While China has portrayed the New Silk Road as a genuine effort to share the bounty of China's economic development and to fund infrastructure gaps, many Western countries are concerned about a lack of detail and transparency in the project and are suspicious about China's broader political intents.



Diplomatic sources said the presence of Putin and other leaders from countries with dubious human rights records, like the Philippines and Central Asian states, had contributed to a reluctance among Western leaders to attend.



What Western leader wants to sit on the same stage as Putin? said one senior Beijing-based Western diplomat who is familiar with the planning for the summit, speaking on condition of anonymity.



Still, at a time of uncertainty about the US place in the world following President Donald Trump's pledges to put America first, China sees an opportunity to become more of a global leader and has found a receptive audience for its New Silk Road.



Leaders from countries that would appear to have little, if any, connection to the plan are coming to the summit, including Chile and Argentina.



Everyone wants to be China's friend now with Trump in office, said a senior Asian diplomat in Beijing. While China says the New Silk Road is not political, it has run into opposition from India due to a section of it in Pakistan, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, where some projects run through the disputed Kashmir region.
Totally wrong for subordinate organisation to reject PM orders: Senate

ISLAMABAD: Legislators in the Upper House of parliament on Thursday were informed that it was totally wrong for a subordinate organisation to reject the order of an elected prime minister.



Senate Chairman Mian Raza Rabbani during the proceedings of the House asked Senator Farhatullah Babar if it was right for a subordinate organisation to reject the order of the prime minister, to which the latter replied it was absolutely wrong. According to rules, Rabbani said, the federal government can control and command all armed forces. He also said that all forces came under the Ministry of Defence, headed by a federal minister. The chairman asked leader of the House Raja Zafarul Haq, opposition leader in Senate Chaudhry Aitzaz Ahsan and Javed Abbasi to inform the House about the control of armed forces today (Friday).



Senator Farhatullah Babar, while taking part in the discussion, said that withdrawal of the controversial tweet by the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) and the closure of potentially destabilising Dawn Leaks saga were a matter of satisfaction. However, he said it was important to learn appropriate lessons from the incidents to avert clash among state institutions in the future. The Dawn Leaks spoke of divergence in views expressed in the meeting, he said, adding that if true, there was a need to enhance national security instead of undermining it.



If the report of a meeting in the PMs House had indeed breached national security, what about the January 17 report in the Times of London of a garrison meeting in Kharian? he asked.



Reading out from The Times report, he said that it claimed, Tensions have emerged within Pakistans military with officers concerned that their powerful army is losing its superiority and standing...



The Times report even listed the questions asked, claiming also that in reply, the army chief told the officers, You do your job and let me do mine.



Why this hypocrisy? Whats sauce for the goose must also be sauce for the gander, he said.



He also criticised tweeting institutional differences, saying that the ISPR tweet was most inappropriate, unfortunate and uncalled for, and should not have taken place in the first instance. He also recalled an earlier ISPR tweet that hugely embarrassed Iranian president just when he set his foot on the soil of Pakistan, during his first state visit, and hoped that it would also be withdrawn. The withdrawal of the March tweet will enhance, and not undermine, the prestige of the ISPR, he said.



He said that as a result of Dawn Leaks, three trusted and competent professionals were sacked, and it was not wrong if those sacked were not censured publicly. Not long ago, did the army itself not follow this principle by keeping a lid on those senior officers reportedly sacked for corruption? he asked. It was right and proper not to cause public humiliation. Why this insistence on public humiliation of civilians?



Opening discussion on Mardan University student Mashals lynching, Senator Farhatullah Babar called for making use of observations contained in the 1992 report of the Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice to open a debate on preventing misuse of the blasphemy law. The committee, he said, while endorsing an amendment to Section 295 to provide for death penalty for blasphemy, also made some observations about the law, which could provide a basis for moving forward to prevent the misuse, even without changing the law itself.



The Senate began discussion on several important issues on the motions moved by Aitzaz Ahsan and others.



Muhammad Azam Khan Swati said politicians, lawmakers, scholars, lawyers and every segment of society would have to play their due role to change the extremist mindset and to present a soft image of Pakistan and Islam. Sherry Rehman said that growing intolerance was becoming a serious issue in our society. She said serious efforts should be made to check mob violence.
Work on the Nai Gaj Dam project resumed 12 May, 2017



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Woke Bingo DADU: Work on the Nai Gaj Dam project resumed on Thursday after deployment of heavy contingents of Frontier Constabulary and police. Armed persons had disturbed the work after they attacked FC and the staff of Nai Gaj Dam some two days ago.



Nai Gaj Dam project is located at Nai Gaj Nullah some 70 kilometres away from Dadu City.



SSP Dadu claimed to have arrest the three main accused involved in attack. SSP said that weapons also were recovered all fully security was provided to the International Companies working on construction of Nai Gaj Dam project.



The local inhabitants, environmentalists, water experts and Nai Gaj Dam staff have demanded from Federal government to resolve the issues faced by management of Nai Gaj Dam to complete it in stipulated period as area can be benefited.



PD-Project Director of the construction of the Nai Gaj Dam project, Wazir Ahmed Qadri briefing to news men at Dam site on Thursday said that since 2014, owing to delaying of releasing of funds by Federal government, this only project of funded by WAPDA-Federal government in Sindh was affected.



He said that already the main schemes like releasing of water into Manchhar lake with discharge quantity of 50 cusecs through pipe lines from Nai Gaj Dam and establishing of power house generating 4.5 mega watt power was cut in the PC-1 of the Nai Gaj Dam project and it was injustice to the area.



He said that this Nai Gaj Dam project was started from April 30, 2012 with revised cost of 31.984 billion rupees and still 48% work of the project was completed. He said that till June 30, 2018, the Nai Gaj Dam was to be completed according its fixed date but owing to none releasing the funds and other issues it would not be completed. He said that the total amount of expenditures of executing companies was 15.41 billion rupees and dues were not paid 5.6 billion rupees till yet. He said that it is central core earth fill dam and it has 59 metres height and 1137 metres length with 1.40 million acres feet storage capacity of water. He said that main purpose of this dam was to irrigate barren land and supply water for drinking purpose. He said that the 90% work of 71 kilometres long left and right canals were completed. He said that 450 cusecs water will be supplied to area for the irrigation and drinking purpose and 75000 acres barren land of area will be cultivated.



He said that chairman of four International Companies working on construction of Nai Gaj Dam Sikandar Ali Jatoi has informed to the senior officers of WAPDA that if the Federal government or Sindh government are not releasing the funds and if it would be more delayed, the project will be closed.



Mr Wazir Ahmed Qadri said that despite of these hurdles, the work at Nai Gaj Dam was continuing but the if the problems and issues like delaying tactics in funds would not be solved it can affect the project.



Project engineer of the Nai Gaj Dam, Bashir Ahmed Abro highlighting the issues of security said that armed persons comprises on 25 to 30 had attacked the FC-Frontier Constabulary and staff of the dams during payment of the salaries owing to none paying them extortions. He said that they had created hurdles and after a quarrelled by FC staff and local police, control of the area was managed. He said that the work of the site was started with heavy machineries, deployment of more police staff and FC in area.



Highlighting the issues admin manager of the Nai Gaj Dam project demanded from Federal government to release the funds as soon as possible as, the work of Nai Gaj Dam can be completed for the benefit of the area.



A famous environmentalist, Roshan Ali Khushik said that the Manchhar Lake will be more polluted if the scheme of water releasing into Manchhar Lake will not be started from Nai Gaj Dam which scheme was cut by Federal government from revised PC-1 of the Nai Gaj Dam.



Another famous environmentalist, Naseer Memon said that Manchhar Lake has main source of receiving water from Nai Gaj nullah since the years if it would not be released Manchhar lake will lose its beauty, civilization owing to high pollution.



SSP Dadu, Shabbir Ahmed Sethar said that five FIRs were registered against 20 armed persons and three of them main accused were arrested and weapons were recovered from their possession. He said that high security was deployed at Nai Gaj Dam and if any will cause again disturbance in the construction work of the dam, he would be arrested.



Ex-GM Wapda south Mr Ali Sheer Baloch said that with completion of this Nai Gaj Dam project, the underground water of area will be charged and all saline water will turn into sweet. He said that area will be prosperous. He appealed to Chairman WAPDA to release funds on this project in the welfare of local people.



The inhabitants of surrounding villages and towns of Nai Gaj Dam like pat Gul Mohammad, Haji Khan, Heero Khan, Qasibo, Tore, Wahi Pandhi, Gozo, salari have appealed to from prime minister of Pakistan Mian Mohammad Nawaz Sharif to pay attention on this project of construction of Nai Gaj Dam, and take efforts to release all dues and funds on this project as it can be completed in stipulated period.
Communications Director of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC), Solomon Nkansah is accusing the Ashanti Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Bernard Antwi Boasiako, of having direct links with Aisha Huang, the Chinese lady who is noted for illegal mining (galamsey) activities in the country.



According to him, Chairman Wontumi as he is popularly known together with his party is fully aware of the activities of the galamsey queen and thus responsible for her stay in the country.



Mr Nkansah noted that the embattled Chinese migrant involved in illegal mining was for a long while never caught in her illegal dealings until now because of her close connections with the governing NPP.



NPP brought that galamsey queen Aisha into Ghana. In fact, the Ashanti Regional chairman Wontumi travelled all the way to China to bring her to Ghana in 2004. Im not saying Aisha is NPP but she is a shroud and that is why they never arrested her till now he said.



Solomon Nkansah was speaking on Adom FM Thursday.



A criminal High Court in Accra Tuesday remanded into Prison custody the 31-year-old Chinese woman suspected to be one of Ghanas most notorious illegal miners and her three other Chinese colleagues.



She was nabbed by the Ghana Immigration Service this week after she made the headlines for allegedly escaping several arrests in her illegal operations in mining.



Ms. Huang, according to Abdul Malik Kweku Baako, the managing editor of the New Crusading Guide had become untouchable because she holds secret recordings of sexual escapades she had with some influential figures in the country.



However the Ashanti Regional Secretary of the NPP, Sam Pyne denied the claims by Solomon Nkansah saying the party, as well as the Regional Chairman, has no links with the galamsey queen.

Video below-

Source: adomonline.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
Now that the awareness is growing, the international community must demand adherence to international law and must not let politics interfere with century-old norms that protect health professionals. At this point, no one can turn a blind eye and say this isn't happening. And yet so far, there has been no justice, no accountability. That must change. And that's why we at PHR are meticulously documenting these crimes. We're hopeful that our work can contribute to future prosecutions for attacks against medical personnel and facilities. It may seem impossible right now  but that's what naysayers said when we were gathering international support for a global landmine ban, an effort that led to the international landmine treaty and recognition by the Nobel Committee. We wouldn't do this work if we didn't have hope.

DM: The numbers take your breath away. Doctors not only save lives  they are often on the front lines of human rights violations. Medical professionals adhere to some of the most robust ethical standards and treat those on all sides of a conflict, regardless of their identity, affiliations, or beliefs. They are also poised to speak credibly about the atrocities they see first-hand. Until fairly recently, the world had agreed that health professionals in conflict must be shielded. But we've allowed those longstanding norms to crumble. In Syria, we feared that attacks on hospitals and doctors would become the new normal  and sadly, they have. The conflict has been raging for over six years, and it's really only in the past year that the world has woken up to these atrocities. I think our work has played a part in that awakening.

PND: You have said that physicians in conflict zones bear witness to atrocities , that they believe in the power of evidence , and that medicine and science are about truth. PHR has documented nearly 800 attacks on medical workers and more than 450 attacks on medical facilities in Syria since 2011. Why are medical workers and facilities targeted in civil wars? And what should the international community be doing that it is not doing to better protect them?

What's heartening, though, is that while crises are on the rise, so too is the notion of human rights more generally. In a number of our trainings, health professionals from other parts of the world have told me that a generation ago, they didn't even have the language of human rights. Indeed, conflict is on the rise, but so is community activism. People are pouring into the streets, demanding their rights. I will never forget the joy I saw on the face of a friend and fellow activist from Egypt describing the first time he voted in an election. There's a thirst out there. And once people are exposed to human rights, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. They're just not going to give up.

Donna McKay: What's striking to me is how many of these crises actually began as human rights crises. In Burma, what started as the marginalizing of a minority group has ballooned into a humanitarian disaster. In Syria, after President Bashar al-Assad mercilessly suppressed an anti-government uprising, those who criticized his government were arrested, tortured, disappeared, and murdered  resulting in a massive refugee crisis. In South Sudan, fighting and forced displacement have caused the world's youngest nation to basically unravel. The list goes on. And each time, the international community has stood by while those human rights violations piled up and became some of the most vexing conflicts facing our generation. If you want to talk about conflict prevention, you have to talk about ending human rights violations and snuffing out larger crises before they begin.

Philanthropy News Digest: Since you joined PHR as executive director in 2012, conflict and humanitarian crises have dominated the headlines  including the rise of Boko Haram and ISIS, violence against civilians in Burma, and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Syria, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Ukraine. Is conflict, and its attendant human rights abuses, on the rise globally?

PND asked McKay about PHR's work, in the U.S. and elsewhere, to end human rights abuses as well as the role of physicians and science, medicine, and technology in advancing those efforts.

Donna McKay is executive director of Physicians for Human Rights , a nonprofit organization dedicated to using science and medicine to prevent and investigate human rights abuses around the world  with a focus on torture, mass atrocities, rape in war, and the persecution of health workers. A joint recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, PHR has unearthed forensic evidence from mass graves that helped convict former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity; mapped attacks on healthcare workers in Syria; and led a campaign against the complicity of health professionals in the United States' post-9/11 torture program.

PND: The Open Society Foundations recently awarded PHR an $8 million challenge grant in support of your efforts to expand your network of health professional and human rights advocates and upgrade your technology. What new technologies is PHR developing or adopting to help clinicians more effectively collect, document, and preserve forensic medical evidence of human rights abuses?

DM: Since 2011, PHR has been using a multi-sectoral approach by training medical, law enforcement, and legal experts to fight the scourge of sexual violence in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the DRC in particular, there are thousands of rape cases annually, yet few of these are properly prosecuted, often due to lack of evidence. So we've also taken a high-tech/low-tech approach. On the high-tech front, we've developed an award-winning mobile app called Medicapt, which allows our network members to document, securely store, and safely transmit forensic evidence in sexual violence cases. But we've also worked with our partners to develop a standardized forensic medical intake form, a kind of routine checklist that last year the Congolese government adopted and agreed to implement nationwide. It sounds a bit bureaucratic, but it's revolutionary in that it provides concrete solutions that radically change how systems can serve survivors.

And we don't think of MediCapt as an end in itself. In order to develop the app, we had to bring together a multidisciplinary group of lawyers and doctors and police officers and prosecutors, all of which has enabled us to strengthen our network. I don't know of another organization that forges these alliances to combat sexual violence. PHR has never been afraid to reinvent and innovate, but we always do so collaboratively. In East and Central Africa, for example, we're all working toward the same goal  ensuring that strong evidence makes its way through the system and ultimately prevents impunity.

PND: Before joining PHR, you spent a decade at the American Civil Liberties Union helping to shape its response to the erosion of civil liberties after 9/11. How did that work influence your perspective on the role of physicians in investigating and preventing human rights abuses?

DM: I was at the ACLU in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent assault on civil liberties in the United States. Helping the ACLU respond to that crisis and then grow strategically was a powerful experience and one that I wanted to take to PHR because I see the incredible power that can happen when change agents are deployed. At the ACLU, lawyers were those change agents, and at PHR, it's health professionals who can influence the world. You see that in PHR's partners  in Turkey, in Uzbekistan, in Tunisia  who've caught that bug, who now know what it's like to deliver rights and fight for justice on behalf of ordinary people. PHR functions best when it acts as a vehicle, a network to support human rights activists who are also health professionals.

When I came to PHR more than five years ago, I saw the organization as this beautiful gem sitting on a shelf, a bit unknown but with enormous potential for impact. I wanted to take that gem off the shelf, shine it up, and make sure that health professionals everywhere know that we are here for them, upholding their ethics and providing a rubric under which they can become some of the world's most powerful advocates. And I think we're moving in the right direction.

PND: PHR was one of the organizations that in September 2015 called on the Obama administration to allow more refugees from the conflict in Syria into the United States. What do you make of the Trump administration's policy vis-a-vis Syrian refugees? And do you have any hope that the administration's policy may become more responsive to the plight of Syrian refugees over time?

DM: I'd push back a little and ask: What policy? I'm hard-pressed to identify anything this administration is doing that qualifies as a coherent policy. The recent executive orders and the fear-mongering whipped up against immigrants and asylum seekers and refugees from war zones are just plain inhumane. It's short-sighted. It's immoral. And it's painful. There's no doubt that the U.S. shutting its doors on those seeking refuge will do more harm than good.

At PHR, every day we're watching the crises that are feeding refugee flows and meticulously documenting the human rights abuses that are leading so many Syrians to flee. We're providing that evidence so no government  including the U.S.  can say it doesn't know what's happening in Syria. As far as responsiveness goes, I'm concerned that there are no signs the administration is going to change its approach to refugees. In fact, through his fixation on building a wall and cracking down on asylum seekers  whom we support through our network of clinicians who evaluate victims of torture and ill treatment  President Trump has shown a deep antipathy toward those who still see the U.S. as a safe haven. He talks a lot about making America great again. But what's great about turning his back on those fleeing horrors like we've seen in Syria or fleeing sexual violence in Central America?

The other challenge we face is that human rights activists and health professionals are under threat  not just in Syria but in Yemen, in South Sudan, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Turkey. They're being persecuted, arrested, and even killed for doing their jobs and telling the truth about human rights violations they're witnessing. NGOs as well as foundations and governments have to commit to protecting these activists and professionals. And ordinary Americans can help by showing their solidarity with those efforts. There's so much fear that Americans will lose interest  that, under the weight of so many crises and so many mixed messages, they will relent and say, "It's just too big a problem for one person to make a difference." Our call to Americans and advocates of humanity and human rights everywhere is simple: Don't give up. And don't underestimate the power of solidarity. We have to show support for one another, for fellow activists, and for the next generation of young advocates who are trying to find their way toward a sustainable model for promoting human rights around the world.

 Kyoko Uchida
The deadline to sign up for this free community event that is open to all is Nov. 16.

Kennebunk Post

"We need to invest in our kids," said resident Brenda Robinson. "That's how we keep graffiti out of Waterhouse Center and mischief out of the downtown on Saturday night."
Michael Goot night and weekend editor Follow Michael Goot Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today

Tuesday is school election day in New York. People will go to the polls to vote on budgets, ballot propositions and elect people to school boards.

Check out Sundays paper and on poststar.com for a complete preview of the 2017 school election. There will be a cover story about this years issues including the average spending and tax levy increases being proposed in this area. It also touches on issues districts faced this year such as a large increase in health insurance costs. A $1.1 billion increase in state aid is allowing districts to add mental health services, advanced courses and new technology.

There will also be capsules giving snapshots about the proposed budget in each school district in The Post-Stars coverage area, ballot propositions, candidates for the board and when and where to vote. There is also a separate budget breakdown, which gives a more in-depth look at the numbers and highlights in that district.

There are contested Board of Education races in Fort Edward, Granville, North Warren, Schuylerville and Whitehall. The responses from people who returned our questionnaires will also be published in this section.

If you dont see it in print, this information can also be found online at http://poststar.com/highlights/school_elections/2017/ You can also find the information from the main page by clicking on Menu in the upper left corner and then clicking on the little arrow next to News to bring up another menu. Then, click on Topic Pages. School Elections 2017 are on that page.

Go out and vote on Tuesday, May 16!
U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Willsboro, announced that she visited Williams College in Massachusetts on Thursday to catch up with former U.S. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, an instructor at the college, and to to be a guest speakers in Gibson's "Leadership and Political Change" class.

It was great to have the opportunity to catch up with my friend Chris and share my background with his class. Chris was an exceptional colleague in Congress and a tremendous leader for our region," Stefanik said, in a statement. "I was honored to have the chance to speak to his students about affecting positive political change, and I know these students are receiving a top flight education in politics and leadership from him.
Social media are a great tool to get information to the public quickly. On Thursday, I saw the bad side of it as they helped create hysteria regarding what was going on at the Queensbury school campus.

I saw at least one person who posted on Facebook that evacuations were taking place because a "bomb" had been found on campus. (I went back this morning to get a screen shot and it was gone, not surprisingly.)

Later in the day, I got a frantic Facebook message from a woman asking if it was true a bomb had been found, because she heard from a friend who has a friend who is a police officer that one was.

We know now that there wasn't any explosive device, but people flying off the handle with unconfirmed information certainly didn't help allay any fears as people tried to figure out where their kids were. The Warren County Sheriff's Office had a press release issued shortly after the threats were found, and we had a writeup on poststar.com well before that release was put out.

And let's think about these threats rationally when they occur. If someone was really going to go to the time to put together a plot to blow up multiple public buildings, do you think they are going to send emails out warning about them? I was told a long time ago by a wise former State Police senior investigator that the people to worry about are the ones we have no idea are out there.

-- Don Lehman
This collection of Cheryl Strayed's advice columns from Dear Sugar was recommended with the highest praise. I was told it would be life-changing. I was completely uninspired.

At one point, a friend texted she wasn't feeling it either and I breathed a sigh of relief  it wasn't just me.

I actually really like advice columns. I don't know what it is, but I enjoy catching up on Dear Abby after being away; it amuses me greatly. So I was intrigued by "Tiny Beautiful Things."

I picked it up when Ann Patchett, author and owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, recommended it over her own collection of essays. She's the one who called it life-changing. When an author says to read something over her own book, you do it.

Part of what I didn't like might have been the volume of relationship columns  I just don't care about your relationship drama  but I also didn't like Strayed's tone. Some of the "sweet peas" feel insincere.

I liked that she shared her own stories to relate to what the person was asking. It was more personal than Dear Abby often is, and definitely longer answers. But something in the tone just falls flat.
GLENS FALLS  Its not every day people say nice things about police officers and other emergency responders.

Thursday was one of those days.

Its always great to hear good things about any of your officers, and Jim is our senior patrolman. He has been serving the people of this city for 20 years, city Police Chief James Lydon said of Officer James Fiorini, who was among those honored at City Hall on Thursday by American Legion Post 233 with its fifth annual awards.

We have some really good officers, and its good to see them recognized, Lydon said.

Along with Fiorini, firefighter John David and Glens Falls EMT Thomas Ordway, who recently volunteered to do medical work in Iraq for several weeks, were also honored by Robert Borngesser, commander of the local American Legion post.

We want to give you a hearty thank you from all of us who serve, he said. We know we can safely ask you for your help or even tell you when we see something that might mean trouble. The next time we pass any of you, we will be sure to thank you for your service.

Fire Chief James Schrammel also said he appreciates what the Legion does to thank public servants.

All of our folks work really hard, and it is nice to see them recognized like this, he said. They all deserve the recognition.

The American Legion also recognized several local Eagle Scouts, including Benjamin Geisler, who attended the program, and Michael Smith, Robert Boyle and Matthew Murphy. All but Smith are in Troop 16. Smith is in Troop 4.

The awards were presented by Warren County Undersheriff Shawn Lamouree.
GREENWICH  One local man thinks too many cell towers are popping up around town.

Paul Schneible brought his concerns to the Town Board on Tuesday and got some support from other residents at the meeting.

Theyre getting all over. Its becoming a very big concern for me and my community, he said, citing a specific tower on Bald Mountain. I have to look down at the top of that thing every day. Thats low level waves  microwaves  it cant be good.

Bill Tomkins, chairman of the town Planning Board, said all cell towers in the town are in accordance with town ordinances. A few of the towers in town are temporary towers or cells of wheels and dont need the same approval that a permanent structure would need, he said.

Resident Lorraine Merghart Ballard questioned how long a tower can be considered temporary.

How long can a tower stay on wheels? she asked.

Tomkins said that in theory, a tower could stay temporary as long as it remains on wheels.

At this point, we have to deal with what the ordinance actually says, Tomkins said.

That answer did little to please Schneible, who said he has run into similar tower-related problems in Argyle, where his son lives.

I dont want to see that in Greenwich, he said. Greenwich, right now, its a little distressing.

Schneible said he was particularly frustrated by the cell towers, because of a previous interaction he had with the town. Officials asked him to take down a sign at the end of this driveway, while allowing cell towers to go up, he said.

They asked me to take that down in a hurry, he said.

Tomkins told Schneible if he was concerned about the cell towers in town, he should come to the next Planning Board meeting on May 18.
FORT EDWARD  A former teachers aide arrested last year for having sex with an underage student pleaded guilty Thursday in Washington County Court to four felony rape charges.

Daniel G. Stoy, 38, pleaded guilty to four counts of third-degree rape for having sex with the 16-year-old girl he met through his school duties at Southern Adirondack Education Center in Kingsbury. The sexual encounters happened at his home in Hudson Falls.

Washington County District Attorney Tony Jordan said his office had offered a plea agreement that included a four-year prison sentence to be followed by 10 years on parole. Stoy would have pleaded guilty to a single charge of third-degree rape, a charge that is brought because the girl was too young to legally consent.

Stoy rejected that offer, and instead opted to plead guilty to all charges in hopes of convincing McKeighan to impose a lesser sentence. The move is a gamble, as the charges could bring up to 16 years in prison, and Jordan said there was no sentence cap offered when he entered his guilty pleas.

Jordan said his office will recommend that Washington County Judge Kelly McKeighan send Stoy to prison.

We plan to ask Judge McKeighan to impose a state prison sentence, Jordan said.

Stoy was hired at the school to help with a criminal justice class after a career in the U.S. Marines that included combat stints in the Middle East. He was arrested by Hudson Falls Police last October, after a friend of the girls learned of the relationship and told a school employee.

Military media reports and prior Post-Star reports show Stoy received three Purple Hearts for injuries he suffered serving as a gunner in Iraq, while seeing extensive combat in Fallujah. He also received a community involvement award while stationed in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2011, before he retired after a 17-year career in the military.

There are a lot of factors that will come into play at sentencing, Jordan said.

His lawyer, Washington County Public Defender Michael Mercure, acknowledged his client had pleaded guilty, but had no further comment Friday, pending sentencing.

Stoy is out of jail on house arrest, pending sentencing by McKeighan on June 30.

The states age of consent for sexual relations is 17.
Authorities said Friday that a Queensbury bank was targeted by a group of thieves who are using technology to steal bank account information, but that security changes allowed the bank to discover the attempted fraud before anyone was victimized.

State Police released a photo Thursday of a person they believe installed a skimmer on a bank automated teller machine at as many as three local bank branches.

In a press release, the agency referred to two banks in Glens Falls and one in Saratoga Springs that were targeted.

Glens Falls Police had publicized that someone had put a skimmer on the Glen Street branch of Glens Falls National in January and February, leading to the theft of dozens of account numbers that were used to create fake cards and withdraw thousands of dollars from accounts.

The electronic skimmer was placed over the banks keypad, and the skimmer takes data from the magnetic stripe of the card, while a camera the thieves put in place catches the personal identification.

Glens Falls Police said Friday that the Glen Street bank branch was the only one targeted in Glens Falls.

The other Glens Falls-area bank was actually in the town of Queensbury, where another Glens Falls National Bank branch was targeted in recent weeks. But the company has made security changes and quickly learned of the tampering, removing the device before anyone had used it, officials said. The Saratoga Springs bank that was involved was a Saratoga National branch.

Blake Jones, a spokeswoman for Glens Falls National, said the bank has been working with police to identify the thieves, and its increased security helped foil two other theft attempts.

Thanks to enhanced surveillance and security, we successfully thwarted two skimming attempts in recent months. We previously notified customers and law enforcement of those failed attempts, which did not result in losses, she said.

The group involved is not believed to be local. The fake bank cards created during the January and February incidents were used in Poughkeepsie, Albany and Schenectady, with 119 customers defrauded in all.

Glens Falls National Bank quickly reimbursed its customers who had money taken.

Anyone with information in the case was asked to call State Police Financial Crimes Unit at 786-2192.

Use of skimmers on ATMs has been a problem in more urban areas for years, but the recent local cases are the first widespread discovery of their use in our area.
The bulk of the prosecution in the Alexander West case was done by Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan and her longtime first assistant district attorney, Jason Carusone.

Although Hogan said her entire staff helped out with the case, two people in particular were invaluable during the trial.

Assistant District Attorney Ben Smith handled the technological aspects, using a laptop to seamlessly put videos, pictures and screenshots of documents on a big screen for the jury to see.

Paulette Hayes served as an air traffic controller, shuttling witnesses in and out of court, no small effort when some days of testimony saw as many as 10 prosecution witnesses.

It really was a team effort, Hogan said.

 Don Lehman

More on scholarships

A representative from Gov. Andrew Cuomos office will be at SUNY Adirondack on Tuesday for a forum on the Excelsior Scholarship program.

State Labor Commissioner Roberta Reardon will host a session at 4:30 p.m. in the third-floor Bishop Conference Room of the Scoville Learning Center. The scholarship covers tuition costs not covered by the Tuition Assistance Program and other grants at New Yorks public colleges. Families making $100,000 or less are eligible this fall. That will increase to $110,000 in 2018 and $125,000 in 2019.

Students must complete 30 credits per year. They must have lived in New York state for 12 continuous months to qualify, and they must agree to remain in New York after graduation for as many years as they took the scholarship.

 Michael Goot

Water parley

The new administration in South Glens Falls is trying to mend fences with the town of Moreau.

The village proposed a high price for water in the last contract for emergency water services. In return, town officials set a high price for their water.

Now, new Mayor Harry Gutheil is pursuing a plan to actually buy water from the town for a few days each summer. So he came to a recent Town Board meeting to plead his case. At $3.25 per 1,000 gallons, he said, it would be cheaper for the village to buy an expensive air stripper to remove sulfur from a well and use that water.

He acknowledged the previous disagreement over water prices but said, I just dont think two wrongs make a right.

Supervisor Gardner Congdon proposed selling water to the village at about the rate it costs the town to get its water from Saratoga County and Queensbury. The two boards will discuss a new price for each others water.

 Kathleen Moore
AUSTIN, Texas (May 12, 2017)  The all-new 2018 LC 500h has been named the Performance Coupe of Texas by journalists of the Texas Auto Writers Association (TAWA) at the 2017 Auto Roundup. The event was held May 6-8 at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin.



We designed the LC 500h to offer dynamic performance with the styling and craftsmanship befitting a grand touring coupe," said Jeff Bracken, group vice president and general manager, Lexus. "The result is a flagship vehicle that combines a head-turning exterior, an elegant and luxurious interior, and an engaging driving experience. To win in Texas is a great honor for the LC 500h, and we are grateful to receive this award from such a respected group of auto writers.



Lexus 2018 LC flagship performance coupe ushers in a new chapter for the brand, blending stunning design, scintillating performance, long-distance comfort and premium craftsmanship to join an elite group of international grand touring coupes. The Lexus LC offers a choice no other premium coupe does: The LC 500, with a high-performance V8, or the LC 500h, with a new-generation Multi Stage Hybrid powertrain. In both, the focus is driving excitement, with the LC 500h offering higher fuel efficiency, associated with the worlds luxury hybrid leader.
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The order by Judge William Alsup late on Thursday was one of two major legal setbacks that Uber suffered, with Alsup also ruling that Google's self-driving-car spinout, Waymo, could take its claims against Uber to trial, denying Uber's bid to move the case into private arbitration.

Waymo sued Uber earlier this year, accusing Uber of stealing trade secrets and intellectual property it had developed related to lidar, the radar-like sensors that self-driving cars use to navigate.

The case, which has pitted two of Silicon Valley's largest tech companies against each other, could affect the future of the nascent self-driving-car industry, a market analysts believe could eventually be worth tens of billions of dollars and upend the automotive and transportation industries.

The dispute has already taken numerous surprising twists, including allegations of evidence being hidden from the court, theories about a shell company, and a high-profile engineer who has refused to testify and invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Google previously invested in Uber, back when the ride-hailing company was still a young startup and had not yet become the world's most valuable private tech company.

Uber declined to comment on the referral to the US attorney's office, but it decried the order denying its bid for arbitration.

"It is unfortunate that Waymo will be permitted to avoid abiding by the arbitration promise it requires its employees to make," an Uber representative told Business Insider. "We remain confident in our case and welcome the chance to talk about our independently developed technology in any forum."

Unwarranted accusations

An additional decision regarding a preliminary injunction to stop part of Uber's self-driving-car research is also expected shortly.

Alsup's denial is the first major decision in the case since the dispute between the companies kicked off in February when Waymo, the self-driving-car division that spun out of Google in December, accused Uber of stealing its trade secrets and intellectual property and of infringing on patents related to its lidar systems.

Since then, Uber's lawyers have argued that Google has made its arbitration agreement overly broad when it says they have to arbitrate disputes with anyone as it relates to an individual's employment. Much of Waymo's case is built on the actions taken by Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer accused of downloading 14,000 files from Google before leaving the company.

Uber argued that Waymo, now a separate spinout of Google, purposefully brought the case against Uber and not Levandowski to keep it in the public spotlight and avoid its obligation to his employment agreement. While any disputes between Waymo and Levandowski would have to be bound by the employment contract, Waymo did not sue Levandowski directly; rather, it sued Uber and the companies founded by Levandowski that were acquired by Uber, including Otto.

"Defendants have repeatedly accused Waymo of using 'artful' or 'tactical' pleading to evade its arbitration obligations by omitting Levandowski as a defendant. These accusations are unwarranted," Alsup wrote.

Obstructing the narrative

Instead, Alsup says Waymo followed the proper course of action.

"This was a desperate bid by Uber to avoid the courts jurisdiction," a Waymo representative said. "We welcome the court's decision today, and we look forward to holding Uber responsible in court for its misconduct.

Alsup also had a few words for Levandowski in his motion to deny arbitration, saying the sidelined head of Uber's self-driving-car division "continues to obstruct" after invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.
The letter  which DeepMind was expecting Sky News to publish on Friday  calls into question how DeepMind and the Royal Free handled NHS patient data, according to sources with knowledge of the letter.

The ICO has been looking into why the Royal Free gave DeepMind access to so much patient data for its kidney monitoring app, which is known as Streams.

The regulator tasked the National Data Guardian (NDG) with investigating the partnership between DeepMind and the Royal Free.

The NDG was unhappy with the way the Royal Free used patient data to test that Streams was working safely, in advance of deploying it in care.

It concluded that "pre-deployment safety testing does not count as direct care for patients, and that implied consent is therefore not a sufficient basis," according to a document seen by Business Insider.

The ICO is planning to make its official verdict on the DeepMind partnership with the NHS public in the coming weeks.
At a press conference in Accra on Thursday, the company revealed their plans to expand in Ghana to other cities apart from Accra.

READ ALSO: Uber smartphone apps provisionally banned in Italy

Speaking to a group of journalists at the event, Alon Lits, General Manager of Uber for Sub-Saharan Africa market revealed that the company was looking forward to open up operations in Kumasi by the end of the third quarter of 2017.

Accra is our fastest growing market among the three we launched in June 2016, Alon Lits explain on why the company was planning to move to Kumasi.

The intention is to grow upwards, and we want to grow quickly, Alon Lit stated. I can give you a commitment that we look forward to launching in Kumasi before the year ends.

Uber started operations in Accra in June 2016 alongside Dar Es Saleem, Kumpalar.

Kumasi is the second largest city in Ghana, with a population of 2 million, according to a 2013 estimate and is known as the second economic hub of Ghana apart from Accra.

At the conference, Alon Lits took journalists through Uber in Ghana, the business model, the technology behind the app and the influence on the transportation sector in Ghana.

Lits, however, maintained that Uber was not a transportation company as he explained the relationship between drivers and Uber. He was responding to a question posed on whether Uber paid all the relevant taxes in Ghana.

Earlier in the month, a coalition of taxi driver had complained that Uber was shortchanging the Government of Ghana by not paying all the taxes paid by regular taxis.

Lits explain that Uber pays all relevant taxes. We support regulation, we support regulation which maximises economic opportunity, he said.

We are an open technology platform...meaning that anyone can join the platform, he explained. We are rather making the industry bigger that it was before, Alon Lits said of the worries that Uber was crippling the taxi system in Ghana.

READ ALSO: Taxi unions in Ghana decry competition from Uber

He however explained that the only advantage Uber drivers are enjoying over regular taxis is being able to forfeit the money paid as ranking fee at taxi ranks. The technology of Uber has defeated the need to pay ranking fee.
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Rony AlwinKaty Perry and her fans -- KatyCats -- are mourning the passing of the self-proclaimed "Oldest KatyCat," Ralph Gierens, who died Wednesday at 69.



"An angel got his wings today, love you @OldestKatyCat and thank you for your laughs and your service #RIPKatyCatRalph," Katy tweeted on Thursday, even changing her twitter handle to "#RIPKatyCatRalph," as some fans had done.

KatyCats had taken to Twitter throughout the day Wednesday and Thursday to pay tribute to Gierens, with one fan posting a montage of photos of Gierens, and another posting a photo of Ralph with Ellie Goulding noting he was a fan of hers too.

According to an obituary on the website of the funeral home in Wheaton, Illinois where services are being held this weekend, Gierens was a Vietnam veteran and Purple Heart recipient who enjoyed "connecting on Twitter and going to concerts, and especially enjoyed Katy Perry."

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The labourer, named Azumah Yankah is said to have asked the deceased, Gamado for GH2 but the two had a misunderstanding which resulted in a fight between them.

The two were separated but Yankah entered a house close to the scene and brought out two machetes to attack Gamado but he was conquered and one of the machetes was taken from him.

But Yankah reportedly used the other machete to slash the left hand of Gamado which resulted in a deep wound on his arm, causing him to bleed profusely.

He was rushed to the 37 Military Hospital for treatment but was pronounced dead on arrival.

Prosecuting, Chief Inspector Victor Dosoo, told the court that residents attacked and assaulted Yankah following the incident. Police later found him lying unconscious with blood oozing from his nose and ears.

Chief Inspector Dosoo said Yankah was taken to the Police Hospital for treatment and was discharged on April 25, 2017.

He said the case is still under investigation.
In an interview with Accra-based Citi FM, he said there is no better candidate than former President Mahama.

He was certain that former President Mahama will lead the NDC to victory in 2020 if he is voted as Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC).

If NDC wants to win 2020, there is no better candidate than John Mahama. If we want to just try 2020, then we can afford to put forth a new candidate so if he doesnt win, he can be advertised for the future. But if we want 2020, what we need to do is to present him [John Mahama].

Victor Smith added that the party must resolve all its internal issues before election 2020.

He said the internal wrangling was the cause of the NDC defeat in election 2016.

READ ALSO: June 4th to be commemorated in Wa

Mahama did so well in delivering the deliverables in terms of development of our country. However in terms of our own party, there was the bickering, there was the anger in our party which cost us. If we want to win elections we should put John, but correct the mistakes. If we [the NDC] want to be the ones in the driving seat in 2020, our best bet is the one we put out there already. He [Mahama] did so well but there were some hiccups and that probably led to us losing the elections.

This is not the first time a party big-wig has made a call for a return of former President Mahama in election 2020.

The NDC Member of Parliament for North Tongu , Samuel Okudzeto, and the National Organiser for the NDC, Kofi Adams and many others have made a similar call.
According to her, it is great that there is a change of government because the country was then in a miserable state.

"I am happy there is a change...I am very happy...because you can't have a situation where we claim to be doing well, calling ourselves lower middle income group, and [live] in a miserable situation," she told Accra-based Joy FM.

"I went round the country and I saw poverty staring at me...the likes of poverty that I hadn't seen since 1982(3) and it gripped my heart and touched every part of my body that this has to change."

"...You leave Accra and the situation is miserable...no capital city in Africa have I seen this kind of filth like it is in Accra... Filth engulfing us. Ghana was not like that. What has brought us to this situation that we steal everything and we can't even clean our city," she lamented.

The 2016 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP) further called on Ghanaians who feel that the current government has underperformed since assuming power to be patient as the president has four years to deliver.

"A party has taken eight years to destroy us and you expect somebody to use 100 days to fix it?" she asked, adding that the president, Nana Akufo-Addo should be allowed to transform the country.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, Mrs Rawlings who broke away from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) to form her own party, labelled accusations on members of the NDC, calling them corrupt and undeserving to lead the country.
A prankster, who is reportedly a disgruntled customer, used a Gmail account to hold a brief exchange with Staley shortly after the bank's annual general meeting on Wednesday.

The trick was relatively crude. The emails even contained a poem that spelled out "whistle-blower" when looking at the first letters, a reference to the controversy over Staley's handling of a recent whistle-blower case at the bank. Staley still responded thinking he was talking to the chairman.

The emails were first reported by the Financial Times. Barclays declined to comment but provided confirmation to Business Insider that the email trail was accurate.

Staley and Barclays are the subjects of investigations by the UK's Financial Conduct Authority and by Prudential Regulation Authority over an incident in which the CEO tried to reveal the identity of a whistle-blower who wrote two anonymous letters about the conduct of a senior executive he hired. He apologised to shareholders again at Barclays' annual general meeting for the incident.

Staley received an email from someone he thought was Barclays' chairman, John McFarlane, at 8.47 p.m. BST (3.47 p.m. ET) on Wednesday, shortly after the meeting.

In fact, it was just a disgruntled customer using a Gmail address with the username john.mcfarlane.barclays. The person sent an email with the subject title: "The fool doth think he is wise."

The email prankster criticised an individual shareholder who called for Staley to resign. The imposter said the shareholder, Michael Mason-Mahon, was "as brusque as he is ill-informed" and said he and Staley would work together to make sure Staley was not forced out. The email ended: "Surely the fickleminded nature of the angry few will help tie up any loose ends. You owe me a large Scotch."

How do I thank you? You have a sense of what is right, and you have a sense of theatre.

Staley's response shows he thought he was talking to the real chairman. Here are the highlights:

"You are a unique man, Mr McFarlane.

"You came to my defense today with a courage not seen in many people. How do I thank you? You have a sense of what is right, and you have a sense of theatre. You mix humor with grit. Thank you John. Never underestimate my recognition of your support. And my respect for your guile."

"And some day I want to see an ad lib guitar run. You have all the fearlessness of Clapton."

The mention of "Clapton" was related to the legendary guitarist Eric Clapton and acknowledged McFarlane's penchant for playing the guitar in public meetings.

The final email in the brief exchange was sent at about 11 p.m. BST by the anonymous prankster. It included the following poem:

"Worry not of tomorrow's end

"Hurry not towards falling trees

"Ignore at once, the jesters dance

"Sigh, oh sigh, at the folly foiled

"Take down the mighty route of ills

"Lest not make a scratch in time

"Evenhanded wins fair stance.

"Broken wooden spoons we take

"Left, oh left, in such a state

"Over crests and furrowed field

"Wirey talons arching back

"Empty roosts the plagued aspise

"Revel in their bloodied eyes."
Justice Haddon-Cave ruled on Thursday that the anonymous billionaire should give the largest sum of its kind to his ex-wife because she was a "hands-on" mother and that she made an equal contribution to their marriage, which spanned over two decades.

The couple had two children together, who are now grown up, and the court heard how she brought up the two boys without the assistance of a nanny. She also cared for ex-husband's first child from his first marriage.

The amount comes from the court awarding her 41.5% of the "marital assets" worth just over 1 billion.
Johnny Depp's business managers alleged that he had spent over $75 million to "acquire, improve and furnish 14 residences," the lawsuit says.

His managers persuaded him to sell some of these properties to keep up with monthly bills that totaled $2 million. One of those monthly costs was upkeep for his 150-foot luxury yacht, "Amphitrite," which he reportedly spent $18 million on.

Source:

His managers claimed that Depp would not be able to afford the $350,000 monthly upkeep he had laid out for this yacht. Joel Mandel, his accountant, convinced Depp to sell the yacht, and it was reportedly bought by JK Rowling in 2016.

But JK Rowling reportedly put the yacht up for sale just eight months after she bought it. It's currently listed for $19.3 million.

A promotional video gives a look inside.

Some of Depp's other extravagant purchases have still not been sold. He owns a 37-acre village in the south of France, which is currently listed with Christie's.

The property is located outside the exclusive seaside town of Saint-Tropez.

Though the listing says that the current price is available upon request, it has previously been listed for $25 million. Depp has invested about $11 million into restoring its 18th-century buildings.

The estate includes the main house, six guest cottages (one of which is a converted chapel), and a restaurant. There are 15 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms in total.

It also has two pools and a painter's studio, which according to the listing, is a favorite room of Depp's.

Depp also owns a three-island property in the Bahamas, which he bought for $5.35 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Known as "Little Halls Pond Cay," it has six different beaches.

But his most extravagant purchase could be his five penthouses, which are all in the same building in Downtown Los Angeles.

The penthouses are in the landmark Art Deco-style Eastern Columbia Building.

Depp purchased the units for around $7.2 million between 2007 and 2008.

Originally, they were listed together for $12.78 million, but they're now being sold separately. Two were bought last fall for $3 million and $2.5 million.

The remaining three are on the market for between $1.8 and $2.5 million.

And then there are the five houses that Depp still owns on a cul-de-sac in the Hollywood Hills, which are collectively worth $19 million, according to the Hollywood Reporter. According to US Weekly, Depp had considered building a tunnel between the homes.
24-year-old Luckey was sidelined at Facebook last year after it was revealed that he had secretly funded a Conservative group whose aim was to create viral, anti-Hillary Clinton memes. The revelation created turmoil within the Oculus group at Facebook and led to multiple female employees resigning, people familiar with the matter told Business Insider.

In a recent interview with Japanese site MoguraVR that was translated on Road to VR, Luckey shared his thoughts on the future of virtual reality and why he could never cosplay while working at Facebook.

"At the moment I am an unemployed engineer, when I worked at Facebook I was just a business person," he told MoguraVR. "The Oculus offices were on the Facebook campus. It certainly was a great working environment. But I had to restrain myself working there. I could not cosplay while working at Facebook."

He certainly has no problem cosplaying now:

Luckey also predicted that it will take at least 10 years before mobile VR headsets will be better than high-end setups like the Oculus Rift, which requires a standalone PC and costs hundreds of dollars.

He said that "integrated" headsets that combine the power of PCs with mobile portability will be "the mainstream of the VR market in the next few years," rather than headsets that require a smartphone, like the Samsung Gear VR. Facebook's Oculus has said that it's working on such an integrated headset, but hasn't said when it will be available.

Ultimately, Luckey appears to be enjoying life as a free agent. He was recently photographed at an anime convention in Japan, and he has hinted at working on future investments in the VR industry.

"I am glad Im not currently employed," he told MoguraVR. "The good thing about independence is that you can stay yourself both at home and when outside."
Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected! Welcome to the Pulse Community! We will now be sending you a daily newsletter on news, entertainment and more. Also join us across all of our other channels - we love to be connected!
The Anniversary committee revealed that the celebration would be flagged off with the National and Historic Exhibition, an 'AA' top level exhibition with the theme: Nigeria through the Times ... at the entrance foyer of Abuja International Conference Centre on May 16, 2017 from 3.00pm till 6.00pm and at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs (NIIA), Victoria Island, Lagos from June 1 to June 6, 2017.

The Exhibition, according to the release, is aimed at bringing back to our memories, the vision and struggles of our founding fathers who laboured vigorously for the Nigerian independence as exclusively documented by the Daily Times and retained in its very rich archives.

The Times Heroes Awards 2017, which comes as icing on the anniversary cake, will climax the celebration and will hold at the Abuja International Conference Centre, Conference Hall from 6.30pm on May 16, 2017. The keynote speaker is H.E. AsiwajuTinubu. The Awards are instituted to honour deserving heroes who have distinguished themselves in various endeavours and whose activities have positively impacted lives, a legacy the Times Nigeria has canvassed over the years

Heroes to be honoured this year include, President Muhammadu Buhari, who is being given Nnamdi Azikiwe Leadership Award, President Nana Akufo-Ado of Ghana with The Babatunde Jose Leadership Award, the immediate past President of Nigeria, President Goodluck Jonathan to be honoured with Ernest Ikoli Leadership Award, and the Nigeria Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki, to be awarded with the Politician of the Year Award.

One of the governors who will be honoured with the Good Governance award is Abia State Governor, Dr. Okezie Ikpeazu. Seven other governors  Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode (Lagos); Ibrahim Dankwabo (Gombe); Bindo Jubrilla (Adamawa); Nyesom Wike (Rivers); Willie Obiano (Anambra); Yahaya Bello (Kogi); and Atiku Bagudu (Kebbi), are also billed to receive the Good Governance award during the event. Governor Dankwabo is being honoured with Governor of the Decade.

Business icon, Mr. Tony Elumelu, Chairman, Heirs Holding and UBA, will be crowned with Man of the Decade Award; Mrs. Ibukun Awosika, Chairman, First Bank Plc, will be awarded Woman of the Decade while Pastor Paul Adefarasin, will bag the Life Impact Award. Others to be honoured include Pinnacle Communications Limited and Nigerian Media icons such as Nduka Obaigbena, John Momoh, Linda Ikeji and Chris Ubosi.

This year's Awards, the anniversary planning committee noted, is a consolidated award in that the last award by the Daily Times was in 1996 when the Daily Times marked her 70th anniversary. Henceforth, the Times Heroes Awards has now been instituted to be an annual award.

Notable icons of the Daily Times are Sir Adeyemo Alakija, Ernest Ikoli and Alhaji Babatunde Jose. Others are Dr. Patrick Dele Cole, Chief Henry Odukomaiya, and Chief Segun Osoba. They also include, Mr. Sam Amuka, Mr. Tony Momoh and Chief Onyema Ugochukwu. Other Icons of Daily Times are Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi, Chief Innocent Oparadike (late), Araba Tola Adeniyi, Tunji Oseni, Onukaba Adinoyi- ojoi and others.
Fani-Kayode or FFK as he is popularly called, has been having a running battle with the APC and its leaders and makes sure he attacks anything they do, either good or bad and this time, he picked on the 60-year-old acting President after he made the comment about President Buhari who is 74-years-old, just 14 years older.

FFK who was the first ever Special Assistant on Public Affairs to President Olusegun Obasanjo when he came into power in 1999, was reacting to the comments Prof. Osinbajo made when he paid a courtesy call to the Emir of Katsina, His Royal Highness, Alhaji Abdulmumin Usman, on Thursday, May 2017.

During the visit, Prof. Osinbajo had said:

I feel very much at home in Katsina. Moreso, because this is the state of the President who has taken me as a brother; in fact, the President has taken me as a son in the way he treats me.

I pray the Lord will preserve our President to continue to lead, as the nation has voted him to do. He seriously believes in Nigeria unity.

But in a swift reaction, FFK, who was also made Minister of Culture and Tourism by Obasanjo took to his Twitter account to pick holes in the statement, saying it is very disappointing that the acting President made such a statement.

The President treats me like his son and his brother - VP. A 60-year-old man can say this? We are in trouble, he tweeted.
Navy Commodore Maurice Eno, who handed over the substance to the Agency, said that the suspects abandoned their two fibre boats on sighting naval men at Igbooja Village near Badagry.

The substance was packaged in 77 big bags and 23 medium bags, weighing about 4226.6kg with an estimated street value of over N40 million."

The seizure was sequel to a tip-off about some criminal elements indulging in transportation of cannabis and other illicit substances within the area through the waterways."

The suspected traffickers absconded before the navy patrol team got to the scene of the crime, as such no person was arrested, said Eno, the Commander, Nigerian Navy Ship (NNS) BEECROFT.

Eno said the navy was committed to assisting the NDLEA in dealing with trafficking of illicit substance in its efforts to rid the waterways of all forms illegalities.
He also said poor attitude to work by health personnel, endemic corruption and fraud had also rendered service delivery in the sector ineffective.

Lambo spoke on Thursday, May 11, at a symposium entitled, Health of the Nation: The Imperative of Inter-Professional Collaboration.

The symposium which held at the University of Lagos was organised by the Nigerian Academy of Pharmacy (NAPharm) in partnership with Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria (PSN).

Nigerias health system, according to a World Health Organisation report, is very weak; the country is 187 of the 191 countries in the world rated for poor health system.

Unending rivalry which I call `beauty contest among health professionals instead of engaging in inter-professional collaboration is affecting the nations healthcare.

Poor health workers attitude and incessant strikes with patients paying the price are serious challenges confronting the sector, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quotes Lambo as saying.

Lambo, who called the shots in the ministry under the administration of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo, however, called on health workers and professionals as well as their associations and unions to embrace inter-professional collaboration as a new culture to move the sector forward.

The road to the new concept is a long one, but it is achievable. There is need for inter-professional education as well as knowledge and appreciation of the roles of other health professionals.

Professionals do not trust themselves and there is superiority being lorded over one another.

Throughout my tenure as minister, I worked towards putting an end to the rivalry that I call `beauty contest among the professionals  doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technologists etc.

There is an urgent need for change-management process and collaboration as a better strategy, said the ex-health minister.

Lambo stressed: No one profession can deal with the complex demands of a patient, hence the need for coordination and collaboration.

Collaboration will improve the care of patients and service delivery in the country.

He lamented the neglect of the achievements of the late Prof. Olikoye Ransom-Kuti, who according to him, gave the country one of the best health policies by defining the roles and responsibilities of the three tiers of government  primary (healthcare centres for local governments), secondary (hospitals for states) and tertiary (teaching hospitals for federal).

Lambo said that primary healthcare was the weakest as malaria and other cases that could be treated at PHC level were being taken to the hospitals daily.

Primary healthcare delivery system is not working and it is the weakest. There is overcrowding in the hospitals for PHC cases like malaria.

In a message to the occasion, Health Minister, Prof. Isaac Adewole, said the success of inter-professional collaboration depended on the working together of the various professionals.

Collaboration is not without its challenges; it should be included in undergraduate curriculum for professionals to imbibe it, said the minister, who was represented by Mrs Gloria Chukwuma.

He pledged the support of the government to the actualisation of the concept in the overall interest of the nations health.

In his remarks, the President of NAPharm, Prince Julius Adelusi-Adeluyi, said the unhealthy rivalry among health professionals dated back to 1961, regretting that the nation had been unable to resolve the crisis.

He called for a new spirit of team work by all professionals in health facilities.

Let us stop celebrating our differences, team work can stop a whole unstoppable forces; else, the distractions will continue, said Adelusi-Adeluyi, who served as Health Minister under the short-lived Interim National Government of Chief Enest Sonekan in 1993.

He called for the setting up of inter-profession committee at the highest level of authorities to address the problem.

A former President, Nigerian Academy of Engineering, Mr Vincent Maduka, said Nigerians travelling abroad for medical treatment were only criticising the nations healthcare system.

Nurses, doctors, pharmacists etc should be well paid to adequately take care of the patients health and the health of the nation.
He said that of the 240 residents treated for various illnesses,about 150 were treated for malaria.

The president noted that residents of the community dumped all kinds of waste not minding the dangers, stressing the need for immediate evacuation of the refuse.

I am not happy seeing the heaps of refuse close to the healthcare centre; if the clinic environment smells because of the waste around, how can the workers deliver good health service.

Two weeks ago, we treated more than 240 residents free of charge in the area and about 150 of them were treated for malaria and this could be caused by the waste dump in the area.

The president decried poor sanitary condition of the area, accusing AMAC of negligence.

As it is now, the waste collection point has become a problem; there are about six refuse dumps in the area, and this gives room for residents to dump refuse indiscriminately in the area, he said.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), the District Head of the area, Mr Yaolo Ishaku, also urged AMAC to take immediate action, to avoid health hazards in the area.

Ishaku said the waste had accumulated to a point where it has become a burden to the community.

I have written to the area council; they came and took pictures of the refuse, but nothing has been down; the waste is close to the hospital and it will make people fall sick.

I am begging them to help us, so that there will not be an outbreak of diseases.

For a long time, the waste in the community has not been collected and this is affecting us.

There are so many mosquitoes because of the stagnant water, the district head added.
According to Channels TV, a bullion van belonging to the Central Bank of Nigeria rammed into Amosun's convoy.

The report said the incident occurred around Ibafo on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway.

It was gathered that the governor's convoy swerved off the road when the CBN van attempted to overtake it.

The van in the process crashed into Amosun's escort vehicle.

ALSO READ: NUT begs Amosun to reinstate dismissed teachers

The Governor was said to be unhurt.
Presiding judge, Justice Abubakar Talba, on Friday, May 12, granted Mohammed bail in the sum of N500m with two sureties in like sum.

The judge said further that one of the sureties must be a Senator, while the other must be a director in the Federal Civil Service.

Both sureties must have landed property in the FCT and show evidence of tax payment in the last three years.

Mohammed has been charged with six counts of fraud by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).

He was remanded at the Kuje Prison on Wednesday, May 10, by Justice Talba pending the bail application.

He is alleged to have laundered the sum of N550 million, while in office as minister.

ALSO READ: Ex-FCT minister sues EFCC for N100m

Bala's son, Shamsudeen is also facing corruption charges after the EFCC accused him of laundering N1.2 billion.
A journalist, Ahmad Salkida, who had previously obtained insider information from the terrorists' camp, disclosed this on Twitter.

He said the video also featured Shuaibu Moni, one of the swapped Boko Haram commanders, threatening the Nigerian authorities and President Muhammadu Buhari.

According to the journalist, Moni said that more than five Boko Haram commanders were exchanged for the 82 freed Chibok girls.

ALSO READ: Shekau threatens world leaders in new video

He noted that a bomb attack on Abuja is imminent.

Moni was also quoted to have denied that the sect is in dialogue with the Federal Government.
The monarch also called on every citizen of Nigeria to pray for the recovery of the President.

The Alaafin also cautioned those mocking Buhari over his health challenge, saying it is not proper to mock the sick.

According to Vanguard, he said I have been following with great interest though mixed feeling comments that have been generated on both social and conventional media on the state of health of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, General Muhammadu Buhari.

Let me state very clearly and unambiguously that in African culture, it is not proper to speculate the death of the sick. In Yoruba culture in particular, it is an abomination not only to speculate but to wish a fellow mortal dead. Neither is it proper to mock the sick because only God determines the future of everybody.

In the custom belief and tradition of the Yoruba, death is not age determined. That is why in Yoruba tradition, we always pray for the recovery of the sick, no matter his age.

In the particular case of President Buhari; although like any mortal, he may be physically sick, that sickness is not in any way transferred to the style and level of governance in the country.

In other words, the President might have been delegating some responsibilities to the Vice President; he is still much in charge of the government.

That is why recent insinuations and interpretations including some political hypothesis on the state of the Presidents health is not only uncalled for but unwarranted.
Aremu, who made the statement while addressing press conference on Friday in Kaduna, said the freed girls are not just girls or mere statistics, but future workers and mothers.

IndustriALL global union identifies with the struggle for the release of the abducted Chibok school girls."

We condemn in strong terms, the silly doubt expressed by some of our political leaders about the abducted girls."

This has increasingly devalued the notion of statesmanship of some of our leaders that trivialises every serious issue, he said.

Aremu said that the girls, who he described as daughters of many of us since 2014 would have graduated from secondary school and even moved to universities.

We should not turn the tragedy of parents of the Chibok girls to cheap political fortune."

Let there be no political capital out of the agonies of the girls and their parents."

We commend President Muhammadu Buhari for the release of additional 82 of the abducted Chibok school girls, Aremu said.

The labour leader said that Buhari had recorded security feat by securing the release of more abducted Chibok girls.

However the release of the abducted girls who returned as unwilling mothers after 3 years of captivity cannot be Nigerias anniversary gift."

In the first place, the school girls and many others held in captive ought not to have been kidnapped."
According to Daily Post, AlHassan said various tests carried out on the girls have shown that they need to be operated upon.

She said The 82 Chibok girls are currently undergoing medical screening in Abuja.

Some of them need surgery; this should be completed in two to three weeks.

The Federal Government had earlier donated drugs and other personal items for the upkeep of the girls.

According to reports, the Chibok girls will soon be re-united with their families soon.
She disclosed this on Thursday, May 11, while speaking to journalists in Abuja.

Negotiations are ongoing to exchange the remaining girls with Boko Haram detainees. We cant afford to keep them any longer, she said according to The Nation.

Most of them were having nightmares some days after they were released. We need to keep them away from the media for some time to avoid some questions that they might be asking them, we are not keeping or hiding them.

We are not shielding the girls from their parents. The parents of the recently released 82 girls have already been contacted and they will be in Abuja any moment from now. Most of them live in villages very far from Chibok, so it will take some time before they can get to Abuja," she added.

Alhassan also revealed that the 21 girls who were released by Boko Haram in October 2016 will return to school in September 2017.
The girls were part of the 276 abducted by Boko Haram insurgents from their school dormitory in April of 2014.

Al Jazeera notes that "the release is the biggest since" the night of the abduction.

113 remain in Boko Haram custody.

However, notes Al Jazeera, "the ordeal is not over for the freed girls and their families".

There have been complaints from some members of the families of the first batch of 21 schoolgirls who were set free from Boko Haram clutches in October of 2016.

ALSO READ: How Buhari secured release of 82 from Boko Haram

Peter Joseph, an Uncle of one of the freed girls, told Al Jazeera's The Stream, that the federal government hasn't made it any easy for the affected families.

According to Joseph, more than six months later, his niece, Sarah, is still in a government rehabilitation camp where the girls rarely see their families.

We were very happy to learn of the news that she was released, he told The Stream. But we are not very much impressed with the way the government is handling the whole rehabilitation process.

Since her release, hes only seen his niece once, when he traveled to Chibok last December, says Joseph.

Even then, he says, there were set time limits on visits, and many topics  like her experience as a prisoner - were off limits.

Joseph disclosed that he calls her often, but says she is only allowed to talk for two-three minutes before being cut off.

He says his niece has told him that only females can sneak in to see them sometimes but males are not allowed into the compound.

Nobody is allowed to see them, he says. So its like another imprisonment, but this one has to do with the government.

Peters sister, Elizabeth, is still being held by Boko Haram.

The federal government has said the girls will need to be de-radicalised, undergo medical examination and receive psycho-social support from trained experts before they'll be allowed to reunite with their families.

Minister for women affairs, Aisha Alhassan, has also said parents of the freed girls are free to phone-in or pay their daughters visits in Abuja, the country's capital.
Osinbajo, during his visit to Katsina state on Thursday, May 11, 2017, said "In fact, the president has taken me as a son in the way he treats me.

"I feel very much at home in Katsina. Moreso because this is the state of the president who has taken me as a brother.

"The amount of responsibilities President Buhari has given me shows he seriously believes we can live together as brothers.

"I pray the Lord will preserve our president to continue to lead as the nation has voted him to do. He seriously believes in Nigerian unity, he added.

In his response, Fani-Kayode posted a tweet mocking the Acting President.
Mr Haruna Furo, Executive Secretary, Adamawa State Emergency Management Agency, made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Friday.

He confirmed that about 1,000 IDPs, who indicated interest to be relocated from the NYSC Orientation Camp, would be merged with IDPs at Malkohi Camp.

Furo said that the decision would enable the state government to reopen the NYSC camp which was turned to an IDP camp in the last three years.

We have already concluded arrangements to commence relocation of interested IDPs from NYSC camp to Malkohi Camp, Furo said.

According to Furo, who is also the Permanent Secretary, Special Duties, the relocation will enable the IDPs, mostly farmers, to start farming again.
Oyegun, while speaking in Enugu state recently, told APC members that the party can work out the possibility of an Igbo presidency.

In his response, MASSOBs spokesman, Sunday Okereafor said the Igbos are not interested in the presidency of Nigeria.

Okereafor, who described Oyeguns comment as laughable, said the movement is not interested in any political partys ideology.

According to him, Nigeria has never supported the idea of an Igbo person ruling the country.

Okereafor also said The claim by the APC national chairman that the party will use Igbo Presidency to finally kill the PDP in the South-East is laughable. Nigeria has never had Igbo presidency in its agenda. So, Igbo man can never be President in Nigeria in 500 years.

ALSO READ:MASSOB declares May 22 Biafra Independence Day

The Igbo elite should understand this. MASSOB does not believe in any political party in Nigeria. We believe in the freedom of Biafra and not the campaign for the Presidency to come to a person from Igbo extraction.
The states Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr Steve Ayorinde, said this in a statement in Lagos on Friday.

He expressed the governments appreciation to the Organised Private Sector (OPS)and corporate sponsors operating in the state for their generous donations and support for making the golden jubilee anniversary a huge success.

According to the commissioner, Lagos state appreciates the sponsors gesture as a way of giving back to a state that has provided them with friendship and conducive environment for their businesses to thrive.

Ayorinde reiterated governments determination to continue to collaborate with the OPS and corporate organisations for the social and economic development of the state.

Lagos State is grateful for the kind support that the Lagos@50 celebration has enjoyed."

The governor is pleased and encouraged that corporate organisations in Lagos share his vision of using the golden jubilee, not only to celebrate the undeniable progress in the state, but to also reflate the economy, Ayorinde said.

He said that various individuals, groups and companies in the state had benefitted from the sponsorship, he said.

As the state begins both the short-term and long-term plans for the next 50 years, Gov. Akinwunmi Ambode assures Lagosians of delivery of excellent services to the good people of the state, the commissioner said.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the last 50 days of the one year celebration started on April 8, 2017 with the symbolic appearance of the Three Wise Men in some parts of the state, offering prayers and gifts to citizens.

This was followed with a popular Musical Drama tagged Wakaa! The Musical.

Other programmes that have featured so far include FELA! The Broadway Musical concert; JAZZ meets Fashion; Lagos Loves The Cinema, held in the five division across the state; Lagos Laughs and Ibile Comedy competition.

The celebration of Social Clubs also took place on Friday.

NAN reports that in continuation of the celebration, Lagos Carnival/Parade of colours would hold on Saturday, in various centres across the state.

On May 18, the State Judiciary would hold a special session to celebrate the state at the Igbosere High Court Foyer, while the cultural heritage of the state will be on focus as the Eyo festival holds on May 20 at the Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos.

Other programmes include a special 50th anniversary Legislative Session at the Lagos State House of Assembly Complex.

On May 23, focus will be on the talents and ingenuity of pupils and students as the state hosts the Science, Arts and Crafts Exhibition by Junior and Senior Secondary Schools in the state.

A special State Executive Council Session to commemorate the golden jubilee anniversary of the state will hold on May 24 and finals of the Literary and Debating competition for all public schools will hold on May 25.

The anniversary Jumat will hold on May 26 at the Lagos State Secretariat Mosque.
Reports said the monarch inherited the money from his predecessor, Ado Bayero.

According to The Cable, the Assembly decided to probe Sanusi after a member representing Nasarawa constituency of the state, Ibrahim Gama moved a motion on urgent public importance.

Gama said some of the allegations against the monarch should not be ignored.

According to him, some of the allegations include spending funds without the approval of the State Governor, Umar Ganduje.

He also said attacking the policies of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration and sending his daughter to represent him without wearing full traditional regalia are part of what should be looked into

After the Speaker, Alhassan Rurum, put the motion to a voice vote, the house adopted it.
The monarch said the cause of the rising spate of insecurity in the country is as a result of poor moral values.

The Ooni of Ife said this while speaking at the National Security Summit, which held at the International Conference Centre, Abuja.

He said Nigeria needs to pay particular attention to investing in morals  very strong moral values. We should invest more in equity and the strength of our diversity.

If we should focus more on those critical issues in our dear country, all the security challenges we are having will not be this much.

We should ask ourselves these questions: Why are people grieved? Why are people frustrated? Why are they going out of the confines of the law to engage in some certain things? Are we all just and fair in our daily dealings across board as a country? Are we thinking about why the other parties are grieved?

We should know that our diversity is our greatest strength.

These are critical issues that we should all look at in this country. If we focus more on all these fundamental issues, we will not have all the issues we are having right now.

Security matters are very sensitive. We all know that but how are we investing and impacting moral values, even in our domestic homes; in our children; in our domestic workers; in our place of work; in each and every one we have dealings with.

How well are we impacting moral, because whatever position you are at some point you will leave? How well are you selfless in your approach?

All these bits and pieces always add up to the entire reasoning, ways and manner that the society will be formed. Over all, how a country will be developed.

Look at our country, over 70% are the youths. If you look at the category of criminality in this country, you will rarely find anybody above 70 years old. They are within the age of 18 and about 45 and 50.

Why are they engaging in all these nefarious activities? How well are we discharging our responsibilities very well? How well are we giving back to the society? We should ask ourselves all these questions so that these problems will not keep piling up one after the other.

Security issues across this country depend on you and I.
According to Daily Post, the NEF also called on Osinbajo to ignore mischief makers who are trying to bring confusion between him and the President.

The group said The Forum expresses its full support and encouragement behind Acting President Osinbajo and urges him to exercise responsibility, as he did in the past, with commitment, sensitivity and respect for the Constitution.

We urge him to ignore mischief which seeks to pitch him against the President or the Nigerian people whose mandates they both exercise.

Adding that Buhari has confronted the issue that has been disturbing us by tackling the insurgency which had caused a lot of havoc in the region especially the three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa.

We expect that the war against corruption will not suffer a setback, and current investigations and activities will not be stalled due to the absence of President Buhari.

Like millions of Nigerians, the Northern Elders Forum prays for the return to full health of President Muhammadu Buhari.
The money is being used to build a 100-room hotel in Lagos, according to The Nation.

The EFCC is still investigating the N19billion allegedly diverted from the loan refund. The commission has so far interrogated 15 companies, more than 10 individuals and over eight bureaux de change used to divert the cash, a source said.

The latest bend of the investigation is the discovery of $3million linked with another governor who benefited from the illegal deduction. The governor had engaged a member of the House of Representatives (who was also a former commissioner) to launder his share.

The lawmaker was said to have wired the $3million into his brothers account before moving it into his own. Upon interrogation, one of the suspects admitted that the cash was for the ongoing construction of a 100-room hotel for the governor.

About $500,000 of the $3million has been recovered by the EFCC. It is a scam in which many people benefited and a sizeable number of proxies used to launder the funds, the source added.

ALSO READ: 7 Govs reportedly under investigation by EFCC over alleged diversion of Paris Club loan refund
What better way to ease off the stress of the week than watch a good movie.

With that in mind, check out our list of movies currently showing in cinemas across Lagos and Abuja.

Starring: Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans

Synopsis: An adaptation of the Disney fairy tale about a monstrous-looking prince and a young woman who fall in love.

Friday - Thursday: 12:05pm

Daily: 1:25PM

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Astrid Berges-Frisbey, Jude Law

Synopsis: Robbed of his birthright, Arthur comes up the hard way in the back alleys of the city. But once he pulls the sword from the stone, he is forced to acknowledge his true legacy - whether he likes it or not.

Sunday: 12:10pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:10am, 1:30pm, 3:50pm, 6:15pm, 7:35pm

Daily: 1:50PM, 4:15PM, 7:40PM, 9:15PM

Fri & Sat:11:45 AM, 2:20 PM, 4:55 PM, 7:30 PM, 8:20 PM, 10:05 PM, 11:00 PM

Sun - Thu:11:45 AM, 2:20 PM, 4:55 PM, 7:30 PM, 8:20 PM, 10:05 PM

Starring: Richard Mofe Damijo, Toyin Aimakhu, Blossom Chukwujekwu

Synopsis: Chuks (aka Terminator) is an ardent player with the ladies. He enjoys the attention of women, including girlfriends from the past. He believes that once a man has had a woman, he forever has access to her. When challenged by his friends to see if he can prove the universality of that theory with three ex-girlfriends from his school days within 21 days, he accepts it.

Turning on his best charm he sets off to try and prove himself, but his quest brings him to three women, Ifeoma (Ify), Tomi and Ejiro, whose situations in life have changed drastically since school days. This challenge of their various new statuses makes his quest to win the bet more and more insurmountable as he tries to prove the immutability of the age-old law, OKAFOR'S Law.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 12:55pm

Friday -Thursday: 12:00PM, 2:10PM

Friday - Thursday: 10:25am, 5:00pm

Synopsis: Omotunde, A young civil engineer married to Raymond an OAP(Online Radio Personality), has just given birth.

Coloured by their different cultural backgrounds,their mothers-in-law forcefully move in with the couple to perform the Igbo child care rite called, Omugwo. But instead of relieving their children of the burden of childcare, the mothers rivalry complicates life for the couple to comical effects.

Daily: 12:30pm, 7:30pm

Friday -Thursday: 12:00PM, 5:45PM

Starring: Rita Dominic, Akin Lewis, Chidi Mokeme

Synopsis: It focuses on a couple Sharon (Rita Dominic) and Kobi (Chidi Mokeme), who in a bid to save their union, expose some of the truths surrounding struggles and independence in marriage.

Showing:

Daily: 11:20am

Starring: Vin Diesel, Jason Statham, Dwayne Johnson

Synopsis: When a mysterious woman seduces Dom into the world of terrorism and a betrayal of those closest to him, the crew face trials that will test them as never before.

Showing:

Daily: 1:10pm, 3:20pm, 5:00pm, 6:00pm, 7:10pm, 8:35pm

Daily: 11:00 AM, 1:45 PM, 4:30 PM, 7:15 PM, 9:05 PM, 10:00 PM

Daily: 12:30pm, 2:20pm, 5:05pm, 6:55pm 9:10pm

Friday -Thursday: 11:45AM, 2:20PM, 5:00PM, 6:40PM, 9:15PM

Starring: Ariel Winter, Michelle Rodriguez, Joe Manganiello

Synopsis: In this fully animated, all-new take on the Smurfs, a mysterious map sets Smurfette and her friends Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty on an exciting race through the Forbidden Forest leading to the discovery of the biggest secret in Smurf history.

Showing:

Daily: 12:45 PM

Starring: Olu Jacob, Desmond Elliot, Yvonne Jegede, Rachel Oniga

Synopsis: is a dramatic movie about an ambitious woman called Meg who left Nigeria in her teenage age to search for a better life in North America.

After years of hard work overseas Meg decided to visit home to see her family. She finds her word rocked when she connected with her old love and in the process Meg lost everything.

She has to fight for her life back. Unveil movie is about love, Obsession, passion and betrayer.

Friday - Thursday: 11:50AM, 3:45PM, 5:50PM, 6:30PM

Friday - Thursday: 3:05pm,7:35pm,9:25pm

Starring: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista

Synopsis: Set to the backdrop of Awesome Mixtape #2, 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2' continues the team's adventures as they unravel the mystery of Peter Quill's true parentage.

Showing:

Daily: 2:25pm, 5:30pm, 8:40pm

Daily: 1:30PM, 4:05PM, 6:40PM, 7:35PM

Daily: 10:30aM, 12:30PM, 2:25PM,9:20PM

Daily: 5:30 PM [3D]

Daily: 4:10 PM, 7:00 PM, 9:50 PM [2D]

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Michelle Monaghan, Dermot Mulroney

Synopsis: A cop with a connection to the criminal underworld scours a nightclub in search of his kidnapped son.

Showing:

Friday - Thursday: 5:05pm, 9:10pm

Friday - Thursday: 11:30PM, 3:55PM, 7:50PM

Fri & Mon - Thu:2:50 PM, 4:55 PM, 7:00 PM

Sat & Sun:4:55 PM, 7:00 PM

Daily: 3:45pm, 5:20pm

Starring: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler

Synopsis: A group of high-school students, who are infused with unique superpowers, harness their abilities in order to save the world.

Showing:
They were arraigned for their involvement in the sexual assault of two female students of another school, Falomo Senior High School.

Of the five boys, one of them is above 18 years and will be tried in a Juvenile Court. The rest will stand before a Juvenile court. If found guilty, the 18-year old might serve up to 14 years in prison.

Michale Mathew broke this news on Twitter about the boys going on sexual assault rampages on school girls. We spoke to residents around the school. One woman, who's lived there for over 15 years said:

"Every year, when these SS3 students write their final exams, we see them celebrating, and ripping their uniforms, amongst other things, but as for Ireti Grammar school, there was never a case before now of any form of trying to rape other students."

According to Michale Mathew, some of the boys were armed with scissors, cutting through the girls' uniforms.

Two of the culprits were identified simply as George and Abiodun.

The Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Fatai Owoseni, said this on Wednesday, May 10regarding the incident:

The police have interacted with the five suspects, one of the victims and the eyewitness. The incident raises questions of criminality and morality, which have been considered and examined by the stakeholders. An offence has been committed and the suspects will be taken to court to serve as a deterrent to others.

We are putting all our files together with the Ministry of Justice and appropriate charges will be taken to court not later than Thursday (today) with the suspects. Issues of the ages of the pupils also came to play.

Four of them will be taken to juvenile or family court, but one of them, who does not fall into the category of children, will be arraigned in an open court.

Also, it was learned the girls have been located and confessed to being assaulted. Also, evidence has shown that the boys not only wielded scissors, but knives.

A statement by the National Council of Child Rights Advocate Nigeria (NACCRAN), counselling and treatment will begin immediately for the girls.

Parts of the statement dated Thursday May 11 read:

"There was also eye witness account of how the boys wielded not just scissors but knives as well. Evidence was also gathered from the scene with torn uniforms in the area. The Commissioner of Police and the Deputy Governor are now working to ensure justice is served.

"Counselling and treatment has been arranged for the girls. We have also realised that there is a code of silence. The Police and the Ministry of Education will be working to break this code of silence.

"Following this, the boys have been arraigned before the court today.

"Thanks to everyone who signed this petition, the Commissioner of Police, the Deputy Governor and her crew and to Ms Michale Mathew, our hero. Victory is ours. We will continue to follow the case till justice is served."
All four Nigerian Mobile Network Operators will join senior executives from organisations such as Uber, Facebook, Ringier, BBM, AccessBank, TECNO, BellaNaija, TheGuardian, OLX, DressMeOutlet, Sliide, Stanbic, HERE, Battabox, TalentBase, Flutterwave, Jiji.ng and Intel.

The conference agenda is set to tackle key topic areas including an analysis of FinTech progress; a debate around success in e/mCommerce; an evaluation of mobile product management; the growing impact of mobile marketing and social media; showcases on education and social impact projects; panel discussions featuring the industrys young guns; the creation of content; as well as a one-off opportunity to listen to and learn from Kai Diekmann, who is one of the leading digital publishing experts on the planet.

ALSO READ: Finalists have been announced for the West Africa Mobile Awards

What I really enjoy about organising Mobile West Africa, aside from the awesome buzz in the room on the days of the conference, is that it brings together such a wide range of people  from the operators to the VAS companies to the startups. Its what makes the interaction, networking and outputs such high quality. Attendees are meeting peers who are passionate, knowledgeable decision makers, said Matthew Dawes, the organiser of the event which he founded it in 2011.

Mobile West Africa 2017 will take place at The Wheatbaker Hotel in Ikoyi on Wednesday, May 17 and Thursday, May 18. The conference delegation will be made up of 200 key stakeholders coming together to do business and facilitate the acceleration of industry progress.
Uber drivers in Lagos have been on strike since Monday, May 8. Taxify has not stopped trying to prove that that strike has somehow ensured Ubers defeat in the ride-hailing war, drivers on both platforms are acting bonkers all over Lagos and the consumers are going through a dilemma over which ride-hailing company to get behind.

So how did we get here? Well, it all started with a Taxify announcement on May 3, 2017, that it was reducing prices in Lagos, the only city where it operates in Nigeria.

The next day, on May 4, 2017, Uber Nigeria also announced a 40% cut in its fare prices for rides within Lagos. By Monday, May 8, Ubers announcement had already devolved into a strike with Uber drivers in Lagos staging a peaceful protest against the price reduction.

Since then the drivers have mobilized and tried to get more drivers to join the strike, had a meeting with Taxify (Ubers chief competitor right now) about dumping Uber entirely and Uber has released a statement to the effect that its all business as usual, strike or not.

Truth be told, the drivers have a point. Uber charges a 25% commission and when you takes away 40% of earnings, there is very little left, if any, for the drivers.

Ill break it down: Lets assume a driver makes N100k per week before the price reduction. N25k from that belongs to Uber, between N30k and N55k goes to the car owner (if the driver doesnt own the car), and the driver will spend roughly N20k  N30k on fuel and other expenses (dependent on the amount of rides he/she executes) which leaves the driver with next to nothing to show for the work. Nobody would like that.

But at the same time, Ubers reasoning is based on the law of supply and demand. The company definitely understands that the profit margins for the drivers will be reduced with the cut in fare prices (it cant say it doesnt), but it also expects demand to increase (because that is typically what happens  prices go down, demand goes up). This means that drivers will have more rides to complete and the sheer volume of rides would offset the lower profit margin  everyone wins.

The problem with this instance is that Uber failed to communicate this line of thought effectively to the drivers before implementing the fare reductions. A lot of them already used both Taxify and Uber concurrently anyways, so it was obvious that they werent getting as many rides as they would need to operate lucratively ergo demand just isnt enough, yet.

Also, a fare reduction wasnt entirely necessary  if it was put in place to counter Taxify in the first place. I say this because Uber couldve just done one of those promos it has been doing from time to time and worn out Taxify over a few weeks before going back to the status quo.

ALSO READ: Taxify has raised its prices again, less than a week after it reduced it

The strike is still ongoing because Uber and its drivers have refused to back down from their respective stances. Taxify seems to think this is an opportunity to deprive Uber of more market share and has been playing to the gallery to drive that point home, literally.

First, Taxify apparently leaked an App Annie screenshot showing that it was atop Uber in the iOSAppStore (in Nigeria) to a fairly popular tech blog. The blog ran the story (which was a bad idea) hailing Taxify as the new king of the ride-hailing apps.

Nigerian Twitter was not having it and Taxifys Twitter could only resort to some dry-boned attempts at humor and trolling to make it go away. It even got a nod of support from Hotels.ng founder and CEO Mark Essien. Ah, well.

Taxifys advantage over Uber has been its lower commission rates (it charges the driver just 15%), cheaper fare rates and less complex vetting and onboarding process. That made it attractive to a lot of riders and driver alike.

The problem with that approach is that it automatically made the service seem like a cheap, pirated version of Uber. The quality of cars are poorer, the drivers were incompetent and dangerous because Taxify does very little vetting (you should go on Twitter and see horror stories littered all over the place) and even the user experience wasnt anything to be excited about. I guess thats the best you can do when you are only charging 15% (or is it?).

Uber, on the other hand, has better cars, a more robust vetting system, a better app (and user experience) even with the same generally crappy drivers. Also, despite its many problems on the global front (Uber is still not profitable, it is under investigation by the US Department of Justice, about half a dozen execs have left this year alone, amongst other issues), Uber still has more than enough cash, technical expertise and pedigree to assert itself on the Nigerian market. In my opinion, Taxify [and the other ride-hailing services] need to sit down and be humble.

Unfortunately, Lagosians are the ones bearing the brunt of all this drama. People who are very reliant on these services now have to seek alternatives and the few drivers that are even available are being exceptional dickheads by being rude and ripping people off.

This case of an Uber driver beating up a passenger and this one where a Taxify driver calls a rider while shirtless on his bed and several other similar stories tell a tale of inefficiency and endangerment by both Uber and Taxify. Both services need to do better, the regulatory agencies relevant to the space they both play in need to get on their game, and users should protect themselves when using these services (Ladies, buy that pepper spray today).
And youll absolutely agree when you see Adrian and Roslyns pictures that have gotten us all emosh and stirred to tears.

Youll be even moved further when you hear the sensational story of how the pictures came about

So on April 30 2017, photographer James Day was taking wedding pictures for the couple who tied the knot in Bowral, Australia.

As usual, he was setting them up for some posed sunset photos when a better idea occurred to him.

With a Facebook post, James says, just as the light became amazing, I scrapped everything I knew and I walked up to them and said, Guys, stop posing. Just enjoy your first sunset together as husband and wife,

He then faces the Adrian and says to him, I have a question for you, but I want you to tell the answer to Roslyn and not me.

Out of the billions of people on the planet, youve chosen to spend the rest of your life with Roslyn. Can you tell her why?

By the time the groom whispered his response in the brides ear, tears just began streaming down her face.

Even without knowing what Adrian had told her, the photographer caught on raw emotion in that moment and snapped all of it, with tears on his own face, too.

It wasnt for me to hear, Day told HuffPost. I had him whisper it in her ear because its for her ears only.

This is what I love to photograph, he adds. Not the overly posed interactions.
Organised without the knowledge of the press, the event -- broadcast after it took place at the presidential palace -- signalled a dramatic end to the protest movement.

Ouattara said of the rebels that he "believed their words were sincere" and they would now be "exemplary soldiers".

A spokesman for the rebels, named as Sergeant Fofana said: "We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands."

He then, in a sign of allegiance, saluted the president, the images showed.

At the start of January, former rebels integrated into army ranks staged a mutiny that paralysed activity in several towns of the west African country while they pressed for bonuses.

In meeting the demands of the ex-rebels, who controlled the northern half of Africa's biggest cocoa producer between 2002 and 2011, the authorities provoked a fresh mutiny by other troops and paramilitary gendarmes.

Clashes claimed four lives in the political capital Yamoussoukro.

The mutineers, who demanded 12 million CFA francs (18,000 euros) in payments for each soldier, obtained 5 million francs (7,500 euros) in January and had been due to receive the rest of the sum this month, the rebels had told AFP.

The government had refused to give details of the negotiations.

Ouattara said Thursday the country was going through a "very, very difficult time" after a fall in the price of cocoa led to "a net loss of 150 billion francs CFA (230 million euros)" to the state budget.

The mutiny had "scared Ivorians, as well as those who want to invest in and visit the country," he said.

He also announced that the government had given up plans to build new schools, a health centre and cultural centres across the country, as well as the delay to 2018 of a key election promise -- bringing electricity to every village with more than 500 inhabitants.

Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel as well as purchases of materiel worth 1.2 billion euros.
Dana Shell Smith, who has been the American envoy to the Gulf emirate since 2014, took to Twitter in the hours after the dramatic sacking of FBI director James Comey by President Donald Trump.

"Increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home, knowing I will spend today explaining our democracy and institutions," Shell Smith tweeted, in apparent disapproval of the move.

It was a rare public show of exasperation with political events -- either in the US or Qatar -- by the envoy, who was appointed by Barack Obama.

The message was posted on May 9 and has been retweeted more than 2,000 times.

Qatar is a key US ally and home to Al-Udeid, the largest US airbase in the region, which houses around 10,000 troops.

Last month, US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis visited Doha and met Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani.

Trade between the two countries is also growing.

Last year, after Trump's election, it was announced that gas-rich Qatar's sovereign wealth fund wanted to invest $10 billion in US infrastructure projects.

There was some angry reaction to Shell Smith's tweet online, with calls for her to be sacked for her apparent criticism of the president.

In a new post on Thursday morning, Shell Smith appeared to try to take the sting out of her earlier message.
Capping a week in which Trump faced a slew of criticism for firing the man investigating his campaign's possible ties to Russia, Trump warned James Comey there could be retribution if he speaks to the press about their private conversations.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump said.

Furious with the news coverage of the White House's shifting explanations on Comey's sacking, Trump lashed out, suggesting the media was wrong to expect his spokespeople to be 100 percent accurate.

"As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!" he tweeted.

Trump then went on to suggest scrapping the traditional White House briefings that have existed in some form since the Woodrow Wilson administration almost a century ago.

"Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" Trump suggested.

Again, Trump brought the issue back to Russia, referencing a former head of intelligence's assertion that Trump was, to his knowledge, not colluding with Moscow.

"When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" Trump tweeted.

Trump's bareknuckle comments immediately fueled fresh comparisons between his administration and that of disgraced president Richard Nixon, who famously recorded his conversations -- a fact that sped his downfall during the Watergate scandal.

"Presidents are supposed to have stopped routinely taping visitors without their knowledge when Nixon's taping system was revealed in 1973," tweeted the presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

The White House initially asserted that Comey's dismissal had nothing to do with the Russian investigations, which continue to be an albatross around the neck of Trump's presidency.

Instead, they said, the president fired Comey on the advice of senior members of the Justice Department, who worried about his handling of a 2016 investigation into Trump's election rival Hillary Clinton.

Pledge of loyalty

But Trump shattered that explanation himself on Thursday when he said he had always intended to fire Comey and that his decision was linked to the ongoing investigation into his campaign's ties with Russia.

In an interview with NBC on Thursday, Trump also revealed that he had asked Comey on three occasions whether he was personally under investigation.

"I actually asked him, yes. I said, 'If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?' He said, 'You are not under investigation,'" Trump recounted, repeating an assertion made when the White House announced Comey's firing Tuesday.

"All I can tell you is, well I know what, I know that I'm not under investigation. Me. Personally. I'm not talking about campaigns. I'm not talking about anything else. I'm not under investigation."

The other two times Trump said he asked Comey whether he was under investigation were in telephone conversations.

Trump also revealed that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he fired Comey.

"When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story."

jpegMpeg4-1280x720That startling admission fanned suggestions that Trump may be interfering with the investigation and promoted Comey allies to refute Trump's account of events.

The New York Times reported that Trump pressed Comey for a pledge of loyalty over dinner only a week after his inauguration, according to an account by two associates of the lawman.

Comey, they said, declined to make such a pledge but told Trump he would always give him "honesty."

US presidents are normally at pains to avoid any suggestion of interference or even commenting on ongoing investigations.

The FBI typically does not confirm their existence.

Noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe told AFP that if Comey did indeed answer Trump's question, it would violate Department of Justice rules and "would be unthinkably unethical and unprofessional in this situation."

Trump also said that at the dinner, he and Comey discussed whether the US top cop would stay in his role and continue his 10-year term.
Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict since 2014, and Russia's annexation of Crimea has been a major point of contention between Washington and Moscow.

The tweeted photos fashion a grinning Trump as peacemaker, a day after the Republican leader gave Lavrov a rare Oval Office welcome and Ukraine's Klimkin met with Vice President Mike Pence.

A Trump-Klimkin meeting had not been on the US president's public agenda.

Trump tweeted the images after the White House had been left fuming when the Russian Embassy published photos of Trump's closed-door meeting with Lavrov, as well as the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak.

The Lavrov meeting came just hours after Trump fired his FBI director James Comey, the man responsible for investigating allegations of collusion between the Republican leader's team and Russia.

The embarrassment was compounded by the presence of Kislyak, who is at the center of a series of questions about contacts between Trump's inner circle and the Russian government.

Comey's shock dismissal ignited furor among Democrats, who suggested that the FBI's investigation into Trump's campaign and Russia could now be tainted, an idea the White House has rejected.
The German leader had welcomed Macron's resounding election win on Sunday, saying he "carries the hopes of millions of French people and also many in Germany and across Europe".

Merkel and her government had thrown their support behind the centrist Macron against far-right and anti-EU challenger Marine Le Pen during the election campaign.

She spoke by telephone with Macron just minutes after his victory and praised his commitment to the European Union. He is due to take office on Sunday.

The two will meet on Monday afternoon, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Friday, adding that further details would be released later.

A Macron aide noted that Merkel "was the first among foreign leaders to ring him, given the importance of the relations between our two countries in restarting the European project".

"There is a wish to work together on several priorities: security, economy and investments as well as (social) protection," said the aide.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Thursday underlined common ground with Macron in Germany and France's bid to bolster the EU, which has been buffeted by Britain's decision to quit the bloc.

Schaeuble said both he and Macron are in favour of creating a parliament for the 19-country eurozone.

"A eurozone parliament could be set up, made up of European parliamentarians, which would have consultative powers" for moving forward the European Stability Mechanism (ESM)," Schaeuble said.

The Luxembourg-based ESM, operational since October 2012, is a bailout fund for eurozone countries.

In a separate interview with Spiegel weekly, Schaeuble kept up Germany's pressure on France to reduce its budget deficit to the EU ceiling of three percent.

"France can make it," he said.
The main trigger for the confidence vote, held Wednesday, was a border demarcation deal with neighbouring Montenegro, the final condition for obtaining visa-free travel in the European Union.

The opposition strongly opposes the deal, claiming that it gives to Montenegro several thousand hectares of land that has traditionally been used by Kosovo's shepherds.

Kosovo's parliament has yet to ratify the deal, and the opposition has fiercely protested the plan, releasing tear gas in parliament on several occasions and organising street protests, some of which were marred by serious violence.

"The work the EU has started with Kosovo institutions should not stop because of upcoming elections," the bloc's representative in Pristina, Nataliya Apostolova, told local TV, urging the new parliament to approve the deal.

The crisis was also fuelled by an agreement reached with Serbia, its former enemy, in August 2015 that envisages political autonomy for the Serb minority in the Balkan territory.

The plan is also sharply contested by the opposition.

Thaci's PDK eventually joined with other opposition parties to push for a snap parliamentary election, which was originally scheduled for next year.

Western analysts say the move could reflect a bid by the PDK to boost its popular legitimacy while a new special tribunal at The Hague prepares to try former leaders of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) for alleged war crimes.

Thaci, a PDK founder and its longtime leader, is one of several former guerrillas cited as potential indictees.

The 1998-1999 conflict between ethnic Albanian rebels and Serbian forces was the last of the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia.

The war ended after a NATO bombing campaign against Serbia, which led to the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo.

Kosovo, with a mainly ethnic Albanian population of about 1.8 million, unilaterally declared independence from Serbia in 2008.
US District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco said Thursday that he expected to issue an order granting approval for the deal, which would apply to 2009-2016 3.0-liter diesel models including Porsche and Audi vehicles equipped with software designed to defeat emissions tests.

The settlement amount will cover buyback, repair and cancelled leases for the affected models, as well as $225 million for a fund to mitigate pollution.

The 3.0-liter settlement brings the total amount the company must pay in the dieselgate matter in North America to more than $22 billion.

In October, the court endorsed a record-setting $15 billion compensation deal that covered the approximately 480,000 2.0-liter Volkswagen diesel cars also equipped with software designed to defeat emissions tests.

In a separate criminal case, Volkswagen was ordered to pay a $2.8 billion fine over the emissions cheating last month.

The company said Thursday it welcomed Breyer's decision to approve the agreement.

"This marks an important milestone for Volkswagen and means that a resolution is available to all of our customers with eligible vehicles in the United States," it said in a statement.

The lead attorney for consumer plaintiffs, Elizabeth Cabraser, praised the deal for compensating consumers and keeping polluting vehicles off the road.
He stands accused of citing a hadith or koranic narrative on March 31 calling for Muslims to rise up against Jews.

"Judgement Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them," begins Abdallah's address in footage on YouTube, according to a transcript of the original Arabic provided by US organisation the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Dan Rosenberg Asmussen, the head of the Jewish community in Denmark, urged police to open an investigation into a possible case of incitement to racial hatred.

"We fear that weak and easily-influenced persons could interpret this kind of preaching as an appeal to visit acts of violence or terror on Jews," Asmussen told the Politiken daily.

Minister of immigration and integration, Inger Stojberg, described the imam's address as "horrible, anti-democratic and abominable".

Neither the imam nor the Jewish community responded to AFP requests for comment.

According to broadcaster DR, Omar al-Hussein, who was behind a series of shootings in Copenhagen in February 2015 which left two people dead, had visited the mosque the day before going on the rampage.

The Dane of Palestinian origin had sworn allegiance to Islamic State and shot and killed one person at a cultural centre hosting a conference on freedom of expression, before killing a Jewish man outside a synagogue. Police later shot him dead after he fired on them in a third incident.

Earlier this month Denmark published a list of six foreigners accused of preaching hatred -- five of them Muslim preachers and one Evangelical, banning them for at least two years.
Silenced for 22 years, victims shot or tortured by Jammeh's security services are now speaking out, along with families whose loved ones have been pulled from recently found unmarked graves.

But the cash-strapped government refuses to put anyone else in the dock, burnt by a high-profile, politically charged case this year that has run into procedural and systemic problems.

"In terms of prosecutions, we are not at that stage yet," Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told AFP in his dimly-lit office in central Banjul, reams of paperwork covering his desk.

An overhaul of The Gambia's beleaguered courts, where judges were long accused of following the will of the president, not the law, is needed to ensure "successful prosecutions", the softly-spoken Tambadou said.

Thanks to his previous experience at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), he is part of a global network of transitional justice experts, whose skills he now wants to call on as he embarks on reforms.

"We have inherited a broken criminal justice system and we need to fix that before we can move forward with any other plans," he stressed.

'NIA Nine'

The case of the "NIA Nine" -- the trial of the former head of the Jammeh-controlled National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and eight subordinates from the feared security service -- is seen as a warning against haste.

A lack of evidence and calls for more time by lawyers have repeatedly delayed the case against the men accused of killing opposition political activist Solo Sandeng last year.

His death sparked a reform movement that eventually unseated Jammeh, who was forced from office in January by west African powers after he refused to accept defeat in a December election.

"It doesn't seem like the judicial system is ready for serious trials," said Reed Brody, a US-based lawyer, who helped the victims of Chad's former dictator Hissene Habre prosecute him successfully more than a quarter century after leaving power.

"It's not enough to have victims. You need to have people who can prove the individual responsibility of a higher-up," he added, after a recent visit to Banjul, saying this was doubly important if the state ever decided to prosecute Jammeh himself.

Switzerland has extended the detention of former Gambian interior minister Ousman Sonko over a crimes against humanity probe, but has ruled out extradition on the grounds the country maintains the death penalty and lacks the legal capacity to try him.

Souleymane Guengueng, a Chadian who campaigned for almost 25 years before seeing Habre convicted in 2016, travelled with Brody to advise the Gambian victims.

"Even if you have all the right conditions, the documents, everything, you have to consider the political aspect. You have to look at the economic aspect," he told AFP, warning it could be a long process.

Lives destroyed

But tensions are rising over when justice will be delivered and the pressure on Tambadou and President Adama Barrow grows by the day, as those with a newfound right to exercise their freedom of speech hold press conferences and marches for justice in a country where, until January, protests were all but illegal.

For some, the urgency is not for psychological closure but something more practical: constant medical bills to manage a permanent disability dealt them by the security forces.

Yusupha Mbye was just 18 when he was shot in the spine by a soldier as he passed a student march in 2000 that was brutally put down by Jammeh's forces, killing 14.

He has constantly struggled to pay his medical expenses and provide for his family, with his legs paralysed.

"My life was destroyed because that was when my schooling stopped," he told AFP, at a march organised by the newly formed Committee for Victims of Jammeh's Atrocities.

"I didn't get anything from the government. I want the new government to help me get my treatment. I want my health first, and then justice," he added.

Family persecution

Others want to turn the page after years of horrors.

At his compound in a Banjul suburb, Malleh Jagne describes meeting other victims and helping raise awareness for their plight through media appearances, although he has yet to win justice for his family.

In March, Jagne found himself standing over the hastily dug grave where his brother was thrown after being accused by the regime of involvement in a December 2014 coup attempt.

"I straight away identified him because he was in the uniform trousers", Jagne said, referring to the US army fatigues his brother Lamin was given while serving as a captain.

Since then, he has pushed for answers. "I wanted to know how my brother was killed: was he shot? Was he beaten to death? The question wasn't answered. It's something that's disturbing my mind," he said.

Jagne himself was detained by the NIA for 35 days once he was identified as a close relative of Lamin, and recalls being whipped, slapped, refused permission to relieve himself, and given dry rice to eat until he was weak from illness.

Another of Jagne's brothers was shot in the stomach by Jammeh's men and survived and his wife died while he was living in exile in neighbouring Senegal.

"If justice is delayed, the pain is still there," he said.
"An alert has gone out nationally and operations are underway to locate her," he said.

Nicknamed "The Boss" ("La Patrona" in Spanish), Lemus started her lengthy sentence in March 2015 after being convicted of heading up the gang that carried out contract killings and kidnappings.

The group was notably accused of carrying out a bomb attack on December 13, 2013 against the mayor of the southeast town of Moyuta, which failed to harm its target.
The prospect of bids not passing muster with the authorities had already previously seen bidding extended once to May 10 at the central bank, where the gem was placed for safe keeping.

Emmanuel Momoh, a 39-year-old pastor who is also one of hundreds of so-called artisanal miners in Kono, Sierra Leone's key mining district, unearthed it in March and handed it over to the government.

Momoh, who remains the official owner, told AFP the diamond was worth far more than bids made to date.

"I want my diamond to be sold abroad so I can get the best price to enable many people to benefit from the proceeds," said Momoh.

"Im expecting not less than $50 million from the diamond," Momoh stated after attending the auction with his wife and several of his employees.

British citizen Ziad al-Ahmadi, based in Belgium's diamond trading centre of Antwerp and reportedly working for Raydiam BVBA, lodged the $7.7 million bid which failed to match the government's unspecified reserve price, prompting the decision to try again in Belgium.

We are going to sell the diamond in Antwerp, Belgium, for us to get the best (bid) within the next few weeks," said Sahr Wonday, director general of Sierra Leone's National Minerals Agency (NMA).

Experts say the diamond is between the 10th and 15th-largest ever found and the biggest uncovered in Sierra Leone in half a century.

Colour doubts

Ahmadi told reporters the colour of the gem made him doubt it would attract much more than $7 million.

Sierra Leone authorities lack the necessary equipment for properly cleaning and polishing the uncut stone.

The Ministry of Mines and Mineral Resources said last month it had tried to clean the diamond "by boiling (it) in hydrofluoric acid and nitric acid for 72 hours," but it was not enough to be able to set an accurate value estimate.

Deputy mines minister, Ignosi Koroma, says the government is committed to achieving a competitive and transparent sale despite the underwhelming local bids.

Diamond trafficking, notably to neighbouring Liberia, has left a deep scar on Sierra Leone after helping to foment a brutal civil war which lasted a decade from 1991.

Experts say the money emanating from the smuggling trade in 'blood diamonds' helped to fuel the conflict in Sierra Leone and others in Africa.
An official statement issued after President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi met his advisors in the Saudi capital "categorically rejected" the South Transition Council whose 26 members include the governors of five southern provinces and two government ministers.

The body was announced on Thursday by Aidarous al-Zoubeidi, the recently fired governor of the southern province of Aden.

"Such acts remain baseless and will never be accepted," the presidency statement said, adding that the move only served the Huthi rebels who have been fighting Hadi's internationally recognised government for more than two years.

It urged those listed as council members "to declare a clear position" towards the new body.

Hadi, a southerner, has been based in Riyadh since March 2015, when the Shiite Huthis closed in on his refuge in Aden after seizing the capital Sanaa and other areas.

Although government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition have recaptured five southern provinces, including Aden, Hadi has only returned to the port city for short visits as the grip of his security forces remains weak.

South Yemen was an independent state until 1990, when it was unified with North Yemen.

Four years later, it launched a separatist rebellion which culminated in its occupation by northern forces.

The Huthis also rejected the new council, which spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam slammed as a "threat to the territorial unity of the Yemeni republic," and a part of a "colonial plot".

Hadi sacked Zoubeidi on April 27 along with cabinet minister Hani bin Breik, in a move widely seen as reflecting divisions among his supporters.

The two men, who played key roles in restoring security to Aden and adjacent provinces after rebels were pushed out in 2015, are believed to be close to southern independence activists.
"I have no doubt that Turkey and the United States will work this out with due considerations, significant attention paid to Turkey's security to NATO's security and the continuing campaign against ISIS," Mattis said, using an alternate acronym for IS.

Mattis' remarks to reporters traveling with him followed an approximately 30-minute meeting in London with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, the highest-profile face-to-face conversation between US and Turkish officials since the announcement.

"We agree 100 percent with Turkey's concern about PKK, a named terrorist group. It is conducting an active insurgency in Turkey, it has orchestrated the killing of innocent Turkish civilians and Turkish soldiers, and we support Turkey in its fight against PKK as a fellow NATO member, just like all the NATO countries stand with Turkey against the PKK," Mattis said.

"We do not ever give weapons to the PKK, we never have and never will."

YPG fighters backed by US-led coalition air strikes and training have carried out much of the ground war against IS in Syria, and have recaptured a series of towns and villages in the country's north.

The focus is now on Raqa, the de-facto Syrian capital of IS's self-proclaimed "caliphate."

The city is largely surrounded and it is only a matter of time before YPG and other forces in a Kurdish-Syrian Arab alliance launch an offensive against the city.

A first consignment of US weapons is already in place for delivery and could be dispatched to the Kurds "very quickly," US Colonel John Dorrian said Wednesday.

Mattis and Yildirim met ahead of the start of a Somalia conference in London.
In a unanimous statement adopted after a closed-door meeting, the council said it was ready to "take necessary measures to respond to further worsening of the situation in Guinea Bissau."

The tiny west African state has been in the grip of a power struggle since August 2015, when Vaz sacked then-premier Domingos Simoes Pereira, leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC).

A new prime minister, Umaro Sissoco Embalo, was sworn in last December but PAIGC rejected him, accusing Vaz of breaching an agreement calling for a consensual choice of prime minister.

The council "invited President Vaz to appoint a prime minister whose selection respects the provisions of the Conakry agreement" that calls for a consensus candidate.
PresidentSalva Kiir's dismissal of Malong on Tuesday night has raised concern among the population who fear confrontation between soldiers loyal to each man.

Speaking at the presidential palace in Juba, Kiir presented Malong's dismissal as "routine work".

However, Kiir berated Malong who he said had erred by failing to thank him for the job he held and by not congratulating his successor, James Ajongo, on his new appointment.

"I was talking to him, I said, Malong, you did a mistake: the first thing that you should have done was to thank me personally for the period I have given you to serve the people of South Sudan. Secondly you are supposed to call James Ajongo and also congratulate him for his new assignment," Kiir said.

Kiir said that when he last spoke to Malong he was "in a fighting mood".

"I tried to calm him down but he was rather wild," said Kiir adding that the situation would be "contained".

Malong was due to return to the capital Juba later Friday.

The general is widely regarded as 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.
Suspected anti-Balaka Christian militias attacked the UN convoy of the MINUSCA force on Monday in the southeast of the country near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"The Moroccan peacekeeper who had been reported missing has now been found dead," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

A Cambodian soldier serving in the MINUSCA mission was killed during an exchange of gunfire and ten other peacekeepers were wounded.

The bodies of three other Cambodian peacekeepers were found on Tuesday.

UN officials said the bodies of the four peacekeepers were badly mutilated, to the point of making identification difficult.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix will travel to the capital Bangui later in the day to attend a memorial on Friday for the five soldiers and to meet with the country's leaders.

He will express "strong support for the UN peacekeeping mission" that was set up in 2014 to help stabilize the country, Dujarric said.

MINUSCA's 10,000 troops and 2,000 police were deployed following bloody sectarian fighting that erupted after the 2013 overthrow of leader Francois Bozize.

The Moroccan royal armed forces separately said in a statement from Rabat that the body of the Moroccan peacekeeper had been returned, and that another wounded soldier remained in serious condition.

The ambush of the UN convoy took place on the Rafai-Bangassou axis, some 140 miles (220 kilometers) southeast of the city of Bria.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council have strongly condemned the attack and called for those responsible to face justice.

Among Africa's poorest countries, the Central African Republic descended into bloodshed in 2013, pitting the anti-Balaka fighters against the mainly Muslim Seleka coalition.
ROCK IN TROUBLE FOR CALLING PUNK?, NEW JAPAN LIVE ON AXS TV?, USING TOURNAMENT TO BUILD TO BROCK'S NEXT CHALLENGER AND MORE

Do you think AXS TV will broadcast the New Japan events in California this July live?

I would suspect that will happen for at least one of them. It makes a lot of sense for AXS to do so, especially since they have obviously had a hand in helping to popularize NJPW here in the United States.

In a previous episode of Total Divas some of the women were upset that Eva Marie had been training, trying to improve on her ringwork, in the state of California. Are wrestlers free to train away from the Performance Center? Can they work out in rings not affiliated with WWE?

No one can stop a WWE talent from getting into a ring to work out. In the case of Eva Marie, Brian Kendrick was suggested to her by the company.

I recently came across a picture of Nora Greenwald (Molly Holly) appearing at this years 2017 WWE Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Is this a sign that Nora Greenwald may finally be inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame perhaps next year?

I'd like to think so. I feel she should have gone in already. I don't believe her appearance was a sign she will be inducted. She was just there to attend the ceremony.

While I think it was short sighted for WWE to put the title on Brock I think they can use this situation to put some larger interest on the title. What do you think of an idea to hold a lengthy tournament to determine the #1 contender for Brock's title when he finally comes back in Summer. I mean it is something they probably should have started after Mania but now that Payback is done it is perfect to build up interest in your top stars as they all attempt to prove they are worthy of facing Lesnar.

On paper, they sounds like a fun idea but the reality is that, except to the most die-hard fans, long form tournaments have never been a big drawing card for pro wrestling in modern day America.

Did The Rock get in trouble for calling CM Punk?

We were told that night that WWE officials were furious about The Rock mentioning and calling Punk from the ring, but really, how could he get in trouble? He's the biggest star in the world. WWE can't touch him. There's no way he could be in "trouble." They could be mad at him all they want, but it would be meaningless.

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First Midwest Bancorp, Inc., the parent company of First Midwest Bank with Quad-City locations, announced it will webcast its annual meeting of atockholders on Wednesday.

The 9 a.m. CT webcast will cover items disclosed in the companys 2017 proxy statement including electing seven directors, approving and adopting amendments to the companys certificate of incorporation and other business. Participants holding common stock at close of business March 24 may vote. Management will close the meeting with a brief presentation on the company.

Stockholders and interested investors may access the live, listen-only webcast by visiting firstmidwest.com/investorrelations.

A replay of the webcast will be available on the website approximately one hour following the meeting and for the following 14 days.

 Times staff
MUSCATINE  City officials confirmed Friday Alderman Bob Bynum, fourth ward, is serving as mayor pro tem, until it is decided how a new mayor will be elected.

At Thursday's City Council meeting, aldermen voted unanimously to impeach Diana Broderson from the office of mayor.

Bynum said he will start having office hours Monday and will maintain his voting abilities as a councilman.

"The mayor appointed me [mayor pro tem] for this coming term in case something would happen health-wise with her, and obviously now something has happened," Bynum said. "And, I've already been groomed to run meetings."

Bynum said he will preside over council meetings until city officials decide how to go about appointing a new mayor. He said a new mayor could be elected through a special election or "some type of appointment."

"I am glad that it's over," Bynum said about Thursday's vote. "We need to start looking forward and start looking at the positive things that will happen within the city of Muscatine."

But, the fight is far from over for Broderson, the first mayor known to be impeached in Iowa, according to President of the Public Interest Institute Don Racheter, who has been advising council members during the impeachment process.

Broderson said she is waiting on city staff to make Thursday's council minutes public record, so she can file an appeal to the district court.

"I've been calling five or six times asking for it to be done," Broderson said. "Our stuff was ready to go at 8 a.m."

Broderson's appeal had still not been filed at 4 p.m. Friday. She said it is likely the appeal will be filed Monday, and then eventually made public record.

Broderson said Thursday, council members have stopped her from performing the duties of her office, and she has yet to do "the things I wanted to do for my community." She said she is looking forward to receiving a fair trial in district court.

Aldermen argue Broderson overstepped her authority as mayor, by contacting city staff without going through the proper channels and nominating people to city positions without the council's approval, according to Prosecutor John Nahra's brief.

Councilmen expect the outcome of the mayor impeachment hearings to cause a contentious election in November. Seats held by Aldermen Michael Rehwaldt, Bob Bynum and Scott Natvig are up for election in November.
An East Moline man wanted in connection with an incident in Silvis on Thursday was captured by Moline police who found him hiding in a garage armed with a handgun after he fled a traffic stop.

Moline Police Detective Scott Williams said Silvis Police contacted other Quad-City agencies saying that Jay Michael Fuller, 21, was wanted in connection with some type of disturbance in Silvis.

Williams said officers located the 1997 GMC truck Fuller was in on the 2400 block of 14th Street around 1:19 p.m.

Fuller also was wanted on two outstanding Rock Island County warrants for criminal trespass and aggravated battery to a police officer.

Fuller fled from officers on foot, Williams said, adding that officers had strong reason to believe Fuller was armed.

Every available Moline police officer was sent to the area where a perimeter was set up and officers made a systematic house-to-house search, Williams said. The K-9 units of both Moline and East Moline were used in the search.

John Deere Middle School was locked down immediately when the Moline School District was contacted by police.

At 2:46 p.m., officers found Fuller, armed with a handgun, hiding in a garage in the 1400 block of 25th Avenue, Williams said.

Fuller was taken into custody on the warrants and transported to the Rock Island County Jail.

This had all the makings of a bad outcome, but it ended without anyone getting hurt, Williams said.

According to Rock Island County Circuit Court electronic records, Fuller pleaded guilty March 31, 2016, to one count of aggravated battery to a police officer, a Class 2 felony under Illinois law, and one count of unlawful possession of a controlled substance, a Class 4 felony.

His sentencing on those charges has been in negotiation and a sentencing hearing was set for May 9 in Circuit Court. The court file did not include a disposition.

While awaiting sentencing, the court allowed Fuller to remain free on a recognizance bond with the provisions that he would obtain his General Education Development, or GED, and maintain steady employment.

Rock Island County States Attorney John McGehee said Thursday that the recognizance bond will revoked.

McGehee said he also will be looking to see if Fuller will be charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm in addition to the charges Silvis and Moline will be filing.

Once a person pleads guilty to a felony or is found guilty by a jury of a felony, regardless of if they have been sentenced, they lose the presumption of innocence, and are therefore considered a convicted felon, McGehee said. Ill have to look at the whole case to be sure, but a convicted felon is prohibited by both state and federal law from possessing a firearm.

McGehee added that the state can prosecute the charge or the federal courts could take over the firearms case.
The Rock Island County Sheriffs Office is investigating reports of at least six vehicles that were stolen from a neighborhood south of Coyne Center.

Capt. Mitch Lee said the thefts are believed to have occurred sometime between midnight and 3 a.m. Friday. The first report was received around 1:30 a.m., he said.

The vehicles that were taken were all unlocked and had the keys inside, Lee said. Four of the vehicles have been recovered.

At least one vehicle was taken from a garage; the walk-in door was unlocked, and the keys were inside, Lee said.

Several other unlocked vehicles had items stolen from inside. Investigators still are receiving calls, and the thefts remain under investigation.

The sheriffs office encourages residents to take their keys inside and lock all doors to their vehicles and homes.
Fourth Ward Alderman Ray Ambrose has company from at least one other member of the Davenport City Council regarding concerns about Timothy's House of Hope.

In an email to the City Council and various city staff, Alderman Jason Gordon, at-large, asked for the city to hold off allowing Timothy's House of Hope to reopen Monday "pending further and specific direction from the Mayor and Council on how best to proceed."

Gordon said although the issue became "hyper-politicized" after Ambrose made comments about the ministry and its clientele that were deemed insensitive, the process could have ramifications in the future depending on how the city handles and responds to this specific issue.

Timothy's House of Hope, a ministry within Compassion Church, was issued a cease-and-desist order on April 19 after its food service at its new 1602 Washington St. facility was found not to be compliant with the acceptable uses of its current C-2, General Commercial District, zoning.

During a management update meeting on May 2, a majority of the council expressed the desire for staff to change the scope of the Planned Institutional DistrictHousing and Supporting Services zoning law.

The change would permit limited meal service to resume.

Because of the intent to amend the zoning ordinance, City Attorney Tom Warner said "there is no real justice in enforcing a zoning law that will soon be changed."

As to reopening on Monday, Gordon sought assurances that Timothy's House of Hope needed to comply with fire and life safety requirements as was the case when other nonprofits have approached the city.

"Some of my colleagues will recall when King's Harvest wanted to expand their shelter services, Fire informed them they would need to install a sprinkle system for fire suppression purposes," Gordon wrote. "A few of their supporters approached council about waiving that requirement and the council was quite firm in stating life/safety issues are critical and were not any less worthy of merit in a temporary shelter or a luxury hotel. I believe the same principles should apply here."

City Administrator Corri Spiegel provided an update to all members of City Council and city staff in a separate email chain Thursday afternoon.

"The inspection did note minor code items that are more customary and do not normally necessitate closure of the facility," Spiegel wrote. "The property owner received verbal notification of the items during the inspection and will be receiving written confirmation of those items shortly. During the inspection, it was noted that some improvements were underway, and they were instructed to discontinue work until the appropriate permits have been obtained."

Spiegel said the topic would reappear on the agenda for next Tuesday's council-management update meeting.

Gordon, who is not opposed to the House of Hope location on Washington Street, said he was willing to assist in helping the facility secure the appropriate zoning through the current code, but he also warned of changing the code in order to bring it into compliance.

"I obviously can't promise a favorable outcome, but nonetheless, was willing to try and assist," Gordon said. "I do feel strongly that changing the comprehensive PID ordinance to essentially bring them into compliance is tantamount to a type or form of spot zoning, as we are changing code to accommodate the needs of one entity."

Gordon drew on personal experience involving his wife, who was director of Rick's House of Hope, an organization that helped grieving and traumatized youth.

"Early in her time at Rick's, the Board purchased a new property on (Northwest Boulevard) in Davenport," Gordon wrote. "Multiple compliance issues had to met  a special use permit from (the Zoning Board of Adjustment), notices sent to neighbors about the special use permit request, a variance to place a sign in the (right of way) so clients could more easily identify the location, and so on."

While he acknowledged the protections churches and religious organizations have under city, state and federal code, Gordon also said that applicable rules need to be followed.

During a May 2 management meeting, the council also requested that staff organize a neighborhood meeting about the issue.

At Wednesday's City Council meeting, Warner said staff still was trying to set that up after Ambrose and residents and business owners on Washington Street inquired.

Gordon said information he received from Spiegel about the challenges of scheduling a meeting and Timothy's House of Hope not committing to a date was troubling.

In her update Thursday afternoon, Spiegel said staff has continued to reach out to both sides, but a meeting has yet to be coordinated.

Mike Meloy, the attorney for Pastor Jim Swope and Compassion Church, challenged any assertion that his clients would not be willing to meet.

Meloy said Swope spoke at length and answered questions about occupancy and use at the Washington Street Business Association's April 11 meeting and both Swope and Cantwell spoke with business owners after the City Council's May 3 committee-of-the-whole meeting.

"We're willing to meet if they wish to do so," Meloy said. "The idea that we haven't met with them is factually untrue."
Diana Broderson's term as the mayor of Muscatine has come to an end.

In a meeting that lasted less than three minutes, the Muscatine City Council has unanimously voted to accept prosecuting attorney John Nahra's proposal to remove Broderson from office.

Members of the City Council would not comment regarding their decision to oust the mayor, but after conferring with her attorney, William Sueppel, Broderson expressed disappointment in the process.

"We assumed it would go this way," Broderson said. "When the person accusing you is also the one deciding the final decision, it's obvious what that decision is going to be and as we could see, it's seven to nothing with no discussion and that's pretty much how it's been since I've been elected."

In the brief submitted to the city on May 2, Nahra wrote that there was "clear and satisfactory evidence that the mayor engaged in willful misconduct and in willful and habitual neglect of office."

Broderson was accused of acting beyond the scope of her duties by forming two ad hoc committees or task forces without City Council approval, directly contacting city staff without the approval of the city administrator on at least three occasions and personally attacking the character or motives of elected officials and city staff on at least five occasions.

Not surprised by Thursday's vote, Broderson said an appeal has already been prepared and will be submitted to the Iowa District Court Friday morning.

"Everything is ready to go, and we will keep moving forward," Broderson said.

With only five months left on Broderson's term, she said she hoped that an appeal would be expedited.

If successful, she said she would consider running for re-election.

Broderson said she had not made a decision yet, but felt she has been unable to execute her duties as mayor during her term thus far and expressed disappointment for the voters.

"All the people that came out to vote had an understanding that things would be a certain way and it is not happening for them," Broderson.

As the City Council made its decision and ended the meeting in such an abrupt fashion, some in attendance booed with the expectation that there was to be a discussion as listed on the agenda.

"I thought that they were going to take some kind of action," Donald Bromwell said. "Why would they print all of this out if they weren't."

Others like Tracy Leone, however, weren't surprised.

"They haven't been asking for or representing the public for the duration of this proceeding," Leone said.

Per Iowa Code 372.13, the vacancy must be filled either by appointment or special election.

As residents stayed behind to listen to Broderson speak after the proceedings, one person shouted "fight on," which she vowed to do.

"We are not giving up and this is not the end," Broderson said. "We know that we will prevail once we get this to a proper jurisdiction."
DES MOINES  Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds announced the appointment of two new members to the Iowa Board of Medicine, replacing a pair who were rejected during last months Iowa Senate confirmation process.

Named to the state medical board are former state Rep. Teresa Garman, R-Ames, and Dr. Warren Gall of Dubuque, a physician at the University of Dubuque who has served on the Iowa Medical Advisory Board three years. The appointments, effective Wednesday, are unpaid and are subject to Iowa Senate confirmation.

Garman and Gall replace Diane Clarke of Lake Mills and Dr. Hamed Tewfik of Iowa City, who were not approved for reappointment when 18 Senate Democrats withheld support primarily over a 2013 board vote to ban the practice of using a webcam to remotely administer abortion-inducing pills to women in health clinics.

Senators voted 32-18 on the confirmations of Clark and Tewfik  which fell two votes short of the two-thirds majority required. Both had been board members since 2011.

Tewfik and Clark were part of an 8-2 board decision that cited health and safety concerns in issuing a rule requiring physicians to personally perform a physical exam before dispensing abortion-inducing drugs  and not use telemedicine.

Opponents, including Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, contended the board was limiting womens access to a legal medical procedure by banning telemedicine abortion services at Iowa clinics. The group sued the board in 2013 and prevailed.

In a 6-0 opinion, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that after careful consideration, we hold that (the) rule ... places an undue burden on a womans right to terminate her pregnancy as defined by the United States Supreme Court in its federal constitutional precedents.
The biggest drive for food in the United States is Saturday, driven by letter carriers who fan out across the nation.

The 25th anniversary of the Stamp Out Hunger food drive is a partnership with the carriers. Residents are asked to put out nonperishable food in a bag by the mailbox, and it will be delivered later on Saturday to the River Bend Foodbank for distribution.

"In any other food drive, we ask you to take food to a location," Mike Miller, the food bank's executive director said. "This is the one day of the year when you just put it by your mailbox."

One in five children are missing meals, not by choice, in the Quad-City metropolitan area, Miller said.

Residents may go through their pantries for contributions, especially unopened boxes that are past the "donate date" on the package.

"It could not be any easier," Miller said, adding hungry people don't worry about due dates on the food they eat.

The letter carriers are a "consistent and familiar presence in the neighborhoods," and they to often see the reality of ongoing hunger, said Tracey Bultnick, event coordinator for the National Association of Letter Carriers, 292, Rock Island.

More than 100,000 bags are to be collected by Saturday afternoon, said Scott Crane, president of United Way of the Quad-Cities Area, which is a partner in the program.

In the past 24 national food drives, letter carriers have collected more than 1.5 billion pounds of food.
DES MOINES  This Fourth of July in Iowa promises to feature significantly more patriotic booms, pops and cracks as a new state law that legalizes home displays of consumer-grade fireworks takes effect.

Across the state, Iowans are preparing for a more festive Fourth  and not just folks who will be shooting off bottle rockets and lighting Roman candles and firecrackers in their backyards.

Iowas new version of Independence Day also has created new opportunities and responsibilities for businesses, public safety and emergency response personnel and local government officials.

Gov. Terry Branstad last week signed into law the legalization of consumer-grade fireworks. Before the new law, Iowa was one of only seven states with similarly or more restrictive fireworks laws, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association.

Business opportunity

Flashing Thunder Fireworks Spectacular has been operating in northern Iowa for more than three decades.

But this will be a milestone year for the Mitchell, Iowa-based company when, for the first time, it will be able to sell its consumer-grade fireworks directly to Iowans.

Flashing Thunder performs professional fireworks shows for cities and organizations, roughly 200 shows per year across the Midwest, according to Katie Mostek, who owns the company with her husband, Jeremy.

Flashing Thunder also sells consumer-grade fireworks to individuals and companies in other states and even has its own line of consumer fireworks.

Now the company can sell those consumer fireworks in its own backyard.

It is a big deal, Katie Mostek said. Every state around us, practically, has consumer fireworks sales open, so everybody (in Iowa) was buying them anyway. They were just bringing it back from other states, and those businesses and those states got the tax money. ...

Now the money can stay inside the state. Thats a big deal.

Mostek said that in addition to the companys normal brick-and-mortar stores  the home base in Mitchell includes a showroom  Flashing Thunder plans to add more locations, including temporary units under tents.

Flashing Thunder and other fireworks retailers find themselves scrambling a bit; the new law was signed by the governor on May 9, and companies can begin selling fireworks on June 1, just 23 days later.

Its going to be a little hectic, Mostek said, noting the state fire marshal as of Friday morning had not yet completed the application for businesses to receive a sales permit. Its a quick turnaround.

Bellino Fireworks, based out of Omaha, Nebraska, also has been operating for more than three decades and plans to expand into Iowa this year.

Owner Vincent Bellino said his company has 130 stands in Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas and Missouri. He hopes to add 50 to 60 locations in Iowa this year, he said, some in stores and others in temporary structures.

Bellino said he traveled to the Iowa Capitol many times over the past three years to encourage state lawmakers to legalize consumer-grade fireworks. He said he expects a lot of interest from Iowans, who for the first time will be able to purchase these fireworks legally in their home state. He thinks it will be similar to when in 2011 the city of Omaha ended its ban on the sale of fireworks.

Theres obviously going to be some excitement around it, some good demand in the Iowa markets, Bellino said. Its obviously an exciting time for everyone, whether its the consumer or businesses.

Emergency response

Its less of an exciting time for emergency response personnel, who are bracing for increased activity this Fourth of July season.

More than a dozen organizations that represent emergency response and health care workers opposed the new law, including the Iowa Medical Society, Blank Childrens Hospital, the Iowa Nurses Association, the Iowa Emergency Management Association and the Iowa Firefighters Association.

Firefighters across the state, for example, already feel short-staffed and stressed by call volume, which they figure will only increase this Fourth of July as more people shoot off fireworks at home.

Now that theyre legal but law enforcement is the same, Halleran said, we can only assume that injuries and potential fires are going to go up.

Halleran said emergency response groups think the new law was freight-trained through the legislative process despite their near unanimous objection. He also expressed frustration with the short time period from the laws approval to the first holiday season.

The law was just signed the other day, and the Fourth of July is right around the corner, Halleran said, noting local fireworks ordinances likely will take another couple of weeks to implement. ... Theres not a lot of time on this to get on top of it.

City's choices

The new law provides some flexibility for cities, which are now determining how best to implement fireworks regulations in their areas.

The law permits home, consumer-grade fireworks displays from June 1 through July 8 and Dec. 10 through Jan. 3, but it also allows cities to shorten that time period or continue to ban home fireworks displays altogether.

Some cities appear content to let the new law take effect and see how it goes, while others are considering restricting the dates residents can display fireworks, said Robert Palmer, a lobbyist for the Iowa League of Cities.

Opinions on what to do and how to proceed are as varied as the number of cities we have in Iowa, Palmer said.

In northwest Iowa, the council in the small town of Moville voted unanimously to adopt the state law as written.

We will go with the state rules, Moville Mayor Jim Fisher told the Sioux City Journal. We will see how people react. If they do it properly, no problem. If it is misused, we will go ahead and make other arrangements (in 2018).

To the opposite extreme, officials in Johnson County are considering a challenge to the provision in the law that says cities can adjust when fireworks are displayed, but they cannot prevent consumer-grade fireworks from being sold.

A local ban on fireworks sales would run afoul of the new law. But Johnson County officials think that runs afoul of local control, and they are considering at least a temporary moratorium on sales until they can better understand the new law.

I dont know where we will end up after this moratorium, but we need time to figure it out. I think everybody in Johnson County is concerned of temporary sales, Johnson County Board of Supervisors chairwoman Janelle Rettig told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. We dont think thats safe in any way, shape or form.
Michelle Thomson knows who deserves much of the credit for South Dakotas nearly $4 billion tourism industry.

We can never thank Doane Robinson enough, she said.

Thomson, president and CEO of the Black Hills & Badlands Tourism Association, was one of the speakers Thursday at the unveiling of a historical marker honoring Robinson, who died in 1946. Robinson conceived the idea to carve giant sculptures in the granite of the Black Hills and wrote a letter in 1924 inviting sculptor Gutzon Borglum to do the carving.

The new bronze marker, which proclaims Robinson The Father of Mount Rushmore, is alongside Iron Mountain Road where the Mount Rushmore National Memorial is framed by the Doane Robinson Tunnel, three miles south of Keystone. About 30 people attended the unveiling of the marker, including some of Robinsons descendants.

The real name of the man known as Doane was Jonah LeRoy Robinson. He was given his nickname during childhood  according to a story told Thursday by one of Robinson's great-grandchildren, Karen Olson  when a young sibling repeatedly mispronounced Jonah as Doanah, which eventually morphed into Doane.

In 1924, while serving as South Dakotas state historian, Robinson sent a letter inviting Borglum to design and supervise a heroic sculpture of unusual character in the Black Hills.

Robinson thought the Needles formations should be carved into sculptures of Western heroes to attract tourists. Borglum, who was at work on a Confederate Civil War memorial in Georgia that he eventually abandoned, visited the Black Hills and instead proposed to carve the likenesses of presidents into the large granite face known as Mount Rushmore.

The carving began in 1927 and lasted until 1941. Today, Mount Rushmore National Memorial attracts more than 2 million visitors annually and powers a South Dakota tourism industry with an estimated $3.8 billion in annual visitor spending.

Much of that success is traceable to Robinson, said a succession of speakers at Thursday's event.

Gary Keller, development director for the Mount Rushmore Society, said Robinson ignited tourism here in western South Dakota.

The only person at the event old enough to personally remember Robinson was 95-year-old Don Nick Clifford, the last survivor of the nearly 400 workers who helped carve Mount Rushmore.

We have Doane Robinson to thank for the idea, Clifford said.

Jay Vogt, whose job as executive director of the South Dakota State Historical Society is the modern equivalent to the post Robinson held, called Robinson an idea man.

And what resulted in Mount Rushmore was his greatest idea, Vogt said.

The tunnel where the historical marker is posted was named for Robinson in 2015, after public safety officials requested names for several tunnels to get better location information from motorists in emergency situations. At the same time Robinsons tunnel was named, additional tunnels on Iron Mountain Road were named for Scovel Johnson, who made surveys for the road and led the construction of the nearby Needles Highway; and for C.C. Gideon, who designed Iron Mountain Road and its pigtail bridges.

The historical marker about Robinson was funded by a contribution from Jerry Klinger, of Derwood, Md., through the nonprofit Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, of which Klinger is the president. Klinger said in a release from the Mount Rushmore Society that the idea for a Robinson historical marker occurred to him last year after donating to the Mount Rushmore Society and visiting Mount Rushmore.

Vogt, of the State Historical Society, said his department has no budget for historical markers but helps develop them when donors step forward. It typically costs about $3,000 to post a marker, Vogt said.

There are 700 historical markers statewide, largely due to the efforts of Doane Robinsons son, Will G. Robinson, who also served as director of the State Historical Society and created the states historical marker program.
A mountain lion that attacked and killed a small dog in Spearfish was euthanized Wednesday morning.

Law enforcement received a call around 9:55 p.m. Tuesday from a couple that lives on St. Joseph Street, who said their dog had been killed by a mountain lion, according to a release from the Spearfish Police Department.

Officers went to the home and spoke with the dog's owners, Janai and Teddy Geppert, who described what happened. Shortly after arriving home, they let their dog out. Within a matter of seconds, they heard a squealing sound, said Spearfish Assistant Chief Curt Jacobs.

The Gepperts looked outside and saw the mountain lion on the porch with the dog in its mouth, Jacobs said. The Gepperts made noise, and the mountain lion released the dog and ran away.

The dog died from bite injuries, Jacobs said. He did not know what breed the dog was but said it weighed less than 10 pounds.

South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks Department personnel searched the area for the mountain lion but were unable to find it.

A houndsman resumed the search at daybreak Wednesday, and the dogs picked up a scent near the Gepperts' home, said John Kanta, regional wildlife manager with GF&P.

The dogs led the houndsman about a half-mile into a wooded area, where they spotted the mountain lion and chased it up a tree, Kanta said. It was then shot and killed.

The mountain lion was a 2-year-old male and weighed around 110 pounds, Kanta said.

GF&P kills mountain lions that present a threat to public safety or damage property. Kanta said these kinds of attacks aren't common.

"We do have mountain lions in the Black Hills. It's not unusual to see a mountain lion ... it's still pretty rare," he said. "Last year, we didn't remove any."

Anyone who spots a mountain lion near their home is asked to call GF&P at 394-2391.
CORSICA | South Dakota farmers, ranchers and businesses are raising money to help their counterparts in Kansas and Oklahoma who were affected by devastating wildfires that burned more than 1,000 square miles along the Kansas-Oklahoma border in early March.

South Dakota farmers have been donating hay to be auctioned, with the money going to a fund called "Southern States Fence Benefit" in the American Bank & Trust in Wessington Springs, The Daily Republic reported.

Dakota Hay Auction owner Willy Groeneweg has been helping with the fundraising efforts and says nearly $2,000 has been raised so far. He says more than 16,000 miles of fence was destroyed and ranchers are having a difficult time keeping livestock on their property.

All of the hay that is donated is sold commission-free, Groeneweg said, so there is no selling fee. Groeneweg held a free appreciation luncheon Monday to help spread awareness about the fundraising efforts. The total raised from that event is still to be determined.

"We deal with ranchers and farmers and we felt South Dakota can be heard that way. We're caring about what happened in Kansas and Oklahoma," Groeneweg said

Last month farmer Steve Roduner helped deliver four loads of hay to farmers in need in Kansas. Roduner said hay is no longer needed in the southern states and the focus has shifted to raising money for fencing supplies.
A judge has thrown out a lawsuit that challenged voting by absentee ballot in Detroit, saying a Republican candidate for secretary of state failed to produce any evidence of violations. Wayne County Judge Tim Kenny says critics have raised a red flag of election law wrongdoing. But Kenny says his ruling takes down that flag. Kristina Karamo and others sued to try to force Detroit voters to vote in person or go to the city clerks office to get an absentee ballot. They made a variety of allegations about how Detroit reviews signatures on absentee ballots and monitors ballot drop-off boxes. The judge says they failed dramatically to back up any of it.
Two days after his abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump only deepened the questions swirling around the episode on Thursday, leaving his aides scrambling to explain contradictory rationales and his allies wondering whether his governing agenda had veered drastically off course.

The turmoil surrounding Comey's dismissal has frustrated the President and his senior-most aides, according to people familiar with the situation. All have expressed anger that the decision to fire Comey wasn't properly executed and created a sharp backlash. The topic has all but consumed the West Wing, where Trump remained holed up on Thursday.

Attempts to move on from the firing were minimal. Trump's own official schedule remained empty. Even the normal parade of photo-ops has been scrapped; instead, Trump signed two executive orders behind closed doors Thursday, avoiding any more questions about his decision to remove Comey from his post.

'I was going to fire Comey'

There are few signs that the crisis is close to lifting. Instead, Trump himself threw two days of official White House accounts into dispute by insisting he'd long planned to fire Comey, even before his Justice Department provided him a reason.

"Regardless of the recommendation, I was going to fire Comey," he told NBC News in an interview.

Meanwhile, the FBI's acting director told a congressional panel that Comey enjoyed "broad support" at the FBI, further undercutting Trump's explanation that Comey had been dismissed because he'd lost the support of his staff.

It all led to the impression of a commander in chief operating in chaotic isolation while leaving even his closest allies to pick up the pieces. At the heart of the storm: the growing sense that Trump fired Comey because of his agency's investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, a probe with which Trump had grown increasingly frustrated.

Trump contradicts deputies

Speaking to NBC Thursday, Trump said he fired Comey because he was a "showboat" and a "grandstander" who he'd long ago decided must go.

That flew in the face of what his top deputies -- including Vice President Mike Pence -- had said publicly about the incident in the 24 hours after the dismissal. Pence said seven times on Capitol Hill Wednesday that Trump acted only after receiving the recommendation to fire Comey from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Trump's spokeswoman, explaining her own statements that seemed to be contradicted by the President's interview, said Trump hadn't told her that he was long planning to dismiss his FBI director.

"I hadn't had a chance to have the conversation directly," Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday. "I went off of the information I had when I answered your question. I've since had the conversation with him, right before I walked on today. And he laid it out very clearly. He had already made that decision. He had been thinking about it for months."

Toxic atmosphere

In his interview, Trump said Comey had fostered a toxic atmosphere at the FBI, which his dismissal was meant to remedy. But on Capitol Hill, the agency's acting director denied that rank-and-file agents at the bureau were dissatisfied with their leadership. Instead, he said Comey commanded widespread respect among his employees, including himself.

"I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard," said the acting director, Andrew McCabe. "I have the highest respect for his considerable abilities and his integrity."

He said Comey enjoyed "broad support within the FBI and still does to this day" and added "the vast majority of FBI employees enjoyed a deep, positive connection to Director Comey."

People within the bureau said the firing had caused anger among agents toward Trump. A planned visit by Trump to FBI headquarters this week, which Sanders had previewed earlier this week, was still in flux on Thursday afternoon.

The scramble to contain the fallout of Trump's decision reflects a sudden change for a president who, less than a week ago, was celebrating a major victory: passage of a Republican health care plan in the House of Representatives. The moment has proven distracting for a President facing a series of hard decisions about US policy, as well as a grueling five-stop foreign swing that begins in just over a week.

Grudges

Trump himself signaled his continued preoccupation with the matter Thursday afternoon, sending a message on Twitter citing his longtime nemesis, comedian Rosie O'Donnell, who called for Comey's dismissal in December.

"We finally agree on something Rosie," the President wrote. Moments later, he continued his Twitter tirade: "Russia must be laughing up their sleeves watching as the U.S. tears itself apart over a Democrat EXCUSE for losing the election."

The messages reflected Trump's longstanding preoccupation with the claims his campaign coordinated with Russia during last year's election. Trump has viewed the claims -- along with the FBI investigation into them -- as a challenge to the legitimacy of his presidency, according to people who have spoken with him.

Trump has been nearly perpetually frustrated by Russia probe, which he believes has overshadowed parts of his agenda, according to people familiar with his thinking.

Trump also bore a grudge against Comey for shooting down his claims during public congressional testimony that Trump's phones had been tapped by President Barack Obama's administration, according to sources.

But firing Comey did not end the conversation about the FBI's look into Russian meddling; if anything, the story has emerged with renewed force.

Investigation remains

Trump admitted in his interview with NBC that he'd asked Comey directly whether he was under investigation during a dinner sometime this year, claiming Comey had assured him that he wasn't. Trump said that Comey had requested the dinner "because he wanted to stay on," even though FBI directors serve 10-year terms that span presidential administrations.

Speaking Thursday, McCabe called the Russia inquiry "highly significant" and said Comey's firing would not impede the agency's work.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," McCabe said.

Meanwhile, at the White House, Trump's spokeswoman suggested that Comey's firing could hasten the FBI's work.

"We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," Sanders said, referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's election. "And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen."
President Trump is about to score a religious trifecta, visiting Saudi Arabia, Israel and Rome, the "home" of three monotheistic religions. The president has said he wants to make the ultimate deal and achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

While the goal is similar to a high school kid attempting to hit a curve ball from an all-star pitcher, the scenario cannot end well for Israel. How do I know this? One has only to look at history. There has never  never  been a time when an American president has sought to lessen tensions in the region that Israel has not been smeared as the main impediment and required to "do more" to make peace happen. Israel is not an impediment to peace. Her enemies are.

Here's the danger for President Trump. The Koran allows Muslims to lie to "nonbelievers" in pursuit of Islam's goal of an earthly kingdom ruled by their religion. An example occurred last week when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas met at the White House with President Trump. Abbas said, "Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children and grandchildren, in a culture of peace."

That is a flat-out lie, as even a cursory Google search or visit to the Palestinian Media Watch website proves. President Trump correctly saw the problem in a campaign speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: "In Palestinian textbooks and mosques, you've got a culture of hatred that has been fomenting there for years. And if we want to achieve peace, they've got to go out and they've got to start this educational process. They have to end education of hatred."

Which country promotes the most extreme form of Islam in children's textbooks, mosques and their media? It is Saudi Arabia. If a person, or nation, believes they have a mandate from their "god" to lie to achieve their goals, how likely is it that even a president is not regarded as an "infidel" whose desire for peace can be used to damage Israel's best interests?

As Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick correctly noted last week: "Israel is the most immediate casualty of Trump's decision to embrace Abbas and the PLO, because the PLO is Israel's enemy. Abbas is an anti-Semite. His doctoral dissertation, which he later published as a book, is a Holocaust denying screed.

"Abbas engages in anti-Semitic incitement on a daily basis, both directly and indirectly. It was Abbas who called for his people to kill Jews claiming that we pollute Judaism's most sacred site, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, with our 'filthy feet.' The Palestinian media and school system which he controls with an iron fist both regularly portray Jews as evil monsters, deserving of physical annihilation."

This is not the attitude of one with whom a president or prime minister of Israel can make peace. A virus of hatred toward Israel and Jews is epidemic throughout the region. One is as likely to change the minds of such people as persuade a serious Christian to deny the resurrection of Jesus, or an Orthodox Jew to accept Him as Messiah. The difference is that Christians and Jews do not have world domination as their goal and violence as their method.

President Trump should re-read his AIPAC speech, because he was right to say what he said then. Abbas lied to the president during his visit. Mr. Trump can expect more lies on his trip to Saudi Arabia, whose leaders may promise all sorts of things and tell the president what he wants to hear, but won't mean it. The proof is in their interpretation of their religion. As always, the West must pay less attention to what the enemies of Israel say and more attention to what they do.
Vneshprombank ex-president gets 9 years in prison for $2 mln embezzlement

MOSCOW, May 12 (RAPSI, Oleg Sivozhelezov)  Moscows Khamovnichesky District Court on Friday sentenced ex-Vneshprombank president Larisa Markus to 9 years in prison for embezzling 114 billion rubles (about $2 billion), RAPSI reports from the courtroom.

Former vice-president of the bank Yekaterina Glushakova received a 4-year prison term.

According to the judgment, a ruling on the Deposit Insurance Agencys lawsuit demanding to recover 113.5 billion rubles from the defendants will be delivered in civil trial.

The case was heard according to special procedure because Markus and Glushakova had pleaded guilty.

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 the 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.
HELENA  Montana Gov. Steve Bullock vetoed 10 more bills Thursday, including one that would have allowed residential subdivision developers to resume drilling multiple small water wells from the same water source without a permit.

That bill would have reversed a Montana Supreme Court ruling in a lawsuit over concerns that too many unregulated wells were being drilled in growing areas where water resources are limited, particularly in Gallatin and Ravalli counties.

Senior water-rights holders in those areas and in other closed basins have said subdivision developers were using a loophole in the state's exempt-well regulations to bypass the costly and lengthy permitting process.

The Supreme Court effectively closed that loophole last year by ruling that two or more wells near each other do not have to be physically connected to be considered a combined appropriation of water that would require a permit.

The bill passed by the Legislature would have undermined that ruling and would have required that wells be physically connected to be considered a combined appropriation in need of a permit.

Bullock wrote in his veto message that the measure would perpetuate a system where many wells can be developed close together and pump substantial amounts of water outside of the permitting process, with other users of the water source powerless to protect their rights.

"I am concerned this legislation will fuel renewed litigation resulting in significant expense to all those involved," he wrote.

Other vetoes by Bullock include:

A bill that would have barred cities and towns from fining people more than $100 for using their cellphones while driving. The bill also would have prohibited cellphone bans without an exception allowing cellphone use while parked. Bullock said the bill would have undermined ordinances that have already been adopted by communities that know best what rules they need.

 Three bills that would have changed the state's landlord-tenant laws. Bullock said the bills give landlords too much legal power and that lawmakers should conduct a thorough study of the state's landlord-tenant laws instead of the "haphazard approach" taken by the bills introduced this session.

A bill that would have allowed hunters to donate funds that would be used to help pay for federal wildlife officials who kill wolves that attack livestock. Bullock said provisions in the bill would restrict the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks' control over how its hunting license money is spent, which could risk $20 million in federal funds the state agency receives.

A bill that would have barred cities, towns and regional water authority from using eminent domain to condemn water and water rights used primarily for agriculture. Bullock said the bill would have prioritized agricultural water rights over other water rights.

A bill to prevent injured workers from receiving workers' compensation benefits if they made a false statement about a medical condition when they were hired. Bullock said the bill has privacy problems, could open workers to discrimination based on a disability and could lead to lawsuits.
BUTTE  A vocal, diverse crowd of about 150 folks, ranging from infants to 80-year-olds, protested the appearance of Donald Trump, Jr., and Greg Gianforte, who spoke at Pioneer Equipment under a secured white tent at the back of the industrial building.

For the most part, protesters stayed within the boundaries  at first on the public sidewalk to the south across the street near the corner of Centennial and South Montana Street.

When Trump and Gianfortes motorcade showed up a few minutes before 11 a.m., police allowed protesters to move onto Centennial a bit closer to yell Boo as the visitors silver vehicle drove past the Butte-Silver Bow dump trucks blocking Pioneer Equipments driveway.

Isnt that a bit overkill? asked Charlie OLeary of Butte about the county dump trucks obstructing protesters from entering the business property and speaking area.

Were here to let everybody know its really aggravating that we have to pay for transportation and security for them, said Dagmar Riddle, a retired Whitehall resident who emigrated from Germany as a toddler. Leaning on a cane with one hand, she held up a protest sign with the other.

Added protester Heatherlynn Meeks: Im so tired of having to protest this stuff. How much is this costing us?

OLeary echoed Rob Quists main platform  preserving Montanas public lands, in Quists campaign against Gianforte to fill the U.S. house seat Ryan Zinke left when Trump appointed Zinke Interior Secretary.

I worry about our public lands and (President) Trump and Zinke taking shots at our national monuments, said OLeary. They should allow plenty of public review.

Protesters voiced their opinions about the importance of affordable healthcare coverage, the protection of Montanas public lands and wildlife, womens rights, human rights and the separation of church and state, among other hot-button issues.

Marya Llovet, a Belgrade mother of two dressed in a Handmaids Tale costume, said she was protesting for the right of her one-year-old baby daughter, born with Downs Syndrome, to have healthcare coverage.

Im pretty worried about her healthcare right now, said Llovet, adorned in red and white, symbolizing the suppressed women, the breeders, in the current The Handmaids Tale Netflix series, a reboot of Margaret Atwood's 1985 classic dystopian novel.

If Republicans had their way, my daughter would be kicked off her insurance, said Llovet. I believe that pro-life also means after the birth, as well. I could have had an abortion, but I didnt do it. I feel that the (politicians) need to have my back. Being disabled does not make you any less deserving of our countrys support.

Protesters picked up steam and numbers as dump trucks hauling gravel honked and passed by on their way west before looping back. Some vehicles were in support of the visitors, but most drivers expressed their support for protesters on the typically quiet street.

A coalition of local Democrats, Butte Area Rising Coalition and individuals, protesters watched Trump supporters walk across Centennial and straggle in to the Pioneer Equipment parking lot, then to the north and east sides of the venue.

I think that America is on a terrible path to becoming a conservative Christian theocracy and thats unconstitutional, said Llovet. If you read the Bible, we need to take care of our elderly and the veterans. If they make cuts to Social Security, it wont take care of them.

Concordia College senior Andie Palagi, fresh off her junior year, protested with friend Chloe McClain, a recent beauty academy graduate.

Im here to protest for our womens rights  my body, my choice, said McClain, 20.

Im really concerned about the integrity of the government, but thats more on the federal level, said Palagi, 21. She was impressed with the crowd.

Ive never seen young people so involved in politics, Palagi added. Even if I dont agree with them  especially at my college. Seeing young people involved in politics is inspiring and important.

Both young women then joined in a chant: Gianforte, go away  sexist, racist, anti-gay.

After Gianforte and Trump began their speeches safely tucked under the tent, the protest crowd moved east, crossed Centennial to the north past the Rosenthal Building, then stopped on the sidewalk where the event was visible.

In the back of the Rosenthal Building stood a lone supporter outside the event area to the east: Leah Anderson, a pharmacy tech at Community HealthCare Pharmacy. She leaned on the property fence, taking photos and video.

I think its good that theyre trying to bring more jobs, said Anderson about the visitors. Its exciting  this is history in the making.

Traffic increased on Montana, with some drivers honking support and others looking to simply get out of the area.

As the motorcade left the area, protests grew angrier and protesters lingered on the cross-streets.

June Lague, 72, and Michael Savoie, 75, of Butte said they protested for their descendants futures.

We want our children, grand-children and great-grandchildren to have the same freedoms we have, said Lague. I want to show people that they have a voice and to get out and give their opinion.

Samantha Fish, 30, and her mother, Jamie Porter, 56, traveled from Bozeman to partake in the protest.

Were showing solidarity just with people who are frustrated not only with the Trump administration, but also with the atmosphere and hostility brought on by this election, said Fish, tending to baby Sophia and poodle Mosby in a double stroller.

Were trying to do whats best for the country instead of the party, added Porter. They protested Trump Jr.s visit to Copper Springs Ranch Arena in Bozeman on April 22.

As protesters bounced from corner to sidewalk, a palpable sense of commonality hung in the air.

Im proud of Butte, said Donavon Hawk of the Butte-Silver Bow Democratic Central committee. Im proud of my community and Im proud to say we had no paid protesters.
WASHINGTON  Congressional Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a long-stalled bill to make it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire its employees, part of an accountability effort touted by President Donald Trump.

The deal announced Thursday could smooth the way for final passage on an issue that had been in limbo since the 2014 wait-time scandal at the Phoenix VA medical center. As many as 40 veterans died while waiting months for appointments as VA employees created secret waiting lists to cover up delays.

The bipartisan deal on Capitol Hill followed a fresh warning from the VA inspector general of continuing patient safety problems at another facility, the VA medical center in Washington, D.C. After uncovering serious problems there last month, the IG's "rapid response" team visited the facility again on Wednesday and found at least two new instances in which patients were "placed at unnecessary risk."

In one case, they found a patient prepped for vascular surgery in an operating room, under anesthesia, whose surgery was postponed because "the surgeon did not have a particular sterile instrument necessary to perform the surgery." The team also found "surgical instruments that had color stains of unknown origin in sterile packs," according to the IG. The VA last month had promised immediate fixes.

VA Secretary David Shulkin told senators at a hearing that he had "no safety concerns today" and that the auditors' visit revealed a process "that works"  doctors stopping a procedure when they identified a potential risk. He agreed legislation was needed to improve the VA. "In the cases we need to make changes in management, today I just don't have that ability to do it," he said.

The Senate measure softens portions of a bill that had passed the House in March, which Democrats criticized as unfairly harsh on workers. Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, the top Democrat and the Republican chair on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, worked to make modifications that would give VA employees added time to appeal disciplinary actions.

Turnover in VA Montana leadership has been a major issue for veterans and is a priority for veteran organizations, Tester told the Independent Record, and the bill streamlines VA executive hires while also codifying whistleblower protections from retaliation.

The bottom line for me is I really think this bill is a bill that addresses the accountability issue, really delivers for our veterans in urban and rural settings, he said.

House Veterans Affairs' Committee Chairman Phil Roe, sponsor of the House bill, said he would support the revisions.

"To fully reform the VA and provide our nation's veterans with the quality care they were promised and deserve, we must ensure the department can efficiently dismiss employees who are not able or willing to do their jobs," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the bill's lead sponsor.

It comes after Trump last month signed an executive order to create a VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, with an aim of identifying "barriers" that make it difficult for the VA to fire or reassign bad managers or employees.

The GOP-controlled House previously approved an accountability bill mostly along party lines.

The Senate bill adopts several portions of a bipartisan Isakson bill from last year, including a longer appeal process than provided in the House bill  180 days vs. 45 days  though workers would not be paid during that appeal. VA executives would be held to a tougher standard than rank-and-file employees for discipline. The Senate bill also codifies into law the VA accountability office created under Trump's order, but with changes to give the head of the office more independent authority and require the office to submit regular updates to Congress.

Still, the bill would lower the burden of proof for the VA to fire an employee  from a "preponderance" to "substantial evidence," allowing a dismissal even if most evidence is in a worker's favor. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said it remained opposed to the bill as "trampling on the rights of honest, hardworking public sector employees."

Tester said he thinks Senate changes hit a sweet spot of accountability and worker protections.

This doesnt take away basic worker protections and also makes sure they have appeal rights and that they have the ability for grievance procedures, so there are worker protection in there, he told the Independent Record, adding that more details will be fleshed out during a hearing next week.

If you get rid of those few bad apples I think it makes the organization strong, not weaker.

The bill is bipartisan with support from veteran groups, but Tester voiced cautious optimism when asked about the legislation becoming law.

I feel good about the potential of it passing, but you never know, you never know when the train can come off the tracks, he said.

Conservative groups praised the legislation.

"These new measures will disincentivize bad behavior within the VA and further protect those who bravely expose wrongdoing," said Dan Caldwell, policy director of Concerned Veterans for America.

The agreement comes in a week in which Senate Democrats are standing apart from Trump on a separate issue affecting veterans, the GOP bill passed by the House to repeal and replace the nation's health care law. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., warned the House measure would strip away explicit protections to ensure that as many as 8 million veterans who are eligible for VA care but opt to use private insurance would still receive tax credits. A group of GOP senators is working to craft their own health bill.

Congress has had difficulty coming to agreement on an accountability bill after the Phoenix VA scandal. A 2014 law gave the VA greater power to discipline executives, but the department stopped using that authority after the Obama Justice Department deemed it likely unconstitutional. This week, a federal appeals court temporarily overturned the VA firing of Phoenix VA hospital director Sharon Helman over the wait-time scandal.

Critics complain that few employees were fired for various VA malfeasance, including rising cases of opioid drug theft, first reported by The Associated Press.

Tom Kuglin of the Independent Record contributed to this report.
Rush skeletonweed, considered to be a part of the daisy family, also known as gum succory, nakedweed and devils grass.

The weed generally inhabits well-drained, light-textured soils. It can tolerate extended periods of drought and occupies disturbed habitats such as overgrazed rangeland, waste places, logging, farming, and road construction. Also be on the lookout around gopher mounds or around badger holes.

Rush skeletonweed is a tap-rooted perennial that can grow up to four feet in height. The stems of this plant are completely leafless but the base of the stem is covered with downward facing, coarse, brown hairs.

It has a long slender taproot can grow up to 7 feet deep. Plants begin as a basal rosette of leaves and then grow 1 to 6 branching flowering stems. It will exude a latex sap from injured surfaces.

The sharp toothed leaves that are lobed with lobes pointing back towards the leaf base. The leaves are only at the base of the plant. The leaves are not easily seen, giving the plant a skeletal appearance. When the plant does flower, it produces a bright yellow flower about three-quarters of an inches in diameter. They typically appear at the branch tips and are in clusters of 2 to 5 blooms.

A mature plant can produce up to 20,000 seeds. When the plant does go to seed, the seeds are light brown to black, ribbed, and have whitish bristles at one end that aid the seed in being dispersed by the wind. Roots are narrow and deep, sometimes penetrating the ground up two to three feet. Roots not only run vertical, but can run lateral near the surface.

Rush skeletonweed is very difficult plant to control and it spreads very easily. Seeds of this plant have been documents to travel up to 20 miles from the original plant via the wind. Plants spread by seed from each mature plant. It also spreads by shoot buds found lateral roots and from shoot buds found near the top of the main root. It also grows from root fragments. It also out competes native vegetation and creates poor wildlife habitat.

Rush skeletonweed is native to Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The weed was accidently introduced in the United States in the early 1900s. It was first discovered in Spokane, Washington in 1938. Today, Idaho and Washington have serious infestation of the weed. About nine years ago about 6 plants was discovered in the Bitterroot National Forest in the Chicken Creek, Deer Creek, and Rye Creek areas. It has also been found in Stevensville in a subdivision and on a property in Charlo Heights.

Management tools are limited: Hand pulling will cause the remaining roots to grow and spread dramatically sending up new plants up to 50 feet away. However very small infestations can be controlled by hand-pulling and digging, done diligently throughout the year and for up to 10 years. Pulled plants should be burned to destroy the seeds and root system. Mowing is ineffective because it will not sufficiently stress the plant. Tillage will not work; it will spread the plant further. If you are considering herbicides to treat the rush skeletonweed, or have any questions about rush skeletonweed or other noxious weeds please contact the Ravalli County Weed District at 777-5842.
The Stevensville School District has experienced a turbulent week since the school board decided not to renew the contract for school counselor, Stephen Coop.

The decision was made at a school board meeting Tuesday night with a large attendance, a letter of support by teachers and a petition by students.

According to Montana law, the district has the right to non-renew without cause any teacher who has not achieved tenure status.

Chairman of the school board Greg Trangmoe said the law supports their decision.

When it is non-renewal without cause there are circumstances we dont discuss, Trangmoe said. It comes down to whether or not I trust the professional administrators that evaluated him.

Trangmoe said he trusts their judgment because they have made the school one of the top schools in the nation.

Junior Matthew Kleinjan said he attended the school board meeting where a petition and letter was presented in support of counselor Stephen Coop.

The board voted twice on not non-renewing Mr. Coop both times losing 3-4 and finally the board voted on the non-renewal and the motion passed 4-3, Kleinjan said. There were about 40-50 students in the meeting as well as around 15 parents, four recently graduated alumni and 10 other assorted community members. Mr. Coop has stated multiple times that he loves this school and he doesn't want to work anywhere else but if he has to he will.

The petition was signed by 140 students and listed specific examples praising Coops efforts in class scheduling, college and career preparation and test score follow up.

He always puts the needs of the students first, and a vast majority of Stevensville High Schools student body relies on him for much more than just educational needs, the petition said. He provides a safe place and a listening ear for students to talk, a shoulder to lean on and a helping hand up.

A letter signed by 30 teachers in the junior high and high school also praised Coop.

Mr. Coop has performed all of the duties outlined in Board Policy 2140 effectively and successfully, the letter stated. Stevensville High School cannot afford to lose quality educators.

Personal letters were written by Diane and Mike Mickelson, Roger and Kathy Cassidy and Nancy Fisher.

Fisher, in her 39th year of teaching third and fourth grade in Stevensville, said I think that Mr. Gum is making a huge mistake not renewing the contract of Mr. Coop.

I have heard nothing but very positive comments from my former students, Fisher said. I have heard several say over many times that Mr. Coop really listens to me. Our high school students need and deserve a counselor that they know and can depend on.

Stevensville parent Linda Page said she attended the school board meeting on Tuesday.

It was packed, Page said. When I watched the board members as they listened to the kids, parents and teachers they looked like they already had their minds made up and seemed like they didnt care. The parents and students shared great stories about Coop.

Page said alumni at the meeting shared about the counselor helping them focus on their grades and college.

We want to keep Coop because hes really, really good, Page said. Hes helped my older daughter find scholarships, loans and helped her find a way to get to college. Hes talked kids down from suicides, one of them my daughter. The kids trust him.

Page said that on Wednesday parents excused their students to picket outside the school.

This is the second counselor theyve done this to and hes the one the kids really, really like, Page said.

Three years ago the Stevensville School Board did not rehire three-year counselor Katherine Mason.

Superintendent Bob Moore said it is not a trend.

This is my second year as the Stevensville superintendent, Moore said. All staff were renewed last year and I would not say this is a trend from my perspective.

On Wednesday a dozen students held protests outside of the school and held a day of silence on Thursday.

Coop sent a response to media inquiries on Thursday thanking everyone for their interest in his non-renewal and student protests.

I am not sure what is going on behind the scenes and I regret the effect that it is clearly having on the kids, their families, my fellow educators, the Stevensville School District and community, he said. After three years living and working in the Stevensville community, I have grown increasingly fond of the students and staff with whom I have had the pleasure to work.

He said his number one priority is to ensure every student was given the resources and support needed to overcome todays challenges.

Coop said he is proud of his work including helping students through social and emotional challenges like suicide, drug and alcohol dependence, and divorce, to providing guidance on college and career opportunities, he said.

The students in Stevensville are why I come to work and they will be why I continue to give 110 percent to them until my current contract expires June 30 of this year, Coop said. To my students, their parents, my co-workers and the greater community who have supported me through this very difficult time, I give my most heartfelt appreciation and thanks.

Trangmoe said the school board would not revisit their decision.

The board had the full information to make the decision when it was made so I dont see the point of having another meeting to reconsider the exact same information and expect a different outcome, Trangmoe said.
The Madonna: Rebel Heart Tour concert film will arrive on digital download, DVD and Blu-ray on September 15, and there will also be a live 22-track audio CD to go along with it. A version of the movie aired on Showtime this past December, but this package includes extra goodies.

The DVD was filmed around the world, and culminates with a show in Sydney, Australia in March of 2016. The package includes previously unreleased footage, in addition to live performances and behind-the-scenes stuff.

Among the songs included in this tour's setlist: "True Blue," "Burnin' Up," "Dress You Up," "Like a Virgin," "La Isla Bonita," "Take a Bow," "Like a Prayer," "Music," "Material Girl," and "Holiday."

Madonna's Rebel Heart tour, which promoted her album of the same name, kicked off in Montreal in September of 2015. It spanned 82 shows over 55 cities on four continents, and grossed just under $170 million. That made the Queen of Pop the top-grossing touring female artist in history, according to Billboard, having sold $1.31 billion worth of tickets in her career.

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BILLINGS  A man accused of the rape and online harassment of multiple women has, for the third time, been arrested on accusations that he continued to stalk victims.

Leslie Dean Ernst, 57, had faced sentencing for five counts of felony privacy in communications. He'd been free on a posted bond since November.

He was arrested on Tuesday with a $50,000 bench warrant after one of Ernst's previous alleged victims told police in April that he was contacting her again using fake Facebook accounts.

It's the third time Ernst has been arrested in this case and the second time he's been accused of harassing women online after posting bond for release. While the case started in 2013, it wasn't until November 2016 that the court ordered him to avoid using computers.

In an April 27 police report, a Billings detective said that the previous alleged victim contacted him about "suspicious" Facebook activity. With this woman and multiple others, Ernst used false social media accounts to make contact, according to court documents.

This time, the woman suspected that two friend requests came from fake accounts run by Ernst. With a search warrant, the detective linked the profiles to three IP addresses owned by Ernst, according to the police report.

The detective identified at least eight false names Ernst used on Facebook, according to the report. Some of them used the same account but changed names.

In one account named "Ashley," the profile identifies the person as a woman but the "About" section says that "I'm a cool guy ... "

Another account allegedly used by Ernst uses a profile photo belonging to an area high school student. That boy's photo was used by Ernst for multiple fake accounts, according to the police report.

In her report, the detective said he also found that Ernst tried to contact another alleged victim nearly a year ago, again using a fake online account.

"Not only was Ernst committing new crimes while out on bond, he also had contacted a victim in the currently charged case," wrote Billings Police Detective Denise Baum.

Charges: Stalking persisted for years

Ernst, a longtime Billings resident, had for years run an elder care business out of his home. His personal Facebook account, parts of which remain public, contains mostly posts that draw from multiple mainstream religions.

His interest extends to non-mainstream religion as well. Detective Baum noted in her report that, based on her investigations, Ernst has shown a "strong fascination with Satanism, the Occult" and other beliefs.

He was convicted in 1995 of four counts of privacy in communications, and investigators have since found victims dating back to 1984, according to court documents.

The current case against Ernst went unprosecuted for years before he was first charged in 2013. Those allegations span back to 2004.

It began with one woman who reported in 2004 that Ernst raped her when she was 17, court documents state. No charges were filed, even after police searched Ernst's home within a month.

The woman made another report in 2008 and still no charges followed. By the time a renewed investigation started in 2010, that same woman said Ernst had relentlessly stalked her for years.

Then more women came forward. One more alleged Ernst raped her and four reported online and phone harassment. Investigators traced all of the communication back to Ernst, charges state.

The pattern of fake Facebook profiles persisted throughout each woman's report. One of the alleged rape victims said Ernst used a fake profile to blackmail her into sleeping with him.

Ernst had at one point been charged with two counts of sexual intercourse without consent, one count of stalking and multiple counts of privacy in communications, all felonies.

A November plea agreement amended the charges to five counts of privacy in communications, none of which are sexual offenses. Prosecutors recommended 25 years in prison with a 15-year parole restriction.

Ernst has been released and arrested twice since he was first charged. After his initial arrest in 2013, Ernst posted bond and was released. Then in October 2016, he was arrested again after a woman in Kalispell accused him of online harassment.

After he pleaded guilty to the amended charges a month later, he again posted bond and was released. This time he was ordered not to use computers, smartphones or the internet.

But with Tuesday's arrest, he's now accused of trying to contact another woman online since his release.

Ernst's attorney, Penelope Strong, said Thursday at a Yellowstone County District Court hearing that Ernst plans to deny the new allegations.

Strong did not return a call to her office Thursday. Juli Pierce, the lead prosecutor in the case, was out of the office this week and did not return a message by press time.

Judge Rod Souza ordered a $50,000 bond  the same amount Ernst has previously posted.
Top of the Hill site

Portions of the Top of the Hill site, including the highly visible corner at Cedar Road and Euclid Heights Boulevard, are grassy and covered with brush. Cleveland Heights and Fairmount Properties just parted ways on a development proposal after failing to agree on key terms.

(Michelle Jarboe/The Plain Dealer)

CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio -- The city of Cleveland Heights and developer Fairmount Properties have parted ways on the Top of the Hill project, sending the prominent East Side property back to the drawing board.

In a joint statement released late Thursday, the Cleveland-based company and the city said they couldn't agree on key terms that would have supported a development agreement for the roughly 4-acre site at Euclid Heights Boulevard and Cedar Road.

Fairmount had proposed building a $75 million project, with 300 residences, offices, retail, structured parking and a hotel. In October, the city picked the company from a field of developers who pursued the site, which is publicly owned and largely used as parking and passive green space.

The city and Fairmount described their parting as an amicable one. Their statement was short on details about what, exactly, derailed their negotiations.

"Our inability to come to agreement is not at all a reflection of the partnership we've built with Cleveland Heights," Randy Ruttenberg, a Fairmount principal, said in the emailed statement. "It was a true collaboration, and we would welcome working with them again in the future.

"More importantly," he added, "this decision doesn't mean that this project won't be a huge success for a future partner that undertakes this exciting initiative."

Ruttenberg didn't immediately respond to an interview request Thursday evening. Neither did Cleveland Heights City Manager Tanisha Briley.

In the emailed announcement, Mayor Cheryl Stephens lauded Fairmount's work on other projects and said the city is open to working with the company in the future. "We were excited to partner with them on the Top of the Hill project," she said. "The negotiations were open and collaborative but, unfortunately, we were not able to agree on terms that were important to both sides of this project."

The city said it remains committed to development of Top of the Hill, a long-dormant site that real estate companies have eyed for decades. But it's unclear where the city will go from here. Cleveland Heights City Council is likely to decide how to proceed at its next meeting, on Monday evening.

Flaherty & Collins Properties, a developer based in Indianapolis, was the runner-up to tackle the project last year. But the company, a newcomer to the region, lost out to Fairmount, a partner in the Flats East Bank project downtown and developer of the retail-heavy Pinecrest project in Orange.

The Flaherty & Collins proposal for Top of the Hill also involved apartments, a hotel, retail, offices, structured parking and, possibly, condominiums. In initial documents, both companies said they'd need tax-increment financing, a form of public financing that allows a portion of the new property taxes generated by a project to go toward debt repayment. Neither company asked for tax breaks on for-sale housing.

Cleveland Heights acquired and cleared the Top of the Hill site after Doctors' Hospital left the corner in the late 1960s. Since then, redevelopment plans have fizzled due to bad timing, economic hurdles and opposition from residents.

In early 2016, six development teams responded to a request for proposals from the city, which is trying to shore up the Cedar Fairmount business district and diversify its housing stock. The other applicants were the Finch Group, based in Florida; the Orlean Co., based in Beachwood; Liberty Development Co., based in Westlake; and the NRP Group, based in Garfield Heights.
GrafTech Parma headquarters

GrafTech International is trying to sell its former headquarters property in Parma, after vacating the complex for leased office space in Independence and research facilities in Brooklyn Heights.

(CoStar)

PARMA, Ohio -- GrafTech International is trying to sell its old corporate headquarters complex in Parma, roughly two years after the company left the building.

Hanna Commercial Real Estate is marketing the 20-acre property, at 12900 Snow Road, at an asking price of just under $4 million. The headquarters building includes 200,000 square feet of offices and 100,000-plus square feet of industrial space.

GrafTech moved its headquarters to Independence in early 2015 but maintained a manufacturing facility in Parma, just east of the former headquarters complex.

The company, which makes graphite electrodes and other carbon-based products, also pulled its research center out of Parma after 59 years in the community. The research operations moved to Brooklyn Heights.

The vacant headquarters property might appeal to developers or large real estate investors looking to lease space to multiple tenants, said David Stover, a Hanna Commercial principal and executive managing director who is handling the listing with colleagues Mark Abood and Anna Maria Hamm.

"I can envision someone knocking down all the office areas and then building a high-bay warehouse," Stover said, noting strong demand across the region for modern distribution space with tall ceilings.

Northeast Ohio's industrial vacancy rate was 5.8 percent early this year, according to a first-quarter report from the CBRE Group, Inc., real estate brokerage. In the office market, the vacancy rate was 18.4 percent, the firm's Cleveland office reported.

GrafTech, then part of Union Carbide, opened its Parma labs in 1956 and expanded on the site. The company vacated the headquarters complex as part of a broader restructuring and cost-cutting effort. In August 2015, six months after the move, GrafTech was acquired by an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management, Inc.

Erik Tollerup, Parma's community services and economic development director, couldn't be reached for comment Friday.

In a news release, Hanna Commercial outlined an array of local and state financial incentives that might be available to potential buyers or tenants at the former GrafTech complex.
Guwahati : A local court in Guwahati on Thursday had sent three persons to five-day police remand, who were arrested in connection with the jewellery shop loot incident in the Assam's capital city on May 9 evening.

The crime branch of Guwahati city police had arrested Prem Singh (security guard), Nilkamal Singh and Basanta Singh for alleged involvement in the robbery incident at the MP Jewellers.

The local court had sent them to five-day police custody after appeared before the court.

Meanwhile, Assam police has still to track the robbers who looted several kilograms gold ornaments from the jewellery shop.

Assam DGP Mukesh Sahay said that, police will arrest the gang of four soon.

'Investigation is going on from all angles. We have collected all CCTV footages and hope the gang of four to be arrested soon,' the Assam DGP said.

Four armed men walked into the jewellery shop and looted valuable jewellery items worth of several crore rupees on May 9 evening.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)*
Kathmandu, Nepal: An unidentified group has exploded a powerful bomb at Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) leader Madhab Khatris house located at Duwakot in Changunarayan Municipality-2 of Bhaktapur district on Friday morning.

Khatri had contested the election to the Constituent Assembly (CA) from Bhaktapur constituency-2.

According to the police, the incident had taken place at around 3.00 am on Friday morning. With the explosion, windows of the louse were broken. Though Police have said that it has already started a probe into the incident, no persons associated with the incidents are arrested yet.
KATHMANDU, May 12: Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal today has administered the oath of office and secrecy to the newly appointed Minister of State at the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development, Janakraj Chaudhary.

The oath taking ceremony was organized at the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers at Singha Durbar.

Also present on the occasion were, DPM and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development, Bijay Kumar Gachchhadar, Minister for Peace and Reconstruction, Sita Devi Yadav, Minister for Education, Dhaniram Poudel, Minister for Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation Jitendra Dev, government secretaries and high level government officials. RSS
KATHMANDU, May 12: The Rastriya Janata Party has reached at Election Commission for the registration of the party in view of the election.

The Party held a discussion with the Election Commission officials in this regard Friday. Party leader Manish Kumar Suman said although it was not possible for them to participate in the local level election as a unified party right now, registration was sought for the same for the next election.

He added that the discussion centered on name of the party, its election symbol and registration process.

The Rastriya Janata Party was a party merged out of half dozen of splinter parties focused on Tarai/Madhes issues last week.

During the discussion, Chief Election Commissioner Dr Ayodhee Prasad Yadav congratulated the unification of different parties and informed that EC was not able to provide new election symbol to them because the printing of the ballot paper was already over. He requested them to participate in the election with previous symbols.

Leaders including Brishesh Chandra Lal, Jitendra Sonal, Keshav Jha, CP Singh and Dipendra Chaudhary attended the discussion. RSS
Welcome to the PROGRESSIVE ALLIANCE. We are a multi-racial, multi-issue "rainbow coalition" dedicated to social justice, peace and building progressive power. Our key priorities include economic justice; equal rights and equal opportunities for all regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation; international solidarity; humanitarian service; eradicating poverty at home and abroad; environmental protection and sustainable development; and electing progressives to public office and then holding them accountable.




Algeria and the Polisario are finding it difficult to conceal their resentment at the stance expressed lately by Donald Trumps administration regarding the Moroccan Sahara conflict.

The separatists and their mentors were hoping to see the new US administration adopt a stand on this issue favorable to their theses, but they were bitterly disappointed.

While Algerian rulers and Polisario leaders have not yet assimilated the latest Security Council resolution on the Sahara, largely in favor of Morocco, they were dealt another blow, this time directly from Washington.

In the FY17 Appropriations Bill passed by the Congress and promulgated by President Donald Trump on Friday, May 5, the United States renewed unambiguously its support for Morocco, in the territorial conflict opposing it to its neighbor, Algeria.

The Bill stipulates in Title III of the Act that the funds made available for assistance for Morocco shall also be made available for any region or territory administered by Morocco, including the Western Sahara

Better than this, the Congress calls on the Secretary of State to continue his efforts to negotiate a settlement of this dispute, consistent with the policy of the United States to support a solution based on a formula of autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty.

In the same document, the Trump Administration is invited to support private sector investments in Western Sahara.

Washingtons position seriously compromises the theses upheld by the Polisario and by Algeria, a stakeholder in the frantic and illegitimate battle waged against Morocco.

And they are not at the end of their sorrows. Frances President-elect Emmanuel Macron will surely drive yet another nail in the coffin of the separatist theses, although the ailing President of Algeria Abdelaziz Bouteflika tried to soften him in a congratulations message. He described him as a great friend of Algeria in a vain attempt to coax him to change Frances stand on the Sahara issue.

The Polisario and Algeria try to ignore that Macrons diplomatic adviser Aurelien Lechevallier had said during the electoral campaign that regarding the Sahara issue, Macron will maintain Frances position in favour of UN-led efforts to find a political and mutually acceptable solution to the regional dispute, and that Moroccos autonomy initiative represents a credible basis to reach a political settlement.
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May-11-2017 23:10 TweetFollow @OregonNews Good Move: Trump Withdraws Rep. Tom Marino of Pennsylvania as Drug Czar Those contributing to the deaths of future generations via the prescription opioid epidemic must be stopped.

Congressman Tom Marino (PA)

(MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.) - In October 2014, I wrote an article for Salem-News.com and Global News Centre regarding Congressman Tom Marino of Pennsylvania and his background as related to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and their attempts to crackdown on pharmacy pill mills -- along with other biographical issues concerning Mr. Marino. My article in Global News Centre from 2014 and links to other articles are shown below. Marino was not happy with my article and I was threatened by one of his staff members as was my editor of Global News Centre with congressional resources being used to investigate us. Several weeks ago, President Trump announced that Marino was being slotted as "drug czar" for the administration. For two days, I emailed my article from 2014 (in its entirety) to every Attorney General in the US, many US Attorneys, US Senators and Congressmen. I also Twittered my article as a link to President Trump and his family members and administration heads since the President is a user of Twitter. This past week, the President withdrew his consideration of Marino for the position of drug czar. A government official called me on Friday and thanked me for my efforts against this appointment of Marino. Ironically this past week someone with the Drug Policy Alliance gave themselves credit and called it a "major victory" that they prevented Marino from becoming drug czar. For the uninformed, the Drug Policy Alliance lists the evil, "legalize all drugs in America George Soros" as a "Board of Director member, Soros Fund Management." Here is a link indicating Soros as a director: www.drugpolicy.org/staff-and-board/board-directors#honorary. You cannot have it both ways, Drug Policy Alliance- saying you represent the interests of the country in this horrific prescription opioid epidemic, killing and addicting in the tens of thousands, and having George Soros as a director of your Alliance bringing with him his multi-billion dollar empire. Just as other organizations such as "Facing Addiction" and "Partnership for a Drug Free America" cannot have Soros as a founding pioneer or contributor to their multi-million dollar non-profit organizations. President Trump may have prevented someone from becoming drug czar who had underlying issues, but these issues did not come to light because of the Drug Policy Alliance efforts. Their association with George Soros spoke volumes to the powers that be. My efforts to expose other organizations affiliated with a man who wants to perpetuate this prescription drug epidemic in the U.S. will continue. His name is George Soros and any "non-profit" allowing his name to be associated with them is contributing to the deaths of a future generation in the prescription opioid epidemic. Watch for my next article - "Why was the Surgeon General of the U.S. fired by President Trump after issuing a 500 plus page bogus report on the prescription opioid epidemic?" LINKS: www.globalnewscentre.com/congressman-tom-marino-pa-and-congresswoman-marsha-blackburn

www.globalnewscentre.com/president-elect-trump-and-the-troublesome-members

www.salem-news.com/articles/september232012/pill-deaths _________________________________________

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With films in two French film festivals this month, American writer/director/actress Molly Ratermann is bringing a fresh voice to international audiences.

Mollys award-winning dark comedy Suicide will be making its 22nd festival appearance when it screens on May 16th at the Nice International Film Festival. Shell follow that up by unveiling a preview of her newest short Lizzie Lost at the Cannes Short Film Corner beginning May 22nd.

This rising California filmmaker has been receiving high-praise for her handling of sensitive social topics, including suicide, LGBT issues and life changing illness; and for her ability to create dynamic female characters. Molly has also been heralded for her performances on-camera earning Best Actress at the LA Film Awards, Studio City Int. Film Festival, International Independent Film Festival, Indiefest, and the Actors Awards among others.

Before heading off to France, Molly Ratermann found some time to answer a few questions.

Can you tell us about your dark comedy Suicide?

MOLLY RATERMANN: Of course. Suicide is a dark comedy that follows the life of an enthusiastic suicide planning hobbyist, Carson, which is also the character I play in the film. Carson drags her best friend, Franny, on her final grand suicide mission into the desert and as the journey goes on, things start to unravel.

Where did you find the inspiration for it?

MR: Around the time I came up with the idea, I was really bothered by the First World Problems trend, people not appreciating more than the materialistic or petty things in front of them. Along with that, I was really intrigued by the lack of compassion for people with mental health issues and how unfair that is. I was mulling around, What could be the most extreme but fun way to shine a light on all of this? and this is what came of that.

Any tough moments on-set while shooting, personally or otherwise?

MR: Oh, definitely! There were lots of little quirks and quips along the way just like any indie, which always makes it fun. We had the cops called on us and then we were chased out of a gas station while filming so we had to cut that scene out of the film. I had to recast the part of Dr. Wolf the night before the shoot due to an actor dropping out, thank god for Katherine! Oh, and I almost had my car towed slash seized by a police officer in the middle of the desert for forgetting my registration sticker. Things like that, but of course make for a fun story to tell.

Why do you think its resonated so well with American audiences and do you expect the same from French movie goers?

MR: I was really nervous how Americans would receive this film, that they wouldnt understand the message of the film. People do want more awareness on the subject of suicide, but its always heavy to delve into and with this film, I think they were happy that it was a lighthearted and relatable take on the subject. With France, I am nervous to see if certain aspects dont translate. I can only hope theyll be as responsive as American audiences.

Youre also previewing another short called Lizzie Lost at Cannes, so can you give us a glimpse of that one?

MR: Lizzie Lost is more of a quirky drama. I play Lizzie, who has a hard time reaching out for help and expressing her feelings as a coping method to not face her problems head on. The film focuses on a pinnacle part of Lizzies life when her health and love life are crumbling, but when faced head on, shell have to decide whether shes going to step up to the plate.

Why this story?

MR: Well, my best friend is lesbian and I always find the things she struggles with or others in the community to be interesting. Most of the things she runs into, straight people rarely do. I wanted to explore loving someone who not only doesnt love you, but doesnt attract to your gender either. I think the people in the world who still dont agree with the LGBT community, dont empathize with the fact you cant choose who you fall in love with. And thats half the message of the film.

Overall, what been the biggest piece of advice you wish you would have followed?

MR: To be patient. Its the number one thing I struggle with and looking back, there really is a timing to things. Of course, being patient doesnt mean not working hard, reflecting, or making things happen, but I do think impatience at the wrong time adds on pressure that could be filled with enjoyment instead.

Best advice you actually followed?

MR: Probably the combination of things my parents always said growing up which usually came down to Go do it, Molly and Have fun. I think making life fun, and making things happen whether its career, life, travel, anything that fulfills you. Make it happen and have fun and dont close open doors on yourself. Kind of cheesy and simple, but has worked well for me so far.

Did you ever think about giving up on either project and what stopped you?

MR: There were lots of moments where it felt overwhelming or impossible. Post production on both were pretty arduous. As everyone knows, seeing a rough cuts of your film so many times before its close to final cut is everything to make you feel like a terrible filmmaker, but I think knowing there is always a creative way to solve a problem and finding that solution makes it really rewarding. Thats always what I look forward to.

Lastlywhere do you go from here?

MR: Hopefully up! So far this year, I have played the lead in 2 projects with a web series, horror feature, and 4 other projects to go. Ill be running around the festival circuit as well, Cannes of course, and trying to get two features of my own off of the ground. Im looking forward to seeing what the festival circuit and other auditions hold for the rest of the year.
Fans of the legendary, occasionally cantankerous, comics writer Alan Moore have reason to celebrate because Show Pieces, the anthology film Moore wrote specifically for the screen, is coming to streaming service Shudder on June 29th.

Show Pieces was directed by Mitch Jenkins and it would appear that this is an extension of the work that he and Moore did back in 2012 with a short film called Jimmy`s World where the above image, complete with some belles of burlesque, comes from. Here is the announcement below.

From the mind of legendary writer Alan Moore (creator of Watchmen, V For Vendetta and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) and acclaimed photographer and director Mitch Jenkins comes the multi-layered film anthology SHOW PIECES. The film launches on June 29th on AMC Networks-backed Shudder, the premium streaming service for all things thrilling and suspenseful.

Set in the town of Northampton, UK, SHOW PIECES is the first work by Alan Moore written specifically for the screen and the first work to explore the bizarre world and characters that frequent an otherworldly gentlemen's club. The five chapters of SHOW PIECES create a tapestry of madness, malevolence and murderous misdeeds, intersecting to form an original, occult noir thriller with Alan Moore himself appearing in character on screen.

In Chapter One: Act Of Faith, Faith Harrington, a young newspaper reporter with an exotic private life, prepares for a stimulating evening at home that doesnt go according to plan. In Chapter Two: Jimmys End, louche and hard-drinking womanizer James Mitchum finds himself wandering into one strange bar too many. In Chapter Three: Upon Reflection, Faiths first bewildered arrival at the club is captured in a fixed security mirror above the clubs oddly anachronistic lounge bar. Whilst in Chapter Four: A Professional Relationship, the unusual relationship between the clubs two managers is explored and in Chapter Five: His Heavy Heart, a dreadful realization hits James Mitchum as he is shepherded into his unenviable afterlife.

The soundtrack to SHOW PIECES features original lyrics by Alan Moore set to music by Adam Drucker and Andrew Broder working as Crook & Flail with help from a cast of vocalists including Tunde Adebimpe (TV On The Radio), Alan Sparhawk (Low) and Nona Invie (Dark Dark Dark).
 Interesting report on plea realities impacting severity of sentences for sex trafficking offenses in Massachusetts | Main | Misreporting of the Sessions Memo and the challenge of nuance in prosecutorial charging policies 

May 12, 2017

AG Sessions issues new tougher charging and sentencing guidelines to federal prosecutors

As reported in this official Justice Department press release, "Attorney General Jeff Sessions today issued the attached memorandum [available here] establishing charging and sentencing policies for the Department of Justice." The press release further reports:

This policy was formulated after extensive consultation with Assistant U.S. Attorneys at both the trial and appellate level, as well as U.S. Attorneys and Main Justice Attorneys. It ensures that the Department enforces the law fairly and consistently, advances public safety and promotes respect for our legal system. Attorney General Sessions will issue further remarks on the new policy later this morning.

This memorandum is relative short and to the point, and here is some of its key language:

Charging and sentencing recommendations are crucial responsibilities for any federal prosecutor. The directives I am setting forth below are simple but important. They place great confidence in our prosecutors and supervisors to apply them in a thoughtful and disciplined manner, with the goal of achieving just and consistent results in federal cases. First, it is a core principle that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency. This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us. By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences. There will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application of the above charging policy is not warranted. In that case, prosecutors should carefully consider whether an exception may be justified. Consistent with longstanding Department of Justice policy, any decision to vary from the policy must be approved by a United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, or a supervisor designated by the United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, and the reasons must be documented in the file. Second, prosecutors must disclose to the sentencing court all facts that impact the sentencing guidelines or mandatory minimum sentences, and should in all cases seek a reasonable sentence under the factors in 18 U.S.C.  3553. In most cases, recommending a sentence within the advisory guideline range will be appropriate. Recommendations for sentencing departures or variances require supervisory approval, and the reasoning must be documented in the file.

This AP article about this new AG Sessions' memo provides this brief and effective account of what these directions change:

The directive rescinds guidance by Sessions Democratic predecessor, Eric Holder, who told prosecutors they could in some cases leave drug quantities out of charging documents so as not to trigger long sentences. Holders 2013 initiative, known as Smart on Crime, was aimed at encouraging shorter sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and preserving Justice Department resources for more serious and violent criminals. Though Holder did say that prosecutors ordinarily should charge the most serious offense, he instructed them to do an individualized assessment of the defendants conduct. And he outlined exceptions for not pursuing mandatory minimum sentences, including if a defendants crime does not involve violence or if the person doesnt have a leadership role in a criminal organization.

This development is a very big deal, although it is not especially surprising and the thousands of federal prosecutors who implement this policy around the nation will ultimately determine how dramatically federal charging and sentencing practices change in the months and years ahead. (And one interesting point for the historical record: the AG Sessions charging and sentencing memo is dated May 10, but it would seem the brouhaha over the Comey firing delayed its official public release.)

Prior recent related post:

May 12, 2017 at 08:58 AM | Permalink

Comments

Sessions needs to just resign already.

Posted by: kat | May 12, 2017 9:15:03 AM

Just what we need: more people in prison for longer times. Maybe certain folks in the White House should be concerned

Posted by: Michael R. Levine | May 12, 2017 9:16:43 AM

Obama might not have done enough in the minds of some, but the ready alternatives as compared to the ideal ones, appear to be worse.

This is not really germane, but fyi, if you don't know:

http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2017/05/court-rejects-commerce-clause-challenge.html

[Dylan Roof]

It probably is appropriate as a matter of law, but as a matter of policy, I do think it is a stretch. I continue to think this should have been left to South Carolina.

Posted by: Joe | May 12, 2017 10:39:15 AM

Joe, that's an interesting discussion for another post, I would imagine.

Regarding this, it's not surprising. In fact, it is, generally speaking, what they still do. The Sorbanes-Oxley fish case was an example of that where the SG's office said that the policy is generally to not have discretion, but to charge the most serious charge they can prove. Narrow exceptions were exceptions. Obviously, it's directly counter to trends and scholarly opinion, but a "law and order" President appointing a very conservative "law and order" AG should be expected to do something like this. I never understood anyone who thought Pres. Trump's administration would at all support or encourage criminal justice reform.

Posted by: Erik M | May 12, 2017 11:26:42 AM

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 "A Contextual Approach to Harmless Error Review" | Main | AG Sessions issues new tougher charging and sentencing guidelines to federal prosecutors 

May 11, 2017

Interesting report on plea realities impacting severity of sentences for sex trafficking offenses in Massachusetts

I just saw this recent Boston Herald article, headlined "Special Report: Sex traffickers evading tough prison sentences," which highlights the ways and reasons why a new Massachusetts law designed to toughen sentencing outcomes for certain sex offenders may not get consistently applied due to plea practices and related case-processing dynamics. Here are excerpts:

Accused pimps and sex traffickers who could face decades behind bars under state law are often being allowed to plead down to less time and reduced charges, with more than half of convictions netting minimum sentences or less, according to a Herald review. The softer sentencing patterns identified by a Herald survey of cases prosecuted by the attorney general and the states 11 district attorneys come five years after lawmakers passed a much-ballyhooed sex-trafficking law billed as a get-tough measure on criminals driving the sex trade. But prosecutors and victim advocates say the sentences highlight the long-standing challenge in bringing complex cases reliant on vulnerable and sometimes reluctant victims. The law called for sentences of five to 20 years for those convicted of trafficking, and up to life for those who prostitute minors. But a Herald review of 32 trafficking cases statewide found 21 defendants in a position to serve the minimum five-year sentence or less, with three getting outright probation. At least 18 times defendants took pleas to reduced charges  avoiding a human-trafficking conviction entirely. The average sentence of all reviewed cases fell between four and five-and-a-half years. Thats a rate state Sen. Mark Montigny, the bills chief sponsor, slammed as abysmal  and exactly what he was trying to avoid when he drafted the law. Never once in my career have I put a mandatory minimum in a bill, but in trafficking of children, I put one in because I didnt want to see plea-bargaining down, said Montigny, who decried what he called a societal ignorance around the seriousness of the sex trade. Its unbelievable.  Not much has changed. And Im so disappointed in that.... Prosecutors have been able to secure some long sentences under the new law. Tyshaun McGhee and Sidney McGee, the first defendants convicted under the statute, got sentences of 10-to-15 and 10-to-12 years, respectively, after a Suffolk County jury found them guilty. Ryan Duntin, who plead guilty in 2015, got a 10-year sentence. But prosecutors defended their handling of the pleaded, low-sentence cases, noting they face a web of challenges. Frightened witnesses are often battling intense trauma or substance abuse, and sometimes are reluctant to go to trial, which makes scoring a jury conviction difficult. Other times authorities have initially brought trafficking charges against girlfriends of the pimps, known as bottoms, who help recruit and intimidate victims. But they sometimes are also seen as exploited victims themselves, leading prosecutors to later bring reduced charges. Other circumstances have played a role. In Suffolk County, one accused trafficker pleaded to receive a four- to five-year sentence after one of his alleged victims died of an overdose before trial, dealing a blow to the case. In Bristol County, prosecutors said they were forced to dismiss one case because the victim wouldnt cooperate. Prosecutors are also wary of forcing victims, especially minors, to take the stand and risk re-traumatizing them, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. When youve got victims terrified about what might come up when they take the stand ... and theyre on board with a guilty plea and we can get a 10-year or an eight-year sentence, thats a successful prosecution, Wark said.... Stephanie Clark, executive director of Amirah, an advocacy group that works with and houses trafficking victims, said she wasnt surprised traffickers are getting softer sentences, given that cases hinge on victims who may back out.

May 11, 2017 at 05:49 PM | Permalink

Comments

Once again "contact offenses" getting less time than "non-contact" offenses.

Makes no sense at all, that's the American way of justice.

Posted by: kat | May 12, 2017 9:13:38 AM

Pimps are really the scum of the earth. They use force or the threat of force to coerce payment from these women/girls everyday. A serious pimp, particularly with minors, should get LWOP. I actually would not have a problem with the death penalty in certain cases.

Posted by: federalist | May 12, 2017 10:10:03 AM

@ kat:

Generally speaking,non-contact offenders get more time than contact offenders mainly because non-contact offenders are internet offenders. Computer hard drives, cell phones, digital cameras, etc...aid tremendously in collecting all the evidence any prosecutor could ever dream of having!

Posted by: tommyc | May 12, 2017 8:15:09 PM

@tommyc-

Seems prosecutors who have "live" victims have evidence too.

Internet crime and punishment has been so over-blown by our government. They go after the little fish hoping it will lead to the big fish CP producers. It seldom does. We are locking up people for 5-10 and saddling them with "sex offender" labels for 15-life when in reality, most of them would have just stopped their internet searches had they been punished with a night in jail.

Our government is unjust.

Posted by: kat | May 13, 2017 10:02:13 AM

Of significant note is the lack of information regarding the requirement of these convicts to register as sex offenders. While much ado is given to the severity of the sentencing upon conviction, once an offender leaves the jurisdiction of the court system, he is still required to register as a Level 3 sex offender, which includes lifetime registration and all the restrictions and other requirements, all that entail additional state and federal felony punishments.

If the offenders are required to register, then the pragmatic result is that the sentence itself is actually secondary to the existence on the sex offender registry, and should be highlighted in the news report.

Posted by: Eric Knight | May 14, 2017 7:36:19 PM

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 Misreporting of the Sessions Memo and the challenge of nuance in prosecutorial charging policies | Main | Former LA Sheriff gets three years in federal prison after obstruction convictions connected to corruption scandal involving county jails 

May 12, 2017

Some notable first-cut reactions to the Sessions Memo

The Hill already has two articles reporting on some notable reactions to the new Sessions Memo. The reactions are not surprising, but they are still interesting:

Obama AG slams Sessions for shift to harsher sentencing

GOP senator: Sessions's push for tougher sentences highlights 'injustice'

Eric Holder is the AG referenced in the headline of the first article, and Senator Rand Paul is the one referenced in the headline of the second one. Senators Mike Lee and Tom Cotton also are quoted in the second article, and long time readers of this blog can likely guess the nature of their takes on the Sessions Memo.

Last but certainly not least, Bill Otis has reactions here at Crime & Consequences under the heading "Jeff Sessions Returns DOJ to Sound Charging Policy." Here are choice excerpts (emphasis in original):

This has been reported as "new" guidance, but it's not. It's the return of the "most serious readily provable" standard that governed charging policy during most of my 18-year tenure in the US Attorney's Office, a tenure that ended last century. The policy continued during the George W. Bush Administration. It was right then and it's right now. It amounts to telling prosecutors to charge what the defendant actually did. This is so obviously correct -- aligning the allegations with the facts -- that I have a hard time seeing any serious objection to it. It does allow exceptions -- that is, in practice, more lenient charging -- in unusual cases. That too seems obviously correct, together with the Attorney General's caveat that such cases must, indeed, be out of the heartland, and the reasons for leniency should be documented and approved by a more senior AUSA or the USA himself. This prevents inattentive, inexperienced or irresolute AUSA's from doing their own thing (or being bullrushed by an aggressive or smooth-talking defense lawyer). On its face, this policy is not that much of a change from the one Eric Holder adopted, but there is an important change in emphasis and purpose.... It will be attacked by the Left as likely to produce longer sentences. That's probably so. However, there is a ready mechanism by which such sentences can be avoided: Mr. Nicey might consider quitting the smack business and getting a normal job like everybody else. I'm just not a partisan of the notion that it's always the public that has to change. Instead, in both practical and moral senses, we'll be better off when we insist that it's the criminal who has to change. We don't need less serious charging. We need less crime. Criminals make choices. We should give them enhanced incentives to make better ones, for them and for us. The Attorney General's directive does just that.

Prior recent related post:

May 12, 2017 at 12:43 PM | Permalink

Comments

"The legal system is an apparatus that is created to secure the interests of the dominant class. Contrary to conventional belief, law is a tool of the ruling class. The legal system provides the mechanism for the forceful and violent control of the rest of the population. In the course of the battle, the agents of the law serve as the military

force for the protection of domestic order. Hence, the state and its accompanying legal system reflect and serve the needs of the ruling class. The primary interest of the ruling class is to preserve the existing capitalist order. This is accomplished ultimately by means of the legal system."

Richard Quinney, "Crime Control in Capitalist Society," in Ian Taylor, Paul Walton, and Jock Young, eds., Critical Criminology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), pp. 19293, 195.

Posted by: Red Rosa | May 12, 2017 1:03:50 PM

I gather it will also gain some criticism from Libertarians and won't only apply to those in the "smack" business. (See, e.g., the "fish" case cited in a previous thread). OTOH, Rand Paul was referenced, to the degree he is a libertarian.

In fact, some conservatives are concerned with the expansion of the federal criminal law (on this blog, special attention -- at least going by comments -- seem to be applied to sex offenders here), which has been reflected some in certain Supreme Court rulings in the Roberts Court.

What the person "actually did," especially given criminal statutes where using a GPS and so forth (see the Roof opinion I cited in a previous comment) might bring forth a federal prosecution in a case that might otherwise be a local case (one the specific state might choose to handle differently), provides wide discretion to prosecutors. Always has. I appreciate the input of insiders here but am wary of this new policy.

Posted by: Joe | May 12, 2017 1:05:21 PM

Briefly, the opening comment has some truth, but good public policy can try as best as possible to use the law in a more equitable way. Such is at least is the principle behind our own republican institutions.

Posted by: Joe | May 12, 2017 1:07:48 PM

It's obvious that the "red" in "Red Rosa" does not refer to her hair color.

Posted by: TarlsQtr | May 12, 2017 1:37:31 PM

Does the rate of solving a crime have an influence on its deterrence or on its frequency? Is Sessions is asking for more prosecutions, rather than fewer, it will have an effect. One may have a thought experiment of zero prosecution vs 100% prosecution to answer the question.

Posted by: David Behar | May 12, 2017 2:00:17 PM

As has been noted countless times on this blog and elsewhere, the War on Drugs, (pushed by Sessions, Otis, and the like) is an enormous failure. In contrast to the more enlightened countries in Europe, we continue on our insane course of locking up drug pushers, only to have others eagerly take their place Meanwhile drugs are cheaper than ever. prisons become more and more overcrowded. Communities are decimated. How about moving to the medical model? At least give it a try for a couple of years.

Posted by: anon | May 12, 2017 2:11:59 PM

I agree with Anon. But, of course we are dreaming here. Medical model will never happen. Not with moral prigs like Sessions leading us. Didn't he say that folks who use marijuana are bad people. With morons like that leading us, there's nowhere to go but deeper into the hole.

Posted by: Mary | May 12, 2017 2:22:08 PM

Mr Otis is quoted above as follows: "Mr. Nicey might consider quitting the smack business and getting a normal job like everybody else. I'm just not a partisan of the notion that it's always the public that has to change. Instead, in both practical and moral senses, we'll be better off when we insist that it's the criminal who has to change."

Pretty words from Mr. Otis, a white upper class Stanford grad. who never had to face blatant discrimination in finding employment because of the color of his lily white skin, and who never grew up in a neighborhood where there are no jobs, no supermarkets, no decent schools, and no fathers because they are all in prison. Not to mention that the "smack" business is driven by the ferocious and insatiable demand of white folks who just can't seem to get enough of it.

Posted by: Mary quite contrary | May 12, 2017 2:31:20 PM

There are two significant aspects to the discussion of the approach of the Obama and Trump Administrations.

The first is that the "unfairness" of the Sessions approach comes from the "unfairness" of the statutes defining the offense. The names of offenses are just the labels that the legislative branch chooses to put on an offense (as shown by the continued problems that federal courts have with attempts to enhance based on state convictions). The real issues are conduct X authorizing or mandating (depending on the statute) punishment Y. Separating out the punishment aspect, it would be otherwise uncontroversial to say that, if the prosecution can prove that defendant did X, it should charge him with X. The impetus toward a lesser-charge than the actual offense committed comes from the punishment associated with the actual offense committed.

The second and more significant aspect is the separation of powers debate. As we saw in other contexts (especially the immigration context), the duty of the executive branch (whether federal or state) is to faithfully execute the law. Most acknowledge that -- given limited resources -- the government is unable to investigate and prosecute every potential law violation (just try to count the number of traffic offenses that are not caught by your local police on your drive home from work), forcing the government to establish priorities on which types of offenses deserve the most resources. The debate comes over whether that justifies the executive branch or the courts to simply ignore the policy decisions and priorities set by the legislative branch in enacting the applicable statutes. (In other words, it is one thing for the executive branch to decide we are going to shift staff from pursuing those who dump toxic waste in order to pursue those who hire unauthorized immigrants. It's another thing for the executive branch to decide that we are not going to enforce a law because we do not agree with that law.) This memorandum clearly leans on the side of less discretion to under-enforce the law.

Posted by: tmm | May 12, 2017 3:56:03 PM

"Separating out the punishment aspect, it would be otherwise uncontroversial to say that, if the prosecution can prove that defendant did X, it should charge him with X."

If something has no effects, yes, I gather doing it would be of little note. The core point here would be the negative effects of prosecution, thus just laying everything you reasonably can on the defendant might not be "just" in such and such a case.

There has always been much more "law" out there than prosecutions, particularly when it came to certain types of morals crimes. This is touched upon in the second paragraph of the comment. In practice, it is a matter of degree, not "simply ignoring" though that in practice is true in certain cases. The fact such and such a crime has 10 years, another five also doesn't necessarily tell me that the legislative each and every time expects the government to target the 10 year one. They might very well expect some discretion, applying that in the "worst cases."

The "most serious, readily provable offense" rule seems at least in part a matter of executive judgment there.

Posted by: Joe | May 12, 2017 4:43:02 PM

@Joe writes, "The "most serious, readily provable offense" rule seems at least in part a matter of executive judgment there."

Well it is. This is why I see these types of memos as mostly if not exclusively rhetorical. The have value for whatever persuasive value they might have. Call me when a USDA get fired for not enforcing it.

Posted by: Daniel | May 12, 2017 10:09:39 PM

Federal drug sentences time served are approx 3-4 times longer than state charges around here. The feds claim they need the mandatories for breaking cartels etc.

Well then fine, restrict the mandatories to the hugest cases. But the gareden variety drug case, especially the lowest level offenders are the ones getting gammered. Especially from smallville, america, as they have had many charges, but served little jail time, mostly probation. Therefore they have a fat rap sheet, perfect for the feds. Just a while back, An OWI wS considered a violent crime. Where was the Ausa and Judges mind at.

Doesnt take Willey E Coyote Super Genius to figure out, hey what are the requirements for a violent crime. And so it went on and on. I commend the Ussc for their work on getting the guidelines lowered to where they are today.

But, but, the mandatories can rear up and hammer offenders just as they did from the late 89s. Mandatories had a chance to eliminate some of them, but we may if just lost a decade or 2 with Trump and Sessions wanting play tough guy.

p

can





Posted by: MidWestGuy | May 12, 2017 11:48:53 PM

Legal policy making, law enacting, philosophies of enforcement or of discretion to not enforce, all represent ghoulish human experimentation, without informed consent, or even follow up assessment of the effectiveness, of unintended consequences, or of utilitarian calculations.

They violate the Helsinki Principles on human experimentation. All are crimes against humanity. Because the lawyer profession is so intensely and uniformly stupid, most of these decision are regulatory quackery. Quackery is fraud. It is a regulatory taking, a violation of due process, and a mass intentional tort, fitting the criteria of strict liability.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 12:19:11 AM

The lawyer may verify that all drug dealers are violent by trying to sell some dope in the territory of the drug dealer. The latter will be right over to greet and welcome the lawyer into the neighborhood.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 12:23:05 AM

Redskella. You posted the same idiotic quote elsewhere under another name. It was rebutted.

Take away the rule of law. You are in Fallujah, spend all your waking hours on physical survival, and doing nothing else. That argument was settled 30,000 years ago. By 5000 years ago, we had law books and procedure.

Ruling class is a job like any other. They have to make systemic decisions without enough information or certainty. They deserve wealth and privilege when they do a good job. They deserve to be killed when they fail, as the lawyer profession is doing big time, today. Doing well means people live in peace; economy is growing; people are satisfied with the fairness. Lawyers make 99% of policy, so are 100% at fault for our problems. The schools that trained them, the Top Tier of law schools should be closed by National Guard cannon fire. Get rid of these failed institutions. Putting the grads of Life Skills class into policy positions would serve us far better. Hey lawyers, your profession really stinks. It in utter failure. You take our $trillion and return nothing of value.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 12:34:49 AM

Mary. What are you, a lawyer?

Go to the poorest, blackest neighborhood in our country. Be quiet. Pass your subjects. Get to Votech in high school. Come out, make $75,000 at age 19, a salary I doubt white guy Bill Otis did not see until 10-20 years older.

What the hell is wrong with you? Get to the age of Prof. Berman, with your own HVAC business, installing air in skyscrapers, and make 10 times his salary. Do you know why? HVAC has great value to the public. Lawyering is totally toxic to the public, and requires fumigation. One has to spray for reptiles.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 12:43:10 AM

I consider the length and severity of sentencing to be controversial as a factor in deterring crime, and in dropping its rate.

What is settled is the effect of the chance of being prosecuted. So prosecute none, and the rate shoots up, engaging even normal, moral people. Prosecute 100%, the crime disappears, such as the policy to pursue kidnapping.

We will need technology. Replace the worthless lawyer with prosecution robots. Cameras on every corner. Facial recognition. Prosecute the identified defendant. Sentencing is to be done by another neutral robot. Deduct the fines from the accounts of the defendants. If not assets can be seized, apply 20 lashes, for every instance of law breaking.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 12:54:35 AM

Prof. Berman. When you are fair and intelligent, you deserve praise. Thank you for returning the thoughts of Bill Otis by your extensive and straight quotation. He was the only licensed lawyer in the criminal law business to advocate for crime victims here. Fed is a licensed lawyer, but not in this specialty. I am sincere in my admiration and praise for your fairness in this post.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 6:21:19 AM

Doug, Supremacy Claus can't stop. Seven inane comments out of eighteen. Including "worthless lawyers." "Lawyering is totally toxic to the public, and requires fumigation."

Pull the plug. Thanks

Bruce

Posted by: bruce cunningham | May 13, 2017 7:56:56 AM

Bruce. You are getting obsessed. Try to ignore me. If you object to something, try to specify, and to avoid personal insult.

Posted by: David Behar | May 13, 2017 8:40:05 AM

Both Sessions and Bill Otis are white Southern men with family connections to white supremacists. Enough said. Otis in particular is deplorable. A Stanford education wasted on a cruel warped man who devotes his life to purring more folks in cages for longer periods. Just pathetic. There is no excuse

Posted by: Mike88@aol.com | May 13, 2017 11:41:45 AM

It should be disclosed that Behar is a moron, who was unable to get admitted to an accredited law school. He was a Trump supporter and self-hating Jew. He is not qualified to comment on any issue requiring the slightest nuance of thought. He is a sadist with nothing better to do than to advocate for harsher punishment of non-whites.

Posted by: Johnj@gmail.com | May 13, 2017 11:55:22 AM

Doug, respectfully, you are not offering a Hyde Park corner soapbox for anyone who chooses to say anything they want. This is a serious blog whose purpose is to assist serious people.

Supremacy Claus's vitriolic insults don't bother me. However, I am concerned that they might deter some younger lawyers from participating on the blog. That would be a shame. You owe nothing to S.C. He is taking advantage of you.

you asked him to leave and he ignored you. Do us all a favor and pull the plug.

bruce

Posted by: bruce cunningham | May 13, 2017 2:03:23 PM

If young lawyers tell me David is deterring them from participating, I will tell them they will encounter in their careers folks a lot more disturbing than David. And David is not taking advantage of me, he is enjoying the fact that I do opt to allow anyone to say nearly anything in this arena. My problem is not that David uses the soap box that I offer, but rather that he too often gets up to say the same old thing in the same old way. He has been warned about that, and we will see if he is a man of his word by either going away (as he offered to do) or dialing it back. I fear he cannot help himself and so I may be compelled to help him. But I would much rather not. Life is too short to police what others have to say, and I refuse to waste much time doing so here or elsewhere.

Posted by: Doug B | May 13, 2017 4:04:32 PM

Ah, the Resolute Oarsman. His argument in effect is one that is made every day by prosecutors all over the country at sentencing. But he thinks he is being profound and saying something that no one else has said. He is starting to remind me of Obama, beautiful words that mean nothing.

The problem with the War on Drugs is that while drugs flow north, dollars flow south. There are many laws on the books that are intended to stop the flow of money, but they are never enforced. Occasionally, a big bank gets caught laundering drug or terrorist money but is allowed to enter into a non-prosecution agreement and pay a big fine and promise never to do it again. The fine isn't paid by the culpable officers out of their own pockets, but out of corporate earnings, which means it is paid by the shareholders. A few careers are ruined, but no one goes to jail.

The Resolute Oarsman would have more credibility when he carries on about street criminals, if he would pontificate a little about our elite criminals.

Posted by: Fred | May 13, 2017 9:29:56 PM

Bruce. Thoughts?

I am not interested in this blog on this subject, but in Facebook/Twitter/Snapchat.

If you own a home, the deed line probably is in the middle of the street. The sidewalk is private property. For example, fail to remove the snow, the city may fine you. If a pedestrian slips, you get sued, and your insurance has to pay.

You may exclude people from your dining room, as the essence of a property right. You may not exclude people from your sidewalk, based on anything. Those invitees have an absolute right of way. You may not exclude people based on viewpoints, within the limits of time, manner and place. I may choose to blare hateful speech all day in front of your house until a noise ordinance says I have to stop, usually 9 PM. I may choose to do so in nasty manner, at the funeral of a young veteran. (Snyder v. Phelps, No. 09-751, an 8-1, self evident decision). I may make open, blatant death threats (Elonis v US).

So when Facebook bans me, It is not banning me from its dining room, as it has a right to, but from its sidewalk. It has no right to do so, not even if I agreed to that in unconscionable and voidable Terms of Use.

Posted by: David Behar | May 14, 2017 10:53:44 AM

Mike/John. Is this you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2R2btO4MEo

Posted by: David Behar | May 14, 2017 11:00:23 AM

Doug. Please, do not ban Bruce for his repetitive posts.

Posted by: David Behar | May 14, 2017 11:07:20 AM

Post a comment
We first heard about it last week, and now City Attorney Dennis Herrera makes it official, filing a lawsuit to compel Uber to hand over the names and addresses of all its local drivers so that SF can contact them and tell them they need a business license to operate here. It's a request that Uber previously complied with, but as of December they refused the request from the city treasurer, citing privacy concerns for its driver fleet.

Herrera issued a statement Thursday saying "The law requires any business in San Francisco to register with the Treasurer and Tax Collectors Office, whether theyre PG&E or a hairdresser. Uber and its drivers are no different. San Franciscans have a right to know who is behind the wheel when theyre being driven somewhere."

As the Chronicle reports, competitor Lyft has been far more cooperative, complying with City Treasurer Jose Cisneros's request and giving over information on 57,000 local drivers, though only 20,000 of those have so far paid their $91 license fees. It's likely that there is a lot of overlap since many drivers work for both ride-hailing companies simultaneously.

Drivers have apparently complained to Uber about the red tape, and about having their personal information posted online  but the city contends that the drivers can have their information shielded by simply creating a business name for themselves, and using a PO Box. "Uber is trying to dodge a tax law under the cloak of driver privacy, Cisneros tells the Chronicle, adding, If Uber wanted to protect their drivers, they could make them employees and pay them living wages. Uber certainly doesnt deserve a special carve out from our laws and our taxes."

Meanwhile, Uber is campaigning in support of a state bill, currently working its way through the California legislature, that would allow Uber and Lyft drivers to file a single license to operate in all California counties at once. Uber's even put up a petition, which has been signed by over 12,000 purported drivers, under the sub-heading "Protect my Private Information."

Also, as the Chronicle reports, the city is pushing for both Uber and Lyft to tell them exactly how many of their drivers are operating on San Francisco's streets  information that so far they've only shared confidentially with the California Public Utilities Commission.

The fight, of course, is similar to the one that's been waged against home-sharing sites Airbnb and HomeAway to try to get the companies to force their hosts to comply with local laws. SF won the latest battle in that war, with both companies settling with the city last week and agreeing to make their local hosts all register with the city.

Previously: Uber Under Criminal Investigation Over Shady 'Greyball' Scheme


An initial decision has come down from a federal judge in the case brought by Google's self-driving car division Waymo against competitor Uber, and the judge has denied Uber's efforts to avoid having to go to trial. As Business Insider reports, Judge William Alsup issued an order late Thursday asking the U.S. Attorney to look into whether Uber has broken the law or stolen trade secrets, as Google/Alphabet's lawyers have contended, and he separately ruled that the case could be taken to trial, squashing Uber's hopes that it would be settled in arbitration.

Uber gave a snarky statement in response to the ruling saying, "It is unfortunate that Waymo will be permitted to avoid abiding by the arbitration promise it requires its employees to make. We remain confident in our case and welcome the chance to talk about our independently developed technology in any forum."

Waymo issued its own statement saying, "This was a desperate bid by Uber to avoid the courts jurisdiction. We welcome the courts decision today, and we look forward to holding Uber responsible in court for its misconduct.

As CNet notes in the ruling, which you can read in full here, Judge Alsup also dismissed Uber's claims that Waymo was "using 'artful' or 'tactical' pleading to evade its obligation for arbitration" by removing the man at the center of this case, Anthony Levandowski, as a defendant. "These accusations are unwarranted," Alsup wrote. "Waymo has honored its obligation to arbitrate against Levandowski by arbitrating its claims (concerning employee poaching) against Levandowksi."

Alsup said that he took "no position" on whether a criminal probe would be warranted, and said that "decision entirely [is] up to the United States Attorney."

The case centers on Levandowski's alleged theft of a trove of blueprints and documents relating to the self-driving car technology known as LiDAR when he was an outgoing employee of Google. A forensic security expert at Google earlier testified that a download of the materials was easily traceable to Levandowski's personal laptop shortly before he left the company to go work for Uber.

Uber paid Levandowski a hefty sum, $680 million, to purchase a startup he created while still working at Google, the self-driving trucking company Otto. They then hired Levandowski to head up their self-driving car division, and Levandowski is separately accused of poaching Google employees to work for Uber.

As of late last month, Levandowski stepped aside as head of the self-driving car division at Uber for reasons that obviously legal. He previously pleaded the Fifth in the case to avoid self-incrimination.

Waymo filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on February 23, and they further moved in March to get an injunction to stop Uber from operating its self-driving cars on public roads altogether. They also filed a motion to ban Levandowski from working on anything self-driving related at Uber. Judge Alsup has yet to rule on either of these motions, but rulings are expected soon.

The case is being watched closely by all of Silicon Valley given the stakes and the high-profile companies involved. Back in March, The Verge spoke to Raj Rajkumar, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (where Uber was developing its self-driving cars), suggested that any ruling against Uber could threaten its ability to attract institutional investment, and he said, "If Waymo prevails after a long suit and a sequence of appeals, the nature of the compensation and fines could be staggering."

Previously: Self-Driving Car Guru Anthony Levandowski Steps Aside From Lead Role At Uber


A psychiatrist at the University of California San Francisco and his reported boyfriend, a noted former performer in pornographic films, were arrested in SF this week after police say both were caught with child pornography.

According to a press release sent by the San Francisco Police Department, their Internet Crimes Against Children "began an investigation into an individual who was uploading and trading child pornography on the internet" in March of this year.

The suspect, police say, was identified as 36-year-old SF resident Billy Lockhart, a psychiatrist who works at UCSF. According to the SFPD, "Investigators determined that Lockhart was using UCSF Wi-Fi internet to upload child pornography."

On Tuesday, police say they searched Lockharts home, located on the 100 block of Buena Vista Terrace. According to the SFPD, "investigators located numerous media devices belonging to Lockhart, which all contained hundreds of child pornography videos and images. Investigators were able to gather evidence that Lockhart was also viewing child pornography."

Police say that they also "located hundreds of child pornography files on media devices" that belong to another resident of the home, 33 year-old Benjamin Martin.

Both were arrested at the scene, police say. Lockhart was booked into San Francisco County Jail on for possession of child pornography, possession of over 600 files of child pornography, and distribution of child pornography. Martin was charged for possession of child pornography and possession of over 600 files of child pornography.

According to Lockhart's UCSF profile page, he's a graduate of Yale Universitys School of Medicine, and is a psychiatry resident in UCSF's 2019 class. In an emailed statement, the school said that when they learned of the allegations, they suspended all of Lockhart's clinical activity as well as access to UCSF systems. They also placed him on investigatory leave, they said.

"The UCSF Police Department is fully cooperating with the San Francisco Police Department in this investigation," UCSF said via statement, and takes theses allegations extremely seriously.

According to a report from The Sword (the link to which depicts pornographic images, and is decidedly NSFW), Benjamin Martin is also known as "Blu Kennedy," a gay porn actor. Per Str8UpGayPorn (similar warnings for their link, here), "Martin and Lockhart have been boyfriends for the past year," publishing numerous photos of the couple from Martin's since-removed Facebook page.

According to Str8UpGayPorn, Martin "was an extremely well known gay adult performer and model from 2006 to 2012, appearing in over 80 scenes and movies for over a dozen gay adult companies." He "was seeking to get his pilot's license for an unknown reason," The Gay Republic (also an NSFW link) reports.

Speaking with ABC 7, a neighbor of the couple says the pair "moved in just three months ago," and says the men "seemed friendly."

According to a spokesperson with the San Francisco Sheriff's Department, both men have posted bond and are out of custody. As of publication time, information on their respective court dates was not publicly available.
Today marks three weeks to the day since the massive downtown PG&E blackout of April 21 that lasted eight hours, affected some 95,000 customers, and throwing the Financial District into conniptions. The affected businesses can file claims against PG&E, and a San Francisco Business Times report finds many are filing some pretty sizable ones in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

PG&E spokesperson Andrea Menniti tells the Business Times, We've received approximately 150 claims and have already resolved more than 60 percent of those claims. But that statement tells only part of the story, because it excludes 1,800 other claims that have been submitted via PG&Es online form.

So the Business Times did some digging and reached out to about 3,500 local businesses to see if they were filing claims, and for how much. While only about a dozen responded, their complaints give us insights that many individual business lost six-figure sums in just the one blown day of productivity.

Our entire staff did not have power and could not do any work at their work stations, one anonymous law firm staffer told the publication. We sent the staff home by late morning because we could not get information on schedule for return of power. That meant staff for 16 computer stations was lost for the entire day.

No businesses were willing to comment on the record, as theyre still in ongoing negotiations with the utility company. But many claimed their single-day losses were in the neighborhood between $100,000 and $300,000. For their part, the City of San Francisco is filing a claim for $187,000 in lost revenue, and the SFMTA says their one-day losses totaled around $180,000.

We cant say for sure how much PG&E is going to have to pay out, but well know eventually. Being a publicly traded company, the utility will eventually have to disclose these amounts. A 2003 blackout downtown resulted in PG&E having to pay out around $6.5 million in compensation to customers who lost business.

Hey, do you want to file a claim against PG&E for losses you may have incurred from the blackout? You totally can! Go to www.pge.com/claims, fill out the forms with your sob story, and hope for the best.

Related: City Pens Angry Letter To PG&E About Blackout, Says Communication That Day Was 'Nonexistent'
LOS ANGELES | You can go home again. Apparently.

This month, director David Lynch revisits Twin Peaks with an 18-episode Showtime series thats about as predictable as the folks behind it.

Meeting with the press in January, Lynch said it was going to be about Laura Palmers last seven days.

Although the original series solved the mystery, Lynch never wanted to. That Laura Palmer mystery was the goose that laid these little golden eggs. And then, at a certain point, we were told we needed to wrap that up. And it never really got going again after that.

Twin Peaks ended after two seasons but spawned a film, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, that served as a prequel to the television series.

And now? This new Twin Peaks could be just about anything -- a return, a remake, a revival  that gets viewers back into the mysterious Washington town.

Kyle MacLachlan, who returns as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper, was glad to get another opportunity to work with Lynch. The idea of a return, for me, was a gift  not only to be able to work with David again within that world but to be able to return to that character.

Working with the Oscar-nominated director was joyful and freeing. You bring what you have and just celebrate the work. It spoils you as an actor.

When MacLachlan first worked with Lynch  on Dune  he wasnt quite sure what the experience was going to be like.

I had never been in front of a camera before. I didnt really know anything about film acting.

To get what he wanted Lynch would give him a word and that would put me in a different frame of mind. I somehow related to it.

Sometimes after a take, MacLachlan would go over to Lynch, stand there for a minute, quietly and something would pass between them. I dont have that with any other director that Ive worked with yet, so I consider it really special. Its great.

Lynch and his fellow creator Mark Frost have a unique relationship, too. Co-star Kimmy Robertson said Lynch would lie on a couch and Frost would sit in a chair and they would go into the world of Twin Peaks and describe what they see during the original series run.

For the new edition, Lynch said the two worked together on Skype. Mark lives in Ojai and I live in Hollywood and we Skype and write together.

In the beginning, he said, the two were lost in the wilderness. When they came out of the woods, they discovered Twin Peaks. Within this world, there were other worldsand thats how it started.

Whenever the actors had questions about a scene, theyd talk with Lynch, actress Madchen Amick says. Sometimes Mark was there on set and wed always go to David. But we would always sit down and we would talk through the scene every time before we filmed it.

Lynch provided details but he expected his cast to refrain from sharing secrets.

Now, theyre practically gagged, unable to say anything until the series premieres May 21 on Showtime.

While some original actors are not in the update, Laura Dern  a Lynch regular  is attached.

She wont identify her character nor will she compare the Twin Peaks experience to, say, the Blue Velvet one or the Wild at Heart one.

Its such an incredible gift to have this unique relationship and dynamic with a filmmaker where a breath is a direction, she said. A sigh or a shrug of the shoulders, you know exactly what he wants.

She now has a shorthand with Lynch  one that few outside his world can boast. Its always felt like family, Dern said. Its always been the most joyful place, the most inventive place, the place where you feel safe to be brave. He just creates an environment thats incredible in that way.

Even what hes not telling is an interesting beautiful story in its own way because now we all have what David Lynch is to us.

Dern said other directors have asked her about working with him because he helped them find their vision.

For us, as actors, its the same, she said. We carry David with us and, hopefully, it makes us braver, even when its not being required verbally or the person knows exactly what to ask for in a way David might.

"Twin Peaks" airs May 21 on Showtime.
SIOUX CITY | Ten years ago, at the age of 47, Barb Pieper found a lump in her breast.

The diagnosis of breast cancer, which Pieper described as a "fluke" since she had no family history of the disease, couldn't have come at a worse time. Pieper had recently purchased her Morningside bungalow.

"I put a bunch of money into (the house), so I didn't have a lot of extra cash," explained Pieper, who was dressed in a hot pink cardigan as she sat in her home. Her reflection shown in the glass of a framed Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure survivor medal setting on the table in front of her. "I was pretty lucky because I had a good job and short-term disability, but still, financially, it's rough."

Pieper, who said she had a feeling breast cancer wasn't going to kill her, didn't get discouraged by her situation. She got help in the form of a grant from Susan G. Komen to pay for her treatment.

Susan G. Komen, formerly known as Susan G. Komen for the Cure and The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, is the world's largest nonprofit source of funding for the fight against breast cancer. To date, Komen has invested more than $2.9 billion in groundbreaking research, community health outreach, advocacy and programs in more than 60 countries. The organization, which reduced deaths from breast cancer by 38 percent between 1989-2014, hopes to increase that percentage to 50 by 2026.

After finishing chemotherapy at the June E. Nylen Cancer Center, Pieper decided she wanted to give back. She got involved with Susan G. Komen Siouxland volunteering for the Race for the Cure.

The ninth annual run/walk to raise awareness of the disease and celebrate survivors will take place Sunday in downtown Sioux City. This year, participants will start and finish at the Stoney Creek Hotel & Conference Center, 300 Third St., and utilize the Perry Creek Trail System.

Susan G. Komen Siouxland executive director Kristi Quinn said she expects around 1,200 participants to attend Sunday's 5K run and walk. So far, teams have raised $10,000 of their $50,000 goal, but Quinn said those efforts will continue through June. Seventy-five percent of the money will benefit Siouxland organizations and projects that educate about or assist in breast health care, while the other 25 percent will support breast cancer research.

"It is a lot of fun and it is a good time, but what we're really here about is stopping breast cancer," Quinn said. "You can't really find anyone who doesn't know someone or who isn't related to someone who hasn't had an incident of breast cancer."

In preparation for her first Race for the Cure, Pieper set up the course and decorated it with pink balloons and ribbons. Soon, she found herself on Susan G. Komen Siouxland's board. She served a stint as education chair and was elected president.

During her tenure as president, Pieper said her proudest moment was meeting Susan G. Komen founder Nancy Brinker during a luncheon in Sioux City in 2012. Brinker founded the organization in memory of her sister, Susan, who died at age 36 after a three-year battle with breast cancer.

"She is just the most gracious, beautiful women I have ever met in my life," Pieper said of Brinker. "That's my highlight of my whole Komen experience."

Pieper said the races kind of blur together. While she usually walks the 5K, she recalled the year she ran it as a "beautiful day." She said her brother-in-law was running in front of her and her son was somewhere behind her.

"It was just a good race. It was a fun one," she said.

Pieper took a break from the Race for the Cure for three years while she was working as a travel nurse. Her job took her to Connecticut, Arizona, Washington and Kentucky. Another health scare and wanting to spend time with her grandchildren led Pieper to return to Sioux City a year ago and resume her volunteer work with Susan G. Komen Siouxland.

Since she has been home, a few of Pieper's friends have been diagnosed with breast cancer and are going through treatment. She urges other women to advocate for their own health.

"Don't wait if you think there's something wrong," she said. "There's a lot of help out there. If you don't have the money, ask for it."
OMAHA | Two people face federal manslaughter charges in connection with the death of a man on the Winnebago Indian reservation last month.

Federal authorities say in court documents that Jeremiah Wolfe, 19, and Lawrencia Merrick, 21, killed William Redhorn Jr., 32, on April 23 near a parking lot on grounds of Ho-Chunk Inc., 1 Mission Road, in Winnebago.

According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Omaha, Merrick and Wolfe both told authorities that they had stopped at the Ho-Chunk parking lot at around 4 a.m. that morning to use a free Wi-Fi signal there. Both said they saw Redhorn, who appeared to be intoxicated, trying to break into the Ho-Chunk building.

Merrick told an FBI agent that she opened the door to their vehicle and told Redhorn to "get out of there." Redhorn made some statements Merrick said she couldn't understand and obscene hand gestures and began to approach the vehicle.

Merrick and Wolfe then got out of their vehicle, and Redhorn tried to punch Merrick, Wolfe told authorities. Wolfe then charged Redhorn, and the two wound up on the ground at the bottom of a small hill. Wolfe told investigators that Redhorn bit him on the arm as they wrestled on the ground and he put Redhorn in a headlock while Merrick punched and kicked Redhorn.

During the fight, Wolfe's mother, Natasha Wolfe, who had been in the back seat of the vehicle, tried to break up the fight and kicked Redhorn in the ribs. A 14-year-old male who had been with them also struck Redhorn in the back with a bag.

According to the complaint, Wolfe said he held Redhorn until he went limp and was unconscious. Both Wolfe and Merrick said they thought Redhorn was just unconscious and would "walk it off" after he woke up.

After the incident, Wolfe and Merrick said they went to Natasha Wolfe's home, washed their bloody clothes and went to WinnaVegas Casino near Sloan, Iowa. They returned to Winnebago around 11 a.m., they said, and went mushroom hunting until around 1 p.m., then returned home and went to bed. They were awakened when they heard family members in the house talking about a body being found at the Ho-Chunk building.

Later that night, Wolfe and Merrick turned themselves in to police. According to the complaint, both said Redhorn's death was an accident. Wolfe told police that he "never meant to kill him or anything."

An autopsy determined Redhorn's cause of death was strangulation and that head trauma could have been a contributing factor.

Natasha Wolfe and the 14-year-old do not presently face charges.
SIOUX CITY | A Storm Lake man was arrested Friday morning after police said he assaulted a coworker during a fight at a packing plant.

The Storm Lake Police Department in a Friday release reported being called to the Tyson Foods pork processing plant in Storm Lake at 4:30 a.m. Police said Xerxes Bouldin, 26, of Storm Lake, attacked a coworker at the plant.

Police said Bouldin charged the other Tyson worker, then struck the man in the face several times, breaking several teeth and causing other injuries. Bouldin fled the plant and was found by police by 5 a.m.

He was arrested on the felony charge of assault causing serious injury. Bouldin was held in Buena Vista County Jail on $5,000 bond.
SIOUX CITY | A ceremony commemorating National Police Week will be held in downtown Sioux City on Wednesday.

National Police Week begins Sunday, and the local ceremony will be held at noon Wednesday at the Public Safety Memorial on Douglas Street, just north of City Hall at Sixth Street.

Sioux City Police Department Lt. Pat McCann said the public is invited to observe law enforcement agencies participate in a memorial ceremony for fallen law enforcement officers.

Right after the outdoor event at the memorial, there will be an awards ceremony for Sioux City Police Department officers in City Hall. Additionally, the Woodbury County Sheriff's Office at that time will also host a reception in the Woodbury County Courthouse, just north of the Public Safety Memorial.
SIOUX CITY | A Sioux City man is accused of leading authorities on a 70 mph chase throughout neighborhoods in a stolen vehicle Thursday night.

The Woodbury County Sheriff's Office also found a rifle and ammunition inside the car after the chase.

Derick Alexander has been charged with second-degree theft, eluding and a number of other traffic charges.

The 29-year-old was booked into the Woodbury County Jail in lieu of a $32,500 bond.

Court documents say Alexander was driving a white Pontiac with paper dealer plates southbound in the 1900 block of Floyd Boulevard Thursday night after 10 p.m. The officer could not see an in transit sticker anywhere on the vehicle, so they initiated a traffic stop. Alexander failed to oblige and started eluding authorities throughout neighborhoods in the northside. The documents said he was reaching 70 mph in the residential areas.

The car eventually went into the front lawn of a home near the corner of 35th Street and Pawnee Place.

A Woodbury County Sheriff's deputy on scene said that two suspects fled on foot from the Pontiac, and were apprehended after a short chase.

The Pontiac was listed as an actively stolen vehicle from a Sioux City dealership.

Inside of the trunk of the vehicle police found 9mm rounds of ammunition as well as a rifle. The documents said Alexander denies any knowledge of the ammunition or the gun in the trunk.

Alexander is also accused of being under the influence of marijuana and Xanax. His driver's license also was suspended.
SIOUX CITY | Three faculty members will not return for the 2017-18 school year, after the Western Iowa Tech Community College Board of Trustees this week made personnel cuts to address reductions in state aid.

WITCC President Terry Murrell on Thursday confirmed the board approved his recommendation to eliminate three faculty posts to balance the college's budget. Murrell said the faculty cuts will come from the Career and Technical and Arts and Science departments.

The move will save between $250,000 to $300,000 in salary and benefits, he said. Murrell first aired the recommendation in the April board meeting.

Murrell said he had hoped to avoid cutting faculty jobs as president, but said circumstances with college revenues made it necessary to make the reductions in his sixth year as president.

"Western Iowa Tech Community College strives to remain true to our core mission of providing quality education and economically enhancing the communities in our service area. The College makes every attempt to minimize any impact to our core mission so that our students and community do not feel the budgetary constraints," Murrell said.

WITCC currently has 74 faculty members and operates with a budget of $33.6 million. The budget for 2017-18 has not been set, but Murrell said that should be put in place in June. The fiscal year starts July 1.

"(The college) won't be able to (approve the budget) until the governor takes action on the budget passed by the legislature and we finalize negotiations with all of our bargaining groups," Murrell said.

The reductions are tied to mid-year budget cuts by state lawmakers that cut state funding to Iowa's 15 community colleges by $3 million. Early in 2017, the Iowa Legislature and Gov. Terry Branstad cut $118 million from the state budget, effective for the the last five months of the fiscal year through June. That step followed a weakened estimation of state revenues.

For the 2017-18 fiscal year, community colleges would share in a $1.6 million increase in state funding, under the Legislature-approved budget.
No one - at least no one outside North Korea - will argue North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is unpredictable, if not unstable.

And he's working to achieve a goal of nuclear-armed missiles.

To say that's a volatile mixture is to define the word understatement.

In what arguably is the most difficult overseas threat to the United States and its allies facing the administration of President Donald Trump, North Korea continues to launch missile tests, thumb its nose at pressure to stop, and make threats, including threats against the United States.

Where does this end?

Today, the answer to that question is as murky as the view from outside North Korea is of life inside the secretive country. Troubling doesn't begin to describe this tension-filled standoff for which no simple answers exist.

As America and other nations, including China, strategize (together, we hope) about North Korea, we prefer to hear measured instead of aggressive rhetoric from our leaders here at home.

In our view, saber-rattling serves no useful purpose in dealing with Kim. Certainly, American power is no secret to him; we don't need to flex our military muscles, they speak for themselves.

In other words, we see little to no upside, but a possibly dangerous, provocational downside to remarks like this one, offered by President Donald Trump in an April 27 interview with Reuters: There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely.

Rather, we believe more potential value exists in the kind of talk we heard from Trump during an interview with Bloomberg News on May 1 when the president said he would be "honored" to meet with Kim face to face "under the right circumstances."

We cringed at use of the word "honored," but we do not dismiss altogether the idea of a high-level meeting of some kind between U.S. and North Korean leaders (as well as leaders of other nations in the region because this isn't only America's problem) at some future point if it would reduce nuclear stress and uncertainty.

Of course, a spectrum of considerations would require discussion before any such meeting happens.

Nuclear weapons raise stakes. Nuclear weapons in the hands of someone like Kim raise them still more. In response, nations involved in and impacted by this dispute, including the U.S., should seek to turn down the heat and pursue constructive dialogue. The alternatives are, frankly, unthinkable.
SIOUX CITY | The search to find Sioux City's next top cop is underway.

The city of Sioux City on Friday began advertising its opening for a new police chief, a position that will become vacant Aug. 31 with the retirement of current chief Doug Young.

City human resources director Janelle Bertrand said the city is posting the job opening on its website and in national journals. The city will receive applications through June 9.

According to the job description posting, the position will receive a salary between $99,468 and $139,284 per year, depending on qualifications. The position is hired by and serves under the city manager.

Young, 60, has served on the department for 36 years, eight of them as chief. Young succeeded longtime chief Joe Frisbie, who served as chief from 1997 to 2009.

Young publicly announced his intent to retire in March, saying he felt it was time to step down and let someone else lead the department. He said he was proud of how Sioux City's police department has continued to stay with the times and has connected with its community.

Young made $121,551.96 in gross earnings during the previous fiscal year and was the city's fifth-highest-paid employee behind the city manager, city attorney, assistant city manager and IT director.

Sioux City's police chief oversees a department of approximately 125 sworn officers, the fourth-most in the state, and 25 civilian employees.
CA, Inc., doing business as CA technologies, develops, markets, delivers, and licenses software products and services in the United States and internationally. It operates through three segments: Mainframe Solutions, Enterprise Solutions, and Services. The Mainframe Solutions segment offers solutions for the IBM z Systems platform, which runs various mission critical business applications. Its mainframe solutions enable customers enhance economics by increasing throughput and lowering cost per transaction; increasing business agility through DevOps tooling and processes; increasing reliability and availability of operations through machine intelligence and automation solutions; and protecting enterprise data with security and compliance. The Enterprise Solutions segment provides a range of software planning, development, and management tools for mobile, cloud, and distributed computing environments. It primarily provides customers secure application development, infrastructure management, automation, and identity-centric security solutions. The Services segment offers various services, such as consulting, implementation, application management, education, and support services to commercial and government customers for implementation and adoption of its software solutions. The company serves banks, insurance companies, other financial services providers, government agencies, information technology service providers, telecommunication providers, transportation companies, manufacturers, technology companies, retailers, educational organizations, and health care institutions. It sells its products through direct sales force, as well as through various partner channels comprising resellers, service providers, system integrators, managed service providers, and technology partners. The company was formerly known as Computer Associates International, Inc. and changed its name to CA, Inc. in 2006. CA, Inc. was founded in 1974 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
The gravity of the existential threat we face from Islamic Jihad is truly of epic proportions. It is essentially a battle pitting free-civilized man against a totalitarian barbarian. What is at stake is the struggle for our very soul - namely who we are and what we represent. The lives that were sacrificed for individual rights and freedoms that we've come to cherish are being chiseled away from right under our noses by the stealth jihadists. And many of us are in denial and totally clueless.



The left's appeasement and pandering to evil is nothing new. What makes their utopian delusions so infuriating and unpardonable is that it is not only they who will have to pay the consequences, and deservedly, so, they are thwarting and undermining our best efforts at resistance and are thus dragging us down in the process as well.







By Peter Lancz,, the head of the Raoul Wallenberg World Campaign Against Racism.
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Center.The progressive global elite is breathing a sigh of relief after centrist newcomer to electoral politics, Emmanuel Macron, defeated Marine Le Pen to become the next president of France. After the shocks of last years Brexit and the election of populist Donald Trump as president, the rejection of populist, nationalist, and anti-EU parties in Austria, the Netherlands, and now the second most important EU country suggests the tide has turned. But the Eurocrats and Europhiles shouldnt start popping champagne corks yet. Like all of Europe, Frances problems run deep.Macron is the consummate establishment insider, with the youth, pleasing personality, and hope and change rhetoric of Barack Obama, who endorsed him because he represents, as Obama said, the values that we care so much about. He is the opposite of the fiery, true political outsider Le Pen, who is nearing 50 and focuses on the gloomy problems of immigration and terrorism, and has hard things to say about the EU and the Euro.Macron also got lucky when his first-round opponent in the voting, center-conservative Francois Fillon, was weakened by a nepotism scandal. Macrons other opponent, radical socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon, is too unhinged even for a basically socialist electorate. And the long demonization of Le Pen as an anti-Semitic Petainist throwback and an Islamophobic, racist fascist has made her a political pariah despite her basically socialist and redistributionist policies, and her promise to do something about the immigration and terrorism that so many French people find threatening.Macron had another advantage: he put forth a seemingly reasonable program for curing Frances economic ills, which are critical: government spending at 57% of GDP, the highest in Europe; a retirement age of 62 and a 35-hour workweek; 3,500 pages of employment regulations; an unemployment rate of nearly 10% (double that for those under 25); a GDP growth rate barely over 1%; public debt at nearly 90% of GDP; an income tax rate topping out at 45%; nine million people living below the poverty line; and welfare spending at nearly 32% of GDP. Macron promises to tackle the job and growth-killing policies that have created these dismal numbers, but hes unlikely to have a parliamentary coalition big enough to get such reforms through. Dont forget, about a third of the French voters cast a pox on both your houses vote, either abstaining or casting a blank or spoiled white ballot. This suggests a fragile foundation for Macrons future government.And if he tries to follow through on his campaign promises, he will likely meet stiff resistance from critics of neoliberalism, the epithet in Europe for free-market capitalism. In March 2006, 2.7 million mostly young French people protested against a minor reform of employment law that would allow entry-level workers to be more easily let go. And that was when the president was Jacques Chirac, a socialist who decried Anglo-Saxon ultraliberalism, Euro-speak for laissez-faire capitalism. Ten years later, socialist prime minister Manuel Valls faced nationwide riots and protests, some broken up with tear gas, over other employment reforms, which he had to get passed by invoking special powers and bypassing parliament. President Macron and his neoliberal reforms are unlikely to be any more successful, given the strength of Melanchons support, the disaffection with Macron of a third of French voters, and the French peoples enduring love for their short work-week and generous subsidies.And one can question whether Macrons heart will really be in getting France out of its dirigiste doldrums and fulfill his promise to cut government workers, lower the corporate tax rate, and reform employment laws to make it easier to hire and fire workers. A one-time investment banker and graduate of the two most elite universities in France, the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) and the Ecole nationale dadministration (ENA), he spent two years as Socialist Francois Hollandes economic advisor. In addition, hes a big fan of the centralized, top-down rule of the EU and it chronic democracy deficit, demanding sanctions on Hungary and Poland for violating EU values on immigration when the two countries defended their borders from the hordes of mostly male economic migrants and jihadists invited in by Angela Merkel. In short, an elite member of the establishment unlikely to be a champion of the free-market, regulatory reforms France desperately needs.Worse yet, Macrons position on Muslim immigration and home-grown terrorism is delusional. There has been a string of lethal terrorist attacks in France in the last few years. Three Jewish children slaughtered in Toulouse (2012), 12 dead in the Charlie Hebdo attack, four Jews killed in a Kosher grocery store, 130 killed in the Bataclan theater (2015), 86 people run-down by a truck in Nice, followed by the beheading of a priest (2016), and on the eve of the election the murder of one police officer and the serious wounding of two others. These are just the most spectacular attacks. For years now gangs of Muslim immigrants, many segregated in Muslim mini-states, routinely burn thousands of cars, riot and destroy property, and take over public spaces as the police mostly watch. No wonder that almost half of French polled believe more refugees will increase the likelihood of terrorism, and in another poll 61% support a ban on Muslim immigration.Yet Macrons comments on Muslim immigrants and terrorism reflect the globalist elites chronic refusal to talk honestly about Islam and terror. Dr. Guy Milliere of the University of Paris, writing for the Gatestone Institute , has collected a catalogue of Macrons myopic pronouncements: he claimed the French presence in Algeria was a crime against humanity, promised that France would be open and welcoming to immigration from the Arab world and North Africa, pledged to facilitate the construction of mosques in France, and said French culture does not exist. And during the debate with Le Pen, he spoke of social issues as the key to understanding home-grown jihadist terror. In short, the same EU suicidal, we-are-the-world multiculturalist dogma that has covered the streets of France in blood, and that is undermining the national identities and liberal political orders of countries across Europe.Macrons embrace of the EU elites same transnational stateless idealism, suicidal multiculturalism, and technocratic arrogance is likely to feed rather than defang the populist parties, and continue to undermine the civilizational foundations of Europe and the national identities of its countries. And they will worsen Frances problems. Demography is not on Frances side, as the number of immigrants is increasing faster than the native-born French. Immigrants are also on average younger.Like other governments across Europe, the French continue to nurse the fantasy that young immigrants will replace the lost workers necessary for paying the taxes that support old-age entitlements. Muslim immigrants, however, are overrepresented in prisons, unemployment statistics, and welfare rolls. They form a large recruiting pool for terrorist organizations like ISIS and al Qaeda, promising more attacks like those in Paris and Nice.Finally, the French economy is on track for further dislocations caused by slow growth and high levels of unemployment. The expensive and extensive social welfare benefits will grow costlier, leading to more increases in the national debt and higher growth-killing taxes. Most important, the decline of faith and patriotism leaves many French without the will to defend their way of life against a jihadist foe that knows exactly what he believes is worth killing and dying for.All these trends point to a coming social cataclysm that will either make the populist and nationalist parties more attractive, or lead to further Islamization that destroys French culture, as imagined in Michele Houellebecqs dystopian novel Submission, a dark but plausible scenario outlining how France could end up a Muslim nation.The transnational Western elites celebrating the defeat of the fascist and racist Marine Le Pen are whistling past the graveyard as they stroll to their rich, white enclaves where the costs of their idealism are never paid. Macron is unlikely to save the French economy, and certainly shows no evidence of understanding the threat of jihadist terror and creeping Islamization. A Wall Street Journal columnist called Le Pens welfare-state, anti-globalist economic proscriptions an illusion, and praised the reformist Macron and supporters because they dont peddle dangerous illusions. But illusions about Islam and unassimilated Muslim immigrants of the sort Macron peddles are much more dangerous and deadly.Macron is not turning a new page in French history, as he claimed in his victory speech. The failed statism and bankrupt internationalist idealism will remain unchanged and unreformed until events, the teacher of fools, forces a change.
Whether your mom was more like June Cleaver or Peg Bundy you no doubt have a special place in your heart for her. If youre lucky enough to have her around here are some places you can take her to celebrate her special day, Mothers Day, Sunday, May 14.

SuViche will be celebrating Mothers Day by offering all mothers a complimentary glass of champagne or a complimentary Mimosa at all its locations. If mom likes her drinks a little stronger, happy hour prices will be in effect from 3-7 p.m. with $4 Beers, $5 cocktails in Wynwood and Las Olas and $4 beer, wine and sake in South Beach and Brickell. The Happy Hour menu features a variety of small plates such as Tuna Tataki, Ceviche Natural, Crunchy Spicy Tuna Roll, and Tiradito starting at $5. For more information, please visit www.suviche.com or call 954-656-3663.

Naked Crab, in the B Ocean Resort, 1140 Seabreeze Blvd., will be serving up a seafood buffet brunch from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The feast will offer crab-stuffed lobster tail, shrimp cocktail, snow crab, crab cakes, crab Benedict, and lobster and mushroom hash. If mom prefers more traditional breakfast dishes there are waffle and omelet station, and a carving area while a carving area will serve leg of lamb and honey-glazed ham. Get mom tipsy after her complimentary glass of prosecco with $10 bottomless drinks, such as mango Bellinis, Mimosas, Bloody Marys and tableside cocktails. The brunch is $65 per person and $29 for children 5 to 12 years old. Reservations can be made by calling 954-727-7090.

Louie Bossis Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton locations will both offer their regular brunch menus with unlimited Mimosas, Bloody Marys, Bellinis Infinite Aperol Spritzes for $13 with the purchase on an entree. Both locations will also be offering specials and Happy Hour on Mother's Day.



Xtreme Action Park, 5300 N. Powerline Fort Lauderdale, will be celebrating Mothers Day by offering all moms a free brunch buffet and $2 Mimosas from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. when they bring the kids. Moms will be free to choose from a display of fruit, Danishes, French toast, sausage, bacon and eggs, juice, coffee and water. Free face painting for kids will also be offered all weekend. Not bad for $10 for adults and $5 for kids under 12. Then mom can work off some of those calories on the overhead obstacle course, or by roller skating or bowling. Call 954-491-6265 for more information.

Looking for something to do with Mom after brunch on Mothers Day? While Im sure shed appreciate tea dance at Hunters (and would be treated like a queen by the queens), maybe something more low-key might be better. How about popping in to Sculpture By Sylvie, 2420 N. Dixie, right in Wilton Manors for an opportunity to create a beautiful piece of stenciled bisque? The workshop is from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and runs $115 for the two of you.
Father Bill Collins probably wont be officially canonized as a saint by the Vatican. Unofficially, Collins was canonized long ago by those who knew and loved him.

He was a saint, an innovator, a man of true compassion and feeling, said longtime friend Terry DeCarlo. DeCarlo met Collins when he worked at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of South Florida, now known as The Pride Center.

Hes a man who would sit with you, laugh with you, cry with you, sit there and hold your hand. He would sit there and counsel you if you were going through something, even if you didnt ask. He could see it in your face and see it in your words. He was a man who just was out there and wanted to help, DeCarlo said.

Collins, 86, a Franciscan priest who founded Poverello 30 years ago, died in hospice on May 10.

He leaves behind family, friends, and a legacy  an organization with 218 volunteers which feeds thousands of people each year, operates its own gym and revenue-generating thrift store, and provides chiropractic, acupuncture, reiki, massage services, and haircuts.

Started from the back of Collins car, the organization moved from Pompano Beach in 1992 to the Shoppes of Wilton Manors. In 2011, the organization moved to its current location on Dixie Highway. Originally, the mission of Poverello was to help those with HIV/AIDS but its spectrum has widened over the years.

Collins began ministering to people living with the virus in 1985 after he was appointed chaplain at Imperial Point Hospital. According to a 2007 Sun Sentinel article, Collins cashed in his $19,000 pension and began delivering food to those same people shortly before founding Poverello, which means poor little one in Italian. I cant think of anything that fulfills my vocation as a Franciscan better than helping others, Collins told the Sun Sentinel.

He did what he did out of the goodness of his heart, DeCarlo said. He didnt do it for press or to say come look at me. 90 percent of his body was heart. He just made it happen. Thats the mark of a true compassionate individual. They dont look for the recognition and he never did. He dedicated his life. Thats a true saint in my eyes. He was an amazing, amazing man and helped so many people throughout the years. I wish my life or my tombstone would read as much as his.

Thomas Pietrogallo, Poverellos chief operations officer, took over for Collins about a year ago because of his declining health. Pietrogallo said that Collins health kept him from spending a lot of time at Poverello recently.

But he never really left.

He engendered the whole philosophy that we have. We put love into those groceries [we give to people], Pietrogallo said. Poverellos 218 volunteers, added Pietrogallo, are there because of Collins.

Thats an important legacy of giving . . . a reflection of his work and who he recruited along the way. Without those volunteers, Pietrogallo said 19 full time staff members would be needed to do the equivalent amount of work. If we had to pay 19 additional people, we wouldnt be able to make this work.

At one of their last meetings, Pietrogallo said Collins was just as humble as he has always been and deflected the credit for Poverellos success from himself onto the volunteers and staff.

I thanked him [for starting Poverello] and he said all I did was have a good idea. I thought that was a really humble and beautiful way of characterizing his role around here.

Information on funeral services for Collins were not available at press time. SFGN will provide them when they become available.
Theres a lot more to Argentina in 2017 than famous icons such as Eva Peron. When youre in Buenos Airesa city that was once all about Evita, tango, and steakthese days, its clear that the city is no longer just a European enclave; its a contemporary haven for young creatives. Thanks to a recent change in government, solid new investments and developments, and strong immigrant growth, the city feels refreshed. Coffee, naturally, plays a perfect role in this very evolution. And the new Editor Market, right in the heart of the creative neighborhood of Palermo, recently overhauled its coffee offering inside the design store cafe.

But first, coffee as a concept in Argentina deserves a moment of reverence. After all, it has deep and very specifically rigid roots in the very culture of the countryinspired by tippings over from Brazil, and its long strikes back to Europe via Spain and Italy. And as portenos (local Buenos Aires residents) will tell youthey do the best coffee in the world. Period. It may be an overstatement at the very least, but with dozens of specialty cafes and a new respect for fresh beans all over town, we might be more inclined to listen to the sweet hyperbole these days.

Editor Market is a chic design store, which is a new retail concept for Argentineans. The simple, stark white warehouse space was founded in 2015 by Gabriel Brener, who believed that Argentinean designers needed a better, bigger, and more accessible platform. We decided to do it on Avenida Corrientes to showcase this beautiful avenue and give it a new meaning, looking toward the future, says Brener. After its opening, we added two more stores, one in Palermo [our Soho and Williamsburg mix] and Nordelta. The name simply came from offering exclusive editions of brands, all curated by experts in each categoryfrom fashion and beauty to home decor and coffee, of course.

We love good coffee, says Agustina Fernandez, who works on the creative direction of Editor Market. So when we decided we would have a coffee shop as part of our project, we knew we wanted to offer the best specialty coffee in Buenos Aires. Along the way, we learned we would need four key points that represent our path toward excellence: the raw materials, the baristas, the grinder [the La Marzocco Vulcano], and the coffee makers [the La Marzocco GB5 and FB80].

And so they went to work with these goals in mind. The barista side was difficult because its a new profession here in Buenos Aires, says Fernandez. But the special blend from the coffee supplier Coffee Town was much easier to procure. Together we designed our exclusive blend for Editor, says Rodrigo Riccitelli, who is responsible for the kitchen and all its coffee.

And the beans come from Honduras, Sumatra, and Colombiawhich gives the baristas plenty to talk about. The Sumatran coffees complexity complements the Colombian coffees acidity and the Honduran coffees sweet and citric notes, says Fernandez. The blend was conceived to achieve the best extraction in both espresso and other systems, without losing its distinctive notes.

The coffee culture in Buenos Aires is directly related to social meetings and friendly gatherings, says Riccitelli. We use it as an excuse to drink coffee and chat, talk about work, relationships and life itself. But even Argentinas coffee intensives, who traditionally love espresso drinks, have come around to the French press, a Chemex, and even an AeroPressall of which are offered by Editor Market. People still drink mostly espresso, cappuccino, plus our new tonic espressos and cold brew in summer, adds Riccitelli. Argentineans enjoy drinking coffee at a table rather than running away with it. Although this modality has grown a lot in our city.

We are also big fans of matcha tea, which is already a global hit but wasnt sold in Argentina, adds Fernandez. We decided to import it from Japan and offer it to our customers for them to enjoy its wonderful properties. And with that Editor Market has grown the rest of its menu to include handmade pastries, sandwiches, fresh salads, and breakfasts.

Looking around the Palermo locations market, it is filled with young people hunting for home goods and grabbing a coffee to go, well-dressed women sitting around talking about the latest political scandal, coffee fans who come every day to have their dripper cup, readers who stack up magazines and sip on a cappuccino. One of the best things about our work is that we have so many clients who travel 30 miles just to come here to enjoy a cup of coffee, says Riccitelli. Welcome to the new Argentina.

Editor Market has multiple locations in Buenos Aires. Visit their official website and follow them on Facebook Twitter , and Instagram

Daniel Scheffler is a Sprudge staff writer at large. His work has appeared in T Magazine, Travel And Leisure, Monocle, Playboy, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and Butt. Read more Daniel Scheffler on Sprudge.
During his rookie season Classic Pro was a fringe player, but hes undefeated to kick start his sophomore campaign for trainer/co-owner Dr. Ian Moore.

Classic Pro, who is listed at 45-1 in Trot Magazine's Pepsi North America Cup Spring Book, went 0-for-11 as a freshman while banking a little more than $120,000. So far this year, hes a perfect 2-for-2 thanks in part to his impressive score Thursday evening at Mohawk Racetrack.

Moore took the hopples off the colt while training down this winter, and after a pair of successful qualifiers at the Southern Oaks Training Center, hes reeled off pari-mutuel scores in 1:57.3 and 1:52.1.

He splashed to a 1:57.3 triumph in the mud at Mohawk on May 4, and earlier this evening he turned in a front-stepping score for driver Louis Roy in 1:52.1 in a non-winner of two races tilt for four-year-olds and younger.

Moore shares ownership on the son of Shadow Play-Kattimon with R G McGroup Ltd and Serge Savard.

Later on the card a one-horse spill occurred in Race 9. Moments after the start pacing filly Village Jamie took a bad step, broke and fell. She unseated driver Trevor Henry before running loose behind the remainder of the field.

The starting gate crew apprehended the filly in the backstretch and escorted her in front of the grandstand where she was tended to. She suffered scrapes and cuts as a result of the fall. Trevor Henry got up quickly walked to the paddock with no apparent injuries. He went on to drive in the finale.

To view results for Thursday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Thursday Results  Mohawk Racetrack.
If you havent made plans for your Mom or that special lady in your life for this Sunday (May 14) dont worry, theres still time -- and weve got a great idea for you that the whole family will enjoy!

Imagine taking your Mom (and your family) out for a scrumptious brunch or delicious lunch, and then for a leisurely drive through the countryside with a stop at a Standardbred Horse farm to see mares and foals frolicking in the fields, or watch some two-year-olds in training at a training centre? Wouldnt that be a great way to spend Mothers Day? High Stakes Farm in Moffat, Mac Lilley Farms in Dutton, and Seelster Farms in Lucan will be opening their farms to the general public for a special Mothers Day Open House while thestable.ca will be hosting their Spring Showcase event at Tomiko Training Centre in Campbellville on Sunday as well.

Seelster Farms will be opening their farm from 10:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. The Open House at Seelster Farms is an officially recognized fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society, with voluntary donations being graciously accepted on their behalf.

High Stakes Farm will be opening their gates from 1:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. The Open House at High Stakes is an officially recognized fundraiser for the Ontario Standardbred Adoption Society (OSAS).

Mac Lilley Farms will host their event from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. In addition to showcasing their mares and foals, the Hands On Horses Team from the Ontario Harness Horse Assocation (OHHA) will be providing rides in jog carts around the racetrack. The Glencoe 4-H horse club members will be passing out cupcakes and drinks to the guests.

Mac Lilley Farms will also promote the 250th anniversary of horse racing in Canada with a commemorative mile and information display.

The farms will showcase their mares, foals, stallions and facilities and educate visitors about Standardbred breeding and racing. The Open House provides a great opportunity for people who would not normally have a chance to visit a horse farm to connect with the horses and the people in the Standardbred industry. This event is free to the general public.

Thestable.cas Spring Showcase will feature their two-year-olds in training. The event will kick off at 10:30 a.m. and you can watch as 50 youngsters of thestable.ca and other trainers, show what they've got as potential racehorses.

Thestable.ca will have pony rides for the kids, rides on a jog cart with actual horses for the aspiring drivers in the crowd, and a BBQ for everyone. The first 30 moms will get a special gift and there will be plenty of door prizes. You can RSVP here.

And if youre interested in a trip to the races on Mothers Day, click here to locate the racetrack nearest you that is hosting a Mothers Day card.

May Zoom Contest

If youre a member of the I Love Canadian Harness Racing Fan Club, heres your chance to take some photos for Mays Zoom Photo contest. The theme is Mares and foals! Were looking for photos of foals and the frisky things they have been getting up to this spring! Foals taking their first steps, frolicking in the pasture, enjoying the sunshine or just getting up to no good!

Get out there and get snappin for your chance to win some great prizes! Please send your photo submissions to [email protected]. The deadline to enter is Thursday, May 25 at 5:00 p.m. (EST)

The addresses for each of the participating farms are as follows:

High Stakes Farm

9685 First Line Nassagaweya

Moffat, Ont. L0P 1J0

(5 minutes from Mohawk Racetrack & 15 minutes from downtown Milton)

Mac Lilley Farms

28322 Chalmers Line

Dutton, Ont. NOL IJO

Phone # 519-762-3423

Seelster Farms

33618 Roman Line, R.R. # 3

Lucan, Ont. N0M 2J0

(15 minutes from London)

Thestable.ca

Tomiko Training Centre

210 Campbellville Rd.

Campbellville, ON L0P 1B0 (10 minutes from Mohawk)
Zika: The $183 million dollar FRAUD

New estimates from Johns Hopkins have suggested that the cost of the so-called Zika virus this year will amount to at least $183 million  and thats if its a mild season. The researchers say that if its a more severe outbreak, it could cost up to a staggering $1.2 billion.

While most people who have the Zika virus experience little to no side effects, the mainstream media continues to purport that when pregnant women get the mosquito-born virus, it can have perilous effects on their unborn children. Microcephaly and Guillain-Barre syndrome are among some of the more concerning problems, but the Zika viruss association with these issues are rather questionable. These doubts are what have led many people, such as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, to believe that the Zika virus scare is nothing more than a cover-up. As Adams explained last winter, A group of doctors from South America are now saying the brain deformations the world is witnessing are caused by the mass fumigation of low-income Brazilian people with a chemical larvicide, not by mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus.

As the Brazilian doctors revealed, the areas in Brazil hit hardest by birth defects like microcephaly also just so happened to be areas where a toxic larvacide known as pyriproxyfen had been applied to the water supply for the last 18 months. So while the Brazilian Ministry of Health was quick to place the blame on the Zika virus, there is reason to believe that the virus isnt whats causing the tidal wave of birth defects  the pesticide is.

In addition to what the doctors from Brazil have revealed, a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has also cast doubts on the validity of the belief that Zika causes microcephaly. The researchers examined 12,000 pregnant Colombian women who were thought to have the Zika virus. None of the babies carried by the women who participated in the study exhibited signs of microcephaly.

It is estimated that roughly 60,000 women in Colombia have contracted the Zika virus. As Science Daily explains, The expected microcephaly rate for countries with no reported infections of 2-in-10,000 births gives exactly four cases. The study also notes that until April 28 there has been a total of about 50 microcephaly cases in Colombia, of which only four have been connected with Zika. The four cases are expected for the coincidence of Zika and microcephaly in the same pregnancies even if Zika is not the cause.

In other words, it is very possible that none of the microcephaly cases diagnosed in Colombia are related to the Zika virus. The incidence of microcephaly in Colombia is dramatically lower than whats been observed in Brazil  a country with over 1500 confirmed cases. If the Zika virus was truly the problem, wouldnt more Colombian newborns be affected?

This finding underscores the fact that the larvacide being added to the water supply in Brazil is likely whats behind the rising number of birth defects. Physicians groups in Brazil and Argentina, the Swedish Toxicology Sciences Research Center, and the New England Complex Systems Institute  which conducted the Colombian study  are both calling for a deeper review of pyriproxyfens safety.

Given that pyriproxyfens primary route of action is not to kill, but rather maim forming larvae via malformations, it seems logical that if exposed frequently enough, the same thing would happen to a developing fetus. Pyriproxyfen is a growth inhibitor that interferes with the process of mosquito larvae transforming into pupae and adults  resulting in abnormalities that lead to disability or death. Is it really that hard to connect the dots? The Zika virus outbreak is a scam  and a costly one at that. Who knows what other toxins will use a virus as a scapegoat.

Sources:

BaltimoreSun.com

NaturalNews.com

ScienceDaily.com
Courtesy Cornelia Reynolds(CINCINNATI) -- A county coroner in Ohio plans to take a new look at the hanging death of an 8-year-old boy, initially ruled a suicide in January, amid the release of surveillance video Friday showing him unconscious on a bathroom floor after an incident with another student.



Cincinnati Public Schools released the footage from Carson School on Friday.



Around the 13-minute mark, Gabriel Taye, 8, can be seen entering a boys bathroom at the school Jan. 24. As he walks into the restroom, he appears to shake another child's hand and then falls to the bathroom floor.



He lay on the floor unconscious for nearly eight minutes. His feet can be seen from the hallway camera. The video shows students entering and leaving the restroom. Some stop to look at Gabriel and to nudge him.



The minutes pass, with Gabriel's body alone on the floor until, finally, a child summons a school administrator to the restroom and the man tends to the boy.



Carla Leader, a lawyer for the family, told ABC Cincinnati affiliate WCPO-TV Thursday it was unclear on the video whether Gabriel had hit his head on the wall or the floor.



According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, Gabriel's mother, Cornelia Reynolds, took him to the hospital for vomiting that evening and kept him home the next day. He returned to school Jan. 26.



That evening, two days after the bathroom incident, Gabriel hanged himself in a bedroom of his home. He was found by Reynolds.



Jennifer Branch, another lawyer for the family, said Reynolds had not been told of the alleged incident in the restroom. Branch said Reynolds had been told her son had fainted.



"There needs to be a lot more response in that school to what is going on and the parents need to know what's going on," Leader said. "I think that's a very big component."



Reynolds called Gabriel a "shining light to everyone who knew him and loved him" in a statement to ABC News Friday.



"We miss him desperately and suffer every day. His life was not only stolen from him, but from those of us who expected to watch him grow up and enjoy life. If I could, I would give anything to have him back. I feel he was cheated. I feel robbed. My only child, my best friend and my first true love isn't here with us physically but I know he's here in spirit," she said.



"I will fight every day, every second of every minute. I am my sons voice and it will be heard. As Gabes Mother, it's my obligation to make sure that this will never happen again. No this will not go away. People need to know the truth and help fix this epidemic in our society by spreading awareness and speaking up. Parents it's OK , to tell your children to reach for help when someone is hurting them, whether it's at school, outside, home, or anywhere. #Iam Gabe, #Gabe strong ?? , #Gabes Light,#Gabe's Way."



Viral Video Shows Alleged Aggressive Bullying Incident at Alabama Middle School



The Cincinnati Police Department told ABC News in a statement: "On January 26th, 2017, The Cincinnati Police Department conducted an investigation into the death of Gabriel Taye. In light of the Hamilton County Coroners Office statement that they have reopened this death investigation, the Cincinnati Police Department does not believe it would be appropriate to comment at this time. Any questions regarding this matter should be directed to the Hamilton County Coroner's Office."



In a statement Friday to ABC News, Cincinnati Public Schools said, "Our hearts are broken by the loss of this child, and our thoughts are with his parents and extended family. He was an outstanding young man, and this is a great loss for his family and our school community."



"In an effort to be completely transparent, we are releasing the video that was reviewed as part of an investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department. As all are aware, no charges resulted from that investigation. We have uploaded the video, in its entirety, blurring out faces of the students who appear to protect their privacy. We ask that you review the video, in its entirety. It is our firm position that the allegations portrayed in the media are not supported by the video," the statement said. "Cincinnati Public Schools is reviewing with faculty and staff the procedures regarding adult supervision in the restrooms. We are committed to student safety and ensuring that all CPS schools foster a positive, learning environment," the statement said.



A spokesperson for the Hamilton County coroner said the office planned to re-examine the circumstances surrounding Gabriel's death. Cincinnati police have not filed charges in the case.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
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There will be several substantial changes to crisis, mental and behavioral health services in Cowlitz County and the Southwest Washington region over the next few months.

As part of a $2 million state grant, Longview-based Columbia Wellness will open a 16-bed, short-term detox and crisis facility in Longview. Columbia Wellness CEO David McClay said he hopes the facility will open in November in the 700 block of 14th Avenue, but it may not be open until January.

In addition, Great Rivers Behavioral Health, a publicly-funded mental health and substance use disorder treatment agency, will expand its mobile crisis service. Officials said they hope to have the mobile teams working throughout the region by July 1. Great Rivers Behavior Health serves Cowlitz, Wahkiakum, Pacific, Lewis and Grays Harbor counties.

These crisis services are available to anyone within the five-county region to address a full range of mental and behavioral health problems.

Its not a one-size fits all response for folks, said Great Rivers CEO Marc Bollinger. This provides a wide array of menu options for the community.

Both agencies said they are working together to implement the changes. Officials with Great Rivers and Columbia Wellness said they want to offer more services, including a higher level of medical care. They also want to reduce unnecessary hospital visits.

Weve enhanced services across the board. There are more services in our region than there ever has been, Bollinger said.

As part of the change, the five-bed Crisis Support Unit in Cowlitz County, at 921 14th Ave., where people with mental and behavioral trouble could go for services and be monitored, closed May 1. The CSU was costing too much to run for the number of patients it treated, Bollinger said.

If people need to access those services in the meantime, there are facilities in Grays Harbor and Lewis counties, Bollinger said. He said those facilities can handle patients coming from Cowlitz County. Other services, such as money management classes, crisis response and medical programs, will still be provided by Columbia Wellness in its remaining offices at 921 14th Ave., McClay, with Columbia Wellness, said.

To replace the five-bed Crisis Support Unit, Columbia Wellness is opening the 16-bed detox and crisis facility. The design of the facility will include eight beds for detox and eight beds for crisis or mental health care, with some of those being 23-hour beds for those who do not need multi-day care.

It is something this community needs, McClay said. People who are using (drugs) are sent north or south, theyre sent out of the community.  Having all the services in one location increases the likelihood of success.  To me its a better level of service and better intervention and care.

McClay said the agency is in the process of purchasing the building at 720 14th Ave. for the 16-bed facility. Currently the building is owned by Lower Columbia Pathologists. McClay said he thinks the facility will help deliver the full continuum of services to those in need.

You have to engage people when theyre motivated, McClay said. We want to make sure we have the availability of doing that.  We will work with Great Rivers to see where we can refer people to so that we can catch them when theyre motivated.

With the other major change, Great Rivers will expand its mobile crisis effort across the five-county region. The crisis teams are sent out into the community whenever someone calls in with any kind of crisis, Bollinger said.

Details are still under development, but one improvement is that providers will now go out in pairs, which is safer, he said. Bollinger also said that by having providers meet people on their own turf, crisis situations can be defused easier, as well as provide the opportunity to stabilize the person in the least restrictive environment possible.

Having a team that when you call says, Where are you? Stay put, well be right there. Is cool when this is the help you need. Thats much more effective, said Todd Broderius, Great Rivers Chief Integration Officer.

Bollinger added: We know that if crises meetings happen in the community rather than in the emergency room ... there is less likelihood that a higher level of care will be needed.

Both Great Rivers and Columbia Wellness officials said the shift in services will provide better access and care.

By responding in the community in a natural setting to concerned folks there, the crisis intervention can be more effective than at other environments or if law enforcement shows up, Bollinger said.
Amateur detectives in Longview have an opportunity to sharpen their sleuthing skills. Longview police are seeking the publics help in identifying two suspects connected with a theft at Dutch Bros. Coffee.

According to police, at around 9 p.m. on Monday two individuals approached the drive up window at the Dutch Bros. Coffee at 901 15th Avenue. While the employee was preparing drinks for the suspects that had been paid for, one of the individuals leaned in through the open window and began taking several items.

The two individuals were captured on the coffee shops security camera stealing a multicolored coffee cup, stamp cards and the stamper used each time a customer makes a purchase (when a card is filled with stamps, the customer can exchange it for a free beverage).

According to an employee on duty, one of the suspects was wearing a reflective jacket. The two appeared to be intoxicated and hung out near the drive up window for 15 to 20 minutes before the suspect finally ordered beverages, the employee told police.

Anyone with information about either of the suspects is asked to call Longview Police at 360-442-5800 and send a private message to LPD on Facebook. Remember to mention case no. L17-2381.
Residents should not worry if they see or smell smoke in the area, according to the the agency.

"We are excited to spend the day perfecting our skills as volunteer firefighters. We train throughout the year and the controlled live burn allows us to put our skills to work," according to a press release from the agency.
IANS

Asia/Pacific enterprises are slightly behind global counterparts in terms of digital business maturity, with 20 per cent of Asia/Pacific CEOs describing their enterprise as "digital to the core," compared with 22 per cent globally, market research firm Gartner said on Thursday. According to the Gartner, 45 per cent of Asia/Pacific CEOs think of digital transformation as a way to optimise their current business versus 42 per cent globally.

"CIOs need to take on an evangelizing role with the CEO and other business leaders about the transformative possibilities of digital business using real examples," said Partha Iyengar, Vice President and Gartner Fellow, in a statement. Asia/Pacific CEOs expect productivity in their organisations to increase by 24 per cent by the end of 2018, with revenue and profitability as the top two metrics of success.

To achieve such aggressive productivity gains, Asia/Pacific CEOs believe that conventional technologies (cloud, ERP, analytics and CRM) will help them, rather than technologies that support digital transformation (digital environments, blockchain, the Internet of Things, robotics, artificial intelligence and 3D printing). Digital business offers a way for Asia/Pacific firms to lower their cost structure drastically and thereby increase margins, but these firms are not pursuing digital business as aggressively as they could.
hidden

After election hacks in the United States and France, Germany is worried it will be next. Four months before an election in which Chancellor Angela Merkel hopes to win another term, Germany's national cyber security agency BSI warned political parties to shore up their computer defences.

The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency last week accused Moscow of gathering a large amount of political data in cyber attacks, and said it would be up to the Kremlin whether to meddle in the Sept. 24 elections.

The German government has boosted funding to the BSI and will add 180 jobs to the agency this year. It is also expanding a cyber defense center and has stepped up data sharing with private sector firms. The government is even studying legislative changes to allow it to strike back  by destroying an enemy's servers, say  in the event of a major cyber attack.

Despite the extra vigilance, over a dozen cyber experts, German lawmakers and government officials interviewed by Reuters say the leaders of Europe's most powerful nation face a huge challenge if they come under attacks like those on U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and France's incoming president, Emmanuel Macron, whose emails were hacked.

Security researchers and U.S. officials believe Russian hackers were behind the U.S. attack, and have warned Berlin that Moscow now has its sights on Germany. The origin of the hack of Macron's emails last week is still under investigation.

In particular, German authorities worry that emails obtained by hackers in a 2015 cyber attack on the German parliament will be leaked before the Sept. 24 election. Two sources familiar with the matter said one of the dozen or so accounts hit was Merkel's parliamentary account, though her primary work account was not touched.

One of the sources said Peter Tauber, the CDU secretary general, was later hit by a ransomware attack, in which viruses are used to lock up a computer's data, forcing users to pay off attackers in order to regain use of their machines.

"Digitisation has overwhelmed us. Let's not fool ourselves. Despite all the assurances about bolstering security, Germany is not really prepared for what is coming," said Dirk Arendt, a German-based employee at Israeli cyber security firm Check Point Software Technologies.

Sisyphus

Government and party officials declined to comment on whose accounts were hit in 2015. The BSI believes Merkel and her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) are being particularly targeted by APT 28, a Russian group U.S. officials have blamed for the hacking of Clinton's emails.

The BSI said APT 28, also known as "Pawn Storm" or "Fancy Bear", was behind the 2015 attack on Germany's parliament as well as two attacks on the CDU last year. Security firm Trend Micro say the group struck the think tanks of both the CDU and the Social Democrats, junior partners in Merkel's coalition government, in March and April. Trend Micro said the group also targeted Macron.

Russia denies involvement in the attacks, saying it never interferes in the internal political affairs of other countries. A Kremlin spokesman said he had no idea who was behind APT 28: "We do not know who these people are and have no relation to them."

But U.S. and German officials say the connections are clear. The head of Germany's BfV domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, last week said Russia is orchestrating cyber attacks and influence operations to destabilise German society. And while Germany has strengthened its defences, gaps were inevitable, he said. "I'm reminded of Sisyphus continually rolling a boulder to the mountaintop only to be overtaken by his inevitable fate," he said, referring to the Greek myth symbolising a futile act.

At a meeting with Merkel in Russia this week, President Vladimir Putin described allegations of Russian attacks related to the U.S. presidential election as rumours. But U.S. and European officials say Moscow wants to erode confidence in Western democracies and undermine European unity. "Putin's short-term goal is to weaken the European consensus on sanctions against Russia," said Hans-Peter Uhl, legal adviser for Merkel's conservative bloc in parliament.

"The long-term objective is to divide the EU and secure the victory of Russian values in the battle against the West," he wrote in the group's latest magazine. The Kremlin representative called the accusations "a bald-faced lie."

Action on multiple fronts

Germany's parliament bolstered security after 2015, bringing in Deutsche Telekom to rework its software systems and providing cyber security training for its 3,000 administrative staff, said Bundestag spokesman Ernst Hebeker.

But private firm secunet told lawmakers in an independent confidential assessment in February that numerous weaknesses remained, including "uncontrolled use" by lawmakers of mobile phones and tablets that are not centrally monitored, according to several sources familiar with the report.

There is no ban on USB sticks, which could be infected with malicious software, they quoted the report as saying. "We don't have sufficient protections for the Bundestag servers where confidential documents are stored," said August Hanning, former head of the BND foreign intelligence agency. The BSI now provides cyber training to state and federal lawmakers, political parties and their think tanks.

But Germany's strict separation of powers mean it can only advise parliament and not force it to act. "It's like teaching traffic safety. We say, 'Please don't cross the street when the light is red.' But it's up to people themselves if they actually listen," BSI president Arne Schoenbohm told Reuters.

Berlin is also taking steps to crack down on so-called fake news. It is targeting the 3 million or so Germans with roots in Russia whom officials fear may be vulnerable to pro-Russian propaganda. Those concerns were triggered by spontaneous protests in January 2016 after a bogus report about the alleged rape of a 13-year Russian-German girl by a migrant.

Thomas Krueger, who heads Germany's BpB agency for civic education, hosted a meeting in March for 250 leaders in the community to encourage better awareness. "We just have to be open about this problem and ensure that as many people as possible develop critical thinking skills," he said.

Russia is known for holding onto damaging material until a critical moment, says Jim Lewis, senior vice president at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The wild card is: 'did the Russians get something in 2015 that they can detonate when the election gets closer?'" he said. "I would get really nervous in August."

Reuters
IANS

India is passing through the biggest technological revolution which will make data analytics critical for delivery of services to the people, NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant said on Thursday. Leakages in government schemes are now vanishing and in due course all benefits provided by the government will go straight to the intended beneficiary's account, he said at an event here.

Addressing an interactive meeting organised by industry body FICCI, Kant enumerated the various initiatives of the government to change the 19th century mindsets and move into the 21st century through vast and transformative decisions.

The government has leveraged technology to link up all states with the Centre through PRAGATI' (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation), an integrative and interactive platform for addressing the common man's grievances and monitoring important programmes and projects, the NITI Aayog CEO said.

Under this initiative, the Prime Minister links up with all Chief Secretaries of states and Indian Ambassadors overseas to monitor projects online once every fortnight. This initiative, he added, was breaking all walls between the states and the Centre. He said the government has moved away from inputs and processes to focus on outcome targets of various ministries.

Outcomes are now monitored regularly through a dashboard, an IT user interface, created by NITI Aayog. Any deviations from the assigned outcome targets are brought to the notice of the PMO, which then suggests appropriate remedial steps, Kant said at the interactive meeting on "The Business of Government: Learnings from Global Experiences" organised with the support of NITI Aayog, Bharti Institute of Public Policy of Indian School of Business (ISB) and the IBM Centre for The Business of Government.

The quiet administrative revolution that has been taking place in the country will receive a shot in the arm by the increasing use of digital technology which in turn will give a fillip to growth, Kant said.
tech2 News Staff

While Samsung had earlier confirmed that it will not be bringing its Note 7 phablet to India, a report now points out that it has begun selling in other markets after its re-launch in Korea.

According to a report by the Playfuldroid, the refurbished unit of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 has gone on sale in China. The product listing on a retailers website showcases a Samsung Galaxy Note 7R (R for refurbished) already on sale, much before the official re-launch.

The smartphone in the image is a gold unit with a price tag at CNY 3,599-3,999 (Rs 33,446) which is a lot less compared to the launch price in India which was set at Rs 59,990 (after which reports of the Note 7 catching fire started to pour in and the model was discontinued).

The Samsung Galaxy Note 7R comes in two variants, one with a 3,200mAh battery and the second with 3,500mAh battery. The variant with the smaller battery is reportedly heading to Europe, the US and Asia. The variant with the larger battery will be a limited volume run.

The Note 7 packed in a 5.7-inch Super Amoled display sporting a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels. There's Gorilla Glass 5 on the back and the front. Inside, you get an Exynos 8890 chipset which is the same as on the older Galaxy S7 along with 4 GB RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. Connectivity options include LTE, dual-SIM card option (hybrid slot), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB Type-C, GPS (A-GPS, GLONASS, BDS, GALILEO). The Galaxy Note 7 borrows the 12 MP camera that featured on the S7 and the S7 Edge.
IANS

Describing cyber crime as a rising menace in India, experts on Thursday said proper awareness, assessment, and implementation of security policies were the way forward to fight the malady. Discussing the nuances of cyber security threats at a seminar in Kolkata, they said that with the offenders in the country constantly evolving, corporates need to sharpen their security at equal speed to overwhelm the mischief makers.

"India is called the ransomeware (a virus) capital of Asia. The cyber threats are rising to steeply here that corporate should not only enhance their security protocols but also impart security training to its employees to minimise the risk factors," said Sandeep Sengupta, chief of a city-based data security company. "Risk assessment and risk management, implementation of security policy is a must for the corporate sector. Also a quarterly security audit of network, a software audit and data centre audit would help in preventing the hacks," he said at the seminar "Information Technology - Challenges and Opportunities" organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Echoing his statements, senior officers of state police's cyber cell said issues like debit card and credit card fraud and bank account hacking, that was not reported frequently even a few years back, have become everyday incidents now. "In cyber crime, the criminal has an advantage of anonymity and they do not have to be physically present to harm someone. The fraudsters often get friendly and build a relationship with people to get access to personal information. As a result, sectors like banks and BPOs, dealing with valuable data are facing the heat," Bidit Mondal, Officer in-Charge, Cyber police, Bidhannagar Commissionerate said.

Cautioning against fake websites coming up with job offers and fake emails offering hefty loans, the officer said, "though there is substantial improvement in police infrastructure against cyber crime in the last few years. awareness among people is the key to fight it." On the legal challenges against the cyber offenders, special public prosecutor Bivas Chatterjee described the proceedings as a slippery slope as collecting evidence about such crimes and authenticating it is difficult.

"In case of a cyber crime through social media, the biggest hurdle is to get the necessary data from the service provider. Unlike the telecommunication companies, the social media websites often refuse to share their user's information due to security reasons. They even decline to share the IP address used to post or share something online," said Chatterjee, who deals with Cyber and E-evidence law. He said one should be made aware of the fine line between investigation and violation of human rights in these cases.

"I have proposed Ato the national police academy that they start a course on human rights violation during the investigation of cyber crime. One has be careful as so much of personal stuff is shared online now a days,"he said. "Police should be 100 percent sure before arresting someone as things like IP and email and other online identities can be duplicated," he added.
IANS

United Nations experts have urged the Indian government to withdraw the ban on Internet services in Jammu and Kashmir and "reinstate" freedom of expression. The Indian government on April 17 blocked access to 22 websites and applications, including Whatsapp, Facebook and Twitter, as well as 3G and 4G data services in the restive northern state.

"The scope of these restrictions has significantly disproportionate impact on the fundamental rights of everyone in Kashmir," David Kaye, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, was quoted by the EFE news agency as saying in a statement. Kaye's statement was seconded by Michel Forst, a special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

New Delhi has maintained that the ban was aimed at preventing circulation of information that might aggravate violence in the restive state. The statement from the experts called on New Delhi to guarantee freedom of expression in the state and to "seek a solution for the social and political conflicts of the region through open, transparent and democratic dialogue".
Dell EMC announced the results of a new study conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), which revealed that a majority of senior IT leaders and decision-making managers of large companies surveyed around the world indicate their organizations have yet to fully embrace the aspects of IT Transformation needed to remain competitive.

While there is a clear imperative for companies to transform their legacy IT, digital transformation is becoming the driving force to making IT Transformation a top priority. However, the ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve study commissioned by Dell EMC shows 95% of survey respondents indicate their organizations are at risk of falling behind a smaller group of industry peers that are transforming their IT infrastructures, processes and delivery methods to accelerate their goals of becoming digital businesses.

Many organizations still measure application cycle times in months, if not years; have siloed infrastructures, and continue to grapple with rigid legacy architectures  all barriers to undertaking a successful digital transformation.

David Goulden, President of Dell EMC, said, These findings mirror how the vast majority of customers are telling us they need to optimize their existing infrastructures to take advantage of digital-age opportunities. However, the research shows that most respondents are falling behind a small and elite set of competitors who have cracked the IT Transformation code, and theyre competing more vigorously because of it. As organizations progress in their IT Transformation investments, they can overcome the conflict between legacy IT and digital business initiatives to realize their goals, speed time to market and increase competitiveness.

Paul Henaghan, President, South Asia & Korea, Dell EMC, said, As organizations in the Asia Pacific and Japan region look at ways to reinvent their business models to thrive in the digital age, an optimized IT infrastructure that is agile and customer-focused is essential. The findings of this research highlight the importance of organizations understanding where they are today in terms of IT transformation maturity. This is a critical first step to achieving their digital transformation goals.

Rajesh Janey, President & Managing Director, India Enterprise, Dell EMC, said, With the Government of Indias increased focus on digitization and the surge in the number of new age companies, organizations Digital Transformation initiatives are unlikely to dissipate reinforcing the need to start the IT Transformation journey immediately, which is the first step for organizations to realize their Digital Transformation goals. The survey underscores that the majority of senior leaders agree that IT Transformation is essential to ongoing business competitiveness.

The ESG 2017 IT Transformation Maturity Curve study was designed to understand the role that IT Transformation plays toward becoming a digital business. ESG employed a research-based, data-driven maturity model to identify different stages of IT Transformation progress and determine the degree to which global organizations have achieved those different stages, based on their responses to questions about their organizations on-premise IT infrastructure, processes and organizational alignment.

Based on the global survey responses, the 1,000 participating organizations were segmented into the following four IT Transformation maturity stages:

Stage 1  Legacy (12%): falls short on many  if not all  of the dimensions of IT Transformation in the ESG study

falls short on many  if not all  of the dimensions of IT Transformation in the ESG study Stage 2  Emerging (41%): showing progress in IT Transformation but having minimal deployment of modern data center technologies

showing progress in IT Transformation but having minimal deployment of modern data center technologies Stage 3  Evolving (42%): showing commitment to IT Transformation and having a moderate deployment of modern data center technologies and IT delivery methods

showing commitment to IT Transformation and having a moderate deployment of modern data center technologies and IT delivery methods Stage 4  Transformed (5%): furthest along in IT Transformation initiatives

The majority of respondents (71%) agree that IT Transformation is essential to ongoing business competitiveness. Of the Transformed companies, 85% believe their organizations are in a very strong or strong position to compete and succeed in their market over the next few years contrasted with 43% of the least mature companies.

The Transformed organizations report the most progress in leveraging IT resources to speed product innovation and time to market; automating manual processes and tasks; and running IT as a profit center rather than a cost center. These companies:

(96%) Exceeded revenue targets last year, more than 2X the least mature

Are 8X more likely than the least mature organizations to report a highly cooperative relationship between IT and the business

Made excellent progress running IT as a profit center rather than a cost center (7X more likely than the least mature)

Are 7X more likely than the least mature organizations to have IT viewed by the business as a competitive differentiator

Leverage IT resources to speed product innovation and time to market (6X more likely than the least mature organizations)

According to ESG, the adoption of modern data center technologies, such as scale-out storage systems and converged/hyper-converged infrastructure, can improve the agility and responsiveness of infrastructure provisioning, IT project delivery and application development. The study found:

54% of all respondents use converged or hyper-converged infrastructure to support applications

58% of all respondents have adopted scale-out storage systems in some capacity

Roughly 50% of respondents are committed to software-defined as a long-term strategy and have begun to implement, evaluate or plan for software-defined technologies

According to ESG, the adoption of modern IT processes  such as self-service provisioning capabilities, running IT like a public cloud and use of DevOps methodologies  can be an attribute of a successfully transformed company. The study found:

26% of all respondents have extensive or established self-service capabilities

65% of all respondents have made excellent or acceptable progress toward providing end users with the same ability to provision IT resources that they can get from a public cloud provider

43% of respondents claim extensive or good adoption of formal DevOps principles and best practices

IT Transformation is often correlated with a more cooperative and effective relationship between IT and the business, which was validated by the research. The study found:

36% of IT organizations and their outcomes are evaluated by the C-suite or board of directors monthly, and 38% are evaluated quarterly

39% have the most senior IT executive reporting directly to the CEO

61% of the least mature organizations indicate their line of business stakeholders view IT as a stable service provider, but ultimately a cost center

@Technuter.com News Service
Ericsson launches its Dynamic Orchestration solution to facilitate the rapid introduction and closed-loop automation of services across physical and virtual networks, signifying a strategic move forward in the companys ambition to lead IT transformation services for its customers.

Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration provides a flexible and modular solution for the management of existing technologies while virtualization capabilities are integrated and controlled.

With support for zero-touch automation, rapid provisioning and policy-driven service assurance, Ericson Dynamic Orchestration helps operators achieve faster time to market and superior delivery of new and differentiated services. The forward-looking solution will be on display at TM Forum Live! in Nice, France, from May 15 to 18.

Ulf Ewaldsson, Head of Business Area Digital Services, Ericsson, said, The opportunities offered by virtualization are significant, but due to the complexity, many operators are taking an incremental step-by-step approach to get there. Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration enables our customers to excel at traditional services delivery while simultaneously incorporating virtualization capabilities to embrace emerging market and business opportunities driven by 5G and IoT.

Operators must be agile to deliver services on a global scale in an era when speed and governance are essential. Stimulated by the advances in IT networking and driven by the migration to 5G and IoT, services are becoming more and more cloud-based. In this environment, innovative services are not only delivered to customers on demand, but must be able to respond to surrounding dynamics in real time. Customer provisioning must move from weeks to minutes and service level agreements (SLAs) must be measured and enforced. As operators transform to meet these needs, enabling automated orchestration of available resources at scale is foundational.

A key offering within the Ericsson Digital Support Systems portfolio, Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration provides operators with the business skills and tools needed to navigate the transformation journey to Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV). The comprehensive offering pairs market-leading software with professional services to automate multiple layers of complex processes for the creation, delivery and assurance of new digital services including Software-Defined Wide Area Networks (SD-WAN), enterprise and mobile virtual private networks (VPN), and 5G network slicing.

Ericsson Dynamic Orchestration is an end-to-end, automated service orchestration solution that provides rapid validation of Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), design and onboarding of new services, inventory, resource and capacity management, service configuration management and service assurance. The use of policy and real-time analytics across the lifecycle affords zero-touch operations and is the foundation for SLA compliance.

@Technuter.com News Service
Shab-e-Barat observed

The holy Shab-e-Barat, the night of fortune and forgiveness, was observed across the country on Thursday night with due religious fervour.



According to Muslim belief, Shab-e-Barat is the night when Allah arranges the affairs of the following year. On this night, Allah writes the destinies of all the creations for the coming year by taking into account their past deeds.



The Muslim devotees offered special prayers, recited from the Holy Quran, arranged milad, zikr and other religious rituals seeking divine blessings for the wellbeing of mankind.



They passed the whole night offering prayers.



The Muslims also visited the graveyards of their relatives and Muslim saints and distribute sweetmeats and homemade foods among the poor, their neighbours, friends and relatives.



Islamic Foundation arranged various programmes, including religious sermons, recitation from the Quran, singing hamd-na't, offering doa and special prayers, on the occasion.



Other religious and socio-cultural organisations also organized milad, zikr and perform other religious rituals throughout the night.



Bangladesh Television, Bangladesh Betar and private TV channels and radio stations aired special programmes while newspapers published articles, highlighting the significance of the night.



Meanwhile, President Abdul Hamid and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina issued separate messages on the occasion. Dhaka, May 12 (UNB)






Moscow backs resumption of dialogue between Israel, Palestinians

Sochi (Russia): Russian President Vladimir Putin shakes hands with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas during their meeting at the Bocharov Ruchei state resident on Thursday.

AFP, Moscow :

Moscow supports the resumption of dialogue between Israel and Palestine, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, as his US counterpart Donald Trump prepares to visit Israel.

Putin said Russia "will continue to give its full support to the resumption of direct dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis", following talks with Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas in the southern Russian city of Sochi.

"The peaceful coexistence of the two states - Palestine and Israel - is an indispensable condition to ensure genuine security and stability in this region," Putin said.

Abbas meanwhile said Palestine "values Russia's counter terrorism efforts, as well as its contribution to strengthening security and stability in the Middle East, including in Syria," Russia's RIA Novosti state news agency reported.

After Putin's meeting with Abbas, Russia's defence ministry said that Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman had called his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu on Thursday.

The two ministers discussed defence cooperation between Russia and Palestine as well as regional security issues, the ministry said in a statement.

Abbas said he welcomed "President Trump's desire to help find a solution" to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, according to a transcript published by official Palestinian news agency Wafa.

"I told him that we were completely ready to cooperate with him and undertake efforts to reach a historical peace plan to end the conflict between us and the Israelis," Abbas said.

Abbas said Tuesday that Trump was expected to visit the Palestinian territories "soon" and that he was ready to meet Israel's prime minister as part of the US president's peace efforts.

Trump is expected in Israel later this month as part of his first foreign trip, and Abbas said Tuesday "we are looking forward to his visit soon to Bethlehem" in the occupied West Bank, with speculation it will occur on May 23.
Holy Shab-e-Barat celebrated

Chittagong Bureau :

The holy Shab-e-Barat, known as the night of fortune, observed in the port city as elsewhere in the district on Thursday night with due religious fervour and devotion.

The Muslim devotees spend the night at mosques, shrines and homes offering prayers, reciting from the holy Quran and seeking blessings to Allah for long life, peace, progress and happiness for themselves, their families, relatives and friends as well as the nation and the Muslim Ummah. Muslims consider Shab-e-Barat as one of three most sacred nights and

believe that on this night Almighty Allah decides the fate of all human beings fixing their 'rizq' (livelihood) for the next year.

On the night, the devotees in the port city visited graves and pray for their beloved ones seeking their eternal peace. Many will also visit mazars, shrines of saints all over the country.

Affluents of the society prepared traditional foods like handmade rice -bread with beef and halua both at rural and urban areas on the occasion.

A good number of Muslims will observe fast on the following day. They distributed food and sweets among the neighbours and the poor. Besides, foods and money will be distributed among the destitute on the occasion.

To mark the holy occasion, the Islamic Foundation Bangladesh (IFB) , chittagong, Anjumane Rahmania , Chittagong , Baitus Sharaf, Anderkilla Shahi Jame Mosque, have chalked out nightlong elaborate holy Day.

The govt buildings like court building, Nagar bhaban , Bandar Bhaban, CRB Building, and mosques , private buildings have been eliminated on the occasion on Thursday night. Special foods in hospitals and Chittagong jail were served i. n that night The day after today will be the govt holiday for the Shab-e-Barat. Bangladesh Television, Bangladesh Betar, Chittagong centre and other private television channels and radio stations aired special programmes on the occasion.


Body recovered from outer berth of Port

Chittagong Bureau :

Body of an unidentified man was found floating in the outer anchorage of Chittagong Port in the Bay of Bengal Wednesday night .The deceased was estimated aged 40 and found tied with ropes.

Coast guard (East Zone) Public relations officer Commander M Mamunur Rashid told that the body was recovered from a place in the sea around 1.5 nautical miles far from the buoy-1 of the anchorage.

The body was first seen drifting in the water from patrol ship 'Ruposhi Bangla'.Metal Shark-2, a high-speed boat of coast guard was used to recover the body. However, the body was sent to Patenga Police Station, added the coast guard official.
Konkona wins best actor, director award

Actor Konkona Sen Sharma bagged the best director award for her debut film, and she even got awarded in the best actor category for Lipstick Under My Burkha, at the recently concluded New York Indian Film Festival.

Actor Konkona Sen Sharma's film Lipstick Under My Burkha was refused certification by the Censor Board.(Instagram/konkona)

Actor Konkona Sen Sharma made her directorial debut last year with the film, A Death in the Gunj, and the film was recently invited to be showcased at the New York Indian film festival. Not only was the film appreciated at the festival, but Konkona also won the title of the Best Director at the festival.

Besides, Konkona was honoured with the Best Actress award for her film Lipstick Under My Burkha, directed by Alankrita Srivastava, at the festival. The film was refused certification by the Censor Board in India.

Congratulating Konkona, producer Ashish Bhatnagar says the actor is sure to win many more awards in the future. "We are all extremely happy for Konkona's big win.

She is one of the most talented people we have in this industry and we are sure that many such prestigious laurels are coming her way. We hope that she gets many more of these honours through her fantastic work!" says Ashish.

In an earlier interview to us, Konkona's mother filmmaker-actor Aparna Sen had spoke about how she was impressed with the way Konkona directed her debut film.

"She would often consult me while she was making the film, but I never told her what to do. She would take all the decisions. It was so great to see that she had the entire film chalked out. She was so clear about what she wanted in her film and how she wanted it.

I was so impressed with her," she told us.

The movie is yet to release in India. Last month, there as news that the movie will release in May, after a delay of a month. The film stars actors Tillotama Shome, Gulshan Devaiah, Om Puri, Kalki Koechlin, Naseeruddin Shah, Tisca Chopra, Neeraj Kabi, Suraj Sharma and Sayani Gupta.
Sushant's Romeo Akbar Walter will film in Kashmir

According to a report in the Mumbai Mirror, Sushant Singh Rajput's Romeo Akbar Walter, where he reportedly plays a RAW agent, will be shot in Kashmir. The film's writer-director Robbie Grewal had this to say: "The film is set in 1971 but it isn't about the war. The story unspools before it begins and is inspired by true incidents. We're going to be filming in multiple regions in the Indian sub-continent, including Kashmir and Nepal. We are prepping up to create a thrilling world, the kind you haven't seen before. Our sole aim is to capture the look and feel of the era."
New S.Korean President`s bid to visit North will bring peace

THE New South Korean President Moon Jae-in who took office Wednesday hinted softening of his country's policy, unlike his predecessor, towards the North as he said he is ready to visit rival North Korea under the right conditions in search of peace. The left leaning new President, who became leader of the nation at a time when the specter of nuclear war is looming large in the Korean peninsula is opposed to both North's nuclear-tipped missiles programme but also equally opposed to aggressive military action to deal with the North. The US recently sent the biggest aircraft carrier group and other strike force in Korean water to dismantle North's nuclear programme.

Moon has replaced former President Park Guen-hye in a mid-term election, as she has been impeached and arrested in March on charges of corruption and misuse of power. She was toeing US policy including military action against North Korea but her departure from power and Moon's softer stance towards the North has definitely removed the fear of nuclear war in the region. But according to AFP and Reuters reports it could create friction with Washington as the situation is quickly shifting from threats of military action and hints of dialogue that does not quite fit to the US strategy.

In the eyes of many the situation suddenly flared up in the Korean peninsula as US President Donald Trump embarked upon a military course of action with a missile strike in Syria and bombing Afghanistan with the biggest bomb so far to end the longest war. He then suddenly sent the naval strike group to Korean waters to force North Korea's leader Kim Jong-Un to bow down. Many believe he was demonstrating US military might abroad to shore up his devastating failure in domestic politics.

Report said the new South Korean leader had opposed any military action against the North favouring dialogue during presidential campaign. But the US deployed THAAD (Thermal High Altitude Area Defense) missile system in South Korea overnight fearing Moon who was almost sure to win would block the deployment.

The first liberal President over a decade has vowed to reconsider US deployment of THAAD as thousands of South Koreans protested against it in the streets denouncing further militarization of their country. But he may be facing a tough situation to deal with the Trump administration. Moon has promised to "sincerely negotiate" with the United States and China which is equally apprehensive of deployment of THHAD which Washington may use, as it fears to spy on its military operation in the region.

Moon pledge to achieve negotiated peace amid growing worries over the North's nuclear program makes sense as he is out to repositioning his country's stance towards the North for peace and seeks help from allies in this regard. We believe his policy that they can't deny the ruler of the North, there is no choice but to recognize him as a leader would definitely help to calm the situation and make peace. His opposition against new sanction against the North is equally poised to bring good, because punishing people does not serve any cause.
Trump was looking to fire Comey from day one: White House

The Business Standard :

The White House has defended US President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI chief James Comey, saying he had been considering to expel him since day one after losing confidence in him.

In his recommendation to Trump, Deputy Attorney General Rod J Rosenstein said that over the past year, the FBI's reputation and credibility 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," he said.

Soon after receiving the letter, Trump dismissed Comey.

"The president had lost confidence in Director Comey. Frankly, he'd been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected," White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters at a news conference yesterday.

However, she acknowledged that Trump did have a conversation with the deputy attorney general.

"The president asked that they put those concerns and their recommendation in writing," she said, referring to the letter which became the basis for firing Comey.

In his letter to Comey, Trump said, "I have received the attachment letters from attorney general and the deputy general of the US, recommending your dismissal as the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). I have accepted their recommendation and you are hereby terminated and removed from the office, effective immediately". Trump told reporters Comey was not doing a good job.

Sanders told reporters that most of America had decided on their own that Comey was not the person that should be leading the FBI, as evidenced by the numerous comments that they have seen from Democratic party members in the House and Senate, Republican members, members of the FBI, and people across the board.

"I think one of the big catalysts that we saw was last week, on Wednesday, director Comey made a pretty startling revelation that he had essentially taken a stick of dynamite and thrown it into the department of justice, by going around the chain of command when he decided to take steps without talking to the attorney general or the deputy attorney general, when holding a press conference and telling them that he would not let them know what he was going to say. "That is simply not allowed," Sanders said. Meanwhile, Comey has been invited by a powerful Congressional committee to testify before lawmakers at a closed session on Tuesday.
Bomb kills 25 as it hits convoy of Pakistan Senate deputy

The explosion appeared to target the convoy of a senator, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

Reuters, Quetta, Pakistan :

A bomb exploded next to a convoy of the deputy chairman of the Pakistan Senate on Friday in the violence-plagued province of Baluchistan, killing at least 25 people, officials said.

At least 35 people were wounded in the blast near the town of Mastung, 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial capital of Quetta. Television footage showed a vehicle mangled by the blast.

Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the explosion he believed he was the

target and he had sustained minor injuries. "There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack from the many militant groups operating in Baluchistan. Haideri is a member of Jamiat e Ulema Islam, a right-wing Sunni Islamist political party that is part of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's coalition government.

District health official Sher Ahmed Satakzai said the death toll had risen to 25 and 10 were in critical condition in hospital. Security in Pakistan has improved since a crackdown on militancy began in 2014, but a fresh wave of attacks that left more than 100 people dead in February has increased pressure on Sharif's government.

Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber, adding Haideri's driver was among those killed.

The senator, who is being treated in hospital, was on his way back to Quetta after distributing graduation certificates to students who had graduated from a madrassa, or religious academy. Separatist militants in Baluchistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province's resources.

Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. A U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last year in Baluchistan. The province was rocked by a series of attacks late last year that claimed over 180 lives and raised concerns about a growing militant presence.

A judicial report released after an attack on the province's lawyers left more than 70 dead criticized security provisions in the region and called for increased clampdowns on extremists.




Cops grilling Banani rapists Shafat, Sakif

Rape evidence found: CIID investigating wealth sources of Shafat, his father Dilder

\'Rapists\' Shafat Ahmed and Shadman Sakif were put on remand as police arrested them from Sylhet city\'s Pathantula area and produced them before the court in Dhaka on Friday. This photo was taken from DB Media Centre.

Staff Reporter :

Police have started the grilling of accused Shafat Ahmed and Shadman Sakif, arrested from Sylhet city, on charge of raping two private university students in a city's hotel recently.

A Dhaka court on Friday placed Ahmed Shafat and Shadman Sakif on six and five-day remand respectively.

Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Md Raihan Ul Islam passed the order after they were produced before the court seeking 10-day remand for each yesterday afternoon, said Farida Yasmin, Deputy Commissioner of Victim Support Centre (VSC) which is now handling the case.

Defence lawyer Abdur Rahman Howlader sought bail for the two but his plea was turned down, she said.

Meanwhile, another Dhaka court granted police to conduct laboratory test on the dress of one of the victims wearing at the time of rape.

Metropolitan Magistrate Delwar Hossain gave the permission following a petition filed by Inspector (Investigation) of Banani Police Station Abdul Matin on Wednesday.

It is difficult to get evidence of rape from the body of a victim a month after the crime but extracting evidence from a dress is easier, said Kamoda Prosad Saha, head of forensic medicine at Comilla Medical College.

Even the two victims gave their judicial statements before a court in Dhaka in the case. Metropolitan Magistrate Nurun Nahar Yasmin recorded statements of the victims under section of 22 of the Women and Children Repression Prevention Act.

Ismat Ara Amy, Sub-Inspector of the Women Support and Investigation Division (WSID)

of the DMP and the Investigation Officer of the case, produced the two girls before the court. In their depositions, the victims narrated how they were raped in the hotel at Banani.

Earlier on Friday morning, law enforcers brought Shafat and Sakif, who are among the five accused of rape case, to Dhaka after arresting them in Sylhet on Thursday night.

Shafat and Sakif were arrested in Sylhet on Thursday night in a joint drive by a Police Headquarter's special team, comprising DMP's Detective Branch (DB), Victim Support Centre, Banani police and Sylhet Metropolitan Police.

Even a day into the arrest of Shafat and Sakif, police have claimed to have found primary evidence of the rape of two university students at fashionable The Raintree Hotel at Banani on March 28, police said.

"We have found evidence of rape based on the primary interrogation of Shafat and his friend Sakif, and other information," Krishna Pada Roy, Joint Commissioner (Crime) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told reporters at a press briefing at DMP Media Centre on Friday.

"A four-member committee will assist the proper investigation while the other three-member body, led by Additional Commissioner (crime), will also scrutinize the allegations of negligence against Banani police over filing of the case," the police official said.

The two victims on May 6 filed a case with Banani police against Shafat, his friends Nayeem Ashraf, Shadman Safik, Shafat's driver Billal and his unnamed bodyguard, the police official said.

Of them, Shafat and Nayeem Ashraf raped the girls in the hotel while three others assisted them, he said.

Krishna Pada said that the police would continue the manhunt for the rest of the rape suspects. He said that no one is influencing our work. A joint team lead by police conducted a raid at a house "Rashid Manzil" in Pathantola area of Sylhet city around 9:00pm on Thursday to arrest the two accused, said Zedan Al Musa, Additional Deputy Commissioner (Media) of Sylhet Metropolitan Police (SMP).

DMP Deputy Commissioner (Media) Masudur Rahman said that Shafat and Safik were being interrogated at the Detective Branch Headquarters in the capital.

Shafat is the son of Dilder Ahmed, one of the owners of top jewellery brand Apan Jewellers, while Shadman Sakif is the son of Regnum Group owner Mohammad Hossain Jony, he said.

The three other suspects-Nayeem Ashraf, 30, and Safat's driver Billal, 26, and bodyguard, who were not named in the case-are still at large. The two girls filed the case on May 6, more than a month after the alleged sexual assault at Banani's Raintree Hotel on March 28. They said they did not file the case earlier because the accused threatened them with dire consequences, including death.

Rapists had also repeatedly threatened them and pressured them to withdraw the case which was recorded by police after a 48-hour delay, according to plaintiffs.

The two raped girls at gunpoint while the three others abetted them and filmed the incident, the girls said in the case.

Narrating the incident, one of the university students told the Media that Shafat pestered her and her friend to join his birthday party and it was with reluctance that they went to the Banani hotel.

Faria Mahbub Piyasha, a former TV presenter, who was recently divorced by prime suspect of the case Ahmed Shafat, said she often heard from her friends that her husband and Nayeem, another accused of the case, were Yaba addicts and frequented a Banani hotel to do drugs. Piyasha filed a general diary with Bhatara Police Station on Sunday expressing concern over her safety. Shafat and Piyasha were married on January 1, 2015. She said Shafat's father did not take their marriage well.

Meanwhile, Customs Intelligence on Friday formed a committee to investigate the sources of wealth of Dilder Ahmed Selim, owner of Apon Jewellers and father of accused Shafat, said Moinul Khan, Director General of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) under the National Board of Revenue,.

"We have already issued a letter to the Bangladesh Bank seeking information of the bank accounts of Dilder Ahmed and his son," the DG said. "It was learnt that Dilder Ahmed earned huge amount of money through gold business, but in the last five years, no gold was imported into the country through proper channel. So, we want to know how he could make the money and property," he added.

"A committee has been formed to check their transactions. We will try to find out how Dildar collected the gold he is selling, despite the fact that there has been no gold import for 10 years," Moinul Khan added.
Draft rules soon for investment in SoE's unused land

Badrul Ahsan :

The government is set to formulate rules allowing private and foreign investment in the unused land belonging to different government industrial-commercial organisations across the country.

Under the move, Bangladesh Investment Development Authority (BIDA) has identified more than 100 unused land and infrastructures of running and closed factories of the State-owned Enterprises (SoE's) under the draft rules.

BIDA has already carried out survey on a total of 15 organisations' land measuring 364.22 acres and found extra land of 110.93 acres there.

There are 15 industries and other structures on the land, 13 of which are closed while two in operation.

Of the total 15 organisations and industries, five are under the Textiles Ministry, six under the Ministry of Industries, three under the Ministry of Environment and one under the Ministry of Commerce.

An inter-ministerial meeting was held recently at BIDA headquarters to finalise the draft rules on the issue.

"The government is going to formulate rules for industrialisation in unused land and infrastructures belonging to different government

industrial-commercial organizations," BIDA Chairman Kazi M Aminul Islam told the inter-ministerial meeting.

He added, "There was no law to use unused land and infrastructures of different governmental organisations. If the rules are framed, the unused land and infrastructures would be used for industrialisation properly that will ultimately increase investment."

"The rules are being formulated in line with the recommendations from all stakeholders," the BIDA chief said.

Representatives from Bangladesh Economic Zones Authority (BEZA), Bridges Division, and Ministries of Industries, Textiles and Jute, Railway, Road Transport and Liberation War Affairs attended the meeting.

"The government has already taken various initiatives, including a survey of unused land acquired to establish industry. As the land was not utilised or the factories were shut, the land would be reallocated to establish new industries," said a high official of BIDA preferring anonymity.

Earlier, a committee headed by former chairman of the Board of Investment (BOI) had surveyed 39 units under the Ministry of Industries and the Ministry of Textiles in 2013 where they found 148,999.84 acres of land, including a 1516.74-acre extra land, said the high official.

The committee recommended for surveying "more intensively" the government industries and property and privatised property for their better utilisation.

Of the total 39 organisations, 14 were under Bangladesh Textile Mills Corporation (BTMC), one under Bangladesh Jute Mill Corporation (BJMC), 10 under Bangladesh Food and Sugar Industries Corporation, four under Bangladesh Steel and Engineering Corporation and nine under Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC). Of them, 18 industries are fully in operation, three operating partially and 18 fully closed.
BD female workers back home empty-handed from KSA

Reza Mahmud :

A considerable number of female Bangladeshi workers are now returning home from Saudi Arabia empty-handed.

Recruiting agencies have mounted their woes, the returnees blamed.

"The main problem of Bangladeshi female workers is they are incapable for adaptations in a foreign country. They failed to stay long time abroad from their beloved children and family members. Most of these workers have no hard working experience so that they cannot stay long in a hot weather country," said, Shamim Ahmed, a Bangladeshi national working at Jeddah, in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA).

Around 350 female workers are staying in different Bangladeshi missions shelter camps in the KSA, according to an official of the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh. Who talked to the correspondent over phone. Many others were waiting for returning home as they were unwilling to live in that country any more. As many as 502 female workers were sent back to the country last month, the official also said.

Some female workers said they had dreamt of earning a lot of money from the Middle-Eastern country, but the reality was far from imagination.

Most of them alleged that the recruiting agencies assured them of providing better jobs like nurses, waitress and chefs. But they had been offered jobs of cleaners, house maids and others. The salaries were also lower than the amount the agencies offered initially.

"The agents told me that I am going there to join as an assistant nurse in a posh hospital in Saudi Arabia. But, on arrival at that country they had put huge pressure on me to join as a cleaner there. The wage was also very low. It had broken my heart," said Josna, a female worker in a shelter camp in the Bangladeshi Embassy in Riyadh.

Some women alleged that the agents tortured them on arrival at Riyadh. The Bangladesh International Recruiting Agencies (BAIRA) leaders however, denied such allegations. They shifted the blame on the local agents who collect those workers for the recruiting agencies.

The local agents often conceal the actual condition to the migrant workers. They also lure them with false statements.

"We always try to brief the migrant workers on the proper working condition abroad," Md.Ruhul Amin Swapan, the BAIRA Secretary General, told The New Nation.

Saudi Arabia is the largest labour Market for the Bangladeshi workers.

The kingdom reopened their labour market for Bangladeshi workers after seven years. But they were imposed a condition to send 25 percent female workers, which many recruiting agencies failed to fulfill.

Meanwhile, the kingdom is also trying to cut their job market for foreign workers as they have given importance to employ their native workforces. The country recently has also announced not to recruit foreign nationals in their shopping plazas.

Experts said when the labour markets abroad is shrinking and the remittance reducing such return of workers will worsen the condition.


Man kills pregnant wife in city

Staff Reporter :

A pregnant woman was allegedly beaten to death by her husband over extra-marital affairs in the city's Khilgaon area early Friday.

The deceased has been identified as Mahmuda Akhter Munni, 26, an eight-month pregnant woman, mother of two children.

Police arrested the accused on charge of committing murder. The arrested man identified as Saiful Al Mamun, 35 is a garment worker in Narayanganj, Police said.

Quoting the deceased relatives, Kazi Mainul Islam, Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Khilgaon Police Station, said, "There was a long-standing dispute between the spouses relating to an extra-marital affair of Mamun.

On the fateful night, the quarrel reached its height and Mamun clubbed her wife mercilessly. Severely injured Munni was rushed to Square Hospitals in the capital where she breathed her last at 6:30 am of Friday."

They got married nine years ago. Mamun's unethical affair came to light two years ago and the family hired a house at Khilgaon of Dhaka, the Police official said. We have arrested the killer, the OC said, and a case has been filed.


Miscalculation, negligence caused power grid failure

Anisul Islam Noor :

The recent power grid failure was the result of the negligence and the grid system operators' miscalculation, investigators said.

Though it primarily seemed that a tornado caused the grid disaster, damaging a transmission tower of the Ashuganj-Sirajganj transmission line on May 2, the clients of 38 districts experienced the power outage the subsequent day. It clearly suggests that the storm had no direct or instant role in the mass power outage.

According to sources related to investigation, the tower of the Ashuganj-Sirajganj transmission line that collapsed in a storm on May 2 did not contribute to the grid failure at all.

They said that the grid system operators diverted the extra current that was meant to be transmitted through the broken Ashuganj-Sirajganj grid line to another transmission line of Ishwardi-Ghorashal. However, both the lines had a peak capacity of 230kV.

As a result, the miscalculated extra load on the Iswardi-Ghorashal grid line forced it to go out of service the following day at 11.20 AM.

Negligence and mismanagement of the respective operators were the cause of the grid failure which could have been easily avoided if the capacity of the new line were considered prior to the load-shifting, the sources said.

The grid disaster that occurred on 2nd May at 11.20 am forced blackout in as many as 38 districts of the country's southern and the northern parts comprising Rajshahi, Rangpur, Khulna and Barisal divisions. The grid failure also led to a halt in the power import from India and generation of electricity in many power plants of the country.

The countrymen faced another massive blackout due to a grid malfunction on 1st November of 2014. Since then, the Power Division had been taking many steps to make the grid secure and reliable but, all of them flopped in the recent grid failure exposing that the grid was not secure and reliable.

According to Power Development Board (PDB), there are 37 power plants in Rajshahi, Rangpur, Khulna and Barisal divisions having a joint capacity of 2,665 MW of electricity. The recent grid failure forced all these power plants to reduce their production to 844 MW, ultimately resulting in the dark till noon of 2nd May.

Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB), the responsible authority for the operation of the national grid system, has formed a four members committee headed by PGCB Chief Engineer (Transmission-2) Kamrul Hasan.

One of the transmission lines tripped due to a storm and the other one got damaged suddenly, and now we are writing a report mentioning the causes of the sudden failure of the second transmission line and it would be submitted to the authority in due time once we finish writing ups.

PGCB Managing Director Masum Al Beruni said that the committee finished its investigation and the reasons behind the grid failure would be known with the submission of the report.


Kremlin says may retaliate against US over expulsion of Russian diplomats

Reuters :

Russia may retaliate against the United States for the Obama administration's expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats it said were spies, a top Kremlin aide said on Friday.

Moscow is also waiting for the return of two diplomatic compounds seized in the United States during the same espionage scandal, Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy aide, said.

"We are waiting for the return of Russian

diplomatic property illegally impounded before the New Year by the previous U.S. authorities," Ushakov told a news briefing.

"We decided not to respond immediately to this escapade, but no one has yet abolished the principle of reciprocity in diplomacy ... Our patience is not without limits," he said, saying Russian retaliation could not be ruled out.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had raised the issue of the compounds during a Washington visit this week, he said.

Barack Obama ordered the expulsion of the 35 Russians in late December and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over what he said was their involvement in hacking political groups in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the time he would not retaliate immediately and would wait until at least U.S. President-elect Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20 before deciding what action to take.

Ushakov said a meeting between Putin and Trump was likely to happen under the auspices of the G20 summit in Hamburg in Germany in July and that it was important that their meeting brought tangible results.
5 militants killed

11 bombs, arms recovered

Law enforcers used water cannon as part of the operation \'Sun Devil\' at Matikata militant den\' in Godagari Upazila of Rajshahi were five militants were killed including a woman and a fire-fighter on Thursday.

Staff Reporter :

Five suspected militants, including two women, and a fire service man, were killed during the 'Operation Sun Devil' in a tin-shed house at Benipur in Godagari Upazila in Rajshahi district.

The deceased are Sajjad Ali, 50, his wife Beli, 40, their sons Al Amin, 30, and Soyaiyad, 25, and their daughter Karima Khatun, 28, and Abdul Matin, a local fireman.

Besides, one Sumaiya, her son Jubayer, 8 and infant Suraiya, have been rescued. They are now under police protection.

Bomb disposal unit recovered 11 bombs, one pistol, two rounds of bullets and a magazine from the house, said our local correspondent quoting Police.

Five suspected members of Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) and a fireman were killed during the operation in the den, Nisharul Arif, Additional Deputy Inspector General (Rajshahi Range) of Police said this in a press briefing at Benipur village in Godagari on Friday.

Police cordoned off the tin shed house at Benipur village

on Wednesday night and ended the operation on Friday morning where the suspecting militants were staying, the Additional DIG said.

"The militant couple and their two adult children, including a daughter and an IT expert son, were killed in a suicide blast during the raid, but another adult daughter of the couple, Sumaiya, surrendered to police with two minor children after her initial reluctance to give in. Even ahead of their deaths, they came out of the den and killed fireman Abdul Matin with machetes," he said. According to the Police official, Sazzad Ali began residing in the one-storey tin-shed house, surrounded by water bodies, at Benipur about a month ago. He is father-in-law of one Zahurul, a militant already under police custody.

However, family members of the dead militants refused to take the bodies, apparently due to social stigma. Their bodies are now in the Rajshahi Medical College and Hospital (RMCH) morgue, he said.

Among those injured, fireman Abdul later succumbed to his injuries. The militants exploded suicide vests, according to law enforcers, said Moazzem Hossain Bhuiyan, Superintendent of Police of Rajshahi. Police initially suspected that Sumaiya was wearing a suicide vest. She surrendered to police on Thursday, the SP said.

"Around 7:45am on Thursday, some people came out from the house and attacked police and fire service personnel before blasts. Five bodies were found on the spot afterwards." Officer-in-Charge (OC) of Godagari Police Station Hifzur Alam Munshi said police cordoned off the house since 9:00 pm on Wednesday last. The operation began around 3:00am early Thursday. Police repeatedly told them to surrender. Minutes later, some militants including two women stormed out of the house and swooped on the police and firemen with sharp weapons, leaving seven policemen injured. They also stabbed a fireman indiscriminately who was engaged in spraying water on the house to hydrate any explosives, Later, fireman Abdul Matin succumbed to his injuries at Rajshahi Medical College Hospital, the OC added. Sazzad's other daughter Sumaiya was spotted sitting in the field outside the house when the security personnel were being attacked. The Godagari OC said Sumaiya's 8-year old son with her 3-month old daughter came out of the house before the attack and the explosions. Security forces removed them from the spot immediately.

Locals of Benipur Village, some 30 km from Rajshahi city, said the house in the middle of a field was built around two months ago.

Sazzad lived with his wife, two sons and as many daughters and the family avoided neighbours, according to villagers. He used to sell clothes as a vendor. His sons, Alamin and Shoyeb were involved in farming. Locals tagged the house as 'Alamin's home', said the Police officer. Local Union Council Chairman Ali Azam Towhid said, Sazzad's son-in-law Zahurul has been in jail for several months on charge of being involved with banned militant group Jamaa'tul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). Sumaiya's husband Zahurul hails from Godagari Upazila's Diya Manikchar, according to Towhid.

Meanwhile, a raid into a militant hideout in Natore Sadar yielded no result, police said on Friday. Nobody was found inside the three storied building at Harishpur, our local correspondent reports quoting Abul Khayer, Additional Superintendent of district police.

"We carried out the raid under specific instruction, but it had no result," the police official said. The operation was withdrawn around 2:00pm on Friday after three hours.

In March this year, law enforcers raided seven houses in Chittagong and Sylhet region. About 26 people, including women and children, were killed in the operation.

From late April, raids have been conducted in three districts' five places.
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What began as a rebellion against the budget practices of the Jindal administration five years ago has culminated in a House budget process that is independent of the governor's office. The path here was not partisan, although the current budget battles might appear so.

Rep. Cameron Henry Photos by Sarah Gamard/Manship News Service

Rep. Cameron Henry was vice chairman of the House Appropriations Committee when in November 2012 he and another member were removed by then-Speaker Chuck Kleckly at the behest of Gov. Bobby Jindal. The cause for the removal: Henry and fellow committee member Rep. Joe Harrison of Napoleonville had questioned the Jindal administration's plan to privatize a state agency.

"I was an appointed member on the committee," Henry explains in an interview in his Capitol office. "Each congressional district in the House gets to elect a member to the committee. Others are appointed. When the administration came to the committee with the contract, they wanted to privatize the Office of Group Benefits."

OGB manages the health insurance and benefit plans for state employees.

"I didn't think it was in the best interest of state employees and I didn't think it was in the best interest of the state," says Henry, who was elected to the House in 2007. He represents HD84 which includes parts of Jefferson and Orleans parishes.

"The administration could never answer the question about what was going to happen to the half-billion cash in the account and they could never tell me where it was going to go once the contract was executed," Henry continues.

The Jesuit High grad's ouster from the Appropriations Committee set into motion five years of events that have culminated this year in the House of Representatives wrestling control of the budget process from the Edwards administration. There is some irony in the story because now-Gov. John Bel Edwards led the House Democratic Caucus at the time. Now Edwards finds himself wrestling with some of his former budget allies in a fight over funding state services.

Henry says two things happened after he was ousted from his seat on the Appropriations Committee.

"I started hearing from other members who would come around and say 'Look, the way we're doing things isn't working,'" Henry, 42, recalls. "The other thing that happened was that the Legislative Black Caucus was having a retreat and I went to talk with them."

At the Black Caucus retreat, Henry says he talked about the devastating impact mid-year cuts were having on programs that the constituents of caucus members needed.

"I said, look, these mid-year cuts have been forcing reductions in programs that are the most valuable to your constituents," Henry says. It was a key meeting that led to the formation of a loose alliance that resulted in Jindal losing control of the House budget process. A group led by then-Reps. Brett Geymann of Lake Charles, Simone Champagne of Jeanerette, and Rep. Lance Harris of Alexandria called themselves the Fiscal Hawks.

Harris was chairman of the Republican Caucus. Rep. Katrina Jackson of Monroe led the Legislative Black Caucus and Edwards led the Democratic Caucus. Together with the Fiscal Hawks the informal alliance commanded an operating majority in the 105-member House that came to the fore in 2013.

"We were able to work together because we set the budget as our priority," Henry recalls. "We agreed that we weren't going to hold any bills hostage, or say we'd had to pass support for things that were not directly related to the budget."

In subsequent years, other issues like Common Core diverted the attention of some of the members, but the ideas of realistic budgeting and legislative independence in the budget process were at the core of the rebellion against what Harris describes as "the smoke and mirror budgets" of the Jindal administration.

Edwards' upset election as governor in 2015 accelerated the development of the House's independence movement. On Inauguration Day 2016, the House elected Rep. Taylor Barras of New Iberia as speaker, rejecting Edwards' choice, Rep. Walt Leger III. Henry was a candidate in that race, but ran second. Leger ran first but did not get a majority of the votes. Henry, sensing that he was too polarizing a figure to win a majority of votes, withdrew from the race. Barras remained in the race and defeated Leger on the second ballot.

Henry, who has an undergraduate degree from LSU and an MBA from Tulane, says that some time after the speaker vote, he asked Barras to appoint him Appropriations chair.

"After it was all said and done I had some time to think about what we had just accomplished and what it meant for the body  OK, now we have independence, not only from the governor, but from any single individual controlling the House  I went through and figured out what would be the best spot for me to be able to help the speaker lead us to success," Henry states. "I said, look, it's your choice. If it fits, if it works in your plan, I'm happy to do it."

Henry says the time after Jindal had him removed from Appropriations had actually allowed him to spend more time studying the budget and the budget process than he did when he served on the committee.

He's brought all of that experience to bear in his new role. The 2016 session was rough. The HB1 that emerged from Appropriations was heavily amended on the floor. This session, things operated much more smoothly and Henry attributes that to a framework that Harris brought to the Republican Caucus when it met on retreat in August of last year.

"When you look at what's been happening," Henry says. "You realize that the Revenue Estimating Conference produces just that  an estimate of how much revenue the state will get over the next fiscal year. For years, administrations used the lower more conservative REC as the basis to build the budget. At some point in the Jindal years, they started using the higher number. It gave the appearance of having more money so we could appropriate more."

Henry says what becomes clear when looking at the REC estimates is that the number can't be trusted.

"The one thing we do know about the REC number is that it's going to be wrong," Henry declares. "It's irresponsible to base your budget 100 percent on an estimate that you know is going to be wrong."

Rep. Lance Harris confers with colleague Valerie Hodges.

Harris' framework called for looking at the budget data from the past 14 years and realizing that REC estimates were anywhere from three percent to five percent off.

"So, I looked at that and recognized that we could eliminate the problem of the mid-year cuts if we would start by budgeting at a percentage smaller than the full estimate," Harris says. "I asked why couldn't we start with a standstill budget that spent in the next year what we actually spent this year  not appropriated because there have been cuts."

The Alexandria businessman says that by taking this approach it's possible the state could end the next fiscal year with a $230 million surplus. He says part of the state's spending problems stem from a failure to reduce state general fund spending to levels that preceded the rapid growth in spending that followed in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita and subsequent disasters.

At the 2016 caucus retreat, Harris created two work groups, one to look at tax reform and the other to look at spending.

Henry was elected to the House in 2007 where he succeeded his former boss, Steve Scalise, who succeeded Jindal as Louisiana's 1st District congressman. He says he carried over the work of the budget group into the Appropriations Committee this year. Using work groups, Henry says, allowed the committee to drill deeper into department budgets than working as a full committee allowed. The result was a more tightly controlled budget process that emerged out of Appropriations and remained mostly unchanged after debate on the House floor.

The bill now awaits action by the Senate Finance Committee which will begin working on HB1 next week. Harris says he's been meeting monthly with Republican senators about budget and spending issues. He's not predicting what the Senate will do with the bill.

The independence established by the House, particularly this year, appears to be built largely on an inclusionary approach to leadership used by Harris in his caucus and Henry in his committee.

"We didn't meet in a room and say, 'Everyone's going to vote for this bill,'" Henry says. "We started with the mindset that we can't spend 100 percent of a wrong number. So, Rep. Harris came up with a methodology and we worked from there."

Henry believes the House's independence on the budget would have happened even if Vitter had won election in 2015.

"I wasn't going to change  what you see is what you get," Henry declares. "I think Sen. Vitter might have had a longer honeymoon period, if you want to call it that, but the members had a way that they wanted to do things and that would have been the case regardless of who was governor. Members were tired of the system where the rules were what the Fourth Floor [the governor's office] said. I was tired of it. Speaker Barras was tired of it. We just stepped up and said this is the way it's going to be."

Even though he and his former House colleague, Gov. Edwards, disagree on issues, Harris does credit the governor with bringing a new level of honesty to the budget process from the executive side that was missing in the Jindal years. "I'll give the governor this, he and his administration are not using smoke and mirrors and some of the gimmicks we've seen tried up here in recent years," Harris says.

Harris believes the House's new-found independence will prove good for the state.

"We have three branches of government, and for the system to work they need to be largely equal," Harris says. "That way you get the interplay of ideas and even disagreements that reveal where the common ground is and what the possibilities for compromise are. I think this is all healthy and will prove good for the state."
Four Southern Illinois residents were indicted on federal meth charges, according to a Friday news release from Donald S. Boyce, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois.

Starlet J. Howie, also known as Star Oettle, and Star Miller, 47, of Cutler; Mandy L. Hagen, 29, of Lenzburg; Jeremy S. Copple, 31, of St. Libory; and Daniel M. Dortch, 26, of Chester, were charged in a one-count second superseding indictment charging conspiracy to distribute more than 50 grams of methamphetamine.

The indictment handed down May 2 alleges that the offense occurred between 2015 and April 2017 in Perry, Randolph, Monroe, and St. Clair counties.

Howie and Hagen were ordered held without bond pending a Monday detention hearing. Copple and Dortch are scheduled to make their initial appearances in federal court on Monday.

The methamphetamine offense carries a maximum penalty of 5 to 40 years of imprisonment, to be followed by four years of supervised release, and a $5 million fine.

The ongoing investigation is being conducted by the Randolph County Sheriffs Office, Jackson County Sheriffs Office, Perry County Sheriffs Office, Monroe County Sheriffs Office, St. Clair County Sheriffs Office Drug Tactical Unit, Metropolitan Enforcement Group of Southern Illinois, Chester Police Department, Coulterville Police Department, Belleville Police Department, Lenzburg Police Department, Perry County (Missouri) Sheriffs Office, and Drug Enforcement Administration. The Randolph County States Attorneys Office and the Monroe County States Attorneys Office also assisted in the investigation.

 The Southern
CARBONDALE  During a visit to the Small Business Development Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale on Thursday, gubernatorial hopeful J.B. Pritzker said the state must better support small businesses and startups, which he called the real engines of job creation.

Pritzker, a billionaire entrepreneur and investor, is one of four Democratic candidates who hope to challenge Gov. Bruce Rauner in the November 2018 general election.

After receiving a tour of the business incubator by executive director Kyle Harfst, Pritzker praised the breadth of small, innovative companies hed seen at the facility.

Its tremendous, the kinds of technology that are being developed that are really an outgrowth of the location here, he said, mentioning in particular Thermaquatica, a company that creates plastics out of coal.

1871, a Chicago digital startup incubator that Pitzker helped found, has created 6,000 jobs and brought in $100 million worth of capital to support those businesses, he said.

He said he hopes to put back together the small business development incubators that have been torn apart by the failure of a budget, and he would start by ensuring universities like SIU are fully funded.

Pitzker said the state would benefit from a small business loan fund and microloan fund for technology being developed in such incubators.

I know we can do this all over the state and create a lot of jobs, he said.

Pritzker said ending the ongoing budget impasse is essential to the health of the states universities, which he called the bulwarks of the next generation, of economic growth and of job creation.

As for balancing the budget, he said it would be easier with a new governor in office.

First youve got to have some leadership and some vision about it, because its not like its impossible, its just that weve got a governor whos folded his arms and said, Unless you give me this Koch Brothers agenda, Im not going to let you have a budget, he said, referring to Rauners so-called turnaround agenda.

Pritzker said he would start by laying what he considered to be the states key priorities: education, health care and job creation.

So you need growth, and you need revenue, and you need to be efficient about how you deliver services to people, he said.

Pitzker said he was uniquely qualified to restore job growth in Southern Illinois, based on the jobs hed created in his businesses and in the 1871 incubator.

I happen to think that Southern Illinois has been forgotten by so many politicians, Pitzker said. Its just become everybodys tertiary thought process, and it should be front and center. It will be for me. Because Ive seen across Southern Illinois, the manufacturing thats gone away and the big companies that have gone away, nothings been put in its place  to create new jobs, and new jobs is what I do best.
Redheadedhornet/iStock/Thinkstock(NEW ORLEANS) -- As New Orleans began the process Thursday of removing the remaining Confederate-era monuments in the Louisiana city, officials said they are facing intimidation, threats and violence amid their efforts to dismantle the statues that were erected decades after the Civil War to honor the Cult of the Lost Cause.



The city aims to take down four prominent Confederate-era monuments. The Battle of Liberty Place monument, which officials said was erected by the Crescent City White League to commemorate the deadly insurrection led by white supremacists against the citys racially integrated police department and state militia, was removed in late April. The statue of Confederacy President Jefferson Davis statue was removed by early Thursday.



"Three weeks ago, we began a challenging but long overdue process of removing four statues that honor the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. Today we continue the mission, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in a statement Thursday. "These monuments have stood not as historic or educational markers of our legacy of slavery and segregation, but in celebration of it. I believe we must remember all of our history, but we need not revere it."



Workers removing the Davis statue wore full masks and the area was heavily guarded by police officers and snipers, presumably to prevent clashes between pro- and anti-monument groups.



The monuments slated to come down next are the Robert E. Lee statue and the P.G.T. Beauregard equestrian statue.



Due to the widely known intimidation, threats, and violence, serious safety concerns remain. Therefore, the City will not share details on a removal timeline for the Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard statues, city officials said in a press release early Thursday.



The four monuments were erected between 1884 and 1915 to celebrate the Cult of the Lost Cause, a movement city officials say promotes white supremacy.



After removal, city officials said the statues will be crated and stored while they determine a more appropriate place to display them, such as a museum, where they can be placed in their proper historical context from a dark period of American history.



The Cult of the Lost Cause emerged at the end of the Civil War when the Confederacy had lost. The movement is made up of those who havent accepted the outcome of the war 152 years later.



The Cult espouses a number of controversial principles, including that slavery was a benevolent institution, that the war was caused by the states secession and not slavery, and that African slaves were loyal to their masters and the Confederate cause.



The movement also asserts that the Confederacy was defeated militarily only because of their opponents overwhelming advantages in men and resources. Confederate figures such as General Lee are revered as heroic and saintly.



Historians describe the deeply rooted phenomenon as a distortion of history by white Southerners.



In attempting to deal with defeat, Southerners created an image of the war as a great heroic epic, documents filed with the National Register of Historic Places state. There was an element of chivalry in the way the South had fought, achieving noteworthy victories against staggering odds. This was the Lost Cause as the late nineteenth century saw it, and a whole generation of Southerners set about glorifying and celebrating it.



That glorification manifested in many forms, including organizations and countless memorials.



In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented over 1,500 symbols of the Confederacy and the myth of the Lost Cause in public spaces as part of its report Whose Heritage? The U.S.-based organization, which monitors hatred and prejudice, has encouraged local governments to move the symbols to settings such as museums where people can learn the full history of the Confederacy.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
The child was shot at Davis home. According to Davis, several children had entered his home through the unlocked back door. He stated he often provided food for the children that live nearby so they were frequently in and out of his home. The victim turned on the water faucet where the washing machine would have been. The other children left the home but the victim stayed behind. Davis was cleaning up the water on the floor when he heard a shot. He ran to the back bedroom and found the victim lying on the floor with a gunshot wound to the chest. Davis had left a stolen .40 caliber Smith and Wesson pistol on his bed. He picked up the child and ran next door where the child lived.
A warm and friendly atmosphere welcomes persons to the Advanced Health. facility. Inset:Dr. Conrad Nedd, brings a multi-disciplined medical background and a record of being a reputable health care professional, to the service offered by the new facility.

ADVANCED HEALTH, an urgent care and wellness centre, was conceived as part of an overall plan to improve access to health care in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





New Montrose Medical Clinic, established by Dr. Conrad Nedd more than 5 years ago as a part-time solo practice, provides the basis for the expansion into a new facility called ADVANCED HEALTH, located along the main leeward highway, opposite the CWSA headquarters. It will provide unscheduled ambulatory care to members of the community, and provide high quality patient-centered care for which Dr. Nedd has developed a reputation.





Dr. Conrad Nedd, a native Vincentian from New Montrose and a past student of Kingstown Preparatory School and the St Vincent Grammar School, graduated with a degree in Medicine from St. Georges University in Grenada in 1998. On completing his internship, he practised both Hospital and Community Medicine.

His further training included Emergency Medicine, Mass Casualty Management, Clinical Management of HIV, Project Management and Leadership in Healthcare.





At the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, he was Head of the Emergency Department until leaving the Public Service to join as full time faculty in the Clinical Science Department at a medical school.

For two years, Dr. Nedd also provided care and treatment at the lone infectious disease clinic in SVG, for persons living with HIV.





He is also a certified instructor for Advanced Life Support and Mass Casualty Management courses for adults and children, which is a standard requirement for health care providers.





Following Gods calling and in pursuit of his dream, Dr. Nedd opened the door of this new medical facility on the 2nd of May, 2017, intent on serving the general public, with the full support of his wife and family.

The mission of the new facility is to promote the health and well-being of the local population, by providing accessible high-quality medical care for people of all ages. ADVANCED HEALTH is focused on patient-centered care and plans to educate patients on the importance of preventative care.





Plans are afoot to offer various specialist services and wellness programmes, and to expand to a 24- hour service to the public.
Left:A large, celebratory crowd of DLP supporters were on hand to hear Volneys call. (Credit: wicnews.com) Right:Herbert Volney, former High Court Judge, made clear which side of the fence he stands on the marijuana debate.

This is the advice supporters of the Dominica Labour Party got from former High Court Judge and Justice Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Herbert Volney, as he delivered the feature address to the partys National Rally held last Sunday in Portsmouth.





It was not the primary focus of Vonleys address, but he found the time to speak to the issue, albeit briefly.

According to Dominica Online News (DOL News), he told a celebratory gathering of thousands of DLP supporters, "And there is one thing I promised the youths to say tonight. Dont mind I was a judge. I will say it, Prime Minister, legalize it. Legalize it. Jamaica legalized it, let Dominica legalize it.





Whether in direct reference to the reference made to marijuana or to more political and government related insights provided by Vonley, Prime Minister and leader of the DLP Roosevelt Skerrit, said that he would be relying heavily on Vonleys experience as Domincia looks to shape a new future.





"Herbert Volney, I am sure you would agree, is a man, who still has a significant contribution to make to the social development of our Caribbean, and I for one, intend to lean very heavily on his vast knowledge and experience in the shaping and emergence of the new Dominica, he stated, as reported by DOL News.

He said Volneys message will be studied and acted upon by the party.





As far as Dominicas response to the ongoing debate on the decriminalisation/legalisation of marijuana is concerned, in December 2016, Prime Minister Skerrit said the government will seriously consider the use of medical marijuana in 2017.





This after his 2014 announcement that his government intended to review and perhaps alter Dominicas marijuana laws, with the view to lifting some restrictions. However, he emphasized then, that the government was not prepared to lift the ban on the use of the herb completely.





Even before Joseph Isaac, an elected member of the Dominica parliament, said in July 2016, that it was time for officials to seriously consider the decriminalization of marijuana, and expressed his willingness to "lead the mission towards this objective.





This call followed on a 2012 pronouncement by then Attorney General, Levi Peter who made it clear that the drug would not soon be legalized.





The cultivation, sale and use of marijuana remains a criminal offence throughout the OECS jurisdiction. (Source: Dominica OnLine)
Gabriel Escarrer, Vice President of Melia Hotel Group, was in SVG for discussions with the Prime Minister.

An European based Hotel chain, with roots in Spain, is exploring the feasibility of expanding its network to St. Vincent and the Grenadines.





Vice President of Melia Hotel Group - Gabriel Escarrer, held discussions with Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves last Wednesday, at the VIP lounge of the Argyle International Airport.





News of the Spanish Hotel chains interest in St. Vincent and the Grenadines was disclosed by Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonslaves during a press conference he hosted last Tuesday. Cuban President Raul Castro made the arrangements for the meeting with the Melia Group here, Dr. Gonsalves said.





The Spanish hotel chain, the 17th largest such enterprise worldwide, offers prospects for "multi-destination tourism, according to the Vincentian leader.





The Melia Group has registered interest in Buccament Bay Resorts Resort, as have other entities regionally and internationally.





The Canadian company PACE, investors in the Mt. Wynne/Peters Hope Black Sand Resort, was one of the other entities showing interest in the Buccament Bay Resort.





The Richard Branson founded Virgin Group, of which Virgin Atlantic Airways is part, was slated to visit Buccament Bay Resort last Wednesday.





The Buccament Bay Resort was forced into bankruptcy, and was officially closed, after an application by a Proposal Trustee requesting an extension so as to file a proposal to the Resorts creditors, was denied by the Eastern Caribbean Court.





"We are all keen to see Buccament back on stream for the tourism season, Dr. Gonsalves remarked.

Steps at reopening the Resort depend on how swiftly Brian Glasgow, the court-appointed Liquidator, completes his work, the Vincentian leader stated. (WKA)
Crime was on the menu when the Insurance Institute of St Vincent & the Grenadines held a lunchtime meeting on Wednesday 3rd May.





The chefs for this special occasion were Detective Inspector Atland Browne and Corporal Alex Primus, Head and Officer respectively of the Major Crime Unit of the CID of the Royal SVG Police Force.

After a brief introduction by Insurance Institute P.R.O. - Joe Sheridan, the officers served-up a cocktail of crime information to the eager insurance professionals, who responded with a vast range of questions, comments and ideas.





Topics such as security cameras, evidence, fingerprints, stolen property, identification, CCTV. neighbourhood watch, dishonesty, assaults and murders were all part of this crime callaloo, in which crime prevention was a constant theme.

The questions came thick and fast, and the experienced officers handled these with pleasing honesty and helpfulness.





According to those in attendance, this packed meeting, held in the upper room of the popular Eat-Rite Restaurant, was a great success, and more discussion time will be a feature of future insurance institute meetings.

The Insurance Institute of SVG was founded in 1997 and promotes insurance education and professional development. (Submitted by the IISVG)
Commissioner of Police (Ag) Renold Hadaway described the news of Danroy Coziers death as unbelievable. Right: Efforts are afoot by the Royal SVG Police Force to devise ways of offering support for PC Danroy Coziers daughter (inset).

The Royal St. Vincent and the Grenadines Police Force (RSVPF) will make every effort to provide, in whatever way they can, for Hailey Cozier, the 1-year-old daughter of the late Constable Danroy Cozier, one of two brothers who were shot dead last week Thursday.





The pledge came from Acting Commissioner of Police Renold Hadaway, who also revealed that discussions have already started in this regard, as part of the constabularys ongoing support for the victims family. Hailey is said to be Danroys only child.





The top cop was speaking to THE VINCENTIAN on Monday, having returned to the state last Saturday after attending the 32nd Conference of the Association of Caribbean Commissioners of Police (ACCP), held in Aruba.





The bodies of Danroy, 25, and his brother Nicholas, 19, unemployed, both of Richmond Hill, Kingstown, were discovered close to 1 p.m. on Thursday, May 4, at Sion Hill Bay. Autopsies showed they died from bullet wounds to the head.





Hadaway explained that he was addressing the regional conference on the issue of crime when he received the spine-chilling information.





"It was unbelievable. I had to try very hard to maintain my composure in order to complete my presentation. I am still extremely traumatized by this wicked and incomprehensible act, the Commissioner (Ag.) stated. He described Danroy as a decent police officer.





Hadaway explained that, from Aruba, he held discussions on the issue with Deputy Commissioner of Police Colin John, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Superintendent Ruth Jacobs, and other senior police officers. As a result of those discussions, a course of action was agreed to ensure that support mechanisms were immediately put in place. In this regard, he noted that the family of the deceased brothers were called in and counselling was provided for them.





He added that after returning to the state, he spoke with the family including Danroys wife Shakitha.

"We are continuing to provide them with the necessary support, as we make arrangements for the burial, the Commissioner (Ag) said.





He also expressed gratitude for the overwhelming support from the public during the period, and looks forward to their continued assistance.





"Our hope is that justice will be served, he concluded.

Danroy, a police officer of about four years, was attached to the Mesopotamia Police Station at the time of his death.




Stubbs Government School was not left out of the act of generosity.

The smiles of gratitude are still on the faces of the recipients of 22 schools, foundations and health facilities throughout this country, which received 33 barrels from the 8-year old, San Diego, California based, SVG Helping Hands Inc.





During the last week of April, the 8-year-old San Diego California- based, non-profit organization SVG Helping Hands Inc., also distributed 8 pallets (which included 1,170 lunch boxes for school children).





President of non-profit organization - Susan Child-Ellis said that the generosity of grandparents Clement and Agatha Gonsalves of Biabou, had inspired her cousins, Sally Regisford-Charleston and Natasha Bullock-Odero, and her to establish the charitable association.





She explained, "When we were growing up, there was a community of sharing with your neighbours, workers, friends and, most of all, the less fortunate. We are very proud to carry on that family tradition which our grandparents passed down to our parents, which continues today with SVG Helping Hands Inc. We are honored to be able to help the people of St. Vincent for 8 years now. This is in part due to our wonderful family, supporters, donors, sponsors and volunteers. To everyone we say thank you for helping SVG!





Child-Ellis said that they migrated as young teens, and today network with the people in the USA to put on fund-raising events to fulfill the wish lists of Vincentians.





Donations were made during the last week of April to the Stubbs Health Center, Stubbs Government School, Argyle Pre-School and Argyle Primary School, Biabou Methodist School, New Prospect Primary School (Simon), Greiggs Primary School, St. Benedicts Childrens Home, Bread of Life, Red Cross, Ladies of Charity, Lewis Punnett Home, Calder Government School, Evesham Methodist School, Marriaqua Government School, Guadalupe Home for Girls, Liberty Lodge Home for Boys, Milton Cato Memorial Hospital, Miranda Preschool, Vinsave and Taraji Foundation.





During that week, the SVG Helping Hands Inc., also distributed 8 pallets (which included 1,170 lunch boxes for school children).
The St. Vincent and the Grenadines Teachers Union (SVGTU) has expressed "alarm and extreme concern about the deteriorating conditions at many schools across the country.





The Union made its "alarm and concern known in a release dated May 8, in which it named the Kingstown Government School, Kingstown Anglican School, and the St Clair Dacon Secondary School as institutions which have especially shown clear signs of deterioration and are in dire need of remedial work.





Among the conditions which "continue to create grave fear and anxiety among staff, students and parents according to the Union, are: termite-ridden wood work, rodent and mosquito infestation and sewerage problems.





Government response

In an immediate response to the expressed concern, the Ministry of Education acknowledged that "one or two schools were in need of repair, and they questioned the accuracy of the extent of the problems as claimed by the Union.





The Ministry also assured that it was moving to address the situation.





Further to this, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, during a press conference he hosted on Tuesday of this week, also gave the assurance that repairs to schools were ongoing, and singled out the Kingstown Government School as a special case. He disclosed that the school was ear-marked for extensive rehabilitation and reno-vation, which would see it being modified so as to serve as a Shelter, but indicated that the Ministry of Education was unable to find a suitable location to temporarily house the students while the school was being repaired.





The Prime Minister added that work was currently ongoing at the Dorsetshire Hill and Diamond Government Schools. Work had already started on the Belair Government School, and according to Gonsalves, work on the Belmont and Langley Park Government Schools was expected to begin soon.





No word





Towards arousing action on the part of the authorities, the Union had called upon "the Ministry of Education to take immediate action and implement the steps necessary to correct the situation.





The Union contends that even in the face of its written concern to the relevant authorities, "to date very little or nothing has been done to effectively address the matter.





The concern was intensified with the Union claiming that the schools referred "are currently unfit for use as they pose a significant threat to the health and safety of staff and students, and other users of the building.

The Union has put itself on record as saying, as per its release of May 8, that it will issue an advisory to its members soonest.




Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves reports that his overseas visits had an air of optimism about them.

Anyone interested in starting an apartment business, small hotel or any other accommodation so as to provide comfort for visitors to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, can put their business proposals to the government.





The invitation was extended by Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, during a press conference at Cabinet Room last Tuesday.





The press conference had been called primarily so that the Prime Minister could report on his recent trips abroad.





Hotel development





One was to Miami where he represented the nation at a Caribbean Hotels Resorts Investment Summit. He was accompanied by Dr. Rudy Matthias, Glen Beache, Allan Alexander, Damion Browne and Hans King.





The Vincentian leader acknowledged having been given a "premier spot to speak at the gathering. He outlined having made use of the offer to "explain opportunities for hotel and construction.





He outlined that two "name brands are expected here between May 15 and June 30, and that "discussions are promising.





In was in light of governments thrust in tourism, hotel-related development, that the invitation to local entrepreneurs was extended.





Creativity and Innovation





The other trip was to Trinidad where he addressed a conference at a Distinguished Leadership and Innovation conference. That activity was spurred by Professor Ken Robinson who has been recognised for works in the creativity and innovation sphere.





The Vincentian leader emphasised the urgency of hotel construction, and couched it in the passage of a Resolution, spearheaded by SVG, and passed at the United Nations General Assembly, April 28.

SVGs Permanent Representative to the UN  Rhonda King piloted that ground- breaking measure, which called for the declaration of a Creativity and Innovation Day to be observed annually. The Day has been set as April 21, and will be marked for the first time in 2018.





The Vincentian leader is keen on the "production of novel ideas and their application to improve the quality of life for our people, and urged, "We have to use our intelligence for good purposes.





Argyle Airport





Referring to the Argyle International Airport as a platform from which businesses can take-off, the Prime Minister reported that Amerijet  which provides a cargo service - is taking off with greater load than obtained at the E.T Joshua airport.





In fact, with Amerijet now using a 767 aircraft to serve SVG, the Prime Minister expects that farmers, fishermen and horticulturists can have Vincentian produce into Miami by mid-afternoon the same day, since direct flights to Miami are being finalised.





Increased activity at the AIA is anticipated, with Canadian and UK entities showing interest.

Local pilots are also galvanising into action and are seeking to expand routes, and Prime Minister Gonsalves is pledging governments assistance in "sensible business plans going forward.
Warmth from the 2017 presentation of reigning Band of the Year champs - Blondie Bird and Friends.

After much anticipation and hype, the 40th edition of the June/July Vincy Mas was officially launched at the Victoria Park, last Saturday, May 6.





The countdown was begun officially to what promises to be a milestone year, featuring special 40th anniversary events as well as the revamping of the already existing shows.





Following whistle stops on the Leeward and Windward sides of the island, a parade got underway in the late afternoon hours, starting from the Cruise Ship Terminal and winding its way through Kingstown to Victoria Park.





The parade featured representations of traditional and contemporary mas and modern and pan-round the neck steelbands. The 2017 Miss SVG contestants, travelling in individual vehicles, took full advantage of the opportunity being part of the parade, as they waved to the many bystanders.





Expect a new thrust





At Victoria Park, Chairman of the Carnival Development Corporation (CDC), Ricardo Adams, in his address, spoke of the innovations and changes that he and his team would be bringing to the festival this year.

But first, he recognized in particular, Bertram Molly Arthur, Chairman of the then Carnival Development Committee that marshalled the changeover 40 years ago and all those who took it from where it started in 1977, to where it is today.





"It is my hope that with this foundation we can grow from strength to strength to make Vincy Mas the main pillar of our cultural and tourism product, Adams projected.





Among other changes, the CDC chairman spoke of the focus on marketing the festival, with an increased use of Social Media (Facebook and Instagram) along with the more traditional avenues of television, radio and newspapers.





"We must speak the language of the market, Adams said, as he addressed a new focus on the youth. "We must pay attention to the youth in Carnival to develop the Jelani Nileses, the Saeed Bowmans, Rodney Smalls, the Chewalees, the Man Zanghies and the Hypa 4000s of tomorrow.





Expect too, that the CDC will intensify its work with Calypso Tents, the Mas Bands and Steel Orchestras, to ensure proper structure, and to set them on a path to becoming genuine breeding grounds of new talent, to inform the national event.





"We will be ensuring that in order to deliver a quality event, that we pay attention to the venues, the quality of the acts and quality of the service that we offer, he said.





Bacchanal time





Following the addresses, which also included one by the Minister of Culture, Cecil Mc Kie, it was time to get a taste from the components of Vincy Mas.





A number of established Mas (costume) bands and debutant Oxygen presented previews of their 2017 presentations, and JOuvert Fanatics gave an indication of what can be expected for this years JOuvert competition.





The Miss SVG contestants made their first public appearance, during which they made their introductory speeches which, from all indications, were well received by the large crowd.

Then it was time for the Calypsonian and Soca Artiste.





Reigning Calypso Monarch Zafir Man Zangie Adams and Michael Lord Have Mercy Olliverrie, the latter demonstrating his penchant for theatrics, carried the flame, commendably so, for the calypsonians.





The Soca flame burned brightly and with excessive heat, with performances by the likes of Lornette Fya Empress Nedd , Joel Dynamite Tyril, Hans John, Reon Fete King Madzart Primus, Kester Flanka Chapman, Ryan Royal Abraham, and Shane Hupa 4000 Husbands, with the crescendo provided by the indefatigable pair of Delroy Fireman Hooper and Gamal Skinny Fabulous Doyle.





All in all, the evenings programme seemed to have excited the expectations of the patrons.
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By Azernews





By Amina Nazarli

Many travelers and sport fans are in a hurry to visit Azerbaijan, as its capital city is hosting the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games. Some have already accommodated in various hotels and hostels of Baku, while for those, who are still looking for accommodation, the below list by Milli.Az will allow to find the best option.

Today, the country can accommodate about 40,000 tourists in its 535 hotels, which include a series of luxury hotels  Excelsior, Hilton, Four Seasons, Fairmont, JW Marriott, Kempinski  as well as several budget hotels for cost-conscious travelers. Moreover, 25 hostels and 92 apartments for tourists operate in Baku.

Hotel prices

Lets start with hotel prices. Bulks of the hotels located in the country are 5-4-3 stars, which sometimes creates inconvenience for low-budget tourists.



"Qafqaz Baku City Hotel & Residences" (address: Nasimi district Tbilisi avenue 34)

Singe standard room -123 manat ($73)

Double standard room - 156 manat ($92)

Breakfast and gym are included.

"12 Inn Bulvar" (address: Uzeyir Hajibeyov street 27)

Singe standard room -130 manat ($77)

Double standard room - 150 manat ($89)

Double luxury room - 250 manat ($148)

Breakfast and Internet are included. By the way the prices a little increased in connection with the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games.

"ABU Arena" (address: Koroglu Rahimov street 15)

Singe standard room - 60 manat ($35)

Double standard room - 90 manat ($53)

Breakfast included.

"Absheron Hotel Group" (address: Azadlig square, block 674)

Single standard room with sea panorama (without breakfast + VAT) - 602,90 manat ($359)

Single standard room with sea panorama (with breakfast + VAT) - 641,84 manat ($382)

"Baku Palace Ascot Inn Hotel" (address: Icheri sheher, Islam Safarli street 15)

Single standard room - 50 manat ($29)

Double standard room - 70 manat ($41)

There is no restaurant in the hotel.

"Excelsior Hotel & Spa BAKU"(address: Heydar Aliyev avenue 2)

Single standard room - 160 manat ($95)

Double standard room - 185 manat ($110)

Breakfast included.

"Grand Hotel Europe" (address: Tbilisi avenue 1025/30)

Single standard room - 130 manat ($77)

Double standard room - 130 manat ($77)

Breakfast, swimming pool, SPA and fitness are included

"Hyatt Regency Bak?" (address: Bakikhanov street 1)

Single standard room - 343 manat ($204)

Double standard room - 366 manat ($218)

Breakfast, swimming pool and fitness are included

"Hilton Baku" (address: Azadlig avenue)

Single standard room (without breakfast + VAT)  384 manat ($228)

Single standard room (with breakfast + VAT)  422 manat ($251)

Double standard room (without breakfast + VAT) - 386 manat ($230)

Double standard room (with breakfast + VAT) - 456 manat ($270)

"Four Seasons Hotel Baku"

Single and double standard room (without breakfast) -760 manat ($450)

Single and double standard room (with breakfast) - 825 manat ($489)

Hostels

"Hostel Land of Fire" - 17 manat ($10)

"Baku Old City Hostel" - 18 manat ($11)

"Caspian Hostel" - 16 manat ($9)

"Sport Hostel Baku" - 8 manat ($4)

"Guest House ?nn and Hostel" - 12 manat ($7)

"Baku Hostel On Gesr" - 17 manat ($10)

"Calipso Hostel"- 14 manat ($8)

Rooms in these hostels vary from 4 to 10 persons. Parking, internet, hairdryer, iron and TV are included in the fee.

Apartments

Such types of accommodation are mostly preferred by Iranian, Ukrainian and Turkish tourists. Depending on condition and state of the apartments the prices vary from 20 to 120 manats ($11-$71).
By Azernews





By Rashid Shirinov

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have common interests to help Azerbaijan and Armenia reach a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Richard Hoagland, the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

He made the remarks on May 12 in Washington at the conference entitled The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict.

There are documents already on the table and the challenge is to help the sides find political will to take a step forward to deliver the peace and stability that the populations deserve, Hoagland said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict 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 regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities. The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations.

Armenia still controls fifth part of Azerbaijan's territory and rejects implementing four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

The diplomat noted that generations of young people have grown up in Armenia and Azerbaijan and they have no first hand contact with the other side.

We focus on the principles and commitment that pertain to non-use or threat of force, territorial integrity and equal rights and self-determination of peoples, Hoagland said, adding that the Minsk Group co-chairs constantly work to bring the sides of the conflict together and develop new approaches for the peace process.

We havent given up, no one has given up, the diplomat said, adding that everyone is still looking for that final peace.

We would like to see the [Azerbaijani, Armenian] presidents get together again, Hoagland said.He added that when such top level negotiations commence, the parties should reconfirm how they will implement the confidence building measures agreed about in 2016 at meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg.

Following the meeting in St. Petersburg in June 2016, the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents confirmed in a joint statement the agreements reached during the previous Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Vienna. These agreements are aimed at stabilizing the situation in the conflict zone and the creation of an atmosphere conducive to advancing the peace process.

"Once we get into such peaceful negotiations, there is a much broader range of practical issues that we can put on the table to begin to benefit all sides immediately, including economic and commercial issues," the diplomat noted.

Hoagland also said the U.S. remains ready to help in any way it can, but it is up to the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan to take the steps necessary for the lasting peace.

"They should consider measures, even unilateral ones, that will demonstrate their strong commitment to making progress, reducing tensions and improving the atmosphere for negotiations, and prepare their populations for peace not war," Hoagland said, adding that he continues to be optimistic.

The United States, along with Russia and France, is a co-chair country of the Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

In his remarks at the conference in Washington Hoagland informed that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit the South Caucasus region in June or early July.
By Azernews





By Kamila Aliyeva

Russia is making great efforts to convince the U.S. to accept Iranian role in a plan for foreign troops to police safe zones in Syria as a step toward ending the six-year war.

Moscow is already working as an intermediary in the settlement of relations between the U.S. and Iran, Special Presidential Representative for the Middle East and Africa and Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said, TASS reported.

It's hard, of course, there are no illusions here, Bogdanov said adding that Americans generally welcomed the talks in Astana; they said that Astana is good and Iran is bad.

Of course, there is a contradiction and a problem here, Bogdanov stated, noting that this requires additional political and diplomatic efforts.

Does anyone think Iran is going to leave this region and Syria, as if you could wave a magic wand and Iran would disappear? Bogdanov said. Thats not going to happen.

He drew attention to the fact that the new administration and U.S. President Donald Trump are "businesslike and love practical results."

"Of course, it is very difficult, but there is no other way," he added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington that he hoped the U.S. would make an active contribution to securing the safe zones. Lavrov suggested the U.S. may initiate the process in southern Syria near the borders with Israel and Jordan.

Russia, Turkey and Iran signed a memorandum on creating four zones at talks involving the Syrian government and opposition groups in Kazakhstans capital, Astana, last week.

Trumps campaign pledge to cooperate with Putin on defeating Islamic State has met resistance from Republicans and Democrats, who are pushing for a harder line toward Moscow over its supposed interference in the U.S. election, support for Assad and actions in Ukraine.

The civil war in Syria between government and opposition with various terrorist groups involved, including Daesh (also known as ISIS or ISIL), began back in March 2011.

Syrian President Bashar Assad managed to turn the tide of war in his favor after Russia started an air campaign in September 2015, while Iran is an uncompromising supporter of the Syrian leader.

According to a report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 470,000 people, injured 1.9 million others, and displaced nearly half of the countrys pre-war population of about 23 million within or beyond its borders.
Expo 2020 Dubai is urging Qatari firms of all sizes to take advantage of the wide-ranging business opportunities available to them through the planning, delivery and legacy stages of the first World Expo to be held in the Arab World and Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) region.



An Expo 2020 Dubai team travelled to Qatar on May 1 as part of its GCC Roadshow, designed to encourage business engagement and growth across the region and highlight the lasting benefits of working with Expo. They connected with key business figures at a session hosted by the Qatar Ministry of Economy and Commerce in Doha, said a statement from the organisers.



This was followed by a meeting with heads of the Qatar Chamber, Qatar Development Bank, Centre for Entrepreneurship at Qatar University, Bedaya, and the Entrepreneurs Association, where the Expo 2020 Dubai team outlined the opportunities available to Qatars wider business community  including its larger corporates and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs)  and provided an overview of Expos transparent and inclusive procurement process, it said.



With more than 4,200 Qatari companies already operating in Dubai, Expo 2020 will open the door for many more, working directly with expo to create partnerships and discover new opportunities that will enable a range of firms to establish a lasting presence in the UAE, it added.



Nasser Mohamed Al Muhannadi, chairman of Qatar Pavilion Committee Expo Dubai 2020, said: We see the expo as a wonderful opportunity for our businesses to showcase to the world Qatari ingenuity, innovations and our expertise in a wide variety of areas.



It is also a golden chance for us to give the millions of overseas visitors to the region for Expo a taste of what our country has to offer, he said.



We look forward to working with our GCC brothers to ensure that Expo 2020 Dubai is remembered as an exceptional World Expo and a proud moment for our region. I urge Qatari businesses to take advantage of the many chances it offers them for growth and development on a global platform, and to make a long-term stake in the UAE.



Manal AlBayat, senior vice president of business development and integration at Expo 2020 Dubai, said: The expo will provide Qatari businesses, both large and small, with the chance to showcase their capabilities on a global platform. Our GCC Roadshow is all about exploring ways in which countries across the region, like Qatar, can maximise the opportunities available to them.



By participating in the expo and entering into our supply chain, businesses can benefit from job creation and economic growth. Beyond this, they can leverage Expo 2020s vast public and private sector network to enjoy greater business connectivity and build new partnerships, AlBayat added.



Qatar and the UAE reinforced their existing ties by committing to new horizons of cooperation in May 2016. Expo 2020 Dubai presents a valuable platform to further develop these ties across a number of areas including tourism, cultural exchange and business, in line with Expos theme of Connecting Minds, Creating the Future.



In 2017 alone, Expo 2020 Dubai expects to award over 140 business contracts, worth over Dh11 billion ($2.99 billion). Many of these will be for goods and services of particular relevance to Qatars business community including construction materials and investment in infrastructure, as well as emerging industries such as tourism, said a statement.



Expo 2020 Dubai is committed to integrating SMEs and encouraging them to bid for contracts, thereby tapping into their innovation and flexibility, with 20 per cent of Expos budget  equating to more than Dh5 billion ($1.36 billion)  to be spent with SMEs.



This will be of particular interest to Qatari SMEs, which already receive strong support from the Qatari government as part of the Qatar National Vision 2030. This states the importance of incubating and growing small and medium scale enterprises to strengthen the countrys business sector, and contribute to sustainable development which provides a high standard of living for all its people for generations to come.



Qatar aims to further diversify its economy through the Qatar National Tourism Sector Strategy 2030, by attracting seven million visitors annually by the year 2030, creating 98,000 new jobs and contributing more than five per cent to its GDP. Expo 2020 Dubai represents a valuable opportunity for Qatar to promote itself as a tourist destination to a global audience of millions, and leverage tourists travelling to the region for Expo.



Expo runs from October 20, 2020 to April 10, 2021 and will attract millions of visitors from around the world. A large proportion of visitors are expected to come from the GCC, which is the UAEs largest source market for tourism  with 3.4 million visitors to Dubai alone from the Gulf in 2016.



Through its GCC Roadshow, which successfully launched in Oman in March and recently travelled to Bahrain in April, Expo 2020 Dubai is aiming to visit Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the coming months.  TradeArabia News Service
ABB has inaugurated a new traction transformer production facility adjacent to its South African headquarters in Longmeadow, Johannesburg.



ABB CEO Ulrich Spiesshofer inaugurated the new factory with the director general of the Department of Trade and Industry, Lionel October, said a statement.



Spiesshofer said: Our company is proud of this new traction transformer facility in South Africa, reiterating our philosophy of locating manufacturing units close to our customers.



It reinforces our next level strategy focus on strengthening our presence in Africa and supports our ongoing commitment to sustainable mobility, he said.



This unit will produce traction transformers to help power trains and support South Africas growing railway network. Traction transformers feed power at safe voltages to essential train functions like traction, brakes, lighting, heating and ventilation, as well as passenger information, signalling and communication, said a statement.



The 2,450-sq-m facility is expected to employ 60 people by the end of 2017 and the first major order to be executed at the new facility will be the supply of traction units for 240 Bombardier electric locomotives. The local manufacturing of these traction units supports the South African governments local procurement and employment requirements, it said.



Since 2012, South Africa has invested in the development of its rail network as an opportunity to rejuvenate the economy, create jobs and support a major shift from road to rail transport for both passenger and freight travel. The expansion of the countrys rail network is also expected to contribute to its vision of becoming a key logistics centre in sub-Saharan Africa.



ABB has more than 130 years of experience in producing traction transformers that are powering more than half the worlds electric locomotives and train sets. As part of its ongoing commitment to innovation, the company recently launched Effilight, its next-generation traction transformer which uses a patented high-technology cell design that can reduce the amount of oil required by up to 70 per cent, without compromising functionality.



To meet higher energy efficiency needs, ABB has optimised the design for a load loss reduction of 25 per cent, compared with a classic transformer of the same weight.



ABB has operations in 23 African countries and employs about 5,000 people across the continent. As a pioneering technology leader serving utilities, industry and transport and infrastructure customers globally, ABB supports Africas growth with innovative solutions designed to address local challenges, from access to electricity, to industrial development, to sustainable transport.



As part of its commitment to Africa, the company provides scholarships and internships for talented engineers who need financial support to complete their studies. ABB has annual sales in Africa of around $1.5 billion and manufacturing operations in Egypt and South Africa, it stated.  TradeArabia News Service
The Dubai Health Authority (DHA), in collaboration with Dnata and more than 16 local and international travel agencies and hotels, held on May 8 the Way to Travel Exhibition at its headquarters in Dubai.



The event, held in the presence of Humaid Al Qatami, chairman of the Board and Director General of the DHA, allowed DHA employees to take advantage of the competitive packages offered at different price points.



Amna Al Suwaidi, the director of the Human Resources Department at the DHA, said the exhibition provided DHA employees an opportunity to benefit from travel offers and packages.

Al Suwaidi commended Dnata for its keenness to provide the authoritys staff with discounted offers and for its fruitful collaboration with the authority, which aided in attracting international companies, hence providing ample tourism options for DHA staff.



She added that the authority was able to attract more than 16 companies to display their travel packages, which included 30 to 50 per cent discounts based on the destination and hotel. Emirates Airlines also displayed discounted packages.



DHA staff commended the offers in terms of variety and discount. - TradeArabia News Service


Thirty start-ups  from the three global BizLab accelerators in Toulouse (France), Hamburg (Germany) and Bengaluru (India)  have pitched their projects at the Airbus BizLab Summit in Toulouse in front of an international audience of investors.



Airbus BizLab, the global aerospace business accelerator, gives start-ups the unique opportunity to bring their ideas and vision to life.



In parallel Airbus Bizlab is also launching its next call for projects featuring two firsts. It will be a joint call for projects between Hamburg and Toulouse, allowing the start-ups to select the location where they would like to be hosted. In addition, Airbus BizLab will open up a new social dimension by welcoming applications from start-ups operating in the Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) environment. The next call for projects for the BizLab in Bangalore will be launched later this year.



Through the summit, Airbus BizLab performs an important facilitator role for the start-ups by easing their access and exchange with the investor community and potential industrial partners as the start-ups present face-to-face their high quality project and eventually seek funding. Also, internal projects are pitched to Airbus management to showcase their successful achievements with the opportunity to benefit from a six month post acceleration programme to bring their project forward.



We are proud to see open innovation moving forward. In just two years, Airbus BizLab has already been in contact with almost 1,000 start-ups from all over the world. said Bruno Gutierres, head of Airbus BizLab. It is key to identify inventive ideas and new services to meet future challenges and customers expectations.



Airbus BizLab already counts several success stories including: the Jetlite start-up that developed a specific lighting system for reducing jetlag and secured a contract from a leading airline for their new A350 XWB; the Uwinloc start-up that has raised 2.3 million to date with its innovative RFID tracking system; internal projects such as the iflyA380.com website, the unique booking assistant tool for the iconic A380.  TradeArabia News Service
Meet award-winning artisans and buy their products at Kerala Arts and Crafts Village
The police department is running smoothly despite the sudden dismissal last week of the former chief, police officials said Friday afternoon.

Business is as usual, Interim Police Chief Steve Schulz said. These guys are still coming to work. Theyre still doing their jobs.

Schulz said that the change isnt affecting the departments ability to keep the community safe.

Interim City Manager Liz Becher appointed Schulz as interim chief Friday after the dismissal of former police chief Jim Wetzel. Schulz is a captain and holds the second-highest sworn position in the department after the chief.

Schulz said it would be premature for him to make large changes at the department because the new chief could decide to take the department in a different direction. He said he and the command staff are working to decide what smaller changes could be made to help solve some of the issues at the department, like those brought up by employees in a survey that became public at the beginning of April.

Im a placeholder, but together as an agency we will see what we can do, Schulz said.

Schulz said that everybody in the command staff  which is composed of the captain, lieutenants and high-ranking civilian employees  has stepped up in the absence of a permanent chief to take care of the immediate issues like the departments budget and preparations for the eclipse.

Rollout of the departments strategic plan will be placed on hold until the command staff can meet to further discuss it, Schulz said. A draft of the plan, which requests a new police station as well as suggesting other broad changes, was posted on the departments website two weeks ago but never officially announced to the public.

An external analysis of the departments operations was expected to continue as planned. In its proposal to the city, the Center for Public Safety Management said it would use data to determine officers workload, examine the departments structure and culture, compare the departments operations to industry standards and make recommendations.

Becher said she had confidence in Schulzs ability to lead the department while the city searched for a new chief.

Ive worked with him over the last six years that Ive been in a senior-level position in the city, said Becher, who previously served as assistant city manager.

A permanent chief would not be hired until City Council selects a new city manager, who would be responsible for selecting police department leadership, Becher said. It is unclear when that will be. The formal search process for the city managers position has not yet begun, and Council still needs to decide whether to use an outside search firm.

City staff was preparing a packet of documents outlining the previous police chief search process so the new city manager can move quickly to fill the position, Becher said. In the meantime, City Council and municipal staff are preparing for budget discussions to be completed in June.

Becher said she was unsure how long her interim term would last but that press coverage about problems at the police department and at City Hall may make the search for her replacement difficult.

The message that the Tribune is continually printing on the front page of paper can be a real deterrent to hiring a city manager for the city and ultimately a police chief, she said.

Schulz declined to answer whether he would be interested in the permanent position.

The departments command staff and Becher met with all the police department staff who were in the building Friday afternoon to discuss Wetzels departure, Schulz said. He said he told officers and staff that he was available to answer any questions or listen to any concerns.

Since then, command staff and Becher have attended briefings with each of the four patrol teams as well as briefings with the dispatchers at the Public Safety Communication Center to relay the same message.

Schulz said that he believes almost every person who works in the department and the dispatch center had been personally contacted by himself or a member of command staff about the change in leadership. A few people had been on vacation at the time of the meetings, but Schulz said that many of those people had come to him to talk after they returned.

I think things are running smoothly for what has occurred, he said.

Star-Tribune staff writer Arno Rosenfeld contributed to this report.
Thirty-seven University of Wyoming employees will lose their jobs next week in the latest in a series of moves by the school to tackle a $41 million budget cut.

UW President Laurie Nichols told the Board of Trustees at its monthly meeting Thursday that the university would be instituting the layoffs, said Heather Earl, secretary for UWs Staff Senate. Though the exact number of the layoffs wasnt clear before Nichols statement, university leaders had previously indicated that the budget crisis would likely mean people losing their jobs.

The layoffs will apply only to staff members, officials have said, and not faculty. The university this winter announced it was offering buyouts for certain faculty members. More than 40 took the offer, and around half of those soon-to-be vacant positions will be eliminated.

University spokesman Chad Baldwin said that laid-off employees will be gone from the university no later than June 30, the end of the fiscal year. None of those positions will be refilled.

Rachel Stevens, the vice president for the Staff Senate, said the layoffs were about what we expected. She said affected employees will begin getting pink slips on Monday. Originally, she said, the process was scheduled to begin before then, but graduation pushed back the timetable.

The president said they wanted to have a celebratory weekend for the graduates and come back on Monday and begin the hard work of laying people off, Stevens said.

Stevens said they didnt know all of the areas on campus would experience layoffs, but she for sure expected that some people working in the Outreach School would lose their jobs. Officials last week denied a rumor that 28 people in the agency had already been laid off. Outreach is being dismantled and will see its funding cut $500,000, two markers that indicate layoffs, Stevens said.

Baldwin said there wouldnt be 28 people laid off from Outreach, but he confirmed that some people in that unit will lose their jobs.

Information technology will experience layoffs, Stevens and Baldwin both said. Stevens speculated that the College of Arts & Sciences, which recently reorganized, will lose a couple of employees.

Baldwin declined to go into more detail about which units would lose employees but said more information would be released Monday, when the layoffs begin.

Still, though staff may be able to guess which areas of campus are likely to institute layoffs, it wouldve been nice if budget documents had included that information, Stevens said. Each department created a budget to explain how it would tackle its share of the state cuts, and Stevens said she wouldve preferred those fiscal plans to include more specifics about layoffs. Baldwin said that suggestion wasnt the most humane way to let people know they may be facing layoffs.

I think I would rather hear it from my supervisor rather than hear about it elsewhere, or have it be mentioned in a public forum, he said.

Earl said uncertain staff were anxious about their future at the school.

Since nobodys been officially notified, at this point it could be anybodys position, she said, so I think its just general unease and anxiety across campus until those letters are given to the employees.

A budget proposal presented to the board during its meeting called for eliminating more than 40 positions, although Baldwin said earlier this week that some of those cuts would involve vacant positions. More than 300 positions have been struck from the universitys books since Nichols took charge a year ago and set about tackling UWs funding crisis. The school has lost tens of millions in state dollars as a result of a downturn in the energy sector.

Stevens said she thought the university should be safe from layoffs for fiscal year 2018, though she couldnt speculate about what comes after. Baldwin said there are no plans for more layoffs or buyout offers for the next fiscal year, though he cautioned that state cuts could change the universitys plans.

A message left for Faculty Senate Chair Michael Barker was not returned Friday.

The board also approved the elimination of five degree programs, Stevens said. They are:

Masters of arts in French;

Masters of arts in German;

Bachelors of arts in Russian;

Bachelors of science in secondary education for industrial technical education;

And the masters of science in neuroscience.

The programs were knocked for their low enrollment numbers. Other sparsely populated degrees were placed on hold.
Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Murray said Wednesday that his decision about running for governor in 2018 will hinge in part on who else enters the field.

I think its possible that I wait and see actually who starts entering the race, the Republican said during an interview with the Star-Tribune.

Murray is finishing his first term as secretary of state  a position that makes him the states chief elections official, lieutenant governor and registrar of businesses and nonprofits.

Gov. Matt Meads second term ends next year, and he has said he intends to leave office without challenging the states term limits, which will open the field to candidates in both parties.

The race is expected to be competitive.

In addition to Murray, former U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming State Treasurer Mark Gordon and others are said to be weighing the possibility of a run.

A number of Democrats may enter the race  including Laramie Sen. Chris Rothfuss, former state legislator Mary Throne and Ryan Greene, who lost to Rep. Liz Cheney in November.

Murray said that when he ran for secretary of state in 2014, he waited to declare his candidacy.

He looked at the others in the field and figured he had a chance, with unique attributes that others in the race lacked, he said. Murray is educated as an attorney and has worked for decades in Cheyenne as real estate developer and businessman.

I felt compelled to run, Murray said.

The GOP gubernatorial primary is expected to have a high price tag. Serious candidates may need to spend $2 million to win, Republican insiders have said. Lummis and Gordon both have considerable assets and the ability to partially self-fund their races.

Murray, who is involved in 16 businesses, said he has pondered the cost of running for governor.

When he ran for the secretarys office three years ago, he said he thought about whether the race would jeopardize his family financially.

In 2014, Murray raised $507,000. Most of the money came from his own fortune. He spent $423,100 of his own money in loans and donations to his campaign.

He said he would have to make a similar assessment with the governors race  if that were to happen.

But for now, Murray said no decisions have been made.

I really do love the office of secretary of state, he said. Its a very rewarding and enjoyable job.
Editor:

The House of Representatives passed what they titled the American Health Care Act with one vote to spare. This bill does a lot. For starters, the AHCA allows insurers to charge older Americans considerably more and impose yearly and lifetime caps on coverage. It gives states the ability to allow insurers to charge higher premiums to citizens with pre-existing conditions. The bill turns Medicaid into a block grant program enabling states to cut benefits and kick people off their coverage. For good measure the bill also provides a tax cut for families making over $250,000 a year. In the preamble of the Constitution the Founding Fathers stated one of the reasons for establishing the Constitution was to promote the general welfare. The House bill is a significant step in the wrong direction in realizing this goal.

Ironically, just hours after the House passed the bill, President Trump offered a different path forward when he publicly acknowledged Australia has a better health care system than we do. Australia has government-run, universal health insurance just like every other industrialized nation. This is not the first time Trump has publicly supported a universal, single-payer system. Trump was elected because he says it like it is. I can only assume that the president would never so openly praise Australias model unless he truly believed their system is indeed better. The Senate should explore this.

There are Americans who, through no fault of their own, have pre-existing conditions, cannot afford coverage, or have been laid off from their job. Others, as is inevitable, are simply getting older. In the past this nation has rallied and pulled together to accomplish big goals. We must find that spirit again and understand we are all in this together. Leaving any American behind due to circumstances they cannot control is unacceptable. We can do better. I truly believe the test of progress for a society is whether or not we can provide for those who have little. So what does the American Health Care Act say about our society and values?
Alisha Owens

Alisha Owens, the Arizona Daily Stars vice president for sales and marketing, told the staff Wednesday that she has accepted a new executive position in New Orleans.

Owens, who joined the Star last summer, will become vice president and chief revenue officer for NOLA Media Group, a digital media firm that is part of Advance Local, one of the nations largest media companies. Her last day with the Star will be May 17.

Her new role is to lead a significant multi-platform sales operation and new business development. NOLA Media is publisher of NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune.

Im excited by this opportunity and, at the same time, have mixed emotions, Owens said. The Star is a terrific operation and one I know will continue on the positive trajectory that my team there and I have set.

Owens said she will remain in contact with the sales team during her transition and when and wherever I can going forward.

John M. Humenik, group publisher for Lee Enterprise and interim publisher for the Arizona Daily Star, said, Alisha brought to Tucson many ideas that immediately helped our customers and our staff, especially in developing multimedia opportunities and sales strategies.

We wish her tremendous success as she starts the next chapter in her career and, at the same time, are thankful to have worked together to help the Daily Star and Tucson.com provide our customers with the best solutions to grow their businesses.
"In 'The Town Too Tough To Die' youll find beers too good to be true."

An appropriate start to DRAFT Magazine's article about Tombstone Brewing Company, which the publication has just named a "brewery to watch."

DRAFT, which focuses on beer and beer culture, made the trip to the Wild West this month to meet the brewmaster at they call one of the hottest new breweries among Southern Arizona drinkers.

Tombstone Brewing opened in October 2016 and currently has 10 beers available on draft at it's taproom, located at 107 East Toughnut.

Despite the fact that it's only a few months old, Tombstone Brewing has already produced "IPAs, sour ales and barrel-aged stouts that would make Wyatt Earps mustache curl," the article says.

In case you aren't able to make the trip to the brewery, four local spots stock kegs from Tombstone Brewing Company: The Garage on 4th, Tucson Hop Shop, Bear Canyon Pizza and Arizona Beer House.
We've collected a few front pages from newspapers.com to give you a look at some May 12 papers in history. With a subscription to newspapers.com you can search the Arizona Daily Star and many other newspapers using keywords or dates, and download articles or pages.
President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey provoked deep thoughts in the offices of Arizonas U.S. senators.

Sen. John McCain said he was disappointed, and Sen. Jeff Flake said he could find no acceptable rationale for the presidents decision.

At least McCain went a bit further and reiterated his demand for a select committee of Congress members to investigate Russias interference in the 2016 presidential campaign, and any possible collusion with Trumps campaign.

Flake, on the other hand, has said essentially that everything is OK as it is. The FBI should keep investigating, sans Comey, and so should the Senate and House intelligence committees. Thatll work out just fine.

Our two Republican senators responses to Comeys firing have been largely characteristic of their broader responses to Trumps candidacy and presidency. Both have expressed stern disagreement with Trumps behavior, positions or appointments at times, but neither has done much of anything about it.

McCain expressed severe doubts about Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson, for example, then voted to approve him.

In fact, McCains votes have been in accordance with Trumps point of view 92.5 percent of the time, according to a measure created by FiveThirtyEight.com. Flake has voted with Trumps point of view 97.4 percent of the time.

The point is, talk is cheap. Its easy to vocally disagree with the presidents decision to fire somebody who is leading an investigation into the presidents campaign. But what are you going to do about it?

Both say they are deeply, seriously concerned, as always, but only McCain has any mild plan for action. Its crucial that however the investigation proceeds, Congress keeps the pressure on, because it is the one body outside of the executive branch with the power to ensure justice is done.

McSally a target in Tucson

The town hall held Tuesday by U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego in U.S. Rep. Martha McSallys district was a strange event.

He invaded a fellow members district to do it  breaking congressional norms  and it didnt seem to have much point except to keep stoking the pent-up anger among Democrats.

But a poll conducted Monday may help explain why Democrats are pushing McSally so hard. The survey of 628 voters conducted by Public Policy Polling, on behalf of the pro-Obamacare group Save My Care, suggests McSally is vulnerable.

Of the respondents, 56 percent said they disapproved of McSallys job performance, while 35 percent approved. Fifty percent said they would vote for a generic Democratic opponent if the election were held today, while 43 percent said theyd vote for McSally.

Of those surveyed, 56 percent said the fact that McSally voted in favor of the American Health Care Act made them less likely to vote for her. Thirty percent said they were more likely.

Thats perhaps part of what made Gallego more willing to break the unwritten rules. The rest is the unprecedented atmosphere of division that came in with Trumps presidency.

The norms have been broken by Donald Trump and the involvement of a foreign government in this election, Gallego told me during a break in the event. Once the other side starts breaking the norms, until things go back to normal, you have to also start upping your ante.

Contenders make a showing

Among those who attended the Gallego town hall at Rincon High School were several Democrats who are considering running against McSally.

The one many have whispered about is Ann Kirkpatrick. The former congresswoman representing District 1 has moved to Tucson, she told me, and is considering a run in CD2.

Kirkpatrick lost badly in her challenge of McCain last year, winning 41 percent of the vote to McCains 54 percent.

While the Democratic Party establishment seems excited by the idea of having a tested candidate like Kirkpatrick challenge McSally, at least four other possible Democratic challengers also attended.

One was Dr. Matt Heinz, who was standing in his scrubs by the exit door when we spoke. Attendee after attendee stopped to shake his hand and say I voted for you.

He couldnt help but be a little encouraged.

Former state Rep. Bruce Wheeler was there and gave a bit of a stump speech during the question-and-answer period. So were newcomers Billy Kovacs and Joshua Polacheck.

Jeff Latas, a JetBlue pilot who has launched an exploratory committee, said he was at LAX when the event occurred.

Friese casts eyes elsewhere

One talked-about contender who wasnt at the Gallego event is state Rep. Randy Friese. That could be because Friese was at the Legislature, where the session was winding down.

But it also could be because thats not where Friese has cast his eyes. The Tucson Democrat told me he is considering running for U.S. Senate against Flake next year.

Thats the seat that U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema was rumored to be pursuing, until she told KTAR that she wasnt. But then she walked those comments back, so she may still be interested as well.

Strange about Aboud

Heres the weird thing about Justice of the Peace Paula Aboud allegedly taking the test questions and answer key from her mentor during a January training session, as my colleague Murphy Woodhouse reported Thursday: She didnt need to pass the test.

Aboud, a Democrat and non-lawyer, had won the election over attorney Jeff Rogers. No test or training assessment could stop her from assuming her place at the bench.

That fact  that the test was not really a test  might lend itself to the explanation by Aboud that she was playing a prank on her mentor.

But even that is a really bad explanation. We should want an elected non-attorney to take her judicial training as seriously as possible. If this were a prank, that would suggest Aboud isnt taking the job seriously enough.

Worse: I dont believe the explanation. Its the judicial version of the dog ate my homework and will hang over her judgeship.

Who runs the state

In the waning days of the legislative session, Arizona Capitol Times reporter Ben Giles got a rare glimpse into how power really works in Phoenix. Senators were debating HB 1290, a bill related to the formula for teacher and principal evaluations.

Giles was on the floor when he saw Sen. Debbie Lesko approach fellow Republican Sen. Steve Smith with a concern  that the Arizona Chamber of Commerce didnt support the bill.

I dont think the chambers on board with this, Lesko said.

Sure they are, Smith replied. We run everything through them. Everything.
PHOENIX  A federal appeals court wont reverse the conviction of Richard Greenway for killing a Tucson mother and her teen daughter in 1988.

Judge Mary Schroeder, writing for the three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, discounted Greenways claim that his trial attorney didnt do enough to keep him from being found guilty.

Police found the bodies of Lili Champagne and daughter Mindy Peters in their home. Each had been shot twice.

Police began looking at Greenway after his sister notified homicide detectives he knew something about the deaths. When police picked up Greenway and co-defendant Chris Lincoln for questioning, Lincoln confessed and implicated Greenway, court records show.

After a three-day trial, Greenway was convicted of murder, burglary, armed robbery, theft and arson and sentenced to death.

In his appeal, Greenway argued his trial attorney should have pursued questions about whether any jurors had been the victim of a violent crime.

The judge did not specifically ask that question. Years later it was learned that one juror had been raped and testified against her attacker at his trial, facts that likely would have led to her being disqualified as a juror.

But Schroeder said there was no way for Greenways attorney to know that information, making it far too speculative to conclude he didnt effectively do his job.
The days of scrounging food from trash cans are over for award-winning University of Arizona graduate Albert Alan.

On Friday, May 12, the formerly homeless man will dine on haute cuisine with the UAs president before collecting three undergraduate degrees he earned against the odds.

And on Monday, he starts classes at the UA medical school, where he hopes to become a physician who specializes in caring for Tucsons street people.

The University of Arizona saved my life, says Alan, 24, a Tempe native who was fresh from the streets when he started his studies in 2011.

I had heard that the UA was like a big family, and its true. The people here have become my family.

Alan will be recognized as one of the schools top graduates at the UAs 153rd commencement Friday, May 12.

He is due to receive a Robert Logan Nugent Award for exceptional achievement, receiving bachelors degrees he earned simultaneously in physiology, sociology, and neuroscience and cognitive science.

Former astronaut and NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. will give the commencement speech at Arizona Stadium. Nearly 4,000 students and 40,000 guests are expected to attend.

Alan still remembers the quizzical looks from fellow freshmen when he showed up on campus in ill-fitting thrift-store duds, sporting a bad haircut he gave himself with an $8 clipper from Walmart because he couldnt afford a barber.

There I was, surrounded by rich kids from California wearing Lululemon designer brands, he recalls. I dont think they knew what to make of me.

Eventually, he won over his peers with brainpower, tutoring hundreds of classmates for free in such complex subjects as organic chemistry, cellular neurophysiology and molecular and cellular biology of neurons.

Alans journey has given him a granular view of how people end up homeless and how it can affect them.

He says he took to the streets as a teenager to escape an abusive home life. He survived for three years by sleeping on the ground outside a library, showering in his high school gym, eating leftovers from the school cafeteria and washing his clothes under an outdoor spigot at a 7-Eleven store.

I guess you could say being homeless made me a problem solver, he says with a wry chuckle.

Humor became a coping mechanism when he was beaten up and bullied. At his worst, he battled thoughts of suicide.

Im not ashamed to say it: There were times I thought about ending my life, he says, noting that depression is widespread among those on the streets.

Sometimes,the kindness of strangers kept him going.

When the manager of a Taco Bell on campus saw him digging in a dumpster one night, he started leaving out care packages of beans and tortillas by the restaurants back door, Alan recalls.

More recently, one of Alans UA academic advisers, Luis Vega, bought him a cap and gown for commencement because he couldnt afford them, he says.

Alans story, and his plans for the future, have won him fans around the city, from UA President Ann Weaver Hart, who calls him an inspiration, to the residents of Gospel Rescue Missions homeless mens shelter, where Alan volunteers delivering donated produce to the kitchen.

The guys love to see him coming. When they see his truck, they rush out to meet him, says John Jones, the shelters kitchen supervisor.

He doesnt hide that he was homeless, and when he shares his story, it comes from the heart, says Jones.

Its great to know that someone who came from where he comes from is doing what hes doing.

To me, its like God is shining through him.
PHOENIX  Acting less than 24 hours after legislative approval, Gov. Doug Ducey inked his approval Thursday to a measure designed to encourage people to rescue children and pets trapped in vehicles.

The new law, which takes effect Aug. 9, spells out that the owner of a vehicle cant sue someone who breaks out a window to remove a minor or domestic animal which is in imminent danger of suffering physical injury or death.

Ducey, who called for such a law in his State of the State speech in January  at least for children  said it is important to save lives.

With this bill, we are protecting Good Samaritans who take action to save a child or pet and sending a signal that breaking a car window should be the last consideration when someones life is on the line, he said.

The proposal by Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, had a few hurdles to overcome.

While it cleared the Senate without trouble, Rep. Eddie Farnsworth, R-Gilbert, refused to give it a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee he chairs.

Farnsworth contends there are already legal protections for those who save lives. But he also objected to having a law on the books that equate the life of an animal, even a pet, with the life of a human.

That forced sponsors to do an end-run around Farnsworth, attaching the provisions to another measure that did not need to go through his committee.

There are some restrictions.

To get immunity from a civil suit, the would-be rescuer must first notify police, medical personnel or, as appropriate, animal control officers. Then, after entering the vehicle, the person must remain on site until there is a response.
PHOENIX  Claiming lawmakers acted illegally, a new group is asking a judge to void a key change in laws governing the right of voters to enact their own laws.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court contends that both the Arizona Constitution and a series of court rulings require that initiative organizers need be only in substantial compliance with state election laws to qualify their proposals for the ballot. That provides a certain amount of leeway for what judges have concluded are errors that do not affect the ability of voters to understand what they are signing and the issues before them.

By contrast, new legislation adopted at the behest of business interests requires strict compliance with every law. That change would allow  and perhaps require  a judge to quash petition drives for what could be technical violations.

Recognizing a trial on the legal issues may take time, attorney Roopali Desai is asking the court to issue an injunction blocking the measure from taking effect as scheduled on Aug. 9.

But Roopali is not leaving the fate of the law to the courts.

Separately, organizers of a group called Voters of Arizona filed the paperwork to give voters the final word on the law change approved by the Republican-controlled Legislature. The group also has a separate petition drive to void another change, this one prohibiting initiative organizers from paying petition circulators based on the number of signatures they gather.

Backers of the two petition drives have until the end of business on Aug. 8 to submit at least 75,321 valid signatures. If they succeed, the legislative measures cannot take effect unless and until voters ratify at the November 2018 general election what lawmakers have done.

Desai said she believes that judges will side with her clients and against attorneys for the state.

Its actually a constitutional issue, she said. Theres a very clear separation of powers between what the Legislature can do and whats a constitutional requirement.

She said Republican lawmakers and their allies  her lawsuit specifically mentions the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Arizona Public Service  do not like the fact that voters can create their own laws.

The litigation will get a fight from the Legislature, whose leaders say they were within their rights to change the laws.

I think the courts will say thats the prerogative of the Legislature, said House Speaker J.D. Mesnard.
The state wont fund a memorial to the Jan. 8, 2011, mass shooting in Tucson, so organizers are looking online to raise $1.5 million.

A bill proposed by state Rep. Todd Clodfelter, R-Tucson, would have allocated $2.5 million for a memorial to the 19 people who were shot, including six who died, outside a Safeway on Tucsons northwest side while then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords spoke with constituents.

The state House approved the bill on a bipartisan 49-11 vote, but it died in committee after state Sen. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, refused to schedule a hearing for the bill.

Organizers of the memorial were extremely disappointed the funding was not included in the annual budget, said Crystal Kasnoff, executive director of Tucsons January 8th Memorial Foundation. However, she understood the Legislature has other priorities, such as funding education and roads.

Organizers are proceeding with a renewed spirit and plan to privately fund the memorial before next years budget season, Kasnoff said.

They launched a GoFundMe campaign Wednesday, which raised $1,105 in one day from 18 people. Kasnoff said an anonymous donor will match the first $10,000 in donations.

Our hopes are to really rally the community and push forward and complete some milestones so we can break ground, she said.

The online campaign also could attract donors from across the country who poured out support in the days after the mass shooting, she said, adding Giffords was the first member of Congress to be shot while meeting with constituents and Gabe Zimmerman was the first congressional staffer to be killed while working. In addition, a federal judge died in the shooting.

At the federal level, Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., introduced a bill in January to establish the January 8th National Memorial. In September, Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both Republicans of Arizona, asked for federal support for the memorial, as did Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz.

Organizers also offer naming opportunities in exchange for donations, with the highest-priced being $1 million for a name to be placed prominently at the memorial in downtown El Presidio Park. The foundation plans to offer $100 naming opportunities soon, Kasnoff said.

Donations to the online GoFundMe campaign can be made here.

The construction of the memorial is part of a public and private partnership between the foundation, Pima County and the city of Tucson.

In the last five years, the foundation raised more than $1.7 million for the memorial from donations and pledges, Kasnoff said. About $700,000 was spent on the memorial design, archiving 30,000 items left at spontaneous memorials in the days after the shooting, and creating 50 hours of oral history videos.
Pool/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- Contrary to the White House's original explanations, its now clear that President Trump himself initiated the process to fire James Comey.



Trump told Lester Holt on Thursday that he had planned to fire Comey for some time.



"I was going to fire Comey," he said, "There's no good time to do it, by the way ... I was gonna fire him regardless of the recommendation."



So why did Trump sour on Comey? And what led him to decide over the weekend to pull the trigger without a replacement nominee ready to announce?



Here are some moments in the past year when Comey and Trump did not align, which likely contributed to Trump's reasons for firing Comey.



1. Clinton email press conference



Trump disapproved of Comey's July 5, 2016 press conference that recommended no criminal charges be brought against election rival Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified information while Secretary of State.



"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 during the conference.



While Comey acknowledged Clintons missteps, he said "no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case" against her, something Trump did not want to hear.



2. Declining to state lack of Trump-Russia evidence



The White House expressed annoyance on February 15 that Comey refused a request for Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe to go public with information that he is said to have told Trump aides privately -- that there was no evidence of collusion between Russia and the campaign.



Such a statement would have refuted a New York Times story from the previous day alleging that campaign advisers "had repeated contacts with Russian intelligence."



3. Hacking investigation and wiretap denial



On March 20, Comey went before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and made two comments that stuck with Trump.



First, he confirmed that the FBI was investigating Russian hacking into the U.S. election and any possible collusion between the Russian government and the Trump team. In the dismissal letter on Tuesday, Trump noted that Comey had told him on three occasions that he personally wasnt under investigation.



Second, Comey would not support Trumps claims that he was wiretapped by Obama. When asked whether Trumps claims, made via Twitter, were true, Comey said: "I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI ... We have no information that supports them."



4. Election interference



On May 3, Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and defended his decision to tell Congress in late October that he would be revisiting the FBIs investigation into Clintons email servers.



While he said he wouldnt change the decision if he could, Comey told the committee it made him "mildy nauseous" to think he had a hand in swaying the election, which could have been interpreted as disappointment that Trump was elected.



5. Ramping up on Russia



Just days before his firing, Comey requested additional money and manpower from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in order to continue the Russia investigation, according to Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and a U.S. official with knowledge of the situation.



Justice Department spokesperson Sarah Flores denied Wednesday morning that such a request was made to the department, saying that it is "100 percent false" and "it didn't happen."



It is also possible that Trump didnt like that Comey was planning to ramp up the Russia investigation, instead of focusing on the leaks.

Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
When college students who live in dorms pack up to leave for the summer, inevitably, a ton of stuff ends up in dumpsters, including books, refrigerators, food, electronics, furniture. The list goes on.

A University of Arizona partnership wants to change that.

The universitys residence life department, Office of Sustainability and student-led Green Team, as well as the Green Purchasing Project, and Procurement and Contracting Services are coming together to divert those items discarded by students from the landfill.

Its just astounding the amount of waste and materials you see during move-out period, said Ben Champion, director of the UAs Office of Sustainability. You walk by dumpsters just full of stuff and you think, Oh, my God, so much of this stuff, you can reuse. 

Volunteers will collect donations from outgoing dorm residents at 15 of the 23 residence halls at the UA until May 12. The items will be sold at a rummage sale in July or donated to campus and local organizations.

The Dodge the Dumpster program is a combination of staff and student teamwork and collaboration, Champion said.

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I think its important to be able to show people that you can reuse all these items that we throw away that still have value, said Michael Beauregard, a UA sophomore who is part of the Green Team. There is a pervasive culture of waste where things are thrown away after a short time of use, he added.

The program started last year as a pilot project at five residence halls.

Last year, volunteers collected more than 18,000 pounds of items, the sophomore said. That included nearly 2,200 pounds of bedding, towels and clothing, which were donated to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and 1,028 pounds of nonperishable foods, which went to the UAs campus pantry.

The goal this year is to collect between 55,000 and 60,000 pounds, Beauregard said. Mattress pads and bedding will be donated to a family welfare organization in Mexico, while food items will go to the campus pantry again. Books will go to the UAs tutoring center, Think Tank, and toiletries will go to the UA Womens Resource Center.

Cash proceeds will be used to support the Dodge the Dumpster project next year, Beauregard said.

One of the biggest goals of the project is to keep as much as we can out of the landfill, he said.
Surf Life Saving Australia will receive $1 million of advertising across SBS TV and digital assets later this year as the winner of the 2017 Diversity Works Challenge.

The initiative called on brands and agencies to develop an advertising campaign that demonstrates the diversity of todays Australia.

SBS Managing Director, Michael Ebeid, said: SBS has been championing diversity for more than 41 years and the Diversity Works Challenge is another way of us delivering on this unique purpose. Were thrilled to see the representation of diverse Australian communities, people and cultures throughout the advertising campaigns submitted as part of this initiative and look forward to seeing the winning entry on air later this year.

The campaign developed by KWP! in Adelaide draws attention to the indiscriminate nature of the dangers of the ocean and prompts people regardless of colour, language, religious beliefs, sexual orientation or cultural differences.

SBS Media Director of Sales, Andrew Cook, said: Despite the very high calibre of entries, the judging panel was unanimous in its decision to award the prize to Surf Life Saving Australia. The concept integrates the diversity of Australia into the fabric of the campaign and delivers a simple and focused creative strategy that will assist Surf Life Saving Australia to deliver their objective of saving lives.

Its been encouraging to see the number of major Australian brands who have taken part in the inaugural Diversity Works Challenge, further demonstrating that thinking with diversity works.
BBC First & Foxtel have now released a trailer for Top of the Lake: China Girl.

A follow-up to the Emmy & Golden Globe-winning miniseries by See-Saw Films, it sees Elisabeth Moss return as Detective Robin Griffin, joined by Nicole Kidman and Gwendoline Christie.

Also joining the cast are David Dencik (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Alice Englert (Beautiful Creatures, Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell) and Ewen Leslie (The Daughter).

Tim Christlieb, Director of Branded Services, BBC Worldwide Australia and New Zealand said: For Top of the Lake: China Girl to be honoured with a screening at the Cannes film Festival is testament to Jane Campions incredible vision and the talent of the team both in front of and behind the camera. We are excited to bring this local production to audiences later this year.

We look forward to bringing the series to Foxtel subscribers on BBC First later this year.

Foxtels Executive Director of Television, Brian Walsh said: Foxtel is very proud to be a co-investor and co-producer of Top of the Lake: China Girl. It continues our commitment to visionary Australian storytelling led by the incomparable Jane Campion and a stellar cast including Elizabeth Moss, Nicole Kidman and Gwendoline Christie.

We look forward to bringing the series to Foxtel subscribers on BBC First later this year.

Top of the Lake: China Girl is a crime mystery story that finds Detective Robin Griffin recently returned to Sydney and trying to rebuild her life. When the body of an Asian girl washes up on Bondi Beach, there appears little hope of finding the killer, until Robin realises China Girl didnt die alone. Robin looks to the investigation to restore herself, but her problems are personal. Haunted by a daughter given up at birth, Robin desperately wants to find her, yet dreads revealing the truth of her conception. But her search to discover China Girls identity will take her into the citys darkest recesses and closer than she could have imagined to the secrets of her own heart.
Help India!

By Amit Kumar, Twocircles.net



Gudalur, Tamil Nadu: The Indian experience of wildlife and forest conservation has been synonymous with forced evictions, mostly of tribals, from areas that have served as their homes and habitat for centuries. This is in part to the approach taken during the pre-Forest Rights Act, when conversation essentially meant removing all human population from the reserves. With the implementation of Forest Rights Act in 2006, the situation has changed for the better; at least a little. Now, there is a growing acknowledgement of the importance of letting forest dwellers and tribes live in the forests and provide them with the basic facilities apart from restoring their rights in the reserves.

However, for one community, the struggle for survival has been routed in a completely opposite direction: for the past 40 years, the Moundadan Chetty community has been trying to get out of the Mudumalai Tiger Reserves with little success. And their disenchantment with the Tamil Nadu government and the Central government is all the more understandable given that the Madras High Court had, in 2007, given a clearance to the community being relocated about 30 km away in Ayankoli and directed the government to complete the process in a year. However, 10 years later, the community is yet to see any progress on that front, and it has left them with a bitter taste.



Mudumalai Tiger Reserves is located in the Nilgiris District of Tamil Nadu state spread over 321 sq.km. at the tri-junction of three states, viz, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It is an important part of the Nilgiris Biosphere Reserve, the first Biosphere Reserve in India and has a common boundary with Wayanad Wildlife Sanctuary (Kerala) on the West, Bandipur Tiger Reserve (Karnataka) on the North, and the Nilgiris North Division on the South and East and Gudalur Forest Division on the South West. The reserves are home to a variety of species such as the Tiger, Elephant, Indian Gaur, Panther, Sambar, Spotted Deer, Barking Deer, Mouse Deer, Mongoose, Jungle Cat and Hyena among others.



B Sukumaran, a lawyer at the Gudalur court and president of the Mudumalai Rehabilitation Committee, a peoples forum, says that the blame for this lies completely on the Tamil Nadu government and the forest department. We are probably the only community in the country that agreed with the government when it decided to declare the Mudumalai Wildlife Sanctuary as a Tiger Reserve in 2007. We want the animals and forests to flourish, and do not want to be a hindrance to conservation efforts. Yet, we are stuck due to the callous nature of the government and forest department, he says.



But beyond wildlife conservation, the needs of the community are pretty obvious and legitimate too. The Moundadan Chetty community is spread over seven villages in the Mudumalai Tiger Reserves, with Benne and Mudukulli their larger settlements. In fact, in these seven villages, the Chettys constitute about 70% of the population, while tribals like Kattunayakars and Kurumbas constitute the remaining. The fight for relocation goes back to the 60s when the community first asked the government to relocate them. I have grown up among the struggle, and our demands are very simple, says 50-year-old Sukumaran talking about the first protests in 1979. Until the 70s, our community, which is listed as a Most Backward caste, was at par with other communities. However, over the past five decades, while we have been left behind others have progressed well: we have to walk miles to go to schools, hospitals. Our villages do not have roads, electricity remains a dream for most of our villages and there is always the threat of human-animal conflict. We have always been living in a sanctuary, he adds.



The path to relocation: Land, money and guidelines



One of the main reasons why the Chetty community supported the formation of the Tiger Reserve was because it would fasten up the process of relocation to Ayankoli. But this came with its own side effects. Under the terms of the relocation, the families were given two choices: to either take a sum of Rs 10 lakh for resettlement or take land for land. In 2010 the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) accepted claims of 19 of the 20 beneficiaries who had opted for Rs 10 lakh cash compensation. To make matters worse, the NTCA rejected the list of the remaining 450-odd beneficiaries because the list was prepared without complying with its guidelines, which says those above 18, unmarried daughters, widows and physically and mentally challenged persons within a family should be considered as separate families and be given cash compensation, says Sukumaran.

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In 2011, the authorities started a land survey of the relocation site and this process, which went on for nine months. In 2013, a fresh list of 800 families was given to the authorities. Again, in September 2015, 9.8 crore was allocated for 98 families (Rs 10 lakh each) as part of an initial allocation to see how the money was to be spent and a report to be submitted. But again six months later, instead of NTCA paying Rs 10 lakh, it was decided to split the amount in 60:40 ratio, meaning the NTCA would pay Rs 6 lakh and the TN government would pay Rs 4 lakh. So once again, the process got stalled.



Ready to relocate in a week but wait continues

Vidyasagar, a 39-year-old from the community, has been waiting his entire life to relocate. Currently working with the Forest Department, Vidyasagar met this correspondent when he was trying to reach Mudukulli village. The village of Mudukulli is about three km from Manvayal and about 20 km from Gudalur town. However, as we found out, getting inside the village is not childs play. After Manvayal, as we tried to enter Mudukulli, we were told that we needed permission from the Range Officer as this was the core area of the Tiger Reserve. To make matters worse, a team of local CID followed us and categorically denied us permission to enter the village without prior authorisation. This, despite K Sukumaran, the leader of Mudukulli, ready to vouch for us. During the ensuing delay, Vidyasagar talked about how he had sent his child to a boarding school due to a lack of quality education facilities around Mudukulli. As you can see, no one can just walk into our village. Outsiders need prior permission. At night, there are a lot of issues especially if we need medical attention. At least Mudukulli is only three km from the gate; other villages like Puliyalam are almost 10 km away and ambulances struggle to reach the village. You can imagine the condition of the road during monsoons, he said.

It was after half an hour of casual conversations along with frantic phone calls that we were allowed to enter the village, but with one forest guard accompanying us during our visit. When we reached the home of K Sukumaran, he narrated how he has been fighting to relocate and get four acres of land in lieu of his holdings here. We have been living in these forests for generations, but you can see what our condition is. We make do with growing root vegetables and some pepper. But we want to get out and start again. We want basic facilities like water, electricity and give our future generation a new start, he says.



Forest Rights Act is not a factor for Chettys

It is inevitable that any conversation these days about forests and the rights of the people invokes the point of Forest Rights Act. However, in the case of the Chettys, it is a non-factor simply because one, their fight for relocation goes back much before the implementation of FRA and two, because they have seen the almost negligible impact of the Act on the lives of the tribals. The tribals are content staying in the forests and there is no tension between tribals and Chettys on this front. We want to leave, they want to stay. However, we have also seen that even in their case, FRA has been hardly implemented, if at all, and that they continue to wait for facilities. So, we are not interested, says B Sukumaran. When we visited Chembakolli, a village inhabited by Kattunayakars and Kurumbas near Mudukulli, the tribals also said they knew little about the Act. According to Bomman M, a resident of Chembakolli, We dont have much understanding of the Act. Some people say this Act is good, well get a lot of facilities through the Act. But now, a law came and we submitted our claims in 2013, but nothing much happened. Were here forever, everything for us is here, so we are definitely not leaving. But the Act has not made any difference to our lives. His village does not receive electricity, he added.



Vidyasagar says he hopes that he can pack his bags soon. We just need the basic facilities and want to help save the forests. I cannot understand why the government wants to delay this, he adds. It is a question that the Chettys have been asking for two generations now.
Help India!

Mumbai, (IANS): In a major development in the 2008 Malegaon terror attacks case, the NIA on Friday told a special court that it was not opposing the discharge plea by Sadhvi Pragnya Singh Chandrapalsingh Thakur, one of the prime accused.

I have filed a reply to her discharge plea. As per the (NIA) stand, we have not objected to the discharge plea, Special Public Prosecution Avinash Rasal told the court.

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The Sadhvi had moved the special court seeking discharge in the Malegaon 2008 case on May 3, and the matter will be heard further on May 29.

The development comes barely a fortnight after she was granted bail by Bombay High Court on April 25 on a bail of Rs 500,000 and set free two days later.

The 44-year old Sadhvi is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer at the Khushilal Ayurvedic Hospital in her home town, Bhopal.

She was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad after the September 29, 2008 blast in a dense Muslim-dominated area of Malegaon town in Nashik. The Navratri-eve blast claimed six lives and left over a 100 others injured.

The case which was investigated by the Maharashtra Police was later taken over by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Sadhvi was accused on two major counts: that she was part of the blast conspiracy meetings in Bhopal and the use of her LML Freedom motorcycle for planting the explosives.

Expressing serious doubts on these, the Bombay HC had granted her bail, nearly nine years after her arrest on October 23, 2008.

A division bench of Justice Ranjit More and Justice Shalini Phansalkar-Joshi had ruled that, prima facie, there was no case made out against the Sadhvi, who was granted bail 11 months after the NIA gave her a clean chit in May 2016.

However, a plea by her co-accused  former Army officer Lt. Col. Prasad Shrikant Purohit  was rejected by the High Court. Purohit had challenged a lower courts rejection of his bail plea.
Help India!

By Shafeeq Hudawi, TwoCircles.net

Kozhikode: The Arabic phrase Baithu Rahma simply means house of mercy. But residents of Manthwara in Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh will tell you it stands for mercy, rehabilitation, revival and hope for a new and better world. The phrase was not familiar for them till last day. But, now it has brought a smile to their faces.

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On Thursday, the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) handed over 61 houses to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riot victims through its housing scheme called Baithu Rahma. A total of 61 families, who were forced to leave their home following the worst riot in UP in recent times, are now safe at the settlement at Manthwara.

Words fail to express suffering of the riot victims. They were residing at houses of their relatives, who opened them doors after the bloody clashes, says IUML national secretary E T Mohammed Basheer.

Started in 2014, the housing project took two and half years to be completed. The party spent Rs. 2.5 crore towards land purchasing and house construction.

As per the official figures, the 2013 riots left more than 50,000 persons displaced while 62 persons were killed and 93 were left with injuries in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts.

On September 17, 2013, a national-level delegation of the party visited the affected areas. Led by national president and the then Minister of States for External Affairs Late E Ahamed, E T Mohammed Basheer M P, Iqbal Ahammed, Khorrum Anis Omer and Moulana Kausar Hayat, the team met Muzaffarnagar district administration and visited the refugee camps.

The camps presented a haunting picture of the humanitarian disaster and we decided to initiate steps to rehabilitate as much as we can, Basheer said.

Land was purchased in 2013 and work started in 2014. IUML Kerala state committee collected Rs 40 lakh while the rest of the amount was contributed by partys expatriate outfit Kerala Muslim Cultural Centre (KMCC) from different countries. To add to this, some business persons in Kerala materials like fans, sanitaries, beds and kitchen equipments.

At the initial stage, local residents were suspicious towards the party volunteers working at the settlement. We could convey them what is going to take place here and they started to cooperate. The works couldnt be completed without the ardent support that the local people lent us, says project coordinator Abdul Latheef.

They were left with no adequate food and accommodation. Still, they were leading life in harmony and extending us all possible help, said ET Mohammed Basheer.

The entire settlement has been divided in four blocks, which are named after IUMLs leaders Quaid-e-Millath Mohammed Ismail, Ibrahim Sulaiman Sait, G M Banatwala and Syed Abdur Rahman Bafaqi Thangal.

The keys were handed over to the beneficiaries at a function, held at the settlement on Thursday. IUML leaders Panakkad Syed Hyderali Shihab Thangal, K M Kader Moideen and IUML MPs P K Kunhalikutty and P V Abdul Wahab were also present.

The party volunteers here are now taking up efforts to set up a school for the riot victims within the settlement. Adequate land is available. Our aim is to ensure education with advanced facilities, Basheer said.

The school will be named after the late IUML leader E Ahamed.
Help India!

New Delhi, (IANS): The Delhi High Court on Friday slammed the city police over the manner of its probe into the disappearance of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmad, who has been missing since October last year.

A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Deepa Sharma said Delhi police was giving an impression that investigation was not being done properly. The conduct of the police showed it was trying to sensationalise the matter or looking for a way out, the bench observed.

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The status report (of police) does not show that he (Ahmad) was accessing any fundamentalist website, the bench noted when senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Ahmads mother, contended that a newspaper had quoted a police source in a news report that claimed that before his disappearance, Ahmad had been looking for information on Islamic State (IS).

We have to keep in mind the possibility that the police is trying to sensationalise or trying to find an escape route, the bench said.

The police should have carried out an internal inquiry as to who was the officer who had leaked or planted that information, it added.

The court also pulled up the police for not questioning the nine students suspected to be behind Ahmads disappearance on day one and for not taking them into custody. It said: What is the point of sending 400 men across the country to find Ahmad, when you have not probed any of the suspects.

The court, which was hearing a habeas corpus plea of Ahmads mother Fatima Nafees, posted the case for further hearing on May 15 (Monday).
Turkish President Erdogan has called on all Muslims to visit Al Cuds, the Islamic name for Jerusalem, in order to protest against alleged violations of the rights of Muslims in Israel. After that, according to local reports, he described Israel as racist and discriminatory and the blockade of Gaza as having no place in humanity. These statements were made during the opening ceremony of the International Forum on Islamic Trusts in Istanbul on Monday. This sudden outburst on an already difficult relationship came less than one year after the two nations re-established full diplomatic ties following a six-year freeze.

Israeli response

Jerusalem dismisses criticism by "serial human rights violator." An Israeli official said that the ideology of the Turkish president is very similar to that of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Furthermore, an Israeli official also exchanged sharp words with the Turkish Ambassador in Israel during a telephone conversation about the remarks of the Turkish president.

Several Israeli politicians have expressed their strong objections to Turkish President Erdogans call for Muslims to massively visit the Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount to protest against Israels occupation of Jerusalem.

The press and other media in Israel seem to be taking these remarks very seriously. Many newspapers such as The Jerusalem Post have published lengthy articles analysing the escalation in the relations between Israel and Turkey ever since Erdogan came to power about fifteen years ago.

Possible reasons behind the escalation

Recently Erdogan won a referendum which gives almost absolute power to the Turkish President. However, in order for Erdogan to achieve absolute power, he needs to win the next presidential elections in 2019 as the constitutional changes will take effect after the elections. Even though Erdogan won the referendum, his victory was very narrow as he got 51.5% of the votes.

He was expecting a victory with at least 60% of the votes.

The referendum results also revealed a split in the country since the more cosmopolitan areas voted against Erdogans proposal and the central areas of the country voted for his proposals. Furthermore, the Turkish economy is not at its best. This simply means that Erdogan may lose the elections in 2019.

Erdogan has a history of exporting internal problems abroad in order to direct the attention of the people to other things. He has done that often by raising border issues with Greece, Cyprus and Syria in violation of international agreements. He followed a similar policy during the referendum campaign by constantly provoking EU countries in an effort to polarise the voters and finally win. He is probably doing something similar now with Israel in his efforts to gather as much support as possible for the coming elections. Thus, his rhetoric is probably intended for internal consumption. However, this is a very risky policy since constantly playing the Muslims against Jews card can have serious consequences in the entire middle east.

In addition to that, during the past decade, Erdogan has managed to almost isolate his country from traditional friends and allies. Relations with the US are probably at their lowest point ever because of the United States support of Beshmerka Kurds who are the most reliable force fighting against the so-called Islamic State that Ankara considers being terrorists. Relations with the EU are also bad mainly due to the Syrian refugee crisis since EU countries believe that Turkey is not doing enough to stop the problem. Russian-Turkish relations are also bad after the downing of a Russian fighter jet that was bombing in Syria. This could mean that since Turkey has become almost isolated, Erdogan might be trying to reach out to Muslim countries by playing the dangerous Muslims against Jews card. On the other hand, it might just be an expression of his ideology as it is well known that his dream is to make Turkey the leader of the Islamic world.

Whatever his reasons may be, the only sure thing is that he is implementing a very dangerous policy that may have very serious consequences in the entire Middle East.
As the 8 June general election approaches fast, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been talking foreign policy. He recently pledged that he wouldnt be sending any more British troops into Afghanistan because that wouldnt solve anything, and now hes been getting more specific about policy. Corbyn says he is not a pacifist and would rather bring back into play the foreign policy on the side of ethical practice that the late Robin Cook was a fan of.

According to the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry (whose article in The Guardian was picked up by the Press Association), this will entail looking into the contracts the UK has with Bahrain and the other authoritarian regime were in bed with, a halt to the selling of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and no one-sided action against the regime in Syria.

US President Donald Trump has no such qualms, since he sent 60 Tomahawk missiles over there, blowing the heck out of the Assads air force, but then Corbyn appears to want to distance himself from Mr. Trump.

Corbyn has spoken against Theresa May for visiting the White House

Current British Prime Minister Theresa May, the one who made the call for the General Election because shes worried people dont like her and dont want her to be the PM, so here we go, lets see if they do, recently visited the White House and held Trumps hand (apparently because hes afraid of slopes  this is the man whos supposed to be intimidating Americas enemies with his fierceness and decisive military action), and Corbyn has taken the opportunity to criticise her for her relationship with him, using the hand-holding as the perfect metaphor.

Corbyn has promised to distance himself from Trump if hes elected into Downing Street. He said that stability will never come to the British government if were constantly pandering to an erratic Trump administration. He then led into a dig at May, saying this would mean no more hand-holding with Donald Trump. Instead, he promises that a Labour governments foreign policy, if they win the election in June, will be robust and independent  and be home-grown, as he adds made in London, meaning no influence from outside parties like Trump or the Saudis.

Thornberrys article has had quotes highlighted by the PA

The Thornberry article that got picked up by the Press Association has had a handful of quotes highlighted by the PA. In the article, Thornberry warns readers that if Theresa May and the Conservative Party win the general election, then Britain will get quickly swept into the civil war going on in Syria, and she calls this a signifier of Mays dangerous devotion to Donald Trump.

This is an attempt to get Labour elected, as both Corbyn and Thornberry are against the use of unilateral force in Syria, as it will only serve to further the civil unrest.

Trump is all for unilateral action in Syria, and has in fact taken some. And according to White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, the Assad is on very thin ice. He said that Trump would barely hesitate to use missiles against the regime again, not just for the use of chemical weapons, but even if they use barrel bombs, which they use all the time. One of Thornberrys quotes sums up Corbyns peaceful, anti-war stance: A disregard for human rights leads to disdain for the human consequences of war. It sounds like its engraved on a plaque appended to the iron statue of a great person who died five hundred years ago.

But thats not the case, it was just published in The Guardian and it was written by the shadow foreign secretary.

Thornberry, speaking on behalf of Corbyn, also warned that as soon as Theresa May becomes Prime Minister again, she will instantly call for a vote on taking unilateral military force against the Assad regime, which Thornberry calls a fresh act of devotion to Trump. She warns that unilateral action in Syria will both escalate and prolong the conflict in the country, and also risk bringing us into conflict with Russia and Iran  and all without any UN agreement or authorisation. Worrisome stuff.
The lack of information center will be DCs biggest downfall for tourism , given the large number of sights and attractions are in the region.

wrt info centers, here we're bigger country-wise and because conservatives for decades don't like funding federal "economic development," tourism promotion is primarily a state activity. That being said, most states do a very good job supporting "welcome" or visitors centers across their states, although they may or may not do accommodations reservations.



DC is an exception for a major city in that it does such a poor job, and this is complemented by the very parochial approach of the federal agencies. And DC extends its poor job by not extending information to area visitors centers located outside of the city but in the metropolitan area.



I missed out once on buying ephemera off ebay when there was a c. 1930s or 1940s photo of a federal "information center" in DC, but somehow I missed the deadline to bid and could never find another one. I need to track it down.



With the federal agencies, fwiw, the problem isn't limited to DC. It's the same for federal parks and lands and rec. centers across the country. They won't provide "local" information on site. Yet, they do economic impact studies every year about the economic impact of these facilities on local economies. It would be much greater if they would bend on this particular element.



the poor job of NPS marketing is why Utah stepped in to do its own campaign. It's so successful that they are overwhelming the facilities...

My NZ e-correspondent comments on the recent blog post on DC tourism issues:Your recent entry on your website refers to:Are US tourist information centers under any sort of governing body? All licensed tourist info centres in NZ are under the " i - site "umbrella," which is a bit like KOA branding of campsites . There is a set level of standards to be maintained i - sites can book domestic travel anywhere in NZ by any mode ( air , bus , ferry ) has information on ALL types of accommodation in their region -- budget backpackers to ultra luxury, and communicate with each other to make bookings in other parts of NZ .Some of the better i-sites include internet access, cafes , DoC information (the Dept. of Conservation administers National Parks and wildlife conservation), sells topo maps and videos, sells postage stamps, has a gift shop with quality souvenirs ..... all in a one stop shop. Even some of the smaller towns in NZ ( with population of 3,000) have good i--sites -- it's not just the big players.My response:The following is a NZ perspective, which may or may not be widely known ( I suspect not)) by Americans.Tourism -- People who are transiting through the US, but are not leaving the airports, have to pay for a visa to do so. If I am flying from NZ to LAX, transferring on to another flight to London UK, will only be in the transfer terminal in LAX for an hour or two, I have to pay for a visa.This is dumb !! As I will not be processed into the US by ICE , I don't understand why I need a visa to do so. Apart from places in Middle East, notably Saudi Arabia there is no other country where I need a transit visa.Entry conditions into US are a lot stricter, and more cumbersome. The US Embassy and Consulates do NOT handle visa applications. It is done by paying a toll call (regardless where one is phoning from in NZ).I don't know what it is like now, but the US immigration that I struck were some of the most obnoxious folk I ever came across in the US . For starters it would help if they spoke slowly and clearly to us -- even those of us who speak English sometimes find a Southern Drawl a little hard to follow ...And uniformed men waving guns in the air, herding us round like a bunch of sheep in the arrivals hall, is not exactly a friendly welcome. If these folk REALLY need guns (how often are they used?) they could be a little more discreet about it.There are 2 lines for queuing; One marked "US Citizens" , and the other marked "Aliens" Although I am not a US citizen, I am NOT an alien. ET might be an alien, but the rest of us are "foreign citizens or "visitors to the US."And with Donald Trump as your country's leader, goodness knows what he will do to make entry to the US harder for those of us who wish to visit.. Although some countries have a tipping culture, this is abhorrent to NZ or Australian folk, unless the service provided was (1) actually wanted, and (2) greater than expectations.Porters who automatically take my luggage and put it into the trunk of a cab , then expect me to pay them to do what I would have done myself is asking for an argument from me. American porters should ASK customers if they need their services, not just help themselves.

Labels: airports, immigration, public diplomacy, tourism planning, travel planning/tourism
Ever since Donald Trump launched his campaign for president back in June 2015, he's been in a heated war of words with the mainstream news media. While it's usually the president who lashes out at the press, some of his top advisers are following in his footsteps.

Conway's claim

When Donald Trump first announced that he was running for president, he labeled illegal immigrants from Mexico as "murderers" and "rapists." Instantly the press reacted negatively, pushing back at the former host of "The Apprentice" for his controversial and inflammatory language.

That moment planted a seed that would grow over the next two years, highlighting the feud between the press and the president. During the campaign, Trump would find ways to bypass the traditional means of a candidate, using social media to promote his agenda and reach his supporters and potential voters. However, Trump would often lash out on Twitter, targeting celebrity critics, his political opponents, and even other world leaders. In response, the press gave Trump around the clock coverage. While much of it was negative, it kept Trump's name in the spotlight, which he rode using an outsider's message to a primary victory and eventually an upset win over Hillary Clinton. Despite this, Trump has only increased his war of words with the media, as his advisers have also come to his defense, with the team accusing the reporters of pushing "fake news" anytime a story is written that goes against the administration's plans.

As reported by The Hill on April 12, Kellyanne Conway is continuing that attack.

Sitting down with Michael Isikoff of the Hollywood Reporter on Wednesday for a Newseum event in Washington, D.C. was Presidential Counsel Kellyanne Conway. As part of an over 30-minute interview, Conway went off on the media for allegedly lying about Donald Trump in various ways during the election and as part of their coverage of the administration.

Conway: People on TV "literally say things that just aren't true" https://t.co/GDll4skas8 pic.twitter.com/67L8sXLnHW  The Hill (@thehill) April 12, 2017

"Those who are covering him, some of those Twitter feeds are a hot mess," Kellyanne Conway said. "If you read peoples Twitter feeds, Im telling you this...it would never pass editorial muster," Conway said of journalists and cable news hosts reporting on social media, before adding, "It just wouldnt." "The free and fair press, that comes with a responsibility," she added.

Conway later went on to say that cable news reporters are "literally say(ing) things that just aren't true."

(Conway's full interview in the video above.)

Double down

In addition to Kellyanne Conway's criticism of the media, she also became irritated after Michael Isikoff claimed Donald Trump disliked New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman. Conway lashed out, accusing Isikoff of "inappropriate" reporting.
Former FBI Director James Comey confirmed that he did indeed have a dinner meeting with President Donald Trump in January of this year, but the differing versions of the story are stark. President Trump told his version to lester holt of NBC News during a wide-ranging interview on Thursday. Trump said he had actually asked Comey on three occasions, including one dinner and two phone, and claims to have been told all three times he was not "under investigation." Trump claims that Comey told him that he was not under investigation for colluding with the Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.

According to an NBC News report, former FBI director James Comey was summoned to the White House "out of the blue." The source added Comey did not want to do it and did not want the FBI rank-and-file to know about it. Trump, for his part, said he "believed" Comey requested the meeting and that during the course of the "dinner meeting" he pleaded for his job.

Trump demanded Comey's 'loyalty' but he refused

The New York Times first reported Trump demanded his "loyalty" which he declined to pledge, but he did tell the president he would be "honest" with him. Trump asked, according to the newspaper, whether that would be "honest loyalty." The newspaper also laid out a timeline of the events leading to the firing, and then the aftermath of the consequences of the firing.

Comey's firing: How the White House's story changed https://t.co/LmXdYEMJEC  The New York Times (@nytimes) May 12, 2017

In other news surrounding the firing of the FBI Director, the Senate has summoned deputy United States Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to brief the upper chamber next week. The leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had been pushing for such a meeting, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) obliged.

AG Rothenstein is anxious to save his own reputation, a reputation that was quite good prior to this firing. Senator Schumer has also asked for Attorney General Jeff Sessions but in a separate closed-door meeting and briefing. No word on whether AG Jeff Sessions will appear.

Trump tells a different story than his press office

During the NBC News interview with Lester Holt, Trump took total responsibility for the firing of Comey, and was not driven by either Rothenstein or Sessions, which had previously been the White House message from the press office, including Press Secretary Sean Spicer, and amplified by deputy White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
It's no secret that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer has struggled since taking on the job earlier this year. After his latest blunder, Donald Trump appears to have had enough.

Spicer, out?

After it became clear that Donald Trump had pulled off one the biggest political upsets in recent history with his defeat of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton last November, all eyes shifted onto who he would surround himself with in the White House. As the transition period kicked off, Trump received daily backlash over his choices, but when it was announced that Sean Spicer was going to take on the role as press secretary, the media didn't have much to say.

Spicer had previously served as a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, and seemed like a solid fit for the role. Despite this, Spicer has found his name in the headlines for all the wrong reasons since Trump's inauguration, appearing to reach a fever pitch last month over his now infamous remarks comparing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Hitler, while claiming the Nazis never used chemical weapons during the Holocaust. After the news broke on Tuesday that Trump had fired FBI Director James Comey, Spicer struggled to deal with the issue, and even reportedly hid in the bushes to avoid the press. As first reported by CNN's Jim Acosta on May 10, Spicer might soon be on his way out.

WH sources: Highest levels incl. POTUS evaluating Sanders subbing for Spicer in briefing room. Last night an "embarrassment.. disaster."  Jim Acosta (@Acosta) May 10, 2017

During the last week, Sean Spicer has given up his press secretary duties to Sarah Huckabee Sanders in order to complete Navy Reserve duty. In Spicer's place, the White House has reportedly been pleased with the job Huckabee Sanders has done, raising questions about the future of the position.

According to several sources close to the president, Spicer's handling of the James Comey firing was an "embarrassment" and a "disaster." In addition, Trump felt the same way, as follow-up reports note that he told his advisers that Spicer handled the situation "poorly."

Sean Spicer had a meltdown after Trump fired Comey, hiding in the bushes and demanding darkness https://t.co/wnPNUeIene pic.twitter.com/h7YcSNEq7w  Newsweek (@Newsweek) May 10, 2017

Unknown future

With Sean Spicer apparently on the ropes, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has come at the right time as Donald Trump has been looking to make the change.

Despite the former host of "The Apprentice" denying the allegations during an interview last month, Spicer has been a drain on the administration, often clashing with Presidential Counsel Kellyanne Conway, while being routinely mocked and trolled on "Saturday Night Live" by Melissa McCarthy. While it's unknown what exactly the president will do in regards to the situation at hand, it doesn't look good for the current White House Press Secretary.
36-year-old Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario was responding to an active shooting situation at the Pine Kirk Care Center in Kirkersville, Oh. when he was ambushed by the gunman. According to Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp, when deputies arrived on the scene as backup, they found the father of six lying dead in the street and three people dead inside the nursing home.

Reports of an active shooting received by Ohio police

Police officers arrived at the Pine Kirk Care Center, located in the 200 Block of E Main Street, shortly before 8 a.m.

on Friday after receiving reports of an active shooter in the nursing home. After finding the police chief lying in the street, they discovered three other people lying dead inside the nursing home. According to Thorp, police believe the gunman was among the dead and that the other two victims were staff members at the nursing home.

As reported by the New York Daily News, no residents of the home were injured in the shooting incident. Initially, the 23 residents stayed sheltered at the home but were gradually relocated to nearby hospitals. Police are planning to interview witnesses who were inside the home at the time of the shooting.

STLtoday: Ohio police chief, 2 nursing home workers killed by gunman https://t.co/Okh46UtvaF  St. Louis News (@stlnews) May 12, 2017

According to officials, the nearby Kirkersville Elementary School went on lockdown after the shooting and will remain closed for the time being.

Students who were in the school at the time of the shooting were moved to a middle school close by, ready to be collected by their parents.

The area will remain closed while police investigate the crime. Police have not yet identified the shooter or the motive for the shooting.

The nursing home has a history

The Dayton Daily News reportedly performed a search and discovered that nine of the nursing homes current residents were registered sex offenders.

That newspaper had previously run an investigation that uncovered the fact that back in 2016, almost half of the homes residents were sex offenders, with a background of various serious crimes.

Kirkersville is a small town with a population of under 600 residents and Thorp said there are not always police on duty.

Disario was promoted to chief of the Kirkersville Police three weeks prior to the deadly shooting. He was a father of six, whose wife is pregnant with their seventh child.

After hearing the news, Ohio Governor John Kasich sent out condolences via Twitter, following up with an official statement a few hours later. In the statement, Kasich said that Ohio is mourning the loss of Chief Eric Disario, an officer who had died in the line of duty.
To tamp down the furor over President Donald Trumps tax returns, which the president has successfully concealed from the media, his political opponents, and the American people, Trumps tax lawyers have released a statement that not only didnt help but may have made things worse. Essentially. Trump has not made any money from business deals with Russians nor does he owe any Russians money, with few exceptions. That last caveat had many people tittering on social media, removing any beneficial impact the statement may have had.

What are the 'few exceptions?'

To be fair, the statement actually lists the few exceptions according to Hot Air. They include $10 million for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow that year, capital gains on some Florida property sold to an unnamed Russian billionaire, and Trump merchandise and rentals to hotels and resorts sold to Russians. On the face of it, the stated exceptions do not constitute any evidence that Donald Trump is in the pay of the Russians. But then another question arose.

What is a Russian?

The Hot Air article quoted a lawyer named Wendy Thurm who asked, in effect, What is a Russian? To most people, a Russian is a citizen of the Russian Federation or, at least, someone who was born there.

But the term Russian has certain legal definitions. Thurm raises the possibility that Trump had dealings with shell companies financed by Russians. She also raises the possibility that Trump owed Russians money at one time that has been subsequently paid off.

What is a Manchurian Candidate?

The upshot is that the statement is not going to satisfy anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is Vladimir Putins Manchurian Candidate.

Indeed, one wonders if the release of the tax returns would serve to tamp down the rampant conspiracy theories that have been swirling about. When MSNBCs Rachel Maddow breathlessly revealed a copy of Trumps return for a particular year, all they proved was that the president made a lot of money and paid a lot of taxes. This performance was too much, even for Trump hating Stephen Colbert, who left off slamming the president to mercilessly mock the cable news talking head.

This leaves us with the horrible realization that Trump cannot prove that he is not Putins slave, but his accusers cannot demonstrate that he is. The matter has become like the faked moon landing, 9/11 being an inside job, and Obama being born in Kenya, a conspiracy theory that cannot die. Of course, some enterprising soul might walk up to the president and say, Donald, why dont you pass the time by playing a little solitaire? If his eyes glaze over and he reaches for a deck of cards, we have him.
"Counting On" will be returning in just a little over a month. It seems like the Duggar Family has been gone for quite some time but that is only because so much has happened since Season 3 went off the air. Because much of what is filmed is done weeks in advance, fans already know what it happening in the Duggar family before it even airs. Here are some of the things fans can count on seeing during Season 4.

Joy-Anna Duggar proposal

It has been a few months now, but Joy-Anna Duggar got engaged to Austin Forsyth shortly after "Counting On" Season 3 ended.

The two lovebirds have been busy planning their wedding and trying to psych fans out about the date. Rumors have swirled about it being an October wedding but being that Joy-Anna and Austin had a joint bachelor/bachelorette party recently, that would imply the wedding is sooner than anyone knows. Could the couple be getting married over Memorial Day weekend and keeping everything completely under wraps like they did with Jinger Duggar and Jeremy Vuolo?

Joseph Duggar is also in a new courtship with Kendra Caldwell. This was announced a few weeks after Joy-Anna got engaged. According to the Hollywood Gossip, Joseph Duggar courting Kendra Caldwell will be featured during Season 4 of "Counting On." It has been almost two years since one of the Duggar boys has been involved in courting at all.

Things didn't pan out for Josiah and Marjorie Jackson but there are high hopes that Joseph and Kendra will end up walking down the aisle in the near future.

Less Jinger Duggar

There was talk last season that the focus on Jinger Duggar was dragging the ratings down. Her wedding to Jeremy Vuolo had been aired in November 2016 and yet, Season 3 of "Counting On" focused almost solely on her wedding planning and the airing of the wedding a second time.

With so many other things happening in the Duggar family, a season of replays was not something many fans were interested in. Jinger and Jeremy will appear on Season 4, but only to discuss life in Texas and help Joy-Anna plan her big day.

Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard will also be present on "Counting On" including their decision to return to Central America despite being pregnant with their second child.

All of the Duggar family members seem to be moving in a positive direction. The older children are marrying off, and it appears that Jana Duggar may have finally found love as well. Season 4 of "Counting On" returns June 12 on TLC.
Ye Yongqing's latest exhibition Paper ChasePresents from Rauschenberg is on show at KWM art center in Beijing, tracing his artistic career over three decades. Photos Provided to China Daily

Exhibition emulates a game, tracing the stages of distinguished artist's career

Ye Yongqing is part of the first generation of Chinese artists to be exposed to Western modernism. His 10-year engagement with the London art scene inspired him to create his best-known bird series. Now, Ye's latest exhibition Paper Chase - Presents from Rauschenberg is on show at KWM art center in Beijing, tracing his artistic career over three decades.

On display are more than 80 artworks. Among them are 29 pieces on the type of paper specially manufactured for US artist Robert Rauschenberg in 1982 by an Anhui paper factory in China.

"They are presents from Robert Rauschenberg," Ye says. "More important, they embody the inspiration Rauschenberg gave me that art is created for fun."

In line with the fun spirit, Ye named the show after a running game, Paper Chase.

"It is a 14th century English game, where the discovery of clues in the form of pieces of paper left in the countryside leads one from pointAto B," Ye says. "Each work on display is a clue to my understanding of art."

Born in 1958 in Kunming, in China's Southwest Yunnan province, Ye became a student in the Oil Painting Department at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 1978, the second year after China restarted the national college entrance exam following the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

Ye and many of his classmates were voracious art students, including Zhang Xiaogang and Zhou Chunya, who later would become big players in the Chinese art scene.

"We couldn't go a day without painting," Ye said in his 1993 memoir.

In the 1980s, the second wave of Modernist thought and influence started to enter China. Ye sought to emulate Western masters such as Paul Gauguin, his favorite artist at the time, and was fascinated by Western poetry and literature.

"There were actually no art books in the school library. To see the only copy of World Art Anthology required an application by a teacher to take the entire class to look together - only after everyone had washed their hands. Later on, the school locked the anthology in a display case, turning one page each day. I would go there each day and emulate the shading and composition of each famous work in chalks," he says.

In 1985, the exhibition ROCI China by Rauschenberg at the institution - now known as the National Art Museum of China - attracted more than 300,000 visitors over its three-week run, inspiring an emerging generation of Chinese artists during a period that would later come to be known as the "85 New Wave".

In the 1980s, China's exposure to Western art was limited to reproductions in catalogs and the understanding of art was largely confined to academic painting, sculpture and printmaking, art critic Li Xianting says.

Rauschenberg's first show in China in 1985 introduced a style of art that concentrates primarily on collage and embraces materials traditionally outside the form for artists, turning away from the seriousness of Abstract Expressionists. Rauschenberg would cover a canvas with house paint, or ink the wheel of a car and use it to create a drawing on paper.

"No exhibition shocked me more than the Rauschenberg one," Ye says. "It's the first time I strongly felt the power of contemporary art. This differed remarkably from the art for art's sake and the artistic education I had received for years. It gave more fodder to my suspicions about the meaning of 'pure art'."

In the 1990s, Ye created Big Posters and a series of collages on canvas, in which he applied scribbles, numbers and large characters on newspaper, canvases or silk scrolls and also boldly blended photographs of his studio, friends and letters, along with philosophical quotes and texts.

"The formal resemblances of his paintings at that time hold some proximity to those of Rauschenberg," says Robert C. Morgan, a New York City-based art critic. "In many ways, the impact of the American Neo-Dadaist exhibition offered a spur for Ye to advocate a rough traditional style of painting on old calendars, wall posters and newsprint, and thus to reveal the internal symbolic aspects of his imagery with a new formal apparatus."

Following his collages, Ye became completely absorbed in painting birds, and these works achieved tremendous popularity on the Chinese art market when he first began producing them in 1999. Consequently, Ye produced them steadily for more than 10 years.
Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, speaks at the Atlantic Council in Washington on April 24. Chen Weihua / China Daily

AIIB President Jin Liqun says his bank is learning from other institutions but also boasts some better features

For Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), skepticism must be forgiven because there is no way to cure it.

Jin said he referenced a quote from Jane Austen, who said in her novel Mansfield Park that, "Selfishness must always be forgiven you know, because there is no hope of a cure."

The banker was referring to his frustration when some audience members approached him after his recent talk, saying they finally understood that AIIB is not a Chinese bank.

"My goodness, after I talked so much and reached out so much, still some people think it's China's bank," he said at a talk at the Atlantic Council in Washington on April 24.

Questions about AIIB abound in the US, especially since former president Barack Obama's administration, unlike the nation's European allies, took a disapproving attitude toward the new multilateral institution.

Jin has been asked multiple questions such as "What do you really want?" or "What is China up to?"

He said it reminds him of a scene in Bernardo Bertolucci's movie The Last Emperor, when the tutor Reginald Johnston said the emperor wants glasses but was met with distrust because no one believed the emperor would need glasses.

"Spectacles, just spectacles," Jin quoted Johnston as saying.

With his impeccable English and frequent citing of English and American literature, Jin stands out among most Chinese officials.

"So don't imagine things; we just want to set up a bank," he said, adding that it is to deal with the shortfall of infrastructure investment in Asia and other countries.

To Jin, the reason to focus on infrastructure is self-evident. China has borrowed from the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and international capital market since the 1980s to invest heavily in infrastructure. The Chinese economy started to take off.

"Given this experience, China believes that to promote broad-based economic and social development through investment in infrastructure and other productive sectors is really important," he said.

However, Jin said he and his people never publicly debated and countered those skeptics who asked why he wanted AIIB when there are well-established, multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and ADB.

He was asked why he wouldn't put money in the existing banks to cut costs and whether AIIB is to cut corners, compete with the existing institutions and disrupt the existing international financial order.

"We stayed very calm," Jin said of his team's not fighting back in previous years.

The AIIB opened for business on Jan 16, 2016, but it was formed on Dec 25, 2015, after its Articles of Agreement entered into force.

Jin said that when he came here almost three years ago, during the initial stage of preparing for the AIIB, he kept telling people that "we are much keen on working with the United States to create this new bank".

"When China and the US work together, wonderful things would happen," Jin said.

He said he was figuratively inviting people to the kitchen to make the cake together, to participate in the whole process and know every ingredient.

Eventually "a beautiful cake" was made by 57 members, Jin said, referring to the 37 regional and 20 non-regional Prospective Founding Members, all of which signed the Articles of Agreement that form the legal basis for the bank.

The new institution also made loans of $1.73 billion in its inaugural year.

In December, AIIB approved $600 million for the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Azerbaijan through Turkey. It was co-financed with the World Bank Group and some other commercial entities.

The multilateral development bank now has 70 members, and Jin expected that number to likely hit 85 by the end of 2017.

He said he understood the worries of some countries, including the US, Japan and some European nations.

"We are very much serene about all these critical comments because we know what we are doing is a right course of action," he said.

But he thought it was not a good idea to argue with the critics in those days. "Because I believe credibility has to be earned. Credibility has to be earned through not what you are talking about, but what you do by your performance," he said.

"It's not possible for you to talk people into believing you, no matter how eloquent you are."

He said that if the AIIB does well, people will believe in it and work with it.

When major US allies, such as the UK, Germany, France and Italy, all joined the AIIB despite US opposition, it was a vote of confidence for the bank.

"Eight months into operation, Canada and some other countries decided to join, which in my view is a vote of confidence," Jin said confidently.

Jin believes one year is still too soon, saying the AIIB will continue to try to do a good job.

US President Donald Trump's administration has not criticized the AIIB like the previous administration, but its prospects of joining the bank are still unknown.

Jin said his position to the US is clear. "Regardless of the membership of the United States, we work together," he said, adding that he was speaking as president of the bank, not simply as a Chinese national.

"As a Chinese national, I would say that AIIB should not be yet another hot spot for possible conflicts between the United States and China. It should be a platform for cooperation between these two countries," said the 67-year-old.

Jin revealed that he has already engaged US financial institutions, manufacturers, law firms and consulting firms to work together.

"I have Americans working in my institution," he said, pointing to a young man sitting in the front row.

Oliver Barren, a US citizen, is now an executive officer at AIIB and participated in all the decision-making processes. Meanwhile, Natalie Lichtenstein, another US citizen, was the chief legal counsel who drafted the AIIB's Articles of Agreement.

Jin believes the AIIB has two good features that other established multilateral financial institutions can't claim.

One is universal recruitment. While those existing institutions hire only nationals whose countries are members, the AIIB recruit across the world.

"We don't look at your passport, we look at your track record, professional and technical integrity," he said.

The second is universal procurement. While the US and Japan are the only G7 countries that have not joined the AIIB, Jin said US and Japanese companies can compete for contracts through competitive bidding.

"We treat you fairly, equally and equitably," he said.

The AIIB has five vice-presidents, including three Europeans and two Asians despite the fact that Asian countries have 75 percent of the voting power. Jin called it "meritocracy".

On March 1, the AIIB voluntarily adopted the list under an anticorruption agreement known as the Agreement for Mutual Enforcement of Debarment Decisions.

It means that close to 1,000 entities that have been debarred by five other leading multilateral development banks also are debarred by the AIIB.

"It's truly a multilateral international institution by the highest possible standards," Jin said.

Jin, who repeatedly emphasized the core values of the AIIB as "lean, clean and green", said people should not just look at the revenue side of the AIIB because the developing institution is not maximizing its profits but rather working in the interest of the borrowing countries.

He said the AIIB is also learning from existing institutions. Only 25 percent of the programs were prepared by the AIIB while 75 percent were co-financed with other institutions such as the World Bank and ADB.

"As we move forward, we would continue to work together. There is no cutthroat competition among all these institutions. We only enjoy cooperation," he said.

Just a day before Jin's speech at the Atlantic Council, the AIIB and the World Bank signed their second memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation, including development financing, staff exchanges and analytical and sector work.

Despite his busy schedule as a banker, Jin said he sleeps well. He sticks to his love for liberal arts before going to bed every night, flipping over some pages of literature or philosophy.

He said it makes his life more interesting. "We should be good by being a whole person - be humane, sympathetic, understanding," he said, referring to his late-night reading.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com
China's homegrown C919 passenger plane completed its first public test flight earlier this month, and US aviation experts say that eventually the narrow-body jet could compete with the updated Airbus 320 and Boeing's new generation of 737 planes.

Mike Boyd, president of aviation consultancy Boyd Group International in Evergreen, Colorado, said that on the surface the C919 is equal to the Airbus and Boeing offerings.

"It will sell well in China," he said. "The problem the plane faces on a global scale is that airline books are filled with similar planes already on order."

The twin-engine plane manufactured by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) has been hailed as a notable achievement in the development of the country's civil aviation industry. "This represents the technology platform (for China) to build on going forward for the next 20 years," Boyd said.

Brian Foley, president of a New Jersey-based aviation consultancy that bears his name, wrote in an email that the C919 could compete with the current Boeing/Airbus duopoly, particularly if it became the preferred airliner of Chinese domestic airlines.

"Globally it becomes more difficult. First, it must be approved by Western aviation authorities. Then there needs to be an adequate maintenance, sales and spare parts network worldwide. If it's any indication of how difficult it will be to enter the market, Bombardier's new C Series jet has found Boeing and Airbus to be formidable competitors," he said.

Richard Aboulafia, a vice-president with the Teal Group Corp in Fairfax, Virginia, said that the C919 represents China's efforts "to get into the big leagues both in terms of technology and customers."

"If they get it right, they could be the first new competitors in this business in half a century. If it performs well and they are willing to set up a global support and finance structure for the plane which can be very expensive, then they could expand anywhere," he said.

Scott Hamilton, the managing director at the Leeham Company, an aviation consulting firm in Issaquah, Washington, said the C919 will likely become the lead airplane for a competitive Chinese aerospace/aviation industry in the future.

"It's a mainline aircraft and it is, essentially, the proof-of-concept that China can successfully design, integrate and assemble an airliner. The prospective twin-aisle C929 is the next step in this process. A 'C939' that will inevitably follow the C929 would return to the single-aisle size and by then, China should be well on its way to a successful commercial aerospace industry. We're looking at 20 years," Hamilton wrote in an email.

Foley said the primary significance of the plane is the experience China gained in designing, building, testing and marketing a commercial airliner.

"This knowledge can be applied to future aircraft which will result in a shorter development cycle and improved manufacturing efficiencies. Long term this know-how will have a greater effect on the global industry than the C919 itself," he said.

paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com
A Chinese professor who faced charges of espionage for selling scientific secrets to China that were later dropped has filed a lawsuit claiming that the lead FBI agent in his case falsified evidence and ignored warnings that he was innocent.

Xi Xiaoxing, a naturalized US citizen from China who teaches physics at Temple University in Philadelphia, filed the lawsuit there on Wednesday, according to The New York Times. The suit seeks an unspecified amount of damages against the agent.

In May 2015, FBI agents arrested Xi at his house at dawn, handcuffed and held his wife and young daughters at gunpoint, according to the lawsuit, the newspaper reported on Thursday.

Xi's lawyer, David Rudovsky, told the Times, that the FBI had filed and dropped two other cases against Chinese-American. He said that he wants to know if the FBI is profiling Asian-American scientists in its efforts to fight spying. He said there was nothing secret about the material Xi sent to academic colleagues in China.

"It is troubling that several cases against Chinese Americans have been dismissed where it appears that there was no evidence of guilt," Rudovsky wrote in an email to China Daily.

Peter Zeidenberg, who is with the Washington-based firm of Arent Fox LLP, was Xi's attorney in 2015 when the world-renowned researcher on superconductivity was accused of passing the schematics of a pocket heater used in semiconductor research to China. After he pleaded not guilty, the charges were dropped several months later.

"We investigated and got affidavits from notable physicists from around the world," Zeidenberg recalled in an interview with China Daily on Thursday. "We presented the evidence to the government and they agreed to dismiss the case."

Zeidenberg, who is not representing Xi in his lawsuit against the FBI agent (Andrew Haugen), said he believes the US government is targeting Chinese when investigating alleged espionage cases. He said that he has been involved in other cases where the US government pursued Chinese, "maybe 10 in the last two years".

"The DOJ (Department of Justice) has a laser-like focus on all things related to China. When you put on the blinders sometimes you miss warning signs," he said. "I don't think they (federal government) have learned a lesson. I expect the trend (of focusing on the Chinese) to continue."

Zeidenberg represented Xiafen "Sherry" Chen, also a naturalized citizen, who worked for the National Weather Service. She was accused of using a stolen password to download information on US dams and reservoirs from a secure database, which coincided with a meeting with a top Chinese official in 2014.

paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com
Malaysia's ambassador to the United Nations is pretty certain about the benefits the Belt and Road Initiative will bring to the countries involved in its development, including Malaysia, one of the earliest participants to sign on.

"Of course the initiative will contribute to the economic growth of the countries involved in the development of the BRI," said Muhammad Shahrul Ikram Bin Yaakob on Thursday in his office in New York.

Yaakob mentioned large-scale joint projects linked to the BRI, such as the Qinzhou Industrial Park in China, the Kuantan Industrial Park in Malaysia and the Malaka Gateway project, all of which have achieved significant progress.

He said big infrastructure projects will benefit people by increasing employment, transferring technologies and spurring the countries' economic activity by improving the efficiency of connectivity.

With regional economy speeding up driven by BRI-related projects, Yaakob said once the six economic corridors are fully implemented, not only regional economies but also global economy will greatly benefit.

The six economic corridors in the framework of the BRI include the New Eurasian Continental Bridge, the China-Mongolia-Russia corridor and the China-Central Asia-West Asia corridor. They form a trade and transport network across Eurasia.

"This is a really massive initiative, here we are talking [about] linking Asia, Europe, Africa," he said.

"When you talk about the global economy, it means the total sum of the contribution of each individual country. If all countries are doing well in their domestic economy, the regional economy is doing well, it will contribute to the global economy," he said.

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak will attend the Belt and Road Forum of International Cooperation on May 14 and May 15 in Beijing.

"Malaysia and China have been having excellent bilateral relations, and that's been a great comprehensive strategic partnership," said Yaakob.

Malaysia has been China's largest trading partner in the ASEAN region since 2008, and is its third largest Asian trading partner after Japan and South Korea. Bilateral trade between the two countries, which grew at 4.4 percent in 2016, is expected to continue expanding.

President Xi first proposed the BRI in 2013 during a visit to central and southeast Asia.

On his visit to Malaysia, President Xi called for efforts to deepen mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Malaysia, Yaakob said, since "China-Malaysia economic and trade cooperation will benefit not only the two countries but also the whole region".

The two sides set a target of bringing bilateral trade volume to $160 billion in 2017.

Yaakob added that in the future, there are lots of areas that Malaysia and China can continue working together on in order to achieve the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, such as infrastructure development and economic development.

"Economic development on both sides has a great significance for the other," he said.

According to a statement from the Malaysia mission, During Razak's visit to China, He will witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation Sdn Bhd, Hangzhou municipal government and Alibaba.

xiaohong@chinadailyusa.com
Chinese enterpreneurs at the Parliament Building during their visit to Canada in August, 2016.

Ever since Deng Xiaoping hit the gas pedal on China's economic reform when he made his famous southern tour to Shenzhen in 1992, companies in China  big and small  have been looking for ways to better manage, develop strategies and capture value.

For the first 30 years of the People's Republic of China, the country was organized under a planned economy. There was no notion of companies and shareholder value. So when China's economic reform started and when entrepreneurs first emerged, they by definition would not have had any formal education in modern management or prior experience in actually running a company.

The rapid growth of China's market and the emerging competition drove many of these entrepreneurs to look for ways to better plan and manage their businesses.

The first wave of management consulting firms and business schools came to China from the West in the early to mid-1990s, and brought along established knowledge, theories and frameworks. Chinese businesspeople were attracted to these new ideas as they searched for ways to help run their businesses better.

In the West, from the 1970s to 1980s, the notion of conglomerates was dominant. Companies like ITT and Tyco in the United States and Hanson Trust in the United Kingdom grew into large amalgamations of businesses, often across a range of unrelated sectors.

The notion was that "big is good". After a while, the capital market decided that conglomerates were not such a good idea after all, because of the lack of synergies across the various businesses.

In 1990, Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad from the University of Michigan published an article called The Core Competence of the Corporation, focusing on this trend. They argued that well-performing companies compete based on their strengths, or what they called core competences or capabilities. This theory caught on quickly in the Western business community and became the governing thought for companies' strategy formulations.

Today it is still the case. Using this theory, the capital market suggests that companies should focus on their areas of strength. And, by implication, companies should not expand arbitrarily beyond their areas of strength.

When management consulting firms and business school academics first came to China, they brought along these concepts and used them as guiding frameworks to advise Chinese clients. However, the Chinese executives, while intrigued, quickly came to the realization that something was missing.

While useful, these frameworks could not quite explain the overall context of doing business in China. The consultants and academics also quickly realized that business in China is somewhat different, although they could not explain exactly what the difference was.

In the meantime, the external operating environment was evolving fast, both in the world and particularly in China.

China's fast economic growth, its gradual but consistent transition from planned economy toward market economy, the emergence of highly intensive competition in the open sectors, and the increasing prevalence of technology and the availability of angel investing and venture capital funds, all contributed to the emergence of waves of entrepreneurship and innovation in China that the country had not seen before.

In their search for growth strategies, these Chinese entrepreneurs were typically fast and agile. Some of them developed diversified conglomerates, and there were others that decided on a narrow focus, taking the core competence approach. The results have been mixed.

Interestingly, some of them, through trial and error, discovered a third way of strategy development. We call it "multiple jumping".

When these entrepreneurs see new opportunities evolving, even if they do not have all the capabilities to fully operate the new business, they decide if they should jump over or not.

So far, some of the companies that have jumped have been successful in latching onto the new business sector. Often, they will repeat the process when newer opportunities turn up. When these companies jump, they try to fill their capability gaps either through their own efforts or by collaboration with other companies, or by using both approaches.

This multiple jumping approach to strategy is different from a conglomerate approach because, despite their involvement in multiple sectors, these companies generally keep their original heritage as their core.

On the other hand, multiple jumping clearly defies the core competence approach, because these companies are willing to enter new areas of business without having the expected core competences established.

So, this multiple jumping approach is another way to think about strategy beyond the conglomeration and core competence approaches. We call it The Third Way.

It provides another way for companies to decide how they should develop their business strategies in a fast-growing, discontinuous operating environment abounding with fertile opportunities.

A prime example of a company that has successfully adopted this approach is Alibaba, which has interests in industries including healthcare, the media and consumer finance as well as its core e-commerce business. Coincidentally, US companies such as Amazon and Google have also grown through this approach.

As China's operating environment continues to rapidly evolve, innovation and entrepreneurship are thriving. Companies are looking for even more inspiration for growth. Many entrepreneurs continue to look at the West, especially at the US, for inspiration in technology, management and investment models. Some are also examining Chinese historical philosophies for guidance.

Today, in addition to a growing number of consulting firms, business schools and training companies in China, many corporations have also set up their own "universities" or "academies". Business executives, successful or not, are eager to share their experiences in running businesses and some have turned into modern philosophers.

The author is founder and CEO of Gao Feng Advisory Company, a global strategy and management consulting firm with roots in China.
JACK MA, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, and other members of the China Entrepreneur Club take a selfie with outgoing French President Francois Hollande in Beijing on Nov 3, 2015.

Led by Jack Ma, elite entrepreneur club is building trust overseas to help Chinese firms extend global reach

Not only are they China's most famous business leaders, they are also important envoys of public diplomacy eager to spread the word globally about the country and its thriving entrepreneurship.

Since 2011, the China Entrepreneur Club has made 12 overseas visits to countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy. At each destination, members engage with the highest echelons of government and leading companies and entrepreneurs to discuss a wide range of issues.

During Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's visit to China last August, his first public event was a meeting with the club. And in late 2015, outgoing French President Francois Hollande attended a breakfast meeting with them in Beijing during a state visit.

Zhao Qizheng, former minister of China's State Council Information Office, said he considers the club's members "the business pillars of China's public diplomacy".

Established in 2006, the China Entrepreneur Club comprises 60 members made up of economists, scholars and founders of Chinese private companies. Their combined annual gross income is more than 3 trillion yuan ($435 billion).

Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, succeeded Liu Chuanzhi, founder of the world's largest PC maker Lenovo, to become the club's chairman in May last year.

International visits are important annual events for Chinese companies on the lookout for overseas knowledge and opportunities, said Maggie Cheng, secretary-general of the club.

Last year, nonfinancial direct investment overseas by Chinese investors totaled $170.1 billion, up 44.1 percent from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

Cheng said the club works as a key platform to serve these entrepreneurs and to promote entrepreneurship in China. Its members all started their own businesses after the country's reform and opening-up in the 1980s, and their companies rank in the top three in their specific industries.

A set of standards is in place for members joining the club: Their companies' revenues must be worth tens or hundreds of billions of yuan; they must be leaders in their industries; and they must have a special approach to management, with involvement in corporate social responsibility programs, philanthropy and charity activities.

Even 10 years or so ago, when the engagement of Chinese companies around the world was relatively limited, many of those represented by the club had set out to test the waters overseas.

"We saw that in the process of globalization, Chinese companies were encountering very similar issues, such as complying with local regulations, market access and cultural integration," Cheng said.

"We realized that the root of these problems was that there was this huge information gap between China and the world."

Overcoming obstacles

Decades after China's reform and opening-up, she added, the West recognizes China's rapid economic growth but fails to understand the business dealings behind it all.

"So when it comes to entities in China collaborating with entities overseas, there are still many obstacles."

The club's international visits are a tool to communicate with the Western business world and to enhance understanding, Cheng said.

Ma Weihua, president of the China Entrepreneur Club and former head of China Merchants Bank, said he was highly impressed when he took part in the club's visit to the UK in 2012.

During this trip, Chinese entrepreneurs and UK researchers and businesspeople at the Needham Research Institute in London discussed whether China's institutional and economic systems were up to the challenge of promoting modern technological development.

"The British people raised many questions with us about China's technological innovation, and we explained many things by drawing on personal experience," Ma said.

The Chinese delegation gained a new perspective from the discussions, he said. "The way the idea sparks collided with one another was really impressive."

Ma said that in visits arranged by the club, the Chinese businesspeople are always very astute when discussing issues such as visas and the business environment, and also with their explanations of how business in China operates.

When the club made its first visit to the US, many had no idea who these Chinese entrepreneurs were, let alone had much inclination to meet them.

"We really wanted to make an impact and bring about change, not just indulge in courtesy meetings. We wanted to broach important issues, and we needed to explain who we were, what the club was, what we were doing and why we were doing it."

Cheng said that many businesspeople in the West were eager to learn more about Chinese business.

"The tales of Chinese entrepreneurs building their business empires from scratch are well-known in China, but few outside the country know these stories."

She said a level of distrust was very likely when entrepreneurs were seeking potential overseas partners to work with.

"People might also have thought China was so far away and a little mysterious, and that one of the only things it could offer was low-end manufacturing. What we were able to do was set out the facts with these people face-to-face and sound out their views."

The secret of success for businesspeople in China and elsewhere is identical, Cheng said.

"To be trusted you need to produce better products and offer better services, do well in competitive markets, respect competitors and customers, and take heed of the interests of all parties concerned."

Ma, the club's president, said that many businesspeople around the world are willing to participate in the club's outreach activities, finding them invaluable.

"As individuals, most of us are unable to meet with that many people from the government and business worlds overseas, but as a group we can exercise influence," he said.

"In these visits we can have candid discussions with people, some of whom may eventually become our business partners."

Strong skill sets

Ma said all members of the club have strong entrepreneurial skills, can adapt to a changing business environment, have the desire to be innovative, are honest and trustworthy, have a sense of responsibility and are keen to repay society for their success.

Going global is a common challenge for Chinese entrepreneurs because the country's economy is now so interconnected with the rest of the world, he said. Every company big or small, whether it makes products or provides services, needs global connections directly or indirectly.

"I'm very proud to be in a club in which I can learn so much by communicating with others," Ma said. "When you are alone with no role model it is difficult to succeed. We are entrepreneurs, but we are also doing public diplomacy. I think Chinese businesspeople could be good ambassadors to explain China to the world."

The club also provides good opportunities for Chinese entrepreneurs to let the world know their ambitions, capabilities and the latest innovations they are working on.

Steve Tappin, CEO and founder of Xinfu, a consultancy that advises CEOs, said the China Entrepreneur Club plays a vital role as a bridge between China and the world.

The English businessman said that when he first met many of the top Chinese entrepreneurs, cultural and linguistic differences made it challenging to connect.

He recalled introducing Stephen Murphy, the former Virgin Group CEO, to Guo Guangchang, founder and chairman of Chinese conglomerate Fosun Group.

"It was not easy for them to deal with one another even though they were both outstanding businessmen."

Nowadays it is very different, Tappin said.

"Guo has transformed himself by working hard on his English, his inner world via tai chi, and his understanding of global business dynamics. Western leaders need to make similar efforts to be successful in China."

chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn
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HA NOI  The United States Department of Agricultures (USDA) catfish inspection programme was not yet suitable for Viet Nam and more bilateral discussions were needed, the Government said on Thursday.

Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) Tran Thanh Nam spoke in Ha Noi at a meeting between senior Vietnamese and US officials to boost trade relations in the agricultural sector.

Nam said he hoped the US would create more favourable conditions for Vietnamese businesses in fishery processing and other fields of cultivation so that they can strengthen trade ties with their American counterparts.

Also, Viet Nam hopes that the USDA would soon approve procedures for the export of Vietnamese mangoes and star apples to the US, the deputy minister said.

In addition, the country wants support in technology and organic agricultural projects, including support training courses on organic product certification for Vietnamese experts, Nam added.

Nam asked the US to transfer the inspection programme on plant quarantine to Viet Nam while continuing to help monitor the amount of plant protection drugs found in products exported to the US.

Robert Macke, chief of the USDAs Office of Agreements and Scientific Affairs and Foreign Agricultural Service, said the US had worked to address Viet Nams concern over catfish inspection over the past few years, and affirmed the countrys support for Viet Nam in the matter.

He called for the MARDs support to get the Vietnamese Governments approval of the US Embassys proposal on new USDA positions at its offices in Ha Noi and HCM City.

Other topics discussed include food safety co-operation in APEC and other bilateral trade collaboration issues.  VNS
A NANG  Authorities in a Nang have launched a website at gopy.danang.gov.vn to get feedback on city services from the local community.

Deputy director of the citys Information and Communications Department, Tran Van Thach, said at a press conference on Thursday that the new online portal, available in English and Vietnamese, would allow residents and tourists to conveniently post opinions and suggestions, as well as complaints on urban, environmental, administrative and tourism-related services.

The department also launched an app for public bus routes (Dana Bus) that can be downloaded from the Apple and Google Play stores.

Using the app, tourists and commuters can easily search for the correct bus service and route in the city.

Thach said users could send all problems related to security, tourism, public disorders, environmental pollution, and administrative procedures to the concerned authorities via the website. Issues will be dealt with within three working days.

Thach said the page had already received 600 opinions and complaints from local residents and tourists, of which 98 per cent were resolved within seven days.

a Nang was the first city in Viet Nam to offer free wireless internet, with a maximum of 20,000 connections at a time for locals and tourists on major streets in the city, including living quarters, schools and beaches.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam Competition Authority (VCA), under the Ministry of Industry and Trade, has invited concerned parties to a public consultation on anti-dumping tariffs on H-shaped steel products.

The consultation, related to H-shaped steel products imported from China (including Hong Kong), will be held on June 20, wherein all parties will get the opportunity to express their opinions on anti-dumping tariffs.

Applications to participate in the consultation have to be sent to the VCAs Trade Remedies Investigation Division before 5pm on June 5, and concerned parties can send their contents before 5pm on June 9.

VCAs deputy director Nguyen Phuong Nam said the public consultation would be based on Order No 20 on anti-dumping tariff on goods imported into Viet Nam, and Decree No 90 on the implementation of this order.

Earlier, the ministry had issued a decree imposing temporary anti-dumping duties on H-shaped steel products imported from China. Under Decree No 957/2017/Q-BTC, anti-dumping duties imposed for all Chinese steel produders exported to Viet Nam is 36.33 per cent and will be in effect from April 5 to August 2, 2017.

However, some companies such as Heibei Jinxi Iron and Steel Group and Hebei Jinxi Section Steel were charged lower anti-dumping taxes at 29.4 per cent, others such as Rizhao Steel Holding Group and Rizhao Medium Section Mill were charged at 21.18 per cent.

H-shaped steel products are used to make support beams during constructions, girders for containers and trucks, steel decks and chassis.  VNS
HA NOI  After a period of actively selling non-performing loans to the Viet Nam Asset Management Company (VAMC), banks are buying back the debts from the VAMC to self-handle.

Han Ngoc Vu, CEO of the Vietnam International Bank (VIB), recently said that in 2016 his bank repurchased VN1.33 trillion (US$58.3 million) of non-performing loans (NPLs) that it sold to VAMC. It will continue to buy back roughly VN1 trillion this year.

VIB is due to acquire all bad debts that it sold to VAMC by mid-2018, Vu said.

VIBs NPL ratio increased to 2.58 per cent in 2016 from 2.05 per cent in 2015.

According to Vu, the increase in the 2016 NPL ratio was due to the bank actively acquiring some debts sold to VAMC to promote the debt settlement process on finding that the process had been better than the previous period.

Even when repurchasing the bad debt from VAMC, the entire bad debt of VIB is still less than 3 per cent regulated by the central bank, Vu said.

Previously, Vietcombanks Chairman Nghiem Xuan Thanh had also said that his bank finished the repurchase of all VN4.3 trillion of NPLs that it sold to VAMC, three years earlier than planned.

Vietinbank Chairman Nguyen Van Thang said that in 2017 his bank would focus on settling bad debts and would buy all bad debts that it sold to VAMC, completely settling the bad debts in 2017 instead of 2018 as planned earlier.

Experts said that the repurchase of bad debts from VAMC was positive, proving that business performance of commercial banks is more positive.

However, according to Vu, not all banks can buy back bad debts from VAMC. He explained though some may really want to buy back the bad debts, these banks must have sufficient financial resources and the NPL ratio must be low enough to ensure that after the debt repurchase, the NPL ratio is still less than 3 percent as regulated by the central bank.

There are going to have banks that face limitations as the NPL ratio at the banks has already been too high or the banks do not have enough profits to put provision, therefore, they still have to continue leaving bad debts at VAMC, Vu told au tu chung khoan (Securities Investment) newspaper.

In fact, banks have identified VAMC as a bad debt landing as the recovery of the debts at VAMC is slow. The banks therefore must take the initiative in handling the debts by themselves.

According to VAMC, it has bought bad debts of VN262 trillion from 42 credit institutions. However, it has recovered only VN42.85 trillion of book bad debts.

Economist Vu inh Anh said that apart from the barrier regarding financial resources to purchase and dispose bad debts, legal regulations, especially procedures on settlement of collaterals, are not suitable in reality as they create an awkward situation for VAMC, and are unable to accelerate the bad debt settlement process.

VIBs Vu said the annual bad debt settlement is very good, especially the sale of bad debt. However, currently, there are still certain obstacles in selling bad debts to foreign buyers. When foreigners decide to purchase bad debt, that means they have professional perspective, they will consider bad debt quality with regard to collaterals and transparency, and see how much can be recovered before deciding to purchase.

Many foreigners have been interested in VIBs bad debts for a long time, Vu said. However, commercial conditions have been negotiated and legal obstacles remain. Therefore, if it can be solved, VIBs bad debt settlement speed will be much faster than today, he said.  VNS
HCMC ITY  An Giang Province and India have good prospects for co-operation in aquaculture and processing, a meeting between business executives from the two sides heard in HCM City yesterday.

Smita Pant, the Indian consul general in HCM City, said An Giang and other provinces in the Cuu Long (Mekong) Delta region possess certain advantages in farming and processing, especially of basa.

Vietnamese fisheries products are exported to many markets and India is a huge market with a population of 1.2 billion.

The Indian Government offers incentives to foreign investors in aquaculture and seafood processing, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu states, she said.

She called on An Giang to send a delegation of leading seafood firms to the three states to do market research and explore investment opportunities, especially in projects to produce basa brood stock.

Ramesh Anand, managing director of Canopus Inter-Trade Pte Ltd, said the Indian market also offers good opportunities for An Giang firms to export basa products.

Vietnamese basa fish fillet is already available at many five-star hotels in India, he said.

Seafood demand is quite high in India, but businesses need to offer competitive prices, he said.

Nguyen Thanh Binh, deputy chairman of the An Giang Peoples Committee, said his province is strong in agriculture, with rice, fish, fruits, and vegetables being the key items.

The province would send a delegation to India to study the market and boost exports of basa and invest in aquaculture, he told the media on the sidelines of the event.

Besides its traditional markets, the province also seeks to boost basa exports to other markets with high demand, including India, he said.

The An Giang and Indian businesses also discussed co-operation in IT, agro-chemicals, vegetables and fruits, human resource training, and tourism.

An Giang University sought tie-ups for training IT engineers to international standards, carrying out research into the internet of things for agriculture, e-governance and others and exchanging students and researchers.

The province sought Indian investment in tourism, especially in developing four- and five-star accommodation, theme parks, cuisine areas, and trade and convention centres.

Binh said trade between the province and India was worth nearly US$8 million last year, with the provinces exports accounting for more than $2 million.

The numbers are modest, and there is room for much greater trade ties, he said.

Such interactions are a good opportunity for businesses from the two sides to exchange information and explore opportunities, he added.  VNS
HCM CITY  Ben Thanh Street Food Market in HCM City is highly recommended as a must-visit place to enjoy a wonderful dining experience with specialities from many countries as well as tasty dishes from the three regions of Viet Nam.

At the same time guests can also discover the hustle and bustle of nightlife in the heart of Sai Gon.

At the market, they should try traditional Vietnamese dishes like bun ca Long Xuyen (noodle with fish), com tam la sen (Vietnamese broken rice wrapped in lotus leaf), bun mam (noodles with broth made of fermented fish), goi cuon (spring roll), chao tom (grilled shrimp mousse on a sugarcane stick) and grilled seafood.

Their prices start at VN25,000 (US$1.1).

Guests can also taste Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Indian dishes.

It is on Thu Khoa Huan Street near Ben Thanh Market in District 1 and open from 10am to 9pm.  VNS
HA NOI  The Vietnamese-language version of the biography of National Azerbaijani leader Heydar Aliyev was presented to the Vietnamese public on Wednesday on the occasion of his 94th birthday anniversary.

The 500-page book will allow Vietnamese people to learn more about the late Heydar Aliyev and his role in the history of Azerbaijan. He was the third President of Azerbaijan, serving from October 1993 to October 2003, two months before his death at the age of 80.

At the ceremony, Anar Imanov, Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Viet Nam, spoke of the role of the late leader.

As a leader of Soviet Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, in a very short period, undertook fundamental steps toward changing agricultural and oil-producing Azerbaijan to one of the most industrialised Republics of the former Soviet Union, he said.

His role in modern independent Azerbaijan was even more remarkable.

Heydar Aliyev played an integral role in the establishment and development of the relationship between Azerbaijani and Vietnamese people. The visit of President Ho Chi Minh to Azerbaijan in 1959 and the visit of Heydar Aliyev to Viet Nam in 1983 laid the foundation of friendship between the two nations. Thanks to the support of Heydar Aliyev, thousands of Azerbaijani specialists were sent to Viet Nam to help rebuild the war-torn countrys infrastructure and oil industry. More than 5 thousand Vietnamese have studied in higher educational institutions of Azerbaijan.

The name and career of President Heydar Aliyev is very close to Vietnamese people, especially to the Vietnamese alumni in Azerbaijan. For Viet Nam, he is a messenger of peace, friendship and cooperation with Azerbaijanis, a great and close friend of the Vietnamese people. After my visit in May 2015 to his hometown in Azerbaijan, I felt blessed and honored, said Nghiem Vu Khai, Chairman of Vietnam-Azerbaijan Friendship Association and Deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Union of Science and Technology Associations.

I hope that, my colleagues in Viet Nam-Azerbaijan Friendship Group will actively promote the book to public, so that more Vietnamese can better understand the life and times of Heydar Aliyev, broaden our knowledge of a remarkable person and strengthen love for our second homeland Azerbaijan, he said.

Following the presentation of the book, a concert was held to mark the 94th birthday anniversary of the late President.  VNS




BEIJING  President Tran ai Quang met on Thursday in Beijing with Party General Secretary and President of China Xi Jinping, stressing that the Vietnamese Party and State consider the strong relationship with China a strategic choice and top priority in Viet Nams external relations.

The Vietnamese leader expressed his belief that under the sound leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) led by Xi, China will score greater achievements in the cause of building a socialist state of modernity, wealth, democracy, civilisation, and harmony, contributing to peace, stability, and prosperity in the region and the world.

He conveyed his wishes for a successful 19th Congress of the CPC slated for later this year, and said he looked forward to welcoming President Xi at the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) Summit in a Nang in November.

Viet Nam and China are close neighbours with many similarities, he said, adding that the friendship founded and fostered by Presidents Ho Chi Minh and Mao Zhedong during the countries struggles for national liberation was a valuable asset for both nations that needs to be maintained.

The healthy and stable development of the Viet Nam-China collaboration matches the basic and long-term interests of the two people and benefits peace, stability and development in the region and the world, he stated.

Xi, for his part, affirmed that the Chinese Party, State and people place high importance on the friendship with Viet Nam and wish to work with the Vietnamese Party, State and people to further that friendship and strategic co-operative partnership.

At their talks, the two leaders praised the progress in ties between the two Parties and countries in recent years and discussed in depth major orientations to strengthen trust and promote win-win co-operation, and maintain peace and stability at sea.

They agreed to maintain regular exchanges and contacts between Party and State leaders to map out strategic orientations, and promptly handle issues in order to maintain friendly, healthy and stable Viet Nam-China ties.

The sides agreed on applying measures to boost bilateral trade, facilitating Viet Nams trade promotion offices in Chinese localities, and encouraging businesses to increase trade, especially of agricultural and fishery products, and of food. Chinese enterprises are encouraged to join eco-friendly advanced technology projects that are suitable to Viet Nams demand and sustainable development strategy.

President Quang asked China to employ measures to gradually reduce Viet Nams trade deficit with the country, including stepping up the import of Vietnamese farm produce.

They agreed to discuss the signing of a master plan on building a cross-border economic co-operation area.

He suggested the sides increase co-operation in agriculture, environment, science-technology and climate change response, and proposed helping Viet Nam create rice varieties adaptable to drought and saltwater intrusion in the Mekong Delta.

The two countries should soon discuss renewing an agreement on a hotline to tackle unexpected issues relating to fishing at sea and boost co-operation in the sustainable use of water resources of the Lancang-Mekong River and in responding to water resource security, environmental protection and nuclear safety, he said.

Regarding sea issues, President Quang asserted Viet Nams consistent stance of persistently addressing the dispute in the East Sea by peaceful measures on the basis of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 and with respect to diplomatic and legal processes.

He asked that both sides implement agreements and commitments, in particular on the basic principles guiding the settlement of issues at sea; soundly manage the dispute and not take any action to complicate and expand it; tackle fisheries problems and fishing operations; hasten the negotiating mechanisms on sea issues; fully and efficiently implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and strive to work together with ASEAN to accomplish a Code of Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (COC) in 2017.

At the end of the talks, Presidents Quang and Xi witnessed the signing of five co-operative documents covering economic and technological co-operation between the two Governments; increased co-operation between their two Foreign Ministries; e-commerce co-operation between the two Industry and Trade Ministries; co-operation in 2017-20 between the Ho Chi Minh National Politics Academy and the Party School of the Communist Party of China; and a government soft loan supplementing the Ha Noi-Ha ong metropolis railway project.

The Presidents and their spouses visited an exhibit at the Great Hall of the People displaying photos of Viet Nam taken by Chinese photographers. Party General Secretary and President Xi hosted a banquet in honor of President Tran ai Quang, his spouse and the Vietnamese delegation.

Front cooperation

The Vietnamese Party and Government highly evaluate the ties formed between the Viet Nam Fatherland Front and the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), stated President Tran ai Quang.

He made the remark at a meeting with CPPCC Vice Chairman Wang Jiarui in Beijing on the same day.

President Quang stressed that people-to-people exchange is an important channel for Viet Nam and China to boost constructive co-operation and resolve outstanding issues satisfactorily.

Lauding Wang Jiaruis long-time support for the Viet Nam-China comprehensive strategic co-operative partnership, he expected the Chinese official to continue his contributions to increasing exchanges and mutual understanding between the two organisations and people.

Wang Jiarui affirmed that the Chinese Party, Government and people treasure the traditional friendship and partnership with Viet Nam and that he will spare no effort to foster amity between Vietnamese and Chinese people.  VNS
PHNOM PENH  Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc attended the 26th World Economic Forum on ASEAN (WEF ASEAN) in Phnom Penh on Thursday, emphasising the creation of a new driving force to maintain the blocs dynamic development and competitiveness.

In his speech at the opening plenary themed ASEAN: 50 Years Young, the PM highlighted achievements on development and regional integration over the past 50 years, saying that the blocs dynamic development has offered opportunities for businesses.

He said to maintain its dynamic development and competitiveness, ASEAN should not only depend on natural resources and a young labour force, but also on creativity and innovation for stronger growth.

Apart from reforming economic management and governance, ASEAN countries need to equip their citizens, especially young labourers, with necessary skills to master advanced technology to meet new job requirements.

The PM proposed setting up a working group to study and put forth policies on education, vocational training and startup promotion, and to encourage businesses to invest in startup initiatives of ASEAN youngsters.

As a dynamic member of ASEAN, he said, Viet Nam is working toward sustainable growth by taking advantage of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to raise labour productivity, competitiveness and jump to a higher place in the global value chain.

Viet Nam is working to build a constructive government, promote institutional reform, create a favourable environment for enterprises and people, especially the youth, and uphold the nations startup spirit and dynamism.

The May 11-12 event has drawn the participation of over 600 delegates, including senior leaders of ASEAN member countries as well as of Japan, the Republic of Korea, representatives from international organisations and regional and global groups.

Following the opening session, PM Phuc had bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the event.

Receiving WEF, AIIB, Cisco leaders

Prime Minister Phuc the same day received senior representatives of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Cisco of the US.

Welcoming WEF Managing Director Philipp Roesler, PM Phuc hailed the WEF choosing Viet Nam for the WEF ASEAN 2018 and proposed closely working for the event.

The PM and the WEF official agreed to increase coordination in the WEFs activities and promote cooperation agreements signed at the WEF Davos in January 2017.

At a reception for AIIB President Jin Liqun, the PM applauded the banks contributions to promoting regional economic connectivity via infrastructure development assistance. He said he wishes AIIB to boost collaboration with Viet Nam in studying and proposing co-operation projects for mutual benefit.

Receiving Global Director of Cisco Goh Seow Hiong, PM Phuc highlighted the US groups effective operation in Viet Nam, suggesting its continued investment in information technology infrastructure, smart city and vocational training.  VNS
HCM CITY  Viet Nam took the Chair of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF) in the 2017-18 tenure from the Republic of Fiji at a ceremony in HCM City on Thursday.

National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Saber Chowdhury, IPU General Secretary Martin Chungong, and representatives from parliaments of Asian-Pacific countries attended the event.

Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of Fiji Ruveni N. Nadalo highlighted the importance of the 25th APPF in his country, which approved resolutions on global issues relating to climate change, management of natural disaster risks, healthcare, education, and measures to ensure peace, border security, and food security.

He expressed the belief that the Vietnamese NA, with its experience, will successfully organise the 26th APPF, affirming that Fiji will support Viet Nam in the work.

Meanwhile, NA Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong said Viet Nam is proud of receiving the APPF chairmanship and hosting the 26th annual meeting of APPF in 2018, saying that the Vietnamese legislature highly values activities as well as agenda of the forum.

The forum contributed to promoting the friendship and co-operation between regional parliaments, strengthening the dialogue mechanism and exchanges among parliamentarians, and improving the role of parliaments in addressing regional issues, ensuring peace and sustainable development, she stressed.

She also affirmed Viet Nams commitment to focusing and making all-out efforts to successfully organise the 26th APPF.

Joining the APPF in 1995, the Vietnamese NA always presents its active role and responsibility in APPFs activities, especially in 2005  the year that Viet Nam hosted the 13th annual meeting of the forum.  VNS
TOKYO  Vietnamese women play an important role in socio-economic development, Deputy Secretary of the Ha Noi Party Committee Ngo Thi Thanh Hang said.

The official made the remarks at a forum of mayors on Thursday, which took place within the framework of the ongoing Global Summit of Women in Tokyo, Japan.

As the countrys political and administrative centre, Ha Noi has exerted great efforts to promote gender equality, resulting in the noted rate of female labourers at 60.9 per cent who engage in almost all sectors, she said.

Hang stressed that Viet Nam has been regarded as the pioneer in removing gender gap over the past two decades.

However, she said, gender discrimination in the economic sector still remains, leading to the gap of income between men and women.

Other challenges facing the country include high rate of untrained female labourers and insufficient attention to gender index in all aspects, the official added.

To promote womens social role, Ha Noi has encouraged them to participate in management and leadership posts and made its best to narrow gender gap in economic and employment fields, raise the quality of female labourers, ensure gender equality in healthcare access and improve State management in this regard.

At the forum, Tokyos Governor Yuriko Koike highlighted the role and contributions of women in the modern world, urging them to be active, dynamic and confident.

Sharing her own success story, Koike said the resolve and knowledge are the key to achieving objectives of her career.

The Global Summit of Women takes place from May 11-13, bringing together more than 1,300 delegates from 60 countries worldwide.  VNS
BEIJING  Viet Nam attaches great importance to economic, trade and investment ties with China, President Tran ai Quang stated at a seminar on Viet Nam-China economic and trade co-operation in Beijing.

The seminar on Friday attracted nearly 500 businesses from both countries.

The President, who is on a five-day visit to China, expressed hope that the two countries will make long-term co-operation plans to bring into full play each countrys strengths and integrate deeply into the global value chain.

He suggested that the two countries business communities drive their trade and investment ties, thus helping consolidate bilateral relations.

In terms of investment, the State leader said Viet Nam hopes to receive more investment from China, especially in hi-tech projects in infrastructure, mechanics, electronics and pharmaceuticals, as well as support industry and agriculture.

Viet Nam hopes Chinese enterprises and investors pay attention to environmental protection, labourers interests and social welfare in the country, he added.

Aiming for US$100 billion in bilateral trade turnover, Viet Nam wants more of its processed agricultural products, seafood, electronic and consumer products to gain access to the Chinese market. The country will also facilitate Chinas export of technological products, spare parts and consumer products.

Quang affirmed that Viet Nam is willing to create favourable conditions for Chinese enterprises to do business and invest in Viet Nam.

The President highlighted that in recent years, China has been the largest trade partner of Viet Nam, with two-way trade reaching nearly $72 billion in 2016.

Viet Nam is a gateway for China to other markets and the top trade partner of China in ASEAN, he noted, adding that China is also one of the 10 largest investors in Viet Nam with total investment of $11.2 billion.

Viet Nam has also become increasingly popular among Chinese tourists thanks to various air routes between the two countries, he said.

China has expanded the scale of preferential credit for Viet Nam in industry, energy and infrastructure, the President added.

As a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Viet Nam believes many infrastructure projects will be implemented in the country in the future.

Quang underscored Viet Nams efforts in speeding up comprehensive reforms and its industrialisation and modernisation, efforts which have borne fruit.

Following nearly 30 years of high and stable growth, Viet Nam has become an economy worth more than $220 billion, while running as an open economy with trade scale 1.6 times the GDP.

The countrys international integration is also progressing with a network of new generation free trade agreements that help expand its development.

Viet Nam aims to continue improving its investment environment and enhance national competitiveness, with the private and foreign-invested sectors important drivers of development, he stated.

The State President underscored that Viet Nam will use all resources while building a firm foundation for its value chain to become a modern industrial country, paving the way for green growth and sustainable development.

Opening the event, Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang lauded economic, trade and investment achievements and potential between the two countries.

He affirmed that China will continue encouraging its businesses to invest in Viet Nam and will support Vietnamese investors in China.

He also proposed the two sides strengthen connections for development, while deepening economic, trade and investment ties, and promote collaboration in increasing production capacity.

During the event, the two countries enterprises signed several co-operation agreements in milk distribution, rice plant construction and tourism.  VNS
BEIJING  Stronger co-operation in all spheres between Viet Nam and China is critical to each countrys development, bringing about economic benefits and reinforcing mutual trust and friendship between the two peoples, said President Tran ai Quang.

He made the remark during a meeting with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing yesterday, which was part of his State visit to China.

The President underlined that amidst complex global situation, the enhancement of the Viet Nam-China friendship and co-operation is an objective demand and in line with the two peoples fundamental and long-term interests. It will also benefit peace, stability and development in the region and the world.

He asked the Chinese Premier to continue paying attention to the implementation of some measures to expand and improve the effectiveness of bilateral co-operation.

In terms of trade, Quang said he hopes ministries, sectors and localities of China will soon finalise legal procedures to open the Chinese market for milk, dairy products, fruits, aquatic products and pork of Viet Nam. He urged the Chinese side to continue facilitating trading between the two countries major businesses in coal and agricultural products, especially rice and cassava.

Stronger trading of agricultural products will not only help boost the healthy and sustainable growth of bilateral trade but also practically benefit Vietnamese farmers, he noted.

The working group for infrastructure cooperation should further bring into play its role in order to promote major investment projects, especially in renewable and clean energy, that represent Chinas strength and development level and match Viet Nams demand and sustainable development strategy.

Quang urged that the two sides push their businesses to swiftly address existing problems in co-operation projects.

Regarding financial partnership, he called on China to provide Viet Nam with more preferential loans and facilitate Viet Nams access to concessional credit sources within the framework of ASEAN-China and Mekong-Lancang co-operation.

He said the two countries should step up collaboration in agriculture and environment with a focus on climate change response, sustainable use of water resources of the Mekong/Lancang River, and creation of rice varieties tolerant of drought and saltwater intrusion in Viet Nam. They should also strengthen ties in science-technology and in ensuring nuclear and radiation safety.

Quang highlighted the need to intensify win-win co-operation between Vietnamese and Chinese localities in economy, trade, tourism, border management and protection of legitimate interests of seasonal workers in border areas.

It is necessary to continue to open and upgrade pairs of border gates, apply customs facilitation measures, cooperate to fight crimes and keep security and order in border areas, and maintain a peaceful and stable environment for the two countries co-operation and development, he added.

On this occasion, the President conveyed an invitation to visit Viet Nam from Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc to Premier Li Keqiang.

For his part, Li reiterated that the Party, Government and people of China treasure the friendly neighbourliness and comprehensive co-operation with Viet Nam. China believes that the two countries stable development brings opportunities for each other, he said.

According to the premier, China pays attention to Viet Nams concerns and has stepped up measures to increase the import of Viet Nams agricultural products, improve trade balance, and create more favourable conditions for the provision of concessional credit packages. It has also actively worked in response to Viet Nams request relating to the sustainable use of cross-border water resources, he said.

He agreed with Quangs opinion on the need to enhance strategic discussions and direct the two countries sectors and localities to seriously comply with common perceptions reached by senior leaders of Viet Nam and China. Both sides should actively carry out measures to reinforce co-operation in all fields, thereby contributing to the Viet Nam-China comprehensive strategic co-operative partnership.

At the meeting, Li also accepted the invitation to visit Viet Nam.

Meeting Chinese officials

Also yesterday, Quang had separate meetings with Yu Zhengsheng, Chairman of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Conference, Liu Yunshan, member of the Politburo Standing Committee and Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committees Secretariat, Zhang Dejiang, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National Peoples Congress of Chinat Party of China Central Committees Secretariat.

The same day, Quang hosted a reception for a delegation from the Chinese Peoples Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), the China-Viet Nam Friendship Association (CVFA) and relatives of Chinese patriotic personalities, cadres and experts who had friendly relations with Viet Nam, led by CPAFFC President Li Xiaolin. During his state visit to China, Quang also received representatives of some Chinese groups, during which he affirmed that Viet Nam will continue creating favourable conditions for Chinese companies to do business in the country for mutual benefits.  VNS
A social housing project for low-income workers in ong Nai City.  Photo dangcongsan.vn

HCM CITY  ong Nai faces a severe shortage of workers housing since 60 per cent of the southern provinces one million workers hail from other provinces and cities.

Most workers and their families live in a shabby rented room because budget social housing is being built too slowly.

Nguyen Thanh Son is a worker who came from the central province of Nghe An to work at the Ho Nai Industrial Park in Trang Bom District 10 years ago.

He and his wife have three children. The couple earn VN10 million (US$400) a month and can only save VN1-2 million ($45-90) out of that.

His room measures a mere 15sq.m. His children often fall sick because of their poor condition.

We try hard to save for a house but we cannot because our income is just enough for our daily needs, Son told Viet Nam News Agency.

His is one of 12 rooms in Bui Chu Hamlet in Trang Boms Bac Son Commune, most of which are rented by workers from central and northern provinces.

Owning a house is a very distant dream for us. We used to hear a lot about social housing where workers like us can pay a little every month. But we hear no more.

A recent survey by the ong Nai Trade Union found only 8 per cent of workers have savings while 72 per cent live from hand to mouth.

Due to their low incomes, 62 per cent of workers have to work extra time, with most facing financial difficulties and lacking support from their families.

In recent times several companies that hire a lot of workers, like Phong Thai and Chinh Xac Viet Nam in Trang Bom District and Chinwell Fastener in Nhon Trach District, have built a combined 65,000sq.m of bachelor housing for 10,000 workers.

Companies building dormitories for their workers is very good but in the long term workers will marry and need their own houses, Tang Quoc Lap, deputy chairman of the ong Nai Trade Union, said.

The Trade Union has called on the provincial Peoples Committee to build apartments for workers at VN6 million ($266) per sq.m, VN2 million ($85) less than the price stipulated by the Ministry of Construction.

Workers could pay for the houses each month together with low interest, Lap said.

Besides, the Trade Union would ask relevant authorities to fix standards for space, hygiene and rents for rented accommodation, he added.

Nguyen Thanh Lam, deputy director of the provinces Department of Construction, said By 2020, ong Nai Province will complete 20,000 apartments for workers and low-income people and dormitories for students.

By 2020, housing demand in ong Nai would increase to over 80 million sq.m, Lam said.

The province said to provide housing, especially for workers, the Government should provide funding for several projects and have more policies to attract investment in social housing.

In the next three years, another 150,000 rooms are expected to be added around the province for workers and 7,500 apartments in Nhon Trach District.  VNS
HA NOI  Viet Nam Expressway Corporation (VEC) has proposed a plan to the Ministry of Transport to transfer Cau Gie-Ninh Binh Expressway toll-collection privileges at a cost of VN9.1 trillion (US$402.12 million) over a period of 30 years.

The move aims to secure funds to invest in other road projects amid difficulties to mobilise capital.

VEC set a goal of constructing 1,000km of highway by 2020. It invested in six highway projects with a total length of 583km. To reach the goal , VEC must mobilise more investment capital to build another 420km of highway.

As public debt rises, however, VEC admits it is a tough task.

A VEC leader said the Government and the Transport Ministry had a policy to transfer toll-collection rights at finished projects for those aiming to raise capital.

VEC deemed it an effective method to mobilise money from non-State sources and reduce the pressure of public debt increases.

Therefore, the method of transfer the right to exploit the expressway projects managed by VEC, was suitable and necessary, the official said. The Cau Gie - Ninh Binh Expressway project is the first part of that plan.

VEC proposed the Ministry of Transport and the Government assign it the task of negotiating and selecting a qualified strategic investor.

The selected investor will set up an enterprise responsible for operating and collecting tolls on the Cau Gie-Ninh Binh Expressway. The VEC will also use a part of the money gained from the transfer to contribute capital in the enterprise.

According to the VEC proposal, the VEC will contribute 29 per cent, while the selected strategic investor will provide 71 per cent of total project capital. The expected return on equity ratio is about 12-14 per cent.

VEC also plans to use the money received from the transfer to invest in two expressway projects to connect Ninh Binh Province to Nghi Son District in Thanh Hoa, which are part of projected North-South Expressway. The capital needed for these two projects is estimated to be at about VN6.1 trillion ($268.78 million).

Some foreign investors, including Frances VINCI company, are reportedly interested in gaining the right to collect tolls in Cau Gie - Ninh Binh Expressway.

The 50-km highway, which cost about VN8.9 trillion, came into operation in June, 2012. In the first quarter of this year, it served about 3.3 million vehicles will an average toll fee of VN1.500 per kilometre.  VNS
Ben Tre College, which offers 13 majors, was formed from the merger of the College of Teacher Training and two vocational high schools in Ben Tre Province.  Photo www.cdbt.edu.vn

Ben Tre College, which offers 13 majors, was formed from the merger of the College of Teacher Training and two vocational high schools in Ben Tre Province.  Photo www.cdbt.edu.vn

HCM CITY  Several colleges of teacher training in the Mekong Delta provinces have closed in the last several years because of a shortage of students.

The Ca Mau Provinces College of Teachers Training, for example, was dissolved by the provincial Peoples Committee late last year.

Tran Hong Quan, the committees deputy chairman, told Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper that maintaining the operation of the College of Education had been costly.

Moreover, its graduates have faced difficulties in finding jobs as the province has an abundant supply of teachers, he said.

The colleges staff has been appointed to work in the provinces Department of Education and Training and at Ca Mau Community College.

The College of Teacher Training in Ben Tre Province faces the same situation as the Ca Mau College of Education.

Ben Tre College, which now offers 13 majors, merged with the College of Teacher Training, the Economic-Technical High School and the Technical-Industrial High School in the province.

Le Thanh Cong, rector of Ben Tre College, said they hoped the colleges enrollment would increase after merger, but the number was still not high enough.

Nearly 1,500 students have applied to attend the college, a reduction of around 3,000 from previous years.

Nguyen Thanh Nguyen, head of the Tra Vinh Provinces Department of Education and Training, said the provincial College of Teachers Training merged with Tra Vinh University in 2007.

The College of Teacher Training in Soc Trang Province has faced difficulties in enrollment for several years.

Mai Thi Yen Lan, the colleges rector, said the college had stopped enrollment in the high school and primary school teacher training programme in 2012 because of an oversupply of teachers in the area.

This year, the college needs to enroll 300 students in the kindergarten education programme and 40 in the English language teaching programme, Lan said

However, the number of applicants remains insufficient.

Many parents in the province prefer their children to study at universities rather than colleges.

Salaries and allowances for teachers are too low, which has discouraged young people from entering the teaching field, she added.

To maintain operation, the college is working with universities in ong Thap, Can Tho, HCM City University of Education and the University of Sport.

The college has also received requests to offer training to improve qualifications of teachers employed by local schools, Lan said.

Cong of Ben Tre College said that, under the Ministry of Education and Trainings new regulation, all primary school teachers must have a university degree by 2020. The new rule has led to a decrease of applicants at colleges.

The country has 33 teacher training colleges and 24 general colleges offering teacher training, according to the Ministry of Education and Training.  VNS
HA NOI  The Prime Minister and ministries of Health and Agriculture and Rural Development are calling for intensive measures to curb the trafficking, trade and consumption of unknown poultry, especially birds smuggled from China, where avian influenza A (H7N9) continues to spread.

The Preventive Medicine Department under the health ministry announced Wednesday that the avian influenza A (H7N9) is spreading rapidly south and southeast China, including Yunnan and Guangxi provinces--which both share borders with Viet Nam.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) and Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) detected changes of H7N9 virus from low pathogenicity to high pathogenicity in poultry and humans.

WHO found H7N9 virus with high pathogenicity in two patients in Guangdong and Taiwan. FAO found high pathogenicity of H7N9 in 41 poultry samples.

With low pathogenicity, H7N9 virus may cause mild or no illness in poultry while with high pathogenicity, the virus can lead to high bird mortality and spread 100-1,000 times faster than low-pathogenicity virus.

So far, there has not been any evidence that the new strain of H7N9 causes more rapid human-to-human transfer. Therefore, WHO have not recommended changing the flu treatment scheme.

According to the Preventive Medicine Department, the health ministry has sped up instruction and training to health officers as well as inspections on disease prevention and control in provinces.

The department recommended people not consume ill/dead poultry or unknown origin. Neither should they kill, traffic or trade unknown-origin poultry.

When detecting ill/dead poultry, people should contact authorities. When having symptoms like fever, cough, chest pain or breathing difficulty after contacting with poultry, people must go to see doctor for immediate treatment.

Flu A (H7N9) was first detected in China in March, 2013 and has surged in five epidemic waves. The fifth wave onset began in October 2016, and it has been the greatest one, with 541 human infections with avian influenza A (H7N9) in 17 provinces of China.  VNS
National Assembly Chair Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (second, left) with Saber Chowdhury, IPU president (second, right), IPUs Secretary General Martin Chungong (first, left) and Kamal Malhotra, UN Resident Coordinator in Viet Nam introduce tools to assess implementation of sustainable development goals on Thursday in HCM City.  VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc

National Assembly Chair Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (second, left) with Saber Chowdhury, IPU president (second, right), IPUs Secretary General Martin Chungong (first, left) and Kamal Malhotra, UN Resident Coordinator in Viet Nam introduce tools to assess implementation of sustainable development goals on Thursday in HCM City.  VNA/VNS Photo Trong uc

HCM CITY  International legislators confirmed their commitment to respond to climate change to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) during a meeting at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) conference that opened on Thursday in HCM City.

Representatives from parliaments of around 20 IPU-member nations and international organisations are attending the regional seminar on sustainable development goals for parliaments around the Asia-Pacific region.

The commitments, reflected in the Paris Climate Change Agreement, will be specified by nationally determined contributions from each country.

Organised by the Vietnamese National Assembly and the IPU, the three-day event will discuss topics related to the conference theme Responding to Climate Change - Actions of Legislators to Achieve SDGs.

The conference aims to identify which practical steps parliaments can take to support the implementation of SDGs in their respective countries and in the region as a whole.

Special emphasis is placed on sharing experience and increasing understanding about how parliaments in the Asia-Pacific region can institutionalise global goals, promote convergence, and build coherence at the policy level.

Speaking at the opening session, Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, chairwoman of the National Assembly, called on stronger cooperation and responsibility among parliaments to take immediate action to save the planet in the context of climate change.

Ngan said the seminar was a step towards applying agreements reached at the 132nd Assembly of the IPU held in Ha Noi in 2015 and turning commitments made by legislators into action, contributing to realising the SDGs.

Being aware of the importance of climate-change response in achieving SDGs, the NA of Viet Nam has agreed with the IPU on topics to be discussed during the seminar, Ngan said.

The topics include promoting gender equality and health in the context of climate change, challenges and opportunities and response actions of countries, international commitments and requirements for national legislators, and mobilising resources for SDG implementation in the region, according to Ngan.

The conference reflects Viet Nams commitment to the IPU, especially with the Vietnamese NA having been elected as a member of the IPU Executive Committee for the 2016-2019 term.

It is expected to help raise the position of the Vietnamese parliament in the region and world while improving awareness of agencies, localities and public about climate change and its impacts.

Viet Nam is one of the countries most at risk from climate change, with the Mekong Delta one of three deltas worldwide vulnerable to rising sea levels, Ngan said.

According to climate-change scenarios, by the end of the 21st century, about 40 per cent of the Mekong Delta, 11 per cent of the Red River Delta, and 3 per cent of other coastal provinces would be under seawater, she said.

HCM City, the southern economic hub, is forecast to lose more than 20 per cent of its area to the sea, she said.

About 10-12 per cent of the countrys population will suffer direct impact from climate change and about 10 per cent of national GDP will be lost, she added.

Saber Chowdhury, IPU president, emphasised the importance of determining SDGs and carrying them out effectively, especially within the Asia Pacific region.

He said in the last 45 years, 88 per cent of people affected by disasters were in the Asia Pacific region, equal to two million life losses and one trillion US dollars.

The main goals of the seminar include exchanging what has been practiced, embracing mutual understanding, and seeing how we can move forward, he said.

Nguyen Thuy Anh, chairwoman of the NAs Social Affairs Committee, said it was vital to ensure strong understanding and consensus among NA members regarding the intersection between climate change, gender inequality and health.

Challenges

While the percentage of people living in extremely poor conditions has significantly dropped within the past 30 years, the Asia-Pacific region still accounts for more than 15 per cent (out of 1.5 billion people) of its population living in extreme poverty conditions, according to the UN in Viet Nam.

Similarly in Viet Nam, rapid economic growth has significantly improved living standards and reduced extreme poverty in the entire Asia-Pacific region, but has also been accompanied by rising inequalities, it said.

Large gender disparities exist for women in accessing primary and secondary education, while South Asia has the highest rate of under-5 mortality globally.

In addition, climate change poses a huge threat to the region, given its impact on economic development, employment, food security, and livelihoods, the UN said.

By 2035, South Asia will have emitted more than 20 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), which equals almost 50 per cent of the worlds share.

The scale and speed of urbanisation in Asia-Pacific is unprecedented, adding more than a billion people to its cities, more than any other region in the world combined.

While such dynamic and fast growth is accompanied with the creation of jobs and the increasing efficiency of economies and productivity, it will also create many challenges in ensuring that the benefits of urbanisation are equally shared by all, and the process is following a sustainable and green path, according to the UN in Viet Nam.

Sustainable development goals

In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted a set of SDGs, which would inform development agendas and policies over the next 15 years.

Realising that SDGs would pave the way for sustainable societies in which no one is left behind, the IPU member parliaments committed to doing what was necessary to carry forward this vision of transformation.

Parliaments have pledged to translate the SDGs into enforceable domestic law, hold government accountable, and align budgets with national sustainable development plans.

Within the Asia-Pacific context, one of the worlds most disaster-prone regions, climate change represents one of the largest threats to sustainable development.

Its widespread and intense impact especially affects the poorest and the most vulnerable, especially women.

It is crucial to promptly address these interlinked challenges in order to pave the way for sustainable development of the region.

Parliaments have a leading role to play in this respect. Through their legislative, oversight, budgetary and representative functions, they can initiate and guarantee the implementation of national and regional sustainable development plans.

The mobilisation of resources by parliaments domestically as well as with development partners can advance the success of national and regional SDG strategies.

Climate change has already affected Viet Nam as it hinders the countrys efforts to reduce poverty, reach millennium development goals (MDGs), and achieve sustainable development.

Against this backdrop, Vietnamese agencies and localities have taken initiatives to tackle climate change.

The country has joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.

Viet Nam, together with 175 countries, signed the Paris Agreement in New York on April 22, 2016 and approved the document at the end of October.

In addition, Viet Nam has carried out various activities, including an action plan to realise the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Today, the delegates will travel to Can Gio District to visit the Dan Xay resettlement area, which is affected by rising sea levels, and then visit the mangrove forest in the district.

Receiving IPU President, Secretary General

On the same day, National Assembly Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan held during separate receptions to IPU President Saber Chowdhury and Secretary General Martin Chungong.

The host emphasised that the Vietnamese NA has set joining IPUs activities as the top important task in its multilateral parliamentary diplomatic activities that enable it to improve its operation towards protecting the countrys interests and reflecting stances on issues of global concern.

Viet Nam wishes to receive further support from the international community in the fulfillment of sustainable development goals (SDGs), she said.

Chowdhury underscored the role of the IPU member states, including the Vietnamese NA in continuing to realise the Ha Noi Declaration entitled The Sustainable Development Goals: Turning Words into Action.

Meanwhile, Chungong wished that each member IPU state, including Viet Nam will concretise each action.

On the same day, NA Chairwoman Ngan also met with the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines Panteleon D. Alvarez and President of the Parliament of Timor-Leste Aderito Hugo Da Costa.  VNS
HA TINH  Local farmers in the central province of Ha Tinh are facing a disastrous rice crop season with nearly 5,300 ha of crop attacked over the past two weeks by Pyricularia oryzae Cav  a bacteria that causes rice blast disease.

Data from the provincial Crop Production and Plant Protection Department showed that the disease mainly attacked rice of the Khang Dan 18, Xi, P6, Thien Uu and VTNA2 types.

uc Tho District is believed to suffer the most from the disease with 1,968ha of affected crop, the department said. Of which, about 300ha of crop were completely damaged in the communes of uc Lac, uc Hoa, uc ong, Lien Minh and Truong Son, the Nong thon ngay nay (Countryside Today) newspaper reported.

Tran Thi Son, a local farmer in uc Tho Districts uc Long Commune, said her familys income mainly depended on its 2,880sq.m rice field. Now, about 2,100 sq.m of rice were damaged. I dont know what to do now, she said.

Duong Thi Bay, of Thach Ha Districts Ky Son Commune, said over 6,120sq.m in her rice field contracted the disease this season. There was no symptom of the disease until the rice flowered, she added. We will lose about five tonnes of rice this season, she said.

Duong Van Thu of Thach ai Commune said that apart from losing the crop, he also had to hire a harvester to deal with the affected rice. The price was VN140,000 ($6) per 360sq.m, and the affected rice area was about 4,320sq.m, he said. One loss leads to another loss," he bemoaned.

To deal with the affected rice areas, many local farmers have to harvest the damaged rice early in the hopes that some rice will remain disease free and they will also get straw to feed their cows and buffalos.

Nguyen Thi Van, of Can Loc Districts My Loc Commune said her rice field was about 2,800sq.m. The entire field had already contracted the disease. She now had to harvest the rice soon and take the straw to her cows.

Le Thi Thi, of Thach Ha Districts Thach Ha Town, said Seeing my own field hit by the disease, I am desperately worried. Thi tried to harvest the rice early, but she only extracted 100 kilos of rice from her 1,000sq.m of field.

Causes and solutions

Tran Xuan inh, deputy head of the Plant Cultivation Department under the Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Development, said prolonged warm weather this year was blamed for the disease.

Nguyen Tong Phong, deputy head of the provincial Crop Production and Plant Protection Department, said this years weather with less sunny and more rainy days was the cause. Between April 22 and April 25  the time that the rice flowered in every field, prolonged rainy weather occurred, creating favourable conditions for the disease to develop.

Nguyen Tri Ha, head of the provincial Crop Production and Plant Protection Department, said farmers neglecting to spray pesticide in order to prevent the disease were also to blame.

The vice chairman of the Peoples Committee of uc Tho District, ang Giang Trung, told Nhan dan (People) online that the district planted rice on more than 6,500ha of agricultural land, including 1,900ha growing Thien Uu rice. The affected area was mainly in fields growing Thien Uu rice, he added.

Some people alleged that the problem stems from the quality of the varieties.

Trung said he asked the State managerial agencies to quickly co-operate with the locality find out the causes of the disease.

In response, the head of the ministrys Plant Cultivation Department, Nguyen Hong Son, led a team on Wednesday to Ha Tinh to inspect the situation and seek immediate solutions.  VNS
Vice President ang Thi Ngoc Thinh delivers speech at the opening session of the Global Summit of Women 2017 in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday. VNA/VNS Photo Quang Hai

TOKYO  Viet Nams efforts and achievements in promoting the role and status of women in economic development was highlighted by Vietnamese Vice President ang Thi Ngoc Thinh at the opening session of the Global Summit of Women 2017 in Tokyo, Japan on Thursday.

In her speech at the event, the Vice President emphasised the significance of the summit, saying that it has become a venue where the potential of women can be realised, new connections established and exchanges furthered to strengthen the role of women in the economy of each country and the world at large.

She applauded the theme of the summit, Beyond Womenomics: Accelerating Access, stressing that the application of womenomics in Japan and other countries will not only ensure women receive equal access to employment opportunities but also create lead to other economic benefits.

It is necessary to develop a comprehensive legal and institutional framework on gender equality to form the legal basis and apparatus to implement female empowerment measures, she noted.

Government agencies, localities and businesses can develop strategies and policies on gender equality, such as the promotion of female participation in the economy and ensuring equal opportunities for women in education, employment and job promotion across both public and private sectors, she said.

It is up to women themselves to take actions to keep up with the increasingly demanding requirements of the economy, she added.

On the same day, the Vietnamese delegation was active in the summits activities.

Former Vice President Truong My Hoa was a key speaker at a press conference, while Secretary of the Vinh Phuc provincial Party Committee Hoang Thi Thuy Lan and Vice Secretary of the Ha Noi municipal Party Committee Ngo Thi Thanh Hang attended a forum of mayors. Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Ho Thi Kim Thoa participated in a ministerial-level seminar on public partnership relating to increasing economic opportunities for women working in enterprises.

The GWS, scheduled for May 11-15, will encompass discussions on speeding up womens ascent to business leadership, scaling up the growth of women-owned enterprises, opening up the global market to women in business, moving more women into technology industries and fostering support policies for women.

As many as 1,300 female delegates from over 60 countries are attending the event.

Business forum

Japanese firms are welcomed to invest in Viet Nam, particularly in the support industry, manufacturing, energy saving industry and hi-tech agriculture, Vice President ang Thi Ngoc Thinh said at a Viet Nam-Japan business meeting in Tokyo the same day.

Addressing an audience of about 300 Vietnamese and Japanese firms at the meeting, the Vice President, who is on a week-long visit to Japan, said that Viet Nam-Japan ties were growing strongly in all fields.

She highlighted Viet Nams policy of treasuring relations with Japan and considering the country an important partner.

Thinh said that the forum is an opportunity for businesses to meet and seek partnerships, while being updated on policies related to business and investment in the two countries.

Viet Nam will create optimal conditions for Japanese enterprises in Viet Nam, contributing to strengthening bilateral relations, she stated.

In his welcome speech, President of the Japan Chamber of Commerce (JCC+) and Industry Akio Mimura said that the Viet Nam-Japan relationship is thriving.

More than 1,600 Japanese enterprises operate in Viet Nam, he noted, adding that 740,000 Japanese tourists visited Viet Nam in 2016.

According to Mimura, the JCCI has sent many delegations to Viet Nam for fact-finding tours. He noted that Vietnamese officials demonstrated the Governments encouragement for Japanese businesses and hopes for a stronger Viet Nam-Japan economic partnership.

Thai Huong, CEO of TH Group, said her group sees big opportunities in Japan, as Japans demand for safe farm produce is rising and Japanese customers like tropical agriculture products.

However, she said that Japans strict regulations on food safety pose a challenge for Vietnamese firm

Meeting the Emperor

Vice President Thinh on the same day paid a courtesy visit to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko and met with Crown Prince Naruhito.

Meeting Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, Thinh described the first State visit by the royal couple to Viet Nam in February an important milestone and a symbol of the friendship and co-operation between the two countries.

The successful visit helped further bolster the Viet Nam-Japan extensive strategic partnership across fields, especially in culture and people-to-people exchange, and tourism links, she stressed.

Expressing his joy to meet Vice President Thinh again, Emperor Akihito affirmed his support for the bilateral ties and pledged to make more contributions to it. He hoped the ties will reach new heights in the future.

At the meeting with Crown Prince Naruhito, Vice President Thinh said she hopes the Japanese Royal Family and the crown prince in particular will continue supporting the strengthening and deepening of the friendship and co-operation between the nations.  VNS
HA NOI  The Ministry of Health has launched the second phase of a project on encouraging Vietnamese people to use locally manufactured drugs at a conference today in Ha Noi.

The project, titled Vietnamese people using locally produced drugs, is aimed at strengthening health workers and peoples awareness of Viet Nam-made drugs and increasing the use of locally made drugs at hospitals and in the community.

It also aims to boost the pharmaceutical industry in its efforts to meet the demand for drugs for disease prevention and treatment in Viet Nam and for export to neighbouring countries and the world.

Speaking at the event, Deputy Health Minister Truong Quoc Cuong said locally manufactured drugs met 50 per cent of the countrys medicine demand for disease prevention and treatment.

However, Cuong said the average usage rate of locally manufactured drugs was still low at central-level medical facilities such as Bach Mai, Viet uc or the cancer hospitals.

Just a half of the 36 hospitals at the central level met the project targets. Only the Quy Nhon Malariology, Parasitology and Entomology Institute met 100 per cent of the projects targets, while the Thai Nguyen General Hospital only met 17.61 per cent of the targets, Cuong said.

The health ministry has launched the projects second phase with a goal to increase the use of locally produced drugs to 30 per cent at central level hospitals, 50 per cent at provincial level hospitals and 75 per cent at district hospitals and medical facilities by 2020, Cuong added.

To achieve the goal, the health ministry has asked provincial health departments to develop policies with priority given to locally made drugs at hospitals and medical facilities. The Viet Nam Pharmaceutical Association and drug firms have been suggested to take measures for improving medicine quality and reducing the price of Viet Nam-made drugs.

Priority is also given to promoting advertisement and communication programmes to strengthen doctors and peoples awareness on the use of locally made drugs.

The health sectors statistics showed that following three years of implementation of the first phase of the project, there is a remarkable change in the awareness among doctors and people, who now have more faith in locally made drugs. The use of Viet Nam-made drugs has increased at provincial and district hospitals nationwide.

The health ministry said the use of locally made drugs has increased from 33.9 per cent to 35.4 per cent at provincial hospitals, while the rate has increased from 61.5 per cent to 69.4 per cent at hospitals at the district level.

The usage rate of locally made drugs has also increased to 80 per cent of total drug use at the district level and above 60 per cent at the provincial level in some provinces such as Ninh Thuan, Phu Yen, Lai Chau, Lam ong and Long An.

According to the Drug Administration of Viet Nam, the country currently has 163 drug manufacturing factories that meet WHO-GMP standards and several factories have even met EU and Japan standards. Local drug companies have produced 10 of 12 vaccines used under the Expanded Programme on Immunisation.  VNS
PARIS  French president-elect Emmanuel Macrons party on Thursday unveiled more than 400 candidates who will stand in parliamentary elections in June, with half of them newcomers to politics and half of them women.

Pro-Europe centrist Macron, 39, was elected on Sunday after promising a "revolution" that would bring fresh faces into Frances stale political landscape and end the pattern of power alternating between traditional parties.

His newly renamed grassroots movement, La Republique en Marche (Republic on the Move), founded only 13 months ago, revealed 428 out of 577 candidates who will stand in parliamentary elections in June.

"We aim to build a majority for change and to win an absolute majority in parliament for La Republique en Marche (LREM) in the National Assembly," party secretary general Richard Ferrand told a news conference.

Macron had promised that half would be newcomers, meaning a diverse range of figures from business, public service, activist groups and academia will get a chance to seek their first ever elected office.

"The promise of renewal is fulfilled," Ferrand added at the news conference, adding that the average age of the candidates was 46 compared with 60 in the current national assembly.

On the tricky decision of whether to accept former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls, Ferrand said the party had not selected him, but would not field a rival against him in his constituency south of Paris.

Valls, a friend-turned-foe of Macrons from their time in government from 2014-2016, had asked to be selected on Tuesday.

Other successful bids came from a woman fighter pilot who will run in eastern France and a man born in Rwanda who was adopted in France at the age of four and will contest a seat in Brittany.

The nomination process is a balancing act for Macron and represents major risks for his presidency, which will begin formally on Sunday when he takes over from Socialist Francois Hollande.

Without his own parliamentary majority, he will find it hard to push through his planned reforms of the labour market, pensions, unemployment benefits or education.

Many of his newcomers will also face seasoned politicians with long careers and local networks of activists and supporters.

And there is also the risk of scandal if anyone with a chequered history slips through the vetting process of the more than 19,000 applications sent online since January.

Ferrand said each candidate had been interviewed and had declared not to have a criminal record or to have been disqualified for any function in the past.

"Our movement has done everything possible to make sure that the candidates chosen respect our values," Ferrand added.

Appeal to the right?

The president-elect is a left-leaning liberal - a one-time Socialist party member - and was a senior advisor to Hollande and an economy minister during his unpopular term.

Among the 214 politicians selected as candidates include a number of familiar faces from the Socialist Party and from the centrist MoDem party, headed by Macron ally Francois Bayrou.

There are none from the rightwing Republicans party, according to Republicans secretary general Bernard Accoyer, but Ferrand left the door ajar for some of them to join in the next week.

There remain another 149 constituencies - 148 excluding Valls area - that remain open.

Macron, a former investment banker who has never held elected office, faces other tricky decisions this week.

The biggest among them is his choice for prime minister, who will head the government until at least the parliamentary elections on June 11 and 18 and perhaps beyond.

The choice will send a strong signal about Macrons intentions, and he has promised to pick someone with past experience of parliament and capable of managing a majority. His declared preference is for a woman.

Amid feverish speculation in the French media - will he pick a loyal supporter or someone from the rightwing Republicans? - nothing has leaked from his small group of aides.

Mushrooming movements

The political consequences of Macrons victory are still being felt, with the Socialists fighting for relevance and the Republicans eager to become the main political force in parliament after the June elections.

Seeking to emulate Macrons route to power outside the traditional parties, defeated Socialist presidential candidate Benoit Hamon has announced his own movement, as has a separate group of Socialists including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
ABIDJAN  Some 8,400 Ivory Coast soldiers who mutinied in January apologised to President Alassane Ouattara in an orchestrated ceremony that was aired on national television late Thursday.

Organised without the knowledge of the press, the event - broadcast after it took place at the presidential palace - signalled a dramatic end to the protest movement.

As well as apologising the rebels said they were giving up all their financial demands.

Ouattara said of the rebels that he "believed their words were sincere" and they would now be "exemplary soldiers".

A spokesman for the rebels, named as Sergeant Fofana said: "We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands."

He then, in a sign of allegiance, saluted the president, the images showed.

At the start of January, former rebels integrated into army ranks staged a mutiny that paralysed activity in several towns of the west African country while they pressed for bonuses.

In meeting the demands of the ex-rebels, who controlled the northern half of Africas biggest cocoa producer between 2002 and 2011, the authorities provoked a fresh mutiny by other troops and paramilitary gendarmes.

Clashes claimed four lives in the political capital Yamoussoukro.

The mutineers, who demanded 12 million CFA francs (US$19,800) in payments for each soldier, obtained 5 million francs in January and are to receive the rest of the sum this month, the rebels said.

Ouattara said Thursday the country was going through a "very, very difficult time" after a fall in the price of cocoa led to "a net loss of 150 billion francs CFA ($248.6 million)" to the state budget.

The mutiny had "scared Ivorians, as well as those who want to invest in and visit the country," he said.

He also announced that the government had given up plans to build new schools, a health centre and cultural centres across the country, as well as the delay to 2018 of a key election promise - bringing electricity to every village with more than 500 inhabitants.

Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel as well as purchases of materiel worth 1.2 billion euros.
RIO DE JANEIRO  Brazils government on Thursday declared an end to a national emergency over the Zika virus which was detected in the Latin American country late in 2015 before becoming a global concern.

Brazil has informed the World Health Organisation, citing "the decrease in cases of Zika and microcephaly throughout the country," the health ministry said in a statement.

The health ministry said that from January to April this year there had been 7,911 Zika cases, 95.3 percent down on the same period in 2016 when there were 170,535 cases.

In November last year the WHO had lifted its own international health emergency status for Zika, which can cause babies to be born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads.

Brazilian health ministry official Adeilson Cavalcante said "the end of the emergency does not signify the end of being vigilant and providing assistance."

Measures to reduce the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry the Zika virus, as well as dengue and chikungunya, will remain in place.

The Zika scare was at its peak before Rio de Janeiro held the 2016 Olympics, with countries around the world reporting an increase in infections.
WATERLOO  Tom Wagner takes photography seriously.

Distinct, sharp and interesting images have been his personal and professional passion for more than 40 years. Often, he blends photography with other interests, from teaching science to rockhunting.

For 44 years, he has staked out the Katoski Greenbelt, where he photographs the explosion of bluebells.

My high school chemistry teacher  my mentor and my hero  first brought me out here as part of our class, Wagner explained, referring to Richard Golz. He taught Wagner at West High and later moved on to East.

From then on, I came out here every year at this time, except one year I was working in Indianapolis, Wagner added.

As spring flowers start to emerge, this particular area is awash in bluebells, along with sweet William phlox, Virginia waterleaf, spring beauties, trout lilies and Wagners favorite, hepatica.

The 1,100-acre Katoski Greenbelt is named for former parks director Leonard Katoski. It includes several miles of trails and prairie, Greenbelt Lake and an 8-mile stretch of Black Hawk Creek.

Visitors can access the greenbelt at several points, including 1006 Martin Road, west of Highway 63. Wagners favorite spot is between the 3100 and 3300 blocks of Ranchero Road.

There used to never be anybody out here, Wagner noted.

In the years since Wagners introduction to the greenbelt, hes seen the number of visitors grow. However, hed like for more people to take advantage of the area. The beauty must be seen, he explained, with care and attention paid to preserving flowers and other wildlife for all to enjoy.

Despite dips or spikes in temperatures, flooding or lack of precipitation, the bluebells return each spring, Wagner noted.

Regardless of chilly winds, excessive rain or extreme heat, the bluebells appear and provide unique photographic opportunities.

Every year, when I think its not going to be a good one for the bells, theyre as good as theyve ever been, he noted.

Wagner has noticed that when bluebells are under water, they trap air.

He has been able to capture this in his photos.

Air is visible as the white (in the images), he explains. There is no white pigment; thats air. I didnt manipulate these images. Its just how the bells were  in the water.

Immersing himself in what the greenbelt presents, Wagner patiently searches for flowers, bugs and other phenomena to photograph. He has a few rules: use a macro lens, with the aperture open to F16 or F22, allowing for larger depth of field and sharpest focus; wait until there is no wind; carry a supply of tape, wooden dowels, bed sheets, poster board and other household items to create wind blocks, diffuse light and troubleshoot.

Wagners grandmother gave him a photo developing kit when he was 12, sparking his interest. He experimented with his moms box camera, trying to take photos of the night sky from a perch on the roof.

Those images didnt turn out, but he continued to experiment and learn.

In 1969, Wagner got his first good camera. That solidified his love of photography, which informed his work as a science teacher and a host of hobbies.He majored in biology at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and minored in earth science. He also earned a photography degree from Hawkeye Community College.

He went on to become an industrial photographer for the former Chamberlain Manufacturing. When the company closed, he became a high school science teacher. In this capacity, Wagner took students on field trips to the Katoski Greenbelt and other spots.

Hes not a photography snob; hell try anything that works. He relies on tested techniques while incorporating newer technologies, like PhotoShop and his current Pentax digital SLR camera. He shares his work and ideas online, from posting photos on Twitter to providing instruction and tips in videos. In addition, his work has been published by international magazines and journals.

Wagner also improvises, attempting whatever might work. When in doubt, he just tries stuff.

For example, he wondered what hed get by shaking his camera while shooting an isolated star. He did so, focusing on Sirius, the dog star. This resulted in 57 different images depicting rainbow streaks shot over the span of 2 seconds.

You can tell, if you look at the stars, that they change color if you shift your focus a bit, he explained. I had this idea about that, so I wiggled my binoculars while looking at them. Then I did the same with my camera.

The notion paid off, and some of the images were featured on SpaceWeather.com.

He also employs a tinkerers ingenuity, playing with ideas and materials to capture different perspectives on common images.

Sometimes, this means building complex apparatus. He created a platform for photographing flowers from beneath with the sky as a backdrop. A dismantled overhead projector was his base material.

Another homemade contraption assists him in shooting ice crystals through glass in a way that captures light to create a colorful, painted effect.

Then theres his trusty ray gun, essentially a Rube Goldberg machine he built to photograph bugs.

Wagner made it from scraps of whatever he could find: discarded aluminum signs, car antenna that I picked up off the street, plastic sheet, surplus solenoids and a lot of components from my place to visit  Radio Shack. The design was mine.
WATERLOO -- Saviour Missionary Baptist Church will offer a Church Women's annual prayer retreat June 2 and 3 at the American Martyrs Retreat House, 2209 N. Union Road, Cedar Falls.

Theme is Understanding the Purpose and Power of Prayer."

This year's speaker is minister Joan Coleman-Bass of Houston. She is the founder and CEO of Christian Women Gathering Others Ministry and currently the director of the Empowerment Through Prayer Ministry at the Community of Faith Church in Houston.

The $72 overnight cost includes meals.

WATERLOO -- The Mount Carmel Male Chorus will host the annual concert at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Several men's choirs from across the Cedar Valley and as far away as Rock Island, Ill., will be participating.

The public is invited, and there is no charge to attend. For more information, call the church at 233-9482.

WATERLOO -- The Children Ministry of Southern Baptist Church will kick off their annual Family Weekend at 5:30 p.m. May 19. The celebration will continue through May 21.

There will be information on accounts, loans, building and rebuilding credit, all types of insurance and funeral preparation. Mayor Quentin Hart will speak at 6 p.m. May 19.

There will be a prayer walk at 9 a.m. May 20, with everyone meeting at the church at 8:30 a.m. The Children ministry will be in concert at 6 p.m., with the theme "Attitude of Praise."

May 19-20 night sessions will be followed with a fellowship meal at the church.

CEDAR FALLS -- Nondenominational Bible talks will take place each Sunday in May at the Cedar Falls Municipal Band Hall, 211 Washington St.

The talks are planned for 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., and everyone is welcome.

For more information, call L. Lee or M. Chardeen, (402) 594-3909.

WATERLOO -- The Music Ministry of Antioch Baptist Church, 426 Sumner St., will host a weekend of worship and praise to celebrate the Gospel Choir's Annual Day at 4:30 p.m. May 21 and 22.

Theme is "More than a Conquerer."

There will be a gospel concert May 21 featuring area vocalists, groups and gospel recording artist Justin Cruickshank of Cedar Rapids. The special guest May 22 will be Toril Sudduth and the congregation of the Shilliam Avenue Church of God in Christ.

Contact the church office at 233-2587 or Minister Reatha Phillips at 433-5406.
WATERLOO  One person was injured in an overnight shooting in Waterloo.

Police said Moriono Deshon Keys, 36, was shot in the leg, and the injuries dont appear to be life threatening.

Residents in the area of Frances Drive and Park View Boulevard called police around 10:05 p.m. Thursday after hearing several gunshots, and 20 minutes later Keys arrived at Covenant Medical Center with a gunshot wound.

Police found numerous spent shell casings between cars parked along Frances Drive.

No arrests have been made.

This is the second time police have responded to gunfire in the Frances Drive area in recent weeks. On April 22, one person was shot in the buttocks and taken to the hospital by private vehicle.
WATERLOO  A Waterloo man who was shot in the leg Thursday night likely wasnt the target of the shooting, according to police.

Moriono Deshon Keys, 36, showed up at the Covenant Medical Center emergency room with a gunshot wound to his lower calf around 10:30 p.m. Thursday, about 20 minutes after neighbors reported hearing gunfire in the Frances Drive and Hale Street.

At this point we dont believe he was the intended target, said Capt. David Mohlis with the Waterloo Police Department.

He said Keys was outside when the gunman apparently began shooting at a nearby apartment building. It wasnt clear if any damage was found, but patrol officers found numerous spent shell casings between cars parked along Frances Drive.

No arrests have been made.

This is the second time police have responded to gunfire in the Frances Drive area in recent weeks. On April 22, one person was shot in the buttocks and taken to the hospital by private vehicle.
DES MOINES  Medical cannabis can be grown and sold in Iowa and can be used to treat more ailments under a program expansion signed into law Friday by Gov. Terry Branstad.

The new law overhauls Iowas 3-year-old medical cannabis program, which critics contended was too restrictive because it provided no legal path for Iowans to acquire the medicinal byproduct of the marijuana plant and covered treatment only for epileptic seizures.

A key advocate for medical cannabis expansion called the new program a step in the right direction while still falling short of reaching more ailing Iowans.

Im thrilled, really. Im thrilled, said Sally Gaer of West Des Moines, who co-founded a medical cannabis advocacy group and has a daughter with a rare form of epilepsy. Were hugely ahead of where we were in 2014 (with the original program). Now, we can have growth and production and testing and distribution in the state. So this is huge.

Its a huge step. Its not everything we wanted, but 2014 wasnt everything we wanted, either. Its a huge step.

Among the key provisions in Iowas new medical cannabis program:

 Allows for the establishment of up to two state-licensed medical cannabis manufacturers in Iowa.

 Allows individuals to obtain medical cannabis from neighboring states with similar programs.

 Adds ailments that can be treated with medical cannabis, including cancer, multiple sclerosis, AIDS or HIV, Crohns disease, Parkinsons disease and more.

 Establishes a medical cannabidiol board that can make recommendations to state lawmakers regarding further expansion or changes to the program.

I recognize medical research continues to investigate the efficacy of medical cannabidiol, Branstad said in a statement issued Friday. "We sympathize with the families that have a loved one that might benefit from treatments that include the use of this product, and for those reasons, I have signed (the legislation) into law."

Advocates have expressed concern that the programs restriction on product potency will limit the number of Iowans who could be helped.

The new law says medical cannabis must contain no more than 3 percent THC, which is the psychoactive element in marijuana that produces the high. Experts say products with 3 percent THC cannot produce a high.

However, Gaer said 3 percent THC likely is too low to help people with pain related to some ailments.

I think the THC cap is very prohibitive, Gaer said. People with cancer and chronic pain, anti-inflammatory (needs), colitis, Crohns, those people all need more than 3 percent THC. So thats one of the major problems with the bill right there.

That restriction could limit the number of Iowans who attempt to register for the program, which could limit sales potential and thus interest in becoming a manufacturer.

Gaer said she is hopeful the creation of the advisory board will help ease the THC restriction and add conditions that could be treated.

Hopefully, moving forward, we can get a program that can help more Iowans, she said.
DES MOINES  This Fourth of July in Iowa promises to feature significantly more patriotic booms, pops and cracks as a new state law that legalizes home displays of consumer-grade fireworks takes effect.

Across the state, Iowans are preparing for a more festive Fourth  and not just folks who will be shooting off bottle rockets and lighting Roman candles and firecrackers in their backyards.

Iowas new version of Independence Day also has created new opportunities and responsibilities for businesses, public safety and emergency response personnel and local government officials.

Gov. Terry Branstad last week signed into law the legalization of consumer-grade fireworks. Before the new law, Iowa was one of only seven states with similarly or more restrictive fireworks laws, according to the American Pyrotechnics Association.

Opportunities

Flashing Thunder Fireworks has been operating in northern Iowa for more than three decades.

But this will be a milestone year for the Mitchell-based company when, for the first time, it will be able to sell its consumer-grade fireworks directly to Iowans.

Flashing Thunder performs roughly 200 professional fireworks shows for cities and organizations across the Midwest, according to Katie Mostek, who owns the company with her husband, Jeremy.

Flashing Thunder also sells consumer-grade fireworks to individuals and companies in other states and even has its own line of consumer fireworks.

Now the company can sell those consumer fireworks in its own backyard.

It is a big deal, Katie Mostek said. Every state around us, practically, has consumer fireworks sales open, so everybody (in Iowa) was buying them anyway. They were just bringing it back from other states, and those businesses and those states got the tax money. ...

Now the money can stay inside the state. Thats a big deal.

Mostek said in addition to the companys normal brick-and-mortar stores  the home base in Mitchell includes a showroom  Flashing Thunder plans to add more locations, including temporary units under tents.

Flashing Thunder and other fireworks retailers find themselves scrambling a bit; the new law was signed by the governor Tuesday, and companies can begin selling fireworks on June 1, just 23 days later.

Its going to be a little hectic, Mostek said, noting the state fire marshal as of Friday had not yet completed the application for businesses to receive a sales permit. Its a quick turnaround.

Bellino Fireworks, based in Omaha, Neb., also has been operating for more than three decades and plans to expand into Iowa this year.

Owner Vincent Bellino said his company has 130 stands in Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas and Missouri. He hopes to add 50 to 60 locations in Iowa this year, he said, some in stores and others in temporary structures.

Bellino said he traveled to the Iowa Capitol many times over the past three years to encourage state lawmakers to legalize fireworks. He said he expects a lot of interest from Iowans, who for the first time will be able to purchase these fireworks legally in their home state. He thinks it will be similar to when in 2011 the city of Omaha ended its ban on the sale of fireworks.

Theres obviously going to be some excitement around it, some good demand in the Iowa markets, Bellino said. Its obviously an exciting time for everyone, whether its the consumer or businesses.

EMTs response

It is a less exciting time for emergency response personnel, who are bracing for increased activity this Fourth of July season.

More than a dozen organizations that represent emergency response and health care workers opposed the new law, including the Iowa Medical Society, Blank Childrens Hospital, the Iowa Nurses Association, the Iowa Emergency Management Association and the Iowa Firefighters Association.

Firefighters across the state already feel short-staffed and stressed by call volume, which they figure will only increase as more people shoot off fireworks.

Now that theyre legal but law enforcement is the same, said Bill Halleran, president of the Iowa Firefighters Association, we can only assume that injuries and potential fires are going to go up.

Halleran said emergency response groups think the new law was freight-trained through the legislative process despite their near unanimous objections. He also expressed frustration with the short time period from the laws approval to the first holiday season.

The law was just signed the other day, and the Fourth of July is right around the corner, Halleran said, noting local fireworks ordinances likely will take another couple of weeks to implement. ... Theres not a lot of time on this to get on top of it.

Cities choices

The new law provides some flexibility for cities, which are now determining how best to implement the regulations in their areas.

The law permits home, consumer-grade fireworks displays from June 1 through July 8 and Dec. 10 through Jan. 3, but it also allows cities to shorten that time period or continue to ban home fireworks displays altogether.

Some cities appear content to let the new law take effect and see how it goes, while others are considering restricting the dates residents can display fireworks, said Robert Palmer, a lobbyist for the Iowa League of Cities.

Opinions on what to do and how to proceed are as varied as the number of cities we have in Iowa, Palmer said.

In northwest Iowa, the council in the small town of Moville voted unanimously to adopt the state law as written.

We will go with the state rules, Moville Mayor Jim Fisher told the Sioux City Journal. We will see how people react. If they do it properly, no problem. If it is misused, we will go ahead and make other arrangements (in 2018).

To the opposite extreme, officials in Johnson County are considering a challenge to the provision in the law that says cities cannot prevent fireworks sales.

A local ban on fireworks sales would run afoul of the new law. But Johnson County officials think that runs afoul of local control, and they are considering at least a temporary moratorium on sales until they can better understand the new law.

I dont know where we will end up after this moratorium, but we need time to figure it out. I think everybody in Johnson County is concerned by temporary sales, Johnson County Board of Supervisors chairwoman Janelle Rettig told the Cedar Rapids Gazette. We dont think thats safe in any way, shape or form.
By 1908, the time was right for a new kind of agency to protect America. The United States was, well, united, with its borders stretching from coast to coast and only two landlocked states left to officially join the union. Inventions like the telephone, the telegraph, and the railroad had seemed to shrink its vast distances even as the country had spread west. ... America was ... a new world power on the block, thanks to its naval victory over Spain.  From an FBI official history.

Theres a certain serendipity in President Donald Trumps precipitation of crisis at the Federal Bureau of Investigation on the 100th anniversary of the United States entry into World War I.

Americas federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, of which the FBI (or its precursors) was among the first, took shape in the 20th century. Their rise is inseparable from that periods dominant themes: national growth, international extension and, comparatively speaking, political consensus.

Certainly, the bitter partisanship of the 19th century, culminating in the Civil War and Reconstruction, helped prevent the development of an American counterpart to, say, the centralized detective force Joseph Fouche built in France. No party in Congress trusted the other sufficiently to create a secret, or semi-secret, agency that might later be turned against it.

In the 20th century, Republicans and Democrats didnt agree on much, but more often than not, they shared a sense of core national interests and, following from that, a sense of who federal detectives and spies might appropriately target (even when that consensus led to excesses, such as CIA domestic surveillance and the FBIs campaign against the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.).

To the extent it guided their oversight of intelligence agencies, that baseline consensus overcame the politicians qualms about the undeniable tension between democratic norms on the one hand and the dark arts of surveillance on the other.

As Trumps bold decapitation of the FBI, and the reaction to it, illustrate, however, this massive agency  14,000 special agents, an $8.7 billion annual budget  has outlasted the national consensus that gave it life, and upon which its legitimacy ultimately rested.

We are about to learn whether such an institution can preserve its professionalism and its ethos of nonpartisan national service at a time when its supposed political masters have lost theirs.

It is a dangerous moment, because history shows partisan control is the hallmark of illegitimate spying, and politicized law-enforcement and intelligence cannot be squared with democracy.

What made East Germanys Stasi so pernicious, for example, was not its pervasive snooping per se, but a single political party directed the surveillance according to its own selfish interests, as defined by a constantly shifting line.

Trumps ouster of FBI Director James Comey, amid an investigation of Russias meddling in the 2016 election Trump won, reeks of self-serving political manipulation, no matter how hard the president and his minions spin it as an attempt to redeem the FBI.

Whats also troubling, from the perspective of consensual governance, is Democrats objections to the firing are themselves less than principled  unavoidably so, given their own grudge against Comey for rekindling the email investigation of Hillary Clinton in the final days of the campaign.

The essence of the predicament is Comey did, indeed, play a part in the election, a fact that itself guaranteed the winner, whoever it was, could not deal straightforwardly with him.

Imagine if it had been Clinton: What would she have done with Comey  if he didnt resign and trigger bitter GOP resistance to the person she chose to replace him?

A big dilemma now, of course, is anyone Trump might pick to run the FBI would carry the stigma of being selected with the same hand that dispatched Comey.

The search is on for an independent person, or group of them, to set this convoluted situation right: a special prosecutor, perhaps, or an independent commission, or aroused Senate Republicans, newly conscious of their constitutional duties.

In Washingtons not-too-distant past, such honest brokers could be readily identified and agreed upon: special prosecutor Leon Jaworski to carry on the Watergate investigation after the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973; or the members of the commission to investigate the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

Today? Not so easy. Comey, as it happens, used to be on everyones straight-shooter list, respected for his 2004 threat to resign unless President George W. Bush limited some surveillance Comey deemed unlawful.

In hindsight, Comeys 2016 performance looks like an attempt to spend that moral capital on behalf of the FBIs reputation, and his own  while politicos all about him were losing theirs and blaming it on him. Look where he is now.
Editor's Note: This editorial has been updated to correct the name of the Russian ambassador.

President Donald Trumps decision to fire FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday, citing his handling of Hillary Clintons emails, begs credulity.

Indeed, Trumps rationale was undercut when he tweeted soon after, The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?

Comey had led the probe, which Trump previously called a witch hunt and fake news.

The pretext for his firing was contained in a hasty three-page review by Rod Rosenstein, the assistant U.S. attorney general on the job for 10 days, who claimed Comey violated Justice Department policy in statements concerning Clintons emails.

Comey said on July 5 the FBI would not recommend charges against Clinton for using a private server to conduct business as secretary of State, despite being extremely careless in handling classified material.

The announcement came after U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who should make the call, had compromised her integrity by meeting with Bill Clinton on a Phoenix airport tarmac.

In October, the FBI seized a laptop, phone and tablet belonging to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a serial pervert under investigation for alleged inappropriate communications with a minor, and found Clinton emails forwarded by his wife, Huma Abedin, her closest aide, to be printed. Comey sent a letter to congressional leaders Oct. 28 that the emails were pertinent to the Clinton investigation.

Two days before the election, he said never mind.

Republicans were irate Comey let Clinton off the hook, while Democrats were incensed, maintaining the 11th hour letter cost Clinton the election.

Then, on May 3 Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Abedin had forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information. The FBI later called it a misstatement, far exceeding the actual amount.

For Democrats, it seemingly confirmed Comeys role in Clintons loss. For Trump, it was an excuse to sack him.

The FBI director serves a 10-year term, designed to be independent of the president, who still can fire him for cause. For the past five months, the Justice Departments inspector general had been conducting an inquiry concerning Comeys actions. A verdict on his competence should have awaited those findings.

Reportedly, the presidents real issues with Comey concerned his failure to validate Trumps tweet President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower phones and his March 20 congressional testimony about investigating the Russian governments efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including 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.

Trump tweeted that day, 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?

In addition, Trump supposedly was irate Comey prioritized the Russian investigation over finding those leaking information.

Then on May 3, Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee his decisions regarding Clinton made him mildly nauseous, which apparently didnt sit well with Trump either.

So now the investigation into Russian meddling will proceed without its driving force, echoing President Richard Nixons 1973 sacking of Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and U.S. Attorney General Elliott Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, who wouldnt do his bidding.

Trump, though, has faithful U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions who recused himself from the Russian probe after not disclosing two meetings with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but still signed off on Rosensteins report.

The Russian connection has focused on Michael Flynn, Trumps former national security adviser, who was forced to resign after disclosures he lied about a December meeting with Lavrov to discuss easing U.S. sanctions; Paul Manafort, briefly Trumps campaign manager, who allegedly made millions promoting Russian President Vladimir Putins government; and investment banker Carter Page, an early Trump foreign policy adviser with supposed links to the Russian hierarchy.

James Clapper, the former national intelligence director, told a Senate subcommittee Monday, Concern about the egregious Russian interference in our election process is so critically serious as to merit focus, hopefully bipartisan focus, by the Congress and the American people.

Our sense to date is congressional Republicans, including Sen. Charles Grassley, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, seem more focused on uncovering leakers than the Russian connection. While they have dutifully called for a new independent FBI director, only a few appeared concerned about the demise of one who truly was.

Meanwhile, Democrats have called for a special prosecutor  an individual who would operate at Sessions behest. Our preference continues to be a bipartisan independent commission.

After Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, Archibald Cox contemplated whether we shall continue to be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people to decide.
Chip Somodevilla/iStock/Thinkstock(FAIRBANKS, Alaska) -- While President Trump has talked tough in the past about his skeptical views on climate change, his administration appears to be taking a more cautious approach to the issue on the world stage in the early days of his presidency.



U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed a document today calling climate change a serious threat to the Arctic and noting the need for action to reduce its potentially harmful effects.



The document, known as the Fairbanks Declaration, concluded Tillerson's chairing of a meeting of the Arctic Council, a board made up of indigenous groups and the eight countries bordering the Arctic, in Fairbanks, Alaska.



While the council only has the power to issue advisories, the language in the statement signed by Tillerson comes in stark contrast to statements and promises made by President Trump about climate change.



Trump has repeatedly called into question the science behind climate change, even calling it a "very expensive hoax." During his 2016 campaign, Trump promised to pull out of the Paris accord and his administration has ordered cuts to funding for climate science and has slashed environmental regulations.



While Tillerson endorsed the Arctic Council document, he cautioned that the U.S. would not be rushed into formulating its policy.



"We're not going to rush to make a decision. We're going to work to make the right decision for the United States," he said.



The Trump administration has not come out with a decision on whether the U.S. will pull out of the Paris Climate accord signed under President Obama. That non-binding international agreement went into effect last year and calls for countries to set goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.



The Fairbanks proclamation says that "the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the global average, resulting in widespread social, environmental, and economic impacts," and notes "the pressing and increasing need for mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience."



It calls for "the entry into force of the Paris Agreement on climate change and its implementation, and reiterating the need for global action to reduce both long-lived greenhouse gases and short-lived climate pollutants."



Later in the statement, the parties commit a whole section to addressing the impacts of climate change, laying out eleven steps forward.



The State Department defended Tillerson's signing by saying the declaration is not an obligatory document.



"The Fairbanks Declaration notes what Paris claims to be," a State Department official told ABC News. "It does not obligate the U.S. to enforce it."



The Canadian foreign minister thanked the U.S. delegation for signing the document today.



"We came to a really good place in our statement, and I think that says something really important to the world," said Chrystia Freeland, addressing the Americans. "I know that that took some effort to get there, so thank you very much."



The White House says that the review of Americas commitments to the Paris Climate agreement will be completed this month. Sean Spicer said on Tuesday that the administration will not announce the results until after Trump returns from the G-7 summit at the end of May.



The assent to the Arctic Council's declaration comes as the Trump administration has a delegation in Germany to attend U.N. climate talks, a follow-up to the Paris agreement focused on implementation.



The State Department told ABC News last Friday that the delegation is smaller than in years past and, Our participation should not be taken as an indication of the outcome of our ongoing review.



"We are focused on ensuring that decisions are not taken at these meetings that would prejudice our future policy, undermine the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, or hamper our broader objective of advancing U.S. economic growth and prosperity," a State Department official said.



During his confirmation hearing, Tillerson said he had concluded as a scientist and engineer that "the risk of climate change does exist" and that "action should be taken." But, he added, "Our ability to predict that effect [of climate change] is very limited," and offered little detail on what those steps should be.



Copyright  2017, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

May. 11, 2017 | MURRAY, KY

By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 11, 2017 | 04:43 PM | MURRAY, KY

A Murray man and woman were arrested Thursday morning on burglary, drug and assault charges.



The Murray Police Department said they got a call at 7:43 a.m. from a woman asking for help, but the call was disconnected. Officers began heading to the callers location at the Magnolia Inn on South 12th Street. While officers were on route, they were able to reestablish contact. The caller told them there had been an assault, and that a man and woman had fled the scene.



Moments later officers spotted two people in a ditch that runs between Magnolia Inn and Dogwood Drive. The two suspects, identified as 24-year-old Kaci Stubblefield and 37-year-old Stephen Dasher were taken into custody without incident. They were taken to Murray Calloway County Hospital after complaining about injuries, and were then booked into the Calloway County Jail.



Dasher was charged with third degree burglary, third degree criminal mischief, theft of services, fourth degree assault and public intoxication. Stubblefield was charged with third degree burglary, third degree criminal mischief, theft of services, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of methamphetamine.
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A startup needs to test an idea quickly. For this, an MVP is created. MVP, Minimal Viable Product  a test version of a product or service with a minimum set of functions (up to one or two), which allows you to see the product's value for consumers and the market. MVP is created to test hypotheses and check the viability of the intended product: is it worth developing the project further, what changes should be made? The sooner a startup brings its MVP to market and tests the idea, the better. This article will look at how no-code technology can help founders achieve their business goals.

This article will try to cover everything that a founder needs to know about no-code at the initial stage of creating a startup.

What is no-code?

No-code, zero-code platform is a tool for creating websites, applications, chatbots, and other programs without the need for direct code writing by programmers. No-code is a valuable alternative to traditional development.

No-code is confused with low-code, but there is a difference in these terms. Low-code includes no-code and the ability to "finish code", add parts of code and the functionality.

A user of a no-code platform usually does not need to know layout, programming languages, or hire a team of programmers. The user of the no-code tool creates an application using a visual block constructor, which he fills with the necessary content and functions, and the no-code platform itself does the processing of requests, compiling the application and other "magic." It generates code using AI and/or contains blocks of code pre-written by programmers.

No-code allows the startup founder to create an MVP himself, entrust it to his employee with basic technical literacy and understanding of the project, or hire a no-code developer. Even in the case of hiring a no-code developer, the cost of creating an MVP will be significantly lower than with classical development with programmers. For example, you can read the interview of a startup and no-code developer on our website, who initially worked as a Product Manager and was able to master no-code for his project himself.

Benefits of no-code for a startup founder

There are the following key advantages for a startup founder in using no-code technology:

a large selection of no-code tools, platforms, and their integrations at the moment  already in 2022, there are many tools and platforms for creating an MVP, a larger project, or even a finished product on no-code, but few people still know about them, and others are far from all startups and founders use their potential;

cost  no-code development saves the money by speeding up the development process, not hiring professional programmers or no need to maintain a developer department, monitoring functions and quick bug fixes, avoiding or reducing the growth of technical debt;

speed is the main advantage over classical development  no-code allows you to build a simple application in a weekend, and a more complex one can be built in a month. In this way, you can test an MVP and even several versions of an MVP very quickly;

low entry threshold  to master a no-code platform, you often do not need technical education at all, but only an understanding of a company's business processes or product from the inside. In the case of pro-level no-code platforms, technical education is required, but you can get used to it hundreds of times faster than with any programming language. This makes no-code available to almost everyone who wants to work with technology;

ease of use  no need to write hundreds of code lines  just move the blocks and assign links between them. Work on a project can be entrusted to your employee without communicating with a team of third-party developers. You can speak "in your language" without the need to understand the "inner kitchen" of developers;

flexibility  with the help of no-code, it is easy for a startup founder to add new functionality and new features right during a project or a MVP testing without a significant increase in development costs.

Possible disadvantages of no-code for a startup founder

As often, any property can be, under certain conditions, both a disadvantage and an advantage. In no-code, many of the benefits with the wrong choice of tool can turn into disadvantages:

no-code is not always a budget solution for a project. Sometimes in a no-code development package, you get unnecessary functions and additions (on AppMaster.io you can separately connect the frontend and pay only for the backend or only for those functions that you are using); if you do not understand the needs of your project, then you can make a mistake with the choice of a no-code tool and not be able to implement the necessary functions on it, or it will be too difficult to implement them; often, no-code tools fail to ensure proper data security and contribute to data leakage (but AppMaster.io allows you to host a finished application on any server); no-code tools often do not provide the ability to upload source code or provide uploading in an inconvenient format, which makes it difficult to move to another tool or to your development. You have to choose a no-code tool "once and forever immediately" (AppMaster. io gives you the ability to download the source code. Also, we generate human-readable code and you will not have any difficulties with its transportation); most no-code tools on the market are not suitable for creating a finished product, and there are significant difficulties with scaling the project if the MVP is successful (AppMaster.io is a professional no-code platform and our capabilities allow us to implement and support the finished product and scale it in the future).

Forewarned is forearmed. Choose your no-code tool wisely and take full advantage of your choice.

Types of no-code platforms

Conventionally, all no-code tools can be divided into several types: no-code devices with a low entry threshold (you can create frontend and not very powerful backend on them), integrators that help connect applications and services, and professional no-code platforms (they strive to replace the code completely, provide the ability to create a robust backend and high bandwidth).

The basic principle of operation of your MVP and the choice of a no-code platform depend on such a conditional division into types. For example, if you make a simple application like a diary, you can limit yourself to a no-code tool with a low entry threshold and a beautiful design.

If your application has powerful potential, high bandwidth, multi-user interface, and works with large amounts of data or real-time data, it is better to choose a professional no-code platform like AppMaster.io or Direcual.

If you use several services at once, link them on integrators like Integromat and Zapier.

Adalo

An easy-to-learn designer with a relatively user-friendly interface. The free version is helpful for learning. The free version contains Adalo watermarks and does not allow you to upload your applications to GooglePlayMarket and AppStore. Beginners often choose this no-code platform to create their first applications with simple logic.

Bubble

It will take more time to learn Bubble , but the platform allows you to work with the backend, databases, business processes, and layout. There are many plugins. The free plan allows you to master the tool, and you can start developing at the middle rate. The price increase is due to the rise in the number of users.

Integromat

It is an integrator. Experts talk about it as a simple and affordable platform for linking applications and services. Scenarios can be created personally, or you can use templates. If you need to connect an application with a service not from the Integromat database, fill out the form and connect to its API via HTTP.

Zapier

This is an integrator for linking applications with each other or with other external services. You can transfer data between thousands of applications. There is a script constructor (one event starts a chain of necessary actions).

Directual

The no-code platform positions itself for creating MVP applications (Minimal Viable Product, minimum viable product) and full-fledged applications of finished products. Scenarios are the backbone of the platform. Using scripts, you can automate the backend logic of the application, create and combine workflows. The Directual catalog includes out-of-the-box connectors, HTTP requests, webhooks, database listeners, and integration with popular services.

AppMaster.io

No-code next-generation platform for creating native and web applications on a real backend. Visual drag-and-drop designer, user-friendly business process designer, one-click app publishing to AppMaster Cloud, or integration with any cloud platform. Push notifications, authorization using social networks. Networks, email, and more. Connect applications to hundreds of services or programmatically access them using APIs. The ability to upload source code and documentation in a human-readable format and transfer it to your servers. Documentation auto-generation. Modern and fast language GoLang at the core.

No-code perspectives for startups

No-code development is gradually gaining popularity around the world. There are already more than 500 no-code tools for creating websites and various types of applications.

According to the forecasts of IT world experts, no-code will develop more and more actively and capture parts of the market responsible for medicine, small online business, small business, and all niches where it is possibly necessary to optimize and automate development processes.

The mass shift of businesses and their customers online and to gadgets has increased the demand for the fast and inexpensive creation of mobile applications that would work according to a single quality standard and have a simple, understandable, user-friendly interface.

Conclusion

No-code is visual programming in the form of a constructor without directly writing code. Usually, basic knowledge in development is enough to build applications on no-code.

The logic of no-code constructors is intuitive: the application interface is assembled from blocks, icons, buttons, and text which are connected to the database. Usually, you can choose a suitable template or do everything from scratch. Speed and economy are the main advantages of no-code tools.

No-code is suitable for creating an MVP, testing an idea or new features in a product, saving time for solving standard tasks. PRO level no-code platforms can provide you with a finished product, an application.

If you don't have an account on AppMaster.io yet, join us. After registration, you will be given a free trial period for 14 days, in which all the basic functionality of the platform is available. It will allow you to learn the intricacies of working with a professional-level no-code platform and understand its potential.
May 12, 2017 | By Benedict

Chemicals company BASF and materials company Essentium have joined forces to develop new 3D printing polymers for FDM 3D printers. The two parties say their efforts will lead to stronger plastic parts suitable for mass production.

Thanks to an improvement in materials, printers, and software, you can now make 3D printed parts a lot stronger than you could once upon a time. For BASF and Essentium, however, those parts are still not strong enough.

Thats why the two companiesone a world-renowned chemical producer from Germany, the other an up-and-coming, Texas-based materials specialisthave joined forces to develop a special new range of materials for FDM 3D printing.

To be fair to them, the duo seem well matched. In their own words, BASF brings to the partnership the most comprehensive portfolio of innovative materials in the chemical industry, with the younger Essentium providing its exciting FlashFuse electric welding technology which enhances layer to layer adhesion of 3D printed parts.

By combining their respective areas of expertise, BASF and Essentium are planning to develop a range of polymer solutions that will be precisely engineered to combat interlayer weakness in 3D printed parts.

Although BASF has a massive reputation behind it, it is perhaps Essentium who are bringing the more awe-inspiring technology to the table here. The Texas companys FlashFuse extrusion system performs in-situ welding which can be applied to open-system FDM printer platforms, boosting isotropy and improving the vertical strength and mechanical toughness of the 3D printed parts.

The extruder uses both heat and electricity to increase the temperature of the 3D printing material before and after each layer is deposited. This external impetus serves to strengthen the part while it is being printed, a process which supposedly results in printed parts with 95% the strength of layer-free molded parts.

Unfortunately, FlashFuse wont work with any old filament, since the material itself needs to be electrically conductive for the technology to work. Thats why Essentium has made its own FlashFuse 3D printing material designed to work with the extruder. It appears that the new materials being developed by BASF and Essentium will also be conductive, so they can work with FlashFuse.

At present, the BASF and Essentium are limiting their joint efforts to FDM/FFF, because of its ability to use a wide range of thermoplastics, fabricate large, complex parts rapidly and efficiently, and easily combine multi-modality materials in the same print. The companies add that FDM filaments can be loaded with functional fillers.

It is not yet clear whether this collaboration could lead to further efforts in other forms of additive manufacturing.

BASF is committed to advancing 3D printing to the next level across all major additive manufacturing technologies, commented Kara Noack, Head of BASFs 3D printing business in North America. I am confident that our collaboration with Essentium will enable the creation of 3D printed functional parts and make the technology accessible to a broader range of industrial customers.

Essentium Materials distinctive FlashFuse technology addresses one of the prevalent challenges for achieving isotropic 3D printed parts, added Dr. Blake Teipel, Essentiums President and CTO. Our partnership with BASF will provide robust and strong 3D printing solutions for extremely demanding applications.

Essentium was demonstrating FuseBox, a 3D printer add-on that utilizes FlashFuse technology, at RAPID + TCT this week.

Posted in 3D Printing Materials

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May 12, 2017 | By Tess

Slant Robotics, a robotics company from Boise, Idaho, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for its latest toy: a 3D printed Arduino robot geared towards promoting STEM education. Called LittleBot, the cute 3D printed device is particularly focused on teaching kids engineering, programming, and robotics.

Often, the best way to learn something is to approach it in a hands-on manner. This is certainly true of robotics, though many schools have been limited by the availability and accessibility of the technology, which is often quite expensive.

Fortunately, thats where Slant Robotics comes in. With its new LittleBot 3D printed robot, the company is aiming to offer kids a fun way to learn about roboticswithout breaking the bank. The kid-friendly bot is now available via Kickstarter for as low as $45.

The smiling LittleBot consists of a cube-shaped 3D printed body, simple electronics (easy enough for kids to learn with), ultrasonic sensors (which double as eyes), dual drive motors and wheels, and an Arduino set up on a custom circuit board.

The beauty of the product is that it is built to be taken apart, examined, rebuilt, and customized in order to help show kids the basics of electronics, programming, 3D design, and 3D printing.

Every inventor has a story from their childhood where they ruined their mom's vacuum cleaner or their own toys, trying to find out how it worked," Slant says in its Kickstarter. "We wanted to create a robotic toy that not only could be taken apart to see how it works but encourages that kind of exploration so that a new generation of engineers and scientists can be created."

The impressive little robot can be programmed to do a number of things, including dancing, wall following, obstacle avoidance, cleaning (by pushing a sponge), and even battling with other LittleBots. The 3D printed robot was also designed to be used in tandem with various kid-friendly programming and design platforms, such as Blockly and Scratch (programming), or TinkerCAD (3D design).

For instance, kids can use TinkerCAD to design parts or accessories for the STEM robot that can be 3D printed and physically attached to LittleBot. The robots outer structure (which is itself 3D printed) features a number of small mounting tabs which could be used to attach extra parts.

The Arduino and circuit board that power LittleBot were also designed with expandability in mind. The board allows for maximum expandability, including other servos, and more sensors. Its Bluetooth dock also allows you to connect to smart devices and create apps for the robot with tools like App Inventor, says Slant.

In terms of usability, LittleBot has two main modes: remote and autonomous. The former lets users control the robots movements via an Android smartphone app, while the autonomous setting means that LittleBot is navigating its environment using its two sensor-eyes. Last, but definitely not least, LittleBots software is entirely open source.

Through the Kickstarter campaign, backers can choose from a number of different reward options. The cheapest one ($45) is an early-bird deal for the LittleBot maker kit, which includes the 3D printing files for the bot, as well as all the electronics and mechanics needed to make it run. The LittleBot Basic Kit (which includes the 3D printed shell) is available for $55, while a fully assembled Basic LittleBot is available for $65. A number of more advanced options, which include extra features for the 3D printed robot, are also available.

With just under a month left of its Kickstarter campaign, Slant Robotics has already raised more than a third of its $3,000 goal. If you think you or your child could benefit from learning STEM in a fun and interactive way, we suggest checking LittleBot out.

Posted in 3D Printing Application

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Matti Friedman at the Jewish Review of Books:

In Israel of the 1970s everyone was supposed to speak Hebrew and forget the past. There would be no Yiddish, there would certainly be no Arabic, and being from the Maghreba fluid Arabic term encompassing Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisiawas nothing to be proud of. Shouting Im from the Maghreb in the confident heart of the new Israeland in Arabicin those days was daring. The same poem goes on to imagine the poet sitting among Ashkenazi intellectuals at the nearby Cafe Roval wearing a colorful Moroccan robe.

All of this might seem innocuous now. But Bittons poems had an electrifying effect on many readersparticularly young Mizrahim who had been given the impression in school, as one put it, that their parents arrived from a smooth and empty place, like the surface of the moon. That writer, Sami Shalom Chetrit, remembered a school classroom of forty Mizrahim and one good-hearted Ashkenazi teacher where he received no inkling of the cultural riches of his Moroccan family, or of any of the Jews who poured into Israel from the Islamic world after 1948. (Today roughly half of Israels Jewish population has roots in Islamic countries.)

Few of the stories the new state told about itselffrom annihilation to rebirth, the kibbutz, Herzlhad much to do with people from Casablanca or Tehran. Their culture wasnt welcome in public, beyond fragments quarantined as folklore. Some of the greatest Iraqi musicians had been Jews, like the famous brothers el-Kuwaiti, and there was Zohra el-Fassiya, of course, and many othersbut the music wasnt on the radio, kept alive only in living rooms, at private parties, and in small clubs in the area of south Tel Aviv known as the Yemenite Vineyard.

more here.
Here are some news bites to chew on this week.

(Courtesy of the Oakland Zoo via Facebook)





River Otter Pups to Make Debut at Oakland Zoo, NBC Bay Area



Three adorable river otter pups debuted Wednesday at the Oakland Zoo, just in time to celebrate Mother's Day with visitors stopping by this weekend. The pups, two male and one female, are all siblings and are now three months old. Read more.





The Next Starbucks: Lower Haight Locals to Protest Proposed Blue Bottle Coffee, Hoodline



A group of Lower Haighters gathered Monday for a planned protest against the proposed installation of a Blue Bottle Coffee, arguing that they are not a mom-and-pop business, but rather "the next Starbucks." Read more.





Nonprofit pledges $100 million to aid SF's chronically homeless, SF Chronicle

The Tipping Point aims to cut the chronically homeless population in San Francisco by half over the next five years, and has pledged $100 million to the effortthe biggest donation of its kind ever made to the city. There are an estimated 2,000 people who have lived outside for at least a year and are suffering from mental illness, substance-abuse problems, and other difficulties. Read more.





The Bay Area companies that are hiring recent college graduates, SF Gate

It's grad season, and salary levels for this year's graduating class have reached an all-time high across the county, with an average of $49,785 for entry-level jobs. This average is even higher in San Francisco at a sweet $62,829, with the Bay Area job market offering the highest pay in the country. Read more.





Ed Lee ponies up $40 million and site for city's first teacher housing,Curbed SF



Following an SF Chronicle piece published Tuesday featuring a story about a 35-year-old public school teacher with a master's degree who found herself homeless in San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee has announced a commitment of $40 million to build at least 130 rental units for teachers in the Outer Sunset. Read more.





Apple Is Auctioning off a Lunch Date With Tim Cook, SFist



Bidders have until next Tuesday to try and land a lunch with Apple CEO Tim Cook in an auction to raise money for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Organization. The hour-long lunch, which will take place in the new Apple Park in Cupertino, was valued at $100,000, but has already surpassed the amount, with bidding reaching $125,000 as of last Thursday. Read more.




Dead for a Dollar, R

Writer-director Walter Hill, 80, whos made classic Westerns on film (The Long Riders) and for cable (Broken Trail), recharges the form with a low-budget doozy. Christoph Waltz, 66, leads Hills tight ensemble through taut adventure as a bail enforcement agent who tracks a New Mexico oligarchs wife (Rachel Brosnahan), ostensibly abducted by a Black U.S. soldier (Brandon Scott), deep into Old Mexico. Its refreshing to meet characters like Waltzs sly, stoic bounty man, or the mordant roughneck played by Willem Dafoe, 67, when theyre a long way into their lives. And when they re-meet, its explosive. Benjamin Bratt, 58, is a dashing villain, Hamish Linklater, a skin-crawling cuckold, and Warren Burke, an exuberant sidekick who becomes Waltzs full partner in a tale that fleshes out Mark Twains thought: Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one. Michael Sragow (M.S.)

Watch it: Dead for a Dollar, in limited theaters and on demand
And the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates the sale of hearing aids, announced in December that it was considering changing its rules on hearing aids. The FDA's rationale for this new category of over-the-counter hearing aids was that it would bring "new, innovative and lower-cost products to millions of consumers."

But what, exactly, is an over-the-counter hearing aid?

Right now it's a concept, not a product. That hearing device you can buy for a few hundred dollars is actually a personal sound amplification device, or PSAP. A PSAP can only be marketed as a sound amplifier for people with normal hearing.

An OTC hearing aid would likely do pretty much what a good PSAP already does, but with FDA approval. It would be a digital device, probably with directional microphones, Bluetooth and a telecoil, and presumably it would cost $1,000 or less. An OTC hearing aid could be sold direct to the consumer, without the involvement of an audiologist or hearing aid dispenser. You can already do this with some online hearing aids, but almost all online retailers require an audiogram before they will dispense the product.

An OTC hearing aid would be subject to FDA safety and efficacy standards. Most consumer activists support this initiative as a way of getting people to correct their hearing loss. OTC hearing aids are not for people with severe hearing loss, single-sided hearing loss or hearing loss caused by other medical conditions.

The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the trade group for speech-language pathologists and audiologists, supports these devices only for people with mild hearing loss. But Frank Lin, associate professor of otolaryngology at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told a House subcommittee that the devices should also be available for those with moderate hearing loss. "From a clinical medical perspective there is no difference  it's on a natural continuum; people progress from mild to moderate," he said.

A recent study found that for those with mild to moderate hearing loss, hearing aids and OTC-like hearing devices are equally effective. Interestingly, what made the biggest difference in user satisfaction was the assistance of a fully trained audiologist. Those study subjects whose devices were fitted by an audiologist were the most satisfied with their device, compared with a fully programmed hearing aid or a device with standard manufacturer-supplied programming.
What do you do when your mom with Alzheimers wont give up her car keys when driving becomes unsafe, for example? What if shes determined to see a sister who passed away? Or suddenly grows agitated because she doesnt recognize a friend?

The boot camp, offered four times a year, addresses questions like these and more, says its creator, Zaldy Tan, the medical director of the UCLA Alzheimers and Dementia Care Program. Tan says the goal is to provide busy, often overwhelmed family caregivers with crucial information in the form of an immersive experience in as short a time as possible. (Respite care is available for participants loved ones.)

An older actor  trained by Tan and his team  presents himself to the boot campers as an advanced Alzheimers patient. Participants are told that he is the father of a friend who needs help with his care, and they take turns performing certain tasks in front of the group, such as convincing Dad to take his medications or not to wander out of the room, or steering him toward an appropriate snack (some people with dementia have difficulty swallowing, so choking is a worry with foods like pretzels).

They make plenty of mistakes in the beginning, says Tan: Its hard for them because theres so many things going on, and theyre dealing with a stranger, not their mom or dad. But the learning happens when they observe all the interactions and give each other suggestions and support. Its really a good experience.
The Board of TUC Resources Limited (ASX:TUC) is pleased to offer Shareholders a free Bonus Option Issue on the basis of two Options for every five Shares held at the Record Date. The Board recognises and greatly appreciates our loyal and supportive Shareholders. It is intended that this additional security will provide leverage to improved share price performance, particularly in the event of what we hope will continue to be successful exploration at the Stromberg Heavy Rare Earth District.


Project Director Appointed for Yangibana Rare Earths Project

Sydney, May 12, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Hastings Technology Metals ( ASX:HAS ) (Hastings or the Company) is pleased to announce that it has appointed Mr. Kok Hoong Leong as Project Director for the Yangibana Rare Earths Project.



Mr. Leong, a qualified engineer with over 30 years' experience, was previously the Senior Project Manager for Lynas Malaysia/Lynas Corporation ( ASX:LYC ) responsible for the engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of two brownfields rare earths processing plants in Kuantan, Malaysia and at Mt Weld, Western Australia with a total capital cost of A$240 million.



Mr. Leong has also worked with Petroliam Nasional Berhad (Petronas), as project manager for two petrochemical plants and held senior roles in a number of its subsidiary and joint venture companies. He holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Electrical Engineering from Leeds University.



Charles Lew, Chairman, commented "we are pleased to have an engineer of Mr. Leong's calibre and experience on board as we move towards completion of the Definitive Feasibility Study and enter the engineering design, procurement and construction phase of the project. Mr. Leong successfully managed a similar rare earths project at Lynas phase 2 which was completed on time and on budget".





About Hastings Technology Metals Ltd





Hastings Technology Metals Ltd (ASX:HAS) (FRA:5AM) is advancing its Yangibana Rare Earths Project in the Upper Gascoyne Region of Western Australia towards production. The proposed beneficiation and hydro metallurgy processing plant will treat rare earths deposits, predominantly monazite, hosting high neodymium and praseodymium contents to produce a mixed rare earths carbonate that will be further refined into individual rare earth oxides at processing plants overseas.

Neodymium and praseodymium are vital components in the manufacture of permanent magnets which is used in a wide and expanding range of advanced and high-tech products including electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, medical applications and others. Hastings aims to become the next significant producer of neodymium and praseodymium outside of China.

Hastings holds 100% interest in the most significant deposits within the overall project, and 70% interest in additional deposits that will be developed at a later date, all held under Mining Leases. Numerous prospects have been identified warranting detailed exploration to further extend the life of the project.

Brockman Project

The Brockman deposit, near Halls Creek in Western Australia, contains JORC Indicated and Inferred Mineral Resources, estimated using the guidelines of JORC Code (2012 Edition).

The Company is also progressing a Mining Lease application over the Brockman Rare Earths and Rare Metals Project.

Hastings aims to capitalise on the strong demand for critical rare earths created by the expanding demand for new technology products.


Meetings with the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection and Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning

Sydney, May 12, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - On Friday 3rd May and Monday 6th May, Queensland Bauxite Limited ( ASX:QBL ) ("QBL" or "the Company") had productive and positive meetings with officers of the Department of Environment and Heritage Protection (DEHP) in Cairns and the Department of Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning (DILGP) in Brisbane, to present the work undertaken to date on the proposal to extract approximately 50,000 tonnes of bauxite, or one ship load of material, for export from Mourilyan Port, under the proposed MDL application, and discuss issues raised by EHP during the recent environmental authority (EA) amendment process. The Company's chief geoscientist Dr Robert Coenraads led the meetings on behalf of the Company, and Director Sholom Feldman was in attendance by phone conference at the meeting with the DEHP. The Company's environmental consultants Northern Resource Consultants (NRC) were also in attendance at the meeting with the DEHP to present and where necessary clarify the Company's environmental reporting and proposals.



The Company had previously provided a detailed work programme to the DEHP as part of the application process. Following a presentation on the project by Dr Coenraads explaining and clarifying the details of the project as previously provided to the Department in writing by the Company's consultant engineers, the Department requested that the further explanatory detail be provided by the Company in writing as part of the application documents to clarify the intended work programme in a number of areas. These primarily include further details on stormwater management and storage, and product handling and stockpiling. The Company will be working with its consultant mining engineers to add the further requested detail into the written work programme.



In addition, following the previous requests from the Department, a clearly defined set of air, water and noise monitoring requirements for the pilot project were discussed, and which NRC are undertaking a program for completion. These will be presented in writing to the Department as part of the revised set of application documents. It was agreed that as soon as the above documentation are complete then QBL will submit a 'clean slate' EA application and an upgraded work program in support of its Minerals Development Licence (MDL) application.



As a result of the meetings, the Company is confident that the revised application to the specifications now requested by the Department should be met with a positive response. It is our understanding that once our monitoring proposals and studies are upgraded to the latest requirements of the Department, as presented at the meeting, we will be operating under the most stringent of conditions on our Environmental Authority (EA), commensurate with the sensitivity of our project area which lies on prime agricultural land, sandwiched between World Heritage rainforest and the Great Barrier Reef. We believe this additional environmental monitoring will also give even further confidence to the local community in sanctioning QBL's social licence to operate in their midst.



Corporate Update



Whilst waiting for the grant of the MDL, the board of QBL has been actively seeking and reviewing other excellent investment opportunities with a view to increasing shareholder value through projects that have significant potential cashflows. The first of these acquisitions has been the Cannabis and hemp acquisition through the agreement to acquire 55% of Medical Cannabis Limited (MCL) which also controls the Vitahemp business. This acquisition was able to be entered into due to the speed and efficiency of the QBL team, lawyers, and timely cooperation of the ASX, once the opportunity was identified. The QBL Board is continuing in its quest to maximise the potential returns from its investment in the Cannabis and hemp industries, both in the short term and long term, and the significant potential shareholder value that we believe will be generated as a result of these investments.



The historic regulatory changes that have taken place, and been announced since the MCL acquisition was entered into, and the significant advancement of the MCL business plan over this short period as publicly reported by the Company, gives the QBL board every confidence that this investment will far surpass even our initial expectations of the benefit to all our shareholders.



Further lucrative value-adding strategic relationships and opportunities are actively being pursued by the Company with the view to enhancing shareholder value, and will be announced to the market as soon as any such deal is entered into by the Company and when appropriate, as approved by the ASX.





About Queensland Bauxite Ltd





Queensland Bauxite Limited (ASX:QBL) is an Australian listed company focused on the exploration and development of its bauxite tenements in Queensland and New South Wales. The Company's lead project is the South Johnstone Bauxite Deposit in northern Queensland which has rail running through the project area and is approximately 15-24 kilometres from the nearest deep water port. The Company intends to become a bauxite producer with a focus on commencing production at South Johnstone as early as possible. The Company also pursues additional investment opportunities, and has agreed to acquire a 100% shareholding in Medical Cannabis Limited, an Australian leader in the hemp and Cannabis industries, and a 100% shareholding in Medcan Australia Pty Ltd, a company with an ODC cultivation and production License and a DA approved Cannabis production and manufacturing facility.


Exploration Development Incentive Scheme

Adelaide, May 12, 2017 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Andromeda Metals ( ASX:ADN ) is pleased to advise that it has been successful in its application for participation in the Federal Government's Exploration and Development Incentive Scheme (EDI) for the 2015-16 financial year.



Summary



- The Australian Taxation Office has confirmed that a modulation factor of 1.0 is to apply for the purposes of calculating an entity's eligible exploration expenditure for the 2015-16 financial year, meaning that 100% of the 2016 EDI credits can be distributed by the Company to eligible shareholders.



- EDI credits totaling $189,761will be distributed as a tax credit against a shareholder's 2016-17 tax year return.



- The benefit received by individual shareholders will be based on the number of shares held at the Record Date pro-rated to the total shares on issue. Based upon the number of shares currently on issue, which does not take into account any shares to be issued under the currently open non-renounceable Rights Issue, the benefit amounts to 0.047 cents per share.



- New shares to be issued under the non-renounceable Rights Issue will also qualify to receive the EDI credit.



- The cost to the Company of distributing the EDI credits is estimated at $10,000.



- To be eligible, a shareholder must be recorded on the Company's share register at the Record Date, which is 31 May 2017.



Introduction



On 2 February 2015 the Senate passed the legislation in relation to the Exploration Development Incentive Scheme. The EDI scheme is intended to encourage shareholder investment in exploration companies undertaking greenfield mineral exploration in Australia.



In broad terms, from 1 July 2014 the EDI scheme allows small mineral exploration companies with no taxable income to provide a refundable tax offset to their Australian tax resident shareholders by renouncing their tax losses arising from expenditure incurred undertaking eligible greenfields mineral exploration in Australia during the year.



Unlike producing mining companies, junior explorers generally have no revenue against which to deduct exploration expenditure. By allowing junior exploration companies to pass their losses on to shareholders as tax credits, the EDI provides an incentive for investment in the Australian mineral exploration sector.



The EDI scheme is capped at $100 million over the forward estimates, with total EDI credits capped at $25 million for exploration expenditure incurred in 2014-15, $35 million for exploration expenditure incurred in 2015-16, and $40 million for exploration expenditure incurred in 2016-17. It is however the Company's understanding that the Budget Papers released earlier this week by the Federal Government contained advice that it has decided to cancel the EDI scheme from next financial year.



A modulation process is used by the ATO to ensure the cap is not breached each year and to share the benefit evenly amongst eligible explorers. As a result of the modulation process, EDI credits become available for distribution in the year following the year in which the eligible expenditure was incurred.



EDI claim by Andromeda Metals Andromeda Metals undertook exploration activities on a number of its Projects during the 2015-16 financial year incurring costs that qualify as eligible exploration expenditures under the EDI scheme.



Consequently, the Company made application to participate in the EDI scheme and has been advised of its success.



Given that the ATO has confirmed that a modulation factor of 1.0 is to apply for the purposes of calculating an entity's eligible exploration expenditure, this means that tax credits applicable to 100% of the eligible exploration expenditure incurred by the Company are able to be passed back to Andromeda Metals shareholders recorded in the share register at the Record Date.



As such, a total of $189,761 in EDI tax credits is available to be passed back to shareholders who are recorded on the Company's share register at the Record Date of 31 May 2017. Based upon the current number of shares on issue, which does not take into account any shares to be issued under the currently open non-renounceable Rights Issue, this would equate to a tax credit of 0.047 cents per share held.



New shares to be issued under the non-renounceable Rights Issue will also qualify to receive the EDI credit. Shares issued upon exercise of options prior to the Record Date will also be eligible for the tax credit and will impact the EDI distribution per share.



The EDI credits will apply to eligible shareholders for the 2016-17 tax year and must be issued by the Company by 30 June 2017. Shareholders should advise the Company registrar of any changes to their registered address.



Eligible shareholders will be notified by the Company of their EDI credit entitlement in the approved form on 30 June 2017.





About Andromeda Metals Ltd





Andromeda Metals Ltd (ASX:ADN) is an Australian Securities Exchange listed company focusing on mineral exploration for gold, copper and lithium deposits. The company has built a highly prospective exploration portfolio of projects covering 7,969 sq kms within 21 exploration licences located in South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. Andromeda Metals was incorporated on 23 December 1993 and subsequently listed on the ASX on 11 September 1996. The company's head office is in Adelaide, South Australia.

Andromeda Metals' vision is to be a sustainable minerals exploration company providing shareholders with risk managed discovery, development and mining opportunities.
Isavia has instigated a major alteration to its ID pass management process at Keflavik International Airport in Iceland by adopting MTrust, the online identity assurance tool created by Liverpool based Human Recognition Systems (HRS).

Human Recognition Systems is one of the earliest pioneers in applying biometric and cloud-based technology to the challenges of identity for major organisations, through MTrust and its other series of M products.



By going paperless with its airport ID pass management and moving the entire vetting and issuance process online, Isavia has joined other major airports such as London Gatwick by adopting the MTrust solution.







MTrust is the first system of its kind to handle the full process of airport ID pass application management, vetting and issuance online. MTrust is a single online portal for sponsor companies, airline and airport users to manage and issue people, vehicle and driver passes. Keeping this complex process in a protected, cloud-based environment saves money and time for the airport, as well as being a more secure, efficient and error-free system compared with paper-based alternatives.



Neil Norman, CEO and Founder of Human Recognition Systems: We are delighted to be working with Isavia on this project and providing a solution that will deliver increased operational efficiency, enhanced security and auditing, and a positive experience for on-airport customers by allowing passes to be issued faster. Isavias decision to deploy MTrust for Keflavik International Airport shows the growing trend toward automated cloud-based systems by major airports to improve security and efficiency in vital operational processes.



Keflavik International Airport has been experiencing enormous growth in passenger traffic since 2010 after the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajokull. Every year growth has been in double digits and on average growing by 21%. Back in 2010, Keflavik International Airport welcomed about 2.1 million passengers. This year (2017), the airport expects a record number of 8.7 million passengers or growth of 2 million from 2016 (29% growth).



The volume of transfer traffic is also growing, with local carriers Icelandair and WOW air using the airport as a hub between Europe and North America. During summer 2017, 26 airlines will have scheduled flights to the airport and 12 of which operate year-round. The largest tourist markets for Iceland are the United States and the UK.



Throstur Soring, Operations Director at Keflavik International Airport: In an ever-growing airport, we are always looking for ways to improve self-service automation for passengers and airport staff. Our massive passenger growth over a short space of time has inevitably led to a parallel growth in employees, which then also leads to a major increase in the number of airport ID passes being verified and issued. We wanted to make the process easier, both for us and the employee. Thats exactly what we look forward to in using MTrust at our new ID Office.



Before Isavia chose MTrust, the organisation was looking to move away from a paper-based process for airport pass applications, aiming to shorten the procedure and strengthen the auditing trail. Approximately 1,000 new airport employees start at Keflavik International Airport for every additional million passengers, and there are also a high number of seasonal employees at the airport. Implementing a paperless, cloud-based system to manage them would, therefore, be highly beneficial.



In a recent visit to another airports ID Centre that used MTrust, Isavia representatives learned the online pass application process. They were particularly impressed with the interface between MTrust and CEM AC2000 access control system, the same system Isavia uses at Keflavik International Airport. The CEM integration became one of the major reasons for choosing MTrust over other providers.



The challenges associated with facing an average of 21% annual growth year on year are great for Isavia. To introduce new solutions at a faster rate, Keflavik International Airports preference was to choose COTS systems with a proven track record and reliable references.



Other key benefits Isavia will gain from adopting Human Recognition Systems tool is the standardisation of the ID pass procedure, the minimisation of manual input at Keflavik International Airports ID Office and the elimination of incorrect, invalid and rejected passes. Isavia will also benefit from remote printing of temporary passes with enhanced security features, such as photography to aid visual verification and real-time checking of application validity.




Kulbhushan Jadhav issue has reached ICJ ruling and it is a diplomatic victory for India. But Pakistan may still play its card close to its chest and may not honour the ruling as a prestige issue. Even as voices in India are getting united in support of Kulbhshan, the alleged Indian spy, who has been awarded death sentence by Military court in Pakistan has become a pot boiler issue. One thing is very clear as Pakistan army is playing tantrums in dealing with Indian officials caught in no mans land. It is now time for direct action to teach them a permanent lesson and Jadhav be brought back to India at the earliest. India needs to approach United Nations to garner maximum support from the member countries to end the stalemate once for all.

Chitra Krishnan

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
Supreme Court upholds death sentence for all Nirbhaya rape case accused. The convicts deserve to be hanged until death. In the wake of this SC judgement upholding the death sentence on the brutes, the nation has started debating on whether the death by hanging must stay or should be abolished? There are many who still say that hanging or any sort of capital punishment should be abolished in our country. But, I am of the strong view that capital punishment should continue to exist.

In India, the capital punishment is awarded only in the rarest of rare cases and after meticulous investigations and rather very lengthy legal process which takes even decades. The verdict reaches a conclusion after considering all deliberations and arguments. Take the very latest case and just see how many petitions are being filed and re-filed in respect of mercy petition to be considered and reviewed and disposed of. The criminal awarded death sentence is given many options to seek mercy. And, add to that our judiciary that is highly respected for meting out fair verdicts over the years. Above all, we do not have the barbaric or cruel way of carrying out a capital punishment like stoning, beheading or whipping in public and so on.

Hence the death penalty is an ideal mechanism to deter criminals, though whether hanging would prove to be deterrent is yet another topic to debate on. The anti-capital punishment group should think of the trauma and the sufferings the victim and his/her families have undergone and still face. Just imagine looking at the face of the hardcore terrorist or criminal, if he is jailed for a few years and is granted bail. Classic example is the case of that juvenile criminal who was brutally involved in the Nirbhaya Delhi gang rape and after serving just a three year jail term, thanks to the then prevailing law, is out leading perhaps a normal and easy life somewhere.

Nowhow long will it take to see the Nirbhaya rape convicts to be hanged finally? Will criminals again seek a review petition? If so, the Supreme Court must again outright reject their petitions and say enough is enough, the judgement stands for once and for all and that they must hanged. I hope the President will again reject their mercy petition and expedite the process to pave the way for hanging of the rapists, very soon.

Incidentally, I learned that that there are already a good number of criminals who were awarded death sentences and still awaiting their turn to hang  for whatever reasons or for unknown reasons. I think here too, the law must move swiftly and all those death sentence convicts must be hanged without undue delay. Justice will seem to be done only if such hardcore criminals are awarded capital punishment and executed too.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
Dance is a profession that many a times needs showing off of ones body. Especially in the western dance world one can see a lot of skin on display. Wearing Short and exposing clothes, body suits, displaying naked shoulders and mid riff is a common thing for a dancer. This makes a dancer go an extra mile to enhance the body part with tattoos or piercings.

Many dancers today love body piercing; I too call myself one of the many I will agree. Few years back, I was invited to perform at the closing ceremony of the prestigious World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. My performance was watched and praised by who is who from the world of business and politics. In the audience was former President of United States Bill Clinton, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Ambanis, Hindujas, Mittals and many more well known names. Excited and elated by all the praise and cheers I got for my dance, I decided to treat myself with a piercing as a memory of Switzerland and the performance at the world economic forum. I decided to decorate my body with an eyebrow pierce. I will admit that I was lucky not to develop any infection or pain, but at the same time I know about many dancers who have gone through a lot due to the body decoration and piercing.

Often dancer gets inspired by Hollywood and Bollywood icons and their body decorations. Celebrity piercing has always interested paparazzi and fans. Often dancers dance to songs of Hollywood pop icons or from bollywood films and it is not surprising that a dancer gets inspired to make a similar piercing as the star. Stars adore going under the piercing gun, be it movies stars, prominent musicians, supermodels  they all just cannot resist the attraction of having something pierced. So getting inspired by their icons a dancer too adorns a piercing. Be it an Ear piercings, nose piercings, genital piercings, lip and oral piercings. A dancer uses all these types of body cutting to look both more provocative and attractive just like their favourite star.

In Hollywood from Lady Gaga to Britney Spears from Rihanna to Janet Jackson all have piercings and here in Bollywood be it Bipasha Basu, Priyanka Chopra, Katrina Kaif or even Salman Khan all have decorated their bodies with one or more piercings. So it is not very surprising when a dancer opts for a piercing too.

Body piercing has come a long way from the traditional earlobes and nose piercing. Nowadays many dancers have a piercing of the belly button, eyebrow, lips and even tongue, chin and nipples. With personal experience, I can say that any piercing needs care in the initial days to avoid infection, which can lead to severe pain and other complications if not given attention to.

Many dancers impulsively opt for piercing without taking note of their skin type, proper sterilization and information about the post piercing care. Lack of hygiene, lack of proper sterilization of the area and the piercing gun or the needle are the common reasons why pierced area catch infections. Also there are many dancers who have sensitive skin and when they clean the pierced area with antiseptic, they get irritant eczema.

While piercing the earlobes and eyebrows result in common complications, nose and naval infections can sometimes be fatal too. A nose infection could result in swelling and extreme pain for few days at the piercing site. Also, studs and rings can get caught in daily clothes, while practicing steps or during quick changes between dance performances, which can further aggravate the problem and also spoil the performance of the dancer. There are times when a stud gets caught in the dancing clothes or strings and pulls the skin, leaving one in extreme pain. This unexpected rubbing too can lead to further complications.

Best is that one should avoid visiting random piercing shops and opt for experienced hands to avoid infection. One of my young troupe dancer girls got her belly button pierced without informing her parents and opted for cheaper piercing method and place and realized her mistake later. She kept the piercing covered to avoid family looking at it and due to which she could not clean the spot at regular intervals. Ultimately the truth came out, when the area got badly infected and then she had to be given heavy antibiotics to control the inflammation. This often happens because cheaper shops are not usually hygiene conscious and on the other hand a medical expert charges a steep price, but takes all the necessary precautions.

After Piercing one should put an antibiotic ointment and gently wash the area twice a day for atleast 15-20 days after the piercing to prevent any kind of infection. Infection if any can be treated with antibiotic tablets and ointments, where as allergies need to be treated with anti-allergic and steroid antibiotic ointments.

So if you are one of those dancers who wish to decorate their body with a piercing, here are a few pointer for you to keep in mind so as to not develop issues with your piercing and you can enjoy the decoration for a long time to come

Choose the area that you want to decorate with proper thought and not because some other dancer has it in the same place.

Make sure you have some free time at hand and you are not busy with shows or rehearsals so you can take good care of it.

Choose the piercing center or the piercing parlour carefully.

Note down and sincerely follow all the instructions given by the medical practitioner for post piercing care.

Religiously take care of the piercing area just the way you take care of your dancing wounds during dance rehearsals or practice.

Once you are ready and piercing has healed, get ready to show the world your body decoration, making sure it is not pulled during practices or shows or otherwise.

Sandip Soparrkar

Artscape

(Sandip Soparrkar is a well known Latin and Ballroom dancer, a World Book of Records holder and a Bollywood choreographer who has been honoured with National Achievement Award and National Excellence Award by the Govt of India. He can be contacted on sandipsoparrkar06@gmail.com)
Availability of voter enrolment forms while seeking admission in colleges will ease the woes of youth who find it difficult to register their names in voter list.

Mumbaikars are pleased with the election commissions directive asking colleges to enrol students as voters at the time of obtaining admission. According to them this step will create awareness among youth about the importance of voting. Even though a person is eligible to vote after attaining the age of 18 years many of them are unable to exercise their franchise as their names dont figure in voter lists. Many of them are unaware about the voter registration process and dont know where to enrol themselves. Even those who have enrolled their names have to run from pillar to post to ensure whether their names appear in the voting lists.

Sometimes youth are unable to find their names in the voter list despite submitting the forms to electoral registration officer of their ward. Many youth find the registration activity a tedious process as they have to fill up forms and submit the necessary documents like identity and address proof hence they dont come forward to register their names. While some others who have migrated to Mumbai from others cities are unable to register their names in voter list as they lack local address proof which is necessary for enrolment. Moreover, the lackadaisical attitude of the enrolment officers makes the registration process cumbersome for aspiring voters.

Sudhir Sonawane a Borivali resident said, I have been trying to enrol my name in the voter list. However, I have been finding it difficult to register my name as the electoral registration officer has been asking me to come after two days. When I had gone to the office for registration process, they didnt accept my forms.

Sameer Wankhede a TYBsc student from Malad said, I appreciate the election commissions circular asking colleges to issue voter enrolment forms to students when they seek admission. This process will ease the woes of youth who are finding it difficult to enrol their names in the voter list.

Rajesh Doshi a FY Bcom student from Kandivali said, Already the election commission has been taking various steps to increase voting percentage like appealing people to come forward and register their names in voter list. They also had created awareness among people by releasing advertisements in newspapers, hoardings and local trains. Thus the election commission has taken a proactive step to increase voter enrolment.

The enrolment of first time voters accounts for 33% of the population within.

We will inquire with students who have completed 18 years of age to ascertain if they have enrolled themselves as voters. In case they have not been enrolled we will ask them to register their names. Officials will assist students to fill up the voter registration forms, said Shirish Mohod, Deputy Chief Electoral Officer (CEO).

College principals have been appointed as nodal officers to collect the enrolment forms. After students submit the forms to colleges they will have to forward the same to collectors, he added.
World Family Day is celebrated on May 15 every year. It is also observed as the International Day of Families. This day is held annually and it is a global observance. This day was founded by the United Nations General Assembly in the year, 1993. The World Family Day celebrates the importance of families. On this day, a get together with the family brings happiness in all the members of the house.

(The views expressed by the author in the article are his/her own.)
The Shiv Sena sharpened its attack on the Centre over the absence of a full-time defence minister and accused it of toying with national security.

It has been three months since the change of the defence minister but we do not have anybody handling the ministry full time as yet. A nation as big as India not having a full-time defence minister amounts to toying with national security, the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece Saamana.

People are responsible for this (of voting BJP-led government to power) and soldiers are now bearing the brunt of this misdeed (peoples choice), it said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was given the additional charge of the Defence Ministry in March after Manohar Parrikar resigned to take on his new role of Goa Chief Minister.

The Sena also said it is evident from the casual manner in which issues of soldiers and farmers are being handled that the government is hit by a mental scam.

People who are today roaming around as saviours of the nation are not able to hear out farmers nor can they lend a ear to the sorrows of family members of soldiers being brutally killed. The slaying of soldiers in the past one year should be treated as culpable homicide by the government, it said.

Senas criticism of the government comes in the backdrop of the killing of a young Kashmiri Army officer Lt Ummer Fayaz.

Fayaz had gone to attend the wedding of the daughter of his maternal uncle at Batapura, about 74 kms from Srinagar, from where he was abducted by militants on Tuesday. His bullet riddled body was found on Wednesday morning.
Except for the New American , these are just scripted, emotional stories blaming measles in Minnesota on the FALSE claims of a link between vaccines and autism and the antivaxxers who promote it. Newpapers are like department stores, airlines and banks: there are only a handful left in the country and they share the same basics.

Note: Minnesota seems to be going the way of California. Measles madness hits the otherwise logical midwest. The Boston Herald called vaccination choice a "hanging offense." Seems the blue states are seeing red when it comes to medical choice. Very unsettling. By Anne Dachel

Minnesota is a SOLIDLY Democratic state, and I think they're going to use this measles issue to push for an end to exemptions. It makes sense. It happened in California, another Democratic state, but I don't think that Minnesota will command the attention that California did.

***May 9, 2017, New American: Measles Outbreak Prompts Outrage Against Anti-vaxers

An outbreak of measles amongst a small unvaccinated population in Minnesota could spell trouble for the anti-vax community as it may prompt yet another push for forced vaccinations by vaccine advocates. The media is using the latest outbreak to criticize anti-vax groups and tout the benefits of vaccinations, despite the science that links vaccines to a number of long-term health issues.

And whether the CDC can even be considered a trustworthy entity is another issue. According to a controversial 2016 film directed by autism advocate Dr. Andrew Wakefield entitled Vaxxed: From Coverup to Catastrophe, the CDC was behind a major cover-up of the MMR vaccines connection to autism. The documentary is based on revelations by CDC whistleblower Dr. William Thompson, a former senior scientist at the CDC who admits that the organization destroyed evidence linking the MMR vaccination to autism.

But while Thompsons revelations were groundbreaking, the mainstream media virtually staged an all-out blackout. Instead, it waits for stories of measles outbreaks to launch a media firestorm. ...

May 9, 2017, Philly.com: Health Highlights: May 9, 2017

They said concerns of a link between measles vaccination and autism were stoked by vaccine skeptics.

"What we have now is a community that was really influenced by these anti-vaccine groups. And they've performed a natural experiment: to forgo the measles vaccine based on this propaganda," David Johnson, program manager with the Hennepin County Health Department, told NBC News.

Somali immigrants have been hardest hit in the outbreak.

"We've seen that the vaccine rates in the community that's being affected right now were once about the same or even a little higher than our average. They've dropped to about half of that," Johnson said.

"And unfortunately now we are seeing the result. Measles is spreading rapidly in the community and 11 children are hospitalized. And at the same time there is no evidence of any corresponding drop in autism in the community," he told NBC News.

The only positive aspect of the outbreak is that it shows that anti-vaccine activists are wrong, according to health officials.

May 9, 2017, National Post: Anti-vaxxers converted Minnesotas Somali community. Now, the state faces historic measles outbreak

May 9, 2017, Slate.com: The Right Should Blame Trumps Anti-Vaxxer Pals, Not Islam, for a Measles Outbreak in Minnesota

In the midst of the second measles outbreak in the state in six years, Somali immigrants in Minnesota have found themselves caught between a manipulative anti-vaxxer movement and rising anti-immigrant activism in right-wing politics. More than 40 cases of the measles have been reported in the state, home to the largest Somali population in the U.S., in the past month.

The anti-vaxxer streak in Minnesotan Somali communities began around 2008, when parents began expressing worries about the disproportionate number of Somali children in special-education classes. A University of Minnesota study found that Somali children were slightly more likely than white childrenand considerably more likely than the general populationto be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. Somali children with autism were significantly more likely to develop intellectual disabilities than autistic children in any other racial or ethnic group.

Because the causes of autism are unknown, there are no satisfactory answers for Somali parents concerned about the wellbeing of their current and future children. Public-health officials say it could be just a statistical fluke, as can be the case with clusters of other noncontagious conditions. Other floated explanatory theories, like genetic predisposition, vitamin D deficiency, and intermarriage all fall short of justifying the gap. Communities began calling autism the American disease, because theres no Somali word for autism and the condition is not recognized in Somalia.

May 9, 2017, NBC News Measles Outbreak in Minnesota Caused by Vaccine Skepticswww.nbcnews.com/.../measles-outbreak-minnesota-caused-vaccine-skeptics-n756246

May 9, 2017, CBS News: Why is Minnesota experiencing the worst measles outbreak in nearly 30 years?

May 8, 2017, CNN: Anti-vaccine groups blamed in Minnesota measles outbreak

May 7, 2017, Yahoo News: Anti-vaccers descended on Minnesota and the result is sadly predictable

Vaccines do not cause autism, according to numerous studies that have debunked the perceived links between vaccination and the developmental disorder. Medical experts say there is no debate about the safety of these vaccines.

While it's true that autism prevalence has increased in the U.S. in the last two decades, that doesn't necessarily mean autism is growing worse. A 2015 study found individuals who would have previously been diagnosed with other intellectual disabilities are now being correctly diagnosed with autism.

May 4, 2017, CBS News: Measles outbreak in Minnesota sickens dozens Research that links the vaccine to autism has been widely discredited. But Anab Gulaid, a University of Minnesota researcher who worked on the autism study, said autism is often diagnosed in children around the same age as they receive their measles vaccine, so some fears persist.

"It's an emotional issue for people," she said. 

Evidence-based research has repeatedly shown no relationship between the MMR vaccine and autism, and there should be no hesitations about vaccines, said Patsy Stinchfield, senior director of infection control at Children's Minnesota hospital.

"In medical science, there is no debate about the safety of vaccines," she said.

May 3, 2017, ABC News: Measles outbreak sickens dozens of Minnesota Somalis

Minnesota law requires that a child be vaccinated before enrolling in child care, early education or school. But it also allows exemptions for medical reasons. Research that links the vaccine to autism has been widely discredited. But Anab Gulaid, a University of Minnesota researcher who worked on the autism study, said autism is often diagnosed in children around the same age



Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism.


By Anne Dachel



Wakefield is labeled a menace and a lot worse. The editorial cited the bogus quote that Wakefield never gave to the Washington Post, I dont feel responsible at all.

This is a vitriolic and personal attack. They try to convince the reader that Wakefield is a bad man. We dont need to talk about his research. The issue is not autism. From Dallas Morning News:

Discredited doctor who falsely linked vaccines to autism is now Texas' toxic export

Goodness knows, Texas has its share of crosses to bear, not a few of them situated in our state Capitol.

This reference is not to our Legislature (this time), but to another  and perhaps farther-reaching  menace: our planet's No. 1 vaccination denier.

Discredited ex-physician Andrew Wakefield, the British researcher who falsely linked routine immunizations to autism, lives in Austin now. And he is as keen to spread his anti-science, potentially dangerous gospel as ever. He may be Texas' most toxic export.

A case in point: Wakefield  who is no longer a doctor, having been booted from the profession in his home country  met repeatedly with immigrant families in a Minnesota Somali community, where legitimate concern over autism diagnoses had taken root.

That community is now ground zero for the state's worst measles outbreak in three decades. More than 40 people  nearly all of them children  have been infected with the disease, which was previously, thanks to vaccines, eradicated in the U.S. Read the rest here.
Note: Thank you to Dr. James Lyons-Weiler for calling out the Boston Herald's despicable editorial calling for violence against those who elect for medical freedom and vaccine choice. Find his books on Amazon here.

Rachell Cohen,

You dont know me. You should. In fact, every newspaper should know about me from my book. By all rights (Im told) it should be a New York Times best-seller. But your Pharma masters wont let you publish anything negative about vaccines. They OWN you, the same way they OWN both sides of the aisle in Congress.

Now that were on such good terms, let me tell you what I think of your Editorial. Its hate speech. It, like all bigotry, is based on pure arrogance mixed with ignorance. And I invite your boss to retract your Editorial. And I invite you to do your homework. Get to know some of these crazed, insane, hapless parents. I did.

Well after I vaccinated both of my sons.

Neither of whom have vaccine-induced encephalopathy-mediated autism.

Do you know why I stand with the parents who call for warnings against the current vaccine schedule, and by those who call for spreading them out, and for those who call for safer vaccines without neurotoxins like mercury, and aluminum?

Because Ive read the REST of the science. Not the garbage studies that CDC put up as definitive. I read over 2,000 studies on autism. Including all the studies ignored by the CDC that found positive association between vaccines and autism. And you know what?

The parents are right.
Even if NATO deploys more troops, the political and security situation in Afghanistan will likely get worse, US spy chiefs said. Australia said it was "open" to sending more soldiers after Berlin signaled reservations.





US top intelligence officers offered a grim assessment of Afghanistan's future, saying that the Taliban were set to "continue to make gains."





"Afghan security forces' performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertions, poor logistics support and weak leadership," the director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, told the US Senate Intelligence Committee.





The US and its NATO allies ended their combat mission against the Taliban in 2014, leaving the field to Kabul troops. Ever since, the US-backed government has been

Kabul now controls or influences only 57 percent of the country's territory, according to the US estimates.





"Unless we change something... the situation will continue to deteriorate and we'll lose all the gains that we've invested in over the last several years," said General Vincent Stewart of the Defense Intelligence Agency on Thursday.





Kabul still dependent on West - Read More, DW




2.5 Million Muslim Armenians Live in Turkey

The revival of the national identity of Armenians, who live in different Turkish cities and villages and have converted to Islam, is speeding up breaking taboos. The specialists of the field relate this to various political factors which enable these people to return to their own roots. The director of research fund "Study Center for Western Armenian Issues", Haykazun Alvrtsyan says that the movement started long ago, and it was greatly influenced by the Kurdish armed rebellion, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Turkey's campaign to join the European Union. The 88th article of the first Turkish constitution adopted in 1924 said that all Turkish residents, regardless of their religious and national belonging are considered Turkish. In order to improve its chances for EU membership, Turkey had to revise some of the points in its constitution. However, even after some changes in the country's constitution the terms Turkish citizen and Turkish national succeed each other -- each Turkish citizen is considered a Turk. Alvrtsyan says that only upon the Treaty of Lausanne Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities were recognized as religious, not ethnic. A huge amount of other ethnicities -- 50 ethno-religious groups speaking 36 languages, were recognized as Turkish. "Now this taboo has been broken, can you imagine what kind of a movement has been started? Armenians are no exception in this movement, but on our part the interesting thing is that Turkey today has the Armenian Question -- a complicated political wrinkle. It does not have a Syrian, Greek or Jewish question, but it has an Armenian Question, which is a serious problem for Turkey, and in this context the revival of Armenians unlike other nations is highly important," Alvrtsyan said. Addressing the question of Islam-converted Armenians, he mentioned that their number grew up till 3 million, a part of whom emigrated. In Germany alone, there were 300,000 Muslim Armenians. He insisted that today in the Eastern part of Turkey, in various areas of historic Armenia there live at least 2.5 million Muslim Armenians, half of which are hiding. "Both of the groups are converted Muslims, but (those who hide their ethnic identity), unlike the other group, secretly preserve the national traditions, ceremonies, beliefs. And they marry among themselves, which is a highly important factor. The other group gets baptized and returns to the Armenian Church. The number of these people is not much yet, because pressure and persecution against Armenians still continue. Thus, they endanger their and their children's lives, property, their children's future," Alvrtsyan said. "But let me tell you that last week I baptized several Alevis and Muslim Armenians from Dersim. One of them had his private business in Dersim four years ago and now he lost it because he announced he is an Armenian and he became a member of the Armenian union in Dersim." Armenians in Hamashen have the Vagf union, and in Istanbul they established Hatig. Last month Armenians from Mush and Taron established the social and touristic union of Taron. According to Turkey's State Statistical data, there are 37,000 Armenian families in 17 cities of the country -- a total of about 200,000 (about 50-60,000 in Istanbul). "Upon official data there are 3,000 Armenians in Mush now, but the locals say that there are more. In Van, again the locals say that they form 12 percent of the 350,000 population, which makes 40-42,000 Armenians. Recently, when there was an earthquake in Van, numerous sacred books, crosses, church relics were found from under the ruins. It was surprising that Armenian icons were found from that unilaterally Kurdish and Islamic city," he said.
Florida-based Western Global Airlines is flying 100m flowers to Miami. The leading carrier of Mothers Day flowers to the US is operating 76 dedicated flights between Miami and South America to carry exotic varieties of roses and carnations that do not grow in the US, primarily from Ecuador and Colombia.

Packed flowers are flown on Western Globals temperature controlled 747-400 and MD-11 freighter aircraft to Miami, each carrying more than 1 million flowers for customs clearance and delivery to wholesalers and thousands of stalls, florist shops and grocery stores all over the US.

It also flies planeloads of Mothers Day flowers from Africa to Europe.

President and chief executive, Jim Neff, says: As a family-friendly company, we are delighted to play a role in making millions of moms feel special and loved. We are experts at airlifting perishables all over the world  fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, and of course flowers. Shipping agricultural goods can provide added challenges, especially given their short shelf-life. For this endeavor, ensuring fast, responsive service and optimal temperature-controlled environment is of utmost importance, and our dedicated team is once again delivering with excellence.

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May 11, 2017

CAIRO  The two-day visit of Pope Francis to Cairo on April 28-29 was valuable for the Egyptian government. Tourism Minister Yehia Rashed told local press April 29 that the pope's visit at this time shows the world the real value of Egypt and would help revive tourism to the country.

On the first day of his visit, mainly aimed to consolidate interfaith dialogue, Francis met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Sheikh Ahmed el-Tayeb, and Pope Tawadros II, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

We live under the sun of the one merciful God.  May the sun of a renewed fraternity in the name of God rise in this sun-drenched land, to be the dawn of a civilization of peace and encounter.  In Egypt, not only did the sun of wisdom rise, but also the variegated light of the religions shone in this land, the pontiff said in his speech at the International Peace Conference held April 28 at Al-Azhar conference center in Cairo.

At his next stop, speaking in front of Sisi, Prime Minister Sherif Ismail, Minister of Defense Sodqi Sobhi, Tayeb and a number of religious figures at a conference in Al-Masah Hotel, Francis described Egypt as Umm al-Dunya" ("Mother of the World"). He ended his speech saying Blessed be Egypt my people, quoting the Bible.

The next day, Francis celebrated mass for Egypt's Catholic community at the Air Defense Stadium in Cairo, and later met with the heads of Egypt's tiny Catholic community at St. Leo's Patriarchal Seminary in Cairo's Maadi neighborhood.

In this context, there were calls in Egypt to take advantage of the popes historic visit at this tumultuous time to improve the countrys image worldwide and promote tourism, which is affected by the unstable security situation.

Indeed, the tourism sector in Egypt has declined significantly since 2010 due to political instability, according to a report issued by the World Tourism and Travel Council on March 20, which indicated that the amount of money spent by international tourists fell below 30 billion Egyptian pounds ($1.7 billion) in 2016 compared to 140 billion pounds ($7.2 billion) in 2010.

All Islamic and Christian religious institutions should invest in this visit to entrench the principles of equal citizenship, spread the culture of peace and work for the happiness of mankind, said Egyptian Minister of Religious Endowments Mohamed Mokhtar Gomaa, commenting on the visit to the state-run Middle East News Agency on April 28.

He continued, The ministry will work to build bridges of peace and spread a culture of tolerance with the whole world."

Dina Tadros, a former adviser to the Ministry of Tourism for Coptic heritage, told Al-Monitor by phone, The pope is seen as the guiding compass of world leaders because of his prestigious standing, and his visit to Egypt will reflect on the tourism sector.

She added, The pope of the Vatican improved the image of Egypt before the international community when he talked about our country in the speeches he delivered during his visit. The pontiff cited a verse of the Bible, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people. He even spoke in Arabic to say Egypt is Umm al-Dunya and described Egypt as the dawn of a civilization of peace and encounter.

Explaining how the pope's statement would promote religious tourism to Egypt, she said, The pope said he is visiting Egypt as a 'pilgrim of peace'  and this will encourage the more than 1 billion Catholics worldwide to visit our country.

She continued, The pope rebutted all negative views of security In Egypt, after insisting not to ride an armored vehicle inside the country. This is good publicity for Egypt.

The number of Catholics in the world is estimated at 1.2 billion, according to statistics by the Vatican, and more than 40% of them live in Latin America, with the highest concentration of Catholics in the world in Brazil.

Tadros said Egypt should benefit from Francis visit by forming a committee composed of representatives of the ministries concerned with the tourism sector and tasked with opening channels of communication with churches, identifying key countries that send religious tourists and equipping religious tourist sites in Egypt.

Coptic writer and thinker Gamal Asaad acknowledged the benefits of the pope's visit. He told Al-Monitor, The pope's visit topped all missions carried out by the Ministry of Tourism to various countries of the world to promote Egypt.

He said, The pope has offered Egypt priceless publicity, pointing to the importance of government action at all levels to invest the results of the visit and take advantage of the role of Al-Azhar and the Coptic Church to embellish the international image of Egypt.

Asaad added, Pope Francis visit was beneficial to Egypt; it laid the foundations on which the government should rely to promote tourism. The visit alone is not enough.

Journalist Abdallah al-Sanawi said that Francis' visit to Cairo is a pastoral visit for Egyptian Catholics. Even if the pope talked to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi about Guilio Regeni, the visit was not a political visit but rather a spiritual one for Al-Azhar and the Coptic Church, he told Al-Monitor.

On Feb. 3, 2016, Egyptian authorities had found the body of Regeni, an Italian graduate student conducting research in Egypt, on the outskirts of Cairo with clear signs of torture nine days after he disappeared on the evening of the fifth anniversary of the January 25 Revolution. The Italian government asked the Egyptian government to conduct an official investigation.

Sanawi said the pope's visit is neither political nor economic, but will positively reflect on Egypts general political and economic climate.

Al-Azhar will benefit the most from this visit. Egyptians saw the importance of Al-Azhar in the photo of the embrace exchanged between Pope Francis and the sheikh of Al-Azhar. This gave momentum to Al-Azhar, which is currently battling a fierce media campaign against it, he said.

Some Egyptian media outlets are claiming that some of the texts and curricula of Al-Azhar incite violence. On April 9, Egyptian TV presenter Ahmed Moussa said, Most terrorists are Al-Azhar graduates.

Asaad concluded that the government must act at all levels to invest the outcomes of the popes visit and benefit from the role of Al-Azhar and the Coptic Church to change the image of Egypt abroad.
May 12, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  On April 26, the Ministry of Interior in Gaza launched a crackdown against what it described as propagandists. During this unprecedented move, 17 Palestinian journalists and activists were arrested for several hours before being released after pledging not to publish news about internal Palestinian affairs before verifying it with official sources.

The crackdown came in the wake of escalating disputes between President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, and only a day after the Gaza Interior Ministry threatened to take decisive action against social media propagandists, saying, Some activists deliberately spread rumors on social media in order to stir up confusion among Palestinian citizens.

On April 25, Hamas-affiliated al-Majd website, which mainly focuses on security issues, reported that the Hamas security services unveiled a dangerous plan thought up by security and intelligence agencies  without specifying which  to flood Gaza with rumors in order to create a state of confusion and chaos and disturb security in the Strip.

In the days leading up to the crackdown, rumors had been spreading in Gaza, mainly about murders and thefts spread by fake accounts, which proved to be invalid hours after they were published.

Spokesman for the Interior Ministry in Gaza Eyad al-Bozom told Al-Monitor that the crackdown came in light of the events that took place in Gaza following the assassination of Hamas leader Mazen Faqha on March 24, such as the arrest of dozens of individuals accused of feeding Israeli security intelligence. Meanwhile, pressure is increasing in Gaza and the siege is being tightened, while Palestinian parties are attempting to exploit the harsh living conditions in Gaza with the purpose of affecting the citizens psyche by spreading rumors and false news, Bozom added.

He said, We have done our duty and we have taken legal action against some propagandists, especially those spreading rumors on social media. In return, we have introduced a set of guidelines for citizens, warning them about such rumors.

The guidelines mainly instructed citizens to rely on official sources to extract information on public affairs, not to share information from anonymous sources on their private accounts.

Bozom said that the Interior Ministry arrested 17 activists and journalists who promoted rumors on social media. After holding them for several hours, they signed pledges not to publish rumors and verify their information before publishing anything. He noted that his ministry will continue with its mission and refer the violators to the public prosecution for a more severe punishment  i.e., trial and imprisonment.

Palestinian journalist Mohammed Zaher, who was arrested on charges of promoting rumors, told Al-Monitor, I was arrested for sharing news on my personal Facebook account about an internal issue in the area where I live in central Gaza," noting that he made sure the information about the issue  which he preferred not to give any specifics about  was accurate.

Zaher explained that police officers came to his house on April 28 to arrest him before he surrendered. He was released on April 29, but during the 22 hours of his arrest, he was questioned three times about the issue he posted about. He was then summoned on May 1 to sign a pledge not to publish any news on internal affairs before verifying it with official sources.

Nasr Abu Foul, the head of the Palestinian Network for Media and director of Nida al-Watan website, told Al-Monitor, I was arrested on April 25 [a day before the crackdown was launched] by the security services in Gaza on charges of spreading rumors and false news and inciting the street against the government, but I denied all these charges.

He added, I was arrested and questioned for several hours and released on April 26 after signing a pledge to respect the law and order. Abu Foul further noted that the security services confiscated his personal computer and blocked his Facebook account, stressing that he received good treatment during the investigation.

Tahseen al-Astal, the deputy head of the Palestinian Journalists Union, told Al-Monitor that his union rejected the arrest campaign carried out by the security services in Gaza against a number of journalists, pointing out that they contacted the Bar Association and human rights organizations in Gaza to help with their release.

He explained that the unions position is consistent in rejecting the arrest of any journalist, noting that Article 19 of the Palestinian Basic Law guarantees the freedom of opinion and expression. Astal also stressed that the security services actions violate all local and international conventions and laws concerning freedom of opinion.

A number of journalism students in Palestinian universities in Gaza, and specifically al-Quds Open University, led a five-day online campaign on April 11 with the hashtag #SpareUsYourAnalysis, in order to raise awareness and put an end to rumors and analyses that affect the community and serve Israel.

Professor of journalism at al-Aqsa University in Gaza Khaled al-Halabi told Al-Monitor that rumors affect the psychological state of Palestinian citizens and called on journalists and activists to explain and verify any information before publishing it instead of only running after scoops as many Palestinian media outlets do.

It should be noted that all journalists arrested could not provide accurate sources for the information they shared and immediately deleted the rumors they shared from their accounts, and they all signed the pledges in order to be released.

Halabi urged Palestinian journalists to verify the information before publishing it, especially when it comes to a certain number of vaguely addressed issues that plague the Palestinian arena as a result of the internal division on the one hand and the conflict with Israel on the other.

He stressed that social media made it difficult to control the volume of information available to citizens, noting that journalists are easy to control in terms of preventing them from publishing inaccurate information, but fake propagandist accounts on social media cannot be tamed.

The Journalists Union and human rights organizations have not reported any arrests since the release of the 17 journalists and activists, which proves that the crackdown has succeeded in reducing the rumors that have recently spread in the Gaza Strip, especially those related to security issues.
May 12, 2017

Incumbent Hassan Rouhani maintains his lead in the run-up to Iran's May 19 presidential election. Two new election surveys show him ahead, going into the third and final nationally televised debate and with less than a week to go before the vote.

A telephone survey conducted May 7-8 by the Iranian Students Polling Agency (ISPA) had Rouhani at 42% of the vote, cleric Ebrahim Raisi at 27%, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf at 25%, First Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri at 3%, former Culture Minister Mostafa Mirsalim at 3%, and former Mines and Industries Minister Mostafa Hashemi-Taba at 2%. No undecided vote was reported, nor was a sample size or margin of error. ISPA is a longtime public opinion research agency in Tehran.

A telephone survey conducted May 8-11 by International Perspectives on Public Opinion (IPPO) had Rouhani at 29%, Ghalibaf at 12%, Raisi at 11%, and Jahangiri, Mirsalim and Hashemi-Taba at 1% or less. The survey had undecided voters at 28%, and a further 20% declined to answer or gave other responses.

IPPOs survey was released as a rolling average, so the May 11 data consist of 1,212 interviews conducted over a total of four nights. As the most recent data are released, the earlier nights interviews drop out of the average. The margin of error was reported at +/- 2.81-3.72%, which would indicate sample sizes of between roughly 700 and 1,212, depending on the question. IPPO, a new firm based in Washington, has not previously released polling data. It will release tracking poll data on a daily basis until May 18, the day before the election.

The differences between the two surveys can be explained by variations in methodology. As noted, ISPA did not report an undecided vote, while IPPO did. When stratifying the sample, ISPA took geography into account, while IPPO also included data on the various Iranian telephone service providers.

In the IPPO survey, Rouhani would have 54% of what Western pollsters call the decided vote, those respondents who have settled on a candidate, leading IPPO to suggest that Rouhani could win a first-round victory if the election were held today.

Both the IPSA and IPPO surveys were conducted after the first two presidential debates, held April 28 and May 5. The surprise winner of the first debate was Rouhanis own first vice president, Jahangiri, who made news with his fiery attacks on the presidents opponents.

Observers said Raisi, who is relatively new to national electoral politics, underwhelmed in his first outing, but both surveys suggest that he has nonetheless consolidated his position among conservative voters by drawing even with Ghalibaf. An earlier ISPA survey, conducted some two weeks ago, before the first debate, had Rouhani at 44%, Ghalibaf at 23% but Raisi at only 17%, or down 10% compared to today. This older survey was conducted face-to-face (dar meydan ve maaber), rather than by telephone.

The raucous nature of the presidential debates may surprise foreign observers who have an impression of Iranian politics as more subdued. Consider the 2013 election campaign, where Principlist candidate Ali Akbar Velayati attacked chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and his diplomatic policies in a memorable debate. Their tense exchange represented a very public difference of opinion, played out on national television, between Irans clerical leadership and the incumbent administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Jalili was running as the candidate of the hard-line Endurance Front, while Velayati was a close foreign policy adviser to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a post that he still holds.

During that same debate, Rouhani stated what would come to represent his policy of seeking accommodation with the West on the nuclear issue: Its very good for centrifuges to spin, but its also good for people's lives to spin. The Iranian state broadcaster, IRIB, would later report that 45 million people, or more than half of Irans population, had tuned in.

This year, the final debate will be held May 12, a week before the first round of voting. Turnout is expected to be high. The IPPO survey found that 72% of respondents are certainly or a lot likely to vote. Official turnout in the 2013 election was 73%.

ISPA did not respond to requests from Al-Monitor for more information about its earlier face-to-face survey, so questions remain about its methodology. As with the telephone survey, ISPA did not report the sample size or margin, two standard disclosure items for legitimate surveys. This lack of disclosure is a persistent problem in Iranian polling.

Face-to-face surveys are common in developing countries, where telephone coverage may be limited or unreliable. The Pew Research Center conducts such surveys around the world. The obvious drawback is that face-to-face surveys take longer to conduct, as interviewers have to fan out across a country and contact respondents one by one in person.

For the ISPA face-to-face survey, it took two days to conduct an unknown number of interviews April 23-24. ACSOR Surveys, the well-regarded Afghanistan firm that works for Gallup International and the Asia Foundation in that country, also conducts face-to-face surveys. By way of comparison, an ACSOR survey for Gallup International from November 2016 took nine days to collect 2,787 interviews nationwide. Still, pollsters in Afghanistan face significant security and infrastructure challenges that their counterparts in Iran do not.
May 12, 2017

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) issued a statement May 7 on the efforts of a team of experts affiliated with the US, British and German Ministries of Defense working on restructuring the peshmerga-affiliated military forces, with the aim of building a professional and integrated military force for the peshmerga.

Gen. Jamal Iminki, the chief of staff of the peshmerga forces, announced April 29 that the Peshmerga Ministry is seeking to review the structure of the ministry. He noted that the first stage of this procedure would be the reorganization of two brigades with the help of the United States.

On April 19, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which is part of the US Department of Defense, announced the approval of the United States to sell $295 million worth of weapons and military equipment to equip two infantry brigades in the peshmerga, as well as two artillery support brigades.

According to Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG representative in the United States, America is paying for these shipments. Peshmerga Secretary-General Jabbar Yawer described the deal April 20 "as part of the American's ongoing support for the Kurdish forces.

On April 19, Yawer said in a statement, Washington has previously provided training, weapons and equipment to two other peshmerga brigades.

In fact, the United States has completed the training of 18,000 peshmerga forces, provided food and fuel among other supplies for 26,000 troops and paid the salaries of 36,000 peshmerga forces.

The ongoing war with the Islamic State (IS) promoted the nature of relations between the peshmerga and the US military, according to the March 28 statement of Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of the US-led coalition against IS.

In July 2016, the KRG and the US government signed for the first time a memorandum of understanding that includes military cooperation.

The US support of the peshmerga forces is not limited to government agencies, but there are also legislative bodies in the United States supporting KRG projects that are related to obtaining as much autonomy as possible from Baghdad.

In the same vein, US Sen. Marco Rubio expressed April 26 his concern about arming the peshmerga forces through the Iraqi government. The Kurds have proven to be incredible allies in the fight against radicalism.  I am open-minded to the idea of direct aid.

The government in Washington, however, has not changed its policy on arming the peshmerga so far, insisting on sending weapons to the KRG through the Iraqi central government.

The US Department of State stressed April 20, The central government of Iraq is the only authorized party to buy weapons in the United States. The United States is selling weapons and supplies to and through the central government of Iraq.

For years, the KRG has been struggling to obtain military aid without Baghdads approval. Kurdistan, for instance, has been benefiting from the services from major lobbying companies to influence Washingtons policies in this direction. These efforts, in addition to fears from some US Congress bodies about Irans control of the central government in Baghdad, led to a bill in April 2015 requiring the US government to send aid to the peshmerga without reference to Baghdad.

The bill that dealt with Kurdistan as a state eventually failed. Nevertheless, special forces in the US military have been involved with Kurdish forces in joint raids without gaining Baghdads permission. The Iraqi government, however, has managed to circumscribe the direct relations between the two forces.

Michael Knights, a senior security expert at the Washington Institute, told Al-Monitor, After the notorious Hawija raid in 2015 that killed a US soldier, Baghdad objected strongly to its lack of foreknowledge of the raid. Now the joint US-Kurdish raids are with Baghdads permission; this was a condition for the continuation of the US raids.

It is clear that Washington sees the Iraqi central government led by Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi as a strategic ally in its war against IS. The United States cannot dispense with the central government in Baghdad under the policy of relying on local allies in the war against IS, instead of going into direct war with the terrorist organization.

Moreover, the American government does not wish to weaken Abadis stance, fearing the control of parties close to Iran on the central government.

This is an obstacle to the development of direct relations between the peshmerga forces and the US military, even though the peshmerga forces are seen as one of America's most important allies in the region.

The design of the new US-equipped Kurdish brigades is that of light infantry forces capable of fighting [IS], but lacking the heavy equipment to fight a modern army like the Iraqi military. There are no anti-aircraft weapons or tanks, signaling that the US is trying to build a force that complements the Iraqi military, but which cannot conduct major offensive operations on its own, Knights, who advises the US military, said.

The April 19 DSCA statement stressed the proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

The United States does not seem willing to build a parallel force to the Iraqi army in the Kurdistan Region at this point. It is, however, trying to build organized forces in Iraqi Kurdistan that would serve as an ally and that could be easily developed into a modern army if Washington decides to do so in the coming period.
May 12, 2017

I flew back from the US this morning and came away with the impression that the president is determined to jumpstart an active diplomatic process in the Middle East for peace between Israelis and Palestinians," Zionist camp member and opposition leader Isaac Herzog told his factions meeting in the Knesset on the morning of May 8.

Herzog said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "will be forced to decide between the historic national exigency and his own narrow interests. His remarks joined the growing indications in recent weeks that President Donald Trump is preparing a major surprise ahead of his May 22 visit to Israel. Herzog, who flew to New York to attend the annual Jerusalem Post conference, got the distinct impression from conversations with administration officials that not only is Trump determined and enthusiastic about sponsoring renewed negotiations on an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, but a concrete move is taking shape behind the scenes.

Trumps impending visit to the region is naturally sending the Israeli political system into a tailspin. Unlike the vague and contradictory hints at the start of his term, theres no mistaking the messages being conveyed by Trump and those around him regarding his intentions. Trump is interested in achieving a deal between Israelis and Palestinians, but the nature of what he has in mind is still unclear, and no one knows whether the American president will present any details during his upcoming visit.

What is clear is that less than six months after taking office, Trump is not the messiah of Israeli settlers, and the Israeli right is following his moves with grave concern and suspicion. Contrary to Trumps campaign promises and declarations at the start of his presidency, the ambassador he appointed, David Friedman, will be working out of the US Embassy in Tel Aviv, which will not be moving to Jerusalem. Since entering the White House, Trump has also spoken out several times against construction in the Israeli settlements.

To understand the extent of the right-wings confusion and disappointment with the Trump administration, recall the whoops of joy that resonated through the Israeli settlements with the election of the new Republican president and the wide anticipation that Friedman, a pro-settler American Jew, would be a dream come true.

"The feeling here is that we just experienced a miracle," Hagai Ben-Artzi told Al-Monitor in February. Ben-Artzi, who lives in the settlement of Beit El, is also the prime minister's brother-in-law. "It is important to understand that the continuation of the Obama administration's policies under Hillary Clinton would have been bad news for us.

In contrast to the premature outburst of joy on the right, the Israeli left felt it had been dealt a hard blow by the November elections. Left-wing Meretz' chair Zehava Gal-On attacked Friedman and proposed in an interview that he go look for his friends in the settlements. Her outspoken reaction reflected a sense of foreboding within the left that its guiding vision  two states for two peoples  was gradually becoming unrealistic.

But in recent weeks, the tables have turned, especially after the successful visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House on May 3. Senior Likud members talk of trepidation in Netanyahus office at the prospect that while in Israel Trump will surprise the prime minister with a concrete plan to revive the peace process.

Trumps special Middle East envoy, Jason Greenblatt, also a yarmulke-wearing American Jew, told diplomats in Brussels May 4, As Trump told Netanyahu, he also told President Abbas that he must be willing to make the compromises we all know are necessary if we want to achieve peace which the public on both sides can trust and own.

In recent months, Greenblatt has strengthened his ties with Israel's former foreign minister and Herzogs political partner Tzipi Livni, one of the figures most identified in Israel with the two-state solution. In a May 12 interview with Haaretz, Livni confirmed that she had met Greenblatt in the United States and made no secret of her enthusiasm.

We have a huge opportunity, she said. The president is talking about his determination to close a deal; that is, to end the conflict. We have a president who thinks big and addresses the hard core. Hes not beating around the bush. I certainly think something dramatic could happen.

Livni, who conducted negotiations with the Palestinians (without concrete results) both as a minister in the government of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and in the third Netanyahu government, probably heard from Greenblatt about a significant move underway. Otherwise, its hard to believe she would have spoken so enthusiastically about Trump. In a matter of weeks, the new American president has turned from the hero of the Israeli right into the hope of the Israeli left.

Addressing the conference May 7, Herzog said, "We know what Trump wants. What Netanyahu wants, no one knows.  If he wants peace, he will enjoy political support even from my camp. The political implication is clear: If the White House puts forth a concrete plan, Netanyahu will come under increased pressure from the right. According to Herzog, the center-left will offer the prime minister a political safety net for any diplomatic move, to prevent him from being able to claim that he will be ousted from power if he pushes ahead with a diplomatic initiative.

A key figure in this interesting puzzle is HaBayit HaYehudi's chair, Education Minister Naftali Bennett. In an interview with Ben Caspit for Al-Monitor last week, he criticized what he called the inaction of the Netanyahu-led Israeli government, claiming it took no immediate action to strengthen its settlement policy when Trump took office. Bennett and his party have presented an organized and consistent front compared with Trumps fitful behavior. Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked have been working creatively to establish facts on the ground in the settlements. For example, Shaked helped push through the regularization bill, legalizing the construction of settlement homes on private Palestinian land, and is now promoting an initiative with Tourism Minister Yariv Levin to apply any law adopted by the Knesset ministerial committee on legislation to Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The effect of the initiative would be differentiation between the Palestinians and Jews living in the West Bank  apartheid.

As he has been doing since he returned to the prime ministers office in 2009, the year he gave his landmark Bar-Ilan speech declaring support for the idea of two states, Netanyahu will try to navigate the various pressures that will be brought to bear. He will display willingness to conduct negotiations, as he has done in recent days, as well as try to stall. A critical unknown in this situation is how impatient Trump will be in the face of such stalling. If Netanyahu knew the answer, he would be far more relaxed.
May 12, 2017

It has been more than a decade since the last open confrontation between Hezbollah and Israel; yet in the last few months, there has been a lot of chatter among Hezbollah and Israel observers over the rising tensions between the two adversaries. The drums of war have been beating even more loudly in the media.

The cost of the 2006 war was severe enough for both sides that they both seem to be making every possible effort to avoid another war: Israel stopped bombing Hezbollah's locations inside Lebanon, while the latter stopped kidnapping Israeli soldiers or launching rockets into northern Israel. However, both parties know that peace in the Middle East is fragile and fleeting. Preparations for a new round of war  now dubbed the Third Lebanon War  have only increased. Both sides appear to be using every opportunity to display not just the military buildup for the upcoming war, but also expose the weaknesses of the other in the event of a war.

On April 20, Hezbollah arranged a tour for journalists to south Lebanon to expose the recent Israeli fortification activities south of the Blue Line. As Israeli military bulldozers busily cut at the landscape across the electrical fence, Hezbollah members pointed to the infrastructure  newly carved military roads, concrete walls, cement blocks and high-tech monitoring radars  all placed along the border in the last year.

These defensive fortifications are the most recent measures taken by Israel in anticipation of the looming confrontation with Hezbollah. Previous measures included, for instance, merging all Israeli army commando units into a single commando brigade, completing the multilayered air defense, and conducting various war games and drills specifically designed to mimic a war with Hezbollah.

Israel is almost certain Hezbollah has advanced mobile air defense systems. This means the Israeli air force might not be able to fly over Lebanon as freely as it did in the past. Furthermore, airborne operations using helicopters, which the Israel Defense Forces depends heavily on, might be too risky in the presence of such advanced air defense systems.

Hezbollah, for its part, has been busy preparing for war as well. Today, it is considered by many in Israel to be the strongest nonstate actor in the region, and it has analyzed the lessons of the 2006 war to prepare for the next one. Rockets and missiles proved to be effective enough in 2006 for Hezbollah to continue increasing their quantity, while also upgrading the quality of its arsenal.

Yet the most important development in Hezbollah's military capability is the unprecedented opportunity that came with its participation in the Syrian war. It now has the ability to train thousands of its fighters, who are rubbing shoulders with Syrian, Iranian and Russian elite special forces, while also developing its telecommunications, logistics, and command and control capabilities to handle a situation where hundreds of its fighters can fight nonstop for weeks and months in a vast, hostile environment. This is a huge leap from 2006, when Hezbollah only deployed independent small fire teams and squads in defensive fortified positions, in a friendly environment, while awaiting the advance of Israeli infantry and armor units.

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah's threat in 2011 to invade northern Israel is no longer so far-fetched, neither are his threats to hit the nuclear facility in Dimona. Israel takes these threats very seriously, hence the fortification works along the Blue Line. Hezbollah's plan is simple and bold: Saturate Israel's multilayered air defense with hundreds of rockets and missiles while its fighters go on the offensive across the Blue Line  and perhaps even the Golan Heights.

According to sources familiar with Hezbollah, "A wider front will force Israel to spread out thinner, so now having the front expanded from Naqoura on the sea all the way to the end of the Golan Heights will prove to be more difficult for Israel in the event of a war."

Amidst the war cries, both sides have made it clear they are not interested in embarking on another war. Hezbollah is indeed busy in Syria and has little interest in fighting on multiple fronts. Furthermore, the domestic atmosphere in Lebanon is not that of 2006. There are now around 2 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon for Israel to consider, as well as a Hezbollah-hostile section of society that would not be as welcoming as they were in 2006 to internally displaced people fleeing airstrikes. In addition, the Syrian-Lebanese border will not be open to those escaping the attacks, essentially turning Lebanon into an open-air prison.

It is also worth noting that with all of Hezbollah's upward trajectory in the region (Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen), today's region is incredibly hostile toward it. Thus, the last thing Hezbollah and its backer, Iran, would want is to create a situation where even on its home territory it is on the defensive and dealing with a hostile population  while also fending off attacks from one of the strongest and best-equipped armies in the world.

Nor is Israel prepared to fight a war in which it cannot guarantee a total achievement of its goals. While it does have the capability of causing severe damage to Lebanon, it still cannot guarantee neutralizing Hezbollah. Israel also knows Hezbollah's missiles have the potential to cause serious damage to both Israeli infrastructure and the security of its population. Furthermore, if the Golan front is indeed activated, it will be a battlefield with a lot of unknown and unpredictable variables. These variables include the role and position of the differing opposition groups, as well as whether both Hezbollah's allies and Israel's allies would be dragged into the confrontation, moving the war from what Israel would prefer  contained, surgical, quick  to an open-ended, messy and complex conflict.

As one Hezbollah fighter told Al-Monitor, "While Israel may have the key to open the door for a war, it does not have the ability to close that door again when it chooses, and therefore wont take the risk."

While this could encourage some analysts to rule out the possibility of a confrontation, one needs to remember that what happens between Hezbollah and Israel is motivated, to a great extent, by what happens in the region  namely the wider confrontation between US allies and Iran.

Hezbollah is certainly wary of the new US administration, with sources close to the organization pointing to the fact that the previous administration under Barack Obama was not interested in entertaining a new Hezbollah-Israel war, whereas the Donald Trump administration has proven so far to be an unknown variable.

"Before Trump, there was no indication of a war [between Israel and Hezbollah] in the future," said one official close to the party. "But now with Trump, no one has a clue about his foreign policy. What we have seen so far, his priorities seem to be North Korea, the Islamic State and Iran."

Is it likely the Trump administration would entertain a confrontation with Iran via a Hezbollah-Israel war? It is so far unclear, but the fluidity of the battlefield and the players in Syria mean such a confrontation would prove to be incredibly risky, with the likelihood of eventually dragging the United States further into an already messy arena.

As one source put it, "If there is going to be a war between Hezbollah and Israel in Syria, it would be an expansive confrontation with many unknown variables."

Mohammed Saleh Alftayeh has contributed to the report.
May 12, 2017

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip  Almost three years have passed since the start of the 51-day Israeli war on the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2014. During this war, Israeli aircraft fully destroyed more than 11,000 housing units and partially destroyed around 160,000 others.

Mufid al-Hasayneh, the minister of public works and housing in the consensus government, posted April 5 a short documentary on his official Facebook page highlighting the ministrys reconstruction efforts that have resulted in the completion of around 75% of reconstruction works.

On April 20, the ministry signed a series of contracts within the scope of the financial aid pledged by Italy at the Gaza Reconstruction Conference in Cairo on Oct. 12, 2014, and which include a grant of 16.45 million euros (around $18 million) for the reconstruction program of Gaza's al-Nada district.

Hasayneh told Al-Monitor, The Italian grant will be disbursed to finance a series of contracts to be signed by the Ministry of Public Works with Palestinian construction and contracting companies. The contracts include the reconstruction of the Italian complex at a total cost of $5 million. The contracts also include the restoration of 17 partially damaged residential towers and the rebuilding of 11 towers that were totally demolished in al-Nada neighborhood, northeast of Beit Lahia, in addition to the construction of 90 housing units for the residents of Izbat Beit Hanoun.

He added, Palestinian construction companies, with support from Italian engineers, will start the construction of the Italian complex in the next few days, after the Italian government approves the final blueprints of the complex. This comes as part of implementing the terms of the grant between the two countries. Reconstruction should start after the month of Ramadan and end within one year.

The Italian complex in the center of Gaza City is roughly 7,200 square meters and was built by an Italian contracting company in 1996. The 16-story high-rise is the only building in the Gaza Strip designed to withstand earthquakes and is home to numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and commercial companies.

During the last days of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip, specifically on Aug. 26, 2014, Israeli warplanes bombed the Italian complex, which includes one of the highest towers in Gaza, with seven missiles, destroying it completely. The shelling caused considerable material and human losses due to the large surface area of the overpopulated targeted location. The assault killed 20 civilians, two of them journalists.

Hamed Jad, an economic expert at Al-Ayyam newspaper who is closely following up on the reconstruction of Gaza, told Al-Monitor, The delay in disbursing the Italian grant for the reconstruction of Gaza for almost three years was due to the guarantees requested by the Italian side from Israel and Egypt related to the entry of raw materials  to allow the reconstruction of the Italian complex within the shortest time possible so as not to repeat the scenario of halted projects, as happened previously with the Qatari reconstruction projects that were delayed because of the closure of the crossings and the blockade.

Jad stressed the commercial and economic importance of the Italian complex, which housed the headquarters and offices of NGOs, the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Works and Housing, and commercial companies. It is necessary to bring back this complex to life, since it is one of the most vital urban landmarks in Gaza, he said.

The complex, which vitalizes its surrounding area, comprises a main tower of 1,500 square meters consisting of 54 units housing commercial companies, offices for civil and human rights organizations and residential units. The remaining area is a large courtyard with a large banquet hall and over 150 stores and clothing franchises.

Abdullah Abu Hudros, the manager of Milano coffee shop, one of the most famous cafes in the Italian complex that was completely destroyed in 2014, told Al-Monitor that many shops in the Italian complex were damaged and their owners have yet to receive any compensation, whether from the Palestinian government or the donor countries that pledged aid to reconstruct the Gaza Strip.

I hope the new agreement between the Ministry of Public Works and Housing and the Italian government will usher in the return of commercial life after three years of setback, he said.

Mohammed Abu Giab, the editor-in-chief of Al-Eqtisadiah newspaper in Gaza, told Al-Monitor, Despite the delay in disbursing the aid pledged at the Cairo Conference in 2014, announcing this project will have significant economic and commercial effects on the Palestinian private sector. Such projects redeem confidence in the Palestinian private sector, represented mainly by the businesses and NGOs located in the Italian complex, which is the largest in Gaza.

However, he explained that the $5 million Italian grant would not be enough to give back the Italian complex its previous features, such as its earthquake-resistance structure and international safety and security standards.

Economic specialists believe the reconstruction of the Italian complex and the return of economic life to the center will have positive economic and commercial outcomes, given the complexs contribution to the national economy. The coming months will prove if the reconstructed complex will live up to the expectations of Palestinians in Gaza.
May 11, 2017

CAIRO  Harmony prevailed between Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church and Coptic Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria during Francis' visit to Egypt April 28-29, but their like-mindedness on baptism has ignited a debate between the Egyptian Orthodox Church and its adherents.

Denominational differences over baptism date back centuries. One point of contention concerns whether Christians who switch churches are required to be rebaptized according to their new denomination or whether a baptism is irrevocable. Egyptian media reported that during a papal meeting at St. Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo's Abbasiya district, Francis and Tawadros signed a document ending the dispute over the sacrament of baptism or rebaptism. During a general audience back at the Vatican on May 3, Francis announced that he and Tawadros had signed a common declaration to journey together, and not to duplicate baptisms already received in the respective Churches.

Their agreement angered many Egyptian Orthodox Christians, some of whom had earlier expressed reservations about the issue based on information leaked before Francis arrived in Cairo. According to the leaks, the document to be signed represented a final agreement on baptismal unity, which many Orthodox Christians view as contrary to their Orthodox faith.

In an attempt to head off trouble, the Orthodox Church Holy Synod Secretariat issued a statement 24 hours before Francis' arrival explaining that the document in question was a common declaration, not a final agreement, and would read as follows:

Today we, Pope Francis and Pope Tawadros II, in order to please the heart of the Lord Jesus, as well as that of our sons and daughters in the faith, mutually declare that we, with one mind and heart, will seek sincerely not to repeat the baptism that has been administered in either of our Churches for any person who wishes to join the other. This we confess in obedience to the Holy Scriptures and the faith of the three Ecumenical Councils assembled in Nicaea, Constantinople and Ephesus.

We ask God our Father to guide us, in the times and by the means that the Holy Spirit will choose, to full unity in the mystical Body of Christ.

A source from the Orthodox Church told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, The document and Pope Francis' remarks do not affirm the signing of an agreement requiring that the sacrament of Baptism not be duplicated. Rather, they both spoke of a common declaration spiritually committing both parties to seek to achieve that in the hope of the reunification of the churches in the future.

Nevertheless, Mina Asaad Kamel, a professor of Christian apologetics at the Alexandria School of Theology, told Al-Monitor, Seeking to not repeat baptism in preparation for baptismal unity should not happen at present. This is because acknowledging the Catholic sacrament of baptism as valid is accepting the Catholic doctrine, while many doctrinal differences need to be resolved beforehand through a dialogue between the two churches, before examining the issue related to the sacrament of baptism.

In an April 30 Facebook post, Kamel asserted that the signed document in its entirety, not just a part of it, should be publicly disclosed so Orthodox followers could be informed. He also started an Arabic hashtag that translates to #We_want_the_original_document.

The Muslim Brotherhood's Arabi21 website, which opposes President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, al-Azhar and the Orthodox Church, published a May 1 article by the journalist Salim Azzouz, who wrote, My guess is that the signing of the declaration does not imply sharing the same faith. Rather, it is a political move made by Pope Tawadros II as a part of Sisis campaign to woo Pope Francis. Tawadros II does not have a problem abandoning his churchs beliefs in order to please the ruler, because Sisi needs the Vatican's pope.

Kamal Zakher, the coordinator of the Secular Coptic Current, an activist group, told Al-Monitor, The political and religious goals behind Pope Francis' visit should not be confused. I do not think that the state pressured the Orthodox Church to sign a document on baptism. This is because Pope Francis came to Egypt at the invitation of al-Azhar and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, not the Orthodox Church or Pope Tawadros II, and Pope Francis builds upon [this] when signing any documents. The visits political objective is to declare that all religious leaders have rallied behind Egypt in countering terrorism. This is the case in particular because the war on terrorism has sought to stem the support of Christians in Egypt and all over the world for the state, after churches and Christians were recently heavily targeted by terrorist attacks.

Zakher also stated, The churches agreeing to try to avoid repeat baptisms is not a complete or finalized achievement that will bring the political regime closer to Pope Francis or pressure the Egyptian church. This is because seeking to do something does not necessarily mean that the efforts are going to bear fruit anytime soon. Such endeavors need years, and negative reactions to the churches declaration are something normal, especially because all churches have taught their followers for centuries that they are right and all other denominations are wrong.

The situation is unlikely to have been one of the regime pressuring the Orthodox Church to sign a mere common declaration. A final agreement, however, would have been a different matter, as it, with an assist from Egypt, would have enshrined Francis as the cleric who ended the centuries-long dispute. Regardless, in light of Egyptian Orthodox Christians' opposition, endeavors to reach baptismal unity will not bear fruit anytime soon.
May 12, 2017

Preparations are underway in Saudi Arabia to welcome US President Donald Trump, who is seeking to mobilize the Islamic world against terrorism, while Saudi officials are hoping to gain some political advantages, especially as they exchange threats with Iran.

The US-Islamic-Arab Summit is scheduled to be held in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, on May 21 in the presence of Trump. Meanwhile, on May 7, Saudi Crown Prince and Interior Minister Mohammed bin Nayef welcomed in his Jeddah office US Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly and Thomas Bossert, Trump's counterterrorism adviser, to discuss issues of mutual interest in security and fighting terrorism, according to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

Observers believe the timing of the US security convoy's visit to Saudi Arabia indicates the White Houses firm trust in Nayef and should remind Riyadh that Washington still needs Nayef's efforts to fight terrorism.

The kingdom announced May 1 that the Saudi Ideological Warfare Center, affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and headed by Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will launch initiatives to fight terrorism. On April 23, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud had issued a directive to establish a National Security Center linked to the Saudi Royal Court.

On May 4, Trump announced that his first foreign visit will be to Saudi Arabia, then Israel and the Vatican. He said, Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, adding, It is there we will begin to construct a new foundation of cooperation and support with our Muslim allies to combat extremism, terrorism and violence.

Trump chose to visit the countries cradling the main religions in the world, starting with Saudi Arabia for Islam, Israel for Judaism and the Vatican for Christianity. It seems Trump wants to mobilize the world religiously to fight religious radicalism and terrorism. He is looking to invest in his presence in Saudi Arabia alongside Muslim leaders to enhance his image in front of Muslims who resented him for signing the Muslim ban Jan. 27.

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir praised Trumps upcoming visit to the kingdom during a May 4 press conference at the Saudi Embassy in Washington. Jubeir described the visit as historic on all levels. He talked about his May 3 visit to Congress and his meetings with several senators and congressmen in which they tackled ways to strengthen the US-Saudi partnership in the economic sector, counterterrorism and in fighting the Iranian threat, as well as ways to find a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In a preemptive step to please Trump ahead of his scheduled visit, Saudi Housing Minister Majed al-Hogail visited Washington to meet May 1 with his US counterpart, Ben Carson, and to propose potential investment projects worth $100 billion to US companies in the fields of housing, infrastructure and real estate funding.

The Saudi Royal Court, which has been preparing its state institutions since mid-April for Trumps visit, seems to have ignored the US presidents previous comments about human rights and womens rights, in particular, in the kingdom, and its slackening in reimbursing the United States for defense costs. Saudi Arabia prefers denial in exchange for increasing its political influence in the Middle East to ward off the Iranian expansion and to receive additional backing for its stance supporting Yemen's government in that country's civil war.

Trump is set to hold three meetings in Riyadh between May 19 and 21 the first with the king, the second with Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) leaders and the third with Arab and Muslim leaders. GCC leaders might have to listen to Trump repeat the criticism of Saudi Arabia he aired during a Reuters interview April 27 when he said, Saudi Arabia is not paying its fair share [for defense]. We are losing our shirt.

An informed source in the GCC Secretariat General told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity, Despite Trumps friendly discourse toward Saudi Arabia in his recent speech, some Gulf countries believe that he will bring up the defense money issue again, perhaps more diplomatically, in front of the GCC leaders in Saudi Arabia. Since Gulf governments still rely on US protection [and have] for decades now, they cannot but consign to Washingtons demands and pay their dues.

Saudi Arabia has sent out summit invitations to several Arab and Muslim leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Moroccan King Mohammed VI, King Abdullah II of Jordan, Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Nigerien President Mahamadou Issoufou and Iraqi President Fuad Massum. On May 8, an Egyptian diplomatic source told the London-based Arab Weekly, which is close to Abu Dhabi, on condition of anonymity that he did not expect Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to attend the summit. He didn't give an explanation.

Jubeirs statements May 4, in which he thanked Salman for seeing Trumps historic visit to Saudi Arabia through, point to an official Saudi inclination to support Salman, who established the Islamic anti-terror coalition in December 2015 and the Saudi Vision 2030 for economic reform in April 2016.

In a May 2 interview on Saudi state-run Ekhbariya TV, Mohammed said he knows his country is a target for Iran. If a battle is imminent, Mohammed said, he will make sure it takes place on Iranian soil and not in Saudi Arabia. Trumps upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia might bear fruit in favor of Mohammed's political aspirations  to gain absolute control in the kingdom and spearhead the Arab and Muslim world leaderships.
May 9, 2017

RAMALLAH, West Bank  The situation of Palestinians displaced from their refugee camps in Syria remains complex. Some progress toward returning them to their homes in the camps has been noted, even as other efforts have stalled.

These are refugees driven from their homes in camps by the Syrian civil war. Many are second-time refugees, having ended up in Syria in the first place because they were displaced from the West Bank after the 1967 war with Israel.

During an April 16 meeting, the PLO factions in Syria welcomed news that Sabina camp residents might be able to return in the near future, pending further negotiations with militants in the area. The factions also praised the government's measures to allow movement in and out of the Khan al-Shih camp, and for the governments ongoing negotiations with gunmen to get them to leave the Yarmouk camp. The Yarmouk talks have been particularly complicated by many factors.

According to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the Sabina refugee camp, just south of Damascus, was home to more than 21,000 registered Palestinians who were displaced from the West Bank following the 1967 war. The camp, however, was completely emptied of its residents following clashes that erupted in late 2012 between insurgents and the Syrian army. The latter regained control of the camp in November 2013.

Khaled Abdul-Majid, secretary of the Palestinian Revolution Factions Alliance in Syria, told Al-Monitor no one has returned yet because militants remaining in southern Damascus and nearby areas could infiltrate the camp again.

Abdul-Majid said negotiations are underway to remedy the situation. Meanwhile, the residents remain in the nearby town of Sahnaya on the outskirts of Damascus in shelters provided by the Syrian government and the UNRWA.

We have established contact with the concerned state authorities to accelerate the process and have people immediately return, he added.

However, Ayman Abu Hashim, general coordinator of the Free Palestinian Syrian Assembly, told Al-Monitor, The regime forces controlling the Sabina refugee camp are the ones obstructing the return of refugees.

Families might return to the camp, but the regime forces are failing to take any serious steps in this regard, Abu Hashim added.

As the Sabina camp awaits the return of its residents, Palestinian families have started to move in and out of the Khan al-Shih refugee camp southwest of Damascus, which had a population estimated at more than 19,000 in 2011, per the latest UNRWA statistics.

Ahmed al-Majdalani, envoy to Syria for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and a member of the PLOs Executive Committee, told Al-Monitor that Khan al-Shih, unlike the Sabina camp, had not been fully deserted. The Syrian government reached an agreement back in November with the gunmen, who gradually left the camp heading toward Idlib and Daraa. Majdalani said forces of the PLO-affiliated Palestine Liberation Army and Syrian army are working on logistic arrangements aimed at restoring normal life there.

Asked about the situation in Yarmouk, Majdalani said it is still complicated, as the Islamic State (IS) has seized the southern part of the camp and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham forces control the center of the camp. Palestinian factions control the rest. This makes the return of refugees very difficult for now.

Majdalani said contacts are ongoing with the remaining 5,000 refugees in the camp to follow up on their living conditions and field developments there. Abdul-Majid said, IS impeded a breakthrough in the Yarmouk camp following contacts between the Syrian state and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham militants, who are estimated at 700.  IS refused the agreement. This raised concerns that IS might also take over the center of the camp if Jabhat Fatah al-Sham leaves.

Abdul-Majid, with the Palestinian Revolution Factions Alliance, confirmed that Yarmouk is completely surrounded by the Syrian army, and the problem can only be resolved by the entire withdrawal of the militants from the camp and the surrounding areas.

He added, There are bids to hold talks between the Syrian regime and Jabhat Fatah al-Sham and have militants withdraw from southern Damascus, namely from the regions of Yalda and Beit Saham, which are close to the Yarmouk camp.

There are about 15 Palestinian refugee camps in Syria, with Yarmouk being the largest. It was established in 1957, south of Damascus, and was home to more than 200,000 Palestinian refugees before the IS seized major parts of it in April 2015.

Although the Sabina camp is awaiting the return of its residents following the return of the Khan al-Shih residents and the current attempts to create a breakthrough in the Yarmouk camp, such a return is seemingly difficult to achieve in light of the complex security situation on the ground and the continuation of fighting with no agreement in sight.
Chris Sims.jpg

Chris Sims, co-founder of Areao

Here are some of today's top AL.com business headlines:

The Airbus manufacturing facility in Mobile has added to its growing list of orders Thursday after announcing that Delta is to buy 30 A321ceo aircraft. The order will be Delta's fourth at the Gulf Coast plant in as many years.

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Millbrook-based Sigao Studios, a software development company founded by Chris Sims, is working on an app for Easter Seals of Houston, Texas, to help families of special needs children.

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It's unclear just how a Jefferson County circuit judge's ruling this week will affect Alabama workers' compensation law going forward - but legal minds say it may be the first step toward momentous changes for Alabama in the law, the workplace and the medical field.

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Sears CEO Eddie Lampert told shareholders this week that Sears has "all the customers we could possibly want." The comments come after Sears has shuttered hundreds of stores in recent years.

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Publix is recalling its ready-to-cook Salmon Florentine Gratin and Scallops Florentine Gratin because they are made with Publix Deli Artichoke and Spinach Dip, which was removed from shelves earlier this week due to the possible presence of glass.

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For more news, visit AL.com/business.
What does the future hold for Alabama's steel industry?

With President Donald Trump talking about infrastructure spending, buying American goods and rejuvenating manufacturing, it certainly sounds bright. And figures in manufacturing and steel production say they're encouraged by what they're hearing.

However, they'd like something, you might say, concrete soon.

According to the Alliance for American Manufacturing, Alabama currently has 252,000 people employed in manufacturing jobs, with more than 60,000 in the steel industry. But the Alliance estimates Alabama has lost nearly 100,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001.

To fully recover from the recession, the Alliance estimates the state still needs about 41,000 more manufacturing jobs.

Scott Paul, president of the Alliance, said there are "not a lot of things you can say with great certainty," but that Trump's early moves seem favorable to the steel industry. In March, for example, Trump granted a construction permit for the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, calling it the first of many infrastructure projects he vowed would get more Americans working.

With Trump focusing on national security and energy, Paul said, there's plenty for the steel industry to like.

"With the pipeline executive order, he's looking to source energy pipelines with American-made steel," he said. "Other policies like buying American, hiring American, that shows a framework for progress. We just have yet to see a lot of details though."

Paul said there are needs beyond the Keystone and Dakota Access pipeline projects dealing with extraction and distribution of oil and natural gas. New England, for example, has pipeline needs due to inadequate natural gas access. Those projects will need steel.

George Clark, president of Manufacture Alabama, a trade association that administers the Alabama Iron and Steel Council, said he sees a "nationwide uptick" in domestic manufacturing interest.

"President Trump is keying on important public policy positions like Buy America and more technical executive issues pertaining to trade cases," Clark said. "But more action must be taken, and not just by the President. Infrastructure investment is a good example."

Currently, the Trump Administration is planning a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, with reports of more than 500 requests coming in over the past few months. Clark said infrastructure needs are "critical to the health of the iron and steel manufacturing sector." But again, he said, there needs to be a serious level of commitment in terms of spending.

One big issue for steel has been imports, and the dumping of Chinese steel. The Alliance has staged protests in the Birmingham area to illustrate the plight of American industries. In April, Trump announced a trade probe into steel dumping by China and other nations.

Paul said the problem has several facets. For starters, Chinese steel is produced by government-owned firms with little or no capital costs that other producers worldwide bear, and its companies are producing more steel than the international market can bear.

Paul suggested Trump try a remedy used by President Reagan in imposing tariffs on Japanese semiconductors back in 1987. Critics say those actions made prices rise domestically and cost American jobs.

However, Paul said more aggressive tariff policies, while extraordinary measures, might provide some breathing space for American production.

Add to that increased demand for steel through infrastructure, energy and defense spending, and that could mean more demand for workers. He cited the recent purchase of a Georgetown, S.C. steel plant, shuttered since 2015, as evidence that the industry can rebound. The plant could be up and running again by June.

"It's entirely possible you could see this scenario unfolding in many parts of the country, including Alabama," he said.

Clark characterized Alabama's iron and steel industry as "sluggish."

"Alabama's iron and steel manufacturing facilities are among the most advanced and efficient in the world," he said. "They routinely do more with less in terms of production, but they are currently operating far below their production capacity."

Critics of Trump's rhetoric say nostalgia for American production is at odds with the realities of an information age, where service jobs drive the economy and automation has filled positions once occupied by people.

But Paul said those criticisms don't tell the whole story. On the flip side, society now sees the human costs in outsourcing and the value of home-grown manufacturing. At the same time, some jobs needing career technical education are out-earning jobs filled by four-year college graduates.

Trump's election, he said, changed many conversations.

"We still live in a built environment," he said. "That's not going to change anytime soon. We still drive automobiles. We still fly in airplanes. We still cross bridges of steel. The only question is where that's going to come from. There's a compelling reason to suggest that it should come from America."
Join us for another stop on our journey through Whitman, Alabama. The goal of the documentary series? Bridge the gap between people. Filmmaker Jennifer Crandall traveled hundreds of miles to capture the essence of America as people across Alabama bring "Song of Myself" by poet Walt Whitman to life. Crandall below tells us more about spending time with Curtia Torbert in Montgomery, Alabama.

Whitman, Alabama site | On Facebook

Curtia and I met at a workshop at the Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham.

The moderator gave us a parting directive. "Make sure you connect with someone." Curtia and I chatted for a bit, then exchanged numbers.

Curtia--now 25-- has been studying acting since she was 17. She's performed in a number of different regional theater productions. She's landed some TV roles. She was a featured extra on "Sleepy Hollow" and "24: Legacy" on FOX. She also had a leading role in the show "Fatal Attraction" on the TV One Network.

As we got to know each other better, I started thinking "wouldn't it be cool for her to give a reading."

I tend to be drawn to people who put themselves in shoes that aren't their own. When people are acting, their real-life persona fades away, and usually what you have on stage or screen is a different life altogether.

Before we actually filmed in Montgomery (where Curtia is from), we talked a little bit about how we might approach the video. I thought we'd just keep it simple while filming Curtia--as an actress on an empty stage--using the stage as just that, a stage for just her and her craft.

Curtia describes the experience of reading on stage as a collaboration. "When we were onstage, we were throwing [ideas] around," Curtia said. "[Looking for a way to] offer a view into my world as an actress."

We had Curtia try reading the verse in a number of different ways. Read it like you're upset. Read it like you have a secret. Do it again. Again. Again.

Curtia said that initially she didn't mean to get that emotional--breaking into tears at points. It's just that the more she leaned into an emotion, the less the verse became about the words, and the more it became about how the words made her feel.

Acting is something that's always been intimidating to me personally for that reason--the vulnerability of trying to portray emotions and people, or your ideas of emotions and other people, sincerely and believably. When you're acting, you're using your body as a vessel and exposing your efforts to an audience.

But for Curtia, it's just another day at work.

"Honestly, it's our job [as actors] to be emotionally connected," Curtia said. "I'm kind of used to it."

By filmmaker Jennifer Crandall as told to writer Liz Hildreth
Kevin Sutton

The wife and daughter of the Fairfield fire chief who died during a wreck involving a tractor-trailer last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the truck driver and the truck company.

Attorneys with Fuston, Petway, & French LLP filed the 18-page, four-count lawsuit in Jefferson County Circuit Court at 2:43 p.m. Thursday.

Chief Kevin Sutton, 54, was pronounced dead at the scene the wreck on Interstate 59 northbound at the Fourth Avenue exit. He was the fire chief for over two decades.

Authorities said an 18-wheeler traveling southbound on I-59 struck two vehicles after crossing the median. One of the vehicles was Sutton's SUV.

The accident also injured Sutton's wife, Phyllis, and his daughter, Tabathia Norman, who are listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The company that owns and operates the tractor-trailer, Peterson Industrial, Inc., and the man who was driving the truck at the time of the accident are listed as defendants.

The lawsuit alleges in count one that Sutton's death was caused by "the negligence, recklessness, carelessness and/or wantonness of the Defendants."

The lawsuit seeks punitive damages from the defendants in an amount to be determined by a struck jury, plus cost and interest. The lawsuit also demands compensation for the medical expenses for Sutton's wife and daughter.

The lawsuit states Phyllis Sutton suffered serious injuries such as severe bruising to her lungs, kidneys and liver. Along with the mental anguish, the lawsuit states she had to get pins in both arms. Her left forearm and one of her wrists were broken.

Norman was also severely injured after she was thrown 30 yards from the vehicle. At the time the lawsuit was filed, attorneys said Norman is on a respirator during an induced coma. Her femur and collarbone were broken and her pelvis was fractured during the wreck, the lawsuit states. She also received severe burns to her arms and face along with lacerations to her head. The lawsuit is demanding compensation for Norman's medical expenses as well.

In count two of the lawsuit, attorneys state that Peterson Industrial had "a duty to properly hire, train and supervise safe and competent drivers." The lawsuit said Sutton's death, as well as his wife and daughter's injuries, were "consequences" of the company not abiding by that duty.

Count three of the lawsuit said Peterson Industrial "caused or allowed their tractor trailer to operate on public roadways in unsafe conditions." It also accuses the company of not properly maintaining, inspecting and/or repairing the tractor trailer, making it unsafe. In count four, attorneys said the tractor-trailer driver "was an uninsured/underinsured motorist at the time of the collision."

Courtney French, one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, released this statement on the family's behalf:

"The Sutton family wish to express their heartfelt gratitude to everyone in the community, across the state and country for their thoughts, prayers and support during this most difficult time. The void left in our lives is incomprehensible as a result of the loss of Kevin - a wonderful husband, father and friend to many. We thank everyone for the outpouring of love, respect and honor shown to Kevin. Please continue to pray for our family, especially our daughter."

Fairfield Fire Chief Wrongful Death Lawsuit by Jonece on Scribd
The vice president of Honda Manufacturing Alabama (HMA) was elected Friday to become chairman of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute Board of Directors.

Mike Oatridge, who is from Ontario, Canada, will be succeeding Doug Jones, who announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate on Thursday. Oatridge is a 1988 of Ryerson University with a degree in mechanical engineering.

Oatridge has been working for Honda since 1989, when he started his career at Honda of Canada Manufacturing (HCM) in Alliston, Ontario. He was project lead for several new model vehicle projects for many years and later played a major role in the start-up of the company's second manufacturing plant at HCM.

He spent 14 months in Japan studying systems and researching equipment as the company prepared for the expansion and construction of a second assembly plant. He became manager of the assembly plant's Weld Department when construction was complete. In this position, he facilitated the modifications to equipment and facilities required to meet growing market demand as a second vehicle model was added to the existing assembly line.

Oatridge now leads HMA's overall operations, which includes vehicle and engine production and parts procurement from more than 300 suppliers.

BCRI President and CEO Andrea Taylor celebrated Oatridge's election.

"BCRI is extremely fortunate to have such an experienced, talented person as our new board chair," Taylor said. "His leadership skills and enthusiasm will be a driving force as we celebrate our 25th Anniversary and move into the next stage of our growth."
Birmingham City Council, Dec. 1, 2015

The Birmingham City Council (Kelsey Stein | kstein@al.com)

The next Birmingham City Council won't receive a $50,000 salary.

Legislation blocking the council's 233 percent pay increase was enacted into law on Friday, according to the Alabama Secretary of State's Office. The law sets the salaries of the Birmingham City Council members at the median household income for the city, an estimated $32,000.

Birmingham City Council President Pro Tem Steven Hoyt said he's not surprised that the bill became law. He doesn't plan to fight the Legislature's action.

"It is a forgone conclusion that the state Legislature will do whatever they are pleased to do," he said. "You can't cry over spoiled milk."

The bill, by Sen. Jabo Waggoner, R-Vestavia Hills, was forwarded to Gov. Kay Ivey on May 4 after being passed by the House. On Friday, Ivey passed the bill on to the Secretary of State's Office to become law without a signature.

The bill will take effect with the council terms that begin later this year, after the Aug. 22 city election. It nullifies the council's move to boost members' salaries from $15,000 to $50,000, which was also to take effect with the next term. The council approved the raises in 2015.

Hoyt said he never wanted the city councilor position to be a full-time job.

"I didn't come for the pay, but it would have been good if could have had an increase," he said.

Hoyt said he didn't think the salary change would affect the upcoming municipal election.

"I think people run because there is a need and because they have something to offer," he said.

The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 19-5. Voting against the bills were Sens. Linda Coleman-Madison, D-Birmingham; Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham; Quinton Ross, D-Montgomery; Hank Sanders, D-Selma and Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro.

In the House, the bill passed by a vote of 18-2. Reps. John Rogers, D-Birmingham, and Rolanda Hollis, D-Birmingham, voted against.

Under Waggoner's bill, the state Personnel Board would determine the median income, which would be adjusted every four years.
If Myanmars leader and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi fails to act on the things that lie within her power, then she fails on her own terms.

She runs her party like a dictator.

She doesnt listen, or accept advice.

She treats us as if we are school children and that we dare not question her as the elder.

It was hardly a positive assessment of Aung San Suu Kyi that I received upon returning to the country where I once lived, Myanmar.

It was to be expected that the optimism of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate taking power would fade, but frustrations among those working with her government seemed to be boiling over.

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi is a politician, diplomat and author.

She studied abroad and came back to military-ruled Myanmar, also known as Burma, in 1988.

She called on the military leaders to hand over power, demanding democracy and human rights.

In 1989, she was placed under house arrest and spent 15 years in custody.

Her fight for democracy in Myanmar was rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

In November 2015, Aung San Suu Kyis party won a majority in parliament, ending decades of military-backed rule.

Her official title is State Counsellor, and President Htin Kyaw is a close ally.

She has come in for criticism by some groups, which claim she has not spoken up for Myanmars minority groups.

Even more alarming, these anecdotes were delivered in hushed tones, with sideways glances, and only after I promised not to quote the people telling them. It felt like I had returned to the bad old Myanmar, when I had to report undercover and meet people in secret.

For a brief period under the quasi-civilian government led by former general Thein Sein, people felt free to test the boundaries of their new-found freedoms, especially on Facebook, which exploded in popularity once Myanmar went online.

But then came 66D, a section of the telecommunications act which allows anyone to sue for online criminal defamation. Judges have used it to lock up dozens of people critical of Suu Kyi, her party and the military, without bail.

Suu Kyis party, the National League for Democracy, has the numbers in parliament to reform the law, but sources say the party is reluctant to do so.

Compared with the other problems Aung San Suu Kyi is grappling with, 66D is low on the priority list. International attention has rightly focused on the plight of the persecuted Muslim Rohingya minority which has reportedly suffered horrific treatment at the hands of the military on her watch.

Her government denies systematic rape and torture of the Rohingya, but human rights abuses are happening all over the country.

If you travel north to Kachin or Shan states, youll find the civil war there has got worse, despite Suu Kyi stating that peace is her main priority. Humanitarian access has been denied to thousands of internally displaced people in Kachin state, some of whom voted for Suu Kyi in the hope of change.

All the while, Aung San Suu Kyi has remained silent about the militarys attacks. She has not given any interviews to Myanmar journalists since taking power. Aside from a few interviews with hand-picked foreign journalists, her people barely hear from her at all.

Many ask how she can stand by and let this unfold. The most obvious answer is that she still does not control the military, which retains 25 percent of seats in parliament and holds three powerful ministries.

But there is increasing evidence that Suu Kyi is failing to address the things that are within her control.

After a recent visit, the respected former US Ambassador to Myanmar, Derek Mitchell, outlined a list of complaints against Suu Kyi: limited communication with the media, tense relations with civil society, a top-down style of leadership, gridlock in decision-making, frustration over the state of the peace process and a lack of a clear and detailed economic policy.

I think she could have done more, he said. Clearly she is constrained by the military and the need to create a government. Shes never governed. But shes a powerful figure, shes iconic in the country and she could have spoken up more.

In a rare address to the nation on the one-year anniversary of taking power, Suu Kyi noted the criticism, but remained steadfast. No one understands our countrys situation and our needs better than we, she said. The people have steadfastly rendered their support and stood by us and have shown understanding.

Its true that she remains the countrys most overwhelmingly popular politician. However, whether it is outlining a vision for her nation, condemning human rights abuses, allowing humanitarian access to conflict zones, delegating authority, listening more or reforming defamation laws; if Aung San Suu Kyi fails to act on the things that lie within her power, then she fails on her own terms.
Locals lament the lack of development in a stronghold of the PPP party of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Editors Note: Al Jazeera visited the Bhutto stronghold of Larkana in May 2017 to report on the political fortunes of the Pakistan Peoples Party, 10 years after the assassination of its leader Benazir Bhutto.

Larkana, Pakistan  A drive to the centre of this city in southern Pakistans Sindh province is an arduous task  its crowded streets, dug up roads, overflowing sewers and traffic jams offer a picture of neglect.

This is Larkana  home to Pakistans most famous political dynasty, the Bhuttos.

The city, inhabited by just over a quarter of a million people, is the birthplace of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, the former prime minister and founder of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), currently the countrys main opposition party.

And despite the general lack of development, Larkana remains a stronghold of the PPP, which has won every election it has contested here. The daughter of the PPPs founder, Benazir Bhutto, who was twice prime minister  from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996  represented the constituency.

The three-domed white marble mausoleum that is the final resting place of Benazir, who was killed in a suicide attack in 2007, and Zulfiqar, who was sent to the gallows in 1979 by the then military ruler General Zia-ul-Haq, in Larkanas Garhi Khuda Bakhsh  the ancestral village of the Bhutto family  has near-sacred status for the PPP and its supporters, drawing visitors from as far afield as northern Punjab state, nearly 800km away.

But locals complain about a lack of economic activity and high unemployment. Some parents say they cant afford to send their children to school.

The Bhuttos have done nothing for us

Im from Bhuttos village, but the Bhuttos have done nothing for us, says Sabir Hussain Bhutto, who runs a fruit stall on a narrow unpaved street with open drains in Larkana city.

IN PICTURES: Remembering Benazir Bhutto

There is nothing left here for the poor. We have no jobs, my kids cant get [a] decent education and we dont have any money. The politicians are all full of fake promises year in year out, he adds.

A shortage of electricity and gas  although common across Pakistan  is particularly acute here.

Sabir pauses to try to control his emotions as he reels off a litany of issues he and others face here on a daily basis.

We dont even have basic facilities like electricity and gas. We have to burn wood to stay warm. Imagine that, in 2017, were burning wood for our needs in Bhuttos city, he says as tears roll down his cheeks.

Such stories of economic hardship and a general sense of resignation are common across Sindh province, where dilapidated infrastructure and a near absence of adequate medical facilities is a hard reality.

In February, when a suicide attack killed at least 88 people at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan, about 150km away from Larkana, that absence of adequate medical assistance was deeply felt.

The PPP, which runs the regional government in Sindh province, has been criticised not just for the lack of security but for failing to provide basic health and education infrastructure.

In a yearly review of the state of education carried out by Alif Ailann, a private NGO working in the education sector, Sindh ranked sixth out of the eight provinces and regions in Pakistan.

Only 23 percent of schools in the province, according to the same review, offer basic facilities like electricity, water, toilets and boundary walls. No latest government figures are available on the educational status of the province.

To address the states educational backwardness, in 2003 the regional Sindh government began distributing free textbooks to pupils in primary schools. Two years later, this was expanded to include those classes up to tenth grade, where pupils are aged 15 or 16.

Benazir helped establish a medical university here, while another university was planned near Mohenjodaro, about 30km south of Larkana, but locals say construction has been stalled.

Still voting for Benazir

Ayaz Soomro from the PPP represents one of the four National Assembly seats in Larkana, but Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari, the heir to the Bhutto political dynasty, has said that he will contest future elections there. In a constituency that has traditionally been seen as the PPPs fortress, there was a mixed reaction to the news.

The people of Larkana are very emotional. They adored Benazir, explains Jameel Gaad, an activist closely associated with the Sindhi nationalist JSQM party.

Asif Zardari [Benazirs husband and a former president of Pakistan] played with the peoples [emotions] and exploited Benazirs assassination for votes. Now, theyve ruined Sindh, he says.

REPORTERS NOTEBOOK: Bhuttos boy or Zardaris stooge?

I dont think he [Bilawal] will lose. People here still respect Benazir and will vote for the PPP because of her and nothing else. But mark my words, he will get stiff competition and it wont be easy for him.

Many PPP supporters say they will vote for Benazir  who is still highly popular in this southern city, nearly 500km north of the port city of Karachi.

But while Benazir has a loyal following here, residents of some remote areas say they do not know the names of her son or husband. Still, they add, the PPP will get their vote.

PPP leaders have downplayed the issues affecting the region.

Improvement is needed in every major city when it develops and Larkana is no different, it has problems related to urbanisation, says Nisar Khuhro, the president of the PPP in Sindh province. I dont deny that. But it will take time. Things do need repairs and work is being carried out.

But I do believe we have the support of the people of Larkana and if someone tells you otherwise, youre talking to the wrong people, Khuhro, who is from Larkana, adds.

Think carefully before casting their vote

Javed, a native of Larkana city, stands at the entrance to a street, pointing at the dug-up roads and overflowing sewage that have left no place for pedestrians to walk.

This is the area that Bilawal calls his own, he says.

He lives in Dubai, he went to an expensive university [the University of Oxford in the UK] and seldom visits the places and people who vote for him. How can you call yourself a leader when kids fall into these open gutters and die? Javed asks.

Corruption is at its peak. Nobody cares about the poor. Those people we elect drive past us in air-conditioned cars. While we dont even have enough money to raise the entrance to our houses to stop sewage water from coming in.

The regional government has been accused of corruption. Following a petition by a local resident, Sindh High Court has sought details of a development budget of $1.1bn allocated for Larkana.

JSQMs Jameel believes a lack of political alternatives is one of the reasons for the lack of development.

But now people have options, they are more aware of their rights and whats expected, he says.

A good number will now think carefully before they cast their vote.

But according to the PPPs Khuhro, the situation in Larkana is not unusual and is part and parcel of a city undergoing expansion and development.

The development is never complete, even in cities like London and New York. Business has grown in Larkana and the city is developing, he says, without addressing the issues of unemployment and the state of education in the region.

Sabir Hussain Bhutto says he has made up his mind about who hell vote for in the next general election, scheduled to be held in 2018.

Its a circus, nothing else. PPP has looted us, it has ruined our future, he says forcefully, adding that his vote will not be going to the PPP.
Former Ghanaian president says political problems in South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt will affect the entire continent.

Boston, United States  When John Mahama stepped down as president of Ghana in January 2017, he became the first in his countrys history to fail to secure a second term in office.

Critics argued that Mahama, who was nicknamed Mr Power Cut because of a series of debilitating power cuts during his term, was unable to meet the expectations of ordinary Ghanaians.

But Mahama has also been praised for the role he played during the Ebola crisis, and most recently for helping convince Yahya Jammeh, The Gambias president, to step down after he lost the presidential elections in December 2016.

Al Jazeera spoke to Mahama about Ghana at 60, the possibility of justice in The Gambia post-Jammeh, and how the calls for Jacob Zuma to step down in South Africa may affect the continent.

Al Jazeera: Roughly a decade after Ghanas independence in 1957, Ghanian author Ayi Kwei Armah wrote the novel The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born, in which a nameless man struggles against corruption in post-colonial Ghana. Have things changed?

John Mahama: I believe the beautyful ones are being born every day. Each generation prepares itself to take over from the next. I feel confident that the next generation is preparing itself to step into our shoes just as we stepped into the shoes of our fathers.

I don't think we should be celebrating each time a peaceful transition takes places. This is what is supposed to happen. by John Mahama, Ghana's former president

What we need to do now is accelerate and improve the lives of our people with a growing economy.

And making sure we provide better social services to our people, ensuring that they have the opportunities for improving themselves through education, I think that is happening in Ghana today.

Al Jazeera: This year marks 60 years of Ghanaian independence. How much progress has the country made in that time?

Mahama: I believe that in 60 years one would expect us to have made more progress than we have. But considering the continent we come from, even maintaining Ghana as a united entity, not in conflict and posting positive development is an achievement.

I think that today Ghana is positioning itself as one of the potential emerging countries on the continent.

Ghana, 60 years after independence

Al Jazeera: When you stepped down, Ghana experienced a peaceful transition of power.

Mahama: I find it surprising because I think it should be the norm. I dont think we should be celebrating each time a peaceful transition takes places. This is what is supposed to happen.

And I think this is increasingly happening in Africa. It happened in Nigeria when President Jonathan stepped away and it happened here in Ghana

Al Jazeera: But it didnt happen in The Gambia. When Jammeh eventually stepped down, he was allowed to leave, going into exile in Equatorial Guinea. So, did democracy really win in The Gambia?

Mahama: I do think that it is still a win for the Gambian people even though it was the negotiations that created the opportunity for Jammeh to leave. I think this gives the new government a free hand and opportunity to do what they have to do.

I dont think it would have been very convenient for them to take over power with Jammeh within Gambia and his party breathing down the necks of the new government.

The new Gambian government want to go the route of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission(TRC) where people come out and vent the abuses they have suffered. Once that process is completed and a report is presented to the president, he can decide what to do to bring closure to people who have suffered abuses.

I dont know what direction he will take but I think a TRC is appropriate. Its happened in South Africa and many countries including Ghana. There are a lot of lessons that The Gambia can share with the rest of Africa.

Al Jazeera: 20 years on, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa isnt necessarily seen as having provided justice.

Mahama: Unfortunately, the reality of life is that there will never be complete closure for everybody. People who have gone through the process have felt satisfied that someone has listened to them, and have even reconciled with their perpetrators. In Rwanda, people live side-by-side with people who persecuted them during the genocide. They have gone through a process of acceptance and apology. If it is a means of bringing closure, I think its good. Not everyone will get closure but it doesnt mean the process has failed.

Al Jazeera: Is justice important for closure?

Mahama: I dont think anyone should dictate to the Gambian people, its for them to decide. There will be a report and the president and his cabinet will have to decide what they want to do. People outside the continent will say he needs to be sent to the International Criminal Court.

Africans feel unfairly targeted because these atrocities happen all over the world and no one is trying to arrest these leaders. If they can find closure in The Gambia thats fine, if they cant, its up to the Gambian people to decide what to do.

Gambia: A lesson for African dictators

Al Jazeera: It took the involvement of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which gave Jammeh a deadline to step down or risk being forcibly removed, before he stepped aside. Isnt that a form of intervention?

Mahama: The community has to want it badly, but the struggle is for the country in particular. The outside communities can only help the process. I think what ECOWAS did is an example for the rest of Africa but it isnt a one-size-fits-all solution.

The Gambia is a relatively small country. If Nigeria decided to behave badly I dont know if ECOWAS could send forces in. Circumstances in The Gambia were amenable to the kind of solution that was done. It was a carrot and stick solution. We had two mediation missions into The Gambia and spoke to all the parties to achieve a resolution.

When South Africa is going through what it's going through, the crisis and near-recession, it affects the rest of the continent, especially the sub-region. by John Mahama, Ghana's former president

ECOWAS applied the stick and went in, not to use force or fire shots, but to show that ECOWAS was prepared to go to that extent. When that happened we sent in the final mission which was President Alpha Conde of Guinea and President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz of Mauritania.

We chose them because they were closer to President Jammeh and it would be easier to get them to negotiate for him to leave power. They did the final negotiations where it was decided for him to leave the country.

Al Jazeera: There are many shakeups taking place on the continent. For instance, President Jacob Zuma is facing pressure to step down. What do you make of the events taking place there?

Mahama: Countries like Ghana have a strong affinity for the African National Congress (ANC) as it was the main instrument in fighting against apartheid. We all celebrated South Africas liberation from apartheid. Nelson Mandela is an icon to us all.

We cannot afford to not be concerned with what is happening in South Africa. They recently even lost Johannesburg in the local elections. This is something that should not happen.

It is obvious that the ANC is losing ground and I wish they would get a grip and turn things around.

I dont anticipate them losing power in the next elections [in 2019], but theres a groundswell of dissatisfaction and I hope our comrades in the ANC do a proper reflection and correct things before they get worse.

What can Ghana teach South Africa about neocolonialism?

Al Jazeera: Does this have an impact on the rest of Africa?

Mahama: It does. I have said that South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are the biggest economies in Africa and they have a certain responsibility to drive investment and prosperity in the continent.

When South Africa is going through what its going through, the crisis and near-recession, it affects the rest of the continent, especially the sub-region.

These larger economies have a responsibility to drive prosperity. It happened in South-East Asia. Japans prosperity is whats driven a lot of progress in South-East Asia. China, Korea and Vietnam are all invested in this.

The bigger economies have the responsibility in their geographical areas. I think in Africa these three countries need to get their act together to drive integration and investments. We all continue to watch whats happening in these countries and hope that they turn things around.
Indias top court bans the controversial law that allowed Muslim men to end marriage by uttering talaq three times.

Indias Supreme Court on Tuesday banned triple talaq, or instant divorce, practised by some in the Muslim community, saying it is unconstitutional.

Triple talaq is the practice under which a Muslim man can divorce his wife by simply uttering talaq three times. It is prevalent among Indias Muslim community majority of whom follow the Hanafi Islamic school of law.

THE STREAM: Indias Muslims and instant divorce

This mode of divorce is not universal among Muslims across the world, as many other Islamic schools of thought prefer the divorce process to be deferred, in many cases over a period of three months.

The government has cited the example of many predominantly Muslim countries, including Pakistan, that have banned triple talaq.

Why is it in the news?

The issue has attracted media attention in the past two years since a Muslim organisation, Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), launched a campaign to ban triple talaq and nikah halala  a practice where divorced women, in case they want to go back to their first husbands, have to consummate a second marriage.

In the course of our work, we have regularly been approached by our sisters, complaining about mistreatment and misuse of the oral talaq system. In most cases, men go scot-free and believe their action is approved by the Quran, Zakia Soman, one of the cofounders of the BMMA, told Al Jazeera in an earlier interview.

Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken on the issue a number of times, calling for justice for Muslim women.

OPINION: Is India ready to abolish triple talaq?

It has generated debate around the rights of Muslim women as the issue of divorce, marriage, and inheritance come under the purview of the Muslim Personal Laws. India has a provision for personal laws for all religious communities.

But the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a non-governmental organisation that aims to educate Muslims on the protection and application of Islamic laws, has opposed the move to ban triple talaq and polygamy. The latter is illegal in India.

Critics say divorce and polygamy are not the main issues facing the Muslim community, the majority of whom are close to the bottom of economic and educational indicators in the country.

The AIMPLB has opposed what it calls government interference in the personal laws of the Muslim community, who form nearly 14 percent of Indias 1.3 billion population.





The Shariat Application Act was passed 10 years before India gained independence from the British colonial power in 1947.

But Indian nationals, including Muslims, can opt to marry under the secular Special Marriage Act enacted by the Indian parliament in 1954.

Gender justice

Islam considers marriage as a contract and it has laid down procedures on how to annul it. A woman can seek divorce under what is called as khula, while the husband can end the marriage by pronouncing talaq thrice, after which arbitration is required.

But activists have highlighted the misuse of instant divorce by men as a reason to ban it. Cases of husbands divorcing their wives through text messages and over phones have come to light.

According to the findings of a BMMA study, more than 90 percent of 4,710 women interviewed wanted a ban on unilateral divorce.

None of the Quranic guidelines of discussion, arbitration, witnesses, specified time period or even a genuine attempt to resolve differences are being followed. In such circumstances, the question of alimony or the rights of children doesnt arise, Zakia told Al Jazeera in a 2015 interview.

So far there is little data on the number of divorces via phones and SMS, while the data provided by BMMA has been questioned not only for not disclosing the methodology but also sample sizes.

Out of 4,710 people 525 divorces took place. Out of this only one divorce was by SMS. Therefore, they have played it out of proportion. Media has further portrayed as if every Muslim is divorcing through SMS, Faizan Mustafa, vice chancellor of the National University of Law, told Al Jazeera.

Nearly 41 percent of women themselves wanted divorce. If a woman herself wants divorce and husband gives, it is out of mutual agreement. It is a divorce by consent. In Islam it is known as Talaq-e-Mubarra. Its OK.

It is only when these two situations are not there, triple divorce will look bad. And, therefore, I would also say in that situation the better solution would be that the three pronouncements should be considered as one. So that there is a scope for reconciliation.

Can triple divorce be banned?

A five-judge bench will examine whether the Islamic divorce practice is fundamental to religion and whether it is a fundamental right. Article 25 of Indias constitution grants the right of religion as a fundamental right.

Triple talaq has already been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a number of cases, including in February 2015.

I think that would be a very poor understanding of the law because banning is a legislative action, Mustafa said.

He suggested instead polygamy should be made a crime for Muslims as well.

But the bigamy law for Hindus has not really helped Hindus in becoming less bigamous. So one must understand that normative changes in law do not really bring about any major social reforms. You have to create those conditions; the attitudinal changes have to come, said Mustafa.

What is the divorce and polygamy rate among Indian Muslims?

The Quran allows polygamy with strict conditions, but polygamy is the least among Indian Muslims when compared with other religious groups.

According to census data from 2011, the divorce rate among Muslims was 0.56 percent less than the Hindu community, which stood at 0.76 percent.

So far, the government has not conducted any survey on the extent of triple talaq among Muslims  a fact legal experts point out.

They say the government should form a committee of experts for Muslim law reform rather than seeking an immediate court ban, and conduct surveys to get a real sense of the problem.

Politics over triple talaq

Modi has urged leaders not to politicise the issue, but Swami Prasad Maurya from his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said last month that Muslims use triple talaq to satisfy their lust.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh  a Hindu far-right group and ideological head of the BJP  has been vocal in calling for these changes. It has been pushing for doing away with the idea of personal laws and replacing them with a Uniform Civil Code  a controversial proposal that Muslims have vociferously opposed.

Flavia Agnes, a prominent womens rights lawyer, said triple talaq has become typical low-lying fruit that everybody can write on.

READ MORE: Muslim women fight to overturn triple talaq

Speaking at a seminar at Aliah University in the eastern city of Kolkata, she said that illiteracy and lack of awareness were the biggest problems when it came to women rights.

Talaq does not extinguish her economic rights, [the ban] is not a magic wand that will solve all her problems. We have created an image that Muslim women have no rights because husbands can pronounce triple talaq, she said.

The Muslim Womens Act of 1986 Act has a provision for fair and reasonable settlement after divorce, she said.

The whole debate is skewed and political, catering to the ruling governments Muslim bashing agenda, and media is a prime player in this.

This article, first written in May, has been updated
Palestinian prisoners have engaged in mass hunger strikes since 1968, after Israel occupied the Palestinian territories.

After 40 days of fasting, approximately 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners announced the end of their hunger strike for basic rights in Israeli jails on Saturday.

On April 17, Palestinian Prisoners Day, the prisoners embarked on the dangerous journey of an open-ended fast to pressure Israel  which is responsible under international law for the well-being of all persons in its custody  to improve prison conditions. The prisoners survived on salt water only.

Healthy humans can survive up to eight weeks without food, but the risk of starvation differs from one person to another depending on body weight, genetics and other factors.

The prisoners demands were simple. They included the installation of a public telephone to communicate with their families, reinstating bimonthly family visits, better medical treatment, allowing prisoners to take photographs with their families regularly, and installing air conditioning where lacking.

They also called on Israel to end its policy of administrative detention, which allows the imprisonment of individuals on secret evidence for months and years on end, and to end its excessive use of solitary confinement, which is in direct contravention of international law.

A deal was said to have been reached with Israeli authorities for better conditions, but no details have been made public yet.

Under international human rights law, prisoners must be guaranteed basic human rights, which include the right to maintain a family life and freedom from torture and other forms of CIDT (cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment).

Since 1967, 72 Palestinian political prisoners have died as a result of torture by Israeli prison authorities, according to Jerusalem-based prisoners rights group Addameer.

READ MORE: What it means to be a Palestinian prisoner in Israel

Israels responsibility  is supposed to be even greater towards prisoners because incarceration is a condition that exposes the incarcerated person to violations of his/her rights to a greater degree than with non-incarcerated citizens and residents, Ran Yaron, a spokesperson for Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, told Al Jazeera.

Palestinians have launched and engaged in mass hunger strikes as far back as 1968 after Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territories of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Some strikes have been regarded as successful, while others were seen to have failed to reach their goals.





Several Palestinian administrative detainees have also gone on individual hunger strikes and have managed to pressure Israel into releasing them, although some have been rearrested.

Though in some cases Israeli prison authorities agreed to negotiate with prisoners on improving conditions, they more often than not respond by placing the prisoners in solitary confinement, transferring them between prisons and blocking family visits.

From the 1980s onwards, prison authorities resorted to force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike using a nasal tube, which resulted in the death of several Palestinians.

The United Nations Committee Against Torture has called on Israel to ensure that prisoners on hunger strike are not subjected to force-feeding or other medical treatment against their will, as it could amount to torture. UN experts have also said the practice under no circumstance will  comply with human rights standards.

Hunger strikes have taken place elsewhere throughout history as a method of nonviolent resistance. By drawing international attention to the plight of prisoners, they aim to put pressure on their jailers and spur a change in policy.

The tactic was used by British and American suffragettes in the early 20th century, Irish republicans, and most notably, Mahatma Gandhi, among many others. Under international human rights norms, hunger striking is seen as a form of freedom of expression and a civil and political right.

Al Jazeera compiled a timeline of notable mass hunger strikes in Palestinian history and looked at what has been achieved.
Nothing in India is local any more. India is permanently in election mode and insurrectionary politics is keeping the nation in a perpetual state of agitation. At least this is what the ruling party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has decided.

If we look at the way the elections for local bodies such as the municipal councils or district bodies are being fought by the party, it becomes clear that it is trying to convert all elections, be they for rural, municipal or district administrative bodies, into national elections. The party does this in three ways:

The end of local politics





First, they make sure their candidates only discuss national issues, such as security, corruption and nationalism, in their campaigns for local elections.

The BJPs municipal election victory in Delhi was a great example for the successful implementation of this strategy. Before last months election, the BJP had been running municipal corporations of Delhi for more than 10 years. Everybody agreed that their performance was abysmal and people were terribly upset with them. But the BJP not only overcame this anti-incumbency sentiment, it scored an astounding victory, decimating its opponents from the Aam Aadmi Party and the Congress Party badly.

Veteran election analyst Yogendra Yadav, who is the leader of the Swaraj India Party, said that the electorate did not even care that the municipal bodies in Delhi were headed by the BJP for a decade before the election. He explained that the BJP won the election by carpet bombing nationalist messages and leaving little thinking space in the minds of the electorate.

The social media effect

Secondly, with the explosion of social media and a significant increase in the number of TV channels in India, local election campaigns and election results started to reach every nook and cranny of the country and become a matter of national discussion. For example, local election results in Maharashtra were used to bolster the prospects of the BJP in the state election of Uttar Pradesh. People witnessed the BJPs victory in Maharashtra as they were lining up outside polling booths in Uttar Pradesh.

OPINION: Umbrella politics of Hindutva

India is very large and there always is an election taking place somewhere in the country. So, with some help from the complicit media, the BJP is capable of permanently keeping the country in election mode.

In the past we have seen parties getting into campaign mode a few months before the elections. But the BJP has put its party machinery in permanent combat mode. by

This gives the BJP leaders a rationale to indulge in sectarian, polarising election campaigns all the time. Speaking against minorities or spreading hatred against them is seen in India as a legitimate mobilising strategy in national elections. But today every election campaign assumes a national character. A statement made in Kerala stirs emotions in Bihar. People keep hoping that once in power, the duties of governance would make the ruling party responsible and inclusive. But since local elections became national discussion topics, the BJP is keeping the country in a permanent election mode and using this as an excuse to continue with its polarising discourse.

In the past we have seen parties getting into campaign mode a few months before the elections. But the BJP has put its party machinery in permanent combat mode. The BJP puts all its central ministers and minsters from other states into work during local elections. Daily visits from central ministers, apparently in connection with one or the other government scheme, becomes a pretext for the media to give all its prime space to the BJP before any local election. Thus the mindscape of the people is constantly filled with BJP propaganda.

A complete takeover

Thirdly, the BJP has decided to open its doors to major and minor leaders from all political parties. Political analysts often see this as the dilution of the partys ideological agenda and the BJP is mocked for looking more and more like the Congress Party by admitting all and sundry. Far from it. Each political leader brings with her a support base of people, contacts, money and other resources. In other words, each leader who decides to join the party is a gain for the BJP. It is impossible for any of these leaders to even influence the ideological plank of the BJP as it is umbilically tied to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a far-right cultural organisation committed to turning India into a Hindu nation.

The BJP and the RSS are on a mission to hollow out all other political parties. We see regional parties weakening and the Congress Party struggling to keep its flock together.

OPINION: How the BJP has come to dominate lower-caste politics

At the moment, a BJP government is in power and the party is also in control of as many as 14 states in India. The BJP is also filling all state institutions, such as universities and research bodies, with people who have a background in the RSS. After the BJP came to power, even government functionaries have been made to attend RSS programmes to help the organisation widen and deepen its reach in the society.

The BJP now insists on having a say in the selection of the heads of state-supported autonomous institutions. Several private schools are claiming that the Central Board of School Examination wants to have a decisive say in the selection of their principals. These schools fear that people professing the Hindu nationalist ideology would fill these posts.





The RSS is also closely monitoring appointments of faculty members in universities and seeks to fill these post with people close to the far-right organisation. Numerous educational institutions and think-tanks founded by the RSS are now getting state support and funding. Research projects with nationalist ideological underpinnings are being favoured over other research programmes. Even prestigious universities such as the University of Delhi are inviting ideologues and propagandists of the RSS as regular speakers.

In short, India is witnessing a complete takeover of its political, social, intellectual and cultural space by the BJP and the RSS. The complicit media is aiding this process. Victimisation of independent journalists and gradual takeover of media organisations by corporations that are close to the BJP is leaving little breathing space for Indias contesting voices.

India is fast becoming a one-party state. Once the takeover is complete, it will be worse than the Stalinist grip on the Soviet Russia, as the RSS is a multilayered body, quite different and more vicious than the homogenous Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even after the BJP is ousted from the government, it is going to be an impossible task to untangle its nationalist knots.

Apoorvanand teaches Hindi at the University of Delhi. Writes literary and cultural criticism.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
Rafael Braga, Brazils symbol of institutionalised racism and criminalisation of poverty, is going to prison  again.

In June 2013, at a time when Brazil was shaken by mass protests against government spending, a homeless young man called Rafael Braga Vieira was arrested in Rio de Janerio for carrying two bottles of cleaning products.

Among several other arrests that occurred during this period, Bragas was one of the most shocking and unjust.

First of all, Braga was not even participating in the demonstrations at the time of his arrest. He was just unlucky enough to be carrying a bottle of Pinho Sol  a common cleaning product  and a bottle of bleach near a large demonstration.

Carrying plastic bottles was not out of the ordinary for a man who was trying to make a living by collecting tin cans and other discarded objects from the streets. But on that day, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his fate was suddenly sealed when plain-clothed police officers approached him.





After his arrest, Braga was swiftly tried and sentenced to five years in prison for carrying bottles of flammable materials that can be use to commit acts of vandalism.

The harsh sentence imposed on Braga by a Rio de Janeiro court on December 3, 2013 was based on the statute of disarmament which prohibits the carrying of or use of an explosive or incendiary device, without authorisation or in breach of legal or regulatory determination. Anyone following Bragas case was surprised to learn that carrying cleaning products was an offence serious enough to land someone in prison in Brazil.

Braga was the first and only person convicted in relation to the June 2013 demonstrations. At the time, several other people  most of them white and middle-class  were arrested for similar offences, but they were quickly released, in most cases on the same day.

OPINION: The barbarism of Brazilian prisons

But Braga was poor, black and he did not know anyone powerful  so the police and the justice system decided to make an example of him. His conviction was designed to serve as a deterrent to others.

Questions about impartiality

In his testimony, Braga said that the bottles in his possession were sealed and full. But the bottles were open and only half full when they were presented to the judge as evidence  they looked like they were about to be used as Molotov cocktails.

Since his initial arrest in June 2013, Braga lives a saga that, to many, symbolises injustice, institutionalised racism and the criminalisation of poverty in Brazil. by

We do not know whether Bragas claims about the condition of those bottles are true, but even if those bottles were already open, there is not enough evidence to suggest that Braga was going to use them as explosive devices. A technical report by Rio de Janeiro states bomb squad concluded that the cleaning products Braga was carrying at the time of his arrest had minimum explosive capacity, partly because the bottles were made of plastic, while Molotov cocktails are normally made using glass bottles.

Activists tried to argue that these discrepancies in the prosecutions case against Braga suggested that the police tampered with evidence to secure his conviction. But their reasoning had little effect.

Braga, who continues to deny any involvement in the protests, remained in jail for more than two years. Eventually, in December 2015, a court allowed him to serve the rest of his term at home in Rio, wearing an electronic tag.

But Bragas problems with Brazils justice system did not come to an end after he was released from prison. Only a month later, he was arrested again as he walked towards a bakery in Vila Cruzeiro, a favela in the Penha neighborhood, north of Rio, where his family lives.

A second arrest

Police officers announced that they had found 0.6 grams of marijuana and 9.3 grams of cocaine on his person at the time of the arrest. They said that they confiscated a firework during the arrest  an item commonly used by drug traffickers to alert each other about security forces approaching a favela.

Braga claims that the police forged the evidence against him, a claim corroborated by the fact that the prosecutions five witnesses, all police officers, gave conflicting testimonies during the hearings. The court threw out the only witness called in Bragas defence  a neighbour who backed his version of events  on the grounds that the he had a family relationship with Braga. During the hearings, requests by the defence to access data from Bragas electronic tag and the police patrol cars cameras were denied.

READ MORE: Brazil  Targeting trans people with impunity

On April 20, 2017, Braga was sentenced to 11 years and 3 months in prison on charges of drug trafficking and association with drug trafficking. He was also ordered to pay $530.

Whether the evidence against Braga was forged or not, Brazilian activists denounce the disproportionality of the sentence he received.

On social media, activists compared Bragas case with the famous case of the Perrella family helicopter. In December 2013, the Brazilian Federal Police seized a helicopter loaded with 440kg of cocaine. The helicopter in question belonged to Gustavo Perrella, a state representative in Minas Gerais, who is the son of Senator Zeze Perrella. Despite strong indications of involvement, both Gustavo and Zeze Perrella claimed to know nothing about the drugs. Police arrested the helicopter pilot, an employee of the Perrella family, and charged him with drug trafficking, but the Perrellas were not prosecuted.

Councilman David Miranda was among those who made a comparison between the cases of Braga and the Perrella family and questioned the impartiality of the Brazilian justice system. Free Rafael Braga, he tweeted.

Many other lawyers, politicians and activists commenting on Bragas conviction argued that the structural racism in Brazil played an important role in his conviction.

Pedro Abramovay, a former national secretary of justice, for example, said in a Facebook post that if Rafael was white he would be free. Braga is a political prisoner of a racist justice [system], he added.

Criminalisation of the poor and the black

Today Brazil has the worlds fourth largest prison population.

The latest official data indicates that black people are significantly over represented in Brazils prisons and 95 percent of the countrys inmates are poor. Two-thirds have not even completed primary education.

Due to poverty, lack of education and their place at the margins of society, Brazils prison inmates, such as Braga, have little political influence and as a result have little chance of putting an end to the injustices that they are facing.

READ MORE: Brazil\s prisons  A battleground in the drug wars

Braga believes that he was framed and victimised by the police only because he iss a poor favelado  someone who lives in a shantytown.

In spite of the intense support he received from the Brazilian public, Braga continues to be the victim of repeated injustices and irregularities on the part of the police authorities and the Brazilian judicial system.

Since his initial arrest in June 2013, Braga lives a saga that, to many, symbolises injustice, institutionalised racism and the criminalisation of poverty in Brazil.

And it does not look like Braga, and thousands of other people like him, are going to find any real justice in their countrys courtrooms any time soon.

Raphael Tsavkko Garcia is a journalist and a PhD candidate in Human Rights at the University of Deusto in Spain.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy.
At least 25 killed as ISIL-claimed blast hits convoy of Senate deputy chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri south of Quetta.

Islamabad, Pakistan  A bomb explosion targeting a senior politician in southwestern Pakistan has killed at least 25 people and wounded 37 others, medical officials say.

The blast took place in the town of Mastung, about 50km south of Balochistan provincial capital Quetta, shortly after the end of Friday prayers, according to a government spokesman.

Senate Deputy Chairman Abdul Ghafoor Haideri escaped the attack with light wounds, medical officials said, but his driver and another aide in the same vehicle were killed.

He was wounded by the blast but someone who was sitting next to him, and his driver were both killed, said Dr Sher Ahmed, the governments district health chief in Mastung, while confirming the death toll.

Haideri received light wounds from broken glass, according to Dr Shafi Zaidi, chief of the local hospital where the senator was initially treated.

Later on Friday, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) armed group claimed responsibility for the attack, in a statement released by its Amaq website. It said the attack had been carried out by a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest.

At least 37 people who received serious wounds from the blast were transferred to Quetta, said Dr Ahmed. They mainly suffered from shrapnel wounds, he said.

Television footage from the scene showed several badly damaged vehicles and motorcycles, with windscreens shattered and severe blast damage visible, as the police established a cordon around the site.

Haideri himself spoke to local media over the phone while en route to the hospital, saying he was not badly wounded.

I am fine, thank God. I have been wounded. I am being taken to the [Combined Military Hospital in Quetta], Haideri told Pakistans Geo News television channel.

The explosion happened on my car  the glass from the front windscreen hit me, and the side door also buckled after the blast, he added.

Anwar ul-Haq Kakar, spokesman for the Balochistan provincial government, told Al Jazeera that the attack occurred when Haideri was leaving a mosque after Friday prayers.

As soon as they started the journey back there was an explosion, Kakar said.

Law enforcement personnel are collecting evidence at the site and examining the crime scene. It would be premature to say what kind of blast it was at this stage.

Haideri is a member of the right-wing religious Jamaat Ulema Islam partys Fazl faction (JUI-F), and has been a senator since 2008. He has been the deputy chairman of the Senate since 2015.

He has previously represented his native district of Kalat, also in Balochistan, in the lower house of parliament.

In February, Pakistans Senate boycotted a UN-sponsored event in the United States in protest against an undue delay by the US in issuing a visa to Haideri to attend.

Asad Hashim is Al Jazeeras web correspondent in Pakistan. He tweets @AsadHashim.
At least 70,000 attacks reported, including Russian Interior Ministry, by programme that demands $300 to unlock data.

A ransomware virus has reportedly targeted organisations in more than 70 countries, including the Russian Interior Ministry and the NHS in the UK.

Fridays attacks came via a technique used by hackers that locks a users files unless they pay the attackers in bitcoin. Computers affected by the virus went into lockdown by a programme that demanded $300 for the files to be unlocked.

Security software company Avast reported more than 57,000 detections.

We have observed a massive peak in WanaCrypt0r 2.0 (aka WCry) ransomware attacks today, with more than 57,000 detections so far, Avast said on its blog.





According to our data, the ransomware is mainly being targeted to Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan, but the ransomware has successfully infected major institutions, like hospitals across England and Spanish telecommunications company, Telefonica.

Hospitals and doctors surgeries across Britain were forced to turn away patients and cancel appointments after the cyberattack crippled some computer systems in the countrys health service.

The National Health Service (NHS) said 16 organisations had been affected by the attack.

It said in a statement that the NHS had not been specifically targeted, adding that the attack was affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.

The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor, the NHS said.

At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed.

Britains National Cyber Security Centre, part of the GCHQ spy agency, said it was aware of a cyber incident and was working with the NHS and the police to investigate.

It certainly caused a meltdown in their [hospitals] email servers, crashed computers, and then a message came up with a threat of a ransom, that all the files will be deleted permanently if the payment was not made, Al Jazeeras Sonia Gallego, reporting from the UK capital, London, said.

FedEx said it was experiencing issues with some of its Windows systems in relation to the attack.

Like many other companies, FedEx is experiencing interference with some of our Windows-based systems caused by malware, a spokeswoman said in a statement.

Also on Friday, Spains government said a large number of companies, including telecommunications giant Telefonica, had been attacked by cyber criminals who infected computers with ransomware.

Hospitals across England reported the cyber attack was causing huge problems to their services and the public in areas affected were being advised to seek medical care only for emergencies.

A reporter from the Health Service Journal said the attack had affected X-ray imaging systems, pathology test results, phone systems and patient administration systems.

READ MORE: UK doctors go on strike over changes to contracts

The Barts Health group, which manages major central London hospitals including the Royal London and St Bartholomews, said it had activated a major incident plan and had cancelled routine appointments.

We are experiencing a major IT disruption and there are delays at all of our hospitals, it said.

Ambulances are being diverted to neighbouring hospitals.

Derbyshire Community Health Services said in a Twitter post: We are aware of a major IT secure system attack. All IT systems have been temporarily shut down.

Blackpool Hospitals NHS Trust, which includes six hospitals, said: Please dont attend A&E unless its an emergency, and, Please avoid contacting your GP practice unless absolutely necessary.

There was no immediate comment from the health ministry or from Prime Minister Theresa May who was out campaigning in northeast England ahead of the general election on June 8.

Britains opposition Labour Party said the attack on English hospitals showed the need to place cyber security at the heart of government policy.

This incident highlights the risk to data security within the modern health service and reinforces the need for cyber security to be at the heart of government planning, Labours health spokesman Jonathan Ashworth said.
World Health Organization confirms one Ebola-related death and investigates two more since April 22 caused by the virus.

An Ebola outbreak has been declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) after one person who died of haemorrhagic fever tested positive for the virus. Two others may have also died from the disease.

The case was confirmed following tests on nine people who came down with haemorrhagic fever in Bas-Uele province, in the northeast of the country, in late April, according to a statement from the countrys health ministry.

Dr Allarangar Yokouide, WHOs representative in Congo, said the first teams of specialists should arrive in the affected area of Likati on Saturday. The zone is some 1,300km from the capital, Kinshasa.

WATCH: Liberia  Aftermath of Ebola





Out of the nine cases, three people have since died, including one who tested positive for Ebola, according to WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier.

We need to take this very seriously, Lindmeier told Al Jazeera on Friday.

Its very important to find all the possible contacts of people who have been infected, who has been in contact, and see whether there is a possible continuation of infection and limit it as much as possible.

Without preventive measures, the virus can spread quickly between people and is fatal in up to 90 percent of cases. There is no specific treatment for the disease.

The last outbreak of Ebola in the DRC in 2014 killed at least 42 people. The country has been hit by Ebola about nine times in all.

This is not the first outbreak for the DRC so its health system has experience in dealing with it, Lindmeier said.

Ebola killed more than 11,300 people and infected some 28,600 from 2013 as it swept through the West African countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and caused alarm around the world.

Our country must confront an outbreak of the Ebola virus that constitutes a public health crisis of international significance, the health ministry said.

READ MORE: What is Ebola?

The WHOs Congo spokesman, Eugene Kabambi, said: It is in a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky. We always take this very seriously.

The new cluster of Ebola cases will again test one of the worlds least equipped health systems. The US Agency for International Development has said an estimated 70 percent of the population has little or no access to healthcare.

In June 2016, WHO declared Liberia free of active Ebola virus transmission. Liberia was the last country still fighting the worlds worst outbreak of the disease.

A major trial last year showed a prototype vaccine to be very effective against the deadly Ebola virus, according to WHO, which co-funded the study.

The GAVI global vaccine alliance said some 300,000 emergency doses of an Ebola vaccine developed by Merck could be available in case of a large-scale outbreak.

The vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBOV, was shown to be highly protective against Ebola in clinical trials published last December.
Troops surround army headquarters in Abidjan, seal off Bouake, over decision by leaders to drop demands for bonuses.

Gunfire has erupted in several cities across the Ivory Coast, including the military headquarters in the commercial capital Abidjan, as anger spread following a decision by some leaders of a group of mutineers to drop demands for bonuses.

The protests on Friday by soldiers, most of them ex-rebel fighters who helped bring President Alassane Ouattara to power, began in the second largest city, Bouake, overnight before spreading to Abidjan and the northern town of Odienne.

The unrest broke out hours after national television broadcast a ceremony in which a spokesman for 8,400 mutinous soldiers apologised to Ouattara for a rebellion in January, and dropped demands for extra pay.

By Friday morning, disgruntled soldiers, firing guns in the air, had surrounded the military headquarters in Abidjan. Later in the day, armed soldiers sealed off all roads leading into Odienne.

READ MORE: Mutinying troops strike deal with government in Bouake

Thats not what they were meant to say, one of the mutiny leaders in Bouake, who asked not to be named, told the Reuters news agency, referring to Thursdays talks.

Soldiers are at the entrances to the city. We wont close it off for the moment  Other soldiers are also deployed inside the city.

The revolt prompted a new meeting between Ouattara, defence officials and mutineers on Friday.

Show of force

The January mutiny erupted in Bouake, spread to nine other cities, and briefly brought the country to a standstill.





The government then agreed to a deal that provided amnesty for the mutineers and agreed to pay each soldier 12m CFA francs ($19,950). The soldiers received 5m francs ($8,370) in January, and were due to get the rest of the sum this month.

But they said the government asked for a delay in payment to ease financial pressure on the Treasury, citing a collapse in cocoa revenues.

Sean Lyngaas, a journalist based in Abidjan, told Al Jazeera that the decision of the mutinuous soldiers spokesman did not sit well with many and that he wasnt really representing the totality of the group.

He added: This is very similar to what happened in January. We had this ripple effect and soldiers are very keen to demonstrate their power to bring the government to the negotiating table.

READ MORE: Simone Gbagbo cleared of war crimes charges

The AFP news agency identified the spokesman as Sergeant Fofana.

We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands, Fofana said on Thursday, and saluted the president in a sign of allegiance.

Ouattara said he believed the rebellious troops would now be exemplary soldiers.

The Ivory Coast was going through a very, very difficult time, the president said, after a fall in the price of cocoa led to a net loss of 150bn francs to the state budget.

The Ivorian army, which consists of about 22,000 soldiers, includes many former rebels who were integrated into the armed forces after years of conflict.

Banks, shops closed

Al Jazeeras Ahmed Idris, reporting from Maidugiri, in Nigeria, said the revolt had caused banks and shops to close in Abidjan on Friday.

While less intense than the first one [mutiny] nobody is willing to bet that this will not escalate, he said.

Already, people, civil servants, businessmen have closed shops fearing that this can escalate and most parts of Abidjan, we were told a few hours ago, were empty because people were afraid things can get out of hand.

Lyngaas told Al Jazeera that the unrest was testing the credibility of the government  and the ability of the soldiers to fall in line behind a leader is still elusive.

He added: There isnt a lot of coherence to the way this mutiny seems to be unfolding.

WATCH: Behind Ivory Coast\s army mutiny

Ivory Coast was plunged into civil war in 2002 following a failed attempt to oust then-president Laurent Gbagbo.

The revolt sliced the former French colony into the rebel-held north and the government-controlled south and triggered years of unrest.

Gbago was forcibly removed from office in 2011 after he refused to accept Ouattaras internationally recognised victory in a presidential election the year before. The rebels were then integrated into the army in a peace deal.

Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel as well as purchases of material worth 1.2 billion euro ($1.3bn).

Part of the plan provides for the departure of several thousand men, particularly ex-rebels, who will not be replaced.
Court rejects Francesco Schettinos claim that others bore the blame for the 2012 shipwreck disaster.

Italys highest court has upheld a 16-year jail sentence for the captain of the capsized Costa Concordia luxury liner for his role in the 2012 shipwreck, which killed 32 people.

Francesco Schettino, 56, was originally found guilty in 2015 of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning his passengers.

Fridays ruling exhausted his appeals process, with the court rejecting his claim that others bore the blame for the disaster.

Free pending the decision, Schettino is expected to start his prison sentence in the coming hours.

READ MORE: Costa Concordia audio transcript

Schettino was commanding the vessel, which was carrying more than 4,200 passengers and crew, on January 13, 2012, when it hit rocks off the Tuscan holiday island of Giglio, tearing a hole in its side and eventually forcing it to keel over.

Investigators severely criticised his handling of the disaster, accusing him of bringing the 290-metre-long vessel too close to shore.

Schettino had also been accused of delaying evacuation and losing control of the operation during which he abandoned ship before all the 4,200 passengers and crew had been rescued.

The captains lawyers had insisted the accident and its deadly consequences were primarily due to organisational failings for which the ships owner, Costa Crociere, its Indonesian helmsman and the Italian coastguard should have shared the blame.

They also argued that it was not the collision, but rather the chaos that ensued owing to the ship losing power that was the direct cause of the deaths.

Schettino could not be blamed for the mechanical failures, they said. Costa Crociere avoided potential criminal charges by accepting partial responsibility and agreeing to pay a one million euro ($1.2m) fine.

Five of its employees received non-custodial sentences after concluding plea bargains early in the investigation.
Police confirm three citizens arrested under security law returned to Ankara as rights group warns of crass abuse.

Malaysia has deported three Turkish nationals wanted by Ankara for alleged links to a US-based cleric accused of being behind a failed coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Malaysias national police chief of Khalid Abu Bakar tweeted that the men were deported back to Ankara on Thursday night, despite concerns from rights groups who fear Malaysia is bowing to pressure from Turkey.

Turgay Karaman and Ihsan Aslan were arrested last week under a security law which allows detention without trial for 28 days. Two days later Turkish academic Ismet Ozcelik was also arrested  ostensibly for national security reasons.

Police investigations showed they were involved in FETO activities and are wanted by Turkey, Khalid said in a separate statement.

Turkish authorities allege last years coup attempt against Erdogan was masterminded by US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Khalid said the mens travel documents had been cancelled by Ankara and so they were regarded as illegal immigrants in Malaysia.

@PDRMsia confirmed that Turkish Nationals; MTURGAY KARAMAN; IHSAN ASLAN and ISMET OZCELIK was deported back to Ankara last night.  Khalid Abu Bakar (@KBAB51) May 12, 2017

The deportation of Karaman and Ozcelik has been termed illegal and an abuse of power by Rosli Dahlan, the lawyer who represted the duo following the arrests.

While Malaysian authorities did not notify the mens families of the deportation, Karamans wife, Ayse Gul, said she was warned by a friend on Thursday night of her husbands situation.

On Friday morning, after getting through to a police official, she received confirmation of Karamans deportation and was asked to pick up his belongings from the police station.

Ainnurul Aisyah Yunus, Asalans wife, learnt of her husbands deportation after a journalist pointed her to Khalids tweet confirming the move.





Rights groups have said they fear Malaysia may be responding to pressure from Turkey, which has mounted a huge crackdown on perceived opponents since the failed coup.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said via a statement on Friday that the Malaysian governments duplicity and crass abuse of the rights of these three men really sets this case apart.

Its like Malaysia just hung a signboard around its neck that reads handmaiden of Turkish repression.

Robertson added that Malaysias decision to deport the men meant that they could face possible torture and prolonged detention, followed by an unfair trial.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights for Southeast Asia last week expressed serious concern about the arrests and urged Malaysia to refrain from deporting the men to Turkey.

Erdogans government has detained or sacked tens of thousands of people under a state of emergency imposed after the attempted power grab.

The crackdown focuses on alleged supporters of Gulen.
Officials say Miriam Rodriguez was shot dead by gunman after dedicating life to finding those who have gone missing.

Gunmen shot and killed a prominent Mexican activist who spent years searching for her missing daughter and organised others to looked for disappeared people in the Mexicos northern state of Tamaulipas, authorities said.

Miriam Rodriguez was shot a number of times on Wednesday and died en route to hospital, local civic society group Citizen Community in Search of the Disappeared in Tamaulipas, a group Rodriguez belonged, said in a statement.

The United Nations human rights office in Mexico condemned the attack and called on the government to ensure that Rodriguezs murder is properly investigated  and does not remain in impunity.

It added that it was even more chilling that Rodriguezs death took place on Mexicos Mothers Day, a day it said has in recent years become an emblem of the fight for justice of the disappeared.

READ MORE: Women in Mexico rally against rampant domestic violence

Rodriguez began a search for her daughter after she went missing in 2014. She eventually found her remains in the Tamaulipas town of San Fernando, according to Citizen Community.

Months later she warned authorities about the perpetrators of the crime, which eventually led to their arrest, the group said in a statement.

Mexicos National Human Rights Commission said Rodriguezs death underscored the governments failure to keep the public safe and prevent rights violations of people working as human rights advocates.

Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios said the state had been protecting Rodriguez, sending police patrols three times a day to her house, following requests from the family.

READ MORE: Murdering Mexican women with impunity

He added that nine people had been put on trial for her daughters kidnapping and murder.

Barrios office denied reports that a man blamed by Rodriguez for her daughters murder remained free after escaping from prison. The man, who has been charged but not yet tried, was part of a prison break of 29 inmates in March, but was recaptured almost immediately, it said.

Negligent response

The number of people in Mexico who have disappeared under suspicious circumstances, often related to drug violence, rose to 30,000 by the end of 2016, with Tamaulipas registering 5,563 missing, the highest state total, according to Mexicos national registry of data on missing persons.

More than 100,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico in the past decade.

Amnesty International said in a statement that Mexico has become a very dangerous place for those who have the courage to devote their lives to search for missing persons.

The nightmare they face not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives and the dangers they face in their work, which they perform given the negligent response from the authorities, is alarming.

On Twitter, Tamaulipas Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca said the government will not allow the death of Miriam Rodriguez to be another statistic.
Arrests follow scuffles in Muslim-dominated areas in Yangon and forcible closures of two Islamic schools by Buddhists.

Myanmar police have arrested two hardline Buddhist nationalists and are seeking several more after they clashed with Muslims in the countrys commercial capital Yangon, underscoring the authorities growing concern over rising religious tensions.

The arrests came after nationalists led by the Patriotic Monks Union (PMU) raided flats on Tuesday in a Yangon district with a large Muslim population, igniting scuffles that were broken up only when police fired shots into the air.

Two weeks ago, the same people had forced the closure of two Muslim schools.

We have arrested two people since yesterday evening, and are still looking for the rest of them, said Police Major Khin Maung Oo, in charge of the police station in Yangons Mingalar Taung Nyunt district, where this weeks clashes took place.

READ MORE: Exclusive  Strong evidence of genocide in Myanmar

The 13-month-old administration of Aung San Suu Kyi had made tentative moves against nationalist hard-liners, but the arrests mark a significant step-up in the governments efforts, highlighting official concerns over a potential outbreak of violence in the countrys main city, which has a substantial Muslim population.





Tensions between majority Buddhists and Myanmars Muslim minority have simmered since scores were killed and tens of thousands displaced in intercommunal clashes during the onset of the countrys democratic transition in 2012 and 2013.

Mutual distrust has deepened since October, when attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents in northwestern Rakhine state provoked a massive military counteroffensive, causing about 75,000 Rohingya to flee across the border to Bangladesh.

Brigadier-General Mya Win, the commander of Yangons regional police security command, said extra security forces had been deployed and the police were on high alert to prevent communal violence.

We are patrolling around Muslim areas and have taken security measures around places of worship, he told Reuters news agency.

Leaders of the PMU said they were acting independently of the Ma Ba Tha, a larger hardline Buddhist and anti-Muslim organisation that counts among its leaders the firebrand monk Wirathu, who once called himself Myanmars Bin Laden.

Ma Ba Tha holds its nationwide congress in Yangon  a city of more than five million that has been a focus of foreign investment since a former military government ceded power in 2012  in two weeks and is expecting about 10,000 monks to attend.

Targeting Muslims

In both incidents, PMU monks and lay sympathisers targeted Muslim areas after attending a trial of fellow nationalists facing charges of inciting violence during a protest in front of the United States embassy in Yangon last year.

We didnt want any confrontation with the nationalists so we allowed them to shut down our schools, said Tin Shwe, the chairman of the Muslim schools, referring to an incident on April 28.

Tin Shwe, and a politician from the ruling National League for Democracy, said the nationalists came to the schools with local administrators and policemen.

On Tuesday the group  again accompanied by local authorities and police  searched a building in a different part of Yangon shortly before midnight, claiming some Rohingya Muslims were staying there illegally.

Local residents confronted the nationalists, gathered in front of the building, prompting police officers to fire warning shots to break up the crowd.

READ MORE: Myanmars punk rockers challenge anti-Muslim rhetoric

A Yangon court issued the arrest warrant against seven people, including two monks, charging them with inciting communal violence, which carries a penalty of up to two years in prison.

At a news conference on Tuesday, organised shortly before the arrest warrants were issued, the nationalists vowed to keep fighting Muslim influence in the country, citing government reluctance to protect race and religion in Myanmar.

We are protecting our people because government authorities are reluctant to do that. Even though many people hate us, we are not creating problems, U Thuseikta, a monk and a senior official of the PMU, told reporters.

Tin Shwe, the Muslim community leader, said: We want to get equal treatment and be protected by the government  we voted for them with our hands.
North Korea will seek the extradition of anyone involved in what it says was a CIA-backed plot to kill leader Kim Jong-un last month with a biochemical weapon, a top official says.

Han Song-ryol, the vice foreign minister, called a meeting of foreign diplomats on Thursday in Pyongyang to outline North Koreas allegation that the CIA and South Koreas intelligence agency bribed and coerced a North Korean man into joining in the assassination plot, which the North Korean Ministry of State Security has suggested was thwarted.

North Koreas permanent mission to the UN late on Thursday issued a statement calling the purported plot to kill Kim a declaration of war.

It said the aim was to hurt the mental mainstay that all the Korean people absolutely trust and eclipse the eternal sun of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), the countrys official name.

READ MORE: CIA creates Mission Center on North Korea threat

The CIA and the White House declined to comment on the statements. The South Korean intelligence service said the charge was groundless.

North Korean state media has been running stories about the plot since last week. The security ministry has vowed to ferret out anyone involved in the alleged plot, which it called state-sponsored terrorism.

The permanent mission to the UN said the Ministry of State Security has declared that a Korean-style anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organisations of the US and South Korea.

Han took that a step further with the extradition statement.





According to our law, the Central Public Prosecutors Office of the DPRK will use all available methods to start to work to demand the handover of the criminals involved, so as to punish the organisers, conspirators, and followers of this terrible state-sponsored terrorism, he said.

North Korea claims the primary suspect is a man it has identified only by the ubiquitous surname Kim. It says he is a North Korean resident of Pyongyang who worked for a time in the Russian Far East. State media said he was involved in the timber industry in Khabarovsk, which is one of the primary places North Koreans can go overseas to work.

The North further said a South Korean agent named Jo Ki-chol and a secret agent named Xu Guanghai, director general of the Qingdao NAZCA Trade Co Ltd, met Kim in Dandong, on North Koreas border with China, to give him communications equipment and cash. The North also said a guy surnamed Han taught Kim how to enlist accomplices.

These terrorists plotted and planned in detail for the use of biochemical substances, including radioactive and poisonous substances, as the means of assassination, Vice Minister Han said, reading from a prepared statement.

These biochemical substances were to be provided with the assistance of the CIA  while the South Korean Intelligence Service was going to provide necessary support and funding for this attempt at assassination on our supreme leader.

READ MORE: North Korea accuses CIA of plot to murder Kim Jong-un

North Koreas UN mission said the organisers infiltrated the terrorist into the country with several pieces of satellite communications equipment so he could be updated with the operational code of terrorism against the supreme leadership, various terrorist methods of using biochemical substances, ways of bribing and hiring the one who would actually carry out the terrorist act and ways of entering the venue of the event.

The statement said the organisers also gave him instructions to report on the creed of the person who would carry out the attack and the state of his brainwashing, and to make sure the preparations were perfect, as there could be a war if it was revealed that South Koreas intelligence agency backed the operation.

In statements for foreign distribution, North Korea often refers to its leader Kim Jong-un without naming him, instead using the phrase supreme leadership or supreme dignity.

The last time that Han appeared to brief foreign diplomats in Pyongyang was last December, to present North Koreas response to the latest round of UN sanctions after its September 2016 nuclear test.
Saba Nidal Obaid, 20, was shot in the stomach while at demonstrations in support of 1,500 Palestinians on hunger strike.

Israeli forces have shot dead a Palestinian youth and wounded more than 10 others during clashes in the occupied West Bank, according to officials and health workers.

Saba Nidal Obaid, 20, was shot in the stomach near the village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah, during a protest on Friday in support of the 1,500 Palestinians on hunger strike across Israeli prisons.

Obaid later died in a nearby hospital, the Palestinian health ministry said in a statement.





His funeral was scheduled to take place later on Friday, Basem al-Tamimi, an activist present at the protest, told Al Jazeera from Nabi Saleh.

We are on our way to attend the funeral of the martyred Obaid and are expecting thousands of people to turn up, said Tamimi.

We got to the demonstration before Friday prayers. After the prayers, Israeli forces started using tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition at the protesters.

In addition to Obaid, three other protesters were shot by the Israeli forces  two were wounded by rubber bullets while the third was injured by live ammo.

Clashes were also reported near the Beita junction and Beit Furik checkpoint on Friday.

INTERACTIVE: A timeline of Palestinian mass hunger strikes in Israel

A spokesperson for the Red Crescent told Al Jazeera that Israeli forces were not letting ambulances through in Nabi Saleh and most of the wounded were taken to hospitals in private cars.

It wasnt easy for us to get through, said spokesperson Arab Faqha, adding that Israeli forces even tried arresting one of the injured from the ambulances before letting the vehicle through.

In Beit Furik, we also treated 10 people. Two of our ambulances were also attacked by the Israeli forces who shot rubber bullets and shattered one of the windows. One of the ambulances was carrying an injured demonstrator to the hospital.

According to Maan news agency, Obaid is the 21st Palestinian to be killed by Israeli forces and settlers since the start of 2017.

Speaking to Maan, an Israeli army spokesperson acknowledged that the Israeli army had used live ammunition on a group of protesters throwing rocks in Nabi Saleh.

Hunger strike

Approximately 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners are on their fourth week of a hunger strike, risking their lives in hopes of gaining basic rights in Israeli jails.

Spread across several prisons in Israel, Palestinian prisoners embarked on the dangerous journey of an open-ended fast to pressure Israel  which is responsible under international law for the wellbeing of all persons in its custody  to improve prison conditions.

The prisoners are surviving on salt water only.
The six candidates competing in Irans presidential election have squared off in their third and final televised debate, with President Hassan Rouhani lashing out at his hardline opponents and vowing to get rid of the remaining sanctions following 2015s nuclear deal.

During the fiery event, Rouhani, who is seeking a second four-year term on May 19, said the historic agreement with world powers had ended many sanctions and brought a windfall from renewed oil sales over the past year that could now be invested.

We want to allocate $15bn for investments  and $3-5bn for supporting the poor and needy, said Rouhani.

READ MORE: Iran election explainer

But he went further in his closing statement, vowing for the first time to target the remaining US sanctions that are still hampering trade deals and preventing foreign money from entering Iran.

THE TWO SIDES OF IRANS POLITICAL SPECTRUM:  The conservative Principlist establishment, which controls most of Irans economic might through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commercial enterprises and the vast financial resources of the religious endowments. Candidates: Ebrahim Raisi, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Mostafa Mirsalim The Reformist bloc, which prefers political, economic and social liberalisation and an opening up of Iran to foreign investment.

Candidates: Hassan Rouhani, Mostafa Hashemitaba, Eshaq Jahangiri

I will engage myself in lifting all the non-nuclear sanctions during the coming four years and bring back the grandeur of Iran and the Iranian people, he said.

Rouhani was first elected in a landslide four years ago on a promise to reduce Irans international isolation.

In 2015, he negotiated the agreement with world powers to curb Irans nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions.

He is now trying to hold on to office by firing up reformist voters disillusioned by a stalled economy and the slow pace of social reform.

If we want a better economy, we should not let groups with security and political backing get involved in the economy, Rouhani said in an swipe at the Revolutionary Guards Corps, an elite military force with a vast business empire, which has backed his main Principlist opponent Ebrahim Raisi.

Poverty has increased

The focus of the final debate was on the economy as the candidates, who are all male, outlined their vision for Irans future.

As in the previous two, bruising debates, the main challengers tore into Rouhanis economic record, arguing that he failed to bring Iranians a better life despite the lifting of sanctions.

Poverty has increased with this government from 23 percent to 33 percent, said Raisi, a cleric and jurist, who is seen as the leading conservative, though still a distant second to Rouhani in unofficial polls.

We must increase direct aid to the poor, he added, accusing Rouhanis government of boosting subsidies only at the last minute to grab votes.

Why did you wait for the election campaign to increase aid? Why didnt you do it four years ago? The people are intelligent and they will decide.

Raisi also kept up his efforts to reach out to poor and religiously conservative voters.

The people expect government members to fear God, said Raisi, who runs the Imam Reza shrine in the holy city of Mashhad.

Rouhani said: Mr Raisi, you can slander me as much you wish. As a judge of the clerical court, you can even issue an arrest order. But please dont abuse religion for power.

OPINION: Irans presidential election puts populism to the test

During these three televised debates, in the first two rounds, the Principlists actually won and the polls showed that, Mostafa Khoshcheshm, a journalist and university professor at the Fars Media Faculty, told Al Jazeera.

But in the third one, I believe they [both camps] were equal. They were on the offensive as well as the defensive. They tried to question each others performance, plans and agendas, but they dealt with their own plans and economic agenda for the country much less, he added.

Khoshcheshm said that Rouhani was expected to have a difficult job in the upcoming election.

The poll show there is going to be a runoff, a second round. and Rouhani may not be able to secure the 50 percent plus one vote that he needs.

Rouhanis deal to lift sanctions won the cautious backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei and his loyalists criticise its failure to boost the economy.

Benefits have been slow to arrive, in part because of unilateral US sanctions still in place over Irans missile programme, human rights record and allegations that it supports terrorism.

Rouhanis allies say his rivals oppose deeper change and exposure to international competition in part because of the economic interests of the Guards, which gained control of swaths of Irans industry during its years of isolation.
Leader of mainly Kurdish US-backed Syrian group confirms attack on ISIL stronghold will take place beginning of summer.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed group, says it will soon begin a final attack to capture Raqqa, ISILs self-proclaimed capital in northern Syria, just days after seizing a key town to the west and an adjacent dam.

The announcement on Friday followed US President Donald Trumps decision on Monday to approve direct arms shipments to the SDFs Kurdish elements  the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG)  to ensure a clear victory over ISIL.





SDF commander Abdul Qader Hevdeli said on Friday the push to Raqqa will be in the coming period of time.

I cant specify exactly; I believe entering and storming the city will happen at the start of the summer, he said in a news conference in Tabqa city, which the SDF took from ISIL on Wednesday.

Hevdeli said the US arms shipments would arrive soon and added that Raqqa would be captured without help from other forces.

We dont need any other forces to be our partner, he said. We thank anyone who wants to help but our forces are capable enough to liberate Raqqa and go further. For those who want to help  they must first solve their problems in their own countries.

The SDFs war on Raqqa has already seen the mainly Kurdish group capture large swaths of the surrounding province with help from the US-led coalition bombing ISIL in Iraq and Syria.

This week, following months of fighting, the SDF seized the strategic town of Tabqa, to the west of Raqqa, and a major hydroelectric dam nearby.

This victory in Tabqa over ISIL has been a big prize for the SDF, said Al Jazeeras Charles Stratford, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkish side of the Syria-Turkey border.

READ MORE: From Mosul to Raqqa  Our family is still suffering

Tabqa lies on the banks of the Euphrates River, about 55km west of Raqqa. It was taken by ISIL in August 2014, following its capture of Raqqa, a city with at least 300,000 residents, in early 2014.

The battle for Tabqa was marked by fears that the dam would be severely damaged and collapse, leading to massive flooding downstream.

The SDF said in a statement that Tabqa would be turned over to a civilian council once fully secured. It also said the authority that oversees the Tabqa dam would remain a national Syrian institution that will serve all the regions of Syria without exception.

Washingtons decision to arm the YPG, the SDFs main faction battling ISIL, reignited a dispute with Turkey, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for an immediate reversal.

Turkey views the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units as the Syrian extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, which has fought the state in the southeast of Turkey since 1984 and is considered a terrorist group by the US and the EU.
Top US intelligence chiefs on Thursday publicly expressed doubts about the global cyber-security firm Kaspersky Labs because of its roots in Russia.

Six leading intelligence officials told a Senate hearing on external threats to the United States of their concerns over the firms broad presence, without specifying any particular threat.

Asked if he was aware of a security threat tied to Kaspersky software, Federal Bureau of Investigation acting director Andrew McCabe replied: We are very concerned about it and we are focused on it very closely.

Defense Intelligence Agency director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart said his agency is avoiding the companys products.

There is, as well as I know, no Kaspersky software on our networks, he said, adding that the agencys private sector contractors are also steering clear.

READ MORE: New cyberattacks on major banks thwarted, Russia says

The allegations against Kaspersky come amid heightened US concerns over Russian hacking after what intelligence chiefs say was a significant effort directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to interfere with last years election.

President Donald Trumps former national security advisor Michael Flynn is under investigation for his links to Russia, which include being paid $11,250 to speak at a Kaspersky function.

Also indicating their concerns in brief were the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and the director of National Intelligence.

I am personally aware and involved as director of the National Security Agency in the Kaspersky Lab issue, NSA head Mike Rogers said.

Kaspersky was founded in Moscow in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, a computer engineer who served in the Russian military.

The company quickly expanded to a global presence, with 3,600 employees, 400 million users of its software, and revenue of some $620m in 2015, according to its website.

READ MORE: Russia charges cyber security experts with treason

Its antivirus programmes regularly rank in the top five of such software for personal and business computers.

But US officials have expressed doubts over its recruitment of some staff with alleged links to Russian defence and intelligence bodies.

Some worry it might offer Russian intelligence a secret backdoor into users computers. US officials are particularly worried that foreign hackers could penetrate US infrastructure via suspect software and malware.

Kaspersky denied having ties to any government.

The company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts, it said in a statement on Thursday.

Kaspersky Lab believes it is completely unacceptable that the company is being unjustly accused without any hard evidence to back up these false allegations.

READ MORE: Cybercrime robbers steal up to $1bn from global banks

Commenting on Reddit, Eugene Kaspersky also said his company had no links to the Russian government, offering to testify in the Senate.

I respectfully disagree with their opinion, and Im very sorry these gentlemen cant use the best software on the market because of political reasons, he said, referring to the intelligence chiefs.

Sean Kanuck, a former CIA officer who was the first US national intelligence officer for cyber issues, said the worries about Kaspersky have mainly come from US lawmakers who dont understand that it gets paid by companies and US government agencies to have front-door access to their systems.

That means that any Congressional questions about back doors in Kaspersky products reflect a certain naivete, because many of Kasperskys clients are intentionally paying for full-content monitoring on their networks.
Police official says Guven was detained over article about the death of a public prosecutor in Denizli province.

Turkish police arrested the online editor of the Cumhuriyet newspaper on Friday, an unidentified police official said.

Oguz Guven, the editor-in-chief of cumhuriyet.com.tr, was taken to Istanbul police headquarters, the official said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on talking to the media.

The official said an arrest warrant was issued for Guven after the online edition published an article about the death of Mustafa Alper, the chief prosecutor of Denizli province, in southwest Turkey, who was killed in a car crash on Wednesday.

Early on Friday, Guven tweeted, I am being taken into custody, without elaborating further.

READ MORE: Turkeys failed coup attempt  All you need to know

A statement on Cumhuriyets website said the newspaper was not given reasons for Guvens arrest.

According to state-run Anadolu news agency, 12 Cumhuriyet journalists and executives are currently in prison facing terror charges.

Scores of opposition media organisations have been shut down since the government acquired emergency powers following the failed coup last year.

Cumhuriyet, known for its independent reporting, received international attention in 2015 when it reported on a fleet of Syria-bound trucks, allegedly sent by the countrys intelligence agency, carrying weapons to Syrian anti-government fighters.

For that report, Can Dundar, Cumhuriyets previous editor-in-chief, was sentenced to nearly six years for publishing state secrets.
State-run media says 62 detained are suspected of being linked to the US-based cleric blamed by Turkey for failed coup.

Turkey has arrested 62 former employees of the Istanbul stock exchange over suspected links to US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is accused of being behind a failed coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.





State-run Anadolu Agency said the suspects were arrested on Friday in simultaneous police raids in Istanbul and five other cities.

Detention warrants were issued for 40 more people, the agency reported.

Anadolu said those arrested are accused of using an encrypted messaging application, which the government said was created especially for supporters of Gulen.

It added that the suspects were removed from positions at Borsa Istanbul stock exchange following the attempted coup last year.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the failed coup.

Authorities have arrested more than 47,000 people since the failed coup, Turkeys interior minister said, including some 10,700 police officers and 7,400 military personnel.

READ MORE: Turkey suspends 9,000 police officers for Gulen links

It has also sacked or suspended 120,000 others from a wide range of professions including soldiers, police, teachers and public servants, over alleged links with what Turkeys government deems to be terrorist groups.

Last month, Turkey temporarily suspended more than 9,000 personnel from the countrys police force while they are investigated for suspected links to Gulen.

Mass detentions immediately after the attempted coup were supported by many Turks, who agreed with Erdogan when he blamed Gulen for orchestrating the coup, which killed at least 240 people, mostly civilians. But criticism mounted as the arrests widened.
One year since the government of Aung San Suu Kyi took power, we explore why high hopes for Myanmar have been dashed.

When Aung San Suu Kyi swept to power in Myanmar, the world hailed a new era. But one year on, the persecution of the countrys Rohingya Muslim minority is tarnishing her international reputation.

Meanwhile, fighting rages in the countrys north, the number of political detainees has risen sharply, and the economy has slowed.

Aung San Suu Kyis supporters say she cant be blamed, and that undemocratic forces are undermining her. Others point to mismanagement and a fundamental lack of political experience.

101 East returns to Myanmar to find out if the high hopes held for pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi have turned to dust.

Join the conversation @AJ101East
We speak to Malaysias opposition leader Wan Azizah, and debate Hassan Rouhanis chances for re-election.

In this weeks UpFront, we speak to Malaysian opposition leader Wan Azizah Wan Ismail about her attempts to unseat current Prime Minister Najib Razak. Could the upcoming election result in Wan Azizah becoming the countrys first female prime minister?

And in the Arena, with Iranians heading for the polls soon, we debate what the future holds for President Hassan Rouhani and how much of his reform agenda he was able to accomplish.

Headliner  Is Malaysias opposition too weak to win?

As Malaysians prepare for elections, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, leader of the opposition and wife to imprisoned former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim, is hoping to lead her coalition into power.

In an unlikely partnership aimed at strengthening the opposition, Wan Azizah joined forces with former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad, the man who previously backed her husbands criminal prosecution.

But with the ruling Barisan Nasional party polling high, and the opposition divided, can Wan Azizah defeat Prime Minister Najib Razak  who is embroiled in a corruption scandal  to become the countrys first female prime minister?

We cannot give up. This is our country. This is our future. So we have to continue and do something, says Wan Azizah.

In this weeks Headliner, Malaysian opposition leader and President of the Peoples Justice Party Wan Azizah Wan Ismail discusses her coalitions platform and her surprising plans if she succeeds in the elections.

Editors note: UpFront received no response to requests for an interview from Malaysian government representatives.

Arena  Has Rouhani succeeded in reforming Iran?

Editors note: For more from this interview debating human rights in Iran, click here.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani came into power in a landslide victory in 2013 on promises of reform and social and economic progress.

Although Rouhanis administration succeeded in negotiating the 2015 nuclear deal, many Iranians have yet to see economic prosperity from the lifting of sanctions, with youth unemployment at nearly 30 percent.

So, with the economy as the primary concern for Iranians casting their votes in the May 19 presidential election, will Rouhani manage to win re-election against his two ultra-conservative challengers, in what has turned out to be a tighter race than expected?

Elections in Iran are very important. The president has a great deal of power, says Iranian academic Mohammad Marandi. According to polls, the overwhelming majority of Iranians are concerned about unemployment, and after that, its wages.

We have to understand that President Rouhani, again, as a prime minister in an absolute monarchy, is not in charge of Iranian economy, says Maziar Bahari, editor of IranWire. Many economic institutions in Iran, many industrial institutions in Iran, are under the supervision, direct supervision of [Supreme Leader] Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In this weeks Arena, Iranian-Canadian journalist and human rights activist Maziar Bahari, and Iranian academic Mohammad Marandi debate how much of a reformer President Hassan Rouhani has actually been and whether the country has progressed under his leadership.

Follow UpFront on Twitter @AJUpFront and Facebook.










English News Belt and Road initiative benefits Pakistans infrastructure

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Mai 2017



Chinese President Xi Jinping, during his visit to Pakistan in April, 2015, witnessed the signing of a framework agreement to build the orange line of the rapid mass transit system in Punjab's provincial capital of Lahore, along with Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

By Yang Xun, Meng Xianglin, Huan Xiang and Xu Wei from Peoples Daily Pakistans infrastructure has been greatly improved thanks to its cooperation with China under the Belt and Road initiative. Both the China-aided Karakoram Highway (KKH), the only land route connecting China and Pakistan, and Orange Line metro project in Lahore, the second largest city in Pakistan, are evidence of such improvement.



Passing through the precipitous Karakoram Mountains, the KKH is one of the highest roads in the world, built in the 1960s to 1970s by arduous work of Pakistani and Chinese constructors. In the eyes of Pakistani people, the project is regarded as the Eighth Wonder of the World.



In a bid to further improve the traffic situation of the Central Asian nation, a renovation and upgrade project for the KKH was launched by the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) in September 2016.



The 120-kilometer project, which links Havelian and Thakot, is expected to be completed by 2020, Zhu Jiangfan, the project manager, told the Peoples Daily.



Bottlenecked by funds and equipment, Pakistan has seen many of its road projects stopped halfway in the past.



Ahmad, a road constructor, said that his uncle is a long distance freight driver, who has had enough of the bumpy road since vegetables, cakes and other food he transports are often damaged after delivery.



We expect an early completion of the road since it will shorten transportation times, lower costs and bring more convenience to our daily lives, Ahmad added.



Pakistan will also say goodbye to the days without subways and light rail thanks to Chinas assistance.



Chinese President Xi Jinping, during his visit to Pakistan in April, 2015, witnessed the signing of a framework agreement to build the orange line of the rapid mass transit system in Punjab's provincial capital of Lahore, along with Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.



The system, the first large rail transit project within the framework of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, was contracted by a consortium composed of China Railway Corporation and China North Industries Corporation.



Describing the orange as a color representing vigor, Sarwar, an official with Punjab provincial government, said that the Belt and Road initiative has injected vitality into Lahore, which is an ancient city, as well as the whole of Pakistan.

The metro project will be built in accordance with the same quality requirements for the high-speed railway linking Beijing and Shanghai, said project manager Wang Feng, adding that the train will be extremely smooth.



The 26-kilometer line will have 26 stations, two of which will be underground. The total $1.6 billion investment of the project will be financed through the loans provided by the Export-Import Bank of China. Adopting Chinese standards, the project will use China-made metro cars and mechatronic systems as well.



A lot of engineering and technical workers from both countries are now working in the forefront of the orange line project that carries the expectation of the Pakistani public, a general manager with the Punjab Transportation Department said.



We believe that the orange line project will definitely be a complete success, the manager stressed.



Pakistans sluggish telecommunications industry has also been bolstered because of the bilateral friendship.



In the past, remote areas of the country did not have stable communication signals, but thanks to the efforts of CMPak, a subsidiary of China Mobile, the situation has greatly improved, local residents told the Peoples Daily.



China Mobile has grown into the countrys third largest telecommunications operator since it entered the market in 2007, said Wang Haibo, vice general manager with CMPak, explaining that its customers have surpassed 28 million from less than 1 million at the beginning.



The number of its 4G users, standing at 2.4 million, tops the whole country, said Wang, adding that the company has extended its base stations to all Pakistani cities with a 10,000-plus population.



Localization was given top priority by CMPak during its operations in Pakistan. Besides the 21 management and expert personnel sent from China, the rest of its employees are local residents. So far, it has created 3,200 direct jobs and more than 50,000 indirect positions.



The company offers training and lectures to the employees, from which my colleagues and I have learned a lot of practical skills, said Martin, a customer service employee with CMPak.



Thanks to the high-quality local workers, the number of Pakistani customers of China Mobile is increasing, Martin said, adding that they feel proud and happy to work there.







Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Belt and Road initiative speeds up Kazakhstans agricultural modernization

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Mai 2017



In May 2015, the 200-hectare China-Kazakhstan Modern Agriculture Innovation Park was completed in Kazakhstans largest city Almaty by the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Industries Demonstration Zone of Northwest Chinas Shaanxi Province and the Kazakhstan International Integration Fund.

By Ma Xiaoning, Zhou Hanbo, Xie Yahong and Liu Junguo from Peoples Daily Thanks to its agricultural cooperation with China under the framework of Belt and Road initiative, Kazakhstan has found a new source of economic growth. An agricultural innovation park established by both sides has witnessed the development of such cooperation.



Being a major grain producer and exporter, Kazakhstan has been challenged by low agricultural production. Frustrated by the dropping global oil prices, the energy-rich country began to diversify its economic modes in recent years.





The country has chosen the exports of agricultural products as a new engine for economic growth, hoping to boost agricultural productivity via technological and scientific innovations.



Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged to deepen bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership in his first visit to the country in September 2013. The president made a commitment to drive forward China-Kazakhstan cooperation in non-energy sectors, help Central Asian countries develop their economy and improve local peoples living standards.



In May 2015, the 200-hectare China-Kazakhstan Modern Agriculture Innovation Park was completed in Kazakhstans largest city Almaty by the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Industries Demonstration Zone of Northwest Chinas Shaanxi Province and the Kazakhstan International Integration Fund.



Situated within the Turgen farm which is 70 kilometers east of Almaty, the park is hailed as a mutually beneficial livelihood project to implement the consensus reached by the two heads of state.



In the past two years, the park has reaped rich harvests of wheat, corns, oil crops, fruit, vegetables and seedlings via combination breeding.



Last July, the park harvested the first batch of winter wheat, with the No.5 winter wheat yielding 319 kilograms per mu (0.07 hectares), 82.28 percent higher than the average 175 kilograms of local wheat, said Yu Jianwei, manager of the dry land agriculture department of the Yangling Modern Agriculture Demonstration Park Development & Construction Co. Ltd.



Quality of the agricultural products is excellent, Yu said, adding that the park is in pursuit of producing high-quality seeds by using advanced technologies imported from China, based on the soil texture and characteristics of Kazakhstans planting industry.



Alexey, a technician with the park, said that Kazakh technicians have learnt the most advanced agricultural technologies from Chinese experts.



After two or three years, we will be able to choose the most suitable plants from these test fields for Kazakhstan and Chinese seeds are believed to be grown in all farmlands across Kazakhstan, he said.



Manshuk, a doctorate and general manager of the Turgen Integration Agriculture Co., Ltd., has visited the Yangling Agricultural High-tech Industries Demonstration Zone three times and loved the park very much.



It was her dream to introduce Chinese agricultural park to Turgen, so that agricultural enterprises in Kazakhstan, other Central Asian countries, Russia and other regions can access to advanced Chinese technologies, she said.



Cooperation in agricultural sector between China and Kazakhstan within the framework of the Belt and Road initiative has turned her dream into reality, she said, adding that the Chinese technicians introduced new agricultural varieties, new technologies and modern machines which helped Kazakhstan make major breakthroughs toward agricultural modernization



Andrey, a ranch owner managing 400 hectares of apple trees and 200 hectares of grape trees, said he hoped introduce high-quality apple tree seedlings from China and learn modern grape planting skills as well.



Before the park was built, Andrey had to go to Xinjiang in Northwest China to learn the skills. Now Chinese experts have come to my hometown to offer help to us, he said pleasantly, adding that he could build his fortune in the near future and buy a new car.



Moreover, cultivating agricultural talents for countries along the Belt and Road route is also an important mission for the innovation park. Alexey, who is to study in Shaanxi Province for one year in September, said he has made up his mind to learn hard to make contributions to the innovation park as well as the acceleration of Kazakhstans agricultural modernization.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News China, Cambodia enjoy deeply rooted, vibrant friendship

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Mai 2017



The institute has established 14 teaching sites from merely 1 at the beginning, covering each province of the country. Currently, a total of more than 10,000 students are learning Chinese at the institute, including over 2,000 government officials, Munyrith added.

By Wang Tian, Jiao Xiang, Yu Jinghao and Zhang Zhiwen from People's Daily The warming up of cultural communication and personnel exchanges between China and Cambodia under the framework of the Belt and Road initiative, which is evident in the "China fever" and "Chinese fever" sweeping Cambodian cities of Phnom Penh, Sihanoukville and Siem Reap, has benefited more local public.



Signs written in Chinese and Chinese commodities are common in local roadside shops, and even the hotel receptionists can communicate with the customers in fluent Chinese.



In the world-famous scenic site, the Angkor temple ruins, the high demand for Chinese-speaking tour guides has been a direct factor behind the craze for learning Chinese.



Chea Munyrith, Cambodian director of the Confucius Institute at the Royal Academy of Cambodia, told People's Daily that the Confucius Institute has experienced rapid development since 2009 when the then Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping inaugurated the academy.



The institute has established 14 teaching sites from merely 1 at the beginning, covering each province of the country. Currently, a total of more than 10,000 students are learning Chinese at the institute, including over 2,000 government officials, Munyrith added.



"Chinese-teaching has become an important bridge to connect the two peoples, and it has also improved the mutual understanding and friendship between them, the director said in fluent Chinese.



During the past 150-plus years, many countries around the world have sent professionals and offered funds for the restoration and conservation of the Angkor temple ruins. In 1997, China's State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) entrusted the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage (CACH) with the establishment of a preservation team for the ruins.



With the persistence of Chinese experts since then, the restoration of the Chao Say Thevoda and Keo has been finished. Both of the projects will be handed back to Cambodia in 2018.



The staff in charge at the site, Liu Jiang, who is also an associate research librarian of CACH, has been working in Angkor for 10 years. Though far away from his home, he has never regretted his posting since the exquisite temples have been brought back to life by him and his colleagues.



Such hard work has received appreciation from Hang Peou, deputy director general of the Authority of Protection and Management of Angkor and The Region of Siem Reap (APSARA). "The valuable culture of Cambodia has been well protected thanks to China's efforts," he said.



More and more Cambodian people are benefiting from the increasingly frequent cultural and people-to-people exchanges between China and Cambodia.



Hang Peou told People's Daily that a total of 800,000 Chinese tourists visited Cambodia in 2016, ranking the first among all foreign visitors in terms of quantity. They contributed a lot to the development of local industries including hotel, catering and tourism, creating a great number of jobs for local residents.



Now, related departments of Cambodia are launching more measures to attract 2 million Chinese visitors by 2020.



Chinese-speaking tour guides are in such high demand in Siem Reap that their salary could reach as much as $1,000, several times higher than the local average, said Zhang Yong, principal of Chong San Chinese School in Siem Reap.



The school has attracted many students for its Chinese courses, Zhang added.



More and more Chinese businessmen are seeking investment opportunities in Cambodia as well. Valuing the historical and cultural resources of Cambodia, the businessmen at the same time bring capital and technology to the country.



Thanks to the implementation of the "Belt and Road" initiative, the opening of direct flights between China and Cambodia has offered the businessmen a great deal of convenience.



The tourism products themed with Angkor are a highlight of China-Cambodia cultural cooperation, said Zhou Xiaoheng, general manager of a tourism company named Jiaheng, citing historic stage drama "Angkor Empire," a big work completed under the guidance of China's Sichuan government, as an example.



The company, attracted by Angkor's profound culture, hopes to build a world-class tourism product, Zhou added. The drama is the first cultural tourism product of Sichuan within the framework of the "Belt and Road" initiative.



The philosophy of the "Belt and Road" initiative comes from history, said Norodom Arunrasmy, Her Royal Highness Princess of the Kingdom of Cambodia, adding that China and Southeast Asian countries have enjoyed friendly exchanges through the maritime Silk Road since ancient times.



"In addition to silk, porcelains and advanced technologies, Chinese people have brought peace and development to Cambodia and other Southeast Asian countries," the princess noted.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Chinas assistance helps realize Maldives bridge dream

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Mai 2017



The China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, named by Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen, will span from eastern edge of Male island to the western corner of the island of Hulhule, where the international airport is located.

By Yuan Jirong and Hu Zexi from Peoples Daily The Maldives, an archipelagic nation in the Indian Ocean, will soon realize its dream to have a bridge with the assistance from a Chinese company.



The China-Maldives Friendship Bridge, named by Maldivian President Abdulla Yameen, will span from eastern edge of Male island to the western corner of the island of Hulhule, where the international airport is located.



Lack of bridges has been a bottleneck in the development of the South Asian island country. Local residents, over the past years, had to travel among the islands by ferry.



Against such backdrop, the bridge under construction is high on the priority list of the island country and its president.



Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony, Yameen said that the day China agreed to construct the bridge was one of the happiest days in his life. The bridge, a dream for generations of Maldivians, is also a cornerstone for the nations future, the president added.



It was Yameen who proposed to name the cooperation project as China-Maldives Friendship Bridge when Chinese President Xi Jinping paid a state visit to his country in September 2014.



Local public even hailed the bridge as a millennium project of the country. Though the country comprises a territory spanning nearly thousand islands, most of its citizens live on the islands of Male, Hulhule and Hulhumale.



In the past, there was a road connecting Hulhule and Hulhumale islands, but ferries served as the only mode of transportation between Male and Hulhule islands. The roads on Male, an island covering less than 1.8 square kilometers, are so narrow that it is hard to drive a truck.



The bridge, upon completion, will link the three islands together so that the country can embrace a jump in growth. It will also boost the economy of the atoll chain and improve the living conditions of people residing on the Male island.



Mohamed Muizzu, Maldivian Minister of Housing and Infrastructure, told the Peoples Daily that the bridge will open the door of development for the Maldives, a country different from others in topographical condition.



The construction commenced on December 30, 2015, and is expected to be completed on August 20, 2018, said Lin Shukui, head of the technical team of the project, adding that 50 percent of the work has been finished so far.



The project was contracted by Second Harbor Engineering Company affiliated to China Communications Construction Company (CCCC).



Though a heaven for tourists, the Maldives is a hell for construction workers, Liu Ling, a representative sent by the Ministry of Commerce to the project described the harsh challenges when building the bridge.



The strong sea wind, unstable ocean currents, torrential water flow, coral reef, as well as a high degree of radiation, humidity and salinity all posed roadblocks for the construction. The waves rising without any breeze on the sea can reach three meters, while the water is as deep as 27 to 46 meters.



The Chinese constructors finally overcame the obstacles by exploring new ways and optimizing the designs. Working in temperatures as high as 32, the constructors with safe accommodation were often soaked with sweat and had to drink as much as five liters of water each day.



While in the rainy seasons, they would be threatened by the dengue fever and H1N1 Influenza virus.



The environment protection was given priority in the construction. The welder, for instance, would take a bucket to collect the rubbish generated by the welding operation.



All the industrial waste and household garbage were disposed, and the sea was kept so clean that small sharks can be seen in the water.



Harboring a desire for the bridge, many locals frequented nearby areas to check the progress, Lin said, adding that the local government also set up an observation desk equipped with telescope near the technical team, so that local residents can get the latest updates in a timely manner.



Both Maldivian officials and the public spoke highly of the project, using simple Chinese like Good and Thank you to express their gratitude to China.



My father is proud of my job, said Amira Latheef, the human resources head of the project. I choose to learn Chinese because China is much stronger and the Chinese language is more popular, said Amira, who once studied Chinese in China.



The engagement of the Maldives in the Belt and Road initiative has brought us a great deal of new opportunities, added Amira.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Chinese enterprise facilitates Djiboutis development

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Mai 2017



The new port has a designed capacity of 7 million tons and is planned to hold 200,000 containers. With a water depth of 15.3 meters, the port can harbor 100,000-ton level vessels. The port is also equipped with large-scale facilities made in China, which have greatly improved its operation efficiency. The management of the port adopted Chinas experience.

By Li Zhiwei and Li Yida from Peoples Daily Chinese companies have helped Djibouti, a country located in the Horn of Africa, develop infrastructure in the past few years, paving the way for the countrys economic development.



Djibouti has been attempting to renovate its ports over years since port economy accounts for 80 percent of its GDP. The countrys rise to prosperity was closely related to its geographical location in the Horn of Africa.



However, the countrys economy was hindered as the aging facilities could no longer satisfy the rising transportation needs.



China Merchants Group Limited (CGM) became the second-largest shareholder of the port after buying 23.5 percent equity stake from the latter in February 2013.



The multi-functional Doraleh Port, which started construction in August 2014, was completed after two years. The project consumed a total investment of $580 million, including a loan on favorable terms from the Export-Import Bank of China (EIBC).



The new port has a designed capacity of 7 million tons and is planned to hold 200,000 containers. With a water depth of 15.3 meters, the port can harbor 100,000-ton level vessels. The port is also equipped with large-scale facilities made in China, which have greatly improved its operation efficiency. The management of the port adopted Chinas experience.



The port has paid an accumulated $35 million tax to the government since 2013, becoming an important taxation source for the Djiboutian government.



The port is the lung for Djiboutis economic development, saidHoumed MohamedKamil, CFO of the port, adding that working with China has brought hope to his country.



With the acceleration of the Belt and Road initiative, investment in the construction of free trade zone, ports, rails and water delivery services came one after another. Those projects have made land price of some areas in Djibouti quintuple compared with a few years ago, according to Li Yao, a representative of the Djibouti office of CGM.



As development progressed, the 0.17-square-kilometer old free trade zone in Djibouti was also in need of expanding. In 2012, Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guellehdecided to introduce the development mode of Shekou Port in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, to the country, after a visit to the place.



The president thought the two places shared a lot of common places. The Shekou Port was developed by CGM.



The Djiboutian government allocated 48.2 square kilometers of land, 10 percent of the countrys available land area to develop an international free trade zone in the city of Djibouti.



Two companies in charge of investment and operation were co-built by CGM and the Djiboutian side. Djibouti hoped toduplicateShekous transformation from a small fishing village to an international new city by combining the development of port, industrial zone and new urban district.



The city of Djibouti will be built into a new engine for the countrys economy and a financial, shipping and trade center for East Africa, Li said.



The Chinese company is sincerely offering help to develop Djibouti, according to Guelleh. The cooperation with China has brought about real changes to Djibouti, Kamilechoed.



Djibouti aims at being the first trade hub in Africa, offering convenience for 80 percent of Africas cargo ships that have to spend an extra five days passing through the Port of Dubai, Li said, adding that an export manufacturing zone will be established in the free trade zone to lead the country toward initial industrialization and create more jobs.



An estimated 15,000 jobs will be added, a big figure for Djibouti, a country having less than 1 million people, according to Aboubaker, chairman of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority.



Our cooperation with China is a typical win-win example. Chinas advanced management experience has helped cut costs, open new market and find unprecedented business opportunities for our country, Aboubaker said.



In recent years, Chinese people are more and more welcomed to visit Djibouti. Neima, who went to learn logistics management in Dalian Maritime University in 2013, said Africas future relies a lot on China, and thats why she chose to further her study in a Chinese university.



Neima said China has invested a heftyamount in Djibouti. The local people started to realize the importance of mastering the Chinese language. The number of Djibouti students in China has doubled in just a few years.



Djibouti will undergo exciting changes after 10 years, benefiting from the mutually beneficial cooperation with China, she added.



The Belt and Road initiative brings about a huge opportunity which will change the outlook of the African continent, said Idriss Ismail Abdi who works with the Djiboutian company of CGM port.



Idriss said he hoped to visit China in the future. The vision of China now outweighs that of the European countries among African youth, he said.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)










English News Romantic love story brightens up Silk Road

Alwihda Info | Par peoplesdaily - 12 Mai 2017



The Belt and Road initiative was first introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013. In a speech delivered at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Xi suggested that China and Central Asia should cooperate to build a Silk Road Economic Belt.

By Ma Xiaoning, Zhou Hanbo, Xie Yahong and Liu Junguo from People's Daily The China-proposed Belt and Road initiative has not only cemented the economic ties of countries along the routes, but also linked their peoples together. The moving love story of a young Chinese lady and her husband from Kazakhstan, the birth place of the initiative, is the best evidence of such bonds.



The Belt and Road initiative was first introduced by Chinese President Xi Jinping during his visit to Kazakhstan in September 2013. In a speech delivered at Nazarbayev University in Astana, Xi suggested that China and Central Asia should cooperate to build a Silk Road Economic Belt.



In his speech, he also cited the love story between a young Chinese man and a Kazakh woman named Valentina to illustrate the close relations between the peoples of the two countries.



Three and a half years later, the fates of a beautiful Chinese woman Han Jianghong and a young Kazakh man named Alman were once again bonded as a result of the Belt and Road initiative.



Alman, a Chinese interpreter working at the Karazhanbas Oil Field in Kazakhstan, operated under the CITIC Group, met Han in 2008 when she was sent to there as a Russian interpreter. "I tried everything to get close to her," said Alman, adding that they had many chances to communicate since they were both interpreters.



Alman helped to improve Han's Russian skills and became familiar with her during the work. His sincerity touched Han, and Han finally accepted his love.



Later, Alman left the oil field and worked for Aktau Asphalt Plant, a Sino-Kazakh joint venture. The couple married in 2013, and their baby Aruzana was born at the end of the same year.



Their romance started from the "Silk Road" since both the Karazhanbas Oil Field and Aktau Asphalt Plant are key projects of capacity cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road initiative. Their trans-national marriage, the only one in his hometown, brightens up the ancient route.

However, fate played its trick on Alman when he was immersed in happiness after marriage.



In April 2016, Alman didnt feel well, suffering frequent nosebleeds and headaches. Local hospitals couldn't make an accurate diagnosis, and Alman himself didn't pay much attention at first. Han, worried about her husband's situation, took him to Dalian in Northeast Chinas Liaoning Province for treatment.



"After 20 different tests, I was diagnosed with M3 acute leukemia," said Alman, adding that people suffering from the disease would normally die in two months if they did not receive timely treatment.



According to the young Kazakh man, he would have missed his last chance if Han had not persisted, since he had already wasted three weeks before coming to China. It is Han and the Chinese doctors who saved his life. After a six months treatment in China, Alman's disease is currently in remission.



Han shouldered a great pressure during the treatment. "She would stay with me whenever she's free, taking care of and encouraging me. She brought me hope at the hardest time of my life," said Alman.



The couple also received assistance from both the Karazhanbas Oil Field and Aktau Asphalt Plant. "The companies' help relieved our economic burden and made us focus on the treatment," Alman told the People's Daily.



"I'll be fully recovered if my disease doesn't recur in the next five years," Alman said, adding that his family will embrace a happy life, since both he and his wife will benefit from promising career developments thanks to the close economic and trade relations between Kazakhstan and China.



The love story told by President Xi and the one between Alman and Han both witness the friendship between the peoples of the two countries.



Alman said that Aruzana, the name of his child, means a beautiful mind. Now Aruzana is able to speak Chinese, Russian and Kazakh. The girl with the beautiful mind and multilingual ability is believed to be another envoy linking the friendship of the two countries, just like her parents.



Dans la meme rubrique : < > Yunnan dispatches sci-tech experts to South Asia, Southeast Asia, builds bridge of int'l technological cooperation China's Beidou reaches world-leading level: white paper Silk Road e-commerce promotes trade among Belt and Road countries Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena)
Both the railroads and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way  Employes Division say the extension will help all parties make the best decision on how to proceed with the outstanding tentative labor agreements.
If you have kids in school or you teach schoolchildren, you must remember those halcyon days of 2008, when the idea of a Common Core (CC) to direct and track all American children along educational pathways to careers or college began to take root.

You remember when testing consultant David Coleman and the executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), Gene Wilhoit, visited Microsoft mogul Bill Gates in Seattle to persuade him to generously supplement future governmental funding of Common Core. And did Gates foundation ever deliver! It provided grants to write, implement, and finally propagandize CC totaling $384,605,464 as of June 2016.

You also likely remember when later in 2008, a Gates-aided triumvirate consisting of the National Governors Association, CCSSO, and a big-business-led outfit called Achieve started plugging for federal backing for Common Core, which the Obama administration subsequently was thrilled to pledge as part of a federal-state partnership.

And you must remember those exciting times in the summer of 2009, when the special interest groups threesome assembled 60 people to serve on teams to write the Common Core English and math standards or to offer advice. (There were five lead writers, including Coleman for English and his partner in a test-consultancy business, Jason Zimba, for math. Coleman is now president of the College Board, where he has aligned the college-prep test, the SAT, with Common Core.)

Surely you recall those robust debates in state legislatures and local school boards culminating in the adoption of Common Core by 46 states and the District of Columbia -- and all the thoughtful media coverage of the pros and cons of embracing one 640-page set of instructional standards for all schoolchildren.

This narrative -- a fine one at that -- is what many on the left would like you to believe, but its simply not true. You, like the vast majority of parents, were likely not aware of the handiwork of these high-rollers until years later, when your children started bringing home the fuzziest math ever as homework while reading a lot less imagination-tickling childrens literature -- all of which is in keeping with the universal K12 Game Plan your school board never approved. As a teacher, you didnt know how your methods and lesson plans would radically change until your supervisors started handing you your script and marching orders for education converted to workforce prep, which were crafted according to government specs.

And this was no mistake. The triumvirate placed only one K12 teacher on those CC developmental panels. The national standards passed through just four state legislatures. Appointed state boards of education rubberstamped most of the applications in desperate bids to get a slice of the $4.6 billion in Obama stimulus funds promised to those who agreed to adopt the standards. There was virtually no debate, state or local.

Everyday parents picked up few clues from reading newspapers, because not until 2013 did education writers awaken from their slumbers and start writing Common Core stories. And that tardy coverage mostly blamed the Tea Party for stirring dissent. Yes, wall-eyed, sleepy, or biased reporters disregarded all the serious criticism of CC coming from early childhood experts, English and math scholars, and well-known progressive educators.

Commenting on one aspect of this regimen imposed on education from the top down -- logic-defying standards-based grading -- Joy Pullmann wrote, The people most affected -- school staff, parents, local leaders -- are not being allowed to decide what works best for their students and their children, and that lack of choice inflames the political and academic disagreement over Common Core.

The central planners making those decisions are so far away from classrooms they may forget theyre playing with human beings, Pullmann wrote. Its a little like kids bulldozing and rebuilding houses in a video game, except it isnt a game. Its real.

That observation is from Pullmanns just-released book The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids, and it is the real deal. Meticulously footnoted, this book by the managing editor of The Federalist (and colleague of mine at the Heartland Institute) tells the story of Common Cores genesis within the education-industrial complex and the occasional successes of grassroots opponents in denting the juggernaut. And it delves into the mounting evidence that this monolithic scheme is a miserable flop.

Is Common Core dead or moribund? Not really. Yes, it is encouraging that more than half the states are snubbing the CC-aligned assessments developed by two federally funded consortia. However, Education Week, the education establishments paper of record, reports 37 states are sticking to their CC adoptions, while nine others have announced major rewrites or replacements. Alas, though, all nine appear to be repackaged or rebranded versions of Common Core -- Common Core lite or Common Core by another name, not genuine repeal.

Given all the foundation and tax money sunk into curricular materials, technology, and teacher retraining to support this de facto national curriculum, it is unlikely the establishment elites are going to give up on Common Core anytime soon. Nor is it likely political Washington, DC will come to the rescue, despite President Donald Trumps repeated calls for ending CC.

Is it time to despair of consent of the governed ever being a guiding principle again? Is it time for parents and neighbors just to accept perpetual victimhood? Pullmann thinks definitely not. It is time to fight back harder than ever.

We can pick up our pens and keyboards to demand political redress and promote cultural remedies, Pullmann wrote. We can refuse to let our kids take tests that perpetuate a failed system of education. We can show up at public meetings to voice our dissent for the record, and to support and inform our neighbors. We can even create better schools than those our government provides.

Indeed, the one positive outcome of the Common Core power grab is that it has inspired many citizens to do just that: create or discover their own schools. Homeschooling is booming more than ever. Private school choice programs doubled between 2009 and 2016. Education savings accounts enabling parents to exercise a variety of options to customize their kids learning experiences are catching on as perhaps the big post-voucher innovation.

In the land of the free, surely choice eventually will triumph over the dreary imposed sameness of a Common Core.

Robert Holland (holland@heartland.org) is a senior fellow for education policy with The Heartland Institute.
Around the time of Irans presidential elections, for as far back as the first round in 1980, vote-rigging has not been unusual. Ever since the regimes founding father Ruhollah Khomeini took power, a pattern was set to select a man for the job with the blessing of powerhouses such as the Supreme Leaders establishment and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The Guardianship of Jurisprudence (Vali-ye faqih), or, the Supreme Leadership, does not in any form or shape have much respect for elections as they are seen in normal democracies, because the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei considers people as "his sheep" lost in the world and in desperate need of guidance. He said recently that we have to show the world our popularity at home and remind them that we respond to our enemies with peoples turnout and show their will and desire for supporting the Islamic Republic. They came up with a solution to couple some form of election with their selection process: engineering the elections. The electoral process in Iran goes through many steps before reaching Election Day.

Passing the vetting process

As in any other dictatorship, power struggles among the fighting factions within the regime have to be settled. From the early days, a term popped up in Irans word dictionary for politics and that is insiders, referring to individuals who are considered loyal to the fabric of the regime; individuals with absolutely proven devotion to Khamenei.

To make it airtight, the mullahs have employed a vetting mechanism called the Guardian Council (GC), consisting of 12 men, all directly or indirectly chosen by none other than the Supreme Leader himself. In this election, as opposed to earlier ones, the council claimed to have vetted all 1600 candidates overnight and came up with six frontrunners. For those who have closely observed how the mullahs have cooked elections in the past, it is not that hard to figure out this years plan of action: a split right in the middle, with three candidates from Khameneis faction and three from Hassan Rouhanis side. No doubt Khamenei would prefer none other than his protege, Ebrahim Raisi, a close confidante, to be the next president. Raisi ran Astan Quds Razavi, the wealthiest charity foundation in charge of Irans holiest shrine in Mashhad, northwestern Iran.

However, considering his role in the massacre of 30,000 political prisoners, mostly members and supporters of the People's Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK) in the summer of 1988, he may run into problems with the rival camps stonewalling if they decide to pressure his weak spot. It is highly unlikely since Rouhani and his gang have, no doubt, the same blood on their hands. Rouhanis track record is not any cleaner than that of Raisis when it comes to crackdowns and using a heavy hand when dealing with dissidents. In his current term as president, 3,000 executions have been recorded. Iran ranks fifth in the world for imprisoning journalists. Over 10 million Iranians live under the absolute poverty line, according to Tehrans mayor. And in the most recent presidential debate on April 29, a new, somewhat suppressing, disclosure surfaced when Tehrans mayor said: Four percent of Iranians have everything while the other 96 percent are deprived of everything.

Rouhani had his Senior Vice President Eshaq Jahangiri register with him just in case the GC disqualifies him. The other two vetted candidates have absolutely no significance and are there just to put on a show. They are former culture minister Mostafa Mirsalim and former vice president Mostafa Hashemitaba.

Voterss role in Irans elections

As opposed to regular ways of encouraging the voters to register and vote on Election Day, the mullahs use special tools to guarantee the turnout to the regimes satisfaction to cook elections to their liking. One such famous tool is none other than Irans identification card system. These are booklets, and each time an eligible voter show up at the polling station, his ID booklet is stamped. The stamp on the booklet is a ticket to a hassle-free life for average citizens in Iran since it helps with getting a job, enrolling in a higher education institution, getting a raise in pay from a government entity, and is simply not to be questioned. The stamp helps a great deal in Iran.

Another tool is the state-run media, and on the top of the list is certainly state-run television, which constantly advertises the Supreme Leader and the IRGCs candidate.

Distributing goods among mostly lower class citizens with a great need of food in todays economy is another tactic used by the candidates to buy votes. Raisi has already cashed in and has handed out tons of sugar and flour to needy people in Khorasan Province, northeastern Iran.

Female voters experience a more relaxed time in the days before elections. To buy their votes, security forces turn down the heat a few notches on women not observing the strict dress code. The relaxation does not last for long, and as soon as elections are over, it is once again business as usual and women face the same inhuman treatment. What they wear would again be an issue and there would be no difference between reformist Rouhani and hardliner Raisi. Let us not forget that in the early days, right after the 1979 Revolution, it was Rouhani who issued the first directive for female government employees to show up for work wearing what he described as Islamic dress.

And the final episode of the election play is to unleash the paramilitary Basij Forces, a suppressive wing of the IRGC, on election day to use expired ID cards belonging to the deceased and fill the ballot boxes with fake votes in the polling stations in favor of the Supreme Leaders candidate.

According to Irans police chief, Brig. Gen. Hossein Ashtari, 300,000 IRGC members will be deployed to secure the ballot boxes. In a simple comparison to France's presidential election, with all the terror threats France faces, only 60,000 police were deployed to secure the polling stations. The Iranian police are there to stop people's protests and uprisings in the volatile days.

The president of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), Maryam Rajavi, described the ongoing stage-managed Iranian election as a total mockery. She said: The Iranian people reject both a black and a white turban referring to incumbent president Rouhani and his challenger Raisi. She said that we seek a free and democratic Iran where elections will find once more their true meaning.

Reza Shafiee is a member of Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI)
If Ivanka Trump listens to the Americans who elected her father in one of the greatest upsets in American electoral history, she will discover her clear path to saving our Republic.

It is a measure of the unprecedented nature of the period of history we are in that a young woman with no background, experience or training in politics, political philosophy, American civics or the Constitution, finds herself in a position of such power.

Yet even in the absence of any credentials of the statesman or knowledgeable political officeholder, Ivanka has the opportunity to set our nation back on track to preserving our sovereignty and freedom, in addition to regaining our prosperity.

You might ask how such a young, idealistic, naive woman born and bred to a cloistered life of privilege and luxury, and whose passion has been focused on fashion design and marketing, could suddenly become her country's savior, much as the young Joan of Arc did for France.

It is perhaps even more unlikely, given the fact that Ivanka's husband is a Democrat, and his father a major Democrat donor, and Ivanka herself appears to have adopted that party along with her husband's religion, that she would aid the country on the side of her father's largely conservative agenda.

And while it is commendable that Ivanka is developing an interest in historical figures, it is at best problematic, from the perspective of her father's supporters, that she's singing the praises of iconic leftist Eleanor Roosevelt.

In fact, in recent interviews with the New York Times, Ivanka "talked about unleashing the economic potential of women  some of her phrases sounding uncannily like those of Hillary Clinton  and effused about finding a new role model in Eleanor Roosevelt, whose autobiography she is reading."

We know she means well. We know she is kindhearted. We know she has good intentions. "I'm really, really trying to learn," she told the NY Times. We also know where good intentions can lead when not backed by depth and breadth of historical perspective, understanding of political and economic complex realities, and awareness of possible unintended consequences.

We also learn from the same Times article that Ivanka, sitting on a panel in Berlin with the likes of Merkel and Lagarde, didn't know how to answer the straightforward question: whom do you represent: the president, the American people, or your business? "I am rather unfamiliar with this role," said the first daughter. But we can understand and sympathize with her dilemma, since she most emphatically does not represent either the president or the people who elected him. If anything, she seems to represent Hillary Clinton, leftist Democrats, and assorted globalists but it would be neither polite nor politic to say so.

We know, however, that she is very caring and compassionate.

In fact, we know she was so distressed over the photographs of the children dying in Syria from poison gas that she urged her father to bomb more Syrians, perhaps not realizing that more mothers and children might be killed  but then she couldn't be expected to know about the nitty-gritty of political strategic manipulation.

We know she cares about mothers because she is now a mother, and so she urged her father to include maternity leave benefits in any insurance program that replaces Obamacare  perhaps not realizing that the money to fund this generous welfare program must either come from taxes, thereby increasing the burden on the middle class, or from deficit spending, or else be taken away from other, possibly even more important programs.

We know she cares about the planet, because she and husband Jared are working to convince the president to walk back his strong position against carbon taxes  that's carbon as in carbon dioxide, the stuff we exhale and that plants need for their survival  but I digress. Using her enormous influence with her father, Ivanka is pushing for the U.S. to stay in the Paris Climate agreements. No less a globalist heavy hitter than Michael Bloomberg says he hopes President Trump will follow Ivanka's lead and reverse his campaign promise to pull America out of the Paris climate agreements, signed by Obama, which candidate Trump understood would cripple our industries, stifle our energy production, and dramatically raise our cost of living.

Says Bloomberg: "I hope he changes his mind and he listens to his daughter, who's supposedly a big advocate of staying the course." It may strike some as odd that Bloomberg seems to confer upon the inexperienced Ivanka the credentials of a climate scientist and policy wonk  or might he actually believe she can twist the president around her perfectly manicured pinky?

But let's give Ivanka credit for being smart, as well as beautiful.

Surely, she recognizes that a young, untutored woman woefully ignorant of history, economics, political theory, and the American founding documents does not belong in the seat of power, inside the Oval Office.

Surely, she realizes that the voters elected Donald Trump to the highest office in the land, and not his pretty daughter of whom he is so proud.

Surely, she recognizes that her political beliefs and perspectives are the antithesis of her father's. And surely, she recognizes that each time she cajoles Daddy to "do the right thing"  which invariably turns out to be the liberal/socialist/globalist thing  she is urging him to betray his base, his own word, his integrity, and the very country he has vowed to make safe, strong, prosperous, and great again.

Surely, she realizes that if the president wants to have a family member close by besides his wife, it makes most sense that it be Don Jr., who, by all accounts, is a conservative and a patriot who believes in his father's agenda and would be supportive of him, rather than continuously trying to pry him away from his promises to the American people.

Surely, she is familiar with the Ten Commandments, which are basic to both Judaism and Christianity, which say, "Honor thy father and mother"  and surely, she recognizes that she should honor her father more than ever now that he is the president, and that for her to presume to tell him what to do is the height of arrogance as well as folly.

Yes, I feel certain that Ivanka is bright enough and compassionate enough to save her country by making the only conceivable intelligent decision  quite possibly the most important one of her life  to pack up her things, and move her husband and children back to New York, and focus on her life there as a wife and mother, and on her businesses, and to stay out of politics, out of Washington, and far away from the Oval Office.

Making this brave and bold move will endear her to millions of Americans and help make the country great again for all of us.

Ivanka Trump may then go down in history as the woman who saved America.

Cherie Zaslawsky is a writer, editor, and educator and English tutor who lives in California.
Chile is becoming instructive on what happens when a well coordinated minority can turn a decent republic to its own ends. That minority is the Palestinian community in Chile, and it has completely distorted Chile's foreign policy.

In Chile, they have a saying: "Three things one would definitely find in every city and village: a priest, a policeman and a Palestinian."

Chile's Palestinians go way back, some even to the 19th century. Many are now third- and fourth-generation Chilean, often intermarried with Chile's other ethnic stock: the Spanish, the Basque, the Italians, the Germans, et al. Though small in number, about 3%, they are highly overrepresented in all the professions, as well as in banking, manufacturing, and real estate.

If this sounds like a similar ethnic group in America, it is. Gabriel Zaliasnik, the 2010 head of Chile's Jewish community, said, "The Palestinian community is to Chile what the Jewish community is to the US."

These Palestinians are continuing to wield power in Chile. Now they seem to be paralyzing the government.

Recently, a Palestinian-Chilean BDS activist and former director of the Palestinian Federation of Chile, named Anwar Makhlouf, was denied entrance attempting to visit the Palestinian areas by Israel authorities at the border.

Chilean anti-Israel activist turned away at West Bank border crossing Head of the Palestinian Federation in Chile barred over alleged efforts to promote boycott of Jewish state

The turning away of Palestinian activists at the border, even at the Allenby Crossing, is rather common. The U.S. government does all but nothing about it when it concerns American citizens. Nor do many other Western governments. What can they do?

Chile, however, regularly issues formal protests over the matter. When did the U.S. last protest when an American was refused entrance to Palestine? This time, the matter went ballistic.

The [Palestine Federation] is calling on Chile to summon its ambassador to Israel  a proposal backed unanimously by the Senate  and to suspend an agreement that allows for visa-free travel between the two countries.

Notice that the Palestinian Federation's recommendation is backed unanimously by the Chilean Senate. That is the sort of clout AIPAC could only hope for.

So let's take a look at Chile. Chile is now a borderline first-world country and a member of the OECD  the only such nation in South America  with a democratic government. Freedom House lists Chile as "Free."

While Chile was once heavily influenced by the Catholic Church, it no longer is so. The country is 15% Protestant, and that figure is increasing, and the Evangelicals aggressively evangelize. Moreover, these Evangelicals tend to be very Zionist. Twenty-five percent of the country is agnostic, non-observant, or atheist. Moreover, while the number of Muslims is increasing, they are still less than 0.1%. Chile is one of the least Muslim countries on the planet.

With a Catholic Church that is weakening, one cannot blame Chile's behavior on Catholicism's historic coolness to Israel. Nor can one blame this on an Islam that is almost nonexistent in Chile. Certainly, the strongly Zionist Evangelicals are not to blame. Logic demands that the blame be placed heavily on the Palestinian community, a thoroughly organized 3% of the population.

Ostensibly, Palestinian-Chileans are Christian, at rates over 99%, split between Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism. Yet one would never know it. Last month:

The Palestinian Federation of Chile warned the Jewish community on Monday not to "play with fire" in a statement regarding Israel's decision to bar the federation's executive director, Anwar Makhlouf, from entering the country last week.

This is strong language. To understand these Palestinian-Chileans, one must understand Orthodox Christianity in the Muslim world. According to the Palestinian Orthodox Christian bishop of the Holy Land, Sebastia Theodosios (Atallah Hanna):

We Christians also say Allahu Akbar. This is an expression of our understanding that the Creator is great. We don't want this phrase to be related to terrorism and crimes. We refuse to associate these words with massacres and murders. We speak against using this phrase in this context. Those who do, they insult our religion and our religious values. Those using these words while taking some unreligious, unspiritual, uncivilized actions are harming the religion. Allahu Akbar is an expression of our faith.

The Palestinian Christians of Chile are nominally Christian but have been so dhimmized in their theology that they are effectively sympathizers of Islam. These people are steering the ship of state in South America's most democratic and stable country.

Take a look at these Chilean (nominally Christian) websites. If one does not read Spanish, one can add a translator app to his browser. Chrome has an excellent app. The translations are not perfect, but they are understandable.

Palestine Federation de Chile

Federation of Arab Societies in Chile

I am Palestinian Campaign/Palestinian Federation

General Union of Palestinian Students  Chile

ARAB TV (Yes, these people have their own network. Look at this recent article.)

Palestinian (Arabic) TV knows this.

There is absolutely nothing like this in the USA. Here, there is virulent anti-Israelism in powerless groups or in academia, but in Chile, such groups have real access to power, and they control the culture and, often, the churches.

Chile, in 1940, took in Jewish refugees when no one else would. What happened? Certainly Saudi and Iranian money and media had an effect. But none of this could have been so effective in Chile without Palestinian-Chilean support.

The most democratic country in South America, a leader on the continent, has had its foreign policy seized by a dhimmified form of neutered Christianity. This group shouts down the influence of the larger Evangelical community and has formerly requested that the Evangelical community stop supporting Israel and seems to drown out the far more moderate but smaller Lebanese community.

Ethnic groups have influence in America, but not at this level. Jewish groups do influence American policy, but they do not override the majority opinion.

This is both fascinating and horrifying to watch.

Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who wishes he had availed himself more fully of the opportunity to learn Spanish in high school, lo those many decades ago. He writes on the Arabs of South America at http://latinarabia.com.
In my university student days, I had a professor of Japanese Buddhist literature who often contrasted the peaceable, broad-minded nature of Japanese Buddhism with the intolerance of Christianity. I wish I could have acquainted him with the work of Brian Victoria, a Zen priest who has exposed the overwhelming support for the Japanese war machine among prominent Zen leaders in the years leading up to the Second World War. His book Zen at War sent shock waves through the world of Zen Buddhism, especially among Western fans of Zen.

Recently, I had the privilege of hearing Victoria at the Asian Conference on Literature 2017 in Kobe, Japan. The moderator introduced him as a "controversial scholar," probably because he challenges the conventional wisdom of contemporary academia. His work has helped to shatter the myth that somehow Western religion is uniquely culpable for promoting war, nationalism, and imperialism.

Eastern religions have at times shown themselves very willing to endorse war. Warrior-priests in some medieval Buddhist sects in Japan engaged in armed conflicts. Moreover, the Hindu classic the Bhagavad Gita justifies killing in war on the basis of its own pantheistic worldview.

Not many in the West these days seem drawn to Hinduism, but Zen has been a fashionable religion among many for some time now, including California governor Jerry Brown and the writer J.D. Salinger. Bestselling books introduce Zen thinking to non-Japanese, and some even promote zazen meditation techniques in Christian circles.

Much of this Zen boom can be attributed to the efforts of D.T. Suzuki, who is lionized by many Western intellectuals. Victoria has devoted much effort to unearthing Suzuki's active role in weaponizing Zen for imperial Japan. Suzuki described Japan's war in Asia as a "selfless war" and "the holiest spiritual war." Furthermore, he urged Japanese soldiers to count their lives "as light as goose feathers." Victoria characterized such statements as "no different from an ISIS imam in Mosul." On top of that, Suzuki viewed Japan's hegemony over the Koreans as an act of unselfish compassion.

However, Suzuki showed some common sense in cautioning against waging war with the U.S. Since he had spent years living in America, he understood well that Japan was no match militarily for the industrial power of the U.S. After Japan's defeat, he became an advocate of peace, yet without really owning up to his active role in promoting war.

Suzuki is not an isolated case, since the great majority of Buddhist organizations  Zen in particular  in Japan aggressively stood behind the war effort. Zen leaders even supported the terrorism that led to the overthrow of Japan's civilian democratic government. In court testimony in 1934, one prominent Zen leader named Yamamoto defended the killing of civilian Japanese government leaders by the "Blood Oath Corps." Yamamoto argued, "The Buddha, being absolute, has stated that when there are those who destroy social harmony and injure the polity of the state, then killing them is not a crime."

Zen undergirded not only a willingness to kill, but also a willingness to be killed. Nakane Kando, president of Soto Zen-connected Komazawa University, put it this way in March 1940: "The spirit of the soldier is that of Bushido [the samurai honor code]... Thus, if we were to sum up Zen in a word, it would be that it is training for death. When you become one with death and are selfless, you are in the realm of enlightenment[.]"

Suzuki concurred:

The Japanese may not have any specific philosophy of life, but they have decidedly one of death which may sometimes appear to be that of recklessness. The spirit of the samurai deeply breathing Zen into itself propagated its philosophy even among the masses. The latter, even when they are not particularly trained in the way of the warrior, have imbibed his spirit and are ready to sacrifice their lives for any cause they think worthy.

Nevertheless, it would be unfair and inaccurate to brand traditional Buddhism as violent. In general, traditional Buddhism is highly moral and forbids the taking of human life. Victoria himself shows a strong sense of moral responsibility. However, Zen has tended to be more mystical than moral. It mainly focuses on the attainment of a personal enlightenment experience. In that regard, Victoria acknowledges a strong antinomian element in Zen that encourages adherents to view life and death, killing and being killed, indifferently. In fact, Victoria considers it no exaggeration to call the Zen that predominated in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century a "cult of death."

Interestingly, a number of Nazis were strongly drawn to Zen. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had written, "All force which does not spring from a firm spiritual foundation will be hesitating and uncertain," so many Nazis wanted to supply a new religious basis for their movement in place of traditional Christianity. A number of Nazi leaders visited Japan to observe Zen in practice, no doubt hoping to glean some insights for a death cult of their own. They included leaders of the Hitler Youth. With regard to Suzuki's work, the influential philosopher and former Nazi Martin Heidegger stated, "This is what I've been trying to say in all my writings."

During his lecture, Victoria seemed genuinely puzzled by the inability of many scholars in both Japan and the West to acknowledge the role of Zen Buddhism in Japan's militarism. In fact, his talk was titled "D.T. Suzuki: How Did Scholars Get It So Wrong?" He attributes some of this problem to putting people like Suzuki on pedestals, but it is also probably due to contemporary academia's knee-jerk inclination to blame the West (and hence exonerate the East) for all the problems of mankind.

Victoria has done conscientious scholarship about a little-known subject. My small area of disagreement concerns his conclusions that "all religions have holy war" and that "we are all children of our times." Some religions seem more prone to generating violent conflict than others. One that still officially espouses a doctrine of holy war comes especially to mind.

Bruce W. Davidson is a professor at Hokusei Gakuen University in Sapporo, Japan and a contributor to the forthcoming Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia.
As he has with all sorts of world leaders, President Trump met with a high-ranking delegation of Russian diplomats and then posed for some glad-handing photos with the officials during and after the event. It should be worth noting that despite Russia's strategic importance, Trump has met fewer times with these officials than with those of virtually any other nation.

The glad-handing went on, and all of a sudden, so did the leaks from purported White House officials, proclaiming fury at the photo ops from the event coming out from the official Russian news agency, TASS. Some headlines:

White House furious after being trolled with Russia Oval Office photos

Kremlin outfoxes White House over photos of Trump meeting with Russians

White House official says Russia tricked us by publishing Oval Office photos

Presence of Russian photographer in Oval Office raises alarms

Turns out that Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov did what he always does: traveled with an official Russian state photographer from the official state news agency TASS, who documented the travels for his audience back home and was pretty appalled at the response that followed for doing his job. The U.S. let in a similarly situated official White House photographer, but no photos emerged. The mainstream press were left to cool their heels outside  and got angry.

The New York Times, for one, whined about favoritism. CNN reported that it had unnamed sources saying the White House was furious, claiming that the Russians tricked them. USA Today obsessed that it came right after Trump fired political animal FBI director James Comey, hollering that the Russian ambassador was "a spy" and cited his previous conversations with former national security adviser Mike Flynn and former senator Jeff Sessions, now attorney general, almost as if that were proof. Meanwhile, one of the two-man tag-team of harassers of White House top counter-terrorism adviser, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Colin Kahl, in between tweeting literally fake news items about Gorka, has suddenly decided he's got national security concerns, being serious and all, as a former national security adviser for that paragon of gravitas, former vice president Joe Biden. He tweeted:

Colin Kahl @ColinKahl May 10 Deadly serious Q: Was it a good idea to let a Russian gov photographer & all their equipment into the Oval Office?

His sidekick in Gorka harassment, Obama "mind meld," and former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, kept uncharacteristically quiet on Twitter. Rhodes, despite his former high position in the White House, was one of the very few who apparently never did get a security clearance. And he's certainly had no trouble giving long interviews to TASS himself.

What is to be made of this gibberish? First, nothing untoward was coming from the Russian side. The foreign minister always travels with an official photographer  and generally a reporter, too  from state agency TASS, a news agency comparable to Voice of America. I've actually known one  who traveled with Lavrov. Heck, I've known Lavrov himself, from his United Nations days. There is nothing strange here, and to see ignorant clowns like Kahl tweeting their alarm suggests that they are very wet behind the ears on Russian ways or else beating the political drum against Trump.

Our Russian sources tell us that the howling comes not from Trump administration sources, as claimed by USA Today, but from the press itself, still bitter and jealous that they didn't get a chance to photograph the meeting, while the TASS photographer did.

As this utterly predictable coagulation of distorted claims about Russia ties and Russia spies spews from the press, and their assorted players get themselves all wrapped up in the same old conspiracy theories that have enthralled them since Trump's election, President Trump stepped in with a Tweetfest on Twitter:

The Fake Media is working overtime today! he said in one tweet.

...and...

Yesterday, on the same day- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. # LetsMakePeace!

...accompanied by this big, in-your-face smiling photo for all the chickens running around with their heads cut off:

In short, he threw it back at them. He got their goat.
The giant evidence-free smokescreen about Russia supposedly colluding with Donald Trump is doing its job masking genuine scandals. So far, but not for much longer. A foreign head of government reportedly has confirmed that Hillary Clinton used her office as secretary of state to pressure her into granting a favor to a donor to her husband's foundation. Circa.com reports:

While secretary of state, Hillary Clinton made a personal call to pressure Bangladesh's prime minister to aid a donor to her husband's charitable foundation despite federal ethics laws that require government officials to recuse themselves from matters that could impact their spouse's business.

The Office of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina confirmed to Circa that Mrs. Clinton called her office in March 2011 to demand that Dr. Muhammed Yunus, a 2006 Nobel Peace prize winner, be restored to his role as chairman of the country's most famous microcredit bank, Grameen Bank. The bank's nonprofit Grameen America, which Yunus chairs, has given between $100,000 and $250,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative. Grameen Research, which is chaired by Yunus, has donated between $25,000 and $50,000, according to the Clinton Foundation website.

"Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton telephoned Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in March 2011 insisting her not to remove Dr. Muhammad Yunus from the post of Managing Director of Grameen Bank," Deputy Press Secretary Md Nazrul Islam told Circa in an email.

Islam said the prime minister informed Mrs. Clinton that according to Grameen Bank rules and regulations, nobody can hold the position of the Managing Director of Grameen Bank after the age of 60. He was 70 at the time of his removal and had wrangled for months to no avail with the prime minister over his removal.
Democrats have been predicting a landslide in the off year elections of 2018 largely based on the notion that Donald Trump is so unpopular that Democratic candidates will simply waltz to victory.

That may be. But first, they have to show that they actually care about people in all those congressional districts that voted for Trump over Hillary Clinton. They must demonstrate a respect for people who don't live on the coasts or in blue congressional districts.

One Democratic congresswoman representing Silicon Valley shows that the Democrats have a long, long way to go.

Washington Free Beacon:

A Democratic lawmaker from California referred to Middle America as "Podunk, USA," during a committee meeting last week, several sources inside the meeting told the Washington Free Beacon. Remarks by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D., Calif.) during a closed-door Energy and Commerce Committee meeting with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai raised eyebrows from those present. The moment occurred when Eshoo pushed back against Pai when he was discussing expanding broadband access to rural areas. Pai said that eliminating Title II net neutrality rules would benefit places he has traveled to, such as Parsons, Kan., Elverson, Pa., and Cadillac, Mich. Sources inside the meeting told the Free Beacon that Eshoo was frustrated with Pai's comments. She wished out loud that Pai would stop talking about "Podunk, USA" and instead be more concerned about the venture capitalists on Sand Hill Road in her district near Palo Alto, according to the sources. Many in the room reacted negatively to Eshoo's remarks, sources said. A member who represents a flyover state did not appreciate the term "Podunk," which means a small, unimportant town, and said districts in Middle America are just as important as those in Silicon Valley. Eshoo's office declined to comment.

Democrats aren't only "out of touch" with most of the country, they hold their fellow citizens in contempt. That attitude was perfectly encapsulated by former President Obama's observation during the 2008 campaign that voters in the heartland are "bitter" and "cling" to guns and religion while hating immigrants.

In the nearly 10 years since Obama told a San Francisco audience that most Americans were ignorant racists, not much has changed in the Democratic party. Try as they might to hide their smug sense of superiority, every once and a while, it manifests itself. Until they realize that many Americans are deeply resentful of that attitude, it's a pretty good bet that it won't matter who is president; they will lose.
When Chancellor George Blumenthal of the University of California, Santa Cruz abjectly surrendered to all the demands of black students who had taken over Kerr Hall, the university's administration building, he foolishly set the stage for more trouble. Perhaps, in his education as an astronomer and astrophysicist, there was no time to study the lessons of Munich and appeasement. Having allowed the aggrieved students to control physical facilities belonging to the university, and having given them control of mandatory brainwashing diversity training, he only whetted their appetites. A week after the surrender, they were back with more demands.

Matthew Stein of The College Fix reports:

[T]he group made three other demands to the university, and it has warned UC Santa Cruz that it has four months to comply with these demands or "more Reclamations" will result. ...

[T]he African/Black Student Alliance also demanded three additional provisions from UC Santa Cruz within its initial "Reclamation Statement," posted on the website of the Afrikan Black Coalition. The group stipulated that if by Fall Quarter 2017 the university does not provide "detailed plans" on how to fulfill its new demands, "there will be more Reclamations."

"Reclamation" is how the student group referred to its aggressive three-day takeover of Kerr Hall.

The alliance's three additional demands are that the university purchase a property "to serve as a low income housing cooperative for historically disadvantaged students," that the university "allocate $100,000" for Santa Cruz's "SOMeCA" student organization support department, and that the university create either a Black Studies department or a Black Studies Minor or Major.

The group promised that, if their demands are not met, UC Santa Cruz will "force [them] to have to take what [they] know to be in [their] best interest to Reclaim."

The alliance's list of demands concludes with a quote from Assata Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party and a convicted murderer: "It is our duty to fight for our freedom; It is our duty to win; We must love each other and support each other; We have nothing to lose but our chains."
How much does it cost to sink an aircraft carrier? I ask because I have just read that the U.S. is launching a new aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford (watch out, Red China: Jerry Ford is coming to get you!) for the whopping cost of $13 billion (not counting cost of supporting ships), with two more carriers, the John F. Kennedy and the USS Enterprise, coming in each for nearly that amount.

But our carriers could easily be sunk by missiles. Both the Chinese and the Iranians have versions of the C-802 anti-ship cruise missile.

The C-802 is the export upgraded version of the Chinese anti-ship missile YJ-8...first unveiled in 1989 by the China Haiying Electro-Mechanical Technology Academy (CHETA), also known as the Third Academy. Due to the Yingji-82 missile's small radar reflectivity, low attack flight path (only five to seven meters above the sea surface) and strong anti-jamming capability of its guidance system, target ships have a very small chance of intercepting the missile[.] ... The single shot hit probability of the Yingji-82 is unknown, though one unreferenced source claims it to be as high as 98%.The Yingji-82 can be launched from airplanes, surface ships, submarines and land-based vehicles.

I figure a dozen of these missiles should be sufficient. These missiles cannot be detected on radar, so ships are often reduced to relying on their Phalanx gun systems, automated machine guns mounted on the sides of ships for protection. A dozen or more cruise missiles flying at just above water level would easily be enough to overwhelm such systems. Aircraft carriers are effectively giant targets.

Back in the 1970s, before current technological advances, Admiral Hyman Rickover, the father of the nuclear fleet, was once asked how long our fleet could survive in battle. He responded, "Two or three days before they sink, maybe a week if they stay in the harbor."

If anything, anti-ship missiles are deadlier than in the 1970s. That does not suggest that a strategy of making big, expensive ships is the way to go. Our Navy should focus on producing submarines, which can launch cruise missiles and can submerge to protect themselves. But our military is stuck thinking in terms of World War II, where carriers were king.

Times have changed, and carriers are more of a liability than an asset. In any event, we have unsinkable carriers in the Middle East. They are called Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Israel. We have unsinkable carriers in East Asia. They are called South Korea and Japan. Building these giant, vulnerable floating cities makes no sense. In a shooting war, even a half-rate power like Iran could easily sink one of our carriers, causing thousands of casualties. It's sad that the military is still stuck fighting the battle of Midway when technology has moved on.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com. He studied military strategy with a former head of the NSA at Yale.
According to a report in Newsweek by Tom OConnor, a Russian hacker who had been detained in Prague at the request of US authorities, was visited multiple times by FBI agents, who pressed him to confess to hacking the Podesta emails at the behest of Putin, and to help Trump. They allegedly (and unsuccessfully) offered generous inducements, to say the least.

Yevgeniy Nikulin, 29, has found himself in the middle of an international dispute between Washington and Moscow, at the very center of which lies U.S. allegations that Russia sponsored a series of hacks targeting Democratic Party candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in favor of Republican candidate and current President Donald Trump. On October 5, 2016, days before U.S. intelligence publicly accused Russia of endorsing an infiltration of Democratic Party officials' emails, Nikulin was arrested in Prague at the request of the U.S. on separate hacking charges. Now, Nikulin claims U.S. authorities tried to pin the email scandal on him.

Nikulin was detained in the Czech Republic for allegedly hacking the servers of major sites LinkedIn, Dropbox and Formspring between 2012 and 2013. While awaiting trial, he claims in an undated letter reportedly given to U.S. Russian-language news site Nastoyashchoe Vremya by Nikulin's lawyer, Martin Sadilek, that the FBI visited him at least a couple of times, offering to drop the charges and grant him U.S. citizenship as well as cash and an apartment in the U.S. if the Russian national confessed to participating in the 2016 hacks of Clinton campaign chief John Podesta's emails in July. (snip)

Nikulin said he refused the deal, but U.S. officials threatened to return. He claims the visits occurred in mid-November 2016 and on February 7 of this year. Czech television has reported at least one FBI visit earlier this year, according to The Guardian, which cited an FBI spokesperson as saying the agency was "aware of the situation," but declining further comment. The FBI is seeking to extradite Nikulin to face trial in the U.S., something he and his lawyers are trying to fight.
One has to almost like punishment to face the White House Press Corps these days. Ever since President Trump was inaugurated, this 100% liberal Democrat murder of crows sits there each day and harasses Sean Spicer, or, as in the last few days, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Spicer has toughened up since his early days, but Sanders, who is temporarily replacing him as he serves his Naval Reserve duty, is a born natural. Like her father, former governor Mike Huckabee, she has the gift of strong, plain language, and she is quick on the draw. How anyone endures the tedium of this press corps is a mystery, but she seems to revel at the opportunity to push back.

These "reporters" are generally obsessed with insignificant details like the "three times Comey told Trump he was not the subject of an investigation." They want to know every minute bit of information about "those three times"; what was the "process," where was Trump when Comey told him this? Dinner where? Who arranged it? Phone call? Who called whom? Etc. It is truly mind-numbing and, most of all, completely irrelevant. What on Earth makes these pseudo-journalists think anyone cares about these bits of inconsequential nonsense? Lester Holt has made a complete fool of himself with this same kind of badgering on a network stage. He is probably so proud of himself. To those of us outside the media-Beltway, he's a joke  an arrogant, pushy, rude, and petty joke.

These people do this because they live for the moment the person at the podium slips. They ask the same questions over and over and over again in the apparent belief that if they ask often enough, at some point, they will get the answer they want. Each wants to be the person who trips up the press secretary and becomes the story himself for the next twenty-four hours. The whole routine is pathetic. Not only does it betray the wholesale lack of critical thinking among these privileged press folk, but it illustrates their absolute hollowness. They are hollow to their core. They care not one bit about the country, the Constitution, the incalculable damage done to the nation by Obamacare, the debt incurred by the Obama administration's profligate spending, the racial animus Obama promulgated, the absolute gibberish that passes for a university education, the horrific danger Obama has engendered with his Iran deal, etc. No. Our White House press corps cares about none of these things. These reporters care about one thing only: taking Trump down.

Here's the thing, though. The more they demonstrate their vacuity, self-love, and elitism, their absolute disdain for Trump and his supporters, the more the rest of us love the guy, even those of us who initially may have thought his candidacy a prank. The more they demean themselves in their oh, so feeble attempts to wring a headline out of the press secretary, the more we root for the person at the podium to put them in their place. Sarah Sanders has done just that these past two days. She is a keeper.

Will the press corps ever learn? Doubtful. They have been carefully taught that they are special, that their "job," in the words of Mika Brzezinski, is to tell us how to think! They are so thoroughly convinced of their own righteous power, they actually believe we pay attention to them. Even after Trump's victory! Go figure.
Fekitamoeloa Katoa Utoikamanu

Two thousand years ago the ancient network of trade routes known as the Silk Road stretched from China, through Asia, to as far as the United Kingdom. These routes heralded a new era of trade, opening up access to the East and West of the globe and resulting in booming trade and vibrant cultural exchanges.

Today, at a time of anemic global economic growth, trade protectionism and a backlash against globalization, a new trade initiative could bring much needed impetus to revitalize the global economy and help the world's poorest nations achieve sustainable development.

Announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the 'Belt and Road Initiative' aims to build a trans Euro-Asia economic belt stretching from China to the Horn of Africa. Since the trade network was announced significant strides have been made to connect trade opportunities including a freight train from London to Yiwu, China, and an electric railway connecting Ethiopia and Djibouti. More is planned, not only boosting trade, but bringing much-needed ICT and sustainable technologies, which could contribute to capacity building in the most vulnerable countries.

The Belt and Road Initiative seeks to promote infrastructure connectivity, with trade routes covering around 60 countries across Asia, Europe and Africa. Importantly it also stands to contribute to addressing the infrastructure investment gap of Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Landlocked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and Small Island Development States (SIDS), which face unique development challenges due to structural and geographical disadvantages. Underdeveloped infrastructure has greatly undermined the ability of these countries to improve productive capacity, expand trade, attract foreign investment and improve livelihoods. Protracted infrastructure gaps have jeopardized the efforts of vulnerable countries to achieve long-term sustainable development leaving them unable to reap the benefits of globalization.

Improving connectivity is therefore central to global efforts in achieving development aspirations set in the Programmes of Action for LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS, the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Abba Action Agenda. Establishing a modern and well-maintained infrastructure network, connecting sub-regions in Asia and between Asia, Europe and Africa could be a potential game changer for these most vulnerable countries in terms of boosting trade, facilitating integration into regional and global value chains, encouraging investment, accelerating structural transformation and ultimately contributing to poverty eradication. Countries disproportionally affected by climate change, in particular SIDS, investment in climate-resilient infrastructure and sustainable technologies, including in renewable energy, could enable a transition towards a blue economy.

At present, one third of participating countries of the Belt and Road Initiative are LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS, illustrating the importance these countries attach to the initiative. For a landlocked country such as Ethiopia the Road and Belt Initiative has already brought considerable benefits, the new electric railway connecting Ethiopia with Djibouti covers over 750 kilometers opening up the African continent to import and export services with plans to expand across Africa to the Atlantic Ocean.

The economic corridors and trans-regional infrastructure projects of the Belt and Road Initiative also point to the potential for increased market access and effective regional and global value chains and transport networks both on land and at sea, facilitating safer routes for migration. New funding vehicles such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Silk Road Fund, could open up alternative sources of funding that leverage foreign direct investment and spur growth and decent employment.

Aside from their huge demand for improved infrastructure, vulnerable countries also urgently require access to information, science and technology and a favorable policy environment to effectively support sustainable development. The greater connectivity and individual interaction envisioned by the Belt and Road Initiative could also bring much-needed ICT and sustainable technologies and contribute to capacity building in the most vulnerable countries. Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, make up the world's 92 most vulnerable countries, stretching across islands in the Pacific to landlocked countries in Central Asia, and least developed countries in Africa and Asia.

Over the past fifteen years, my office has established itself as the leading UN entity delivering global advocacy, providing substantive support to these vulnerable countries in global negotiations, monitoring and following-up progress in the implementation of the programs of actions for LDCs, LLDCs and SIDS, coordinating the UN system support and forging strong global partnerships. In 2015, UN-OHRLLS and China co-hosted a roundtable on South-South Cooperation, chaired by President Xi Jinping and the UN Secretary-General. A Memorandum of Understanding, signed between the Ministry of Commerce of China and UN-OHRLLS in 2015, marks a step forward in our substantive collaboration with China.

UN-OHRLLS is committed to building a solid partnership with China and the rest of the global community as we work towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and 'leaving no one behind'. Through partnerships such as this we aim to transform economies sustainably, turning landlocked countries into land-linked nations, small islands into well connected states and least developed countries into prosperous nations who have successfully graduated from their status as the world's poorest.

It is my hope that the outcomes from the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing constitute an important step towards this direction.

The author is United Nations under-secretary-general and high-representative for least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing states.
TEL AVIV - Celebrated Israeli novelist David Grossman was a guest of the Italian cultural and scientific expedition called 'Mediterranea Project' in Tel Aviv.



Writer Simone Perotti, the head of the expedition, described the meeting in the Israeli city.



Grossman spoke about the fact that he would like Israel to have more of a Mediterranean culture. ''I would like to have many more Mediterranean elements in my life. I'm afraid we are more Middle Eastern here: belligerent, aggressive..'', he said.



The novelist spoke about Mediterranean qualities like ''a certain softness, sense of compromise, humor, reluctance towards fanaticism'', noting that ''we are the opposite. Here, you are born and grow up in a culture of trauma. That is how you become a warrior. Suspicion, strength, investments in armaments and defense..''.



''We were very close in Camp David - Grossman recalled - but in order to make real peace the survival instinct that has always kept us alive in the past needs to drop. That instinct has saved us, why should we separate from it? That's what people think. We need courageous leaders who don't rely on people's fears. Unfortunately, you need to feed that fear to be elected here. Netanyahu is very good in stressing current risks and mixing them with past traumas. If you don't push the button of fear as a politician you don't go a long way''.



He said politicians are emerging both within the Labor party and the Joint Arab List, ''whose leader is very capable and can be a partner in dialogue. On the other side, in this country, 20% of the population is Arab and marginalized. That's the point''.



''You don't define identity here by who you are but by who you hate'', said Grossman.



''You need a border so that everyone on either side can savor peace. There is no home without border. I am an Israeli, Palestinians too must feel at home in their country, with a real border protecting them, not like this horrible wall we have built''.



Grossman continued saying that Europe ''can and must do a lot'' to improve the situation.



''One can't say that the problems of terrorism depend on our conflict but this is certainly a breeding ground''.



''Europe must stimulate Israel in every possible way'', continued the novelist, mentioning schools, cultural projects as well as politics.



He said that nobody talks about occupation in Israel: ''no one uses the term 'occupation' but rather 'territories'. ''There is marginalization in Israel and there is something very similar to apartheid in the occupied territories''. ''How is it possible to maintain the status quo where people are unwell, humiliated and depressed? '', said Grossman, citing the Intifada. ''It will happen again if this situation doesn't end. But we have to start the peace process, not comply with it''.



The writer said intellectuals are working in this direction ''but it's never enough''. Grossman noted that he tries to have an impact through the media and, most of all, his novels: ''We have to heal through literature, which highlights our contradictions, makes us hesitant and takes away our shield - and it makes us understand our enemy, who is also a human being''. .
Turkish opposition paper Cumhuriyet web editor arrested 12 journalists and executors arrested 6 months ago

(ANSAmed) - Istanbul, May 12 - Police on Friday arrested Oguz Guven, the web editor of Turhish secular opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet.



"I am being taken into custody," Guven said in a Tweet.



Anadolu agency reports that the arrest warrant was issued following publication of an article on the recent suspicious road accident death of magistrate Mustafa Alper, who opened the first probe into the Gulen movement accused by the government of masterminding the July 15, 2016 coup attempt.



Twelve Cumhuriyet journalists and executives including editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu were arrested over six months ago.



Meanwhile, former Cumhuriyet editor-in-chief Can Dundar, who has been arrested in the past and is wanted by the authorities, has sought refuge in Germany.




(ANSAmed) - ROME - Lower House Speaker Laura Boldrini on Friday invoked the spirit of the 1941 Ventotene Manifesto for closer European union and warned against withdrawing into a 'fortress'.



"Investing in the Mediterranean was a far-sighted choice, the European Union was conceived precisely on a small Mediterranean island, the island of Ventotene," Boldrini said at the summit of parliamentary speakers of Mediterranean countries in Rome. "There were two themes at the centre of the Ventotene Manifesto: peace and social justice, and on this issue much still has to be done. We need to return to this original spirit, we mustn't shut ourselves into Fortress Europe," she added. The problems facing the Mediterranean region can only be resolved through dialogue, Boldrini insisted.



"The political dialogue  launched by the Italian parliament through bilateral cooperation" and the "decision by EU institutions to invest in the Mediterranean dimension" are positive, she continued.



"In this way we can meet the big challenges" facing the region, which "cannot be tackled by closing our front door", Boldrini concluded.
Libya: tension in Tripoli against Sarraj-Haftar agreement Premier fears new spiral of violence of rebel militias

(by Rodolfo Calo) (ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MAY 12 - Tension is high in Tripoli with the Libyan presidential council of Premier Fayez Al Sarraj warning against a ''new spiral of violence'' and a militia boasting that it has closed the foreign ministry. The fresh tension was sparked by the 'summit' earlier this month in Abu Dhabi between Sarraj and the strongman of Cyrenaica, general Khalifa Haftar, as shown by statements and comments.



''Press reports on the summit of Abu Dhabi between Haftar and Serraj have shaken the equilibrium both in Tripoli and Misrata'', warned Mattia Toaldo, senior analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in London in statements to ANSA.



What has emerged, after seeing the statements and official remarks after the meeting on May 2, is that Arab media presented as an agreement what were apparently Haftar's negotiating positions: the creation of a three-member presidential council with Haftar, Sarraj and the president of Parliament, Aghila Saleh; the unification of the army under the general's command; a ban on some Islamist militias; presidential elections to be held in a few months during which Haftar himself could present his candidature.



''Together with news of an imminent second summit in Cairo'' in which Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi ''blessed the accord, all this gave the impression to many actors in western Libya that Sarraj was on the verge of making extreme concessions to Haftar'', noted Toaldo, signaling that ''over the last week the 'hardliners' became stronger in Misrata'', the key city for the survival of the Libyan Political Agreement mediated by the UN in December 2015 in Morocco.



''But most of all in Tripoli balances broke after they led to the almost entirely pacific establishment of the Sarraj government in the capital'', said the ECFR analyst. It is well known that the premier's position is based on a coalition between the militias of the capital and of Misrata.



Toaldo noted that ''part of the latter, after the meeting in Abu Dhabi, started to detach themselves from the coalition and get closer to the more radical front that supports the national salvation government of Khalifa Ghweil, Sarraj's rival. It is unclear whether this will bring an armed conflict in the capital between the militias of Tripoli formally supporting Sarraj and those of Misrata''. There is a clear 'political' convergence between the two fronts because those from both Tripoli and Misrata are against attributing a political role or military leadership to Haftar.



''This also explains why militias of the capital stormed the foreign ministry after the statements of minister Mohammed Siyala in Algiers that legitimized Haftar's role'', explained Toaldo, stressing that, although there is a ''concrete danger of violence'', mediators like Paolo Serra, the UN military advisor in Libya, ''are already at work''. (ANSAmed).




(ANSAmed) - Belgrade, May 12 - UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has voiced his concern over obstacles blocking the continuation of dialogue between Serbia and Kosovo and the execution of existing agreements between the two countries, as well as the growth of nationalism in the region. In the latest quarterly report prepared by the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), Guterres said that dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina mediated by the European Union "is the best available instrument for a peaceful resolution of differences to each side's benefit." However, he also described the implementation of agreements already reached through dialogue as having been "extremely slow" in the observation period from January 16 to April 15. During this time not one concrete step was taken toward establishing the Community of Serb Municipalities in Kosovo, while decisions concerning the integration of the judiciary in the majority-Serb north have been postponed, the report states.



Guterres also said that the rise of ethnic and nationalistic sentiments are cause for serious concern, and that measures encouraging ethnic divisions do not contribute to improving living conditons or stability in the region. (ANSAmed)
FTV3 joins a test program that has been demonstrating excellent system reliability and breaking new ground since it got underway in November 2016. Just five months into testing, the Global 7000 aircraft set a record as the largest business jet to operate so close to the sound barrier, reaching a milestone top speed of Mach 0.995.

"The Global 7000 business jet is a highly sophisticated, state-of-the-art aircraft, and we are pleased that our flight test vehicles have been showing a high degree of maturity," said Michel Ouellette, Senior Vice President, Global 7000 and Global 8000 Program. "Our test program's development and certification schedule is on track, and the addition of our third flight test vehicle is in line with our commitment for certification in 2018 as we accumulate more flight hours."

FTV3, dubbed "The Navigator," will be used to test the aircraft's advanced avionics and electrical system performance. It is the first production aircraft to be equipped with a dual head-up display (HUD). The dual HUD significantly improves operational efficiency and safety, in good or poor visibility, while reducing pilot workload.
The direct service, to be operated on a B777-200LR aircraft with eight seats in First Class, 42 in Business Class and 216 in Economy Class, will increase capacity on the route by 3,724 seats a week, inbound and outbound between Brisbane and Emirates hub Dubai.

This will give passengers in the United Kingdom, France and North America greater access to Australia with just one stop in Dubai as part of Emirates global route network, which includes over 150 destinations in more than 80 countries and territories.
The partnership offers children an interactive and fun introduction to their preferred roles as pilots and cabin crew, and an understanding of the vocations available to them with the airline.

At KidzMondo Doha, Qatar Airways offers an insight into the complete travel experience for children who can take on roles as passengers, as well as airline staff, within the specially-adapted aircraft fueslage model. Children are able to explore the aeroplane, examine its different parts, and experience the daily tasks required of Qatar Airways staff. Children will also be able to play the role of cabin crew, learning about the safety and service standards required of all aviation professionals, and other children will live out the excitement of being a pilot, in a Qatar Airways' cockpit. There is a specially-adapted real Qatar Airways aircraft to set the stage for both passengers and staff on board. Children can also adopt the role of an airport agent, issuing boarding passes to visitors at a replica of Hamad International Airports check-in counter. Upon arrival at KidzMondo Doha, the youngsters journey begins with check-in, where they enter the city to become part of an amazing experience, becoming official Kidizens of the city.

Qatar Airways Group chief executive, Akbar Al Baker, said: It is our great pleasure to open these airline-inspired attractions to support and inspire our leaders of the future. We fully support KidzMondos Doha unique and innovative techniques to help engage and encourage childrens development, and these new activities are a great introduction to the many rewarding roles available across the aviation and travel industry.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The exclusive project of ARMENPRESS entitled Yerevan Bestseller brings the top ten bestselling books of Yerevan.

This weeks top bestselling book is Edgar Harutyunyans Unfound Chamomiles collection. This is the second book of the author. Unfound Chamomiles is about human relationship, love, friendship and betrayal.

Mark Arens Where Wild Roses Bloom remains on the second position, just like last week.

The story describes the inner world of an Armenophobic Turkish former serviceman, when he, already an old man, suddenly hears a lullaby song that reminds him of his mother and later finds out that the song is in Armenian: realizing his parents were Armenians. He spends his remaining life searching the graves of his parents, without knowing that it was a misunderstanding.

Oscar Wildes The Picture Of Dorian Gray comes next in the bestselling list of the week. Dorian Gray is the subject of a full-length portrait in oil by Basil Hallward, an artist who is impressed and infatuated by Dorian's beauty; he believes that Dorian's beauty is responsible for the new mode in his art as a painter. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, and he soon is enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life.

Aram Pachyans Goodbye, Bird has advanced in the list with one point, ranking 4th in the list. The book describes the inner world of a man who has been demobilized from the Army.

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is ranked 5th in the list. It is a 2006 Holocaust novel by Irish novelist John Boyne. Unlike the months of planning Boyne devoted to his other books, he said that he wrote the entire first draft of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas in two and a half days, barely sleeping until he got to the end.

Stefan Zweigs Collected Stories comes next. Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world. The book was translated by Ara Arakelyan and Margarit Arakelyan.

The Alchemist by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho has returned to the list. Originally written in Portuguese, it has been translated into at least 69 languages as of December 2016. An allegorical novel, The Alchemist follows a young Andalusian shepherd in his journey to Egypt, after having a recurring dream of finding treasure there.

Spencer Johnsons Who Moved My Cheese is next. Published on September 8, 1998, Who Moved My Cheese is a motivational business fable. The text describes change in one's work and life, and four typical reactions to those changes by two mice and two "little people," during their hunt for cheese. A New York Times business bestseller upon release, Who Moved My Cheese? remained on the list for almost five years and spent over 200 weeks on Publishers Weekly's hardcover nonfiction list. It has sold more than 26 million copies worldwide in 37 languages and remains one of the best-selling business books.

The Kite Runner by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini has debuted in the list. Published in 2003 by Riverhead Books, it tells the story of Amir, a young boy from the Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, whose closest friend is Hassan, his father's young Hazara servant. The story is set against a backdrop of tumultuous events, from the fall of Afghanistan's monarchy through the Soviet military intervention, the exodus of refugees to Pakistan and the United States, and the rise of the Taliban regime.

Inferno by American author Dan Brown concludes the list. It is the fourth book in his Robert Langdon series, following Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol. The book was released on May 14, 2013 by Doubleday. It was number one on the New York Times Best Seller list for hardcover fiction and Combined Print & E-book fiction for the first eleven weeks of its release, and also remained on the list of E-book fiction for the first seventeen weeks of its release. A film adaptation was released in the United States on October 28, 2016.

YEREVAN BESTSELLER presented by Angela Hambardzumyan
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. US President Donald Trump hopes the dialogue with Russia will lead to establishment of peace in Syria and Ukraine, reports Armenpress.

In an interview with NBC TV, Trump said the discussion with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will contribute to saving numerous lives.

I think we had a very good talk. We discussed Syria and Ukraine. Due to this discussion probably few people will be killed and it will ultimately lead to establishment of peace, Trump said.

The meeting of Trump and Sergey Lavrov was held on May 10. The White House said Trump plans to improve relations with Russia. The Russian MFA said despite all difficulties, Russia and US can and must jointly assist to settle urgent international issues.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. President of Syria Bashar al-Assad said the de-escalation zones in the country provide a real chance to start the political settlement of the conflict, reports Armenpress.

In an interview with Belarusian TV Channel ONT, Assad said any escalation attempt will be prevented by the military forces of Syria and Russia, with the support of Iran and Hezbollah.

He considered Russias initiative as right, however added that certain time is needed for talking about the results.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Three Boeing mechanics caused $4 million of damage and could have sparked a mid-flight fire while repairing one of the planes in the US Air Force One fleet, a federal investigation has found, CNN reports

The oxygen system aboard one of the two VC-25 aircraft available to President Donald Trump was contaminated while the plane was undergoing maintenance at a Boeing plant in San Antonio, Texas between April 1 and April 10, 2016, according to an incident report released by Air Force investigators this week.

The mechanics "caused the mishap by supplying and using non-oxygen clean tools, parts, components, a regulator, and an unauthorized cleaning procedure while performing oxygen system leak checks," according to the report.

If left unchecked, a contaminated oxygen system could increase the risk of fire or even cause an explosion.

Last year's mishap did not result in any injuries and the aerospace contractor paid for the damages.

"Boeing fully understands the level of responsibility that comes from working on the President's aircraft," Boeing told CNN in a written statement.

The investigation was triggered when one of the Boeing mechanics notified his superiors that something looked awry, according to Boeing.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur announced he wont allow any gathering or event in the city in support for Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to Diken, the Mayors statement came after media reports that Erdogan will arrive in Brussels for the NATO summit 12-14 hours earlier than expected.

I will also officially notify the Turkish authorities. The organization of a small celebration in Brussels by Erdogan is out of question, he said.

The mayor said he is concerned that the supporters and opposition of Erdogan might clash.
YEREVAN, MAY 12, ARMENPRESS. The US Department of State approved the deal to sale 160 Patriot system missiles worth 2 billion USD to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), BBC reported.

The Department of State said the proposed deal will benefit the US foreign policy and national security since it will strengthen the security of an important ally which has been and remains the power that ensures political stability and economic progress in the Middle East.

Now the US Congress must discuss the deal.
The Belgian composer-conductor, music director of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, decided to write his own, all-new take on the concept of the Mussorgsky-Ravel favorite. (Unlike George Crumb, Brosse didnt come up with a new title.) So he took a special tour of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and ultimately chose seven paintings from the collection  from Thomas Eakinss The Gross Clinic to Man Rays Fair Weather  as his inspirations. Peter Dobrin met with Brosse to talk about the artworks and how Brosse found the music in them.
In todays Wall Street Journal I review the world premiere in New Haven of Amy Herzogs Mary Jane. Heres an excerpt.

* * *

Plays whose subjects can be summed up in one wordabortion, divorce, Trumpare prone to be preachy. They neednt be, though, and Amy Herzogs Mary Jane, a play about caregiving, steers clear of every potentially fatal trap that lies in wait for an issue-driven playwright. Not only is it devoid of sermonizing, but Ms. Herzog has taken a topic that lends itself to six-hanky sentimentality and written about it in a plain-spoken, unmanipulative way. The result, exceptionally well directed by Anne Kauffman, is the best new play so far this year, one that will surely make a stir when it transfers from the Yale Repertory Theatre to the New York Theatre Workshop this fall.

The first act of Mary Jane takes place in the shabby little Queens apartment that the title character (Emily Donohoe), a preternaturally good-humored working woman and single mother, shares with Alex, her two-and-a-half-year-old child, who suffers from cerebral palsy. We never see Alex, who sleeps in the next room and cannot speak (he has a paralyzed vocal chord). Instead, we watch Mary Jane interact with a varied group of other womena doctor, a nurse, the superintendent of her building, a Buddhist nun whom she meets in the hospitalwho help her carry her cruel load.

Nothing much happens in Mary Jane, which is part conversation piece and part character study. Yet Ms. Herzog tells her tale so skillfully that it is as tense and enthralling as a mystery, while Ms. Donahoe is completely convincing in a role that in less accomplished hands could quite easily seem too good to be true, that of an ordinary woman who copes with a brutally stressful situation in a manner for which the only possible word is heroic.

* * *

Read the whole thing here.

The cast of Mary Jane talks about the play:
On May 16th, Dezan Shira & Associates' Shanghai Office will host a group of EMBA students from NEOMA Business School for a seminar on Doing Business in China.

Thibaut Minot, the Associate of International Business Advisory Department in Shanghai will provide an overview on doing business in China. The topic will cover Chinas Macroeconomic Environment, Foreign Investment Vehicles in China as well as common pitfalls and operational issues faced by foreign-invested companies in China. Both opportunities and challenges of doing business in china will be shared to the students based on what Thibaut has seen from his work experience.



Organizer:



Dezan Shira & Associates is a specialist foreign direct investment practice with a pan-Asian presence. Since its establishment in 1992, the firm has grown into one of Asia's most versatile full-service consultancies with operational offices across China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore and Vietnam, Dezan Shira Asian Alliance member-firms in Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand, as well as liaison offices in the United States, Italy and Germany.



Neoma Business School offers a comprehensive range of degree-awarding programmes, including Executive MBA, MBA, and Specialised Masters, intensive programmes and custom programmes. Located in central Paris, Neoma Business School comprises a 1500m2 campus reserved exclusively for professionally active managers.
He also spoke about the changes that took place in his life after moving to Mumbai from New Delhi.

Mumbai: Shah Rukh Khans recent debut at TED Talk in Vancouver, is the most talked-about thing currently.

His speech at the show was undoubtedly an inspiring one, with him talking about the important aspects of life in a light and witty manner, and the audience seemed to be amazed by his sense of humour and intellect.

The 51-year-old spoke about the struggle and hardships he faced in life and how from being anonymous to the city, he has managed to achieve something in life.

Well, we think from an anonymous, the actor has gone on to become a synonym with the nations name, and admits to being self-obsessed.

Sharing some pages of his life when he was 20 years old, SRK said, "I thought celiac was a vegetable and you married the first girl that you dated. I really thought that gay was a sophisticated English word for happy. And that lesbian was the capital of Portugal, as you all know."

This definitely got the audience burst out in laughter.

He further went on to add, "We relied on systems created by the toil of generations before, to protect us and we felt that governments worked for our betterment. Science was simple and logical and Apple was still just a fruit. Eureka was what you scream when you wanted to run naked on the streets. You went wherever life took you for work and people were welcoming of you. Most importantly, you were who you were and you said what you felt."

Talking about the changes that took in his life after moving to Mumbai from New Delhi, he said, In my late 20s, I headed to Mumbai. I met people who had descended from all over the world. All the systems seemed overwhelming to me. Almost too thick to hold on to the diversity of mankind, and I saw the human need to progress and grow. By the time I was 40, I was really, really flying. I had done 50 films by then and 200 songs. I had been given the highest civilian honour by the French government, the title of which for the life of me I cannot pronounce even now."

Watch the video here:
The actor addressed rumours around his life as he spoke at a TED event.

Superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who delivered a TED Talk titled Thoughts on humanity, fame and love, made use of all his wit for the event. He even addressed rumours that his youngest child, AbRam, all of four, is actually the son of his older child, Aryan, 19.

He delivered the speech at Vancouver two weeks ago, and the video was only released on Thursday. Four years ago, my lovely wife Gauri and me decided to have a third child, he recollected. It was claimed on the net that he was the love child of our first child, who was 15-years-old. Apparently, he had sown his wild oats with a girl, while driving her car in Romania.

And, yeah, there was a fake video to go with it. And we were so disturbed as a family. My son, who is 19 now, even when now you say hello to him, he just turns around and says, But bro, I didnt even have a European driving licence.

He continued, Reality became virtual, and virtual became real. I started to feel that I couldnt be who I wanted to be, or say what I actually thought. And humanity, at this time, completely identified with me. Both of us were going through a mid-life crisis. Humanity, like me, was becoming an overexposed prima donna.
The pilot of the chopper informed about the technical snag just before the take off, Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police said.

In Nagpur, the chief minister is to attend the programme of Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court. (Photo: PTI)

Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had to travel by road from the naxal affected Gadchiroli district to Nagpur after his chopper developed a technical snag before take off, police said.

Fadnavis, who was on a day's visit to Gadchiroli, was to travel to Nagpur, an official said.

"The pilot of the chopper informed about the technical snag just before the take off for Nagpur in the afternoon," Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police Abhinav Deshmukh told PTI.

Gadchiroli district collector ASR Nayak said, "One of the engine of the chopper did not start, maybe due to the intense heat. Hence the chief minister was advised to travel by road."

The chief minister left for Nagpur at around 3 pm, he said. In Nagpur, the chief minister is to attend the programme of Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court.
Six militants identified in Lieutenant Umar Fayyaz Parray murder.

Indian army soldiers cover the coffin of their colleague Umar Fayaz with Indian flag during his funeral at Sursoona village, Srinagar. (Photo: PTI)

Srinagar: Militants belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen may have been involved in Lieutenant Umar Fayyaz Parrays gruesome murder in southern Kulgam district of the restive Valley, J&K police officials said on Thursday. The Hizb and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba were also involved in recent weapon-snatching incidents and the killing of five policemen and two bankguards in south Kashmir, they added.

However, a report quoting defence sources in New Delhi said that six militants from Lashkar and Hizb involved in the killing have been identified and a massive manhunt has been launched to arrest them.

The murder of the young Kashmiri Muslim Army officer of 2 Rajputana Rifles and the ongoing student unrest in the Valley dominated the discussion over the overall Kashmir situation between visiting Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti and governor N.N. Vohra here on Thursday.

The governor and the home secretary held extensive discussions about issues relating to effective maintenance of law and order, a Raj Bhavan spokesman said.

Mr Vohra and Mr Mehrishi also discussed matters relating to the security situation along the international border and the LoC, increasing infiltration attempts and the growing incidents of terrorism in the valley, the spokesman said.

In the evening, the home secretary was briefed by security and police officials about the situation in the Valley.

The officer was on his first leave when abducted from the wedding of his cousin in Batpora village of Kulgam on Tuesday night. His bullet-riddled corpse was found in Harmain area of neighbouring Shopian district on Wednesday morning. The gory incident evoked a nationwide outrage and renewal of the governments pledge that terrorism will be eradicated from the Valley at any cost.

IG (Kashmir range) Syed Javaid Mujtaba Gillani said that preliminary investigations into the Army officers murder point out to the involvement of a module of the Hizb active in Shopian. The police has found two empty cartridges of an INSAS rifle at the place where Parray was shot dead which indicates that the weapon snatched from the policemen recently was used in committing the crime.

The police has, however, denied earlier reports which had said that the corpse of the slain Army officer bore torture marks.

We had had two incidents of weapon-snatching in south Kashmir recently. We have leads that the Kulgam snatching was carried out by Lashkar militants while Hizb militants were involved in weapon-snatching at Shopian court complex. So it could be one of those weapons (used in the murder of the Army officer), Mr Gillani said. He added that the autopsy report was awaited but confirmed that there were no torture marks on Parrays body.

Hostilities again broke out between the facing forces along the LoC on Wednesday night. A woman was killed and her husband injured in Pakistans firing.

In Islamabad, Indias deputy high commissioner was summoned over alleged ceasefire violations by India resulting into one death.

Meanwhile, BSF IG Sonali Mishra and her counterpart from the CRPF Ravideep Singh on Thursday held separate meetings with governor Vohra to discuss the Kashmir situation in the backdrop of recent incidents of violence, student protests and increasing activities of militants mainly in southern parts of Kashmir Valley.

Even after the governments ordering closure of some educational institutions or suspending teaching work at these, student protests have continued in parts of the Valley.
The CJI asked Karnan to file an application and told him that he can be heard when all seven judges would be available for the hearing.

Justice Karnan yesterday sought relief from the apex court in the contempt of court matter. (Photo: File)

New Delhi: Calcutta High Court judge Justice C S Karnan's lawyer on Friday requested the Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar (CJI) to stay the arrest order.

The CJI asked Justice Karnan to file an application and told him that he can be heard when all seven judges would be available for the hearing.

Justice Karnan's lawyer told the apex court that he wanted to tender an unconditional apology, but the apex court registry was not accepting his application. Justice Karnan yesterday sought relief from the apex court in the contempt of court matter.

Advocate Mathew Nethumpara, who was appearing for Justice Karnan in the apex court was asked for the documents to prove that he is the lawyer of Karnan.

Nethumpara told the apex court that he has the 'wakalatnama' and authorisation letter.

Earlier on Tuesday, the apex court sentenced Justice Karnan to six months in jail while holding him guilty of contempt of court. It was a landmark ruling, as it is for the first time ever that a sitting High Court judge has been sentenced.

The apex court had ordered the immediate arrest of Karnan. The seven-judge bench of the apex court headed by CJI Khehar was hearing the contempt petition against Karnan.

Justice Karnan earlier on Monday sentenced the Chief Justice of India and six other apex court judges to five-year rigorous imprisonment after holding them guilty under the SC/ST Atrocities Act-1989 and amended Act of 2015.

Along with the Chief Justice of India, six judges - Justice Dipak Misra, Justice J. Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Madan B. Lokur, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Kurian Joseph - had initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan in February after he had named 20 'corrupt judges,' seeking a probe against them.

Justice Karnan had alleged this was done because he is a Dalit. Justice Karnan earlier on May 2 directed the court's registrar to issue non-bailable warrant against these seven Supreme Court judges. He tagged the apex court judges as 'accused' for not being present.

On May 1, in response to the apex court ordering an examination of his 'mental health', Justice Karnan asserted that he would issue a suo moto suspension order against West Bengal Director General of Police (DGP) if he forcefully conducted a medical checkup.

Karnan further asserted that the DGP should take all the seven accused judges for medical test too.

Earlier, the apex court constituted a medical board to examine the mental condition of Justice Karnan on May 5 and also directed the DG West Bengal to assist the medical board to get justice Karnan examined.

The apex court said in its order that High Courts, any tribunal and authority would not take any cognizance on the orders passed by Justice Karnan.

Earlier, in an unprecedented move, the apex court had invoked its powers to initiate contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan, for writing letters casting aspersions on several judges.

Justice Karnan has been accused of circulation of disparaging letters against sitting High Court judges of the Madras High Court. He also allegedly wrote about Supreme Court judges in his letters to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
The convicts have also been freed from the jobs assigned to them in the jail to keep them relaxed, a source said.

New Delhi: The four convicts in the December 16 Delhi gangrape case are fighting "depression" since the confirmation of their death sentence by the Supreme Court, even as their lawyers are pinning hopes on review petitions to be filed in the court.

The apex court had last week upheld the conviction and death penalty to Mukesh, Pawan, Vinay Sharma and Akshay Kumar Singh awarded to them by the Delhi High Court court on March 13, 2014.

"I will be filing the review petition before the Supreme Court next week, perhaps on Monday or Tuesday," said Mukesh's advocate M L Sharma.

A P Singh, the lawyer of the other three convicts, said he would take him some time before filing the review petitions.

"We are preparing the petitions, but chances are it will take some time," he said.

The four convicts are being provided counselling by the authorities in Tihar jail where they are lodged since their arrest in the horrific gangrape of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in south Delhi on December 16, 2012.

"They are under depression and being given expert counselling," said a source in Tihar.

They have also been freed from the jobs assigned to them in the jail to keep them relaxed, the source said.

The jail authorities have kept Vinay in Jail number 4, the remaining three Mukesh, Pawan and Akshay are in jail number 2.

They are also being watched round the clock with the help of CCTV cameras and jail staff to ensure that they do not take any extreme step under depression, said the source.

Upholding the HC verdict in the matter, Justice R Banumathi, the lone woman judge in the Supreme Court, had said that if at all there is a case warranting death sentence, it is the December 16, 2012 gangrape-cum-murder case which "shocked the collective conscience of the society".
The leader claimed that many opposition parties, in fact, would openly support the BJP-led NDA candidate for the presidential poll.

Kolkata: BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya on Friday described Congress president Sonia Gandhi's effort to forge opposition unity for presidential poll as a "fight for political existence".

The leader claimed that many opposition parties, in fact, would openly support the BJP-led NDA candidate for the presidential poll.

"The Congress, the CPI(M) and other political parties are trying to gang up against the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after their successive defeats in various elections. They have come together to save their own political existence which is at stake," Vijayvargiya said.

"Now they are coming together for the presidential poll. Let me tell you, this time too they will be defeated. Many from the opposition camp will come out in support of the BJP and NDA candidate for presidential poll," Vijayvargiya told PTI in an interview.

His comments followed the Congress chief's initiative to form an opposition front to fight the presidential election. Gandhi had met CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and is also slated to meet TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in this regard.

"The opposition wants to project their candidate for the presidential election. It's fine. But let me tell you their strategy will fall flat in front of Modiji. We believe in 'Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas'. And they believe in appeasement politics," he said.

Vijayvargiya, however, refused to comment on whether the BJP and the NDA had already decided on any candidate, saying that the final call would be taken in a meeting of the NDA.

"Our party president will talk to NDA partners and decide on it. I can't comment on it," he said. Asked whether the BJP would be able to hold together the NDA flock ahead of the presidential poll, he claimed, "Not only NDA partners, some parties from opposition camp will also come out in our support as they know it is very well that only Modi can save India."

Berating the "opposition and pseudo-secular brigade" for labelling the BJP as "communal", Vijayvargiya said, "What they were doing when our soldiers were being slaughtered on the border. We did not see any protest or candle light march, or anyone returning awards."

"Actually they are hypocrites who are at ease while supporting terrorists and anti-nationals in the name of human rights. They are traitors," he alleged.

On the continuing Kashmir unrest, he said, "The BJP will not compromise with the territorial integrity and security of the country."

Asked why the central government has failed to control the situation, the leader said, "We cannot comment on it. We need to leave it to our government and the Army to tackle the situation. Our stand is clear; we'll not bow our heads before terrorism and divisive politics."

Talking about the growth of the BJP in Bengal, he alleged, "The Mamata Banerjee government has crossed all limits in appeasement politics. It is during her regime that the rights of the Hindus are being curbed. The state government along with the ruling party is actually helping infiltration just for the sake of vote bank politics."

"Unabated infiltration is fast changing the demography of the state. The party will go all out to make it an issue in order to save Bengal from turning into a Jehadi state", he claimed.

He, however, refuted allegations by the TMC that the CBI was being used by the BJP to corner TMC politically in Bengal. "The CBI is probing the Saradha chit fund case under instructions from the Supreme Court. What has BJP to do with the investigation?

The TMC has looted public money and they have to return it. In the Narada sting operation, we have seen TMC leaders accepting money on camera. What else do you need to call them other than thieves?" he asked.
In the clip, the speaker asks separatists to either fight along with militants in the field or refrain from speaking about the struggle.

The clip surfaced after a recent move by Hurriyat leaders to downplay fears of the growing influence of the ISIS in the Valley. (Photo: AP)

Srinagar: A slideshow in which Hizbul Mujahideen militant commander Zakir Moosa is purportedly speaking about establishing an Islamic caliphate in Kashmir has gone viral in the Valley.

The 5.40-minute long clip also warns separatist leaders of Kashmir not to meddle in the move to set up a caliphate in Jammu and Kashmir along the lines of the rule established by the ISIS in parts of Syria and Iraq.

There was no immediate confirmation about the source or authenticity of the audio.

But if the voice is that of Moosa, it may signal a worrying turn in Kashmir's insurgency. The movement so far has largely been about independence or annexation with Pakistan.

The Hizbul Mujahideen is nearly as old as the Kashmiri militancy which started in 1989. The group is made up almost entirely of local youths, and had always campaigned for joining Pakistan.

In the clip, the speaker asks separatists to either fight along with militants in the field or refrain from making statements about the armed struggle.

The clip surfaced after a recent move by Hurriyat leaders to downplay fears of the growing influence of the ISIS in the Valley.

Earlier this week, Hurriyat leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq and Yaseen Malik issued a joint statement in which they claimed that the Kashmir struggle had nothing to do with the ISIS, Al-Qaida and other such organisations.

In a statement today, Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander Syed Sallahuddin also said there was no place for groups such as ISIS, Al-Qaeda or the Taliban in Jammu and Kashmir.

"This movement is purely local and indigenous. It has no international agenda. Al Qaeda, Daesh or Taliban have no involvement or role in Kashmir," he said.

The Urdu-language slideshow includes stills and quotes of jailed Indonesian national Abu Bakar Bashir and Yemeni resident Anwar al-Awlaki -- seen as the brains behind ISIS and Al-Qaeda activities.

Senior police officials believed it was Moosa's voice in the slideshow and said the banned ISIS terror group could be trying to create a base in the Valley.

Last month, two masked gunmen appeared at the grave of a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist in Pulwama during which they asked the gathering to follow the rules laid down by the Taliban and ISIS, and not support or raise slogans in favour of Pakistan.

For over three minutes, they spoke about pan-Islamisation and the importance of having Shariat as a law and fled after firing shots in the air.

Militant outfits including the United Jehad Council, a conglomerate of terror outfits based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as well as separatists were quick to downplay the incident but security officials viewed it with more seriousness.

Security agencies felt that if the growing influence of ISIS was not checked, it could adversely affect the already precarious situation in the Valley.

They said chats and contacts between Kashmiri youth and possible handlers in Syria and Iraq had grown in the last six months.

There was no specific information about the Internet users other than the fact that they were from villages in South Kashmir, Sopore in North Kashmir, Prang and Lar in Central Kashmir as well as Reasi, Kishtawar and Doda areas of Jammu region, the agencies said.

During the recent protests across the Valley, ISIS flags were waved in some areas. Slogans supporting the banned terror outfit were also up on some walls.

The Indian Army has also been worried about the growing influence of the ISIS ideology on the Valley's youth. A study last year showed that six out of 10 young Kashmiris were watching videos of controversial Islamic preacher Zakir Naik or other jihadi videos.
AAP no longer wants to go back to paper ballots.

New Delhi: After many parties alleged that tampering of Electronic Voting Machines had led to their defeat in the recently-held Assembly polls, the Election Commission on Friday said it would throw an open challenge to all political parties to try and tamper the EVMs used in the polls in five states. However, at the end of an all-party meeting held here on Friday, only four parties  BSP, Trinamul Congress, Panthers Party and PMK  stuck to their earlier demand for a switchback to using ballot papers.

The Aam Aadmi Party, that was harping on tampering of EVMs and had even held a live demonstration recently on the subject within the precincts of the Delhi Assembly, was among the parties  along with the Congress, Left, Janata Dal (United) and others  that did not demand a reversal to ballot papers.

Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who earlier had claimed the EC had backed out of a hackathon, said his party had already proved EVMs can be hacked and was ready for the ECs challenge. Our party will prove again that EVMs can be tampered with, he said.

Chief election commissioner Nasim Zaidi told the media after the meeting that the EC would hold a challenge and invited all parties to get technocrats to examine whether EVMs can be tampered with. At the meeting, Mr Zaidi dismissed queries by some parties about the incidents of alleged EVM manipulation at Bhind and Dholpur during the recent byelections, and said baseless perceptions had been generated about these incidents and that there was no case of biased vote results.

Mr Zaidi also declared the EC had no favourites. We maintain anequal distance from all parties and groups. It is our constitutional and moral duty to stand dead centre of the circle drawn around us by 55 political parties.

The commission had sent invitations to seven national parties and 48 regional parties, of which only 35 regional parties attended the meet.

The poll body has, however, not yet fixed any date for the challenge. It said that in all future polls, EVMs will be enabled with 100 per cent Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT), a kind of receipt of voting.

Many parties wanted the duration of visibility of the VVPAT slip to be raised from the current seven seconds to at least 20 seconds for voters to be satisfied. Many also said the paper audit should be counted separately. But the EC ruled out all VVPAT slips being counted and instead only promised to do random counting of around 25 per cent of the paper slips.

Congress leader Vivek Tankha, who represented his party at the meet, said his party wanted the EC to clear up all doubts in the peoples minds about EVMs, but did not seek a reversal to the ballot paper system of voting.

CPI(M) leader Nilotpal Basu said his party was against reverting to the ballot paper system as there was a need to move ahead with technology. We cannot go back to where we started from, he said.

The JD-U took the same line, saying ballot papers had led to large-scale cases of booth capturing in the past and that it was not in favour of reverting to that.

However, BSP leader Satish Mishra stuck to his partys earlier stand at the meeting, and sought a reversal to the ballot paper system. Trinamul leader Mukul Roy also said the ballot paper system should be brought back.

The EC had also put the question of making bribery (in elections) a cognisable offence on the meetings agenda, but most parties were opposed to this, saying it would lead to arbitrary action as evidence would be based on oral testimony rather than hard evidence.

Several parties, including JD(U), RJD, CPI(M) and CPI, also raised the issue of electoral reforms and provision of funding that does away with disclosing names of people who give donation upto `20,000. They also demanded the state funding of polls. For us, electoral funding is the more important issue, CPI(M)s Nilotpal Basu said.
Just before verdict on Jadhav, Pakistan revoked its 1960 declaration in March.

New Delhi: Pakistan seems to have meticulously planned its strategy in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case, with indications that it anticipated Indias move to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and therefore acted in advance.

While the Pakistan Army had announced on April 10 that former Indian naval officer Jadhav had been sentenced to death on charges of sabotage and espionage, the Pakistani state machinery seems to have quietly swung into motion on the global stage just days before that. Till recently, Pakistans last declaration on jurisdiction before the ICJ had been made decades ago on September 12, 1960. But in a curious turn of events, on March 29, this year  just 12 days before it went public with the verdict of death penalty against Jadhav Pakistan made a fresh declaration before the ICJ, and told it that this declaration revokes and substitutes the previous declaration made on 12 September 1960.

In its March-29 declaration, Pakistan had recognised the jurisdiction of the ICJ but had specified before it that this would not apply to matters related to the national security of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Pakistan treats the Kulbhushan Jadhav case as a matter of national security. Pakistans Permanent Representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, had, in the fresh declaration before the ICJ on March 29, said, Pakistan recognises the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice under its statute  provided that this declaration shall not apply to: all matters related to the national security of Pakistan.

With New Delhi accusing Islamabad at the ICJ for violating the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, Pakistans March 29 declaration accepting the ICJ jurisdiction also stated that its declaration would not be applicable regarding disputes arising under a multilateral treaty or any other international obligation that Pakistan has specifically undertaken unless all the parties to the treaty affected by the decision are also parties to the case before the court, or Pakistan specifically agrees to jurisdiction.
Mufti was speaking at the panel discussion on medical trauma on the sidelines of second annual Jammu and Kashmir Sciences Congress.

Trauma experts in the state claimed that they are facing extreme interference of the police and armed forces while treating patients who suffered pellet gun injuries during clashes. (Photo: PTI)

Srinagar: Health experts from Jammu and Kashmir have decided to approach Centre demanding a new law stopping police or armed forces from intervening in the treatment of youth with pellet gun injuries.

Trauma experts in the state claimed that they are facing extreme interference of the police and armed forces while treating patients who suffered pellet gun injuries during clashes.

We will present a memorandum to the Central and state governments to come up or amend the existing law to stop the interference of police and armed forces and let us treat patients with injuries from pellet guns, said Dr Showkat Ali Mufti, head of emergency medicine at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar.

Dr Mufti was speaking at the panel discussion on medical trauma on the sidelines of second annual Jammu and Kashmir Sciences Congress and the first conference of MPCOS society at Kashimr University. Her added that they will soon consult with the medical fraternity of the state to prepare the memorandum.

Another senior doctor from the state, who was not willing to be named, told this newspaper that the new law was basically to prevent the pellet gun victims from being haunted by the police and armed forces.

Normally what happens is that pellet gun victims do not want to come to hospital for treatment as they are afraid of arrest. Therefore, it is extremely important to bring in some law to prevent the victims, he said.

Doctors also said currently the police and Army in the state was such that any pellet gun victim approaching the hospital for treatment were being chased. Many a times these pellet gun victims do not even tell their original name to evade arrest, The doctor said.
Khurshid said something that is sinful in the eyes of the God cant be legal and triple talaq cant be fundamental to religion.

New Delhi: Former Union law minister Salman Khurshid on Friday asserted in the Supreme Court that triple talaq form of divorce in one stroke is sinful and said that anything sinful could not have been ordained by Islam.

Making his submissions before a five-judge constitution bench of Chief Justice J.S. Khehar and Justices Kurian Joseph, Rohinton Nariman, Uday Lalit and Abdul Nazeer, Mr. Khurshid said a sinful act like triple talaq could not be part of the Shariat law. He said the All India Muslim Personal Law Board says triple talaq is an abhorrent practice, sinful but is valid in law. Mr Khurshid said: I cannot imagine any religious law that will validate a sin.

Justice Kurian Joseph asked Mr Khurshid can anything sinful be taken as ordained by God and made a law by men? It cannot be a law made by men, even if it is valid. There is no sin in law but it is only in the eye of God.

Mr Khurshid said something that is sinful in the eyes of the God cant be legal and triple talaq cant be fundamental to religion.

He submitted the Shias and Malikis do not recognise the validity of the talaq-ul-bidat, while the Hanafi and Shafi agree in holding that a divorce is effective, if pronounced in the biddat form, though in its commission the man incurs a sin. The Shia law says there is general consensus that triple divorce at one time will be counted as only one divorce though it is pronounced in several numbers and Imamia sect of Shia has faith that such divorce is no divorce.

Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, appearing for one of the victims of triple talaq, said the triple talaq is invalid and unconstitutional and violative of Article 14 (equality before law) as the right of divorce is available only to the husband and not the wife.

He said This is discrimination on the ground of sex because she is a woman. TripleTalaq is inherently inequal to women. No discrimination against women is possible just because she is a woman. Law can be made only to improve the lot of women and not to decrease it.

This method is abhorrent to the Holy Quran and the Prophet. It is not only sinful but also repugnant to the teachings of Prophet. The whims at the hands of the husband is the highest constitutional violation and against the spirit of Directive Principles of State Policy under the Constitution, he said.

Mr. Jethmalani said if secularism has to become a reality then Uniform Civil Code under the Directive Principles must be enforced. The State had an obligation to bring UCC but lawmakers have not done that. CJI Khehar then compared Triple Talaq to death penalty and said it is abhorrent but permissible in law.

Former Union Minister Arif Mohd Khan for an intervener said triple talaq is not fundamental to religion and it violates everything that Islam has spread. It is pre-Islamic and akin to the practice of burying alive young girls. Arguments will continue on May 15.

When the CJI asked Mr Khurshid how extensive is the use of triple talaq outside India, the counsel said triple talaq is not practiced in any other country and is in use only among Indian Muslims. In many Muslim countries across the world, domestic law no longer recognises triple talaq as a valid form of divorce. More countries in the Islamic world have come to realise that triple talaq does not have any foundation in the teachings of Islam; and certainly not any place in the modern world under Islamic law.

He suggested that pronouncement of tripple talaq in one sitting should also be regarded as pronouncement of talaq one time.This will solve 90% of the problem that gets created by instant divorce through tripple talaq in one sitting, Mr Khurshid said. He said if triple talaq was taken as one talaq, it would lose irrevocability and allow reconciliation in couples during the three-month iddat period.

When CJI observed if triple talaq is India specific, then what led to its repeal in other countries?, Mr Khurshid said, Whatever is happening in India may have happened outside earlier to make those countries to decide for repeal of triple talaq.
The aim is to involve civil society more than politicians and not engage the pro-separatist elements.

New Delhi: Wary of being branded as anti-nationals, Opposition parties have decided to avoid seeking talks with Pakistan as one of the solutions to the Kashmir issue. At a special conclave to be held early in June on Kashmir, only moderate faces would be fielded  chief among whom would be former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former external affairs minister Yashwat Sinha, former Union minister Kamal Morarka, former CIC Wajahat Habibullah and former RAW chief A.S. Dulat.

JD-U Rajya Sabha member Sharad Yadav, who has taken the initiative to get parties on board, met Mr Sinha on Wednesday and a decision was taken not to call for talks with Pakistan so that the Modi government doesnt get an opportunity to put the anti-national tag on the initiative, sources told this newspaper.

The aim is to involve civil society more than politicians and not engage the pro-separatist elements, the sources added. Mr Yadav, who was part of an all-party team that visited Jammu and Kashmir in 2016, has held a wide range of discussions with many political leaders and civil society activists, including Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Dr Singh, CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and CPI leader D. Raja.

He has thrice met Mr Sinha, who headed a team of concerned citizens to the Valley.

Sources said the parties may hold an all-party conclave early next month after the birthday celebrations of DMK patriarch Karunanidhi in Chennai. They said that Dr Farooq Abdullah, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, has also supported the move to hold an all-party conclave on Kashmir.

Mr Yechury said the proposal to hold a non-governmental conference in Delhi is an attempt to seek a unified voice on resolving the unrest in the Valley.

The attempt will be to make it an all-party kind of gathering. We are inviting all experts and members of different delegations, which have visited Kashmir. We are exploring the possibility of inviting some political leaders and experts from Kashmir, he added.
he BJP welcomed the court order, saying the case had serious ethical and moral dimensions.

New Delhi: In a major setback to the top Congress leadership, party chief Sonia Gandhi and vice-chief Rahul Gandhi, the Delhi high court Friday dismissed their petition to halt the income-tax investigation in the National Herald case. We are not inclined to entertain your writ petition. It is better you withdraw it and approach the income-tax assessing officer, a bench of Justices S. Muralidhar and Chander Shekhar said. The bench noted the company had not moved the assessing-officer over its grievances, and suggested that it approach the I-T department and submit its documents. If it is still not satisfied, it could then go to court, the bench added.

The counsel for the income-tax department had opposed the petition saying the firm had not moved the assessing officer and therefore its plea was not maintainable.

The BJP welcomed the court order, saying the case had serious ethical and moral dimensions. The BJP also had a word of advice for the Gandhis, urging them to cooperate in the investigation as it would be beneficial to them. Senior BJP leader and Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said: Their (Gandhis) lawyer says they will move the Supreme Court. They can do as they wish, but they must remember this involves a serious ethical and moral issue. There is an important question of propriety. Democracy runs on public morality.

Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who is also the senior advocate appearing for the Gandhis in the Delhi high court, accused the BJP and the government of spreading disinformation about the Delhi high court proceedings. Mr Singhvi said the court had stated that all the points of law that had been raised in the petition can be raised in front of the assessing officer of the income-tax department. In view of this... we withdrew our petition, Mr Singhvi said, adding that the Congress was proud of its association with National Herald newspaper.

The National Herald case has haunted the leadership of the Congress since June 2014 when the metropolitan magistrate had asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi and others to appear before her. This was on a private complaint filed by senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy. He had alleged that fraud and land-grabbing had been committed by these leaders. The allegation relates to the acquiring of a public limited company, Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), through a privately-owned company Young Indian.
From a small eatery in Sion to a brand-new small plates bar in Powai, the Mini Punjab group has come a long way.

Harmeet Singh is a teetotaller and belongs to a family that has never touched a single drop of alcohol. Yet, the young entrepreneur came up with a small plates bar to keep up with the times. Being Punjabis, food is in our blood. We dream of food, but to design the bar menu was a challenge for us, says Harmeet, the co-founder of Turban Tales.

The dhaba-styled restaurant, which opened in April is a milestone for Harmeet and his family. Harmeets grandfather Bahadur Singh had moved to the city from Peshawar after Partition and had re-settled at Sion. He opened a small eatery where he would sell fish koliwada. That was in the 60s when he would sell a kilo of fried fish for Rs 4, says the 30-year-old.

Paan Ice Cream served with Apple Murabba

In 1992, along with a catering service, Harmeets father Karnail Singh opened a family dining restaurant in Bandra  Mini Punjab. Today, apart from being a prominent landmark in the area, it is also a hub for young people who want a taste of tandooris and kebabs at night. Our catering business travelled to almost all of Maharashtra. And now we have Mini Punjab branches in Bhiwani and Sion as well, says Harmeet.

But to keep up with the times, the third generation of the family came up with the idea to spread their business and add a zing. The idea was to do something different and experiment with different concepts, says Harmeet.

Patiala Ice Tea

Brainstorming sessions with his cousins led to concepts like Tikka Momos and Besan Taco Cheelas and pan ice cream. Cheelas is a popular street food in Delhi, we thought of mixing the two, he points out, adding, It was equally fun and challenging for us to design the menu.

Amarsar to Thailand is a unique white-rum-based cocktail with sugarcane juice, galangal, kaffir and mint leaves, and its priced at Rs 350. This is the most popular cocktail, admits Harmeet.

The interior of lakeside is designed with unique Punjabi elements. From walls and stools made of kadhais to tables laid out on top of a tractor, theres a surprise in every corner of the restaurant, says Harmeet.

Interestingly, the chefs at the restaurant have also been part of the family for ages. They would drop us to school when we were young. They are like our family too, he adds.

Currently, while Harmeet and his other cousins are planning to open up the space for live performances and live screenings, it seems the Singh family is determined to continue to challenge and excite Mumbaikars taste buds.
AAP govt had conferred martyr status to an ex-armyman, who allegedly killed himself over the OROP issue.

New Delhi: A person who commits suicide cannot be termed a martyr, the Delhi High Court Thursday told the AAP government which had conferred the status to an ex-armyman, who allegedly killed himself over the OROP issue.

A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Anu Malhotra asked what duty was somebody, who was at Jantar Mantar, discharging.

"He committed suicide on his own. Can he be called a martyr," the bench asked.

The court was hearing two PILs against the Delhi government's decision to accord martyr status to Ram Kishan Grewal who had allegedly committed suicide during a protest at Jantar Mantar over the 'One Rank, One Pension'(OROP) issue on November 1 last year.

Another PIL opposed the city government's decision to declare as martyr a Rajasthan-based-politician-cum-farmer Gajendra Singh Kalyanwat who had allegedly hanged himself at an AAP rally at Jantar Mantar on April 22, 2015.

The incident took place during an anti-land bill rally called by the Aam Aadmi Party.

The court's oral observation came while clubbing all three matters together and listing them for further hearing on July 7.

During the brief arguments, the petitioners' lawyers told the court that only those persons who die fighting in border areas or while discharging their duty there can be termed or considered as martyr.
Mishra was referring to an alleged Rs 400 crore water tanker procurement scam of 2012.

Sacked minister Kapil Mishra on the second day of hungerstrike at his residence on Thursday. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Sacked Aam Aadmi Party minster Kapil Mishras statement was recorded by the Anti-Corruption Branch on Thursday over his allegations that chief minister Arvind Kejriwal had influenced the probe into a Rs 400 crore tanker scam.

Mr Mishra had visited the anti-graft bodys office a few days back and shared evidence related to the tanker scam that dates back to Sheila Dikshits tenure as chief minister. Mr Mishra has alleged that the investigation into the tanker scam was repeatedly delayed and influenced by Mr Kejriwal and his two men.

Last year in August, Ms Dikshit was examined by the ACB officials in connection with her alleged involvement in the tanker scam and was also handed over a set of 18 written questions. Till some time back, Mr Mishra had been accusing the BJP of shielding Ms Dikshit in the case and later he alleged that the AAP government tried to shield her.

Earlier in the day, Mr Mishra said that he will visit the ACB with more details on the tanker scam. I will go to the ACB at 12 noon today and divulge more details in the water tanker scam, Mr Mishra had said.

Mr Mishra was referring to an alleged `400 crore water tanker procurement scam of 2012. when the Delhi Jal Board, with then CM Sheila Dikshit as its chairperson, dodgily awarded tenders to hire 385 stainless steel tankers from private companies. An FIR filed by the ACB in June 2016 mentions both the Ms Dikshit regime as well as the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government.

The Kejriwal-led AAP government had in June 2015 constituted a fact-finding committee to go into alleged irregularities in procuring some 385 stainless steel water tankers by the DJB. The Delhi government in June 2016 sent a report of the fact-finding committee to the then Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung following which an FIR was registered in case.

Leaders attacker a party worker: Police

A day after a man was caught for allegedly atta-cking sacked AAP minister Kapil Mishra, the po-lice said that the accused is an AAP worker.

The accused, Ankit Bharadwaj, is a chartered account (CA) by profession. He quit his well-paid job to work for the party. Sources said that presently he was working in one of the mohalla clinics of minister Satyendra Jain.

He is a resident of Moti Bagh and on Wednesday came to show his anger over the jolt in the party after Mr Mishras allegation of corruption on chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Mr Jain, said a police official.

After the incident, Ankit was was booked under relevant sections.

On Thursday, he was produced before a court and sent to judicial custody for five days.
The Iranian man had married the girls surrogate mother after her birth but the couple divorced subsequently.

Mumbai: The Bombay high court recently refused to hand over a three-year-old girl to her father, an Iranian national, after her surrogate mother questioned his character during her interaction with the judges. The Iranian man had married the girls surrogate mother after her birth but the couple divorced subsequently. The HC was hearing the habeas corpus petition filed by the father in 2015, seeking directions for the Thane police to trace his daughter after she was taken away by the surrogate mother after divorce.

According to the petitioner, he married the woman after she gave birth through surrogacy and later divorced her but she took away his daughter despite the family court order giving him custody. The court will continue hearing the petition in June.
Our main aim is to provide employment to locals in Gadchiroli, Fadnavis said.

Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said his government was committed to the development of Gadchiroli district.

"We are committed to the development of Gadchiroli and our main focus is to provide employment to locals," said Fadnavis after handing over land for the proposed sponge iron plant of Lloyds Metals and Energy Ltd at Konsari village in Ashti tehsil of Gadchiroli.

Naxal menace has put hurdles in the development of Gadchiroli district all these years.

He said Lloyds plant is being set up to process iron ore and provide employment to locals, a release issued by the chief minister's office said here.

Fadnavis distributed cheques to various farmers, who gave their lands for this sponge iron plant of Lloyds. The company announced adoption of Alapalli ITI in Gadchiroli for providing training to the locals, the release added.

Later, Fadnavis visited a village in Chamorshi taluka of Gadchiroli district and inspected work of Malgujari talao. He also interacted with locals in Bamanpeth village in Chamorshi taluka.

The chief minister also interacted with girl students at Bamanwadi village in Chamorshi taluka in Gadchiroli district and reviewed security situation in Gadchiroli with CRPF and state police officials in a meeting. Fadnavis later left for Nagpur by road as his helicopter developed a technical snag.
Reliance Energy has upped the ante against power theft in the city.

Mumbai: Hundreds of Kurla and Chunabhatti residents sweated it out on Thursday night as they had to endure a power cut that lasted for four hours. The residents have complained that they did not get any satisfactory reply from the helpline of their supplier, Reliance Energy. Later, the company has clarified that the technical snag had occurred due to feeder tripping.

The electricity supply was disconnected in suburban Kurla and Chunabhatti from around 12 am on Thursday and the problem continued till 4 am on Friday. There was no reason for the power cut in this hot season. None of our family members could sleep at all last night. The helpline could not give us a satisfactory reply. We were not aware about the issue It was complete torture for us, a Kurla resident said.

Asked what went wrong, a Reliance Energy spokesperson said, The interruption in the power supply was on the account of tripping in the Chunabhatti feeder. Our field team worked on a war footing and restored the power within just an hour.

However, the residents said that the power was not there for four hours. Meanwhile, Reliance Energy has upped the ante against power theft in the city.

In a bid to deter miscreants from stealing power, the discom has conducted over 4,100 mass raids with the help of the police during the financial year 2016-17 to remove unauthorised wires pilfering electricity from its network, and curb other means of illegally drawing power.
The entire party is planning to cause a stir in the state with its second-rank leadership criss-crossing all five regions of Maharashtra.

Mumbai: In a bid to revive the fortunes of his party, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief and veteran politician Sharad Pawar has decided to reach out to every part of the state. Beginning June 11, Mr Pawar will kick-off his state-wide tour from Vidarbha by meeting a cross-section of society to raise issues. Not just Mr Pawar but the entire party is planning to cause a stir in the state with its second-rank leadership criss-crossing all five regions of Maharashtra.

Mr Pawar on Thursday directed all his party colleagues to prepare the party for the elections. Come out of the mentality of rulers. You were ruling the state for 15 years. But now, until you dont hit the road and establish last-mile communication with voters, it will not be possible for you to come to power again, he said. In a sense, the veteran leader made it plain that the days of hard work had started and his colleagues needed to come out of their comfort zone.

With NCP facing an image crisis with many of its second-rung leaders under the scanner for several issues, and Mr Pawars bonhomie with Prime Minister Narendra Modi serving to further confuse the party rank and file, Mr Pawar has decided to go all out to strengthen the image of his party.

Day-to-day details of Mr Pawars itinerary are yet to be ironed out but it is likely that the NCP chief will address corner meetings of farmers in nearly every third taluka of the state, said sources. He is also scheduled to meet the elite of every locality such as doctors, lawyers, professors and people from the literary world. Sources said Mr Pawar would bring local leaders of like-minded parties together informally to help the anti-BJP campaign gain momentum.

Other NCP leaders who will be part of this effort are former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar; Maharashtra NCP chief Sunil Tatkare; and former ministers like Jayant Patil, Dilip Walse Patil and Supriya Sule.
Dancing on a boat, was a challenge even for the professional dancers, but every moment of the shoot was enjoyable for them.

Chennai: Several people appearing in advertisements are being discussed a lot all over social media. After the Airtel 4G girl became one of the most popular faces for the telecom giant, Vodafone seems to have brought the coolest granny and grandpa on board as brand ambassadors for the Vodafone 4G campaign.

While the internet has been admiring this couple doing everything from going parasailing and getting tattoos to shaking a leg in Goa, this duo in their 70s are Bharatnatyam Dancers from Chennai who have both been honoured with the Padma Bhushan award. Shanta Dhananjayan and V.P Dhananjayan also teach dance and run a business in Chennai together.

Although the couples son Sanjay works for Ogilvy in New York, he didnt know that they were being approached for the campaign. Shanta and Dhananjayan found the idea interesting as they found it different from usual ads and more like characters they were enacting.

Shanta actually went for parasailing and evidently aced it in a saree, but for Dhananjayan things were a bit tricky as both of them were on the move since their arrival in Goa and it was difficult for him to wear a shirt and shorts because he is used to wearing traditional veshti and jippa.

As for dancing on a boat, it was different and a challenge for the professional dancers, but every moment of the shoot was enjoyable for them. The reaction to the ads has been tremendous as the couple got mails and calls saying how cute and natural they looked.

Dhananjayan has previously appeared in a Malayalam commercial for Nerolac Paints and Shanta did an ad for Kumaran Silks. The Padma Bhushan awardees say that acting comes naturally as its a part of Bharatnatyam and they breath the art-form.
US intelligence officials are reviewing government use of software from Russia's Kaspersky Lab as senators raised concerns over security.

ABC News and Buzzfeed News this week reported US officials were increasingly concerned that Russian spies might seek to use Kaspersky computer-security software to spy on Americans or sabotage key US systems. (Representational image)

US intelligence officials told a Congressional committee on Thursday they are reviewing government use of software from Russia's Kaspersky Lab as senators raised concerns that Moscow might use the product to attack American computer networks.

National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers told a Senate committee that he was personally involved in monitoring the Kaspersky issue, but did not elaborate.

We are tracking Kaspersky and their software, said Defense Intelligence Agency Director Vincent Stewart.

ABC News and Buzzfeed News this week reported US officials were increasingly concerned that Russian spies might seek to use Kaspersky computer-security software to spy on Americans or sabotage key US systems.

ABC said the US Department of Homeland Security issued a secret report on the matter in February and that the FBI was investigating Kaspersky Lab's relationship to the Russian government, citing unnamed sources.

Reuters was not able to verify the claims, which Kaspersky Lab denied in a statement: As a private company, Kaspersky Lab has no ties to any government, and the company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts."

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin said at Thursday's Senate hearing on global security threats that lawmakers were very concerned about Kaspersky Labs and asked intelligence officials if they could confirm they did not have Kaspersky software on their networks.

We are tracking Kaspersky and their software, Stewart said. There is as far as I know no Kaspersky software on our networks, though he added it was more difficult to assess whether the same could be said for intelligence contractors.

Marco Rubio, Republican Senator from Florida, asked the chiefs of the NSA, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, DIA and two other intelligence agencies if they would be comfortable using Kaspersky products. All said no.

Eugene Kaspersky, the company's founder and chief executive, said in a question-and-answer session on the website Reddit that he would be happy to testify before the Senate to assuage their concerns about his company's products.

I respectfully disagree with their opinion, and Im very sorry these gentlemen cant use the best software on the market because of political reasons, he said.
Qatar is a key US ally and home to Al-Udeid, the largest US airbase in the region, which houses around 10,000 troops.

Doha: The US ambassador to Qatar has expressed her dissatisfaction with political events back home in a decidedly undiplomatic message posted on social media.

Dana Shell Smith, who has been the American envoy to the Gulf emirate since 2014, took to Twitter in the hours after the dramatic sacking of FBI director James Comey by President Donald Trump.

Increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home, knowing I will spend today explaining our democracy and institutions, Shell Smith tweeted, in apparent disapproval of the move.

It was a rare public show of exasperation with political events  either in the US or Qatar  by the envoy, who was appointed by Barack Obama.

The message was posted on May 9 and has been retweeted more than 2,000 times.

Qatar is a key US ally and home to Al-Udeid, the largest US airbase in the region, which houses around 10,000 troops.

Last month, US defence secretary Jim Mattis visited Doha and met Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani. Trade between the two countries is also growing. Last year, after Trumps election, it was announced that gas-rich Qatars sovereign wealth fund wanted to invest $10 billion in US infrastructure projects.

There was some angry reaction to Shell Smiths tweet online, with calls for her to be sacked for her apparent criticism of the president. In a new post on Thursday, she appeared to try to take the sting out of her earlier message. Diplomats explain & defend our political system. Can be tough when partisan acrimony so high, but there is still no greater country. #USA.
Analia Pasatino was forced to take a leave of absence from the police department after coming out as a transgender woman in 2008.

Buenos Aires (Argentina): Analia Pasantino served in Argentinas federal police as a man for 20 years, and then she came out as a transgender woman and was forced to resign.

She is smiling these days, though, beaming with pride to be wearing a police badge again. And the sign on her office door reads: Chief.

Nearly a decade after psychiatric reports said Pasantino suffered from an irreconcilable illness that made her unfit to serve, she was welcomed back to the police force this week and appointed deputy police commissioner in the judicial communications department.

This is a milestone, Pasantino, 49, said on Thursday. Im the first transgender police chief in Latin America. Its an unprecedented and important step to show Latin America and the world that we are an open institution.

She has backed me with everything, Pasantino said about Mauro, who is also a lawyer. She has been my pillar of support.

Pasantino said she was forced to take a leave of absence from the police department after coming out as a transgender woman in 2008. Every three months, she would present a psychiatric evaluation hoping to rejoin the force, but a committee reviewing her case repeatedly extended her leave.

It was always seen as an illness, she said. As crude as it sounds, the final diagnosis was: a disturbance in gender identity that made me unrecoverable to the police force.

Then the leadership of the federal police changed and she won reinstatement, Pasantino said.

She also credits the efforts of Mara Perez, a transgender woman who leads the diversity division at Argentinas security ministry. Maras efforts were priceless, Pasantino said. When they said no under previous governments, she kept insisting until she succeeded.

This week, Pasantino was flooded by messages of support from former colleagues and requests for interviews, after she was welcomed back into the police force at a televised press conference with Argentinas security minister and the federal police chief.

At first I was a bit overwhelmed by so much attention. But Im proud to tell this story, she said. And I hope it helps others as well.
Describing himself as a very active president, the US president said it was very difficult for his surrogates to explain things.

Trump has also strongly refuted the allegations that there was any collusion between him or his campaign with the Russians. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to cancel the White House press briefings and instead issue written responses to questions "for accuracy", escalating his tiff with the media that has questioned the administration's shifting stance on the FBI chief's firing.

Describing himself as a "very active president", Trump said it was becoming very difficult for his surrogates to explain things with perfect accuracy to reporters at the news conferences.

"...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" Trump said in a series of tweets. His latest attack on the media came after his administration's shifting narrative on the firing of James Comey as FBI chief was questioned by the media.

The president's advisers said this week that Trump fired Comey in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Later, however, they said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless.

Slamming the media, Trump said, "The Fake Media is working overtime today!" Trump's comments came after acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe directly contradicted the White House's claims that the "rank and file" agents had lost faith in Comey.

"Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe said yesterday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Trump has also strongly refuted the allegations that there was any collusion between him or his campaign with the Russians.

"Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians and Trump campaign was fabricated by Democrats as an excuse for losing the election," he said. "When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" Trump asserted.

Trump also warned sacked FBI chief Comey not to "leak" details of their conversations to the media, suggesting they may have been taped.

"James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" he said. "China just agreed that the US will be allowed to sell beef, and other major products, into China once again. This is REAL news!" Trump said.

The suggestion to cancel briefings is not the first time the administration has threatened to limit media access. Trump's aides had floated the idea of moving the media from the White House to the nearby Executive Office Building to accommodate media interest. However, the move was interpreted as a bid to limit media access.
Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the LoC might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

'Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use,' Coats warned. (Photo: AFP/Representational Image)

Washington: The Donald Trump administration on Thursday blamed Pakistan for deteriorating India-Pak relations and warned that the ties might worsen further if there is another "high-profile" terrorist attack from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by terrorists crossing into India from Pakistan.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting India's pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

"Easing of heightened Indo-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation," Coats said.

Last year, heavily-armed terrorists sneaked in from across the border and attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. The attack had claimed the lives of seven security personnel while four terrorists were killed.

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against India's rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," said the top US intelligence official.

In his remarks ahead of the possible release of the Afghanistan policy of the Trump Administration, he said "Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan."

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, he said anti-Pakistan groups are likely to focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan's internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ui-Ahrar, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhare Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi ai-Aiami," he said, adding that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

"Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use," Coats warned.

"Early deployment during a crisis of smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons would increase the amount of time that systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site, increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon," he said.
Trump should be meeting with the foreign minister, said WH spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lambasting critics.

Washington: Donald Trumps administration was left red-faced Thursday after the Moscow surprised it by releasing pictures of a closed-door meeting between the US president and Russias top diplomat.

The images, issued by the Russian state news agency TASS, and subsequently published by much of the global media, showed a grinning Trump shaking hands with Sergei Lavrov and the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting.

That Wednesday meeting was already being seen as a major diplomatic coup for the Kremlin, a red carpet welcome months after being hit with US sanctions for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Veteran diplomats questioned why Trump agreed to host the diplomats -- a rare honour for non-heads of state, much less for those at the centre of major US political scandal.

US administrations often treat Oval Office meetings as a type of currency, dangling the prospect of a high-profile sit-down to gain leverage or concessions in negotiations.

But the emergence of photos compounded the perception that Russia had won a diplomatic victory and the White House was outmanoeuvred.Congrats Kollegi (colleagues) at getting these photos! Huge coup, said former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul.

Publicly, the White House put on a brave face. Trump should be meeting with the foreign minister, said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lambasting critics.

For them to try to attack him for doing his job, maybe they should spend a little more time doing their jobs and we wouldnt have all the problems that we do. Privately though White House officials seethed at what they described as a breach of trust.
North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations and virtually no official channels of communication.

The North also announced last week that it thwarted what it claims was a CIA-backed attempt to assassinate Kim. (Photo: AP)

Tokyo: A North Korean parliamentary committee sent a rare letter of protest to the US House of Representatives on Friday over its new package of tougher sanctions.

The sanctions were condemned as a "heinous act against humanity" by the foreign affairs committee of the North's Supreme People's Assembly, according to a state media report.

It was not immediately clear how the protest was conveyed - if it was sent by mail or how it was addressed - since North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations and virtually no official channels of communication. The report, carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, said the letter was sent Friday.

The Republican-led House overwhelmingly voted May 4 to impose the new sanctions, which target North Korea's shipping industry and use of what the bill called "slave labour."

It's not unusual for Pyongyang to condemn Washington's moves to censure it, but direct protests to Congress are exceptionally rare. Pyongyang normally expresses its displeasure with Washington through statements by the Foreign Ministry or other institutions, or through representatives at its United Nations' mission in New York.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said it's not unprecedented for the North to directly contact the US legislature or government. Pyongyang sent letters to the United States in 1984 calling for the opening of three-way talks between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington.

But he said Friday's protest was also notable in that it was sent by the recently revived parliamentary foreign affairs committee, which was discontinued by Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, in 1998.

The move to restart the committee has been seen as an attempt to create a "window" for contacts with the outside world - Seoul and Washington in particular.

Pyongyang has had more than its usual share of criticism for Washington in recent months.

It has been in a high-indignation mode for the past two months because of military exercises between the US and South Korea that it sees as a prelude to invasion. This year's war games were the biggest ever, and reportedly included training for precision strikes and assaults intended to take out Kim Jong Un and his top lieutenants.

The North also announced last week that it thwarted what it claims was a CIA-backed attempt to assassinate Kim. On Friday, its Central Public Prosecutor's Office issued a statement suggesting the United States and South Korea are harbouring suspects and should extradite them to the North immediately.

At the same time, however, a senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official reportedly flew to Oslo, Norway, to meet with former US diplomats and scholars in what is known as "track 2" talks on bilateral issues. The talks, which are held intermittently, are an informal opportunity for the two sides to exchange opinions and concerns.

The US Senate would need to approve the new sanctions next before they could be implemented. The House bill bars ships owned by North Korea or by countries that refuse to comply with UN resolutions against it from operating in American waters or docking at US ports.

Goods produced by North Korea's forced labour would be prohibited from entering the United States, according to the legislation.
Prime Minister Modi has often recalled his days as a tea-seller while addressing gatherings in India and abroad.

Dickoya, Sri Lanka: I have a special association with tea was how Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an instant connect with the Tamil community members here in the tea-growing Central Province of Sri Lanka.

Mr Modi, in his address, lauded the Ceylon Tea, saying it was world famous but what was lesser known was the sweat and labour behind it. You and I have something in common. I have a special association with tea, Mr Modi said. Chai pe Charcha or discussions over tea is mark of deep respect for dignity and integrity of honest labour, he said.

Prime Minister Modi has often recalled his days as a tea-seller while addressing gatherings in India and abroad.

The PM also visited Sri Lankas iconic Buddhist Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy and offered floral prayers. Mr Modi, who is here on a two-day trip, went around the Sri Dalada Maligawa temple, an architectural wonder housing shared religious heritage.

Blessed to be at the Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple in Kandy. This is a centre of immense spiritual importance, Mr Modi said in a tweet. PM @narendramodi at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy. Offered floral prayers in sanctum of Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple, tweeted Gopal Baglay, spokesperson with the ministry of external affairs. An architectural wonder housing shared religious heritage, Mr Baglay tweeted.

The Sri Dalada Maligawa temple or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which houses the relic of the tooth of the Buddha. The actual chamber in which the tooth relic is kept is known as Handun Kunama. The PM also said Sinhala and Tamil communities in Sri Lanka should strengthen unity and harmony as he assured Indias full support to the steps taken by Colombo to improve the living conditions of minority Tamils in the country.

Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Sinhala and Tamil people and languages existed harmoniously, Mr Modi told the Tamils of Indian origin in Dickoya town in the tea growing Central Province of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is still recovering from the wounds of a nearly three-decade long bloody civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which fought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and the east of the island.
On Monday, the Kushner Company apologised after it emerged that Meyer had mentioned her brothers name during the sales pitch.

Beijing: The real estate company owned by the family of US President Donald Trumps son-in-law and adviser withdrew on Friday from a sales pitch to Chinese investors after it sparked an uproar.

White House aide Jared Kushners sister headlined events in Beijing and Shanghai last weekend to seek more than $150 million in investment in a US luxury apartment complex.

Nicole Kushner Meyer urged wealthy Chinese to buy stakes through the EB-5 visa program that offers US residency in exchange for at least $500,000 investment in a US business that must also create at least 10 American jobs.

The presentation raised concern over potential conflicts of interest and set off a media firestorm in the US. Kushner is married to Trumps daughter, Ivanka, who also works for the White House. On Monday, the Kushner Company apologised after it emerged that Meyer had mentioned her brothers name during the sales pitch.

The names of Meyer and Kushner Company president Laurent Morali were on advertisements for the five-city tour that included the southern cities of Shenzhen and Guangzhou this weekend.

But a company spokesman told AFP in a brief statement on Friday: No one from Kushner Companies will be in China this weekend. While the Kushner Company is not sending anyone, the weekends presentations were not cancelled by the host, the Chinese government-approved immigration agency QWOS.

Journalists had been asked to leave the hotel ballroom where Meyer had made her presentation in Beijing last Saturday. In Shanghai last Sunday, they were told they could not attend the private event even though it was publicly advertised.
The pair, a 29-year-old of Bosnian descent and a 19-year-old of Yemeni origin were caught in January 2016 near the border with Turkey.

Thessaloniki (Greece): A Greek court on Friday handed 15-year prison sentences to two suspected jihadists with Swedish passports trying to enter Turkey carrying combat items, a local justice source said.

The suspects' lawyer said the men, who have refugee status in Sweden, would appeal against the sentence. They will remain incarcerated until their next trial, a date for which was not given.

The pair - a 29-year-old of Bosnian descent and a 19- year-old of Yemeni origin - were caught in January 2016 near the border with Turkey.

Inside their luggage police found two machetes, army uniforms and other combat paraphernalia. The suspects insist the items had been legally purchased

in Athens as souvenirs.

The 29-year-old had been arrested in Bosnia in 2005 after a police raid at his house found a suicide belt, explosives and a video showing a man with a covered face threatening terrorist acts against the US Capitol and the White House.

He was sentenced to up to 14 years in Bosnian prison, but was released in 2011.
The victim though did not make a statement in court about why or how she was attacked.

Ferguson admitted to the crime and sobbed in the dock while the video was being played, the report said. (Photo: Representational)

London: A 32-year-old man from the United Kingdom who set his girlfriend on fire by pouring petrol on her, has been jailed for at least eight years.

According to a report in Daily Mail, Lee Ferguson attacked his live-in partner Jordan Jade on February 19, 2017. Jade suffered 13 per cent burns and required surgery and skin grafts.

The couple, who were in a relationship for 12 years and have two children, were seen arguing outside a pub in CCTV footage produced in Newcastle Crown Court. The footage then shows the victim lying on the ground, screaming in agony, with her clothes burnt off.

During his trial in court, Ferguson admitted to the crime and sobbed in the dock while the video was being played, the report said.

Witnesses, who saw the lady engulfed in fire, heard Jordan 'shouting and then screaming'.

After acting in a fit of rage, Ferguson realised his crime, stamped out the fire and covered the victim in a coat to stop the flames.

The victim though did not make a statement in court about why or how she was attacked.

Prosecutor Paul Rowland said, An emergency operation was carried out. There was cleaning and dressing of the burns and also a laser scan undertaken.

Fergusons defence lawyer, John Wilkinson said his client realises the effect of what he did to the victim. He added that Ferguson expressed genuine remorse for what has occurred.

While awarding jail for eight years to Ferguson, Judge Robert Adams said, It seems to me the horror of what you had done and the injury inflicted became clear to you soon after you committed this offence.
Sri Lanka is still recovering from the wounds of a nearly 3-decade long civil war between the govt and the LTTE.

Modi assured India's full support to the steps taken by Colombo to improve the living conditions of minority Tamils in the country. (Photo: AP)

Dickoya (Sri Lanka): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said Sinhala and Tamil communities in Sri Lanka should strengthen unity and harmony as he assured India's full support to the steps taken by Colombo to improve the living conditions of minority Tamils in the country.

"Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Sinhala and Tamil people and languages existed harmoniously," Modi told the Tamil community members in Dickoya town in the tea growing Central Province of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka is still recovering from the wounds of a nearly three-decade-long bloody civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which fought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and the east of the island.

The war caused significant hardships for the Tamils and resulted in deaths of an estimated 80,000-100,000 people. "We need to strengthen, not separate, (these) threads of unity and harmony," Modi told thousands of Tamils during a public rally in the presence of Lankan President Maithripala Srisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Jindal had the backing of some important Indian officials for the meeting to defuse ongoing tension between the two countries.

Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the country's powerful Army that his meeting with Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal last month was part of a back-channel diplomacy, a media report said today.

BBC Urdu reported that Sarif has taken Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa into confidence on his meeting with Jindal on April 27 at the hill resort of Murree, BBC Urdu reported.

The civilian leadership informed the military authorities that Sharif's hour-long meeting with Jindal was a part of back-channel diplomacy. And Jindal had the backing of some important Indian officials for the meeting to defuse ongoing tension between the two countries, the report said.

India-Pak ties are strained over a series of cross-border terror attacks in India and over the death sentence to Jadhav.

India has denied Pakistan's allegations and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence agencies. The report quoting a ruling PML-N leader said Sharif was tight-lipped on his meeting with Jindal.

However, the only detail of the meeting he shared with his aides was that Jindal was making efforts to defuse tension between India and Pakistan.

It said the military leadership also took its officers into confidence on the meeting. Gen Bajwa told his officers that the meeting was a part of a back-channel diplomacy.

The Sharif-Jindal meeting had triggered intense speculation with several politicians and analysts suggesting it could be the precursor to a possible meeting between the two premiers in the near future.

Pakistan prime minister's adviser on foreign affairs Adviser Aziz told reporters yesterday that if India shows interest, Pakistan will look into the possibility of a meeting between Sharif and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO summit on June 8-9 at Astana in Kazakhstan.

Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly expressing concern over the "secret" meeting. It had also alleged that Jindal conveyed Modi's "message" to Sharif on the death penalty to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav on spying charges.

Jindal is said to be the man who had arranged a meeting between Modi and Sharif in Lahore on December 25 in 2015 on Sharif's birthday and the day when Sharif's granddaughter Mehr-un-Nisa was married.
The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads to expand trade.

China's new Silk Road initiative is ramping up as President Donald Trump focuses on domestic issues, downplaying foreign affairs. (Photo: AP)

Beijing: In a mountain valley in Kashmir, plans are underway for Chinese engineers guarded by Pakistani forces to expand the lofty Karakoram Highway in a project that is stirring diplomatic friction with India.

The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe.

The Asian Development Bank said the region, home to 60% of the worlds people, needs more than $26 trillion of such investment by 2030 to keep economies growing.

The initiative is in many ways natural for China, the worlds biggest trader. But governments from Washington to Moscow to New Delhi worry Beijing also is trying to build its own political influence and erode theirs.

Others worry China might undermine human rights, environmental and other standards for lending or leave poor countries burdened with debt.

India is unhappy that Chinese state-owned companies are working in the Pakistani-occupied Kashmir. Indian leaders see that as an endorsement of Pakistani control.

We have some serious reservations about it, because of sovereignty issues, said Indias finance and defence minister, Arun Jaitley, at an Asian Development Bank meeting this month in Yokohama, Japan. China has tried previously to mollify Indian anxiety by saying in January its highway work targets no third country.

Chinas new Silk Road initiative is ramping up as President Donald Trump focuses on domestic issues, downplaying foreign affairs.

American officials say Washington wants to work with China on infrastructure. But some diplomats and political analysts say Beijing is trying to create a political and economic network centered on China, push the United States out of the region and rewrite rules on trade and security.

At a Senate hearing in Washington on Thursday on global threats, Dan Coats, the US director of national intelligence, identified the Silk Road strategy as part of a pattern of aggressive Chinese investments and other actions around the world.

They clearly have a strategy, through their investments, Coats said. You name a part of the world, the Chinese are probably there, looking to put investments in. The Silk Road process, he said, is a different way to address nations that theyve had difficulty connecting with.

William A Callahan, an international relations specialist at the London School of Economics, said China is trying to change the way the political structure of the region works. We will have to see whether it can achieve this, he said.

Trumps decision to pull out of the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deprives Chinas neighbours of a tool they hoped would counter its rising influence, said Max Baucus, the US ambassador to Beijing until January. Baucus called the move a large geopolitical mistake.

Southeast Asian countries would tell me We want you, we want the TPP, then we can balance China with the United States. But when youre not there, there is a void that Chinas going to fill, Baucus told The Associated Press.

Dubbed One Belt, One Road after ancient trade routes through the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, the initiative is Chinese President Xi Jinpings signature project.

Details such as financing are vague. But since Xi announced it in 2013, Beijing has launched dozens of projects from railways in Tajikistan, Thailand and Kenya to power plants in Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan, financed mostly by Chinese loans.

Countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty. India, Indonesia and others want investment but are wary of Chinese strategic ambitions, especially after Beijing started building artificial islands to enforce its claim to most of the South China Sea, a busy trade route.

Indonesias political elite have a fear of regional hegemony by China, said Christine Tjhin, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.

Moscow worries Beijing is diluting Russian influence in Central Asia by linking Uzbekistan and other countries more closely to Chinas more dynamic economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded last June by proposing a Great Eurasia Project, with Beijing leading on economics and Moscow on politics and security.

This vision enables the Kremlin to maintain an appearance that it retains the political initiative in its neighbourhood, Marcin Kaczmarski and Witold Rodkiewicz said in a report for the Center for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw think tank.

Perhaps trying to defuse unease, China has invited governments to a two-day forum starting Sunday and led by Xi to brainstorm on interconnected development.

Leaders from 28 countries including Putin are due to attend, but none from major Western countries.

GOING GLOBAL

One Belt, One Road is the biggest of a series of initiatives launched by Beijing in the past decade in pursuit of global influence to match its economic success.

Starting in 2004, the communist government opened Confucius Institutes with universities in Asia, Europe and the Americas to teach Chinese language and culture. After the 2008 global crisis, Beijing lobbied successfully for more voting rights in the US- and European-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Chinese officials reject suggestions One Belt, One Road is a power play by Beijing.

The Chinese government has never wished to control any other countrys government, a cabinet official, Ou Xiaoli, told The AP. We feel in contacts between countries, we need to talk about studying benefits, studying mutual profit.

The bulk of Chinese financing is to be loans, which Ou said will be mostly on commercial terms based on market principles. That might add to debt burdens in countries where dealing with Beijing can be politically sensitive.

Sri Lankas former president suffered a surprise election defeat in 2015 after his challenger criticised him for running up an estimated $5 billion in debt to China. Villagers protesting a $1.2 billion Chinese port project there violently clashed with government supporters as recently as January.

China often is the only entity willing to finance big projects in poor countries. That gives Beijing leverage to require use of Chinese builders and technology.

The state-run China Development Bank announced in 2015 it had set aside $890 billion for more than 900 One Belt, One Road projects across 60 countries in gas, minerals, power, telecoms, infrastructure and farming. This year, the governments Export-Import Bank of China said it would finance 1,000 projects in 49 countries.

Beijing will provide only part of the financing and wants projects to attract private investors, Ou said.

We must consider economic viability, he said.China is far from alone in promoting infrastructure investment.

Japan has given Southeast Asian governments tens of billions of dollars in grants or low-interest loans. The Asian Development Bank lent $32 billion last year.

South Korea launched its Eurasia Initiative in 2013 to develop rail, trade and energy links across the two Koreas and Russia to Europe. That stalled last year due to trade sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons development.

US allies Britain, South Korea and Australia signed on as founding members of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched in 2015 to finance roads, ports and other projects. The US and Japan have so far stayed away.

Ou said AIIB will operate separately from One Belt, One Road and any loans made by the bank will be decided independently.

In Pakistan, the proposed $1.3 billion effort to expand the Karakoram Highway is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which involves dozens of projects including power plants, roads and railways spanning the length of the country. It links Chinas far western region of Xinjiang with the Chinese-built port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean.

It threatens no one. It benefits all, most of all the common man who shall see a boom in jobs and businesses, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in April.

In this November 13, 2016 file photo, a Pakistan Navy soldier stands guard while a loaded Chinese ship prepares to depart from Gwadar port that links to China's far western region on a new international route exporting goods to West Asia and Africa, about 700km (435 miles) west of Karachi. Pakistan. (AP)

TRADE CONCERNS

One Belt, One Road could help Chinas exporters by encouraging countries to adopt its industrial standards for railways and other products, locking buyers into sticking with them for repairs or additional technologies. Chinas premier has cited the promoting of Chinese standards abroad as one of Beijings goals.

This has some countries in the region concerned about Chinas dominance, Baucus said. Were going to have to bow to their standards and if theyre Chinese standards, then Chinese companies are going to have an advantage over our companies in our country, the former US ambassador described officials as telling him. Theyre very concerned.

Chinese rail technology is poised to make inroads into the European Union with a plan for state-owned companies to build a high-speed line from Budapest, capital of EU member Hungary, to Belgrade in neighboring Serbia.

The $2.9 billion project, financed by Beijing, faces obstacles after EU officials said they will look into whether Hungary broke trade bloc rules by agreeing to the Chinese deal without competitive bidding.

In Pakistan, officials say much of the Chinese money for power projects is investment, not loans. They have given few details, raising questions about whether other projects can pay for themselves.

China is giving most contracts for energy projects to its own companies without even consulting Pakistan, said Azeem Khalid, a lecturer at the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South, a non-government group in Islamabad. I feel that our several generations will have to repay these Chinese loans for decades.

In Indonesia, the Chinese effort could fit with President Joko Jokowi Widodos Maritime Axis Policy to transform the country into a sea power. China muscled aside Japan in 2015 to win a contract to build a $5.2 billion high-speed rail line from the capital, Jakarta, to the city of Bandung.

But Indonesian leaders also are wary of a backlash in a country where resentment of ethnic Chinese billionaires simmers.

The Jokowi government must balance its desire for capital and expertise with a need to guard against a populist, anti-Chinese backlash, said Hugo Brennan, an analyst at political risk firm Verisk Maplecroft.
Francis was welcomed to the Marian shrine by tens of thousands of people. A prayer that also announces the gospel proclamation, tearing down all walls and crossing every frontier, going out to all the peripheries, to make known Gods justice and peace".

Fatima (AsiaNews) - Concord among all peoples, the ability to be gospel announcers, tearing down all the walls and crossing every frontier, " going out to all the peripheries, to make known Gods justice and peace". It is the first prayer that Pope Francis addressed to the Virgin of Fatima, as soon as he arrived at the sanctuary.

Tens of thousands of people, gathered from the morning in the large square in front of the sanctuary, to welcome the Pope.

On arriving in Portugal, at the Monte Real Air Base at 16.20 (local time) Francis was received by the President of the Republic, Marcelo Nuno Duarte Rebelo de Sousa, and other civil and religious authorities. In the airport there was a brief private meeting between the Pope with the head of state. Then, passing between the crowds awaiting him and over a flower petal carpet, he visited the military airport chapel and left for Fatima.

Here he had his first encounter with the faithful and was welcomed by the bishop of Leiria-Fatima, Msgr. Antonio Augusto dos Santos Marto. The fourth Pope to visit the Portuguese shrine after Paul VI (1967), John Paul II (1982, 1991 and 2000) and Benedict XVI (2010), Francis also gifted a golden rose to the Virgin in the Chapel of the Apparitions.

This is the Pope's prayer:

Hail Holy Queen, / Blessed Virgin of Fatima, /Lady of Immaculate Heart, /our refuge and our way to God! /As a pilgrim of the Light that comes to us from your hands, /I give thanks to God the Father, who in every time and place is at work in human history;/As a pilgrim of the Peace that, in this place, you proclaim, /I give praise to Christ, our peace, and I implore for the world concord among all peoples;/As a pilgrim of the Hope that the Spirit awakens,/I come as a prophet and messenger to wash the feet of all, at the same table that unites us.

Hail, Mother of Mercy,/Lady robed in white!/In this place where, a hundred years ago you made known to all the purposes of Gods mercy,/I gaze at your robe of light and, as a bishop robed in white,/I call to mind all those who,/robed in the splendour of their baptism,/desire to live in God and tell the mysteries of Christ in order to obtain peace.

Hail, life and sweetness, / Hail, our hope,/O Pilgrim Virgin, O Universal Queen! /In the depths of your being, in your Immaculate Heart, / you keep the joys of men and women as they journey to the Heavenly Homeland./ In the depths of your being, / in your Immaculate Heart, /you keep the sorrows of the human family, / as they mourn and weep in this valley of tears. / In the depths of your being, /in your Immaculate Heart, /adorn us with the radiance of the jewels of your crown /and make us pilgrims, even as you were a pilgrim. / With your virginal smile, / enliven the joy of Christs Church./ With your gaze of sweetness, /strengthen the hope of Gods children./With your hands lifted in prayer to the Lord,/ draw all people together into one human family. /

O clement, O loving, / O sweet Virgin Mary, / Queen of the Rosary of Fatima! / Grant that we may follow the example of Blessed Francisco and Blessed Jacinta, /and of all who devote themselves to proclaiming the Gospel./Thus we will follow all paths /and everywhere make our pilgrim way; /we will tear down all walls /and cross every frontier, / as we go out to every periphery, /to make known Gods justice and peace./ In the joy of the Gospel, we will be the Church robed in white, /the whiteness washed in the blood of the Lamb, / blood that today too is shed in the wars tearing our world apart. /And so we will be, like you, an image of the column of light /that illumines the ways of the world,/making God known to all, / making known to all that God exists, / that God dwells in the midst of his people, /yesterday, today and for all eternity. /

Hail, Mother of the Lord, /Virgin Mary, Queen of the Rosary of Fatima! /Blessed among all women, / you are the image of the Church robed in paschal light, / you are the honour of our people, /you are the victory over every assault of evil. / Prophecy of the merciful love of the Father, / Teacher of the Message of Good News of the Son,/Sign of the burning Fire of the Holy Spirit,/teach us, in this valley of joys and sorrows,/the eternal truths that the Father reveals to the little ones. / Show us the strength of your protective mantle. /In your Immaculate Heart, / be the refuge of sinners /and the way that leads to God./In union with my brothers and sisters, /in faith, in hope and in love, /I entrust myself to you. /In union with my brothers and sisters, through you, I consecrate myself to God,/ O Virgin of the Rosary of Fatima./And at last, enveloped in the Light that comes from your hands,/I will give glory to the Lord for ever and ever. Amen.
by Wang Zhicheng

The US will be able to export liquid gas and beef; it wWill be able to enter the credit card market and issue credit certificates to their companies in China, with the possibility of receiving loans as well. China will be able to export pre-cooked chicken meat and Chinese banks will enter the American market. An "Herculean result". US Representatives will be present at One belt One road Forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15 next.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - China and the United States have reached a number of agreements, which appear to reduce the chances of a commercial war touted in the past before and after the election of Donald Trump as US President.

Such agreements include the possibility for Beijing to import liquid gas, beef and other products from the US; and for Washington to enter the Chinese financial services.

The deal follows the promise made a month ago in Florida between Trump and Xi Jinping to review the trade imbalance between the US and China, with Washingtons $ 350 billion debt.

US trade secretary Wilbur Ross greeted the deal as a "Herculean result", shaped in no time. "Usually - he said - business deals are drawn up over several years, not in dozens of days."

The most significant points of the agreement include:

The US allows Chinese companies to buy liquid gas. The Energy Department has already authorized shipments of 19.2 billion cubic meters of natural gas per day to China and other interested nations;

Beijing will allow US credit card companies to enter the service sector, to now the monopoly of Chinese UnionPay;

Foreign companies in China will have access to credit;

China will allow US companies to issue commercial securities in China;

Beijing will abolish import restrictions on US beef, in place since 2003 after some cases of "mad cow";

The United States will facilitate the entry of Chinese banks into the US market;

The Chinese will be allowed to sell pre-cooked poultry.

Prior to his election, Trump had accused China of being a "currency manipulator" and destroying many jobs in the US with its protected exports. Soon after, he even threatened not to recognize the principle of the "One China", going to support Taiwan. The threat was dropped just a few days before the visit of the Chinese president to his American counterpart.

Several analysts had warned of a possible trade war that would damage both countries, although several of them reiterated that the economies of the US and China are now interconnected, so it was necessary to agree.

As if to crown this new climate of agreement, the US has stated that they will send their representative to the "One belt One road (Obor)" Forum, to be held in Beijing on May 14 and 15. Obor plans to invest over $ 100 billion in Southeast Asian countries, Central Asia up to Europe to build a "new Silk Road". Before Washington viewed this project as an attempt to reduce US influence in the Asia Pacific region and Europe.
In a TV broadcast, Salem Abdel Galil said they followed "corrupt" cults and "will not go to heaven". His words stirs protests and indignation. A Christian attorney files a complaint against the preacher: Defamatory words and threat to unity of the country. The apologies of the broadcaster hosting the program.

Cairo (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Egyptian authorities have suspended the activities of an Islamic preacher, guilty of repeatedly preaching offensive sermons against Christians and Jews. The religious leader, who will be tried by the judiciary, said that the faithful of Jesus and Abraham follow "corrupt" cults and "will not go to heaven."

Salem Abdel Galil (pictured), once an official at the Egyptian Ministry for Religions, made these observations in the context of a television broadcast that he himself conducts. Speeches that have stirred anger and indignation in a nation where the Christian minority has been the subject of targeted attacks by the Islamic State jihadist militias (IS) over the last months.

In total, since last December, at least 75 members of the religious minority (about 10% of the total population) have been killed by Islamic fundamentalists. These include the victims of the explosions at churches last month and the faithful who died in the context of the attack on the Coptic cathedral of St. Mark in Abassiya, Cairo, in December.

The escalation of violence had also made many fear the cancellation of Pope Francis's apostolic journey in Egypt, scheduled for late April. However, the pontiff wanted to respect the initial program by meeting with the president of the Republic al-Sisi, the great imam of al-Azhar Ahmad Al-Tayeb, and celebrated a mass in front of tens of thousands of faithful.

The Ministry of Religious Affairs, who controls the mosques of the country, has stated that Abdel Galil will no longer be allowed to pronounce sermons and conduct prayers if he does not retract his hate speech.

Naguib Gobrail, a lawyer and Christian activist, filed a complaint against the religious, which a criminal court will deliberate. The sentence is expected by June 24th. "These words constitute confessional defamation - said the Christian leader - and a threat to the unity of Egypt."

Abdel Galil has criticized other Muslim religious who claim that Christians and Jews are "believers". He is convinced that non-Muslims are "infidels" who, in his opinion, have no hope of making their way into heaven. Caught up in a wave of popular indignation, he wrote a message on his Facebook page yesterday asking for forgiveness "to those who felt hurt," adding that he did not want to foment attacks on Christians.

The Mehwar television station, which hosted the broadcast of the Islamic preacher, presented its apologies.

According to many Muslims, the teaching that is practiced at Al Azhar, where many Islamic religions are prepared, has this fundamentalist footprint, deserving the title of "academy of Islamic terrorism".
by Peter ang

Fr. ang Huu Nam and Fr. Nguyen inh Thuc support protests against the government for failing to distribute compensation from a company responsible for one of the most serious environmental disasters in the country's history. The Catholic Mass Media Federation in a statement: "Immediately stop terrorist acts against the priests of Thuan Nghia." "With our total confidence in God, we are in communion, we share and accompany the victims of the disaster." "We call upon international bodies to accompany us in the fight for human rights and religious freedom in Vietnam."

Hanoi (AsiaNews) - Two priests from the diocese of Vinh are being targeted by the Vietnamese government. Fr. ang Huu Nam and Fr. Nguyen inh Thuc are the parish priests of the Phu Yen and Song Ngoc churches. In recent months they have supported their faithful in protests against the government and Formosa Plastics Corporation, the Taiwanese company responsible for the most serious environmental disaster in the country's history. The Vietnamese authorities conducted a defamatory campaign against the two parishioners on all official media, television, radio, and government-controlled newspapers. Faced with this unprecedented attack on their confreres, members of the local clergy have not stood idly by. In a statement signed by many priests, they support Fr. ang Huu Nam and Fr. Nguyen inh Thuc. The Vietnam Catholic Mass Media Federation takes a stand on the case and issued an official release yesterday in Sydney. Below is the full statement.

The Federation of Vietnamese Catholic Mass Media

11th May, 2017

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.

Sydney, 11 May 2017. The Federation of Vietnamese Catholic Mass Media, before the international community, protests and sternly condemns the intense, orchestrated wave of attacks against Catholic priests in the Vinh Diocese by Vietnamese government.

Last year, a steel mill owned by the Taiwan-based Formosa Plastics Corporation discharged 12,000 cubic metres of liquid toxic waste into the sea through drainage pipes in what was the worst incident of its kind in the country.

The waste killed hundreds of tonnes of fish, negatively impacting the population of Vietnams central provinces. About 250 km of coastline suffered serious environmental damage and more than 40,000 fishermen lost their livelihood.

In an agreement signed by the Formosa Plastics Corporation and the government without any public hearings, Hanoi accepted compensation to the tune of US$ 500 million on behalf of the victims. The money, however, has never been handed out to the victims.

As the waiting gets longer, the sense of injustice and resentment has grown against the government, accused of corruption and failed policies.

Fr. ang Huu Nam and Fr. Nguyen inh Thuc, who are pastors in the deanery of Thuan Nghia - where the Formosa environmental disaster caused greatest impacts, support affected residents and have taken a stance against the authorities and their shortcomings.

The priests have actively spoken for and acted on behalf of victims of the Formosa environmental disaster as the government still allows the Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation to exist; and keeps covering up for and protecting the dangerous company so that it can continue to dump toxic waste in the sea without any intention of cleaning up the waters.

In an attempt to silence the priests, since the beginning of this year, Vietnamese government has mobilised a large number of state-run media outlets in a campaign of false accusation against them.

More seriously, in recent days, it has employed peripheral organisations of the Communist Party including the Women movements, Youth associations, and veterans organisations to threaten the priests. A veterans organisation in Nghe An Province even went so far as to threaten Bishop Paul Nguyen Thai Hop of Vinh with violence demanding that the two priests be removed from their posts.

In the most extreme episode, since May 7th, 2017, a series of large meetings and protests against the priests have been held in the Quynh Luu County. Students, including those in primary schools, have been forced to participate in protests and to yell slogans that condemn the priests as anti-revolutionaries, demanding that they should be arrested immediately and be sentenced with heavy imprisonment.

The scene at these protests is completely similar to that of public denunciation during the land reform period (1953  1956) where tens of thousands of people were killed. As it usually happens in Vietnam, these protests serve as a prelude for an imminent crackdown on the priests and those who dare to back the victims of the environmental disaster.

Convinced that the Catholic Church must stand for Truth, defending the poor and all those who are victims of an unjust and brutal regime, The Federation of the Vietnamese Catholics Mass Media lend full support to the diocese of Vinh. We sternly condemns and denounces before international community the inhumane conducts and the violent actions of public authorities against Fr. ang Huu Nam and Fr. Nguyen inh Thuc, and the victims of the Formosa environmental disaster; and ask the communist government of Vietnam to do the followings:



1) Stop immediately the terroristic acts against the Catholic priests of Thuan Nghia.



2) Stop the persecution of the Catholic Church and other religions.



3) Solemnly abide the law promulgated by its own government and make proper compensations to the victims.



4) Absolutely respect Human Rights and Religious Freedom as the Charter of the United Nations affirmed.



With our complete trust in God, we would be in communion, share and accompany the victims of the Formosa environmental disaster, and the diocese of Vinh in their way of the cross. We earnestly call for all Congresses, governments, political parties of all nations, the Human Rights organizations, the Amnesty Internationals, the International Commission on Human Rights, any organizations with special concerns for Freedom and Human Rights in Vietnam, and the World Communication Agencies to please accompany us in the struggle for Human Rights and Religious Freedom in Vietnam.

Contacts:

Rev. John Tran Cong Nghi

Director of VietCatholic News Agency

Rev. Anthony Nguyen Huu Quang

Vice Director of VietCatholic News Agency

Editor of the People of God Monthly Magazine ( in Australia )

Rev. Stephen Luu Thuong Bui

Editor of the People of God Monthly Magazine (in Europe)

Rev. Paul Van- Chi Chu

Vice Director of VietCatholic News Agency

The Federation of Vietnamese Catholic Mass Media
by Sumon Corraya

Thousands of profiles have been hacked, sensitive data stolen, and people tricked. Filched pictures of young women end up in a Facebook account with offensive captions. Some 73 per cent of women using the internet are victims of cyber bullying, minister says. About 23 per cent do not complain."

Dhaka (AsiaNews)  In Bangladesh, cybercrime is rising, especially against women who are often "naive victims" of their tormentors.

The Bangladesh Christian Association and Vawel Christian Jobo Somity, a group of young Christians, organised a meeting to address the issue.

Their discussion focused on the theft of personal pictures posted on Facebook by some women and girls, which end up on other Facebook page, that of the Next Model girls/vawel gazipur, with offensive captions.

"Women become victims because of their poor knowledge of technology, computer expert Sumon Reberio told AsiaNews. It's time to learn how to use it, for example, by entering more secure passwords and protecting ones mobile phone."

"We found that more than fifty Christian women, mostly university students, have become victims of this Facebook account, said Biran Gomes, president of Vawel Christian Jobo Somity. The account is officially registered as a magazine.

We got together to figure out how to block it. A lawsuit has already been filed against its editor, but they continue their dishonest activity."

Sumi Gomes (not her real name) is one of the women tricked. Sobbing she said she posted "some photos on my profile. A few days later I received a phone call from a relative, who told me that all of my pictures had been added to that account. Now I have blocked my account to avoid worse consequences."

Cybercrime is widespread in the country. A few years ago, technology and digital media were little known; now thousands of profiles have been hacked, sensitive data stolen, and people tricked.

According to Tarana Halim, state minister of Post and Telecommunications, "73 per cent of women using the Internet are victims of cyber bullying or other forms of cyber crime. Of these, at least 23 per cent do not complain. Compared to two years ago, when we had no data, we now know that at least 100 Christian women and girls have fallen victims to this crime."

Shomit Gomes (not his real name) is a university student. He chose to report his misadventure and ask for police help. A few years ago, when he lived in his village, he had a relationship with a young woman. They exchanged romantic photos, emotionally caught up in the moment. Later, they went their separate ways, but remained friends.

"We do not know how this could happen, but our pictures ended up with someone else who is blackmailing my ex-girlfriend. He is threatening to post our photos on the internet if we do not give him money. "

In another case, police yesterday arrested Safat Ahmen and Shadman Sakif, accused of raping two college students at a Dhaka hotel. The two young women filed charges against the two attackers who threatened to post the rape video online if they dared to talk about it.
PIME priest performs his daily mission north of Tokyo. Weekdays, this means only two worshippers at Mass. About a hundred come for Sunday Mass. Two couples are his real friends. A joyless Japan is centred on itself, competition and success. Even in failure can we discover Jesus and the baptism. Some people do facial exercises to smile.

Rome (AsiaNews)  Father Pedro Tomaselli, 42, is a priest with the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME). He hails from Santa Caterina, southern Brazil, and has lived in Japan since 2008, serving as pastor in two cities, some forty minutes apart by car, Ashikaga and Sano, in Tochigi Prefecture, north of Tokyo.

About 25 Japanese take part his Sunday Mass. Other worshippers come from the Philippines, Vietnam Bolivia, Peru, a couple from China, and a few students from Africa. In total, a hundred, no more. On weekdays, only two come to church for the service. For Fr Tomaselli, "It is necessary to leave the outcome in God's hands, because if one were to rely on ones own results, one would quit Japan immediately."

Did you want to come to Japan or did the circumstances of life lead you to it?

I wanted it but had little hope. As a young seminary I was impressed by the missionaries I met who talked about their experience in Japan. Thats where my desire was born. I later had the opportunity of studying philosophy in the Philippines for four years, but Japan never left my mind. When Fr Marc Tardiff (then PIME General Advisor, now missionary in Japan) came to the seminary and met us individually, he asked us to pick three countries for a possible destination. I told him: Thailand, Japan and Mexico. I ended up instead in Brazil as an outreach missionary for three years. One day though, I got a phone call from Rome, from Fr Francisco da Silva. At the age of 33 I took off for Japan.

Did you speak Japanese already?

No. I started from scratch. Two years in Tokyo at the PIMEs regional home. Another year with the local Franciscans. Finally, another 12 months with a Japanese priest in two parishes in Gunma Prefecture. Still, after nine years, I still have trouble communicating.

How is your daily mission?

I arrived in Ashikaga, north of Tokyo, where I am in charge of a multinational parish. I also deal with another parish, not far away. I live alone in the rectory. About 25 Japanese come to Sunday Mass, but my parish registry has 187 names. In addition, we have Filipinos, Vietnamese, Bolivians, Peruvians, a couple of Chinese and some African students. I always read the Mass in Japanese once. Alternatively, I do it Vietnamese, Tagalog, or English. The songs are in Spanish ... On weekdays however, only two come.

Are there any integration issues?

Foreigners help and enrich the Japanese Church. Without them, most communities would not survive. They are fundamental to evangelisation.

Who are your friends?

Two families have especially opened their hearts to me and I to them. This is quite rare. In fact, the Japanese see friendship as an exchange of favours. I give you something or do something for you and you give something to me or do something for me, then we are friends. It is not bad, but it is different from the free love that Jesus taught us. It must also be said that they are not in the habit of opening their homes. Once I was happy when I finally received an invitation. I thought I was going to the house of these people, but instead they came to pick me up to go to a restaurant.

What about the two cases you mentioned?

What happened is that thieves broke into the church and the rectory three times. They told me that in Japan if a person violates private property then he is capable of any violence. I was so scared that I could not sleep any more. A bit selfishly I prayed, "Lord, I do not want to die martyred in such a petty way."

Then, my friend showed up at the rectory one night and said, "Ill spent the night here with you. You are tired and you have to rest." A bit ceremoniously, Japanese style, I told him "No, no! you have your family; you must go home to them." But he insisted and for some nights he came to keep me company. He is 70 years old and converted to Christianity about twenty years ago. He has four children, one of whom is a priest.

How did you befriend the other family?

They come from Nagasaki. He was already a Catholic, she was not a Christian. Or, better, she said she was a bit Shintoist and a bit Buddhist. She said she liked being free. "Come on," I would tell her, "then your heart must be Christian." She laughed.

Having strong feelings for the poor, she expressed some admiration for Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but nothing would bend her. I did not insist. After three years (about a year ago), she came to me and said, "Let's start studying." Eventually, she asked to be baptised.

Why is it so difficult to pass on the Christian message in Japan?

Being Japanese is almost like a religion. I asked one kid, "What is your religion?" And he answered: "My grandparents were a bit Shintoist and a bit Buddhist; my parents a bit Buddhist and a bit indifferent, I am Japanese." Given such syncretism he confided in me and said that he liked Catholic weddings.

The Church has put greater efforts in Japan than in Korea. Yet Catholicism is more widespread in the latter. Why?

No bishop or priest in Japan would ever say that we must imitate Korea. Pride prevents it. Unresolved historical events that have come to the fore again in recent weeks also prevent it. It is undeniable that the situation is different. If I think about Brazil, its 500 short years of history, its melting pot, I certainly see greater openness to new things. However, we cannot say that Japan's ancient culture is in itself an impediment to the novelty of the Gospel. The point is always about touching peoples hearts. The Japanese mind-set aims at competition and victory, but faced with the inevitable defeat in life, it has no answer, and that is the end. Failures are not an opportunity to grow, but a misfortune that sometimes results in tragedy. Just think of the countless cases of depression and suicide. Many people who come to church go through these problems. For them, we proclaim hope.

Yet, the proclamation must also be valid for everyone caught up in the frenzy of everyday life

The idolatry of money and work is widespread. Often what matters the most is not the family, but the company one works for. There is even a tendency to show that one is busy even when one is not. The Japanese propensity of seeing themselves in a group rather than as individuals is still very strong. If you ask, "Who are you?" The answer is, "Ask my neighbour." Still, it would be wrong to focus on these flaws. First, one has a lot to learn and share. I remember their kindness, honesty, cleanliness, order ... We need to listen to them.

How can one reach into the heart of their life?

One example is Father Marco Villa (PIME), who opened an outreach centre at the Koshygaya Train Station. In Japan it is getting harder to find someone who will listen to you. In particular, relatives who are always so busy and tired do not easily put up with the complaints of those who do not keep up with the general speed of things. Five years ago, Father Marco put aside his preaching a followed.

One gets the impression that joy is missing in Japan . . .

Indeed. In Shinjuk railway station, employees must exercise their facial muscles to learn to smile before working with the public. Although it does not seem very honest, they say it does a lot of good. Of course, with the great joy of the Gospel, this would not be necessary.
by Emiliana Saptaningsih

Protesters came from different parts of the country and the world. For organiser Didi Kurniawan, "We are gathered here as one family because Ahok is victim of a grave injustice. People are motivated by a desire to defend Indonesias pluralism.

Bali (AsiaNews)  Large-scale demonstrations continue across Indonesia in solidarity with Jakarta Governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama, who is currently in custody after a court in the capital sentenced him to a two-year jail term on Tuesday.

In Denpasar, the capital of Bali, a large crowd of more than 7,000 people took to the streets last night, converging on Puputan Niti Mandala Square, one of the citys main open venues for a prayer meeting in support of the jailed Christian political leader.

Protesters came from different parts of the country wearing black and holding a lit candle. Several foreigners were present. "Black symbolises the death of the rule of law and the candle represents light in the darkness of injustice in Indonesia," an organiser told AsiaNews.

"We are gathered here as a single family, not for a religious question, said Didi Kurniawan. We are here because we followed Ahoks trial; his conviction is a grave injustice. We are here to defend truth, justice and honesty against corruption."

The rally began with prayers followed by the Indonesian national anthem. The enthusiasm grew as the rallys presenter invited participants to defend Pancasila, the theory of pluralism on which the Indonesian state is founded. The crowd repeatedly shouted: "Freedom for Ahok, punish Rizieq, the head of the Islam defence Front (FPI), currently on trial for contempt of Pancasila.

The event was open to anyone who supports not only Ahok but justice above all. Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Protestants, and Catholics, people from different religious backgrounds attended. Seniors, young people and even children come to the prayer rally. Together they sang traditional songs about unity in diversity.

In addition to candles, many protesters carried banners with pro-Ahok slogans. However, rally organisers banned them, reminding the crowd that the purpose of the gathering was to pray for Ahok and say no to injustice.
Fr Samir Youssef talks about a plan for outreach and exchange to rebuild a social fabric broken by the Jihadi madness. Weekly meetings, summer camps, films and exchanges are dedicated to interfaith dialogue. Pope Francis is a model of teaching known and appreciated by Muslim and Yazidi families.

Erbil (AsiaNews)  In order to overcome the murderous madness of the Islamic State, which has covered with blood a land already brutalised by years of wars and violence, it is necessary to start with "a plan of dialogue and outreach at the local level", involving first of all children and young people, the new generations, "who will be tasked with building life together" beyond their respective religions.

Starting from such premises, Fr Samir Youssef, pastor of the diocese of Amadiya (Iraqi Kurdistan) who has long been on the frontline of the refugee emergency, is promoting a project to transform "young Muslims, Christians and Yazidis" into "seeds of dialogue " to breathe new life into Mosul, the Nineveh plain, and Iraq as a whole.

Speaking to AsiaNews, the priest mentioned an initiative that is in its initial stage, but one that has already garnered "the enthusiastic participation" of some thirty of kids, aged 10 to 16, from various religious background. "We started with a group of about 30-35 kids, Fr Samir said, but we want to increase the numbers for the summer, involving young people from high school and university."

The aim is to find youth "eager to talk, communicate, and bear witness" that living together is possible and that from this, a model can emerge applicable across the country, and beyond.

"We have already started to meet," he added, "although getting the first results will take some time. At the moment, the first group, the base on which to start working, has been found. It includes a dozen Christians, eight Muslims and seven Yazidis. There are also Sabians and Turkmen."

As parish priest in the diocese of Zakho and Amadiya (Kurdistan), Fr Samir is responsible for about 3,500 Christian, Muslim, and Yazidi refugee families who fled their homes and property in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain to escape Jihadis. Since the summer of 2014 and the start of the emergency, the clergyman has played a key role. Working with him and Iraqi bishops, AsiaNews has recently renewed its Adopt a Christian of Mosul campaign to provide refugees with kerosene, shoes, clothing, and school material for children.

To start with, the group has already met twice to lay the foundations for future work, which will continue through the summer. "With this experience, the group can become the salt and the light of this land, and involve the whole population, talking first of all at home, explaining issues and arguments at meetings. This way they can make other religions known to their families, creating a common basis for dialogue. Often, great things stem from small ones."

The pastor wants to promote many ideas and plans at these meetings: from the stories of "special" children who lived under the Islamic State (IS) and those who lost a father or a mother to the jihadists, to summer camps open to young people of all faiths to develop even greater outreach and exchange.

"We would also like to screen films during the meetings centred on God, religions, and spirituality, Fr Samir said. The first one could be Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty, in which the protagonist thinks he is replacing God by solving everything, but then discovers his limits and the need for patience to get lasting results."

With the fruit of the work of this first group of young people, which could be expanded, we can "create a website that presents the meetings, trips, and stories." Unlike other social media that too often espouse hate and division, such a page could be a "virtual place for outreach and exchange, a testimony to living together."

"It is necessary to start with this countrys new generations, a land crossed by four great rivers: the Tigris, the Euphrates, petroleum and great religions. Such a flow of power and life can bring peace to the world from a land that has always been a beacon of civilisation since ancient times."

For Fr Samir, to achieve such goals "starting from my parish", it is necessary to look "to the testimony and teachings of Pope Francis, starting from his last apostolic journey to Egypt. The visit has been followed closely, bearing witness to the path of dialogue and outreach.

For me, Francis is a great teacher. He is increasingly appreciated and followed by Muslim and Yazidi families when they come to see me. Although they are not Christians, they ask me to talk to them about the pontiffs latest speeches and stories." (DS)
Clyde & Co has announced an expansion of its global footprint by entering two new markets.The firm has been building a network of intellectual property offices across the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and has completed this with a new Kuwait office.Clyde, the largest international law firm in the Middle East, now has Clyde IP Services offices in Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE. In addition to regional trade mark and patent filing capability, Clyde & Co has a full service IP practice centred on the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.The firm has also expanded its presence in Latin America with a proposed merger with Mexican law firm Garza Tello & Asociados.The 23-lawyer firm is the pre-eminent insurance, marine and energy law firm in Mexico and will bring Clydes presence in the Americas to 13 offices including Brazil, Canada and the US.The global chairman of Baker McKenzie has been addressing the issue of gender equality as part of the firms backing of a UN-led initiative.Speaking at the launch of the UN Womens Champions of the Global Pay Coalition Paul Rawlinson said that pay inequality is not a womens issue its a business issue, and one that both men and women must champion. There is a clear way forward and that is to invest in women and retain the best talent.Acknowledging that there is no quick-fix, Rawlinson added that he has a young daughter and hopes that by the time she enters the workforce, the gender pay gap will no longer exist.Baker McKenzie has signed the UN Womens Empowerment Principles which includes a pledge to measure and publicly report on progress to achieve gender equality.Its reported that global ride-share firm Uber dismissed two of its in-house lawyers for seeking outside counsel.According to theinformation.com the lawyers consulted with external law firms regarding an internal discussion about the storage of the companys documents and other data. The two lawyers were concerned about a proposed new policy and wanted to get the opinion from third parties.This was considered to be a breach of ethical and fiduciary duty as the external consultation had not been authorised.Uber has not commented on the story.
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The 2017 federal budget has axed funding for the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), an agency that provides information to decision-makers on how best to manage the risks of climate change and sea level rise.

The NCCARF received A$50 million in 2008 to coordinate Australias national research effort into climate adaptation measures. That was reduced in 2014 to just under A$9 million. For 2017-18, a mere A$600,000 will be spread between CSIRO and NCCARF to support existing online platforms only. From 2018, funding is axed entirely.

This decision follows on from the 2014 streamlining of CSIROs Climate Adaptation Flagship, and comes at a time when a...


(NejroN Photo/Bigstock.com) (NejroN Photo/Bigstock.com)

Farmers and rural businesses in Australia have demanded that the Government rethink its new levy on foreign workers, which they believe will have a significant impact on their ability to employ people from abroad.They say it will make it harder and more expensive for them to recruit key skilled works from overseas in key roles in dairy, pork horticulture, racing, fruit and vegetables. This could mean fewer opportunities for people wanting to work in Australia.From March 2018 an annual foreign worker levy of $1,200 or $1,800 per worker, depending on the size of the business, per year will be imposed on temporary work visas while employers sponsoring permanent skilled visas will face a $3,000 or $5,000 levy.Treasurer Scott Morrison said the new levy will be used for training people in Australia for the kind of jobs for which employers seek skilled worker from abroad. He pointed out that under the existing arrangement where employers employing foreign workers are required to contribute 1% or 2% of their payroll to training, has been difficult to police.'Skilled migration has always played a significant role in driving our economic growth. But it must be on our terms and we must skill more Australians to secure jobs,' he explained, adding that $1.2 billion will be raised from the levy over four years that will contribute directly to a new Commonwealth-State Skilling Australians Fund and States and Territories will only be able to draw on this fund when they deliver on their commitments to train new apprentices.But vegetable industry peak body AusVeg has called for exemptions for small businesses in regional and remote areas which rely on skilled labour from overseas and the National Farmers' Federation (NFF) said it was seeking further discussions with the Government.'The cost of doing business in remote and regional Australia is already well above and beyond what it is to the city, and for Government to blanket costs like that over the whole lot I think is probably unfair,' said Western Australian fruit grower and AusVeg board member, Michael Nixon, adding that the levy will be a significant cost for the horticultural industry.According to Australian Dairy Farmers, the new levy would hit the industry hard at a time when it was struggling to stay afloat. Up to half the workforce on larger dairies are foreign workers and many farmers are unable to find people in Australia. One farmer explained that he advertised for farm workers six weeks ago and was still looking for employees with the appropriate animal husbandry, pasture management, and supervisory skills.Many farmers believe a new specialist agriculture visa would be a good idea for the industry. The idea has been raised by the National Farmers Federation (NFF), which wants a comprehensive review of the labour force needs in agriculture.Australian Pork said that the increased costs associated with skilled migration visas were potentially significant at a time when farmers are trying to fill critical skill shortages and pointed out that the new levy comes on top of already higher application fees for the new temporary skills shortage visa.Meanwhile, the racing industry said it will also be hit by the new levy. According to Racing Australia there is already a severe shortage of skilled track work riders and yards have no option but to recruit from abroad.
Hey all, I'm currently in Adelaide for a month and I'll be leaving on the fourth. I'm extremely nervous about having a four hour connection in Sydney airport to get back home to the states. I did come through that airport coming to Australia, but a part of me thinks it was just luck that I didn't get lost.



This is my first international trip and my first trip on planes. I have bad anxiety and I'm hoping someone can alleviate my fears a little. Will I have plenty of time to get to my gate? I think it took me around two hours to get through customs, find my luggage, check my luggage, and get to the Qantas terminal. I'm trying to comfort myself with that but any information or advice would be greatly appreciated.



Like - when I check my luggage at Adelaide airport, will it meet me at my final destination or will I have to recheck it. I'm assuming not...I hope so. I will be arriving at the Qantas domestic terminal, won't I? That means I'll have to transfer to the international terminal - advice on getting there? Will I be able to check in at the Qantas domestic terminal if I arrive there since my international flight is Qantas? Thank you!
Hi Guys,



After 375 days of logging my application, I have received a call on 3rd May 2017 from Australia High Commission Delhi (India), the Officer asked few details on the documents I have submitted and my Roles and responsibility. The call went well and I was asked to submit provide and Fund statement showing from the time I joined my company which I dint have handy and was not available on the website. I have submitted a screenshot of the website which showed my Company name and the date of joining Company and provide and Fund. The Office called and acknowledge that he receive the email and will suffice the need.

Is there something concerning with my application that I have received a call, or is a routine check by DIBP. When can I expect a outcome of the my application since I have received a call.



What is the aprox time that i can expect an outcome on my Application



Thanks

Albert Joseph
Italian design firm signs 30m deal with Iranian brand to produce underpinnings thatll spawn at least four vehicles.

Pininfarina has signed a 30 million deal with Iranian automotive company Iran Khodro to produce a new platform thatll underpin at least four vehicles.

The deal will see Iran Khodro, which manufactures vehicles for Iranian brand Samand, Peugeot and Renault to be sold in Iran, produce a medium-size passenger car, likely a saloon or small SUV, first.

Pininfarina will be involved in the entire process of getting the car to production, from concept design to physical validation of the final product. It will even support the start of production.

Silvio Pietro Angori, Pininfarina Group CEO, said: The agreement with Iran Khodro represents another important step in the growth strategy of Pininfarina on markets of the new Silk Road and the Middle East.

We are happy to contribute to the development of the Iranian automotive industry through a very significant style and engineering programme for our company.

The partnership, which is planned to last three years, isnt the first of its kind for Pininfarina. The former design house has expanded its portfolio to include full engineering projects such as the recent Hybrid Kinetic Group turbine cars and Pininfarina Fittipaldi EF7.

It is also planning an electric supercar, with links to parent company Indian automotive giant Mahindra's involvement in Formula E.
TVS has forged an alliance with a Guatemalan company to set up retail and service centres in Central America.

TVS has ramped up its efforts to increase and improve its global presence by forging a partnership for expansion in Central America. TVS has forged an alliance with MASESA (Mayor Servicios Socieda Anonima), a Guatemalan company that specialises in commercialising two- and three-wheelers in the region.

MASESA will help TVS set up retail and service operations in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. MASESAs team will help TVS build support infrastructure that is critical to the brands growth in the region. The first phase of this alliance will involve the setting up of five retail showrooms in the region, with integrated parts and service centres. Additionally, TVS products will also be sold through the 500 dealers that MASESA has in the region.

The following range of TVS products will be marketed in Central America:

Motorcycles: Star HLX 100/125, Sport 100 ES, Phoenix 125, Stryker 125, Max 125 (from the Indonesian market) and Apache RTR 160/180/200.

Scooters: Scooty Zest 110, Wego 110 and Neo 110 (from the Indonesian market).

Three-wheelers: King DLX
Photo of the Wuling Hong Guang S3 courtesy of General Motors.

SAIC-GM-Wuling unveiled the Wuling Hong Guang S3, its first SUV to the Chinese market.

SAIC-GM-Wuling, the joint venture between SAIC Motor, General Motors, and Liuzhou Wuling Motors Co Ltd., unveiled the Hong Guang S3 at Auto Shanghai 2017. It will join the Hong Guang nameplate, which sold approximately 640,000 units in 2016, according to General Motors.

The Hong Guang S3 was developed on the same platform as its sibling, the Hong Guang compact multi-purpose vehicle. Positioned as a compact seven-seater, it has a 2,800-mm (110 inch) wheelbase, along with a length of 4,654 mm (183 inches), width of 1,731 mm (68 inches), and height of 1,777 mm (69 inches).

Available black-painted headlights can concentrate the vehicles light beam without blinding other drivers, according to the automaker. Fog lamps and LED daytime running lights are integrated on the sides of the bumper.

The vehicle is available with two engine options: a 1.5L naturally aspirated engine and a 1.5L turbocharged engine.

The Hong Guang nameplate has been popular among small and intermediate enterprises, as well as private entrepreneurs, for personal and business use, according to the automaker.
David Wyshner. Photo courtesy of Avis Budget Group

Avis Budget Group Inc. has announced the resignation of David B. Wyshner, president and chief financial officer.



Wyshner, who has served as the company's chief financial officer since 2006 and its president since January 2016, will leave the company in June to pursue other opportunities.



"During his tenure at the company, David consistently delivered results and was instrumental in growing our global footprint and deploying our cash flow to enhance shareholder value," said Larry De Shon, CEO of Avis Budget Group. "We thank David for the work he has done and his dedication to our company, which have positively impacted our strategies and contributed to our success, and wish him all the best in the future."



"I am proud of what the Company has done to drive its evolution as a leading global player in its industry," said Wyshner. "I look forward to moving onto new opportunities. At the same time, I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to have played a role in Avis Budget Group's development and to have worked with so many talented colleagues."



Avis Budget intends to appoint Martyn Smith, who previously served as finance director of the company's Avis Budget EMEA subsidiary and of Avis Europe plc, to serve as interim chief financial officer and is conducting a search to fill the CFO position on a permanent basis.
Harold Pierce covers education and health for The Californian. He can be reached at 661-395-7404. Follow him on Twitter @RoldyPierce
Natalie Goldberg reads from her newest collection of essays about finding her place in the world.

WRITING TEACHER GOLDBERG VISITS PAGE ONE 6:30 PM THURSDAY, MAY 11

Natalie Goldberg, writing teacher and creativity champion, will be at Page One Books 6:30 pm Thursday, May 11, to talk about and sign her latest collection of essays, "The Great Spring: Writing, Zen, and This Zigzag Life."

The book is described as such: "From beloved writing teacher and author of the best-selling 'Writing Down the Bones': a treasury of personal stories reflecting a life filled with journeysinner and outerzigzagging around the world and home again. Here, Goldberg, 'a writer both energized and enlightened' (Julia Cameron), shares those vivid moments that have wakened her to new ways of being. We follow alongside her mapless meanderings in the New Mexican desert and her pilgrimages to Bob Dylan's birthplace and to Larry McMurtry's dusty Texas ghost town of rare books. We feel her deep hunger while she sits zazen in a monastery in Japan, and her profound loss when she hears of the passing of a dear friend while teaching in the French countryside. Through it all, she remains grounded in a life informed by two constants: the practices of writing and of Zen. With humor and insight, Natalie encircles around the essential questions these paths compel her toward: Where does this life lead? Who are we?"

Goldberg is the author of 14 books, including "Writing Down the Bones," which has changed the way writing is taught in this country. She also is a prolific painter. Goldberg has been teaching seminars in writing as a practice for the last 30 years. People from around the world attend her life-changing workshops, and she has earned a reputation as a great teacher. The "Oprah Winfrey Show" sent a film crew to spend the day with her for a segment on Spirituality that covered her writing, teaching, painting, and walking meditation. She currently lives in Northern New Mexico.

Page One Books is located at 5850 Eubank Blvd NE, Suite B-41, in Albuquerque's Mountain Run Shopping Center (southeast corner of Eubank and Juan Tabo). The Goldberg event is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 294-2026 or visit www.page1book.com.

-------------------------

Goldberg website: http://nataliegoldberg.com
Continued from previous entry:

After a delicious catered barbecue lunch, the convention was called back to order at about 1:15 pm. With officer elections out of the way, surely we could get through the remaining order of business -- seven proposed amendments to the state party rules, a resolution, and the platform -- in two or three hours. Not quite.

Proposed rule change 1 (17 (d) 6): Requiring convention rules committee to submit its report to county chairman two weeks before the convention. This was defeated by a voice vote, following a claim that the rules already required 10 days notice, a claim that seems to be based on rule 20 (d) 2, which applies to proposed amendments to permanent state rules.

Proposed rule change 2 (new subsection of 17(d): Requiring convention rules committee to make recommendations on proposed amendments to the permanent rules. The wording and placement generated some confusion, and the proponent wasn't present to explain his intentions. After too much time taken by debate in the guise of questions, the motion was defeated by a voice vote.

Proposed rule changes 3 and 4: Two separate proposals to remove the last vestiges of sex distinction from the state party rules. Previous conventions had revoked the requirement for chairman and vice chairman to be of opposite sexes. This proposal replaced state committeeman and woman and district committeeman and woman from each county with two state committee members and two district committee members. Proposed change 3 was defeated as less comprehensive than change 4. Change 4 passed by voice vote, but some delegates spoke against it, believing that this was not the cultural moment to obliterate all distinctions between the sexes. The Oklahoma GOP move toward eliminating sex distinctions arose in reaction to the Left's push for "affirmative action" and diversity enforced through strict quotas in the Democrat party.

Proposed rule change 5: This rule would have created a new rule, requiring the state chairman to ask Republican candidates for president or for Oklahoma statewide or federal office to identify the planks in the Oklahoma Republican platform with which they agree:

The Oklahoma Republican Party State Chairman, in the interest of informing the voting public during primary elections and special elections, shall request Republican candidates for President of the United States of America and Oklahoma's statewide and federal congressional elected offices to affirm which sections of the Platform of the Oklahoma Republican Party they support. This request shall be made to official candidates within ten (10) business days of the filing deadline for these offices. The deadline for candidate response is ten (10) business days from the date of the Chairman's request. This request and responses to it may be made in written, typed, or electronic form. The Platform shall be made available to the candidates in the request. The State Chairman shall make public the candidates' responses, or failure to respond, on the Oklahoma Republican Party's website and to the press within ten (10) business days of the request deadline. The Oklahoma statewide-elected offices are Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Auditor and Inspector, Attorney General, State Treasurer, Superintendent of Public Instruction, Commissioner of Labor, Commissioner of Insurance, and Corporation Commissioner. The Oklahoma federal congressional elected offices are United States Congressman and United States Senator. In the event that county parties conduct candidate examinations, the results of such examinations shall be delivered to the State Chairman, and the Chairman shall make public such results on the Oklahoma Republican Party's website within ten (10) business days of receiving the results. In the event of refusal or failure of the Oklahoma Republican Party State Chairman to adhere to this rule and to discharge the obligations under this rule, any member of the Oklahoma Republican Party State Committee may call the Chairman to act and may call for a meeting of the State Committee to implement appropriate action. Refer to Rule 10.c. of the Rules of the Oklahoma Republican Party for information regarding calling a meeting of the State Committee.

For years, activists have sought to put some teeth in the platform. This is a very mild proposal that imposes no obligations on candidates, nor does it withhold any party resources from candidates who refuse to participate. It simply requires the state chairman to put the platform before the candidates, allowing them to identify those planks with which they agree, and then to publish their replies.

Nevertheless, most of those who do politics as a living -- lobbyists, consultants, staffers -- seem to see any intrusion of principle into politics as a threat to their bosses and thus to their own livelihoods. LePetomane's Imperative applies: "Officia nostra phoney-baloney defendenda sunt!"

Despite the frantic arguments by the politics-as-a-living crowd, the motion appeared to pass in a voice vote, but it was close. A standing vote followed, and once again the ayes appeared to have it. Someone raised the point of order that, because of county vote weighting, counting heads wasn't sufficient to determine the outcome according to the rules. A roll call vote would be necessary.

Cleveland and Oklahoma Counties went narrowly against. Tulsa County was about 2-to-1 in favor. The final weighted tally was 500.733 votes in favor, 502.267 votes against. The result, on the summary page of the spreadsheet, was displayed on the big video screens, along with the result from the chairman's election roll call earlier. Then people noticed something odd: The total number of weighted votes in the result from the chairman's election (677 -- Pollard 468.566, Aery 208.434) was lower than the number in the vote on Rule Change 5 (1003), even though it was obvious that many delegates had left at lunch time and fewer people were voting. Something was wrong, somewhere.

Not long thereafter, the big screens went dark. I went upstairs to where the computer operator was sitting, and where Pam Pollard and a few others had gathered to figure out what was going on. I was going up to suggest that showing the raw and weighted totals and the county vote weights on the screens would either reveal miscalculations or dispel concerns.

I won't get into details at this point -- there are a dozen or more people, including myself, who are independently scrutinizing the spreadsheet and in the near future there will be a report -- but I can tell you that an error was found in the chairman's race spreadsheet which did not change the outcome although it did narrow the result. The correct weighted tally was Pollard 908.604, Aery 631.396. I can also tell you that the Rule Change 5 tally was accurate. The raw vote was 257-256, but some of the "yes" votes had a lighter weight, because those counties had a higher proportion of their authorized delegates present. In one case, a county -- Cimarron -- had more delegates present than authorized votes, so its unanimous four delegates in favor translated to only two yes votes.

Proposed Rule Change 6: Convention Chairman Josh Cockroft ruled that because proposed Rule Change 6 was similar to Rule Change 5, it was now moot. In fact, although both have to do with candidates and the platform, RC6 was a substantively different proposal:

Rule 19.(i) Disclosure of Agreement of Candidates with Our Platform: For a Republican candidate for elective office to receive the endorsement and support of the Oklahoma Republican Party, he must read and mark up a copy of the current Oklahoma Republican Platform, indicating his agreement or disagreement with each plank with explanation as necessary, and make it available for review at the state Party office.

Proposed Rule Change 7: This simplified and clarified the rules for giving a proxy for voting in the State Committee (the governing body of the state party between conventions), passed by a voice vote.

Abortion ban resolution: By a convincing voice vote, the convention approved a resolution that directs an official statement by the state party to the governor, state legislators, and statewide officials calling on these officials to make abortion illegal in Oklahoma and to enforce such a law. The effect would be to set up an opportunity for the U. S. Supreme Court to vacate Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, recognizing those decisions as unconstitutional forays into legislating from the bench.

Platform: As 5 pm approached, we were ready to consider the platform, but late-arriving lobbyist Seth Rott made a point of order that a quorum was no longer present. A head count turned up 355 delegates, 59 shy of the required 50% of the initial count of 827. (It wouldn't surprise me if his incessant microphone-hogging bore some responsibility for the afternoon's proceedings dragging out to the point where delegates had to leave for other commitments.) While the convention rules prohibited a motion to adjourn prior to consideration of the platform, they didn't prohibit a quorum call, and perhaps in future years the should.

So that was it for the 2017 Oklahoma Republican Convention. As we gathered up to leave, an exhausted and heartbroken platform committee member from Tulsa County told me he had been up for 36 hours straight. He had given up two Saturdays to come to Oklahoma City to work on the platform and had been up all night the night before the convention to deal with news of a brother in another state who had suffered a heart attack, trying to decide if he needed to travel right away. Having decided that he could stay, he came to the convention, despite the lack of sleep, to be sure that all of the committee's hard work would come to fruition. He believed that this platform was a great improvement over the previously adopted document and was beyond disgusted that this selfish lobbyist would throw all of their hard work out the window.

The premature end of the convention also prevented a vote on a party mission statement proposed by Canadian County Chairman Andrew Lopez. More on that in a later entry.

DOCUMENTS:
The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a death sentence of a former Air Force sergeant accused of killing his ex-girlfriend from St. Petersburg and their child.

Florida Supreme Court overturns murder conviction in St. Petersburg case

Conviction and death sentences for Ralph Wright Jr. overturned

Paula OConnor and 15-month-old son Alijah killed in 2007

Previous stories on this case

The court overturned the conviction and death sentences for Ralph Wright Jr., who had been accused of killing Paula OConnor and 15-month-old boy Alijah in 2007.

Wright, 48, was found guilty in 2013 and sent to death row by Circuit Judge Thane Covert. Now, the case will be sent back to the Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court, where Wright will officially be acquitted of the murders - though that likely will not happen immediately.

According to prosecutors during the 2013 trial, Wright strangled O'Connor, his lover, and suffocated the baby in St. Petersburg.

O'Conner had Wright, who was based at MacDill Air Force Base, served with papers demanding child support just three weeks before her death. Wright was married at the time and denied fathering the child. However, DNA evidence later confirmed he was the father.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court said: "Although the facts established at trial support a strong suspicion of guilt, they are not inconsistent with innocence. We therefore conclude that the evidence is insufficient to sustain Wright's conviction."

According to the Tampa Bay Times, one of Wright's attorneys said he is hopeful Wright will be released from prison in the next month or two.

Defense attorneys also said it is not out of the realm of possibilities that prosecutors could ask the Supreme Court to hear the case again.
Here are eight gastroenterologists making headlines the week of May 8, 2017.

The Massachusetts Medical Society re-elected Francis P. MacMillan Jr., MD, as its vice speaker of the house of delegates.

The American Gastroenterology Association awarded its highest honor to Anil K. Rustgi, MD, for his contributions to the gastroenterology field and the AGA over several decades.

The AGA awarded David Ahlquist, MD, the William Beaumont Prize for discovering that multitarget DNA testing detects significantly more cancers and premalignant polyps in asymptomatic patients at average risk for colorectal cancer than fecal immunochemical tests.

The AGA awarded Hari Conjeevaram, MD, for his entire academic career and his commitment to education, mentorship and empowerment of medical students.

The AGA awarded two distinguished mentor awards to John Carethers, MD, and to Emeran Mayer, MD. The AGA recognized Dr. Carethers for his GI fellow mentorship and Dr. Mayer for his three decades of trainee mentorship.

The AGA presented private practice and clinical academic practice Distinguished Clinical Awards to Steven Burdick, MD, and David Metz, MD, respectively.
Dearborn, Mich.-based Beaumont Health and Detroit Medical Center recorded their strongest profits to date in 2015, which are partially attributable to merger activity and the state's decision to expand Medicaid, The Detroit News reports.

Beaumont reported net income of $301.6 million in 2015, up from $276 million the year prior, according to the Michigan Health Market Review 2016. DMC recorded net income of $133.7 million in 2015, up from $45.3 million in 2014.

"Taking the Detroit hospitals as a group ... in 2013 they had a loss on their patient care operations of $278.1 million and they turned that around to a profit of $132.6 million in 2015," Allan Baumgarten, author of the hospital market review, told The Detroit News. "That's a swing of about $411 million in a two-year period."

Mr. Baumgarten partially attributed Beaumont's strong profits to the merger that created the 8-hospital system, which joined Royal Oak, Mich.-based Beaumont Health System; Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Botsford Hospital; and Dearborn, Mich.-based Oakwood Healthcare, according to the report.

The study author also pointed to Beaumont's presence in Detroit's more affluent and insured suburbs, where patients tend to be healthier. The five-hospital DMC system, a subsidiary of Dallas-based Tenet Healthcare, also gained from Michigan's decision to expand Medicaid coverage under the ACA, the report states.
A Medicare backlog significantly holds up the audits and appeals process, according to a study published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

Researchers examined complex Medicare Part A audits and appeals for services before Oct. 1, 2013, that reached level three of the appeals process as of May 1, 2016. Study authors included data from Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Hospital, University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics in Madison and University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

The study analyzed 135 cases concluding at level three of the five-level appeals process. A vast majority (71.1 percent) of those cases were decided in favor of the hospital.

Researchers found an average of 1,663.3 days passed, or more than four and a half years, between the date of service and the conclusion of the Medicare reimbursement audit and appeals process. This includes an average 560.4 days between date of service and audit and 891.3 days in appeals, according to the study. Researchers said hospitals and government contractors were responsible for 70.7 percent and 29.3 percent of that time, respectively.

According to the study, government contractors and judges met legislative timeliness deadlines only 47.7 percent of the time. Researchers said more than 95 percent of level one and level two decision letters cited time-based (24-hour) criteria for determining inpatient status, "despite 70.3 percent of denied appeals meeting the 24-hour benchmark."

"CMS's current and proposed reforms may not be enough to eliminate the appeals backlog and restore a timely and fair appeals process," the study's authors concluded. "As CMS explores bundled payments and other reimbursement reforms, perhaps the need to distinguish observation hospital care will be eliminated. Short of that, additional actions must be taken so a just and efficient Medicare appeals system can be realized for observation hospitalizations."
Four major privacy incidents captured the attention of media outlets in the past two days.

While media outlets reported on the following breaches in the past 48 hours, healthcare organizations provided notifications to HHS as early as February.

Here are the incidents, presented in order of number of patients affected.

1. Pennsylvania gastroenterology practice notifies 93k patients of privacy breach

Harrisburg (Pa.) Gastroenterology on March 17 determined an unauthorized individual may have accessed the practice's patient information.

2. Hacker slaps Memphis physician's office with ransom demand

Memphis, Tenn.-based Primary Care Specialists on Feb. 27 experienced a malware attack and ransom demand affecting 65,000 individuals.

3. EHR database hack affects 14k patients at NJ infertility center

Millburn, N.J.-based Diamond Institute for Infertility & Menopause on Feb. 27 discovered an unauthorized individual gained access to a third-party server containing an EHR database.

4. 7,000+ people affected in New York hospital data breach

At least 7,000 medical records from New York City-based Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center were exposed by a third-party vendor.
At least 7,000 medical records from New York City-based Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center were exposed by a third-party vendor, NBC News reports.

Here are four things to know.

1. A team of security researchers at MacKeeper Security Research Center discovered the breach earlier this month. Researcher Bob Diachenko told NBC News private patient information was viewable online due to a misconfigured backup server hosted by iHealth, a records management technology provider.

2. The exposed patient information included names, home addresses and medical diagnoses  along with addiction histories, mental health diagnoses, HIV statuses and sexual assault reports  of patients who visited the hospital between 2014 and 2017. Mr. Diachenko told NBC News it's unclear how long patient records were viewable online.

3.iHealth told NBC News it conducted an internal review upon learning of the breach. The vendor said one unauthorized person accessed the data, although there is no evidence that data has been misused.

"While iHealth continues to work with a leading IT security firm to validate its analysis, at this time, iHealth believes that the issue has been contained," iHealth told NBC News.

4. Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center confirmed the exposed patient records in an emailed statement to NBC News and said it is cooperating with law enforcement agencies to address the breach.

Editor's note: Becker's Hospital Review reached out to Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center for comment and will update as more information is available.
The term 'value' takes on different meanings for providers and payers. While providers strive to deliver the best value to patients, payers are focused on lowering costs and transferring risk.

Peter Mallow, PhD, director of health economics and market access at Cardinal Health, spoke to this predicament during his presentation, "Thinking Beyond the Procedure: Winning in a Value-Based World," at the Becker's Hospital Review 8th Annual Meeting, on April 18 in Chicago. Cardinal Health provides scaled logistics, product, business and patient solutions to those tasked with navigating the complexities of healthcare.

Healthcare is a complex landscape, and as the industry moves closer to a value-based model, providers bear the burden of increased administrative tasks. From healthcare consumerism to precision medicine, the provider workload is building, resulting in a tangle of administrative complexity.

"We don't seem to ever take anything away, and that's resulting in a whole lot of waste  $5 billion in wasted supplies and healthcare materials on an annual basis," said Dr. Mallow.1 "And it makes you think, what is this value-based care world we're getting into and how is this helping?"

Illustrating his point, Dr. Mallow said a 7.3 mm cannulated screw for hip and knee replacements increased from $129 to $360 between 1996 and 2016, even though the materials and distribution did not change.

To combat this striking increase in costs, CMS has its own vision of a value-based environment. Bending the cost curve in its favor and expecting to reduce costs by $480 billion dollars over the next several years, CMS has rolled out new payment models to shift risk from payer to provider in the form of value-based purchasing, shared savings, episodic bundles and partial capitation. These models are pointing in the direction of a fully capitated payment model in the future.

Dr. Mallow argues CMS' application of value-based care involves "adding more complexity onto you  not reducing it  causing your costs to increase, while you also assume more risk to provide that same level of care and try to achieve that triple aim. A new approach is necessary and it's up for you to decide how to win in CMS' value-based world."

Transitioning to the quadruple aim

While still focusing on the core elements of the triple aim  improved outcomes, enhanced patient experience and reduced per capita cost  the quadruple aim emphasizes provider satisfaction as a fourth aim.

As clinicians try to navigate this regulatory landscape, they are spending less time with patients and more time meeting administrative demands. Various surveys have revealed supply-related tasks take up 2.5 to 3 hours of a medical inpatient nurse's shift.

"The quadruple aim approach is about elevating the provider so that we can work with them and align the goals and incentives in place, knowing that they have a fundamental seat at the table," Dr. Mallow said.

Leveraging data analytics to achieve the quadruple aim

Dr. Mallow highlighted CMS data for total hip and knee replacements. The 90-day episode for a hip or knee replacement begins at an average cost of $12,900 during the index hospitalization, and hits $22,180 at the 90-day mark.2

Most patients don't align with the average benchmark, however, instead falling between $8,256 and $22,188 during the index hospitalization. At the 90-day mark, these patients' costs will reach between $10,038 and $36,663.2

"That's a big variation, and if we can think about how we standardize our operations, maybe we can narrow that variation," Dr. Mallow posited, breaking down the episodic costs. Fifty-eight percent of the cost comes out of the index hospitalization, directly tied to costly medical devices.2

"If we can tie those devices to outcomes that help us understand what's going on during the skilled nursing/long-term acute care stay, readmissions and the rest of that 90-day window, we can start to think about winning here," said Dr. Mallow. Additionally, by integrating a team-based clinical approach, providers can reduce procedure times and improve outcomes substantially.

Further, a focus on outlier cases is necessary, because about 10 percent of patients drive up the average costs.2 By leveraging data analytics to identify those patients upon arrival, combined with a comprehensive team-based clinical approach, hospitals will be able to provide proactive services to ease burden on the clinical staff.

These steps to winning in a value-based world cannot happen without accurate, timely and reliable data and analytics. Advanced analytics platforms integrate the EHR, materials management system and the billing system, allowing providers to view information at the clinician, patient, hospital and integrated delivery network level simultaneously. Equipped with the data, leaders can drive decisions about the future.

By implementing an advanced analytics platform, organizations will have the tools to achieve this quadruple aim, easing burden on clinicians. "We know that the value to the patient is the ultimate long-run win, but we have to deal with the realities we are faced with by our payers today, who have a short-run definition of valuefocused on cost reduction and transfer of risk to win in this value-based world," concluded Dr. Mallow.

References

1 PNC Healthcare, GHX Quantitative Research Study, August 2011

2 CMS MedPAR Data 2014
A worldwide ransomware attack hit organizations across multiple continents Friday, with preliminary evidence showing infections in at least 14 countries, according to Reuters.

No hospitals in the United States have reported experiencing an attack as of 2:30 p.m. CST, however, the ransomware has brought down operations at multiple facilities in the U.K.'s national healthcare system. The main U.S. target thus far is FedEx.

Here are six things to know.

1. Security experts report the ransomware variant exploits a vulnerability discovered by the National Security Agency in the U.S., according to The New York Times. Many organizations, including hospitals, had not appropriately updated their systems to address this vulnerability.

2. The ransomware was distributed via email, in which users were sent an encrypted file that, once loaded, would infect their system, The New York Times reports. Affected organizations report seeing similar messages that request roughly $300 in Bitcoin to unencrypt their files.

3. Organizations in North America, Europe and Asia have all been affected by the ransomware attack, according to Forbes. MalwareTech, a security researcher, reported 1,600 organizations in the U.S. have been infected with the ransomware.

4. One of the most prominent attacks hit healthcare facilities affiliated with the U.K. National Health Service. NHS reported 16 affected organizations, as of 2:30 p.m. CST. The ransomware  which locked healthcare workers out of IT systems, including patient files  led NHS to cancel routine operations and divert ambulances, according to The Financial Times.

5. In a statement posted on NHS Digital  which said the malware variant is called Wanna Decryptor  NHS emphasized the attack "was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors." For instance, the ransomware hit Telefonica, a major telecommunications company based in Spain, according to Reuters.

6. In the United States, FedEx was reportedly hit by the ransomware variant. In a statement obtained by The Commercial Appeal, FedEx spokesman Jim McCluskey said: "Like many other companies, FedEx is experiencing interference with some of our Windows-based systems caused by malware. We are implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible. We regret any inconvenience to our customers."

Editor's note: Becker's Hospital Review will update as more information is available.
Just 21 percent of American voters approve of the GOP healthcare plan  but this is up 4 percentage points over the plan's 17 percent approval rating in March, according to the Quinnipiac University Poll.

Fifty-six percent of the voters surveyed disapprove of the American Health Care Act, while 22 percent are unsure. It appears much of the disapproval stems from uncertainty about increasing costs under the proposed plan and opposition to the state waivers that allow payers to charge people with preexisting conditions more for their health plans.

Under the AHCA, a good portion of voters (42 percent) believe their health insurance costs would go up, while 11 percent believe they would go down and 37 percent expect them to stay the same, according to the poll. An even greater portion of respondents (75 percent) felt it was a "bad idea" to allow states to file for waivers that would allow payers to charge people with preexisting conditions more for the same health plans. The majority of Republicans (59 percent versus 34 percent) also felt this was a bad idea.

"The second attempt wins the support of 21 percent of voters," Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in the press release. "The grim diagnosis from voters: Healthcare will cost more and deliver less."

Overall, 96 percent of voters say they just want healthcare to be affordable for all, according to the poll.

More articles on leadership and management:

Kaiser Permanente CEO Bernard Tyson thanks nurses for 'responding to a calling'

How firing Comey could hamper the GOP health plan

5 latest healthcare layoffs
Stay in the know with Becker's Hospital Review's weekly roundup of the nation's biggest healthcare news. Here's what you need to know this week.

1. OSU Wexner CEO resigns over faculty concerns about leadership

Columbus-based Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center CEO Sheldon Retchin, MD, resigned, following complaints about his leadership from the faculty. He is also stepping down from his position as executive vice president of health sciences at the medical center.

2. Aetna to withdraw from all 2018 ACA exchanges

Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna will exit ACA exchanges in Delaware and Nebraska in 2018, marking the insurer's full exit from the individual marketplace, The Washington Post reports.

3. New findings in case of slain Boston physicians

New information suggests the 30-year-old man suspected of killing two Boston physicians the evening of May 5 may have previously worked as a concierge in their condominium complex, according to The Washington Post.

4. Dr. Scott Gottlieb confirmed as FDA commissioner

The Senate on May 9 confirmed Scott Gottlieb, MD, as the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner, reports The New York Times. Senators confirmed Dr. Gottlieb in a 57-42 vote, largely along party lines.

5. Judge rules Cigna can abandon $54B mega-merger with Anthem

A Delaware judge denied Indianapolis-based Anthem's request for a preliminary injunction May 11 to stop Bloomfield, Conn.-based Cigna from leaving the insurers' $54 billion merger deal, according to Bloomberg.

6. Florida lawmakers settle on $521M in state hospital funding cuts for FY 2017-18

Florida lawmakers agreed to cut $521 million in hospital funding for the upcoming fiscal year beginning in July, according to a Miami Herald report.

7. Nearly 7,000 bodies reportedly buried under University of Mississippi Medical Center campus

Officials estimate the bodies of nearly 7,000 former patients treated by Mississippi's first psychiatric institution are buried across a 20-acre stretch of land that now belongs to the Jackson-based University of Mississippi Medical Center, according to The Clarion-Ledger.

8. 7,000+ people affected in New York hospital data breach

At least 7,000 medical records from New York City-based Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center were exposed by a third-party vendor, NBC News reports.

9. Senators respond to all-male group working on ACA replacement plan

Senate Republicans are addressing questions regarding the 13-member, all-male group working on the party's healthcare bill, reports Reuters.
Victoria Williams, DO, a family medicine practitioner at Petaluma (Calif.) Health Center, has delivered numerous babies for her patients. But she never expected to deliver her own child in a moving car en route to the hospital, according to The Press Democrat.

Dr. Williams said she experienced contractions May 1 which later stalled out. Around 6:45 a.m. PST May 2, her water broke.

No more than 25 minutes later, she and her husband were driving on Highway 101 to Petaluma (Calif.) Valley Hospital. Though she began experiencing contractions during the 25 minute timeframe, Dr. Williams said she and her husband were not worried about reaching the hospital in time.

Once en route, she reportedly called her colleagues at the hospital, telling them she would be arriving soon to give birth.

Moments later, Dr. Williams said the contractions became more intense. She said she directed her husband, who was driving the vehicle, to phone their midwife and tell her she was "involuntarily pushing" the baby and to make her way to the hospital if she had not already done so, according to the report.

Around 7:25 a.m., Dr. Williams said she reached down and felt the top of her baby's head.

"My next thought [was], 'anterior shoulder!' My last kid was 8-and-a-half pounds so I knew a big baby was a possibility ... I [gave] slight traction downward until I [felt] a shoulder then I [knew] we are all clear and rest of baby will come out just fine. I put both hands down and [pulled] the baby up  I [gave] an ever-so-gentle sweep inside [the baby's] cheek for fluid [and looked] down and [saw] a vulva. It [was] a girl!"

A birthing center nurse and emergency room crew reportedly met the couple outside the facility upon arrival, according to the report.

Dr. Williams said she was "very, very lucky" the birthing process occurred without any complications, according to the report.
The Saint Louis University School of Medicine placed Stuart Slavin, MD, associate dean for curriculum and a professor in the school's pediatric department, on sabbatical, according to St. Louis Public Radio.

Officials reportedly placed Dr. Slavin on sabbatical "so that he [could] transition to the next phase of his career," according to the report. Administrators notified students and staff of the decision this week.

Dr. Slavin reportedly instituted a number of changes to the medical school's curriculum to improve students' overall health, including introducing wellness classes and implementing a pass/fail grading system for first- and second-year students. His policies also helped the school drop its rate of reported depression among first-year students to 4 percent, according to the report.

Many students and staff expressed dismay over Dr. Slavin's departure and have reportedly created a petition to reinstate him. Students have also planned a protest for May 11, according to the report.

News of the decision comes just after the Liaison Committee on Medical Education placed the medical school on probation in March. The committee said the medical school must remedy curricular deficiencies within a two-year period or risk having its accreditation status withdrawn.
Louisville-based KentuckyOne Health is seeking new owners and operators for more than 10 entities. The changes will ultimately leave KentuckyOne as a seven-hospital system.

The system, which is part of Englewood, Colo.-based Catholic Health Initiatives, is working to identify new owners and operators for the following facilities and sites of care. It will continue operations and oversight of the following until ownership and operations are transferred:

1. Jewish Hospital

2. Sts. Mary & Elizabeth Hospital

3. Jewish Hospital Shelbyville

4. Saint Joseph Martin (Ky.) (critical access hospital)

5. Medical Center Jewish East (ambulatory center)

6. Medical Center Jewish South (ambulatory center)

7. Medical Center Jewish Southwest (ambulatory center)

8. Medical Center Jewish Northeast (ambulatory center)

9. Frazier Rehab Institute

10. KentuckyOne Health Medical Group provider practices in Louisville and Martin

It will retain ownership and operations of the following facilities:

1. Our Lady of Peace

2. Flaget Memorial Hospital

3. Saint Joseph Hospital

4. Saint Joseph East

5. Saint Joseph Mount Sterling

6. Saint Joseph London

7. Saint Joseph Berea (critical access hospital)

8. Saint Joseph Jessamine (ambulatory center)

9. KentuckyOne Health Partners Clinically Integrated Network

10. KentuckyOne Health Medical Group provider practices in central and eastern Kentucky and Bardstown

"This decision has been made with great care and consideration. New owners and operators of the facilities outside of our central and eastern community focus will have the resources and ability to continue to deliver care, support employees and physicians and engage the community," said Ruth W. Brinkley, president and CEO of KentuckyOne Health. "We understand this will bring change and questions to our employees and community partners. We have an extensive transition program underway to ease the change and ensure focus on our priories to our patients and our partners."

It was reported earlier this month that KentuckyOne was dissolving employment contracts with approximately 25 physicians as early as July. Last month, it laid off nearly 150 employees, or 1 percent of its workforce.

KentuckyOne negotiated the spin off of University of Louisville Hospital this past December. Come July 1, University Medical Center in Louisville will resume management of the academic medical center and its affiliated cancer center.
With front-line providers experiencing an epidemic of burnout and compassion fatigue in the era of value-based care, it's critical for hospital and health system leaders to create a cultural environment where nurses are set up to thrive.

Nurses spend more time with patients than any other provider, meaning they have considerable influence on care outcomes. With nurses working long shifts amid a nationwide nurse shortage, leaders must make the extra effort to keep nurses engaged in their work.

"At the executive level, organizations have to acknowledge that employee engagement is a fundamental part of the culture... this work cannot just be seen as another program," says Martie Moore, RN, CNO at Medline who has more than three decades of industry experience.

Here are three areas of focus for nurse engagement.

Nurse empowerment

Nursing literature is replete with studies suggesting an empowered nurse is more likely to trust the organization, stay on with their current employer, have high levels of productivity and beneficially influence care quality.

In a 2014 article for American Nurse Today, Shelley Moore, PhD, MSN, RN, wrote, "To truly embrace healthcare reform in creative ways, they [healthcare leaders] also must foster a certain degree of controlled destabilization that births new ideas and innovations. People (not only staff but also patients and families) should feel comfortable asking questions. A structurally empowered nurse is best equipped to protect patients' rights."

According to Dr. Moore's article, elements of structural employee empowerment include:

 Workplace culture that supports a non-punitive professional accountability and error reporting system designed to improve patient safety rather than ostracize employees

 Performance evaluations conducted by peers who are knowledgeable about the intricacies of the work environment

 Decision-making policies that are recognizably influenced by the philosophy of shared governance

Embracing humanness

Due to the high-pressure demands of the healthcare work environment, stoicism can become a kind of default setting for providers, which can be detrimental to morale and ultimately the quality of care being delivered.

Ms. Moore, Medline's CNO, references Don Berwick, MD, Institute for Healthcare Improvement president emeritus and senior fellow, who often speaks on bringing joy to the workplace.

"When people are joyous in their work...they are more alert, they are more curious, they can learn, they're not scared of data, they're not scared to ask a question, they're not scared to ask 'how am I doing?'" said Dr. Berwick in an IHI video.

Building on the idea of joy, Ms. Moore describes the importance of having a work environment that embraces the humanness of the nursing vocation  which is more calling than it is profession. Those who step into these roles are driven by the innate drive to help others, she says.

Ms. Moore encourages the regular acknowledgment of the inspirational things nurses do on a daily basis. To embrace and amplify the humanness of the workplace, she suggests after witnessing an inspirational act, leaders should "just call it out and say 'you just took my breath away'... people need that, employees need that."

Fostering resilience

The word resilience has become a buzzword of sorts in recent years, entering the lexicons of psychology, the global development sector, economics and healthcare. Resilience by definition is the ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. This is an essential quality for nurses as these front-line providers regularly confront life or death scenarios.

The American Psychological Association provides several tips to build resilience, including these that can be applied to the healthcare workplace environment:

 Set goals: Establish achievable team goals that can be improved upon daily.

 Promote wellness: A healthy mind and body are more apt to meet adversity head on.

 Make connections: Promote a culture of support and caring in which colleagues can confidently rely upon one another when the road ahead seems perilous.

"Nurses make a difference every day," says Ms. Moore. "Their vision for betterment of those they serve keeps their spirit alive and touches the heart and soul of many. Nursing is not about a stethoscope and scrubs. It is about the people who wear them  genuine, incredible people who are the heart and soul of healthcare. We have to create environments that foster their ability to be resilient, authentic and engaged."
Deb Feldman, president and CEO of Dayton (Ohio) Children's Hospital, wrote an email memo to staff Wednesday regarding the hospital's handling of allegations of sexual assault by Arun Aggarwal, MD, a former pediatric gastroenterologist at the hospital, reports the Dayton Daily News.

The email went out after the state medical board on Wednesday voted to permanently revoke Dr. Aggarwal's medical license over two separate complaints in 2014 that he improperly touched the breasts of two teenage female patients.

In her email, Ms. Feldman discusses an interview she did with the Dayton Daily News after the state medical board's decision as part of a series of articles the publication is running on the situation.

The Dayton Daily News published her memo in full. Here are four highlights.

1. "First, I told them we are deeply saddened by this situation." Ms. Feldman said the hospital leaders are concerned that despite the quality care Dayton Children's Hospital has provided for more than 50 years, " this story has given the impression that we did not fulfill our promise in this situation to protect our patients so we felt it was necessary to respond."

2. "This situation was ambiguous," she wrote, as leaders attempted to determine if the patients' families' allegations were indicative of inappropriate behavior by Dr. Aggarwal or a "misunderstanding regarding a physicians' proper exam of a child." She added that when the allegations were made, Ms. Feldman and her colleagues did not have all of the information available that was later presented to the medical board.

3. "Our process failed us," she said. However, Dayton Children's Hospital has already implemented three significant changes that its leaders believe will prevent a similar situation from occurring. These changes include the establishment of a new process for child abuse experts to immediately review similar concerns; the addition of "one of the most conservative chaperone policies in the country"; and a commitment to work with healthcare providers to help them better communicate with patients and their families before an examination, "so there is no misinterpretation and we can respond in a more careful and caring manner to any concerns."

4. "There was no retaliation to the employees who raised concerns about Dr. Aggarwal," and the hospital's leadership encourages all employees to come forward with concerns about patient safety, Ms. Feldman wrote. She emphasized that the hospital prioritizes the safety of its patients above anything else, and "we work hard to develop a culture of safety that encourages our employees to identify and report any and all safety concerns, including an anonymous alert line," according to the report.

Editor's note: This article was updated at 5:43 CST on May 12, 2017 to remove the statement that said Ms. Feldman had not previously addressed the organization's staff regarding the allegations against Dr. Aggarwal. Her email memo simply came after the state medical board made their decision to revoke Dr. Aggarwal's medical license.
Boston-based Steward Health Care and one of its largest affiliated physician groups, Compass Medical Group of East Bridgewater (Mass.), are suing one another for fraud and breach of contract over millions of dollars in physician payments.

Here are six things to know about the lawsuits.

1. Compass filed suit against Steward, claiming the for-profit system has failed to make incentive payments since 2013, according to The Boston Globe. The payments are mandatory bonuses that are supposed to be paid to physicians for hitting quality targets, which were unspecified in the lawsuit. Steward allegedly withheld the payments because they surpassed fair-market value for services, according to the report. The physician group questioned this claim, but Steward allegedly never followed through on its promise to review it, according to a report from CommonWealth Magazine.

2. The physician group also claims Steward fell behind on rent and equipment leases. Compass claims Steward owes at least $1.4 million in late rent and equipment lease payments, according to CommonWealth Magazine.

3. Compass filed the Chapter 93A lawsuit in the Suffolk Superior Court for $20 million. Under this statute, the jury could triple the award to $60 million if it decides in favor of the plaintiff.

4. Steward filed a counter-lawsuit against Compass for fraud and breach of contract. The health system claims the group held onto $3.5 million in overpayments and would not return the money to Steward. It also claims Compass executives dodged negotiation discussions, even after bringing in the Department of Justice, according to The Boston Globe.

5. Steward also claims Compass engaged in "deceptive financial practices," according to CommonWealth Magazine. The health system claims Compass billed for non-physician providers at the same rate it did for physicians, according to the report. Both parties claim the other has withheld financial information, according to The Boston Globe.

6. The health system and physician group have been partners since 2012.The group has 104 providers, CommonWealth Magazine reported, and about 50 of those are physicians, according to The Boston Globe. Compass operates independently, but coordinates care for patients with the health system and refers patients to its hospitals. Under the arrangement, Steward is responsible for managing claims and paying physicians, according to the Globe report.

More articles on legal and regulatory issues:

3rd Detroit physician convicted in $17.1M Medicare fraud scheme

Man drops lawsuit against CNN over aired images of him in Florida hospital

Jury rejects physician's allegations of defamation by hospital and medical group
Rock Springs, Wyo.-based Memorial Hospital of Sweetwater County alleged former CEO Jerry Klein hid financial information from the hospital board and overstepped his fiduciary duty, according to the Wyoming Business Report.

The hospital countersued Mr. Klein Wednesday after the former CEO filed a claim he was wrongfully terminated, according to the report. Mr. Klein, who resigned from Memorial Hospital in February, claimed the hospital never officially ended his contract and argued the hospital owed him at least $595,518.15 in compensation.

Memorial Hospital issued several allegations against Mr. Klein in its countersuit, including breach of contract and fraudulent behavior through the "conversion of money, assets and property to his own use and benefit," the report states.

The lawsuit also claims Mr. Klein was intentionally "draining" the hospital's funds as he pursued talks with the University of Utah in Salt Lake City to acquire Memorial Hospital as a limited liability company, in addition to other regional hospitals. Part of the talks allegedly included his promotion to CEO of the new company, according to the report.

Lawsuit documents cite various events that reportedly occurred while Mr. Klein helmed the organization, such as dramatic increases in expenses, loses of more than $5 million in investment revenue and a reduction in on-hand cash from 245 days to 88 days.
Vivek Murthy, MD, who served as U.S. Surgeon General before President Donald Trump fired him last month, tweeted criticism of HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD, for his comments on addiction treatment.

"Science, not opinion, should guide our recommendations and policies" on addiction treatment, Dr. Murthy said, after tweeting that "there is a lot of confusion about addiction treatment," according to STAT.

The tweets came a day after Dr. Price made comments indicating his skepticism over the efficacy of medication-based addiction treatments. "If we're just substituting one opioid for another, we're not moving the dial much," Dr. Price told the Charleston Gazette-Mail in West Virginia during his "listening tour" on the nation's opioid drug crisis. "Folks need to be cured so they can be productive members of society and realize their dreams."



Dr. Murthy confirmed with STAT that his tweets were a direct response to Dr. Price's remarks.

"If recent comments from the administration indicate a shift away from an evidence-based, public health approach to the opioid crisis, I am concerned the negative impact on the health of Americans will be considerable," said Dr. Murthy, according to STAT. "It is important that people know the truth about what science says about opioid addiction treatment: medication-assisted treatment works."

"It is also important that we not further stigmatize medication-assisted treatment by incorrectly implying that it is not effective," he added. "That will only make it harder for people to seek out the care they need."
"Gray Death" is a deadly opioid cocktail making headlines across the nation as its reach and presence on America's illicit drug market seems to be expanding.

While the nation has yet to see a national proliferation of the substance, according to a statement from a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesperson cited in an NBC News report, the drug has been found in states along the gulf coast, Ohio, Indiana and North Carolina.

Here are five things to know about Gray Death.

1. The substance's name derives from its appearance, which resembles concrete, according to a report from the Indy Star.

2. The deadly cocktail is made of heroin; fentanyl, which is 50 times more potent than heroin; carfentanil, which is 100 times more potent than fentanyl; and a synthetic opioid called U-47700, better known by is street name "Pink."

3. A version of Gray Death sans Pink was first encountered in Atlanta in 2012, according to NBC News.

4. The synthetic opioids found in Gray Death are primarily manufactured overseas in China and is either shipped directly from China by mail or smuggled into the U.S. through Mexico.

5. While law enforcement officials are intensifying their focus on Gray Death, domestic drug dealers are continuously developing new lethal drug combinations.

"It's mad science and the guinea pigs are the American public," the DEA's Russ Baer told NBC News. "The ingredients come from abroad, but this is made in America."

More articles on opioids:

New Hampshire AG prioritizes carfentanil cases

Researchers identify tools to protect first responders from fentanyl exposure

Price, Conway address opioid epidemic in West Virginia
A Delaware judge denied Indianapolis-based Anthem's request for a preliminary injunction Thursday to stop Bloomfield, Conn.-based Cigna from leaving the insurers' $54 billion merger deal, according to Bloomberg.

Here are four things to know.

1. The decision means Cigna can walk away from the proposed merger with Anthem. It also means Anthem could owe Cigna $14.85 billion in break-up fees and damages, according to the report.

2. Vice Chancellor Travis Laster of Delaware's Court of Chancery, who denied the 60-day injunction, said Anthem's outlook for completing the deal is dim.

3. Mr. Laster's decision comes nearly three months after the deal was blocked over antitrust concerns. A U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia affirmed the decision April 28. Anthem has since filed a petition calling for a Supreme Court review of the decision.



4. Anthem and Cigna spokespeople did not immediately respond to Bloomberg's request for comment.
New research has uncovered dramatic disparities in life expectancy  as much as 20 years  between counties with the lowest and highest life expectancies in the U.S., according to an article published JAMA Internal Medicine.

Christopher J.L. Murray, MD, DPhil, of the University of Washington in Seattle and his co-authors used population-based analysis to create annual estimates of life expectancy and age-specific risk of death for each county of the U.S. from 1980 to 2014. The authors included geographic inequalities, socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors, as well as behavioral and metabolic risk factors, in their analysis.

Here are seven main findings from the report.

1. Between 1980 and 2014, life expectancy increased for men and women from 73.8 years to 79.1 years, respectively. Life expectancy increased from 70 to 76.7 years for men and from 77.5 to 81.5 years for women.

2. The gap between the counties with the highest and lowest life expectancies was 20.1 years. People in counties with the highest life spans tended to live to about 87, while those in counties with the lowest life spans died by about age 67, according to NPR. Dr. Murray told NPR the disparity in life expectancy across counties in the U.S. is comparable to low-income parts of the developing world and countries with advanced economies.

3. Several counties in South and North Dakota  especially those with Native American reservations  have the lowest life expectancies. Counties with the lowest life spans tend to include poor communities with less-educated people. The lowest life expectancy is in Oglala Lakota County, S.D., which houses the Pine Ridge Reservation, according to NPR.

4. Other counties with the shortest life expectancies are along the lower Mississippi River Valley and parts of West Virginia and Kentucky, NPR reported.

5. The counties with the longest life expectancy are more affluent and educated, such as Marin County, Calif.,  which includes San Francisco  and Summit County, Colo., which houses Breckenridge.

6. Although life expectancy grew overall for each of the sexes individually and combined, there was significant variation at the county level. Socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors (60 percent), behavioral and metabolic risk factors (74 percent) and healthcare factors (27 percent) accounted for this county-level variation. Combined, these factors explained 74 percent of county-level variation.

7. Dr. Murray's research suggests the gap isn't closing. In fact, it seems to be widening. The gap between the highest and lowest life expectancies by county increased by about two years between 1980 and 2014, according to the report.

"With every passing year, inequality  however you measure it  has been widening over the last 34 years," Dr. Murray told NPR. "And so next year, we can reliably expect it'll be even more than 20. That is probably the most alarming part of the analysis."
Each year, AMN Healthcare takes part in a mission to the impoverished highlands of Guatemala, sponsoring clinical and nonclinical personnel to quickly launch a week-long acute care surgical facility and clinic that provides vital healthcare to people who might otherwise never see a nurse or doctor.

This is a labor of love, because it's entirely volunteer and from the heart.

Nurses are at the heart of our Guatemala mission, providing the foundational work to transform a few empty rooms in a military base or community center into an operating and recovery suite, pharmacy, triage area, records room, and a clinic. Then, they staff each facility for the week to treat patients who come from towns, villages and farms from miles around. After a week, the nurses work to dismantle and pack up everything when the mission is over. In that time, they provide services to about a thousand patients, including a hundred surgeries, most commonly hysterectomies, hernias, tear duct blockage, tumor removal and eye surgery.

AMN Healthcare supports the transportation and other costs for the volunteers, and also helps the mission through logistics and other support. The AMN volunteers are often travel nurses who cherish this opportunity to provide care for the poorest of the poor, providing life-changing  and lifesaving  care for men, women and children. I feel fortunate to be able to join this amazing team every year and am always awestruck at the level of commitment, compassion and selflessness exhibited by all involved, but especially the nurses.

The AMN mission to Guatemala is also a life-changing experience for nurses. One nurse recalled people lining up outside the hospital at 4 a.m. on the first day, having traveled by bus or by foot for much-needed treatment. And the challenges that nurses must overcome are very real, such as the time power went out six times in a thunderstorm during a hysterectomy surgery, which had to be completed by flashlight. The rest of the hospital was lit by candles, because all flashlights and power from generators was needed in patient-care areas.

Nurses also took part in the outreach team that set up makeshift clinics in nearby villages, where hundreds of people would quickly line up at the triage table presenting conditions ranging from bug bites and tooth decay to serious infections and vision problems. The medical team treated what they could on the spot and referred the more serious conditions immediately to the hospital or clinic.

Said one AMN Healthcare travel nurse on the Guatemala mission: "I've been working as a nurse for nearly ten years, and the job is so gratifying. But I'm always look for something more that I can do for people, and for me this is the ultimate opportunity to offer my professional skills to those who need them most."

Each year, AMN Healthcare seeks nurses to volunteer for the mission, usually med-surg and recovery nurses and CRNAs. This is an experience like none other, and one where the strength and dedication of each individual and the team makes a life-changing impact for the patient, their family -- and the volunteers themselves.

The views, opinions and positions expressed within these guest posts are those of the author alone and do not represent those of Becker's Hospital Review/Becker's Healthcare. The accuracy, completeness and validity of any statements made within this article are not guaranteed. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions or representations. The copyright of this content belongs to the author and any liability with regards to infringement of intellectual property rights remains with them.
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America on Tuesday rolled out new membership criteria, dismissing 22 drugmakers from the powerful lobby group, reports Chicago Tribune.

The new rules, effective immediately, require member companies to spend at least $200 million annually on research. Research spending must also equate to at least 10 percent of sales revenue, based on a three-year average, according to the report.

PhRMA removed seven full members and 15 associate member companies from the group, following the new membership criteria.

"By putting in place new membership criteria, the board is sending a clear message that being a member of PhRMA means being committed to doing the time-intensive, scientifically sound research it takes to bring bold new advances in treatments and cures to patients, Joaquin Duato, PhRMA board chairman and worldwide chairman of pharmaceuticals for Johnson & Johnson, said in a news release.

The lobby group changes follow PhRMA's January launch of a major advertising campaign to improve the drug industry's public image following heated criticism over rising drug prices. In April, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals and Marathon Pharmaceuticals  both the center of drug pricing controversies  resigned from the lobby group ahead of the membership changes.

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The American Medical Association noted its sixth consecutive year of membership growth, outlined alongside other achievements in its 2016 Annual Report, according to AMA Wire.

Here are six takeaways from the report:

1. In 2016, the AMA worked with state medical societies to help block the Aetna-Humana and Anthem-Cigna mergers.

2. The society also honed in the opioid epidemic, diabetes and hypertension in 2016, launching efforts to address the needs of patients in these areas.

3. The AMA added new members to its Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium, bringing total membership to 32 medical schools. The consortium supports innovations in teaching, such as offering courses on EHR systems.

4. The year also saw the unveiling of AMA's specialty journals, JAMA Cardiology and JAMA Oncology.

5. In 2016, the AMA published a Code of Medical Ethics  the first comprehensive update in a half-century.

6. APCO Worldwide, an international public affairs firm, recognized the AMA as the most effective professional and trade organization in the United States in 2016.
A Caddis affiliate purchased Plano (Texas) Orthopedic, Dallas News reports.

Here's what you should know.

1. Caddis is a healthcare facility investment, development and management company.

2. Plano Orthopedics was a 21,246-square-foot medical office facility.

3. EDGE Realty Capital Markets brokered the sale.
In April, CMS released the fourth data feed from the Comprehensive Care for Joint Replacement Model. The CJR is CMS' first mandatory bundled payment initiative, with a focus on hip and knee replacements. This data feed covered episodes beginning in the second quarter of 2016 through early 2017.

Initially, CMS released data feed quarterly, but recently decided to start releasing feeds every month. Many hospitals expected episode counts and episode average spend to remain static, since both features remained stagnant between the second and third feeds.

But, some hospitals received an unwelcome surprise in the fourth data feed, as CMS decided to remove any episodes falling under Bundled Payments for Care Improvement participation.

"CMS did tell us it may [remove BPCI episodes], but we didn't know until right before the data came out," explains Kelly Price, vice president and chief of healthcare data analytics at Rensselaer, N.Y.-based DataGen. "Some [hospitals] were aware that they would lose a big chunk of volume, but not all of them."

With the removal of BPCI volume, average episode cost increased slightly. This boost did not surprise Ms. Price, who commented that a committed physician group likely heavily managed the lost episodes.

Ms. Price and her team have been analyzing the CJR data feeds since CMS' first release in August 2016. DataGen analyzes data for 64 episode-initiating hospitals. For the second and third quarters of 2016, the data included 5,500 episodes.

Of the 64 hospitals analyzed, 12.5 percent lost all of their volume when CMS pulled BPCI episodes. Moving forward, Ms. Price recommends hospital senior leadership hones in on BPCI management to understand which episodes will count toward CJR.

Ms. Price and her team also analyzed the first CJR reconciliation:

Forty-three of the 64 hospitals received savings and will be receiving checks from CMS.

Thirty-one hospitals reached the 5 percent stop-gain cap.

Twenty-seven hospitals earned a score of "excellent" on the quality metrics, changing discount factors from 3 percent to 1.5 percent.

Variants to the target proved surprising to many of Ms. Price's clients during the reconciliation process. Moving the target and average episode spend just slightly produced significant changes in variants.

"A very small change in episode spend or target can produce a huge swing in the variants; you can have a 100 percent change in variants due to a 1 percent change in spend or target," explains Ms. Price.

Understanding the impact of slight target and spend changes is critical to expectations for the true-up of this reconciliation in early 2018, Ms. Price emphasizes. Although targets will likely remain the same, average episode spend will likely increase slightly, which has the potential to cut reconciliation in half or even move a hospital from a gain to a loss.

"Since [hospitals] were very focused on the variant, these little swings in target and spend produced a huge change in the numbers they had focused on," concludes Ms. Price.
Atlanta-based Shepherd Center appointed Michael Yochelson, MD, its new CMO, according to Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Here are five highlights:

1. Shepherd Center represents one of two U.S. hospitals dedicated to the treatment and rehabilitation of people with spinal cord injuries, brain injuries, multiple sclerosis, spine and chronic pain as well as other neuromuscular conditions.

2. When he steps into his CMO role on Sept. 6, Dr. Yochelson will focus on establishing relationships with consulting physicians from other hospitals.

3. He currently is the vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer at Washington, D.C.-based MedStar National Rehabilitation Network. He established the Brain Injury Medicine Fellowship at the hospital.

4. Dr. Yochelson served almost 12 years in the U.S. Navy, during which he served as the sole neurologist and physiatrist stationed in Japan.

5. He has focused his career on neuro-rehabilitation, treating veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday reportedly hailed the spirit of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka. Speaking at a gathering in Colombo, Modi reportedly said: "We remember and salute the struggle of Tamil people of central Sri Lanka". Notably, Modi also announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas. Notably, he also announced a series of training facilities for Sri Lankan Tamils.
Belfast City Hall. Donegall Square. Under construction in 1903. The Earl of Glasgow unveiling the statue of Sir Edward J Harland in the grounds of the new City Hall. BELFAST TELEGRAPH ARCHIVE

James Magennis:Ulsterman awarded The Victoria Cross (VC). Belfastman decorated for his heroic actions onboard the X.E.11 Midget Submarine returning from the attack on a japanese cruiser. James Magennis with Lord Mayor Sir Crawford McCullagh at a civic reception in Belfast in 1945.

On a visit to the Gasworks an employee demonstrates the Coal Gripper (The feed system of a coal getting combine, which works with a face conveyor, comprises: a traction device located on the combine and having a cylinder-shaped sprocket on the side surface of which a circular spherical-shaped recess is provided, slots being made on both inner sides of the spherical recess, said slots having an involute-spherical surface) 20/1/1938

Donegall Square East, with air raid shelters, from the roof of the Robinson & Cleaver building, Belfast. Top of photo cut of by the censor. 22/9/1943 BELFAST TELEGRAPH COLLECTION/NMNI

The demolition of the old Post Office, in Royal Avenue, to make way for a new shopping complex. 11/7/1985

Brendan Bowyer does "The Fly" with two dancers who will be touring with the Rpyal Showband. 22/4/1966

" This is how you do it." Three Randalstown fans get some quick tuition on "The Hucklebuck" from members of the Royal Showband. From left: Alice O'hara, Ballygrooby; Brendan Bowyer, Margaret O'Hara, Ballygrooby; Ed Sullivan, Betty McKeown, Hook's Lane, and Tom Dunphy. 18/2/1965

James Callaghan: Former British PM, deep in thought as he stands in front of one of a row of burnt out houses in Bombay street, Belfast. On the right is Gerry Fitt, MP. 27/8/1969

Explosions. Attacks on Electricity Service. Castlereagh. The smouldering remains of a transformer at an electricity sub-station in the Cregagh Hills, near Belfast, where an explosion caused ?500,000 damage. 31/3/1969

Riots: Belfast. Refugees. Furniture is carried into the schools meals centre in Butler Street as Roman Catholic families move from their homes in the Protestant area of the Crumlin Road. 5/8/1969

Riots : Belfast. August 1969. Children playing in the sentry box erected by vigilantes at Thames Street, Belfast. The box is used by the residents who guard the street during the hours of darkness. (23/8/69)

A report commissioned by the Department for Employment and Learning on labour mobility in Northern Ireland found some unemployed people suffer from a chill factor of Troubles

WORLD WAR II: BELFAST AIR RAIDS. TRANSPORT. 15/16 April 1941. The Municiple tram service carried on despite Hitler's bombs, which fell both inside and outside this depot in Salisbury Avenue (Antrim Road). AR 172.

WORLD WAR II: BELFAST AIR RAIDS. SUGARHOUSE ENTRY. April/May 1941. Where the United Irishmen used to meet under the leadership of Henry Joy McCracken in the days of '98. AR 161.

Baby elephant, Sheila, who was moved out of Belfast zoo because of fears of a hit from bombers during the Belfast Blitz of 1941

They are haunting images of the devastating aerial assault unleashed on Belfast by the German Luftwaffe during World War Two.

Now the Blitz of April and May 1941 has been dramatically brought to life through modern technology. Photographs from government files from the time capture the terrible aftermath of the air raid attacks on the city.

Staff at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) have digitally enhanced the photographs with animation.

They now include features such as 'moving' plumes of smoke from ruined buildings.

Digitisation officer Joy Carey said: "These photographs, which were included in a report compiled by the Ministry of Public Security on the air raids on Belfast and their aftermath, illustrate the devastation caused to Belfast city centre during heavy attacks during the nights of the May 4 and 5 in 1941."

The blitz devastated a city that up until 1941 had remained unscathed from the horrors of war.

Over two nights 150 people were killed and more than half of the city's housing stock was rendered uninhabitable.

The photographs are from the Cabinet Secretariat Official War History of Northern Ireland archive at PRONI.

It contains hundreds of photographs illustrating the devastation caused by the air raids.

The graphically animated images are available to view on PRONI's Flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/proni.
Swiss Air was one of the first carriers to buy Bombardiers new CS100 passenger jet

Bombardier's commercial aircraft business - much of which is produced in Belfast - has posted a loss in earnings as the aerospace giant's executive chairman announced he was relinquishing that post.

The Canadian firm, which employs around 4,500 workers here, posted revenues of $3.6bn (2.8bn) during the first quarter of the year.

Its earnings before interest and tax were $128m (100m).

But the commercial aircraft business suffered a reverse.

The Belfast operation produces part of the fuselage and wings for Bombardier's CSeries passenger jets; the complete centre fuselage, nacelles and wing components for the CRJs, and designs and manufactures wing-mounted flight components for the Q400 turboprop.

The results came as executive chairman Pierre Beaudoin announced he would step aside from the position next month.

But Mr Beaudoin will stay on as chairman.

This week a Canadian pension fund that is a major shareholder in Bombardier announced it was withdrawing support for Mr Beaudoin's re-election as executive chairman.

Mr Beaudoin said: "This change reflects the very successful transition of Bombardier's executive leadership to Alain Bellemare over the past two years.

"As chairman, I look forward to working with the board of directors to provide continuing support to Alain and the leadership team.

"The company is firmly on the right path, with a very strong leadership team now in place to execute its turnaround plan and return Bombardier to long-term, sustainable growth."

Mr Bellemare said: "Our continued margin expansion and improving cash performance demonstrate both the early benefits of our actions and the long-term potential of our company."

Despite receiving a US$1bn (0.75bn) bailout from the Quebec Government for its struggling CSeries jet and a CAN$375m (225m) loan from the Canadian Government, the company's top bosses will see their pay and bonuses rise this year to $32.6m (26m).

The move sparked outrage among staff in Canada following a series of job losses there. The firm also cut 1,080 posts in Northern Ireland.

The company faced protests outside its Montreal headquarters last month and criticism from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the executive pay hikes.
Deadlock at Stormont s having an extremely detrimental effect on planning for Brexit, according to CAI president Liam Lynch

Northern Ireland runs the risk of being "left behind" in Brexit preparations because of the absence of a devolved government, it has been claimed. Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI) called on all the political parties to intensify their efforts to secure the future of power-sharing.

At its annual conference in Galway, CAI president Liam Lynch said: "In Northern Ireland, the fact that there is no devolved government is having an extremely detrimental effect on planning for Brexit.

"It is important that all institutions involved appreciate and address the extreme gravity of the negotiations and put aside posturing and politics to deal with the issues for the betterment of their constituents."

The organisation, which has more than 3,000 members in Northern Ireland, said politicians should resolve the deadlock for the sake of both jurisdictions on the island.

It added that Brexit negotiations between the UK and EU should be carried out in a "respectful" atmosphere.

Mr Lynch said: "The language used in the public utterances of several of the key figures suggests that there is a real possibility that the breaking of links between the UK and the EU will be sudden and final, without any phasing in or transitional arrangements.

"We must do everything we can to ensure that Irish business, north and south of the border, is prepared to handle Brexit shocks."

Brian Keegan, director of public policy and taxation, said the organisation wanted to help firms prepare for the future.

"We are looking for practical solutions to the issues raised by Brexit," he added.

"Our research shows that there is a knowledge deficit when it comes to dealing with the realities of cross-border trade and customs post-Brexit.

"We are working towards, and campaigning for, a programme of education and resourcing to assist smaller businesses in particular adapt to the UK's departure from the EU.

"Both Ireland and Europe will need to be open to fresh perspectives and bold ideas to ensure a successful transition."
Norway"s JOWST performs the song "Grab the Moment" during rehearsals for the Eurovision Song Contest, in Kiev, Ukraine, Saturday, May 6, 2017. The first semi final of The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 will be held on May 9. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

United Kingdom's Lucie Jones performs the song "Never Give Up on You" during rehearsals for the Eurovision Song Contest, in Kiev, Ukraine, Monday, May 8, 2017. The first semi final of The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 will be held on May 9. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky)

KIEV, UKRAINE - MAY 11: Koit Toome & Laura representing Estonia perform the song 'Verona'during the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest at International Exhibition Centre (IEC) on May 11, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. The final of this years Eurovision Song Contest will be aired on May 13, 2017. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

Timebelle of Switzerland performs with the song Apollo during the second Semi-Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Valentina Monetta and Jimmie Wilson of San Marino perform with the song "Spirit of the Night" during the Second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Brendan Murray of Ireland performs with the song "Dying to Try" during the Second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Brendan Murray of Ireland performs with the song "Dying to Try" during the Second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Koit Toome and Laura perform with the song Verona during the Second Semi-Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Fusedmarc of Lithuania performs with the song Rain Of Revolution during the Second Semi-Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Joci Papai of Hungary performs with the song "Origo" during the Second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Ilinca ft. Alex Florea of Romania perform with the song Yodel It during the Second Semi-Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Nathan Trent of Austria performs with the song "Running On Air" during the Second Semi-Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Nathan Trent of Austria performs with the song "Running On Air" during the Second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

KIEV, UKRAINE - MAY 11: IMRI representing Israel performs the song 'I Feel Alive' during the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest at International Exhibition Centre (IEC) on May 11, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. The final of this years Eurovision Song Contest will be aired on May 13, 2017. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

Serbia's Tijana Bogicevic performs the song "In Too Deep" during the second semi-final dress rehearsal of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 on May 10, 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Naviband of Belarus performs with the song Story of My Life during the Second Semi-Final of Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Naviband representing Belarus perform the song 'Story of My Life' during the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest (Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

KIEV, UKRAINE - MAY 11: JOWST representing Norway performs the song 'Grab The Moment' during the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest at International Exhibition Centre (IEC) on May 11, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. The final of this years Eurovision Song Contest will be aired on May 13, 2017. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

Jacques Houdek of Croatia performs with the song My Friend during the Second Semi-Final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev on May 11, 2017. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / SERGEI SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

KIEV, UKRAINE - MAY 11: Jacques Houdek representing Croatia performs the song 'My Friend' during the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest at International Exhibition Centre (IEC) on May 11, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. The final of this years Eurovision Song Contest will be aired on May 13, 2017. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

KIEV, UKRAINE - MAY 11: Volodymur Ostapchuk and Oleksandr Skichko perform on stage during the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest at International Exhibition Centre (IEC) on May 11, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. The final of this years Eurovision Song Contest will be aired on May 13, 2017. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

KIEV, UKRAINE - MAY 11: Claudia Faniello representing Malta performs the song "Breathlessly" during the rehearsal for the second semi final of the 62nd Eurovision Song Contest at International Exhibition Centre (IEC) on May 11, 2017 in Kiev, Ukraine. The final of this year's Eurovision Song Contest will be aired on May 13, 2017. (Photo by Michael Campanella/Getty Images)

Ireland's Brendan Murray performs the song "Dying to Try" during the second semi-final dress rehearsal of the Eurovision Song Contest 2017 on May 10, 2017 at the International Exhibition Centre in Kiev. The Eurovision Song Contest 2017 finals will be held May 13. / AFP PHOTO / Sergei SUPINSKYSERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images

Ireland's hopes of Eurovision glory came to an end last night in Kiev.

Brendan Murray delivered a solid performance of single Dying to Try, but he failed to make it into the contest's Grand Final, to be held in the Ukrainian capital tomorrow.

Speaking afterwards, Brendan described his time on stage as "the best three minutes of my life".

"Life is full of knocks but I am taking it on the chin and tomorrow is another day," he said.

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RTE's head of delegation, Michael Kealy, said the result was "extremely disappointing".

"It's a completely different competition to how it was when we used to win back in the 90s," he added.

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More than 200m people are expected to tune into the Eurovision final tomorrow night.

Former X Factor hopeful Lucie Jones will represent the UK with Never Give Up On You.

The UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy got an automatic pass to the final, as they contribute the most money to the competition.
Keith Acheson, festival director, Deepa Mann-Kler, chair of the Crescent Arts Centre, and Damian Smyth, head of literature and drama at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, at the launch of the Belfast Book Festival programme yesterday

Northern Ireland's readers are getting ready for a literary feast as the buzz begins for the seventh Belfast Book Festival, running from June 7 to June 17.

The packed programme unveiled yesterday features 100 events over the 11 days of the festival, engaging a wide range of interests and exploring topical themes.

Through authors, workshops, music, comedy, poetry, theatre and discussions, festival-goers will be treated to the best international and local talent at the Crescent Arts Centre and partner venues across the city.

Acclaimed writers as diverse as Douglas Murray (The Strange Death of Europe) and Louis de Bernieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin) will discuss their latest books.

Poet Kayo Chingonyi will read from his new collection, Kumukanda, in which issues of race, identity and masculinity are explored. And current affairs commentators including Polly Toynbee, David Walker and Gary Younge will discuss the political uncertainties around Brexit.

This year also sees the launch of the inaugural Mairtin Crawford Award.

Aimed at poets working towards their first full collection, the winner will receive a six-month mentorship.

Festival director Keith Acheson said: "The festival provides not only a unique opportunity to explore, discuss and debate key themes affecting us all, but importantly offers new and existing audiences the opportunity to discover these themes through the wonderful world of books."

Deepa Mann-Kler, chair of the Crescent Arts Centre, said: "We have literary nourishment for your mind, body and soul."

Damian Smyth, head of literature and drama at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the festival's principal funder, added:"The seventh Belfast Book Festival opens up the incredible worlds of literature and the imagination by allowing the best international and local writers to present their work to audiences in the most intimate of settings.

"The Arts Council's support reflects our confidence in this festival to extend the appeal of all literary genres so that everyone has the opportunity to experience the full and inimitable pleasure of books."
The north coast of Northern Ireland is well known for its scenic views and now a new walking route at Fairhead, near Ballycastle is certain to bring even more visitors to the Causeway Coast.

Known as Northern Irelands tallest cliff face, the impressive and iconic Fairhead rises 600 feet above sea level. Highly regarded as an outstanding rock-climbing location, its believed to be the biggest expanse of climbable rock in Britain or Ireland.

The walking route

Walkers can enjoy the breathtakingly beautiful views from the top to Ballycastle, Murlough Bay, Rathlin Island and the Scottish isles. The challenging route  which requires good walking boots, a map and caution near the cliff edge - gives walkers a sense of how fire, ice and volcanic activity shaped the unique formation of the headland some 60 million years ago.

There is car-parking available on your approach to the headland. The trailhead panel in the car park will offer you a number of route choices with loops from 1.5 to 3.4 miles. Whichever walk you choose to do, take time to read the hidden interpretation information at some of the waymarkers pointing out important sites of historic and geological interest along the way.

Discover the history

There are early housing settlement villages, known as clachans, to be discovered. The area was once an important industrial site for coal mining and the kelp industry. Its also steeped in mystic mythology; legend has it the Children of Lir were put under an evil spell, transforming them into swans to spend 900 years in exile from humanity in the Sea of Moyle. From the Dalriadian Kingdom period, there once stood in all its mighty, Dunmore Fort.

Local wildlife

Wild goats roam the rocks beneath the clifftops, as you wind along the rugged coastline. From the road, a manmade Iron Age island or crannog can be seen in the middle of a lake, Lough na Cranagh. The lakes are stocked with trout and can be fished during the summer months.

Take a trip to Rathlin Island

May is the best time to combine a trip to Fairhead and the seaside town of Ballycastle with a ferry crossing to Rathlin Island. Orchid carpets appear on hillsides and the air is filled with birdsong as the islands famous seabirds - guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, puffins, fulmars, shags and gannets - compete to establish territories and attract a mate.

The RSPB Seabird Centre has just re-opened for the year, with binoculars and telescopes on a viewing platform where staff are available to help identify birds. Wildlife is in abundance on Rathlin, where only about 100 people live today. Its rugged terrain, a dramatic patchwork of idyllic green fields, towering sea-cliffs and sensational sea- views, make it an inspirational retreat from the mainland.

Nearby attractions

Rathlin West Lighthouse

Known as Irelands only upside down lighthouse, visitors can now explore the unique Rathlin West Lighthouse as part of Irish Lights Great Lighthouses of Ireland trail. Take a tour to learn about its history and the people that lived and worked there.

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Aquaholics Dive Centre

The Antrim coast is prime wreck-diving territory, with a multitude of boats, ships and a WWII German sub to be found under the sea. This PADI certified centre offers Try a Dive sessions in the sea for complete beginners - and can take the more experienced to some fascinating finds. Explore the ancient wrecks and reefs of Rathlin Island, swim with seals along the Causeway Coast or discover caves under the island at Carrick-A-Rede Rope Bridge.

Ursa Minor Bakehouse

Expand Close Ursa Minor Bakehouse in Ballycastle. / Facebook

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See behind the scenes at this artisan bakehouse, part of the Economusee, or working museum, network. Founders Ciara and Dara O hArtghaile discovered delights like sourdough loaves and friands while living for a year in New Zealand and returned home to Ballycastle where they use traditional techniques to hand-mould loaves.

Place to stay

Marine Hotel

The 3* Marine Hotel sits in a prime location, overlooking the picturesque marina and harbour in the seaside town of Ballycastle and only a stones throw away from the golden Ballycastle Beach.

Restaurant

Morton's Fish & Chips

This unassuming little hut on the waters edge attracts huge queues in the summer months. Go now for delicious cod, haddock, sea bass, scallops or scampi that are freshly unloaded in Ballycastle Harbour.

If you would like to enjoy a short break, there is a wide range of excellent accommodation available across the area ranging from luxurious hotels, to B&Bs full of character and charm, and self-catering options as a home from home.

There is an option to suit all needs and pockets with many great offers available at this time so check out www.discovernorthernireland.com for further information.
EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier after being shown the cross border road on the N53 road between Co. Louth and the A37 road in Co Armagh in Northern Ireland by local Irish Government members. (Liam McBurney/PA Wire)

EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier (centre) talking with Phil Hogan European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development (left), chief executive of Co-operation Ireland Peter Sheridan (2nd left), Irish Minster for Forgein Affairs Charlie Flanagan (2nd right), and Heather Humphreys TD at the border road on the N53 road between Co. Louth and the N3 road in Co. Armagh Northern Ireland. (Liam McBurney/PA Wire)

EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier speaking to the media with Irish Foreign Affairs Minster Charlie Flanagan (left), European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan (2nd right), and Heather Humphreys TD after a visit to Lough Egish Food Park, in Co Monaghan, Ireland. (Liam McBurney/PA Wire)

Michel Barnier has said there is always an answer if the will exists to resolve the Irish border question.

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator visited the Republic's frontier with Northern Ireland at the end of a two-day visit to the country.

It will become the UK's only land border with an EU state after Brexit.

Mr Barnier had earlier raised the prospect of customs controls but struck a pragmatic note after meeting business owners.

He said: "There is always an answer, there is always a road when there is a will."

Businesses and politicians in the Republic and Northern Ireland want to avoid the restrictions on movement of the past.

Brexit Secretary David Davis has said the UK would adopt technology to cover the transport of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The British Government wants a "frictionless" arrangement to avoid a return to the borders of the past when the area was heavily militarised because of the IRA threat.

On Thursday Mr Barnier warned Brexit would have consequences and said controls were part of EU border management, protecting the single market and food safety.

On Friday he visited a company producing ready made meals for the UK which could be hard-hit by Brexit.

Swift Fine Foods in Co Monaghan exports a quarter of its produce to the UK and uses the land route through Northern Ireland.

Mr Barnier said: "This negotiation once again will be extraordinary and very complex and difficult."

He said it would be financial, legal and technical but firstly human, social and economic.

"I want to listen to meet the people on the ground, to come into the negotiation having the feet on the ground.

"I came to this county of Monaghan to listen, not to give solutions."
We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. Please see policies for more information.

Disclosure: This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #onetreeonebag #CollectiveBias

Its 6:30/7am and the alarm goes off (next year for high school its earlier but we arent talking about that right now). After I let the dogs out and wake up a bit I sit down to push out some computer work with a cup of hot coffee. Every morning. Its my routine, my me time and its even better on the weekends with a book instead of my computer! I like to try to keep an eye out for easy ways to give back with things we do every day like a cup of coffee. While Parker and I were shopping for essentials I made sure to pick up a bag of Starbucks Pike Place Roast because for every bag of Starbucks 10-12z & 20z Ground or Whole Bean coffee purchased at participating Albertsons Company stores in the U.S. from May 1st through May 28, Starbucks, through its partnership with Conservation International, provides one disease-resistant coffee tree to a coffee farmer in Guatemala or El Salvador.

Giving Back

Yes! Starbucks will donate 70 to Conservation International for every bag of coffee sold at participating Albertsons Company stores in the U.S. from May 1st through May 28 to foster thriving coffee communities. To learn more, visit conservation.org/onetree. Check out the displays they have in store when you grab your bag(s).

Do you try to give back in little ways like this? I enjoyed looking up and learning about this effort (its not the first year theyve done this). I love the thinking that it can start with one person, one cup and one neighborhood at a time. Together, Conservation International and Starbucks are sparking an industry-wide movement to make coffee the first sustainable agricultural product in the world which is super inspiring.

Once Ive finished a bag I like to come up with ways to reuse the packaging to further the giving back. We love origami and this is a favorite project to use stronger materials like the Starbucks Pike Place Roast bag because it will hold up better!

Origami Wallet from a Coffee Bag

Open up the bag at the seams and wipe off any coffee grounds left. Carefully remove the plastic pressure valve.



Trim the bag to 8 x 9.



Next youll fold the bag hamburger or taco style Basically, along the long end so youre folding the 9 side to make it 4.5. Run your fingernail along the crease to make it as tight as possible.

Open back up and fold each edge into the center fold. Open back up so you have 3 creases.



Next, fold the corners in to meet the creases closest to them.



Then, fold back down on those outside creases so the corners are tucked inside. Turn the whole thing over.



Now, fold the entire thing in half!



Open back up. The crease you just made is the center of the wallet. Fold the outside edges into the center on each side. To secure youll want to glue these final flaps down. The triangles are where youll keep your cards or money!



Like this!











Now every time you use your wallet you can remember the farmers in Mexico, Guatemala or El Salvador!

Pike Place is a registered trademark of The Pike Place Market PDA, used under license.



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Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in London. PA

The "war on terror" has been a failure, Jeremy Corbyn said as he insisted as prime minister he would not be afraid to stand up to Donald Trump's US administration.

In a major speech setting out his approach to foreign and defence policy, the Labour leader said "fresh thinking" was needed.

In an address to the Chatham House international affairs think tank in London, Mr Corbyn insisted he was not a pacifist but cautioned against a "bomb first, talk later" approach to foreign policy.

"Today the world is more unstable than even at the height of the Cold War. The approach to international security we have been using since the 1990s simply has not worked," he said.

"Regime change wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria - and Western interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen - haven't always succeeded in their own terms.

"Sometimes they have made the world a more dangerous place."

He said it was the fourth general election in a row during which the UK had been at war.

"The fact is the war on terror, which has driven these interventions, has not succeeded.

"It has not increased our security at home. In fact, many would say, just the opposite."

Senior members of Mr Corbyn's team were present for the speech, including shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry and shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti.

Expand Close Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outlines his party's defence and foreign policies at Chatham House on May 12, 2017 in London, England. Mr Corbyn announced a robust and independent foreign policy and no hand holding with U.S President Donald Trump. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Getty Images / Facebook

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Whatsapp Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn outlines his party's defence and foreign policies at Chatham House on May 12, 2017 in London, England. Mr Corbyn announced a robust and independent foreign policy and no hand holding with U.S President Donald Trump. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

But shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith - whose support for the Trident nuclear deterrent is at odds with her leader - was notably absent from the event.

Mr Corbyn, who has been accused by the Tories of being weak on defence and security, hit out at the way the issue was characterised.

"Too much of our debate about defence and security is one-dimensional, you are either for or you are against what is presented as 'strong defence', regardless of the actual record of what it has meant in practice," he said.

"Alert citizens - or political leaders - who advocate other routes to security are often dismissed or treated as unreliable."

Mr Corbyn condemned Mr Trump's US administration for "recklessly" endangering global security through interventions in North Korea and Syria while opposing President Barack Obama's nuclear deal with Iran.

He said that while a Labour government would want a "strong and friendly" relationship with the US, it would "not be afraid to speak our mind" to Washington.

He criticised Theresa May for "pandering" to the US president during her visit to Washington earlier this year.

"Waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isn't strong leadership. And pandering to an erratic administration will not deliver stability," he said.

"Britain deserves better than simply outsourcing our country's security and prosperity to the whims of the Trump White House. So no more hand-holding with Donald Trump.

"A Labour government will conduct a robust and independent foreign policy made in Britain."

He also denounced the way in which Mrs May had spoken in "alarmist terms" about the rise of China and India and the need for Britain and America to use their "military might" to protect their interests.

"That is the sort of language that led us into the calamities in Iraq and Libya and other disastrous wars, that stole the post-Cold War promise of a new and peaceful world order," he said.

'Bomb first, talk later approach hasn't worked'

Mr Corbyn, a former chairman of the Stop the War coalition, denied that he was a pacifist but said the "bomb first, talk later" approach to security taken by the Conservatives in government had failed.

"The best defence for Britain is a government actively engaged in seeking peaceful solutions to the world's problems. But I am not a pacifist," he said.

"I accept that military action, under international law and as a genuine last resort, is in some circumstances necessary.

"But that is very far from the kind of unilateral wars and interventions that have almost become routine in recent times."

The Labour leader, who has previously made clear he would never authorise the use of Britain's nuclear weapons, said that if it ever were to emerge as a "real option" it would represent a "cataclysmic failure" by world leaders.

"I am often asked if as prime minister I would order the use of nuclear weapons," he said.

"It's an extraordinary question when you think about it - would you order the indiscriminate killing of millions of people? Would you risk such extensive contamination of the planet that no life could exist across large parts of the world?

"If circumstances arose where that was a real option, it would represent complete and cataclysmic failure. It would mean world leaders had already triggered a spiral of catastrophe for humankind."

Mr Corbyn said that in office, Labour would work to halt the "drift to conflict" with Russia while maintaining its opposition to human rights abuses by Moscow.

"There is no need whatever to weaken our opposition to Russia's human rights abuses at home or abroad to understand the necessity of winding down tensions on the Russia-Nato border and supporting dialogue to reduce the risk of international conflict," he said.

Mr Corbyn said Labour would retain the commitment to the Nato target of spending 2% of GDP on defence, and strongly criticised the Conservatives' record on the armed forces.

"They have balanced the books on the backs of servicemen and women. Deep cuts have seen the Army reduced to its smallest size since the Napoleonic Wars," he said.

"From stagnant pay and worsening conditions to poor housing, the morale of our service personnel and veterans is at rock bottom."
A Labour government would extend abortion rights to women in Northern Ireland over the heads of Assembly members, according to the party's leaked draft manifesto.

The document, published in full by the Guardian yesterday, said: "Labour will continue to ensure a woman's right to choose a safe, legal abortion - and we will legislate to extend that right to women in Northern Ireland".

The 1967 Abortion Act does not apply to Northern Ireland and women here may only access a termination if her life or her health is at serious risk.

Foetal abnormalities, rape and incest are not considered grounds for a legal abortion, so hundreds of women from Northern Ireland travel to Britain each year for terminations.

Last night, pro-choice campaigners welcomed the commitment, but anti-abortion groups said it displayed "utter contempt" for voters in Northern Ireland.

Grainne Teggart, Northern Ireland campaigns manager for Amnesty International, welcomed the commitment.

"Westminster has long neglected its duty to uphold the rights of women in this part of the UK," she said.

"I would encourage other parties to commit to abortion law reform, including decriminalisation. The next UK Government must address this as a matter of urgency."

But the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC) accused Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn of "breathtaking arrogance".

SPUC's Northern Ireland development officer Liam Gibson said: "The decision by the Labour Party to include in its election manifesto a commitment to impose the Abortion Act on Northern Ireland demonstrates a shocking level of utter contempt for the people of the province and the devolved institutions established by the Good Friday Agreement. We are outraged but so should every single person in Northern Ireland be by this high-handed interference.

"We have the legal and constitutional right to make our own laws on issues such as abortion, which is a matter for the devolved Assembly in Stormont.

"If the Labour Party were to carry out its threat to override the democratic settlement in the province in order to push its own extremist and unpopular abortion agenda, it would severely damage the credibility of the political process and make the existence of the Assembly meaningless."

Pro-choice campaigners Alliance for Choice welcomed the pledge, saying it would be encouraging to see a main Westminster party pushing for abortion rights in Northern Ireland.

"As it stands, 1,000 women a year travel from Northern Ireland to the mainland to access treatment that really should be accessible here," a spokesperson said.

"Our laws here don't stop abortions from happening, they just export them elsewhere so that politicians can pretend it isn't something that happens, and meanwhile it's the most vulnerable women, with little access to money or travel, who are forced into desperate situations."

Green Party deputy leader Clare Bailey said: "I'm encouraged that the Labour Party has pledged action on the issue but I remain disappointed that both Westminster and our Assembly have continually failed women here.

"The Northern Ireland High Court ruled that our abortion legislation is in breach of minimum human rights standards back in 2015. Likewise, the UK Government have been repeatedly called on to decriminalise abortion in Northern Ireland by a series of international human rights bodies.

"This means that there is a legal responsibility for the Westminster Government to act to ens ure that they are human rights compliant in all areas of the United Kingdom."

Cara Sanquest of the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign said: "Those living in other parts of the UK can access free and safe abortions on the NHS, under the 1967 Abortion Act. This right was never extended to Northern Ireland.

"We are aware that the manifesto is currently in draft. We urge the Labour Party to retain this vital pledge and provide more information.

"We'd also strongly encourage other parties to follow suit when publishing their manifestos."
The cost of theft and vandalism to the Belfast Bikes scheme has risen to almost 20,000 this year - an almost tenfold increase

The cost of theft and vandalism to the Belfast Bikes scheme has risen to almost 20,000 this year - an almost tenfold increase.

According to a report, Belfast City Council it is considering increasing security by installing CCTV or dummy cameras near bike stations.

Earlier this year, the council removed bikes from certain points overnight after they were identified as crime hotspots.

Since then, however, the problem has grown, with all stations now affected to some extent.

Police have punished six people, with two community orders issued and another on the way. One case has been referred to the Public Prosecution Service and two more are pending.

Theft and vandalism cost the scheme 1,805 in its first year, rising to 18,807 in year two.

The scheme has 41 docking stations, with two more planned for Carlisle Circus and Twin Spires on the Falls Road, funded under the Building Successful Communities Fund.

However, Belfast City Council's City Growth and Regeneration Committee is set to hear next week that a strategic review of the scheme will be undertaken before any further developments.

City council director of development Donal Durkan said in his report for the committee: "This review will work at a number of elements, including how to resolve the vandalism challenge, pricing policy, policy for deciding the locations for any future expansion of the scheme and opportunities for alignment with wider city developments, e.g. link to new regeneration schemes, partnerships with major conferences and future financing options, including sponsorship."

Officers are also carrying out further action in parallel with the review.

Jonathan Hobbs, editor of Bikefest.org, said the problem needed to be solved quickly.

"Belfast Bikes is a cheap, socially inclusive transport from just 20 a year, and free journeys under 30 mins places this within the budget of everyone," Mr Hobbs added.

"Belfast needs to come together as one united community to stop this pointless destruction.

"The council needs to solve the mystery of bikes being stolen with apparent ease and solve it quickly.

"We're on the brink of losing one important and popular solution to our urban mobility needs."

The PSNI urged the public to report any incidents of vandalism.
One of the two dry docks in Belfast. It is argued being scheduled rather than listed would offer them more appropriate protected status

Two dry docks which are the oldest part of Belfast's port may lose listed status as a result of a review by Northern Ireland's heritage authorities.

The Department for Communities has asked Belfast City Council for its views on delisting the two Clarendon graving docks, close to the Belfast Harbour Commissioners Office.

A report to the council's planning committee said: "The department is currently considering the delisting of the following and would welcome the views of the council on this matter.

"They have been recommended for delisting because they do not meet the criteria to be a listed building.

"Both graving docks are scheduled, rather than listed, as a more appropriate form of protection."

Both docks would not be under formal protection, but would be subject to planning law.

No 1 Graving Dock is the earliest surviving part of Belfast's port infrastructure.

It sits beside the Harbour Office, and was constructed between 1796 and 1800 on behalf of the Belfast Board by William Ritchie, an Ayrshire-born shipbuilder who moved to Belfast in 1791. It was completed at a cost of 7, 684.

The low building in the middle was a workshop, whose upstairs section was designed for working on the rigging of sailing ships. The No 2 Graving Dock and the dock buildings were completed in 1826 to designs by David Logan from Angus.

These two docks were used to work on the ships' hulls once the gates had closed, allowing water to be pumped out.

The open dock between this area and the main river was opened in 1851. The area has now been transformed into a business hub and is home to, among others, the Belfast Telegraph and the NI Policing Board.

Nikki McVeigh, chief executive of the Ulster Architectural Heritage Society, said the group normally did not support delisting per se.

"In this very unique instance, it probably is fine, because the docks have scheduling protection," she said.

"They are not taking away protection - they are moving to a more appropriate form of protection."

The department also asked for views on listing several buildings, including the Chapel of Unity at Methodist College and All Souls Church Hall in nearby Elmwood Avenue, both of which are in south Belfast.
To the residents of Greenisland he was simply Eddie, the retired plumber from down the road.

He had lived in the area for over half his life and was said to be as quiet and inoffensive as the Co Antrim loughside village itself.

People remember Eddie Girvan pottering around in his silver Hyundai car, on the hunt for bargain antiques.

Perhaps not the most gregarious of men, he lived alone for the final three years of his life following the death of his partner, but was polite and friendly when spoken to.

And when somebody needed a job done, the father of two girls rarely refused.

His hobbies included collecting antiques and he was well-known to the local dealers through frequenting their shops.

He valued his privacy, though, and had CCTV cameras installed at his home.

Eddie was always there to help anyone in trouble, his long-term friend John Milliken recalled.

I had known him for about 30 years; he had a good heart. He was very good at anything he turned his hand to.

Mr Milliken told the Belfast Telegraph that the 67-year-old was brilliant with his hands, interested in loads of things and had a great mind.

I think he would have loved to have been a mechanic as he loved motorbikes and rode grass track in his younger days, said Mr Milliken.

There was nothing mechanical that he couldnt work with or fix.

In the three decades of their friendship, Mr Milliken said Eddie  affectionately nicknamed Plumb by friends because of his trade  was drawn to people who were struggling, and was always willing to help.

Eddie was a kind man, but I felt that sometimes folks could take advantage of his kindness and his goodness, he added.

Mr Milliken told how Mr Girvan had been in a relationship for 13 years after his marriage to Heather ended.

However, his partner had passed away around three years before his own death, adding that life had been tougher for Eddie after his lady friend died.

Another family friend, Richard Meeke, described the pensioners death as tragic and said it was a great loss to the family and to Greenisland.

Eddie, who is survived by two daughters, Martina and Amanda, was also well-known to local Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson.

The pair had attended Greenisland Primary School and the Boys Brigade together.

He was a lovely guy, a local handyman who was well-known throughout the community, said Mr Dickson.

He was a really nice person, very popular. Everyone in the local area knew Eddie and he was one of those men who would always stop and talk to you.

His teenage daughters were in our local Guides.

Mr Dickson added: He was a very friendly individual but, if anything, he was maybe too trusting.

Tragically for his family and friends, Eddies many qualities are not what immediately spring to mind when his name is mentioned in the Greenisland area now.

Those who live there recall the shock of hearing about his death, and the grim scene encountered by police officers when they entered his home at Station Road in January of last year.

Detectives found him seated, his shorts around his ankles, his hands and ankles bound together with neckties and his mouth stuffed with kitchen roll, blocking his airways.

He had sustained several stab wounds, including a serious injury to his chest that resulted in internal bleeding.

In a bail application for Margaret Henderson-McCarroll last November, a court heard claims that his death was the result of an argument over money for sex.

Yesterday, 31-year-old Henderson-McCarroll admitted the pensioners manslaughter, just as she was about to go on trial for murder.

The prosecution accepted the plea on the grounds of diminished responsibility from the mother-of-two, who has a long history of drug addiction.
A 31-year-old heroin addict has admitted unlawfully killing a Co Antrim pensioner.

Margaret Henderson-McCarroll's guilty plea to the manslaughter of Eddie Girvan came moments before her trial for his murder was due to start. The mother-of-two is now awaiting sentencing.

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Mr Girvan's body was discovered tied up inside his home on Station Road in Greenisland on January 18 last year.

He was found with stab wounds to his chest, and his death sparked shock and horror in the community.

Yesterday morning, Henderson-McCarroll's defence barrister, John McCrudden, asked trial judge Mr Justice Treacy for the defendant to be re-arraigned before Belfast Crown Court.

His client then admitted in front of a jury of six women and five men that she was "not guilty of murder, but guilty (of) manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility".

Following the development, Charles MacCreanor QC, for the Crown, said: "The prosecution accept those pleas."

Mr Justice Treacy then remanded Henderson-McCarroll - who wore jeans with a blue checked shirt over a white T-shirt and had her short hair dyed red - back into custody while pre-sentence reports are compiled ahead of her sentencing next month.

No details surrounding the horrific death were given during the hearing.

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However, in a bail application last November, a Belfast court heard claims that retired plumber turned antiques collector Mr Girvan was killed in an argument over money for sex.

Following her arrest, Henderson-McCarroll, who has close to 100 previous convictions and a history of drug addiction, made admissions to police.

Belfast Crown Court was told the victim paid her to have sex with him, that she spent the weekend in his house and that on the morning he died they had a row over money.

It also emerged that police found Mr Girvan - his hands and ankles bound together with neckties - with kitchen paper stuffed in his mouth, which resulted in his tongue blocking his airway.

He had also several stab wounds, including a serious injury to his chest that resulted in internal bleeding.

The defendant told police that during the row Mr Girvan pushed her and struck out at her with a sword and that she "poked him in the stomach".

Henderson-McCarroll also made the case that she gagged him because she did not wants the neighbours to hear.

She denied murdering him, claiming she lost control while acting in self-defence.

The earlier hearing was told that she was arrested in south Belfast while on her way to allegedly see a drug dealer after allegedly selling a gold chain belonging to Mr Girvan for 60 at a Cash Converters.

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In addition to the manslaughter charge, Henderson-McCarroll, who was living at the Ormeau Centre, in Verner Street in the Markets area of south Belfast but whose address on court papers was given as Hydebank Young Offenders' Centre, pleaded guilty to a total of eight other charges.

They included attempting to steal 20 from the pensioner, stealing his Zodiac watch, a Praktica digital camera, a gold chain, a Garmin SatNav device, binoculars and a bunch of his keys.

The defendant also pleaded guilty to a series of motoring offences that same day, ranging from taking Mr Girvan's Hyundai Sonata car, driving it while unfit through drugs or drink and with no insurance, crashing it and failing to stop or report the accident.
A man has been tortured after he was abducted off a Belfast street.

The man, aged in his 30s, was walking along Denmark Street around 1.30am on Friday morning when a car carrying three men stopped beside him.

He was attacked and forced into the car before being taken to another address. He was then beaten again and had boiling water poured over his hand.

The victim was then returned to Denmark Street suffering cuts and bruises to his head and body as a result. He also sustained burns to his right hand.

Detective Sergeant Sloan is appealing for anyone who witnessed the incident or anyone with any information that can assist with the investigation to contact Detectives in Musgrave Police Station on 101 quoting reference number 227 of 12/05/17. Information can also be passed anonymously via the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
Local children are increasingly turning to Childline for help and counselling as they struggle to cope with the pressure of exam stress. New figures from the NSPCC-run helpline reveal it delivered 93 counselling sessions to children from here in 2016/17 - up from 78 the year before.

Neil Anderson, head of the NSPCC in Northern Ireland, said: "Every year, we hear from thousands of children who are struggling to cope with the pressure to succeed in exams.

"For some, this can feel so insurmountable that it causes crippling anxiety and stress and in some cases contributes to mental health issues or even suicidal thoughts and feelings.

"Exams are important, but worrying and panicking about them can be counterproductive, leaving young people unable to revise and prepare.

"It is vital that young people are supported by family, friends and teachers during the exam period to help them do the best they can.

"Childline is also here 24/7 for any young person needing confidential support and advice."

Of the UK-wide contacts, more than a fifth took place in May as pupils faced upcoming exams.

Many told counsellors they were struggling with subjects, excessive workloads and feeling unprepared.

Children aged 12 to 15 were most likely to be counselled about exam stress, but this year saw the biggest rise - up 21% across the UK on 2015/16 - amongst 16 to 18-year-olds, many of whom will have been preparing for A-levels to determine university places.

Childline president Dame Esther Rantzen said: "I am very distressed that so many young people are turning to Childline because they have nobody else to confide in safely when they are desperately anxious.

"We need to recognise how stressful exams can be and reassure our young people and support them through these tough times "

Across the UK, Childline said it delivered 3,135 counselling sessions to children on exam stress in 2016/17 - a rise of 11% from 2015/16.

Children and young people can contact Childline for free, confidential support and advice, 24 hours a day on 0800 1111 or at www.childline.org.uk
Michel Barnier is shown the cross-border road on the N53 road between Co Louth and the A37 road in Co Armagh

There is always an answer to what shape the Irish border takes after Brexit, Michel Barnier said.

The EU's chief negotiator visited the Republic's frontier with Northern Ireland at the end of a two-day visit.

It will become the UK's only land border with an EU state after Brexit.

The Frenchman said: "There is always an answer, there is always a road when there is a will."

He had earlier raised the prospect of customs controls but struck a pragmatic note after meeting business owners badly affected by Brexit.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair has told a meeting in the Irish Republic of Europe's centre-right political groups that a "hard border" on the island would be a disaster.

The former prime minister said a deal between Britain and Ireland on the issue was the best way of limiting damage from Brexit.

"If the UK and the Republic were able to agree a way forward on the border, then we would have the best chance of limiting the damage. It is in the interests of us all, including our European partners, for this to happen."

He said getting consensus on the border will be crucial in the negotiations.

On Friday, Mr Barnier visited a company producing ready-made meals for the UK which could be hard hit by Brexit.

He warned: "This negotiation once again will be extraordinary and very complex and difficult."

Mr Barnier said the talks would be financial, legal and technical but firstly human, social and economic.

"I want to listen, to meet the people on the ground, to come into the negotiation having the feet on the ground.

"I came to this county of Monaghan to listen, not to give solutions."

Businesses and politicians in the Republic and Northern Ireland want to avoid the restrictions on movement of the past.

Brexit Secretary David Davis has said the UK would adopt technology to cover the transport of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The British Government wants a "frictionless" arrangement to avoid a return to the borders of the past when the area was heavily militarised because of the IRA threat.

On Thursday Mr Barnier warned Brexit would have consequences and said controls were part of EU border management, protecting the single market and food safety.
Josie McCusker was just five years old when, on a bright Sunday morning in September 1942, a Spitfire crashed on her father's land and almost set the family farmhouse alight.

The impact, just across the Irish border in Co Monaghan, caused an enormous explosion and sent pieces of burning wreckage flying across the nearby fields.

While most of the wreckage remained above ground, parts of the Battle of Britain fighter were buried when it crashed.

Luckily, the plane's pilot had bailed out in time.

Tomorrow, an excavation of the site will begin, and among those watching will be Josie, now 80 years old.

"I was with my two sisters in the house (at the time)," she told this newspaper.

"My mother was at church and my father was in the byre milking the cows when we heard the almighty bang.

"My father came running into the house because a piece of something that was burning had landed on the roof.

"There were bits of the plane scattered all over the yard, but we didn't know what it was at that time.

"Around 200 people gathered to see what it was, but then the Army came to keep everyone back and to make sure there were no bombs on board.

"It was very close to our house and we could have been killed, but thankfully no one was and the pilot had got out before the crash."

The excavation will be carried out by a team of aviation historians, Queen's University surveyors and professional archaeologists, supported by Monaghan County Museum.

Among them is Londonderry man Jonny McNee, an aviation historian who discovered the wreckage and organised the dig.

"Although the site was largely cleared by the Irish Army at the time of the crash, it is suspected that parts remain buried in the impact crater," Mr McNee said.

"The aim of the project is to safely excavate the impact crater of this aircraft and recover any remaining pieces of wreckage.

"Wreckage will then be sorted, identified, catalogued, cleaned and preserved before being returned to the Monaghan (County) Museum later in the year for display.

"This will enable the museum to put on a display of artefacts from the only Battle of Britain Spitfire to be legally excavated in Ireland.

"We won't know exactly what we will find, but we will be able to keep anyone that is interested up to date on our Facebook page, The Monaghan Spitfire."
Ireland is to bid to host two EU bodies located in London, Taoiseach Enda Kenny confirmed.

The European Medicines Agency is responsible for the protection of public and animal health through the scientific evaluation and supervision of medicines.

The European Banking Authority was tasked with finding risks and vulnerabilities in the EU banking sector at the height of the financial crisis.

Mr Kenny addressed the Dail following Michel Barnier's speech to Dublin parliamentarians.

He said: "Ireland will bid along with other countries for the two EU bodies currently located in London, the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Authority.

"I believe that Ireland offers an excellent opportunity as a location for these."

He said Brexit was a British policy.

"It is not an Irish policy and it is not an EU policy.

"For its part Ireland remains committed clearly to the European Union and its future."

He said 88% of Irish people felt the country should remain a member of the EU and membership had transformed the country over the last 40 years.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Sean Haughey and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan during a reception at Glencairn House, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PA

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and Sean Haughey meet the Prince of Wales during a reception at Glencairn House, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PA

Prince Charles has shared his condolences with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams over the death of Martin McGuinness during a reception in Dublin hosted by the British ambassador.

The veteran Irish republican was among 200 guests to greet the prince and Camilla as they arrived at Glencairn House, the official residence of ambassador Robin Barnett.

It is almost 41 years since IRA bombers murdered British ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs at the residence.

The Prince and the Sinn Fein president shook hands and shared a joke about their dates of birth.

Charles said that they were both born in the same year - 1948 - but joked that the Sinn Fein leader was older.

Speaking afterwards Adams said: "The history is the history and it's really important but the future hasn't been written."

Earlier in the day Charles paid tribute to those who fought for Irish freedom in the 1916 Rising.

He said it was important to honour the memory of "men and women from all sides whose sacrifice shaped our shared history".

The future king also laid a wreath at a memorial in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin in memory of all those who died in the 1916 rebellion.

He and his wife Camilla took part in a ceremony at the Necrology Wall, which bears the names of all who died in the rebellion - Irish and British, military, police and civilian.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close The Prince of Wales unveils a Victoria Cross paving stone in memory of Corporal John Cunningham at the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA The wreath laid by the Prince of Wales at the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA (Left-right) Conor Dodd with the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys and John Green at Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA (Left-right) the Duchess of Cornwall, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys and the Prince of Wales receive a tour by John Green (second right) and Conor Dodd (right), of Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA (Left-right) Conor Dodd shows the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys and John Green the grave of Eamon De Valera at Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA Victoria Cross paving stones which were unveiled at the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA The Prince of Wales unveils a Victoria Cross paving stone in memory of Corporal John Cunningham at the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire PA / Facebook

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Whatsapp The Prince of Wales unveils a Victoria Cross paving stone in memory of Corporal John Cunningham at the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Friday May 12, 2017. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are on a three day visit to Ireland. See PA story ROYAL Ireland. Photo credit should read: Lorraine O'Sullivan/PA Wire

They also took part in a ceremony at a war memorial where Victoria Cross paving stones were unveiled in memory of four Irish-born soldiers - Corporal John Cunningham, Company Sergeant Major Robert Hill Hanna, Lieutenant Frederick Maurice Watson Harvey and Private Michael James O'Rourke.

The Prince also met Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, on the final day of his visit.

Charles and Mr Kenny held a private meeting in government buildings, Dublin.

As the future king signed his name in the visitors' book, he joked: "This is just to prove I can write".

Speaking at the end of their four-day visit to the island of Ireland, Charles said his most memorable moment was joining the acts of remembrance.

He said: "My wife and I were deeply moved to join acts of remembrance.

"It's so very important we are able to come together to honour the memory of so many men and women from all sides whose sacrifice shaped our shared history."
The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall are on a four-day visit

The Prince of Wales has paid tribute to those who fought for Irish freedom in the 1916 Rising.

Prince Charles said it was important to honour the memory of "men and women from all sides whose sacrifice shaped our shared history".

The future king had earlier laid a wreath at a memorial in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin in memory of all those who died in the 1916 rebellion.

He and his wife Camilla took part in a ceremony at the Necrology Wall, which bears the names of all who died in the rebellion - Irish and British, military, police and civilian.

They also took part in a ceremony at a war memorial where Victoria Cross paving stones were unveiled in memory of four Irish-born soldiers - Corporal John Cunningham, Company Sergeant Major Robert Hill Hanna, Lieutenant Frederick Maurice Watson Harvey and Private Michael James O'Rourke.

Speaking at the end of their four-day visit to the island of Ireland, Charles said his most memorable moment was joining the acts of remembrance.

He said at an event in the British ambassador's Dublin residence : "My wife and I were deeply moved to join acts of remembrance.

"It's so very important we are able to come together to honour the memory of so many men and women from all sides whose sacrifice shaped our shared history,"

Charles also shared his condolences with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams over the death of Martin McGuinness during a reception hosted by the ambassador.

The veteran Irish republican was among 200 guests to greet the prince and Camilla as they arrived at Glencairn House, the official residence of ambassador Robin Barnett.

It is almost 41 years since IRA bombers murdered British ambassador Christopher Ewart-Biggs at the residence.

The Prince and the Sinn Fein president shook hands and shared a joke about their dates of birth.

Charles said that they were both born in the same year - 1948 - but joked that the Sinn Fein leader was older.

The Prince also met Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, on the final day of his visit.

Charles and Mr Kenny held a private meeting in government buildings, Dublin.

As the future king signed his name in the visitors' book, he joked: "This is just to prove I can write".
Not so long ago few people outside of the rail industry had even heard of Mick Lynch, but in the space of a week, the head of the RMT union ...
Two men killed in a speedboat accident in the Irish Sea were part of a notorious puppy smuggling ring that uses Northern Ireland ports to traffic animals to Scotland.

Sandy Hamilton (35) and his cousin, Kevin McKinlay (46), were part of a group that brought thousands of designer puppies from the Republic through Northern Ireland to sell across the UK.

They died on Sunday after setting out from Port Logan in Scotland on Saturday.

One of them was pulled from the water by Donaghadee RNLI.

The BBC reported that a substantial amount of cash was found on Hamilton's body.

It is understood the pair were using the speedboat to evade animal cruelty investigators and police as they went to the Irish Republic to pick up more dogs.

Hamilton, who was due to stand trial accused of killing two pensioners in a car crash, is known to have made regular trips to the Republic to source designer breeds that could come with a price tag of 1,000 each. He would pay as little as 50 for the pups, which would be taken from cramped breeding farms.

The men were under surveillance as part of Operation Delphin, which aims to disrupt the illegal trafficking of pups into Northern Ireland and onwards to the UK market. The USPCA played a key role in the operation and helped intercept six smuggling attempts this year.

A spokesman for the organisations said that puppy smuggling was a multimillion-pound trade that involved vulnerable dogs being crammed into crates and subjected to incarceration in car boots.

Pups are generally bred at farms in the Republic before they are smuggled through Northern Ireland ports without the necessary veterinary paperwork that confirms their age and health condition.

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The mixed litters are then subjected to long journeys by sea and road.

"This is an ideal environment for the spread of fatal diseases such as parvo," the USPCA spokesman said.

"The ongoing success of Operation Delphin is attributed to cooperation between the Ulster, Dublin, Irish and Scottish societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs.

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"Our sharing of intelligence has impacted on this evil trade, and the USPCA has been key to six successful interceptions.

"These have led to the rescue of over 100 puppies and dogs, all of whom were admitted to the USPCA Veterinary Hospital in Newry for recuperation and health checks before being returned to their country of origin.

"Detecting and observing the movement of the couriers comes at a high financial cost, and the charity receives no government funding to offset this outlay."

Investigators previously stopped Hamilton travelling by ferry to Cairnryan in 2015, driving a Range Rover that contained dozens of pups. He was not charged, however, as it could not be proven that he had taken the animals from the Republic.
The Duchess of Cambridge arrived in Luxembourg yesterday for a visit hailed as a boost to relations between the UK and EU

The Duchess of Cambridge arrived in Luxembourg yesterday for a visit hailed as a boost to relations between the UK and EU.

Kate flew to the country to join celebrations marking the signing of a treaty, brokered 150 years ago in London, that secured the future of the land-locked state.

Yvonne White, Britain's deputy ambassador to Luxembourg, insisted the visit was not linked to Brexit. But she added: "It will certainly help bilateral relations."

The Duchess was joined by Princess Stephanie from the Luxembourg royal family on a visit to the capital city's museum of modern art, Mudam.

Before leaving, Kate went on a walkabout and met a group of children from St George's International School.

British-born Alison Huckle, whose six-year-old son, George, met the Duchess said: "She was very down to earth."
Ebola is a deadly haemorrhagic fever that occasionally jumps to humans from animals including bats and monkeys (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention/PA)

One person has been confirmed dead from Ebola in an outbreak in a remote corner of northern Congo as health authorities look into a total of nine suspected cases, including another death, the country's health minister said.

One case of the haemorrhagic fever has been confirmed out of the five tested since the outbreak emerged in Bas-Uele province on April 22, Health Minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga said.

He said the confirmed case was of the Zaire strain of the virus.

The outbreak could test a recently developed experimental Ebola vaccine that the World Health Organisation (WHO) says could be used in emergencies.

The global vaccine alliance GAVI said 300,000 doses are available "if needed to stop this outbreak becoming a pandemic".

This vast, impoverished Central African nation has had seven known previous Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2014 with several dozen cases.

That outbreak was not connected to the massive epidemic in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone that left thousands dead.

Dr Allarangar Yokouide, the WHO representative in Congo, said the first teams of specialists should arrive in the affected area of Likati on Friday or Saturday.

The zone is some 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) from the capital Kinshasa.

"The area in Likati is difficult to access, but the work of tracing contacts is very crucial to stopping the epidemic in its tracks," he said.

The community is near the border with Central African Republic.

Ebola occasionally jumps to humans from animals including bats and monkeys.

Without preventive measures, the virus can spread quickly between people and is fatal in up to 90% of cases.

There is no specific treatment for the disease.

The new cluster of Ebola cases will again test one of the world's least equipped health systems.

The US Agency for International Development has said an estimated 70% of the population has little or no access to health care.

"We urge you not to give in to panic," Mr Kalenga said.

AP
Queens University has come under fire for paying male academics more than females ones

Dismaying news from my beloved alma mater this week. A substantial gender pay gap has been exposed between male and female professors at Queen's University Belfast (QUB). Figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show that QUB's female professors earn almost 15% less on average than their male counterparts. That amounts to a gap of nearly 12,000.

I don't call that a gap, I call that a yawning chasm. And it only gets worse. According to Times Higher Education figures, the disparity is the largest of any of the Russell Group of leading UK universities, of which Queen's is a proud member.

By contrast, the gender pay gap among professors at Oxford is about 3,000, and at Cambridge around 1,500. At Ulster University, it's just over 3,000.

It turns out that this is not a new phenomenon. As far back as 2014, the University and Colleges Union, which represents the majority of lecturers, was flagging up the very wide pay gap between men and women professors at Queen's, describing it as "both shocking and profoundly worrying".

At that point, the gap stood at just over 11,000. Now it has crept up still higher.

So what problem does Queen's have with top female academics?

It must have been really embarrassing for Professor Yvonne Galligan to stand up and defend the university in the face of these woeful figures.

Galligan is director of the Gender Initiative at Queen's, which advocates for a "gender equality culture in the university". She's also the long-time director of the Centre for Advancement of Women in Politics.

Speaking on Radio Ulster, and sounding more than a little uncomfortable, she acknowledged "there is definitely a big problem" which the university is "determined to address".

I was surprised to hear Galligan dismiss the idea that female academics who take career breaks for family reasons may find this impedes their progress up the salary scale.

"Our findings show that this is not the case," she said. "The period of time from getting one's PhD and becoming a professor is pretty much the same for women and men."

If that's true, then the predicament is even worse. At least a career break is a quantifiable - albeit questionable - reason for slower advancement. But if women taking time out to have children isn't an issue, then what exactly is holding them back?

Queen's has almost four times as many male professors as female, and Galligan said that the disproportionate number of men in this senior academic role, many of whom are in much higher pay ranges than female professors because of longevity, contributed to more than half of the pay gap.

No doubt there is a legacy issue involved here. But that's only part of the story. The senior management of Queen's University is also predominantly male.

This raises the question of both conscious and unconscious bias against the idea of women in the highest, most powerful roles. After all, authority tends to reproduce itself in its own likeness.

Proposals put forward by Queen's to address the gap include changes to pay scales and mentoring for female professors.

The university claims to be "one of the leading institutions in the UK for tackling the unequal representation of women in higher education" and says it recognises there is more work to be done to promote equality.

But the University and Colleges Union says the proposals won't be anywhere near enough to close the gender pay gap, which is why it's calling for a root-and-branch review of salaries at Queen's.

Some people might dismiss all this as the niche concern of a small group of highly paid academics. Why should we care whether well-remunerated female professors earn less than their male colleagues when they're still bringing in substantial salaries, far in excess of the average wage?

The point, however, is not the amount earned, but the extent of the disparity. Queen's is our leading university, and it should set the highest standards of excellence in every respect. An embarrassment for Queen's is an embarrassment for Northern Ireland as a whole.

I learned many valuable lessons during my years at Queen's, and one of them was that a woman can carry and embody authority every bit as much as a man. I learned to hear authority in my own voice.

But if these ideas are to mean anything, they must not just be taught, they must be reflected in the structure of the university too.
Affected NHS trusts said that IT systems had been shut down in order to protect them (File photo: Lynne Cameron/PA)

NHS hospitals and surgeries across England and Scotland have been hit by a huge ransomware cyber attack.

Ambulances have been diverted and patients warned to avoid some A&E departments in England after systems were targeted on Friday.

Hospitals and GP surgeries in England and Scotland were among health service organisations hit by a ransomware attack, using malware called Wanna Decryptor.

Staff were forced to revert to pen and paper and use their own mobiles after the attack affected key systems, including telephones.

Here's the malware attack which appears to have hit NHS hospitals right across England today pic.twitter.com/zIAJ6wbAG5  Lawrence Dunhill (@LawrenceDunhill) May 12, 2017

Saffron Cordery, director of policy and strategy of NHS Providers told the BBC that 21 hospitals have been affected but that the attack has also hit universities, pharmacies and dental practices.

An NHS Digital spokesman said: "At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed.

"We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this."

He added the attack "was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors".

'International attack'

Theresa May said the Government is not aware of any evidence that patient records have been compromised.

The Prime Minister said the ransomware hit was "not targeted" at the health service but was part of a wider assault on organisations across a number of countries.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is working to support the NHS.

Mrs May said: "We are aware that a number of NHS organisations have reported that they have suffered from a ransomware attack.

"This is not targeted at the NHS, it's an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected.

"The National Cyber Security Centre is working closely with NHS digital to ensure that they support the organisations concerned and that they protect patient safety.

"And, we are not aware of any evidence that patient data has been compromised.

We are aware of cyber incident and we are working with @NHSDigital and the @NCA_UK to investigate  NCSC UK (@ncsc) May 12, 2017

"Of course it is important that we have set up the National Cyber Security Centre and they are able to work with the NHS organisations concerned and to ensure that they are supported and patient safety is protected."

Scotland

Several health boards in Scotland have confirmed they are affected by the cyber attack that has hit NHS England.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and NHS Forth Valley said some of their GP surgeries have been caught up in the incident.

NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Western Isles also confirmed they have been affected.

The situation across Scotland is currently being monitored closely.

The first health board to confirm it had been affected was Dumfries and Galloway, which said three GP surgeries in the region were hit.

A spokesman said: "Three GP practices have been initially affected and we are taking precautionary measures to prevent any others being affected."

He declined to name the practices involved and said the board is "comfortable and confident" with the steps taken, but added: "We don't know what we're dealing with.

"We are monitoring the situation here, as are all health boards in Scotland."

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) said in a statement: "We can confirm that four GP practices have experienced disruption to their IT systems today.

"The rest of NHSGGC is unaffected."

NHS Forth Valley said some GP and dental surgeries had been hit by the problem.

"We can confirm that a small number of GP and dental practices in the Forth Valley area have experienced disruption to their IT systems which may be linked to the wider IT issues affecting parts of NHS England.

"Steps have been taken to isolate their IT systems to minimise the risk of any virus spreading to other parts of the NHS. The practices affected remain open and have put in place contingency arrangements."

An NHS Western Isles spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that we have been affected but can't confirm to what extent at the moment.

"We do have systems in place to cover all emergencies."

NHS Grampian and NHS Ayrshire and Arran said they are monitoring the situation.

John Wright, director for corporate support services at Ayrshire, said: "NHS Ayrshire & Arran is aware of the reported cyber attacks which appear to have affected NHS services in England and a number of national services across Scotland.

"Our IT security team are closely monitoring our networks to identify any suspicious activity.

"We will continue to do so over the coming days in order to minimise any possible impact on services.

"We are also in contact with the National Services Centre who are co-ordinating the situation on behalf of NHS Scotland.

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is to chair a resilience meeting on the issue.

Scottish Health Secretary Shona Robison said: "We are aware of a number of health boards affected by potential cyber incidents and the First Minister will chair a resilience meeting shortly.

"Scottish Government health officials are currently working closely with affected boards to assess the extent of the problem, and take steps to isolate affected systems, which have been affected by a Ransomware cyber attack of the kind which has also affected health trusts in NHS England.

"We are taking immediate steps to minimise the impact of the attack across NHS Scotland and restrict any disruption.

"Our priority is to ensure that boards are supported to deal with this incident swiftly, and that services to patients can continue to run effectively."

Ransomware

Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of 300 US dollars worth of the online currency Bitcoin, saying: "Ooops, your files have been encrypted!"

It adds: "Maybe you are looking for a way to recover your files, but do not waste your time."

It demands payment in three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received in seven days the files will be deleted.

The IT-help website describes 'Wanna Decryptor' as "one of the worst viruses".

"Ransomware causes great damage and often you have to spend money to fix it. Encrypting ransomware, like Wanna Decryptor, brings greatest gain to its makers, and major damage to its victims."

Global attack: At least 74 countries affected

The malicious software behind the onslaught appeared to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft Windows that was supposedly identified by the US National Security Agency for its own intelligence-gathering purposes and was later leaked to the internet.

Russia appeared to be the hardest hit, according to security experts, with the country's Interior Ministry confirming it was struck.

All told, several cybersecurity firms said they had identified the malicious software, which so far has been responsible for tens of thousands of attacks, in more than 60 countries.

That includes the United States, although its effects there did not appear to be widespread, at least initially.

In the US, FedEx reported its Windows computers were "experiencing interference" from malware, but would not say if it had been hit by ransomware.

Chris Wysopal of the software security firm Veracode said criminal organisations were probably behind the attack, given how quickly the malware spread.

"For so many organisations in the same day to be hit, this is unprecedented," he said.

The security holes it exploits were disclosed several weeks ago by TheShadowBrokers, a group that has published what it says are hacking tools used by the NSA as part of its intelligence-gathering.

Shortly after that disclosure, Microsoft announced it had already issued software "patches" for those holes.

But many companies and individuals have not installed the fixes yet or are using older versions of Windows that Microsoft no longer supports and did not fix.

By Kaspersky Lab's count, the malware struck at least 74 countries.

In addition to Russia, the biggest targets appeared to be Ukraine and India, nations where it is common to find older, unpatched versions of Windows in use, according to the security firm.

Spain, meanwhile, took steps to protect critical infrastructure in response to the attack.

Authorities said they were communicating with more than 100 energy, transportation, telecommunications and financial services providers about the attack.

Spain's Telefonica, a global broadband and telecommunications company, was among the companies hit.

Patients told only to attend A&E only if "absolutely necessary"

Hospital trusts and GP groups in Lancashire and Hertfordshire were among those reporting problems, with one warning patients to only visit hospital accident and emergency departments "if absolutely necessary".

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and the resort town's clinical commissioning group (CCG) warned of problems.

The CCG tweeted: "We are aware of an IT issue affecting some GP computer systems.

"Patients are asked for understanding whilst the issue is resolved.

"Please avoid contacting your GP practice unless absolutely necessary. Should you wish to obtain non-urgent medical advice, please call 111.

"Please also only attend the Walk-In Centre and A&E department if absolutely necessary."

Derbyshire Community Health Services Trust tweeted: "We are aware of a major IT secure system attack.

"All IT systems have been temporarily shut down. More information will be available shortly."

A conversation circulating online saw one doctor saying "our hospital is down".

"We got a message saying your computers are now under their control and pay a certain amount of money," the messages read. "And now everything is gone.

Affected NHS trusts said that IT systems had been shut down in order to protect them. That meant that all systems were offline and hospitals were unable to accept incoming calls.

East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust also said that it was asking people not to come to A&E, but instead to ring 111, or 999 in the case of an emergency.

To ensure that all back-up processes and procedures were put in place quickly, the trust declared a major internal incident to make sure that patients already in the trusts hospitals continued to receive the care they need," a spokesperson for the trust said.

Someone as hacked into the computer network at Royal Blackburn Hospital!! Can't give out prescriptions to anyone!!!!  Chris Lofthouse (@lofty316) May 12, 2017

We are aware of a major IT secure system attack. All IT systems have been temporarily shut down. More information will be available shortly  DCHS NHS FT (@DCHStrust) May 12, 2017

What kind of scumbag hacks a hospital? Patients could literally die as a result. #NHSHack #Ransomware pic.twitter.com/taRTm3vkSS  Tom Fish (@tomfish1989) May 12, 2017

A Barts spokesman said it was experiencing "major IT disruption" and delays at all four of its hospitals, The Royal London, St Bartholomew's, Whipps Cross and Newham.

He said: "We have activated our major incident plan to make sure we can maintain the safety and welfare of patients.

"We are very sorry that we have to cancel routine appointments, and would ask members of the public to use other NHS services wherever possible.

"Ambulances are being diverted to neighbouring hospitals."

NHS IT security boss warned cyber attacks would affect patient care

The man responsible for IT security in the NHS recently warned that cyber attacks "have and will affect patient care".

Writing in National Health Executive magazine in February, NHS Digital's head of security Dan Taylor said: "The NHS is moving quickly to realise the fight to protect our critical information assets and systems starts on the frontline with our people, then our processes, backed up by technology.

"I'll say this upfront: cyber-attacks have and will affect patient care.

"It is no longer just about our email or our IT but the digital transformation, which means delivery of care is underpinned by working software."

What is 'Wanna Decryptor' ransomware?

Ransomware does not traditionally aim to steal personal or sensitive data held on a computer or system, instead focusing on blocking access to and threatening to delete files.

Aatish Pattni from cyber security firm Check Point, said the version of Wanna Decryptor used in the attack was a new piece of malware.

"The ransomware used in this attack is relatively new - it was first seen in February 2017, and the latest variant emerged earlier today, Friday 11 May," he said.

"Even so, it's spreading fast, with organisations across Europe and Asia being hit.

"It shows just how damaging ransomware can be - and how quickly it can cause disruption to vital services.

"Organisations need to be able to prevent infections taking hold in the first place, by scanning for, blocking and filtering out suspicious files content before it reaches their networks.

"It's also essential that staff are educated about the potential risks of incoming emails from unknown parties, or suspicious-looking emails that appear to come from known contacts."

A map showing the spread of 'Wanna Decryptor' infections around the world is available here.

How can ransomware infection be prevented?

Security experts say users should ensure their computer software is always up to date. Often important security updates are contained within these downloads and can prevent known viruses from infecting a device.

Users should also be vigilante in relation to email and not open any links or downloading attachments in emails from unfamiliar or possibly suspicious sources.

Experts also warn that software, apps and other programs should never be downloaded from unofficial sources as this is another common method for hackers to secretly install malware onto computers.

Pete Turner, from cyber security firm Avast, said: "It's critical that organisations and employees, particularly those in our most critical sectors like healthcare, start to think pro-actively about how to protect themselves from ransomware."

Further information on how to protect systems from ransomware is available from the National Cyber Security Centre.

National Cyber Security Centre to play central role in response

Experts at Britain's new dedicated cyber security headquarters will play a central role in responding to and investigating the NHS computer attack.

The National Cyber Security Centre began operating in October last year before being officially opened by the Queen in London in February.

Underpinned by a 1.9 billion government cash injection, the facility is part of intelligence agency GCHQ.

It was established to spearhead the UK's work to counter the mounting threat against the country's infrastructure and economy from cyber criminals and hostile states.

In the three months after the centre was launched, there were 188 "high-level" attacks, as well as countless lower-level incidents.

Chancellor Philip Hammond disclosed earlier this year that the NCSC had blocked 34,550 potential attacks targeting UK Government departments and members of the public in six months.

The NCSC's website says it was set up to help protect critical services from cyber attacks, manage major incidents and improve the underlying security of the UK internet through technological improvement and advice to citizens and organisations.

Senior figures have stressed that attacks are inevitable.

Speaking at its official opening, the NCSC's chief executive Ciaran Martin said: "We're a prosperous, digitally advanced, important country so people are going to attack us.

"That's a fact of modern life. But when someone attacks the UK, I want them to think of us as the hardest of targets. We're good at cyber security in the UK. But we need to get even better."

Patients' Association condemns attack

The Patients' Association condemned the criminals behind the cyber attack on the NHS but said lessons from earlier incidents had not been learned.

In a statement the group said: "We should be clear that responsibility for today's apparently extensive attack on NHS IT systems, and for any harm that occurs to patients as a result, lies with the criminals who have perpetrated it.

"From reports so far, the attack appears to have been highly coordinated and aggressive and a police investigation will no doubt be required.

"However, that something of this sort could happen will surprise few people.

"It has long been known that the NHS struggles with IT in multiple respects and that this includes serious security problems.

"Though today's may be the largest attack of this sort, it is not the first - yet the lessons from earlier incidents have not been learnt.

"The power of IT in transforming services for patients is undoubted, yet the NHS has struggled to harness it: centralised approaches have failed badly, while smaller scale local projects can easily give rise to huge variations in both quality and security.

"We are seeing today that IT security is critical to patient safety.

"Addressing it effectively and quickly is essential and requires appropriate investment.

"In this election period, we must look to our political parties for leadership - now is not the time to be squeamish about the cost of keeping our NHS secure."

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the attack was a "real worry for patients.

"Our hard-working NHS staff are already operating under unprecedented pressure and should be given every support to help the public in the face of these malicious and disturbing actions.

"This incident highlights the risk to data security within the modern health service and reinforces the need for cyber security to be at the heart of government planning. The digital revolution has transformed the way we live and work but we have to be ready for the vulnerabilities it brings too.

"The Government need to be clear about what's happened and what measures they are taking to reduce the threat to patients.

"The safety of the public must be the priority and the NHS should be given every resource to bring the situation under control as soon as possible."

Dr Kubo Macak, senior lecturer in International Law at the University of Exeter and an expert on cyber warfare, said: "Early reports indicate that today's cyber operations against the NHS may affect the care for many hospital patients, with potential impact on their health and lives.

"As such, if investigation shows that the cyber attack was directed by an outside state, it would amount to a violation of the UK's sovereignty prohibited by international law.

"However, regardless of the origin of the attacks, the situation confirms how important it is to maintain resilience of the national critical infrastructure, including in the public health sector."

Earlier on Friday Britain's intelligence service GCHQ tweeted: "We work against cyber threats, terrorists and those up to no good, because keeping Britain safe is what we do." The agency made the post to celebrate National Limerick Day. It was mocked by Twitter users following news of the NHS attacks.

It's a good job we're better at keeping Britain safe than writing limericks #NationalLimerickDay pic.twitter.com/KZYURft1EP  GCHQ (@GCHQ) May 12, 2017

The latest hack comes months after Barts Health Trust, the largest NHS trust in England, was hit by a ransomware cyber attack.

The trust sent a message to staff urging them not to open email attachments from unknown senders.
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10 Famous TV Personalities Born In Ethiopia Ethiopia is a country best known for its fast athletes like Dibaba and Bekele, breathtaking models like Liya Kebede and of course Haile Selassie but there are also famous TV personalities who are doing a great job in entertainment and pushing the country to civilization. The following is a list of ten most famous TV ...

Top 10 African Authors of All Time The pace of present African literature is moving at a high-speed; more defiant in both style and tone than those of the great independence writers generation. Here, the subjects of taboo are widely explored. The emerging African authors of this generation are not afraid to go further afield for the literary fodder. Meanwhile, since the birth ...

Maina Kageni Biography  Daughter, Salary and Gay Rumors Maina Kageni is one of those Kenyans who has remained as interesting as ever in the eyes of the public. A strong Red devil fan and lover of football, the man is currently a Breakfast Show presenter with Mwalimu Kingangi on Nairobis Classic 105 Radio Station. Many questions have always emerged on the man in serious ...

Kalekye Mumo  Biography, Boyfriend and Salary Kalekye Mumo has been described as someone who is as vibrant as she is beautiful, a Kenyan radio queen, TV host and media personality, movie actress, Musician, businesswoman, and fashionista but what else is there to know about this Kenyan icon, Kalekye Mumo and her co-host Shaffie Weru have been among the most listened to radio presenters ...

Julie Gichuru Bio  Age, Husband & Children In Africa, women have a long history of bringing under control obstacles to keep their heads above the water. So, it comes as no surprise whenever African women are recognized and decorated across the continent and globe for performing brilliantly well in their various fields of endeavor. In Kenya for instance, a list of national ...

Jeff Koinange Biography  All About His Age, Wife  Shaila Koinange & Family Jeff Koinange is a well-known Kenyan journalist. He currently hosts Jeff Koinange Live on KTN. Koinange has served as a journalist in the United States and has also worked for a few U.S. broadcasters. He was born in Kenya but attended college in the United States, which may explain his accent. There are several interesting ...

Caroline Mutoko Biography  Age, Daughter & House Caroline Mutoko is a Kenyan radio presenter, famously known for hosting a morning breakfast show on Kiss 100 FM. The station is based in Nairobi and ranks among the highly-rated radio stations in Kenya with online streaming services as well. Learn more about the Kenyan-born journalist. Caroline Mutokos Age and Bio Born on January 4, 1973, Caroline is ...

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Demystifying Chimamanda Ngozi Adichies Biography, Husband & Education Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian novelist, non-fiction writer, short story writer and actress. As a seasoned Nigerian writer, she has been called the most prominent of a procession of critically acclaimed young anglophone authors that is succeeding in attracting a new generation of readers to African literature. She has been making Nigeria proud in the global scene ...

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5 Most Vulgar Kenyan Radio Presenters It appears being vulgar is the real deal nowadays especially for the fact that the world is becoming more exposed and civilized. Sadly, but true, young people are constantly being exposed to images, discussions, and content that most people would deem detrimental to the African culture and moral statutes. This is because most of us ...

6 Sexiest News Anchors In Kenya Some news anchors have been stealing eyes every time they appear on-screen. Most of us hardly concentrate on the programme they present as our entire focus is usually on their striking physique and beautiful faces. It is common knowledge that Kenyan women are amazingly beautiful. From the celebrities to the everyday woman, they are all in ...

Interesting Oprah Winfrey Quotes To Keep You Motivated Oprah Winfrey is one of the worlds most powerful women in the media and business sectors. Her life is the typical success story that motivates and lifts ones morale. One amazing thing about this media mogul is her sincerity about past hurts, mistakes, healing, and success. The renowned talk show host and media personality is the first ...

Chinua Albert Achebe Biography- Family, Net Worth & Death Chinua Albert Achebe, of blessed memory, was a Nigerian prolific author best known for his inventive style of writing and simplicity of expressions. Famed as one of the finest writers Nigeria has ever produced, Achebe lived and died an international hero and a literary giant, who left behind unforgettable legacies and footprints in the sands of ...

Steve Harvey  His Wife, Kids & Height Steve Harvey is an American comedian, actor, radio and TV show host, producer and an author of different relationship advice books. Steve Harveys Early Life Born in Welch, West Virginia, on January 17, 1957, as Broderick Stephen Harvey, Steve was the last of five children. His family relocated to Cleveland when he was young and there, he attended Glenville High School from ...

Intriguing Things You Should Know About Danny Kokers Rise to Fame and Who His Wife Is Danny Koker is popular as the star of the History Channel reality TV series, Counting Cars. Prior to him appearing on the show, the TV personality was a musician who had embarked on a number of national tours with his rock group, Counts 77. He and his group have released quite a number of songs ...

Fun Facts You Didnt Know About Andy Cohens Rise to Prominence and His Partner Andy Cohen is one of Americas top media personalities who gained prominence after helping to bring the Bravo network back to life. He also hosted a couple of shows on the network, including the popular nightly series Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. After rising to the position of head of production and development at ...

Tracing Isha Sesays Career Until CNN, Her Worth And Why She Divorce Her Husband As far as journalists of African origin go, Isha Sesay is one of the most famous on the continent  and by extension, the world. The Sierra Leonean and British journalist has had a successful career since she joined the industry in 1998. In that time, she has worked for a host of major media ...

Open Secrets of How Joanna Gaines Balances Her Career With Being a Wife and Mother Joanna Gaines is the co-founder of Magnolia Homes, a business she runs with one goal: converting houses to homes. She doubles as the lead designer of the company which she co-owns with her husband, Chip Gaines. Lady Gaines gained massive popularity when she became a co-star with her husband on the HGTVs show, Fixer Upper. ...

Juicy Details of Ayesha Currys Love Story With Stephen, Her Family Members and Recent Pursuits When your husband is one of the greatest basketballers that the NBA has ever seen, then it bestows on you the status of a celebrity wife  and may not even demand that you do anything extra to maintain that status. However, Ayesha Curry, the wife of multiple NBA champion, Steph Curry, is not one ...

What Is Tarek el Moussas Ethnicity, Why Did He Divorce His Wife and Who Is He Dating? Tarek El Moussa has made himself one of the most recognizable men on reality television, especially to fans of HGTV. Thanks to his expertise in the world of real estate, Tarek has become a national star. But even to his hardcore followers, there are questions about Tarek El Moussa that remain unanswered, such as his ...

Fun Facts About Natalie Beckers Lonely Childhood and Eventual Career Success Natalie Becker is an actress of South African descent who became famous for her appearance in films like The World Unseen and The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior. A multitalented individual, Natalie is also a television/radio presenter. She is also a co-founder of the Thought Leader Global Media which she runs together with ...

Top 3 Female CNN News Anchors You Didnt Know Were Africans CNN is one of the leading news agencies in the world. The satellite and cable news network was founded in 1980 by Ted Turner and has been one of the best sources of news for a number of years. It also boasts of the best journalists and presenters all around in media broadcasting. The company is a ...

Channels That Aided Katie Pavlichs Growth as a Journalist and All About Her Marriage To Friedson If you have ever come across any Fast and Furious featuring Barack Obama, it is the handiwork of Katie Pavlich. The book which claims to have exposed Obamas bloodiest scandal and the shameless cover-up thereof, has been earning Pavlich much praise and fame ever since it was published in 2012. Nonetheless, Pavlich is more famed ...

Is Oprah Winfrey Married? Husband, Children, Biography, House, Facts Oprah Winfrey is a billionaire philanthropist, talk show icon, producer, actress, and writer. The media icon famously dubbed The Queen Of All Media owns and hosts the highest-rated television program in the media circle. Read more about the powerful television star below. Oprah Winfrey Biography Oprah was born as Orpah Gail Winfrey on January 29, 1954, to a ...

Who Is Arsenio Hall, What Happened To His Talk Show and Why Do Fans Think He Is Gay? He is one of the funniest beings to have graced the comedy constituent of the American entertainment industry. Arsenio Hall has a reputation for the rib-cracking disposition always portrayed in his comedy roles. He is not just a comedian; he is also an actor and a former talk show host for his popular show, The ...

What Is Woah Vicky Famous For and Who Are Her Family Members? Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Woah Vicky is one of those stars that have utilized the internet as a powerful tool to propel themselves to instant fame. The social media space, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc., offers lots of people the right opportunities and potentials to become superstars overnight. Not everyone achieves ...

Where Is Michael Strahan Since His Retirement From The NFL and Who Is His Partner? Michael Strahan is a retired American football player turned media personality. He played the defensive lineman position and holds the record for most sacks in a single NFL season. He also only played for the New York Giants throughout the entire 15-year professional career that saw him win a Super Bowl ring. In February 2014, ...

How Wendy Williams Went From Being a College DJ to Having Her Own Talk Show and More About Her Divorce Wendy Williams is a former radio personality, now talk show host, who is known for her outspokenness and brash no-nonsense attitude. She gained fame and notoriety for her on-air clashes with celebrities before moving on to host her own talk show. Since 2008, Williams has hosted the nationally syndicated television talk show, The Wendy Williams Show. ...

Who is Sunny Hostin? Her Husband, Family & Net Worth Sunny Hostin is no ordinary Latina  American lawyer but also a successful columnist, multi-platform journalist, and social commentator. A happily married woman and mother of two, Hostin is the Senior Legal Correspondent and Analyst for ABC News and co-host of ABCs popular morning talk show, The View. She is a legal expert popularly known as a former ...

Who Is Robert Costa and Is He Married, Who Is His Wife? Robert Costa is a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC who is regarded as being part of Americas next generation of journalists. The University of Notre Dame graduate, who is of Italian/Portuguese descent, has been lauded for his fresh political perspectives in an industry full of old heads. In addition to his work listed above, Costa ...

Team Valor Pokemon Go  7 Key Facts You Need To Know Team Valor Pokemon Go  The craze of the new game Pokemon Go is one that took the gaming world by storm sending teenagers and adults alike into a frenzy and one of its teams Team Valor, has proven to be instrumental in making it so. Before the game was created, Pokemon was a cartoon ...

Sheryl Underwood  Husband, Family & Net Worth She is known for her trademark smile which can be described as the brightest and broadest smile ever seen on planet earth. She is none other than Sheryl Underwood the comedian, actress, and TV host whose funny wits has left America in great awe. Although Sheryl has risen to become an important personality in the industry, ...

Team Mystic Pokemon Go: 7 Facts You Need To Know And Signs You Are One Team Mystic of the break out game Pokemon Go is a team that is full of sass and chivalry. With an enchanting monicker, Team Mystic stands out from the rest of its counterparts and deserves to take the crown as champion in the Pokemon gaming-verse. To be a member of this exceptional team of Pokemon battle ...

Exploring Guy Beahms Dr Disrespect Persona, Wife and Why He was Banned Permanently From Twitch Guy Beahm who is popularly known by his online alias  Dr DisRespect, is an award-winning Twitch.tv streamer. He has leveraged on the Twitch platform to become an internet personality that is quite widely known. His online success is just more proof that anyone who is good at what they do can attain celebrity status ...

Critical Facts About Lee Ann McAdoo  The Infowars Anchor Lee Ann Mcadoo is a conservative journalist and television host whose interests in conspiracies and astrology has established her as a famous American reporter. Often referred to as Wonder Woman, McAdoo is a reporter who works for InfoWars.com, a controversial right-wing website run by radio show host, Alex Jones. Who Is Lee Ann McAdoo? Lee Ann McAdoo was born on 7 ...

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Is Jessica Tarlov Married? What Are Her Height & Weight? Jessica Tarlov is an American political consultant, strategist, and analyst whose influential and regular TV presence has made a popular figure. A good example of beauty with brains, Tarlov has appeared on various TV networks, mostly the FOX News Network where she is known for her liberal views on political analysis and insights. She is also the senior director ...

Who Is Kelly Rebecca Nichols  Alex Jones Ex-Wife? Kelly Rebecca Nichols is the ex-wife of controversial American radio show host, Alex Jones. She got nationwide attention following her divorce and subsequent custody battle with her estranged husband. Nichols, who worked with PETAs public relations department, was herself no stranger to controversies as she was involved in several publicity stunts of the non-profit animal rights ...

Who Is Bree Morgan  Cole Sprouse Ex-Girlfriend And What Is She Up To Now? Although Bree Morgan became famous through the Instagram, she also sapped some dose of popularity from Disneys sweetheart, Cole Sprouse of the Sprouse brothers. She is not only an Instagram star but also a YouTube vlogger whose popularity has long exceeded the ordinary level. Bree is conspicuously prominent on the internet and has her digital savviness ...

Does Vanna White Have Husband or Children, What Is Her Net Worth / Salary? For over three decades, Vanna White has been a household name, famous as the co-host and letter turner of the iconic NBC game show Wheel of Fortune. The talented and beautiful television personality is also an actress with several TV series and films to her credit. Since making her Wheel of Fortune debut in 1982, she has become one ...

Liz Wheeler  Biography, Husband & Net Worth Liz Wheeler is the kind of girl who sets the room on fire whenever she comes around. In this situation, however, she sets our screens on fire each time she appears as the host of One America News Tipping Point. She is, therefore, a presenter, publisher, consultant and a member of the Board of Zoning ...

Betty White  Net Worth, Children & Husband The entertainment industry will remain indebted to personalities like Betty White who brought something extra to the table and kept the world entertained for donkey years. The comedienne, actress, and writer graced the big screens in the early 50s as a show host and has been a delight since then. She is the queen of ...

Is Bill Nye (The Science Guy) Dead or Alive, What Are His Net Worth & Education? Everyone will always remember Bill Nye as the Science Guy. Besides his TV show Bill Nye the Science Guy, he is well-known for his Netflix show Bill Nye Saves the World which started airing in 2017 as well as his appearances in many famous media projects as a science educator. The star studied mechanical engineering ...

Is Cesar Millan Dead, Who Is The Wife & What Is His Net Worth? Cesar Millan is the famous dog whisperer who often stirs up mixed emotions. The Mexican-American is precisely speaking, a dog behaviorist; he has been in the game for over 25 years. His Emmy-nominated television series, Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan further pushed his method and tactics into the limelight. The series was produced from 2004 ...

Is Thomas Sanders Gay and Does He Have A Boyfriend? By the time Vine was shut down in January 2017, Thomas Sanders was already popular within and beyond the internet community for his heavy involvements on the online video hosting platform. After the tragic shutdown of Vine impacted on the growing career of the multi-talented personality, he immediately switched over to YouTube where he continued to upload ...

Is Shepard Smith Gay, Who Is The Boyfriend & What Is His Net Worth? There are only a few media personalities who are as bold and confident as Shepard Smith. Apart from his impressive stint at Fox News Channel which includes but not limited to his classic news delivery, upfront stance on virtually every issue and much more; he loves his job as much as he loves his personality. Smith ...

Is Milo Yiannopoulos Gay? His Husband and Net Worth Milo Yiannopoulos is a popular writer, journalist, polemicist, public speaker, and political commentator who is also known as the founder of The Kernel, an online blog. He has been said to be among the list of 100 weird and influential people in the United Kingdom. He appeared on this list as a result of personal beliefs and ...

Does Ryan Seacrest Have A Wife Or Girlfriend, What Is His Net Worth? From radio to television, Ryan Seacrest is a household name and a force to be reckoned with in showbiz. The radio personality, television host, and producer is best recognized as the host of the popular TV talent search contest American Idol. Heres how the media personality who always knew what his lifes ambition was and diligently pursued ...

Is Anderson Cooper Gay, Who is The Boyfriend or Husband? For many, the thought of becoming a millionaire by writing and talking about other people appears unachievable but this is the reality of the prominent American journalist Anderson Cooper who gathered millions of dollars for conducting accurate political analysis and other vital reports on TV. He is the main anchor of the CNN news show Anderson ...

Is David Muir Gay or Does He Have A Wife, What Is His Salary? David Muir is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who works for the ABC broadcast-television network and anchors the ABC World News Tonight with David Muir program while also co-anchoring the magazine program 20/20. The Ithaca College graduate, whose show has become the most-watched newscast in America, has covered stories from all across America and the world; reporting ...

Joel Osteen  Divorce Rumors, Net Worth & Family Members Joel Osteen is an American Televangelist, Senior Pastor of Lakewood Church based in Houston, Texas, a husband and a father of two. He is an author of many books, seven of which are New York Times Best Sellers and his televised sermons capture more than 7 million viewers per week and 20 million every month ...

Who Is Todd Chrisley? What To Know About His Children, Gay Rumors & Net Worth Premiered on the USA network in 2014, Chrisley Knows Best is one of the most watched family reality TV shows in the U.S. The series which is currently in its sixth season is centered around U.S real estate mogul Todd Chrisley and his family. The show reveals Todd the patriarch of the Chrisley family as a strict dad who rules ...

Who Is Shannon Bream Of Fox News? Her Husband, Children & Net Worth Shannon Bream who hosts the iconic primetime program started her journalism career in the late 1990s debuting as the evening and late-night news reporter for the CBS affiliate, WBTV. The beauty from America currently works for the Fox News Channel and she is best known for anchoring the primetime program. She also hosts Americas News ...

Is Troye Sivan Gay, Who Is His Boyfriend and What Is His Net Worth? Troye Sivan is an Australian singer and songwriter best known for songs like Happy Little Pill, Youth, Heaven (with Betty Who) and The Boyfriend Tag (with Tyler Oakley) which have all garnered him different awards and ranked on the Billboard Charts. Sivan, who was born in South Africa but now resides in the United States, is ...

Did iDubbbz Have Cancer, Is He Gay and Who Is His Girlfriend Now? iDubbbz is one YouTuber who has made a career out of courting controversy. Renowned for his absurdist channels and comedy video series, the Los Angeles based personality is the owner of two channels, iDubbzTV, and iDubbzTV2, as well as the brains behind comedy video series such as Content Cop, Kickstarter Crap, Gaming News Crap, and ...

Inside Greg Gutfelds Love Story With Wife Elena Moussa and Why Fans Thought He Was Gay Greg Gutfeld is a seasoned American television producer whose career in the media industry has spanned over a decade. He is a man of many talents who makes extra income through comedy, journalism, and editorial works. Gutfeld regularly appears on Fox News Channel as a panellist and co-host of the political talk show The Five ...

Works That Made Bo Burnham A Household Name and How Much He Is Worth Now One of YouTubes first viral stars and the worlds most exciting young comedian, Bo Burnham, has always amazed critics and comedy aficionados alike. Often regarded as the Justin Bieber of comedy, thanks to his fresh looks, floppy blond hair and hoodies, he has a multi-faceted career bigger than many comedians twice his age. It wouldnt ...

Is Louie Anderson Gay And What Is His Net Worth? Louie Anderson has one of the most abstract faces in the industry and equally knows how to use it to his advantage. He is not only a stand-up comedian but also an actor and television host who is known for his distinctive comic wits. Some of his notable projects include Family Feud, where he was ...

Is Don Lemon of CNN Gay, Who is His Partner and What Is His Salary? Don Lemon has risen to become one of the most recognizable faces on CNN over the past few years. The fiery journalist, who anchors CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, is liked and somewhat disliked for his strong and candid opinions on a variety of matters that do not just include politics but also race, significantly, matters that ...

Is Rachel Maddow Gay, Who is the Wife and How Much Does She Earn in Salary? Rachel Maddow is an award-winning American journalist, political commentator, and television news anchor. She is best known for hosting the popular nightly TV show The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Prior to this, she hosted a talk radio program on Air America Radio from 2005 to 2010. As of now, the TV sensation co-anchors MSNBCs ...

Demystifying Pokimane  Her Real Name, Ethnicity & Boyfriend Like most social media celebrities in this digital era, Pokimane Thicc is one of those stars who took advantage of the internet to make a name for herself. Given the unlimited potentials which the social media space offers, many people have been instantly propelled to fame just by posting creative online contents. Not only has ...

A Breakdown of Kris Jenners Net Worth, Sources Of Income and Relationships Over The Years Standing outside and looking in, Kris Jenner looks like the oil that greases the wheels of the entire Kardashian/Jenner machine. She has been dubbed a momager and rightfully so because she seems to have had a part to play in the trajectory of each and every one of her daughters individually and the Kardashian brand ...

Pursuits That Brought Liza Koshys Fame To its Zenith and Her Love Life Since David Dobrik Liza Koshy is an American actress who has leveraged YouTube as a platform to promote her comedy while also serving as a television host on occasions. She is talented and funny and has gathered a lot of fans from around the world. Koshy started on Vine in high school and was able to get millions of ...

Alex Aiono Biography  Inside The Life Of The American Singer Not everyone who started from the streets has attained the heights where Alex Aiono is currently. His story could be referred to as the perfect definition of rising from Grass to Grace. He came into the limelight after he started out as a YouTuber, singer, and producer. One fascinating thing about the young YouTuber is ...

Virginia Vallejo Biography And Her Love Story With Pablo Escobar Virginia Vallejo can be referred to as one of the oldest whistleblowers in history after her involvement with Pablo Escobar which made her famous. Over the years, many questions have been raised about her relationship with the drug lord and why she endangered her life to be with him despite his notorious acts. The death ...

Princess Love Bio  Ethnicity, Real Name & Parents For many people, Princess Love is simply Ray Js wife but there is so much more to this feisty lady than meets the eye. She is a star in her own right and has many feathers on her cap. Princess Love is a reality TV star, a model, video vixen, and fashion designer. She and her ...

Who is Papa Franku Also Known As Filthy Frank or Joji, Where is He Now? The social media as we all know today has given people the opportunity to be creative and innovative and at the same time, make something of themselves. YouTube is one of the known social platforms we have today that makes it possible for people to express their God-given talents and post videos they created to ...

Who Is Molly Qerim, How Did She Become a Famous Sports Anchor and Who Is Her Husband? Molly Qerim is an American sports anchor popularly known for moderating First Take, a highly rated sports talk show, on ESPN. Prior to joining ESPN, Qerim hosted Fantasy Live and NFL AM on NFL Network. It is quite obvious that the widely acclaimed television personality is in a class of her own when it comes ...

Safiya Nygaard  Height, Parents & Net Worth Safiya Nygaard is an American YouTuber, writer, content producer, and director who is popular for posting makeup, beauty and fashion videos on YouTube. Her videos regularly top at least one million views, thanks to her lively character as well as her willingness to experiment with outrageous outfits and different beauty products. Here are the things to ...

The Rigors of Sunlen Serfatys Career Journey Until CNN and Fun Facts About Her Personal Life CNN correspondent, Sunlen Serfaty is an Emmy Award-winning journalist known for covering a broad range of breaking news stories, national news, and Washington politics. She has been able to garner widespread recognition for herself which even goes beyond the sphere of her work. Her profile also increased with the extensive work she did in covering ...

Demystifying Jazz Jennings Real Name, Boyfriend & Family Of One The Youngest Transgenders Jazz Jennings is an unusual personality who became famous as a transgender activist and was recorded as the youngest documented public figure to be seen as transgender. She is also a YouTube personality and spokesmodel for brands, her fans, and other transgenders. She fought for acceptance in her high school with her super supportive family for over ...

Inside Fred Armisens Life  Ethnicity, Romantic Relationships and Gay Rumors Fred Armisen is an award-winning American comedian, he is also a writer, an actor as well as a musician. He was a cast member of the legendary comedy show, Saturday Night Live for 13 years and also one of the brains behind the successful satirical show Portlandia. Find out more about this incredibly talented guy ...

Ed and Lorraine Warren Biography: Cases, Kids, and Family Life Have you ever woken up with fear you could not explain, or felt a strange presence that made the hair at your nape rise or even experienced strange occurrences around you? Well, these were some of the promptings that made the well-known paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren delve into trying to explain the ideas ...

Truth About Tony Romos Wife, Kids and Life Since His NFL Retirement Tony Romo grew from the field as a quarterback to the screens as an American Football Analyst. He was a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys in the richest football league in the world (NFL) before retiring. As a junior, he was honored as an All-Ohio Conference Member, an Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year and ...

Who is Brittany Venti, The Controversial Game Streamer and YouTuber? In recent times, many people live stream themselves playing video games. This has become a popular pastime on the internet and many highly skilled gamers have become internet celebrities through this means. However, some of them rather than becoming renowned for their gaming skills and great commentary, have become controversial and infamous. A good example ...

Rob Dyrdeks Family: His Kids And Relationship With Wife Bryiana Noelle Flores A multi-talented star and an elite pro skateboarder, Rob Dyrdeks success story began at a remarkably young age. Yet another proof that schooling doesnt always correlate with success, Rob has established himself not just as a phenomenal sportsman but also as a successful entrepreneur. Besides perfecting his skill as a natural talent on the board, ...

xChocobars  Biography and Everything You Should Know About Her Having distinguished herself and recorded massive successes in an industry notably dominated by men, it is very safe to say that Xchocobars deserves all the attention and cash she makes from her career. A household name on Twitch (a smart live streaming video platform), the online-gamer is popularly known for streaming classic games such as Stardew ...

Everything To Know About Mary Padian, Her Boyfriend and Net Worth Mary Padian is a famous American television reality personality best known for her involvements on the Reality show Storage Wars. She also has her own shop called Mary finds where she displays her antique collections. Since her childhood, Padian has been a creative learner. At the time, she used to create new items out of reusable ones and ...

Betsy Woodruffs Family Life: Is She Married or Related To Bob Woodruff? An old name in the world of journalism, Betsy Woodruff has warmed her way into the hearts of many with her impressive talents. Through hard work, Woodruff has carved a niche for herself in a very competitive field. Betsy has strong family and work values and is also an advocate for equal opportunities for everyone ...

Matpat (Matthew Patrick)  Wife, Height & Net Worth As far as internet business is concerned, Matpat remains one of the most dynamic and seasoned figures. He boasts a wealth of experience that has helped him in growing his business from one level of greatness to another. Like most successful people, MatPat started out small but today, he makes millions of dollars from his ...

Facts About Ricegum  His Girlfriend, Real Name & Net Worth Ricegum is an online gamer and YouTube sensation who ditched college; took advantage of the digital era, and made a name for himself on the internet. Though he began as a gaming YouTuber, Ricegum soon gained recognition as a controversial internet star following his many diss tracks. Here is everything you need to know about the youngster ...

Joy Taylor Once Married MLBs Richard Giannotti  Inside Look At Her Love Life and Family The erosion of the sexist idea that women have no business in sports broadcasting created a host of women celebrities who attained fame outside of modeling and acting. One of them, Joy Taylor, a radio personality and TV host for Fox Sports 1, has been in the industry since 2009, becoming one of the most ...

What To Know About Conan OBriens Wife, Kids & Family Today The name Conan OBrien is one that jumps right at you almost immediately you start talking about the most popular television hosts in the USA and this is no surprise because the man behind that name has risen to become one of the most admired men in the business. Known for hosting the late-night talk ...

David Letterman  Net Worth, Wife & Son In all of American, one man whose face has been seen frequently by late night TV talk show lovers is none but David Letterman. The comedian and TV show veteran has been hosting late night talk shows for more than three decades. His Late Night with David Letterman show began on February 1st, 1982 aired ...

Demystifying Sssniperwolfs Family Background And The Boyfriends Shes Had Since she launched her eponymously named channel in 2013, Sssniperwolf has been on the rise when it comes to video game influencers. She is one of the biggest names in the online gaming subgenre of YouTube videos. Real name Lia Shelesh, she started with Call of Duty: Black Ops II but has diversified with other ...

Lester Holt  Wife, Family & Net Worth Lester Holt is a multiple award-winning journalist, newscaster, reporter, and actor who has worked for notable media houses like WCBS TV, CBS, MSNBC and among others. His remarkable feat in journalism has endeared him to the hearts of many and earned him some awards and recognitions. Read on to get acquainted with his biography, ethnicity, ...

What Is Louis C.K. Doing Now, Where Are His Family And How Much Is His Net Worth? It is not easy to make it in comedy. It takes more than a funny bone and the ability to elicit a few giggles from a listening audience. For all the complexities that go into making a successful career in comedy, Louis C.K, the Washington D.C-born comedian, did it. For years, he was at the ...

The Progression of Hoda Kotbs Career, Her Ancestry and Family Life Hoda Kotb gained fame as a television host and news anchor for NBC. She anchors the shows signature show Today, and it has been an excellent vehicle for her skills in front of a camera. Kotb has won several awards, including Daytime Emmys and Peabody Awards. Simply put, she is one of the most successful ...

Jerry Seinfelds Family: All About The Amazing Comedians Wife and Kids Apparently one of the highly important entertainers in America, Jerry Seinfeld is a man of many talents. A very funny man, he is considered to be one of the most successful comedians in the USA who has been in the business as a professional rib-cracker for more than 40 years. As an actor, he has ...

The Rigors Of Sarah Silvermans Rise To Prominence And Rundown Of The Men She Has Dated A comedian, writer, and actress, Sarah Silvermans art and craft is as unique as you would ever find. Her poignant use of comedy to discuss social issues such as race, sexism, politics, and religion has gained her an impressive following. As unorthodox as her style is, so is her life experiences. She previously suffered from epiglottitis ...

Who Is Hannibal Buress, Does He Have A Wife or Girlfriend & Why Was He Arrested? Making people laugh when they are tense or not in the mood is a tough order and to ply the trade, it must indeed take some guts and expertise, this is what the humor maker, Hannibal Buress has been able to achieve and sustain after his inital teething process. The African-American is a screen writer, stand-up ...

The Success of John Mulaneys Career Efforts Since His Work On Saturday Night Live and Facts About His Wife John Mulaney had been working as a professional comedian for years before Saturday Night Live changed his status for life and like many who are now his fans, you probably did not know of him then. However, that changed when he joined the sketch comedy show in 2008. Since then, he has been one of ...

Jeff Dunham  Wife, Children and Net Worth Ventriloquism is a very subtle method of making an inanimate object (like a puppet, doll or dummy) appear to be saying words which are actually coming from the person (holding the inanimate object). In effect, the individual throws his/her voice to the puppet and can even appear to be having a conversation with it. Not ...

Ellen DeGeneres  Net Worth, Wife  Portia de Rossi & Parents Ellen DeGeneres is an American female standup comedian who has proven that whatever a man can do, a woman can also do. Since her journey as a standup comedian started in 1981, she has held swirl as one of the finest comedians America and the world at large has seen. She is often referred to ...

Revisiting Joan Rivers Death  The Daughter, Husband & Net Worth She Left Behind Joan Rivers was a renowned American comedian, TV host, writer, and actress. Her brand of comedy consisted of scathing one-liners and no individual or topic is spared. She hosted her own talk shows in the 80s and 90s and was a pioneer for women in stand up comedy. She was the first woman to host a late night ...

The Struggles of Margaret Chos Childhood, How It Influenced Her Career Growth and Love Life Margaret Cho is best described as a comic star who knows how to maneuver everything related to life into a rib-cracking joke. She is also known to criticize every social and political problem, especially those involving race and sexuality. Apart from her talents as a comic actress, she does amazingly well as a singer and ...

Where Is Eric Bolling Today? Who Is His Son & What Is His Net Worth? Eric Bolling who was once a notable figure on Fox News, is an American TV personality, an author, and versatile Journalist. As a political and financial analyst/commentator, he anchored discussions bothering on finance for Fox Business Channel. Here is everything there is to know about his career, family, and allegations that led to his exit ...

Who Is Chelsea Handler and Does She Have A Husband or Boyfriend? Chelsea Handler is one of Americas top female comedians. She is also an actress, writer, television host, producer, and activist. She is known to be very outspoken even with things that are very personal. In separate interviews with The New York Times, Handler revealed that she had an abortion twice when she was 16. She has authored five books ...

How Did Laura Lee Achieve Fame, How Much is She Worth and Who is Her Husband? Laura Lee is a popular American YouTuber, make-up artist and beauty blogger. From posting videos of her makeup routines on Instagram, Lee has transformed into a beauty influencer and a YouTube sensation. Today, her YouTube Channel has over 630 million views and 4.5 million subscribers. Asides having millions of followers across all social media platforms, ...

Madison Gesiotto Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Measurements Madison Gesiotto is no ordinary woman; although she excelled in quite a number of pageants and competitions while she was in school, it is her views on politics and issues in America that has made her name known to most people. She possesses beauty and intelligence in a seemingly equal measure and has been able ...

Who Is Lil Tay? Parents, Brother, Sister, Age, Net Worth, Ethnicity Child stardom is nothing new in the entertainment world. With the advent of social media, we have seen more stars made from the internet than ever before, and Lil Tay is one of them. Her uploaded rap videos trademark is cursing, swearing, cash-throwing, and use of obscene languages. Her fame went wild after she dropped ...

What To Know About Tig Notaros Wife, Kids and Family Today Tig Notaro is an American stand-up comic star, writer, actress, and radio analyst. Since she started her career in 2001, she has become one of Americas best comedians, particularly when it comes to observational comedy. One prominent aspect of her routine involves her family, which includes a wife and two children. Interestingly, Tig Notaro is part ...

Who Is Chantel Jeffries? What To Know About Her Age, Ethnicity & Net Worth Chantel Jeffries is a lady of many talents. Beyond being celebrated as a DJ, she has fared well as a model, an actress, musician, and as an artist. She first rose to fame on Instagram where she has a large following. However, in recent times, she has hit the spotlight for her rumored relationships with some ...

Is Ellen DeGeneres Married, Who Is The Brother  Vance DeGeneres and Family Members? Ellen DeGeneres is one of a kind celebrity in todays world as she has used her wealth for the greater good for many people. She has served a host of famous awards shows like the Grammy, Primetime Emmy and Academy Awards. Moreso, she is probably one of the most decorated entertainment personalities around the world and ...

Carli Bybel Bio  Height, Boyfriend & Net Worth Video blogging is now on the rise and YouTube is the place where most of it happens. If you are a lady who cares about her looks or a guy who likes to help his woman out with her looks, then one person whose name rings a bell when it comes to giving beauty tips ...

Who Is Lexy Panterra? What To Know About Her Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth Lexy Panterra is one of the YouTube personalities whose breakout came through the Twerk dance videos she posted on her social media handles and YouTube which has so far generated over 13 million views for her. From there on, she created her LexTwerkOut workout program in 2014. She is sure very talented as she as moved ...

Who Is AnneMunition? What Is Her Ethnicity & Does She Have A Girlfriend or Boyfriend? AnneMunition is a professional gamer and content creator of American origin. She is one of the most sought-after streamers on Twitch  a popular online platform for watching and streaming videos, especially video games. AnneMunition has almost half a million followers on Twitch and her channel has accumulated at least 13 million views. Her favorite games ...

Norm MacDonald  Former Wife, Son & Net Worth Recently, 59-year-old former Saturday Night Live stand-up comic Norm MacDonald caused a not-so-funny stir when he expressed his personal opinion about the #MeToo movement speaking in defense of Louis CK and Roseanne Barr. Following the backlash of his actions, he is diligently doing damage control for his questionable opinion by posting a public apology on ...

Inside Iliza Shlesingers Life With Husband and How Much She is Worth Now Witty, spontaneous, and truly humorous, Iliza Shlesinger is an American comedian who is clearly proving that the stereotypical claim that women are not really funny is not only incredibly wrong but completely outrageous. Having been in the game for more than 10 years, Shlesinger has grown bigger with each step, stunning fans with her incredible ...

Who Is Nessa Diab? Details of her Parents, Ethnicity & Relationship With Colin Kaepernick Nessa Diab has gained more fame as the girlfriend of different footballers than in her career. She is currently with the popular National Football League (NFL) player, Colin Kaepernick, and has stood by his side during his most trying times. Also known for her mononym, Nessa, she recently engaged in a tweet battle with the ...

Samantha Bee  Inside the Life of Full Frontal Comedian and Presenter We have over the decades seen various brands of humor and personalities who have walked the ropes. One of the formidable forces in the world of comedy is no other than the iconic Samantha Bee of the Daily Show who now runs her own television show on TBS channel. She is a Canadian-American political commentator, ...

What Happened To Jessica Williamss Boyfriend And Which Are Her Best Works? Jessica Williams is a woman who has a lot of feathers in her cap  and keeps acquiring more. The former senior political correspondent of the comic Daily Show, who is also a comedian and actress whose recent movie appearance include starring as a playwright just recovering from a recent split with her boyfriend, Damon, and ...

Who is Nicole Byer? Here are 5 Facts You Need To Know About The Comedian Nicole Byer, an American comedian, actress, and writer, made a name for herself after she played supporting roles on MTVs prank show Ladylike and the reality show Girl Code. The latter was a series that featured comedians who analyzed in minute details, all the issues that young women deal with daily, from period to dating, to weird friendship dynamics and questions about sex. Currently, ...

A Closer Look At Bart Kwans Ethnicity, Height & Personal Life Bart Kwan is one of few Asians who is known for being successful in the comic industry at an international level. His fame broke out after the YouTube channel which he created with his close pal Joe Jo garnered up massive followings. The talented duo has been running the channel since 2007 and their success ...

Heres How VanossGaming Achieved Fame Online, His Worth and Other Facts About The Gamer For many years, the decision to drop out of college to pursue an online career was considered to be foolish and self-destructive by conventional wisdom. It was no different when Evan Fong, popularly known as VanossGaming, dropped out of college to pursue a YouTube career. However, that radical move paid off, and he stands shoulder to ...

Desi Perkins  Ethnicity, Net Worth & Husband YouTube is littered with videos of makeup tutorials by different people but if you are interested in learning how to do your makeup like a pro, there is just one person on that platform who you must follow. She is none other than Desi Perkins! She is a popular make-up artist, Instagram star, and vlogger. Desi, ...

The Phases of Casey Neistats Pursuits and His Love Story With Candice Pool YouTuber, vlogger, filmmaker, and creator extraordinaire; these are just a few hats that Casey Neistat wears and the story of how he got here is incredible. A native of Connecticut, Neistat started out by making refreshingly-authentic short films and videos that featured content that was based on everyday life and called attention to serious issues. He ...

Connor Franta  Inside The Life of American YouTuber YouTube has produced a lot of young celebrities in modern times and Connor Franta happens to be one of them. Apart from being a YouTuber, the young American is also an entrepreneur, entertainer, and writer. His journey to fame began almost a decade ago when he started a self-named YouTube channel where he uploads content ranging ...

Rhett and Link  Bio, Who are Their Wives, Net Worth and Family Facts Rhett and Link refer to an American comedy duo who are very popular on YouTube. They are known for their comic songs, viral commercials, skits and the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. Good Mythical Morning is the most watched daily show online, averaging 100 million views in a month. The show has featured guests such ...

A Walk Through The Maze of Ryan Higas Career Pursuits And Relationship With Arden Cho Ryan Higa is not only celebrated as a YouTube star, but he is also famed for appearing on television screens as an actor and comedian. Nigahiga, his Youtube channel, has gathered over 20 million subscribers and billions of views with his different comic acts, short films, and music videos uploads. With the rise in his career, ...

What to Know About The Shows That Made Craig Ferguson a Star and His Family Ties Rising to the top of your profession can sometimes be a hard and difficult process. It requires days and nights of working consistently hard to be better than what you were yesterday. It requires not giving up when all of your experiences seem to be pushing you to quit. It is because of these challenges ...

David Dobrik Married Liza Koshy for One Month  Inside His Family and Relationships David Dobrik is a YouTube sensation who has garnered fame not just for his vlogs but his love life too. Given his career as a YouTuber, his channel is one place where he shares his romantic escapades. With a cute boyish look like his, this Slovakian young man is definitely a good catch, and not ...

Merrell Twins Bio  Ethnicity, Parents & Boyfriend One of the beautiful things about modern life is social media. As rudimentary as it might seem, it could turn out to be the greatest thing that would be invented in the next 50 years because of its impact on human life. Very few tools have revolutionized human behavior and culture as much as social ...

Who Is Bunny Meyer, Is She Married & What Is Her Net Worth? Bunny Meyer is a YouTube celebrity who has amassed over 8.8 million subscribers with 1.5 million viewers on her channel. She is popularly known as Grav3yardgirl and is one of the highest-paid YouTubers in the world. She initially started out as a fashion designer and later chose the path of a YouTuber. Grav3yardgirl has used her knowledge on fashion, makeup, ...

Ninja  Inside The Life of The American YouTuber and Internet Personality Ninja is a talented video game player known for his mastery of Fortnite and other seemingly difficult games he plays with ease. The video gamer made a career out of what is ordinarily the hobby of many people and has since then amassed a huge online following. Find out about him here, including the controversies that ...

What Is Eva Gutowskis True Sexuality and How Did She Rise So Fast As an Influencer? Ever since Eva Gutowski joined YouTube in 2011, it has been an interesting journey for her, moving from one milestone to the other. Backed by an army of young women and teenage girl fans known as Evanators, she has risen to become one of the most-talked-about personalities in the digital stratosphere. She has also leveraged ...

Emma Chamberlain Biography  Age, Height & Net Worth Before now, people in the entertainment industry could only achieve popularity after many years of dedication and hard work but since social media came into the scene, massive success and overnight popularity became possible. That is the story of Emma Chamberlain who encountered fame as a fifteen-year-old. Emma is one of the many young people who became ...

Anna Akana  Ethnicity, Boyfriend & Net Worth There is a new crop of YouTubers known by their different contents with a very strong uniqueness that stands every one of them out, some upload video games, some fashion while some others have comedy video contents to showcase on their channels. Anna Akana has used her platform to showcase her comedy contents to the ...

Revealing Truths About Lilly Singhs Ethnic Background, Family and Her Relationship With Yousef Erakat Lilly Singh is an Indian-Canadian YouTube personality, actress, and comedian also known as Superwoman. She kicked off her YouTube career in 2010 with the launch of her channel IISuperwomanII and followed it up with a vlog channel in 2011. This paved the way for her fame and success which led to a world tour. The ...

Who Is Andrea Constand, Is She Married and What Is Her Connection With Bill Cosby? Many people got sexually molested but could not voice out due to the stigma victims suffer and what will become of them thereafter. Very few of the victims danm every consequence to seek justice and bring the perpetrator to the book, like Andrea Constand. She never got any media buzz, not until her friend cum molester; ...

Who Is Lazarbeam (Lannan Eacott)? Here Are Facts You Need To Know Lannan Eacott became a person of interest after his YouTube channel, LazarBeam pulled him to the limelight. Initially, he started with uploads of Madden Challenge videos before deciding to build his own channel in January 2015. Within the space of three years, his YouTube channel had gathered over 7 million loyal subscribers. Today, he has not ...

Puzzling Facts About Wengies YouTube Success and More About Her Fiance Among the many YouTubers who have succeeded in winning the hearts of millions of people is Wengie. She is a Chinese-Australian YouTube personality, vlogger, singer, and voice actress. Wengie is famous for a lot of things, from her simple life hacks, DIYs, craft ideas to fun experiments, tricks and pranks. Her content portfolio also includes hair tutorials, diet & fitness tips, lookbooks, ...

Is Jeffree Star A Billionaire and How Much Does He Make On YouTube? If looks can be deceptive then theres no other person who proves this maxim better than Jeffree Star. A quick look at Stars pictures would likely leave you wondering whether or not to tag him a male or female. But who says being controversial has to be a curse? For Star, his looks have caught ...

The Place of Rosanna Pansinos Career Hats In Her Rise To Fame and Facts About Her Personal Life There are a few phrases that could summarize Rosanna Pansinos rise to fame. None of them can do it better than the famous axiom, no knowledge is lost. Her popularity YouTube comes out of her foray into other professions, specifically acting. Although acting now occupies one of the major professional hats in Rosannas resume, it was ...

Muselk (Elliott Watkins) Biography  Age, Girlfriend and Net Worth The new and best in-thing in terms of career is video gaming and we have over time seen young men and women make massive income from an activity that was purportedly designed to serve as a hobby or a relaxation activity. One of such individuals is the Australian-born YouTube Celebrity and Twitch streamer, Muselk, whose ...

PopularMMOs Biography: 5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know We have over the years seen social media millionaires, especially on the YouTube social platform. These celebrities cum millionaires have made names for themselves after carving out niches on the internet, and a typical example of one of such exciting media personality on the YouTube is American Minecraft gamer and YouTube star, PopularMMOs whose channel ...

Jason Nash Once Married Marney Hochman  What To Know About His Ex-Wife and Kids The now-defunct video-sharing app Vine was the path that led Jason Nash to fame. With it, he built an audience of over two million followers, which he parlayed into a significant YouTube career. That move has seen him become one of the most popular personalities on the internet, with the cash income to go with ...

Where Does Dantdm Live? What Do We Know About His Net Worth, Wife and Brother? Most parents buy video games for their kids to occupy their time leisure, while other parents frown at their kids when they play video games. Despite the disparity, every parent would be proud of their child if he/she eventually turns a celebrity or millionaire through playing video games like Dantdm. Biography of Dantdm Dantdm was born Daniel ...

LaurDIY  Biography: 5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTuber LaurDIY is the YouTube channel of Lauren Riihimaki which she created on December 1, 2011, when she was still a college undergrad with the sole aim of giving Do It Yourself (DIY) as well as practical fashion and beauty tips to her followers. She has used the channel to establish herself as a YouTube personality ...

Lachlan Ross Power  Bio And Family Life Of Australian The YouTube Star It is amazing the varied sources of income that the internet has made possible in this day and age. Internet fame can get its holder a whole lot of monetary and social benefits, but it must be noted that it does not come easy or cheap. For those who desire fame, content is the sacrifice ...

Alfie Deyes  Bio and Net Worth: Everything You Need To Know Alfie Deyes is one internet personality you definitely would like to know about. He boasts of over 10 million subscribers on three of his YouTube channels and has three bestseller books to his name. He is probably the most renowned young personality on YouTube today and his vlogging empire continues to grow by the day. ...

Colleen Ballingers Love Story With Husband Erik Stocklin and How Much She Is Worth Now Colleen Ballinger is an American comedian and YouTuber who is a very funny, adventurous, and highly talented woman. She is also an actress, singer, and writer. Collen is widely known for her work on YouTube where she posts content on her channel, Miranda Sings. The comedian has gained many subscribers over the years and has ...

Who Are The Dude Perfect Members and How Much Are They Worth? Entertainment in the 21st century can be digested in many forms and with platforms like YouTube, the creators and purveyors of entertainment have been democratized. Today, one of the most popular platforms to exhibit ones creative talents is YouTube, even though there are other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, who suffer in comparison to YouTube because ...

Who Is Rudy Mancuso, What Is His Earning Power and What Do We Know About His Girlfriend? Rudy Mancuso started his internet journey on Vine. He would later transition to YouTube where he solidified his place among the internets most beloved comedic creators. He is now regarded as one of the renowned internet personalities in the world, with a presence in mainstream TV and film projects like Comedy Centrals Drunk History and ...

Vsauce (Michael Stevens) Biography and Net Worth: All You Need To Know The advent of YouTube and the internet as a whole revolutionized how human beings consume information. With each passing year, the percentage of learning that is done in a traditional classroom decrease as a seismic shift to internet-based learning happens in our education industry. From open courses online to YouTube classes and videos, there are ...

How did Jake Paul Make His YouTube Big Break and Who is His Wife? One of the most interesting Social Media personalities of the 21st century is the young and popular Jake Paul whose elder brother is the famed Vine star, Logan Paul. Jake has utilized the power of the internet to bring himself to the limelight with a channel named JakePaulProductions that has amassed up to six billion ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About Reaction Time (Tal Fishman)  The American YouTuber Before 2015, the leading meaning of reaction time was the amount of time it takes to respond to a stimulus, until Tal Fishman started his channel, Reaction Time on YouTube and the dominant meaning changed. Today, a google search of Reaction Time would deliver Tal Fishmans videos and YouTube channel link with a few physics ...

Grace Helbig  Net Worth, Boyfriend and Family Life of The YouTuber Grace Helbig is an American internet personality, comedian, actress, and writer. She became popular due to her daily vlog series, DailyGrace, which ran on My Damn Channel from 2008 to 2013. Helbig is also popular for her own indie series on YouTube, ItsGrace, which she launched in 2014. Her vlogs which feature random stuff such as ...

Mark Wiens Bio  Ethnicity, Wife and Parents Food is a great way to connect with people. We all love to eat, if not for the pleasure of food, the satisfaction of quenching hunger, and the very process of providing and sharing that food is part of the strongest bonds that bind humanity together. Maybe it is our historical connection to food, where ...

Is Filthy Frank Dead, What Happened To Him and How Much Is He Worth? As George Kusunoki Miller, he was a nobody. However, as Filthy Frank, George was one of the most famous internet personalities on the planet. The Filthy Frank Show, a sketch series on his YouTube channel, TVFilthyFrank, was one of the platforms most influential creations. He is the reason a crazy dance song, Harlem Shake, made it ...

CaptainSparklez Bio  Net Worth, House and Cars of The Famous YouTuber Sometimes, what society wants from its citizens is quite different from what the citizens want for themselves. This is evident in the life and career of video blogger and American YouTube personality, Jordan Maron famous for his YouTube channel CaptainSparklez. He dropped out of school after discovering his talent in playing an online game called Minecraft. ...

Who is Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg)? Here are Facts You Must Know Canadian Youtube personality, Simply Nailogical (Cristine Rotenberg) originally started out polishing and designing nails even before it became a trendy culture in the social media. Simply Nailogica started out her showbiz career in her early days as a child actress, acting in commercials for game and toy companies. Aside from acting, she is blogger, vlogger, specializing ...

5 Interesting Facts You Need To Know About Huda Beauty In the world of entrepreneurship, it is interesting when an individual has a mentor who he/she looks up to, this yield more productivity on the part of the individual. The iconic and rich American beautician and makeup artist Huda Kattan nicknamed Heida is the founder of the Huda Beauty blog which is number one Instagram beauty blog ...

Is Dino MasterChef Gay? Details About His Ethnicity, Girlfriend, Where He Is Now Food, for the better part of the early years of human life, was nothing more than what we needed for survival. There was no artistry or curation to the method of cooking. The scarcity of food left no room for artistic expression until we figured out agriculture and we could make as much as we ...

Who Is Gabbie Hanna And How Did She Become Famous? As the world shifts to digital media and depends more and more on streaming services for its news and entertainment content, YouTubers have become one of the leading creators in the new media world. Their understanding of the online audience: how to create, maintain, and increase followers, are all handy skills that have primed them ...

Jacksepticeye  Height, Girlfriend & Net Worth Jacksepticeye is a YouTuber and actor who gained popularity with a series of gaming videos he uploads on his channel to the delight of millions of his subscribers. He is Known primarily for his comic video game series titled Lets Play and his vlogs. His channel was formerly ranked 46th in the list of most subscribed ...

Chris Heria Personal Details: About His Wife, Height & Ethnicity Background In this generation, keeping fit has become one of the major criteria for being hale and hearty. In fact, most occupations these days are majorly concerned with ones body mass, weight and looks. Unlike the past where most people have to register in a gym to keep fit, social media has made it quite easy ...

Everything You Need To Know About Game Grumps Gaming is becoming incredibly popular on YouTube these days with game vloggers make millions of dollars out of them yearly. One of the most popular up-coming gaming YouTube channels is Game Grumps. The Lets Play series was created in 2012 and celebrated its fifth anniversary on July 18th, 2017. In six years of its existence, the ...

Daithi De Nogla Biography, Girlfriend and Net Worth YouTube has created an avenue for many to make wealth and become famous from the comfort of their homes while having fun. Many have built a career out of the platform, uploading numerous videos that have earned them the admiration of viewers across the globe. For Daithi De Nogla, he is loved for his humorous commentary on ...

Does Phoebe Robinson Have A Boyfriend or Husband and What Do We Know About Her Family? Phoebe Robinson is a New York-based comedian, writer, and actress. She is best known as the co-creator and co-host of the WNYC Studios podcast 2 Dope Queens. Just like some other female comedians, she never had any original plans of becoming a stand-up comedian even though, according to her, she took a class on a whim at Carolines on Broadway. After ...

Who Are Lex and Alana from Listed Sisters? What Is Their Ethnicity & Is the Show Cancelled? America is a country built on diversity. Everywhere you look all over the country, a countless number of immigrants or children of immigrants have become an integral part of the fabric of the country. From entertainment to business, immigrants are creating a niche for themselves and climbing to the summit of their respective professions. One ...

Riveting Facts About Danielle Lombard And What She Is Best Known For The American entertainment industry is one that provides many avenues for aspiring hopefuls to express their talents and become famous. From films to television shows and game shows, there is no shortage of ways for men and women who desire fame to pursue and earn it in the United States of America. Another tested medium ...

Unearthing New Details About The YouTube Success And Personal Life of Alex Burriss of Wassabi Productions Wildly hilarious and truly audacious, Alex Wassabi is an American YouTuber who has become a very popular face on the video-sharing platform after having garnered millions of subscribers over the years by keeping people glued to his channel with his witty parody video releases. If you have always loved parody videos, there is every chance ...

Everything You Need To Know About H2O Delirious H2O Delirious whose full birth name is reported to be Jonathan Gormon Dennis has successfully kept himself mystified by hiding his face behind the masks leaving his loyal fans speculating who he really is for many years. The American YouTube star is easily identified by the Jason Mask Style with make-up which he wears on his ...

Who Is HolaSoyGerman and What Happened To Him? German Garmendia has certainly seen it all when it comes to internet success. His channels, HolaSoyGerman and JuegaGerman are in the top twenty most subscribed channel on YouTube. The Chilean YouTuber found a way to tap into one of the worlds greatest inventions and make a living from it. He has been able to build ...

Who Are Glenn Becks Family, What Is His Net Worth And What Happened To Him? The American political commentary space is filled with different personalities. A few of them, through their rhetoric, charisma, and resources have been able to build a large following of men and women who listen to them for insight and direction for various political and social issues in the United States. For Conservatives, the story is ...

Following Charissa Thompsons Rise Through The Ranks Of Sports Casting and All About Her Boyfriend Superstar TV host and sportscaster, Charissa Thompson, has been hailed as one of the highest-profile women journalists in America, and the reason is there for all to see. She has worked for popular establishments such as Versus, Yahoo! Sports, ESPN, GSN, and Big Ten Network. She currently hosts the popular pre-game show, Fox NFL Kickoff, ...

Is Chris Kattan Gay or Does He Have A Wife? What Is His Net Worth? Chris Kattan is a popular American comedian and actor. He has appeared in several comic movies and TV series such as The Middle, A Night at the Roxbury and Bunnicula. Kattan is, however, most popular for his six-year stint as a cast member of Saturday Night Live. During his time on the legendary show, he ...

Everything You Should Know About the Rise of Insta Star Claire Abbott and Why She Gave It All Up A lot of young Americans have shot into the limelight for uploading different kinds of videos on YouTube. Some of these young stars include Connor Franta, Desi Perkins, Emma Chamberlain, the Dolan Twins (Ethan and Grayson), and Claire Abbott. The latter became a social media celebrity for uploading sexy bikini pictures of herself on social media. Apart from ...

5 Facts You Need To Know About The YouTube Channel  h3h3Productions H3h3Productions is a YouTube channel that specializes on Comic responses or reactions of other contents or trendy stories. The celebrity couple that created the channel has over time racked up sizable views for their commentaries and contents. Even though they had their own fair share of copyright cases, thankfully they scored an unprecedented victory in all ...

Lilypichu Bio  Height, Brother and Love Story With Albert SleightlyMusical Chang Like most popular internet celebrities, Lilypichu is one of those Twitch streamers who spend their lives on camera. From daydreaming about the possibility of becoming a full-time professional streamer, she grew to live out her dreams on the popular live streaming platform where people play games, make crafts, and showcase their day-to-day activities. Given the rise of ...

KSI  What To Know About His Girlfriend, Brother  Deji Olatunji & Net Worth Assuredly, when Internet inventors Vint Cerf and Bob Khan created the technological masterpiece, they probably did not know how massive the creation will be harnessed by many for different purposes including as a platform for earning money through content creation. One of such person who smiles to the bank regularly today for spending time creating ...

The Interesting Progression and Highlights of Carrie Keagans Career as a Host and Actress Carrie Keagan has garnered huge fame through her various stints on television. She is not just your regular TV host but one with a difference. Keagan has hosted several high profile events and TV shows, including VH1s Big Morning Buzz Live and Fox News Channels Red Eye with Greg Gutfeld. However, not many know she ...

The Gist On Elise Jordans Marriages And Her Rise To Prominence Political commentaries tend to be boring when it is handled by someone who does not have a knack for it. However, when you see the likes of Elise Jordan run the same commentary, you will have a lot of reasons to look forward to watching her again as the journalist is well-versed in the field ...

What Is Timmy Thick Best Known For and How Successful Is The Star? Thanks to the internet, many people whose talents would have ordinarily gone unnoticed have become famous. A very good example of this modern-day internet celebrity is Timmy Thick, an American social media star. He became popular on Instagram due to his penchant for posting raunchy pictures of himself. He also often posted videos of himself ...

What Does Heather Storm Do For a Living and Who Is She Dating? Reality Television is a great way to make a name for oneself as well as amass a fortune. Heather Storm can attest to this as she is one of those who have made a name and earned a lot from reality TV. She made her name appearing on shows like Car Fanatics, Awesome Autos, and, ...

Matt Carriker Biography  Net Worth, Wife & Height Unlike your regular veterinary doctor next door, Matt Carriker chose to spice up his noble profession with the unusual. Though he is known to many as a medical practitioner, Carriker is better renowned as a YouTube star and an animal lover. Having recorded huge successes on his various YouTube channels, the vet doctors name and ...

Jillian Mele of Fox News Career Achievements, Husband & Measurements There are quite a good number of presenters on radio and television who listeners and viewers may never wish to miss any of their shows because of their sensational golden voice, beauty or the special way or artistry they anchor their shows. Jillian Mele is one of such. She has been at the top of ...

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Bangladeshi police and civilians carry an injured firefighter during a raid on an Islamic militant hideout in Rajshahi, northwest of Dhaka, May 11, 2017.

Updated at 5:37 p.m. ET on 2017-05-11

Police raided a hideout of suspected Islamic militants who were armed with suicide vests and machetes in northwestern Bangladesh on Thursday, triggering a clash that killed at least six people, including a firefighter, officials said.

Four of those killed, including two women, belonged to the same family. Four police officers were injured, police and eyewitnesses told BenarNews.

The firefighter was killed by a female suspect who allegedly hacked him to death with a machete.

Five of the deceased are militants, said local police officer-in-charge Hifzur Alam Munsi, who said the raid took place in a village in Rajshahi district, about 300 km (187 miles) northwest of the capital Dhaka. The militants have apparently been killed in a suicide blast.

He said a woman and two children were rescued from the hideout. A second adult left the hideout as well.

The raid comes as authorities stepped up their battle against militants suspected of involvement in dozens of deadly attacks against writers, secular bloggers, gay-rights activists and religious minorities across Bangladesh. Those attacks that started in early 2013 mostly targeted individuals.

Police said among the dead was a man who was arrested about six months ago on suspicion of involvement with militant group Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB).

Bangladesh authorities have blamed its offshoot, Neo-JMB for the major attack on a Dhaka cafe in July 2016 in which 20 people were killed, mostly foreigners. The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack, but the government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina denies the presence of IS in the mostly Muslim country of 163 million people.

Since the cafe attack, 70 suspected militants have been killed in multiple raids launched across the country, including the five suspected militants who died Thursday.

Firefighter slain in cold blood



The raid on the militant hideout, a house built two months ago in a rice field, began early Thursday, police said.

Members of the Rajshahi district police, backed by the counter-terror unit of the Dhaka metropolitan police, cordoned off the area at Benipur village about 1 a.m., officials said. Firefighters were on standby.

We had been requesting the insiders through loudspeakers to surrender since midnight. But they did not pay heed to our call, Hifzur Munsi, the officer-in-charge, said. In the morning, police fired a few gunshots. But they did not come out.

There were no neighbors within a 1.5 km (1 mile) area and police said they had no idea how many people were inside the house.

As police took positions and cordoned off the area, firefighters began spraying the houses mud walls, hoping to defuse any explosives inside.

Suddenly, the militants stormed out, throwing explosives, eyewitnesses said.

A few people, wearing suicide vests and wielding machetes, came out from the house suddenly, Hifzur Munsi said. One of the suspects then grabbed a firefighter and hacked him repeatedly with a machete, as others blasted bombs.

All the horrified policemen could do was quickly withdraw, he said. The scene was caught on camera (see video clip).

We could not open fire as the firefighters were in the frontline, Hifzur Munsi told BenarNews. Many firefighters could have died had we opened fire at the terrorists.

Officials could not immediately confirm how many of the suspects were wearing suicide vests. But a police officer told BenarNews a woman believed to be the mother of two rescued children surrendered before the clash. She was wearing a suicide vest packed with explosives.

Another person came of the house with the womans children, a 5-year-old boy and a 3-month-old child, the officer said. They were taken to a safe place.

Journalists were blocked from entering the area, but Godagari Municipality Mayor Monirul Islam Babu was allowed to visit the scene in the afternoon.

I saw the remains of devastation, he told reporters. Dead bodies of five people are there.

Bolder tactics



Security experts said militants have adopted bolder tactics by using more powerful explosives.

The militants are carrying out suicidal attacks as the law enforcers were successful to keep them at bay, Monirul Islam, chief of the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime Unit of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told BenarNews. Once upon a time, they used to change locations. Now they are staying in their own houses along with arms and ammunition.
Worshipers line up to enter the Baitul Mukarram National Mosque in Dhaka, April 21, 2017.

Saudi Arabia has rejected claims by Bangladesh that it has agreed to provide $1 billion to build almost 600 mosques in the South Asian nation, saying such a major commitment would require a formal bilateral agreement.

Bangladesh Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal had claimed last month that the Saudis would provide about 81.6 billion taka ($1 billion) to build 560 mosques from April 2017 to December 2019, with Bangladesh chipping in 8.9 billion taka (U.S. $110 million) for the massive project.

The executive committee of the national economic council, headed by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, had approved the project, Kamal announced on April 25.

Kamals announcement of the Saudi commitment was widely reported in local and foreign media.

But Saudi Arabias minister of culture and information, Awwad Alawwad, said on Thursday that his government has not committed such funding for the mosque-building project.

Saudi Arabia has never committed to pay Bangladesh one billion dollars for the construction of mosques, he said in a statement sent to BenarNews on Thursday.

This is simply not true, Alawwad said.

Any commitment by the Saudi government of this nature would only be considered after receiving an official request from the host countrys government. When such an agreement is finalized there would definitely be an official announcement by both countries, the minister stated.

He underlined the important role of Saudi Arabia for Muslims worldwide, noting the kingdoms hosting of the two holiest mosques of Islam and millions of Muslim pilgrims every year.

But Kamal maintained Friday that Saudi Arabia had made the funding commitment.

The agreement was with the Saudi king. Maybe the king did not inform the ministry, he told the Bangla Tribune newspaper when commenting on the Saudi denial.

Aid

On Friday, officials at Bangladeshs Islamic Foundation, an agency under the Religious Affairs Ministry in charge of implementing the mosque construction project, said they were confident the project would go ahead.

We will supervise the construction of the 560 mosque complexes. These will be constructed jointly by the governments of Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia, foundation Director General Shamim Afzal told BenarNews.

But I cannot give you any specific timeframe for the construction of the mosques, he said.

On Feb. 2, Religious Affairs Minister Principal Matior Rahman announced the massive mosque-building project to parliament, and two months later a senior official gave details of what he said was Saudi Arabias financial commitment to it.

The religious affairs ministry has adopted a project on construction of 560 mosques cum Islamic cultural centers at all districts and upazilas (sub-districts) with grants from Saudi Arabia, Matior said, according to a transcript of his remarks to lawmakers obtained by BenarNews.

Muhammad Nazrul Islam, deputy chief of mission at the Bangladesh embassy in Riyadh, said Hasina had sought financial support for the construction of the mosques during her last trip to Saudi Arabia.

His excellency the Saudi King assured our honorable prime minister that he will look into the matter, Islam told BenarNews.

The funding the construction of the mosques is handled by the office of the Saudi King. I think implementation of the project will take time. I cannot give you any timeframe in this regard, he said.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has passed the Arctic Council chairmanship over to Finland's Foreign Minister Timo Soini at the 10th Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting held in Fairbanks, Alaska, USA.

"I'd like to ask my friend and colleague, Foreign Minister Soini, to join me on the platform so I can pass this beautiful gavel which is in itself a work of art over to him in his new role as chairman," Tillerson said, passing Soini the symbol of chairmanship created in line with the traditions of Alaska's indigenous peoples.

TASS reports that the Finnish Foreign Minister named the four main issues Finland will deal with during its two-year long chairmanship: environmental protection, including the preservation of biodiversity; development of communication networks in the Arctic; improvement of observation networks for intensified monitoring on land, at sea, in the atmosphere; as well as providing fair educational opportunities to indigenous people of the North.
Indian Muslim women participate in a rally in Ahmedabad to oppose efforts to outlaw the practice of triple talaq, Nov. 4, 2016.

Updated at 8:08 a.m. ET on 2017-05-12

Indias Supreme Court will examine if a controversial practice of unilateral divorce among Muslims is fundamental to their religion, the court said Thursday as it began hearing a cluster of petitions filed by Islamic women challenging the constitutional validity of triple talaq.

The countrys apex court said it would take into consideration laws in Islamic nations before delivering its verdict on the legality of the practice, which allows a Muslim man to part from his wife by uttering or writing the word divorce three times.

The five-member bench, headed by Chief Justice of India J.S. Khehar, includes judges belonging to different religious communities. While Shekhar is a Sikh, Kurian Joseph is a Christian; Rohinton Fali Nariman is a Parsi; U.U. Lalit is a Hindu, and Abdul Nazeer a Muslim.

The court said it was banding together seven petitions filed separately by two womens rights groups and five victims of triple talaq so it could deliver a speedy verdict.

Influential Muslim bodies such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) and Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, which resisted attempts to modernize Sharia-based laws, will challenge the petitions that seek to reform Muslim personal law, members of the groups said.

The Indian government, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), last year submitted an affidavit in court, saying it was opposed to the practice of triple talaq on grounds of gender equality and secularism.

Any practice by which women are left socially, financially or emotionally vulnerable or subject to the whims and caprice of men-folk is incompatible with the letter and spirit of the constitution, the government said.

The court, which for the first time in Indian judicial history is hearing a case during its summer vacation, gave two days each to the prosecution and defense to present arguments and a day each for rebuttals.

Each side can argue whatever they want but there should not be any repetition, the bench said, according to the Press Trust of India. The court added that the arguments must only be limited to whether triple talaq is an integral part of Islam and if banning it would mean curbing the fundamental right to religion, as promised in the constitution.

Women speak

Zakia Soman of the Mumbai-based Muslim womens rights group Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan (BMMA), one of the petitioners in the case, said she was confident the court would rule in favor of gender equality.

We are confident that we will get a verdict in our favor. Not just that, the court will also abolish the board (AIMPLB), Soman told BenarNews. The AIMPLB governs Muslim personal law in Hindu-majority India, which has a population of about 180 million Muslims.

There is no single civil law code for officially secular Indias 1.25 billion citizens.

Whatever the board has been saying is informed by their extremely patriarchy-driven mindset. They have resorted to enforcing such ridiculous laws just to stay in existence, Soman said.

Facing jibes from Islamic scholars that the Quran does not approve the practice of triple talaq, the AIMPLB last month passed a resolution that whosoever divorces his wife by uttering the word divorce three times in one sitting will face a social boycott. It also called for non-interference by courts and the government in matters of Muslim personal law.

The concept of triple talaq, according to the Quran, is that there should be a gap of three months before the word divorce is uttered for the third and final time. In the interim period, the couple should have enough time and opportunity to reconcile, Shaista Amber, president of the All India Muslim Women Personal Board, told BenarNews.

But Maulana Mohammad Wali Rahmani, general secretary of the AIMPLB, said: People can say anything and express whatever they like. We want the court to give its ruling based on the constitution and not on personal opinion.

Triple talaq is a part of our religion, and freedom to practice our respective religions is a fundamental right of every Indian citizen according to the constitution, Rahmani told BenarNews.

The BJP-led government stood by its stance that the practice of unilateral divorce was illegal.

Triple talaq is legally wrong, which is why we oppose it, BJP spokesman Bizay Sonkar Shastri told BenarNews, adding that the ruling party would welcome a solution to the issue.

Any section of people struggling with any fundamental problem should get social and political support. Our party will support any such social and political solution, he said.

Soni Sangwan in New Delhi contributed to this report.

An earlier version gave a wrong name for the chief justice of India.


A ranking communist guerrilla leader wanted for a string of attacks in the southern Philippines has been arrested along with three others including a Christian bishop, authorities said Friday.



Rommel Salinas, identified as the secretary general of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) in Mindanao, was arrested by joint police and military operatives Thursday evening near the city of Ozamiz, about 1,200 km (750 miles) of the capital Manila, officials said.



Also arrested were Bishop Carlo Morales of the local Christian church Iglesia Filipina Independiente, his wife and the driver of the van the group rode in, local police spokesman Superintendent Lemuel Gonda said.



Authorities confiscated a hand grenade, mobile phones, battery packs, a city map and almost $2,000 from the four suspects, he said.



Brig. Gen. Rolando Joselito Bautista, commander of the Philippine Armys regional command, said Salinas was the top commander of the communists armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA), and was believed to be in charge of sowing a range of terrorist activities in the region, from arson and extortion to killings and abductions.



Salinas was allegedly "involved in numerous high-profile crimes" and a local court had issued at least five warrants for his arrest.



Bautista said Salinas "was the most wanted NPA commander" in the western part of Mindanao, the country's southern third-largest island where both communist guerrillas and Muslim insurgents operate.



"Coordination work from the community, local government units, the national police and the army led to the capture of one of the highest-ranking CPP-NPA leader in western Mindanao," Bautista said.



The arrest of Bishop Morales ignited a furor in his church, during which the clergy ordered its members to immediately travel to the regional police office to demand his freedom.



Those of you who can travel, go now to the Ozamiz police station, said Bishop Antonio Ablon of the church's diocese in Pagadian City, also in the south.



The church also posted a photo of a handcuffed Bishop Morales in its social media page and said the four were not allowed to make any phone calls to seek legal assistance.



Ablon said Bishop Morales properly identified himself to the police, but was ignored. The church, however, did not explain why the bishop was with a top communist guerrilla wanted by the authorities.



"We find no reason that the good IFI Bishop of Ozamiz will be illegally arrested, handcuffed and illegally detained in jail. He had properly introduced himself as a bishop but was still accorded with maltreatment, a church statement said.

Communist guerrillas patrol a remote town in Bukidnon province in the southern Philippines, April 27, 2017. [Froilan Gallardo/BenarNews]



Clashes continue elsewhere



The arrests came a day after four NPA rebels were killed in separate clashes with troops also in the south Wednesday, some two weeks after the gunmen attacked three rubber manufacturing facilities in the southern city of Davao, killing a civilian.



Senior Superintendent Raul Supiter, provincial police commander in the southern city of Sultan Kudarat, said fighting erupted when NPA rebels attacked a Marine contingent patrolling the area.



A 30-minute gunbattle ensued, resulting in the death of two rebels. Two other guerrillas were also slain in a firefight in the city of Malaybalay, about 1,500 km (937 miles) south of Manila.



While local government officials have condemned the series of rebel atrocities, the Philippines has insisted that the next round of talks with the communists would still go ahead later this month in the Netherlands.



The NPA, armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has been waging a guerrilla campaign in the countryside since the late 1960s. Its numbers are believed to number more than 3,200.



Some 40,000 soldiers, rebels and civilians have been slain over the course of the conflict, and peace talks have been on and off since the early 1990s.



In February, the negotiations collapsed after the guerrillas killed several government forces in a series of attacks.



But President Duterte subsequently agreed to return to the negotiating table subject to several conditions, including the release of several officers the NPA has captured and for the rebels to agree to a bilateral cease-fire.
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Russian Ambassador to Armenia Ivan Volynkin condemned the incident with the shelling of the Shant TV crew by Azerbaijani armed forces.

May 12, 2017, 12:51 Russian ambassador condemns fire on Armenian TV crew by Azerbaijani armed forces

STEPANAKERT, MAY 12, ARTSAKHPRESS: When humanitarian law is violated, I think not a single sensible person would not condemn it. Journalists, doctors and other peaceful professions should not be under fire of the opposing sides. This, of course, is a very unpleasant incident and must be condemned, Ambassador told reporters, News.am reports.

As for the situation at the line of contact, the Russian diplomat noted: We see that there are periodic shootings, clashes, and people are dying. Of course, this is unacceptable in the 21st century. The proposals on strengthening security in the conflict area that we worked out in St. Petersburg and Vienna must be implemented.

Cameraman of Shant TV Davit Atoyan was wounded in a fire from the Azerbaijani side on Wednesday.
This project comes at a time when we are looking back at PNGs path to independence over the years since the end of World War II, Mr Greh said.

National Museum and Art Gallery acting director Senea Greh said PNG Speaks provides important insights into how Papua New Guineans experienced the transition to an independent nation in 1975.

'PNG Speaks' ( click on this link to visit the site ) was developed by the National Museum and Art Gallery of PNG, the University of Queensland, Deakin University and the Australian government to preserve PNGs oral history.

A NEW website hosting interviews with Papua New Guineans who were prominent around the time of independence from Australia in 1975 has been launched.

This is the subject of a major exhibition at the National Museum and Art Gallery, scheduled for later in 2017.

Former Australian High Commissioner to PNG, Adjunct Professor Ian Kemish (pictured above with the late Ben Moide), said the people interviewed represented only a sample of the many people who had important views and recollections to share on the period.

We recognise that, given the many thousands of Papua New Guineans who participated in the independence period, this website will remain a work in progress for many years, Mr Kemish said.

Dr Anne Dickson-Waiko from the University of Papua New Guinea and Professor Musawe Sinebare from the University of Goroka also played significant roles in planning and conducting interviews.

This project is an important element in a broader body of oral history research which sheds light on key moments in PNGs rich history, said Dr Jonathan Ritchie of Deakin University.

The people interviewed so far include Sir Michael Somare (left), former PNGDF Commander Ted Diro, journalist Biga Lebasi, former senior public servants Charles Lepani and Jean Kekedo, Papuan separatist leader Dame Josephine Abaijah and political scientist and former premier Stephen Pokawin.

The website also contains resources including a digitised version of A Papua New Guinea Political Chronicle by Emeritus Professor Clive Moore and Dr Mary Kooyman of Queensland University. The paper provides detailed contemporary accounts of PNGs political developments from 1967-1991.

To better understand ones history is to understand the opportunities of the future, which is why projects like this are so important, said Australias High Commissioner to PNG, Bruce Davis.

He the High Commission was pleased to have partnered with organisations in Papua New Guinea and Australia to support the project.
The College of Business Administration (CBA) appealed to me because of the study abroad opportunities and the diverse classes offered, Everard said. After going online to research what supply chain management was, I became extremely interested in it and wanted to pursue it further.

It intrigued him so much that he added it as a dual major. Two professors in the supply chain management program, Karen Eboch and Janet Hartley, Ph.D., were particular factors in his success.

They have helped me personally, and I appreciate their continued mentorship and guidance, Everard said.

The support he found from BGSU faculty was not unusual.

I hear stories like this from all across the CBA about students developing fantastic relationships with professors and staff that have helped the students succeed in and out of the classroom, Everard said. The best thing about the CBA is a faculty that is invested in students; not just their academics, but their lives as a whole.

In January, Everards goal to include international experience in his education became a reality when he left to spend a semester in Nantes, France. BGSU has a long-standing partnership there with Audencia Business School, which is one of Europes leading business schools.

Everards time in Nantes has enabled him to enhance his skills in working with people from diverse cultures.

While we all have our differences, we are all just college students trying to figure out life, he said. The most refreshing part of my trip is learning how similar people are, even though we are from every continent.

Audencias academic schedule, which includes a longer spring break than American universities, has enabled Everard to experience more European culture than just what the schools Nantes campus offers. So far, he has traveled to Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Ireland.

It is very hard to choose the most interesting place, as each one has its own culture and experiences, which are extremely cool to be immersed in, he said. However, he is planning a return trip to Italy.

Education abroad is an opportunity that intimidates some students and families. One of the first concerns is often the increased cost of living outside the United States for a few weeks or months. Everard credits generous scholarships that have subsidized much of his education, including a Presidents Leadership Academy scholarship and a Primrose Family Scholarship. His semester abroad was financed by income from an Owens-Illinois internship he completed, along with support from his family.

Even if a full semester isnt possible, Everard said a short time in another country is still an incredible opportunity.

The experiences are once in a lifetime, he said, and even if you dont want to miss a semester, there are summer opportunities that are just a few weeks. Any way you can fit it into your college career, I would recommend it 100 percent.

Everards European experience is not without some personal sacrifice. Because of his final exam schedule in Nantes, he missed BGSU commencement ceremonies. But when he returns to the United States in late May, a job is already waiting for him at Owens-Illinois in Perrysburg.
By Amber Stark 99

Originally from Chicago, Diana and Olivia Paredes path to Bowling Green State University wasnt straight or planned, but rather a happy accident.

Mother and daughter Diana and Olivia Paredes were both born in Chicago, but Dianas husbands career kept them moving, first to Wisconsin, then to Cincinnati and finally to Perrysburg, Ohio. Once here, Olivia attended Maumee Valley Country Day School in Toledo before going away for her freshman year of college. She wasnt exactly sure what she wanted to study, so she came back to northwest Ohio.

I ended up transferring to BGSU to be closer to home, she said. I fell in love with BGSU. The professors were amazing and I loved the vibe on campus. BGSU was a happy accident.

Before long, her mother joined her.

Both women graduated from Bowling Green State University May 6 with bachelors degrees in communication. Olivia had a Latino/a studies minor.

I chose communications because of its versatility, Olivia said. Coming into college and deciding exactly what you want to do for the rest of your life is such a scary endeavor. I wanted something that would give me the tools necessary for the multiple fields I was interested in. Communications is the basic understanding for all professions. It does not matter how amazing an idea is if you cannot properly share it with the world.

Diana chose communications for a different reason.

Thirty years ago, when I first began college, my degree was in elementary education with a Spanish minor, she said. I tried several times, both in Wisconsin and Cincinnati, to inquire about finishing that degree, but no one would accept the credits. I came to BGSU, they looked over my credits and encouraged me to pursue communication.

While here, Olivia was involved in the Latino Student Union and served as public relations chair on its executive board.

Not content with their bachelors degrees, both women are considering graduate school in the fall.

I thought that I would go straight into the workforce after graduating, however, now that I have finished my bachelors, I find myself still wanting to further my education, Olivia said.

Diana added: When I first began, I really didnt have any aspirations for beginning a career at my age, but I have had amazing professors who believe in me and I now feel that I would be a good asset for any company. I am considering graduate school next fall, or perhaps continuing working in nonprofit.
Getting Acquainted

The Gospel of John plays a unique and influential role in the Christian Bible. In this account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we learn that Jesus is the Son of God,1 sent2 by God the Father to give eternal life3 to all who believe in him. Jesus repeatedly shatters peoples assumptions, teaching that salvation is not earned but rather is a free gift received through a miracle of gracethrough being born again. Johns Gospel also sounds a constant theme of mission. Just as the Father sent Jesus to earth, Jesus sends his followers to continue his mission by testifying that Jesus is the Son of God so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

Of the four Gospels, John was probably the last one written. It is the most theologically and philosophically profound Gospel account. John does not narrate Jesus birth. Instead, he begins his Gospel at the very beginning, stating in his opening sentence that Jesus has eternally existed and that all things were made through him (John 1:3). John roots Jesus identity in eternity past, providing a lofty vision of the Son of God sent to earth as fully God and now also fully man. Other than the feeding of the five thousand, the anointing at Bethany (John 12:1-8), and the passion narrative, John does not share any sizable blocks of teaching with the Synoptic Gospels. John is organized around carefully crafted narrative strands that highlight both the signs and teachings of Jesus. This gives Johns Gospel a sense of depth as the reader is presented with a rich, multi-layered, and cosmic display of the identity, works, words, and mission of Jesus.

Johns purpose is to present Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, sent to earth to fulfill all that the Old Testament anticipated: bringing new lifeeternal lifeto a dark world.

Placing It in the Larger Story

While Matthew focuses on Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, Mark focuses on Jesus as the one who ushers in the kingdom of God, and Luke emphasizes Jesus as the one who welcomes the outsider, John emphasizes Jesus as the eternal Son of God. Through his signs and teaching, through his death and resurrection, and through the mission he entrusts to his disciples, Jesus fulfills all the Old Testament hopes and promises. He inaugurates the long-awaited new age.

Key Verse

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31).

Date and Historical Background

The Gospel of John was written by the apostle John, the son of Zebedee. He was a Palestinian Jew and a member of Jesus inner apostolic circle. John most likely wrote his account of Jesus between AD 70 (when Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans and the temple was destroyed) and AD 100 (the approximate end of Johns lifetime). Most likely he wrote his Gospel in Ephesus, one of the most important urban centers of the Roman empire. Johns Gospel was aimed at both Jews and Gentiles living throughout the Greco-Roman world. John frequently explains Jewish customs and Palestinian geography to non-Jewish readers. John also presents Jesus as the eternal Word that has now become flesh, utilizing the background of Greek thought familiar to his Gentile audience. Yet John clearly also has a Jewish audience in mind: he reveals Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of many Old Testament themes, and the eternal Son of God sent by God the Father to mediate a new relationship between God and man.

John thus wrote his Gospel about two generations after the death and resurrection of Jesus. At the time of writing, the other three Gospels had been written and the Greco-Roman world was in a state of change. Jerusalem had been sacked by Rome. Jews were increasingly dispersed throughout the Roman empire, causing Jews and Gentiles to come into even more frequent contact. It is to this mixed and dispersed Jewish and Gentile audience that John directed his Gospel.

Outline

I. Prologue: The Incarnate Word (John 1:1-18)

II. The Signs of the Messiah (John 1:19-51)

A. John the Baptist and the start of Jesus ministry (John 1:19-51)

B. Jesus expanding ministry (John 2:12-25)

C. More signs amid mounting Jewish opposition (John 5)

D. The final Passover: the ultimate sign (John 11)

E. The Messiahs death at hand (John 12:20-50)

III. The Farewell Discourse and the Passion Narrative (John 13)

A. Jesus final teaching and prayer (John 13)

B. Jesus arrest, trials, death, and burial (John 18)

C. Jesus resurrection and appearances (John 20:1-29)

D. Purpose statement and epilogue (John 20:30-31)

Definitions

1 Son of God  designates Jesus as the Messiah predicted in the Old Testament (2 Samuel 7:14; Psalms 2:7). This term gathers up many strands of Old Testament expectation about a coming anointed one who would lead and rescue Gods people.

2 Sent  Johns favorite designation of Jesus is to call him the Son of God sent by the Father. This is set against a Jewish background in which a messenger represents the sender himself. Jesus is the ultimate sent one; he is the perfect revelation of God.

3 Eternal life  For believers, the new life that begins with trust in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and that continues after physical death with all eternity in Gods presence in heaven.

Taken from John: A 12-Week Study by Justin Buzzard. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, Il 60187, www.crossway.org.

The Knowing the Bible series is a new resource designed to help Bible readers better understand and apply Gods Word. Each 12-week study leads participants through one book of the Bible and is made up of four basic components: (1) Reflection questions designed to help readers engage the text at a deeper level; (2) Gospel Glimpses highlighting the gospel of grace throughout the book; (3) Whole-Bible Connections showing how any given passage connects to the Bibles overarching story of redemption culminating in Christ; and (4) Theological Soundings identifying how historic orthodox doctrines are taught or reinforced throughout Scripture. With contributions from a wide array of influential pastors and church leaders, these gospel-centered studies will help Christians see and cherish the message of Gods grace on each and every page of the Bible.
The pharmaceutical watchdog from the US had inspected the companys Bengaluru plant, before issuing a Form-483 listing out the 8 observations

Shares of Biocon, India's largest and fully-integrated, innovation-led biopharmaceutical company, continue to fall for the third day today from May 10 after it received observations from US FDA in Form-483, leading to worries over further delay in approvals.

The pharmaceutical watchdog from the US had inspected the companys Bengaluru plant, before issuing a Form-483 listing out the 8 observations.

Reacting to the development, company in a statement to BSE noted form 483 is a standard outcome of any audit. Biocon has already responded to US FDA on all observations of the recent audit within stipulated timelines.

The spokesperson of the company in press statement said 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 US FDA, European regulators and other regulators from developed and emerging markets.

A Form- 483 is issued when the US FDA finds possible violations of the US Food Drug and Cosmetic Act after an investigation.

Biocons share prices at BSE opened on May 12 at Rs 999 while it closed at Rs 1008 on May 10. The company's share prices touched a 52 week high of Rs 1188 and low of Rs 615.80.
The GM mustard, developed by a Delhi University institution, is only the second food crop which got its clearance from the central regulator

India's central biotech regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) recently cleared the genetically modified (GM) Mustard for commercial cultivation and recommended its approval to the environment ministry.



The GM mustard, developed by a Delhi University institution, is only the second food crop which got its clearance from the central regulator. The GEAC had earlier in 2010 cleared the Bt Brinjal but the decision was not accepted by then environment minister Jairam Ramesh. Currently, only Bt Cotton - a non-food GM crop - is commercially cultivated in the country.



Amita Prasad, chairperson of the GEAC said, "The application on GM Mustard presented by Deepak Pental of South Campus (Delhi University) was appraised at the GEAC meeting held on Thursday. The GEAC has recommended the approval of GM Mustard to the environment ministry. Earlier, a sub-committee had appraised the safety document for GM Mustard",



Pental, ex-vice chancellor of the Delhi University and a well-known genetics scientist, had filed the application for commercial release of the GM Mustard in December 2015. The GEAC had subsequently set up a sub-committee to examine the safety aspect of the use of transgenic variety of the mustard. The sub-committee had last year given its safety clearance while noting that the GM Mustard is safe for human consumption and environment.

The 'Sarson Satyagraha', a broad platform of hundreds of NGOs representing farmers, consumers, scientists and others that has been at the forefront of resisting the approval of GM mustard in India' too condemned the green signal to the herbicide tolerant GM Mustard.

Kavitha Kuruganti of the Alliance for Sustainable & Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) said, "The GEAC has proven yet again that it is unscientific and uncaring with regard to citizens' health and environment. They have failed in their very mandate and purpose for which they have been created, to protect citizens from risks of GMOs. Earlier in the case of Bt brinjal too, they behaved irresponsibly and shamelessly unscientifically. In this case, it is a hazardous herbicide tolerant food crop at that, which has direct implications for a large number of Indian farmers, agricultural workers and consumers"

She, on behalf of the Sarson Satyagrah, said, "We have shown over the past several months, through rigorous analysis of available material, how this GM mustard dossier was rigged for favourable results, how it is an unneeded GMO, how it will increase chemicals in our food and farms (because it is a herbicide tolerant GMO) and how regulators should have never allowed it to proceed this far. They had ignored many valid questions raised by scientists and others and chose to function behind a shroud of secrecy".
As the new president of Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction, Dr Shah sets her sights on making reproductive healthcare and infertility treatment available to all women, in rural and urban India

Well known gynaecologist and infertility expert Dr Duru Shah recently took charge as the president of the prestigious Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction (ISAR). As the Scientific Director of Gynaecworld and the Gynaecworld Assisted Fertility Center, Mumbai as well as a consultant to Breach Candy and Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai, Dr Shah leads a highly qualified team of consultants offering a wide range of specialised fertility treatments such as IUI and IVF to freezing of embryos, eggs, sperm, to surrogacy.

She took over as the president of ISAR from Dr Narendra Malhotra, and assured her esteemed colleagues of her commitment to the worthy cause of womens reproductive rights in India in her Presidential address, by dedicating 2017 as ISARs Year of Empowerment: through Education, Ethics and Empathy.

Over her several decades of experience in the field, Dr Shah has had to opportunity to work with and help women from all walks of life, and from all parts of the country, and has developed a deep empathy for the plight of lakhs of women in India who do not have access to reproductive healthcare.

India has a strange problem. On the one hand, it has the burden of high fertility which the government is addressing through family planning programs, and on the other hand, there is the problem of childlessness, with over 7 % of currently married women being childless, she explained. And as an infertility expert, Dr Shah stressed the point that infertility treatment is a very necessary component of womens mental and physical health, especially considering the social pressure that women who are unable to conceive or have children face both in rural and urban India.

Apart from this, they battle many other demons, such as the high cost of the treatment, the lack of access to quality infertility treatments in rural areas, the lack of insurance coverage for infertility treatments etc. Adding to this stress is the fact that the woman, who ultimately has to get pregnant, has to go through repeated examinations, procedures and maybe surgeries, entailing a lot of physical discomfort and health issues.

An issue that Dr Shah wants to address during her term as President of ISAR is the need to offer good, dependable and genuine clinical services related to infertility treatment through public private partnerships with infertility clinics, which are accredited by a professional organisation such ISAR. And for this, she has a solution: We could utilise a program with GOI and ISAR to get private IVF centers accredited so as to help women to become mothers without being at the mercy of quacks. As the former President of the prestigious Federation of Obstreticians and Gynaecologists Society of India (FOGSI), Dr Shah had proposed a Public Private Partnership of GOI with FOGSI. Convinced of the need for such a partnership, the WHO had even offered a grant of Rs. 40 lakh to create guidelines on accreditation of private nursing homes that would then be a part of the PPP model. Ten years later, this agenda has been officially taken up in order to reduce maternal mortality. Many experts agree that the PPP model is the way to go, as far as healthcare in the country is concerned. Even other countries in the world such as UK, Singapore, UAE, Israel, Canada, Switzerland, Germany and Australia have begun offering support for infertility treatments both through government or insurance channels. And that is what is needed in India, she added.
Today we find out from the One Show's SA Young Ones' student judges' about SA's significant creative talent and why we need to simplify to amplify and better promote design as a career possibility.

One Show Creative Week is well underway, with SA bringing home 7 bronze pencils and 17 merit awards from the first awards night held at Cipriani Wall Street on Wednesday. SA also brought home our first ever portfolio winners at The One Show's Young Ones Awards held on Tuesday night, in the categories of graphic design, photography and illustration.

To boost your excitement until the final results from the One Show's culmination in the awards night tonight, I chatted to our SA judging contingent for the One Shows Young Ones about the state of local creativity. They raised interesting points on the importance of a well-written rationale, not expecting your work to speak for itself and the all-important need for a truly inclusive, transformed industry

Simplify to amplify

Reddy: My personal view on global creativity is that brands need to stand out. Culture is way ahead of what we do, our target should be trying to be ahead of what is happening in culture. When something breaks in culture, it's amazing how it spreads. Creativity or the ones that are creating should take inspiration of what's happening in culture and try push our work so we also shape what's happening. There's so much material out there. It's just a matter of editing: simplify to amplify.

Schaefer: I'm happy that South Africans were named winners in the Young Ones photography, graphic design and illustration portfolio categories. I was impressed with the graphic design and illustration portfolios I assessed, and clearly, the other judges were as well!

Many of the projects that I judged in the advertising portfolios were using brands to create social improvement and/or to support causes. Often a product innovation was the focus of the campaign. Students seemed to be less concerned with the benefits of the product but rather focussed on how the product or brand can be used to benefit society.

The international students all created professional-looking and -sounding presentation videos for their campaigns. I wondered where they got such slick voice-over artists from, or if they all have professional actors at their colleges! On the downside, the students had to write brief explanations or rationales of the projects submitted. I was shocked to see how badly written some of these rationales were. Did these students assume that the work would speak for itself and therefore rushed through writing the descriptions? Excellent representation of one's creative work and the context thereof, both in the spoken and written word, is important, especially for an international audience who would not always be familiar with that which one takes for granted.

Promote design as a career possibility

Van der Westhuizen: May I be so bold to be allowed this opportunity to express the importance of an inclusive, transformed marketing and advertising industry? Never in the history of our country has it been more important than now to celebrate our rich, boundless, enigmatic and beautiful cultural heritage and experience ground-breaking new work that truly speaks to our country's people. The youth offers us a glimpse into this, however, we need to promote, encourage, motivate and nurture our future creative talents in helping us build this creative industry with relevant, moving and culturally sensitive advertising and communication, which speaks not only to our fellow countrymen's eyes but to their hearts, too. Moreover, we need the input and support of our creative industries and educational providers to encourage and promote design as a career possibility which in turn will develop and promote our local talent and affirm its importance and relevance that does not need to adhere to international standards, but rather South African standards.

Sudheim: Marcuse once said creativity requires conflict. In developing countries such as South Africa, there is a lot more conflict  especially between ideologies  than in highly developed countries, where many of the big questions have been settled and norms are pervasive and universal.

Thus, often work from the first world is concerned primarily with style whereas we are still grappling with issues of substance. Its important for local creativity to take up this challenge and tackle the big, ugly socio-economic and political issues in a way that fuses substance with style. But this isnt prescriptive in any way  many of the global trends are about a postmodern sense of play and theres no reason our creatives cant beat the best of them in that realm as well.

The SA creative context

Pretorius: We often think that we should compare with global standards and trends, but we have significant talent in South Africa. Our South African context encourages a greater social awareness, possibly more so than in developed or first world countries. With this awareness comes greater diversity in ideas and solutions.

In a recent forum, institutions from Europe and the United States were impressed by our ways of working and the kinds of work produced. Students especially aim to produce meaningful work and they have a hunger to make a difference, have an influence and to become change agents.

We can all learn from this way of approaching creativity. You can follow The One Club on Twitter and click through to our One Show special section for the latest updates!
The decision by Rwanda to increase the price of gorilla trekking permits is likely to benefit its neighbours Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where the world-famous mountain primates are also found.

deinarson via pixabay

The Rwanda Development Board (RDB) has increased the fees for both local and international visitors effective from 6 May , when the announcement was made. Foreign tourists will now pay double from $750 to $1,500, while locals and East Africans will pay a similar amount from $36.3, an over 4,000 percent increase.

RDB has also introduced a new package for tourists wishing to book an entire family of gorillas at a cost of $15,000. The package includes exclusive personalised tour guide services, it says.

Price increase aims to strengthen conservation efforts

The decision to review the charges upwards has elicited concerns from players in the tourism sector, who argue that the new fees will reduce the country's competitiveness. Though the rare primates are most popular in Rwanda, the volcanic Virunga mountains range that is home to the gorillas is also shared by Uganda and the DRC. It is feared that the new rates are likely to force tourists to abandon Rwanda in favour of its neighbours who have not increased their charges.

"We are targeting high-end tourists. I don't think the low prices in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo will divert the traffic to those countries," the RDB chief executive Clare Akamanzi told The EastAfrican.

She said the price increase aims to strengthen conservation efforts as well as revenue that communities living around the Volcanoes National Park receive for development projects.

Negative impact

But the Rwanda Tours and Travel Association (RTTA) said that while it supports efforts to conserve the endangered species, the sudden increase of the permit fees will affect the industry adversely. "We believe an immediate doubling of gorilla permits will be taken negatively by the market, it will affect our businesses and the entire tourism value chain, and we risk losing substantial revenue for the industry and government as a whole," RTTA said in a statement.

The association accused RDB of failing to consult the stakeholders, adding that this will make it hard for the firms to "manage the sudden and abrupt change."

The concerns were reiterated by the Rwanda Safari Guides Association (RSGA), which expressed its frustration with the new development. "We were not given enough time to adjust to this abrupt change.

"As transporters, I can assure you that we are not amused by this change. We made big investments and the least we should have got is a question of what we think before the change," said Patrick Kwizera, the chairman of RSGA.

Locked out

While RDB said the price increase will not affect tourists who had purchased their tickets before 6 May, the decision was met by criticism from hoteliers who said tourists have begun cancelling their bookings. Rwandans too criticised the move saying the sharp increase locked many of them out.

But Akamazi, defending the raise, said only about four percent of locals visit the Volcanoes National Park, an indication that they were not interested even when the prices were low.

Rwandans and other East Africans who have been paying $36.3 will now pay $1,500 per permit per visit. The gorilla permit for foreign residents has gone up 328.5 per cent from $375 to $1,500.
A collection of good government groups is urging the New York Board of Elections to place the question asking voters whether the state should hold a constitutional convention on the front of this year's general election ballot.

The leaders of the five groups  Citizens Union, Committee for a Constitutional Convention, League of Women Voters of New York State, Long Island Association and the NY People's Convention PAC  worry that the state Board of Elections will place the question on the back of the ballot.

The placement of ballot questions and propositions depends on available space. If there are few races, the questions could appear on the front of the paper ballots. If there are several local races on the ballot, the questions and propositions could be shifted to the back.

Dare Thompson, president of the League of Women Voters of New York State, said the question regarding the constitutional convention is "too important" to place on the rear side of the ballot.

"No one should be deprived of their vote by forgetting to turn the ballot over," she said.

The coalition is also requesting the addition of neutral language to the ballot question. The existing question is: "Shall there be a convention to revise the constitution and amend the same?"

Proponents of the constitutional convention want a line added informing voters that if a majority votes no, there won't be a convention.

"Standing alone this wording doesn't give a sufficient picture of the role of the people in the process," said Bill Samuels, founder of NY People's Convention PAC. "Delegates to the convention are elected by the people, and any proposals emerging from it must be approved by a public vote in order to take effect."

The question about whether to hold a constitutional convention appears on the general election ballot every 20 years. It was last on the ballot in 1997. New York voters rejected the question by more than 600,000 votes.

Polls indicate there may be more of an appetite for a constitutional convention this time around. A Siena College poll released in April found 59 percent of voters support holding a constitutional convention.

One challenge for supporters, though, might be the lack of information about holding a convention.

A vast majority of voters  85 percent  told Siena that they have heard very little, if anything, about the constitutional convention ballot question.

If voters allow a constitutional convention to be held, three delegates from each of the state's 63 state senate districts will be elected in November 2018. Fifteen at-large delegates will be elected statewide.

The convention would be held in April 2019.

Any amendments authored at the convention and approved by a majority of delegates will go to the state's voters for final adoption.
KIGALI, Rwanda: Connected learning is key to improving education in Africa, says the Internet Society in a report presented at a conference bringing together internet and development organisations from throughout Africa.

 everythingpossible via 123RF

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the internet in particular, can have a transformative effect on education in Africa, says a report launched by the Internet Society.

At the Africa Regional Internet and Development Dialogue taking place today in Kigali, Rwanda, the Internet Society revealed the results of a study entitled Internet for Education in Africa  Helping Policymakers to Meet the Global Education Goals.

The new report assesses how the internet is used in the education sector in Africa. It also looks at the untapped opportunities by examining experiences in other regions, and provides recommendations for policymakers to help encourage learning via the internet.

Expanded connectivity thanks to increased access to mobile broadband and the development of submarine cables enabled more than a quarter of the African population (approximately 341 million people) to have internet access in 2016. This represents a significant opportunity to use the internet to provide education and learning opportunities.

However, the report underscores that integration of ICTs and leveraging the Internet for education requires clear vision and strategy and, most importantly, commitment accompanied by investment in broadband connectivity, learning resources, and technical support.

A skilled workforce that can use Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) effectively to solve Africas problems will also determine Africas competitiveness in the global economy, explains Dawit Bekele, Africa Regional Bureau Director for the Internet Society. And policymakers have a critical role to play in creating the necessary ecosystem for integrating ICT in education, he added.

The Internet Societys Enabling Environment Framework provides guidance and highlights the necessity of encouraging infrastructure development, fostering skills and entrepreneurship and establishing governance for the internet ecosystem  with a particular focus on clear and holistic policies for ICT in education in Africa.

Key advantages

Some of the key advantages of internet learning outlined in the report are:

The internet provides alternative learning tools to address some education challenges in Africa such as the lack of learning materials and teachers.

The internet can reach more individuals and disseminate content and learning resources at a lower cost.

It can remove certain economic and social barriers to education such as geography, gender, and disabilities.

It provides greater flexibility for any-time, any-place education, particularly for those who are working and want to pursue professional development.

The first ever Africa Regional Internet and Development Dialogue opened in Kigali, Rwanda, in partnership with UNESCO and Republic of Rwanda Ministry of Youth and ICT. Experts included government and inter-governmental organisation officials, business and educational leaders from throughout the continent to discuss how Africa can use the internet to advance education, innovation and job creation.

This conference is part of a global series of internet development conferences organised by the Internet Society with the aim of furthering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that aim at tackling the worlds main development challenges by 2030. Regional internet development dialogues were held last year in Asia Pacific and Latin America.
Leaders in the healthcare sector will meet at the seventh annual Africa Health Exhibition & Congress, 7-9 June 2017, at the Gallagher Convention Centre in Johannesburg to discuss investing in a sustainable healthcare future in Africa.

Jamie Hill, director, Informa Life Sciences Exhibitions

We caught up with Jamie Hill, director at Informa Life Sciences Exhibitions, to get some insight into what a sustainable healthcare future on the continent looks like, as well as some of the key topics to be addressed at this year's event.

How has the Africa Health Exhibition & Congress been developed since last years event?

Africa Health gets bigger each year with more and more healthcare and trade professionals coming to attend from across Africa. This year, exhibition space has expanded to allow for more local and international companies to attend and showcase their latest technology and products. The topics that will be discussed across the 13 conferences (nine of which offer CPD accreditation) have been developed to address the latest trends and issues that are impacting healthcare in the region.

We will also see the launch of the Leaders in Healthcare conference which will see key personnel from across the sub-Saharan healthcare sector come together to discuss sustainable investment for African healthcare. Leaders in Healthcare will host a ministerial summit with ministers of health from across the SADC in attendance.

What topics will the conference be covering and what type of companies will be exhibiting?

Africa Health will feature nine clinical conferences such as the Surgery Forum, Imaging & Diagnostics, and Nursing, as well as four non-clinical conferences including Leaders in Healthcare, Public Health, and Hospital Build. Under topical and relevant themes, each of these conferences will highlight challenges in healthcare and offer room for discussion on the possible solutions.

More than 500 companies will be showcasing their latest innovations across the three days of the exhibition. With a mix of both local and international companies exhibiting, visitors and delegates will get to explore products from more than 34 countries. Products on display cover multiple specialties across the medical spectrum, from high-tech imaging equipment to medical disposables.

Who are some of the keynote speakers, and how were they selected?

Working closely with local healthcare associations, as well as key industry leaders, we develop conference programmes to address the most topical issues in healthcare right now. Accordingly, based on the specific topics to be discussed, we reach out to practitioners and healthcare professionals that have experience at the forefront of these issues to come speak during the congress and impart their knowledge to the regions healthcare workforce.

Below are some of these influential speakers:

Dr Bernard S. Haufiku, minister of Health, Ministry of Health, Windhoek, Namibia

Anita Hamilton, group pharmacy procurement manager, Netcare, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dr Anne Beatrice Kihara, obstetrician-gynecologist and national chairperson, Kenya Obstetrical & Gynaecological Society, Nairobi, Kenya

D.P. Parirenyatwa, minister of Health, Ministry of Health and Child Care, Harare, Zimbabwe

Aneliswa Cele, chief director: Environmental Health and Port Health Services, National Department of Health, Pretoria, South Africa

Joe Seoloane, project lead and trustee, Nelson Mandela Childrens Hospital Trust, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dr Sodzi Sodzi-Tettey, executive director and head: Africa region, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Accra, Ghana

Prof. Carol Benn, specialist surgeon, head of Breast Care Centre, Helen Joseph Hospital, Netcare Breast Care Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa

What does a sustainable healthcare future in Africa look like?

There are several factors that come into play when considering a sustainable healthcare system, including the initiation of a healthcare facility, from financing to equipment procurement, to efficient processes carried out by healthcare practitioners. Several of these factors, and their issues and potential solutions, will be discussed across the conferences at Africa Health. If the solutions are actively applied, a sustainable healthcare future in Africa may see the proficient management of healthcare financing, seamless cohesion in public-private partnerships, longer lasting lifecycles of equipment, and the seamless adoption of improved processes by healthcare practitioners across specialties  all to result in improved patient outcomes.

What are some of Africa's most pertinent healthcare challenges?

Each of the 13 conferences at Africa Health address key challenges faced by healthcare in Africa. Some of the most prevalent issues that will be discussed include maternal health and mortality, which will be explored in the Obs-Gyne Case Reviews and Ethics conferences, and the dilemmas behind healthcare infrastructure financing and cost management, which will be a leading topic in the Hospital Build conference.

What are some of the current bottlenecks in sustainable healthcare provision in Africa?

Different stakeholders in a healthcare system will have their own challenges that they feel impact their roles and contribute to inhibiting sustainable healthcare. However, across the conferences, a common theme is the issue of healthcare financing. Overall funding seems to be the biggest issue that needs to be addressed before achieving sustainable healthcare in Africa.

In which African countries are we seeing the most progress? Whats driving this?

Through research and from discussions with the Africa Health speaker faculty, it could be said that numerous African countries are taking steps in the right direction towards sustainable healthcare in different ways. Namibia for example have their plans in place to implement universal health coverage and eliminate malaria by 2020 and Botswana have recently opened a new 450-bed teaching hospital through public-private partnership (PPP).

Here in South Africa, key discussions on healthcare cost regulation are a real positive sign to relieve the current strain on the public sector, as well as the National Infrastructure programme focusing on the building and development of primary healthcare centres.

How important are public-private partnerships in securing sustainable healthcare?

These are extremely important and can play a pivotal part in achieving sustainable healthcare and delivery. It allows for the overall alignment of healthcare providers to government initiatives and priorities but backed by funding and expertise from the private side.

Click here for more information on the Africa Health Exhibition & Congress.
The genetic mutation responsible for a rare skin disease in Afrikaners has been found after a 40-year search at Wits University. Thandiswa Ngcungcu is the scientist responsible for the final breakthrough. She chose keratolytic winter erythema as a topic for her doctoral studies.

Levente Gyori via 123RF

The disease, colloquially known as Oudtshoorn skin, causes redness on the palms and soles, with cycles in which thick sections of skin peel, especially during winter.

Wits researchers started studying the disorder in the late 1980s, and in 1997 the trait was mapped to the short arm of chromosome 8. But the mutation remained elusive until Ngcungcu decided to try to track it down, said Wits spokesman Lisa Rautenbach.

International collaboration

Writing in this month's edition of the American Journal of Human Genetics, Ngcungcu and researchers say they discovered a mutation in a region between genes which was present in all Oudtshoorn skin sufferers they studied.

At the same time, a researcher from the University of Bergen discovered the cause of the disease in Norwegians. When they compared notes they found an overlap in a critical genomic region called an enhancer. After another year's work, they demonstrated that the mutation causes a nearby gene to produce more protein than normal - the likely cause of skin peeling.

"Solving the mystery of [Oudtshoorn skin] was a journey of data analysis, ancestry mapping, genomic comparison and global collaboration," said Rautenbach. The discovery will allow dermatologists to make a definitive diagnosis of the disease in patients and is a starting point for researching possible treatments.

Rautenbach said Afrikaners were at high risk of inheriting several genetic disorders, the best known being familial hypercholesterolaemia - inherited high cholesterol leading to heart attacks early in life - and porphyria-sensitivity of the skin to ultraviolet exposure and adverse reactions to specific drugs. "These disorders are common because of founder mutations brought to South Africa by small groups of immigrants who settled in the Cape of Good Hope," she said.

Ngcungcu is now examining the genetics of albinism.

Source: The Times
After five years as group managing director of FCB Africa's award-winning digital arm, Hellocomputer, David Moffatt is leaving the agency.

Joey Khuvutlu Robyn Campbell

Mark Tomlinson, co-founder and managing director of the Johannesburg business will be taking over as group managing director, with Joey Khuvutlu replacing him and Robyn Campbell, who has grown with the business for nine years, taking on the position of managing director in the Cape Town office.

Commenting on the appointments, FCB Africa Group CEO and Chief Creative Officer Brett Morris said that Moffatt was leaving the group to fulfill a lifelong dream: to travel the world with his wife and three young children.

He said Moffatt would be sorely missed but that the group is well poised to continue growing from strength to strength.

When someone as talented as Dave leaves the business, its obviously going to provide an opportunity for others to step up and were incredibly excited about the next generation of leadership at Hellocomputer, he said.

The agency has cemented its place as one of the continents leading digital specialists and has helped establish FCB Africa as a leading integrated agency. This is, however, just the beginning for us. The new team has considerable experience combined with youthful drive and passion for innovation, and we have some audacious ambitions for the future, he said.

Tomlinson said he was thrilled to be a part of the change happening in the industry, and looking forward to going from strength to strength with Khuvutlu and Campbell.

At FCB and Hellocomputer we are passionate about diversity and transformation in the advertising and digital sector, and there are simply no two people better than Joey and Robyn to head up their respective offices. I'd also like to thank Dave for his incredible contribution to the business and personal partnership in creating one of South Africa's pre-eminent digital agencies."

Aside from award recognition, Tomlinson has judged at the Loeries, the Cannes Lions and the coveted FWAs; served as a committee member of The Bookmark Awards; and has sat on the DMMA Digital Creative Circle Judging panel. His work has also been published in publications like the Taschens Web Navigation.

Reflecting on his move, Moffatt said, Hellocomputer, and more recently our inclusion into the FCB Group, has been the most extraordinary journey. Ive enjoyed the trust of many wonderful clients, and had the privilege of being surrounded by immensely talented colleagues. Im going to miss it terribly, but look forward to watching Hellocomputers future successes from the sideline.




Any hope for restoring the maize price depends on South Africa putting a solid export programme in place for its expected record harvest. At present price levels, it is not profitable for farmers to grow maize. According to Laeveld Agrochem Chief Operating Officer, Neel Rust, the latest South African crop estimate indicates that 2,8 million tonnes of maize must be exported before the next planting season in November to ensure that the stock that is carried over to the next season is not too much.

Although that sounds like a lot, a Free State grain trader says that it can be done because in six of the last 13 years about two million tonnes per year were exported.

Reaching export parity

Rust believes that for export to take place, the local maize price first has to move closer to export parity (the price level at which maize can be competitively exported). At the moment, there is a gap of about $10 (about R135) per tonne between export parity and the price at which local maize is currently traded.

Export parity is not constant and changes primarily in relation to the American maize price and the Rand/Dollar exchange rate, with the American maize price having the biggest impact on export parity.

According to the Free State grain trader, the current American maize price of about $3,80 per bushel (39 bushels = one ton) is considerably lower than the last 10-year average price of $4,80.

American surplus

Rust says that the reason for this is that America is currently sitting on its largest surplus in 12 years. American maize farmers are currently in their planting season which lasts until the end of May, and this is followed by the pollination period which extends to the end of August. Difficult planting and pollination circumstances could bring about an increase in the American maize price, which would be positive for the local maize price.

If the American maize price rises from its present level of $3,80 per bushel to its 10-year average price of $4,80, a price increase on the local maize price of about R540 per ton will be realised, says Rust. As at 11 May 2017, yellow maize for delivery in July 2017 is currently trading at about R2,003 per ton.

If the American planting and pollination period goes well, it can mean that the price of American maize may continue to trade at the current low levels for a number of months. If the American maize price does not lift its head, and the South African farmer can position himself so that he is not forced to price his maize at harvest time, he may in all likelihood have to wait until the end of the year, which is the beginning of the next local planting season, for a possible significant recovery in the maize price, says Rust. The reason for this is that the oversupply of maize will by then most probably be exported or be included in an export contract that has been closed.

Added to this is the expectation that local farmers will plant less in the next planting season because of the current low maize prices. This bodes well for future maize prices.

All the factors that can have an adverse effect on the South African maize price have already been discounted. This includes the expected large local harvest, the strengthening of the Rand/Dollar exchange rate from about R14 to the current level as well as the American maize price which currently is $1 lower than the average 10-year price. The only answer for the low local maize price is the export of the current oversupply. If this does not happen, there is a risk that our maize prices may remain at these low levels until the end of 2018."
The competitive online retail environment has forced retailers to reassess many aspects of their business, including trading hours. This is according to Carel Fourie, CEO of Oryx Properties, a Namibian Stock Exchange-listed company that has 287 tenants in 25 properties in retail, industrial and office real estate.

Carel Fourie

The old practice of shops being open only during working hours clashes with the 24/7 economy in goods and services that people are increasingly coming to expect and rely on, says Fourie.

The digital revolution has touched and changed every aspect of society, including, very significantly, shopping. For many people, its just not worth the time, trouble and expense of making a trip to a bricks-and-mortar mall when everything they might desire is available literally at their fingertips in the virtual world.

In the retail sector, which makes up 62% of the Oryx portfolio, the company owns Maerua Mall, Gustav Voigts and Baines shopping centres, all in Namibias capital city of Windhoek.

Maerua Mall is currently undergoing a massive refurbishment to bring its look and offerings up to date. The refurbishment was heavily motivated by the desire to create a place for Namibians to not only have a great shopping experience but also to provide safe, fun activities to keep the whole family entertained, Fourie explains. Many of our new and upgraded offerings naturally lend themselves to longer trading hours and encouraging shoppers to stay after hours.

Win-win situation

The mall is situated on the periphery of the CBD and bordering the eastern suburbs of Windhoek, which means it serves largely mid- to upper-income families and professionals living in the area. This is relevant because, as Fourie points out, changes in social patterns, too, contribute to the need to trade outside of traditional shopping hours.

People today have more flexible working hours, there are more women in the workforce, and there are more single-parent households, he says. Allowing retailers the option to trade when they feel they would serve their markets best is a forward-looking approach to meeting the needs of modern families and busy professionals.

Describing the ultimate aim of extended shopping hours as a win-win situation for both retailers and shoppers, Fourie says, extending the hours during which we trade shows that were willing to adapt to the needs of our customers. He points out that extended trading hours are good for employees who wish to earn extra income, good for shareholders because profits increase, and as a result good for government because tax revenue rises.

Big-name tenants at Maerua Mall include Truworths, Stuttafords, Mr Price, Hi-Fi Corporation, Clicks, Foschini, Edgars/Boardmans, Ackermans and House & Home. Many currently trade from 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, and 9am to 3pm on Sundays.

We have to gain critical mass of willing tenants to trade extended hours in order for it to make sense for shoppers to visit, Fourie says. Retail is an extremely competitive environment and its important for our smaller retailers to realise that adapting to this strategy will be beneficial to them in the long term.
Hunter's has released Edge, a new hybrid drink that combines cider refreshment with the taste of hops.

What makes Edge different is that it is real. Real cider combined with real hops extract. Edge delivers bold masculine packaging and a real hops taste," says Maijaliina Hansen, global marketing manager, Hunter's.

Edge is for every social occasion that brings together what unites us. Created for those who like to explore the new and unconventional. For those who are bold, individual and confident to choose both the crisp refreshment of cider and easy drinking taste of hops.

The product will be introduced to consumers through a national tasting drive with free sample cans, visibility and in-store activations, premium events in on-trade and influencer-targeted digital and PR support at launch. This will be backed by a through-the-line campaign with television, radio and out-of-home awareness, national large-scale events, in-store promotions and on-going visibility.

The cider is now available in store in 330ml bottles and 440ml cans and is available in both 6- and 12-pack formats. Hunters will launch the returnable 660ml bottle in 12-pack crates in July 2017.
The 2017 PRISA National Conference, which was held at the Indaba Hotel from 4-5 May, was deemed to be a success by delegates. The local and international speakers that attended this event imparted their knowledge and global expertise. We would like to thank our international speakers from the International Communication Consultancy Organization (ICCO) and our national speakers for their significant contribution to this conference, says Adele Paulsen, Executive Director of PRISA.

A panel discussion chaired by newly inaugurated PRISA Vice President, Daniel Munslow on The 5 big changes in the public relations landscape every business should know reinforced the urgent need to develop skills of the new entries into the industry, with the focus being on the Work Integrated Learnership (WIL) within the South African landscape.

The outcome of the panel discussion led to an unexpected surprise when three companies opened their doors and offered internship placements to the students that were assisting at the PRISA conference.

A few topics such as: Future proofing our profession, Ethics, and Digital transformation in public relations, sparked interest and got delegates debating about the future of the industry.

The evening ended on a celebratory note at the PRISA 60th Gala Dinner. The PRISA Golden Medal award for outstanding public relations (that has only been awarded 12 times in the Institutes 60 years of existence) was received by Mohamed Sooliman on behalf of his father Dr Imitiaz Sooliman. Dr Sooliman was honoured for his comparable humanitarian work rendered to South Africans, his country and internationally.

Last but not least, we also wish to thank our sponsors for their awesome support as it wouldnt have been possible to pull off such a remarkable conference without them, says Daniel Munslow.




KZN-based agricultural training initiative, Future Farmers , is a unique social programme which aims to cultivate the skills and development of young aspiring farmers from around the country. The programme recently celebrated its 11th anniversary at Cedara Agricultural College where farmers, farming students, and agricultural industry leaders came together to honor the achievements of current and past agricultural apprentices.

L-R: Judy Stuart, Isaiah Mahlangu {Acting Chief Director for Agricultural Research and Development for KZN Department of Agriculture) and Sandy La Marque (Kwanalu CEO)

The brainchild of former Howick dairy farmer, Judy Stuart, the Future Farmers programme provides young people with real job experiences in the field of agriculture and the opportunity to learn as they earn by finding apprentice positions on local and then later, international farms, as far afield as the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

Agents of change

Guest speaker, Isaiah Mahlangu, the acting chief director for Agricultural Services for the KZN Department of Agriculture, told the audience that it was encouraging, refreshing and inspiring to see as many young people in one room so passionate about something. In front of me today I see the agents of change, he said.

The event included many future farmers who shared impassioned tales of their experiences on farms locally and overseas all agreeing that, despite the hard work, the opportunity the Future Farmers initiative afforded them wasnt just an agricultural experience but a life-changing one.

Over the years, Future Farmers has become a recognised role-player in shaping the future of farming in KZN and, with the backing of Kwanalu, gained overwhelming support from agribusinesses, AgriSETA, sponsors and the agricultural industry at large.

L-R: Future Farmers Ntsikelelo Baleni (Farm manager in Karkloof), Bobby Govender (Lecturer at Weston Agricultural College, Mooi River), Lerato Mantsi (Farm manager, Matatiele), Lungelo Batman Mathenjwa (Farm manager in Swartberg)

Setting future farmers up for success

Kwanalus CEO, Sandy La Marque said Kwanalu was proud to be a part of the Future Farmers programme and commended the associations members for their mentorship roles in the programme.

Congratulations are extended to the young people who have participated in this earn as you learn programme with hard work and now the exceptional farming skills each one has developed. Coupled with the outstanding commitment by commercial producers this programme sets up the young future farmers for success.

It is liberating to see the unfettered commitment to the future of agriculture by the commercial producers, said La Marque.

The event culminated in an awards ceremony honouring those who had excelled in the programme and showed the most promise during their apprenticeships.
The first 28 participants of the Mazars Job Readiness Programme called, Access' graduated this week. The programme equips participants with personal mastery, communication and basic business skills to make them job-ready' and accessible to the job market.

Access graduates

Access, an accredited youth development programme, run in conjunction with Ucademy, an accredited business process outsourcing (BPO) learning institution, offers a tailored programme to prepare youth for the workplace and to assist them in finding employment.

According to Anoop Ninan, managing partner at Mazars Gauteng, Access aims to address the socio-economic issue of unemployment and lack of skills in South Africa. Nearly 50% of South Africans between the ages of 15 and 34 are unemployed and most are discouraged by the efforts to seek work. We needed to find a way to re-engage our youth and prepare them for successful transitions into the workplace.

As part of the programme, Mazars identifies willing youth from designated groups and provides them with an extensive two-month job access training programme with professional accredited training partners and job placement support services. There is no cost for the participants to be part of Access and all necessary supplies are provided. Mazars, our clients and business partners, fund the course.

This is our way of giving back. The course has the potential to have a ripple effect: it will change an individuals life, which will change a familys life, which will change communities, and even the local economy.

We started investigating this programme, when some of our clients started asking if we could assist with finding employable youth. We decided to develop a programme that enables businesses to contribute to an impactful social initiative and have the opportunity to employ the youth who have been trained. In addition to this, Mazars is able to provide a solution to our clients to maximise their points for skills development, enterprise and supplier development or socio-economic development on their B-BBEE scorecard.

Ucademy, our accredited skills development partner, facilitates the learners through the curriculum. To make sure the participants were a good fit for the programme they had to go through an interview process by the team at Ucademy. Candidates have to be marginalised youth with a matric, be unemployed and under the age of 30.

Success through value chain

According to Judy Robison, director of Ucademy, the programme was successful because of the value-chain that it boasts: the attitude of the youth themselves who were so eager to learn; the trainers who were the right fit for what the role demanded; and the employers that were looking for youth with employability skills. This coupled with Mazars, which was the driver and innovator and in turn its partners, who came on board as recruiters, mentors and clients, made this a success.

Following the graduation, the aim is to assist the graduates with all the necessary tools to become job ready and apply for opportunities, which can take the form of either fulltime or contract job placement, learnership qualifications, internships or further training.

The learners have already started going for job interviews. We wish them the best of luck and look forward to hearing many success stories, she concludes.

In order to address the challenge of unemployment, we have to start at the very beginning and drive youth employability through targeted skills development and workplace experience opportunities that develop a prepared talent pool for our market. Access is the perfect vehicle to address this necessary cause and we urge other stakeholders to get involved, concludes Ninan.

The programme is set to be rolled out in Port Elizabeth and Cape Town throughout 2017. For more information, go to www.mazars.co.za.
If you want to know about a country's hidden gem destinations and old-school favourites, ask the locals. Which is why, when MotorHappy decided to create the ultimate road trip route around South Africa, they turned to South Africans.

Were one month into the project and were excited to watch some of South Africas best road trip routes taking shape on our community-sourced online map, says Barend Smit, marketing director of MotorHappy, a subsidiary of Imperial, referring to the Ultimate Journey roadtrip map which is being built through votes and submissions from the South African public. To help create South Africas best road trip route, visit the Ultimate Journey website and add a destination to the map or vote for destinations already added to the map. Participants stand the chance of winning a R50 000 roadtrip, driven in a new Kia Sportage.

If youre looking to explore the area around Cape Town, three of the top roadtrips have already emerged, as voted for by South Africans on the Ultimate Journey website so far. The submissions make it clear that people are looking to escape the hustle and bustle of city life, observes Smit.

The top three roadtrips from Cape Town are as follows:

Hermanus Less than two hours from Cape Town, is Hermanus, one of the greatest treasures of the Whale Coast. Most famous for its whale watching, this town has something for everyone. Enjoy some shopping at the Village Square and the adjacent outdoor market, eat at any of the world-class restaurants or visit little gems like Breakfast Bay, Lovers Cove and Piet se Bos picnic area. Standing on one leg! Boom. Decades of training  #avocado #hermanus #trip #ocean #sea #weekend #whalewatching (without the ) #ballet #balletmen #balletboyz #dontmove #secondsbeforehefelltohisdeath #water #balance #dance #afrika #africa #britishboy #redhair #holiday #vacation #fitness #edge #igerssouthafrica #instadaily A post shared by Martin Milner (@wiggle_lizard) on May 8, 2017 at 8:11am PDT Infanta Infanta is a sleepy little town at the mouth of the Breede River. Just over a three-hour drive from Cape Town, this roadtrip is for people looking to immerse themselves in nature with whale viewing, fishing and hiking. Beaverlac Just outside the quaint little town of Porterville is Beaverlac, a wildlife sanctuary where you can camp or stay in cottages. There is a rock pool just a five minute walk from the campsite, or for the more energetic hikers, walk for 90 minutes to reach the Totem Pole pool. Call 022-931-2945 or visit www.beaverlac.co.za for more information.

Summer is coming #Beaverlac A post shared by Cape Town (@bradyn_hopking) on Sep 28, 2016 at 1:11am PDT

Other well-known destinations within a short drive from Cape Town that have been added to the Ultimate Journey website are Laingsberg, Yzerfontein and Viljoensdrift Winery.

The destinations with the most votes will form part of South Africas inaugural Ultimate Journey, the best road trip route of 2017, explains Smit. However, our website also serves as a tool to create mini-road trips, using votes and submissions from South Africans. If youre in Durban, Port Elizabeth or any other place in South Africa, visit the Ultimate Journey website to discover the best places to visit in your area.
Minor Hotels have announced an investment of over $7m in an extensive refurbishment project of Avani Gaborone Resort & Casino in Botswana, encompassing all public spaces and guest bedrooms. The aim of the renovations, which is already underway and set to be completed by September 2017, is to introduce Avani's signature design hallmarks.

Avani Gaborone Resort & Casino

Avani, one of the fastest growing hospitality brands, appeals to millennial-minded travellers, tapping into their desire for affordability, quality, and communal social spaces.

More modern and simplified

The renovated Avani Gaborone Resort & Casino will see guests enjoying new design aesthetics and technological enhancements. There will be a total redesign of the main entrance and porte-cochere. The overall shape, colour, and design will be more modern and simplified, using accent lighting, timber and stone and a new water feature will be introduced.

The proposed lobby design has been completely reimagined. Existing lobby walls will be demolished and ceilings raised to introduce natural light and open up the living space. The introduction of the Avani Pantry, an inviting space where guests will be able to eat, grab a quick bite or stock up their mini bars, will add to the stylish modern ambiance.

The Conservatory, located within the centre of the living space, will provide an informal, communal eating area. The colour palate will be a stylish blend of plum, grey, green and walnut and a leafy graphic design wall, ceiling punkah fans, wicker seating and parquet flooring will completely refresh the lobby decor.

The layout of the guest bedrooms and bathrooms will be redesigned to ensure the best use of space. The design will be fresh and contemporary, including decor accessories, media hub and large screen plasma screen television with satellite news, and sport and movie channels.

Riaan Van Rooyen, general manager of the hotel comments on the refurbishment project: "This renovation will ably demonstrate our focus to enhance the Avani portfolio, as well as evolve the guest experience.
Check Point researchers have reported a flaw to Google, spotted in one of Android's security mechanisms. Based on Google's policy which grants extensive permissions to apps installed directly from Google Play, the flaw exposes Android users to several types of attacks, including ransomware, banking malware, and adware. According to Google, this issue is already being dealt with in the upcoming version of Android, Android O.

 Alexander Kirch via 123RF

Technical background:

In Android version 6.0.0, Marshmallow, Google introduced a new permission model for apps. The new model consists of several groups of permissions, with permissions considered as dangerous granted only during runtime. This means that during the first time an app tries to access a dangerous resource, the user is required to approve the necessary permission.

In addition to the dangerous permissions, another category exists, which contains a single permission  System_Alert_Window. Unlike the other permissions, to grant it, the user must go through several menus (Settings -> Apps -> Draw over other apps) and manually allow an app to use it.

The reason System_Alert_Window is unique is the extensive capability it withholds, by enabling an app to display over any other app without notifying the user. This entails a significant potential for several malicious techniques, such as displaying fraudulent ads, phishing scams, click-jacking, and overlay windows, which are common with banking Trojans. It can also be used by ransomware to create a persistent on-top screen that will prevent non-technical users from accessing their devices.

According to the findings, 74% of ransomware, 57% of adware, and 14% of banker malware abuse this permission as part of their operation. This is clearly not a minor threat, but an actual tactic used in the wild.

The flaw:

Since Google understood the problematic nature of this permission, and the apparent risks for user privacy it created the distinct process mentioned above to approve it. However, this soon caused problems, as this permission is also used by legitimate apps, such as Facebook, which requires it for its Messenger chat heads feature. Since most users wont be able to approve the permission manually, such apps could be hurt by it.

As a temporary solution, Google applied a patch in Android version 6.0.1 that allows the Play Store app to grant run-time permissions, which are later used to grant System_Alert_Window permission to apps installed from the app store. This means that a malicious app downloaded directly from the app store will be automatically granted this dangerous permission.

The impact:

Based on the research, nearly 45% of the applications using the System_Alert_Window permission are apps from Google Play. With the granting of the permission to apps installed from the app store, Google effectively bypasses the security mechanism introduced in the previous version. Google relies heavily on Bouncer, which scans apps uploaded to Google Play, to keep harmful apps out of it. Unfortunately, malicious apps successfully infiltrate Google Play time after time. FalseGuide and Skinner discovered on Google Play are two recent examples.

Google is working on a fix

After the company reported this flaw, Google responded it has already set plans to protect users against this threat in the upcoming version Android O. This will be done by creating a new restrictive permission called Type_Application_Overlay, which blocks windows from being positioned above any critical system windows, allowing users to access settings and block an app from displaying alert windows.

How to stay protected in the meantime?
BRUSSELS, Belgium: Ride-hailing app Uber may be a pioneer in its field but at heart it is just an ordinary taxi company and should be regulated as such, a top EU lawyer said Thursday.

 gyddik via 123RF

Uber claims it is a service provider, connecting riders with freelance drivers directly and much more cheaply than traditional cab companies.

It has run into huge opposition from critics and competitors who say this allows it to dodge costly regulations such as licensing requirements for drivers and vehicles.

Should be treated as traditional taxi company

In an opinion on a case brought by a taxi drivers' association in the Spanish city of Barcelona, Advocate General Maciej Szpunar of the European Court of Justice said California-based Uber should be treated as a traditional taxi company.

"The Uber electronic platform, whilst innovative, falls within the field of transport," Szpunar said in an ECJ statement. "Uber can thus be required to obtain the necessary licences and authorisations under national law," he said.

Harming innovation

The company reacted sharply, saying the opinion would change little in practice and only harm innovation.

"To be considered a transport company will not change the regulations we are subject to in most European countries," a spokesman for Uber France said.

"It will, however, hurt the necessary reform of outdated laws which prevent millions of Europeans being able to find a reliable ride with just one click," the spokesman said.

The opinions given by the ECJ's advocate generals - its top lawyers - are potentially significant since the EU's top court very often follows their advice in its final rulings, expected later this year for the Uber case.

Rough ride in Spain

Uber has had a rough ride in Spain, where a judge ruled in 2014 that its UberPop service risked breaking the law, leading to the Barcelona submission to the ECJ which Szpunar reviewed.

Early last year it decided to operate in Spain only a limited a version of its UberX service which uses licensed, professional drivers the amateurs who had previously worked via the UberPop application.

A lawyer for the Barcelona taxi drivers association said Szpunar's findings marked a "memorable day".

"We think it is very positive as the advocate general examined each of our arguments and says very clearly, without a trace of a doubt, that Uber is not a new technology information service as it claims but is simply a transport company," lawyer Montse Balaguer said.

Uber does not employ drivers or own vehicles, but instead relies on private contractors with their own cars, allowing them to run their own businesses.

Licensed taxi drivers must undergo hundreds of hours of training, and they accuse Uber of endangering their jobs by using more affordable drivers who need only a GPS to get around.

Composite service

Szpunar said could not be considered solely an information service, which falls under a different regulatory regime.

Instead, he said it was a composite service, providing both information electronically and then the all-important means of transport.

Since the transport component is the main part of its offering, Uber "must be classified as a 'service in the field of transport'."

"It is thus subject to the conditions under which non-resident carriers may operate transport services within member states, (in this case, possession of the licences and authorisations required by the city of Barcelona regulations)," Szpunar concluded.

Source: AFP
For one night, border limitations ceased and nations came together in a celebration of sound never seen or heard before!

This weekend Offlimit Communications (OLC) transformed Turbine Hall in Johannesburg into a sanctuary of sound for the Ballantine's Beat of Africa. South Africa, Mozambique, Cameroon, Zambia and Angola came together in one accord, in the universally understood language of music. The who's who of Johannesburg's social scene, music aficionados and fans alike flocked to inner city Johannesburg to experience a first-of-its-kind multi-country album launch.

Offlimit transformed Turbine Hall this weekend.

The agency responsible for pulling off this mammoth campaign was South Africa-based BTL/experiential agency Offlimit Communications (OLC). In collaboration with partner suppliers, OLC not only turned Johannesburg, but Lusaka, Douala, Maputo and Luanda into the canvas of a celebration of sound.

Celebrated Isidingo actress and musician Noluthando Meje, Lerato Sengadi and DJ ID Akio were amongst the revellers who watched African music sensation duo Black Motion tear up the stage with their much anticipated Beat of Africa reveal.

Business Unit Director Gareth van Vuuren expanded, We could not be more thrilled at the outcome of what was easily one of our best productions to date! This campaign pushed the boundaries and was beyond rewarding for the team, what started out as trade activations across the regions to encourage and uplift awareness and sales then culminating in a main event per region was truly a feat on its own and by simply looking at the vibe across the board, the consumer enjoyed experiencing the Beat of Africa. OLC specialises in pushing brand capabilities and consumer experiences as an experiential/BTL agency. Beat of Africa is a perfect manifestation of our belief of living in the next, which means we are always looking for ways to give the consumer an experience they will never forget, evolving with global industry trends, creating world-first executions."

The Ballantine's Beat of Africa was a four-month campaign across five countries - Cameroon, Angola, South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique - to find the sound of the continent, limited only by the confines of fans' imaginations.

Fally Ipupa and DJ Paulo Alves completed the music ambassador triadic collaboration and party-goers danced until the morning, unifying in sound and dance - true to African form.

#BeatOfAfrica

#StayTrue




KZN's largest urban radio station joins Loeries as radio partner

South Africas largest regional commercial radio station, KZN-based Gagasi FM, has joined forces with Loeries Africa Middle East as the Official Radio Partner.

With a reach of over 1.4 million listeners comprising primarily of urban black young adults, the partnership will be highly instrumental in communicating and encouraging young creatives to take up successful careers in the brand communications industry.

This is our third year of being hosted by the city of Durban and to solidify our relationship with KZN, we saw it fit to partner with a local radio station that sits on the pulse of the young and vibrant people in this region. We are excited to see what new life Gagasi FM will breathe into this partnership with us, says Loeries CEO, Andrew Human.

In addition to sponsoring the Radio award category, Gagasi FM will also be the official radio broadcaster for Loeries Creative Week Durban this year and will host the legendary Chairmans Welcome Party which will take place on Friday, 18 August.

As Gagasi FM we are very delighted to be the official radio category partner for the Loeries. As a KZN-based station this partnership is key for us to showcase our authentic local feel to the delegates.

The alignment with the Loeries gives us a direct interaction with the trade community within the creative industry, in our home ground. As a commercial radio platform, celebrating creative excellence in the brand communication industry is of the utmost importance. This partnership also talks to the direction we are taking as a business, going forward, in terms of strengthening our commercial value and taking the brand to new heights, says Gagasi FM Head of Brand, Phinda Magwaza.

Gagasi FM will be broadcasting live from the Inkosi Albert Luthuli International Convention Centre during Loeries Creative Week, keeping listeners tuned into all major events and activities taking place in Durban including the DStv International Seminar of Creativity, Loeries MasterClasses, the Loeries Fringe Festival and the glamour of the red carpet, as well as the awards ceremonies.

Loeries Creative Week Durban takes place from Monday, 14 August to Monday, 21 August 2017.

EXTENDED DEADLINE for entries into Loeries 2017 is 31 May. For more information, visit loeries.com

About Loeries Africa Middle East

The Loeries, a non-profit company, is Africa and the Middle Easts premiere initiative that recognises, rewards, inspires and fosters creative excellence in the brand communication industry. As the highest accolade for creativity and innovation across our region, the Loeries promotes and supports creativity by helping marketers, agencies and consumers appreciate the value of ideas and fresh thinking.

Culminating in the biggest creative gathering in Africa and the Middle East, Loeries Creative Week Durban brings together the best innovative minds from our industry for a festival of networking, inspiring minds and recognising great work.

Our region's creative economy is world-class and has great potential to grow and to offer employment both to our talented youth. The growth occurring throughout Africa and the Middle East is very exciting, and a major focus of the Loeries is to increase the standard of brand communication in the region.

Major partners of the Loeries 2017

Tourism KwaZulu-Natal (TKZN), the Department of Economic Development, Tourism and Environmental Affairs, KwaZulu-Natal Province (EDTEA), eThekwini Municipality  Durban Tourism, DStv Media Sales, Gearhouse Group

Category partners

Accenture, Channel O, Facebook, Gagasi FM, Google, JCDecaux, SANBS, The Times, Unilever South Africa, Woolworths

Additional partners and official suppliers

AAA School of Advertising, Antalis South Africa, Aon South Africa, Association of Practitioners in Advertising, Backsberg, BEE Online, Circus Circus Beach Cafe, DDB South Africa, First Source, Fresh RSVP Guest Logistics, Funk Productions, Gallo Images, Graphica, Grid Worldwide, HelloCrowd, Hetzner, Multiprint Litho, Newsclip, Paygate, Paul Shiakallis Photography, Rocketseed, Scan Display, Shift Social Development, South African Airways, Total Exposure, Tsogo Sun, Vega School, VQI

Official media partners

Between 10and5, Bizcommunity.com, Book of Swag, Campaign Middle East, CliffCentral.com, Coloribus Advertising Archive, Film & Event Media, Goliath and Goliath, iDidTht.com, Leading Architecture and Design, Marketing Edge Nigeria, Marketing Africa, Media Update, The Redzone, YouTube




Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown expects to receive a report from the Eskom board on an inquiry into allegations against Eskom CEO Matshela Koko at the end of the week.

The Eskom board appointed legal firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr to probe allegations that Koko's step-daughter, Koketso Choma, benefited by about R1bn from contracts awarded to a company of which she was a director.

After becoming a director last year, the company - Impulse International - received 11 contracts from Eskom. Koko claimed he was not aware of her involvement in the company.

Brown said in replies to questions in the National Assembly on Wednesday, 10 May, that she awaited the presentation on the matter by the board at the end of the week.

Source: BDpro
According to the South African Wind Energy Association (SAWEA), the National Energy Regulator's electricity sub-committee has launched a formal investigation into Eskom's conduct after it filed a complaint regarding Eskom's failure to sign the Department of Energy's Power Purchase Agreements.

"We have had confirmation from Nersa that an expedited investigation into whether Eskom is in contravention of its licence, has now commenced. We await the timeline associated with this process, which could culminate with a ruling by a Nersa tribunal. Based on previous communications with Nersa, it is likely that the process will be concluded within two weeks, explained Brenda Martin, SAWEA CEO.

SAWEA declared a dispute during October 2016, requesting Nersa to undertake an investigation into Eskoms continued unwillingness to honour the Power Purchase Agreements. In the event that Eskom is found to be guilty of failing to comply with its licence conditions, the industry association further requested that Nersa impose a penalty, being 10% of its annual turnover per day, commencing on the day of receipt of the notice of contravention. SAWEA has also confirmed that in subsequent communications with Nersa, the association extended the complaint to include consideration of budget quote escalation effects.

Hope remains for final closure

Wed like to reiterate that our primary intention is to achieve financial closure of Power Purchase Agreements. It remains our hope that Eskom will comply with the legal framework for power purchase, so that penalties do not need to be imposed on Eskom, added Martin.

The South African Renewable Energy Council (SAREC) together with a number of individual independent power producers have all subsequently joined the complaint as interested and affected parties.

Representing the 37 independent power producers affected by the power purchase impasse, legal opinion was sought out by SAREC in January 2017. SAWEA is guided by the legal opinion that Eskom cannot sidestep binding determinations of the minister. As single buyer, the monopoly utility must abide by the results of such determinations, which naturally include the signing of duly procured power purchase agreements.
Youths account for 60% of all of Africa's jobless, according to the World Bank. In North Africa, the youth unemployment rate is 25% but is even greater in Botswana, the Republic of the Congo, Senegal, and South Africa, among others. With 200 million people aged between 15 and 24, Africa has the largest population of young people in the world.

 sam74100 via 123RF

In most African countries, youth unemployment occurs at a rate more than twice that for adults, notes the African Development Bank.

African governments are confronting unemployment in many different ways. In Senegal, with 200,000 Senegalese joining the labour market each year, President Macky Sall launched a programme in February 2013 to create 30,000 jobs within a year and possibly 300,000 by 2017. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is financing some of Senegals self-employment programmes for youth and women.

Young women feel the sting of unemployment even more sharply than young men. The AfDB found that in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa and all of those in North Africa, it is easier for men to get jobs than it is for women, even if they have equivalent skills and experience.

Africas unemployment statistics exclude those in vulnerable employment and those who are under-employed in informal sectors. Young people [in Africa] find work, but not in places that pay good wages, develop skills or provide a measure of job security, reports the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

The Brookings Institution considers under-employment a problem serious enough to warrant greater attention, since it masks the reality in countries that post low unemployment rates.

More than 70% of the youth in the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, Rwanda, Senegal and Uganda are either self-employed or contributing to family work, adds the Brookings Institution report.

Under-employment masked

Gabriel Benjamin, a jobless university graduate in Lagos, Nigeria, says it is common to find young Nigerian university graduates doing menial jobs. They clean floors in hotels, sell mobile telephone calling cardssome even work in factories as labourers.

But under-employment is not a solution to poverty, notes the International Labour Organization (ILO), which reported in 2016 that up to 70% of African workers were working poor, the highest rate globally. The organisation added that the number of poor working youth has increased by as much as 80% for the past 25 years.

Mthuli Ncube, the chief economist at the AfDB, had this to say: This is an unacceptable reality on a continent with such an impressive pool of youth, talent and creativity.

Alexander Chikwanda, Zambias former finance minister, put it succinctly an interview: Youth unemployment is a ticking time bomb, that now appears to be perilously close to exploding. The analogy draws attention to the consequences of high youth unemployment in a continent where about 10-12 million young people join the labour market each year.

As events in North Africa [the Arab Spring] have shown, lack of employment opportunities can undermine social cohesion and political stability, the AfDB had warned in 2016.

The militant group Boko Haram, for example, has found it easy to recruit jobless young people, noted Ahmad Salkida, a Nigerian journalist who has had rare access to the group.

A number of African governments have, however, made some efforts to match words with action. Ghana, for example, created a national youth service and empowerment programmes to equip college graduates with requisite skills and help them find jobs. Mauritius developed a plan to encourage technical and vocational education for young people. Zambia introduced a national youth policy and a youth enterprise fund to stimulate job creation.

African leaders intervene

The jury is still out as to how much of an impact such national initiatives have had on youth unemployment. Ncube warned against high expectations. There are no quick fixes, he advised, and recommended stronger job-creation mechanisms. The World Bank proposes a jobs strategy that pays more attention to rural development. Investment in agriculture slows down youth migration into urban areas and prepares young people for the contemporary labour market.

Young people migrating into Africas urban areas aggravate city unemployment. They often confront obstacles, including discrimination due to their inexperience, according to African Economic Outlook, a publication of the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Even those who are lucky enough to find employment are the first to be laid off when economic growth derails.

Focus on manufacturing, urges the Brookings Institution, because it is the industrial sector which is most closely associated with employment-intensive growth. It also urges more investment in agriculture, tourism and construction, and in projects that employ young people. Public works programmes provide opportunities for young workers, particularly rural residents and people with low skills, to acquire initial work experience.

The African Union also lends its voice to the call for more investments in agriculture. The AU requests its members to allocate 15% of their national budgets to agriculture.

Mobilising youth

Ghanaian opposition politicians used the countrys high unemployment rate to mobilise the youth against former president John Dramani Mahama in the countrys December 2016 presidential election. Joblessness was one of the main issues that drove the countrys many young people to the polling stations to press for a change of government that ushered the current leader, Nana Akufo Addo, into office.

During the election campaign some Ghanaian opposition politicians frequently cited a 2016 World Bank report on the employment situation in the country. Authored by Maddalena Honorati and Sara Johansson de Silva, the report stated that only 52% of people aged 15-24 were employed, compared to 77% of the entire population, meaning that 48% of these youths did not have jobs. Although the authors attributed the high youth unemployment rate to the fact that about one-third of the youth were active in school, the figure nonetheless underscored the challenge facing the country.

I fear for the future of this country, candidate Akufo-Addo warned before the elections, We must do something about the current unemployment rate in Ghana because if care is not taken, something bad may happen. That may have been a subtle reference to some countries in Africa (Nigeria and Somalia, for example) where young people are easily recruited to join armed groups or rebel forces.

A World Bank survey in 2011 showed that about 40% of those who join rebel movements say they were driven by a lack of jobs.

Source: Africa Renewal.
The United Nations health agency's regional office for Africa has announced that Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi will take part in a breakthrough pilot programme to make the world's first malaria vaccine available in selected areas, beginning in 2018, the World Health Organisation has announced.

 Feije Riemersma via 123RF

The prospect of a malaria vaccine is great news. Information gathered in the pilot will help us make decisions on the wider use of this vaccine, said Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, in a news release.

The injectable RTS,S vaccine was developed to protect young children from the most deadly form of malaria caused by Plasmodium parasites. It will be assessed in the pilot programme as a complementary malaria control tool to potentially be added to the core package of WHO-recommended measures for malaria prevention.

Combined with existing malaria interventions, such a vaccine would have the potential to save tens of thousands of lives in Africa, Dr Moeti added.

Africa bears the greatest burden of malaria worldwide.

Africa bears the greatest burden of malaria worldwide. Global efforts in the last 15 years have led to a 62% reduction in malaria deaths between 2000 and 2015, yet approximately 429,000 people died of the disease in 2015  the majority of them young children in Africa.

The WHO pilot programme will assess whether the vaccines protective effect in children aged 5  17 months old during Phase III testing can be replicated in real-life. Specifically, it will assess the feasibility of delivering the required four doses of RTS,S, the vaccines potential role in reducing childhood deaths and its safety in the context of routine use.

Pilot implementation strategy

The three countries selected to participate in the pilot were based on the criteria of high coverage of long-lasting insecticidal-treated nets; well-functioning malaria and immunisation programmes  a high malaria burden even after scale-up of LLINs; and participation in the Phase III RTS,S malaria vaccine trial.

Each country will decide on the districts and regions to be included, with high-malaria-burden areas prioritised, as they are predicted to provide the broadest benefit. Information garnered from the pilot will help to inform later decisions about potential wider use of the vaccine.

The malaria vaccine will be administered via intramuscular injection and delivered through routine national immunisation programmes. WHO is working with the three countries to facilitate regulatory authorisation of the vaccine for use in the pilots through the African Vaccine Regulatory Forum. Regulatory support will also include measures to enable the appropriate safety monitoring of the vaccine and rigorous evaluation for eventual large scale use.
DEWITT  Byrne Dairy is feeling the effects of Canada's new dairy trade policies, and they aren't alone.

The Canadian dairy industry changed its policies regarding ultra-filtered milk to favor domestic production. With lower prices for Canadian producers, U.S. producers, such as Byrne Dairy and Cayuga Milk Ingredients in Aurelius, have been shut out.

Kevin Ellis, CEO of Cayuga Milk Ingredients, told The Citizen in April that the company lost $30 million in sales to Canadian firms overnight when the policies were adopted.

U.S. Rep. John Katko drew attention to the trade woes Thursday during a press conference outside of Byrne Dairy's ultra-high temperature pasteurization plant in DeWitt.

Katko, R-Camillus, said Byrne Dairy, which receives milk from 300 dairy farms in the region, is suffering due to Canada's "protectionist" trade policies.

Ryan Elliott, an attorney for Byrne Dairy, said the DeWitt plant is one of four operated by the company. Free and open trade, especially with Canada, would be beneficial to its business and the farms that supply milk.

"Trade should really be viewed as a door," Elliott said. "That door should swing both ways in order for this to be a functional trade relationship."

For Byrne Dairy and other producers, the Canadian dairy industry's trade policies are on top of an existing oversupply of milk. The surplus continues to grow, Elliot said, and plants are being inundated with milk.

"That obviously has real consequences for dairy processors," he said.

Katko also highlighted trade challenges faced by other businesses in central New York. He visited Nucor Steel in Auburn Wednesday and has previously stopped at Novelis, a major aluminum manufacturer in Oswego County.

The U.S. aluminum and steel industries have been dealing with the impact of dumping, which occurs when a product is exported at a price below market value.

Katko said Novelis and Nucor Steel aren't competing on a level playing field with foreign manufacturers, especially entities from China and Turkey that are dumping heavily subsidized products in the global market.

He sees similarities between what aluminum and steel manufacturers are facing and how the dairy industry has been affected by Canada's trade barriers.

"While the industries are certainly different, they're all critical to our local economy," he said. "Surely global market fairness is vital to the competitive conditions facing our local dairy, steel and aluminum manufacturers, to name a few."

Next week, Katko will testify at a public hearing held by the U.S. International Trade Commission. The panel will examine unfair trade practices in the steel rebar industry.

Nucor Steel manufactures rebar at its Auburn plant.

"Trade can be a force for economic growth, innovation and wealth creation  but only when it's fair," Katko said. "Unfortunately, other nations have been anything but fair. We owe it to our workers to do everything we can to level the playing field."
The East African Community has moved a step closer to a single currency standard for the region.

The Council of Ministers of the East Africa Community has adopted the Draft East African Monetary Institute (EAMI) Bill, 2016 and the Bill establishing the East African Statistics Bureau. The two proposed laws are a precondition for having a single currency by 2024 and will help the partner states to establish the East African Central Bank.

The EAMI is a transitional institution that will carry out preparatory work for the East African Monetary Union (EAMU). The EAMI Bill aims at initiating legal instruments, identifying the host partner state, signing host country agreements and operationalising the institute.

Robert Maate, head of Statistics Department at the EAC Secretariat, said the Bill establishing the East African Statistics Bureau is a crucial instrument for the implementation of the Monetary Union as it will enable the partner states to harmonise their statistical data and produce quality data in the region.

"The Bill will also enable the partner states to determine which country can host the EAC Bureau of statistics," said Maate.

Partner states are expected to harmonise monetary and fiscal policies; harmonise financial, payment and settlement systems; financial accounting and reporting practices; policies and standards on statistical information; and, eventually establish an EAC Central Bank.

So far, the partner states have developed the EAMU monitoring mechanism and implementation of the convergence criteria. It is being used to gauge how the region is doing in the implementation of the convergence criteria.

Save for Burundi, the rest of EAC partner states have prepared their medium term convergence programmes and had them approved by finance ministers.

The EAMU Protocol lays the groundwork for a monetary union within 10 years and allows partner states to progressively converge their currencies into a single currency. The EAC heads of state signed a protocol in November 2013 in Kampala, committing to a 10-year road map towards achieving a Monetary Union in 2024.

The protocol provides for gradual establishment of four institutions including EAMI, a transitional institution responsible for laying the foundation for the EAMU. It also provides for the introduction of a single currency and creation of a single central bank for the region.
Kristina: There is another possible repeal being talked about, which could allow for the mega-mergers of large TV corporations  what do you think is leading this push?

Greg Portell, Lead Partner, Consumer Practice, A.T. Kearney: Large media companies are under pressure from smaller, more nimble rivals. The result has been extremely fragmented growth across the industry with limited performance improvement for the major players. By allowing mega-mergers, companies would be able to more quickly shift the business economics within their segments. They can improve scale efficiencies in the slow growing areas while prioritizing growth areas. The action is being driven by those corporate interests.

Kristina: What impact might this have on advertisers?

Greg: Advertisers need a way to simplify their marketing operations. The ad world has become too fragmented for all but the best marketers to efficiently execute marketing programs. The result is a mess of wasted money and poor oversight. A consolidated media world may at some point increase ad rates, but that cost would be outweighed by the benefits of more consistent execution and accountability.

Kristina: What about consumers?

Greg: Brand power kills creativity. Mega-media companies would have incentive to push their branded media franchises across their platforms. Consumers can expect to see less innovative content that isnt tied to a franchise.

Kristina: What can be done, from an advertiser standpoint, in the face of these changes?

Greg: Advertisers need to avoid putting anyone between them and their consumers. Ultimately the brands that control the most consumer data are in the best position to act on it. At the same time, those brands can avoid being held captive by the larger, more powerful media outlets.
Author Doug Pagitt will give a lecture at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 20, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 17 William St., Auburn.

Pagitt is the author of "Flipped," "A Christianity Worth Believing" and "Body Prayer." He will lead an interactive, multimedia conversation about the U.S.'s changing spiritual landscape, and how activists and people of faith can create pathways toward fair and generous faith communities through connection, belonging and robust change.

Pagitt is a guest of the Presbytery of Cayuga-Syracuse. He will speak to its members at the Case Mansion following the morning's business meeting at First Presbyterian Church.

Admission to the lecture is free and open to the public.

For more information, visit westminsterauburn.org or call (315) 253-3331.
AUBURN  About $2.6 million needs to be out the city of Auburn's door by January 2018 due to new federal requirements around Community Development Block Grants.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development introduced the changes in March, requiring those receiving CDBG funds to spend down those account balances. Utilizing the city's five-year consolidated plan, Office of Planning and Economic Development Director Jennifer Haines proposed a list of amendments to the city's CDBG Action Plan, which was the subject of a presentation and public hearing Thursday night at the Auburn City Council meeting.

Councilor Jimmy Giannettino said it was unfortunate that the city even had to have this conversation, adding that spending down the funds "takes a lot in our tool bag."

The timeline, too, poses problems. Haines said if the city doesn't meet those new HUD account requirements, city staff could be sitting in a hearing with HUD in Washington D.C. early next year, at risk of losing all of the money.

"A lot of stars will have to align," she said about getting the projects off the ground.

One project that received both support and dissidence during the public hearing was a proposed $800,000 grant for asbestos removal at the Auburn Schine Theater. Privately owned by the Cayuga County Arts Council, Haines explained that whoever works on the project will need to follow strict regulations around the work to comply with the CDBG process. The asbestos removal will be funded on a reimbursement basis, she added after the meeting, and not as one large check.

Haines did not reference the arts council directly, but told councilors, "whoever is doing this project is going to have us all in their business." She said getting the asbestos removed would allow the city to be a catalyst for getting the building redeveloped.

Todd Gaglianese, of Auburn, spoke against funding the asbestos removal. A former arts council member, Gaglianese said he's in a quandary because he wants to see the Schine restored.

"It's not just an asbestos issue that's held up this project," he said. "It's been the owning entity, who has alienated funding sources, who has alienated the public. No one is behind them at this point."

Gaglianese continued that the theater restoration has been at a standstill for 15 years, and he doesn't believe it's a good idea for the city to give the owners money.

Michelle Milewski, communications chair of the arts council, also spoke, saying that the Schine has been a part of her family for generations.

"It became the fabric of my family's story," she said. "There are hundreds of citizens in the Cayuga County area who can tell a similar story. This is why I'm encouraging you to vote accept and approve the funds to abate the asbestos in the Schine Theater, as well as all the projects up for funding. The theater holds a special part in the heart of this community, and remediating the asbestos is the first step in the restoration of this beloved landmark."

In a release sent after the meeting Thursday night, the arts council said it was grateful for the city's support, and the $800,000 would help with the approximately $12 million of renovation work needed for both the interior and exterior. It added that the council is revamping its mission and vision statements, and will be updating its website and branding.

Other projects are slated to receive funding including the Owasco River Greenway Trail project and demolition of some local properties, to name a couple. Haines said the plan is to have council vote on the amendments at its meeting June 1.

In other news:

 A public hearing on the city manger's proposed 2017-2018 budget will be held 6 p.m. Thursday, May 18 in City Council Chambers, Memorial City Hall, 24 South St., Auburn. The public may view the proposal at www.auburnny.gov/budget or view a hard copy at the city clerk's office.

 Peter Petrosino was honored with a city proclamation Thursday night. Petrosino, who has taught at Cayuga Community College for 49 years and has been teaching in total for 54 years, will retire. Mayor Michael Quill also honored the Auburn man for his work as a CPR instructor since 1992, a Red Cross water safety instructor since 1990, among many other accomplishments. Petrosino said his family tricked him into going to the council meeting, and he was not aware that he would be receiving the honor.
Cayuga County Legislator Joe Bennett resigned from his post as chair of the Health and Human Services Committee Thursday night.

Bennett, who was appointed to that seat at the beginning of the year, said he's frustrated with many things happening in the Legislature. What spurred his resignation, though, was discussion Thursday night regarding the county's newly implemented hiring freeze.

The Health and Human Services' agenda included two resolutions to fill two new positions in the county's Department of Social Services. The county Legislature voted last month to implement a hiring freeze on the creation of all new positions until July 1 in order to give department heads time to assess local impacts of the New York State budget.

Bennett said those two positions were vetted and recommended through the county's new vacancy committee. Last month, he said, the Health and Human Services Committee asked Community Services Director Ray Bizzari to bring the two new positions forward as resolutions in May. But with the new hiring freeze, committee members disagreed Thursday night with how to proceed.

Legislators Aileen McNabb-Coleman and Joe DeForest told The Citizen Friday that they supported the positions, but wanted to word the resolutions so they would be filled after July 1. McNabb-Coleman said Bizzari thought it would take him a couple of months to fill the positions anyway.

"I think if we have a freeze at the county, we need to be careful," McNabb-Coleman said. "We don't want to damage the integrity of such an action because I feel, then why take an action in the first place?"

But Bennett and Legislators Patrick Mahunik and Tucker Whitman were in favor of filling both positions immediately, and both resolutions passed the committee. Mahunik told The Citizen the process for filling those positions had started before the hiring freeze, and he felt it should continue to the full Legislature. Bennett agreed.

DeForest said that despite those resolutions passing, things at the meeting went south very quickly. He was flabbergasted, he said, when Bennett announced he would be resigning from his chair position. Bennett sent an email to Legislature Clerk Sheila Smith at 8:02 p.m. Thursday confirming the decision.

Bennett said it wasn't just the hiring freeze discussion that made him want to resign. He's frustrated that the county is without an administrator. It's a position he hopes can be put back in place soon. For now, Chairman Keith Batman, McNabb-Coleman and Deputy Chairman Ben Vitale are acting as an interim management team. Discussions have begun with a consultant regarding the county administrator position, though it was not clear when the body would decide if it would keep the position or proceed differently.

"I have total frustration, and I feel between having an interim management committee and the vacancy committee trying to undermine us now, I said, 'Enough is enough,'" Bennett said Friday.

As far as the Health and Human Services Committee is concerned, Vice-Chair Michael Didio will take Bennett's place for now, but the county attorney's office said the position is appointed by the chair of the Legislature. It was not clear Friday afternoon when that appointment would be made.

Legislators will vote on the two new positions at the Ways and Means Committee meeting, which will take place at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 16, in the Sixth Floor Chambers of the Cayuga County Office Building, 160 Genesee St., Auburn.
Things You Need To Know About Narada Muni Faith Mysticism oi-Nutheti

Narada Muni is perhaps one of the most recognizable characters in the Hindu mythology. He can be seen prominently in many of the mythological stories. He features in epics such as the Mahabharata, Ramayana and Srimad Bhagwat Gita. He also plays a major role in the Puranas.

In this Kalpa, he was born as the son of Lord Brahma. He is famous as being one of the greatest devotees of Lord Maha Vishnu.

Narada Muni is infamous in the mythologies for being meddlesome and a gossip monger. But that could not be more far from the truth. Malice is never the intention of this Great Sage.

His actions are often the seeds for great good in the long run. Narada Muni has been the catalyst of many important events in the Hindu mythology.

He was the one who converted Angulimal, who was a robber, into the great Sage Valmiki; and it was because of him that Kamsa did not spare even one of Lord Krishna's siblings.

Narada Muni wanders the three worlds and carries news from one place to the other. He is called the first journalist. He wears saffron robes and has his hair tied into a knot.

Narada Muni carries a Khartal and a Veena by the name of Mahati. He uses these instruments to sing the praises of his Lord, Lord Maha Vishnu. The name of Narayana flows unceasingly from his lips and his mind is always bent on the Lord's name.

Narada Muni is forever alert and present to help the cause of Lord Maha Vishnu and it is believed that he also often travels beside the Lord on the bird Garuda.

12th of May, 2017, is celebrated as Narada Jayanti. It is believed to be the day that Narada was born. As per the regional lunar-solar calendar, Narada Jayanti is celebrated on the day after the Poornima of the Vaishakha month, which is the Pratipada day of Krishna Paksha.

The timings of Narada Jayanti are as follows:

Pratipada Tithi Begins = 03:12 AM on 11/May/2017

Pratipada Tithi Ends = 05:28 AM on 12/May/2017

To honour the occasion of Narada Jayanti, we have compiled a list of things you probably didn't know about Narada Muni. Read on to know more.

The Previous Birth Of Narada Muni

In the previous kalpa, Narada Muni was born as the son of a maid who worked in an ashram where holy men resided. Just as a boy, Narada Muni watched the holy men sing the praises of the Lord Maha Vishnu and was inspired. The words of the holy men made him become free of Maya at a very young age. When his mother passed away due to a snake bite, all his attachments and bonds with this world were broken. He then became an ascetic and pleased with his devotion, he received a boon that he would be born as Narada Muni in this Kalpa.

Patrakar Divas

Narada Muni's birthday is celebrated as the Patrakar Divas. Narada Muni is considered as the first journalist. He roams the earth, the heavens and the underworld and carries the news and messages from one place to the other. This is due to a boon he received that he can go whereever he pleases at will.

Patron Of The Musicians

It is said that Narada Muni has a very melodious voice and he is always singing the praise of the Lord Maha Vishnu. He is never seen without his veena that is named Mahati. This is why the musicians of the Hindu community hold Narada Muni at high esteem. He is worshipped by them on the occasion of Narada Jayanti.

Narada Muni Was Instrumental For The Ramavatar

It was due to a curse of Narada Muni that Lord Maha Vishnu had to be separated from his wife in Ramavatar. It is also due to the curse that Lord Rama had to ask the ape clan to help him rescue his wife.

Narada Muni Might Be Of Chinese Origin

In the Rig Veda, it is mentioned that Narada Muni was a resident of the 'Hoon Desh'. This area lies in the present day Uttarakhand on the borders of China.

A legend says, "Hoon Desh Me Rahate Narad Tholing Math Wale [Narad of Tholing Math lives in Hoon Desh]".

Master Of 64 Vidyas

Narada Muni was not just a sage who wandered the world, passing chunks of news and information to everyone he met, he was also a wise and knowledgeable person who had mastered the 64 vidyas.

Books Named After Him

Narada Muni has two books named after him. They are called the Narada Purana and the Narada Sukti.

Temple Dedicated To Narada Muni

There is a temple dedicated to Narada Muni in the state of Karnataka. In the river Krishna, there is a small island called Korva. The Narada temple is built on this island and is called Naradgadde.
It's finally open.

The Port Byron Old Erie Canal Heritage Park is now welcoming visitors, the New York State Thruway Authority and the Canal Society of New York State announced on Friday. The park, which opened in 2016, is the only facility in the United States where visitors can access a heritage park from an Interstate.

With a pull-off and parking area near the former Lock 52, the park showcases the canal and historical components including the Erie House Tavern and Hotel, a mule barn and blacksmith shop all dating back to the late 1800s.

"The community is excited to open up this treasure that we have kept for over 150 years," said Andrea Seamans, coordinator of the "Friends" of Port Byron Old Erie Canal Heritage Park, in a release. "This one of a kind park will open New York State, the nation and the world to a transportation project that expanded our state economically and opened the west to development. Visitors enter through a magnificent welcoming center with many displays including an 1893 large double lock on the the Enlarged Erie Canal. There is nothing else like this in the United States and we are ready to welcome visitors from all over the world to see the amazing feat of engineering."

The Canal Society of New York State will provide guided tours to complement the visitor center's interactive displays and educational materials. The heritage park will be showcased, too, at the World Canals Conference Sept. 24-26 in the city of Syracuse.

Located off of I-90 eastbound at milepost 308.7 between Exits 41 and 40, the park will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday through October 31. For more information visit http://www.newyorkcanals.org/preservation_portbyron.htm.
A grand jury has indicted three Seneca Falls residents on kidnapping and other charges for allegedly abducting an individual and holding the victim in an attempt to secure ransom money, Seneca County District Attorney Barry Porsch said Friday.

Jesse James Dillsworth, Bryan A. Gonyou and Lisa J. Freer, all of 25 Miller St., have been charged with first-degree kidnapping, second-degree grand larceny, first-degree conspiracy and endangering the welfare of a child.

The kidnapping, grand larceny and conspiracy charges are felonies. Endangering the welfare of a child is a misdemeanor.

The charges stem from an alleged incident that involved the abduction of an unnamed person. The victim was restrained for more than 12 hours, according to Porsch.

Dillsworth, Freer and Gonyou abducted and held the victim with the intent to force another individual to deliver ransom money to them, Porsch said.

Dillsworth is facing additional charges for allegedly displaying a knife during the incident. He has been charged with two counts of second-degree menacing, a class A misdemeanor.

A search warrant was executed at the site of the crime Monday, Porsch said. The Seneca Falls Police Department, New York State Police and Seneca County District Attorney's Office executed the search. The Seneca County Sheriff's Office assisted with the investigation.

Dillsworth, Freer and Gonyou were indicted Thursday.

The defendants are being held without bail at the Seneca County Correctional Facility.
AUBURN  A local sex offender has admitted to having oral sex with a 13-year-old girl in Cayuga County.

Keith A. Hilliard, 38, of 4258 Route 38A, pleaded guilty Thursday to three felonies.

According to the Cayuga County Sheriff's Office, deputies arrested Hilliard in November 2016 following an investigation into the sexual abuse of a child in the town of Summerhill. In addition, deputies said Hilliard had been using a social media account that he did not report to the Department of Criminal Justice Services, something he was required to do as a level 2 sex offender.

Hilliard  who was previously convicted of third-degree rape in June 2003 for having sex with another 13-year-old girl  was charged with two felony counts of second-degree criminal sex act and endangering the welfare of a child, a class A misdemeanor. He was also charged with failing to report his social media account, a class D felony.

On Thursday, Hilliard pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree criminal sex act and one count of failing to report a change of internet identifier as a sex offender. In addition, Hilliard admitted to one count of second-degree assault for causing physical injury to another inmate while he was incarcerated at the Cayuga County Jail in March.

In exchange for his pleas of guilty, Judge Thomas Leone agreed to sentence Hilliard to a total of three years in prison plus 10 years post-release supervision. Hilliard was remanded to jail pending sentencing July 11.

Also in court:

 A 24-year-old man pleaded guilty to a felony Thursday for breaking into a building in Moravia.

Corey Papusha, of 10 Grove St. in Moravia, was arrested in September 2016 and charged with second-degree burglary.

According to District Attorney Jon Budelmann, Papusha and multiple co-defendants broke into a building on Rockefeller Road and stole a "water-cooler-sized jug of change."

Papusha admitted his involvement in the crime Thursday, pleading guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree burglary. He was remanded to Cayuga County Jail without bail pending sentencing July 6.

Papusha could face a maximum of seven years in prison. However, Judge Leone agreed to sentence him to six months in jail and five years probation. In addition, Papusha and his co-defendants would be required to pay nearly $5,000 in restitution.

 A Syracuse man admitted to selling roughly $1,500 worth of drugs in Cayuga County.

Jose Rosa, 26, of 319 Shuart Ave., pleaded guilty Thursday to fifth-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, a class D felony. In court, he told Judge Leone he sold a relative's Xanax prescription to someone in Weedsport in July 2015.

Rosa could face up to seven years in prison for the crime, but Leone said he would sentence him to two years in prison and two years post-release supervision to be served as parole supervision. Rosa will also have to pay $1,480 in restitution.

 A former inmate at Auburn Correctional Facility will spend an additional two to four years in prison for possessing a weapon while he was incarcerated.

In March, 28-year-old Nicholas Cortese pleaded guilty to first-degree promoting prison contraband, a class E felony. At the time, he admitted to possessing a "stabbing-type weapon" while he was serving a sentence at Auburn prison in April 2016.

According to the district attorney, Cortese had confessed his guilt in recorded phone calls at the prison, in which he told relatives that he stabbed another inmate and was caught 'red handed' with the weapon.

However, in court Thursday, Cortese claimed he had possessed a 3-inch drywall screw to protect himself from other inmates.

Cortese has been in prison since 2007. He is currently serving a 15-year sentence for two separate offenses  first-degree robbery for robbing a man at gunpoint and first-degree assault for stabbing a cab driver in the stomach.

On Thursday, Judge Leone sentenced Cortese to two to four years in prison. That sentence will run consecutive to any other time he is serving with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
Independent Power Producers (IPPs) in the country are eying to export power generated from its vast coal and gas resources to neighbours South Africa and Zambia, an official has said.

Botswana Chamber of Mines (BCM) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Charles Siwawa said several companies in the country have secured power licences while others are in the process. Once fully operational the companies intend to export the power across borders.

We have these IPPs that are going to produce power from the northern Botswana and export it to Zambia. The government of Botswana is also in negotiations with South Africa, through various departments, to actually export significant amount of power from Botswana amounting to 3700 megawatts, Siwawa told the World Banks Botswana Mining Investment and Governance Review report meeting last week in Gaborone.

He said the local companies have been participating greatly in trying to tap into that energy market. Siwawa said there are also discussions and plans to fully utilise the countrys coal resources to generate fuel. He said there will be other downstream industries such as the fertiliser industries that could emerge in this country once the coal resource is explored.





In terms of quality, our coal is comparable with the biggest coal producing countries like South Africa and Australia, stated Siwawa.

Botswana has the second largest coal resource in the continent after South Africa amounting to200 billion tonnes and none has been commercially exported outside the continent. Siwawa said Botswana is set to utilise its gas reserves that have proved commercially viable.

Siwawa said the mining sector in the country offers great potential to investors both foreign and local. He said there are several financial institutions that are ready to support the development of the mineral sector in Botswana.

The CEO however pointed out that the performance of the mining sector in the country is rather lukewarm due to the low commodity prices across the globe.

Siwawa was optimistic that in future the price will pick.
Eco-tourism companies, Wilderness Holdings and Chobe Holdings are expecting a mixed set of results for the past year,amid forecast that the industry will grow by nearly ten percent this year.

Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE) listed firm, Wilderness stated in cautionary note that results for the 12 months to February 2017, are likely to be more than 10percent lower than those achieved in the corresponding period in the prior year. The expected fall in profits is likely to have shareholders worried, given that the Little Mombo owner also posted a drop in profits for the past year (2016).



For the same year, the dual-listed group saw its results taking a dive by 3 percent to close at P74, 2million. The Keith Vincent -led company explained the bottom line is down for the soon-to-be released results because of unrealised losses resulting from translation of the companys foreign currency position. However, there has been a jump in segmental profit. The company, which listed at BSE in 2010, sells its rooms in the highly volatile US dollar.



Shareholders will have a chance to read more on the financial results when they are made public at the end of the month.The report of lower profits comes amid media reports that, government is on the verge of selling the struggling national airliner, Air Botswana to Wilderness following an expression of interest. Chairman of the group, Parks Tafa has denied the latest developments in an interview with a local weekly.







Meanwhile, shareholders of Wilderness competitor, Chobe Holdings are excited that profits for the group will be higher when compared to the year ended February last year. The board of directors hereby announces that the Groups results for the year ended February 2017 are likely to be significantly higher than those achieved in the corresponding period in prior year, a company statement reads.



For the year to February last year, the owners of Desert and Delta Safari made a profit of P56million, up when compared to P52million recorded the year before. The BSE-quoted company has not stated factors which led to the rise in bottom line. Writing in the companys 2016 annual financial statement, Chief Executive Officer, Jonathan Gibson said the introduction of South African Airlinks flight between Maun and Cape Town is anticipated to contribute positively to Mauns accessibility.



These factors,coupled with the Groups superior marketing strategies and ever improving product offering,are anticipated to translate to satisfactory results in the forthcoming financial year, said Gibson. Chobe Holdings has not announced when the results will be out. It has, like Wilderness Safari, cautioned shareholders to exercise caution when dealing with its securities.



On a related matter, Chief Economist at the finance ministry, Batane Matekane told the just-ended HATAB annual conference that, the industry has grown rapidly in the past few years. Travel and tourism generated 32 000 jobs directly in 2014, representing 4.6 percent of total employment. This was forecast to grow by 2.6 percent in 2015 to reach 32 500 or 4.6 percent of total employment.



Total employment in the tourism sector includes direct employment by hotels, travel agents, airlines and other passenger transportation services, excluding the commuter services, said Matekane.
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A file photo.

COLOMBO (AFP): Sri Lanka refused permission for a Chinese submarine to dock at Colombo next week after a similar visit in 2014 angered regional super-power India, a top defence official said Thursday.



Chinese authorities had sought clearance for a port call at Colombo where a Chinese state-owned company operates a mega container terminal, the official said asking not to be named.



"They have asked for permission, but we have said no," the official told AFP. "It is a very sensitive matter." He did not elaborate.



The rejection came as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was visiting Sri Lanka as chief guest of "Vesak", the island's main Buddhist celebration making the birth, enlightenment and the passing of the Buddha.



The request for the Chinese submarine visit was for next week, after Modi's departure on Friday evening, official sources said.



There was no immediate comment from the Chinese embassy in Colombo, but two submarine calls at the Colombo harbour in 2014 had reportedly angered India which considered it as undermining their security.



New Delhi traditionally regards its smaller neighbour as being within its sphere of influence. New Delhi is said to have been worried about Beijing's growing influence on Colombo under the former regime of strongman president Mahinda Rajapakse.



Sri Lanka's new President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in January 2015 promising to loosen ties with China after a decade of hefty funding by Beijing under his predecessor.



However, analysts have noted that Beijing's influence was on the rise again as Colombo struggles to find alternative sources of much needed foreign capital.






WASHINGTON (AFP): The US State Department has approved the possible sale of 160 missiles to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for an estimated US$ 2 billion, the Pentagon said Thursday.



The UAE government has requested the possible sale of 60 Patriot missiles with canisters and 100 Patriot guidance enhanced missiles, among other military equipment, according to a Department of Defense statement.



"This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of an important ally which has been, and continues to be, a force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East," it said.


PHOENIX  State lawmakers completed the 2017 legislative session Wednesday evening with millions of dollars in new and expanded tax breaks for business that sponsors say will help economic development.

Legislators approved providing another $10 million in state income tax credits for angel investors who put money into qualified small businesses. They also revamped a fund designed to provide grants to microenterprises.

Separately, they gave final approval to restoring lifetime eligibility for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to two years, the way it was before Gov. Doug Ducey signed legislation trimming that by half two years ago. But the measure includes some conditions on getting that second year of cash assistance, provisions Democrats said are designed to trip up recipients.

But the big action Wednesday was the decision to provide even more financial incentives for manufacturers, some of whom already get special property tax treatment and a few of whom may be paying no state corporate income taxes at all.

Senate President Steve Yarbrough did not dispute that existing laws and what is in SB 1416, approved by the Senate on a 21-6 and the House by a vote of 32-21, will minimize what some companies pay not only to the state but also in local property taxes that support the city and school districts.

But he said that has to be weighed against the promise by Intel it will be investing more than $7 billion to refurbish and finally occupy a now-vacant chip-manufacturing facility it built years ago in Chandler, his home town. And that, he said, will create new revenue streams.

You're missing all of those people who have jobs at Intel who make six-figure salaries, who pay income tax, who pay property taxes on their home, who pay sales taxes at all the places they buy stuff, he said.

But House Minority Leader Rebecca Rios said the record in Arizona disproves theory that tax breaks for business will grow the economy.

She cited a recent report that various tax exemptions and credits total $14 billion, more than the $9.8 billion state budget. But Rios pointed out that the current state budget is essentially equal to what it was a decade ago, with more than half a million more people in Arizona.

Where's all this revenue that's flooding into the state? she asked.

We have no proof that tax credits like this one actually working, added Sen. Martin Quezada, D-Glendale.

Rep. Pamela Powers Hanley, D-Tucson, took particular issue with provisions of the bill that extend special tax credits to firms to reimburse them for the cost of doing research and development.

She said the state is forgoing millions of dollars of taxes. But Powers Hanley said that's not the worst of it.

This bill also gives away millions of dollars in research royalties into the future, with no end date, she said, research that was financed by taxpayers in the first place.

Giving away all the intellectual property rights is a huge potential loss of future revenues, Powers Hanley continued. When the voters fund research or fund anything, the voters should get a return on their investment.

She said the benefit to the state amounts to trickle-down economics.

But not all the Democrats were opposed.

Not only will SB 1416 create thousands of high-paying jobs to thousands of Arizonans, but will catapult economic development in the right direction, said Rep. Cessar Chavez, D-Phoenix. He said graduates from the state's three universities are fleeing because there are not enough jobs available.

House Speaker J.D. Mesnard, reflecting a philosophical difference between the parties, took particular issue with Rios' contention the state is giving away tax breaks.

Not taxing something is not the same thing as giving it away, he said.  'Giving it away' suggests we own it.

The money, he said, belongs to the taxpayers.

They own it and then we force it from them, yes, to provide services for various things, Mesnard said. But there's a very important distinction.

The provisions in SB 1416 come on top of the special tax treatment that certain large corporations already get.

There are those R & D tax credits, which can be equal to 24 percent of what a company spends.

Arizona also has created foreign trade zones, where the property tax on businesses is just a fraction of what it is on firms whose facilities are located elsewhere.

And multistate corporations are allowed to compute what they owe in Arizona corporate income taxes based entirely on what percentage of the products they make are sold in the state. That potentially reduces the liability to manufacturers whose products are made here and shipped elsewhere.

That break is even more significant for firms like Intel, whose computer chips are sold to other firms nationally and worldwide, and Raytheon which has little Arizona audience for its missiles.

SB 1416 makes three major changes in existing laws.

It would extend and expand tax credits manufacturers already get for creating new jobs. That credit is currently set to expire at the end of June.

Another provision extends the tax credits available for expenses on research and development.

And it would create an accelerated depreciation schedule for any equipment purchased by manufacturers.

That break relates to the fact that Arizona law imposes property taxes not only on land and buildings but also any business equipment, from major presses to computers and desks. The value of that equipment is based on the purchase price, a figure that is adjusted annually for depreciation.

This legislation allows businesses to write off half the value in the first year alone, a move that provides an immediate break on what already is a reduced property tax rate. That will particularly help companies that are currently in the market for major new equipment, like Intel.

Gov. Doug Ducey has generally been favorable to new business tax breaks. But he's also getting something in the legislation he did not want.

Rep. Jill Norgaard, R-Phoenix, slipped in language which says that the sale of partial ownership shares of corporate jets is not subject to the state sales tax.

Ducey vetoed a bill with only that language earlier this year because of the revenue implications. But he will have to accept it if he wants the rest of what's in SB 1416 because he lacks the constitutional power to excise provisions of new laws he does not like.

There was no immediate response from his office to what Norgaard had done.
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two people are reportedly in custody following a high-speed chase in Brandons north end on Thursday afternoon that ended with a crash near the First Street bridge and a manhunt downtown.

Witnesses described how a black Audi SUV had sped along a residential street followed by police early Thursday afternoon.

Two men said they saw the SUV zip by along the avenue, followed by two or three police cars, while other police vehicles converged on the area from an adjoining street.

Erin DeBooy/The Brandon Sun Brandon police arrest a suspect found hiding between two automotive garages at Third Street and Rosser Avenue on Thursday after fleeing from a vehicle pursuit on foot.

Everything happened so fast, said one of the men who asked not to be identified. They went flying by and there was a bunch of dust up in the construction zone there.

That dust seems to refer to the crash at the foot of the new First Street bridge, where the second of two twin bridges are under construction.

The chase seems to have begun shortly before 12:30 p.m.

Employees at the Co-op gas bar on the 300 block of 18th Street North confirmed an account that the chase began there.

One employee there said that it appeared that a single police unit had pulled over a black Audi SUV in the parking lot.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Members of Brandon Police Service's Tactical Response Unit and other members search for a suspect along Rosser Avenue after a chase on Thursday afternoon. A suspect crashed their vehicle into a barrier in the CP Rail yard.

Employees then saw the SUV take off through the lot with a police car behind. Other police cars quickly followed, within 20 to 30 seconds.

Co-op employee Carl Fawcett estimated six to eight police cars were engaged in the pursuit.

He was doing at least 60 km/h, just going through here, fellow Co-op employee Braden Woods said, referring to the SUV going through the parking lot, adding there was a police ghost car right behind it.

Woods said he saw a man and woman in the SUV as it passed by.

The quick response by other officers suggests that the stop was part of a larger operation already underway at the time, but the Brandon Police Service couldnt immediately confirm that.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun A Brandon Police Service Forensic Identification Unit member photographs a damaged vehicle involved in a police chase on Thursday afternoon. A suspect crashed their vehicle into a barrier in the CP Rail yard and took off on foot before being eventually captured on Third Street between Rosser Avenue and Pacific Avenue.

The police cars in the pursuit were described as a mix of marked and unmarked, their lights and sirens going.

A construction worker from the First Street bridge said that tactical response members arrived at the crash scene right behind the first officers. That report bolsters the theory that there was a larger operation already underway, although thats not conclusive.

Other witnesses said the SUV was pursued east down Assiniboine Avenue at a speed they estimated to be more than 100 km/h. One Assiniboine resident said he was alerted to the approaching chase by a neighbour, and he could hear the whine of the SUVs engine.

By the time he got outside the SUV had passed, and police were just going by.

As soon as I came out the door, zoom, zoom, a bunch of cops just came flying, like it dusted the whole area.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Members of Brandon Police Service's Tactical Response Unit, Canine Unit and other members search for a suspect along the CP tracks under the Eighth Street bridge after a chase on Thursday afternoon.

The construction worker from the bridge said that, at the end of the avenue by the structure, the SUV hit a concrete barrier where it came to a stop.

He said another damaged car, apparently a police vehicle, was at that scene. Its not clear how it was damaged, although the witness believed it may have run over some metal work.

He said police, guns and at least one Taser drawn, arrested a female who had been in the SUV at the crash scene. A man from the SUV ran south, passed between moving rail cars and evaded police.

A Canadian Pacific Railway flagger stopped the train for police, who then followed the fleeing man, the worker said.

Officers, some with rifles and tactical gear, spread throughout the downtown area as they looked for the suspect. Cruisers squared off a section from First Street to Eighth Street between Pacific Avenue and Princess Avenue.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Brandon Police Service members search for a suspect behind The Brandon Sun's building on Rosser Avenue after a chase on Thursday afternoon.

St. Augustine School and Ecole New Era school were both placed in lockdown, and several businesses were told to lock their doors while police were on scene.

By about 1:30 p.m., with guns drawn and with the help of the K-9 unit, police had narrowed their search to a back lane in the 00 block between Second and Third streets when the dogs started to bark.

Police yelled: Put your hands up! toward a space between two garages on the corner of Rosser Avenue and Third Street from where they then dragged and handcuffed a suspect.

Its not known if the man was armed.

A BPS officer was assembling details for media Thursday afternoon, but The Brandon Sun didnt receive an update by press time. No release was issued by the BPS.

Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun Members of Brandon Police Service's Tactical Response Unit and other members search for a suspect on Third Street near Rosser Avenue after a chase on Thursday afternoon.

 ihitchen@brandonsun.com, with files from Erin DeBooy
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 11/05/2017 (2008 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thursday afternoons car chase, in which police made a pair of arrests, led them to a city home where they seized guns and arrested another man, bringing the total of people arrested for the days events to three.

Police delivered an update on the case around 9:45 p.m. on Thursday in which they detailed the series of events that led to the arrests.

That chain of events actually began on Wednesday when police were told to be on the lookout for a Black Audi vehicle with a Saskatchewan licence plate. A caller had seen a man punch a woman while in the vehicle which was travelling south on First Street.

Brandon Police Service Displayed here are some of the guns seized by members of the Brandon Police Service from a city home. The guns were found as part of an investigation into the events surrounding a high-speed chase Thursday afternoon.

Police couldnt find the vehicle at the time, but were informed several hours later that a man was driving the black Audi SUV with Saskatchewan licence plates and may have a handgun.

Early Thursday morning, police found an unoccupied SUV matching the description in a parking the parking lot of the Trails West Inn. Police learned the drivers identity and police records showed tht the man from Saskatoon has a lengthy and violent criminal record. He was also bound by a bail order to live in Saskatoon and abide by a curfew.

At 12:22 p.m., police watched as the man and a woman exited a hotel room and entered the SUV with the man driving. Police tried to stop the SUV, but during that stop its driver took off, dragging the police officer a short distance while he tried to stop the driver. The officer wasnt injured.

That SUV led police on a high-speed pursuit that ended when the man lost control of the SUV and hit a concrete barrier in the CPR rail yard under the First Street Bridge.

The woman from the SUV tried to run but was caught. The man ran but was caught after a police search that involved the K-9 unit. The suspect was hiding in a shed at the rear of a home on the 00-block of Third Street.

It turns out the SUV had been stolen from Saskatoon.

A 31-year-old Saskatoon man faces six charges that include flight, possession of stolen property, assaulting a peace officer with a weapon, dangerous driving and driving while disqualified.

A 26-year-old woman of no fixed address is charged with possession of stolen property.

Both of those suspects will appear in court on Friday.

But the investigation didnt end there.

Police were informed that another man, also a 31-year-old man from Saskatoon, was at a residence on the 600 block of Franklin Street had a handgun and assault rifle.

At 4:52 p.m. he exited the home and was arrested. Inside the home, police found a .22-calibre long rifle, a 20-gauge shotgun, a hunting rifle and a BB gun. The realistic-looking BB gun was the handgun police were warned about.

A pickup truck parked at the home had been stolen from Prince Albert, Sask.

This third suspect will appear in court on Friday and faces six charges that include possession of stolen property, possession of a prohibited firearm with ammunition, and possession of a firearm contrary to a prohibtion order.

 The Brandon Sun
Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Assiniboine Community College, Brandon University and the Sexual Education Resource Centre are partnering together next week to recognize the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia.

Were happy to co-host this event with BU and to develop a strong relationship with SERC to create safe and inclusive environments on our respective campuses, Pam Roberts, Respectful College co-ordinator at ACC, said in a statement.

On May 17, there will be a screening of the short documentary One Gay City: A History of LGBT Life in Winnipeg at ACCs Victoria Avenue East campus, followed by a discussion about the advances made to date and what BU and ACC can do to promote inclusive, safe campus environments.

As post-secondary institutions, we feel that it is important that we take leadership on issues like these by sparking the conversations that lead to positive change, said Lisa Park, diversity and human rights adviser at BU.

The event will also kick off a campaign that will include awareness training for staff to help build an Assiniboine ALLY program, Roberts said.

The event, which is free of charge and open to the public, runs from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

 The Brandon Sun
Coconino Community College will be celebrating the graduation of more than 275 students on Friday. The community colleges spring commencement ceremony takes place at 1 p.m. today at CCCs Lone Tree Campus in the commons area. Graduates will receive certificates or diplomas for associates degrees.

This years speakers include student graduates Kevin Scholler and Rita Schreiner, part-time faculty member of the year Andy Allen, and full-time faculty member of the year Alan Petersen.

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Saving a seat for someone else is not allowed. Overflow seating will be provided in other rooms with a live stream of the event.

For a list of this years CCC graduates, visit this story at www.azdailysun.com.
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PHOENIX  Claiming lawmakers acted illegally, a newly organized group is asking a judge to void a key change in laws governing the right of voters to enact their own laws.

The lawsuit filed Thursday in Maricopa County Superior Court charges that both the Arizona Constitution and a series of court rulings require that initiative organizers need be only in substantial compliance with state election laws to qualify their proposals for the ballot. That provides a certain amount of leeway for what judges have concluded are errors which do not affect the ability of voters to understand what they are signing and the issues before them.

By contrast, the legislation adopted at the behest of business interests requires strict compliance with every law. That change, if it takes effect, would allow  and perhaps require  a judge to quash petition drives for what could be technical violations.

Recognizing a trial on the legal issues may take time, attorney Roopali Desai is asking the court to issue an injunction blocking the measure from taking effect as scheduled on Aug. 9.

But Desai is not leaving the fate of the law to the courts.

Separately, organizers of a group called Voters of Arizona filed the paperwork to give voters the final work on the change in the law approved by the Republican-controlled legislature. They also have a separate petition drive to void another change, this one prohibiting initiative organizers from paying petition circulators based on the number of signatures they gather.

Backers of the two petition drives have until the end of the business day on Aug. 8 to submit at least 75,321 valid signatures. If they succeed, the measure cannot take effect unless and until voters ratify at the November 2018 general election what lawmakers have done.

The petition drives ensure that the issue, at least as to the new strict compliance standard, does not die if courts do not rule in her favor. But Desai said she believes that judges will side with her clients and against attorneys for the state.

It's actually a constitutional issue, she said. There's a very clear separation of powers between what the legislature can do and what's a constitutional requirement.

There already is a strict compliance requirement for referenda, the kind of thing that her clients are using to put the two new laws before voters. Courts in general have concluded that referenda are different because simply gathering enough signatures is enough to at least delay enforcement of something approved by the legislature until the next election.

By contrast, initiatives are designed to propose entirely new laws, often in situations where the legislature has refused to act. And Desai said a requirement for strict compliance for initiatives is not articulated anywhere in the Arizona Constitution or the courts that have interpreted the Constitution.

What this all comes down to, she said, is that Republican lawmakers and their allies  her lawsuit specifically mentions the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Arizona Public Service  do not like the fact that voters can create their own laws. And that power is amplified by the fact that voters in 1998 amended the Arizona Constitution to specifically prohibit lawmakers from altering or repealing what had been approved at the ballot.

They're not happy with the Voter Protection Act, Desai said, calling the new law being challenged an end-run around the substantial compliance standard by legislating in an arena that is not within their purview.

The litigation will get a fight from the legislature.

House Speaker J.D. Mesnard acknowledged the courts have allowed measures on the ballot that only substantially comply with election laws. But he said that's only because the legislature has not enacted a contrary law  at least not until now.

I think the courts will say that's the prerogative of the legislature, Mesnard said.

His Exhibit No. 1 argument for strict compliance involves a 2012 ballot measure seeking to make permanent what had been a temporary one-cent increase in the sales tax.

As required, backers of the initiative filed a copy of what they intended to circulate with the secretary of state's office. But it turned out that what was being circulated was different, failing to mention who gets some of the money that would be generated.

Ken Bennett, then the secretary of state, said that disqualified the measure from the ballot.

But a trial judge noted  and the Supreme Court agreed  that Bennett's office did get an accurate version, albeit on computer disk.

The judges said the incorrect paper version amounted to a clerical error and that initiative supporters substantially complied with the legal requirements to begin circulating petitions.

Mesnard said that shows why a strict compliance standard is needed.

That would never be acceptable at the legislature, he said. We are talking about making law.

The plaintiffs in the legal challenge to the change in the standard have more than a passing interest in the issue.

They include Matt Madonna who is the former president of the regional division of American Cancer Society. It was his organization that was behind a successful ballot effort to ban smoking in public places.

Sandy Bahr is chapter director of the Sierra Club which has been involved in various ballot fights including a ban on leghold traps on public lands and creating an optional system of public financing for state and local elections.

And the Animal Defense League helped get voter approval of a ban on gestation crates for calves and pigs.

Desai said there is no legal challenge planned to the ban on paying petition circulators on a per-signature basis, at least at this time. That means the fate of that law will depend on the referendum drive.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One of my friends messaged me the other day criticizing my plans on going to Montreal next month for Mondial de la biere, stating that I need to stop going to Montreal all the time and start going to other cities.

Unfortunately, I dont have the time or money to go to Montreal all the time, otherwise I would. And Id go to other Canadian beer cities like Toronto, Halifax and Vancouver as well. It has been almost a year since I went to Montreal for Mondial, which was only one of the many highlights of the trip.

My trip to southern Quebec, where I went brewery hopping, was easily one of the best afternoons Ive had in a long time. Brasserie Dunham was likely the best brewery out of the brews cruise that day, but that shouldnt be a surprise seeing that Dunham is considered one of the top breweries in the world.

We dont get much from Brasserie Dunham in Manitoba, but weve been lucky enough to get their delicious Berliner Melon Weisse and Black IPA in the past. Fortunately, their Saison Rustique is here to stay.

Saison Rustique is a Belgian-style saison that tops out at six per cent ABV and is bottle fermented, meaning that the beer is constantly aging and changing flavours over time. The saison pours a cloudy, lemon-peel yellow with a light to moderate amount of fizzy carbonation and a moderate amount of foam on top.

The aroma is strong with the scent of lemon right from the beginning and there are also notes of herbs, a hint of a barnyard funk which is common with beers that use more experimental yeasts, and lastly theres a touch of a sour zestiness to it, almost like a lime but not quite. I actually recall once saying that it reminded me a bit of Miss Vickies Sea Salt and Malt Vinegar chips.

The flavour of the beer is heavily lemon and yeast-forward with the barnyard funk that I noticed in the aroma. I dont know how to describe what barnyard funk is. Its not the smell of manure (thankfully), its just more of that earthy, woody smell you get in an old barn, which we all should recognize seeing that this is an agricultural community. Theres a bit of sourness to the beer, certainly quite a bit more sour than most Belgian saisons. Compared to most other saisons, this one is much more carbonated as it feels tingly on my tongue as it hits my palate and ends up feeling a bit gassy in my stomach. Lastly, theres an interesting flavour that pops up once in a while that tastes like its a combination of black pepper and grapefruit, if thats even a thing.

I dont think Ill be visiting Brasserie Dunham this time around, but their tasting room is absolutely beautiful, especially with their terrace giving off a vibe that youre in Paris, not in rural Quebec. I know Ill be sampling many of their beers at Mondial and might even bring home a bottle or two if something interesting is available at one of the million depanneurs (convenience stores that sell beer there).

This time around, my day trips in the region will consist of Beaus in Vankleek Hill, Ont., and to Quebec City to check out their new brewpubs since I havent visited La Belle Ville since 2013. You can find Brasserie Dunhams Saison Rustique at the 10th & Victoria Liquor Mart as well at the Portage la Prairie Liquor Mart for $8.36 per 750 ml bottle. I was paying about the same price at the brewery so we are definitely getting a great value 2,500 kilometres away. 3.5/5 pints

  

Unibroue has recently released its Megadeth collaboration, Saison A Tout le Monde, in Manitoba. The beer is priced at $6.99 per 750 ml bottle and I find its a lighter tasting saison than their sister Blonde de Chambly but has a bit more of a floral hop bitterness to it. Its available at all three main Liquor Marts in Brandon and possibly as well at the Keystone Motor Inn.
Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 12/05/2017 (2007 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Last weekends Winnipeg Wine Festival was an incredible treat in so very many ways.

Reconnecting with old friends in the industry, meeting lots of new people who could become friends, and sharing opinions, thoughts and suggestions about what we tried and tasted and loved  I mean, it just doesnt get any better than that.

This was the first time Id gone into the city for more than just the Friday and Saturday public tastings. I was invited to join a small gathering of folks for a private dinner the Wednesday prior, hosted by Tammy Brown of Californias Delicato Family Vineyards for Select Wines, that featured dishes specially created to pair with Delicato wines. And oh my goodness! What a time we had!

One of the most interesting things for me, because I enjoyed every bit of this evening so very much, was that most of the wines were what many of those in the biz term off-dry. And really, thats what they were. They werent sweet, per se, but neither were they dry. And what was so intriguing was this: Im generally not fond of sweet, even sweet-ish wines, but when those wines are properly paired with foods and sauces and accoutrements that enhance their flavour components, the results can be magic.

And thats exactly what happened that Wednesday night at Blaze Restaurant and Lounge in the Delta Hotel.

I say this, too, because this Sunday is Mothers Day, and my mom prefers her wine to have a hint of sweetness. Shed have loved the wines I tasted at the Delicato dinner. And who knows? She may get to sample a few of them when I host her for dinner this weekend.

As mentioned, all of these wines are from California, and frankly, California is where its at for me. Its my favourite wine region, no ifs, ands, or buts. So again, I couldnt have been more delighted with what was sampled that night.

Anyway, we began with the Bora Box Pinot Grigio (Ill have more on that in next weeks column, just in time for May Long) and the Z. Alexander Brown Uncaged Proprietary Red Blend ($21.92 at Liquor Marts). With dark berries aplenty, both in aroma and taste, the Uncaged boasted blueberry, blackberry and black cherry with just the faintest hint of cedar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Lush and full, this blend was stunning with the Port Pate Brulee, the likes of which Ive never tasted before. I love pate anyway, but this creation knocked my socks off. The crisp torched-sugar crust on the rich, creamy and decadent appetizer was mind-bogglingly delicious. I couldnt have loved the pairing more if Id tried.

Next up, another pleasant surprise that shouldnt have been a surprise. I discovered in the Sonoma Valley last summer that even though I generally dont like Sauvignon Blanc because of its tendency to be super citrusy, I really do like Sauv Blanc from California. The Cali Sauvs are just richer and rounder and not as aggressive as most of the other ones Ive tasted from other locales. And the Noble Vines 242 ($19.99) was lovely. With peach, melon, nectarine and just the faintest hint of lemon pie, I really liked it, especially paired with Scallops au Gratin with Cantaloupe Beurre Blanc and Crispy Fried Leeks. As with all the other courses, this was a delicious match.

The Gnarly Head 1924 Double Black Red Blend Limited Edition ($19.96), a blend of Zinfandel, Merlot and Syrah, was redolent with blackberry jam, chocolate, mocha, raspberry, and vanilla caramel, accented by a taste of baked figs. It was paired with a Bison Short Rib, Arugula Salad with Potato Bacon Vinaigrette, Saskatoon and Green Peppercorn Puree, and a Mustard- and Red Wine-Poached Egg. I was over the moon.

Most astonishing, I think, was the next course. Because red wine absolutely doesnt go with fish. But it did that night!

The secret, of course, is matching the wine to the sauce and the other elements of the dish. But it the result was still amazing.

Blackened Char was served with a Pistachio and Basil Puff, Chorizo Skillet with Bell Peppers and Potatoes, and a Cherry Cola Reduction. It was paired with Brazin Old Vine Zinfandel ($20.99), and the wines flavours and aromas of spice, coffee, chocolate and vanilla were the perfect complement. Somehow, the fabulously delicate flavours of the char came shining through. What a feat  and a feast!  this was.

The Black Stallion Cabernet Sauvignon ($34.99), served with the final course of Sous Vide Veal Medallions, Half Duck Breast, Navy Bean Cassoulet with Port Belly, Blueberry Peppercorn Vanilla and Nutmeg Sauce (yes, all of that!) was a standout. I was smitten. Black cherry, blackberry, plum and cassis mingled effortlessly to deliver a truly memorable wine. So if you want to really spoil Mom this weekend, pick up a bottle of the Black Stallion. But Im betting shed like all the others, too.

I cant thank Tammy and Delicato Family Vineyards, Laurie Christensen of Select Wines and Chef Phil Andrews of Blaze enough for a palate-and-mind-blowing event.

It was a tremendous pleasure I wont soon  if ever  forget.
Chartered Accountants Ireland has called for political parties in the North to redouble their efforts to secure the future of the devolved government.

Chartered Accountants Ireland President Liam Lynch, speaking ahead of the Institutes Annual Conference taking place in Galway today, warned that the North runs the risk of being left behind in Brexit preparations and negotiations.

In Northern Ireland, the fact that there is no devolved government is having an extremely detrimental effect on planning for Brexit.

"It is important that all institutions involved appreciate and address the extreme gravity of the Brexit negotiations, and put aside posturing and politics to deal with the issues for the betterment of their constituents. said Mr Lynch.

The institute, which has over 3,000 members in the North, is asking all parties in the North to resolve the impasse, for the good of both jurisdictions on the island.

Brian Keegan, Director of Public Policy and Taxation at Chartered Accountants Ireland, added: We are looking for practical solutions to the issues raised by Brexit. Our research shows that there is a knowledge deficit when it comes to dealing with the realities of cross border trade and customs post Brexit.

"We are working towards, and campaigning for, a programme of education and resourcing to assist smaller businesses in particular adapt to the UKs departure from the EU.

The call from Chartered Accountants Ireland comes as the institute brings together a panel of industry leaders, thinkers, and experts from the worlds of business, technology, and sport for its flagship Annual Conference.
Solar power advocates say a 250-megawatt renewable-energy facility could be in place in time for the late-2019 closure of the Navajo Generating Station, if permitting and construction began right away.

But thats too soon for the Navajo and Hopi, who hold hope that the coal-fired power plant in Page  and its close to 1,000 mining and plant jobs, most held by tribal members  will be around well beyond 2019.

Between the mine and NGS we have over 3,000 indirect jobs, said Meghan Cox, a spokeswoman for the Navajo Nation. A solar field wont come even close to that.

Bullish solar advocates are quick to point to a January report from the Department of Energy that said more than 370,000 people were employed in solar in 2016 compared to around 160,000 in coal.

But those jobs arent exactly sustainable. Jessie Audette Muniz, senior director of project development for Apex Clean Energy, said that construction of a solar plant would employ about 750, but operation would only take about 45 workers.

Its a function of this type of technology, she said.

She said the plant would generate revenue through lease payments on the land needed for a solar field and have a low resource impact in an area thats been severely impacted by coal generation.

A 250-megawatt plant capable of producing 500 gigawatt hours of energy a year would generate land-lease payments of $500 to $600 per acre per year, Muniz said, which could total about $1.1 million a year.

She said it would take about $325 million to build a solar plant of that capacity  and 10 such fields would be necessary to meet the generation capacity that would be lost if NGS shuts down.

Muniz said Salt River Project, which operates and partly owns the plant, has interest in renewables. It recently said it would purchase power from NextEras planned 20-megawatt-capable solar plant with 10 megawatts of storage in Pinal County  a format Muniz said would be likely for a solar plant in Page in order to ensure consistent power is available, addressing a frequent criticism of solar fields.

An SRP spokesman said the utility is in talks with the Interior Department on the future of the land on which NGS sits, though he emphasized that the company would not be involved in any operations there after 2019.

The land that NGS sits on may be attractive for future solar development, said Scott Harelson of SRP. We will fully support the Navajo Nation if they should choose another operator for the plant or a transition to renewable energy at the site  We could consider purchasing energy from any new facility at NGS in the future if the price is similar to other resources available on the market.

But he said solar would be unlikely to fully replace the power generated by NGS, as coal-fired plants produce around the clock, whereas solar is limited by literal outside factors  sunshine.

Cox said the Navajo have not rejected solar, but the tribe wants to consider other options, including a 10-year extension on the NGS lease so the tribe can examine other revenue streams and power options. That would include getting access to transmission lines needed to sell power generated there.

Cox said over $180 million is tied to salaries related to NGS and the Kayenta mine that supplies it with coal.

We have retained energy experts to specifically work on those plans, she said. As far as anything concrete, thats up in the air. It depends on what the federal government allows. But discussions include major a solar field in the Page area. Its part of the long-term plan.

Its still not an ideal replacement, one official said.

The bottom line is, we can definitely install a solar plant in Page and connect it to the grid, Jackson Brossy, executive director of the Navajo Nation Washington Office, said in an email. We would love to do so, and we would love to sell solar electricity to Arizona, California and Nevada customers.

However it is nearly impossible to replace the 3,000 NGS-related jobs with 3,000 solar-related jobs  not to mention the tens of millions of dollars from coal revenue, Brossy said.

A solar facility in Page, even one big enough to match the wattage lost by the NGS closure, is certainly doable, said Kris Mayes, a professor of utility law and energy policy at Arizona State University and a former chair of the Arizona Corporation Commission.

I would hope that the states utilities would do everything in their power to allow the Navajo Nation to develop renewable energy as a potential replacement to NGS if its closed, she said.

Mayes agreed that solar doesnt employ nearly as many in the long run as a coal-fired plant, but said clean energy is still a worthy goal.

Building renewable energy, helping the Navajo and Hopi nations build and operate renewable energy is only the first step, she said. The state of Arizona is obligated to do much, much more than that to replace those jobs. Thats going to go beyond the energy field.

Lets put it this way: The ratepayers of Arizona have benefited from the cheap power of NGS for decades, and we owe it to these nations to assist them, Mayes said.

^__=

Web links:

_ Navajo Generating Station: https://www.srpnet.com/about/stations/navajo.aspx

_ NGS closure announcement: https://www.srpnet.com/newsroom/releases/021317.aspx

_ Apex Clean Energy: http://www.apexcleanenergy.com
Prosecutors are considering charging 18 British soldiers over involvement in the Bloody Sunday shootings in the North, a relative has said.

Thirteen people died when members of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on Civil Rights demonstrators in Derry in 1972.
UPDATE 1.50pm: The former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has warned parts of the Good Friday Agreement may have to be rewritten to take account of Brexit.

He made the comments while addressing a meeting of Fine Gael's European Party, the EPP, in County Wicklow.

As he left the venue, he explained why the agreement would have to be reworded.

"Well there's bits of the Good Friday Agreement that specifically assume that Britain and the Irish Republic are in the European Union, so there's obviously changes of language, but I don't think it should mean a change of substance."

EARLIER: Former British prime minister Tony Blair has said that there is a consensus in Britain to minimise the effects of Brexit and any "potential disruption" as much as possible to the North, writes Juno McEnroe, Irish Examiner Political Correspondent.

Speaking after meeting MEPs and politicians from the European People's Party at a conference in Wicklow, the former Labour leader also said that it was important to try and keep the common travel area between Ireland and Britain.

Mr Blair, one of the architects of the Good Friday Agreement, said earlier this morning that a hard Brexit would be a disaster.

I'm extremely anxious to make sure that Brexit does not impair that agreement, that we continue to have the closest possible agreement between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

There are really difficult and important challenges in this. At the moment we have the common travel area where people can travel freely between North and South on the island of Ireland. This is vital to maintain.

In addition, the open border between north and south, in terms of trade, has done an immense amount for UK-Irish trade and commercial relationships and obviously it is important that there will be difficult challenges in relation to this, that we safeguard that as much as possible and minimise any potential damage.

Former British PM Tony Blair tells media of importance to 'minimise damage' in trade & relations between North & South with #Brexit #Epp pic.twitter.com/cWcfKRCyuq  Juno McEnroe (@Junomaco) May 12, 2017

There is a real consensus across the British political system that we must do everything we possibly can to keep the present situation between the South and North as similar to what we have at the moment as we possibly can and do all we can to minimise any potential disruption.

"This is of vital importance for the economic relationship but also for the political relationships."

Politicians at the Wicklow meeting, including from Fine Gael, are also holding talks with EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, before the French man visits businesses and communities in the border area later today.
A man had boiling water poured over him after he was kidnapped in north Belfast, police said.

He sustained burns to his hand and back.
A Romanian national has been extradited from France to North in connection with a sexual assault.

The incident happened in Portadown in 2014.
Health Minister Simon Harris has said the cyber security of Irish hospitals is being "closely monitored" in the wake of confirmed attacks on hospitals in Britain, writes Daniel McConnell of the Irish Examiner.

Mr Harris was tonight briefed by Tony O'Brien, Director General of the HSE, on precautions taken to protect the health service.
By Daniel Hickey

The Special Criminal Court trial of a Louth man accused of IRA membership has heard that two "very well made" and "viable" improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were found in a car that gardai had stopped on the N52 in County Meath.

It is the prosecution's case that Michael Connolly (44) was observed by gardai driving in convoy along the road with a man who was later found with the two IEDs.

Mr Connolly, of Grange Drive in Dundalk, County Louth, has pleaded not guilty (NOT GUILTY) to membership of an unlawful organisation, styling itself Oglaigh na hEireann, otherwise the Irish Republican Army, otherwise the IRA on December 16th, 2014.

Today, retired army captain Dan Morrow told prosecuting counsel Fiona Murphy BL that on the day of the alleged offence he went to Mitchelstown Cross, County Meath.

The court heard that gardai had stopped a car with two suspect devices inside and required the support of the army's Emergency Ordnance Disposal unit.

Mr Morrow said that he looked at the two devices. He said they were "very well-made" IEDs.

Detective Garda Brian Barry, of the ballistics section, also gave evidence. He told the court that he examined both devices.

The court heard that they were of similar construction, consisting of cylindrical plastic containers and powered by nine-volt batteries. There was a time and power unit inside each container, programmed for an approximately eight-hour run-down time.

Inside each container, the detective said, there was pyrotechnic material, normally used in fireworks.

His conclusion was that they were two "completed and viable" IEDs.

The trial resumes on Monday in front of Mr Justice Tony Hunt, presiding, sitting with Judge John O'Hagan and Judge Flann Brennan.
A UCC student has secured a temporary High Court order freezing the monies of his assailant awarded in another court case.

The order was secured by William Thompson against Kevin Buckley, who it is believed was awarded 30,000 in a court case while still under eighteen years of age.

Mr Thompson of Ashford Court, Grange, Douglas, Cork was assaulted by Buckley and three other people in Cork city centre on the evening of August 24, 2016.

Last February Buckley pleaded guilty at Cork Circuit Criminal Court to assaulting Mr Thompson.

In a separate case, also heard in February, Buckley was sentenced to four years detention by a judge at Cork Circuit Criminal Court after he pleaded guilty to the false imprisonment of a woman. Buckley is currrently serving that sentence.

Today the High Court heard in the assault Mr Thompson was knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked in the head, suffering injuries including a fractured eye socket.

Gerard Nicholas Murphy Bl for Mr Thompson said his client's solicitors had become aware Buckley had previously been awarded 30,000 following what is believed to have been a personal injuries claim.

The money was lodged in court for Buckley's benefit and was to be kept there until he turned 18 years of age.

Counsel said, Buckley's 18th birthday was last month and the teen may seek to have the award paid out to him.

Counsel said Mr Thompson was in the process of making an application to the Personal Injuries Assessment Board in relation to the injuries he received in the assault.

The only way Mr Thompson could enforce any damages award in his favour is to have the monies lodged in court frozen until such a time the personal injuries claim against Buckley has been determined, Counsel added.

Buckley, Counsel said has no other assets.

Counsel said Mr Thompson, who is a student at UCC, has been informed that he will require treatment on his eye socket.

The injunction, restraining Buckley from drawing down any monies lodged in court to his credit until Mr Thompson's action for personal injuries action has been heard, was granted, on an ex parte basis, by Mr Justice Paul Gilligan.

Permission was also granted by the court allowing Mr Thompson's lawyers to serve notice of the proceedings on interested parties including the chief executive of the Courts Service.

The Judge adjourned the matter to a date in early June.
The brother of Dara Quigley this evening joined a vigil outside Leinster House to remember a woman who "wanted to make a change".

Activist Dara, from Coolock in Dublin, took her own life days after a Garda allegedly recorded CCTV footage of her arrest in Dublin. It was subsequently leaked online.

Sean appealed to the crowd to remember his sister for her work as an activist.

"She led by example in a lot of ways. She wasn't afraid, and she wasn't a victim," he said.

"In January 2015, Dara decided she wanted to make a change in society. She wasn't happy with a lot of the things that she saw and the way people were being treated."

"She said as a new year's resolution, 'I'm going to be a writer and I'm going to make a change'. In January 2016 she was writing for the Dublin Inquirer.

"That's the kind of Dara that I want to remember and I think that's the kind of Dara that should be remembered."

He also called on the Government to improve treatment facilities for addicts, and follow the examples of other countries such as Russia and Portugal.

"It's crazy to expect a person to treat themselves before they'll be treated. If somebody's addicted, they have to get clean themselves and it's not like that in every country."

Sean hopes Dara's death can affect change in Irish society.

"I want Dara to be remembered for the positive things, and I want us to try to use this, the outrage and the anger and pain that everybody feels, for some kind of positive change, because it is possible."
The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner that crashed into a reef in 2012, killing 32 people, is set for prison after losing his final appeals bid.

The Court of Cassation, Italy's highest criminal tribunal, in a ruling on Friday evening upheld Francesco Schettino's lower court convictions and his 16-year prison sentence.
The following editorial appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune on Monday, May 8:

The Trump administrations decision to relax some of the school lunch rules involving sodium intake, whole grain content and milk approved in 2012, following the provisions of a 2010 law adopted at the behest of then-first lady Michelle Obama, drew fire from some health experts. An American Heart Association official warned that there could be serious health consequences for students.

But in explaining the decision to give school districts the option to not meet strict standards, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue made a crucial point: If kids arent eating the food, and its ending up in the trash, they arent getting any nutrition  thus undermining the intent of the program. Patricia Montague, CEO of the School Nutrition Association, agreed with the decision: We have been wanting flexibility so that schools can serve meals that are both nutritious and palatable. We dont want kids wasting their meals by throwing them away.

The evidence that the lunch rules backfired is considerable. A 2013 study estimated that 1.1 million students had stopped buying school lunches in the 2012-13 school year, the first year-to-year decline after nearly a decade of steady increases. Another 2013 study pegged the annual cost of wasted food at school cafeterias at $1.24 billion. Anyone who doubts student antipathy to school food should search #ThanksMichelleObama on Twitter for a look at photos of lunches that left kids fed up instead of fed.

Good intentions dont always pay off with good results. Having a healthy school lunch menu achieves nothing if the lunch goes uneaten.


A review of Donald Trump's last 10 years of tax returns has found they do not reflect "any income of any type from Russian sources", with some exceptions, his lawyers said.

It is the latest attempt by the US president to tamp down concerns about any Russian ties amid an ongoing investigation of his campaign's associates.

The lawyers did not release copies of Mr Trump's tax returns, so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions.

Their review also notably takes into account only Mr Trump's returns from the past 10 years, leaving open questions about whether there were financial dealings with Russia in earlier years.

In a letter released to the AP, the lawyers said there is no equity investment by Russians in entities controlled by Mr Trump or debt owed by him to Russian lenders.

However, it did reflect some exceptions, including income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for 95 million US dollars.

The White House said Mr Trump asked his lawyers for the letter following a request from Senator Lindsey Graham for information on any ties Mr Trump might have to Russia.

Mr Graham leads one of the congressional committees investigating Russia's interference in last year's election.

The letter came amid an active FBI probe into the Trump 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia's election meddling and days after Mr Trump's stunning firing of FBI director James Comey.

"I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever," Mr Trump said in an interview with NBC News on Thursday.

"I don't have property in Russia. A lot of people thought I owned office buildings in Moscow. I don't have property in Russia."

The president said he "had dealings over the years", including the Miss Universe pageant and the sale of a home to "a very wealthy Russian".

''I had it in Moscow long time ago, but other than that I have nothing to do with Russia," he said, referring to the pageant.

The unnamed Russian billionaire cited by the Trump company's lawyers is Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose financial empire springs from his companies' production of potash, often used for fertiliser.

Trump had purchased the 62,000 square-foot estate for 41.35 million dollars in 2004, and he sold the mansion to Mr Rybolovlev in July 2008 for 95 million dollars.

The deal was widely reported at the time, including by The Associated Press.

When Mr Trump was pressed during a campaign conference last year about his ties to Russia, he said: "You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach," adding that "I sold it to a Russian for 100 million dollars".

The letter, written by lawyers Sheri Dillon and William Nelson from the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, simultaneously leaves open the possibility of other Russian ties while attempting to dismiss them.

The letter does not vouch for any of Mr Trump's personal federal tax returns that predate the past decade.

The lawyers also write that over the last 10 years, it is likely that the Trump Organisation sold or rented condos, or other products, that "could have produced income attributable to Russian sources".

"With respect to this last exception, the amounts are immaterial," they wrote.

AP
US President Donald Trump has tweeted that former FBI director James Comey "better hope" that there are no "tapes" of their talks.

He wrote early on Friday: "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Mr Trump fired Mr Comey on Tuesday, later saying that "he wasn't doing a good job".

In the termination letter to Mr Comey, Mr Trump thanked him for telling him "three times" that he personally is not under investigation for collusion with Russia during his 2016 campaign.

He said in an NBC News interview on Thursday that Mr Comey told him once over dinner and twice by telephone that he is not under investigation.

Mr Trump showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in an active FBI probe.

Mr Comey has not commented since he was fired.

Mr Trump also reiterated his view that reports about collusion with the Russian government are "fabricated".

The president tweeted: "Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election."

He added: "The Fake Media is working overtime today!"

AP
A gunman has fatally shot the police chief of an Ohio village and two nursing home employees, authorities said.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said the suspected gunman was also found dead on Friday.
UPDATE 12.30: Pakistani police have raised the death toll from a huge bombing in the country's south-western Baluchistan province to 25.

A powerful bomb struck in the town of Mastung on Friday, targeting the convoy of the deputy leader of the senate, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, who was lightly wounded in the attack.

Local government official Munir Raisani said that along with the 25 killed, more than 30 people, including some policemen, were wounded in the attack.

He said Mr Haideri is in a stable condition at a hospital in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Local TV stations broadcast footage showing Mr Haideri's badly damaged car.

From the hospital, the lawmaker told Pakistani Dunya news channel that he saw several bodies at the scene of the blast.

Mr Haider's extremist and pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party is headed by Fazlur Rehman, who is known for his anti-US stance.

Earlier: A bomb attack in south-western Pakistan has killed 15 people and wounded up to 35 others, including the deputy leader of the country's senate, police said.

Earlier, officials reported that Abdul Ghafoor Haideri was lightly wounded along with several others when a powerful roadside bomb struck his convoy in the town of Mastung, in Baluchistan province, on Friday.

Later, senior police officer Abdul Razzaq Cheema said 15 people were killed in the attack and another 35 were wounded.

He said at least one police officer was among those killed in the bombing.

The victims have been taken to hospital. Several were reported to be in critical condition.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

AP
Plans to legalise cannabis so it can be taxed and sold on the high street will be brought forward if the Liberal Democrats gain power.

The party will commit to creating a legal market for the production and sale of the substance in its manifesto, it confirmed, making it one of the first political parties to fight an election on a ticket of relaxing drug laws.
A US-backed Syrian Kurdish force expects to push on and capture Islamic State's de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria this summer, a commander said.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have been buoyed by this week's capture of the key town of Tabqa and its nearby dam.

The advance left no significant IS-held urban settlements between SDF lines and Raqqa, about 25 miles (40 kilometres) to the east.

An SDF commander, identified only as Abdelqader, declined to specify dates at a news conference, citing tactical reasons.

He said the battle for Raqqa would begin once the group receives heavy weapons from the US military.

The announcement was a snub to Turkey, which does not want the Syrian Kurdish-led force to take Raqqa and has offered its own troops instead.

Ankara is also enraged by US plans to arm the Syrian Kurds, who they consider terrorists.

However, the SDF made clear it is capable enough with the forces and support it already has.

"We do not want any other forces to participate with us. They can solve their problems in their country," Abdelqader said, in reference to Turkey.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration announced it would arm the Kurdish elements of the SDF.

Ankara said the plan was "unacceptable" and a threat to its national security.

Turkey says the fighters are an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to convince Mr Trump to reverse his administration's decision in a meeting between the two leaders at the White House next week.

Also at the news conference inside Tabqa on Friday, the SDF announced it would hand over the administration of the town to civilian administrators.

Meanwhile, more than 1,200 residents and opposition fighters trapped in the Syrian capital Damascus left their neighbourhoods for rebel-held Idlib province on Friday as part of a deal to return the last neighbourhoods of the capital to government control.

Syrian state media said 718 fighters and 528 others were bussed out of the Barzeh and Tishreen neighbourhoods in the second round of departures from the area since it came under government siege last month.

Tens of thousands of people living in besieged areas around Damascus, Homs and Aleppo - Syria's largest city - have surrendered under similar agreements in recent months, agreeing to relocate in what critics have said amounts to forced displacement.

The evacuations are taking place at the same time as United Nations-mediated talks between the government and the opposition, though the UN does not endorse the rearrangement.

Delegates are set to meet again in Geneva next week.

President Bashar Assad indicated in an interview on Belarus ONT television aired on Thursday that the government would not take the summit seriously.

He said the talks are "merely a meeting for the media" and "there is nothing substantial in all the Geneva meetings. Not even one per million. It is null."

AP
In 2009, I interviewed Mark Weber and Bradley Smith, two amateur historians notorious for being among the leading Holocaust revisionists. Smith is an old-school denier, dubious about the existence of gas chambers, while Weber merely believes that Jews exaggerate history to help consolidate Zionist power.

I interviewed Weber in his offices outside Los Angeles, and Smith at a coffee shop close to the border of Mexico, where he lived. In each case I went alone. Although I wasnt afraid  neither had a history of physical violence  meeting with two men whod spent their professional lives spinning theories about the perfidy of my people was, at the least, a bit creepy. Lets put it this way: I hugged my wife extra tight before leaving home.

Lately, Ive been reminiscing about my time with Smith and Weber, and not just because white nationalists now have a president who they feel is sympathetic to their cause. Rather, the triggering event, if you will, is the national debate about how to confront speech we find odious.

On college campuses across the country, students have reacted with fear and anger to the possibility that far-right (or even slightly right) thinkers might speak some words somewhere in their vicinity. At Middlebury College, students violently protested a talk featuring Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a 1994 book that many call racist. At Claremont McKenna College, protesters shut down a speech by Heather Mac Donald, whose recent book defends police officers. Ann Coulter had to cancel a speech at UC Berkeley.

Protesters have not argued these speakers pose an immediate physical threat to students of color, or women, or anybody. Instead, they posit that its wrong or somehow psychically damaging to allow certain views a platform.

At Wellesley College, for example, a student editorial in March insinuated that Laura Kipnis new book, which questions how Title IX is applied to sexual life on campuses, undermines the existence and rights of others. Students at Claremont McKenna, and the other four colleges in Pomona, wrote a letter stating that merely engaging with Mac Donald is a form of violence.

The same logic undergirds the vicious campaign against philosopher Rebecca Tuvel, who recently published an article using the analogy of trans people to interrogate the transracialism of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who famously passed as black. In a letter to Hypatia, the feminist journal that published Tuvels article, hundreds of signatories argued that the articles failures of scholarship do harm to the communities who might expect better from Hypatia. The articles continued availability, they claimed, causes further harm.

Unquestionably, words can, and do, cause harm. Im not interested in lending support to policies that I despise. But free speech is an important value, one that protects everyone with unpopular views: critics of Israel, defenders of revolutionary movements, anti-vaccine activists. Those who run from unpopular views, moreover, may ultimately harm themselves.

Let me return to the question everyone asked me in 2009: What was it like to meet with Holocaust revisionists? And then spend many more hours on the telephone, listening to their cracked, sinister theories about me, my relatives, my dead co-religionists?

Truth be told, it was invigorating. They were so deluded, so sad, and so alone in the world. Their lives were tangled webs of failed ambitions, failed ideas, even failed marriages. They werent well. I was. It was heartening to listen to my enemies respectfully, and conclude that in a country that permits free inquiry, they would never win.

Interviewing Smith and Weber  two men who downplay the literal genocide of my people; who dehumanize me more profoundly than even Murrays critics believe that he dehumanizes others  actually empowered me as a thinker, as a progressive, and as a Jew. Having looked at evil, I found it puny. We can beat this, I found myself thinking.

I dont think that can be everyones response to every speaker. There are good reasons that a victim of sexual violence might avoid speeches that could trigger memories of the assault. Victims of police violence might carefully consider how theyd feel listening to a speaker who plays down their experience. A concentration-camp survivor might not, to put it mildly, be the right person to interview Smith and Weber.

Each person has to be her own best judge of what experiences will be valuable, detrimental, painful or simply a waste of time. Id skip Coulter because I know what I think of her views. Id rather read a novel or scramble some eggs.

But imagine if, instead of protesting Mac Donalds speech at Claremont, students had waited until she finished, taken the microphone, and then described the abuses theyd experienced at the hands of police officers?

They might have changed her mind, if only a little. But even if they hadnt, theyd have used their experience to shrink hers. Theyd have said, You dont scare us. Theyd have enlarged the scope of their world, and theyd have done so as allies of free speech. And I suspect that theyd have left the room emboldened, ready for the next time.
A tradesman has been hospitalised after part of a 500-kilogram panel fell onto him at a Griffith worksite on Friday afternoon, Worksafe ACT confirmed.

ACT Work Safety commissioner Greg Jones said the man, aged in his 30s, was being treated at hospital, but he was incredibly lucky to have escaped with what appeared to be only minor injuries.

A worker was injured at a Milin Construction site on Canberra Avenue on Friday afternoon. Pictured is believed to be the crane carrying the screen that partially fell onto the man. Credit:Clare Sibthorpe

"We understand that the load the small mobile crane was carrying which was a screen weighing half a tonne, and that it slipped and became partially disconnected, injuring the worker," Mr Jones said.

"It appears the load was still partially supported by the crane so he didn't have the full weight of the load on him, which is very fortunate."
The Australian government is "open" to a NATO request for more troops to be sent to war-torn Afghanistan, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed.

The request followed Mr Turnbull's recent trip to the region, where he met with US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and General John Nicholson, the commander of allied forces in Afghanistan.

"We have been asked to consider additional resources, and we are actively considering that. We're open to that," Mr Turnbull said on Friday.

Some 270 Australian personnel are stationed in the country, mostly in the capital Kabul in support, security and training roles. Forty two Australian troops have died in the country since the war started in 2001.
Emma Foster receiving her confirmation certificate from then Bishop George Pell at Sacred Heart Church in Oakleigh, Melbourne, in 1993. Emma died from a drug overdose in 2008. In 1994, two years after his appointment, a parishioner made a complaint to head office about Brady for, the parishioner said, the heretic charge of questioning the virginity of Mary. "I got a phone call from George," Brady remembers. It was a Friday and Brady says he had a lunch and a dental appointment that day, so he made time to call Pell back later on the Friday. The parishioner's complaint turned out to be false, and Pell, Brady says, soon discovered that. "After he conducted his heresy trial," Brady says Pell made a startling comment. "He said to me, 'You've been speaking out about sexual abuse at Dandenong and you should not be doing that.' He then said either, 'You are too close to the scene' or 'You might be too close to the scene.' " Brady can't remember which of the two versions it was, but he believes that is immaterial. "I said, 'George, you cannot be more wrong, more so in Dandenong than anywhere'." Brady meant Pell could not be more wrong in his assessment that he, Brady, should not be speaking about this scourge and it was particularly vital to speak out about it in Dandenong. Brady wanted his parishioners to know they were believed and that if they had a complaint he could be trusted to help them manage it. Brady believes Pell's warning connoted first that Pell was trying to shut down discussion by him of child sexual abuse, and second that he knew there were issues with O'Donnell, who was on the "scene" in Dandenong. He can pinpoint the date exactly. "I can pinpoint it exactly because I said in relation to the heresy allegations, 'I have been at Dandenong two years to the day and you hardly knew I existed, and then one complaint and I am summoned on the same day.' "

[In 1994, Pell] said to me, 'You've been speaking out about sexual abuse at Dandenong and you should not be doing that.' Father Noel Brady, former assistant priest at St Mary's Dandenong So, in 2015, when Brady realised this information about Pell was significant, he went back to his dentist  one of the appointments he had had that required him to delay returning Pell's call  and asked if there was any way of checking his records for July 8, 1994. There was. "They said, 'You had two procedures done and you paid the bill in cash,' " Brady says. Back in 1994, Brady ignored Pell's warning not to speak out at Dandenong about sexual abuse. He thought it crucially important that he did. And as it happens, two months after the conversation he recounts with Pell, on September 7, 1994, Victoria Police charged O'Donnell with 32 incidents of indecent assault at four parishes. Brady had always shaken his head at the way that Pell had spoken to him back in July 1994, but it wasn't until June 2015 that he felt compelled to do something about it. Jesuit priest and social commentator Father Frank Brennan had written a piece for the Australian Jesuits' magazine Eureka Street that was republished in The Australian. It was headlined "Call Off the Cardinal Pell Witch-Hunt". Brennan is no great fan of Pell's, but he has frequently written of his dismay at the way he has been treated by some commentators. "Many Australians are baying for Pell's blood," Brennan wrote. "It's time for a dispassionate consideration of the facts." As part of that dispassionate consideration of the "facts", Brennan said this: "Between 1987 and 1996, Pell was an auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Frank Little in Melbourne. Pell has constantly claimed he knew nothing of abuse in those days and was therefore in no position to do anything about it. No evidence has been produced proving that Pell knew anything at that time."

Reading this made Brady sit upright. He searched his conscience and decided it was best he put his knowledge on the record. So, Brady wrote to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I have that letter, and the replies to Brady from Darren Latimore, the Australian Federal Police officer who is seconded to the commission to work with victims and also other witnesses. "[Brennan's] article contained an assertion that George Pell did not know anything about clergy sexual abuse in Melbourne until he became Archbishop in 1996 [July]," Brady writes. "I know that not to be true  My only motive is the truth be known and the chips then can fall where they may." Brady was never called to give evidence. He was verbally told that the commission was very busy, had an awful lot of potential witnesses, and had to make a judgment call on who to fit in or leave out. Another royal commission source suggested it could have been an oversight by the legal team and there were "any combination of reasons, not always good ones, why some things have been overlooked because they deal with a vast amount of information from many, many sources". Brady's ears pricked up again when he watched Pell give evidence to the royal commission from Rome in February 2016. He wrote to Latimore again: "Having listened to the evidence given by George Pell to the royal commission, I think the point raised in my email still has some relevance." Again, the commission did not call him as a witness. Father Noel Brady did not approach me; I found him. He thought very carefully about contributing his conversation with Pell to my book about Pell. But he says he is committed to the truth. "People can handle the truth," Brady says. "It's the cover-ups that really hurt." Father Noel Brady, who says he was warned by George Pell not to speak out about child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. Credit:Darrian Traynor

There are other evidentiary alarm bells that suggest Pell knew about O'Donnell long before Pell became archbishop in 1996. These lie first in the minutes of the Melbourne Curia  the diocesan governing body  from the early 1990s. In among the discussions about whether kissing the crucifix during what's known as the Veneration of the Cross could spread HIV, and talks about a PR strategy for "special issues" (that's the euphemism they used for sexual abuse of kids) and undertakings to keep written discussions of special issues to a minimum (lest they be discovered in legal proceedings), are a number of references to Pell's work. They show Auxiliary Bishop Pell was a committed and detail-focused local bishop who was regularly involved in priest and parish matters in his region. In the minutes from April 1991, there are two relatively oblique references to O'Donnell. The first is headed "Oakleigh Parish": "Bishop Pell said that Father Kevin O'Donnell is happy to stay alone in the parish, provided adequate supplies can be arranged." During the next April meeting, that sentence is amended. "[The reference] should read: 'Bishop Pell said that Father Kevin O'Donnell is prepared to stay alone in the parish, provided adequate supplies can be arranged'." So, what was that all about? Well, two documents give a clue. And they suggest Pell was a kind of fixer in the whole O'Donnell saga. The first is a meeting many years later between Pell's later lawyer, Richard Leder, and a Father John Salvano. Salvano was assistant priest to O'Donnell. Salvano couldn't bear O'Donnell. It says in the typed notes of this conversation that Salvano had four or five meetings with Pell's colleague, the Archdiocesan Vicar-General Hilton Deakin, as Leder wrote, "re unhappiness". Salvano was unhappy with the "way [O'Donnell] treated children, women", said O'Donnell was "an abusive personality" and "I found his behaviour around children quite inappropriate". He said while he never saw anything happen, O'Donnell would "focus on a couple of kids at a time", brought one boy on a holiday to Queensland, gave kids money and Salvano "had a gut feeling all was not right". While initially nothing happened after Salvano's discussions with Deakin, he notes that eventually "something did". "Because they sent Pell to see Kevin [O'Donnell] and confront him. Then [O'Donnell] retired. My understanding is that it was a forced retirement. "I know he was not happy about retiring."

According to Salvano's account to Pell's lawyer, Pell was part of the reason O'Donnell was no longer at Sacred Heart Oakleigh and in fact was at a house in Brady's parish in Dandenong. In 1999, Salvano gave more detail of what he had told the hierarchy about O'Donnell in a statement to a solicitor representing Chrissie and Anthony Foster, parents of Emma and Katie. Salvano, who is now Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, looked over the statement for Chrissie Foster some years later and agreed to her making it public. Salvano had an awful time working with O'Donnell. In his approaches to Deakin about O'Donnell, he cites cases of serious violence  O'Donnell punching Salvano and having him in a headlock  guns and ammunition being kept all over the presbytery, large amounts of parish money being given to boys, boys constantly being present  day and night  and O'Donnell "mauling" boys in his presence: "Physical contact with the boys in an inappropriate way by hugging them, holding them around the shoulders or waist." Salvano thought it "incongruous for a man [O'Donnell] who was otherwise so cold and aggressive and not demonstrative." He described the behaviour to Deakin as "highly abnormal" and believed boys had keys to the presbytery and let themselves in at all hours. Deakin informed Archbishop Frank Little. Salvano also told Deakin he believed O'Donnell was "emotionally dependent" on the boys. Chrissie Foster's solicitor notes at the end of the record of interview that Salvano became quite tearful having relived the O'Donnell years. The Salvano statement also says that, despite the eventual decision to retire O'Donnell, the first response of the hierarchy via Deakin was to offer to find alternative accommodation for Salvano. Salvano refused  primarily because he was concerned about the situation between the children and O'Donnell. Katie Foster was abused during the seven-month period between when Salvano first began to raise the alarm and when Pell came and got O'Donnell out. Chrissie Foster believes Little, Deakin and Pell were "responsible for the abuse which took place in those seven months by Father Kevin O'Donnell, who had an insatiable sexual appetite for primary school-aged children which spanned the 50 years of his priesthood". And after they participated in the process of getting O'Donnell out? There is no evidence to suggest that any of them ever went to Victoria Police about O'Donnell.

Pell has never admitted any personal liability in this, nor any other child abuse cover-up. In some cases, he has alleged a conspiracy of others. Deakin, who is not a friend of Pell's and disagrees with many of Pell's positions, has been more forthcoming. In late 2015, he agreed that as a member of the Curia of the Melbourne Archdiocese, he belonged to a culture "motivated by a desire to protect the Church's reputation", that "collectively forgot about the primary need to protect children". He admitted the archbishop had "secret files" and said he was instructed to only tell Little verbally, when they were alone, about these cases. But he also said they had "covered up especially the evil deeds of certain men against children  There were meetings, for instance, where everybody voted on things; like, for instance when a priest was moved or retired, it was because of ill health or something, when in fact it was because of child abuse." There is another person who says she and her family bore the brunt of Pell's efforts to sweep the abuse problem under the carpet during his reign as auxiliary bishop and, again, lecturing a priest about not getting involved. Her story has also never been told. Her name is Eileen Piper. Her history is strange and tragic. When I first meet her in 2016, Eileen Piper is 91  a sprightly woman who seems about 10 years younger. She has dancing eyes, claps her hands in exclamation, calls you "darling" and insists on feeding you tea cake she's baked that morning. Eileen has been holding on to her story about Pell for more than 20 years and has faced the sort of tragedy that would make many others collapse into bitterness. She and her husband struggled to have children and eventually adopted two. One was her daughter, Stephanie. Eileen and her husband were committed Catholics; Eileen was the proud sister of a monsignor, Kevin Toomey. Stephanie, too, was very active in the life of the parish of St Christopher's, Syndal, in Melbourne's eastern suburbs. "She had very strict morals and she wasn't a worldly type of girl," Eileen remembers.

But when Stephanie was a teenager in the 1970s, she came into the orbit of one Gerard Mulvale. Mulvale was a Pallottine brother who became a priest. He was based at the Syndal parish and would run the youth groups. While Eileen had had some concerns about Mulvale at the time, it wasn't until 1993, when Stephanie was 32, that Eileen says she realised that the concerns were well founded. Stephanie attempted to take her own life. And when she did so, she told her mother what she had been hiding for many years: that she had been a repeated victim of Mulvale  culminating in a final incident in which Stephanie said she had been locked in the boot of his car and later savagely raped. "It was torture, what he put Stephanie through. And the fear, the fear  he strangled her with fear," Eileen says, looking off to the side sadly, "and she didn't want to tell us what was happening." Mulvale eventually pleaded guilty to the abuse of one boy in Stephanie's youth group and was convicted of abusing another. A fourth complainant  a girl in the youth group  pulled out of the police prosecution. Stephanie also made complaints to both the police and the Catholic Church's Special Issues Committee about Mulvale, but her mother says she was belittled and not believed by the man who took her statement for the Church, the now-deceased Vicar-General of the Melbourne Archdiocese, Gerry Cudmore. After leaving the interview with Cudmore in 1993, Stephanie broke down crying and said, "What's the use? Nobody will believe me." In August 1993, the committee found Stephanie's allegations could not be substantiated. In November of that year, Stephanie made a complaint to the Victoria Police Rape Squad. Mulvale has always strenuously denied the rape, and even made complaints, from prison, to the Victorian Ombudsman when Eileen later went to the media. When Stephanie went to police, Mulvale was charged with rape and he was later charged with offences against the others. One of the other boys, Neil Bourke, who was dying of AIDS during the trial, made a statement saying Stephanie had made the whole thing up and, while he was a victim of Mulvale, she was not. Bourke retracted the statement during his court case, saying a Pallottine priest at Syndal instructed him to sign a statement for the Church: "The object of this letter was to make Stephanie the villain," Bourke told the court.

In 1993, the court heard, Bourke received a letter from Cudmore, thanking him for signing the statement. In January 1994, before the case even got to trial and she could give evidence, Stephanie took her own life. "She gassed herself at two o'clock in the morning," Eileen sighs. "She was a terrible mess, poor darling. She never really had any chance of living a normal life." Bourke was devastated. "I felt that [my Church] statement drove Stephanie to suicide," he later told the court, admitting that the guilt of this had driven him, too, to attempt suicide soon after. With Stephanie's death, the rape case against Mulvale collapsed. Eileen Piper with a picture of her daughter, Stephanie, who committed suicide after being sexually abused. Credit:Michael Clayton Jones Eileen's husband was also sick at the time and he died that year, too. After their deaths, but before Mulvale was brought to court, Eileen went to look after her brother, Monsignor Kevin Toomey, who was in poor health. She was at Toomey's house in Mount Eliza in outer Melbourne one day when, she says, the telephone rang. Eileen says on the other end was Pell. "Kev said that 'the big boy' was coming down," Eileen remembers. At that time, Pell was based in Mentone, about half an hour from her brother's home, but she says he seemed to arrive very quickly at Toomey's door. "And I saw George Pell beckon with his hand, to tell me to go out, to get out of the room." Eileen did what she was told. "I sort of skittled into the bathroom, which was the adjoining room." She was shocked by what happened next. "I heard George Pell say to my brother, 'Don't you dare have anything to do with your sister's case, now that's an order.' "

Pell left. "I came out of the bathroom crying, breaking my heart. Because I thought he was threatening Kev not to do anything about Stephanie, I was getting no help." But fortunately for Eileen, she says her brother chose to ignore the orders of his regional bishop and to stand by his sister. "Kevin was beautiful, and he told me not to be upset, he would support me in any and every way I needed him and he would be there  we appeared in the court, we went together." Eileen today is furious that Pell tried to bully Toomey over his niece's case. "The Church let Kevin down," Eileen says of her brother, whom she now regrets gave his life to the institution. "He worked so hard for the Church and to be told to do that, to save them, at my expense, it makes me feel that the Catholic Church," she shrugs darkly, "has got a lot to answer for. "It destroys your faith in the Catholic Church. They're there as a beacon of right from wrong, but to me, it's manufactured. There's nothing really deeply genuine about it at all. It's just surface. It's all on the surface." Later, Mulvale wrote a letter to Pell while he was Archbishop of Melbourne. It was sent from Ararat prison. Curiously for the time, hen archbishops were typically referred to as "Your Grace" or "Archbishop" in correspondence  particularly from a more junior priest and convicted criminal  Mulvale was more familiar. He began his letter "Dear George".

Eileen had been in the media talking about Stephanie's case and Mulvale was most upset about it, saying she "appears to be taking her place in the line-up for a compensation payout". There is zero remorse in the letter for any crime he committed  two of which he had been found guilty of  but he is full of righteous anger at the grieving mother of a young woman who had killed herself after alleging that he raped her. One might think an archbishop who was doing his job as a Christian and an effective leader might have reminded Mulvale, a convicted sex offender, to come off his high horse and get his priorities right. Eileen obtained a copy of Mulvale's letter, but she has no idea whether "George" ever replied. Eileen has never forgotten Pell's conversation with her brother that day, but fearing it might hamper her attempts to get justice for Stephanie, she has never spoken out about it before now. It is contained in a statement she has written which has been used in correspondence with the Catholic Church as she fights for an apology for Stephanie. "He has hurt me. It's a wound that won't heal, until I can get justice for Stephanie," Eileen says as the dark cloud lifts from her face and she breaks into an almost beatific smile. "I hope I can live long enough to do that." Eileen, seeking justice for her daughter, went through Melbourne Response, an internal church redress scheme for child victims of sexual abuse, but Pell's special commissioner, Peter O'Callaghan, QC, found an "inherent improbability of a brutal rape as alleged". As of early 2017, the Melbourne Archdiocese stood by that position, despite the Pallottine order paying Eileen $20,000 in an ex gratia compensation payment in 2002. Earlier this year, at the royal commission, Archbishop Denis Hart said he would "pray" for Eileen, but would not overturn the ruling. Author's note: Cardinal Pell did not respond to questions about Noel Brady, Eileen Piper or any other allegations outlined in this article. Edited extract from Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell, by Louise Milligan (MUP, $34.99, Ebook $16.99).
"You called our name ... and we came," Middleton wrote in her Instagram post celebrating her new home. The designer relocated to France with Plowman and their two young daughters, Elka and India, in 2015. The family's new home has absorbed many of the millions Middleton made from the sale of her fashion label, which at its peak generated $50million in sales globally, to Myer. Sarah Jane Clarke and Heidi Middleton. Credit:Mark Nolan The retailer bought a 65 per cent stake in the business in 2011 for $42.5 million before snapping up the remaining 35 per cent in October 2013. At the time, Clarke and Middleton maintained their executive roles and chairs on an advisory board for the brand. But by 2014 both Clarke and Middleton had departed from the business they founded as a couple of teenagers.

Cupid's arrow strikes true for millionaire yachtie Neville Crichton Cupid must have used his diamond-tipped arrows when it came to finding love for three of Sydney's wealthiest chaps of a, ahem, certain vintage. Amber Symond, Nadi Hasandedic and Marly Boyd. Credit:Belinda Rolland On Saturday, millionaire car importer and yachtie Neville "Croaky" Crichton, 74, will tie the knot with his glamorous and much younger fiancee Nadi Hasandedic, formerly the "boutique directeur" at Christian Dior. It will be a lavish affair, kicking off at Sydney University's Quadrangle in the afternoon before moving into the Great Hall for a no-expense spared reception, for which the groom has dropped $20,000 to spruce up the toilets, on top of another couple of hundred thousand dollars on the wedding itself, which could top $1 million.

But he can certainly afford it; Crichton's fortune is estimated to be topping $400 million. He recently downsized from his harbour-front mansion in Point Piper, selling his digs for $60 million and moving to a smaller new pad just along the shoreline. Amber and John Symond. Their new superyacht is soon to be unveiled in Monte Carlo. Credit:Belinda Rolland Photography On the eve of her big day Hasandedic told PS she hoped it would be a "wonderful day shared with our friends and family" and revealed she had found her wedding gown on a trip to New York last year. "It was the first dress I saw and fell in love with it," she said of the custom-made gown by Ersa Atelier. Neville Crichton and his fiance Nadi Hasandedic will get married this weekend. Credit:Belinda Rolland

Croaky's best man, millionaire property developer John Boyd, married his own young bride a few years back. Marly, the mother of his youngest son, is also an old girlfriend of Hasandedic, and the couples often "double date". It was Marly who threw a lavish bridal shower for Nadi in the expansive penthouse Boyd built atop the ANZ tower, affording one of the most dramatic views in the city. Also on the guest list for Saturday is John "Aussie" Symond, who will be there with his wife, Amber, who was previously married to Patrick Keating, the son of former prime minister Paul Keating. Amber has been busy helping John plan his upcoming 70th birthday in Monte Carlo, where PS hears his huge new superyacht will finally be unveiled. The $75 million vessel has been under construction at the Dutch shipyard Feadship, and reportedly includes such essentials as heated floors, a gymnasium with steam shower and a temperature-controlled wine cellar. And while a few tongues have been wagging about what could seem three unlikely pairings, PS can confirm that all three brides are completely smitten with their men. Ain't love grand? Murdoch's teen daughters show keen sense of style at Met Gala Ball

They are set to inherit a share of one of the greatest fortunes ever amassed in the world, let alone Australia, and it looks as though Rupert Murdoch's two youngest daughters with his third ex-wife Wendi Deng, Grace, 15, and Chloe,13, are ready to take their place on the public stage. Fluent in Mandarin, the bilingual teenagers flanked their Chinese-born mother Wendi at the recent Met Gala Ball in New York, giving the world a glimpse of how they are growing into young women: a couple of teenagers with a keen sense of style and immediate entree into a life of privilege. In a video posted on social media the trio are seen cavorting about before the ball on the terrace of their magnificent Fifth Avenue triplex which Wendi received in the divorce settlement. The former couple paid $US44million in 2005 for the penthouse which once belonged to Laurance Rockefeller. Chloe Murdoch, left, Wendi Deng, and Grace Helen Murdoch at The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Gala Ball. Credit:AP And while the girls may have little connection with their father's homeland, their roots run deep from Manhattan to Beijing. Up until last year President Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka helped oversee a trust fund worth nearly $US300 million ($406.6 million) on behalf of the sisters.

In February The Financial Times quoted a Trump spokesman saying that she had stepped down from a five-person trustee board at the end of December, pre-empting any suggestions of improper association with one of America's most powerful media moguls. But when it comes to everyday life the sisters appear to do all the things regular teenagers do, from dabbling in fashion to posing in cheeky selfies, including one on Grace's Instagram feed showing her embracing her kid-sister in front of a sign saying "Hug A Hoe", with a $10,000 Hermes Kelly bag hanging off her wrist. It's not clear what their 86-year-old father, who has remarried to former supermodel Jerry Hall, would make of it all. The eternal optimists party on Last year Rodney Adler told The Australian that when people stop and stare at him in public, his reaction is to: "Try to pretend they are thinking nice thoughts about me ... I'm an optimist!"

Well, his positive thinking must be working because in recent weeks PS has witnessed a virtual resurrection of the one-time jail bird and former corporate high flyer on Sydney's red carpets, and he has been all smiles. From sashaying down the red carpet at the premiere of Kinky Boots with his theatre producing wife Lyndi, to holding court last month at The Sydney Institute Dinner just before Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull rose to speak, Adler is very much back on the scene. Rodney and Lyndi Adler at the Gold Dinner in Sydney. Then, as PS navigated the cashed-up tables in the epicentre of last week's Gold Dinner, there was Adler again, though this time playing second fiddle to Lyndi, who was one of the charity dinner's pioneers. Adler was sitting with former power broker Graham Richardson, who managed to put in a valiant effort on the night after looking a little weary from his recent health battles. Richo managed to make his way into the party with the aid of his collapsible walker. Also on the table was freshly minted software billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, who no doubt would have enjoyed hearing a few tales of yore from Richo and Adler.

It was all for a good cause though, with the Gold Dinner raking in more than $2 million for the Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick. Flannery charged Quentin Flannery, heir to an $800 million-plus coal fortune, has seen better times in recent months, from marrying his new wife Kim, soaking up the delights of Disneyland and buying a new, designer mansion in the eastern suburbs. But last Friday night things went south when he was searched and arrested by police outside the Tilbury Hotel in Woolloomooloo. He was charged with drug possession, which police will allege comprised of two bags of cocaine totalling 1.53 grams. Better times: Quentin Flannery.

PS' attempts to contact Flannery, who is the son of Queensland businessman Brian Flannery, have gone unanswered. The matter is due for mention in the Downing Centre on May 23. Flannery junior is listed as a director of his father's property development company KTQ. Late on Thursday night his Facebook and Linkedin profiles vanished. Flannery was caught up in the same police operation that ensnared Cronulla chairman Damien Keogh, who immediately stood down following the charges. As the Herald's Andrew Webster revealed on Thursday, an ABC film crew was shadowing police that night for an upcoming documentary with the working title "Keeping Australia Safe", which will no doubt be compulsory viewing in the Flannery household. Life of Moses It's good to know that Moses Obeid's legal travails haven't challenged his and wife Nikki's miraculous financial skills.
Fuelled by ice and cannabis, Lance Rhodes arrived at the Lalor Park home he shared with his mother, Linda Adams, and niece Hayley Rhodes, just before 11pm on September 8, 2015.

"We're going to have fun tonight," he said to Hayley, then 19.

Lance Rhodes outside the NSW Supreme Court on Friday. Credit:Nine News

The teenager said, "whatever" and went back to her bedroom, unaware of the horror that was about to follow.

About five minutes later, Hayley found Rhodes standing over her grandmother with a knife in his hand, saying "They're in the house ... don't worry I'll get rid of them."
A traveller returning Indonesia brought back more than just memories after a dead toad was discovered in his shoe at Cairns Airport.

The passenger was stopped by a biosecurity officer at the airport on March 24 after a detection dog reacted to the shoes he was wearing.

The toad was found in the shoe of an unsuspecting passenger at Cairns Airport. Credit:Department of Agriculture and Water Resources

The officer was surprised to find a black-spined toad inside one of his shoes, which was believed to have been alive when the man had put the shoe on, according to a statement released by the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.

The department's head of biosecurity, Lyn O'Connell, said frogs and toads were often found hitching a ride inside unsuspecting passengers shoes, but did not usually share the ride with a foot.
An outbreak of Legionnaires' disease possibly linked to building cooling towers near a Cranbourne shopping centre is under investigation.

Four people, aged from 45 to 78 years, were recently hospitalised after contracting the pneumonia-like condition.

Three have since been discharged.

Authorities are disinfecting and sampling several towers in the vicinity of Cranbourne Park Shopping Centre on High Street while they search for the source.
A man has been stabbed with a box cutter at Melbourne Central shopping centre in what police have described as a "shocking" daylight attack.

Police had to pull two men apart after the violent fight, which broke out outside a pharmacy in the CBD shopping complex, spilled onto the street about 1.30pm on Friday.

The 28-year-old victim was treated for upper body injuries and taken by ambulance to The Alfred hospital in a stable condition, an Ambulance Victoria spokeswoman said.

Two police officers pounced on the man's 40-year-old alleged attacker, pinning him to the ground.
He was jailed for two years on Tuesday, not for corruption but for telling people to vote with their conscience, albeit in a provocative and foolish way. While campaigning for re-election in September, Ahok - himself a Christian and ethnically Chinese - was critical of his political opponents who used verse 51 of al-Maida - a chapter of the Koran - to persuade voters not to support Ahok because he was non-Muslim. A choir sings outside Jakarta City Hall in support of jailed governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, universally known as Ahok. Credit:Jefri Tarigan His opponents, including hardline groups such as the Islam Defenders Front (FPI) and Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), staged massive rallies calling for his prosecution, paving the way for his blasphemy trial. Ahok is not the first Chinese Christian to be found guilty of insulting Islam under Indonesia's blasphemy laws, but he is undoubtedly the most high profile.

The outgoing vice-governor of Jakarta, Djarot Saiful Hidayat, is moved to tears by the demonstration in support of Ahok. Credit:Jefri Tarigan The laws generally target those belonging to minority faiths, such as Ahmadis and Shiites, whose interpretation of Islam deviates from the mainstream Sunni Islam of Indonesia. However the most prominent case prior to Ahok's was the five-year jail sentence given in 1991 to Arswendo Atmowiloto, the chief editor of the Jakarta tabloid journal Monitor, who published a poll on readers' "most admired people" which rated the Prophet Muhammad 11th among 50 names. Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama was subjected to a vicious smear campaign. Credit:AP In March this year, three ex-leaders of Gafatar, which Islamic clerics had called a "deviant sect", were jailed for up to five years after judges found the movement offended Islamic values. The court noted prayers were not obligatory in the Gafatar movement.

However it was Ahok's unexpectedly harsh sentence - prosecutors concluded he did not intend to insult Islam and did not request that he be jailed - that sent ripples of shock throughout the world. Anti-Ahok protesters were angry that he was only sentenced to two years' jail for blasphemy rather than the maximum five. Credit:Jefri Tarigan The European Union issued a statement saying laws that criminalised blasphemy, when applied in a discriminatory manner, could have a serious inhibiting effect on freedom of expression and religion. Britain's first Muslim ambassador to Indonesia, Moazzam Malik, tweeted that he knew and admired Ahok and did not believe he was anti-Muslim. This is highly unusual, given diplomats are normally at pains not to comment on the domestic situation in their host country. The two-year jail sentence for Ahok has left many Indonesians wondering about the future of their society. Credit:Jefri Tarigan

The United Nations called on Indonesia to review its blasphemy laws. "Actually we don't need such a rubbery law any more. It is only used to serve certain political targets," Yahya Cholil Staquf, the Supreme Council General Secretary of Indonesia's largest Islamic civil organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), told Fairfax Media. "What happened with Ahok actually shows that this law has numerous flaws." In a rousing editorial in The Jakarta Post, editor-in-chief Endy Bayuni said Indonesia had come too far on the march towards democracy begun in 1999 to give up now.

Supporters of Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, also known as Ahok, outside Jakarta City Hall on May 10. Credit:Jefri Tarigan "Ahok's guilty verdict was surely a tragedy for democracy," he wrote. "This is no time for regrets however. What is required is hard work on our part to get back to where we were before  One priority area is to get the Constitutional Court to repeal the blasphemy legislation because it has been widely abused and has sent the wrong people to jail." But Andreas Harsono, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, is pessimistic about the likelihood of the blasphemy laws being repealed. Indonesia's 1945 constitution explicitly guarantees freedom of religion but the government only recognises six official faiths: Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism. In 1965 Sukarno, the first president of Indonesia, enacted blasphemy laws to prevent "deviation" and protect religious harmony, amid concerns religions could be tarnished by mystical indigenous beliefs.

However only a handful of people were prosecuted until Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono became president in 2004. During his 10-year reign about 100 people were charged with blasphemy, all of whom were found guilty. In 2009 activists, including former president Abdurrahman Wahid, asked the Constitutional Court to repeal the blasphemy laws, arguing they breached the right to freedom of religion. However the court found the laws were necessary to maintain public order. "In 2009 when the law was challenged, it was the Islamists with the backing of SBY who defended the laws," Harsono told Fairfax Media. "I think the Islamists are only getting more powerful." Harsono worries the next target of hardline Islamist groups will be the Christian governor of West Kalimantan, Cornelis, who has publicly warned anyone who is radical or intolerant to leave the province.

His fears have already been realised - during a visit by Cornelis to Banda Aceh last week, a group calling itself the Islam Defender Troop (LPI) went to his hotel and demanded he leave the city. "Aceh land is haram (forbidden) for those who hate ulema (religious scholars) and Islam, including Cornelis," one protester, Tengku Achmad Shanjy, was quoted as saying in The Jakarta Post. In an interview with Fairfax Media this month, Prabowo Subianto, who is widely tipped to challenge President Joko Widodo in the 2019 election, said religion was a sensitive subject in Indonesia. He cited the 2013 case of Rusgiani, a Christian who was sentenced to one year and two months' jail in Bali. She had described canang sari - the daily offerings Balinese Hindus place in temples or small shrines in houses to thank the deity - as "dirty and disgusting". "In recent years there were several other cases which maybe for foreigners or for people who were educated outside of Indonesian environment and culture and tradition seem to be very small," Prabowo said. "But it is so sensitive."

But most analysts and human rights organisations fear the Ahok verdict ushers in a dark new epoch for Indonesia, where non-Muslims are lesser citizens and religion can be used as a tool for subjugation. A few careless throwaway lines on the campaign trail, whipped into an outrage by his foes, cost Ahok his bid to be re-elected as governor and two years behind bars. The NU's Yahya Cholil Staquf believes religion was exploited not just by radical groups but by craven politicians who used their resources to mobilise people to attend the anti-Ahok rallies. He says the Ahok case verdict will tempt opportunistic politicians to continue to use religion to achieve their political goals. "It has been proven it works," he says. "And this is going to be dangerous for the future unity of the nation." But while there have been volumes of commentary on the political dimension, Dr Melissa Crouch, an expert in Indonesia's blasphemy laws from the University of New South Wales, says there has been surprisingly little commentary on the role the courts played in Ahok's downfall.

Crouch says the prosecution request that Ahok only be given a suspended sentence seemed like a rather convenient concession to the embattled governor, coming a day after his resounding loss in the gubernatorial election. Rizieq Shihab (with microphone) speaks in Jakarta in January. His role in the blasphemy trial of Ahok has been criticised. Credit:Dewi Nurcahyani "The courts, it seems, were not having any of this," she writes in Policy Forum. "Indonesia's judges are fiercely protective of their independence, to a point that it now borders on a gross lack of accountability." She also wrote that it was cause for alarm that firebrand Islamist Rizieq Shihab, the leader of the Islam Defenders Front who has been jailed twice for inciting violence, was called as an "expert witness" during the trial. Three of the five judges in Ahok's blasphemy trial were promoted the day after the verdict.
Charged with DUI

Steven Begay was arrested on Tuesday for an aggravated DUI and driving with a suspended license after he fell asleep in his car while at a stop light along Route 66.

According to Flagstaff police reports, Begay did not consent to a breathalyzer and was ordered via a court warrant to take a blood test. Police said that Begay was too intoxicated to deny medical service and was taken to Flagstaff Medical Center.

Assault with intent to injure

An incident occurred at the Motel 6 located on East Lucky Lane when a motel receptionist called police about a disturbance in one of the rooms.

When police arrived at the room, a woman said that she was almost raped by two men and wanted to press charges.

The woman said she was taking a nap when she found Thomas Herrera and Roy Hale standing on top of her attempting to take her pants off.

Herrera and Hale were found on a bench near the motel.

Herrera said that he and another man and woman who were in the room saw Hale attempt to pull the victim's pants down, causing one of the men in the room to get angry and scream at Hale for trying to rape the sleeping woman.

Herrera said when he witnessed the incident he wanted to leave the room because he did not want to be involved.

Hale said he did not rape anybody, but admitted to pulling the victims pants down and spanking her while she was sleeping.

Hale was charged with assault and arrested. Herrera was not arrested but was listed as a suspect with Hale.

City and county residents who want to report a crime but wish to remain anonymous may call Silent Witness at 774-6111 or (877) 29-CRIME, submit a tip online at www.coconinosilentwitness.org, or text the word Flagtip along with your information to 274637 (CRIMES). Rewards of up to $2,000 are given for information that leads to an arrest.
It's not over. Thousands of uncounted ballots remain in Bucks, Montco
It was while studying in France that Ly San, now 29, decided to resurrect traditional Khmer cuisine.

Missing the tastes of his homeland Cambodia, he began to research traditional Khmer food but found that written accounts of the country's native recipes and ingredients were hard to find.

He realized that much of this information had been lost during the civil war of the early 1970s and subsequent barbaric rule of the Khmer Rouge, which saw hundreds and thousands of people die from execution and starvation.

"We ate little (during that period) and that's why people lost their (culinary) education," he tells CNN. "People also were killed. So the food that we ate was to sustain the body and mind only."

Determined to find out more, San spent six years interviewing elderly Cambodians about the recipes they had loved before political turmoil tore apart the nation's kitchens.

In 2016, San opened a restaurant in Phnom Penh, Kraya Angkor, where he serves these dishes.

He realized that his country's cuisine was far richer than even he had realized.

"The food -- no one can forget it. It's one of the identifiers of Cambodian culture."

Countrywide search

Before San, a lawyer who teaches at the Royal University of Law and Economics, in Phnom Penh, began his project he thought Cambodian cuisine "to be simple."

His research, however, in his hometown of Siem Reap, where he interviewed the elderly there about the dishes they grew up with, changed his perception.

"This passion popped up and pushed me to learn more," he explains. "As I gained more knowledge about Khmer food, I started to realize the major impact (of it on people's lives) as well as the importance of the Khmer culture of food."

After one elderly lady taught him how to cook "na tang" -- a dish usually reserved for royalty -- San decided to broaden his search, traveling across Cambodia to interview and cook with older citizens.

Six years later, San has interviewed 26 Cambodians, and written two lengthy books -- one of recipes and the other detailing ingredients.

"I only learn from old folk who have been cooking for many generations," he tells CNN. "I go to meet them, I go to their house and cook food with them.

"They teach me, they tell me about the taste of these foods. I take a lot of pictures, and learn how to make these foods spicy or salty, things like that."

Fit for a king

Broths, curries, relishes, roasted meats and dipping sauces. These, San discovered, are all part of traditional Khmer cuisine.

He also learned the three Khmer classifications for food -- royal, elite and peasant.

Royal food -- such as na tang, a starter of deep-fried sticky rice with a sauce made from minced pork, chilli and coconut milk -- was once primarily served to people in Cambodia's royal palace. The ingredients in such dishes are richer, more diverse and contain more meat.

Elite dishes, which were mostly for the country's officials and wealthy citizens, are less complicated and made using lower quality meats and ingredients.

Peasant, or everyday, food -- such as "kor kou", a fish soup that remains popular in the country -- is made using simple, easily accessible ingredients.

Fragrant and delicate, all of these dishes rely heavily on galangal, garlic, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and turmeric for flavor. The subtlety makes Khmer cooking distinct from other southeast Asian cuisines, such as Thai, with its strong flavors.

"The way that we cook is very different from other countries and it reflects how our country developed," says San "Khmer food is very ... good for your health."

Complex culture

Cambodia's famous Angkor temples are stunning reminders of the country's rich heritage and culture, despite a modern history scarred by war.

After the communist Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975, their Marxist leader Pol Pot embarked upon a dramatic regime of social engineering, sending people from the cities to communal farms in the country.

Intellectuals and middle-class citizens were tortured and executed while hundreds of thousands of people died of disease and starvation from the famine Pol Pot's revolutionary policies induced.

Records of the country's cuisine were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, and people ate purely for survival, living on what little was available at the time.

"Cambodian people just ate in groups, eating porridge and small foods and a lot of water to stay stable," says San.

Although San won't elaborate on whether his elderly tutors shared their experiences of Cambodia's struggle, it's clear that what started out as a personal project has taken on greater significance.

"This experience is very important. It has taught me how to protect Cambodian culture," says San. His restaurant, Kraya Ankor, serves dishes from all three categories of Cambodian cuisine, and counts Cambodia's Princess Norodom Buppha Devi among its regulars.

He is also working on turning the two Khmer books he wrote into one comprehensive cookbook, and hopes to eventually have it published in French and English.

"I want to show Cambodian people their food and enable them to taste real Cambodian food."
State Senator Steve Santarsiero (D-10) presented a check to Yardley Borough Police Chief Joseph Kelly for $68,600 for the purchase of a new police vehicle and motorcycle during a visit to the station. Our police put themselves on the line every day to keep our community safe, said Sen. Santarsiero. Dating back to when I was a Lower Makefield Township Supervisor more than...
Elliotts Living Spaces designer Emma Knight has been crowned Sottini Showroom Designer of the Year after her 3D bathroom design was selected by a judging panel made up of industry experts.

Scooping the 2,000 prize, the Lymington-based bathroom designer was praised for successfully combining style and innovation.

Sottini ran the competition to find the nations pride of showroom design, in partnership with Virtual Worlds.

Steve Breen, Sottini sales director, said: The aim of this competition was to reward and acknowledge the talents of the UKs finest designers who continue to go the extra mile. The standard of designs submitted was testament to the talent and hard work of the designers who dedicate thousands of hours to creating truly stunning showrooms.

Entrants had to submit their design proposals in a 3D format, to include all key elements of the bathroom, with an ethos on creating an inspiring and innovative design.

The judging panel was made up of industry experts from Barratt Homes, Potton Homes, Millwood Designer Homes, Colemore Tang and Conran Design, as well as Virtual Worlds, Ideal Standard and EKBB magazine.
50 women who have raised the profile of sports in South Jersey

To mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX, we're spotlighting 50 women who have raised the profile of sports in South Jersey.
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Call 281-422-8302 or email sunnews@baytownsun.com to wish someone a happy birthday. We will print your birthday wish on Page 2 of The Sun.

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In his social media post, an anonymous techie called the recent spate of layoffs in the information technology (IT) sector a "nightmare". The bad news is, the nightmare is unlikely to end anytime soon.




With the decline in revenues from the US market, Dr Reddy's Laboratories (DRL) is currently focusing on improving its geographical diversification in Europe and emerging markets. It is planning to enter new markets through partnerships and acquisitions, according to company's co-chairman and CEO G V Prasad.

The Hyderabad-based company has expanded in China by setting up its office. It is in the process of filing several oncology products, which will boost its revenues in this country over the next 3-5 years. It has also opened offices in many other emerging markets.
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The New Democratic Labour Front (NDLF) IT Employees Wing, a trade union, is planning to conduct a protest march next week against what it calls an unjustified dismissal of employees by IT firms. It is looking to represent around 20 employees who have been dismissed from various IT firms with the Tamil Nadu labour department.
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Medical technology company has opened its first M Lab Collaboration Centre in India in Bengaluru, which will help biopharmaceutical firms from development to production of molecules in lab scale, before they embark on large-scale manufacturing of these drugs in the market.

The lab, among the nine global labs for Merck, will collaborate with local generic pharma firms who look at transitioning to making biopharmaceuticals for both the local and global markets.
Multinational food are interested in picking up a controlling stake in Gujarat-headquartered Havmor Ice Cream Ltd, which is on an expansion spree in the northern markets as well as the seventh largest ice cream and frozen dessert brand in India with a 3.5 per cent market share, claim sources.
Three months, more than 15 meetings, and a payout of at least $210 million later, its a clear road now for Japanese telecom and internet giant SoftBank to merge its biggest Indian asset with leading e-commerce firm Flipkart.
In two days, solar tariff has fallen to Rs 2.44 a unit from Rs 2.62 a unit, and by 80 per cent in the past six years. Such a massive fall is unprecedented in the history of solar power across the world.

In a bidding held for the 500-Mw Bhadla solar power park in Rajasthan, domestic company ACME won the top slot by quoting Rs 2.44 a unit for 200 Mw. It was closely followed by SoftBank Energy with Rs 2.45 for 500 Mw. As the tender followed a bucket-filling method, ACME will build 200 Mw and SBG Energy 300 Mw. The park is being developed by IL&FS.

Government officials pointed out this rate was lower than the average coal-based price and the grid parity price for solar to match with coal. This rate was closer to spot power price as well.

Two days ago, for a 250-Mw segment of the park developed by Adani Power, South African company Phelgan Energy Group and Avaada Power Group, promoted by Vineet Mittals Welspun Energy, quoted Rs 2.62 a unit. Japans SoftBank Energy was a tad below at Rs 2.63 a unit.

The tariff in Bhadla has been fixed for 25 years with no escalation and the bidders have sought no viability gap funding from the government, officials said.

"Some of the main contributing factors are the 7-8 per cent higher yield in Rajasthan due to better solar radiation conditions, a drop in module prices in the international market, and strengthening of the rupee against the US dollar," said Ashwini Kumar, managing director at Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI).

SECI is a wholly owned public sector undertaking under the ministry of new and renewable energy (MNRE) that executes solar bidding."

"There are multiple drivers. One, the project level risks in terms of timely availability of land, transmission as part of solar park scheme, and counter party risk in terms of payment timelines is mitigated appropriately in the structuring of the project by making NTPC/SECI has the counterparty. Second, this risk mitigation structure have unlocked relatively cheaper source of capital in the market especially from the foreign investors'" said Vivek Sharma, Senior Director, Infrastructure Advisory, CRISIL

Lack of any mega tenders, the large size of the park capacity, and an influx of cheap financing and capital options were also cited as the reasons for such low bids."

Since too much capital is chasing too few projects, this in turn is leading to competition and a much lower return expectation of 8% to 10% than a typical expectation of 14% to 16%.. Also, there are players in the market who are purely looking to unlock the value through an IPO, therefore, for them to show a growth in top-line is critical than overall risk return matrix," said Sharma.
After domestic sales of its commercial vehicles plummeted by 36 per cent in April this year following the sudden Supreme Court order banning sales of Bharat Stage (BS) III vehicles, Tata Motors' commercial vehicles division is getting future ready to avoid any such sales disruptions in the coming three years.

The company, which is now faced with an inventory of 15,000 BS-III graded commercial vehicles, of which the heavy vehicles account for atleast 27 per cent, is working on introducing Exhaust Gas Recirculation (EGR) and Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) technology in its vehicles which will not just make its vehicles comply with BS IV emission norms but these technologies will also help the company migrate from BS-IV to BS-VI, which is poised to become the norm in April 2020.
Chakravarthy Narayan was in for a shock when he went for a meeting with the human resources manager at an IT (information technology) services company last month. A day ago, a conversation at his office had veered around how resources could be rationalised. As a programme manager, Narayan managed around six teams but little did he realise that he was being let go.
The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessertmore food than an average person can eat in that time.
The recent dastardly murder of a young Kashmiri officer of the brings forth rage as well as sadness. He had committed no crime, had joined the Service of a country he considered his own and had done no one any harm. It is time for introspection.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are personal. They do not reflect the view/s of Business Standard.
Nepal on Friday inked a deal with China to join Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious 'One Belt One Road' (OBOR) initiative to link Asia with Europe, a move that may worry India.

The decision to sign the agreement comes ahead the OBOR forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal, Yu Hong, and Nepal's Foreign Secretary Shankar Bairagi signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singhadurbar, Kathmandu.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat were present during the signing ceremony.

"The MoU is an important moment in the bilateral relation between the two countries. Roads and railways connectivity is important for us and we want investment in this sector," Mahat said.

Yu said that the Belt and Road initiative will bring new opportunities for China-Nepal cooperation and South Asia's development.





ALSO READ: China's new Silk Road: India's caution on OBOR is well founded

"To promote Belt and Road initiative, we are committed to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. Openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit are the defining features of the initiative. The Initiative is not only open to the countries in the region, but also open to the countries outside the region who are interested in it," said Yu.

OBOR aims to enhance connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Asia and Europe through land as well as maritime routes.

China had sent a draft proposal on OBOR to Nepal late last year. After a month-long consultation, the Nepalese side had sent back the draft to Beijing with some changes.

Nepal signing the deal with China may cause concerns in India, which has opposed Beijing's initiative. India has reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of OBOR, as it is proposed to pass through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

India, which has traditionally enjoyed great economic and political ties with Nepal, has faced increasing competition from China in recent years.

Landlocked Nepal relies heavily on imports from India and completely on Indian ports for sea access.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said that Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to the growing phenomenon of terrorism across the world.

"The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today may not be necessarily from conflict between the nation states," Modi said in his address here as the chief guest at the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

"It is from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence," he said.

The theme of this year's International Vesak Day, being hosted by for the first time, is Buddhist teachings for social justice and sustainable world peace.

The Indian Prime Minister said that the menace of terrorism in the region "is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion".

"Sadly, these ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are not open to dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction," he said.

"I firmly believe that Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world."

Modi hoped for not just a negative notion of peace defined by the absence of conflict, "but a positive peace where we all work to promote dialogue, harmony and justice, based on compassion and wisdom".

Stating that the friendship between India and was etched in time by Lord Buddha, he said that "Buddhism imparts an ever present radiance to our relationship".

"As close neighbours, our relationship spreads across many layers. It draws its strength as much through our interconnected values of Buddhism as it does from the limitless possibilities of our shared future."

The Indian Prime Minister also announced a new direct flight between Colombo and Varanasi, the place of Lord Buddha's first sermon.

"This will ease travel to the land of Buddha for my brothers and sisters from Sri Lanka, and help you directly visit Sravasti, Kusinagar, Sankasa, Kaushambi and Sarnath," he said.

"My Tamil brothers and sisters will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath."

Stating that India was committed to the economic prosperity of Sri Lanka, Modi said: "We will continue to invest in driving positive change and economic growth to deepen our development cooperation."

He also called for free flow of trade, investments, technology, and ideas between India and for mutual benefit.

"India's rapid growth can bring dividends for the entire region, especially in Sri Lanka. In infrastructure and connectivity, transport and energy, we are poised to scale up our cooperation," Modi stated.

"Our development partnership stretches across nearly every sector of human activity such as agriculture, education, health, resettlement, transport, power, culture, water, shelter, sports, and human resources."

He also mentioned that India's development cooperation with Sri Lanka amounted to $2.6 billion.

"Its only aim is to support Sri Lanka in realising a peaceful, prosperous and secure future for its people," Modi said. "Because, the economic and social wellbeing of the people of Sri Lanka is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians."

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit at the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

This is his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.
Is triple talaq fundamental to Islam? Shayara Bano would not agree, and she has challenged the constitutionality of the practices of polygamy, triple talaq ('talaq-e-bidat'), and 'nikahhalala' in the Supreme Court.
Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan's lawyer on Friday requested the bench, headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Jagdish Singh Khehar to stay the arrest order.

The CJI asked Justice Karnan to file an application and told him that he can be heard when all seven judges would be available for the hearing.

Justice Karnan's lawyer told the apex court that he wanted to tender an unconditional apology, but the apex court registry was not accepting his application.

Justice Karnan on Thursday sought relief from the apex court in the contempt of court matter.

Advocate Mathew Nethumpara, who was appearing for Justice Karnan in the apex court was asked for the documents to prove that he is the lawyer of Karnan.

Nethumpara told the apex court that he has the 'wakalatnama' and authorisation letter.

Earlier on Tuesday, the apex court sentenced Justice Karnan to six months in jail while holding him guilty of contempt of court.

It was a landmark ruling, as it is for the first time ever that a sitting High Court judge has been sentenced.

The apex court had ordered the immediate arrest of Karnan.

The seven-judge bench of the apex court headed by CJI Khehar was hearing the contempt petition against Karnan.

Justice Karnan earlier on Monday sentenced the Chief Justice of India and six other apex court judges to five-year rigorous imprisonment after holding them guilty under the SC/ST Atrocities Act-1989 and amended Act of 2015.

Along with the Chief Justice of India, six judges - Justice Dipak Misra, Justice J. Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Madan B. Lokur, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Kurian Joseph - had initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan in February after he had named 20 "corrupt judges," seeking a probe against them.

Justice Karnan had alleged this was done because he is a Dalit.

Justice Karnan earlier on May 2 directed the court's registrar to issue non-bailable warrant against these seven judges.

He tagged the apex court judges as 'accused' for not being present.

On May 1, in response to the apex court ordering an examination of his 'mental health', Justice Karnan asserted that he would issue a suo moto suspension order against West Bengal Director General of Police (DGP) if he forcefully conducted a medical checkup.

Karnan further asserted that the DGP should take all the seven accused judges for medical test too.

Earlier, the apex court constituted a medical board to examine the mental condition of Justice Karnan on May 5 and also directed the DG West Bengal to assist the medical board to get justice Karnan examined.

The apex court said in its order that High Courts, any tribunal and authority would not take any cognizance on the orders passed by Justice Karnan.

Earlier, in an unprecedented move, the apex court had invoked its powers to initiate contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan, for writing letters casting aspersions on several judges.

Justice Karnan has been accused of circulation of disparaging letters against sitting High Court judges of the Madras High Court. He also allegedly wrote about judges in his letters to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
Authorities have set up two relief camps in Rajouri district as Pakistani troops on Friday resorted to shelling on civilian areas near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, killing a woman and injuring two others.

"Two relief camps have been established in Nowshera where 50 persons comprising around 15 families have been settled," Deputy Commissioner Rajouri, Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, said here today.

District administration has also earmarked additional camps which may be required in case of further ceasefire violation.

The shelling has affected five-six hamlets along the LoC including Sheri Makeri, Namakdali and Khamba since last night.

As many as 27 families have been affected due to the shelling in which many houses, including a school, have been damaged partially or severely, he said.

More than 40 farm animals are also reported killed in firing, he added.

A woman, identified as Akhtar Bi, was killed in Pukharni village last night. Her injured husband, 40-year-old Mohammad Haneef, has been given a compensatory sum of Rs 1 lakh. Another villager also received minor injuries.

The district deputy commissioner has also directed the essential services department to mobilise their services for ongoing evacuations. The Naushera sub-divisional magistrate and a team of doctors have been tasked with ensuring coordination as well as the emergency response.

Divisional Commissioner Jammu, Dr Mandip Bhandari, along with Deputy Commissioner Rajouri Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, visited various areas affected by the shelling.

He also convened a meeting of representatives and affected families from various villages including Pukherni, Qila Darhal, Sarya, Khamba and Jhangar.

Issues related to compensation, loss assessment, cultivation of crops, coordination with Army, construction of bunkers, provision of power supply and availability of ambulances were discussed during the meeting.
When Justice Chinnaswamy Swaminathan Karnan was sentenced by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, the now infamous Calcutta High Court judge came under the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. Karnan, whom a seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar sentenced to six months in prison, has been at loggerheads with the apex court after making allegations of high level corruption in the judiciary through a letter sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January.

The accusations, which were not the first of their kind made by the controversial judge, met the ire of the Supreme Court almost instantaneously, which launched contempt proceedings against Karnan for lowering the dignity of the Indian judiciary. Instead of defending his stance, as one would have expected the judge to do in such a situation, Karnans unprecedented choice of provoking the Supreme Court through his open defiance and retaliatory judicial orders have left both the judicial fraternity and outsiders shocked and surprised.

Terming the Supreme Courts action as illegal and playing the caste card, Karnan refused to cooperate in the contempt case right from the beginning. His defiance, however, did not stop at failing to turn up for the hearings  he went on to initiate criminal actions against the seven judges under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act and even ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe them. These events and his additional demand of the seven judges to answer the charges before him in Calcutta led to the Supreme Court to question his mental fitness and order a medical examination. Karnan, to ratchet up the fight, passed an order directing the examinations of all these seven judges instead.

Only days after, Karnan refused his medical test and instead took the highly provocative step of sentencing the Supreme Court judges to five years imprisonment without concern for the superiority of the apex court or the procedure of the justice delivery system. This proved to be the last straw and broke the Supreme Courts patience: in the first move of its kind, it ordered the sitting judge to serve six months in jail for contempt of court. The court also barred media houses from publishing any statements made by Karnan in the future and also restrained all courts and tribunals in the country from taking cognisance of any orders issued by the judge since the start of proceedings against him.

Karnan, 61, is not unfamiliar to contempt proceedings. In fact, he had himself initiated such an action in 2015 against the then Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Sanjay K Kaul, after accusing him of corruption and personal harassment. Karnan said he was being given insignificant and dummy portfolios because he was a Dalit. The same year, he also accused another judge of sexually assaulting an intern in his chamber without providing any proof of the allegation. In another instance, he stormed into a courtroom and demanded to hear a case to which he was not assigned. In 2011, Karnan had also sparked a huge controversy by calling a press conference to accuse a fellow judge of deliberately touching him with his foot as he was a Dalit.

This series of events eventually led to the Supreme Court transferring Karnan from the Madras High Court to the Calcutta High Court in March 2016. This decision he stayed through a judicial order of his own, which was later upheld by a two-judge bench of the high court. The Supreme Court had threatened to initiate contempt proceedings against Karnan if he refused to follow the order. After a closed-door meeting with the then Chief Justice, T S Thakur, Karnan accepted the transfer and apologised for his actions saying that he had lost his mental balance.

Karnan hails from the Karnatham village in the Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu where he was born in 1955. His father was a retired teacher and his mother a housewife, leading one to believe that his background was quite austere. After finishing high school and a pre-university course, he graduated with a science degree from New College, Chennai, and then pursued a course in law from Madras Law College which he completed in 1983. He then started his practice in civil side of the Madras High Court and served as a government counsel for the state and central governments till his elevation as a judge in 2009. His appointment had been made by the then Chief Justice of India, K G Balakrishnan, on the recommendation of the then Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, A K Ganguly. Later, Balakrishnan said he did not know Karnan personally and Ganguly said he did not remember how his name came up for consideration as a judge of the high court  a fact that has lent support to the criticisms of the present collegium b

ased system of higher judicial appointments.

To add a further twist to this tale, Karnan is now known to have left Kolkata the morning of the Supreme Courts decision to send him to jail. His whereabouts are unknown and the West Bengal police is currently looking for him in three states. This interesting turn of events should not come as much of a surprise though, considering the operatic melodrama that this saga has been since the beginning. Given the present situation, this Bollywood-style potboiler may still have some gas left in the chamber.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced that India's flag carrier Air India would begin direct flights between Colombo and the holy city of Varanasi from August.

Modi, who is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, made the announcement of the beginning of the flights during his address at the inauguration of the International Vesak Day, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

He said the flights will allow "my Tamil brothers and sisters" to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath.

At a distance of 10 kilometres from Varanasi, lies Sarnath, one of the most revered Buddhist pilgrimage centres.

It is believed that after attaining the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, it was in Sarnath that Lord Buddha preached his first sermon, sanctified as Maha Dharm Chakra Parivartan.

The direct flights will aid pilgrims from Sri Lanka, a Buddhist-majority country, to visit Sarnath.

Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh is the parliamentary constituency of the prime minister, from where he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

This is Modi's second visit to Sri Lanka in two years. He arrived yesterday primarily to attend the International Vesak Day celebrations and his vist is aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka.
India's only private weather agency on Thursday warned against "irrational exuberance" after a state forecast flagged heavier-than-expected monsoon rains and the stocks of companies dependent on the farm economy shot ahead a second straight day.

The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) told Reuters late on Tuesday that the June-September monsoon season - critical for the half of the country's farmland that is not irrigated - was likely to bring more rain than its previous forecast as concerns over the El Nino weather condition had eased.

Indian shares have been on a record-breaking spree since, but privately held Skymet said it was sticking to its forecast of below-normal monsoon rains.

"I am cautiously optimistic but I need more data - which will come between a week and 10 days - to take a better call," Skymet CEO Jatin Singh told Reuters.

"The El Nino forecast has become volatile, (and) next week it might go up again. We will have to see it week by week."

El Nino, a warming of ocean surface temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific, typically occurs every few years and is linked to crop damage, fires and flash floods.

Australia's Bureau of Meteorology said this week some international climate models have reduced the likelihood of El Nino this year compared to indications last month. Five of eight such models, however, still indicate the tropical Pacific Ocean may exceed El Nino thresholds during the second half of 2017.

Kyle Tapley, an agriculture meteorologist with U.S.-based MDA Weather Services, said he expected a slightly below-normal monsoon this year in India but nothing "catastrophic".

"During the monsoon season in India we will be probably transitioning into El Nino, so I don't think there will be a huge impact but we are showing a little bit of drier influence," Tapley told Reuters.

IMD, which on April 18 forecast this year's monsoon rains at 96 percent of the 50-year average of 89 cm, cautioned though that weather patterns are dynamic.

India defines average, or normal, rainfall as between 96 percent and 104 percent of the 50-year average.

The federal farm ministry has already written to various states to review their preparedness to manage the impact on farmers in case of below-normal rains, it said in a statement on Monday.

The government data shows that only once in the last four years have actual rains been higher than IMD's official forecasts.
Its almost the end, but its far from over.

The 105th Legislature is groaning toward a June 2nd finish, but the situations created in the final days will probably have an impact on the 2018 session and definitely on the 2018 election. The tax plan favored by Governor Pete Ricketts is dead for now. For the first time in a long time, passage of the two-year-budget has been an uphill battle.

The tax plan doomed itself with the inclusion of income tax cuts in a bill that was supposed to provide property tax relief. For three years, Ricketts has been beating the drum for property tax relief. He has said that all across Nebraska he has heard from people who want property tax relief. In fact, his constant use of that line almost became annoying.

All of a sudden, with state Senators Lydia Brasch of Bancroft and Jim Smith of Papillion carrying the water on his omnibus bill, the focus became income tax cuts. Brasch, elected by the Gang of 27 to lead the Agriculture Committee proposed a change in farmland valuation that became part of the measure (LB461). Smith, also promoted by the Gang to lead the Revenue Committee, brought income tax cuts triggered by revenue growth to the table.

Ricketts started talking about income tax cuts growing the economy. Thats what they said in Kansas  it didnt work. They tried the triggers in Oklahoma  they didnt work. Rural interests and their senators looked at the numbers and asked for more property tax relief. But Ricketts clung to the income tax cuts, egged on by the Americans For Prosperity (Tea Party). Opponents noted that only the states wealthiest would benefit.

The train ran off the tracks when lawmakers rejected a cloture motion on the bill that would have freed it from a filibuster. There were 22 senators who either voted against the cloture motion or did not vote. Ricketts denounced the 22 senators and said they had voted against taxpayers. The state Tea Party director vowed retribution during the 2018 election.

Lawmakers are well aware of Governor Deep Pockets penchant for using his own money to support candidates running against senators who disagree with him. There will likely be more of that next year.

Senator Burke Harr of Omaha, one of 15 Democrats in the officially nonpartisan Legislature, said he led the filibuster because the proposal was tilted too heavily toward income tax cuts, while most Nebraskans want property tax relief. He said it is irresponsible to be cutting taxes at the same time that the state is dealing with a budget shortfall. He countered Ricketts scolding by saying, Were not saying no to taxpayers, were saying no to a bad bill.

Ricketts pushed hard for the bill with telephone town halls, mailers sent by his campaign committee and statewide public appearances. The bill included Ricketts proposals for cutting the top individual income tax rate and changing how agricultural land is valued as well as cuts in the top corporate income tax rate and increased tax credits for most taxpayers. Some of that could have benefitted the low income.

So, where to from here? Theres always next session, but the same senators and lobbyists and issues and faltering economy will be in place. While Ricketts and the Tea Party make their list of incumbents to defeat, supporters of property tax reduction may take the matter to the people. A ballot question could come either in the form of an initiative that writes a new law or a constitutional amendment that makes a more permanent change.

And then theres the legislative races. Brasch, Smith and Harr are among six senators who will be term-limited out. Another 18 will be facing election for their second and final term. Ricketts and the Americans for Prosperity Nebraska branch will have their lists. The Republican Party will likely be pushing for the election of more Republicans to further tip the scale, which now counts 32 Republicans, 15 Democrats, one Independent and one Libertarian.

But, as the 2016 elections proved, there is no magic in simply being a Republican. Several fell out of favor with Ricketts who pumped money into the campaigns of other Republicans to replace them.

Yes, the last time I looked, the Nebraska Legislature is still non-partisan. But one has to wonder how much longer thats going to last.
In February this year, a road in Lutyens Delhi shed its 19th century colonial persona to go back about three centuries to its Mughal past. Dalhousie Road, just a couple of kilometres from Raisina Hill, was renamed Road, after Mughal Emperor Shah Jahans eldest son. It would seem like poetic justice, considering another road named after his brother, Aurangzeb, was renamed APJ Abdul Kalam Road in 2015. Justice, as a Twitter user pointed out, would have been more direct had Aurangzeb Road been renamed after his elder brother.
The US has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's JuD group as part of an effort to disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks.

The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu'ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISIS-Khorasan.

Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan and parts of India.

The sanctions in particular have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the Welfare and Development Organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawah for Quran and Sunnah (WDO).

"These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, Director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

"The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities," Smith said.

"The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said.

"The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added.

OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISIS-Khorasan.

Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan.

Inayat-ur Rahman has been slapped with sanctions for acting for JDQ and the Taliban, and for providing material and financial support to LeT and the Taliban. A long-time leader of JDQ, he worked directly for Haji Hayatullah.

OFAC designated the WDO for being controlled by Inayat-ur Rahman. As of 2015, he was the director, chairman, and president of WDO.
In what is being termed as a huge setback to Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked the Income Tax Department to investigate the Herald case. The court asked the defendants to not be arrogant and added that Young India Private Limited must submit its tax documents.
Amidst predictions of an oncoming World War by an American astrologer, local astrologers conducted a special "Shanti Yagna" at the Yamuna bank here to prevent Third World War.

Pramod Gautam, Chairman of Vedic Sutram told IANS: "The fear of third world war starting from May 13 had created a lot of scare after an American astrologer recently painted a grim picture following a full fledged nuclear war involving countries from east to west. His predictions have been discussed on the electronic media in the past few days."

The American astrologer had predicted victory of Donald Trump. Gautam said stars in the American birth chart were placed in hostile houses till September 2017. Trump himself is under the influence of Mars.

"America could face any number of violent actions forcing Trump to retaliate. Stars do not augur well and the world is placed in a highly volatile situation that could trigger off violent reactions in several theatres," he said.

Gautam said India's relations with Pakistan and the fluid situation in Kashmir could result in clashes with devastating outcomes.

"We have therefore organised a peace Yagna to propitiate the stars and seek Yamuna's blessings. Yamuna is the sister of Yamraj, the god of death."

A large number of river activists and peace volunteers joined the ritualistic havan, that the faithfuls said would defuse tension building up everywhere.
An FIR has been lodged against Google under the Information Technology (IT) Act for an alleged derogatory search result in 2015 involving Prime Minister .
As debate rages over Aadhaar being a privacy and surveillance liability, its architect Nandan Nilekani says the unique identity programme has become a whipping ward. In an interview with Alnoor Peermohamed and Raghu Krishnan, he says we need a data protection and privacy law with adequate judicial and parliamentary oversight. Edited excerpts:

There is concern we are losing our privacy because of Aadhaar...



Privacy is an issue the whole world is facing, thanks to digitisation. The day you went from a feature phone to a smartphone the amount of digital footprint you left behind went up dramatically. The phone records your messages, it knows what you are saying, it has a GPS so it can tell anybody where you are, the towers can tell anybody where you are because they are constantly pinging the phone. There are accelerometers and gyroscopes in the phone that detect movement.

Internet companies essentially make money from data. They use data to sell you things or advertisements. And that data is not even in India, it is in some country in some unaccountable server and accessible to the government of that foreign country, not ours.

Then increasingly there is the Internet of Things. Your car has so many sensors, wearables have sensors and all of them are recording data and beaming it to somebody else. Then there are CCTV cameras everywhere, and today they are all IP-enabled.

So privacy is a global issue, caused by digitisation. Aadhaar is one small part of that. The system is designed not to collect information, because the first risk to privacy is if someone is collecting information. Aadhaar is a passive ID system, it just sits there and when you go somewhere and invoke it, it authenticates your identity. By design itself, it is built for privacy. I believe India needs a modern data privacy and protection law.



Watch: Excerpts of the BS interview with Nandan Nilekani

Why is Aadhaar being used as a proxy for the privacy and data protection issues?



It is a motivated campaign by people who are trying to find different ways to say something about it. Privacy is a much bigger issue. I have been talking about privacy much before anyone else. In 2010, when it was not such a big issue, I had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying we needed a data protection law. You could see what was happening, the iPhone came out on June 30, 2007, Android phones came around the time we started Aadhaar, so we could see the trend. I asked Rahul Matthan, a top intellectual property and data lawyer, to help and we worked with the government to come out with a draft law. And then there was the AP Shah Committee. The UIDAIs DDG Ashok Pal Singh was a part of that committee, so we helped shape that policy.

When a banking application uses Aadhaar, the system does not know what the bank does. It is deliberately designed so that data is kept away from the core system.

I am all for a data protection law but we should look at it in context, look at the big picture. If people want to work together to create a data privacy law then it is a great thing. But if they want to use it to just attack Aadhaar, then there is some other interest at work.

Now that the government is linking Aadhaar to PAN and drivers licences, will that not lead to Aadhaar being used as a surveillance tool?



Surveillance is conducted through a 24x7 system that knows what you are doing, so from a technology perspective the best surveillance device is your phone. The phone is the device you should worry about.

Aadhaar is not a 24x7 product. I buy one SIM card a year and do an e-KYC, the drivers licence sits in my pocket and only sometimes someone asks for it. With the PAN card I file my returns only once a year.

But with all that data being linked, can the government not use it?



It is a valid concern and has to be addressed through a legal and oversight process. Aadhaar is just one technology. You do not attack the technology, you look at the overall picture.

The US has the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act under which special courts issue warrants to the FBI for surveillance. This is absolutely required and it should be a part of the data protection law (in India) which says under what circumstances the government can authorise surveillance.

Today mobile phones are being tapped by so many agencies. In the US, the FBI is under the oversight of the Senate. In India, Parliament does not have oversight of any intelligence agency. I remember (former Union minister) Manish Tewari had introduced a Bill six or seven years ago saying Intelligence agencies needed to be under the oversight of the Parliament, but nothing happened.

Is there any way to stop Aadhaar being used as a surveillance tool?



Today a person can be identified with or without Aadhaar. US systems can identify a person in a few milliseconds using big data. All that is part of what we have to protect. Aadhaar by itself is not going to add anything to that. What is important is that the infrastructure of surveillance comes under judicial oversight as well as parliamentary oversight.

Would the Aadhaar narrative have been different if this were a Congress-led government?



I think most people making this noise are against the government, so it is a political argument and Aadhaar has become a convenient whipping ward. Lots of different agendas are at work here. But my understanding is this - whether it is data protection and privacy, surveillance or security, these are all broad issues that apply to technology in general and if you are serious about solving the issues you should fix it at the highest level and have a data protection and privacy law which includes, mobile phones, CCTV cameras and Aadhaar.

A report by the Centre for Internet and Society says 130 million Aadhaar identities have been leaked...



It is because of the transparency movement in the last 10 years. In 2006, we passed the RTI Act and MNREGA Act. Section 4 of the RTI Act says that data about benefits should be made public. At that time it was all about transparency. Since then, governments have been publishing lists of MNREGA beneficiaries and how much money is being put into their bank accounts. At that time it was applauded. Now the same thing is coming back as privacy being affected.

These are not leaks; governments have been consciously putting out the data in the interest of transparency. The message from this is we have to strike a balance between transparency and privacy. And that is a difficult balance because Section 4 of the RTI Act says if a benefit is provided by the government it is public information, so the names of beneficiaries should be published because it is taxpayers money.

There is something called personally identifiable information. You should strike a balance between transparency and not revealing personally identifiable information. That is a delicate balance, and people will have to figure this out. The risk you have now is governments will stop publishing data - look, you guys have made a big fuss about privacy, we will not publish. In fact, the transparency guys are now worried that all the gains are being lost.

If Aadhaar is voluntary, why is the government forcing it on to various schemes?



There are two things, benefits and entitlements and government-issued documents. There the government has passed a law, the Aadhaar Bill of 2016, which is signed by the President. In that, there is a clear protocol that the government can use Aadhaar for benefits and what process they should follow.

The second thing is Aadhaar for government documents. There are three examples - PAN cards, drivers licences and SIM cards.

The government has modified the Finance Bill and made Aadhaar mandatory for a PAN card. Why has it done that? Because India has a large number of duplicate PAN cards. India has something like over 250 million PAN cards and only 40 million taxpayers. Some of those may be people who have taken PAN cards just as ID but not for tax purposes, but frankly it is also because a lot of people have duplicate PAN cards. Why do people have duplicates? That is a way of tax evasion. The only way you can eliminate duplicate PAN cards is by having Aadhaar as a way of establishing uniqueness.

The second thing is mobile phones. Here the mobile phone requirement came from the Supreme Court, where somebody filed a PIL saying so many mobile phones are being given to terrorists and therefore you need to do an e-KYC when the SIM is cut and the government said they would use Aadhaar and they have been asked to do it by 2018.

The third thing is drivers licences. As (Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari has said, 30 per cent of all drivers licences are fakes. Now why is this important? Because when you have fake drivers licences or multiple drivers licences, even if you are caught, you can give your fake licence and continue to drive. Today India is the country with the largest number of deaths on highways. Lack of enforcement, fake licences are all a problem. So in the latest Motor Vehicle Bill which was passed the government said Aadhaar was necessary to get a licence. So that you have just one drivers licence, whether it is issued in Karnataka or Bihar, you have just one.

The government is also talking about using Aadhaar for the mid-day meal scheme...



If you talk to people on the ground, and I have spoken to people on the ground, a big part of the leakage is mid-day meals. It is not reaching children. So it is important that all this has to happen so children get what they need.

You engaged with governments and civil servants when you initiated the Aadhaar process. In hindsight, would you say you should have also engaged with civil society?



I do not think there is any other programme in history which reached out to every stakeholder in the country. When we started Aadhaar we met governments, regulators and even parliamentarians. I gave a talk in Parliament and we engaged deeply with civil society. In fact, we had one volunteer only to engage with civil society.

You said you were engaged with the previous government about the data protection law. Are you engaging with the current one too?

I am not really engaging. I know that people are working on it and recently the attorney-general has made a statement in the Supreme Court that the government will bring in a data protection law by Diwali.

We have heard of several instances of people not being able to get their biometric authentication done. Is there a problem with Aadhaar?



The seeding of data in the Aadhaar database has to be done properly and that is a process. Authentication has been proven at scale in Andhra Pradesh. Millions of people receive food with Aadhaar authentication in 29,000 PDS outlets. In fact, now they have portability -- a person from Guntur can go to Vijayawada and get his rations. It is empowering. We keep forgetting about the empowering value.

What has the Andhra Pradesh government done? They have used fingerprints, but they also have used iris scans, OTP on phone, and they have a village revenue officer if none of the above works. When you design the system, you have to design it in a way that 100 per cent of the beneficiaries genuinely get the benefit. Andhra Pradesh has shown it can be done.

The government needs to package the learning and best practices of Andhra Pradesh and take it to every other state. It is an execution issue.

Activists have raised concerns over the centralised Aadhaar database...



How else would you establish uniqueness? If you are going to give a billion people a number, how else would you do it? Is there any other way of doing it? Every cloud is centralised, then we should not have cloud systems.

How do you ensure security standards and software are updated?



There are very good people there. The CEO is very good. There is a three-member executive board with chairman Satyanarayana and two members, Anand Deshpande and Rajesh Jain. I have no doubt that they will continue to improve things.

On security, you keep improving. It is a constant race everywhere in the world. They are now coming out with registered devices that will make it more difficult to spoof.

But without a centralised database, how do you establish that an identity is not two people? If you look at the team that designed this, cumulatively they have a few hundred years of experience of designing large systems around the world. Every design decision has been taken consciously looking at the pros and cons. Why did we have both fingerprints and iris scans? There are two reasons. One is to ensure uniqueness. The second is inclusion. We knew that fingerprints in India do not work all the time because of age and manual labour. So we included iris scans. I can give you a document from 2009 that says all of this. All of these things were thought through.

If you are given a chance to design Aadhaar today what would you do differently?



I would do exactly the same thing. Go back and look at the design document. Every design has been articulated, the pros and cons are written down, published on our website, and it is a highly transparent exercise. It is the appropriate design for the problem we are trying to solve. We are forgetting about the huge benefits people are getting. Crores of people are getting direct benefit transfer without hassle. They can go to a village business correspondent and withdraw money using Aadhaar. They can get their SIM card and open a bank account using e-KYC.

You are also forgetting that people are getting empowered. That portability has ensured the bargaining power has shifted from the PDS shop owner to the individual. If a PDS guy treats him badly, the individual can choose another shop, earlier he could not do that. The empowerment of millions of people to buy rations at the shop of their choice is extraordinary.
The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation will be held in Beijing on May 14 and 15. It will mark the formal launch of Chinas ambitious and potentially game-changing initiative to build a network of transport and economic corridors across Asia and Europe with China as the nodal point. At last count, some 28 heads of state and government had confirmed attendance while another 50 countries will send official representatives. India is unlikely to participate, except at a functional level, as it has objected to one major component of the (OBOR)  the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)  as it runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The objection is legitimate. After all, China routinely blocks any international funding of projects in Arunachal Pradesh on the ground that it is disputed territory. Of late, it has even raised objections to the central government undertaking projects in that state. It is hypocritical then for Beijing to justify undertaking projects in PoK. But India should be cautious about participating in other components of the OBOR as well.
The MoEF will now take a final call on whether herbicide-tolerant GM mustard can become the first genetically modified food crop to be cultivated in India or it meets the same fate as bt brinjal
The Trump administration blamed Pakistan for deteriorating Indo-Pak relations and warned that the ties might worsen further if another "high-profile" terrorist attack emanates from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting India's pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

"Easing of heightened Indo-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation," Coats said.

Last year, heavily-armed terrorists sneaked in from across the border and attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. The attack had claimed the lives of seven security personnel while four terrorists were killed.

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against India's rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," said the top US intelligence official.

In his remarks ahead of the possible release of the Afghanistan policy of the Trump Administration, he said "Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan."

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, he said anti-Pakistan groups are likely to focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan's internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ui-Ahrar, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhare Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi ai-Aiami," he said, adding that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

"Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use," Coats warned.

"Early deployment during a crisis of smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons would increase the amount of time that systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site, increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon," he said.


In a major push towards use of genetically modified crops, the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), the regulator for GM crops, today recommended commercial use of in a submission made to the environment ministry.

The GEAC in a meeting held today approved the commercial use of GM mustard, agency PTI reported.
The government is focussed on bringing domestic producers out of their distress. In an interview with Jyoti Mukul and Megha Manchanda, Minister Birender Singh describes how he is going about implementing a new policy. Edited excerpts:



The Cabinet recently cleared two policies for the steel industry. How will those policies benefit the industry?



For the last three years, the steel industry was facing stress, so we thought that instead of adopting stop-gap measures it would be better to have a policy. Two previous policies could not achieve targets so it is important to have a road map for promoting steel consumption and production. We have a per capita steel consumption of 65 kg, we are aiming to reach 160 kg in the next 14 years.
Janaushadhi Pariyojana is creating a Silent Revolution in achieving Health Security by providing Affordable, Quality Medicines for All: Shri Ananthkumar

The Goal of the Government is to take Janaushadhi scheme to every Block: Shri Ananthkumar

1320 Janaushadhi Kendras already functioning across the country

By end of this year more than 3000 Janaushadhi Kendras to be opened; Over 30,000 received applications given in principle approval

To ensure high quality, only the medicines meeting WHO GMP benchmarks supplied at Janaushadhi Kendras

Mandatory for all medical practitioners to prominently mention Generic Names of drugs along with Brand Names, as per MCI guidelines: Shri Ananthkumar

Addressing the media on the achievements under the Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) here today, Union Minister for Chemicals & Fertilizers and Parliamentary Affairs, Shri Ananthkumar said that the scheme is creating a Silent Revolution in achieving Health Security by providing Affordable, Quality Medicines for All. Today India is the Worlds Pharmacy and our Pharma sector is growing at a pace of 20-21% and India is exporting quality generic medicines to 215 countries the Minister added.

Shri Ananthkumar said that following the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modis vision of making providing Affordable, Quality Medicines for All, the Government has made Health Security for all citizens its priority and this aim can only be achieved through the Janaushadhi pariyojana. Through this scheme, the Government is planning to take affordable medicines to each block of the country in near future, he added.

Shri Kumar informed that as on date, 1320 PMBJP Kendras (PMBJKs) are functioning in the country in the 30 States/UTs, covering 426 districts, as compared to only 80 opened between 2008 and 2014. The turnover in the beginning of the scheme was around Rs. 3 crores, which would increase to around Rs. 60 crores by end of this year, he informed.

Further, the Minister said that MoUs for opening PMBJKs have been signed by Union Government with 19 State Governments and other Organisations/NGOs. A total of 32,225 applications have been received out of which in-principle approval has been given to 30,300 applications. which is a proof of the huge opportunity that this scheme provides for unemployed youth to get self-employed, Shri Kumar added.

Talking about the actual reduction in medicine prices, Shri Kumar said that in these PMBJKs, the Government procured generic medicines are sold which are 50% - 90% less as compared to the branded medicines in open market, for e.g. the price of Amlodipine 5 mg 10 Tablets is Rs. 3.25 as compared to market average price of Rs. 20.00 for branded version. Further, the product basket of PMBJP contains more than 600 medicines and 154 surgicals and consumables in all therapeutic categories viz.

Anti-infectives, Anti-diabetics, Cardiovasculars, Anti-cancers, Gastro-intestinal medicines, etc.

Most importantly, allaying the concerns about quality, the Minister said that each batch of drug supplied to PMBJKs is tested for impeccable quality assurance at NABL (National Accreditation Board Laboratories) accredited laboratories and is compliant with WHO GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) benchmarks. Out of total 10,000 pharmaceuticals companies in India, 1400 are WHO GMP compliant and drugs under the PMBJP are procured only from these 1400 companies, Shri Kumar said.

Answering to a question on prescription of generic medicines by doctors, the Minister informed that due to sustained efforts of the Ministry, the Medical Council of India (MCI) has recently issued a directive to all medical colleges, hospitals, doctors across the country and made it mandatory to prominently mention Generic Names of drugs along with Brand Names in their prescriptions, in pursuance of which strict disciplinary action may be taken against the violators. All medical practitioners have been directed by the Government to strictly comply with its directions. Further, the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare has also issued advisory to all State Drug Controllers that all branded drugs, imported or domestically manufactured, should mandatorily contain generic names mentioned in bold letters while packaging, Shri Kumar added.

It was also informed that in order to encourage doctors to prescribe generic medicines, the MCI had amended the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002 on 08th October 2016 advising the use of generic name of drugs in doctors prescription.

Informing about the Governments efforts towards future expansion of PMBJKs in the country, Shri Kumar said that the Ministry of Railways has come on board to open Janaushadhi kendras in over 1000 railway stations across the country in collaboration with Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers. Further, the Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers has also written to all State Governments to open PMBJKs in District headquarters, Tehsil/Block level, bus stands etc. to increase the reach of affordable medicines to the poor and underprivileged citizens of the country, Shri Kumar added.

Other dignitaries present on the occasion were Shri J. P. Prakash, Secretary, Department of Pharmaceuticals, Shri Rajneesh Tingal, JS, Pharma and Shri Biplab Chatterjee, CEO, Bureau of Pharma PSUs in India (BPPI), the implementing agency for PMBJP, under Ministry of Chemicals & Fertilizers.
The launch of a partys manifesto is among the most decisive moments in a British general election campaign. Manifestos are not merely devices to harvest votes at election time. They establish the agenda for government that the party will pursue in office.
Pakistan's Senate deputy chairman on Friday escaped an assassination attempt with injuries when a powerful blast damaged his car, killing 25 people and wounding 35 in the volatile south-western Balochistan province.

The blast targeted Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri when he came out of a mosque after addressing a gathering shortly after the Friday prayers in Mastung area of the province.

The area where the explosion took place is approximately 70 kilometres from provincial capital Quetta.

Mastung Hospital PRO Malik Jibran said that 20 dead and over 35 injured were brought to the hospital.

He said more than 15 injured were in critical condition.

Senior police officer Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that 30-40 people were injured. He said Haideri was slightly injured.

Haideri belongs to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Most of the people killed were workers of his party.

Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani said that it was suicide attack which targeted the deputy chairman.

"I have talked to chief secretary of Balochistan and asked him to airlift Haideri to Quetta," he said.

Citing sources, Geo TV said Haideri has been shifted to the Civil hospital.

Haideri later told Dunya TV in a brief chat that he received minor injuries. "It was a powerful explosion. I have received injured but I am safe. I am sorry for the death of innocent of people," he said.

TV footage showed Haideri's vehicle was badly damaged. His driver was killed in the attack.

The District Police Officer Mastung, Ghazanfar Ali, said Haideri escaped as he was not sitting in the car when the blast took place.

"It could be a suicide bomb attack but it is too early to say for sure," he said.

So far no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Haq Kakar said it was too early to say anything about the nature of the attack. "Probe has been launched to determine the nature of the bombing," he added.

Balochistan has been hit hard by attacks from terrorists and separatists in recent years and Mastung has seen a lot of unrest despite constant security operations in the area.
The Energy Agency (IEA) will review its (EV) use and oil demand forecasts after India and China recently signalled new policies in favour of electric cars and vehicles using other alternatives to gasoline.
US President Donald Trump on Friday warned fired FBI chief against leaking their private conversations to the media.

" better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!", Trump said in a tweet.

Comey, who was leading an inquiry into possible collusion between Trump election campaign officials and Russia, was fired on Tuesday.

Trump has since insisted he was told by Comey that he was not under investigation, Fox News reported.

The US President said he had been told twice by Comey over dinner and once over the phone that he was not a target of the inquiry.

"I had a dinner with him, he wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on," Trump said.

"...And I said, 'I'll consider we'll see what happens'... And at that time he told me, 'You're not under investigation,' which I knew anyway," said Trump.

Trump added: "In one case I asked him... He said: 'You are not under investigation'."

The US President, speaking to NBC News on Thursday, gave his first in-depth remarks since the surprise ousting of Comey earlier this week.

"Look he's a showboat, he's a grandstander," Trump said.

"The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil -- less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that."

Trump said he had planned to fire Comey for some time, but "there's no good time to do it, by the way."

The President also said that his surrogates cannot be expected to have "perfect accuracy" in their communications with the press, as he hit out at the "fake media" coverage of his decision to fire Comey.

Trump dismissed the FBI investigation into the alleged Russian meddling in the US election as a "charade" and has said Democrats are using "fake news" about collusion with the Russians as an excuse for losing the election.

When he fired Comey earlier this week, Trump garnered comparisons to former President Richard Nixon and his infamous decision to remove the special prosecutor investigating Watergate crimes in 1973.

The Watergate scandal accelerated drastically when it was revealed Nixon taped conversations in the White House.
The European Union's Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier has pledged the 27-member bloc's full support for Ireland's negotiations.

"Today (Thursday), in front of these two houses, I want to reassure the Irish people: in this negotiation Ireland's interest will be the Union's interest," said Barnier, while delivering a speech to a joint sitting of the upper and lower houses of Irish parliament.

"We are in this negotiation together and a united EU will be here for you," he said.

Because of its historical, geographical and economic ties with the UK, Ireland is in a unique position, Xinhua news agency reported.

"With the depreciation of the sterling, is already having an impact on the value of Irish exports to the UK. In particular, the agri-food sector," he said.

"If the conditions are right, a close partnership with the UK is in everybody's interest. And in Ireland's interest in particular," he added.

Barnier said the UK has been a member of the EU for 44 years and that it should remain a close partner with the bloc.

At a summit held in Brussels on April 29, the leaders of the 27 remaining EU countries adopted unanimously the guidelines.

According to the guidelines, the EU, throughout the negotiations, will maintain unity and act as one with the aim of reaching a result that is "fair and equitable for all member states and in the interest of its citizens".

The two year timeframe of Brexit negotiations ends on March 29, 2019.
If US president, Donald Trump, thinks sacking his FBI director, James Comey, will stop the intelligence leaks against his administration, he can think again. If anything, they are likely to get worse. The sacking may well have sent shock waves around Washington. But the investigation into allegations of Russian interference will continue, no matter how many intelligence officials get fired by the president.
On May 19, Iranians nationwide will vote for president and for candidates in local elections, selecting representatives for city and village councils. The public's attention has been focused largely on the presidential race, but local elections offer citizens a unique chance to make a direct impact on their communities by choosing officials with their local interests in mind. The elections also present Iranians with the chance to reshape their government by putting more women in .
According to reports in the U.S. media, Washington is furious that the Russian state media published photographs of President Trumps meeting on Wednesday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak.
Anthony Schnuelle walked into the conference room at Blue Valley Behavioral Health toting a three-foot tall trophy.

It had been sitting on a shelf for some time, but still sparkled when the light hit the holographic columns and the golden stars that topped it off. Schnuelle was named 2016s Mr. Homesteader and it was time to pass the torch, even though hell be a tough act to follow.

The five candidates in this years 29th annual Mr. and Ms. Homesteader Contest met for lunch on Friday at Blue Valley to go over the rules and get some advice from previous winners. The contestwhich benefits the Blue Valley Behavioral Health Foundations mental health and substance abuse servicesis essentially a race to see who can raise the most money in a month and a half.

Schnuelle shattered the record last year, pulling in $15,000 through May and June with fundraisers like a car wash, cow pie bingo and just going door to door and talking to friends about the contest.

Getting your friends and family involved is really big, Schnuelle told this years competitors. You can't do it all by yourself, but be prepared for the next month and a half to be a whirlwind. It's like a lot of things in life, the harder you work at it, the more you're going to get out of it.

Competing for this years title of Mr. or Ms. Homesteaderwhich comes with a new Stetson cowboy hat, a ride in a convertible during the Homestead Days parade and the bragging rights that go along with a three-foot tall trophyare a wide cross-section of Beatrice residents.

Theres Christy Burger, supervisor for Better Living Counseling Services. Shes sponsored by Dairy Queen and Better Living Foster Care; Shoni Baxa, a qualified intellectual disabilities professional at Mosaic who is being sponsored by the American Legion; Shaun Gordon is the general Manager at Westlake Ace Hardware, the company that is sponsoring him in the contest; Denise Pahl, a teacher at Southern Schools in Wymore and owner of Tall Tree Tastings is being sponsored by Tall Tree as well; and Sergeant Jay Murphy of the Beatrice Police Department is being backed by the Eagles Club.

All of the money that is raised for this fundraiser stays here in Gage County for this office, said Amber Ferguson, a counselor with Blue Valley whos working to organize the contest. Blue Valley Behavioral Health is a much bigger agency, we have 14 offices total in southeast Nebraska. But all the money raised stays here, none of that money goes to the other 13 offices.

Blue Valley offers outpatient mental health and substance abuse services and serves people from age four and up. They offer "Telehealth," Ferguson said, which gives users a secure line to a mental health professional and a 24-hour hotline that connects people going through a crisis with a counselor any day of the year, even on holidays.

Theyll accept anyone who walks through the door, she said, even if their insurance doesnt cover it or if theyre unable to pay. Thats one of the reasons the Mr. and Ms. Homesteader Contest is so important to the organization, she said.

"With health care in such a shaky situation, that's frightening," Baxa said. "That's going to impact part of services here and that hits really home for me because that's where Mosaic is."

For Murphy, dealing with Blue Valley on a regular basis is part of the job. He and his fellow law enforcement officers bring people to the Beatrice office quite a bit, he said.

A couple of weeks ago, Murphy said, there was a young girl who was threatening suicide. Her family didnt have the money to take her to Lincoln to get the help she needed, but Blue Valley was able to help her almost immediately.

I called down here to see if we could get her in and talk to someone and they got her in within a couple of hours, Murphy said. They do a good job of accommodating us and it's another tool that we can use. It probably saved a life.

The contestants vying for Mr. or Ms. Homesteader met with several former winners. Schnuelle recommended setting the expectations for donations high.

Jane Beavers, who was Ms. Homesteader in 2015 said things like spaghetti feeds, breakfasts, shuffleboard, pool tournaments, scavenger hunts, auctions, garage sales and helicopter rides were all successful in the past, but, said 2008s Mr. Homesteader Tracy Crawford, its best to make it a group effort.

I just want to stress to you guys to make this a fun time, Crawford said. I got a 30 pack of beer, got my friends together and we started making ideas. You get a few beers in your friends, they'll come up with good ideas.

This years competitors received a bag with Blue Valley flyers, a coloring book for grown-ups, a bag of chocolates, a Blue Valley tote bag and an envelope with 100 tickets for the upcoming Vans Barbecue fundraiser on June 8 at the Eagles Club at 5 p.m. The barbecue is the only fundraiser put on by Blue Valley, so whatever the competitors have in mind is all on them.

The most important thing for fundraisers is determination, Schnuelle said. If the weather isnt cooperating or if it doesnt look like its going to be a success, do it anyway. You never know wholl show up.

We did a car wash last year, Schnuelle said. I want to say that the high did not get past 50 that day and it was windy. It was so cold, but we did it anyway. Plan an event and stick to it, because people are going to come one way or another.

The contestants will start planning out their fundraisers in the coming weeks. Tickets for the barbecue can be purchased from contestants and to see what theyll be up to, check Blue Valley Behavioral Healths Facebook page for updates. The winner will be announced on June 23 during Homestead Days.
Retail Mogul Yusuff Ali and Pepsico executive Sanjeev Chadha are among the top 100 Indian business leaders in the Arab World 2017, according to a Forbes ranking for the Middle East.

Ali, Managing Director of Lulu Group topped the Indian business owners' category. Chadha, CEO, Asia, Middle East and Africa at PepsiCo led the Indian executive's category. He was followed by Raghavan Seetharam, Group CEO of Doha Bank and Adnan Chilwan, Group CEO of Dubai Islamic Bank holding the top three positions.

For the first time, the ranking highlighted 28 young and talented next generation business leaders who will carry forward the legacy of their family businesses. Out of the young and talented next generation, 25 of them will lead their family business with an estimated total revenue of more than USD 27.5 billion.

Speaking at the event, Vipul, Consul General of India in Dubai said, "Indians make up the largest expat community in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, with over 7 million Indians residing and contributing to the economies of the host countries, not only as big business conglomerates but also as professionals, construction workers and in government departments."

Forbes Middle East is an annual ranking of the top 100 Indian business owners and the top 50 Indians in executive management. The businesses of the top 100 business owners represent different vital sectors, with most of the leaders running diversified companies, followed by the retail, real estate, and construction sectors. The top 50 executives work across different sectors with 15 executives hailing from the banking and financial services.

Total revenues of the top 10 business owners add up to an estimated USD 28.9 billion.

Twenty-four of the companies represented by the top 50 executives have revenue of over USD 1 billion. These business owners and executives oversee a workforce of over 750,000 employees.
Attorney Generals of 20 states have sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice's Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, calling the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey during an active investigation "a violation of the public trust."

Chief of law enforcement officers of respective states have written a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein over the President's firing of FBI director in the middle of his investigation of Russian interference in the presidential election, as a violation of the public trust.

"As prosecutors committed to the rule of law, we urge you to consider the damage to our democratic system of any attempts by the administration to derail and delegitimize the investigation."

"The residents of our states and the American people deserve although investigation that makes clear the extent of Russian meddling, any collision by Trump campaign officials, and any cover-up," the letter added.

The letter further stated "Only the appointment of an independent special counsel, pursuant to 28CFR $600. I,with full powers and resources can begin to restore public confidence. "

The Attorneys General who also signed the letter are from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Vermont and Washington.

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In a classic case of one-sided jilted love, the Delhi Police has arrested a man for the cold blooded murder of his ex-lover's husband.

The offender Vivek Kumar Aggarwal (37), who was arrested from Budh Vihar by the police, had earlier tried to kill the woman complainant in February this year.

On 20 April, the accused shot victim Piyush Malik as he was returning home on a scooty with his newly wedded wife.

The accused holds no previous criminal records, and had attempted to commit suicide by ingesting sleeping pills upon learning that the police was investigating.

He also changed his residence after learning that he was listed under suspects.

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The Delhi Police has arrested three burglars on charges of mega heists in nine cases in the capital.

The arrest made by Shahbad Dairy Police registered the offenders under Burglary u/s 457/380 34 and 492/17.

Upon interrogation, the offenders were found guilty in several cases registered with the Sadar Bazar Police station.

The police recovered 25 mobile phones, one photocopier, cosmetic items and facial kits from their possession.

Of the three accused, identified as Rihaan (22), Danish (19), and Rahisuddin (33), Rihaan has been previously involved in one theft case registered at Sadar Bazar Police Station.

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World number two Novak Djokovic stormed into the semi-finals of the Madrid Masters without hitting a ball as Japan's Kei Nishikori pulled out of the match due to the recurrence of a wrist injury in Spain on Friday.

Last month, Nishikori, the world number eight, was also forced to withdraw from the Barcelona Open due to the injury.

He now remains doubtful for the next week's Rome Masters with 10 days to go until the start of the second major of the tournament--French Open, Sport24 reported.

Djokovic, on the other hand, has made it to his first semi-final since he won the Qatar Open in January.

The Serbian maestro will now face fourteen-time Grand Slam Champion Rafael Nadal or face Belgium's David Goffin in the last-four clash.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday did a balancing act in Sri Lanka of keeping Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamils 'close' that has definitely left the Dragon sulking.

After inaugurating the International Vesak Day function, Modi offered India's continued support to 'friend' Sri Lanka.

"As you make important choices for harmony and progress of our society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building efforts. I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka," he added.

Prime Minister Modi not only extended India's full support to the Sri Lanka on economic and development fronts but also soothed the emotions of Indian origin Sri Lankan Tamils through his 'medical diplomacy' via Dickoya Glengairan Hospital, which is a super-specialty hospital built with the Indian assistance of Rs 150 crore.

India's total development portfolio to Sri Lanka now exceeds $2.6 billion, of which the grant component is more than USD 436 million.

After inaugurating the hospital, when Modi said health and well being of people of Sri Lanka "is a shared priority" then he actually was sending message to the Sri Lankan non-Buddhist Tamils that India cares for them, who are a minority in Sinhalese-Buddhist dominated country.

Later, when he addressed the Sri Lankan Tamils in the presence of Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena and community leaders then he soothed the emotions of Sri Lankan government by saying that "I am aware the Government of Sri Lanka is taking active steps to improve your living conditions including a 5-year National Plan of Action".

Modi's superficial agenda of Sri Lanka was apolitical as 'officially' he went there mainly to participate International Vesak Day function as a chief guest, but unofficially his visit was much more important diplomatically.

Modi carried along with him a 'complexed diplomatic responsibility' to keep Sri Lanka out of the influence of China, which enjoyed hegemony in Colombo during the rule of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa has been backing hardline Sinhala-Buddhist elements, who completely oppose India's diplomatic and trade interests in Sri Lanka.

In fact, India's business interests in Sri Lanka are being opposed vehemently by Rajapaksa backed politicians and trade unions.

Before Modi's visit, Srisena had to openly denounce the call by the Sri Lankan opposition to show black flags to Modi.

Opposition Parliamentarian Wimal Weerawansa alleged that "they (Sri Lanka Government) are trying to sell Sri Lanka to India".

In fact, Beijing's grip over Sri Lanka loosened when Rajapaksa lost his bid for a third term in 2015. Had Rajapaksa been in power then instead of Modi Chinese President or Prime Minister would have been given privilege to open International Vesak Day function.

The Sri Lankan opposition and the Dragon definitely would not have liked Srisena's presence everywhere wherever Modi went on Friday.

It is pertinent to mention here that new Sri Lankan President Sirisena has put several Chinese projects on hold temporarily. It needs to be watched whether Modi's diplomacy is able to keep Srisena away from Beijing permanently or not.

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The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Friday appealed to the Uttarakhand High Court against its order of sealing the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to be used in the upcoming seven assembly constituencies elections.

The High Court has given the petitioners in the EVM tampering case to file their objection regarding the same within three weeks.

On May 1, the High Court had ordered the sealing of EVMs in the strong rooms for six assembly constituencies, within 48 hrs.

Justice Sarvesh Kumar Gupta passed the order to seal the EVMs while hearing the petition filed in context of its tampering.

The six constituencies are Mussoorie, Rajpur, Raipur, Ranipur, Haridwar Rural and Pratappur.

All the concerned parties have been given time of six weeks to respond.

Earlier on April 27, the Uttarakhand High Court issued notices to the Central Election Commission (EC), the State Election Commission and Bharatiya Janata Party Vikasnagar MLA M.S. Chauhan.

The action was taken upon a plea filed by Congress Vikasnagar runner-up candidate Navprabhat on alleged tampering of EVMs.

The High Court asked the authorities to preserve the EVMs and sought a response on the same within six weeks.

Chauhan had defeated the Congress candidate, Navprabhat, over 6,000 votes in the elections held in February this year.

Former Uttarakhand chief minister Harish Rawat had hinted at possible tampering of EVMs to tweak the poll outcome.

The EVMs are under scanner after the opposition parties have alleged that the BJP had tampered the machines to ensure favorable results.

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In 1877, the United States government gathered the Ponca people and forced them to march south to Oklahoma.

During the march from their ancestral homeland near the mouth of the Niobrara River in the northern part of Nebraska to a reservation in Oklahomathen known as Indian Territorymany members of the Ponca died. After about a year in the reservation, the son of Chief Standing Bear, Bear Shield, also died.

Standing Bear promised his son that he would have him buried on their lands. It was when he was making the trek back to the Ponca lands to bury his son that he was arrested for leaving Indian Territory without permission. Standing Bear then sued for a writ of habeas corpus, which orders a person in custody to be brought before a court.

Judge Elmer Dundywho had ruled against Native Americans many times before in his courtroomwas moved by Standing Bears testimony, and in 1879, ruled that Native Americans are people and could not be forced to stay on a reservation. It would be another 45 years before Native Americans were declared to be American citizens.

The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska continues to celebrate Standing Bear and their ancestors. On Thursday, many were present for the signing of a deed to the 19.5 mile Chief Standing Bear Trail that stretches from Beatrice to Barneston. It was the culmination of a 12-day, 277-mile journey that started in Niobara.

The Ponca tribe walked with supporters down through Nebraska, braving the elements. The original path taken by the Ponca tribe in 1877 was subject to rain nearly every day, said Larry Wright Jr., chairman of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. The weather gave them a glimpse at what their ancestors had to endure.

It didn't stop the walkers that were there every day, Wright said. They came back every day and endured everything that was thrown at them. As a Ponca, it was inspiring to be with them every day.

Nearly 200 people gathered in the red and white tent in Barneston to mark the occasion.

I think we may have tripled the towns population, Wright joked.

Numerous speakers were on the schedule, including Sandra Washington of the Nebraska Trails Foundations who described the history of the railroads that led to the trails construction.

In 2002, the Nebraska Trails Foundation, with help from the city of Beatrice and Lancaster County, purchased 59 miles of the Union Pacific Railroad between Lincoln and Marietta, Kansas. In 2006, they were able to purchase the last 8 miles of track.

"Many years of planning, countless hours of sweat and over $850,000 in cash donations, hundreds of thousands of dollars in donated services and, I'm told, the demise of three pickups, went into building this beautiful trail on the remains of the Union Pacific line, Washington said.

Being able to own this piece of history and to follow the footsteps of their ancestors was an important, historic event for the Ponca, Wright said. It was a piece of history they didnt want or ask for, he said, but now it is a piece of history that they own and can remember. They saw the graves of the Ponca who died during the forced march, they walked where their ancestors did and made sure there was a legacy for future generations.

There would be no Ponca Tribe of Nebraska if it werent for Standing Bear, Wright said. The fact that they can still live in their ancestral homeland is thanks to the sacrifices made by Standing Bear.

We talk about 140 years ago like it's a long time, Wright said. That's our connection to this country. For a while, our relatives in Oklahoma would bury their dead and face them north so they could face the home country. That's our connection to this land. This trail symbolizes that and will forever be remembered as the Standing Bear Trail.

The Otoe-Missouria tribe was in attendance and performed dances and prayers, as was the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma who closed out the night with scalpor, victorydances outside after the sun broke through the clouds.

It's been 140 years since this happened, said Galen Springer who danced with other members of the Otoe-Missouria. The Ponca tribe has been through a lot of hardships to get to where they are today and we just want to say thank you and God bless everyone that took part in this historic event.

The ceremony closed with a meal provided by Colleens Catering from Beatrice.

Wright encouraged everyone in attendance to talk to their senators about creating a national historic trail for the route they took. The trip traveled on no private land, Wright said, and the only thing holding it up was inaction in the state house.

The Ponca Tribe of Nebraska expressed their gratitude to the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma and the Otoe-Missouria for walking the trail with them and for celebrating the deed signing, then added a little friendly teasing.

I still say the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska got the better deal because we're Cornhusker fans and not Sooners, Wright said. I never get tired of that joke.
Union Minister of Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar reviewed developments of education sector in the North East.

Javadekar visited Guwahati to attend a regional workshop on innovations and best practices in school education in the city organized under the initiative of ministry of human resource development, in collaboration with Education Department of Assam.

Similar workshops have been organized in Raipur, Pune, Bengaluru and Chandigarh in an attempt to understand the shortcomings and improve the quality of education.

Several dignitaries attended the workshop and enlightened the people about the improvement of education in the region.

Elementary education remains a major worry due to the high drop-out rates, lack of proper infrastructure, basic school amenities and financial constrains hindering the development of the education sector in the region.

Javadekar emphasized that quality of education needed to be maintained as it is the basic component of nation's building.

Entrepreneurs, teachers, members of NGOs and professors from across the northeast attended the workshop to brainstorm on development of the education sector.

The Union Minister also reviewed the contributions of non-profit organizations towards the growth of education sector in the region. State education minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma also attended the workshop.

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Adding yet another first to his huge repertoire of firsts, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan addressed the audience in a conference at TED Talks in Vancouver, Canada.

SRK's TED talks are full of inspirational instances, intelligently woven with motivational words.

The 51-year-old actor representing India at the global platform has been earlier graced by the likes of remarkable people like former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, astronaut Mae Jemison, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to name a few.

In his TED Talk, the 'Chak De! India' star said, "My country has taught me the capacity for a human being to love is akin to godliness. It shines forth in a world which civilization, I think, already has tampered too much with. In the last few days, the talks here, the wonderful people coming and showing their talent, talking about individual achievements, the innovation, the technology, the sciences, the knowledge we are gaining by being here in the presence of TED Talks and all of you are reasons enough for us to celebrate the future "us." But within that celebration the quest to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion has to assert itself, has to assert itself, just as equally."

He added, "The people of this ancient land embraced me in their limitless love and I've learned from these people that neither power nor poverty can make your life more magical or less tortuous. I've learnt from the people of my country that the dignity of a life, a human being, a culture, a religion, a country actually resides in its ability for grace and compassion. I've learned that whatever moves you, whatever urges you to create, to build, whatever keeps you from failing, whatever helps you survive, is perhaps the oldest and the simplest emotion known to mankind, and that is love. A mystic poet from my land famously wrote."

The King of Bollywood then proudly narrated a Sanskrit Shlok and translated it for the audience.

He added, "My country has taught me the capacity for a human being to love is akin to godliness. It shines forth in a world which civilization, I think, already has tampered too much with. In the last few days, the talks here, the wonderful people coming and showing their talent, talking about individual achievements, the innovation, the technology, the sciences, the knowledge we are gaining by being here in the presence of TED Talks and all of you are reasons enough for us to celebrate the future "us." But within that celebration the quest to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion has to assert itself, has to assert itself, just as equally."

The actor's speech was received with a standing ovation at TED.

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IFFCO, world's largest fertiliser cooperative federation with over 40,000 member cooperatives, has announced its plans to garner massive cooperative market via creation of a digital platform.

"Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited has made an ambitious plan to achieve Fertilisers' Marketing target of 15 million tonnes per annum by 2020," said IFFCO Managing Director and CEO Dr U.S. Awasthi.

"We are creating one massive cooperative market through a digital platform-iffcobazar.in. Members will get instant information in the field of agriculture etc in 12 languages," Dr Awasthi said while adding that it is the first of its kind e-commerce initiative for agriculture sector in rural areas.

"I am surprised to see how India has changed. The burning desire in young boys and girls, they want jobs, they want to show that they can do something good. You can feel the vibrations in them. This has been made possible by Narendra Modi's initiative of Digital India and mobile penetration for 97 percent Indians", Dr. Awasthi claimed, who is travelling across the country to better understand the pulse of the farmers in the 50th year of the IFFCO.

Coincidently, this year is also Dr. U.S. Awasthi's 50th year of service to India's farming sector in various capacities.

"I have decided to visit 125 locations all over India, right from Andaman to Leh and from Arunachal to Kutch. I have already visited 70 locations. Everywhere in our country there are different pockets with expertise in different agriculture practices. The idea is to cover entire geography of India, meet all kind of farmers, and understand each ecological strata and places of agriculture needs. I am also connecting all of them to one massive cooperative market through a digital platform. Today, we can join and empower them by technology", Dr Awasthi said, who has been instrumental in making IFFCO a global leader in fertiliser production. IFFCO has made rapid strides on all fronts and has diversified into several sectors like General Insurance, Rural Telephony, Rural Retail, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) under his leadership.

On the question of what difference he found while travelling in the rural areas, Dr. Awasthi said, "There is a perceptible change, and this is not only for 3 years; this is from 10 - 15 years from now. Several schemes and initiatives launched by the present government have made perceptible change in rural India. With Digital India, I can do everything from my phone, even while travelling. So, I have seen big change. For example, woman of south who can't understand my language, hold my hand wanting to understand the Mobile technology," he said.

Dr. Awasthi, who is seen as the guardian of about 4 crore farmers also said, "I think everyone has contributed, but Narendra Modi has strived to bring major change through digital India. He has brought certain dynamism. We couldn't have reached here without the government's support and contribution."

He further said that IFFCO YUVA has been launched to give Skill

Development Training to the rural youths following the Skill India initiatives taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "We ask them to take an online test. After the test, it tells you what skills match your aptitude. They have designed theoretical program, followed by practical training, all online", Dr. Awasthi said.

"In the Golden Jubilee year, the IFFCO plans to achieve specific targets for energy saving through modernisation of existing plants, manufacture of new fertiliser products, setting up agro-processing units and agro-chemicals projects, diversification in e-Commerce and promoting venture capital projects, setting up fertiliser projects overseas through strategic alliances and also to set up a credit rating agency for cooperative Societies", Dr. Awasthi said while talking to ANI.

He further said, "IFFCO will concentrate more on organic fertilisers. Inorganic fertilizers have reached a plateau; there is no further need of chemical fertilizers. Now the time has come, that world will switch over to different kinds of crop pattern, different kinds of nutrition management, which I believe is Organic. Hence we will now concentrate more on organic fertilizers which is the future.

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The Indian Government has lodged a strong protest with Canada over the presence of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a Khalistan event in Toronto, where separatist elements were felicitated.

"We have taken up such issues in the past with the government of Canada, and in this particular instance, without getting into details, I can tell you the practice has not been discontinued," said Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Gopal Baglay.

Two legislators, who had authored a motion in the Ontario assembly terming the 1984 anti-Sikh riots "Genocide", were felicitated at the Khalistan event.

On April 30, Trudeau addressed a parade for 'Khalsa Day', which included floats glorifying Sikh militant leaders Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Amreek Singh and former General Shahbeg Singh who were killed in the siege of the Golden Temple and Operation Bluestar in June 1984.

The procession, organised by the Ontario Sikhs and Gurdwara Council, also felicitated the legislator from Trudeau's Liberal Party, Harinder Kaur Malhi who had moved a resolution on "genocide" against India for the anti-Sikh riots of November 1984, that was passed by the Ontario Assembly on April 6 this year.

India has been raising the issue of emerging anti-India elements in Canada calling it a "misguided motion based on a limited understanding of India, its constitution, society, ethos, rule of law and its judicial process,", with the government expressing its unhappiness both with the High Commission in Delhi, and with the Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan when he met with Defence Minister Arun Jaitley in Delhi on April 18.

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The manuscript of an untitled prequel to Harry Potter books handwritten by author J.K. Rowling has been stolen in a robbery in Birmingham, United Kingdom.

Just 800 words long, the handwritten manuscript written on two sides of an A5 postcard was taken from a property in Kings Heath, Birmingham, reports the CNN.

The West Midlands Police in a statement on Twitter appealed the Harry Potter fans not to buy this copy if offered.

"The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans. We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale, to contact police," investigating officer Paul Jauncey said in a statement.

The story is said to feature a young James Potter, Harry's father, and his best friend Sirius Black .

Rowling had penned the story for a local dyslexia charity, which then sold it at a 2008 Sotherby's auction for 25,000 (around $32,000).

West Midlands police said the theft, in which several items of jewelry were also stolen, occurred at a property on Howard Road sometime between April 13 and 24.

They are asking anyone with any information to come forward.

Rowling also urged her followers on Twitter to turn down any sales of the manuscript.

"PLEASE DON'T BUY THIS IF YOU'RE OFFERED IT. Originally auctioned for @englishpen, the owner supported writers' freedoms by bidding for it," she tweeted on Friday.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday questioned Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's "silence" over Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) Chief Lalu Yadav's daughter Misa Bharti's money laundering case, and asked him to come out openly and order a proper investigation into the matter.

Senior BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi told ANI, "The land has been purchased under the name of Lalu Yadav's daughter under highly suspicious circumstances. I suggest, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), ED should take strict against Bharti. Nitish Kumar who has kept silence on the issue should also come out openly and take strict action her in connection with the matter."

Echoing similar sentiments, BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav said the latest reports over the dealings of Misa Bharti has proved that she has accumulated illegal fund from anonymous companies.

"Now, the Bihar Chief Minister has to break his silence on the issues related to his Cabinet Ministers, adding that the government should take strict action against Misa Bharti," Yadav told ANI.

A leading English daily accessed papers that document land purchases in Delhi's Tony Sainik farms and Bijwasan luxury farm enclave - two deals that point to alleged Misa Bharti is involved in money laundering matter on a massive scale.

Lalu's daughter has bought almost 7 acres of land worth Rs 100 crores for just about 1.4 crores through mysterious business entities that have allowed her to make huge profits at their expense.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday chose the occasion of function here to exhort the international community to work towards the sustainable world peace.

Addressing the gathering after inaugurating the function, Prime Minister Modi said, "The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states but it is from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence."

The biggest challenge to Sustainable World Peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states: PM @narendramodi  PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 12, 2017

In a veiled attack on Pakistan, the Prime Minister alluded to the pro-terror policies of Islamabad.

"The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion. These ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction," he said.

"The themes of Social Justice and Sustainable World Peace resonate deeply within Buddha's teachings and they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected," the Prime Minister added.

Lauding the Buddha's message of peace and truth, Prime Minister Modi said Lord Buddha's message is as relevant in the twenty first century as it was two and a half millennia ago.

Lord Buddha's message is as relevant in the twenty first century as it was two and a half millennia ago: PM @narendramodipic.twitter.com/g2E1ANbVLj  PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 12, 2017

"The themes of Social Justice and Sustainable World Peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings. On Vesak let us light the lamps of knowledge to move out of darkness; let us look more within and let us uphold nothing else but the truth," he said.
China's naval ambitions in Sri Lanka received a jolt when Colombo rejected Beijing's request to dock one of its submarines in the nation's capital.

A senior Sri Lankan government official has said that China's request to dock one of its submarines in Colombo this month has been rejected and it is "unlikely" that the government would agree to China's request to dock the submarine at any time ,given India's concerns, the Colombo Page reported.

This decision by Sri Lanka shows that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit is successful as he arrived in Colombo Thursday afternoon for a two-day visit to the country.

India has been raising concerns about Chinese military influence in strategically important Indian Ocean Region since 2014 when Sri Lanka had permitted China to dock its submarine in the capital of Colombo.

India has also expressed its concerns over Sri Lanka finalizing to lease 80% of its loss-making Hambantota port to China for 99 years .But trade unions are also opposing the deal.

China has invested heavily in the infrastructure projects like roads, railways and ports in Sri Lanka .

Prime Minister Modi was accompanied by his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe to the temple.

Seema Malaka or the Gangaramaya Temple is a Buddhist temple constructed in the middle of the Beira Lake and the design was inspired by the ancient monasteries in forests of Anuradhapura and Ritigala.

Following the temple visit, the Indian Prime Minister will attend a private dinner with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena at 'Temple Trees', the latter's official residence.

On the second day of his visit, Prime Minister Modi will deliver a celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Madras High Court on Friday granted conditional bail to sand mining baron J. Sekhar Reddy and his associates in a money laundering case.

High Court Judge Baskaran granted bail with condition that Reddy should furnish sureties of Rs.10 lakh and two of his associates P Kumar, K Sreenivasulu have to furnish sureties of Rs. five lakh each and should appear and sign paper at Delhi's Enforcement Directorate (ED) office.

Earlier in March, the Enforcement Directorate had arrested Reddy and his two associates post demonetisation.

The trio was arrested under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after they were called for questioning by the Enforcement Directorate.

Reddy and his two associates were later produced in a court which had sent them to jail till March 28.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Assam health care sector recently took a leap as a new mother and child wing with 100 beds was inaugurated by State health minister Himanta Biswas Sarma at function held inside the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital campus.

The inauguration was attended by Hitendra Nath Goswami, Assam Assembly Speaker, Kamakhya Prasad Tassa, members of parliament, and a host of dignitaries.

The new wing marks a major physical extension of the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital. The new hospital will allot 12 quarters each to doctore, nurses and paramedic staffs.

A total of Rs 22.32 crores was spent for the entire project. Further, Health Minister announced Rs.120 crore as one time financial aid for overall development of campus.

The hospital stands fully equipped including neo natal care units and neo natal intensive care unit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On April 5 2017, Tri-County graduate Joan (Meints) Hayden of Chapman, Kan., was one of seven Kansas teachers honored by being named a Kansas Master Teacher. The ceremony was held on the campus of Emporia State University, Emporia, Kan.

Emporia State established Kansas Master Teacher awards in 1954. The awards are presented annually to teachers who have served the teaching profession long and well and who typify the outstanding qualities of earnest and constructive teachers.

Joan is a 1982 Tri County graduate and also a graduate of the University of Nebraska Lincoln. She has been teaching in Geary County Kansas/Fort Riley for 29 years.

Joan is the daughter of Lois Meints of Rural Beatrice.
Rounding off his two-day state visit to Sri Lanka on Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi departed for Delhi from Colombo a short while ago.

Before his departure, he tweeted "I thank President @MaithripalaS, Prime Minister @RW_UNP, the Government & warm-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka for their hospitality."

"Thank you Sri Lanka! This was a memorable visit, in which I got to take part in various programmes, including Vesak Day celebrations," Modi added.

During his visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held meetings with the Sri Lankan leadership, including President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and Leader of Opposition R. Sampanthan and other leaders of his Tamil National Alliance (TNA) party.

Discussions were focused on issues of bilateral, regional and international interest to both New Delhi and Colombo.

Prime Minister Modi also inaugurated and attended the International Vesak Day celebrations, where he offered India's continued support to Sri Lanka, whom he described as a 'friend'.

"We are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. For us most relevant benchmark for success of our friendship is your progress and success."

"As you make important choices for harmony and progress of our society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building efforts. I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka," he added.

Talking about the Buddhist links between India and Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister said that the friendship between India and Sri Lanka was etched in time by the "Great Master- Buddha".

"Buddhism imparts an ever present radiance to our relationship. Vesak is an occasion for us to celebrate the unbroken shared heritage of Buddhism. Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy," said the Prime Minister.

He said the countries of South, Central, South East and East Asia were proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

He further lauded Sri Lanka's Buddhist connection and said, "Sri Lanka takes pride in being among the most important nerve centres of Buddhist teachings and learning."

Talking about the bilateral and economic relations, Prime Minister Modi said that "economic and social well being of people of Sri Lanka is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians and security of our societies is indivisible".

He further mentioned India's aid to Sri Lanka for the development projects.

"India's development cooperation with Sri Lanka amounts to USD 2.6 billion and its aim is to support Sri lanka in realizing peaceful, prosperous and secure future for its people," said Prime Minister Modi.

Prime Minister Modi also soothed the emotions of Indian origin Sri Lankan Tamils through what has been described as his 'medical diplomacy' through the inauguration of the Dickoya Glengairan super-specialty hospital built with Indian assistance of Rs 150 crores.

Modi said the health and well being of the people of Sri Lanka "is a shared priority". He also addressed Sri Lankan Tamils in the presence of President Maithripala Sirisena and community leaders, saying that he was aware of the Government of Sri Lanka's active steps to improve the living conditions of Tamil through various schemes, including a five-year National Plan of Action.

He hailed the spirit of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka and announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas and the extension of the emergency ambulance service.

Prime Minister Modi assured Tamils that the government and people of India are with them in their journey towards peace and greater prosperity.

He also announced a series of sops for the Sri Lankans like setting up of vocational training centres, ten engineering training centres and labs to impart suitable skills, computer and science labs in plantation schools.

On Friday, Modi also visited the Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is a Buddhist temple and is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which is said to house the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha.

The Prime Minister arrived in Colombo on Thursday evening for a two-day visit. He was received by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera and several other senior ministers.

Soon after his arrival, he visited one of Sri Lanka's oldest Buddhist temples, the Seema Malaka Temple and took part in the traditional lamp-lighting ceremony.

Prime Minister Modi, accompanied by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, prayed and offered flowers at the altar of the temple, which is a part of the more-than-120-year-old Gangaramaya Temple.

The temple's chief monk received the two leaders.

This was Prime Minister Modi's second visit to Sri Lanka in the last two years, and will be returning home this evening.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Sri Lanka's Leader of Opposition R. Sampanthan and other leaders of his Tamil National Alliance (TNA) party here on Friday.

The meeting was described as a courtesy call as per protocol.

Both leaders reportedly discussed issues of mutual interest to India and Sri Lanka, according to reports.

Prime Minister Modi, who will be rounding off his two-day visit to the island nation later this evening, had earlier in the day, inaugurated International Vesak Day celebrations, where he offered India's continued support to Sri Lanka, whom he described as a 'friend'..

"We are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. For us most relevant benchmark for success of our friendship is your progress and success."

"As you make important choices for harmony and progress of our society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building efforts. I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka," he added.

Talking about the Buddhist links between India and Sri Lanka, the Prime Minister said that the friendship between India and Sri Lanka was etched in time by the "Great Master- Buddha".

"Buddhism imparts an ever present radiance to our relationship. Vesak is an occasion for us to celebrate the unbroken shared heritage of Buddhism. Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy," said the Prime Minister.

He said the countries of South, Central, South East and East Asia were proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

He further lauded Sri Lanka's Buddhist connection and said, "Sri Lanka takes pride in being among the most important nerve centres of Buddhist teachings and learning."

Talking about the bilateral and economic relations, Prime Minister Modi said that "economic and social well being of people of Sri Lanka is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians and security of our societies is indivisible".

He further mentioned India's aid to Sri Lanka for the development projects.

"India's development cooperation with Sri Lanka amounts to USD 2.6 billion and its aim is to support Sri lanka in realizing peaceful, prosperous and secure future for its people," said Prime Minister Modi.

Prime Minister Modi also soothed the emotions of Indian origin Sri Lankan Tamils through what has been described as his 'medical diplomacy' through the inauguration of the Dickoya Glengairan super-specialty hospital built with Indian assistance of Rs 150 crores.

Modi said the health and well being of the people of Sri Lanka "is a shared priority". He also addressed Sri Lankan Tamils in the presence of President Maithripala Sirisena and community leaders, saying that he was aware of the Government of Sri Lanka's active steps to improve the living conditions of Tamil through various schemes, including a five-year National Plan of Action.

He hailed the spirit of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka and announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas and the extension of the emergency ambulance service.

Prime Minister Modi assured Tamils that the government and people of India are with them in their journey towards peace and greater prosperity.

He also announced a series of sops for the Sri Lankans like setting up of vocational training centres, ten engineering training centres and labs to impart suitable skills, computer and science labs in plantation schools.

On Friday, Modi also visited the Sri Dalada Maligawa or the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy, Sri Lanka. It is a Buddhist temple and is located in the royal palace complex of the former Kingdom of Kandy, which is said to house the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha.

The Prime Minister arrived in Colombo on Thursday evening for a two-day visit. He will be returning home this evening.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, currently on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, will be attending the International Vesak Day celebrations and interact with leading Buddhist spiritual leaders, scholars and theologians, along with Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

He will also deliver a celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day.

Prime Minister Modi will also address the Indian origin Tamil community at Norwood Grounds.

The Prime Minister will then inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital, a base hospital in the same province which has been built with Indian grant.

He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC). Thereafter, the Prime Minister will also hold a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBC).

The Prime Minister will then arrive at the President's Palace for a lunch hosted by the Sri Lankan President.

Prime Minister Modi will also visit Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple (The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), where he will sign the visitor's book and interact with Mahanayaks.

Just before returning to India, the Prime Minister will meet Sri Lankan Leader of Opposition at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo.

The Prime Minister will also visit the hilly regions of Sri Lanka that host tea plantations.

India will give an aid of $2.6 billion for the hospital. Sri Lanka's hilly regions home Indian Tamil people who work in tea plantains.

Upon his arrival in Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Modi met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena.

He also met former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Ministry of States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) agreed to begin documentation of illegal Afghan nationals which is considered as a 'carrot- and- stick -policy for illegal Afghan nationals.

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the Federal Minister of SAFRON Lt. Gen. (retired) Abdul Qadir Baloch and Chairman Nadra Usman Mobeen asking illegal Afghan refugees to get them registered.

There are approximately 1 million Afghan nationals living without documentation in Afghanistan "There is an offer for the Afghan nationals in the deal. This is a carrot and stick approach. If Afghan nationals get themselves registered, they will not be harassed by police," The Dawn quoted Abdul Qadir Khan as saying.

The legislation the government would give six months to the Afghan refugees for registration. Pakistani authorities committed abuses against Afghan refugees that triggered mass refugee return of about 200,000 in 2016.

The consequences of the National Action Plan for Afghan refugees included a wave of police abuse, such as the unlawful use of force , arbitrary arrests and detentions.

Baloch said Afghan government has been taken on board before the process of documentation of the illegal AFghan national in Pakistan. "This is why Afghan government will provide us with an official for each centre to verify the illegal immigrants, Dawn Quoted Baloh as saying.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Inaugrating the Dickoya hospital here, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said India also shares health and well-being of Sri Lankans.

He was speaking after inaugurating the Dickoya Glengairan Hospital in the Central Province of Sri Lanka. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena also attended the function.

After the inauguration, Prime Minister Modi toured the super-specialty hospital built with the cost of Rs 150 crore, which is going to mainly cater to the medical needs of Tamil plantation workers of Indian-origin who dominate the area.

India's total development portfolio to Sri Lanka now exceeds $2.6 billion, of which the grant component is more than $436 million.

India's financial assistance to the Dickoya Glengairan Hospital is a part of India's total assistance to Sri Lanka.

Earlier in the day, the Prime Minister reiterated India's full support to Sri Lanka's growth and prosperity.

The Prime Minister said that India's rapid growth could bring dividends for entire region, especially in Sri Lanka.

"In infrastructure, connectivity, transport and energy, we are poised to scale up our cooperation," said Modi.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that would improve government's cybersecurity that seeks to reduce threats from automated attacks on the Internet.

As per the order, the agency heads will be held accountable for protecting their networks and will require them to use their government's commerce department guidelines to manage risks to their systems.

The order places the defence secretary and the head of the intelligence community in charge of protecting "national security" systems that operate classified and military network.

The order also asks the federal agencies to use The Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity (the Framework) developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to manage the agency's cybersecurity risk.

"Each agency head shall provide a risk management report to the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) within 90 days of the date of this order," the order read.

"We've seen increasing attacks from allies, adversaries, primarily nation states but also non-nation state actors, and sitting by and doing nothing is no longer an option. So President Trump's action today is a very heartening one," Thomas Bossert, Trump's homeland security adviser, said during a Whitehouse press briefing.

Bossert, however, said the order was not prompted by a Russian-motivated issue, that targetted presidential elections last year, rather it was a United States of America-motivated issue.

"The Russians are not our only adversary on the Internet, and the Russians are not the only people that operate in a negative way on the Internet. The Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians, other nation states are motivated to use cyber capacity and cyber tools to attack our people and our governments and their data," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order forming a commission on voter fraud and elections.

The new commission aims at investigating the President's claims that three to five million people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential polls, CNN reports.

The panel will be headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Kobach has been accused of extreme racism and having ties to white nationalists.

Deputy press secretary Sarah Sanders announced five additional members who will be added to a list of about a dozen: Connie Lawson, Indiana's secretary of state; Bill Gardner, New Hampshire's secretary of state; Matthew Dunlap, Maine's secretary of state; Ken Blackwell, former secretary of state of Ohio; and Christy McCormick, who already serves on the US Election Assistance Commission.

Trump was initially set to sign an executive order looking into the alleged voter fraud on January 26, a few days after taking office.

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At meeting held on 11 May 2017

Plastiblends India announced that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on 11 May 2017, inter alia, has

1. Recommended dividend of Rs. 2.50 per share.

2. Issue of Bonus shares in the proportion of 1:1 i.e. One equity share of Rs. 5/- each for every One fully paid up equity share held as on the record date, subject to approval of members of the Company. The record date for reckoning eligible shareholders entitled to receive bonus shares will be fixed in due course.

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The Committee constituted by the Finance Minister to suggest the areas in respect of which further Income Computation and Disclosure Standards (ICDS) may be notified under the Income Tax Act, 1961 ('the Act') has suggested the notification of ICDS in respect of Real Estate Transactions and submitted the draft of the same.

The draft ICDS submitted by the committee is based on the Guidance Note issued on Real Estate Transactions issued by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI). For the purposes of providing uniformity and certainty and harmonising the same with provisions of the Act, the committee suggested certain changes in draft ICDS.

The draft ICDS on Real Estate Transactions along with the significant changes suggested in ICDS vis-vis the Guidance Note issued by ICAI are uploaded on the Income-tax website at http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) invites comments from stakeholders on the draft ICDS on Real Estate Transactions, which may be submitted to Director TPL-III by e-mail at dirtpl3@nic.in by 26th May, 2017.

Section 145(2) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 ('the Act') provides that the Central Government may notify Income Computation and Disclosure Standards (ICDS) for any class of assessees or for any class of income. Accordingly, Central Government notified 10 ICDS vide Notification No.

S. O. 3079 (E) dated 29th September, 2016. These ICDS inter-alia contain provisions relating to valuation of inventory; construction contracts; effects in changes of foreign exchange rates, borrowing costs etc. These ICDS are applicable from assessment year 2017-18 (previous year 2016-17) in respect of specified assessees for computation of income under the head Profits and gains of business or profession or Income from other sources.

The Finance Minister had constituted a Committee comprising of experts from accounting field, departmental officers and representatives from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) to suggest the areas in respect of which further ICDS may be notified under the Act.

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Every vote counts. And so does every voter. Serving every elector flawlessly is the commitment of Election Commission of India that it has lived up to time and again. The Commission has added another feather to its cap with the launch of National Contact Centre with a toll-free No. 1800111950. Now any citizen from any part of the country can call on the toll-free in English or Hindi with any query or complaint at any time of the day. Callers can enquire on subjects such as elections, voting dates, EPIC, electoral roll, online registration etc. and lodge a complaint by simply dialing in to the toll free no. Not only this, executives also make outbound calls for educating the electors and spreading voter awareness.

The National Contact Centre is operated on a National Grievance Redressal System Software. This software is a single window platform to manage complaints and feedback received through calls, emails, sms and website access in an integrated and time-bound manner.

Callers may connect with the executives to register a complaint and know about its status of receipt and disposal as well as to give suggestions and feedback at every step of the way.

The Contact Centre is Commission's step forward towards bringing about electoral reforms where citizens and officials are empowered to monitor and report any anomaly or violation of ECI instructions in the field before, during or post elections.

Each state and UT will also soon setup and operationalize dedicated State Contact Centre (SCC) and District Contact Centre (DCC) to ensure seamless flow of information across the contact centers for handling issues/ query from citizens. National Contact Centre will build IT protocols to ensure that any call landing at NCC are properly redirected to the respective State Contact Centre.

It is expected that on operationalization of Integrated Contact Centre, ECI will be able to provide multilingual support to all the citizens across the nation in a decentralized and integrated manner.

ICT 2025 Vision Document

ICT 2025 is about setting up core IT infrastructure and process to consolidate multitude of election process and functions.

The ICT 2025 Vision Document heralds the beginning of what we call as Digitalization instead of just Digitization. Digitalization is the key strategy in ICT 2025. It is the strategy of adopting recent technologies and consolidating existing technologies in IT to make the most of the digital resources available in the Election ecosystem.

Launch of ICT 2025 Vision Document by the Hon'ble Commission

The ICT 2025 Projects which capitalise on Digitalization, will capture both Electoral Process and the conduct of elections. There are four major components of the ICT 2025.

1. Integrated Software application

2. GIS, Analytic and Integrated Contact Centre

3. IT infrastructure including data center, IT security, disaster recovery

4. Knowledge Management, Capacity building and social media engagement

Further Election Commission has launched 'Annual Report 2017' & 'Electoral Statistics Pocket book 2017' & 'IT in Elections Booklet'.

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App is a 'Digital Option' to jawans to lodge their grievances: Home Minister

The Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh launched the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) Mobile Application for grievance redressal of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) personnel. The Union Home Minister also launched BSFMyApp on the occasion.

Speaking on the occasion, Shri Rajnath Singh said that he had proposed this App at the DGPs conference held in Hyderabad last year. He said that he wished to relate to every jawan working for nation. He congratulated the BSF for developing this App in short span of time. He said that the CPAFs are one of the most disciplined forces. If they are disciplined, this does not mean that they do not have emotions, he added. He said that they also have some personal problems and the system keeps on resolving their problems from time to time. Shri Rajnath Singh said that this App is required when the jawans feel that their problems need attention of the Ministry of Home Affairs. This has given a 'Digital Option' to jawans to lodge their grievances and he is just one click away from jawans, the Home Minister said. Shri Rajnath Singh said that he will review the dashboard of the App every month and check the status of redressal of grievances. The MHA will intervene, wherever required, he said. He said that everybody should get benefitted from the telecom revolution.

The Home Minister also appreciated the jawans for the dedication with which they do their duty. He said that the Government is making efforts for the welfare of jawans. He said that to curb stagnation, 34,000 jawans have been promoted to Head constable position. He also said that the families of the jawans, who sacrifice their life for the nation, should get minimum assistance of Rs one crore. He said that the Government has recently launched a web portal Bharat ke veer to enable the willing donors to contribute towards the family of a braveheart who sacrificed his/her life in line of duty. The web portal is getting very good response, he added.

The MHA Mobile App has been developed in view of the fact that personnel of various Central Armed Police Forces are discharging their duties at their places of duty all over the Country. In the course of discharging their duties, they come across various personal/service related problems which can be addressed and re-addressed by their organizations. All Central Armed Police Forces have well organized mechanism for Redressal of Grievances of their personnel. Notwithstanding, there are still some personnel who feel that their grievances need further consideration and better solution. As a result, they have a keen desire to raise their level of grievances to the level of Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). This required a suitable mechanism to enable Force personnel to submit their grievances to MHA and at the same time provide an opportunity to their organization for further consideration of their requests. Considering this requirement, the MHA Mobile App provides a common system in which all personnel of various CAPFs can submit their grievances through a Mobile Application and the same provides respective Forces to receive the submitted grievance for further action. The Mobile application also has a provision for MHA to continuously monitor the action taken by various CAPFs on their grievances and regulate the process for further improvement in the Grievance Redressal System.

The BSFMyApp launched on the occasion has been developed to cater to the requirement of BSF personnel regarding Grievance Redressal as well as various other service and welfare related issues of the Force personnel, deployed in the field. It provides mechanism to address issues related to Pay, GPF, Leave, Deputation etc. The most significant feature of the Application is its Financial Literacy Module which not only educates BSF Personnel about investment of their savings but also facilitates investment in a safe and systematic manner.

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Accra, May 12 (IANS/MAP) The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) in Ghana over the past two years has constructed 1,705 boreholes fitted with hand pumps and 70 piped schemes to boost the nation's drinking water supply coverage.

Worlanyo Kwadjo Siabe, Chief Executive of the agency, during a five-day review said 12,756 washrooms were also built.

The meeting was held under the theme: "Rural water and sanitation services provision: Current role of CWSA, gaps and the way forward for effective and sustainable delivery".

Siabe expressed a deep concern about the poor management of the water facilities, according to the report on Friday.

"Many of these facilities, being run under the community ownership and management system, had to be rehabilitated only to go through another cycle of mismanagement," he said.

Siabe also complained about high staff attrition, poor working conditions and inadequate logistics and pledged to lead reforms to strengthen the performance of the agency.

--IANS

soni/vm

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In a close call for 152 passengers, an Air India Delhi-Pune flight AI-849 overshot the runway after landing here on Friday evening, officials said.

The AI and airport authorities immediately evacuated all the 152 passengers on board from the airliner and no injuries were reported.

The incident occurred around 6.30 p.m. and efforts were underway to clear the blocked runway which was expected to be operational soon.

--IANS

qn/lok/vm

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Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday he expects IS operative Neil Prakash, Australia's most wanted terrorist, to be extradited within the next few months.

Prakash, 26, of Melbourne, a former head of recruitment for the Islamic State (IS) was arrested in November in Turkey while trying to leave for Syria, Efe news reported.

Since then Australia has been claiming him for various crimes of terrorism, including support and recruitment for IS, and entry into a prohibited combat zone.

"Neil Prakash, who has been one of the key financiers or organisers in IS, the barbaric terrorist group, will be brought back to Australia and he will face the courts," Turnbull said in an interview with Channel 7.

Prakash, also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, is linked to several plans to attack Australia and has called for lone wolf-style attacks in the US.

According to media reports, Turkey has about 420 Australians on its immigration blacklist, suspected of travelling to Iraq and Syria to join IS, and has deported more than 20 people since 2015.

--IANS

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The Islamic State group has released the photo of a Bangladeshi youth who was killed fighting for the terror outfit in Iraq, a media report said.

The photo was of Taz Rahman, who was from Mohammadpur in Dhaka, Dhaka Tribune reported.

The photo - published early on Thursday in Arabic Nashir channel on Telegram and later in At-Tamkin Bangla website - identifies him as Abu Ismail al-Bengali.

The photo statement does not contain the time of his death, but Swedish-Bangladeshi journalist Tasneem Khalil told the Dhaka Tribune that he had possibly been killed in Iraq earlier this month.

A close family source confirmed his identity to the Dhaka Tribune.

"Taz Rahman was active in the Finnish jihadi/Islamist scene until 2013/2014 before migrating to Syria," Tasneem added.

He was last seen in Finland in January 2015, while another Bangladeshi IS fighter, Gazi Kamrus Salam Sohan, met him in Raqqa, Syria between April and May 2015.

Sohan, a former Desco engineer, returned home in mid-May 2015. Upon his arrest in Dhaka, Sohan told investigators that Taz had been working as a physiotherapist at a hospital in Raqqa.

Taz was the son-in-law of Abdul Mannan, who leads the Islamic Society of Northern Finland, and also the second in command of the local Social Democratic Party.

According to a close friend of Taz, who requested anonymity, he met Taz in Cyprus in 2000 and left for Finland with his Latvian wife in 2011. They were separated the following year.

Taz got married to the daughter of Mannan of Olulu city. Later he got close to some Jamaat-e-Islami men including Abdus Salam.

"Taz's wife may have travelled to Syria with him. They had a small child," a source close to Taz told the Dhaka Tribune, but could not confirm the information. Taz also co-owned a halal shop in Finland.

--IANS

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday sent out a stern message to the police to be on alert and take immediate action if anybody tries to spread communal discord.

"Some miscreants from outside were responsible for causing turmoil in Dhulagarh and spreading rumours of communal tension in the region. They have also initiated false campaigns in social media. The situation went out of hand as the police was not able to tackle the situation initially. This should not happen," Banerjee said.

"Police has be very careful and alert in these sort of situations. Their duty is to take quick and timely action. Police cannot shake off the responsibility," she said at an administrative meeting in Howrah, referring to the violence and tension in Dhulagarh last December.

Banerjee said the state government is doing the needful for the villagers of Dhulagarh affected during the time of tension.

"The state government is reconstructing the houses that were destroyed. A total compensation of Rs 2.5 crore was given to the affected villagers and more than 250 houses and shops are being rebuilt in Dhulagarh," she said.

The Chief Minister urged the police to increase its visibility in the region and be in constant contact with the local sources to get the first hand information about any discord.

"Police has to increase their visibility. If you receive any information even from a small source, do not neglect that. Use the green police and civic police forces at your disposal as major sources. They are your asset," Banerjee said while talking to inspectors in-charge of different police stations.

"Police should make a list of the ICDS centres, 100 days work centres and local clubs and should be in regular contact with the clubs to gather all the ground level information," she advised.

Alluding to the recent incidents of attacks on police forces, Banerjee asked the police to operate in such a way that the miscreants are intimidated.

"There is nothing that police cannot do. The miscreants should be alarmed by the presence of police. They should not dare to threaten police at any cost," she added.

--IANS

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A "suspected" bird hit forced a Jet Airways flight to return shortly after it took off from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport here on Friday morning.

The aircraft landed safely and all 180 passengers and eight crew have also deplaned, a spokesperson said.

The incident occurred around 8.15 a.m. on the Mumbai-Bangkok flight 9W-70 when the crew executed an air-turn following the suspected hit on the tail of the aircraft.

The aircraft is currently being examined by the Jet Airways engineering team and ground personnel.

Following the strike, the flight has been delayed by over four hours and is rescheduled to depart at 12.45 p.m. to reach Bangkok around 6.25 p.m., the spokesperson said.

--IANS

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BJP national President Amit Shah will visit Telangana for three days from May 22, a party leader said on Friday.

BJP Telangana unit President K. Laxman said Shah will visit Munugudu in Nalgonda district on May 22, and tour Nagarjunasagar and Miryalguda on May 23.

He will address party meetings in Nakrekal, Bhongir and Hyderabad on May 24.

Shah will also meet party district unit chiefs, other office-bearers and leaders during his visit to gear up the cadres for the 2019 general and state elections.

Laxman said the party will prepare a road map for the 2019 elections.

Addressing a meeting of BJP leaders from Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency will be top on the BJP chief's tour programme.

Shah was scheduled to address BJP's booth-level workers in the constituency last month but his visit was put off.

The BJP is determined to make a serious bid to wrest the Hyderabad seat from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), which has been winning this seat since 1984.

Laxman said the party will try to win the support of poor Muslims in Hyderabad to defeat the AIMIM.

--IANS

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The Congress on Friday accused the central government of spreading what it claimed was "misinformation" on a Delhi High Court order in the National Herald case, saying it showed the regime's "fear, insecurity, and vindictive approach".

The party also accused the Bharatiya Janata Party of launching a "witch-hunt" in the case.

The opposition party alleged that the government was circulating unsigned press notes which said that the court had directed the Income Tax Department to initiate a probe into the matter which, the party said, was not the case.

"The amount of misinformation going on with regard to Young Indian-National Herald case makes me wonder whether the government has anything better to do than to circulate unsigned notes that are actually campaigns of misinformation and distortion," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

"We have one such note. It is a government's version of what happened regarding the judicial challenge in the Income Tax matter of Young Indian Pvt. Ltd. It's a sorry state of affairs that government agencies, by proxy, are engaging in incomplete and distorted information, possibly bordering on contempt of court," Singhvi said.

"This shows the government's fear, insecurity, and vindictive approach," he added.

The Delhi High Court on Friday declined to entertain a plea by Young Indian Pvt. Ltd. (YIL), in which Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi are the main stakeholders, challenging Income Tax Department notices served on the company, thereby clearing the decks for an I-T Department probe.

The Congress leader said the High Court observed that all the points raised in the writ petition can be raised in front of the Income Tax Department.

"The court said: 'Why did they come to HC; raise all the points in front of the department'. The court recorded my statement and gave me liberty that all points raised by me can be raised before the department, including the jurisdictional point," said Singhvi.

"Because of that, I withdrew the writ. This is the order. Is this what you have been told? Unsigned note circulated by government proxies is using all adjectives. Some are even saying there's direction by the court to the tax department to investigate the matter."

"Does the order show this? We will apologise if the order shows this. Some even ran a media report that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been asked to appear before the court. Please tell, where is it written," Singhvi asked.

Singhvi said that the Congress is proud to be associated with the National Herald which, he said, stood for free speech during the colonial period.

Another Congress spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala said that Young Indian Private Limited had raised some jurisdictional issues concerning the Income Tax Department in the High Court, but withdrew its petition after being "satisfied" with the court direction.

"Young Indian had raised certain fundamental jurisdictional issues challenging the powers of Income Tax authorities. The High Court directed these authorities to decide all the issues raised in the court petition. Being satisfied with it, Singhvi, the counsel for Young Indian, has withdrawn the petition," Surjewala said.

"Incidentally, Young Indian is a 'not-for-profit' company that only runs the National Herald paper. No one can withdraw a single rupee of profit, salary, or dividend from it or benefit from it in any manner as per the Companies Act," the Congress leader said.

"The witch-hunt or malice of the current BJP-led government will not deter us from upholding our bounden duty to the nation," Surjewala added.

The case stems from a complaint by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who alleged "cheating" in the acquisition of the Associated Journals Limited (AJL), the publisher of National Herald, by Young Indian Private Limited.

Swamy claimed that the Congress gave an unsecured loan to YIL, in which Sonia and Rahul have 38 per cent stake each, to acquire AJL.

--IANS

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The Congress on Friday accused the central government of spreading "misinformation" on a Delhi High Court order in the National Herald case, while the BJP said the order has exposed the Congress "like never before."

Accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of launching a "witch-hunt" in the case, the Congress alleged that the government was circulating unsigned press notes which said that the court had directed the Income Tax Department to initiate a probe into the matter which, the party said was not true.

Welcoming the court order, the BJP accused the Congress of "usurping money for their own benefit" and termed it "one of the huge scams".

"The amount of misinformation going on with regard to Young Indian-National Herald case makes me wonder whether the government has anything better to do than to circulate unsigned notes that are actually campaigns of misinformation and distortion," said Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

"We have one such note. It is a government's version of what happened regarding the judicial challenge in the Income Tax matter of Young Indian Pvt. Ltd. It's a sorry state of affairs that government agencies, by proxy, are engaging in incomplete and distorted information, possibly bordering on contempt of court," Singhvi said.

"This shows the government's fear, insecurity, and vindictive approach," he added.

The Delhi High Court on Friday declined to entertain a plea by Young Indian Pvt. Ltd. (YIL), in which Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice President Rahul Gandhi are the main stakeholders, challenging Income Tax Department notices served on the company, thereby clearing the decks for an I-T Department probe.

The Congress leader said the High Court observed that all the points raised in the writ petition can be raised in front of the Income Tax Department.

"The court said: 'Why did they come to HC; raise all the points in front of the department'. The court recorded my statement and gave me liberty that all points raised by me can be raised before the department, including the jurisdictional point," said Singhvi.

"Because of that, I withdrew the writ. This is the order. Is this what you have been told? Unsigned note circulated by government proxies is using all adjectives. Some are even saying there's direction by the court to the tax department to investigate the matter."

"Does the order show this? We will apologise if the order shows this. Some even ran a media report that Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been asked to appear before the court. Please tell, where is it written?" Singhvi asked.

Singhvi said that the Congress is proud to be associated with the National Herald which, he said, stood for free speech during the colonial period.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra said: "The Congress party has been left exposed today as never before. Definitely the after-thought itself shows there is an admission of culpability. But the bigger issue is that the Congress has found excuses and alibis."

He said the fact that the High Court dismissed the plea "naturally shows that the court did not find any merit with the argument of the Congress".

"They (Congress) were usurping public money for their own benefit. It is one of the huge scams of Rs 5,000 crore," said Patra.

Another Congress spokesperson, Randeep Singh Surjewala said that Young Indian Private Limited had raised some jurisdictional issues concerning the Income Tax Department in the High Court, but withdrew its petition after being "satisfied" with the court direction.

"Young Indian is a 'not-for-profit' company that only runs the National Herald paper. No one can withdraw a single rupee of profit, salary, or dividend from it or benefit from it in any manner as per the Companies Act," the Congress leader said.

The case stems from a complaint by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who alleged "cheating" in the acquisition of the Associated Journals Limited (AJL), the publisher of National Herald, by Young Indian Private Limited.

Swamy claimed that the Congress gave an unsecured loan to YIL, in which Sonia and Rahul have 38 per cent stake each, to acquire AJL.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court's ban on alcohol may have shut down scores of bars in the vicinity of the national highway network in Goa, but this does not appear to have curbed the spate of road accidents -- at the rate of almost one per day -- in the tourist state.

The rising spate of accidents in the state, with its high vehicle density, has become such a significant issue that when the legislative assembly met on Tuesday for a day to ratify the Goods and Services Tax bill, the only other issue the lawmakers discussed, via a calling attention motion, was how to bring down accidents on Goa's roads.

Poor road engineering, rash and negligent driving, driving without helmets and under the influence of liquor are some of the key reasons for the accidents, according to the state Transport Department, but for Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar, mere financial penalties do not serve as a deterrent for Goa's errant drivers.

"Police officers have been asked to conduct classes at police stations for traffic offenders who have been caught without helmets. The classes are being designed by the police department over a period of three hours on two consecutive evenings for the violators," Parrikar has said, adding that , henceforth, mere fines for traffic violations will not do.

According to Transport Minister Sudin Dhavalikar, 326 people died on Goa's roads last year. In 2017, 115 people have so far been killed in over 100 accidents and this paints a grim picture, Dhavalikar said.

"The Motor Vehicles (Amendment) bill 2016 will be implemented in the state soon. The stringent punishment for driving under the influence of liquor and rash driving, or non-wearing of helmet, should help to bring down the accident rate," Dhavalikar told IANS.

Dhavalikar's department earlier this week also started a unique initiative, where two- and four-wheeler drivers were offered a red rose by Transport Department's enforcement officers for following traffic rules.

"We tried to do something positive, which will instill confidence in the motor vehicle users vis-a-vis following of rules," Dhavalikar said.

Goa, India's smallest state, has a vehicle density of nearly one for every resident. This high density is also a pointer to the state's poor infrastructure as far as a mass transportation system is concerned.

According to Transport Department statistics, the number of vehicles registered in the state has almost doubled to 13.5 lakh in the last five years.

This, plus the multitude of tourists -- over four million last year -- adds to the pressure on the state's roads, resulting in a spike in the number of accidents.

Parrikar now claims that a string of measures are being worked out over the next 15 days in a bid to bring down the accident rate.

"We are looking to incorporate traffic safety in school curriculum, remedial classes for habitual offenders in police stations. We are also working with the Public Works Department to correct accident prone zones," Parrikar said.

The Chief Minister also said that the objective of the exercise was to bring down the accident rate by "30 per cent to 40 per cent" by year-end.

(Mayabhushan Nagvenkar can be contacted at mayabhushan.n@ians.in)

--IANS

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The Delhi High Court on Friday slammed the city police over the manner of its probe into the disappearance of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Najeeb Ahmad, who has been missing since October last year.

A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Deepa Sharma said Delhi police was giving "an impression that investigation was not being done properly". The conduct of the police showed it was trying to "sensationalise the matter or looking for a way out", the bench observed.

"The status report (of police) does not show that he (Ahmad) was accessing any fundamentalist website," the bench noted when senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Ahmad's mother, contended that a newspaper had quoted a police source in a news report that claimed that before his disappearance, Ahmad had been looking for information on Islamic State (IS).

"We have to keep in mind the possibility that the police is trying to sensationalise or trying to find an escape route," the bench said.

The police should have carried out an internal inquiry as to who was the officer who had leaked or planted that information, it added.

The court also pulled up the police for not questioning the nine students suspected to be behind Ahmad's disappearance on day one and for not taking them into custody. It said: "What is the point of sending 400 men across the country to find Ahmad, when you have not probed any of the suspects.

The court, which was hearing a habeas corpus plea of Ahmad's mother Fatima Nafees, posted the case for further hearing on May 15 (Monday).

--IANS

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The External Affairs Ministry will host the 'India-Pacific Islands Sustainable Development Conference in Suva, Fiji, on May 25-26, it was announced on Friday.

The conference would be held under the framework of the Forum for India Pacific Islands Cooperation (Fipic) with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) as the key knowledge partner.

"Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh will host ministers from the 14 Pacific Island countries at the conference," the ministry said in a statement.

"Two Presidents and three Prime Ministers from Pacific island countries have confirmed their participation in the conference," it said, adding business leaders, academics, civil society members and youths from the region would also participate.

The two-day conference will focus on issues such as the blue economy, adaptation-mitigation practices for climate change, disaster preparedness, health, the India-initiated International Solar Alliance as well as finding practical solutions to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) implementation.

"The conference is expected to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience, and initiate public-private partnerships and collaborations for the benefit of all participating countries," the statement said.

Other key partners at the conference include ]industry organisations Ficci and CII, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF).

Fipic was formed in November 2014 to strengthen India's relationship with the Pacific island nations.

The first Fipic summit was held at the level of Heads of Government in November 2014 in Suva, Fiji, and the second one in August 2015 in Jaipur, India.

--IANS

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An alliance of civil society groups that visited Kashmir Valley amid the 2016 unrest has in a report urged the central government to address the Kashmir issue by initiating a "healthy dialogue" and discuss the demand for the "right to self-determination" by Kashmiris.

A "Citizen's report on the violations of Democratic rights in the Kashmir valley in 2016" was released by prominent civil rights leaders, including veteran lawyer Indira Jaising, filmmaker Sanjay Kak, women's rights activist Kavita Krishnan and trade unionist Gautam Mody at an event here on Thursday.

The report was based on the visit to Kashmir valley by 25 activists representing different rights organisations, civil society groups and trade unions last November. They went to the troubled valley to know "why the people in Kashmir are protesting?".

The group stayed in the valley for 10 days and spoke to different people, including lawyers, trade unionists and business communities, state government employees, students, doctors and journalists.

The 58-page report stresses on the need to recognise the Kashmir conflict as a political issue and "find the democratic and political means to address it".

"The movement in Kashmir has gone from what was initially merely a passive support for independence to an active demand for the right to self-determination," Gautam Mody, who was also part of the group that visited Kashmir, said at the event.

Putting forward the demands of the citizen's group, Mody said: "The release of prisoners, repealing AFSPA, withdrawal of the army, and the beginning of a democratic, open and accountable dialogue by the Indian government is needed."

Filmmaker Kak, who was also part of the 25-member citizen's delegation, stressed on the need for civil society groups in India to consider the Kashmir issue as an agenda and help resolve it.

He asserted the report was "too late" as Kashmiris were "consistently feeling betrayed by the Indian civil society".

He however said the admission in the report of the word "right to self-determination -- which has been a constant demand of the people of Kashmir -- was an achievement".

Talking about the political conciousness of Kashmiris, Kak said: "We should not see the stone in the hands of children, there is a political conciousness in it."

The members said the report would be released across 40 cities in the country and in those parts where the "understanding of Kashmir is absent".

Khurram Parvez, Chairman of the Jammu and Kashmir Civil Society Coalition (JKCCS), said Kashmiris did not expect the Indian civil society to fight for them.

"We Kashmiris do not expect Indians to fight our battle. We will fight our own. We want them to fight their own battles of poverty and posterity," Parvez, who was booked under the Public Safety Act in 2016, said.

Activist Kavita Krishnan urged the central government to initiate a "healthy dialogue" with Kashmiris and said: "We must hear what the people of Kashmir are saying. There is a need for a healthy dialogue with the Kashmiris to resolve the long-standing issue."

--IANS

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Delhi Daredevils rode on Karun Nair's brilliant half century to post 168/8 against Rising Pune Supergiant in an Indian Premier League (IPL) contest at the Ferozeshah Kotla here on Friday.

Nair's 45-ball 64, laced with nine hits to the fence, helped Delhi recover from a precarious position after the visitors had reduced the home side to 9/2 after three overs.

Electing to bat after calling the toss correctly, Daredevils were off to a disastrous start, losing the key wickets of opener Sanju Samson (2) and one down Shreyas Iyer (3) cheaply.

Nair and wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant (36) then steadied the ship with a 74-run third wicket stand as the right-left combo took the attack to the opposition in no time.

The first three overs yielded only 11 runs for Delhi before Nair started the onslaught slamming Washington Sundar and Ben Stokes for five boundaries in two overs.

Pant wasn't left too far behind, slapping Sundar for a flat six over midwicket before milking Shardul Thaur for three boundaries as Delhi got back the momentum to yield 62 runs in the next five overs.

The strategic time-out once again brought smiles back to the Pune camp, but not before Pant had smacked leg-spinner Adam Zampa for a four and six.

Zampa, however, got the southpaw the very next ball with a flatter delivery which Pant after facing 22 balls and hitting four boundaries and two sixes, failed to connect properly to be caught by Daniel Christian at long-on.

The fall of Pant brought in West Indian Marlon Samuels (27 off 21), who looked good during his 21-ball stay at the crease.

Samuels slammed two consecutive maximums of pacer Shardul Thakur to add 34 runs for the fifth wicket with Nair before stumper Mahendra Singh Dhoni plucked off a stunning catch off Christian to pack back the Caribbean batsman.

Comfortably placed at 117/4 after 14 overs, the stage was set for Nair and New Zealander Corey Anderson (3) to step up the gas after the second time out.

But Dhoni's brilliance behind the stumps foiled Delhi's plans, when the former India skipper effected a perfect stumping to end Anderson's five-ball stay.

Despite losing his partners at the other end, Nair, who had faced 37 balls by then completed his half century and was joined briefly by Pat Cummins (11), before Stokes packed back the Australian.

Towards the end, veteran leggie Amit Mishra (11 not out) joined Nair to add a quickfire 22-run stand for the seventh wicket before the Karnataka batsman got a top edge off Stokes to be caught by Jaydev Unadkat at midwicket.

Unadkat bowled a brilliant final over, leaking five runs and taking the wicket of tailender Mohammed Shami (2) as the home side failed to get the push.

Brief Scores: Delhi Daredevils 168/8 (Karun Nair 64, Rishabh Pant 36, Marlon Samuels 27, Ben Stokes 2/31) vs Rising Pune Supergiant.

--IANS

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Twenty immigrants, detained in Japan, have begun a hunger strike to protest against inhuman conditions in the country's detention centres, the non-profit Provisional Release Association said on Friday.

The detainees, aged between 22 and 25, from 12 countries including Peru, China, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria and Cameroon, began the hunger strike at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau on Tuesday protesting against multiple detentions and human rights violations at the centre, Efe news reported.

The protestors were also demanding an improvement in conditions at other detention centres, following the death of a Vietnamese citizen from heart attack in March in another detention centre, where he was allegedly not provided with timely medical help, said the Association.

The detainees, who handed over their grievances in a letter to the director of the Regional Immigration office, also said they have been intimidated and threatened during interrogation at their centre.

A spokesperson of the immigration office, under the Japanese Ministry of Justice, told Efe news that 20 people were on hunger strike and they have been given a complaint box to register their grievances.

The spokesperson said the detention centre is managed according to Japanese law, and added there was a provision for third party audits to review its conditions.

The protestors are expected to continue their hunger strike until their demands are met.

Nearly 570 irregular migrants remain detained at the regional centre.

Some human rights organisations and national media have criticised the poor conditions in which these people are being held -- in particular, harsh interrogations or insufficient medical facilities -- along with Japan's strict immigration policy.

In 2016, Japan accepted 28 refugees, representing 0.25 per cent of the total of 10,901 applications, a record number of asylum seekers for the Asian country, according to the Japanese Ministry of Justice.

--IANS

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Jindal Steel and Power Plant's (JSPL) six million tonne per annum (mtpa) steel plant in Odisha's Angul would be commissioned by the end of May, JSPL Chairman Naveen Jindal said on Friday.

He said the sinter plant has already been commissioned and the blast furnace is likely to be commissioned by next week.

In the first phase, the Angul steel plant would be expanded from the present capacity of 2 MTPA to 6 MTPA.

With the commissioning of the blast furnace, JSPL will become India's fourth largest steelmaker after JSW, SAIL and Tata Steel.

The blast furnace at Angul is part of the company's proposed 12.5 MTPA steel plant and 2,600 MW of power projects in phases, said company sources.

Jindal, who met Chief Secretary A.P. Padhi and other officials at the state secretariat here, also sought the withdrawal of the hike in electricity duty on Captive Power Plants (CPPs).

"I appeal the state government to withdraw the decision as hiking electricity duty from 30 paise to 55 paise would affect the business of the investors," he said.

The state government on Thursday hiked electricity duty by 25 paise per unit for the CPPs, which generate electricity for their own consumption, in a move that it expects to generate additional revenue worth Rs 875 crore annually.

--IANS

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday made a veiled reference to the sponsored from across the border in India and said the proponents of hate are not open to dialogue.

Without taking any names, he said the menace of "in our region is a concrete manifestation of destructive emotion".

The Prime Minister was addressing the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day celebrations to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

"Sadly, these ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are not open to dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction," he said in his speech as chief guest at the function to which he was invited by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

Modi said he firmly believed that Buddhism's message of peace was the answer to growing violence all over the world.

He said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today was not necessarily from conflict between the nation states but from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

--IANS

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In a bid to build industry ready talent for the IT sector in India, Nasscom's IT-ITeS Sector Skills Council (SSC) in association with Edcast on Friday launched the 'Basic Learning for Future Technologies platform' website.

The website was launched by Nasscom President R. Chandrashekhar.

It will give students, universities and corporations, access to basic and advance level courses on the latest in technology.

"These courses will help the learners gauge the basic concepts of new technologies helping them build their skills to advanced levels thereby making them industry ready," a statement said.

--IANS

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The Jammu and Kashmir Police on Friday released the posters of three militants, saying they were responsible for the killing of Kashmiri army officer Ummer Fayaz.

Police said these three militants were part of the Hizbul Mujahideen and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) outfits.

The three militants whose photographs appear in the posters are Gayas-ul-Islam, Ishfaq Ahmad Thoker and Abbas Ahmad Bhat, all local militants belonging to south Kashmir.

They carried out the kidnapping and murder of the 22-year-old lieutenant who had come home to attend his cousin's marriage, an officer said.

Ummer Fayaz had been kidnapped from his maternal uncle's house in Herman village of Shopian district in south Kashmir on May 9 and his bullet-riddled body was found on May 10.

A resident of Sudsona village in Kulgam district, Fayaz had come on his military career's first leave.
North Korea's nuclear programme poses as a "potentially existential threat" to Washington, US National Intelligence Director Dan Coats said.

"It's clear that we have assessed this as a very significant, potentially existential threat to the US that has to be addressed," Coats said on Thursday at a Senate hearing.

Calling North Korea "an increasingly grave national security threat" to the US, Coats said Pyongyang had taken "initial steps" toward fielding a mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, Xinhua news agency reported.

However, Coats refused to reveal the US intelligence community's estimation about when Pyongyang would have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of taking a nuclear warhead.

Tension has escalated on the Korean Peninsula over the few past months over Washington's threat to stage military attacks against Pyongyang in response to its nuclear and missile programmes.

The US and South Korea also held their largest ever joint military exercises in the past two months.

At the end of April, the USS Carl Vinson nuclear aircraft carrier task group arrived in the waters off the Korean Peninsula for a separate joint naval exercise with South Korea.

--IANS

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Film: "Sarkar 3"; Director: Ram Gopal Varma; Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Jackie Shroff, Manoj Bajpayee, Amit Sadh, Supriya Pathak Kapur, Ronit Roy, Rohini Hattangadi and Yami Gautam; Rating: ***1/2

In "Sarkar 3", the legacy of Subhash Nagare aka Sarkar, the indisputable and ominously powerful politician of Maharashtra continues. The film uses political intrigue inside the corridors of power and despite every attempt to become respectable, the past cannot be erased.

The plot concocted by director Ram Gopal Varma and Nilesh Girkar, is a screenplay inspired by newspaper, broadcast media headlines and the generic political scenario borrowed from Director Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" franchise, which is artfully intertwined with the Nagare family's story.

The film opens, as each of the trilogy does, with a verbose disclaimer, suggesting that this film should be taken in the right spirit as it is a fictional piece which is not meant to hurt anyone. This is followed by a rousing speech by Subhash Nagare.

This edition takes off from the last 2008 released "Sarkar Raj". After the death of his sons, Nagare's wife Pushpa (Supriya Pathak Kapur) who is bedridden, informs him that his grandson Shivaji (Amit Sadh) who is fondly addressed as Cheeku desires to come over and live with his grandfather.

And thence begins the drama of doubts, crossing and double crossing, with Sarkar torn between the future represented by the two characters, his trusted nephew Gokul (Ronit Roy) who has been with him all along and his hot-blooded and volatile grandson Shivaji.

In an otherwise cold, dispassionate and predictable narrative, there are some poignant moments between Sarkar and his grandson that give this film an emotional tinge.

Amitabh Bachchan, whose character Subhash Nagare is designed on the lines of the late Shiv Sena supremo Bal Thackeray, dressed in black flowing robes and sporting a grey French beard long with the characteristic rudraksh, emulates the chieftain to perfection. With his steely gaze and paused speech, he effectively conveys the conniving persona.

Supriya Pathak Kapur with a limited on screen time is effectively wasted.

Amit Sadh as the brash young Shivaji along with Ronit Roy deliver perfunctorily convincing performances. Yami Gautam as Annu, Shivaji's love interest in the film, is lacklustre. Her character certainly seems forced into the script.

Manoj Bajpayee essays the role of the firebrand political instigator Govind Desphande with ease. He shines effortlessly with his faultless demeanour. He is aptly supported by Rohini Hattangadi as his equally ambitious mother, Rukku Bai Devi.

Jackie Shoff as Sarkar's UAE based adversary Michael Valya aka "Sir" is a misfit. His character is designed as a caricature and is performed with equal sluggishness. His presence onscreen emits involuntary guffaws.

On the technical front, with atmospheric lighting and unusual camera angles, the visuals are asthetically captured. The frames with a grey and sepia tone palette, are dark and in keeping the genre.

This, accompanied by the frenzied background score with the lyrics, "Govinda, Govindaa" elevates the viewing experience.

Overall, the film will appeal to those who have watched the earlier Sarkar versions and of course Amitabh Bachchan and RGV fans.

--IANS

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The Supreme Court on Friday declined to consider the plea for an immediate hearing on Calcutta High Court Justice C.S. Karnan's review petition seeking stay of top court's order sentencing him to undergo six months jail for its contempt.

Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar, heading the five judges bench hearing challenge to the validity of triple talaq, told Justice Karnan's counsel Mathew J. Nadumpara that they had permitted him to file whatever he wanted in the registry.

However, Chief Justice Khehar did not say anything on Nadumpara's plea seeking an immediate hearing of the plea to stay the May 9 order sentencing Karnan to undergo imprisonment for criminal contempt.

The plea for the stay of the sentence till the review plea is decided can only be considered by the seven judge bench of Chief Justice Khehar, Justice Dipak Misra, Justice J. Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Madan B. Lokur, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Kurian Joseph which passed the order. Justice Ghose is retiring on May 27.

Seeking the recall of the May 9 order, Justice Karnan has sought stay of the order convicting him of criminal contempt of court and sentencing him to undergo imprisonment for six months till the final disposal of his review petition that was filed on Thursday.

The court by its May 9 order had directed the Director General of West Bengal Police to constitute teams for the execution of its order forthwith.

The Supreme Court initiated contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan on February 8 and restrained him from performing judicial and administrative work.

Justice Karnan had taken on the top judiciary after he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing various judges and officers of the Madras High Court of corruption.

--IANS

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Seven persons suffered burn injuries as a cooking gas cylinder exploded in a building and triggered a blaze, a fire officer said on Friday.

"Four fire tenders rushed to the building situated near the community centre in Munirka area (in south Delhi) around 7.30 p.m. and doused the flames in two hours. The injured have been sent to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences for treatment," a senior police officer said.

There were no immediate report on what triggered the explosion of the LPG cylinder.

Four to five families reside in the said building, a portion of which collapsed due to the explosion's impact, the officer said.

Another fire was reported from a motorcycle showroom in Patparganj industrial area in east Delhi. However, there were no casualties.

--IANS

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All opposition parties in Telangana on Friday came together for another round of protest over the shifting of 'Dharna Chowk', a popular venue for staging protests in Hyderabad.

Leaders of all opposition parties and mass organisations participated in a silent protest at Telangana Martyrs' Memorial at Gun Park, organised by Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC).

TJAC chairman Kodandaram, a bitter critic of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, led the protest and warned the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government that if it failed to withdraw the move, a march to 'Dharna Chowk' will be organised on May 15.

Kodandaram, who had played a key role in Telangana movement along with Chandrasekhar Rao, alleged that the government was trying to snatch democratic and constitutional rights of the people.

TJAC leader said that for over a month the opposition parties had been raising their voice over the issue but the government was bent on shifting 'Dharna Chowk'.

Main opposition Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) declared their support to the proposed march.

State Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy said people had hoped that there will be greater freedom and liberty in Telangana state but the government was curbing people's right to dissent.

The TDP's Telangana unit President L. Ramna said the party would extend full support to TJAC on the issue.

'Dharna Chowk' has been the venue of thousands of protests by political parties, people's organisations, students' groups, employees' unions and others for over two decades.

Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao had last month defended the police move to shift 'Dharna Chowk' to the city outskirts saying that some parties were deliberately creating problems in the name of protests.

In March, leaders of all opposition parties had come together to meet Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan Rao and submit a memorandum protesting the government's move.

--IANS

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In a stern warning to Facebook, Thailand authorities have asked the social media giant to take down content critical or against the monarchy or face legal action.

The social media giant has been given until next Tuesday to remove more than 130 items from pages viewable in Thailand, the BBC reported on Friday.

Facebook has agreed to consider the requests from the authorities and comply if it breaks Thai laws.

According to the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, Facebook has already co-operated in blocking some pages, but that more than 130 pages judged to be illegal remained visible in Thailand.

Under Thailand's stringent lese-majeste laws that are intended to protect the most senior members of Thailand's royal family from insult or threat, any comment critical of the monarchy can land a person in trouble and a long prison sentence.

Since 2004, when Thailand's military government seized power, there have been tremendous efforts to suppress any criticism of the monarchy.

As part of these efforts, the authorities have blocked thousands of websites and arrested people who shared or merely liked a Facebook post that was critical of the monarchy.

This is not happening for the first time in Thailand though. Last year, the authorities said Google had agreed to remove online content that they deemed insulting the monarchy.

"When we are notified of content that is illegal through official processes, we will restrict it in the country where it's illegal after a thorough review," Google had said at that time.

--IANS

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A prominent trader was shot dead around midnight in Gorakhpur, the parliamentary constituency of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, police said on Friday.

Traders have threatened protests if the killers were not nabbed immediately.

All city shops will remain closed, convener of the Joint Traders Association Sitaram Jaiswal said.

Bike borne assailants of oil trader Chandra Prakash Tibdewal, also decamped with Rs 20 lakh cash that the victim was carrying.

Tibdewal, 45, owned an oil trading company at Sahebganj. He was on his way home after closing his shop when he was intercepted by the assailants.

The staff accompanying him had a bag with the cash -- the sale proceeds of the day. Before the trader could do anything, the killers shot him and fled with the bag.

He was rushed to a nearby medical facility where he was pronounced dead on arrival. Police are interrogating the employees of Tibdewal. Vigil has been stepped up in the city.

Other traders associations have also expressed apprehensions over the spate of crimes under the watch of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which stormed to power in March, making poor law and order under the Samajwadi Party (SP) government its main poll plank.

--IANS

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Rome, May 12 (IANS/AKI) Two blasts on Friday outside a post office in central Rome near the ancient Roman Circus Maximus caused damage to a parked car but no injuries, police said.

District police chief Massimo Improta said explosions in the Piramide district were caused by a "crude" homemade device.

The first blast was probably caused by the device's fuse and the second by a plastic bottle of inflammable liquid, Improta said.

Police described the blasts as a "symbolic" and apparently "limited" act that could not have caused much devastation.

Sniffer dogs and explosives teams were deployed at the scene, which was blocked off with police tape, but did not find any other devices, according to police.

Police said investigators were examining footage from security cameras in the area in a bid to identify those responsible for planting and detonating the devices.

Anarchist groups have previously targeted post offices in Italy but police declined to say if such groups were their main line of inquiry.

--IANS/AKI

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Abu Dhabi, May 12 (IANS/WAM) Rebecca Kadaga, Ugandan Parliament Speaker and the President of the African Geopolitical Group in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, has praised the UAE's fast-paced development.

"The UAE encourages all sectors to excel through competition for the lead in development, something which Zayed University represents," Kadaga said during a visit to Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.

She expressed admiration for the university's academic programmes, advanced research facilities and initiatives.

Kadaga invited the university's officials to visit Uganda to build academic and research tie-ups between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and her country.

Reyadh Al Mehaideb, Vice President of Zayed University, stressed that the Emirati institution matches international prestigious universities in terms of services for students.

Some 500 faculty members from prestigious international universities work at Zayed University, which plays a significant role in achieving the goals sets by the UAE Vision 2021 National Agenda, said Al Mehaideb.

--IANS

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A US Congresswoman of Indian origin has cautioned the Donald Trump administration against hasty changes in the H1-B visa regime, saying this should be done via the legislative route rather than through a presidential executive order.

Representative Pramila Jayapal (Democrat, Washington), now in India as part of a US Congressional delegation headed by Leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, believes that there is bipartisan support for continuing the H1-B visa programme "perhaps with some changes".

She is also hopeful that the Trump administration will continue to prioritise India though there are concerns about the growing process between the US and China and US and Russia but she feels that India "should be right in there".

"You can't just stop processing when people have been waiting in line for three years to get those H1-Bs and then put a barrier there and then say you are not going to get these...," Jayapal told IANS in an interview.

"There has to be a thoughtful roll-out to any changes we might want to make to the H1-B programme and really it should come from Congressional authority, not from the President's executive orders," she said.

Her comments come after President Trump signed the "Buy American, Hire American" executive order last month to bring in major changes regarding the H1-B visa programme, including closing loopholes for immigration fraud and a shift from the current lottery system to a mechanism that favours higher-paid and higher-skilled workers.

Indian IT companies are likely to be badly affected if the rules are brought in.

Stating that every country has to make sure that it is taking care of its workers, Jayapal, however, said that the H1-B visa programme "is incredibly valuable". She said that there has been some abuse of H1-B visas and that needed to be addressed.

"But I really do believe that there is a lot of bipartisan support for continuing the H1-B visa programme, perhaps with come changes," the Chennai-born former pro-immigration advocacy activist.

Stating that she is on the immigration sub-committee that is chaired by Jim Sensenbrenner (Republican, Wisconsin), who is also a part of the visiting delegation, she said: "He (Sensenbrenner) raised the issue of H1-Bs in an internal meeting and you know, I think again that there is a lot of support for an H1-B programme that provides opportunities for Indians to come to the United States, provides opportunities for them to stay and also benefits India and Indian companies."

Regarding India-US ties following the transition from the Democrats to the Republicans in the White House, the Congresswoman said she hoped that the Trump administration would continue to prioritise India.

"We were so proud of President (Barack) Obama at many levels but certainly the fact that he prioritised US-India relations was a huge benefit I think to the United States and to the world and I think probably those relations between India and the United States were never better in the last few years," she said.

"We very much want this administration to continue to prioritise this relationship. We hope that they appoint an excellent ambassador (to India) very soon."

Jayapal said that apart from diplomatic ties, "there are independent economic relationships that have been established regardless of which administration is in office".

Asked about Trump's policies on South Asia and Indian Americans, she said that there are now five Indian-origin members in the US Congress -- Senator Kamala Harris and Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ro Khanna and Ami Bera, apart from her.

Stating that there is an increased interest in South Asia, she said: "I don't think that the President himself is going to determine whether or not there are ties with South Asia. We are going to make sure that we continue to lift up the region and the importance of the region and the importance of the contributions of the South Asian Americans to the United States."

Regarding Trump's comments last month that countries like India, China and Russia have done nothing on climate change, she said that during the visiting delegation's meeting with Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, the latter said that this was not just a negotiation, it was a deep belief that India has that it must address climate change and the effects of climate change.

"I don't think that India will back away from that, from taking on the climate question," she said.

Asked about China's criticism of the Congressional delegation's meeting with the Dalai Lama, she said that "we know that China would not be happy".

"It has not changed our resolve to really make sure that we address the issue of an autonomous Tibet and the United States I think in a bipartisan way continues to be deeply committed to speaking for autonomy for Tibet and the ability to practise their religion and their culture and their philosophies freely."

Asked about Washington's position on Beijing's One Belt One Road initiative, Jayapal said that Foreign Secretary Jaishankar informed the delegation that while it was seen as an investment, many of the Chinese investments were actually in the form of loans to governments and not grants.

"So we are looking to see how that rolls out," she stated.

(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)

--IANS

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Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath visited the residence of slain Border Security Force (BSF) trooper Prem Sagar in Teekampur village in Deoria on Friday and extended his condolences to the bereaved family.

The 50-year-old BSF Head Constable was on patrol duty between two forward posts along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir as part of a 10-member team of BSF and army soldiers when Pakistani troops opened unprovoked fire, using rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

Pakistan's Border Action Team (BAT) allegedly crossed the LoC and ambushed the patrol team. Sagar and Naik Subedar Paramjeet Singh of the Indian Army died in the ambush and their bodies were mutilated.

During the meeting with the family of the martyr, the Chief Minister also handed over a cheque of Rs 4 lakh and a fixed deposit of Rs 2 lakh to the widow of the deceased soldier. Before this, Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi has already extended a financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh to the family.

The Chief Minister also announced that a girls inter college would be constructed on a stretch of 1.5 acres of government land and a memorial in the memory of the slain soldier would also be made. On the remaining land, a park would be constructed and beautified.

To a demand of the family of being allocated a gas agency, the Chief Minister said he would send a recommendation of the same to the union government.

--IANS

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Watching the exciting personal political dramas that are suddenly unfolding on our usually rather staid TV channels and wading through details of controversies and crises in the newspapers, I am reminded of the media revelations that were laced into the death rattle of the old Soviet Union. Not that the Union of India is similarly collapsing, but there do seem to be some remarkable similarities between the interplay of media and politics in the two countries.
It was two months ago that we were in a B&B in Chennai. When we came to the breakfast table there were already three women occupants. As we sat at the other end of the long table we overheard their conversation. Two of the women were French, who had come for a yoga retreat in Mysore and the other woman was Dutch, who was on a four-month biking tour of India.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) appears to be in a veritable free fall. It lost an election in Punjab where virtually all observers believed that it held a substantial initial advantage. It not only lost to a party whose political fortunes appear to be in a state of permanent decline but barely exceeded the performance of the ruling coalition widely panned for an ineffective and corrupt administration. It has only taken two years to turn its magnificent victory in Delhi into a humiliating defeat in the recently held municipal elections. Worryingly for AAP, the Congress voters who had completely abandoned the party in Delhi appear to be coming back home.

What would give further pause to supporters is the clear lack of self-reflection and self-criticism. It has preferred a bizarre tirade against electronic voting machines (EVMs) aligned with its preternatural ability to convert every disagreement into a grand conspiratorial narrative. Though it might appeal to party's core supporters and help Arvind Kejriwal maintain his halo of popularity, it strengthens the narrative that is an irresponsible party which cannot be trusted with power. After promising a political culture radically different from the rest, it has exceeded the Congress party in its desire to deflect responsibility from the paramount leader.

Further exasperating the true believers is the constant and bitter infighting. In its latest itineration, Kapil Mishra has been unceremoniously dumped from the cabinet. Kapil Mishras charges of personal corruption against Arvind Kejriwal are too convenient to be believed but there is a delicious irony in AAP being hoist by its own petard. Its habit of flinging reckless charges, cheered on by a section of the media which confuses foolhardiness with bravery, has led it to a sorry point where even its genuine criticism of Modi governments high-handedness has few takers.

So is the party over for the AAP? Or can it still stage a comeback? The odds are against it but nothing is impossible in . Arvind Kejriwal has certainly proved previously that he is endowed with an extra ordinary fighting spirit.

Three thoughts:

First, AAP and its leaders need to recognize and celebrate their success. In Indias stultified where outsiders are rare and lineage or political affiliations count the most, Kejriwal has succeeded with no god fathers and little political infrastructure or monetary wherewithal. Delhi may only be half a state but in a country where even panchayat elections are fiercely contested, winning a state is a significant achievement. Seasoned professionals like Nitish Kumar or Mamata Banerjee who have been in for decades struggle to win a single seat outside their strong holds. And yet within four years, the AAP is the main opposition in Punjab. That is nothing to be scoffed at

But it is unclear if Kejriwal understands the enormity of his own political achievements. Perhaps he suffers from a savior complex or he genuinely believes that he is the leader India needs right now. What else explains his absurd political decisions ranging from fighting an impossible election against Narendra Modi from Varanasi to his refusal to declare a CM candidate in Punjab? To Delhi voters, it suggests that Arind Kejriwal is interested in every job except the one he was elected to. And if there is anything voters detest most, it is to be treated as a mere stepping stone. Arvind Kejriwal was delivered an enormous verdict by the voters in Delhi and he should fully pay that debt before he moves on. India will take care of itself.

Second, a broader realization of what is politically feasible. Narendra Modi is the most popular Indian prime minister in forty years. Kejriwal cannot contest Modi only through twitter barbs or media comments and his party is in no position to challenge Modi across the country. Even if an anti-BJP mahagathbandhan is launched in 2019, there are far bigger claimants to be its prime ministerial candidate and they are unlikely to accept a newbie barely a decade old in politics. Arvind Kejriwal is ambitious and wants to become the prime minister of India. There is nothing wrong in aspiring for the ultimate prize in Indian politics. But as important as ambition is in motivating a politician, so is a sense of realism. Arvind Kejriwal will not become Indias leader in 2019 and its quixotic pursuit may completely destroy his political career. Arvind Kejriwal should bide his time, respect the position he holds and the people who elected him to it, and he still has decades to realize his ambitions.

Finally, revolutions usually fail for two reasons. First, revolutionaries are so much in love with the idea of fighting the system that even conquest appears as co-option. Reconciling with the idea of power and its visible symbols without becoming just another political animal is an extremely fine balance which great leaders in history have failed. Will Kejriwal prove to be different? There is every reason to be skeptical and it is only he who can prove the critics wrong and reassure the increasingly frantic supporters. Second, governance is mostly boring. It involves anodyne tasks and routines which capture no media headlines and most of the effort is cloaked in anonymity. There is no drama in it especially compared to grand gestures of night-time protests amidst the media glare or giving sound bites assured to drive the TV news cycle for the next 24 hours. Or compare the glamour of the so-called odd-even scheme which did little to alleviate the pollution problem in Delhi but assured gushing headlines versus trying to navigate the complex land acquisition issues which have constantly hobbled Delhi metro's expansion.

Even the media ultimately gets bored with this routine unless one can keep upping the ante. So does the public. Arvind Kejriwal needs to ignore the media circus and worry not about making headlines but about avoiding them. Theater is important in politics---and Modi is its great exponent---but only theater ultimately leads to the destruction of Laloo Yadav.

Arvind Kejriwal has an opportunity in Indian politics very few outsiders are blessed with. But that opportunity is evaporating fast and politics is a brutal sport and voters an unforgiving lot. He should concentrate on Delhi for the next few years, keep his head down, and prove himself an efficient and responsible politician, and not merely a flamethrower.

Arvind Kejriwal and his party already had a second chance; there might not be a third one.

This article first appeared on Rohit Pradhan's personal blog www.retributions.in
In a major setback for Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, the Delhi High Court on Friday allowed the Income Tax (I-T) department to continue its investigation in the Herald case.
Pakistan's Senate deputy chairman today escaped an assassination attempt with injuries when a suicide bomber targeted his convoy, killing 25 people and wounding 35 others in the volatile south-western Balochistan province.

The bomber targeted Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri when he came out of a mosque after addressing a gathering shortly after the Friday prayers in Mastung area of the province.

The area where the explosion took place is approximately 70 kilometres from provincial capital Quetta.

District Health Officer in Mastung Sher Zaman said that 25 bodies have been shifted to two hospitals in Quetta.

"More than 35 were also injured," he added.

Earlier, Mastung Hospital Public Relation Officer Malik Jibran said over 35 injured were brought to the hospital. He said more than 15 injured were in critical condition.

Senior police officer Abdul Razzaq Cheema said Haideri was slightly injured and he has been shifted to the Combined Military Hospital in Quetta.

"I am alive, Allah has saved my life, it was a sudden blast, broken pieces of the windscreen hit me, I am injured but safe. The driver and other people sitting next to me were badly injured," Haideri later told SAMAA TV.

"I am sorry for the death of innocent of people," said Haideri, who belongs to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Most of the people killed were workers of his party.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Maulana Fazulr Rehman condemned the attack on Haideri and said today's attack was not the first on the party.

"Many of our dear companions have been martyred [in this attack]," he said further, adding that, "We have to continue to work for this country and the stability of Islam."



District Police Officer Muhammad Ghazanfar said that initial evidence suggests it was a suicide attack.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the attack directed the relevant authorities to ensure the best medical treatment for the injured.

Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani and Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan also condemned the attack.

Rabbani said that it was suicide attack which targeted Haideri. "I have talked to chief secretary of Balochistan and asked him to airlift Haideri to Quetta," he said.

TV footage showed Haideri's vehicle was badly damaged. His driver was killed in the attack.

The District Police Officer Mastung, Ghazanfar Ali, said Haideri escaped as he was not sitting in the car when the blast took place.

"It could be a suicide bomb attack but it is too early to say for sure," he said.

Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Haq Kakar said it was too early to say anything about the nature of the attack. "Probe has been launched to determine the nature of the bombing," he added.

Balochistan has been hit hard by attacks from terrorists and separatists in recent years and Mastung has seen a lot of unrest despite constant security operations in the area.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi Police has arrested four men for allegedly robbing two employees of a mobile phone retailer in southwest Delhi's Sagarpur area of Rs 15.90 lakh.

Police said the accused -- Manoj (22), Ashish (30), Deepak (31) and Ravi Kumar (29) -- had hatched the robbery plan so that they could pay off their debts and make up for the losses in their businesses.

Three of the accused were arrested yesterday from Rajapuri area, while Ravi, who had earlier worked with the retailer, was held this morning, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Southwest) Surender Kumar.

On April 15, two employees of mobile phone retailer R K Agency were going to deposit Rs 15.90 lakh in a bank in Palam on a two-wheeler.

Around 3.25 PM, three armed assailants intercepted their vehicle and robbed them of the bag containing Rs 15.90 lakh after attacking them with pepper spray.

On the basis of a tip-off about the presence of the accused in Rajapuri area, police arrested Manoj, Ashish and Deepak yesterday.

They led the police to the fourth accused, Ravi, who was arrested this morning from his residence in Rajapuri, said the officer.

Rs 4.95 lakh robbed cash was recovered from the accused.

A stolen motorcycle and one .315 bore country-made pistol were seized from them, he added.

Police said Ashish had arranged a weapon from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh with the aim to target his former girlfriend who had married someone else. He had failed to carry out the attack, and the pistol was used in the robbery, police added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The personal stories of Montanans and North Dakotans experiencing the highs and lows of the most recent oil boom will be featured once again with a weeklong run of the documentary "Makoshika," beginning May 12 at the Vue and Brew Coffeehouse and Theater in Laurel.

The 50-minute film, which was popular with local audiences during its last theatrical run in the area, will run through May 18 in Laurel.

At the 7:30 p.m. screenings on May 12 and May 13, producers Peter Tolton and Stan Parker will field questions about filmmaking and their experiences shooting in the Bakken area.

"Makoshika" illustrates how people cope with cycles of industrial boom and bust throughout generations, sharing stories that start from the height of the most recent oil boom. The story alternates between first-person narratives and historical commentary.

A dialogue on the balance between economic development and humans relationship with the land, the film is a portrait of a region in transition, told from a diverse set of voices.

"Makoshika" gets its name from the native Lakota word for bad lands. Those who live in this region have always been met with both opportunity and intense hardship. From the native tribes, to the pioneering homesteaders of a century ago, to the laborers who have come to the region in successive waves of oil development, its history has ricocheted wildly between booms and busts.

Billings native Jessica Jane Hart made her directorial debut on "Makoshika," which premiered in February 2016 at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula.

The documentary won a Jury Award from the Local Sightings Festival in Seattle, Best Heritage Feature Documentary at the Tribute Film Festival in Abilene, Texas, and a Silver Spotlight Documentary Film Award.

The film was partially funded through a Kickstarter campaign that gathered support from the Billings community, plus a Humanities Montana Grant and local sponsorships.

'Toad to Nowhere'

Art House Cinema & Pub presents "Toad to Nowhere,' a documentary by Marshall Granger, Andrew Rizzo and Eddie Roqueta about the search for healing within the realm of hallucinogens, and for a psychedelic toad in the Sonora Desert in Arizona.

Admission is $5.

There will be two screenings of the hour-long film, at 6:30 & 8 p.m. Tuesday. Granger and Rizzo, who are also subjects of the documentary, will be in attendance.
Tripura government has taken initiative to hold Aadhaar enrollment camps for Bru community people sheltered in seven camps in North district, official sources said today.

"This initiative was taken by the district administration following demands raised by the students living in the camps as Internally Displaced People (IDP). This move would legitimise the IDPs who are living in the camps for last 20 years," Sub-Divisional Magistrate of Kanchanpur Santosh Deb said.

The Aadhaar cards would be given to students living in the transit camps in the first phase.

The rest of camp inmates would be given their Aadhaar cards in phased manner, he told PTI over phone from Kanchanpur.

Deb today said the local administration has arranged to start taking photos for Aadhaar cards of students belonging to the Reang IDP relief camps from next week.

Initially, the authorities would set a target of taking photos of 40 individuals per day for the first phase of the initiative.

When asked about his take on the issue, Mizoram Bru Displaced Peoples Forum (MBDPF) secretary Bruno Msha said, "the decision would be beneficial for the camp inmates".

"I am sure it will help us", Bruno said.

He added that the Bru coordination Committee had earlier sought Aadhaar cards a couple of times.

Over 37,000 people from the Reang community fled their homes in Mumit, Kolasib and Lunglei districts in Mizoram after ethnic riots broke out between the Mizo and Reang communities.

Since then, the Internally Displacement Victims (IDP) have been living in transit camps in Tripura.

Recently, a delegation of the Government of Mizoram visited the Reang camps in North Tripura district and held an identification drive that recognised around 32,000 people.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A day after India's bio-tech regulator GEAC gave its nod to commercial use of GM mustard, activists opposing the move today asked the government to reject the proposal and dissolve the GEAC immediately.

The 'Coalition for a GM-Free India', a platform of hundreds of organisations representing farmers, consumers, and scientists, wrote to Union Environment Minister Anil Dave expressing "disappointment and shock" over the approval by the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC).

They demanded the regulatory body be immediately dissolved given its "repeated unaccountable functioning".

Meanwhile, Environment activists Vandana Shiva asserted that GM mustard will lead to "genetic contamination" of pure organic mustard and pollution of food.

The GEAC, India's GM crop regulator, had yesterday recommended the commercial use of genetically modified mustard in a submission to the environment ministry amid opposition by anti-GM groups, including RSS-affiliated bodies.

Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave now has to take the final call on approval of GM Mustard.

Ministry sources told PTI that although they were expecting the approval from the Minister today itself, the process has been delayed by a week.

"By clearing GM mustard, the GEAC has shown itself to be anti-science, anti-farmers, anti-environment and anti- consumers.

"We appeal to you (Dave) to summarily reject the application for approval of GM-Mustard. We also urge you to dissolve the GEAC immediately, given their repeated unaccountable functioning," the Coalition said in the letter written to Dave.

The Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP), Delhi University South Campus, had submitted an application to the GEAC for the environmental release of GM mustard (Brassica juncea) hybrid DMH-11 and the use of parental events (varuna bn 3.6 and EH2 mod bs 2.99) for the development of a new generation of hybrids.

With its green signal, the GEAC has pushed the hybrid plant developed by scientists at the Delhi University closer to becoming the country's first edible GM crop.

"The GEAC is a compromised body, which works only for corporate interests. Every word of their safety dossier was prepared by corporations.

"And in fact most of the members of the GEAC have been directly associated with corporates and lobby groups and now are only serving to promote their corporate interests," Shiva said in a letter to Dave.

The Coalition also said the GM HT Mustard is a "hazardous" herbicide-tolerant food crop, which has adverse impact on a large number of Indian farmers, agricultural workers and consumers.

It said that previously, it has shown, through rigorous analysis of all available materials that how it will increase chemicals in food and farms and how regulators should have never allowed it to proceed this far.

"The appraisal was shoddy while the tests were rigged and many tests not taken up. The need for GM mustard was never questioned and answered.

"The GEAC has ignored all the many valid questions raised by scientists and others and chose to function in an unscientific and biased fashion. Importantly, there was no integrity apparent in the processes adopted," the Coalition said in a statement.

It said when the rest of the world is shunning GM crops, India would be "foolish" to rush into GM mustard commercialisation.

"There is absolutely no reason, not a single one, why the GEAC should have recommended this for approval. Herbicide Tolerant crops increase chemical usage.

"Our conservative estimates show that even 25 per cent adoption of GM mustard in India's mustard cultivation area will lead to more than 4 crore employment days being lost by poor women in mustard growing areas, which are mainly BJP- ruled states," the Coalition said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is all set to relive her first Cannes moment with the screening of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's "Devdas" at an outdoor cinema event during the festival.

The actress, who is set to walk the red carpet as L'Oreal Paris brand ambassador on May 19 and 20, will attend the brand's Paris Open Air Cinema event.

The outdoor cinema event, to be held from May 17 to May 22, will showcase films that will be selected and introduced in-person by six actress ambassadors of the beauty brand



"Devdas" will be screened on May 20.

"We attended the festival not just as artists but as proud representatives of Indian cinema, showcasing a film that meant so much to us. The kind of reception we got for the movie was truly overwhelming and I will cherish it all my life," Aishwarya said in a statement.

Besides Aishwaraya, Bollywood actresses Sonam Kapoor and Deepika Padukone will also walk the Cannes red carpet.

Padukone will walk the red carpet on May 17 and 18 along with international ambassadors Julianne Moore and Susan Sarandon while Sonam Kapoor will attend the event on May 21 and 22.

The festival runs from May 17 to 28.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Allahabad High Court today fixed May 26 as the next date of hearing in connection with the stay on the bail order passed in favour of former Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prajapati and his two accomplices in a gangrape case.

While directing that the bail order issued by the additional session judge be kept in abeyance, Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosle had on April 28 asked Gayatri and others to file their response.

As the matter came up for hearing before Justice A P Sahi of the Lucknow bench today, the counsel for the accused demanded more time to file reply.

Accordingly, the court postponed the hearing.

A sessions court had on April 24 granted bail to Gayatri and two other accused.

But the high court, on a petition moved by the state government for cancelling the bails, had directed that the bail orders would remain in abeyance.

It had also asked the police to nab the two accused who were released from jail by then.

The high court had expressed serious reservation on the manner in which the bails were allowed.

An application was filed on behalf of the rape survivor alleging that despite court direction, the police have yet not arrested the two accused, due to which she has life threat.

The counsel for accused Vikas and Amrendra had submitted in the high court that they had approached against the stay on their bail and the Supreme Court had directed them to submit their plea before the high court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Assam Governor Banwarilal Purohit today congratulated the members of the state assembly for passing the Goods and Services Tax (GSt) Bill, thus paving the way for operationalizing of the GST Act and rolling out a uniform tax regime.

"The GST Bill will benefit consumer states like Assam to reap dividends as the burden of taxation at various stages would no longer be operational", the Governor said in a statement here.

It would also lend transparency in taxation system as the consumers would not have to bear the brunt of multiple taxation, he added.

The state assembly had passed the GST Bill yesterday to put in place a uniform taxation system for goods and services.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The coal-based Badarpur power plant, considered a major source of air pollution in Delhi, will close by July 2018, the Supreme Court-appointed Environment Pollution-Prevention and Control Authority (EPCA) today said.

The NTPC (National Thermal Power Corporation) has also prepared a remediation plan on managing the flyash, of around 250 lakh tonne, present at the site, which also adds to the level of particulate matters in the city's air.

The plan has been submitted to the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), an NTPC official told an EPCA meeting here, which was chaired by its chairman Bhure Lal and attended by the authorities concerned.

The plan involves growing special plants (Ipomoea) to prevent the fly ash from getting airborne as has been done in the entity's Dadri thermal power plant, using it as a raw material in brick kilns and in construction of a highway.

In the meeting, EPCA member Sunita Narain, the chief of Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), expressed concern on the amount of particulate matter and sulphate particles, of plumes from coal-fired plants, in the city's air.

"The IIT-Kanpur study of the city's air quality has observed that Delhi's air has the presence of flyash in it," she said, while also pitching for the Bawana gas-based power plant to operate in its full capacity.

Bhure Lal also emphasised that the Bawana plant has to start operating its full capacity and directed the authorities concerned to resolve the issues hindering its functioning.

The Delhi Power Department told the EPCA the thermal plant, essentially two of its units of 210-MW each, have to function to meet the power needs of south Delhi areas and the peak demand during the summers, which may touch a high of 6600-MW this year.

The NTPC-run plant will be allowed to function till around October subject to a set of conditions including the emptying of its flyash pit within a time-frame and timely commissioning of the 400-KV Tughlaqabad sub-station by June 2018.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid continued unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre has asked the state government to be tough against those taking law into their hands but ensure no innocent person is harassed.

The message was put across by Union Home Secretary Rajiv Mehrishi during the meetings he had with top civil and police officials in the course of his visit to the Kashmir valley yesterday.

The message of the central government is clear that security forces have to be tough against militants and those involved in stone pelting but no innocent should be harassed, official sources said today.

The home secretary told the security forces to "be tough but just", sources privy to the meeting said.

Mehrishi, however, did not broach the issue of political dialogue with his interlocutors as the matter was within the purview of the political leadership.

During the visit, the home secretary had called on Governor N N Vohra and Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti, and discussed with them the security situation as violent clashes between locals and security forces continued to rock the valley.

In his meeting with civil and police officials, Mehrishi was briefed about the ground situation and the steps taken to restore normalcy in the valley, which is witnessing uninterrupted violence, including the killing of a Kashmiri army officer by militants two days ago.

The home secretary was told that the Army along the LoC was fully alert to checking infiltration attempts from Pakistan as summer has set in and snow has started melting, sources said.

Jammu and Kashmir had witnessed large-scale violence during the April 9 bypoll to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat in which eight people lost their lives in more than 200 incidents.

The Election Commission had cancelled the May 25 bypoll to Anantnag Lok Sabha seat, noting the situation there was not conducive to holding election.

There have been protests by students in the valley last month against alleged police excesses. Students, including girls, were seen pelting security personnel with stones.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Centre will soon hold a meeting of the states, including Punjab and Haryana, to resolve the contentious issue of sharing of river water between them.

"The Ministry of Water Resources will soon call a meeting of the affected states, including Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan, to discuss river water issue," Punjab Chief Secretary Karan Avtar Singh said here today.

He was briefing reporters about the points discussed during the meeting of the northern zonal council (NZC), chaired by Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, here.

During the meeting, he said that the states concerned reached a consensus that the issue of sharing of river water, which has been pending for several years, needs to be resolved.

"There is consensus among all the states and they want it (river water issue) to be resolved. As there are a lot of nitty gritty involved, the Ministry of Water Resources has called a meeting of the states concerned to resolve it following a detailed discussion," Secretary of Inter-state council Secretariat, Sanjeevani Kutty said.

Stating that as many as 18 issues of common interest were discussed during the meeting, she said there was a consensus on all the issues among states but solution has not come yet.

"The water sharing issue is a complicated one which has been pending for last several years. Some of them are in the Supreme Court," she said.

Notably, Sutlej-Yamuna-Link (SYL) canal issue is a contentious issue between Punjab and Haryana.

On April 20, in a meeting of Chief Secretaries of both Punjab and Haryana with Secretary, Ministry of Water Resources, Punjab had expressed inability to share water with its neighbouring states and sought a realistic solution while Haryana demanded completion of construction of incomplete parts of the SYL canal at the earliest. This matter is also being heard in the Supreme Court.

In today's meeting, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh urged Singh and the chief ministers of Haryana and Rajasthan to settle this issue out of court through discussion with the intervention of Ministry of Water Resources.

"Amarinder suggested that a fresh data collection of availability of river water be made in the wake of change in climate, monsoon, Himalayan glaciers as river water flow has changed during last 3 to 4 decades. Data analyses can be made by experts," said the Punjab Chief Secretary.

He further said that a discussion on collection of fresh data was also held and there was a consensus that states concerned needed to look at it.

In the meeting, the Punjab CM also raised the issue of cross border drug smuggling and urged the union minister to direct the BSF to stop the supply of narcotics that come from across the border.

Punjab CS said Amarinder also sought sharing of intelligence among neighbouring states and fast prosecution to deal with drug problem in the state.

A representative of Himachal Pradesh also sought a campaign against drug menace to be undertaken collectively by neighbouring states.

On the Shahpur Kandi power project, Punjab Chief Secretary said that Punjab had ratified the agreement signed with Jammu nad Kashmir in this regard in March. "If J&K can also ratify this agreement, then this power project can start," he said.

"Amarinder also sought time bound action plan to deal with problem of pollution in Ghaggar and Sutlej rivers," said Punjab CS.

All the member states unanimously agreed to jointly tackle the problem of water pollution under the guidance of central pollution control board, official said.

Giving details, Kutty said for the export promotion of fruits, flowers and vegetables, APEDA has sanctioned projects to J&K, HP, Punjab and Rajasthan.

Out of 18 issues discussed today, seven issues were resolved, said a PIB release.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Chinese Foreign Ministryon Friday parried questions on reports that Sri Lanka has rejected China's request for its submarine to dock at Colombo next week after a similar visit in 2014 triggered a strong protest from India.

"I have just read the relevant information. I suggest you raise it with the defence ministry for more details," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said when asked whether China has expressed dissatisfaction to Sri Lanka for refusing to let its submarines to dock in Colombo port.

The remarks came as China gets ready to host Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wicikramasinghe for the high-profile silk road summit on May 14-15.

"What I can tell you is that China and Sri Lanka enjoy traditional friendship. The two sides maintain sound cooperation in the fields of politics, economy, culture and military to military exchanges," Geng said.

China has made about $8 billion investments in Sri Lanka in the last few years, specially in port projects like Hambantota and Colombo ports.

It continues to pressure the island nation for docking its submarines despite assertion by Sirisena government that it will not permit them due to concerns from India.

India has expressed concern over the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa's government for permitting a Chinese submarine in Colombo harbour in 2014.

China's request to dock its submarines coincided with the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Colombo.

China says it wants docking facilities for its submarines to take part in the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

In February this year, Sri Lankan Ambassador to China Karunasena Kodituwakku told the media here that Colombo will not permit any military activity by China in any of its ports including Hambantota where a Chinese firm plans to acquire 80 percent in view of India's concerns.

However, China is happy that Wickaramansinghe has consented to take part in its Belt&Road Forum.

Significantly, Wickaramansinghe and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are the only two top leaders from South Asia to attend the conference in which India is yet to confirm its participation owing to its objections to the USD 46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The other South Asian countries would be represented by either ministerial and official level delegation. China is yet to release the list of delegates participating in the event.

During his visit, Wickramasinge is expected to finalise the Hambantota Port deal as well as a Chinese free trade zone in the area which were stalled by public protests.

Saddled with heavy Chinese loans, Sri Lanka offered to lease 80 per cent of the loss making Hambantota port for 99 years lease. The two sides are also expected to finalise Free Trade Agreement.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis had to travel by road from the naxal affected Gadchiroli district to Nagpur after his chopper developed a technical snag before take off, police said.

Fadnavis, who was on a day's visit to Gadchiroli, was to travel to Nagpur, an official said.

"The pilot of the chopper informed about the technical snag just before the take off for Nagpur in the afternoon," Gadchiroli Superintendent of Police Abhinav Deshmukh told PTI.

Gadchiroli district collector ASR Nayak told PTI "One of the engine of the chopper did not start, maybe due to the intense heat. Hence the chief minister was advised to travel by road."



The chief minister left for Nagpur at around 3 pm, he said.

In Nagpur, the chief minister is to attend the programme of Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON  Congressional Republicans and Democrats have reached agreement on a long-stalled bill to make it easier for the Department of Veterans Affairs to fire its employees.

A deal announced Thursday could smooth the way for final passage on an issue that had been in limbo since the 2014 wait-time scandal at the Phoenix VA medical center. As many as 40 veterans died while waiting months for appointments as VA employees created secret waiting lists to cover up delays.

The bipartisan deal on Capitol Hill, , part of an accountability effort touted by President Donald Trump, followed a fresh warning from the VA inspector general of continuing patient safety problems at another facility, the VA medical center in Washington, D.C. After uncovering serious problems there last month, the IG's "rapid response" team visited the facility again on Wednesday and found at least two new instances in which patients were "placed at unnecessary risk."

In one case, they found a patient prepped for vascular surgery in an operating room, under anesthesia, whose surgery was postponed because "the surgeon did not have a particular sterile instrument necessary to perform the surgery." The team also found "surgical instruments that had color stains of unknown origin in sterile packs," according to the IG. The VA last month had promised immediate fixes.

VA Secretary David Shulkin told senators at a hearing that he had "no safety concerns today" and that the auditors' visit revealed a process "that works"  doctors stopping a procedure when they identified a potential risk. He agreed legislation was needed to improve the VA. "In the cases we need to make changes in management, today I just don't have that ability to do it," he said.

The Senate measure softens portions of a bill that had passed the House in March, which Democrats criticized as unfairly harsh on workers. Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Johnny Isakson of Georgia, the top Democrat and the Republican chair on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, worked to make modifications that would give VA employees added time to appeal disciplinary actions.

Turnover in VA Montana leadership has been a major issue for veterans and is a priority for veteran organizations, Tester told the Helena Independent Record, and the bill streamlines VA executive hires while also codifying whistleblower protections from retaliation.

The bottom line for me is I really think this bill is a bill that addresses the accountability issue, really delivers for our veterans in urban and rural settings, he said.

House Veterans Affairs' Committee Chairman Phil Roe, sponsor of the House bill, said he would support the revisions.

"To fully reform the VA and provide our nation's veterans with the quality care they were promised and deserve, we must ensure the department can efficiently dismiss employees who are not able or willing to do their jobs," said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., the bill's lead sponsor.

It comes after Trump last month signed an executive order to create a VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, with an aim of identifying "barriers" that make it difficult for the VA to fire or reassign bad managers or employees.

The GOP-controlled House previously approved an accountability bill mostly along party lines.

The Senate bill adopts several portions of a bipartisan Isakson bill from last year, including a longer appeal process than provided in the House bill  180 days vs. 45 days  though workers would not be paid during that appeal. VA executives would be held to a tougher standard than rank-and-file employees for discipline. The Senate bill also codifies into law the VA accountability office created under Trump's order, but with changes to give the head of the office more independent authority and require the office to submit regular updates to Congress.

Still, the bill would lower the burden of proof for the VA to fire an employee  from a "preponderance" to "substantial evidence," allowing a dismissal even if most evidence is in a worker's favor. The American Federation of Government Employees, the largest federal employee union, said it remained opposed to the bill as "trampling on the rights of honest, hardworking public sector employees."

Tester said he thinks Senate changes hit a sweet spot of accountability and worker protections.

This doesnt take away basic worker protections and also makes sure they have appeal rights and that they have the ability for grievance procedures, so there are worker protection in there, he told the Independent Record, adding that more details will be fleshed out during a hearing next week.

If you get rid of those few bad apples I think it makes the organization strong, not weaker.

The bill is bipartisan with support from veteran groups, but Tester voiced cautious optimism when asked about the legislation becoming law.

I feel good about the potential of it passing, but you never know, you never know when the train can come off the tracks, he said.

Conservative groups praised the legislation.

"These new measures will disincentivize bad behavior within the VA and further protect those who bravely expose wrongdoing," said Dan Caldwell, policy director of Concerned Veterans for America.

The agreement comes in a week in which Senate Democrats are standing apart from Trump on a separate issue affecting veterans, the GOP bill passed by the House to repeal and replace the nation's health care law. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., warned the House measure would strip away explicit protections to ensure that as many as 8 million veterans who are eligible for VA care but opt to use private insurance would still receive tax credits. A group of GOP senators is working to craft their own health bill.

Congress has had difficulty coming to agreement on an accountability bill after the Phoenix VA scandal. A 2014 law gave the VA greater power to discipline executives, but the department stopped using that authority after the Obama Justice Department deemed it likely unconstitutional. This week, a federal appeals court temporarily overturned the VA firing of Phoenix VA hospital director Sharon Helman over the wait-time scandal.

Critics complain that few employees were fired for various VA malfeasance, including rising cases of opioid drug theft, first reported by The Associated Press.

Tom Kuglin of the Independent Record contributed to this report.
Actor-comedian Chris Rock will embark on his first UK tour after a gap of ten years next year in January.

The 52-year-old actor will head to the country with the series of shows titled "Total Blackout Tour", which will see him perform in Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham, Glasgow, Birmingham and London, reported BBC.

Rock's last UK tour, "No Apologies", saw two nights at O2 Arena in sell out here.

The shows also broke a Guinness world record for gathering the largest audience at a comedy show at the time.

The tour begins from January 11 in Manchester and will end January 27 here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said Sinhala and Tamil communities in should strengthen unity and harmony as he assured India's full support to the steps taken by Colombo to improve the living conditions of minority Tamils in the country.

"Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Sinhala and Tamil people and languages existed harmoniously," Modi told the Tamil community members in Dickoya town in the tea growing Central Province of .

is still recovering from the wounds of a nearly three-decade long bloody civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, which fought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and the east of the island.

The war caused significant hardships for the Tamils and resulted in deaths of an estimated 80,000-100,000 people.

"We need to strengthen, not separate, (these) threads of unity and harmony," Modi told thousands of Tamils during a public rally in the presence of Lankan President Maithripala Srisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
With Meghalaya falling under high seismic zone, a state disaster management plan which focused on preparedness and mitigation during disaster, was today released by Deputy Chief Minister R C Laloo.

The plan was derived in consultation with National Disaster Management Authority, various government departments, stakeholders, civil societies, by focusing on preparedness and mitigation disasters, Laloo said during the release of the plan at a one-day incidence response system (IRS) training.

Highlighting that preparedness is the only way to combat a natural disaster, he said the state is vulnerable to seismic disturbances as it falls under Zone V of the seismic zones besides other natural disasters like floods, storms, landslides, etc are recurrent phenomena.

Laloo who is in charge of Revenue and Disaster Management department, expressed hope that the IRS training will further enhance the ability of the government functionaries in management and execution of different tasks in the event of disasters.

He expressed hoped that the State Incidence Response Team will collectively take the responsibility to generate awareness among the public on how to deal in the event of disasters.

In his speech, Chief Secretary K S Kropha reminded the meeting of the great devastation from the two major quakes of 1897 and 1950 and other natural disasters which have been witnessed in recent years.

"As time goes by, we see high rise buildings towering in every nook and corner of the state and this has put people's lives and properties at a higher risk," he said.

As we sit in the highest seismic zone, we need to be prepared to overcome the challenges in the event of disasters, the chief secretary opined even as the state has come up with the building bye saws and the State Disaster Plan to confront with challenges arising from natural disasters.

He said that proper and organised mechanism system needs to be put in place so that we are prepared to deal with all kinds of disasters and that preparedness is the need of the hour.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The White House has defended US President Donald Trump's decision to fire FBI Director James Comey, saying man who had been leading a probe into Russia's alleged meddling in November polls "was not up to the task".

The defence came after Trump in an interview to NBC had effectively contradicted his own White House when he said he would have sacked Comey "regardless" of the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

The White House had said Comey was fired "based on the clear recommendations of both Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions." Later, Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the decision was the Justice Department's.

Trump's explanation, though, put him back in the position of power but had undermined the accounts of his senior staff.

Yesterday, the White House attempted to clear the air on the several accounts leading to Comey's sacking that had been in the public domain. It said that Trump knew Comey was not up to the task so he decided to replace him with someone who could bring credibility back to the investigative agency.

"The president knew that Director Comey was not up to the task. He decided that he wasn't the right person in the job. He wanted somebody that could bring credibility back to the FBI that had been lost over this last several months," White House Principal Deputy Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

"The president made that decision. He made it. He moved forward. It was the right one," she told reporters responding to a volley of questions at her daily conference.

An she repeated her assertion, "the only person that can fire Comey was the president. He made that decision."



"I think instead of getting so lost in the process, 'Did this happen at 12:01 or 12:02? Did he fire him because he wore a red tie or a blue tie?' he fired him because he was not fit to do the job. It's that simple," Sanders said.

She also defended the use of word "showboat" for Comey by Trump in an interview earlier in the day.

"I think that it speaks pretty clearly. Those words don't leave a lot of room for interpretation, so I think it's pretty clear what he meant," she said.

Sanders reiterated that Trump lost confidence in Comey over the months. "After watching Director Comey's testimony last Wednesday, the president was strongly inclined to remove him," she said.

"On Monday, the president met with the attorney general and the deputy attorney general and they discussed reasons for removing the director. The next day, Tuesday May 9th, the Deputy Attorney General sent his written recommendation to the Attorney General, and the Attorney General sent his written recommendation to the President," Sanders said.

Those opposed to the sacking have claimed that Comey's sacking was a bid to stall an FBI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which is also looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's team.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Cow vigilantes thrashed five persons who were caught illegally slaughtering a buffalo inside the premises of a private dairy in Gandhi Park area here, police said.

Giving details of the incident, they said the owner of the dairy, Kalu Baghel, was operating from his compound in Panna Ganj locality. As one of the buffaloes had stopped yielding milk, he decided to sell it.

Imran, a cattle trader, offered to buy the buffalo provided the dairy owner gave permission to slaughter the animal in the premises of the dairy itself.

A group of five persons, including four butchers and the cattle trader, were in the process of slaughtering the buffalo when the blood of the animal oozed out of the gates of the dairy and was spotted by some bystanders.

Alarmed by the sight of blood, some activists rushed to the spot and barged into the dairy premises. By then, a huge crowd of protesters had converged on the spot after which the cow vigilantes started thrashing those slaughtering the buffalo, police said.

Later police managed to control the situation before it went out of hand.

The police have arrested the five persons along with the owner of the dairy for carrying out illegal slaughter. However, no case has been registered against the assaulters.

Station Officer in-charge, Gandhi Park police station, said investigations are on in this matter.

There has been a spike in the cases of cow vigilantism in the country recently with many such incidents reported in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
Following is the chronology of events relating to the domestic violence case against AAP leader Somnath Bharti in which the police today told the Delhi High Court that as per AIIMS report, scars on his wife's body were "due to dog bites and burn injuries".

Jun 10, 2015: Ex Delhi Law Minister and AAP MLA Somnath Bharti's wife Lipika lodges domestic violence complaint against him at Delhi Commission for Women (DCW).

Jun 26: Bharti fails to appear before DCW, which had summoned him in the case.

Jul 3: Bharti fails to appear before DCW again.

Jul 7: Delhi court denies anticipatory bail to Bharti, terms his plea as "pre-mature".

Sep 9: Delhi Police registers FIR against Bharti for domestic violence and attempt to murder of his wife.

Sep 10: Delhi Court records statement of Bharti's wife.

Sep 14: Delhi court junks Bharti's anticipatory bail plea, issues non bailable warrant against him.

Sep 15: Bharti moves Delhi HC seeking protection from arrest in the case. HC protects him from arrest for two days.

Sep 16: Bharti says his wife was being "misused" for political ends by rival parties taking advantage of her "gullibility".

Sep 16: Bharti defends his dog "Don", who allegedly bit his wife during her pregnancy, says he lacks the bite. Bharti moves court seeking monitoring of probe.

Sep 22: HC declines anticipatory bail to Bharti.

Sep 23: Bharti moves Supreme Court for protection from arrest.

Sep 28: SC asks Bharti to surrender before police. Bharti surrenders at night.

Sep 29: Delhi Police arrests Bharti.

Oct 1: SC denies interim bail to Bharti.

Oct 6: Bharti seeks bail, claims it's a "BJP-sponsored" case.

Oct 7: Delhi court grants bail to Somnath Bharti and gives clean chit to his dog 'Don' who allegedly bit his wife, saying allegation was unfounded.

Apr 5, 2016: Delhi Police files charge sheet aginst Bharti for alleged offences of attempt to murder and cruelty to his wife.

May 12, 2017: Police seeks cancellation of bail granted to Bharti and informs Delhi HC that AIIMS report opines Lipika suffered injuries due to dog bites and burns.

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Force India is against any kind of deal that would see their engine suppliers Mercedes assisting hapless Honda with their unreliable power units used by McLaren, deputy team boss Bob Fernley said today.

Fernley made this clear in a bid to prevent any kind of co-operation that would favour one of Force India's main rivals.

Speaking at the Spanish Grand Prix, he told reporters that Force India could not back any deal that involved Mercedes helping Honda.

"As a team, obviously, that has not only paid for its engines, but contributed to the development of them, I would certainly be very negative about sharing that technology with another team that is a competitor," she said.

Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff evaded direct questions on the subject, but said that there was no deal under discussion.

"We are not doing anything for Honda, that is the current status quo," he said. "So, unless that situation changes, I don't want to contribute to rumours out there that are false and I think are damaging for Honda... We will see what happens."



He added that he believed Honda would overcome the problems that on Friday saw two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso halted by a failed engine before he had done an opening lap in morning practice.

"Honda is an important factor in F1, a massive and very successful company, and I have no doubt they will eventually be where they expect to be," said Wolff.

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The Goa government has decided to sign memorandum of understanding with the Centre under Pradhan Mantri Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana (PMBJP) to provide subsidised medicines in the coastal state.

Union Minister of State for Chemical and FertilisersMansukhLMandaviya who was in Goa today met Health Minister Vishwajit Rane to discuss the implementation of PMBJP.

"I had a meeting with Mandaviya this morning at state secretariat. In principle, we have agreed to sign an MoU on lines with other states where government of Goa will implement Prime Minister's pet project PMBJP," Rane told reporters emerging from the meeting.

Goa will sign MoU with the Centre in the first week of June in presence of Chief Minister.

He said all the state government run pharmacies would be converted into 'Jan Aushadi Kendra' ina phased manner.

"We will have flagship store at Goa Medical College and Hospital. This will help the patients by reducing the cost of drugs," Rane said.

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Customs officials today seized 784 gms gold worth Rs 22.5 lakh from two passengers in separate cases at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport here.

In the first case, gold weighing 385 grams was seized from a passenger, who arrived here from the US via Dubai, a senior Customs official said.

In the second case, 399 grams of gold was seized from a passenger, who arrived from Sharjah.

Based on specific intelligence, Customs officials of the Air Intelligence Unit seized the yellow metal from the two persons, who were carrying it in the form of bracelets (kada), the official said.

Both the passengers are being questioned and further probe was on.

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Accusing the government of spreading misinformation in the National Herald case, the Congress today said it was proud to be associated with the newspaper that stood up in pre-independence times against the British for throttling free speech, similar to the present day climate.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi alleged that government agencies by proxy were engaging in distorted, slanted misinformation possibly bordering on contempt.

"This shows the unambiguous, clear insecurity and vindictive approach," he said hours after the Delhi High Court declined to stay income tax proceedings against Young Indian Pvt Ltd in the National Herald case, which involves Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

He said it is quite astonishing to see the amount of misinformation and distortion going on in the case.

Singhvi said he wondered if the government has better things to do or focus on governance in the country than to circulate unsigned notes of briefing to the media "which are actually campaigns of misinformation and distortion".

"Yes, we understand that the ruling party wants to indulge in this campaign of misinformation only because either they want to supply information to their proxies who are fighting us in court or they do not want to go by the facts because they are scared of the fact," he said.

Singhvi said he had withdrawn the case as the high court in its written orders said that all points raised by Young Indian can be raised before the IT department including the point that it had no reason to believe to reopen the case.

"In view of the matter, because of that, I withdrew the writ," he said.

AICC in-charge of communications department, Randeep Surjewala, said Young Indian had raised certain fundamental jurisdictional issues challenging the authority of Income Tax authorities and the Delhi High Court directed IT authorities to decide all issues with IT department and satisfied with it, Young Indian withdrew the petition.

He said Young Indian is a 'not for profit' company that runs the 'National Herald ' newspaper which is the last vestige of freedom movement which contributed to India's freedom struggle.

"No one can withdraw a single rupee of profit, salary or dividend from it or benefit from it any manner as per the Companies Act. We are proud of protecting this important symbol of the freedom struggle and will always protect this trust of people of India.

"Witch hunt or malice of the current BJP government will not deter us from upholding our bounden duty to the nation," he said.

Attacking the government for its false propaganda, Singhvi said, "terrified government proxies who have nothing else to do are using all adjectives" and claimed that they were circulating an unsigned note stating that this is a direction issued by the court and the department has been directed to investigate.

"We will apologise to you if the order shows this. Is it not contempt of court? Some of you are told to publish that the order says Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi have been asked to appear.

"This is all government agencies are doing, feeding the press misinformation when our grievance is known to all...Is this fair reporting, is this fair for the government agencies," he asked.

He said the Congress is "proud to be associated with the newspaper which in the pre-independence era stood up for free speech when the Britishers were tightening and throttling free speech very similar to the present-day climate".

Singhvi said the National Herald stood up for certain ideals and the Congress fully supports with pride this initiative.

On the IT case involving the newspaper, he said, nobody has benefited financially from it as it is registered as a Section 25 'Not for Profit' company.

The Act prohibits paying out dividend and giving of pecuniary perks as it is a Section 25 Company and no financial gain is possible, he said.

"Is it a real estate company, is a somebody's fertile imagination to think so? These are properties owned by this company for decades. And who can benefit, it will remain property of 'Not for Profit Section 25 Company'," the Congress leader said.

Explaining the case, he said the Income Tax authorities had sent out a notice in 2014 while reopening a six-year- old notice to the company owning the newspaper and claimed that it had no jurisdiction to reopen that after a six-year period.

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The Montana justice system, a misnomer in the highest degree, is determined to return Barry Beach to prison. This insanity is in spite of the attorney generals office admitting Beach is only guilty of poor decision making. Good grief, we all make occasional poor decisions! Perhaps Attorney General Fox notes Marc Racicot rode Beach into the governor's office and wants to try it? Or, is Republican Fox still miffed over Democrat Gov. Bullock pardoning Beach? Maybe our attorney general gutlessly dances to the tune of some nasty "Rascal?" We know his office disgracefully refers to Beach as the Celebrity, going to great lengths to silence him. Why? What's the real beef?
In a surprise move, veteran banker H N Sinor has quit as member of Bank Board Bureau which was constituted last year by the Prime Minister to advise the government on top-level appointments in state-owned lenders.

According to sources, the resignation comes within days of sudden changes in the top management of two large public sector banks -- Punjab National Bank and Bank of India.

They said Sinor, former Joint Managing Director of ICICI Bank, was not happy as BBB was completely bypassed when the heads of the two banks were shifted to smaller banks.

Sinor has put in his papers, a senior finance ministry official confirmed without sharing content of his resignation letter.

BBB, which was set up in April 2016, was originally tasked to recommend names for chiefs of public sector banks and financial institutions and help state-owned lenders in developing strategies and capital raising plans.

Headed by former CAG Vinod Rai, BBB was authorised to suggest to banks to develop a robust leadership succession plan through appropriate HR processes, including performance management systems.

After exit of Sinor, Anil K Khandelwal, former CMD at Bank of Baroda and Rupa Kudwa, former MD & CEO at Crisil are the only two members left at BBB.

Its role was further enhanced in October 2016 when it was entrusted with the task of advising the government on extension of tenure or termination of services of the board of directors in state-run banks and financial institutions.

Last week, PNB Managing Director Usha Ananthasubramanian was shifted to Kolkata-based Allahabad Bank while head of Bank of India (BoI) Melwyn Rego was moved to Syndicate Bank.

The changes were made in these two public sector banks after a similar rejig at IDBI Bank because of non-performing assets (NPAs).

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Haryana tonight rejected Punjab government's claims that two neighbouring states had agreed to find through talks a solution to the contentious Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal issue.

A Punjab government release had earlier said that responding to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh's call for discussions to resolve the decades-old contentious issue, the two states agreed to try and find a collective solution.

Rajnath's plea came after Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh, hosting the 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council (NZC) here, pushed for consensual resolution of the dispute by calling for coordination of the states and the central government.

However, a Haryana government release issued here tonight called it as "misleading and incorrect".

Haryana's Agriculture Minister, O P Dhankar, who was present in the meeting, said that Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had made it abundantly clear both in his printed speech and in his oral remarks that "there was no question of any dialogue on the SYL canal issue since the Supreme Court's judgment has attained finality and Haryana's execution petition is listed for hearing in July, 2017".

"In fact, just like the stand of the Haryana Chief Minister, the Union Home Minister said that while all states must make serious attempts to resolve all issues through dialogue under the aegis of the Zonal Council, the failure thereof would leave the recourse to the courts as the only final option," Dhankar said.

He said that in fact when Haryana pointed out that it was an issue of national concern that despite the Indus Water Treaty, more than 3 MAF water goes to Pakistan, "Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder said that that happened only during the monsoon".

Khattar said in the meeting that Haryana is more than willing to accept this water even during monsoon.

"Amarinder reacted by saying that if they were to do so, Haryana would be flooded. Khattar explained to him how thousands of villages of southern Haryana go thirsty even during monsoons and that the elaborate but usually dry canal network of Haryana can accept this water.

"While Amarinder looked at his officers, Haryana CM said that construction of SYL canal was a must for this water to come to the parched fields of Haryana whether during monsoon or otherwise. At this stage, there was no reaction from Punjab," Dhankar said giving out details.

Later in the meeting, Khattar pointed out as to how Punjab was not even allowing linking of Hansi-Butana Canal with Bhakra main line even though it did not involve drawing even a single drop of Punjab's water by Haryana.

Meanwhile, the Punjab Government release had earlier said that Amarinder suggested that the chief ministers and chief secretaries of both the states should sit and discuss the SYL issue threadbare in order to arrive at a mutually acceptable solution.

The Punjab Chief Minister suggested the Union Water Resource Ministry convene a meeting of the CMs and Chief Secretaries at the earliest to take it forward.

Amarinder pointed out that with an estimated 10 lakh acres of southern Punjab likely to go dry following the construction of the SYL, the region, which had seen the emergence of Naxalism, could become the hotbed of terrorism, triggering a national problem.

Though Haryana had less land, it had been given more water at the time of Punjab's reorganisation, said Amarinder, pointing out that Punjab did not get any share of the Yamuna water.

Khattar said in the meeting that his government is willing to work towards an "amicable settlement" of every issue, "but we must always honour agreements arrived at in the past".

"Since our faith in the Constitution of India is full and unflinching we would never hesitate in taking legal recourse in our determination to safeguard our interests and to protect the rights of the residents of the State," Khattar said, according to a Haryana government release.

"Haryana is a water stressed State as against the demand of 36.0 MAF water, the availability of water is only 14.7 MAF. We have to give, out of our own share in the Yamuna waters, extra water to Delhi in compliance of the Apex Court's orders, even as Punjab is not delivering Haryana's full share of the Ravi-Beas water", Khattar added.

Khattar also termed it "most unfortunate" that thousands of villages in Haryana and millions of hectares of land are even today bereft of the water "that is our due from Punjab".

Earlier, in his address, Amarinder reiterated his demand for re-assessment and re-determination of the availability of surface waters in the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers.

Noting that Punjab was suffering an ecological crisis because of depletion of ground water, he urged the central government to take expert advice on how to make reliable estimates of future flows in these rivers.

Others who attended the meeting were Punjab Governor V P Singh Badnore, who is also UT Chandigarh's Administrator, Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave, J-K Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, Himachal Pradesh minister Thakur Kaul Singh and Rajasthan minister Ram Pratap.

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: Concerned over a drastic rise in caesarean deliveries, the government may make it mandatory for private hospitals empanelled under the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) to make public the number of such surgeries they conduct.

A senior CGHS official told PTI that under a new process to be completed in a month, hospitals seeking to be empanelled by CGHS, which is under the ministry of health and family welfare, may have to publicly display the number of such deliveries.

A new agreement between the government and hospitals will also have a provision for punitive measures -- including being dropped from the empanelled list -- if the hospitals do not fall into line.

"Under the existing memorandum, we have asked all hospitals to voluntarily put out this information. However, when we launch the new empanelment process, it will be made mandatory," the senior CGHS official said.

He said with this move, the government wanted to raise awareness about caesarean deliveries and help would-be parents decide on their choice of hospital for a delivery.

A c-section, or cesarean section, is the delivery of a baby through a surgical incision in the mother's abdomen and uterus.

The World Health Organization (WHO) prescribes that such deliveries should be ideally 10-15 per cent of the total number of deliveries in a country. However, 74.8 per cent of private sector deliveries are by c-section in urban Telangana, 58 per cent in Tamil Nadu, and 41 per cent in Kerala, according to a report by the Chennai-based ICMR School of Public Health.

The move to include such a clause comes two months after Women and Child Development (WCD) Minister Maneka Gandhi raised the issue in a letter to the health and family welfare ministry.

In April, she sent another mail to the ministry, asking them to make it a mandatory provision for hospitals under CHGS.

The agreement for CGHS empanelment has to be renewed every two years by hospitals. Currently there are 1000 private hospitals and diagnostic centres which are empanelled under the CGHS across the country.

"The number of such surgeries has gone through the roof and in many states it is as high as 70 per cent. Why undergo such surgery unnecessarily when there a perfectly natural way to deliver babies," Gandhi said.

In February this year, a petition was started in Change.Org, an Internet advocacy platform, which appealed to both the ministries for more transparency in data regarding c-sections.

"Even though serious complications were not detected, I was cut open to deliver my baby. I wanted to have a natural birth but had to undergo a c-section as it was presented to be more 'scientific, modern and risk-free'. I was misled, manipulated, confused and my choice was overridden," the petitioner wrote, drawing Gandhi's attention.

Studies show that c-sections have a higher risk of post-partum depression and lower breastfeeding rate in women and can lead to obesity and diabetes in children.

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"I have a special association with tea" was how Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an instant connect with the Tamil community members here in the tea-growing Central Province of Sri Lanka.

Modi, in his address, lauded the Ceylon Tea, saying it was world famous but what was lesser known was the sweat and labour behind it.

"You and I have something in common. I have a special association with tea," Modi said.

"Chai pe Charcha or discussions over tea is mark of deep respect for dignity and integrity of honest labour," he said.

Prime Minister Modi has often recalled his days as a tea-seller while addressing gatherings in India and abroad.

"We remember your forefathers. Men and women of strong will and courage, who undertook the journey of their life from India to then Ceylon," the Prime Minister told thousands of Tamils during the public rally in the presence of Lankan President Maithripala Srisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

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A senior Indian diplomat had to apologise after he was caught taking photos inside the Islamabad High Court during the hearing of a case filed by a Pakistani man accused of forcing an Indian woman into marriage at gun point, a media report said today.

The official identified as Piyush Singh, first secretary at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, snapped three photos inside the court, including a picture of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, during the hearing of the case filed by Tahir Ali seeking the high court's intervention to meet his Indian wife Uzma.

When courtroom officials brought the incident to the notice of the judge, he ordered confiscation of Singh's cellphone, The Express Tribune reported.

Terming it a serious violation of the court decorum, the judge ordered the Indian diplomat to submit a written apology before the court after Singh verbally apologised for the said incident. However, later the diplomat issued a written apology. The court accepted his apology and warned him not to repeat the act, the report said.

"I fully apologise for the attempt of using mobile in court by mistake. It is requested that I may kindly be pardoned for this," said Singh in his statement.

Uzma, a resident of New Delhi, on May 8 filed a plea with the Islamabad court against Ali, alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him.

Uzma reached Pakistan on May 1 and travelled to Buner district in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to marry Ali on May 3. The couple reportedly met in Malaysia, where Tahir worked as a taxi-driver.

The case has attracted attention on both sides of the border.

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Indian dancers have put up spectacular shows in Egyptian cities to mark the 156th birth anniversary of the famous Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore.

The Kolkata-based Dancers' Guild performed for the first time in Cairo yesterday and Alexandria on Tuesday as part of the Tagore Festival which concluded yesterday.

The festival was organised by the Maulana Azad Centre for Indian Culture (MACIC), the cultural wing of the Indian Embassy in Cairo.

A dance drama based on Tagore's work called 'Chitrangada' was presented at the Sayed Darwish Theatre in Alexandria and at the Arab Music Institute in Cairo.

"Chitrangada" tells the story of the warrior princess in the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata.

"This time we have decided to work on the 1892 verse. We took the main text of Chitrangada and interposed it with songs, music and dance," Ashika Chakraborty, who did the concept and choreography of the play, told PTI.

"The story is a little bit of magic and reality," she added.

Before the play started Chakraborty, gave a brief introduction in English narrating the story of the plays to make it easy for Egyptians to get the story, which was mostly performed in dances and expressions and less text.

"Tagore dance, songs and theatre actually brought out a new universal language and a new universal creation, which certainly not classical, but contemporary. Although he passed away many years ago, still he is relevant," she said, adding that dance can change the world.

Chakraborty said that she was very happy to have brought Chitrangada to the land of cleopatra.

"Once we stepped in Alexandria first and then in Cairo, we're just overwhelmed. There is something in the air, that we will feel very bad to miss it when we go back to our country. My language is poor that I fail to describe all the richness exquisite brilliance of the city," she said.

Parbati Gupta, secretary and one of the founder members of the Dancers' Guild, said that the audience were very receptive to the performance.

"I enjoyed working in Egypt. I feel it is my luck that I'm involving with this group," she said.

Tagore received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913. He was the first non-European to win this prestigious award, in recognition for his collection of poems, 'Gitanjali'. His poetry, novels, plays, short stories and essays are widely read in India and across the world.

His songs have been set to music, his plays have been enacted as dance drama and his novels have been filmed. He is an integral part of India's literary heritage and a towering figure in Bengali literature who continues to inspire creativity even in the contemporary world.

Tagore is not unknown to Egypt. He visited Egypt as a young adolescent in 1878 and later as a famous poet- philosopher in 1926, when he met King Fouad and interacted with scholars in Alexandria and Cairo. His friendship with Egyptian poet Ahmed Shawki is well known and he wrote a moving eulogy on his friend's death in 1932.

He was impressed by the strong literary trends and found great resonance in the intellectual movement in Egypt. He also wrote about the beautiful relationship between the noble Nile River and the flourishing civilization of Egyptians.

The Tagore Festival was organised in cooperation with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Cairo Opera House, Cultural Production Sector, Dancers' Guild and the Indian Community Association in Egypt.

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India plans to launch next month its most powerful rocket that is capable of transporting a heavier 4-tonne communications satellite and described as a "game-changer" in the first of its kind space mission.

Aiming for a greater share of the multi-billion dollar global space market and to reduce dependency on international launching vehicles, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said today it is hoping to launch the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) Mark-III in the first week of June.

A successful launch of this rocket will be yet another major step towards being self-reliant in the country's space programme.

The currently has the capability to launch payloads of up to 2.2 tonnes into the intended orbit and anything above that it had to tap foreign launch facilities.

"GSLV Mark-III is our next launch. We are getting ready. All the systems are in Sriharikota. The integration is currently going on," Chairman AS Kiran Kumar told reporters here.

"The whole process of assembling the various stages and then integrating the satellite into the heat shield, these activities are going on. First week of June is when we are targeting this launch," he said.

The views operationalisation of this rocket as a "game-changer" mission.

GSLV Mark-III will be India's most powerful launch vehicle built to lift the heaviest Indian communications satellites to space. It can put satellites weighing 4 tonnes in space, double the weight that the current GSLV-Mark-II can lift.

It will also enable ISRO to launch from India heavier communications spacecraft to geostationary orbits of 36,000 km. Because of the absence of a powerful launcher, ISRO currently launches satellites above 2 tonnes on European rockets for a big fee.

Noting that communications satellites built beyond the capacity of 2.2 tonnes have to be launched from foreign soil, Kiran Kumar said efforts are on to launch satellites upto four tonnes and even beyond in India itself.

The GSLV Mark-III is intended to launch satellites into geostationary orbit and as a launcher for an Indian crew vehicle.

It features an Indian cryogenic third stage and a higher payload capacity than the current GSLV.

The satellite would carry Ka and Ku-band payload along with a Geostationary Radiation Spectrometer (GRASP) payload to monitor and study the nature of the charged particles and influence of space radiation on spacecraft and electronic components.

It would also employ advanced spacecraft technologies including bus subsystem experiments in electrical propulsion system, indigenous Li-ion battery and indigenous bus bars for power distribution, among others.

The technology on lithium ion batteries developed by ISRO is good for space programme in terms of cost-effectiveness, but it requires the efforts of industry to develop it to reduce costs, Kiran Kumar said.
The Allahabad High Court today said it is an obligation of the Uttar Pradesh government to establish and run modernised slaughter houses in the state and directed authorities to issue new licenses as per rules.

Considering that licenses for meat shops and slaughter houses can be granted under the Food Safety Act 2006, the Lucknow bench of the high court in its interim order asked the applicants of licences to apply accordingly.

In case the local authorities find any difficulty in doing so, they can approach the state government for proper guidance, it said.

The court also directed a High Powered Committee to consider the aspects set forth in the verdict and formulate the policy in the matter of slaughtering and licensing to meat shops.

A bench of justices A P Sahi and Sanjai Harkauli passed the directives on a bunch of writ petitions filed individually.

The petitioners had demanded that their meat shop licences which had expired on March 31 be renewed.

They had pleaded that the state in fact wanted to close slaughter houses and therefore it issued an order on March 22.

The petitioners submitted that the state act has forced the closure of meat business which is constitutional right.

The act of the state indirectly put unreasonable restriction on taste of food of a citizen which cannot be permitted.

Citing an apex court guideline, it was also pointed out that in compliance whereof the central and state governments had released funds for establishment of modern abattoirs but the present government was lagging behind the steps.

Opposing the pleas, advocate general Raghvendra Singh and state's special counsel L P Mishra had strongly submitted that it was not obligation of the state government to establish the slaughter houses.

It was argued that the Food Safety Act 2006 had overruled other provisions under which licenses for slaughtering and renewal of meat shops were granted. The state counsel pleaded that if the aspirants of licences applied as per norms, the same can be issued after scrutiny.

The bench had heard the matter for many days and finally issued its interim verdict.

Considering the provisions of different local acts and government order issued during last government, the bench said that establishing and running slaughter houses were responsibility of the state.

It relied on government orders places before it in which it was evident that the state had earlier issued fund for the purpose.

"The disbursement of funds under the said head has been categorically described in relation to several projects with substantial amount of funding by the central government. It is thus clear that not only the central government but the state government as well in the past has undertaken these steps in order to ensure the running of modernised slaughterhouses either by improving upon the existing slaughterhouses or setting up of new modern slaughterhouses" held the bench.

The court also asked the state to require the private players in the field.

"All the citizens have the right to an adequate means of livelihood to subserve common good which in the instant case would also include the choice of food of its citizens and all other such obligations that can be gathered from the constitutional provisions," observed the bench, directing the High Powered Committee to formulate policy on the whole issue by next date fixing July 17 for further hearing in the matter.

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Norwegian film directors Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg are making their big Hollywood debut with "Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge" and they say it was a daunting job but the cast and crew were more than welcoming to them.

The directors started working together since the age of 10 and co-own one of Scandinavia's largest production companies for commercials called Motion Blur.

They are best known for their 2012 historical drama "Kon-Tiki", which was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards.

"We have been working on this film for the past three years. Jerry Bruckheimer (producer) called us on board. Everything was bigger and grander than what we have done before," Ronning told reporters here.

"The franchise is a family as it has been going on for years. The cast and crew have worked for many years. It was a daunting task to come on board the film. But everyone was very supportive. They welcomed us with open arms. We are thrilled to be a part of it."



The fifth "Pirates" movie stars Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario and Kevin McNally.

Sandberg says they chased after the film for many years before finally getting to direct it.

"We started making movies at the age of 10. We started playing with the camera. We always wanted to make movies. We actually chased for this film for a while as we really wanted to direct it. This is the kind of film that we believe in. I am glad that we got to direct it," Sandberg says.

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar's Revenge" releases on May 26.

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A Japanese textile body is evaluating whether testing laboratories belonging to the Textiles Committee comply with the quality requirement.

The experts from Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Centre (QTEC) are currently evaluating eight laboratories.

Already they have completed four laboratories located in Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Chennai and Kolkata, Textile Committee joint director K S Muralidhara said today.

The Textiles Committee's main objective is to ensure the quality of textiles and textile machinery both for internal consumption and export purposes.

The Japanese textile market worth USD38 billion is presently dominated by China (65-70 per cent) and even Bangladesh (seven per cent) stays ahead of India which account for only one per cent.

Although Indian textiles are majorly exported to US and Europe, it is failing to pass the quality standards of Japan, Muralidhara said.

With the rising production cost in China, propspects of the Indian textile industry are turning bright, Axis Securities MD & CEO Arun Thukral said.

QTEC officials interacted with the local textile manufacturers and exporters.

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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders will hold a free public rally in Billings on Saturday, May 20, to support the campaign of Democrat Rob Quist for Montana's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sanders will be at the Billings Depot from 8:30-9:30 p.m.

He will also be at the Wilma Theater in Missoula from 11 a.m. to noon and at the Butte Civic Center from 3 to 4 p.m. On Sunday, he will appear at the Union Building Ballroom in Bozeman from 11 a.m. to noon.

Quist, a musician from the Flathead Valley, is running against Greg Gianforte, a Republican businessman from Bozeman, and Mark Wicks, a Libertarian farmer from Inverness.

They are campaigning to replace former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, who was tapped by President Trump to be Interior Secretary earlier this year.

Sanders is an Independent from Vermont. He won Montana's Democratic primary election last year, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton with a populist message that he brought to Missoula for a rally that drew thousands to Caras Park. He also drew a large crowd to a rally at MetraPark in Billings.
Kerala government will develop 10 ecotourism circuits connecting various forests as part of its plans to promote green tourism.

Forest Minister K Raju today informed the assembly that as many as 60 ecotourism projects were being implementedin 32 forest divisions across the state at present.

The ecotourism circuits were envisaged to promote tourism without harming environment and preserve local culture.

Replying during the question hour, he said the total forest cover in the state was 11,30,941.71 hectare and high range Idukki district topped the list in terms of forest stretch.

"The government will implement 10 forest-centred ecotourism circuit projects."



"Neyyar-Kottur-Shenduruni-Achankovil will be such a circuit in the southern part of the state," he said.

Quoting figures, Raju said forest fire destroyed 2,984.18 hectare land in various parts of the state since May last year.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The BJP today accused RJD chief Lalu Prasad, his MP-daughter Misa Bharti and his two sons, both Bihar government ministers, of being involved in corrupt land deals worth over Rs 1,000 crore, and asked the central government to probe one such transaction in Delhi.

Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad alleged that these transactions were a case of "quid pro quo" as they date back to the period when Lalu Prasad was the railway minister, and dared Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to take action against him.

Lalu's RJD is a constituent of Bihar's ruling coalition led by Kumar. His sons Tejashwi Yadav and Tej Pratap Yadav are ministers in the government.

Lalu's official residence was the address of the owners of the firms allegedly floated by his family members, he said.

Addressing a press conference here, Prasad urged the Election Commission to act against Lalu's daughter Misa Bharti, saying she did not disclose the details of these assets in her Rajya Sabha election affidavit.

It is a serious case of "misrepresentation" and has very grave implications, he said.

Several suspect land deals took place in Bihar, he said, wondering if Kumar would invoke a special law enacted by his government in which assets acquired through illicit money are confiscated in this instance.

"The politics of Lalu Prasad has become politics of loot. Land worth crores of rupees was grabbed for a pittance," he said.

This was "Vadra model of development", he said, referring to dubious land deals allegedly involving Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's son-in-law Robert Vadra.

One such land deal involving Lalu Prasad and his family members is in Bijwasan in Delhi, he said. "We expect the central government to take appropriate action," he added.

All the companies owned by Lalu Prasad's family members for the purpose of these land transactions had no employees, no business activities and no turnover, Prasad claimed.

Bihar's biggest shopping mall spread over 7.5 lakh square feet is coming up in Patna as part of such dubious transactions, he said.

Taking a dig at opposition parties over their efforts to unite, the law minister asked if their proposed alliance is meant to be a cover for corruption and if "rank corruption will be covered in the name of secularism".

He said JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury should respond to these charges against Prasad and his family members.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Meghalaya State Commission today launched a 24X7 helpline to assist women in the domains of harassment and distress.

"The helpline bearing number 181 is an attempt to provide all kinds of assistance - legal, police, medical, counseling and temporary support services - to women affected by violence," Meghalaya State Commission for Women chairperson Theilin Phanbuh said here at its launch.

It's centre is currently situated at Ganesh Das Government Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Shillong.

"The helpline is a long felt need for women in distress and its launch will be a boon in reaching out to those who need of help," she said.

Phanbuh also appealed to the helpline staff to dedicate themselves to the cause and work to restore the dignity of women.

Social welfare additional chief secretary H Marwein, who was present on the occasion, said that the helpline is an "effective mechanism that will go a long way in curbing sexual abuse and atrocities against women.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host Emmanuel Macron for talks in Berlin on Monday, a day after the new French president is due to take office.

The German leader had welcomed Macron's resounding election win on Sunday, saying he "carries the hopes of millions of French people and also many in Germany and across Europe".

Merkel and her government had thrown their support behind the centrist Macron against far-right and anti-EU challenger Marine Le Pen during the election campaign.

She spoke by telephone with Macron just minutes after his victory and praised his commitment to the EU.

The two will meet on Monday afternoon, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said, adding that further details would be released later.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Thursday underlined common ground with Macron in Germany and France's bid to bolster the European Union, which has been buffeted by Britain's decision to quit the bloc.

Schaeuble said both he and Macron are in favour of creating a parliament for the 19-country eurozone.

"A eurozone parliament could be set up, made up of European parliamentarians, which would have consultative powers" for moving forward the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Schaeuble said.

The Luxembourg-based ESM, operational since October 2012, is a bailout fund for eurozone countries.

Macron visited Berlin twice during the hard-fought electoral campaign.

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Digital payments firm MobiKwik today said it would invest Rs 500 crore by 2018 towards merchant and user acquisition.

"We are aiming to become India's first digital banking App without being a bank as we don't have a banking licence," MobiKwik Chief Business Officer Vineet Singh told reporters here



He said the company was targeting around 10 million merchants in the calendar year 2017 and about 150 million users by the end of calendar year 2018.

Singh said, "We are planning to invest around Rs 500 crore over the next eight to ten months in merchant and user acquisition. The virtual circle that we want to build ismore merchants, more users and more transactions."



Founded in 2009, MobiKwik as of now has more than 15 lakh direct merchants and over 55 million plus users.

According to company officials, with a headcount of about 290 people, MobiKwik had during last month had openedoffices in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Kolkota.

Singh said "the company is also investing Rs 30 crorein setting up 13 offices, out of which four have alreadybeen set up and two will be ready by the end of this month inSouth India."



He also said that the company's head count by March FY 18 should be around of 1000 people.

According to company officials, MobiKwik,which has so far raised about USD 85 million from investors like South Africas payments major Net1, Sequoia Capital, American Express, Tree Line Asia and Cisco Investments, will be raising fresh funding by the end of this month.

MobiKwik also announced that it has partnered with Bangalore One andKarnataka mobile one, aimed at helping consumers make payments of utility bills and tax in a faster, easier and simpler way.

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The chief of Pakistan's Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has rejected allegations that his party workers attacked media houses during a protest last year.

Altaf Hussain, the leader of Mutthaida-E-Qaumi Movement (MQM), said he had called for "peaceful demonstration" against the media houses.

"I asked my workers to go at the media houses and...Asked them not to televise the views of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)," London-based Hussain said in a message to PTI.

"It (asking supporters to attack media houses) is totally a false information aired by Pakistani media and I deny it completely," Hussain said,referring to the reports appearing in this regard in a section of the media.

It was reported that several journalists from various media organisation were attacked by the activists of the MQM. The protesters pelted stones and resorted to heavy aerial firing that killed one person and wounded others in August last year.

"I totally deny this allegation levelled by the ISI," he said.

The MQM, Karachi's biggest political party, is facing a crackdown after its self-exiled leader Hussain in London last year delivered an anti-Pakistan speech.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A day after accusing Mayawati of demanding Rs 50 crore, expelled BSP leader Naseemuddin Siddiqui today appealed to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to extend 'Z category' security to him claiming there was a threat to his life from the BSP leadership.

"I have come to know that her (Mayawati's) gang of criminals have got into action and my people have advised me to exercise caution... I appeal to the CM through the media to take note of it," he told a press conference here.

"He (Yogi) is the chief minister of all and he should address the security concerns of myself and my family... She can get me and my family attacked and killed... He should provide me with 'Z category' security," he said.

A person getting 'Z category' security is protected by paramilitary force personnel round the clock.

Responding to Mayawati's charge that he was a big blackmailer, Siddiqui alleged, "Since the days of Kanshi Ram, she has been harassing senior leaders and many of them were expelled from the party... Some others left the party and eight of them died of shock."



"I have faced her anger and atrocities and played the audio of telephonic conversation with her only to save myself and my family and not to blackmail her... I only did what she taught me," he said, adding what he presented before the media in the form of audio tapes was before all and asked if it amounted to blackmailing anyone.

"She is saying that there were complaints that I have blackmailed partymen earlier... If she has the proof, she should bring it before all," he said.

"I have not seen a bigger blackmailer than you (Mayawati). MLAs, workers, leaders all were blackmailed by her... One who checked the audio (released yesterday) said there is no tampering... (you can) get it probed and if anything wrong is found, I am ready to go to jail," he said, terming Mayawati as a "blot" on humanity.

On Mayawati's allegations that he did not give account of the membership money, Siddiqui said had that been the case both the charges of blackmailing and usurping funds should have been made at the time of his expulsion.

"I will give proper proof of where all the money of membership drives in the party has gone... I have reply of all allegations made by her...I have known her more than anyone in the party or her family," he said.

Siddiqui also refuted the charge that he had lost the 1990 Banda Nagarpalika election.

He said no such election was held that year and challenged her to quit politics if he was right.

He said it was Mayawati who has lost a number of elections.

"If she is so brave, she should contest nagar nigam or palika election from a Muslim-dominated constituency as she claims that Muslims like BSP and win the seat, leave alone MLA, MP polls," he dared.

Referring to Mayawati's claim that Kanshi Ram had warned her against him, the expelled leader said that it only goes on to prove that she did not adhere to his orders as she not only inducted him as minister but also gave him 18 portfolios.

In a retort to Mayawati's praise of party national general secretary S C Misra, he said that Kanshi Ram had in fact warned against Misra on whom she is showering praises now.

Naseemuddin, who played a new audio clipping to back his claim that no membership money was due on him, also made some people stand from among his supporters at the press conference who said that they gave several lakh rupees collected in the name of membership drive and there is no account of it.

Many members were made to sign blank papers and give up their properties in the name of membership, he alleged.

He said that he will consult his people after seeing to what extent Mayawati, Anand Kumar and Misra go before deciding on his political course.

Taking exception to Mayawati expressing ignorance of his daughter who died when he was busy in Mayawati's election, Siddiqui said that she cannot know what the loss of one's child means.

Earlier in the day, Siddiqui blamed Mayawati for a protest demonstration last year when derogatory slogans were raised against BJP leader Dayashankar Singh's family, including his minor daughter.

"The protest was held on the orders of the Maharani (Mayawati)," Siddiqui told newspersons after recording his statement before the Lucknow police here in connection with a case in the matter.

Siddiqui recorded his statement on an FIR registered against him and other BSP leaders for allegedly raising derogatory slogans against Singh's minor daughter and wife Swati Singh during the protest.

Siddiqui went to the Hazratganj police station today and gave his statement which was video-recorded.

Singh's comments against Mayawati had stirred a hornets' nest in July last year. The BSP had strongly objected to the comments of Singh, an upper caste BJP leader.

In response to Singh's derogatory comments, the BSP had staged a dharna at Hazratganj on July 21 last year, demanding his arrest and branding the BJP as "anti-Dalit".

It was during this protest that senior BSP leaders, including Siddiqui, allegedly raised slogans against his minor daughter.

The BJP expelled Singh and initiated a fight in the name of honour of 'beti' (daughter). It later fielded his wife Swati Singh, who won the Assembly election. She is now a senior minister in the Yogi Adityanath government.

Singh's expulsion was later withdrawn.

Singh's wife had filed a police case against a BSP leader who, she said, made what amounted to a sexual threat against her 12-year-old daughter.

To a question, Siddiqui had yesterday refused having made any adverse remarks against Swati's minor daughter.

"Video clippings could be checked, I never said anything wrong against her," he had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Delhi High Court today declined to stay the income tax proceedings against Young Indian Pvt Ltd in the National Herald case, which involves, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and asked them to approach the tax authorities.

"We are not inclined to entertain your writ petition. It is better you withdraw it and approach the income tax assessing officer," a bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Chander Shekhar said.

It also said that the company has not moved the assessing officer raising its grievances, so it should first approach the IT department and submit its documents.

In case it is still not satisfied, the company can move the court thereafter, the bench added.

Sensing the mood of the bench, senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, appearing for the firm, withdrew the petition which was allowed by the court that termed it "dismissed as withdrawn".

Young Indian (YI) had approached the high court seeking a direction to stay the IT proceedings and quashing of re- assessment notices issued against it with regard to the National Herald misappropriation of assets case. The company was issued notices regarding the assessment year 2011-12.

The counsel for the Income Tax Department opposed the petition, saying the firm has not moved the assessing officer and hence its plea was not maintainable.

BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, in a private criminal complaint, had accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh, through which YI had obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which the Associate Journals Limited (AJL) owed to the Congress party.

The Gandhis and other accused -- Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda -- have denied the allegations levelled against them.

The trial court had summoned them as accused persons, besides Young India on June 26, 2014.

On December 7, 2015 the high court had rejected their pleas for quashing the summons issued against them by the trial court in the case.

On December 19, 2015, it had granted bail to Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to summons. Pitroda was granted bail on February 20, 2016 when he had appeared in the court.

The Congress President and the Vice President, Vora (AICC treasurer), Fernandes (AICC general secretary), Dubey and Pitroda were summoned for the alleged offences of dishonest misappropriation of property, criminal breach of trust and cheating read with criminal conspiracy of the IPC.

The IT department's move to issue notices followed its probe on Swamy's complaint alleging that the Gandhis had misappropriated AJL's assets while transferring their shares to the newly formed Young India.

According to IT records, 83.3 per cent of Young Indian was held by Sonia and Rahul, 15.5 per cent by Vohra and the remaining 1.2 per cent by Fernandes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Nepal today inked a major deal with China to join Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious 'One Belt One Road' initiative to link Asia with Europe, a move that could raise concerns in India.

The decision to sign the agreement comes ahead the One Belt One Road (OBOR) forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong and Nepal's Foreign Secretary Shankar Bairagi signed an MoU at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kathmandu.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat were present during the signing ceremony.

"This agreement will bring Nepal and China closer through road connectivity and bring home the Chinese investment," Mahat said.

The agreement was important for Nepal in terms of expansion of road connectivity and construction of railways, he said.

Mahat expressed hope that the deal would help in attaining economic prosperity for the country.

"With the signing of the MoU, a new chapter has begun in the area of foreign investment and trade promotion," he said, adding Nepal would reap benefits from the Chinese project which would expand to Europe and Africa.

"Nepal needs the maximum investment and we want Chinese investment channelled in Nepal through this new project."



"Nepal would benefit from this important project initiated by China and that this should be taken as a significant achievement of Nepal's development endeavour," Bairagi said.

Yu expressed hope that the project would contribute to enhancement of China-Nepal cooperation as well as to the economic development of the South Asia region itself.

"The MoU aims to forge cooperation on promoting connectivity of facilities, trade connectivity and financial integration," according to the Foreign Ministry statement.

The OBOR aims to enhance connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Asia and Europe through land as well as maritime routes.

China had sent a draft proposal on OBOR to Nepal late last year. After a month-long consultation, the Nepalese side had sent back the draft to Beijing with some changes.

Nepal signing the deal with China may cause concerns in India, which has opposed Beijing's initiative. India has reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of the OBOR, as it is proposed to pass through the Pakistan- occupied Kashmir.

India, which has traditionally enjoyed great economic and political ties with Nepal, has faced increasing competition from China in recent years.

Landlocked Nepal relies heavily on imports from India and completely on Indian ports for sea access.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
He will give a short speech on the tarmac and then travel with a motorcade to the Crow Indian Reservation for a tour of the Absaloka Mine. At 4 p.m., he will participate in a business "listening session" in Hardin.
Axed Delhi minister Kapil Mishra, who is on an indefinite fast, today claimed his next "expose" will rattle the people of Delhi who "trusted the Aam Aadmi Party".

During the day, Mishra visited the Raj Ghat, the memorial for Mahatma Gandhi, where he had made startling allegations of corruption against Kejriwal on Sunday.

He broke down at the memorial.

He has been sitting on an indefinite strike since Wednesday and was advised hospitalisation be a team of doctors today.

"His blood sugar level has dropped to 81 mg/dL and intravenous fluids need to be started immediately. His pulse is low. He is going into dehydration because of poor salt intake. We have thus advised hospitalisation," said Dr Javed Salam of the Aruna Asaf Ali Hospital who examined Mishra.

He is demanding that the AAP divulge details of foreign tours undertaken by five leaders of the party.

"I am feeling very lonely, so paid a visit to the Raj Ghat. Tomorrow, I will visit a Hanuman temple. I will reveal the next batch of expose on Sunday. After that, the people of Delhi will receive a jolt, especially those who trusted the AAP," he said.

His mother Annapurna, a former BJP mayor, wrote a letter to Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of spreading "lies" that the BJP was behind her son's stinging attacks on him and the AAP.

Yesterday, several AAP leaders had tweeted a picture in which Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari and Mishra were seen in one frame.

She claimed the picture was clicked at an event to felicitate AAP leader Kumar Vishwas' father and was attended by Kejriwal and all his ministers.
Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh today pushed for a consensual resolution of the SYL dispute by calling for coordination of the states with the Centre.

He was addressing the 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council (NZC) here, presided over by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

The chief minister also sought the central government's help in supplementing Punjab's efforts to check cross-border smuggling of drugs which he said his government was committed to eliminating.

Referring to Punjab's border status, Amarinder reiterated his demand for the central government's concessions, on the lines of the fiscal and industrial concessions being given to other states, in order to compensate for the financial and economic losses already suffered by it.

This, he said, was necessary to provide a level playing field to the state, said an official release issued here.

Amarinder reiterated his demand for re-assessment and re-determination of the availability of surface waters in the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej rivers.

Noting out that Punjab was suffering an ecological crisis because of depletion of ground water, he urged the central government to take expert advice on reliable estimates of future flows in these rivers.

On the drug menace in Punjab, Amarinder said as the border was manned by central security forces, the home minister should order a strict vigil on the border to check drugs smuggling.

He underlined the need to combat the drug problem in a systematic and organised manner, stressing on the importance of inter-state coordination. He urged the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Haryana, HP and J-K to make focused efforts to check illegal cultivation of poppy and cannabis.

The chief minister also called for effective plugging of pilferage of narcotic substances from areas where they are being cultivated legally for pharmaceutical and related purposes.

Sharing of information and initiating criminal action against the smugglers involved in this nefarious trade should be promoted, he said. He also called for shifting of poppy husk vends located in Rajasthan along the border villages of Punjab.

Amarinder lamented the growing trend of centralisation of authority and said there was a need for greater operational freedom to states, cutting across party lines, as state governments "are in a much better position to understand, address and solve the problems of their people".

"Moreover, they are directly answerable to the people for ensuring a better quality of life," Amarinder said.

He said more funds are needed by the states for their primary development needs and reiterated his demand for an increase in the percentage of devolution of central funds to the states.

Amarinder expressed concern at the "dilution", by the Chandigarh Administration, of the 60:40 ratio decided by the central government, at the time of reorganisation of Punjab, in the matter of all government posts of the Union Territory between Punjab and Haryana.

He asked the home minister to direct the Chandigarh administration to ensure strict compliance with the 60:40 principle in matters of recruitment in all departments/ categories of employees.

Amarinder asked the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister to look into the matter of Shahpur Kandi dam project which had been stalled by the state in 2014. He said it was an important project which was in the interest of the nation and Punjab as well.

Amarinder also sought his Himachal Pradesh counterpart's intervention to put an immediate stop to discharge of effluents into river Sutlej by industries/towns by various rivulets.

Noting that the water of Sutlej river was used for drinking in many parts of Punjab, he said his government had initiated an ambitious project for cleaning of rivers. He said it would also ensure that all the waste water being discharged into Punjab's rivers was treated before discharged, in the next three years.

The meeting was also attended by Punjab Governor V P Singh Badnore, who is also UT Chandigarh's Administrator, Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, Delhi Lt Governor Anil Baijal, Enivornment Minister Anil Madhav Dave, Jammu and Kashmir Deputy Chief Minister Nirmal Singh, Himachal Pradesh minister Thakur Kaul Singh and Rajasthan minister Ram Pratap.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 73.62 lakh tonnes of wheat has arrived in the mandis of Haryana till yesterday.

Out of the total arrived wheat, the five government procuring agencies have purchased over 73.55 lakh tonnes and traders have purchased 6,854 tonnes of wheat at Minimum Support Price (MSP).

While stating this here today, a spokesman of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department said the procurement process was running smoothly in the mandis.

Giving details of the wheat procured by government agencies, he said that more than 18.21 lakh tommes of wheat has been procured by the Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Department, whereas HAFED has purchased more than 26.59 lakh tonnes of wheat.

He said the Food Corporation of India (FCI) has purchased more than 8.59 lakh tonnes of wheat, Haryana Agro Industries Corporation 6.75 lakh tonnes and over 13.40 lakh tonnes of wheat has been procured by Haryana Warehousing Corporation.

He said that district Sirsa was leading in wheat arrival where more than 10.72 lakh tonnes of wheat has so far arrived in the mandis.

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Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.

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A Pakistani team will visit Nepal to probe the disappearance of a retired Pakistan Army officer from Lumbini near Nepal's border with India.

"A team comprising government officials from the Ministry of Interior will proceed for Nepal to examine the firsthand facts," the Nation reported.

Lt Col (Rtd) Mohammad Habib Zahir went missing soon after he landed in the Nepalese town of Lumbini last month where he was supposed to appear for an interview.

The family of the retired Pakistan Army officer has told police that he may have been kidnapped by "enemy spy agencies".

Saad Habib, a son of the missing officer, in an FIR said that his father was received by one Javed Ansari in Nepal who took him to Lumbini.

The Pakistani team will take the statement of Ansari, the host and airline officials/hotel management to assess as to who arranged the bookings etc, the daily said.

The team will seek any other information from fellow passengers or any other person concerned and also take statement of the police officer in-charge of the city/town from where he went missing, it said.

Zahir, who retired in October 2014 and belonged to artillery wing of the army, was currently employed with a private firm in Pakistan and had posted his CV online for employment.

A caller identified as Mark Thompson had reportedly contacted him both via email and telephone for a job interview in Nepal for which he was also provided an air ticket.

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The Patna High Court today paid tribute to Justice Leila Seth, who spent 10 years here as a barrister in the initial phase of her trailblazing career, and recalled her contributions to the legal field.

Chief Justice Rajendra Menon presided over a full court condolence meet that last about 30 minutes in the chief justice's courtroom.

"As per the traditions of a full court reference, all the judges and lawyers gathered to pay tribute to her and recalled her career in the Patna High Court. Representatives of all the lawyer associations read out obituary messages and finally the chief justice made his speech," K D Chatterji, an advocate, said.

"A two-minute silence was then observed and after that the court was closed for the remainder of the day. The bereaved family will receive a copy of the proceedings," he told PTI.

On May 9, the Himachal Pradesh High Court had observed a full court Reference in memory of Seth, who died on May 5 at her residence in Noida.

Acting Chief Justice of HP High Court Sanjay Karol had said in his message, "Justice Leila Seth was an eminent jurist, an author, social activist, great human being and swift and bold in taking decisions."



Seth became the first woman chief justice of a high court in the country when she was appointed to the post in the Himachal Pradesh High Court on August 5, 1991. She served in the post till October 20, 1992.

She was also the first judge of the Delhi High Court before her elevation as the chief justice.

Seth started her career in 1959 in the Patna High Court as a young London-trained barrister and spent 10 years here, seeking a foothold in a field dominated by men.

In her memoirs "On Balance", she recalls how once visitors of the zoo came to the court only to "see a lady judge".

Seth, who was born in October 1930 in Lucknow, also championed women and gender rights.

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The CPI(M) today trashed BJP chief Amit Shah's claim that there was a "long misrule" in Tripura and his party would put an end to it saying the people of the state will reject the "communal" designs of the Centre's ruling party.

Countering the allegations that Chief Minister Manik Sarkar is involved in chit fund scandals, the CPI(M) said the BJP is living in "fool's paradise" if it feels the Marxist leader's image can be "tarnished".

Former CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat also accused the BJP of unleashing violence in the northeastern state to spread its wings there.

The BJP -- which formed governments in northeastern states of Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur in the recent past -- fancies wresting power from Sarkar when Tripura goes to polls next year.

"Shah has declared the BJP would oust the Left Front government in the assembly elections. BJP's and RSS' communal and reactionary designs will be firmly rebuffed by the people of Tripura," Karat said.

The Marxist leader made the remarks in an editorial of latest issue of party mouthpiece 'People's Democracy'.

Karat alleged that to fulfil its desire of "uprooting" the Left Front from power in the state, the BJP is "working overtime" to create conditions of confrontation.

He also cited recent incidents of clashes between cadres of the two parties.

"However, unlike in the other north-eastern states, the BJP is faced with a CPI(M) which has a strong and deep rooted base among the people," he cautioned.

Karat further accused RSS-BJP workers of propagating a Hindutva agenda and spreading disinformation about the state government.

He charged the combine with trying to disrupt the unity among tribals of the state for achieving its "narrow" political gains by seeking to rope in tribal "extremist" parties like the Indigenous People's Front of India and Indigenous Nationalist Party of India.

Referring to the BJP's reported challenge to Sarkar that he hands over chit fund cases to CBI to prove his "honesty", Karat said, "The BJP is living in a fool's paradise, if it believes it can tarnish the image of Sarkar."



Karat sought to deflate the BJP's reported allegation, saying Sarkar had written to the Centre immediately after the exposure of the chit fund scams namely - Saradha, Rose Valley and others - demanding a probe by the central agency into the cases.

The CBI, he added, is investigating five out of the total 37 cases in this connection.

The rest 32 cases are being investigated by a Special Task Force under the supervision of the Tripura High Court, Karat added.

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PM Modi at at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. Photo: @PMOIndia

Prime Minister on Friday cautioned the international community on the growing "arc of violence" and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

"The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion," he said, apparently referring to Pakistan, which is accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks inside India.

"The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

Modi said he believes that "Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world."

Lord Buddha's message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.

"Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings," he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy."

The themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings; they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected, Modi said.

He said the countries of south, central, south east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

Prime Minister Modi assured India's support to Sri Lanka for the island's nation-building endeavours.

Modi said that he believes that both India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity in its relationship.

"You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours," he said and called on the two countries to uphold ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.

The prime minister lit a lamp  a traditional practice  initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.

Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.

Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event.

"Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said.

"Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said.

Modi arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today left for home after wrapping up his two-day Sri Lanka visit during which he took part in the the International Vesak Day celebrations and addressed Indian-origin Tamils.

"Thank you Sri Lanka! This was a memorable visit, in which I got to take part in various programmes including Vesak Day celebrations," Modi tweeted before emplaning for New Delhi.

"I thank President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the government and (the) warm-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka for their hospitality," he said.

Earlier in the day, Modi took part in the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo where he also addressed the gathering as the chief guest.

Later, Modi addressed the Tamils of Indian origin in Dickoya town in the tea growing Central Province of Sri Lanka and inaugurated a Rs 150 crore super-speciality hospital built with India's assistance.

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Police continued to hunt for Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan, sentenced to six months jail by the Supreme Court for contempt, for the third day on Friday but without any luck.

The Kolkata police, which has been instructed by the apex court to execute its order, stayed put in Chennai to take him into custody before he could be forwarded to jail for serving the sentence.

The team comprises officials of Kolkata police, including a DGP rank officer, Chennai police sources said, adding the whereabouts of Karnan were not known.

Karnan had on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking a recall of its order holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to a six-month imprisonment.

The seven-judge bench of the apex court had passed the order on May 9, a day after he defiantly ordered eight apex court judges, including the Chief Justice of India, to be put behind bars.

However, before the apex court pronounced the order, he had left Kolkata for Chennai.

Justice Karnan, who has been on a warpath with the Supreme Court for last several months, is the first sitting judge of a high court to be ordered jailed. He is due to retire next month.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said a "conscious decision" was taken by seven of its judges to sentence to six months imprisonment.

"The seven judges assembled to take a conscious decision," a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said.

The CJI made the remarks while he was sitting with four other judges hearing the issue of triple talaq.

He made the statement when advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, on behalf of Justice Karnan, mentioned the plea for recall of the May 9 order when the bench had come to the dais after lunch to hear the triple talaq matter.
Pope Francis called for harmony "among all people" today after arriving at Portugal's holy site of Fatima where he was greeted by thousands of pilgrims gathered to mark 100 years since child shepherds had visions of the Virgin Mary.

The Argentine pontiff flew into the central Portuguese town on board a helicopter, circling twice over a giant, 400,000-capacity, packed esplanade that faces the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima to enthusiastic cheering.

Disembarking in a nearby stadium, he set off in his "Popemobile" for a journey through town followed closely by hovering helicopters, ending up at the sanctuary where pilgrims from all over the world had been waiting eagerly for hours.

The giant esplanade fell silent when he prayed privately in the Chapel of the Apparitions, built on the very spot where the Virgin Mary reportedly appeared six times between May and October 1917 to three impoverished, barely-literate children.

"I implore for concord among all people," he then said in comments broadcast across the holy site.

Pilgrims from countries as varied as China, Venezuela and East Timor listened intently, some crying, the flags they had been waving enthusiastically just moments before standing motionless.

"In the joy of the Gospel, we will be the Church robed in white, the whiteness washed in the blood of the Lamb, blood that today too is shed in the wars tearing our world apart," he added.

Unity and peace were the day's themes in Fatima, where some Catholic faithful sought solace from the stress or violence of their daily lives.

"We are going to pray to Fatima and Pope Francis so that they can intervene for a peaceful solution for Venezuela," said Jose Ornelas, a 59-year-old librarian who came all the way from Caracas, which along with other cities has been wracked by deadly anti-regime protests.

"We are living in a violent spiral with so much hate and so much helplessness."



Fatima has become a major holy site since the Virgin is said to have appeared in 1917 to Jacinta, 7, Francisco, 9, and their cousin Lucia, 10.

She apparently shared three major prophecies with them at a time marked by the ravages of World War I and persecution of the Church in a relatively new Portuguese republic.

These reportedly included a warning of a second war.

On Saturday -- the 100th anniversary of the first reported apparition -- Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco, who have officially been credited with two miracles.

Many pilgrims trekked to Fatima for days on foot -- some finishing the last few metres on their knees.

Others staked out a prime spot next to the railings marking off the route where Pope Francis rode his "Popemobile."



Carolina Palacios, a 48-year-old civil servant from Paraguay, said she and her fellow group members had taken turns sitting on fold-up chairs through the night before to make sure no one took their spot.

"We came and went. We stood guard just like soldiers," she joked.

And while the atmosphere was one of joy, emotions ran high and difficult memories bubbled to the surface.

Dung Lu, a refugee from Vietnam living in Denmark, said she and her mother fled their country in the late 1980s, partly because they were unable to practise their religion under the communist regime.

With tears in her eyes, she remembered praying to the Virgin Mary when she was still in Vietnam and her father was jailed after the war and then fled the country, leaving them behind. They were later reunited.

Standing nearby, her young daughter interrupted her, asking why she was crying.

"It's difficult to tell them how hard it was. They (were) born in freedom," she said.

Pope Francis is the fourth pontiff to make a pilgrimage to Fatima in half a century.

Arguably the most devoted was the late Pope John Paul II, who attributed his narrow escape from an assassination attempt at St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981 -- the anniversary of the first reported apparition -- to the intervention of the Virgin Mary.

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Pope Francis and pilgrims from around the world are flocking to a Catholic shrine town in Portugal to honor two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

Francis arrives today to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and canonise the children. He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of World War I, will resonate with the Catholic faithful today.

Thousands of pilgrims, waving flags from as far as Venezuela, Argentina and Cuba, braved a steady cold rain as they waited for him, many spending the night outdoors to make sure they had a good spot.

Over the past several days, church groups, families and individuals have made their way to Fatima, about 150 kilometres north of Lisbon, some completing the final leg of the pilgrimage on their knees in prayer.

Carrying candles, rosaries and roses, they have made their way to the statue dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima or tossed wax body parts ears, hearts, limbs into a huge fire to pray for healing.

"For me it is the second time I am here with a pope, first with John Paul II and now with Papa Francisco," said pilgrim Elisabete Fradique Conceicao in between rain showers.

"They are simple men and that simplicity makes sense when you think what happened here 100 years ago."



On May 13, 1917, while they were grazing their sheep, the children saw the first of a half-dozen visions of the Virgin Mary. They said she revealed to them three "secrets" apocalyptic messages foreshadowing World War II, hell, the rise and fall of communism and the death of a pope and urged them to pray for peace and turn away from sin.

At first doubted by the local Catholic Church and even their parents, the children's story gained believers and was eventually accepted as an authentic apparition by the church in 1930. The children being canonised, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were 9 and 7 at the time of the apparitions, died of influenza two years later. Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, at 10 the ringleader of the group and who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case couldn't begin until after her death in 2005.

Francis' deputy, Cardial Pietro Parolin, said the importance of Fatima lies specifically in the fact that poor, illiterate children not the wealthy, learned or intellectuals were able to convey a powerful message of love and forgiveness at a time of war when "the talk was of hatred, vendetta, hostilities."



Fatima has long been associated with St John Paul II, given the Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with having saved his life in 1981 when a would-be assassin shot him on Fatima's feast day May 13 in St Peter's Square. John Paul made the first of his three pilgrimages to Fatima the following May, and one of the bullets fired at him now adorns the crown of the Madonna at the shrine.

Like John Paul, the Argentinian-born Francis is exceedingly devoted to the Madonna, thanks in large part to the strong role that Marian devotions play in the popular piety of Latin American Catholics.

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Police today put up posters of three Hizbul Mujahideen militants wanted for the killing of Kashmiri army officer Lt Ummer Fayaz in Shopian district even as the outfit sought to distance itself from the crime.

In the posters carrying photographs of gun-wielding local militants Ishfaq Ahmad Thoker, Gayas-ul-Islam and Abass Ahmad Bhat, the police offered reward for those giving information about them.

The posters read: "The above criminals who are involved in many terrorist acts including the murder of Umar Fayaz Parray s/o Fayaz Ahmad Parray R/o Sarsona Kulgam....

"Any person providing information regarding the above criminals will be suitably rewarded and his identity will be kept secret."



Inspector General of Police (Kashmir Range) S J M Gillani had yesterday said that a Hizbul Mujahideen module was behind the killing and an INSAS rifle snatched from police personnel recently could have been used in the crime.

Defence authorities in Delhi had yesterday identified six militants belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), saying they were involved in the abduction and killing of the 22-year-old Army officer in Shopian district of Kashmir.

Lt Fayaz, on leave and unarmed, was abducted on Tuesday by three armed men from the house of a relative in Shopian where he was attending a wedding. His bullet-riddled body was found the next morning.

With the killing triggering an outrage in the Valley, Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, a Kashmiri operating from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, issued a statement alleging that the "Indian agencies" were responsible for the killing.

"Indian agencies are involved in the killing of Lt Ummer Fayaz. They have hit two birds with one stone -- killing an officer of a freedom-loving family and blaming the Mujahideen (militants) for it," he alleged.

Yesterday, the IGP had said, "We have conducted preliminary investigation... It does point to (the involvement of) a module of Hizbul Mujahideen active in Shopian."



Police has found two empty cartridges of an INSAS rifle at the place where Lt Fayaz was shot dead.

"We had two incidents of weapons snatching in south Kashmir recently. We have leads that the Kulgam weapon snatching was carried out by Lashkar militants while Hizb militants were involved in weapon snatching at Shopian court complex (on May 2). So it could be one of those weapons. We are looking at it," Gillani had said.

Salahuddin, who has been operating from PoK for the last 26 years, said there was no place for groups lile Al-Qaeda, Islamic State (IS) or Taliban in Jammu and Kashmir.

"This movement is purely local and indigenous. It has no international agenda. Al Qaeda, Daesh or Taliban have no involvement or role in Kashmir," he said.

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BJP national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargiya today described Congress president Sonia Gandhi's effort to forge opposition unity for presidential poll as a "fight for political existence".

The leader claimed that many opposition parties, in fact, would openly support the BJP-led NDA candidate for the presidential poll.

"The Congress, the CPI(M) and other political parties are trying to gang up against the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi after their successive defeats in various elections. They have come together to save their own political existence which is at stake," Vijayvargiya said.

"Now they are coming together for the presidential poll. Let me tell you, this time too they will be defeated. Many from the opposition camp will come out in support of the BJP and NDA candidate for presidential poll," Vijayvargiya told PTI in an interview.

His comments followed the Congress chief's initiative to form an opposition front to fight the presidential election.

Gandhi had met CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury and is also slated to meet TMC supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in this regard.

"The opposition wants to project their candidate for the presidential election. It's fine. But let me tell you their strategy will fall flat in front of Modiji. We believe in 'Sabka Sath Sabka Vikas'. And they believe in appeasement politics," he said.

Vijayvargiya, however, refused to comment on whether the BJP and the NDA had already decided on any candidate, saying that the final call would be taken in a meeting of the NDA.

"Our party president will talk to NDA partners and decide on it. I can't comment on it," he said.

Asked whether the BJP would be able to hold together the NDA flock ahead of the presidential poll, he claimed, "Not only NDA partners, some parties from opposition camp will also come out in our support as they know it is very well that only Modi can save India."



Berating the "opposition and pseudo-secular brigade" for labelling the BJP as "communal", Vijayvargiya said, "What they were doing when our soldiers were being slaughtered on the border. We did not see any protest or candle light march, or anyone returning awards."



"Actually they are hypocrites who are at ease while supporting terrorists and anti-nationals in the name of human rights. They are traitors," he alleged.

On the continuing Kashmir unrest, he said, "The BJP will not compromise with the territorial integrity and security of the country."



Asked why the central government has failed to control the situation, the leader said, "We cannot comment on it. We need to leave it to our government and the Army to tackle the situation. Our stand is clear; we'll not bow our heads before terrorism and divisive politics."



Talking about the growth of the BJP in Bengal, he alleged, "The Mamata Banerjee government has crossed all limits in appeasement politics. It is during her regime that the rights of the Hindus are being curbed. The state government along with the ruling party is actually helping infiltration just for the sake of vote bank politics."



"Unabated infiltration is fast changing the demography of the state. The party will go all out to make it an issue in order to save Bengal from turning into a Jehadi state", he claimed.

He, however, refuted allegations by the TMC that the CBI was being used by the BJP to corner TMC politically in Bengal.

"The CBI is probing the Saradha chit fund case under instructions from the Supreme Court. What has BJP to do with the investigation? The TMC has looted public money and they have to return it. In the Narada sting operation, we have seen TMC leaders accepting money on camera. What else do you need to call them other than thieves?" he asked.

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Passengers of the New Delhi- Ranchi of May 10 complained to the railway officials here that they were not served food on the train during its journey, railway officials said on Friday.

The Ranchi Railway Division has taken seriously the passenger's dissatisfaction on delay in serving food in the 12454 New Delhi-Ranchi on May 10, the officials said.

Senior Divisional Commercial Manager Neeraj Kumar was at the station with his team at Ranchi station when the train arrived on Thursday, according to a railway release.

Kumar spoke to the passengers, who complained that they did not get food as there was no catering staff to serve food.

Following the complaint, the official ensured sufficient food and staff in the 12453 Ranchi-New Delhi on Friday.

"There were staff vacancies in serving the food. Now everything is under control," said a senior railway official.

The train left on Thursday after inspection of cleanliness, pantry car and full staff strength and all other facilities, the release said.
A Russian fighter jet flew close to a US Navy plane operating over the Black Sea, but the manoeuver was considered safe, a Navy spokeswoman said today.

The Russian SU-27 came within about 20 feet (six meters) of a US Navy P-8A Poseidon anti-submarine plane while the US aircraft was conducting routine operations in international airspace Tuesday, according to Captain Pamela Kunze.

"The interaction lasted 65 minutes and was considered safe and professional by the P-8A's mission commander," she said in a statement.

Distance is only one variable that is considered when defining "safe and professional," she added.

Mid-air interceptions are routine in international air space, and Russian jets frequently scramble to fly alongside US spy planes in and around the Baltic Sea and elsewhere near Russia.

"Most interactions are safe and professional," Kunze said.

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Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today left for Beijing to attend a two-day conference on the ambitious Belt and Road initiative, a part of which passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The Belt and Road (B&R) Forum for International Cooperation, likely to be attended by 28 world leaders, begins on Sunday and Beijing aims to project the summit as a global acceptance of its initiative.

The B&R initiative aims to connect China to Eurasia through a maze of road, rail and port projects.

Radio Pakistan reported that several agreements are expected to be signed in connection with the USD 46-billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) during Sharif's visit.

The CPEC is a part of Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road (B&R) initiative. It aims to revive ancient land and sea routes - New Silk Road and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road - to connect China with Asia, Africa and European markets.

But the CPEC passes through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and resultantly India has raised objection to the plan.

India is yet to confirm its participation in the B&R Forum. The US and a number of other western countries have either skipped the summit or deputed officials to attend it.

The Pakistan prime minister is accompanied by a high- level delegation, including the four chief ministers and some federal ministers.

Sharif will also have Sartaj Aziz, his adviser on foreign affairs, by his side during the visit. He will attend the inaugural session of the summit and the plenary meeting of the high-level dialogue and the state banquet.

He will attend the leaders' roundtable sessions on second day of the forum and hold meetings with President Xi and Premier Li Keqiang.

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Relations between the new US administration and its main world partners are warming up despite lingering reservations over Donald Trump's 'America First' economic agenda, officials said today as G7 finance ministers met in Italy.

The talks, the first Group of Seven outing for US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, followed the overnight announcement of a surprise trade accord between Washington and China.

A senior US Treasury official said Mnuchin had been quizzed on a series of issues, including Trump's tax-cutting plans.

"The tenor was very cooperative and open; people aren't shy about asking direct questions and people get direct answers," the official said.

The China deal, securing better access to the big Chinese market for US beef, natural gas and some financial services, was welcomed by Mnuchin.

"We are excited about US trade policies and I think you probably saw we made an announcement of a 100 day economic plan with the Chinese so I think we're very happy with how we're proceeding with the Chinese," the former banker said.

European Finance Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said the deal showed Trump's administration could be more flexible and pragmatic than initially feared.

"We need to analyse it but it proves one thing: there is, finally, no global protectionist attitude," the Commissioner said.

"It also proves a capacity to change an ideological position," he added.

The China deal came just months after Trump was attacking Beijing in an election campaign in which he promised to restore trade barriers if he felt they were needed to protect US interests.

The rhetoric caused alarm among other members of the G7 club of wealthy democracies, who are lobbying Trump's team to stick with the existing system of rules-based, largely liberalised global trade.

Trade issues were pushed to the sidelines in Bari, with host Italy seeking to find areas of overlap between Trump's still vague agenda, and the priorities of Washington's chief European partners (Britain, France, Germany, Italy), as well as Canada and Japan.

"Obviously the climate has changed," Moscovici said. "The (US) administraton is progressively defining its own policy agenda and integrating better the global framework in which they have to move."



There was a indicator of lingering mistrust from outgoing French finance minister Michel Sapin, who said Mnuchin had welcomed the election of Emmanuel Macron as France's new president.

"I allowed myself to tell him that an attack on the Champs Elysee was never going to affect the outcome," Sapin said.

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Sri Lanka today said that it has cleared the last hurdle to regain key trade concessions from the European Union for its export to the 28-member bloc.

Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva said the facility known as Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) Plus would be in effect for Sri Lankan exporters within two months.

"We have cleared the last hurdle after a process which started in January," he said.

The trade concessions were pulled by the EU in 2010 due to Sri Lanka's poor human rights record. Since then the government has campaigned to regain the benefits for a number of products entering the EU markets.

Before the EU Council approval for the concessions, Sri Lanka faced a major obstacle at the EU Parliament against the trade concession when a resolution was moved against it being granted.

Sri Lanka won the vote in Brussels with 436 members voting against the motion, 119 in favour and 22 abstentions.

Sri Lanka is EU's 54th trading partner. Sri Lanka's exports to the EU in 2015 were valued at 2.6 billion Euro, according to the statistics.

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A Sashashtra Seema Bal (SSB) team today arrested a smuggler along with 5.2 kg charas worth around Rs 78 lakh along the Indo-Nepal border in Bihar's East Champaran district.

The SSB's 47 battalion's Commandant Sonam Chherring said that the SSB team arrested the smuggler from block road of Raxaul town in the district.

He had entered the Indian territory from Nepal side, Chherring said.

The smuggler, a resident of Telkuwa village under the jurisdiction of Penawli police station in Nepal's Bara district was handed over to Raxaul police, he said.

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Assam Governor Banwarilal Purohit today called upon students to create a strong deterrent to corruption as it hinders the nation's growth.

"Corruption takes birth in a society when its citizens digress from the common truth that the society is a common property", the Governor said in his address at the 22nd convocation of Assam Institute of Management here.

He also asked students to be change agents, disapprove corrupt practices and help the nation to grow faster and appealed to the faculty members to help students in building a strong moral character.

As management graduates, the students need to manage everything effectively and contribute to the growth of the nation, the governor said.

Referring to the phenomenal growth in China, Purohit said that it had marched ahead in all fronts because of its strong stand against corruption.

The governor also stressed on the need to maintain a disciplined life with highest mission and vision to work as change agents and help the society to set an agenda for development.

"Determination and strong will power can achieve everything and students must fix their goal and work relentlessly," he added.

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The CBI today arrested the promoter of a telecom company in connection with a Rs 126 crore bank loan scam case.

Sunil Kakkad, the promoter of Click Telecom, was arrested this evening for allegedly cheating a consortium of State Bank of India, Canara Bank and Vijaya Bank to the tune of Rs 126 crore, CBI sources said.

The agency had registered the case against Kakkad in 2015.

Kakkad had allegedly expressed urgency for releasing the funds and got them released, pending execution of individual documents, the CBI had said after the registration of the case.

After the funds were released, he allegedly fled from India.

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Three IIT alumni were among the eight persons who were killed in separate road accidents which took place on the city outskirts since last midnight, police said.

Four men in their twenties, all alumni of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, were travelling by a car from Gachibowli area here to Khammam to attend a marriage when the vehicle was grazed by a truck coming from opposite direction.

The car swerved, hit side-railing of the road and overturned. The accident took place on Outer Ring Road at Tukkuguda on the city outskirts at around 7.30 am today, resulting in on-the-spot death of two of the passengers.

"Ravi Teja and Surya Teja died on the spot while Rohit (all three IIT graduates, working at various IT firms), who was taken to a hospital along with Kiran, died during treatment. Kiran was shifted to another hospital for further treatment," inspector P Laxmikanth Reddy of Pahadisharif Police Station told PTI.

In the second mishap, five persons including four members of a family were killed when their car rammed into a stationary truck in Nadigam mandal at around 11.20 last night.

The deceased were identified as B Somanna (70), B Narsamma (60), B Giddamma (50) and B Somesh (35), all family members and natives of Kurnool district, and the car driver K Mallesh (35), who belongs to Lingampally here.

Police took the driver of the truck in custody for questioning and probe was on.

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German mobility solutions major Thyssenkrupp today opened a Rs 360-crore elevator and escalators manufacturing facility here making it the fourth plant globally.

The 20,000 sqm facility at Chakan is its first in the country and the fourth globally, after the one at home and two in China, and has a capacity to do 6,000 units a year which can be scaled up to 10,000 units in the second phase, which it hopes to achieve over the next three years.

"India is the third market after Germany and China where the company has a manufacturing facility for elevators," Oilver Burkhard, member of the executive board of Thyssenkrupp AG said, adding in China the company has two plants and the Pune plant will source all critical components from there.

The facility also has an R&D centre, which will be serving the German giant's global markets as well as a training centre and employs around 300 now, which will be scaled up as and when demand grows.

When asked about plans for local sourcing, Bukhard said, the objective is to have 95 per cent local components. At present it sources around 70 per cent.

Thyssenkrupp elevators enjoy around 7 per cent market share in the around Rs 9,000-crore or the 55,000 units per annum domestic market which the fastest growing in the world and the second largest after china and is growing at 10-12 percent per annum.

The market is dominated by MNCs like Otis, Kone Mitsubishi and Schindler besides many local companies.

The company already serves Bangladesh and Nepal from the facility and may look at serving more markets in the Saarc region later, its India chief executive Ravi Kirpalani said.

Thyssenkrupp Elevator entered India in 2002 and has done two acquisitions in the space -- CSE a while Delhi-based Birla group entity in 2002 and Mumbai-based Kare Elevators in 2006, which has an assembly line at Bhiwandi near Mumbai.

With the launch of the Pune facility, Thyssenkrupp will shift its assembly lines in Bhiwandi and Delhi to the new plant, Kirpalani told PTI.

It employs around 2,300 across its 27 regional business centres across the country.

Bharat Vishnani, managing director of Thyssenkrupp Elevator India, said the company expects faster growth with the focus on smart cities and faster urbanisation, which will get a boost with the introduction of the GST and the realty regulator Rera.

Despite the low volume, India is the second largest elevator market in the world ahead of the us and after China, which is way ahead with 5.5 lakh units a year, it said.

When asked the labour unrest in his home market due to planned revamp of its steel business and if it will have any impact on the India business, Burkhard, who is also the group chief human resources officer, answered in the negative.

"What is happening in Europe will have no impact on our India plans and the opening of this world class manufacturing facility is a step forward in that direction," he said.

He further said "whether we like it or not, the European steel industry has to consolidate. Our talks with the Tatas are in this regard. We, at the same time, are also talking to two other companies. But, finally who will merge with who is not finalised yet."



Peter Allaart, EVP, global manufacturing, Thyssenkrupp Elevator, said the new facility was done in 18-months time.

Thyssenkrupp India employs aroiund 6,500 people and had around Rs 7,500 crore in revenues in the year to September 30, 2016. It began its India journey way back in 1860 and is the third largest market for the group in Asia-Pacific with 10 operating units.

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President lashed out in a series of tweets on Friday amid a firestorm over the abrupt firing of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey, defending the shifting narrative and timeline his administration has offered for the decision.

He questioned whether his administration should cancel all future press briefings and, instead, replace them with written responses to questions, "for the sake of accuracy."

The president's advisers said this week that Trump fired Comey on Tuesday in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Later, however, they said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless.

The president tweeted, "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"

He added, "Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"

The decision to fire Comey amid an ongoing FBI investigation into ties between the Russian government and members of Trump's 2016 campaign has raised concerns that Trump was trying to undermine a probe that could threaten his presidency.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted the information she and her colleagues offered was consistent. "It was a quick-moving process," she said. "We took the information we had as best we have it and got it out to the American people as quickly as we could."

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Tuesday that Rosenstein drafted the memo raising concerns about Comey on his own accord. The next day, Sanders said the president asked Rosenstein to put his concerns in writing.

The White House also changed its narrative about whether the president had decided to fire Comey based on the recommendations by Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

At first, the administration said that Rosenstein "made the recommendation, the president made a swift and decisive action and let Comey go."

Later, the president and his advisers said Trump had planned to fire Comey since taking office.

The White House also shifted its stance on whether Comey's termination had anything to do with the Russia investigation, at first saying it was not linked. Later, Sanders said, "We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity."

"And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen," she added.

Trump reiterated his view that reports about collusion with the Russian government by members of his 2016 campaign are "fabricated."

The president tweeted, "Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election." "The Fake Media is working overtime today!" he added.
Two naxals, one of them carrying a reward of Rs 5,000 on his head, were arrested in insurgency-hit Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh today, the police said.

Kadti Podia (42) and Mitthu Kadti (20) were apprehended by a joint team of security forces which was conducting a search operation in Mirtoor police station area, a police official told PTI.

The composite squad of the Central Reserve Police Force's 199th battalion, Chhattisgarh Armed Force (CAF) and the district force had launched the operation yesterday in the interiors of Mitroor, around 450 kms away from the state capital, he said.

When the patrolling team was advancing through forest of Pitepal and Cherli villages, they spotted the two suspects and took them in custody, according to the official.

Podia and Kadti were allegedly involved in an attack on a police party which was providing security to the under-construction Kodoli-Mirtoor-Reddy road on March 3, the official said, adding that Podia was carrying a reward of Rs 5,000 on his head.

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With the ambitious regional air connectivity scheme taking wings, authorities have set up a trust for disbursing viability gap funds to the participating airlines.

Airports Authority of India (AAI) is the nodal agency for the scheme -- UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) -- that aims to connect un-served as well as under-served airports and make flying affordable for the masses.

As at least half of the seats in UDAN flights are to be offered at subsidised fares, the participating carriers would be provided a certain amount of Viability Gap Funding (VGF) -- an amount shared between the Centre and the state concerned.

AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said a trust has been set up to disburse the VGF to the carriers operating under UDAN.

The trust, headed by the AAI chief, also has officials from the Civil Aviation Ministry and the national airports operator to administer it.

"The trust has been formed and all the necessary formalities have been done. All the exemptions required are also being done. That will soon start working," Mohapatra said in an interview.

According to him, the trust would be in charge of providing VGF to the airlines for participating in the scheme.

To raise money for the VGF, a levy of Rs 8,500 per departure is levied from airlines operating in major domestic routes, including Mumbai and Delhi.

When asked about local carriers moving court against the levy, Mohapatra expressed hope that the issue would be resolved soon even as he asserted that the scheme would not suffer due to court case.

"The scheme will not be affected by virtue of this dispute... These are all government of India schemes and they don't suffer on account of some court cases. They are sovereign commitments," he emphasised.

The first UDAN flight started operations last month flying from Shimla to the national capital. In the first round of UDAN bidding, five airlines won bids to operate on 128 routes connecting 70 airports of which 31 are un-served.

In March, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju informed the Lok Sabha that over Rs 1.15 crore has been garnered towards the regional connectivity fund.

An amount of up to Rs 8,500 is being levied from scheduled airlines operating in major routes to raise money towards the fund.

The Ministry started collecting the levy from December 1, 2016.

The Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) has already challenged the collection of levy from carriers for the RCS fund in the court. Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir are members of the FIA.
The banned ULFA-I is recruiting youths from different parts of Assam, its Director General of Police Mukesh Sahay today said.

"ULFA-I is still recruiting youths from different parts of Assam and its commander-in-chief Paresh Baruah is conducting it from Myanmar," the DGP said while interacting with media on the sidelines of a high-level security meeting at Army's 4 Crops Headquarters here.

Referring to action against other militant outfits in the state, he said operations against National Democratic Front of Bodoland(Songbijit) is on in Sonitpur district as well as across Assam.

The combing operations against militants have been intensified ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Assam later this month, he said.

"Following anti-insurgency operations in Bangladesh extremist groups such as Jamatul Mujahaddin, ULFA-I and NDFB-S may try to create disturbance in the state. The security forces look into the matter very seriously," the DGP said adding close circuit cameras would be installed on the streets in Guwahati within two weeks.

The DGP said there were several security lapses in the M P Jewellers showroom in Guwahati where dacoits in a daring heist took away gold jewellery weighing seven to eight kg on May 9.

Chief Secretary V K Pipersenia reporters said that if any government employee is disturbed by the behaviour of their superior officials or may have been deprived of their rights, they should contact him or DGP special branch and not use social media platforms to air their grievances.

The security meeting was held in view of the May 26 visit of the prime minister and the threat perception from militants. It also discussed border-related issues between Assam and Arunachal Pradesh as well as Nagaland, official sources said.

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Auto component maker Uno Minda Group has tied up with Microsoft India to offer connected vehicle technologies for the automotive industry.

Minda iConnect, the connected vehicle and telematics arm of Uno Minda Group, today inked a strategic pact with Microsoft India in this regard.

"With this collaboration, Uno Minda and Microsoft aim to enhance in-vehicle connectivity and efficiency to provide an enriched driving experience to automotive users in the country," the auto component maker said in a statement.

As part of the deal, Microsoft will help Uno Minda to develop technologies that will bring together artificial intelligence (AI), advanced machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities on the Microsoft Azure cloud.

These technologies will help create highly personalised, smart and safer driving experience for vehicle drivers.

"This partnership puts in place the right building blocks as we aim to connect millions of vehicles across passenger and commercial segments," Minda iConnect CEO Ravi Jakhodia said.

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: Ten women were today felicitated by Union minister Maneka Gandhi for raising issues that led to policy change.

Most of the women honoured by the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) had drawn the minister's attention to the issues with the help of social media platforms.

Their role led to changes in the issuing of guidelines for passport forms and safety advisories for women travelling alone by taxis.

The women had reached out to WCD Minister Maneka Gandhi through tweets on her personal and official handles and online petitions on Change.Org. The ministry recognised the need to address the issues and moved to make the necessary changes.

Priyanka Gupta, a single mother, had posted a petition on Change.Org, requesting the minister to modify the format of passport application forms which made it mandatory for an applicant to mention his or her father's name.

"My husband abandoned us when my child was born just because she was a girl. My daughter doesn't want his name on the document. Our application was denied and we were told that both names were required," she said.

Her petition not only drew the interest of more than 25000 people on the first day it was posted, it also prompted Gandhi to write to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj with Gupta's recommendation.

The forms have now been changed, and the father's name is no longer necessary for a passport.

Pitampura resident Monika tweeted Gandhi, demanding the right to not mention her husband's name in her son's caste certificates.

"He is not part of our lives any more. Why should his name be on their certificates," Monika asked.

"I work as a helper for a doctor and she told me how the minister responds to tweets," she said.

The minister has referred the demand to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.

"These women are special people who came out of the blue and communicated with us, resulting in policy change. They are doing exceptional work," Gandhi said.

Among the others felicitated was Sudipa Bose, whose Facebook post about her ordeal in a cab drew the attention of the WCD ministry which then went on to write to the Ministry of Road Transport. Later recommendations were made by the ministry on safe travel for women.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By David Alire Garcia and Theopolis Waters

MEXICO CITY/CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mexico's growing beef industry is targeting Muslim consumers in the Middle East for its prime cuts as it seeks to reduce dependence on buyers in the United States.

The potential for a U.S.-Mexico trade war under President Donald Trump has accelerated efforts by Mexican beef producers to explore alternative foreign markets to the United States, which buys 94 percent of their exports worth nearly $1.6 billion last year.

Trump has vowed to redraw terms of trade with Mexico and Canada to the benefit of the United States. Mexican beef companies fear they may be dragged into a renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement between the three countries.

That has firms looking to the Middle East, where most meat is imported from non-Muslim countries using animals slaughtered by the halal method prescribed by Islamic law.

Mexico, the world's sixth biggest beef producer, plans to quadruple exports of halal beef to 44 million pounds (20,000 tonnes) by the end of 2018 from 11 million pounds (5,000 tonnes) this year, according to data from the Mexican cattle growers association AMEG.

The country should have 15 plants certified to produce halal meat by the end of next year, up from a current six, according to AMEG data.

Jesus Vizcarra, chief executive and owner of SuKarne, Mexico's biggest beef exporter, said his company sees big potential for sales to Muslim-majority countries.

"We have to seek out more markets," he said in an interview, pointing to near-term targets in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Lebanon.

"There's an opportunity in these Middle Eastern countries," said Vizcarra, who is known in Mexico as the King of Beef and has boasted of being born in a slaughterhouse.

At SuKarne's sprawling Monarca plant, located 270 miles (435 km) west of the Mexican capital in Michoacan state, more than 150,000 cows leisurely pick at row after row of grain channels in dusty feed lots.

The plant is the company's first halal-certified facility and earlier this year began its first-ever shipments to Muslim markets.

"EYES WIDE OPEN"

Mexico's cattle growers' association sent a trade mission to Dubai and Qatar in late February to meet potential buyers, said Rogelio Perez, AMEG's top trade official

Inspectors from the UAE will visit Mexico by June, after Saudi inspectors were in Mexico in March, he said.

"They left with a very good taste in their mouths regarding Mexican production systems," he said.

Plants must be certified as halal compliant by third-party companies such as U.S.-based Halal Transactions of Omaha or United Arab Emirates-based RACS.

Earlier this year, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country, expressed interest in buying Mexican beef for the first time although no deals have yet been cut.

Sales to Muslim countries would take a bite out of the market share for halal meat held by beef packers from the United States and Brazil, according to industry and trade sources.

Mexico's beef industry is able to grow its export markets due to a successful push to meet exacting U.S. standards and modernize the sector over the past two decades.

That has put Mexican packers in a strong position to diversify away from the U.S. market.

"It was our big strength until President Donald arrived, and now it's our major weakness," said Bosco de la Vega, president of Mexico's state farm council, adding that Mexico should limit beef exports to the United States to a maximum of half the overall flow.

He said Mexico can do so in the next five years.

Russia is considering buying large volumes of Mexican beef, and Mexico is also seeking to expand shipments to existing buyers like Japan and South Korea.

Mexico's herd hit a record 31 million animals in 2015 and totaled 30.8 million in 2016, producing 4.142 billion pounds and exports of 712 million pounds.

Top exporters Brazil, India and Australia each export over 2.5 billion pounds.

"We're on the path of diversification," Mexican Agriculture Minister Jose Calzada recently told reporters. "And we won't stop, because these occasional insults from the United States toward Mexico have opened our eyes."

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia in Mexico City and Theopolis Waters in Chicago; Editing by Simon Webb and Andrew Hay)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than a year ago, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer struck down the government's designation of MetLife as "systemically important," which signifies it could devastate the financial system if it failed and triggers stricter oversight, saying the label was "arbitrary and capricious." The administration of former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, immediately appealed.

In October the government and insurance company had a rematch before two judges appointed by Obama, Sri Srinivasan and Patricia Millett, and one by former President George H.W. Bush, a Republican. At the time most expected a ruling to soon follow, with the losing side possibly appealing to the Supreme Court.

Republican President Donald Trump, however, has expressed scepticism about the designation process and the council of regulatory heads that assign the labels, and has ordered the Treasury Department to review both. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin also has said the council's work should be evaluated.

The 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law, intended to avoid a repeat of the 2007-09 crisis and recession, created the Financial Stability Oversight Council and empowered it to designate non-banks as systemically important.

Last week the council asked the court to put the appeal on hold for 60 days, saying it needed "additional time for deliberation."

Previously MetLife had asked for a pause until Treasury completed its review. A spokesman for the company said it was pleased with the 60-day abeyance.

The company is not officially labelled "too big to fail" during the appeal. Currently, only two firms, both insurance companies, carry the label: American International Group , which received a $182 billion bailout during the crisis, and Prudential Insurance .

(Reporting by Lisa Lambert and Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Bill Trott)

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ritika Sharma (name changed), who studies in a prominent Delhi school, went to the police after being stalked by a Facebook user whom she had befriended on the site a month ago. She had given her cellphone number to the man who was later found to be using a fake name, photo and phone number.

Experts say cyberbullying and cyberstalking are increasingly becoming common nuisances for the city's schoolkids with people using electronic communication like emailing, social networking and texting to harass or pursue them. Nearly 60 per cent of the Capital's school students and youth using social media face the risk of cyberbullying, a Delhi Police survey has found.

According to Ritika's complaint, the two started chatting on WhatsApp after the "friend" introduced himself as Rohit Sinha, a businessman. She had also shared her residential address, school name and the tuition timings with him. Rohit then allegedly tried to force her into going on a date with him outside Delhi.

Following this, Ritika stopped taking his calls and also blocked him on Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. She says Rohit then started stalking her and even issued threats.

Ritika informed her brother, who approached the police. Now cops are trying to trace the accused who has been booked under the IT Act along with the Indian Penal Code.

The Delhi Police survey found that cyberbullying often leads to serious crimes, including stalking, molestation and rape. Most of these cases are from the Capital's private schools, where students are easily accessible in social media groups.

However, a lot of cases remain unknown as kids don't report the matter to the police or even their parents.

"More than 90 per cent of the school students are using social media and Facebook has emerged as the leader followed by WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat," said Delhi Police spokesperson Madhur Verma. The study was part of Delhi Police's cyber safety awareness programme conducted in more than 400 schools. The kids, from the age of 12 to those in Class XII, were given questionnaires to find out if they had ever been victims of cyberbullying and how they should react in such situations.

Explaining how criminals lure schoolkids, Verma said, "They often connect with them by simply sending a friend request on Facebook. Eventually, the person on the other side starts developing proximity with the student and later, they end up exchanging numbers. As a result, these schoolkids fall in the trap."

As per Delhi Police data since 2014 till April this year, as many as 508 cyber crime cases were registered while 244 cases were registered under the IT Act with IPC. 26 cases were found to be of sexual harassment.

Since summers vacations are here, students are more vulnerable as they will now spend more time on social media, observers say. Usage of the internet to find information for school projects, play games, read books, listen to music, watch movies, check emails and access social networking sites will increase.

A senior official in the cyber crime cell told MAIL TODAY, "In most of the cases, it was found that the cyber criminal used to bully the victim by sending inappropriate messages, humiliating them through pictures/videos."

Experts say even if children approach their parents, nearly 70-75 per cent of the parents were not aware of the existence of the helpline for children - 1098.

To cope with such problems, Delhi Police has been launching cyber safety awareness programmes in schools in which students are informed to avoid giving personal information online to anyone they don't know.
The government is monitoring specific investment projects to find hard data on job creation amid concerns that not enough is being done to generate employment, Niti Aayog Member Bibek Debroy said today.

He also said that maximum job creation will happen in the services sector and not manufacturing.

"There are various government initiatives. The government is trying to monitor specific projects, specific investment proposals so that we have some hard data on jobs," he said at a Ficci event here.

Debroy further said that tracking some of the projects will provide figures on the number of jobs that might have been created in the organised sector like garments or pharmaceuticals.

India suffers from a lack of reliable, timely data on employment which has made it difficult for policy makers and independent observers to assess the extent of employment generation at different points of time.

Some data is collected and published by certain agencies including the Labour Bureau, but the coverage is very small.

Earlier this week, the government has set up a task force headed by Niti Aayog Vice-Chairman Arvind Panagariya to give suggestions to deal with employment data vacuum so that policies can be modified to promote job creation.

Debroy added that the primary growth in jobs will come from the services sector.

"And even when reforms happen in agriculture, most of the jobs will be created (in the section) that will show up in National Accounts as services," he said.

Elaborating his point, the Niti Aayog Member said transport and logistics, which come under the services sector, where large number of jobs will be created.

He also lamented that quality of vocational education was not in sync with the skill sets demand in the market.


A government panel has formally cleared an application seeking approval for commercial use of what would be India's first genetically modified (GM) food crop and has now put the ball in politicians' court to give their final approval.

The environment ministry's Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC) on Thursday recommended the commercial use of indigenously developed GM mustard, loosely called rapeseed, two government sources said.

Now, Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave has to make a decision in consultation with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the sources with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Dave could not immediately be reached for comment.

Late last year Reuters reported that the GEAC gave its technical clearance for GM mustard, following multiple reviews of crop trial data generated over almost a decade.

In its recent report, a government think-tank said New Delhi could prevent foreign firms monopolising the market for GM seeds by allowing the sale of only locally developed varieties.

Monsanto, the world's biggest seed company, is locked in a bitter battle with an Indian firm, drawing in the Indian and U.S. governments.
The Trump administration on Thursday blamed Pakistan for deteriorating India-Pak relations and warned that the ties might worsen further if another "high- profile" terrorist attack emanates from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting India's pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

"Easing of heightened India-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation," Coats said.

Last year, heavily-armed terrorists sneaked in from across the border and attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. The attack had claimed the lives of seven security personnel while four terrorists were killed.

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against India's rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," said the top US intelligence official.

In his remarks ahead of the possible release of the Afghanistan policy of the Trump Administration, he said "Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan."

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Also Watch:




India's biggest telecom company is intent on retaining the tag, despite aggressive competition it is facing from Reliance Jio. To hold the attention of a freebie-interested consumer class, Airtel has released the myHome promotional plan, which promises a maximum of 250 GB of free data to its broadband users.

The myHome scheme gives 5GB additional data on every postpaid connection and digital TV connection linked to an Airtel broadband connection. There is a cap, however. Only 25 postpaid connections and 25 DTH connections can be bundled to a broadband connection. Which essentially, 250 GB of additional broadband data per month.

The scheme is available at My Airtel app and can be availed by individuals who subscribed to Airtel postpaid, broadband or DTH before July 1, 2016.

The scheme was launched shortly after Bharati Airtel sustained heavy losses in this quarter. Earlier this week, Bharti Airtel reported its lowest quarterly profit in four years as net earnings declined by 72 per cent in January-March, hit by "sustained predatory pricing" by rival Reliance Jio, representing the mood of the industry.

Billionaire Sunil Mittal-headed company blamed rival Jio for the lowest profit since the January-March quarter of 2013 and said the "sustained predatory pricing" by the new entrant was responsible for the drop in annual revenue of the entire telecom industry.

This is also being seen as a retort to Reliance's JioFibre plans, another plan by Reliance Jio offering free data and services to its customers. Bharti Airtel has been locked in an intense war of words with Jio over free offers.

Under the JioFiber Preview Offer, consumers will not have to pay for first 3 months service. However, there will be one time refundable installation fee of Rs 4,500 that consumers will have to pay to get the JioFiber.
Central to KVNU radios charter in eight decades of broadcasting is reporting events in the valley  in essence compiling a day-to-day history of Cache Valley  and the weather is vital to that responsibility.

Thursday, Alex DeSmet, meteorologist with the National Weather Service out of Pocatello, Idaho, presented morning host Al Lewis a certificate recognizing his 45 years compiling the weather numbers at KVNU, which was long ago designated the valleys official weather reporting station.

It has always been important to provide our listeners updated weather forecasts and accurate records over the years, said Lewis. It has been a part of my responsibility at the station, along with others, to compile those records.

Keeping that history current allows us to go back through the decades and compute things like average daytime high temperatures and record high and low temperatures for every day.

From that history we can tell you what the temperature was a year ago today, for example.

He said it has been a natural part of his morning show routine to compile the numbers and each day submit a copy of a form to the National Weather Service; something that is now done electronically.

I was surprised by the recognition. It is a nice honor.

Lewis will also be recognized for his 45 years of broadcasting on May 25th by the Utah Broadcasters Association. Lewis, along with Jennie Christensen, will be inducted into the Utah Broadcasters Hall of Fame during a special ceremony at the Riverwoods Conference Center in Logan.
The Cache/Rich County Bookmobile in front of Bear Lake. Photo by Bookmobile Librarian Shawn Bliss.

The days are numbered for the <a href=https://www.cachecounty.org/library/bookmobile.html>Cache County Bookmobile</a>, which has been distributing books and other commonly used supplies throughout the county for more than 30 years. The Cache County Council voted several months ago to end funding for the Bookmobile, and County Executive Craig Buttars said the <a href=http://ula.org/>Utah Library Association</a> is helping with the transition.

The contract actually ends the end of June, Buttars said. Service will be up until the first week in June, and after that, theyre looking to open up drop-off sites at the different libraries in the cities so that if you checked out a book from the Bookmobile and werent able to return it, then youll be able to take it to the community library thats closest to you.

Buttars said the public is encouraged to utilize the <a href=https://www.cachecounty.org/library/>Cache County Library</a>, located at 15 N. Main Street in Providence. He expects the change to be an orderly transition.
Starting this summer, area youths from age 14 to 21 will have an opportunity to participate in the newly created Mandan Police Explorer program through the Mandan Police Department.

Mandan Police Chief Jason Ziegler came up with the idea to implement Mandan Police Explorer Post No. 2853, said David Tomlinson, the department's school resource officer and post adviser.

The Explorer post's digits 2853 represent Deputy Police Chief Paul Leingang's badge number and honor his years of service at the department, said Tomlinson. Leingang, recently diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer, has been employed by the Mandan Police Department for over 36 years.

The Explorer program is a charter program of the Boy Scouts of America. By 1981 it rapidly grew into not only exploring police work but the development of national specialty programs in aviation, business, science and engineering, law and government, law enforcement, health careers, outdoor, sea exploring, sports, career education, arts, skilled trades, social service, fire and rescue, and communications, according the Explorer programs website, www.exploring.org.

Ric Jensen, Mandan, who works for the Boys Scouts of America/Northern Lights Council as a senior district executive, assisted Tomlinson with starting the Police Explorer program. "I think that this program is going to be excellent for our community in terms of outreach with the police," said Jensen. "It's going to be a huge educational piece into the lives of our law enforcement officers and what they do on a day-to-day basis."

The purpose of the police program is to provide members with real-world career and leadership opportunities in law enforcement and challenge them to become responsible citizens. The Explorer program is a hands-on experience that includes ride-alongs with officers, participating in mock court exercises, learning how to preserve crime scenes, documenting evidence, maintaining physical fitness as well as community service activities.

Tomlinson also said the program will be beneficial to those interested in pursing a career in law enforcement. "There's so much in law enforcement that you can do, we just want to give them every aspect that we can," he said.

Jared Foley, a Minot police officer and Minot Police Explorer post adviser, said he helped start his chapter five years ago. "Being able to teach the kids about law enforcement in general," said Foley. "We introduce them into a little bit of criminal law, traffic law, different aspects of the program itself." Foley added that three officers who are employed at the Minot department went through the Police Explorers program.

At 6 p.m. May 18, Tomlinson along with the Mandan Police Department will host an opening night launch event at the Mandan Middle School cafetorium. This meeting will inform the public about the program along with answering any questions by the audience. Parents are encouraged to attend this information session. There also will be a demonstration by West Dakota SWAT team and the Morton County K9 Gabber at the meeting.

To enroll in the program those interested must submit an application and pass a background check. Student members must have a 2.0 grade-point average or higher and submit a letter of interest. There also will be a $35 annual fee for participants.

Boys and girls from the surrounding area are encouraged to participate in the program. Tomlinson said once the program starts the group will meet twice a month and will hold two recruitments per year, including one this fall.

Police Explorer applications can be picked up at the Mandan Police Department. For more information on Mandan Police Explorer Post No. 2853, contact Tomlinson at 701-667-3250 or dtomlinson@mandanpd.com.
The worlds economic center of gravity is returning to Asia.

With it, the historic trade routes of the Silk Road are emerging from centuries in the shadows, creating new opportunities for trade, economic growth and development. Where caravans of donkeys, camels, and horses once carried goods and ideas between East and West, today it is trucks, trains, ships and the internet that are binding one end of the Eurasian landmass to the other.

Since 2011, trains have transported Hewlett-Packard laptop computers and other electronics from factories in Chongqing to Duisburg, an inland port at the heart of Germanys industrial Ruhr region. The 11,000-kilometer Yuxinou Railway carries BMW and Audi auto parts back in the opposite direction, through Poland, Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan, destined for assembly plants in China. The journey, at around 20 days, takes half as long as by container ship via Shanghai or Shenzhen, and costs one-third as much as air freight.

Chinas announcement of the One Belt, One Road initiative in 2013 gave a major boost to efforts to deepen trade, investment, and infrastructure ties across Eurasia. President Xi Jinping has outlined plans for a land-based New Silk Road Economic Belt through Central and Western Asia, coupled with a 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, reaching from Southeast Asia through the Indian Ocean to the African coast. The latter traces the path of the voyages of the fabled 14th century Chinese expeditionary fleet led by Admiral Zheng He.

Transport corridors

Beijing has since led the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and unveiled programs like the $40 billion Silk Road Fund to invest in infrastructure development across continents. Trains now connect places in China with cities as far afield as Madrid, Warsaw, and Tehran. Roads are being constructed along key transport routes, such as the China Pakistan Economic Corridor.

New oil pipelines, power lines, high-speed rail, roads, fiber optic cables and shipping connections promise to link Chinese markets and producers to Southeast Asia, the Caspian and Black seas, the Arab region, Africa and beyond.

Just like its historic predecessor, the new Silk Road is about much more than transport. By lowering the cost of trading with inland China, it promises to spur growth in the countrys interior, narrowing the growing income gap with coastal regions. Further afield, Chinese investment also has the potential to drive the economic rejuvenation of landlocked Central Asia.

Samarkand and Merv were once trading hubs renowned for their prosperity. Today, high trading costs have relegated Central Asia to the margins of international value chains, except as suppliers of raw materials like oil, gas, gold, and uranium. A highly networked Central Asia would not only lay the groundwork for increased value addition and better jobs for people from Armenia to Tajikistan, it would provide growing markets for companies from China and elsewhere. It would also serve as an example for comparable investments in Africa.

On Sunday in Beijing, leaders from around the world will gather together with top international officials, business representatives, and academics, to improve coordination in driving the One Belt, One Road initiative forward. Its outcomes will include a joint statement of principles and cooperative infrastructure projects that the International Trade Centre will be part of.

Sharing the gains from growth

To maximize One Belt, One Roads contribution to growth and poverty reduction, and to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, one additional ingredient will be essential: ensuring that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) can take advantage of the new trade opportunities. Because they account for the vast majority of businesses and jobs, SMEs are central to ensuring that the gains from trade are broadly shared across society, including by women and youth. Competitive, internationally integrated SMEs can confer inclusive growth across the new Silk Road.

Research by the International Trade Centre points to how governments can act at home and with their trading partners to enable SMEs to tap into international production networks. One Belt, One Roads "hard" infrastructure must be accompanied by investments in "soft" infrastructure: policies and institutions to support business and trade.

For instance, governments can work together to lower non-tariff barriers by simplifying, harmonizing or recognizing each others technical standards and regulations for goods and services. They can swiftly implement the World Trade Organizations agreement on trade facilitation to cut border delays and costs. At home, countries can act to strengthen the institutions that help businesses comply with health and safety regulations, while expanding access to finance for SMEs. They can create open and competitive services markets, not least for the logistics sectors that are essential for e-commerce to function smoothly.

China and its partners this week have an opportunity to send the world a powerful message about the importance of open markets for growth and development. They also have a chance to lay the foundations for SMEs to benefit from the new trade highways in Asia, Africa, and beyond.

Arancha Gonzalez is the executive director of the International Trade Centre
A group of more than 60 volunteers underwent training last week to prepare for a mass fatality scenario in the state.

The state Department of Health's newly established Disaster Fatality Team is composed of more than 60 people from various disciplines, including emergency responders, law enforcement, public health and forensic professionals. These volunteers participated in a three-day training that included a search-and-recovery field exercise at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park south of Mandan, as well as setting up a temporary morgue.

Rep. Mike Nathe, R-Bismarck, advocated for state funding to establish the team during the 2015 legislative session. Nathe, owner of Bismarck Funeral Home, is also a member of the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Teams, which are called in to respond to mass fatalities nationwide.

I was sent to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 for the first three weeks of that disaster and saw the importance to have a state ready for an unspeakable situation .... If North Dakota should ever find itself in a situation where we have a mass fatality, I thought we need to be ready," Nathe said.

State lawmakers appropriated $189,000 for joint federal and state training, Nathe said.

For the past 15 years, the Health Department has been developing a disaster response system, using state resources to address scenarios such as flooding, critical disease outbreaks, tornadoes and train derailments, according to Tim Wiedrich, the chief of the Health Department's emergency preparedness and response section.

This area, in terms of mass fatality, is an area that needed further development, and so were welcoming this new resource thats being added to the state," he said.

The Disaster Fatality Team will be combined with the Health Department's Medical Reserve Corps, which is composed of about 1,000 people within the state, primarily physicians, nurses and EMTs.

Our objective here with the training is to have a team here in the state that can, with dignity and respect, recover the deceased, identify them with 100 percent accuracy, scientifically, and return them to their loved ones as quickly as possible," Peterson said.
| BY Lynchy |

Insurance and stand-up comedy may not be the most obvious bedfellows, but that is the path J. Walter Thompson Manilas chose to celebrate Manulifes 110 years in the Philippines.

Featuring real-life Filipino comic Victor Anastacio, and loosely based on his own struggles, the online spot tells the tale of how he left banking (by choice, he says, adding: my boss choice when she fired me) and began performing stand-up. At the time, his mother was skeptical but his dad backed his son.

The Stand Up spot is filled with one-liners about Anastacios family, including his siblings, one a lawyer and the other a doctor. So you have a doctors appointment, an attorneys appointment, he says, adding: and a disappointment.

Were in a business that is largely built on relationships  with our clients, our insurance advisors, our employees, said Melissa Henson, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Manulife Philippines. So we wanted to launch a campaign that celebrates the many relationships that allowed Manulife to serve Filipinos for 100 years.
North Dakota cattle producers cheered the reopening of the Chinese market to U.S. beef.

Its very, very positive, said Tim Petry, a livestock economist at North Dakota State University. The more beef we can export  will certainly have a positive effect on cattle prices funneled all the way down to North Dakota feeder calves.

China, one of the world's largest importers of beef, has been closed to U.S. producers for 13 years after mad cow disease was found in some Washington cattle.

"The agreement struck is a monumental step forward that will open the door for the sale of commonly recognized beef cuts, like chucks and rounds, as well as other specialty cuts, to nearly 1.4 billion new customers, said Warren Zenker, president of the North Dakota Stockmens Association.

A round of technical consultations will need to take place between the two countries. Details, such as whether cattle who received genetically modified feed would be accepted, still need to be determined, according to Petry.

While this deal is promising, China has made similar commitments before and has failed to follow through," Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said in a statement.

Final terms are expected to be met and the market reopened no later than July 16.

The effects of the deal are expected to become more apparent in the longer term, as it will take time to build infrastructure and find markets within the country, according to Petry, who said Canada previously negotiated a deal for beef imports to China and the effects have been positive but slow to materialize.

In the past several months, the number of U.S feeder cattle sent north to Canada has doubled over the past four years, which signals the market is good up there, Petry said.

Thats one of the reasons why prices have increased nicely, he said, pointing to a seasonal peak of about $1.40 to $1.70 per pound, depending on the size of the cattle.

Prices have seen a welcome increase; maybe more than people expected, Petry said.

Though prices will likely decline in the fall as more cattle come to market, prices will be starting at a higher level, hopefully staying up above the dismal lows seen in October.

China is one small part of the picture, but, for the longer term, getting back into China would be great, Petry said.

Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., who said the trade was vital to the success of farmers and ranchers, also touted the opening of Chinese markets to U.S. natural gas exports as part of the deal made by the Trump administration this week.
Friday, May 12, 2017 at 9:24AM

Apple today announced Corning Incorporated will receive $200 million from Apples new Advanced Manufacturing Fund as part of the companys commitment to foster innovation among American manufacturers. Corning makes Gorilla Glass which is used as the protective glass on iPhone, iPad and MacBook displays as well as for Apple Watch.

The investment will support Cornings R&D, capital equipment needs and state-of-the-art glass processing. Corning's 65-year-old Harrodsburg facility has been integral to the 10-year collaboration between these two innovative companies and will be the focus of Apples investment.

Apple has committed to investing at least $1 billion with US-based companies as part of the fund, which is designed to foster innovative production and highly skilled jobs that will help lay the foundation for a new era of technology-driven manufacturing in the US.



Corning is a great example of a supplier that has continued to innovate and they are one of Apple's long-standing suppliers, said Jeff Williams, Apples chief operating officer. This partnership started 10 years ago with the very first iPhone, and today every customer that buys an iPhone or iPad anywhere in the world touches glass that was developed in America. Were extremely proud of our collaboration over the years and we are investing further with Corning who has such a rich legacy of innovative manufacturing practices.



Cornings longstanding relationship with Apple has not only led to significant glass innovations that have enabled new capabilities for consumers, it has also helped create nearly 1,000 American jobs and allowed us to continue growing and expanding in the US, said Wendell P. Weeks, Cornings chairman, chief executive officer and president. This investment will ensure our plant in Harrodsburg remains a global center of excellence for glass technology.



Since the inception of Gorilla Glass in 2007, the partnership between Apple and Corning has created and sustained nearly 1,000 US jobs across Cornings R&D, manufacturing and commercial functions, including over 400 in Harrodsburg. Corning has procured enough renewable energy to cover all of its Apple manufacturing in the US.




The Morton County Sheriff's Department is looking for a 57-year-old Mandan man, who may have drowned near the Fort Rice boat ramp.

The man was last heard from around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, when he was fishing in the Missouri River, authorities said. On Thursday morning, around 8:15 a.m., a boater reported an idling boat in gear near the shore. Authorities identified it as belonging to the missing man.

The sheriff's department continues to search for the man, with the help of North Dakota Highway Patrol and the state Game and Fish Department. They are searching by land, air, water and sonar.

Anyone with information should contact the Morton County Sheriffs Department at 701-667-3330.
Millennial Moms Review: 2022 Acura MDX is pretty close to the perfect family car

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FARGO  North Dakota State University is seeking permission to raise tuition rates 4 percent for the 2017-18 academic year to help maintain operations in the midst of a steep budget cut.

The request, submitted to the chancellors office of the North Dakota University System, will be considered by the State Board of Higher Education, likely in June.

The 4 percent hike is the maximum allowed by state lawmakers, who gave North Dakota universities and colleges permission to increase tuition 4 percent in each of the next two school years to offset the state funding cuts.

If approved, the 4 percent increase would apply to all residency groups and programs except pharmacy.

A 5 percent tuition increase is sought for the pharmacy program for North Dakota residents and nonresidents, except for students from Minnesota, who could see a 7.5 percent tuition increase.

If granted, Minnesota pharmacy students would pay tuition rates equal to 109 percent of those paid by North Dakota resident students.

The tuition requests, submitted Monday to the chancellors office, released to The Forum late Wednesday afternoon. NDSU administrators were not available to discuss the tuition proposals.

Base NDSU tuition for North Dakota students is now $6,924 and $7,755 for Minnesota students. International students and nonresident students not covered by tuition compacts is $18,488.

Student fees for U.S. undergraduates are $1,283 and $1,383 for international students.

Under its strategic plan, NDSU also is seeking approval from the state board to begin blending course and program fees with tuition, a proposal NDSU officials maintain would be revenue neutral. If approved, the blending would eliminate all course and program fees, which would become part of tuition.

The fee adjustment being sought is 1 percent for undergraduate and professional students, and 2 percent for graduate students. Examples of the included fees would be course fees, field trip and study trip fees, study abroad, music lessons and aviation fees.

Beginning in the fall of 2018, NDSU plans to request a differential fee for its masters of business administration program.

The 2017-19 budget for NDSU includes a general fund appropriation of $130.7 million, a decrease of 16.9 percent from the 2015-17 base funding level, before budget cuts of 6.55 percent were imposed. The budget cuts result from declining state revenues from chronically lower oil and crop prices.
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A week after grainy images of the updated 2018 Honda Fit/Jazz leaked online, a number of official images of the vehicle have surfaced thanks to a website launched for the hatchback in Japan.



As weve become accustomed to in recent times, the changes to this so-called facelifted model are incredibly minor. Some of those small tweaks include new garnishing around the front grille, modified air intakes, different fog lights and a revised front bumper.

Elsewhere, we can see that the new hatchback gets different black and silver wheels, taillights inspired by the Civic and a different rear bumper. Like the vehicle that leaked, the car pictured also has black wing mirror caps and an intriguing plum-colored paint finish.

The latest reports suggest that alongside the slight exterior changes, the 2018 Fit/Jazz will have different dashboard trim and in India, come complete with Hondas 7.0-inch Digipad infotainment system.

A number of different powertrains will be available for the updated car, including the hybrid model pictured. The most popular variant will inevitably be powered by the same 1.5-liter four-cylinder, 130 hp engine as the current model.

PHOTO GALLERY
Skoda is preparing to roll out its new Karoq next week. But before it does, its giving us a glimpse at what to expect.



Several glimpses, in fact, as the Czech automaker has revealed five new teaser images (in addition to the nameplate previously announced) of the forthcoming compact crossover.

The latest embodiment of Skodas current design theme, the Karoq will feature the brands signature grille, flanked by (optional) LED headlights, with (standard) LED taillights around back  all with crystalline elements evocative of Czech glassware and sharply angled to make the model stand out in an already crowded segment.

At 172.5 inches long, 72.5 inches wide, 63 inches tall, and riding on a 104-inch wheelbase, its closer in size (for comparisons sake) to the previous third-generation Toyota RAV4 than the newer, larger fourth-gen model. Its also a fair bit bigger (in every dimension but height) than the Yeti it replaces  to say nothing of the larger Kodiaq under which it will be positioned in Skodas growing SUV lineup.

An optional VarioFlex rear seating arrangement will allow for individual positioning, folding, and even removal of each of the rear seats. With those seats in place, it can accommodate over 18 cubic feet of stuff. Push them forward and it can swallow more than 20 cubic feet. Fold em flat: 58. Take em out: 64  two more than the outgoing Yeti, but still substantially less than the RAV4, Ford Escape/Kuga, or the class-leading Honda CR-V, which can swallow 76 cubic feet with the rear seats folded (but still in place).

Cargo space aside, the interior is set to incorporate a horizontally differentiated design, large air vents, LED ambient lighting, and the latest onboard infotainment technologies that the Volkswagen Group has to offer. Look for its debut in Stockholm on May 18 before the Skoda Karoq reaches dealers in the second half of this year  and check out the teaser images in the gallery below in the meantime.

Photo Gallery
Flooding 2017

Guns drawn in Rutland Madison Erhardt Update: 3:00 p.m. RCMP were called to 250 Hollywood Road South just after 1:30 p.m. "We got a call about a possible distraught male and as a result from the information received it to be somewhat of a risk call," said Patrol Supervisor Amadeo Vecchio. "We set up a perimeter and we entered the building, made contact with the male and took him into custody for assessment," Vecchio added. The male is being assessed at Kelowna General Hospital. UPDATE: 2:30 p.m. Images from the scene show police with rifles drawn outside a Hollywood Road apartment complex. Police at the scene say a man in distress posed a danger to public safety. More information to come. UPDATE: 1:50 P.M. Multiple police cruisers are surrounding an apartment complex on Hollywood Road South in Kelowna. Unconfirmed reports say RCMP are on foot surrounding the area. Castanet has a reporter on scene. ORIGINAL: 1:40 P.M. RCMP have closed Hollywood Road just south of Highway 33. Two police cruisers are seen blocking the road. At this time, the reason for the closure is unknown. Send your photos to [email protected]

A 102-day emergency Photo: Alan Sanderson Flood mitigation work in Peachland, in June. It's been 102 days  and counting. That's how long the Central Okanagan Emergency Operations Centre has been up and running since floods first hit the region in early May. Kelowna Coun. Luke Stack, sitting in as acting mayor Monday, took the opportunity to thank those who have put in time at the EOC to ensure residents are safe. "They have been doing double duty, as many have been seconded from their regular daily work to take on additional responsibility within the EOC," said Stack. "These folks, for those who don't know, are doing their regular job, and manning the Emergency Operations Centre." The EOC was activated on May 5 after heavy rains the night before, combined with snowmelt, caused massive flooding throughout the region. The centre also pulled double duty last month after a wildfire in Okanagan Centre displaced hundreds and destroyed eight homes. Kelowna city manager Ron Mattiussi, who helps oversee the centre, says the real story within those walls is the fact it's been a regional approach. "If you walked into the EOC on any given day, there would be a communication person from Kelowna, or Westbank First Nation, or West Kelowna and an engineer from Peachland," said Mattiussi. "It really was the strength that we could call upon the whole region, and the whole region responded by sending people who were pretty busy, to fill in." Stack said everyone looks forward to the day when the EOC can be decommissioned, "and our lives can return to normal." While the flood danger has passed, the EOC will remain operational until cleanup is complete.

Last call for sandbags Photo: File photo It's last call for sandbag removal in the Central Okanagan. The majority of flood response sandbags have been removed from public and private property, and regional recovery operations will wrap up Aug. 25. Crews are completing the last of the pickups, with some areas like West Kelowna already finished. Residents are responsible for any final sandbag removal on their own property. Drop off locations are now closed, and separated sand and sandbags can be returned to the Glenmore landfill in Kelowna. Sand will be accepted free of charge, and the empty sandbags charged regular tipping fees. Under no circumstances should sandbags be emptied into creeks, lakes, wetland, beaches or other watercourses. If sandbags on private property have been missed by pickup crews, call the flood recovery line at 250-470-0674. Residents dealing with sandbags on their own property should take precautions when working around stagnant water. Sandbags that have been sitting in water can contain mould. Residents should wear N95 respirators, nitrile gloves and rubber boots, and should thoroughly wash hands and clothes after handling the bags. Meanwhile, debris removal is ongoing, with four barge crews on Okanagan Lake. Removals will continue along the shoreline in Kelowna from the Mission area toward the W. R. Bennett Bridge. Additional crews will be working along north Westside Road as well as Peachland and West Kelowna. The collection of broken docks, unregistered boats, garbage and barrels is expected to continue for several weeks. Damaged docks and pilings still in place are the responsibility of the property owner. Any debris that residents do not want removed should be clearly marked with Do Not Remove, so crews know to leave it behind.

Walkway partially reopens Photo: Dave Ogilvie A portion of the Gellatly walkway will reopen this weekend. A portion of the Gellatly walkway in West Kelowna will reopen for the long weekend. The city announced Friday construction is now complete on the portion of the walkway between Willow Beach, adjacent to the West Kelowna Yacht Club, and the CN Wharf. Beginning Tuesday, the portion of the trail from the wharf to Rotary Beach, including the trail adjacent to the dog beach, will be closed for repairs. Motorists may also encounter some delays on Gellatly Road during this second phase of construction. The walkway was closed June 1 for repairs to damage caused by historically high levels of Okanagan Lake.

Lake falls below full pool Photo: Rob Balsdon Nearly two months after it crested in early June, Okanagan Lake finally fell below full pool over the weekend. The magic number 342.480 metres above sea level is the upper end of the lake's "normal" operating range. As of Tuesday morning, the lake was nearly six centimetres below that mark, 342.435 metres above sea level. Shaun Reimer, head of public safety and protection for the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, who operates lake flow from the Penticton dam, said last week he will continue to bring the lake level down at about the pace it has been for the next few weeks. Okanagan Lake remains higher than it normally would be this time of year, however, it is now well below the flood danger level. Reimer says the latest readings indicate Okanagan Lake remains about 19 centimetres higher than its normal level for the beginning of August, while Kalamalka Lake is about 17 centimetres above that mark. "Because we have been so dry, we should be able to get back on track in the fall," he said. With very few exceptions, all waterfront beaches, parks and walkways are open again. Some do remain closed for repairs to damage caused by this spring's flooding. Check local municipal and regional district websites for the latest on waterfront access, and follow the rise and fall of the lake on our daily updated lake level graph page.

Massive dock rebuild awaits Photo: Denise Egan One of about 1,200 docks damaged or destroyed during spring flooding. The province is coming to the aid of Okanagan waterfront property owners who need to repair or replace docks damaged by spring floods. An estimated 1,200 docks on Okanagan Lake were damaged or destroyed by the high water. To help speed up the approval process, FrontCounter BC has set up a temporary office in Kelowna. It will remain in place until at least the end of October in the Ministry of Agriculture building on Powick Road. It will be open Tuesday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to noon, and 1 to 4:30 p.m. Staff will be able to answer questions about permits and assist with the application process. Information on approvals is also available at 1-877-855-3222. At the same time, the government reminds people that all structures must be constructed on their own property. That means above the natural boundary or normal high-water mark. They must not build on Crown land fronting their property below the natural boundary. For years, people in the Okanagan have complained some structures along the foreshore have impeded their legal right to access the lakefront. Unauthorized structures (e.g., fences, retaining walls) and fill located below the natural boundary will not be allowed to be rebuilt.

Sandbag cleanup underway Photo: Deborah Pfeiffer Sandbags left along Mill Road in Naramata The Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen is releasing a schedule for sandbag cleanup outside of municipalities. The district will be removing sandbags and flood debris from rural and residential lots, local First Nations lands, and the Crown foreshore. The provincial government will be footing the bill for the cleanup, which is also already underway in Penticton. All you have to do is register and a strong labour force will come and remove them for you, reads a media release from the RDOS. A registration for is available online or at the RDOS Main Office, 101 Martin St, Penticton. You can submit them back to RDOS Emergency Operations Centre at [email protected] or the main offices. The staged tentative schedule below: Osoyoos Lake  July 25 to July 28

Naramata  July 31 to August 4

Rural Summerland  August 7 to August 9

Red Wing - August 9 to 11 Any stockpiled sand remaining in neighbourhoods is free for the taking. It just must not end up in the lake or in any water bodies, as it is not natural to waterways. The RDOS is also helping to remove unsecured unnatural flood debris like dock fragments, floats as a result of high water. The consent form covers both sandbags and dock debris. Okanagan Lake East Shoreline  July 31 to August 4

Okanagan Lake West Shoreline. August 7 to August 11

Almost back to normal Once Okanagan Lake reaches full pool, beaches not already open are scheduled to do so, and normal lake activities will resume. If the current pattern continues, and barring a major catastrophe, the magic "full pool" number should be reached by the weekend. Readings Tuesday morning showed the lake level at 342.560 metres above sea level. That's eight centimetres lower than it was Friday, and eight cm above full pool, which is 342.480 metres above sea level. Flooding across the Okanagan began May 7, when a massive spring storm, coupled with runoff from late-season snowfalls, caused the lake to rise to unprecedented levels. Okanagan Lake crested the first week of June after reaching a level of 343.250 metres above sea level. It's been steadily falling since. For more than a month, crews have been steadily removing sandbags, bladder dams and gabion dams. Large chunks of debris have been removed from the lake, beaches and waterfront parks. Cleanup from the nearly three month event is continuing in some areas. Some parks will remain closed while repairs are made. The lake, which has resembled a ghost town on some weekends with a lack of boating activity, will be back to normal. Track the rise and fall of the lake on our lake level graph page.

Lake nears normal level Photo: Gerry Faux Most of the sandbags in parks and beaches on Okanagan lake have now been removed. Since Okanagan Lake reached historic highs back in early June, the level of the lake has fallen dramatically. It's fallen 61 centimetres since reaching a high water mark of 343.250 metres above sea level on June 6. As of 5:30 this morning, the level was pegged at 342.640. That's down 61 centimetres since June 6 and 6.8 centimetres since Tuesday morning at the same time. That's 16 centimetres above what is considered normal full pool levels of 342.48 metres above sea level. Kalamalka Lake in Vernon is also falling at a steady rate. The lake level this morning was pegged at 391.927 metres above sea level. That's a drop of 3.6 centimetres since Tuesday. As the lake level drops, flood mitigation continues to be removed from beaches, lakefront parks and private property along the lakeshore. In West Kelowna, most parks, beaches and boat launches are now open, except for a handful along Jennens and Whitworth roads. The Gellatly Walkway also remains closed. Most waterfront parks and beaches in other areas around the Central Okanagan have also opened to the public. In the North Okanagan, the Kalavista boat launch on Kalamalka Lake and Paddlewheel Park boat launch on Okanagan Lake reopen today. Boaters are being cautioned to watch for debris in the water as a result of the recent flood and to reduce speeds near shore lines to respect those flood barriers still in place.

West Kelowna opens parks Photo: Dave Ogilvie The Gellatly walkway in West Kelowna remains closed. The City of West Kelowna has opened up several parks that have been closed the past few months due to flood concerns. Parks have opened as crews remove sandbags and other flood mitigation resources from those areas. Those now open, include: Paddlewheeler Park  Pritchard Drive

Pritchard Park  Pritchard Drive

Aberdeen Park  West Bay Road

Casa Loma Dock

Willow Beach  Gellatly Road

Marina Beach  Gellatly Road

Pebble Beach  Whitworth Road

CNR Wharf  Gellatly Road

Rotary Beach  Gellatly Road

Gellatly Landing Park  Gellatly Road

Casa Rio Park  Casa Rio Drive

John Dupuis (Casa Loma) Boat Launch  Casa Loma Road

Gellatly Boat Launch  Gellatly Road

Casa Loma Waterfront Access  Casa Loma Road (south) Currently, sandbag removal is being undertaken in the Green Bay, Pritchard Drive and Gellatly Road/Whitworth Road areas of West Kelowna. Work will resume in Casa Loma early next week. Residents who are undertaking their own sandbag removal on their property can assist by moving their bags to the roadside for pick up and disposal. Please separate burlap and polypropylene sandbags. While numerous parks are open, a handful remain closed. These include: Jennens Park  Jennens Road

Hitchner Park  Jennens Road

Gellatly Walkway  Gellatly Road

Beechnut Park  George Court

Hazelnut Park  Whitworth Road

Heartnut Park  Whitworth Road
Alanna Kelly

Parents living on Shannon Ridge Drive are frustrated with the number and speed of vehicles coming through their neighbourhood.

People who were hit by the floods and bridges being washed out in West Kelowna are being rerouted on Shannon Ridge Drive.

My issue is safety, weve already had two children hit at the school since the road was open, said Alisa Dafoe. We have had a constant problem, it doesnt end well, it cant end well.

When they took a count of cars between 7 a.m and 8 a.m. on Thursday, there were 998 cars going down their street.

The bridge has washed out Shannon Lake Road so the city has advised everyone in Talus Ridge, Smith Creek, Crystal Springs, Shannon Woods, Shannon Heights to reroute traffic down this small residential street, said Robyn Muccillo.

Their community has one elementary school, two preschools, a park and only one sidewalk

50 (km/h) is good right now, said Dafoe. There are people in commercial vehicles doing 60 and 70 at high time. Any sort of commercial vehicle is whipping through constantly through the day.

They said they would like to have a 30 km/h limit, speed bumps and crosswalks.

They noted the RCMP have been very helpful with dealing with the situation. The community will be hosting a town hall meeting on Monday to address the issue.
You could have the missing piece of the puzzle that will help the RCMP put someone behind bars. Here are some recent crimes that Central Okanagan Crime Stoppers hope you can help solve by calling our anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net or text to CRIMES (274637), starting with Ktown.

CRIME: THEFT / ASSAULT WITH WEAPON

DATE: April 30, 2017

RCMP FILE: 2017-21577

A male entered the Subway located on the 1700 block of Springfield Road at approximately 9:35 PM on April 30th. He grabbed some money out of the open till and ran outside, jumping on a bicycle. The lone employee followed and confronted the male, who then brandished a knife and threatened him. The employee called police as the male left in a western direction on his bicycle. The suspect is a balding Caucasian male, approximately 510 tall and wearing all black.

Photo: Crime Stoppers

If you know anything about this crime, or any other crime, call the Central Okanagan Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS or visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net. Your information will be kept confidential and could lead to a reward of up to $2000.00.

CRIME: ARSON

DATE: May 6, 2017

RCMP FILE: 2017-22781

An alarm was activated at 1:56 AM at a fast food business on the 1500 block of Banks Road. Upon arrival police discovered fire crews fighting an active fire at a fast food restaurant two doors down. The restaurants front door window had been smashed and suspects had lit the restaurant on fire. The fire is deemed suspicious and any information on the occurrence would be appreciated by Kelowna RCMP.

Photo: Crime Stoppers

You can help catch these suspects and qualify for a reward by calling Crime Stoppers anonymous tips line at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477), visit our website at www.crimestoppers.net or text to CRIMES (274637), starting with Ktown.

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: Darren Handschuh

Theres fewer farms in the Okanagan, fewer farmers, less acreage of farmland, and farmers are getting older.

New data from Statistics Canada appears to paint a fairly bleak picture of the local agriculture industry  but many Okanagan farmers are heralding big things in the years ahead.

Read why farmers are looking forward to the future, what they're really concerned about, and what a closer look at the numbers reveals, on Castanet's sister business news website Okanagan Edge.
Photo: wikihow.com

I did a lot of flying for business last year and, as a result, became an Elite Status client for one of Canadas largest airlines.

I was excited that flying in 2017 might be a little easier and slightly more comfortable.



As December approached, my welcome package arrived in the mail. Shiny, posh little luggage tags that now allowed me to walk past long line ups and check in on a priority basis. Upgrade tickets so I could enjoy the comforts at the front of the plane and relax a little for my next meetings.



Frankly, the package was more than a little confusing, so I took to Google to try to find out what all of the privileges meant.

In many instances, not a lot.



My first flight of the year was eventful. I checked in at Kelowna and found out that my connecting flight from Calgary had been canceled.

I talked to the gate agent in the departure lounge and asked if the airline would accommodate me with a hotel, they certainly would she indicated, but not their airline because it was a code share.

it would be United who would joyfully help me out.



Then came the next opportunity that allowed me to be a good Samaritan.

The first flight was overbooked; who wanted to get off?

Oh, me. I am in no rush. I have no flight out of Calgary and just a hotel to go to. I walked up to the gate and offered my seat. The gate agent was very pleased and heaped a pile of gift certificates on me.

I confirmed again, that even though I was in no rush, I would get a hotel. Correct she indicated. Go see United Airlines.



Later in the day, I arrived in Calgary and walked through security. I had had to change hotels at my final destination because the airline could not get me there and found out that I was too late to cancel.



So I was already down a few hundred dollars.



I walked from security to the very last desk at YYC  United Airlines. I have come to get my hotel details, I exclaimed.

Not from here, I was told; your own airline will deal with that.

I must admit I was a tad frustrated and I had just walked past my airlines desk half a kilometre ago. I told the check-in clerk to get my airline on the phone and sort it out because I did not enjoy being a ping pong ball.

Off I went to my airline. Sorry no hotels; it is a weather delay out of our control."



Now, I was a little heated. I exclaimed that I checked at the gate in Kelowna and was told there would be a hotel. I stepped off my flight to accommodate my airline's own booking error and now no hotel.

To make a long story short, after about 15 minutes of phone calls, the help desk exclaimed that because of my status, I do get a hotel and a nice one. Too late; I was really frustrated and tired of being bounced around, but nice to know my status helps.



More recently, I was late for a flight from Kelowna. My first grand daughter was born overnight at KGH and I decided to go give her a hug.

Given the traffic to the airport, I arrived only 25 minutes before my flight. Too late.

I get it. My fault. But they gave me a standby boarding pass and said good luck.

I ran through customs went to the gate and the gate agent said I had no ticket because of my lateness. The flight was full, but there was a chance a seat might open up.

Suddenly, just before they closed the doors I was called to the gate. My chance had come. She explained that a passenger had arrived late and was hurrying through customs, but was unable to make the flight if he did not come through in the next minute.

We waited for two minutes and then she said, There he is, sorry, we cant help you; the next flight is in three hours."

I sat down and wondered how 30 minutes before my flight I was not allowed to access my paid for ticker and yet as the doors closed another passenger came running through security and took my seat perhaps my status was not that good.



Last night, I finished my work on Vancouver Island and thought my status allows me standby privileges. Rather than stay the extra night - I will see if I can get out on standby.

I attempted to check in last night and was told by an extremely snooty desk agent that there is no such thing as standby, but I could spend $300 for a ticket home from Nanaimo."

I asked her to check at my status level. No standby according to her, just the option to buy another ticket.

Begrudgingly, I booked a hotel and stayed for an additional night. At my hotel, I called my airline special status helpline. No such thing as standby for even our top tier passengers the lady exclaimed.

OK, I get that I said, adding but what does the line Airport Priority Standby mean in my privileges section?

I was told by the second person that it does not say that, this time by an expert on my status who clearly knew a lot more than me. Confused I asked again what it means in my privileges section by the statement Airport Priority Standby?



I was told to write to customer service to get an answer. Really? Thank you Air Canada. Can somebody please tell me what Airport Priority Standby means? Is it a clandestine code for another service I have yet to discover?

This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet.
Photo: stantec.com

Kelowna General Hospital is like any other business or property owner situated near a body of water in the Okanagan.

Staff are taking the necessary precautions in case expected flood waters rise high enough to affect the facility.

In this case, it would likely be from Okanagan Lake.

"As KGH falls within the flood-watch warning area released by the city, the hospital is making preparations for potential flood activity," health services administrator Andrew Hughes said in a brief statement to Castanet.

"As a precaution ... some of our parking lot areas will be closed, and sandbagging will also begin to take place. Our planning is evolving and will be based on further updates received by the city."
Photo: Roy Hollett A fire truck caught fire on the way to a fire in Halifax.

Halifax firefighters got a surprise Thursday morning when flames started shooting from their own truck as they responded to a call.

"Unbelievable  a fire truck actually caught on fire," mused Deputy Fire Chief Roy Hollett. "It's like a police car getting broken into."

Hollett said the truck was responding to a medical call in Lake Echo, about 26 kilometres east of downtown Halifax, about 9 a.m. when it began to lose power and started making loud noises.

"As (the driver) stopped the truck, the cab started to fill up with smoke. The captain directed everyone to get out immediately. When they got out, they noticed there was smoke and fire under the wheel well and the cab."

He said four people were in the truck, a 2003 Pierce. Some of the firefighters suffered minor smoke inhalation, but nothing that required medical attention, Hollett said.

"There's a degree of irony, yes ... OK, did I actually hear a fire truck on fire?

"So I made my way there ... Thankfully, no one was hurt and I can laugh at it now."

Another truck continued to the medical call, while a spare truck picked up the stricken truck's equipment.
Alanna Kelly

Residents of the Central Okanagan have been advised to create a 72-hour emergency kit by both the mayor and Central Okanagan Emergency Operations.

Here's what kits should include, but are not limited to:

Food (ready to eat) and water

Flashlight and batteries

AM/FM radio

Medications

Seasonal clothing

Blanket

Cell phone charger

Pen and notepad

Personal toiletries

Small First-Aid kit

Extra pair of glasses or contacts

Cash in small bills

Local map with your family meeting place identified

Whistle

Sergeant Preppers Army Surplus also carries pre-made kits that can be purchased.

Residents are urged to prepare for possible flooding by sandbagging areas of concern.

They are being asked to limit the amount of water going down drains to reduce strain on wastewater systems.
Photo: Linkedin Ninette Ollgaard has been chosen as the Downtown Kelowna Association's new executive director.

The Downtown Kelowna Association has found a new executive director.

The organization promotes the city's downtown core and members' businesses.

Ninette Ollgaard will take over on July 4.

Ollgaard has spent the last 11 years working with Destination BC, a Crown corporation that promotes tourism in the province.

"Ninette is a proven leader, enthusiastic and action oriented which is just what we need as Downtown Kelowna continues to develop in positive ways moving forward, said Dan Allen, president of the DKA. Her understanding of tourism, which underpins our successful downtown, is welcomed by our more than 1,200 members.

Ollgaard replaces Peggy Athans, who has been in the role for the past six years.

"Kelownas downtown is exciting and has great potential, Ollgaard said. I am looking forward to working with the staff of DKA, the membership and the City of Kelowna to grow our strong and vibrant downtown.
Photo: Contributed

Police have arrested a man after they were alerted of a person with a firearm.

Several officers and a police helicopter were seen in the area of Sexsmith Road and Arab Road about 2:30 p.m.

Castanet readers said they noticed a heavy police presence in the area.

Shortly after arriving on scene, officers found the suspect on the 3000 block of Appaloosa Road and took him into custody.

"RCMP have since confirmed that what appeared to be a firearm was in fact an airsoft pistol," said Cpl. Jesse O'Donaghey.
When James Blaine introduced his ill-fated constitutional amendment in 1875, he probably never would have imagined the unintended consequences it would have over a hundred years later. Blaine wanted to prohibit the use of state funds at sectarian schools (a code word for Catholic parochial schools) in order to inhibit immigration. Since the public schools instilled a Protestant Christian view upon its students, public education was viewed as a way to stem the tide of Catholic influence.

While the amendment passed by a large majority (180-7) in the House, it failed by a tiny margin (4 votes) in the Senate. Supporters of the amendment, however, pressed the issue at the state level, often making it a prerequisite for statehood. The measure finally found its way into 37 state constitutions, including Missouri.

In this brief video Notre Dame Law professor Richard Garnett explains how these Blaine Amendments affect religious liberty today.

Such an amendment is also at the center of one of the most significant religious liberty cases to be decided in years.

The case, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, involves a religious preschool that was rejected from a state program that provides reimbursement grants to purchase rubberized surface material (tire scraps) for childrens playgrounds. The preschool was ultimately denied the grant for its playground solely because the playground belongs to a religious organization. The church is being defended in the case by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Missouri applied for Missouris Scrap Tire Grant Program so that it could provide a safer playground for children who attend its daycare and for neighborhood children who use the playground after hours. The

Scrap Tire Grant Program is otherwise neutrally available to a variety of nonprofits and Trinitys application was ranked fifth out of 44 applications (in total, 14 grants were awarded).

Although the grant was for a secular use (i.e., making a playground safer), the state of Missouri halted the application process and denied Trinitys attempt to participate in the program solely because Trinity is a church. The state based this exclusion from the program on Article I,  7, of the Missouri Constitution, which states, no money shall be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.

The Eighth Circuit affirmed that denial by equating a grant to resurface Trinitys playground using scrap tire material with funding the devotional training of clergy.

At its core, says ADF, the Trinity Lutheran playground case strikes at the heart of American jurisprudence, asking: What is fair play in a pluralistic society? Can a state prohibit police from responding to a burglary at a Catholic school? Can a city stop the fire department from putting out a fire at a church?

The outcome of the case will determine whether the government can discriminate against religious organizations and exclude them from receiving a generally available public benefit simply because they are religious. A loss could mean that religious nonprofits could be excluded from government programs meant to serve their communities and even be denied basic safety services like fire and police protection, says ADF.

While the type of anti-Catholic sentiment Blaine endorsed has been all but purged from Protestantism, the vestiges of this religious bias remain in the dusty tomes of our nations law books. What a strange legacy this former congressman from Maine has left us. As Blaine biographer Charles Russell said, No man in our annals has filled so large a space and left it so empty.
Photo: Colin Dacre A sandbag pickup point in Penticton

Communities throughout the South Okanagan are preparing for severe thunderstorms, significant snowmelt and the possible flooding that could follow.

The Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen is distributing sandbags throughout the region. A list of pickup areas can be found here.

RDOS Emergency Services Supervisor Dale Kronebusch says they are going to focus on keeping the creeks in the creeks, noting that the Okanagan River corridor is heavily controlled through a series of dams in Penticton and south.

But what they can't control, is the streamflow, he added.

The Ministry of Forests Lands and Natural Resource Operations confirmed Thursday that the Penticton Channel and dam at Okanagan Lake is releasing water at full capacity.

They are trying to manage the water to get it out of Okanagan Lake, Kronebusch said Its at full pool now, but before it becomes problematic.

Despite the release of water, Okanagan Lake has risen steadily over the past several days, driven by rapid snowmelt.
Photo: Contributed The Westbank First Nation has declared a state of emergency, in anticipation of increased flooding Thursday night.

With floods predicted to hit the Okanagan hard tonight, the Westbank First Nation has declared a state of emergency.

The First Nation's chief and council declared the emergency Thursday afternoon to allow for prompt co-ordination and action or special regulation of persons or property to protect the health, safety or welfare of people.

The declaration attributes the move to the close proximity of flooding to the Westbank First Nation Indian Reserves 9 and 10.

Under the state of emergency, WFN employees can use any land or property that is needed to alleviate the effects of the flooding, prevent travel into and from any WFN reserve land, evacuate any residents when needed, enter any private building without a warrant while implementing an emergency plan and demolish any structures or trees when needed to prevent flooding.

The City of Kelowna and the City of West Kelowna also remain under a state of emergency, after declaring them on Saturday.
Photo: Nicholas Johansen Last year's Great Okanagan Beer Fest sold out of its beer 3,000 tickets.

Despite the foreboding forecast and flooding fears, organizers of Saturday's Great Okanagan Beer Fest say the event will go on, rain or shine.

Organizers say they have been given the go-ahead from city officials to proceed with Saturday's festival, despite the City of Kelowna being under a state of emergency due to flooding.

Waterfront Park has remained dry and festival prep is underway, the organizers said in a statement.

As of Thursday afternoon, Saturday's forecast is calling for a mix of sun and cloud and 14 C.

Saturday's event will be the third year the festival has run in Kelowna. The 3,000 tickets were sold out last year, and attendees drank the taps dry.

This year, capacity has increased to 3,500 people and more than 45 breweries will be serving up samples.
Photo: YouTube

A 31-year-old Edmonton woman has been charged with murder after her 11-day-old daughter died from an methamphetamine overdose.

Police got a call on March 29 of a baby not breathing at a residence near 72 Street and 83 Avenue.

The medical examiners office contacted police on April 6 after autopsy and toxicology tests confirmed the baby died from a lethal dose of methamphetamine.

Michelle Rice was arrested Thursday and charged with second-degree murder.

Police spokesman Scott Pattison said Rice has a young son who is unharmed and staying with his biological father. He added he didn't know if the man was the father of the baby girl as well.

Pattison said it's not known exactly how the baby ingested the drug, but ruled out breast-feeding.

"From what the medical examiner and our understanding of that level of methamphetamine, it couldn't have been administered in that lethal dose through a woman's breast milk specifically," he said.

Homicide detectives would also like to speak with several other people who visited the residence in the 11 days prior to the babys death.

Investigators are asking anyone that was at the house on or after March 18 to contact police.
Photo: The Canadian Press New Zealand aims to rid the entire nation of rats to save its bird population.

New Zealand has set itself an environmental goal so ambitious it's been compared to putting a man on the moon: ridding the entire nation of every last rat, possum and stoat.

The idea is to give a second chance to the distinctive birds that once ruled this South Pacific nation. When New Zealand split away from the supercontinent Gondwanaland 85 million years ago, predatory mammals hadn't evolved. That allowed birds to thrive. Some gave up flight altogether to strut about the forest floor.

Then humans arrived, bringing predators with them. Rats stowed away on ships. Settlers introduced brushtail possums  an Australian species unrelated to North American opossums  for the fur trade and weasel-like stoats to control rabbits. The pests destroyed forest habitats and feasted on the birds and their eggs. More than 40 species of birds died out and many others remain threatened, including the iconic kiwi.

Now people want to turn back the clock. Yet the plan sounds impossible. How do you kill millions of vermin across a country that's the size of the United Kingdom? How do you ensure a few furtive rats won't undo all the hard work by surviving and breeding?

The number of pests in New Zealand is many times larger than the human population of nearly 5 million. Possum numbers in 2009 were estimated at 30 million. Scientists can't hazard a guess at how many rats there are because their numbers fluctuate wildly.
Photo: The Canadian Press Volunteers rush an injured person to a hospital in Quetta, Pakistan, Friday.

The deputy leader of Pakistan's Senate escaped an assassination attempt on Friday when a suicide bomber targeted his convoy in the country's southwestern Baluchistan province, killing 25 people and wounding dozens more, government officials said.

The Islamic State took responsibility for the attack on its official Amaq News Agency.

The bomber struck soon after Abdul Ghafoor Haideri's convoy left a madrassa, an Islamic religious school, in the town of Mastung, not far from the provincial capital of Quetta, according to local government official, Munir Raisani.

The area has been a hotbed of militant activity in the past, although most of the previous attacks near Mastung have been on Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslims by the violent radical Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Friday's attack underscored the militants' continued ability to carry out high-profile attacks despite a protracted military crackdown that's underway in several parts of the country, including Pakistan's border regions with neighbouring Afghanistan.

Shaken but with only minor cuts and bruises, Haideri told a local news channel that he could not speculate on the reason for the attack.
They may not fully realize it, but people living down the road from Ted Walker owe him a debt of gratitude.

Walker lives on 20th Street near 48th Avenue and he was up until the wee hours of Friday morning sandbagging and diverting a swollen BX Creek that was spilling its banks.

Walker's is the first house in the 4900 block of 20th Street and if had not been for the barrier on his property, several homes downstream would have been flooded by the morning.

Walker said some neighbours did come out and help fill sandbags to divert the raging waters.

Rocky Mountain Transport also helped out by placing several large cement blocks on the edge of Walker's driveway against which dozens of sandbags were placed, diverting a strong current that was flowing directly toward houses down the road.

While many people were breathing a sigh of relief that a predicted heavy rain storm did not unleash too much fury on the region, Walker is watching with nervous anticipation as BX Creek continues to rage.

The creek is fed from Silver Star Mountain which had a lot of snow this winter.

And that snow combined with the rain has turned the normally docile waterway into a frothing, raging river.

This is terrible. I've never seen anything like it in the 10 years we've been here, said Walker Friday morning. We were sandbagging all night. We haven't slept.

There is some water seeping into the basement of Walker's home, but he has removed all the furniture and he has set up pumps to get the water out.

Walker said the creek rose fairly quickly in the evening.
Photo: Vancouver Aquarium

Animal rescuers at the Vancouver Aquarium's marine mammal centre say they're trying to save a California sea lion that was shot in the face.

The adult male, which the team named Senor Cinco after he was found on the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo, was spotted on the beach at Spanish Banks, emaciated and unresponsive.

The aquarium says in a news release that it took several days to stabilize the animal, and on Tuesday a team was able to give him a full examination under a general anaesthetic where they discovered he had been shot at least twice in the face.

Dr. Martin Haulena, the aquarium's head veterinarian, says the sea lion's teeth are shattered, he is blind in one eye and the injuries indicate he's been in distress for weeks.

Haulena says it's too early to tell if Senor Cinco will be a candidate for release, but he has a long road to recovery ahead.

California sea lions breed off the coast of Southern California and the Baja Peninsula, but during non-breeding season a large number of males migrate north to B.C.
Emergency crews are heading to a trailer fire on the Coquihalla Highway

The rear tires of a Sutco trailer are fully engulfed in flames.

Tony Pallas passed the fire just after noon Friday and said no emergency crews were on scene yet.

The incident is about three kilometres west of Larson Hill on Highway 5.

There is no word on the cause of the fire, if there are injuries or how it is affecting traffic.
Photo: Contributed

Enderby residents can once again turn on the taps.

The city's mandatory water conservation advisory has been lifted following the successful installation of a temporary line over the Bawtree Bridge, restoring access to the city's secondary/back-up water source.

As a result, the city has also cancelled its state of local emergency.

The city is encouraging residents to resume normal domestic and business uses, but in order to ensure the system is not overwhelmed, residents are asked not to turn on irrigation, wash vehicles or driveways, or do other non-essential activities that consume a lot of water.

These activities can be phased back in next week.

Residents are reminded the boil water advisory remains in effect until further notice.

"Our crew, contractors and volunteers worked tirelessly to get this temporary line in place so that the Mandatory Water Conservation Advisory could be lifted for our residents. It was truly a team effort," said Mayor Greg McCune.

"Our residents deserve a ton of praise for how patient and supportive they were throughout this event. When faced with a tough situation, our community never fails to pull together for each other."
Cementir benefits from acquisitions

ICR Newsroom By 12 May 2017

Cementir's first-quarter turnover rose by 33 per cent to EUR279.9m while on a like-for-like basis the improvement was just 0.5 per cent. EBITDA improved by 7.9 per cent to EUR23m, with only the Nordic countries showing an improvement. At the trading level there was a reduction from a EUR1.2m, profit to a EUR1m loss and at the pretax level the loss increased by 2.8 per cent to EUR6.2m.

Net debt at the end of March was EUR646.4m compared with the EUR271.9m a year earlier to give a gearing level of 62.7 per cent compared with 24.7 per cent a year earlier.

Shipments of grey and white cement rose by 24.9 per cent to 2.52Mt and ready-mixed concrete deliveries were 19.4 per cent higher at 1.09Mm while dispatches of aggregates jumped by 187.3 per cent to 2.01Mt.

The Nordic and Benelux turnover jumped by 64.1 per cent to EUR185.8m, mainly thanks the inclusion of the Belgian-based CCB. CCB contributed a turnover of EUR53.4m and an EBITDA of EUR5m. In Denmark turnover improved by 9.3 per cent as domestic deliveries advanced by 16 per cent in grey and by four per cent in white cement. In ready-mixed concrete volumes improved by 12 per cent, while exports of white cement ware off by nine per cent with exports of grey cement to the USA being stable. In Norway ready-mixed concrete deliveries advanced by 26 per cent while in Sweden deliveries rose by 31per cent in ready-mixed concrete and by 25 per cent in aggregates.

The Italian turnover benefited from the consolidation of Sacci and rose by 88.1 per cent to EUR37.4m, resulting in an EBITDA loss 2.3 per cent lower at EUR5m, with Cementir Sacci making a negative contribution of EUR2.1m. Sales volumes in cement and concrete were two per cent ahead of the comparative volumes last year, helped by a good performance of the Spoleto works.



In Turkey an uncertain political situation and adverse weather conditions as well as exchange rate movements combined to lead to a 32.4 per cent reduction in turnover to EUR32.4m, as cement deliveries declined by 16 per cent and ready-mixed concrete deliveries dropped by 25 per cent. Export volumes showed a 34 per cent reduction. Egyptian turnover declined be 24.3 per cent was the exchange rate declined, with white cement and clinker volumes declining by two per cent in the domestic market, but exports increased by 16 per cent. EBITDA amounted to EUR0.3m in respect of Turkey and EUR4.4m for Egypt.

In Malaysia volumes declined by some five per cent for domestic deliveries and fell by around 39 per cent in the case of exports, leading to reductions in turnover at EUR9.1m and of EBITDA to EUR2m. In China the turnover increased from EUR7.4m to EUR9.2m while EBITDA jumped from EUR0.9m to EUR1.7m.

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Cementos Argos 1Q revenues impacted by Colombia

12 May 2017

Cementos Argos posted a 6.1 per cent decline in consolidated revenues for the first three months of the year, citing a challenging first quarter affected mainly by Colombia.



Over 70 per cent of revenues and EBITDA came from operations outside of Colombia. The US continues to be its main market in terms of revenues, cement and ready-mix volumes. For the first time, the Caribbean and Central America group region was the leading contributor to EBITDA accounting for 43 per cent.



Cement volumes were up by 11.5 per cent YoY driven by US operation and a recovery in market share in Colombia. However, ready-mix concrete volumes fell six per cent, reflecting the importance of its operations in Texas where the Houston market has been affected by oil price dynamics and adverse weather conditions.



US division

In the US cement dispatches rose by 43.4 per cent to 1.3Mt during the quarter, and by 14 per cent excluding the inclusion of the Martinsburg operations acquired from HeidelbergCement. Revenues rose by eight per cent YoY to US$361m while EBITDA was US$32m.



Colombia

In its home market of Colombia, Argos reported a 10.3 per cent increase in volumes to 1.4Mt. Its commercial and pricing strategy enabled the company to significantly recover market share mainly in the central and northern regions. Argos said that, going forward, it remains confident on the outlook for the Colombian market based on the diversified backlog of projects in the housing, commercial and infrastructure sector that it will be supplying. Revenues and EBITDA in 1Q17 were below the companys expectations, falling to COP599bn (-10.1 per cent) and COP82bn (-59.8 per cent), respectively. The decline was attributed mainly to pricing dynamics.



Caribbean and Central American

Cement volumes in the Caribbean and Central American region declined by 10.7 per cent YoY to 1.14Mt. The contraction was attributed to a fall in exports and trading, down 40.1 per cent. In terms of sales to local markets, sales 8.6 per cent to 67,000t mainly reflecting a 20 per cent increase in Honduras and a two per cent advance in Panama after eliminating the Canal base effect. Volumes in this quarter also reflected Argos new acquisition in Puerto Rico. For 2017 Argos expects stable growth in cement and ready-mix driven by public investments in infrastructure of around US$4bn announced by the governments of Honduras and Panama for the construction of roads, bridges, houses, ports, etc.

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OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- The best fare from some of Ocean Springs' best restaurants, coupled with fine wine and other beverages and mild evening temperatures, resulted in a crowd of more than 500 people in attendance for the ninth annual Taste of Ocean Springs Food & Wine Festival.

Offerings from 21 food vendors and 11 drink vendors were in ample supply through the event, which ran from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the L&N Depot parking lot. Guests moved from booth to booth to sample the items, with many simple standing nearby to eat, while others opted to sit and dine on white tablecloths with candlelight.

"The weather is perfect, we've got a great turnout and the food is exceptional," said Keith Crosby, an Ocean Springs resident and general manager of the Palace Casino. "As usual, it's a great event. We've had a good time."

Dr. Chris Duke, an Ocean Springs veterinarian, noted that while the food and drink is the main attraction, Taste of Ocean Springs is also a major social event.

"It's phenomenal," said Duke, who has been attending the event for at least five years. "Being a small southern town, it's an opportunity to not only taste the fare from the local vendors, but to run into everybody and socialize. It's like the town square here."

Cynthia Sutton, Executive Director of the Ocean Springs Chamber of Commerce, which sponsors the event, was equally pleased.

"It was an awesome event, top notch," she said. "We're very pleased to have remained steady in terms of attendance and the number of participants."

Some of the highlights among the food offerings were the seafood gumbo from McElroy's on the Bayou; the rigatoni bolognese with braised pork from Salvetti's; crab cakes and coconut shrimp from Phoenicia Gourmet; Vodoo quesadillas, based off their Vodoo wrap, from Froghead Grill; shrimp and chorizo paella from Mosaic; and -- although pizza isn't necessarily the first thing that comes to mind when thinking of gourmet food -- the "white" pizza from Marco's was a surprise hit.

Sutton noted a couple of new attractions this year: an "artist's lair" where the work of Ocean Springs artist Anita Hughes was on display, and two Mercedes-Benz sedans provided by Mercedes-Benz of South Mississippi to provide more "elegance" to the event.

"This being the ninth year for Taste of Ocean Springs, we're always looking to reinvent ourselves, to try and take things up a level," Sutton said. "I think we did that this year."

Ocean Springs alderman Bobby Cox certainly thought so.

"This event is fantastic," he said. "We've been here the last few years and every year it gets better. We end up staying until the end -- either til they run out of food or close the doors. How often do you see people dressed up and coming to an event like this?

"I think it'd be great to do this twice a year. I really enjoy it."
The Singing River Squadron of the Civil Air Patrol the Official Auxiliary of the United States Air Force received numerous awards at the Mississippi Wing Conference held this past weekend, May 8, 2017, in Jackson, MS.

The Singing River Squadron has been in existence since 1941 when World War II broke out.

The unit was originally named Submarine Patrol Base 11 during WWII and was one of the original Squadrons in the United States.

Each year the Mississippi Wing holds its Conference and Awards Banquet in recognition of achievements to its volunteer members.

The unit's present Commander is Lieutenant Colonel Danny Watson a Hurley resident and retired police investigator.

At this year's annual conference he was awarded the "Top Gun" trophy for the most flight hours flown in the Mississippi Wing.

He was also awarded the Meritorious Service Commendation, Squadron Safety Excellence Award, Commander's Commendation Award and the Mississippi Wing Commander's Award for Excellence.

Major Ronald "Gary Turner", a past Squadron Commander of the Singing River Squadron and currently the Mississippi Wing Inspector General, also a Hurley resident was awarded the Exceptional Service award, the Mississippi Wing Commander's Award for Excellence and Inspector General of the year award.

Major Turner has also been awarded the Southeast Region Inspector General of the year award for 2016.

Major Dayle Robinson, a Gautier resident and is a retired police officer and Huntington Ingalls employee was awarded the Commander's Commendation Award for Outstanding Duty Performance and the Southeast Region Award for Excellence in Counter Drug and Homeland Security Programs.

Major Robinson is the Squadron's Aerospace Education Officer and the Wing's Counter Drug Officer.

Major Robinson is known by many elementary schools in Jackson County for his presentations on behalf of the Civil Air Patrol and United States Air Force to promote Aerospace Education.

Captain Rodney Fernandez of Gautier and Moss Point business owner, received the Commanders Commendation Award for Excellence.

The Singing River Squadron is based at Trent Lott International Airport and meets on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday nights at 7:00 p.m.

The Squadron along with Emergency Services, Aerospace Education and Cadet Programs flies the Sundown Patrol Mission each weekend from April through Daylight Savings Time change looking for any boaters in distress and works with the United States Coast Guard assisting as necessary.

This mission is funded by the taxpayers of Jackson County and in the past three years has been credited with six " Life Saves" and one "Distressed Find", by the Civil Air Patrol, US Air Force and US Coast Guard along with numerous requests by the US Coast Guard to assist in finding overdue boaters and individuals.



Mississippi Wing

Civil Air Patrol / USAFAUX

1635 Airport Drive

Jackson, MS 39209



For Immediate Release

For more information contact:

Lt Col Danny Watson USAFAUX

Phone: 228-623-3738

Email: danny.watson@mswg.cap.gov
On the left is a low-resolution scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) image of a ferroelectric material that is continuously graded from barium strontium titanate (BSTO, top) to barium titanate (BTO, bottom). The material is grown on a gadolinium scandate (GSO) substrate buffered by a strontium ruthenate (SRO) bottom electrode. To the right are local nanobeam diffraction-based 2D maps of a-axis and c-axis lattice parameters that confirm large strain gradients in the ferroelectric material. The material is promising as electrically-tunable capacitors with extreme temperature stability.

Scientists have greatly expanded the range of functional temperatures for ferroelectrics, a key material used in a variety of everyday applications, by creating the first-ever polarization gradient in a thin film.

The achievement by researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), paves the way for developing devices capable of supporting wireless communications in extreme environments, from inside nuclear reactors to Earth's polar regions.

Ferroelectric materials are prized for having a spontaneous polarization that is reversible by an applied electric field and for the ability to produce electric charges in response to physical pressure. They can function as capacitors, transducers, and oscillators, and they can be found in applications such as transit cards, ultrasound imaging, and push-button ignition systems.

Berkeley Lab scientists created a strain and chemical gradient in a 150-nanometer-thin film of barium strontium titanate, a widely used ferroelectric material. The researchers were able to directly measure the tiny atomic displacements in the material using cutting-edge advanced microscopy at Berkeley Lab, finding gradients in the polarization. The polarization varied from 0 to 35 microcoulombs per centimeter squared across the thickness of the thin-film material.

Tossing out textbook predictions

"Traditional physics and engineering textbooks wouldn't have predicted this observation," said study principal investigator Lane Martin, faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division and UC Berkeley associate professor of materials and engineering. "Creating gradients in materials costs a lot of energy--Mother Nature doesn't like them--and the material works to level out such imbalances in whatever way possible. In order for a large gradient like the one we have here to occur, we needed something else in the material to compensate for this unfavorable structure. In this case, the key is the material's naturally occurring defects, such as charges and vacancies of atoms, that accommodate the imbalance and stabilize the gradient in polarization."

Creating a polarization gradient had the beneficial effect of expanding the temperature range for optimal performance by the ferroelectric material. Barium titanate's function is strongly temperature-dependent with relatively small effects near room temperature and a large, sharp peak in response at around 120 degrees Celsius. This makes it hard to achieve well-controlled, reliable function as the temperature varies beyond a rather narrow window. To adapt the material to work for applications at and around room temperature, engineers tune the chemistry of the material, but the range of temperatures where the materials are useful remains relatively narrow.

"The new polarization profile we have created gives rise to a nearly temperature-insensitive dielectric response, which is not common in ferroelectric materials," said Martin. "By making a gradient in the polarization, the ferroelectric simultaneously operates like a range or continuum of materials, giving us high-performance results across a 500-degree Celsius window. In comparison, standard, off-the-shelf materials today would give the same responses across a much smaller 50-degree Celsius window."

Beyond the obvious expansions to hotter and colder environments, the researchers noted that this wider temperature range could shrink the number of components needed in electronic devices and potentially reduce the power draw of wireless phones.

"The smartphone I'm holding in my hand right now has dielectric resonators, phase shifters, oscillators--more than 200 elements altogether--based on similar materials to what we studied in this paper," said Martin. "About 45 of those elements are needed to filter the signals coming to and from your cell phone to make sure you have a clear signal. That's a huge amount of real estate to dedicate to one function."

Because changes in temperature alter the resonance of the ferroelectric materials, there are constant adjustments being made to match the materials to the wavelength of the signals sent from cell towers. Power is needed to tune the signal, and the more out of tune it is, the more power the phone needs to use to get a clear signal for the caller. A material with a polarization gradient capable operating over large temperatures regimes could reduce the power needed to tune the signal.

Faster detectors enable new imaging techniques

Understanding the polarization gradient entailed the use of epitaxial strain, a strategy in which a crystalline overlayer is grown on a substrate, but with a mismatch in the lattice structure. This strain engineering technique, commonly employed in semiconductor manufacturing, helps control the structure and enhance performance in materials.

Recent advances in electron microscopy have allowed researchers to obtain atomic-scale structural data of the strained barium strontium titanate, and to directly measure the strain and polarization gradient.

"We have established a way to use nanobeam scanning diffraction to record diffraction patterns from each point, and afterwards analyze the datasets for strain and polarization data," said study co-author Andrew Minor, director of the National Center for Electron Microscopy at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry, a DOE Office of Science User Facility. "This type of mapping, pioneered at Berkeley Lab, is both new and very powerful."

Another key factor was the speed of the detector, Minor added. For this paper, data was obtained at a rate of 400 frames per second, an order of magnitude faster than the 30-frame-per-second rate from just a few years ago. This technique is now available for users at the Foundry.

"We're seeing a revolution in microscopy related to the use of direct electron detectors that is changing many fields of research," said Minor, who also holds an appointment as a UC Berkeley professor of materials science and engineering. "We're able to both see and measure things at a scale that was hard to imagine until recently."
The Board of County Commissioners approved on May 11 a reading of an ordinance to adopt findings that affirm the designation of urban and rural reserves in the metro region.

That action was taken immediately after the board approved the substance of the May 10 version of an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) between the county, Metro and the cities of West Linn, Tualatin and Lake Oswego on potential future urbanization of the Stafford area in unincorporated Clackamas County.

The commissioners are scheduled to take final action on the IGA and the ordinance at a special business meeting planned for 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, May 23. The meeting will include a hearing on the ordinance; the public will be welcome to comment.

The meeting will be held in the Board Hearing Room on the fourth floor of the Public Services Building at 2051 Kaen Road in Oregon City.

The action is being taken in response to a remand from the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development.

The most current versions of the IGA, ordinance and related material are available at http://www.clackamas.us/planning/reserves.html.

For more information, members of the public may contact Public Information Officer Tim Heider at 503-742-5911.
Don't let your teen get discouraged in a job search, writes columnist Karla Miller. He or she may need to make an extra effort to stand out. (Kevin Sullivan / Orange County Register)

Q: My 17-year-old son is looking for an evening and weekend job. He's polite, well spoken and clean-cut. But when he goes into places that are advertising, managers just tell him, "Apply online" (this includes the places that say "Apply Inside"). He has applied to dozens of jobs online and has not received a single expression of interest. It's been tremendously demoralizing.

He has pointed out that it's rare to see teenagers working even at fast-food joints or in grocery stores. Do you have any advice for him?

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A: Polite, well spoken and clean-cut are a good start - but your son will need more to get a foothold in the current market. According to data compiled by Bethesda research nonprofit Child Trends, the number of high-school students with jobs has dropped from peaks of 35 percent in the late 1990s to about 18 percent in 2015. Child Trends research fellow David Murphey attributes the decline in part to automation and international competition, as well as teens' increased focus on academic pursuits.

I suspect those first two trends have also pushed unemployed adults - willing to work for low wages, at any hours, exempt from youth labor restrictions - into some of the jobs traditionally filled by teenagers.

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But that's not to say your son should give up. He just has to make an extra effort to stand out.

A study by the same nonprofit identifies the "soft skills" most likely to help youths succeed in the job market: communication, social skills, self-control, higher-order thinking and positive self-concept (self-awareness, not just self-esteem). The problem is that "those kinds of things are not visible on the Internet," notes Kristin Anderson Moore, study co-author and Child Trends senior scholar.

Here's how your son might display these skills:

Communication: Phone ahead and arrange for in-person conversations with managers at select employers. Business cards might be over the top, but a typed list of references wouldn't be.

Working Lunch Weekdays Get the latest business news headlines, delivered to your inbox midday weekdays. >

Social skills: Work existing connections with peers, teachers, family friends, clergy and neighbors. Parents can help make introductions.

Self-control: Fight discouragement. Keep busy, and keep looking ahead.

Higher-order thinking: Identify employers and personal connections where he's most likely to succeed.

Positive self-concept: Develop and practice delivering a 30-second self-introduction: name, interest in opportunity, skills and assets.

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The response might still be "Apply online." But a manager might also remember the pleasant candidate who takes the initiative to personally introduce himself and who follows up with a thank-you message. And building those soft-skills muscles now will give your son a head start in the post-educational rat race.

PRO TIP: If you're an under-18 worker or parent of one, check out the Labor Department's Youth Rules website at youthrules.gov for information on the federal rights of underage workers.

Ask Karla Miller about your work dramas and traumas by emailing wpmagazine@washpost.com.
This year's college graduates say they want the security and stability that comes from employment at large established companies, according to a survey by Accenture. (fstop123 / Getty Images)

The fantasy of graduating from college and immediately going to work with the next Mark Zuckerberg is dying.

For the first time in years, fewer college graduates are enamored by the idea of working for startup companies. Instead, this year's college graduates say they want the security and stability that comes from employment at large established companies, according to a survey by Accenture.

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The number seeking jobs at large companies is up 37 percent over last year's graduating class, according to researchers for the business management consulting firm, who describe this year's graduates as more like their parents' generation than the millennials that preceded them in college.

Millennials are known as an entrepreneurial group  a generation skeptical of big business and drawn, instead, to small startups where they can get in on the ground floor, innovate, make their mark and maybe get rich off of stock options if the business hits it big.

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But working for startups is tough. Only a few grow into a Facebook or Google. Most don't survive. And this year's graduates  who fit into the next generation, Gen Z  are in no mood for risks.

"They've seen the classes before them and their predecessors feeling underemployed," said Teri Hill, managing director for Accenture. "This group fears that the most."

To compile its report, Accenture surveyed 1,000 U.S. students between the ages of 18 and 24 who are graduating from college in 2017, and 1,000 students who graduated in 2015 or 2016. The online survey was conducted in January and February of this year.

Accenture found that 54 percent of the people who graduated a year ago consider themselves underemployed, or working in positions that don't fully utilize their skills. About 49 percent accepted a lower salary or benefits than they anticipated and 44 percent found it difficult to get a job.

Rather than being drawn to an entrepreneurial experience, this year's graduates stress the significance of getting a good salary and training on the job, according to the report. About 84 percent expect their first employer to provide formal training.

That is exactly the opposite of what small startups typically offer.

"They hire real smart people, but it's millennials leading millennials," said Christine DiDonato, founder of Career Revolution, a workplace leadership training consultant. "It means working many hours, having no development and a lot of growing pains. Few can stick it out."

DiDonato, who previously was a human resources manager at Sony, said getting graduates to consider employment at a large company was difficult in years past because of the allure of startups. The fact that this year's graduates are turning back to large companies for employment is a sign of how different their perspective is.

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Still, new graduates may be surprised if they think they will be nurtured and trained at large companies.

After the financial crisis, companies slashed their training budgets. Most training money goes toward top executives with the assumption that the benefit will trickle down to the workers.

And with plenty of college applicants, companies select individuals who have all the skills needed rather than people who need training, said Kenneth Tsang, an analyst for the National Association of Colleges and Employers, a group which includes professionals in college career services, university relations and recruiting.

Still, if there is a training budget it's more likely to exist in the largest companies. According to information from the Brandon Hall Group in Training Magazine, the average training budget for companies with 10,000 or more employees is $13 million. Midsized companies of 1,000 to 9,999 employees spend $3.7 million on average, and companies with fewer than 1,000 employees budget $290,000 on average.

"Employers are looking for people with the relevant skills so they don't have to spend time and money on training," Tsang said. Large companies use internships to train and weed through possible full-time job candidates, but even those internships have been reduced recently, he said.

Companies also may be cutting back on new graduates in favor of more seasoned employees. Of all the hiring done last year, 48.3 percent involved recent college graduates, according to research by the colleges and employers group. In 2013, 57.2 percent were recent graduates.

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Last year only 46.2 percent of graduates received job offers as they were finishing college, and the results diverged greatly based on the students' degree, the group found. Only 27.8 percent of communications majors received job offers, compared with 61.5 percent of those in computer science. Pay was also dramatically different. While the average was $47,000, graduates in computer science were offered $64,000 while those who got jobs in communications made $35,000.

In the Accenture survey, 69 percent of 2017 graduates expect to make more than $35,000. Among people surveyed from the 2015-2016 graduating class, only 49 percent were making $35,000.

gmarksjarvis@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @gailmarksjarvis
With hopes of higher pay, the unionized staff of the Chicago Reader voted unanimously Friday to authorize a strike.

The move acts as a formal threat to the weekly newspaper's owner, Wrapports, that it's time to get serious in negotiations, music editor Philip Montoro said.

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Employees are paid so little that many freelance or rent out their apartments to bring in extra income, or they leave the paper, Montoro said. He's been with the paper about 20 years and in his position for 13. He said he makes $42,000 a year.

"It's a free paper, and when you come to work for the Reader, you understand your salary will probably be below market," he said. "The problem is the salaries that were set below market 10, 12, 13 years ago haven't budged.

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"It makes it hard to survive."

Wrapports, the owner of the Chicago Sun-Times, bought the Reader in 2012 for about $3 million, according to a Chicago Tribune report. It has not offered increased salaries or benefits since the union, which represents 17 editorial staffers at the Reader, proposed a contract 16 months ago, Montoro said.

Wrapports spokeswoman Marisa Kollias wrote in an email that the company has been negotiating with the Chicago News Guild for several months over a contract and has made progress in some areas. It remains "committed to negotiating in good faith," she said.

"While we remain apart on some issues, we continue to hope we can keep negotiating to a positive resolution," Kollias said. "It is unfortunate that the Guild has taken this step."

The free paper launched in 1971 and distributes about 90,000 copies weekly in the Chicago area, according to the Reader's website.

A strike would be a last resort for the union, said Craig Rosenbaum, executive director of the Chicago News Guild. But things must change.

"You can't live in Chicago on that kind of salary," he said. "And if you're really smart, which everyone there is, you're going to find a job somewhere else."

amarotti@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @AllyMarotti
A clerk, right, helps a woman shop for chicken at a supermarket in Beijing, Friday, May 12, 2017. China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting the American market as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement. (Mark Schiefelbein / AP)

Washington  China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting American supermarket shelves as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement.

Trump administration officials hailed the deal as a significant advance toward boosting U.S. exports and close America's trade gap with the world's second-largest economy.

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The United States would also allow U.S. companies to ship liquefied natural gas to China as part of the bilateral agreement reached following President Donald Trump's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April. It covers a range of long-standing barriers from agriculture to energy to the operation of American financial firms in China.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross hailed the agreement as "a herculean accomplishment" forged in record time.

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"This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade," Ross told reporters Thursday evening at the White House. "Normally trade deals are denominated in multiple years, not tens of days."

In Beijing, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told reporters that the early results of the agreement showed that economic collaboration between the two sides "couldn't be closer."

But while the agreement touches on many of the trade barriers American companies have long complained about, it remains to be seen how far China will go to allow more American exports. Previous administrations have hailed market-opening agreements only to be left disappointed.

"The key in these negotiations is specifics that are enforceable  literally the devil is in the details," said Scott Mulhauser, the former chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

"The more these agreements include real, concrete outcomes rather than platitudes, rehashing old ground or punts to the future, the better they are. American companies, workers, farmers and more are eager for more access to Chinese markets and they'll look to ensure reality matches the rhetoric of these promises," Mulhauser said.

Trump has made America's massive trade deficits and specifically the gap with China a major issue in his campaign and during the early days of his administration. He's argued that America's perennial trade deficits have cost millions of factory jobs and pledged to take a tougher stance in trade negotiations to lower the imbalances.

Under the agreement, the United States would welcome Chinese companies negotiating agreements to purchase U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas. The Energy Department has already authorized the shipment of 19.2 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas exports to China and other interested countries, the Commerce Department said.

A number of U.S. companies are seeking permits to build facilities to process liquefied gas, which would allow America to become a net exporter of gas, something it has not been since the 1950s. China is attempting to turn to natural gas as a way to reduce its dependence on coal and combat the country's extensive air pollution. The move would allow China to diversify its supply and provide a significant market for American suppliers  though the expansion could boost prices for U.S. consumers.

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Ross downplayed the impact, pointing to the decline in natural gas prices. "If you look at it on a historical basis, there's plenty of room to go back up," he said. "It's not as though this is going to wreck anybody's pocketbook."

The agreement would also ease import restrictions on agricultural goods, including ending China's ban on beef imports that was imposed in 2003 after a case of mad-cow disease. The Bush and Obama administrations have sought for years to get it removed.

In exchange, the U.S. would allow the sale of cooked Chinese poultry  a move Ross said could be done safely. "We do not intend to endanger anybody's health or safety in the U.S.," he said.

The agreement would also streamline the evaluation of pending U.S. biotechnology product applications; pave the way for allowing American-owned suppliers of electronic payment services to begin the licensing processes in China and facilitate the entrance of Chinese banks into the U.S. banking market, among other measures.

The agreement grew out of negotiations both countries agreed to start after Trump's meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate with the Chinese president. The areas dealt with in the initial agreement represent export opportunities that American companies have long sought.

America's trade deficit in goods and services with China totaled $310 billion last year, by far the largest imbalance with any country. The deficit with China represented about 60 percent of the country's total deficit last year of $500.6 billion.

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The two countries have also agreed to hold high-level talks this summer to be led by Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang to work on a one-year plan.

These talks represent the latest effort to resolve contentious trade issues between the world's two largest economies in a process that began during the administration of George W. Bush under Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. Both countries got together twice a year. The Obama administration continued that effort but reduced the frequency of the talks to once a year.

While Trump had earlier said China could receive more favorable trade terms from the U.S. in return for help in persuading North Korea to cease its nuclear and missile activities, Zhu downplayed any suggestion of a link between the two.

"Both sides have a deep and close understanding that the U.S.-China economic relationship can't be politicized." Zhu said.

___

Associated Press writers Gerry Shih in Beijing and Josh Boak contributed to this report.
Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs, seen here in 2014, supports legislation that would require life insurance companies to review records dating to 1996 and ensuring that death benefits have been paid to beneficiaries. (Nancy Stone / Chicago Tribune)

A lively tussle is shaping up between a top Illinois official and the state's mighty insurance industry, and the Illinois General Assembly will pick the winner.

At the center of the dispute is legislation, supported by Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs, that compels life insurance companies to review their records going back to 1996 and confirm that death benefits have been paid to policyholders' beneficiaries.

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Paying death benefits? Isn't that what life insurance companies are supposed to do?

If the answer were always a resounding "yes," there wouldn't be any need for Frerichs' bill.

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Unfortunately, history shows too many life insurers haven't been doing their jobs. That's why this legislation should become law despite the strenuous objections of the state's biggest insurers, including Allstate and State Farm.

"The insurance industry has been fighting this tooth and nail," Frerichs tells me.

This is not the first time Frerichs has squared off against the life insurance business.

A few years ago, his office identified $550 million that should have been paid to beneficiaries in Illinois but instead was held by insurance companies.

In response, Frerichs pushed for legislation forcing life insurers to confirm they've paid death benefits on policies that were up-to-date with carriers. Gov. Bruce Rauner signed that bipartisan-supported bill in August 2016, and it took effect in January.

Still, if the state's life insurance firms thought Frerichs was done with them, they were mistaken.

This time around, he's pushing life insurers to dig deeper into their records, going back to 1996, to confirm if death benefits were paid.

The measure already has passed in the House and is making its way through the Senate, where it's expected the insurance lobby will push hard to kill it.

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It's too early to forecast the bill's fate but there are compelling reasons for moving it along to the governor's desk for approval. (The governor's office says the bill is "under review.")

One significant consideration: The life insurance industry's disturbing track record for holding back on paying death benefit claims.

Regulators and activists argue the system often keeps regular people in the dark because the industry has placed the legal onus on beneficiaries to file a claim after a death.

Problems arise, however, because beneficiaries may not even know they are beneficiaries. A policyholder may never have told them, or the money is designated to an unknowing institution like a church or charity.

We're not talking eye-catching, multimillion-dollar payouts. It's usually small amounts in the hundreds of dollars derived from insurance policies that customers paid for, over many years, in incremental installments or regular paycheck withdrawals.

By the way, the money that's not awarded to beneficiaries does pile up. It's held by the insurance companies, which can earn investment income on the proceeds.

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Starting in the late 2000s, state authorities nationwide began requiring insurers to check policyholder information against databases like the "Star Wars"-sounding Death Master File, which is used by Social Security, or other computer files. They also were pressed to make good faith efforts to inform beneficiaries that money was on the way.

Including Illinois, over 20 states now have laws requiring insurers to regularly match policies against databases. Since the crackdown, an estimated $7.4 billion in benefits has been paid nationwide by 22 insurance carriers under pressure from state regulators, The Wall Street Journal reported last year.

Frerichs suspects the amount of unpaid death benefits in Illinois is higher than the reported $550 million. He contends the proposed law, along with independent audits of insurance company books, likely will reveal a larger amount.

More importantly, I'd argue the proposed bill also would infuse greater accountability, openness and discipline into the insured death benefit system.

In the Senate, the state's insurance powerhouses are expected to line up against this bill. Among those that opposed the House version: Allstate, State Farm, the Illinois Life Insurance Council, the American Council of Life Insurers and the Coalition of Insurance Agents and Brokers.

The industry is making the case that Frerichs' bill is over-reaching and will impose additional costs, especially at a time when insurers already are changing operations to comply with the law that took effect this year.

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That's a serious concern and maybe something can be worked out to ease those burdens.

Nonetheless, it's clear the state's hardworking policyholders and their beneficiaries are at risk, so here's hoping the life insurance companies won't defeat Frerichs' much-needed remedy.

roreed@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @Reedtribbiz
Shareholders of PrivateBancorp, parent company of Private Bank, approved the sale of the bank to Canada's CIBC for $4.8 billion. (Handout)

Shareholders of Chicago-based PrivateBancorp on Friday approved a sale to Canadian bank CIBC after two price increases boosted the deal to a current value of about $4.8 billion.

The acquisition of the publicly traded bank, which operates as The PrivateBank, represents a 26 percent increase to the price announced in June.

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"Today's vote reinforces our stockholders' support for the strategic opportunity a combination with CIBC offers," Larry Richman, PrivateBancorp's president and CEO, said in a news release. "This will make our strong bank even stronger with the same commitment to building long-term client relationships, the same experienced team, and the same dedication to Chicago and all of the communities we serve."

The transaction is expected to close next month, pending approval from U.S. and Canadian banking regulators. Illinois regulators signed off on the deal earlier this month.

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Toronto-based CIBC initially offered to buy PrivateBancorp in June in a cash and stock deal valued at $3.8 billion, but improving valuations of U.S. banks in the wake of the November election of President Donald Trump made the deal less attractive to investors. CIBC raised its offer in March by about 20 percent.

In April, proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended PrivateBancorp shareholders vote down the deal, leading CIBC to boost the cash consideration May 4 by $3 per share.

CIBC President and CEO Victor Dodig said in a news release Monday it was CIBC's "best and final offer," leaving it up to PrivateBancorp stockholders to decide.

Founded in 1867, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has 11 million personal banking and business clients and $501.4 billion in total assets. It is looking to expand its reach in North America through the PrivateBancorp acquisition.

PrivateBancorp was founded in 1989 and opened its first office two years later in Chicago. The company went public in 1999.

Primarily located in the Midwest, PrivateBancorp has 36 offices in 13 states and $20.4 billion in assets.

rchannick@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @RobertChannick
"Profit Down, Sears May Hold Yard Sale." "Are Sears and Kmart Goners?" "Will Sears go bankrupt?"

Those are not the headlines you'd expect a company's chairman and CEO to put on the big screen at an annual shareholder's meeting.

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Sears Holdings' Edward Lampert, however, displayed them not once but twice during what he acknowledged was a "little rant" on Wednesday, in which he argued "unfair" media coverage and vendors who exploit it were undermining his more than decadelong attempt to reverse the retailer's slide.

But even Lampert acknowledged the company's financial results provide "a lot of ammunition to shoot at us."

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Hoffman Estates-based Sears lost $2.2 billion last year, its sixth straight year of losses. Over the last five years, the number of Kmart and full-line Sears stores declined 44 percent and 20 percent, respectively. Several key executives have left and the company's stock price is down about 30 percent just in the past year. And last month, research from S&P Global Market Intelligence named Sears the U.S. public retail company most at risk of default.

Sears certainly isn't the only department store struggling to adapt to a world where new competition from specialty, discount and online retailers means the one-stop-shop mall experience isn't the draw it once was.

Bankruptcies have hit the retail sector unusually hard this year. By early April, 14 retailers had filed for bankruptcy, almost the same number as the total for all of last year, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. Store closings have hit other venerable names, including J.C. Penney and Macy's. In total, think tank Fung Global Retail & Technology has tallied nearly 3,300 announced store closings this year.

But Sears was in trouble long before others, Lampert points out, so it felt the impact of the 2008 recession and customers' changing shopping behaviors earlier than other mall-based retailers.

Lampert says he's committed to the same strategy he's been pushing since shortly after combining Sears and Kmart in 2005: turn the old-school retail chains into a 21st-century company that combines the best of online and bricks-and-mortar shopping and caters to its top customers through a membership rewards program launched in 2009.

But several years in, Sears has continued to shrink and the broader retail challenges aren't going away. Despite Lampert's assurance that he's "not in denial" and "the reality is better than the perception," there's little outward sign his turnaround is materializing.

"You just can't find any silver lining," said Neil Stern, senior partner at Chicago-based consulting firm McMillanDoolittle.

Since March, when Sears released its annual report, speculation about the retailer's demise has grown. In that document, Sears said its past results point to "substantial doubt" about its ability to remain in business, though it believed it was taking the necessary steps to ensure its survival.

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The comment was in line with new regulatory standards that require management to disclose potential risks a company could face within one year. Retail analysts said Sears was already in bad shape and the disclosure didn't indicate a meaningful change in the company's prospects. And in a blog post responding to the heightened speculation, then-chief financial officer Jason Hollar said Sears remained confident in its financial position.

Still, longtime followers of the company agree it's hard to see the company's journey ending any other way, especially if Kmart and Sears stores remain part of the picture.

"I would not say it's a certainty, but I can't, with the information in front of me, take the existing pieces today and draw a linear path that moves up," said Leon Nicholas, chief insights officer at Kantar Retail.

At the company's annual meeting Wednesday, a shareholder suggested a "simple solution" to Lampert's complaints about the consistent pessimism: share more details on the company's progress to bolster confidence.

Lampert cited regulatory and competitive reasons for keeping some details close to the vest, and pointed to Amazon's resistance to disclosing the number of shoppers in its Prime membership program.

But since he rarely speaks publicly and the company hasn't shared much on the results or timelines around its initiatives, it can be tough to assess where Sears is heading.

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 13 The exterior of the Sears store at Woodfield Mall is seen May 9, 2017, in Schaumburg. (Alyssa Pointer / Chicago Tribune)

As a result, there's no consensus around how long a runway remains for Lampert and Sears to make the turnaround happen.

Even if the "going concern" disclosure provided little new information about Sears' prospects, it could further spook merchandise vendors who worry they won't be paid for their goods, Stern said.

Credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service believes Sears has the financial resources to make it through the holiday season, but its outlook on the company reflects a "significant probability" of default within two years, said Moody's Vice President Christina Boni.

Sears has said it is in discussions with lenders to refinance a $500 million loan maturing in July. In 2018, it will need to address another $1.3 billion of loans due, but Sears has options, Boni said. The company repeatedly has turned to cash infusions from Lampert and asset sales to fund its operations during four straight years where it lost more than $1 billion each year. Lampert and his hedge fund have lent the company more than $1 billion since September 2014, and the company has raised even more by selling off portions of itself.

Sears sold its Craftsman tool brand to Stanley Black & Decker earlier this year for $900 million. The 2015 sale of 235 stores to real estate investment trust spinoff Seritage Growth Properties  an entity in which Lampert also holds a stake  raised $2.72 billion, and spinning off the Lands' End brand brought in a $500 million cash dividend in 2014.

The company still has considerable assets, including its remaining real estate footprint and big-name brands like Kenmore and DieHard.

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Lampert is "very creative financially" and asset sales could potentially keep Sears in business several more years, said Leon Nicholas, chief insights officer at Kantar Retail.

"It's a bit like taking apart the deck of your ship to burn for fuel while you're in the middle of the ocean, but you can do that," he said.

It's possible Sears could avoid bankruptcy altogether, according to Nicholas, but it would require "radical change" on the order of selling goods online-only.

"The question would be, what is it they're really doing? If it's just a protracted fire sale, I don't know that it's a retail story as much as it is a real estate story," he said.

Lampert insists Sears is still driving toward its "transformation"  one that includes a future for mall stores, if smaller ones.

In an interview, he pushed back against criticism that the company dismissed the importance of stores, and that a lack of investment in stores left them dated, worn and less appealing to customers.

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"I still believe the stores matter," Lampert said.

Still, Lampert said he wasn't convinced better stores alone would be enough to keep Sears competitive long term, which is why he pushed to go all-in on the membership strategy and services that blend online and in-store shopping. Progress would have gone faster had there been more profit to invest, he said.

As consumer shopping habits have changed, fewer retailers want massive stores like the Sears at the center of the Six Corners shopping district in Chicago's Portage Park neighborhood, still operating in its original 1938 building. Some sections appear unnecessarily spacious, with open shelves and walls.

To shrink, Sears has leased out entire stores or portions of them. When it sold properties to its real estate investment trust in 2015, the agreement gave the trust the right to recapture half the store space  letting Sears continue to operate within a smaller footprint.

Sears also is trying to shrink space devoted to weaker categories, like electronics, and is experimenting with smaller, specialized stores, like a 10,000-square-foot appliance-only store in Colorado that opened last year.

At Sears stores in Portage Park and at Woodfield Mall in Schaumburg this month, there were signs of the effort to bring online shopping and Sears' Shop Your Way membership program to customers. Stores had multiple kiosks where customers can shop online for products not stocked in-store. In the Six Corners appliance department, touch screens atop dishwashers invited people to read online reviews or email themselves product information for additional research. Signs at the checkout register promoted a raffle for customers who signed up for Sears' apps, including Shop Your Way.

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Since the start of the year, about 50 percent more people qualified for Shop Your Way VIP memberships than during the same period last year, Lampert wrote in a Thursday blog post. VIP members must spend at least $2,500 annually.

Sears declined to share more details on growth in membership or spending beyond saying the program has "tens of millions" of active members.

The company is working on adding more partnerships with outside companies that will give members more ways to earn and redeem rewards. It's also trying to grow its Sears Home Services business, which Sears says is the largest residential services provider in the country.

In the meantime, as losses have continued, Sears is eyeing more cuts.

Last month, Sears said it was more than halfway to its goal of cutting $1.25 billion in costs this year  up from the $1 billion target announced earlier this year.

As part of a restructuring plan announced earlier this year, the company said it would close 150 unprofitable stores, 92 Kmart pharmacies and 50 Sears Auto Centers and laid off about 130 corporate employees, mostly at its Hoffman Estates headquarters, and said it's working on selling more real estate.

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But as Sears has made cuts over the years, its performance has gotten worse, not better, as it's continued losing customers and relevance, Evercore ISI analyst Greg Melich wrote in an April report.

The more pieces of itself Sears sells, the more urgent reversing losses becomes if it's going to have a future as a retailer, Boni said.

"You can't cut your way to prosperity. There isn't an indefinite pool of assets," she said.

lzumbach@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @laurenzumbach
"Aladdin" 

"Aladdin," the most frenetic and cartoonish of Disney's screen-to-stage musicals, officially opened its first national tour in Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. And Adam Jacobs, his gleaming white teeth, his charming costar Isabelle McCalla as Princess Jasmine and the rest have all acquired a little more attention to veracity and Broadway chops since this show's first turn on the rialto. The new "Aladdin" crew is committed and fun, which you would expect, but they also bring more emotional depth to a show naturally inclined to remain in the shallow end of the pool. You can't beat catching a first-class Equity tour right at the start. Through Sept. 10 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St.; $44-$153 at 800-775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com

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"Blue Man Group"  1/2

"Blue Man Group" has been playing at Briar Street Theatre since 1997, a remarkable run of 20 years. There have been only two major overhauls in that time; the latest adds selfie sticks, new music and a livelier finale. I'd argue the Blue Men need a bigger overhaul  they still chomp marshmallows, bang drums and paint up audience members  but this remains a fine gateway for the young into the arts. If you've never had the pleasure, go. Open run at the Briar Street Theatre, 3133 N. Halsted St.; $49-$69 at ticketmaster.com

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"Chicago" 

William Osetek, the director of the highly entertaining new production of "Chicago" at the Drury Lane Theatre, finally got the rights to this most deliciously cynical of American musicals  you could see years of pent-up ideas crammed on stage, along with a lot of talent, excitement and raw desire. E. Faye Butler knocks us back in our seats with "When You're Good to Mama." And Kelly Felthous plays the unfortunate murderess Roxie as very much a lost soul until she wises up to her situation. She and Alena Watters' Velma are a study in contrasts, which is what Kander and Ebb originally intended. Through June 18 at Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace; $45-$60 at 630-530-0111 or drurylanetheatre.com

"Fantastic Super Great Nation Numero Uno"  1/2

"Fantastic Super Great Nation Numero Uno" is an inclusive and warmhearted new e.t.c. Theater show, directed by Ryan Bernier, that takes a broad view of the moment. There have been edgier revues on the e.t.c. stage, but this crew is so funny you worry some coastal talent-spotters soon will steal them away. Alan Linic plays a Cubs fans who slept through everything that has happened since. Katie Klein's old-school parody of affirmative women's daytime talk shows  "What's Up Girl?"  is probably the richest material of the night. Open run in Second City e.t.c. Theater in Piper's Alley, 1618 N. Wells St.; $19-$46 at 312-664-4032 or secondcity.com

"Hamilton" 

This Broadway show has given Chicago a Chicago-style production. The heartland "Hamilton" is performed by players mostly younger and less experienced than the original New York cast and is less flashy. But it is more in touch with the fundamental scrappiness of the early years of a rebel colony turned into a spectacular democratic experiment. And in a city whose native theater is founded on truth, it is somehow very much more human and vulnerable. That Chicago-style sensibility is led by Miguel Cervantes, the superb actor in the title role. This is a company that deserves to be embraced. Open run at PrivateBank Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.; $65-$400 at 800-775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com

"Hookman" 

Terrifying audiences with slasher theater on a storefront budget is a tough assignment. All the more reason to admire the work the remarkably versatile director Vanessa Stalling is doing at Steep Theatre with Lauren Yee's "Hookman." This 75-minute creeper probes the psyche of a college freshman named Lexi (Kiayla Ryann), who has been through some tough stuff. Her grief and loss makes her everyday life seem nonsensical, which gives her the need to build something to take its place. In this play, it's the title character, a terrifying boogeyman (played by James Doherty) lurking in the shadows with his metal appendage. "Hookman" is set in a dorm at an East Coast college, with all of its young adults living in close quarters and flailing about at relationships. That spooked version of familiarity  such as in a scary little overture of flickering desk lamps  is what Stalling does so well. Through May 27 at Steep Theatre, 1115 W. Berwyn Ave.; $25-$35 at 773-649-3186 or steeptheatre.com

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"Jesus Christ Superstar" 

If you know every note of "Jesus Christ Superstar," the rock opera penned by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, you'll be surprised by what you hear in director Ron Kellum's splashy new production at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. This talented African-American cast really does have something new to give. The co-music directors Kory Danielson and Tom Vendafreddo clearly allowed a whole lot of freedom: I've never heard "I Don't Know How to Love Him" sung with the embellishments that Felicia Boswell offers. And why not? Through May 28 at the Paramount Theatre, 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora; $44-$59 at 630-896-6666 or paramountaurora.com

"La Havana Madrid" 

In the 1960s, many of Chicago's Puerto Ricans lived on the western side of Lincoln Park, just a few blocks from the Steppenwolf Theatre. "Yeah, like right here," says one of the characters in Sandra Delgado's heartfelt and fascinating musical tribute to those immigrants and the music, especially the salsa, that they brought to town. This new show, staged by Teatro Vista in Steppenwolf's intimate new 1700 Theatre, is a celebration of a nightclub run by the music promoter Tony Quintana and what it meant to the community it served. Hand-holding couples of a certain age have been finding their way to Steppenwolf for what has become the best-selling show in Teatro Vista's history. Through May 21 at Steppenwolf 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted St.; $15-$45 at 312-335-1650 or steppenwolf.org

"Linda Vista"  1/2

Dick Wheeler is a heterosexual white male, halfway to an antique, both the smartest guy in the room and a misanthropic grump. And "Linda Vista" is his play. His very funny play. How you feel about Wheeler, played at Steppenwolf in all his epic mediocrity by Ian Barford, largely will dictate how you feel about Tracy Letts' new world premiere. Its most telling scene takes place between Wheeler and his friend Paul. The men are talking about their deathbeds; they come to see that life then will suck, and that all you can do is grab whatever vestiges of happiness your aging bones, and dubious morals, will allow. Through May 21 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; $20-$94 at 312-335-1650 or steppenwolf.org

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"Marry Me a Little"  1/2

Spring has sprung in Chicago. High time, then, for a Stephen Sondheim revue. Porchlight Music Theatre is staging "Marry Me a Little," about a pair of emotionally entangled New York singles and the least known of the Sondheim songfests. And Austin Cook, who stars in this show with Bethany Thomas and also serves as musical director, has been granted permission update the song list to include such ditties as "Rainbow" from "Into the Woods" and "The Best Thing That Ever Has Happened" from "Road Show." This show is mostly an excuse for 75 minutes of lesser-explored Sondheim. Such a pleasure. Through May 21 at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave.; $38-$51 at 773-327-5252 or porchlightmusictheatre.org

"The Mystery of Love & Sex" 

The two young people in Bathsheba Doran's compassionate play are what's often called soul mates. Charlotte (Hayley Burgess) and Jonny (Travis Turner) are longtime girl-and-boy friends who, as they head off to college, are exploring their own sexuality and trying to figure out if they are gay. She's Jewish, he's African-American. But this play is not just about their relationship, it deepens in Act 2 and brings in conflicts with Charlotte's parents, as well as the power and necessity for reconciliation. Through July 2 in the Gillian Theatre at Writers Theatre, 325 Tudor Court, Glencoe; $35-$80 at 847-242-6000 or writerstheatre.org

"Objects in the Mirror" 

The gripping story of an African refugee who somehow makes it out of a Guinean refugee camp that held 90,000 hopefuls in a petri dish of malaria, dysentery, cholera and violent government oppression is Charles Smith's new play. It moved me greatly not just with its unshakable compassion for its dislocated protagonist, but with its firm determination to reflect the agonizing complexities of identity, trust and loyalty that beset every refugee. Chuck Smith has directed scores of shows; this really is among his best work. He is using an all-Chicago cast and the acting in this production is blisteringly good. Daniel Kyri as the refugee Shedrick Yarkpai is terrific  vulnerable, honest and yet also confounding when the script so demands. Through June 4 at Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; $20-$75 at 312-443-3800 or goodmantheatre.org

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"Odysseo" 

As with the first Cavalia production, the best parts of the new, more spectacular "Odysseo" come when the horses are allowed to roam free over the stage. This touring French Canadian enterprise has the combined magic of a computer-generated set and a 17,500-square-foot performance space, and you really do feel a sense of having come upon them in the steppe of Kazakhstan or the damp of Norway. "Odysseo" is a show genuinely in love with the horse. Still, as a fan of acrobatics, I was mightily impressed with the act from New Guinea, the best tumblers I've ever seen. Open run in the White Big Top, Soldier Field South Lot, 1410 Museum Campus Drive; $34.50-$269.50 (VIP price includes food and drink) at 866-999-8111 or cavalia.com

"Paradise Blue" 

Black Bottom, the east side neighborhood of Detroit that once was the center of African-American life in that city, was the kind of place where a musician could play with dignity, as noted in Dominique Morisseau's play "Paradise Blue." That was before the community was razed to make way for Interstate 75. "Paradise Blue" is set in 1949 in a jazz club owned by Blue (Al'Jaleel McGhee), a gifted trumpeter who faces so many racial obstacles that he becomes dangerous to himself, his girlfriend Pumpkin (Kristen E. Ellis) and the pals, Corn (Ronald L. Conner) and P-Sam (Charles Andrew Gardner), who hang around in his Paradise. It's also filled with the music and longing of composer Orbert Davis in director Ron OJ Parson's languid TimeLine production. Through July 23 at TimeLine Theatre Company; 615 W. Wellington Ave.; $38-$51 at 773-281-8463 or timelinetheatre.com

"Shakespeare in Love" 

The smarty-pants 1998 movie "Shakespeare in Love" imagined a love affair between Shakespeare and Viola de Lesseps, a wannabe actress seduced by a life on the boards. The stage adaptation has had a mixed history (it really should have been a musical). But in the hands of the director Rachel Rockwell  who has put a lot of heart into the Chicago Shakespeare Theater production  it makes for a very warm, accessible and enjoyable night out. Nick Rehberger is unpretentious and likable as the man himself, Kate McGonigle is a pleasing Viola, and the whole play is now a love letter to the collaborative nature of Chicago theater. Through June 11 in the Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand Ave.; $58-$88 at 312-595-5600 or chicagoshakes.com

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"She Loves Me"  1/2

Emotional intimacy can be tricky at the Marriott Theatre and its in-the-round auditorium. But director Aaron Thielen's very lovely new production of the 1963 musical "She Loves Me" manages to carve out an exception for itself. This charming show  the book is by Joe Masteroff, music by Jerry Bock and lyrics are by Sheldon Harnick  is set mostly inside an old-school perfumery. The characters are ordinary folks striving to have successful romantic relationships, including the main couple, both clerks in the shop. You really care about these two, not the least because Alex Goodrich and Elizabeth Telford turn in such honest, vulnerable and realistic performances. This is perhaps Thielen's best work at the Marriott. Through June 18 at the Marriott Theatre, 100 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire; $50 to $60 at 847-634-0200 or marriotttheatre.com

"Spamilton"  1/2

With "Spamilton," the savvy parodist Gerard Alessandrini ("Forbidden Broadway") has come roaring back in a new, local production ideally timed for Chicago, delivering nonstop laughs to anyone with enough knowledge of "Hamilton" to get the gags. The famous "blue-collar/shining beacon/Puerto Rican" is played by Yando Lopez, an actor with a better vocal instrument than Lin-Manuel Miranda, and Eric Andrew Lewis blows out the room as Aaron Burr. It's a fair criticism to say that Alessandrini is perhaps too much in love with the real "Hamilton" to really skewer the show, but there's guaranteed fun here for Miranda obsessives. Open run at the Royal George Cabaret Theatre, 1641 N. Halsted St.; $59-$99 at 312-988-9000 or spamilton.com

"Tony n' Tina's Wedding" 

I actually had a blast at this semiscripted affair that employs 23 actors to play members of the two feuding families joining in holy matrimony. Don't judge without going. Still, I wouldn't be recommending this thing if it were just like last time. The difference this time around is that the show begins in an actual Chicago church, where the congregants are to be commended for their sense of humor, and the scale and quality of the Chicago improv community (not all of whom are in the first blush of youth) have improved vastly in the years since I last saw this show. It's a rough, tough, divisive world out there. Here, everyone was having fun. Go in a group. Open run at Resurrection Church, 3309 N. Seminary Ave.; $75-$85 at 773-327-3778 or tonylovestina.com







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We have lost a true lesbian pioneer in the passing of Leslie Cohen. Whether opening the first upscale lesbian club Sahara in NYC in 1976 ...
The Purple Pig chef/owner Jimmy Bannos Jr. and father Jimmy Bannos describe a signature item on the new breakfast menu, the fried egg English muffin with foie gras butter. (Louisa Chu/Chicago Tribune)

The Purple Pig breakfast bar launched Wednesday. So on Day 2, Thursday morning, I took a first look, with Tribune restaurant critic Phil Vettel, to taste everything on the menu. What we discovered was that what had been described as grab-and-go included much more.

Available weekdays from 8 to 10:30 a.m. the menu may change daily.

You do indeed order your coffee and sandwiches at the bar. The latter range from Italian flatbread piadina street food-style sandwiches to a sublime fried egg English muffin with foie gras butter, all house-made. Then you can take your order to go or dine in. If you choose to stay, your order is brought to your table by servers on real plates with silverware and cloth napkins.

I spoke with chef/owner Jimmy Bannos Jr., and his father/partner, Jimmy Bannos, who's also chef/owner of Heaven on Seven. Why breakfast?

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"A couple of months back, me, my dad and Tony Mantuano were just talking about what else we could do," said Bannos Jr. Also a Purple Pig partner, Mantuano is perhaps best known as chef/partner at Spiaggia, Terzo Piano and River Roast restaurants.

"Being where we're located, there needs to be more dining options for a good cup of coffee and a nice bite for breakfast," added Bannos Jr., about the North Michigan Avenue neighborhood where Purple Pig is based.

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Said his father, "We wanted to do a grab and go, but if people want to sit down and relax we encourage that too."

"Our prices are competitive with McDonald's and Starbucks I think," said Bannos Jr.

The egg and American cheese piadina ($3.95) is surprisingly hearty, even without adding optional meat, in the form of Berkshire pork breakfast sausage, Kurabota bacon, Canadian bacon or jamon serrano ($1 each). A vegetarian asparagus, avocado and feta piadina ($4.95) will likely change seasonally. Gluten-free piadinas are also available.

"But based on producing our products in house and not having to buy bread or bacon or sausage, it still works for us; it's profitable," Bannos Jr. added. "It's important because I wanted to prove that how we're sourcing everything and making everything, you don't have to double the price of say a Starbucks."

People dont want to spend a ton of money on breakfast. I thought it was really important to show that were still going to be affordable as well, and that includes our coffee, Counter Culture.

Counter Culture Coffee, founded in Durham, N.C., and also served at Alinea, has opened its Chicago training center in the West Loop to the public too.

Other savories at Purple Pig included a bagel with cream cheese ($1.95) available with optional smoked salmon, tomatoes, pickled onions and caper leaves ($6); plus fried smashed potatoes with ketchup, also house-made ($3.95).

Sweets included a Greek yogurt parfait with preserved fruit and granola ($5.95); a lemon thyme scone with strawberry jelly ($2.99); and an orange lavender coffee cake ($2.99).

But we recommend dining in if you order the fried egg English muffin with foie gras butter ($9.95), or remember to have plenty of napkins at your desk.

Bannos Jr. described every layer in detail, The homemade English muffin, with black truffle sausage, fried egg and then a spreadable foie gras butter. Then we also have quince paste, Spanish membrillo. We add a little bit of quince vinegar too, put that on the toast as well to cut a little bit of the richness of the sandwich.

The foie butter is just perfect. You just spread it on the bread  you put it on top of the egg, and it almost gives it like a bath right on the egg. It gives you that flavor of foie without being too overpowering. Instead of doing a slab of foie  it would just be too much  just gives you the flavor and not too rich. To me, its a perfect breakfast sandwich.

The Purple Pig, 500 N. Michigan Ave., 312-464-1744, www.thepurplepigchicago.com
The perfect Low Cut Connie album would drop the listener into the middle of one of their shows in some dingy saloon on a dicey side of town. They're playing the third of three long sets and a few cracks appear in the songs, as Shondra, Adam Weiner's beat-up upright piano, starts to wobble out of tune.

But no one cares because the sweat and beer are flowing, and someone is stomping on a table top smashing bottles and glasses beneath her Converse high-tops. Newly introduced songs sink in instantly and by the third chorus everyone is singing along. Shondra finally collapses, but not before everyone sinks into a pile of ecstatic exhaustion on the sticky dance floor.

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Alas, this is not that album. Granted, it's pretty much impossible to capture the vibe of full-tilt Low Cut Connie on tape. But "Dirty Pictures (Part 1)" (Contender) comes close enough often enough to qualify as a worthy substitute for one of the Philadelphia quintet's bar-room blowouts. The band's fourth studio album was cut at Ardent Studios in Memphis, and captures some of the unfiltered analog-tape vibe that informed an earlier era of no-fuss record-making. This is less about inventing something than reigniting a spark from an earlier era of music and seeing if it still has the ability to make us feel something. In more cases than not, Low Cut Connie makes it so.

Weiner specializes in writing songs that capture a certain self-deprecating, I'm-a-loser-but-so-what? attitude that sometimes masks deeper anxieties. The guy who's like a bad virus in "Montreal" finds himself mocked and ignored. "All my friends don't answer when I call," he confesses. But this is no pity party. On the contrary, Weiner and his band fight through the malaise that comes from working a series of dead-end jobs and finding yourself approaching midlife with middling (or worse) prospects.

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"C'mon, children, rip it up," he demands as the band roars to life on "Revolution Rock 'n' Roll." He's a man of low means who revels in T Rex guitars, knows how to rock a piano and swims in "Dirty Water." "Death and Destruction" nods to a world teetering on the brink of disaster, but refuses to bend to it  one can imagine the dials on the mixing board jumping into the red as guitars, drums and piano fight for air.

The band's versatile, in the way all great bar bands must be, as it dives into the swaggering soul of "Love Life" and knocks out a credibly twitchy version of Prince's "Controversy." Weiner drops back to his cabaret roots in "Forever," a requiem for something or someone lost. It's a fitting encore for closing time at the bar.

Greg Kot is a Tribune critic.

greg@gregkot.com

Twitter @gregkot

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Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 122 Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, anger management student, in "Dark Phoenix." The film, the latest in the "X-Men" franchise, costars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jessica Chastain. Read the review. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Health officials in Minnesota have been dealing in recent days with a costly and dangerous outbreak of measles in children, centered in the large community of Somali immigrants in and around Minneapolis. "It's the borders stupid," screamed a headline in The Washington Times, underneath which the columnist Cheryl K. Chumley implied the frightening measles outbreak was a direct consequence of "a state with a massive refugee acceptance rate."

But if you burrowed a bit deeper into what the Minnesota officials were finding to be causal in this crisis, you could see that these professionals blamed the targeting of the 25,000-strong Somali community by activists opposed to state-mandated vaccinations  not activists in Somalia, but in the United States.

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The Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported this week that one such national speaker, Mark Blaxill of a group called Health Choice, was speaking to an audience mostly made up of Somali-American parents in Minneapolis as recently as last Sunday night, even after the measles outbreak had begun. Blaxill, the newspaper reported, discussed his belief that the vaccine was linked to autism.

Meanwhile, Dave Johnson, a Hennepin County health official, told NBC News that he blamed the precipitous drop in vaccination rates in Minnesota's Somali-American community on this "propaganda," especially effective when applied to a population with a strong oral tradition of passing on information from family to family. The alarming drop in vaccination rates, the official said, had not resulted in "any corresponding drop in autism in the community."

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The situation in Minneapolis, then, is a reminder of the vulnerability of refugees not just in camps or camped out on borders, but even after they have reached their places of refuge and raised families in their new homes. It's also a reminder that communities that accept refugees don't always find things to be easy; the moral obligation to provide safe harbor does not mean there are no risks to those already there. That will never be the case.

You can consider those truths at the Goodman Theatre presently, where Charles Smith's complex new drama about the global refugee crisis, "Objects in the Mirror," is in production. This is a world premiere that centers on a young refugee from Liberia who, after a long, arduous and dangerous journey across borders and war-torn African nations, finally resettles in Australia. The teenage protagonist, whose name is Shedrick Yarkpai, arrives in Adelaide with his uncle (and surrogate father) John, a character who has risked life and limb and life again to get his nephew out of harm's way.

Such a story you might expect from such a play. But what you would maybe not expect is that Smith also is arguing that the man who saved Shedrick from death and propelled him into a viable future is not necessarily the man best equipped to help him navigate his new identity in Adelaide. The journey out of hell takes its toll. The wariness and mistrust of officialdom that gives John the the strength to prevail in refugee camps and at border crossings translates quickly into a lack of trust of the Australians who genuinely want to help his young charge.

Some of those forces surely have been at work in Minnesota. Self-evidently, the Somali-Americans, many former refugees, have proved more susceptible to the anti-vaccine message, especially when couched in terms of not trusting government health bureaucrats and choosing for yourself what is right for your own children.

For those Minnesotans not in the Somali-American community, this surely preventable outbreak of measles has been understandably distressing. Some have seen in that a cautionary tale about accepting refugees, in effect blaming the immigrants for their vulnerability to an all-American force that wanted to influence them in their new Midwestern home. That's profoundly unfair. Which is not to say that accepting refugees does not involve real sacrifices and  this situation makes clear  some risky disruption to established norms. Smith's play makes all too clear that a well-meaning person can do everything in his power to help a refugee and yet fail, sometimes because the refugee is not willing or able to accept help. Or, at least, because a refugee often needs something more as a consequence of what has transpired before he or she arrived at the border. And this need does not necessarily end with the first generation.

Requisite sacrifices notwithstanding, the moral imperative remains.

Smith's play, incidentally, is based on the experience of a real refugee. "Objects in the Mirror" is at least partially a biography of the real Shedrick Yarkpai, former refugee from Liberia, current Australian actor on the Adelaide storefront scene.

The Goodman had wanted to bring him to Chicago on opening night to see his own refugee story on the stage; the theater said this week that it had been unable to secure a timely visa for Yarkpai's acceptance for entry into the United States.

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cjones5@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @ChrisJonesTrib

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Collaboraction Theatre Company announced Friday its 22nd season, centered on the theme "The Reality of Racism and Envisioning Racial Healing in Chicago."

The return of the "Peacebook Festival," featuring 21 short performances, will launch at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., on Aug. 26. The festival will then tour to the Englewood, Austin and Hermosa neighborhoods in the fall.

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In January, the company will open another festival titled "Encounter: An Explorative Event Series" (Jan. 17-21) at Collaboraction Studios. The fest will offer mixed-medium performances in the Studios' three spaces centered on racism in Chicago.

Closing out the seaon at Collaboraction Studios in the spring is "A Blue Island in the Red Sea" (April 19-May 27, 2018), a devised premiere about the history of racism in Chicago that imagines racial healing. The piece will be created in collaboration with Chicagoans and led by artistic director Anthony Moseley with an ensemble of co-devisers.

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"Encounter" and "A Blue Island" will both tour to Chicago parks following performances at Collaboraction Studios, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave.

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Mike Shaw doesn't want me to write about the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's new Mobile Passport app. He used it on a recent trip from Beijing to Seattle, and it worked flawlessly.

"I breezed by the line and went directly to the document-checking agent," remembers Shaw, who works in Beijing as an operations-support supervisor for an American company. "I was through customs in 90 seconds. Amazing."

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Shaw is accustomed to three-hour waits. When he mentioned his positive experience to a customs agent recently, the officer just rolled his eyes.

"Yeah," the agent replied, "until everybody starts using it."

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Between passports, passport cards, mobile passports and a constellation of trusted-traveler programs such as Global Entry, Sentri and Nexus, international travelers have a lot to choose from this summer. Chances are, there's a program that will suit your itinerary and help you avoid long lines when you come home.

Passports and passport cards: If you cross the border, you'll need either a passport book ($135 for adults) or a passport card ($55). Unless you use the Mobile Passport app, you'll have to stand in all the usual lines. (Yes, the three-hour ones that Shaw complained about.) Which one is right for you? A passport card, while cheaper, only works when entering the United States at land-border crossings and via ports of entry from Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. It can't be used for international air travel. Get a passport book instead.

Mobile Passport app: This free smartphone app, now in use at one cruise port and 20 U.S. airports, lets you cut some of the customs lines by filling out your paperwork in advance online. Arriving passengers can head straight to the "Mobile Passport Control" line. "This is a particularly good option for those who do not travel frequently enough to justify the cost of Global Entry," says Gina Gabbard, vice president for leisure sales at Tzell Travel Group.

Global Entry: This is the gold standard for expedited border crossing. Global Entry lets you cut the line at customs at U.S. airports and land borders when you arrive, and includes TSA PreCheck, the Transportation Security Administration's trusted-traveler program. A five-year Global Entry membership costs $100 and requires online pre-enrollment, as well as an in-person visit to an enrollment center for an interview, where you'll have to verify your ID and be fingerprinted. "The application process is brutal," says Michelle Weller, a travel agent with Travel Leaders Network in Houston, "but it's worthwhile." Weller says the background check is thorough: One of her clients was denied because of a bar fight in college that resulted in a misdemeanor assault charge.

Nexus: If you travel between the United States and Canada, this is the program for you. Nexus lets you cut the line at airports and land borders when entering the two countries. It's half the price of Global Entry ($50 for five years) but the requirements are similar - pre-enrollment, an interview and fingerprinting. Nathan Smith, an American who lives in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, likes Nexus because it helps him avoid long waits at the border when he's driving. If you're an American, you get Global Entry benefits with your Nexus card. "Also, it automatically qualifies you for PreCheck," he says.

Sentri: This trusted-traveler program allows expedited clearance for preapproved, low-risk travelers from southern land-border crossings. The benefits and requirements are virtually the same as for Nexus, but the cost is $122.25 for five years. If you have to cross the Mexican border in a car frequently, you should consider this program. Keith Shadle, who runs an information site called EasySentri, which helps travelers apply for trusted-traveler status, knows the benefit of Sentri well. He says it saves him hours whenever he navigates one of the world's busiest land-border crossings at San Ysidro, California. But for American citizens, he says there may be a better path to the fast lanes. "Sentri benefits are included with Global Entry membership," he says. "If you are a U.S. citizen and are thinking of using or wanting to use Sentri lanes, get Global Entry."

By the way, if you want to figure out how much time these cards will save you, check out the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Wait Time website, bwt.cbp.gov.

So what's the bottom line?

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If you're an infrequent international traveler - one or two border crossings a year - get a passport and use the Mobile Passport app. If you want to avoid the intrusive questions of an in-person interview or are uneasy about a government background check, this is also the way to go. If you live near the Canadian or Mexican border and make a lot of land crossings, consider Nexus or Sentri. If you travel abroad more than a few times a year, you'll want Global Entry. Time and again, that's what experienced travelers recommend.

"Nothing is as time-efficient as Global Entry when returning to the United States," says Andy Abramson, who runs a marketing firm in Los Angeles and spends almost as much time in the air as on the ground. Global Entry is even accepted in other countries, he says. He recently used it for entry to New Zealand, which saved him hours of waiting in line.

This summer, there are more ways than ever to avoid long waits at the airport or at land-border crossings. But don't wait too long to decide. The application process can take weeks, and in some cases, months for some of these trusted-traveler programs. If you take too long to decide, you could find yourself stuck in a line.

Elliott is a consumer advocate, journalist and co-founder of the advocacy group Travelers United. Email him at chris@elliott.org.
If you live near Lake Michigan in Chicago's North Shore, you may find sucker fish in your backyard. The Shedd Aquarium and citizen scientists are teaming up for an experiment to help track spawning of white sucker fish along the Great Lakes. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

Great Lakes fish stories can be downright scary.

Pollution dumped by industries and cities make some fish unsafe to eat. Invasive species spread by cargo ships decimate yellow perch, lake trout and other native fish. Warmer water in a changing climate triggers algae blooms that create oxygen-depleting, fish-harming dead zones.

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But on a crisp April afternoon, Karen Murchie waded into a Lake Michigan inlet and spotted a sign that nature still works wonders when humans get out of the way. Clustered in a shallow pool a few feet from the Highland Park shoreline were a dozen white suckers, native bottom-feeding fish resting on their way up the narrow creek to spawn.

"You wouldn't have seen this a few years ago," said Murchie, a Shedd Aquarium biologist, pointing to a spot where the Park District of Highland Park and the local water utility had removed a steel wall that once blocked the mouth of the waterway. "As soon as that barrier was gone, the fish started coming back."

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The Ravine Drive creek is among more than two dozen tributaries of Lake Michigan and Lake Superior where Murchie is tracking the annual spawning run of white and longnose suckers  fish that play an important, though largely unheralded, role in the complicated ecosystem of the Great Lakes.

Taking advantage of a renewed push to restore streams that drain into the world's largest body of fresh surface water, she spent the past few months enlisting volunteers around the region for a new multiyear study that will measure changes in water quality and shifts in the sucker migration. The Shedd sees the work as part of a broader effort to understand how climate change is affecting the lakes and give people tangible examples of why it is so important to protect them.

Unlike walleye or smallmouth bass, suckers aren't prized game fish. Nor do they evoke mystical stories of blue-ribbon trout streams. But they're found throughout the Great Lakes and are easy to spot as they swim inland  making the fish handy subjects for a citizen science project.

The sucker migration begins soon after Lake Michigan warms in the spring, Murchie said, starting in creeks that meander through tree-covered North Shore ravines and extending to late May in the upper reaches of Wisconsin's Door County. Waste and unfertilized eggs left by the fish become part of the food chain, and some of the sucker fry swimming back to the lake are gobbled up by northern pike, muskie and great blue herons.

Karen Murchie, a Shedd Aquarium biologist who is studying how climate change affects fish in Lake Michigan, from left, Liz Ettelson, who coordinates volunteers for the Highland Park Districts Natural Areas Program, and Rebecca Grill, natural areas manager for the district meet at Rosewood Beach on March 29, 2017, hoping to observe white sucker fish. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

Researchers are still figuring out how climate change is altering these pockets of biodiversity. What they know already is that suckers and other migrating fish are coming back to Great Lakes tributaries where dams, culverts and other barriers have been removed in recent years. Much of the work has been funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a bipartisan effort President Donald Trump is pushing to eliminate.

"It's as if they were just waiting out there for us to let them back in," Rebecca Grill, manager of natural areas for the Park District of Highland Park, said as she described the restoration of a ravine that ends at Rosewood Beach.

After the district three years ago removed a parking lot culvert that blocked fish from moving up the creek, residents began calling excitedly with reports of white suckers, rainbow trout and lake chub upstream closer to Green Bay Road, which runs along the subcontinental divide separating the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed. There also have been sightings of longnose dace, a type of minnow on the state's priority list for species conservation.

Grill and her colleagues eagerly joined Murchie's project. Like other study volunteers, they check their assigned creeks daily and record the water depth, clarity, weather conditions and number of suckers they spot.

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During a recent visit, groups of fish gathered in rocky pools and darted under limestone outcroppings installed to mimic natural conditions that existed before development altered the ravines.

Murchie plans to combine historical records with her newly collected data for a comprehensive analysis that will help direct future conservation efforts. There also is talk of tagging some of the fish with tiny tracking devices to determine if suckers return to the same creeks every year.

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The lack of broad knowledge about migratory fish in the Great Lakes shows how in many ways what goes on underneath the surface of the water remains a mystery.

White sucker fish work their way upstream in Highland Park in April. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)

Last year scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey reported finding scores of white suckers with grotesque tumors in streams near Milwaukee and Sheboygan  two of the most toxic hot spots on Lake Michigan. Since the fish eat invertebrates from lake and river bottoms, the findings are considered an indicator of the health of the entire ecosystem.

Farther north, along the cold waters of Lake Superior, Bruce Prentice and Ron Nemec have for years been netting suckers and other fish in streams emptying into Chequamegon Bay. Now the two science teachers and their students at Ashland High School are part of Murchie's research project.

Prentice sees the field work as a fun, engaging way to teach kids how to think critically and answer questions by following scientific methods. It also helps inform decisions made by local leaders about roadwork and drainage projects that could affect the health of the waterways, he said.

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"There are always more things to learn," Prentice said. "You put information about all these small (water) systems together and you get a broad picture of how the entire Great Lakes ecosystem is connected."

mhawthorne@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @scribeguy
Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson and emergency physician Dr. Kristen Donaldson speak to the news media at Loyola University Medical Center following the shooting of a Chicago police officer in the West Garfield Park neighborhood May 12, 2017. (Antonio Perez and Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune) (Antonio Perez And Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

A Chicago plainclothes officer was shot in his bulletproof vest and a 25-year-old woman was critically wounded when shots were exchanged at a drug corner in the West Garfield Park neighborhood Friday afternoon, authorities said.

The officer, with the Harrison District tactical team, was taken to Loyola University medical center where he was expected to be released later in the evening. Officials credited the vest with saving his life.

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The woman was shot several times and was in critical condition at Stroger Hospital, police said. A handgun was confiscated at the scene, officials said.

The shooting comes a little more than a week after two other plainclothes officers were shot May 2 with a military-style rifle in the Back of the Yards neighborhood. Both officers were released from the hospital the next day.

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Initial investigation of the latest shooting appears to show the woman was shot after firing on officers, according to Mia Sissac, a spokeswoman for the Independent Police Review Authority. The shooting took place around 2:25 p.m. in the 4600 block of West Maypole Avenue, police said.



The officers were in an unmarked SUV and saw what appeared to be a drug transaction, according to a police news release and Sissac.



The officers turned the SUV around, got out and went toward the woman, Sissac said. A man who appeared to have been making an exchange with the woman ran off, and the woman turned around and opened fire on the officers, she said.

The woman "fired shots" at the officers, hitting one officer in the upper chest, which was protected by his bulletproof vest, according to a police news release.

Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 7 Chicago police officers and investigators confer at the scene where a Chicago police officer was shot in the 4600 block of West Maypole Avenue on May 12, 2017. (Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)

The officers returned fire, Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a news conference outside Loyola medical center.

"This vest absolutely saved this officer's life," he said.

The other officer was treated at Loyola for anxiety. He also was expected to be treated and released, Johnson said.

An arrest warrant had been issued for the woman on Thursday after she apparently failed to show up in court on a charge of aggravated assault of a police officer from February.



The woman had been arrested around 2:10 p.m. on Feb. 11 at an apartment in the 5700 block of South May Street in the Englewood neighborhood after the officer suffered minor injuries, according to police records. She was released on a personal recognizance bond the next day, records show.



The woman previously served two years probation in a heroin possession case from 2014.

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Neighbors said they saw the woman lying on the ground after hearing as many as 10 shots fired rapidly.

Charles Hannon, who lives on the block, said he was on his way home when a blue unmarked police car stopped in the middle of the street to talk to someone walking east on Maypole Avenue. As an officer opened his door, the person started running and shots were fired, he said.

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"All of a sudden they were jumping out of the car," Hannon said. "It wasn't even six or seven seconds and they were shooting."



Erwin Henry, 39, said he was visiting his friend from church when he heard shots and hid behind a tree. When he looked around, he saw an officer on the ground as another officer chased someone, he said.

"I grew up in this neighborhood. I was just hanging out, talking with one of the older guys that I go to church with sometimes. He was watching his vehicle," Henry said. "At the same time we hear gunshots.

"Of course we try to get cover because it was close," he said. "At that time, I ran to get a better look because I noticed it was officers we had just saw come through the neighborhood. I took cover behind a tree and I just saw the officer running in pursuit."

At Loyola, the doctor who treated the officer who was shot said her husband is a Chicago police officer.



"The shot  could have been fatal," said Dr. Kristen Donaldson. "Today we have seen gun violence in Chicago hit home, not only as a physician but as the wife of a Chicago police officer.

"I dread the day - and I don't ever want to receive the phone call this officer's family got today," she said. "Thank God it was a good call, and he'll be going home to his family."
The Chicago Teachers Union will stage a districtwide referendum on the tenure of schools chief Forrest Claypool next week, though union leaders have already declared they have no confidence in the mayoral appointee's stewardship of the system.

The union's governing body called for Claypool's "immediate resignation" in February in a symbolic gesture while also denouncing budget cuts and layoffs implemented by the city amid ongoing budget turmoil.

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The union now says its rank and file will take a "no confidence" vote on Claypool's tenure in each of the city's district-operated schools.

While unlikely to prompt a leadership change at CPS, the vote allows the CTU to channel member anger toward a single target in Claypool, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's former transit chief and longtime political operative. Claypool's tenure has been marked by a sense of enmity between the district and union after fierce contract negotiations and budget cuts.

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"The day he was appointed to that position, I said 'Run, Forrest, run' for a reason, because I knew he would be a disaster for our schools, and for our members and their students," CTU President Karen Lewis said in a statement Friday. "And he has been."

Emanuel, in a statement similar to one released after the February vote by CTU's House of Delegates, said Claypool enjoyed the mayor's "complete confidence" while attempting to turn the focus on CPS and City Hall's favored boogeyman, Gov. Bruce Rauner.

"Forrest has my complete confidence. The person who doesn't is Bruce Rauner, and when it comes to the education of our students that's where our collective energy should be focused," Emanuel said.

Claypool, in a statement, accused CTU of "creating a sideshow" and said the union would be better off siding with the district in its ongoing battle with Springfield.

The district has been under considerable pressure in recent weeks.

The Chicago school board's lawsuit against Rauner and the State of Illinois over education funding was rejected by a Cook County judge. Claypool had warned that classes could end early without a favorable ruling, but Emanuel was quick to quash that idea after the judge's decision.

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Earlier this week, the city's chief financial officer confirmed that CPS has the cash it needs to complete the school year, but is still hundreds of millions of dollars short on the money needed to make a massive contribution to the Chicago Teachers' Pension Fund that's due June 30.

City officials continue to huddle over options to make the payment and address the next school year, while the CTU, community groups and some City Council members have criticized the continuing lack of a public plan.

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The CTU has voiced concern about the direction of district's special education program under Claypool's tenure, and also fears that CPS will eliminate school clerk positions while rolling out a program that will make teachers responsible for filling out time sheets.

For its part, the district has conducted an audit of teachers' use of sick days, questioning some 250 employees as part of that probe.

The union said its vote will be spread across three days, beginning Monday and ending Wednesday. CTU officials said the results will be delivered to City Hall on May 23, the day prior to this month's scheduled meeting of the Chicago Board of Education.

jjperez@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @PerezJr
Divers recovered a body Friday afternoon from the Des Plaines River between Maywood and River Forest, authorities said.

Crews cleaning debris from the river near Washington Boulevard and First Avenue in Maywood found the body about 1 p.m., according to a news release from Illinois State Police.

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Maywood and Pleasant View Fire Department divers worked several hours Friday afternoon before recovering the body, according to police. The person was pronounced dead at the scene at 4:40 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The male of an undetermined age has not yet been identified, according to state police.

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Maywood and Forest Preserve police were assisting but referred all calls to state police.

An autopsy was expected Saturday.
A man who taught high school in Chicago's northwest suburbs for almost 20 years  and was once named Illinois' teacher of the year  has pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a teenage boy at a prominent prep school in New Hampshire in the 1970s.



Arthur Peekel, 75, will serve no jail time under a plea agreement approved by a judge Friday. A 12-month sentence was suspended, though he has to pay a fine of $1,200 and register as a sex offender for the next decade.



"While I believe that there is some satisfaction to sending someone like you who committed a crime like this to jail, no amount of jail time is going to right the wrong you committed in this case," Rockingham Superior Court Judge N. William Delker told the court.



The judge said he hoped the guilty plea and sentence would change the culture and show this "kind of conduct, no matter how long ago it occurred, will come back to roost."



Peekel was accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old prospective student who visited Phillips Exeter Academy in 1973. The student, who later graduated from Exeter, said he pretended to be asleep during the attack by Peekel, who was the school's admissions officer.



The victim said he told school authorities repeatedly about the assault, including meeting with the principal at the time. But it was only last year when Exeter referred his case to the police.



After working at Exeter, Peekel went on to teach social studies at Rolling Meadows High School, where he was named Teacher of the Year in 1992. He taught at the school from 1986 to 2004.



Officials at the school said they were unaware of the Exeter allegations when they hired him, and none were made against him there.



The district received a letter of recommendation from Peekel's previous employer, and he had passed a criminal background check, the spokeswoman said, adding that the district has no record of allegations or complaints in his file "related to these accusations."



In 1991, Peekel was the recipient of Illinois' Distinguished Educator Award, winning a $25,000 prize and becoming the state's candidate for the national award. As part of the honor, he served as the state's Ambassador for Teaching, speaking throughout the state, and he received a one-year paid leave for graduate work and a lifetime tuition waiver to state universities.



Peekel's roots in the northwest suburbs run deep. He graduated from Palatine High School in 1959, and in 1995 was honored by that school as a distinguished graduate for his contributions to education.



Peekel also served as a judge for the Chicago Tribune's Illinois High School All-State Academic Team competition for at least two years, in 2004 and 2008.



During Friday's hearing, Peekel showed little emotion as he entered his plea. He never directly addressed the victim, who was in court with his family and several Exeter alumni, and left without making any comments.



The victim told reporters afterward that the assault had haunted him for the past four decades, describing how it made it difficult form intimate relationships and how he left Exeter "not with a sense of my potential as a young man but instead with sense of grave doubt about my abilities and very little sense of self-worth."



But with the guilty plea and sentencing, the victim says he finally has closure and "understands maybe more clearly than ever before that I am a victim, that it wasn't my fault and that I didn't do anything to deserve what happened to me.



"I feel validated after 43 years of not telling this story," he told reporters. "I agreed to the plea terms. I think the judge was right. No months in jail really makes a difference at this point in time. It's his reputation."

Associated Press contributed to this report
Chinese E-Commerce Giant JD Joins the American Apparel & Footwear Association

After Alibabas very brief and highly controversial stint as a member of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition last year, JD has joined the roster of the American Apparel & Footwear Association (AAFA). According to a statement from the Chinese e-commerce giant, "JD, as a member of AAFA, will collaborate with international fashion labels on the issues related to intellectual property protection, as the group continues to invest on introducing top worldwide brands to Chinese consumers via its JD website.

Beijing-based JD  which is one of the two largest business-to-consumer online retailers in China in terms of transaction volume and revenue, following just behind Alibaba  has generally managed to stay out of the unfavorable spotlight, while Alibaba has emerged as the most problematic of platforms in China, with its TaoBao site landing on the U.S. Trade Representatives Notorious Markets blacklist for a number of years in a row and the company landing on the receiving end of a number of lawsuits from luxury brands.

The Washington, DC-based AAFA represents more than 1,000 world famous brands, such as mass market companies like Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, and Levis, as well as more fashion-oriented brands like Calvin Klein and Marc Jacobs. Its decision to align itself with JD may run the risk of ruffling the feathers of some members, according to the World Trademark Review, which is exactly what happened in the case of Alibaba and the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition. After Alibaba's acceptance, over a dozen of the Coalition's most prominent members, including Gucci and Tiffany & Co., among others, threatening to leave the group if Alibabas membership was not rescinded.

Alibaba v. JD

So, how - exactly - does JD, the first Chinese e-commerce site to join the ranks of the AAFA, differ from its closest rival, Alibaba? JD founder Richard Liu, one of China's richest entrepreneurs, says that by managing the entire supply chain, JD can ensure the authenticity of what it sells and offer better service.

According to Forbes, "Nearly all of the goods that JD sells directly to consumers come from a network of 234 warehouses. (The rest is sold by the brands, their distributors or other formally registered businesses.) JD controls its deliveries as well. Around 60% of its 114,000 employees are engaged full-time in delivering packages." And consumers have responded; "some consumers in China are drawn to JD because of its reliability," the publication noted last year.

Liu Yungang, the 35-year-old general manager of an Internet-equipment company in Shanghai, told Forbes that he believes the products he buys from JD's warehouses are more authentic. "A lot of items I bought from Taobao turned out to be counterfeit - clothes, electronic accessories and a Zippo lighter," he says. "Counterfeits are rare in JD's [online] store."

Yet, this level of integration and oversight - and the resulting level of reliability - has not been cheap. Between the significant amount of resources required to construct warehouses, pay tens of thousands of staff members for delivery purposes and invest in new businesses, JD did not turn a profit following its 2014 IPO ... until recently. The company surprised analysts on Monday by achieving its first profitable quarter since going public two years ago, which it says was helped by Chinese consumers' ever-increasing use of smartphones to shop.

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A former Lake Bluff teacher has been charged with public indecency, local authorities announced Friday.

The allegation against Charles Ritz III dates to the 1980s, authorities said, and is the culmination of an investigation that began nearly a year ago when former students of Ritz reported to authorities that he had inappropriate sexual contact with them decades ago.

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Ritz taught at Lake Bluff Junior High from 1975 to 1985, and records recently released by Lake Bluff School District 65 show that he resigned amid an investigation into claims that he engaged in "unacceptable behavior" involving two male students that occurred in a home in Waukegan.

Jim Moss, a former student who spoke in front of the school board earlier this year, outlining his claims that Ritz sexually abused him in the 1970s, called the charge against Ritz "really good news."

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"A major pillar in our effort has been addressed," said Moss, who came forward publicly, saying he felt it was important to put his name to the effort of protecting children.

Moss said he and another former student who also claims Ritz abused him as a child went to authorities last year after discovering that Ritz went on to have a long teaching career in California after leaving District 65.

Moss said he had long been under the impression that, in seeking Ritz's dismissal from Lake Bluff Junior High before he resigned, local school officials also took steps to ensure that Ritz would not be able to get another teaching job.

In fact, Ritz was hired a short time later by Fullerton Joint Union High School District in Orange County, Calif., and spent 30 years teaching there before he retired in 2016. That district has also launched its own investigation into Ritz, according to published reports.

Lake County authorities did not elaborate on the specifics of the public indecency charge or whether it stemmed from alleged conduct involving any former students.

But in a news release Friday, Lake County State's Attorney Michael Nerheim confirmed that the complaints of former students prompted the investigation.

"In those complaints, the students provided information regarding a number of incidents, dating from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s, that occurred in the presence of Mr. Ritz," Nerheim said.

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The release said that investigators interviewed about 50 people, from California to Florida, and "uncovered extensive records spanning back nearly 30 years."

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A spokesman for Nerheim said California authorities were handling Ritz's arrest, and it wasn't clear if he was yet in custody late Friday. He is expected to be extradited to Illinois to face the charge.

Ritz could not be reached for comment. A woman who answered a phone number for Ritz said he was not available.

District 65 posted a statement on its website Friday, saying in part: "With the charge filed today by the Lake County State's Attorney's office, we are hopeful that Charles Ritz will be swiftly brought to justice and held accountable for his actions."

The statement reiterated that the district is cooperating fully with authorities.

Though statutes of limitations often prohibit the prosecution of alleged crimes from decades ago, Nerheim said in the news release that his office was able to proceed with the case because Ritz "left the State of Illinois shortly after the commission of these criminal acts."

"When we launched this investigation 11 months ago, we knew it would present challenges because of the amount of time that had elapsed between the incidents and when we learned of them," Lake Bluff Police Chief David Belmonte said in the news release. "But those challenges did not diminish our resolve to investigate the matter and work on behalf of the victims and our entire community so we could learn as much as we could about the disturbing allegations and do whatever we could to hold responsible parties strictly accountable."
Chicago Police are continuing to search for the driver who last month critically wounded a pedestrian in a hit-and-run accident on the city's Southwest Side.



A 28-year-old man was struck by an SUV while crossing the street in the 5400 block of South Pulaski Road in Chicago's West Elsdon neighborhood around 10:45 p.m. on April 19, according to a CPD news release.



The vehicle, described as a dark-colored Honda CR-V, was last seen driving away from the scene northbound toward 54th Street. Police recovered surveillance footage of the vehicle, which it disseminated in a community alert.



Police are asking anyone with information on the incident to call the Chicago Police Department's Major Accident Investigation Unit at 312-745-4521.
Stanley and Joyce Boim, of Jerusalem, seen here in 2004, filed a lawsuit in Chicago on May 12, 2017, against American Muslims for Palestine and Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation to collect a massive legal judgment awarded the family years ago. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune)

The parents of an American-born student fatally shot by Hamas gunmen in Jerusalem in 1996 filed a lawsuit Friday against two Chicago-area Palestinian-American groups, claiming they are liable for a massive legal judgment awarded the family years ago but never collected.

Stanley and Joyce Boim filed the federal lawsuit in Chicago against American Muslims for Palestine and the Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation, both based in Bridgeview, as well as three men they identified as leaders of the two groups.

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The suit claims the organizations are the "alter egos" of three Islamic fundraising groups held liable for the death of the Boims' son, David, for providing financial support to Hamas, a militant Palestinian group. In 2004, a federal jury in Chicago awarded $52 million in damages to the Boims, far more than the family's lawyers had sought. Citing relevant law, a magistrate judge then trebled the award to $156 million.

The verdict was the first by a jury holding U.S. citizens or organizations liable under a federal law that allows victims of terrorism to sue for civil damages.

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One of the Boims' lawyers, Stephen Landes, said Friday that the family received only a small fraction of the award  he would not say how much  because the defendants claimed they had ceased operations and had no money to pay the huge judgment. The successor groups named in Friday's lawsuit formed shortly afterward, with many of the same men assuming similar leadership roles, Landes said.

"What we ended up finding is they just tried to rebrand themselves, and they set up down the street," he said.

If the groups are allowed to move on without paying the huge judgment, Landes said, "it makes a mockery" of federal anti-terrorism laws.

David Boim was 17 when he was shot in the head while waiting for a bus in Jerusalem. Boim, originally from New York, was standing with classmates as they prepared to head to a review class for exams, according to the lawsuit. A gunman fired from a passing car. Boim died the next day.

"We think about and mourn our son David every day," Joyce Boim said Friday in a statement. "We brought the original suit to prevent other American families from suffering similar tragedies. We pray that this new effort will give more force to the law that seeks justice for terror victims."

The Boims, who are U.S. citizens, live in Israel.

The original lawsuit was filed in 2000.

In a landmark ruling in 2002, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago said Islamic groups could be held liable if the Boims could establish that they aided and abetted Boim's killing.

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But the Islamic Association for Palestine and the American Muslim Society, both based in the Chicago area, and the Holy Land Foundation, with a branch in Chicago, contended they were charitable and educational institutions promoting the welfare of Palestinians.

However, in late 2004, the court found the groups had knowingly supported Hamas and its terrorist activities. The jury awarded the multimillion-dollar damages  trebled by the judge.

A three-judge panel of the 7th Circuit later set aside the jury's decision, but the full court upheld the verdict in December 2008.

The new lawsuit was filed almost nine years after that key ruling. Landes said it took time to confirm connections between the old and new groups.

In Friday's lawsuit, the Boims asked that a judge find that American Muslims for Palestine and the Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation constitute successor groups and order them responsible to pay the remaining tens of millions of dollars still owed.

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Messages left with American Muslims for Palestine were not returned. It is not clear if the Americans for Justice in Palestine Educational Foundation is still operating.

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AMP describes itself on its website as "a national education and grassroots-based organization dedicated to educating the American public about Palestine and its rich cultural, historical and religious heritage."

Friday's lawsuit also names three individuals  Rafeeq Jaber, Abdelbasset Hamayel and Osama Abu Irshaid  as defendants because of their alleged associations with the old and new groups.

Jaber was an organizer of Americans for Justice in Palestine and the former president and principal spokesman for American Muslims for Palestine and the Islamic Association for Palestine, according to the lawsuit. Hamayel has been identified as American Muslims for Palestine's executive director, according to the lawsuit, and was director and secretary general of the Islamic Association for Palestine. Irshaid sits on the American Muslims for Palestine board and was also editor of the Islamic Association for Palestine's newspaper, the lawsuit said.

Hamayel said he was unaware of the lawsuit and declined to comment, while Jaber and Irshaid could not be reached for comment. The lawsuit said both Jaber and Hamayel live in Illinois, while Irshaid resides in Virginia.

poconnell@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @pmocwriter
Chicago-area attorney Alison Motta and her family law firm have a take-no-prisoners motto when it comes to criminal defense.

"When your enemy is weak expose their weakness," the Motta & Motta LLC website states. "When your enemy is strong delay the battle, and when your enemy is angry make them angrier because mistakes are sure to follow."

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It turns out Motta indeed made someone angry at a recent criminal trial in Chicago's federal court.

Unfortunately for her, it was the judge.

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In a strong rebuke made public Friday, Motta was suspended from practicing in the Northern District of Illinois for 90 days after she was accused of using profanity in front of the jury, scoffing at judicial rulings and otherwise disrupting the high-profile trial of a woman accused of weapons violations.

In one particularly egregious instance, Motta rolled her eyes and said, "F------ bull----" after U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve overruled an objection, according to a three-page order issued by the federal court's Executive Committee, which ruled that Motta's behavior "prejudiced the administration of justice."

"Not only are witnesses thrown off balance when the opposing lawyer visibly reacts to testimony (such as by rolling her eyes), a lawyer's outright defiance of a trial judge's decision endangers the judge's control of the courtroom," wrote the committee, a disciplinary arm of the court with a revolving panel of judges and the clerk of the court.

In addition to taking the rare step of suspending Motta from practicing for three months, the committee also barred her from participating as lead attorney in any trials for a full year. She must also take ethics and professionalism classes.

By rule, the order was forwarded to the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission, which could decide to impose further sanctions. Online ARDC records show Motta has been licensed to practice since 2004 and has never been disciplined.

Reached by telephone, Motta, whose firm has offices in Aurora and downtown Chicago, had no comment Friday for this story. Her attorney, James Doppke, later issued a statement saying she "looks forward to moving past this unfortunate situation so that she can resume fighting for those accused of serious crimes in federal court."

"Ms. Motta sincerely regrets that she projected her frustration with the system in her demeanor in the way the judge described," the emailed statement read.

Doppke said Motta made the profane comment under her breath, but sensitive courtroom microphones picked up the remark.

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Records show from 2008 to 2016 Motta has handled only a few cases in federal court, none now pending.

The ruling marred what was otherwise a successful case for Motta, who won a rare jury acquittal of her client, Vandetta Redwood, after a two-week trial in January. Redwood had been charged with handing her teenage cousin a loaded gun seconds before the girl allegedly opened fire and killed 14-year-old Endia Martin during an after-school fight. Redwood faced up to 15 years in prison if convicted, but the jury deliberated less than six hours before acquitting her on both counts.

In his statement, Motta's attorney said he was convinced that the federal charges against Redwood "rested weakly on incorrect assumptions" but knew the trial would be "an uphill and fierce battle."

The surprising acquittal came after eight days of testimony that was often bogged down by lengthy cross-examinations by Motta. Prosecutors routinely objected to Motta's line of questioning, and several times St. Eve reprimanded her for her behavior, both in front of the jury and during breaks in the trial.

During closing arguments, Motta was chastised again by St. Eve for taking photos of a prosecution exhibit with her cellphone. After the verdict was read and the jury had left the courtroom, both Motta and her co-counsel, J. Clifford Greene, were escorted away by deputy U.S. marshals and issued misdemeanor citations for taking photos in the courtroom in violation of long-standing rules.

On Feb. 1, a week after the trial ended, St. Eve submitted a complaint to the Executive Committee laying out Motta's many infractions, according to the order issued Friday. Motta was issued a letter in March directing her to respond.

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Last month, Motta apologized for her behavior, admitting she was frustrated by the progress of the case and "regrets projecting that frustration in her demeanor, language and tone," the order stated.

Motta was ordered to notify all clients she represents in pending matters in Chicago's federal court about her suspension. She also had her login credentials for the district's electronic filing system revoked.

The order stated Motta would have been disciplined far more severely had she not accepted responsibility for her actions.

The ruling was not the first time Motta has found herself in trouble because of her courtroom behavior. Last year, a judge in Omaha, Neb., took the unusual step of removing her on the eve of trial from a high-profile death penalty case involving Anthony Garcia, a former doctor accused of two sensational double slayings.

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In an 11-page ruling, Judge Gary Randall said Motta violated a court-imposed protective order by making "inflammatory" statements to the media about a DNA sample that she said exonerated Garcia and implicated another man in the 2008 killings of a doctor's 11-year-old son and the family's housekeeper.

The case  including the controversy sparked by Motta's removal  was featured in an episode of the news magazine "Dateline NBC" that aired in March.

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Motta's firm was founded by her father-in-law, Robert Motta, a onetime Cook County assistant public defender who gained attention in the 1980s as co-counsel for infamous Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy.

Though rare, the ruling in Motta's case marked the second time this year the Executive Committee has suspended an attorney for misbehaving.

In January, Chicago attorney Jason Craddock Sr., known for representing Christian conservative causes, was suspended from practicing in federal court for a year after he admitted making lewd and misogynistic comments to a rival lawyer, including sending an email that twisted her name to spell a vulgar term for a female body part.

jmeisner@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @jmetr22b
PAWS Chicago is planning to expand its medical center in an effort to treat more cats and dogs and find them forever homes. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune) (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune/Chicago Tribune)

In a city that can be a cold place for unwanted pets, they are the most unwanted of all.

Little Klaus, a Chihuahua, had a deadly contagious virus and suffered from seizures. He was sitting in a cage at the city pound. Tiny Tim, a Shih Tzu, had a broken leg that was infected so badly it needed to be amputated. He, too, was left at the pound.

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They are just two of the many animals that have been considered too sick or injured to be worth saving and placing in a new home.

Now, one animal welfare agency is looking to change that.

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PAWS Chicago is planning to expand its medical center so that it can treat more injured or sick animals like Little Klaus and Tiny Tim and find them permanent homes.

The group views the medical center's expansion as the next frontier in what has been a quietly successful push to reduce Chicago's population of unwanted animals.

"These are sweet animals that shouldn't die," said Paula Fasseas, who co-founded PAWS Chicago 20 years ago with her daughter Alexis.

To do this, the group plans to remodel 19,000 square feet of space at its Little Village medical site and expand its operations into a former bank building next door to provide more isolation and quarantine areas for potentially sick and contagious homeless animals.

The total cost of the project is $6 million  financed in part by a $2.5 million grant from Maddie's Fund, a California-based animal welfare organization. PAWS is raising the rest of the money. The project is expected to begin this fall and take about a year to complete.

The goal is to help PAWS fulfill one of its central tenets  that no animal deserves to die because it is given up by an owner who can no longer care for it or is found wandering the city streets. The organization follows a no-kill model, which means that except for rare cases, PAWS does everything it can to save animals.

For many years, Chicago's population of unwanted animals has been steadily declining, thanks to efforts by city officials working with animal welfare agencies, along with the success of spay and neuter programs to curtail overpopulation.

More than 14,000 dogs and cats entered the Chicago Animal Care and Control shelter last year, a 13 percent decrease compared with the prior year, with about half brought in as stray animals, according to city data. In 2016, the city transferred more than 7,000 dogs and cats to animal rescue organizations. Additionally, about 1,000 were directly adopted from the shelter to new homes. As a result, the number of animals euthanized at the pound has decreased over the years, according to city data.

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But it's easier to find a home for a healthy animal.

"The no-kill model is to save and treat all healthy and treatable animals," Paula Fasseas said. "Healthy is easy. The treatable is what is the biggest need in our society today and we're able to take those treatable animals in and get them saved."

The project will allow PAWS to take on cases that other shelters and organizations might not have the resources for, whether it's because of lengthy recovery times or the cost of the care itself.

The longer the stay, the less space is available at the medical center for incoming animals, according to PAWS. The limited space is already creating a bottleneck to get animals ready to meet the adoption demand, said Alexis Fasseas.

PAWS could take more animals from the pound if the medical center had more quarantine and isolation space, she said.

"As the proportion of the animals come through the program need more care, it limits the number of animals if you can't expand your capacity to provide that care, it limits the number of animals that you can actually get through to adoption," she said. "So you'd be doing more work but getting fewer animals saved over time."

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The list of expanded services in the 30,000-square-foot medical center reads like those of a trauma center  an additional operating room for more surgeries including amputations and tumor removals, more quarantine areas to isolate animals with potentially contagious diseases, and additional areas to isolate sick animals awaiting adoption.

Every animal that PAWS rescues from the pound spends a week in a quarantined area to see if it develops any illness symptoms without exposing others before it heads to a foster home or the adoption center. The isolation units are of particular importance in helping ailing animals.

With such areas, PAWS is able to take in dogs with canine influenza, for example, without affecting its adoption operations, which are located in a separate building. Some other agencies, by contrast, would be forced to put pet adoptions on hold if there was a dog flu outbreak at their shelters.

The expansion will also help PAWS speed up its spay and neutering programs.

PAWS' Lurie Clinic, which performs more than 17,000 spay and neuter surgeries a year, will expand its reception area to help alleviate long check-in lines.

It all is done with the goal of saving and finding homes for the animals  which is encouraged by the city.

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"PAWS has been instrumental in providing veterinary services in underserved communities in Chicago," said Susan Russell, executive director of Chicago's Animal Care and Control. She added, "And this work has undoubtedly helped to reduce dog intake at the city shelter, and to save more lives."

Last year, PAWS helped find new homes for 5,125 animals, mainly rescued from the city's pound, natural disaster areas and overcrowded or high-kill shelters in other states. About half required extensive medical care beyond vaccinations and spay and neuter procedures, Fasseas said.

On any given day, about 150 to 200 animals are treated at the medical center, she said.

Today, both Klaus and Tim have been given a second chance at life.

"Most shelters would just euthanize for distemper (virus) immediately," Alexis Fasseas said. "Animals like Tim are at the highest risk because their cases are incredibly complicated and require immediate care."

lvivanco@chicagotribune.com

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Federal prosecutors have launched an investigation into south suburban Thornton Township High School District 205 and possible kickbacks tied to technology purchases from Alsip-based Comcapital. (Gregory Pratt / Chicago Tribune)

Federal authorities have opened a criminal investigation into south suburban Thornton Township High School District 205 and possible kickbacks tied to technology purchases, the Tribune has learned.

The investigation focuses on the relationship between the district and a suburban-based technology company that sold it $4.5 million in technology equipment since 2009, including hundreds of computers, monitors and printers, attorneys involved with the probe said.

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In addition to probing potential kickbacks on those purchases, federal officials also are investigating whether the district received all the equipment it purchased from Comcapital Inc., the company's attorney said. The business, based in Alsip, recently announced it is closing.

A federal grand jury subpoena, served on the school district in January and obtained by the Tribune through the Freedom of Information Act, requested all records related to Comcapital, including contracts, invoices, payment records and correspondence. It also requested similar information from any other company used by the district for technology purchases or support, and records related to the school board's authorization of such purchases and an inventory of them.

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The subpoena also sought personnel records related to the district's information technology director and her assistant, as well as a former consultant. Among other records, the subpoena sought information about compensation and other payments made to them and any personnel actions taken. The director and her assistant have been on paid leave since January, the district confirmed.

It's not clear what sparked federal interest in the district, which oversees three high schools in Harvey, Dolton and South Holland that serve more than 5,000 students from 15 south suburban communities, many of them poor and African-American. The district has been running multimillion-dollar deficits in recent years and recently borrowed $30 million for capital improvements.

Joseph Fitzpatrick, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, declined to comment. The subpoena stated that records could be sent to the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General in Chicago.

Hundreds of emails, invoices and other documents obtained by the Tribune through the open records law show a casual purchasing arrangement between Comcapital and District 205. The district did not have a contract with the company and did not appear to have competitively bid the purchases.

The district's purchasing policy prohibits "favoritism" and notes that all purchases over $25,000 must comply with the state's bidding law, which requires, with some exceptions, that school districts get bids for purchases or professional work above that amount.

One exception to the law  for the purchase of software and data processing equipment  arguably could be applied to the district's purchases from Comcapital, according to Ben Schwarm, deputy executive director of the Illinois Association of School Boards.

District 205 officials declined to answer questions about the district's relationship with Comcapital, its business practices or the federal investigation. The district also declined to say whether it had received all technology equipment it had purchased.

"As your questions concern an ongoing federal investigation that the school district has been asked not to comment on, however, we respectfully decline your request for an interview or to answer your extensive questions," Jerry Doss, assistant superintendent for human resources and community relations, said in a statement.

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Comcapital President Fidel Esparza declined to speak with the Tribune and referred questions to his attorney, Christopher Grohman, who acknowledged the government investigation into possible kickbacks and items potentially not being provided to the district.

But Esparza denies wrongdoing, his attorney said.

The federal subpoena requested employment records relating to Maria Brunson, the district's information technology director; Brunson's secretary, Veronica Zambrano; and a former consultant, Timothy Silagyi.

The district put Brunson and Zambrano on paid administrative leave in January, and Silagyi has not done work for the district since the 2012-13 school year, the district said.

Criminal defense attorney Michael Ettinger, who represents Zambrano, said his understanding is that prosecutors are probing possible kickbacks. Ettinger said his client is innocent.

Brunson and Silagyi did not respond to Tribune requests for comment.

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Invoice records show the district regularly bought equipment from Comcapital, including laptops, keyboards, projectors, portable hard drives, printers, scanners and HDMI cables. The district's purchases began in summer 2009 and continued through November 2016, with payments ranging from $11 to $133,000, according to an invoice history provided by the district.

The district paid $132,930 in 2011 for 70 "classroom response clickers," remote controls used to make lectures more interactive, for example. On another occasion, Comcapital charged the district $64,125 for 45 Dell computers at $1,425 a piece.

Without a formal purchasing arrangement, Zambrano, the technology director's secretary, instead reached out to Comcapital's president when the district needed something, emails show.

"Hola mi vendedor favorito," she wrote, referring to him as her favorite vendor, as she often did. "Can you please order and send me a quote for a 27 inch monitor and two screen protectors? Please order and send me a quote so I can process."

On another occasion, Zambrano received a quote from another company and forwarded it directly to Esparza with the message: "We have faith that you can beat this price :D"

At one point, Esparza lent Zambrano money, according to the emails.

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Grohman, the attorney representing Esparza, said his client lent Zambrano $1,000 in 2013 and that she hasn't paid it back.

"It was done because of their relationship as friends," Grohman said. "They'd known each other for several years at that point."

In late 2016, Zambrano emailed Esparza to express concern about how much she owed him. Esparza tried to put her at ease, telling her it's "truly the last thing on my mind" and asking her to "put a smile on (her) precious face."

State law prohibits government officials and employees from accepting gifts, including loans, from vendors or individuals seeking to do business with the district. But it contains an exception for "anything provided by an individual on the basis of a personal friendship" unless the official believes the gift was provided "because of the official position or employment of the member, officer, or employee and not because of the personal friendship."

Ettinger, Zambrano's attorney, declined to comment on the loan or email exchanges.

Cindi Canary, a longtime government reform advocate, said gift bans are meant to prevent "any kind of potential conflict or divided loyalty or sense of indebtedness."

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"It's kind of 101  you don't want your employees in that situation," Canary said.

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As the federal investigation continues, Comcapital has announced it's in the midst of a storewide sale.

The company on Facebook said it's "closing its doors for good" and declared "Sale sale sale everything must go!" without an explanation.

Comcapital is in a storefront beside a garagelike warehouse in Alsip. During a recent visit, the Tribune saw old computer hard drives, wires and other equipment for sale, with signs thanking customers for 20 years of business.

A customer at the counter asked Esparza what's next for him.

"God only knows," he replied.

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Twitter @royalpratt
Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner said Friday that he would approve a bill to keep abortions legal in Illinois even if federal law were to change, but he said he opposes expanding the availability of taxpayer-funded abortions because the idea is "too controversial."

Rauner's comments came a few days after state lawmakers approved a proposal that includes both provisions. The legislation would lift restrictions on Medicaid- and state employee insurance-covered abortions. It also would change a provision in Illinois law that ties the state's abortion policy to the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that protected a woman's right to have an abortion. Abortion rights supporters have accused Rauner of backtracking on a campaign pledge to support the ideas contained in the legislation. During his 2014 campaign for governor, Rauner filled out what was then a confidential questionnaire for the political action group Personal PAC, in which he expressed support for the ideas.

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During a question-and-answer session Friday on WBEZ radio, the governor said he is only in support of the language that ensures that abortions will be legal in Illinois regardless of what happens on the federal level. If a proposal included only that part, Rauner said, he would "sign that legislation if that bill came to my desk."

"What we need to do is make sure that gets protected," Rauner said after he was asked by a caller and host Tony Sarabia to explain his shifting position on the issue. "Many people are very concerned, and perhaps rightly so, that things could change at the federal level. Our current law  and I believe it was put in, in 1975  said that if the federal law changed, Illinois' law would change and automatically reverse and reproductive rights could be taken away. We should never let that happen."

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Rauner has promised to veto the legislation, though he did not go so far in his comments on Friday. Despite voting to send the bill to Rauner, Democrats used a procedural move to hold onto the paperwork and keep it off the governor's desk, at least for now.

The governor accused Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan of adding the expansion of taxpayer funding for abortions to the proposal "to create political problems" for him.

"We're one of the more progressive states," Rauner said. "I support that. I want to protect that. But the bill goes further and expands taxpayer funding in a way that only two other states have. That's very divisive, it's very controversial. That part, I don't think makes sense to do now."

Rauner said he has asked the General Assembly to send him a bill that includes only the language he supports. Bill sponsor Sara Feigenholtz, D-Chicago, has previously said she declined the governor's request.

"I am not leaving women who are insured by the state of Illinois, whether you're an employee or Medicaid is your insurer, I am not leaving them in the dust," Feigenholtz said. "I'll let Gov. Rauner do that. That's what it looks like he's doing."

kgeiger@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @kimgeiger
J.B. Pritzker joined labor leaders and members from across Chicago and Cook County to rally against Bruce Rauner at the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 399 in Chicago on May 3, 2017. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune)

With early friction emerging in the 2018 Democratic race for governor, the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen's Association is urging the candidates to turn their wrath toward Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner instead of on one another.

The phone call this week raising concerns about the contest's tone among the campaigns and the group's leader came as billionaire entrepreneur and investor J.B. Pritzker has launched TV ads and begun amassing endorsements, prompting rivals for the nomination to criticize him.

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"There seemed to be a change in tone and of people focusing on each other," said Doug House, who also is chairman of the Rock Island County Democrats.

"We wanted to make it clear where we were on this and that when they are speaking at our functions in the future, we wanted them to address their visions for the state. We weren't interested why somebody else was bad," House said. Rauner has "been a huge disappointment by all standards, and that's what they should be talking about."

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House said no candidates or campaigns were singled out for criticism. But he warned that Democratic attacks on each other could damage the eventual nominee and end up as fodder for Rauner campaign ads. The county chairmen's group has set no timetable for its own endorsement in the March 2018 primary, House said.

Pritzker, the wealthiest candidate in the contest, is working to separate himself from the rest of a Democratic field that includes businessman Chris Kennedy of the iconic political family, state Sen. Daniel Biss of Evanston, Northwest Side Ald. Ameya Pawar and Madison County regional schools superintendent Bob Daiber.

The issue of wealth already was a division in the contest, pitting Pritzker and Kennedy against the rest of the field and mirroring a national Democratic divide between establishment contenders and populist progressives.

Part of that divide is the question of whether to seek a candidate who can go toe-to-toe in matching the personal wealth of Rauner, a former private equity investor, or to seek a more grass-roots progressive.

Some Democrats contend the ability to have a governor candidate who can self-fund a campaign, like Pritzker, allows more money to be freed up for lower-ballot campaigns next year, including key legislative races that help to decide the fate of Democratic majorities in the Illinois House and Senate.

Kennedy, despite his own wealth and that of his family, has been vocal in attacking Pritzker. Kennedy has likened Pritzker to Rauner, who has used his money not only for his own campaign but also to rejuvenate the Illinois Republican Party and instill loyalty among GOP lawmakers.

"We can't let what's happening in the Republican Party happen in the Democratic Party," Kennedy said in a fundraising email to supporters this month titled "Big money talks, it doesn't listen."

"When political influence is controlled by a few wealthy people, it does terrible things to our democracy. It silences us. It says to those few powerful people that we're prepared to make a deal. That if you fight our fight for us, we'll make you our king," Kennedy said.

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Days later, the Kennedy campaign followed up with an email noting Pritzker had launched his TV ads and declaring, "This election isn't for sale."

Kennedy's team also has expressed concerns that powerful Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, who wants to keep control of his chamber above all else in next year's elections, is working to help Pritzker and trying to secure a clear field early.

Madigan could use the resources of Pritzker and labor unions for legislative elections next year. And Madigan is close to the 14 trade unions that recently issued an unusually early endorsement of Pritzker.

Now those trade unions are pushing for the Illinois AFL-CIO, the umbrella organization of organized labor in the state, to make an early endorsement of Pritzker, union sources said.

The sources, who were not authorized to discuss union business publicly, said that while the trade unions want to move quickly, public sector and service unions want to move more slowly and deliberately. But trade unions carry more clout. A meeting has been set for next month to discuss the way forward.

Michael Carrigan, who heads the state AFL-CIO, said in a statement that the organization "has a process for vetting candidates that we are working through, including face-to-face meetings with candidates and issue surveys," and that no endorsement will be made "until there is widespread and significant support for one particular candidate across the diverse labor movement."

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Kennedy has been counting on labor support for his bid while disdaining endorsements by Democratic organizations such as the Cook County Democratic Party. Pritzker recently gained the backing of a major Downstate organization, the St. Clair County Democrats.

But in forgoing organizational support within the party and facing difficulty attracting labor backing, Kennedy may find himself in the outside lane along with Pawar and Biss in trying to formulate a more grass-roots challenge to Pritzker, albeit with a better-funded effort.

As for the county chairmen group's request to tone down the rhetoric, there wasn't much of a public response by the campaigns Friday.

Pritzker campaign manager Anne Caprara said it was "important for all Democratic candidates to focus their time and energy on getting (Rauner) out of office" and ensure he is not re-elected. Biss' campaign said the election isn't just about the governor's office, but also is "a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party." Kennedy's campaign suggested their candidate is the only one ready to "bring radical change to Springfield," while Pawar's camp said its effort was focused on the alderman's "vision" for Illinois.

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U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley speaks at a news conference with other Illinois congressional Democrats about the need for an independent prosecutor to look into possible Trump connections to Russia. May 12, 2017 (John Byrne / Chicago Tribune) (Chicago Tribune)

A group of Illinois congressional Democrats on Friday continued to beat the drum for a special prosecutor to investigate ties between President Donald Trump's administration and Russia, saying Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey is the strongest indication yet that he's trying to prevent a full accounting of the connections.

Appearing at a downtown news conference, U.S. Reps. Bobby Rush, Mike Quigley and Danny Davis of Chicago and Reps. Brad Schneider of Deerfield and Jan Schakowsky of Evanston insisted that only an independent inquiry can be trusted.

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"We need an independent prosecutor to investigate the crumbling Donald Trump administration," Rush said. "I think, in my opinion, the Trump administration is falling into a downward spiral, into an abyss that is frightening to say the least. We're approaching a constitutional crisis because of the lies."

Rush called on Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan to "stop drinking the poison Kool-Aid" Trump is giving him and to take the lead on calling for an independent investigation into whether there was collusion between Trump associates and the Russians, and into Trump's decision to fire Comey, who was heading up the FBI investigation.

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It's been a common refrain from Democrats, and many made the same arguments in news releases and interviews earlier this week. But with the news coming out of Washington changing seemingly by the hour, they took the opportunity Friday to again make their case for the local TV cameras.

Quigley sits on the House Intelligence Committee, which is looking into whether Trump's associates coordinated with Russians to tamper with the presidential election. The congressman called this investigation "the most important investigation of our lifetime" and said there is something "far more sinister about this investigation" than Watergate, because of the involvement of Russia.

Illinois Republicans in Congress this week didn't make the same call for an investigator, but they didn't fully embrace Trump's ouster of Comey, either.

Peoria Republican Rep. Darin LaHood said he was surprised by Comey's firing and that he has admired him for his "integrity, judgment and independence," but he added that he wanted to know more about the president's rationale for the dismissal.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Channahon in Will County, said on Facebook that "we need a transparent investigation that we, the American people, can all trust."

And Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of Wheaton said he was surprised by the timing of the firing but added that Comey "had become a lightning rod for criticism" as "Republicans and especially Democrats had sadly lost confidence in his ability to lead the FBI."

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Chicago's water commissioner has resigned amid what City Hall sources say is an inspector general investigation into racist and sexist email messages sent at the agency.

Out is Barrett Murphy, who made $170,000 a year leading the Department of Water Management after taking the job in April 2016. He's a city government veteran who is married to Lynn Lockwood. She's the former chairman and treasurer of one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's political funds, as well as a friend of Chicago first lady Amy Rule.

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The Emanuel administration on Friday afternoon cited the watchdog probe in explaining Murphy's abrupt departure.

"We were made aware of an IG investigation into the culture at the water department," Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said. "The mayor acted quickly and decisively, asking for the commissioner's resignation and appointing a new commissioner to lead the department forward and change the department's culture."

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One of the City Hall sources said the investigation has been going on for eight months. Collins said the mayor recently was made aware of the probe. A spokeswoman for Inspector General Joseph Ferguson declined to comment.

Two other Water Department managers resigned this week. William Bresnahan, the agency's managing deputy commissioner, resigned, Collins said. And Paul Hansen, a district superintendent of water distribution and the son of former 44th Ward Ald. Bernie Hansen, resigned Thursday, said water spokesman Gary Litherland.

Attempts to reach Murphy, Bresnahan and Hansen were unsuccessful Friday.

One veteran Water Department employee, Patrick McDonough, said Friday that he repeatedly has complained to the inspector general's office about the department's workplace culture and about top bosses covering up for politically connected workers, including Hansen.

In April 2010, Hansen was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol in northwest Illinois, according to public records from Jo Daviess County. He later pleaded guilty to reckless driving. City payroll records show that he was promoted to his current position in December 2010, which is after the case was resolved.

Murphy succeeded longtime Water Commissioner Tom Powers last year. Before that, Murphy was a deputy in the Department of Water Management. He had worked for Mayor Richard M. Daley in the Aviation Department and as the city's project manager to prepare for possible Y2K computer problems, a predicted calamity that never came to pass.

Replacing Murphy at the water agency is Randy Connor, who had been at the Chicago Department of Transportation.

The Emanuel administration released the news of Murphy's resignation mid-afternoon Friday, a time politicians typically try to bury bad news as the public's attention turns toward the weekend. It also came a couple hours after they announced other, less troublesome personnel moves at City Hall.

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The mayor reappointed Ferguson to a third term as inspector general, and announced that Budget Director Alexandra Holt was planning to leave to pursue other endeavors after six years on the job.

Four years ago, when Ferguson was closing out his first term, it wasn't clear that he would be reappointed. Ferguson had been critical of many mayoral initiatives. After Emanuel did reappoint him, Ferguson eventually decided to stay longer, and the relationship between mayor and watchdog became less frosty.

On Friday, Emanuel suggested they have come to something of an understanding.

"He plays an important role for the city in constantly making changes and asking some core questions, and Joe knows there are places where we strongly agree, and there will be places where I have a different perspective," Emanuel told the Tribune after an event to honor 25 City Colleges graduates from the Chicago Star Scholar program who received $5,000 scholarships from CME Group to continue their education at four-year institutions.

"(Ferguson) has to have his perspective, and I have to have a slightly wider lens to look at," Emanuel added.

The mayor said he would "beyond miss" Holt, who has been his only budget director. Holt helped the mayor push a series of tax, fee and fine increases that helped narrow the city's annual budget gaps while providing a way to pay for revamping the city's aging water system and significantly increase contributions to the city's financially ailing employee pension funds.

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Emanuel said Holt served a "very long time" in a tough job and "can leave with her head high that the city is healthier and stronger financially, and she brought a sense of professionalism that I will miss."

Holt, who said she planned to take some time off after 20 years of working at City Hall, had a slightly different take.

"It's time for somebody who can come in with some fresh ideas and take the next step," Holt said. "I just wanted to give someone else the joy of doing the job."

Holt will be succeed by Samantha Fields, the current commissioner of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection.

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An 8-year-old Cincinnati boy died by suicide in January, two days after he fell to the floor in an elementary school bathroom after an incident police have called a possible assault. Now his mother, through an attorney, is questioning whether his school handled the situation properly.

The death of the student, Gabriel Taye, is part of a higher than usual number of youth suicides for the region, local media reports.

Cincinnati schools on Friday released choppy footage from a hallway security camera of the interaction, blurring out students faces to protect their privacy. It is our firm position that the allegations portrayed in the media are not supported by the video, the district said.

The districts move followed a Thursday announcement by a county coroner that she would re-open the childs death investigation to include a review of the video, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported:

Gabriel died by suicide Jan. 26 at home. Two days before in a Carson Elementary restroom, another student grabbed Gabriel and pulled him to the ground, which apparently knocked Gabriel out. Other students poked and touched Gabriel for as long as nearly five minutes until a school official appeared to care for the boy, according to a Cincinnati Police Department detective's written account of what he saw on school surveillance video. Gabriel's mother said through her lawyer, Jennifer Branch of Cincinnati, that no one at Carson told her about the assault when she collected Gabriel that day. In the evening, his mother took him to Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center because he was vomiting. After a night in the emergency room, the mother brought him home and kept him out of school that day, Jan. 25. The next day, Gabriel went back to school."

He died later that night.

In documents obtained by the Inquirer, a Cincinnati Police homicide detective described the behavior on the video as bullying and could even rise to the level of criminal assault, if not for the ages of the students involved. The district contends the students actions are not as severe as they have been described.

Ive embedded the eight-minute video below. Its choppy because security cameras typically capture fewer frames per second than a cell phone camera. The interaction between Taye and his fellow student happens relatively quickly, at the beginning and the nature of it is not totally clear. The two boys appear to shake hands before Taye ends up on floor. Once hes down, his face is obscured by a dividing wall at the entrance to the restroom, but boys can seen passing by his outstretched body, some poking at his legs. Later, several adults respond and, eventually, Taye walks out of the restroom with them.

Gabriels mother says the school contacted her to say her son had fainted, but it did not tell her about the peer incident, the Enquirer reports. She picked up her son and took him home but did not take him to the hospital until he reported feeling sick to his stomach later that day. Doctors diagnosed him with a stomach flu, unaware of the interaction hed had earlier that day, Branch told the Inquirer.

Our hearts are broken by the loss of this child, and our thoughts are with his parents and extended family. He was an outstanding young man, and this is a great loss for his family and our school community, the Cincinnati district said in a release about the video.

Here are some discussion points the incident raises:

Was it bullying? Or something else?

Some media reports have characterized the incident as bullying, but I would note that bullying is a very specific form of peer harassment that involves repeated malicious actions by a peer. The district told local media that it had no documented incidents of bullying during that time period to support claims that Taye had been targeted by his peers before. But experts say students dont always report bullying.

What steps should schools take to protect students in bathrooms?

Student restrooms are often less supervised than hallways and classrooms because adults have their own staff facilities, meaning theres less chance of incidental encounters that could dissuade students from engaging in fights and harassment. There have been several high-profile incidents in school restrooms in recent years. In 2016, a Delaware girl died after a fight in her high school restroom.

What kind of safety protocols should schools have to ensure bathrooms are properly monitored?

Cincinnati Public Schools is reviewing with faculty and staff the procedures regarding adult supervision in the restrooms, the district said in its statement. We are committed to student safety and ensuring that all CPS schools foster a positive, learning environment.

A higher rate of youth suicides

The 8-year-old boy died Jan. 26, the first youth suicide in 2017 in Hamilton County, the Enquirer reports. Seven county residents 18 and younger have died as suicides this year. Last year, there were 13. The yearly average is about five.

Suicide experts say youth suicides can cluster. One can create a contagion that leads to another. Experts sometimes intervene in these situations, working with educators to respond to mental health issues in schools and with local media about how to responsibly cover the issue.

You can read more about warning signs for suicide and materials for schools here .

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, you can find support by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or check out these resources from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

Further reading on suicide:

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MANILA, Philippines  Authorities in the Philippines have rescued four girls and arrested a mother and two other women for allegedly livestreaming sexually exploitative videos of children to men paying by the minute to watch from the United States.



Three sisters ages 8, 9 and 12, and an 11-year-old found in a separate rescue, are now in a shelter for abused children while the women face prosecution.



The arrests came just two weeks after Filipino authorities raided the home of an American man suspected of similar cybersex crimes, arresting David Timothy Deakin, 53, in his townhouse in Mabalacat. During that bust, agents from the National Bureau of Investigation rescued two girls, 10 and 12, who had spent time in Deakin's home, and made one of the largest seizures of illicit digital content in the Philippines. Dozens of hard drives and a handful of computers will be analyzed to search for other possible victims, as well as buyers.



Deakin, originally from Peoria, denied wrongdoing.



"They got it twisted around like somehow I was using those girls," he told The Associated Press after his April 20 arrest.

David Timothy Deakin, from Peoria, who is suspected of running a child webcam cybersex operation, is reflected in a mirror as investigators gather evidence during a raid at his home in Mabalacat, Philippines, on April 20, 2017. (Aaron Favila / AP)



The series of arrests and rescues underscore a rapidly growing crime in which children, even toddlers, are made to remove their clothes and touch themselves in obscene ways while adults, often their parents, train video cameras on them in exchange for payment from pedophiles abroad. Police in the Philippines are collaborating with their counterparts in Europe, Australia and the U.S. to investigate and prosecute.



The Australian Federal Police and U.S. FBI separately provided Filipino authorities information that led to the arrests of the mother and two other women on May 5, rescuing four girls. They were allegedly making the girls engage in sexually explicit acts while men in Australia and the U.S. watched. The women have been charged with human trafficking, child abuse, child pornography and cybercrime.



Police officer Arlyn Torrendon said she was part of a team that rescued three of the children and arrested the three women, including the mother of the siblings, Friday in a house in Bacolod city on an island about 445 miles south of Manila.



"The children were innocent. They were not even aware that they were being used in a crime," Torrendon told the AP by telephone from Bacolod.



She said the children came from an impoverished family; their mother was a widow.

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Gen. Liborio Carabbacan of the National Police Women and Children Protection Center gestures during an interview in Manila, Philippines, on April 21, 2017. Filipino authorities have arrested three women who were allegedlylive-streaming sexually exploitative videos of girls to men paying by the minute to watch from half a world away. Carabbacan said the exploitation is increasing in the Philippines because many people are gaining internet access and English fluency is common, making it possible to communicate with would-be customers in North America, Australia and Europe. (Aaron Favila / AP)





Gen. Liborio Carabbacan at the National Police Women and Children Protection Center said the incidents are increasing in the Philippines because many people are gaining access to the internet and English fluency is common, making it possible to communicate with would-be customers. Also, he said, parents and relatives, motivated by greed, are often not even aware that it is against the law to exploit their children.

The livestream abuse happens in many of Philippines' densely populated, impoverished neighborhoods, said attorney Gideon Cauton, who works with the nonprofit International Justice Mission. The organization provides social workers, shelters, lawyers and even former U.S. police detectives to local law enforcement, who don't have enough resources to tackle all cases of online sexual exploitation of children.



In metropolitan Manila, where gleaming condominium high-rises and stores selling designer clothes and cars stand in stark contrast to the squalor of the slums, Cauton pointed to Wi-Fi antennas rising from rooftops above a long stretch of shanties and rundown houses. In the past, the antennas amid crushing poverty were red flags, sparking suspicion of cybersex crimes. Today pocket Wi-Fi, cellphone internet and other technology have rendered those irrelevant, driving the crime even further behind the scenes.



"This type of crime is really hidden," he said. "Usually the family and community, they are complicit, and these are tight-knit communities, very dense areas."



In the U.S., the proliferation of crimes, along with new mandatory reporting, led to 8.2 million reports last year to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's CyberTipline related to online child sexual exploitation. That compares with 8.3 million reports in the 17 years prior.



One of those reports led authorities in the U.S. to Karl Touset, 72, of Marietta, Ga., who was sentenced to prison for 10 years in March after Homeland Security Investigations agents found evidence on his computers that he had paid facilitators in the Philippines more than $55,000 over three years for images of girls being sexually exploited.



"Unfortunately, extreme poverty in many parts of the world affords individuals like Touset the opportunity to exploit children across national borders," said U.S. Attorney John Horn in a statement after the sentencing.



Read the AP's story on the earlier raid of Deakin's home here.

An FBI computer analyst examines the computer of David Timothy Deakin, from Peoria, who is suspected of operating a child webcam cybersex service in Mabalacat, Philippines. (Aaron Favila / AP)
TULSA, Okla.  The supervisor of a white Oklahoma police officer who shot an unarmed black man testified Thursday that he told her to say nothing about the incident because he knew the shooting would be racially explosive.

Tulsa police Cpl. Wyett Poth testified Thursday about his directions to Officer Betty Jo Shelby after the shooting of Terence Crutcher. He said he walked up to Shelby at the shooting scene to make sure she knew she had the right to say nothing.

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"I told her not to say a word. I knew there was going to be a group of people that didn't like what happened simply because of the color of somebody's skin," he testified.

The testimony came in the second day of Shelby's manslaughter trial for the Sept. 16 shooting.

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Crutcher's SUV had stalled in the middle of a city street. Shelby, 43, had said the 40-year-old Crutcher wasn't obeying commands and kept reaching for his pockets, and that she shot him because she thought he was reaching into his vehicle for a gun. Crutcher didn't have a gun on him or in his SUV.

Prosecutors argued during their opening statement that Shelby overreacted when she shot Crutcher last September.

The shooting was captured on police helicopter and dashcam video, and one of the witnesses who testified Wednesday was officer Michael Richert, who was in the helicopter above the scene. In radio chatter moments before Shelby shot Crutcher, Richert said Crutcher looked "like a bad dude" who "could be on something."

Richert's statements outraged Crutcher's family, who said it indicated a racial bias.

On Wednesday, Richert was among the six witnesses who testified that they weren't aware of anything Crutcher may have said or did to signal that he was a threat to the officers on the ground. He told prosecutors he "had no idea" if Crutcher was on something as he watched from above and that his comments weren't based on Crutcher's appearance.

"I was basing those statements on everything in the totality of the circumstances," Richert said.

Tulsa Police officer Betty Jo Shelby arrives at the Tulsa County Courthouse on May 11, 2017, for her manslaughter trial in the shooting death of Terence Crutcher, in Tulsa, Okla. (Mike Simons / Tulsa World via AP)

Richert also testified that he watched Crutcher walk away from Shelby with his hands up. He said it was highly unusual for a person to do that while not complying with commands and while an officer has a gun pointed at him, the Tulsa World reported.

Shelby's attorneys have said Crutcher refused Shelby's commands to lie down during a two-minute period before police cameras recorded the shooting.

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Shelby also told police investigators that she believed Crutcher to be high on PCP, a powerful hallucinogenic that can make users combative and unpredictable. An autopsy found the drug in his system, and police said they recovered a vial of it in Crutcher's SUV.
Before being assembled into something recognizable at a museum, most dinosaur fossils look to the casual observer like nothing more than common rocks. No one, however, would confuse the over 110 million-year-old nodosaur fossil for a stone.

The fossil, being unveiled Friday in Canada's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology, is so well preserved it looks like a statue.

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Even more surprising might be its accidental discovery, as unveiled in the June issue of National Geographic magazine.

On March 21, 2011, Shawn Funk was digging in Alberta's Millennium Mine with a mechanical backhoe, when he hit "something much harder than the surrounding rock." A closer look revealed something that looked like no rock Funk had ever seen, just "row after row of sandy brown disks, each ringed in gunmetal gray stone."

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What he had found was a 2,500-pound dinosaur fossil, which was soon shipped to the museum in Alberta, where technicians scraped extraneous rock from the fossilized bone and experts examined the specimen.

"I couldn't believe my eyes - it was a dinosaur," Donald Henderson, the curator of dinosaurs at the museum, told Alberta Oil. "When we first saw the pictures we were convinced we were going to see another plesiosaur (a more commonly discovered marine reptile)."

More specifically, it was the snout-to-hips portion of a nodosaur, a "member of the heavily-armored ankylosaur subgroup," that roamed during the Cretaceous Period, according to Smithsonian. This group of heavy herbivores, which walked on four legs, likely resembled a cross between a lizard and a lion - but covered in scales.

Unlike its cousins in the ankylosaur subgroup, the nodosaur lacked a bony club at the end of its tail, instead using armor plates, thick knobs and two 20-inch spikes along its armored side for protection, according to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

"These guys were like four-footed tanks," dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford told The Washington Post in 2012.

This particular one, according to a news release, was 18 feet long and weighed around 3,000 pounds.

As Michael Greshko wrote for National Geographic, such level of preservation "is a rare as winning the lottery." He continued:

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The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling it becomes. Fossilized remnants of skin still cover the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal's skull. Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five digits splayed upward. I can count the scales on its sole. Caleb Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, grins at my astonishment. "We don't just have a skeleton," he tells me later. "We have a dinosaur as it would have been."

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The reason this particular dinosaur was so well preserved is likely due to a stroke of good luck.

Researchers believe it was on a river's edge, perhaps having a drink of water, when a flood swept it downriver.

Eventually, the land creature floated out to the sea - which the mine where it was found once was - and sank to the bottom.

There, minerals quickly "infiltrated the skin and armor and cradled its back, ensuring that the dead nodosaur would keep its true-to-life form as eons' worth of rock piled atop it."

That is a boon to researchers, particularly given that teeth and bone fragments are much more common finds.

"Even partially complete skeletons remain elusive," Smithsonian reported.
A view of the proposed Obama Presidential Center campus from the southwest shows the Museum Building, Forum Building and Library Building surrounding a public plaza in Chicago's Jackson Park. (Obama Foundation)

From Boston's John F. Kennedy Library to Southern California's tribute to Ronald Reagan, America's 13 major presidential libraries get about $65 million a year from the federal government. That opens the facilities, which typically gloss over their namesakes' faults, to criticism that they are taxpayer-funded "centers for presidential spin."

The Obama Presidential Center in Chicago's Jackson Park will take a different route, opting out of the presidential library network operated by the National Archives and Records Administration and the millions of dollars in federal support that go along with membership.

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Agency officials on Thursday confirmed the split, which was not disclosed last week when former President Barack Obama unveiled conceptual designs for the center. In the months leading up to the announcement, it was widely assumed that the center would have a presidential library, full of documents and artifacts, that was part of the NARA system.

"It's surprising," said University of Louisville professor Benjamin Hufbauer, author of a book on presidential libraries. "My short take is that it's good news. Most of [the libraries] are centers for presidential spin. They're propaganda centers run by the federal government. Should the government be doing that for presidents?"

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According to the conceptual designs, the Obama center will be a three-building complex consisting of a high-rise museum tower and two low-slung structures: a "forum" containing an auditorium and a library building. In a break with convention, the latter will not house a collection of presidential documents and artifacts. Those will be stored in existing NARA facilities. Nonclassified documents will be available online.

The break from the National Archives will free up the Obama Foundation, the nonprofit group charged with building the center and raising funds for it, in several ways.

The foundation won't have to amass an endowment equivalent to 60 percent of the construction cost of a NARA-operated presidential library. The foundation also won't have to adhere to the agency's stringent architectural and design standards for presidential libraries. And it won't have to pay NARA to help run an agency-controlled portion of the center.

All that could save the foundation tens of millions of dollars, more than making up for the loss of federal funds.

Indeed, Hufbauer said, the foundation will be able to channel money that would have gone to the endowment to programs and unconventional features of the center that Obama mused about last week. They include a recording studio that the former president said would be built to host artists like Bruce Springsteen, Chance the Rapper and Spike Lee.

Amy Brundage, a spokesman for the foundation, characterized the new arrangement with NARA as "mutually beneficial."

It "better reflects the way people access information in this digital age. Our goal here was to create, with NARA, a new model for the next generation of presidential centers," Brundage said in an email.

Yet the arrangement confounded expectations previously expressed by NARA officials.

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In a 2015 web post, for example, U.S. Archivist David Ferriero said the planned Obama library would increase NARA's presence on Chicago's South Side, "where we already have the National Archives at Chicago and a Federal Records Center."

The shift also appeared to disrupt the plans of the center's architects, Tod Williams and Billie Tsien of New York. A large-scale model of the center that they displayed last week envisioned the library building as a NARA-type facility, largely devoted to storage.

Questioned about that aspect of the plan, the architects said it was no longer current.

A NARA spokesman, James Pritchett, confirmed Thursday that the Obama center would not receive funds from the National Archives. However, if NARA lends documents or artifacts to the Obama center's museum for display, the center would be subject to the agency's regulations regarding those materials.

Brundage did not respond to questions about the estimated cost of the Obama Presidential Center and the foundation's fundraising goal. The center is expected to cost at least $500 million.

On Thursday, the Obama Foundation released a study which estimated that the center will have an economic impact of $2.1 billion on Chicago's South Side during construction and its first 10 years of operation.

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A groundbreaking is expected to be held in 2018. Foundation leaders have said the center will open in 2021.

In fiscal 2015, NARA provided a total of about $65 million to the 13 presidential libraries. The library of the most recently built presidential center, devoted to the presidency of George W. Bush, received $6.2 million. Boston's Kennedy library got more than $7 million, the most of all the facilities. Herbert Hoover's, in Iowa, received the lowest amount, about $2.2 million.

The modern concept of presidential libraries began in 1939 when President Franklin Roosevelt donated his personal papers to the federal government and formed a nonprofit group to raise money to build the library on his estate in Hyde Park, N.Y.

When President Harry Truman decided he wanted a library, too, Congress passed the Presidential Libraries Act in 1955, creating the system of privately erected and federally maintained libraries.

As the number of presidential libraries grew, Congress in 1986 required foundations to create a private endowment to offset increasing operating costs. The George W. Bush Foundation, for example, raised more than $500 million to build the library and cover the endowment.

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Obama would have been required to have an endowment equal to 60 percent of the cost of the library portion of the center under a 2008 law. His most recent predecessors needed to reach only a 20 percent threshold.

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Barbara Blonsky of Mt. Laurel, N.J., protests outside a town meeting held by U.S. Rep. Tom MacArthur in Willingboro, N.J., on May 10, 2017. MacArthur, who played a key role in helping the GOP-led U.S. House pass an Affordable Care Act replacement bill faced angry voters at a town hall Wednesday, with charged questions about health care and President Donald Trump. (Tom Gralish / AP)

The other day, Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., held a town hall meeting where constituents grilled him about his role in passing the American Health Care Act. When he claimed the insurance market is "collapsing," a chant went up: "Single-payer, single-payer!"

That chant will be heard again, and it should worry Republicans. It reflects the fact that their replacement for Obamacare is unpopular even before its effects have been felt. It suggests that undoing Barack Obama's alleged government takeover of health care could open the way to a real government takeover of health care.

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One House Republican said in 2012, "Today America is threatened with a Stage 3 cancer of socialism, and Obamacare is Exhibit 1." In reality, it was a centrist attempt to preserve the existing framework  which relies mostly on private insurance, largely provided by employers  while using various measures to expand the number of people with coverage.

Though some Democrats preferred a single-payer system similar to Canada's, Obama rejected it, and his party mostly concurred. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has long favored the idea, acknowledged in 2010 that "in the Senate, there are at most 10 votes for a single-payer plan."

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But the GOP rallied furiously against Obama's blueprint, nearly kept it from being enacted and opposed its implementation at every turn. Republicans in Congress vowed to repeal and replace it if they ever had the chance, which this year they do.

They've found that the task was more alluring in theory than it is in practice. For most of its life, the Affordable Care Act has been underwater in opinion polls, with a plurality of Americans taking a negative view. But since Donald Trump became president, its popularity has grown.

A March Monmouth University poll showed that 58 percent of Americans favor keeping it, and a Quinnipiac University survey found that only 17 percent support the GOP replacement plan.

Republicans are learning what Democrats discovered: Americans are maddeningly hard to please. They dislike paying for health insurance, jumping through hoops to get it, dealing with claim forms and copayments, and being denied whatever they want whenever they want it.

In 2007, according to Gallup, 56 percent of Americans said there were "major problems" with our health care system. Only 25 percent were satisfied with the "availability of affordable health care." But when Obama tried to address those issues, they were not happy with his remedies. Rest assured, though, that if Republicans repeal it, citizens will almost certainly dislike the replacement.

If none of these options is satisfactory, what others are left? The obvious one is a single-payer system, with the federal government providing coverage financed with tax revenue.

That's the worst option from the GOP point of view. And it has a surplus of flaws. Sanders' plan, according to the center-left Urban Institute, would swell the federal budget by more than $3 trillion a year and increase the nation's total spending on health care. Liberal economist Paul Starr of Princeton University says it "would require staggering increases in federal taxes."

But if Democrats regain power, they will have no reason to tinker with the status quo. Obama tried that and got vilified. They might as well try something that would be simpler to explain and more far-reaching in its effects.

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There are grounds to think a single-payer system would be comparatively popular. A third of Americans are already in one  through Medicare, Medicaid, or military or veterans insurance. Three-quarters of people in these programs are satisfied  a higher figure than among those with employer-provided or individual policies.

Single-payer systems are not the only path to near-universal coverage. The U.S. could achieve it with some combination of employer-based insurance, subsidized coverage for individuals and adequately funded high-risk pools, alongside Medicare and Medicaid.

But if Republicans succeed in scrapping the law, they will reduce the number of people with insurance rather than expand it. They will also ensure that upon regaining power, Democrats will not bother resurrecting Obamacare.

Democrats are more likely to try to build a single-payer system one brick at a time. Starr, for example, proposes "Midlife Medicare"  opening the program to uninsured people between ages 50 and 64. Further expansions could follow when the time is right.

Republicans had better find a way to meet the expectation of near-universal coverage if they want to preserve our system of private health insurance. They may never get another chance.

Steve Chapman, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/chapman. Download "Recalculating: Steve Chapman on a New Century" in the free Printers Row app at www.printersrowapp.com.

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What to read next:

Donald Trump looks like someone with a lot to hide

Ivanka Trump just doesn't get it

Sean Spicer, have you no decency?

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If Trump gets away with this, America will be seen as a failing state
WASHINGTON  It was implausible that FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017 for actions committed in July 2016  the rationale contained in the memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

It was implausible that Comey was fired by President Donald Trump for having been too tough on Hillary Clinton, as when, at that July news conference, he publicly recited her various email misdeeds despite recommending against prosecution.

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It was implausible that Trump fired Comey for, among other things, reopening the Clinton investigation 11 days before the election, something that at the time Trump praised as a sign of Comey's "guts" that had "brought back his reputation."

It was implausible that Trump, a man notorious for being swayed by close and loyal personal advisers, fired Comey on the recommendation of a sub-Cabinet official whom Trump hardly knew and who'd been on the job all of two weeks.

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It was implausible that Trump found Rosenstein's arguments so urgently persuasive that he acted immediately  so precipitously, in fact, that Comey learned of his own firing from TVs that happened to be playing behind him.

These implausibilities were obvious within seconds of Comey's firing and the administration's immediate attempt to pin it all on the Rosenstein memo. That was pure spin. So why in reality did Trump fire Comey?

Admittedly, Comey had to go. The cliche is that if you've infuriated both sides, it means you must be doing something right. Sometimes, however, it means you must be doing everything wrong.

Over the last year, Comey has been repeatedly wrong. Not, in my view, out of malice or partisanship (although his self-righteousness about his own probity does occasionally grate). He was in an unprecedented situation with unpalatable choices. Never in American presidential history had a major party nominated a candidate under official FBI investigation. (Turns out the Trump campaign was under investigation as well.) Which makes the normal injunction that FBI directors not interfere in elections facile and impossible to follow. Any course of action  disclosure or silence, commission or omission  carried unavoidable electoral consequences.

Comey had to make up the rules as he went along. He did. That was not his downfall. His downfall was making up contradictory, illogical rules, such as the July 5 nonindictment indictment of Clinton.

A series of these  and Comey became anathema to both Democrats and Republicans. Clinton blamed her loss on two people. One of them was Comey.

And there's the puzzle. There was ample bipartisan sentiment for letting Comey go. And there was ample time from Election Day on to do so. A simple talk, a gold watch, a friendly farewell, a Comey resignation to allow the new president to pick the new director. No fanfare, no rancor.

True, this became more difficult after March 20 when Comey revealed that the FBI was investigating the alleged Trump-Russia collusion. Difficult but not impossible. For example, just last week Comey had committed an egregious factual error about the Huma Abedin emails that the FBI had to abjectly walk back in a written memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Here was an opportunity for a graceful exit: Comey regrets the mistake and notes that some of the difficult decisions he had previously made necessarily cost him the confidence of various parties. Time for a clean slate. Add the usual boilerplate about not wanting to be a distraction at such a crucial time. Awkward perhaps, but still dignified and amicable.

Instead we got this  a political ax murder, brutal even by Washington standards. (Or even Roman standards. Where was the vein-opening knife and the warm bath?) No final meeting, no letter of resignation, no presidential thanks, no cordial parting. Instead, a blindsided Comey ends up in a live-streamed O.J. Bronco ride, bolting from Los Angeles to be flown, defrocked, back to Washington.

Why? Trump had become increasingly agitated with the Russia-election investigation and Comey's very public part in it. If Trump thought this would kill the inquiry and the story, or perhaps even just derail it somewhat, he's made the blunder of the decade. Whacking Comey has brought more critical attention to the Russia story than anything imaginable. It won't stop the FBI investigation. And the confirmation hearings for a successor will become a nationally televised forum for collusion allegations, which up till now have remained a scandal in search of a crime.

So why did he do it? Now we know: The king asked whether no one would rid him of this troublesome priest, and got so impatient he did it himself.

Washington Post Writers Group

Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist.

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President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey in the midst of an FBI investigation of the Trump campaign doesn't look any better with age.

Trump told Comey on Tuesday he was being dismissed in order to restore trust and confidence in the agency. But since then the opposite is occurring: The president and his underlings are waging a heavy-handed campaign to discredit Comey and diminish the significance of the investigation, with the apparent goal of beating the FBI into submission.

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That danger is real. But the FBI's mission and culture are strong protections against political interference in the agency's sensitive work. Comey went down fighting to maintain control of the Trump campaign investigation, and the FBI's new acting director, Andrew McCabe, appears just as determined and independent-minded as Comey. "You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," McCabe told the Senate intelligence committee Thursday.

That's a good sound bite, made more convincing by McCabe's direct contradictions of the shifting anti-Comey storyline coming out of the White House. McCabe told senators that the investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia is "highly significant." McCabe said he wouldn't tolerate interference from the White House. He said he wouldn't allow Comey's departure to hinder progress of the investigation, nor would he provide the White House with updates. McCabe also contradicted assertions by Trump and other administration officials that Comey needed to be dismissed because he had lost the confidence of rank-and-file agents. "I can tell you that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe testified.

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Where to begin with the White House version of events? On Wednesday, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters the Russia probe is one of "the smallest things" the FBI has "going on their plate." She used that characterization to justify why Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation, should maintain involvement in choosing Comey's permanent replacement.

The White House, meanwhile, continues to frantically update its rationale for getting rid of Comey. His dismissal was accompanied by the release of a memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that focused entirely on Comey's handling of last year's investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails. That explanation went over like a balloon filled with rocks because it was irrelevant and implausible: Trump had been perfectly happy with that investigation, since it derailed Clinton's candidacy.

It's clearer now that the Rosenstein memo was meant to be short-term legal cover. Trump acknowledged Thursday in an interview with Lester Holt of NBC that he had decided to get rid of Comey regardless of Rosenstein's recommendation. Trump called Comey a "showboat" and was reportedly incensed by Comey's appearance before Congress last week in which the then-director confessed to being "mildly nauseous" about the idea that his late October decision to reopen the Clinton investigation may have cost her the election.

Trump also told Holt that he'd asked Comey directly if he, Trump, was a target of the investigation. "I said, if it's possible would you let me know, 'Am I under investigation?' He said, 'You are not under investigation.' " We weren't privy to that conversation, of course, but the idea that Trump, as Comey's boss, was asking for specific information about an ongoing investigation would have been a conflict of interest. The answer Trump obviously wanted to hear was "no," and the answer we would have expected Comey to provide is "I can't tell you." After all, targets of an investigation shift over time. McCabe was asked Thursday about the exchange. He didn't say much, but did tell the committee that it's not standard practice to inform someone that he or she isn't a target.

What we are witnessing now is an unseemly scramble by the White House to tamp down a story that isn't going to go away. Neither will the FBI. The agency has important work to do. It needs the time and space to finish the job.

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In recent years, Americans have gotten used to seeing partisans in Washington stick with their allies through thick and thin. Barack Obama got no Republican support for the Affordable Care Act. The GOP replacement bill passed the House recently with all 193 Democrats voting no. Truly bipartisan efforts on major issues are vanishingly rare.

In some ways, this development is perfectly reasonable, reflecting principled differences between two parties that uphold coherent political philosophies. Expecting Democrats to vote for bills built on Republican tenets is like expecting Mormons to go to Mass.

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Yet there are times when the issues before Congress are not about competing ideologies. Instead, they are about upholding the nation's bedrock values and preserving our system of government and law.

The controversy over the alleged connections between Donald Trump's campaign and the Russian government, and the related uproar over the president's firing of FBI Director James Comey, should transcend party loyalties. But let's be realistic: The president is not likely to get any slack from Democrats  even those who had denounced Comey last year. If there comes a time when the facts exonerate Trump, it's hard to think of a prominent Democrat who will step up to say so.

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Republicans are in a different position. They owe a measure of loyalty to the man they nominated for president  and to their voters who chose him in the party's 2016 primaries. They share much of his policy agenda, and they need to work with him to advance their legislative goals. But they also have a duty to hold him to the standards of conduct they would expect of any president.

Trump has clearly fallen short there. The abrupt firing of Comey, and the stream of conflicting explanations of it, showed his disdain for traditional norms as well as poor judgment. But whether he crossed any legal line in his handling of the FBI director is far from certain. And the Russia matter, whose investigation infuriates Trump, is a mass of questions yet to be answered.

Many if not most Republicans will be determined to defend him against what they see as a hypocritical outcry from Democrats bent on derailing his presidency. So it will be up to a relatively small number of GOP members of Congress to serve as the champions of truth, no matter what.

Already some have made it clear they wouldn't overlook incriminating evidence about Trump, should it surface. Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have endorsed an independent inquiry. Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona said he couldn't find a plausible justification for the Comey firing. Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska said it contributes to a "crisis of public trust." Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia have said they haven't ruled out supporting an independent counsel to take over the investigation.

We think that would be a mistake, given what is known so far. There are already three probes well underway  by the FBI and the House and Senate intelligence committees. These bodies have the ample tools they require to unearth the needed evidence. Until such time as they prove themselves unable or unwilling to do the job, they should be given a wide berth.

What is important is that the administration knows it can't count on blind allegiance from its own party. During the Watergate scandal, it was responsible, conscientious, patriotic Republicans who proved pivotal in impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon  and in persuading him to resign the presidency.

Their real distinction was not that they were willing to turn against their own president. It was that they were prepared to do whatever the evidence and the nation's fundamental ideals demanded, regardless of politics.

We trust there are enough Republicans in Congress with a similar resolve today. A great deal depends on them.

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A member of the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) walks with a Kalashnikov assault rifle slung behind his back in the town of al-Karamah, 26 kms from the Islamic State (IS) group bastion of Raqa, on May 10, 2017. (Delil Souleiman / AFP/Getty Images)

The long, bloody bid to run Islamic State out of Mosul, the militant group's last major stronghold in Iraq, is in its seventh month. It's a testament to the time and patience it takes to defeat Islamic State fighters entrenched in an urban environment. Count on the same measure of time and patience to retake Raqqa, Islamic State's de facto capital in war-wracked Syria.

But one crucial steppingstone in the campaign to oust the militant group from Raqqa was finally reached Tuesday, when President Donald Trump decided to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters poised to move in on the northern Syrian city.

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The Pentagon will supply Kurdish forces with heavy machine guns, armored cars, anti-tank weapons and mortars  supplies regarded as pivotal against an enemy that has fortified itself with trenches, booby traps, car bombs and even tanks taken from Syrian army forces. Why Kurdish forces? Because Syrian Kurds have the best track record for retaking territory from Islamic State.

Arming the Kurds is the right tack for Trump to take, a decision that for months we have been urging both Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, to make. Behind the reluctance by both administrations has been a strong concern over how Turkey will react. Syrian Kurdish forces, also known as the YPG, are fighting under the umbrella of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, alongside Syrian Arab forces. Turkey has long regarded the YPG as a terrorist force linked with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, a separatist group that Ankara has clashed with for decades. Turkey, along with the U.S. and Europe, lists the party, known as the PKK, as a terrorist organization.

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The reaction to Trump's decision from Turkey, a NATO member and an important ally in the fight against Islamic State, was swift and blunt. Its defense minister, Fikri Isik, said Wednesday that the decision plunges Washington and Ankara into a "crisis." He warned cryptically that Turkey, which has its own troops in Syria, has the authority to defend its interests in that country.

The Pentagon and State Department will need to work fast to get Turkey to, if not support the decision to arm the Kurds, at least acquiesce to it. The U.S. has already made it clear that once Raqqa is liberated, Syrian Arabs rather than Kurds will govern the city. And American officials have stressed that the U.S. will try to ensure that the arms supplied to Kurdish fighters aren't smuggled out for separatist attacks on Turkish interests.

So far, that hasn't been enough to mollify Turkey. Trump and his team will get a chance to chip away at Ankara's objections when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visits Washington next week.

So much is at stake: The U.S. cannot afford to alienate a Turkish government that remains crucial in the ongoing battle against Islamist militancy. But vital to that battle is the defeat of Islamic State in Raqqa. Victory for the West there, coupled with success in Mosul, would deprive Islamic State of its two primary nerve centers in the Middle East.

Arming the Kurds is a good first step.

Safeguarding ties with Turkey is the next.

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The lengthy Tribune story "How the bond system fosters cycle of violence" tries to illustrate what some believe is a basic flaw in the criminal law's bail-bond release of persons accused of a crime when they post 10 percent of the bond set by a judge.

Most of the story focuses on Comfort Robinson, an alleged gang leader with a lengthy criminal history, and Michael Smith, a security guard and the chief prosecution witness against Robinson. The incident giving rise to the criminal charges against Robinson occurred at a club where Smith tossed out Robinson. Robinson then pulled a gun and threatened to kill those involved in his ejection.

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Robinson's bond was set at $200,000, and he was later released when $20,000 bail was posted on his behalf.

The story continues that Robinson arranged a contract murder of Smith, for $10,000, by a rival gang member. Smith was later killed in a hail of bullets.

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The shooter, Robinson and others have been arrested and charged. Robinson is in custody on a no-bond order, awaiting trial.

The Tribune story suggests that, because Robinson was released on $20,000 bail, Robinson was able to arrange Smith's murder and that the murder would not have occurred if Robinson had not been released from custody. This is pure speculation.

As reported, Robinson is no ordinary criminal. He is a clever and astute gang leader with a long criminal history. It is fair to say that Robinson's alleged plot to have Smith killed by a rival gang member, and its execution, could have happened whether or not Robinson was in custody.

The Robinson/Smith illustration does not fairly represent how the bail-bond system works, and it certainly does not demonstrate how the bail-bond system "fosters" and feeds the "cycle of violence."

 Dennis M. Dohm, retired circuit judge, Oak Lawn
Too many teacher prep programs are doing a poor job of covering content that future science and social studies teachers need to master, according to a new report on the programs preparing high school teachers.

Only 57 percent of education programs are providing high school teacher candidates a strong enough foundation in the science and social studies subject matter they will need to do their job, claims the report released Thursday by the National Council on Teacher Quality, a Washington group that tracks teacher policies. The report evaluates 717 undergraduate programs that train high school teachers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on their coverage of subject-specific content, admissions requirements, and other topics.

Included in NCTQs list of top-ranked education programs are Arizona State University in Phoenix, Hunter College in New York, and the University of Minnesota in Duluth. Here is a list of the ed programs by ranking . NCTQs president Kate Walsh said in a press call that the report looks for the very basics of what a teacher needs in order to be prepared to lead a classroom, so the schools at the bottom of the list should set off alarm bells. She said that the lowest-ranked schools are not making sure teachers know their content or how to teach it. Its very disturbing.

While 81 percent of programs preparing future science teachers earned a grade of A, as measured by sufficient coursework and a passing grade on what NCTQ deems sufficient state licensure tests, only 65 percent of programs qualified for that grade when it came to preparing social studies teachers. The deficiency in the lower-performing programs in both subjects, the reports authors say, can be attributed to the needs of states and districts that clamor for teachers certified in more than one subject. Programs trying to prepare candidates to teach in more than one science or social studies subjectfor example, not just biology but also chemistry, earth science, and/or physicsdemonstrated a huge drop in quality.

Yet most states, 37, allow education programs to prepare teachers of subjects like chemistry and biology to earn certification in general science. You can imagine how much coursework you would need to major in physics, chemistry, earth science, and biology, Walsh said. You would be in college for 10 years. Programs struggle with the right balance, but there are many schools of ed that have figured that out and they are at the top of our list.

The study also found that only 42 percent of programs provide courses combining content knowledge with teaching method, and less than half of programs (47 percent) require high-quality experience doing practice teaching as part of their methods courses. Only 44 percent of programs evaluated their candidates teaching and classroom management, while the rest taught management skills but never observed candidates under real conditions.

Criticism of the Studys Methodology

NCTQs education school grades are based on evaluations of program materials including course catalogues, degree plans, course syllabi, and student-teaching agreements with districts, not on in-class observations. This method of judging education schools based on a review of documents and procedures has long been criticized .

Benjamin Riley, the founder and executive director of Deans for Impact , a coalition of education school directors that aims to overhaul teacher training, argues that document review doesnt warrant the judgements in the study. He said hes learned from visits to education schools that descriptions dont always capture whats actually going on in any given program. The reality is I dont look at these reports as being able to say very much about programs that are truly strong or truly falling behind, Riley told Education Week. More interesting to me is the higher-level data on which states are doing certification tests in which areas versus which states arent. Thats helpful. But when they get to specific claims about programs, thats where I think theyre on thinner ice.

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education also took issue with the studys methodology in this blog post . AACTE represents colleges and universities that have teacher-prep programs.

For her part, Walsh argues that visits to ed programs would be impractical for NCTQs purposes. Our lens is not to comment on the quality of instruction, she said. Our lens is to make sure teachers are getting the fundamentals of what they need.

Riley admits schools of education have work to do, but he doesnt see grading them as useful. People have been saying for a long time that colleges of education are hopeless, retrograde, choose whichever negative adjective you want to use, but the reality is there are outstanding folks out there working hard, he said. This is not to say that there isnt tremendous room for improvement, but the notion that theyre going to be shamed into improvement? I think that hypothesis has been tested, and I think we know what the evidence says.

This new study on education schools preparing high school teachers follows the December 2016 release of a report on education programs that prepare elementary teachers. You can read our breakdown of that earlier report here . Walsh said the studies show that programs preparing high school teachers are doing a better job than those preparing elementary teachers. Only 6 percent of programs adequately prepare elementary school teachers for their role in the classroom, according to Walsh. That is not the case at the high school level, which is comforting, said Walsh. The road is not as long to fix some of these problems.

NCTQs next review of teacher prep programs, due in fall 2017, will focus on graduate and alternative-route elementary programs.
Former President Barack Obama at the Seeds & Chips Global Food Innovation Summit in Milan on Tuesday, May 9, 2017. (Luca Bruno / AP)

A zombie argument is one that seems to be long dead until somebody brings it back to life. Barack Obama's post-presidency has raised a zombie argument: How should ex-presidents dress and behave?

"Barack! Get back here  we need you!," somebody posted on Richard Branson's Facebook page after a video went viral of Obama kitesurfing with the Virgin Group founder in the Virgin Islands.

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Another wrote with more sarcasm: "Much easier to be on that boat than helping the poor black American (sic) in Chicago , same old story, Democrat with elites and they say they are on the side of the little people, hypocrites."

Right. If I believed that writer really cared about poor black people in Chicago, I might take that message seriously. Maybe.

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Instead, I expect public opinion about the lifestyles of ex-presidents to be like opinions of every other public issue these days: polarized along party lines.

But regardless of political party, I'm not going to begrudge any ex-president's right to take a vacation after eight years as leader of the free world. That includes the peculiar, yet not-badly-executed picture that former President George W. Bush painted of his toes sticking out of the water as he rested in a bathtub. Priceless.

I'm not even upset, as some of Obama's supporters are, over the huge speaker fees and book contracts hauled in by Barack and Michelle Obama, since neither of them holds a public office or other apparent conflicts of interest.

Obama is slated to receive $400,000 for an upcoming speech to Wall Street bankers and an undisclosed amount estimated to be worth as much as $3.2 million (based on the price of the 3,500 tickets) for a speech at the Seeds & Chips Global Food Innovation Summit in Milan this past Tuesday.

And that's not including the estimated $60 million deal the Obamas signed for their yet-to-be-written post-White House books.

All of this buck-raking was described in a Fox News report (Where else?) as "deals that seemed to contradict his image as a champion of the 99 percent."

Ah, yes, the image. That concern might hold more water if the Obamas were not also busily raising money for social service projects  the $2 million the Obamas are donating toward two Chicago programs that provide summer jobs and apprenticeships, the Obama Foundation and the Obama Presidential Center, expected to cost at least $500 million, to be built on Chicago's South Side.

Like them or not, big speaker fees have become the norm for ex-presidents since at least 1989 when Ronald Reagan accepted $2 million (worth about twice that amount in today's dollars) for two speeches to a communications corporation in Japan.

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I will leave it to the Obamas and the marketplace to guard the integrity of the Obama brand. It is up to them to avoid the conflicts of which former President Bill and Hillary Clinton were accused in their operation of the Clinton Foundation  or for that matter, the questionable practices of which President Donald Trump has been accused, such as purchasing a 6-foot portrait of himself with his charity's money. That's not fake news. It's getting to be an old story.

But of all the complaints that I have heard raised by a post-presidency, the fussiest fault-finding comes these days from the fashion media. As GQ's site headlined after Obama's Milan speech Tuesday: "Barack Obama's post-presidency style called 'too casual.'"

Why? Because the nation's 44th president wore a tailored suit with  Gasp!  no necktie and with at least a couple of his shirt buttons left unbuttoned.

For most of us mortals, that would not be a big deal. But the fashionista press went wild.

New York magazine hailed him as a "Street Style Star." But GQ's Max Berlinger tsk-tsked that No. 44 might just be getting "a little too casual."

Berlinger was shocked to see that Obama, "in the most casual of business-casual outfits," had "left two buttons undone on his collared shirt, leading to a whole lot of open real estate in the chest region."

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"There's a skin-to-seriousness ratio that's being broken here," he wrote. "To wit, if you're going to wear a suit but go tieless, one undone button (and a shirt with a nice, stiff collar) is kinda the unspoken mandate."

Indeed. Well, call me a slob (It wouldn't be the first time) but I applaud our former president's effort to break through the walls of fashion fascism.

Maybe the man who used to be cool enough to be called "No Drama Obama" on the campaign trail can teach the fashionistas a thing or two.

Good luck with your battle against the necktie, Mr. President. A nation of guys tugging at uncomfortable collars salute you.

Clarence Page, a member of the Tribune Editorial Board, blogs at www.chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

cpage@chicagotribune.com

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Twitter @cptime
An Aurora man has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a young child he knew.

A Kane County jury on Thursday convicted Orane R. Foster, 24, of the 1300 block of Andover Drive, of four counts of predatory criminal sexual assault, each a class X felony, and aggravated criminal sexual abuse, a class 2 felony.

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Kane County prosecutors presented evidence that between June and August 2015, Foster sexually assaulted the victim. The victim was younger than 12 years old.

Kane County Judge James C. Hallock set Foster's next court appearance for July 7 for motions and sentencing. Foster faces a minimum sentence of 27 years in prison.

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In addition to the prison term, Foster must register for life as a sexual offender in accordance with the Illinois Sexual Offender Registration Act.

Foster had been free on $9,000 bond. Bond was revoked at conviction, and Foster was taken into custody at the Kane County Jail.
Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin spent his second full day as mayor testifying in Springfield for extension of an historic tax credit program beneficial to Aurora's downtown.

Irvin Wednesday asked the Illinois House Revenue Committee to quickly extend the River Edge Redevelopment Zone Historic Tax Credit because it has the potential to create hundreds of jobs and tens of millions of dollars in economic development for the state's second-largest city.

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Irvin joined state Rep. Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) -- the sponsor of the River Edge Historic Tax Credit extension -- in asking the committee to extend the credit through 2022.

The credit provides a state income-tax credit equal to 25 percent of a project's qualified expenditures to owners of certified historic structures located within River Edge Redevelopment Zones. The credit only applies to commercial and industrial properties and parallels the 20 percent federal historic preservation tax credit.

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The River Edge Redevelopment Zones apply to Aurora, East St. Louis, Elgin, Peoria and Rockford.

"During my campaign for mayor, one of my main platforms was that I would focus the first 100 days on controlling crime, improving education and fostering economic development," Irvin said. "The integrity and quality of Aurora's 180-year-old downtown will help in all three of these areas. That's why we need an extension of this historic tax credit."

The legislation is included in House Bill 2972 and Senate Bill 1783. The Senate has already passed the extension and now the bill is awaiting action in the House. Besides Chapa LaVia, sponsors include state Sen. Linda Holmes (D-Aurora) and state Rep. Stephanie Kifowit (D-Oswego), who is a former Aurora alderman.

Aurora's River Edge zone takes in about 2.5 square miles, and consists of the downtown and commercial and industrial corridors along the Fox River. Aurora was the first city to develop its River Edge zone, but several of the other river cities, such as Elgin and Rockford, have made good use of it, too. Aurora also was the first city to expand its River Edge zone when that was allowed several years ago.

That expansion allowed the city to take in the St. Charles Senior Living Center, a rehabilitated, 60-unit independent living facility. Formerly St. Charles Hospital, the historic Art Deco building was converted to modern senior housing as part of a $24 million redevelopment that began in February 2016. Designed by Wybe J. Van der Meer, the former hospital was completed in 1932, with additional renovations made to the interior of the structure in the decades that followed. Until the redevelopment, the building had been vacant since 2010, the year it was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

Irvin told the House Revenue Committee that the tax credit helps make redevelopment of historic properties competitive in Aurora.

"Often times property owners and developers in Aurora cannot make the rehabilitation of older properties economically feasible because the rehabilitation can often times equal the cost of new construction, thereby narrowing the number of interested, dedicated parties," Irvin said. "Also, in communities with similar characteristics as Aurora, the lease/sale rates that property owners can get in the market is less than in many other communities. And third, with construction costs a constant in the region, and coupling these sale/lease rates in Aurora, this gap puts the rehabilitation of older buildings in cities such as Aurora at a disadvantage."

The tax credits in the case of the St. Charles Senior Living Center provided the final piece of funding that made the project feasible. The tax credits allowed the developers to bring in millions in private investment, and use other state and federal programs.

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Similar arrangements could be available for such properties as the Hobbs and Terminal buildings in downtown Aurora, as well as a five-acre spot along the river by the Indian Trail bridge that was once the Soderstrom Pallett Co.

"Several other major downtown projects are in progress, but they all depend on the extension of the River Edge Historic Tax Credit," said Irvin.

The legislature last year extended the program through this year, but that is not enough time to get other projects going, which is why supporters are asking for it to be extended through 2022. Almost exactly a year ago, former Aurora Mayor Tom Weisner also was in Springfield lobbying for extension of the River Edge Redevelopment Zone program.

The Illinois General Assembly session is scheduled to end on May 30.

slord@tribpub.com
A week after his bail was reduced by more than half, Howard S. Flint remains held in Kane County Jail on allegations he sexually assaulted his girlfriend while armed with a knife earlier this year.

Flint, 54, of Geneva, faces a seven-count indictment charging him with aggravated criminal sexual assault, sexual assault, intimidation, aggravated unlawful restraint, aggravated assault and domestic battery in connection to the Feb. 2 incident inside the Westhaven Circle home he shared with the woman. Flint used a knife with a 6-inch blade to threaten the woman while preventing her from leaving a bedroom where the assault occurred, according to authorities and charging documents. The woman received medical treatment following the incident.

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A judge on May 3 agreed to lower Flint's bail to $150,000 from the original amount of $500,000, which was set at the time of his arrest. If Flint is able to post bond, he would be placed on the highest level of GPS monitoring, be barred from any contact with the woman and be required to wear an alcohol-monitoring device, documents show.

Flint is scheduled to return to court June 14 for arraignment.

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Dan Campana is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
The owners of Jimmy's Grill and Potter's Place in Naperville are looking to put a restaurant with an outdoor dining patio in downtown Oswego. (File photo / Chicago Tribune)

Two Naperville restaurateurs are a step closer to opening a Mexican restaurant in downtown Oswego.

The Oswego Village Board recently approved a purchase and sale agreement for property the village owns at 63 Washington St. for the project.

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"I am excited and love the idea," Trustee Ryan Kauffman said.

Andrew Trasatt and John Leahy, the owners of Potter's Place and Jimmy's Grill in downtown Naperville, have proposed building a 3,500-square-foot restaurant with a street-level patio and second-floor balcony for outdoor dining.

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Public improvements, such as streetscape upgrades for Washington and parking, are part of the proposal as well.

"We're excited as well," Trasatt told village trustees.

Trasatt said he was raised in Naperville and married a woman whose great aunt owned the Oswego Inn.

"I do have ties to Oswego," he said.

According to the village, the agreement designates Trasatt as the purchaser. Prior to formal closing of the real estate deal, the developer will have 90 days to go through the village's development approval process, which will include a public hearing before the Plan Commission.

Following that, the village will consider the approval of a redevelopment agreement that will specify the development terms, finalize the property's development plan and establish the use of any village incentives, including tax increment financing assistance to partially finance the project.

The village's focus to recruit new restaurant concepts is part of an overall economic redevelopment plan initiated through a newly created tax increment financing district that encourages developers to invest in downtown properties.

The redevelopment agreement could also adjust the $60,000 sale price for the parcel. Should either side not meet the timeline, the purchase and sale agreement will be voided, and the village will continue to own the property, according to village officials.

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"The downtown is an untapped opportunity," Trasatt said. "The direction you are going is phenomenal."

Trasatt said their plan is to open the restaurant in the spring of 2018.

"Ideally we would like to open one year from now. We would like for people to experience the patio during the summer  that's the exciting part of the whole restaurant," he said.

"We are all excited. Thank you for joining the family down here," Trustee Pam Parr said.

Linda Girardi is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.
Live Weed or Die: New Hampshire Votes to Decriminalize Marijuana

The New Hampshire State Senate voted 17-6 to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana yesterday, following a 318-36 vote from the House in March. But the Senate version differed slightly from the House version, so there are a few more legal hoops to jump through before New Hampshire residents can safely carry weed with them.

So what regulations did the Senate sign off on, and what might a finalized decriminalization bill look like?

Ounce of Prevention

While the House approved decriminalizing up to an ounce of marijuana, the Senate bill only allows up to three-quarters of an ounce of marijuana and up to five grams of hashish, according to Manchester's WMUR. A proposal for full legalization for recreational use was killed earlier last year. While proponents of legalization touted pot's ability to replace more dangerous alcohol consumption, anti-legalization arguments were bolstered by the state's burgeoning opioid crisis.

This compromise appears to have appeased both sides. House Representative Renny Cushing, who led his chamber's decriminalization efforts, told WMUR the House will likely accept the Senate version of the bill. Once that happens it will be passed to Governor Chris Sununu, who said after the vote that he "look[s] forward to signing House Bill 640 into law."

Fines for Cures

The New Hampshire law would specifically forbid police officers from arresting anyone for pot possession violations and take jail off the table for possession penalties. Instead, persons 18 years of age or older convicted of marijuana possession up to the legal limit would only be guilty of a violation. Fines would be $100 for the first or second offense, and up to $300 for any subsequent offense within a three-year period. Money collected from pot possession would then be designated to combat alcohol and substance abuse.

No date has been set for the House vote.

Related Resources:
A photo of the Popescu family, all with colllege degress, includes Nick, who was imprisoned in Romania before coming to America; Cornelia, a long-time nurse at Rush-Copley Medical Center and its recently-named Employee of the Year; and their children Ligia, now 43; Dina, now 41; and Josh, now 28 (Denise Crosby / The Beacon-News)

Interviewing Cornelia Popescu at her work place is not the easiest task.

She's worked there as a housekeeper, then a nurse  more on that in a minute  for 25 years and is so well known, so well-loved that everybody who sees her has to stop and say hello.

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Popescu is easy to like, one reason she was honored in March by Rush-Copley Medical Center as its 2016 Employee of the Year.

It also could be the cookies and other baked goods she brings to the staff on a regular basis.

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Or the fact she's considered one of the most knowledgeable and loving nurses in the hospital, hence her nickname, "Mama Cornelia."

"I put a lot of heart into my job," she said in her acceptance speech that was laced with both passion and humor. "I don't know how to do it any other way."

But it's also her back-story that makes Popescu so special. She arrived in America at age 26 with her husband Nick and two young daughters back in 1980, leaving behind their Romanian homeland in a quest for religious freedom and a better life.

The hardest part of parting with jobs, home, family and friends, she said, was knowing how difficult, perhaps even impossible, it would be to return, as her husband was not on good terms with the government when they left. According to Popescu, Nick was imprisoned and beaten after the militia incorrectly believed West German friends of theirs were spies, then he was imprisoned again after trying to escape Romania. But even after officials apologized for the mistake, the family was not allowed a passport or visa until Nick went on a 14-day hunger strike in protest.

When they were finally able to leave, she said, the family of four came to America only with a suitcase of clothes apiece. But like so many hopeful and grateful immigrants, they worked hard. Nick started off tarring roofs for $3.10 an hour, she said, coming home covered in black but "thanking God each night for the opportunity to feed his family." And she worked on an assembly line in an Aurora factory, learning to speak English, mostly by listening to soap operas, where the actors, she noted appreciatively, speak "clearly and loudly."

Cornellia Popescu, who came to America 30 years ago for religious freedom, started as a housekeeper at Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora and, as a long-time nurse there, was recently named its 2016 Employee of the Year (Denise Crosby / The Beacon-News)

"We were determined to keep up and get ahead," Popescu said. "Our goal was to gain independence. We just needed a little help and we received it from a supportive community."

Those small but important milestones in her life still cause her to tear up: purchasing that first car, or being able to place a McDonald's order for the first time. After being denied entry back in Romania, she was able to finally return seven years later, where she soon realized, despite family and friends still living there, "America had become my home."

Still, Popescu  who eventually moved from Aurora to Winfield, where she now resides, could not let go of her childhood dream of becoming a nurse. So when she was told Rush-Copley would pay employees for schooling, she set about getting a job as a housekeeper there, going to school at night and eventually earning her associate's degree from Waubonsee Community College. Her efforts were even featured on the front page of The Beacon-News on April 3, 1986, the same day she and her husband were granted citizenship.

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"That was such an emotional day," she recalled, holding a yellowed but treasured copy of the newspaper article.

Popescu went on to earn her bachelor's degree in nursing from Aurora University. The couple had a third "made in America" child, as she described son Josh. Her husband earned a degree in mechanical engineering from DeVry University. He recently retired after 30 years with Motorola. And she became such a much-loved fixture at Rush-Copley  she's currently working in medical/surgical  there were few who were surprised when Cornelia Popescu was named Employee of the Year for 2016.

Cornelia Popescue, Rush-Copley's Employee of the Year, was featured in a 1986 front page newspaper article on the day she became a U.S. citizen. (Denise Crosby / The Beacon-News)

In fact, the day after the awards dinner at Two Brothers Roundhouse, recalled Public Relations Manager Courtney Satlak, "that's all anyone could talk about was her acceptance speech."

"She's just awesome," declared Dr. Alice Daniele, an internal medicine physician who stopped by to say hello while I was interviewing Popescu. "She is definitely one of the best nurses we have here."

The fan parade continued.

"I love Cornelia," said Tricia Hook, her nursing colleague of nine years. "She's without doubt one of the sweetest people I know  she's our work mom."

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Maria del Carmen, customer service coordinator and medical interpreter, even remembers Popescu as her favorite nurse when she was a patient at Rush-Copley 16 years ago.

"She was so caring," del Carmen said. "She helped create such good memories here."

Even after Popescu retires next year, she plans on making memories, coming back as a volunteer so she can spend more time with patients who don't have loved ones who visit or even send cards.

"Everyone has a story to share," she noted, "and we all need that human contact."

Cornelia Popescu came to America because she saw this as "the land of opportunity,' as she said in her speech. But we are the ones lucky to have her among us.

Dcrosby@tribpub.com
Before they were shipped to orphans in Ukraine, portraits created by Richards High School students were put on display in the school library for parents to see. ( District 218)

Ayah Kurdi spent so much time studying the face of her 17-year-old portrait class subject that "I kind of developed a little crush on him," she said.

Ayah, a 17-year-old senior, was one of more than 50 students at Richards High School in Oak Lawn who participated in a weeks-long art unit for The Memory Project, a nonprofit that aims to increase kindness and global awareness by connecting students in the United States with children living in difficult situations around the world.

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With the help of a grant from the District 218 Foundation, students in three of Michelle Richardella's art classes were invited to paint portraits of children in Ukraine, many of whom had been orphaned or were living in extreme hardship due to that country's ongoing conflict with Russia.

Each year, The Memory Project receives photos of children who have endured violence, extreme poverty or neglect from global charities and shares them with art teachers who devise a portraiture unit around the topic, inviting students to choose a subject, study the person's face and then paint his or her portrait.

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When the portraits are complete, The Memory Project delivers them to the children in the photographs and produces a video of them being received.

Since 2004, The Memory Project has delivered more than 100,000 portraits to children in 43 countries.

Trashante Watkins holds her painting of a Ukraine orphan that she worked on in studio art class at Richards High School. More than 50 students participated in the project sponsored by the nonprofit group The Memory Project. The finished portraits were recently shipped to the troubled Eastern European nation and delivered to the children. (Donna Vickroy / Daily Southtown)

On a recent Thursday morning, students in Richardella's studio art class watched the video of portraits they and students at other schools made being delivered to children in Ukraine. Afterward, the class applauded.

"It made me happy to know they actually got the portraits because I wondered what if they get lost or something," Michelle Quinn, of Chicago Ridge, said.

She chose to paint a 3-year-old boy named Artem who had "an adorable" smile. And although she wasn't able to pick him out in the video, she said the joy displayed by the children featured made her believe that Artem felt the same way.

"Personally," the 17-year-old added, "I don't think I'm the best artist so I don't know why I chose to do this because it was a tricky thing to do. But it ended up working out really well. It ended up being one of my favorite projects because it was the first project that I actually really, really felt like I wanted to make so good. I really wanted to make him happy."

Richardella first learned about The Memory Project when she was a student teacher. Back then, she said, her students painted portraits of children in Indonesia. Now, as then, she said, the students responded positively.

"I definitely feel they were very engaged in the process. They felt a sense of ownership and really wanted to make this work," she said. "The project had a lot of purpose. To make something for somebody else, to use your skills to create some sort of positive impact in the world, is really cool."

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The students often "got really wrapped up in it, like, 'Oh my God, this eyebrow doesn't look like it's supposed to,'" she said.

The unit began with students researching Ukraine. They learned about the weather, the landscape, the culture, and the conflict that has devastated parts of the Eastern European country and left many children orphaned and living in extreme poverty.

The typical cost to participate in The Memory Project is $15 per portrait, but Richardella said the organization agreed to accept paintings from nearly 60 students in exchange for the school's $500 grant donation.

Before the portraits were shipped off, students wrote a letter to their subject about the experience. Parents were then invited to an exhibition of the artwork in the school library.

"If you're going to teach portraiture," Richardella said, "this is the best way to do it."

Some students chose to paint their subject literally, others took a bit of creative license.

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Jacob Perkins, 18, holds the portrait he painted for the Memory Project. The senior was among more than 50 Richards High School students who painted portraits of orphans living in the Eastern European nation of Ukraine. The finished artwork was recently delivered to the children. (Donna Vickroy / Daily Southtown)

Jacobs Perkins, 18, said, "I knew it was a big responsibility because it was for someone who has gone through a tough time."

Because of that, the Oak Lawn teen said, "I wanted my person to know I put my whole heart into it. I tried to make it look as close to him as possible. I took the assignment literally."

Most challenging, he said, was his subject's hair. "He had frosted tips and they were hard to get."

Trashante Watkins, 17, of Calumet Park, took a different approach to her subject, a 6-year-old named Diana.

"Her favorite color was pink so I changed the background to be pink with glitter. (In the photo) she had a flower crown on her head but I turned it into roses because I gave it a princess theme," Trashante said. "She looked like the girly type, so that's what I imagined for her."

Pink also was the favorite color of Shahd Issa's subject.

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The 16-year-old said she wrote in her letter to her 6-year-old subject how much she enjoyed painting her.

"It seemed like for a time she was my best friend," Shahd said.

"I enjoyed coming in every day and working on this. She had a beautiful smile. It really made me want to do well," she said. "I'm not very good at painting but I tried my best and I hope she likes it."

Ayah, who lives in Chicago Ridge, said she has plans to study forensic science at UCLA next fall but wouldn't mind visiting Ukraine someday, to actually meet her portrait subject, Yura.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

In his photograph, she said, "You could see the sadness in his eyes; they were probably the hardest to draw."

She said, "It was kind of hard knowing I have a life here but he has trouble over there. It kind of hit home and made me think about what he probably doesn't have."

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The project, she added, "felt right to do. It made me wonder what can I do to help, to make him feel it will be OK."

To learn more about The Memory Project, go to www.memoryproject.org/

To watch the video of children in Ukraine receiving painted portraits of themselves created by students at Richards and other high schools, go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgefs8JhwIQ

dvickroy@tribpub.com

Twitter @dvickroy
Severall Southland seniorshave been offered more than $1 million each in merit-based scholarships. (L-R) Jeremiah Price, Adam Milne, Toby Bassingthwaite, Iyanna Counts, Chyna Sanders, Brianna Carpenter, Camille Johnson all point to schools they plant to attend (Southland College Prep)

One by one, all 117 members of the Southland College Prep Charter High School senior class stepped up to a map of the United States and marked where they were going to college.

Every senior in the Richton Park school has been accepted to college, earning over $25 million collectively in merit-based scholarships, according to the school's chief executive officer Blondean Davis, who also serves at the Matteson School District 162 superintendent. On Thursday, the school made the announcement, celebrating with the students.

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"I think they have in essence brought themselves to this point," said Davis, calling the senior class "cohesive." "These children are thinkers."

With few exceptions, the students are mostly African-American, with diverse economic backgrounds, according to a school statement. Though publicly-funded, admission is via a lottery system from 27 different feeder schools. This year, the senior class included 11 percent special education students, all of whom will be attending college and will receive merit-based scholarships.

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Senior Camille Johnson, 17, of Olympia Fields is ranked second in her class, said it is a "privilege and a duty to help others" who struggle in school. College has always been a goal that was set early in her life by her family. That is why she created a tutoring group at the school to help students in areas of science, technology, engineering and math. She was accepted to 20 colleges, and chose the University of Chicago to become an oncologist. She has been a paid intern at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center for the past two summers.

Many of the students have similarly diverse backgrounds. Valedictorian John Anderson, III, 18, from Matteson, will attend the University of Pennsylvania. An Illinois State Scholar, and Questbridge finalist, he has volunteered in hunger-related organizations and organized the school's participation in the Chicago Autism Speaks Walk.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

"Everybody has something unique to them," Anderson said of his fellow classmates. "Although we have great grades, it's the other attributes of our character that makes us who we are."

"The thing about our school is that we really are a family," said senior Ericka Satchell, 18 of Matteson. "I think that's what makes Southland stand out as a school is that we really do act as a family."

Historically, all high schools struggle in terms of their graduation rates, Davis said. Because students at Southland come from diverse backgrounds, the school has a 9-hour day in order for everyone to be accepted into college, she said.

"We are not just depending on (grade point averages) and ACT (test) scores, we have to find out who these children are because they come from 27 different schools," she said. "That has to be done very carefully child by child."

Starting the summer before their senior year, the school's college counselor meets with each student to learn the goals, dreams and aspirations of the entire family.

Now in the school's fourth year, it has a cumulative total of $67 million in merit-based scholarships offered to the first four graduating classes, according to a school statement.

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Erin Gallagher is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
Justin Morgan, a student at Tinley Park High School, was accepted to the U.S. Naval Academy. (Photo courtesy of Justin Morgan) (Justin Morgan )

Justin Morgan said he was sitting in class when he got an email from U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush congratulating him on being accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy.

The 17-year-old Morgan said getting into the academy in Annapolis, Maryland, has been a goal since his freshman year. Morgan said his uncle and grandfather were both in the military.

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"I did want to go to college, but I also wanted to join the military," Morgan said. "So, a military college was the perfect fit, just putting the two together."

The U.S. Naval Academy is a four-year undergraduate college where students who graduate with a bachelor's of science degree commission as ensigns in the Navy or second lieutenants in the Marine Corps, according to the academy's website.

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Morgan described the application process as "extremely rigorous." It included essays, medical and physical evaluations and securing a nomination from a member of Congress, he said.

"In a way (a nomination) is a recommendation, but it's a necessary part of the application," Morgan said.

Lee Rucinski, Morgan's Advanced Placement Chemistry teacher, said, Morgan has been focused on getting accepted to the Naval Academy.

Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

"He set this goal and he's been working at it for years just to make sure everything could go on to his resume," Rucinski said.

Morgan said he has always been interested in science and plans to major in chemistry.

"As a child when I was growing up, I always wanted to be a scientist of some sort," Morgan said, "which I now have the opportunity to do."

Gloria Varlotta, Morgan's AP Spanish teacher, said he is an exceptional student and human being.

"He has a very hard, a very strong, a very serious work ethic," Varlotta said. "So that is just reflected in everything he does. He's just an overall great young man."

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Morgan said he's concerned about the workload at the academy, but knows it will make him stronger.

"Something that I look forward to is the camaraderie that we make among each other," Morgan said. "I've heard that the Midshipmen at the academy become really close because everybody goes through this together and you're all working toward the same goal to succeed and be the best that you can."
Work on the Freedom Pond, a stormwater retention project on the Panduit Corp. site at Ridgeland Avenue and 175th Street in Tinley Park, is shown on Thursday, May 11, 2017. Village officials say the project will aid in economic redevelopment of the downtown. (Ted Slowik / Daily Southtown)

I agree with the view that excessively high property taxes are driving some residents and businesses from the south suburbs.

State legislators and local officials need to work together to address high taxes, especially in southern Cook County.

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Despite the high taxes, some manufacturing businesses are committed to remaining in the south suburbs. The region has advantages over other areas, including rail and interstate highway access and the opportunity to hire employees from a large pool of well-educated and skilled candidates.

That's the message being shared by Reggie Greenwood, director of economic development for the Chicago Southland Economic Development Corporation, which is affiliated with the East Hazel Crest-based South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association.

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"The region doesn't recognize the extent of sophisticated manufacturing enterprises in the south suburbs," Greenwood told me by phone the other day. "I think the world is underestimating the strength of manufacturing and logistics in the region."

Greenwood called to talk about the CSEDC's upcoming Big Shoes event, a fundraiser that will be held June 22 at Calumet Country Club in Homewood. Proceeds from the event support the Southworks High School Engineering and Robotics Challenge, an annual competition held in April.

"Our program connects manufacturing companies to a student workforce pipeline," Greenwood said in a letter promoting the event.

"This student competition is an extraordinary opportunity to support our local high schools and help students see the value in a manufacturing career and the critical need to become involved in science, technology, engineering and math."

This is the third year of the Big Shoes initiative, which includes presentation of an award that acknowledges business leaders in the manufacturing community. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is scheduled to present this year's award to Tinley Park-based Panduit Corp.

Panduit was founded in 1955 and has grown into a global company with more than 5,000 employees and $1 billion in annual sales. The business started out making electrical cables and has expanded into providing a range of network infrastructure solutions.

Panduit maintains alliances with companies like IBM and Cisco Systems, the company says on its website.

Panduit has about a dozen manufacturing facilities worldwide and for many years was headquartered northeast of 175th Street and Ridgeland Avenue in Tinley Park. Panduit maintains a research center  the Jack E. Caveney Innovation Center, named for the company's founder  on part of the site, which is being eyed for residential redevelopment.

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Panduit donated 8 acres of the 57-acre site to Tinley Park for the Freedom Pond stormwater retention project, where officials celebrated a groundbreaking on Tuesday.

"The Freedom Pond is a key step to redevelopment of our downtown area as well as redevelopment of the former Panduit headquarters site," Tinley Park Mayor Jacob Vandenberg said at the ceremony. "It will significantly help all our drainage issues in our downtown area."

Panduit also operates a manufacturing facility off 167th Street in Orland Park, and in 2010 relocated its global headquarters to a site south of Interstate 80 and east of 80th Avenue in Tinley Park.

Previous recipients of the Big Shoes Award were Phoenix-based Sterling Lumber in 2016 and Mi-Jack Corp. in 2015, a Hazel Crest-based maker of industrial cranes.

Greenwood said manufacturers in the south suburbs are currently seeking to fill 200 job openings.

"We're seeing real demand for people," he said.

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He cited several companies that have committed resources to remaining or expanding operations in the Southland: Monee-based Whiting Corp., a maker of overhead cranes; Harvey-based LB Steel, a metal processor and fabricator; and Winpak, a Canadian-based maker of packaging products with facilities in South Chicago Heights and Sauk Village.

Ardagh Group, a global company that makes glass containers for the food and beverage industry at a facility in Dolton, recently was honored as the Cook County Manufacturer of the Year by the Alliance for Industry and Manufacturing.

"Ardagh Group has devoted significant resources to hire and develop talent from the local community eager to begin life-long careers at our Dolton facility," John Riordan, president and CEO of Ardagh Group, Glass  North America, said in an October news release about the award.

The list of manufacturers goes on. There's SET Enterprises, a Michigan-based metal processor whose customers include automakers, which has a facility in Sauk Village. Dot Foods, "the nation's largest foodservice redistribution company," has a facility in University Park.

Greewood said the strength of manufacturing in the south suburbs is due to more than proximity to a large population center.

"It's not just whether there are people there, it's whether the region has taken steps to create a skilled workforce over time," Greenwood said.

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Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

A representative of Panduit, this year's Big Shoes honoree, said the company supports the Southworks High School Engineering and Robotics Challenge and invites area high school students to tour its research facility. Panduit encourages high schools to maintain industrial arts programs like shop classes.

"We want to make sure (students) understand when they apply for a manufacturing job, it's not mundane work. It's highly skilled," said Taylor Malloy, university relations programs specialist for Panduit.

Students from Tinley Park High School, Bloom High School in Chicago Heights and Eisenhower High School in Blue Island have toured Panduit's research center to get acquainted with the range of careers in manufacturing, engineering and related fields, Malloy said.

People can support the robotics challenge, partnerships between schools and manufacturers and the development of a skilled workforce by attending the Big Shoes event.

Tickets are $75. The event is from 5 to 8 p.m. June 22, at Calumet Country Club, 2136 W. 175th St., Homewood.

tslowik@tribpub.com

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Smart meter technology is on its way to East Dundee.

Installation of the digital meters in homes and businesses will begin in June and should be concluded by September, Ronald W.H. Banner, ComEd's external affairs manager, said in a memo to village officials.

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A mailer about the installation landed in some East Dundee mailboxes Friday.

The devices, which send usage information to the utility several times a day through a wireless connection, also allow customers to access that data to better manage electric bills and enroll in optional pricing programs available through ComEd or other electric suppliers.

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Fewer and shorter outages are also expected, officials said.

Installations will be made from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday at no cost and take about 10 minutes each, officials said. Customers may experience a brief interruption in their electric service. Residents will be notified one week prior to scheduled installations.

In 2011, the Illinois General Assembly enacted the Energy Infrastructure Modernization Act, authorizing ComEd to invest $2.6 billion over 10 years to modernize the state's electrical grid. Of its 4 million northern Illinois customers, more than 3 million have the new digital technology.

Residents can refuse the devices until the year 2021 but must pay a monthly charge of $21.53, approved by the Illinois Commerce Commission, to cover some of the costs associated with employing a meter reader, officials said.

For information, go to ComEd.com/SmartMeter or call 866-368-8326.

Erin Sauder is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
Penny Porter is one of the thousands of letter carriers who will be collecting food on Saturday. (Gloria Casas / The Courier-News)

Penny Porter will be one of thousands of U.S. Postal carriers doing double duty Saturday, delivering mail and collecting food donations for the 25th annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive.

"I think a lot of carriers are excited," said Porter, a union steward who works in the U.S. Post Office in Elgin. Last year, postal carriers collected 81.5 million pounds of food for pantries. "We are hoping to beat it this year," she said.

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Stamp Out Hunger is a food drive held the second Saturday of May and has collected 1.5 billion pounds of food nationwide since it started 25 years ago, Elgin Post Master Thomas Castillo said.

Locally, Elgin and South Elgin carriers collect between 30,000 and 50,000 pounds of food, Castillo said.

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The National Association of Letter Carriers coordinates efforts nationally and involves more than 220 union branches, according to the association's website. It takes place in more than 10,000 cities and towns to raise awareness about hunger, the site stated.

"It seems like a lot of carriers take pride in helping out," Castillo said.

Residents are encouraged to put out non-perishable food donations by 9 a.m. Saturday. Letter carriers will pick up the items then donate them to local food pantries, Castillo said.

Examples of non-perishable items include cereal, pasta, pasta sauce, rice, canned fruits and vegetables, canned meals like soups, chili and pasta, peanut butter and beans, according to the National Association of Letter Carriers website. Frozen food or home canned items cannot be accepted, the site stated.

This year, the U.S. Post Office sent out bags for customers to use for their donations, Porter said. If customers didn't get bags, any bag can be used, the website states.

Castillo thinks the convenience helps make the event popular among customers.

Local post offices participating include Aurora, North Aurora, South Elgin, Elgin, West Dundee, East Dundee and Carpentersville.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
A grass roots movement to end the state's budget impasse and its ramifications to public schools continued this week in a new form: a letter.

Hundreds of school district superintendents and CEOs sent letters to Gov. Bruce Rauner and General Assembly chamber leaders from both parties. In these letters, the message was uniform: pass a budget.

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The movement, simply called Pass Illinois' Budget, began among a group of four school district leaders which include School District U46 CEO Tony Sanders, Indian Prairie School District Superintendent Karen Sullivan, West Aurora Superintendent Jeff Craig, and downstate Sandoval School District Superintendent Jennifer Garrison. Last month, schools in districts such as U46 advertised the message, most notably on school marquees.

"There is urgency to the work you need to do," the letter read. "For the past five years, school districts have suffered prorated General State Aid. This year, despite a full budget for K-12 education, the State of Illinois lacks the resources to make good on its promise and currently owes public schools $1.1 billion in payments for programs such as special education, bilingual education, early childhood education, and transportation."

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The letter states three demands: end the impasse immediately and find bipartisan support, improve the state's education funding formula, and pay unpaid commitments to schools for this past school year.

"Not everyone will be happy with the agreements you reach (which may include us)however, school districts need certainty and stability in our funding," the letter reads.

The document ends with 418 names of school district leaders from the state, representing more than two-thirds of students attending Illinois public schools. Aside from District U46, Indian Prairie, and Aurora West, the letter also contains the signatures of leaders from local districts such as District 300, St. Charles and Batavia.

The number of superintendents having joined the movement as of Thursday is 432, according to the tally U46's Sanders updates on his social media pages.

raguerrero@tribpub.com
The Illinois House of Representatives approved a bill to require cursive writing to be taught in elementary schools and high schools by a bipartisan 67-48 vote. The bill was sent to the Senate for additional debate.

Rep. Chris Welch, D-Hillside, a sponsor, was reported to have said, "Cursive has been proven to improve comprehension and high-level thinking. There are just too many positives not to be teaching cursive.

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"Teaching a person how to write their signature is an additional form of identity protection. It's almost like a fingerprint. If you teach it, then they can write it, and they can read it."

St. Lawrence Elementary School in Elgin teaches cursive writing, according to Principal Wendy Kelly.

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"Although I am not aware that the Rockford Diocese mandates its teaching, there has been a push away from it. Cursive writing does assist the learner with retaining information," Kelly said.

Elgin Academy in Elgin also teaches it. Harry Gould, director of preschool through 4th grade, said, "Teaching cursive is no longer required in most school districts. Elgin Academy finds benefit in teaching students a balance between printing, cursive writing and keyboarding.

"When students write, they have better recall and understanding than when they use a keyboard to take notes. Time will tell how the debate on whether to continue to teach cursive writing plays out."

My own experience learning how to write in cursive was mainly positive, until I reached the upper grades. At that time, my personal artistic and exceptionally curvy style of writing proved to be too much for my parochial school teachers.

I spent many a night with my parents relearning how to form the letters according to the templates I was given by my instructor. To this day, my handwriting is quite legible, and I still learned keyboarding skills in high school.

Knowing how to write in cursive proves to be beneficial, as I do not always carry a keyboard with me. Though some might find cursive writing to be outdated, it sure can save the day when the electricity is out or the battery on the iPad goes dead.

Cursive writing is a beautiful form of expression. It would be a shame if future generations were unable to read documents left by their ancestors. Illinois lawmakers should make the teaching of cursive writing mandatory in our state.

Linda McDaniel-Hale is a Fox Valley resident who offers opinion on local topics.
We went there with a speedboat as soon as we received the report. We arrived around noon and we opened up a clinic. Sixty-four patients came to seek medical treatment. Among them, 35 people were suspected of [being infected with dengue fever], said Dr San Linn. We found the dengue fever virus in 12 people. I dont know the full number of dengue fever patients at the moment.

Dengue fever is flu-like virus spread by mosquitos. Typical symptoms may include: fever, exhaustion, headache, muscle and joint pain, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain. A more severe form, dengue hemorrhagic fever, can cause organ damage, severe internal bleeding, dehydration and potentially, death.

Dr San Linn said 11 health workers including him are working in cooperation with the World Health Organisation (WHO) to monitor the outbreak in Belya Village.

He added that none of the cases have turned fatal, and he expects the 12 patients will recover within a week or so. Local authorities have fumigated the village in order to eliminate mosquito breeding grounds.

A visiting monk who was holding a donation ceremony at Belya Village was the one to initially report the outbreak to health workers.

When I arrived at the donation ceremony I saw three or four people per household were sick. They couldnt work. The poor people couldnt travel to the city to receive medical treatment. Thats why I asked for assistance from the township, said Sayadaw U Ya Thu.

Belya Village has over 150 households and a population of around 700 people.



Translated by Thida Linn

Edited by Laignee Barron
Beach Park School District 3 Superintendent Nancy Wagner is leaving the 2,400-student district for the smaller but closer-to-home, Mount Prospect-based River Trails School District 26, she said.

The District 3 Board of Education voted unanimously Thursday evening to hire the Illinois Association of School Boards' executive search group to conduct a search for a new superintendent, board President Andy Luther said. The district used the group for the search that led to Wagner's hiring three years ago.

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The school board is also in preliminary discussions with former Superintendent Robert DiVirgilio about holding down the job on an interim basis while the district looks for Wagner's replacement, Luther said.

DiVirgilio retired in July 2014 after 10 years with the district. He was replaced by Wagner, who said Friday that she would also be willing to help the district through the transition.

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Wagner earned $160,000 plus benefits this year as Beach Park's superintendent, according to district records.

"The most important job the school board does is hire the superintendent," Wagner said, adding that she is already getting calls from people interested in the position.

Wagner, who described leaving as "bittersweet," said she thinks the draw is the District 3 community's small-town feel, its diversity and its "really great staff."

Luther said he's "very disappointed" to see Wagner go, and while he raised concerns about the district losing its positive momentum, he said he thought the district would be fine.

"I think we have a lot of things going well in the right direction, and I'd hate to see those things fall out with student academics and finances," he said.

The district is in the midst of a lot of professional development connected to its shift in how it provides supports to students and on professional learning communities, Wagner said. She agreed that the district is headed in the right direction and just needs someone to keep that going.

Luther said he hopes to find someone with some of the characteristics Wagner brought to the job, including good ideas, the ability to get staff buy-in and how she really listened.

The board wants a new superintendent "as soon as possible" but is willing to take a few months to do a really good search, Luther said.

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emcoleman@tribpub.com

Twitter @mekcoleman
Edith Smith, seated on the far left, served on the Waukegan Township High School District 119 for four years starting in 1968. She is pictured here with, seated, left to right, school board President Richard Flagg and board members Moselle Morrison and Rev J.N. Lightfoot, and standing, left to right, board members Robert Weismantel, Ellis Fugua and William Smart and Superintendent Paul Burke. (Smith family photo)

Lucille Harper remembers walking to Glen Flora Elementary School as a black fourth-grader after the Illinois Supreme Court handed down the decision that desegregated Waukegan schools.

She mainly remembers "little stuff"  the white kids making comments about the new students and some fights breaking out  but it was all quickly quashed, she said. The next year, she had the best teacher she ever had, and her academics improved dramatically, something she credits to that teacher, not necessarily the change in schools, she said.

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"The parents probably had more fear than the kids did, kids being kind of fearless," Harper said. "They don't really have the same reservations. I didn't go there with the feeling of that it was going to be hard or that I was going to be treated differently."

The integration of the nearly all-white Glen Flora, Hyde Park, Clearview and Glenwood elementary schools with the primarily black Whittier Elementary School followed a 1966 boycott of Whittier and a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Harper's parents, Marvin and Edith Smith, along with several other parents.

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"I remember white parents banging their fists on the table and declaring in no uncertain terms, 'Wasn't no (racial slur) going to Hyde Park (school),' " Edith Smith told the News-Sun in 2004. "It was interesting to see how misinformed they were. They assumed that black children were all deprived of books, that they were slow and couldn't read. My son began reading when he was 4. I told them to visit our home to see all our books."

The lawsuit, led by Shirley Tometz, resulted in the state Supreme Court upholding an Illinois law that required school districts to re-evaluate their school boundaries to prevent segregation along racial lines and to integrate Waukegan schools.

The history is one of the reasons Duryl Smith, 35, decided to pursue an honorary street sign for his grandmother, Edith Smith, after her death in September at the age of 87.

Edith Smith served on the Waukegan Township High School District 119 for four years starting in 1968 and then worked for the newly consolidated Waukegan School District 60 as a paraprofessional and then in security from 1972 to 1997. She is pictured here in a 1969 yearbook photo. (Emily K. Coleman / News-Sun)

His mother, Helen Smith, is one of Edith Smith's seven children, two from her first marriage to Alex Brownlee and five from her marriage to Marvin Smith. Helen Smith attended kindergarten at Whittier before going to Glen Flora.

After the integration of Waukegan schools, Edith Smith was elected to the Waukegan Township High School District 119 board in one of the school districts that preceded the current consolidated Waukegan School District 60.

"I remember conversations more than anything," Helen Smith said. "I didn't notice the segregation (as) a kid because I was here in the community, and this area here was mostly black.

"I first noticed it when she was running for the school board. It was the conversations. It was the organizing. There were meetings here at the house, campaigning at the house, and I remember people always coming over. I remember the night she won, there was a huge party here."

Edith Smith served one term, deciding not to run again after getting pregnant with her youngest son, Helen Smith said.

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But Edith Smith remained involved with the schools, joining the newly consolidated school district in April 1972 as a paraprofessional and then in the security department, monitoring hallways and the in-school suspension class. She retired from the district in 1997.

"The kids knew her," Helen Smith said. "She was very stern. They didn't like her at the time, but they respected her. You know, a lot of kids come back, 'Oh, Miss Smith, Miss Smith, you were so mean,' but again, it was about the community. She saw how important it was for these kids to go to class, to be present, to listen, to get this education, because knowledge is something that no one could ever take from you."

Edith Smith was born in October 1928 in a small town in Mississippi and did not graduate from high school, Harper said. She later got her GED and an associate's degree from the College of Lake County.

"She was always somebody who wanted to learn more, do more," Harper said, adding that she also helped black teachers get jobs in the school district.

A ceremony marking the dedication of the stretch in front of Edith Smith's former Glen Flora Avenue home is scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday in the parking lot at the northeast corner of Glen Flora and Lewis avenues.

"I thought it was important for her legacy, to recognize everything she did for the community," Duryl Smith said, adding that he hopes the sign leads to more Waukegan students learning about the community's civil rights history.

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"I would love for them to know when segregation happened and to know why they get to go to school with everyone else," he said. "Someone somewhere had to do something to make that happen."

Edith Smith wasn't about accolades, Helen Smith said. But she hopes that the sign will be a reminder to the people who knew her and a chance for those who don't to learn about her and Waukegan's past.

emcoleman@tribpub.com

Twitter @mekcoleman
In this file photo dated Jan. 20, 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy delivers his inaugural address at Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., after taking the oath of office. Wealthy senator and war hero Kennedy was 43 years old when he took the oath of office to the presidency of the United States. (Uncredited / AP)

He was the youngest man ever elected to the presidency yet his term is perhaps best remembered for what might have been.

His early missteps in foreign policy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, yet he pursued peace more passionately than any president since.

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His time in office has been characterized as "One Brief Shining Moment," and is recalled as "Camelot." But to those Americans who lived through those times, he will never be forgot.

This coming May 29 will be the 100-year anniversary of the birth of President John F. Kennedy, who is forever the young president in our memory.

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It is hard to believe that much time has passed. Although he has now been dead longer than he lived, his presidency still looms large. And it is not for reasons people think.

Today, Kennedy is lionized by the left as a liberal giant. Every Democrat who has sought the presidency since has dared to be considered the next JFK.

But politically, Kennedy was not the liberal hero he is cast as today.

The liberals in the party always tried to pin him down, yet he wouldn't be put in a box. Lyndon Johnson complained as majority leader that he couldn't count on a vote from Sen. Kennedy. And when asked if he was a liberal or a conservative, he answered, "I'm a realist."

Kennedy today is considered one of the heroes of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but if he did lead the movement, it was from behind. He often was bewildered by the movement of events, once wondering where the activists were getting their rhetoric.

Yet he made a great landmark speech in June 1963 calling for Congress to act on civil rights. Congress did after his death, urged to memorialize the fallen president by his successor.

While talking about vigor and looking the picture of health, Kennedy was actually a very sick man. He was a sickly child, and developed his self-deprecating humor as a way to survive in his overly competitive family. Some scholars doubt whether he would have lived past a second term.

He hid his many illnesses from the public, disguising his diseased back as a war wound. Truth is he probably never should have been cleared for combat, yet he became a war hero.

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There was a dark side to Camelot, of course. His womanizing was shameful and reckless. It has been said part of his libido was due to the steroids he took, but he certainly wasn't lacking in charm and good looks.

One of my journalism professors who covered the Kennedy administration described his charm to us this way: "All the men wanted to be him and all the women loved him."

Yet it was one woman who loved him forever, and when she died, Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis was buried next to her husband.

He was a paradox, and that, in a sense, made him quintessentially American. He was his own man, and knew he was smarter and better prepared for the job than anyone else. Once asked why he appeared so calm during the 1960 campaign and his opponent so frazzled. He answered: Because when I wake up in the morning I know who I am. Dick Nixon has to figure out who he is going to be.

Despite his early mistakes, his last year in office gave us a glimpse of his real potential  his handling of the Cuban missile crisis, his great civil rights speech, and his "Ich bin ein Berliner," rally in Germany.

But his greatest contribution to this nation was this: He opened the door to power to more Americans.

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Until Kennedy, the idea of an Irish-American Catholic becoming president was ridiculous. Since Kennedy, Americans of all stripes entered politics. They came through the door that he opened in 1960, including President Barack Obama.

At this point in history, Kennedy is most remembered for how he died on that fateful day in Dallas. But on the 100th anniversary of his birth, we should remember how he lived, for he lived a fascinating life.

And his vision of America is still one that inspires. Read, or better yet, watch his inaugural address as a way to mark this anniversary. The words still ring true.

Randy Blaser is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press.
Several years ago, Suzanne Newman got invited to a social event where she said she knew women would be wearing expensive designer dresses and suits  clothing she could not afford at the time.

"I was newly divorced and had just begun dating, and I didn't have the budget to shop at high-end stores," Newman said. "I bought a dress at Target for $10, but I felt really good in it."

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To her surprise, the dress she chose was a huge hit!

"Here's the cool part. I ended up on the social pages in two newspapers. It taught me that style isn't about money, but rather it's about knowing what works for you, finding a really good fit and accentuating and understanding your own positive attributes."

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The experience was a big factor in Newman's decision to become a personal stylist and wardrobe consultant; a career she has had for 14 years, in which she helps men and women dress and accessorize for both their professional and personal lives.

I met with Newman, founder of her company, Find Fashion Happiness, to talk about style trends, dating and putting fashion into your love life.

"The biggest mistake people make when they dress for a date is not putting enough thought into what they choose to wear," said Newman, a University of Georgia graduate and former Liz Claiborne sales executive whose clientele includes many recently single men and women. "When you go on a date, how you look  your outfit, your makeup and accessories is sending a very strong message. Old, beat up shoes or no makeup or a baggy sweater might make it look like you don't care."

Newman recommends that people dating have a "first date go-to outfit," and that the look should be fresh, yet uncomplicated, feminine (for women) and flattering to their shape.

"Dating is about highlighting your positives, which includes your body," said Newman, who got remarried seven years ago. "While you should still be comfortable in the clothes you choose, you want to look like you've got a little something going on. Not overly provocative, though."

Other tips include dressing appropriately for the date (in other words if you are going for a walk, skip the four-inch heels) and identifying your "confidence boosters."

"Maybe you feel really good about your lips, so lipstick is your thing, or if you are happy with your shoulders, maybe wear an off-the-shoulder top, which is in style right now," she said. "These are your confidence boosters and they will bring out the best in you because you will feel poised and self-assured highlighting something you like about yourself."

Newman also explained that an outfit you choose for a girls night out might look a lot different than something you would pick for a romantic dinner date.

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"Girls definitely have an appreciation for clothing and accessories that is very different from a man's," she said. "For example, women love vintage. They will think your grandma's mink sweater or a piece of vintage jewelry is beautiful, whereas many men see vintage as a turn-off."

I asked Newman if dressing fashionably can take away from a person's authenticity. Her response: Not a chance.

"You can still be you, and the person you are on a date with can still get to know all of your unique and wonderful qualities," she said.

In my opinion, all you are doing by dressing and accessorizing fashionably is packaging yourself well so that you are attractive at first sight, giving the date an energetic, appealing tone right from the start. The other benefit you get when you let style into your love life is that because you look so good on the outside, you will most likely internalize it, and your personality will exude freshness, elegance and flair.

I did ask Newman if she had any fashion advice for men who are new to dating. She said being well groomed with an up-to-date haircut is very important, and that the biggest mistake she sees in men when it comes to fashion is that they don't wear clothes that fit properly.

"A great outfit for a guy on a date is updated, well-fitting jeans in a current looking wash and a slim-cut button-down shirt," Newman said. "Nice tie shoes or a leather slip on shoe works much better than sneakers, and a leather jacket or sport coat is always nice. A nice watch is my favorite accessory for a man."

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She also suggested that if you aren't sure what your look should be, pick a few celebrities you admire, look at some photos of them in casual outfits, and choose what appeals to you.

There is another benefit to letting fashion into your love life: it can help keep a long-term romantic relationship or a marriage fresh. Mixing up how you dress and accessorize can be sexy. It adds spice. It can make a couple feel young and it keeps things exciting, like when you were first dating.

The bottom line: Being aware of fashion trends is great. That doesn't mean throwing all your clothes away every year and wearing the newest styles, but rather choosing the trends that work best for you, the ones that make you feel pretty and sexy and smart and stylish. What never goes out of style when it comes to your love life? Appreciating, respecting and showing gratitude to your spouse, maintaining self-love and never losing hope for happily ever after.

Jackie Pilossoph is a freelance columnist for Chicago Tribune Media Group. She is also the creator of her divorce support website, Divorced Girl Smiling. Pilossoph lives in Chicago with her two children.
When "Food Truck Fridays" return for a new season in Lincolnshire on May 19, local residents and workers will have some new food selections to decide on and also some live music to take in.

Lincolnshire officials recently released the new schedule for Food Truck Fridays, which brings in numerous food trucks during lunchtime hours in the summer and early fall to a parking lot at the Lincolnshire Corporate Center, 300 Knightsbridge Parkway, village officials said in a news release.

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The food line-up this year will feature some new trucks offering Asian food, seafood, barbecue, desserts and other items, officials said. For the opening event on May 19, the Sipos and Young band will perform live for attendees.

Lincolnshire officials have scheduled 11 "Food Truck Fridays" from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on every other Friday through Oct. 6 at the Lincolnshire Corporate Center.

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Village officials have seen interest grow in the special, lunchtime events since starting the program four years ago. Last year they scheduled two additional dates for middle and late October because of increased demand.

"It is in direct response to the demand that we are seeing," Tonya Zozulya, the village's economic development director, said in August 2016. "Corporate people are asking, 'Chicago goes until November. Why can't you run yours longer?'"
A mother octopus observed via an underwater camera by the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California lived more than twice the normal octopus lifespan and went without food to ensure her eggs were protected and hatched, a testament for what mothers will do for their children, Bill Mego says. (Monterey Bay Aquarium / handout)

Bruce Robinson, a biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, was operating a robotic camera 4,000 feet below the surface of the ocean when he spotted a purple female octopus guarding a clutch of 150 transparent eggs. The same octopus hadn't had any eggs just a month before.

Robinson and his team returned to that spot 18 times during the next 53 months, and each time the mother octopus was still there, cleaning and circulating oxygen-rich water around her eggs. Octopuses, which seldom live longer than two years, typically do not leave their eggs or eat until their eggs hatch.

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Finally, after almost 41/2 years, they found the eggs had hatched and the mother octopus, who had been looking quite old, had died. We may be surprised at octopuses' ability to solve puzzles, play tricks on people and understand things like cameras, but we must never question how much a mother octopus is willing to sacrifice to care for her young.

When a car bomb set fire to a home in Chile, firefighters were called. After they arrived, a mother dog named Amanda emerged from the burning building with a 10-day-old puppy in her mouth and placed it gently on the stairs of the fire truck.

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Four more times she entered the blaze, emerging each time carrying a puppy she placed on the fire truck's stairs. When they were all safe, she lay beside them, shielding them from the heat. Only one of the puppies, a female named Amparo, did not survive. The rest were fine.

In another instance, when firefighters approached a burning house in Pennsylvania, they found the blaze was so intense they could not enter. When a cat ran into the building, they thought it was crazy. However, it emerged a minute later with a kitten in its mouth, then it ran back into the house.

After two more minutes, it came back out carrying another kitten, which it placed next to the first one. The fire chief said the mother cat was "the bravest creature I have ever seen during all my years of firefighting."

In Edie Creek, New Guinea, a woman won a lease for a plot of gold mine land, which she planned to use to make it possible for her two schoolboy sons to eventually go to college. It turned out to be a poor piece of land, with overburden that had to be removed and no water with which to wash out the gold.

Naperville Sun Twice-weekly News updates from the Naperville area delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

She eventually got permission to use a neighbor's water supply, but only from midnight to 6 a.m. So that's what she did, washing bits of gold in the dark, bitter cold every night while the rest of the camp slept. Each morning she returned home to care for her family.

A mother and her daughter were only a few minutes into their hike in Squamish, British Columbia, when an 88-pound cougar, probably close to starvation, attacked the girl. The mother jumped on the back of the cougar and was eventually able to wrestle it off her daughter. When the two were finally safe, the daughter asked, "Why didn't the kitty play nice?"

There are an abundance of stories about mothers who have done things like chase and catch runaway school buses that had their children on them or who have done other spectacular things. As Rudyard Kipling said, "God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers."

I must confess, though, the stories that impress me the most are those about moms that do the really difficult things about which newspapers never write, like taking care of children with special needs.

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We all owe our mothers more than we even realize. It's important this Mother's Day to find some way to show your appreciation while you still have the chance.

There are, for example, literally hundreds of brunch choices around Naperville. It's the least you can do. No, seriously, it really is the least you can do. If you try, you can think of a way to do a lot more.

bill.mego@sbcglobal.net
Photo by SHRF: land confiscation for Salween Dam in northern Shan State.

A local source who wished to remain anonymous told Shan Herald that Burmese army Battalion No. 286, which is based near Kong Kham village in the Mong Nong Sub-township of Kehsi Township, had erected barbed-wire fencing around local properties on April 27.

The Tatmadaw [Burmese military] Battalion 286 is located west of Kong Kham village, the local source explained. The commander of the battalion is Maj. Aung Kyaw Soe, and his deputy is Maj. Thin Myo Aung. They put up the barbed-wire fences about 80 feet from Kong Kham, which blocks access to the main road between Wan Mai and Wiang Gao villages.

He added: The lands in question belong to local villagers, who grow crops there. Altogether, they think that about 30 acres of land have been confiscated. No compensation was offered. The villagers even requested the army build a new road but have received no reply.

During the era of the military junta, especially during the 1990s, the arbitrary seizure of farmers lands was a common phenomenon across the country, particularly in Shan State. By the 2000s, much of the seized land had been rented out to agri-business firms, and a massive government campaign was initiated to encourage investment in the harvesting of jatropha oil. Ultimately, the scheme failed; investors lost great sums of money, while farmers lost land and livelihoods.

According to a report in April 2016 by the Ethnic Peace and Resources Project (EPRP), the Tai Youth Organization, and the We Are Tai group, a total of over 10,000 acres of villagers land has been confiscated by the Burmese military, private businesses, and local ethnic armed groups in 18 townships across Shan State.

Since the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi, took power over a year ago, villagers have petitioned the government for assistance in getting their lands back. However, only modest successes have been reported.

On April 28, Shan Herald reported that some 30 villagers in northern Shan States Hsipaw Township had staged a protest in the town, demanding that the government intervene to resolve the issue of lands which, they say, were seized by the military government over 20 years ago.

By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
Park Ridge Police Officer Anthony Raitano was recently named the department's Officer of the Year.

With 25 years in law enforcement, Raitano currently serves as Maine South High School's school resource officer. It's Raitano's work in the school that Police Chief Frank Kaminski credited when speaking about his selection as Officer of the Year. One particular area that Raitano has been instrumental in is running a citizens police academy for special education students, which Raitano described as an "awesome" experience that is enjoyed by the students.

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As Raitano was receiving his Officer of the Year award, his wife, Christina, was also receiving accolades from her employer when she was named salesperson of the year, Raitano said.

"It's been a great year at the Raitano house," he said.

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Q: Were you surprised to learn you were the 2017 Officer of the Year?

A: Very much so. I thought it was a joke because I found out on April Fools' Day. I told the chief, "Oh, funny." And he said, "No, I'm serious."

Q: What does a school resource officer do?

A: I was surprised to find out it's a lot of different hats that I wear. You're more of a mentor than a police officer . It's always trying to teach the students. It's like being a teacher. It's crazy because it's almost like I'm not a policeman anymore.

Q: What is a typical day like?

A: I get in a half-hour early and have coffee with the security guys, talk about what we're doing, almost like a mini roll call. Then I get emails squared away with the department. I read about the previous shifts, what's happened on the street and see if there were any students involved. Then I meet with each of the deans and talk about what we'll be doing that day. If there are any disciplinary issues they have to deal with, sometimes I'll be called in . Like today, we had an issue where two phones went missing and we were able to identify who was involved. I was able to talk to him, and we got the property back. I basically let him know what could happen. That phone is over $500  that's a felony. You do that stuff out there in the real world and you'll catch some real problems.

Q: Is there a type of advice you tend to give out frequently to the students?

A: The main thing is the social media stuff. I say, "Before you hit send, before you take a picture, think about if your mom or dad is on that list of recipients and think about how they would react." That's one I throw out a lot.

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Q: Do students ever approach you with personal issues?

A: Daily. I have a great group of kids over there. My famous line is, "Hey, I'd rather have you come to me with an issue because I'd rather not do my job. I don't want to meet you in a setting where I have to be a policeman."

Q: What is one thing your students would be surprised to learn about you?

A: I wasn't always an angel in high school! That's why I see both sides of the coin. I'm not big with the labels. I don't label any kid. I give everyone the same shot. I like to be fair and treat them the same.

Q: What do you enjoy doing outside of work?

A: Spending time with my family. We're a close group. I've got four kids, and that's what helps me with this job. I've got kids in the same age group [as the teens I work with]. We're always running around and doing stuff with the kids.

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jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter: @Jen_Tribune
A 64-year-old Chesterton man who pleaded guilty to coercing a 12-year-old girl to perform sex acts with him was sentenced Thursday to more than 24 years in prison.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph S. Van Bokkelen sentenced Willard Abatie on one count of coercion and enticement of a minor. The 292-month sentence includes five years of supervised release, stated a news release from the U.S. attorney's office.

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The girl's mother told East Chicago police investigators that she first met Abatie through Facebook in December 2010. At some point after their relationship became physical, Abatie asked her to take nude photos of her daughter, who was then 10 or 11, court documents said.

The woman reportedly told law enforcement that she did take two photos of her daughter as she left the shower, documents said. The woman said she then deleted the photos, although it wasn't clear if she first sent them to Abatie.

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She told investigators that another man from her past came into play at some point, who she met through an online dating site before she met Abatie. She said he professed his love for her, but that she would also pick up money from other people and then send it to him, court documents said.

She would take money on a monthly basis from about 30 people and then send it to someone in Nigeria, documents said. The money flow stopped in January 2014, and the woman told police that the man told her she had to pay $600 a month or he would kill her, court documents said.

That's when she turned to Abatie to help her transfer the money. As payment for his help, Abatie demanded he be allowed to sexually touch her daughter, documents said.

Investigators reported finding six pictures of the woman's daughter on Abatie's phone. He admitted during an interview at the Hammond Police Department he had made the agreement to help her in exchange for access to her daughter, and he said he touched her "a couple of times," according to court documents.

Jim Masters is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Gary

The Center Reception Hall:1845 W. 37th Ave.  Healing Broken Hearts Mothers Day Brunch will celebrate mothers who have lost children on Saturday. The free brunch will start at 10 a.m. and feature giveaways, including spa treatments, and gift bags. For more information, call 219-932-9775.

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Carter Memorial C.M.E. Church: 635 W. 49th Ave.  Israel C.M.E. Church's annual Hats and High Tea will be at Carter Memorial C.M.E. Church at 1 p.m. June 10. The donation is $40 per person. For tickets, call 219-887-2390 and leave a message for Leslie.

Christ Baptist Church: 4700 E. 7th Ave.  The Women's Day Committee will host a women's weekend May 20 and May 21. Brunch will be from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 20 at the Avalon Banquet Center, 3550 E. U.S. 30, Hobart. Minister Jocqueline Protho will be guest speaker. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children. Tickets must be purchased in advance. Sunday service will be at Christ Baptist Church at 10 a.m. May 21. Sister Stephanie McDonald, of Emmanuel Church, will be the guest speaker. The theme is "Here I Am," Isaiah 6:8. "Afrocentric" attire is suggested. All women are invited. For tickets or information, call 219-938-5504.

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First Tabernacle Baptist Church: 643 W. 41st Ave.  A trip to the Shipshewana Flea Market and Blue Gate Restaurant will be July 11. The bus will depart from the church at 8 a.m. The cost is $65 per person. Reservations are required and full payment is due by June 10. Information: Pattie McGhee at 219-977-9394.

First Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church: 643 W. 43rd Ave.  A prayer breakfast will be at 9 a.m. May 20. Guest speaker Rev. Curtis Lee of Gethsemane Baptist Church will speak on the topic, "The Call to Serve in Ministry." Tickets are $10. Information: 219-884-6170.

Marquette Park United Methodist Church: 215 N. Grand Blvd.  Saturday Outreach Lunch will be at noon May 20. Senior yoga will be Tuesdays and Fridays for $3 and Thursdays for $4 when lunch will be served. Sunday School is at 9:15 a.m. and Sunday service is at 10:15 a.m. Information: 219-938-4106.

Mt. Calvary Church: 1001 Garfield St.  The Usher Program will be at 3 p.m. May 21. The theme is "There is Great Pleasure in Doing God's Work." Pastor Ron Smith of the New Fellowship Church will be the guest speaker. Information: 219- 883-3608.

Mt. Zion Pentecostal Church of Jesus Christ: 4937 Massachusetts St.  The Annual Women's Day Service will be May 28. The theme is "Standing on a Sound Doctrine; Overcoming an Unsound World." The speaker at noon will be Evangelist Geraldine Thomas of God's Grace Apostolic Church. The speaker at 4 p.m. will be Evangelist Edyth Campbell of Christ Temple Church. Information: 219-980-1647.

The Praise House: 565 Adams St.  The Praise House Recording Choir's 8th Church Pre-Anniversary Concert will be at 4 p.m. May 21. Pastor Marcus T. Hurt, Sr., New Praise, Evangelist Marnita Garland and others will be special guests. Admission is free and the public is welcome.

East Chicago

Greater First Baptist Church: 4862 Olcott Ave.  A Mother's Day Queen Luncheon will be at 1 p.m. Saturday. The speakers will be First Lady Robin Grant of Greater First Baptist Church and First Lady Juanita Hill of New Ebenezer Baptist Church. Donation is $10. A Mother's Day celebration will be at 11 a.m. May 14. Bishop Tavis Grant will share the message "Dance Moms."

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Merrillville

American Legion Post 430: 7430 Broadway  The motorcycle/bicycle blessing and fundraiser will begin at 1 p.m. May 21. All bikes should arrive by 12:30 p.m. Participants will have their bikes blessed and receive a blessing pin. A 45-minute escorted memorial ride will take place immediately after blessings are completed. The fundraiser will include a silent and live auction, door prizes, food and a DJ at Post 430. The cost is $15 for kids, $20 for a single riders and $30 for a rider with a passenger which includes food and a chance at a door prize. There will be a Chinese auction for the children with a bicycle as the prize. Proceeds will go to military veterans; Ekaterina Hatzikostantis, a nine-year-old cancer survivor, and the Northwest Indiana food pantry. Information: Tommy at 219-928-6700

 Staff report
Bead artist Stephan Wanger works on the Gary Bead Town mural at the Gary Area Career Center on Monday, May 8, 2017. (Carole Calson / Post-Tribune)

Gary's school system is facing an uncertain future, but it hasn't deterred the colorful, creative mission of Stephan Wanger.

If anything, it's intensified his quest for a world record as he guides students into creating mural panels from discarded Mardi Gras beads in a project known as Bead Town.

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"We wanted to bring positive attention to Gary. It's not all gloom and doom," said Wanger as he glued tiny beads into a House of Blues panel that's part of "Life in the French Quarter," a gigantic tribute to the 300th birthday of New Orleans.

"There's greatness in the children and you can see it. You just have to bring the opportunity to them," he said as clusters of students sat in the Gary Area Career Center clipping beads from endless strands of purple, white, green and gold tossed away during recent Mardi Gras celebrations.

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Wanger, 50, feels a kinship with Gary because it reminds him of the gritty, industrial city of Wilhelmshaven, Germany, the seaport city where he grew up. He came to the United States in 1990 and met his wife in New Orleans while he helped the city recover from Hurricane Katrina. That's when he saw the thousands of discarded beads after parades and first envisioned "Bead Town," which is now Wanger's non-profit organization.

On Monday, a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records will peruse and measure the students' effort to take away the bead mosaic record now held by the Varingaskolan School in Sigtuna, Sweden. The school created a mosaic of nearly 432 square feet that's displayed at the Arlanda Airport in Stockholm. That mural knocked off Gary's Bead Town effort of 384 square feet, set in 2013.

"We tell the students they have choices," said Wanger. "When someone takes something away, you could cry or work to get it back. It's all the inspiration we need."

Now, Wanger has primed Bead Town to retake the record with beaded images of Tennessee Williams, Louis Prima, and Truman Capote who help make up "Life in the French Quarter."

In all, he estimated about 5 million beads are in the mural.

He designed and created it about three years ago in New Orleans. The painted mural moved to Gary in 2015 and students and volunteers have been working on it ever since.

The Lake County Surveyor's office has measured the 96-foot mosaic's square footage to make sure of its stature before the Guinness representative arrives for Monday's 10 a.m. reveal at the Career Center, 1800 E. 35th Ave.

Sidney Augustus, 16, a junior at the Gary New Tech Academy, has been working on the mosaic for months. "I think it's really cool being a part of something like this," said Augustus as he clipped beads off a strand.

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Augustus is part of an art class taught by Wanger, who been teaching in Gary since 2014. "Getting into the rhythm of doing it is the hardest thing for me."

Augustus said he's amazed every time he looks at the mosaic that covers most of the wall in the Career Center's multi-purpose room. "I would never expect to be part of something like this," he said.

Wanger said the students learn teamwork skills as they sit side by side and glue beads into images.

Missie and Chris Hinkle of Lake Station met Wanger at a Bead Town exhibit at the Porter County Expo Center and since then, they've brought their home-schooled daughter, Skylar, 13, to work on the project. "It lets me express my artistic side," said Skylar. They've been joined by another family of home school students, as well.

The Legacy Foundation supported Bead Town with a $17,500 grant in 2015, Wanger said. Last year, it received a second Legacy grant of $25,000. Last year, the school district also provided $8,000 to Bead Town, he said.

Wanger hopes to continue his work in Gary, but the future is cloudy as the district awaits the arrival of an emergency manager who will take over fiscal and academic operations. Paying down debt is likely to be the overriding mission.

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A new 14-piece exhibit in Gary called "My Brother's Keeper," is on the horizon, Wanger said.

"I would love to continue on a part-time basis, perhaps with West Side or Roosevelt," said Wanger who said the Legacy Foundation wants Bead Town to remain in Lake County.

Wanger, who lives in Chicago, also plans to work part-time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on a Bead Town project this year.

"We have planted an incredible seed in Lake County and I would like to continue to nourish that seed," he said.

Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

Where: Gary Area Career Center, 1800 W. 35th Ave., Gary

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Be there for record attempt

What: Bead Town exhibit and world record attempt

When: 10 a.m. Monday
Munster police officers take part in the annual police memorial service at Town Hall on May 11, 2017. (Jim Masters / Post-Tribune)

Speaking to people gathered for the Munster Police Department's Memorial Service Thursday, Dyer resident Don Bacso said he owed police officers his life.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Bacso was on a temporary work assignment on the 57th floor of New York's World Trade Center Tower 1 when it was struck by a commercial airplane in terrorist attack. He feels fortunate to have escaped the destruction just floors above him, and continues to speak to groups about the experience

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"On that day, I know we were led out by God's hand, which consisted of the Port Authority and New York police departments," Bacso said. "There are many things about that day I will never forget, and one of them is the police and firemen leading us out to safety before unselfishly going back into those burning buildings. I owe my life to their bravery, determination and courage."

Bacso urged everyone to remember the 23 New York police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers who perished that day. He also thanks police officers and firefighters across Northwest Indiana with whom he found support and reassurance over the tragedy he survived.

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"So, do me a favor, from this day forward when you see a police officer give them a pat on the back or a handshake and tell them how much they are appreciated," he said. "I don't think they hear it as much as they should."

Munster police Chief Steve Scheckel noted 145 officers "made the ultimate sacrifice" in 2016in the United States, in addition to thousands more who were injured on the job.

"Tonight, please pray for the fallen officers' family and friends who must go on through life without their husband, wife, son, daughter or grandchild," he said. "This ceremony is our promise to our fallen that we shall never forget."

Scheckel noted the community's support of Munster police Officer Joe Pacheco, who is having serious health issues, and former Dyer and Schererville police chief Don Parker, who died May 4.

With the Munster Police Department in full dress uniforms, the members took turns laying flowers on a police memorial marker in front of Town Hall, followed by a gun salute and playing Taps, courtesy of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2697.

Jim Masters is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
The "Girls Night Out" group consists of from left, Rosanne Skertich, Diane Nelson, Liz Moses Culp, Tess Mangold, Ellen Schwartz and June Huber. (Not pictured is Kathy Kulchawick.) (Photo by Liz Moses Culp )

Six years ago, a group of seven women began meeting each month at restaurants across Northwest Indiana to celebrate their birthdays.

They referred to their monthly adventures as their Girls' Night Out, just as generations of other women have described similar escapes without their husbands, children or grindstones. On those nights, the women could leave behind their worries or annoyances. Or they could take their emotional leftovers to dinner and share them with each other.

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"In this day of Facebook and texting, it is easy to lose real interaction with your friends," said Diane Nelson, of Valparaiso, one of the women in the group. "I very much look forward each month to our girlfriend get-together."

The women, who range from 50 to 75, simply enjoy each other's company. They're not forced to do so through work duties or stuck together through family obligations. They choose to be together, a freedom that most women can likely identify with or, in all honesty, be envious of.

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"We just love to see each other once a month, no matter what," said Liz Moses Culp, of Valparaiso.

Over the past 20 years, I've heard from similar groups of women who get together on a regular basis either to share meals, play bunco, bar hop, go bowling or do anything together. A few months ago I wrote about a group of eight women who've been getting together to play pinochle since 1956.

Nothing has kept them apart through the decades. Not deaths of loved ones. Not job relocations. Not even moving out of Northwest Indiana.

"No matter how far we have to drive, we still make an effort to be together once a month," one of those women told me in between pinochle games.

I've learned that these regular get-togethers for women are more important than I previously thought, and possibly more needed than most men understand. These excursions, whether it's monthly, bimonthly or even once a year, are dates that get circled in many women's calendars and emblazoned in their minds, I'm told.

"The bonus is that we share a meal in a different restaurant each month," Nelson said.

That's the twist with this particular women's group. They've dined at so many restaurants across our area  53 and counting  that they began writing reviews of their dining experiences. Similar to what a professional food critic would write, including notations on a menu's choices, a server's urgency and the taste of their meals.

"We were talking on how we would be the best critics," Culp told me after the group's April visit to Old Style Inn in downtown Valparaiso. "We come from a diverse cultural background and have shared our ethnic heritage and our tastes in food."

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Here's a sampling of the restaurants they've dined at through the years: BC Osaka, Aladdin Pita, Lucrezia and Giovanni's in Lake County; Semento's, Fork & Cork, Craft House, Sage, Pikk's Tavern, The Dish, Gelsosomo's, El Salto, Casa Del Mar, Don Quijote, Meditrina Market and Martinis in Porter County. In LaPorte County, the group has visited Galveston Steakhouse in Michigan City.

"It is a great place to celebrate a birthday," the women wrote in their review. "There was seven of us in the group and the dessert they served for the birthday girl was big enough to serve all seven women."

"Galveston has a full service bar, and the atmosphere is a western-style decor," they wrote. "The price range is keeping in line with other fine dining in Northwest Indiana. The service was outstanding and the wait staff was very accommodating. The parking was adequate  and the extra bonus feature is you can walk to the Lake Michigan waterfront to take in a beautiful sunset."

One of their favorite eateries is Blue Point Oysters & Sushi Bar in Valparaiso, where they dined twice in a row.

"We loved it," Culp noted after their second visit.

Their review states, "They are mainly known for their sushi, but don't let that keep you away if you are not a sushi lover. Their menu is extensive with other seafood choices, such as lake perch, Mahi Mahi and salmon. For the meat lovers out there, they featured baby back ribs, filet mignon and ribeye steak."

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"We were warmly greeted by the owner and wait staff, and seated at a comfortable table away from the crowded diners," they wrote.

"The wait staff was attentive to our needs, made sure we knew the food and drink specials, and shared some of their favorite choices with us. Valparaiso is becoming well known for its fine dining restaurants and we strongly recommend Blue Point."

In addition to Culp and Nelson, the group's members include Rosanne Skertich, of Schererville; Tess Mangold, of Valparaiso; June Huber, of Chesterton; Ellen Schwartz, of Valparaiso; and Kathy Kulchawick, of Chesterton.

All of them are mothers except Culp, something to note on this Mother's Day weekend.

"I have only cats!" Culp said.

Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

The women initially contemplated whether they should reveal their identities publicly, which may affect how they're treated at restaurants during future visits.

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"By going public with our name, Girls' Night Out, would it influence restaurants to be on their best behavior?" Culp asked me, echoing the group's concerns. "Should we remain anonymous?"

Fortunately, I was able to sway them otherwise in order to illustrate how much these monthly escapes mean to them. And possibly to other women in our area who meet regularly for the same unifying, universal reason.

"We have the chance to laugh, brag about grandchildren, discuss life's problems and so much more," Nelson said.

jdavich@post-trib.com

Twitter@jdavich

Three of the women spoke with me on my latest radio show, sharing more reviews and personal stories about their group. Listen to that on-air interview here: www.lakeshorepublicradio.org/programs/casual-fridays-jerry-davich-and-karen-walker#stream/0.
Tony Schifino, owner of A.J. Specialties, sells his wares at the Maria Reiner Center in Hobart on May 11, donating 15 percent of his earnings back to the center. (Jerry Davich / Post-Tribune)

The middle-aged man waited quietly for Bill Chipman to arrive at Arman's hot dog joint in the Miller section of Gary.

Chipman, the longtime owner of the popular restaurant, strolled in and the man jumped out of his seat. He was handed an empty trash bag and he immediately darted outside. Without a word spoken, he began picking up garbage on Arman's property.

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The man lives in a nearby former hotel that now houses special needs individuals. Chipman helps the man earn spare cash for his efforts around the restaurant.

I watched the man hustle around the building, filling up the trash bag, while I gobbled down the same lunch I've been ordering there since my childhood  a Polish sausage, fries and cheese sticks.

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While watching the man fill up that trash bag, I wondered how many of us also hustle on a daily basis to fill our wallet, purse or checking account, just to make ends meet. I know I do.

After I pulled away from Arman's, I started paying more attention to the people in my orbit who always seem to be hustling, in the best sense of the word.

I began noticing newspaper vendors at busy street intersections, regardless of weather. And school teachers who teach driver's education courses on the weekends. And police officers who work security jobs on their off hours.

I noticed all the working professionals with solid careers who hustle to moonlighting jobs to make sure their kids get extra perks, or so their family can take a summer vacation.

Last week, I spied another worker hustling around at the Maria Reiner Center in Hobart after I finished a presentation there. His name is Tony Schifino, owner of A.J. Specialties in Hobart, in business for 27 years.

"I love what I do so it's not really a hustle thing for me," Schifino told me while selling hats, sunglasses, purses, ponchos and countless other items.

When he operated out of a retail store, his customer traffic was low. So he hit the road. He's now in three networking groups, a chamber of commerce, numerous craft shows, and three farmer's markets. (At senior centers, he gives back 15 percent of his earnings as a goodwill gesture.)

"OK, I guess I do hustle," he concluded.

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It's an admirable attribute, I told him. In fact, this kind of hustle is the social currency I admire most in others.

Media Relations 101

The older lady motioned me toward her while looking around suspiciously.

I had just walked into the Portage Public Library to give a presentation. She was waiting for me in a seat near the front of the room.

"I have something to talk to you about," she whispered, clutching a stack of paperwork.

I told her I'd be happy to talk to her after my presentation, but I already had an idea what was on her mind. Sure enough, an hour later I found out.

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While finishing up my presentation and chatting with guests, the woman waited patiently to finally speak to me. Just as I presumed, she had a column idea to pitch to me.

"How much time do you have tonight?" she asked me, fishing through her paperwork.

Not enough time to go through all her paperwork, I replied.

I suggested she email me a summary of her column idea, as I tell most readers. She scrunched up her nose and shook her head back and forth. Or I could call her, I suggested.

She scribbled down her phone number and we parted ways. I called her the next day. It rang and rang. She didn't pick up, and didn't have a voice mail or answering machine. I called again. No luck.

The following day I tried one last time. She picked up. We chatted for a few minutes but our conversation went in circles. I finally asked for the point of her column idea. We determined it was about the rights of senior citizen renters in regard to "slum landlords."

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Our belabored exchange confirmed my concern that I should again host a Media Relations 101 seminar for readers interested in pitching ideas to media outlets. One of the most consistent questions I receive from readers, radio show listeners and social media followers is how they can better interact with newspapers.

"No one ever gets back to me," complained Larry, of Merrillville, who left me a voice mail last week.

Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday >

He also circled around a story idea that took us 13 minutes (yes, I timed our phone chat) to nail down what was on his mind. Before we hung up, I invited him to attend my free seminar scheduled for 2 p.m. June 10, (a Saturday) at the Lake County Library's main branch on U.S. 30 in Merrillville.

On Friday, I gave a crash-course Media Relations 101 presentation to the South Shore Leadership Center, offering ideas to its latest class of professionals how to publicize potential stories to local news media outlets, including tips and suggestions.

Although most professional public relations specialists send perfectly fine press releases to media outlets, other PR reps do not. And non-professional publicity seekers can really use a crash course on how to get their message out.

My seminar will include these tips, among others: How to write an informative, if not catchy, media release; how to grab a journalist's attention, or at least pique their curiosity; how to concisely compile a complete news release, including a possible "hook" introduction, and a photo opportunity (great photo ops can sell a lackluster idea).

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If you or your company, church or organization would be interested in attending my seminar, feel free to email me at jdavich@post-trib.com, or call the library at 219-777-7012.

jdavich@post-trib.com

Twitter@jdavich
Chris Georges of Morton Grove and David Hanna of Skokie take in the parade of flags in this May 21, 2016 file photo of the Festival of Cultures at Oakton Park in Skokie. For 2017, the event will kickoff with an internation short film festival May 19, leading into thefull two-day event May 20-21. (Karie Angell Luc / Pioneer Press)

Organizers last year estimated 27,000 people attended Skokie's two-day Festival of Cultures, and they expect as many or more to be in attendance this year.

Celebrating the village's large ethnically diverse population, the Festival of Cultures is scheduled to run May 20 and 21 in Oakton Park

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"Skokie is a tremendously diverse community, with more than 90 languages spoken in residents' homes," said festival Chairman Jon Marquardt." The Skokie Festival of Cultures serves to unite the people of the village for an entire weekend, allowing them to celebrate one another's customs and cultural backgrounds in a fun and colorful setting."

He said the event will feature dozens of cultural booths, and attendees will also enjoy two days of ethnic folk music and dance, a wide range of food, unique arts and crafts and a merchandise marketplace.

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Like in recent years, this 27th annual festival kicks off with a preview event May 19 that includes an international short film festival.

The weekend festival is also scheduled to have an international beer tasting area (for a fee), a children's area featuring hands-on exhibits and the "Passport to the World" official guide packed with a schedule of the many ethnic performances, educational information and a festival map.

The festival is staged by the Skokie Park District with support from the Village of Skokie and the Skokie Public Library. And over a dozen corporate sponsors contribute as well as the Illinois Arts Council, according to festival organizers.

Pamela Zeid, Oakton Community Center customer service supervisor, said she has worked with the festival and its many volunteers for years.

"When people think of diversity, there's a political connotation to it and that's not what this is about," Zeid said at last year's festival. "It's about celebrating what makes everyone different."

The festival emerged from a Skokie ethnic diversity project called VOICES (Valuing Our Image Concerning Ethnicity in Skokie), according to festival history. The project was intended to promote a better understanding between Skokie residents of different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds.

The first festival in 1991 included only 14 cultures  well below half the number of participating cultures today.

Armenia, Assyria, Croatia, Cuba, Iraq, Ireland, Thailand and Tibet are all among the ones scheduled to be represented this year.

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misaacs@pioneerlocal.com

Twitter @SKReview_Mike
Frisch eyes upset of Boebert, but Pueblo County results could take time

About 9,000 votes are due in the next batch that Pueblo County posts, which could determine if Lauren Boebert will continue to represent CD-3 in Congress
After the bomb blast that wounded eight novice monks, the following day local authorities and community leaders went to the area and uncovered more than twenty mines near the temple, Nang Kham Phong, a local aid worker in Namtu, told Shan Herald on Thursday.

The mines were buried east of Zeya Sukha Temple in Mong Yen Tract, Namtu Township, said Nang Kham Phong. They have now been moved to the local military office.

Many years ago, the Burma military set up positions in this village. When they withdrew from the area the villagers reclaimed their lands.

According to an official from the local administration, authorities suspect there could be many more devices planted in and around Mong Yen. He said that that the landmines may have been planted in a line, but otherwise they had no idea how to locate them. He said that the local administration could not be the ones to take responsibility for this.

Burma was ranked third most dangerous country in the world for landmines in 2014 behind only Colombia and Afghanistan, according to the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a research and monitoring arm of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL).

A report from the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor published in November 2016 reads: In September 2016, Deputy Minister of Defense Maj-Gen Myint Nwe informed the Myanmar parliament that the army continues to use landmines in internal armed conflict. At the same session, a Member of Parliament from Shan State stated that it cant be denied that non-state armed groups are also using landminesparticularly since 2012.

Landmine explosions are regularly reported across Shan State. On July 7, 2015, Shan Herald reported that a 70-year-old woman was killed after stepping on a landmine near a Burmese military compound in northern Shan States Hsenwi Township.

Another case occurred in northern Shan States Hsipaw Township on July 22 last year, when a villager and his eight-year-old daughter were seriously injured by a landmine explosion when they went into a forest to cut firewood.

According to an ICBL report in November 2015, 396 people had been killed, 3,145 injured, and 204 affected in an unknown extent by landmines in Burma since 1999. However, the report noted that the real figure could be much higher.

By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN)
Racist, perjuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions has issued guidance to federal prosecutors, ordering them to charge the people they will face in court with "the most serious offense you can prove," paving the way for a surge in America's already-shameful record of racially biased, family destroying, community-devastating, private-prison-enriching mass incarceration, which already outstrips the rates of incarceration in Apartheid-era South Africa, China and the USSR.

Sessions has also vowed to reinstate long prison sentences for minor drug offenses, including possession of marijuana in states where its use has been legalized.



In a brief one-and-a-half-page memo, Sessions outlined his new instructions for charging decisions in federal cases, saying that his new first principle is "that prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense." "The most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences," Sessions later adds. While the federal sentencing guidelines are advisory  and take into account everything from a defendant's criminal history to cooperation with authorities  some judges have felt handcuffed by mandatory minimums, which provide a statutory sentencing minimum of months below which the judge cannot depart.

AG Sessions paves way for stricter sentencing in criminal cases

[Laura Jarrett/CNN]
By Dezan Shira & Associates

Editor: Alexander Chipman Koty

The Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Human Resources & Social Security recently released its annual minimum wage adjustments for 2017, as well as the associated changes to employee benefits.

The adjustments, which came into effect on April 1, affect minimum wages, medical insurance, social insurance, pensions, and other forms of employee compensation.

Minimum wage increase

The Shanghai government raised the citys minimum monthly wage by five percent, from RMB 2,190 (US$318) to RMB 2,300 (US$334), and the minimum hourly wage from RMB 19 (US$2.76) to RMB 20 (US$2.90).

The five percent increase is the lowest since minimum wage hikes in Shanghai were frozen in 2009 as a response to the global financial crisis. The minimum monthly wage increased by 8.4 percent in 2016 and 11 percent in 2015.

While the increase was lower than in previous years, Shanghai still has the highest minimum monthly wage in China. Rapid wage growth is often cited as a key reason for Chinas slowing economic growth, as labor costs are outpacing productivity gains.

Many regional governments have consequently put the brakes on minimum wage increases to maintain their competitiveness with other Asian countries. For example, Guangdong province froze minimum wage hikes in 2013 and 2014, and after raising minimum wages by an average of 19 percent in 2015, froze increases in 2016 and 2017.

Social insurance payment limits revised

The maximum medical insurance fund payment limit was revised in accordance with the wage hike, increasing from RMB 420,000 (US$60,987) to RMB 460,000 (US$66,795).

The upper and lower limits of the social insurance contribution base were also increased, with the lower limit raised to RMB 3,902 (US$567) and the upper limit to RMB 19,512 (US$2,833). The limits are based on the average monthly wage of employees in Shanghai: the lower limit is 60 percent of the average wage; the upper is 300 percent.

Shanghais social insurance contribution base has grown in tandem with the rapid increase in average salaries over the past five years. In 2013, the lower limit was RMB 2,815 and the upper limit RMB 14,076.

The Shanghai municipal government announced in early April that the average monthly salary in 2016 was RMB 6,504, a 9.5 percent increase year-on-year, while the average annual salary was RMB 78,045. In 2015, the average monthly salary in Shanghai was RMB 5,939, or 71,268 per year.

RELATED: Payroll and Human Resource Services

Social insurance contribution rates revised

The Shanghai government has also released the social insurance contribution rates for 2017. The employer contribution rate for medical insurance has been lowered from 10 percent to 9.5 percent, and the unemployment insurance contribution rate lowered from one to 0.5 percent.

The reductions in contribution rates are part of an effort to reduce the burden on employers. The reduced rates are in effect from January 1, 2017 to April 30, 2018.

All other social insurance rates in Shanghai remain unchanged. The employer contribution rate for pension insurance is 20 percent, maternity insurance one percent, and injury insurance 0.2-1.9 percent.

More HR reforms expected

Shanghai has recently released a slew of other HR reforms, including granting residency to foreign domestic workers, launching an online work permit registration system for foreigners, and giving foreigners in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone easier access to green cards.

The city is aiming to boost its capacity to attract and retain foreign talent, and to deepen reforms in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone. Consequently, businesses in Shanghai should monitor for further reforms that may affect HR and payroll to ensure compliance.

Editors note: This article was originally published on April 20, 2017, and has been updated to include the latest regulatory changes.



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This Dezan Shira & Associates 2017 China guide provides a comprehensive background and details of all aspects of setting up and operating an American business in China, including due diligence and compliance issues, IP protection, corporate establishment options, calculating tax liabilities, as well as discussing on-going operational issues such as managing bookkeeping, accounts, banking, HR, Payroll, annual license renewals, audit, FCPA compliance and consolidation with US standards and Head Office reporting.

Payroll Processing in China: Challenges and Solutions

In this issue of China Briefing magazine, we lay out the challenges presented by Chinas payroll landscape, including its peculiar Dang An and Hu Kou systems. We then explore how companies of all sizes are leveraging IT-enabled solutions to meet their HR and payroll needs, and why outsourcing payroll is the answer for certain company structures. Finally, we consider the potential for China to emerge as Asias premier payroll processing center.

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Bank of China has joined CHAPS Clearing Company Limited, Britain's electronic same day payment system as a shareholder and direct participant with immediate effect, CHAPS Clearing Company announced on Thursday.

Bank of China (BOC) is the first Asian-headquartered direct participant in CHAPS (the Clearing House Automated Payment System)), which brings the total number of CHAPS direct participant to 25.

Sun Yu, general manager of Bank of China Limited London branch, said: "After joining CHAPS, we have completed another vital step towards the internationalization of our direct clearing network, now covering the world's major currencies. Our customers will benefit from the more efficient, secure and flexible payment and settlement services provided by Bank of China Limited."

Tim Fitzpatrick, chief executive of CHAPS Co, said: "Bank of China Limited is a leader in banking and financial services with an international presence in over 50 countries, and their participation in CHAPS further extends the accessibility of our service around the globe."

"Our expanding base of Direct Participants is a testament to the world-class offering we provide. We are looking forward to working with Bank of China Limited to enhance CHAPS for the benefits of all our users," he added.

CHAPS is the British electronic payment system that guarantees same day settlement finality for high-value payments. It is at the heart of the British payments and financial infrastructure. The system continues to be one of the largest Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems in the world, offering efficient, risk-free and irrevocable same day payments to meet the sterling RTGS payment requirements of its Direct Participants.

Bank of China Limited is the most internationalized and diversified bank in China. Established in 1912, it has been satisfying the financial requirements of its clients in Britain for nearly 90 years with a comprehensive range of financial services.
Tanzanian Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said on Thursday 131,000 tonnes of sugar will be imported this year to fill existing shortfall.

Majaliwa told the National Assembly in the political capital Dodoma that there was sugar deficit of 100,000 tonnes annually caused by poor production of the commodity.

He said only 320,000 tonnes of sugar were being produced by four local manufacturers annually against the east African nation's annual demand of 420,000 tonnes.

Majaliwa said sugar importation permits have been issued and 80,000 tonnes have already been ordered. 35,000 tonnes of the commodity have been imported and distributed to markets across the country, the second largest economy in East Africa.

"We are making plans to import even more sugar especially during the holy month of fasting for Muslims. There is no need for traders to hike prices of sugar because the commodity is available in the market," he said.

Majaliwa said the government was aware of problems facing local sugar manufacturers, adding that authorities have been in talks with them on the need to increase productivity to meet the country's demand.

Majaliwa told the House that plans were underway to establish new sugar factories in Mbigiri and Mkulazi areas in Morogoro region.

He said the Mbigiri factory will be constructed with assistance from the National Service while the factory in Mkolazi will be jointly constructed by pension funds and investors.

In February this year, the Sugar Board of Tanzania said the country planned to increase sugar production from the current 300,000 tonnes annually to 420,000 tonnes by 2020/2012.

Henry Semwaza, the Director General of Sugar Board of Tanzania, said the government directed sugar factories in the east African country to increase production of the commodity.

Semwaza was speaking at a meeting that brought together stakeholders in the sugar industry held in Morogoro region, home to two major sugar industries.

"We want our sugar factories to expand and construct new industries in order to increase production to at least to 420,000 tonnes by 2020/2021," he said.

Semwaza added: "Owners of sugar factories will be required to support small-scale sugarcane growers in order to increase production."

Tanzania's four sugar manufacturing factories are TPC in Kilimanjaro region, Kagera Sugar Limited in Kagera region, Mtibwa Sugar Limited and Kilombero Sugar Company in Morogoro region.
Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation [By Zhang Xueshi/China.org.cn]

On May 14-15, Chinese President Xi will convene the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation with 29 world leaders in Beijing. Announced in January by President Xi at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Forum is expected to be the most important diplomatic event of 2017 to be held in China.

In contrast to U.S. President Donald Trump's protectionist rhetoric, the theme of the Forum will emphasize ways that the Belt and Road Initiative can strengthen international cooperation and globalization in order to achieve win-win development. The Forum will likely highlight the success of both the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road "early harvest" projects that have demonstrated mutually beneficial cooperation.

Beyond the world leaders attending the summit, a number of ministerial-level delegations, representatives from the United Nations and other international organizations, former dignitaries, business figures, and policy experts from various countries and regions will participate in the Forum. Unfortunately, the United States and some members of the European Union have chosen to skip the Forum. This is unfortunate because these nations should reflect upon both the possibilities and positive impact that the Belt and Road Initiative presents, rather than being immediately dismissive or suspicious.

Instead of being automatically dismissive or distrustful of the Belt and Road Initiative, perhaps the U.S. and certain EU members should consider the possibility that among the many countries along the Belt and Road across Asia, Africa and Europe there is growing support for the initiative. And why is that? Because there is an urgent need for investment in infrastructure projects as well as economic development and trade projects.

The Belt and Road Initiative covers nearly a quarter of global trade ($7.2 trillion in 2016) and includes 63 percent of the world's population. The Initiative offers a venue not only for greater global economic cooperation, but for enhanced collaboration between China and the U.S. In fact, the Belt and Road Initiative should be attractive to the U.S.  even to Trump  because it offers an opportunity for China and the United States to work together.

The U.S. should not make the mistake of ignoring the Belt and Road Initiative. The U.S. should be an important participant in the Belt and Road Initiative because it could promote American interests and ensure a more prosperous global economy.

For those doubters in the U.S. and Western Europe, it should be noted that the Credit Suisse Group AG recently estimated that the Belt and Road Initiative could funnel investments worth as much as $502 billion into 62 countries along the Belt and Road over the next five years. China has invested more than $50 billion in Belt and Road countries since Xi introduced the initiative in 2013 and Chinese businesses have built 56 economic and trade zones in the countries, generating nearly $1.1 billion in tax revenue.

While there are some who are reticent to admit it, Xi Jinping's highly ambitious plan for regional economic integration envisioned in the Belt and Road Initiative will shape the global economy for years to come.

The U.S. withdrawal as an advocate for free trade after Trump's election has served to boost China's role in global governance and fill the void left by U.S. protectionism in the international market. Both Xi and Premier Li Keqiang have noted that China will champion economic openness and trade. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Belt and Road Initiative, which, along with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), has moved China to the forefront of globaleconomic and financial leadership.

The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation meets at a crucial time when there is a need for greater global economic cooperation. Issues and policy initiatives discussed at the Forum may very well shape much of this century's global economy by encouraging both consensus and interconnected development.

Dr. Jon R. Taylor is a professor of Political Science and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of St. Thomas in Houston.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
China's visionary initiative to revive the ancient Silk Road bears historical resonance, especially when it comes to enhancing connectivity and cooperation with South Asian nations. [By Zhang Xueshi/China.org.cn]

China's visionary initiative to revive the ancient Silk Road bears historical resonance, especially when it comes to enhancing connectivity and cooperation with South Asian nations. Several ancient South Asian cities sat along the ancient Silk Road, which started during the Han Dynasty in 130 B.C.

The Silk Road passed through the ancient South Asian cities of Kathmandu, Patana, Calcutta, Delhi, Mathura and Taxilla. The routes to these places passed mostly through western China. Prominent ancient scholars from China and South Asia travelled through these routes, exchanging socio-political information, knowledge and religions.

The landmark Belt and Road Initiative carries the heritage of the ancient Silk Road into the 21st century, seeking to spread the dividends of economic prosperity fuelled by connectivity, trade, investment, technology, financial integration and people-to-people contacts.

With the Belt and Road (B&R) gaining momentum since it was inaugurated in October 2013, several initiatives and instruments have come into operation to align South Asia with the developmental strategies of China's project.

"South Asian nations stand to gain from Belt and Road through economic corridors, trade, investment and tourism. Likewise, China will get an extended market for trade, investment and execution of big projects in the region," said Madhu Raman Acharya, former foreign secretary of Nepal.

South Asia is suffering from poverty due to slow economic growth. "One of the drivers of economic growth is infrastructure. China has a specialized expertise in infrastructure development. So, our needs and Chinese priorities can align with each other," said M Humayun Kabir, the former Bangladeshi ambassador to Nepal.

He said that if the B&R plan is implemented, it will create a network of markets and create new opportunities. "Our potential for either export or import will increase. It can create more employment and more economic opportunities for people."

Kabir said Bangladesh is appreciative of China's initiative, believing it will bring important opportunities for Bangladesh's goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2021 and a developed country by 2041.

Bangladesh and China have agreed to enhance the "alignment of their development strategies, fully tap the potentials of cooperation in various areas, and work on the Belt and Road Initiative to realize sustainable development and common prosperity of two nations." China had already committed US$25 billion to Bangladesh for infrastructure, connectivity and trade.

Sri Lanka, a pioneer member of the B&R Initiative, has begun to benefit from Maritime Silk Road-related investment and infrastructure development. China has invested in the development of a new port in Hambantota and the establishment of deep water container terminal in the port of Colombo.

Likewise, work related to the reclamation of a large sea area adjacent to the Colombo port and the construction of a new city with Chinese direct investment of US$1.4 billion is underway. "The 269-hectare site is available for construction of shops and office complexes and it is expected to attract additional US$13 billion worth of investment from many other capital exporting countries," said Luxman Siriwardena, executive director of Pathfinder Foundation.

He said Sri Lanka believes that the Maritime Silk Road will undoubtedly contribute to its long-term socio-economic development due to its strategic location. It lies on an international shipping route and also has close proximity to the Indian subcontinent.

Nepal: gateway to South Asia

For China, Nepal has been a gateway to South Asia because of its strategic location. Nepal has offered viable routes for the trade of wool and salt since ancient times. A new route via Chumbi Valley opened under Younghusband Mission but it is closed since 1951.

Kodari Highway, constructed in 1965, remained a vital road between Nepal and China. Rasuwagadhi-Kerung border point is being equipped with modern facilities. Nepal has proposed opening new entry points at Korala, Hilsa, Kimathanka and Lamabagar in a bid to boost bilateral trade and infrastructure development. Now, with most of the bilateral cooperation and investment being executed under the B&R Initiative, Nepal and China should forge a robust partnership to usher in an era of better connectivity and collaboration for the benefit of both nations.

Ritu Raj Subedi is an associate editor of The Rising Nepal.

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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File photo taken on July 7, 2016 shows U.S. FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Oversight Committee over investigation into Hillary Clinton's email system, on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., capital of the United States. (Xinhua/Bao Dandan)

Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Andrew McCabe Thursday said ongoing investigation into alledged links between White House staff and Russia will continue.

"We consider it to be a highly significant investigation," McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing.

McCabe said "there has been no effort to impede our investigation to date," but promised to inform the Congress should the White House tries to interfere with the FBI investigation.

McCabe also refuted a White House claim Wednesday that fired FBI Director James Comey had lost the confidence of "rank and file" FBI staff, saying Comey "enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

"I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his consideration abilities and his integrity," McCabe said.

McCabe's hearing came after Comey was unexpectedly fired by U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening. Trump said he made the decision based on advice from the deputy attorney general and attorney general that Comey was unfit to lead the FBI, but critics say the timing of the firing was suspicious.
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Peacekeepers with the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). [Photo / UN MINUSCA]

A Moroccan peacekeeper has been found dead after a convoy of UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic (CAR) was attacked by armed men, said a UN spokesperson on Thursday.

On Monday, suspected anti-Balaka armed men ambushed the convoy on the Rafai-Bangassou axis in the southeast of the Central African Republic. Four Cambodian peacekeepers were killed and ten other peacekeepers were injured.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Jean-Pierre Lacroix will leave for the capital Bangui to attend the memorial ceremony for the five killed peacekeepers scheduled for Friday, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told a daily briefing.

UN Security Council has condemned the attack in the strongest terms, noting that attacks against peacekeepers may constitute war crimes.

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.
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Colombia's top guerrilla groups on Thursday called for an end to political violence in the South American nation as well as the complete implementation of a peace process that will end over 50 years of armed conflict.

In a joint press conference in Havana, Cuba, the top leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), Rodrigo Londono and Nicolas Rodriguez, respectively, said Colombia must undergo a "real democratic" process that includes an end to political violence.

"Both guerrillas have the common will to build a lasting peace in Colombia. It will be with combined efforts that deep transformations of our society based on social justice and dignity can take place," said Londono while reading a joint statement.

Both organizations also pledged to reach a political solution to the armed conflict.

Londono, also known as Timochenko, urged Colombia's poorest communities to continue "defending" the peace pact and their territory against persecution by alleged government security forces and paramilitary groups.

"We truly believe the majority of Colombians support the end to the conflict as we continue to advance in the implementation of the peace agreement signed last year as well as the talks being held between the ELN and the government," added Londono.

The ELN and FARC also demanded Bogota show its political will to put an end to irregular or paramilitary groups which, according to the guerrillas, have killed several social organization leaders in the last few months.

"Until now, we do not believe the Colombian government has the will to confront these groups. It is definitely an issue that threatens the peace of our country. Peace cannot only be rhetoric, it has to be demonstrated with facts and actions," said Rodriguez.

Both guerrillas have held several meetings in Havana this week with the permission of the Colombian government in order to discuss the peace process in the South American nation, including joint strategies to further advance a political solution to the armed conflict.

In September 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and top FARC commander, Rodrigo Londono, signed a peace deal in Cartagena in front of 15 Latin American presidents and then UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.

However, the agreement was rejected by over 50 percent of Colombian voters in a referendum.

After two months of further discussions, both sides changed several issues of the initial peace agreement and had it approved by the Colombian Parliament.

By the end of May, FARC members are expected to have finished handing over their weapons to UN officials and will continue the process of reinserting themselves into society and political life.

Currently, the ELN is set for a second round of discussions with Santos' government in Ecuador on May 16.
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PLA Navy's missile frigate Yulin [File photo / Navy.81.cn]

The PLA (People's Liberation Army) Navy has handed over three captured pirates to Somalian authorities, the Chinese Ministry of National Defense (MOD) confirmed on May 11.

The MOD's information bureau announced that the three suspects of piracy were handed over to Somali's Puntland authorities on May 5 and the transfer process was safe and smooth.

The MOD said that the transfer was a result of coordination with Somali's federal and local governments. It was in line with international laws and practices, the announcement read.

In an earlier statement dated April 12, the MOD said that the Chinese missile frigate Yulin rescued a Tuvalu-registered cargo ship (hull number OS 35) from being hijacked by pirates on April 9 in the Gulf of Aden.

Yulin is on the PLA Navy's 25th batch of task forces on escort missions in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia.

The MOD maintained that the Chinese military will continuously keep navy escort task forces in piracy-harassed waters to play a greater role in preserving international navigation safety.
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Russia's Black Sea Fleet warships doubled the maritime operation time in 2016 compared with the previous year, Alexander Vitko, the commander of the fleet, told Russian Defense Ministry's newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda on Friday.

"In 2016, Black Sea Fleet's warships and support vessels almost doubled the time they spend on maritime operation at sea compared with 2015, covering almost 340,000 nautical miles. The time they spent at sea rose by 45 percent," said Vitko.

The Black Sea Fleet is a large operational-strategic command of the Russian Navy, operating in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has been increasing its military presence in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea since the eastern Ukraine crisis began in 2014. Russia has repeatedly warned that NATO's increasing activities in the region could undermine regional and global stability.
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Lebanonese Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah on Thursday declared Lebanon's eastern border with Syria safe, saying that the party's forces deployed along the border have withdrawn.

Nasrallah made the announcement in a televised speech to mark the death of Mustafa Badreddine, a top Hezbollah military commander, who died in Syria last year.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah has "dismantled and will continue to dismantle the remaining military positions along the border between Lebanon and Syria. There's no need for us to remain deployed."

"This battle has no horizon, the mission is accomplished." Nasrallah said.

Hezbollah, an ally of Tehran and Damascus, has been fighting

for years in Syria's conflict against rebels.

Nasrallah also expressed readiness to contact Syrian authorities to begin returning refugees to their hometowns.

Meanwhile, the leader of Hezbollah called on Lebanese authorities to assume their responsibilities.

"We don't replace the Lebanese state or the Lebanese Army," he said, "Matters along Lebanon's Eastern Mountain Range are left from now on to the Lebanese government."

Turning to the southern border with Israel, Nasrallah said that the Jewish state's swift work along the border to erect a wall means that Lebanon has defeated it.

"Israel the great has fallen ... when it hides behind walls then it is weak," he said.

Israeli bulldozers were photographed Wednesday putting up additional fences and fortifications in an attempt to strengthen crucial areas south of the Lebanese border, the Hezbollah-affiliated War Media Center reported.

Three Israeli bulldozers were seen raising new fences near a surveillance tower east of Wazzani, a town near the Lebanese-Israeli border.

The fence, that included barbed wire, was reportedly put up out of fear of Lebanese infiltration.

"Israel is concerned and fears any future combat," Nasrallah said, vowing that any future battle with the Jewish State "will be inside the occupied Palestinian territory. No place will be safe from the resistance rockets and our infantry units."

The Hezbollah chief also sought to soothe the fears of the Lebanese.

"Live your normal daily lives. Don't be afraid. Their rhetoric will not become action. Trust your army, resistance and yourselves," he said..
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at strengthening cybersecurity of federal networks and critical infrastructure.

"We've seen increasing attacks from allies, adversaries, primarily nation-states, but also non-nation-state actors, and sitting by and doing nothing is no longer an option," Trump's homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said at a daily briefing.

When asked if it's the Russian hack that led to this order, Bossert said, "It wasn't a Russia-motivated issue. It was a United States of America-motivated issue."

He said the priorities on protecting networks, which is the first section of the order, include agency heads being held accountable for implementing risk management measures and a preference in federal procurement for shared IT services, including moving to the cloud services.

"If we don't move to shared services, we have 190 agencies that are all trying to develop their own defenses against advanced protection and collection efforts. I don't think that's a wise approach," Bossert said.

The second section of the order focused on protecting the US's critical infrastructure, requiring a report within 90 days on cybersecurity risks facing the defense industrial base, including its supply chain, and U.S. military platforms, systems, networks, and capabilities, and recommendations for mitigating these risks.

In the third and final part of the order, Trump demanded a report within 90 days on "the Nation's strategic options for deterring adversaries and better protecting the American people from cyber threats."
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A British court Thursday ordered a Russian billionaire to pay his wife 584 million U.S. dollars in a divorce settlement.

Divorce law experts in London described it as one of the biggest ever payments to be ordered by a judge in an open court hearing.

The judge, Justice Haddon-Cave, said the couple met and married in Moscow before moving in a home in Surrey in southern England.

He awarded the wife 41.5 percent of the total assets from their marriage.

The judge also made a court ruling preventing the man aged 61 from the Caucasus, and the woman who is in her 40s and was born in eastern Europe, from being identified.

Both have been living in Britain for a number of years.

During the hearing, the court was told that the husband sold shares in a Russian company for 1.3 billion U.S. dollars. He then flats in a luxury London development for their two sons, one for 29 million pounds (37.3 million U.S. dollars) and the other for 7 million pounds (9 million U.S. dollars).

Announcing the award, the judge said the wife had been a housewife and mother to the couple's children.

The husband had argued he had made a special contribution to the generation of wealth, but the judge concluded the man and woman had made equal contributions to the welfare of the family.

The husband had made a sudden decision, said Justice Haddon-Cave, to no longer contest the divorce case. Neither the husband or his wife were in the court to listen to the judge's final ruling.
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The Islamic State (IS) group continues to be an "active terrorist threat" to the U.S. despite its degrading strength, U.S. intelligence chief said Thursday.

Speaking at a U.S. Senate hearing on world threats to the U.S., Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence, said the IS is experiencing territorial losses in Iraq and Syria as a result of persistent counter-terrorism operations.

However, Coats told lawmakers that the terrorist group still has the ability to "direct and inspire attacks against a wide range of targets around the world."

"Homegrown violent extremists remain the most frequent and unpredictable terrorist threat to the United States homeland," he said, adding that this threat will persist with many attacks happening with little or no warning.

At the hearing, Coats also called Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) an "increasingly grave national security threat to the United States," citing the country's growing missile and nuclear capabilities.

The Trump Administration has said it aims to use economic sanctions and diplomatic measures to pressure the DPRK into dismantling its nuclear and missile programs, and Washington remains open to negotiations towards this goal.

On Iran, Coats said Tehran's public statements suggest that it wants to preserve the nuclear agreement because it views the deal as a means to remove sanctions while preserving some nuclear capabilities.
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Nepal's Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi and Ambassador of China to Nepal Yu Hong sign and exchange the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative in Kathmandu on May 12. [Photo: RSS/Xinhua]

Just ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) to be conducted in Beijing on Sunday and Monday, Nepal has formally joined the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) by signing the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Cooperation under the BRI in Kathmandu this morning.

Nepal's Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi and Ambassador of China to Nepal Yu Hong signed and exchanged the MoU on behalf of their governments at the presence of Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr. Prakash Sharan Mahat.

With the MoU on BRI multi-lateral cooperation, Nepal has officially joined the China-promoted strategic move to be a part of it which in turn is likely to give impetus for Nepal's presence in the region. The Nepal government would identify the areas of cooperation, welcome the Chinese investments and implement the projects so as to receive Chinese support under the initiative. Nepal would also sign other sectoral agreements under the BRI framework.

Earlier, a cabinet meeting on May 7 had decided to sign the framework agreement on BRI.

After the formal ceremony organized to sign the MoU, Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said the major thrust of the MoU is to promote mutually beneficial cooperation between Nepal and China in various fields such as economy, environment, technology and culture.

"The MoU seeks to strengthen cooperation in connectivity sectors including transit transport, logistic systems, transport network and related infrastructures development such as railway, road, civil aviation, power grid, information and communication," reads the press statement.

Speaking on the occasion, Nepal's Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Mahat said, "Nepal is in need of huge foreign investments to proceed ahead development efforts, to uplift living standards of Nepalis and ensure prosperity in the country. We are fully confident that Nepal too will get benefit from the Road and Belt Initiative unveiled by the Chinese President (Xi Jinping)."

"Our major focus shall be on infrastructure development and cross-border connectivity to address the development challenges Nepal is facing due to its landlocked geographic location and least developed economic status," Nepal's Foreign Affairs Secretary Bairagi said.

Following the MoU agreement, the major media outlets in Kathmandu have given due priority terming the incident "historic."

A vernacular online, lokaantar.com, carries a news story on MoU agreement stating it a far-reaching step adding that China's assistance to Nepal in the future is likely to soar up after Nepal's participation in the initiative.

Likewise, another popular news portal, setopati.com, has published an in-depth interview of Ambassador of Nepal to China Mr. Leela Mani Paudyal with the banner headline titled "Immense possibility of Chinese investment has opened up now."

Similarly, Nepal's most-viewed news portal, onlinekhabar.com has carried out news along with a video clips with the headline "Nepal signs China's OBOR initiative."

Furthermore, Nepal's largest media house's web portal, ekantipur.com, has also posted a detailed news story of the event, stating: Nepal became the formal member of the neighbor China's ambitious OBOR project introduced for development cooperation.

Meanwhile, a high-level delegation from Nepal is attending the BRF to be held in Beijing. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Minister for Information and Communications Surendra Kumar Karki and Minister for Physical Infrastructure and Transport Ramesh Lekhak, and other high-ranking government officials would also take part in the forum, Deputy Prime Minister Mahara confirmed.
During the 21st Belarus International Media Exhibition in Minsk, I noticed an elderly woman standing at the front desk of the China section. She seemed anxious.

It was lunchtime, so almost everyone in the section was on a break, leaving only a Chinese calligrapher who did not speak Russian.

So I went up and asked the lady what she needed. She said her name was Anna Petrovna, and she wanted to buy some Chinese calligraphy for her daughter.

"Her name is Lena," the 67-year-old told me. "I'd like to have the calligrapher write the characters for 'healthy' and 'successful', so I can give them to her.

"I've never been to China, and I know little about the country," she said. "But I have heard how friendly Chinese people are, and I really like Chinese calligraphy."

The exhibition was held at the Belarus National Exhibition Center from May 3 to 6, and for the first time China was the guest of honor. Employees from the Chinese embassy in Minsk and a local Confucius Institute, one of three in the country, manned the China section for the event.

Unlike many other sections, China's display area was so crowded with visitors I struggled to find somewhere to stand.

In addition to asking for samples of calligraphy, many of the attendees were interested in traditional Chinese printing as well as the Russian-language edition of President Xi Jinping's book, Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.

Thanks to reports in the Belarusian media and close cooperation between governments and companies in both countries, China and Chinese culture enjoy good reputations in Belarus, according to Fan Di, a teacher from Northeastern University in Shenyang, Liaoning province.

Fan is on a two-year teaching program at the Confucius Institute affiliated with the Belarusian National Technical University in Minsk.

She said the local people are enthusiastic about traditional Chinese culture, as demonstrated by the fact that every time the Confucius Institute participates in an exhibition, its displays are always swamped by curious locals, who ask all sorts of questions.

"The Belarusians really do seem to love our calligraphy, kites and fans," she said.

Anna Petrovna displays calligraphy she was given at an exhibition in Minsk.Ren Qi / China Daily

(China Daily 05/11/2017 page6)
Mandarin has become one of the most important languages for communication between China and countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative, the vice-minister of education said on Thursday.

Tian Xuejun said increasing numbers of people in Belt and Road nations are learning the language, which has played a key role in boosting relations.

"As of March, 137 Confucius Institutes and 131 Confucius Chinese-language study classes had been established in 53 Belt and Road countries, with more than 460,000 people in these countries studying Chinese," he said.

He said international students are ambassadors for exchanges between cultures and civilizations, and that the Chinese government will increase support for students from Belt and Road nations who study in China.

The country has promised to grant Chinese Government Scholarships to 10,000 students from Belt and Road countries each year, which has helped the number of students from these countries grow.

Last year, almost 210,000 students from these countries were studying in China, an increase of 14 percent compared with 2015.

China is also encouraging more of Chinese students to study in Belt and Road countries, Tian said, adding that at least 350,000 Chinese have studied in these countries since 2012.

Last year, 74,000 Chinese students headed to these countries for education purposes, he said.
China strengthens personnel training in Belt & Road countries

Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-11 20:12

BEIJING -- China has increased personnel training in Belt and Road countries to support the implementation of the initiative, an official said Thursday.



Since 2013, China has provided training for more than 100,000 people in Belt and Road countries, and its "circle of friends" under the initiative is expanding, Ministry of Commerce spokesperson Sun Jiwen told a press conference.



The training courses cover topics such as governmental management, finance, agriculture, medical services and poverty relief, according to Sun.



"Sharing expertise in Belt and Road countries is one of most important ways China can implement the Belt and Road Initiative," said Sun.



With the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits, the initiative focuses on promoting policy coordination, connectivity of infrastructure and facilities, unimpeded trade, financial integration, and closer people-to-people ties.



A total of 29 heads of state and government leaders will attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which will be held from May 14 to 15 in Beijing.



More than 1,500 delegates, including officials, academics, entrepreneurs, representatives of financial institutions and media organizations from 130 nations, as well as representatives from more than 70 international organizations, will also attend.
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It takes a bottle of whisky, a great Britain-made specialty, almost 20 days to travel to China, while packaged on a newly-opened freight train linking London to China's Yiwu.

The cargo locomotive, the first rail freight service linking the UK directly to China, departed from Stanford-le-Hope in Essex on April 10, 2017, and then stopped in London and arrived in the eastern Chinese city on April 29.

Other British products packed in with the bottle of whisky on the 7,500-mile Trans-Eurasia journey included vitamins, soft drinks and pharmaceuticals.

Located in Zhejiang, a coastal province in East China, Yiwu is known as a small-commodity trade hub.

The Yiwu-London freight service now makes London the 15th European city to have a direct rail link with China.

It is part of China Railway Express (CR Express), also known as the China-Europe freight train service, which has seen rapid growth since the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013.

So far, CR Express has opened three routes, 51 lines departing from 27 Chinese cities, and has reached 28 cities in 11 European countries.
Siro Polo Padolecchia is the only living descendant of Marco Polo (1245-1324), the Venetian traveler and merchant whose book, The Travels of Marco Polo, provided Europeans with the first descriptions of China.

Padolecchia, who lives in Monaco, retains close contacts with China, where he lived from age 8 to 11 as a result of his father's business interests in the country.

In an email exchange with China Daily, he recalled that as a child he had been eager to discover the country, but he also feared he would not understand the language, culture or humor.

Many decades later, he feels his memories are as poignant as those of his illustrious ancestor. For Padolecchia, China's charm lies in the kindness of its people, seasons of white magnolias, lotus flowers floating on lakes and small boats navigating rivers.

For years, he promoted communication between Europe and China by founding the Euro-China International Business Advisory Council, and through the activities of the Marco Polo Society.

When asked about the differences between the China of his childhood and the modern country, he said: "It is the attitude of the people. They have a sense of satisfaction you can see in their eyes, and not only in large cities but in smaller ones and even in villages."

He suggested the best way to understand the country is to pay a visit, and quoted an old Chinese proverb: "It is better to see something with your own eyes than to read it 100 times."

He has paid great attention to the Belt and Road Initiative, which he believes will improve connectivity between China and Europe. He said promoting development and trade between Asia and Europe will enhance stability and security for countries along the initiative's routes.

He said a number of Chinese projects in Africa and Central Asia have boosted confidence in China's ability to build and operate infrastructure projects at home and abroad.

Citing the opinion of Italian and European friends, Padolecchia said the Belt and Road Initiative is an attempt to formulate a mega-foreign policy project to realize peace and common prosperity.

"If the 20th century was dominated by the concept of the American Dream, in the 21st century the concept of the Chinese Dream prevails, particularly in terms of opportunities and the positive image of New China," he said.
Romano Prodi, a former two-time prime minister of Italy, said the Belt and Road Initiative will change the lives of half the global population in the coming decades.

He urged global leaders to grasp the opportunities the initiative will offer when they meet at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing at the weekend.

"This is a very important meeting, which will signal a green light from Beijing that the countries that have agreed to participate in the initiative can get down to business," he said, speaking in an exclusive interview with China Daily in Rome.

Up to 30 world leaders will attend the forum to discuss the development of the initiative, which Prodi called "a century-long project" that will improve connectivity between Asia, Europe and Africa.

Prodi, who was president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, said the thing that has impressed him most is that the initiative will change the lives and fates of people in less-developed countries, especially in Asia.

He said the first and most visible consequence of implementing the initiative will be that many countries in Central Asia will cooperate with China in infrastructure development.

"This will not just be about constructing roads and railways, but also about changing the daily lives of people in those countries. I expect this to be a new page for those countries," he said.

Now, after three years of publicity and promotion, European countries are "competing to seek synergies" with the Belt and Road Initiative, according to Prodi.

Nevertheless, he warned against complacency: "This will be a difficult project, which will last many, many decades. The most important thing is to gain greater political will, endorsement and support from countries along the routes."

Progress and confidence

However, he is confident that progress will be made, because the initiative has been widely accepted in recent years as a result of promotion by the Chinese government, businesspeople and think tanks.

"After three years of preparation, the Beijing forum will be seen as a green light for larger-scale cooperation," said the 77-year-old, who has played his own part in promoting the initiative.

Prodi, who lectures at the University of Tianjin and at Peking University in Beijing, regularly shuttles between China and Italy. After returning to Italy after a week teaching in Beijing, he met with Paolo Gentiloni before the Italian prime minister headed to China to attend the forum.

Although he declined to reveal details of their discussion, the former politician said Gentiloni, who was communications minister in Prodi's cabinet from 2006 to 2008, is a firm supporter of the Belt and Road Initiative.

When President Xi Jinping visited Central and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013, he raised the idea of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, known together as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Prodi said the project is a combination of vision and implementation by land and by sea: "As a European and an Italian, I would say the bulk of goods will still flow via sea routes, and the role of the Mediterranean region is vital in implementing the initiative."

He added that the initiative originated from the concept of the ancient Silk Road, whose European terminus was Italy, while the famous traveler Marco Polo, who brought China to Europe more than 700 years ago, came from Venice.

"So, I propose the next summit should be organized in Venice, which has a symbolic meaning in that President Xi's initiative links the past with the future," he said.

Romano Prodi delivers a lecture at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.Jin Rong / For China Daily

(China Daily 05/12/2017 page6)
The Mediterranean country has pledged active promotion and engagement with the 'new Silk Road'. Fu Jing reports from Rome.

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.

Italy was the European terminus of the old Silk Road, and therefore a meeting point for China and Europe.

Now, in seeking synergies with the Belt and Road Initiative, which many Europeans are calling the "new Silk Road", the country is determined to seize the opportunity to revive its economy.

Sergio Mattarella, Italy's president, has pledged that his country will actively promote and develop the initiative.

During a six-day visit to China in February, Mattarella said that given Italy's geopolitical advantages in connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, the two countries can "write a new chapter in history" by implementing the initiative.

Paolo Gentiloni, Italy's prime minister, will join about 30 national leaders at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing at the weekend.

Gentiloni is familiar with China after meetings with Chinese counterparts when he was foreign minister in Matteo Renzi's cabinet from 2014 until December. He was also minister for communications when Romano Prodi served his second term as prime minister from 2006 to 2008.

Development strategies

Last year, Gentiloni, then foreign minister, agreed with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that both sides should promote three major strategies: Exploring the synergies between the Belt and Road Initiative and Italy's development strategy; the links between Made in China 2025 and Italy's Industry 4.0 program; and the relationship between China's Internet Plus strategy and Italy's technological innovation plan.

"The Italian side earnestly expects to be considered a key cooperative partner by China in jointly building the Belt and Road, and hopes that more Italian businesses will participate in the initiative," Gentiloni said, in an official statement.

In November, when President Xi Jinping made a technical stopover on the Italian island of Sardinia en route to South America, he met with Renzi, who promised that Italy will actively participate in the development of the initiative.

"Italy's leaders have shown a strong desire for cooperation. President Mattarella has demonstrated full confidence in the initiative, and Prime Minister Gentiloni has also expressed his strong support on many occasions," said Li Ruiyu, China's ambassador to Italy.

Mutual benefits

Italian businesses have also shown strong interest in exploring the mutual benefits that will accrue from embracing the initiative.

"I have attended many themed promotional activities organized by the Italians to push economic and trade cooperation to a new high," Li said.

Trade between China and Italy was $43 billion last year, while China has invested more than $12 billion in Italy.

"Chinese companies have participated in some heavyweight projects in Italy," he said, adding that China and Italy will soon renew the action plan for cooperation, which expired at the end of last year.

Luigi Gambardella, president of ChinaEU, a business-led international association in Brussels, said the two countries can explore third-party cooperation in the fifth-generation era by improving the digital and telecommunications infrastructure along Belt and Road routes.

One of the main Chinese investors in Italy is ZTE, the telecommunications giant, which last year won a $1 billion contract to upgrade Italy's telecommunications infrastructure.

Hu Kun, ZTE's head of operations in Western Europe, said the company will upgrade Italy's telecommunications infrastructure in preparation for the 5G era: "When the project is finished, Italy will be the European frontrunner in terms of telecommunications infrastructure."

He added that the project will create about 2,500 new jobs in Italy in the next two and a half years, and ZTE will expand its "smart city" business and research facilities in the country.

John Hooper, correspondent for the Economist magazine in London, is a close observer of the benefits Italy could gain from the dynamics of Asia, especially China's development.

He said Italy is traditionally an exporting country and its economy can easily be influenced by external factors, so economic reform will be needed to further unlock its potential: "The country needs outside demand to develop its economy, especially from China," he said.

"However, Italy is still a country dominated by family-owned businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises, which makes it difficult to engage with China's demands and penetrate the Chinese market," he added.

"What I suggest is letting Italian SMEs form alliances region by region to engage Chinese customers and boost their presence in the huge market."

Wang Keju, Zheng Jinqiang and Zhang Zhaoqing contributed to the story.

Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn

Chinese customers use the Alipay platform to purchase goods at a store in Rome.Photo By Xinhua

(China Daily 05/12/2017 page6)
BEIJING -- A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson confirmed Friday representatives from the European Union, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States will attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.

According to spokesperson Geng Shuang, the Washington delegation will be led by Matt Pottinger, special assistant to the president and senior director for Asia at the National Security Council.

Park Byeong-suk, former deputy speaker of National Assembly of the ROK, will also attend, along with Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Geng said.

As a special envoy of British Prime Minister Theresa May, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, will attend the forum; and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will send Minister of Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries. Former French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin will lead the French delegation, Geng said.

European Commission Vice President Jyrki Katainen will also attend, Geng said.
Shu Qing, vice-governor of Henan, has vowed to transform Henan into a national transport and logistics hub, in order to take advantage of the Belt and Road Initiative and free trade zone policies. He made these comments during a press conference in Beijing on Friday.

"The Henan Free Trade Zone, one of the recently launched seven new free trade zones, undertakes the mission to build a traffic and logistics network, which link up the north and south while connecting the east and west," he said.

"It also serves as a modern comprehensive transportation hub, serving the Belt and Road Initiative."

Shu said he saw Henan's import-export volume with countries, and regions, participating in the Belt and Road Initiative during 2016, which reached 80.2 billion yuan ($11.60 billion), with a year-on-year increase of 15.4 percent.

The Zhengzhou-Europe railway, which launched 251 cargo trains in 2016, also exceeded the annual plan of 200, and had a total cargo volume reaching $1.2 billion.

Since being launched in 2013, the Zhengzhou-Europe Train finished 556 one-way trips by March, 2017, and delivered cargo amounting to the total value of $2.82 billion, according to Zhengzhou's bureau of commerce.

It would also take 300 Zhengzhou-Europe trains to complete the 10,214-kilometer trip in 2017 alone.

Shu added, during the press conference on Friday, Henan should take advantage of the free trade zone policies to upgrade the province's modern logistics sector, as well as the high-end manufacturing sector, while boosting business in cross border e-commerce, and transit, processing, service and offshore trades.

"The province had 29 international airfreight lines in 2016, and delivered 450,000 metric tons of cargo," he said.
Luis Alberto Moreno, IDB president [For China Daily]

Latin America and the Caribbean may not be the first areas that come to mind when you think of the Silk Road.

Yet, the chief of the Inter-American Development Bank said he wants to know how the region, which the IDB serves, can be better integrated into the Belt and Road Initiative.

As Luis Alberto Moreno, president of the IDB, prepared Wednesday to leave Washington for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which is in Beijing on Sunday and Monday, he said he hoped to get some answers.

Moreno said he wants to ramp up his bank's cooperation with China, which has become an influential provider of financing in the region.

"It's very important for us to see how this hemisphere, which is so significant, can be connected to that initiative, and in which ways cooperation is possible," Moreno told China Daily.

"That's what I look forward to exploring, and to seeing what comes out of this forum."

Moreno has been invited to speak at a plenary session of the forum and will also participate in a side event that focuses on financing.

"I'm very interested in seeing what President Xi Jinping and Chinese officials look to accomplish with this kind of initiative," Moreno said.

The former Colombian ambassador to the United States said he believes the initiative is not only about physically connecting the trade routes that exist, but more importantly connecting people and the financial dimensions that trade and globalization require.

Moreno said his bank needs to double investment in infrastructure. In 2016, the IDB approved $9.3 billion in lending, 40 percent of which went to infrastructure and the environment, while 24 percent was used for health and social investment, according to the bank's 2016 Annual Report.

"We have seen for a number of years already how the enormous impact of the Chinese demand for some of our commodities has helped countries lift many people out of poverty," Moreno said.

He said the bank hopes to deepen its ties with China. China joined the IDB in 2009, and has been a key provider of finance for infrastructure and development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

"Chinese companies have been interested in doing roads and ports," he said, adding the IDB has set up a platform for Chinese investment to encourage commercial linkages as well as knowledge sharing between China and Latin America and the Caribbean.

"But beyond that, there are huge possibilities," he said. "We're in a phase where we have to begin to diversify our own trade with China."

The IDB and People's Bank of China also launched a joint green finance program in March, focusing on green bonds, green credit line regulations and environmental and social risk management systems for financial institutions.




Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC China Energy, meets with deputy chairman of Rothschild & Co Alexandre de Rothschild at CEFC China's Shanghai headquarters on May 10, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC China Energy, met with deputy chairman of Rothschild & Co Alexandre de Rothschild in CEFC China's Shanghai headquarters, along with management members from both parties, on May 10 to exchange ideas on global investment opportunities.

The two parties agreed to strengthen cooperation in sectors including energy, financial services, aviation, infrastructure construction, food and high-end property management.

Ye said that CEFC China is developing a bank and insurance company-based financial platform to support its expansion in overseas markets. It focuses on investing in the United States, Central Asia, Middle East and Central and East Europe.

Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC China Energy, meets with delegates from Rothschild & Co on May 10, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

CEFC China also strives to push cooperation between leading foreign businesses with domestic State-owned businesses to support related parties' development.

Rothschild also explained Rothschild & Co's efforts in global expansion. He said the group is a pioneer in providing professional and customized investment consulting services to global businesses.

Rothschild told Ye that the group has strong advantages when it comes to energy projects in the regions including Europe, West Africa and the Middle East. It also maintains a strong position in food, aviation, infrastructure and high-end property management.

Ye Jianming, chairman of CEFC China Energy, meets with deputy chairman of Rothschild & Co Alexandre de Rothschild in CEFC China's Shanghai headquarters on May 10, 2017. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Rothschild said Rothschild & Co Group hopes to establish contacts with CEFC China in different business segments.

Both parties have agreed to use their advantages and professional skills to strengthen long-term partnerships with related industries.

Rothschild & Co Group is a leading investment bank in Europe and has paid close attention to expanding in the Chinese market. The company has accumulated ample experiences in promoting mergers and acquisitions between Chinese privately owned companies and large-scale Chinese State-owned companies. It also pushed several merger and acquisition cases between Chinese and foreign companies.
Spectators take photos as they watch the C919, China's first large homegrown passenger jet, coming in for a landing on its maiden flight at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport on May 5. GREG BAKER / REUTERS

Commercial Aircraft Corp of China Ltd, the Shanghai-based State-owned passenger plane manufacturer, said on Thursday that it plans to establish a multibillion yuan fund this year to support further research and development of aircraft components and related supply companies.

The company said the COMAC fund is undertaking the registration process and more than 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) in funds are set to be in place.

The company said the investment fund is expected to drive rapid growth of upstream and downstream industry chains and other high-end manufacturing sectors, such metallurgical processing and dynamic controls, for the C919the homegrown large passenger jet.

Such funds are expected to nurture the involved companies through direct investment and help them launch more mergers and acquisitions within the industry, according to analysts.

"Chinese companies are capable of making most aircraft components, but are less competitive due to higher costs and the design and quality can't catch up," Shanghai Securities Journal quoted an unidentified senior aircraft engineer as saying.

The successful maiden flight of the C919 has proved COMAC's capability of making modern aircraft, the engineer said. The next step is to nourish Chinese companies in order to make the aircraft structures and components another proud Made-in-China product range.

In the early stage, the fund will concentrate on the development and research of aircraft components such as engines, controls and electronic devices.

More than 240 local companies serve as suppliers and manufacturers for the C919, which has more than 100,000 components.

Lin Zhijie, an aviation industry analyst and columnist at Carnoc.com, one of China's largest civil aviation web portals, said the successful maiden flight of the C919 proved COMAC's capability in designing and assembling narrow-body commercial aircraft in line with international standards.

The next step for COMAC, he said, is to support more Chinese companies in the aircraft manufacturing chain. The fund will provide favorable support for industry growth.

"A lot of Chinese aviation manufacturing companies don't have enough capital and financial strength for the research and development of high-end manufacturing, especially making these complicated aircraft components," Lin added.

"They need external support to grow faster and produce more competitive products."
Culture is vital for the Belt and Road Initiative, Li Tao, a veteran in the internet industry and CEO of mobile internet startup APUS, said suggesting internet companies pay more attention to this when exploring foreign markets.

The Belt and Road Initiative is not just about production capacity and capital, but most importantly about culture, said Li, who leads a fast-growing company which provides a user system on Android mobile phones globally, seeing more than one billion users in the past three years. Before founding the company, Li worked as vice-president of China's biggest internet security company Qihoo 360.

"China's strong production ability makes it possible [for companies] to provide better products and services not only for the country itself but also for the vast emerging markets," Li said in an interview with China Daily Website.

The capital strength the country has accumulated over the past several decades of steady and high-speed growth cannot be used only for the economic development in China but also for emerging countries along the Belt and Road, he added.

"However, if China wants to be a country that has a leading position in the world, it must encompass culture in the Belt and Road Initiative," he said.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, China's trade with economies along the Belt and Road Initiative saw 26.2 percent growth year-on-year in the first quarter of 2017.

During the same period, China's non-financial outbound direct investment in 43 economies along the Belt and Road reached $2.95 billion, accounting for 14.4 percent of the country's total.

Since 2014, China has launched a series of cultural events including the Silk Road International Arts Festival, the Marine Silk Road International Arts Festival and the Silk Road (Dunhuang) International Cultural Expo to promote cultural communication among Belt and Road countries.

The Ministry of Culture released an action plan for cultural development along the Belt and Road in January this year. With the action plan, China will improve the international cooperation mechanism for the cultural industry and step up the development of the Silk Road Cultural Industry Belt.

"In today's world, when we talk about the 'cultural Belt and Road', or cultural integration, we cannot bypass the internet, for whatever we regard it, as a medium, a technology, or an industry, the internet, in nature, has strong cultural attributes," Li said.

The content that runs on the internet has strong cultural features. Therefore, internet companies operating globally must pay attention to local conditions and localize the content and services, he said.

"The most valuable things Chinese internet companies can bring with while going global are mature products and technologies, capital and business models, but as we are doing so, we must take into account the religious, and legal, political and cultural factors," Li said.

APUS has focused on going global ever since it was founded in 2014. It started to work in the Indian market in 2015 and has achieved solid results, with products well received there. The company also set up a 3 billion rupee ($45 million) fund in India that same year.

Another market APUS focuses on is Indonesia, where it has invested in the market's biggest Wi-Fi connect service provider Zoomy.

"Emerging markets are expected to experience leap-frog development in the internet industry, skipping the personal computer era to the mobile era." said Li.

"This does not mean that developed markets are not our consideration. On the contrary, we place a lot of attention on North America and Europe, where there are high-end users who add more value than those from emerging market," he added.

The company invested in LoopMe, the largest video platform company from UK. "The collaboration is generating a positive result, both in terms of the user acquisition and the ad profit," said Li.

The mainstay business models in emerging markets will develop from the current internet traffic entrance-based models, to content-based models in 2017 to 2020, and then the high-speed growth of localized commercial services, he said.

Li attributed the company's fast growth in the past two years to its traffic entrance model, where it provides easy access to the internet for users and generates revenue from the traffic.

Now the company is in its second stage where it is more important to work with local companies and provide more localized content and services. To prepare for the future era of cloud-end services, the company is working to build its own big data center.

"For people engaged in the internet industry, the Belt and Road Initiative came at a right time, "Li said.

Chinese internet companies are at a point when they must go global, and the Belt and Road Initiative has pointed to the right direction and created a conducive external environment, said Li.
Chinese and African workers on the Mombasa-Nairobi railway project in Mombasa, Kenya. China's non-financial outbound direct investment to Africa reached $750 million in the first three months this year. PAN SIWEI / XINHUA

China-Africa trade surged 16.8 percent year-on-year to $38.8 billion in the first quarter of the year, thanks to their deepening cooperation, said a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce.

It was the first quarterly rise since 2015, Sun Jiwen said at a news conference on Thursday, saying the latest favorable results might herald an era of high-level cooperation this year.

China's imports from the continent in the first three months amounted to $18.4 billion, up 46 percent from a year earlier. Among them, agricultural products grew by 18 percent, according to the ministry.

The nation's exports to African countries continued to decline, by 1 percent year-on-year in the period, but the rate of decline has slowed.

China mainly imports commodities from Africa like oil and minerals, while it exports a wide variety of consumer and capital goods.

Sino-African cooperation has been on a fast track since 2015, when President Xi Jinping, at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in South Africa, announced 10 strategic priorities with Africa within three years.

Cooperative fields ranged from industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure and financial services, to green development, trade and investment facilitation.

China's direct investment in the continent has increased significantly. The ministry's statistics showed that in the first quarter, non-financial outbound direct investment from China to Africa reached $750 million, up 64 percent from last year.

In addition, Chinese companies have financed and built many infrastructure projects across the continent. In the first quarter, Chinese companies' newly signed contracts in Angola grew by 136 percent year-on-year, and in Nigeria surged by 132 percent, according the ministry.

Chinese companies' engagement in African infrastructure projects has been successful, said Zhao Lin, GE China's engineering procurement construction leader, citing his company's latest endeavor with State-owned PowerChina Ltd in Africa.

In the future, the US-based company will continue to build stronger relations with Chinese partners across African markets, he added.

In 2016, China became the third-largest investor in Africa in terms of projects, capital investment and jobs, according to the Africa Attractiveness report released by accounting firm Ernst & Young.

It found almost a quarter of China-invested projects were directed toward Egypt, and Chinese investors took an active role in the telecoms, media and technology sector, automotive and business services sectors.
Workers on a motor vehicle production line at a factory in Qinzhou, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Official says more R&D centers will help country modernize its manufacturing

Li Dong, director of the industrial equipment department at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

Foreign companies could get more involved into the Made in China 2025 strategy by setting up research and development centers, talent training organizations and smart plants in the country, a senior official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said.

Li Dong, director of the industrial equipment department at the MIIT, said in an exclusive interview with China Daily: "We welcome foreign companies to expand investments in intelligent manufacturing and join hands with us to accelerate the transformation of China's manufacturing sector."

China is actively promoting the Made in China 2025 plan, in the hope of upgrading its sprawling manufacturing sector with cutting-edge technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence.

"Foreign and Chinese enterprises will continue to be treated equally. Relevant policies and measures are applicable to all companies in China," Li said.

The ministry has selected a group of foreign enterprises as model players in helping build smart plants in China. German companies SAP SE and Siemens AG and Japanese shipbuilder Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd are among them.

Mark Gibbs, president of SAP Greater China, said the company is seeing new opportunities from the Made in China 2025 strategy, which encourages more businesses to accelerate their digital transformation.

SAP has a laboratory in Shanghai, its third-largest lab globally, which employs around 3,000 software engineers and business architects to offer localized industrial solutions.

According to Li, international cooperation is also highly valued when China is drafting industry standards and protecting intellectual properties.

To promote communication on standards for intelligent manufacturing, China has established a Sino-German standardization working group with the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy in Germany, the German Institute for Standardization and other relevant organizations.

"When implementing the Made in China 2025 strategy, we will take advantage of both domestic and foreign resources, in a move to strike a balance between nurturing homegrown innovation while expanding international cooperation," Li said.

Last year, the MIIT chose 14 model projects of Sino-German intelligent manufacturing cooperation, which include the manufacturing solution developed by Siemens.

Zhu Xiaoxun, senior vice-president of Siemens China, said the company opened an industrial facility at its Wuhan Innovation Center in Hubei province in January, in order to get more involved in the Made in China 2025 initiative.

"The Wuhan facility will be geared to the needs of local industries to provide such services as innovation project incubation, professional training and technical consulting for small and medium-sized enterprises," Zhu said.

Siemens will also work with local companies to build digitization laboratories, intelligent water-testing laboratories, industrial hardware and software platforms and expert networks.
By SHI JING in Shanghai and ZHU WENQIAN, YUAN HUI in Hohhot | China Daily | Updated: 2017-05-12 08:16

A technician tests a dairy product of Yili Industrial Group Co at the company's innovation lab in Hohhot, capital of the Inner Mongolia automous region. XINHUA

Dairy giant plans to spend $850 million on purchase of 100 percent stake in Stonyfield

China's biggest dairy producer Yili Industrial Group Co has shown its ambition to consolidate its position and expand its production line with its latest overseas acquisition plans.

Yili announced on Wednesday night that it will bid for a 100 percent stake in leading US organic yogurt brand Stonyfield, which is currently owned by French dairy giant Danone. The acquisition will total $850 million, according to Yili.

Fully acquired by Danone in 2014, Stonyfield had an annual sales revenue of $370 million in 2016, with net profit to $50 million. Its production line covers yogurts, smoothies, milk and cream. Danone plans to sell off Stonyfield in order to accelerate the closure of its $10.4 billion acquisition of natural food company WhiteWave.

Yili is likely to confront strong competitors such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, according to Credit-Suisse analyst Laurent Grandet.

Xu Ke, vice-president of Yili Group, said that the whole bidding process is quite complicated and it is yet unknown when the result will be announced.

The capital market has responded positively to Yili's acquisition plan. Yili's price went up 0.92 percent on Thursday to close at 17.58 yuan ($2.54) per share, while the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index went up 0.29 percent.

Industry insiders consider Yili's intended acquisition of Stonyfield reflects Chinese dairy makers' growing interest in the low-temperature dairy products market. According to the Dairy Association of China, the country's low-temperature dairy product industry, especially pasteurized milk, grew by over 20 percent annually in the past three years.

Independent dairy analyst Song Liang predicted that low-temperature dairy products will continue to register the fastest pace of growth in 2017 as they will become consumers' favorite in first and second-tier cities, gradually replacing ultra-high-temperature dairy products.

Yili's resolve to expand its production line has been quite evident recently. Last October, it announced plans to acquire a 37 percent stake in organic milk producer Inner Mongolia Shengmu Animal Husbandry Co Ltd for 4.6 billion yuan. However, the acquisition plan ended on April 28 after the two companies failed to reach all the preconditions by the due date.
Miners carry parts at a colliery in Huaibei, Anhui province. Xie Zhengyi / For China Daily

Mergers and reorganization of China's central coal enterprises are speeding up, amid the government's effort to promote industry concentration and deepen supply-side structural reform.

China Poly Group Corp announced on Monday that it will transfer its coal businessPoly Energy Holdings Ltdto China National Coal Group Corp, also known as Chinacoal, which is the second time that Chinacoal has consolidated coal assets.

Owning coal mines in Shanxi province and the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, Poly Energy currently has 11 coal mines and controls nearly 2.6 billion metric tons of coal resources.

Last year, the State Development and Investment Corp transferred its 30.31 percent share of Xinji Energy Co Ltd to Chinacoal, which made Chinacoal the biggest shareholder of Xinji Energy, which is engaged in the exploration, washing, processing and distribution of coal.

The Chinese government is trying to create two mega coal giants in the coal industryChinacoal and Shenhua Group Corp, whose annual production and sales volume are respectively more than 400 million tons, Securities Times reported on Thursday.

Shenhua has already reached the goal, while Chinacoal's output is expected to be close to 200 million tons, after receiving Poly Energy's assets, the report said.

"There will be more mergers and acquisitions among Chinese coal companies in the next few years," said Mi Pengqi, an analyst at Beijing-based JLC Network Technology Co Ltd, a commodity information provider.

First, the moves will be among central State-owned companies, and some enterprises are likely to spin off divisions which are not their main business, in order to reach the goals of industrial upgrading and overcapacity elimination, he said.

Poly Energy's merger into Chinacoal is that kind of example.

Second, badly run companies belonging to local governments will be absorbed by profitable large enterprises, he said.

In tough times, mergers and acquisitions are likely to occur. China's coal industry remains weak and many companies have suffered heavy losses in recent years.

The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council announced the task of eliminating the excess capacity and disposing "zombie enterprises" in the steel and coal industries in July 2016.

The commission said that it would strive to reduce about 10 percent of the existing capacity in two years, to encourage professional steel and coal companies to become bigger and stronger and to ask other central enterprises involved in coal industry to pull out of the business.

Mergers and reorganizations are conducive to the healthy and stable development of the coal industry, which will see more market-based pricing. Concentration of resources will lead to their more reasonable allocation, and companies' capacity to combat risks will be greatly improved, said Zhang Min, an analyst from Sublime China Information Group, a commodity market information service organization.
Students at a playground of a school, built by the Chinese government, in Shibin al Kawm, Al Minufiyah, Egypt. China is the biggest investor in the development of Egypt's Suez Canal Corridor. XINHUA

Middle Eastern nation eyes the revival of its economic fortune

CAIRO  The Belt and Road Initiative will "open up huge opportunities" for deals between Egypt and China in terms of mutual trade and investment, a leading researcher and authority at a Cairo-based institute said.

"The philosophy of the initiative is based on the concept of development as well as trade," said Mohamed Fayez Farahat, head of the Asian Studies program at the state-run Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies.

Proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims at reviving ancient land and sea trade routes that link China with many countries in Asia, African and Europe via trade and infrastructure networks.

"The initiative by nature provides support for development process in Egypt because the maritime path of the Belt and Road passes through the Suez Canal," said Farahat who is scheduled to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

Egypt has recently adopted reform policies and austerity measures, taking out loans to revive its economy that has been ailing due to disruptions caused by two political uprisings and the ouster of two presidents, which caused investors and tourists to leave.

"The Belt and Road Initiative depends on huge financing capabilities and institutions that stand behind it and Egypt could benefit by getting support and loans for carrying out developmental projects with better and easier conditions, unlike the difficult system run by Western financial institutions," Farahat added.

The diversity and the richness of the initiative is seen covering coordinating policies, developing infrastructure and integrating financial cooperation between partners, which would create several fields of cooperation with Egypt, he explained.

Farahat said the logistics, ports and infrastructure of the developmental projects could constitute "a breakthrough of cooperation" between the two nations.

Despite the problems facing globalization in recent years, the Asian affairs researcher forecast that China would witness "massive transitions".

"China, which represents a successful model in development based on industry, is set to pay more attention to the logistics sector to push economic development in the region, including Egypt," he said.

Egypt's parliament on Sunday passed a long-awaited investment law that aims to create incentives the country needs to bring back investors after years of turmoil.

The new law is expected to boost much-needed investments by cutting bureaucracy, especially for starting new logistics and ports projects around the Suez Canal.

China is the biggest investor in the development of Egypt's Suez Canal Corridor which emerged in 1998. The Suez Canal Economic Zone, covering a total area of 461 sq km and comprising four sections and six ports, is seen as facilitating the presence of foreign investors.

"I expect China will contribute in a major way to increased development in Egypt, whose peace and stability provides a foundation for the Middle East," Farahat said, adding that by supporting Egypt, China would secure mega infrastructure projects passing through the Belt and Road Initiative's path.

He added that as a member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, Egypt could also benefit from funding its infrastructure projects with easier conditions.

Farahat, who is expected to deliver a speech during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation on the challenges that would face the implementation of the initiative, said he saw "large scope" for the initiative's success.

"The economies along the Belt and Road path should work on marketing the initiative as a project that the people believe in, which is the challenge now."

He pointed out some factors behind its success included China enjoying a high level of credibility among developing and growing countries. It also had very good and special ties with different international partners and its history lacked any negative implications with regards to imperialism or hegemony.

He also praised the initiative because it does not seek conflict with the existing international system, but integration with world financials institution like the World Bank.
Yihua Enterprise (Group) Co Ltd, the bellwether of the country's listed timber companies that ventured overseas for forest resources, said it is going to aggressively expand its business in Africa with a $1 billion investment in Gabon, on the west coast of the continent.

The Guangdong-based company signed an agreement on the joint development of Gabon's timber industry with its government last month. The planned projects include an international timber trade center, more deep processing factories and a timber museum.

Based in Shantou, Guangdong province, Yihua has developed from a wooden furniture workshop into a conglomerate that covers a wide range of businesses from real estate to healthcare.

It has two listed companies, Yihua Life and Yihua Healthcare. Yihua Life, a leading furniture designer and manufacturer in China, bought a Gabonese timber company for its resources including 350,000 hectares of forests in 2012, in its first and the most important step so far to explore the African market.

Liu Zhuangchao, vice-chairman and general manager of Yihua Life, said that it was a win-win deal for Yihua to expand its business in Gabon. He revealed that Yihua has invited the prime minister of Gabon on a visit to China in June to discuss details for the deal.

"Gabon urgently wants to make good use of its timber resources to boost its economy. Our cooperation with the Gabonese government meets their demand, so we have their support to implement the agreement as soon as possible," Liu said.

"Yihua will continue to focus on Gabon for its African business, since the country has a relatively stable political situation," he added.

"We will invest $1 billion on the projects in the agreement and will add more as our cooperation expands."

Yihua has invested $150 million in Gabon since its purchase of the local timber company in 2012.

The Chinese company has built four timber processing factories in Gabon, two of which are for deep processing. The two deep-processing bases have hired more than 1,000 local workers and boast a total capacity of 400,000 cubic meters of timber annually.

Yihua said that to help with Gabon's industrial upgrade, it would add more investment to the two deep-processing factories, planning to increase annual capacity to 600,000 cubic meters.

Gabon's President Ali Bongo Ondimba visited China in December. During the talks with Bongo, President Xi Jinping said that China supported Gabon's efforts to speed up its industrialization and convert the country's resources advantages into value-added results.

Xi added that China encouraged domestic companies to take an active part in infrastructure projects in Gabon.

Besides the timber business, Yihua also plans to enter the real estate, elderly care and medical care sectors in Gabon, according to Liu.

Yihua also signed an agreement with the city government of Gabon's capital, Libreville, last month to establish a strategic partnership to develop the city's infrastructure, healthcare services and social housing sector.

As China vigorously promotes the Belt and Road Initiative, Yihua has been making greater strides for business expansion along the route in recent years, including Gabon.

Liu said Yihua Life is selling the furniture it makes in 35 countries and regions internationally under the Yihua brand. He said that in the UK, one in four lounge suites sold there is now made by his company.

Yihua Life bought HTL International, a Singaporean furniture manufacturer, for 1.83 billion yuan ($265 million) last year.

"The purchase is a big stride for a privately owned Chinese companies, but we will continue to increase global investment in the housing and lifestyle sectors," said Liu.

"The Chinese government encourages privately owned companies to venture overseas, especially to the economies along the Belt and Road," he added.
James Quincey, chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Co, delivers a presentation in Paris. He took over his current position from Muhtar Kent on May 1. BENOIT TESSIER / REUTERS

ATLANTA  As Coca-Cola Co Chief Executive Officer James Quincey settles into his new job, he's facing a challenge that most of his predecessors never worried about: digital disruption.

Consumers are increasingly shopping online, spending more time on mobile apps, and getting groceries delivered to their homes. And that's hitting Coca-Cola in ways you might not expect, Quincey said in an interview from his office in Atlanta.

When shoppers skip trips to the local mall and get their clothes at Amazon, they also forgo buying Coke at a vending machine or food court. So while the decline of retailers has mostly focused on bankrupt apparel chains and shuttered storefronts, a brand like Coca-Cola is suffering as well.

"Digital is changing the way you behave," he said. "It affects other categories that are not the primary reason you thought about making the shopping trip."

Turning Coke into a winner of the digital agerather than another brick-and-mortar victimis a key priority for Quincey.

The technological challenges faced by the 52-year-old executive, who took the reins from Muhtar Kent on May 1, are compounded by a backlash against sugary beverages. The upheaval has led the soda giant to invest in new brands such as Suja Life and Aloe Gloe, which appeal to health-conscious consumers. Quincey also is slashing expenses and offloading large swaths of its bottling plants around the world in a bid to re-emerge as a leaner, more focused operation.

As its sales slip, Coca-Cola has seen its stock decline 3.8 percent in the past year. That compares with a 16 percent gain for the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

No paper

But technology is a main focus for Quincey, an Englishman who has spent more than two decades at Coca-Cola. He wants to modernize the 131-year-old company and brags that there's hardly any paper in his pristine office. (Glancing over at a lone document sitting on a cabinet, Quincey apologizes that one piece "crept in.")

The self-proclaimed techie drives a Tesla and uses a standing desk. Quincey, who is fluent in Spanish, likes to put his calls on speakerphone and paces around the room while he talks.

The disruptive power of tech has been especially pronounced in some overseas markets, including China. When Quincey was chief operating officer in early 2016, he saw sales in that country slumphurt by a decline in sales to noodle shops and other restaurants.

The shops themselves weren't the problemthey were still selling large quantities of foodbut more customers were ordering online and having their meals delivered.

The problem for Coca-Cola: The restaurants offered glass bottles and sizes that weren't suited to being transported via scooter.

'Weird and surprising'

"Unless you're adapting to the secondary effect, you can findall of a suddenweird and surprising changes happening to you," Quincey said.

At the same time, technology is helping Coke cut its own costs. For one, the company is no longer building customized software to run things like human resources and bill payment, relying instead on cheaper ready-made systems.

"We're not a software companywe're in the business of making beverages," Quincey said.

Tech advancements also have made some jobs at Coca-Cola obsolete. The company is currently cutting 1,200 positions, in part because it's spinning off bottling plants.

"Technology has provided lots of new ways to do things, and in the end, that displaces some work and some people," he said. "You have to adapt."

BLOOMBERG
The construction of a Boeing completion and delivery center got underway in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province, on Thursday.

The joint venture between Boeing Co and Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China Ltd is expected to help the Chinese aviation industry promote industrial upgrading and facilitate the transformation of Zhoushan's aviation park into a leading aviation manufacturing base.

Ray Conner, vice-chairman of Boeing, has expressed willingness to expand the partnership with the Chinese aviation industry for mutual benefit, and said the Zhoushan project was another step.

He said the center will increase the production of the B737 and B737 MAX to meet global demand.

The project will consist of a completion center under a joint venture between Boeing and COMAC and a delivery center owned by Boeing, capable of tasks including cabin installation, painting, flight testing and aircraft maintenance.

With maximum annual delivery capacity of 100 planes, the center will be ready for its first delivery in 2018.

While the aviation park is aiming for its maiden delivery in 2018, the Airbus A320 final assembly line in Tianjin will start assembling the A320neo in July and delivering in September.

Airbus's first overseas completion and delivery center for the A330 is also expected to deliver its first aircraft in September and produce two aircraft monthly by 2019.

Eric Chen, Airbus China president and CEO, said the company is bullish on the growing demand for A330 in China.
A man speaks on the phone outside the Bank of China head office building in Beijing, China, March 30, 2016. [Photo/VCG]

LONDON - Bank of China has joined CHAPS Clearing Company Limited, Britain's electronic same day payment system as a shareholder and direct participant with immediate effect, CHAPS Clearing Company announced on Thursday.

Bank of China (BOC) is the first Asian-headquartered direct participant in CHAPS (the Clearing House Automated Payment System)), which brings the total number of CHAPS direct participant to 25.

Sun Yu, general manager of Bank of China Limited London branch, said: "After joining CHAPS, we have completed another vital step towards the internationalization of our direct clearing network, now covering the world's major currencies. Our customers will benefit from the more efficient, secure and flexible payment and settlement services provided by Bank of China Limited."

Tim Fitzpatrick, chief executive of CHAPS Co, said: "Bank of China Limited is a leader in banking and financial services with an international presence in over 50 countries, and their participation in CHAPS further extends the accessibility of our service around the globe."

"Our expanding base of Direct Participants is a testament to the world-class offering we provide. We are looking forward to working with Bank of China Limited to enhance CHAPS for the benefits of all our users," he added.

CHAPS is the British electronic payment system that guarantees same day settlement finality for high-value payments. It is at the heart of the British payments and financial infrastructure. The system continues to be one of the largest Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems in the world, offering efficient, risk-free and irrevocable same day payments to meet the sterling RTGS payment requirements of its Direct Participants.

Bank of China Limited is the most internationalized and diversified bank in China. Established in 1912, it has been satisfying the financial requirements of its clients in Britain for nearly 90 years with a comprehensive range of financial services.
CAIRO - The Egyptian banking sector focuses on the Chinese market for external expansion to enhance mutual trade between Egypt and China in the light of the Belt and Road Initiative, the vice chairman of an Egyptian giant national bank said in an interview with Xinhua.

"We see China as one of the priorities of our bank for external expansion due to the large Chinese market and the volume of trade between China and Egypt that has exceeded $11 billion," Banque Misr Vice Chairman Akef Abdel-Latif al-Maghraby said.

He added that the Chinese investments in Egypt are about $600 million and they are expected to greatly rise in the near future, which is why his Banque Misr attaches importance to attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation that will be held in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

Proposed by China in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative aims to revive ancient land and sea trade routes that link China with many countries in Asia, Africa and Europe via trade and infrastructure networks.

"Hence, we see that the Egyptian banks should have strong presence in China to facilitate mutual trade, whether exports or imports, and more importantly to attract Chinese investments to Egypt," the vice chairman of Egypt's second largest national bank told Xinhua.

The banker said that Banque Misr representatives will be among an Egyptian high-profile ministerial delegation scheduled to visit China to attend the mid-May forum in Beijing "due to its significance to us."

"The Belt and Road Initiative will restore cooperation and investment opportunities and will increase Egyptian trade not only with China but all other states included in the initiative," Banque Misr vice chairman said.

Maghraby noted that a key part of his visit to China for the forum is a loan agreement to be signed with China Development Bank (CDB) to provide Banque Misr with $500 million to finance joint projects in the Arab country for eight years.

CDB is the largest Chinese bank for foreign investment and financing cooperation. It chose Egypt as the destination for its first overseas representative office established in 2009 to be the only Chinese financial institution in Egypt.

It has also provided financial service to support various sectors in Egypt including energy, telecommunication, banking, manufacturing and SMEs. By the end of 2016, CDB's loan outstanding in Egypt has been more than $2 billion.

"Besides, we'll make a number of visits to Chinese companies and investors to help them enter the Egyptian market and remove any obstacles they may be facing," Maghraby said.

It has also opened a representative branch in Guangzhou city of Guangdong province and is planning to establish similar branches in China in the near future.

Maghraby continued that Egyptian banking and financial cooperation with China is "promising" and "very comfortable" due to the transparency of the Chinese side and the closeness between the peoples of the two countries.

"We hope this closeness can be translated into more Chinese investments in Egypt and also to bring the knowhow of Chinese technology and industry to our country," he told Xinhua.

He added that his country should learn from the Chinese experience that raised China to become the world's second largest economy within 40 years, noting that China's interest in investment in Africa is good for Egypt.

"China greatly developed over the past two decades in various fields and it focuses on technological industries and foreign investments today, which is a new shift for the Chinese economy that used to focus on labor-intensive industries," the senior banker said.

Egypt has been suffering economic slowdown over the past few years due to political turmoil and relevant security issues, which led the country to adopt a strict economic reform program including austerity measures, energy subsidy cuts and local currency floatation, all encouraged by a 12-billion-dollar loan from the International Monetary Fund.

"We have issues and we still do, but we're moving in the positive direction through our economic reforms and currency floatation, which reflected on increasing competitiveness of the Egyptian companies and products," the Banque Misr official said.

In late 2016, the central banks of Egypt and China signed a currency swap deal worth 18 billion yuan ($2.62 billion) to bolster economic activities in the North African country.

"It's a good and useful deal because it promotes mutual trade between the two countries and broaden the sphere of their mutual trade," Maghraby remarked.

He concluded that the Egyptian-Chinese economic relations are "heading in the right direction but with a bit slow pace," vowing that Egypt will work hard on removing all obstacles facing Chinese investors in the country.
Alibaba's executive chairman Jack Ma delivers a speech at an investor conference at the company's headquarters in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, on June 14, 2016. The e-commerce giant Alibaba owns the online shopping platform Taobao. [Photo/Xinhua]

Founder and chairman of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd Jack Ma is planning to host a summit in Detroit aimed at attracting Americans who have an interest in selling to the world's largest consumer market: China.

The decision to hold the summit looks to be a step in fulfilling his pledge to create 1 million jobs in the country, a topic that was discussed during his meeting with then US president-elect Donald Trump in New York in January.

In a widely-circulated video footage, Ma talked about how China's rising middle class and their exploding purchasing power will fuel business growth and spell job opportunities in the US.

"By next year, China's online spending will be greater than the rest of the world combined. At Alibaba, we want to help you take advantage of this appetite for consumption through our e-commerce marketplaces," he said, referring to the slew of online shopping portals under its brand.

For example, Taobao and Tmall pair Chinese audiences with mom-and-pop and bigger sellers, while AliExpress connects foreign buyers with affordable made-in-China products. Tmall Global, on the other hand, is a key gateway through which Chinese consumers can purchase delicacies from around the world.

According to market research company eMarketer, Chinese consumers are projected to spend over $150 billion on foreign-made goods by 2020, a sign that the traditional Chinese trait of frugality is gradually being eroded by the free-spending attitudes of today's younger generation.

Factors such as rising disposable incomes, heavy smart phone usage and frictionless online payment have also pushed cross-border e-commerce in China to new heights, and consequently turned the online shopping operator into a $284 billion company.

Alibaba's 2016 Singles Day shopping festival, a 24-hour online retail event held every November 11, logged a record 120.7 billion yuan ($17.5 billion) of purchases bought from overseas virtual stores. Goods from the US generated the highest sales among foreign stores.

While established US brands from Apple to Gap have already established a presence in Tmall, tapping into half a billion Chinese buyers who long for authentic products, Ma said that he wishes to help extend this success to small American businesses that lack the resources and experience needed to navigate one of the world's most sophisticated consumer markets.

"It's partly because SMEs are reminiscent of Ma's early days when he was starting up his own business in an apartment. He is always looking to empower the smaller players," said Lu Zhenwang, an internet veteran and CEO of Shanghai-based Wanqing Consultancy.

The US summit, added Lu, will be an opportunity for Alibaba to remind the US audience of the strength of China e-commerce and it also underpins the company's renewed focus on reaching out to smaller businesses, something that was put on the sidelines when it prioritized growth at home.

The US is among a slew of destinations around the globe that Alibaba is aiming to establish a foothold in. Since the start of this year, the company has opened an office in Melbourne, signed pacts for importing Argentina's top agricultural products and vowed to march into Canada through a similar trade fair in September.

Ma has also been advocating a free-trade arrangement dubbed the "Electronic World Trade Platform". It features lowered entry barriers and easier access to loans for SMEs. The first prototype of the platform landed in Malaysia in March.
China's regulators are encouraging bond issuance in a drive to support the Belt and Road Initiative, according to a 21st Century Business Herald report on Friday.

The bonds issued in Fujian province and Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region totaled 235 billion yuan ($34 billion) by the end of last month.

Of which, 143.4 billion yuan was raised to support key areas mentioned in the Belt and Road Initiative's directive document, titled Vision and Action.

The total debt instruments issued domestically, and overseas,to bankroll Belt and Road constructions exceeded 170 billion yuan by the end of April, according to the newspaper.

On Tuesday, the Shanghai Stock Exchange announced it wouldsupport the United Company Rusal (UC Rusal) on follow-up issuance, listing and transfer processes of its yuan-denominated panda bonds.

The Russian aluminum producer, which registered to raise 10 billion yuan in Chinese market in February, 2017,has been the first foreign company, along the Belt and Road, to issue panda bonds.

The domestic corporate bond issued by the Zhejiang Hengyi Group in April, 2017, with the China Development Bank Securities as its underwriter, was the first of its kind to tap into the onshore renminbi market to finance construction projects of the Initiative, according to the newspaper.

Belt and Road themed bonds entered the market as early as 2015, when overseas subsidiaries of the China Merchants Group, the China Merchants Port Holdings Co Ltd and Global Logistic Properties issued panda bonds in the country to finance constructions along the routes.
Wei Zengjun (center), Shaanxi's deputy governor, briefs the media at a news conference on May 12, 2017, ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing, China. [Photo by Luo Wangshu/chinadaily.com.cn]

Northwest China's Shaanxi province has successfully exported apples, electronic products and oil extraction equipment to Asia and Europe using a newly developed transportation network, a senior provincial official said on Friday.

"Shaanxi is China's largest apple production base. Apples produced in our standardized plantations are popular in the European and US market," Wei Zengjun, Shaanxi's deputy governor, said at a news conference ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which starts on Sunday.

About 1,500 delegates from more than 130 countries, including 29 heads of state, will gather for the two-day forum, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Shaanxi aims to establish five centers to implement the Belt and Road Initiative - one for transportation, trade and logistics; another for international industrial cooperation; a third for technology and education; a fourth for international tourism; and the fifth for regional finance.

"International freight trains such as China Railway Express and chartered planes have taken products made in Shaanxi and other parts of China to the rest of Eurasia," Wei said, adding that the number of trains carrying products such as wheat and frozen food back to China is also rising.

"Shaanxi is in the geographic center of China, which facilitates its linking up with the rest of the country and opening up to the world," he said.

The Belt and Road Initiative, first proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013, aims to boost exchanges between China and the rest of the world, including in trade and infrastructure investment and people-to-people exchanges.

The Initiative, comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, is intended to connect Asian, European and African countries and promote cooperation.
BEIJING - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) Friday signed a loan and technical assistance facility to Beijing-based China Water Environment Group to help restore water ecosystems and improve wastewater management in China's central and western provinces.



The facility included a dual currency U.S. dollar-yuan loan equivalent to 150 million dollars from the ADB's ordinary capital resources and a complementary loan of 100 million dollars raised from participating banks, as well as a technical assistance of 260,000 dollars funded from the ADB-administered Water Financing Partnership Facility.



"Developing water infrastructure and wastewater management systems is a key element of the government's plan to better manage water resources," said Hisaka Kimura, East Asia Unit Head of ADB's Private Sector Operations Department.



Integrating greater operational efficiency, additional capital, and technical expertise in water resources will help China become cleaner and more resistant to water-related disasters, the Manila-based ADB said in a statement.



The project will construct wastewater treatment plants and related works for the improvement of river and lake water quality in central and western regions of China, with treatment capacity reaching 2.3 million tonnes of wastewater and 2,900 tonnes of sludge per day by 2024.



ADB's engagement will also help mobilize commercial co-financing for the project, it added.
Thanks to internet and technology, camels and ships carrying goods along the Belt and Road routes in ancient times have made ways for modern e-commerce.

Online platforms are expected to play a leading role in boosting trades along the routes and benefiting people from all regions, research unit of the country's e-commerce giant Alibaba said in a report.

The institute has launched an e-commerce connectivity index (ECI) which tracks cross-border trade activity enabled by online platforms.

Here let's take a look at the top 10 countries along the Belt and Road weaved most by e-commerce.

10. Singapore

ECI: 6.4
Attendees visit the General Motors Co (GM) Cadillac booth at the Auto Shanghai 2017 vehicle show in Shanghai, April 20, 2017. [Photo/VCG]

CHICAGO - General Motors Co (GM) plans to launch 10 "new energy" vehicles including hybrid electrics, plug-in hybrids and pure electrics in China by 2020.

Besides Cadillac CT6 plug-in hybrid electric that has already been in sale in China, GM's Buick will have a pure battery-electric for China by 2020, the Detroit News reported in a news released Thursday.

"New energy" vehicles are now the focus of the Detroit-based automakers. Months ago, GM launched its new 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV, a pure electric with an estimated 380 kilometers of range and equipped with a 60-kwH battery pack. Recently, it debuted the Buick Velite 5 plug-in hybrid electric vehicle based on the Chevrolet Volt.

Available at a price around $30,000 after a federal income tax credit, GM sold 4,384 Bolt EVs in April this year in the United States.

A McKinsey & Co study in January found the cost of an average battery pack has dropped from more than 1,000 dollars per kilowatt hour to an estimated 227 dollars per kilowatt hour in 2016. The research firm predicts that the cost could fall to less than 190 dollars per kilowatt hour by the end of 2020 and further to less than 100 dollars by 2030.

Statistics provided by the federation show that US sales of EVs and plug-ins in 2016 totaled about 159,000 units, up 37 percent from 2015.
Jean-Sebastien Jacques, chief executive officer of Rio Tinto. PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY

China's moves on steel expected to swing focus onto high-quality raw materials

Rio Tinto Chief Executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques said he was not concerned that China's continuing fight against overcapacity in its steel sector would hurt the business of the mining behemoth.

"Instead, the move represents a good opportunity for us as steel plants resort to utilizing high-quality assets and higher-quality raw materials," said Jacques, CEO of the world's second-biggest miner.

"I'm optimistic about Rio Tinto's business in China and if you ask me if I am worried about China in 2017, the answer is definitely no."

With substantial overcapacity in its iron and steel sector, China has vowed to continue with its overcapacity reduction this year, aiming to cut 50 million metric tons of steel production and analysts believe the initiative will reduce iron demand in the world's second-biggest economy.

Jacques said his company viewed the relationship with China as a mutual partnership.

"The overcapacity cuts mostly aim at scrapping polluting and less efficient plant, which will drive efficient producers to demand high quality minerals and resources such as iron ore, bauxite and copper that we produce," he said.

Rio Tinto's strategy was to build business around a set of tier one assets and the group was taking a value over volume approach, he added.

Recently, he spoke with China Daily about the company's strategy, business opportunities and prospects. The following are edited excerpts from the interview:

China accounts for 40 percent of Rio Tinto's revenue. How do you describe Rio Tinto's business in China in recent years?

China has been growing in importance and we have been working with China to realize its long-term strategic goals through sustainable business operations. At Rio Tinto, we want to be China's preferred supplier, preferred customer and preferred partner in our sector. We have been supplying the minerals and metals China needs including iron ore, bauxite, copper, diamonds, coal and borates for over a century.

How would you forecast Rio Tinto's prospects in China in the next five to 10 years?

Our relationship with China will become even more important in future years. The prospects for growth in China over the medium to long-term remain strong and this will drive demand for our products.

Over the next 15 years, the world is expected to consume more copper than in the past 20 years, almost as much steel as in the past 30 years and almost as much aluminum as in the past 40 years. So we remain very much focused on the bigger picture.

What business opportunities do you see as China promotes the Belt and Road Initiative? How do you think the new infrastructure can contribute to global growth?

Infrastructure including roads, rail lines, transport links and power generation are the key to supporting global growth and can unleash economic growth by creating jobs, increasing investment and enhancing productivity. China's infrastructure boom provides lessons for the rest of the world.

The world is already looking at how China, the Asian region and the world can cooperate and make better use of bilateral and multilateral approaches to deliver all-important regional infrastructure.

At Rio Tinto, our business sees the potential from a greater focus on infrastructure through the Belt and Road. We are pioneers in mining and metals, and produce materials essential to human progress which are also needed for the rollout of the Belt and Road through infrastructure. Multilateral groups such as the B20 are just as keenly interested and watching progress closely.

How has globalization benefited your business?

Globalization has been a significant driver of growth for Rio Tinto, by driving demand for the metals and minerals that we produce. We have witnessed first-hand the benefits globalization can bring as we were the first company to sign a joint venture and work with China to develop iron ore deposits in Australia. That joint venture, called Channar, is now celebrating 30 years of operations.

At the time it was China's largest and most successful overseas investment. Today China is Australia's and Rio Tinto's major trading partner. Globalization has developed its own momentum.

What is your company's biggest achievement here since 1983, when Rio Tinto set up its very first office in the country?

We take pride in supplying the aluminum, copper, borates, diamonds and iron ore that have helped underpin China's economic growth and raise living standards across the country.

We also are very happy to have helped quite a few Chinese manufacturers and suppliers raise their products to international standards and export their goods for the first time.

The most important achievement is continuing to build on our enduring partnership with China. Rio Tinto's relationship with China stretches back a century and it is now stronger than ever.

Are you optimistic about business in China, as there is a fundamental shift going on in a growing preference for the more efficient and less polluting end of the industry?

I am optimistic about Rio Tinto's business in China. China is experiencing an adjustment phase as it attempts to rebalance its economy and focus on quality of growth. Overcapacity cuts mainly target the polluting and the less efficient, which will drive the efficient producers that we supply. China's growth may continue to slow, but it will do so off an ever larger base which means demand for raw materials will still be huge.

How will Rio Tinto keep its edge and maintain its cost advantage against the long-term low iron ore pricing and overcapacity in China? What's your view about the country's ongoing efforts to address overcapacity?

We have a very clear strategy that is working. Our strategy is built around a set of tier one assets and in iron ore our Pilbara operations are amongst the best in the world. We are disciplined with our capital allocation and deliver superior returns for our shareholders. With our strategy in place, backed by a high-performance culture, we are well positioned to benefit from continuing demand across China and the developing world.

How do you distinguish Rio Tinto's from other competitors? What is your competitive edge over your rivals?

We are committed to the Chinese market and we want to keep building our long-term partnership with China and have been working with key Chinese partners closely, all of which helps differentiate us from other top industry players.

As a supplier, we are powering the Chinese economic development and urbanization through a long-term commitment to the country. Since the very first Rio Tinto shipment delivered to China in 1973, we have sold more than 2 billion tons of iron ore, highlighting the longevity of Rio Tinto's relationship with China. Our longstanding commitment to events like the CDF, where we have been a sponsor every year since it began in 2000, underlines the importance we place on China.

How has Rio Tinto's expansion in China been going so far? What strategies will you adopt to expand your business in China?

China is already our largest customer responsible for about 43 per cent of sales revenue in 2016. What is clear to us is that the relationship will only become more important in the future. We view the China relationship as a mutual partnership. In the past 10 years, Rio Tinto has purchased about $7 billion in goods and services from China for use in our operations worldwide. This figure will continue to grow.

During your trips to China, is there a place that particularly impressed you?

Beijing and Shanghai are the cities that I visited most during my trips. Both look and feel quite impressive and full of energy. I was in Hangzhou last September for the G20 and found it a wonderful city.

What are your hobbies?

I like rugby and often watch it with my two daughters, which allows me to spend more time with my family.

CV

Age : 45

Career:

 2016 onwards: Chief Executive, Rio Tinto

 2015-16: Chief Executive, Rio Tinto Copper & Coal

 2013-15: Chief Executive, Rio Tinto Copper

 2011-13: President, International Operations, Rio Tinto Copper

 2003-11: Group Director Strategy, Tata Steel Group

 1998-2003: Aluminium Controller, Pechiney

 1996-98: Manufacturing & CI Engineer, Vallourec & Mannesman

1994-96: Manufacturing Engineer, L'Oreal

Education:

 1994: Master of Science from Ecole Centrale Paris

Family: Married with two daughters
Thirty-two cities in China will compete in a large-scale culture tourism TV program Charming Cities in China, which will be broadcast on CCTV 2 from June 16 to Dec 8.

They include Inner Mongolia's Alxa League, Shaanxi province's Yan'an city, Tibet autonomous region's Linzhi and Jilin province's Tonghua.

The 32 cities were considered to represent 32 forms of distinctive Chinese culture, selected from more than 330 counterparts.

They will go through four rounds of challenges in the program and the one receiving the most votes from the audience worldwide will be named the charming tourism city of the year.

The show is a joint effort between the China National Tourism Administration and CCTV, and aims to boost cultural tourism development and help the public better understand Chinese cities.

"The main purpose of the program is to display city culture image and brand," says Zhao He, deputy director of the CCTV 2.

It will display tourism opportunities and the unique culture of those cities.
President Xi Jinping and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang (center) visit the photo exhibition Vietnam in Chinese Photographers' Eyes in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday. JU PENG/XINHUA

China and Vietnam should handle maritime disagreements through dialogues, President Xi Jinping said on Thursday as he calls for efforts to push bilateral relations to a new level.

In a meeting with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, who is making a five-day state visit to China, Xi said the two countries should push forward maritime cooperation, accumulate consensus gradually and broaden their common interests.

Quang will attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation on Sunday and Monday.

Witnessed by the two presidents, China and Vietnam signed cooperative documents in areas like diplomacy, technology, e-commerce, infrastructure and education.

Xi said China and Vietnam should take advantage of the Belt and Road Forum to connect their development strategies.

Noting it is Quang's first visit to China since becoming Vietnamese president, Xi said the visit could energize China-Vietnam relations.

Xi called on the two nations to strengthen coordination to push forward cooperation in all areas and bring practical benefits for the people of both countries.

Quang said the two countries should handle disagreements properly and continue to push forward with maritime cooperation.

Vietnam is willing to expand cooperation with China through people-to-people exchanges and in areas like economy and trade, agriculture, environment, infrastructure, tourism and security, he said.

Liu Zhenmin, vice-foreign minister, said that during their talks, the two presidents discussed the South China Sea "in a positive atmosphere".

According to Liu, the two sides agreed to implement the consensus reached by the high-level leaders of the two countries, make continuous efforts to stabilize the South China Sea situation, and push forward negotiation.

"The talks over the South China Sea issue are completely positive, without any discord," he told reporters.

The two countries will enhance maritime cooperation in "less sensitive areas", such as joint scientific research and exploitation of the Beibu Gulf, he added.

While China remains the largest trading partner of Vietnam, Vietnam surpassed Malaysia last year to become the largest trading partner of China in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, two-way trade between China and Vietnam reached $87.8 billion in the first 11 months of 2016, up by 1.6 percent year-on-year.

In the same period, Vietnam's export to China amounted to $32.96 billion, up by 20.8 percent year-on-year, and its trade deficit with China fell by 31 percent.
THAAD, nukes thought to be key topics of talks between leaders

President Xi Jinping and the Republic of Korea's new president, Moon Jae-in, talked about Beijing's "major concerns" and agreed in their first phone conversation on Thursday to meet at an early date, sending positive signals for the bilateral ties.

Xi said it is hoped that the new ROK government will attach great importance to the relevant major concerns of China and take tangible actions to push for the healthy, stable development of bilateral ties.

Moon said he fully understands China's major concerns, according to a news release from China's Foreign Ministry.

Although the release did not elaborate on China's major concerns, observers noted that the call was made since Washington and Seoul have deployed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense antimissile system in the ROK, a move that has angered Beijing and chilled China-ROK ties.

Moon said the new ROK government will communicate with China over this and work hard to seek a proper solution.

Xinhua quoted an ROK senior presidential press secretary as saying Moon will send special envoys to Beijing to discuss issues concerning THAAD and Pyongyang's nuclear program. He will dispatch separate delegations to discuss the two issues with their Chinese counterparts, the report said.

The leaders will keep in contact and meet at an early date.

The conversation was held a day after Xi sent a message congratulating Moon on his landslide election victory.

Zhang Liangui, an expert in Korean studies at the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, said the inauguration of a new ROK president "offers a good chance for the China-ROK ties to improve, and the talk on Thursday enhanced the chances of such a trend".

"There is a shared wish on both sides for some new changes over the ties, as the chilly relations have affected many fronts of bilateral exchanges, such as trade," Zhang said.

Zhang said Moon's latest comments indicated possible damage control for THAAD, and the proposed talk with Beijing on THAAD itself "is already very valuable, as there has been scant official bilateral discussion on THAAD".

Ruan Zongze, vice-president of the China Institute of International Studies, said the THAAD deployment is undermining policy coordination between China and the ROK on global and regional issues.

"The impact on the economic front may eventually offset the great benefits that the two sides had once harvested," Ruan said.

On the Korean Peninsula situation, Xi reiterated Beijing's position regarding nuclear weapons, saying China will work with all parties, including the ROK, to continue working for peace.

Moon said Seoul is ready to work with Beijing to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula by resuming the Six-Party Talks.
The second sandstorm in a week, carried by strong winds, covered a large area of the north on Thursday and was forecast to linger into Friday, the national weather authority said on Thursday.

The storm arrived as the State Forestry Administration said the country's expanding shelter forest has worked better in reducing the dust in the originating areas but did little to block the long-distance storm.

At least seven provincial regions, including the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, Shanxi province and the Hebei-Beijing-Tianjin area, were engulfed by sand and dust in gusting winds on Thursday, the same areas hit by the year's strongest sandstorm a week earlier, the China Meteorological Administration said.

The dusty weather is forecast to affect fewer regions, and with less severity. For example, Beijing saw the reading for PM10 - a major pollutant in dusty weather - climbing to 400 micrograms per cubic meter at noon on Thursday, according to the city's environmental monitoring bureau.

On May 4, the peak reading of PM10 in Beijing exceeded 1,000 mcg/cu m and turned the sky a murky yellow. That sandstorm engulfed one-sixth of the country for two days, and the low visibility affected roads and flights in some cities.

In the latest sandstorm, dust engulfed northern regions quickly and caused severe air pollution, making some people question the influence of the shelter forest, which is supposed to stop the sand.

Since 1978, the central government has planted trees and expanded forests along the northwestern, north and northeastern regions, collectively called the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, the world's largest forestation project.

To date, the reforestation covers over 290,000 square kilometers, and by 2020, the new woodlands will be expanded by over 16,400 sq km, according to the State Forestry Administration's Three-North Forest Shelter Bureau.

The shelter forest has stretched through regions prone to dusty weather. The national weather authority determined two-thirds of the sandstorms formed in the southern part of Mongolia and got stronger in Inner Mongolia.

In response to public concern regarding the forest's effects on the recent sandy weather, Zhang Bihui, a senior meteorologist at the weather authority, explain-ed: "The sand and dust (in the sandstorms on May 4 and 5) were carried aloft by upper air currents, over 5,000 meters high, which is why the forest had little effect."

Hong Jiayi, deputy head of the forest shelter bureau, said the upper limit that the forest can work in stopping sand is the height of the trees.

"The forest has reduced the dust by increasing the vegetation coverage to slow down the wind near the ground, control the dust from rising off the ground and forcing the flying dust settle down when it passes through the forest," he said.

The forest cannot change the air currents as some people thought, he added.

Researchers have found the shelter forest works in reducing dust storms in local areas and in changing desert into farmland or grassland, said Li Xinrong, a researcher on deserts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In 2015, sandy land area in China had been reduced by 9,902 sq km compared with 2009, a national desert survey showed.

Zhang said China has had seven instances of dusty or sandy weather between Jan 1 and May 6, lower than the average of nearly 12 over the same period since 2000.

In the long run, the expanding shelter forest has worked in controlling dusty weather, forestry and weather authorities said.

zhengjinran@chinadaily.com.cn
Langfang city in Hebei province will redouble its efforts to control air pollution by the end of October, as required by the Ministry of Environmental Protection, local authorities said on Thursday.

The ministry announced last week that it would be supervising the city's efforts going forward. "We will take stricter measures to shut down or oversee polluting companies that have been identified by the ministry," said Li Chunyuan, deputy head of the Langfang Environmental Protection Bureau.

The ministry said in a notice on its website on Friday that it will oversee Langfang's work on air pollution control because the city, which has been haunted by environmental issues in recent years, still has many prominent problems to deal with.

"Some local government officials of Langfang don't realize the seriousness of the environmental issues and are slow to implement related plans, leading to continuous illegal pollution-discharging activities by clusters of companies," the notice said.

According to the notice, two counties in Langfang, including Wenan and Dacheng, are facing serious pollution caused by a number of companies making plywood and thermal insulation materials, and processing plastics and nonferrous metals, all of which are polluting.

According to Langfang Daily, 2,290 companies in 20 clusters were identified by the ministry.

Most of the companies emit volatile organic waste without proper processing, it said. They have poor environmental protection facilities, directly discharge waste or disperse it in the open air.

According to Li, all of the companies processing nonferrous metals in Dacheng county have been closed permanently, while some others were temporarily shut down pending improvements.

This is the first time the ministry has stepped in directly to oversee a city's work on preventing air pollution since earlier last month when it began intensified environmental scrutiny in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, chinanews.com reported.

Beyond Langfang, the ministry also found clusters of polluting companies - the major environmental issue for the region - in Binzhou and Jining, Shandong province; Cangzhou and Hengshui, Hebei province; Yangquan and Changzhi, Shanxi province; and Zhengzhou, Henan province.

All will be urged by inspection teams designated by the ministry to deal with pollution in a more timely manner.

zhangyu1@chinadaily.com.cn
Police in Guangdong province have detained 910 suspects after busting 80 gangs they say were involved in telecom fraud, theft and robbery, in two crackdowns launched in late April and early May.

Many bank cards, cellphones and cash machines were seized, Zhang Rui, political commissar of the Guangdong Public Security Department's Criminal Investigation Bureau, said at a news conference in Guangzhou on Thursday.

"Fraudsters seize every opportunity to con their victims, and residents should improve their awareness to guard against being taken in by scams," he said. "Police will spare no effort to fight against these criminals."

Zhang said new measures will be introduced to combat online and telecom fraud as criminals upgrade their methods to target victims, such as asking people to send congratulatory baskets to friends and family for special events.

A woman surnamed Lu contacted police this year after she paid 7,840 yuan ($1,150) to send a congratulatory basket to a man she met on a dating website. Lu said the man asked her to send a basket as a gift for the opening of his new store. But after she sent the money to what she thought was a local flower store, the man broke off contact.

Lu was not alone, Zhang said. Police detained more than 140 suspects after busting 20 gangs that tricked victims into sending baskets, flowers or gifts for special occasions. Fifty-three locations were raided and 683 bank cards, 271 cellphones, 13 vehicles, 40 computers and 64 cash machines were seized.

Zhang also urged people not to be duped by online ads for medicines that promise to improve sexual performance or enlarge breasts.

More than 8,680 people have been defrauded by the gangs, and the cases involve more than 27 million yuan.

Fang Wenshan, a Guangzhou woman, called for more effective measures against the crimes.

"Many of my friends and neighbors have been defrauded or encountered online and telephone fraud in the past months," she said.

Zhang said his province has made great progress in the fraud fight over a number of years. Online fraud in Guangdong fell by 29.3 percent year-on-year between January and April. The number of suspects detained increased 48 percent year-on-year during the time.

zhengcaixiong@chinadaily.com.cn
New programs subsidized; government to keep lid on healthcare cost increases

China has been increasing financial support for the healthcare sector to guarantee all citizens affordable and proper medical services, according to senior finance and health officials.

The central government has earmarked more than 1.4 trillion yuan ($205 billion) this year for healthcare, Song Qichao, deputy director of the Ministry of Finance's Social Security Department, said at a joint news conference on Thursday with the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

That accounts for 7.2 percent of government expenditures, he said, up from about 5 percent in 2008.

"We see healthcare as an important sector that affects people's livelihoods, and we will continue to increase financial support," Song said.

The latest round of changes is a continuation of nationwide healthcare reforms that started in 2009 to eliminate irregularities, particularly in drug distribution and pricing, and to ensure public access to proper and affordable medical services.

The government investment has helped the country achieve universal healthcare by extending health insurance policies to the rural population and urban unemployed, who previously had no coverage at all.

The two new programs are largely subsidized by the government, and people can participate on a voluntary basis, with users paying a reasonable premium.

For instance, the government is allocating 450 yuan for each participant this year, up 30 yuan from 2016, according to Liang Wannian, head of the commission's Medical Reform Department.

The premium paid by the participant varies by region but is less than the government's contribution, he added.

Liang said the government had increased its allocation for each participant for eight consecutive years.

At the same time, he said, the government would strictly curb improper increases of medical costs.

The average annual increase in medical costs at public hospitals, he said, has to be kept under 10 percent. To meet that goal, the commission has been pushing reforms of public hospitals. That includes ending a longtime policy of marking up drug prices, which led to over-prescriptions and unnecessary treatments, and wasted the money of patients and insurance programs.

Last month, Beijing led the way by scraping drug price markups at all public hospitals, and all hospitals nationwide will follow suit by the end of September, ang said. Government funds will support the hospitals, he added.

shanjuan@chinadaily.com.cn
By Mao Weihua in Urumqi and Chen Mengwei in Beijing | China Daily | Updated: 2017-05-12 07:27

Rescuers help a local resident transfer his belongings after a magnitude 5.5 earthquake jolted Taxkorgan county in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Thursday. Li Jing / Xinhua

121 aftershocks recorded by 1 pm Thursday; 10,000 people relocated

At least eight people were killed and 23 injured by a magnitude-5.5 earthquake that jolted Taxkorgan county in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region on Thursday morning.

The quake affected more than 12,000 people, 10,000 of whom were being relocated to safe places. The government immediately activated emergency response procedures.

The injured have been sent to hospitals for treatment. More than 1,000 soldiers and police officers, along with 1,500 civilians, rushed to the quake-stricken areas to assist. Relief goods are on the way, according to the quake emergency response headquarters.

The local government said at least 1,000 tents, 12,000 metric tons of food and 5,000 tons of coal are urgently needed.

The China Earthquake Administration activated emergency response procedures, saying it would send a team to help with relief efforts. It added that all departments concerned are on high alert, and will continue to monitor aftershocks and evaluate damage.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs and the China National Commission for Disaster Reduction initiated Grade IV emergency response measures, the lowest in the emergency response system. It includes daily damage reports and allocation of money and relief materials within 48 hours.

The ministry and commission sent teams to assist in the resettlement of those displaced by the earthquake.

Wang Fuyou, Party chief of Taxkorgan, said the quake was strong and was followed by frequent aftershocks. The walls of some houses cracked, and people were buried after adobe houses near the epicenter collapsed.

The county government has sent personnel to search for the buried people in Quzgun village, the worst-hit community in the quake, where 449 people lived, Wang said. In Quzgun village, 820 farm animals were injured or killed and 1,520 houses collapsed.

The county's electrical power supplier said the power network across the county, including the quake-hit areas, is operating normally. Water supplies and communications are also normal, Wang said.

As of 1 pm, the Xinjiang earthquake bureau had recorded 121 aftershocks.

The epicenter of the quake, at a depth of about 8 kilometers, was located at 37.58 degrees north latitude, 75.25 degrees east longitude.

Xinhua contributed to this story.

Contact the writers at chenmengwei@chinadaily.com.cn
Women make grain pictures at a workshop in Shoudong village, Hebei province. [Photo by WANG ZIRUI/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Development of the art form has helped draw tourists and bring prosperity to a rural community

For residents of Shoudong in Hebei province, grain is not just a food staple, but also the material used to make beautiful collages and mosaics, which have brought prosperity to the formerly destitute village.

Shoudong used to be a typical poor village, with most men moving to work in cities, leaving their wives, aging parents and children behind.

Now, through the creation of artwork made from cereals and pulses, women are able to earn an income working from home while taking care of their families.

"I'm proud that the income from my artwork is enough to cover our household expenses. I don't need to ask for financial support from my husband," said Shi Xianqiao, one of the artists.

Grain pictures are made by pasting various kinds of grain, such as wheat, rice and beans, on a hard backboard.

The village of 180 households is home to more than 80 such artists, and not all of them are housewives - some men have returned home, attracted by the profits to be made from the emerging craft.

The monthly income for each artist is about 2,000 yuan ($290), which is a result of them utilizing their spare time when they are not farming or looking after their family.

Residents of Shoudong first started making collages from grain in March 2014, when Zhang Haizeng, from the province's Guantao county, came to teach the craft to the villagers.

Zhang, an art graduate, had been an advertising designer, a welder, a security guard and taxi driver before gluing together his first picture using tree bark, cotton and green beans in 2008.

"I imagined that even if I earned 1 yuan from each picture, I would soon be able to buy an apartment and a car," Zhang recalled.

Unfortunately, his pictures decayed rapidly because the glue he used was not compatible with the grain. He tried using more than 100 different types of glue before finding the perfect solution. But then he realized that while he could make the pictures, he had nowhere to sell them.

"In the following two years, I only sold one piece of my work, and that was to a friend," he said, adding that the picture made him 260 yuan.

In September 2009, an art exhibition in the county changed both his mind and his fate. "I had told my family I would give up making these pictures, when a customer unexpectedly ordered eight pieces of my work at the exhibition," he said, smiling at the recollection.
LANZHOU - Mao Xiaobing, a former high-ranking official from northwest China's Qinghai Province, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for taking bribes and embezzling public funds.

The Intermediate People's Court in the city of Lanzhou found that Mao, former member of the standing committee of the Communist Party of China Qinghai Provincial Committee, had accepted bribes worth over 104 million yuan ($15 million) and embezzled 400 million yuan in public funds.

Mao was also deprived of his political rights, his personal property will be confiscated and illicit gains will be turned over to the state treasury, according to the court sentence.

The court verdict said that between 1995 and 2013, Mao took advantage of his various official positions to seek benefits regarding project contracts, stock acquisitions, purchasing and sales of products and real estate developments on behalf of others.

In exchange, he extorted or accepted money or gifts from companies and individuals.

The court also found that in 2006, Mao had taken advantage of his post and embezzled public funds for other businesses.

The court said that in deciding the sentence, they took into consideration that Mao had extorted bribes, which deserves harsher punishment, but also that he had confessed, shown remorse, cooperated in returning illegal gains and provided information about other people's violations during the investigation, facts that may warrant leniency.

Mao said that he will not appeal.
TAIPEI - Preferential policies allowing Taiwan residents to work, study and travel on the Chinese mainland embodied the goodwill and sincerity of the Chinese mainland, Taiwan academics told Xinhua Thursday.

The Chinese mainland Wednesday published a series of preferential policies for Taiwan residents, including easier access to transportation, employment, education and legal services.

The move was welcomed by academics in Taiwan, who believed it would help promote peaceful communication and cross-Strait relations.

"Cross-Strait ties have been at a deadlock as the administration of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has refused to recognize the 1992 Consensus," Wang Kunyi, professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies of Tamkang University, told Xinhua.

"However, these new measures showed that the Chinese mainland, has always and will continue to, adhere to the 1992 Consensus and promote people-to-people exchanges and cooperation, no matter which party holds power on the island," he said.

Ting Jen-fang, professor at the Graduate Institute of Political Economy of Cheng Kung University said not only would the new preferential policies improve the lives of Taiwan residents on the mainland, it would also increase their willingness to work and live there, and gain their support for peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.

Under the new measures, Taiwan residents can be employed in public institutions in six more provincial-level regions and Taiwan academics working on the mainland can apply for state-level research projects, including projects from the National Social Science Fund.

In addition, Taiwan residents can now purchase and collect tickets via self-service ticket machines in train stations in many major cities and provinces.

Lin Hsin-hsiung, Vice President of the Peace Research Center for the Cross-Strait at Shu-Te University, said these measures will have a positive impact on Taiwan residents, and therefore be good for cross-Strait relations.

"The measures are more targeted and detailed this time, with many serving a specific group or occupation. This means the Chinese mainland is opening its market to Taiwan, and more Taiwan residents are expected to benefit from it," Wang said.

In order to help Taiwan graduates from mainland higher education institutions find jobs, the Ministry of Education has told institutions to standardize enrollment regulations and protect the legal rights of Taiwan students, which Ting believed will open new doors for Taiwan graduates.

"Starting salaries for recent graduates in Taiwan are around 30,000 to 40,000 New Taiwan dollars ($1,000 to $1,333), with very few opportunities in high-end industries. But if they go to the Chinese mainland, they will have a better chance at securing a higher paid job," he said.

"Preferential policies, such as more job opportunities in public institutions, offer Taiwan graduates a better quality of life and allow them to integrate into the Chinese mainland," Ting said.
WUHAN - The first two overseas non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Hubei Province, central China, were issued registration certificates Thursday, after a law on overseas NGOs took effect on Jan. 1.

The International Plant Nutrition Institute (IPNI) from Canada and the Cheongju Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Cheongju CCI) from the Republic of Korea both received certification for their offices at a ceremony in Hubei's capital Wuhan.

The organizations are just two of the first group of NGOs to be certified by the overseas NGOs management office under Hubei public security department.

"We will continue to provide efficient services for NGOs," said Xia Zhibin, deputy director of the department.

Lee Sang Yeon, chief representative of Cheongju CCI office in Hubei, thanked the bureau for its services and said that his office would continue to support economic and trade exchanges between Cheongju and Wuhan.

Last year China adopted a new law that required all overseas NGOs to secure approval from Chinese authorities to operate on the Chinese mainland.

The Ministry of Public Security and provincial police departments are responsible for registration and regulation. All provincial-level police authorities in China can now administer the procedure.
Lifestyle / Travel and Tourism

by Oscar Nkala

Two endangered lionesses were killed after being lured out of Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe to a hunting trap set up using meat from a cow they allegedly killed the previous night. One of the two lionesses was reportedly pregnant when she was gunned down.The shooting took place within 60km of the spot where the iconic lion Cecil was killed by hunter Theo Bronkhorst and his American hunter-client, Dr Walter Palmer on July 1, 2015.Hwange-based lion researcher Brent Stapelkamp said while the livestock loss was regrettable, it could have been avoided together with its consequences if the farmer had kept his cattle in a protective boma for the night.Further, he said the council could have opted to save the endangered animals by seeking help from one of the five community-based lion guardian groups, which are trained to use non-lethal means to mitigate conflict between humans and predators.The lion guardian groups include the Soft Foot Alliance, The Lion Guardians, Mother Africa Trust, Conservation & Wildlife Fund and Panthera. The staff are specially trained to resolve human-lion conflicts in a way that balance the safeguarding of community property and lion conservation interests.Stapelkamp said by approving the killing of the lions in the absence of proof that they were responsible for the predation incident of the previous night, the Hwange Rural District Council had demonstrated its insensitivity to the plight of Hwange's critically endangered lion population.He said council attempts to justify the killings by making allegations that they killed four cows, instead of one, were misleading and aimed at creating the impression that the lions exited the park with the intention of hunting down livestock in the communal lands."Apparently, an elephant was shot (earlier) as a problem animal a distance from the scene, although meat from the carcass was removed very quickly. Three lions then came out the park to feed on it"I hear that the lions then found a heifer that refused to go into its protective boma at night and killed it," Stapelkamp said.He said the killings should be investigated to find out whether it was legal because the slain lions were not found in the communal lands, but were baited out of the park using a meat trap set up by the professional hunter who killed them."A local guide and professional hunter rushed around, and without notifying the Lion Guardians or trying any non-lethal mitigation, sought permission from the council to shoot the lions."He was granted permission. The remains of the lion kill was set up (as a bait) and three lions came to feed. Two females were shot and killed and a sub-adult male escaped," Stapelkamp said.He said the killing undermined the Hwange lion conservation project and was a call for Zimbabwe to wake up to a 'perverse mix of ego and self-interest' that works to reverse the gains of conservation.Photographic safari operator Sharon Stead expressed her outrage saying for the past eight months, the slain lionesses were mostly resident and very popular with her guests at Ivory and Khulu Lodges.Stead said the killings happened as she concluded a marketing tour of Germany and the United States, where she used slide images of the slain lionesses to market Hwange as a global photographic safari destination."Today, I learned that the very lions I have spoken about and shown on my slide presentations, the same lionesses that have found and made our concession at Ivory Lodge their home for the past 8 months, have been shot and killed," Stead said.She said it was shocking to learn that the community based lion guardian groups which are trained to advise and provide manpower support for non-lethal mitigations of such human-wildlife conflicts were never called up to handle the predation case in Dete.Benny Ncube, the area manager of the Communal Areas Management Programme For Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE) who authorised the killing. CAMPFIRE is a council sub-department responsible for problem animal control said the public outrage over the lion killings was informed by public ignorance of the council policy for dealing with 'nuisance' predators. He said although council understands the importance of lion conservation, it was more concerned about the protection of community resources."As far as I know, those lions were eliminated in a legitimate problem animal control programme. We cannot try scaring away the lions because they are stubborn and it doesn't work. So we just eliminate all nuisance predators whenever they kill livestock," Ncube said.He said although the Dete lionesses had no known tendency of leaving the park to hunt for livestock in communal areas, he classified them as 'nuisance animals' on account of the farmer's loss of four cattle in one night.However, Ncube conceded that he never visited the scene but approved the killings based on verbal reports from the farmer and a council-contracted hunter who went to assess the damage.The killings have raised concerns about cattle ranching in Dete, a town on the northern boundary of Hwange's lion range. Zimbabwean urban bye-laws prohibit pastoralism in urban areas.Safari operators said at least three large herds of cattle are permanently grazing in Dete, which is completely surrounded by the park and forests which are primarily home to lions and elephants.Some cattle have been sighted as deep into the Hwange National Park as Nehimba, a previously secluded lion range-land. The presence of cattle has led increased human infiltration by herd-boys who are blamed for setting up snares and hunting with dogs each time they come into the park.The rangeland also faces human encroachment as illegal fishermen spend days at the Nehimba dam, the only water source and hunting ground for the big cats. Conservationists fear that the unchecked livestock incursions into the park may lead to more disputed shootings in case of predator attacks.PWMA sources blamed cattle incursions on parks bosses who take bribes from ranchers in return for illegal grazing rights and immunity from prosecution. Efforts to get a comment from Environment, Water and Climate minister Oppah Muchinguri were unsuccessful.
BEIJING -- The cremation of Buhe, a former vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), was held Thursday in Beijing.

Buhe died in Beijing on May 5 at 3:28 pm He was 91.

President Xi Jinping, Premier Li Keqiang, and other senior leaders including Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli, as well as former leader Hu Jintao attended the funeral, which was held at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in west Beijing.

All guests stood in silent tribute and bowed three times in front of Buhe's body before the cremation. They also extended their condolences to his family.

Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Zhang Dejiang, Yu Zhengsheng, Liu Yunshan, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli, as well as former leaders Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao either visited Buhe while he was in hospital or offered their condolences after his death.

Buhe was a member of the Mongolian ethnic minority group. He is extolled by the central authority as an excellent member of the Communist Party of China, a time-tested and loyal communist soldier, a proletarian revolutionary and an outstanding leader of ethnic work.
(ECNS) -- Peking University has vowed to fully support the Xiongan New Area, a new economic zone about 100 kilometers southwest of Beijing, including opening a medical center to train high-level professionals.

The move was disclosed after Zhao Kezhi, Party chief of Hebei province, and provincial governor Xu Qin held talks with the prestigious university's Party chief Hao Ping.

Hao said the university will take advantage of its strengths in medical and educational training to support Xiongan's growth. The university will also make it a priority to encourage more professionals to work in Hebei.

Among other measures, the university's Guanghua School of Management will establish a training center in Xiongan for business and management talents. It will also work with governmental departments to launch Public-Private Partnership programs for Xiongan's development.

On April 1, China announced the plan to create the Xiongan New Area, which spans the counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin in Hebei Province, and is home to Baiyangdian, a major wetland in northern China.

The new area will cover around 100 square km initially and be expanded to 200 square kilometers in the mid-term and about 2,000 square km in the long term.
A file photo of Tulenov Ruslan. [Photo/CCTV]

Tulenov Ruslan, a carrier of "panda blood" - as rhesus negative blood is known in China, has donated more than 5,000 milliliters of blood since he came from Kazakhstan to study in 2009.

Ruslan, 25, usually donates blood twice a year. The volume of blood he has donated equals to all the blood in his body.

President Xi Jinping praised Ruslan in a speech at Nazarbayev University during his visit to Kazakhstan in 2013. Xi said Ruslan has helped relieve the pain of many Chinese patients, embodying the friendship between the two countries.

Ruslan, who is interested in Chinese culture, came to Hainan University in the southern island province of Hainan in 2009 to study Chinese and then joined Beijing's University of Science & Technology in 2016 for postgraduate degree.

"I first donated blood after I a classmate told me that he donated blood twice a year. I too wanted to donate blood as helping others is an important thing to me," he said.

Ruslan, whose Chinese name is Lan Tian (blue sky), said his mother told him many times to help others before he came to China.

When he realized that his blood type was rare in China, he told blood banks that they could give his phone number to patients who were in urgent need of blood.

In 2014, a nine-year-old girl, a victim of a traffic accident, urgently needed blood transfusion in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region. When he heard about the case on WeChat Moments, Ruslan left a comment that said "Lan Tian brother wishes to help you."

"I wanted to help her, but I did not know how to find her since I had never been to Guangxi. I asked a friend at a blood bank for help," Ruslan said.

"The friend informed me at around 11 pm that the girl had received blood in Guangxi. If needed, I would have surely gone there," he said.


Chinese scientists have put forward an ambitious plan at a two-day forum in Qingdao, Shandong province, aimed at boosting the country's deep-sea research.

The plan, dubbed the "Indo-Pacific Scientific Initiative", will also work to enhance cooperation with countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.

More than 200 scholars and experts, including academics from some 40 universities, colleges and research institutions, participated in the forum, which ended on Tuesday.

The event was hosted by the Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, the first laboratory of its kind in China.

Wu Lixin, director of the laboratory's executive committee, said the Indo-Pacific Scientific Initiative aims to bring scientists working on terrestrial and oceanic studies together so that they can collaboratively innovate solutions to major earth science issues in the Indo-Pacific region.

He emphasized that the initiative is open and shared, saying it encourages Chinese scientists to cooperate with their peers from elsewhere to benefit the whole world.

It also provides a scientific basis for China's future deep-sea drilling practices, added Wu, who is also an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Zhu Rixiang, another academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said a holistic approach to research must consider both the land and ocean as a whole and connected.

"With the Indo-Pacific Scientific Initiative, Chinese scientists should take the opportunities presented by the Belt and Road Initiative and contribute more to global geological studies," Zhu said.
The relationship between China and Mongolia has enormous prospects and the two countries should tangibly take care of core interests and the major concerns of each other, President Xi Jinping said when meeting with Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat in Beijing on Friday.

Erdenebat is in China to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which is scheduled to take place from Sunday to Monday.

The two sides should deepen mutual trust and make sure the development of the relationship does not drift away from the track, Xi said.

The countries should also accelerate the feasibility study into a bilateral free trade area and their cross-border economic cooperation, and expand cooperation in various fields, including mineral and major energy projects, infrastructure and connectivity, Xi said.

Cooperation should be enriched in areas such as youth, media and localities to boost the friendship and mutual trust between the two peoples, Xi said.

Mongolia is an important country along the routes of the Belt and Road Initiative and China welcomes the participation of Mongolia in its building, Xi said.

China supports Mongolia's role as a bridge and a bond that connects the Eurasia continent, Xi said.

The two countries should implement cooperation in areas such as trade, investment, connectivity, agriculture and husbandry, production capacity, and energy, Xi said.

The Mongolian Prime Minister said it is a priority for Mongolia to develop friendly cooperation with China and Mongolia upholds the one-China policy.

Mongolia attaches great significance to the Belt and Road Initiative in tackling the imbalance in mankinds development and promoting world peace and development, Erdenebat said.

Mongolia is ready to play its role as a bridge to connect the Eurasia continent and proactively participate in the mutually beneficial cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, Erdenebat said.

Xi also noted that the construction of China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor should be pushed forward to facilitate the common development of all the three parties.
President Xi Jinping and his wife, Peng Liyuan (second from left), and Uzbekistan's President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and his wife, Ziroatkhon Mirziyoyeva, attend a welcoming ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on May 12, 2017. [Photo by WU ZHIYI/CHINA DAILY]

Deals signed with one of first neighbors to back Belt and Road

Chinese and Uzbekistani enterprises signed agreements and deals of more than $10 billion, just days before the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

The deals were signed during Uzbekistani President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's first state visit to China, which began on Thursday, Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai said on Friday. Mirziyoyev will also attend the forum in Beijing on Sunday and Monday.

In his meeting with Mirziyoyev on Friday, President Xi Jinping said Uzbekistan is a close and important neighbor of China.

Xi said Uzbekistan was among the first countries to support and participate in the building of the Belt and Road Initiative.

The two countries have harvested achievements in their cooperation to build the initiative, and this has created a mainstream that leads bilateral cooperation, he said.

Xi added that China is ready to work with Uzbekistan to fully tap into the potential and push for new progress on cooperation in building the initiative.

He said the two sides should strengthen the synergy between their development strategies and jointly plan the priorities for directions, areas and programs of bilateral cooperation.

Additionally, they should fully tap into the potential for economic and trade cooperation, expand the scale of bilateral trade, optimize the trade structure and achieve long term, steady and healthy development of bilateral trade, Xi said.

He said China is willing to expand cooperation with Uzbekistan in production capacity, investment, industrial parks and infrastructure construction on the basis of equal footing and mutual benefits.

Mirziyoyev said China is a great neighbor of Uzbekistan, and that under the current international situation, China is a crucial and positive factor in promoting world peace, stability and development.

He said Uzbekistan appreciates China's support for the country's taking its own development path, one that adapts to its own national condition, and that his country firmly supports the one-China policy.

He expressed Uzbekistan's support for China in safeguarding its rights and interests and major concerns, as well as its position in combating the "Three Evil Forces"  separatism, extremism and terrorism.

He said Uzbekistan will deepen cooperation with China in areas such as economy and trade, investment, production capacity, infrastructure and water conservation; strengthen exchanges regarding localities and culture; and reinforce coordination and collaboration within multilateral frameworks.

After the talks, the two leaders signed a joint statement and witnessed the signing of cooperative documents covering such areas as economy and technology, transportation and shipment, medical care, agriculture, hydropower, small and medium-scale enterprises, infrastructure, tourism and exchanges.

Assistant Foreign Minister Li told reporters that the two neighbors have seen achievements in the Belt and Road Initiative, such as the completion last year of the longest tunnel in Central Asia. Chinese builders finished the tunnel, which has a total length of 47.3 km, in Uzbekistan in 900 days.

"The project has elevated Uzbekistan's role as a regional transportation passage," Li said.

He added that companies from the two countries also are discussing hydropower projects in Uzbekistan.


Volunteers help a journalist at the media center for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. The media center opened on May 12, 2017, in Beijing. [Photo by ZOU HONG/CHINA DAILY]

Zhang Weiguo just finished several weeks of intensive training, preparing for only a few days of giving high-quality service.

Zhang, who is pursuing a master's degree at the University of International Business and Economics, started working on Thursday as a volunteer for the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing on Sunday and Monday.

Wearing a black suit with such Chinese elements as a traditional Zhongshan collar and red buttons on the suit sleeves and on the white shirt inside, the 23-year-old, standing in the lobby of Beijing International Hotel, wears a constant smile and is ever ready to offer help.

Zhang, who is responsible for answering inquiries from guests, is one of about 2,500 volunteers who will provide services to delegates from home and abroad.

They are all students from 28 universities in the capital, including UIBE, Peking University, Tsinghua University and Beijing Normal University.

In February, the Beijing Committee of the Communist Youth League issued a notice to recruit volunteers from among the city's college students. Among the conditions were that applicants must be juniors or above who will be dedicated to working for the forum, and they must be proficient in a foreign language and have previous volunteer experience.

Some universities raised the threshold. UIBE, for example, required that candidates must have passed the College English Test Band 6, a senior-level English test for non-English majors.

All the selected volunteers went through several rounds of training, including lectures about the forum and Belt and Road Initiative countries, as well as instruction on etiquette and first-aid skills.

Jiang Qingzhe, Party chief of UIBE, from which 99 volunteers were chosen, said he's very proud of the young students. "They are representatives of excellent young Chinese and prospering China," he said.

To become quickly acquainted with their work, the volunteers created scenarios such as airport pickups, conference registration and route guidance to practice how to serve guests from abroad.

Teng Hewen, a volunteer who is studying diplomacy and pursuing a master's degree at UIBE, said she was impressed by details of the training that emphasized paying special attention to guests, for example by always smiling, walking to the left of the guests to show respect, and extending a hand above a car door as guests exit a vehicle to make sure they don't hit their head.

"Through such voluntary work, I hope I can make a small contribution to China's diplomacy," she said.

Xu Jinxi, a volunteer from Beijing Normal University, worked for five hours nonstop on Friday.

"It's tiring but worthwhile," said Xu, who is responsible for delivering documents and materials. "The delivery is fundamental and crucial, since it affects every single event of the forum, which makes me feel my work is meaningful."
Chen Yin (left), Zhuge Yujie (center) and Shi Xiaolin

Party chief says city will continue to push economic reform and innovation

The eastern metropolis of Shanghai witnessed a new leadership lineup as the municipality's once-in-five-years Party congress concluded on Friday.

Among the newly-elected 11-member Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China Shanghai Municipal Committee, Han Zheng was re-elected Party chief, and Mayor Ying Yong remained a deputy Party chief.

Han, who has been Party chief of Shanghai since 2012, was elected to the post at the first plenary session of the 11th CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee.

Han, born in 1954, is currently a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. He served as Shanghai mayor between 2003 and 2012.

Notably, the new leadership had three new facesChen Yin, Zhuge Yujie and Shi Xiaolin.

Zhuge, born in May 1971, is the youngest of the 11 members. He has been head of the general office of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee since July.

Chen, 54, has been deputy mayor of Shanghai since May 2016, and 48-year-old Shi, now Party chief of Putuo district, is the only woman in the city's new leadership, according to official documents.

The 11 members made their public debut on Friday afternoon. On behalf of the newly elected members, Han said that the Party congress set the goals for the city's development in the coming five years, and the city and its people will have a more brilliant future.

He said Shanghai will continue to push forward economic reform and make historic leaps in innovation-driven development and economic transformation and upgrading.

"Shanghai strives to place itself in the world's top echelon of economic, financial, trade and shipping centers by 2020, become more influential among the world's metropolises and enhance the living and working conditions of its residents so that the fruits of the city's reform and development will benefit all its residents," Han said.

He also said the new leadership will rigorously promote the work of comprehensively strengthening Party discipline, enhancing the level of the Party's leadership and capability for governance.

More than 800 deputies to the congress, representing all CPC members in Shanghai, attended the five-day meeting.

They also elected deputies from Shanghai who will attend the 19th CPC National Congress, which is scheduled in the second half of this year in Beijing.


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Chinese, Vietnamese presidents hold talks on ties

Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-11 20:07

BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks Thursday with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, who is on a state visit to China and will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.



Xi recalled his meeting with Quang last November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima. Peru, in which they reached important consensus on deepening bilateral all-round strategic cooperation.



Xi invited Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee, to visit China in January this year. Xi and Trong had in-depth exchanges on major issues of common concern, and clarified the direction of future China-Vietnam ties.



Xi said both sides should work closely to implement consensus reached by state leaders, cement cooperation in various areas, and boost their all-round strategic partnership to a new level.



Quang congratulated China's development achievements in recent years.



This is Quang's first visit to China since he took office in April 2016.



Altogether 29 heads of state and government leaders will attend the upcoming forum, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing. It marks the highest-profile international meeting on the Belt and Road Initiative since it was proposed by China in 2013.
News / National

by Staff reporter

HIGHER and Tertiary Education minister Jonathan Moyo might be off the hook on charges of abusing social media to settle political scores with foes in Zanu-PF after party secretary for finance and Umguza legislator Obert Mpofu said "the case is no longer on the agenda".Mpofu recently told a Zanu-PF Provincial Co-ordinating Committee (PCC) meeting held in Lupane, Matabeleland North last month that a date will be set to discuss charges against Moyo, who is also the Tsholotsho North legislator.The Macro-Economic planning minister was responding to a resolution by the province calling for the expulsion of national commissar Saviour Kasukuwere over a litany of allegations ranging from setting parallel structures to depose the President, fanning factionalism and undermining the authority of First Lady, Grace Mugabe.The reports say Moyo faced charges of airing party issues on social media and working against government programmes particularly command agriculture through his strong views on the communist style system, eliciting an angry response from the Tsholotsho North legislator.But on Tuesday, Mpofu, however, told Southern Eye that Zanu-PF Matabeleland North no longer had the appetite to go after Moyo."It is not on our agenda. We don't have it on the agenda," Mpofu said, refusing to comment further on the matter on Tuesday in a telephone interview.Moyo has been prolific on Twitter criticising command agriculture, his opponents within Zanu-PF while also trying to clear his name in the case in which he is being accused by the Zimbabwe Anti-Corruption Commission of siphoning over $400 000 from the Zimbabwe Manpower Development fund (Zimdef).Moyo, in his angry response last month, described Mpofu as the biblical "Judas Iscariot", after the latter indicated that the Tsholotsho North MP would also be censured soon for backing his Mt Darwin South colleague, Kasukuwere."From the published remarks on the social media platforms of The Chronicle and The Herald, it is clear that Obert Mpofu abused the PCC (provincial co-ordinating committee), as he so often does, in his mistaken belief that just because he has a big body, he should throw his weight around and usurp the PCC for his personal purposes and his grossly selfish politics that the people of Matabeleland North have come to loathe for its depravity," Moyo said in his response."Obert Mpofu believes he is the Zanu-PF PCC in Matabeleland North and that the PCC in Matabeleland North is Obert Mpofu. This rot of his has gone on for too long and too far."Obert Mpofu's allegation that I have attacked command agriculture on social media and that I should be censured for that shows beyond any doubt that he has become dangerously opportunistic in his quest to impress some successionist interests in the hope of securing a position in their treacherous ranks."I, for one, will not allow Obert Mpofu to impersonate King Lobengula, pretending to be Matabeleland North's centre of power. Zanu-PF has one centre of power across the country and that centre of power is President [Robert] Mugabe, my appointing authority to whom I report directly, not via Obert Mpofu or anyone else for that matter. Obert Mpofu is a colleague in the politburo, and not my boss. If he does not respect this fact, he must prepare for the consequences."
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Jargaltulga Erdenebat is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. [Photo/Xinhua]

BEIJING -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that Mongolia is welcome to actively participate in construction of the Belt and Road.

China supports Mongolia's efforts to be a bridge linking Europen and Asian continents, Xi told Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 to 15.

The two countries should cooperate on areas including trade and investment, connectivity, agriculture and animal breeding, industrial capacity, and energy, so that the Belt and Road Initiative and Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative can be effectively dovetailed, Xi said.

He called for efforts to promote the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor to boost the common development of the three nations.

Xi said the Chinese side attaches great importance to the development of China-Mongolia ties. Both sides should uphold the principles of mutual trust, cooperation and win-win outcome, and take opportunities to broaden exchanges and cooperation in various fields and push forward their comprehensive strategic partnership.

He stressed that the developmental prospects for China-Mongolia ties are broad, adding that the two sides should care for each other's core interests and major concerns and deepen mutual trust to ensure that the development of bilateral ties will not deviate from the right track.

The president called for facilitating the study of a free trade zone and cross-border economic cooperation, and promoting cooperation on major mineral industry programs and infrastructure connectivity.

Efforts should also be made to increase exchanges between youth, media and local authorities, Xi said.

Erdenebat said carrying out friendly cooperation with China is a priority for Mongolia. The country adheres to the one-China policy, and is willing to strengthen bilateral high-level exchanges, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

The prime minister said Mongolia understands the significance of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is open and inclusive, in solving the unbalanced and unstable development of mankind and boosting world peace and development.

Mongolia is willing to be a bridge linking Europen and Asian continents and will actively participate in mutually beneficial cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, Erdenebat said.


Shakespeare to Sherlock: Treasures of the British Library at Beijing's National Library of China is a showcase of iconic British literary works.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

An early edition of Romeo and Juliet is part of a stunning collection of treasures the British Library has brought to China. Mei Jia reports.

The 1599 quarto edition of Romeo and Juliet, once owned by King George III, is exceptionally rare: When it was printed, William Shakespeare was still alive and the play had already debuted. This version could well be the most accurate and closest to the Bard's original.

William Wordsworth's manuscript of his poem Daffodils includes handwritten notes the romantic master gave to the printer about where to place the verse.

Those are two of the 11 precious exhibits that are touring China for the first time, in a special exhibition of British literary masters - Shakespeare to Sherlock: Treasures of the British Library - at the National Library of China.

The exhibition, jointly organized by the national library and the British Library, runs through June 21.

"We chose works that are iconic in Britain, and are also known, liked and well-understood by Chinese," says Alexandra Ault, curator of the exhibition.

Her British Library colleague Jamie Andrews says: "We want to make a new partnership, a new friendship in China through culture and learning. There is no better way to do it than through English literature."

At the exhibition, the Shakespearean classic is shown side by side with a Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) copy of The Peony Pavilion, by the Bard's Chinese contemporary playwright Tang Xianzu.

Tessa Blackstone, chairman of the British Library Board, says she feels strong cultural links between the two countries, which "convey a sort of universality of literature", is a way of communicating our feelings, expressing our ideas and developing our humor or even creating tragedies.

The nine manuscripts and two early specimens of the British masters share the stage with 119 Chinese items, including key Chinese translations, adaptations and critical responses in categories of poetry, dramas and novels.

Lei Qiang, curator of the Chinese exhibits, is the one who suggested that a copy of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield be included in the exhibition because Chinese readers it know much better than the previously planned Nicholas Nickleby.

From the national library's rich collections, there are translations of Dickens' works by Lin Shu from the turn of the 20th century, as well as works by writers like Lao She, who has been influenced by Dickens' depiction of people of various social status.
Actor Johnny Depp attends the global premiere of Hollywood film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, in Shanghai, China, May 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

Film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, the fifth installment in the series, premiered at Shanghai Disney Resort on May 11.

The event marks the first time a Hollywood movie has held its world premiere in China.

Actors Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem, directors Joachim Rnning and Espen Sandberg and producer Jerry Bruckheimer will attend the gala event, with fans lining up outside the venue since Wednesday evening.

While most people know Pirates of the Caribbean as a 21st century blockbuster franchise, the idea was actually born 50 years ago in Disneyland. In 1967, Walt Disney and his Imaginersa team specializing in imaginative engineeringdecided to turn an idea they had for a pirate wax museum into an attraction.

On April 19, 1967, the first Pirates of the Caribbean ride opened at Disneyland Park in California. A firm favorite among Disney fans ever since, Pirates of the Caribbean is all the more poignant for being the last attraction Walt oversaw before he passed away.

Featuring multiple audio-animatronic pirates, animals and birdsthe attraction was an immediate hit. It later became the inspiration for the Pirates of the Caribbean film series, which debuted in 2003, starring Johnny Depp in the role of Captain Jack Sparrow.

With Thursday evening's premiere of the latest film at Shanghai Disney Resort, the choice of venue represents the continuing popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as the global reach of Disney.
Vice Minister of Culture Ding Wei [Photo by Zhang Xingjian/chinadaily.com.cn]

Dynamic heritage cooperation, intensified cultural industry cooperation and booming cultural trade between China and countries along the Belt and Road were Vice Minister Ding Wei's key topics during a Ministry of Culture press conference on the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) on May 11.

Ding Wei said that for centuries, China and countries along the Belt and Road have been trading goods and sharing the best of rich historical and cultural heritage, as cultural cooperation can deepen mutual understanding and friendship, and generate more opportunities to strengthen people-to-people bonds between Belt and Road countries.

Dynamic heritage cooperation

The governmental cooperation in cultural heritage has gained momentum in recent years. In January 2016, witnessed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saudit of Saudi Arabia, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage of China and the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage signed the Memorandum of Understanding on the Furtherance of Cultural Heritage Exchange and Cooperation.

Also, progress has been made in networking with countries along the Belt and Road, such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka, India, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, to nominate the Maritime Silk Road to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The Ministry of Culture also encouraged cultural institutions, museums and universities to provide programs on archaeology and heritage restoration in Laos, Myanmar, India, Bangladesh, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Have you prepared anything special for your mother to express your gratitude towards her on the Mother's Day, which falls this Sunday? Originally, the Mother's Day was marked as a day on which the ancient Greeks paid their respects to the mother of all gods in Greece, Gaea. But the modern day's version traces its roots to the US when the Congress named every second Sunday in May as the Mother's Day in 1914.

But long before there was Mother's Day, artists have been expressing emotion to their mothers through their brushes. Let's take a look at images of mothers in art pieces.

Portraits of artists' mothers:

Thread in Mother's Hands, by Cheng Wenzheng. [Photo/Artron.net]

Watercolor painter Cheng Wenzheng remembers that when he was little, he always woke up at night seeing her mother doing needle work under the dark oil lamp. A day in 2007, when he saw the scene again, Cheng picked up his brush, and created this painting. When his mother saw it, she was very happy, saying "That's me", like a child. This is maybe the best expression of love to mother.
Zhongguancun sends tech innovation along Belt and Road

( chinadaily.com.cn )

Updated: 2017-05-12

A hub of Chinese technology innovation, Beijing's Zhongguancun Science Park is promoting the latest products made in China to the world and pushing a technology boom along the Belt and Road.

According to officials from the management of Zhongguancun Science Park, enterprises based in there have made great contributions in technology cooperation and connection in Asia, Africa and Europe.

Xinwei Group has cooperated with telecoms companies in Cambodia, Russia, Ukraine and Tanzania to provide people with better and more reliable mobile communication.

Xinwei Group, a telecoms company based in Beijing's Zhongguancun Science Park, has cooperated with telecoms companies in Cambodia, Russia, Ukraine and Tanzania. [Photo/xinweigroup.com.cn]

IZP, a global leader in internet, cross-border trade and big data, has set up overseas finance clearance and settlement bases to benefit bilateral trade and provide direct clearance channels between RMB and local currencies.

IZP has also established a big data center and sub-centers in countries along the Belt and Road to facilitate information sharing. The company is expanding its investment and business layout as overseas business demands increase.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte (L) speaks during an interview with Xinhua News Agency in Manila, the Philippines, Oct 13, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua]

The Philippines and the United States began their main annual military exercises on Monday on a low key and a limited scale. The 12-day "Balikatan", or "shoulder to shoulder", joint military drills could serve as a barometer of the decades-old alliance. Some media reports say the number of troops taking part in this year's drills is less than half that in 2015, and the focus is only on anti-terrorism and disaster-response operationsin sharp contrast to the drills held when Benigno Aquino III was the Philippine president.

The "shoulder to shoulder" war games, begun in 1991, have been held almost regularly except for the brief interruption between 1995 and 1999. In recent years, many observers saw the annual exercises as a strategic maneuvering of former US president Barack Obama to push forward his "rebalancing to Asia" strategy. The military drills even served Aquino III's ulterior motive of confronting China over the South China Sea disputes and using it as a pretext to strengthen the Philippines' maritime defense and combat capabilities. And the drills, as expected, raised tensions in the region as they were staged near disputed waters.

However, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has sought to improve ties with China after taking office and play down the importance of his country's alliance with the United States. Duterte has also made some unfriendly remarks against the US, raising a lot of eyebrows in Washington and other Western capitals.

Yet the Donald Trump administration has been restrained in its response to Duterte's somewhat provocative rhetoric and instead has tried to shore it up as one of the most important alliances for the US in the Asia-Pacific region.

After Duterte announced in September that he would soon stop holding joint military drills, US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, in an apparent response, said Washington's alliance with Manila remains "ironclad".

Although Trump is yet to reveal a policy to replace the "rebalancing to Asia" strategy, the US is unlikely to play down the importance of the Philippines in the Asia-Pacific as the latter will assume the rotating chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year. But it would be naive of the US to still believe Manila will be happy to propel the US' strategic maneuvering in the region just like it did during Aquino III's tenure.

For its part, the Philippines under Duterte is unlikely to change its policy of gradually distancing itself from the US. That Washington and Manila, at their annual strategic meeting in November, agreed to scale back their joint exercises and reduce the number of US troops deployed in the Philippines is one example of Manila sticking to its course. Philippine officials said the scaled-down drills include an amphibious landing exercise and cooperation afloat readiness and training, both major naval exercises that include territorial defense training.

Although it might be too early to speculate the slow weakening of the US-Philippines alliance, one can safely say a light breeze of change is blowing, especially because the uncertainties that have emerged might not be bad for Manila and the South China Sea disputes. After all, the Philippines did not get any substantial gains for becoming a leading catalyst for the US' "rebalancing to Asia" strategy while suffering all the negative consequences of its soured relations with Beijing. Duterte realized this inequity before deciding to develop better relations with China. The Philippine president will visit China to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing on May 14 and 15. His second visit to China since taking office in July shows his determination to deepen ties with China.

China-Philippines ties are back on the right track, and the two sides have signed an array of bilateral agreements of cooperation that will bring mutual benefit. And tensions in the South China Sea have defused as Manila gradually distances itself from Washington. Some times even a light breeze makes the wind chimes produce clear, melodious music.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. wanghui@chinadaily.com.cn
THE MINISTRY of Education has banned primary and middle schools from providing students with any drill-and-review workbooks. An article published in Shenzhen-based Jingbao Daily comments:

It is not the first time the Education Ministry has banned curriculum workbooks featuring fill-in-the-blanks and define-the-term exercises in public schools in recent years. But the bans have not stopped the publishing of such workbooks from becoming a lucrative industry with an annual value of more than 50 billion yuan ($7.24 billion).

The root cause is the exam-oriented education system has remained largely unchanged, so the students and teachers favor these materials, as they are good for rote learning which helps the students prepare for their exams.

So as not to violate the authorities' ban, schools do not openly organize or encourage students to buy such workbooks. However, on a private basis, teachers can still require their students to buy the workbooks. Some teachers may fatten their own wallets by demanding kickbacks from the publishers if their students use the books.

The gap between the Ministry of Education's ban and the situation in the classroom has its origins in the slow progress made in introducing a curriculum that stimulates students' interest in learning and applying what they learn to practical situations.

However, this can still not replace the role of exams in selecting the most competent students among a large number of candidates for a limited number of seats in the key high schools or universities.

So until the authorities reform the education system so there is less emphasis on rote learning and cramming and more emphasis on exploring students' talents and creativity, the workbooks will not disappear because of the ministry's ban.
Some of the 10,000 unclaimed ID cards on display on a table of a lost-and-found company in Zhenzhou, Central China's Henan province, on Monday. [Photo/CFP]

AFTER THE SUPREME PEOPLE'S COURT and Supreme People's Procuratorate jointly issued a judicial interpretation on Tuesday on punishments for those guilty of stealing and selling people's personal information, the Ministry of Public Security also vowed to crack down on the illegal chains that have formed for the trading of personal information. An editorial on thepaper.cn comments:

By vowing to target the illegal chain, the Ministry of Public Security has announced it will strike at the root of the problem.

As early as 2009, theft of citizens' personal information was listed as an offense in the Criminal Law, but the stealing and selling of personal information has remained rampant.

Worse, some personal information has been sold to criminals. Last August, Xu Yuyu, an 18-year-old girl from Shandong province, died of cardiac arrest after she was defrauded of 9,900 yuan ($1,434).

It was the theft of her personal information that led to her death, as the fraudsters knew that she had just been enrolled into a university and phoned her saying she was to receive a student subsidy but needed to activate the account by transferring her money to it.

Hundreds of thousands of people become victims of personal information theft nationwide every year.

There are multiple causes for the problem, and one of them is that some of those with access to people's information sell it illegally for profit.

Media reports have exposed many such cases: Bank mangers selling clients' credit reports, police officers selling residents' basic information, even airline company staff selling the flight information of passengers.

Unless these suspects get their deserved penalties, the rampancy of selling personal information will not be curbed. It is time to better protect people's personal information and severely punish those who steal and sell it.

That is why the judicial interpretation comes at the right time. It has made clear that those abusing their power in hand by selling personal information will be brought to justice.

It can be expected that greater efforts will be made by the authorities to break the chains of selling personal information.
China is becoming increasingly attractive to British visitors, with travel bookings from the United Kingdom for visits to the Chinese mainland up by 40 percent in the first four months of this year.

British tourists taste a welcome drink offered by a local girl in a Miao village in Guizhou province last year.

According to data from the travel brokerage firm Tourico Holidays, the UK, the United States and South Korea are still the strongest source markets for visits to China.

The company also found that emerging markets, such as India, the United Arab Emirates, and Brazil, were helping to diversify demand.

Hillary Wang, regional director of product development in North Asia for Tourico, said: "Regional political turmoil, such as the nuclear one on the Korean Peninsula, makes the inbound China market more unpredictable- as (South Korea) was the number-one inbound source country for China last year - but, so far, Chinese travel business remains very strong."

Tourico is also predicting that business will double in 2017, because both the larger markets and the emerging markets will continue to visit China in growing numbers.

Wendy Wu Tours, a UK-based travel agency that specializes in tours of Asia, said it has seen an 18 percent year-on-year increase in China-bound travels this year.

Ben Briggs, the company's head of marketing, said: "We have found that interest in traveling to China has significantly increased in the past few years and this has continued in 2017. China has a wealth of bucket-list sights, such as the Terracotta Warriors in Shaanxi province, the Great Wall, and the Forbidden City in Beijing, so it is no surprise that it is an increasingly appealing destination to visit."We found that the blockbuster movie The Great Wall, released earlier this year, also helped to showcase the beauty of China to a wider audience and we saw an increase in interest from customers around the release period." Figures from the China National Tourism Administration indicated that 579,600 visitors arrived into China from the UK in 2015 and 179,700 stated it was for sightseeing or leisure purposes.

The administration noted that, in 2016, Western visitors went up by 9 percent, with Beijing being one of the most popular cities for overseas tourists. Meanwhile, Chinese tourists remain major travelers and outbound hotel bookings grew by 70 percent in the first 17 weeks of this year.

Wang of Tourico Holidays said: "Our local Chinese supplier partners and distribution clients are both experiencing a strong demand in 2017 and we've ensured that a dedicated support team is in place to help them push their businesses to the next level."

According to the official UK tourism body VisitBritain, Chinese tourists spend longer and travel more widely in Britain than other international visitors. They also spend an average of 2,174 pounds ($2,812) during each visit. In 2015, visits from China increased 46 percent to almost 270,000 year0on-year, with Chinese visitors spending 586 million pounds.
News / National

by Staff reporter

Local companies from Zvishavane and Mberengwa have raised US$102 000 for the rehabilitation of Nkankezi bridge that was destroyed by the recent Cyclone Dineo which affected some parts of the country.Nkankezi bridge in Filabusi was not spared by the recent cyclonic rains which affected parts of the country as the bridge was swept away rendering access to and from Zvishavane and Bulawayo impassable.Following its destruction a number of companies led by Mimosa Mining Company raised US$102 000 to rehabilitate the bridge.Guest of honour at the handover of the donation in Harare, Minister of Mines and Mining Development Walter Chidhakwa commended the companies for the kind gesture saying it is critical for companies to develop communities in their areas of operations.Chief Ngungubane who led the chiefs delegation from Mberengwa and Zvishavane at the handover ceremony commended the platinum miners and other stakeholders for remembering the community.Mimosa Mining Company executive chairperson Mr Winston Chitando noted the destroyed bridge was affecting economic activities including the operations of companies in the area.The intervention to construct Nkankezi bridge comes at a time when government is appealing for the corporate sector and development partners to contribute towards rehabilitation of roads and bridges destroyed by the Cyclone Dineo rains.
China to fund Bangladesh for 9th friendship bridge, other infrastructure projects

Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-11 18:25

DHAKA -- China will fund Bangladesh for construction of the ninth Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge and other infrastructure development projects.



Bangladesh's Economic Relations Department (ERD) Secretary Kazi Shofiqul Azam and Chinese Ambassador to Bangladesh Ma Mingqiang signed an agreement in this regard on Thursday in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka.



Ma said China has been supporting Bangladesh's infrastructure development to help it realize its economic development goals.



"I hope that we can use this money smartly and more efficiently so that more and more people can benefit from this excellent relationship between Bangladesh and China," Ma said.



Kazi Shofiqul Azam said Bangladesh's relationship with China is excellent and outstanding.



Seven friendship bridges have been completed across Bangladesh under Chinese grants, and the eighth one is under construction, he said.



"It will be a symbol of friendship actually. We hope that we will be able to sign another grant agreement in near future."



The Chinese assistance will play a vital role on the economic and social development of the country as well as the communication sector, an ERD statement said.



ERD said the location of the ninth Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge and other infrastructure projects will be settled later on through negotiations of the two governments.



The eighth friendship bridge is under construction over Kocha River in southern Bangladesh. The length of the bridge will be 1,400 meters and Bangladesh Roads and Highway department has been carrying out the project.



The construction of the first Bangladesh-China Friendship Bridge, with a span of more than 917 meters in length, began in October 1986, and was completed in February 1989.
Man shot dead outside of middle school in Sweden

Xinhua | Updated: 2017-05-11 20:07

STOCKHOLM -- A man was shot dead in broad daylight at a nearby school north of Gothenburg, Sweden, Thursday morning.



Police in Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city, were called to Lovgardesskolan middle school in the Angered district around 9 a.m. with reports of a shooting.



They quickly confirmed that a man had been shot to death, Swedish public television broadcaster SVT reported.

"There are supposed to be two shooters and a third in the getaway car," Thomas Fuxborg, press officer with the Gothenburg police, the report said.



Police said they have identified the victim as a local man in his 30s, it said.



A preliminary murder investigation has been initiated.



Many people witnessed the crime, including school children, police said.



The shooting occurred right outside Lovgardesskolan, a middle school for grades four to nine with about 380 students. There, administrators kept the children inside and locked the doors.



"We are keeping the children inside," Marie Ahman, head of communication with the Angered district administration, told SVT.



Gothenburg is located on the west coast with a population of about 550,000 in the urban area and 1 million inhabitants in the metropolitan area. It has become notorious in recent years for gang-related violence. Twenty-six people have been shot dead and there have been about 200 shootings since 2013.
The UK government has given its conditional approval for Chinese technology company Hytera to buy the British communications firm Sepura for 74 million pounds.

The acquisition still needs approval from the German federal minister of economic affairs but Sepura shares rallied when the news was revealed.

Hytera, the Shenzen-based manufacturer of radio systems, bid for Sepura, a similar company, in December, but the acquisition was stalled when United Kingdom and German authorities withheld their approval. Sepura supplies the UK's Metropolitan Police and the German army with radios. Regulators were concerned about a Chinese acquisition on "national security grounds".

The UK Department of Business appears to have had its concerns answered. A spokeswoman said: "Having considered the Competition and Market Authority's report on the proposed takeover of Sepura, the secretary of state is minded to accept the remedies offered by Sepura and Hytera in order to ensure the UK's national security is properly protected."

Sepura was brought out of administration by Goldman Sachs' former Europe boss Michael Sherwood in 2002 for just 1 pound. The company was floated on the London Stock Exchange five years later with a valuation of 200 million pounds.

Sepura began life as Pye in 1896 in Cambridge, where the company is still headquartered. The company was an early pioneer of television in the 1930s, but later specialized in radio.

If the acquisition is cleared, Hytera will pay Sepura shareholders 20 pence per share. Sepura shares were trading at 13.75 pence at noon on Thursday.
Liu Xiaoming, the veteran Chinese diplomat who is ambassador to the United Kingdom, told China Daily in an exclusive interview he was "deeply impressed" by the strong support shown by many British friends for the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative  a blueprint initiated by President Xi Jinping in 2013.

Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom Liu Xiaoming receives an exclusive interview with China Daily. [Photo/China Daily]

"The UK was the first major Western power to join as a full member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the second contributor after China to inject capital into the AIIB special fund. These moves speak to Britain's entrepreneurship, of daring to take the lead, and Britain's farsightedness and truly global vision.

"They also reflect the vigorous momentum of the win-win cooperation between China and Great Britain," he said.

The initiative is a modern version of the ancient Silk Road that linked China and Europe at the time of Marco Polo, the Italian explorer and trader who exploited the route in the 13th and early 14th centuries.

Xi's proposal consists of land and maritime links connecting China with the rest of Eurasia and beyond.

The AIIB is a central part of the plan.

"I believe that, with the concerted efforts of China and the UK, our cooperation on the Belt and Road will go a long way and deliver more benefits to the people of our two nations," Liu said.

UK Chancellor Philip Hammond will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum in Beijing as a personal envoy of Prime Minister Theresa May, who has told the Chinese authorities she strongly supports the initiative.

"This provides a valuable opportunity for China-UK cooperation on the Belt and Road," he said. "At present, China and Britain are working together to advance projects in the field of nuclear power, high-speed railways, infrastructure etc."

The ambassador said he believes the forum, which is set for Sunday and Monday, will facilitate stronger synergy between respective development strategies, "which will help unleash the potential in bilateral investment, trade and forecast, and give rise to tangible outcomes of China-UK cooperation on the Belt and Road".

Liu dismissed suggestions that the UK will miss out because it is not directly on the proposed route from China.

"Not long ago, China Railway Express made the return trip between Yiwu and London. This was the very first time China-UK trade was completely connected by land transportation. It also means China Railway Express has completed its last mile' and has extended the Belt and Road to the very Western point. This is a landmark event," Liu said.

One apparent tangible by-product of the Belt and Road Initiative is a plan by a Chinese developer to construct 15,000 affordable homes in the Dagenham area of East London, not far from the arrival point of the China Railway Express service.

The ambassador stressed that Britain's role in the Belt and Road plan is not limited by geography.

"For example, the UK has an advanced and international financial sector, and mature professional service industries in law and consulting. These are what countries along the Belt and Road routes need for setting up financial service platforms and improving legal systems.

"The UK also has prestigious think tanks and education institutions, and world-class R&D and innovation capabilities. These are all intellectual resources to support the Belt and Road projects," he said.

Addressing the broader issue of China-UK relations, the ambassador, who moved to the UK in 2010, said relations could not be swayed by a single incident.

"Last year, Britain voted to leave the European Union and the government went through a reshuffle. But developing positive ties with China remains the consensus of all British political parties," he said. "Next month, there will be a general election in the UK. Whatever the result will be, I believe the China-UK relationship in the golden era' will continue to deepen. In a world of uncertainties, the sound bilateral relationship between our two countries will always be a certainty."

Contact the reporters at liwensha@chinadaily.com.cn and chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com
Editor's note: This article written by Yang Yanyi, China's ambassador to the European Union, encourages deeper Sino-EU cooperation, and was written ahead of the Belt and Road Initiative Forum for International Cooperation, which will be held in Beijing on Sunday and Monday.

Together We Can Make a Difference

By H.E. Ambassador Yang Yanyi, Head of the Chinese Mission to the EU

May 7, 2017

When it was announced that the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) will be held in Beijing from 14 to 15 May, it soon became headline news.

This Forum will be the highest level of international conference held by China since the "Belt and Road" initiative was put forward by President Xi Jinping in 2013.

With "Strengthening International Cooperation and Co-building the 'Belt and Road for Win-win Development" as its central theme, the Forum is expected to focus on the following: Firstly, further identify goals and principles for cooperation, and deepen the implementation of docking strategies. Secondly, draw up cooperation plans for the next 5 years or longer and specify the detailed action plans. Thirdly, come up with list of projects and push forward implementation. Fourthly, introduce a series of significant policies and supportive measures including strengthening financial cooperation mechanism, constructing comprehensive service platforms and enhancing exchange and training of professional talents.

The quality of the theme and program has attracted broad participation of over 1200 officials, scholars, entrepreneurs and people from financial institutions and media from 110 countries, and 89 principals and representatives from 61 international organizations. Of the 28 heads of state and government to attend the Forum, quite a number are from Europe -- President Milos Zeman of the Czech Republic, President Doris Leuthard of the Swiss Confederation, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni of Italy, Prime Minister Beata Szydo of Poland, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic of Serbia, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain. Vice-President of the European Commission Mr. Jyrki Katainen will be also attending.

At a time when the foundation for global economic recovery is not solid, trade investment remains weak, and growth impetus is also unstable, this Forum will offer an excellent opportunity to take stock of what has been achieved and most importantly to consolidate closer and stronger partnership, and draw strengths to upgrade infrastructure construction and connectivity to cultivate new growth impetus.

It is fair to say that China and Europe share much in common in pursuing shared growth, development and connectivity including through the "Belt and Road" initiative and have come up with a proud record so far.

With regard to policy coordination and strategic guidance, back in 2015, at the 17th China-EU Summit, China and the EU reached important agreement to support synergies between the "Belt and Road" initiative and the Investment Plan for Europe. China and some European countries have signed inter-governmental cooperation document and launched "Belt and Road" working group mechanism to jointly advancing the Belt and Road Initiative. To enrich and compliment European integration and the overall partnership and cooperation between China and the EU, China and 16 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries have worked closely to enhance cooperation within the "Belt and Road" initiative and 16+1 framework.

With regard to facility connectivity, as concrete steps to promote seamless traffic flows and transport facilitation, China and the EU signed an MOU on establishment of a Connectivity Platform, conducted ministerial and expert group meetings to share information, identify co-operation opportunities, explore business and investment opportunities and create favorable environment for sustainable and inter-operable cross-border infrastructure networks in countries and regions between China and the EU.

Bilaterally, China launched rail freight service with some European countries, including the first direct rail link between China and Great Britain which went into operation early this year. Bilateral or trilateral cooperation in such areas as railway, ports, airports, power, transportation and logistics between China and European countries have also gathered momentum.

To implement their Joint Statement on 5G telecommunications, China and the EU are joining hands to deepen dialogues and cooperation in areas of ICT to achieve a better synergy between Europes digital agenda and Chinas Internet Plus strategy and to benefit the 1.1 billion Internet users in both China and the EU.

With regard to financial integration, to develop practical avenues for mutually beneficial co-operation, China and the EU agreed to set up a co-investment fund and experts from China's Silk Road Fund, the European Commission and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have kept in close touch to work on concrete ways to increase cooperation on investment.

Recognizing the high importance of having the worlds second largest economy as a shareholder of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), China became the Banks 67th member early last year. As described by President Sir Suma Chakrabarti of the EBRD, Chinas membership is a win-win scenario. While supporting Chinese companies to invest in the EBRD regions, EBRD will also provide a boost to "Belt and Road" initiative where it passes through EBRD countries of operations.

Notably also, the EU and many of its Members States have shown strong interest and support to cooperate with the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) to address Asias extensive needs for infrastructure investment. Of the 52 members of the AIIB, 18 are from Europe and among which 14 are EU Member States.

With regard to people-to-people bonds, the past years have witnessed three China-EU High-Level People-to-People Dialogues (HPPD) and expansion of student and professor exchanges, multiplying meetings between youth organizations, strengthening cooperation in the cultural field and increasing communication between think tanks, academics and journalists.

To promote mobility of our peoples and stronger relationships between China and the EU, China and the EU signed an Agreement on the Short-Stay Visa Waiver for Holders of Diplomatic Passport in March 2016 and agreed to open visa application centers in mutually agreed Chinese cities without consular presence.

Thanks to the initiative of the Committee on Transport and Tourism of the European Parliament, the EU-China One Belt One Road Culture & Tourism Development Committee was established to promote cultural diversity, connectivity, heritage preservation and harness the tourism growth potential of China and the EU, and ensure greater progress and development of the "Belt and Road" initiative.

In short, even though the "Belt and Road" initiative is relatively new and road ahead is challenging, it has captured imaginations and made a good start and solid progress.

Now, with the highly-anticipated the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation approaching, interest in exploring and collaborating in potential areas of cooperation between China and the EU to create fresh energy for pursuing interconnected development is growing.

To contribute to the ongoing efforts and deliberations, I wish to make some humble observations.

First, just as the ancient Silk Road that brought benefits to China, Central Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe, the "Belt and Road" is guided by the spirit of openness and constructive cooperation. Against rising protectionist and anti-globalization sentiments around the world, and even advocating and implementing of trade protection measures by some, it is in all our interests that China and the EU stay committed to free trade and economic openness, to a rules-based, transparent and fair international trading regime and order; and join in our shared desire to open up markets, oppose protectionism and secure greater connectivity and economic development and prosperity.

Second, the "Belt and Road" initiative is a win-win formula and not a one-state show. Time will prove wrong and unwarranted the notion that this project is designed to access new markets for China and presents a challenge and even "threat" to the future of Europe. Such kind of view neglects the many facets of the initiative and overlooks the fresh perspectives it will bring to European integration. Being open, transparent, harmonious and inclusive, "Belt and Road" initiative is an invitation to all countries along the routes. All participants have the opportunity to join in the design of its objectives and goals, build synergies between their development strategies with this initiative, explore options for cooperation, contribute to the improvement of mechanisms and share the benefit of the project.

Third, it is high time that China and the EU capitalize on the new and exciting opportunities and gear up to deliver on the "Belt and Road" initiative. Among others, we wish to broaden policy coordination and further cooperation consensus through institutionalized dialogue mechanism especially the China-EU High-Level Economic and Trade Dialogue, carry out closer collaboration on concrete projects within the China-EU Connectivity Platform, work closely to explore ways and means of joint financing and initiating projects and work out concrete road-map for implementation, deepen China-EU legal affairs dialogue with a view to creating enabling environment for business, and push ahead China-EU Migration and Mobility Dialogue to facilitate increased connections between our peoples.

Besides, we are more than ready to add new dimensions to our cooperation. For instance, given that China has embarked on an ambitious transition to a new model of economic development based on innovation, and innovation remains essential in European integration process, we should make it a high priority to enhance cooperation in science and technology and innovation. There is also the need to further promote cooperation between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and give full play to their role as principal driving forces in economic development and regional integration.

Last but not least, it is hoped that at the upcoming BRF and the 19th China-EU Summit, China and the EU will send out this positive message loud and clear: as two important factors for the maintenance of world peace and promotion of common development and prosperity, China and the EU will shoulder the shared responsibility to promote the construction of a more fair, reasonable and balanced global governance system under the concept that features openness and inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, and that together we can make a difference.
Minister Li Kexin of the Chinese Embassy in the US speaks at a roundtable discussion on the Belt and Road Initiative in Washington on Tuesday. Zhao Huanxin / China Daily

The US is "close to deciding" about sending a representative to the Belt and Road summit next week in China, according to a minister at the Chinese embassy in Washington.

Minister Li Kexin did not reveal the name or title of the potential US participant, but said it was "encouraging" news.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, will be held in Beijing on Sunday and Monday.

"The main focus of the initiative is on the further connectivity, and it is open and inclusive," Li told a roundtable discussion at the embassy on Tuesday. "It is opening up great opportunities for other countries, including the US, and we welcome all parties to be a part of this."

Li noted that globalization and regional integration is also driving China to promote the BRI.

Anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise in the US and in some European regions.

"I don't think this is a good trend here in this country, because American companies complain about the investment environment in China, but vice-versa is that Chinese companies do face more and more serious problems here," Li said.

Sourabh Gupta, a senior specialist with the Institute for China-America Studies, speaks at a roundtable discussion on the Belt and Road Initiative in Washington on Tuesday. Zhao Huanxin / China Daily

Tian Deyou, economic and commercial minister-counselor of the embassy, also said that the BRI is a huge project with major opportunities that go beyond a single country.

Citing World Bank statistics, Tian said that over the past 70 years, for every dollar spent on infrastructure projects in developing countries, 40 cents are used to buy equipment and services from developed countries.

"So in this way I can understand that Americans want to do something with this project," Tian said, noting that when the BRI was first raised, there had been skepticism among think tanks and American companies.

"They are changing their attitude and wanting to be aggressive about joining this project," Tian said, adding that American businesses can play a role in banking, financial support, consulting, construction, infrastructure engineering and manufacturing.

Cooperation is on the rise between Chinese enterprises and American enterprises in implementing projects in a third country, not in China or the US, but in Africa, for example.

"I think there are many examples, so I am sure in the future there will be more examples for the cooperation of the enterprises of the two countries through the initiative," said Li Bin, economic consul at the'embassy.

Sourabh Gupta, a senior specialist with the Institute for China-America Studies, said the BRI should be understood in terms of existing great and rising major powers, and how countries can create an international system that is inclusive and in which all participants can frame the rules.

"This is not overcoming a new order, but it is adding more content to a new order and more ideas to the new order, and especially in the area of development," he said.

huanxinzhao@chinadailyusa.com
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe testifies before the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Capitol Hill in Washington, US May 11, 2017. [Photo/Agencies]

WASHINGTON -- Acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Andrew McCabe Thursday said ongoing investigation into alledged links between White House staff and Russia will continue.

"We consider it to be a highly significant investigation," McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a hearing.

McCabe said "there has been no effort to impede our investigation to date," but promised to inform the Congress should the White House tries to interfere with the FBI investigation.

McCabe also refuted a White House claim Wednesday that fired FBI Director James Comey had lost the confidence of "rank and file" FBI staff, saying Comey "enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

"I hold Director Comey in the absolute highest regard. I have the highest respect for his consideration abilities and his integrity," McCabe said.

McCabe's hearing came after Comey was unexpectedly fired by US President Donald Trump on Tuesday evening. Trump said he made the decision based on advice from the deputy attorney general and attorney general that Comey was unfit to lead the FBI, but critics say the timing of the firing was suspicious.
The UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistrua holds a press conference in Geneva, Switzerland, May 11, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

GENEVA -- The UN Syria envoy confirmed Thursday that the next round of Syria peace talks is slated to kick off on May 16, adding that negotiations between warring factions will be both short and business-like.

"As you all know, we are preparing the new intra-Syria round of talks next week... and we are aiming (at finishing) as a target towards (May) the 19th," Staffan de Mistrua told press.

"These (talks) will be rather business-like, rather short compared to other meetings," he added.

The diplomat explained that the timing and brevity of upcoming negotiations were linked to the need to keep the momentum going while taking into heed the start of Ramadan on May 26.

UN-mediated talks will also follow parallel meetings in the Kazak capital of Astana earlier this month which saw regional stakeholders pledge to create "de-escalation zones" in the war-torn country.

"When we talk about the four de-escalation areas, these have the potential of affecting, hopefully positively from a humanitarian point of view, at least 2.6 million people," de Mistura said.

"So we are talking anyway of a major impact, if as we hope that would work," he added.

The next round of intra-Syrian peace talks will the third between warring factions since the start of the year.

While some progress on the humanitarian front has been achieved, opposing delegations remain at odds as to what a future, peaceful Syria, might look like.

De Mistura's job is to help bridge deep-seated gaps between rival delegations, while ensuring that any outcome is in line with UN Security Council resolutions.

While progress on the political track has been sparse, the UN stands by its commitment to pursue peace through political negotiations to prevent further bloodshed in a country where as many as 400,000 people have died and millions more have been forced to flee their homes.
China's homegrown C919 passenger plane completed its first public test flight earlier this month, and US aviation experts say that eventually the narrow-body jet could compete with the updated Airbus 320 and Boeing's new generation of 737 planes.

Mike Boyd, president of aviation consultancy Boyd Group International in Evergreen, Colorado, said that on the surface the C919 is equal to the Airbus and Boeing offerings.

"It will sell well in China," he said. "The problem the plane faces on a global scale is that airline books are filled with similar planes already on order."

The twin-engine plane manufactured by the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) has been hailed as a notable achievement in the development of the country's civil aviation industry. "This represents the technology platform (for China) to build on going forward for the next 20 years," Boyd said.

Brian Foley, president of a New Jersey-based aviation consultancy that bears his name, wrote in an email that the C919 could compete with the current Boeing/Airbus duopoly, particularly if it became the preferred airliner of Chinese domestic airlines.

"Globally it becomes more difficult. First, it must be approved by Western aviation authorities. Then there needs to be an adequate maintenance, sales and spare parts network worldwide," he said. "If it's any indication of how difficult it will be to enter the market, Bombardier's new C Series jet has found Boeing and Airbus to be formidable competitors."

Richard Aboulafia, a vice-president with the Teal Group Corp in Fairfax, Virginia, said that the C919 represents China's efforts "to get into the big leagues both in terms of technology and customers".

"If they get it right, they could be the first new competitors in this business in half a century. If it performs well and they are willing to set up a global support and finance structure for the plane which can be very expensive, then they could expand anywhere," he said.

Scott Hamilton, managing director at the Leeham Company, an aviation consulting firm in Issaquah, Washington, said the C919 will likely become the lead airplane for a competitive Chinese aerospace/aviation industry in the future.

"It's a mainline aircraft and it is, essentially, the proof-of-concept that China can successfully design, integrate and assemble an airliner," Hamilton wrote in an email. "The prospective twin-aisle C929 is the next step in this process. A C939' that will inevitably follow the C929 would return to the single-aisle size and by then, China should be well on its way to a successful commercial aerospace industry. We're looking at 20 years."

Foley said the primary significance of the plane is the experience China gained in designing, building, testing and marketing a commercial airliner.

"This knowledge can be applied to future aircraft which will result in a shorter development cycle and improved manufacturing efficiencies. Long term this know-how will have a greater effect on the global industry than the C919 itself," he said.

paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com
News / National

by Staff reporter

THE Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (ZUPCO) has won a 10-year-long legal battle against the sole distributor of Scania buses in Zimbabwe, Packhorse Investments.Packhorse had taken the State-owned bus company to court, demanding to be paid US$800 000 in outstanding debt for buses purchased in 2002.The company had won the dispute in the lower court before the tables were turned recently at the Supreme Court.The facts are that ZUPCO entered into an agreement with Scania South Africa in 2002 for the purchase and supply of 50 luxury Scania Torino buses at cost of US$3 663 000.Packhorse was engaged by the two companies as the official and sole distributor of the Scania buses from South Africa into Zimbabwe.ZUPCO then settled most of its debt, leaving an outstanding balance of US$763 068.In 2007, Packhorse Investments then took ZUPCO to the High Court in a bid to recover the outstanding debt.In its defence, ZUPCO said it was not liable to pay the remaining debt because government had taken over the balance demanded, and Packhorse should instead chase the State for the outstanding payment.In July 2009, ZUPCO filed an amended plea and made a number of pertinent changes to its 2007 defence outline.In the amendments, the public transporter denied ever entering into an agreement with Packhorse and claimed it was only aware of the agreement it entered into with Scania South Africa.ZUPCO altered the fleet of buses it purchased by acknowledging procurement of 48 buses and not the 50 claimed by Packhorse.It restated that if Scania South Africa had not received its outstanding debt, it should instead approach government for such payment since it was no longer liable for servicing the debt.In 2013, the High Court passed a ruling against ZUPCO and ordered it to pay Packhorse the outstanding amount, but the State-owned company appealed against the judgment at the Supreme Court.In its appeal, ZUPCO said it was common cause that it had purchased the buses, but the dispute related to who the buses were purchased from.It argued through its lawyers, Magwalimba and Kwirira, that the High Court had erred in finding Packhorse as the seller of the buses when Scania South Africa were the sellers.ZUPCO also argued that the High Court had erred in ruling that the agreement entered into between the State and Scania South Africa had no effect of releasing ZUPCO from the obligation to pay the balance of the purchase price. The appeal was heard last month before Supreme Court judges Paddington Garwe, Marie-Anne Gowora and Susan Mavangira, where Packhorse maintained that the agreement of sale of the buses was between it and ZUPCO.Packhorse, represented by law firm, Kantor and Immerman, argued that although it was known that the supplier of the buses was Scania South Africa, the liability to pay Scania South Africa remained with it. The distributor also denied that government had taken over ZUPCO's debt and it was, therefore, entitled to claim the balance of the purchase price from ZUPCO and not from government.The Supreme Court then over turned the High Court judgment, ruling that Packhorse had failed to prove that the transaction was between it and ZUPCO."The respondent did not prove that the transaction of the sale of the buses was between it and the appellant," the Supreme Court ruled.The judges ruled that all exhibits produced in court referred to Scania South Africa as the seller and previous payments were made to Scania South Africa and not to the Packhorse."Consequently, the question of whether or not Scania compromised the balance owing does not arise. The appeal has merit and must succeed. The order of the court a quo (High Court) is hereby set aside. On a proper analysis of the evidence adduced before the court a quo, the respondent did not meet the requirements set out by the authorities," the judges ruled."Its case is not compelling. The court a quo placed emphasis on the credibility of the respondent's witnesses, but in reality their version does not tally with the evidence on record at all."The Supreme Court reprieve for ZUPCO comes in the wake of the bus company having secured a US$25 million loan from India Exim Bank for the purchase of 290 buses from an Indian bus manufacturer, ASHOK.The deal was announced last week in Parliament by Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Deputy Minister, Christopher Chingosho, who told legislators that from the 290 buses, 145 would be used to ply intra-city routes.Chingosho was responding to a question from Harare West Member of Parliament, Jessie Majome, on what his ministry was doing to restore the efficiency of public transport service in the capital similar to standards set by the now defunct Harare United Passengers Omnibus Company in the 1980s.
The Boston Consulting Group and China's e-commerce giant Alibaba issued a joint report entitled "The New Retails: Lessons from China for the West" on the situation in the Chinese e-commerce market.

The authors compared China's intensely growing digital marketplace with Times Square, as one of the busiest and most lively places in the world.

The authors pointed that the core reason is not China's large population, but rather the essentially different conditions in which e-commerce developed in China and in Western markets.

E-commerce emerged in the US in the 1990s and Western customers had to break away from their old habits, switching to the digital marketplace. By contrast, physical retail was less developed in China at the time and Chinese customers simply skipped this transition period, quickly finding themselves accustomed to online shopping.

The same situation is characteristic for shopping via smartphones and other mobile devices."

Many [Chinese] consumers skipped the PC era entirely, going right to smartphones. This may explain why Samsung phones with larger screens took hold in China well before they did in Western markets," the report read.

The authors estimated that by 2020, online purchases made with mobile phones would reach 74 percent of e-commerce in China, against just 46 percent in the US market.

Moreover, the pace of e-commerce does not show a sign of slowing down. The industry is expected to grow by 20 percent a year in China in the next five years, which is two times faster than that of in the US and the UK.

The authors also expect this trend to result in millions of new customers and a growing number of e-commerce categories that "may be surprising for the West."

The authors highlighted the main advantages of China's e-commerce market, differentiating it from Western digital marketplaces.

All of the above, according to estimates, will further drive up online shopping in China, at a much faster pace than in the West.

Analyzing the market's dynamics and consumer behavior both in China and in the West, the authors of the report concluded that in the future all online retailers will have to tackle almost the same set of issues, in order to keep profitable growth.

Among the most crucial challenges is developing versatile offline retail channels that would combine the advantages of both physical retail and online shopping.

According to the authors, such a model should deliver a "seamless and compelling customer experience, and increases efficiency in inventory management, product selection, and logistics."
LONDON -- Police in Britain's Birmingham city issued a global appeal Friday after a rare Harry Potter prequel, handwritten on a postcard by the author J. K. Rowling, was stolen during a burglary at a house in the city.

A copy of "The Tales of Beedle the Bard", handwritten and illustrated by Harry Potter author JK Rowling, is displayed at Sotheby's auction house in London, Britain December 8, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

The story, penned personally by Rowling over two sides of an A5 size postcard, was described by West Midlands Police as "extremely valuable".Police said the handwritten postcard was purchased to raise money for charity. They are hoping the appeal goes far and wide among Harry Potter fans throughout the world.Investigating Officer PC Paul Jauncey said: "The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans. We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale to contact police."Containing 800 handwritten words, it was sold at a charity auction in 2008 for 25,000 pounds(32,200 US dollars).Media reports said Rowling's words outlined a story set three years before the birth of the world's most famous fictional wizard Harry Potter.It features the schoolboy wizard's father James Potter, and godfather Sirius Black, when they were teenagers. They are confronted by two "muggle" policemen after a high-speed motorbike chase but manage to escape on their broomsticks.The proceeds of the auction were donated at the time to English PEN, which promotes understanding through literature, and the charity Dyslexia Action.The Potter document was stolen along with a quantity of jewellery from the property on Howard Road in Birmingham's Kings Heath district.Although it is thought the burglary occurred sometime between April 13 and 24, police only released details Friday.
The United States is sending a delegation, led by a special assistant to US President Donald Trump, to the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing on Sunday and Monday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday.

Matthew Pottinger, also the senior director for Asia at the US National Security Council, will head the delegation.

"As we always say, the Belt and Road is an open and inclusive initiative," Geng told a daily news briefing. "We welcome all parties to participate."

The US embassy in Beijing said Alan Turley of the US Commerce Department also will be part of the delegation, Reuters reported. Turley is the department's deputy assistant secretary for China.

Representatives from other developed countries also will attend. Former French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin was chosen by French president-elect Emmanuel Macron as his special representative to the forum, Geng said.

The British delegation will be led by Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and the German delegation by Minister for Economic Affairs Brigitte Zypries. In addition, European Commission Vice-President Jyrki Katainen will attend forum activities.

The Republic of Korea's new president, Moon Jae-in, has sent Park Byeong-seug, a veteran member of Parliament and a senior official of Moon's Democratic Party, to the forum on behalf of the ROK government, Geng said.

He added that Japan's delegation will be led by Toshihiro Nikai, secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
Chinese companies are seeking out technology wherever and however they can find it and my law firms international licensing lawyers have been writing a slew of China technology licensing agreements lately. Sometimes these deals come to us as China licensing deals, but other times, they come into our law firm as putative joint ventures, but after our China lawyers explain the difficulties and the costs involved in doing a joint venture our clients seek to restructure their relationship with their Chinese counter-party into a licensing arrangement.

We are big fans of China licensing deals because we have seen them be a financial stimulant for so many companies, including companies with admittedly outdated or second tier technology. China licensing deals can be win-win transactions because the Chinese companies and Chinese citizens get perfectly fine technologies (I presume) at a good price and the Western companies get a revenue source from a formerly moribund or nearly moribund technology.

The licensing deals our lawyers have been handling in the last year or so have mostly involved computer or industrial or medical technologies where the Chinese company wants to use the licensed technology to jump-start its own technology development. These Chinese companies initially plan to license the technology from our American or European clients as stepping-stone to building their own cheaper products in China and then later using that technology and the funds they receive from new product sales to further develop and refine (and perhaps even localize) the technology and their own products to compete better with Western companies on the high end. Sometimes though the deals are with a Chinese company that wants to put the technology to immediate use to improve on existing products they sell in China.

The below is a list of initial questions I pulled from an email (modified to eliminate anything that could possibly serve as an identifier to anyone) from one of our China licensing lawyers to a client based on the licensing term sheet to which the client and the potential Chinese company licensee had signed off. The email posed some initial questions, the answers to which were necessary to allow this lawyer to being drafting the licensing agreement.

1. Territory

a. For China, does this include Taiwan? Hong Kong? Macao? These three jurisdictions all have an independent patent/trademark system. We do not use the term China in our agreements since it is not clear. We use the term PRC to refer only to Mainland China. Given the PRCs aspirations, even that term is not perfectly clear. To which of these countries were you referring?

b. The term Southeast Asia has no precise meaning. Please identify the specific countries intended to be included. In particular, what is the status of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, and The Philippines?

2. Note with respect to Territory. There are a number of separate issues:

a. Place of manufacture.

b. Place where patents/trademarks must be maintained.

c. Place where sales are permitted.

The three are quite distinct and it will be important we be clear on all three. It seems to me you are proposing the following:

a. Territory of manufacture is the PRC.

b. Territory of patents is PRC, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong and Japan.

c. Territory of sales is PRC, Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and The Philippines?

Please advise on whether the above is correct? If yes, this will require some complex drafting. But it is doable.

3. Your statement of the license grant is a typical U.S. grant, which includes the right to sublicense. We though generally advise against giving a Chinese licensee the ability to sublicense. What is you position on this?

4. For a manufacturing license, we prefer to see our clients limit the Chinese side to manufacturing only in China at a manufacturing facility you the licensor have approved in advance. Do you agree with this?

5. This agreement is for two products. How do you want to deal with the trademarks and logos for both of these products? Will the patent license also include the associated trademarks and logos? What is the current status of registration of those marks in the applicable territories? Your controlling the trademark is a powerful way for you to control the right to manufacture and sell the products and if you have not registered your trademarks in the PRC and in the other countries in which they will be sold by your licensee, you should consider such registrations in connection with this project. Lets discuss this.

6. In your Performance Metrics section, you raise the important issue of the obligation of [Chinese company] to pursue approvals in the appropriate territories and to engage in selling the two products in those territories. Note, however, that this is extremely complex. To list out just some of the issues:

a. What is the obligation of [Chinese company] to apply for and receive approval with respect to each of the countries in which you will be granting it the licenses? What happens if [Chinese company] receives approval in the PRC, but does not even try to secure approval in the other territories. What happens if [Chinese company] receives approval for Korea but not for the PRC? How are you intending for this to all work?

b. Is the stated sales goal just for the PRC or for the entire sales territory? Have you considered separate sales goals for each country?

c. What is the penalty to [Chinese company] if it does not achieve the performance metric. For example, what if they dont even try for Korea? We could draft it so that you can either terminate the entire license or simply remove Korea from the territory. If the sales goal is cumulative, then you would terminate the entire license. But if the sales goal is by country, then you would remove the country from the license.

d. The same applies to your company. I doubt you mean that you must pursue patents in all of the countries listed. Am I right about this? Either way, we must be clear about this. We could perhaps clarify all this by providing for three territories:

i. Manufacturing territory: PRC.

ii. Patent territory: PRC, Republic of Korea, Hong Kong and Japan.

iii. Sales territory: PRC, Republic of Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Viet Nam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Singapore and The Philippines.

That said, we need to keep these various territories clearly demarcated.

7. In the performance metrics, you properly make clear that actively pursuing approval for sale is required for the license and you provide a hard deadline for one product. But since there are two products and as many as 15 different countries, this could get impossibly complex. We will need to provide a manageable way to keep track of two separate issues: the approvals to sell and the actual sales, for each product and for each country. There are many ways to do this. The simple way is to set an overall gross sales goal, without any specification of country of sales. If the sales goal is met, thats the end of it. Then you can provide that if no approval is obtained for a particular region by a particular time for a particular product, you have the right to remove that country from the sales territory for that product. It seems this approach will work best but I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

8. Buy Back Right. It seems the buy back right for manufacture should only apply if [Chinese company] meets all of its obligations under the license. Do you agree?

Please consider the above and provide me with your comments and questions.

For more on what goes into a China licensing contract, check out:
News / National

by Bloomberg

ZIMBABWEAN President Robert Mugabe's ruling party is discussing using a press clampdown and intimidation in rural areas to thwart a newly united opposition's challenge to its three-decade rule in elections next year, according to three senior officials with knowledge of the matter.Officials of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front are increasingly concerned the health of Mugabe, 93, may undermine his campaign and alternative candidates would struggle to beat a coalition of parties united behind opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change, according to the members of the party's politburo who asked not to be identified because the discussions haven't been made public.Among the methods being discussed are police clampdowns on opposition rallies and using state-controlled media to target opposition figures for alleged misbehavior in their private lives and alleged meetings with western diplomats, the officials said. No final decision has been taken on more violent tactics that were evident in the 2008 election, when the U.S. State Department said about 200 MDC supporters died, or softer propaganda tactics used in 2013, they said."I'm skeptical about the use of 2008 tactics; they know these tactics rob them of legitimacy and peer approval," Alex Magaisa, a U.K.-based law lecturer and one of the architects of Zimbabwe's 2013 constitution, said by phone from Harare, the capital. "They are more likely to use 2013 tactics; the subtle but effective use of the machinery of fear and intimidation."Opposition UnityZanu-PF spokesmen Psychology Maziwisa and Simon Khaya Moyo didn't answer calls seeking comment.The ruling party's concern has mounted in recent weeks with the announcement that Tsvangirai's party agreed to unite with the National People's party led by former vice president Joice Mujuru and a breakaway wing of the MDC led by Welshman Ncube. They're making their unity bid at a time of deepening unrest because of widespread poverty, massive unemployment and the collapse of basic services. Prior to the unity agreement, the authorities haven't seen the opposition as a major threat.Opposition parties have been handicapped in previous election campaigns by divisions among themselves, according to analysts such as Magaisa. Tsvangirai's MDC has disputed every election since 2000, claiming voter intimidation and manipulation of the country's voters' roll, allegations that Mugabe's government denied. Observers including teams from the European Union have backed the MDC's assertions.MDC officials say intimidation of rural voters has escalated in recent weeks, especially in opposition strongholds, such as Matebeleland in the southwest and Manicaland in the east.Rural Fear"Zanu utilises fear, so rural villagers are afraid to attend our rallies, knowing the history of murder, rape, arson and beatings meted out before elections," MDC spokesman Obert Gutu said. "Villagers are being threatened with violence if they attend MDC meetings and being told that support for any opposition amounts to treason, which will lead to beatings and other forms of victimization."Many rural voters may fear that a new biometric balloting system will allow Zanu-PF to know who they voted for, said Pedzisa Ruhanya, who heads the independent Zimbabwe Democracy Institute."They'll concentrate their intimidation on rural areas, knowing that their urban and peri-urban vote has been diluted even further since the last election on the back of activism directed at economic crises and decline," he said.Zanu-PF will also probably try to unite its own factions before the vote. In recent weeks, supporters of Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and rivals in the so-called Generation 40 group, which backs Mugabe's wife, Grace, as his successor engaged in street brawls in Harare.
News / National

by Staff reporter

DURING his days in President Robert Mugabe's Cabinet, Enos Chikowore (now late) earned a reputation for his love for television cameras.Chikowore would not read out his speech or address a media briefing unless the cameras start beaming.If he had lived to this day, he would have been happy to know he was not alone.Generally, all politicians like to appear on television, for better or worse.Whenever camera lenses stray in their direction, you will see them in public places smiling from ear-to-ear, in case the footage might appear on prime time news.Their love for the small screen was exposed last week when they trooped out of Parliament soon after the television crew from the one and only State broadcaster switched off its live national broadcast.Parliament had to adjourn, immediately, because it could not constitute a quorum after the walkout.This is not the first time it has happened.On several occasions, the National Assembly has found itself with no quorum to allow debate to continue.This always happen soon after the crew from the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC-TV) has gone back to Pockets Hill, their headquarters.Every Wednesday, when Parliament is in session, ZBC-TV broadcasts live on national television its proceedings to bring Parliament business to the people.Wednesdays have become popular among listeners and viewers alike because they get to know what happens behind Parliament's walls, first hand.Legislators also take this as an opportunity for them to "shine", as they get an opportunity to ask ministers the most difficult of questions.It is the liveliest session in the august House, known for producing "fireworks".Last week, the House of Assembly recorded a high attendance of 270 legislators with MPs from both the ruling ZANU-PF party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change jostling for a chance to ask ministers questions and, in the process, appear live on ZTV.For most of the MPs, it was their chance to be seen by viewers in their constituencies back home.It is now a common trend that when the ZBC crew cuts off its live transmission, even debate in Parliament comes to an end because most lawmakers will also take a break for the day.Last week Wednesday, as the ZBC crew walked out of the Chambers, most ministers and MPs could be seen following right behind them, leaving behind only 66 MPs in the House of Assembly, who were not enough to constitute a quorum.According to Standing Order Number 56, a parliamentary quorum requires at least 71 MPs.There is a new school of thought emerging among lawmakers that says television cameras should continue rolling 24/7.Kuwadzana East MP, Nelson Chamisa, belongs to this school of thought."I want our Parliament, if it were possible, to be able to consider the issue of coverage of parliamentary debates be done 24 hours per day as the case in other countries like South Africa and Kenya," he said as a point of order."I am raising a point of order Mr Speaker Sir, because once the live coverage ends, people leave this Chamber," he added.Chamisa said most MPs were no longer treating Parliament business with the respect that it deserves.As far as most of them were concerned, parliamentary business is now centred on live television broadcasts."We should not only be in the House when ZBC is in the House. When ZBC leaves, we should also (continue to) debate. The majority of the MPs have left the Chamber, I do not know if they are seeing off the ZBC crew to Pockets Hill or maybe this is just a bad practice that we now have," observed Chamisa.Reuben Marumahoko, who was the acting Speaker of Parliament on the day, promised to "make the necessary report to the powers-that-be and your response will come in due course".Marumahoko had a word of caution for Chamisa though."What you have left out is that you spend a lot of time making a lot of noise during question time. If you had mentioned that, it would have been worthy," Marumahoko said."Indeed, what you have said is true that once ZBC leaves, the ministers also leave this august House. We should not be people that come because the television is present. We should come to the House to represent our constituencies," said the acting Speaker.
(Photo : ONR) Hypervelocity projectiles

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Guided hypersonic projectiles (HVPs) for electromagnetic railguns being developed for the U.S. Navy were successfully tested during multiple firings, a breakthrough that allows railguns to shoot down Russian and Chinese aircraft and cruise missiles in large numbers.



The success was reported by General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS), the railgun developer. GA-EMS said that its smart hypersonic projectiles with enhanced Guidance Electronics Units (GEUs) were successfully tested during multiple firings from its three megajoule (3 MJ) Blitzer railgun system.



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The enhanced GEU containing a new battery configuration and running GA-EMS developed Guidance, Navigation and Control software completed testing at launch accelerations over 30,000 gs at the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground in Utah.



"We're continuing to test at an impressive pace, building on the successes over the past year to advance both our Blitzer railgun systems and hypersonic projectile capabilities," said Nick Bucci, vice president Missile Defense and Space Systems at GA-EMS.



"We are on track to conduct another series of tests using the Blitzer 10 MJ railgun system later this year. With each new firing, we continue maturing the technologies and performing risk reduction toward a multimission railgun weapon system that supports future operation on land and at sea."



The GEU tests also successfully demonstrated a continuous two-way data link between the in-flight projectiles and the ground station over the Dugway Proving Ground open range. In addition to the GEU, a new lightweight composite sabot was tested, demonstrating successful sabot separation and in bore structural integrity at the high acceleration levels.



GA-EMS has internally funded the Blitzer railgun systems and hypersonic projectile development.



The successful trials for guided HVPs will give the U.S. military the long sought after capability to use HVPs as anti-aircraft ammunition for both it railguns and conventional guns.



In October 2016, the navy and the U.S. Army said they will use HVPs designed originally for their railguns as missile-killing ammunitions for their conventional naval guns and ground artillery systems.



Studies by the Department of Defense have revealed that HVPs fired from 5 inch (127 mm) Mk-45 guns aboard U.S. Navy warships such as the Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, and the 155 mm guns aboard the Zumwalt-class destroyers can neutralize anti-ship missile (ASM) salvoes that will be the chosen mode of attack by China and Russia against Navy warships, especially aircraft carriers, in any future conflict.



DoD noted that "if we can close the fire support with a controlled solution," HVPs will be able to shoot down most of the anti-ship missiles in a 100 ASM attack.



When fired from conventional 5 inch guns, HVPs achieve a speed of Mach 3 (3,700 km/h), half the speed it achieves when fired from a railgun, but more than twice the speed of a conventional high-explosive round.



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Tagshypersonic projectiles, HVPs, guided hypersonic projectiles, electromagnetic railgun, U.S. Navy, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems, Blitzer railgun system, U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, Blitzer 10 MJ railgun system
(Photo : US Navy) US Navy EA-18G Growler with jammers and missiles

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The U.S. Navy is using Boeing EA-18G Growler Airborne Electronic Attack (AEA) aircraft costing some $67 million apiece to jam command signals to ISIS-operated quadcopters and off-the-shelf aerial drones that can be bought online for about a few hundred dollars each.



Growlers from Electronic Attack Squadron 131 (VAQ-131) "Lancers" aboard the USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), which entered the Persian Gulf in March, are supporting airstrikes by Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornets against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.



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EA-18 Growlers are conducting electronic warfare (EW) missions, jamming ISIS communications, as well as the communications of ISIS drones doing reconnaissance or "kamikaze" suicide drones inflicting casualties on coalition ground troops when armed with explosives.



Admiral Ken Whitesell, Commander, Carrier Strike Group 2 aboard CVN-77 said he believes the importance of the Growler's capability to mess-up electronic communications is underscored in the current fight against small, commercially available unmanned aircraft systems deployed by ISIS.



"You've probably been watching the unmanned aerial vehicles -- homemade, Amazon-delivered, radio-controlled," said Adm. Whitesell.



"(ISIS militants can fly) homemade bombs over the top of forces and drop them by crashing the gyro-copters. So how can we attack those? The easiest way to do that is potentially to jam the signal and stop them flying."



Growlers feature wingtip ALQ-99 jamming pods and ALQ-218 radar warning receiver equipment. The EA-18G defeats an enemy's communications by using a combination of EW systems and air-to-ground missiles. It can carry up to five ALQ-99 jamming pods for AEA.



It can be armed with two AIM-120 AMRAAM (Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles) or AGM-88 HARM (High Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles) to attack enemy EW sites.



Growlers fly regular missions with Hornets when attacking ISIS targets.



"The Growlers is a difficult mission, because you never know if you're successful," said Adm. Whitesell.



"If nothing bad happens, that community is always happy to go, 'OK, nothing bad happened, but I don't know for sure that I was a part of that. So let's just keep doing what we're doing.' "



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TagsU.S. Navy, Boeing EA-18G Growler, Airborne Electronic Attack, Electronic Attack Squadron 131 (VAQ-131) "Lancers", USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), Persian Gulf, Electronic Warfare, EW, ISIS, quadcopters, aerial drones, Admiral Ken Whitesell
(Photo : Getty Images) Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) talks with India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (L) during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing, China.

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India's claim to the Pakistan-controlled Kashmir has reportedly resulted in conflicts for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, Wang Yiwei, Dean of the Center for European Studies at the Renmin University, said.



"India says that whole of Kashmir (including the part controlled by Pakistan) belongs to India. This is a Pakistan-dominated area, not India," Wang told IANS, noting that "it's a problem [for CPEC]."



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Wang said that India was unnecessarily concerned about the CPEC. Indian security experts earlier said that they fear that China would eventually find it easy to sail into the Indian Ocean after it gains access to the strategic Gwadar Port.



When asked how the CPEC issue would be resolved, Wang said: "You should ask Pakistan." But he also noted that India's concern should be addressed. "We want India to join the Belt and Road forum. Belt and Road is a guarantee that it's a win-win [project]."



China has been trying to persuade India to join the upcoming Belt and Road Forum on May 14 and 15 in Beijing.



Meanwhile, China has previously offered to rename CPEC for India, but this was later amended after the suggestion stroked fears in Pakistan, which is worried that China may eventually be convinced to eliminate the word "Pakistan" in the corridor's name.



"Even we can think about renaming the CPEC," Luo Zhaohui, China's ambassador in New Delhi, said. "This is an example of China taking care of India's concern," he noted, adding that China do not have plans to get involve with the sovereignty and territorial disputes between India and Pakistan.



Beijing has reiterated its unchanged stance on the Kashmir issue. "With regard to the CPEC, China has been stressing that it is an economic program. China's promotion of the relevant program does not mean we have changed our position on the relevant issue. These are two different things," Geng Shuang, Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said.



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TagsCPEC, India, china, Pakistan, OBOR, One Road One Belt
(Photo : USMC) Marines of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment tote M4s with silencers during a field exercise in California.

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A U.S. Marines company currently assigned to defend Norway from an invasion by Russia has become the first infantry unit in either the Marines or the U.S. Army to have all its Colt M4 carbines equipped with silencers, which asre also called sound suppressors.



Two other Marine companies -- both deployed to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, North Carolina -- were also issued "SureFire" suppressors as part of the evaluation phase.



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Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division arrived in Norway in January and with silencers for all their M4 carbines. The men of Bravo Company, who have been testing the silencers in field exercises in arctic conditions for three months, are unanimous in their liking for the silencers.



The Marines' proof-of-concept effort will eventually equip every weapon in an infantry battalion with silencers: M4 carbines; M27 Infantry Automatic Rifles; M249 light machine guns; M240G medium machine guns and M2A1 .50 caliber heavy machine guns.



Maj. Gen. John Love, Commanding General, 2nd Marine Division, said the suppressors are changing the way Marines operated in early testing and evaluation.



"It used to be a squad would be dispersed out over maybe 100 yards, so the squad leader couldn't really communicate with the members at the far end because of all the noise of the weapons," said Gen. Love.



"Now they can actually just communicate, and be able to command and control, and effectively direct those fires."



Silencers make the Marines more "invisible" to the enemy by suppressing weapon flash and sound. They also allow team leaders to stop carrying radios and extra radio batteries, lightening their load.



Two other companies have been issued suppressors as part of the evaluation phase: Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 6th Marines deployed in March aboard the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and Lima Company, and 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines from Camp Lejeune deployed to Japan in February as part of the unit deployment program.



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TagsU.S Marines, Norway, Colt M4 carbines, silencers, sound suppressors, Maj. Gen. John Love
The extremist group Boko Haram has released 82 school girls who have been captive for more than three years, Nigerian officials said on Saturday.

The girls were released after negotiations, according to reports, and the Nigerian government has released prisoners in return.

Though most reports say the number and other details of the prisoners were not disclosed, The Guardian has reported that five commanders were released.

The 82 women who were released were among more than 270 girls who were abducted at a school in Chibok, located in the northeastern part of Nigeria, in April of 2014. Since the abduction, some girls have escaped, and dozens have been released after negotiations. An estimated 100 are still captive.

The President directed the security agencies to continue in earnest until all the Chibok girls have been released and reunited with their families, the Nigerian President Muhammadu Buharis office said.

I am very, very excited with this development, Yana Galang, whose daughter was among the 276 who were kidnapped, told CNN.

I hope and pray that my daughter is among these released girls, Galang added.

The abduction of these school girls received much international public attention, as it sparked the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls. However, Boko Haram, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, is known to have abducted thousands others over the last eight years.

Buharis spokesman said Buhari was thankful to security agencies, the military, the Government of Switzerland, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and local and international NGOs for their roles in securing the rescue of the 82 girls.

Boko Haram has existed as a militant group since the late 1990s. The Nigerian government estimates that its violent activities have caused tens of thousands to be killed, and hundreds of thousands to be displaced from their homes.
News / National

by Staff reporter

TWO friends have been hauled to court on allegations of extorting $1200.Tauya Muzivi Mushangwe and Arnold Moses Ojesi have been granted $100 bail and will be back in court on June 8 on routine remand.Mushangwe is reported to be a member of the Central Intelligence Organisation and Ojesi an accountant at Sanctuary Insurance Company Limited both stationed in Harare.The Country Director of Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative (REPSSI), a non-governmental organisation that promotes social services such as health and education, Sibusisiwe Marunda decided to undertake a project to cater for deprived children in Mashonaland West Province.REPSSI was to undergo a vetting process before being allowed to offer their services to the above-mentioned province.Mushangwe was tasked to vet and clear the organisation.It is alleged that during the vetting process, Mushangwe approached Marunda and informed her that her organisation was not eligible to carry out its project in Chinhoyi.He is further alleged to have demanded $1200 as a bribe so that the organisation could be cleared.Marunda then reported the matter to the police who then set up a trap for Mushangwe.On May 8, a trap team comprising of six detectives from CID Commercial Crimes Division were tasked to execute a trap using 25$20 notes.At around 7pm, the trap team held a meeting with Marunda at Long Cheng Plaza where she contacted Mushangwe and informed him that she had been delayed in a meeting and would give him the $1200 he had requested the following day.However, Mushangwe is reported to have insisted that Marunda meet him on the same day at Divaris Shopping Centre in Belvedere.The trap team along with Marunda proceeded to the shopping centre in separate vehicles and strategically positioned themselves.It is reported that both Mushangwe and Ojesi were at the scene.Marunda is reported to have gotten out of her vehicle and met up with Mushangwe who had also alighted from his own vehicle, a black Volkswagen Passat.The two started walking together towards Ojesi who was seated in his vehicle, a Toyota Mark II.On the way, Mushangwe was handed the trap money and he is reported to have handed it to Ojesi.The trap team is then reported to have pounced on Ojesi in a bid to recover the trap money and to arrest the two accused persons.However, Mushangwe is alleged to have sensed danger and alerted Ojesi to drive away immediately which he did.The trap team arrested Mushangwe at the scene and then pursued Ojesi who they managed to apprehend at his work place.The trap money was then recovered from his car.The total value extorted is $1200.Harare magistrate Barbara Chimboza presided over the matter whilst Sebastian Mutizirwa represented the State.
Basuki Ahok Purnama, the incumbent Christian and ethnic Chinese governor of Indonesias capital Jakarta, was found guilty of committing blasphemy by an Indonesian Court on Tuesday, May 9, raising concerns about religious freedom in the country.

During the court hearing on Tuesday, head judge Dwiarso Budi Santiarto said Purnama was found to have legitimately and convincingly conducted a criminal act of blasphemy, to which the five-judge panel voted unanimously.

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, Santiarto said.

Purnama has been sentenced to two years in jail, and until his term as governor officially ends in October, Deputy Governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat will serve as the acting governor of Jakarta. Purnamas jail sentence began on Tuesday, as he was taken to a prison in East Jakarta after the court decision was made.

Purnamas lawyer expressed that he plans to appeal the case.

Purnama was first accused of blasphemy in November of 2016. In response to some who said that the Quran forbids Muslims from voting for non-Muslims, Purnama had said that politicians are deceiving the people, a comment which was distributed and edited via a video that soon went viral.

Hard-line conservatives said his comments were offensive and that he insulted the Quran.

Though Purnama ran for re-election, he conceded defeat last month to Anies Baswedan, the former education and culture minister. Analysts have said that the trial against Purnama had a significant effect on the election results.

Human rights activists expressed concern that the ruling is an alarming sign for religious minorities in the country.

Its a sad day, and its frightening. If the governor of Indonesias largest and most complex city, and who is an ally of the Indonesian president, can be brought down and humiliated this way, what will happen to normal Indonesian citizens? Andreas Harsono, an Indonesian researcher at the Human Rights Watch, told the New York Times. Purnama is known to have close ties with Indonesias current president, Joko Widodo.

Benedict Rogers, the East Asia team leader for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said that the ruling against Purnama represented an outrageous miscarriage of Justice.

It also represents a further, and severe, erosion of Indonesias values of religious pluralism as set out in the Pancasila, the state ideology, Rogers went on.

Indonesias ability to hold itself up as an example of a moderate, tolerant, Muslim-majority democracy is further threatened and is now very questionable.
Franklin Graham condemned the Christian genocide thats killing over 100,000 a year because of their faith in Christ at a Washington, D.C., gathering of 600 persecuted believers and their advocates from 130 countries.

I am sure the number of Christians who are in prison or martyred each year would stagger our mind if we really knew what the total number really was, Graham told the opening session of the inaugural World Summit in Defense of Christians, reports Religion News Service. And it would send us to our knees in sorrow and in prayer.

The figure of 100,000 martyrs that Graham cited originates from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity (CSGC), and includes all Christians who have lost their lives prematurely, in situations of witness, as a result of human hostility.

This definition is broad. For example, it includes about 20 percent of the 4 million people killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congos ...

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Update (May 13): President Donald Trump told a roaring crowd at Liberty Universitys commencement to follow their Christian convictions, even when it means feeling like an outsider or taking a stand against the establishment.

Being an outsider is fine. Embrace the label, because its the outsiders who change the world and make a lasting difference, Trump told the Lynchburg, Virginia, campus during his first visit as president Saturday morning. Be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures. Does that sound familiar, by the way?

In front of a record-setting crowd of about 50,000 attendees, the newly minted politician winked to his support from white evangelicalsrepeatedly bringing up religious freedom and identifying with their position as Washington outsiders by critiquing the broken system and leaders who think they know everything.

In America, we do not worship government, ...

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The recent arrest of two American citizens working in North Korea has brought attention to the curious case of Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), an American-founded, evangelical-affiliated school in the capital city of the worlds most notorious dictatorship.

Its hard to think of a less likely place for American Christians to teach than North Korea, a country the United States has not had diplomatic ties with for over 60 years and where religious freedom does not exist.

Kim Hak Song and Kim Sang Duk, both Christians and professors teaching at PUST, the only private university in North Korea, were detained last month on charges of hostile acts or intent against the North Korean governmentthe same allegation that kept Youth With a Mission missionary Kenneth Bae in prison for more than two years, longer than any other American arrested in the country. (Bae was finally released, in ailing health, in 2014.)

PUST, which CT featured in 2012, ...

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Texas Senator John Cornyn is under consideration by President Donald Trump to replace ousted FBI Director James Comey, according to people close to the discussions.

A former Texas attorney general, Cornyn is one of nearly a dozen candidates that include acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The 65-year-old senator, who was first elected to the Senate in 2002 and serves as majority whip, would not comment on whether he had spoken to the White House about the position when contacted Friday.

"I have the distinct privilege of serving 28 million Texans in the United States Senate, and that is where my focus remains," Cornyn said in a statement released by his office.

The White House declined to comment.

Speculation over who will take over the nation's most powerful law enforcement agency follows Trump's surprising decision earlier this week to fire Comey in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether there was collusion between Trump's campaign staff and Russian hackers who infiltrated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's email server ahead of the November election.

Whether Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate after Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, would want the FBI position was unclear. For now, though, he is viewed as a long shot to takeover the FBI, with Kelly and Rogers the likely frontrunners, said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University.

"One of the difficulties Senator Cornyn faces is there's going to be at least some resistance to having someone in the position with a clear partisan profile. There's a belief the FBI director should at least nominally be politically independent," he said. "Also, he's perhaps one of the few individuals for whom FBI director could be construed as a step down as opposed to a step up."

Cornyn's seat is not up for re-election until 2020, and he is considered a potential successor to the 75-year-old McConnell, should he step down.

Other names under consideration by Trump to head the FBI include Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who led the congressional probe into the attack on a U.S. diplomatic base in Benghazi, Libya; and Larry Thompson, former deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush.
Katherine Feser/Houston Chronicle

The Texas Children's name is being added to 6330 West Loop building in Bellaire.

Texas Children's Health Plan, a subsidiary of Texas Children's Hospital, relocated its headquarters to the building last year after leasing the top seven floors. The building houses 400 employees.
A lawsuit filed Friday against the owners and managers of a northeast Houston apartment complex where a March shooting took place alleges that the residential community did not have adequate security, according to court documents.

The latest legal action follows a shooting on March 26 at the complex, Haverstock Hills, that left two dead and four, including a former America's Next Top Model contestant, injured.

Four family members and three people injured in the gunfire are suing the owners of Haverstock Hills, Equality Community Housing, and the company that manages the property, J. Allen Management Company, for gross negligence, according to court documents.

They are asking for more than $1,000,000 in damages, said the lead attorney on the case, Benny Agosto, Jr., partner at the law firm Abraham Watkins. The two companies declined to respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit accuses both companies of putting residents at the complex at 5619 Aldine Bender Road at risk for injury.

Neither company adequately secured the complex, despite a history of gang violence in the area and on the premises, according to the lawsuit. Both companies also failed to respond to the 30-minute dispute at the complex before it escalated into a fatal shooting, the lawsuit alleges.

The suit was filed on behalf of the mothers of the two men who died in the gunfire at Haverstock Hills, 33-year-old Christopher Beatty and 31-year-old Wayne Rusher; the two mothers of Wayne Rusher's four children; and three of the four people who were injured during the shooting, 47-year-old Arthur Larkin, 28-year-old Isaiah Rusher and 32-year-old Brandy Rusher, the former Top Model contestant.

It comes days after the accused gunman, 35-year-old Harvey Jones, was arrested in Jacksonville, Fla.

Jones was charged with capital murder in March. Jones' brother who was at the complex with him that day, 34-year-old Harvey Jones, was charged with aggravated assault in March. He turned himself in to authorities shortly after.

Haverstock Hills has had a reputation for decades as a crime-ridden apartment complex. In 2010, it was the site of the first gang injunction in Harris County. The injunction banned known members of the Bloods and the Crips street gangs from the premises and surrounding businesses and schools.

The 2010 injunction was expanded in 2014.

The lawsuit points toward the complex's open gates, unmanned security station and lack of working security cameras as evidence of negligence on behalf of the owners and management companies.

Since the March 26 shooting, the companies have demolished the unmanned security station to make way for a secure gate.

The sole person injured in the shooting who is not included in the suit is 16-year-old Ty'bra Baptiste. Agosto said he was unsure if she planned to file a separate suit.
Houston Police Department

Police are searching for a teenager with autism who was last seen at a Walmart store in southwest Houston.

Zachaeus Oyeneyin, 17, was last seen today at the Walmart in the 11700 block of Beechnut.
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Galveston's skyline will look a little less glamorous tonight, but it's for a good cause.

On Wednesday, 395 birds died after crashing into One Moody Plaza, a 23-story skyscraper and headquarters to The American National Insurance Company.

"The building has been here for 45 years and there's never been anything like this," said Bruce LePard, a spokesperson for American National.

SQUAWK: Sugar Land firefighters rescue adorable parrot

Sarah Flournoy, the Bird-Friendly Communities Program Manager for Houston Audubon told Chron.com the building's lights disorient birds, especially on stormy nights when they fly lower than normal.

Now, LePard said American National is working on making One Moody Plaza less attractive to migrating birds.

For the foreseeable future, the insurance company will turn off the building's lights during migrating season and when the Houston Audubon Society sends out alerts.

PEACE AND QUIET: Pearland police vehicle taken off streets so a mother bird can nest on it

As for the casualties that have occurred already, the avian's corpses have been shipped out to Texas A&M to be studied.

Click through above to see images of the birds that crashed into One Moody Plaza.
News / National

by Staff reporter

In a move that has been roundly criticised by the opposition as "2018 bribes", President Robert Mugabe's stone-broke government is to splurge millions of scarce United States dollars on new vehicles for traditional leaders.This comes as Zimbabwe has just been officially ranked as the poorest country in Africa, at a time that the nation is also experiencing a severe shortage of cash.Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Rural Development minister Abedinico Ncube revealed that the government would be buying new cars for the country's 226 chiefs, as part of the fulfilment of promises that Zanu-PF made in the aftermath of the 2013 elections."It (buying new cars) is something we are working on. We are going to give them (chiefs) very shortly all 226 registered chiefs will get the cars," Ncube said, responding to questions on how much the government had budgeted for chiefs' to have vehicles before the expiry of the current parliamentary term.Apart from splurging on new cars for the traditional leaders, the stone-broke government will also continue to pay village heads $25 in monthly allowances."They are not given salaries, but this is an allowance. Every village head is entitled to be given an allowance."For those who are not receiving their allowances, they must approach the relevant authorities . . . those who are not registered they must also do the same for them to get their allowances," Ncube said.Traditional leaders have often been accused by the opposition and rights groups of aiding Zanu-PF to retain power through terror campaigns and partisan food distribution in rural areas.Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai recently warned that Mugabe and his warring ruling Zanu-PF - fearful of receiving an even bigger poll shellacking than they got in 2008 - were already working feverishly to steal next year's eagerly-anticipated elections.Tsvangirai's concerns emerged as the MDC president was concluding his tour of Mashonaland East, where he interacted with traditional leaders - who opened up to him on how they were already being roped in by Zanu-PF to become part of the apparatus to ensure victory for the ruling party in 2018.Traditional chief after traditional chief had apparently told Tsvangirai during his tour of the restive Mashonaland East Province, which is traditionally a Zanu-PF stronghold, that they were being forced to not only join the ruling party, but to also lead its cells and wards - and to actively work to help rig next year's polls."There is a plan by Zanu-PF to steal next year's elections. We have been on the ground here in Mashonaland East and what we are seeing and hearing is that Zanu-PF wants to steal the next elections again, after they took over the BVR (biometric voter registration) process, in addition to commandeering chiefs, village heads and headmen on board this devious scheme."The fearful village heads all said they were forced to be chairpersons of Zanu-PF's cells. That way, Zanu-PF will coerce them to frog-march people to vote for the ruling party."So, the sum total of Zanu-PF's ploy is that it is assimilating traditional leaders into its partisan structures, abusing them in the process"However, we will do all that we can to ensure that traditional leaders are not abused and absorbed into Zanu-PF structures? Indeed, the rights of traditional leaders must and will be observed," Tsvangirai said then.Zimbabwe is deep in the throes of a huge economic crisis which has led to horrendous company closures and the consequent loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs.At the same time, economists have said that poverty levels in the country are skyrocketing, with average incomes now at their lowest levels in more than 60 years - with more than 76 percent of the country's families now having to make do with pitiful incomes that are well below the poverty datum line.
It's not too late to nominate your favorite company for the Houston Chronicle's Top Workplaces awards.

The deadline for nominations has been extended until June 23.

To nominate your company for an award, just tell us what you like: the flexible hours, the perks, the benefits, the conscientious management, the foosball tables - or maybe the nap room.

Tweet a photo of what makes your workplace so awesome to @chronbusiness.

More Information Top Workplaces 2017 Nominate your company for the Top Workplaces survey, conducted for the Chronicle by WorkplaceDynamics. Online: chron.com/nominate By phone: 713-429-0375 Deadline: June 23 Read last year's coverage: chron.com/topworkplaces See More Collapse

"A company should be considered a sacred thing. It allows people to earn livings, pay for homes and college educations, as well as pay the taxes that support our communities," Business Editor Al Lewis said. "At the Houston Chronicle, we celebrate area companies that take care of their employees."

Last year, almost 77,000 local workers gave feedback about their employers as part of the Top Workplaces program. Anyone, from employees to customers or top executives, can make a nomination.

Organizations must have at least 50 local employees to qualify. Private, public, nonprofit and government workplaces can all take part.

To determine winners, Chronicle partner WorkplaceDynamics conducts short employee surveys that will be completed by mid-July.

WorkplaceDynamics works with more than 40 major news organizations across the country, and last year surveyed more than 2 million employees.
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A retirement reception was held by the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce for Charlie Dromgoole and Kathy Caves on Monday, May 8, to honor their work in the community.

Caves joined the chamber in 2002 and was present during the transition from Humble Area Chamber to the Lake Houston Area Chamber, which led her to being able to work with three different CEOs.

Dromgoole served as the senior vice president of the Lake Houston Economic Development Partnership and former CEO of the Lake Houston Area Chamber, and Caves served as the accountant and office manager.

"When I came to the Lake Houston Area Chamber of Commerce in October 2010, I had told them that I would be there four to five years," Dromgoole said.

He said implementing a succession plan early on helped smooth the transition.

"We developed a succession plan that started in 2014. Jenna (Armstrong) became president and COO in 2015, and I stayed on as CEO and focused the rest of my time on the Lake Houston Area Economic Development Partnership," Dromgoole said.

Armstrong assumed the role as president and CEO in 2016, making the planned transition a success.

"With the proper succession planning that occurred, the transition has been smooth," Dromgoole said. "Jenna Armstrong has put together a strong, young and energetic staff built for the future."

"A redirection rather than a retirement" is how Dromgoole refers to his move because it has led him to start a consulting firm with retired Lufkin chamber executive Jerry Huffman.

"We will continue to work with other chambers, economic development organization, associations and governmental entities on strategic planning and organization improvement," Dromgoole said.

With all the new free time, Dromgoole plans to spend it with his grandchildren and traveling with his wife, Marilyn, by taking more "spur of the moment" road trips.

"We also look forward to being able to enjoy family and friends during the week rather than having to plan everything for weekends," Dromgoole said.

Dromgoole said Mark Mitchell will no doubt do great work as president of the Economic Development Partnership.

"Mark Mitchell will take the economic development program that started during my tenure to the next level," Dromgoole said.
The Houston Society for the Prevention and Cruelty of Animals rescued 66 dogs from Ruff N Fluff in Magnolia on Thursday, May 11, alleging animal cruelty.

A Houston SPCA cruelty investigator went to the site on May 4 to look into cruel confinement allegations that were reported to Montgomery County Animal Control, the organization said in a press release.
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Children were playing at a park in Porter when deputies arrested two men there who were carrying narcotics and a firearm, the Montgomery County Precinct 4 Constable's Office said Thursday.

Deputy constables went to the park along FM 1314 and Cumberland just before 5 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a tip that Tyler Waid, 23, who was wanted on a burglary warrant, was there. He ran when deputies arrived but was quickly captured.
Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries is reaching out to the community to expand its fundraising and services to help the growing number of residents in need.

The nonprofit recently received a $10,000 donation from the Cypress-Woodlands Junior Forum. The group also recently began partnering with AmeriGas, including receiving a $1,500 donation this month.

And the Tomball nonprofit recently started The Client Partnership Program, where community members can request that their funds be used for a particular need.

The new programs "are vehicles for community involvement to assist the growing number of those who are suffering from unemployment, underemployment and circumstantial difficulties," said Becky Loving, director of Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries.

And, Loving said, she is thankful for all of the new support because the needs continue to grow in the region.

"For the first time, the needs are starting to outweigh the resources we have," Loving said.

The $10,000 donation will pay for a staff coordinator for the nonprofit's new cloud sharing resource guide to help the area's needy population.

Spearheaded by the Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries, the new Tomball Benevolence Network is a group of community and business leaders, schools, churches and other nonprofits that are working to build a resource of community help for those in need.

The guide will bring together all the resources in the Tomball area - medical, housing, financial, plus the services or skills of volunteers from the community, including potentially auto mechanics, plumbers and air conditioner technicians who are willing to donate their services, Loving said.

The new software is called GRACE - God's Resource And Community Exchange.

Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries helps residents in need throughout the year, including with food and with help paying rent and utilities.

The number of people seeking assistance has increased, due mostly to employment layoffs in the area, Loving said.

Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries has recently teamed with AmeriGas. The company donated $1,500 in May to help the nonprofit with its mission.

"AmeriGas has been a part of this community for 50 years; Our employees are local people," said Ron Gorham, district manager of AmeriGas in Pinehurst. "We've partnered with TEAM because we want to do more for our neighbors. My employees and I got together to talk about how we could help the people in this area who have come up against hard times, often through no fault of their own."

AmeriGas is calling its campaign "From Here. For Here."

As part of that partnership, AmeriGas has offered to help residents identified by Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries who are in need of propane.

AmeriGas employees will also volunteer at the nonprofit's food pantry and plans to start a food drive for the pantry. The company also plans to be involved this year in Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries' Christmas Family Adoption program.

"We can't control what happens to the economy and how many jobs our area gains or loses every month," Gorham said. "But we can stick up for our community and give back with our dollars, time and energy."

As the population continues to rise in the region, the number of financially unstable households has increased as well.

In 2015, Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries provided about $180,000 in assistance to area residents. In 2016, the assistance provided increased to $255,503, Loving said.

And nearly all of that assistance was from community donations, she said. Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries received $255,307 in donations from the community last year.

Other area nonprofit agencies are also seeing an increase in the need for services as the region grows.

Hundreds of families and seniors struggle to pay for basic needs, primarily food. At Northwest Assistance Ministries, the biggest demand is for food, which is due in part to job layoffs.

Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries is run entirely by community support, including with the help of many volunteers.

The nonprofit has two full-time employees and two part-time employees, and the rest are volunteers.

Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries runs a resale shop in Tomball. The profits from the resale shop help support its community outreach.

More than a year ago, the nonprofit changed management for both the ministry and the resale shop and completely remodeled the resale shop.

And the upgrade has paid off. Sales have consistently increased, Love said.

Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries receives monthly contributions from 16 area churches. And they are working to add more.

Want to know more?

Tomball Emergency Assistance Ministries

300 West Main Street, Tomball

281-351-6700

For more information about services, to donate or to volunteer, visit http://www.teamtomball.com/
News / National

by Staff reporter

Embattled local government minister Saviour Kasukuwere, who is also the ruling Zanu-PF party's political commissar, has denied allegations that he is plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe, 93.Speaking during an interview with News24, Kasukuwere, charged that those pushing for his expulsion from Zanu-PF were the ones pushing for the nonagenarian's ouster.Most of Zanu-PF's provincial structures recently petitioned Mugabe, calling for Kasukuwere's ouster. They accused him of setting up parallel structures within the party, with a view to ascend to the presidency of the party and the country.Zanu-PF was divided into two distinct factions that sought to outwit each other in the battle to succeed the veteran leader. Mugabe has failed to groom a successor in his 37 years in power in the southern African country.One of the camps calling itself "Team Lacoste" was linked to Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa, while another faction made up of Young Turks trading by the name Generation 40 was reportedly linked to First Lady Grace Mugabe. G40 was said to be seeking to torpedo Mnangagwa's presidential ambitions.'That is madness'However, both Mnangagwa and the First Lady have publicly denied harbouring presidential ambitions.Kasukuwere told News24 that he was a Mugabe loyalist adding that it was "madness" for anyone to think that he was pushing for an extra-ordinary congress before next year's presidential polls in order for him to take over from the nonagenarian."That is madness, we have already endorsed President Mugabe as our presidential candidate for 2018 and I am 100% behind his candidature," said Kasukuwere."Our party is guided by rules and principles and one cannot just wake up and be president of the party."Some Zanu-PF supporters held demonstrations across the country in recent weeks calling on Mugabe to wield the axe on Kasukuwere. They also called on the president to relieve him of his ministerial duties.But Mugabe advised his party members to follow in-house procedures if they were not happy about any official in the party.Investigations"Those that are accusing me of trying to take over from the president are the ones who have that hidden agenda (of toppling Mugabe), not me. I am very loyal to our president and my pre-occupation is mobilising people to vote for president Mugabe in 2018," said Kasukuwere."Anything else is sheer madness and we should not waste time on this madness being created by people with hidden agendas".Meanwhile, Zanu-PF legislator for Gokwe Nembudziya, Mayor Wadyajena, who was reportedly aligned to "Team Lacoste", told News24 that Kasukuwere was indeed plotting to oust Mugabe."This first came from Kasukuwere's home province (Mashonaland Central) and it's bound to be true. Why would those people in his home area lie. It's true he wants to take over from the president and we know that is his (Kasukuwere's) hidden agenda," said Wadyajena.Mugabe recently dispatched a four-member delegation to Mashonaland Central Province led by parliamentary speaker Jacob Mudenda to probe Kasukuwere, but the findings of those investigations were yet to be released. Mudenda refused to comment on the findings, saying he did not want to pre-empty the report.'We celebrate Mugabe'Following the probe team's visit to Bindura, Mashonaland Central Provincial Affairs minister Martin Dinha told The Sunday Mail newspaper that he had presented to the probe team that Kasukuwere had formed an alliance with Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party. Dinha alleged that Kasukuwere and Malema wanted to oust the leaders of both South Africa and Zimbabwe.Asked about this, Kasukuwere said this was "madness".Malema was on record calling on both South African President Jacob Zuma and Mugabe to step down to pave way for fresh blood. Malema has often accused Zuma of massive corruption and Mugabe of overstaying in office. At one time, he labelled Mugabe "grandpa"."We celebrate Mugabe. We celebrate what he has done and we will continue his legacy, but grandpa, it's enough now," Malema was quoted as saying. "You must let go and allow other people to continue that legacy."For his part, Mugabe has told the world that he would continue at the helm of power "as long as the people of Zimbabwe want me to continue".
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At first, it appeared Miguel Ramos lost his life over a cooked chicken and a bicycle, which would have been senseless enough. But it was money the four teens who robbed him were after, authorities said, and they left Ramos to die in a dark northwest Houston alley after shooting him and taking everything he had - a single, torn dollar bill.

Ramos, a 32-year-old homeless man who worked hard when he could find it and drank beer with a group of other homeless men who hung out along a gritty stretch of Hempstead Highway near the intersection with 34th Street, wasn't a target on the night of April 4.

The four teenagers who were charged with capital murder Tuesday in the slaying were looking for prostitutes to rob that night but couldn't find any, police said.

At about 10:30, heavily armed and cruising around in a dark green Honda, they happened to see Ramos at Tezzie's Mesquite Grill, a food truck parked on the corner, and figured if he was buying a chicken, he would have money.

They were wrong.

Bought on credit

Marguerite Manriquez, the owner of the truck, said she knew Ramos. He was a good man and she trusted him. That night she sold him a chicken on credit because he didn't have any money.

"He was a very, very decent guy," Manriquez said.

Carlos Daniel Fernandez, 18, Michael Alexander Correa, 17, and Marilyn Ashley Villarreal, 18, are charged with capital murder in Ramos' death. A 16-year-old girl will be referred to Harris County Juvenile Probation authorities on a capital murder charge.

When police first arrived on the scene that night, they thought Ramos and two of his friends had been targeted because of the chicken and the bicycle one of them had.

But as the investigation unfolded it emerged the teens had gone looking for money because Correa was out of work and he needed supplies for his 1-year-old baby, said Brian Harris, a sergeant with the Houston Police Department homicide division.

Villarreal was driving the car. Fernandez had a .25 pistol; Correa a .38. The 16-year-old girl was in the back with a shotgun, police said.

Fernandez and Correa confronted Ramos and his two friends in an alley leading to a rundown trailer park where the homeless men squatted in an abandoned trailer.

According to the juvenile girl, two of the men started fighting with Fernandez and Correa. She got out of the car and fired the shotgun at them, but missed.

The girl told police that Fernandez then shot Ramos in the heart, and the teens fled.

'It hurts'

A witness, Enrique Jose Avila, told police he ran over to Ramos, his friend, who was lying on the ground. Ramos said "it hurts" and then stopped breathing, the witness said.

Harris said the break in the case came four days after Ramos' slaying when the 16-year-old girl was shot in the leg with her own shotgun during a home invasion allegedly involving Fernandez, who is her boyfriend, and another man.

Soon, police said, all had admitted their roles in the killing. Harris said police believe the quartet is responsible for as many as a dozen home invasions and robberies since March. 1.

A white cross with a wreath on it is still in the alley where Ramos died. It has the inscription Miguel el ojitos - Miguel the little eyes.

'A giving man'

Peter Welz, who described himself as temporarily homeless, had nothing but praise for Ramos.

On Tuesday, he was sitting outside the convenience store on the corner, nursing a hand he broke on the jaw of another man during a whiskey-induced fight.

"Miguel was damned good man," he said. "He liked to drink beer, but he was a giving man. If he saw you and you were down and out, he'd help you out."

Harris said the 16-year-old girl, who is less than 5 feet tall and weighs about 90 pounds, told them they had gotten $2 from Ramos in the robbery. She was wrong.

"They killed a man for a one dollar bill torn in half," he said.

tony.freemantle@chron.com
Harris County asked a federal appeals court Friday for an emergency halt to judge's order that would alter the way cash bail is handled for hundreds of people jailed on misdemeanor charges.

The request from Harris County's team of lawyers asks the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to decide by Monday - when the order is set to take effect - whether the county should be allowed with continue with its current bail system while a contentious lawsuit proceeds through the courts.

"The injunction jeopardizes public safetythe harm is real and imminent," the lawyers argued in the 11th-hour filing just before noon Friday.

The county asks the appeals court to either overturn the injunction or temporarily halt action if the court needs more time to evaluate the merits of the case.

In the meantime, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez is moving forward with plans to begin releasing inmates on personal bonds starting Monday if the order stands.

Chief U.S. District Judge Lee H. Rosenthal issued the temporary injunction last month along with a 193-page opinion in which she found the county's bail practices unconstitutional because they discriminated against low-income defendants charged with, low-level offenses, who couldn't pay cash bail.

While other inmates paid bail and went on with their lives while awaiting trial, indigent inmates often took guilty pleas to avoid getting behind on payments, lost their housing or jobs, she ruled.

The lawsuit was filed last year by two civil rights groups - Texas Fair Defense Project and Civil Rights Corps - and 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 couldn't afford the $2,500 bail. Two similar lawsuits filed on behalf of two other people were merged into the case in August.

Commissioner Rodney Ellis, who opposed the vote authorizing the county's attorneys to appeal the decision, said it's time for the county to stop the expensive fight.

"The county should stop wasting time and tax dollars defending the indefensible and start investing in our broken justice system," he said in a written statement. "Jailing poor people accused of misdemeanors simply because they cannot afford bail does nothing to make our communities safer, and it is outrageous to claim otherwise."
A Houston flight traveling to Ecuador returned to the gate Thursday night after a scorpion attempted to come out of a passenger's clothing, according to an emailed statement from the airline company.

The flight traveling out of Bush Intercontinental Airport has now departed to Quito after a new aircraft was arranged. The passenger declined medical treatment.
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Arnold Schwarzenegger went from firing people on television to firing up University of Houston graduates Friday, in a speech that didn't directly focus on the current political climate but featured deep undertones of America's role in improving the lives of immigrants and helping others.

"America has proven to be the greatest country in the world where anyone can make it," Schwarzenegger said during the school's 2017 Spring Commencement. "This place has given me the opportunities step after step. Thank you America for the great thing you are doing for immigrants who are coming here."

Without mentioning any politicians but himself, the former California governor alternated from cheering immigrants such as himself and UH president Renu Khator for taking hold of opportunities in the U.S., and reminding graduates that while only their names will appear on their diploma, they are not solely responsible.

"The whole concept of the self-made man or woman is a myth," he said interspersing the speech with references to his own prowess as a bodybuilder and movie-screen hero. "I just didn't materialize like the terminator in a fire ball on the streets of Los Angeles."

Using his own life as a Mr. Universe-turned-actor-turned-politician as an example, Schwarzenegger noted the people along the way who made his leap from Venice Beach muscle-boy to state official possible.

"At some point take a break from the celebration and the Instagrams and Snapchats and think about all the people who helped you," Schwarzenegger told graduates.

Though he didn't mention President Donald Trump  who Schwarzenegger briefly replaced as a reality TV host  the mixture of crediting immigrants, dispelling notions of the self-made man and celebrating humility and service was laced with connections to current political discussions.

"We are not going to be remembered for how much we've made, but how much we have given," Schwarzenegger said.

Initially the university agreed to pay $40,000 for Schwarzenegger's appearance, which was brokered through a third party. Schwarzenegger learned of the agreement and the contract was rescinded.

The university controversially paid Matthew McConaughey $135,000 for its 2015 commencement speech. After the sum paid to McConaughey was publicly disclosed after the university first tried to keep the payment confidential, officials stressed he donated $130,000 of it to his charitable foundation.
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When Houston art curators Randall Kallinen and John Paul Hartman put out a request for work relating to Donald Trump, they didn't expect so many young artists to answer the call.

"Trump! The Art Show" officially opened last month, but co-curator Kallinen said there were a few last minute submissions.

"After the opening, I received a whole bunch of art from elementary school children on the topic of immigration policy," said Kallinen.

POLICE: Immigration debate might chill crime reporting in Hispanic communities

Kallinen said the art came from various parts of Texas and was hand-delivered to him by someone whose identity he chose not reveal. According to Kallinen, some of the children and their parents may not have legal status.

"It was cathartic for the children to write about these topics," said Kallinen. "I live in the East side of Houston, which is mainly Hispanic, and I can feel the tension that Donald Trump brings."

In total, Kallinen received roughly 70 pieces of art. He said the artist's themes range from the fear of people getting deported,to opposition toward current immigration policy, to immigrants in general.

WARNED: ACLU issues 'travel alert' for Texas over SB4 immigration law

Each piece of art is signed anonymously as to not draw unwanted attention to the artists or whoever helped organize what Kallinen assumes may be a project.

Now, the art is set to be displayed along with the rest of the work at "Trump! The Art Show."

Click through above to see the anonymous school children's art work.
GALVESTON  About 100 Beach City residents were back in their homes Friday after an early morning evacuation caused by a crude-oil tank catching fire, a Chambers County official said.

Emergency personnel went door to door asking residents near the flaming tank to evacuate after the fire was reported at 3:23 a.m., said Bill Vola, Chambers County deputy emergency management coordinator.
Most of the 33 members of a ring arrested in January and accused of dealing large quantities of methamphetamine and cocaine in San Antonio are pleading guilty, including a handful scheduled to appear in federal court today.

Court records show more than 20 of the 33 defendants have pleaded guilty or have signed plea deals intending to do. Many of those targeted in the investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI and San Antonio police are members or associates of the Tango Blast gang.
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Concerns about an ugly student confrontation prompted Texas Southern University in Houston to cancel a scheduled commencement address Saturday by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate.

The decision at the historically black college comes amid a student petition demanding that Cornyn be blocked from speaking and urging that all graduating students and their families "express their discontent" if he does.

By Friday, 863 people had signed the petition on change.org, an online activist petition network.

BOOS: Education secretary gets chilly reception

The school's decision comes amid a growing national debate about free speech on college campuses, following increasingly frequent student protests and several high-profile cancellations, mostly directed at conservative speakers.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos was booed at a commencement address this week at Bethune-Cookman University, a black college in Daytona Beach, Florida. It also comes weeks after protests led a student group at the University of California at Berkeley to pull the plug on a speech by conservative commentator Ann Coulter. That decision followed clashes over President Donald Trump, and the cancellation of an appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopouloswas amid destructive student disturbances.

(Story continues below ...)

DeVos, amid heckling, boos, and gown-clad graduates turning their backs, could be seen on news footage Wednesday appealing for respectful dissent. "Let's choose to hear each other out," she said.

Cornyn aides said the decision to cancel his appearance was the school's, not his. "Sen. Cornyn was honored to be invited to address TSU's graduates, but he respects the administration's decision and looks forward to continuing to engage with the University in the future," said a Cornyn spokesman.

Texas Southern released a statement saying that the decision was made for the sake of the students and their families: "Every consideration is made to ensure that our student's graduation day is a celebratory occasion and one they will remember positively for years to come. We asked Senator Cornyn to instead visit with our students again at a future date in order to keep the focus on graduates and their families."

The Change.org petition was sponsored by 26-year-old Rebecca Trevino, 2017 graduate in social work from San Antonio. In an interview Friday, she said she had no desire to censor Cornyn, but rather to represent the values of the school.

"What I want people to realize is that this is our commencement," Trevino said. "This is something we've worked hard for and we want someone who represents us and our values."

She posted the petition online a week ago, after hearing about Cornyn's invitation. "This is an issue that's important to me and my classmates," she added. "We have a lot of pride in our school, and we're very protective of who comes by."

In an online appeal for signatures, she said that "Cornyn and his political party create and support policies that cause harm to marginalized communities." She also cited Cornyn's votes to approve DeVos, Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, and his support for voter ID law.

The student petition also cites is opposition to federal funding for "sanctuary cities" and his past support for a constitutional ban of same-sex marriage.

Word spread among students on social media on Thursday night before the school's official announcement Friday, said sophomore Kernard Jones, who is studying political science.

When students realized that the speech's cancellation was fact, not rumor, there was a sense of "jubilation," he said.

He said the petition took off because many students saw Cornyn's speech as hypocritical, as they did not see the senator as invested in TSU or any historically black university.

"(Cornyn) really doesn't have a connection with Texas Southern University," Jones said. "I'm pretty sure if we were to shut down tomorrow, then he wouldn't put up that much of a fight to keep us open. And that's what really makes us as students really turn our backs on him."

Marcus Smith, a graduating senior and the student newspaper's editor, said he wasn't surprised that the university made a change based on the concerns of student activists.

Last year, a Take Back TSU campaign on social media led to safety improvements around campus.

"When the students rally together and use their voice, a lot gets done and a lot can happen," he said. "I knew it was only a matter of time before it would be changed."

Texas Southern, founded in 1927 as the Houston Colored Junior College, is considered one of the nation's leading historically black colleges, with nearly 10,000 students. About three-fourths of the students are African American, with the rest a mix of other races, including Hispanics, whites and international students.

Among its most famous graduates was the late congresswoman Barbara Jordan, who chose Texas Southern after racial segregation prevented her from attending the University of Texas at Austin.

Cornyn's first visit to TSU's campus was in February 2016. Then, he toured TSU's aviation and engineering program, its pharmacy simulation lab and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, where he met with faculty and students.

"This is my first time here, but it is long overdue," he said, according to a university publication from the time.

Cornyn's invitation to commencement was reportedly extended in part because of his help in securing federal funding for historically black colleges.

In February, Cornyn praised Trump for signing an executive order to prioritize federal support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs): "For generations these institutions have provided Texas students with high quality education and a great sense of community and history," he said. "The President's commitment today is significant, and I hope even more Texans will be afforded the chance to become a part of these storied institutions across our state."

Trevino said she understood that, and that there was no intention to disrupt his speech or create an ugly scene. "In no way would we do anything violent," she said. "That's the farthest from what we are." The protesters' plan, she said, was to stand up silently and face away when Cornyn spoke. "No shouts, no boos. Just a silent and peaceful form of protest," she said.

U.S. Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green will give the commencement address.
News / National

by Stephen Jakes

A researcher of Africa at Tokyo, Ken Yamatomo has said if Zimbabwe had proper leaders it could be the Singapore or South Korea of Africa by now as the abundance of mineral resources could have lifted the nation to that level 37 years after independence."We can still shape a better future. If Zimbabwe's economy had decent stewards with a modicum of vision, Zimbabwe's economy would have been the third largest economy in Africa or better, because it had a good head start. It could easily have been the Singapore or South Korea of Africa," Yamatomo said.He said President Robert Mugabe and his mafia should have incubated and nurtured supported and help fund, right from 1980, many competent business entrepreneurs to set up businesses that would have developed strength at home and rapidly grown into the southern and eastern African region."If this had happened, Zimbabwe would today have been a $100bn economy at the very least and instead of it's citizens flowing in all directions running away from home, Zimbabwe would have been a magnet of immigrants dashing into the small country for opportunities, " he said.
AUSTIN  A move to keep alive the most significant open-government measure of the legislative session was overwhelmingly approved by the Texas Senate on Thursday, including measures to reopen government contracts and spending open to public disclosure.

Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin, amended House Bill 2328 to include the wording of bills that earlier passed the Senate by a large margin that would mandate public disclosure for government contracts and the details of public funding provided to non-profits and quasi-governmental agencies.

Those two provisions restored state law on disclosure about public contracts and spending that were blocked by two Texas Supreme Court rulings last year.

Watson also added to the finally-approved bill three House bills that are stalled in the lower chamber regarding open-government.

"This is a very good Public Information Act bill, one that closes significant holes blown in the Public Information Act and assures the public will have the information it deserves," Watson said.

When it came to the Senate, the bill dealt only with a new way for governmental agencies to expedite making information public to citizens.

Thursday's approval came after a circuitous route in the Senate. Watson first attempted to get the bill adopted on Tuesday, but was temporarily blocked because some of the proposed amendments had not been properly vetted in the Senate.

Watson then vetted those as separate bills in a public hearing in the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, which approved them at a meeting earlier Thursday. Once that occurred, under Senate rules they could go onto the bill as amendments.

The Senate vote was 30-1, with Sen. Bob Hall, R-Edgewood, voting no.

The Senate-approved bill now goes back to the House for agreement on the Senate changes. Watson said he is optimistic the House will concur with the Senate amendments.
The summers final Live on the Waterfront concert was held Wednesday evening at Prince Arthurs Landing. The popular series in Thunder Bay has completed nine weekly shows that began on July 13. Wednesdays concert was unique as it was held one hour later in the evening to mesh with the 10 p.
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News / Religion

by Agencies





The parties represented were the following:

In a historic move sixteen (16) Zimbabwean Political parties the bulk of whom are CODE and NERA members, met in Cape Town, South Africa from the Monday 8 to 9 May 2017 and committed to do all that is necessary to building a broad coalition of political parties to contest the elections from a unified and solid position. All but two political parties signed the resolution as the two parties wanted to consult their structures."The parties committed to reach out to other leaders from different sectors in our nation as the Crisis in Zimbabwe demands that we put aside our differences and work together to save our Country" says the Chairperson of the Gathering Dr. Dumiso Dabengwa.Specifically the 16 parties committed to building a mass opposition movement (MOM) which is going to be guided by inclusivity, trust and ownership as the parties gear under one message in preparation for the elections in 2018."We recognize the need to build inclusivity, trust and ownership and it is our hope that we will reach out to the masses of Zimbabwe to come together to fight the elections as one unified voice echoing shared vision as we build the Zimbabwe we want", said the Chairman Dr. Dabengwa.According to the Chairman the next step in this pivotal move would be consultative forums with various multi stakeholders representing diverse groups and institutions across Zimbabwe."We recognize that the masses of Zimbabweans are fighting the same battle in their different platforms, however to win this battle we need to come together as one", he explained.Zimbabwe is currently embattled with a despotic government which has been in power for the last 37 years, and a plethora of crises which have brought Zimbabweans to their knees. This has caused many voices to rise up to respond to the crises albeit in a fragmented manner."Through this initiative we will be working together in achieving the establishment of a democratic, peaceful, sustainable Zimbabwe where every citizen lives a happy, fulfilled and prosperous life and to deliver transformational leadership to the people of Zimbabwe through a lean, competent and effective government", enunciated the Chairman.The mandate of the MOM is to bring Zimbabweans together under one vision and one voice to reclaim their country by putting its destiny in their hands by putting in place a winning team for the 2018 elections.According the Chairman the vision of the Mass Opposition Movement (MOM) will be achieved through:1. Working together as political parties and other stakeholders in addressing the Zimbabwean crisis including Zimbabweans in the diaspora and in particular the challenges of leadership, governance, rule of law and economic collapse.2. Working together in a broad coalition of opposition parties and stakeholders with a view to contesting elections as a united opposition and in particular the principle of fielding one candidate for every elected position.3. Engaging the international and regional community including SADC, AU and UN in the achievement of the above objectives.Dr. Dabengwa concluded by saying the consultative meetings and related activities were part of the road map towards the establishment of a strong Mass Opposition Movement.African Democratic Party (ADP)Democratic Assembly of Restoration and Empowerment (DARE)Free Zimbabwe Congress (FZC)Freedom Front (FF)Mavambo Kusile Dawn (MKD)Movement for Democratic Change (MDC)Multiracial Christian Democrats (MCD)People's Democratic Party (PDP)Progressive Democrats of Zimbabwe (PDZ)Renewal Democrats of Zimbabwe (RDZ)Transform Zimbabwe (TZ)Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU NDONGA)Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU)Zimbabwe First (ZF)Zimbabweans United for Democracy (ZUNDE)Zimbabwe People First (ZPF)
Joseph Conrad was born in 1857 in the Ukraine. At the age of 16 he left his home and travelled to Marseilles, France to become a mariner. He spent the next 23 years of his life at sea, and it would be these experiences and adventures that would later inspire him to write. Conrads writings would go on to gain great notoriety by the turn of the century. He managed to explore the relationship between man and the world around him, not through traditional adventure, but via a haunting portrayal of greed and corruption. In a time when the glory of imperialism was quickly coming to an end, Conrad described exactly the toll humanity had paid for its rapid development over the last century. His books travelled to the far corners of the Earth, and what he found there was not inspirational, but deeply depressing.

So, what does Joseph Conrad have to do with Alien? A lot, actually. For one, Conrad was one of Ridley Scotts favorite authors. When they needed a name for the main ship on which the original 1979 film would take place, Ridley Scott decided to use the name of one of Conrads most famous characters (it also happens to be the name of the book in which he is featured). Nostromo in Italian means boatswain, the officer in charge of the crew on a ship. The name conjures up a sense of responsibility based on that fact alone. In the novel, the character makes a name for himself as being reliable. In the fictional country of Costaguana, he is a hardworking foreigner, someone that the citizens are able to trust because of everything he has done for them over the years.

In Alien, the USCSS Nostromo is a working class freighter. The crew are trying to make a living  tugging a refinery through deep space. The corporation that owns the ship is Weyland-Yutani, and they are the ones that take advantage of the hard work that these future blue collar employees are providing. It is Weyland-Yutani that has knowledge of what awaits the Nostromo on LV-426, and it is Weyland-Yutani which sends the ship down with the ultimate purpose of bringing the xenomorph lifeform back to Earth for experimentation and implementation as a biological weapon. In Nostromo the novel, the wealthy also take advantage of the workers. Senor Gould is the wealthy owner of a silver mine. He manipulates the fledgling countrys government by contributing funds to a dictator. The dictatorship affords Gould a certain stability for his business interests, but at the expense of local freedoms. When a revolution breaks out, Goulds silver mine becomes an important target for the revolutionaries as a potential source of funding and export for the fledgling country. It is Nostromo whom Senor Gould trusts to smuggle his silver out of the country before it is too late.

In both the Alien franchise, and in Conrads books, it is greed that leads humanity into places it should not be. In Aliens, it is Weyland-Yutanis continued desire for the xenomorphs which pushes them even further into moral insignificance. During the 57 years between the two films, the corporation sends a group of colonists to live on the planet LV-426  fully aware of what horrors lurk there. Like the Nostromo, the colonists are supposed to be the targets for xenomorph infection. The colony would become a necessary sacrifice for Weyland-Yutani to possess the ultimate weapon. The USS Sulaco is sent to investigate, and hopefully retrieve the specimens. The Sulaco is named after the town in which Nostromo takes place. Both the Sulaco in Nostromo and the Sulaco in Aliens are, in essence, at the bidding of a potentially nefarious business entity. Its also an homage to the naming conventions of the original film, but also a reminder of even more people being betrayed. One source of greed, the original attempt to secure the life form, has now expanded to another level. Hundreds of innocent lives are now being taken for this purpose  an entire town, if you will.

In Conrads novel, Nostromo becomes the ultimate anti-hero. Instead of smuggling Goulds silver as he was entrusted, and instead of distributing it to the town or the revolutionaries for the benefit of the country, he keeps it for himself. With this decision, Nostromo essentially betrays the entire country. While the Alien franchise doesnt feature an Anti-Hero (except maybe David in Prometheus), Nostromos abrupt turn from reliable to corruptible reminds us of another related theme throughout the Alien franchise  nothing is as it seems.

Distress signals turn out to be warnings. Fellow crew members turn out to be robots planted by Weyland-Yutani. Rescue missions arent about rescuing anyone at all. Prometheus is named after the ship featured in that film, which is in turn named after the Titan in Greek mythology who is given credit for creating mankind by stealing fire from the gods. It is a fitting name because the film focuses on seeking the origins of life on Earth. This search leads the crew of the Prometheus to the Engineers, who are later determined to have created life on Earth. But, the discovery of mankinds maker does not turn out to be a beneficial one. While the Engineers are in fact as powerful and technologically advanced as is necessary to create new life, they have no compassion for the life they have created. Instead, the Engineers become determined to destroy humanity rather than help save it.
Mumbai, May 12 : Bollywood fashionista and actress Sonam Kapoor, along with sister Rhea Kapoor, launched their first-ever fashion brand 'Rheson' here on Friday. Rhea revealed that it was originally Sonam's idea to have their own brand.

At the launch event Rhea, who has been styling Sonam for quite sometime, was asked whose idea it was to come up with a fashion brand and instantly said: "It was Sonam."

"Many brands had approached Sonam for endorsement. They wanted to design and start a fashion line with her. But then Sonam came and told me 'Lets make our own brand. Lets do it right'," said Rhea, adding she was the 'Rhe' part of Rheson.

"It has to be authentic. There is no point giving your name to something when you are not designing it or not being part of it. Specially if it is fashion," asserted Sonam, the 'son' part of 'Rheson'.

Sonam, in a statement, said: "We wanted to work on something that is owned by us and had our personal touch on every level. The key to the birth of Rheson was to give girls a platform wherein they do not have to spend money to look stylish.

"Its like accessible, affordable glamour. We did not wish to create a couture brand. Our forte lies in the fact that our clothes should become your best friends."

The 'Neerja' actress also said that the reason behind campaign #NoRhesonICantQueue! is to empower women.

"We want to empower women. There is no such thing in this world which women can't achieve. If we put our heart and mind into it, there are no boundaries. Five years back when we started, it was just an idea to have our own brand. And today this idea has come to a fruition so there is no reason that you can not achieve anything," she told media on the occasion.

Asked about Cannes, Sonam said: "It will be very special. My sister will be designing for me. We always try to do something new, some India story."

Asked if any specific theme would be seen, she just said: "You just have to wait and watch."

Sonam, who will next be seen in "Veerey di weddding", also said that the film's shoot will start soon.
Opinion / Columnist

Dear Cabinet and Politburo membersCOMRADES, just a year before we go into another election, yet another survey has revealed the obvious  that a preponderating majority of our people trust us. This survey was conducted by a respectable Pan African think-tank known for conducting credible surveys in several countries on the continent.Results of surveys by this think-tank have proved to be very correct in every sense, even in our case, so as we approach 2018, our work on the ground has been verified by independent researchers who have confirmed that we are the only party that the people  in their own words  say have them at heart.What more can one ask for?I really laughed when I learnt that Morgan & Co are suspecting that our party is now clandestinely funding these surveys. They are already running scared.Sadly, nothing  I mean nothing  will save them from the pot in the next elections!Meanwhile, Cdes, I am so saddened by the sudden passing on of Cde Godfrey.His death comes just a few weeks after his retirement  when we were seriously looking at some other role we could have assigned him to  possibly something without these perky age restrictions.Anyway, who are we to question the Creator's decision? May his dear soul rest in eternal peace a true son of the soil!Kindest RegardsYours SincerelyME AND CZ'S NOTEBOOKPatrioticTalk of super-patriots!"Parliament is working very hard on laws that create ease of doing business," said Speaker of the House of Assembly, the ever-patriotic Cde Advocate Jacob Mudenda this week. "We will make sure that when you swipe, the money will be there."When do we expect this to happen?  very soon! I will not tell you why I am so optimistic, but in less than nine months or thereabouts, our economy will be ticking, there will be a lot of financial liquidity here so much that the American dollar will be awash everywhere and accessing it will be like picking tomatoes at Mbare Musika."Mark my words, and if that does not happen cut off this finger, this one, you come and cut it off!"Cde Adv Mudenda said the confidence he had of an economic turnaround in less than 12 months was the same with another prediction he made in 1986, that ZANU-PF and PF-ZAPU would form a Unity Accord."I was somewhere in Tsholotsho and I said if it does not happen cut my finger and nobody came to cut it off, and it is still there," he said. "Things will improve."Cde Adv Mudenda urged the nation not to despair and implored the media not to write pessimistic stories.Dr CZ, the only ISO-certified patriot has always regarded Cde Adv Mudenda as a serious threat to his status because his patriotism is growing at a rate that could soon reach dangerous levels!Meanwhile, let us warn those who still care to continue reading that in their reading they may come across something like this, somewhere: "While the Fifth Brigade largely failed in its attempt to change people's political allegiance by repression, as is evidenced by the 1985 election results, subsequent ongoing political violence continued to paralyse elected rural ZAPU leaders and led to much distrust at development efforts. The victory of ZAPU in the January 1985 district council elections brought punishment in its wake. In Nkayi, the ZANU PF-Youth and soldiers assaulted the district administrator, councillors, and council and hospital staff under the watchful eye of provincial governor (Cde Jacob) Mudenda"These malicious lies  which seek to make him look like he was complicit in the Gukurahundi issues  are meant to tarnish the otherwise squeaky clean public track record of this loyal servant of the people.We have no doubt whatsoever that the hard-working lawyer  whose respect for human rights is beyond reproach  is keeping his legal options open. Nxa-a!Super-patriotism!Still talking of real super-patriots, Dr CZ's homeboy, who sometimes moonlights as the Minister of War Veterans & Blah, Blah, Cde Tshinga Dube tells us that he has set up a company, Power Zimbabwe, through which the ministry hopes  one day  not just to stop depending on Treasury, but also to generate enough cash to fund government operations to a generous extent that the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority might actually became redundant. Dear fan; please don't laugh because this is what Cde Tshinga & Co are threatening! When Power Zimbabwe starts operating at full throttle, no more spot fines on roadblocks, no more tollgates, no more poverty! One of the projects that the war veterans are working on is a world-class hospital that they are going to build in Victoria Falls, which will cater for celebrities from America, Europe and some such places. Please don't laugh, dear fan! Maybe we should take this man seriously because he is the very same man who was responsible for the Zimbabwe Defence Industries, a very successful business venture.Remember him pushing a motion in the House of Assembly last year that there should be traditional chiefs in urban areas at which point Dr CZ started rubbing his belly in gleeful anticipation of being the inaugural Chief Mzilikazi (not to be confused with King Mzilikazi!). Unhappily, later in the week there were reports about the same brother man being ill and admitted in hospital where he was said to be "in the ICU, but not in danger" whatever that is supposed to mean!Democracy!The election to choose the ZANU-PF Masvingo provincial chairman was held again last weekend. They reminded many Zimbos of the 2008 presidential elections.The first election held in March was ruled by the Politburo to be inconclusive and were therefore abandoned.In the first round, Cde Ezra Chadzamira, whom we are made to understand is a Team Lacoste candidate, polled 12 393 votes while Rtd Colonel Mutero Masanganise, whom we are made to understand to belong to G40 faction, had 4 888 votes. A re-run was commanded. On the eve of the command re-run, Masanganise pulled out citing massive rigging, intimidation and other electoral malpractices.Despite Masanganise having done a Tsvangirai, the command vote still went ahead. Chadzamira went on to cruise to a resounding victory.Please do not ask Dr CZ what could have happened to Masanganise's previous 4 000-plus votes for what Yours Truly knows for sure is that the losing side is still crying "foul!" It is claiming that the election was rigged, rigged, rigged and rigged again!Well, talk of washing the family dirty linen in public!We loved the following as reported in the media: "Contacted for comment, Rtd Col Masanganise, who did not turn up for elections, professed ignorance about the elections saying: 'I am not aware of any elections that I participated in. What results are you referring to?"'FinallyIt took government three weeks to find alternative accommodation for the 17 disabled people who were lawfully evicted from the Leonard Cheshire Home in Harare's cool Avenues area. It should really been a long journey from their offices to the Avenues site where the "victims" had stubbornly camped in the rain and cold for the past three weeks protesting their eviction from the place they stridently say it is their right to live in for free.There are people in Parliament who are specifically there to represent the interests of people with disabilities, but unhappily, a good number of them are very, very busy. One of them was recently in court claiming to have been raped upon leaving a nightclub in the wee hours of the day somewhere in Matabeleland South it turned out that the 56-year-old lawmaker could have cooked things up after being caught in some misdemeanour of sorts.Well, back to the 17 evictees. They will now be housed "temporarily" at Ruwa Rehabilitation Centre. Let Dr CZ warn them in advance the moment they arrive at that place is the last time they will ever hear from these mandarins ever again!Meanwhile, from the smell of things, it looks like some ruling party goons are now plotting to seize that Leonard Cheshire Home property. Watch this space!SadDr CZ was saddened by the recent passing on of the recently retired Chief Justice, Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, whom we are just learning was the great, great grandson of Mbuya Nehanda! It is therefore only natural that the brother was declared a national hero. How we wish there was a higher grade of national "hero-ship" for those of his ilk!Thankfully!In Tanzania, the May 15 deadline is looming for the nearly 1 000 civil servants found with fraudulent educational qualifications to dismiss themselves from the public jobs through which they have been cheating a living, failure of which would see them being prosecuted. They face up to seven years in jail.After noticing their performance, that country's no-nonsense President, John Magufuli ordered an audit into the qualifications of all civil servants, which audit revealed that 9 932 names appearing on the public salary roll were not found anywhere in the database of that country's examination body.Thankfully, that would never happen in this country because we love our people so much and we care so much!Imagine that happening here half of the civil service would dismiss itself, including some Cabinet ministers! Thankfully this is not Tanzania, just as it is not France!cznotebook@yahoo.co.uk
Opinion / Columnist

Chemist Siziba, a pioneering telecoms expert, once told me a simple home truth which can be applied to many facets of everyday life."If you tell me that you have a PhD, that's fine, I hope it makes you feel better about yourself. But can you tell me something: with this doctorate of yours, are you able to make a simple chair or a table, on your own? I'm not asking for anything sophisticated; just an ordinary chair. Can you make a simple chair that we can use right now?" It is an interesting way of looking at life.Whenever Siziba relates this amusing anecdote, people go into spasms of laughter.Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Let's face it, if you cannot mend a simple pothole, your seven university degrees are useless to me. Surely, education should impart a sense of utility that goes beyond hollow boasts about the number of university degrees one has amassed.Nqaba Matshazi, a colleague, has observed that Zimbabweans are clinging on to the bygone accolade of "Africa's most literate nation" like a drunkard who stubbornly refuses to let go of an empty gin bottle, long after the wise waters have run dry.This week, the growing trend of African leaders leaving their countries to seek medical attention abroad sparked heated debate across the continent.In social media discussions, the burning question was: Why don't African leaders build world-class hospitals at home instead of blowing taxpayers' money on overseas treatment?This week alone, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe flew overseas to seek treatment. Buhari went to London on Sunday for "follow-up medical tests", less than two months after an extended medical break in Britain. Mugabe left for Singapore on Monday for what the government has described as a "routine medical check-up".Nigeria and Zimbabwe have produced some of the world's top medical experts, but because the governments are hopelessly inept, these brains are benefitting Western populations instead of serving the people who need them most back home.Everyone deserves the best medical care and Mugabe is no exception. But can you imagine the public goodwill he could generate through the simple but powerful gesture of channelling the money he spends on his foreign trips to the upgrading of Harare Central Hospital? Just a fifth of the US$36 million he spent on foreign trips in the first 10 months of last year would have been enough to transform the hospital.African countries spend a lot on education. The tragedy is that after attaining crucial qualifications, the top-notch doctors, engineers, lecturers and lawyers are forced to leave their home countries and settle in nations where they are assured a better quality of life.There is no better definition of leadership failure.If Harare Central Hospital is not up to scratch, it is the government's responsibility to rectify that. Indeed, if the specialists are not good enough, again, it is the responsibility of the leaders to facilitate the requisite training. After all, we can't all be presidents and every citizen deserves world-class healthcare.
Copiii cu nevoi speciale din Stefan Voda au conditii de reabilitare mai bune, datorita UE si Fundatiei Soros Moldova
Every year in America, an estimated 21,000 kids 14 and younger go to the emergency rooms after suffering traumatic brain injuries on the playground.

Chris Hanson, working as a salesman in the playground industry, wanted to do something to lower those numbers.

The Munster, Ind., man saw that all the equipment to test playground safety was too expensive or required multiple people to operate. Thus, not much testing was being done.

So he teamed up with his brother, a mechanical engineer, to develop a lower-cost, less cumbersome testing device.

The result is the ST Impact Analyzer CH, a handheld electronic tester that measures the impact of falls on playground surfaces. The device recently received a design patent and is on the market now.

In the past, a parks and recreation guy or a school maintenance guy would go out and give it the eyeball test, Hanson said. With the growing awareness of the long-term repercussions of brain injuries, especially in children, what was out there was not good enough. The technology hadnt progressed past where it was 20 years ago.

Hansons company, Sonam Technologies, is located at the Purdue Research Park in Crown Point.

Sonam Technologies sells the equipment to professional safety auditors, schools and municipal parks and recreation departments across the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia. The device, which is the size and weight of a 6-year-olds head, is dropped onto the playground surface, measuring the impact of a fall.

Hanson said park inspectors traditionally had checked for things like loose bolts and choking points. His device, fitting into a case thats about 1 cubic foot, will allow them to easily test the safety of the playground surface, which can change over time due to use and climate.

That ability to take it from site to site to site in quick succession means the testing is going to be done, he said. If the technology is too difficult to use, people arent going to take advantage of it.

He noted that park and school districts can be sued if a child injures his or her brain on the playground. He said his device is a way for them to reduce their legal liability while improving the health and safety of children, who inevitably fall while theyre playing.

You cant make a safe playground, he said. You can only make a safer playground.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The owners of a giant rabbit named Simon who was found dead after a United Airlines flight demanded on Monday that the airline pay damages, order an outside investigation and re-evaluate how it handles animals on flights.

Attorneys for Simons owners, who purchased him in hopes of winning the title of worlds largest rabbit at the Iowa State Fair this summer, said they would take legal action if United failed to respond within seven days.

The lawyers say it is possible the 3-foot-long (1-meter) hare died after being placed in a freezer for 16 hours upon landing in Chicago on a flight from London. They say the airline then destroyed his remains without permission.

United Airlines can issue any statement they like but their companys credibility is under question when they immediately cremate the giant rabbit Simon without anyones consent, said Guy Cook, lead attorney for the three-person investment group that owned the rabbit. They destroyed the proof.

United Airlines spokesman Charles Hobart denied Simon died in a freezer. He said in a written statement the company was reviewing a letter outlining the claims, was saddened by Simons death and takes its responsibilities for transporting pets seriously. The statement did not say how much the owners were seeking in damages.

Hobart said the hare arrived in Chicago in apparent good condition and was seen moving around his kennel some 35 minutes later.

Shortly thereafter, a kennel representative noticed Simon was motionless and that he had passed away, Hobart said. He did not address the cremation allegations.

Cook said it would be difficult to establish a cause of death because the rabbits remains had been destroyed but, in the letter, demanded that United turn over all records of its investigation, including closed-circuit television footage.

The attorney also requested an independent investigation as well as compensatory and economic and punitive damages.

Cook said that Simon, a Continental rabbit whose father is considered the worlds largest hare, was expected to exceed his fathers size to claim that title and that his owners should be compensated for their potential economic losses from exhibiting him.

The investment group purchased Simon from a breeder in England and was flying him to the United States, where he would have been displayed at the Iowa State Fair in August and ultimately crowned worlds largest rabbit, Cook said.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Bill Trott)
The collapse of a tunnel containing radioactive waste at the Hanford nuclear weapons complex underscored what critics have long been saying: The toxic remnants of the Cold War are being stored in haphazard and unsafe conditions, and time is running out to deal with the problem.

Unfortunately, the crisis at Hanford is far from an isolated incident, said Kevin Kamps of the anti-nuclear group Beyond Nuclear.

For instance, at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which opened in the 1950s and produced plutonium and tritium, the government is laboring to clean up groundwater contamination along with 40 million gallons of radioactive liquid waste stored in tanks that are decades past their projected lifespan. The job is likely to take decades.

In addition to the tunnel collapse discovered Tuesday, dozens of underground storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state  some dating to World War II  are leaking highly radioactive materials.

The problem is that the U.S. government rushed to build nuclear weapons during the Cold War with little thought given to how to permanently dispose of the resulting waste.

Safely removing it now is proving enormously expensive, slow-going, extraordinarily dangerous and so complex that much of the technology required simply does not exist. The cleanup has also been plagued with political and technical setbacks.

For example, the nations only underground nuclear waste repository, in New Mexico, closed to new shipments in 2014 after an improperly packed drum of waste ruptured. The site just recently reopened.

The U.S. Department of Energy spends about $6 billion a year on managing waste left from the production of nuclear weapons.

The temporary solutions DOE has used for decades to contain radioactive waste at Hanford have limited lifespans, said Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and frequent Hanford critic. The longer it takes to clean up Hanford, the higher the risk will be to workers, the public and the environment.

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry acknowledged the problem with nuclear waste, saying the nation can no longer delay fixing the problem because lives are at stake.

During a tour Wednesday of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Perry said the federal government has failed to remove the waste in a timely manner and he pledged to make progress.

A recently approved bipartisan federal budget deal for this fiscal year includes $2.3 billion for the ongoing Hanford cleanup, which matches the amount that Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, worked to include last year. President Donald Trump is expected to release his 2018 proposal later this month.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the state plans to issue an order making sure the federal government determines the cause of the tunnel collapse. The order will also require the Energy Department to assess if theres 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.

Thousands of workers at Hanford were told to stay home as efforts began to plug the 400-square-foot (37-square-meter) sinkhole in the earth over the unoccupied storage tunnel.

Officials said they detected no release of radiation and no one was injured in the collapse, though thousands of workers were forced to take shelter for several hours as a precaution. The cause of the collapse was not immediately known.

A gravel road was built to the collapse site, and workers wearing protective suits and breathing masks planned to fill the hole with 50 truckloads of dirt, the Energy Department said.

The rail tunnel was built in 1956 out of timber, concrete and steel, topped by 8 feet of dirt. It was 360 feet long (110 meters). Radioactive materials were brought into the tunnel by railcars. The tunnel was sealed in 1965 with eight loaded flatbed cars inside.

Gerry Pollet, a Washington state legislator and longtime Hanford critic, said the collapse of a waste storage tunnel at Hanford had been feared for years.

This disaster was predicted and shows the federal Energy Departments utter recklessness in seeking decades of delay for Hanford cleanup, he said.

He noted the Energy Department last year received permission to delay removing waste from the tunnels until 2042. The waste was supposed to be gone by 2024, Pollet said.

The radiation levels of the waste in the tunnel that collapsed would be lethal within an hour, Pollet said.

Hanford, a 500-square-mile (1,300-square-kilometer) expanse in remote interior Washington about 200 miles from Seattle, was created during World War II as part of the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb.

Hanford made most of the plutonium for the nations nuclear weapons, including the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, during the war. It now contains the nations greatest volume of radioactive waste left over from the production of weapons plutonium.

The cleanup there has cost $19 billion to date and is not expected to be finished until 2060, at an additional cost of $100 billion.

The most dangerous waste at Hanford is 56 million gallons stored in 177 underground tanks, some of which have leaked.

Plans to embed the toxic stew in glass logs for burial have floundered. Construction of a $17 billion glassification factory has stopped because of design and safety issues.

The plan is to bury the glass logs at a nuclear waste dump carved inside Nevadas Yucca Mountain, a project that has been on the drawing board for three decades but has run into resistance from Nevada politicians, including former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid.

President Donald Trump has proposed $120 million to restart the licensing process for the dump.

(Geranios reported from Spokane, Washington. Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Matthew Daly in Washington contributed to this story.)

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In just a few years, well-mannered self-driving robotaxis will share the roads with reckless, law-breaking human drivers. The prospect is causing migraines for the people developing the robotaxis.

A self-driving car would be programmed to drive at the speed limit. Humans routinely exceed it by 10 to 15 mph (16 to 24 kph)  just try entering the New Jersey Turnpike at normal speed. Self-driving cars wouldnt dare cross a double yellow line; humans do it all the time. And then there are those odd local traffic customs to which humans quickly adapt.

In Los Angeles and other places, for instance, theres the California Stop, where drivers roll through stop signs if no traffic is crossing. In Southwestern Pennsylvania, courteous drivers practice the Pittsburgh Left, where its customary to let one oncoming car turn left in front of them when a traffic light turns green. The same thing happens in Boston. During rush hours near Ann Arbor, Michigan, drivers regularly cross a double-yellow line to queue up for a left-turn onto a freeway.

Theres an endless list of these cases where we as humans know the context, we know when to bend the rules and when to break the rules, said Raj Rajkumar, a computer engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University who leads the schools autonomous car research.

Although autonomous cars are likely to carry passengers or cargo in limited areas during the next three to five years, experts say it will take many years before robotaxis can coexist with human-piloted vehicles on most side streets, boulevards and freeways. Thats because programmers have to figure out human behavior and local traffic idiosyncrasies. And teaching a car to use that knowledge will require massive amounts of data and big computing power that is prohibitively expensive at the moment.

Driverless cars are very rule-based, and they dont understand social graces, said Missy Cummings, director of Duke Universitys Humans and Autonomy Lab.

Driving customs and road conditions are dramatically different across the globe, with narrow, congested lanes in European cities, and anarchy in Beijings giant traffic jams. In Indias capital, New Delhi, luxury cars share poorly marked and congested lanes with bicycles, scooters, trucks, and even an occasional cow or elephant.

Then there is the problem of aggressive humans who make dangerous moves such as cutting cars off on freeways or turning left in front of oncoming traffic. In India, for example, even when lanes are marked, drivers swing from lane to lane without hesitation.

Already there have been isolated cases of human drivers pulling into the path of cars such as Teslas, knowing they will stop because theyre equipped with automatic emergency braking.

Its hard to program in human stupidity or someone who really tries to game the technology, says John Hanson, spokesman for Toyotas autonomous car unit.

Kathy Winter, vice president of automated driving solutions for Intel, is optimistic that the cars will be able to see and think like humans before 2030.

Cars with sensors for driver-assist systems already are gathering data about road signs, lane lines and human driver behavior. Winter hopes auto and tech companies developing autonomous systems and cars will contribute this information to a giant database.

Artificial intelligence developed by Intel and other companies eventually could access the data and make quick decisions similar to humans, Winter says.

Programmers are optimistic that someday the cars will be able to handle even Beijings traffic. But the cost could be high, and it might be a decade or more before Chinese regulators deem self-driving cars reliable enough for widespread public use, said John Zeng of LMC Automotive Consulting.

Intels Winter expects fully autonomous cars to collect, process and analyze four terabytes of data in 1 1/2 hours of driving, which is the average amount a person spends in a car each day. Thats equal to storing over 1.2 million photos or 2,000 hours of movies. Such computing power now costs over $100,000 per vehicle, Zeng said. But that cost could fall as more cars are built.

Someday autonomous cars will have common sense programmed in so they will cross a double-yellow line when warranted or to speed up and find a gap to enter a freeway. Carnegie Mellon has taught its cars to handle the Pittsburgh Left by waiting a full second or longer for an intersection to clear before proceeding at a green light. Sensors also track crossing traffic and can figure out if a driver is going to stop for a sign or red light. Eventually there will be vehicle-to-vehicle communication to avoid crashes.

Still, some skeptics say computerized cars will never be able to think exactly like humans.

Youll never be able to make up a persons ability to perceive whats the right move at the time, I dont think, said New Jersey State Police Sgt. Ed Long, who works in the traffic and public safety office.

(Allen G. Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina; Joe McDonald in Beijing; Nirmala George in New Delhi; and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.)

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State records show Colorado has only three people assigned to check on the safety of pipelines running from about 54,000 active oil and gas wells, a task that came under scrutiny after a leaking pipeline was blamed for a fatal house explosion.

The Denver Post reported that since 2016, an inspector has checked about 400 of those pipelines and an engineer has audited company records for inspections of lines at about 2,800 wells.

The April 17 explosion in the town of Firestone killed two people. Investigators have said unrefined, odorless gas was leaking into the home from a pipeline that was thought to be out of service but was still connected to a nearby well.

The pipeline, called a flow line, is one of thousands in the state installed to carry oil and gas from wells to storage tanks or other collection points.

After investigators announced their findings in the Firestone explosion, the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, which regulates the industry, ordered energy companies to inspect and test all flow lines within 1,000 feet of occupied buildings.

A 2014 report by the Oil and Gas Conservation Commission requested by the Legislature said pipelines were the source of half of the equipment failures that cause industry spills in Colorado.

The report said the state did not have a formal program to monitor whether energy companies were conducting required tests on pipelines.

In 2016, the commissioner assigned an inspector, and engineer and a supervisor to monitor compliance.

The engineer has audited 24 oil and gas companies to see if they are keeping records on required annual pipeline tests. No operators were cited for a violation in 2016.

Lawmakers and regulators are weighing more extensive measures including a comprehensive map of all flow lines. Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat and a former petroleum geologist, and legislators from both parties agree a map is needed.

Two Democratic lawmakers introduced a bill Friday to require such a map, but the Legislature adjourns this week and the measure faces long odds.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Opinion / Columnist

Good day Editor!,Can you please help us find Beauty Mpofu also known as Patience from Zimbabwe wanted for armed robbery in Meyersdal Johannesburg.She was working as a maid and disappeared with the robbers who took cash and jewellery.I am offering a reward of R50,000. Please call or WhatsApp me on 0792879945 for information or Brackendowns police station.I am General Manager at Selkirk Security Services (Pty) Ltd and I have posted on my Facebook page "Nkosi Moyo" about the reward offer. You can visit my page and see. Our main worry is that she might skip the border and sell jewellery at giveaway prices.Attached please find photo from her Facebook profile.RegardsNkosi
AKRON, Ohio - A street party is requisite for every Art Bomb Brigade mural unveiling, and the bash at Lock 1 in downtown Akron on Thursday had all the elements.

The group's fourth public mural at Echogen Power Systems on Water Street was presented to kids, students and art enthusiasts amid live music, food trucks, vendors and games.

Run by the University of Akron's Myers School of Art, the Art Bomb Brigade celebrated its wildly colorful 2,400-square-foot mural, developed as part of the university's course "Mastering the Mural."

Previous murals, like the one at Chill Gourmet Ice Cream on Maiden Lane, were created by volunteer students, alumni and local artists. Art Bomb also has a mural at the Downtown Akron Laundromat on South Main Street. The group also worked with students at Firestone Community Learning Center to create one at the Akron Sustainer, an educational hub promoting green living.

The group was awarded a 2016 Knight Arts Challenge to make a community impact through art.

Art Bomb Director and university Associate Professor of art education, Elisa Gargarella, thanked the Knight Foundation, the university and Echogen for supporting the 25 students who created the mural, including Marisa McClellan, the brigade's assistant director. The design was created by UA student Lindsey Mitchell.

Echogen, which approached Art Bomb about creating a mural on the lock-facing wall of its building, worked side-by-side with the group, assigning an engineer who installed an outdoor sink to clean paint brushes, sanded the wall and stayed on nights and weekends to support the artists, Gargarella said.

"We hope to keep putting paint on your empty walls, your brick and mortar and your ugly sidewalks," she said.

Assisting with the project was UA Associate Professor of graphic design David Szalay, who said the mural's entire creation had been captured on video, including a drone hovering above the party.

"We're going to have a pretty nice piece of documentation for this project," he said.

Art Bomb Brigade put out a creative call for music videos in March to select a band to perform at the unveiling. Akron's eclectic Red Rose Panic won, bringing its hip hop-rock-funk style to the party.

The celebration also featured DJ Larry, Square Scullery, Western Fruit Basket and Akron Coffee Roasters, as well as local arts, craft and clothing vendors.

Art Bomb Brigade is already planning its fifth mural, which will begin in the next couple months.

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Planning for Kenmore's Better Block event is set for May 25 at the Rialto Theatre, an historic theater restored and managed by brothers Nate and Seth Vaill who want to bring the performing arts back to the Kenmore neighborhood.

(John R Aylward)

AKRON, Ohio -- Kenmore is the next Akron neighborhood planning to undergo a two-day transformation during a Better Block festival set for late summer.

Better Block is an engagement initiative that empowers residents to reshape and reactivate their neighborhood environment, while featuring what's great about their community.

Kenmore's Better Block, planned for Sept. 1-2, will be hosted by the Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance. A kick off meeting is set for May 25 from 6-8 p.m. at the Rialto Theatre at 1000 Kenmore Boulevard.

Residents, business and property owners, and other stakeholders are invited to attend the kick off to share ideas for the business district. Check out Akron's Better Block website for more information on the kick off.

Kenmore's Better Block is intended to dovetail with the Akron's efforts to revitalize each of its 24 neighborhoods. Kenmore is an area that could include new zoning to encourage mixed-use development, a historic designation and urban design, according Akron Planning Director Jason Segedy.

"The Better Block will be a great way to help engage people on some of these efforts, and will undoubtedly spark ideas that we can incorporate into our planning work," Segedy said in a news release.

Kenmore's Better Block will be the 3rd such event in Akron in as many years, following North Hill in 2015 and Middlebury in 2016 The hope of its leaders is to reimagine Akron's largest neighborhood business district as a welcoming and vibrant area for residents and visitors.

"Our business district was once home to theaters, coffee shops, ice cream and soda fountains, clubs and a wide variety of small businesses frequented by folks from both the local neighborhood and the greater Akron community," Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance President David Hoppe said in a release. "It can be that place again, and Better Block will allow our residents to test their ideas."

Moderating the May 25 planning session will be Jason Roberts, the founder and CEO of Dallas-based Better Block Foundation, a nonprofit formed to create "complete streets" and to educate, equip and empower communities and their leaders to create healthy, vibrant neighborhoods.

The foundation has been integral in the development of North Hill's Exchange House, which opened as a community gathering place in March for the neighborhoods refugees and immigrants.

"Better Block Foundation is excited to be back in Akron for a project in the Kenmore neighborhood," Roberts said in a release. "The projects have been successful because there has always been great community support, and we cannot wait to see what ideas the Kenmore community brings."

Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance is seeking sponsors for the Better Block event. Sponsorship opportunities range from $100 to an exclusive $10,000 Event Sponsor. For more information, contact Kathy Hoppe, sponsorship chair, at KNAcares@gmail.com.

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JarrodHartzlerTMA91.jpg

Jarrod Hartzler, executive and artistic director of Tuesday Musical, said the organization will partner with surrounding educational institutions to provide professional arts learning opportunities for teachers throughout Northeast Ohio.

(Tuesday Musical Association)

AKRON, Ohio -- Tuesday Musical Association was selected to join one of three Ohio teams in the national Partners in Education program of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The program has approximately 100 teams in nearly 40 states and the District of Columbia.

Tuesday Musical joined an existing Partnership Team in Ohio comprised of the Tri-County Educational Service Center, Wayne Center for the Arts and the College of Wooster.

The members will provide professional arts learning opportunities for teachers throughout Northeast Ohio to increase the artistic literacy of young people.

"Being a part of the Kennedy Center's Partners in Education program is further recognition of our commitment to breaking down barriers to classical music for children and adults," Jarrod Hartzler, executive and artistic director of Tuesday Musical, said in a news release.

The Partners in Education program includes:

A four-day institute that examines program models and planning strategies for establishing or expanding professional learning programs in the arts for all teachers

Follow-up consultation and ongoing communication to assist Partnership Teams in program and partnership development;

Annual multi-day meetings and intensive seminars to assist Partnership Teams in program and partnership development; and

Special access to Kennedy Center resources.

The Escher String Quartet, Tuesday Musical's quartet in residence, will visit high schools in Wooster and Ashland, and plans for arts integration workshops for classroom teachers will be conducted this year.

Team members will attend the Partners in Education Institute next April, where they will develop a written plan that specifies how they will provide professional learning programs in the arts for teachers in their communities.

"While Tuesday Musical has long been known for bringing world-acclaimed musicians to Akron, we also have a national reputation for presenting outstanding education and community engagement programs," Hartzler said in a news release.

The Tuesday Musical Association's mission is to provide a premier concert series for the community, a comprehensive educational and scholarship program for young people and performing and listening opportunities for its members and guests.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Bring on the foodies, artists and music - and don't forget the Twister games, horse rides and, of course, the Guinness World Record Holder for the largest soap bubbles.

You got it... It's time for Walkabout Tremont.

The event, held the second Friday of every month, brings together bars, restaurants, galleries and boutiques for a party in Cleveland's Tremont neighborhood. It also rolls out street vendors, musicians and performers outside and in various venues.

The installment - which runs 5-10 p.m. Friday May 12 - will mark the one-year anniversary of the event, which took the place of the long-running Tremont ArtWalk.

To celebrate, Tremont Walkabout will boast a "Come Out & Play" theme that features performers on Professor Avenue, including Dr. UR Awesome, a.k.a., that soap bubble guy. The street show includes horse and carriage rides, classic board games, the Hoopernova HoolaHoopers and a variety of musicians.

While Walkabout has expanded the focus to eateries and boutiques - as in, food and shopping - it continues to spotlight artists and will premiere eight new exhibits to go with 22 other shows featuring a total of 100 artists.

Of course, there's also another, very different kind of opening going on: The Beauty Room at 755 Starkweather Avenue. The salon will offer free beauty services (hair cut/barber, manicure, waxing or brow tinting) to 30 people.

For a complete listing and more info, go to walkabouttremont.com.
GARFIELD HEIGHTS, Ohio - The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office has ruled the death of a Garfield Heights woman a homicide.

Lavora L. Allen, 38, died of cervical compression May 1 at her home on Orme Road near Turney Road, the medical examiner's office said.

Detectives have interviewed several people during the investigation but no arrests have been made in the case, police said Friday.

Allen was found dead at the bottom of a set of stairs to her basement after family members reported her missing. Family members found a patio door and a garage door open, according to a police report.

Family members also reported that a Nissan Versa was missing from her garage. Investigators found the car the following day on West 140th Street in Cleveland.

Allen overcame repeated tragedies in her life, including the deaths of two of her five children, her sister told cleveland.com.

Nearly four years ago her son, James Swindler III, was shot to death after he was caught in the crossfire of a shooting in Cleveland. Two brothers were later sentenced to life in prison for causing his death.

Allen also lost a child in 1998. Dominique Allen was just 17 months old when a driver ran a red light and hit her mother's car in Cleveland, according to a Plain Dealer report on the fatal crash.

Allen did not let grief overcome her; instead, she became a caretaker and founded All Happy Helping Hands, a home care company that provides assistance to elderly and disabled persons.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio - Richard Veres finished his studies at Fenn College in 1956. But he couldn't walk in the commencement ceremony because he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

On Saturday, 61 years later, 84-year-old Veres will don a cap and gown to march with fellow engineering school graduates at Cleveland State University's commencement.

Veres, of Novelty, was the first in his extended family to graduate from college, so his family was disappointed they could not attend the Fenn College graduation, he told CSU.

Now, his brother, three children and two of his three grandchildren will have the opportunity to see him march across the stage and shake President Ronald Berkman's hand.

Veres enrolled in Fenn College to study electrical engineering after receiving a work study/scholarship from Reliance Electric. He said he likely never would have gone to college without the financial help.

As he prepared to graduate he was ordered to report for basic training at the U.S. Army training center in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. He was heading there on a train during commencement, he said.

Veres spent his career at Reliance, retiring in 1998 after 46 years with the company. He work took him around the world.

In February, following the 2016 death of his wife Donna, he told his children one of the things he regretted in life was not walking across the stage to graduate.

"It was something that really bothered him," said his daughter Melissa Mann, who lives near Cincinnati. She contacted the university.

In April, Dean Anette Karlsson of the Washkewicz College of Engineering wrote Veres.

The college "appreciates your service and believes every graduate should have the opportunity to participate in commencement," she wrote. She invited him and his family to Saturday's ceremony.

"It means so much to me," Mann said. "I wanted him to know that life is still vibrant and he is still valued. At every age good things can happen. This gives us a reason to celebrate him."

When asked what advice he would give today's graduates Veres said:

"When they are ready to start their career path don't let a few rumbles that you get at the beginning, like I had, take you off course," he said. "Keep your nose down and keep going. Once you decide what you want to do don't give up. That worked for me."

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CUYAHOGA FALLS, Ohio -- A bus driver for the Cuyahoga Falls School District went the extra mile this week for a student.

The driver, identified only as Mr. Bill, found a student's empty lunchbox on his bus.

Instead of just tossing it aside, the driver got it back to the student at DeWitt Elementary School, but with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, peanut butter crackers and a bottled water inside.

The driver then left a note for the student, "Ms. Zoey," letting her know she wouldn't go without a lunch that day, identifying himself as "Bus Driver Mr. Bill."

The Cuyahoga Falls Education Association posted about the incident on its Facebook page after the child's mother let them know about the driver's assistance.

"It goes without saying that all of our school employees in Cuyahoga Falls City Schools are dedicated individuals who care about our Black Tiger Family," the post says. "Kudos to Mr. Bill and the rest of our support staff who take care of our children!"

The child's mother also thanked the driver on Facebook.

"I am happy that my daughter knows there are people who still believe in acts of kindness," she said.
SOUTH AMHERST, Ohio - A scaled-down version of a defunct project to bring high end homes to a 900 acre quarry site now appears to be on the fast track.

The Industrial Realty Group, of Los Angeles, Calif., purchased the former Cleveland Quarry in 2007 after British developer Neil Pike backed away from his bid to buy the 900 acres and create a $1.5 billion development. IRG is not affiliated with Pike.

IRG has been given approval from the South Amherst Zoning Hearing Board to build a gated community of 47 homes valued at about one million dollars each that will surround a giant, partially water-filled, quarry. The quarry is the southernmost of eight quarries on the former Cleveland Quarries property located north of Route 113 in the center of South Amherst. The quarrying operation started in 1847 and continued until 1992, employing thousands of workers over the years and providing sandstone that was used all over the nation, including the Lorain Avenue bridge in Cleveland.

Debra Harrell, IRG senior vice president, said the development, "Amherst Quarries at Beaver Creek," would include a luxury hotel and spa. The development would offer outdoor recreational attractions like hiking, non-motorized boating and other diversions. There will be a private beach for swimming and a 100-foot waterfall.

"It's still very early in the planning," she said. "The property is beautiful. We want to preserve that. We won't bulldoze every tree we see into the ground. We also want to pay tribute to the historic nature of the quarry and the people who worked there over the years. We are trying to come up with a way to use the sandstone quarried from the site in our houses."

Harrell said they would bring in a builder, or perhaps two, to construct the homes along the ridge of the massive quarry so that the look would be consistent. She said the cost would likely be "a million dollars each, or north of that."

She said the houses would have an unobstructed view of the quarry.

The top of the water is currently about 30 feet from the top of the quarry. It is unclear how deep the water in the quarry is, which is one of the things IRG hydrologists are working on. The Amherst Historical Society said the quarries were about 240 feet deep on average.

South Amherst Mayor David Leshinski said the project would not need any action by the village council since it falls under the Planned Development District passed in 2007. He said it would bring in much-needed revenue to the village, county and Firelands school district.

"Groundbreaking could begin as early as the end of this year with the infrastructure (roads, sewer lines, electric lines) done by the end of 2018 and housing soon after," he said. "They have a lot of work to do, but they seem to know what they are doing."

Harrell said they want to begin work at the site as soon as possible, and said they hope to start building the infrastructure this year. She said individual lots are likely to be a half or third of an acre.

IRG wants to finish the Amherst Quarries at Beaver Creek Part and gauge its success before considering additional projects on the site, which spans South Amherst, Amherst Township and part of Brownhelm Township.

South Amherst residents have heard this before, after hopes were raised in early 2007 when Pike talked about his exotic plans, that included installing a giant dome over one of the water-filled quarries to be used for year-round recreation. Many in the village rolled their eyes at such a huge project in their little village of 800 homes and said it would never happen.

And they were right. Pike pulled out, allowing IRG to buy the 900-acre property for $20 million in December of 2007.

But local politicians agree this proposal is much more realistic.

IRG has projects around the country. They recently refurbished a 1.7-million-square-foot factoriy into offices and retail facilities at Canal Place in Akron, and turned unused buildings into multi-million dollar properties in Iowa, California and other places, including transforming the McClellen Air Force base in Sacramento into homes for 240 companies that employ 14,000 people, according to IRG.

Closer to home, IRG purchased the old Ford manufacturing plant on Baumhart Road in Lorain and is leasing it to smaller companies.

Amherst Township Trustee Dennis Abraham said he is excited about the idea of the quarry project, particularly about the resort hotel which would be in the township.

"This is a more modest approach than the one proposed by the British company years ago," he said. "IRG is very committed to doing this and I am very hopeful."

He noted that the proposals conform to township zoning codes and would not require any approval.

"They are talking about a helicopter landing pad at the hotel, which shows the quality of the operation. They will face some engineering challenges."

Among those challenges are installing sewers and hooking them up to a sewage treatment plant. Currently, South Amherst has no sewage and residents use septic systems. Leshinski said if the new development gets sewers he would like at least part of the village to tap into it, which could radically change the town. Sewers often draw in developers interested in building housing developments on some of the numerous acres of vacant land in the town.
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- One of five Tremont carjackers will spend more than 16 years in prison for his role in a string of 2015 carjackings in the popular Cleveland neighborhood.

D'wan Dillard, 19, was sentenced Friday to 16 years and two months in federal prison. U.S. Judge Patricia Gaughan ordered that he serve that time in addition to half of his state prison sentence for a 2015 attempted murder in East Cleveland.

That means Dillard will serve 23 years and two months between prison systems for crimes he committed during a single week in August 2015. He previously pleaded guilty to two carjackings and using a gun during a violent crime, and to an attempted murder charge in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.

He is the first in the group to be sentenced for the string of carjackings that became known as the Tremont Carjackings.

Federal prosecutors said during a trial for two co-defendants that the other four in the group were part of the Heartless Felons gang's Broadway sect. They were feuding with another Heartless Felons group from the Fleet neighborhood and needed new cars to drive after carrying out drive-by shootings against rivals.

The group targeted the Tremont neighborhood because of its ample street parking.

Dillard's attorney, Michael Cheselka, said Dillard was not part of the Heartless Felons and was friends with some of the gang members. He said his client made mistakes and wants to learn from them.

"When D'wan got caught, it was a wake-up call," Cheselka said. "When you're young and full of yourself and everything comes crashing down, you realize it's not a game."

Dillard's first crime happened on Aug. 14. He and Tre'Vontae Taylor pistol-whipped a man parked on Thurman Avenue near Literary Road. The duo ordered him to the ground, rummaged through his pockets and stole his cellphone, wallet and keys before driving off in his 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Dillard on Aug. 19 carried out two crimes: another carjacking in Tremont and the shooting of a man in East Cleveland.

He shot a man on Ardenall Hayden Avenue and was sentenced to 14 years in state prison.

Dillard then went with Taylor again to the Tremont neighborhood looking for a car to steal. They walked up to a 22-year-old Euclid man who was sitting inside his 2004 Porche Cayenne at West 5th Street and Miller Court.

The duo ordered the man out of his car and threatened to kill him while pointing guns at him.

They ordered him to take off his Nike sneakers, jumped in his car and sped off. The Porsche was found later that day on East 36th Street.

Dillard is one of five men convicted of carrying out a series of carjackings from June to August at the behest of Antwoine Palmer, who prosecutors said was a ranking member of the Broadway gang who ordered the carjackings.

Palmer and Kenneth Jackson, 20, were convicted at trial. Jackson was convicted of committing three carjackings. They will be sentenced Aug. 23.

Several charges were dropped after Taylor reneged on the stand after initially agreeing to testify against Jackson and Palmer during the trial. Another co-defendant, Calvin Rembert, also pleaded guilty in the case and testified against Jackson and Palmer.

Rembert and Taylor have not yet been sentenced. Dillard did not testify during the trial, but Cheselka said he cooperated with prosecutors in the case.

To comment on this post, please visit cleveland.com's crime and courts comments section.

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CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Getting the attention of voters -- and the media -- is a big preoccupation for all political candidates.

In the past week, a couple of 2018 Ohio candidates did things -- some might view them as silly -- that stood out.

- Former State Rep. Connie Pillich, a Democrat who's running for governor, "warned" President Donald Trump on Thursday that if she's elected, she would refuse to deploy the Ohio National Guard, if Trump were to declare a "cover-up war" meant to distract from his political problems, such as the ongoing investigation into possible contacts between members of his campaign and the Russian government.

She made the pronouncement in a news conference on Thursday in Columbus.

Campaign spokesman Eric Goldman told cleveland.com Pillich's background as a lawyer and U.S. Air Force veteran inspired her idea.

"Connie is concerned by Trump's erratic behavior in office, the ongoing criminal investigation, and -- as a military veteran -- worries that could lead to American troops being put in harms way to deflect from the administration's alleged improprieties," Goldman.

- Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, a Republican who's running for U.S. Senate, posted to his Twitter account last week a video of Mandel, standing near the U.S. / Mexico border, criticizing the Republican-controlled U.S. House ("liberals & squishy repubs," as Mandel tweeted in accompanying post) for not fully funding a border wall. Two other videos showed Mandel interviewing a border agent.
It should go without saying that Ohio's must-pass budget is not the place to hide pet projects and frivolous or self-serving legislative items.

Technically, such add-ons also violate the one-subject rule in Ohio's Constitution. But that's a legal requirement so routinely ignored, and so loosely interpreted by the Ohio Supreme Court, that it's become almost meaningless.

One major consequence: The state budget bill has become a favored vessel for nonbudget items that lawmakers dearly want -- but would prefer to avoid being subject to a lot of debate or attention.

The latest example is an amendment added to the state budget bill in the Ohio House that could be very costly to local school boards, county governments and others.

The provision, from Dayton-area Rep. Jim Butler, a lawyer who has represented private property owners in tax valuation appeals, would force public entities like school districts to pay all legal costs when they appeal such valuations and lose those appeals. If commercial firms or other big property owners appeal and lose, however, they would only have to pay their own costs.

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Butler's rationale for this lopsided provision, according to reporting by cleveland.com's Jackie Borchardt, is that it's needed to balance out what he says is public entities' natural advantage in property tax appeals. But where's the evidence school boards are favored in these cases?

The reality is that, if this unfair provision becomes law, it would chill the willingness of public entities to challenge too-low valuations, changing the inherent checks and balances of the system. The Ohio Senate should promptly shelve this bad idea.

An allied bad idea is in a separate bill from state Sen. Bill Coley of Butler County in southwest Ohio. It would ban government agencies from appealing property tax valuations -- even while private property owners could continue to do so. This is Coley's fourth attempt at this one-sided move and he's still trying -- a hopeful sign that Ohio lawmakers do draw the line somewhere. They should do so again here.

Have something to say about this topic? Use the comments to share your thoughts, and stay informed when readers reply to your comments by using the Notification Settings (in blue) just below.

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ROCKY RIVER, Ohio -- Prosecutors are seeking additional charges against a man accused of crashing his car through the wall of a Rocky River convenience store on purpose in a quest to get beer.

Robert Mason, 45, is now charged with aggravated vehicular assault, reckless operation and vandalism, according to court records. He was initially charged with operating a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol or drugs.

Mason is still at Fairview Hospital, Rocky River Police Chief Kelly Stillman's office said. The hospital declined to give his condition.

A warrant was issued Thursday by police, the chief's office said. Court records say the case is temporarily closed pending the arrest of Mason and a court hearing set, according to the Rocky River Municipal Court clerk's office.

The crash, which injured a store employee, happened just after 1 a.m. Sunday at SDM Food Market on Hilliard Boulevard just west of Wooster Road, police say.

A deli counter separated the 49-year-old employee from the car, but he still suffered injuries to his legs and chest, Stillman said.

The car crashed through the wall after the employee closed for the night. Mason told the employee he needed beer, the employee reported.

If you'd like to comment on this story, visit Friday's crime and courts comments section.

cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate.
Two people were killed in an early morning house fire in Westlake.

WESTLAKE, Ohio -- Two people were killed in an early morning house fire in Westlake, police say.

The fire broke out just after 4 a.m. Friday on Clague Road just south of Hilliard Boulevard, Westlake police Capt. Guy Turner said.

Police have identified the victims as 46-year-old Diana Rego and 56-year-old Christopher Nakel.

The cause of the fire is unknown. The Westlake Police Department, Westlake Fire Department and Ohio State Fire Marshals Office are investigating.

Neighbor Jerry Welliver said a man delivering The Plain Dealer called the fire department after seeing smoke come from the home.

Welliver's wife woke him up after smelling the smoke. When he looked outside his neighbor's home was engulfed in smoke.

Smoke was blowing out of the roof, he said.

"(Firefighters) couldn't get in because everything was locked up and that's when I realized they were already dead," Welliver said. "That kind of smoke, I was in the service I know how that is. I had to fight fires like that."

Firefighters broke the windows and knocked the door in, he said. Welliver saw the firefighters bring the Rego and Nakel out.

Avon, Bay Village, Fairview Park, Lakewood, North Olmsted and Rocky River fire departments assisted at the scene.

cleveland.com is a partner of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank. Every dollar buys four meals for the hungry. Click here to donate.
Six Students Receive Fulbright Awards To Study Abroad

May 12, 2017

By Julianne Mattera



Six graduating seniors have been named 2017 Fulbright Award winners. From left to right, they are: Kayla Lee, Melanie Diaz, Philip Nantawisarakul, Timothy Gao, Rudina Morina and Emily Joyce.

Carnegie Mellon University's six Fulbright award winners for 2017 will teach and conduct research in Spain, Taiwan, Mexico, Ecuador, Switzerland and Germany.

"This year's Fulbright awardees personify the ideals of the Carnegie Mellon undergraduate experience," said Joanna Dickert, assistant director of undergraduate research in CMU's Fellowships and Scholarships Office. "They are committed scholars and citizens who have crafted distinctive paths for intellectual exploration that embraced experiential learning via undergraduate research, study abroad and service learning. We have every confidence that they will continue to learn, create, discover and inspire in their respective host countries as ambassadors for Carnegie Mellon and the United States."

The Fellowships and Scholars Office provides support to students who are interested in applying for nationally competitive fellowships and scholarships.

The U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sponsors the Fulbright U.S. Student Program to "increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries."

This year's Fulbright winners are:

Melanie Diaz, Class of 2017, Bachelor of Arts in English and Global Studies, with a minor in Politics and Public Policy

Diaz, of East Los Angeles, is the recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship award. In a position co-sponsored by the Government of La Rioja, Spain, Diaz will spend her summer teaching up to 16, 50-minute class periods a week in La Rioja. She will assist in English language classes and other subjects taught in English at an elementary or secondary school. She also hopes to volunteer with an organization focused on refugee assistance.

Timothy Gao, Class of 2017, Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences

Gao, of New York City, is headed to Yilan and Taipei, Taiwan, after being awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. Primarily, he will teach English and science in the rural elementary schools of Yilan County. He also plans to work with grassroots non-governmental organizations on mental health awareness, an issue that Gao said "remains stigmatized" in East Asia.

Emily Joyce, Class of 2017, Bachelor of Science in International Relations and Politics; and a Bachelor of Arts in Hispanic Studies

Joyce, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, will travel to Mexico City, for the Fulbright-Garcia Robles Binational Business Internship Program. In addition to an internship through the program, Joyce will take classes in economics.

Kayla Lee, Class of 2017, Bachelor of Arts in Global Studies and Hispanic Studies, with a minor in Politics and Public Policy

Lee, of Seattle, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship. She will work in Ecuador at a public university or English training program where her responsibilities could include presentations on topics related to the United States and its culture, preparing classroom activities and encouraging students' communication in English. She also plans to volunteer with local non-governmental organizations.

Rudina Morina, Class of 2017, Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering

Morina, of Kosovo, will spend the next year in Zurich, Switzerland, after being awarded a Fulbright Study/Research Grant. She will conduct research at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, a joint institute of the University of Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Morina's research will focus on using computational techniques to study the neural computations underlying cognitive processes like decision-making and attention.

Philip Nantawisarakul, Class of 2017, Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences/Neuroscience Track

Nantawisarakul, of Ellicott City, Maryland, is the recipient of a Fulbright Study/Research Grant. He will be traveling to Munich, to work at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry and study at the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich. His research will revolve around attempting to find biomarkers of stress-inflicted mood disorders through clinical fMRI studies.
The $1.7 trillion infrastructure financing gap in Asia is a "problem" of the region's success, which require more facilities to be built and maintained in the coming years, said Jin Liqun, president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Speaking to CNBC at the sidelines of the World Economic Forum's ASEAN meeting in Cambodia, Jin noted that the $1.7 trillion estimate by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was in fact an upward revision of its previous $1 trillion projection.

"The infrastructure bottleneck is coming up just because of the fast growth of this region, it is a problem of the success of the Asian countries because the living standard improvements and sustained growth in these countries would raise new problems, new issues for these countries to handle," he said on CNBC's "Street Signs" Friday.

"I would say it's evolving and you may see that some of the infrastructure projects may not be needed today  [but] you need to maintain the existing infrastructure. So I would say the demand is huge."

AIIB, which opened its doors early last year, was set up to address infrastructure financing needs across Asia and support China's "One Belt, One Road" policy.

Jin's comments came ahead of a two-day "One Belt, One Road" summit starting Sunday in Beijing. Hundreds of diplomats and businesses leaders from around the world are expected to attend.

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As the U.S. pulls back from globalization, China is stepping into the breach with programs including the One Belt One Road (OBOR) infrastructure initiative, experts said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Asean meeting this week. Cambodia, for one, made it clear China's investment was welcome. "Other countries have a lot of ideas, but no money. But for China, when it comes with an idea, it also comes with the money. That is the hope of all countries around," Hun Sen, prime minister of Cambodia, said at the WEF Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) this week in Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh.

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"For example, to fund the Silk Road project, China invested $40 billion in order to give other countries the opportunity to benefit," he said. Cambodia isn't alone. Earlier this month, Pakistan's Finance Minister Ishaq Dar reportedly said his country "fully supports" the OBOR plans. Launched in 2013, the initiative, backed by China's President Xi Jinping, aims to revive the ancient Silk Road and strengthen Chinese ties with more than 60 countries across Asia, Europe and East Africa through infrastructure, trade and investment. The attraction to China is opening up vast areas of Central Asia that still retain trade links established centuries ago to routes in South Asia, Persia, Arabia and Africa, but now often lack the modern infrastructure needed to attract large-scale investment and trade.

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China's wide-ranging infrastructure projects with developing countries along the Silk Road link that are planned or underway, have an estimated worth of more than $900 billion, Fitch Ratings estimated earlier this year. China's big push comes as the U.S. has appeared to abandon what former President Barack Obama called a pivot to Asia. Current President Donald Trump has pushed a more nationalist and protectionist agenda, although he's walked back or contradicted some of his harsh rhetoric from the campaign trail. Arancha Gonzalez, executive director of the International Trade Centre, a joint development agency of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the U.N., said China was stepping up. "What we are seeing is this very famous saying that nature abhors a vacuum and China is very clearly using this moment to assert itself," she told CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Friday on the sidelines of WEF Asean.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia Omar Havana | Getty Images
China's art market is becoming a popular way for its wealthy to invest. Many have purchased at auctions overseas in cities such as London or Hong Kong. But in late 2015, authorities started worrying about money fleeing the country and imposed tighter controls on capital. The increased restrictions have forced more Chinese to look for new ways to invest their money at home.

"Antique collectors in China have started to collect my work," Tai told CNBC while preparing a painting at his studio in Beijing for an exhibit in Chicago. "I am happy."

To get a picture of how Chinese government policy influences the country's art market, meet artist Tai Xiangzhou. Tai, a veteran of Song Dynasty-style painting whose work is usually sold in the U.S., says his pieces are attracting more buyers in China.

Beijing gallery owner and art investor Chris Reynolds is seeing a surge in sales after a long dry spell in the market.

"Following the global financial crisis and the stimulus package in China, which really supercharged liquidity and demand for Chinese art, there was a lull after that period," explained Reynolds, co-founder of and director at INK Studio in the Chinese capital's Caochangdi art district.

"What we are actually seeing in the past year or so is a return to a rapid growth trend. For example, last fall if you look at the auctions in mainland China you saw a kind of heat and sizzle that we haven't seen in five years," he said. "We've seen liquidity increases, and at the same time we have capital controls, which are getting tighter and tighter and that is actually having the impact of trapping more capital within China, which will lead to different sorts of price appreciation and assets here."

Auction houses like China Guardian are feeling the fervor.

According to Guo Tong, vice president at China Guardian Auctions, turnover hit around 200 million RMB ($28.97 million)  up around 54 percent from a year ago.

"The warm up in the market has been quite obvious," she told CNBC. "More money is trapped in China. It is very likely that some of that money will go into the art market. This is one of the reasons people have upbeat predictions about the market this year." Guo estimated a 30 percent rise in 2017 in the Chinese art market overall.

That is welcome news for Tai, who used to restore paintings at the ancient Forbidden City before pursuing his own artistic career. He hopes his modern take on an ancient technique will be enjoyed well into the future  long past Beijing's policy decisions today.

"I want people to feel my work is connected to the world around us," he said.

CNBC's Daisy Li contributed to this report.
Jared Kushner, right, was chief executive of Kushner Companies until he joined the White House this year.

The Kushner real estate family, whose scion Jared Kushner is President Trump's son-in-law and close adviser, has run into more turbulence in Jersey City, where it has placed a major bet on development.

The Kushners have six projects under development in Jersey City  with square footage equivalent to two Empire State Buildings  the once blue-collar town that sits a mile across the Hudson River from Manhattan.

Now, after making the highest offer last year for a 95-acre waterfront parcel that would have been their seventh project, the Kushners said they have dropped out of the bidding for the site, where a Honeywell factory once stood.

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How 'Brexit' Could Alter London, the World's Banker

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Kushner Companies, which is led by Jared's father, Charles Kushner, had bid as much as $125 million for the Honeywell site, which had been contaminated by chromium, with plans to build 3,000 apartments catered to Orthodox Jews who are being priced out of the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Honeywell suspended the sale last year to obtain environmental approvals from the state and expects to resume negotiations later this year.

"A decision was made late last year not to pursue the project," James Yolles, a spokesman for the Kushners said Wednesday, "because the company was not persuaded by the economics of the deal."

The Kushners' decision to drop out of the bidding was first reported by Bloomberg.

But the mayor of Jersey City, Steven Fulop, also cast a shadow over an existing Kushner project: the $820.8 million, twin-towered complex known as One Journal Square.

A joint venture of Kushner Companies and KABR Group, the complex would entail 1,476 apartments, shops and office space. A third company, WeWork, which builds shared office spaces, recently dropped out of the project. Kushner Companies is negotiating to buy WeWork's stake in the project, according to the group's spokesman, Mr. Yolles.

Mr. Fulop announced Sunday on social media that the city would not support Kushner's recent application for additional subsidies, including tens of millions of dollars in property tax breaks over 30 years and $40 million in city bonds.

The development had already obtained state approval for more than $90 million in tax credits for the 10-story base of the complex and one of the two towers. With the loss of WeWork, that number has been cut to $34 million.

Last week, the city provisionally rejected the developers' request for additional subsidies because the components of the complex have changed over time and the total subsidy package would have exceeded anything the city has given other projects in that neighborhood. The plans, to be built in two phases, now call for more apartments and less office space than originally proposed.

"Our current proposal for One Journal Square would provide 4,000 sorely needed union jobs and $180 million in tax revenue for Jersey City over the next 30 years," Mr. Yolles said. He said that the developers had changed the project to focus more on residential and retail based on the market.

Jared Kushner was chief executive of Kushner Companies until he joined the White House in January. But last weekend, his sister Nicole Meyer alluded to the family's ties to the Trump administration when she pitched the Journal Square project to prospective investors in China.

Kushner and KABR recently eliminated some of the office space, which had garnered the state tax breaks, and expanded the number of apartments. Those changes will have to be approved by the city planning board, according to city officials, although Kushner disputes the necessity of that step.

The Kushners opened Trump Bay Street, a 53-story residential tower, in Jersey City last year. They have two commercial projects in the planning stages and a third residential tower in Journal Square, which would rise 72 stories with 741 units.
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One day after the acting attorney general warned the White House that its national security adviser was subject to blackmail, the president summoned the FBI director to dinner at the White House, sources close to James Comey told NBC News. At the Jan. 27 dinner, a week after assuming the presidency, Trump requested a loyalty pledge from Comey, people familiar with the dinner say. Comey replied that he could not offer loyalty, but he could pledge his honesty. It's not known whether the men talked about national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn had been interviewed by the FBI a few days before, on Jan. 24  grilled about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak. Acting Attorney General Sally Yates had told the White House counsel that Flynn lied to White House officials about his talks with Kislyak  and that as a result, Vice President Mike Pence had misled the American people. More from NBC News:

Trump interview with Lester Holt: President asked Comey if he was under investigation

What is the controversial 'Golden Visa' touted by Kushner's sister?

Carter Page, adviser linked to Trump and Russia, claims FBI, CIA contacts



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Yates was soon fired for refusing to enforce Trump's travel ban. Now Comey has been removed, sparking a host of new questions. Trump suggested, in an exclusive interview Thursday with NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt, that he had the FBI's Russia collusion investigation on his mind when he decided to remove Comey. "When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won,'" Trump said. Trump gave Holt an entirely different account of the dinner, saying that Comey requested it to seek job security, and told the president he was not under investigation. None of that is true, Comey's associates insist. A former senior FBI official said Comey would never have told the president he was not under investigation  contradicting what Trump said. "He tried to stay away from it [the Russian-ties investigation]," said the former official, who worked closely with Comey and keeps in touch with him. "He would say, 'Look sir, I really can't get into it, and you don't want me to.'"

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In sunny Singapore, one start-up is disrupting the world of development consulting. The field, in which companies advise public and private sector players on projects related to economic development, traditionally uses a top-down strategy. Zeroth Labs, however, takes that a step further with an adaptive approach to problem solving and constant experimentation. The two-and-a-half year old consultancy applies behavioral insights to urbanization challenges in order to create new services and business models within emerging economies, and it's beginning to make waves. "In the dominant business model of development consulting, you create great strategy based on great information and analysis, and expect that to work on the ground. But things aren't always as linear we'd like it to be," said Zeroth co-founder Bernise Ang, who was recently named a young global leader of the World Economic Forum.

One of Zeroth's projects: A prototype of a service center in Gazipur City, Bangladesh. UNDP - Zeroth Labs - Tandemic

Development professionals need to formulate hypotheses, create a small-scale prototype, test it, and pay attention to what the data says you need to do next, said Ang, who boasts a finance and psychology background. "It's not as sexy because it now places the client as the expert instead of the consultant. Still, this is what I think will truly build the capability for developing countries to make life better for citizens." In 2014, Zeroth worked on a United Nations project designed to improve Bangladesh's social services that saw municipal officials in the city of Gazipur generate concepts for how they believed services should operate from a user perspective. The end product was a new range of services that supported the blind, was more sensitive to women with children and culturally relevant for female slum dwellers. "An interesting prototype that emerged was an app for municipal payments and services  not because it's techy, but because of cash and corruption issues surfaced by the mayor's office staff," said Ang. In international development, where the interaction of public, private and civil society players is key, understanding human behavioral patterns is crucial to creating sustainable solutions to real-life problems. Organisations such as the Brookings Institution have long advocated the importance of behavioral science in economic development.

Women in Gazipur City working on the Bangladesh social services project. UNDP - Zeroth Labs - Tandemic
Obama became the leader of the free world, but he didn't grow up rich. He and his wife Michelle both had to take out loans to fund their educations, and the couple had "barely finished" paying them off by 2005, when he was 44 and she was 41.

The President told an audience in Buffalo, NY:

Michelle and I, we're only where we are today because scholarships and student loans gave us a shot at a great education.

And we know a little bit about trying to pay back student loans, too, because we didn't come from a wealthy family. So we each graduated from college and law school with a mountain of debt. And even though we got good jobs, we barely finished paying it off just before I was elected to the U.S. Senate. ...

I mean, I was in my 40s when we finished paying off our debt. And we should have been saving for Malia and Sasha by that time. But we were still paying off what we had gotten, and we were luckier because most of the debt was from law school. Our undergraduate debt was not as great because tuition had not started shooting up as high.
Apple 's plan to invest $200 million into Corning to spur U.S. manufacturing jobs are further indication of the company's plans to add wireless charging and augmented reality features to future iPhones, according to analysts.



Oppenheimer analyst Andrew Uerkwitz, who covers Corning , believes Apple is developing wireless charging technology for the next generation of iPhones, as has been previously suggested by other analysts. But that means Apple will have to use something other than metal on the back of the phone.

"Metal can interfere with wireless charging technology," he told CNBC. "That means you need glass on the back of the phone, but glass that won't break. Or you need to use ceramics. Corning has a long history of investing in both glass and ceramics."

Uerkwitz also notes that those materials can be relatively expensive, which is one reason these next-generation iPhones could carry a higher price tag.

He estimates that Apple accounts for about 5 percent of Corning's business.

Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights has a different take: He thinks the investment is for Apple's rumored augmented reality glasses.

"You need specialized glass in the headset, glass that properly magnifies the 180-degree experience of AR. Also, that glass has to be really light. Corning could develop that for Apple."

Moorhead also thinks Apple  with this investment  would demand exclusive rights to the intellectual property associated with this material.

Both Apple and Corning declined comment.

Watch: Apple's cash hoard hits $256.8 billion
The Asia Vision LNG carrier ship sits docked at the Cheniere Energy Inc. terminal in this aerial photograph taken over Sabine Pass, Texas.

Shares of Cheniere Energy rose as much as 4 percent after the company revealed it has held "extensive negotiations" with Chinese state-owned companies to increase liquefied natural gas exports to China.

The stock closed up more than 3 percent on Friday.

The Commerce Department announced on Thursday it had reached a deal with China to open the world's second largest economy to certain U.S. exports, including LNG. The agreement gives the country's state-controlled firms the green light to enter into long-term purchasing contracts with U.S. suppliers.

Cheniere Energy operates the only LNG export terminal in the lower 48 United States. It has sold nine LNG cargoes to China since its Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana opened in 2016, all of which were priced on the spot market, Reuters reported.

"We have had extensive negotiations with the Chinese over the last month," Cheniere spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder told Reuters.

China is the fastest growing market for LNG, according to energy research firm Wood Mackenzie, but analysts told CNBC on Friday that U.S. firms face a number of obstacles to tapping into that growth.
As retail stocks drag the market down on weak earnings reports, Jim Cramer feels like some stocks will need positive news from Washington policymakers to see any real upside.

"But on a case by case basis, there's still plenty to cheer about with individual stocks," the "Mad Money" host said. "Anything related to social, mobile, cloud, artificial intelligence, continues to get a boost. But anything related to physical bricks-and-mortar merchandising remains hopelessly disliked, with the once-stellar Nordstrom taking the group down again today."

E-commerce and the cloud reign supreme, but with Deutsche Bank's downgrade of General Electric to a "sell" rating, it looks to Cramer like enterprise and individual spending is slowing.

With these diverging forces in mind, here are the stocks and events on Cramer's radar next week:

Monday: Trivago

The hotel booking company will report its first quarter earnings. After sitting down with the CEO of its parent company, Expedia , Cramer felt good about Trivago's impending report.

But after competitor Priceline's management team gave downbeat guidance in their earnings report, the "Mad Money" host became less certain about the strength of the travel arena.

"Which is right? Expedia or Priceline? Rivals. Why don't we let Trivago decide, and if it's good, I suggest you go right back to the stock of Priceline at this discount, because it has been a monster long term winner over the years," Cramer said.

Tuesday: Home Depot, Stanley Black & Decker, TJX Companies

Home Depot : The home improvement giant kicks off the week's retail earnings with what Cramer expects to be a strong report.

"I always encourage people to buy this stock, but not all at once because you know what? Home Depot, up here, [has] become quite volatile. So maybe you pick up some Monday and then some after they report," he advised.

Stanley Black & Decker : An analyst meeting at this industrial tools manufacturer could prompt the stock to take off thanks to a recent wave of positive acquisitions and Home Depot's presumably strong tools sales, Cramer said.

TJX : Off-priced goods have been the savior of this Cramer-fave retail company and parent of discount chains TJ Maxx and HomeGoods.

"I've been waiting for the huge breakout that TJX will give us with all of these brick-and-mortar stores that are being closed, because they've got to offload their goods and they give them to TJX for cash, so they'll be able to sell name-brand stuff for even cheaper than you can get it on Amazon ," Cramer said. "It has not happened yet. TJX's stock has been so-so. That said, I'm betting on a strong second half of the year and think you need to get in ahead of it."

Wednesday: Target, Cisco, Rexnord

Target : Even though some on Wall Street are predicting a turnaround for Target and blessing the stock because of its seemingly safe 4.3 percent yield, Cramer is not so convinced.

"All I can say is that big dividends sure didn't do much good for the people who own shares of Kohl's or Macy's . So as tempting as Target might be, I am not going to sanction a buy of it," he said.

Cisco : The software giant reports after the close, and while competition in the cybersecurity space has driven a lot of investors away from the stock, Cramer is sticking to his guns.

"My charitable trust has owned Cisco for ages and we're going to ride it out given that CEO Chuck Robbins has been remaking this company as a soup to nuts offering for any enterprise that's trying to embrace the internet of things in a secure way," the "Mad Money" host said.

Rexnord : President Donald Trump has been targeting this manufacturing company on Twitter for moving jobs to Mexico, and Cramer wants to see if it will respond at all in its earnings report.

Thursday: Wal-Mart, Alibaba, Applied Materials, Salesforce.com

Wal-Mart : Of all the companies vying to compete with Amazon, Cramer thinks Wal-Mart may actually have a chance. The company will report before the opening bell and explain to shareholders how its brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce subsidiary Jet.com are boosting business and giving Amazon a run for its money.

"I think it's too early to tell, of course, if they'll win, but the stock, after languishing for ages, has become a big winner, up almost 10 percent for the year. Wal-Mart, in the end, is a bargain store, and what really matters is that bargain stores are working in this environment," Cramer said.

Alibaba : This e-commerce giant will report earnings, and it is the only Chinese stock Cramer recommends for the simple reason that business is booming.

"They have a very good handle on e-commerce, perhaps second only to Amazon, and, of course, their home market in the People's Republic is incredibly strong," the "Mad Money" host said.

Applied Materials : In the golden age of semiconductors, a company that makes machines that make the chips should be strong as ever, so Cramer expects a good earnings report.

Salesforce.com : Yet another tech name benefiting from the rise of the cloud, Cramer expects excellent numbers from Salesforce's earnings report.

"Remember, the stock does act weirdly, though, even on good quarters, so don't attempt to trade it. Just own it," Cramer advised.

Friday: Deere & Company, Foot Locker, Honeywell

Deere : For ages, anything the agriculture machinery company reported meant very little to the market, even if management insisted things were looking up.

"Then one day, investor interest simply switched, and now whatever Deere says is greeted with adulation and any caveats are totally ignored. It's remarkable," Cramer said. "I suspect the stock goes higher again unless they tell us that they're shutting the company down. I mean, that's how much this story is loved."

Foot Locker : Cramer says that this is one of two stores that is bucking negativity around mall-based retail. After Kohl's management said business from Under Armour and Nike was good and Adidas reported a strong quarter, Cramer expects positive things from Foot Locker's report.

Honeywell : Friday's analyst meeting at this multinational will be the first one run by new President and CEO Darius Adamczyk. After hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb's activist fund suggested the company split, Cramer is curious to hear Adamczyk's thoughts on the matter.

Cramer's bottom line? "I think that when earnings are finished, maybe Wall Street will start focusing on the White House again, if they can focus themselves. Right now, though, the only thing this market cares about is the numbers," Cramer said. "If the numbers are good, stocks go up regardless of the Comey fracas or the state of the Russia probe. And if they're bad, they get taken to the woodshed, or even go straight into the chipper-shredder."

Watch the full segment here:
The malware was circulated by email; targets were sent an encrypted, compressed file that, once loaded, allowed the ransomware to infiltrate its targets.

The hacking tool was leaked by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers , which has been dumping stolen N.S.A. hacking tools online beginning last year. Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability last March, but hackers took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets  particularly hospitals  had yet to update their systems.

The attack involved r ansomware , a kind of malware that encrypts data and locks out the user. According to security experts, it exploited a vulnerability that was discovered and developed by the National Security Agency.

An extensive cyberattack struck computers across a wide swath of Europe and Asia on Friday, and strained the public health system in Britain, where doctors were blocked from patient files and emergency rooms were forced to divert patients.

Reuters reported that employees of Britain's National Health Service were warned about the ransomware threat earlier on Friday.

By then, it was already too late. As the disruptions rippled through hospitals, doctors' offices and ambulance companies across Britain on Friday, the health service declared the attack as a "major incident," a warning that local health services could be overwhelmed by patients.

Britain's health's secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was briefed by cybersecurity experts, while Prime Minister Theresa May's office said she was monitoring the situation.

Among the many other institutions that were affected were hospitals and telecommunications companies across Europe, Russia, Asia and beyond, according to MalwareHunterTeam, a security firm that tracks ransomware attacks. Spain's Telefonica and Russia's MegaFon were among the targets.

Attacks were being reported in Britain and 11 other countries, including Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, with the majority of affected computers in Russia. The computers all appeared to be hit with the same ransomware, and similar ransom messages demanding about $300 to unlock their data.

The attack on the National Health Service seemed perhaps the most audacious of the attacks, because it had life-or-death implications for hospitals and ambulance services.

Tom Donnelly, a spokesman for N.H.S. Digital, the arm of the health service that handles cybersecurity, said in a phone interview that 16 organizations, including "hospitals and other kinds of clinician services," had been hit by a cyberattack. Officials later updated that number to at least 25.

"It is still ongoing," he said. "We were made aware of it this afternoon."

The service's digital arm said in a statement that the attack involved a variant of ransomware known as Wanna Decryptor.

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The user is asked to pay a ransom to unlock the computer. It has become an increasingly prevalent problem. Last year, a Los Angeles hospital paid $17,000 after such an attack; earlier this year, hackers shut down the electronic key system at a hotel in Austria.

On social media, several images circulated showing computer screens bearing a message that the user could not enter without first paying a $300 ransom in Bitcoin. Many doctors reported that they could not retrieve their patients' files.

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N.H.S. Digital added, "At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed."

It said that the N.H.S. did not appear to have been the main target of the attack.

The National Cyber Security Center, an arm of the GCHQ, the British electronic surveillance agency, said it was investigating the attack. "We are aware of a cyber incident, and we are working with N.H.S. Digital and the National Crime Agency to investigate," it said in a statement.

As of 3:30 p.m., 16 organizations within N.H.S. England had reported being affected, the statement said. (It did not immediately appear that the N.H.S. systems in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland had been hit.)

According to the BBC, hospitals in London and Nottingham, the town of Blackburn and the counties of Cumbria and Hertfordshire had been affected.

In the northwestern seaside town of Blackpool, doctors had resorted to pen and paper, with phone and computer systems having shut down, according to the local newspaper, The Blackpool Gazette.

TWEET

A bit to the south, in the seaside town of Southport, images on Twitter showed ambulances backed up outside the town's hospital.

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In Stevenage, a town in Hertfordshire, north of London, the health service postponed all non-urgent activity and asked people not to come to the accident and emergency ward at the Lister Hospital.

Watch: Biosecurity warning, hackers targeting DNA?
The Asia Vision LNG carrier ship at the Cheniere Energy terminal in this aerial photograph taken over Sabine Pass, Texas, Feb. 24, 2016 Lindsey Janies | Bloomberg | Getty Images

American drillers and natural gas exporters may see limited benefits from the U.S. deal with Beijing to open Chinese markets to U.S. natural gas, analysts say. The deal, announced by the Commerce Department on Thursday, paves the way for Chinese companies to negotiate long-term contracts to purchase liquefied natural gas from American suppliers. Beijing will allow private and state-controlled companies to import U.S. LNG and encourage them to invest in import infrastructure, a person familiar with negotiations told The Wall Street Journal. Shares of Cheniere Energy popped 4 percent on Friday after the company told Reuters it has held "extensive negotiations" over the past month with Chinese state-owned companies about increasing LNG shipments to China. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Friday the deal would help to "liberate American energy." "China is the world's largest buyer of LNG. Now that market really is going to be open to the American producers," Ross told CNBC's "Squawk Box."

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In fact, Japan is the largest market for LNG, followed by South Korea and then China, according to the International Gas Union. But China is the world's fastest-growing market for LNG, according to energy research firm Wood Mackenzie. The deal positions the United States to capture part of that growth, which would represent $26 billion a year in purchases by 2030 at today's prices, according Massimo Di-Odoardo, head of global gas and LNG research at Wood Mackenzie. However, he cautioned that U.S. LNG's fortunes in China "will depend on its competitiveness versus other global alternatives and Chinese buyer appetite for exposure to U.S. gas prices." Alan Bannister, regional director for energy pricing at S&P Global Platts, noted on Friday that shipping LNG to China from the U.S. Gulf Coast  where much of the export capacity is planned or being built  would be inefficient and unlikely.



"China is much nearer and much cheaper to ship from Australia, for example, or Qatar," he said. "What I think we're more likely to see in the real world is that U.S. Gulf Coast LNG will primarily go to Europe." China imported 26.1 million tons of LNG in 2016, up 32.6 percent on year, IHS Fairplay reported. The shipping news outlet noted that Australia accounted for 46 percent of China's LNG imports in 2016, or 12 million tons. Qatar supplied 19 percent, while just around 200,000 tons came from the United States in 2016.

Limited U.S. LNG export capacity
President Donald Trump speaks during an interview in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

"In a short period of time," President Trump recently told Time magazine in an interview about his first months in the White House, "I understood everything there was to know about health care." Around the same time, Trump gave another interview, this one to the Economist. He talked a lot about health care in it. And his comments suggest he still has a lot to learn  starting with how much health insurance actually costs. Speaking with editors from the Economist, Trump seemed uncertain about how the health insurance industry works, or how the Republican plan to overhaul it would work. He waffled on how he'll continue running the Affordable Care Act. More from Vox:

Trump is threatening to release secret Comey "tapes" and cancel press briefings

Impeachment of the president, explained

The case for and against a universal basic income in the United States Trump cited numbers that don't seem to come from any recent version of the health care debate. He talked about how health insurance ought to cost "$15 a month"  a premium that anyone who has ever purchased coverage, let alone studied the health insurance market, knows is unheard of. The president estimated that the Republican bill would save "$400 to $900 billion" in government spending  an amount significantly higher than the $337 billion in savings that the Congressional Budget Office has referenced in its analyses of an early version of the bill. But perhaps most concerning to health insurance plans was the uncertain answer he gave on whether he would continue paying a key Obamacare subsidy program, known as the cost-sharing reduction subsidies. If Trump stopped making those payments, which are currently challenged in court by House Republicans, it would leave insurers with about $8 billion in unpaid bills. "We're subsidizing it and we don't have to subsidize it," Trump told the Economist, referring to the law's contested cost-sharing reduction payments. "You know if I ever stop wanting to pay the subsidies, which I will..." Trump's answers likely don't give much comfort to the insurance plans that participate in the Obamacare marketplaces right now, which have begged for more certainty on this particular issue. And they don't suggest that Trump has familiarized himself with the details of the Republican health care plan either.

Trump has reiterated his promise that Americans will have "guaranteed absolutely coverage." The Republican plan doesn't deliver that.

The Economist asked the president about the fact that many Americans are expected to lose coverage under the Affordable Care Act. This was Trump's response to that question (emphasis added): The state governments are in much better position to, you know, help people. In terms of, you know, just the size, the mere size of it. But we're putting in $8bn and you're going to have absolute coverage. You're going to have absolute guaranteed coverage. You're going to have it if you're a person going indon't forget, this was not supposed to be the way insurance works. Insurance is, you're 20 years old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and by the time you're 70, and you really need it, you're still paying the same amount and that's really insurance. Trump makes a promise of "guaranteed coverage." But the Republican bill doesn't deliver on that. When the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the last version of the American Health Care Act, it estimated that 24 million fewer Americans would have coverage if the bill were to pass. As Trump mentions, the more recent iteration of the bill adds an additional $8 billion to fund high-risk pools, but analysts of all political stripes agree that is not nearly enough to cover all the Americans who would want access to those programs. There's also this other line in the response that caught my eye, where Trump discusses how he thinks health insurance ought to work. "Insurance is, you're 20-years-old, you just graduated from college, and you start paying $15 a month for the rest of your life and you really need it, you're still paying the same amount and that's really insurance," Trump says. The fact that Trump settles on $15 as the appropriate amount to pay for health insurance betrays a lack of familiarity with the actual cost of coverage. You do not have to be a health policy expert to get this  just someone who has ever purchased a health plan. Most voters I talk to don't have this expectation. I often ask Obamacare enrollees what they think would be a fair price for health insurance. Usually I hear something between $50 and $100 seems reasonable. The mental math going on here is that you have to pay something in order to get a plan that will cover doctor visits and hospital trips and prescription drugs. They know, from their experience, that health coverage is not as cheap as $15, and have more realistic assumptions than the one Trump makes in this answer.

Trump waffles on a key Obamacare policy  and that's bad for the Obamacare marketplaces
Elon Musk has begun digging under Los Angeles.

The entrepreneur posted Friday several pictures of equipment meant for digging tunnels beneath Los Angeles.

The project is one of Musk's latest ventures, which was inspired by a desire to alleviate "out of control" traffic in Los Angeles.

He aims to first dig a tunnel from SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, to the nearby Los Angeles airport. Musk frequently flies from Los Angeles to the San Francisco area, where he runs Tesla . Eventually, he envisions a deep, multilayered network of underground tunnels spanning the city.

Musk discussed the concept in depth during a recent TED talk in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Since Musk began his project, questions have surfaced about whether he has, or will even be able to obtain, the permits needed to fulfill his vision.

Below is a picture of boring machine segments that are being lowered into the starter tunnel at SpaceX.
European markets closed higher on Friday as investors digested the latest batch of corporate earnings and reacted to some fresh deal-making activity.

The FTSE closed up 0.66 percent higher at 7,386; the DAX ended up 0.41 percent at 12,711; the CAC finished higher by 0.41 percent at 5,383. All major bourses were little changed on the week, reflecting the muted impact of the election of pollsters' favorite Emmanuel Macron has on markets following Sunday's French election.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed marginally higher, though sectors remained mixed.

Media stocks were among the best performers, propelled higher on reports French media group, Vivendi , had approached Havas with an indicative offer to acquire Group Bollore's stake in the Paris-based advertising and public relations firm. As a result, shares of Havas rocketed up more than 9 percent, while Vivendi shares moved more than 4 percent higher.



Meanwhile, telecoms and healthcare were also ended Friday, up more than 2 percent and 1 percent respectively.

Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca ended trading more than 9 percent higher following the news that it had successfully trialed a new cancer drug. Meanwhile, German internet service provider, United Internet , closed at the top of the benchmark after reporting plans to acquire a majority stake in Drillisch in order to create a stronger challenger to other domestic telecommunication companies in Germany. Its shares closed up almost 14 percent higher on Friday.

On the other end, basic resources were seen lower, down 1.5 percent, as struggling oil prices continued to weigh on the sector.

Richemont reported worse-than-expected results on Friday in which the Geneva-based company said a volatile trading environment had caused its net profits to slip more than anticipated. However, the world's second-largest luxury goods group noted an uptick in sales growth towards the end of its fiscal year, in large part attributable to easier comparisons and support from a sustainable recovery in mainland China, Reuters reported. It ended the day down 5 percent.

Across the Atlantic, U.S. stocks traded mixed, dragged down by retail earnings.



G-7 meeting remains in focus



Germany's Federal Statistics Office published provisional gross domestic product (GDP) data on Friday which showed Europe's leading economy grew by 0.6 percent in the first-quarter.

Oil prices were stable on Friday as investors anticipated OPEC-led supply cuts to extend beyond the middle of the year. The 13-member cartel is expected to announce whether production cuts will continue at its meeting on May 25.



Elsewhere at the G-7 meeting in Italy, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emphasized the Trump administration's excitement after the U.S. and China announced a series of trade measures aimed at improving the trade balance between Washington and Beijing. The official G-7 meeting agenda focuses on inequality, tax laws, cybersecurity and preventing the funding of terrorism.

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Source: NBC News

Claim 1: "He gave [Hillary Clinton] a total exoneration," Trump said of Comey's announcement two days before the election that the FBI's late-stage review of a new batch of Clinton emails had not changed their view of the case.

False. Two days before the election, Comey said the new emails had been reviewed and "we have not changed our conclusion." He did not absolve the former secretary of state from blame or fault, then or during his initial announcement of the FBI's findings in July. His conclusion was that there was insufficient evidence that she had broken the actual statutes of law, which prohibit willfully mishandling classified information.

Claim 2: "[Comey's] testimony on Wednesday, it was terrible," Trump said. "And then you look more importantly, he made errors the day before yesterday, he had to go and correct his errors, he sent people to go and correct his errors."

True. After media reports noted that Comey's testimony overstated how many emails Clinton aide Huma Abedin had forwarded to her husband, Anthony Weiner, the FBI issued a clarification.

Claim 3: "They found a vast number of emails. It could be 650,000, some ridiculous number of emails on the Anthony Weiner server, right," the president said. "And it was gonna take months to go through them but the election was shortly thereafter. So they did it in a few days. Now you tell me, you can go through hundreds of thousands of emails in a few days?"

The number of emails discovered on Weiner's laptop is technically true, but not all of those were relevant to the Clinton email investigation. The 650,000 emails on Weiner's laptop were seized by the FBI while investigating the estranged husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. The FBI used a computer program that targeted the pertinent emails, and as onlookers noted, it would not take long to electronically review a large batch of emails.

Claim 4: "Obama perhaps knew" that Flynn had been paid by the Russian and Turkish governments.

During Obama's administration, Flynn lied to the Defense Intelligence Agency about the $34,000 he was paid by RT, a state-funded Russian media network. It's against the Constitution for former generals to receive foreign payments. In March, after Flynn's firing, it was learned that Flynn had received payments from Turkey while advising Trump's campaign. The Trump White House said it did not know that Flynn was acting as a foreign agent when he was appointed national security adviser.

Claim 5: "There is no collusion and everybody has said  and I think you will admit that  there's no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians."

"Everybody" is a major overstatement. Trump and allies have forcefully denied allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, as well as anything improper about contacts between Trump campaign staffers and Russian government officials. But the various ongoing investigations have not come to a conclusion one way or the other on the issue.

Claim 6: The investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia "was set up by the Democrats," the president said. Asked whether he meant the FBI investigation or the Senate investigation, the president said "the whole concept of it."

Democrats have been some of the loudest voices calling for investigations surrounding Russian meddling in the 2016 election and allegations of collusion between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin. But the Senate and House intelligence committee investigations into the matter are bipartisan. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies, meanwhile, are also conducting non-partisan investigations.

Claim 7: "You know, you're talking about 2015. I don't know that I knew him in 2015," Trump said of Flynn.

False. Flynn and Trump met in the summer of 2015, before Flynn took a paid trip to Russia and dined with Russian president Vladimir Putin in December 2015.

Claim 8: "I don't even think we have 17 intelligence agencies," Trump said.

Office of the Director of National Intelligence Central Intelligence Agency National Security Agency Defense Intelligence Agency Federal Bureau of Investigation Department of State - Bureau of Intelligence and Research Department of Homeland Security - Office of Intelligence and Analysis Drug Enforcement Administration - Office of National Security Intelligence Department of the Treasury - Office of Intelligence and Analysis Department of Energy - Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency National Reconnaissance Office Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Army Military Intelligence Office of Naval Intelligence Marine Corps Intelligence Coast Guard Intelligence

Claim 9: "I want our borders to be strong, we're setting new records now in terms of strength," Trump said, boasting illegal border crossings are down 73% percent in his earliest months of his administration.

True, according to PolitiFact's detailed fact check; Homeland Secretary John Kelly credits Trump's tough rhetoric for adding "enough confusion" to slow crossings.

Claim 10: "I remember seeing a piece of where I said something about Sweden, there was not exactly doing so great and I was very badly attacked and then the next day they had a unbelievable terrorist attack," the president said.

Trump is blurring the timeline here.

Seven weeks after Trump repeatedly named Sweden as a place where immigration was threatening Europe, there was a terror attack  and some questioned whether Trump had predicted it. The day after Trump repeatedly named Sweden, Swedes were perplexed. Nothing had happened. Watch: Trump calls Comey a 'showboater'
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Health savings accounts have been getting more attention lately as Congress and the Trump administration work to replace Obamacare. The problem for many people is that they have no idea when to use these tax-advantaged accounts  and that could hurt their retirement. Nearly half of HSA users didn't know they can invest the money in the account, according to a survey by Fidelity Investments of 5,133 people in December. What's worse is that 38 percent of account holders didn't know that HSAs offer triple tax advantages: First, contributions are tax deductible. Second, those contributions can be invested and grow tax-free. Third, withdrawals aren't taxed as long as you use them for qualified medical expenses, such as doctor's visits, prescription drugs and dental care. "No account has better tax advantages," said Roy Ramthun, president and founder of HSA Consulting Service. Ramthun is known as "Mr. HSA" because he led the U.S. Treasury Department's implementation of HSAs after they became law in 2003.

Other tax-advantaged accounts don't offer three tax breaks. With traditional IRAs, 401(k)s and workplace retirement plans, your contributions aren't taxed and grow tax-free, but you pay taxes when you withdraw. For Roth IRAs and 401(k)s, you pay taxes upfront on your contributions while you enjoy tax-free growth and withdrawals. The catch with HSAs is that you have to use a high-deductible health plan. Such a plan means you'll have to pay a deductible of at least $1,300 for individual coverage and $2,600 for families this year. The maximum 2017 out-of-pocket costs for these plans are $6,550 for individuals and $13,100 for families.

No account has better tax advantages. Roy Ramthun president and founder of HSA Consulting Service

"Not every high-deductible plan makes people eligible for an HSA," Ramthun said. The confusion about high-deductible plans can make it harder for people to embrace HSAs, he said. That's unfortunate because HSAs can be a powerful retirement savings vehicle. Fidelity estimates that a 65-year-old couple retiring in 2016 would need roughly $260,000 to cover health-care costs during retirement. So if you have 22 years of retirement, that's roughly $985 per month. A well-funded HSA can cover that cost completely tax-free. And if you're healthy enough to not have many health care costs in retirement, you can withdraw the money from your HSA without penalty and use it for anything you want when you are age 65 or older. However, you will pay income taxes on withdrawals if you don't use it for health care. More from Balancing Priorities:

3 ways to maximize your charitable deductions

Do this with your retirement portfolio if you're worried about a correction

63% of workers believe they will need less than $1 million for retirement: Survey Because of the triple-tax advantages, workers may need to revamp their retirement savings strategy. Jeanne Thompson, a senior vice president at Fidelity, recommends that people contribute to their retirement plans enough to receive matching contributions from their employer and then fund their HSAs because they have more tax advantages. Keep in mind that HSAs have much lower contribution rates than workplace retirement plans. In 2017, you (and your employer) can contribute up to $3,400 to an HSA for individuals and $6,750 for families. Account holders age 55 and older can contribute an extra $1,000. For 401(k)s and other retirement plans, you can contribute up to $18,000 this year and $6,000 more if you are age 50 and older. HSAs don't seem to crowd out 401(k) contributions and may actually be increasing overall retirement savings among workers. Employees using both a 401(k) and HSA had a higher savings rate, 10.6 percent of their 2016 salary, compared with those saving in just a 401(k), which was 8.2 percent of salary, according to a recent analysis of the employee benefit programs Fidelity manages for more than 23,000 businesses. Fidelity found that 88 percent of people who opened an HSA maintained or increased their 401(k) savings after they enrolled in an HSA. "It's almost like savings begets savings," Thompson said.



HSA contribution limits could increase

Provisions of the American Health Care Act, which passed the House by a narrow 217-213 vote on May 4, will nearly double the contribution limits for health savings accounts and give people more flexibility in how they can spend money in these tax-advantaged accounts. Though top senators have said they want to write their own health-care bill, key lawmakers in the debate are supportive of boosting the benefits of HSAs. For example, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would increase HSA contribution limits the same way as the American Health Care Act. "One of my concerns is that HSAs haven't truly been embraced by both sides of the aisle," Ramthun said. However, he is optimistic that contribution limits for HSAs will eventually be raised. "If Congress misses on the health-care bill, there is still tax reform," he said.

How to pick an HSA

You don't have to wait on Congress or President Donald Trump to open an HSA. Unlike flexible spending accounts, you don't have to "use it or lose it" with an HSA each year. In fact, more than three-quarters of HSA account holders withdraw less than they contribute, and roughly a quarter of people don't touch any money from their accounts, according to Fidelity. Your employer may direct you to sign up with its preferred HSA provider, but if you are enrolled in a qualified high-deductible health plan, you can choose whatever provider you want. However, if employers only offer matching HSA contributions to their preferred provider, it makes sense to stick with them. Roughly 80 percent of employers give "seed money" to workers to fund their HSAs, according to Fidelity. That can come in the form of a direct contribution or a dollar-for-dollar match. The average contribution at Fidelity-run plans was $541 last year. If you do receive matching contributions to your HSA, Ramthun recommends that you keep one HSA with your employer's preferred provider and open another one to use as an investment account. Devenir, an HSA consulting firm in Minneapolis, estimates that about 10 percent of the roughly 20 million HSA account holders have a balance of $5,000 or more and 4 percent of people are using their HSAs as investment plans. Many HSA providers require that you have at least $1,000 in your account before you can invest. How should people invest their HSA money? Generally, you should have enough cash in your HSA to cover expected medical expenses and invest the rest. Here are some portfolio guidelines Fidelity uses based on age:
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As businesses in the United States, China and beyond sorted through the details of the new U.S.-China trade agreements, many said they are disappointed that the 100-day plan missed larger issues such as overcapacity, forced technology transfer and equal treatment of U.S. companies. "Meaningful, yes. All progress on market access is well-received by the business community. However, many of these issues have been part of ongoing bilateral discussions for years and many more barriers need to be resolved," said James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based lawyer and former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Chinese capital. "This is a very selected list. We have to see if the Chinese live up to their promises. [The American Chamber of Commerce] and we had all hoped for a broad opening of the market, not a piecemeal opening due to political pressure," Joerg Wuttke, president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, told CNBC. However, the deal could still benefit many important companies and industries:

1) Beef and poultry producers

The U.S. has been lobbying for China to open up its market to American beef for years  it was banned in China in 2003 after a mad cow disease scare. The perception among some businessmen in the country has been that the Chinese have been sitting on the beef issue until the U.S. agreed to buy cooked poultry products made in China. Under the new plan, U.S. beef is to be imported to China "no later than July 16." Chinese poultry exports are to be realized "as soon as possible." The U.S. beef industry is an obvious winner. "Beef is a great symbolic move by the Chinese government," said Jake Parker, vice president of the U.S.-China Business Council, which has been advocating for a lifting of the ban. American companies with production in China, such as Cargill, could also benefit as the new plan theoretically allows them to export China-made chicken back to the U.S.

2) Agro-biotech companies

U.S. companies that make biotech seeds have been trying to get their genetically modified seeds approved by China's Ministry of Agriculture. Under the new plan, China is requested to make decisions on outstanding safety certificates that would eventually allow the sale of those GMO seeds in China  potentially along with other U.S. biotech products. Companies eyeing China's market include , and .

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3) Credit card providers

Credit card companies such as , and have long been frustrated with the lack of access to the Chinese market. President Barack Obama's administration brought the case against Beijing to the World Trade Organization and won in 2012. Even so, uncertain regulations have prevented these companies from applying for licenses to issue yuan credit cards. Under the new plan, China has agreed to give "full market access" to electronic payment services providers and is expected to issue implementation guidelines by mid-July. In the meantime, Chinese card issuers such as the local banks will have the option to issue dual-branded cards  which would help boost the market share in China of these American credit card companies. "We welcome today's announcement, of course, and we look forward to having full and prompt market access in China," said a representative for MasterCard in China.

4) Credit ratings agencies and two financial institutions

Credit ratings agencies like Fitch, Standard & Poor's and Moody's have a presence in China through joint ventures, but the new deal would allow wholly foreign-owned financial services firms to provide credit ratings services in China. That's a move that could help those agencies expand their business and help improve risk assessment in China's corporate debt market. (China had already proposed to fully open its credit rating market to foreign participants in late 2016, but the new plan adds a July 16 deadline.) In addition, under the new deal, China will issue both bond underwriting and settlement licenses to two qualified U.S. financial institutions by July 16. recently became the first U.S. bank to obtain a bond underwriting license in China outside of a joint venture. received a bond settlement license around the same time.

President Donald Trump (L) and China's President Xi Jinping walk along the front patio of the Mar-a-Lago estate after a bilateral meeting in Palm Beach, Florida, April 7, 2017. Carlos Barria | Reuters

The 10-point trade plan addresses other industries such as energy, but China watchers say it doesn't go far enough to tackle President Donald Trump's goal of job creation. "China just got a steady supply of liquefied natural gas, which will also reduce the deficit but not really add up to many, if any, U.S. jobs," said James McGregor, China chairman of APCO Worldwide. "I guess that helps with the administration's focus on the deficit, but it would be good to see some action on Made in China 2025 and the other very aggressive industrial policies." The Trump administration may have scored some political points with Beijing by referencing the importance of the Belt and Road Initiative  an economic plan unveiled by President Xi Jinping and to be discussed in a two-day meeting in Beijing starting Sunday. "President Trump is a clever man and he is now looking for global investors, including Chinese investors," Xu Hongcai, an economist at the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, told CNBC. "This will help in U.S. economy in infrastructure, ports, bridges, railways and roads  areas where the U.S. is weak and China has advantages. China can expand its investments in these areas."  CNBC's Daisy Li contributed to this report. Watch: You may soon be buying imported Chinese chicken
Salvador Dauvergen, a serial entrepreneur from California, bustled around a co-working space in Bali, Indonesia on a Monday morning greeting familiar faces. He was wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip flops  or as he referred to it, the Bali business suit.

His surrounding is casual, even by entrepreneurial standards, with open-air work spaces overlooking a rice field, hammocks and a room for air conditioning. Outside of the office is a street  filled with inexpensive massage places and fresh smoothie shops  which leads to the Monkey Forest.

Burnt out by Silicon Valley's lifestyle, Dauvergen recently relocated to Bali to begin his next start-up in the food industry, about which he's hesitant to offer specifics since he has yet to launch.

"I have the same work day in terms of hours, but my stress level is incredibly lower compared to back home," he said. "I talk to a lot of my friends in the start-up world and tell them this is the new frontier."

Dauvergen said he thinks there is "app fatigue" in the U.S., which is one of many reasons he set his eyes on Southeast Asia for his next venture. While his long-term vision is tapping into Indonesia's vast 257 million population increasingly coming online, he's also thinking about the new lifestyle.

"Getting to a meeting from Oakland to downtown San Francisco is a lot of stress," he said. "Everything else there is so much more complex and here life is easier."

"The cost of living, deployment, marketing is substantially lower," he said of Bali. Similar to when he was in California, he still outsources to contractors outside the U.S., but being in Indonesia has an added benefit: He's now on a similar timezone with many of his developers in Asian countries, he said.

It's not just remote islands to which entrepreneurs are flocking.

After receiving doctorates from Stanford, MQ Wang and Tony Zhang formed tech start-up Zero Zero Robotics, and based the company in Beijing. The company's flagship product, drone camera HoverCam, is marketed and sold around the world and recently just announced a partnership to sell in Apple stores. While the start-up has an office in Silicon Valley, its headquarters are in Beijing, with more offices in Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

A few years ago, Wang and Zhang likely would have stayed in Silicon Valley  but not today.

Global venture funding was down 23 percent last year, but fell 28 percent in Silicon Valley, according to a report by PwC and CB Insights/MoneyTree.

Meanwhile, the share of unicorns  companies valued at more than $1 billion  located outside the U.S. has gone from 30 percent in 2013 to 58 percent last year.

Still, Silicon Valley obviously maintains an appeal for many would-be entrepreneurs, as it offers deep funding and talent reservoirs that are largely unrivaled. But as people now have unprecedented access to technology and resources from just about anywhere in the globe, that preeminence may be increasingly less important.
Most Americans don't care about the deficit because it doesn't affect their day-to-day lives, a top real estate executive and friend of President Donald Trump told CNBC on Friday.

"I don't wake up at night worrying about deficits," said Howard Lober, chairman of Douglas Elliman.

Lorber's comment came during a discussion on "Squawk Box" of what changes the Trump administration could make to spur economic growth, including tax reform. Trump has said lower tax rates, particularly for U.S. businesses, would boost the economy.

In an interview this week with The Economist, Trump acknowledged his tax plan would increase the budget deficit, if only for a short time to "prime the pump" for growth.

"I heard for 40 years, 'your children will be in debt, your grandchildren will be in debt,'" Lorber said. "I don't think anybody cares."

With tax reform, he argued, the U.S. deficit will then take care of itself.

But according to a recent CNBC All-America Survey, reducing deficits ranks higher than cutting business taxes in the list of the public's priorities. And when asked to choose directly between cutting the deficit or generally cutting taxes, 39 percent said the deficit is more important, compared with 22 percent who favored cutting taxes.

According to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted in early December, the federal deficit ranked 6 percentage points higher than taxes as what Americans view are the most important issues facing the country.

Many Republicans, including influential Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, have said any tax reforms should be deficit-neutral. After Trump's address to a joint session of Congress in February, Portman cautioned in a CNBC interview about adding to deficits and the nearly $20 trillion national debt.

To Lorber's broader point, however, according to data from June 2010 to 2015 from Poll Reporting, the percentage of Americans citing debts and deficits as a top priority has declined.
FBI director James Comey Getty Images

The country is obviously better off if James Comey is replaced as FBI director by someone who is good at running the FBI  it's a large and important government agency that carries out many crucial functions. But in terms of the immediate obstruction of justice crisis kicked off by President Donald Trump's decision to fire Comey, it's important to be clear. Choosing a new FBI director, no matter how well-qualified or how sterling his reputation for independence and integrity, doesn't fix the problem. The problem is that the president can, legally speaking, fire the FBI director if he wants to. And he just fired the FBI director for pursuing investigations into the president's ties to Russia with excessive rigor. For Senate Republicans, the idea of the Good Comey Replacement serves a critical psychological and political role. It allows them to acknowledge that there was something alarming and suspicious about Comey's dismissal without committing them to a fight with the Trump administration. They simply need to convince the White House to nominate someone well-qualified and then move on to cutting taxes. More from Vox:

Trump has now admitted he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation

Trump is threatening to release secret Comey "tapes" and cancel press briefings

Trump just picked a fight with the FBI. The FBI can punch back  hard.

But the Comey firing bell can't be unrung. The independence of the FBI is now inherently compromised. And faced with a White House that's willing to violate the norms governing presidential involvement in the investigative process, either there will be the forceful pushback from the legislative branch that most Republicans want to avoid or else oversight of the Trump administration will be woefully lacking. There's no middle path.

Trump has fatally compromised FBI independence

The FBI has operated, since its inception, with a greater degree of independence from the White House than your average federal agency. The director is a presidential appointee, but in practice the FBI as an institution has worked more like the uniformed military than like other parts of the administration. The president is statutorily permitted to fire the FBI director, but the statute also states that the director will serve a 10-year term, indicating a presumption that he will not be fired at the president's whim. This is in part a question of law, but it's largely a question of norms. Nobody says that Trump "fired" former Treasury Secretary Jack Lew because the new president always brings in a new Treasury secretary. The FBI isn't like that. Jimmy Carter appointed William H. Webster to the job in 1978, and he ended up serving almost through to the end of Ronald Reagan's administration. George H.W. Bush only served one term in office and ended up not appointing a new FBI director at all. The only previous firing of an FBI director, by Bill Clinton in 1993, happened in response to specific allegations of financial wrongdoing that were made by the Bush administration's attorney general, not as a post hoc pretext ginned up at the behest of the West Wing. The upshot of these norms is that the president is not supposed to be in a position to tell the FBI what it can and can't investigate. Trump has changed that norm by firing Comey on a thin pretext out of anger over the Russia investigation. The fact that the cover story isn't remotely plausible  and that the White House immediately began leaking to the effect that it was false  is crucial here. Whoever is chosen as Comey's successor, and all of that person's subordinates, will know the truth about what happened and will have to behave accordingly.

Republicans have to choose
Anger at the collusive ties between government and business was at the heart of the protests that led to the impeachment of Mr. Moon's predecessor, Park Geun- hye . During the election campaign, Mr. Moon vowed to end that corruption, but he also promised to address other factors that had fueled the revolt: skyrocketing household debt , high youth unemployment and stagnant wages, all of which are hobbling the economy.

"Unfortunately, because we ourselves do not see the future of Korea as so rosy, I do not want to bring up children in this unpromising society," said Bang Seong-deok, 26, a civil engineering Ph.D. student taking a break with a friend outside a classroom block on Wednesday. "I think that mentality is persistent among many of my peers."

Many students, who might have been expected to celebrate the victory of a liberal, Moon Jae-in, to the presidency on Tuesday, instead spoke of fears about their prospects in a country plagued by corruption, household debt and other economic ills.

The day after South Korea elected a new president, the mood on the campus of Yonsei University in Seoul was bleak.

[Moon] is a very sincere person, and I think he will try his best, but it's a much bigger problem. It's not something that you can fix by tweaking one or two issues. They are all related to each other.

He faces daunting obstacles as he tries to overhaul entrenched practices and deliver on ambitious campaign promises in a country that has yet to complete the tough transition from tiger economy to developed society.

Mr. Moon, whose party spent nearly a decade in opposition, "is a very sincere person, and I think he will try his best, but it's a much bigger problem," said Gi- wook Shin, director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center at Stanford. "It's not something that you can fix by tweaking one or two issues. They are all related to each other."

In the food court of a student lounge at Yonsei, Lee Ji-won, 23, a public administration major, said her friends often described the moribund state of their country as "Hell Chosun," a reference to the last dynasty of Korea, which lasted for five centuries.

Ms. Lee, who aspires to be a lawyer, said she worried about eventually having to take care of her parents and grandparents. Although just over half of voters in their 20s and 30s cast their ballots for Mr. Moon, according to exit polls, Ms. Lee did not vote for him. She said she was not convinced that he would be able to pay for his economic policy prescriptions.

During the past decade when conservatives were in power, they tried to recapture the high-growth years that characterized South Korea's dynamic postwar rise from poverty. Much of that growth was turbocharged by chaebol , the family-controlled conglomerates like Hyundai and Samsung that dominate the economy and in which vast wealth is concentrated.

Because the chaebol tend to guarantee lifetime employment to an elite group of employees, those who do not secure these jobs have grown disaffected. And since the chaebol effectively wield monopolistic powers over their suppliers, workers at smaller businesses that depend on the large companies for their revenue often suffer from depressed wages and tough working conditions.

Those factors have exacerbated income inequality in South Korea, and young people in particular are affected as they scramble to compete for a small pool of prestigious jobs at the chaebol or accept lower-paid work at smaller companies. In many cases, they cannot find jobs at all. The youth unemployment rate here is nearly 10 percent.

In a country with one of the lowest birthrates in the world and a rapidly aging society, improving conditions for young South Koreans is vital.

"Koreans really have to think hard about how to motivate young people and meet them part way, not only with job opportunities but better working environments," said Katharine H. S. Moon, a professor of political science at Wellesley College.

They are "the backs on which the middle-aged and elderly people are going to be eating, sleeping and surviving for the next few decades," she added.

Some economists have also expressed skepticism about how Mr. Moon's administration will finance his plans, which include pledges to create 810,000 public sector jobs and subsidize living expenses for young people during job searches.

Some measures could work in the short term, economists said, but would not be sustainable.

"If we do not have a sufficient financing plan, it will be hard to maintain that system for the long term," said Taeyoon Sung, a professor of economics at Yonsei University.

Kim Sang-jo, a professor of economics at Hansung University in Seoul and an adviser to Mr. Moon, said creating government jobs and offering subsidies were just early steps.

"It is the role of the government to stimulate the market in the first stage to fix the market that hasn't been running smoothly," Mr. Kim said in an interview shortly after the election. He said the "trickle down" model of the chaebol was no longer working. But, he added, "Of course the government cannot solve all problems."

Mr. Moon's public job creation plan met with mixed reviews even among students studying for the exams that are required to land jobs in the bureaucracy.

In the Noryangjin neighborhood of Seoul, which is home to several cram schools dedicated to preparing for the exams, Yoon Bo-mi, 26, a nutrition major, said she was studying for the test because she did not think private corporations offered enough good opportunities.

"To be honest, I don't think that young people all learning to become bureaucrats is so desirable for society," she said.

Economists say that for South Korea to create many more private sector jobs, it needs to open up the market for entrepreneurs and prevent the chaebol from taking over start-ups before they have the chance to expand.

The government needs to nurture "a business ecosystem that is more ably disposed to start-ups protecting their intellectual property rights and giving them better financial access and incubating and supporting them," said Lim Wonhyuk, professor of economic development at the KDI School of Public Policy and Management in Sejong City.

For now, many entrepreneurs are concentrated in the retail and restaurant sectors. The fate of Reo Sushi Maguro, a cozy restaurant in the heart of Seoul, is a sobering illustration of the challenges facing Mr. Moon.

Around the corner from several government office buildings, Reo Sushi, which specialized in premium tuna sashimi, enjoyed a bustling business as corporate executives treated civil servants to expensive meals.

But in September, the legislature passed an anticorruption law barring public servants from accepting a meal worth more than 30,000 won, about $27, to avoid a potential conflict of interest. Reo Sushi's business took a dive.

To cover costs as well as replace lost income, the owner, Oh Sung-min, 39, began borrowing money at high interest rates, until the debt spiraled to about $266,000.

Mr. Oh's wife, Chung Sora, 35, a beauty salon owner who only learned the extent of the debt two weeks ago, blames the antigraft law.

"I think it's ridiculous," she said. "The politicians may have thought we will try to regulate people's bad behavior, but so many shops closed as a result."

Mr. Oh, who decided to close his sushi place after a government counselor agreed to help him develop a 10-year debt-repayment plan, is in a familiar situation. Economists say small-business owners have taken out a large portion of the country's about $1.19 trillion in household debt.

Mr. Oh, the father of a toddler, will depend on Ms. Chung's beauty salon to support the family for now. Ms. Chung, who recently took on her own debt to expand the salon, said she was determined to pay off her husband's debt in a year.



As Mr. Oh served final customers this week, he said he had plans to start fresh with a new restaurant, this time offering chicken ribs and cheaper tuna dishes. Still, he was not quite as optimistic as his wife.

"Of course, it is most Korean people's wish to tell the president and the next administration to revive the economy," he said. "But I think that is actually a very difficult task."
When I was preparing to speak to a group of Black corporate directors several years ago, I was asked a straightforward question: How much money does the foundation I run invest with firms owned by women or minorities? We had recently made a $7 million investment in Lloyd Trotter's GenNx Capital Partners, but what else?

I didn't know the answer, so I called our CFO. He paused for a minute, and replied: $7 million. No, no, I said. Not just the new investment. What's the total amount of assets under management by women and people of color? And he said that, yes, the answer is still $7 millionon an endowment that was then $2 billion. That works out to just three percent.

I was surprised. And I decided we needed a new approach. Three years later, Knight Foundation's investment in diverse firms had soared to $200 million. Today, we have almost a half-billion dollars invested with diverse asset managers, roughly a quarter of our endowment.

How did we do it? And what did we learn?

Let's start with the obvious. It's no secret that finance has long been a white man's club. Even in 2017, as women and minorities make significant strides in the industry, managerial ranks remain remarkably homogenous. And, whether we're talking about hedge funds or mutual funds, private equity or real estate trusts, there is not a single field with more than 5 percent of its assets managed by minority or women-owned firms, according to a recently released Knight Foundation report.

This dearth of diversity in the top echelons of the industry can be self-reinforcing. Our previous investment strategy allowed for investing in minority and women-owned funds. Our approach was to invest in firms with a certain baseline of assets under management, and an established, long-term track-record. While individual asset managers may have had the requisite experience, ownership of firms by minorities and women was more recent, so they didn't meet the institutional ownership threshold. Working with Cambridge Associates, we developed a different approach, focused on talent and individual track records, a fit within the foundation's investment strategy, and a manager's ability to deliver results.

Everyone we talked to had the same reaction, solicited or not: insisting on diversity on the grants side of the foundation was one thing, but insisting on the same on the investment side was risky. We could lose money and appear to fail in our fiduciary obligation to care for the endowment. But we had faith that with careful screening, diverse funds could match the returns we were used to seeing.

They did match the returns  and slightly surpassed them.

Not everyone succeeded brilliantly. But our experience convinced us that, contrary to conventional wisdom, any investor can pursue diverse management strategies without sacrificing profits.

To make sure our experience wasn't an anomaly, we set out to study the state of diversity in asset management ownership. That study, carried out by Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner and the Bella Research Group, confirms our experience: there is no discernible difference in how diverse and non-diverse funds perform. There is no performance gap to justify the substantial representation gap in fund ownership and management.

In some fields, such as private equity, female-owned firms make up a disproportionately large share of the top quartile earners. Minority-owned hedge funds have seen similarly strong returns. It shouldn't be breaking news that, when given the same opportunities as white men, women and minorities can, and do, perform just as well.

Yet, even as the number of diverse-owned funds continues to rise, their overall presence in the financial industry remains low. According to the report, just 1.1 percent of the $71.4 trillion assets under management across the world is in the hands of women and minority-owned firms. In a field of philanthropies and educational institutions that profess to value inclusion and equality, innovative people and ideas, the data suggest emotional behavior by people who are making decisions to hire only people who look like themselves or whom they've known for a long time.

If you take anything from our experience, let it be this: there is no legitimate reason to not invest with diverse asset managers in the 21st century. Our decision to invest nearly $500 million with diverse managers was not an act of altruism. We believe diversity and inclusion in the workplace leads to broader-based, smarter decision-making. That includes investments. And that's a lesson for everyone.

We carried out our diversity investments with two goals in mind: make money and do the right thing. Our new study shows they go hand-in-hand.

Commentary by Alberto Ibarguen, president, CEO and a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Follow CNBC's Opinion section on Twitter @CNBCopinion.
Amazon 's potential for global growth is "enormous," billionaire investor Mark Cuban told CNBC Thursday, shortly after increasing his holdings in the e-commerce and cloud computing company.

Cuban said he believes FANG stocks  Facebook , Amazon, Netflix and Google parent Alphabet continue to be undervalued but the opportunity for the online retailer is especially large.

"It's the ultimate [artificial intelligence] company, it's the ultimate start-up," he said, arguing that the company has mastered the art of pre-emptive selling.

"When Amazon talks about opening up grocery stores, it's not because they want to sell groceries in stores. It's the same with bookstores. It's because they want to know what you need, when you need it, before you know you need it so they can deliver it right to your door in anticipation," he said.

"They become prescriptive, and the opportunity there, globally, is enormous."

Cuban is the owner of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theatres, Magnolia Pictures, and chairman of cable network AXS. He also is a panelist on "Shark Tank."

Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable rights to "Shark Tank."

Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook.
US Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin arrives for a G7 summit of Finance Ministers on May 12, 2017 in Bari.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emphasized the Trump administration's excitement after the U.S. and China announced a series of trade measures aimed at improving the trade balance between Washington and Beijing.

When asked how he planned to defend the Trump administration's "America First" trade policies at a G-7 meeting of finance ministers in Italy, Mnuchin told CNBC, "We're excited about U.S. trade policies and I think you probably saw last night, we made an announcement of a 100 day economic plan with the Chinese, so I think we're very happy with how we are proceeding on trade."

On Thursday evening, the U.S. and China struck a deal which would open China to exports of U.S. beef and chicken and, at the same time, give access to U.S. financial companies in areas in China such as card payment services and credit ratings.

Mnuchin arrived in Italy's southern seaside town of Bari on Friday with representatives from Europe, Japan and Canada hopeful he would shed some light on the direction of President Trump's key policies.

Although protectionism was technically off the agenda at the G-7 meeting, Trump's "America First" pledge had prompted global concerns regarding trade relationships between the world's largest economy and other nations.
That's me, right after the dealer handed over the keys.

When I realized my time with my beloved 2001 Honda Civic was nearly over, I started to think about buying or leasing a car. I walked into a dealership knowing I wasn't going to buy anything that day, but wanting to test drive a specific car and practice my negotiating skills. Right now, it's more important than ever to understand that a sales person at a car dealership will almost always tell you you can afford a car, and likely present you with loads of appealing financing options. According to Bloomberg, deep subprime auto loans are surging, which means that lots of folks who historically have had trouble paying off their debts are being granted access to attractive financing opportunities. Dealers are offering riskier loans, and default rates are increasing. Some have even likened the situation to the subprime mortgage crisis. If you want to buy a car, don't want until you show up at the dealership to find out if you can actually afford to buy one. After I crunched some numbers and came up with a car budget that felt reasonable, I did some research and decided to follow one key rule: Never accept the first offer, whether it's the sticker price or whatever deal the salesman puts before you.

Ian Forsyth | Getty Images

That guideline served me well, but, based on my own successful experience, I came away with a lesson that was just as simple, and equally useful, for getting a great price: Don't mention money. Strange, right? But it works. If you act like money doesn't matter and instead keep the focus on your ambivalence about the car, you turn the normal situation around. The salesperson must strive to convince you of the merits of their product using every tool at their disposal, including lowering the price. Here's how you get there. 1. Practice Use your first time at the negotiation rodeo as a rehearsal, even if it means test-driving a car you're not even interested in. That way, when it comes time for you to sign a piece of paper, you won't doubt yourself and wonder if you could have done better. 2. Act unenthusiastic, even unconvinced, about the product I walked into the dealership and asked to test drive the 2017 Honda Fit. After I'd gone a few blocks, I made no sign that I was won over by the car. I appeared ambivalent. When we went back inside the dealership, the salesman sat me down and handed me a piece of paper. It said they could offer me a lease of $250 a month for 36 months and the ability to put 15,000 miles on the car every year. As I had been told to do, I asked if that was the best he could do on the price, and he immediately brought it down from $250 to $229. It's a salesperson's job to sell you a car, and they have two ways to do it: Convince you that the price is great or convince you that the car is great. Shifting the conversation to the car itself puts you in a more powerful position.

When the salesman presented me with $229, I told him I was going to be honest and I wasn't super concerned with the price but with the car itself. "Part of me thinks I should check out comparable cars to make sure the Honda Fit is the best one," I said. Doing that shifted the conversation away from money to why I needed to buy a Honda. With a few words, I sent the signal that I might be taking my business elsewhere. The fact that he wanted to keep me in the dealership enticed him to work harder. That ended up being my ticket to a great price. The salesman spent 10 minutes showing me specs of comparable cars against the specs of the Honda. He told me I could go out and test drive tons of options but I would 100 percent come back to the Fit. Why not save the time, he asked me, and just lease this car for $190 a month? That was $60 lower than their initial offer from 15 minutes before.
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, is feeling OK about markets and the economy right now, but he is getting really worried about the future.

"Big picture, the near term looks good and the longer term looks scary," Dalio wrote in a LinkedIn blog post Friday.

"We fear that whatever the magnitude of the downturn that eventually comes, whenever it eventually comes, it will likely produce much greater social and political conflict than currently exists," he said.

Bridgewater manages $150 billion.

Dalio listed four reasons for his pessimism:

1. Economic growth "at or near its best" with no major economic risks in the next two years. 2. "Significant long-term problems" such as high debt levels and limited central bank power "that are likely to create a squeeze." Required payments for social programs including pensions and health care are also increasing. 3. Social and political conflicts "near their worst for the last number of decades." 4. "Conflicts get worse when economies worsen."

Productivity necessary for raising living standards is low, while social tensions over income inequality and politics are increasing, the hedge fund manager said.

"Since such tensions are normally correlated with overall economic conditions, it is unusual for social and political tensions to be so bad when overall economic and market conditions are so good," he said.

U.S. stocks are at record highs, while political conflict is elevated based on a Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia index created by looking at newspaper articles, Dalio noted.

"The idea of conflicts getting even worse in a downturn is scary," he said.

Source: Ray Dalio, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

To be sure, Dalio said asset prices "look about right to us." He expects low returns from investments, which is slightly better than holding cash.

"There are no debt crises on the horizon," Dalio said. The overall global economy "is at equilibrium."
It's a great time to be a telecom investment banker and it may get a lot better. The value of telecom M&A deals is already up 27 percent year to date to $38.8 billion through Thursday, according to Thomson Reuters data. And that was before Bloomberg News reported Sprint approached T-Mobile-owner Deutsche Telekom to discuss a merger with the U.S. wireless carrier.

T-Mobile has a current market value of $54 billion compared with Sprint's $32 billion, according to FactSet. Given the size of the companies a merger between the two wireless carriers would be the largest deal of the year.

Johnson & Johnson's $31.4 billion acquisition of Actelion in January was the biggest deal so far in 2017, according to Dealogic data.



"The TMT [tech media telecom] sector has been one of the hottest sectors in the last few years, and if a T-Mobile-Sprint merger goes ahead, it would push deal volume in this sector this year to levels not seen since before the financial crisis," Dealogic's head of Americas M&A research, Agnieszka Zalecka, wrote in an email. "The deal will face huge regulatory scrutiny, and previous talks for Sprint to buy T-Mobile fell through in 2014 because of regulatory concerns."



As mentioned, Sprint was forced to abandon its attempt to acquire T-Mobile three years ago. However, the companies may believe large telecom consolidation is possible under the President Donald Trump administration.



Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges also hinted Thursday, he is open to a T-Mobile deal.



"Purely theoretically, we can see several advantages to consolidation and convergence," Hoettges said according to a Reuters report. "The strong position we have established for ourselves gives us the time and space to evaluate all options together with colleagues in the U.S."



If the merger talks get serious, other companies may decide to jump into the fray. Bloomberg News reported in April that Sprint thinks it may get acquisition interest from cable companies such as Comcast , Charter and Altice.



Sprint shares closed up 1 percent on Friday, while T-Mobile stock closed down slightly negative. Both companies did not immediately return requests for comment.



Disclosure: Comcast is the owner of NBCUniversal, the parent company of CNBC and CNBC.com.

Watch: CEO Legere on deal chatter
Investors knew retailers were struggling, but it wasn't until this week's financial reports that they were able to gauge how much sales had deteriorated due to slowing foot traffic.

Department store operators Macy's , Dillard's , Kohl's and Nordstrom each reported first-quarter results on Thursday sparking a selloff in the sector, which continued Friday as Wall Street awaits a slew of more retailers' earnings to come.

Retailers have been under pressure as more sales shift online, helping Amazon and other online players like Wayfair.

"A decade ago we were talking about how to compete with Wal-Mart's everyday low prices, now it's Amazon," Thomson Reuters Director of Research Jharonne Martis told CNBC on Friday. "Reducing [store] footprints is a good way to go; they can reinvest in e-commerce. But it's not only rethinking e-commerce ... you also have to appeal to millennials."

As of Friday morning, shares of Macy's were down more than 17 percent for the week, while Dillard's stock was down 20 percent, Kohl's was down 11 percent, and Nordstrom's stock has dropped about 15 percent since Monday.

J.C. Penney reported disappointing quarterly same-store sales Friday morning, which dragged shares of the stock at one point down to $4.78, a fresh intraday low not seen since 2014.

The S&P 500 Retail ETF (XRT) was falling near 1.5 percent Friday, trading on pace to mark its second consecutive negative day and its worst week since March.

The one winner of the retail sector is Wayfair , whose shares are up more than 27 percent for the week and are trading on pace for their best day since 2015. The internet retailer's shares rallied Tuesday after Wayfair reported better-than-expected first-quarter results, boosted by greater furniture sales.

Now that many of the department store chains have reported earnings, it's time for big-box retailers Wal-Mart and Target to take the stage. These two companies, along with names like Home Depot , TJ Maxx , Dick's Sporting Goods and Gap , are scheduled to report earnings next week.

The overarching narrative for much of the retail industry into the first half of 2017 has been store closures and bankruptcies.

For example, Bebe is shuttering all of its 180 locations, and more store closures are expected from hunting-and-fishing outlet Gander Mountain following its recent bankruptcy auction.

"Retailers have pledged to close over 3,600 stores since the start of the year, which means closures in 2017 have already exceeded those in 2016 by a wide margin," Fung Global Retail & Technology analyst Deborah Weinswig said in a statement. "We expect more announcements in the coming months, particularly for stores located in lower-grade malls."

Retailers' business models are broken, RBC Capital Markets' Brian Tunick told CNBC during an interview on Friday.

What's happened to stocks lately  the downward trend  "tells you the market doesn't believe a lot of these companies will be around five to 10 years from now," Tunick said.
The chief executive of one of Apple 's biggest semiconductor suppliers has insisted that smartphone technology comprises just one aspect of the business's three-pronged efforts to boost revenues by $1 billion this year, in a bid to abate concerns that Apple could be about to begin a mass withdrawal from its partner network.

"The smartphone is an important part of our business, but from a market point of view we have a huge, huge focus on smart driving and the internet of things," STMicroelectronics ' Carlo Bozotti told CNBC Friday as he outlined his "aggressive plan" to increase revenues by 14 percent to $8 billion in 2017.

Bozotti underlined the company's diversified technology offering, which extends to smart driving  both quasi-autonomous and fully-autonomous  as well as developments in the internet of things, in a bid to reassure investors whose faith in suppliers of semiconductor technology has been shaken by indications that Apple is to move its hardware capabilities in-house.

When the Cupertino company announced in April that it would be "reducing its future reliance" on fellow semiconductor supplier Imagination Technologies, the supplier's shares plummeted more than 70 percent.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) , an economic bloc comprising of 10 member nations, celebrates its 50th birthday this year and its embrace of digitization was a key theme at the WEF's annual event.

A Muslim woman uses her phone before the start of an evening mass prayer session in Indonesia.

"In the context of the industrial revolutions, this is the first time Southeast Asian companies can compete with global players... It's the first time for Southeast Asian companies to be champions," Patrick Walujo, co-founder of private equity firm Northstar Advisors, said at the WEF on Thursday. Walujo's Singapore-based firm is a backer of Indonesian unicorn Go-Jek and manages more than $2 billion in equity capital.

ASEAN will take a long time to catch up to first-world nations in the realm of traditional industries, such as manufacturing, "but the eco-system for digitization is different, so that's an opportunity for us," he continued.

The region's digital economy already generates $150 billion in revenues per year, according to data from A.T Kearney, led by the information and communication technology (ICT) sector.

Venture capitalists have long remained bullish on ASEAN and now, a growing degree of regional cooperation between neighboring countries is fanning even further optimism. Speaking at the WEF, Paul Bragiel, founding partner of Silicon Valley-based venture firm Bragiel Brothers, outlined several improvements he's witnessed in the region's tech scene over recent years.

Not only have the quality of investors increased, entrepreneurs are also helping each other out, he explained. "That's how you move faster. When we invest, we're also gathering knowledge among start-ups so we can avoid repeating mistakes. That's part of the digital leapfrogging."

But plenty of roadblocks still remains for ASEAN to truly become a digital champion.

"We have great young talent but they haven't had opportunities to develop large companies," Tan Hooi Ling, co-founder of Southeast Asian ride-hailing app Grab, told CNBC on Thursday.

The businesswoman, who usually prefers to let CEO Anthony Tan handle media interviews, explained that five-year-old Grab was now at a mature enough stage to start giving back to the region, noting the firm's recent $700 million investment in Indonesia and newly-launched research and development centers across Asia and the U.S. Grab also holds regular talks with regional governments on promoting cashless societies, Tan said.
President Donald Trump, in an interview on NBC News, called James Comey a "showboat," saying he was going to fire him as FBI director even before a Justice recommendation. Trump also revealed he asked Comey whether he was under investigation for alleged ties to Russia.

Despite what Trump told NBC, Comey did not seek a dinner with the president to retain his job. That's according to one current and one former FBI official close to Comey. Sources said the White House requested the January dinner.

President Trump on NBC defended his decisions to oust Comey quickly and wait to terminate national security advisor Michael Flynn. Trump also reiterated he fired Flynn because he misled the vice president over whether he discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador.

Trump on NBC again firmly denied that he has any financial links to Russia. While saying the investigations into his campaign were "set up by the Democrats," he said he backs a full investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The New Yorker, long known for its comedic covers that flirt with controversy, is taking on the firing Comey and in the process comparing it to the national outrage over the passenger who was forcibly removed from a United Airlines flight.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the U.S. and China have agreed to expand trade in beef and chicken, and increase access for financial firms, as part of a plan to reduce the massive Washington deficit with Beijing. (Reuters)

Mexico sent a stark message to the Trump administration, saying an upcoming visit by Mexican officials to China showed Latin America's second largest economy had other places to export to if he tore up the NAFTA trade deal. (Reuters)

A new directive from Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions has reversed Obama-era policies on charging and sentencing nonviolent drug offenders and orders federal prosecutors to seek harsher penalties. (NY Times)

Trump has signed an executive order, targeting the federal government's notorious vulnerability to cyber threats, mandating one set of standards and making the heads of each government agency responsible for security. (NBC News)

Apple (AAPL) announced today Corning (GLW) will receive $200 million from Apple's new Advanced Manufacturing Fund as part of the company's commitment revealed earlier this month on CNBC to foster innovation among U.S. manufacturers. (Press Release)

Japan's SoftBank is pledging to invest $5 billion in China's leading ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing. Last year, Apple invested $1 billion in Didi. Separately, Softbank is putting $500 million into a U.K. virtual reality startup. (WSJ & CNBC)
When Canada Goose went public earlier this year, there were scores of investors ready to nestle the winter coat maker into their portfolios. One surprising IPO buyer was PETA, the animal-rights activist organization often thought of publishing graphic pictures of animals in distress and throwing paint on fur-clad pedestrians.

The public may not think of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as the Wall Street types, but the group has a sizable portfolio that includes dozens of companies.

They're not in it for the money: By purchasing shares, PETA earns the ability to appear at annual shareholder meetings and introduce shareholder resolutions to further their cause. Each stock is bought with a particular issue the groups wants to focus on, from a pharmaceutical company that tests its products on animals to lonely whales in an aquarium.
Tory Burch is a fashion icon who sits at the helm of her namesake fashion brand that in 2016 did more than $1 billion in sales. She's ambitious, and proud to be. But in the course of her career, she's also passed on tremendous professional opportunity. In 2001, she got the job offer of a lifetime: President a LVMH Group, the influential Paris fashion house that owns luxury brands including Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior, Fendi, Dom Perignon and Veuve Clicquot, among many others.

But Burch  who had worked her way up the fashion corporate ladder, holding positions Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang and Narciso Rodriguez at Loewe  had two small sons at home and was pregnant with her third. She was faced with the prospect of raising three young kids and being at the helm of one of the largest fashion companies in the world. "[I] realized I just wouldn't be able to do both well," says Burch, speaking recently at the Vanity Fair Founders Fair in New York City. She turned down promotion to focus on raising her young children.

Though it was the right decision for Burch, she didn't take it lightly. "It was very hard to leave a career that I really loved," she says. Indeed, LVMH is a leader in the fashion world. Today, LVMH's market cap is north of $127 billion and the company did more than $40 billion in revenue in 2016. (When Burch was offered the position of President, LVMH was not quite as big as is today, but the conglomerate, first established in 1987, has long been a behemoth.)

Ambition can mean being a stay-at-home mom. It's not necessarily about work. It's about having the confidence to live your life the way you choose to. Tory Burch CEO Tory Burch

In the end, Burch couldn't stay away from the business for long. She launched Tory Burch in 2004 with a retail shop on Elizabeth Street in New York City with her now ex-husband, Chris Burch. She wanted to fill what she perceived to be a wide and vacant chasm in the fashion industry between haute couture and Gap. Today Tory Burch has more than 200 retail storefronts around the world and the brand is sold at more than 3,000 department stores and boutiques in addition to online.
President Donald Trump, in an exclusive interview Thursday with NBC News' Lester Holt, called ousted FBI chief James Comey a "showboat" and revealed he asked Comey whether he was under investigation for alleged ties to Russia.

"I actually asked him" if I were under investigation, Trump said, noting that he spoke with Comey once over dinner and twice by phone.

"I said, if it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, 'You are not under investigation.'"

"I know I'm not under investigation," Trump told Holt during the 31-minute White House interview.

The president also said he supports a full investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. election last year, saying he wants the probe to be done "absolutely properly."

It would be highly unusual for someone who might be the focus of an FBI probe to ask whether he was under investigation and to be directly told by the FBI director that he was not. Several legal experts told NBC News the president's action was improper.

More from NBC News:

Fact Checking Donald Trump's Interview With NBC's Lester Holt

Current, Former FBI Officials Dispute Trump Account of Comey Meeting

Experts: Trump's Alleged Conversations With Comey Improper

The president reiterated his claim that he had been planning to fire Comey even before he received Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's recommendation to do so.

"He's a showboat, he's grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil," Trump said of Comey in his wide-ranging interview with Holt. "You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that."

Holt asked Trump if he was "angry with Mr. Comey because of his Russia investigation."

"I just want somebody that's competent," Trump responded. "I am a big fan of the FBI, I love the FBI."

Trump said he never tried to pressure Comey into dropping the FBI probe of the Trump campaign and insisted, "I want to find out if there was a problem in the election having to do with Russia."

"As far as I'm concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly," Trump said. "Maybe I'll expand that, you know, lengthen the time (of the Russia probe) because it should be over with, in my opinion, should have been over with a long time ago. 'Cause all it is, is an excuse but I said to myself, I might even lengthen out the investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people."
United States Court of Appeals, Federal Circuit. NOVA CHEMICALS CORPORATION (CANADA), Nova Chemicals Inc. (Delaware), PlaintiffsAppellants v. DOW CHEMICAL COMPANY, DefendantAppellee 2016-1576 Decided: May 11, 2017

Before Prost, Chief Judge, Dyk and Hughes, Circuit Judges. Donald Robert Dunner, Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner, LLP, Washington, DC, argued for plaintiffs-appellants. Also represented by Mark J. Feldstein, Darrell Christopher Karl. Raymond N. Nimrod, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, New York, NY, argued for defendant-appellee. Also represented by William Adams, Cleland B. Welton, II; Harry J. Roper, Aaron A. Barlow, Paul David Margolis, Jenner & Block LLP, Chicago, IL.

NOVA Chemicals Corp. (Canada) and NOVA Chemicals Inc. (Delaware) (collectively, NOVA) appeal the district court's award of approximately $2.5 million in attorney fees to Dow Chemical Co. (Dow) under 35 U.S.C.  285. NOVA filed the underlying action in equity, seeking relief from a prior judgment that it had infringed certain Dow patents. The only issue in this appeal is whether the district court abused its discretion in finding this case exceptional for purposes of  285. Because it did not abuse its discretion, we affirm.

I. Background

We provide only a brief summary of the background, which is recounted in more detail in our opinions addressing the merits of the underlying patent litigation. See Dow Chem. Co. v. Nova Chems. Corp. (Canada) (Dow I), 458 Fed.Appx. 910 (Fed. Cir. 2012); see also Dow Chem. Co. v. Nova Chems. Corp. (Canada) (Dow II), 803 F.3d 620, 635 (Fed. Cir. 2015), cert. denied, 136 S. Ct. 2452 (2016).

A

In 2005, Dow filed an infringement action in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, alleging that NOVA infringed U.S. Patent No. 5,847,053 and U.S. Patent No. 6,111,023 (the asserted patents). NOVA asserted numerous defenses, including arguments that the accused product did not infringe and that Dow lacked standing to sue because it had transferred ownership of the asserted patents. The court held a jury trial, followed by a bench trial on standing. The district court ultimately held that Dow had standing to sue and entered judgment against NOVA for over $61 million in damages (the 2010 judgment). J.A. 442; see also Dow Chem. Co. v. Nova Chems. Corp. (Canada), 726 F. Supp. 2d 459 (D. Del. 2010); Dow Chem. Co. v. Nova Chems. Corp. (Canada), No. 05-737-JJF, 2010 WL 3070189 (D. Del. July 30, 2010); Dow Chem. Co. v. Nova Chems. Corp. (Canada), No. 05-737-JJF, 2010 WL 3056617 (D. Del. July 30, 2010). We affirmed that judgment on appeal. Dow I, 458 Fed.Appx. at 921.

In a separate appeal from the district court's subsequent award of supplemental damages, we held the asserted patent claims to be invalid as indefinite under the Supreme Court's intervening indefiniteness standard in Nautilus, Inc. v. Biosig Instruments, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2120 (2014). Dow II, 803 F.3d at 635. Our decision in Dow II did not disturb the 2010 judgment relating to pre-verdict infringement. The district court had entered final judgment pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 54(b), which NOVA had already paid at the time of the second appeal.

During the supplemental-damages phase of the infringement action, NOVA became aware of evidence allegedly showing that Dow and its counsel had committed fraud on the court in the course of obtaining the 2010 judgment. By then, however, NOVA was time-barred from filing a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(3) to set aside that judgment for fraud, misrepresentation, or misconduct. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(c)(1) (setting a one-year time bar). Accordingly, in September 2013, NOVA filed a separate action in equity against Dow (the equity action) for relief from the 2010 judgment.

In its amended complaint, NOVA alleged two frauds on the court. First, NOVA asserted with respect to standing that Dow and its counsel had misrepresented Dow's ownership of the asserted patents. NOVA based this allegation on the testimony of a former Dow tax department employee, Edward Valenzuela, in an unrelated Louisiana tax case (the Louisiana action). Mr. Valenzuela testified in that case: I think [around the end of 2001] all of Dow's patents were contributed to an intangible holding company. J.A. 22554.

Second, NOVA alleged that Dow's counsel knew or should have known of a scheme to mislead the jury with respect to infringement. J.A. 21055, 21081, 21087, 21089 (capitalization omitted). In particular, NOVA contended that Dow's expert, Dr. Joao Soares, had provided conflicting testimony about testing on the accused product during a separate litigation in Canada (the Canadian action).

Dow moved to dismiss the equity action. The court granted the motion and dismissed the complaint, holding that [t]here [wa]s fundamentally no adequate allegation of the grave miscarriage of justice that is required under the extraordinary circumstances for setting aside a prior judgment based on fraud. J.A. 21496. Specifically, the court noted that Mr. Valenzuela's testimony in the Louisiana action was immaterial and irrelevant to Dow's standing because the terms of the relevant patent transfer agreement were clear on their face, and Mr. Valenzuela's testimony ha[d] nothing to do with the authenticity of [the version of] Schedule A that had been held to be the controlling portion of the agreement. J.A. 21497. With respect to noninfringement, the district court held that NOVA had merely identified arguably inconsistent statements by  Dr. Soares that neither plausibly alleged perjury nor reached any fact that had been in material dispute at trial in the infringement action. J.A. 21498.

We affirmed the dismissal of the equity action. Nova Chems. Corp. (Canada) v. Dow Chem. Co. (Dow III), 607 Fed.Appx. 993 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (Mem.).

B

Dow subsequently moved in the district court for sanctions, attorney fees, and costs under 35 U.S.C.  285, 28 U.S.C.  1927, and the district court's inherent sanctioning authority. In opposing the motion, NOVA submitted declarations regarding its pre-suit diligence, which allegedly showed it had filed the equity action in good faith.

The district court denied Dow's motion under 28 U.S.C.  1927 and the court's inherent sanctioning authority. It held that, as demonstrated by the extent of pre-suit diligence, NOVA did not file the equity action in bad faith. Nova Chems. Corp. v. Dow Chem. Co. (Dow IV), No. 13-1601, 2015 WL 5766257, at *45 (D. Del. Sept. 30, 2016). The court, however, granted Dow's motion under  285, which allows courts to award reasonable attorney fees to the prevailing party in exceptional cases. 35 U.S.C.  285. The district court did so based on the weakness of NOVA's litigating position and the manner in which NOVA pursued this case. Dow IV, 2015 WL 5766257, at *57. In particular, the court reiterated that NOVA's claims for relief just didn't stand up and were not even plausible. Id. at *6 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. at *23 (reiterating the insufficiency of NOVA's allegations). It also stated that NOVA could have dealt with the situation in less inflammatory ways. Id. at *5. The court concluded that, despite the high burden applicable, NOVA nonetheless moved forward with its theories, theories which the [c]ourt ultimately found were not even plausible. Id. at *6.

The district court then awarded Dow nearly $2.5 million in  285 attorney fees. J.A. 1. NOVA timely appealed. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.  1295(a)(1).

II. Discussion

On appeal, NOVA only challenges the district court's exceptional-case determination under  285. It does not dispute the amount of attorney fees awarded. Nor does it dispute that  285 is applicable. See Dow IV, 2015 WL 5766257, at *5 n.2 (noting that NOVA did not dispute the applicability of  285 before the district court).

An exceptional case under  285 is simply one that stands out from others with respect to the substantive strength of a party's litigating position (considering both the governing law and the facts of the case) or the unreasonable manner in which the case was litigated. Octane Fitness, LLC v. Icon Health & Fitness, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 1749, 1756 (2014). District courts may determine whether a case is exceptional in the case-by-case exercise of their discretion, considering the totality of the circumstances. Id. We review all aspects of a district court's  285 determination for abuse of discretion. Highmark Inc. v. Allcare Health Mgmt. Sys., Inc., 134 S. Ct. 1744, 1749 (2014). A district court would necessarily abuse its discretion if it based its ruling on an erroneous view of the law or on a clearly erroneous assessment of the evidence. Id. at 1748 n.2 (quoting Cooter & Gell v. Hartmarx Corp., 596 U.S. 384, 405 (1990)).

A

NOVA argues that the district court committed legal error, and thus abused its discretion, by looking to NOVA's pursuit of the equity action as [t]he overriding factor, rather than considering the totality of the circumstances, and also erred in finding that the filing of an equity actionregardless of its meritcould be subject to a fee award. Appellants' Opening Br. 34. According to NOVA, the court improperly viewed NOVA's pursuit of the equity action to be an extreme[ ] tactic and incorrectly suggested that there were other, less inflammatory ways [NOVA] could have dealt with the situation. Dow IV, 2015 WL 5766257, at *56. NOVA acknowledges that it faced a high burden in the equity action but argues that the district court legally erred by relying on the extraordinary nature of relief sought to create a Catch-22 situation wherein the mere filing of an independent action to set aside a prior judgment would render a case exceptional under  285. Appellants' Opening Br. 3638 (internal quotation marks omitted). We agree with NOVA to the extent that the filing of an action to set aside a prior judgment, without more, does not render a case exceptional per se.

Due to the applicable Rule 60(b)(3) time-bar and other circumstances, NOVA is correct that the pursuit of a separate action in equity was the only federal court option available for it to set aside the 2010 judgment. Appellants' Opening Br. 35. Dow submits that rather than file the equity action, NOVA could have requested additional discovery in the infringement action or filed a motion under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(4) on grounds that the 2010 judgment was void for lack of standing. But those suggestions are unhelpful. Dow conceded at oral argument that even armed with additional evidence from further discovery, NOVA would have still been required to file a separate action to set aside the 2010 judgment. Oral Argument 17:5518:36, available at http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/mp3/2016-1576.mp3. And Dow's suggestion of filing a Rule 60(b)(4) motion relates only to raising a lack of standing; it does not necessarily allow NOVA to also challenge how the infringement determination was previously procured.

A party whose only option for relief from a prior judgment is to file a separate action in equity should not be disincentivized from doing so if that party has a plausible basis for relief. Therefore, despite the extraordinary nature of relief that NOVA sought, the district court erred to the extent it based its exceptional-case determination on NOVA's filing of the equity action itself.

B

But that does not end our review of the district court's exceptional-case determination. The district court did not base its analysis solely, or even primarily, on the fact that NOVA filed an equity action. Rather, it expressly relied on alternative grounds, holding the case to be exceptional, both in the substantive strength of NOVA's litigating position and in the manner in which the case was litigated. Dow IV, 2015 WL 2766257, at *5 (emphases added). At a minimum, the court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that the case was exceptional due to the substantive strength of NOVA's litigating position.

The substantive strength of a party's litigating position cani.e., whether it is objectively baselessindependently support an exceptional-case determination. See Octane Fitness, 134 S. Ct. at 1756 ([A]n exceptional case is simply one that stands out from others with respect to the substantive strength of a party's litigating position  or the unreasonable manner in which the case was litigated. (emphasis added)). Thus, a case presenting  exceptionally meritless claims may sufficiently set itself apart from mine-run cases to warrant a fee award. Id. at 1757. In this regard, [i]t is the substantive strength of the party's litigating position that is relevant to an exceptional case determination, not the correctness or eventual success of that position. SFA Sys., LLC v. Newegg Inc., 793 F.3d 1344, 1348 (Fed. Cir. 2015) (quoting Octane Fitness, 134 S. Ct. at 1756).

NOVA's allegations of fraud in this case mainly rested on purportedly conflicting testimony from the Louisiana action and the Canadian action. Dow IV, 2015 WL 2766257, at *7. But as explained by the district court, the arguable inconsistencies in those other actions, even if proven, were immaterial to the 2010 judgment. We previously held with respect to standing that, as a legal matter, the relevant patent transfer agreement unambiguously provided that Schedule A defined the scope of the transfer. Dow I, 458 Fed.Appx. at 914. The district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that NOVA had failed to sufficiently challenge, based on a generic inconsistent statement, the authenticity of the document held to be the operative version of Schedule A. Dow IV, 2015 WL 2766257, at *2. NOVA's allegations of fraud regarding the infringement determination are just as baseless, if not more. As the district court observed, Dr. Soares's testimony in the Canadian action was not necessarily inconsistent with his prior infringement testimony and, in any event, did not directly relate to the limitation that had been the focus of the parties' underlying infringement dispute. Id. The district court therefore did not abuse its discretion in holding that NOVA's litigating position was objectively baseless.

NOVA contends that the district court compound[ed] its error by relying on the extensiveness of NOVA's pre-suit investigation to support the exceptional-case determination. Appellants' Opening Br. 38. The court pointed out that NOVA's pre-suit diligence confirm[ed] the extraordinary nature of this case. Dow IV, 2015 WL 5766257, at *6. To the extent the district court relied on NOVA's extensive pre-suit diligence to support an exceptional-case finding, doing so would appear counterintuitive. In context, though, we think the better reading is that the district court properly relied on the extensiveness of NOVA's pre-suit diligence to confirm NOVA's high burden and the gravity of its allegations. The court did not rely on the pre-suit diligence itself as an independent basis to find the case exceptional. It later clarified that even though NOVA's pre-suit diligence undercut[ ] Dow's assertion of bad faith, it d[id] nothing to sway the [c]ourt to find that this case [wa]s not exceptional. Id. We agree, as a general matter, that the extent of a party's pre-suit investigation or how fervently it believed in its allegations does not affect the objective strength of that party's litigating position.

At a minimum, the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that NOVA's litigating position was objectively baseless.

C

NOVA also argues that the district court legally erred by consider[ing] this case in comparison to the full panoply of patent cases. Id. at *7. According to NOVA, the court should have considered whether the equity action stood out from other actions to set aside a prior judgment, rather than considering whether the equity action stood out from other patent cases more generally. Otherwise, it contends, an action to set aside a prior judgment would always be exceptional because, [b]y necessity, it would stand out from the traditional patent infringement case. Appellants' Opening Br. 40. NOVA's argument is unavailing.

NOVA fails to cite any legal precedent to support its position that a district court's baseline for comparison is so restricted in a  285 analysis. Oral Argument 0:322:29. One could always search for more similar cases for comparison. Taken to its logical conclusion, continuing to narrow the universe of comparators to cases resolved on similar procedural postures, legal grounds, or facts would leave few or no comparators remaining. We decline to hold that the district court erred in comparing this case to other patent cases more generally.

Any concern regarding the district court's comparison is tempered because, again, it did not hold that this case stood out merely because NOVA requested that a prior judgment be set aside for fraud whereas many other patent cases do not present such circumstances. The equity action was a direct extension of, and intertwined with, the prior infringement action. Requiring the district court in this circumstance to narrow its comparison to other independent actions requesting relief from judgment would run counter to the Supreme Court's general instruction that [d]istrict courts may determine whether a case is exceptional in the case-by-case exercise of their discretion, considering the totality of the circumstances. Octane Fitness, 134 S. Ct. at 1756. The district court therefore did not commit reversible error in comparing this case to patent cases more generally.

We have considered NOVA's remaining arguments and find them unpersuasive.

III. Conclusion

For the foregoing reasons, the district court did not abuse its discretion in determining, under the totality of the circumstances, that this case was exceptional under  285.

AFFIRMED.

Costs

Costs to Appellee.

FOOTNOTES

. Such an action is permitted under Federal Rules of Civil Procedure 60(d)(1) and 60(d)(1)(3). See Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(d)(1), (3) (stating that Rule 60 does not limit a court's power to: (1) entertain an independent action to relieve a party from a judgment [ ]  or (3) set aside a judgment for fraud on the court).

. Dow states in its briefing that a Rule 60(b)(4) motion would have failed. Appellee's Br. 48. It is unclear if Dow means that such a motion would have been procedurally improper or failed on the merits.

. But for the relevant time-bar, NOVA may have filed its request to set aside the 2010 judgment through a Rule 60(b)(3) motion, in which case its argument for excising patent infringement cases from the universe of  285 comparators would lose considerable, if not all, force.

Prost, Chief Judge.
President Donald Trump's firing of James Comey as FBI director threatens the independence of America's top law enforcement agency, a former FBI official told CNBC.

"This is not going to end well for this administration," the former official said.

"[Trump] is out of control," the former official continued, adding that what the president has done "goes against core American values."

@EamonJavers: 1. I just spoke to a former high ranking FBI official about the president's Tweets. Here is what he said...

@EamonJavers: 2. Former FBI official on Trump: "First he started a war with the intelligence agencies, and now he wants one with the FBI?"

@EamonJavers: 3. Former FBI official: "This is not going to end well for this administration."

@EamonJavers: 4. Former FBI official on Trump: "He is out of control. It is so out of the norm for him to even say that."

@EamonJavers: 5. Former FBI official on Trump: "This threatens the independence of the FBI and goes against core American values."

In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Trump said Thursday he decided to fire Comey on his own, before Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo that harshly criticized Comey's actions and suggested he should be removed.

White House press statements, though, are creating confusion regarding the timeline of Comey's firing within the FBI. For example, White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said the president fired Comey because he was advised to do so.

Trump took to Twitter on Friday to blame his "active" presidency for any inaccuracies that his surrogates make at the podium. Maybe, Trump said, he will just cancel briefings with the media altogether.

@realDonaldTrump: ...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???
Help likely is on the way for banks looking to get out from under trading restrictions levied after the financial crisis.

At a closed-door meeting earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin directed five regulatory agencies to review the so-called Volcker rule, which prohibits banks from trading for their own accounts, according to a Bloomberg report.

The rule is designed to reduce risks at big financial institutions and head off the need for the kinds of bailouts needed during the crisis. However, banks complain that it has constricted their operations and reduced revenues.

Mnuchin's directive is similar to others from the White House that have sought reviews of the myriad regulations put in place under the Obama administration. The meeting came with the 15 agencies that comprise the Financial Stability Oversight Council, according to Bloomberg.

The ultimate goal is to get the FSOC to issue revised guidelines that would give the banks more clarity on permitted activities. While President Donald Trump has talked about repealing the broader Dodd-Frank rules put in place after the crisis, there appears to be little political will for overturning the entire legislation, both for logistical reasons and a desire for Republicans not to look soft on Wall Street.
President Donald Trump salutes as he walks to Air Force One prior to departing from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, March 2, 2017, as he traveled to Newport News, Virginia, to visit the pre-commissioned USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier.

President Donald Trump wants "goddamned steam" power catapults on the Navy's new Ford-Class aircraft carriers, not a new electromagnetic power system, according to Trump's interview this week with Time magazine.

Others too have questioned the wisdom of abandoning the reliable steam-powered catapult technology, which has been used for decades to launch aircraft from the deck of the Navy's carriers.

Dan Grazier, a defense expert at the watchdog group Project On Government Oversight, back in March questioned the decision by the Navy to use the new electromagnetic launch technology instead of sticking with the steam-powered catapult system on the battle-tested Nimitz-Class carriers.

"The president is very accurate to be skeptical of this component  and there are other components that he should be skeptical of [on] the ship," Grazier told CNBC on Friday. A former Marine Corps captain, Grazier said the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, or EMALS, on the Ford-Class carrier remains "an unproven system."

In March, Trump visited the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier, a roughly $13 billion warship. The commander-in-chief landed on the carrier's flight deck on Marine One, took a tour and met with sailors.

The president was asked in the Time interview about the future of the Ford-Class carriers, which are replacing the Nimitz-Class warships first commissioned in the mid-1970s.

"You know the catapult is quite important," Trump said. He then recalled the visit to the carrier:

"So I said what is this? Sir, this is our digital catapult system. He said well, we're going to this because we wanted to keep up with modern [technology]." Trump added, "I said you don't use steam anymore for catapult? No sir. I said, 'Ah, how is it working?' 'Sir, not good. Not good. Doesn't have the power.' You know the steam is just brutal. You see that sucker going and steam's going all over the place, there's planes thrown in the air.'" At the same time, the president said he also learned the new catapult system was "very complicated, you have to be Albert Einstein to figure it out. And I said  and now they want to buy more aircraft carriers. I said what system are you going to be  'Sir, we're staying with digital.' I said no you're not. You going to goddamned steam, the digital costs hundreds of millions of dollars more money and it's no good."

The Pentagon and Navy both declined comment on the president's comments.

Sean Stackley, the acting secretary of the Navy, declined to comment on the president's remarks Thursday night when asked about them at a U.S. Naval Institute event. The secretary did, however, indicate that the Navy had not briefed the president on the Ford-Class program.
A financial intelligence unit within the Treasury Department has agreed in principle to turn over financial records related to President Donald Trump and associates, NBC News confirmed Friday, citing a person close to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The committee's bipartisan investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 election is also looking into whether there was collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

CNBC and NBC News first reported on Wednesday that the committee requested the documents from the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. A committee aide said the evidence could include possible money laundering and to what extent, if at all, people close to Vladimir Putin have invested in Trump's real estate empire.

In response to that report, 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."

The White House and FinCEN did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for further comment.

The Wall Street Journal first reported FinCEN's intention to share the records.

 Reporting by NBC News' Ken Dilanian and CNBC's John Schoen. Written by CNBC's Christine Wang.

Watch: Acting FBI director says investigation 'highly significant'
The UK FCA will co-operate with Hong Kongs SFC in enabling fintech firms to more easily access the respective financial services marketplaces.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a U.K. regulatory body, has entered into a co-operation agreement with the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), its equivalent in Hong Kong, in order to foster greater collaboration in support of global financial technology (fintech) innovation.

The deal will make it easier for fintech firms to enter one another's respective markets. The FCA and SFC will co-operate on information sharing and referrals involving fintechs so that firms that have been approved in the UK can set up business more easily in Hong Kong and vice versa.

A similar agreement was signed with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) in December 2016, its de facto central bank. This latest deal strengthens the co-operation between the U.K. and its former colony, and is intended to keep track of the breadth and speed of development in the growing fintech sector. Technology companies are increasingly looking to enter financial services (FS) to displace incumbents or collaborate with them in order to offer new services.

Commenting on the SFC deal in a statement, Christopher Woolard, executive director of strategy and competition at the FCA, said: "Co-operation agreements are absolutely vital in fostering an environment of fintech innovation on a global scale. In the last few months alone we've signed agreements with colleagues in China, Japan, Canada and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority."

"Working with other regulators internationally, we want to build a common understanding of the principles of good innovation and we look forward to working closely with the SFC."

In the same statement, Ashley Alder, the SFC's CEO, said: "This agreement will help both regulators stay abreast of innovation in financial services while providing innovative fintech firms seeking to develop and grow their businesses internationally with enhanced channels for communicating with regulators."

The agreement follows the creation of the FCA's Innovation Hub in 2014 and the SFC's Fintech Contact Point in 2016. These initiatives were pioneering in their day, offering regulatory support to fintech innovation that seeks to disrupt the existing means of doing business in the financial services sector.

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This photo taken on February 12, 2017 and released on February 13 by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) shows North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) surrounded by soldiers of the Korean People's Army as he inspects the test-launch of a surface-to-surface medium long-range ballistic missile Pukguksong-2 at an undisclosed location.

The United States has failed to put in place enough senior diplomats to tackle the North Korean nuclear threat and trade issues in East Asia, international policy experts told an audience this week.

"You'd think we're going into a crisis with North Korea, and there's no ambassador in Seoul, in Tokyo, in Beijing or an assistant secretary for East Asia. You wonder, beyond the tweets and what the White House says, how actually the work of the government is going to get done," said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a former senior advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan under Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

The U.S. State Department website says that those major ambassadorships are "vacant"  as are the top U.S. diplomatic posts to India and Australia  even as smaller countries such as the Philippines have ambassadors in place.

In a statement to CNBC, the State Department pointed out that it has officials "serving in acting capacities" in those countries. The department deferred to the White House on senior nomination questions.

The White House did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

"You worry that even if things are calm, you're just one step away from a very big crisis," Nasr said. He was speaking Wednesday evening at the Asia Society in New York.
Attorneys for alleged victims of the Wells Fargo fake account scandal are now saying that the bank may have been responsible for more unauthorized accounts than previously thought.

In a legal filing, plaintiffs' attorneys in a class-action lawsuit say: "Based on public information, negotiations, and confirmatory discovery, the parties estimate the number of unauthorized accounts for the period 2002-2017 is approximately 3.5 million. This number may well be over-inclusive, but provides a reasonable basis on which to estimate a maximum recovery."

It's important to note that based on the results of the independent board review of the scandal, former CEO John Stumpf was not made aware of the systemic nature of the bank's sales practice problems until 2012, but was first aware of specific cases as early as 2002.

"The unauthorized account number reported in yesterday's filing are estimates made by the plaintiff attorneys based on a hypothetical scenario and have not been verified," Wells Fargo representative Ancel Martinez said in a statement. "The number of unauthorized accounts estimated in the filing do not reflect actual unauthorized accounts."

Wells Fargo disclosed it entered into a settlement agreement in April 2017 in the company's most recent 10-Q. The bank disclosed it planned to pay $142 million for remediation, attorneys' fees and settlement fund claims administration. It also noted that the settlement was still subject to approval by the District Court.

The case is being handled in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, in San Francisco.

Watch: Buffett says Wells Fargo obviously incentivized the wrong thing
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I asked both Wittes, who's very familiar with the current FBI's practices, and Douglas Charles, a historian of the FBI at Penn State, what the FBI could actually do  in practical terms  to undermine and weaken the Trump presidency. Their answer? Quite a lot. The bureau could leak damaging information to the press. It could work more closely with Congress to strengthen the legislative probes into Russia. It could intensify its own Russia investigation, or even open new investigations into Trump and his allies. Any one of these actions, theoretically, could do serious damage to Trump's already chaotic and politically vulnerable administration. And, according to Charles, one of them is "probably" inevitable. This is one fight the president may soon regret picking.

Leaks, leaks, leaks

The first and most obvious thing the FBI could do is talk to the press. "The FBI has a really long history of leaking to various outlets who could advance their own bureaucratic interests," Charles says. "There could be some very good amount of leaking happening soon, if there's not already." The most famous leaker in US history  the pseudonymous Deep Throat, who gave sensitive information on the Nixon administration to Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in 1972-3 during the Watergate scandal  was later revealed to be Mark Felt, who was associate FBI director at the time. Interestingly, Felt's motivation for leaking about Watergate wasn't whistleblowing: He wasn't motivated by some patriotic sense of duty to protect American democracy. Rather, he believed he was acting to protect the FBI's independence from Nixon's attempts to rein it in. "He was doing that because Nixon appointed a sycophant, L. Patrick Gray, as FBI director," Charles explains. "He wasn't leaking out of some sympathy for Woodward and Bernstein or Watergate, but for his own interests  to undermine Gray." It "wouldn't surprise me whatsoever," Charles continued, if this were to happen again in this case. A senior FBI official decides that Trump is a threat to the FBI, and begins leaking damaging information that the FBI has on the president to reporters. That could start, obviously, with any troubling facts the FBI may have uncovered so far in the Russia investigation. In late March, 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." CNN didn't say what that information was, exactly  was it a phone call between a Trump ally and Russian intelligence? Compromising emails?  but it's pretty likely that its release would be embarrassing for the Trump administration. And presumably there's more where that came from, given that the FBI's investigation into Trump and Russia has only grown in the past month and a half. These leaks wouldn't necessarily have to be authorized at the highest levels. A few disgruntled agents with access to the right information could contact the press on their own. Indeed, that's what appeared to happen last summer, when information about the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails kept drip-drip-dripping out of the bureau's New York field office. "I have not seen a lot of evidence of leaks out of this Russia investigation. In fact, I haven't really seen any," Wittes says. But "I don't deny the possibility that you could imagine individual agents doing that stuff [now]." Assuming the FBI investigation is as serious as it seems  and given that acting FBI Director McCabe testified Thursday that the investigation was "highly significant," it probably is  the information it has is likely far more specific and damning than what we've seen so far. Fighting them would consume huge amounts of Trump's time and energy  and could potentially grind his legislative agenda to a halt, as Congress holds hearing after hearing on whatever the FBI tells the press. It'd be especially painful since FBI investigations usually take a long time to conclude, which means the information could continue to drip out for quite a while. The sooner it started to come to light, the sooner it would start messing up Trump's political agenda.

Working with Congress

The FBI is technically part of the Justice Department  and thus the executive branch. But in reality, it operates sort of like a freestanding bureaucracy, with conduits to other parts of the government that don't involve going through the White House or the attorney general. The most important of these bureau relationships, for present purposes, is with Congress. Both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees are currently conducting investigations into Trump's ties with Russia. The House investigation is a bit of a mess  remember Devin Nunes?  but the Senate's is pretty serious. Its biggest problem is that the Senate has given it limited funding and limited access to trained investigators. The FBI can help with that. "There's a thousand ways in which, for example, the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation depends on cooperation institutionally from the intelligence community," Wittes says. "That cooperation can be more or less robust. An FBI that really believes its independence is under attack is going to have a deeper relationship with its overseers, whose job, among other things, is to protect its independence." Wittes thinks this is one of the most likely ways that post-Comey resistance will manifest. The FBI will devote more resources to helping along the congressional investigations, which will help those investigations become more credible and more effective. The more Trump is being pressured on Russia by Congress, the harder it will be for him to try to install a crony atop the FBI and get Senate consent for it. Even if this doesn't happen, the FBI has ways of working with Congress outside of official channels. This is a different sort of leaking, where information uncovered by the bureau just so happens to end up in the hands of a friendly member of Congress, who then either leaks this information to the press herself or threatens the president with it behind closed doors. This used to happen a lot more frequently in the days of the legendarily vicious FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had dossiers on everyone, and contacts in all different parts of the government for disseminating them. In 1953, in the midst of a moral panic about gays in government known as the Lavender Scare, Hoover had set up specific contacts in each branch of government for leaking information that someone was a "Sex Deviate"  an operation explicitly authorized via an executive order signed by President Dwight Eisenhower. When Hoover wanted to get rid of someone or block their nomination, he would discreetly hand off that person's file to the relevant contact at the White House or the Capitol. That tactic torpedoed a number of careers, including that of Arthur Vandenberg Jr., whom Eisenhower had picked to be his top aide. After Hoover died in 1972, Congress put in place a number of reforms aimed at limiting the FBI's influence  and since then, that kind of super-shady stuff has presumably happened a lot less frequently. But the FBI still knows how to discreetly hand off information to Congress if need be. Charles floated a hypothetical in which Trump appointed someone the FBI didn't like to be its new director. You could easily imagine, in that scenario, the bureau handing off damaging information it has about that person to a cooperative senator  and that senator using the information to prevent Trump's nominee from ever being confirmed. "They could do that without ever getting caught, and it would perfectly fit their history as well," he says.

Ramping up investigations into Trump  even beyond Russia
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told CNBC on Friday the new U.S. trade deals with China include a promise to allow Chinese banks greater access in America.

In addition to paving the way for U.S. beef imports to China and Chinese chicken imports to the United States, Ross said the agreements with Beijing lay the groundwork for treating Chinese banks the same way as the U.S. treats other foreign banks.

"We've agreed to treat their financial institutions, their banks, the same way as we evaluate other foreign banks when they want to come and open up activities in the U.S.," Ross said on "Squawk Box." "Clearly China, whose banks are among the largest in the whole world, wants access to the U.S. banking market."

But he said there's no specific date on when it may happen, and it would be dependent on China complying with U.S. standards. "As long as they can comply with the normal rules, they will get access."

In financial services, in turn, Beijing will also allow U.S.-owned card payment services to begin the licensing process in a sector where China's UnionPay system has had a near monopoly.

Foreign-owned companies in China will also be able to provide credit rating services.

The deals are the first concrete results of trade talks that began last month after President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Florida to discuss cooperation between the world's two largest economies.

Ross, a billionaire who made his fortune investing in distressed assets, said the dialogue with China is an ongoing process, and these developments should help reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China.

But he's encouraged by the quick progress that happened in a matter of weeks for trade deals that usually take years to achieve.

"I have a new boss who's very demanding that things get done on time. So I'm quite relieved that we ad tangible achievements," Ross said, referring to Trump.

 Reuters contributed to this report.
Ask any employer, and they'll tell you that healthcare costs for their employees are an enormous expenditure. Dig deeper, and you'll find that musculoskeletal conditions (MSC), such as degenerative disease of the spine, hips and knees, account for more than 16 percent of total employer healthcare costs, says Hospital for Special Surgery Surgeon-in-Chief and Medical Director, Dr. Todd Albert.

The statistics bear that out: In a 2014 report from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), researchers note that MSC cost employers more than $20 billion annually in direct costs. Up to five times that amount is paid out in "indirect costs," such as training workers for replacement, notes OSHA. And as workforce aging increases, the need to manage and treat MSC will increase, as well.

"One-third of lost work time is related to musculoskeletal diseases and conditions," says HSS President and CEO, Lou Shapiro. "People are either absent, or not [fully] present." According to a report from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, when employees are absent due to musculoskeletal pain, they are out for an average of 11 days. Given that an estimated 126.6 million Americans are affected by a musculoskeletal condition, this a problem for just about every employer.

The solution is two-fold: Employers can mitigate MSC by providing training on ergonomics and encouraging early reporting of MSC symptoms. When MSC are unavoidable, Albert contends that early quality medical care is the best course of action. When patients are treated at a center with a comprehensive focus on MSC, clinicians can more quickly and efficiently diagnose and care for the patient; a timely diagnosis and appropriate treatment will ultimately reduce time away from work.
The Dahlonega Mint in Georgia only struck gold coins, from 1838 through 1861. This 1861-D Coronet $5 half eagle from the final year of production is graded NGC About Uncirculated 58.

Only 1,123 1855-D Coronet $2.50 quarter eagles are reported to have been struck. This one is graded NGC AU-58.

Only 1,120 examples of the 1854-D Indian Head $3 gold coin were struck during the denominations first year of production. This example is graded NGC AU-50.

The Coronet design was introduced on the half eagle denomination in 1839. This coin is graded NGC AU-58.

For the Dahlonega Mint, 1861 was the final year of production, which included Indian Head gold dollars. The facility was seized by the Confederacy soon after the American Civil War broke out.

Total mintage for the 1861-D Indian Head gold dollar during the Dahlonega Mint's final year of operation is unknown.

A complete 62-coin set of gold coins struck at the Dahlonega Mint that was assembled for the express purpose of one day being donated and put on public display will go on exhibit June 5 at the University of Georgia in Athens.

The collection of Dahlonega Mint gold coins is a major component of an extensive multi-gallery presentation on the history of gold and gold mining in Georgia, the production of gold coins in the Branch Mint of the United States at Dahlonega, and the evolution of currency in America, including paper money, with a focus on Georgia.

Katherine Stein, director of the universitys Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, said the exhibit will be staged in the Russell Building Special Collections Libraries at the university.

The massive exhibit is scheduled to remain on public display through Dec. 5.

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Stein said the exhibit  titled Gold-digging in Georgia: Americas First Gold Rush,  is based on the article From Georgia to California and Back: The Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Southern Gold Mining by Dr. Drew Swanson, published in a 2016 issue of Georgia Historical Quarterly, published by the Georgia Historical Society.

Collector John McMullan took less than 10 years to assemble the collection of Dahlonega Mint gold coins, which were produced at the facility between 1838 and 1861.

The 81-year-old McMullan dubbed his assemblage The Reed Creek Collection after the region of Georgia in which his father, Thomas Leverette McMullan, was born and raised.

Only gold coins were ever struck at the Dahlonega Mint, in $1, $2.50, $3, and $5 denominations.

Mintages for many dates are extremely low, with the lowest being the unknown number of the 1861-D Indian Head gold dollar, all of which were produced while the U.S. Mint facility was under the control of the Confederate States of America. The Confederate government seized the facility during the opening year of the American Civil War.

The entire Reed Creek Collection has been graded and encapsulated by Numismatic Guaranty Corp. and Professional Coin Grading Service.

Among the highlights of The Reed Creek Collection, with published mintages and certified grades, are:

??1838-D Classic Head $5 half eagle, 20,583, NGC About Uncirculated 58.

??1839-D Coronet $5 half eagle, 18,939, NGC AU-58.

??1854-D Indian Head $3 coin, 1,120, NGC AU-50.

??1855-D Coronet $2.50 quarter eagle, 1,123, NGC AU-58.

??1856-D Coronet $2.50 quarter eagle, 874, NGC AU-58.

??1861-D Indian Head dollar, unknown mintage, NGC AU-58.

??1861-D Coronet $5 half eagle, 1,597, NGC AU-58.

Overall exhibit

The Georgia Gold Rush of the 1830s pre-dated the more highly publicized California Gold Rush by more than a decade.

The university exhibit will trace the discovery of gold in Georgia and the long-term effects it had on the region and the nation.

According to one of the exhibit panels:

In 1830, the Georgia legislature declared its control of all Cherokee territory within Georgias boundaries, and Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which ultimately forced Native Americans from the state. State officials then began auctioning off Indian land; white Georgians could claim Cherokee territory in 160-acre agricultural lots and 40-acre mining tracts within the gold belt. President Andrew Jackson withdrew federal troops from the gold district giving Georgians the liberty to populate the territory. In 1838, the land grab concluded in the tragic forced march of Georgias remaining Cherokee to Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma.

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 Cherokee Nation had comprised more than 4 million acres.

In 1835 the Treaty of New Echota, signed without the authority of Principal Chief John Ross or the Cherokee government, required the Cherokee Nation to exchange its lands for a parcel in the Indian Territory, according to the exhibit narrative. Beginning in 1838, President Martin Van Buren ordered the Cherokee to be removed, the forced march became known as the Trail of Tears where thousands of Cherokee perished due to lack of food, disease, and exposure to extreme temperatures.

The American economy became stimulated by the Georgia gold, which initially was shipped to the Philadelphia Mint for assaying and coining. As gold production increased, so did the need for local output of federal coinage after assay locally.

The Mint Act of 1835 not only established Branch Mints of the United States in Dahlonega, but also in Charlotte, N.C., and New Orleans.

Coinage production commenced at the Branch Mints within three years of the acts passage, ceasing in 1861 when the three facilities were seized by the Confederacy.

In its first year of operation, the Dahlonega Mint struck more than $100,000 worth of gold coins, eventually coining $6.1 million during its tenure.

Assembling the collection

McMullan said he began assembling The Reed Creek Collection as a tribute to his father with the Aug. 5, 2008, purchase of the first coin, the 1854-D Indian Head $3 coin.

McMullans father graduated circa 1919 or 1920 from the University of Georgia and upon graduation, took a job teaching agriculture in North Georgia College.

The former Dahlonega Mint building was used by the college from 1873 until it burned in 1878. A new building used by the college was subsequently erected on the foundation of the former Branch Mint structure.

McMullan said while the complete collection he donated to the University of Georgia totals 62 coins, he actually held possession to 63 coins, the 63rd coin being an 1851-D Coronet half eagle.

The 1851-D half eagle was found in a bank safe deposit box upon the 1954 passing of Thomas Leverette McMullan. John McMullan said he didnt take possession of the coin until the 1994 passing of his mother. He is keeping the coin as a memento of his father.

McMullan says he considers himself more of a coin accumulator than a sophisticated collector. Over his lifetime he says he has searched rolls of thousands of cents and half dollars, many of the half dollars obtained at banks during business excursions.

McMullan says he has relished the adventure of assembling The Reed Creek Collection. While several numismatists aided him during the first two years of his quest, McMullan credits Bob Harwell from Hancock & Harwell Rare Coins in Atlanta for the bulk of the effort, beginning in 2010.

Harwell was assisted in the coin searches by Jeff Garrett from Mid-American Rare Coin Galleries from Lexington, Ky.

McMullan said the toughest coin to obtain was one of the last needed to complete the collection  the 1861-D Indian Head gold dollar struck under Confederate auspices.

McMullan said he is relishing the opportunity to see the completed exhibit and how it is received by the public.
Blackhawks' Patrick Kane Lauded For Giving Up 1st Class Plane Seat To Soldier

By Rachel Cromidas in Arts & Entertainment on May 11, 2017 10:02PM



Finally, a bit of cheerful news related to flying: Blackhawks star Patrick Kane has gained some major Internet points this week for reportedly giving up his first class plane seat to a soldier Wednesday evening.

Twitter user Teri Truss, who appears to work for American Airlines, Tweeted about Kane's small act of kindness Wednesday evening during a recent flight Kane took on the airline. "Patrick Kane from The BLACKHAWKS gave up his 1st Class seat to a SOLDIER...what a class act...," Truss tweeted. Truss Tweeted, along with a photo of herself and Kane, looking happy:





Patrick Kane from The BLACKHAWKS gave up his 1st Class seat to a SOLDIER...what a class act... pic.twitter.com/NKTDWXWdZA  Teri Truss (@TeriTruss) May 11, 2017



[H/T Tribune]
Joe Boston's, One Of Chicago's All-Time Great Italian Beef Joints, Is Closing

By Stephen Gossett in Food on May 11, 2017 9:50PM



Photo: Stephen Gossett

It's with heavy hearts and soggy hands that we relay the closing of one of Chicago's longest-running, all-time favorite Italian beef shops: Joe Boston's, in Humboldt Park.

As noted by Eater, which first reported the story, owners of the beloved restaurant announced the closing on Wednesday via Facebook after almost 70 years in operation. In the post, owner Spero Kutrubiswho took over after his father-in-law, the shop's namesake, diednotes that the last day of operation will be this Saturdaybut he confirmed on Thursday with Chicagoist that he'll likely keep the shop open for a couple of weeks beyond that date, as the property's new owner juggles other commitments, according to Kutrubis.

Still, we recommend you get there ASAP, whether you're a lifelong devotee or a newcomer to Joe Boston's (2932 W. Chicago Ave.you'll know it by the vivid green exterior, a relic from its previous life as a social club). The Italian beefswith house-cooked meat and house-made giardinierarival any in the city. If you're hard up, the gravy bread works great in a pinch, too, especially with those peppers. The perfectly zero-frills interior of the place caps it off. (The White Sox fan in us loves the fact that they, a North Side spot, nonetheless sport a framed copy of the Tribune from when the South Siders won it all in 2005, too.)

According to Kutrubiswho listed the property for sale a couple of months backthe new owners "dont want to continue the business, to my knowledge." The asking price was advertised at $579,000 via KW Commercial. The broker did not return Chicagoist's request for comment. "I asked his realtor if he needed me to leave any equipment, but he just wants it empty," Kutrubis said.

Kutrubis was feeling mixed emotions as patrons kept the place hopping on Thursday amid news of the imminent closing. "I'm just conflicted; it's bittersweet," he said. Even as Humboldt's gentrification creeps westward toward Joe Boston's Grand and Chicago corner, Kutrubis said the decision had nothing to do with changing neighborhood dynamics. "I just got to the age of retirement and have been here for 68 years. That s about it," he said.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Redistricting reform advocates stopped an attempt to place severe limits on the ability of Floridians to use the states Fair Districts Amendments to hold legislators accountable for gerrymandering. The Fair Districts Amendments, which passed in 2010, amended the Florida Constitution to state the following:

No apportionment plan or district shall be drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or an incumbent; and districts shall not be drawn with the intent or result of denying or abridging the equal opportunity of racial or language minorities to participate in the political process or to diminish their ability to elect representatives of their choice; and districts shall consist of contiguous territory.

HB 953 would have required citizens to file a challenge to any map within 60 days, which would make it very difficult to obtain evidence needed to build a case. Thomas Zehnder, the plaintiffs attorney called the bill a blatant effort to write the Fair Districts Amendments out of the Constitution and permit the sort of gerrymandering that Floridas citizens have overwhelmingly forbidden. The bill was a response to successful lawsuits supported by Fair Districts Now in which Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of Florida were plaintiffs. After emails between legislative staff and political operatives demonstrated a concerted effort to get around the amendments, Florida courts struck down the states congressional map and legislators stipulated to a violation in the drawing of state senate maps. Ultimately, the Florida Supreme Court approved the use of maps the plaintiffs drew.

Common Cause Florida was the only organization to speak out against the bill in the Public Integrity and Ethics Committee and opposed it at every step in the process. The legislature ultimately replaced the bill with a state senate provision designed to clarify how candidates can get on the ballot when a plan is being challenged.
It's fair to say that no one has been covering Xero longer than I have. I first talked to its co-founder and CEO, Rod Drury, long before the company launched a product. Trawling back through my emails and I discovered that we first talked about his vision 10 years ago to the day. (Rod, we really should have a celebratory beer!) I can't imagine he'll be celebrating the milestone, but it does go to show just how long Drury has been on this journey.

When it was founded, Xero took a very unusual path, listing on the New Zealand Stock Exchange before it even had a real product and customers. Backed by some high-profile names, and with Drury's masterful marketing execution, Xero got its IPO away in the nick of time, just before the GFC really took its hold.

Since then, the company has experienced the turbulent ride common to all organizations. The share price has been buffeted by both internal and external factors -- from its listing price of NZD1, it has been as low as 60 cents, as high as $40 and is now around the $23 mark. Xero has raised significant additional funds (from high-profile sources such as Matrix Capital and Peter Thiel's Valar Ventures) and had a public listing in Australia for good measure.

So at the 10-year mark, it is worth reflecting on the full-year operating report that Xero has just released. And the numbers look good. To give some color to that, after reporting breaking through the 1 million-customer mark a few months ago, Xero's metrics are now as follows (all as of March 31 and in New Zealand Dollars):

1,035,000 customers, up 44% year-on-year

Revenue $294.40, up 43%

Operating cash flow positive $9 million in the six months ended March

Operating cash outflow for the year to $4.4 million, down from $34.8 million in the previous year

EBITDA positive $1.6 million in the second half

Annual EBITDA loss $16.9 million, compared with a $44.8 million loss in the 2016 year

Interestingly, the financial analysts had all predicted Xero not turning cash flow positive until the year ending March 2019, showing, once again, how hit-and-miss financial analysis really is.

Customer breakdown

Xero is the incumbent player in Australia and New Zealand, where total customers are just shy of 700,000. By way of reference, its key competitor in that market, MYOB, has roughly a third as many customers for its own cloud-based product. In the U.K., the offshore market with the longest Xero pedigree, the company has just over 212,000 customers -- again in this market it is ahead of its main rival, Sage.

North America is a different story, where incumbent vendor Intuit has the lion's share of the market with close to 2 million customers for its QuickBooks Online product. In this market, Xero has just over 90,000 customers (for accuracy's sake, it is worth noting that Intuits number is U.S. only, while Xero combined the U.S. and Canada, not yet disclosing U.S.-only customer counts).

MyPOV

This is an impressive result. In the detail to the annual report, Xero details just how much its cost to acquire, sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue, and administration costs as a percentage of revenue are all trending downward -- a natural development as scale kicks in. The cash flow breakeven milestone is a huge one, and will put the company in a good position with regard to capital requirements -- Xero still has cash in the bank and has no real need to fundraise again.

Which leads us to an interesting point: Drury has always admitted to having an ambition to list his company in the U.S. While in the past he has talked about a rough date for this listing, in recent times this discussion has become somewhat muted. The reality is that U.S. investors are parochial, and while the numbers look fantastic for Xero, and the company is almost four times over the generally accepted IPO level of $100 million revenue, its U.S. customer base is still a tiny proportion of total customer count.

What would be fascinating here would be if Xero did try and list. Would U.S. investors look at the overall picture (arguably the right thing to do from an investment perspective), or remain fixated on that U.S. customer count?

All in all it is a great showing, and somehow appropriate on the eve of Xero's 10th anniversary. Something tells me the team will be celebrating the event heartily.
Guo Tao, commander a mobile radar force of the Southern Theater Command of the PLA (People's Liberation Army) speaks about the battalion's resolution to guard the country's airspace during a training at an undisclosed location. [Photo by Chen Boyuan / China.org.cn]

In the radar force of the PLA (People's Liberation Army) Air Force, some vehicles are mobile  as opposed to fixed stations on mountain tops  and they are called mobile radar forces.

The air force of the PLA Southern Theater Command, has such a mobile radar battalion. Its commander Major Guo Tao said on April 25 that they are "a necessary complement to fixed stations" in that they "patch up, reinforce and extend the colossal sky net" of the country's radar detection ranges.

Established in May, 1991, this battalion was the first-ever modern mobile radar force in the PLA Air Force. Its creation followed the central military authority's call for an effective response to high-intensity regional conflicts in modern warfare.

In modern warfare, combatting parties usually seek to paralyze each other's air defenses first before conducting further operations. Radar installations, which are the eyes of the air force, are among the first and most vulnerable targets for enemy attacks.

Having no self-defense capabilities itself, once a radar is destroyed, it can tear apart the regional defensive monitoring network. Under such circumstances, the mobile radar forces must kick in and patch up the country's defensive sky net of radar monitoring.

Likewise, there may be blind spots in radar detection ranges either affected by terrain or a radar's own limitations, or a new battlefield out of the range of fixed radar stations. As for the solution, deploying a mobile radar unit in such blind-spots will instantly reinforce the PLA's air defenses.

Throughout the 26 years since the battalion's establishment, this mobile radar force has participated in more than 30 major exercises, and their tracks have reached 26 provinces nationwide.

"We stand ready to b deployed anywhere that the country needs," said Senior Colonel Duan Zhibing, bridge political commissar, which supervises the battalion. He explained that the mobile radar force is also an extension of the country's sky net.
Singapore govt working for rehabilitation of Sungei Road market vendors

The Sungei Road market in Singapore will soon become a part of history as curtains are set to fall on the location on July 10. It will be the last day of this free hawking zone. The government is working for the rehabilitation of the vendors through various assistance options, including employment and financial help and facilitation of applications for hawker stalls at other places.

However, only 44 out of the 200 vendors at the market have turned up for the rehabilitation. Till now, 23 vendors have applied for hawker stalls, of which 20 have been allocated lock-up stalls at Chinatown Market, North Bridge Road Market and Food Centre, or Upper Cross Street Market.

Sungei Road market is the oldest and largest flea market of Singapore. Photo courtesy: reach.gov.sg

70 vendors have indicated that they did not need any help,being able to support themselves or find other jobs on their own.

About seven government agencies  including the Ministry of National Development, the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF), the National Environment Agency (NEA) and Workforce Singapore (WSG) issued a press statement today and said, The officers had engaged the vendors at the market over four days last month. They then followed up on the various aid schemes that the vendors were interested in via phone calls and house visits.

Fifteen vendors have been granted financial assistance through ComCare, and the MSF is partnering the Central Singapore Community Development Council to refer vendors who might need more help to other assistance schemes.

Adeline Leong, director of NEAs Food and Environment Hygiene Department, said, Although hawker stalls are in high demand in Singapore and are at near full occupancy, we have set aside more than 30 stalls that Sungei Road Hawking Zone users can apply for.

On those who have declined any help, Leong said the authorities will continue to keep in touch with them, and help them with the various assistance options should they wish to apply for them.

Sungei Road market is the oldest and largest flea market of Singapore which has also been dubbed as the Thieves Market and can trace it roots back to the 1930s.

However, this market would soon cease to exist. The government has announced that the site would be set aside for ground preparation works for future residential development use.
Douglas Carswell was MP for Clacton from 2005-2017. His latest book Rebel: how to overthrow the emerging oligarchy is published by Head of Zeus.

Its been a straightforward story about switchers. The defining dynamic of this election campaign so far has been the mass migration of former UKIP voters to Theresa May, giving the Conservatives a runaway poll lead.

I know why those of us who voted UKIP in 2015 are switching to May. Indeed, I made the move myself. The moment the Prime Minister triggered Article 50 seven weeks ago, beginning the formal process of leaving the EU, it was job done. Judging by the opinion polls, I wasnt the only ex-Kipper who felt that way. Support for UKIP is in free fall.

To understand quite how significant the UKIP collapse is, consider some basic electoral maths; at the last election, the Conservatives got 11.3 million votes. Labour took a little over nine million. The sudden UKIP collapse now puts the 3.8 million votes they got last time into play  with the potential to change rather dramatically the electoral arithmetic in scores of constituencies across the country.

Ex-Kippers arent moving back to any old mainstream party. They are going overwhelmingly to May. Some of the pundits sound a little puzzled by this, but they shouldnt be.

Ever since last Junes referendum, a succession of Remain-voting MPs have whined about the result. Labour and Liberal Democrat spokesmen have, at times, come close to implying that there is something morally suspect about those that voted Leave. Youre bigots! they have seemed to say.

Having only heard insults from Labour and the Lib Dems since the referendum, many of those that voted Leave are being pushed  as much as pulled  towards Team Theresa.

Almost every day for the past twelve months, the sort of posh left-wing voices that get to go on the BBC have sounded as if they are seeking to delegitimise what the people decided. The demos was duped, arrogant opinion-formers imply. Gina Millers efforts to frustrate Brexit were reported with great glee. Millions of voters have noticed. Eurocrats in Brussels have issued what sound like carefully choreographed threats, designed to cajole and intimidate. Brexit cannot be a success Jean Claude Juncker insisted.

For many voters, June 8th is a chance to answer back. Giving Mrs May a massive mandate would cut through all that nonsense.

What we are seeing is not just former Tories coming home, which would be enough to see the Conservatives win in places like my former constituency, Clacton. We are seeing people who have never voted Conservative before making the move, too. So much so, in fact, that constituencies like Sedgefield, where I cut my political teeth against Tony Blairs massive majority at the 2001 general election, are also whispered to be in play for the Tory party.

But its so unfair! cry some of my former UKIP colleagues. We spent years saying we should leave the EU, and now everybody is voting for May to do what we said all along!

Yup. Its true. But there are no prizes for being right first in politics. Nor will there be any prizes for my former party if they put themselves in the absurd position of wanting Mays Brexit negotiations to fail. Success in politics is, as Milton Friedman once put it, making sure that even the wrong people have to do the right thing. And that is precisely what we are seeing today.

The biggest switcher in this story is, of course, the Conservative Party. What we are witnessing right now is one of those magnificent moments in British political history; a great Tory pivot. As has happened before on some of the great issues of the day, the party rotates  shamelessly you might say, pragmatically others would insist  180 degrees.

For much of the 1920s and 30s, the Conservative Party was hopelessly wrong over appeasement. Yet during the late 1930s, the party pivoted, turning in favour of rearmament just in the nick of time  and rewriting its collective memory of what it stood for as it did so.

In the 1960s and 70s, the upper echelons of the Conservative Party were obsessed with a failed Keynesian economic orthodoxy. But in 1978-79, the party pivoted, ditching the old ideas in favour of the new. By the mid-1980s, it was hard to find a Conservative who hadnt been a monetarist all along.

So, too, today. The Conservatives have rejected four decades of failed Euro orthodoxy, and are now fighting an election advocating EU withdrawal. Soon it will be quite impossible to find a Conservative who was not always an advocate of an independent Britain. And it might be quite impossible to find a Kipper at all.

Vote for Mrs May!
Lewis Baston is author of Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling and several books about British general elections. He is a consultant on politics, elections and constituencies.

Tracing the roots of the election back to the start, it was mostly down to May  although events rapidly gained their own momentum.

The Conservatives ran on the basis of a doctors mandate, asking for national unity and a free hand to address the pressing problems of the time. The Labour vote dropped sharply and the Tories sucked up the votes that had gone to other parties in the previous election, producing an extreme landslide.

This, then, is the story of the October 1931 election, which began with the report of the May committee recommending various austerity measures  including cutting unemployment benefit.

The Labour Cabinet could not agree on a response to the crisis and broke up; instead, an emergency National Government was formed in August from Labour, Conservative and Liberal elements and passed a supplementary budget introducing the cuts in September.

The Government had a perfectly adequate majority in parliament (59 at its first confidence vote test) and there was initially no talk of an early election. But events piled on, notably the forced departure from the Gold Standard, and the temptation of going for an election and getting a huge mandate to tide the Conservatives through what looked like a turbulent few years and extend the end of the parliament from 1934 to 1936 eventually became too much.

The Government asked for a doctors mandate  the freedom to do what was necessary to tackle the economic crisis. The formula covered the hitherto transgressive Conservative dream of introducing protective tariffs, which had doomed the Tories in 1906 and 1923 but which were at last legislated in 1932 (and little good they did). They got what might have better been called a surgeons mandate  a completely comatose and compliant patient on which to operate.

Contemporary observers were awe-struck by the scale of the landslide, but the ability of the electoral system to produce wildly unbalanced results when one party has a large lead in votes was not properly understood at the time  concepts like uniform national swing and the cube law had not been refined yet.

But the old-fashioned cube law would suggest that a party or alliance with better than a 2:1 advantage in votes should get a better than 8:1 advantage in seats, which is what happened in 1931. The National alliance beat Labour with 67 per cent of the vote, of which 55 per cent was cast for its Conservative members, to 30.6 per cent, a lead  depending on how one counts it  of either 36 points or 24 points.

For comparison, the Tories led by 17 points in 1935, 15 points in 1983 and 1924, and Labours margin in 1997 was 12.5 percentage points. A 37-point Tory lead on uniform swing since 2015 would reduce Labour to around 94 seats.

It was unsurprising that Labour lost the election badly; that was going to happen in any circumstances because of the economic collapse that had happened since 1929, and the feebleness of the Governments response to the unemployment and misery it caused. For the party to split, and for the main bit of the party to leave in a way that could credibly be represented as running away from a national crisis, added a heavy anvil to the defeat that was coming.

The scale of the National win was augmented by the circumstances of the election; the other electoral event when all the sensible chaps were on the same side, the Europe referendum in 1975, produced a similar result (a 67 per cent win).

There was a fierce and bitter tone to the contest, particularly between National Labour and their recent colleagues. The National Governments electoral appeal had unusual levels of overt support from the traditional Establishment, such as the Church of England; after all, the formula for its creation had a lot to do with the intervention of Buckingham Palace. Even Cabinet Secretary Thomas Jones, who had greeted the unexpected Labour successes of 1923 with glee, felt ruefully that Labour needed to lose this one.

The results of the 1931 election were the most extreme in the history of Parliament. This went further even than the elections with out-sized landslide margins such as 1906, 1924, 1935 and 1997. The Unionists won 471 seats and there were 50 more who were unambiguous allies (35 Liberal National, 13 National Labour, 2 National). There were 33 Liberals who retained more independence and eventually left the government over tariffs.

Against 554 government MPs the opposition could muster 56  46 Labour, 6 Independent Labour who disaffiliated in 1932, and four Lloyd George Liberals (and there were five Independents). The Governments majority was nearly 500.

The City of London had housed what was effectively a spread betting market on the results and while the Government was expected to increase its majority the sheer scale of the liabilities involved made or ruined many of the people involved in this market.

The completeness of the sweep was astonishing. Every seat in Manchester, Sheffield, Salford, and Birmingham went Tory, as did both banks of the Tyne, where Jarrow elected a Tory MP with a majority of over 3,000. Marginal Birmingham Erdington went from a Labour majority of 133 to a Tory majority of 18,996.

In Rotherham the little known Tory candidate George Herbert overturned a 1929 Labour majority of 16,836  he resigned from the House in 1933 but lived until 1982.

Labours leader Arthur Henderson was defeated in his Burnley constituency. The main areas that held out were the core mining districts of South Wales and Yorkshire. Of the ministers of the Labour government who had not followed MacDonald there was only one Cabinet-level survivor, George Lansbury, and a couple of junior ministers called Clement Attlee and Stafford Cripps. From little acorns that survive a sharp frost

One of the side-effects of the 1931 landslide was that the number of women Conservative MPs rose from three to thirteen. Startlingly, the same number of Conservative women MPs  thirteen  were elected in the 1983 high water mark and the number only climbed out of the mid-teens in the 2010 election. Several of the women elected in 1931 were surprise winners in unlikely seats, such as Norah Runge (Rotherhithe) and Mavis Tate (Willesden West). Thelma Cazalet (Islington East) was not alone in regarding herself as an avowed feminist. In her memoirs From the Wings she notes that:

When I entered the House there was still something slightly freakish about a woman MP and I frequently saw male colleagues pointing me out to their friends as though I were a sort of giant panda. The House has often been labelled the best Club in the world, but it was nothing of the sort to women.

The women MPs, and their multiply more numerous male colleagues, elected in 1931 were generally a fairly moderate lot, in contrast to 1918s hard faced men who looked as if they had done very well out of the war. They owed their election to Baldwin and to the crumbling figurehead of MacDonald, and owed nothing to the press barons who had made 1929-31 such a miserable term of opposition for Baldwin.

Many of the victors in normally Labour constituencies knew that although they were Conservatives they were only in Parliament because normally Labour voters had supported them, and they had to try to satisfy this extended base of support by introducing moderate and pro-working class measures.

Harold Macmillan, returning as MP for Stockton after a two-year absence, was confirmed in his moderate views which he expressed in his 1938 book The Middle Way  a path between the excesses of unregulated capitalism and bureaucratic socialism.

Right-wing discontent did surface from time to time, particularly on the issue of India, but it was split between old fashioned reactionaries and people who sympathised with the apparently invigorating force of fascism.

It may appear that there was little in the 1931 election result that could console the Labour Party. Its parliamentary representation had been smashed and it was so far behind that the prospect of it being able to govern again seemed extremely remote. The crisis had also inflicted damage on the partys reputation that would be hard to repair.

But despite the electoral disaster, the foundations of the Labour Party were shaken rather than destroyed. The trade union movement was powerful in heavy industry and mining, which were the backbones of the economy despite the ravages of the Depression and in the new industries that grew during the 1930s. The unions were well-led and could command a hearing within Government. The Labour movement was still an estate of the realm after 1931.

Labours vote share was still 30.6 per cent even at this moment of extreme weakness. It was the first election in which Labours share of the vote had fallen. Even in the electoral arena, there were soon signs that Labour was on the way back  a series of by-election gains crowned by the first-time victory in Fulham East (1933) on a 29 per cent swing, and the capture of the London County Council in 1934.

However, even with the strong foundations it had, 1930s Labour could only rebuild as far as a position as a credible opposition rather than a possible government. The 1931 realignment had created a stable pattern in which a moderate, mildly statist bloc led by the Conservatives had a lock on power and Labour MPs represented the constituencies that were nearly exclusively manual working class and suffering from unemployment.

It made Labour, until total war changed society and politics, a party whose electoral appeal was mostly confined to the organised working class which was a source of some strength but insufficient to be a platform for government. The stifling complacency and unimaginativeness of 1930s government, and the policy and leadership failures that resulted, dates back to the nearly opposition-free parliament of 1931-35 and the uncompetitive state of electoral politics.

Further reading: Andrew Thorpe The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford University Press, 1991).
Tuo Zhen, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, addresses a news conference on Tuesday. [Photo/SCIO]



The Chinese research institutions and universities have established more than 300 research platforms on the Belt and Road Initiative and more than 50 foreign think tanks have joined the research, said Tuo Zhen, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, at a news conference on promoting people-to-people exchanges among countries along the Belt and Road on Thursday.

Tuo said a large number of research platforms have been established after the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed, as the initiative has already become a key research for think tanks and received positive response from domestic and overseas academic circles.

Chinese think tanks published more than 400 books on the Belt and Road Initiative and foreign think tanks published more than 100 research reports on the initiative.

The high-level academic platforms for exchanges and cooperation on the Belt and Road Initiative have attracted extensive participation of think tanks, and thus help build bridges for effective communication, better understanding and broad consensus.

Chinese and foreign think tanks will gather at a parallel session during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation.

Tuo said outcomes of cooperation among think tanks will be announced at the session.
SOUTH DUNDAS, Ontario  Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry (SD&G) Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officers are currently at the scene of a single vehicle fatal collision on County Road 1 (Carman Road), South Dundas Township.

Preliminary investigation has indicated that at approximately 9:30pm, a pick-up truck was travelling south on County Road 1 when, for reasons under investigation, it went out of control and rolled over. The adult male driver (lone occupant) was pronounced deceased at the scene. His identity is being withheld pending notification of next-of-kin.
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A $55 million project is going to commence to study the effect of climate change on agriculture and the quality of life. This project is going to be launched by Indiana University.

According to school officials, this beautiful effort is to understand the impact of climate change on almost all the overall pillars of human life. The announcement was made by Michael McRobbie, the University President on Wednesday (May 10).

What Could Be The Outcome Of This New Study?

According to the US News, this effort to understand the phenomena will augment the number of new instructors. It is also supported by a few major businesses, including the maker of diesel engines, named Cummins Inc.

The source also revealed that the research will be guided by Biology Professor Ellen Ketterson. According to Ketterson, this extensive study on climate change will bring solutions to natural disasters, like flooding caused by severe weather. Apart from this, it will also assist farmers to cope with alterations in pollination and look into the process of restricting the spread of avian disease.

Three Signs Or Three Threats To Indiana As A Consequence?



Scientists have discovered three signs that show of climate change's huge impact on human lives. The three signs - typical weather with minimum rain followed by summer drought, intrusive species spoiling farmers fields at a large scale, and tripling of Lyme disease in Indiana in the last five years, as reported by IndyStar.

The new study will help forecast environmental or climate change and envisage the real fact that how it can affect the businesses and residents in Indiana. There arent lot of people who sit around the university or anywhere else and think about environmental change in those terms. What we see is a lot of people who are confronting elements of environmental change, IU Vice President for Research Fred H. Cate said.

See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare
Internet of things News

Partners: Microsoft's New Azure IoT Edge Service Pushes It Head To Head With GE In The Industrial Market

Lindsey O'Donnell

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Microsoft's Azure IoT Edge service, unveiled Wednesday, pushes the traditionally IT vendor into the industrial market to compete with manufacturing conglomerate General Electric through its new vital edge analytics capabilities, partners told CRN.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company announced the service at its Build developer conference, saying it will help enable developers to move their computing needs to Windows and Linux devices  and utilize Microsoft's array of services, including Azure Machine Learning, Stream Analytics, and the Azure IoT Hub.

"This announcement pushes Azure out ahead of the AWS and IBM offerings and matches feature capabilities with GE from an edge capability," said Brian Blanchard, vice president of cloud solutions at 10th Magnitude, a Chicago-based solution provider.

[Related: Industrial IoT Startup IoTium Hopes To Expand Vertical Footprint With $8.4 Million Funding Round]

"GE led the way in edge services, but was weaker initially in the cloud analysis category," Blanchard said. "AWS and IBM soon followed with edge-delivered streaming analytics, but no advanced analytics. Azure already had the cloud processing strength of an AWS or IBM offering. They've now added to that the edge processing capabilities of GE's Predix offering."

GE has approached the IoT market from an industrial standpoint. Its Predix software platform includes a range of integrated technologies at the edge, including Predix Machine for device provisioning, Predix Connectivity, and Predix EdgeManager for management, configuration, and administration of edge devices.

Predix performs two types of data analysis: operational analytics, which analyzes information in real time at the source  like a wind turbine or MRI machine  that detect split-second changes to prevent damage and optimize performance, and historical analytics, which collects and analyzes data over time.

Microsoft's existing IoT platform includes various offerings like Azure Stream Analytics and IoT Central, a service that can deploy and manage a company's IoT ecosystem from devices to cloud.

However, Azure IoT Edge fills a final gap in the company's real-time analytics capabilities. Like GE's platform, Microsoft's platform with Azure IoT Edge helps IoT devices run cloud services, process data in real time and communicate with sensors and other connected devices, even with intermittent cloud connectivity.

"The rationale is certainly consistent with other vendors such as GE, Siemens, and AWS and is a recognition that for many real-time analytic use cases in the real and physical world, analytics, logic and processing need to be as close to the action  and the data  as possible," said Scott Udell, vice president of IoT solutions at Boston-based Cloud Technology Partners. "I have no doubt that Microsoft will pursue a robust hardware and software partner ecosystem and seek to have as many vendors embed, support  or certify these new tools at the Edge."

GE said it remains a partner to, not a competitor with, Microsoft in the Industrial IoT market, a GE spokesperson told CRN. The two have partnered in the past in the industrial space; in July 2016, GE announced that its Predix platform would run on Azure and leverage applications available on both platforms for industrial customers.

"In our partnership with Microsoft to bring Predix to Azure, we are leveraging applications available on Azure, combined with Predix, to bring these joint capabilities to our industrial customers," a GE spokesperson told CRN. "The edge plays an important role in industrial IoT computing. While the cloud enables industrial companies to cost-effectively store and process the massive data sets and number crunching required to fulfill the vision for the Industrial Internet, the cloud alone isnt enough for industrial companies looking to optimize their assets and operations. In the real world, they need to be able to put analytics at the edge  on any device or machine. Only then can we support remote and disconnected operations, produce intelligent machines that do their own on-board computing, and integrate and interoperate at the edge with traditional industrial control systems. Thats why GE built the Predix platform as a complete, distributed operating system for the Industrial Internet. It is the only software platform to provide complete connectivity from the edge to the cloud and computing capabilities at every level of the industrial software stack."

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on its positioning in the manufacturing market. However, it directed CRN to this statement from Sam George, partner director at Azure IoT: "Microsoft has the most comprehensive IoT portfolio with a wide range of IoT offerings to meet organizations where they are on their IoT journey, including everything businesses need to get started  ranging from operating systems for their devices, cloud services to control them, advanced analytics to gain insights, and business applications to enable intelligent action."

Partners said they're happy that Azure IoT Edge fleshes out Microsoft's platform as a whole so that solution providers in the manufacturing market can also use the platform's Azure Machine Learning, artificial intelligence features, Azure IoT Hub, and Stream Analytics services.

"One key advantage is that Azure IoT Edge capabilities now offer one consistent platform," said Blanchard. "You can write a single code base or configuration for stream analysis, machine learning, cognitive services  then choose where to execute the code based on environmental factors."

The new Azure IoT Edge service is better positioning Microsoft to lead in the industrial space, but it's also positioning partners to broaden their portfolios and work with manufacturers, according to partners.

"As an Azure partner building enterprise-grade IoT and cloud solutions, we now have a powerful, new tool set that we can bring to bear for situations where connectivity may be intermittent, and the need for rapid, low-latency decisions are critical," said CTP's Udell.

Meanwhile, Jeff Dunmall, executive vice president of cloud applications at Washington-based New Signature, said the new service would help his company strengthen its IoT solutions in the manufacturing space.

The solution provider hopes to use Azure IoT Edge for customers in the mining sector, for example. That industry has been plagued by the issue of improving infrastructure in areas where there is little or no connectivity.

"We were dealing with constraints in the mining sector  these customers were dealing with remote sites collecting vast amounts of data, but that had poor connectivity," Dunmall said. "The cloud has been hard to adapt in those situations. Now, we can send up only relevant data to the cloud, which dramatically reduces the data we need to transfer and makes the overall solution more efficient."

10th Magnitude will use the new service to do business with a number of organizations that mix chemicals and fluids to create products, using models where decisions are made in milliseconds.

"For us personally, weve been eagerly awaiting the ability to talk about this technology for months," said Blanchard. "IoT Edge allows us to be more streamlined in the creation of solutions that suffer from connection disruptions, real-time responses, and complex device management scenarios. Looking forward, we are expecting a tighter relationship between system integrators and the manufacturers of devices."

Blanchard said his company can now leverage Azure IoT Edge to tackle these scenarios: "Decisions at the device, teamed with analytics in the cloud, creates a unique opportunity for this type of customer," he said.
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DERBY-The clock has restarted on Luis Barrios possible deportation again.

This time D-Day is June 6.

Barrios, 52, Chestnut Drive, is the undocumented non-citizen whose plight has touched the region. He fled to the U.S. from Guatemala in 1992 at the urging of his father, who had been threatened. Shortly after Barrios arrived here his father was murdered and later a brother was killed. Since that time several members of his wifes family have been murdered in Guatemala, according to court papers.

Barrios, who has no criminal record in the U.S., sought asylum but because he missed a court hearing on that request in 1998, he was ordered out of the country. He was set to leave on Wednesday but U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal interceded and obtained a 30-day stay.

Im very concerned about what could happen, Blumenthal said Friday while meeting with Barrios, his family and his lawyer, Erin ONeil-Baker in the familys Chestnut Drive home. We have only 30 days but my staff and I will work as hard and as long as possible to enable Mr. Barrios to stay here.

Now the clock has started again.

Hes been given another timetable, said ONeil-Baker, a Hartford lawyer who has been fighting Barrios impending deportation. He must present his airline ticket to ICE (Department of Homeland Securitys Immigration and Custom Enforcement) by May 18 and then be prepared to deport on June 6.

In the meantime ONeil-Baker is hopeful that the Board of Immigration Appeals will consider her motion to re-open the asylum request and grant him a hearing before an Immigration judge in Hartford.

She said it takes about 18 months for a hearing to be scheduled.

Blumenthal said if Barrios, who works for Pease Septic in Newtown, had been deported he would have been at serious physical risk. Guatemala is a lawless, violence-prone country where he said criminal gangs run rampant. The Senator said drug gangs have moved into the country from Colombia.

As for those who say Barrios broke the law by coming to the U.S. illegally, Blumenthal said we are a nation of laws. There are laws that relate to asylum...Mr. Barrios is an example of someone who should be considered for asylum. That process has never occurred in the way it should have in his case.

Simply sending him home without affording him his due process is wrong, Blumenthal continued. Im very concerned for him. We only have 30-days to get something done.
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Shawn Mansfield drives Interstate 95 for a living, occasionally at 120 miles an hour.

Five days a week, youll find him in his super-charged muscle car, sipping a coffee and listening to his FM radio, driving up and down the highway starting at 5:30 a.m.

Mansfield is a Connecticut state trooper.

I love my job, he told me during a recent ride-along in his unmarked car as I was squeezed next to his on-board computer and wearing an under-sized bullet-proof vest.

Mansfield has been a trooper for nearly three years following a stint as a corrections officer and six years in the U.S. Navy, including a deployment to Afghanistan.

Six years in the Navy and I was never on a ship, he said as we raced down the interstate en route to an accident.

Its 8:30 a.m. on a recent weekday morning and the southbound highway is bumper-to-bumper, yet Mansfield weaves through the cars, choosing not to drive in the breakdown lane.

Theres too much debris there, he said, adding he loves to issue tickets to impatient motorists who think the emergency rescue lane is their express way through the delays.

Hes also quick to ticket trucks driving in the left lane. But his favorite targets are distracted drivers, especially people on their cellphones. Sure enough, we stealthily passed a Colorado van with the guy oblivious to our unmarked police vehicle.

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Mansfield pulled him over and the driver immediately confessed.

Honesty is always the best policy, said Mansfield, who issued the driver a $150 ticket for his first offense.

We made four stops  mostly rear-end accidents in congested I-95 traffic and one on Super 7  over a four-hour span.

In addition to tickets for following too close, several stops found unregistered vehicles or unlicensed drivers.

She wont be going anywhere today, Mansfield said as a tow truck removed her car from the highway.

Mansfield said undocumented immigrants, who can obtain Connecticut drivers licenses, should not fear state troopers.

We dont toss anybody to ICE (Immigration Customs Enforcement) he said.

Mansfield uses his laptop to check license plates and drivers licenses. He writes up his accident reports on the scene with his dispatchers at Troop G in Bridgeport able to follow every keystroke. They also know his every move, thanks to the GPS transponder mounted on his roof  the only sign his super-charged speedster is a State Police vehicle.

In each case, the motorists involved in the accidents were patient and friendly, some of them even shaking hands after receiving their citations.

You can be a nice guy and still do your job, Mansfield said with a smile.

But there are other times when he needs to break up fights or speak to someone who doesnt understand English.

My Spanish isnt great, he said. But one time, I used Google Translate to talk with a Korean gentleman.

Editors note: This is the first of a two-part series about a ride-along with State Trooper Shawn Mansfield. Next week, Mansfield discusses speeding on state highways.

Jim Cameron is a longtime commuter advocate based in Fairfield County. Contact him at CommuterAction

Group@gmail.com.
11 Mays 2017 Persembe, 14:44

The USAs president with his hair dyed tawny orange, Donald Trump, has announced that he will give heavy weapons to the PYDs armed wing, the YPG, in the war against ISIL in Syria.

Precisely or almost precisely on the eve of Tayyip Erdogans 16 May visit to the USA for talks with the president.

This is quite obviously, putting it mildly, a cold shower for the AKP regime, or, to put it less mildly, an unexpected blow.

In fact, a stream of comments has emanated from the government front.

A pronouncement came from soon-not-to-be Prime-Minister Binali Yldrm:

The USA must make a choice. It is impossible for us to accept procedures that amount to direct or indirect aid for the PKK.

Then Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu chimed in:

Every weapon that passes to the YPG is a threat for Turkey.

The reply to these reactions came from Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis on behalf of the US administration:

We are 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.

I do not know how those versed in diplomatic language will interpret and assess Jim Mattis reply. To me it came a bit like the consolation from the man who assists a boy during his circumcision, Dont be afraid, it wont hurt. Just a bit at the end.

But, do not pay too much attention to what I say: that language is not a language I know. Perhaps I have misunderstood.

It is not my business, in any case, to write about the cold winds blowing between Erdogan and his team and the Trump administration, whose election came as the source of hope to the AKP regime and joy to the AKP media.

***

But, I deem it worthwhile to inquire whether the PYD and its armed wing, the YPG, indeed pose a threat to Turkey.

The PYD is the Syrian Kurds political organ. It is a party. Its Kurdish name is Partiya Yekitiya Demokrat, meaning Democratic Union Party. It was formed in 2003. It has adopted the political line set by Ocalan. It has strong relations with the PKK.

The YPG, for its part, is the PYDs armed wing. Its Kurdish name is Yekineyen Parastina Gel, meaning People's Protection Units.

Ocalan has been in a state of complete isolation for a long time. I do not know if he has changed his opinions in the lengthy intervening time. What I know is that he rejects the establishing of a Kurdish nation state. Even if it comes across as utopian to some, he persistently advises the sections of the Kurdish political movement over which he holds sway to steer clear of the ideal of establishing a nation state. He advocates, not Kurds breaking away from Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, where they live, and establishing an independent state on that territory, but those countries retaining their national borders but, through weakening these, building up the strongest possible economic, political and cultural ties.

For some people, these are preliminary steps, preparations, in the direction of a prospective Kurdish nation state.

But this is to read meaning into it. However, the HDP in Turkey and the PYD in Syria have on countless occasions stated their commitment to remaining within this political sphere. Selahattin Demirtas has underlined this at every opportunity. There are comments in the same vein from Salih Muslim on behalf of the PYD.

No comment, or even rhetoric, has been heard in which either political party has deviated from this orientation.

So, under such circumstances, why should the rising to prominence of the PYD in the Kurdish regions that stretch along Turkeys border with Syria and its reaching an agreement based on autonomy with the Syrian regime pose a threat to Turkey?

Quite the reverse, will it not prevent the porous border from becoming the wayside inn of ISIL and similar pseudo-religious terrorist organisations?

In Syria today, it is the Kurds, the YPG, who are waging the most serious fight against terror-wreaking Islamist organisations, large and small, from ISIL to Al-Nusra. Until the contrary is proven to be true, if declaring the PYD to be a threat is not giving the green light to Islamist terrorists, what is it?
The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is set to commence on May 14, when the world will again focus its attention on Beijing. [Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn]

The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation (BRF) will be held in Beijing May 14-15. President Xi Jinping will attend the opening ceremony and chair the leaders' roundtable summit. As another international conference that China is hosting only months after last September's G20 Hangzhou Summit, the BRF will serve as an important forum for China to explore cooperation plans and promote the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative with the rest of the world.

This high-level forum attended by many heads of state, and over 1,000 Chinese and foreign representatives, is designed to explore all possible themes related to the three key issues -- international consensus and the outcomes of the Initiative as well as the challenges in its implementation.

1. Has the international community reached consensus on the Belt and Road Initiative?

An affirmative response can be given to this question. China's "circle of friends" has kept expanding in the three years or so since the Initiative was first put forward by Xi. Up to now, it has gained support from more than 100 countries as well as international organizations, with over 40 having already signed related cooperation agreements with China. This undoubtedly shows the international community has reached broad consensus on the Initiative. Such consensus is inspired by history and necessitated by reality.

The consensus is definitely inspired by history. The original "Silk Road" began to take shape more than 2,000 years ago when Zhang Qian, an imperial envoy of the Han Dynasty (206 BC  220 AD), set foot in the Western Regions [Central Asia]. The land and maritime silk roads that subsequently developed connect the civilizations formed in China, West Asia, Central Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean. In the past two millennia, numerous followers of Zhang, the Buddhist Monk Xuanzang, Admiral Zheng He and Marco Polo have traversed these passageways, regardless of wild winds, burning sun and rolling waves. History tells us that it is the roads and seaways, and people that promote the goods trade, the spread of cultures, mutual learning between civilizations and the rapid development of world civilization and human society.

The current consensus is necessitated by reality. Since the 1950s, scientific and technological progress and growing social productivity have powered rapid global growth and accelerated economic globalization. However, the latter has repeatedly suffered setbacks as a result of geopolitics, ideology and competition over resources. From trade barriers to Cold War, "de-globalization" factors have influenced the whole process, holding back global growth like blockages and blood clots in the arteries. In this context, Xi proposed the initiative to build a "Silk Road Economic Belt" and "21st Century Maritime Silk Road." The Belt and Road Initiative is widely embraced by the world because it not only upholds equality, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, but also responds to major pressing problems facing human society, such as a widening wealth gap and sluggish economic growth. With lessons from history, the Initiative encompasses the global landscape, charting the course of the future.
Say what you like about Jeremy Corbyn, he is without doubt a man of consistency and principle.

Unmoved by evidence and deaf to argument, Comrade Corbyn has spent his entire political career spouting the same outdated and extreme version of socialism. In summary, his principles have been consistently wrong for more than 30 years.

So it is no surprise that Labours election manifesto, which was leaked on Wednesday, is built on the same dangerous ideology which took Britain to the brink of ruin in the 1970s and would bankrupt us today.

Though shorter  and disguised with moderate language  it is in many ways even more deluded than the 1983 Labour manifesto, memorably described by the late Sir Gerald Kaufman as the longest suicide note in history. So undiluted is its statist dogma, economists say it would turn the clock back further, to the 1940s.

Unmoved by evidence and deaf to argument, Comrade Corbyn has spent his entire political career spouting the same outdated and extreme version of socialism

The great winners in Mr Corbyns fantasy land would be his union paymasters, richly rewarded with a Ministry for Labour (abolished half a century ago) and the repeal of anti-strike laws. Nationalising the railways, buses, Royal Mail and swathes of the energy sector would further strengthen their chokehold on the economy.

Pay caps... rent controls... forced collective bargaining a minimum wage of 10 an hour that even The Guardian admits would cost jobs No wonder business groups are utterly horrified and moderate Labour MPs are calling it a cocktail of insanity.

Then theres the endless list of unfunded spending pledges, from scrapping tuition fees (8billion a year), to more welfare (2.5billion a year) and NHS spending (6billion a year). Damaging tax rises on high earners and business have already been spent countless times over.

Fulfilling every commitment, at an estimated annual cost of more than 90billion, would mean milking not just the rich but every business, large and small, and every household, or by laying waste to the already precarious public finances by borrowing countless hundreds of billions.

On defence, the manifesto betrays the tortured compromise between Mr Corbyns strident opposition to nuclear arms and his partys official pro-Trident policy.

By stating that he would be extremely cautious in using atomic weapons, Mr Corbyn  a longstanding CND activist sends a clear signal to other nuclear states that he would never push the button.

It is no surprise that Labours election manifesto, which was leaked on Wednesday, is built on the same dangerous ideology which took Britain to the brink of ruin in the 1970s and would bankrupt us today

But the policies which, more than anything, show how out of touch he is with the public  and particularly millions of ordinary, decent, patriotic Labour supporters  are on Brexit and immigration.

The clearest lesson from last years referendum was that voters want to end free movement, bring down migrant numbers and restore our borders. But not only does Mr Corbyn not want to reduce immigration, hes happy to relax the rules!

On the defining political issue of the day, Brexit, Labour is in such chaos there are serious doubts over whether we would leave at all. Ruling out walking away without a deal would give the EU every incentive to offer us little or nothing.

With such a misguided, backward-looking programme for government, and with hapless, incompetent Mr Corbyn in charge, it might seem obvious that the public will emphatically reject Labour on June 8.

But the paradox of this election is that the more unlikely a Labour win appears, the greater the risk voters will take a Theresa May victory for granted and either stay at home or, not wanting an overly powerful government, back another party.

In the chaotic aftermath of an unclear result, the nationalists and Brexit-blockers could do a deal and agree to prop up Mr Corbyn in Downing Street.

As Labours Marxist manifesto shows, the consequences would be nothing short of catastrophic.
One of the great joys of holidaying is the eating indulgence: whether its a bowl of silky pasta dressed in the best local olive oil, fresh shellfish straight from the sea, or the finest French cheeses; dinner abroad is always a delight.

One of the great joys of holidaying is the eating indulgence, and now you can enjoy this without the hassle of getting on a plane

And nowhere is more popular than the Mediterranean for Brits looking to chase the sunshine. With each country offering its own distinct culture, heritage and flair, we are spoilt for choice having everywhere from Italy to Turkey within a few hours' flight.

But what if you could enjoy some of the Mediterraneans most fabulous foods in the comfort of your own home?

Thanks to M&S, now you can. They sent a crack team of their top foodie development bods to travel extensively around the Med, tasting, researching and sourcing the best flavours, suppliers and dishes to produce this years Spirit of Summer range of authentic Mediterranean meals, salads, dips, desserts and everything in between.

Heres how you can enjoy a taste of sunshine whatever the weather

Spain

The dish we all order on holiday is paella. With its roots in Valencia, the Spanish are very firm about what constitutes an authentic paella  as Jamie Oliver discovered to his peril last year when he mistakenly added chorizo.

Make things easy on yourself with M&S 3 Easy Step Paella Kit  perfectly seasoned rice and paella paste with the true flavours of Valencia

A purists paella is calasparra rice cooked over a flame in stock, paprika, parsley, lemon and generally with chicken and rabbit, but importantly never stirred or agitated to allow that signature crust to form.

Get an authentic taste of Spain in your British back-garden with this M&S Griddled Chorizo and Chicken with piquillo pepper on smoky rice

Sumptuous Garlic King Prawns with spinach and sweet piquillo peppers on a bed of Spanish rice makes a perfect summer evening dinner

Make things easy on yourself with M&S 3 Easy Step Paella Kit  perfectly seasoned rice and paella paste with the true flavours of Valencia ready prepared. Alternatively, try an arroz mixto (more like the Oliver version) and pick up M&S Griddled Chorizo and Chicken with piquillo pepper on smokey rice; or perhaps youd prefer the sumptuous Garlic King Prawns with spinach and sweet piquillo peppers on a bed of Spanish rice.

Anyone who has ever eaten in Spain, or indeed a tapas restaurant, knows no meal is complete without patatas bravas- and now M&S has developed a way for you to make them at home!

In fact, why not magic up an entire trip to Spain with a few tapas beforehand  we like the Manchego Chorizo Croquettes, Tortilla and the 3 Easy Step Patatas Bravas Kit  includes potato seasoning, spicy bravas tomato sauce and aioli. Finish the night off with some zesty Orange and Lemon Sangria Pots and Churros without lifting a finger.

Italy

Italy is often seen as the jewel in the culinary crown of Europe due to the varied abundance of fresh produce and delicious specialties

Perhaps the worlds richest country when it comes to gourmet goodies, Italy has always led the way in holiday eating.

M&S's new Linguine with Scallops, Pancetta and Peas in a white wine chilli dressing really does allow you to close your eyes and transport yourself to Capri

From luxuriously creamy Burrata - a type of Puglian mozzarella cheese injected with cream  to trendy Sicilian Nocellara olives (amazingly buttery, nutty and green) that are so good even Jamie Oliver uses them in his Italians. Look out also for sundrenched Sicilian treats like caponata  a rich ragu of aubergines, capers and tomatoes in the signature agrodolce style (sweetly sour) that can be spread on Italian breads or served alongside a main meal.

Vegetarians and meat-eaters alike should sample the M&S Aubergine and Mozzarella Bake for an indulgent take on the traditional melanzane parmigiana

Fish lovers will also love the new Cod with deliciously rustic Tuscan beans, garlic and focaccia croutons

You can find all of the above as part of the M&S new Spirit of Summer grocery range (the new Truffle Pesto will totally transform simple pasta dishes into something special) but if youd prefer to leave the cooking to someone else, pick up the new Linguine with Scallops, Pancetta and Peas in a white wine chilli dressing; close your eyes and youre in Capri.

Fish lovers will also love the new Cod with deliciously rustic Tuscan beans, garlic and focaccia croutons and an authentically zingy salsa verde and vegetarians and meat-eaters alike should sample the M&S Aubergine and Mozzarella Bake for an indulgent take on the traditional melanzane parmigiana.

France

Check out M&S Lamb Ratatouille  a succulent chump atop a colourful, juicy ratatouille and dusted with a garlic and basil pistou straight from Provence

If youre yearning for some classic French gastronomy, a Provencal ratatouille always hits the spot with its gently stewed summer tomatoes, aubergine, courgette and fresh herbs in good French olive oil.

Instead of slaving over a stove, check out M&S Lamb Ratatouille  a succulent chump atop a colourful, juicy ratatouille and dusted with a garlic and basil pistou straight from Provence.

A trip to France wouldnt be complete without a few stops at the fromagerie for creamy Camembert, brie and Roquefort. Recreate the holiday feeling at home with M&S Camembert tomato tarts encompassing the finest French cheese and patisserie skills.

Israel

With borders in both North Africa and an Eastern Med coast, Israeli cuisine is a tasty hybrid of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean and is proving to be a massive trend.

One of the countrys most iconic dishes is shawarma: a heavily spiced  but not spicy  marinated dish usually of chicken or lamb and spit roasted for days. Its served with generous plates of vibrant fresh salads, an array of pickled vegetables, tahini infused yoghurt and plenty of hot fluffy pita.

mouth-watering lamb shawarma wrap of slow roast lamb, sweet potato puree and pickled vegetables on an authentic flatbread.

Do it yourself at home without stocking up on exotic spices or spending days cooking with with M&S Chicken Shawarma Thighs, or grab the whole package with the Velvet Houmous too, inspired by Israeli houmous which is silky smooth, made with olive oil and deeply savoury from earthy tahini: perfect for spooning over pitta. Try the M&S Houmous with Lamb Shawarma for a double hit of Levantine deliciousness.

Turkey

Aromatic Spiced Lamb Pide consists of meltingly soft pulled lamb, peppers, onion and mozzarella atop a springy, light bread with incredibly rich, unctuous centre

Turkeys answer to pizza is the rather more exotic pide. Originating in the Samsun area of the country, these are delicious flatbreads made from dough left to rise for 12 hours before baking in a wood fired oven.

They are usually made in an elongated boat shape, with the edges slightly turned up to encase fillings like spinach and cheese, or  generally  beautifully spiced lamb mixed with onions and vegetables.

Whatever the filling, butter is used liberally to finish it and the result is a springy, light bread with incredibly rich, unctuous centre. Thrillingly, M&S has two varieties of pide to pop in the oven at home: try the fresh, Spinach Pide or the Aromatic Spiced Lamb Pide piled with meltingly soft pulled lamb, peppers, onion and mozzarella.

So, even if this summer does prove to be a wash-out, at least we can head down the high street to Marks and Sparks for a dose of sunshine. All we need now is a large glass of something cold and French to wash it all down: sante!
Shane Richie claims he and his former EastEnders co-star Jessie Wallace are so close they share secrets theyll take to their graves.

Its part of the bond between us, he says. We watch each others backs when it comes to our personal lives and we never betray each other.

'Some of whats happened to us has been well documented. Thankfully some hasnt  and hopefully never will be!

The fate of Kats baby son Luke, who was adopted at birth by an Irish couple when she was a teenager was never known until now, in new BBC1 drama series Kat & Alfie: Redwater, will the truth emerge

The same cant be said of the couples famous characters, Albert Squares Kat and Alfie Moon.

For 14 years their scandal-filled lives were played out in front of millions of fans before they won 1 million on the Lottery and upped sticks to start a new life in Spain at the beginning of 2016 with their son Tommy.

A baby swap, infidelity, arson, a miscarriage, divorce, remarriage and financial disaster... you name it, when it came to the staples of soap opera married life, Kat and Alfie ticked every box.

There was, however, one story that remained untold. The fate of Kats baby son Luke, who was adopted at birth by an Irish couple when she was a teenager. Only now, in new BBC1 drama series Kat & Alfie: Redwater, will the truth emerge.

Jessie Wallace and Shane Richie say that there years of working together have made them closer than ever. Pictured: Kat & Alfie's wedding in December 2003

Kats been piecing together what happened  from what she was told before she left Albert Square to a postcard she received from the Irish village of Redwater in the 1980s that said he was safe, explains Jessie.

She and Alfie visit Redwater, where they believe Luke might be living, and ruffle feathers, especially among two prominent families, the Kellys and the Dolans, who may know what happened.

Redwater isnt a soap spin-off, the kind EastEnders have made over the years featuring characters such as Dot Cotton and Frank Butcher, but a stand-alone drama over six hour-long episodes that makes no mention of Albert Square at any point.

Redwater isnt a soap spin-off but a stand-alone drama over six hour-long episodes that makes no mention of Albert Square at any point

Jesper W Nielsen, the award-winning director of Danish drama Borgen, has been drafted in to oversee the series, which was filmed in Dunmore East, County Waterford.

Its a classy show, with lots of trouble being taken over the filming, says Shane, sipping tea in The Strand Inn, a beautiful hotel on the seafront in Dunmore East.

Wed get through 20-odd scenes a day on EastEnders, on this were only getting through two or three. Its taken me and Jessie a bit of getting used to. We film one scene, then it takes an hour or two to set up the next to make sure its all perfect.

The drama opens at the hillside house that Kat and Alfie have rented on the cliff overlooking Redwater. Its from here that Kat sets out to find Luke. Shes convinced shes found him almost instantly when a handsome, dark-haired man in his 30s called Andy Kelly, part of the family that owns a nearby cattle farm, looms into view during the villages boozy Spring Festival.

Kat & Alfie: Redwater starts on Thursday at 8pm on BBC1

She starts taking pictures of him and visiting him on the farm, explains Jessie. This desire to track down the son she had to give up all those years ago burns within her. She sees this as her big chance and shes determined to take it.

When Kat is befriended by pub landlord Peter Dolan, who theyre renting from, her meddling opens up new rifts between the Kellys and the Dolans, who all seem to be hiding secrets. Meanwhile, could the brain tumour Alfie was diagnosed with before the Moons left for Spain be responsible for anxiety thats causing him to see things that might not be there?

The BBC is banking on the popularity of the two main characters to deliver a big audience for Redwater. Kat and Alfie are right up there with fish and chips when it comes to Great British double-acts, and their survival as a married couple, achieved against all the odds, has been key to their popularity with viewers.

People like the fact theyve stayed together despite the challenges theyve faced, says Shane. Weve noticed that particularly in Ireland. The Irish are very big on family so when they see a couple whove gone the distance, they admire that.

Jessie agrees. They like the fact our characters are just like any other married couple. They bicker and fight but love each other very much. A bit like Shane and me really!

Despite many rumours, Shane and Jessie have never been a couple although much has been written about their respective love lives. In his autobiography Rags To Richie: The Story So Far, Shane admitted to an affair with dancer Claire Taylor while married to first wife Coleen Nolan, by whom he has two sons, Shane Junior and Jake, who are now in their 20s.

And Alison Hall, the president of Shanes fan club, claimed she had an affair with him in the early days of his relationship with second and current wife Christie Goddard, with whom he has three more children.

Jessie was dating Mallorca-based former criminal Paul Whitworth when she joined EastEnders in 2000, before a liaison with policeman Dave Morgan, by whom she has a 12-year-old daughter, Tallulah. The couple parted soon after Jessie gave birth, with her lawyers placing a gagging order on Morgan.

Me and Jessie have been there for each other through good times and bad, says Shane. Our friendship has lasted longer than my first marriage and longer, to date, than my second so its based on something solid. People have speculated on a romance between us over the years, but the truth is were like brother and sister.

Theres a shorthand between us and a lot of mutual respect, adds Jessie. I suppose you could say that in some ways were like an old married couple because even when we row we still feel comfortable with each other.

Some of their fallouts have been spectacular. They didnt speak to each other for five years while they were in EastEnders, as each thought the other was spilling dressing room secrets to tabloid newspapers.

And when they were on tour together with the Peter James play The Perfect Murder in Edinburgh last year, Jessie wouldnt talk to Shane after he called her an idiot. She couldnt find her passport, says Shane. I said, Why did you bring it? Weve only come to Scotland, and she said she thought she had to.

He called me an idiot so I wouldnt talk to him for a week, says Jessie.

Let the bickering begin again!

Kat & Alfie: Redwater starts on Thursday at 8pm on BBC1.
We ask a celebrity a set of devilishly probing questions  and only accept THE definitive answer. This week its former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls

Former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls is in this week's hot seat for the definite article

The prized possession you value above all others My 1966 upright Yamaha piano. I got it in 2011 when I started learning and Im on Grade 5 now. I find it relaxing because its so immersive. It takes my mind off work.

The biggest regret you wish you could amend That my uncle Tom never lived to celebrate a civil partnership with his partner Glenn. Tom died aged 59 from cancer in 2005, the year the first civil partnerships were allowed.

The temptation you wish you could resist Crisps and peanuts. Theyre bad for me, but utterly compelling.

The book that holds an everlasting resonance Swallows And Amazons by Arthur Ransome. My dad Michael gave it to me when I was seven and I was swept away with the vividness of the adventure.

Ed says that he could watch The Sound of Music again and again

The pet hate that makes your hackles rise People leaving damp towels on the bedroom floor, assuming someone else will pick them up. Its gone on in our house for 20 years. The culprits know who they are  its all of them!

The person who has influenced you most My wife, Yvette Cooper. Shes always been supportive, but she doesnt put up with any nonsense. Shes made sure I only do things that are true to my values.

The film you can watch time and time again The Sound Of Music. My mum Carolyn played the music when I was a child, and Yvette and I took our kids [Ellie, 17, Joe, 15, and Maddy, 12] on a Sound Of Music tour of Salzburg in 2014. Great fun.

The figure from history for whom youd most like to buy a pie and a pint Id talk to Denis Healey in 1976 when he was tackling many tough issues as Chancellor of the Exchequer, such as the Labour Party rebellions. Id ask how he coped.

The misapprehension about yourself you wish you could erase When I was asked in an interview if my surname caused embarrassment at school, I said as a joke, It was worse for my sister Ophelia. For years Ive had people ask me if its true. Her real names Joanna.

The unending quest that drives you on To play the piano effortlessly and be able to improvise. I want to be at Grade 8 in five years.

The unlikely interest that engages your curiosity Campanology  bell ringing. I did it at a local church in Nottingham for four years from the age of 14. Its technically difficult but it has a mathematical beauty.

The piece of wisdom you would pass on to a child When your formal education finishes, take your time before rushing into a career.

The treasured item you lost and wish you could have again The ability to eat what I want without putting on weight left me in my 20s. I lost a stone doing Strictly though, Im 16st now.

In his fantasy 24 hours Ed would enjoy pancakes on the island of Lombok

The poem that touches your soul I love the words to The Magnificat canticle, which has been sung in churches for hundreds of years. Its timeless beauty always touches me.

The philosophy that underpins your life See the glass as half full.

The event that altered the course of your life and character In 2009 I was supporting some children talking about their stammer on a DVD. One of the fathers called me a coward for keeping mine a secret, so I chose to speak out.

The crime you would commit knowing you could get away with it Id camp overnight at the top of the Empire State Building, so I could watch the sun rise over New Yorks fabulous skyline.

The song that means most to you Cant Help Falling In Love by Elvis. I remember singing it with Yvette soon after we met in 1994. Four years later the guests sang it at our wedding.

The way you would spend your fantasy 24 hours, with no travel restrictions Id have mango juice and a banana pancake for breakfast on the beach on the island of Lombok, Indonesia.

Then all the family would go windsurfing on a Greek island and have lunch at a beachside restaurant. Id have calamari and chips.

Wed go white-water rafting on the Zambezi river in Zambia, then look at Impressionist paintings in the Musee dOrsay, Paris, before heading to New York to watch the musical Hamilton.

Wed end the day at El Capitan Canyon nature reserve in California. Id barbecue steaks on an open fire, then wed sleep under the stars.

The happiest moment you will cherish forever When Yvette was elected MP for Pontefract and Castleford in 1997. I felt so happy that we were going to be in government together [Ed was working as an adviser to the Chancellor Gordon Brown at the time].

The saddest time that shook your world The 9/11 attack. I was in Downing Street with Gordon Brown and there was a real sense of foreboding. He said, The world will now be a darker and more dangerous place.

The unfulfilled ambition that continues to haunt you That I never became Chancellor. But it doesnt haunt me  Ive moved on to do other things.

The order of service at your funeral I want music by Handel and Herbert Howells, and then for the congregation to dance to Gangnam Style.

The way you want to be remembered He showed that being a politician is a noble calling. Ill probably also be remembered for Strictly!

The PlugThe stage show An Evening With Ed Balls: Strictly Speaking Out is coming to Greenwich and Cheltenham. Eds memoir Speaking Out is published by Arrow at 9.99.
Byron Bay yogi and artist Sally Mustang has made her colourful Instagram into a safe haven for fans to share their ideas on sex and love.

She and fellow artist Mitch Gobel, 27, even released a newsletter describing their most intimate, sexual moments together.

So it came as a surprise to Miss Mustang's 274,000 followers when the social media sensation announced in a two-part photo series that she and Mr Gobel had broken up.

Scroll down for video

'If you love something set it free.. if it comes back it's yours,' Miss Mustang's cryptic caption began, accompanied by a pensive photo of the artist

The Byron Bay couple have been together for over two years now and only yesterday confirmed their split

Opening up: 'Mitch and myself have taken a break from our relationship. It has nothing to do with not loving one another but more to do with what is right and wrong for both of us right now,' she said

'If you love something set it free.. if it comes back it's yours,' Miss Mustang's cryptic caption began, accompanied by a pensive photo of the artist.

'Mitch and myself have taken a break from our relationship. It has nothing to do with not loving one another but more to do with what is right and wrong for both of us right now.

'I am really proud of the relationship we share, it is so beautiful and creative.

'Everything we create and have created together holds the essence of such powerful love - a special magic. Twin flame. It's nice to know no matter what we can look back at all these wonderful things and see our love.

Miss Mustang and Mr Gobel released a line of yoga mats and artworks together in Mitch's typical resin lacquered style. They are still being sold on each other's websites

'We poured ourselves into one another and everything we did together for the last two years. We have always been so honest and open with everything and that is also something I am so proud of,' she said

'We are giving each other space and freedom instead of turning something so amazing into something toxic,' she said

'We poured ourselves into one another and everything we did together for the last two years. We have always been so honest and open with everything and that is also something I am so proud of.

Miss Mustang and Mr Gobel released a line of yoga mats and artworks together in Mitch's typical resin lacquered style. They are still being sold on each other's websites.

'We want to give each other's individuality an opportunity to grow right now,' she continued.

'But I have to remember the bigger picture. There is so much more to life then worrying whether or not someone wants to be with you or not. Or what the future will bring. It's coming regardless. Right now in this moment is what is important, and right now I need to be alone on my journey,' she wrote

Mitch Gobel, 27, recently opened up about his drug and alcohol addiction but it's not clear if this played a part in the reasons why the couple split

'Suppressing those emotions is not my desire. I don't excuse how I feel. I sit with the hard moments and I learn from them. I have also probably made some mistakes along the way,' she wrote

'We are giving each other space and freedom instead of turning something so amazing into something toxic.

'Of course I get upset, my heart hurts and I'm often confused. It's probably the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with, the fear is sometimes overwhelming.

'Suppressing those emotions is not my desire. I don't excuse how I feel. I sit with the hard moments and I learn from them. I have also probably made some mistakes along the way.

'But I have to remember the bigger picture. There is so much more to life then worrying whether or not someone wants to be with you or not. Or what the future will bring. It's coming regardless. Right now in this moment is what is important, and right now I need to be alone on my journey,' she wrote.

Mr Gobel, who also isn't shy talking about his raw emotions on social media, recently admitted to a drug and alcohol problem online

Miss Mustang didn't acknowledge her ex-boyfriend's drug use in the post instead making it about love and positivity

Mr Gobel's darkest point came at the age of 24 when he found himself using drugs up to five days a week - and then spending half of his week in bed recovering

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Mr Gobel said he will always be thankful for what he and Miss Mustang have shared over the years.

'Everyday single day I reminisce about the life we shared in Byron and I can hardly explain how much I miss it, thinking of it has me in tears,' he said.

'I don't know if I'll ever find love like that again, life was just so beautiful - perfectly imperfect; it really was like a fairy tale. The adventures, the places we saw, our home and the lifestyle we lived, the sex... the sex!

'For now these memories are infused in my mind as the greatest days of my life, maybe they'll hold that position forever and I'm totally content with that.

'If you take one thing away from the love you witnessed between Sal and I, I'd like it to be this: 'Don't ever be afraid of 'failure' in a relationship, because if you are you can never truly love or be loved.'

Mr Gobel will be posting his own tribute to his former girlfriend on Instagram on Friday evening.

He started drinking from the age of 15 - and it wasn't until his 19th birthday when he tried drugs for the first time. 'I put off doing drugs for so long because I knew I would like it, I was the last of my social group to do it,' he said

Mr Gobel, who isn't shy talking about his own raw emotions on social media, recently admitted to a drug and alcohol problem online.

His darkest point came at the age of 24 when he found himself using drugs up to five days a week - and then spending half of his week in bed recovering.

'At the height of my using, I was doing four days on drugs, sometimes five, then three or four days in bed recovering, I'd be a ghost of a human, just useless - no emotions, no energy, no love,' he explained to FEMAIL.

'I'd lay in bed for a few days until I felt better and then repeat the process all over again. It was the darkest time of my life, I just couldn't get my s*** together.

He started drinking from the age of 15 - and it wasn't until his 19th birthday when he tried drugs for the first time

He is currently tracking his sobriety on Instagram using a hashtag. It has been 38 days since the artist touched a drug

'I did that for about seven months straight and I didn't create [art] at all while I went through this phase.'

He started drinking from the age of 15 - and it wasn't until his 19th birthday when he tried drugs for the first time.

'I put off doing drugs for so long because I knew I would like it, I was the last of my social group to do it,' he said.

He is currently tracking his sobriety on Instagram using a hashtag. It has been 38 days since the artist touched a drug.

'I did that for about seven months straight and I didn't create [art] at all while I went through this phase,' he said

'I need to honour the essence of myself and love myself. Blossom and create on my own. Become independent and support my own path on this earth,' she wrote in a second post online

'Blaming anyone for your current situation is the surest way to stay in a problem. Understanding enables us to rise above the issue and take control of our future,' she said

Miss Mustang didn't acknowledge her ex-boyfriend's drug use in the post instead making it about love and positivity.

'I need to honour the essence of myself and love myself. Blossom and create on my own. Become independent and support my own path on this earth,' she wrote in a second post online.

'Mitch also. We both have amazing gifts and messages to share with this world and it wouldn't be possible to give right now if we were together.

'Are you good to anyone if your not being good to yourself?

'Love is free to be whatever it wants. Love from a far, love when together, it's really the same thing. Love is love. Real. Anyway, anyhow,' she said

'This pain or this change is an opportunity for us as individuals to understand ourselves and one another better. A time for both of us to start navigating life in a better direction. A gift,' she continued

She finished the captions by declaring her love for Mr Gobel in a touching sign that they would move further forward without each othe

'Blaming anyone for your current situation is the surest way to stay in a problem. Understanding enables us to rise above the issue and take control of our future.

'What expectations have you created in your head about love ?

'Love is free to be whatever it wants. Love from a far, love when together, it's really the same thing. Love is love. Real. Anyway, anyhow.

'Remember that the universe always puts you in the exact place your meant to be.

The couple released a newsletter titled 'Sex is Art' where they shares intimate moments they had shared together

'I love you @mitch.gobel always will, but for this moment, I understand and embrace being on my own. Thanks for setting me free,' she said

'Remember that our power is always in the present moment.

'This pain or this change is an opportunity for us as individuals to understand ourselves and one another better. A time for both of us to start navigating life in a better direction. A gift.

'It will no matter what lead to happiness in the future. Without love though why would we bother trying to recreate our reality.'

She finished the caption by declaring her love for Mr Gobel in a touching sign that they would move further forward without each other.

'I love you @mitch.gobel always will, but for this moment, I understand and embrace being on my own. Thanks for setting me free,' she said.
Her tales of love, sex and romance among the upper-middle classes have long enthralled readers.

Yet Jilly Coopers novels havent received the same adoration in literary circles  until now.

A Cambridge don has likened Mrs Cooper to Charles Dickens in an impassioned defence of what he calls her absorbing and elegant prose.

After first reading her novel Rivals last year, Dr Ian Patterson has ploughed through all 45 of the 80-year-olds books.

A Cambridge don has likened Jilly Cooper (left) to Charles Dickens (right) in an impassioned defence of what he calls her absorbing and elegant prose. Dr Ian Patterson has ploughed through all 45 of the 80-year-olds books

Last night Mrs Cooper, who has sold more than 11million books in Britain, said she was delighted to be praised by such a well-regarded scholar.

Writing in the London Review of Books, Dr Patterson  who teaches English at Queens College, Cambridge  said that last year, as his wife lay dying, he was unable to focus on academic texts.

Instead, he sought solace in Mrs Coopers books after being recommended her bestseller Rivals  part of the Rutshire Chronicles series. He wrote: I was told it was just the thing I needed, I must give it a try.

That turned out to be right. It was exactly the sort of narrative, for me, at that moment: absorbing, distracting, elegant enough, silly enough and, in a strange way, affectionate. And so were all the others.

Following his wifes death, he made his way through the rest of Mrs Coopers books, including collections of her newspaper columns.

Mrs Cooper, who wrote first book How To Stay Married aged 32, said she was well aware of the scoffing of some academics  but she believed her work would stand the test of time.

Speaking from her home in Stroud, Gloucestershire, she said: I love to be read and Im absolutely knocked out by it. Its marvellous, such a treat to hear.

Even Tchaikovsky cried and cried in Moscow after he heard how beastly they were about his second piano concerto, but now they listen to it the world over.

Dr Patterson conceded that colleagues derided her work as soft porn. But he said themes of social class, sex, marriage and children had long been at the heart of Mrs Coopers work.

He wrote: If you set aside for a moment the raunchy cover pictures, the breathless titles (Score! or Wicked! or Jump!), and the publicists emphasis on wall-to-wall sex, you do find something worth reading and worth thinking about, which is pleasure, that most ticklish of subjects.

There is a particular pleasure in reading about pleasure: pleasure delayed and deferred, guilty pleasure, the pleasure of repletion and the problems of it.

He said he considered her propensity for sub-plots worthy of such literary greats as Anthony Trollope and Dickens.

Yesterday Isobel Akenhead, of the Jilly Cooper Book Club, said: Jillys true fans know her for what she is: the funniest, smartest, most irreverently brilliant writer out there. Put simply, she is todays Jane Austen.

And anyone too snobby to read her is just going to miss out.
Moon Jae-in of the liberal Minjoo Party waves during a celebration event in Seoul, South Korea, on May 9, 2017. [Photo/Xinhua]

On his last day at the White House while handing the keys over to his successor, outgoing President Barack Obama warned incoming President Donald Trump that the Oval Office has a tendency of having "a calming effect" on new tenants, especially when it comes to transforming campaign promises into public policy. He also warned the new president that "North Korea" should be his Number One foreign policy priority, above all else.

At the end of his First 100 Days in Office, the new president had learned a-hundred-times-over that his two-term predecessor was right  and on both counts.

But there are two things Obama could not have prepared Trump for: the rapid escalation of the military stand-off in the Korean Peninsula while the former Republic of Korea (ROK) President Park Geun-hye was facing trial for corruption; and the result of the election that followed her impeachment.

With the May 9 election now having presented a new political paradigm shift in Seoul, Washington's doublespeak policy towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) can soon experience another gear-shift, as new ROK President Moon Jai-in is less likely to automatically back the U.S.'s high-impact, aggressive and militarized proxy approach to dealing with an always defiant Pyongyang regime.

The new ROK president has a totally different approach than Washington, opting instead for a return to the peaceful "Sunshine Policy" approach. He noted during the campaign that the two Koreas were united for 5,000 years and the six decades of division is a relatively brief historical moment. He's also already said that he will visit Pyongyang, once the conditions are made right.

That's not the kind of tune the war hawks in Washington want to hear from Seoul, where the U.S.'s offensive THAAD Missile System was surreptitiously deployed and operationalized almost overnight, at a time when the ROK was without an elected leader.

The new Moon administration might also have some differences with Washington over the THHAD deployment, which has not only drawn stiff opposition from inside the ROK, but also raised public concern that Seoul may have to foot the billion-dollar bill.

Regime change has come in Seoul amid continuing events of concern to China and the rest of the world.

Just ahead of the ROK election, the U.S. (on May 3) tested its long-distance Minuteman 3 intercontinental ballistic missile from an air force base in California to an atoll in the Pacific, covering enough distance to reach the DPRK.

Following deployment of the THAAD system in South Korea, Beijing a week later (on May 10) confirmed the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force had also conducted a missile test, to enhance its capability to fend-off threats to China's national security.

After earlier threatening to (again) bomb the DPRK into oblivion, President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are now (again) both talking about possible U.S. support for a peaceful path to peace with Pyongyang, each (again) also waving mixed flags and sending confusing signals.

International observers fear that the U.S. president's recent improved domestic popularity ratings following his decision to launch Tomahawk missiles against Syria may encourage the U.S. Commander in Chief to again try to augment his poll ratings with another similar show of strength, this time against the DPRK.

Under elevated domestic pressure and criticism following his May 9 dismissal of CIA Chief James Coby in the middle of the agency's investigations into alleged links between his campaign officials and Russia, Trump is also widely expected by the mainstream U.S. press to resort to his usual creation of a new distraction.

North and South Korea will be the first to suffer from any first strikes, but China faces all the possible risks. However, its unambiguous Korean peninsula policy has been patient and consistent all along: repeatedly calling on all sides to replace war threats with peace talks, warning the U.S. against deployment of the highly intrusive THAAD system and independently imposing unilateral sanctions against both the DPRK and the ROK.

The leadership change in Seoul opens the hopeful possibility of the unpredictable Pyongyang regime again being invited to resume the long-halted six-party talks to discuss a two-track, peace-based solution that will lead to a denuclearization of the Korean peninsula, silencing of the war drums and new engagement with Seoul about serious tension de-escalation.

Nobody ever knows what tomorrow will bring. But hope is very much alive that a new moon is rising that will lead to a new sunrise for the Korean people on both sides of the imposed "38th Parallel" that has divided them since the end of the costly war still much remembered on both sides.

Earl Bousquet is a contributor to china.org.cn, editor-at-large of The Diplomatic Courier and author of an online regional newspaper column entitled Chronicles of a Chronic Caribbean Chronicler.

For more information please visit: http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/earlbousquet.htm

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
As a leading Australian TV presenter and mother to a four-month-old baby, you could say that 60 Minutes reporter Allison Langdon has her hands full.

Which is perhaps why she has made some interesting personal discoveries in the past few months.

'I have found that you can't do it all and be good at it,' the 37-year-old told whimn.com.au.

'Juggling this new world of motherhood, I have just worked out that you have to be 50 per cent good at everything and accept that.'

Australian TV presenter, Allison Langdon (pictured) opened up about how she balances her home and work life

'I have found that you can't do it all and be good at it,' the 37-year-old said (pictured with her four-month-old baby)

'Juggling this new world of motherhood, I have just worked out that you have to be 50 per cent good at everything and accept that,' she said

The new mother-of-one also opened up about how she is finding balancing work with motherhood.

She explained that while she was adamant that she would be back at work before her baby son, Mack, turned three months, she realised she couldn't do it when she was up all night the night before:

'That morning, I turned to my husband and said: "Can you pass me what is that thing that thing that we eat with?". He said: "Spoon?". And I realised if I can't remember the word for spoon, I can't do my job,' she said.

Ms Langdon said that initially she was adamant that she would return to work three months after having her baby son, Mack

However, she eventually realised - when she couldn't remember the word for spoon - that she might need a little more time (pictured with Mack)

According to Allison Langdon, women are often harder on themselves than anyone else is. She also thinks that the stigma surrounding maternity leave is a real thing

According to Allison Langdon, women are often harder on themselves than anyone else. She also thinks that the stigma surrounding maternity leave is a real thing:

'That is why I waited so long to have kids. I love my job so much and I couldn't see that working with children,' she explained.

Luckily for the new mum, by the time she gave birth to Mack she said she felt 'really confident' that she would come back to her job - a feeling which she didn't necessarily feel five years ago.

'That is why I waited so long to have kids. I love my job so much and I couldn't see that working with children,' she explained

The active mum and her partner had their baby, Mack, in January, in what they described as a 'traumatic [birthing] entrance'.

Prior to Mack's birth, Ms Langdon was overseas for 'all bar two weeks of the first trimester', filming stories in 12 different countries all over the world.

These days, the happy mother shares countless colourful family photos on Instagram, proving that she does manage to effortlessly juggle motherhood with her career.
A mother who went blind just weeks after giving birth to her baby daughter has opened up about her four-year struggle.

Mii Teuru-Bates, from Perth in Western Australia, had the perfect eyesight for 30 years when she welcomed her little girl Riteria in March 2013.

But just two weeks later, the mother-of-10 was unable to see after suffering bouts of excruciating pain despite returning to the hospital multiple times.

Speaking to The Project on Thursday night, Mrs Teuru-Bates opened about her devastating ordeal when she was left blind four years ago.

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Pictured: The last time mother Mii Teuru-Bates saw her newborn girl before she went blind

'I can't see anything now. It's black and white. Black is like darkness, nothing at all. No little dots of light,' she told the Channel Ten program.

The mother had fallen ill shortly after being discharged from the Rockingham Hospital following the birth of her daughter.

'I'm freezing and yet it was a very hot day, that day was 39-40 degrees... and I was using three big blankets on me,' she recalled.

So when she returned to the hospital, the mother was given painkillers after her symptoms were dismissed.

The mother opened up about the moment she was left blind after the birth of her daughter

The mother was unable to see after the birth of her little girl Riteria - now aged four

Far from getting better, Mrs Teuru-Bates was rushed into intensive care at Perth Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital where a piece of placenta was allegedly found inside her.

It's alleged her blindness was caused by the resulting infection - but by the time it was detected, the mother had become critically ill.

Breaking down in tears, the mother said one of her biggest challenges is not being able to read books to her youngest children.

'[My youngest son] always asks me to read his book and I always tell him that I can't help you... and he always says to me "you can see mum, you can read my book, you can help me",' she said.

Her devoted husband Turoa Teuru-Bates had to leave his job as a motor mechanic to become a full-time carer for their family.

The distraught mother-of-ten said she was struggling to cope with the thought of not being able to see her husband and children - aged four to 19 - again

Her devoted husband Turoa Teuru-Bates (left) had to leave his job to become a full-time carer

The distraught mother said she was struggling to cope with the thought of not being able to see her children - aged four to 19 - again.

'I'm very, very angry. I'm very angry and very frustrated everyday since day one till today,' she said.

'I don't want to lose my husband and also my children. I want to see them again.'

Rockingham General Hospital has declined to comment due to 'confidentiality requirements on individual patient circumstances or matters before the courts'.
You get what you pay for, the famous saying goes, but when it comes to cheese the most expensive one isn't necessarily better - and the proof is in the feta.

Or in the cheddar, at least in this case, thanks to a new blind CHOICE taste test that took on 18 different vintage varieties that are available in local supermarkets.

It may sound cheesy, but the test found that some of the best cheeses are also the cheapest.

These are the top four winners of CHOICE's taste test of 18 premium and vintage cheddar cheeses, with some of the highest scoring brands among the cheapest of the selection

Two of the lowest-priced brands in the group of 18 cracked the top five, with the $18 Mainland Vintage, Aged up to 24 Months, taking the number one spot.

The Australian cheese, scored an 88 per cent on the judges' taste test and beat out a number of choices that cost nearly triple the price.

King Island Dairy, Warrnambool and Bega Strong were among the tested brands, but it was Cracker Barrel that took the second spot.

The Vintage Cheddar Special Reserve scored just one per cent lower than the Mainland winner, and only costs $20 a kilo.

The $18 Mainland Vintage, Aged up to 24 Months, took the number one spot while $15 Aldi's Emporium Selection 20 Month Aged Cheddar nabbed fourth place

A more expensive variety of Mainland also grabbed third place, with the brand's Epicure Aged up to 36 Months scoring 84 per cent.

The 'bitey' cheddar, as the judges dubbed it, can be purchased for $24 a kilo.

Aldi's Emporium Selection 20 Month Aged Cheddar nabbed the fourth spot in the taste test with 81 per cent.

The $15.96 cheese is the third cheapest cheddar of the group, with the cheapest of the 18 completing the top five.

Great Ocean Road's Vintage Cheddar scored a 79 per cent and only costs $13.60.

So with the cheaper cheddars taking the cake, how did the more expensive selections fare?

King Island Dairy's Surprise Bay Cheddar King, the priciest of the bunch at $51.71, didn't even make the top 10 - instead scoring 12th place with 72 per cent.

Cracker Barrel's Vintage Cheddar Special Reserve scored just one per cent lower than the Mainland winner, and only costs $20

Premier Selection Grand Reserve Cheddar and Collier's Powerful Welsh Cheddar, both $40 cheeses from Great Britain, fared better with respective spots in seventh and eighth place.

The same can't be said for $42.86 South Cape Vintage Club Cheddar, the second most expensive of the group, which took the bottom spot with a 60 per cent score.

Fifty-five per cent of the 240,000 tonnes of cheese sold in Australia every year is cheddar, which is why CHOICE choice to make it the subject of its cheesy test.

Each brand, all of which were sold under 'premium' or 'mature' labels, were judged on flavour, aroma, texture, and appearance.

Judges were specifically looking for whether the cheese had a sweet and milky flavour, a good balance of salt and acid, with a firm texture and lingering aftertaste.
Full-time Youtuber Chloe Morello, 26, has kept her engagement fairly low key to photographer Sebastian Mecha, 29.

Their status as an item was only announced months ago with the appearance of a huge diamond sparkler on Miss Morello's left hand.

But for the first time the beauty guru has introduced Mr Mecha to her online family of loyal followers via a question and answer video.

'We met on Happn which is an online dating website,' Miss Morello said, after reading out a question asking the couple how they met.

Sebastian Mecha and Chloe Morello were dating for over a year before he proposed on a canoe in Canada (pictured in their latest video together)

What is Happn? Happn is a new mobile dating app that uses your phone's location to show you potential matches. Every time you cross someone's path, this person's profile will be added to the top of your feed. If you like what you see you can hit the red love heart and if the feeling is mutual you have a crush and can start messaging. Advertisement

'I don't think we should say Happn...' Mr Mecha countered. 'We met on Hot Singles Now... we met on Hookups Tonight...' the beauty Youtuber continued to joke.

'I messaged her first and then she messaged me. It took about two weeks to meet up... Why? Because she thought I was scary looking,' Mr Mecha said.

'I don't like shirtless photos in general on dating apps. And you were frowning in every photo,' Miss Morello answered.

After two weeks of talking over the app the pair finally decided to meet up at the beach. Since that day over a year ago the pair have hung out 'pretty much every single day'.

The couple have decided to get married in January next year and have already chosen the venue. And while the day promises to be extremely romantic, the same can't be said for the Youtuber's proposal.

The couple have decided to get married in January next year and have already chosen the venue. And while the day promises to be extremely romantic, the same can't be said for the Youtuber's proposal

'He was stopping the canoe and I ruined the moment by saying "oh great, I need to pee" and so I went to pee in the bush. When I came back he proposed,' Miss Morello said

'I proposed. We were out camping in Canada...' Mr Mecha began, talking about his hometown.

'He was stopping the canoe and I ruined the moment by saying "oh great, I need to pee" and so I went to pee in the bush. When I came back he proposed,' Miss Morello said.

The embarrassing admission was met with nervous giggles and a whole lot of hugging on Mr Mecha's part. Ultimately he captured a gorgeous photo of the moment and the bladder situation was long forgotten.

The embarrassing admission was met with nervous giggles and a whole lot of hugging on Mr Mecha's part. Ultimately he captured a gorgeous photo of the moment and the bladder situation was long forgotten

'We just clicked so well. I told her everything from the get go. Everything about her I love,' Mr Mecha admitted

The video also shared why they were so drawn to each other.

'We just clicked so well. I told her everything from the get go. Everything about her I love,' Mr Mecha admitted.

'I like that you're very affectionate and nurturing,' Miss Morello said, recalling a time he was playing with his younger nieces.

'We dealt with long distance by using WhatsApp, Facetiming... the max we've been away from each other is a month and a half though,' they said.

Later in the video Miss Morello was asked about Mr Mecha's jobs - one of which is being a stripper.

'He is a stripper on weekends. I don't get jealous. I love it. I try to get to his shows anytime I can. Women hit on him all the time,' the 26-year-old beauty lover said

'Am I the only one that didn't know he was a stripper?' One woman said in the comments below the video

'He is a stripper on weekends. I don't get jealous. I love it. I try to get to his shows anytime I can. Women hit on him all the time,' the 26-year-old beauty lover said.

Mr Mecha told his fiance about being a stripper on the first date so neither of them were at all bothered by the job description.

Her fans were a little bit more roused by the situation.

'Am I the only one that didn't know he was a stripper?' One woman said in the comments below.

The couple appeared blissfully happy despite the fact they are currently in a long distance relationship, with Mr Mecha flying back home to Canada from Miss Morello's native Sydney residence

'I thought they were joking!' Said another.

The couple appeared blissfully happy despite the fact they are currently in a long distance relationship, with Mr Mecha flying back home to Canada from Miss Morello's native Sydney residence.

But the flexibility of their occupations means they won't have to go without the other for very long.
Queen Letizia of Spain proved office wear doesn't have to be boring when she stepped out in a suede two-piece today.

The 44-year-old royal looked elegant in the grey sleeveless jacket and matching skirt as she greeted visitors at the Palace of Zarzuela, in Madrid.

She finished the look with a pair of snakeskin stilettos, which brought a touch of edge to an otherwise soft and feminine outfit.

Elegant: Queen Letizia, 44, opted for a grey suede sleeveless jacket and matching skirt today

Gracious: The Spanish royal welcomed visitors to the Palace of Zarzuela in Madrid today

The Spanish queen wore her brunette locks loose around her shoulders and kept her make-up simple with a touch of eye shadow and berry-coloured lipstick.

The mother-of-two was on hand to welcome visitors to the royal palace before posing for photos in one of the ornate reception rooms.

Yesterday Letizia joined her husband, King Felipe VI, at a rather more sombre affair as they paid their respects at the funeral of a Dowager Spanish princess.

Sleek: The mother-of-two wore her brunette locks loose around her shoulders

Radiant: The Spanish queen posed for photographs in one of the ornate halls in the palace

Infanta Alicia, Duchess of Calabria died on March 28 aged 99 and was remembered with a service at the chapel of the Royal Palace in Madrid.

Letizia, mother to Leonor, Princess of Asturias, 11 and Infanta Sofia of Spain, 10, kept her dark hair down, wore a knee length dress and matching black court shoes.

The royal couple made their way down the aisle of the chapel and remained straight-faced as they honoured the Duchess' memory.
Bristol Palin is already reminiscing about the arrival of her third child, Atlee Bay, just a few days after she announced the birth of her baby girl.

The 26-year-old mom took to Instagram on Thursday to share photos of her and her family at the hospital with the newborn baby, presumably after she had given birth.

'Everything in life right here,' she captioned the images, which see her and her husband Dakota Meyer posed with their children.

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Family of five! Bristol Palin took to Instagram on Thursday to share photos of her and her husband Dakota Meyer at the hospital with their children after the birth of their newborn

Happy as can be: 'Everything in life right here,' Bristol captioned the images, which see her daughter Sailor Grace and son Tripp posing next to their sister Atlee Bay

In the heartwarming photo, Bristol is sitting in bed in a hospital gown, cuddling her swaddled newborn, while Dakota, 28, is holding their one-year-old daughter Sailor Grace.

Bristol's eight-year-old son Tripp, her only child with her ex-fiance Levi Johnston, is standing next to his mom, sweetly resting his head on her shoulder while placing his hand on Atlee Bay.

The mother-of-three is glowing as she smiles for the camera in her hospital gown and glasses, with her medical bracelets still attached to her arm.

The other image Bristol shared sees her kissing Atlee on the head while Tripp is laughing and Sailor is sitting in Dakota's lap.

Look of love: Dakota shared a sweet photo of their one-year-old daughter Sailor Grace gazing at her newborn sister on Tuesday

Meanwhile, Dakota took to Instagram on the same day to share a throwback photo that sees him and Bristol in the car together last Fourth of July.

Both Bristol and Dakota have been posting numerous photos of their family on social media in the days leading up to and after Atlee's birth.

Earlier this week, Dakota shared darling photos of Sailor holding and kissing her newborn sister on Instagram Stories 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.

Too cute: The doting dad also shared snapshots of Sailor holding little Atlee Bay

Thick as thieves: At one point, the little girl bent over and gave her little sister a kiss

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.

Fast asleep: Dakota posted a photo of Bristol taking a nap with the baby earlier in the day

Doting dad: Bristol recently shared a heartwarming photo of Dakota kissing their newborn daughter Atlee Bay

'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.

Reminiscing: Dakota celebrated 'Throwback Thursday' with this photo of him and Bristol in the car last Fourth of July

'Welcome to the world!' Bristol posted this photograph of herself 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 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.

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.'

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!'

Too cute: Bristol is pictured with Sailor about a week before she gave birth

Almost there! Bristol posted a photo of herself sitting on Dakota's lap before the birth last month

It is not known exactly when Atlee Bay was born; however, the picture appears to have been taken in the hospital.

For the past few weeks leading up to her due date, Bristol and Dakota have been living in a suburb of Austin, Texas, with Sailor and Tripp.

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.
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He's captivated women on the world stage from the Duchess of Cambridge to Ivanka Trump and sent the internet into meltdown when a snap of his pert posterior went viral.

Now Justin Trudeau has yet again confirmed his heartthrob status yet again in the role of 'hot dad'.

The Canadian Prime Minister, 45, shared a series of heartwarming snaps of himself and his youngest son Hadrien, three, on Facebook , saying: 'Had some company at the office today.'

And fans were predictably delighted by the snaps which showed blonde-haired Hadrien standing on his father's desk and waving to assembled delegates as he held a meeting.

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Justin Trudeau took his youngest son Hadrien to work for the day at parliament, and adorable photos show the three-year-old standing on a desk waving to politicians

The Canadian prime minister enjoys a game of hide-and-seek with his young son at work

No doubt to Hadrien's delight, they rewarded him with a sea of hands waving back.

Another adorable image shows the father-of-three playing hide-and-seek with Hadrien, peeking out from behind a wood panel in his office.

The pair also went for a race down the corridor with Hadrien appearing to steal the lead on his father.

Another more reflective shot, captures the youngster intently looking at a smartphone screen while perched at his father's desk.

Politician of the future? The youngster takes a quiet moment to sit in the hot seat

Father and son race each other down the corridor at the houses of parliament

Father and son face the assembled media together on a 'bring your son' to work day

Did they take inspiration from someone? One of the final photos of JFK and his son was captured in a tender moment on October 15 when the toddler played under the Resolute Desk

The father-of-three is happily married to Sophie Gregoire and in addition to Hadrien, the couple have two older children Ella-Grace, eight, and Xavier, nine.

The two grew up together in the affluent Mont Royal neighborhood of Montreal, where Gregoire Trudeau attended school with her future husband's younger brother.

She recalled seeing him in the newspapers years later, and described having a 'weird feeling' that they were meant to be together - a notion that her mother laughed off at the time.

The PM went viral earlier this year after appearing to mesmerise figures on the world stage from the Duchess of Cambridge to Donald Trump

The PM sent fans into a frenzy when eagle eyed admirers zoomed in on his pert posterior

The two met again as adults when they co-hosted a charity ball together and soon began dating before tying the knot in 2005.

The Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada went viral earlier this year after a snap showed President Trump's daughter Ivanka looking captivated as she stole glances at him during a roundtable discussion at the White House.

The snap captured the imagination of Twitter users who dug out photos of the Duchess Of Cambridge, Emma Watson and even Trump himself appearing to gaze longingly at the Canadian head of state.
High school students around the country jumped at the opportunity to vent against Donald Trump when a test question asked them to reflect on political tricks.

Gifted teenagers sat down to take the AP Language and Composition exam Wednesday, and had to write several essays as part of the standardized test.

One of them asked them to reflect about the role of artifice, i.e. 'clever or cunning devices or expedients, especially as used to trick or deceive others' (as per the Oxford Dictionary) in politics.

Roasted: High school students around the country jumped at the opportunity to vent against Donald Trump when a test question asked them to reflect on political tricks

Multiple students admitted that they immediately thought of President Trump when they read the question, and took to Twitter to rejoice at the chance to roast the mogul in their essays.

'If your third essay wasn't about Trump then you ain't woke,' one student tweeted.

The question, which promptly became known on social media as the elusive question three, was inspired by a column from progressive writer Chris Hedges, according to BuzzFeed News.

It seemed especially timely, since it was asked the day after Trump fired James Comey not long before the FBI director was scheduled to testify before the Senate intelligence committee to discuss 'worldwide threats', amid the bureau's investigation into Russia's possible interference in the US presidential election.

Pointed reference? One question asked the teens to reflect about the role of politics, i.e. cunning devices used to trick or deceive others, in politics

Inspired: Multiple students immediately thought of President Trump when they read the question, and took to Twitter to rejoice at the chance to roast the mogul

While some students claimed to have openly derided the tycoon in their essays, some worried their scores might suffer if the people grading them happened to agree with Trump's policies.

'When you want to roast Trump for the third essay but your graders might be republican,' one of them tweeted.

Another showed how inspired she had been by the question, while implying she hadn't quite dared leaving her full answer for her grader to see.

'When you write "Donald trump is a talking Cheeto with the power to veto" in your Q3 essay and then lightly cross it out,' the student wrote.

A few cheeky students pictured the president taking action to protest against the question, with one imagining the mogul calling the ''Office Of Testing Integrity'.

One high-schooler was unapologetic about bashing the commander-in-chief. 'Probably got a 1, but at least I got to roast Trump in my essay,' the student tweeted.

In a different tweet, one exam taker admitted to being slightly confused as to the meaning of the word 'artifice' but brushed off that concern, writing: 'At least I got to roast Trump.'

STUDENTS ROAST DONALD TRUMP IN AP EXAM QUESTION Advertisement




Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed, a 29-year-old doctor, has been crowned 2017's MasterChef champion in a show-stopping finale.

She has swapped hospital scrubs for an apron and the picket line for professional kitchens.

And this evening, the mother-of-one from Watford, drew tears from John Torode as she triumphed in the final of MasterChef.

Saliha, who stunned the judges with her Kashmiri-inspired three-course meal, became the thirteenth amateur cook to claim the title - and she already has big plans for the future.

It seems Saliha is intent on using her medical knowledge to follow in the footsteps of TV chef Jamie Oliver, who famously campaigned to improve school dinners a decade ago and was enlisted by former Prime Minister David Cameron to draw up a strategy to challenge the problem of obesity among primary school pupils.

'I think that as a doctor, I have lots to offer,' said Salima, who lives with her doctor husband and their two-year-old son, Aashir Ahmed. 'I would love to work in a national campaign to tackle obesity and develop recipes for people with Coeliac disease and IBS,' she said.

Saliha Mahmood-Ahmed, the 29-year-old doctor from Watford, has been crowned MasterChef's 2017 winner. She juggled the competition with her job at Watford General Hospital and looking after her two-year-old son

Saliha stormed to victory over music teacher Giovanna Ryan and DJ Steve Kielty with an Asian-inspired menu described as clean, crisp, refined and beautiful.

Earlier in the week she found herself trending on Twitter and viewers claimed that Gregg Wallace was flirting with her. However, Saliha proved it was her culinary skills rather than her good looks that saw her triumph and her coup was the result of hard work and gruelling hours.

She said she regularly had no sleep during the gruelling competition, which she juggled with her full-time job at Watford General Hospital and looking after her two-year-old son.

Indeed, so stretched was she that she only had time to practise her dishes for the final once before serving them to Gregg Wallace and Torode.

Speaking to MailOnline, Saliha, who beat 64 amateur cooks to the final alongside Steve Kielty, 40, and Giovanna Ryan, 29, said: 'I was absolutely not expecting this, it feels weird to say it even now. Im so happy that my cheekbones are hurting and Im probably going to have a paracetamol for smile-induced fatigue.'

Congratulating her on her stellar win after seven gruelling weeks, judge John Torode, left, said: 'Saliha is a class act'. Gregg Wallace, right, added: 'It's East meets West and it is stunningly good'

Pictures from her Facebook page show her and her husband on the picket line campaigning over the new junior doctor contracts.

The placard reads: Junior doctors are your 24/7 NHS #notfairnotsafe.

Speaking about why she joined last years protests, she said: It is a very complex and multi-faceted issue. Junior doctors work very hard, they are very passionate about the NHS, but most of all they are passionate about patient safety.

'And that is of the most importance to all of us as a body. I think in the future all of us need to work towards making sure that our patients are as safe as possible, and that is why we were at the picket line.

Speaking following her coup, she said: 'I'm so happy that my cheekbones are hurting and I'm probably going to have a paracetamol for smile-induced fatigue! I'm a scientist, I'm not an artist, and this is pure creativity'

Saliha beat 64 amateur cooks to the final alongside Steve Kielty, 40, and Giovanna Ryan, 29

SALIHA'S WINNING MENU Starter: Venison shami kebab with cashew and coriander green chutney, chana daal and a kachumbar salad  in memory of her grandmother's house in Pakistan. Main course: A Kashmiri style sous-vide duck breast, with crispy duck skin, freekeh wheatgrain, spiced with dried barberries, walnuts and coriander, a cherry chutney and a duck and cherry sauce. Dessert: Saffron rosewater and cardamom pannacotta, served with a deconstructed baklava (inspired by her childhood love of baklava), including candied pistachios, pistachio honeycomb, filo pastry shards and kumquats. Advertisement

Congratulating her on her stellar win after seven gruelling weeks, judge John Torode said: 'Saliha is a class act. She's walked in here and has taken her food culture apart and put it back together in a modern and very exciting way.

'She always does something a little bit extra  something which always surprises us.'

On her winning menu, he said: 'Those dishes sparkled. They were clean, crisp, refined and beautiful.'

Gregg Wallace added: 'It's East meets West and it is stunningly good.'

And Saliha, a junior doctor training to specialise in Gastroenterology, says she has numerous people to thank for helping her to get to where she is.

'This is more about sharing my success with the people who helped me get there along the way.

'My husband was exceptionally supportive and my colleagues swapped on-call shifts with me so I could attend the filming days. I feel like winning MasterChef was a team effort for us.'

Saliha, who is training to specialise in Gastroenterology, says she has numerous people to thank for helping her to get to where she is

Sharing her reasons for entering MasterChef, Saliha says: 'I've always seen food as a serious hobby but being a doctor means I don't always have the time to fully engage in it. I entered the competition to challenge myself, and see what I was capable of'

Saliha's winning menu started with a Venison shami kebab with cashew and coriander green chutney, chana daal and a kachumbar salad - in memory of her grandmother's house in Pakistan - and won over the judges

A tearful John said: 'She always does something a little bit extra  something which always surprises us'

Saliha admits she'd sometimes go days without sleep, revealing: 'It was really challenging actually. Balancing my work and home life was difficult and tested my multi-tasking skills but these skills aren't too dissimilar to the skills I use on a busy ward.

What an incredible cook and an incredible person. Her food is simply stunning - beautiful art on a plate - Gregg Wallace

'I would sometimes come off a night shift and go straight to filming with no sleep at all but tiredness vanishes when you're that excited and I just had to live in the moment.'

In a punishing final week, MasterChef fans have seen Saliha cook for the American Ambassador under one of Britain's best chef's, Paul Ainsworth; embark on a culinary adventure to South Africa - which she said was the highlight of her time on the show - and take on three exceptional challenges.

Earlier this week, she found herself trending on Twitter after 52-year-old presenter Gregg Wallace left viewers chomping on their fists during after he appeared to flirt with pretty contestant Saliha.

'What rhymes with lamb shank?' he quipped at 29-year-old Saliha as she prepared her dish for the judges, before engaging her in an embarrassing 'roses are red' ditty.

After Wallace uttered the classic 'roses are red, violets are blue' line, an embarrassed-looking Saliha managed to utter: 'Lamb is lovely...and I hope you like it too.'

Unsurprisingly, Wallace's 'lamb shank' comments were met with much mirth on social media, with many making reference to the rude term that the dish is cockney rhyming slang for.

Earlier this week, she found herself trending on Twitter after 52-year-old presenter Gregg Wallace, right, left viewers chomping on their fists during after he appeared to flirt with pretty contestant Saliha

Firstly, she was mentored by one of South Africa's most celebrated, Reuben Riffel, then under British-born Luke Dale Roberts at the world-renowned The Test Kitchen restaurant and finally she cooked for leading figures in Cape Town's cultural and food community; and in the penultimate programme, cook for The Chef's Table, overseen by one of the country's most creative chefs, the two-Michelin starred, Sat Baines.

So, it's hardly surprising how Saliha hopes to celebrate her win. 'I am a simple person at heart and I tend to avoid big parties so I just want to relax with a few loved ones and spend lots of time with my son.'
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First Lady Melania Trump and her stepdaughter Ivanka Trump celebrated their own version of 'casual Friday' this week by donning stylish trousers and comfortable tops for their day at the White House.

President Donald Trump's 47-year-old wife looked stunning in a pair of wide-leg black pants and a casual white button-down to attend an event honoring military mothers in the East Room of the White House on Friday afternoon.

While Melania's outfit was effortlessly chic, Ivanka undoubtedly turned a few heads thanks to the hot pink trousers she was wearing.

Effortlessly chic: President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania attended an event honoring military mothers in the East Room of the White House on Friday morning

Eye-catching: Ivanka Trump was photographed stepping out of her Washington, D.C. home in hot pink pants earlier in the day

Early bird: The 36-year-old paired her striking pants with a sleeveless turtleneck

The 35-year-old mom was photographed leaving her Washington, D.C. home on Friday morning wearing a black, sleeveless turtleneck and electric pink pants as she headed off for a day of work.

Ivanka, who is the unpaid assistant to the president, pulled her long blond hair up in a ponytail, and she accessorized her look with sunglasses as she jetted out the side gate of her residence and headed into the black SUV parked at the curb.

The mother-of-three's husband Jared Kushner is Trump's senior adviser, and he was also seen leaving their home on Friday.

The 36-year-old was wearing a gray suit and blue tie as he walked out the door and headed to work.

Stunning: Melania looked elegant in a classic white button-down shirt and black white leg pants for the event

Calm, cool, and collected: The First Lady also rolled up her sleeves, giving her stunning ensemble or a more casual feel

Look of love: President Trump and his wife shared a kiss on the cheek at the Mother's Day event

Patriotic: Trump sported a red tie and an American flag pin for the White House event, which was held on National Military Spouse Appreciation Day

Meanwhile, Melania looked elegant in her classic white button-down, which she left open at the collar to show off her gold chunky gold necklace.

The First Lady also rolled up her sleeves, giving her stunning ensemble a more casual feel.

Instead of opting for traditional black pumps, Melania chose white heels featuring glittery pendants to match her top.

Melania joined her husband on stage at Friday's event, and the two sweetly kissed each other on the cheek.

She was all smiles as she watched Trump address the crowd at the event, which was held on National Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

All smiles: Melania left the collar of her button down open to show off her chunky gold chain necklace

Joyous occasion: The U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra and the U.S. Army Chorus performed patriotic music for the invited guests, which was held two days before Mother's Day

Shaking hands: Melania is pictured thanking members of the U.S. Army Chorus

The U.S. Marine Chamber Orchestra and the U.S. Army Chorus performed patriotic music for the invited guests just two days before Mother's Day.

Trump and Melania have a 11-year-old son son Barron together, and in addition to Ivanka, she is a stepmother to his children Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Tiffany Trump.

And while Melania wears a mix of pants and dresses, Ivanka is more commonly seen wearing ladylike dresses, including ones from her eponymous collection.

On Wednesday, Ivanka looked ready for summer as she stepped out in a $158 white halter dress from her fashion line.

Though she kept her megawatt smile hidden, the First Daughter looked elegant in her dress, which had laser cut-outs on its bodice and hem.

Simply stunning: Melania wore her hair in loose waves and sported glossy lips

Added touches: Melania, who is pictured leaving the event, wore her button-down shirt tucked into her wide-leg pants

Since her father was elected president, Ivanka has modeled her fair share of pricey designer ensembles, but for her day-to-day duties she tends to wear more affordable options.

Earlier this week, she donned a black and white polka dot dress for a day at the White House before co-hosting an event with Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence, as well as National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster.

The foursome welcomed military families in celebration of National Military Appreciation Month and National Military Spouse Appreciation Day at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White House complex.

Ivanka, who spoke at the event, was also joined by Jared and their three children, Arabella, five, Joseph, three, and Theodore, one.

At one point, the doting mom was photographed with Theodore in her arms, while Jared carried their eldest son Joseph.

On the go: Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner were both seen leaving their Washington, D.C. home on Friday morning

Always elegant: Ivanka is more commonly seen wearing ladylike dresses and heels over pants

First Daughter duties: Earlier this week, Ivanka donned a $78 J.Crew dress to co-host an event honoring military families in celebration of National Military Appreciation Month and National Military Spouse Appreciation Day

The mom looked polished in a black and white polka-dot sheath dress by J.Crew, which retails for only $178  a far cry from the expensive designer duds she has worn to events in the past.

After the event, Ivanka took to Instagram to share a photo of herself speaking at the podium earlier that night.

'Today we honored military families at the White House,' she captioned the image.

'We are incredibly grateful to our service men and women for keeping us safe and protecting our freedom!

'On behalf of this administration and my family, thank you for serving our great nation, whether in uniform or in support of those who wear it. #Military #USA.

According to Politico, Ivanka will remain busy as she will be going on a 'listening tour' for the next two weeks, meeting with White House department heads and cabinet officials.
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South Korean President Moon Jae-in will send special envoys to China to discuss issues concerning the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), a senior presidential press secretary said on Thursday.

Yoon Young-chan told a press conference here on Thursday that President Moon would dispatch separate delegations to discuss THAAD and the DPRK's nuclear program with their Chinese counterparts, although the two issues will be dealt with together.

Yoon said the dispatches were mentioned during the first telephone conversation between Moon and Chinese President Xi Jinping which lasted for 40 minutes beginning at about noon.

Xi has congratulated Moon on his election win and the two leaders agreed to exchange special envoys as soon as possible, according to Yoon.

During the phone conversation, the two leaders discussed a broad range of bilateral issues, including the Korean Peninsula and the DPRK's nuclear program, Yoon said.

Xi and Moon agreed to meet face-to-face at the earliest possible date, while re-affirming their common goal of the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

During the phone dialogue, Moon advocated a two-track approach of pressure and sanctions toward the DPRK to resolve the country's nuclear issue in a comprehensive, staged way.

Moon said the ultimate goal of sanctions was to bring the DPRK to the dialogue table to abolish its nuclear program.

On Wednesday night, Moon held his first phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump and talked about the Peninsula situations. Trump officially invited Moon to the United States.
New York City's trash - and the smell it carries - is infamous. But one local artist is helping transform the Big Apple's garbage into a floral-fragranced masterpiece.

Florist Lewis Miller - who also runs an eponymous floral studio - is the man behind the colorful flower arrangements that are popping up on everything from Uptown sculptures to Downtown hotels - to actual public trash cans..

The project began back in October 2016, when Miller and his team decorated the John Lennon 'Imagine' memorial in Central Park. The florists used more than 2,000 individual flowers in order to create a 'psychedelic halo' of carnations.

A pop of color! Florist Lewis Miller and his team have been creating stunning centerpiece-style bouquets in New York City's trash cans

Wow! Miller said that a surprising amount of planning goes into his garbage can vases - 'Choosing the right can can be tricky!'

How it all began: In October 2016, Miller's team decorated the John Lennon memorial with more than 2,000 flowers; the positive reaction inspired Miller's future urban arrangements

There was the instant and overwhelmingly-positive reaction to the project. Miller later wrote on his website, 'It was one of the most rewarding and gratifying "events" I have produced.'

It was rewarding enough, evidently, to inspire Miller to continue decorating New York City with flowers.

Since decorating the Lennon memorial, Miller has given an Alice in Wonderland statue a floral boa, a cat sculpture a purple mohawk, and - perhaps most memorable of all - he's filled numerous garbage cans with extravagant bouquets more suited for a wedding centerpiece than a street corner.

Though Miller's floral arrangements have a spur of-the-moment quality to them, the florist told Gothamist there is actually quite a bit of planning that goes into his urban bouquets.

Unexpected: Miller goal with his floral arrangements is to inspire a 'childlike reaction' in 'hard to surprise New Yorkers'

Love (and flowers) is all you need! In addition to bedazzling trash cans, Miller also decorates sculptures and statues around the Big Apple

A natural wonderland: Miller's floral arrangements are a welcome sight for those living in a city with little green space

The team searches for 'well-trafficked areas or places in the city that are visually appealing and have a sense of drama', he explained.

This can involve 'a great backdrop, whether it be with a bit of architecture or a beautiful, hand-painted mural.'

He also said that people wouldn't believe how many pictures of trash cans he takes beforehand, explaining: 'Choosing the right can can be tricky!'

Miller hopes his creative project inspires 'smiles and a feeling of surprise and wonder.'

'New Yorkers are hard to surprise and hard to please,' he said, and added that he believes that creating a 'childlike reaction' in a gritty New Yorker is a 'victory and a gift.'
Until she reached her 50s, Carol Vordermans default mood was happy. The words cheerful, resilient and independent described her.

The broadcaster, a staple on our TV screens since she hosted Countdown, had known grief and sadness, of course, but never the fog of anxiety that descended, then developed into black and suicidal depression.

The change of mood  from upbeat optimism to panic, despair and emptiness  seemed as arbitrary as it was sudden. Carol, 56, could neither account for, nor explain it.

Countdown presenter Carol Vordeman (pictured on the Lorraine show) became severely depressed when going through the menopause in her 50s. She was prescribed bio-identical hormones and the change in her mood was sudden and miraculous

Today the divorced mum of two grown-up children is fully recovered  joyful and positive again  and she grapples to find words that describe the awful enormity of the apparent mental illness that enveloped her like a suffocating fog, for six months.

Id wake up and I knew I had to get up and function because I have two children and an elderly mum to look after, but Id think: I dont see the point in life. I cant see the point in anything, and Id start sobbing. I just wanted everything to stop, she says.

I felt wretched for no reason. It wasnt as if I was grieving or anything had gone wrong. Far from it; Im fortunate  there was just no joy in anything.

But it went much deeper than that. It was all pointless and I just wanted life to stop, and the only way it would was if I made it. To admit that was a big thing.

She pauses, loath to articulate the fact that she contemplated ending her own life.

Id go through the process: how would I actually do it? And that was my stopping point. Id say to myself: Carol, you have children. You cant do it. Stop, stop, stop! And it was wretched; so, so horrible. Its difficult to explain, but the world seemed dark and you could be in a lovely place and feel nothing, no pleasure at all.

Vorderman talking about the menopause on the Lorraine show.

Carol pictured a the age of 50 with her two children Cameron, then 20, and Katie, then 25, from her second marriage to management consultant Patrick King, which ended in 2000

There would be short respites when you had to do something for a few hours, or youd see some friends, but as soon as you stopped youd be back in the pit of despair. There was shame. Youd think: Is there something wrong with me?

Youd feel as if the rest of the world was carrying on its everyday business and you were this weirdo, sitting on the sidelines.

I was exhausted. I barely slept unless I took a sleeping pill, and then Id wake in a fog that added to the other fog in my mind.

On the outside people wouldnt know  Im well-rehearsed at laughing in company  but as soon as I was back on my own, Id be on the floor again.

This descent into despair seemed inexplicable, until Carol began to make sense of it. The problem-solver in her started researching depression which made her analyse the issue and look for patterns.

Vorderman on the ITV programme I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! in 2016

Vorderman during a Bushtucker Trial on I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!

And there she found it, in the unlikely place of the menopause. At any point, 13 million women in Britain are menopausal. This is caused when a womans oestrogen levels, usually around the age of 50, suddenly plummet, causing a variety of symptoms, some severe, some mild.

Although at 54 Carol says she was still having regular periods  and this is not uncommon among menopausal women  what was unusual were her sudden, extreme mood swings. She started plotting them against her cycle. It was, she says, a lightbulb moment.

I thought: Perhaps its connected with the menopause. Suddenly there was hope.

A friend recommended she see Professor John Studd, a London-based expert on menopausal depression, and in January last year, he prescribed bio-identical hormones  so called because they are derived from plants and more closely mimic the naturally occurring hormones in the human body than conventional HRT.

Carol was given oestrogen, testosterone and progesterone supplements in gel and cream form, so they are absorbed through the skin. The change in her mood was sudden and miraculous.

When youre given hope you feel instantaneously better anyway, and by the second day of applying the gels and cream I felt fine; back to my old self. Ive never felt that awful depression since  nor would I ever want to.

Yet NHS doctors are loath to prescribe these bio-identical hormones either to treat common menopausal symptoms like hot flushes, night sweats and loss of libido, or to deal with the depression that afflicts so many.

Carol Vorderman at the Pride of Britain awards at Grosvenor House in 2013

Instead, they opt for the cheaper HRT (derived from pregnant mares urine) to assuage physical symptoms, and rely on antidepressants to deal with mental ones.

Antidepressants may attack the symptoms but they do not solve the problem, says Carol. For me they would have been the last resort.

Many psychiatrists also fail to differentiate between clinical and hormonal depression, and treat both with psychotherapy, Carol believes, when the answer could lie with bio-identical HRT.

It is her hope to raise awareness of this in a TV documentary, and to press NHS doctors to prescribe it routinely, to prevent future generations  her 25-year-old daughter specifically  from suffering the way she did. It was on Lorraine Kellys ITV morning show this week that Carol first admitted she was driven to the brink of suicide by depression directly linked to depletion in her hormones.

There have been a spate of mental health confessionals since Prince Harry led the way last month, describing how the death of his mother in 1997 nearly led to a breakdown.

While TV presenters Fearne Cotton and actor Denise Welch have spoken about their mental health problems, Carol is the first to make the link between the menopause and her own struggles.

It seems to have struck a chord with thousands, says Carol, whove contacted her via email and social media to thank her for making sense of their own depression.

Vorderman during her Countdown days with Richard Whiteley in 1989

For years women have been made to feel ashamed of the menopause and its symptoms. In my mums day they talked darkly about the change.

Carol has two children Cameron, 20, and Katie, 25  both of whom live with her in Bristol  from her second marriage to management consultant Patrick King, which ended in 2000.

Her mother Jean, 88, who has terminal cancer, lives a two-minute walk away. Carols mission is that young women of Katies age will not have to flounder unaided if they suffer as Carol did.

I dont want women of my daughters generation to be treated ignorantly about the menopause, by both society and medicine, as my generation has been, she says.

Its not spoken about. Women are written off as past it when theyre menopausal, which is demeaning and dreadful. Now were beginning to understand a fall in oestrogen levels can profoundly affect the brain and our mental well-being, and there is a simple, effective way of addressing it: by restoring these depleted hormones.

Carol, a presenter on ITVs Loose Women between 2011 and 2014, describes the suddenness with which symptoms hit her, transforming her mood from buoyant and capable, to anxious and panic-stricken.

She says: My default position was  and is  happy and kind. Id skip down the street singing. Id propose to builders because it was a laugh. Life was funny. Laughter was a natural state. I was a glass-half-full person. In my late 40s I was zinging along, having the time of my life.

Then, having turned 50 and when she was presenting Loose Women, the first intimations of a change in temperament began  with panic and anxiety attacks.

She says: I had them once every three months. Id wake in the early hours and although I have lived out of a suitcase, travelling for most of my working life, Id be in a real state.

Id be thinking: Should I get a train, or drive myself? Or get a driver? Id churn over these decisions and half a dozen times Id be so shattered Id ring up in the morning and say I couldnt go to work.

For Carol, these panics seemed inexplicable: I didnt link them with the menopause as I didnt have night sweats or hot flushes or loss of libido. I didnt have any of the usual symptoms, and I still had my periods. So I cracked on.

Then the anxiety transmuted into depression. Carol had been having flying lessons, and was planning to fly solo round the world  a project she has deferred because of her mothers illness. She returned from a two-month training course in Florida, and suddenly felt inexplicably sad.

I felt empty. There was a void where my feelings should have been. I didnt imagine anyone would want to be around me because I couldnt see the point in life  or of me.

Id felt desperately unhappy when Id divorced; when Mum was ill or the children were sick, but this was depression without an apparent cause.

I started to think about what I could do to end it all. It was only the thought of my children and my mum that stopped me from going any further.

In November 2015, Carol reached a nadir. Id been rushing around and it was only when I stopped I realised how exhausted and depleted I was.

I remember driving home one evening and thinking: I just dont want to get home. Couldnt I just run away?

I started to think about what I could do to end it all. It was only the thought of my children and my mum that stopped me from going any further.

What alarms her today is the realisation that so many women suffer similarly. Often they will attribute their profound sadness to external changes in their lives.

Yet, Carol points out, their cause is hormonal and there is so often a simple remedy.

When I told Professor Studd how I felt he knew what I was talking about and that was a relief and a comfort, she says.

He said every day he saw as many as five women in his clinic who have been prescribed antidepressants by their GPs. Some have been taking them for ten years, and hes put them on a mixture of bio-identical hormones instead and within weeks their mood lifts. Theyre cured.

Prof Studd took blood tests which revealed Carols hormone levels were low: And it became obvious that my depression was linked to the menopause, and that knowledge gave me hope.

She adds: Life now is so very sweet, the sky is brighter, music is more glorious. Now my battle is to make the bio-identical hormones that cured me readily available on the NHS. We cannot diminish their importance. They may actually help to save lives.
A woman who had a brush with death after taking Roaccutane for just two months is warning others about the risks of the controversial anti-acne drug.

Charlotte Carpenter, 24, suffered horrendous pain in her side and difficulty breathing and was rushed to A&E with life-threatening pancreatitis.

She was shocked to be told the condition - where the pancreas becomes inflamed and can cause complications, such as multiple organ failure - was a side effect of the medication she'd taken for her skin problems.

Now the hospital administrator - who had been plagued by severe acne since the age of 12 - is speaking out to tell acne sufferers that 'the benefits do not outweigh the risks'.

Pancreatitis is just one of a host of possible serious side effects associated with Roaccutane, which has been linked to at least 20 suicides in Britain since 2012.

Yet worryingly, prescriptions of the drug - which can cause debilitating depression, psychotic disorder and bowel disease - have increased more than sixfold in the last decade.

Anxiety: Charlotte's severe acne plagued her throughout her teens and 20s

Charlotte, from Burton-on-Trent, was prescribed Roaccutane last August after all other medication had failed to work.

She said: 'I had horrendous pain in my side. I was doubled over and barely able to breathe. It was terrifying - I felt like I was dying.

'Roaccutane did work wonders for my skin. But it nearly cost me my life - it's a high price to pay for clear skin.

The drug contain the active ingredient isotretinoin, which is a vitamin A derivative

'I understand how desperate youngsters can become when acne is destroying their confidence, but I want to speak out and make people aware of the dangers of this so-called wonder drug.'

Charlotte's acne was so bad that at one stage, she woke up with blood all over her pillow from burst pustules.

At 18 and extremely self-conscious, she was referred to a dermatologist. But none of the antibiotics or creams she tried over the years had any affect.

Having such bad skin throughout her teens and 20s made Charlotte so anxious she was eventually prescribed anti-depressants by her GP.

The 24-year-old used to wear heavy make-up in an attempt to hide her bad skin

She said: 'I felt like I was in never-ending spiral downwards and I just didn't know where or when it was ever going to end.

'It made me feel like a freak and I started to become very antisocial and depressed.'

Charlotte's dermatologist suggested Roaccutane - and she says she was warned about the potential side effects but was so desperate for a solution she agreed to try it.

She never imagined that, after two months of taking it, she would end up in a hospital bed hooked up to tubes and drips - but she is thankful she's alive.

Charlotte found a cure for her acne with Sebopure

The Reeves in Essex have not been as lucky. Just last week, the heartbroken parents of 21-year-old Luke Reeves spoke out to claim their popular son killed himself after Roaccutane changed his personality.

In 2015 the UK drugs regulator the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency showed 20 people died while taking Roaccutane between 2012 and 2014.

Critics are concerned doctors are giving it out 'like sweets' without due consideration for its possible devastating effects.

Figures show prescriptions of the drug, known as isotretinoin, have increased from 6,522 in 2006 to 48,997 in 2016.

The label warning with Roaccutane says very common reactions include anaemia and conjunctivitis, while common side effects include headache.

Depression is classed as a rare side effect and suicidal ideation, psychotic disorder, pancreatitis, arthritis, diabetes mellitus and hepatitis are all classed as very rare.

PARENTS BLAME SON'S SUICIDE ON ROACCUTANE Luke underwent a four month course of Roaccutane The devastated parents of Luke Reeves claim their son killed himself after Roaccutane changed his personality. They said the 'handsome and popular' 21-year-old became irrational, lethargic and finally suicidal because of the drug's effects. His father Robert Reeves said: 'In the medical profession there is no proven link. Luke took the drug at 16 and died when he was 21. They don't connect it. 'It is only when you learn how prevalent these stories are, it becomes apparent.' Dr. Rav Seeruthun, medical director at Roche, said the information provided with the drug carries a warning that some patients may experience mood changes, including an increase in depression. He pointed to a study published in the BMJ in 2010 that did not establish a link between isotretinoin and an observed increased risk of suicide. Additionally, he says, the MHRA concluded in December 2014 that while a causal link cannot be ruled out, it was not possible to identify a clear increase in risk of psychiatric disorders in people who take isotretinoin. The drug leaflet warns patients to speak to their doctors if they do feel depressed. Advertisement

A spokesperson for Roche said: We are sorry to hear that a patient has been unwell during treatment with a Roche medicine.

We ensure healthcare professionals and patients have up to date information on Roche medicines.

In this instance, Roche cannot comment on how clinicians prescribed Roaccutane, but we do recommend our medicines are prescribed carefully, that patients are monitored and that patients understand what to look out for when taking a medicine.

We advise patients and healthcare professionals to follow the advice provided in patient leaflets and prescribing information.

We always stress the importance of reporting adverse events. Report it to us directly or to the MHRA via its yellow card system.

This helps us update the Summary of Product Characteristics and Patient Information Leaflet to reflect the most up-to-date safety data so that all parties can make informed decisions.'

Roche provided a link here for patients to find out more about the drug's safety.
One in eight GP posts is empty with soaring numbers of doctors retiring or moving abroad.

The vacancy rate has increased six-fold in six years and implies the NHS is short of almost 5,000 family doctors.

Some surgeries have given up trying to recruit more, and are hiring pharmacists or therapists to take appointments instead.

One in eight GP posts is empty with soaring numbers of doctors retiring or moving abroad (stock image)

Others have had to permanently close, forcing their patients to register with a practice further away, which in turn becomes overcrowded.

A survey of 860 GPs by Pulse magazine found the average vacancy rate at their surgeries was 12.2 per cent. This has risen from 11.7 per cent reported last year and compares with just 2.1 per cent in 2011.

These staffing gaps pile the pressure on remaining family doctors and increase waiting times for patients.

Almost a fifth of respondents  18 per cent  said their surgery had given up hiring another GP after unsuccessful attempts.

Rising numbers of family doctors are retiring in their 50s, moving overseas, going part-time or quitting altogether. They are not being replaced by younger trainees, who are instead choosing more lucrative careers as consultants or surgeons. Patient demand is also rising due to the ageing population and migration, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to secure an appointment.

Medic who swapped NHS job for four-day weeks Down Under Dr Chris Reid, who formerly worked at a rural GP practice in Dorset, moved to New Zealand with his wife Sara and their two border terriers. He was able to trade long hours for four-day weeks, and the couple swapped their cottage for a home with 12 acres of land and its own private beach in the Bay of Islands. Dr Reid, who studied medicine at Newcastle University and emigrated more than a decade ago, said: I work Monday to Thursday, from 7.30am to 5.30pm, and one in six Saturdays. Im also on call every 20 nights in the local hospital. We have 15-minute appointments with each patient and time to think and do a proper job. Dr Reid added that doctors are no different from other professionals and should not be judged for pursuing a nice life. We work in a global market and our skills are a global commodity, he said. The NHS recruits from overseas, and plenty of doctors trained in New Zealand end up going off to Europe. Like in any trade, people will go where they think they can further their career and have a nice life. Advertisement

There are about 34,050 full-time GPs practising in the NHS in England. If the one in eight vacancy rate found in the survey is consistent across the country then there is a shortage of about 4,860 GPs.

Liz McAnulty, of the Patients Association, said: These figures are highly concerning. We call for safe, compassionate, person-centred care, and delivering it will plainly be impossible without a sufficient workforce. Soaring GP vacancy rates are a significant warning sign that we may increasingly struggle to deliver the care patients need.

Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the British Medical Associations GP committee, said: This is another sign of the recruitment crisis  adding to the pressure of the remaining staff.

Some practices are looking to recruit therapists, pharmacists and other health professionals but of course they are not a replacement for a GP. There needs to be a real step change in recruitment initiatives to ease the pressure.

Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard, of the Royal College of GPs, said the vacancy rate was staggering, adding: In the most severe cases, not being able to recruit has forced practices to close. This can be devastating for the patients and staff affected.

Jonathan Ashworth, Labour health spokesman, said: The Tories catastrophic approach to the NHS workforce has left services on the brink.

It is harder than ever to see a GP  and it is a real danger to patients that surgeries are closing because there are not enough GPs available. The Government has promised to hire an extra 5,000 GPs by 2020 to guarantee weekend appointments for all.

The vacancy rate has increased six-fold in six years and implies the NHS is short of almost 5,000 family doctors

The most recent NHS figures show approximately 150 family doctors are leaving each month. Many are retiring in their 50s, while others leave for New Zealand, Australia or Canada where the pay is often higher and they enjoy more of a work-life balance.

Last month, MPs on the public accounts committee found half of the 7,600 surgeries close during the afternoon. GP leaders said this was because they were understaffed, but NHS bosses claimed there was a culture of taking afternoons off or long lunches.

A Tory spokesman said: This survey actually shows an increase of half a percentage point in vacancies at some practices.

Worst A&E waiting times for 15 years Waiting times in A&E have reached their worst levels since records began nearly 15 years ago. More than 2.5million people waited longer than the four-hour maximum in English emergency departments in 2016/17, official data shows. Only 89.1 per cent were seen within four hours, well below the 95 per cent target. The NHS also missed targets for routine operation waiting times and cancer appointments  the first time all three targets have been missed in one year. An NHS England spokesman insisted monthly records had improved after a difficult winter. But Tim Gardner, of the Health Foundation think tank, said: Funding for the NHS in England will need to increase if these hard-won gains to the quality of patient care are to be upheld and built upon. He added: For stroke, heart attack and some cancers, the latest data shows the quality of care being delivered by the NHS is holding. This may be because it is too early to tell whether the pressures on the NHS are affecting the quality of care  Or it may be a reflection of the incredible hard work of NHS staff. Norman Lamb, Liberal Democrat health spokesman, said: These figures reveal the dismal human cost of the NHS crisis. But the Tories said investment was being made to improve services. A spokesman said: Under Theresa Mays leadership, the NHS has more doctors, more nurses and record funding. Advertisement

It doesnt diminish our commitment to having 5,000 more doctors working in general practice by 2020  and were backing the sector with an extra 2.4billion by then.

NHS trusts are spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on special ambulances that can carry obese patients.

Ambulance services have bought dozens of the vehicles following a boom in hospital admissions linked to obesity  from 52,000 in 2006 to 520,000 in 2016 across England  a BBC investigation found.

Standard ambulances are typically designed to carry patients up to 28st, but the reinforced vehicles can transport those to 70st.
An Ebola epidemic has been declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo after it was revealed that the killer virus has left several dead.

The World Health Organisation confirmed three people had died in the northeastern part of the country today.

A spokesperson from the WHO said the latest outbreak is being taken 'very seriously' after announcing the first death.

The announcement comes after the deadly virus swept across much of west Africa in 2014 and 2015, leaving thousands dead.

Many British aid agencies volunteered to help stop the spread of the virus, including nurse Pauline Cafferkey, who was left critically ill by the deadly disease.

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The World Health Organisation has declared a new Ebola epidemic. The epidemic in West Africa previously claimed more than 8,000 lives in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia

'It (the outbreak) is in a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky,' said spokesman Eric Kabambi.

'We always take this very seriously.'

The outbreak was confirmed from tests on nine people who came down with a hemorrhagic fever in Bas-Uele province in the northeast of the country on or after April 22.

The former Save the Children volunteer Pauline Cafferkey was originally infected in December 2014 while helping Ebola victims in Sierra Leone

The last outbreak of Ebola in Congo was in 2014 and dozens of people died.

Ebola is an RNA virus, similar to HIV and influenza, and as such it has a high rate of mutation.

People can only catch Ebola by coming into contact with the bodily fluids - urine, vomit, diarrhoea - of an infected individual.

It is not an airborne disease, and as such cannot be transmitted through infected people coughing or breathing in open spaces.
More than 36 million Americans could be allergic to marijuana - even if they passively inhale it, figures show.

According to a report on the nation's allergies, 73 percent of the 50 million people who react to pollen also have issues with cannabis - and the figure is rising.

Scientists warn reactions even occur in people who are merely exposed to marijuana smoke, rather than consuming the drug themselves.

Researchers found in some cases exposure to marijuana pollen or cannabis smoke provoked symptoms of allergic rhinitis, caused by inflammation of the nasal passages, causing sneezing, congestion, itching and a runny nose.

They also found symptoms of conjunctivitis and asthma.

Experts warn the issue is a matter that needs urgent investigation as more than half the country has now legalized the drug.

Marijuana, like other pollen-bearing plants, is an allergen, and can cause allergic reactions similar to those suffered by people with hayfever

Indeed, a study published last year reviewed the medical evidence, examining cases of allergic reactions to the marijuana plant, also known by its Latin name Cannabis sativa.

The researchers wrote: 'Although still relatively uncommon allergic disease associated with cannabis sativa exposure and use has been reported with increased frequency.'

Cannabis pollen normally sheds in late summer and early autumn.

The researchers wrote it is 'very buoyant, allowing for distribution across many mile'.

Scientists and authors Dr Thad Ocampo and Dr Tonya Rans said for those people with cannabis allergies an act as simple as touching the plant can trigger hives, itching and puffiness or swelling around the eyes.

They also revealed eating cannabis products, such as cannabis seed-encrusted seafood, could trigger an allergic reaction.

After emergency treatment tests revealed the patient was not allergic to seafood but the cannabis seeds were the culprit.

And the study noted some people who injected marijuana developed reactions including facial swelling and wheezing within minutes of exposure.

Allergic asthma triggered by seasonal and occupational exposure to cannabis was also reported.

The authors of the article pointed out that cannabis' legal status may create barriers for accurate and clear patient reporting, and that legal limitations may pose diagnostic challenges.

As with other allergens, the researchers advised that people avoid cannabis to reduce the risk of a reaction.

For those who have a history of anaphylaxis, which causes breathing difficulties, the scientists advise carrying an EpiPen.

Marijuana's legal status in the US is changing, making information about cannabis allergy timely and noteworthy.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia currently have laws legalizing marijuana in some form, and eight states have legalized marijuana for recreational use.
Chance the Rapper is urging fans to know the signs of inflammatory breast cancer after his aunt succumbed to the disease on Sunday.

The 24-year-old musician took to Twitter to mourn the passing of 'Auntie Kim' and to raise awareness of how to catch the notoriously difficult-to-spot disease in its early stages.

While most women check themselves for lumps, he warns few may realize that redness, slight aches, and an unusual sensation of heat can be tell-tale signs.

He shared a video of his beloved relative speaking about the aggressive cancer and warned his 3.8million followers of its unusual symptoms.

In the clip, Kimberly Bennett shares her story of discovering her stage 4 diagnosis after experiencing symptoms she never associated with breast cancer.

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Chance the Rapper (left) announced Tuesday that his aunt Kimberly Bennett (right) lost her battle against inflammatory breast cancer on Sunday

Inflammatory breast cancer is very hard to spot and has symptoms different than other types of breast cancer. At first, Bennett said she thought her stage 4 cancer was just an infection. Pictured: Bennett (center) with Chance (right) and other family members

SYMPTOMS OF INFLAMMATORY BREAST CANCER Redness of the breast: Redness involving part or all of the breast is a hallmark of the cancer. Sometimes the redness comes and goes. Swelling of the breast: Part of or all of the breast may be swollen, enlarged, and hard. Warmth: The breast may feel warm. Orange-peel appearance: Your breast may swell and start to look like the peel of a navel orange (this is called 'peau d'orange'). Other skin changes: The skin of the breast might look pink or bruised, or you may have what looks like ridges, welts, or hives on your breast. Swelling of lymph nodes: The lymph nodes under your arm or above the collarbone may be swollen. Flattening or inversion of the nipple: The nipple may go flat or turn inward. Aching or burning: Your breast may ache or feel tender. Advertisement

Recorded in February, she said: 'I first realized something was wrong when my breast was going from purple to burgundy. It was hot and getting bigger and warmer. It was painful.

'I thought it was just an infection, they come and go. So I went to urgent care and got an ultrasound and a mammogram.'

Bennett began to get suspicious when the nurses at the clinic 'got extraordinarily nice', giving her hot chocolate and making small talk.

Finally a doctor came in and Bennett said: 'I thought she was a little off and she said "I think you have cancer, a terrible cancer."'

A few days later, the medic's fears were confirmed as test results revealed Bennett did have that terrible cancer.

Inflammatory breast cancer is a rare form of breast cancer and only makes up about one percent of cases in the United States.

Cancer cells block lymph vessels in the skin of the breast and is called 'inflammatory' because the breast often looks swollen and red, or 'inflamed.'

It usually begins with redness or swelling rather than a distinct lump. It grows and spreads quickly, usually worsening within days or even hours.

It can easily be confused with a breast infection.

Black women have a higher risk of inflammatory breast cancer than white women. And obese women also have a greater risk compared with women of normal weight.

Bennett said she didn't necessarily want to tackle the disease right away; she had an upcoming birthday trip that she didn't want to miss.

She added: 'My oncologist got up in my face and said "I'm not your friend, I'm not here to make you happy. I'm here to save your life, cancel that trip."'

Despite her progressed stage, Bennett knew she was going to fight after that conversion.

She had her doctor agree to give her the four drugs normally used on stage 3 patients. Bennett added: 'All those four drugs was like getting hit with a sopping wet pillow of concrete mixture.'

Bennett continued on in her treatment until she died earlier this week.

Chance paid her tribute and called her a 'warrior'. He said he wanted to leave his fans with her final message of paying attention to your body and to always see a doctor.

In the last seconds of the video, Bennett begs viewers to not just listen to what people describe as the 'normal' symptoms of breast cancer because the signs of inflammatory breast cancer are unusual.

Bennett finished: 'The goal of this cancer is to kill you and to kill you fast. So the only thing you can do to help yourself is to respond and react fast.

'That's the only thing you can do to save your life.'
SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE by Sarah Schmidt (Tinder Press 12.99)

SEE WHAT I HAVE DONE

by Sarah Schmidt (Tinder Press 12.99)

Despite the jury acquitting her on the grounds that no woman would have done such a thing, Lizzie Borden is notorious in the popular imagination for hacking her wealthy father and stepmother to death in the stifling Massachusetts heat of August 1892 (Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks).

Having puzzled for years over the slaughter, Sarah Schmidt has written a why-dunnit in a debut novel which is not for the faint-hearted.

Voicing accumulated hatreds and frustrations, Lizzie, her sister Emma, their maid and Benjamin, a mysterious friend of their uncle, play out a vicious psychodrama in a household already awash with rank smells, vomit, malice and small, but deadly, cruelties.

With echoes of Greek tragedy, it is a discomforting reimagining. In places, it threatens sensory overload but the author is certainly one to watch.

THE SOLDIER, THE GAOLER, THE SPY AND HER LOVER by Simon Parke (Marylebone House 8.99)

THE SOLDIER, THE GAOLER, THE SPY AND HER LOVER

by Simon Parke (Marylebone House 8.99)

In February 1647, the Scots have sold Charles I to Oliver Cromwell, who has imprisoned him on the Isle of Wight. His family is mostly in exile, the Royalists are scattered, leaving Charles virtually alone but for the redoubtable Jane Whorwood.

A spy and a fixer, she is also Charless mistress, a surprising revelation (deftly expunged by royalist historians) as the King was famously uxorious.

Simon Parkes well-written and absorbing story of the Kings final years dramatises the political chicanery, the shifting loyalties and an unexpected love story before his execution in 1649. Charles was autocratic and, sometimes, a fool, but his death was courageous and left its imprint on Jane, his gaolers and, not least, on Cromwell himself.

MIDNIGHT BLUE by Simone van der Vlugt (Harper 7.99)

MIDNIGHT BLUE

by Simone van der Vlugt (Harper 7.99)

Abandoning her childhood home, the widowed Catrin Barentsdochter fetches up in the Delft workshops of the kindly Evert Van Nulandt. The mid-17th century is turning into the golden age for Dutch trade, and the workshops and waterways of the city are humming. Unusually for her sex, Catrin is allowed to work on the new Delft Blue pottery, which its manufacturers pray will supersede the highly fashionable imported Chinese porcelain.

However, Catrin has a secret and it threatens to jeopardise her new life. Characterisation is not the strongest point here but the pottery detail is fascinating.

If you dont object to a translation with a contemporary flavour and long for a change from the Tudors, this may well catch you.
FOOD AND DRINK

The Wine Dine Dictionary

by Victoria Moore (Granta 20)

Wine, said my father, peering suspiciously at the carafe on the dinner-table of our small Normandy hotel. Its all very well once in a while, but you wouldnt want to drink it every day, would you?

His wary approach to the reckless hedonism of regular wine drinking was characteristic of his war-time generation. He grew up with rationing, and the austere habit of eating for survival rather than pleasure proved hard to relinquish.

But this was my first trip to France and Id fallen in love  with the language, the landscape and, above all, the food. So far I had only had a sip of wine, which seemed shudderingly sour. But I was determined to love that, too. When I grew up, I vowed, I would drink wine every day.

Cheers: Victoria Moore shares her wine expertise

Fast-forward 40-odd years, and I have kept my promise, yet my knowledge of what I am drinking has hardly increased since that first childhood taste. What little I know comes from the labels at my local wine merchants, each one a tiny prose poem.

For several weeks I drank a Bourgogne Aligote, simply because its label began: This much misunderstood grape . . ., and I felt sorry for it. Other finds included a Moroccan rose called Volubilia (the name made me laugh).

I could tell you what they taste like, but as to grape varieties, or what food they might best accompany, I havent a clue. But help is at hand, in the form of Victoria Moores Wine Dine Dictionary.

Moores credentials are impeccable  she is an award-winning wine writer and columnist, and her Dictionary is one of those ideas so brilliantly simple that it seems incredible no one has thought of it before.

The book is divided into two parts. The first, From Food To Wine, gives an alphabetical list of foods from abalone (sea snails) to zander (a freshwater fish), and suggests which wines might best accompany them (chardonnay with the snails; a dry chenin blanc with the fish). The second part, From Wine To Food, does the same thing in reverse.

Some pairings are contributed by wine-makers themselves. My favourite, from Javier Hidalgo of Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana, begins: I was driving a herd of cattle from Extremadura to Castilla . . ., and involves a splendid picnic of sherry, Manchego cheese, chorizo and ham.

The text is punctuated with recipes and there are plenty of simple ideas, including chilli con carne (served with a rather rugged Chilean carmenere) by Moores brother.

Ive owned Moores Dictionary only a few days, but I already know it will become one of my most-used kitchen reference books.

78,105 The amount paid for one bottle of Chateau dYquem 1811 in 2016 Advertisement

It responds so unpatronisingly to the most unlikely of food/wine dilemmas. Nothing in the fridge but some fish fingers and the end of a loaf? Fish-finger sandwiches it is, then. Surely no wine writer would lower themselves to consider such fare?

But Moore is on the case: You dont want a wine with intellectual aspirations. A supermarket Fitou is my tried-and-tested match for fish-finger sandwiches.

Note that she doesnt just tell you what to drink with this humble snack; she has been there herself. Once you have tested her book to its limits (what to drink with haggis, or baked beans? Australian syrah, and a cheap supermarket red. What to eat with a bargain bottle of chardonnay? Ricotta gnudi  or dumplings  with artichoke, broad bean, hazelnut and lemon), you should read the introduction.

Many of us who love wine feel intimidated by wine experts but Moore explains the science of taste and smell (inextricably linked), and the challenge of converting olfactory sensation into language.

Smell, she suggests, may be the sense we think we could most easily manage without, but its powerful links to memory and emotion suggest otherwise. Her combination of serious expertise and delight in the vast range of experience offered by wine and food is so playful and knowledgeable that you would have to be very grand indeed not to love it.

I plan to buy a copy for everyone I know, from my 26-year-old son, whose experiments with wine tend towards quantity rather than quality, to my 87-year-old father, who probably didnt mean to start me on a lifetime of wine drinking, but to whom I am deeply grateful, all the same.
Main petitioner Shayara Bano kicked-of proceedings by questioning India persisting with the controversial practice when almost all Muslim countries have banned it

The day-to-day hearing of a batch of petitions challenging the legal validity of triple talaq divorce began in the Supreme Court today.

Main petitioner Shayara Bano kicked-off proceedings by questioning India persisting with the controversial practice when almost all Muslim countries have banned it.

'If practices like triple talaq were fundamental to Islam, then many Islamic countries would not have banned it.

'If Muslim countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and even Afghanistan can do away with it, then why not our country?'

Senior advocate A S Chadha, who appeared for Bano assisted by advocate Balaji Srinivasan, argued before a bench comprising of Chief Justice J S Khehar and Justices Kurian Joseph, R F Nariman, U U Lalit and Abdul Nazeer.

After the submission was made, the SC bench said it would like to take a look at the laws passed by those countries to ban triple talaq mode of divorce.

Twenty of of 22 Islamic nations, including Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iraq, have banned or restricted such practice, while it continues to vex the Indian society in general and Indian Muslim women in particular.

After the submission was made, the SC bench said it would like to take a look at the laws passed by those countries to ban triple talaq mode of divorce

The practice also wreaks havoc to the lives of many divorced women and their children, especially those belonging to the weaker economic sections of the society,' Chadha argued.

Thirty-five-year-old Shayara Bano from Uttarakhand, a post graduate, is spearheading the battle against triple talaq.

The mother of two endured a bad marriage, an abusive husband, and physical and mental agony for over 10 years.

Before giving her triple talaq, she was made to undergo as many as six abortions by her husband who forcibly administered her pills which ruined her health.

The Centre, too has in its affidavit questioned India continuing with the practice banned by Islamic countries.

Many members of the Muslim community to not want the law to change

'The fact that Muslim countries where Islam is the state religion have undergone extensive reform goes to establish that the practices in question cannot be regarded as integral to the practice of Islam or essential religious practices,' it said.

The bench meanwhile said it would first determine whether the practice is fundamental to Islam.

The court said the issue of polygamy among the Muslims may not be deliberated upon as it is not connected with the triple talaq issue.

The apex court also said if it came to the conclusion that triple talaq is fundamental to religion, then it will not go into the question of its constitutional validity.

Another senior advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for one of the petitioners, said in case of divorces being granted through extra-judicial mechanism, there should be a judicial oversight to deal with the consequences.

Former Union minister and senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who is assisting the court in his personal capacity, termed triple talaq as a non-issue saying it is not considered complete without conciliation efforts between the husband and the wife.

He said there was no adjudication to determine the validity of the grounds of talaq.

Jethmalani to argue for RSS forum on talaq

Siddhartha Rai

While over half a hundred petitions have been filed with the Supreme Court against the regressive practice of triple talaq prevalent in the Muslim society in India, the latest has a high-profile spin that promises to make the hearing of the cases in the apex court even more interesting.

RSS-affiliated Forum for Awareness of National Security (FANS) has filed the 69th petition in the apex court and none other than Ram Jethmalani would be appearing on behalf of the organisation.

Jethmalanai, said Fans general secretary Lubna Asif, has accepted to fight the case pro bono or without any fees on grounds of the social relevance of the case.

RSS-affiliated Forum for Awareness of National Security (FANS) has filed the 69th petition in the apex court and none other than Ram Jethmalani would be appearing on behalf of the organisation

Fans is the same organisation that shot to fame after the Jamia Millia Islamia University denied permission to RSS and BJP leaders such as Shazia Ilmi from speaking at a seminar that the right-wing outfit had organised against triple talaq on the varsity campus.

Fans also counts RSS pracharak Indresh Kumar as its chief patron.

Meanwhile, Fans has other plans too to put pressure on the BJP-led Union government and the legal establishment of the country to come up with a solution to the problem, obviously to abolish it.

After the Jamia incident, Fans had changed tack and has since then, been organising protest meets on legal campuses.

Asif, who runs a major Urdu news agency apart from being associated with Fans, argued that triple talaq was way more nuanced a problem than appeared ostensibly.

'While the practice does not find mention in the holy book, what intent is behind the demand of the Maulanas in India to perpetuate the practice?'

Asif asked, adding, 'The practice is regressive, but all the more suffocating and debilitating for the Muslim women who are living in geographically and economically backward areas such as villages of India,' Asif said.

'We are asking for only gender parity,'Asif said. 'Pakistan and Bangladesh that were carved out of India have abolished it, but it prevails in India. While hundreds are called to a wedding, how can a Skype call end the marriage,' she said.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping (L) holds a welcome ceremony for Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang before their talks in Beijing, capital of China, May 11, 2017. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks Thursday with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, and both agreed to boost bilateral all-round strategic cooperative partnership up to a new stage.

Xi recalled his meeting with Quang last November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima of Peru, in which they reached important consensus on deepening bilateral all-round strategic cooperation.

Xi invited Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee, to visit China in January this year. Xi and Trong had in-depth exchanges on major issues of common concern, and clarified the direction of future China-Vietnam ties.

Xi said both sides should work closely to implement consensus reached by state leaders, cement cooperation in various areas, and boost their all-round strategic partnership to a new level.

"The two countries should boost maritime cooperation, accumulate consensus and expand common interests, and control their differences through dialogue," Xi said.

Quang agreed to properly handle disputes and step up bilateral maritime cooperation.

China firmly supports Vietnam's development path suitable to its national conditions, and will stick to a friendly policy towards Vietnam and facilitate sustained and stable growth of bilateral ties, Xi said.

He urged both sides to maintain high-level exchanges, keep timely contacts on bilateral relations and issues of common concern, and to adhere to the correct direction of bilateral relations.

Xi called on to make full use of the China-Vietnam steering committee on cooperation, combine their development strategies, accelerate the building of cross-border economic cooperation zones, and deepen cooperation in such areas as capacity, infrastructure building, investment and trade.

The Chinese president also proposed expanding cultural exchanges as well as cooperation in education, medical care, youth and cultural industries.

He asked both sides to cement coordination in multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations, APEC, China-ASEAN and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Frameworks.

Quang is on a state visit to China from May 11 to 15, and will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing.

"The forum will help gather consensus and enhance global cooperation, to push forward economic globalization in a more open, inclusive, balanced and win-win direction," Xi said.

He called on the two countries to take the opportunity of the forum to synergize their strategies and boost substantial cooperation.

Quang, for his part, said it is a set policy and a priority of Vietnam to consolidate friendship with China and boost healthy and stable growth of ties.

The CPV, the Vietnamese government and people will never forget China's precious support for its national liberation and construction, he said.

Quang suggested both sides to keep high-level visits, expand cooperation in trade, agriculture, environment, infrastructure, tourism, culture, security as well as in the Belt and Road Initiative.

He congratulated China's development achievements in recent years, and wished full success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China later this year.

The two presidents witnessed the signing of a series of bilateral cooperation agreements ranging from diplomacy, economic technology, e-commerce, to infrastructure building and education.

This is Quang's first visit to China since he took office in April 2016.

Altogether 29 heads of state and government leaders will attend the upcoming forum. It marks the highest-profile international meeting on the Belt and Road Initiative since it was proposed by China in 2013.
Japanese investor SoftBank has won co-investor Nexus Venture Partners' (NVP) approval for going ahead with a distress sale-cum-merger of cash-strapped Snapdeal with bigger e-commerce rival Flipkart, according to reliable sources.

The deal would be the biggest acquisition in the Indian e-commerce space, redrawing the landscape of the sector that is witnessing fierce competition among players.

While Softbank had got co-investor Kalaari Capital to agree to the sale last month, NVP did not agree to the Japanese firm's valuation of Snapdeal.

Japanese investor SoftBank has won co-investor Nexus Venture Partners' (NVP) approval for going ahead with a distress sale-cum-merger of cash-strapped Snapdeal with bigger e-commerce rival Flipkart

SoftBank, NVP and Kalaari Capital are the Gurgaon-based company's three main investors with over 30 per cent, 10 per cent and eight per cent shares in the firm respectively, according to regulatory filings.

Snapdeal's seven-member board includes representation from investors SoftBank, Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners, as well as co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

The players were in huddled talks over the past few weeks to break the logjam. Now, Soft- Bank is moving ahead with the sale plan, with the Japanese firm expected to sign the term sheet with Flipkart by this week, sources said.

Kunal Bahl, CEO of India's e-commerce firm Snapdeal

The due diligence for the deal will start soon after, they said. Snapdeal founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal are expected to take home $25 million each, while NVP will get $100 million and stakes in the merged firm.

Kalaari may get $70-80 million. Snapdeal and SoftBank did not respond to a Mail Today request to comment on the issue.

The deal will reportedly include Softbank spending as much as $1.5 billion to buy the stake held by US investor Tiger Global in Flipkart. Snapdeal was valued at $6.5 billion in its last funding round in February 2016.

The valuation has since shrunk on the back of heavy losses. The potential deal may value Snapdeal at $1 billion, analysts said. Snapdeal's losses in 2015-16 more than doubled to a whopping Rs 2,960 crore from Rs 1,319 crore in 2014-15.

The company has been desperately seeking to raise more funds without any success.

As investors are asking to see profits and rationalization of expenses, funds have been drying up for Indian e-commerce companies in recent months. On Wednesday, SoftBank said it had suffered a $1 billion (Rs 6,500 crore) loss on its investment in Snapdeal during 2016- 17.

An employee works on a laptop computer at the Flipkart Online Services Pvt. headquarters in Bengaluru

It is almost equal to the money it put in the home-grown marketplace. The Masayoshi Son-led Internetto- telecom conglomerate's latest write-off follows SoftBank's announcement in February of a $350 million loss on its investments in both Snapdeal and Ola.

Softbank has invested close to $900 million in Snapdeal since August 2013, a company that was seen as the main competitor to take on Flipkart.

However, the company has been disp laced by cash-rich US giant Amazon from the second spot and is now trailing way behind the two leaders. Snapdeal's mobile wallet service Freecharge could also reportedly be sold separately.

Snapdeal in recent months has had to trim its workforce significantly and shut down non-core businesses. It has given pink slips to a large number of employees and is keen to get out of the noncore businesses.

The deal would be the biggest acquisition in the Indian e-commerce space, redrawing the landscape of the sector that is witnessing fierce competition among players

The Snapdeal founders Bahl and Bansal have gone directly to employees with a string of townhall meetings, promising profit and brushing off takeover talk.

Like most e-commerce players in India, Snapdeal has been burning cash to sustain discounts - and keep customers - in a cut-throat online market.

But as the number three player, it also is under growing pressure from investors to consider its bottom line, as well as market share.
A military court has upheld a decision made 11 years ago to dismiss a colonel who failed to activate mines that were placed in a war zone where an attack from Pakistan was thought to be imminent.

Ex-Colonel Rajat Daslaid mines in safe mode ahead of a forward-fighting base on the Pakistan border during a war-like situation while expecting a fully fledged tank attack from the enemy.

He was the commanding officer of a mechanised infantry battalion deployed in Bikaner district of Rajasthan during Operation Parakram, which saw India moving forces towards the Pakistan border after the October 2001 Parliament attack by Pakistanbased Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists.

The officer was dismissed from Army in 2006 after an Army inquiry found him guilty of laying anti-tank and anti-personnel mines in safe mode to protect a forward base from enemy attacks.

The Armed Forces Tribunal upheld the dismissal of ex-colonel Rajat Das, saying the punishment was lenient

As the mines were laid in safe mode they would not have exploded even if Pakistani tanks crossed over them or its troops passed through the area and could have been detrimental to national security.

The officer had challenged his dismissal from service arguing that his dismissal was due to a conspiracy from junior officers. But the Armed Forces Tribunal bench headed by Chairperson Justice Virender Singh upheld the punishment given to him by the Army General Court Martial.

The matter had come to light after a pseudonymous complaint was received against two officers of the Colonel's unit alleging 'irregularities in laying of the minefield by the troops of the 20 Mechanised infantry battalion.'

Rejecting the officer's plea , the Tribunal said: 'There is no procedure of laying a minefield on safe mode. All military procedures say that minefields are laid in active mode to ensure casualties to enemy when he assaults across the minefield on defensive positions.'

The court also observed that the Colonel's orders to lay mines in safe mode had 'virtually rendered the entire minefield defunct.'

The military court agreed with the findings of Army inquiry that the Colonel might have 'possibly (laid mines) to avoid casualties while laying the minefield.'

Loss of lives during such procedures is considered to have adverse effects on the career of officers in the forces.

During the proceedings of the case, it also came to light that when the junior officers objected to the laying of the landmines in safe mode while defending a forward base from Army base, they were told that such an action was based on a secret plan of the higher ups and they had to follow orders from superior formations.

The Tribunal also rejected the contention of the Colonel that his punishment of dismissal from service was too severe saying that 'in light of the act, its circumstances and possible outcomes, which were definitely adverse to the security of the nation, we find the GCM has, in fact, already shown a fair degree of indulgence by restricting the punishment only to dismissal.'
Calcutta High Court judge Justice Karnan has gone into hiding after facing arrest when the Supreme Court sentenced him to six months in jail.

The 61-year-old judge was found guilty of contempt for hurling corruption charges against Supreme Court judges including the Chief Justice.

According to sources, he is currently hiding out at a secret location within India amidst speculation that he may flee the country.

Calcutta High Court judge Justice Karnan

Meanwhile, he has approached the apex court against his conviction and six month jail term.

In his appeal Justice Karnan has challenged the constitutional validity of the contempt of court act and said that he has been convicted without any charges being framed.

'He is not evading arrest,' one of his close associates told India Today.

A police team from West Bengal reached Chennai on Wednesday to execute the SC order to arrest Karnan.

Sources say Karnan's team is preparing a review application.

He is also seeking an appointment with President Pranab Mukherjee.
Customers of O2 and EE will be able to use their mobile phone while travelling abroad in 47 countries at no extra cost above their contract allowance, from June 15.

The networks' announcements follow shortly after a similar launch by rival Vodafone, which added a free roaming feature across 40 countries last month.

Holidaymakers will be offered free roaming in Europe from June 15 anyway, following new rules from the European Commission.

However should the new deals from O2 and EE stay in place, they will mean customers wont have to worry about using their mobiles in Europe once we leave the EU in 2019, regardless of whether the EU roaming rules are scrapped or not.

Three Mobile, still tops the list for the most destinations overall, adding a further two holiday hotspots to to its Feel At Home roaming list from the same date.

Roaming: From June 15 you won't be charged extra to use your phone in Europe

EE is launching the perk to all new and existing customers on both pay monthly and pay-as-you-go deals automatically.

O2's free Europe Zone will be offered to new and existing customers, but those with a pay-as-you-go SIM will be charged to use their mobiles in a handful of destinations offered free to pay monthly customers - Guernsey, Isle of Man, Jersey, Monaco and Switzerland.

It will mean travelers using either network can use their existing allowances to surf the web and make calls and texts while abroad.

Vodafone recently made a similar announcement, but it gives users a smaller 40 country Roam Free map. You can read more about this here.

But there are still better deals to be found elsewhere.

Three will now offer the best choice of locations to use your mobile at no extra cost.

It has announced that it is boosting its Feel At Home line up - available to all Advance Plan customers - with a further 2 destinations. This brings the total number of countries to 60 - from June 15.

It will then offer 17 countries outside of Europe, including USA, Australia and Hong Kong and most recently Singapore and Brazil.

Pay-as-you-go customers and those on an Essentials Plan will be able to use their mobiles at no extra cost in Europe until 2019, but they don't qualify for free use in the further 17 Feel at Home countries.

Alternatively, iD, ownded by Carphone Warehous, which piggy-backs off the Three network has 29 countries on its Takeaway plan list. Included on the list are popular holiday destinations Australia and USA.

What can existing EE and O2 customers expect?

The new EE and O2 free-roaming countries include Austria, Azores, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canary Islands, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Germany, Gibraltar (UK), Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania,Luxembourg, Madeira, Malta, Martinique, Poland, Portugal, Reunion Islands, Romania, Saint Barthelemy, Saint Martin (French), San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, The Netherlands and Vatican City.

Plus holidaymakers will be able to use their mobiles at no extra cost in Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Monaco, Isle of Man, and Jersey & Guernsey.

EE also offers a wider selection of free-use countries to certain customers.

Those taking out the networks new 4GEE Max plans are offered an extended list of 52 countries which include the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand.

It claims these holiday hotspots cover over 80 per cent of the overseas trips made by its customers.

Anyone taking out one of these contracts will automatically get free roaming and wont have to wait until the June 15 deadline.

Selfie: Posting holiday snaps in Europe will be part of your network allowance from June 15

Until this date existing customers are subject to the EUs current cap on roaming charges. These are the domestic price plus the following rates:

 Outgoing voice calls 0.05 (4p) per minute

 Incoming voice calls: 0.01 (1p) per minute

 Outgoing texts: 0.02 (2p) each

 Data: (0.05 (4p) per Mb

O2 customers currently get 120 minutes, texts and GB of data for 1.99 when travelling in Europe with O2 Travel.

Pay-as-you-go customers will have to be slightly more careful with a 100MB allowance for the same price and standard charges of 4p per minute and 1p per text.

EE currently offers its customers 500MB for 3-a-day and it costs 4.4p per minute to make a call or 1.8p per text.

While there are no answers yet to what will happen after we leave the EU if no separate deal is reached over roaming charges, one of these Brexit-friendly tariffs will mean holidaymakers wont have to worry about the outcome.

If you are lucky enough to be jetting off on holiday further afield, you can find out what your network will charge you in our round-up here.
Winner: Alison Brittain was named Veuve Clicquot's Businesswoman of the Year

At Tuesday's Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year, Alison Brittain stood upon the stage inside Claridge's marbled ballroom with her winner's Magnum of Madame Clicquot's finest cradled proudly in her arms.

Beaming from ear to ear, the Whitbread boss graciously acknowledged her fellow nominees before thanking her husband, Kevin, and their two children.

In a defiant address to other mothers in the room, she raised her bottle of fizz aloft in Boudicca-style salute and said: 'This just shows it can be done.'

She was so delighted that for a minute it appeared she might do a Lewis Hamilton and start spraying the stuff over the crowd.

If there was a whiff of triumphalism in Brittain's tone, it was understandable.

Previous Veuve winners, such as ex-Thomas Cook chief Harriet Green and former Alliance Trust boss Katherine Garrett-Cox, have been glossy, careerist types, all shoulder pads and weapons-grade management speak.

Not so Derbyshire-born Alison, 52. Grounded and approachable, she's an 'ay-up-me-duck' toiler whose easy-going manner is as transparent as Buxton water.

Knives have been out for her ever since she was the surprise choice to succeed Andy Harrison last year as chief of Whitbread, Britain's largest hospitality company which owns Costa Coffee and Premier Inn.

Here was someone whose 30-year career had thus far been confined to banking. What, scoffed walrus-y analysts, did this mistress of the credits and debits know about hospitality? Most of them had expected the job to go to Costa chief Chris Rogers.

Oh, how they crowed when shares dipped upon his departure several months later.

Even when Whitbread's yearly results, published last month, showed a steady 6.2 per cent rise in profits to 565.2million, there's been continued carping.

Raised by her single mother, a doctor, Brittain earned a degree in business marketing from Sterling University before joining Barclays' graduate trainee scheme.

Being the brash 1980s, these were not easy times for a woman working at a bank. Finding a way of getting heard among the swathes of red-braced male yuppies was difficult.

Straight up: Derbyshire-born Alison is grounded and approachable, she's an 'ay-up-me-duck' toiler whose easy-going manner is as transparent as Buxton water

Brittain gave herself a crash course in sport in order to break into their conversations.

She ended up spending 19 fruitful years there, rising from lowly cashier to managing director of small businesses. Along the way, she met Kevin at the Baker Street branch.

She departed for Santander in 2007 to work alongside bank's charismatic chief Antonio Horta-Osorio. Four years later, she followed the Portuguese smoothie to Lloyds.

She enjoyed working with him and becoming head of the bank's retail operation arguably made her the most powerful woman in British banking. She was widely seen as Antonio's replacement until Whitbread chairman Richard Baker came calling.

Now overseeing 50,000 staff, the job is not for the faint-hearted.

She sometimes visits as many as half a dozen Costas a day, where, in case you're interested, her preference is a cortado (an espresso with warm milk).

Although her remuneration (annual salary of 750,000 potentially rising to 6million with add-ons) makes her one of the highest-earning women in the country, she also insists she stays at Premier Inns where she can.

The Brittains live in Hertfordshire. They like going to Ed Sheeran concerts. And those days of laddish office chat at Barclays also left her with enduring commitment to Manchester United.

She gets tetchy when asked about balancing motherhood and her career. It's trite and patronising. Besides, she says, no one ever asks men the same question. That said, there's no doubt Brittain has shown admirable, rhino-like resilience to get where she has.

But dark clouds loom for the hospitality sector. Competition in the coffee market is intensifying. But all that can wait. Should Brittain choose to crack open that bubbly this weekend, she'll be forgiven for saying it tastes especially sweet.
Porta loss

Marketing and communications group Porta has posted a 9 per cent jump in revenues to 37.1m in the year to December 31.

However losses at Porta, which includes Newgate, Publicasity and Redleaf Communications, widened from 2.9m a year earlier to 5.1m.

Porta Communications reports year of significant change

Brexit deal

Britains planned departure from the European Union opens the door for a UK-Swiss deal covering financial services, Boris Collardi, chief executive at Julius Baer, one of Switzerlands biggest private banks said yesterday.

Following a clampdown on tax evasion which has eroded Switzerlands bank secrecy laws, Swiss banks are increasingly setting up branches abroad and Collardi said Brexit could be a catalyst for deal covering Swiss and UK firms.

China extension

Travel firm Tui has extended a venture in China, Tui China, by 15 years to 2033, thanks to a new trend among young Chinese for Western-style holidays.

Heathrow thrives

Booming demand for Easter getaways helped Heathrow secure its best April. The airport saw 6m passengers pass through last month, up 11 per cent on the same period the year before. New York and Dubai were the most popular destinations.

Booming demand for Easter getaways helped Heathrow secure its best April

Boss quits

The finance boss of Mothercare, Richard Smothers, has quit after three years at the childrens retailer. He joined in 2015 and will remain until a successor has been identified and a transition plan has been put in place.

Cult job

Fine wine investment group Cult Wines has appointed former Duco Technology director Patrick Thornton-Smith, 56, as a non-executive director.

Mine move

Chrome and platinum group metals miner Tharisa is to run its mine in South Africa, paying contractor MCC 17m to take over 900 staff and 170 machines. It hopes to boost efficiency by taking such action.

Gas production

BP has started gas production from two fields off Egypts coast, producing 700m standard cubic feet of gas a day to the Egyptian gas grid.

Mobile extension

O2 is to invest 80m to enhance mobile coverage in London by installing hundreds of internet hubs, teaming up with the City of London Corporation to fit 1,400 small cells on lampposts and street signs.
The 26-year-old boss of Snapchat lost more than 18m a minute after the photo-messaging firm plunged into the red.

Evan Spiegel, who founded the firm with friend Robert Murphy, saw the value of his shares plummet 830m after parent company Snap announced its first results as a listed company on Wednesday.

The company which floated in New York in an 18bn listing earlier this year reported slowing user growth and first-quarter losses of 1.7bn on sales of just 115m.

Fall: Evan Spiegel and fiancee Miranda Kerr

The results sparked a 23 per cent tumble in the its share price in just 45 minutes on Wednesday, falling from $22.98 to $17.66 and wiping 4.6bn off the companys value, as investors offloaded their shares.

It now faces a threat from US law firms who have called on investors to join litigation claims to recover losses.

Spiegel, 26, and Murphy, 28, each own more than 211m shares in the company, which allows users to send pictures and other messages that vanish in seconds.

Yesterday, shares opened at $17.96  just above their initial offer price of $17  before rising to just over $18 in mid-day trading.

Rumours in New York were that hedge funds and venture capitalists who had invested in Snap from the beginning had offloaded their shares in after-hours trading, leaving ordinary investors who got in after the initial float nursing some heavy losses  or making just $1 profit per share on their original investment.

Spiegel and Murphy set the business up in 2012, but it has been under pressure from rival Facebook which has been busy introducing similar features on its own social media sites including Instagram and Whatsapp.
FTSE giant GlaxoSmithKline has been given breathing room after a US regulator blocked a rival bid to make a cheaper copy of its bestselling asthma drug.

The British pharmaceutical giant faces the threat of generic rivals to its blockbuster drug Advair  which it lost the exclusive rights to sell in 2010  that brings in at least 1bn a year.

But London-based Hikma Pharmaceuticals, which was tipped to upset the 81bn companys position in the market with a cheaper version of the drug, said yesterday that the US Food And Drug Administration (FDA) did not approve its version due to major issues with the application.

GlaxoSmithKline escaped competition to its lung drug Advair

It is the second copycat drug to be delayed this year, after Mylans version of Advair was rejected in March.

Hikma and its partner Vectura have been racing against American firm Mylan to produce the first generic copy of Advair, but making a major amendment to a generic drug application could mean a delay of ten months for an FDA response, giving GSK another competition-free year.

One of the reasons why rivals to Advair are taking so long to enter the market is because of the complex nature of the drug and the way it is administered.

Because the drug is both a medicine and an inhaler there are two elements to its development, and even without the added difficulties only around one in ten drugs are approved by the FDA first time.

Packages of GlaxoSmithKline's best selling asthma drug Advair

Shares in Hikma were down 8.2 per cent, or 161p, to 1795p, while shares in Vectura fell 9 per cent, or 13p, to 131.9p.

Without a rival for Advair in the US this year, GSK expects adjusted 2017 earnings per share to rise by between 5 per cent and 7 per cent. If a rival had launched by mid-year, it had forecast earnings to be flat to slightly lower.

GSK, which is headed by Emma Walmsley, 47, who took the helm last month, is developing new blockbuster drugs to offset the decline of Advair.

The company said: The possible introduction of generic competition to Advair in the US is an event we have anticipated.
A bonus scheme for bosses at struggling Royal Bank of Scotland has been slashed as furious shareholders hit out after nearly a decade of losses.

Chief executive Ross McEwan and other top staff will be able to earn 40 per cent less under a long-term bonus scheme, in a bid to tackle anger at City excess.

Last year McEwan could have trousered 2.9m if he had hit targets, but this has been cut to 1.8m in future. He could now earn up to 4.1m, including salary and benefits, down from 5.2m in 2016.

RBS Chief executive Ross McEwan will be able to earn 40% less

The bank also announced plans to make executive directors buy more shares, tying them closer to the fortunes of the business.

The time is right for a new, simpler approach, developed specifically to align with RBSs culture and our thinking on pay, said remuneration committee chairman Sandy Crombie.

It came as investors demanded answers over closing branches, terrible customer service and a stubbornly low stock price.

Performance was branded a catastrophe at a charged annual meeting in Edinburgh yesterday.

NatWest owner RBS was saved with 46bn of taxpayers money at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. The bank has since posted losses of 58bn and is expected to slump into the red again this year.

And the Government has said it is likely to lose money on the 71 per cent stake it currently owns.

A tale of two banks: it shows just how far RBS has to go to catch up with Lloyds

It came as rival Lloyds held a triumphant meeting in the same city, celebrating annual profits of 4.2bn, the highest for a decade.

Lloyds was also saved by a 2008 bailout, but the Government will sell its remaining stake in days and is expected to make a 500m profit on its 20.3bn investment.

Analyst Laith Khalaf of Hargreaves Lansdown said: This is a tale of two banks, and it shows just how far RBS has to go to catch up with Lloyds. At RBSs meeting, small investors demanded bosses set up a committee to give shareholders more say over the lenders direction.

They accused the bank of ignoring a letter signed by 150 people calling for reform. Shareholder Gavin Palmer claimed the lender was stuffed with corporate psychopaths. You insult the shareholders, he said. RBS is a dark hole in British banking.

McEwan admitted it had been an extremely tough year.

The gloom and excuses stood in sharp contrast to Lloyds meeting, which saw chief executive Antonio Horta-Osorio crowing over his turnaround efforts.

Six years ago, this was a bank in crisis, the Portuguese banker said. We are now a strong, safe and UK focused bank.
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Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in an interview published on Thursday that he is open to the eurozone reforms proposed by French President-elect Emmanuel Macron.

"Mr. Macron and I are in complete agreement," Schaeuble said in an interview with Italian newspaper La Republic. "There are two ways to strengthen the eurozone: through treaty changes or pragmatically (through agreements) between states."

Schaeuble continued to say treaty changes are not realistic at the moment.

"But we can't do nothing," he said, "So it is the second best solution to create a European monetary fund in which we further develop the European Stability Mechanism."

Macron promised in his election campaign to promote further eurozone integration and has called for a eurozone finance minister and common budget. He also wants to create a eurozone parliament.

Macron's reform plans have drawn wide criticism from German Parties CDU and FPD. But Schaeuble said he had discussed the parliament proposals with Macron and said it's "possible."
The value of gas storage firm Infrastrata fell yesterday after it said it may have to hold a shareholder meeting to vote on whether to axe its entire board of directors.

The meeting was requested on Tuesday by Hornbuckle Mitchell Pension Trustees and Tower Pension Trustees, which own a combined 5.1 per cent stake in Infrastrata.

Shares initially jumped on the news of the move to fire all the directors.

Gas storage firm Infrastrata's value fell yesterday after shareholder meeting

Although Infrastrata has refused to hold the meeting as the request is not valid, for undisclosed reasons, it expects to receive a valid request. In this case, Infrastrata will write to investors with its view of the proposal.

Despite recommending that shareholders take no action, Infrastratas shares fell 12.9 per cent, or 0.1p, yesterday to 0.68p.

This month, the company warned there was no guarantee it could secure the 2.2m to complete its design of a gas project in Northern Ireland and it said it may have to scrap the project if money cannot be raised.

The FTSE was relatively flat yesterday, as gains among miners on the back of a rise in copper prices offset a bad day for pharmaceutical stocks. The index was down 1.39 points, to 7386.63.

Burberry was a big winner after a key broker said the luxury retailers bad days are now behind it. Credit Suisse  highly rated for its recommendation accuracy  upgraded the stock to neutral from underperform.

It said the 100m of savings made by the firm last year have reduced earnings uncertainty.

Although it said the stock is being undervalued, it withheld more positive ratings on concerns it is unlikely to become more creative or cut further costs until November. Shares rose 1.4 per cent, or 23p, to 1648p.

Howler: British gas owner Centrica was downgraded from JPMorgan

British Gas owner Centrica had another howler after being hit by a downgrade from JPMorgan.

The banks analysts slapped the firm with an underweight rating, citing evidence that a price war is emerging in the UK gas market.

As well as going ex-dividend, the firm was also held back by news that the Labour party plans to campaign for a partly public-owned energy market.

Shares were hit earlier this week when Theresa May reiterated her commitment to introducing an energy price cap.

Shares fell 5.4 per cent, or 11p, yesterday to 192.2p, and are now down 17.9 per cent so far this year.

Mysquar offers a mobile messaging application in Myanmar

Debt buyer Arrow Global Group jumped after revealing a near-40pc jump in profits over the first three months of the year.

The firm, which purchases, collects and services non-performing loans saw profits reach 19.3m, up from 7.6m last year, while revenues grew 45pc to 64.5m. Shares rose 5pc, or 19.25p, to 408.5p.

In small cap-land, social media firm Mysquar returned to its recent growth run following a brief sell-off yesterday.

Focused on the market in Myanmar in Asia, Mysquar offers a mobile messaging application.

Shares rose 22.8 per cent, or 0.82p, to 4.45p. A recent rally for the stock was helped along last week when it announced that it had reached daily revenue of nearly 4,000.

Advertising firm Spaceandpeople rocketed after its update for the first four months of the year, with strong sales in its UK promotions division.

It expects to report profits of 1.1m for 2017 alongside earnings per share of around 4.5p.

Shares rose 45.1 per cent, or 11.5p, to an eight-month high of 37p.
Shares in AstraZeneca leapt after it revealed its ground-breaking cancer drug had been shown to reduce the risk of death in patients with advanced lung cancer.

The FTSE pharmaceutical firm soared 9 per cent or 428.5p to 5176p when it announced success in testing of its immunotherapy drug Imfinzi, saying it had halted cancer progression in stage 3 patients taking part in the study.

Imfinzi works by helping the body's immune cells kill cancer  offering an alternative to chemotherapies.

Trial success: AstraZeneca leapt after it revealed its ground-breaking cancer drug had been shown to reduce the risk of death in patients with advanced lung cancer

The drug targets PDL1s, a type of protein that stops the immune system from fighting cancer, by blocking them, allowing the body's immune system to work its magic.

The new class of medicines are tipped to be the next big wave in drug development and a number of pharmaceutical heavyweights have been investing in the sector.

AstraZeneca has already been given the green light to bring the drug to the US for patients suffering from bladder cancer, but its biggest commercial opportunity lies in the lung cancer market.

This is because it's currently trialling the benefits of using Imfinzi with Tremelimumab, another immuno-cology compound that, if approved, would be the first of its kind to offer a combination treatment for lung cancer.

The firm already brought out its ground-breaking lung cancer drug Tagrisso earlier this year.

The two treatments would make AstraZeneca the market leader in lung cancer drugs, as it would be able to treat patients with different forms of the disease.

The success of Imfinzi is a much needed win for AstraZeneca boss Pascal Soriot, who suffered a shareholder revolt over his pay last month.

Two-fifths of investors opposed his 13million pay package at the firm's annual meeting in London, amid falling sales following the loss of its patent for cholesterol medicine Crestor.

But Soriot has been adamant the firm can return to growth.
Investors voicing their anger at the executive pay at British firms may well want to cast an eye at the whopping perks handed out to bosses at motor giant Ford.

At its annual general meeting yesterday shareholders voiced their grievances after bosses took home a combined 43m last year  including payouts for a private jet and personal security.

Chief executive Mark Fields took home 17m in 2016, 2.3m more than what he had earned in 2016 and 224,000 of which went towards the use of a private jet.

Fatter cats: Ford bosses took home a combined 43m last year

Bill Ford Jr, executive chairman and great-grandson of Ford founder Henry Ford, was paid 10.1m, including 147,000 for a private jet and 698,000 for security.

Joe Hinrichs, executive vice president, made 5.4m as did Jim Farley, president of Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Bob Shanks, chief financial officer, made 4.6m.

The use of private jets at Ford is eye-opening because it symbolises a return to better fortunes for the firm.

In 2007, as the global financial crisis took hold, Fields was criticised for using the company private jet for taking weekend flights home to Florida from the Ford head office in Detroit.

Shareholders criticised the payouts amid a poor share price performance at companys first ever webcast annual meeting.

Last month electric car company Tesla overtook Ford in value

One investor called the performance pathetic and questioned how the board could continue to support Fields.

The automaker is facing sharp questions about its strategy as shares have fallen about 36 percent since Fields became chief executive on July 1, 2014.

Last month electric car company Tesla overtook the firm and General Motors to become the most valuable carmaker in America.

Fields has been pouring billions into self-driving cars and ride-sharing experiments as its traditional-car business has struggled far more than crosstown rival General Motors Co. in a slowing U.S. market.

Executive chairman Ford Jr told shareholders: Look, were as frustrated as you are by the stock price. People have said, Does the Ford family care about the stock price? The short answer is yes, a lot. Most of our net worth is tied up in the company.
Banking giants are braced for a fresh mis-selling scandal after Lloyds was forced to shell out up to 80million for peddling risky investment deals to cautious savers.

The lender is writing to more than 7,000 customers who bought structured investments, which are complex products linked to the performance of the stock market.

An investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority in 2015, prompted by a Money Mail investigation into sales practices at Lloyds branches, found there was an industry-wide problem.

Compensation: Lloyds was forced to shell out up to 80m for peddling risky investment deals to cautious savers

The probe found that a number of Lloyds customers had been lured into taking out complicated investments when all they wanted was a regular savings account.

The bank compensated those affected. This new investigation focuses on some of those products, as well as a whole raft of other Lloyds structured deals.

HSBC, Barclays and Santander have all sold the products in the past or sell them today, although none said they were aware of any issues yesterday.

Mark Brown, of Lloyds Banking Union, said: 'The bank didn't want to do a review. It's only because of the Mail that this was picked up on and something was done.

'Other banks sold exactly the same products  so does it go beyond Lloyds? And is the FCA looking at other banks?'

Customers at Lloyds who were affected, including those in its investment arm Scottish Widows, were often older savers with a large stockpile of cash.

They were offered deals including the Acorn Market Linked Deposit and Protected Capital Solutions Funds, which in some cases saw investments of 10,000 locked away for years and ploughed into the FTSE 100.

Although this can offer higher returns than a savings account, there is no guarantee on how it will perform  raising the risks.

Campaigners believe this was not made clear to customers.

The bank has reviewed 22,000 cases and is offering compensation to 7,250 customers who will be contacted by the bank.

A Lloyds spokesman said: 'We recognise that with some of our historic structured investment products we did not provide a small number of customers with sufficient information before making their deposits.

'We apologise for these errors. We are writing to these customers to explain their options and will ensure customers do not suffer any financial loss.'

The lender set aside 450million to deal with legal and regulatory issues last year, and it is possible the cash could come from this pot.

Lloyds does not believe the bill will be as high as 80million, a figure suggested by its trade union.

An FCA spokesman declined to comment on whether the lender might also face a fine.

It is not the first to be hit with a structured products bill. Yorkshire Bank and Credit Suisse were fined a combined 3.8million by regulators in 2014.

Justin Modray, of the consumer group Candid Money, said: 'A lot of customers have unwittingly moved safe savings into products which are somewhat higher risk.'

The scandal comes just as big banks breathe a sigh of relief that the PPI mis-selling saga, which has cost them more than 40billion since 2011, is finally drawing to a close.

A deadline for claims has been set in mid-2019. Lloyds fell 1.4 per cent, or 0.96p, to 68.7p.
After 58 years of searching, a Chinese woman who was separated from her siblings aged four has finally been reunited with her two long-lost sisters.

Li Hongxia, now 62, met her two elder sisters Wen Yuehua and Wen Yuelian, who had travelled 654 kilometers (406 miles) from their hometown, Lanzhou, in northwestern China to Xi'an on May 8.

The reunion was emotional, the three sisters embracing for the first time in decades.

Li Hongxia (centre) finally got a chance to meet her two elder sisters, Wen Yuehua (right) and Wen Yuelian (left), in Xi'an, China, after 58 years

Wen Yuehua (right) touched Li's face. She was the one who brought four-year-old Li to relatives

The three sisters hugged and embraced their moment for the first time in decades

Li Hongxia, 62, was sent to live with her relatives when she was four as her uncle and auntie did not have any children. Her eldest sister, Wen Yuehua, still recalls the moment she was sent off to Xi'an.

'Me and my sister took a train from Lanzhou to Xi'an and got on a rickshaw. We followed the address given by our grandmother to our uncle's house,' said Wen Yuehua to Lanzhou Morning Post reporters.

75-year-old Wen noticed a column called 'Waiting for you' on Lanzhou Morning Post that helped to reunite people with long-lost family members. She contacted reporters on April 18 in a bid to find her sister.

Reporters called Sanqin Metropolis Post, a local newspaper in Xi'an for help and confirmed the address of Li Hongxia on April 26.

Wen Yuehua (centre) and her sister, Wen Yuelian (right), arrived Xi'an with their family members after travelling 406 miles from Lanzhou to meet their youngest sister

Wen Yuehua brought pictures of Li Hongxia when she was in her primary school uniform (right) and when she just started working (left)

With the help of two local newspaper, the Wen sisters were able to see each other again

Wen Yuehua recalled her youngest sister's name as Wen Yuexia which was later changed to Li Hongxia.

Wen decided to travel with her second sister, Wen Yuelian, as well as their daughters to Xi'an on May 8.

Although it is 58 years late, Li prepared a reunion gift for her family the first time. She bought her eldest sisters scarves with a peony flower print.

The next day, reporters followed Wen Yuehua, Wen Yuelian and their family members to Li Hongxia's house.

'Sisters, you are here,' said Li as soon as she opened the door.

'I am late...' said Wen Yuehua.

Wen Yuelian, Wen Yuehua and Li Hongxia (from left to right) could no longer hold back their tears when they recalled their childhood memories

Long-lost family reunited: 'This is a precious moment I must keep and show to other siblings,' said Wen Yuehua (centre front)

The three sisters could no longer hold back their tears as they had their first hug in 58 years.

Wen took out two pictures of Li, one when she was studying in primary school and one when she started to work.

Wen said the pictures were from her late parents but she had no idea how.

Li gave out the scarves to her sisters before they took a family photo.

'This is a precious moment that I must keep it and show it to our other siblings,' said Wen the eldest.

The Wen sisters could not believe that their family had finally reunited again.
An Arizona prison is working together with a local animal shelter to provide rehabilitation for neglected animals and inmates.

A small team of women prisoners in Phoenix, Arizona work with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Animal Safety Unit (MASH).

The program is designed to help comfort and train mistreated and neglected animals rescued from deplorable conditions. But the rehabilitation goes much further than helping the abused animals.

One inmate, 35-year-old Kristina Hazelett (pictured) had cats, birds and hamsters growing up, but she never knew much about dogs until she started serving her several-month jail sentence for drug possession

An Arizona prison is working together with a local animal shelter to provide rehabilitation for neglected animals and for inmates

'Along the way, we provide the rehabilitation for not just the animals but for the inmates as well,' William Sibole, a detention officer with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, told Reuters.

One inmate, 35-year-old Kristina Hazelett had cats, birds and hamsters growing up, but she never knew much about dogs until she started serving her several-month jail sentence for drug possession.

Six days a week Hazelett is transported with the other women in the program to the animal shelter in a former men's jail where rows of cells, some adorned with dog portraits and animal murals, have been renamed Bow Wow Way, Purr Lane, 2nd Chance and Ruff Road.

Six days a week Hazelett is transported with the other women in the program to the animal shelter

Female inmates, including Hazlett (second from the left) walk from their holding cell into the safe haven

The program is designed to help comfort and train mistreated and neglected animals rescued from deplorable conditions. Once the animals are healthy, some of them are taken to another program at the jail to interact with prisoners, pictured

Since the former men's jail was converted into a holding center to provide a safe haven for the animals in 2000, thousands of mainly dogs, cats and horses have been cared for and adopted.

Tiger, a pit bull terrier rescued from a dog fighting ring, became the beloved mascot for MASH during his nearly nine-year stay, before leaving to live with a family.

Once the animals are healthy and social some of them may be taken by detention officers to another program at the Maricopa County jail facilities to interact with other prisoners.

MASH said it is the only agency in the United States that investigates animal cruelty complaints, rescues the animals, houses and cares for them and arranges adoptions.

Two puppies look out through a cell door at the MCSO Animal Safe Haven. Since opening in 2000, the program has seen thousands of animals, mainly dogs, come through and get adopted

Animals are kept in the shelter and rehabilitated by the inmates until they are healthy and social enough to be put up for adoption

Hazelett and the other women in the female-only program that lasts at least 30 days are interviewed and rigorously screened before they are accepted. They work with detention officers and animal care technicians to acquire the training skills necessary to get the dogs ready for adoption.

Some of the hundreds of graduates have gone on to jobs in the pet industry. Two are studying to become veterinarian technicians.

'I get so much out of it, probably more than the dogs do,' Hazelett said in an interview. 'It's very therapeutic for me as well, not just them, which was an unexpected, pleasant surprise.'

Aubrey Herrera, pictured, a 31-year-old woman serving time for a probation violation for theft and drug charges, said that caring for the dogs is the highlight of each day

Herrera, pictured, with a dog and an officer, said that the program has taught her patience, saying 'it's not about us when we come here'

For Aubrey Herrera, a 31-year-old woman serving time for a probation violation for theft and drug charges, caring for the dogs is the highlight of each day.

Patience is what she said the program has taught her.

'These dogs are locked up just like we are and they need love just like we do,' she explained. 'It's not about us when we come here. It's about the dogs and making sure they're taken care of and loved and bathed - that they know what it's like to feel loved.'
A Pennsylvania restaurant received backlash from the community after serving raw horse meat during a special event.

Pittsburgh's Cure Restaurant hosted a Quebecois-themed dinner with Canadian chefs Monday that included horse tartare on the menu.

When horse welfare advocate Joy Braunstein found out, she started a petition to the governor to ban the serving of horse meat in all Pennsylvania restaurants, according to CBS's KDKA.

Pittsburgh's Cure Restaurant hosted a dinner with Canadian chefs Monday that included horse tartare on the menu, prompting a petition to ban the dish in Pennsylvania

Braunstein said she received multiple screenshots of a Facebook post made by the restaurant that they had served the dish.

Braunstein was outraged to hear that horse was served at Cure, which prompted her to start an online petition to ban horse meat from being served in all Pennsylvania restaurants.

After receiving backlash online for the post, Cure edited the post to remove the reference to horse tartare, but did not delete an earlier post that showed a picture of the printed menu which included the dish by name.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Cure Restaurant is shown here, located at 5336 Butler Street

When horse welfare advocate Joy Braunstein found out horse meat was served at a Pittsburgh restaurant she was inspired to create a petition to ban the dish in Pennsylvania

After receiving backlash online for the post, Cure edited the post to remove the reference to horse tartare, but did not delete an earlier post that showed a picture of the printed menu which included the dish by name

Once the petition is closed, a letter stating 'I demand that No Horse Meat be Served in PA Restaurants' will be sent to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf

Horse is commonly served in Canada and other countries, like France

Cure chef and co-owner Justin Severino released the statement giving context to the special menu selection:

Cultural Differences in Diet Across the World While beef is a major food staple in the United States, many countries consider eating cattle unacceptable. Below is a partial list of animals consumed in countries around the world that aren't typical to the US diet. France: Horse, Frog Peru: Guinea Pig, Dog Cambodia: Spider Australia: Kangaroo, Opossum China: Starfish, Scorpion Republic of Congo: Elephant Source: Spoon University Advertisement

'On Monday night we hosted a collaborative dinner with chefs from Canada, a Quebecois feast. One of the courses included horse tartare, which is traditional Quebecois. It was sourced from a sustainable horse farm in Alberta, Canada. This dish was available for one night only and it is not part of the Cure menu,' Severino said.

Horse is commonly served in Canada and other countries.

Braunstein said that there are no American slaughter plants that handle horses, which she attributed to the idea that horses are given medication that is toxic to humans if ingested.

Braunstein's petition currently has nearly 1,000 signatures. Once the petition is closed, a letter stating 'I demand that No Horse Meat be Served in PA Restaurants' will be sent to Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf.

The petition is posted online on Change.org and is available for viewing and signing here.
A mother who spent years searching for her missing daughter in northern Mexico and organized others looking for their disappeared relatives was shot to death in her home, authorities said Thursday.

Citizen Community in Search of the Disappeared in Tamaulipas, the group of 600 families which Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez Martinez founded, said she was killed Wednesday night while at her home in the town of San Fernando in Tamaulipas state.

Rodriguez was shot multiple times as she attempted to escape from unidentified gunman and died en route to the hospital, according to Yahoo! News.

Mexican human rights activist Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez Martinez was killed Wednesday night while at her home in the town of San Fernando in the Tamaulipas state of Mexico

The citizen group said Rodriguez's tireless search had eventually led to the discovery of the remains of her daughter, Karen, in an unmarked grave in 2012. Rodriguez identified the men she believed to be responsible to authorities, and they were captured.

The Tamaulipas state attorney's office released a statement following Rodriguez's death that denied reports that one the men she blamed for her daughter's slaying was free following a prison escape.

The man, who has been charged but not yet tried in the daughter's killing, was part of an escape of 29 prisoners in March, but was recaptured almost immediately, it said.

The statement said he is currently in prison awaiting trial in the case.

But Rodriguez was reported to have received death threats beginning shortly after that prison escape in March, prompting her to request police protection.

Rodriguez was also reported to have alerted the federal army to a recent instance in which Los Zetas attempted to kidnap her husband.

The state attorney's office said the state government responded to Rodriguez's request for protection after the escape, sending police to patrol outside her home three times a day.

That fact was disputed by Rodriguez's friend from her community group, however, who said her request was ignored.

Mexicos National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) cited Rodriguez's death as another example of the Mexican governments failure to protect its citizens, particularly its human rights advocates who place themselves in harm's way to help others in their communities.

Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International director for the Americas, said Mexico had become a 'very dangerous place' for those who are on the front lines fighting to find individuals who have been kidnapped.

'The nightmare they face not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives and the dangers they face in their work, which they perform given the negligent response from the authorities, is alarming,' she said.

Despite the danger, groups like the one organized by Rodriguez have spread across Mexico in recent years as people search for their missing loved ones in the face of government inaction or indifference.

Some 30,000 people have disappeared in the decade since Mexico announced a war on drug cartels, according to figures released by the CNDH.

Tamaulipas state Governor Francisco Cabeza de Vaca condemned Rodriguez's killing and promised justice, via a post to Twitter.

The Tamaulipas state attorney's office said in a statement that Rodriguez's killer would be brought to justice.

San Fernando is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) south of Brownsville, Texas, and is a critical point on drug and migrant smuggling routes to the border.

The municipality has one of the highest crime rates in Mexico, with the highest kidnap rate.

In 2010, gunmen for the Zetas drug cartel killed 72 migrants who had been traveling toward the border in one incident in San Fernando.
A man accused of secretly cutting off bundles of women's hair while riding public buses has been arrested.

Jared Walter, 30, has terrorized the community Portland, Oregon for eight years years, and was arrested for the fourth time on Wednesday night after several 911 callers reported sightings of him.

Walter - who also has a history of gluing and masturbating into women's hair while on the city's buses - has been charged with harassment and interfering with public transportation.

'It's unusual activity, pretty disturbing, pretty invasive,' Portland Police Sgt. Pete Simpson told KATU. 'It's someone who we want caught, someone off the streets. We don't want to ride on transit and be in the community.'

His actions left members of the community in Portland, Oregon afraid to use public transportation but they bound together to catch him after a reward of $1,000 was offered to anyone who had information about him

The first report of Walter - a registered sex offender - came on May 1 after a woman accused him of cutting out locks of her hair with a scissors.

'I see this person really close in my space, so I turned around, and said what the hell are you doing?, the victim told KGW.

'And I see coming, out of the edge of his hoodie are a pair of scissors. So, I start screaming at him. Are you cutting my hair?!'

His actions left many afraid to ride Portland's public buses - controlled by Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District of Oregon, which is also called Trimet - and a reward of $1,000 was offered to anyone who had information about him.

Jared Walter, 30, has been accused of secretly cutting off bundles of women's hair while riding public buses

A vigilant community member, Christian Coats, recognized Walter - also known in the local community as 'Trimet Barber'- on Wednesday night while shopping at his local Walmart with his seven-year-old son, KGW reported.

Coats followed Walter after dropping his son with a family member.

'I didn't want him to come with me when Im chasing bad guys. Not yet, anyway. He doesn't have his cape on!' Coats said.

Coats spent an hour and a half chasing Walter, whose hair was shaved himself, around the neighborhood. During this time, other community members who had spotted him were also closely following him. But it was Coats who finally caught the Trimet Barber near a park.

Speaking about the moment he caught him Coats said: 'Hes like, "I surrender, I give up, please don't hurt me," he was ready to give up by the time I cornered him.

'When you got people like that out there, hes a sex offender, you gotta get him. You have all that adrenaline. I knew I had to get that guy.'

Coats called the police who took Walter into custody at the Multnomah County Detention Center, where he's being held on $8,000 bail, according to jail records.

In 2010, Walter was imprisoned for 14 months in prison for cutting and gluing women's hair on public buses around Portland.

Vigilant community member Christian Coats recognized Walter at his local Walmart. He then followed and cornered him until the police arrived to arrest him on Wednesday night

Three years later, the Trimet barber was again arrested for ejaculating into the hair of at least three different women riding the bus. He was sentenced to two years in prison but was released in July 2014.

In the same year of his release, Walter was arrested after he cut the hair of a woman he followed into a dollar store.

'We will not tolerate this type of behavior on our transit system,' said TriMet safety director Harry Saporta.

'As this individual has clearly shown he will continue to re-offend despite repercussions, we will work closely with transit police and the district attorney's office to find this individual and seek the harshest penalty possible.'

Saporta said the Trimet agency is considering banning Walter in the long-term, although violators typically receive a maximum of six months suspension.

Walter is due in court this week.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has been slammed for suggesting Australia introduce a sugar tax to limit childhood obesity.

Former Labor party leader Mark Latham said the idea was 'ridiculous' when he appeared on Channel Seven's Sunrise on Friday morning.

'I'm sick and tired of this celebrity politics, where people just fly in expecting to tax all Australians and then just fly out,' he said.

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Former Labor party leader Mark Latham (pictured) said the idea was 'ridiculous' when he appeared on Channel Seven's Sunrise on Friday morning

'Jamie Oliver let me give you one of my little laws about politics; if a celebrity flies into another country and tells you to do one thing, well make sure you do the opposite.'

Mr Latham, who was axed as a political commentator on Sky News' Outsiders in March, said Australia was already bombarded with too many taxes.

'It's ridiculous, we pay too many taxes already. There are plenty of fit people out there who'd be punished by a sugar tax as much as the fatties, so I don't think it's right to have extra taxes at all,' he said.

'We pay more taxes than ever, why do we need a sugar tax.'

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver (pictured) called for a sugar tax in Australia on Thursday

Mr Latham urged Mr Oliver to donate money to the cause rather than taxing hardworking Australians.

'Well the guy's got plenty of money, how about he just donates money to all the schemes he's trying to run here in our country instead of trying to tax people working here trying to do the right thing,' he said.

'(We) don't want some Pommy blow-in.'

Mr Oliver, 41, called for the tax on Thursday.

The father of five said children's health needed to be put first because the rate of obesity and diabetes was soaring.

'I think governments need to grow balls,' he said on the Today show.

Mark Latham called for Jamie Oliver (pictured) to donate money to the cause rather than taxing hard working Australians

Mr Oliver said children's health needed to be put first because the rate of obesity and diabetes was soaring

'I think governments need to grow balls,' Jamie Oliver (pictured) said on the Today show on Thursday

Mr Latham went on to call the famed British chef a 'fraud'.

'I've got to say, he's not much of a cook. I've got his cook book and he's nowhere near as good as Bill Granger. This bloke's a bit of a fraud,' he said.

'Ignore Jamie Oliver and take the tax burden off people.'

Sunrise co-hosts Samantha Armytage and Michael Usher appeared lost for words following Mr Latham's animated rant, with Ms Armytage simply saying 'oh my god'.

Sunrise co-hosts Samantha Armytage (left) and Michael Usher (right) appeared lost for words following Mr Latham's animated rant with Ms Armytage simply saying 'oh my god'

Jeff Kennett (pictured) offered a more diplomatic approach to the sugar tax suggestion saying parents needed to educate their children on healthy food options rather than introducing a sugar tax

Fellow interviewee on the program Jeff Kennett, the former Victorian Premier, offered a more diplomatic approach to the sugar tax suggestion.

'Surely this is a parental responsibility, parents have got to educate their children as to good eating habits and good exercise,' he said.

Following the humerous exchange, Ms Armytage said 'sometimes I feel like I'm sitting here having an interview with my father'.

Mr Kennett jumped in and told the Sunrise co-host 'that's no way to refer to Mark'.
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Sudan's Prime Minister Hassan Saleh attends a press conference in Khartoum, Sudan on May 11, 2017. Sudan's Prime Minister Hassan Saleh on Thursday announced a new government, with economic ministers being replaced. (Xinhua/Mohamed Babiker)

Sudan's Prime Minister Hassan Saleh on Thursday announced a new government, with economic ministers being replaced.

Mohamed Othman Rukabi, a former army lieutenant general, was appointed as finance minister, Saleh said.

Mubarak Fadel al-Mahdi was appointed as minister of

investment, while Abdulrahman Othman Abdulrahman was appointed as oil minister.

Saleh also said that Hamed al-Mannan was appointed as minister of interior.

The ruling National Congress Party(NCP) has dominated the majority of sovereign ministries, namely defense, foreign affairs, oil, finance, education and electricity.

The new government was scheduled to be announced last February, but was delayed due to differences within the parties.
A nine-year-old boy has died after shooting himself at his home in Georgia when he came home from school.

The third grader had gotten off his school bus in Winder, north-east of Atlanta, on Wednesday afternoon shortly before the incident.

Investigators say the boy shot himself with a handgun inside the home.

The nine-year-old boy died from his injuries after shooting himself with a handgun at his home in Winder, Georgia (above) on Wednesday after he got off the school bus

The boy was airlifted to Children's Hospital in Atlanta but he tragically died from his injuries just before 11pm.

Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith told Channel 2 that the weapon had been secured but the boy was still somehow able to get hold of it.

A team of counselors and law enforcement officials were sent to Yargo Elementary School on Thursday to help the boy's friends and staff deal with the tragedy.

The boy was a third grader at Yargo Elementary School. Counselors and law enforcement officials were sent to the school on Thursday to help the boy's friends deal with the tragedy

Officers said it was unlikely that any charges would be filed as a result of the boy's death.

The investigation is still ongoing to determine if the incident was intentional or a tragic accident.

A neighbor set up a GoFundMe to help the devastated family with funeral and other expenses.
Police are hunting a man who allegedly followed a 13-year-old girl into a public toilet and attacked her in broad daylight at a scenic tourist destination.

The girl was assaulted at Cataract Gorge in Launceston about noon on Thursday, police said.

A man described as about 50-years-old allegedly entered the female toilets and attempted to trap the girl inside.

Police are hunting a man who allegedly followed a 13-year-old girl into a public toilet and attacked her about noon on Thursday at Cataract Gorge (pictured) in Launceston

Police said the man then pushed the teenager into a wall and hit her, before she struggled free and called for help.

The man fled the scene on foot and was last seen running towards the northern side of the gorge.

He was wearing a blue t-shirt, black tracksuit pants, grey sneakers and sunglasses at the time of the alleged assault.

He has been described as being of Asian appearance with dark scruffy hair, green eyes and a large build.

Police have asked anyone who saw a man running or acting suspiciously at the gorge to come forward.

Cataract Gorge is popular for its walking tracks, panoramic views and the world's longest single-span chairlift, according to Discover Tasmania.
Police are hunting for a man of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance after two teenagers were stabbed in a random attack at train station in Sydney's west.

The 17 and 18-year-olds were attacked by a man while standing at a taxi rank outside Bankstown train station at 7pm on Thursday night.

Both teens were stabbed multiple times in the chest during the violent assault.

Both teens were stabbed multiple times in the chest during the violent assault (victim pictured centre)

The pair were rushed to Liverpool Hospital after being treated at the scene by intensive care paramedics (scene pictured)

The pair were rushed to Liverpool Hospital after being treated at the scene by intensive care paramedics.

Inspector John Brotherhood said police haven't been able to locate the attacker or the weapon used.

'(They) received multiple wounds from a weapon that we're unable to locate at the present time,' he told 9 News.

'We transported them in a serious but stable condition.'

The teens described their attacker as a man of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern appearance wearing a grey Adidas-brand hoodie, black track pants, and joggers.

He may have been with three women wearing dark-coloured clothing.

Two teenagers were stabbed multiple times by a Middle Eastern man at train station in Western Sydney
Thousands of weapons have been seized from children as young as five in schools, including samurai swords, axes and air guns.

The latest police data reveals that incidents of pupils bringing weapons to school is on the rise, and many of those caught are still in primary school.

The data, from 32 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales, shows that 1,369 weapons were found in the 2016-17 financial year.

This is a rise of 18 per cent on 2015-16, when 1,158 were found.

More than 1,300 weapons were seized from children at schools in the UK last year (file picture)

Among the weapons found were 500 blades, including a samurai sword, similar to this one pictured

At least 47 children found with weapons were below ten, the age at which someone can be prosecuted.

This included three five-year-olds. One of them was caught with a knife while another was found with a missile, probably a brick or a rock.

According to the 24 forces that gave details of the type of weapon, just under 500 of those seized  nearly 20 per cent  were knives, including samurai swords.

The figures for primary and secondary schools, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that around one in five of the incidents involved knives.

The chilling catalogue of harmful objects discovered by teachers last year also included at least 26 guns, including BB guns, air rifles and an imitation firearm.

It comes amid mounting concerns over violent behaviour in schools and the ongoing problem of gang culture in cities. Some forces have launched a crackdown on knife crime in schools.

The true numbers of weapons seized by police is likely to be far higher, because many forces did not provide data or offered incomplete figures.

The data, obtained by the Press Association news agency, shows that unusual contraband included a police baton, a rolling pin and a 15in metal rod.

Some forces gave historical information that weapons including a paper-cutting guillotine and a Taser stun gun were seized.

Chief Constable Alf Hitchcock, of the National Police Chiefs Council, said: Schools should be free of weapons.

Air guns, similar to this one picture, and axes were found on children as young as five at UK schools in the past year

We have recently seen an increase in young people carrying knives and this is worrying.

We are responding to this trend by targeting those who carry them illegally and working with retailers to reduce the sale of knives to underage people through nationally coordinated operations.

In 2014 teacher Ann Maguire was stabbed to death at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds by pupil Will Cornick, 15.

And in 2015, another teacher, Vincent Uzomah, was seriously injured when he was stabbed at Dixons Kings Academy in Bradford by a racist 14-year-old pupil.

A Department for Education spokesman said: We have increased teachers powers. Teachers can search without consent and confiscate prohibited items.
The Sydney Grammar School teacher who had sex with a 17-year-old boy had previously been warned four times about inappropriate behaviour with students at the same school.

The teacher first met with the school in September 2013 - more than two years before she had sex with the boy - to be reminded of the school's child protection policy.

She was sent a letter by the school setting out the policy in detail the next day.

That policy states: 'You must not in any communication with boys of the school, written or spoken, or electronic, make any sexual references or use terms with obvious sexual connotations...'

The first time a Sydney private school teacher (pictured on Thursday) and her student had sex at her apartment, the pair then sat together and ate ice cream while they watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit

The former Sydney Grammar School teacher (pictured) has pleaded guilty in Downing Centre Local Court to having sex with a school student

Text exchanges between the teacher and student in April 2016 included the teacher saying her dog missed the boy

'This prohibition includes jokes, anecdotes and other matters and covers all contexts in which you engage with boys, including classes, tutorials... and private conversations.'

The next month, the teacher again met with the school following a complaint about her inappropriate behaviour towards students and was warned about a 'pattern' relating to her actions.

At the end of 2014 the teacher was reprimanded by the school for forming an 'overly close pastoral role' with a male student with a mental health problem.

According to court documents, the school and the teacher 'discussed how to avoid students looking to her for special support'.

'She was advised of the need for a more professional approach and was reminded that the school permits use of phones strictly on school business for contact only as necessary.'

Despite all those warnings, the woman began having sex with a 17-year-old student in January 2016 and continued to do so for about three months.

After the first time the pair had sex, at the teacher's apartment, they sat together on a lounge and ate ice cream while they watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

The teacher and student continued to exchange messages after they stopped having sex

The teacher repeatedly sought help via text from the student with whom she had sex

On Thursday, the court heard the teacher and student would meet in a spare classroom or a storage room to have sex and perform fellatio

Half an hour later, the 33-year-old married teacher and her 17-year-old student got bored and decided to have sex again.

The former Sydney Grammar School teacher has pleaded guilty in Downing Centre Local Court to nine counts of sexual intercourse and one of indecent assault.

On Tuesday, the court heard the pair would meet in a spare classroom or a storage room to have sex. She sometimes performed fellatio.

Text messages between the pair have been revealed, with the teacher calling herself a 'f***ing monster' and asking the student if she was 'going to jail' after he ended the relationship.

'Please don't be so angry with me. We were such good friends,' she wrote in April 2016.

HOW DID THE SCHOOL BOY RESPOND TO HIS TEACHER?

Mon 25.4.16 at 10.49am The boy: I'm sorry that it's been so hard on you. I really am. It's been hard on me too, but that period was largely staggered before yours. I don't think I have it in me to help you get through this, and I know it's especially difficult on one's own, but I'm afraid that's how it's going to be. I've taken a destructive approach to remembering our past, but that's what's helpful for me to get through it. Keep all the memories you want, if that's a key to your happiness. But this shouldn't change how you would approach or treat me, because we have to move on. Look at me as another face in the crowd. I won't be looking back with malice, or a wish to distance myself from you. We did both love each other for a time and I'm not forgetting that. This isn't a gesture of friendship, because while not distancing myself, I shan't make attempts towards the opposite either. Call it compassion if you want, but that makes it sound like you're a victim here, which isn't a particularly helpful approach, nor accurate, in my mind. Please try to be happy. There's no realistic cause for paranoia, because I can assure you any danger to you is gone. But that relies on us moving on, and I really hope you can do that. Because you are a fantastic person, a fantastic teacher and you bring light to the world through your passion for what you do. Don't let that end up being collateral damage for love lost, or bridges burned. We've got to be constructive here. I know that's the hardest part, but believe me when I say I'm struggling with that too. But that's no reason to not. Fight the good fight. Do it because it's hard, and because it's important. I believe in you, and I believe you can. I will be here to reach out to, but very infrequently I must stress. Any more ends up being counter-intuitive, and the cause of pain. Pick yourself up, and the pieces, if you have to. If there are any more helpful cliches I haven't thought of, think of them yourself. Better yet, make a list.

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'I know you don't want me to contact you but I'm on four consecutive nights of insomnia and panic attacks.

'I'd rather kill myself than let my parents down and I just can't see how this isn't going to get out'.

The student told her it was not his 'responsibility to soothe' her fears and said he needed to stop communication because it was using too much credit on his phone.

In another April 2016 text the woman wrote: 'I don't know how long ago you changed your mind about me. The show? The last time we had sex? Before? I don't know how much is real.'

Later that month, the boy wrote: 'Please try to be happy... Because you are a fantastic person, a fantastic teacher and you bring light to the world through your passion for what you do.'

The former Sydney Grammar School teacher, 33, (pictured) and the teenager started a sexual relationship in 2015

Text messages sent from an elite Sydney private school teacher to a 17-year-old student she had sex with nine times have been revealed.

The teacher, who earlier this year had a baby with her husband, continued texting him until shortly before police arrested her at a mental health facility on October 14.

On September 8 she wrote: 'Am I really beneath your notice? Even after everything we shared? All those poems? Even now, when it's so close to the end?'

Before the sexual relationship ended, the pair met in a classroom next to Sydney Grammar School's Palladium Theatre.

Once inside, the teacher performed fellatio on the student. They were then going to have intercourse but decided the floor would be too uncomfortable.

On another weekday around February or March the pair arrived separately at a prop room so as not to attract attention.

That afternoon the teacher performed fellatio on the student for about an hour.

After being arrested on October 14, 2016, she was made the subject of an apprehended violence order to stop her contacting the teenager and is yet to be sentenced.

The Sydney Grammar School (pictured) teacher also told the student she couldn't sleep, eat or breathe after having 'hurt' the teenager

The former teacher pleaded guilty in Downing Centre Local Court to nine counts of sexual intercourse

Sydney Grammar School headmaster Dr Richard Malpass wrote to parents on Thursday offering counselling to anyone who needed it following publication of the teacher's guilty pleas.

'The name of the boy is permanently suppressed and I ask all members of the Grammar community to respect the privacy of any boy or family they may think is connected to this matter, as intrusions on privacy in this sort of situation can be very distressing,' Dr Malpass wrote.
Jeremy Corbyn will today deny he is a pacifist while signalling that he could bring home all British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Labour leader will declare the 'bomb first, talk later' approach to defence has failed as he pledges there will be 'no more hand-holding with Donald Trump'.

However, he will insist that he accepts that military action 'under international law and as a genuine last resort' is sometimes necessary.

Mr Corbyn faces a growing row over his stance on security as it emerges today that he said Britain should be condemned for having a nuclear deterrent. The Mail can reveal the Labour leader marched on Downing Street, in May 2005, demanding the country gives up its nuclear weapons.

Jeremy Corbyn (pictured) will declare the 'bomb first, talk later' approach to defence has failed

The leaked draft of Labour's election manifesto reveals that Labour is 'extremely cautious' about using the Trident submarine missile system and would only send the Army to war as a last resort. It commits to the idea of a 'nuclear free world'.

In a major speech setting out his foreign policy this morning in London, Mr Corbyn will hint that he could end the deployments of British troops around the world.

'This is the fourth general election in a row to be held while Britain is at war and our armed forces are in action in the Middle East and beyond,' he will say. 'The 'war on terror' which lies behind these interventions has failed. They have not increased our security at home  rather the opposite  and they have caused devastation abroad.'

However, he will claim he is not against all wars. 'If elected Prime Minister, I will do everything necessary to protect the safety and security of our people and our country,' he will say.

Mr Corbyn will insist that he accepts that military action 'under international law and as a genuine last resort' is sometimes necessary

Mr Corbyn will also warn: 'Pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability.'

He was pictured with CND officials outside Number 10 presenting a petition in May 2005, which demanded the country get rid of its nuclear deterrent. Months later he used a column in the communist-supporting Morning Star to denounce Britain over Trident. 'Any state that wants to develop them should be condemned, as should states that continue to hold them,' he wrote.

Tuition fees axe 'will hit the poor'

Labour's pledge to scrap tuition fees could lead to fewer poor students going to university, experts have warned.

Professor Anna Vignoles, of Cambridge University's Faculty of Education, and Nick Hillman, of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank, said it will lead to a cap on student numbers and could mean disadvantaged students with lower grades are squeezed out.

Currently, with fees paid by government-backed loans, any 18-year-old who gets the required grades can go to university. If the state pays, as it used to, only a limited number of places will be available within each annual budget.

Mr Hillman said when there is a race to get one of a finite number of places 'the middle classes will always win. They will always do the extra tutoring'.

Labour's pledge to scrap tuition fees could lead to fewer poor students going to university (pictured, Oxford University), experts have warned

'Traveller camp for every town'

Jeremy Corbyn's promise to protect 'nomads' should lead to a traveller camp in every borough council, a leading gipsy group said last night.

The draft copy of Labour's manifesto pledged to protect the right to 'a nomadic way of life' and support gypsies, travellers and the Roma community.

There were no further details, but the National Federation of Gypsy Liaison Groups said yesterday it assumed this meant Labour would scrap a 1994 law that allowed councils to close down traveller sites.

Before 1994, every borough council had a duty to provide a site with 16 pitches, the federation said.

A spokesman added: 'We would hope (the Labour manifesto) would mean a greater provision of public sites, transit sites and privately owned sites.

'We hope they mean it and they crack on with doing it  no doubt it will be top of their list.'

Row over 'no limit' plan for migrants

Jeremy Corbyn was accused of having an 'arrogant disregard' for the concerns of ordinary voters as he pledged to allow in thousands more migrants.

According to Labour's draft manifesto, they will put no limits on the number of people coming to live in Britain.

He will also scrap the 18,600 minimum income rule for the partners of non-EU migrants.

It is understood to have sparked a party row, with some shadow ministers urging Mr Corbyn to address the concerns of Labour voters who supported Brexit due to concerns about uncontrolled migration.

Lord Green of Deddington, of Migration Watch UK, said: 'For anyone worried about immigration, this is the worst possible manifesto. This reflects an arrogant disregard of many people's genuine concerns.'
A police and crime commissioner yesterday called for the so-called zombie drug Spice to be legalised and allowed back into shops.

Images of people staggering around town centres, in zombie-like states, have become common in recent months with the increased abuse of man-made cannabis drugs, known as Spice or Black Mamba.

But Arfon Jones, the police and crime commissioner for North Wales, said criminalising the drug, which was previously legal and sold in so-called head shops, had driven its production underground and made it more deadly.

Oblivious: A man slumped up against a wall in Wrexham

His area covers Wrexham, where pictures of homeless addicts sprawled on the floor in the towns bus station, unaware of their surroundings, made national headlines.

I dont think that [the drug] should have been criminalised in the first place, he said.

The fact that it was criminalised is the cause of problem weve got now.

When it was sold in head shops, we never heard about it because it was weaker, it was safer.

Now its gone underground no-one knows the strength of it and its causing the agencies a lot of difficulties.

As addictive as heroin and crack, the drug costs just 5 per bag. Smoking a single Spice joint is akin to smoking up to 100 containing normal cannabis  and addiction can take hold in just three days.

It has left addicts suffering severe psychotic episodes, hallucinations, vomiting and even seizures.

Ministers outlawed possession of the Class B drug last year, but there is confusion amongst police over whether those caught with it can be arrested.

Officers also say the drug has become more potent as supply has shifted from shops to streets.

The drugs relative cheapness has also made Spice popular among the homeless and in prisons.

In Manchester, police and ambulance chiefs recently admitted they were struggling to cope with the number of call outs to Spice users who were collapsing in the city centre daily. It is estimated that 96 per cent of the citys young homeless are hooked on the drug.

Other cities, such as Cardiff, Derby and Blackpool have also reported similar problems.

Spice has left addicts suffering severe psychotic episodes, hallucinations, vomiting and even seizures

Lancashire Police said it dealt with 120 Spice-related incidents in 2016/17, compared with just 18 between April 2014 and March 2015.

It is also estimated that an ambulance is called to British jails every 42 minutes as a consequence of a Spice epidemic in prisons.

Last year, ambulances were called 12,576 times, an increase from 6,677 in 2014, figures from Englands ten ambulance services revealed.

Such psychoactive substances have also been linked to a rise in violence against staff and inmates, prisoner blackouts, seizures and heart attacks.

Each call-out costs about 300 so the bill for all incidents in 2015-16 was 3.7million.

Mr Jones was due to tell an audience in Wrexham last night (THURS) that the war on drugs has failed and that a regulated market is the only way forward.

I believe that the war on drugs was lost many years ago and that we need a new approach to dealing with problematic drug use, he said.

I have felt for some time that the current prohibitive stance is extremely damaging to individuals and their communities.
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This is the dramatic moment a helicopter tried to land on a 25million superyacht in a Norwegian fjord before flipping over into the sea leaving three Britons injured.

Pictures show the 1 million AS 350B hovering above the aft deck of the 196ft Bacarella, near Sandviken, Norway.

But seconds later, the helicopter - which had earlier flown from the Shetland Islands to refuel - is believed to have caught its rotors in a tarpaulin before spinning out of control and landing upside down in the sea.

Photos show the aircraft upside in the water near the luxury vessel on Wednesday before emergency crews had arrived at the scene.

One of the three people on board, a 57-year-old, is understood to be in a serious condition while the other two, aged 53 and 62, suffered cuts and bruises and have been discharged from Haukeland University Hospital. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) confirmed the trio were hurt on Wednesday, in what was believed to be a botched landing.

Video shows a helicopter flipping upside down and crashing down into the water after trying to land on the back of a superyacht in Norway

Impact: Footage shows the moment the helicopter crashed down in to the sea with three Britons on board near Sandviken, Norway

Dramatic pictures show the moment a helicopter tried to land (above) on a 25million superyacht in a Norwegian fjord before flipping over into the sea leaving three Britons injured

Pictures by Espen Haagensen show the helicopter upside down in the water close to the superyacht moments after it flipped over while attempting to land

This was the scene as the helicopter was being hoisted out of the water following the crash. One of the three people on board is understood to be in a serious condition while the other two have suffered cuts and bruise

The chopper was equipped with floats which prevented it from sinking and the three people on board were also wearing survival suits.

The British-registered helicopter flew from the Shetlands to Bergen to refuel before making a rendezvous with the 196ft yacht, which was built in 2009.

According to local media, all three people on board the aircraft tested negative for intoxicants.

The chopper crashed on Wednesday afternoon and was removed from the sea earlier today. Norwegian air crash investigators have begun a probe into the cause of the accident.

It is not yet clear who owns Bacarella, which was sold to an undisclosed owner at auction three years ago.

Three people survived when this helicopter crashed while attempting to land on a superyacht. One of them is said to be in a serious condition

Footage appears to show debris flying through the air moments before the helicopter crashed down into the sea

Espen Haagensen took photos of the luxury yacht shortly after crash. It is thought the chopper's rotor got caught in a tarpaulin

Norwegian crash experts are investigating the cause of Wednesday's incident. they are pictured at Bergen Harbour

A brochure for the luxury vessel says one of its aft decks is 'certified from build as a helicopter deck and has fold down railings all around in order to accommodate the landing of an EC135 type and sized helicopter.'

This, it says, brings Bacarerlla 'right into the super yacht playing field.'

Bergen resident Jan Haughland, 48, was taking photographs of a tall ship in the fjord when he heard a 'crash and splash in one'.

He told the Press Association: 'It was exactly at sunset and I was concentrating on the tall ship when I heard the crash.

'I was slow to realise what had happened at first. There is a lot of shipping and helicopters flying over the harbour normally and I thought maybe someone had dropped something overboard.

Emergency crews are pictured returning to Bergen Harbour this morning

'The yacht was around 500 to 700 metres from where I was standing and I noticed all the rescue boats moving really fast towards it.'

Mr Haughland said up to five boats raced to the scene, including a passing passenger ferry that diverted from its course.

'It can't have been more than five minutes before they arrived, it all happened very fast.'

The casualties began arriving at the quayside around an hour after the incident, he said.

'I think there were three ambulances and the critically injured person received emergency care on the boat before he was taken.'

The computer programmer said it was a 'mystery' who the boat was owned by or who was on board.

There are usually 'two or three really big luxury yachts' in the harbour at any time and he believed the Bacarella had arrived at least three days before the incident.

'It's a popular place to visit for the very, very rich,' Mr Haughland said.

Kara Lynsdale, from London, was aboard the Statsraad Lehmkuhl Tall Ship in Bergen harbour with her parents when she saw the incident unfold.

The 30-year-old said: 'We sort of looked to our left and just saw this helicopter just fall into the sea.

'I literally saw it when it was quite low - it didn't seem to fall from a great height or anything - I saw it while it was about in line with the boat.'

She added: 'It just looked like it fell, it kind of just splashed into the water... It almost looked like it rolled off the boat, or hadn't landed properly on the boat and missed it.

'It fell from such a low height that it just plunged - it sank straight away.'

Rescue mission: The 1 million chopper crashed on Wednesday afternoon and was removed from the sea earlier today

The AS 350B was trying to land on the 196ft Bacarella (file picture of the vessel) superyacht, near Sandviken, Norway, when a tarpaulin became entangled in the rotors and it spun out of control, flipping upside down into the water

Miss Lynsdale said she saw a person being given CPR while being jetted across the harbour on a boat.

'A lifeboat came past with crew inside the boat giving someone CPR... it was quite shocking to see them bomb past giving someone CPR in the back of the boat.'

She praised the fast response of vessels in the harbour and said she was not sure if the people escaped from the helicopter themselves or were rescued.

A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: 'We can confirm that three British people were injured in an incident in Bergen, Norway on May 10.

'We are offering assistance to them and remain in close contact with Norwegian authorities.'
The chance of winning a free pizza almost cost one man his life when he decided to climb up one of Arizona's mountains in sub-zero temperatures dressed in shorts.

The 30-year-old man ended up having to be treated for hypothermia after being rescued from a snowy Mounts Elden in the northern part of the state.

He had climbed up the peak in a quest for a few slices promised by Pizzicletta, a local Italian restaurant in the town of Flagstaff.

Authorities say a man had to be treated for hypothermia and rescued from Mount Elden in northern Arizona after he had hiked up while wearing only shorts to get a free pizza

The weather at the top of the mountain was treacherous with near white-out conditions

The pizza restaurant remarked that there were a few cases of hypothermia on the day of the rescue due to the conditions. There was half a foot of snow covering the ground

Plenty of other intrepid hikers also decided to head up the mountain to claim their prize with at least one other individual wearing shorts when the weather improved the following day

Delicious pizzas are being offered by Flagstaff restaurant Pizzicletta as long as food-lovers hike up a nearby mountain to collect their reward

The tiny restaurant offered free pizza to anyone who could make it to a radio transmitting tower at the top of Elden overlooking the town.

The elevation of the mountain is more than 9,000 feet up and was completely covered in snow on Tuesday morning when the man decided to go for his hike.

A Forest Service lookout at the tower ended up providing shelter to the man, said Coconino County sheriff's Cmdr. Rex Gilliland, although his name has not yet been made public.

The mountain had several inches of snow from a spring storm when authorities received a report and asked the lookout to check for him.

The restaurant made reference of the 'memorable morning' yet is still encouraging people to head up the 9,000ft peak in order to claim their prize of free pizza

The restaurant only seats around 30 people but is popular with locals for its cheesy pies

The man was apparently unaware of the forecast or completely disregarded it when he set out on Tuesday morning, Gilliland said.

'Regardless of what this business offers ... the responsibility falls back to the individual to make good sound decisions about what they're going to do,' he said.

'The freezing temperatures and snowfall on the mountain were clear signs that the hike would be dangerous', Gilliland said. 'It shouldn't have been a surprise.'

A rescue was not at all the intention of the business owner behind the challenge.

Caleb Schiff, owner of Pizzicletta and a self-confessed fitness fanatic, said it was all voluntary, adding that when he asked people to climb to the top of Mt. Elden, he hoped they would check the weather and be prepared.

'We never want anyone to risk their life for pizza. It's certainly not worth it,' Schiff said to 12 News. 'We give away a lot of free pizza, which is OK,' Schiff laughed.

The wood fired pizza restaurant is run by chef Caleb Schiff who is himself a fitness fanatic

A few days later, the snow had all cleared and more hungry hikers climbed the mountain

Schiff challenged people to meet at the top of Mt. Elden at 8.30am for a free meal later that day.

'In truth, what we really want is people to make great decisions about their health and be active,' Schiff said. 'We always encourage people to not get in over their heads, to make smart decisions.'

The hiker was taken to the lookout cabin at the top of the mountain and picked up by a friend once he warmed up.
General Robert Brown, pictured, who commands thousands of US troops in the Pacific, said ISIS fanatics are spreading into Asia

Islamic State fanatics are flowing out of the Middle East and finding places to go in Asia, a top US commander warned UK troops yesterday.

General Robert Brown, in charge of tens of thousands of US troops in the Pacific, warned the spread of the group across the world was a huge concern.

Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, he revealed how 30 extremist organisations in Indonesia had recently pledged allegiance to IS.

He said: We have violent extremist organisations in the pacific.

As they are being pushed out of other areas be it the Middle East, or Africa, they are flowing in, finding places to go.

He said they had popped up in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

He added: Recently about 30 violent extremist organisations pledged allegiance to ISIL in Indonesia.

Violent extremist organisations are a huge concern for everybody.

Islamic State is losing swathes of its territory in Iraq and Syria as coalition warplanes and local forces drive the barbaric militants out of towns and cities.

As they have been pushed out, foreign fighters have made their way back Europe, sparking terror fears.

The terrorists have also spread to countries such as Libya and Afghanistan. With the help of US airstrikes, they are now on the back foot in the two countries.

But now they are emerging in the Asia-Pacific, alarming Western militaries already grappling with an increasingly provocative North Korea.
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Nigeria's Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Aisha Alhassan Thursday said 82 Chibok schoolgirls released recently were undergoing medical screening to facilitate their quick reintegration into the society.

Alhassan, who said this at a news conference in Abuja, Nigeria's capital city, said the girls would afterwards go for psycho-social therapy and refresher courses.

She said pictures of the 82 girls had been sent for their parents to confirm their identification as some have similar names.

"It is not true that we are not allowing the parents to see their children; we allow them access but not everyday," she told reporters.

According to her, most of the girls prefer to be within the government facility because they don't want to be reminded of their experiences having to go to their community.

"Those saying we are not allowing them access are not the direct parents of the girls; we cannot bring anybody to see them apart from their biological parents, allowing visitors everyday will not allow them to heal fast," the minister added.

She also renewed the government's resolve to negotiate for the release of the remaining abducted Chibok schoolgirls and other captives.

Alhassan said there was need to help the girls forget the trauma they experienced from the bush.

She said all the girls would resume the new academic session in September, including the recently released 82 Chibok girls, adding that they will undergo skill acquisition.
A charity worker has made an unexpected discovery after finding an unexploded artillery shell - believed to have been used for years as a doorstop - covered in a woollen tea cosy.

The bomb was found at a northern Sydney op shop on Thursday morning by a volunteer rummaging through the weekly donations.

Police evacuated the store before the army was called in to dispose of the shell.

Fusion Australia worker Myf Webster told Daily Mail Australia the shell was dressed up in a crochet costume, which indicated it was likely used as a doorstop.

A charity worker has made an unexpected discovery after finding an unexploded artillery shell covered in a woollen tea cosy, believed to have been used for years as a doorstop

Police arrived about 11am and evacuated the store (pictured) as a precaution. The police then called in the army who took possession of the shell

It was dressed up in a crochet doily with a hat and outfit, so we are assuming it was used as a doorstop for a long time,' she said.

We think it was probably from a deceased estate and someone was clearing things out and bringing it all in.

I dont know if they realised what they were bringing in.

The discovery was made by volunteer of 25 years Phyl Ladd, who alerted Ms Webster when she arrived on Thursday morning.

Ms Webster then took a photo of the bomb with the top of its costume on, but said she was too scared to touch the bottom.

I took a photo [of the shell] and walked around to the local police station and they said you better evacuate everyone from the building, which we did, Ms Webster said.

Police arrived about 11am and evacuated the store as a precaution, a police spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

The police then called in the army who took possession of the shell.

Ms Webster said the store remained close for more than three hours while the bomb was disposed

Ms Webster said the store remained close for more than three hours while the bomb was disposed.

Ms Ladd said she didn't realise the 'gravity of the situation' when she found the shell until she removed its costume.

'I remembered there was an amnesty on, so I told the other volunteers that we needed to call the police,' Ms Ladd told Hornsby Advocate.

Ms Ladd said the shell was the most 'unusual' donation she had seen in 25 years of volunteering.
Two's company, three's a crowd, particularly when your owner is kissing his son rather than your own furry face.

At least, that appeared to be the issue that one dog had after a soldier who just got home began planting kisses on his newborn baby boy's face.

But someone wasn't happy, and Abbey, a cute Corgi sitting right by her young friend quickly realized that she wasn't getting in on the action.

Each time army combat medic Ricky Perez went in for another peck on the cheek of his son, Tommy, Abbey tried to stick her snout in where it wasn't wanted

The Corgi appeared to get very jealous seeing baby Tommy was receiving all of the kisses

Each time army combat medic Ricky Perez went in to peck his son Tommy's cheek, Abbey tried to stick her snout in where it wasn't wanted.

'Abbey the Corgi is our first fur-child, and so we spoiled her with attention,' said Ricky Perez to DailyMail.com.

'When our son came along she got jealous of our attention being on the baby! Especially daddy's. She very gentle and protective of the baby but I think she'd rather we focus on her.'

Time and again, as little Tommy was given another smooch, his furry friend seemed to notice she was losing out.

Even when no kisses were being planted, Abbey the dog tried to get Ricky's attention

Another interception occurred as Abbey stuck her snout between dad Ricky and baby Tommy

In between kisses, Abbey even tried to stick her wet nose into soldier Ricky's face.

But the serviceman, who is stationed in Vilseck, Germany, was having none of it.

True to form, he remained focused on the mission at hand: to give as many kisses to his kid as possible - even if his faithful friend looked desperate enough to go rogue by the end of it all.
She is at the center of the latest airline controversy. But it seems like Love and Hip Hop Star Tommie Lee, 32, may have been at fault.

She was forced to exit a Delta airline flight at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, shortly before the jet took off.

The star had to leave the flight headed to Miami, Florida, because she allegedly refused to give up her glass of wine at a terminal and boarded the flight on Wednesday night, TMZ reported.

The video shows the star, wearing a pink and grey striped long sleeve shirt with her blonde locks in a lose ponytail, while she walks from her seat and into the aisle of the jet.

She then speaks with a flight attendant before she is finally escorted by a security official. While the exchange lasted ten minutes and Lee was calm throughout, the flight was delayed for 20 minutes.

Lee's rep says the star was not kicked off for drinking but for grieving the death of her friend, which, if true, is an unprecedented move from the airline.

This comes as rumors have been swirling that Lee will be booted off Love and Hip Hop for her 'violent' behavior, even though she has been part of the show for just two seasons.

Lee has had her fair share of alcohol-related controversies. Last year, a video emerged of her being forced out of her car and handcuffed by police officers.

Tommie Lee, 32, was forced to exit a Delta airline flight after she allegedly refused to give up her glass of wine at a terminal at the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. Just two days before the incident unfolded, the Love and Hip Hop star posted this picture on Instagram with the caption, 'Imma try for u'

The star initially posted a video, accusing the cops of police brutality but they later said Lee was forced put of her car because she had allegedly lied about being the passenger, rather than the driver of the car.

Police officers said Lee's eyes were bloodshot and watery and her speech was slurred when they booked her for drunk drinking, disorderly conduct and driving on an expired license, according to TMZ.

She also reportedly peed herself in the police car on the way to the station but she blames the deputies for not accepting her request to go to the bathroom.

Earlier this year, she posted a 'drunken' rant on Instagram Live, which seemed to be aimed at her friend Mary Jane - also featured in the video - although it's unclear the reason behind it.

'Stop playing with me!' she said in her viral rant. 'Y'all are not going to trick me off the motherf***ing streets.

'I will beat a b****'s a** and kill a b****!'

When DailyMail.com reached out to Delta Airlines, the spokesperson said Lee was 'accommodated' on a later flight. The company is yet to release an official statement regarding the incident.

Last year, Lee accused the cops who arrested her of police brutality. Video later emerged showing the star handcuffed by police officers. In this tweet posted on July 2016, she shows the bruises behind her knee and on her shoulder, which allegedly came about because of her interaction with the police officers
A high-flying Melbourne businesswoman has sued an upscale matchmaking company because it was unable to find a man who met her high standards.

The woman, from inner-city Melbourne, took her case to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal this week where she fought for a full refund of what she paid.

She claimed she paid a total of $5,107 but was only refunded $4,000, when the site was unable to match her with her desired partner, the Herald Sun reports.

Elite Introductions International owner Trudy Gilbert (pictured) advertises herself to clients as a 'well-connected friend who can introduce (you) to other like-minded compatible singles'

The high-profile businesswoman was a client with Elite Introductions International Pty Ltd, an Australian matchmaking company, from December 2015 to May 2016.

She said the service failed to meet promises that it would match her with a partner who met her criteria.

'There were no introductions over that period despite the fact that when I first joined, I questioned the organisation over whether they had an appropriate listing of people to facilitate their ability to make those introductions,' she said.

'They assured me that was the case and over five months they were not able to.

'There were a couple of people recommended that were outside what I specified I was still willing to do those but they were never to eventuate.'

The woman said the service failed to match her with a partner who met her criteria, despite promising it could

Elite Introductions International advertises itself as an exclusive dating agency based in Sydney and Melbourne

The client is a chartered accountant who sits on the board of a not-for-profit charity.

She is also a partner at a multinational company.

The disgruntled client told the tribunal she would not have taken legal action if the company offered her a $4,000 refund to begin with, but instead she said she was dragged through a messy dispute.

Elite Introductions International (Sydney office on Bligh Street) advertises itself as an exclusive dating agency for successful business people

Elite Introductions International advertises itself as an exclusive dating agency for successful business people.

Owner Trudy Gilbert advertises herself to clients as a 'well-connected friend who can introduce (you) to other like-minded compatible singles'.

'Over the years, I have successfully introduced CEOs, business owners, finance and medical professionals, media professionals, actors, Olympic athletes, fashion designers and published authors,' she wrote on the website.

The company asks clients to share their income when signing up to the matchmaking service.

Elite Introductions International (Lonsdale Street in Melbourne) asks clients to share their income when signing up to the matchmaking service

Company representative Lisa Hayes told the tribunal there were 'reasons' why they were unable to introduce the woman to her ideal partner.

Ms Hayes said the company considered the $4,000 refund appropriate considering they worked with the woman for five months before she left the service.

Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal member Linda Rowland said the disagreement between the parties was not necessarily a breach of the law but arose from poor communication and bad manners, the Herald Sun reports.

Both parties failed to submit a copy of the contract and the tribunal is yet to make a ruling.
A drug dealer who pleaded guilty to charges related to the death of a New York dermatologist mother-of-three has been sentenced to five years in prison.

James Holder pleaded guilty to maintaining a drug distribution house after Dr Kiersten Cerveny died of cocaine and alcohol intoxication in his apartment building.

But, the judge ruled that Holder is not liable for a $1million restitution order from the woman's family after his lawyer argued that Cerveny was a victim of her own choices when she died following the all night drinking and drug session in Manhattan.

James Holder, center, has been sentenced to five years in prison for charges related to the death of a New York dermatologist

Friends of Cerveny, pictured with her husband, had observed her drinking wine, vodka, beer and tequila shots and doing lines of cocaine at a bar and in a hotel room she and her friends had secured for the night

Attorney Matthew Kluger, who represented Holder, said that friends of Cerveny had observed her drinking wine, vodka, beer and tequila shots and doing lines of cocaine at a bar and in a hotel room she and her friends had secured for the night.

In announcing the sentencing, the judge said that though Holder sold her the drugs and behaved badly by not helping Cerveny after she overdosed, ultimately she was a victim of her own choices when she went to the apartment to buy the drugs.

The case also resulted in a guilty plea by Marc Henry Johnson, who is awaiting sentencing. He was charged with drug conspiracy and accessory in moving her lifeless body.

Cerveny died of cocaine and alcohol intoxication in Holder's apartment building. He is pictured, center, being taken in for charges related to the death

In October 2015, James Holder and Marc Henry Johnson (left) were involved in the death of New York Dermatologist Kiersten Cerveny

Johnson is a producer of 'The Deuce,' an HBO pilot starring James Franco that focuses on the rise of the porn industry in New York in the 1970s and '80s.

Holder and Johnson were both arrested in October 2015 after Cereveny's death.

The mother-of-three was found unconscious in the lobby of Holder's Manhattan apartment building after overdosing in his apartment.

When paramedics arrived, they found her panties stuffed in her purse.

Holder and Johnson were seen on surveillance cameras of Holder's building dragging Cerveny down into the lobby. Pictured, evidence is removed from the apartment building in question following her death

Authorities said the 38-year-old Long Island doctor had been snorting cocaine as she shared drinks with Johnson at a Lower East Side bar.

The two then went together to Holder's Chelsea apartment to buy cocaine, according to authorities.

They said Johnson was seen on the surveillance cameras of Holder's building dragging Cerveny down into the lobby, where he then called 911 and took off when emergency crews arrived.

In a letter to the judge, Holder apologized and blamed drugs.

The doctor, who attended Duke University on scholarship after winning an America's Junior Miss pageant and graduated magna cum laude, left behind a life in which friends say she had 'everything'.

The doctor, pictured with her husband at their wedding, attended Duke University on scholarship after winning an America's Junior Miss pageant and graduated magna cum laude

She and her husband lived in a $1.2million home in Manhassaet, Long Island, where they lived with their three children

'They looked healthy and happy. It seemed like they were on top of the world,' Thomas Nicotri, her former professor at the Medical Center of Louisiana, told NBC New York.

The New Jersey native, who was formerly a professor at Cornell Weill Medical School and chief dermatologist at The Brooklyn Hospital, met her husband when they were in their medical residency.

She and husband Andrew, also a dermatologist, had their wedding featured in a prestigious New York Times announcement and later moved to a $1.2million home on Long Island.
Two British doctors attempting to complete a record breaking row across the Indian Ocean are facing a race against time.

Ted Welman, 26, and Jack Faulkner, 27, are 56 days into a 3,700mile crossing from Geraldton Harbour in Australia to Mauritius, in order to raise 100,000 for charity.

But after an arduous journey, the friends are running dangerously low on water and have been set back by a brush with Mauritian bureaucracy.

The pair hoped to land at La Balise Marina instead of heading round to the capital of Port Louis - but were told they would not be allowed due to an alleged lack of proper documents.

Ted Welman, 26, and Jack Faulkner, 27, are 56 days into a 3,700mile crossing from Geraldton Harbour in Australia to Mauritius

After an arduous journey, the friends are running dangerously low on water and have been set back by a brush with Mauritian bureaucracy

Writing on the trip's website, Doctors Adrift, Mr Welman's father Jo said: 'Obviously knackered and running low on water (4 litres left), and not enough juice in the battery to make more, so its so important theyre allowed straight in.

'But some jobsworth was determined to throw a spanner in the works saying under no circumstances will they be allowed in without all the necessary permissions.'

Mr Welman wrote that the doctors on-shore team had spoken to immigration authorities and had initially thought they were clear to dock - but were soon informed that 'under no circumstances' could the rowers come into La Balise Marina.

He fumed: 'They must continue on to Port Louis only another 6km. Wrong. It is very much further, crowded with shipping, tricky at night and another 12 hours rowing.

'Not looking forward to breaking this to the boys and we are still looking for plan B!

Mr Welman and Mr Faulkner, who met while studying medicine at Imperial College London, are attempting to break a record of 85 days for the crossing set by pair of French rowers in 2012.

The pair hoped to land at La Balise Marina instead of heading round to the capital of Port Louis - but were told they would not be allowed due to an alleged lack of proper documents

The friends, who are raising money for Medecins Sans Frontieres, have been rowing in two-hour shifts, 24 hours a day, and have been required to consume 8,000 calories each to keep going each day.

In order to keep hydrated the rowers have a machine that converts fresh water from the sea, but it runs on a batteries and they only have one left - which is also needed to power the radar.

Dr Faulkner's mother told the Times: 'It is now a race to try and break the record for the crossing.

'It is unfortunate they were not allowed to land earlier but they just have to get on with it.'
Greg Rudd (pictured) had previously managed to avoid a 1.3 million fine for a separate phone scam

A telecoms boss whose firm was fined 400,000 for making an 'unprecedented' 100 million cold calls has avoided the penalty by shutting his firm.

And it emerged last night that Greg Rudd had previously managed to avoid a 1.3 million fine for a separate phone scam.

Rudd, 51, has made a career of pestering Britons with unwanted calls regarding anything from PPI compensation and road accident claims, to offers of free holidays.

His company instigated 99.5 million automated marketing calls over an 18-month period  equivalent to about two every second.

Yesterday, the Information Commissioner's Office finally moved to punish his firm  Keurboom Communications Ltd  with the potentially crippling six-digit fine.

But Mr Rudd wound up the company before the fine had been paid  seemingly walking away scot-free.

And there's nothing to stop him setting up another cold-calling firm. It means the IT specialist  who describes his modus operandi as 'annoying' but not 'illegal'  looks set to cling on to his 750,000 Cambridge home, as well as the cash with which he funds his lifestyle.

The Mail can reveal Mr Rudd was involved in another massive rogue cold-calling operation, which was described at the time as 'intrusive and almost certainly illegal'.

He was a director of Allied Telecommunications Ltd, a firm at the centre of a nexus of 16 nuisance call services which lured people into dialling premium rate numbers with the promise of a cash prize.

His firm was fined 400,000 for making an 'unprecedented' 100 million cold calls (stock photo)

When the scam was exposed in 2005, Allied was hit with a 1.3 million fine  but also went straight into liquidation, before any reparations were made.

James Dalton, from the Association of British Insurers, said: 'It is absurd that those responsible for these calls may be able to avoid the fine by shutting down their company and starting another one.'

Mike Lordan, of the Direct Marketing Association, added: 'We hope that in the future rogue marketers will face the real threat of prison.'
One in eight lone children seeking asylum in Britain comes from Albania, it emerged last night  despite the country not being at war.

A total of 3,175 unaccompanied child migrants lodged claims for sanctuary in the UK last year  nearly nine a day.

But 405 applications, or 13 per cent, were made by youngsters from the former Communist nation in the Balkans.

One in eight lone children seeking asylum in Britain comes from Albania, it emerged last night  despite the country not being at war

Ministers have come under fire for not doing more to take thousands of minors crossing Europe without their families.

However critics said the latest figures from Eurostat, the EU's official statistics agency, sparked concerns that the asylum system is being abused.

David Davies, Tory candidate for Monmouth, said: 'Albania is not a country at war and it is not immediately clear why people from there need asylum. This risks undermining the whole system by raising fears among the public that it is being exploited.'

Last month, Eurostat figures revealed that 32,000 asylum claims were made in EU countries by Albanians last year, including 1,700 in the UK. Reasons that people might flee Albania include possible persecution because of their ethnicity, sexuality or religion.

But unlike those fleeing war-torn Syria and Iraq, many quit the country as economic migrants, in part because of high youth unemployment. Judith Dennis, policy manager at the Refugee Council charity, said: 'Even seemingly peaceful countries like Albania can be very dangerous places for different groups of people, such as lesbian or gay people, or trafficking victims.

Nation that Norman conquered Sir Norman Wisdom was a cult figure in Albania, as his films were the only Western entertainments allowed under the Communist regime Before the Second World War, Albania was ruled by King Zog. Afterwards, it became an isolationist Stalinist state until its transition to democracy The majority of its 3m population is Muslim Albanians are the third largest foreign population in British prisons Despite sending athletes to eight Olympic Games, the country has yet to win any medals Albanians nod when they mean No and shake their head when they want to say Yes Advertisement

'You don't have to flee war to be legally entitled to international protection. Decisions on asylum claims can be life or death so it's important the Home Office gets its decisions right and judges each individual claim on its own merit.'

More than 63,000 lone children applied for asylum in EU countries last year. It was a fall of a third from 96,465 in 2015, when the international migration crisis was at its peak. But the tally was still around five times the annual average of 12,000 between 2008 and 2013.

Germany received the most claims (35,935) followed by Italy (6,020) and Austria (3,900), while Britain had the fourth highest number. However last year's figures are slightly lower than in 2015, when the UK received 3,253 asylum applications from lone children.

In total, the UK granted asylum or other forms of protection to more than 8,000 children in 2016.

Earlier this year the Government faced a furious backlash after announcing that only 350 unaccompanied minors would arrive from Europe through the so-called Dubs scheme  well below the 3,000 campaigners had called for.

Then last month ministers said they would accept an extra 130 after they found places had been under-counted because of an 'administrative error'. It meant the total number of children taken in through the scheme, named after Labour peer Lord Dubs, would rise to 480.

However Freedom of Information requests revealed that local authorities had offered to accept some 1,572 lone child refugees, according to online magazine Vice.

This is despite warnings about significant cost to the taxpayer of schooling, housing and foster care.

Earlier this week it emerged in a Court of Appeal hearing that hundreds of gay asylum seekers, victims of trafficking and survivors of domestic violence may have been wrongly deported to Albania after courts and the Home Office relied on incorrect guidance.
BBC2s intrusive King Charles III contained some howlers, inevitably. Prince Charles prefers a belt, not braces.

Royals (and the upper classes generally) arent served breakfast but help themselves.

People always stand when the monarch does. Charles is Papa to William and Harry, not Dad.

Kings and Queens are crowned separately, in different places, and not side by side.

They are also crowned facing the altar, not the congregation.

King Charles III, pictured, inevitably contained howlers, including William and Harry calling their father 'Dad' instead of 'Papa'

The portrayal of our always sweetly smiling Duchess of Cambridge (played by Charlotte Riley) as a scheming, hard-faced power behind the throne in King Charles III might have surprised some viewers.

Is Kate tough as old boots when out of the public eye?

Yes, says my source, adding: Shell see herself as first lady, not consort, when William is king.

I cant picture her yet as a toughie, can you?

Charlotte Riley, left, played the Duchess of Cambridge, right, as a schemer, but sources say the real Kate Middleton is also said to be 'tough as old boots'

Apropos Kate, she must now increase her paltry (according to the royal website) 12 patronages.

The retiring Duke of Edinburgh has 800 to give away, but many are military roles.

Can he persuade military-averse Kate to take over his cherished role as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, which he has held since 1975?

The Grenadiers first female Colonel, in 1942, was 15-year-old Princess Elizabeth, pictured on parade in 1947. So Kate would be following in illustrious footsteps.

She might also tone down the language in the Officers Mess, adds my source.

David Beckham is reviled by critics as useless in his cameo role in director (and chum) Guy Ritchies new King Arthur film.

So why does Skys Kay Burley tell viewers: Im looking forward to it? Is she extending an olive branch?

David Beckham's cameo in King Arthur, pictured, has been reviled by critics

He sought legally to block Skys interview with his alleged mistress, Rebecca Loos, who told Ms Burley: There is something I know about him, an intimate part of his body that I think only women whove been in bed with him would know.

Fearless Kay blithely inquired: Is he circumcised?

While comedian John Cleeses Radio 4 series is reviled, listeners point out that its occupying the Wednesday morning slot recently vacated by Libby Purvess popular show, Midweek, axed after 30 years.

Radio 4s controller is Gwyneth Williams, 63, of which little is known.

The BBCs director general is (Lord) Tony Hall, 66, a hurried appointment after the Jimmy Savile scandal.

Isnt Ms Purves, 67, superior to both combined?

Hollywood veteran Jane Fonda, who turns 80 in December, offers a romantic assessment of ageing: They say, Youre over the hill.

'What they dont realise is, when youre outside of oldness looking in, its scary.

'But once youre inside oldness, its not scary anymore, because you realise that over the hill, theres all those other hills.

Jane Fonda, pictured with Michael Caine, said getting old does not scare her

'And a lot of beautiful meadows and things.

How does currently single, thrice-married Jane remain perky? She admits to enjoying sex toys.

Use it or lose it, right?
A lawyer has vanished without a trace after dropping her daughter off at school.

Mother of two Renata Antczak, 49, has not been seen or heard from for more than two weeks.

Detectives in Hull say there is no indication of what has happened to the Polish national.

Lawyer Renata Antczak, pictured, has been missing from her home in Hull for two weeks

Ms Antzcak is married to dentist Majid Mustafa, pictured, and was last seen dropping her 11-year-old daughter to school on April 25 before returning to her house

Police said that Miss Antczak  married to dentist Majid Mustafa  took her 11-year-old daughter Victoria to school on April 25 before returning home.

She left the house on foot at about 1pm and has not been seen since.

Her friend Iwona Janas, 35, said: She was planning to go back to Poland this summer when her youngest daughter had finished school and was going to take the daughter with her. I think something has happened to her as she would not leave her daughter behind.

Everybody is worried about her. She was a nice person, a very special person and very kind to people.

Superintendent Phil Ward, of Humberside Police, said: We have no indication of where she was going or who she was with.

She took her daughter to school in the morning, nothing had happened previously. She has never been missing before. Police say there is no indication Miss Antczak has left the UK, but Polish police have also been checking addresses. Her 47-year-old husband, who has worked in Hull for 13 years, was not available for comment yesterday. The couples other daughter Magda, 20, is studying at Manchester University.

Friends have expressed concern about the safety of the mother of two after she vanished

A neighbour said police had searched the familys rented detached home in Kingswood, Hull, and their black Mercedes. They said: No one knew them well as they had only been here for six months, but they seemed like a decent family.

The lease on the house was up around the time she left so I dont know what will happen now. Miss Antczak, who is 5ft 6in and was last seen wearing dark trousers and a purple T-shirt, is qualified to work in Poland as a solicitor and has moved between the two countries in recent years, though she moved back to the UK full-time in June last year.

Hairdresser Mrs Janas said that Miss Antczak had recently been working part-time as a therapist after completing a course in a type of healing therapy in Poland.

Superintendent Ward said that there was no indication that anything suspicious has happened or that any crime had been committed. He added: Her husband is very concerned and has reported her missing to us. He has been co-operating with all our inquiries.

Miss Antczaks friend Alexandra Jastrzebska said: We just dont know what has happened.

She was just wearing a T-shirt at the time and didnt have much with her. She is a very clever and lovely woman who would never leave her family like this. She is a very loving mother.

She doesnt suffer depression and isnt the type of person just to go missing like this.
A Sydney Sheik who provides sharia law-compliant financial services has urged Australian Muslims to invest in Islamic schools.

Sheik Tawfique Chowdhury told his clients at Islamic Co-operative Finance that Muslim schools are a good investment because they are backed by the government, The Daily Telegraph reports.

'There is huge demand for schools. We have more children than we actually have Islamic schools,' he reportedly said in an online video which has since been deleted.

A Sydney Sheik who provides sharia law-compliant financial services has urged Australian Muslims to invest in Islamic schools. The Malek Fahd Islamic School is seen in Greenacre, Sydney

'The point of the matter being this is also government-backed, because the government funds the schools, so the risk of loss is actually far less.'

In the video, Sheik Chowdhury urged Muslim Australians to earn as much money as possible to strengthen Islam in the country.

'I want you to think how your wealth and your money cannot only help you get wealthy (but) help Islam in this country establish themselves,' the paper reported he said.

He said there was only one reason to get rich after children had become adults and left home.

'After the kids have gone do you really need that much wealth and money? Why not do it for Allah? Why not get rich for Allah?' he asked.

'Why not get rich so you can help Islam... that is the right reason to get rich.'

Sheik Tawfique Chowdhury (pictured) told his clients at Islamic Co-operative Finance that Muslim schools are profitable because the government backs them
A young Muslim university student who was one of four hijab-wearing women punched in the face in a random attack in Sydney says mental illness should not be used as an excuse for race-based violence.

Hanan Merhab described the attack on her and three other women in broad daylight outside the University of Technology on Wednesday, in a Facebook post.

Maria Claudia Gimenez Wilson, a 39-year-old journalism student from Paraguay, has been charged with assault over the attack.

At a court hearing on Thursday, Wilson was ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment, The Sydney Morning Herald reported

Hanan Merhab, pictured, was one of four women allegedly punched in the face near the University of Technology Sydney in the inner-city suburb of Ultimo on Wednesday

Ms Herab, who said the four women attacked suffered minor injuries, noted the claim about mental illness.

'Subhan Allah (God is perfect), there must be something in the water that White people drink. Amazing how they all have these (mental health) issues,' she wrote on Facebook.

In her account on Facebook, Ms Merhab said she had been walking along the street when a woman approached her and, without warning, hit her in the face.

'She didn't speak to me, didn't run away, she just punched me and walked off, as casually as if she had just come to say hello,' she wrote.

Maria Claudia Gimenez Wilson, pictured, has been charged over the alleged attack

'In front of me, another hijabi had just been punched, and just behind, this same woman was about to punch yet another hijabi.'

The four women who were punched were 'a little hurt, but we're ok'.

'Don't try to tell me she was mentally ill,' she wrote. 'Even if that were the case, honestly, I don't even care. Stop making excuses dammit.'

Ms Merhab's social media supporters appeared to be on side with their comments.

'She didn't speak to me, didn't run away, she just punched me and walked off, as casually as if she had just come to say hello,' Ms Merhab said

'So sorry that this happened to you ladies, the 'mental illness' excuse is always dragged out when a 'white' person commits an act. But if this was the other way around the ladies would be branded as Muslim terrorists,' said a supporter.

'These things are happening more frequently and mentally ill my a**e. The resolve you and other hijabis show...is commendable,' said a male friend.

'If this was a sister doing the same thing she would have been arrested and be on trial for attempting to commit an act of terrorism,' said a woman.



The alleged attacks happened near UTS in the inner-city suburb of Ultimo

However as the post was shared some people offered conflicting opinions.

'Two wrongs don't make a right. Blaming "all" white people for the actions of a few won't solve this problem,' said a man.

A university lecturer who claims to have witnessed the alleged attacker walking away after punching one of the women said he saw a Muslim woman in a hijab fall to the ground and ran to help.

Kais Al-momani called the alleged attack a 'hate crime' on his Facebook page.

'I didn't know what had happened but I could see straight away that her mouth was covered in blood.

'She was crying and shaking and said she'd been punched in the face and knocked to the ground by another woman who she didn't know.

'There was no doubt that this woman was deliberately targeting women in hijab, and not just assaulting random strangers.

Lecturer Kais Al-momani called the alleged attack a 'hate crime' on his Facebook page

'The woman I helped at UTS was a young student from a migrant background. As you can imagine she was absolutely terrified after this incident.'

Comments on the man's post also highlighted possible bias for 'white' people.

'Here is a case of double standards. If a Muslim woman did the same thing everyone would be blowing their war horns against Islam. But this is a Caucasian woman using mental illness as an excuse to get out of gaol and use the innocent white victim card,' a man said.

'Apparently it's been happening a lot lately! If this was scarfed Muslims going around punching people who wore crosses there would be security everywhere,' said another.

Another quoted Islam's holy book - and said the women need to learn to fight.

'These coward's aren't going to stop, Hijabi's need to learn to fight.. Go gym. Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you. But perhaps you hate a thing and it is good for you; and perhaps you love a thing and it is bad for you. And Allah Knows, while you know not. Quran.'

The alleged attacker is due to appear in court following mental health assessment. She said in court she was not sick.
A photographer made an expensive mistake last weekend when he accidentally photographed the wrong couple's proposal.

Jacob Peters said he was contacted several days ago by a man in Wisconsin who needed a photographer to sneakily capture a romantic sunrise engagement at a popular landmark known as Hawksbill Crag.

The man wanted to surprise his soon-to-be fiance with the romantic photos from afar.

A photographer made an expensive mistake last weekend when he accidentally photographed the wrong couple's proposal, completely missing his client's shot

Jacob Peters (pictured) said that he was contacted several days ago by a man in Wisconsin who needed a photographer to sneakily capture a romantic sunrise engagement at a popular landmark known as Hawksbill Crag

At 2.30am on Saturday, May 6, Peters woke up and headed out to Arkansas' Ozark National Forrest to make his way up towards the crag.

He hiked for over an hour to get to the photo op spot with 30 pounds of gear, and then set up his camera and got ready for the couple to arrive.

With no cell phone service at the remote spot, all he could do was wait.

At 2.30am on Saturday, May 6, Peters woke up and headed out to Arkansas' Ozark National Forrest to make his way up towards the crag

At 6.17am, a young couple, who he assumed were the couple he was meant to be photographing, walked onto Hawksbill Crag in the distance, and Peters began shooting

At 6.17am, a young couple, who he assumed were the couple he was meant to be photographing, walked onto Hawksbill Crag in the distance, and Peters began shooting.

After a few minutes standing and taking in the view, the man pulled out a ring, got down on his knee and asked the young woman to be his wife.

Peters said that when she turned around she started crying and hugged him, making it obvious to him that it went well and that she said yes.

He took a few more photos after the couple sat down to enjoy the rest of the sunrise, and after 15 minutes packed up his belongings and hiked back down to his car.

Before driving home, he said: 'I send the guy a text saying congratulations, the photos are beautiful. I'm glad it all worked out.'

After a few minutes standing and taking in the view, the man pulled out a ring, got down on his knee and asked the young woman to be his wife

Peters said that when she turned around she started crying and hugged him, making it obvious to him that it went well and that she said yes

Once he got home, he said he took a nap, 'since I was very exhausted,' and woke up to a text from his client.

The text read: 'I'm confused, we never saw you and we got there a little late, are you sure it was us? I was in a blue plaid shirt...'

Peters realized that the proposal he photographed was the wrong couple who happened to get engaged at the same place at the scheduled time.

His client was about an hour late and, due to lack of cell service, couldn't get in touch to tell him that.

Speaking to Petapixel, Peters said that he was kind of upset at himself at first.

Peters said that he hopes he can make it up to his client by doing another romantic photo shoot with them, and has started a GoFundMe to try to raise enough money to make that happen

'I had just ordered a new camera and this shoot was going to go towards that. And I knew I wasn't going to charge someone for work I didn't do. I told my wife what happened and then immediately thought, they had to have seen me and thought I was some creeper in the woods with my camera,' he explained.

After a few days, he decided that he had the couple's photos so he might as well try to find them, and put out a public request on Facebook.

He was able to get in touch with the mystery couple, and said that 'they couldn't have been happier'.

Peters said that he hopes he can make it up to his client by doing another romantic photo shoot with them, and has started a GoFundMe to try to raise enough money to make that happen.
Chloe Shorten has tweeted an apology to her husband, Bill, after her gold necklace stole the limelight during his Federal Budget reply speech.

The Opposition Leader's wife took to Twitter on Friday to say sorry for causing a stir on Thursday night.

Ms Shorten's three-tiered gold choker was seen around her neck at the beginning of her husband's speech in Canberra, but went missing by the end of the Opposition Leader's fiery remarks.

Before: Chloe Shorten is seen wearing the three-tiered necklace prior to the delivery of her husband's budget reply address in the House of Representatives on Thursday

Ms Shorten took to Twitter to issue an apology after her gold necklace caused a stir

'Happy birthday darling. Sorry my $20 necklace caused so much trouble!,' Ms Shorten tweeted along with a picture of the pair kissing.

The rumour mill had been in full swing over why Ms Shorten's jewellery had mysteriously disappeared mid-speech.

It's removal came as Mr Shorten vowed to stand up for 'working class' Australians and increase taxes on the wealthy during his speech.

Government MPs sent text messages to journalists indicating Ms Shorten had been advised to take the gold necklace off to not clash with her husband's message, The Australian reported.

But Mr Shorten's office told the Herald Sun that the clasp to the three-tiered choker had broken.

The paper also reported the necklace had been purchased from a store inside Maribyrnong's Highpoint Shopping Centre in Melbourne's western suburbs.

Ms Shorten's attire has been in the spotlight in recent months after it was revealed in March that Labor spent $60,000 on a stylist and outfits for her during last year's federal election campaign.

After: The ornate gold choker has disappeared from Chloe Shorten's neck as she congratulates her husband following his Federal Budget Reply speech

The rumour mill was in full swing over the missing piece of jewellery, but Bill Shorten's office said that the clasp to the three-tiered choker had broken

During his Budget reply speech, Mr Shorten addressed funding cuts to universities, increases in student fees and the Turnbull government's proposed Medicare levy hike.

Mr Shorten said Labor would only back the Government's 0.5 per cent increase to the Medicare levy to Australians in the top two tax brackets, who earn upwards of $87,000.

The Opposition Leader has also committed to keeping the Coalition's Budget repair levy on high-income earners, and says his party will back a $6.2 billion tax on the big banks.

Mr Shorten said independent costings showed his plan to hit the rich with a Medicare hike would deliver more revenue than the Government's plan over the medium term without burdening families earning modest incomes.

'This is the fair and responsible way forward,' Mr Shorten said.

He said the Turnbull Government's proposed Medicare levy hike would hit people earning as little as $21,000 and see a worker earning $55,000 pay an extra $275 per year.

Mr Shorten addressed funding cuts to universities, increases in student fees and the Turnbull government's proposed Medicare levy hike on Thursday

Mr Shorten said the Turnbull government's proposed Medicare levy hike would hit people earning as little as $21,000 and see a worker earning $55,000 pay an extra $275 per year

'Labor cannot support making people on modest incomes give up more of their pay packet, especially when this budget goes out of its way to give taxpayer money to millionaires and multinationals,' he said.

He also announced Labor would cap the amount people can deduct for the management of their tax affairs at $3000 in a bid to stop people exploiting holes in the tax net.

'The days of earning millions and paying nothing are over, no matter who you are,' he told MPs.

Labor would also introduce a new set of laws targeting those who 'aggressively minimise' their tax by hiding money in offshore tax havens.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten prepares to deliver his budget reply address in the House of Representatives

Mr Shorten said Labor would oppose funding cuts to universities and increases in student fees.

He also committed Labor to restoring $22 billion he says the Government has stripped from schools and the $600 million torn from TAFE.

The Opposition would not support setting aside $170 million for a same-sex marriage plebiscite, he said.

'This parliament should do its job and get on with making marriage equality a reality in Australia,' Mr Shorten said.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Shorten's office for comment.
Former reality TV star Will Hayden has been sentenced to life in prison for raping two girls in Louisiana.

The 51-year-old was sentenced on Thursday to two life sentences, plus 40 years to run consecutively, and he will not be eligible for probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.

Hayden, who appeared on the show, Sons of Guns, was found guilty last month on two counts of aggravated rape and one count of forcible rape for abusing two girls.

The Advocate reports one of Hayden's two victims was in court on Thursday when the sentence was handed down.

Former reality TV star Will Hayden has been sentenced to life in prison for raping two girls in Louisiana. Hayden is pictured in his 2014 mugshot (left) and prior to his arrest (right)

The 37-year-old woman smiled and said 'thank God' as she left the courtroom. The younger victim, who is now 15, did not attend the sentencing.

The older woman, who now has three children and is engaged, testified at Hayden's trial that he raped her twice in the early 1990s when she was 12 and 13. She told the court Hayden - who was in his 20s at the time - raped her the first time in his apartment after they smoked marijuana.

'The next thing I remember is him on top of me,' she testified in April, according to the newspapaer.

'I was scared. I didn't know what was happening. I wanted to leave and I couldn't.

Hayden was sentenced on Thursday to two life sentences, plus 40 years to run consecutively, and he will not be eligible for probation, parole, or suspension of sentence

The 51-year-old, who appeared on the show, Sons of Guns (pictured), was found guilty last month on two counts of aggravated rape and one count of forcible rape for abusing two young girls

'It hurt. I couldn't physically do anything. I just remember thinking I wanted this to end.'

His younger victim testified she was raped repeatedly in 2013 and 2014 when she was 11 and 12. The teenage girl told the court the attacks took place in Hayden's home and his truck.

Hayden denied the allegations during the trial, however he was found guilty by a jury in less than an hour.

He is also still facing two other charges - one relating to the same 15-year-old girl who testified against him, as well as his daughter, Stephanie.

Hayden is still facing two other charges - one relating to the same 15-year-old girl who testified against him, as well as his daughter, Stephanie (pictured)

Sons of Guns (pictured) was canceled by the Discovery Channel after Hayden was arrested in 2014

Stephanie Hayden told the Dr Phil Show in 2014 her father entered her bedroom one night in the mid-1990s and kissed her while trying to undress her. Stephanie said her father was drunk at the time.

She added she escaped her father's grasps that night, and that he never touched her inappropriately again.

The accusations and Hayden's arrest led to the cancellation of the television show, Sons of Guns.

Hayden was also removed as owner of his company, Red Jacket Firearms.
President Trump had allegedly demanded loyalty from James Comey during a private dinner at the White House back in January, associates of the now fired FBI director claim.

Comey had told associates that he was summoned to the White House for a one-on-one dinner with Trump seven days after the inauguration, the New York Times reports.

It was during the dinner that Trump reportedly asked Comey twice to pledge loyalty to him as the new Commander in Chief. Sources claim Comey declined to do so but said he told the President he would always be honest with him.

Trump is said to have pressed Comey on whether that would be 'honest loyalty', to which the FBI director said: 'You will have that.' Sources close to Comey said he now believes this dinner conversation may have sealed his fate.

This version of events is vastly different to the dinner conversation Trump himself described in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday.

While it is not clear if they are talking about the same dinner, the pair are believed to have only dined together privately once.

Trump indicated that he had dinner with Comey at the former FBI director's request - and said Comey was angling to keep his job.

President Trump had allegedly demanded loyalty from James Comey (pictured at the White House in January at a law enforcement reception) during a private dinner at the White House back in January, sources claim

'I had a dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House,' Trump said.

'He asked for the dinner?' Holt followed up.

'A dinner was arranged, I think he asked for the dinner,' the president hedged. 'And he wanted to stay on as the FBI head.

'And I said I'll consider and we'll see what happens. But we had a very nice dinner. And at that time he told me 'you are not under investigation',' Trump said.

Trump said he had asked Comey - once over dinner and twice by phone - if the FBI were investigating him as part of its probe into alleged collusion between members of his campaign and the Russian government prior to the election.

The President showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in the active FBI probe.

Comey has not confirmed Trump's account.

During that same interview, Trump declared he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

Trump told NBC News anchor Lester Holt he had directly asked Comey three times if he was himself under investigation

Full account: Lester Holt's interview with the president is his first interview since he fired James Comey

The White House had initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision.

But Trump acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that the Russia investigation - which he dismissed as a 'made-up story' - was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a 'showboat' and 'grandstander,' added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president.

Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

Multiple officials, including Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

'I was going to fire Comey,' Trump said. 'Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey.'

The White House's explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House's assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file.

My decision: Trump said of the firing of the FBI director: 'Oh, I was going to fire Comey regardless of recommendation.'

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from 'countless' members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision

'That is not accurate,' McCabe said. 'Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.'

Unfazed, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from 'countless' members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trump's version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not 'standard practice' to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trump's comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

Trump and Comey's relationship was strained early on, in part because of the president's explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.
Chilling handwritten letters from notorious backpacker murderer Ivan Milat have given terrifying insight into the mind of one of Australia's worst serial killers.

The 2012 letters, hand written in neat cursive script from behind the walls of NSW's Goulburn Supermax prison, include Milat describing in gruesome detail how he sliced off his own finger in protest at not being allowed a laptop in his cell.

He then goes off on bizarre rantings about 'prophecies' and 'subconscious messages' predicting the 9/11 terror attacks and the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting in the United States.

'I can understand you undertaking to study this phenomenon to foretell of major happening beforehand would benefit greatly the world,' Milat wrote.

'May you go far in this quest'.

Chilling handwritten letters from notorious backpacker murderer Ivan Milat (pictured) have given terrifying insight into the mind of one of Australia's worst serial killers

The 2012 letters, handwritten in neat cursive script from behind the walls of NSW's Goulburn Supermax prison, include Milat describing in gruesome detail how he sliced off his own finger

In the meticulously written three-page letter from 2012, revealed by an American 'true crime' collector, Milat said he applied for a computer and equipment in 2009 to send a typed application to the High Court of Australia

Milat then rants about famous bushranger Ned Kelly as 'the only person ever involved with police in Australia that is instantly recognised as a hero'.

The serial killer repeatedly protests his innocence in the three-page letter, saying he has been trying to 'overcome judgment' against him since his conviction in 1996.

He revealed the documentaries released on his life and murders had caused him 'sleepless nights'.

'The producers apparently aim for violent sensationalism by a multiplication of shocks and horrors and the narrative given of it does not attempt to initiate the viewer into any contemplation of "any great issue of innocence",' he wrote.

'On occasion the program producer exploits the harshness of my confinement condition as further proof of my guilt'.

Milat also detailed how he sliced off his little finger with a plastic knife to get the attention of the High Court of Australia after prison staff denied him a laptop computer.

Milat said he put the finger in box with a letter of explanation to the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia and 'filled out the postage purchase form'

He goes off on bizarre rantings about 'prophecies' and 'subconscious messages' predicting the 9/11 terror attacks and the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting in the United States

In the three-page letter, Milat asks the recipient, E.R, to use their 'knowledge to broadcast his innocence'

Milat, known as the Backpacker Murderer, butchered seven people between 1989 and 1992 and buried their bodies in the Belango State Forest in southern NSW

'I could not stop the bleeding, slow consistent drip, drip,' he wrote in the letter addressed to an 'E.R'.

Milat said he put the finger in box with a letter of explanation to the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia and 'filled out the postage purchase form'.

He said prison staff came back a few hours later to give him his evening meal, which he ate one-handed.

Milat said he was then put into the 'safe cell' to be watched.

'Devoid of anything, a cement box, light on 26/7, no noise, no idea of time, day or night,' he wrote.

'Suicide was not my goal'.

In the three-page letter, Milat asks the recipient, E.R, to use their 'knowledge to broadcast his innocence'.

'Oh goodness, I have been trying to achieve that goal since my convictions,' he wrote.

'I have argued my case in every court available in Australia, unfortunately unsuccessful on every attempt'.

The serial killer signed off the letter 'I.M,' and with a hand-drawn stick-figure man.

Milat, known as the Backpacker Murderer, butchered seven people between 1989 and 1992 and buried their bodies in the Belango State Forest in southern NSW.

Five of the seven young men and woman Milat killed were backpackers travelling through outback Australia, including British nationals Caroline Clarke (pictured) and Joanne Walters

The serial killer signed off the letter 'I.M,' and with a hand-drawn stick-figure man

Five of the seven young men and woman Milat killed were backpackers travelling through outback Australia, including British nationals Caroline Clarke and Joanne Walters.

Walters was stabbed 35 times and Clarke had been shot 10 times in the head and both their bodies were found in September 1992.

A year later, the decapitated body of German backpacker Anja Habschied was found with her boyfriend Gabor Neugebauer in shallow graves 50 metres apart.

His victims were kidnapped, raped, shot, and decapitated alive  earning him the title of Australia's most prolific serial killer.

Milat received seven life sentences and is now incarcerated in Australia's toughest prison, the High Risk Management Correctional Centre, known as Supermax, in the city of Goulburn south of Sydney.

'True crime collector' Eric Holler was in possession of the letter, but sold it for $US350.

Ivan Milat was found guilty of seven murders, including Deborah Everest (left) and Simone Schmidt (right)

Clarke had been shot 10 times in the head when her body was found in September 1992

Boyfriend and girlfriend German backpackers Gabor Neugebauer (R) and Anja Habschied (L) were found dead on 3 November 1993 in shallow graves 50 metres apart

Crime pays: Eric Holler (posing at the grave of US musician Leon wilkesonl) makes a living peddling items for the world's most infamous serial killers

Excerpt from Ivan Milat's letter 'I had a proper finger removal equipment, put it in a letter of explanation addressed to the Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia. Composed myself a bit, called at the screen, gave the letter and a package actually filled out the postage purchase form. They went away with it. Later they came back gave me my evening meal. I ate it one handed. They go away. But I could not stop the bleeding, slow consistent drip drip. suicide was not my goal. The safe cell, devoid of anything, a cement box, light on 26/7, no noise, no idea of time, day or night! I reject all food meals after eight days they let me out. The High Court recommence correspondence months later, advised me that because of my circumstances, handwritten application will be satisfactory'. Advertisement

Mr Holler said he had also seen letter come through from the Snowtown murderer, John Bunting.

Bunting and his accomplice Robert Joe Wagner were convicted for 12 twisted murders between 1992 and 1999.

The bodies of the victims were stored in barrels and the pair moved the bodies numerous times, keeping the mutilated remains in places including a shed behind Bunting's house and in a Toyota Land Cruiser in Adelaide Plains.

In 1999, eight dismembered bodies were found in six barrels in a disused bank vault in Snowtown, a small town 145km north of Adelaide.

In the most gruesome evidence, jurors heard that Bunting and Wagner had fried and eaten their final victim's flesh, who was slain inside the Snowtown bank vault in 1999.

Sentencing, Justice Brian Martin stated that the men were 'in the business of killing for pleasure' and 'incapable of true rehabilitation.'
Police are urgently searching for a 10-year-old autistic boy who disappeared on the way home from school.

Caleb Parsons did not return home from Gray Primary School near Darwin on Thursday.

Northern Territory police said there are fears for the safety of the boy, whose family believe he may still be in the Gray area.

Caleb Parsons did not return home from Gray Primary School near Darwin on Thursday

He has high-functioning autism and ADHD.

He is described as Caucasian with blonde hair, blue eyes, dressed in a blue, black and white Gray Primary School uniform.

He was wearing white runners and could have been carrying a backpack. He is about 140cm tall.

Anyone who sees Caleb is urged to call police on 131 444.
Accused Australian drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has spoken for the first time since her arrest for smuggling cocaine from Colombia.

Miss Sainsbury, 22, who is being held in a prison holding 50,000 other women where rape and drug-taking are rife, claims there is no security inside and she doesn't feel safe.

'Theres a lot of chaos here. ... quite a few of the inmates here are very pushy with me,' she told News Corp from El Buen Pastor prison.

'They push past me. They start abusing me in Spanish because they know I dont understand it and I havent actually done anything wrong'.

Bogota local Andrea Paolo Daza Quintero regularly visits her mother inside El Buen Pastor, where Miss Sainsbury has been detained following her April 11 arrest.

Miss Sainsbury, 22, was found with 5.8kg of cocaine concealed in the packaging of 15 headphone boxes at Colombia's El Dorado International Airport.

Now Miss Daza Quintero has revealed harrowing information about what happens inside the infamous prison's walls.

Accused drug smuggler Cassie Sainsbury is being held in a prison where woman-on-woman rape and drug-taking are rife, a regular visitor has revealed

Bogota local Andrea Paolo Daza Quintero regularly visits her mother inside El Buen Pastor women's prison (pictured), where Miss Sainsbury has been detained following her April 11 arrest

'You find rapes - the women rape other women. Violation, between women,' Miss Daza Quintero told news.com.au about the prison

'You find rapes - the women rape other women. Violation, between women,' Miss Daza Quintero told news.com.au via a translator.

'If you like somebody, if one girl falls in love with another, she will look for a way to rape you.'

Miss Sainsbury is staying in the prison's Patio Five wing - nicknamed 'narco patio' - which is reserved for foreigners, according to the website.

If found guilty of smuggling drugs, she faces up to 25 years inside a prison where violence and drug-taking is reportedly commonplace.

'Violence is normal in all of the patios,' Miss Daza Quintero said.

'Smoking of drugs, you can find more on the inside than on the outside.'

Miss Sainsbury, 22, was found with 5.8kg of cocaine concealed in the packaging of 15 headphone boxes at Colombia's El Dorado International Airport

If found guilty of smuggling drugs, she faces up to 25 years inside a prison where violence and drug-taking is reportedly commonplace

The first photo of Miss Sainsbury (right) from inside her Colombia prison, showing her smiling at the camera alongside a fellow inmate. Her family have reportedly negotiated a huge TV deal to tell her story

Miss Daza Quintero also said her mother told her the cells are dark, dirty and have a bad smell, according to news.com.au.

The revelations come hours after Miss Sainsbury's family touched down in Bogota.

Mother Lisa Evans and sister Khala Sainsbury refused to comment on their daughter's situation to waiting media as they walked through the airport, but were accompanied by a crew from Channel Nine's 60 Minutes.

The family have reportedly negotiated an 'eye-watering' sum just under $1 million for a TV deal with the program.
An adopted man has taken to social media with an emotional plea to find his biological mother.

Canberra radio presenter Ryan Jon, 29, uploaded a video to his Facebook page, which has since gone viral, in the hope of meeting his mother for the first time to let her know he was thankful for her sacrifices.

'I'm adopted. So every year around Mother's Day I get the same sort of tricky conundrum in my mind,' Mr Jon said.

'I'd love to be able to look my birth mother in the eye and just say how thankful I am for literally everything.

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Canberra radio presenter Ryan Jon (pictured) uploaded a video on social media in the hope of meeting his biological mother for the first time

Mr Jon (pictured) broke down as he told the story of how he was adopted and that he bore no ill will towards his biological mother

In his Facebook post, Mr Jon said he would love to let his biological mum know just how thankful he is for her sacrifices

'But there's one little thing that's sort of stopping me. I'm scared that I'm looking for someone who might not necessarily want to be found.'

The clip has gone viral since it was uploaded on Sunday, viewed more than 6 million times on his Facebook page and shared about 105,000 times. It has also been posted to YouTube and his website.

'My birth mother's name is Julie and she sent me a letter,' Mr Jon said.

'So from the little information I know it seems that when she got pregnant unexpectedly she didn't believe she had the time or maturity to be a great mum.

Ryan Jon (pictured), a radio presenter in Canberra, posted his emotional video plea to his Facebook page, where it has been viewed more than 6 million times

Mr Jon (pictured) said he was not upset that he had been adopted out

'And she sort of implies that she didn't have the best upbringing and she wanted to make sure that her child had every opportunity available so she thought the best thing to do would be to give me up for adoption.'

Mr Jon said he was not upset that he had been adopted out.

'I'm really happy to exist. My parents who I now call mum and dad - they were told they couldn't be parents and now they are so they're happy as well,' he said.

'You've given someone the gift of life. You've sacrificed your body, your life, for someone who in 12 months you won't even know them.'

He said his biological mother might have married and had other children who might not know he exists and acknowledged he did not want to create any awkward conversation or situations for her.

'So if this video gets shared around enough and my birth mother views it, I don't expect anything from you. I don't need you to do anything or contact me, I just wanted to say thank-you for everything and I hope you have a great Mother's Day,' Mr Jon said.
A Singaporean man who worked in Melbourne as a nurse has been jailed on several counts of rape and sexual assault and registered as a sex offender for life.

Jefferson Augustine, who sexually assaulted three women including two while they were sleeping, has been jailed for eight years and is likely to be deported to after he serves his sentence.

Judge Claire Quin on Friday said Augustine had taken advantage of women in vulnerable situations in which they were unable to consent between August 2015 and March 2016.

A Singaporean man who worked in Melbourne as a nurse has been jailed on several counts of rape and sexual assault and registered as a sex offender for life (stock image)

Augustine, who worked as a nurse in a Melbourne hospital, raped and sexually assaulted a woman while she was recovering from surgery, touching and applying cream to her vagina.

On another occasion, a Belgian traveller had stayed with him for two nights after connecting via the social media website Couchsurfing.

Police later found three photographs of the tourist on Augustine's phone that showed him sexually assaulting her while she slept.

A third woman in Australia on a working holiday visa met Augustine via a real estate website.

The court heard Jefferson Augustine raped a patient who was recovering from surgery, a Belgian traveller who stayed with him via Couchsurfing and another traveller who met him on a real estate website

The woman said that after drinking with Augustine, she woke the next day naked in bed with him, with a bite mark on her neck.

She later told a friend she thought she'd been raped.

Police found photos on Augustine's phone of him raping her while she was unconscious.

In the County Court of Victoria on Friday, Augustine was registered as a sex offender for life.
The Sydney rental market is so unaffordable property seekers have been forced to lease bunk beds for almost $1,000 a month in shared bedrooms with strangers.

Overcrowded, overpriced and sometimes illegal housing has become the harsh reality for people living in Sydney and struggling to navigate the market.

Advertisements for shared bedrooms show clothes strewn across the rooms, and bunk beds connected in groups of four, leaving occupants with barely any space and little privacy.

Photo obtained of an advertised share room, obtained by Channel Seven, shows clothes strewn across the room, and bunk beds connected in groups of four

Sydney renters are leasing out their own rooms in order to stay afloat in the expensive market

Accommodation website ShareMyRoom offers about 70 beds in various apartments on its site and accommodates about 400 people.

A bed is advertised for $1,000 a month on average including bills, with some leasing for much more.

ShareMyRoom, unlike some of its competition, accommodates no more than two people in its rooms.

ShareMyRoom owner Daniel Blus told Daily Mail Australia the operation was all above board and a viable solution to the housing crisis.

Sydney renters are turning to Facebook to advertise their share rooms to property seekers

ShareMyRoom owner Daniel Blus (pictured) told Daily Mail Australia the operation was all above board and a viable solution to the housing crisis

ShareMyRoom, unlike some of its competition, accommodates no more than two people in its rooms (pictured)

'We operate according to all the laws, building regulations. We work with real estate agents and the buildings,' Mr Blus said.

'We believe we're changing the industry and changing the industry for the better.

'We don't want to be put in the same basket as illegal accommodation providers.'

Mr Blus said the housing market was overrun with illegal accommodation.

'There is just so much illegal accommodation around that is overcrowded and dirty,' he said.

'We wanted to provide a good alternative to it.'

Accommodation website ShareMyRoom offers about 70 beds in shared rooms (pictured) on its site, which accommodates about 400 people

A bed is advertised for $1,000 on average a month, not including bills, with some leasing for much more on ShareMyRoom (pictured)

A bed is advertised for $1,000 on average a month, not including bills, with some leasing for much more on ShareMyRoom (pictured)

Finance Service and Property Minister Victor Domminello condemned those who rorted the system.

'If you're a slumlord in New South Wales your days are numbered,' he told Seven News.

The tight-knit quarters are the unflattering reality of what the Sydney property market has come to.

On Wednesday a woman in Sydney's inner-west advertised a swag in her backyard for $130 a week, plus $200 bond.

The unconventional listing was posted on Inner West Housemates Facebook page as a legitimate alternative to living in a house or apartment block.

On Wednesday a woman in Sydney's inner-west advertised a swag (pictured) in her backyard for $130 a week, plus $200 bond
Grisly new details have emerged about the alleged MS-13 gang-related killing of 15-year-old Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas (pictured)

Shocking new details have emerged about the alleged MS-13 gang killing of a 15-year-old girl amid a love triangle and intra-gang rivalry in Virginia.

Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas' was forced to stand in freezing water and stabbed 13 times by a teenage love rival.

Damaris and her killer, Venus Romero Iraheta, were both lovers of aspiring gang leader, 21-year-old Christian Sosa Rivas - who was murdered days earlier.

Iraheta believed Damaris was to blame for Christian's death, and allegedly kidnapped the 15-year-old and told her 'see you in hell' as she repeatedly stabbed her, prosecutors said Thursday.

Prosecutors announced Thursday they believe 17-year-old Venus Romero Iraheta was the chief attacker who carried out the brutal murder, before they revealed some of the horrible abuse Rivas allegedly suffered before she died.

FBI Special Agent Fernando Uribe told the court the killing was the result of a love triangle involving the two teenage girls and 21-year-old Christian Sosa Rivas - who was found dead on January 12.

Uribe testified that another MS-13 member called Damaris on January 8 and arranged to pick her up, with the 15-year-old thinking they were going to smoke marijuana, the Washington Post reports.

However, she was instead driven by the gang member - 18-year-old Jose Castillo Rivas, who is also charged in the death and had a preliminary hearing Thursday - to an abandoned area near Springfields Lake Accotink Park, where she was questioned by Iraheta about her relationship with Christian Rivas and where he was.

Prosecutors announced Thursday they believe 17-year-old Venus Romero Iraheta (right) was the chief attacker who carried out the brutal murder of Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas (left)

FBI Special Agent Fernando Uribe told the court Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas (right) was picked up by 18-year-old Jose Castillo Rivas (left) - who is also charged in the death and had a preliminary hearing Thursday - and driven to the spot where she was killed

The lake is about two miles from the industrial park where Damaris' body was found.

The 15-year-old was forced to take her shirt and shoes off, then stand in icy water and snow so she would 'feel as much pain as Christian.'

Uribe told the court Damaris then confessed to having a sexual relationship with the missing 21-year-old, before telling her abductors to call another MS-13 member to get more information about where Christian was.

Furious, Iraheta then allegedly knocked her 15-year-old to the ground and stabbed her, before sending a final message to her victim.

'Venus told her she would never forgive her and told her she would see her in hell,' Agent Uribe told the court, according to the Post.

'She would never forget her name.'

Angelica Maria Blanco, right, and Keyri Sujey Portillo Gonzalez, left, were charged as co-conspirators in the killing of Christian Sosa Rivas - who was in a relationship with both Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas and Venus Romero Iraheta

This picture shows the location where Christian Rivas' body washed up - four days after investigators believe Damaris Alexandra Reyes Rivas was killed

Another person close to the case added Iraheta sliced a diamond tattoo off Damaris, which the teen had allegedly gotten to symbolize her relationship with Christian Rivas, according to the Post.

WHO ARE MS-13? The ultra-violent street gang MS-13 was the first to be designated as an international criminal group. With as many as 20,000 members in 46 states, the gang has expanded far beyond its initial roots. Members are accused of major crimes including murder, kidnapping, prostitution, drug smuggling and human trafficking. Major roundups of MS-13 members have taken place across the country since the early 2000s. In Charlotte, N.C., 53 gang members were arrested as part of Operation Fed Up, which targeted MS-13 members. In 2016, 58 members of MS-13 were rounded up as part of 'Operation Mean Streets'. Previously, two of their most notable killings include stabbing to death a federal witness in 2004 and chopping the hands off of a 16-year-old boy in 2005. Advertisement

Investigators have previously said they believe the gang members filmed Damaris' final moments.

A total of 10 people have been charged over the death, including five with murder.

Iraheta sat silently in the courtroom on Thursday as Uribe told the court all the alleged, horrible details of the murder.

Meanwhile, the victim's mother was seen wiping away tears at various points.

She did not speak to the media on Thursday, but Maria Reyes previously told the Washington Post she had moved with her daughter to the US to flee violence like what is alleged.

'I didnt know people like that existed in the United States,' she told the newspaper in March, referring to the MS-13 gang.

'I thought it was super safe to have my daughter here with me.'

She also told NBC News4 after her daughter's body was found that the 15-year-old was a 'truly sweet' person.

The current hearing is to determine whether or not Iraheta should be tried as an adult.

Police believe the murder of Christian Rivas was the result of a power struggle, as the 21-year-old had reportedly claimed to be the leader of a local chapter.

The MS-13 was started nearly 20 years ago in Los Angeles after millions of immigrants from El Salvador came to the United States after a violent civil war left over 100,000 dead

His body washed ashore on the Potomac River near Dumfries, Virginia. Angelica Maria Blanco, 19, and Keyri Sujey Portillo Gonzalez, 18, were charged as co-conspirators in his killing.

Four more people have also been charged with murder in the case.

The ultra-violent MS-13 gang has been linked to a number of murders in recent months, with 18 arrested in the Washington area alone.

The gang has also been linked to the death of two teen girls in Long Island, New York and the execution of one teen and abduction of another in Houston, Texas.
A United Airlines flight was delayed for several hours in Texas after reports of a scorpion crawling out of a passenger's clothes.

Passengers say United Flight 1035 was evacuated on Thursday at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston following the scorpion sighting.

The flight, which was headed for Quito, Ecuador was delayed for three hours.

News of the scorpion incident got out when passengers started tweeting about the ordeal.

Passengers say United Airlines Flight 1035 was evacuated on Thursday night at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston following the scorpion sighting

'The captain of my flight just told us it's a scorpion on the plane???!!!!! Good job United!' Daniel Duenas tweeted.

Another passenger claimed on Twitter that 'flight 1035 from Houston to Ecuador evacuated due to a scorpion stinging a passenger'.

United, however, said no one was stung by the scorpion.

'Houston to Quito flight 1035 returned to the gate after a scorpion reportedly emerged from a customers clothing,' the airline said in a statement.

'Paramedics at the gate immediately examined the customer and determined that he had not been stung. The customer declined further medical treatment and, as a precaution, a new aircraft was arranged.

'We provided all passengers with a meal voucher due to the delay and the flight, with the customer aboard, has departed for Quito.'

It comes a month after a passenger on another flight out of Houston was stung by a scorpion when it fell on the man's head from an overhead bin.

The passenger, Richard Bell, was stung when he picked the creature up after it landed on his plate.

Another passenger then stomped on the scorpion before it was thrown in a toilet.
Stephen Colbert has fired yet another shot at Donald Trump.

The Late Show host and the president have been locked in a bitter war of words in recent days, which escalated further on Thursday afternoon when Trump referred to Colbert as: 'a no-talent guy'.

But the 52-year-old comedian opened his show on CBS Thursday night by taking a victory lap.

'The President of the United States has personally come after me and my Twitter, and there's only one thing to say "yay,"' the host said, before clapping his hands together and giggling and blowing a kiss to the camera.

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Stephen Colbert has taken another shot at Donald Trump during the opening monologue of his show on Thursday night

'Mr Trump, there's a lot you don't understand, but I never thought one of those things would be show business.

'Don't you know I've been trying for a year to get you to say my name, and you were very restrained, admirably restrained, but now you did it. I won!'

Colbert delivered the remarks in his monologue just hours after Trump blasted him in a Time Magazine interview.

'You see a no-talent guy like Colbert. There's nothing funny about what he says,' Trump told Time.

'The President of the United States has personally come after me and my Twitter, and there's only one thing to say yay' the host said, referencing comments Trump made Thursday

'Mr Trump, there's a lot you don't understand, but I never thought one of those things would be show business. Don't you know I've been trying for a year to get you to say my name, and you were very restrained, admirably restrained, but now you did it. I won!' Colbert (pictured in February) said

'And what he says is filthy. And you have kids watching. And it only builds up my base. It only helps me, people like him.'

He then attacked the Late Show - which airs at 11.30pm, a time when most children would be in bed - for its ratings.

'The guy was dying. By the way they were going to take him off television, then he started attacking me and he started doing better,' Trump told the magazine.

'But his show was dying. I've done his show But when I did his show, which by the way was very highly rated. It was high - highest rating. The highest rating he's ever had.'

Trump blasted Stephen Colbert in an interview with Time Magazine on Thursday,

Vanity Fair reports Trump's claim about bringing the show its highest ratings is untrue - and off by almost a third.

'Colbert's premiere as Late Show host attracted 6.6 million viewers, compared with Trump's 4.6 million. (More important, Trump's episode also attracted fewer viewers in the 1849 demographic than the premiere did.) So at no point in Late Show history was Trump's episode its highest rated - in any way, shape, or form,' the magazine wrote.

It was also reported this week the Late Show had its widest margin of victory over NBC's Tonight show since Colbert's debut week in September 2015, the Nielsen company said. The CBS show averaged 3.06 million viewers last week, which was up 12 per cent from the previous week, Nielsen said.

'Colbert's premiere as Late Show host attracted 6.6 million viewers, compared with Trump's 4.6 million... So at no point in Late Show history was Trump's episode its highest rated,' the magazine wrote. Trump is pictured in the White House on April 12

The feud between the host and president started when Colbert made a lewd joke about Trump.

During a monologue filmed at the end of Trump's first 100 days in office, the former Colbert Report star blasted Trump.

'You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head. In fact, the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin's c**k holster,' Colbert said.
The police officer who shot Toby Cummins four times has been cleared of all charges

A police officer who fatally shot a suspected thief will not face charges, prosecutors say.

Brad Rusk, an officer at a station in Friendswood, Texas, was cleared by a grand jury, for the shooting of Toby Cummins, who was holding a box cutter when he was fatally shot.

The jury reviewed every frame in the video captured by Rusk's body cam, analyzed physical evidence and listened to witnesses' testimonies before drawing a conclusion.

The jury members decided to clear Rusk because they say the footage confirmed that Cummins waved his weapon at the police officer.

Even though the investigation has been closed, Cummins' family, who were shown the video on Wednesday, are still asking questions about how the incident unfolded.

'Why didnt he just use a stun gun?' Cummins's sister told KPRC.

'Couldnt he tackle him to the ground? Toby was unarmed. Even if they say he had a box cutter, you can still stun gun somebody.

'They just killed him. Four shots. They meant to kill him. I just think that it was way over the top.'

The jury reviewed every frame in the video captured by Rusk's body cam, analyzed physical evidence and listened to witnesses' testimonies before deciding to clear Brad Rusk

The jury deemed Rusk innocent because they said his body cam footage footage confirmed that Cummins lunged toward the officer with his weapon, a box cutter (pictured)

Cummins was accused of stealing beer from a convenience store at a Shell gas station last November. Rusk was called to the scene just as Cummins was fleeing, with a box cutter in his hands.

Upon seeing the police officer just two blocks from the gas station, the accused thief waved his box cutter at him, before the officer shot him four times.

Friendswood resident, Edward Galle, who witnessed the shooting says Rusk's complexion 'completely changed' just after the shooting.

'It really affects you when you see something like that,' he told KPRC. 'His complexion completely changed in his face and his face got very red.

'He may have had a very good reason for doing what he did, but it was an awful I'm telling you.'

Cummins died after he was rushed from the hospital and the Galveston County District Attorney's Office called for witnesses as it opened the investigation into the California native's death.

Autopsy results showed that Cummins may have used his box cutter, stained with blood, to injure his own arm before he was shot.
Melbourne Central station was placed into lockdown after a man was attacked with a boxcutter during an altercation on the street outside.

Victoria Police said two men, who are thought to have been known to each other, had been having an argument in the shopping centre above the station at around 1.30pm.

Investigators were told the victim was a 28-year-old man from Doncaster, a spokesman said.

A 40-year-man was arrested in connection with the incident and is assisting police with their inquiries, a Victoria Police spokesman told Daily Mail Australia.

Melbourne Central station has been placed into lockdown after a man was stabbed during a violent argument on the street (stock image)

The victim was taken to hospital in a stable condition after suffering injuries to his upper body.

The lower level of the shopping centre on Swanston Street was blocked off at around 2pm.

Later, a dramatic arrest was made in the Royal Arcade near the centre's Elizabeth Street entrance, the Herald Sun reports.

Mr Fennell said one of the men walked inside the shopping centre after the other was stabbed and police have blocked off the lower levels (stock image)

A witness said a bleeding man was taken into custody after trying to hide from officers.

Another witness to the stabbing said he saw two men in a heated exchange on Swanston Street before it escalated to 'pushing and shoving'.

'Then I heard one guy say 'you dog, you had to pull out a knife' and then I saw blood,' witness Shaun Fennell said, according to The Herald Sun.

Mr Fennell said one of the men walked inside the shopping centre after the other was stabbed and police blocked off the lower levels.




Donald Trump has tweeted photos of meetings he had with the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers - a day after the White House was left red-faced when Moscow surprised it by releasing pictures of its closed-door meeting.

The President had met Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian diplomat Sergey Kislyak on Wednesday morning in an Oval Office meeting that reporters were banned from attending.

But the photos, which showed a grinning Trump shaking hands with Lavrov and Kislyak, were made public after Russia's embassy in Washington DC tweeted them soon after the meeting.

The White House put on a brave face after the photos emerged. Trump attempted to make up for the humiliation by tweeting Thursday that he had also held a meeting with the Ukrainian foreign minister on the same day.

Trump tweeted these photos on Thursday of his meetings with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov (right) and Ukraine's FM Pavlo Klimkin - a day after they took place behind closed doors

'Yesterday, on the same day - I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. #LetsMakePeace!' Trump wrote.

The photos show Trump standing beside Lavrov and seated at his Oval Office desk beside Ukrainian foreign minister Pavlo Klimkin.

Absent from Trump's tweet was Kislyak - who intelligence officials have warned is a Russian spy.

The Russian government had earlier made sure that Lavrov's and Kislyak's handshakes with Trump were captured by a photographer and its embassy immediately sent out pictures of the friendly exchange.

Trump can be seen looking at Lavrov as he shakes the smiling, Russian official's hand.

The Wednesday meeting was already being seen as a major diplomatic coup for the Kremlin, a red carpet welcome just months after being hit with US sanctions for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Veteran diplomats questioned why Trump agreed to host the diplomats - a rare honor for non-heads of state, much less for those at the center of major US political scandal.

US administrations often treat Oval Office meetings as a type of currency, dangling the prospect of a high-profile sit-down to gain leverage or concessions in negotiations. But the emergence of photos compounded the perception that Russia had won a diplomatic victory and that the Trump White House was outmaneuvered.

No reporters around to witness the meeting with Vladimir Putin's top diplomat. This photo was produced by the Russian government

Another photo produced by the Russian embassy shows Trump grinning from ear to ear and shaking the hand of Sergey Kislyak, the Russian diplomat at the center of allegations that Trump's associates colluded with the foreign government to disrupt the presidential election

All smiles: There seemed to be a relaxed mood in the Oval Office as Sergey Lavrov (left) got a hand on his arm from the president, while Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador accused of being its top spy laughed

Trump 'should be meeting with the foreign minister,' said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lambasting critics.

'For them to try to attack him for doing his job, maybe they should spend a little more time doing their jobs and we wouldn't have all the problems that we do.'

Privately though White House officials seethed at what they described as a breach of trust.

Another photo produced by the Russian embassy showed Trump grinning from ear to ear as he shakes the hand of Sergey Kislyak, the Russian diplomat at the center of allegations that Trump's associates colluded with the foreign government to disrupt the presidential election.

It was former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn's conversations with Kislyak that got the retired general fired. The White House maintains that it was Flynn's misrepresentation of the talks that did him in.

Officials said that Vladimir Putin had requested the meeting, a quid-pro-quo for his recent face-to-face with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow.

The White House was told an official Russian photographer would be present, implying the images would be for the historical record and not necessarily made public.

'Our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that's it,' said one aide shortly after the meeting.

But when the images were published across the world via state media, the White House raged that Moscow had misled them.

Two officials admitted they were not told that the images would be made public.

Asked whether the Russian delegation informed the White House that they planned to release the photos, one official said tersely: 'No they did not.'

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, writing on Facebook, countered: 'The American side did not ask us to refrain from publishing these photographs.'

The Russians are coming: Officials crowd into the Oval Office for the meeting between the president and Vladimir Putin's foreign minster Sergey Lavrov - but White House reporters were banned from seeing the meeting and instead Russia's official news agency, TASS, released the images

Earlier this week on Twitter, President Trump pushed back on any talk of collusion between the Russians and his presidential campaign

President Trump pointed to testimony from former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who said he knew of no evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, but subsequently explained he wasn't privvy to Comey's FBI investigation

The photographer involved - Alexandr Scherbak - also took to Facebook to address what he called the 'hysteria around my photoshoot,' which raised hackles among US media denied access to the meeting.

'There was nothing unusual about the photoshoot,' he said, adding that the images were taken as part of a regular collaborative deal between his employer, TASS, and the Russian foreign ministry.

'I was scanned, patted down, and then sniffed by canines,' he said. 'We worked for just a minute and that's all.'

Former US intelligence officials have suggested allowing a Russian photographer access to the Oval Office could pose a potential cyber-security risk, and the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers, was grilled on the subject by the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.

Rogers told the hearing he had not been consulted beforehand.

The Oval Office pictures could hardly have come at a worse time for Trump, deepening suspicions that he is too cozy with Putin's government.

His campaign faces a slew of investigations about whether it colluded with the Kremlin to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.

The Lavrov meeting came just hours after Trump fired his FBI director James Comey, the man responsible for investigating the allegations of collusion between his team and Russia.

The embarrassment was compounded by Ambassador Kislyak's presence. He is at the center of a series of questions about contacts between Trump's inner circle and the Russian government.

Michael Flynn's failure to disclose meetings with Kislyak eventually led to his departure as national security advisor and made the Russian diplomat a virtual household name.

'I could have done without the attention' Kislyak told AFP recently.

The White House later released its own pictures from the meeting, which did not feature Kislyak.
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Fresh pictures have emerged of the American man accused of abusing dozens of children in the Philippines and using webcams to sell livestreams to pedophiles in the US and Australia in a case that has shocked the world.

David Timothy Deakin, 53, was arrested last month in what was potentially the largest ever seizure of illicit digital content in the Philippines.

Images taken shortly after his arrest emerged on Thursday, showing the suspected child abuser handcuffed to a chair with his head buried in his right arm.

In another, the accused cybersex operator is seen staring at the ground as he wipes his nose - still handcuffed to the chair.

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Fresh pictures have emerged of American David Deakin (above), who is accused of abusing dozens of children in the Philippines and using webcams to sell livestreams to pedophiles in the US and Australia

One image taken shows the suspected child abuser handcuffed to a chair with his head buried in his right arm (above)

Authorities in the Philippines arrested Deakin (pictured) last month, suspected of exploiting dozens of children using webcams to sell videos, images and livestreams

Further details about Deakin's dramatic arrest have also surfaced. When Filipino authorities barged through his door on April 20, he was allegedly streaming illicit content through the Tor network, which disguised his identity.

Agents said he had a webpage open to wipe his phone clean. They tied him up with the first thing they could grab - an iPhone charging cord - before he could hit the button.

With his wrists bound, Deakin denied he was part of an international online pedophile ring, as investigators sifted through stacks of computer files allegedly found in his home.

'I'm a file pack rat. I've got files of frigging everything,' Deakin reportedly protested.

'Why is everyone asking about children coming into my house?' he said, later telling AP: 'They got it twisted around like somehow I was using those girls.'

Deakin is seen sitting on his bed where he allegedly handled online sharing of videos of children engaging in sexual acts

Further details about Deakin's dramatic arrest have also emerged. Here, investigators gather evidence at the 53-year-old's home

A member of the National Bureau of Investigation Anti-human Trafficking division displays bondage cuffs at Deakin's home

Investigators asked him repeatedly why he allegedly had images of children engaged in sexual acts on his computer and bondage and fetish tools in his apartment.

'I'm just a costumer,' he said, as if the leather wrist restraints and ropes in the second bedroom were just for dress-up.

'I'm schizophrenic, you know,' he later told AP, looping his finger at his temple.

'I don't even know what you're frigging doing here!' he yelled.

Deakin's arrest last month coincided with what is potentially one of the largest ever seizures of illicit digital content in the Philippines

Food wrappers, cigarettes, plastic cups, perfume, and deodorant are spread across the workspace of suspected child webcam cybersex operator, David Timothy Deakin

During the raid, agents rescued two girls aged 10 and 12, who had spent time at the 53-year-old's house.

Last week, authorities rescued a further four girls - three sisters ages 8, 9 and 12, and an 11-year-old found in a separate rescue.

A mother and two other women were arrested and charged for allegedly livestreaming sexually exploitative material.

They were allegedly making the girls engage in sexually explicit acts while men in Australia and the US watched, though it is unclear if the shocking allegations involve Deakin.

Deakin is seen in handcuffs following his arrest last month as authorites gather evidence inside his home in the Philippines

A Filipino member of the National Bureau of Investigation takes a picture of a computer allegedly owned by Deakin

Children's clothing is seen scattered across the floor of the alleged child webcam cybersex operator's home

Earlier this week, disturbing images surfaced from inside Deakin's home in the Filipino city of Mabalacat.

Children's underwear, toddler shoes, cameras, bondage cuffs, fetish ropes and stacks of hard drives could be seen scattered throughout the two-bedroom townhouse.

One photo showed food wrappers, cigarette butts, plastic cups and perfume spread across the work space of the suspected child cybersex operator.

In another image, a sweaty-faced Deakin was seen waiting as investigators gathered evidence during the raid on his home.

Deakin's arrest reveals one of the darkest corners of the internet, where paedophiles in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children

Computer hard drives and sex toys were gathered by members of the National Bureau of Investigation Anti-human Trafficking division

Another snap showed Deakin handcuffed, sitting on a bed where he allegedly handled online sharing of videos of children engaging in sexual acts.

Investigators also allegedly found a pipe which can be used for smoking methamphetamine, or ice.

Deakin's arrest revealed one of the darkest corners of the internet, where pedophiles in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia pay facilitators on the other side of the world to sexually abuse children.

The 53-year-old American is seen smiling at the top of a set of stairs just moments after he was arrested

Computer equipment and young girl's clothes were allegedly found inside the home of the suspected child webcam cybersex operator

Underwear is pictured wedged behind the faucet of the sink in Deakin's bathroom. The picture was taken following his arrest on April 20

Authorities said earlier this week they were reviewing about 30 hard drives, as well as numerous computers, to find suspected buyers and victims.

In his computer files, videos and images of children engaged in sex acts were allegedly found.

Deakin has been charged with cybercrime, child pornography, child abuse and child trafficking.

The 53-year-old suspect, originally from Peoria, Illinois, has been in the Philippines since 2000.

An investigator is seen holding a pipe which can be used for smoking methamphetamine as they raid Deakin's home

Deakin has been charged with cybercrime, child pornography, child abuse and child trafficking. Pictured left, a bedroom inside his home and right, the dining area

Gen. Liborio Carabbacan of the National Police Women and Children Protection Center gestures during an interview in metropolitan Manila, Philippines. He said horrific incidents of child abuse are increasing in the country because many people are gaining access to the internet and English fluency is common

Gen. Liborio Carabbacan at the National Police Women and Children Protection Center said child exploitation is increasing in the Philippines.

He said many people are gaining access to the internet and English fluency is common, making it possible to communicate with would-be customers.

Also, he said, parents and relatives, motivated by greed, are often not even aware that it is against the law to exploit their children.

The 53-year-old alleged child abuser is seen with his hands tied behind his back with an iPhone charger - the first thing authorities could find

Deakin is seen sitting inside his living room following his arrest as investigators gather evidence during the raid

Pictured left, cigarettes are seen overflowing from an ashtray on a table in Deakin's living room. Right, a young girl's shirt, a cowboy hat and pictures of Deakin are seen on the floor of his home

This image shows a former cybersex victim arranging a shoe rack at a shelter for sexual exploitation survivors in Manila, Philippines

A photograph of Deakin, originally from Peoria, is pictured sitting beside a laptop computer and wireless web camera
The homeless Melbourne man who brutally bashed his girlfriend Brittany Shanice Harvie, 22, to death has been sentenced to serve a maximum 23 years in jail.

Mataio Jordan Aleluia left the mother of two with fatal injuries to her head and body following an outburst of unfounded jealous rage.

She was described as a 'wonderful woman' who did everything for him, including buying his clothes, feeding him, and finding him shelter.

Mataio Jordan Aleluia, 20, was ordered to serve a maximum 23 years in jail for killing girlfriend Brittany Shanice Harvie (pictured)

The couple were living together in a car at Clayton South when on a night in June 2015 Aleluia, 18 at the time, bashed Ms Harvie for up to 15 minutes, stopping at one point to roll a cigarette.

After dragging her across the gravelled car park, he put a blanket on her and slept beside her in their car, making no attempt to get help.

He woke the next morning to find her cold and dead.

An autopsy showed Ms Harvie suffered multiple blunt force trauma wounds, including to the brain, fractured facial bones, fractured ribs, concussive head trauma, chest trauma and blood loss.

Justice James Elliott said Ms Harvie's parents described their daughter's 'kindness and love of life' before her death.

Justice Elliott said the bashing of Brittany Shanice Harvie (pictured) carried a 'high degree of moral culpability'

The court heard Mataio had a level of mental impairment that affected his ability to understand cause and effect, and a history of aggressive and compulsive behaviour.

But Justice Elliott said the bashing of a defenceless woman carried a 'high degree of moral culpability'.

He said Aleluia claimed he thought Harvie would make it through the night.

'You woke in the morning to find Brittany Harvie cold and her heart not beating,' Justice Elliott said.

Aleluia, who was homeless, first attacked Ms Harvie in the Mitsubishi Magna (pictured) they were sleeping in

He said Aleluia had shown remorse and was seen running through the streets frantic and scared when he realised his girlfriend was dead, admitting later to his counsellor that he'd killed her.

Later that day he told police his girlfriend had been a wonderful woman who did everything for him, including buying his clothes, feeding him, and finding him shelter.

Aleluia's sentence carries a minimum non-parole period of 18 years.

He has already served 709 days in pre-sentence detention.
A massive blaze at Sydney Olympic Park has left the city shrouded in thick black smoke.

The fire started at around 2.30pm on Friday with more than a dozen fire crews rushing to the scene in Homebush in the city's west.

The blaze is believed to have started at indoor recreational centre Monster Skate Park, though it is unclear how it was sparked.

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A massive blaze at Sydney Olympic Park has left the city shrouded in thick black smoke

Around 80 firefighters rushed to the scene, according to Fire and Rescue NSW

Around 80 firefighters were called to the scene, according to Fire and Rescue NSW.

A spokeswoman told news.com.au the blaze was categorised as a 'sixth alarm, which is rather large'.

'We have 12 fire crews on the scene with more on the way. We don't know if anyone is trapped inside,' they said.

The fire was contained a short time later.

'We have 12 fire crews on the scene with more on the way. We don't know if anyone is trapped inside,' a spokesperson said

The blaze is believed to have started at the indoor recreational centre Monster Skate Park, though it is unclear how it was sparked

NSW Fires and Rescue crews were called to Showground Road near Grand Parade about 2.30pm

Fire and Rescue took to twitter on Friday afternoon to confirm the massive blaze

A NSW Ambulance spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia a man in his 30s suffering smoke inhalation was taken to Concord Hospital.

'The fire was thick and it was starting to escalate prior to the brigade's arrival,' a firefighter said at the scene.

'Fire crews were able to get in quickly and start applying water.'

The Monster Skate Park is just metres from ANZ Stadium, where the NRL match between the Wests Tigers and the Rabbitohs is expected to kick off at 7.50pm tonight.

A Fire and Rescue spokeswoman said the blaze was categorised as a 'sixth alarm, which is rather large'
An 11-year-old-boy accused of raping and threatening to kill an eight-year-old boy with a knife has had charges against dropped after being found mentally unfit to stand trial.

The boy originally pleaded guilty to the charges after he allegedly raped the eight-year-old at a suburban Perth park in December.

The Department of Public Prosecutions said in Perth Children's Court on Friday that it had decided not to continue with the case after taking into account a psychiatric report that was ordered by magistrate Andree-Marie Horrigan.

An 11-year-old boy accused of raping and threatening to kill an eight-year-old boy at knife-point has had his charges dropped after being found mentally unfit to stand trial. Prosecutors told the Perth Children's Court (pictured) they had decided to drop the case following a psychiatric report

The report confirmed Ms Horrigan's concerns about the boy's capacity to understand what he had admitted to and proceedings against him and therefore, his fitness to plead and stand trial based on section 29 of the Criminal Code.

'People that fall into this category should not be criminalised notwithstanding how serious the matter is and the matter should be discontinued,' Ms Horrigan told the court.

Section 29 states a person under 14-years-old is not criminally responsible for a crime unless it can be proven he knew what he was doing is wrong.

The boy was in court with a middle-aged adult male relative.

A woman who works for the Department of Child Protection told the court it was working with the boy and his family, and requested a copy of the court-ordered psychiatric report.

The case shocked Perth residents when it was first revealed in February that the small schoolboy had been charged with sexually penetrating a child but had then been allowed to return to his suburban school and interact with other children.

This prompted an outcry from parents and he was removed from the school.
A woman who escaped the clutches of ISIS after being sold to the sinister death cult as a sex slave is hoping to embark on a new life in Australia.

Nihad Barakat Shamo Alawsi was 15-years-old when she was kidnapped by the terror group in her home town of Sinjar in northwest Iraq in 2014.

She was held against her will, tortured, and left with a child who was the product of rape. But the courageous Yazidi teenager is ready for a new beginning.

Nihad Barakat Shamo Alawsi is seeking a protection visa in Australia by the end of the year

Now 18, Nihad is freed from the brutal rule of ISIS and seeking to relocate to Australia with her family.

She hopes to be granted a protection visa by the end of the year before completing her studies, reports Sydney Morning Herald.

'I would like to go there to continue to work to be a teacher.'

Australia is one of the few countries willing to keep her family together.

Australia announced it would welcome 18,750 people seeking protection after being displaced by the conflict in war-torn Syria and Iraq.

The government announced in March it would grant protection visas to 12,000 people escaping the conflict zone.

She 15-years-old when she was kidnapped by the terror group in her home town of Sinjar in northwest Iraq in 2014

Last year, Nihad laid bare the horror of life under the rule of the terror group.

'They raped us, they killed our men, they took our babies away from us,' she told an event in London last year.

'The worst thing was the torture in Mosul. We were beaten and raped continuously for two weeks.'

Nihad gave birth to a baby boy and managed to escape when three months later after the baby's father decided to marry her to his cousin.

She made a phone call to her family and was then rescued by Steve Maman from The Liberation of Christian and Yazidi Children of Iraq (CYCI).

'I managed to escape, but I had to leave the baby behind,' she said.

The Sunni militants captured around 5,000 Yazidi men and women in summer 2014.

Islamic State considers the Yazidis to be devil-worshippers. The ancient Yazidi faith blends elements of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Islam.
An amusing sign outside of an IGA store offering life advice and a few helpful 'tips' to shoppers has emerged online.

The sign - which sits outside of the South Dubbo supermarket in regional NSW - gives passing customers some interesting suggestions on how to live an adult life.

Perhaps sick of shoppers spilling life stories and sharing personal narratives of gloom, the owner of South Dubbo IGA has candidly told locals to 'stop complaining'.

'Don't smoke meth': The unusual sign offers candid life advice for passing customers

The sign was spotted outside of IGA South Dubbo, which has an IGA Liquor store next to it (pictured)

'Being an adult is easy,' the unusual signpost reads.

'Pay your bills, don't smoke meth, keep a few close friends, wear deodorant and tip your liquor manager.'

The final piece of advice encourages locals to generously tip the manager of the liquor store which is conveniently a part of the IGA supermarket.

A snap of the humorous sign was shared online to Facebook by Dubbo local Jake Dooley and re-posted by Buzzfeed writer Nick Wray who wrote: 'The IGA in my hometown has some interesting signage out the front.'
Facebook has been accused of shutting down ex-Muslim and atheist groups amid claims they were targeted by 'fundamentalists' who wanted them closed.

This week the social media company temporarily closed the pages of Atheist Republic, which has more than 1.6million followers, and the Ex-Muslims of North America, liked almost 25,000 times.

It is believed Facebook closed the groups after a flurry of complaints from people taking advantage of the company's 'flagging' tools to falsely report the pages.

This week the social media company temporarily closed the pages of Atheist Republic and the Ex-Muslims of North America page (pictured)

Moderators revealed that the pages, which have since been reopened, were closed for being 'in violation of Facebook's community standards'.

Several ex-Muslim and atheist groups have now claimed that Facebook is blocking their pages before investigating complaints, reports Heat Street.

Former Muslims have written an open letter to the social media giant, calling on it to 'to stop exercising intellectual persecution' against atheist and ex-Muslim organisations.

With more than 1.6million followers, Atheist Republic is believed to be the biggest collection of online atheists in the world

On Monday the president of the Ex-Muslims of North America, Muhammad Syed, said the company is not doing enough to protect 'groups vulnerable to malicious attacks'.

In an open letter he wrote: 'Ironically, the same social media which empowers religious minorities is susceptible to abuse by religious fundamentalists to enforce what are essentially the equivalent of online blasphemy laws.

'A simple English language search reveals hundreds of public groups and pages on Facebook explicitly dedicated to this purpose  giving their members easy-to-follow instructions on how to report public groups and infiltrate private ones.'

Mr Syed added that the Atheist Republic group has been shut down four times in the last two years and then reinstated.

Several ex-Muslim and atheist groups have now claimed that Facebook, set up by Mark Zuckerberg (pictured), is blocking their pages before investigating complaints

He believes that there are hundreds of Facebook accounts working to shut down atheist and ex-Muslim public pages in an organised effort- and Facebook is doing little to stop them.

Other groups which have allegedly been targeted include: A Science Enthusiast, the Arab Atheist Network and Radical Atheists without Borders.

Mr Syed said:'Arab atheists, Bangladeshi secularists, and numerous other groups have been under attack for years, as religious conservatives in the Muslim world learn to abuse Facebook's reporting system to their advantage.'

He is now urging Facebook to create a 'whitelist' for groups that are vulnerable to attacks and to penalise accounts that repeatedly abuse the reporting tools.

MailOnline has contacted Facebook for comment.
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Hundreds of travellers from across the country dressed to impress as they descended on a sleepy Cotswolds town for a 500-year-old horse fair.

Romany carriages, stalls flogging handicrafts and girls with flamboyant hairstyles donning traditional dresses were all on display in Stow-on-the-Wold.

The Stow Gipsy Fair is held twice a year - in May and October - and dates back to 1476, when a Charter was granted for it to be held.

The fair is considered one of the biggest events in the Gipsy and traveller calendar and sees hundreds of horses paraded and sold.

Psychic Romany Rose is pictured in her caravan with her crystal ball, fake tanned women browse market stalls and other gipsy visitors relax in deckchairs.

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Smile for the camera: Friends Ashley and Stephanie Mochanall enjoy taking in the sights and stalls at the at the Stow-on-the-Wold Hypsy Horse Fair

Colourfully-clad travellers descended on the quiet Cotswolds town to buy adnd sell horses, such as the one pictured above

A colourful horse cart is advertised for sale by three men at the Stow-on-the-Wold Gipsy Horse Fair, in Gloucestershire

Dressed to impress: Demi Parkes proudly shows of an item of children clothing that she is selling as part of the stall that she has set up at the fair. Other garments can be seen hung up around a stall

Fortune teller: Romany Rose sits inside her caravan with three crystal balls. A picture on an older-style caravan can be seen on the side

Mane event: James Evans shows off one a pony, with another standing just behind. They are just two of the many horses that are sold at the famous Cotswolds festival every year

Carting about: Billy Price and Crimea Lee pictured playing on a horse's cart, showing that the festival is enjoyed by people of all ages

Elsewhere, men in tweed jackets mingle and young boys parade Shetland ponies while horses roam freely and graze the land.

Gipsies from around Britain flocked to the festival, at Maugersbury Park on Thursday.

Traveller Anthony Alsop, 36 from Staffordshire said: 'Today is the travelling community coming together and being sociable.

'More and more travellers seem to be coming each year and it is growing well. This will be my fifth year here and I really like coming here.

'The children have a great time playing with each other.

'I travel and breed the horses because I love them.

'They are foaling at the moment, some will come along still over the next few weeks, but then we will still be getting some coming along at the end of the summer.

'We are due to come back in July and September.'

Man's (and woman's) best friend: Steve and Liz Miller relax in their camping chairs at the festival with their cross-breed dog Maccy D

All smiles: Linda Evans, Caroline Biddle and Elainea Calleaine (left) were enjoying the festival, as were Juliet Clarke and Rosie Hegarty (right)

Peace: Isabella Biddle was one the youngest attendants of the festival, which took place throughout the day on Thursday

Fun for all the family: Two mothers push their prams along the pathway as they take in some of the items and refreshments on offer

The Stow Gipsy Fair is held twice a year - in May and October - and dates back to 1476, when a Charter was granted for it to be held

Towing the path: These teens were amonmg the hundreds of Gipsies from around Britain who flocked to the festival, at Maugersbury Park
The US navy has revealed a Russian fighter plane passed within 20 feet of one of its aircraft this week.

On Tuesday a Russian SU-27 came close to a US Navy P-8A Poseidon which was in international airspace over the Black Sea.

It was carrying out routine reconnaissance, the US Navy has stated, but no further information has been provided.

Spokeswoman Captain Pamela Kunze added that the US plane's mission commander thought the interaction was safe and professional.

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A Russian SU-27 fighter (similar to the one shown) was sent out after the US Navy plane was detected

Russia has said its pilot carried out a 'greeting' maneuver, and the US plane then changed course away from the Russian border.

But previous similar passes at a greater distance have been considered unsafe, NBC reports.

Kunze said that distance is only one of the factors which determines how safe an interaction between US and Russian planes is, and similar events are a regular occurrence.

The US Navy plane, similar to this one, was carrying out routine reconnaissance, but no further detail about its mission has been revealed

Others include speed, altitude and visibility, she stated.

A statement from the Russian military said: 'After approaching a plane at a safe distance the Russian pilot visually identified the flying object as a US surveillance plane P-8A Poseidon.'

Russia said it sent out the fighter after detecting the plane close to the Russian border, and said the US aircraft changed its course after a 'greeting' maneuver.

The two planes met on the same day as Russia's Victory Day parades were held to mark 72 years since the defeat of Nazi Germany.
A corgi, which was once so fat it looked like a seal and collapsed after walking a few steps, has lost six stone.

Tyko ballooned to double his maximum recommended weight after owner Denise Leitch, from Earlston in Scotland, fed him too many treats with little exercise to burn them off.

He had grown to such a size that vets thought he looked more like a seal than a dog, with one vet saying the 'ginormous' cross-breed was the most obese dog he had ever seen.

At his fattest, Tyko tipped the scales at 7.7st when he should have been just over three. He now weighs a much healthier two stone - losing 5.8st - after the dog was removed from his owner last year.

Tyko now weighs a much healthier two stone - losing 5.8st - after the dog was removed from his owner last year

At his fattest, Tyko tipped the scales at 7.7st (pictured) when he should have been just over three

Now fully recovered, the Scottish SPCA is in the process of finding him a new home.

Edinburgh SPCA centre manager, Diane Aitchison, said: 'Tyko has lost 5.8st after coming into our care weighing a massive 7.7st.

'He's now looking for an active forever home to keep his fitness up. He loves chasing a ball, but he's not so keen to give it back.

'We feel he would be best suited to an adult-only home without any other dogs or cats.'

Mrs Leitch - who escaped a jail term after a court concluded she was 'killing it with kindness' rather than as an act of cruelty - insisted she, nor her husband Alex, is a threat to animals.

Speaking last year at her semi-detached home in in the Scottish Borders, she said: 'I loved that dog.

'The animal welfare officers took him away - we were forced to sign him over. We both loved that dog.

Mrs Leitch (pictured) - who escaped a jail term after a court concluded she was 'killing it with kindness' rather than as an act of cruelty - insists she, nor her husband Alex, is a threat to animals

'They badgered us in to it, and then he was in a hot van for an hour and a half. They're making out as though I'm the bad one and I'm not.'

Mrs Leitch has another dog, a Jack Russell, and a cat, both of which she has been allowed to keep.

She continued: 'They left my other dog, and my cat. Like they said in court they are both healthy. I am not cruel to animals

'Growing up in Wales I had cats all my life. I've never been cruel to an animal.

'My solicitor overheard the sheriff talking to the procurator fiscal at one point during the case asking why this had been brought to court, but it's happened now.'

Tyko was seized by Scottish SPCA officers after a neighbour tipped them off that he could barely walk and had difficulty breathing because he was so fat.

At Selkirk Sheriff Court last June, Leitch pleaded guilty to a charge of failing to provide treatment for a morbidly obese dog.

She also admitted causing Tyko unnecessary suffering between April 1 and October 13 in 2015.

The offence carries a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison, a fine of 20,000 or a disqualification from owning animals.

But Sheriff Derrick McIntyre - who studied pictures of the dog and described it as 'ginormous' - said it was not a normal case of maltreating an animal.

Tyko has been under the care of the Scottish SPCA. He is pictured in June last year after losing two stone

Defence lawyer Claire Patterson said Tyko had been 'freaked out' by a firework display in 2015 and rarely ventured out to exercise.

Ms Patterson said: 'She has already been punished by losing custody of the dog. It was not intentional for the dog to reach that size but it is accepted she did not seek the proper treatment.'

Depute fiscal Tessa Bradley told the court: 'The SSPCA officer said the dog was like a seal because it was so obese.'

Mrs Leitch bought the dog as a Christmas present for her husband - but she was the person charged with mistreating it as she was legally responsible for its welfare.
An allegedly drunk racist thug who likened a Muslim-American family to ISIS terrorists in a vicious 20-minute tirade on a beach has been arrested.

Alexander Downing, 35, of Connecticut, grabbed himself in front of young children and screamed 'suck my goddam d****' during the rant in South Padre Island, Texas.

The Donald Trump supporter was later pictured in tears in his mugshot after being charged with public intoxication following the sickening May 3 incident.

Alexander Downing, 35, of Connecticut, who likened a Muslim-American family to ISIS terrorists in a vicious 20-minute tirade on a Texas beach, was pictured crying in a mugshot after being arrested

Officers were called to the Pearl Resort and found Downing 'intoxicated in a public place and a danger to himself and others', South Padre Island Police told KVEO-TV.

Footage uploaded to YouTube by Noria Alward, 19, showed the squat American holidaymaker hurling abuse at her family as they were playing on a beach.

The family had been enjoying a holiday together at the three-star South Padre Pearl hotel, on South Padre Island.

The video showed Downing, dressed in a yellow vest and swimming shorts, jabbing his fingers aggressively at the family.

Downing - who has been arrested several times before - slammed a chair on the beach and squared up to the men, as their children made sandcastles on the beach.

Another holidaymaker tried to pacify Downing - who appeared to be intoxicated - as he screamed 'Sharia law don't mean s*** to me!'

However he then returned and Miss Alward, who is Muslim American, said he 'became more aggressive and with more racial slurs'.

Extraordinary footage showed the man screaming racist abuse at the Muslim family in Texas

A holidaymaker was unable to stop the man launching his tirade as he beat his chest screaming 'Donald Trump, Donald Trump'

As he continued to hurl abuse, the family dialed 911.

In the astonishing footage, he shouted: 'ISIS don't mean s*** to me, motherf***er. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, motherf***er.'

He then shouted: 'Suck my goddam d***, right there, right f***ing there, n****r' before screaming 'my f***ing country is the greatest country in the world'.

Thumping his chest he then threatened them, saying: 'Donald Trump, motherf***er. Come f*** with Donald Trump. That's my motherf***ing President.'

Miss Alward claimed that her father was approached by two women on the beach, asking him to help as Downing was 'harassing' them.

She wrote: 'All my father said to the guy was, "Please enjoy your time and have fun and let everyone else here enjoy their time".

'The guy seemed to listen and walked away. He then came back to my father and started throwing racist comments.'

Downing has been arrested several times since 2003, court records show.

He has previously lived in New Hampshire, Florida and Spring, Texas.

The video showed the man, who appeared to be drunk, shouting racist abuse at the family

Describing the incident, Miss Alward, who lives in Michigan, said: 'While enjoying our time at the beach during a family reunion, our kids and us had to experience ugliness and aggressiveness in the worse shape and form possible.

'After about 20 minutes of him going crazy, he went back to the hotel. The police then came back and they arrested the man at the hotel restaurant.'

However she said they spotted him back at the front desk of the hotel the following morning despite being assured by hotel staff that he would be evicted if seen again.

Speaking to MailOnline, her uncle Ahmed Alward said: 'We had been enjoying the sunshine and water during our one week-long family reunion. There were 13 of us and three children, aged from two to four.

'As a decent American citizen [what happened] made feel disgusted and in shock.

'But I'd like to say that this man doesn't represent the masses and he needs to be charged for what he's done. I want to thank all the beach-goers that stood by our side. As you can see in the video the man with the black shorts...hats off to him.'

When asked about President Trump, he replied: 'Trump was elected and is the president. He is my President.'

A spokesman for the hotel told MailOnline: 'I have no comment to make at this time but we are taking it very seriously as it is not a positive thing for the resort.'

South Padre Island Police said it was 'blatantly out of line' for 'Downing to 'taunt and harass' the family.

'I was saddened,' police chief Randy Smith told News Center 23. 'I just want to say there is no way any of us here that work for the city would not tolerate anything like that.

'We try to create an environment where people can come to the beach, have a good time and have a good time with their families and enjoy themselves.

'The last thing we want is for someone to be harassed and taunted by an intoxicated subject that is blatantly out of line.'
The bereaved family of a woman murdered by the IRA have launched a blistering attack on Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, accusing them of 'having blood on their hands'.

Julie Hambleton, 54, whose sister Maxine was killed in the Birmingham bomb of 1974, said the Labour leader and Shadow Chancellor were 'not fit to hold high office and not fit to be trusted' because they have supported the IRA.

'It makes a mockery of the suffering we've gone through that these people are running for office,' she told MailOnline.

'Words fail me, and words fail so many other people, too. It's just unforgivable.'

Her brother, Brian, 62, added: 'It sickens me. In all honesty, I would not shake Corbyn or McDonnell's hands. They've got blood on their hands.

'If there's a gang and just one of them kills a victim, the others are drawn in by association. That's what we're talking about with Corbyn and McDonnell.

Lost: Maxine Hambleton, pictured, was one of 21 people killed when the IRA set off bombs in two Birmingham pubs. Her siblings have said the Labour leader and Shadow Chancellor are 'not fit to hold high office' because they 'sympathise with the IRA'

Grief: Maxine's brother and sister told MailOnline it is 'painful to know that supporters of the group that killed my sister could be the next Prime Minister and Chancellor'. Pictured: One of the pubs bombed in 1974

Julie and Brian Hambleton, pictured, who lost their sister Maxine in the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings, have accused Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Home Secretary John McDonnell of having 'blood on their hands' for 'sympathising with the IRA'

'It's painful to know that supporters of the group that killed my sister could be the next Prime Minister and Chancellor. I don't think anyone could vote for them with a clear conscience.'

It comes after the Labour leader caused outrage by snubbing an elderly army veteran who wished to question Labour's policy on Northern Ireland at a rally in York.

'He saw the beret and the medals and he went,' said Rob Gray, 62, who served two tours in Northern Ireland as a member of the 1st battalion of the Duke of Wellington regiment.

Both Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell claim they do not support violence, but the Shadow Chancellor has praised 'the bravery of the IRA' in the past.

In 2015, he apologised for a speech in which he 'honoured' the 'bombs and bullets and sacrifice' of the IRA.

That same year, Mr Corbyn defended his connections with IRA leaders, arguing that dialogue was necessary to bring about peace.

'I don't want violence, I don't want killing, I don't want all the horrors that go with it,' he said.

'The violence was wrong on all sides and I have said so all along. My whole point was if we are to bring about a peace process, you weren't going to achieve it by military means.'

Mr Corbyn famously invited IRA terrorists to Parliament two weeks after the Brighton bombing in 1984, and stood for a minute's silence to honour IRA militants killed by the SAS.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline, Mr Hambleton lashed out furiously at the Labour leadership.

Determined: Brian Hambleton, who is still fighting for an inquest into the bombing which killed his sister Maxine, pictured, said: 'If there's a gang and just one of them kills a victim, the others are drawn in by association'

Mr McDonnell once 'honoured' the 'bombs and bullets and sacrifice' of the IRA while Mr Corbyn famously invited IRA terrorists to Parliament two weeks after the Brighton bombing in 1984: Pictured: Julie and Brian Hambleton

Brian went on to say he did not think 'anyone' could vote for the Labour party with a clear conscience, given their top brass have been known to sympathise with the group which was widely blamed for the Birmingham bombing, pictured

Maxine was 18 when she and 20 other people were killed in two explosions at The Mulberry Bush and Tavern in the Town in central Birmingham

CORBYN AND McDONNELL'S SYMPATHY TOWARDS IRA The Labour leader and Shadow Chancellor have a long history of sympathy for the IRA, though both men claim to abhor violence. In a notorious BBC interview in 2015, Mr Corbyn was asked five times to condemn the IRA's atrocities during the Troubles  but caused outrage by repeatedly sidestepping the question. The Labour leader attended several pro-IRA events in the Eighties and Nineties, and once stood for a minute's silence to honour IRA militants killed by the SAS. Labour leader Corbyn, above, and Shadow Chancellor McDonnell both abhor violence but each of them has a history of sympathy for the IRA He was widely condemned when he invited members of Sinn Fein, including Gerry Adams, into the Commons in 1984, a fortnight after the IRA's Brighton bombing which killed five and injured 31. Mr Corbyn again provoked fury in March by paying a glowing tribute to former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, calling him a 'great family man'. He had controversially shared a platform with Mr McGuinness at a news conference at the House of Commons in 1995, and posed with him and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams at Portcullis House two decades later. The Labour leader was also accused of 'traitorous' behaviour for helping Mr Adams plug his autobiography inside the Houses of Parliament in 1996. Mr McDonnell has also been an enthusiastic supporter of the IRA over the years, and in 2003 made a controversial speech in which he 'honoured' the 'bombs and bullets and sacrifice' of the 'brave' IRA. Shadow Chancellor McDonnell, pictured, has previously praised 'the bravery of the IRA' He said: 'It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table.' In 2015, he apologised for the remarks. It later emerged that in 1986, at the height of the Troubles, Mr McDonnell suggested that 'kneecapping might help change the mind' of the 'gutless wimps' who boycotted a pro-Republican meeting. Advertisement

'Corbyn and McDonnell spout about British life and how it should be, yet they've supported terrorists who killed loved ones of the people they'd like to serve,' he said.

'These people actually must think the public have got Alzheimer's.'

He added: 'It's quite frightening. We're at a stage where if Labour scrape into power, I'd hate to refer to myself as British.'

Maxine Hambleton was killed at the age of 18 along with 20 other victims in the Birmingham pub bombings in November 1974. Her brother and sister are still fighting for an inquest into the murders with a campaign called Justice 4 the 21.

Corbyn and McDonnell spout about British life and how it should be, yet they've supported terrorists who killed loved ones of the people they'd like to serve Brian Hambleton

The Hambletons emphasised that they are not aligned to any political party and are speaking out against the Labour leadership strictly out of conscience.

Labour MPs like Jess Phillips, Khalid Mahmoud and Steve McCabe have been 'superb' in supporting their campaign, they stressed.

Ms Hambleton told MailOnline: 'For me personally, it makes a farce of our democratic system. How on earth is it possible for people like McDonnell, who openly admits he supported a terrorist organisation, to be this close to Government?

'It is disbelief, I have to say. Every time Corbyn or McDonnell are on TV, I switch it off. I have no interest in anything they have to say.

'You don't need to be a family member of the victim of a terrorist atrocity to have little faith in them or what they say. Even their own MPs don't think they are sufficient to hold high office.'

The Hambletons' scathing attack on Labour's top brass comes after Corbyn caused outrage by publicly snubbing army veteran Rob Gray, above, who wanted to question Labour's policy on Northern Ireland at a rally in York

Mr Gray, 62, who served two tours in Northern Ireland, claims Corbyn avoided him after he 'saw the beret and the medals' he was wearing

Mr Hamilton said: 'To me, their IRA support is a stain on their past and their future. The far-Left never changes its spots. If Corbyn gets into power with his past, that's only going to be a big plus for Sinn Fein so far as I'm concerned.'

Although the Hambletons are not politically aligned, they said they had 'only good things' to say about Theresa May, who has supported their campaign.

'She was the only one out of anybody in the Government who had the courage and the honour and integrity to meet us,' Ms Hambleton said.

In December, Ms Hambleton hand-wrote a letter to the Prime Minister and it was delivered to her personally by the editor of the Birmingham Mail.

Sir Oliver Heald, the Justice Minister, contacted her by telephone the next day. As a result, the preliminary hearing for the inquest will be held at the end of the month.

'Theresa May has done a lot of beavering around on our behalf without putting herself on a pedestal,' Mr Hambleton said.

'I think she has good a good conscience of mind. She's obviously a very well-rounded lady. She did seem quite empathetic towards us. We politely pleaded with her for help. And she helped us.

'She was very empathetic. It was a proper meeting of minds and emotions.
The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.
Julie Rankine has been freed from a jail term she was given for attacking her neighbour after suffering a stroke in prison

A 'neighbour from hell' jailed for attacking a local resident and threatening another with an axe has been freed from prison after having a stroke.

Julie Rankine, 54, hit neighbour Caroline Moore, 50, in the stomach with a metal walking stick during an argument about building work on their upmarket properties.

She also waved a 3ft axe at her neighbours on the other side during a row about a fence outside her 1million home in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands.

She was jailed for 22 weeks at Birmingham Magistrates' Court in March, but freed this week after a judge heard of her health issues.

Lucinda Wilmott-Lascelles, representing Rankine, said she was jailed on March 22, but the following day suffered a stroke whilst in prison.

She was taken to hospital where she remained until April 10, after which she was granted bail with the condition she lived with her sister, pending the appeal.

She said her client was in poor health following chemotherapy for cancer and had also suffered a previous stroke which meant she didn't have the use of her left hand.

Video footage showed Rankine brandishing her walking stick during a row over work at a neighbour's home. The original court hearing heard she 'tormented' those living next door

The rows erupted around Rankine's six-bedroomed detached property in Sutton Coldfield

The court heard how Rankine was still subject to an indefinite restraining order which prevents her harassing her neighbours.

Judge Mr Recorder Hegarty told Rankine: 'I am putting my name to this order and it will come back to me personally if you breach it.

'If that happens, you can expect to be going downstairs to the cells - even in your wheelchair. Remember, I will be waiting for you if you breach the order.'

The judge told Rankine's neighbours: 'It is my wish that during this suspended prison term you can expect peace to break out in that street.'

Earlier this year, magistrates heard the attacks took place between March and August last year after a boundary dispute 'escalated' into violence, prompting Mrs Moore to try to sell her house to escape the area.

Rankine also attacked Michelle Kavanagh, 51, with her walking stick before later assaulting her husband Brendan, 56, by pushing a spiked fence panel into his face.

Rankine attacked Caroline Moore (left) and Michelle Kavanagh (right) and made their lives hell

The complaints also included pool parties at the property running late into the early hours and keeping families awake.

Simon Cleary, prosecuting in the original case said: 'There are numerous statements from her neighbours, not just to do with the assaults, but quite frankly to do with Ms Rankine's behaviour as a neighbour going back nine years. She has tormented them.

'One of the statements from Mrs Moore is 17 pages long... listing incidents day after day after day. These incidents have been reported to the police on many occasions.

'Since moving in to the house, there has been total anti-social behaviour. It got to such a point that at one stage Mrs Moore decided that she was going to put the house on the market and move.'
An alarming outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease in Melbourne and Adelaide has been linked to industrial cooling towers in both of the cities.

Seven people have been hospitalised after contracting the pneumonia, with four aged between 45 and 78 years in Victoria and three aged 58 to 77 in South Australia.

The outbreak in Melbourne is suspected to have originated from several cooling towers near a Cranbourne shopping centre, southeast of the CBD.

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An outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease has hospitalised seven people in Melbourne and Adelaide (stock image)

Building operators in Adelaide's south are also being urged to decontaminate air-conditioning and industrial cooling towers following three cases of Legionnaires' disease.

SA Health says two men and a woman from the southern suburbs ranging have been hospitalised after contracting the respiratory infection.

It is not yet clear if the cases are related and the source has not been identified.

Samples have been taken from the cooling towers to determine the true source of the infection.

People who have been exposed to areas near the cooling towers could still develop symptoms over the next 10 days, health experts warn.

Only last month five cases of Legionnaires disease were found to have involved individuals who spent time in the eastern half of Melbournes CBD and at Southbank.

The outbreak in Melbourne is suspected to have originated from several cooling towers near a Cranbourne shopping centre, southeast of the CBD

It is not yet clear if the cases of are related and the source has not been identified

It can be contracted by inhaling fine droplets of water which have been infected, such as the spray which emits from cooling towers.

Anyone suffering flu-like symptoms have been urged to contact their doctor.

Those most susceptible to Legionnaires' include men and women aged over 50, heavy smokers, heavy drinkers, people with diabetes, people suffering from chronic lung disease and those with lowered immunity.

So far this year 47 people have contracted the illness.
A retired school teacher claims a hospital in Mexican is holding her hostage until she pays tens-of-thousands of dollars in medical bills for treatment she is not sure she needed.

Vikki Moormann, who was an English teacher at Coeur d'Alene High School in Idaho, was on holiday in the Mexican coastal city of Nuevo Vallarta when she says she fell ill at the end of April.

Ms Moormann, who was vacationing with her sister-in-law, said she was having stomach problems and began vomiting uncontrollably.

Vikki Moormann (pictured) a retired English teacher from Idaho, was on holiday in Mexican coastal city of Nuevo Vallarta when she fell ill at the end of April

After checking into the Hospital San Javier Riviera Nayarit, she was told by doctors that she had a urinary tract infection and was on the brink of pneumonia, reported Fox News.

The diagnosis was a surprise to Mrs Moormann, who claims she felt fine apart from her stomach problems.

She has now accrued $40,000 in medical fees, an amount she says she cannot pay.

In a phone call from her hospital room Ms Moormann told Fox News: 'I wonder if I'm being extorted.

'I'm good enough to get out of the hospital, but they won't let me go until I pay the bill.'

A hospital spokesman claimed that Ms Moormann is not well enough to leave.

Ms Moormann said she was having stomach problems and began vomiting uncontrollably. However, after checking into the Hospital San Javier Riviera Nayarit, she was told by doctors that she had a urinary tract infection and was on the brink of pneumonia

She added that the hospital is working with the family so they can pay the bill and blamed the media and Ms Moormann's son, Ryen, for the reports that the patient was being held against her will.

The family are now frantically trying to gather the funds needed to pay the bill.

Ms Moormann's son Ryen set-up a GoFundMe page to pay the bill but the family claim it has already risen from $15,000 to $40,000.

Ms Moormann, who is due to fly home on Saturday, said that she has paid $1,000 of the bill and her son has contributed $5,000.

Ms Moormann claims she is being held hostage in the hospital until she pays $40,000 in medical fees

She is also willing to pay a monthly fee if released. The family has also reached out to the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Consular Agency in Puerto Vallarta.

However no resolution has been reached so far.

Ryen Moormann posted a video of a conversation he had with a hospital representative on Facebook.

The representative can be heard saying his mother will be held in the hospital until the family the bill.

'I'm just so frustrated,' Ms Moormann said. 'I feel like I'm a hostage.'
Schapelle Corby's sister Mercedes is bound for Bali to bring the 39-year-old home after nine years in jail for drug smuggling.

Mercedes told 9 News she is 'glad to be going over there to bring my sister home,' as she left Brisbane airport on Friday.

Schapelle Corby is due to return from the Indonesian island to Australia on Saturday May 27, after serving nine years for drug trafficking.

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Schapelle Corby's sister Mercedes is bound for Bali to bring her sister home after nine years in jail for drug smuggling

Schapelle Corby (pictured) is due to return from the Indonesian island to Australia on Saturday May 27, after serving nine years for drug trafficking

Schappelle Corby has been living in Bali out of jail since being granted parole in February 2014, but a judges ruling said that May 2017 was the earliest she could return to Australia.

During that time she has been seen enjoying the local Bali beaches and has spoken about trying to get fit.

She has also avoided anything that would prevent her return to Australia, avoiding the media and presenting herself to police.

Corby, now 39, will not be allowed to return to Indonesia, and Bali, once she leaves.

Mercedes Corby pictured arriving at the International Airport in Bali on Friday

Mercedes is expected to help with planning her sisters return to Australia and to fly home with her when the time comes

Schappelle Corby has been living in Bali out of jail since being granted parole in February 2014

Mercedes said she is 'glad to be going over there to bring my sister home,' as she left Brisbane airport on Friday

The Australian consulate will organise a new passport to replace her expired one and she will be deported on a direct flight to Queensland, 9 News reports.

Along with Mercedes, Schapelle will also escorted by Australian Federal Police officers at Brisbane Airport in order to shield the family through the terminal.

The former beauty student was arrested in Denpasar airport October 2004 after being found with over four kilograms of cannabis in a body board bag, which she has always maintained wasn't hers.

Along with Mercedes, Schapelle will also escorted by Australian Federal Police officers at Brisbane Airport in order to shield the family through the terminal
Tony Blair warned today a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit would be a 'disaster' to the peace process.

The former prime minister said Northern Ireland should be treated as a 'special case' and the Common Travel Area between the UK and the Republic should be retained.

Resolving questions about the border issue are a top priority for both sides in the Brexit talks, with a mutual commitment to not returning to the 'borders of the past'.

Tony Blair (pictured today in Wicklow, Ireland) addressed a conference of influential MEPs in Ireland about the dangers of a hard border after Brexit

The former PM (pictured Fine Gael's Sean Kelly) has urged for Ireland's border with the UK to be treated as a 'special case' as part of the Brexit talks

Mr Blair spoke up for the Northern Ireland peace process today as he warned failing to sort out the border rules would be a disaster

Former British PM Tony Blair says he thinks that Northern Ireland should be treated as a special case in the upcoming Brexit negotiations pic.twitter.com/tAHpzD43UX  RTE News (@rtenews) May 12, 2017

The border is currently completely open under a combination of EU free movement rules and bilateral agreements between London and Dublin.

But there are fears Brexit could mean customs and even immigration checks on Britain's only land border with the EU.

Mr Blair today urged both sides to ensure this does not happen to protect the peace process.

Speaking at a conference of the European People's Party in Wicklow, Ireland, Mr Blair said: 'If the UK and the Republic were able to agree a way forward on the border, then we would have the best chance of limiting the damage.

'It is in the interests of us all, including our European partners, for this to happen'.

The former Premier said getting consensus on the border will be crucial in the Brexit negotiations.

'Some disruption is inevitable and indeed is already happening,' he said.

'However, it is essential that we do all we possibly can to preserve arrangements which have served both countries well and which command near universal support.

'A hard border between the countries would be a disaster and I am sure everyone will and must do all they can to avoid it.'

Tony Blair (pictured at a meeting of the European People's Party in Wicklow, Ireland today) warned today a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland after Brexit would be a 'disaster' to the peace process

The former prime minister (pictured today with Irish MEP Sean Kelly) said Northern Ireland should be treated as a 'special case' and the Common Travel Area between the UK and the Republic should be retained

Mr Blair said it was vital that the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK was maintained.

'Obviously it's important that though there will be difficult challenges with this that we safeguard that as much as possible and minimise the damage,' he said.

Mr Blair said he sees a consensus across the British political system to keep the open border arrangements between the Republic and Northern Ireland 'as similar' to now.

'I think there's a real common desire whatever issues there are in relation to Brexit to make Northern Ireland a special case and make sure we do everything we possibly can to protect the Good Friday Agreement and peace process and to protect that strong relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the UK going forward,' he said.

Speaking earlier on RTE Radio's Morning Ireland, Mr Blair said: 'I honestly believe, whatever my disagreements over Brexit with the present British Prime Minster (Theresa May) and Government, I think they will do everything they possibly can to make sure that the border is not a hard border and that we have the most satisfactory and open border arrangements as possible.'

Mr Blair has repeatedly intervened on the Brexit vote and led calls for a second referendum on the final deal (pictured with EPP chief Manfred Webber, right, and Mr Kelly, left in Wicklow today)

Mr Blair is due to make a speech on Brexit in Ireland later as he warned a Brexit deal that avoids a hard border is essential

Mr Blair is due to make a speech on Brexit later today at a meeting in Ireland when he addresses a gathering of pro-EU politicians from across Europe.

The former Labour leader has repeatedly intervened on the Brexit vote and led calls for a second referendum on the final deal.

He repeated his assertion today that British voters should have the right to change their minds on Brexit once the final terms of the split with Europe are confirmed.

But he admitted the 'overwhelming likelihood' is that Brexit will happen.

He said: 'As I say to people, at the moment it's like agreeing a house swap without having seen the other house. Well, we are going to see it.'

On the future of the leadership of the Labour Party, Mr Blair said it would be best for him to keep a 'diplomatic silence' for the time being.

He said the issue would be addressed after the election.

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier visited Dublin yesterday to make a rare address to the Irish Parliament (pictured)

Mr Barnier told Irish politicians their interests were the EU's interests in the Brexit talks, which are set to begin in earnest next month

The EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier visited Dublin yesterday to make a rare address to the Irish Parliament.

Acknowledging the particular issues Brexit poses to Ireland, Mr Barnier said: 'I want to reassure the Irish people: in this negotiation Ireland's interest will be the union's interest. We are in this negotiation together and a united EU will be here for you.'

He restated the EU's insistence that the issue of the UK-Ireland border, citizens' rights and 'the financial settlement' must be the first priorities for talks.

'We first must make sufficient progress on these points before we start discussing the future of our relationship with the UK.

'The sooner this will happen, the better. If the conditions are right, a close partnership with the UK is in everybody's interest. And in Ireland's interest in particular.'
A former captive of Kim Jong-un has warned North Korea has a prison 'full of Westerners'.

Canadian security consultant James Leigh was interrogated after being held in North Korea for several days in April.

While he was there, he said he met US professor Tony Kim - accused of trying to 'overturn' the regime - who claimed the country is holding a large number of Western prisoners.

It comes as new research suggested Kim Jong-un's military forces are more powerful than ever.

A former captive of Kim Jong-un (pictured) has warned North Korea has a prison 'full of Westerners'

According to the Daily Star, Tony Kim told Mr Leigh: 'There's a lot more Americans locked up here than anyone knows. Canadians, Americans, Europeans. There's a whole place to hold them.'

Mr Kim told Mr Leigh that locals were aware of the secret prison and referred to it as 'the house of people with no name'.

Mr Leigh said that Mr Kim was 'specific' about the jail because he feared he, too, was due to be sent there.

On Thursday, North Korea said it was its sovereign right to 'ruthlessly punish' U.S. citizens it has detained for crimes against the state, saying U.S. media's description of such arrests as a bargaining ploy was 'pure ignorance'.

'Recent Americans detained are being interrogated by relevant legal authorities for criminal acts against the Republic,' the KCNA news agenct said.

'It is an exercise of the legitimate right of a sovereign state to deal with the criminals according to its law ... The DPRK will detect and frustrate every anti-DPRK plot of the dishonest hostile elements and ruthlessly punish the criminals and thus reliably defend its state and social system.'

New research has suggested dictator Kim Jong-un's military forces are more powerful than ever.

North Korea's military manpower has increased and now ranks as the 23rd most powerful in the world - up from 35th in 2014

The statement came as it emerged that as many as four North Americans are in custody in North Korea.

In March last year, North Korea sentenced U.S. college student Otto Warmbier to 15 years of hard labour for the alleged theft of a propaganda poster.

South Korean-born Kim Dong Chul, a naturalized U.S. citizen, was convicted a month later and sentenced to 10 years hard labour - shortly after Washington levied more sanctions against Pyongyang in response to a missile test in February of that year.

Meanwhile, North Korea's military manpower has increased and now ranks as the 23rd most powerful in the world - up from 35th in 2014.

This is still well below South Korea, which is 11th in the world according to Global Firepower's annual ranking of the world's armed forces. However Seoul has slipped from seventh position in 2015.

The US tops the list followed by Russia and China while Britain is sixth, behind India and France.
The BBC cameraman run over by Jeremy Corbyn's car has today hit back at bizarre claims by Left-wingers that it was faked - or he got hit intentionally - to 'smear' the Labour leader.

Giles Wooltorton, who is on crutches after breaking two toes and suffering a badly bruised foot, denies inexplicable allegations by Labour supporters that the crash was 'set up'.

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg has also faced outlandish allegations that she was in on a conspiracy to undermine Mr Corbyn because Mr Wooltorton was her cameraman - including entirely bogus claims she pushed him.

Speaking exclusively to MailOnline at his home in Guildford Mr Wooltorton, 51, said: 'It's certainly not that way and I wouldn't have wished it to happen at all.

'I'm a behind-the-lens person, not in front. It's as simple as that.'

He added: 'It's very painful. It's the last thing I want. I've got huge management interest, police interest, Labour Party interest.'

Mr Wooltorton is unable to walk and is recuperating with his wife at home after the Labour leader's car ran over his foot yesterday.

Victim: Giles Wooltorton had to be taken away in an ambulance after the Labour leader's car ran over his foot - he told MailOnline there was no way he would do it deliberately

Mr Wooltorton was trying to take footage of the Labour leader's arrival when the accident happened. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg (pictured left) stepped in to comfort her colleague only to be accused of being part of a bizarre conspiracy

Jeremy Corbyn, who has dubbed himself 'Monsieur Zen', seemed slightly ruffled as he realised something had gone wrong as he arrived for a Labour meeting to discuss the manifesto today

A minority of Mr Corbyn's supporters have suggested that it was an attempt to undermine his election campaign hours after Labour's manifesto was leaked a week early

He fell to the ground yelling in pain after the incident, which happened outside the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London.

Within minutes of being taken away by ambulance some of Mr Corbyn's supporters suggested that it was an attempt to undermine his election campaign and baseless claims the BBC was in it.

Trolls have been calling Laura Kuenssberg 'Laura Torygirl' and a 'Conservative stooge' and even accusing the experienced journalist of pushing him in the way or 'kicking his foot'.

A minority have taken to Twitter to claim that Mr Wooltorton was hounding the Labour leader or the even more bizarre theory 'put his foot in' so the wheel would run over it.

George Foulkes said in a message to Ms Kuenssberg: 'If your cameramen stopped hounding @jeremycorbyn they would be less likely to get knocked over'.

Jane Abbott tweeted: 'If I was cynical I'd say a BBC cameraman being hit by Corbyn car when next to Corbyn hating @bbclaurak was a complete set up. Stinks'.

@Snugglegoth wrote: 'BBC cameraman filming labour leader in car. you play with the traffic, you expect to get hurt. BBC desperation to smear Corbyn. VOTE LABOUR'.

Corbyn was sat in the back of the people carrier as it arrived at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London when the incident happened just before 11.30am.

Mr Wooltorton was stood near the entrance to the underground carpark of the building in Savoy Place alongside other press filming as the dark coloured car turned in to enter.

Media footage of the shocking moment he was run over, shows the cameraman falling to the ground shouting in agony and exclaiming my foot, he ran over my foot.

But the car did not stop and Corbyn could be seen looking over his shoulder through the back window in concern as the vehicle continued into the building.

As the injured cameraman was helped by his colleagues on the side of the road, witnesses reported that Corbyn went straight inside to present the manifesto to senior Labour figures.

Scotland Yard will now face investigation, as the vehicle was being driven by officers from the Met Polices royalty and specialist protection unit.

One witness lift engineer Rob McNamara, who saw the incident, said: There was a lot of press and the poor cameraman got caught as the car turned in. It didn t stop even when the man went down.

It just continued into the building edging forward aggressively, another car was beeping behind it and the security just wanted to get them in.

BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton's foot was run over by the Labour leader's car as it entered the building on Savoy Place in central London today

Miss Kuenssberg was concerned to ensure Mr Wooltorton was in good hands as he was taken away from the scene today

The BBC and its reporters have suffered a torrent of abuse from Corbyn supporters

An ambulance was called to the scene and Mr Wooltorton was said to be good spirits as he was tended to on the pavement before being taken to hospital by ambulance.

In a statement the broadcaster said: An experienced BBC cameraman has been injured while filming at the Labour Party manifesto meeting.

He has been taken to hospital for assessment and treatment. At the moment the BBC are focusing on their duty of care, making sure that he is OK.

Police interviewed witnesses at the scene and took statements while a senior Labour source told the BBC that the party was looking into the incident.

It was part of a 14 hour horror show for the Labour leader began at around 9pm on Wednesday night when his left-wing manifesto was embarrassingly leaked a week early.

As the party went into meltdown this morning over the unprecedented campaign breach, Mr Corbyn compounded the chaos by pulling out of a poster launch - leaving young activists bewildered.

To cap off the woes, as Mr Corbyn arrived for a meeting with top Labour figures at around 11.40am his car ran over the foot of a waiting BBC cameraman, who had to be taken away in an ambulance.

The leader initially grinned for photographers - but then appeared to lose his self-style 'Zen' calm as he realised what had happened.

The disastrous sequence encapsulates the misery faced by Labour, with polls showing the party is on track to be put to the sword by the Tories on June 8.

The gloom among moderates has fuelled by the uncompromising manifesto draft - which sets out the most left-wing election platform for decades and amounts to a 'wish list' for the leader's union paymasters.

Workers on more than 80,000 a year would be hit by a 6billion tax raid, although a spending splurge on scrapping tuition fees, education, the NHS and pensions would cost many times that.

The blueprint also hints that Brexit could be blocked, makes clear there should be no limits on immigration - and calls for restrictions on inflows that are currently in place to be lifted.

The 43-page manifesto - the most radical since Michael Foot's in 1983, which was dubbed 'the longest suicide note in history' - was being prepared for a dramatic launch next week.

But a draft was leaked, leaving the party reeling and struggling to work out how to get its campaign back on track.

The very fact that the document - written by Mr Corbyn's top aides Seumas Milne and Andrew Fisher - slipped out underlines the civil war that is still raging within Labour.

A blame game is under way over who might have disclosed it, with speculation the leader's own allies might have done it to 'bounce' moderates into accepting hard-left policies. There are also claims that Mr Fisher, who once called for MI5 to be disbanded, had left a copy lying around on a desk in Labour HQ.

Mr Corbyn himself appeared completely wrongfooted by the news, pulling out of a poster launch at the last moment apparently to avoid difficult questions.

Labour's election coordinator Andrew Gwynne admitted the situation was 'not ideal'.

Having missed the launch, Mr Corbyn headed for nearby offices to hammer out details of the manifesto with senior Labour figures - but refused to take questions afterwards.

Jeremy Corbyn grinned as he arrived for a meeting to sign off the Labour manifesto today - but his car then ran over the foot of a waiting cameraman

The BBC stalwart laughed off his injury but it marked another low for the accident-prone Labour leader

The BBC cameraman was taken to hospital for treatment but the police have confirmed he was not seriously injured

Activists looked slightly bewildered after Jeremy Corbyn failed to turn up at the poster launch in central London this morning

Mr Lavery told reporters at the poster launch today was pleased about the leak because it meant people would talk about the manifesto

Labour frontbencher Ian Lavery was left covering for his leader after he pulled out of the event at the last moment today

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer are among the Labour figures attending a meeting in London today to sign off the manifesto

Unite chief Len McCluskey, who has been propping up Mr Corbyn, said it was 'really really exciting' manifesto before falling down some stairs later.

'THE LONGEST SUICIDE NOTE IN HISTORY' - THE 1983 MANIFESTO The 1983 39-page manifesto from Michael Foot, pictured, was dubbed the 'longest suicide note in history' due to its far left policies. Mr Corbyn's manifesto is four pages longer Michael Foot's 1983 General Election manifesto was a 39-page booklet that was derided for its hard Left socialist policies. Now Jeremy Corbyn is facing the same treatment for his campaign pledges, which run four pages longer than Mr Foot's. Called The New Hope for Britain, the 1983 manifesto called for unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher taxation on the rich, a withdrawal from the then European Economic Community, the abolition of the House of Lords, and the re-nationalisation of recently privatised industries including shipbulding, British Aerospace and British Telecom. But the policies put off voters and Margaret Thatcher led the Conservative Party to a resounding victory, boosted by her popularity over the Falklands War. Labour ended up securing just 28 per cent of the vote, while the Tories received 42 per cent. It meant the Conservatives gained almost 40 seats, while Labour lost 50, giving Mrs Thatcher a very comfortable 144-seat majority. The slogan itself was the brainchild of Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, displaying the resentment for Mr Foot's policies from within his own party. After the defeat in 1983, Labour began a gradual shift towards the political centre ground, first under Neil Kinnock and then Tony Blair, eventually rising to power in the 1997 General Election. Advertisement

The union presence at the 'Clause V' gathering has been beefed up with an extra eight representatives to help the leader impose his will.

But Labour moderates are not planning to fight his demands for a socialist programme that is red in tooth and claw and dripping with class envy.

Instead they are trusting voters to deliver a verdict on the proposals - and put an end to the hard-left takeover of the Opposition.

One source warned it was 'Ed Miliband's manifesto with hard left hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top'.

Another source told the Daily Mirror: 'Is that it? For 40 years the Hard Left wanted to control the Labour manifesto, and all it amounts to is a load of freebies for every special interest group.'

Mr Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell have claimed the final manifesto will be 'fully costed'.

But, with new spending pledges running into hundreds of billions of pounds, it will raise concerns that Labour would embark on a gigantic borrowing spree, as well as levying swingeing taxes on business and the middle classes.

The extent of the pledges suggests Mr Corbyn's team believes it has nothing to lose in next month's election and can make a series of populist promises with little prospect of ever having to deliver them.

The document reveals the depth of influence of the union barons who are bankrolling the party's election campaign.

A new Ministry of Labour will oversee the biggest boost to workers' rights in decades. Collective bargaining will be extended and laws designed to prevent damaging strikes will be rolled back.

Around 20billion a year will be raised by reversing the cuts to corporation tax introduced by the Tories since 2010.

Specific union demands have also been written in - including a ban on driver-only trains in the wake of the RMT and Aslef industrial action that has been blighting Southern and other rail franchises.

There will be a further taxes on firms 'with high numbers of staff on very high pay' and a previously-announced tax on private health firms. And new income taxes will be levied on workers earning more than 80,000 a year.

The 6billion raised by the tax hike will be ploughed directly into the NHS.

Other eye-catching measures include a promise to 'take energy back into public hands'.

While the existing power companies will be allowed to continue, a new publicly-owned competitor firm will be established in every region of the UK.

It suggests a Labour government would also take full control over the National Grid.

The draft manifesto pledges to bring the Royal Mail back into public ownership following the 'historic mistake' of the coalition government to sell it off.

Publicly-owned bus companies will be established, and railways renationalised as each private franchise expires with a pledge 'to repeal the Railways Act 1993 under which the Conservatives privatised the railways.'

The manifesto also promised: 'We will end racism and discrimination against Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and protect the right to lead a nomadic way of life.'

Prime Minister Theresa May, who was campaigning in London and Southampton today, branded Labour 'shambolic'

After the manifesto was formally approvated by the Clause V meeting tonight, Mr Corbyn tried to put a brave face in the situation.

He vowed the final manifesto would include 'costings of all the pledges and promises that we make'.

The draft was the result of 'the most informed, interesting, sensible discussion and debate' within the party, he said.

Theresa May said Labour's day had been 'pretty shambolic'. 'I think what we see from the issue around the Labour Party's manifesto is, first of all, it is pretty shambolic the way the manifesto has come out,' she saidon a visit to a mental health charity in London.

'I think that shows the sort of chaos that we would see from a Labour government.

'But, crucially, if you look at what they are suggesting, if you take their manifesto overall, actually, what they are suggesting is taking us back to the past.

'What I'm interested in is dealing with the challenges that we face today but making a better future for this country.'

Mrs May also went canvassing in Southampton today, where the Tories are hoping to pick up seats.

Jeremy Corbyn's Labour manifesto would 'take Britain back to the 1970s' by re-nationalising railways, the energy industry and the Royal Mail, a leaked draft has revealed

Labour's manifesto pledges have also sparked fears the party would go on a 'gigantic borrowing spree' to fund it

CORBYN IS JUST THE LATEST LEADER TO SUFFER POLITICAL CATASTROPHE ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL Jeremy Corbyn may have suffered the premature leak of Labour's manifesto and seen his car run over a photographer today - but he can take solace that he is not the first leader to endure such setbacks. There is a long tradition of politicians coming a cropper in the public eye, inflicting differing degrees of damage on their own electoral chances. NEIL KINNOCK Neil Kinnock notoriously slipped on the beach in Brighton in 1983 When he was elected Labour leader, many thought Neil Kinnock was destined for victory. But his image was forever tarnished when he tried to take a walk on Brighton beach in October 1983. The Welshman was striding along with his wife Glenys when he was hit by a small wave - and promptly crumpled in a heap on the sand. The episode came to represent his somewhat accident-prone leadership. GORDON BROWN Gordon Brown came a cropper after being confronted by Gillian Duffy in Rochdale in 2010 Gordon Brown, never the most natural of public performers, struggled as Labour's front man in the 2010 election. His worst moment came when he was confronted by Gillian Duffy in Rochdale, who voiced concerns about the effects of immigration. Having seemingly dealt with the encounter quite well, Mr Brown forgot to detach his lapel microphone on returning to the prime ministerial car and was overheard describing her as a 'bigoted woman'. The ensuing mea culpa was agonising, as his careless words were played back to him during an interview. William Hague was ridiculed after boasting that he drank 14 pints of beer a night in his youth WILLIAM HAGUE One of WIlliam Hague's main problems when he became Tory leader was his 'Young Fogey' reputation. So ingenious decided Mr Hague should talk about how he would regularly down 14 pints of beer a night in his youth. He told GQ magazine he would drink a 'horrifying' amount while working delivering soft drinks in South Yorkshire. 'Anyone who thinks I used to spend my holidays reading political tracts should have come with me for a week,' he said. As well as general ridicule, the remark drew a sharp rebuke from Alcohol Concern. A spokesman for the charity said: 'We say that people should stick to the government guidelines, but they should also remember that they are the maximum recommended levels and not the level people should be encouraged to drink at every day.' ED MILIBAND Ed Miliband's tenure in charge of Labour was blighted by awkward mishaps. One notorious episode was when he tried to consume a bacon sandwich under the glare of TV cameras at an event in London in 2013. Sadly, his aides had forgotten to tell him that no-one looks good eating. The resulting photographs went viral and helped cement his gawky persona in the public mind. It surely contributed to his eventual defeat at the hands of David Cameron two years later. The photograph of Ed Miliband struggling to eat a bacon sandwich in 2014 came to sum up his hapless spell in charge of Labour Advertisement

Labour says Brexit might NOT happen as poll finds most voters have NO IDEA where party stands on the issue

Jeremy Corbyn has again raised the prospect of blocking Brexit after the leaked manifesto ruled out leaving the EU with no deal.

The document says that no deal is the 'worst possible' situation for Britain and would damage the economy.

The position leaves Mr Corbyn open to the accusation he could be held to ransom by Brussels, as he has effectively told them his bottom line in negotiations.

Theresa May has been careful to stress that she is willing to walk away from the table if the EU tries to impose punitive arrangements.

Mr Corbyn, pictured with Labour supporters in Rotherham yesterday, ruled out leaving the EU without a deal, according to the leaked manifesto

The Prime Minister has argued that without the option of walking away, Britain's negotiating hand is severely weakened.

But the draft Labour manifesto says: 'Labour recognises that leaving the EU with 'no deal' is the worst possible deal for Britain and would do damage to our economy and trade.

'We will reject 'no deal' as a viable and negotiate transitional arrangements to avoid a cliff-edge for the UK economy.'

It also promises an MPs' vote on the final deal  raising the prospect Brexit could be abandoned if Remain-supporting Labour MPs refuse to approve it.

Mr Corbyn sparked confusion earlier this week when he refused seven times to confirm that Britain would definitely leave the EU if Labour wins the election.

A YouGov poll for the Times today indicates that two thirds of the public and more than half of Labour voters think the party has no clear policy on Brexit, are not sure or picked the wrong option from a list.

In another snub to the outcome of the Brexit referendum, Labour will rule out limits on immigration, while saying numbers should be 'managed'.

The Prime Minister this week recommitted the Conservatives to reducing net migration to the tens of thousands.

Mr Corbyn has previously indicated he wants unfettered migration to continue.

The Labour manifesto also said all EU migrants already here will be given automatic rights to stay. Pictured are the shadow cabinet at the campaign launch earlier this week

His manifesto says all EU migrants already here will be given automatic rights to stay  something Mrs May has refused to do as she wants to make sure the rights of British ex-pats are also secured.

The Labour document says: 'The Conservative government has scapegoated immigrants to divert from for their own failings and have made bogus promises on immigration.

'When politicians fan the flames of fear it has real consequences on both recently-arrived and long-settled communities.

'Today, the National Health Service, our social care providers and private companies across many sectors depend on the labour of migrant workers. We value those workers and we will never denigrate them.

'We also understand the importance of more skills training for British nationals, whatever their colour or creed.'
A holidaymaker got into a hilarious dance off with a blonde woman while on a stag do in Las Vegas.

Dave Richards, 29, from Exmouth, Devon, was in the gambling city at the beginning of this month with a group of friends.

The mechanic was showing off his moves wearing nothing but a very revealing speedo with a drink in his hand.

The smooth mover soon caught the eye of a female holidaymaker wearing a black bikini.

She returned his dance moves with some impressive shapes of her own.

A holidaymaker got into a hilarious dance off with a blonde woman while on a stag do in Las Vegas

Mr Richards didn't give up and was seen twerking his behind during the funny dance off.

Throughout the funny episode, Mr Richard's friends were egging him on.

The minute-long clip ends with Mr Richard's waving his finger and smiling at the female dancer.
David Davis reignited tensions with Jean-Claude Juncker today by accusing the EU commission chief of trying to get him sacked.

The Brexit Secretary said senior figures in Brussels wanted to force him out in order to undermine the UK's negotiating position.

But he insisted he saw the poisonous briefing coming from the top levels of the EU as a 'compliment'.

Brexit Secretary David Davis said senior figures in Brussels wanted to force him out

Theresa May has lashed out at Eurocrats for 'meddling' and 'threats' in a bid to influence the outcome of the June 8 General Election.

She has urged voters to give her a thumping majority to strengthen her position for the looming Brexit talks.

Relations plunged to a new low after vicious leaks about a dinner at Downing Street attended by Mrs May, Mr Davis, Mr Juncker and EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier.

The detailed account - widely believed to have been given to a German newspaper by Mr Juncker's chief of staff Martin Selmayr - claimed Mrs May was 'in another galaxy' and warned the chances of a deal were receding.

Mr Juncker admitted earlier this week the leaking of accounts of his dinner in No 10 to discuss Brexit with the PM was a 'serious mistake', although he denied responsibility.

Mr Davis told the Daily Telegraph today: 'I think to be honest he has now learned his lesson - he is not going to be meddling in British politics any more or at least if he does he will get the same reaction.'

There was a stream of poisonous briefing after Jean-Claude Juncker had dinner with Mrs May in Downing Street (pictured)

He added: 'All these stories are briefing against me, trying to get me sacked - which, of course, is a compliment by the way.

'If they don't want me across the table, there is a reason for that - it is in Britain's interests, not theirs.'

Mr Davis said an election victory for Mrs May 'reinforces her negotiating hand', adding: 'One of the things that may have led to that briefing is the fact they know a big mandate from the British people is a big mandate in the negotiation and helps (us) and doesn't help him.'

The Brexit Secretary said he was confident that an early agreement would be reached on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and British expatriates on the continent, which is set to be one of the first items on the agenda once negotiations start.

'I see no reason why we can't have an 'in principle' agreement straight away for EU nationals and British nationals abroad,' he said.

'Once it is agreed people can relax. We want people not to be anxious.'

Voters getting more confident that PM can win a good deal from Brussels

Voters are becoming more confident that Theresa May will secure a good Brexit deal, according to a poll today.

Research by ORB found 44 per cent believe the PM can secure a good agreement - up from 41 per cent a month ago.

The proportion who fear she will not has dropped marginally from 35 to 34 per cent.

"British voters seem increasingly confident that May is going to pull off the right deal despite the might of the EU," said ORB managing director Johnny Heald.

The survey found 55 per cent approved of the way the government was conducting preliminary talks, while 45 per cent disapproved.

However, a separate poll of 9,000 voters in nine EU countries by RED C showed that 78 percent say the bloc's primary objective should be ensuring its future.

Just 22 percent wanted the talks to focus on building a new special economic relationship with Britain.

In Ireland, 70 percent of respondents said protecting the Good Friday Agreement was critical.
Former television presenter Kelly Landry has taken a break from her lengthy AVO court battle with estranged husband Anthony Bell to speak at a luncheon for The Heart Foundation.

Despite being the centre of an ugly and highly publicised marriage breakdown, Ms Landry, 37, took the time to inspire other woman with stories about her heart condition at the Sydney event on Friday.

After the birth of her first child in 2011, Ms Landry was diagnosed with a rare heart defect left ventricular noncompaction and Ebsteins anomaly.

Scroll down for video

Ms Landry (right) posed with another woman at the luncheon for The Heart Foundation in Sydney

The former Getaway host (middle) took a break from her ugly marriage breakdown to inspire other women at the event

Her health battle has rarely been played out in public, and Ms Landry shared to a room full of women the trauma of a heart condition diagnosis.

The former Getaway host spoke at the Women with Heart Lunch held by The Heart Foundation on Monday about her private illness.

'I had a brand new baby, a congenital heart condition and a doctor standing across from me saying, "We don't know a lot about this, it's only been diagnosed within the last five years, but what we do know is the greatest risk is sudden death and stroke",' Ms Landry said.

Her two pregnancies put a strain on her heart and at one point she even went into the early stages of heart failure.

Ms Landry also opened up about her battle with heart disease in March, telling Daily Mail Australia she spent four 'lonely' months of her second pregnancy in hospital.

The former Getaway host spoke at the Women with Heart Lunch held by the Heart Foundation on Monday about her private illness

Her health battle has rarely been played out in public, and Ms Landry (right) shared to a room full of women the trauma of a heart condition diagnosis

Ms Landry (pictured) was a special guest at The Heart Foundation luncheon which was held in Sydney on Friday

'My personal heart story': Ms Landry shared with guests the trauma of having a heart condition

The embattled wife of 'accountant to the stars' Anthony Bell was a world away from her seemingly endless court appearances.

The couple - who share two daughters - spent have spent days in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court for a hearing into an AVO Ms Landry has taken out against Mr Bell.

Police took out an AVO on behalf of Ms Landry in January, 2017, following an incident at their home in Watson's Bay, Sydney, on November 18 last year.

The last few days of court have shed light on explosive allegations of physical assault, financial bullying and accusations of an 'inappropriate' relationship between Mr Bell and The Footy Show star Erin Molan.

A magistrate is set to decide in a little over a weeks' time whether to grant a permanent AVO against Mr Bell.

The couple - who share two daughters - spent have spent days in Sydney's Downing Centre Local Court for a hearing into an AVO Ms Landry has taken out against Mr Bell (pictured is Ms Landry)

Police took out an AVO on Anthony Bell (right) on behalf of Ms Landry in January, 2017, following an incident at their home in Watson's Bay, Sydney, on November 18 last year
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Stunning Second World War photographs show American's first black military airmen preparing for battle in the face of crippling segregation.

The famed 'Tuskegee Airmen' were determined civilians who volunteered to train as pilots, navigators and bombardiers and formed an elite squadron of all-black military pilots.

Known officially as the 332nd Fighter and 477th Bombardment groups, they trained and graduated from the historically black university in Tuskegee, Alabama - a landmark move as African Americans had been pressing for access to elite military training for decades.

In April 1943 they shipped out to North Africa and Sicily, and later earned the nickname 'Red-Tail Angels' for their aircrafts' custom crimson-dipped nose and tail paint jobs.

The airmen stylishly embody American wartime cool in leather aviator jackets and bomber caps in the images - which were taken by Antoinette 'Toni' Frissell in Ramitelli, Italy, in 1945, and later released by the Library of Congress.

But their stoicism is the result of years of training, and their resolve a product of the Jim Crow-era discrimination they overcame just for the chance to fight for their country.

That they might be killed doing so underscores the irony of a military that would offer up its young men for battle, but only in the company of those with the same color skin.

Edward C. Gleed, a Tuskegee airman wearing flight gear, poses next to his fighter plane at an air base at Ramitelli, Italy, 1945. The famed 'Tuskegee Airmen' were determined civilians who volunteered to train as pilots, navigators and bombardiers and formed an elite squadron of all-black military pilots

A group of Tuskegee airmen exit the parachute room at Ramitelli as they prepare to take to the skies. The airmen were known officially as the 332nd Fighter and 477th Bombardment groups and trained and graduated from the historically black university in Tuskegee, Alabama - a landmark move as African Americans had been pressing for access to elite military training for decades

Leaning over the engine, Marcellus G. Smith and Roscoe C. Brown look intent as they work on an airplane. In April 1943, the Tuskegee airmen shipped out to North Africa and Sicily, where they promptly garnered distinction for their effectiveness in clearing Axis forces from strategic Mediterranean naval routes

Members of the Army Air Force 332nd Fighter Group gather round a wooden table as they discuss tactics in a briefing room in Italy. The images, captured by Antoinette 'Toni' Frissell and released by the Library of Congress, show the airmen stylishly embodying American wartime cool in leather aviator jackets and bomber caps

One shot offers a rare glimpse into the off-duty lives of the Tuskegee airmen as they laugh while playing cards in the officers' club in the evening. The airmen knew the US government was not keen on integrating the military - so much so that one black pilot even enlisted in the French air service after being rejected by his own

Pilot Edward M. Thomas takes a break from the chaos to smoke a cigarette. Leaning against the wall of a parachute room, he looks pensively into the middle distance. The interwar period saw civil rights groups and professional organizations like the NAACP pressing for greater access to military training

A pilot from the 332nd Fighter Group furrows his brow as he signs a Form One Book, indicating any discrepancies of the aircraft before take off. In 1939, African Americans were rewarded when a House Appropriations Bill earmarked funds for training black pilots at any civilian flight schools that would have them

Colonel Benjamin O. Davis gazes at the sky next to a fighter plane in Italy in March 1945 in a stylish display of American wartime cool. He was among the squadron of Tuskegee airmen who later earned the nickname 'Red-Tail Angels' for their aircrafts' custom crimson-dipped nose and tail paint jobs

A breathtaking shot shows four P-51 Mustangs soaring through the skies in perfect formation in Ramitelli. The airmen were escorting bomber missions into central Europe and Germany, shooting down the Luftwaffe's technologically superior fighter jets

A standing airmen laughs as he holds a knife high above his head among a crowd of members of the 332nd in a briefing room. The images were captured by Antoinette Frissell, a Manhattan fashion photographer who volunteered for war in 1941 and became an official chronicler of the American Red Cross and Women's Army Corps activities in Europe, producing inspirational images for use as propaganda

Ground crew with aviator jackets slung over their shoulders group together as they gaze at the skies. The shot is a rare moment of respite among the 280 medium format photos which show a tight knit band of modern warriors preparing for the next mission

A Tuskegee airman crouches effortlessly on the wing of a P-5/D, 'Creameris Dream' airplane in Ramitelli in March 1945 - just six months before the Second World War ended

A groupof pilots look on intently as their peers indulge in a tense game of cards in the officers' club in the evening. They were based at Ramitelli air field, a temporary airfield southeast of Campomarino in the north of Apulia, Italy. It was built by the United States Army Corps of Engineers in early 1944, as part of the Foggia Airfield Complex and had a single runway and made use of farmhouses around the airfield as operations buildings

Planning an upcoming air mission, Woodrow W. Crockett, stands at the center next to Edward C. Gleed, Lawrence, KS, Class 42-K, group operations officer on the right and an unidentified airman seated on the left

One image shows Sergeant William P. Bostic looking the picture of composed calm as he gives out instructions at the control tower. Frissell's pictures from the war are persuasive, though they also function as powerful vignettes of wartime humanity

Tuskegee airmen take notes as they attend a briefing. Among those shown are: Hiram E. Mann of Cleveland, Newman C. Golden of Cincinnati, Bertram W. Wilson Jr. of Brooklyn, Samuel W. Watts Jnr of New York, Armour G. McDemoe of Martinsville, Howard C. Gamble of Charles Town, Harry T. Steward, Jr. of Corona, Earle R. Lane of Wickliffe, Wyrain T. Shell of Brooklyn, Harold M. Morris of Seattle, John E. Edwards of Steubenville, John H. Porter of Cleveland, James H. Fischer of Stoughton, Wyrain T. Shell of Brooklyn, William E. 'Porky' Rice of Swarthmore, Tony Weaver, Charles L. White of St. Louis, George Arnold Lynch of Valley Stream, Samuel L. Washington of Cleveland, Calvin J. Spann of Rutherford and Frank N. Wright of Elmsford




A tycoon's feud with his wife has ended up in court after a row over money for Botox and her fling with a DJ.

Mike Ramsay, 59, from Elgin in Moray, was arguing with Gemma Ramsay, 34, in his Porsche at Inverness Airport, after she requested more money for Botox and lip injections.

Mr Ramsay had already forked out 70,000 for her boob and nose jobs and wanted to know why her millionaire DJ lover Mark Vanderpump, 56 - whom he allowed her to continue to have an affair with - wouldn't pay for it.

He was accused of threatening to kill his wife during the row and he turned himself in at a police station.

Mrs Ramsay (pictured), 34, had begun an affair with millionaire DJ Mark Vanderpump

Mike Ramsay, 59, from Elgin in Moray, was arguing with Gemma Ramsay (pictured together in happier times), 34, in his Porsche at Inverness Airport, after she requested more money for Botox and lip injections

Pictured is Mark Vanderpump, who Mrs Ramsay was having an affair with - with the blessing of her husband

According to The Sun, he told Inverness Sheriff Court: 'It was better to have an adulterous wife than have no mother for our two children.'

The court heard that in the row Mr Ramsay told her: 'The only thing he feels when he puts his hand in his pocket is his c**k.'

But the court was told his wife hit back, saying: 'At least he knows what to do with it.'

Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Ramsay said his wife had turned to drink and suffered from depression.

He said he hoped to save their marriage, despite her affair with Mr Vanderpump who had relaunched the lad mag model's career. But things escalated when she flew home in October 2016.

When Mr Ramsay, who owned the now-bust Scotland Electronics Limited, picked up his wife they argued in the car.

When Mr Ramsay, who owned the now-bust Scotland Electronics Limited, picked up his wife they argued in the car

Giving evidence yesterday, Mr Ramsay (left) said his wife (centre) had turned to drink and suffered from depression

Pictured are Mike Ramsay and his wife Gemma in happier times on their wedding day

He stopped the car at Nairn police station and told her to go in and report it.

Mrs Ramsay claimed he raised a fist and threatened her, but Mr Ramsay denied this claim and said he pointed to the car door.

Sheriff Charlotte Coutts found him not guilty of behaving in a threatening and abusive manner.

Mr Ramsay's lawyer Matt Jackson said: 'His behaviour was perfectly reasonable in the circumstances.

'This was nothing more than the sad breakdown of a marriage played out in court.'
The families of two women and a baby killed in a car wreck say they are comforted by a strange photo taken at the scene of the crash.

Hannah Simmons, 23, her nine month old daughter A'lannah, and friend Lauren Buteau, 28, from Gainesville, Georgia, were killed in a car crash on April 25.

Ms Simmons lost control of her Subaru Legacy and hit another vehicle. The crash caused a traffic jam and driver Anisa Gannon found herself stranded as she drove to work.

Anisa Gannon captured the strange image of a ray of light beaming down on a car wreck

Hannah Simmons (centre), her nine month old daughter A'lannah, and friend Lauren Buteau (left), from Gainesville, Georgia, were killed in a car crash on April 25. Hannah's cousin Paige Wilson (right) said 'no doubt' the photo was 'some kind of sign'

To prove to her boss that she was trapped, Ms Gannon snapped a photo her aunt, Tara Noble, told TODAY.

The photo shows a ray of light beaming down on the crash scene as two lighter patches appear to fly up out of the wreck.

The families of the victims say the picture has given them hope.

When Ms Noble looked at the photo, she said she instantly saw the 'pathway to heaven'.

The families of the victims say the picture has given them hope. Pictured Hannah Simmons and her nine month old daughter A'lannah

While many would attribute the light to a windshield glare or lens flare, Ms Noble said that was not the point.

She added: 'I don't believe in coincidences, especially the two "lights" inside that bigger light.

'It brought the families peace, whether it's a glare or not.

'It's indescribable, basically, and it does look like them leaving.'

Ms Noble tracked down the victim Hannah Simmons' mother, Judy, who said the photo was a gift.

She said: 'That picture was taken for a reason  to give me sanity. Hannah was also my best friend, and she's looking down from heaven now.'

She added that Ms Simmons and Ms Buteau were best friends, just like their mothers, Judy and Dana.

Paige Wilson, Hannah Simmons' cousin, said: 'No doubt its some kind of sign'.
Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (pictured on GMB yesterday) is not fielding candidates in scores of marginal seats

Ukip is not standing candidates in scores of marginal seats around the country in a huge boost to Theresa May's hopes of a big majority.

The nomination deadline for the June 8 general election passed at 4pm yesterday and the lack of Ukip candidates is today emerging.

In many places, Ukip is not standing candidates in Labour-held seats where in 2015 they secured more votes than the MP's majority.

Across England and Wales, around 70 Labour MPs were elected in 2015 by a smaller margin than the local Ukip vote. Polls and the local elections suggest that vote is switching in huge numbers to the Tories.

Ukip is not standing in Wirral West, which Labour won from the Tories by 422 votes in 2015. The Eurosceptic party scored 2,772 votes there.

There will be no Ukip candidate in Wrexham, where Labour is defending a majority of 1,831 over the Tories - with 5,072 Ukip votes now up for grabs.

A similar situation exists in Delyn where Ukip socred 6,105 votes in 2015 but are not standing on June 8. Labour beat the Tories to the seat by 2,930.

Ukip has also stood down in Stoke South, Bassetlaw, Eltham, Wakefield, Don Valley and Birmingham Erdington, all which offer the chance of a surprise Tory challenge.

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 this week said it was hoping to field candidates in more than 400 seats but a spokesman was today unavailable to confirm if this was the case.

Earlier this week, 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.

Labour politicians Margaret Greenwood (left) and Ian Lucas (right) are both defending constituencies in which Ukip are not standing in June 8 but in 2015 secured more votes than their majority

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.

Bizarrely, Ukip does not even have a candidate in Clacton, the only constituency it won in 2015, when Douglas Carswell (pictured in Westminster last week) stood for the party

'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.'
A Perth man whose bloodied body was found in a Bali villa is now believed to have been strangled to death by someone close to him, police say.

Stephen Richardson, 63, was found lying naked on his bed in his rented villa at the popular beachside town of Sanur by his friend on Monday afternoon.

Mr Richardson was found lying on a mattress in a pool of blood with wounds to his right arm, right cheek, and forehead, but an autopsy has revealed the cause of death to be strangulation.

Bloody footprints at the scene appear to indicate that Mr Richardson moved from the bedroom to the bathroom to the living room during the attack, while a second set of smaller footprints discovered could belong to his attacker.

Stephen Richardson, 63, (pictured) whose bloodied body was found in a Bali villa is now believed to have been strangled to death by someone close to him, police say

A set of footprints discovered could belong to the 63-year-old's attacker. Authorities would not confirm whether they belonged to a man or woman

The discovery of the second set of footprints has led local authorities to believe Mr Richardson was possibly the victim of 'an act of violence' at the hands of someone who close to him.

'If they didn't know the victim, he or she couldn't get into the house,' Head of Denpasar District Police Colonel Hadi Purnomo said.

There was no confirmation on whether the footprints belonged to a man or woman.

Initially police believed the 63-year-old may have died as a result of an accident while intoxicated.

'There has been an assault that has caused the victim's death,' Head of Denpasar District Police Colonel Hadi Purnomo said on Friday.

'There's also stabbing, blunt object (trauma) too.

'(But) the main (cause of death) is strangulation, which caused the victim to run out of breath and die.'

Col Purnomo added that the largest amount of blood was in the living room area of the rented villa.

Police say they are continuing an investigation into his death but have so far been unable to find CCTV that may lead to a suspect.

They believe the killing was carried out by a single perpetrator.

'The questioning of witnesses also hasn't led to suspect,' Col Purnomo said.

Police at the rented villa scouring the scene as they continued to investigate the case

There has also been no sign of robbery, with Mr Richardson's passport, phone, money and jewellery left untouched at the villa.

The main gate had also been locked from the outside.

'There are weird things (about the case). The main gate was locked from the outside while the garage door was locked from the inside,' police said.

When police arrived they said the house was locked and there was broken glass from a cabinet inside the villa.

Mr Richardson is believed to have moved to Bali around three months ago and was living alone at the villa.

Friends had seen him on Saturday night drinking at a local bar and around 10 beer bottles were found at the scene.

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)

Police outside the rented villa of Australian man Stephen Richardson in Bali on Tuesday

Friend Garry Crocker scaled Mr Richardson's fence on Monday afternoon after being unable to contact him for a number of 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.

Mr Richardson is believed to have moved to Bali around three months ago and was living alone at 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.

'It could be the victim was fighting back. Maybe at the crime scene, we will find the blood of a perpetrator,' Col Purnomo added.

'The blood on the porch is being checked to see whether it's the victim's or if it is a perpetrator's.'

A suspect is being questioned by police before a DNA test after hair and two types of blood were found at the grisly crime scene,

They will now be matched against the suspect's, who is reportedly known to the victim.

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'

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.

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.'

Mr Richardson's family released a statement through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) saying that until the Indonesian Police have concluded their investigation, they did not wish to comment.

'We are greatly saddened by this event and ask the media to please respect our privacy and allow us to grieve in private.'
Madeleine McCann's parents have sent a touching message to their messing daughter on what would be her 14th birthday.

Kate, 49, and Gerry McCann, 48, are to mark the occasion by laying presents in Maddie's bedroom at their Leicestershire home.

The room has become a shrine to the girl, who vanished 10 years ago - aged three - while on a family holiday in Praia da Luz in Portugal.

Alongside a photo of her, Maddie's parents wrote on Facebook: 'Happy 14th Birthday, Madeleine! We love you and we're waiting for you and we're never going to give up.'

Alongside a photo of her, Maddie's parents wrote on Facebook: 'Happy 14th Birthday, Madeleine! We love you and we're waiting for you and we're never going to give up.'

The parents of Madeleine McCann joined villagers, family and friends to pray for their daughter on the 'unwanted' heart wrenching 10th anniversary of her disappearance

Kate, 49, and Gerry McCann, 48, are to mark the occasion by laying presents in Maddie's bedroom at their Leicestershire home

Kate has previously described how the family continue to buy cards and presents to mark each birthday and Christmas and they are left unopened in the hope that Madeleine will return to see them.

The family will say a prayer for her today and their 12-year-old twins Sean and Amelie will blow out candles on their sister's cake, according to The Sun.

In a TV interview last week, Kate said: 'I do all the present buying.

'I think about what age she is and buy something that, whenever we find her, will still be appropriate so there's a lot of thought goes into it.'

Kate and Gerry hold on to a glimmer of hope that Madeleine could still be alive.

10 years since Maddie vanished, Carlos Anjos, the former head of the country's Policia Judiciaria officers' union, said the Metropolitan Police's theory that Madeleine was taken in a botched burglary is 'absurd'

In a TV interview last week, Kate said: 'I do all the present buying. 'I think about what age she is and buy something that, whenever we find her, will still be appropriate so there's a lot of thought goes into it'

The family will say a prayer for her today and their 12-year-old twins Sean and Amelie will blow out candles on their sister's cake

Scotland Yard is still chasing a critical lead it believes could crack the case and it is understood they have returned to a theory that burglars were involved.

But the Portuguese police, who have previously accused the British of acting like a 'colonial power' in their country, say there is no evidence to back this up.

But, 10 years since Maddie vanished, Carlos Anjos, the former head of the country's Policia Judiciaria officers' union, said the Metropolitan Police's theory that Madeleine was taken in a botched burglary is 'absurd'.

Carlos Anjos, who accused Gerry and Kate McCann of hampering the abduction investigation in 2007, said: 'This burglary theory is absurd.

And the detective leading the case, Pedro do Carma, says British police made four local men in Praia du Luz suspects for three years when they obviously had nothing to do with the abduction.

Mr Anjos, who accused Gerry and Kate McCann of hampering the abduction investigation in 2007, said: 'This burglary theory is absurd. Not even a wallet disappeared, nothing else disappeared. A child disappeared.'

It came as the four men questioned over her disappearance in 2014 and still living in Praia Da Luz were told last week they have no case to answer.

One of them, Paulo Ribeiro, told the BBC's Panorama: 'I thought it was incredible. I knew of nothing when the police arrived at my door with a piece of paper that had a drawing on it, saying it bore a likeness to me and that someone had said I was involved and that I looked like the person who had kidnapped Maddie. I don't know who that person was.'

There are not believed to be any others with 'arguido' status - the Portuguese term for a formal suspect in a crime.

Pedro do Carma, deputy director of the Policia Judiciaria, told Panorama these men should not have been made suspects.

But he also suggested that Kate and Gerry McCann should never have been suspects in 2007 either.

He said of the four men: 'I can only say that we questioned those people on request of the Metropolitan Police and only based on the request of the Metropolitan Police.

'We never questioned those people. We never saw or looked at those people as suspects of the crime.'

Madeleine McCann's parents claimed Portuguese police treated them inhumanely from the start of the investigation into their daughter's disappearance, according to a secret report leaked yesterday.

A tribute to Madeleine McCann is left outside the Church of Nossa Senhora da Luz in Praia Da Luz earlier this month

Kate (pictured clutching her favourite teddy bear, a Cuddle Cat) and Gerry's relationship with the police in Portugal deteriorated rapidly

After a short service, the couple were seen leaving the same way they arrived, holding hands and united in their anguish last week

The Home Office document reveals they also later fell out with British officers and did not share 'a large amount of information' gathered by their own private investigators.

The 'turbulent relationship' between Madeleine's parents and detectives in both Portugal and the UK hampered the hunt for the three-year-old who vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz in Portugal on May 3, 2007.

Passages from the secret report  ordered by then home secretary Alan Johnson in 2009  emerged as Gerry and Kate McCann marked the tenth anniversary of Madeleine's disappearance last week.

Maddie's hairbrush is returned to Gerry and Kate 10 years on Madeleine McCann's hairbrush was returned to her parents last week. Private investigator Daniel Krugel was given it by Kate and Gerry McCann after her disappearance in the hope its hair could be used for DNA matching. But a decade on it had been given back to her parents, Sky News revealed. Spokesman Clarence Mitchell (pictured) said: 'Gerry did give a hairbrush to Mr Krugel at the time to assist in his work. 'He eventually returned to South Africa and the hairbrush slipped their minds. But they were delighted to get one of Madeleine's possessions back. We are very grateful for it.' Advertisement

It says: 'It is clear that from the beginning the McCanns felt there was a lack of clarity and communication on the part of the Portuguese police.

Despite the involvement of British consular staff, they were, by their own accounts, left for long periods without any updates or communication with the investigators.

'They state they were taken to the police station on more than one occasion and then left for hours waiting to speak to someone who never materialised.

'They describe this situation as inhumane, with no real consideration for their emotional and physical wellbeing.'

It was written by the Child Exploitation And Online Protection Centre for the Home Office to establish if it was worth getting Scotland Yard to review the case.

Report author Jim Gamble, former head of CEOP, said that 'frequent criticism of the Portuguese investigation led to accusations the UK was acting like 'a colonial power'.'

The intervention of British detectives also created a sense of 'frustration' and 'resentment' among Portuguese officers, he found, and the decision to put Leicestershire Police in charge of the operation was a mistake because the force was ill-equipped to deal with such a big investigation.

His report states: 'The McCanns have had a turbulent relationship with both Portuguese and UK law enforcement. They now openly acknowledge there is a distinct lack of trust between all parties.'

Madeleine vanished from the family's holiday apartment as her parents dined yards away with friends.

Even before the end of the original Portuguese investigation, Mr and Mrs McCann used money collected by fundraisers to hire private investigators, and continued to use them for the three years before Scotland Yard got involved in 2011.

The report, unearthed by Sky News, concluded: 'It is clear that the McCanns and the private investigators working on their behalf have gathered a large amount of information during the course of their inquiries.

'This information does not appear to have been shared fully with the Leicestershire constabulary or Portuguese authorities.'
Nicola Sturgeon is standing by senior SNP candidate Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh despite her facing a probe into allegations about her legal career.

The SNP today confirmed the Law Society of Scotland was looking into professional misconduct claims about Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh.

But in a statement the party stood by her and her re-election campaign for the Commons seat of Ochil and South Perthshire.

Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh today insisted she was proud of her 17-year legal career and was getting on with her re-election bid.

Ms Sturgeon is under pressure to drop her as a candidate over the allegations, which pre-date her political career. Nominations closed yesterday and Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh will appear on the ballot on June 8 for the SNP.

Nicola Sturgeon (pictured at a business conference in Inverness today) is standing by senior SNP candidate Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh despite her facing a probe into allegations about her legal career

Ms Sturgeon is under pressure to drop Mrs Ahmed Sheikh as an SNP candidate over the allegations, which pre-date her political career

Senior SNP politician Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh is under investigation for professional misconduct relating to her previous career as a lawyer (file picture in the Commons)

Confirming the probe, Mrs Ahmed Sheikh said: 'I'm proud of my 17-year career in the legal profession. I am aware that issues have been raised with the Law Society in relation to administrative matters during my time at my former firm.

'The Law Society has a duty to uphold professional standards and they must be allowed to do so without prejudice.

'In the meantime, Im getting on with fighting this election campaign and seeking re-election to stand up for the people of Ochil and South Perthshire.'

An SNP spokesman said: 'The party is aware that administrative matters relating to Tasminas time at her former firm are being looked into. Hundreds of issues are raised with the Law Society every year and it is right that they investigate them.

'She has co-operated fully and is continuing her campaign to be a strong voice for the people of Ochil and South Perthshire.'

The Scottish Daily Mail understands that the investigation was launched into professional misconduct claims made against Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh relating to her time as a partner at Glasgow law firm Hamilton Burns.

The Law Society of Scotland has launched an investigation into Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh (pictured with Alex Salmond) is one of the Scottish nationalists' most prominent figures

Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh is a close ally of former SNP leader Alex Salmond (pictured together in Brussels in 2014)

Scottish Labour General Election campaign manager James Kelly said: 'Any investigation by the Law Society is so serious that, if confirmed, the SNP must immediately suspend Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh.

'Nicola Sturgeon must make it clear if she will continue to support Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh as an SNP candidate. In the wake of a series of scandals, it once again raises questions about the party's vetting process.

'The voters in Ochil and South Perthshire need immediate answers. They cannot go to the polls without all the information being made available to them.

'Voters on June 8 have an opportunity to reject Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh at the ballot box and get a Labour MP who will fight a second independence referendum.'

Sources told the Scottish Daily Mail that the investigation into professional misconduct was launched several weeks ago by the Law Society of Scotland.

Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh, a mother of four, is a senior decision-maker in the SNP and sits on its powerful national executive committee, as women's and equalities officer.

She is a close ally of former First Minister Alex Salmond and was a director of the company he set up to deal with his publishing incomes, Chronicles of Deer, until she stood down after becoming an MP in May 2015.

The revelations about the investigation could be embarrassing to SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon (pictured on the campaign trail in Inverness today)

Ms Sturgeon is leading the SNP's campaign around Scotland, despite not standing for a Westminster constituency herself, and climbed aboard a bike in Inverness today

She set up Hamilton Burns WS as a partnership in 2001 and it became a limited company in 2014. She was one of two directors but resigned shortly after becoming an MP.

She has declared on her register of interests that she continued to receive income from the company shortly after she became an MP for work carried out prior to her election. On May 12, 2015, she received 1,800 for work completed during April 2015.

The investigation was launched into professional misconduct claims made against Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh relating to her time as a partner at Glasgow law firm Hamilton Burns

In December 2016, it emerged that she faced court action from HMRC in a sequestration case related to Hamilton Burns WS Limited.

Sequestration is the removing, separating or seizing of anything from the possession of its owner under process of law for the benefit of creditors or the state.

HMRC launched an action against Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh as a former partner in the firm and as an individual, as well as against the company.

The case never came to court after being dismissed 'in chambers'. Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh insisted at the time that she had 'no outstanding personal tax liability whatsoever'.

She was listed as one of only two founding directors of Hamilton Burns WS Estate Agents Limited, which was set up in 2008 and formally dissolved last October. She resigned from the role in 2013.

She was also a founding director in a separate company, Hamilton Burns Commercial Limited, set up in 2010 and still active, but resigned in October 2011.

Two SNP members elected in 2015 were later suspended by the party amid allegations of wrong doing. Neither Natalie McGarry (left) or Michelle Thompson (right) are standing again for the party in June

Questions have also been asked about her role at the Scottish Asian Women's Association, a charity that was launched at a Stirling Castle event in April 2012 attended by Nicola Sturgeon and Mr Salmond.

Last year, it emerged that it had spent only 700 on good causes despite receiving 16,000 of taxpayers' cash.

The SNP suspended two of its 56 MPs elected in 2015.

Edinburgh West MP Michelle Thomson had the party whip withdrawn after Police Scotland launched a probe into property dealings.

Glasgow East MP Natalie McGarry was suspended after a police investigation was launched in November 2015 into claims that 30,000 was missing from the Women for Independence group, which she cofounded. She has subsequently been charged.

Both Mrs Thomson and Miss McGarry have confirmed they are not standing in the General Election, after the SNP moved to select new candidates for their seats.

When asked about the investigation last night, a spokesman for the Law Society of Scotland said it 'has no comment to make at this point'.

Mrs Ahmed-Sheikh failed to return calls about the investigation, while a spokesman for the SNP did not provide a comment.
Just before he slaughtered his mother and a young child, Lance Rhodes declared: 'We're going to have some fun tonight.'

He then chased his mother outside, stabbed her and repeatedly hit her with a 28-kilogram statue, which broke her skull and caused massive head injuries.

The horrific details of his attacks were revealed in an 'agreed facts' document presented to the NSW Supreme Court on Friday at his sentence hearing.

The 36-year-old has pleaded guilty to murdering a child and his mother, 63-year-old Linda Adams, outside her home at Lalor Park, in Sydney's west, late on September 8, 2015.

Lance Rhodes, 36, has pleaded guilty to murdering a child and his mother, 63

He killed both of them in a frenzied attack outside his mother's home in Lalor Park, in Sydney's west

After attacking his mother, Rhodes returned inside where he told the child: 'If you move, talk or speak, I'm going to stab you with this knife.'

Rhodes then grabbed and stabbed the child, while his victim screamed out in a high-pitched voice: 'Please ... please .... don't hurt me.'

After Rhodes repeatedly slammed the child's head against a wall, he chased the victim who fell to the ground outside.

He picked up a large piece of sandstone and using both hands, repeatedly struck the child's face, causing extensive head injuries.

As he moved to the back door, Rhodes said: 'Die, just f***ing die. I don't care.'

Rhodes was found to have cannabis and ice in his system and told police he had been drinking.

Prosecutor Terry Thorpe said there was no doubt 'there was a degree of intoxication' involving ice and/or alcohol when Rhodes launched the sustained and ferocious attack.

Six victim impact statements were read including one from his niece, Hayley Rhodes, who was 19 when she witnessed the attacks.

He chased his mother outside the house, stabbed her and repeatedly hit her with a 28-kilogram statue

Rhodes then grabbed and stabbed the child, while his victim screamed out in a high-pitched voice: 'Please ... please .... don't hurt me'

He had come home late and told her: 'We're going to have some fun tonight', to which she replied, 'Whatever.'

After she heard her grandmother screaming, she saw her uncle standing over her with a knife and yelled at him: 'Lance, what's wrong?'

'They're in the house. They're in the house,' he replied.

When she asked who, he said: 'Don't worry, I'll get rid of them.'

Ms Rhodes told the court she didn't think her uncle would ever understand the horror of what he'd done.

Horrific details presented to the NSW Supreme Court during his sentencing

He picked up a large piece of sandstone and using both hands, repeatedly struck the child's face, causing extensive head injuries

'The only person who had ever really loved and cared about him, his own mother, and he killed her.'

Ms Rhodes said she lived in a constant state of fear and can never let her guard down.

'There are times when I wish Lance would have killed me that night,' she said.

An uncle was someone 'you should be able to trust, who was supposed to protect you' but he had now 'ruined so many people's lives, including his own'.

The murders had left her with horrifying nightmares, panic attacks and flashbacks, and a feeling of constant exhaustion, she said.

Rhodes is due to be sentenced on June 2.
Jeremy Corbyn insisted he can be trusted to defend Britain today - despite refusing to back the nuclear deterrent and making clear he would only go to war if there was a Nazi-style threat.

The Labour leader tried to sweep his track record under the carpet by declaring he is not a 'pacifist' and would take military action as a 'last resort'.

But asked whether there was any circumstance he would use force, the only example he gave was the Second World War which ended in 1945 - ignoring the war to reclaim the Falklands from Argentina in 1982.

He also said a deployment would only happen with UN security council approval - effectively giving Russia and China a veto.

Mr Corbyn risked further inflaming tensions within the party by suggesting airstrikes against ISIS should be halted immediately, and Trident would go into a defence review if Labour wins.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured speaking at Chatham House today, said keeping Britain safe was the 'primary function' of the government

The address at Chatham House today was an effort to reassure voters that he could be trusted in Downing Street

Delivering a keynote speech on security at Chatham House today, the veteran-left winger desperately tried to reassure the public over his credentials to take the keys to Downing Street.

However, the doubts within his own team were laid bare as his shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith was notably absent from the event today amid rumours of bitter clashes over policies including Trident renewal.

The Labour leader's 'shadow peace minister' Fabian Hamilton was absent because he is scrambling to fight off a Tory challenge in his previously safe Leeds constituency.

In his speech, Mr Corbyn - who founded the Stop the War coalition and is still vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) - sought to make a virtue of his long opposition to violence.

He said asking whether there were circumstances under which he would use nuclear weapons - the underlying principle of the deterrent for the past six decades - was an 'extraordinary question'. But he stopped short of providing any answer.

KEY POINTS FROM JEREMY CORBYN'S SECURITY SPEECH Jeremy Corbyn rejected the idea he is a 'pacifist' and said he would be willing to us military force. But only in the 'last resort' and it would need UN security council approval - effectively giving Russia and China a veto. Asked what military action he had unequivocally supported, Mr Corbyn cited the Second World War - but said the First World War had been unnecessary. Mr Corbyn, who is vice-president of CND, repeatedly refused to say if there were any circumstances in which he would use the nuclear deterrent. The veteran left-winger risked inflaming Labour tensions by saying Trident renewal would form part of a full defence review if he becomes PM. The Labour leader said he would not align the UK with the US if he wins the keys to No10, accusing Theresa May of 'hand-holding' with Donald Trump. Advertisement

Mr Corbyn said the 'bomb first, talk later' approach to defence had failed and pledged there will be 'no more hand-holding with Donald Trump'.

'Britain deserves better than simply outsourcing our countrys security and prosperity to the whims of the Trump White House,' he said.

Hinting that he could end all current deployments of UK forces abroad - including airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq and Syria - Mr Corbyn said: 'This is the fourth general election in a row to be held while Britain is at war and our armed forces are in action in the Middle East and beyond.

'The "war on terror" which lies behind these interventions has failed. They have not increased our security at home  rather the opposite  and they have caused devastation abroad.'

Mr Corbyn repeatedly took aim at the US, saying when he was younger he was 'haunted by images of civilians fleeing US chemical weapons'.

He claimed he is not against all wars. 'If elected Prime Minister, I will do everything necessary to protect the safety and security of our people and our country,' he said.

But asked what military campaigns he would have supported as PM, he said: 'I doubt many if any people in this room would have opposed the Second World War.'

Mr Corbyn also suggested he might have signed up to peacekeeping missions in East Timor and Cyprus - but did not mention the 1982 Falklands War.

The left-winger previously sparked fury by telling Argentine diplomats he wants to hand back the Falklands in a power-sharing deal.

Last year outgoing ambassador in London Alicia Castro branded him one of ours and claimed Mr Corbyn told her personally he wants a Northern Ireland-style arrangement for Britain and Argentina to govern the islands together.

Mr Corbyn was a backbencher when the proposal was first discussed, but after becoming leader he called for a reasonable accommodation with Argentina on the South Atlantic territory.

The Labour leader, who is still vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), said asking whether he would use nuclear weapons was an 'extraordinary' question

Mr Corbyn, pictured arriving at Chatham House in London today, will insist he accepts that military action 'under international law and as a genuine last resort' is sometimes necessary

Both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have kept up a punishing schedule during the election campaign, making more than 30 stops each around Britain

There is mounting panic within Labour about the 'toxic' impact of Mr Corbyn on the party's electoral chances.

A ComRes poll for the Mirror today found some 56 per cent of the public thought he would be a 'disaster' in Downing Street.

The Mail revealed today that Mr Corbyn previously said Britain should be condemned for having a nuclear deterrent.

The veteran left-winger marched on Downing Street, in May 2005, demanding the country gives up its nuclear weapons.

He was pictured with CND officials outside Number 10 presenting a petition in May 2005, which demanded the country get rid of its nuclear deterrent. Months later he used a column in the communist-supporting Morning Star to denounce Britain over Trident. 'Any state that wants to develop them should be condemned, as should states that continue to hold them,' he wrote.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, pictured on the campaign trail in Newport today, said he was 'genuinely worried' about Mr Corbyn becoming PM

The leaked draft of Labour's election manifesto reveals that Labour is 'extremely cautious' about using the Trident submarine missile system and would only send the Army to war as a last resort. It commits to the idea of a 'nuclear free world'.

Mr Hamilton, speaking from his Leeds constituency, insisted voters could be confident that Mr Corbyn would not follow through on his personal views if he became Prime Minister.

Asked about Mr Corbyn's previous stance on Trident and the militarym Mr Hamilton told Sky News: 'He was a backbencher then, hes party leader now. It is not just about what he thinks, it is about what the whole party thinks.'

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, on the campaign trail in Wales today, said: 'Im genuinely worried about some of things that Jeremy Corbyn stands for and believes in. This is a time of great uncertainty in the world. We have to have a very robust response to the threat of terrorism.

'Jeremy Corbyn is a guy who all his life has campaigned to weakened the UKs defences.'

WHAT JEREMY CORBYN HAS SAID ON SECURITY IN THE PAST DOES HE BELIEVE IN THE NUCLEAR DETERRENT? Asked on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in September 2015 whether he would ever use nuclear weapons: 'No.' Asked same question on BBC's Andrew Marr show, April 2017: 'I have made clear there would be no first use of it. I've made clear any use of nuclear weapons would be a disaster for the whole world. 'Nuclear weapons are not the solution to the world's security issues. They are a disaster if ever used.' Pressed on what he would write in 'letters of last resort' to Trident submarine commanders for if contact had been lost: 'A strict instruction, follow orders when given.' WOULD HE EVER USE MILITARY FORCE? Asked whether there were any circumstances he would deploy military force during Labour leadership hustings in September 2015: 'Any? I am sure there are some. But I can't think of them at the moment.' IS HE A PACIFIST? Asked if he is a pacifist, Guardian interview, August 2015: 'It is hard to define. I am person that has a very high threshold of saying I would not wish to be involved in armed conflict. The question always comes back to the second world war.' WOULD HE ORDER DRONE STRIKES AGAINST TERRORISTS? Asked on BBC's Andrew Marr show in April 2017 whether he would authorise drone strikes on terrorists in Syria and Iraq: 'I think the leader of (ISIS) not being around would be helpful and I'm no supporter or defender in any way whatsoever of Isil, but I would also argue that the bombing campaign has killed a large number of civilians, many of whom were virtually prisoners of Isil, you have got to think about these things.' Pressed on the issue he said: 'What is the objective here? Is the objective to start more strikes that may kill many innocent people as has happened or is the objective to get a political solution in Syria? My whole point would be does this help to get a political solution in Syria?' WOULD HE EVER SUPPORT MILITARY ACTION AGAINST ISIS? November 2015 BBC interview: 'I would support security measures, policing measures... 'I think that is a hypothetical question at this stage. At the present time the issue of the bombing in Syria does not seem the right thing. Asked to say what he thought in principle, he said: 'I'm not saying I would or I wouldn't, I'm saying it's a hypothetical question... There has to be, at the end, a political situation to it.' DOES HE BELIEVE IN SHOOT-TO-KILL POLICY? November 2015 BBC interview: 'I'm not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general. I think that is quite dangerous and I think can often be counter-productive. I think you have to have security that prevents people firing off weapons where you can.' Amid criticism from Labour MPs, Mr Corbyn later clarified that he supported whatever 'proportionate and strictly necessary force is required to save life'. WOULD HE ABOLISH THE ARMY? Speech in 2012: 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if every politician around the world instead of taking pride in the size of their Armed Forces did what Costa Rica have done and abolished their Army, and took pride in the fact they don't have an Army? 'Their country is near the top of the global peace index. Surely that is the way we should be going forward.' DOES HE CONDEMN IRA BOMBINGS? BBC Radio Ulster interview, August 2015: INTERVIEWER: Do you condemn what the IRA did? JC: I condemn all bombing, it is not a good idea, and it is terrible what happened. INTERVIEWER: The question is do you condemn what the IRA did? JC: Look I condemn what was done by the British Army as well as the other sides as well. What happened in Derry in 1972 was pretty devastating as well. INTERVIEWER: Do you distinguish between State forces like the British Army and the IRA? JC: Well in a sense the treatment of IRA prisoners which made them into virtual political prisoners suggested that the British government and the State saw some kind of almost equivalency. I mean my point is that the whole violence was terrible, was appalling, and came out of a process that had been allowed to fester in Northern Ireland for a very long time and surely we can move on a bit and look towards the achievements of the peace process in moving things forward. Advertisement

PM launches most personal attack yet on 'appalling' Corbyn accusing him of 'deserting' working class voters

Theresa May launched her most personal attack yet on 'appalling' Jeremy Corbyn today, accusing him of 'deserting' working class voters.

Delivering a series of vicious barbs at the veteran left-winger as she mounted another campaign raid on Labour's traditional heartlands, the PM branded him 'appalling' and said he was unable to 'add up'.

Mrs May warned activists in Tyneside that Mr Corbyn was trying to take the country 'back to the 1970s' with a disastrous hard-left plan for government.

But she also refused to deny that the Tories were considering a new 'death tax' to help fund social care.

Theresa May warned activists in North Shields today that Mr Corbyn was trying to take the country 'back to the 1970s' with a disastrous hard-left plan for government

The new Tory battlebus is emblazoned with the slogan: 'Theresa May: For Britain'. There is only a small Conservative logo on the door

The Prime Minister stepped up her attempts to win over traditional Labour voters as the election reached its halfway point.

In a sign of the presidential-style campaign being waged by the Tories, the party's new battlebus has been unveiled emblazoned with the slogan: 'Theresa May: For Britain.'

The word 'Conservatives' has been relegated to a small logo on the door.
A US-backed alliance will launch their final assault on ISIS's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa in June, two commanders from the force have said.

Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander Rojda Felat said: 'The attack on Raqqa will take place in the beginning of the summer.'

She later specified that it would likely start in June based on 'military and tactical considerations.'

A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) removes an ISIS flag in the town of Tabqa, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Raqqa on April 30

Felat spoke at a press conference in Tabqa, which the SDF captured from ISIS on Wednesday along with its nearby dam.

The city is a key waypost in the SDF's flagship offensive for Raqqa, the Syrian heart of ISIS's so-called caliphate, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) further down the Euphrates Valley.

The deputy head of the SDF, Qahraman Hassan, said: 'In the beginning of the summer, we will storm and liberate (Raqqa) city.'

He said the alliance would receive 'special weapons and armoured vehicles' to enter the city after President Donald Trump changed US policy to allow arms deliveries to Kurdish as well as Arab SDF fighters.

'I believe this support will arrive soon,' he said.

A US-backed alliance will launch their final assault on ISIS's Syrian stronghold of Raqqa in June

SDF commander Abdul Qader Hevdeli added: 'I believe entering and storming the city will happen at the start of the summer.'

The SDF, an alliance of militias including Arab groups and the Kurdish YPG militia, has been waging a campaign to isolate and ultimately capture Raqqa city since November, with backing from the U.S.-led coalition.

While the U.S.-led coalition has already supplied weapons to Arab fighters in the SDF, the White House this week authorized for the first time arming its most powerful element - the Kurdish YPG - to help in the Raqqa assault, infuriating Turkey.
Chippewa Valley Newspapers will have a new publisher June 1.

Bob Fleck will take over as publisher of the River Valley Media Group, which includes the Chippewa Herald, the Dunn County News, the La Crosse Tribune, Winona (Minn.) Daily News and other weekly newspapers and specialty publications.

Fleck, 54, joined The Heralds parent company, Lee Enterprises Inc., as vice president of business development in May 2016 and was named the companys vice president of sales and marketing in January.

Fleck said Thursday after an announcement in La Crosse he is excited about moving to the area and about the potential of the River Valley Media Group.

I truly believe this is a mission-driven operation that plays an important role in the community, Fleck said.

Before joining Lee, Fleck was general manager and publisher for the Suburban Media Group, a division of the Chicago Tribune Media Group. He was executive vice president of sales for Tribune Publishing in 2013 and 2014.

Kevin Mowbray, Lees president and chief executive officer, said Fleck will remain a member of the companys CEO team and will continue to contribute to the companys sales strategies and objectives.

Since joining Lee, Bob has proven himself as a strong leader and talented executive, Mowbray said. His skill and experience will serve the readers and businesses in the River Valley group well and help drive strong results for our company.

Fleck grew up in Schaumburg, Ill., and is a graduate of Elmhurst (Ill.) College, where he earned a bachelors degree in business administration. Fleck and his wife, Jeri, have three children.

I am eager to get started in this new role, Fleck said. River Valley is an outstanding group of communities and a vital set of markets for Lee.

Davenport, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises publishes 46 daily newspapers, with a joint interest in two others, along with rapidly growing digital products and almost 300 weekly newspapers and specialty publications in 21 states.

Lees newspapers have circulation of 900,000 daily and 1.4 million Sunday, reaching more than 3 million readers daily. Lees digital sites attract more than 25 million unique visits monthly.

Outgoing publisher Mike Burns is leaving the company, having accepted a position as chief revenue officer for Oregonian Media Group.
The magazine cover depicts former FBI director James Comey being dragged off a plane by Attorney General Jeff Sessions

A 'savage' magazine cover depicting former FBI chief James Comey being dragged off a plane by Attorney General Jeff Sessions has fuelled fierce debate - but one party is far from happy.

The New Yorker cartoon satirizes the treatment Dr David Dao received from United Airlines, prompting a fierce response from his lawyer.

The cover has gone viral and attracted a wide range of comments.

Dr Dao was left bloodied after being dragged off a United flight in Chicago last month, with footage sparking outrage across the world.

After seeing the magazine cover, attorney Thomas Demetrio told MarketWatch that although it was 'very clever', it downplayed his client's suffering.

He said: 'It minimizes the Dao event so thats collateral damage of a magazine trying to make an editorial point.

'They must feel that Comeys exit was Dao-ish when in fact it wasnt. It was a whole different deal.'

Widely shared on social media, opinions on the cover have varied from 'genius' and 'brilliant' to 'disgraceful'.

Bloodied and battered: Dr. David Dao (above) and United Airlines have agreed to a settlement

James Comey was this week fired as director of the FBI in a move that was satirized on the front cover of the New Yorker magazine

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is depicted dragging Comey off the flight, as President Trump looks on

New Yorker artist Barry Blitt, on the magazine's website, said: 'Its probably a bit of a leap. James Comey is six feet eight  he probably would have been happy to give up his seat in a cramped cabin.'

President Donald Trump sent shockwaves through Washington when he dismissed Comey in a letter this week 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.

The cartoon has been branded the 'best cover ever' on Twitter as social media users debate the front cover

It was branded 'excellent' after the controversial front cover was unveiled by the New Yorker

The metaphor works well, one commenter posted after the cartoon was shared on Twitter

Not everybody was impressed though, and the cartoon has been branded a 'disgrace'

On May 2 United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz pledged that his airline 'will do better' as he was grilled by Congress over the passenger drag scandal.

Munoz apologized for the incident as he faced some tough questions at Capitol Hill, admitting that 'No customer should be treated the way Mr. Dao was' adding that it was a 'terrible experience'.

Comey's dismissal has sparked fierce debate, and reports state that the former director thought TV reports of his firing were an elaborate prank as he addressed agents in Los Angeles.

The magazine has been praised for featuring the cartoon following the sacking of James Comey this week

Another Twitter user described the New Yorker cover as 'pure genius'

The magazine has been widely praised for its satirical state on the sacking of James Comey this week

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.'
The family of murdered NSW police officer Bryson Anderson have lost their fight against an appeal to have his mentally-ill killer's jail sentence slashed by more than ten years.

Mitchell Barbieri, 21, stabbed Detective Inspector Anderson to death on December 6, 2012 as he was attending a neighbourhood dispute in northwest Sydney.

Three High Court judges refused to grant the Director of Public Prosecutions leave to appeal last year's reduction of Barbieri's minimum sentence from 26 years to 15.

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Detective Inspector Bryson Anderson (pictured) was killed while attending a neighbourhood dispute in 2012

His three children (pictured) are heartbroken over the news their father's killer will have his jail term slashed

Mitchell Barbieri, 21, (pictured) stabbed Detective Inspector Anderson to death on December 6, 2012 as he was attending a neighbourhood dispute in northwest Sydney

Then 19-year-old Barbieri was sharing mental delusions with his mother, Fiona, when he stabbed Det Insp Anderson twice in the chest with a hunting knife during a siege at the pair's rural northwest Sydney property.

The killer of the much-loved father-of-three also had 11 years cut off his initial 25-year sentence last year as his 'mental health was not taken into consideration'.

Commissioner Mick Fuller said he acknowledged the court's decision but he would continue to champion harsher sentences for people who harm police officers.

'Like every police officer, I am devastated by the decision,' he said in a statement on Friday.

'Bryson was the finest police officer. He was decorated and dedicated.

'He deserved to go home to his family at the end of his shift.'

Det Insp Anderson is survived by his three children Olivia, Cain and Darcy and his wife, Donna.

Barbieri had pleaded guilty to the 2012 murder but his sentence was substantially reduced in December after the NSW Court of Appeal found the original sentencing judge erred when considering his severe mental illness.

The High Court said there had been no error of legal principle in the appeal court's decision.

Detective Inspector Anderson, 45, (pictured) was killed with a knife at a rural property in Oakville

The distraught Anderson family have been left outraged by the shock re-sentencing (pictured is Donna)

Det Insp Anderson is survived by his three children Olivia, Cain and Darcy and his wife, Donna

Det Insp Anderson's brother, Warwick Anderson, said it was hard to expect police officers to put themselves in harm's way if 'this is the result when people murder them'.

He said the fight was 'not over'.

'It's a result that defies description, really,' he said outside the Sydney court on Friday.

'We look forward to having some meaningful discussion with the attorney-general about how repetition of this can be avoided.'

Police seized a large volume of material from the squalid, isolated Barbieri home among them letters to world leaders including the Russian president.

Det Insp Anderson's grieving family outside the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in Sydney last year (pictured from left: daughter Olivia, wife Donna and son Darcy)

His heartbroken widow Donna Anderson tried to hold back her tears after Barbieri got his jail term slashed (pictured)

Cain Anderson - the 13-year-old son of Detective Inspector Bryson Anderson - broke down in tears outside the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal in 2016 after the re-sentencing

Fiona Barbieri, 47, and her 21-year-old son Mitchell cried and hugged in the dock as they prepared to plea to their roles in the death of Detective Inspector Anderson in 2014

They revealed 'a complex delusional belief system alleging corruption, persecution and perceived grievances of a wide-ranging nature', according to a psychiatrist.

The Court of Appeal in December said it made no difference that Barbieri's illness was secondary to his mother's, or that he recovered after being separated from her.

One of the judges, Justice Carolyn Simpson, said Barbieri's 'mental illness diminished his moral culpability to a very significant degree.'

Police Association of NSW acting president Tony King said his members were 'disgusted' by Friday's decision.

It suggested crimes were prosecuted in a legal rather than a justice system, he said.

Det Insp Anderson's family (pictured) described him as a joker who had a great sense of humour

Police officers at Det Insp Anderson's funeral which was held in 2012

Fiona Barbieri was jailed for at least six-and-a-half years for Det Insp Anderson's manslaughter.

Upon cutting Barbieri's sentence in 2016, two of the three appeal court judges found the sentencing judge erred in applying principles relevant to the sentencing of mentally-ill offenders.

'His mental illness diminished his moral culpability to a very significant degree,' Justice Carolyn Simpson said at the time.

'His evidence persuades me that the applicant is genuinely remorseful, that he has accepted responsibility for his conduct, and that this indicates that he is unlikely to re-offend.'
A Chinese couple have been forced to choose between their twin sons who are both seriously ill because they only have money to save one of them.

Impoverished Wang Guojun and Xu Shijia, from Inner Mongolia, had to use a lottery system to decide if they should treat Wen Yuan or Wen Bo, who are seven months old.

On May 9, Wen Yuan, the elder brother, grabbed a piece of paper saying 'go', which means his parents would bring him to Shanghai for further treatment, leaving his younger brother at home to fight his heart disease and pneumonia on his own.

The desperate family made an emotional plea for help through media on May 11, looking for people who could help them and their children.

Impossible choice: Wang Guojun (left) and Xu Shijia (right), a couple from China, had to choose between their ill twins after running out of money to treat both boys

Seriously ill: Seven-month-old Wen Yuan and Wen Bo have heart disease and pneumonia

According to a report on QQ.com, 39-year-old Xu Shixia gave birth to Wen Yuan and Wen Bo at the No. 1 Hospital of Qiqihar on September 30, 2016.

However, the 39-year-old mother was devastated to discover that both of her children were seriously ill.

The twins were diagnosed with congenital heart disease at birth and were sent to the intensive unit immediately. They also suffered from pneumonia, kidney failure and respiratory failure.

Xu (pictured) gave birth to her sons aged 39 and was devastated to discover their illness

The couple live with their children and Mr Wang's mother in Hulunbuir, Inner Mongolia

The report said that the twins' parents are ill themselves and the family are poverty-stricken.

Their mother, Ms Xu, is disabled in the hand and has Leucoderma. Their father, Mr Wang, was diagnosed with brain tumour in 2016 when Ms Xu was five month pregnant.

Ma Xiaoma, a local journalist who first reported about the family, told MailOnline that the two babies were so sick, they would often twitch.

The family is impoverished as the boys' mother is disabled and their father has a brain tumour

The family borrowed nearly 18,000 and had to beg on the street to pay for the medical bills

Their parents have reportedly spent more than 200,000 yuan (22,500) in order to give them basic treatment, including 100,000 yuan (11,200) borrowed from relatives as well as 60,000 yuan (6,750) loaned by the bank.

The doctors informed the family that in order to avoid further complications, the twins would need to receive proper treatment before they reach eight months old.

In order to raise funds, the couple tried to beg on the streets - together with the babies. But they failed to obtain the large amount of money that would be needed to save the boys.

They decided not to wait further.

The couple cried in front of a hospital after taking Wen Yuan, the elder brother, to Shanghai

The boy had grabbed a slip saying 'go', meaning he would be brought to a hospital in Shanghai

On May 9, the couple put the fate of their twin sons on two pieces of paper. They wrote 'stay' and 'go' on two slips and let the babies grab them at their home in Hulunbuir.

Wen Yuan, the elder brother, got 'go', which meant his parents would bring 2,253, donated by their kind-hearted friends, and take the boy to Shanghai for treatment.

A seriously ill Wen Bo was crying and struggling as Ms Xu and her husband set out for Shanghai with Wen Yuan.

The couple broke down in tears, but they had to leave their younger son at home for the husband's mother to look after.

On the afternoon of May 11, the couple and Wen Yuan arrived in Shanghai after travelling 2,831 kilometres (1,759 miles) from their hometown.

They took their son to the Shanghai Children's Medical Centre for a checkup.

Doctors in Shanghai said Wen Yuan's pneumonia is even more serious than his heart disease

Doctors said Wen Yuan's pneumonia is even more serious than his heart disease and would need immediate medical attention. The baby also had severe bronchitis.

The 2,253 the couple brought was a far cry from the medical bills.

With the help of Ma Xiaoma, the couple made an emotional plea for help in the press, hoping people could help them through the hardship.

Mr Ma said: 'What struck me the most is that the couple said they had decided to let the babies draw the lots by themselves.

'They didn't want the boys to hate them in the future had they picked the slips.'

As of writing, the couple have received more than 800,000 yuan (90,000), according to a follow-up report.

Ms Xu and her husband arranged their younger son, Wen Bo, to be taken to Shanghai by Wen Bo's grandmother on May 12.

With the help of the donations, both twins are expected to be treated.

The couple and Wen Yuan are currently on way to Tianjin in order to meet Wen Bo and his grandmother, who had travelled there from Hulunbuir.

The five of them will go to Shanghai afterwards to arrange the treatment for the twins.
'They have failed their duty of care': Speaking outside court, Nasar's parents said the school did not do enough

The parents of a boy killed by an allergic reaction to his school dinner have hit out at staff after an inquest heard he may have survived if given his EpiPen as he lay dying on the floor.

Nasar Ahmed's mother accused authorities at Bow School of failing in their duty of care by not administering adrenaline to the teenager after he collapsed, turned blue and began foaming at the mouth in a school exclusion room.

She spoke after a catalogue of errors were revealed at the inquest into the November 2016 death of the 14-year-old - who had a history of severe asthma and food allergies - after eating tandoori chicken containing milk.

The inquest heard an early adrenaline injection may have saved Nasar, but staff did not do so. Instead he died four days later in the Royal London Hospital from a massive brain injury caused by the reaction.

Returning a narrative conclusion, coroner Mary Hassell said she would write five Prevention of Future Death (PFD) reports, including to the London Ambulance Service (LAS), whose paramedic told staff not to give Nasar adrenaline before they arrived.

Speaking outside the inquest, Nasar's mother Ferdousi Zaman told reporters her son had been a 'jolly' boy who dreamed of becoming a politician, and whose friends still hoped 'maybe Nasar is coming back'.

She criticised school staff's medical training, saying: 'If he has anaphylaxis I give him his EpiPen. They are first-aiders, they are more knowledgeable than me.

'They have failed their duty of care.'

Nasar Ahmed, 14, was in an exclusion room with other pupils when he became unwell

In a statement read by family solicitor Lochlinn Parker, she and her husband Ashrafuz added that they were 'deeply saddened to now know of the missed opportunities to save Nasar's life'.

'We strongly believe that if Nasar's care plan had been completed correctly, if staff had been aware of the care plan and if it had been followed properly, including administering an EpiPen as soon as possible, that Nasar would be alive today.

'Following our painful loss of Nasar we hope that important lessons about the care of children suffering from asthma will be learnt and other lives saved.'

Year Nine pupil Nasar had asthma, severe eczema and a host of allergies, including to milk, fish, nuts, wheat, some meats, apples and oranges.

His inquest revealed:

:: His asthma had been inaccurately listed by the school nurse in his medical care plan as 'mild to moderate' rather than 'severe'.

:: The care plan did not mention an EpiPen or using adrenaline to tackle his many allergies.

:: Staff including first aider Cherie Hyde and PE teacher Gemma Anderson had access to an inhaler and EpiPen from Nasar's personal medical box for five minutes before paramedics arrived but were unsure whether to use them.

:: Staff were encouraged to familiarise themselves with pupils' care plans but 'often did not unless there was a school excursion'.

:: The deputy head, who had in the past taught Nasar, did not know about his allergies or care plan when he made the decision to place Nasar in the IER detention.

:: The coroner said 'the lack of familiarity of the IER supervisor and nearby members of staff with Nasar's allergy action plan and medication box used up time in an extremely time critical situation'.

:: The 999 operator put staff through to a LAS paramedic, who told them over the phone not to administer adrenaline from the EpiPen because Nasar was not displaying classic symptoms of anaphylaxis.

:: Differences in how the severity of Nasar's allergies and asthma were recorded by Barts and his GP - he was prescribed as many as 30 inhalers in a single year.

Ferdousi Zaman (left) and Ashrafuz Zaman (right), mother and father of Nasar, heard in court that if staff had used Nasar's EpiPen it could have saved his life

Ms Hassell said she would be writing PFD reports to the school, his GP, Barts Health NHS Trust, LAS and the Chief Medical Officer for England, the latter to suggest EpiPens be widely available alongside heart defibrillators in public places.

Returning her conclusion, Ms Hassell told the inquest: 'If the EpiPen had been used promptly and Nasar had been administered adrenaline, there is a possibility but not a probability that this would have changed the outcome.'

Outlining her PFD to the ambulance service, she added: 'The paramedic said don't give the EpiPen because there were no classic symptoms of anaphylaxis.

'The reality of giving a dose of adrenaline is that it is unlikely to do any significant harm, whereas the potential good of giving an EpiPen is lifesaving.'

In a statement, Bow School's executive headteacher Cath Smith said it had 'rigorously reviewed all of our safety procedures and are providing more training for staff across the board'.

Nasar was in the internal exclusion room (IER) at the school when he complained of breathing problems at 2.21pm on November 10 at Bow School in east London (shown)

She added: 'We will now consider the advice from the coroner very carefully to see what further action we should take.'

Nasar was in the internal exclusion room (IER) at the school when he complained of breathing problems at 2.21pm on November 10.

The inquest heard that Nasar's asthma had been inaccurately listed by the school nurse in his care plan as 'mild to moderate' rather than 'severe' and did not mention an EpiPen or using adrenaline to tackle his allergies.

In her determination, the coroner said: 'Staff at the school were encouraged to familiarise themselves with pupils' care plans but often did not unless there was a school excursion.

'Even the deputy head teacher, who had in the past taught Nasar, did not know about Nasar's food allergies or the fact he had a care plan and allergy action plan when he made the decision to place Nasar in the IER.

'Knowledge of the care plan would not have changed the decision... but the lack of familiarity of the IER supervisor and nearby members of staff with Nasar's allergy action plan and medication box used up time in an extremely time critical situation.
Parents have been left furious after a school called police when 40 final year students turned up with sequins on their uniform.

A group of around 40 girls, all Year 11 pupils at Blackfen School for Girls in Sidcup, south east London, went to school wearing decorated uniforms to celebrate their last day of school ahead of their GCSEs.

However when they showed up at the gates they were turned away as their outfits did not comply with uniform rules.

The pupils refused go home and congregated outside the gates, demanding to be let in for their final day - prompting the school to call police, saying pupils were causing problems with traffic.

Some 40 Year 11 pupils at Blackfen School for Girls in Sidcup, south east London showed up with sequins on their uniforms to celebrate their last day of school ahead of sitting their GCSEs

They had decorated their uniforms with sequins on the collars and glittery bows on their socks and shoes as part of a celebration of completing their final year at school.

One parent, who asked not to be named, said: 'It is their last day today, they have all got their uniforms on but some of them have put sequins on their collars and bows on their socks which doesn't comply with uniform.

'They've left all of them to roam the streets, they called the police, they had a meat wagon outside.

'The girls have been in education for ten years, they have all turned up to school, and they want to do their lessons. You've got 40 girls roaming the streets, it is not safe, especially in this day and age.

'I think it is absolutely crazy on their last day, I just don't believe it.'

And the incident quickly sparked outrage online.

Grace Taylor, writing on Twitter said: 'How is Blackfen not letting year 11s into school because they've decorated their uniform - it gets worse and worse every year.'

Claire Norris wrote on Facebook: 'I saw them this morning all coming out of blackfen. TBH I thought they looked quite nice, could be worse could be eggs and flour.'

Rebecca Parish Moran added: 'I saw them this morning they looked lovely. totally ridiculous.'

Another said: 'My school wouldn't let year 11 leavers decorate their uniform, but of course they did, and now they're not letting them in school, pathetic.

'They won't let them through the gate and all the girls were just standing and shouting so they called the police.'

There was a Twitter storm after news spread that the school had called police officers to the grounds

Valueonlife wrote: 'How ridiculous - these girls have prob worked hard all through school and wanted a bit of fun on their last day, what is wrong with that?

'Surely the rules could have been bent slightly. What is up with the education authorities! It's there last day, when I left school we used to wear signed shirts on our last day and didn't do much learning/work and the teachers joined in our fun. [sic]'

Another, calling themselves Net Twitcher wrote: 'Let them have their last day of breaking the rules. Life's hard enough, but all they will remember is how sad old teachers are the ones that never grow up.'

Another local calling themselves Mums Rule wrote online: 'No prom, no leavers assembly and now they are not even allowed to decorate their uniforms on the last day!

'I think the school has made a massive mistake on this and they wont back down for fear of losing face.

'The school didn't want the leavers assembly because that they wanted a full day of learning on their last day but that has backfired completely! Enjoy your last day Blackfen School for Girls.'

A spokesman for the Met Police conformed officers were called to the school at 8.35am staying 'traffic was being disrupted by a large group of students' who were gathered outside the gates.

The 1,275-pupil secondary school was made an academy in 2012.

Matthew Brown, the headteacher of Blackfen School for Girls, said today: 'We are sorry that some of our year 11 students chose to turn up out of uniform today and so were unable to come into school.

'The whole year group were asked earlier this week to come in uniform today as usual and they were clearly told that if they didn't they would be asked to return home to change.

'Many of the girls that turned up this morning did just that and have since come back into school. We know that the end of school is a celebration and recognise that the girls have worked hard at Blackfen.

'To mark this we will be holding a special event after the exams next month.'
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This is the heart-rending moment an ecstatic toddler ran into the arms of his Marine father when he finally returned home after serving overseas for seven months.

Elijah Proctor flew to embrace his beaming father Sergeant William, while his mother Lindsey looked on lovingly, at a homecoming reception at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, on Thursday.

Sgt Proctor was among dozens of excited Marines and sailors from the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit returning home after serving in the Western Pacific, Middle East, and Horn of Africa.

Touching photos also captured a tearful Lance Corporal Shane McMain kneeling to embrace his wife Madison, who is pregnant with their first child, and cradle her baby bump.

Elsewhere, proud mother Teresa Vickers squeezed her eyes shut as she wrapped her arms tightly around her son, Sergeant Nicholas, while Katie Sciutto tenderly kissed her boyfriend Corporal Seth Peaton through tears.

This is the heart-rending moment Elijah Proctor ran into the arms of his Marine father William when he finally returned home after serving overseas for seven months, at a homecoming reception in California

Elijah Proctor flew to embrace his beaming father Sergeant William, while his mother Lindsey looked on lovingly, at Camp Pendleton in Oceanside, California, on Thursday

Sgt Proctor cradled Elijah in his arms as the sweet toddler puckered his lips to give his father a kiss

The adorable father and son started making the most of their quality time together by playing in a mud puddle at the camp

A tearful Lance Corporal Shane McMain knelt to embrace his wife Madison, who is pregnant with their first child, and cradle her baby bump

He became visibly emotional as he saw Madison for the first time after seven long months apart

Katie Sciutto tenderly kissed her boyfriend Corporal Seth Peaton before laughing as she wiped away tears of joy

Marine dropped their belongings on the floor to hug their loved ones as they returned home, oblivious to passersby

Proud motherTeresa Vickers squeezed her eyes shut as she wrapped her arms tightly around her son, Sergeant Nicholas

Gunnery Sergeant Michel Grabau lifted his daughter Mikaelie into his arms and planted an overjoyed kiss on her cheek

Sgt Grabau seemed immersed in the moment as he fixed his daughter with a loving gaze

Canee Copeland ran furiously into the open arms of her kneeling father Corporal Cade Copeland

Cpl Copeland seemed determined to make up for lost time as he held Canee in his arms

Marines gathered their various belongings, including a ukulele, as they prepared to head home to spend time with their families

After seven months overseas, the sailors seemed keen to spend time with their loved ones
A teenage girl is fighting for her life after her father and brother shot her in the face and chest in an attempted honour killing because she loved a man in her village.

Ruby, 18, from a small village in Sambhal, in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, had been in a secret relationship with Ibrahim, 24, for the last three years.

But yesterday her younger sister overheard her talking to him on the phone and told her brother and father.

Within minutes of finding out, Ruby's brother, Iftikhar, 32, and father, Sameraj, 52, confronted her.

They brutally beat her before shooting her twice  once in her face and once in her chest.

Ruby, 18, from a small village in Sambhal, was shot by her father and brother in an 'honour killing' in India, police said

Video footage showed Ruby being taken to hospital covered in blood with a bandage on her face

Ruby was attacked after her younger sister overheard her talking to the older man on the phone

Neighbours heard loud screams and called the police who rushed to the scene.

They arrived at approximately 4am this morning to find Ruby lying on the floor outside her home, bleeding to death as members of the family did nothing.

Police rushed her to a local government run hospital where her condition was reported as critical.

Due to a lack of facilities she was referred to a private hospital in Moradabad, around 40 kms away, early this morning.

Video footage showed Ruby being taken to hospital covered in blood with a bandage on her face.

Her brother and father were arrested at the scene.

Officer Brahmapal Singh Baliyan, from Asmoli Police Station, said: 'It's an honour killing case. The girl told us at the hospital that she was shot by her brother and father after they came to know about her relationship.

'She also said that her mother was involved as she opposed a marriage between the girl and her boyfriend.

'She is currently in a critical condition and is being treated at a private hospital with police protection.'

Both father and son are currently in police custody and have been arrested under Section 307 (Attempt to murder) of Indian Penal Code

Dr Jitender Singh, Emergency Medical Officer at the District Hospital, said: 'She arrived in a semi conscious state and was bleeding heavily. Her blood pressure was really low and she was barely able to speak.

'She had one bullet in the left side of her face, around 3 cm away from ear, and one bullet on the right side of her chest. As we do not have proper surgeons or an ICU ward here, she was referred to a private hospital in Moradabad. She needs immediate treatment as she could die due to heavy bleeding.'

Both father and son are currently in police custody and have been arrested under Section 307 (Attempt to murder) of Indian Penal Code.

Police confirmed other members of the family will be interviewed once Ruby is in a stable state to give an official statement.
Grainne Dunworth has been awarded thousands in compensation after claiming the lid was not fastened on a tea she was handed in a Ryanair flight

A Ryanair passenger who spilled a hot cup of tea and scalded herself has won 9,000 in damages.

Grainne Dunworth was flying from Czech capital Prague to Dublin last year when she burned her stomach and thigh.

A court in Ireland awarded her 10,500 damages after she said the lid wasn't fastened properly by cabin crew.

The 27-year-old, from Ballingarry in Limerick, said the lid fell off when she picked up the cup, causing her to drop it.

Flight crews said they believe Ms Dunworth had put milk in the tea, meaning she must have removed the lid before it was dropped, The Irish Independent reported.

Ms Dunworth, who was helped by crew and fellow passengers and given ice and cold cream to put on the burns, denied she had opened the lid.

A member of flight crew told the court that similar incidents are common, with a passenger being scalded by hot drinks around once a month.

The judge accepted Ms Dunworth's account and ordered that the budget airline pay compensation and the legal costs of the case.

The case comes two years after Ronald Furlong, from Wexford, won a payout from the same airline after he was badly injured on a flight from Dublin to London in August 2012.

Mr Furlong's genitals, thighs, groin and abdomen were hurt when the hot drink fell into his lap when being passed over him to another passenger.

The amount of compensation paid out in that case was not disclosed, but Mr Furlong had been suing for 28,000.

A Ryanair spokesman said: 'We will be appealing this case, since the lady in question admitted in her evidence that she accidentally spilled the tea on herself, and so there is clearly no basis for any compensation payment.'
A young father shot dead the teenage mother of his son then turned the gun on himself in front of police on Thursday.

Kai Williams, 20, killed 18-year-old Larissa Barros at her family's home in Poinciana, Florida. She was two weeks away from graduating from Liberty High School and had been accepted in to Florida State University.

Williams, who was previously jailed for stalking and had been ordered to stay away from the teenager, then took his own life two blocks away when police, who she had called to the scene before she died, approached him.

Barros called 911 at 12.05pm to report that someone she knew was trying to break in and that he was armed.

Larissa Barros, 18, was murdered by her ex-boyfriend Kai Williams, 20, who turned the gun on himself when police approached him after the killing

By the time officers arrived in the neighborhood, Williams had fled the house and was two blocks away.

When the responding officers attempted to approach him, he shot himself in front of them.

The officers then discovered Barros's body in her home. There was no one else in the house at the time.

Previous court records show that the pair had a tumultuous relationship and that Barros was afraid of her ex.

She requested a permanent domestic violent injunction against him last year after telling a court that she was afraid he would harm her or their young son.

'For almost two years, my life has been made miserable by Kai Williams. Kai has been unstable and jealous.

'I am afraid he will hurt me or my child if he gets the opportunity,' she said in the most recent request which was viewed by The Orlando Sentinel.

Barros previously told authorities she was afraid Williams would hurt her or their 15-month-old son

Barros had taken out two domestic violence injunctions against her ex and he spent time in jail for aggravated stalking

Police discovered the teenage mother's body in her home in Poinciana, Florida, on Thursday afternoon

In September, the 20-year-old slashed the tires of her car in the parking lot of her high school. Days later, he set the vehicle on fire.

He spent less than two weeks in county jail before being released.

The injunction was granted afterwards.

In December, Williams was arrested again for violating it by trying to contact the high school student.

He returned to county jail but was released on January 12. Barros made no reports that he had tried to contact her since then before her death on Thursday.

Friends paid tribute to the 18-year-old in light of the tragedy, describing her as a motivated young mother who was determined to go to college.

'She was beautiful and smart. She loved her son more than anything and would have done anything for him.

'A beautiful baby boy will grow up without of his parents now,' said one.
Vanessa George was jailed in 2009 with an indeterminate length sentence

Britain's worst female paedophile could move to an open jail despite being turned down for parole.

Vanessa George thought she would walk free after serving her minimum sentence of seven years in December, but was turned down for parole.

The panel decided the mother-of-two is still a danger and will not be considered for release again until at least 2019.

But the former nursery teacher, from Plymouth, could go from a high-security prison to an open jail.

The panel has made the recommendation to the Ministry of Justice, who will make the final call.

Judge Mr Justice Royce ordered an 'indeterminate' sentence in 2009, meaning she would only be released when the Parole Board gave the green light.

He said: 'Parents have to live with the memory of you coming out with a smile on your face to hand them back their child.

'In fact you may have been doing unspeakable things to that child.

'Many of the parents still have to live with that uncertainty and distress.'

George could move to an open prison after failing to convince the panel she should be freed on parole

The board has made the recommendation to transfer her from a high-security prison but the final decision will be made by the Minister of Justice

A Parole Board spokesman said: 'A panel recommended her transfer to open conditions. The final decision rests with the Ministry of Justice.'

George was jailed in 2009 after abusing an unknown number of children at the nursery she worked at in Devon.

George, a qualified special needs coordinator, was arrested and jailed for sexually assaulting babies and children aged around two, photographing the abuse, and sending the images to Colin Blanchard, the 'Facebook friend' to whom she sent thousands of messages and photographs.

George was obsessed with IT salesman Blanchard, telling him she was his 'paedo whore mumma'.

It was previously decided she was too much of a danger to receive parole, and it was refused

She admitted taking up to eight pictures a day while on duty in an attempt to get him to propose to her.

Last December, when George had her hearing, parents of the children who attended the nursery where she worked warned of the fear they had they would see her.

Her ex-husband Andrew George, who divorced his wife following the scandal, has begged the parole board not to free her.

Mr George said she never fully revealed the scale of her sex attacks on babies and toddlers in her care, or apologised to him and their daughters for the disgrace and embarrassment she caused them.

George's court case heard she was part of one of the 'most sickening paedophile rings this country has ever seen'.
VP Pence Speaks at Persecuted Christians Event

Contact: Liberty Counsel, 407-875-1776, Media@LC.org; Press Kit



WASHINGTON, May 12, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- Yesterday, Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the Mayflower hotel to open the day's session at the World Congress of Persecuted Christians event sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). Attendees hail from over 130 nations with high level representatives from the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Coptic and Evangelical Christian communities. Vice President Pence delivered a heart-felt message to the gathering of Christian leaders. He said that President Trump is resolved to help persecuted Christians and religious minorities.



Vice President Pence said, "I am here on behalf of President Donald Trump as a tangible sign of his commitmenta commitment to defending Christians and all who suffer for their beliefs. Freedom to worship God according to our conscience is in the very fabric of our country. 'For I know the plans that I have for you' True words when they were first spoken, true words today. Know that America stands with you."

During the first day's main session, Franklin Graham paused his message to acknowledge some of the relatives of the Egyptian Coptic Christians who were beheaded by Islamic Jihadists on the beach in Libya. "This was a powerful moment when everyone rose to honor the families and remember those who were martyred because they were followers of Jesus," said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel and President of Liberty Relief International, an international humanitarian relief ministry of Liberty Counsel, dedicated to helping persecuted Christians around the world. Graham, who is president of BGEA and Samaritan's Purse, noted that 20 of the 21 people who were martyred were Coptic Christians. The one who was not was so moved by the faith of the other Christians that when he was told to renounce Jesus, he responded "their God is my God," and with that he too was beheaded.

The World Congress of Persecuted Christians began on May 10 and continues through Saturday. Multiple breakout sessions address a wide variety of issues and the horrible persecution Christians are facing worldwide. "Christian martyrdom is on the rise. Christians are facing unspeakable persecution around the world. We are the keeper of our Christian brothers and sisters and we must pray and do everything we can to help them," said Staver. "In America, Christians face discrimination that is on the rise. In other parts of the world, Christians are being slaughtered for one reason only  because they are followers of Jesus. While rampant persecution comes from Islamic Jihadists, Christians are tortured and face death from many sources. But history has proven the words of Jesus to be true that even the 'fury of hell shall not prevail' against the Church of Jesus Christ," said Staver.

If you want to help, visit Liberty Relief International. Contributions are tax-deductible.

Liberty Relief International is an international humanitarian ministry of Liberty Counsel dedicated to helping persecuted Christians around the world.
A 23-year-old man has been sentenced to four years for a drunk driving crash that killed a woman during their first date.

Rafael Rangel of Las Lomas, California, was sentenced to four years and four months on Thursday after his car crashed into a bridge railing and plummeted 32 feet down an embankment, killing 18-year-old Daynzu del Carmen Rico Becerra.

Rangel, who started drinking before he picked Becerra up for their date in August 2016, was later found with a blood alcohol level of .11, according to the Monterey County District Attorney's Office.

Rafael Rangel (left) was sentenced to four years and four months on Thursday for a drunk driving crash that killed 18-year-old Daynzu del Carmen Rico Becerra (right) in August 2016

Rangel was convicted of driving under the influence 'causing great bodily injury', and will be eligible for parole once he serves 85 percent of his sentence.

Rangel met Becerra just two weeks before their first date on August 6, 2016.

He had a beer before he picked her up in Salinas and continued drinking on their way to dinner in Las Lomas.

Rangel's car was going about 50 to 60 miles per hour when it crashed into a bridge railing and went over.

The 2015 Jeep Patriot plummeted about 32 feet before it landed on the roof, according to the California Highway Patrol.

First responders used hydraulic rescue tools to save the two, but Becerra, who was sitting in the passenger seat, died at the scene.

Officials said there were multiple alcoholic beverages scattered inside the car, and Rangel later blew a .11 - well over the limit of .08. Becerra did not have any alcohol in her system.

Rangel started drinking before he picked Becerra up for their first date. His car crashed into a bridge railing (general view) and went over, plummeting about 32 feet

The car landed on the roof, and Becerra died at the scene. She was remembered as a smart and determined woman who had dreams of a higher education (pictured, a memorial for her)

Becerra, who picked raspberries to help support her family when she wasn't in school, had dreams of enrolling in the Migrant Education Program, her mother said.

Her father Lazaro Rico told KION: 'I feel proud of the 18 years that I saw her and was allowed to see her flourish.'

A GoFundMe page for her family, set up by the teacher Summer Prather Smith, read: 'Daynzu del Carmen Rico Becerra was AMAZING, smart, kind, giving, determined and motivated young woman.

'She was a senior at Everett Alvarez High School. She had big dreams to get her diploma, go to a university and provide a better life for her family.'
A Detroit-area high school located in the heart of one of America's largest Muslim communities hosted a girls-only prom this year, for students whose culture frowns on unmarried girls and boys dancing with each other.

'Princess Prom' was started five years ago by a group of Muslim students at Hamtramck High School, an area which has a large Arab and Southeast-Asian population.

Students have continued the tradition, raising money and organizing the alternative prom largely by themselves while the school continues to host its regular prom.

'We run it like an after-school club,' Caitlin Drinkard, a school counselor who helps organize the event, told MLive. 'We meet once a week throughout the year. The girls really carry it and lead the meetings.'

Muslim students at Hamtramck high school in Michigan threw a girls-only prom this year for students who would normally be barred from attending the school's regular prom because of their culture

Hamtramck High School (above) is located in the heart of one of America's largest Muslim communities

According to MLive.com, the Princess Prom was created to 'create a comfortable and safe environment for girls how cannot attend the traditional co-ed prom for cultural reasons'.

Around 250 attendees attended this year's event, which was hosted on May 6. The event was open to all female students at the school, who were allowed to invite one female guest from another school. According to the website Start Class,the school has a population of 914 students.

Since both boys are banned from the event, attendees could literally let down their hair by taking off their hijabs. (Muslim women who wear the veil are only required to do so in the company of men who are not their husbands or immediate family members.)

Cellphones were also prohibited so that no photos of the unveiled girls could be posted on social media.

The prom included a special room where attendees could go to use their phones if needed.

Other than the absence of their male peers, the event is not unlike any other American prom - with food, drink, and girls dressed up in extravagant gowns and hairstyles.

There was also the added bonus of a henna tattoo artist and a photo booth provided by General Motors.

The students that organize the prom every year also partnered with other companies that provide freebies for swag bags.

This year, the organizing group also set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the event and made more than $1,400 from the page.

Drinkard said that the process of fundraising and organizing the event empowers the the girls.

'I've gained a lot of business management skills,' Aisha Khanum, an 18-year-old student who worked on this year's event, said
A secondary school has been handed Britain's worst possible Ofsted report after out-of-control pupils pelted inspectors with food.

Willenhall E-ACT Academy in the West Midlands was rated as 'inadequate' in all five inspection categories and put into special measures.

The damning inspectors report found 70 per cent of teachers at the school left during 2015 and 2016 and pupils did not feel safe.

The report states that even inspectors visiting the school in March had food thrown at them and were 'jostled' in corridors by 'rude' pupils.

And parents today hit out at the school and insist the report findings did not come as a surprise.

Willenhall E-ACT Academy in the West Midlands was rated as 'inadequate' in all five inspection categories and put into special measures

Parents Tracey Millinchip, 38, and Stephen Hawkins, 62, outside, Willenhall E-ACT Academy

The damning inspectors report found 70 per cent of teachers at the school left during 2015 and 2016 and pupils did not feel safe

As well as pupils feeling unsafe, inspectors arriving to see the school had food thrown at them

Tracey Millinchip, 38, said her 14-year-old daughter had been bullied at the school.

She added: 'We have read the report.

'First I saw of it was on Facebook because parents highlighted the concerns. I was appalled but it doesn't surprise me.

'There have been a lot of problems here. My daughter is in Year 9, she had a lot of problems.

'She was attacked a couple of months ago. She was put into lessons with a teacher on her own to do her education which has had an effect to the point where her levels have dropped.

'She leaves in July luckily and is going to a performing arts college. But I'm worried because my other daughter has just got a place here because we live a stones throw away.

'My main concerns would be a lack of continuation of regular staff. They have a lot of agency staff coming in.

Roy Toon, 72, was waiting to pick up his 13-year-old granddaughter

'I have to take my daughter to reception every day and pick her up from there for her own safety because the behaviour is so awful. The kids have a lack of respect and don't respect the staff at all.'

Stephen Hawkins, 62, who was picking up his 12-year-old daughter, said the school had issues.

He added: 'My daughter is here and she loves it and her grades have gone up.

'The problem is you have some kids that just aren't bothered about learning.

'And there's just nothing the teachers can do because parents aren't bothered that they don't learn either.

'What they need to do is just expel all the problem children but they don't.

'Instead they get detentions and they just walk out or don't care or see them as a badge of honour.

'My daughter says there is trouble there every day with fighting or kids playing up in classes.

'The teachers do their best but it must be one of the hardest professions nowadays.'

Roy Toon, 72, was waiting to pick up his 13-year-old granddaughter.

He said: 'My granddaughter loves it here but she had a good group of friends.

'My son and daughter also went here and they never had any trouble. But there are problems here.

'I live near the school and I've had my windows put through before by kids.

'I think it's the same as any other school though, there are good kids and bad kids.

'It's just a very big school so the problems get highlighted even more.'

Willenhall E-ACT Academy was rated as 'inadequate' in all five Ofsted inspection categories

A third of pupils in one year regularly fail to turn up and one student said it was 'normal' to disrespect senior teachers.

Inspectors also found graffiti and litter inside school buildings and watched as pupils gathered on staircases instead of going to detentions.

The report states: 'Inspectors had food thrown at them in the canteen and in a classroom. A small number of pupils were rude to them.

'Inspectors were jostled in corridors and witnessed staff being ignored or defied.

'A senior leader was spoken to disrespectfully by pupils and told inspectors this was the norm.

The damning Ofsted listed a long list of problems at the struggling secondary

'Persistently poor behaviour at social times and in lessons leads to many pupils feeling unsafe and not learning well.

'Pupils do not take a pride in their school. Litter and graffiti were evident both inside and outside the building.

'Litter was particularly prevalent after lunchtimes but was also noticeable early in the day.

'Internal truancy is not uncommon during the day. This occurred during the inspection.

'Pupils who had been sent to a referral room chose instead to congregate on stairwells.'

Reacting the report online, a former security guard at the academy revealed a Year 8 student once tried to stab him with an Allen key.

Inspectors did manage to highlight some positives in the report by saying the school is trying to react to the problems.

They added: 'E-ACT, the school sponsor, fully recognises the challenges faced by the school and has begun to address aspects of greatest concern.

'Vocational education in the sixth form is strong and leads to good outcomes for students.'

A team of five Ofsted inspectors visited the school on March 7 and 8 this year

The mixed school has just over 1,300 pupils, making it the largest school in the borough of Walsall.

An E-ACT Trust spokesman said: 'Naturally we are disappointed by Ofsted's decision.

'However, under the strong leadership of Ms Kirsty Jones as the recently appointed headteacher, and with the close support that we provide across all aspects of the academy, we are confident that Willenhall Academy will continue to make rapid progress so that we can offer the best possible education to our students.

'At E-ACT we are proud of the fact that almost two thirds of our academies are rated at least Good by Ofsted, and we expect Willenhall to join this group by the time of their next Ofsted inspection.'
A jury has found a North Carolina woman was fired by the city in retaliation for raising safety concerns, rather than for what the city argued was a racially-charged Facebook post, in a verdict reached Thursday.

The Charlotte jury concluded former fire inspector Crystal Eschert was discriminated against for being a whistleblower and should be awarded $1.5 million for her wrongful termination.

City attorneys have one week to file a brief arguing against the size of the award before a final judgment will be entered in the lawsuit.

A jury has found that Crystal Eschert was fired by the city of Charlotte, North Carolina in retaliation for being a whisteblower and should be awarded $1.5million, in a verdict reached Thursday

'It just gave me confirmation that I did the right thing,' Eschert told WSOC, of her decision to persevere through what has been a long, difficult process.

'It's definitely been hard,' she said. 'I appreciate everyone's time, we had a great team and I appreciate the jury's time as well and their ability to really look into the information that was provided and make the best decision they felt was appropriate.'

The trial centered largely around free speech and political correctness, and the standard a fire inspector should be held to in the community.

One city attorney argued that Eschert should be held to a higher standard as someone who is required to enter people's homes, and that use of the word 'thug' in a Facebook post that Eschert published around the time that Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri would make it hard for her to do her job, as she must sometimes testify in court, according to Firehouse.com.

The post in question was published on August 20, 2014, and read as follows:

'White guy shot by police yesterday near Ferguson ... Where is Obama? Where is Holder? Where is Al Sharpton? Where are Trayvon Martin's parents? Where are all the white guys supporters? So is everyone MAKING it a racial issue? So tired it's a racial thing. If you are a thug and worthless to society, it's not race -- You're just a waste no matter what religion, race or sex you are.'

Around that same time, Eschert raised concerns over new construction that would house her unit of the Charlotte Fire Department.

She felt the building was unsafe and alerted both her father-in-law Ray Eschert, a well-known Ballantyne political activist, and City Council member Claire Fallon, to what she felt were problems with the renovations.

Shortly after Eschert went outside the chain of the Fire Department's command to make her concerns known, a complaint about the Facebook post was received by city officials under a name that Eschert's attorney argued did not belong to an actual person, and Eschert was subsequently fired from her position with the Charlotte Fire Department.

The jury rejected the city's argument that Eschert had to be fired over what they termed the 'offensive' an 'inflammatory' Facebook post.

Eschert is seen here with her family celebrating the jury's verdict on Thursday

One jury member spoke anonymously about whether Eschert had crossed a line with her post.

'After reading the post in its entirety, she was expressing the frustrations people had with what was going on in the country,' the juror said. 'She has a right to do so. I don't agree with it, but she has a right to do so.'

During the trial two African American civil rights leaders from the community spoke on Eschert's behalf.

The city declined to comment on the jury's verdict and award.

'A judgment has not been entered as there are a number of legal rulings that still must be made. since the trial is not over it would be inappropriate for the City to comment at this time,' Charlotte City Attorney Bob Hageman wrote.

The city could appeal whatever final judgment is entered in the case to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
A 13-year-old girl was allegedly abducted from a bus stop and sexually assaulted before being rescued by police.

Dontrel Jermaine Williams, 39, was arrested on felony charges of sex assault and kidnapping after the young girl was forced into a car in Portage Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan on Wednesday afternoon.

The girl was allegedly taken to Williams' home in Clinton Avenue and assaulted.

Dontrel Jermaine Williams, 39, was arrested on felony charges of sex assault and kidnapping after the young girl was abducted at a bus stop. The girl was allegedly taken to Williams' home in Clinton Avenue (pictured) and raped

When Williams' wife came home unexpectedly at about 7.45pm the girl said she was able to briefly get away and call 911.

Kalamazoo officers said they narrowed down their search to a specific house and found the victim upstairs.

A neighbor told 24 Hour News 8 that she saw officers arrest Williams. The channel reported that state police records show Williams is being held on felony charges of sex assault and kidnapping.

He has no other charges on his record with Michigan State Police.

When Williams' wife came home unexpectedly the girl said she was able to get away and call 911. Kalamazoo officers said they narrowed down their search to a specific house and found the victim upstairs (stock photo)

Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety Captain Vic Ledbetter said: 'From the interview and from what we can gather at this point, it seemed to be a random act.'

'She was smart enough and aware enough to call 911 to report that she had been kidnapped.'

He added that the 13-year-old girl's mother was waiting for her and when she did not return home she filed a missing person report.

Authorities said the suspect and victim do not know each other.
Gina Miller wept today after receiving a standing ovation for a speech to a Remoaners conference in London.

A crowd of anti-Brexit enthusiasts including Sir Bob Geldof applauded the political activist, who rose to prominence dragging Brexit through the courts.

Mrs Miller slammed the Prime Minister Theresa May as 'robotic' and vowed to continue her fight against an 'extreme' Brexit.

Senior Tory Michael Fabricant told MailOnline said Ms Miller 'fails to understand' the facts of Brexit.

And her outburst was mocked by Ukip today, with the party accusing the former model of behaving like someone receiving a 'Best Supporting Patroniser' award.

The language is a direct echo of former Prime Minister David Cameron who yesterday urged voters to hand Mrs May a big enough Commons majority to allow her to defy Brexiteers wanting an 'extreme' exit from the EU.

Gina Miller wept today after receiving a standing ovation for a speech to a Remoaners conference in London

Mrs Miller slammed the Prime Minister Theresa May as 'robotic' and vowed to continue her fight against an 'extreme' Brexit

During her speech today Mrs Miller said: 'Just because Mrs May has called a snap election does not mean we all have to snap into line and jettison common sense.'

She added: 'By being inflexible and harsh, close-minded, deaf to others' opinions and concerns about Brexit, Mrs May is preventing the country from healing and recovering.

'As a country we value fairness and reasonableness and compromise for the greater good - Mrs May is out of step with that, robotically repeating mantras of 'Brexit means Brexit', and the words 'strong and stable' being trotted out just rings hollow.'

Ms Miller continued that an 'extreme Brexit is not a done deal' and called on the public to use their votes in the upcoming election.

'Mrs May seems to want no opposition on Brexit - the official opposition, it seems, is obliging - it is therefore up to us as individuals and a civil society to do so,' she added.

A number of leading figures from across the political spectrum will take to the stage for the discussion event at The Convention at Central Hall, Westminster.

Ahead of today's conference, she said: 'We're going to have to hear and engage and respond to all those people who voted Leave and find out why they voted Leave and understand that cry,' she said.

'Because I do think a large populous voted Leave because they wanted someone to listen to them. They were crying out, it was an emotional spasm, Brexit.'

Mr Fabricant told MailOnline: 'What Ms Miller fails to understand are two basic facts. One: it is the will of the British people to leave the European Union.

'Two: like pregnancy, there is no half-way house.

'When we leave the EU the UK Supreme Court must be in control of our laws - not a European court. We must be in control of our border, not Brussels.

'And we must be free to make our own trade deals. All that means leaving the single market.

'Anything else would be a betrayal of our nation's democratic decision last June. This is not a hard Brexit. It is just Brexit.'

During her speech today Mrs Miller said: 'Just because Mrs May has called a snap election does not mean we all have to snap into line and jettison common sense.'

The language about 'extreme' Brexit is a direct echo of former Prime Minister David Cameron who yesterday urged voters to hand Mrs May a big enough Commons majority to allow her to defy Brexiteers

A crowd of anti-Brexit enthusiasts including Sir Bob Geldof applauded the political activist, who rose to prominence dragging Brexit through the courts

A Ukip spokesman said: 'Ms Miller takes the biscuit, accuses the majority in the country of having an ''Emotional spasm'', then promptly bursts into tears after a round of applause for luvvies.

'This isn't the Oscars Ms Miller, this is the future of the country, decided by millions in a referendum.

'But if it were the Oscars I'm sure you would be awarded 'Best Supporting patroniser'.

Theresa May (pictured today camapaigning in North Shields, Tyneside) was blasted as 'robotic' by Ms Miller today

Mrs May defended her Brexit plans today and launched a personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn's failures

Ms Miller, a businesswoman and former model, unveiled her latest campaign to limit the impact of leaving the EU last month after Theresa May urged voters to give her a 'mandate' for looming talks with Brussels.

Best for Britain, which has been supported by Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson, will back candidates in the June 8 poll who want to limit the impact of quitting the EU.

Ms Miller came to prominence last year when she challenged Mrs May's right to trigger the Article 50 process using executive powers.

Instead, the government pushed through the Brexit Act despite efforts by Remain-supporting MPs and peers to water it down.

The 52-year-old has made clear she will carry on fighting to limit the impact of Brexit despite receiving abuse and death threats.

Mrs Miller's speech at the Convention on Brexit opened an event due to hear from a collection of Remain campaigners including former Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, ex Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and Geldof.

Ms Miller (pictured arriving at the conference today) came to prominence last year when she challenged Mrs May's right to trigger the Article 50 process using executive powers

The 52-year-old has made clear she will carry on fighting to limit the impact of Brexit despite receiving abuse and death threats

Mr Campbell, a panellist in one of the debates, accused Mrs May of calling the election to try to exploit weakness in the Labour Party.

'This is the most surreal election I have ever, ever been involved in,' he said.

'It is being held for reasons which are not being stated - she (Mrs May) had a mandate for Brexit, she didn't have that much trouble getting Article 50 through.'

He added: 'She's exploiting the weakness of the Labour Party to try to get a huge majority to deliver a hard Brexit and all the other crazy stuff she wants to do like bringing back grammar schools, and we are helping her to do that.'

Brexit supporters including Tory Kwasi Kwarteng have also been invited to take part in the two day conference at Westminster's Centre Hall.

The conference was called to host debate that is 'absent from Parliament' on the impact of Brexit.

It will host a debate on holding a second referendum on whether Britain should leave on the terms agreed in the Brexit deal.

PM launches most personal attack yet on 'appalling' Corbyn accusing him of 'deserting' working class voters

Theresa May launched her most personal attack yet on 'appalling' Jeremy Corbyn today, accusing him of 'deserting' working class voters.

Delivering a series of vicious barbs at the veteran left-winger as she mounted another campaign raid on Labour's traditional heartlands, the PM branded him 'appalling' and said he was unable to 'add up'.

Mrs May warned activists in Tyneside that Mr Corbyn was trying to take the country 'back to the 1970s' with a disastrous hard-left plan for government.

But she also refused to deny that the Tories were considering a new 'death tax' to help fund social care.

Theresa May warned activists in North Shields today that Mr Corbyn was trying to take the country 'back to the 1970s' with a disastrous hard-left plan for government

The new Tory battlebus is emblazoned with the slogan: 'Theresa May: For Britain'. There is only a small Conservative logo on the door

The Prime Minister stepped up her attempts to win over traditional Labour voters as the election reached its halfway point.

In a sign of the presidential-style campaign being waged by the Tories, the party's new battlebus has been unveiled emblazoned with the slogan: 'Theresa May: For Britain.'

The word 'Conservatives' has been relegated to a small logo on the door.
Donald Trump lobbed a veiled threat at the former FBI director on Friday, hinting that some of their conversations before his firing may have been recorded.

'James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!' the president tweeted.

It's unclear whether Trump was warning that the White House is recording his calls, or if he believes the FBI may have been recording Comey's.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Friday afternoon that the Oval Office would be silent on the matter: 'The president has nothing further to add on that.'

Challenged about the tweet itself, Spicer said: 'That's not a threat. He's simply stating a fact.'

Donald Trump (right) warned former FBI director James Comey (left) that their conversations may have been preserved on 'tape'

The stunning move adds a new level of intrigue to the firing of the nation's former top cop

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Friday afternoon that the Oval Office wouldn't have any further comments about the tweet, which he denied was a 'threat' to Comey

But Comey, according to CNN, which cited an unnamed source, is 'not worried about any tapes' of conversations between him and the president. 'If there is a tape, there's nothing he is worried about.'

And NBC News had its own secret access to Comey's inner circle, with one person close to him saying: 'He hopes there are tapes. That would be perfect.'

Trump said Thursday during an interview with NBC News that the two men have spoken at least three times since Inauguration Day.

And on those occasions, he insisted, Comey assured him that he was not personally the subject of any federal investigations.

'He said it once at dinner and then he said it twice during phone calls,' Trump said.

He described a matter-of-fact exchange over dinner in which he asked an unusual question and got an unconventional response.

'I said, "If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?" Trump recalled.

'He said, "You are not under investigation".'

Spicer was asked Friday whether or not the White House had a recording of that dinnertime conversation, and replied: 'I'm not aware of that.'

Trump said Thursday that Comey told him  three times  that he wasn't being investigated

It is rare for a federal law enforcement official to tell anyone, including the President of the United States, whether they are being investigated.

Even if Comey doesn't speak to reporters about the circumstances behind his dismissal on Tuesday, he may have a high-profile venue to tell his side of the story.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked him to testify next week.

The latest twist from Trump amid reports that he demanded loyalty from James Comey during the private dinner at the White House back in January.

The claims from associates of the now fired FBI director. Comey had told associates that he was summoned to the White House for a one-on-one dinner with Trump seven days after the inauguration, the New York Times reports.

It was during the dinner that Trump reportedly asked Comey twice to pledge loyalty to him as the new Commander in Chief.

Sources claim Comey declined to do so but said he told the President he would always be honest with him.

Trump is said to have pressed Comey on whether that would be 'honest loyalty', to which the FBI director said: 'You will have that.' Sources close to Comey said he now believes this dinner conversation may have sealed his fate.

This version of events is vastly different to the dinner conversation Trump himself described in an interview with NBC's Lester Holt on Thursday.

The version is denied by the White House. But the president also used Twitter on Friday morning to say that 'it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy'.

While it is not clear if they are talking about the same dinner, the pair are believed to have only dined together privately once.

Trump indicated that he had dinner with Comey at the former FBI director's request - and said Comey was angling to keep his job.

'I had a dinner with him. He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House,' Trump said.

'He asked for the dinner?' Holt followed up.

'A dinner was arranged, I think he asked for the dinner,' the president hedged. 'And he wanted to stay on as the FBI head.

'And I said I'll consider and we'll see what happens. But we had a very nice dinner. And at that time he told me 'you are not under investigation',' Trump said.

Trump said he had asked Comey - once over dinner and twice by phone - if the FBI were investigating him as part of its probe into alleged collusion between members of his campaign and the Russian government prior to the election.

The President showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in the active FBI probe.

Comey has not spoken publicly to confirm or challenge Trump's account.

During that same interview, Trump declared he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

The White House had initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision.

Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Counselor Kellyanne Conway (pictured) Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Vice President Mike Pence had all claimed that Trump did the firing after he was advised to let Comey go by the deputy attorney general

With Spicer (left) away on Navy Reserve duty, Huckabee Sanders (right) was put behind the White House podium to handle the billowing crisis that prompted comparisons to Richard Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre

Been here before... White House tape threat sounds like Nixon President Nixon resigned before he could be impeached for the Watergate scandal President Donald Trump said in a Twitter tirade Friday morning that sacked FBI director James Comey 'better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.' Presidential recordings of course have played a part in history before - notoriously so in the case of Richard Nixon. He resigned before he could be impeached after the infamous Nixon White House tapes that were made public before the Senate Watergate Committee. Nixon ordered the Secret Service to install recording devices in the White House and taped 2,636 hours of phone calls and conversations between 1971 and 1973. He was paranoid about how he was viewed by members of Congress and the executive branch. The 37th president was also concerned about how he was being portrayed to the media. Most people did not know they were being taped and only a few members of the White House administration knew the sound activated recording devices existed. Nixon's downfall spiraled because of the tapes which were exposed during the Watergate investigation into the DNC burglary while he was running for re-election. President Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox (pictured) who was investigating the break-in at the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex The burglars were trying to bug the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex. During the investigation, the 'smoking-gun' tape led to Nixon's resignation. It proved the president ordered a cover-up of the burglary of the DNC. The recording revealed Nixon ordering the FBI and CIA to abandon its investigation of the break-in. Before the release of the 'smoking gun' tape, Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox - who was investigating the Watergate scandal - in the Saturday Night Massacre, which itself has drawn comparisons to the firing of Comey. Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, but many of his aides served time in federal prison. Nixon wasn't the first president to secretly record Oval Office conversations. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also recorded discussions in the Oval Office with a microphone hidden under his desk. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt used a recording device hidden under his desk after a New York Times article containing 'a deliberate lie' was publsihed He began using the device after the New York Times published what he claimed to be a fictitious article. FDR was advised by his stenographer to record meetings to keep this from happening again. He recorded eight hours of conversations in the Oval and stopped using it after he was re-elected in 1944. President Dwight D. Eisenhower also used a secret recording device disguised as a telephone on his desk in the Oval Office. FDR could only tape 10 minutes at a time with his recorder, but Eisenhower was able to record a full 15 minutes. However, Eisenhower would occasionally forget to turn the machine on at the beginning of meetings and the quality of many recordings was extremely poor. He used the device to document 75 different conversations beginning in 1953. President Eisenhower (pictured with Vice President Nixon) used a recording device hidden in a fake telephone . However, he often forgot to turn it on before meetings President John F. Kennedy had a system installed in 1962 by the White House Communications Agency. He hid microphones in the drapes of the Cabinet Room and under a coffee table and his desk in the Oval. Kennedy had a Dictaphone machine hooked up to a telephone and taped 265 hours of meetings and 12 hours of phone calls. His Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson also used a device and as president he used it to record 800 hours covering 9,000 phone conversations. JFK upped the number of devices in the White House from previous administrations. Recorders were hidden in the drapes of the Cabinet Room, his study and in the Oval President Johnson used secret recording devices as vice president and president Again, the quality of the Dictaphone recordings were often lacking. The tapes would often pick up background noise and JFK's leg tapping more than the actual conversation. President Ronald Reagan also taped dozens of calls made from the Situation Room. The recordings reveal the conversations he had with world leaders such as former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, former Syrian President Hafez el-Assad and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Ronald Reagan taped dozens of calls made from the Situation Room, including one with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (left) Source: History.com, Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, The Institute: The IEEE News Source and CNN Advertisement

But Trump acknowledged for the first time on Thursday that the Russia investigation - which he dismissed as a 'made-up story' - was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a 'showboat' and 'grandstander,' added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president.

Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

Multiple officials, including Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

'I was going to fire Comey,' Trump said. 'Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey.'

The White House's explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House's assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file.

My decision: Trump said of the firing of the FBI director: 'Oh, I was going to fire Comey regardless of recommendation.'

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from 'countless' members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision

'That is not accurate,' McCabe said. 'Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.'

Unfazed, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from 'countless' members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trump's version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not 'standard practice' to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trump's comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

Trump and Comey's relationship was strained early on, in part because of the president's explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama 'wiretapped' him.
More than a dozen great white sharks have been spotted along the Southern California coast, sparking urgent warnings to paddle-boarders to get out of the water.

Video posted online by the Orange County Sheriff's Department shows the sharks swimming near several people in the water at Dana Point.

The group were warned by officers who flew over the area in a helicopter.

'You are paddle-boarding next to approximately 15 great white sharks,' deputy Brian Stockbridge announced over the helicopter loudspeaker.

'They are advising you exit the water in a calm manner. The sharks are as close as the surf-line.'

More than a dozen great white sharks have been spotted along the Southern California coast, sparking urgent warnings to paddle-boarders to get out of the water. Authorities warned paddle-boarders (pictured) to calmly exit the water

One male paddle-boarder (pictured) was seen scaring off a juvenile great white that was swimming just feet next to him

Video posted online by the Orange County Sheriff's Department shows the sharks (pictured) swimming near several people in the water at Dana Point. The group were warned by officers who flew over the area in a helicopter

One male paddle-boarder was seen scaring off a juvenile great white that was swimming just feet next to him.

The video remained focused on the sharks in the water and did not show the paddle-boarders; however, beachgoers were seen standing along the beach following the warning.

The Long Beach Fire Department issued a shark advisory 'until further notice'.

'Two 3-5ft juvenile great whites seen @ Peninsula Oceanfront. No aggressive behavior!' the department tweeted on Thursday.

Shortly after, the department tweeted that the advisory would be in affect for the next 24 hours.

Fire captain Cameron Abel, of the Marine Safety Unit in Long Beach, said the increase in shark sightings is similar to an influx seen at this time last year.

Marine safety officials have attributed the activity to a 'thriving aquatic ecosystem' in the area and estimated that 10 to 20 juvenile sharks swim near Long Beach daily.

The sharks 'were around most of the summer', Abel told the Los Angeles Times. 'We'd spot them periodically, and towards the end of the summer they disappeared.'

Some people can be seen standing along the beach heeding the officers' warning as the sharks swim close to the surfline

The Long Beach Fire Department issued a shark advisory 'until further notice'. 'Two 3-5ft juvenile great whites seen @ Peninsula Oceanfront. No aggressive behavior!' the department tweeted on Thursday

There were also several advisories posted up and down beaches along the Southern California coast following week-long sightings of the sea creatures.

A total of 25 great white sharks have been spotted along the coast since Monday.

Another video showed the Orange County Sheriff's Duke 1 helicopter warning beachgoers on Wednesday to 'not enter the water'.

The video showed several huge sharks swimming near the surfline of Capistrano Beach around 1.30pm.

In the helicopter video, sheriffs are heard discussing and contacting local lifeguards about issuing a warning over the loudspeakers.

'We have some people real close to some of the larger ones,' officers are heard saying in the video before they made an announcement for beach patrons to beware of the sharks.

Marine safety officials have attributed the activity to a 'thriving aquatic ecosystem' in the area and estimated that 10 to 20 juvenile sharks swim near Long Beach daily

Another video showed the Orange County Sheriff's Duke 1 helicopter warning beachgoers on Wednesday to 'not enter the water'. The video showed several huge sharks (far right) swimming near the surfline of Capistrano Beach around 1.30pm

Orange County Lifeguards Chief, Jason Young, told the Register that there were two reports of shark sightings in the Capo Beach area.

'We haven't had any reports of anyone being bumped or charged, just observations of them either swimming or breaching,' Young said.

Sharks are loners, which is why it's unusual for them to gather in groups along the coast.

Experts say the great whites are hanging out close to shore in areas called 'hot spots'.

The department tweeted a short time later that the advisory would be in place for at least 24 hours

Chris Lowe, the director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach, has been studying the recent shift in great white behavior in Southern California.

'Ocean temperatures are rising, causing them to live in places they've never lived before,' Lowe told the Orange County Register.

'Populations are coming back. And ocean conditions may be pushing them to new places.'

Lowe said the part that is unknown is the extent to which global climate change is affecting marine animals in and near Southern California.

The El Nino winter of 2014 and 2015 brought on an interesting change in behavior of a group of juvenile sharks that made Surfside in Huntington Beach their home, year-round.

Instead of migrating that year, the sharks remained in the area.

'They didn't migrate south in the winter, which they usually did,' Lowe said. He added that if the water temperature patterns don't return, they "might start residing here."'

Recently, a woman was bitten by a shark at San Onofre State Beach on April 29. She is recovering from wounds to part of her upper thigh.

Sightings are not uncommon along the coast, but attacks are rare.
Theresa May launched her most personal attack yet on 'appalling' Jeremy Corbyn today, accusing him of 'deserting' working class voters.

Delivering a series of vicious barbs at the veteran left-winger as she mounted another campaign raid on Labour's traditional heartlands, the PM branded him 'appalling' and said he was unable to 'add up'.

Mrs May warned activists in Tyneside that Mr Corbyn was trying to take the country 'back to the 1970s' with a disastrous hard-left plan for government.

But she also refused to deny that the Tories were considering a new 'death tax' to help fund social care.

Theresa May warned activists in North Shields today that Mr Corbyn was trying to take the country 'back to the 1970s' with a disastrous hard-left plan for government

The Prime Minister stepped up her attempts to win over traditional Labour voters as the election reached its halfway point, holding a rally in Tyne and Wear today

The new Tory battlebus is emblazoned with the slogan: 'Theresa May: For Britain'. There is only a small Conservative logo on the door

The Prime Minister stepped up her attempts to win over traditional Labour voters as the election reached its halfway point.

In a sign of the presidential-style campaign being waged by the Tories, the party's new battlebus has been unveiled emblazoned with the slogan: 'Theresa May: For Britain.'

The word 'Conservatives' has been relegated to a small logo on the door.

The styling of the vehicle contrasts sharply with that being deployed by Jeremy Corbyn - which does not mention his name at all.

Mrs May said: 'Proud and patriotic working class people in towns and cities across Britain have not deserted the Labour Party  Jeremy Corbyn has deserted them.

MAY REFUSES TO RULE OUT NEW 'DEATH TAX' Theresa May today refused to rule out imposing new 'death taxes' to fund social care. The Prime Minister insisted people would have to 'wait to see the manifesto' amid reports the policy is being considered. In 2010, the then health secretary Andy Burnham floated the idea of a 10 per cent levy on all estates on top of inheritance tax. The policy, designed to fund social care, was abandoned after the Tories ran striking adverts condemning Labours death tax. Chancellor Philip Hammond told MPs at his spring budget that the government would not 'exhume' that policy. However, there have been claims that a similar approach could be back 'on the table' amid huge pressure on the system. Mrs May said the Tories were looking for a 'long-term' way of ensuring there was enough funding. Advertisement

'Millions of people here in the north east of England, and across our country, have loyally given the Labour Party their allegiance for generations. I respect that.

'We respect that parents and grandparents taught their children and grandchildren that Labour was a party that shared their values and stood up for their community.

'But across the country today, traditional Labour supporters are increasingly looking at what Jeremy Corbyn believes in and are appalled.'

Highlighting the 'shambolic' leaking of a draft of Labour's manifesto yesterday, Mrs May said it showed Mr Corbyn's 'desire to go back to the economically disastrous socialist policies of the 1970s'.

'Labour voters are appalled because they see a leader who can't lead, a shadow chancellor in John McDonnell who can't be trusted and a Shadow Home Secretary like Diane Abbott who can't add up,' she added.

Mrs May is seeking to capitalise on disarray in Labour after a draft of its election manifesto was leaked a week early.

Moderate MPs are in revolt over the left-wing programme, with many pleading with voters to back them personally and ignore the national picture.

A ComRes poll for the Mirror today found some 56 per cent of the public thought he would be a 'disaster' in Downing Street.

The Prime Minister made another raid on traditional Labour heartlands today as she visited an airfield north of Newcastle

Mrs May boarded the bus as she upped the pace in her tour ahead of the election on June 8

The styling of the vehicle contrasts sharply with that being deployed by Jeremy Corbyn - which does not mention his name at all

Mr Corbyn, pictured before delivering a speech in London today, is struggling to keep his campaign on track amid Labour fears he is 'toxic' on the doorstep

Corbyn insists he CAN be trusted to defend Britain despite REFUSING to back nuclear deterrent

Jeremy Corbyn insisted he can be trusted to defend Britain today - despite refusing to back the nuclear deterrent and making clear he would only go to war if there was a Nazi-style threat.

The Labour leader tried to sweep his track record under the carpet by declaring he is not a 'pacifist' and would take military action as a 'last resort'.

But asked whether there was any circumstance he would use force, the only example he gave was the Second World War - ignoring the war to reclaim the Falklands from Argentina in 1982.

He also said a deployment would only happen with UN security council approval - effectively giving Russia and China a veto.

Mr Corbyn risked further inflaming tensions within the party by suggesting airstrikes against ISIS should be halted immediately, and Trident would go into a defence review if Labour wins.

Jeremy Corbyn, pictured speaking at Chatham House today, said keeping Britain safe was the 'primary function' of the government

Delivering a keynote speech on security at Chatham House today, the veteran-left winger desperately tried to reassure the public over his credentials to take the keys to Downing Street.

However, the doubts within his own team were laid bare as his shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith was notably absent from the event today amid rumours of bitter clashes over policies including Trident renewal.

Gina Miller WEEPS as she receives a standing ovation from a Remoaners conference for a speech blasting 'robotic' Theresa May

Gina Miller wept today after receiving a standing ovation for a speech to a Remoaners conference in London.

A crowd of anti-Brexit enthusiasts including Sir Bob Geldof applauded the political activist, who rose to prominence dragging Brexit through the courts.

Mrs Miller slammed the Prime Minister Theresa May as 'robotic' and vowed to continue her fight against an 'extreme' Brexit.

Senior Tory Michael Fabricant told MailOnline said Ms Miller 'fails to understand' the facts of Brexit.

And her outburst was mocked by Ukip today, with the party accusing the former model of behaving like someone receiving a 'Best Supporting Patroniser' award.

The language is a direct echo of former Prime Minister David Cameron who yesterday urged voters to hand Mrs May a big enough Commons majority to allow her to defy Brexiteers wanting an 'extreme' exit from the EU.

Gina Miller wept today after receiving a standing ovation for a speech to a Remoaners conference in London

During her speech today Mrs Miller said: 'Just because Mrs May has called a snap election does not mean we all have to snap into line and jettison common sense.'

She added: 'By being inflexible and harsh, close-minded, deaf to others' opinions and concerns about Brexit, Mrs May is preventing the country from healing and recovering.

'As a country we value fairness and reasonableness and compromise for the greater good - Mrs May is out of step with that, robotically repeating mantras of 'Brexit means Brexit', and the words 'strong and stable' being trotted out just rings hollow.'
A female high school student has been accused of 'inappropriate conduct' for giving the Trump slogan 'build that wall' as her yearbook quote

A North Carolina high school has confiscated all its senior yearbooks and is reprinting them because it believes a white female student's 'build that wall' quote was inappropriate.

Richmond Early College High School is a predominantly white public school in Hamlet, North Carolina, with 214 students.

Its staff recalled its senior yearbooks this week after a screenshot of one female student's photograph and quote appeared on social media, sparking accusations from critics that the state is 'racist'.

The blonde student, who beamed in her posed-for photograph wearing a string of pearls, gave the Trump campaign slogan as her quote for the book and attributed it to the president.

Teachers now say that the remark amounted to 'inappropriate conduct' which it would not 'tolerate'.

It recollected the 22 yearbooks which had already been distributed among students and is reprinting them.

The decision had divided opinion among residents on social media. Some agreed with the decision while others said it infringed on the girl's first amendment rights.

The student did not face any disciplinary action and it is not known what her new quote will be.

In a statement, Richmond County Schools said there were also 'errors' in the yearbooks which had been put together by students.

'Earlier this week, it was discovered by school administration that Richmond Early College yearbooks had errors and inappropriate comments.

Schoolboard staff explained its decision in a statement on Facebook and said it was working to 'correct' the comment

'The principal immediately collected the distributed yearbooks.

'We regret that this incident has occurred and are currently working with the yearbooks publisher to make corrections.

'As a district, we do not and will not tolerate inappropriate conduct toward any of our students.

'In each situation, our goal is to provide for the well-being of all of our students and prevent recurrences of inappropriate conduct,' it said.

Some welcomed it, claiming the quote, which refers to President Trump's plan to construct a wall along the Mexican border, is offensive to the school's Hispanic students.

Richmond Early College High School is a predominantly white public school in Hamlet, North Carolina

Local residents flooded the school board's Facebook page to condemn its decision to reprint the books

'When one has a negative connotation to a huge majority of the school then it's a problem,' said one female student.

But others accused the school of trying to censor the the girl's beliefs.

'When did the first amendment become inappropriate? It's pathetic that students approaching graduation are not mature enough to handle words on a page,' one critic said.

'It's a cryin' shame that a white person can't even quote the President in their yearbook without being called racist.

'Funny how a few years ago all you saw was "my president is black". What is this world coming to!' another said.

Of the school's 214 students, around 60 percent are white and the remainder belong to minorities.
Foundation for Moral Law Files in Transgender Case Contact: John Eidsmoe, Foundation for Moral Law, 334-262-1245



MONTGOMERY, Ala., May 11, 2017 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Foundation for Moral Law, a Montgomery-based legal foundation dedicated to a strict interpretation of the Constitution as intended by its Framers, filed an amicus brief Tuesday in a transgender case that has garnered nationwide attention.



G.G., a Gloucester, VA high school student who was born female but identifies as male, sued the Gloucester School Board to gain the right to use the boys' locker rooms and other facilities. A federal judge ruled that the School Board was justified in refusing her request, but the Fourth Circuit remanded, holding that the trial judge had failed to give adequate consideration to a letter of the Department of Education and the Department of Justice directing that transgender students should be assigned to the facilities designated for the sex with which they identify. The School Board appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.



However, shortly after President Trump took office, his Department of Justice and Department of Education rescinded the previous letter and instead directed that school-related transgender matters should normally be resolved at the state and local levels. The Supreme Court therefore vacated the Fourth Circuit's order and remanded the case to the Fourth Circuit for further proceedings.



In its brief, the Foundation endorsed the School Board's argument that neither the U.S. Constitution nor the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires schools to allow transgender students to use facilities assigned to the opposite biological sex. Additionally, the Foundation argued that schools should not be required to facilitate transgender identity because there is growing evidence that transgenderism has tragic consequences in terms of emotional maladjustment, depression, anxiety, and suicide. Foundation Senior Counsel John Eidsmoe noted that "In an area as fraught with uncertainty as this, the courts should not intrude where the Constitution is silent. Local school boards should be free to make decisions that protect their students and reflect the values of their communities."



Foundation President Kayla Moore added that forcing teachers and administrators to adopt transgender policies may violate their religious freedom. She said, "People who believe God and nature have assigned distinct gender identities to people cannot simply call men female and women male without violating their religious beliefs. The first freedom guaranteed by the Constitution is religious liberty, but transgender identity is not even mentioned."

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Aaron Hernandez's fiancee thought someone was playing a trick on her when she learned of his suicide last month, Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez revealed in a heartbreaking Dr. Phil interview.

A preview of Shayanna's tearful interview was released on Friday, ahead of the two-part Dr. Phil special set for next Monday and Tuesday.

In the clip, the mother of one breaks down in tears as she recalls the moment prison officials informed her last month that Hernandez had hung himself in his jail cell.

'I got a call at 5:27am in the morning from some official at Shirley prison, and they informed me...they informed me that indeed Aaron was deceased,' Shayanna said, looking away from the camera as a tear streamed down her face.

'And at first I thought it was a hoax. I thought that this was some cruel person - that it was a cruel person playing a trick on me,' she added, taking a tissue from Dr. Phil.

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Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez (pictured) broke down in tears as she recalled the moment she learned of her fiance Aaron Hernandez's suicide last month

'And at first I thought it was a hoax. I thought that this was some cruel person - that it was a cruel person playing a trick on me,' Shayanna said

The interview marks the first time that Shayanna has spoken since her fiance's death.

In a press release about the interview, it was revealed that Shayanna had no idea what Hernandez had been planning, despite his suicide letter 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 their last conversation.

The full interview with Shayanna will air next Monday and Tuesday on the Dr. Phil show

Shayanna 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)

Hernandez's hung himself in his jail cell the morning of April 19, just five days after he was acquitted in the 2012 double murder of Daniel Jorge Correia de Abreu, 29, and Safiro Teixeira Furtado, 28.

However, he was still serving a life in prison sentence - without the possibility of parole - for the 2013 murder of Odin Lloyd.

Shayanna said it sounded like Hernandez was certain his murder conviction would be overturned on appeal and he would soon be freed.

He was very positive, so excited to come home. I spoke to him the night before and he was so, you know, "Daddy's going to be home, and I can't wait to sleep in bed with you guys, and I can't wait to just hold you and love you. I just know the feedback that I was getting from our last talk had nothing to do with suicidal thoughts. Shayanna Jenkins Hernandez

'He was very positive, so excited to come home,' Shayanna said of their final phone call, just hours before he was found dead. 'I spoke to him the night before and he was so, you know, "Daddy's going to be home, and I can't wait to sleep in bed with you guys, and I can't wait to just hold you and love you."'

'I just know the feedback that I was getting from our last talk had nothing to do with suicidal thoughts,' she added.

Their happy final phone call is also part of the reason Shaynna doesn't believe that Hernandez killed himself. Members of the Hernandez family are investigating his death independently, believing he was murdered instead.

Dr. Phil says that Shayanna does not believe that her fiance killed himself. She thinks he was murdered

'She does not believe he killed himself, surprisingly, because the evidence is pretty overwhelming,' Dr. Phil told the Today show on Friday.

Shayanna attended the court hearing last month where Hernandez was proclaimed innocent in the 2012 double-murder, and brought along their four-year-old daughter Avielle.

In a now troubling image, Hernandez teared up as he blew a kiss to the mother and daughter.

Dr. Phil also 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.

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 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, since they owed him about $6.5million when he was arrested for Lloyd's murder in 2013 and he was fired from the team.

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'

A judge finalized the decision to throw out the guilty conviction in court on Tuesday - making Hernandez technically an innocent man.

In an interview on the Today on Friday, Dr. Phil says Shayanna told him she is not expecting to receive any financial benefit from his death.

'She thinks there could be financial trouble, not financial windfall,' Dr. Phil said.

And 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 of murder in the first place.

The interview will also tackle Hernandez's 'purported secret romantic life.'

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.
Donna Hughes, pictured, is accused of locking a five-year-old with autism in a supply closet without any light for 30 minutes as punishment

A former special education teacher has been accused of locking one of her autistic kindergarten students in a supply closet without any light for 30 minutes as punishment.

Donna Hughes, a former teacher at Woodland Elementary School in Greer, South Carolina, was charged with unlawful neglect, cruelty to children and assault and battery for locking a five-year-old with autism in a closet.

She also allegedly dragged the child across the room on his knees, which injured him.

Hughes was suspended after the incident in March 2014 and she resigned in April.

The South Carolina Department of Education suspended her teaching license, saying that she had been reprimanded in 2012 and 2013 by the the Greenville County School District for her discipline practices, according to WSPA.com.

Though the child's parents filed a report against Hughes in 2014, she was not arrested by Greer Police until December 2016.

The reason for the delay is unknown, but Greer Police did begin an investigation into her discipline and management techniques in March 2014, according to Fox Carolina.

The parents of the five-year-old are now suing the Greenville County School District, saying the school district 'was aware of prior instances concerning improper punishment techniques and instructional practices' that involved Hughes and that their child was put in 'unreasonable risk of harm', according to Fox Carolina.

Their lawsuit, which was filed on May 2, says Hughes physically and emotionally abused the five-year-old student and that his parents amassed medical expenses from the teacher's abuse.

'Having gone through what he went through, it's hard for him to go back to a school,' the family's lawyer Joshua Kendrick told WSPA.

The family are seeking actual and punitive damages, the amount to be decided by a jury.
The Labrador who was dubbed the 'saddest dog in the world' has found a loving new home after being rejected by a second foster family.

Lana's plight touched the hearts of millions of dog lovers in 2015 after a photo of her looking depressed in her kennel when her foster family returned her went viral.

After 4,000 adoption applications and $15,000 in donations to cover her care, the two-year-old pooch finally found a second home in Ontario, Canada, in January 2016 - but the new owners ditched her just months later.

Now, a third foster home and training program has been found for Lana ahead of May 20 - which is when she was set to be moved from an overcrowded kennel.

Lana the Labrador who was dubbed the 'saddest dog in the world' has found a loving new home after being rejected by a second foster family.

Lana's plight touched the hearts of millions of dog lovers in 2015 after a photo of her looking depressed in her kennel when her foster family returned her went viral

A third foster home and training program has been found for Lana ahead of May 20 - which is when she was set to be moved from an overcrowded kennel

'We are happy to report that Lana has found a foster home and a new training program,' Canadian non-profit Rescue Dogs Match wrote on their website.

'RDM would like to thank everyone for their concern and support and we will keep you updated.'

It is not yet known who has chosen to foster Lana, but MailOnline has contacted the non-profit for further information.

They added that May 20 is Lana's move date from the overcrowded kennel she was being kept in, not a euthanasia date.

Lana's rehoming comes just a week after Rescue Dogs Match launched a desperate online appeal for her to fostered.



'May 14 is Lana's birthday (she will be three),' they wrote on Facebook last week. 'Please help find her a foster or forever home. Lana only has until May 20th.'

She was being held at a boarding facility that no longer had the room to keep Lana.

Lana first arrived at a boarding kennel in Toronto as a puppy  the runt of a large litter in Mexico.

She was kept in a foster program, spending short amounts of time with different families with no problems reported.

Lana was the 'size of a hand' when she first arrived at a boarding kennel in Toronto as a puppy  the runt of a large litter in Mexico

She was adopted by a family in 2015 - but they returned her after she snapped at the mother just once while protecting her food. Once returned to her kennel she was so heartbroken she refused to move or go on walks (pictured)

Rescue worker Dahlia Ayoub (pictured with Lana) said the pooch was soon back to her old self and was happy to see her the following day

Eventually she was placed with one family permanently at five months old, but they returned her in October 2015 after her guarding issues resurfaced.

Dahlia Ayoub, of Mighty Mutts, explained that Lana was the size of her hand when she arrived at the kennel and 'terrified' of everything.

She added that the only time her guarding instincts, stemming from when she was forced to compete for food with her siblings, have only reappeared that one time.

'She snapped at the mom. And they decided because they have kids in the house to bring her back to boarding.'

When her new owners returned her to the kennel, she said Lana was unresponsive for a whole day and too heartbroken to move or go on walks.

'It's almost like her world shut down,' she told The Dodo.

But Lana was soon back to her old self and was happy to see the rescue worker the following day.

After 4,000 applications to adopt her and $15,000 in donations to cover her care, the two-year-old pooch finally found a second home in Ontario, Canada, in January 2016

But unbeknownst to Lana's millions of fans, they returned her to the shelter in July, because they realised she was not the kind of dog to be petted and given belly rubs, but one that preferred having a job and being outdoors (pictured at her first foster home)

Lana's story seemed to have a happy ending when a second family adopted her in January 2016.

But unbeknownst to Lana's millions of fans, they returned her to the shelter in July.

'Lana's adoption did not work out because people want a dog they can pet and play with,' Brenda Dobranski, founder of Rescue Dogs Match, told The Dodo.

'Lana is a silly fun girl but she is not the type of dog that will let you give belly rubs to and sleep in bed with. She loves to have a job.'

She went to a boarding shelter until October 2016.

Then she was placed in a foster home for a week, before going to another boarding house in November 2016 - which needs her out by May 20.

'We need to keep Lana's happiness and well being at the forefront,' Ms Dobranski said. 'It is not fair for her to have to keep moving around.'

Ms Dobranksi explained that every time she settles in one place she is uprooted again - leaving her agitated.

The desolate dog now faces being euthanized by May 20 after her third birthday unless she can find a home due to overcrowding at the kennel where she is staying

'The best environment for her would be a horse or hobby farm where she can be outside most of the time "helping" her person with the chores around the property,' Rescue Dog's Match explained

The non-profit added that the ideal family would be a mature couple or someone with the 'time, patience, determination and commitment to help her become more confident'

'The best environment for her would be a horse or hobby farm where she can be outside most of the time "helping" her person with the chores around the property,' Rescue Dog's Match explained.

'She loves to be outside no matter what the weather. Lana loves to be part of whatever is going on but not in 'tight' quarters.'

The non-profit added that the ideal family would be a mature couple or someone with the 'time, patience, determination and commitment to help her become more confident'.

Lana's chances of adoption had been slimmed down by the fact that she must be adopted by a family in Canada.

They said they were hoping that Lana's match would have a routine she could rely on and an active lifestyle that would 'banish the thought of endless hours in concrete bunkers with nothing to do'.

Lana was described as 'sweet and silly' but has a 'tendency to shut down' when she is not around people she trusts.

'It is important for her to be in a home where she will continue to be exposed to new situations with lots of positive reinforcement,' Rescue Dogs Match concluded.

'She is loyal and loving to the people she trusts.'

Her rescue team was said to be 'committed' to supporting Lana and hopefully finding a family with the training and time to ensure her third home is her last.

Please email info@rescuedogsmatch.com if you are interested in fostering or adopting Lana
Prized paintings, drawings and antiques owned by one of the most influential refugees to flee Nazi horrors are set to sell for more than 1.4milliom

The contents of the late Lord Weidenfeld's apartment will be sold at auction run by Christie's, and the incredible pieces will fetch tens of thousands of pounds each.

Vienna-born George Weidenfeld left Austria for the UK at the outbreak of World War Two and settled in London.

The Jewish refugee had a colourful life as a publishing tycoon, diplomat, adviser to the first president of Israel, philanthropist and star of the social scene.

Jewish peer Lord Weidenfeld who died last year at the age of 96. His extensive collection will be auctioned next week at Christie's

Inside the apartment belonging to Lord Weidenfeld, who became one of the most daring and influential publishers

Left, Lavinia Fontana's Portrait of Pope Gregory XIII who was pope from 1502-1585. The oil on canvas, set in an Italian foliate-carved giltwood frame is expected to fetch 20,000-30,000; Right, Agostino Masucci's Portrait of Pope Clement XII. Bought by Lord Weidenfeld in 1980, it is thought to be set to fetch 10,000-15,000

He was also regarded as Gatsby-like, holding three parties a week at his lavish Chelsea apartment, hosting lunches for 20 and dinners for 50, with guests including the Grand Mufti of Egypt and a former Mrs Jagger.

To ensure the Thames-side apartment was the place to entertain, Weidenfeld convinced antiques dealer Geoffrey Bennison to decorate it.

His lavish apartment was decorated by antiques dealer Geoffrey Bennison who only ever worked on 11 homes

Bernardo Cavallino (Naples 1616-1656) Saint Dorothy, an example of small-scale saints painted in the second half of the 1640s by Cavallino. The piece is estimated to sell for 150,000-200,000

Henri Matisse (1869-1954). Portrait de Janie Bussy. This piece from 1950, crayon on paper, will fetch between 60,000 and 80,000 at the London auctioneers

THE COLOURFUL LIFE OF LORD WEIDENFELD Born in 1919, George Weidenfeld came to the UK in 1938 after his native Austria was annexed by Germany. He described arriving on British shores with just one suitcase, a few books, and a little money in his pocket, permitted to stay just three months. But he became an influential Jewish refugee. He worked for the BBC, as a political commentator, and had a regular newspaper column. In his varied career, he set up a publishing company and became a peer. He married four times over his 96 years, and died in London in January last year. Advertisement

It was one of just 11 homes Bennison worked on and the results were so impressive that it remained almost exactly the same for 40 years.

Baron Weidenfeld of Chelsea passed away last year at the age of 96.

More than 100 items will be auction on Thursday, May 18, many demonstrating his interest in art and collecting.

It includes a study of a female model by Egon Schiele, valued at 300,000. Another highlight is a pair of 1947 drawings by Alberto Giacometti which could sell for as much as 350,000.

A 1950 portrait by Henri Matisse is expected to sell for 80,000 and a 16/17th century oil painting of a bullfight in Siena which is valued at 100,000.

There are paintings of numerous popes as well as marble busts of Roman emperors.

Bryan Organ (b. 1935). Metamorphosis II. Signed and dated by the artist, this bright piece is expected to fetch more than 5,000

Vincenzo Rustici (Siena 1556-1632). A bullfight between the contrade in the Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy. He bought this piece in 1990 and it will fetch between 70,000 and 100,000 at auction next week

Lord Weidenfeld was an avid art collector and his extensive collection reflects his passion for a variety of artists and eras

The auction house has estimated the contents of the sale could make more than 1.4 million.

Adrian Hume-Sayer, head of sale at Christie's, said: 'Lord Weidenfeld was an avid art collector with a keen eye.

'The spectrum of works he collected is as broad ranging as the titles he published.

'From his collection of papal portraiture, reflecting his fascination with the power of that exalted office, to the explicit work on paper by Egon Schiele, which in its own time would have scandalised society as much as Weidenfeld's publication of Nabakov's Lolita did half a century later.

'The sale really is a snapshot of the life and passions of a great man in microcosm.'
President Donald Trump went back to labeling a probe of possible collusion between his campaign and Russia a 'witch hunt' concocted by Democrats, hours after saying it should be allowed to go forward.

With the White House in turmoil over its collapsing story of the reasons Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, the president once again went on the attack on Twitter Friday.

'When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?' Trump tweeted.

He was referencing a statement and testimony by former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper that there was 'no evidence' of collusion.

President Donald Trump tweeted that the idea of collusion between his campaign and Russia was 'fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election'

Clapper had told NBC that there was no evidence of collusion in a report  although an FBI investigation and two congressional investigations are ongoing.

'We did not include any evidence in our report, and I say, 'our,' that's NSA, FBI and CIA, with my office, the Director of National Intelligence, that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians,' Clapper said. 'There was no evidence of that included in our report.'

Asked Monday if his statement was still correct, Clapper testified Monday: 'It is.'

Trump also continued his tactic of painting the investigation as being driven by Democrats he cast as sore losers, in an election defeated rival Hillary Clinton has said she lost in part through the actions of Comey's FBI and Russian hacking.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper listens during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Capitol Hill May 11, 2017 in Washington, DC

'WHEN DOES IT END?' Trump once again blasted ongoing inquiries into Russian election interference

'Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election, Trump tweeted.

Trump's efforts to muddy up the investigation contrast with other statements expressing a wish that it be able to go forward  although these statements in turn are contradicted by other White House statements trashing the inquiry.

'As far as I'm concerned, I want that thing to be absolutely done properly,' Trump told NBC's Lester Holt, in the same interview where he also acknowledged that Russia was on his mind when he sacked Comey.

Trump denied ever asking Comey to stop the investigation. 'In fact, I want the investigation speeded up,' Trump said.

The president himself connected Russia to the firing when he said: 'In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.''

Trump also told NBC's Lester Holt he wanted the FBI's Russia inquiry to 'absolutely be done properly'

The Russian embassy in Washington released this photo of President Trump warmly shaking hands with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak this week. The White House didn't mention Kislyak in its official readout of the meeting or send out a photo of Trump and Kislyak

The New York Times reported that Trump asked FBI Director James Comey at a January dinner whether he would give him his 'loyalty.' Comey reportedly promised his 'honesty'

On Thursday, White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of the probe: 'I think he would love nothing more for this investigation to continue to its completion.'

Asked if the president was 'open minded' about the investigation, she responded: 'I think any time we have somebody interfering with our election, that would be considered a problem, and I think the President would certainly recognize that.'

'We'd love for this to be completed. But we also want it to be completed with integrity,' she said.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN Friday: 'I think no one believes [the Comey firing] was about Hillary Clinton's emails. I think it was all about the Russia case.'
An Oregon man, who was accused of pushing his girlfriend off a cliff for a $1 million insurance payout, pleaded guilty to waiting nearly two hours before calling 911 and coercing her for months to go hiking.

State prosecutors dropped a murder charge against Steven P. Nichols, 42, for the death of his girlfriend Rhonda Casto, 23, earlier this week.

Casto fell 100 feet to her death shortly during a March 16, 2009, hike on the Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge.

Nichols was a suspect from the beginning and was accused of pushing her off the cliff just months after he increased her life insurance policy to $1 million.

He pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide for reportedly waiting nearly two hours to call 911 after she fell.

Nichols said it took him an hour to get to her body. He then began CPR, before laying on top of her for 45 minutes until he got cold, according to Oregon Live. Nichols has never explained his actions.

Steven P. Nichols, 42, who was accused of pushing his girlfriend, Rhonda Casto (right) off a cliff for a $1 million insurance payout, pleaded guilty to criminally negligent homicide and coercion earlier this week

Crime scene: Casto fell 100 feet during the March 16, 2009, hike on the Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon (pictured)

Nichols' lawyer, Mike Arnold (on the ground at the scene), challenged the murder case, pointing out the destruction of evidence by an investigator and the unconstitutional three-hour police interview of Nichols after he was arrested

Nichols also pleaded guilty to coercing Casto to go on the hike.

He was placed on three years of probation after taking the plea deal. He will also get credit for the year and seven months he served while waiting for trail.

In March, Nichols won a court victory that would not allow his statements made to police to be admissible at trial.

The Oregon Supreme Court ruled at the time that a detective should have stopped interrogating Nichols when the suspect said he did not want to discuss Casto's death.

Nichols' lawyer, Mike Arnold, challenged the murder case, pointing out the destruction of evidence by an investigator and the unconstitutional three-hour police interview of Nichols after he was arrested, according to Oregon Live.

The interview occurred shortly after Nichols' February 2015 arrest at San Francisco International Airport, nearly six years after his partner's death.

A lead detective on the case also destroyed evidence on his computer, including crime scene and autopsy photos before he retired, court records showed.

In March, Nichols (left) won a court victory that would not allow his statements made to police to be admissible at trial. The state's Supreme Court ruled that a detective should have stopped interrogating Nichols when the suspect said he did not want to discuss Casto's (right) death

Beauty: Nichols, then a recently divorced 30-year-old stock trader, met Casto, a 20-year-old aspiring model, in 2005

Treacherous path: The hiking trail has a few narrow sections that drop off on one side into a ravine. The trail was even more dangerous that day due to a battering of sleet and hail that made the path treacherous

A Hood River County judge had ruled the statement inadmissible, but the state appealed to the higher court.

Casto was an aspiring model and young mother to their infant daughter at the time of her tragic death.

Nichols called 911 at around 6pm that night to say Casto had slipped and fell, which was nearly two hours after she had fallen.

The popular hiking destination has been the scene of other accidents in the past due to a few narrow sections that drop off on one side into a ravine.

The trail was even more dangerous that day due to a battering of sleet and hail that made the path treacherous.

Records show that several months before the incident, Nichols, who was then working as a stock trader, increased Casto's life insurance policy to $1 million.

He was secretly indicted while living in China in April 2014.

Court documents show Nichols and Casto became romantically involved in 2005, according to The Oregonian.

In 2008, Casto gave birth to the couple's daughter (pictured), who would ultimately become the beneficiary of her mother's life insurance, along with her father

In an interview with CBS' 48 Hours last year, Casto's mother, Julia Simmons, said that she was the one who introduced Nichols to her daughter while renting a room in his three-bedroom condominium in Portland.

Nichols was 30 years old and recently divorced. Casto was 20 at the time.

'Everything about her was impressive. And I just immediately fell in love with her,' Nichols said in the March 2015 interview.

Before long, Casto moved into Nichols' home, and three years later they welcomed their baby daughter, who is now eight.

The papers reveal that the couple each bought a $1 million life insurance policy in late 2008 from MetLife and named each other as beneficiaries.

Their daughter was named as a contingent beneficiary.

Nichols eventually agreed to split the money with Casto's mother and with the estate of his daughter.

Casto's mother said that shortly before her fall, the 23-year-old told her Nichols had been pestering her about going on a hike

In the 48 Hours interview, Nichols said that after delivering their baby, Casto said she wanted to lose the baby weight so she could start modelling again, so the couple took up hiking.

Simmons, Casto's mother, said that in the weeks leading up to the fatal March 2009 outing to the Eagle Creek Trial, her daughter told her that Nichols had been trying to convince her to go for a hike for a month.

'She says, 'he's either gonna give me a ring or he's gonna throw me off the cliff,'' the mother said in the episode.

Nichols said March 16, 2009, started off as a nice day but the weather turned inclement as the couple were making their way up the narrow, moss-covered trail

As they reached a particularly slippery portion of the pathway, Casto fell off the cliff to her death.

Nichols said he hiked down to the spot where his girlfriend came to rest and tried to give her CPR, but it was too late.

He later claimed that the 23-year-old mom was high that afternoon, was acting silly and ran on the slick trail before disaster struck.

Prosecutors would have had to show that Nichols intentionally caused Casto's death in order to prove murder.

His lawyer concluded that there 'was no evidence', adding that it was just 'speculation and conjecture'.
Cincinnati school officials have released disturbing surveillance video which reveals how a January 24 locker room assault left an eight-year-old unconscious two days before he hanged himself.

The video, shot from a hallway camera at Carson Elementary School shows Gabriel Taye being pulled to the ground by another student in a bathroom and left lying for over five minutes while other boys crowd over his body and kick and prod him.

Eventually, school officials come to his aid, but Gabriel's mother says they did not tell her that her son had been assaulted or he had lost consciousness.

Now investigators are trying to determine if the bullying led to his suicide and whether criminal charges should be brought.

The Cincinnati coroner is urging police to open a homicide investigation after an eight-year-old boy committed suicide two days after he was assaulted in a school bathroom

Gabriel Taye lies motionless as his assailant, the boy in a red and gray coat, walks away just moments after the assault

Cincinnati school officials have released disturbing surveillance video which reveals how a locker room fight left Gabriel unconscious

In the minutes after he was knocked to the ground, a number of classmates are seen stepping over him, kicking him, and taunting him

It took a full five minutes before adult supervisors were called to the bathroom to assist Gabriel

Two days after the incident, Gabriel committed suicide by hanging himself with a necktie in his bedroom

Immediately before the shocking assault, the video shows the assailant, who is wearing a red and gray coat and sporting a dyed hairstyle, walking into the bathroom.

In the early parts of the footage, the boy is seen consorting with his friends.

At one point, he knocks another classmate down to the floor by hitting him in the stomach, sending him down on all fours.

The boy with the dyed hair is then seen leaving the bathroom. He returns moments later and greets Gabriel, who is wearing a hooded jacket, in the bathroom.

It appears as if the boy and Gabriel are shaking hands. What happens next is unclear.

Gabriel falls suddenly to the ground and appears unconscious, though it is impossible to discern what exactly the boy did to him.

Attorneys for Gabriel's mother who saw the video claim that he was thrown against the wall, though that is difficult to discern from the footage that has been released.

The assailant is seen above with a red and gray coat and a dyed hairstyle according to Cincinnati police

Moments before the assault on Gabriel, the boy with the dyed hairdo is seen hitting another student in the stomach and knocking him to the ground. The student is seen above on his hands and knees as the assailant stands next to him

After the incident, things return to normal. The assailant is seen above talking with his peers inside the bathroom

The assailant in the red and gray coat then leaves the bathroom only to return moments later

The assailant walks back into the bathroom toward his friend holding a yellow coat. Gabriel seen behind him in the hooded dark blue jacket, walks in behind him

The assailant gives his friend a chest-bump as Gabriel approaches the bathroom entrance

Gabriel greets the assailant as two other schoolmates look on

Gabriel and the assailant appear to be engaging in a handshake at the entrance to the bathroom

In the next frame, Gabriel is seen falling over after it appears that the assailant yanks him to the floor

The assailant is seen walking away as Gabriel lies motionless on the floor

The assailant appears to either step on or kick Gabriel as he leaves the bathroom. Four other kids are seen standing around as Gabriel lay on the ground

As Gabriel lies motionless on the ground, the boy immediately gives a celebratory chest-bump to a friend.

In the next five minutes, children are seen peering over Gabriel. In some cases, they kick him, step on him, hop over him, and appear to taunt him.

Some of the students videotaped going into the bathroom appear to be checking in on Gabriel.

Two minutes after Gabriel hit the ground, a school official is seen opening one of the doors leading to the hallway where the bathroom is located.

For the next few minutes, Gabriel would remain on the ground

A minute after Gabriel hit the floor, a school official is seen opening the door leading to the hallway, though it appears he doesn't see Gabriel sprawled out on the bathroom floor

The official, who apparently does not see Gabriel lying on the ground, closes the door and disappears from view.

Three minutes later, after many children had already walked in and out of the bathroom with Gabriel lying on the ground, school officials are seen tending assistance.

At least three adult supervisors - including the assistant principal and the school nurse - are seen helping Gabriel to his feet and accompanying him out of bathroom and into the hallway.

Cincinnati school officials debated whether or not to release the video.

In the end, they decided it was in the public interest to distribute the footage. The school board sought and received approval from Gabriel's mother.

'We felt this video added to the public knowledge about what happened in this case,' Cincinnati Public Schools said in a statement.

A boy wearing a red jacket appears to step on Gabriel. At least three children surround him and three other kids, including the assailant, loiter in the hallway

Other kids walk by Gabriel in the bathroom. The boy above is seen standing over Gabriel and hitting him with his foot before running off

Two other kids are seen standing over Gabriel though it is unclear what they are doing

'We believe parents and members of the community have the right to important information that helps them understand how safe students at local schools are.'

The video footage was taken from an incident that occurred on January 24. Two days later, Gabriel committed suicide by hanging himself in his bedroom with a necktie.

After viewing the video, a coroner has reopened an investigation into Gabriel's suicide.

The coroner is urging police to treat this incident 'as a homicide until proven otherwise.'

Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco told Cincinnati radio station WLW on Thursday that she asked police for a full investigation to determine whether there are contributing factors to Gabriel's suicide, WXIX-TV reported.

'It was very hard for me to believe that an 8-year-old would even know what it means to commit suicide,' Sammarco told WLW.

Police initially closed the investigation, believing that school officials were in better position to handle the matter.

It was reported, however, that a detective asked for the name and date of birth of the assailant in the red and gray coat, according to USA Today.

Cincinnati police said in a statement that they would have no further comment about the case, and they directed question to the coroner's office.

Finally, after five minutes in which Gabriel was lying on the floor, a school official comes to his aid

The school official was joined in the bathroom by the assistant principal and a school nurse

The school official seen opening the door one minute after Gabriel was knocked to the ground comes into the bathroom and watches his colleagues as they attempt to help the boy

As the school nurse tends to Gabriel in the bathroom, another official on the far right arrives

Gabriel is eventually helped to his feet and escorted by the officials out of the bathroom

The coroner's spokesman said Friday that Sammarco wasn't available to discuss the investigation being reopened.

After viewing the video, a coroner has reopened an investigation into Gabriel's suicide

Cornelia Reynolds, Gabriel's mother, declined an interview Friday and referred questions to her attorneys.

A woman who lives in the same Cincinnati apartment complex as Reynolds said Friday that her 13-year-old son sometimes played with Gabriel outside.

'I would see him and his mother racing from their car to the building laughing,' Mildred White said.

According to her attorneys, Reynolds didn't learn of the bullying until the attorneys received a copy of a police investigative file that contained an email from a homicide detective to school officials describing the surveillance video.

The school district on Thursday disputed some of the detective's descriptions but not the most crucial parts - the boy being knocked unconscious and the five-minute wait for help from an adult supervisor.

Cornelia Reynolds (left), Gabriel's mother, declined an interview Friday and referred questions to her attorneys

Reynolds picked up Gabriel from school that day after administrators called to say he had fainted but was now alert

Reynolds picked up Gabriel from school that day after administrators called to say he had fainted but was now alert.

The district said administrators asked Reynolds to pick Gabriel up from school and take him to a hospital.

The attorneys dispute that. They said Reynolds decided herself to pick him up from school and that she didn't take him to the hospital until her sister, who was baby-sitting while Reynolds was at work, called to say Gabriel had vomited and was complaining of stomach pains.

Leader said Gabriel had no history of mental health issues and described him as a happy-go-lucky kid.

When his mother asked him what happened at school the day he was bullied, he said he didn't know, her attorneys said.

'He really didn't have any recollection of what had happened,' said attorney Jennifer Branch, who also is representing Reynolds.
Celebrity chef Neil Perry was forced to personally apologise to a black man who was handed a receipt with 'n*****' on it by an employee of a burger joint he owns.

Rutendo Ruth Muchinguri shared a snap of the of the receipt with the racist slur on it that her husband Nick was given after he dined at Burger Project in Melbourne on Friday.

'It is so disappointing that in a place where my husband spent his hard earned money, he received this sort of disgracefully discriminatory treatment,' she wrote on Facebook.

Burger Project's parent company Rockpool Dining Group shared an apology on its Facebook page, said the male employee in question had been terminated and claimed the company had apologised to Mr Muchinguri on Friday night.

But Mrs Muchinguri then clarified that the company had not apologised as claimed on Friday night, but Mr Perry had called her husband on Saturday morning to do so.

Rutendo Ruth Muchinguri (left) and her husband Nick (right) were horrified after the racist experience at the burger eatery

The receipt (pictured) had the word 'n****s' written next to the order number, clearly referring to Nick and his friends

'We felt that the initial response of the The Burger Project was more concerned about its public image than the hurt caused,' Mrs Muchinguri later said on Facebook.

'It was stated that they reached out to apologise as soon as they were aware of the incident and, as mentioned, Nicholas received an apology this morning, not last night.'

In a furious post to social media, Mrs Muchinguri had slammed Mr Perry's boutique burger joint for its staff member's blatant racism.

'My hard working black husband went to your Collins St store to have lunch with his friends and this is a photo of his receipt for the order,' she said.

'It's exhausting that in 2017, in a modern and multicultural society some of your staff remain insensitive to the impact that this insidiously nasty and vile word has.

'Come on, you can do better. This is NOT OK. I guarantee you that we will not be spending our money at any Rockpool Group businesses. I want to know what you will do about this,' she added.

The image went viral on Friday night, prompting Burger Project issue an apology for the racist slur and to reveal the employee responsible had since been fired.

In a furious post to social media, Ms Muchinguri (pictured) slammed Neil Perry's boutique burger joint for its staff's blatant racism

Neil Perry (pictured) owns Burger Project in both Sydney and Melbourne - where the racist incident ocurred

Burger Project has since issued an apology about the racist incident and said they terminated the employee responsible

'We are very concerned to learn about the unacceptable language used by an employee of our Burger Project St Collins Lane store today,' the apology reads.

'We do not condone this kind of behaviour from our staff, or accept this treatment of our customers. As soon as we became aware of the matter this afternoon, when we were contacted on the behalf of the customer, we acted.

'We reached out and apologised and the employee's position was terminated. The employee's behaviour was in breach of our code of conduct and such behaviour won't be tolerated. We apologise profusely for the upset and hurt this has caused.'

Neil Perry is a chef and restaurateur who runs Burger Project in Sydney and Melbourne and also fine dining group Rockpool.

He also develops menus for business and first class passengers flying Qantas.
Outgoing French President Francois Hollande has posed for a bizarre set of photographs as he prepares to hand power to Emmanuel Macron.

Portraits of the 62-year-old were captured both in colour and black and white during a photo shoot at the the Elysee Palace in Paris.

Hollande, who has yet to decide what to do after he leaves office on Sunday, is shown resting his head on his hand in one photo while in others he removes his glasses and closes his eyes.

Outgoing French President Francois Hollande has posed for a bizarre set of photographs as he prepares to hand power to Emmanuel Macron

Hollande, who has yet to decide what to do after he leaves office on Sunday, removes his glasses and closes his eyes in one bizarre picture

Portraits of the 62-year-old were captured both in colour and black and white during a photo shoot at the the Elysee Palace in Paris

Hollande is shown resting his head on his hand in one picture. The bizarre photo shoot came days before he is due to hand power to Emmanuel Macron

Another image shows the suited politician standing and running his hand through his hair.

Hollande became the first French president in recent history to not seek a second term of office having been in the position for the last five years.

This week, he chaired his final cabinet meeting before handing over the reins to Emmanuel Macron, while the governing Socialist Party began to splinter.

Macron will be inaugurated on Sunday and the centrist's victory over far-right leader Marine Le Pen is threatening to rapidly re-draw the French political map.

After embracing each member of his government as they left the Elysee Palace for the final time, Hollande said he had not decided what to do after he leaves office.

'How can I be of use to my country? That is the question I am going to try to answer now by mulling over it,' he said.

Hollande chaired his final cabinet meeting this week before handing over the reins to Emmanuel Macron, while the governing Socialist Party began to splinter

Hollande removed his glasses for some of the shots, which were captured at the Elysee Palace in Paris

Hollande became the first French president in recent history to say he would not seek a second term of office having been in the position for the last five years

The bruising election contest left the traditional parties on the sidelines, and Hollande's ruling Socialist Party is in disarray after the two-round election.

After former prime minister Manuel Valls shocked the party by saying it was 'dead' and he wanted to be a parliamentary candidate for Macron's year-old 'Republique en Marche' (Republic on the Move) movement, another leading Socialist struck out on Wednesday.

Benoit Hamon, who as the Socialist presidential candidate finished fifth in the first round of the election, said he planned to launch a new leftwing movement.

Hamon vowed to 'rebuild the left' with a new 'broad-based movement', while saying he intended to remain a member of the Socialist Party.

Leftwinger Hamon beat centrist Valls to secure the Socialist nomination for the election after an ideological battle within the party.

But he won just 6.4 percent of the first-round presidential vote on April 23 after being overshadowed by Communist-backed firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Hamon said his movement would be launched on July 1, after legislative elections in June that will be crucial to Macron's ability to pursue his agenda.

Hollande posed for pictures at Elysee Palace as the clock ran down on his time as French President

A poll in December predicted Mr Hollande would win just seven per cent of votes if he stood in the first round of the election. In the end, he decided he would not seek a second term of office

Macron, 39, has promised to rejuvenate France's jaded governing class by bringing more people into parliament who, like him, have never held elected office.

The incoming president has said half of Republique en Marche's candidates for the 577 seats up for grabs in the June 11-18 elections to the National Assembly will be new to politics.

The rest will be from the centrist Modem party or rebels from the Socialists and rightwing Republicans - and he will likely need to form a coalition to govern.

The candidates will be announced on Thursday but Macron's movement said Wednesday that Valls had 'not yet' fulfilled the criteria.

The ramifications of Macron's victory are also being felt in Le Pen's National Front (FN), following the announcement that her influential niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen is quitting politics - for now.

Marechal-Le Pen, 27, who has been tipped as a future leader of the party, told a regional newspaper in southern France she would resign her parliamentary seat because she wanted to work in the private sector and spend more time with her two-year-old daughter.

Behind her decision though is a battle for the far-right party's future between the more socially progressive wing led by her aunt and the more Catholic, conservative branch based in the south of France represented by Marechal-Le Pen.

Mr Hollande came to office in 2012 promising to be a 'Mr Normal' after five years of rule by the flamboyant Nicolas Sarkozy, who married supermodel Carla Bruni in office, and was seen as a friend of the super rich

Hollande sat down and placed his hands on his legs for one picture in the photo shoot

She was openly critical of Marine Le Pen's score of 33.9 percent against Macron, reflecting the opinion of many critics of her aunt that any score below 40 percent was a failure.

Marine Le Pen, a mother of three, tweeted that 'as a political leader I deeply regret Marion's decision but, alas, as a mum, I understand it'.

The conservative Republicans party, whose candidate Francois Fillon crashed out in the first round of the presidential election after being charged over giving his wife allegedly 'fake' jobs on the public payroll, are aiming to become the majority party in parliament.

That would force Macron to share power with them in what is known as a 'cohabitation' in France.

A poll showed that only 52 percent of voters want a pro-Macron government to emerge from the elections, while 42 percent favoured a legislature that would be a check on the new leader.

Optimism seemed muted too, with 55 percent of respondents to the Elabe survey saying they thought Macron would 'not improve things for the French people'.

Macron meanwhile was mobbed by wellwishers after he took part in a ceremony in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris with Hollande to commemorate the abolition of slavery.
A mother is accused of stealing more than $8,700 from a high school graduation party fund and transferring about half of it towards her sex toys business.

Jill Lynn Fiedler, 38, of Rosemount, Minnesota, was the treasurer of a parent group organizing a party for graduating seniors at Eastview High School.

But Fiedler wrote checks to herself, made an ATM withdrawal, and transferred $4,325 to a Paypal account for the sex toy company Pure Romance, where she worked as a contractor.

Jill Lynn Fiedler, 38, of Rosemount, Minnesota, is accused of stealing more than $8,700 from a high school graduation party fund

Fiedler was charged with one count of felony theft by temporary control, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday.

In March, members of the parent group noticed unusual transactions linked to the party fund account which Fiedler controlled as treasurer.

Starting from October 2016, Fiedler wrote five unauthorized checks to herself totaling $3787.64.

In addition to one ATM withdrawal for $200 and a $414 payment to AT&T, Fielder used the account to make six payments to Pure Romance totaling $4325.59.

Fielder used the account to make six payments to the sex toys retailer Pure Romance, totaling $4325.59

Pure Romance is a sex toy company that enlists hosts to sell their products at home.

Fiedler told Apple Valley Police the Pure Romance account was hers, and that she made transactions for cash advances so she could purchase prizes for the senior party, which she had not bought yet.

The 38-year-old acknowledged she owed the group money, and said she had $5,000 readily available to pay back, even though the group did not see that money returned as of April 11.

She is scheduled to appear in court on August 7.
In secret, behind locked gates, our Nation's Oldest City dumped a landfill in a lake (Old City Reservoir), while emitting sewage in our rivers and salt marsh. Organized citizens exposed and defeated pollution, racism and cronyism. We elected a new Mayor. We're transforming our City -- advanced citizenship. Ask questions. Make disclosures. Demand answers. Be involved. Expect democracy. Report and expose corruption. Smile! Help enact a St. Augustine National Park and Seashore. We shall overcome!
The NHS has been hit by an 'unprecedented' hack that has shut down computers and cut off phone lines in a cyber attack that could 'endanger lives', doctors said today.

Hackers have taken control of computers in at least 40 NHS Trusts across the country meaning doctors cannot access patients' files which are stored online.

Some hospitals cannot carry out emergency MRI and CT scans and have turned off all their IT systems, reverting to using pen and paper as hundreds of non-urgent operations have been delayed.

Messages popped up on computers this afternoon which said 'oops, your files have been encrypted' and demanded a ransom of 230 to regain access to the PC otherwise the files would be wiped forever.

One doctor at Colchester General Hospital said screens were 'wiped out one by one' while another described a matron running around frantically yelling: 'Turn off your computers'.

Scroll down for video

The NHS has been hit by a major cyber attack hitting computers, phones and emergency bleepers in hospitals and GP surgeries - and pop-ups like this one have appeared demanding a ransom

Staff members in some hospitals have been told to keep all computers turned off for the weekend as some chemotherapy patients are sent home because their records cannot not be accessed.

There are major concerns about new patients being admitted overnight and staff members not being aware of allergies and past medical history because they cannot see records online.

NHS Digital says there is no evidence that patient data has been accessed in the attack. It comes as:

The worldwide attack affects thousands of computers across organisations in 74 countries;

Prime Minister Theresa May said that British hospitals had not been deliberately targeted and that an investigation is underway;

Nicola Sturgeon held a so-called resilience meeting after at least eight of Scotland's 14 health boards were affected;

Patients are advised to 'think very carefully' about going in to A&E and ring 111 for urgent medical advice instead;

NHS Digital, which runs the computer systems, said its advice to hospitals is not to pay the ransom;

It was claimed the hackers may have taken advantage of a chink in the armour of the Microsoft system revealed by a WikiLeaks dump of CIA documents.

One anonymous doctor at a major trauma center in London wrote online: 'Everything has gone down. No blood results, no radiology images, there's no group specific blood available.

Medics have claimed that messages are flashing up on screens saying they must pay cash or terminals are down completely

'They've declared an internal major incident, the hospital is diverting major trauma and stroke patients. All elective surgery was cancelled from about 1pm. We're not doing anything in theatre that's not life or limb threatening.'

It is not known who carried out the attack. Theorised culprits range from the Chinese government to a 13-year-old in his bedroom.

In a message that pops up on screens, the hackers demand 300 US dollars (230) in the virtual currency bitcoins to relinquish control of each hacked PC.

The pop-up contains a countdown clock with a deadline of next Friday.

It is not clear how many computers were affected but if all of the NHS's 1.4 million employees were affected, the health service would have to hand over 326million.

At least 10 payments of around 300 US dollars have been made to bitcoin accounts that the hackers have asked to be paid this afternoon.

But, although all Bitcoin transactions are public, it cannot be see who made the payments.

'Non urgent' appointments and operations have been postponed across the country and some hospitals have diverted ambulances to neighbouring ones to ensure patient safety.

Patrick Ward, 47, had travelled with his family from his home in Steeple, Dorset, to St Bartholomews Hospital in Central London for open heart surgery.

He was due to have a septal myectomy, for which he had been waiting ten months but it was delayed.

Anthony Brett from Bow, east London, was about to have a stent put in his liver to treat his cancer when he was told the procedure could not happen

Patrick Ward had his heart operation at Barts Hospital cancelled due to the attack. He had booked hotels for his family members to stay near him in London

This map released by cybersecurity experts, shows the impact of the ransomware around the world - with affected countries shown in orange and red. Russia is thought to be the worst affected

Anthony Brett was about to have a stent put in his liver to treat his cancer when he was told the procedure could not happen.

The 50-year-old from Bow, east London, said: 'I was about to have the operation but then the doctors came round this morning and said all the computers are down because of all the hacking and the procedure can't be done because they can't access my records.

ADVICE TO PATIENTS Don't come to A&E unless necessary Ring NHS 111 for urgent medical advice Dial 999 if it is a life-threatening emergency. Blackpool Trust says: 'Patients are asked for understanding whilst the issue is resolved. 'Please avoid contacting your GP practice unless absolutely necessary. 'Should you wish to obtain non-urgent medical advice, please call 111.' Advertisement

'There are so many corporations out there they could be getting money from, but to do it to the NHS that does so much good for people, it's just disgusting.

'It's very frustrating, I have to be away from my family over the weekend. I've got to stay in now over the weekend. But they have got a bed for me which is good.'

Computer systems have been switched off or immobilised and key services including the bleeper system for doctors are also believed to be down.

In the minutes after the attack one doctor tweeted: 'Massive NHS hack cyber attack today. Hospital in shut down. Thanks for delaying emergency patient care & endangering lives. A******s'.

NHS Digital, which is responsible for the health service's cyber security, says computer systems are believed to have been hit by a ransomware cyber attack using malware called 'Wanna Decryptor'.

A similar attack was launched on a hospital in Los Angeles, US last year. Bosses paid 13,140 to get their computer systems back in accordance with general FBI advice to pay up.

The National Cyber Security Centre is investigating and is working with Britain's FBI - the National Crime Agency.

Hours after news of the cyber attacks broke, a Microsoft spokesman revealed that customers who were running the company's free antivirus software and who had enabled Windows updates were 'protected' from the attack.

It raises questions about why NHS computers using the operating system were not shielded from the ransomware.

Police discussed the cyber attack with NHS staff at Lister Hospital in Stevenage

Some hospitals said they were forced to divert emergencies on Friday after a suspected national cyber attack.

The Microsoft spokesman said: 'Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt.

'In March, we provided a security update which provides additional protections against this potential attack.

'Those who are running our free antivirus software and have Windows updates enabled, are protected.

'We are working with customers to provide additional assistance.'

Prime Minister Theresa May said that British hospitals had not been deliberately targeted in a cyber attack that had encompassed a number of different countries.

'This was not targeted at the NHS, it's an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected,' May said.

'We're aware that a number of NHS (National Health Service) organisations have reported that they've suffered from a ransomware attack.'

'We're not aware of any evidence that patient data has been compromised.'

OUR SCREENS WERE 'WIPED OUT ONE BY ONE' A shocked worker at Colchester General Hospital described how her office's computers were 'wiped out, one by one'. She said: 'My computer locked at about 3pm and I couldn't get anything to work. Then my colleague sat next to me said her computer was down. 'It swept through the office and everyone was effected and didn't know what was going on. One by one the computers were wiped out. 'Nothing was working and switching them off and on did not solve the problems. The NHS has been hit by a major cyber attack and criminals have taken control of computers and cut off phone lines across England, leaving some departments working with pen and paper 'Some of our colleagues from a neighbouring department came in and they'd been told to unplug their internet cables and await further instruction.' The health worker said the effect of such a hack on modern hospitals would be catastrophic because 'all the doctors' notes' are kept on the computers now. 'They record their notes to a dictaphone during a consultation but that's only so the the notes can be typed up and stored on the computer. 'It's very worrying that the impact has been so far-reaching in such a short space of time.' A Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust spokesman, which runs Colchester General, confirmed patients are being warned to told to avoid A&E where possible. Patients are being warned that all non-urgent activity is being postponed. Advertisement

Police at Southport Hospital following the NHS cyber attack this afternoon

The attack came as several companies in Spain were hit by ransomware attacks. Telecoms firm Telefonica was one of those reporting problems.

The NHS is investigating 'an issue with IT' amid reports of a cyber attack on its systems

GP surgeries hit in the attack say their phones are down and patients should avoid calling unless 'absolutely necessary' and doctors are back to using pen and paper in some areas.

Explaining the fallout one doctor said in a message shared on Twitter: 'So our hospital is down. We got a message saying your computers are now under their control and pay a certain amount of money. And now everything is gone.'

A screenshot obtained by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) purported to show the pop-up that appeared on at least one of the computers affected.

It said: 'Your important files are encrypted. Maybe you are busy looking for a way to recover your files, but do not waste your time.

'Nobody can recover your files without our decryption service.'

It goes on to demand payment, otherwise the files will be deleted. It gives a deadline of next Friday afternoon, May 19, to pay.

East and North Herts NHS Trust issued this warning to patients on their website

The HSJ said services affected were thought include archiving systems for X-rays, pathology test results, phone and bleep systems, and patient admin systems.

Barts NHS Trust in east London said they are treating it as a 'major incident' to ensure they can 'maintain the safety and welfare of patients'.

A spokesman said: 'We are experiencing a major IT disruption and there are delays at all of our hospitals.

'Ambulances are being diverted to neighbouring hospitals. The problem is also affecting the switchboard at Newham hospital but direct line phones are working.

'All our staff are working hard to minimise the impact and we will post regular updates on the website'.

Fylde and Wyre NHS Trust and Blackpool Hospitals in Lancashire, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Trust have admitted having problems. Colchester University Hospitals Trust is also a victim as is neighbouring Chelmsford in Essex.

WHAT IS RANSOMWARE? Ransomware is a type of malicious software that criminals use to attack computer systems. Hackers often demand the victim to pay ransom money to access their files or remove harmful programmes. The aggressive attacks dupe users into clicking on a fake link  whether it's in an email or on a fake website, causing an infection to corrupt the computer. In some instances, adverts for pornographic website will repeatedly appear on your screen, while in others, a pop-up will state that a piece of your data will be destroyed if you don't pay. Blackpool Victoria Hospital is one of many across the country hit - operations have been cancelled and ambulances diverted In the case of the NHS attack, the ransomware used was called Wanna Decryptor or 'WannaCry' Virus. The WannaCry virus targets Microsoft's widely used Windows operating system. The virus encrypts certain files on the computer and then blackmails the user for money in exchange for the access to the files. It leaves the user with only two files: Instructions on what to do next and the Wanna Decryptor program itself. When opened the software tells users that their files have been encrypted and gives them a few days to pay up or their files will be deleted. It can quickly spread through an entire network of computers in a business or hospital, encrypting files on every PC. Advertisement

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust which runs York and Scarborough hospitals has confirmed its computers have been affected by the widespread attack.

They have urged people to be patient and avoid calling GP surgeries and hospitals unless 'absolutely necessary'.

NHS Merseyside said: 'Following a suspected national cyber attack we are taking all precautionary measures possible to protect our local NHS systems and services'.

NHS Lanarkshire said only those patients requiring emergency treatment should attend hospital while they dealt with the issue on Friday.

At least eight of Scotland's 14 health boards have reported some level of disruption as a result of the attack.

Scottish Health Secretary Shona Robison said: 'We are aware of a number of health boards affected by potential cyber incidents.

York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust which runs York and Scarborough hospitals has confirmed its computers have been affected

'Scottish Government health officials are currently working closely with affected boards to assess the extent of the problem, and take steps to isolate affected systems, which have been affected by a ransomware cyber attack of the kind which has also affected health trusts in NHS England.

'We are taking immediate steps to minimise the impact of the attack across NHS Scotland and restrict any disruption.'

NHS Lanarkshire urged non-emergency patients to stay away from its hospitals as it dealt with a ransomware attack to its IT network.

It said in a statement: 'As a precaution, NHS Lanarkshire is closing down its non-essential networked IT systems on a temporary basis.

'All our sites remain open, however we are appealing to members of the public only to attend hospital for emergency treatment during this period.'

Fylde and Wyre NHS Trust and Blackpool Hospitals in Lancashire, East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust and Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Trust have admitted having problems.
A former policeman desperate to win back his ex-girlfriend hired an actress to go to her house and convince her he was an MI6 spy.

David Fisher split with his girlfriend when she found out he was not a store manager at Sainsbury's as he had claimed, but worked at a B&M store.

After they split, Fisher - a former policeman who was suspended from Surrey Police after committing a string of driving offences - employed an actress to tell his ex-girlfriend he was an MI6 agent.

The 29-year-old from Epsom admitted he had been 'stupid, strange and desperate' and denied stalking but was found guilty of harassment at Sevenoaks Magistrates' Court.

David Fisher, 29, denied stalking despite sending the woman dozens of emails and phoninh her repeatedly

Although the woman said Fisher was 'very kind', the couple broke off their seven month relationship in October last year after returning from holiday in Greece, where they had a number of arguments.

They pair went for their first date in Tunbridge Wells Bar and Grill after speaking on match.com in March 2016.

While they were away the woman's family researched Fisher's background and found he was not, as he told his girlfriend, a store manager at Sainsbury's in Epsom.

After conducting her own research she found he actually worked for B&M Stores, and called off the relationship.

But Fisher persistently tried to contact her, sending her daily emails and calling her up to 50 times in one week.

Amanda Burrows, prosecuting, said: 'The act in itself is so extreme, we can be in no doubt that this man has subjected this woman to a great deal of harassment.

'This defendant is capable of going to the most extraordinary measures to fabricate something. With utmost respect to Fisher, he really was having some kind of breakdown, or lost the plot.'

The woman said: 'When you start a relationship you don't see them every weekend or week, but David demanded a lot of my attention.

'I would go out after work and socialise with my work colleagues and friends, and it was clear he found that an issue. I felt very claustrophobic and overwhelmed.'

After finding out he had lied about his job, she added: 'I told him I could not be in a relationship with someone who lies.

'I said it was over and I agreed to send him our holiday photos, but that was it.'

Fisher was found guilty of harassment by way of stalking after a day-long trial at Sevenoaks Magistrates' Court

After this, she said he was 'very persistent' in trying to contact her on WhatsApp, and although she blocked him he sent her an email every day.

He sent gifts including flowers, photo albums, alcohol and 10 pieces of paper each with a reason why he loved her on it.

She added: 'I then got a call from someone who said they needed to come to my house and read me a disclosure report regarding an officer who I had been in a relationship with.

'I knew David had been a police officer at some stage so I decided to ring 101 and check.'

Fisher told the court: 'I'd had no closure as such. I just wanted to communicate like an adult. And I wanted to believe she wanted to meet up. It was stupid, strange and desperate.'

He claimed he had not intended for his ex-girlfriend to believe his MI6 agent stunt, and said he 'just wanted to meet her for a drink' after she realised it was not real.

Lionel Blackman, defending, said: 'He was trying to persuade her to meet up with him and this culminated in him using an actor to pretend to be a security officer from the Government.

'He was getting mixed messages as to whether it would be appropriate to contact her.

'Where does one draw the line when one is pursuing love? Did he cross the line? Maybe others have more restraint, or less passion.'

Chairman of the bench Nick Benstead-Smith said: 'You caused distress with your actions and we regard this as unreasonable. We found these actions amounted to stalking and we find you guilty of the offence.'

Fisher was found guilty of harassment by way of stalking after a day-long trial at Sevenoaks Magistrates' Court on Thursday, May 4.

He will be sentenced at Maidstone Magistrates' Court next Wednesday, and in the meantime is not allowed to contact his complainant either directly or indirectly.
A Jane Doe case that baffled investigators for 27 years and was featured on Unsolved Mysteries has finally been solved, thanks to cutting edge FBI fingerprint analysis.

Virginia woman Andrea Kuiper, 26, was the person struck and killed by two cars in Huntington Beach, California on April 1, 1990, officials with the Orange County Sheriff's Department revealed on Thursday.

'We are thankful to know what happened to our daughter after all these years,' Andrea's father, Richard Kuiper, said in a statement.

'Andrea was loved and respected. She was beautiful. But she was manic depressive, and therefore we had been through quite an adventure.'

Identified: Virginia woman Andrea Kuiper, 26, has been identified as the person struck and killed by two cars in Huntington Beach, California on April 1, 1990

Case Closed: The crash victim's identity had baffled investigators for nearly three decades

The mystery that spanned decades began around 10pm on April 1, 1990, on a scenic stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway that runs next to a public beach.

A young woman trying to cross the road was struck by both a Mazda MX-6 and a Lincoln Continental, breaking her neck and killing her.

The fatal crash in the dark of night was ruled accidental, and neither driver was charged with her death.

The crash victim was wearing a black dress, pink sweater, fishnet stockings and pink heels.

She had only two possessions on her body: a hotel room key and a ring on her left ring finger made of human hair.

After local newspapers covered the case, two men came forward with information about the unidentified dead woman, whom they both knew only as 'Andrea'.

The first man said he and Andrea had both been hitchhiking along the Pacific Coast Highway two weeks prior to her death, and had shared a car along the way.

Crash Scene: Andrea was trying to cross this stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway, seen in a 2008 file photo, when she was fatally struck by both a Mazda MX-6 and a Lincoln Continental

Evidence: Aside from the clothes she was wearing (pictured) the dead woman only possessed a hotel room key and a ring made of human hair on her left ring finger

Andrea told him that she was originally from Virginia, but then he later heard her tell a woman she was from New York, he said.

She said she'd been adopted and had traveled to California in search of her biological parents.

The second man said Andrea had been penniless and hungry when he'd let her stay in a spare bedroom for one night and given her some food and money.

This time, Andrea's story was that she'd been adopted at a young age, but that her biological parents were a well-known celebrity couple, whom she didn't want to name.

The second man revealed that the ring of human hair on Andrea's left hand was her own hair, which she'd cut off and fashioned into the ring in front of him.

The man gave Andrea some money and took her shopping for clothes at a Goodwill thrift store, where she spent $19.95 and purchased the pink shoes she was wearing when she was killed.

Clues: A witness came forward and said he'd given Andrea some money and took her shopping for clothes at a Goodwill thrift store, where she bought the pink shoes she was wearing when she was killed (pictured in an evidence photo)

Then the case went cold, and investigators were stumped as months turned to years, and years became decades.

'The investigators at the coroners office never stopped trying to figure out who she was,' Kelly Keyes, Orange County's supervising deputy coroner, said in a statement.

'We never forgot her and would regularly pull out her file to see if we could think of anything new to try,' Keyes said.

Investigators at the coroner's office tried running Andrea's information and fingerprints through new databases as they were created and expanded.

As recently as eight months ago, investigators revisited the case file after recieving information that Andrea may have had connections to Newport News, Virginia, but came up empty.

Then, in early 2017, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, a US Justice Department program, partnered with the FBI on a new fingerprint analysis project that more closely examines the fingerprints of unidentified bodies and compares them to an ever-expanding database of old prints from around the nation.

On May 4, the FBI notified the coroner in California that they had found a match: 26-year-old Andrea Kuiper of Fairfax, Virginia.

Nearly three decades after their daughter went missing, Andrea's family finally has closure.
Police in Thailand are trying to establish if a retired British teacher committed suicide because he was receiving lower pension payments.

Trevor Roberts was found dead in the Nan River in Phitsanulok, 300 miles north of Bangkok on Thursday.

Police were told by the 74-year-old's Thai wife that he had been complaining about his British pension, leading officers to consider whether this could be the reason for his death.

Trevor Roberts (pictured left) was found dead in a river in Phitsanulok, 300 miles north of Bangkok. In his pocket police found his driving licence, 2,640 Thai baht (59) and keys (right)

His body was pulled from the river about two hours after he was believed to have drowned - but police could find no immediate reason why he was in the water.

A former language teacher at a college in the Phitsanulok area, Mr Roberts had been living in the town for some 10 years and had recently been receiving a UK pension.

His original home town in the UK has not yet been revealed by police.

His body was pulled from the Nan River in Phitsanulok on Thursday - about two hours after he was believed to have drowned

His sister-in-law, Phuangthong Nuanjan, has told police that Mr Roberts and his wife had been arguing lately because he was receiving less pension money than before due to changes in the way it was paid.

Although there have been no changes to British pensions, UK citizens living abroad have been hit by a fall in the value of the pound, causing many to suffer such heavy losses that they have even been considering returning home.

In Thailand, British ex-pats have suffered an eight per cent drop in sterling against the Thai baht.

As police try to establish whether Mr Roberts' death was the result of suicide because of his pension drop, an accident, or foul play, suicide was emerging as the most likely cause.

As plans were being made for an autopsy, police were continuing to investigate the reason for the Britons death

In his pocket police found his driving licence, 2,640 Thai baht (59) and keys.

He was wearing a watch and also carried an appointment card for a visit to the town hospital.

Police who spoke to Mr Roberts wife, Pratheuang Roberts, were told that just two days earlier he had said he wanted to die, but she had thought nothing of it at the time.

As plans were being made for an autopsy, police were continuing to investigate the reason for the Britons death.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, or see samaritans.org for details.
Hollywood legend Cary Grant first tried LSD in 1958 in the office of Dr Mortimer Hartman, and would later claim it saved his life

At the peak of his fame as one of Hollywood's leading men, yet plagued with self doubt, Cary Grant discovered a new drug which changed his life forever.

The British-born actor would soon be loudly proclaiming his love for LSD, a substance he first took as part of a controversial treatment programme at the age of 53.

He once famously recounted that one trip left him feeling like a 'giant penis launching off the Earth like a spaceship'.

Grant's relationship with the drug, which he first tried in his therapist's office in 1957, forms the basis of a new documentary set to screen at the Cannes film festival next week.

The North By Northwest actor, remembered as one of Hollywood's greats, is the subject of feature Becoming Cary Grant.

Focusing on the period between 1958 and 1961, it details Grant's life through the kaleidoscope of an estimated 100 acid sessions.

Grant, pictured in 1959 classic North By Northwest, was convinced that taking acid could help keep his insecurities at bay

The documentary features home video footage from the star, and extracts from his unpublished autobiography

Movie director Mark Kidel told The Guardian: 'He claimed he was saved by LSD. You have to remember that Cary was a private man'

Producer Nick Ware told The Guardian: 'Like all documentary makers, we started out looking at the construction of Cary Grant. But we ended up deconstructing him through the LSD sessions.'

Grant was a patient of Dr Mortimer Hartman, who diagnosed him with 'prolonged emotional detachment', and thought he could help cure, Vice reports.

Grant, by that time divorced three times, first tried LSD in 1958 in the doctor's office.

Movie director Mark Kidel told The Guardian: 'He claimed he was saved by LSD. You have to remember that Cary was a private man.

'He rarely gave interviews. And yet, after taking acid, he personally contacted Good Housekeeping magazine and said: "I want to tell the world about this. It has changed my life. Everyones got to take it."'

Born Archie Leach, Grant believed his mother had died when he was a child, only to discover when he was in his 30s that she had in fact been committed to the Bristol Lunatic Asylum by his father

The movie uses the star's own words from his unpublished autobiography, spoken by actor Jonathan Pryce, and newly discovered personal footage he shot to reveal more about the man who was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England, in 1904.

Born Archie Leach, he believed his mother had died when he was a child, only to discover when he was in his 30s that she had in fact been committed to the Bristol Lunatic Asylum by his father.

Reflecting on his early exposure to LSD, Grant wrote: 'Any man who experiments with something that cannot benefit himself, or add to his happiness, and that of his fellow man in turn, is a fool and a menace to society.

Grant pictured with fourth wife Dyan Cannon and daughter Jennifer. Cannon would later say he believed LSD gave him 'a path to truth and enlightenment'

'Ive heard that a man here and there died during LSD25 sessions; but then Ive heard that men died during poker games and while watching horse racing; but that didnt seem to stop such occupations.'

And he continued: 'In attempting to traverse the next step into progress and knowledge, men have always died.

'But there is a difference between the man who knows what hes about with a high-powered airplane, and an idiot who puts wings on a bicycle and takes off from the edge of Niagra Falls.'

He would state that LSD brought the subconscious to the fore, and wrote he later regretted the 'ignorance' he had previously lived in.

'The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance,' he wrote.

Despite being at the height of his powers, Grant would quit making movies in 1966 - the same year possessing the drug became illegal in the US.

Despite seemingly going quiet about LSD in the later years of his life, he left a sizeable sum to Dr Hartman.

The new documentary explores the Hollywood legend's relationship with LSD

Grant, pictured in 1964 movie Father Goose alongside Leslie Caron, was an outspoken advocate for LSD, which he felt everyone should try

His fourth wife, Dyan Cannon, recounted in 2011: 'Cary claimed LSD offered a path to truth and enlightenment, and his tactics to persuade me to try it were rather underhand.

'On a trip to London in 1963, we had an unexpected visitor. Cary had apparently decided that the time was right for my first "cosmic exploration" and I came into the sitting room of our rented house to find that his acid guru, Dr Mortimer Hartman, had been flown over from LA to guide me through it.

'"Its like leaping off the high dive," Cary told me when I complained about being ambushed in this way. "If you take too much time to think about it, youll back out."'
A couple enjoying a bushwalk were disturbed by a terrifying two-metre tiger snake slithering across their path.

The pair were taking a long walk along Moonlight Head at Great Ocean Road in Victoria on Thursday when they stumbled across the slow-moving serpent.

Footage of the long tiger snake shows the slippery creature slowly glide through the grass, seemingly unbeknownst to the couple watching it.

The two-metre serpent (pictured) was filmed slithering along the bushwalking trail in Victoria

'He was very slow and dopey,' the woman who took the video told 3aw.

'We were about to turn around and head back... I looked down and there it was.'

She added: 'We got one hell of a fright.'

The shocked pair tentatively watched as the brown-coloured snake crept past them as one can be heard exclaiming: 'I think I'd rather a leach'.

The woman guessed the reptile was around two metres in length, and both were amazed at how its body appeared to be never-ending as it snaked through the grass.
There has been an explosion in the numbers of moped muggings in London, up over 1000% with 11,389 crimes recorded in the 12 months to March this year.

It's rapidly becoming the crime of choice in the capital. Most of us know someone who has had a bag or a phone swiped. Or both.

And it's not just regular punters like you or I who are under attack.

George Osborne was a nearly victim last Thursday outside BBC Broadcasting House. Footage shows the moment two thugs on a moped tried to grab at his phone, the one on the back wielding a handy hammer.

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Hammer-wielding gangs on moped terrorised people in the streets of West London, outside BBC broadcasting house, last week

Shocking footage showed a businessman having his phone swiped from his hand as he walked along the pavement in the Square Mile

But thanks to luck or timing  they came away empty handed.

Listening to your stories, I accept it is actually no laughing matter.

I tweeted about this phenomenon, asking victims of moped muggings to share their experiences.

Without fail, every one of them said they were 'in their own little world' or 'minding their own business' on their phones when it happened.

And speaking honestly I do think these victims are annoying as hell.

Face planted on their phones with their earphones on, most phone obsessives have about as much self-awareness as Kim Kardashian's fat a*** in Mexico.

But I do wonder what sort of civilisation we live in when being a bit ignorant on a pavement means you have to accept it when your stuff is stolen from you by a hammer wielding mugger on a moped.

And listening to stories from policemen, victims and the muggers themselves, this summer  things are about to get a whole lot worse.

Be clear. This isn't just about phones or cash.

Katie Hopkins says things are going to get worse this summer as thefts of phones from people using mopeds continues to rise

Gangs expert Simon Harding, senior lecturer in Criminology at Middlesex University says for these moped muggers it is all about how much they love the chase. 'For them it's like a video game or a Hollywood Movie'

This is location-based augmented reality gaming. Developed by council-estate kids using mopeds as their devices.

Moped muggers are gamers. They play their very own version of Pokemon Go. Let's call it 'Mugamon Go'. Instead of eggs, Poke Balls, berries and potions; they hunt phones, bags and wallets  for quick exchange on a market they know well.

But it's the thrill of the chase that is everything. Recorded and played back to their mates for laughs.

And the police have learned to be afraid. Not of the kids and their stupid games. Not of these little thugs, some as young as eleven, playing Mugamon-Go for kicks.

But the very real fear that if they give chase, they not only risk their lives, but their careers.

It has been a painful lesson for some.

The police officers who gave chase to Henry Hicks  a young lad apparently dealing drugs on a moped  were vilified, and investigated for trying to do their job.

They gave chase to a moped, and Hicks died in the collision, speeding away from the police in pursuit.

His parents and the local community were outraged, demanding justice for the boy, saying the police were to blame.

The officers involved suffered death threats and gave their evidence anonymously and behind a secured screen for their protection.

The IPCC upheld the complaints against them for failing to call in for permission to give chase - and ordered the four police officers face hearings for gross misconduct. Their careers were left in tatters.

Although victims feel let down by the police, their hands are tied and officers can be reluctant to give chase if they will have complaints made against them

Whilst Henry Hicks was remembered by his community as a lovable young lad, when he died, his bag contained seven bags of skunk cannabis in his bag, 230 in cash and three mobile phones. His 'ringer' moped (engine changed for a more powerful version) was stolen but registered to his address.

Four police officers paid the price with their careers, for daring to try to stop him.

And they are not alone. In February 2016 Met Officers chasing a teenager, Lewis Johnson, who was killed when his motor scooter collided with a van were also put under investigation.

One has been served with a gross misconduct notice. The other was put under criminal investigation for death by dangerous driving.

If you were a police officer would you risk this? Just to catch an idiot kid on a stolen scooter playing Mugamon Go, goading police for a chase?

I would not. And I do not blame them. Until we stop threatening police with prosecution for simply trying to do their job, how on earth do we expect them to risk their careers to solve crime?

As so many of the victims written to tell me, their shock at being mugged gave way to frustration when the police seemed to do nothing about it.

One lady said: 'The police had all the photos, witnesses, who the moped was stolen from but they said they didn't have enough information and closed the case within a few weeks. I'm still fuming a year later  I was totally let down by the police'.

But their hands are tied. It is not that the police want to let people down. It is that they are threatened with criminal investigation if they respond and someone gets hurt.

The kids know this. They know they can't be chased if their lives are in danger. It's the reason the throw their stolen helmets from their heads as they flee. Because they know the system. And they know how to beat it.

Until we are prepared to support our police, and supply them with the tracking tech or drone support they need to catch these idiots, the moped muggers know they can operate with impunity.

I should warn you. These 'Mugamon kids' are easily bored in the summer months.

You, with your face planted in your mobile phone. Be aware. The streets truly are theirs for the taking
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is weighing up whether to send more Australian troops to Afghanistan.

Mr Turnbull, who visited the region ahead of Anzac Day, confirmed he has been asked by NATO for additional resources.

'We are certainly open to increasing our work there, but we've obviously got to look at the commitments of the ADF in other parts of the region and indeed in other parts of the world,' he said on Friday.

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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is weighing up whether to send more Australian troops to Afghanistan following requests from NATO

More than 1700 Australian Defence Force personnel are deployed in the Middle East, with about 750 in Iraq and Syria and 270 in Afghanistan

'But it is very important that we and our other allies in the effort in Afghanistan continue to work together to build up the capacity of Afghanistan's own security forces so that they can keep that country secure from the threat of terrorism, both ISIL and of course the Taliban.'

More than 1700 Australian Defence Force personnel are deployed in the Middle East, with about 750 in Iraq and Syria and 270 in Afghanistan.

Since 2002, 42 Australian troops have been killed in Afghanistan and two in Iraq.

Outgoing Defence secretary Dennis Richardson said anyone who went into Afghanistan in 2001 should have realistically expected Australian troops to remain there for a long, long time.

'I think that is what the coalition is doing. That is sensible,' Mr Richardson told the National Press Club in Canberra on Friday.

'We have now moved beyond the involvement in the direct fighting phase. We are now placing emphasis on building the Afghan forces themselves and that will take a long, long time.'

Mr Turnbull (left) poses for a 'selfie' photograph during a BBQ dinner at the Australian Defence Force (ADF) recreation area in Afghanistan in 2016

'We are certainly open to increasing our work there, but we've obviously got to look at the commitments of the ADF in other parts of the region and indeed in other parts of the world,' Mr Turnbull said (Pictured in 2016)

Australia must also brace for providing financial aid to Afghanistan for many years to come.

While Iraq can earn upwards of $30 billion depending on the price of oil, Afghanistan has a total income from within its own domestic sources of less than $3 billion a year.

'It costs over $4 billion a year to keep the Afghan national security forces in operation, apart from other things that we need to assist the Afghanis with,' Mr Richardson said.

Mr Turnbull said on Friday that it is important Australia and Afghanistan continue to work together to keep the country secure from the threat of ISIL and the Taliban

Mr Turnbull also announced in Sydney on Friday that Australia's most notorious Islamic State terrorist Neil Prakash will be extradited from Turkey within months.

The Melbourne-born 25-year-old, who is also known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, has been held in a Turkish maximum-security prison since his arrest last year.

'Neil Prakash should never ever be released from custody and I will do everything I can to ensure he remains behind bars, full stop,' Mr Turnbull said on Friday.

The prime minister said once Prakash is processed by Turkish authorities 'we should be getting him back within months.'

'We are satisfied Neil Prakash, who has been one of the key financiers and organisers in ISIL (Islamic State) - this barbaric terrorist group that we are determined to destroy - will be brought back to Australia and he will face the courts,' he said.

However, several government sources told AAP that Australia was still working with Turkish authorities and no indications of a timeframe for the extradition had been given.

Mr Turnbull also announced in Sydney on Friday that Australia's most notorious Islamic State terrorist Neil Prakash will be extradited from Turkey within months

A spokesman for the attorney-general's department told AAP that Prakash was subject to a formal extradition request from Australia.

'Mr Prakash has been arrested by Turkish authorities and their processes need to be respected and allowed to be completed.'

Prakash, who is of Fijian and Cambodian descent, left Australia for Syria via Malaysia in 2013.

He has featured in a number of IS propaganda videos in which he calls for attacks on Australia and the United States.

His Australian passport was cancelled in October 2014 and federal police issued a warrant for his arrest through Interpol in August 2015.

In November 2016 he was captured in Turkey - where he faces charges under domestic law - when he tried to cross from Syria using false documents.
The U.S. Marine Corps has filmed an explosive TV ad, targeting the recruitment of women, after having long been perceived as being the least welcoming of the military services for women.

The ad is being released this Friday and features a marine in full combat gear, gripping an M-16 rifle, moving through dark, frigid waters.

Titled, 'Battle Up' the female Marine plunges under barbed wire and through a submerged drainage pipe, yelling orders over the sounds of explosions.

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The U.S. Marine Corps has filmed an explosive TV ad, targeting the recruitment of women. Capt. Erin Demchko (pictured) portrays a convoy commander engaged in a firefight during the filming of the Marine Corps new ad, Battle Up

Capt. Erin Demchko (pictured) endures grueling obstacle course to film the recruitment commercial, submerging from muddy waters with M-16.

It is part of a new campaign, appealing to a new generation of Marines, 'the few, the proud,' mainly athletes capable of meeting their tough physical standards.

The ad is intended to increase awareness among women about new opportunities.

Marine Capt. Erin Demchko, a deputy commander at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, Japan, described the great difficulty of the making the commercial.

'The water was 27 degrees and coated with a layer of thick ice,' Demchko said. "Giving the film production staff what they wanted, while maintaining my bearing as a Marine officer and trying not to look cold, was a challenge.'

It was unlike anything she'd ever done. There were multiple cameras following her every move at a school for Marine Corps officer candidates in Virginia.

Thick layers of ice had to be chopped through to film the water scenes. Demchko and other officers fired live rounds as cameras followed her through an obstacle course at Quantico, known as Quigley.

Demchko, who grew up in Hackensack, N.J., and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, was familiar with the combat actions and maneuvers but had to get used to the cameras and staff.

She has already served a tour in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Marine Corps has long been perceived as being the least welcoming of the military services for women. Female Marine recruits (pictured) fire on the rifle range during boot camp Feb. 25, 2013 at MCRD Parris Island, South Carolina

The Marines are battling an image problem, one that was made worse after a recent scandal involving nude photos.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is reviewing the incident, which included crude, derogatory and violent remarks about women. Several Marines have been disciplined.

With the lowest percentage of women of all military services, the Marines hope to boost representation by women to 10 percent by 2019.

Women have appeared in ads on occasion in the past but this is first national television commercial to feature a woman.

The male-dominated Corps have long struggled with the inclusion of the opposite sex. They were the only service to seek exception from The Pentagon, when they began allowing women to serve in all combat jobs.

Since that request was denied by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter in 2015, only 74 women have moved into combat jobs previously exclusive to men. Women currently make up just 8.3 percent of the Marine Corps.

Maj. Gen. Paul Kennedy, head of Marine Corps Recruiting Command says they want more.

He wants potential recruits to 'not think that we are only looking for a few good men, that we're actually using all of our recurring efforts to find good women as well,' he said.

Women currently make up less than 10 percent of recruitment in Marine Corps. Female recruits (pictured) extend a steel pole to a cross bar Jan 15, 2003 during Leadership Reaction Course at boot camp on Parris Island, SC

However, the Marines don't expect instant results. Competition among employers, unemployment rates and the need to increase the Corps make recruiting women a problem.

'We're facing headwinds now that we didn't have even a year ago,' said Kennedy, who conferred with members of other military services last week. 'There's a train wreck coming for some folks. They're not getting tail winds that they used to have - the high unemployment, the money that was associated with enlistment bonuses.'

Despite this, Kennedy still expects female recruits to comprise nearly a tenth of the Marines entering the service this year.

The recruitment ad begins with a young girl defending another girl from bullying. She than transitions to playing rugby, then training and serving as a Marine.

Demchko says the commercial 'is targeted at young women who are seeking a way to challenge themselves,' she added that it could entice anyone who wants to fight for their country.



'I am extremely humbled to be a part of such a big production,' she said. 'Professional actors can keep their jobs, though. I'd rather be a Marine.'
A former police detective and beekeeper found 70,000 bees living in the wall of his Long Island home.

Anthony Planakis, who goes by the nickname 'Tony Bees' is a former NYPD detective who also worked as the department's beekeeper.

Planakis noticed a bee swarm outside his home three weeks ago, but didn't realize how bad the problem was. After using thermal imaging and a fiber optic camera, he found even more of the bees in a bedroom wall.

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A former police detective and NYPD beekeeper found 70,000 bees in a bedroom wall, pictured, Thursday

Anthony Planakis, pictured, who goes by the nickname 'Tony Bees' noticed a swarm of bees outside his Long Island home three weeks ago

He used to be the voluntary beekeeper for the NYPD and would remove bees and hornets from New Yorkers' homes and other public spaces

After cutting open the wall, a large hive and honey combs were discovered made by the colony of 70,000 bees. The insects were collected with a special bee vacuum and were taken to another beekeeper in Locust Valley.

Planakis retired from the NYPD in 2014. He was the only voluntary beekeeper in the department but left because he was accused of keeping the bees he extracted for his own hives.

He refuted those claims and told NBC New York in 2015 that he would never bring in an outside swarm to his own bees.

'You're rolling the dice when you pick up a swarm,' he said. 'Pathogens, disease Now the last thing I want to do is introduce that to my investment.'

Since he retired, Planakis has removed several hives from New Yorkers' homes for the NYPD.

In May of last year, he extracted 15,000 bees from a Bronx playground and in 2015 he removed a hive of more than 40,000 bees from underneath a woman's bedroom in Queens.

When Planakis cut open the wall in a bedroom in his house, he found a massive bee colony and the hive they had made

Before extracting the bees, he had to cut a hole in the wall for a fiber optic camera. Some of the bees are pictured leaving from the hole

Planakis is pictured cutting open a section of the wall in order to extract the bees from the bedroom

The former police detective knew there were bees in his home, but he didn't realize the extent of the problem until Thursday

The former NYPD beekeeper used a special vacuum to collect the bees from the wall, pictured

Planakis is pictured examining a honeycomb after he cut it out of the wall, left and vacuuming the comb for bees, right

'Tony Bees' retired from the NYPD in 2014, though he still occasionally extracts bees for the department

He was the only voluntary beekeeper in the department but left because he was accused of keeping the bees he extracted for his own hives, though he refuted those claims by saying bringing in an outside swarm could damage the hives he keeps for himself

He used a thermal imaging camera in order to find where in the bees had made their hive in his wall

In order to extract the bees, he had to cut open a section of the wall, left. But first, he used a fiber optic camera to see how big the hive was, right
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Shocking new pictures have revealed how Islamic State has wiped out thousands of years of Syrian history by obliterating the country's ancient treasures.

As desperate militants are driven out of the towns, villages and cities they used to run, the terrorists have made sure the new occupants are left with nothing.

Not content with massacres and bloodshed, the terror group has taken to annihilating religious buildings, artifacts, tombs and graveyards in Syria and Iraq.

By doing so ISIS has torn down pieces of architectural history that has stood for thousands of years, with some calling for the destruction of significant cultural sites to be classed as a war crime.

 Slide me  The Temple of Bel (pictured) was destroyed in August 2015 by ISIS, wiping out the building that had been dedicated to the Phoenician god of storms and fertilizing rains for 2,000 years. The terrorists used dynamite to blow it up. Constructed in 32AD, the temple was dedicated to gods worshipped by the Semites - a group of different cultures in the Ancient Middle East including Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arabs

 Slide me  Another fallen piece of architecture is the Lion of al-Lat, which was smashed to pieces outside a museum. It stands at 10ft tall and weighs 15 tons, and when ISIS destroyed it in July 2015, the country's antiquities director said it was the most serious crime the terror group had commited against Palmyra's heritage. The limestone statue had even been covered with a metal plate and sandbags were piled high next to it in an attempt to protect it from fighting, but it didn't stop the terrorists from getting to it

 Slide me  In January this year, the traditional art museum Ajakbach was torn to the ground by terrorists and this is just one piece of value that was ruined. The UNESCO Beirut office's emergency safeguarding to the Syrian Cultural Heritage project went on a mission to salvage what was left of the building on January 16, but the three-day trip was in vain. It had been reduced to rubble by militants as they were driven out of the area by coalition forces

The Al Sultania Mosque is pictured here before militants got hold of the stunning structure and reduced it to nothing but rubble

The unrecognisable Al Sultania Mosque in Aleppo after the brutal civil war in Syria resulted in Islamic State terrorists smashing it to the ground

Zaki Aslan, Director of ICCROM-ATHAR - an international body that works to conserve cultural heritage in the Middle East, said: 'W orld nations should unite for heritage protection as this is part of our human story.

'We are facing cultural cleansing in countries such as Iraq and Syria - images weve received are appalling.

'Destruction of heritage should be treated as a war crime by the international community at large.

'We need to plan well for the recovery phase guiding all parties involved in the reconstruction process.'

Conflict continues to dominate the Middle East resulting in air strikes, gas attacks and combative fighting on the streets.

As the death tolls rise, so too do the cultural catastrophes as heritage is deliberately targeted by terrorists who are blowing up, looting and ultimately abandoning Syria's artifacts.

Historic buildings, artistic treasures, monuments and neighbourhoods are repeatedly dismantled or destroyed.

The terrorists blew up the temple of Baal Shamin (pictured) with dynamite, as well as funeral towers and a triumphal arch, which had stood for 1,800 years in the oasis city described by the UN cultural agency as a crossroads of cultures since the dawn of humanity.

The terror group used Palmyra's ancient theatre as a venue for public executions and also murdered the city's 82-year-old former antiquities chief. The now obliterated Tetrapylon (pictured) was once a grand platform with four columns at each corner topped by a massive corinth, built to make the main route through Palmyra appear more harmonious.

The Arch of Triumph (pictured) was one of the most recognisable sites in Palmyra, the central city affectionately known by Syrians as the 'Bride of the Desert,' which ISIS seized in May of 2015. The monumental arch sat atop the famed colonnaded streets of the ancient city, which linked the Roman Empire to Persia and the East

This aerial shot shows the extent of the damage caused by the ISIS terrorists. Zaki Aslan, Director of ICCROM-ATHAR - an international body that works to conserve cultural heritage in the Middle East, said: 'W orld nations should unite for heritage protection as this is part of our human story. 'We are facing cultural cleansing in countries such as Iraq and Syria - images weve received are appalling.'

It wasn't in the greatest condition before ISIS terrorists got hold of it, but they made sure it would be unrecognisable after bombing it. It was blown up on a Sunday evening by extremists and the aftermath is pictured here

In January this year, the traditional art museum Ajakbach was torn to the ground by terrorists.

The UNESCO Beirut office's emergency safeguarding to the Syrian Cultural Heritage project went on a mission to salvage what was left of the building on January 16, but the three-day trip was in vain.

It had been reduced to rubble by militants as they were driven out of the area by coalition forces.

The Temple of Bel was destroyed in August 2015 by ISIS, wiping out the building that had been d edicated to the Phoenician god of storms and fertilizing rains for 2,000 years.

Palmyra resident Nasser al-Thaer said ISIS militants set off a huge blast and added: 'It is total destruction,' he said of the scene of the explosion. 'The bricks and columns are on the ground.'

'It was an explosion the deaf would hear,' he added.

Constructed in 32AD, the temple was dedicated to gods worshipped by the Semites - a group of different cultures in the Ancient Middle East including Assyrians, Phoenicians, Hebrews and Arabs.

It stood on an artificial hill which dates back more than 2,200 years and lavish carvings of the then-known seven planets, zodiac signs and Makkabel the fertility god adorn the monolithic ceiling of its northern chamber.

The remains of a basin, altar and even a dining hall can be made out inside the temple. On the north-west corner is a ramp where sacrificial animals were once led into the building.

The terrorists blew up the Temple of Bel (pictured) with dynamite. Palmyra resident Nasser al-Thaer said ISIS militants set off a huge blast and added: 'It is total destruction,' he said of the scene of the explosion. 'The bricks and columns are on the ground.'

The Temple of Bel stood on an artificial hill which dates back more than 2,200 years and lavish carvings of the then-known seven planets, zodiac signs and Makkabel the fertility god adorn the monolithic ceiling of its northern chamber. The remains of a basin, altar and even a dining hall can be made out inside the temple. On the north-west corner is a ramp where sacrificial animals were once led into the building

As well as the Temple of Bel, terrorists used dynamite to blow up funeral towers and a triumphal arch, which had stood for 1,800 years in the oasis city described by the U.N. cultural agency as a crossroads of cultures since the dawn of humanity.

Palmyra: Syria's 'Bride of the Desert' Palmyra, situated about 130 miles northeast of Damascus, is known by Syrians as the 'Bride of the Desert'. It was an important caravan city of the Roman Empire, linking it to India, China, and Persia. Before the outbreak of Syria's conflict in March 2011, the UNESCO site was one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Middle East drawing 105,000 visitors a year. The whole of Palmyra, including the four cemeteries outside the walls of the ancient city, has been listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO since 1980. Global concern for Palmyra's magnificent ancient ruins spiked in September 2015, when satellite images confirmed that ISIS had demolished the famed Temple of Bel as part of its campaign to destroy pre-Islamic monuments it considers idolatrous. Unesco described the temple as one of the best preserved and most important religious edifices of the first century in the Middle East. In October last year, the jihadists blew up the Arch of Triumph, dating from between 193 and 211 AD, as they pressed a campaign of destruction that Unesco has said constitutes a war crime punishable by the International Criminal Court. Advertisement

The terror group used Palmyra's ancient theatre as a venue for public executions and also murdered the city's 82-year-old former antiquities chief.

The now obliterated Tetrapylon was once a grand platform with four columns at each corner topped by a massive corinth, built to make the main route through Palmyra appear more harmonious.

In the same month, ISIS used dynamite to destroy another ancient temple situated in the Syrian archaeological site of Palmyra.

The Baal Shamin temple had stood at the site for nearly 2,000 years and was considered one of the best preserved temple on the site.

The destruction was described as an 'immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity' by the UN's cultural watchdog Unesco.

Meaning 'Lord of Heaven', the temple was dedicated to the ancient pagan god of Baal.

One witness, who goes by the name Nasser al-Thaer, said ISIS militants had been laying explosives around the temple for more than a month.

Just two months later, it was the iconic Arch of Triumph which was bombed to the ground.

The arch was one of the most recognisable sites in Palmyra, the central city affectionately known by Syrians as the 'Bride of the Desert,' which ISIS seized in May of 2015.

The monumental arch sat atop the famed colonnaded streets of the ancient city, which linked the Roman Empire to Persia and the East.

However, it was blown up on a Sunday evening by extremists.

It stood yards from the Tetrapylon and the Roman Theater at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Palmyra, which were both blown up in January this year.

Satellite images, taken on January 10, show the monuments of huge cultural importance lying in ruins after the jihadist group recaptured Palmyra on December 11, 2016, when Syrian armed forces pulled out.

The ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiative (ASOR CHI), which documents the cultural heritage of Syria and northern Iraq, said: 'ISIS executed prisoners around the archaeological site, destroyed the Tetrapylon and part of the Roman Theatre.'

Another fallen piece of architecture is the Lion of al-Lat, which was smashed to pieces outside a museum.

It stands at 10ft tall and weighs 15 tons, and when ISIS destroyed it in July 2015, the country's antiquities director said it was the most serious crime the terror group had committed against Palmyra's heritage.

The limestone statue had even been covered with a metal plate and sandbags were piled high next to it in an attempt to protect it from fighting, but it didn't stop the terrorists from getting to it.

Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war.

For centuries, Aleppo was Syria's economic and cultural powerhouse, attracting tourists from around the world to its celebrated heritage sites.

But now, only gaunt stray cats roam the rubble-strewn alleyways of its Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site, after years of savage conflict.

The war also ravaged the touristic area around the citadel, including the Al-Sultaniyah mosque and the imposing white-stoned Grand Serail.

Once renowned for its bustling souks, grand citadel and historic gates, Aleppo's Old City has been rendered virtually unrecognisable by some of the worst violence of Syria's war. For centuries, Aleppo was Syria's economic and cultural powerhouse, attracting tourists from around the world to its celebrated heritage sites such as the Grand Serail (pictured)

But now, only gaunt stray cats roam the rubble-strewn alleyways of its Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage site, after years of savage conflict. The war also ravaged the touristic area around the citadel, including the Al-Sultaniyah mosque and the imposing white-stoned Grand Serail (pictured)

Before the war, Aleppo's ancient walled Citadel drew in armies of visitors to one of the Middle East's greatest treasures.

But for the past four years the Citadel's high stone ramparts have been on the front line of fighting pitting the Syrian army and its allies against rebels who occupied much of the Old City surrounding the fortress.

The fate of Aleppo, listed by the United Nations as a World Heritage Site, has been the subject of great anxiety for city residents, archaeologists, historians and travellers, even as they despair for the human suffering caused by the fighting.

'We are now exactly in front of the Citadel's entrance. These streets are very familiar. My school was nearby. Now, only part of it is left,' said Abdel Rahman Berry, a lawyer. 'It was ruined. They ravaged our childhood memories,' he added.

Large sections of Aleppo's Islamic-era covered market or souk, one of the most extensive in the world, were destroyed in clashes in 2012 and 2013, and the 11th century minaret of the Umayyad mosque was brought down by shelling.

 Slide me  Aleppo's Umayyad mosque (pictured, left, on March 12, 2009) was badly hit during the war. Rubble is now strewn across its floor and the remains of its ancient stone minaret lay in a heap in one corner (right)

During a visit to the Old City and inside the Umayyad mosque with the Syrian army in December, reporters were shown rubble-strewn streets and scorched walls that were once part of the souk, pocked with bullet holes and daubed with slogans.

The Umayyad mosque was also scarred by the fighting, and the remains of its ancient stone minaret lay in a heap in one corner where it had collapsed after suffering a direct hit, but despite damage, its elegant floor and arcaded walls remained.

While the city, one of the oldest continuously habited in the world, was split into warring government and rebel sectors, the army retained control of the citadel even when it was surrounded by insurgents on three sides and could only be accessed by a tunnel.

'There were around 25 of us protecting the citadel. We used to switch with armed men who were stationed in the old market through a tunnel that was dug underneath,' said a Syrian soldier from the Citadel's garrison.

 Slide me  The Umayyad mosque, built between the 8th and 13th centuries, is reputedly home to the remains of John the Baptist's father. It is pictured (left) on March 12, 2009 before it came under fire and after (right) on December 13, 2016

 Slide me  Al-Sheebani school's building, in the Old City of Aleppo, is pictured on May 14, 2008. Now, a photo taken on December 17 this year, shows it closed and covered in bullet marks

 Slide me  Massage parlour Hamam El Nahasin, in the Old City of Aleppo, was once a relaxing sanctuary. It is pictured, left, on October 6, 2010. Now rubble is strewn across the floor and lights have fallen from the ceiling (right)

 Slide me  Aleppo's ancient walled citadel once drew in armies of visitors to one of the Middle East's greatest treasures. It is pictured, left, on August 9, 2010 and, right, after it was destroyed by fighting

 Slide me  A man plays the piano at a concert in al-Sheebani school's courtyard, in the Old City of Aleppo, on June 6, 2009, left. Now the trees have died and the walls are blackened and crumbled from fighting

 Slide me  The entrance to al-Zarab souk in the Old city of Aleppo is pictured on November 24, 2008 (left). It was once a major trade centre for imported goods, including raw silk from Iran, spices and dyes from India. Now it lies in ruins (right)

No stranger to war and disaster, the Citadel was damaged by the Mongol invasion of 1260 and again destroyed by invading forces in 1400.

It was used as a barracks for Ottoman troops and more recently for soldiers during the French mandate. It sustained heavy damage in the earthquake of 1822.

Among important features lost in recent fighting were mediaeval mosques and trading houses.

Others, including the al-Shibani church school, evidence of Aleppo's history of religious tolerance, and the 13th century Nahasin bathhouse were damaged.

Aleppo's Old City and citadel had been restored in 2004.

One of the tactics used by rebels in the intense street fighting through the Old City's narrow alleyways was the detonation of mines, dug beneath army positions in tunnels.

The soldier said even on top of the citadel one such blast, under the Carlton Hotel, a landmark, had felt like an earthquake.
President Donald Trump will return to Liberty University on Saturday to deliver his first commencement address since taking office.

The Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia, is preparing for a crowd of more than 38,000 at what it expects to be the largest event in campus history.

Trump's candidacy divided the evangelical university whose president offered a personal endorsement of the thrice-married billionaire during last year's Republican primary.

A member of Liberty's board of trustees resigned after Jerry Falwell, Jr. gave Trump's candidacy his blessing.

President Donald Trump will return to Liberty University on Saturday to deliver his first commencement address since taking office. He's seen here with the evangelical university's president, Jerry Falwell, Jr., in Iowa during his presidential campaign

Trump has spoken at Liberty once before, in January of 2016, an occasion on which he flubbed a referral to Second Corinthians. He called it 'Two Corinthians' in a speech that was crafted to appeal to devout followers of Christianity.

Falwell hailed Trump as 'a breath of fresh air' during the the visit that took place a week before he endorsed the New York businessman.

'The American public is finally ready to elect a candidate who is not a career politician but rather who has succeeded in real life,' Falwell gushed.

It came as no surprise when Falwell, whose father founded Liberty, endorsed then endorsed Trump.

He argued vigorously that the endorsement was his alone to make and should not be taken as a measure of support from the religious university. Federal law prohibits religious institutions like his openly backing specific politicians.

Public affairs executive and board of trustees representative Mark DeMoss resigned amid the controversy after taking public his condemnation of the endorsement.

DeMoss told the Washing Post that Trump's campaign, which relied heavily on insults in the primary, did not reflect the 'Christ-like behavior that Liberty has spent 40 years promoting with its students.'

A writer at Liberty University's student paper stepped down later in the year, Politico reported, after Falwell censored a column that hit Trump over the head for his infamous Access Hollywood claims.

Falwell has continued to support Trump and told Judge Jeanine Pirro last week during an appearance on Fox, 'I'm just so proud that he's my president.'

Trump had just signed an order gutting a regulation that prohibits religious institutions from engaging in political speech at the time of Falwell's comments.

'He restored the free speech rights of non-profits, of churches, of universities like the one that I head,' he said. 'The Johnson Amendment was never used against the Ivy League schools when they, all the time, supported one candidate over another...and so now at least it levels the playing field.'
Walking outside his sheltered accommodation home, Ronnie Knight is almost unrecognisable to the well-dressed, bustling gangland figure recently portrayed in the TV biopic of his ex-wife Barbara Windsor.

The 83-year-old was married to the famous actress in the 60s and 70s, when he was an east London nightclub boss who knew the notorious Kray brothers.

Knight has denied he was a 'gangster', prefering instead the term 'loveable rascal'.

But he was jailed for his involvement in a 6million armed robbery at a Security Express depot in east London after a decade on the run in Spain.

Former East End figure Ronnie Knight was seen strolling outside his modest home in Cambridge this week, days after his marriage to Barbara featured in a TV drama

The ex-husband of actress Barbara Windsor was protrayed in the BBC biopic Babs on Sunday

Now free from prison, he has previously said he is ashamed of his modest home in Cambridge, explaining: 'I don't want people feeling sorry for me because I'm Ronnie Knight.'

He was played by actor Lewis Allen-Gale in the BBC biopic Babs, which was aired earlier this month.

The show received mixed reviews, with some viewers unable to get past the strangely written script and others confused by the plot jumping between different eras.

Dame Barbara, 79, is now married to Scott Mitchell, 53, and the couple recently celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary.

Knight was a flashy nightclub owner, who regularly rubbed shoulders with celebrities, and married to his first wife, June when he met Barbara.

He later said: 'I've loved all the ladies in my life. But I found what I wanted with Barbara.'

Windsor, who was married to Knight for more than 20 years, fell for him because of his 'dapper' dress sense

He was played by actor Lewis Allen-Gale in Babs, which was aired to mixed reviews this week

He didn't say goodbye to her when he fled to Spain, later saying she was 'fixed on this showbusiness thing' and he knew he would be gone for some time.

He denied he went to Spain because of the robbery, saying: 'I just woke up that morning and thought: "I'm going."

'The next morning, I woke up in brilliant sunshine. A couple of years later, Barbara phoned and said: "We should get a divorce." I said: "OK, mate." I got the papers through and I signed them.'

He returned to Britain in 1994, citing his mother Nellie's ailing health as the reason, and was put on trial.

He was jailed for seven years the following year and met a new partner, Diane, through a friend while he was in jail.

He credited her father with causing him to lose his money after his release and he moved into a 360-a-month rented one-bedroom flat living on a state pension, where he remains.

Windsor pouring champagne for her husband Ronnie Knight as her mother Rose in 1970
The elderly father of Salt Creek kidnapper Roman Heinze has admitted his son deserves to stay behind bars, but denied he is a monster.

Speaking to Ten from his home the day after his son's identity was revealed, Werner Heinze said he was shocked to discover his 'nasty' crimes in 2014.

The father's comments come as earlier interviews with Heinze's family surface. Both his son and ex-wife cast doubts on his capability pf committing the heinous attacks.

This week, Heinze was unmasked as the man behind the sickening crimes after the South Australian Supreme Court lifted extensive suppression orders.

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Heinze was found guilty in March over the 2016 Salt Creek crimes that horrified the nation, and recently pleaded guilty to the earlier offence

Werner Heinze has admitted his son deserves to be behind bars for terrorising backpackers

'He has an aggressive, disrespectful and nasty character, but he's no monster,' Heinze told Ten.

'I'm shocked he's been convicted. He should pay for it. Jail is where he needs to be.'

The father laid bare the toll of the revelations, telling 7News he 'had a very bad day' when the suppression order was lifted.

In the days after he was arrested in 2016, his ex-wife, whose identity cannot be revealed, said she struggled to accept the allegations.

'He's never put hands on family at least not on me or the kids, you know,' she said.

His son, Jackson, admitted it was odd he met up with the backpackers but suggested there may have been another side to the story.

'You never know what the other parties, the victims, you don't know if they were on anything, if they're on drugs or if their story was a bit exaggerated.'

Heinze seen at the time of his arrest in 2016, his t-shirt appears to be drenched in blood

Earlier interviews with Heinze's family reveal both his ex-wife and son, Jackson, cast doubts on his capability to commit the heinous crimes

Roman Heinze, 61, terrorised and attacked two foreign backpackers at South Australia's Salt Creek last year and indecently assaulted another backpacker in 2014

In February 2016, Heinze assaulted a young Brazilian woman and German woman at Coorong National Park, southeast of Adelaide.

The two women had only met each other through a mutual friend a few days before they decided to travel together.

Heinze offered to drive the women from Adelaide to Melbourne after he responded to the Brazilian woman's advertisement on classifieds website Gumtree.

He picked them up from a train station and drove them to the remote spot in SA's Coorong National Park where he attacked them.

The Brazilian woman previously told the court that she was walking with the man to spot kangaroos when he suddenly dragged her to the sand, sat on her and pulled out the knife, plunging its blade into the sand beside her.

Heinze grabbed the young Brazilian backpacker from behind and pulled a knife on her before binding her wrists and ankles with rope, cutting her bikini off with a knife and sexually assaulting her.

The second backpacker, a German woman, said she woke to sounds of her friend screaming.

Heinze went after the second backpacker with a hammer, hitting her in the head four times, before attempting to mowed the German woman down with his four-wheel drive.

Heinze tied up a Brazilian woman with rope and sexually assaulted her before hitting the German woman in the head with a hammer and ramming her with his 4WD (Pictured: The roof of the vehicle)

Heinze was arrested in his car on the beach after the two women managed to escape

In a victim impact statement, the German woman told the court she feared she would die during the attack and had since relived the horror 'hundreds of times'.

But in a defiant message to Heinze, she said his violence had only made her stronger.

'I want you to know, Roman, that you could not defeat me. You could not break me. You could not win, even when you tried so hard,' she said.

'You could not make me into a victim because I'm a survivor. This only has made me stronger than I have ever been.

'I am very angry, but at the same time, I feel pity for you. I will never understand how and why you could do such things to innocent people.'

The former chef still awaits sentencing for his crimes at Salt Creek, and for the 2014 assault of a third backpacker in Hackham, where he lived

In February 2016 Heinze assaulted a young Brazilian woman and German woman at Coorong National Park, southeast of Adelaide
The three children who predicted World War Two, the fall of Communism and an attempt to kill a Pope and who were 'visited by the Virgin Mary' will be made saints this weekend.

Pope Francis will hold a Mass in the small town of Fatima, and one million people are expected to attend.

One hundred years ago, three Portuguese shepherd children said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in Fatima, and the pontiff is visiting the shrine on the centenary of the 'visions.'

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The Pope arrived at the military air base of Monte Real, Portugal, ahead of holding a Mass in the small town of Fatima tomorrow

The children being canonised, brother and sister Francisco (centre) and Jacinta Marto (right), who were nine and seven at the time of the apparitions, died of influenza two years later. Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos (left), at 10 the ringleader of the group and who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step towards becoming a saint

Security is tight for the pope's scheduled arrival on Friday afternoon.

Then on Saturday the Pope will hold a Mass to make two of the shepherd children saints.

Pope Francis and pilgrims from around the world are flocking to a Catholic shrine town in Portugal to honor two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

In a video message to the people of Portugal before his journey, Pope Francis said he would 'present' himself to the Virgin Mary.

On Saturday - the 100th anniversary of the first reported apparition - Pope Francis will canonise Jacinta and Francisco, who have officially been credited with two miracles

Souvenir tiles are displayed for sale at a shop in the village of Aljustrel, outside Fatima - they show Lucia Santos, Francisco Marto and Jacinta Marto, the Portuguese shepherd children who say they saw visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago

In a video message to the people of Portugal before his journey, Pope Francis said he would 'present' himself to the Virgin Mary

On May 13, 1917, three shepherd children claimed to have visions of the Virgin Mary.

The two girls and a boy said she told them three secrets, which were later interpreted as foretelling the Second World War, the rise and fall of Communism and the death of a pope.

At first doubted by the local Catholic Church and even their parents, the children's story gained believers and was eventually accepted as an authentic apparition by the church in 1930.

Fatima has long been associated with St John Paul II (pictured), given the Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with having saved his life in 1981

It wasn't until 2000 that the Vatican disclosed the long-awaited third secret, describing it as a prediction of the 1981 assassination attempt of Pope John Paul II.

Their visions have become known as the 'Three Secrets of Fatima.'

The children being canonised, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who were nine and seven at the time of the apparitions, died of influenza two years later.

Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, at 10 the ringleader of the group and who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step towards becoming a saint.

Her case could not begin until after her death in 2005.

Fatima has long been associated with St John Paul II, given the Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with having saved his life in 1981 when a would-be assassin shot him on Fatima's feast day - May 13 - in St. Peter's Square.

John Paul made the first of his three pilgrimages to Fatima the following May, and one of the bullets fired at him now adorns the crown of the Madonna at the shrine.

Like John Paul, the Argentinian-born Francis is exceedingly devoted to the Madonna, thanks in large part to the strong role that Marian devotions play in the popular piety of Latin American Catholics.
A Cambridge graduate who learned to code at 12 and turned his back on a family empire to launch a tech start-up with friends has landed a 400m deal for the business in Europe's biggest-ever tech investment.

Herman Narula, 29, last night signed the record-breaking contract with Japan's SoftBank for Improbable, a virtual reality business which he founded with fellow computer scientists Rob Whitehead and Peter Lipka in 2012.

The deal makes the business worth more than $1billion, marking the largest early stage investment for a venture-backed European company and firmly putting the London company into the top ranks of the industry.

But the cash injection will also come as a huge relief to Mr Narula, who, five years ago, turned down the offer of joining his father's family business to carve his own career.

A Cambridge graduate who learned to code at 12 and turned his back on a family empire to launch a tech start-up with two friends has helped land a 400m deal for the business. From left to right, Improbable founders Peter Lipka, Herman Narula and Rob Whitehead

Mr Narula's father Harpinder Singh Narula is the head honcho at DS Construction, a construction company which works across India and the Middle East, and he was fully expected to follow in his father's footsteps, as his brothers had done.

But, Mr Narula shunned his laid out path - and the millions which would have gone along with it - instead opting to create a tech start-up in an 'act of rebellion' which few people in such a privileged position might take.

The surprise move - which resulted in the virtual environment start-up - caused a family rift, which appears to have driven Mr Narula to his success.

'It would be silly to argue that it wasn't as a result of conflict,' he said previously. 'You abandon a family business in which all 30 male members of your family work in, it doesn't go down too well.

'But I felt strongly I wanted to build something new that could be massive.'

Mr Narula said there was also a part of him that wanted to differentiate between his family's wealth and successes and his own.

His father - whose company has carried out work in Iran, Libya and Kuwait - who lives nearby in Hertfordshire, with his society hostess wife, Surina, told Forbes that his son's career choice was a 'bit of a shock'.

'Indian families are tightly knit. You get dispossessed if you don't contribute,' he added.

But Mr Narula did not shun the family empire entirely and, when Improbable needed early funding, his family and friends lent him the 1m.

Two months before his finals in 2012, Mr Narula (right), stumbled across 26-year-old Mr Whitehead (left), an avid gaming fan from Liverpool. The next day, they started coding

And, although like many traditional rags to riches tales the company's humble beginnings were in a barn, the building was located on the site of a 19th-century Hertfordshire mansion known as Hyver Hall in Barnet, where Mr Narula grew up.

Mr Narula admits he could not have done what he has done without that financial help, but there is no doubt he has worked hard since that to prove his chosen path.

Born in Delhi into a Sikh family, Mr Narula - who attended Haberdashers' Aske's school in Borehamwood, Herts, and was a talented fencer - received his first computer, an Intel 486, at the age of seven.

With the family living India, the US and the UK, Mr Narula had long periods of time with different relatives and spent most of his time reading or on a computer.

That led to a natural talent for programming and he passed his IT GCSE four years early. He later landed a place at the University of Cambridge to study computer science.

They started their company at a barn at a 19th-century Hertfordshire mansion known as Hyver Hall in Barnet, where Mr Narula grew up (pictured from above)

Mr Narula lived at the grand property (pictured) with his family. He admits his decision to shun the family business caused a rift

During his time at Cambridge, Mr Narula's family had assumed he would then join the family business.

But, two months before his finals in 2012, Mr Narula, who studied at Girton College, stumbled across 26-year-old Rob Whitehead, an avid gaming fan who grew up in Liverpool.

The pair, who were at a dissertation review, began talking and quickly discovered 'a mutual interest' in 'virtual worlds'.

The next day, the pair left Cambridge and went to Hyver Hall where they started coding.

Just a few months later, the duo had formed a company and were hiring engineers and other tech talent from a pool of former colleagues and fellow students.

In their hiring spree, the pair employed Peter Lipka, 28, an Imperial College graduate who was working at Goldman Sachs on the bank's back-end system.

Mr Narula (pictured) turned down the offer of joining his father's family business to carve his own career. The company has now been given a major cash injection

Mr Lipka, who had a masters in computer science from Imperial College London, was enticed into the company by the daunting technical challenge and became COO of the company.

Improbable is now based in Farringdon, close to London's so-called 'silicon roundabout' tech hub, where there are now 180 staff.

It uses cloud-based computing to digitally simulate complex real-world locations.

The software can be used in hyper-realistic gaming but also to design infrastructure and scenarios for self-driving vehicles.

Describing their aspiration as being the 'Google of simulation', Mr Narula admits he is aiming to create a 'universe of new worlds', akin to The Matrix.

An obvious scenario is computer games - they want a Call of Duty player to have an experience with 'an entire army' - but now it is being tested in other fields.

At its best, they want their systems to reveal the potential weak spots of the entire world's internet that could be vulnerable to attack from hackers, terrorists or hostile governments.

Improbable's first product, SpatialOS, is described as a 'distributed operating system for massive-scale simulations'.

The technology enables the creation of massive simulations - 'virtual worlds' - at a far greater level of scale and computational complexity than previously possible, and while able to support more simultaneous connected users.

Before their deal with SoftBank, the company raised $20 million from Andreessen Horowitz, which backed Twitter, Facebook and Airbnb.

The latest cash injection marks the biggest ever early stage investment for a venture-backed European company, putting it on a par with Skype and Spotify.

The investment gives SoftBank a non-controlling stake and a seat on the board for Deep Nishar, its managing director.

Britain has a thriving tech start-up scene but few companies secure the large investments they need to become fully-fledged businesses, meaning many list in the US or sell out to American giants such as Google or Microsoft.
The Prince of Wales shared a jokeand a handshake with Gerry Adams in extraordinary scenes today, 38 years after his beloved uncle Lord Mountbatten was murdered by the IRA.

They shook hands after Prince Charles held a private meeting with Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Government Buildings on the final day of his tour of Ireland.

Charles looked in good spirits as he met with the Sinn Fein president, who has been at the helm of the party since 1983, during a reception at Glencairn House in Dublin.

Their handshake came two years after Charles became the first member of the Royal family to meet the man accused of being the IRAs mouthpiece.

On that occasion, Adams refused to apologise for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, Charles's beloved great uncle and mentor, who was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979.

The Prince of Wales greeted Gerry Adams two years after the Sinn Fein leader refused to issue an apology over the death of Lord Mountbatten

Step towards peace, 2015: Prince Charles became the first royal to meet Gerry Adams and warmly shook his hand in a momentous step in the Northern Ireland peace process in 2015

Although Mr Adams later expressed 'regret' over Louis Mountbatten's murder - which he publicly justified at the time - he stopped short of apologising for what had happened.

Speaking in 2015 and asked whether he had offered an apology to the heir to the throne, Gerry Adams said: 'One couldn't help but be regretful about the loss, particularly when there are children involved.

'Both he and we expressed regret at what had happened from 1968 onwards.'

A t the time of Louis Mountbatten's death - when he was reputedly an IRA commander - Adams appeared to back the attack, saying: 'With his war record, I don't think (Mountbatten) could have objected to dying in what was clearly a war. He knew the danger involved in coming to this country.

'The IRA gave clear reasons for the execution. As a member of the House of Lords, Mountbatten was an emotional figure in both British and Irish politics.

'What the IRA did to him is what Mountbatten had been doing all his life to other people.'

The Prince of Wales met Gerry Adams at a reception at the British Ambassadors residence in Dublin

Charles's four-day trip to Ireland in 2015 (left), saw an emotional walkabout in the seaside village where the assassination of his uncle Lord Mountbatten (right), took place

Lord Mountbatten, Charles's beloved great uncle and mentor, who was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979

THE DAY THE IRA STRUCK AT THE HEART OF THE ROYAL FAMILY Earl Mountbatten of Burma was Prince Philip's uncle and a second cousin to the Queen, and had a close relationship with his godson Prince Charles. After a distinguished military career, during which he commanded the Allied forces in south-east Asia in the Second World War, he became the last Viceroy of India and served as Chief of the Defence Staff. While holidaying at his summer home in Ireland, Classiebawn Castle, in August 1979, Lord Mountbatten went fishing with several relatives despite security warnings. When his boat went out to sea, the IRA detonated a remote-control bomb which had been placed on board, blowing up the vessel and fatally wounding Lord Mountbatten. His 14-year-old son Nicholas Knatchbull and a local teenager who was helping to crew the boat were also killed in the attack, along with the mother-in-law of Lord Mountbatten's daughter. The IRA immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing. Advertisement

As the Prince signed his name in the visitors' book during today's visit, he joked: 'This is just to prove I can write.'

Mr Kenny showed Charles the signatures of his mother and father, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

They signed the book during their historic visit to Ireland in 2011.

Earlier, Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall took part in a ceremony at a 1916 Easter Rising memorial in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin.

The future king laid a wreath at the Necrology Wall, which bears the names of all those who died in the rebellion, Irish and British, military, police and civilian.

During a tour of the cemetery, the royal couple visited the graves of Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera, major figures in Irish nationalism.

Prince Charles appeared in good spirits as he and the Duchess of Cornwall greeted Gerry Adams

They also took part in a ceremony at a war memorial, the Cross of Sacrifice, where paving stones were unveiled in memory of four Irish-born soldiers - Corporal John Cunningham, Company Sergeant Major Robert Hill Hanna, Lieutenant Frederick Maurice Watson Harvey and Private Michael James O'Rourke.

The soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross in 1917.

Charles paused at the paving stone of Cpl Cunningham after he unveiled the memorial stone.

The Duchess bowed her head as she unveiled the paving stone in memory of Sgt Maj Hill Hanna.

Charles and Irish arts minister Heather Humphreys then laid wreaths at the Cross of Sacrifice.
Alex Hickie, 20, told a jury her mother and her wife had hit her, kept her from eating food and made her sleep in the dog's bed

A woman has told the court how her lesbian parents starved her, made her sleep in a dog's bed and beat her with a hammer 34 times - once for every sweet she allegedly stole.

Alex Hickie, 20, claims her step-mother shattered her childhood by alleging her real father was a rapist who forced himself on her mum.

Miss Hickie told a jury she had always been told her father had loved her mother and the reason they never married was because he passed away.

But she told the court her stepmother Jennifer Harrison, 40, said her father was actually a rapist.

Harrison is on trial with partner Debora Harrison, Miss Hickie's biological mother, at Hull Crown Court this week.

Both deny assault and causing actual bodily harm.

But Miss Hickie alleges the pair made her life a misery by making her sleep in a dog's bed and banning her from eating food in the cupboards, instead forcing her to eat porridge.

In one incident, she claims to have been beaten 34 times with a hammer after she 'stole' some sweets. She said she was hit for each piece she had taken.

Miss Hickie, who is accused of making up the allegations, took the witness stand behind screens to deny claims she had been jealous of the lesbian couple's relationship.

She said she was hit with a hair brush, TV remote control and at one stage tried to run away eventually trying to take her own life.

She claimed Jennifer Harrison controlled when she could get bathed and even who she dated.

Defence barrister Claire Holmes asked Miss Hickie: 'Do you recall a conversation with your mother when she told you she had relationships with women not men and you did not speak to her for a week.'

It is alleged that, when her step-mother (left) found 34 sweet wrappers stashed in her bedroom, she hit the girl with a hammer 34 times. Her mother (right) is also accused of hitting her

Ms Hickie replied: 'It was general knowledge. It was not information I needed as a child. I was nine.

'What she did say was she was dating Jen. She said: "She is my girlfriend."

'I said: "What do you mean? That does not sound right." I think she perceived it as homophobic.

'My complaint was not that she was lesbian - but that she was dating at all. I was nine. I was jealous. I heard her on the phone giggling with Jennifer.

'In a child's way, I wanted her to be like that with me.

'I was jealous - but it was not about her lesbianism - it was just what it was.'

She said Deborah and Jennifer met when she was six - but did not live as a family together at first.

She said when she was born she lived with her father, but when he died they moved to her grandfather's home in Bridlington with her mother and uncle.

She said her mother and Jennifer moved to Edinburgh when she was 12 - but she did not move to be with them until she was 14.

Ms Holmes accused Ms Hickie of being a troublesome teenager who indulged in fictional story writing believing the characters were telling her to do things.

Ms Hickie told the jury: 'I was told my mum and dad were in love and they were going to get married but then he died. I believed that. For a lot of years. Then one day, Jen told me it is not true.'

Ms Hickie had earlier told the jury that food such as milk, bread, and potatoes were gradually withdrawn from her until there was nothing she was allowed to eat. Pictured above: Deborah Harrison, right, and Jennifer Harrison arrive at Hull Crown Court

She said: 'She said my dad was a rapist who had told my mum he had to live with her and that he had raped her. I was told my grandfather was aware of this. I did not speak to my grandfather again after that.'

Ms Holmes accused Miss Hickie of self diagnosing herself as a manic depressive, stabbing her own pet rabbit with a compass and deliberately allowing her dog to walk on a railway line to get back at the couple.

Ms Hickie denied all the allegations. She said: 'There were sometimes good days. Generally bad days. They would say there are people who are dying of cancer who would love to have your life.

Deborah Harrison (pictured) allegedly stopped her daughter from having food in their home

'They said I was this weird, horrible thing. I was wrong, stupid or delusional. There came a point when I believed them. I was too afraid to go to school.'

She approached Jennifer with a sheet of paper thinking is she had a personality disorder. 'Jen went ballistic. She said: "You know I was calming down. Then you bring me this b*******." She started to hit me, to bang my head against the corner of the bedroom wall. I went to bed on the dog's bed as usual.'

Ms Hickie had earlier told the jury that food such as milk, bread, and potatoes were gradually withdrawn from her until there was nothing she was allowed to eat.

'Because of that I started to starve,' she said. 'All of a sudden you realise there's a whole kitchen full of food and you can't eat it.'

She told the court she resorted to eating small amounts of fruit, bread and sweets that were kept in a cupboard at their home in Bempton, East Yorkshire.

But, when her parents found the leftover wrappers in July 2013, they decided to 'punish her'.

The woman told the court how Jennifer Harrison started attacking her, 'repeating herself about how disgusting I am.'

The jury was told Jennifer Harrison was taken ill after hearing the opening of the case.

She was taken to hospital and detained overnight and the jury heard no evidence on Thursday.

Judge Simon Jack said today: 'Mrs Jennifer Harrison has been discharged from hospital. She has been at court this morning, but chosen to leave.

'You must not speculate her precise medical condition. That is not issue for you to decide. You have to decide what happened in July 2013. Ms Holmes has assured me she has full instruction so we will continue without her.'

The trial continues.
Eighteen soldiers could be charged over their alleged involvement in Bloody Sunday, it emerged last night.

Some may even be put on trial for perjury, according to official correspondence.

Thirteen people were shot dead when members of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on civil rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972. Another died later.

Thirteen people died on the spot when members of the Parachute Regiment opened fire on 26 Civil Rights demonstrators in Londonderry in 1972

The Police Service of Northern Ireland began a murder probe in 2010 after a 12-year inquiry by Lord Saville concluded the killings were unjustified and unjustifiable. David Cameron, then prime minister, issued a public apology for the soldiers actions.

Amid claims of a politically motivated witch-hunt, the fresh police probe sparked outrage in the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment, which was deployed during the Bloody Sunday riots. Police submitted a file of evidence to the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland late last year.

John Kelly, brother of Michael Kelly, pumps his hands into the air to cheering crowds after reading a copy of the long-awaited Saville Inquiry report into Bloody Sunday, outside the Guildhall in Londonderry in 2010

Last night the BBC said it had obtained a letter from a senior public prosecutor detailing the criminal charges the soldiers could face. These include murder and attempted murder, wounding, perjury (lying under oath) and joint enterprise.

In the correspondence from the PPS, the identities of the 18 soldiers facing possible charges are withheld, but all are said to be British. It reveals four other soldiers, whose actions on Bloody Sunday formed part of the murder probe, have since died.

The PPS said it was actively considering Bloody Sunday investigation files it received in December, but added: It is likely to be some time before any decision.

We have recently made contact with families to provide an update on progress and also to explain our role and some of the legal issues that require consideration.

Detective Chief Inspector Ian Harrison, of PSNI Legacy Investigation Branch, confirmed the families had been informed.

Victims of Bloody Sunday. The top row, left - right shows Michael Kelly, Michael McDaid, Hugh Gilmore. The bottom row, left - right shows Kevin McElhinney, William Nash and John Johnston

In November 2015, it was reported British paratroopers could lose anonymity if they are charged with the murder of civil rights campaigners on Bloody Sunday. Every soldier who fired a shot during the events in Londonderry over 40 years ago had their identity hidden amid fears they could be the target of reprisals. The names were kept secret after a campaign led by the Daily Mail, supported by politicians, military figures and more than 200,000 readers.

Following the arrest of a former paratrooper  later released on bail  on suspicion of murdering three civil rights protesters on Bloody Sunday, solicitors acting for the ex-soldiers applied for a judicial review of the way the PSNI is running its inquiry. They questioned its legality and claimed it was being pursued for political reasons.

The official Army position, backed by the Government, claimed paratroopers had reacted to gun and nail bomb attacks by suspected IRA members.

In one of the most famous images of the Troubles, Bishop of Derry Edward Daly tries to cover a victim of the 1972 slaughter that saw 14 Catholic civil rights protesters shot dead
A truck driver who heard a strange thud while driving pulled over to find landing gear sticking out his trailer after it was clipped by a small plane.

Pilot John Kelly Randall, 71, clipped the tractor trailer on Tuesday in Fremont, Ohio while making a low approach in his twin-engine Piper Aztec, but was able to land safely on the belly of his plane.

No one was injured in the collision at 4pm near the Fremont Airport.

'I thought I might have blown a couple tires,' truck driver Russ Street told the Sandusky Register.

'I thought I might have blown a couple tires,' truck driver Russ Street (left) said on Tuesday. Street's big rig was hit by a small airplane in Fremont, Ohio

When Street pulled over at the Fremont Airport he was surprised to see a small tire sticking out of the roof of the trailer

Pilot John Kelly Randall, 71, was able to land his Piper Aztec safely on its belly after clipping the truck and losing his landing gear

'I heard a boom,' said Street. 'It rocked the trailer. I thought the semi was going over.'

When Street pulled over at the airport he was surprised to see a small tire sticking out of the roof of the trailer, which was empty as he was returning to Sandusky, Ohio from a delivery in Indiana.

'I thought I had seen everything,' said the trucker, who's driven with South Shore Transportation for 20 years.

The collision occurred on Ohio State Route 53, which runs perpendicular to the Fremont Airport's runway, passing within a hundred feet of the airstrip.

Street was returning to Sandusky, Ohio after making a delivery in Indiana. His truck was empty

Emergency responders work at the scene of the plane-on-truck crash. No one was injured

Investigators secure the scene around the downed plane, a 1978 Piper PA-23-250 Aztec

A wheel of an airplane that crashed lies on the ground at the Fremont Airport on Tuesday

Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper Donte Hanns told the newspaper that Randall is an experienced pilot with 3,500 hours of flight time.

Hanns said it wasn't clear why Randall was flying so low.

'He left from Fremont airport and went out for 25 to 28 minutes before he came back,' the trooper said.

The plane, a 1978 Piper PA-23-250 Aztec, was registered in 2001 with Randall listed as the owner, according to Federal Aviation Administration records.

Investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration are looking into the incident.
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Thomas Telford was cleared by a jury in just 45 minutes at Exeter Crown Court after denying a charge of sexual assault

A Royal Marines sniper has been cleared of groping a student at a university ball after claiming he had brushed against her stomach while trying to photobomb her.

The jury at Exeter Crown Court took just 45 minutes to clear 23-year- old commando Thomas Telford of the charge.

The commando had denied sexually assaulting the 21-year-old graduate by rubbing his hand over her vagina in the early hours of the morning on the dance floor at Exeter University.

Telford - who won the King's Badge at the top recruit in his troop before becoming a sniper - said he could have touched the victim's stomach as he photobombed a picture at the event.

Telford told the jury at Exeter Crown Court: 'I did not touch her in the incident.

'I could have had my hand on her stomach. But I am sure in my head I had not done it.'

He denied the prosecutor's assertion that he had drunk too much and 'simply saw the pose and took the opportunity to rub your hand over her body'.

He also denied showing off to his friends at the ball and denied getting 'carried away with drink, fun and the atmosphere'.

The commando, who works on Navy fleet protection at Faslane, Scotland, said that groping was serious.

Telford, a marine for four years, who had been given a caution for an assault in 2015, said he had drunk six pints of lager during the boozy ball attended by 2,000 students.

He told the jury: 'I was drunk. I was a bit more jolly after a few pints. I remember everything, I remember the incident.'

He said he had photobombed the group by the stage before one of the victim's friends launched a 'tirade' against him for alleging groping her.

Telford said: 'I hadn't done anything. I just walked off. I acted nonchalantly. I laughed it off.'

The victim's friend told the jury they had been having fun dancing and then posing for the photos - as she held up her pal's leg in the air.

She said a hand then rubbed up and down on her friend's vagina about three times.

She told the court: 'I am 99.9% sure in my heart it was him who touched her.

'I saw a hand coming from the same direction he had been standing. We were in a pose. The hand touched her body.'

The jury was told that Telford won the King's Badge as the top recruit in his troop while at Commando training in Devon.

He also excelled in jungle training and a senior officer said he had a 'maturity above and beyond his years'.

Privately educated Telford became a maritime sniper and his behaviour was 'faultless and he was highly regarded' by the Corps.

Prosecutor Brian Fitzherbert had said: 'This defendant Thomas Telford sexually assaulted a young woman on the dance floor at the Exeter University graduation ball.

'Put in simple terms he groped her.'

The victim said: 'I was not drunk. I had obviously been drinking. I did not feel impaired in any way and was in control of myself.

'I was posing for a picture with my friend.'

The brown haired graduate said she then felt 'someone touching my stomach around my belly button and move down to my vagina'.
The editor of British Vogue has lashed out at Theresa May criticising the 'isolationist overtones' of Brexit.

In a letter in the new issue of the magazine Alexandra Shulman champions the benefits of travel and voices her anger at the way the country is heading.

It comes after the outgoing editor said she had not approached the Prime Minister for a photoshoot, adding that she would rather have had Michelle Obama.

British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman (left) has criticised the Government's Brexit policy saying it carries 'isolationist overtones'. Theresa May (right) has said in the past she is a huge fan of the magazine

In the latest issue Shulman writes: 'In travel we collect experiences and memories that can feed into our lives back home.

'It's an essential part of the way we live.

'As I write this on the day Article 50 is triggered, we must not allow the isolationist overtones of Brexit to challenge our enjoyment of the richness and variety that the rest of the world offers us.'

The words could be particularly piercing for Mrs May, who says she worships the fashion magazine and even chose a lifetime subscription to the publication as her luxury item on Desert Island Discs.

The Prime Minister also featured in the April edition of Anna Wintour's US Vogue in which she opened up on her marriage to Vogue journalist Gaby Wood

Earlier this year Shulman stated that she had not approached Mrs May to appear in her magazine. Instead she stated a preference for former US first lady Michelle Obama (pictured with husband Barack)

She also posed for celebrated portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz at her country residence Chequers.

Mrs May gave a wide-ranging interview in which she also revealed the truth behind her holding hands with Donald Trump.

Despite stating a preference for former first lady Michelle Obama, Shulman has stressed there is no bad blood between her and the Prime Minister.

'She's very nice,' she told the Evening Standard. 'On Desert Island Discs she said she'd like a lifetime subscription to Vogue as her luxury item. So before she became Prime Minister I arranged that.'

In January Schulman announced she would be leaving her role in the summer after 25 years at the publication.
A teen says she was asked to sign a contract, agreeing not to speak out, after she complained about being sexually harassed at school.

Alyssa Wilson posted a photo of the 'no contact contract' that administrators at Las Vegas High School in Nevada gave to her this week.

The post quickly went viral online, as outraged Twitter users demanded that the high school junior get justice.

In an interview with Yahoo Beauty, Wilson says a male student approached her Monday morning and asked if she was cold.

Alyssa Wilson says she was given this contract to sign when a boy at her high school sexually harassed her this week

Wilson (left and right) was upset by the language in the contract, which required her not to speak out about the incident

She says he then lifted up her dress and asked repeatedly 'What do you have on under?'

Wilson went to class but the traumatizing experience caused her to start crying, and a teacher asked her what was wrong.

She told the teacher what had happened and the teacher reportedly said that she had heard of issues with the student in question.

The teacher took Wilson to the dean of students, who reviewed surveillance footage to try and corroborate Wilson's claims.

But a glitch in the security tapes made it impossible to confirm the allegations.

That's when the school asked Wilson and the other student to sign a 'no contact' contract, essentially agreeing to stay away from each other.

But Wilson says she was furious at some of the language in the agreement, including a line that made her agree not to speak out about what happened.

A spokesman for Las Vegas High School in Nevada said that the contract is 'a standard thing at the school'

'So you get sexually harassed at school and all you get is a contract???' she wrote on Twitter, after posting a picture of the contract.

Wilson says all administrators did to punish the boy was to bring his parents in for a conference.

The photo quickly went viral online, as outraged Twitter users rallied around Wilson and called for the school to hold the boy responsible.

'Just hang on a mo... did I get this right...you got sexually assaulted and you are the one to sign a contract of conduct?!?!?!? WTF!?' one Twitter user wrote in response to the post.

Dave Sheehan, a spokesman for the Clark County School District, couldn't speak about the specifics of the case with Yahoo Beauty, but did clarify that such contracts are voluntary.

He said the contract is a 'standard thing at the school' designed to keep students who have had issues away from each other and to stop rumors from spreading.

'You know how things travel, words get twisted, rumors fly - it can create a big issue for the school,' Sheehan said.
Francesco Schettino began his 16 year prison sentence on Friday after courts rejected his appeals

The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner that crashed into a reef killing 32 people is set to begin his lengthy prison sentence after losing his final appeals bid.

The Court of Cassation, Italy's highest criminal tribunal, in a ruling Friday evening upheld Francesco Schettino's lower court convictions and his 16-year prison sentence.

Schettino, dubbed 'Captain Coward,' was convicted of manslaughter and causing the shipwreck while captaining the luxury liner sailing near Giglio Island off Tuscany on January 13, 2012.

He was also convicted of abandoning the capsizing vessel with passengers and crew still aboard.

Michelina Suriano, one of the lawyers representing the victims, said 'finally Schettino begins to pay for his wrongdoing.'

Defense lawyer Saverio Senese called the ex-captain a scapegoat.

The ship was finally righted in September 2013 and was towed into Genoa harbour in July 2014, where it was slowly dismantled

Of the 4,200 holidaymakers and crew aboard 32 were killed after the ship hit rocks close to shore

Schettino was dubbed 'Captain Coward' for abandoning the ship soon after it crashed

In February 2015 the captain was given ten years for manslaughter, five for causing a shipwreck, one for abandoning ship, and a further month for giving false information to port authorities.

But as is the case with most Italian criminal cases he was not sent straight to jail but released pending his appeal.

The cruise ship was heading out on a week-long cruise around the Mediterranean but capsized soon after hitting rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio.

The Naples-born captain has rejected the accusation of cowardice claiming he didn't abandon ship

The cruise ship capsized after hitting rocks off the Tuscan island of Giglio killing 32

The ship was heading out on a week-long cruise around the Mediterranean with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew onboard

Schettino, 55, gained the name 'Captain Coward' after it was revealed he had fled the ship before the 4,200 passengers were safely ashore.

The Naples-born captain resented the accusation of cowardice and unprofessionalism and claimed he had 'fallen' into a lifeboat as the Concordia rolled.

'I will fight for ever to prove that I did not abandon the Costa Concordia,' he said after his conviction.

During his trial Schettino was accused of showing off to his lover, Moldovan nightclub dancer Domnica Cemortan, when he steered the ship too close to the island as a 'salute'.

However he blamed communication problems with the Indonesian helmsman.

The court ruling was welcomed by a lawyer representing relatives of the victims, who said it represented justice at last.

Five of Schettino's colleagues were also jailed for up to three years in earlier cases

Rusted and rotting ghostly photographs show the brittle remains of the once luxurious cruise liner

When he launched his appeal that the prosecution also simultaneously appealed against the sentence, which they claim is too lenient and Schettino should have been given 26 years.

The company sidestepped potential criminal charges in 2013 by accepting partial responsibility and agreeing to pay a one million euro (780,000) fine.

Five of Schettino's colleagues were also jailed for up to three years in earlier cases.

The wreckage, raised in a dramatic engineering feat, was eventually towed away to become scrap.
A woman who threatened to jump from the roof of a 22-story building was rescued by first responders in Los Angeles Thursday.

The distressed woman was sitting at the edge of the high rise, her legs dangling off the side, when police and fire fighters came to her rescue.

LAPD Officer Rodginald Cayette talked to the woman to calm her down and try to convince her to move away from the ledge.

He said she was 'agitated' as they approached and threatened to jump as they got closer, but he tried to gain her trust.

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A woman, pictured, threatened to jump from the ledge of a 22-story building in Los Angeles on Thursday

LADP officers and Los Angeles fire fighters rescued the woman by grabbing her while she was talking to an officer, pictured

LAPD Officer Rodginald Cayette talked to the woman to calm her down and try to convince her to move away from the ledge as the other two approached from the other side. Pictured is the moment the officers were grabbing her off the ledge

At the same time, officer Antonio Canchola and a Los Angeles fire fighter slowly approached from the other side, wearing harnesses just in case they fell while trying to rescue her.

As Cayette spoke with the woman she kept disconnecting from his conversation and he had to keep getting her attention again, trying to get her to explain why she was there.

Thankfully, Canchola and the fire fighter were able to quickly grab her away from the ledge while she was distracted with Cayette.

'She was talking to my partner, she was distracted. Me and the firefighter, we pretty much did a bear hug on her, make sure we had a good grip, and bring her down with us,' Canchola told CBS Los Angeles.

The woman was brought down from the roof safely with the officers, but they said they won't quickly forget the incident.

Canchola said: 'I feel relieved, I feel glad that she didnt jump and we were able to save her life.'

Cayette added: 'I actually had to pull myself away for the first time in my 14 years to just gather and thank God it went the right way.'

The officers who helped rescue her, pictured, were relieved she didn't jump and no one was hurt

Cayette said the woman was 'agitated' as they approached and threatened to jump as they got closer, but he tried to gain her trust. She is pictured on the ledge of the roof moments before officers rescued her

LAPD Officer Antoio Canchola said: 'She was talking to my partner, she was distracted. Me and the firefighter, we pretty much did a bear hug on her, make sure we had a good grip, and bring her down with us.' Pictured is the moment after they grabbed her from the ledge
Former FBI director James Comey is hoping to hear his own voice  and Donald Trump's  on recordings of his presidential chit-chat, according to unnamed friends who are leaking his thoughts to reporters.

Trump hinted Friday morning on Twitter that some of his communications with James Comey may have been preserved, tweeting that he had 'better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!'

But America's former top cop is 'not worried about any tapes' of those talks between him and the president, according to CNN, who quoted a Comey friend saying that 'if there is a tape, there's nothing he is worried about.'

NBC News has its own secret access to Comey's inner circle, with one person close to him saying: 'He hopes there are tapes. That would be perfect.'

White House press secretary Sean Spicer wouldn't rule out the possibility during Friday's briefing.

President Donald Trump (left) warned former FBI director James Comey (right) that their conversations may have been preserved on 'tape'  and Comey's friends are saying he hopes it's true

An NBC White House reporter spoke with a Comey confidant who said the fired FBI chief is hoping the tapes exists; CNN made a similar report based on another unnamed source

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Friday afternoon that the president wouldn't have any further comments about the tweet, which he denied was a 'threat' to Comey; he also wouldn't confirm or deny that the White House records the president's phone calls

Trump's veiled threat is said to have enraged Comey, who believes it would be 'perfect' to have a record of his discussions with the president

'The president has nothing further to add,' he said several times. Asked directly whether the White House is taping Trump's phone calls , he wouldn't give a yes-or-no answer.

And when asked if it was proper for the president to threaten his former FBI director into silence, Spicer said the tweet was 'not a threat. He's simply stating a fact.'

It's also possible that the FBI or the Justice Department was openly recording, or secretly monitoring, Comey's calls. A request for information from the DOJ went unanswered on Friday.

Trump said Thursday during an interview with NBC News that the two men have spoken at least three times since Inauguration Day.

And on those occasions, he insisted, Comey assured him that he was not personally the subject of any federal investigations.

'He said it once at dinner and then he said it twice during phone calls,' Trump said.

He described a matter-of-fact exchange over dinner in which he asked an unusual question and got an unconventional response.

'I said, "If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?" Trump recalled.

'He said, "You are not under investigation".'

Spicer was asked Friday whether or not the White House had a recording of that dinnertime conversation, and replied: 'I'm not aware of that.'

It is rare for a federal law enforcement official to tell anyone, including the President of the United States, whether they are being investigated.

Even if Comey doesn't speak to reporters about the circumstances behind his dismissal on Tuesday, he may have a high-profile venue to tell his side of the story.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked him to testify next week.

The latest twist from Trump amid reports that he demanded loyalty from James Comey during the private dinner at the White House back in January.

The claims from associates of the now fired FBI director. Comey had told associates that he was summoned to the White House for a one-on-one dinner with Trump seven days after the inauguration, the New York Times reports.

It was during the dinner that Trump reportedly asked Comey twice to pledge loyalty to him as the new Commander in Chief.

Sources say Comey declined to do so but said he told the President he would always be honest with him.

Meanwhile former national intelligence director James Clapper says Comey was uneasy about having dinner with President Donald Trump in January.

Clapper told MSNBC on Friday that he spoke briefly with Comey about the dinner before they attended a retirement celebration for Clapper.

The dinner was held on January 27 - and is now at the center of the dispute over Comey's sacking.

He says Comey mentioned that he had been invited to have dinner with Trump and was 'uneasy with it.'

Clapper says Comey was concerned about the 'optics' of that because it might appear that he or the FBI was not working independently of the White House.

Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said Friday that he doesn't know if the Trump presidential campaign colluded with Russia to meddle in November's election

Clapper had said in March on 'Meet the Press' that he wasn't aware of any evidence to support the idea that Trumpworld worked with Moscow, but he changed his line on Friday

Clapper had said in March on 'Meet the Press' that he wasn't aware of any evidence to support the idea that Trumpworld worked with Moscow, but he changed his line on Friday

The president has gone ape on Twitter, leaning on Clapper's statements that the former top intelligence official now seems to be abandoning

Question: Asked if he agreed with the president's claim that the Trump-Russia investigation was a 'witch hunt,' Clapper responded: 'I don't believe it is, but that's kind of irrelevant.'

Clapper also pushed back on the president's description of Comey as a 'showboater' and White house claims that FBI agents were close to an uprising

'I witnessed personally the very high esteem and respect people in the FBI have, and still have, for Jim Comey,' he said.

The former director of national intelligence - who said in March that there was 'no evidence' the Trump campaign collluded with Russia 's election -meddling efforts - also changed his story on Friday, saying 'I don't know' if evidence exists.

Clapper told Andrea Mitchell that while he was America's top intelligence official, he typically allowed the BFI to decide how much information to share with him about counterintelligence investigations that had the potential to turn into criminal cases.

'So it's not surprising or abnormal that I would not have known about the investigation, or even more importantly the content of that investigation,' he said, talking about the FBI's Russia probe.

'So I don't know if there was collusion or not. I don't know if there's evidence of collusion or not, nor should I have in this particular context.'

Asked if he agreed with the president's claim that the Trump-Russia investigation was a 'witch hunt,' Clapper responded: 'I don't believe it is, but that's kind of irrelevant.'

'I think what needs to happen here is to clear this cloud, the cloud that is hanging over the administration, over the president, over the White House,' he said.

'And it would be in everyone's best interest to get to the bottom of this and for the country. Otherwise this is going to continue to linger as a dark cloud over  in my opinion  over this administration.'

The president has gone ape on Twitter, leaning on Clapper's statements that the former top intelligence official now seems to be abandoning

Clapper first appeared to give Trump a clean bill of counterintelligence health during a March appearance on NBC's 'Meet the Press' program, saying a multi-agency assessment had included no evidence that Trumpworld worked with Moscow to tilt the November election in the president's favor.

'We did not include any evidence in our report  and I say, 'our,' that's NSA, FBI and CIA, with my office, the Director of National Intelligence  that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report,' he said then.

Asked if such evidence exists, he replied: 'Not to my knowledge.'
President Donald Trump's hint that he has a tape of his dinner with former FBI director James Comey sounds extraordinary  but it could be completely true.

No law stops the president from recording every aspect of life in his White House. And there is no a law that blocks these recordings from being released by the president.

Secret tapes, of course, brought down President Richard Nixon. Many believed that his downfall would have stopped presidents making recordings.

That wasn't the case, at least for President Bill Clinton.

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President Donald Trump implied Friday morning there might be secret recordings of conversation he had with former FBI Director James Comey. At least seven other presidents have been proven to have recorded meetings and phone calls while in office

President Bill Clinton recorded conversations in office, but he has not yet released the tapes. President George W. Bush enacted the Presidential Records Act which means any recordings made in office must be preserved for historical purposes

Because of former U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr's inquiry, it was established that Clinton recorded many calls to foreign leaders and conversations he had with an historian.

However, he's keeping these tapes a secret. Whether George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Barack Obama made recordings is still unknown, but it is likely.

The law surrounding the recordings is actually very simple: Washington D.C. is a 'one party recording' jurisdiction; as long as one party consents to the recording, the tape can be made and the other party need not even know they have been recorded.

This means it is perfectly legal to use hidden recording devices and offer no notification that a recording is being made to dinner guests.

There is not a law that stops a president from recording meetings and phone calls in the Oval Office. In Washington D.C., it is legal to record a conversation without the other party's consent

While Nixon's notorious recordings were kept on tape, modern technology would mean that what Trump called 'tapes' would now be computer files.

Once the 'tape' has been made, it is subject both to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which means that the public can ask to hear it.

Even after the president leaves office, the file would still have to exist because of Presidential Records Act. The act requires the recordings be preserved for historical purposes.

The PRA was brought in after outrage over Nixon's Watergate scandal. It says that 'presidential records' are documentary materials created by the president.

It says 'in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President' must be held for public inspection in the future.

They are usually held by the president's library but it is the responsibility of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to make sure that they can be accessed by the public.

While former President Bill Clinton is known to have recorded conversations in the White House, it is not proven if former President George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush have tapes

The existence or non-existence of secret recordings by President Obama. Presidents have a five-year pass before they have to respond to FOIA requests

But actually accessing a recording is not that simple.

The only presidential recordings published under the FOIA so far were those of Reagan's 'situation room' tapes. They were first requested by historian William Doyle in 1996 and he published a book containing them in 2014.

The FOIA rules have also failed to bring recordings made by Bill Clinton to light.

He held lengthy conversations with the historian Taylor Branch, who was specifically asked to make an oral history of the Clinton presidency.

In 2009 the conservative freedom of information campaigners Judicial Watch made a FOIA request to the Clinton Presidential Library for the tapes, but it said that the records were Bill Clinton's own, not public material.

That was upheld by the NARA, although Judicial Watch began litigating an appeal in 2010. The case remains unresolved.

Clinton's successor George W. Bush wrote his own rules in 2014 on how his records should be treated.

According to Politico if there are tapes, they would be released under FOIA as his guidelines for access were praised as liberal by historians.

It is unclear if any exist however; as yet no relevant FOIA appears to have been made. If they have been made, they have still to be responded to in the public domain.

As for Obama's potential tapes, their very existence or non-existence is secret, because presidents have a five-year pass on having to respond to FOIA requests before they leave office.

Presidential recordings of course have played a part in history before - notoriously so in the case of Richard Nixon.

President Richard Nixon resigned after the released of the 'smoking gun' tape before he could be impeached for the Watergate scandal

He resigned before he could be impeached after the infamous Nixon White House tapes that were made public before the Senate Watergate Committee.

Nixon ordered the Secret Service to install recording devices in the White House and taped 2,636 hours of phone calls and conversations between 1971 and 1973.

He was paranoid about how he was viewed by members of Congress and the executive branch. The 37th president was also concerned about how he was being portrayed to the media.

Most people did not know they were being taped and only a few members of the White House administration knew the sound activated recording devices existed.

Nixon's downfall spiraled because of the tapes which were exposed during the Watergate investigation into the DNC burglary while he was running for re-election.

The burglars were trying to bug the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex.

During the investigation, the 'smoking-gun' tape led to Nixon's resignation. It proved the president ordered a cover-up of the burglary of the DNC.

President Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox (pictured) who was investigating the break-in at the DNC headquarters at the Watergate complex

The recording revealed Nixon ordering the FBI and CIA to abandon its investigation of the break-in.

Before the release of the 'smoking gun' tape, Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox - who was investigating the Watergate scandal - in the Saturday Night Massacre, which itself has drawn comparisons to the firing of Comey.

Nixon was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford, but many of his aides served time in federal prison.

Nixon wasn't the first president to secretly record Oval Office conversations. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt also recorded discussions in the Oval Office with a microphone hidden under his desk.

President Eisenhower (pictured with Vice President Nixon) used a recording device hidden in a fake telephone . However, he often forgot to turn it on before meetings

He began using the device after the New York Times published what he claimed to be a fictitious article. FDR was advised by his stenographer to record meetings to keep this from happening again.

He recorded eight hours of conversations in the Oval and stopped using it after he was re-elected in 1944.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower also used a secret recording device disguised as a telephone on his desk in the Oval Office. FDR could only tape 10 minutes at a time with his recorder, but Eisenhower was able to record a full 15 minutes.

However, Eisenhower would occasionally forget to turn the machine on at the beginning of meetings and the quality of many recordings was extremely poor. He used the device to document 75 different conversations beginning in 1953.

JFK upped the number of devices in the White House from previous administrations. Recorders were hidden in the drapes of the Cabinet Room, his study and in the Oval

President Johnson used secret recording devices as vice president and president

President John F. Kennedy had a system installed in 1962 by the White House Communications Agency. He hid microphones in the drapes of the Cabinet Room and under a coffee table and his desk in the Oval.

Kennedy had a Dictaphone machine hooked up to a telephone and taped 265 hours of meetings and 12 hours of phone calls.

His Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson also used a device and as president he used it to record 800 hours covering 9,000 telephone conversations.

Again, the quality of the Dictaphone recordings were often lacking. The tapes would often pick up background noise and JFK's leg tapping more than the actual conversation.

President Ronald Reagan also taped dozens of calls made from the Situation Room.

The recordings reveal the conversations he had with world leaders such as former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, former Syrian President Hafez el-Assad and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
When President Donald Trump makes his first trip abroad next week, his first stop will be in Islam practicing nation of Saudi Arabia, a choice the White House says he made.

From there, he'll travel to Israel and The Vatican speaking to the 'faithful of three of the world's greatest religions' before he flies to Brussels and Sicily for gatherings of NATO alliance and the countries that make up the G7.

'This trip is truly historic,' the president's National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said Friday. 'No president has ever visited the homelands or holy sites of the Jews, Christians and Muslim faiths all on one trip.'

When President Donald Trump makes his first trip abroad next week, his first stop will be in Islam practicing nation of Saudi Arabia, a choice the White House says he made

From there, he'll travel to Israel and The Vatican speaking to the 'faithful of three of the world's greatest religions' before he flies to Brussels and Sicily for gatherings of NATO alliance and the countries that make up the G7. Trump's first stop: Ridyah, which is seen above

Trump will shift his attention to another aspect of Middle East peace as he embarks on the second portion of his trip - the fight between Israelis and the Palestinians over their right to rule Jerusalem

Rounding out his travels to the homelands of the world's three most-practiced religions, Trump will visit the seat of the Catholic church

The president's top national security official offered a sneak peak on Friday of the trip the White House intends as a reset for US foreign policy.

Trump will promote his 'America First' doctrine on the trip while spreading a message of 'tolerance and hope' as he works to unite peoples of all faiths, McMaster said.

He'll do that by promoting a 'common vision of peace, progress and prosperity' in the three countries that have been historically defined by their religions.

Etching a sharp line of distinction between his foreign policy and that of his predecessor, Trump will decry Islamic terrorism on the first leg of his trip and urge peace-loving Muslims to reject perverse interpretations of their religion.

'He will develop a strong, respectful message that the United States and the entire civilized world expects our Muslim allies to take a strong stand against radical Islamist ideology,' McMaster said Friday, subtly acknowledging the president's aggressive rhetoric toward followers of Islam during his campaign.

Trump at one time said he would be in favor of a Muslim registry having already proposed a Muslim travel ban.

He says he never meant to suggest he'd trample on law-abiding citizens' First Amendment rights, though he continues to believe that citizens from some Muslim-majority countries should be barred from entering the country.

A second iteration of his proposed travel ban that's making its way through the courts would block residents of Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen from coming to America for a set period.

While he's in Asia, Trump will ask the the United States' regional allies to use their resources and influence to help put a stop the atrocities of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and of ISIS.

'He will lead the first steps toward a stronger, more capable, and more robust security partnership with our Gulf, Arab, and Muslim partners,' his national security advisor said.

Trump will shift his attention to another aspect of Middle East peace as he embarks on the second portion of his trip - the fight between Israelis and the Palestinians over their right to rule Jerusalem.

'With President Rivlin and Prime Minister Netanyahu, he will reaffirm America's unshakeable bond to the Jewish state. With President Abbas, he will express his desire for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians,' McMaster on Friday said.

National Security Advisor H.R McMaster said Trump is positioning himself to take back the mantle of American leadership on the foreign trip that ends in Italy

'And so to leaders and peoples alike, across the entire trip, he will demonstrate his hopes for a just and lasting peace.'

Rounding out his travels to the homelands of the world's three most-practiced religions, Trump will visit the seat of the Catholic church.

'In Rome, the President will be honored to accept an audience with Pope Francis,' McMaster said, making reference to the sprawling Italian city that butts up next to The Vatican.

'He looks forward to paying his respects and to discussing religious freedom, ways to combat religious persecution, human trafficking, and cooperating on humanitarian missions across the globe.'

McMaster said Trump is positioning himself to take back the mantle of American leadership on the foreign trip that begins in Saudi Arabia and ends in Italy after an eight-year period of home rule that veered toward isolationism.

'For America to secure and advance its interests, that requires American leadership,' McMaster said, explaining that 'America First' never meant 'America not leading' in the eyes of this administration.

It it did not mean 'America alone,' either, he insisted.

'Americans dont have to do everything, dont have to bankroll everything. And our allies and partners are grateful for, I think, the President's leadership in asking them to do more.'

Burden-sharing will be the essence of Trump's message as he meets with the United States' NATO allies in Belgium near the end of overseas adventure.

At the convening of the G7 alliance in Sicily immediately afterwards, American economic opportunity will be Trump's top priority.

He will also push America's partners to do more to address security threats coming out of North Korea, Afghanistan and the broader Middle East, McMaster says.
The FBI's Los Angeles office has reportedly been so overwhelmed by hacks against Hollywood that they have been advising studios to just pay ransoms.

At least a half-dozen extortion attempts have been made against Hollywood firms in the past six months, according to The Hollywood Reporter, including the recent hack on Netflix.

Industry sources told the magazine that there have been so many hacks that the FBI has been unable to properly investigate them all.

They say the FBI has been advising studios to just pay the ransoms since what hackers are asking for isn't all that much for Hollywood companies.

Hollywood insiders say the FBI has been advising hacked studios to pay their ransoms

None of the recent hacking cases have involved extortions more than $80,000, which is chump change in the billion-dollar industry.

However, when reached by the Hollywood Reporter for comment, the FBI's official statement was quite different.

'The FBI does not encourage payment of ransom as it keeps the criminals in business,' FBI spokesman Laura Eimiller said. 'Of course, the individual victim must weigh their options.'

One of the latest victims of the hacking has been Netflix, which had the first episode of its upcoming season of Orange Is The New Black posted online last month by the hacking group The DarkOverloard.

Netflix was the recent victim of a hack, which saw the first episode of their upcoming season posted online last month

Hacking collective The DarkOverlord posted the episode online when Netflix didn't pay them the approximately $60,000 ransom

The collective also stole then-unaired episodes of New Girl, Portlandia and NCIS: LA in a hack on a post-production studio at the end of 2016.

In March, they demanded that Netflix pay a ransom of 50 bitcoin (about $60,000) by April 30 or the episodes would be released. Netflix never responded and two days before the deadline, the hackers posted the first episode online.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with the group online recently, who said they were planning to release more content soon.

'We're motivated by our desire to acquire internet money,' TheDarkOverlord said in an encrypted chat room. 'Contrary to what others have declared, we're motivated only by the benefit of financial gain.'

Hacks have reportedly become an issue for Hollywood because the film industry involves so many players.

Big studios likely have the funds to set up a secure firewall, but the third-party groups that they work with - such as post-production companies, publicists and agents - likely do not have the same security measures.
Bill O'Reilly sat down with Glenn Beck on Friday in his first interview since being fired by Fox News last month, blaming his demise on an organized group who made a point of bringing him down.

'This was a hit. In the weeks to come, were gonna be able to explain some of it,' said O'Reilly, who continues to deny the sexual harassment claims being made by multiple women, at least three of whom received seven-figure settlements.

'It has to do with destroying voices that the far left and the organized left-wing cabal doesnt like. Thats the general tone. I cant get specific. Theres a lot of legality here.'

He then said that he may take legal action to try and bring down this 'left-wing cabal,' going on to state: 'Were going to name them and its going to be a big, big, story.'

O'Reilly also said that billionaire investor George Soros was funding this group, which he believes paid protesters to picket outside Fox News.

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Speaking out: Bill O'Reilly (above ) sat down with Glenn Beck for an interview on Friday and said that he was targeted by a 'left-wing cabal' who wanted him gone from Fox News

'Ill point you to an article that was very very seldom seen this week about nine corporations, big corporations that are now being targeted by organized left-wing groups funded by George Soros because they allegedly are profiting from President Trumps immigration stance,' said O'Reilly.

'You can Google the article. That gives you your road map.'

Soros, who has a net worth of approximately $25billion, has donated millions to progressive and liberal causes, as well as supers PACs that supported Hillary Clinton.

'Unfortunately, I was target number one. Its sad. Its sad for me. Its sad for my family. Its grossly dishonest,' said O'Reilly.

'I did what I thought I had to do to protect my family. Those days are over. From now on when Im attacked, Im going to take action, mostly legal action.'

He then added: 'But its not going to happen anymore to me.'

O'Reilly said that the recent election played a role in the attack against him as well, motivating the unnamed group who he claims brought him down.

'It was bull. It was all a lie,' said OReilly of the sexual harassment allegations.

'Now its ramped up since President Trump was elected. Its ramped up to a place where I think this is going to become a major story in the next six months.'

O'Reilly did not have anything negative to say about his former network however, noting that he had '20 good years' at Fox News.

He did reveal that rather unceremonious way he discovered he was let go in the interview.

'My attorneys told me, and we were all shocked. But Im not going to say anything more than that,' said OReilly.

'Its their prerogative. They can do whatever they want. They run the company and they own the company. So, if thats what they felt was best for the company, Im not going to hammer them.'

Pulling the strings: O'Reilly also said that billionaire investor George Soros was funding this group, which he believes paid protesters to picket outside Fox News

Paid players?: Soros, who has a net worth of approximately $25billion, has donated millions to progressive and liberal causes (protesters above outside Fox News last month)

O'Reilly also used the interview to criticize Sean Spicer and President Trump's administration.

'The messaging is always the problem with the Trump White House,' said O'Reilly.

'They don't have strong people dealing with the press. I think Huckabee's daughter is much stronger than Spicer.'

He went on to state: 'Spicer's just weak.'

Rupert Murdoch announced that he was terminating the network's most popular host in a letter last month that was signed by himself and his sons, Lachlan and James.

Rupert reportedly made this decision to fire O'Reilly after being pressured by his two sons.

'After a thorough and careful review of the allegations,the company and Bill OReilly have agreed that Bill OReilly will not be returning to the Fox News Channel,' 21st Century Fox said in a statement

O'Reilly, who recently signed a multiyear contract worth over $20million a year, was halfway around the world at the time, having spent the morning meeting Pope Francis in Vatican City.

The popular host was in St. Peters Square with his son for Pope Francis' weekly address, and afterwards stood in a VIP line to shake hands with the holy leader.

Pope Francis likely had no idea whose hand he was shaking however as the pontiff has said in interviews that he does not watch television.

O'Reilly released a statement that same afternoon saying: 'It is tremendously disheartening that we part ways due to completely unfounded claims.'
A 4-year-old boy with special needs was struck and killed by a passing van in Orlando after creeping out of his parents' motel room as they slept.

Florida Highway Patrol says Kiyan Tomlin was struck at about 2 AM in the area of Sand Lake Road and John Young Parkway, according to WESH.

He apparently wandered out of the motel rooms while his parents, Terrial Tomlin Jr and Sharice Adams were asleep. They told investigators that they flipped the top latch on the door and went to sleep around 11 PM.

Kiyan Tomlin (pictured), 4, was struck and killed after leaving his motel room, while his parents were asleep

Florida Highway Patrol says Kiyan Tomlin was struck at about 2 AM by a van (pictured) in the area of Sand Lake Road and John Young Parkway

According to Sgt. Kim Montes, it seemed the child pushed a chair to the door and unlocked the door to escape the room.

The 56-year-old driver of the van told troopers that the road was very dark. Montes said the driver stopped when he felt he had hit something and found the child.

He got out and tried to help, but the boy was already dead, according to News6.

"I don't think there's anything (the driver) could have done to avoid this," FHP spokeswoman said. "It was dark out here, and you don't expect there to be a child in the middle of the road as you're driving along."

Troopers arriving at the scene found the boy wearing mismatched shoes and a T-shirt but no pants.

They followed tiny footprints in the dirt road to a nearby Extended Stay America motel, Montes said.

He apparently wandered out of the Extended Stay America motel (pictured) room while his parents, Terrial Tomlin Jr and Sharice Adams were asleep

The family was staying at the motel, while they looked for a home to buy in the area. No charges have been filed as an investigation is ongoing. Pictured are investigators responding to the scene

They noticed a side door cracked open and after going inside, found a motel room door that was partially open.

When the troopers knocked on the door, the sleeping parents 'had no idea' the boy had left the room, Montes said. Emergency crews were notified to treat the emotionally distraught parents.

The couple is from Brooklyn, New York, according to Montes. However the father is originally from Orlando.

The family was staying at the motel, while they looked for a home to buy in the area. No charges have been filed as an investigation is ongoing.
David Pena-Melo (pictured), 27, was arrested in Florida for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl as she was riding from her boyfriend's house Monday night, police said

A married Uber driver was arrested in Florida for allegedly raping a 14-year-old girl as she was leaving her boyfriend's house Monday night, police said.

David Pena-Melo, 27, was taken into custody by Osceola County Sheriff's Office deputies on a sexual battery charge after the victim reported the incident, according to a police statement.

Around 3am on Monday night, Pena-Melo picked the girl up after she used the Uber application to request a ride from her boyfriend's house in Kissimmee, Florida, to her aunt's house in the same city.

When the victim first got into his vehicle, Pena-Melo complimented her beauty and asked her questions about her age.

He then made the girl sit in the front seat where he 'began to make sexual advances towards the juvenile and sexually battered her', police said in the statement.

The victim told authorities that she asked him to stop several times but he was 'forceful and persistent,' according to an arrest report.

A short time later, Pena-Melo drove past the victim's destination and parked his car near a wooded area.

Police said he then forced the juvenile to perform a sex act before finally driving her to her requested destination.

Authorities received the sexual battery report on Wednesday and used his license plate number the victim provided to track his Toyota Camry to an address in Kissimmee, according to News 6.

Pena-Melo's wife initially told deputies that he was in Boston caring for a sick family member.

But when police told her they were investigating a crime that took place in her car, she became cooperative and gave them permission to search the vehicle, according to the station.

She then led deputies to another apartment in Kissimmee.

Once Pena-Melo saw the deputies he immediately admitted to picking the girl up.

Authorities received the sexual battery report on Wednesday and used his license plate number the victim provided to track his Toyota Camry to an address on Bonita Circle (pictured) in Kissimmee

Uber (file image) released a statement Friday afternoon saying the company is 'appalled by what's been reported, and our thoughts are with the family'. The company also said Pena-Melo 'has been banned from Uber'

'This is about the girl I picked up from her boyfriend's house the other day. I knew it. I knew it. She told me she was 18,' Pena-Melo said, according to News 6.

He was stopped from making more admissions until he arrived at the sheriff's office, where confessed to the sexual activity during an interview.

Pena-Melo maintained that he thought the victim was 18 years old.

Uber released a statement Friday afternoon saying the company is 'appalled by what's been reported, and our thoughts are with the family', according to News 6.

The company said Pena-Melo 'has been banned from Uber'.

Pena-Melo was booked into the Osceola County Jail on a sexual battery charge and he's being held without bond.
Rep. Rick Brattin sparked an outrage for suggesting gay people are not fully human

A Republican lawmaker in Missouri sparked an outrage after he said there was a 'distinction' between gay people and 'being a human being'.

Rep. Rick Brattin (R-Harrisonville) was arguing against an amendment for Senate Bill 43 to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in matters of employment, housing or public accommodation.

Making a case that the amendment would limit religious liberty, Brattin said: 'When you look at the tenets of religion, of the Bible, of the Quran, of other religions, there is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.'

Brattin went on to describe transgender people as 'crossdressers' saying: 'Nobody says you need to hate anyone. It is wrong to hate and cast judgement on someone.

'But you have a policy in place that you don't want someone to show up that was a guy yesterday to show up as a girl today and you believe that's wrong and you don't believe that's fitting for your company, then I have that right to say: "No, I'm sorry, you are not going to show up as a cross-dresser today in my business."'

People took to Twitter to call Brattin a 'bigot' and an 'absolute embarrassment'

People took to Twitter to call Brattin a 'bigot' and an 'absolute embarrassment'.

A social media user, tweeting under the handle @padriveum, wrote: 'You're not a Christian-- you're a bigot. Re-read the words of Christ -- he doesn't advocate hatred or discrimination.'

Laurian Rhodes wrote: '@RickBrattin You are an absolute embarrassment to the US. Keep your "Godly" ways out of your JOB as a state employee.'

Greg Razer, an openly gay representative of Kansas City, issued an email encouraging people to take a stand, saying: 'Somehow gay people are less than other people to some folks in the Missouri House of Representatives.'

The St. Louis Rabbinical Association also issued a statement calling for Brattin to apologize, saying: 'Sexual orientation does not deprive one of being human in the eyes of God.'

The statement also said: 'We are also deeply dismayed that Rep. Brattin uses religion in an attempt to mandate unequal treatment of citizens under the law.'

The St. Louis Rabbinical Association also issued a statement calling for Brattin to apologize

The amendment was scrapped, and Senate Bill 43 was passed, 98 to 30, making it one step harder for people to win discrimination lawsuits.

The bill, which will head to Governor Eric Greitens next, raises the bar for people to seek recourse for discrimination.

Instead of proving that discrimination based on a 'protected classification' such as race, religion, disability or age, played a 'contributing factor' to someone's unlawful dismissal, for example, an employee has to prove that discrimination was the main reason.

Rattin has taken controversial stances before. He proposed a bill that would require a woman to seek permission from the man who impregnated her before getting an abortion.

He also sponsored a bill to give equal attention to creationism and evolution in school textbooks.
Ukip leader Paul Nuttall has been mocked for seemingly walking on the spot during his party's latest political broadcast.

In the clip, aired on the BBC earlier this week, Mr Nuttall looks to be moving his legs but not covering any ground, creating a bizarre treadmill effect.

The video then shows the MEP placing his hands over a wall and staring out to sea in the same position he was in on previous cut.

In the clip, aired on the BBC earlier this week, Mr Nuttall looks to be moving his legs but not covering any ground, creating a bizarre treadmill effect

The video then shows the MEP placing his hands over a wall and staring out to sea in the same position he was in on previous cut

The scene was quickly noted on Twitter with user Ross Fairbairn posting: 'Is it just me or is Paul Nuttall just walking on the spot in the UKIP party political broadcast? Hahaha'.

Meanwhile Ross Lawson replied saying: 'That's an outrageous suggestion. Paul Nuttall is in fact the inventor of the moonwalk. Showed it to Michael Jackson back in '82.'

A cutaway then shows the Merseyside born politician outside Westminster as he outlines his party's pledges.

He says: 'We want to cut immigration, we want a more secure Britain, we want to prioritise the NHS over foreign aid, we want to protect British culture, and we want a modern and fair democracy.'

Mr Nuttall is standing for the anti-EU party in Boston & Skegness in Lincolnshire in the General Election

Mr Nuttall is standing for the anti-EU party in Boston & Skegness in Lincolnshire in the General Election although it is unclear if the leader was in the coastal town during the filming for the broadcast.

Despite shedding more than 100 councillors and winning only one seat in May's council elections Mr Nuttall, who succeed Nigel Farage as leader, insisted his party has a 'bright future.'

Campaigning in the constituency he is hoping to seize for Ukip on June 8, Mr Nutall said: 'Ukip does have a great future. It just has to stay on the pitch, hold its ground and people will come back to us.'
The rank and file members of the FBI have taken to social media to show their support for former FBI Director James Comey following his unexpected firing by President Donald Trump on Tuesday.

'At least a dozen' agents have changed their Facebook profile pictures to photos of themselves with Comey, or just of Comey himself, according to a Wednesday report by the Daily Beast.

This comes as Comey declined on Friday an invitation from the Senate Intelligence Committee to testify in a closed session on Tuesday, according to Politico.

'At least a dozen' agents have changed their Facebook profile pictures to photos of themselves with former FBI Director James Comey, or just of Comey himself, according to a Wednesday report; Comey is seen here testifying before a Senate judiciary committee in Washington, DC on May 3

Trump seemingly threatened the former FBI Director to remain silent via social media earlier that same day.

Trump's tweet followed a letter released by Comey on Wednesday, addressed to his FBI staff, that spoke fondly of his time leading the FBI and urged those remaining at the Bureau not to get too caught up in questioning his dismissal.

'I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for no reason at all,' he wrote.

'Im not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you wont either.'

But the staff didn't necessarily heed that advice.

'Everyone feels like there has been a death in the family,' a counterterrorism agent told the Daily Beast.

Another agent said that they're 'basically sitting shiva.'

(Sitting shiva is the Jewish practice of observing a week-long mourning period immediately following the funeral of a loved one who has passed.)

President Donald Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, just as the FBI director and his team were sending out grand jury subpoenas to business associates of forner National Security Advisor Michael Flynn as part of their investigation into whether the president and his administration had colluded with the Russian government to affect the 2016 president election.

'The President's sudden and brazen firing of the FBI director raises the ghosts of some of the worst Executive Branch abuses,' House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, CNN reported. 'We cannot stand by and watch a coverup of the possible collusion with a hostile foreign power to undermine American democracy.'

The move surprised government officials on both sides of the aisle, and Comey, himself. Comey learned of the firing while addressing employees in Los Angeles when news of his termination began flashing across television screens behind him.

President Donald Trump is seen here in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, DC on May 4

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 94 of 100 senators, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump contradicted Conway and statements made by Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to the same effect when, on Thursday, he told NBC's Lester Hold that he was going to fire Comey, anyway.

'Regardless of the recommendation I was going to fire Comey,' Trump said.

He then reasserted that Comey had told him on three separate occasions, upon his questioning, that Trump, himself, was not under investigation for collusion with Russia to interfere in the 2016 president election.

On Friday, Trump seemed to suggest he may have recorded private conversation he had with Comey, and that might be a reason why Comey would want to refrain from speaking publicly on whatever subject those conversations covered.

'James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!' Trump tweeted on Friday.

Also during the interview, Trump seemed confused about whether an actual FBI investigation was underway, repeatedly referring to allegations of Russian meddling the US election as a hoax created by Democrats to explain away their defeat.

The FBI began an investigation in July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Hospitals across Britain were paralysed last night after cyber hackers held the NHS to ransom in an unprecedented global attack.

Countless operations were cancelled and patients were turned away as 45 NHS organisations and trusts and hundreds of GP surgeries were locked out of their computer systems.

NHS staff pleaded with patients to stay away from A&E except in an emergency, and ambulances were diverted away from hospitals struggling to cope, with medics facing a weekend of chaos.

Meanwhile Russia is believed to be the worst affected country with computers in its interior ministry hit and its second largest phone network - Megafon - also targeted.

Ticketing machines and computers at German railway stations have also been affected alongside Spanish companies including telecoms giant Telefonica, power firm Iberdrola and utility provider Gas Natural. Shipping company FedEx also confirmed it was hit by the attack.

Experts say the cyber attack used code developed by the US National Security Agency which was leaked online last month by a mysterious group called the Shadow Brokers.

Data released under the Freedom of Information Act in December suggested 90 per cent of NHS trusts are using outdated software Windows XP, which is 15 years old and has been branded 'obsolete', leaving systems more vulnerable to attacks.

But it is understood the hack has now been stopped thanks to a 'kill switch' that was built into the malware code.

The NHS has been hit by a major cyber attack hitting computers, phones and emergency bleepers in hospitals and GP surgeries - and pop-ups like this one have appeared demanding a ransom

The hackers made the attack able to spread itself by using the NSA code, which is known as Eternal Blue.

The Shadow Brokers released Eternal Blue last month as part of a trove of hacking tools that they said belonged to the US spy agency.

Cambridge University professor Ross Anderson said the attack looked to have exploited a weakness in Microsoft software that was previously fixed by a patch released earlier this year.

But he said the patch may not have been installed on NHS computers and said Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt should be 'roasted' in Parliament.

He told the Guardian: 'If large numbers of NHS organisations failed to act on a critical notice from Microsoft two months ago, then whose fault is that?

'This is the sort of thing for which the secretary of state should get roasted in parliament.'

With the virus spreading at a rate of five million emails per hour, tens of thousands of victims have now been reported in 99 countries including the US, Australia, Belgium, France, Italy and Mexico.

This map released by cybersecurity experts, shows the impact of the ransomware around the world - with blue dots showing where attacks have been made. Russia is thought to be the worst affected, while Taiwan fears being the victim of a second wave. Europe was targeted first, meaning there were fewer incidents in the US because companies were able to prepare themselves better

Ransomware: How do hackers take your data hostage?

Researchers with security software maker Avast said they had observed 57,000 infections worldwide with Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan the top targets.

Asian countries reported no major breaches on Saturday, but officials in the region were scrambling to check and the full extent of the damage may not be known for some time.

China's official Xinhua news agency said some secondary schools and universities had been affected, without specifying how many or identifying them.

The virus's global spread has been slowed by the triggering of the virtual 'kill switch'.

According to The Register, the switch is built in to the virus and causes it to search for a website address that, once activated, stops the transmission.

It is believed that website was activated on Friday, pausing the spread of the virus.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said work was ongoing to identify the attackers, and that no patient data had been stolen.

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme the virus had not been targeted at the NHS, saying the attack 'feels random in terms of where it's gone to and where it's been opened'.

She added: 'Windows XP is not a good platform for keeping your data as secure as the modern ones, because you can't download the effective patches and anti-virus software for defending against viruses.

'CQC (Care Quality Commission) does do cyber checks on the NHS trusts, on hospitals when they do their visits, and they will be advising NHS trusts to move to modernise their platforms and I think that after this experience, I would expect them all to move forward with modernising.'

Ms Rudd said the UK was a world leader in cyber security, adding: 'So far, all we have seen is patients inconvenienced, some hospitals, some doctors making changes to their daily life.

'But the fact is no data has yet been accessed and the NHS are brilliantly managing to weave through this disruption.'

Computer expert Lauri Love, who is facing extradition to the US over the alleged theft of data from government computers, said the attack is being powered by a 'top of the range cyber weapon' used by spies in the US.

'It appears the cyber attack affected so many computers in the UK in the NHS and in Spain by taking advantage of a very nasty vulnerability in Microsoft Windows, which was dumped by hacking group Shadow Brokers who obtained it from the NSA in America.'

Amid a huge row over cyber security flaws in the NHS, Theresa May was forced to reassure the public that their patient records had not been compromised.

As a massive hunt began for the hackers and the NHS declared a 'major incident':

The hack reportedly hit up to 74 countries, but the NHS is thought to have been the biggest institution affected;

NHS computers, MRI machines and telephones were switched off to stop the attack spreading;

Staff described computers going down 'one by one';

Doctors were forced to resort to using pen and paper, while patients told of their agony at having operations cancelled;

Police sources said the attack bore the hallmarks of a co-ordinated Eastern European or Russian gang operation;

Experts said they had been warning about an attack on the NHS for months;

It was claimed the hackers may have taken advantage of a chink in the armour of the Microsoft system revealed by a WikiLeaks dump of CIA documents.

The 'Wanna Decryptor' virus, spread via email in what experts called a 'highly co-ordinated and aggressive' attack, locked staff out of their terminals and demanded $300 (230) worth of the virtual currency bitcoins to release the files on each employee account.

Microsoft had apparently launched a defence patch against the virus in March, but experts said few hospitals had updated their systems.

Police discussed the cyber attack with NHS staff at Lister Hospital in Stevenage

The Prime Minister insisted the ransomware hit was 'not targeted' at the health service but was part of a wider assault.

She added: 'The National Cyber Security Centre is working closely with NHS Digital to ensure that they support the organisations concerned and that they protect patient safety.'

Mrs May stressed it was unlikely the hackers could access private patient data. But the virus is thought to have locked doctors out of patient records, test results and X-ray scans.

The hackers said the ransom will double if it is not paid within three days and the data will be deleted if it is not paid within a week.

A note which appeared on computers throughout the afternoon said: 'Ooops, your files have been encrypted! Maybe you are looking for a way to recover your files, but do not waste your time.'

As of 6.30pm yesterday, at least 37 NHS trusts in England had been affected. Hospitals in London, Blackpool and Colchester are thought to have been the worst hit  but last night the virus spread over the border into Scotland as the NHS admitted the extent of the chaos had not yet become clear.

It is not known how many computers were affected but if all of the NHS's 1.4 million employees were affected, the health service would have to hand over 326 million to unlock the scrambled data. Security sources said the Government would not pay a ransom.

RANSOMWARE: THE CYBER ATTACK THAT CRIPPLED THE WORLD What is ransomware? Ransomware is a type of malicious software that criminals use to attack computer systems. Hackers often demand the victim to pay ransom money to access their files or remove harmful programs. The aggressive attacks dupe users into clicking on a fake link  whether it's in an email or on a fake website, causing an infection to corrupt the computer. In some instances, adverts for pornographic website will repeatedly appear on your screen, while in others, a pop-up will state that a piece of your data will be destroyed if you don't pay. In the case of the NHS attack, the ransomware used was called Wanna Decryptor or 'WannaCry' Virus. The WannaCry virus targets Microsoft's widely used Windows operating system and can quickly spread through an entire network of computers in a business or hospital, encrypting files on every PC What is the WannaCry virus? The WannaCry virus targets Microsoft's widely used Windows operating system. The virus encrypts certain files on the computer and then blackmails the user for money in exchange for the access to the files. It leaves the user with only two files: Instructions on what to do next and the Wanna Decryptor program itself. When opened the software tells users that their files have been encrypted and gives them a few days to pay up or their files will be deleted. It can quickly spread through an entire network of computers in a business or hospital, encrypting files on every PC. How to protect yourself from ransomware Thankfully, there are ways to avoid ransomware attacks, and Norton Antivirus has compiled a list of prevention methods: 1. Use reputable antivirus software and a firewall 2. Back up your computer often 3. Set up a popup blocker 4. Be cautious about clicking links inside emails or on suspicious websites 5. If you do receive a ransom note, disconnect from the Internet 6. Alert authorities Advertisement

A spokesman at Barts NHS Health Trust, which runs five hospitals in London, said: 'We have activated our major incident plan to make sure we can maintain the safety and welfare of patients.'

Dr Krishna Chinthapalli, a registrar at London's National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, said it was the worst attack of its kind ever seen.

Just 24 hours before the attack, Dr Chinthapalli wrote in a British Medical Journal paper that the NHS was ill-prepared for a cyber attack  warning that nine out of ten NHS trusts ran an 'obsolete' version of Windows.

He wrote: 'We should be prepared  more hospitals will almost certainly be shut down by ransomware this year.'

Brian Lord, the former deputy director of GCHQ Cyber and Intelligence, said the attack had been 'inevitable' because firms were 'neglecting basic cyber hygiene'.

Police at Southport Hospital following the NHS cyber attack yesterday

A spokesman for NHS Digital said: 'At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed.

'This attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.'

Experts have been warning for months that the NHS was at risk. Gordon Morrison, director of government relations at Intel Security, warned last November that many NHS hospitals used 'antiquated' computer equipment which did not have the latest security programmes.

Experts estimate roughly a third of NHS trusts had been attacked before last night.

Last year an investigation revealed that seven NHS trusts, serving more than two million people, spent nothing on cyber security throughout the whole of 2015.

East and North Herts NHS Trust issued this warning to patients on their website

Sky News, working with security experts, uncovered misconfigured email servers, outdated software and security certificates.

It also found NHS trusts' emails and passwords were available through public searches.

In a similar attack, Wichita Heart Hospital in Kansas last year agreed to pay the hackers' fine, but instead of unlocking all of the information, they released only part of it and tried to extort more cash.

The hospital refused, and has been left permanently locked out of some data.

Cyber attack Q&A: What happened, why are hospitals vulnerable and didn't the NHS know it was at risk? Cyber criminals have unleashed their most dangerous weapon on the NHS  'ransomware'. CHIEF REPORTER SAM GREENHILL explains. What happened? At 1.30pm yesterday, NHS computers came under massive attack from cyber criminals threatening to destroy patient files unless they received a ransom. Staff found computers locked, with a warning that files had been scrambled to make them unintelligible. It gave a one-week deadline to pay up and recover the data  or see it deleted. In response, dozens of NHS Trusts shut down their IT systems  cutting off phone lines and medical machinery. Who is affected? At least 37 NHS Trusts have been attacked by the 'Wanna Decryptor' ransomware virus. What is ransomware? A malicious virus which infects devices and holds information hostage until a ransom is paid. It can be triggered by a staff member clicking on a link in a malicious email that may look innocent. The virus lies low until it is activated, either by a timer or remotely by the cyber gang. Blackpool Victoria Hospital is one of many across the country hit - operations have been cancelled and ambulances diverted What are the cyber criminals demanding? The ransom note warns: 'Do not waste your time. Nobody can recover your files without our decryption service.' It demands $300 (230) worth of the digital currency bitcoins  per computer infected  within three days or the price doubles. If the ransom is not paid by Friday, the files will be wiped 'forever'. What are bitcoins? The controversial web currency, dubbed 'geek's gold', recently overtook the value of an ounce of gold. One bitcoin is worth 1,367. They are not physical coins and only exist in cyberspace. Users can remain anonymous, which is why they are often used for illegal activity. Why are hospitals vulnerable? Many NHS computers are running very out-of-date software which can have serious security flaws. At least ten health trusts still rely on the Windows XP operating system, released in 2001. Why target hospitals? This is viewed as 'unethical' by some hackers, but hospitals are increasingly being seen as easy targets who will pay up quickly because getting systems running is a matter of life and death. Who are the prime suspects? Sources said the attack pointed to a criminal network rather than a state. Security insiders have vowed that the Government will not pay a ransom. Hackers in Russia, China, Ukraine and Taiwan have been pioneering ransomware lately. Didn't the NHS know it was at risk? Almost a third of NHS trusts have been infected by ransomware, according to the latest edition of the British Medical Journal. Experts have been warning about the risk to the NHS for years. Last year the Papworth Heart Hospital in Cambridge was attacked, but fortunately, a backup had just been completed of its files, meaning the system could be rebooted and the data was safe. The IT director said: 'We were very, very lucky.' How can attacks be prevented? Software should be kept up to date. Anti-virus programs can also be used to 'clean' malicious software from a computer. Advertisement

Heart surgery I waited ten months for was cancelled at the last minute because of the cyber attack, reveals patient

Patrick Ward, 47, had travelled with his family

A heart patient told last night how his long-awaited operation was cancelled because of the cyber attack as he waited to go into the operating theatre.

Patrick Ward, 47, had travelled with his family from his home in Steeple, Dorset, to St Bartholomew's Hospital in Central London for open heart surgery.

He was due to have a septal myectomy, for which he had been waiting ten months.

The surgery involves removing part of the septum  a wall of tissue that separates part of the heart  which is obstructing the flow of blood.

After having his arms and chest shaved and a cannula inserted into the back of his hand, he was ready to go into theatre when his surgeon told him they had to cancel the operation.

'I was told at about 1.30 that there had been a cyber hack and we couldn't proceed today,' he said. 'Apparently if I needed a blood transfusion during the procedure they would need to access files on their database, which they can no longer do.

'They can't tell me when the next available slot is to reschedule, so we'll stay at a hotel in London tonight and head back to Dorset tomorrow.'

Mr Ward, a sales director for an ice cream company, said: 'It's a specialist operation so it could be a while before I get another appointment. What I have isn't life-threatening but it has impacted my life a lot. It's very restricting.

'I think this is one of the few hospitals that can do it, and they only do it on certain days which is why I've had to wait so long to get a date set. It prevents me from doing exercise and I get pains when I walk. I was hoping to be able to play football again after the operation.

'I was supposed to spend a week in hospital recovering. My daughter travelled from Liverpool today to spend the weekend with me.'

Emma Simpson and her son whose appointment was delayed after the attack

Emma Simpson took her son, Sebastian, to Whipps Cross University Hospital in Leytonstone, east London, for an X-ray on his broken toe but was sent home because of the cyber attack.

They had an appointment with an orthopaedic clinic to check that the toe was healing properly.

But when they arrived they were greeted by 'chaos' and told that computers would be down until 'at least Monday'.

'They sent us away and said they would call us with a new appointment,' she told ITV London. 'Lots of people were very disappointed.'

A woman with a suspected blood clot was turned away from the Lister Hospital in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.

Anthony Brett from Bow, east London, was about to have a stent put in his liver to treat his cancer when he was told the procedure could not happen

Janetts Douras originally went to the A&E department on Thursday with the suspected clot but was sent home after six hours and told to return yesterday for a CT scan.

But after an hour she was sent away again with medication that she must inject herself to thin her blood.

She was asked to come back on Monday but said: 'I can't see it happening.'

The day the screens went dead: NHS staff tell of shock as computers freeze then hospitals plunge into chaos

The screens went blank one by one. Shortly after 1.30pm staff in busy hospital wards, GP surgeries, operating theatres and NHS offices up and down the country sat blinking uncomprehendingly at their screens as their systems went down.

Yesterday stunned doctors, nurses and staff revealed how the NHS was paralysed over a matter of hours from a catastrophic cyber attack.

A spam email set off an irreversible train of events, infecting computers, critical hospital software and finally even the phones went dead.

The NHS has been hit by a major cyber attack and criminals have taken control of computers and cut off phone lines across England, leaving some departments working with pen and paper

One shocked worker at Colchester General Hospital described how her office's computers were 'wiped out, one by one'. 'My computer locked at about 3pm and I couldn't get anything to work. Then my colleague sat next to me said her computer was down. It swept through the office and everyone was affected and didn't know what was going on. One by one the computers were wiped out.'

Tim Dawson, a doctor in a hospital in the North West, said: 'NW hospital computer systems under cyber attack 4 ransom... Sitting in front of a blank screen & can't do any work. Criminal. Poor patients.' Another medic, Chris Lofthouse said: 'Someone has hacked into the computer network at Royal Blackburn Hospital!! Can't give out prescriptions to anyone!!!!'

Nurses and doctors were forced to resort to pen and paper and by 3pm, the only form of communication was hand-held radios. One father, Warren Jones, said staff could not even print out an identity tag for his baby daughter born at 10.30am yesterday. The 24-year-old courier said: 'They don't want to let people go [from the hospital]. It is normal to have two baby tags  we have got no tags. They can't print them out.'

Patients, relatives and friends flocked to social media to vent their fury as patients were told at the last minute their operations were cancelled.

The NHS is investigating 'an issue with IT' amid reports of a cyber attack on its systems

Pharmacist Chris Maguire tweeted: 'All shut down in Yorkshire  even in GP practice. Back to handwriting notes while seeing patients without full histories!' Richard Davidson, a junior doctor in Carlisle, tweeted: 'Clinic in ruins. This is chaos. Why would anyone do this?'

Another doctor posted: 'Massive NHS hack cyber-attack today. Hospital in shut down. Thanks for delaying emergency patient care & endangering lives. A**holes.'

Twitter user fendifile, a doctor based in London, shared a photo of her computer screen following the cyber attack. She added: 'We are in middle of an #nhscyberattack computers now all powered off. Happy Friday. Our emergency surgeries are running doors open, we can access our software but ransomware window pops up every 20-30 seconds so we are slow.'

Patient Mark Pritchard wrote: 'Can't get discharged from Colchester general and my test results inaccessible  all computers down from what I hear.'

Dr Tarek Seda, who works at Kings Mill Hospital in Mansfield, said he had to divert a serious case because of the cyber attack. He told the BBC: 'I had a lady today who has severe back pain which potentially could paralyse her, and we had to divert her to another hospital... for further management.'

And an ambulance driver who works for a subcontractor at London's St Bartholomew's Hospital claimed that another ransomware attack had happened six months previously. He said: 'It's terrible if this has happened again...the system was down for a few days.'
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Geordie Shore star Aaron Chalmers got off to a cracking start in his new life as a Mixed Martial Arts fighter after punching and pummelling his way to victory in his debut bout this evening.

But the real star of the show was freed Peru Two drugs mule Michaella McCollum who turned heads as she sat ringside in a stunning little black dress.

The 23-year-old returned home to Northern Ireland in August last year after reportedly doing a deal with Peruvian authorities.

Geordie Shore star Aaron Chalmers, pictured, punched and pummelled his way to victory in his debut Mixed Martial Arts bout this evening

The real star of the show was freed Peru Two drugs mule Michaella McCollum, pictured right, who turned heads as she sat ringside in a stunning little black dress

Peru Two drugs mule Michaella McCollum, pictured left, stunned in a little black dress at the debut bout of Geordie Shore star Aaron Chalmers, pictured right

McCollum, pictured, was released on parole in March 2016 after serving less than half of her sentence in Peru

Despite her conviction for attempting to smuggle cocaine out of the country she has been spotted at a succession of parties and glamorous events since her release.t

McCollum was released on parole in March 2016 after serving less than half of her sentence but was initially required to stay in Peru, where she carried out voluntary work.

Her friend Melissa Reid - who also admitted to trying to smuggle cocaine - was released from prison in June last year, flying back to Scotland shortly afterwards.

Heavily-tattooed Aaron, 29, made his MMA debut against Greg Jenkins as part of the Brett McDermott vs Ruben Wolf undercard at Genting Arena in Birmingham.

It was set to be a tough fight with a weigh-in before the match seeing Jenkins aggressively pushing Aaron as the pair came face-to-face.

Greg Jenkins, pictured left, and Aaron Chalmers, pictured right, settled their differences inside the cage on Friday night

After taking Jenkins to the matt Aaron, pictured on top, landed a series of strikes and was ultimately victorious

Aaron won his debut Mixed Martial Arts bout - much to the delight of his Geordie Shore castmates who were watching ringside

But they settled their differences inside the cage on Friday night with Jenkins making full use of his height and weight advantage to rain blows on Jenkins.

After taking him to the matt he landed a series of strikes and was ultimately victorious - much to the delight of his Geordie Shore castmates who were watching ringside.

Jenkins was forced to tap out just two minutes in to the bout - with the crowd feverishly cheering in support of Aaron.
Unanswered questions: Kirsty Maxwell

The apartments where Kirsty Maxwell died are not exactly salubrious. Next door is an establishment called Stardust Cabaret, where each night Kinky Karen provides a sexy erotic show, while all around are takeaways and bars promising cheap drinks.

At Payma Apartamentos, visitors walk through a tatty reception area, which leads to lifts and stairs serving the ten-storey building in Benidorm, the Spanish resort that became a favourite with the British in the Seventies.

On each floor there are five flats  with small bathrooms and beds for four, with French windows opening onto balconies overlooking the garish bars in an area known as Little England, and the small pool below.

The two-star apartments attract a rowdy crowd renting rooms for less than 50 a night. Location is all: for those keen to avail themselves of 24-hour drinking (not to mention sex and drugs) Little England is perfect. This is where, two weeks ago, a group of young British women arrived for a weekend hen party to celebrate a forthcoming wedding.

The 20-strong group checked in to their apartments on Friday night, planning to stay until Sunday, before flying back to Britain nursing nothing worse than hangovers.

But Kirsty Maxwell, one of this cheerful group, never made it home. Less than 12 hours after checking in, the crumpled body of the 27-year-old  who married only last September  was found beside the swimming pool outside the apartments.

At first, it was assumed she had jumped or fallen from the balcony of one of the apartments, intoxicated with drink, drugs or both.

Certainly, Spanish police seemed to think so.

After examining CCTV footage of the incident taken from the pool area, police sources indicated that, as far as they were concerned, there was nothing suspicious about Kirstys death, which was probably a tragic accident after too much alcohol.

She wouldnt be the first British holidaymaker to plunge to her death from a balcony. Last November a 21-year-old British woman called Danielle Hall fell to her death in the early hours at another Benidorm hotel and a 25-year-old bricklayer fell from a balcony on a Spanish holiday last year. He lived, but is expected to take years to recover.

Amazon logistics manager Joseph Graham, 32, opened the door to Kirsty

There have been many other balcony falls  all ruled unsuspicious by police and with no further action taken.

But the case of Kirsty Maxwell is now very much active, a fortnight on, in circumstances that reveal the sleazy underbelly of this resort.

For Kirsty was not alone when she died. She was in a flat which was not her own, with a group of men  dubbed the Benidorm Five  one of whom had been taking cocaine and drinking heavily.

Like Kirsty, theyd been out in Little England that night, where bars advertise specials such as ten beers for 8. Girls get free alcoholic shots.

All body-builders, the men continued the party at their apartment on the tenth floor after arriving back in the early hours. (When police arrived, there was drink on the table, plus cocaine and an opened packet of Tadalafil pills  tablets to increase sex drive.)

According to statements given to police by her friends, Kirsty had consumed up to ten glasses of alcohol as they toured the bars in the area.

At all times, she was with her friends. Around 4am, a group of girls, including Kirsty, walked to their apartment through the chaotic streets, taking some 30 minutes.

At 4.50am, Kirsty was asleep in apartment 9A. We know this because another girl sharing the room took a video of Kirsty on her phone. Fully dressed, but with her shoes off, she is seen snoring on the bed.

British champion cage fighter Ricky Gammon was also in the flat

But at around 7.50am, Kirsty awoke. Without putting her shoes on, and leaving her mobile behind, she walked up to the tenth floor, where some of her other girlfriends had a room.

But for reasons unclear, she knocked on the door of the Benidorm Five. Joseph Graham, 32, a 49,000-a-year logistics manager with Amazon, opened the door.

Also in the flat were a British champion cage fighter called Ricky Gammon; Anthony Holehouse, a 34-year-old convicted fraudster, Callum Northridge, 27, and Daniel Bailey, 32. All five are from the Nottingham area and were on a birthday celebration.

Graham told the Spanish police that the woman walked in without speaking.

She then apparently rushed into the bathroom by the front door and was acting mad, drunk or both.

Tragic: Kirsty Maxwell, pictured right on another hen trip to Benidorm, died when she fell from a tenth floor balcony at the Apartamentos Payma hotel in Costa Blanca at 8am on Saturday

Admitting that all the men were also drunk, Graham told police the woman was attempting to climb through a small window in the bathroom, which led to another area of the flat, before giving up and running through the apartment window, jumping over the balcony, plunging to her death below.

Graham allegedly screamed Shes jumped! after she disappeared, even though he claimed he had not seen her go over the balcony. He told police he only spoke to her to ask her to leave.

Some of his friends who were in their rooms thought he was playing some kind of joke, a police source told me this week. They came out and saw her at the bottom by the pool. One called the police.

Held for 48 hours in police cells in Benidorm, Graham was released after a brief court appearance and allowed to return home.

I have been advised by my Spanish lawyer that despite me not being charged with any wrongdoing, the investigation into this tragic accident is still ongoing, he said in a statement. I am unable to say anything at this time other than I am innocent of any wrongdoing.

None of this cuts much ice with Adam Maxwell, Kirstys grieving widower who describes his late wife as my world. They married last September in Cyprus, had a good life in Livingston, Scotland, and planned to start a family.

Fatal drop: Kirsty fell from the tenth floor balcony at the Apartmentos Payma block

Mr Maxwell has hired a local lawyer, Luis Miguel Zumaquero, who is spearheading a private prosecution to have the British men recalled to Spain  and taken to the apartment for a reconstruction of that mornings horrific events.

At a meeting this week in a cafe near the scene of Kirstys death, Senor Zumaquero told me Mr Maxwell and Kirstys parents are convinced something sinister and untoward took place in apartment 10E.

They can smell something is wrong, he told me. We need these five men to come into one room and explain exactly where they were and exactly what went on. There are too many inconsistencies. Senor Zumaquero has this week submitted a six-page dossier to the Spanish courts, asking for the men to be put under formal investigation.

The documents state: Kirsty was a young, healthy, happy, hard-working girl, with no record of any type of depressive syndrome or medication, or any evidence she intended or had a reason to take her own life. She was at a great moment in her life, recently married to a husband she loved with plans to start a family shortly.

Then, the court documents add, Kirsty falls from apartment 10E, a room occupied by five young, well-built men who had consumed large amounts of alcohol and drugs, and in whose apartment there were pills to maintain an erection, which someone had taken.

Holiday: Mrs Maxwell (bottom right wearing green jacket) was pictured with a hen party before before leaving the airport for Benidorm in Spain where she fell to her death from a balcony

These men had never met Kirsty before. The version the men [provide] is that Kirsty called at their door, Joseph Graham opened the door and the young woman entered the bathroom, touched a window opening onto another room and went into the passageway before throwing herself off the balcony.

He described their stories as full of contradictions and implausible.

These men say . . . Kirsty killed herself by jumping off their balcony, while they watched, stunned by this strange and unexplained action, and were unable to do anything to stop it. Does this not show clearly that what they are trying to do is cover up the truth?

Theories in the Spanish press include suggestions that Kirsty was sleep-walking, drunk, or tried to get away from the men by jumping out the window, thinking she would land in the pool below.

Graham told police that a disorientated Kirsty climbed over the hotel balcony deliberately and jumped towards the swimming pool because she misjudged the height. I went to the apartments and walked to the tenth floor. The pool is a speck far below.

I went back to the pool where she had landed about three metres from the water, and looked up.

Not even the biggest daredevil would try to jump in to the pool from that height.

Although Kirstys hen party friends have refused to make any public comment about her tragic death, statements they gave to police admit that she had consumed a large amount of alcohol  but had not taken drugs.

Couple: Kirsty, from Livingston, in West Lothian, Scotland, married husband Adam, right, in September last year

Roberto Sanchez, a Spanish lawyer representing Graham, says his client is innocent. He is pressing for the case to be archived  so no further action will be taken.

The defence is also expected to focus on CCTV footage that captured Kirstys fall, which reportedly shows that she landed feet first, suggesting she had jumped rather than been pushed.

The CCTV does not show her falling  only her landing, a police source said. It looks like she was upright and standing when she fell. Her legs were broken.

The horrific death has focused attention on Benidorm. There is a pleasant side to the resort  families play on the beach, and old folk ride on mobility scooters.

Yet Little England is a magnet for mayhem: gangsters ship girls from West Africa to prostitute themselves, and hard drugs such as cocaine and ecstasy are widely available.

And still the hen and stag parties come. I watched one group on a hen night, in short skirts and cheeky T-shirts, staggering along the street, holding each other up as groups of young British men shouted ribald comments.

Falling out of the bars stupefied, many revellers looked as if they had been lobotomised. Some urinated and vomited on the streets.

I watched one inebriated man dance around, hands up in a boxers pose, challenging weary Spanish doormen to a fight.

As I watched, I was offered sex a dozen times by prostitutes.

Why anyone would want to come to Little England is a mystery.

Perhaps it would be better for everyone if the Benidorm Five were to return to apartment 10E and explain exactly what happened that awful Saturday morning.

Additional reporting: PAUL THOMPSON
Theresa May will today promise a crackdown on internet giants that gives people the right to have their social media history wiped.

The Prime Minister will pledge to make the country the safest place in the world to be online, with the threat of punitive new levies unless firms clean up their act.

Web users can demand platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram delete their records from before they were aged 18.

Under May's pledge social media companies could be hit with levies unless they reform

It would mean that adults do not face the prospect of embarrassing pictures they took when younger, or posts they regret writing in their youth, coming back to haunt them.

Sites will also be required not to direct browsers unintentionally to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of harm.

And firms will be obliged to take down any inappropriate, bullying, harmful or illegal content reported to them or provide an explanation of why not.

The entitlements and protections will be backed up with a statutory sanctions regime that gives regulators the ability to fine or prosecute those companies who fail in their legal duties.

Ministers will promise to work with the industry to make changes to social media, app stores and websites to protect minors.

The Tories will put into law the power to impose an industry-wide levy on social media companies if they fail to introduce adequate reforms. The charge, modelled on a levy on the gambling industry, would raise money to provide awareness of potential dangers online.

Mrs May will also promise to make Britain the best place in the world to do business online with improvements to broadband and extra buying and selling rights.

Tory proposals would allow houses to have the right to low-cost broadband wherever they live

People will be entitled to take up basic digital training throughout their lives. Government departments will be required to make it easier for citizens to access their services using the internet as part of a digital revolution that will also require officials to release all non-sensitive publicly owned data whenever possible.

Households will have the right for low-cost and fast broadband connections wherever they live, with transparent pricing and easy switching. Online sellers must provide a digital receipt for all purchases, plus simpler terms and conditions.

Mrs May warns one of the greatest challenges is how to respond to the opportunities and threats arising from the advance of digitisation and automation.

It was revealed earlier this month that Facebook and other web firms will escape the threat of multi-million pound fines for allowing extremist content

She will say: The internet has brought a wealth of opportunity but also significant new risks which have evolved faster than societys response. We want social media companies to do more to help redress the balance and will take action to make sure they do.

But critics will ask whether the planned measures are enough to counter online dangers.

Earlier this month it was revealed Google, Facebook and other web firms will escape the threat of multi-million pound fines for allowing extremist content.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said she was not convinced fines were the best way to prevent extremists putting videos and documents online.

Facebook has agreed to hire 3,000 staff to police what users post, joining 4,500 already in place.
Megyn Kelly was spotted out with Erin Andrews in Santa Monica on Wednesday, one day after the popular television personality jetted off Los Angeles in her second week on the job at NBC.

The two woman were photographed as they strolled on the beach with their heels in their hand in what looked to be an interview, though no cameras were seen following the two.

It is possible that the women could have been doing a photoshoot as well, with both seen carrying nearly identical pairs of nude heels.

There were also a number of fashion editors and stylists in the area this week for the Dior resort show on Thursday, which took place in Santa Monica.

Kelly's outing with Andrews, who hosts the hit ABC program 'Dancing With the Stars' while also appearing on Fox Sports, comes just days before she is reportedly set to be make network debut at the NBC Universal upfront presentation in New York City.

NBC News declined comment when asked about Kelly's outing with Andrews.

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Pals on the Pacific: Megyn Kelly was spotted strolling on the beach in Santa Monica with Erin Andrews on Wednesday

Laughter: It is unclear in Kelly, who is in herb second week on the job at NBC, was interviewing Andrews, who hosts ABC's 'Dancing With the Stars'

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.

Savannah 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.
Under the new administration, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement has adopted a more aggressive approach and apprehended nearly 1,400 people who they believed to be eligible for deportation.

Unfortunately for the President, more than two-thirds of those arrested won't be able to be deported because they are United States citizens, according to Vocativ.

President Trump ran on a platform that promised to round up all of the 'bad hombres' illegally plaguing the United States.

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The ICE announced Thursday that 'Project New Dawn' targeted street gangs between March 26 and May 6, leading to the arrests of 1,378 people nationwide (stock image)

However, according to Vocativ, two-thirds of those arrested cannot be deported because they are legally citizens of the United States (stock image)

He infamously categorized immigrants, specifically Mexicans, as rapists, murderers and gang-bangers, and said that when he was elected he would send them all back across the border.

The agency announced on Thursday that 'Project New Dawn,' which is part of ICE's 'Operation Community Shield' program, targeted street gangs between March 26 and May 6, leading to the arrests of 1,378 people nationwide.

Authorities said that these individuals are involved in 'transnational criminal activity, including drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human smuggling and sex trafficking, murdering and racketeering.'

However, of those arrested, 933 are United States citizens. The other 445 are from 21 different countries.

Additionally, of that 445, 280 were arrested solely on administrative immigration violations, meaning that they were only apprehended for being undocumented.

Therefore, out of the 1,387 alleged 'bad hombres' who the new administration set up to deport, only 165 were undocumented immigrants who committed crimes beyond entering the country illegally.

Authorities said that the individuals arrested were targeted because they are believed to be involved in 'transnational criminal activity, including drug trafficking, weapons smuggling, human smuggling and sex trafficking, murdering and racketeering' (stock image)

ICE acting director defended the agency's new aggressive approach, saying that these 'gangs' threaten the safety of communities, and that they are a challenge for law enforcement everywhere

Acting ICE Director Thomas Homan defended the new aggressive approach, saying: 'Gangs threaten the safety of our communities, not just in major metropolitan areas but in our suburbs and rural areas too.

'Gang-related violence and criminal activity present an ongoing challenge for law enforcement everywhere. Our efforts to dismantle gangs are much more effective in areas where partnerships with local law enforcement is strongest,'

According to the ICE, 1,095 of those people arrested in the six-week period were confirmed members of the Bloods, Crips, Ma-13 and the Surenos.

None of the remaining 283 individuals arrested claimed any gang affiliation, but were rounded up on 'either criminal or administrative charges'.

In addition to arrests, ICE and partnering law enforcement agencies seized 283 fire arms and more than $491,000 in cash. They also seized 790 ounces of cocaine, 546 ounces of methamphetamine, 113 ounces of heroin and more than an ounce of fetanyl.
President Donald Trump went back to blaming sacked FBI Director James Comey's handling of the Clinton email scandal as the reason for for his firing  after allowing Thursday that the FBI's Russia investigation also was a factor.

Once again grousing about Democrats, who he termed 'hypocrites,' Trump said they 'should have liked' Comey for having recommended not to prosecute her, giving her what he called a 'free pass.'

In fact, many Democrats, including Clinton, fumed about Comey for castigating the presidential candidate in his July press conference, then reopening an investigation following the emergence of newly discovered Clinton emails.

Trump said: 'They should have liked him. But because he did what he did for her was unbelievable, with all of the guilty, guilty, guilty, I mean, because  but she's not guilty.

President Trump complained on Fox that Democrats were 'hypocrites' and said sacked FBI Director James Comey gave Hillary Clinton a 'free pass'

On the other major investigation of the last year  alleged Russian hacking  Trump once again raised doubts about whether Russia was even involved.

Teeing off on Democrats, he said: 'Number one, they're hypocrites, but it's beyond being a hypocrite. You have these tremendous, the level of hatred toward him, especially during that period of time with Hillary Clinton where he gave her a free ride.'

'I mean, he gave her a free pass like nobody's ever, ever gotten a free pass. And during that period of time, the level of hatred by the Democrats -- also the Republicans, to be honest -- because first she got a free pass. Then he came out with Comey two, and then he came out with Comey three, and the ultimate thing is, he gave her a free pass. So they should have liked him,' Trump said.

Trump also disputed that Russia was behind the election hack  something the U.S. intelligence community agrees on.

'There is no collusion. We have nothing to do with Russia and everything else. But there is a question, was it Russia, who was it that went in and tried to hack?' he asked.

Trump went back to the Clinton investigation in an appearance on Fox News Channel with Jeanine Pirro

'Was it Russia, who was it that went in and tried to hack?' Trump asked.

During an interview Thursday with NBC News, Trump connected Russia to the firing, complaining about the FBI's investigation of alleged Russian election interference.

'In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.''

Trump also groused about how his recent meetings with Russians was perceived. A Russian official photographer was there for his meetings with foreign minister Sergey Lavrov and ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Moscow put out the photos  smiling images of Trump and the Russians  prompting the White House to release some the following day. The White House never sent out photos including Kislyak, whose meetings with national security advisor Mike Flynn helped get Flynn fired.

'Russia came in to see me, the Foreign Minister, the other day,' Trump said.

'And right after that, they didn't say this, but right after that, the Foreign Minister from Ukraine came in. I said, fellows, you got to make peace, you got to get peace. They only talk about Russia coming in, OK. And we took pictures, they took pictures. We release the pictures, they made a big deal out of. Everybody knew he was coming, and he was scheduled to come. But they didn't talk about Ukraine,' Trump complained.

The Russian embassy in Washington released this photo of President Trump warmly shaking hands with ambassador Sergey Kislyak

Comey has told Senate Intelligence Committee aides that he won't testify in a closed hearing next week about alleged ties betweenRussia and Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

The committee's top Republican and Democrat had invited the former FBI director to Capitol Hill to appear behind closed doors next Tuesday.

Politico reported that Comey declined the invitation. A committee aide confirmed his decision to DailyMail.com.

Former FBI director James Comey won't be appearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week to testify in the Trump-Russia probe

Did Trump bluff? The president's veiled threat that he might have tapes of their conversations is said to have enraged Comey

Committee co-chair Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, also said on MSNBC that Comey wouldn't be testifying.

'It is our hope in the not-too-distant future that we can find a time for him to come in and talk to our committee,' Warner said.

Before his firing on Tuesday, Comey had been scheduled to appear in Thursday's hearings  one in public and another more revealing classified session.

But Andrew McCabe, who became acting director when Comey was sacked, appeared in his place since Comey was no longer a government official.

It's unclear why Comey turned down the offer to speak to the committee next week.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Friday afternoon that the tweet wasn't a 'threat,' but also wouldn't confirm or deny that the White House records the president's phone calls

President Donald Trump seemed to throw him a brushback pitch on Twitter, writing Friday that Comey had 'better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!'

The White House wouldn't rule out, hours later, the possibility that the president's three known conversations with his then-FBI chief were recorded.

Trump has claimed that Comey told him on all three occasions that he wasn't personally under investigation.

The leading Democrats on the House judiciary and oversight committees asked the White House Counsel on Friday afternoon for copies of any recordings he might have.

Reps. John Conyers and Elijah Cummings also said 'Congress should immediately seek the testimony of Director Comey.'

'Under normal circumstances, we would not consider credible any claims that the White House may have taped conversations of meetings with the President,' they wrote.

'However, because of the many false statements made by White House officials this week, we are compelled to ask whether any such recordings do in fact exist. If so, we request copies of all recordings in possession of the White House regarding this matter.'
She is not just one of his closest political allies but also a former lover.

But even Diane Abbott is avoiding mention of Jeremy Corbyn on her election leaflets, it can be revealed.

The shadow home secretary last month claimed most of Labours support is down to the party leader.

Dianne Abbott's election literature conspicuously fails to mention Jeremy Corbyn

However, in campaign literature sent to voters in her Hackney North and Stoke Newington constituency his name is strangely absent.

One letter written by Miss Abbott that hit doormats this week name-checked the Prime Minister, with a pledge to oppose Theresa Mays hard Brexit.

The veteran MP argued that People will be better off with Labour, but instead of mentioning her party leader by name and how he could become prime minister, she only referred to a future Labour government.

The General Election on 8 June will be a clear choice between a Labour Party that will stand up for you, and a Tory Party that has consistently failed this country, she added.

Yesterday Mrs May warned that Mr Corbyn benefited from all votes for Labour even if candidates were airbrushing his name from their campaigns.

In a speech in North Tyneside, the Prime Minister said: During this campaign, we have learned that Jeremy Corbyn simply cannot lead.

Across the country, Labour candidates are disowning their leader. They dont want him to visit; they dont want him on their leaflets or on their Facebook posts.

His own candidates have no confidence in him leading their party, but Jeremy Corbyn is happy to take a vote from them anyway.

The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington has pledged to oppose Theresa May's Brexit

Because it may say Labour on the ballot, but its Jeremy Corbyn that says thank you for each vote.

But if he cannot effectively lead his party during this election, he cannot possibly be ready to lead our country through Brexit in just 27 days time.

Mrs May went on to criticise Miss Abbott by name, saying: Labour voters are appalled because they see a leader who cant lead, a shadow chancellor in John McDonnell who cant be trusted and a shadow home secretary like Diane Abbott who cant add up.

In one of the most memorable events of the election campaign so far, Miss Abbott was last week humiliated in a radio interview after she got in a complete muddle over the partys policing policy.

She faced accusations of not being on top of her brief after she was unable to answer basic questions about the cost of hiring 10,000 officers.

Stumbling through the car crash interview on the national talk station LBC, she suggested the plan would cost just 300,000 - meaning each officer would be paid just 30.

She then suggested it would cost 80million, or 8,000 per officer. She also got the number of officers wrong twice - at one point suggesting there would be 250,000 more in a year.

Attempting to defend herself, Miss Abbott said she mis-spoke and had got the figures right in six out of seven interviews. I am completely on top of my brief, she said afterwards.

Abbot and Corbyn were famously former lovers, going on a motorcycle tour of East Germany together in the 1970s

Miss Abbott has held her London seat or almost 30 years with a 24,000 majority in 2015, making it the partys 18th safest.

But strategists believe her weak response to Labours anti-Semitism row - when she denied the party had a problem and refused to join calls for Ken Livingstone to be expelled - could lead to a backlash from Jewish voters.

The constituency includes Stamford Hill, which is home to 30,000 Hassidic Jews, the largest community in Europe.

Miss Abbott last month suggested that around two-thirds of Labour support was down to the popularity of Mr Corbyn.

One of their current arguments is that Labours difficulties in the polls are all attributable to him and that if only we had a new leader, almost any leader, then this would resolve our problems. This is completely untrue, she said.

We can go further. Compared to all his critics, Jeremy Corbyn is worth about 18-20 percentage points to Labours vote. Without him, and led by any one of his vocal critics, we could easily be languishing in single digits in polls.

Miss Abbott had a fling with Mr Corbyn in the 1970s, when they are said to have had a sexual relationship and even went on a motorbike tour of East Germany following the break-up of his first marriage.
Few things are more terrifying to mild-mannered civil servants than an angry dressing-down from a member of the Prime Ministers closest staff.

Falling out with No 10 can ruin careers or condemn entire departments of government to obscurity and irrelevance.

For a brief time 18 months ago, this was the chilling prospect that faced Jamie OHara, Head of Government Relations at Transport for London (TfL).

Daniel Korski was renowned as one of Downing Streets most effective fixers

The date was September 30, 2015, and hed just sent a polite email to one of then Prime Minister David Camerons top aides requesting a catch-up at the Tory conference in Manchester.

Such meetings formed an important part of OHaras job at the TfL quango, which oversees the capitals road, rail and Underground networks. It involved liaising with Whitehall over a wide range of issues  from funding major infrastructure projects to placing road-signs.

This time, he hoped to brief the senior Downing Street adviser  Daniel Korski, who hed met at the previous years Tory conference in Birmingham  about how a new ticketless payment system recently introduced on the Tube could be replicated elsewhere in the UK.

So far so anodyne. Or so you might think. But four minutes after sending his email, OHara received a response of extraordinary hostility. Short in length and aggressive, it radiated petulance and menace.

To be honest, read the message from Korski, as TfL does the kind of insane and luddite things youre consulting on for private hire vehicles I cant really see much point in discussing innovation and technology with you.

Rachel Whetstone was one of David Cameron's closest friends and a senior executive at Uber

The email ended abruptly, without so much as a thank you or best wishes.

Judging by the tone, Downing Street  where Korski was deputy head of Camerons policy unit  was angered by something TfL had done. Specifically, I can reveal that the insane and luddite things Korski was complaining about were proposals by OHaras then boss Boris Johnson, who was London Mayor, that had upset a tax-dodging internet company called Uber. Based in California, but funnelling most of its UK earnings to the tax haven of Bermuda, via Holland, the Silicon Valley firm runs a mobile phone app that allows users to hail minicabs at the touch of a button.

Launched in 2012, it quickly grabbed a big share of the taxi market. Yet Uber soon began to generate serious controversy in the process.

Some accused it of using predatory pricing (it loses around $2 billion a year) to undercut traditional black cab and minicab firms, to drive them out of business and create a monopoly.

Others noted that Uber had roughly doubled the total number of taxis in Central London, creating some of the worst congestion ever, and causing serious pollution. There were further concerns about passenger safety, with allegations of rapes and sexual assaults by Uber drivers reported at a rate of one every 11 days.

The tone of Korski's email to TFL's Jamie O'Hara was extremely blunt and abrasive

With all this in mind, Mayor Johnson had in September 2015 (days before Korskis caustic email was sent) announced that TfL was considering 25 measures that might protect the public more and regulate better the private hire industry.

They included capping the number of taxi licences, making drivers pass an English test (many of Ubers workers are foreign-born) and requiring cabs to wait at least five minutes between accepting a booking and picking up a client (Uber likes to fulfil such requests in just three). Naturally, the plans outraged Uber, which launched a petition against them.

Then, almost immediately, its campaign attracted some remarkable, heavyweight support.

For in a most unusual  and certainly controversial  move details of which were recently revealed by the Mail, both Prime Minister Cameron and his then-Chancellor George Osborne began lobbying Londons Mayor to drop the proposed regulations affecting the Silicon Valley giant.

Whetstone's previous job with Google had also seen the tech giant chummy up to Cameron

Each sent furious (and some say threatening) text messages to Johnson, in which he was urged not to take steps that might damage the U.S. firms interests.

Then Korski, a renowned backstairs operator regarded then as one of Downing Streets most effective fixers, began attempting to persuade the Mayor to drop the proposed regulations.

Seven emails previously released under Freedom of Information [FOI] show Korski held several tense meetings with Johnson and his aides during the subsequent months.

An eighth email (the terse insane and luddite message to OHara, which the Mail obtained this week) is more revealing still: for it lays bare, in writing, the extraordinary level of hostility the then No 10 man sometimes brought to the table. Korski is also said to have browbeaten senior City Hall officials in phone calls.

Unlike the emails now dribbling out, there is no formal record of them. But friends of Isabel Dedring, deputy mayor in charge of transport, have said the conversations were abrasive and she said she was taken back by the aggression.

Other strands of a wider lobbying campaign soon saw both the then Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, and the Competition and Markets Authority (the regulator protecting the public from unfair monopolies) come out publicly against the crackdown on Uber.

Perhaps inevitably, this campaign, which largely took place behind closed doors, ended in success: in January 2016, Johnson announced that  hey presto!  he was dropping all of the measures Uber had opposed. The firms market value duly soared.

Business secretary Sajid Javid also soon came to publicly support Uber

Fast forward 14 months, and in March this year, the Mail first revealed details of this rum business. Our reports have since sent shockwaves through Westminster  for two principal reasons. One is straightforward: Uber pays almost no tax in the UK, directly employs fewer than 100 people here and pays its drivers (who it claims are independent contractors) so poorly that many are on tax credits, at great expense to taxpayers.

So it seems a highly unsuitable candidate for vigorous support from the highest echelon of Britains government. Not least since transport policy in London is officially devolved to the Mayor.

The other reason the growing Uber scandal is so toxic is more murky. For one of the firms most senior executives at the time of the secret lobbying was Rachel Whetstone. She is one of both Cameron and Osbornes closest friends, godmother of the former PMs late son Ivan, and wife of Steve Hilton, his one-time policy guru.

In other words, the secret intervention by Downing Street leaves Cameron and Osborne open to accusations of cronyism: using their office and staff to secure valuable special favours for a member of their so-called chumocracy.

Adding to the ugly smell surrounding this is an apparent cover-up. For last year, Downing Street formally denied it has any record of Korski sending emails to TfL or anyone in the mayors office any time in 2015 or 2016.

The claim was made in response to FOI requests from Lib Dems on the London Assembly. But, separate requests to TfL have since revealed the existence of large numbers of such messages (including the abusive one to TfLs Jamie OHara) that were sent during the period in question. Most discussed the regulation of Uber.

The Information Commissioner is therefore investigating whether Downing Street breached disclosure laws in an attempt to keep Korskis emails secret. In theory, such behaviour may represent a criminal offence. The Cabinet Office denies wrongdoing, but has yet to explain what went on.

Uber pays its drivers incredibly poorly - so badly that many are on tax credits

Meanwhile, there is mounting controversy over the fact that one of Ubers major investors (and therefore a beneficiary of the Downing Street lobbying) is U.S. firm BlackRock. It recently hired George Osborne as an adviser, paying him a salary of 650,000 to work 48 days per year.

Little wonder that senior figures in the Labour Party, along with Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, have called for a parliamentary inquiry after the Mails revelations, along with wider connections between Uber and the Cameron machine.

I have been investigating this murky affair for several weeks, and the more that emerges, the more I am convinced it is one of the great political scandals of our time.

The saga shows how a rapacious, tax-dodging Silicon Valley firm was able to use highly paid lobbyists and well-connected senior executives to gain special treatment at the hands of the British government.

In a troubling perversion of democracy, a cabal of Downing Street insiders helped the offshore private company protect its valuable business model. Many were personal friends with the firms then 1million-a-year boss Whetstone.

Korski was not a social chum of the Uber boss. But his petulant email to OHara, which was released to the Mail under FOI this week, nonetheless raises yet more serious concerns.

For it betrays the aggressive (and some might argue downright sinister) manner Downing Street sought to exert its will.

Uber investor BlackRock paid George Osbourne a salary of 650,000 to work 48 days a year

In addition to spreading insults, Korskis email after all suggested that TfL faced serious wider consequences should it persist with the planned regulation.

This new email makes it crystal clear, in black and white, the extent to which No 10 under David Cameron was prepared to throw its weight around, says Labours Wes Streeting, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taxis.

He says its obvious Korski and No 10 had TfL over a barrel, and were indicating that they would be unwilling to engage with them over a wide number of issues relating to transport in London unless they dropped proposals to regulate Uber. Its an abuse of power and a gross betrayal of black cab drivers and the travelling public.

Korski, however, says he engaged in an email exchange because he had a remit to advise government on how best the UK economy could benefit from emerging new business and business models.

His actions were designed to help the tech industry in general, not Uber specifically, he insists.

I did not and have not ever lobbied on behalf of any particular business while working in government, he said. Any allegation that I did so is false.

Korski  who now works for his own firm which helps companies to win government contracts and public sector deals  says he bore no responsibility for Downing Streets FOI responses, and said any suggestion to the contrary is fake news.

Yet the story refuses to go away.

Labours deputy leader Tom Watson recently submitted Parliamentary questions asking if Cameron and Osborne lobbied Boris Johnson on behalf of Uber.

With regard to Cameron, the Cabinet Office refused to answer, claiming it would be disproportionately expensive to do so.

However, the Treasury took a different view. It has now formally confirmed that Osborne had discussions with the former Mayor about London taxis and private hire vehicles.

To which Watson responds: When it comes to Uber, government ministers have turned obfuscation into an art form and shown contempt for the principle of open government.

He wants Theresa Mays government to reveal the truth about any secret talks Camerons team had with Uber and whether it was given favoured treatment.

Deputy Labour leader Tom Watson wants Theresa May's government to reveal the truth about secret talks Cameron's government had with Uber

On the subject of special treatment, the Mail has separately established that, in recent years, Uber has hired three top lobbying firms with very close links to Camerons Downing Street machine.

In early 2014, Uber became a client of Westbourne Communications, a firm run by James Bethell, a former Tory candidate and ex-night club boss once described by Londons Evening Standard as an established Notting Hill friend of the Cameron set.

The same year, Uber added Burson Marsteller to the payroll. It employed Andrew Mackay, Camerons former Commons aide, and Clarence Mitchell, who was director of the Conservative Partys media monitoring unit in 2010.

The following year, Uber signed Portland Communications.

Its staff include James OShaughnessy, Camerons former director of policy who was made a life peer in 2015.

Although theres no suggestion any of these men personally lobbied the PM on behalf of Uber, we know that someone at Westbourne spoke directly to senior government figures on behalf of the U.S. firm in 2015.

Whats more, ministerial diaries show that  in 2015 and 2016 alone  Ubers staff held at least eight face-to-face meetings with Tory ministers.

Among them were George Osborne, with whom they discussed developments in technology, Cameron ally and Skills Minister Nick Boles, with whom they talked consumer rights, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin (the topic: London taxis) and Business Secretary Sajid Javid (regulation of taxi industry).

As Uber becomes more and more popular, London's traditional black cabbies get the short end of the stick

The vast majority of these chummy encounters took place after Cameron confidante Rachel Whetstone had joined Uber in May 2015. In her previous job, at Google, she helped the internet giant enjoy similarly intimate relations with the Cameron set.

Londons traditional black cabbies got short shrift, aside from a meeting with Javid in December 2015 and one with Korski the following month.

During that encounter, in No 10, Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association trade union, complained that his members were being bankrupted thanks to Uber which Downing Street had so vigorously supported.

Korski made no attempt to disguise his support for Uber, and that he had played a key role in thwarting the Mayors efforts to regulate it, recalls McNamara.

The only nice thing about the meeting was the tea and biscuits. The rest of the time, he was aggressive, opinionated and shameless in his defence of this firm and its exploitative business model. I left with the impression that he couldnt care less about the plight of black cabbies.

Maybe not. But in the chummy world of Camerons Downing Street, McNamara would have been naive to expect anything better. For unlike the Silicon Valley firm, he and his hard-working members didnt boast enough friends in high places.
Archaeologists digging for ancient artefacts in Israel have stumbled upon the remnants of an epic World War I battle between British and Ottoman forces.

The almost century-old artefacts, which date back to a brutal skirmish for control of Palestine in 1918, include dozens of bullet cartridges and artillery shell shrapnel.

The team found the relics, including a well-preserved British Army insignia that once attached to a military cap, among the remains of two Ottoman military outposts.

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A set of almost century-old World War I artefacts have been found in Israel. The relics, which date back to a brutal battle for Palestine in 1918, include dozens of bullet cartridges and artillery shell shrapnel (pictured)

BATTLE OF MEGIDDO British and Ottoman forces clashed in a brutal skirmish on September 19, 1918, as part of the larger Battle of Megiddo. Britain was fighting for an Ottoman-occupied area of Palestine that is now part of Israel. The artefacts helped the team to reconstruct the bloody conflict. Artillery shells and shrapnel balls found at the site reveal that the British forces pounded the Turkish outposts with heavy 18-pounder guns, Israel Antiquities Authority weapons expert Alexander Glick said. Mauser rifle bullet cartridges at the site show that the Ottoman forces returned fire with light arms, despite sustaining heavy casualties in the artillery bombardment. Advertisement

One of the outposts was positioned near a piece of farmland while the other was adjacent to an older tower, which may have been used as a lookout post.

The rifle casings and shell fragments were of Ottoman origin, but finding a British military cap insignia in 'enemy territory' was of particular interest.

'Finding the British cap insignia inside the Ottoman outpost vividly illustrates the historical event,' said Assaf Peretz, a researcher at the Israel Antiquities Authority.

'Our excitement increased even more when archaeologist Shahar Crispin identified the name of the unit to which the soldier belonged whose insignia was found  the Norfolk Regiment.'

The find was made at Rosh Ha'Ayin, which is near the ancient biblical fortress of Antipatris.

Archaeologists were exploring the area before a new road was paved in a bid to uncover artefacts dating back thousands of years.

But when a student found a rifle casing buried in the dirt, a search for very different remains began.

'As archaeologists, we expect to discover ancient finds from hundreds and thousands of years ago,' Yossi Elisha, director of the excavation on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said in a statement.

'Whereas here, we have a relatively "young," 100-year-old artefact, but we were all drawn to the fascinating story of the battle.'

The team found the relics among the remains of two Ottoman military outposts. The rifle casings and shell fragments were of Ottoman origin, but finding a British Army insignia (pictured) - designed to attach to a military cap - in 'enemy territory' raised questions

British and Ottoman forces clashed in a brutal skirmish on September 19, 1918, as part of the larger Battle of Megiddo.

Britain was fighting for an Ottoman-occupied area of Palestine that is now part of Israel.

'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,' Mr Peretz said.

The artefacts helped the team to reconstruct the bloody conflict.

The find was made at Rosh Ha'Ayin, Israel, which is near the ancient biblical fortress of Antipatris

Artillery shells and shrapnel balls found at the site reveal that the British forces pounded the Turkish outposts with heavy 18-pounder guns, Israel Antiquities Authority weapons expert Alexander Glick said.

Mauser rifle bullet cartridges at the site show that the Ottoman forces returned fire with light arms, despite sustaining heavy casualties in the artillery bombardment.

'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,' Mr Glick said in the statement.
The completion date for the world's tallest tower has been pushed back to 2019, a Saudi Arabian billionaire said yesterday, almost six years after launching the record-breaking project.

Jeddah Tower is to rise more than a kilometre (almost 3,300 feet), placing it above Dubai's Burj Khalifa.

'The project was delayed... but it'll open (in) 2019,' Prince Alwaleed bin Talal told AFP during a visit to the site beside the Red Sea.

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The completion date for the world's tallest tower has been pushed back to 2019, a Saudi Arabian billionaire said yesterday, almost six years after launching the record-breaking project

A HISTORY OF THE JEDDAH TOWER Once dubbed 'Kingdom Tower', the 170-storey building is to rise more than a kilometre (almost 3,300 feet), surpassing Dubai's Burj Khalifa as the world's highest building. It will feature a hotel, apartments and offices. Prince Alwaleed first announced plans for the tower in August 2011, saying it would take 36 months to build after the start of construction. By November 2014, a four-storey foundation was in place and Prince Alwaleed said the building would be finished in 2018. But that was before the kingdom felt the full force of a drop in oil revenues. In November 2015, Kingdom Holding said Jeddah Economic Company had reached a financing deal with Saudi Arabia's Alinma Investment to finish the Jeddah Tower, which then had 26 floors. Now the project has been pushed back to the end of 2019. Advertisement

Prince Alwaleed chairs Kingdom Holding Co whose affiliated Jeddah Economic Company is developing the spire-topped landmark.

Once dubbed 'Kingdom Tower', the 170-storey building will surpass Dubai's Burj Khalifa as the world's highest building.

It will feature a hotel, apartments and offices, as well as a large outdoor viewing deck that doubles as an 'air park'.

Costs for the project had originally been estimated at around 900 million ($1.2 billion).

But delays and an oil price crash have skyrocketed the total cost to at least 1.5 billion ($2 billion).

The huge fund, compliant with Islamic sharia law, will also be used to develop the first phase of Jeddah Economic City.

The City is an urban project surrounding the tower in the Obhur area north of Jeddah.

The project contractor Saudi Binladin Group was among construction firms in the kingdom that suffered heavy financial losses after a collapse in oil revenues in 2014.

The company, which has developed other prominent buildings in Saudi Arabia, was founded more than 80 years ago by the father of deceased Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Binladin Group late last year said it had completed payment to 70,000 laid-off employees.

Prince Alwaleed first announced plans for the tower in August 2011, saying it would take 36 months to build after the start of construction.

By November 2014, a four-storey foundation was in place and Prince Alwaleed said the building would be finished in 2018.

A size comparison of some of the world's tallest buildings. The Kingdom Tower - now called The Jeddah Tower - will be built before 2020 and reach a height of more than a kilometre (almost 3,300 feet)

Previously dubbed 'Kingdom Tower', the 170-storey building is to rise more than a kilometre (3,300 feet), surpassing Dubai's Burj Khalifa as the world's highest building. Left, a computer generated image of how it will look, and right, a model of the building

But that was before the kingdom felt the full force of a drop in oil revenues.

In November 2015, Kingdom Holding said Jeddah Economic Company had reached a financing deal with Saudi Arabia's Alinma Investment to finish the Jeddah Tower, which then had 26 floors.

Prince Alwaleed on Thursday rode a construction elevator about 30 floors to meet reporters in the concrete shell of the building, which already offers spectacular views over the rest of Jeddah and the adjacent sea.

Kingdom Holding has shares in the Euro Disney theme park, Apple, News Corporation and US banking giant Citigroup, among other firms.

The skyscraper is intended to be the centre piece of the Kingdom City development beside the Red Sea and will have 170 floors, most of which will be habitable. This is an image of what it might be like to look down on the structure

An illustration of what the buildings luxurious lobby might look like

The Burj Khalifa, by comparison, stands at 2,716 feet. New York City's Freedom Tower, currently the fifth tallest in the world, is dwarf-like at 1,792 feet

The tower will feature a stunning viewing deck allowing visitors to walk around an 'air park'

The project has been hit with multiple delays since it began in August 2011
A full-sized Nasa Mars rover has been in development since late 2016, and it looks a lot like the Batmobile.

The angular concept vehicle has six wheels, is made entirely of carbon fibre and aluminium, and is solar-powered.

It was designed to accommodate four astronauts and has its own detachable laboratory - though the rover will never travel to the red planet.

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A full-sized Nasa Mars rover has been in development since late 2016, and it looks a lot like the Batmobile. The angular concept vehicle has six wheels, is made entirely of carbon fibre and aluminium, and is battery-powered

NASA'S CONCEPT ROVER - Measures 28 feet (8.5m) long, 13 feet (4m) wide, and 11 feet (3.4m) tall - Estimated weight of 5,000 pounds (2,250kg) - Rear area is a detachable lab, while the front area is a cockpit for scouting - Made entirely of carbon fibre and aluminium - Six wheels that measure 50 inches (1.3m) tall, 30 inches (75cm) wide - Battery powered using solar panels - Top speed of 60-70 miles per hour (95-110kph) Advertisement

Its six wheels are 50 inches (1.3m) tall, 30 inches (75cm) wide, and are specially designed with air ducts to let the coarse red sands of Mars slip through, Business Insider reports.

The 28 feet (8.5m) long, 13 feet (4m) wide, and 11 feet (3.4m) tall vehicle has not been officially weighed, but its developers estimate it reaches 5,000 pounds (2,250kg).

Nasa have yet to officially announce the project but video and images of the bizarre vehicle began to appear on social media earlier this week.

It is now on display at the Nasa Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex in Florida.

A video of the rover posted to Instagram on Tuesday shows the vehicle patrolling a road in front of the complex.

It was built by a collaborative team of engineers, an unnamed cable television network and a company that specialises in building concept vehicles.

Marc Parker, a designer and builder of the new rover, told Business Insider that the buggy is a six-wheeled, all-electric vehicle that was created 'with every intention' of overcoming rocky obstacles on Mars.

He said that the rover could hit top speeds of 60-70 miles per hour (95-110kph), but would not disclose its cost.

'What we actually came up with was a dual-purpose vehicle. It actually separates in the middle,' he said.

'The rear section is a full lab, the front area is a cockpit for going out and doing scouting.

'The lab section can actually disconnect ... and be left on its own to do autonomous research.

The rover was designed to accommodate four astronauts to explore the surface of Mars and acts as a portable laboratory. Its six wheels are 50 inches (1.3m) tall, 30 inches (75cm) wide, and are specially designed with ducts to let the coarse red sands of Mars slip through

'That way the scout vehicle can go out to do its thing without the fuel consumption and extra weight, then come back later.'

Unfortunately, the sci-fi concept will never touch down on the red planet.

Nasa is taking it on a cross-country tour of the US for the agency's upcoming 'Summer of Mars' event, Mr Parker said.

The educational programme is designed to inspire the public about space exploration.

Mr Parker and his brother Shanon started work on the rover in November after Nasa approached them with the idea.

Their company, Parker Brothers Concepts, normally builds 'outlandish' vehicles for movie and TV productions.

But Nasa did not fund the rover, Mr Parker said, which instead relied on financing from a private company involved in the project.

Nasa have yet to officially announce the project but video and images of the bizarre vehicle began to appear on social media earlier this week. It is now on display at the Nasa Kennedy Space Centre Visitor Complex in Florida

Unfortunately, the sci-fi concept will never touch down on the red planet. Nasa is taking it on a cross-country tour of the US for the agency's upcoming 'Summer of Mars' educational event

'We're also filming for a reality television series that's going to be coming out about this build,' Mr Parker said.

It took the Parker brothers around five months to construct the vehicle from late November 2016 through to early April 2017.

The small team consisted of the company's two owners plus a few of their employees, as well as a number of suppliers they deal with.

'Me and the guys, we averaged about 80 to 100 hours a week, each,' Mr Parker said.

The rover bears a striking resemblance to the Batmobile seen in the 2005 film 'Batman Begins'. Pictured is the superhero's vehicle at the film's premiere in London in 2005

'We worked 10-, 12-, 14-hour days, seven days a week since late last year.

'If I thought about how many hours we put into this thing, I'd probably cry. It's way too many.'

A formal announcement of the concept rover is coming soon, Mr Parker said, but the two brothers have posted several images and videos to their Instagram accounts.

The project 'is not really a Nasa-affiliated thing', a Nasa spokesperson told Business Insider, and is run independently by the Kennedy Space Centre Visitors complex.
Technology used by cyber criminals to gather sensitive information comes pre-installed on a range of laptops, it has been revealed.

Dozens of models of notebooks sold by Hewlett Packard (HP) contain keystroke logging software, which captures everything that is typed on the device's keyboard.

And the unprotected files used to store this information could allow hackers to access private details like passwords and pin numbers.

A Swiss computer security consultancy has discovered that dozens of models of HP notebooks (pictured) were sold with a flaw that could allow hackers to access your passwords and pin numbers (stock image)

HP KEYLOGGING FLAW Swiss computer security consultancy ModZero has found that 28 models of HP laptops come with keylogging software pre-installed. The keylogger is used by audio drivers to determine when the up and down volume control buttons on the keyboard have been pressed. But by storing the recorded details of every keystroke made in unencrypted plain text files, hackers or other third parties could access everything users have ever written. Owners of affected laptops should check for specific files installed on their systems (see below), which ModZero recommends that you delete. HP will also be issuing a patch for the issue on Friday through Windows Update. Advertisement

Swiss computer security consultancy ModZero were the first to expose the bug, in a briefing released yesterday.

The flaw is thought to affect 28 HP laptops on sale between 2015 and 2016, including the EliteBook, ProBook and ZBook.

The keylogger is used by audio drivers to determine when the up and down volume control buttons on the keyboard have been pressed.

But by storing the recorded details of every keystroke made in unencrypted plain text files, this raises a number of security concerns and questions as to why the software was designed in this way.

Although the file logging the keystrokes is erased each time the computer restarts, deleted files can be recovered by people with the technical expertise.

And this could allow hackers or other third parties to access everything users have ever written.

In a blog post written by ModZero, the firm said: 'There is no evidence that this keylogger has been intentionally implemented.

'Obviously, it is a negligence of the developers - which makes the software no less harmful.'

In a statement to MailOnline, a spokesman for HP said: 'HP is committed to the security and privacy of its customers and we are aware of the keylogger issue on select HP PCs.

'HP has no access to customer data as a result of this issue.

'Our supplier partner developed software to test audio functionality prior to product launch and it should not have been included in the final shipped version.

'Fixes will be available shortly via HP.com.'

Keyloggers capture a person's key strokes on a keyboard or pinpad.

They recognise the keys pressed and capture that information, usually with the intention of sending it on to a person wanting to harvest the details.

Some legal, or at least legally ambiguous, applications for this technology include parents wishing to monitor their children's online safety or employers checking up on employee's internet usage.

The keylogger is used by audio drivers to determine when the up and down volume control buttons have been pressed. But by storing the recorded details of every keystroke made in plain text files, this makes sensitive information vulnerable to hackers (stock image)

MODELS AFFECTED HP Elite x2 1012 G1 and G1 Advanced HP EliteBook Folio G1 Notebook HP EliteBook Folio 1040 G3 Notebook HP EliteBook G3 Notebook 725, 745, 755, 820, 828, 840, 848, 850 HP ProBook G2 Notebook 640, 645, 650, 655 HP ProBook G3 Notebook 430, 440, 446, 450, 455, 470 HP ZBook 15u G3 Mobile Workstation HP ZBook G3 Mobile Workstation HP, models 15, 17, Studio Advertisement

But criminals can also make use of them to capture personal details.

A web-based keylogger can find its way onto a site through malware that is installed in many ways.

These include clicking on a phishing link in emails or being infected with viruses or worms.

Owners of affected laptops should check whether the program C:\Windows\System32\MicTray64.exe or C:\Windows\System32\MicTray.exe is installed.

ModZero recommends that you delete or rename the files so keystrokes are no longer recorded, although this may mean that the volume control buttons on affected laptops no longer work.

The file C:\Users\Public\MicTray.log file should also be deleted immediately according to the company, as it may also contain sensitive information like login-information and passwords.

HP will also be issuing a patch for the issue on Friday through Windows Update.
Young men with a slow heart beat are up to three times as likely to turn into stalkers, according to new research.

A low resting pulse is normally a sign of good health, but it has also been linked to a tendency towards aggression and violence.

Now a study suggests that another potential criminal activity can be added to the list - following women.

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The latest research looked at almost 400 college students and found males with a low resting heart rate were at much greater risk of engaging in stalking behaviour (stock image)

HOW TO CHECK YOUR HEART RATE 1 - Hold out your hands with your palm facing upwards 2 - Place the first index finger and middle finger on the inside of your wrist at the base of your thumb 3 - Press your skin lightly until you feel a pulse 4 - Count the number of beats you feel for 15 seconds and multiply it by four 5 - Anything lower than 60 beats per minute is considered a low resting heart rate Advertisement

Researchers claim this is because they are more likely to have lower levels of arousal, and so are less fearful of dangerous situations.

Another reason may be that their bodies fail to physically detect danger as effectively as their peers.

The research looked at almost 400 college students and found males with a low resting heart rate were at much greater risk of engaging in stalking behaviour.

The same did not apply to women.

Criminologist Dr Danielle Boisvert, of Sam Houston State University in Texas, said this fits in with 'arousal theory' that states we seek an optimum level of excitement.

It is the first study to link a person's pulse with stalking, and is among a growing body of literature associating the nervous system with antisocial behaviour.

Those with a slow heartbeat are less fearful, more likely to seek opportunities to pursue victims to feel stimulated, and are more likely to exhibit impulsive behaviours (stock image)

Dr Boisvert said: 'Participants whose heart rate was one standard deviation below the mean or lower had nearly three times the odds of having engaged in stalking as compared with all other participants, suggesting low resting heart rate is associated with increased prevalence of stalking behaviour.

AROUSAL THEORY Arousal theory is about the optimum level of excitement that individuals look for. People with high levels of arousal will enjoy high excitement behaviours like bungee jumping, sky diving - and stalking. Those with low optimum levels of arousal will be stimulated by more sedate activities. People with a low heartbeat are generally less fearful and more likely to pursue high arousal opportunities. Researchers found participants whose heart rate was one standard deviation below the mean or lower had nearly three times the odds of having engaged in stalking as compared with all other participants. Recent estimates suggest 16.2 per cent of women and 5.2 per cent of men in the US have been stalked at some point in their lifetime, which represents 20 million women and six million men. Advertisement

'Overall, our findings suggest while heart rate is generally found to be associated with aggression and antisocial behavior across the sexes, these associations may be sex specific when discussing stalking perpetration.'

Recent estimates suggest 16.2 per cent of women and 5.2 per cent of men in the US have been stalked at some point in their lifetime, which represents 20 million women and six million men.

The study was based on 384 American university students who answered a survey on stalking measures and had their heart rate monitored through a finger pulse oximeter.

They were asked if they followed, watched or spied on someone, or tried to communicate through a variety of written and physical methods with someone against their will over the last year.

Of the sample, 32 had engaged in stalking behaviour, 15 of whom were female.

Dr Boisvert said: 'There is consistent evidence to suggest individuals with low resting heart rate are more likely to engage in a variety of antisocial behaviours.

'The present study examines whether this finding can be extended to stalking perpetration.

'Drawing from fearlessness theory and stimulation-seeking theory, as well as conceptual work, we find individuals with low resting heart rates had significantly greater odds of engaging in stalking behaviour.

'When disaggregated by sex, the heart rate-stalking relationship was found to be significant for males, but not for females.'

Public figures who have been stalked include pop star Madonna, TV presenter Zoe Ball and supermodel Naomi Campbell.

The research was published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence and follows a Scandanavian study that found adolescents with resting heart rates of 60 beats per minute or below were up to 39 per cent more likely to become criminals.
Think vodka and Red Bull gives you wings? Think again.

A new study has found that the combination of alcohol and energy drinks does not actually get you any more drunk than alcohol alone, despite a common misconception.

But believing that it does can lead to you behave as if you are more heavily intoxicated, with potentially deadly results.

The effects, say researchers, are 'all in your head'.

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Experts studied how advertising effects people's perceived levels of intoxication from energy drink cocktails. They believed marketing could result in a placebo effect, which would lead people to act more drunk if they believed their drink contained Red Bull (stock image)

PLACEBO EFFECT Marketing experts at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada wanted to study how advertising effects people's perceived levels of intoxication. They believed that marketing could result in a placebo effect, which would lead people who knew they were consuming Red Bull based cocktails to act more drunk. To put their theory to the test, they recruited 154 young men who were each given a cocktail containing vodka, Red Bull and fruit juice. And the researchers found that emphasising the presence of an energy drink significantly increased how drunk people felt, including risk-taking and sexual self-confidence. This was even more apparent in participants who already had a strong belief that mixing energy drinks with alcohol would have this effect. Advertisement

The research was conducted by a team of marketing experts at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada.

They wanted to study how advertising effects people's preconceptions of how the cocktail will affect them.

They believed that marketing could result in a placebo effect, which would lead people who knew they were consuming Red Bull-based cocktails to act more drunk.

And the researchers found that emphasising the presence of an energy drink significantly increased how drunk people felt, including risk-taking and sexual self-confidence.

This was even more apparent in participants who already had a strong belief that mixing energy drinks with alcohol would have this effect.

People who drink the cocktails have twice the risk of experiencing or committing sexual assault or being involved in a car crash, compared to people who drink alcohol straight according to UBC.

And the study suggests that perceptions of intoxication levels could be leading to this behaviour.

Yann Cornil, the study's lead author, said: 'Red Bull has long used the slogan 'Red Bull gives you wings', but our study shows that this type of advertising can make people think it has intoxicating qualities when it doesn't.

'When alcohol is mixed with an energy drink and people are aware of it, they feel like they're more intoxicated simply because the marketing says they should feel that way.'

Doctors have long warned against the trend of mixing alcohol with highly-caffeinated energy drinks like Red Bull, since it sends your heart rate pumping dangerously fast.

To put their theory to the test, UBC recruited 154 young men who were each given a cocktail containing vodka, Red Bull and fruit juice. Participants were then asked to complete a series of tasks on a computer to measure their perceived drunkenness (stock image)

STUDY METHODS To put their theory to the test, UBC recruited 154 young men who were each given a cocktail containing vodka, Red Bull and fruit juice. The labelling of the cocktail either emphasised the presence of the energy drink, describing it as a 'vodka-Red Bull cocktail,' or not, describing it as a 'vodka cocktail' or 'exotic cocktail.' Participants were then asked to complete a series of tasks on a computer to measure their perceived drunkenness and their attitudes and behaviours. The researchers also measured how likely participants were to drive, and found that emphasising the energy drink decreased participants' intentions to drive under the influence. Advertisement

And in March, researchers at another Canadian university announced finding a higher rate of injuries among people who drink vodka with Red Bull or similar cocktails.

The team, from the University of Victoria, argued that the increased risk of injury boiled down to the person's excessive energy, which drives them to be reckless.

To put their theory to the test, UBC recruited 154 young men who were each given a cocktail containing vodka, Red Bull and fruit juice.

The labelling of the cocktail either emphasised the presence of the energy drink, describing it as a 'vodka-Red Bull cocktail,' or not, describing it as a 'vodka cocktail' or 'exotic cocktail.'

Participants were then asked to complete a series of tasks on a computer to measure their perceived drunkenness and their attitudes and behaviours.

The researchers also measured how likely participants were to drive, and found that emphasising the energy drink decreased participants' intentions to drive under the influence.

The full findings were published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.
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It has long been speculated that women tend to choose partners who look like their fathers but new research has found women are more attracted to men who resemble their brothers.

Researchers found there was was 'clear evidence' for similarities between the faces of women's brothers and their partners.

Although the idea of having a relationship with someone who looks like your sibling might be disturbing, partnering up with someone who looks like them could be a genetic advantage.

Actress Gwyneth Paltrow's ex-husband singer Chris Martin of Coldplay (middle) bears a strange resemblance to her brother, Jake Paltrow (right). Research shows although the idea of having a relationship with a sibling might be repulsive partnering up with someone who looks like them could be a genetic advantage

WHAT DID THEY DO? Researchers from Northumbria University ranked the facial similarities between the brothers and boyfriends of a selection of women. Volunteers were asked to say which of the four other men resembled the brother the most. People chose the picture of the partner as the one that was most similar to the brother 27 per cent of the time. The results showed there was 'clear evidence for perceptual similarity in facial photographs of a woman's partner and her brother'. Advertisement

Researchers from Northumbria University asked volunteers to rank the facial similarities between the brothers and boyfriends of a random selection of women.

'We asked 32 women to pass on details of the study to their brother and male partner, who in turn supplied photographs of themselves', Dr Tamsin Saxton from Northumbria University told MailOnline.

The 32 brothers were aged 1840 and the 32 partners were aged 2037.

'In addition, 48 photographs (24 brothers, 24 partners) were located online by a researcher who had been instructed to find relatively recent facial photographs of brothers and partners of public figures or celebrities', she said.

Participants were given a piece of paper with a picture of the brother of a women and four other men - one of whom was her partner.

They were then were asked to say which of the four other men resembled the brother the most.

The results showed there was 'clear evidence for perceptual similarity in facial photographs of a woman's partner and her brother'.

'Although siblings themselves are sexually aversive, sibling resemblance is not', researchers wrote in the paper which is published in Evolution and Human Behaviour.

Australian actress Margot Robbie's partner Tom Ackerley (middle) looks similar to her brother Cameron Robbie (right). It has long been speculated that women tend to choose partners who look like their fathers but new research suggests women are more attracted to men who look like their brothers

Model Gigi Hadid's boyfriend Zayn Malik looks like her younger model brother Anwar Hadid (right). Researcher's results showed there was 'clear evidence for perceptual similarity in facial photographs of a woman's partner and her brother'

Actress Jessica Alba's partner film producer Cash Warren looks like her brother and actor Joshua Alba. People chose the picture of the partner as the one that was most similar to the brother 27 per cent of the time, which is only slightly above random chance

'Faces that subtly resemble family members could present useful cues to a potential reproductive partner with an optimal level of genetic dissimilarity', they said.

People chose the picture of the partner as the one that was most similar to the brother 27 per cent of the time, which is only slightly above random chance.

'So, I guess one important point is that you shouldn't expect to be able to pick a partner simply based on the appearance of a sibling,' Dr Saxton told Global News.

Actress Blake Lively's partner Ryan Reynolds (middle) looks like her brother and fellow actor Eric Lively (right). 'Although siblings themselves are sexually aversive, sibling resemblance is not', researchers wrote in the paper which is published in Evolution and Human Behaviour

'Not all women had partners that looked like their brothers The point though is that it [may be] pretty weird to think that our partners might bear any resemblance whatsoever to our brothers  and an everyday prediction might be that partners and brothers wouldn't look alike at all.

'However, our study found that there was this subtle resemblance, on average, across the sample', she said.

The study also looked at people from one ethnic group who were a similar age.

Actress Maggie Gyllenhaal's husband Peter Skarsgaard (middle) looks like fellow actor and brother Jake Gyllenhaal (right). Dr Saxton believes it is because people find the familiar attractive. For example people choose partners who have similar interests, tastes and views - so in a similar way individuals choose someone who looks like them too

Actress Jessica Biel's husband singer Justin Timberlake looks like her brother Justin Biel. Dr Saxton decided to look into this after looking at previous research which showed people chose partners who resemble their parents so thought a similar logic could be applied to siblings.

In a recent interview with Seth Meyers, Allison William (left) said that reporters confused her brother Doug, right, for her husband, Ricky Van Veen (center), when she took him as her date to the Girls premiere earlier this year

'The researcher was asked to find brothers and partners who appeared to be of white ethnicity. We wanted to try to restrict participants to one ethnic group, because people often select partners within their culture', Dr Saxton told MailOnline.

'So, if we included people from a lot of different cultures, then people might base their judgements on perceived cultural similarity.

'For a similar reason, we tried to control for age when we ran the study, so that people werent simply matching the 20-year-olds to the 20-year-olds, and the 40-year-olds to the 40-year-olds', she said.

Dr Saxton believes it is because people find the familiar attractive.

For example people choose partners who have similar interests, tastes and views - so in a similar way individuals choose someone who looks like them too.

She decided to look into this after looking at previous research which showed people chose partners who resemble their parents so thought a similar logic could be applied to siblings.
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A fossil so well preserved that it looks like a statue is being unveiled today at a museum in Canada.

The 110 million-year-old nodosaur fossil, dubbed the 'four legged tank' was discovered by a miner in a find so rare, it's being described as like winning the lottery'.

The armoured plant-eater is the best preserved fossil of its kind ever found, according to reports in National Geographic.

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The fossil is a newfound species of nodosaur, which lived midway through the Cretaceous period, between 110 million and 112 million years ago.

HOW IT WAS FOUND The armoured plant-eater is the best preserved fossil of its kind ever found, according to reports in National Geographic. It was found by Shawn Funk, when he was digging at the Suncor Millenium Mine near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, on March 21, 2011. He hit something which seemed out of place from the surrounding rock, and decided to take a closer look. The fossil he uncovered was sent to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. They spent the next six years working on uncovering the beast within the 2,500-pound (1,100 kg) lump of earth. After all that hard work, the finished result is now ready to be unveiled. Advertisement

It was found by Shawn Funk, when he was digging at the Millenium Mine near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, on March 21, 2011.

He hit something which seemed out of place from the surrounding rock, and decided to take a closer look.

The fossil he uncovered was sent to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology.

They spent the next six years working on uncovering the beast within the 2,500-pound (1,100 kg) lump of earth.

According to the museum, it is the best preserved armoured dinosaur in the world, including skin and armour, and is complete from the snout to hips.

It took over 7,000 hours to prepare this specimen for research and display.

After all that hard work, the finished result is now ready to be unveiled.

And it reveals how the ancient creature used scaly armour to defend itself.

Speaking to National Geographic, paleobiologist Jakob Vinther, from the University of Bristol, said: '[It] might have been walking around a couple of weeks ago.

'I've never seen anything like this.'

The fossil is a newfound species of nodosaur, which lived midway through the Cretaceous period, between 110 million and 112 million years ago.

The creatures were around 18 feet (five metres) long on average, and weighted up to 3,000 pounds (1,300 kg).

It featured two 20-inch-long spikes which protruded from its shoulders.

The fossil was so well preserved that the researchers were able to digitally recreate an image of what the dinosaur would have looked like

In life this imposing herbivore  called a nodosaur  stretched 18 feet long and weighted nearly 3,000 pounds. Researchers suspect it initially fossilized whole, but when it was found in 2011, only the front half, from the snout to the hips, was intact enough to recover

The researchers believe that the this armored plant-eater lumbered through what is now western Canada, until a flooded river swept it into open sea.

But the dinosaur's undersea burial preserved its armor in exquisite detail.

The fossilised remains of this particular specimen are so well preserved that remnants of skin still cover bumpy armour plates along the dinosaur's skull.

As Michael Greshko wrote for National Geographic, such level of preservation 'is a rare as winning the lottery.'

'The more I look at it, the more mind-boggling it becomes.

'Fossilized remnants of skin still cover the bumpy armor plates dotting the animal's skull.

'Its right forefoot lies by its side, its five digits splayed upward.

'I can count the scales on its sole. '

Caleb Brown, a postdoctoral researcher at the museum, told the writer 'We don't just have a skeleton.

'We have a dinosaur as it would have been.'

The researchers say it may even have more to give.

THE NODOSAUR: THE 'FOUR LEGGED TANK' The fossil was found by Shawn Funk, when he was digging at the Millenium Mine near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, on March 21, 2011 The fossil is a newfound species of nodosaur, which lived midway through the Cretaceous period, between 110 million and 112 million years ago. The nodosaur is a type of ankylosaur often overshadowed by its cereal boxfamous cousins in the subgroup Ankylosauridae. Unlike its cousins, nodosaurs had no shin-splitting tail clubs, but they too wielded thorny armor to deter predators. The 18-foot-long, nearly 3,000-pound behemoth was the rhinoceros of its day, a grumpy herbivore that largely kept to itself. However, it it was attacked, the nodosaur had two 20-inch-long spikes jutting out of its shoulders like a misplaced pair of bulls horns. It was found by Shawn Funk, when he was digging at the Millenium Mine near Fort McMurray in northern Alberta, Canada, on March 21, 2011. He hit something which seemed out of place from the surrounding rock, and decided to take a closer look. The exhibit will now form part of The Royal Tyrrell Museums new exhibit, Grounds for Discovery, in Drumheller, Alberta. Advertisement

Its skeleton, for example, remains mostly obscured in skin and armor.

However, reaching the dinosaurs bones would require destroying its outer layers.

CT scans funded by the National Geographic Society have revealed little, as the rock remains stubbornly opaque.

The exhibit will now form part of The Royal Tyrrell Museums new exhibit, Grounds for Discovery, in Drumheller, Alberta.

It took over 7,000 hours to prepare this specimen for research and display, museum staff say

'Visitors will explore the personal stories and exceptional specimens that have been discovered as a result of the Museums collaboration with numerous industries such as housing and road construction, mining, wind turbine development, and oil and gas.

'New discoveries and a new species of dinosaur will be revealed,' it says of the exhibit.
A new video reveals how decorator crabs use materials such as seaweed and anemones to camouflage themselves from predators.

The crabs stick plants and animals to rows of hook and loop-like fasteners on their bodies to blend in with their environment.

There are almost 700 different species of decorator crabs around the world, about a dozen of which live off the coast of California in tide pools and kelp forests.

The video, by PBS's Deep Look, shows two different species of decorator crabs - the cryptic kelp crab (Pugettia richii) and the moss crab (Loxorhynchus crispatus).

In the video, the cryptic kelp crab trims and cuts pieces of kelp to a smaller size and then nudges them into place in the hooked hairs on its head.

The wedges of seaweed are held tightly by the hooks, and the crab even tugs them to make sure they're held in place tightly.

The crab also uses a wedge of seaweed to hide two of its four fluttering antennae.

These antennae are constantly fluttering and the crabs use them to smell.

But if they weren't covered, they could give the crab away to predators.

In the video, the moss crab first nibbles on a piece of algae to determine if it's safe to eat, or if it's covered in poisonous chemicals that make it better suited as protective camouflage

In the video, the cryptic kelp crab uses a wedge of seaweed to hide two of its four fluttering antennae. These antennae are constantly fluttering and the crabs use them to smell. But if they weren't covered, they could give the crab away to predators

'Its not a glue or anything; they have these hooked hairs all over their shells,' biologist Dr Jay Stachowicz, who studies decorator crabs at the University of California, Davis, told PBS.

'Through microscope photography we can see that it looks just like Velcro, except probably even better, even more hooked.'

The hooks are thick and curled and form rows.

The cryptic kelp crab trims and cuts pieces of kelp to a smaller size and then nudges them into place in the hooked hairs on its head (pictured)

While some species of decorator crabs only have these hooks on their heads, others have them all over their bodies.

For example, the moss crab has hooks all over its body, which it uses to lodge pieces materials in.

In the video, the moss crab notices that its face is uncovered, and looks for objects to camouflage its face.

While some species of decorator crabs only have hooks on their heads, others have them all over their bodies - such as moss crabs (pictured)

Moss crabs stick anemones (pictured in orange) on their bodies that sting anything that touches them. Over time, the anemones and seaweed grow and spread on the crab's shell

It first nibbles on a piece of algae to determine if it's safe to eat, or if it's covered in poisonous chemicals that make it better suited as protective camouflage.

It also sticks anemones on its body that sting anything that touches them, and over time, the anemones and seaweed grow and spread on the crab's shell.

When decorator crabs grow and molt to develop a new shell, they remove the anemones, sponges and other decorations from their old shell and use them to decorate their new shell.
Politicians have slammed the hackers who attacked the NHS as 'pathetic geeks' after thousands of computers and phone lines in hospitals across the country were shut down in a mass cyber attack.

UKIP's health spokesman Suzanne Evans led calls for those behind the ransomware to face the 'full force of the law' as union leaders slammed the underfunding of the NHS.

In Britain more than 40 NHS organisations including hospitals and GP surgeries have been hit by the virus which orders Windows XP users to pay $300 or have their files deleted within days.

Hours after news of the cyber attacks broke, a Microsoft spokesman revealed that customers who were running the company's free antivirus software and who had enabled Windows updates were 'protected' from the attack.

It raises questions about why NHS computers using the operating system were not shielded from the ransomware.

It was only a matter of time before the NHS was subject to a major cyber attack. That's the conclusion of security experts who claim the NHS' reliance on old Windows XP software left it wide open to attack. Pictured is the message left on NHS computers by the recent hack

At least 57,000 victims have been reported in 74 countries including the US, Australia, Belgium, France,Germany, Italy and Mexico - with the virus thought to be spreading at a rate of five million emails per hour.

Ms Evans said: 'This is an absolutely despicable and cowardly attack on Britain's best-loved public service.

'I simply cannot understand the mentality of the pathetic geeks behind this crime, who must know they are putting lives at risk.

'I would like to express my sympathy to NHS staff who, in addition to already having to cope with heavy workloads, now have to deal with this crisis.

'I trust NHS Digital will be able to restore systems to normal and soon as possible, and whoever set this malware in motion will face the full force of the law.'

Prime Minister Theresa May earlier said that the attack was not targeted at the NHS and that the government was 'not aware of any evidence' that patient data had been compromised.

This map released by cybersecurity experts, shows the impact of the ransomware around the world - with affected countries shown in orange and red. Russia is thought to be the worst affected

UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis, pictured left, slammed the underfunding of the NHS, while Ukip's Suzanne Evans said those responsible for the cyberattack should face the 'full force of the law'

She said: 'We are aware that a number of NHS organisations have reported that they have suffered from a ransomware attack.

'This is not targeted at the NHS, it's an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected.

'The National Cyber Security Centre is working closely with NHS Digital to ensure that they support the organisations concerned and that they protect patient safety.'

In December last year it was revealed about 90 per cent of NHS Trusts were still running Windows XP, two and a half years after Microsoft stopped supporting the system.

DANGERS OF USING OUTDATED SOFTWARE Windows XP has been used used to run everything from water treatment facilities and power plants to small businesses like doctors' offices. Microsoft stopped offering support for the system two and a half years ago. Despite this, many businesses saw it as a reliable workhorse and chose to stick with it instead of upgrading to Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. Unfortunately, the NHS was one of them. Without patches to fix bugs in the software XP PCs are prone to freezing up and crashing. The absence of updated security protections make the computers susceptible to hackers. Security patches released for Microsoft's newer systems may have served as a way for hackers to reverse engineer ways to breach now-unprotected Windows XP computers. Advertisement

Windows XP was released more than 15 years ago and is now particularly vulnerable to viruses.

Without patches to fix bugs in the software PCs are prone to freezing up, crashing and cyber attacks.

The list of hospitals that continue to run the outdated software includes East Sussex, which has an estimated 413 Windows XP machines, Sheffield's Children's hospital with 1,290 PCs, and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Trust with 10,800 Windows XP-powered PCs.

A Microsoft spokesman said: 'Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt.

'In March, we provided a security update which provides additional protections against this potential attack.

'Those who are running our free antivirus software and have Windows updates enabled, are protected.

'We are working with customers to provide additional assistance.'

General secretary of the UNISON union Dave Prentis said that health bosses must 'spend the cash to protect staff and patients from future incidents'.

He added: 'Staff are already facing huge challenges to keep the health service running and deliver the best care for patients.

'This senseless cyber attack will make their jobs even harder. The government must take urgent action to get hospitals up and running again.'

Today's Wanna Decryptor ransomware - which also raided companies and organisations across the world - is spread by a worm that exploits unpatched vulnerabilities in Windows machines.

The virus, which supports 28 languages, uuses MS17-010 - a now-patched Microsoft Windows vulnerability that was attacked by the leaked NSA tool, EternalBlue.

While the security hole has been patched for modern Windows versions, it has for not WindowsXP.

Commenting on the cyber attack, Liberal Democrat shadow health secretary Norman Lamb said: 'This is a deeply disturbing development with potentially awful consequences for patients.

'It shows we urgently need to explore what steps could be taken to better protect vital systems like this from cyber attacks.'

The attack comes just a day after Dr Krishna Chinthapalli warned the NHS was under threat from computer hackers because of its use of old systems.

The neurology registrar at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London said it was the worst incident there has ever been worldwide.

Dr Chinthapalli said it was remarkable the crisis broke out within hours of his report being published in the BMJ.

'I'm not behind it - I promise you!' he said.

'But I've never heard about a ransomware attack being so widespread - affecting so many hospitals across such a wide area.

Windows XP has been used used to run everything from water treatment facilities and power plants to small businesses like doctor's offices. Microsoft stopped offering support for it two and a half years ago. Pictured in Bill Gates promoting Windows XP during its launch in 2002

'There have been many isolated attacks but this is the first to be so co-ordinated - a number of attacks in different parts of the country.

'We have not seen this either here or in other countries - such as America.'

Dr Chinthapalli said patients' lives could be at risk and added that the problem may have escalated by a staff member clicking on a fake message - a 'phishing email' - and spreading it by mistake.

The virus - or ransomware - then quickly spread to other computers locked in to the same NHS system.

He said: 'The Malware would have infected the computer and then spread - corrupting a large part of the NHS network.

'Most of these spams start with phishing. By clicking on it the malware possibly got into the whole NHS network and corrupted the software programme.'

He said 'digital hygiene' - keeping hardware and software as secure as possible - is vital to prevent possible attacks while frequent backups are also important.

Dr Chinthapalli said: 'NHS staff have to be very vigilant when using computers and report anything they are at all suspicious about.

'The IT departments then have a huge role to play with their anti-virus software.

'It sounds like the motive has been financial rather than something else.

'Safety is the main concern because these incidents are becoming more widespread.'

Dr Chinthapalli says hospitals are ideal targets for ransomware hijackers.

For instance, many use proprietary software that runs on ancient operating systems - and hold confidential patient information that can be sold to other criminals.

He said, as such, hospitals are probably more willing than other organisations to pay for quick recovery of their data.

Dr Chinthapalli added: 'We should be prepared: more hospitals will almost certainly be shut down by ransomware this year.'
The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a peculiar object in the Hare constellation thats made up of two individual galaxies, speeding past each other at more than 1 million miles per hour.

According to NASA, theyre traveling too fast to merge into a single galaxy, but are close enough to massively distort their structures.

Hubble caught a glimpse of the pair from 500 million light-years away using its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instruments.

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The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a peculiar object in the Hare constellation thats made up of two individual galaxies, speeding past each other at more than 1 million miles per hour

Over the years, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured all kinds of bizarre galactic interactions, including galactic cannibalism, galaxy harassment, and galaxy collisions, according to NASA.

The galaxy IRAS 06076-2139, seen in the constellation Lepus (the Hare), is really two objects, not just one.

Two galaxies speeding past each other at roughly 2 million kilometers (1,243,000 mph) appear as one in the stunning Hubble photo, as theyre just 20,000 light-years apart.

According to NASA, galactic interactions can take many forms  and one day, even our own will be subjected to a merger with another.

The Milky Way itself will eventually fall victim to [a collision], merging with the Andromeda Galaxy in about 4.5 billion years, NASA explained.

The fate of our galaxy shouldnt be alarming though: while galaxies are populated by billions of stars, the distances between individual stars are so large that hardly any stellar collisions will occur.

Yesterday, researchers revealed a fascinating look at the Crab Nebula, using data from Hubble.

In the new study, researchers from the Institute of Astronomy and Physics, the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), and the University of Buenos Aires tapped into five telescopes to obtain new insight on the Crab Nebula

THE CRAB NEBULA: A 'COSMIC GENERATOR' In the year 1054, a massive supernova erupted in the sky, creating a light show that was seen from Earth 6,500 years away. Historical records reveal the phenomenon was spotted by Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arab astronomers. And, it could be seen even during the day for almost three weeks afterward. A study analyzing the Crab Nebula  the remnant of the stellar explosion  found that the faint jet of debris lines up with these ancient records, confirming its 11th century origin. According to NASA, the object is now a powerful cosmic generator, producing energy at the rate of 100,000 suns. Advertisement

After stitching together images from five different telescopes, accounting for nearly the entirety of the electromagnetic spectrum, astronomers have revealed the nebula in stunning new detail.

The remarkable object is the remnant of a stellar explosion that lit up the sky nearly 1,000 years ago, bright enough to be seen on Earth from 6,500 light-years away.

Researchers used data from the Very Large Array and the Hubble Space Telescope, along with several others, to merge observations from different wavelengths in efforts to improve understanding of the nebulas complex inner workings.

In the new study, researchers from the Institute of Astronomy and Physics, the National Council of Scientific Research (CONICET), and the University of Buenos Aires tapped into five telescopes to obtain new insight on the Crab Nebula.

The Crab Nebula was spotted in the year 1054 by Chinese astronomers, as well as other viewers around the world. A super-dense neutron star lies at the center, and rotates once every 33 milliseconds as it spews lighthouse-like beams of radio waves and light

This includes the Very Large Array (radio), the Spitzer Space Telescope (infrared), the Hubble Space Telescope (visible), the XMM-Newton (ultraviolet, and Chandra X-ray Observatory (X-Ray).

Individually, these make up the red, yellow, green, blue, and purple components, respectively, of the composite image.

Comparing these new images, made at different wavelengths, is providing us with a wealth of new detail about the Crab Nebula, said Gloria Dubner, of the Institute of Astronomy and Physics.

Though the Crab has been studied extensively for years, we still have much to learn about it.
Australian company Wave Swell Energy is developing a new system that harvests wave energy, a renewable form of energy.

The system is a giant hollow chamber that sits partially submerged on the seabed, funneling waves in and out of an underwater opening and generating electricity via a turbine.

The use of renewable sources of energy, such as wave energy, could play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the Paris agreement goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 2 C (3.6 F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

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The use of renewable sources of energy, such as wave energy, could play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions to achieve the Paris agreement goal of preventing temperatures from rising more than 2 C (3.6 F) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Pictured is a prototype of the system in use

Solar power use hit record highs in 2016, and renewables overall overtook coal to become the worlds largest source of installed power capacity.

However these sources of energy arent always easy to harness: For example, wind and solar energy are only effective when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.

So, the more diversified renewable energy sources are, the more reliable they can be.

The motion of the ocean is a renewable energy source, and there have been different methods to tap into that energy.

For example, buoys can be used to drive underwater hydraulic systems and wave energy stations have been mounted onto jettys, where they convert the rise and fall of waves into energy.

Wave Swells artifcial blowhole  called an Oscillating Water Column (OWC) is a large hollow concrete chamber, sitting partially submerged on the seabed.

It funnels waves in and out through an underwater opening, and it also has a small opening above the water, which houses an air turbine.

As waves pass the column, which measures 20 x 20 x 18 m (66 x 66 x 59 ft), water enters and leaves the chambers, rising and falling inside the column  causing the air above it to change pressure.

These changes in pressure force the air to pass by the turbine, generating electricity as they do.

So the water wants to fall, and that creates a partial vacuum inside the chamber, and it sucks air back through past our turbine, and that's what generates the electricity, CEO Dr Tom Deniss told NewAtlas.

What makes it different to other OWCs is that its turbine is only exposed to air flow from one direction .

The only moving parts in the entire technology are the turbine and some simple off-the-shelf valves, all of which are well above the water line.

There are no moving parts in or below the water.

HOW DOES IT WORK? Wave Swells artifcial blowhole  called an Oscillating water column is a large, hollow concrete chamber, partially submerged and sitting on the seabed. It funnels waves in and out through an underwater opening. As waves pass the column, water enters and leaves the chambers, rising and falling inside the column  causing the air above it to change pressure. Pictured left is a diagram of the system as a wave enters it, and right is a wave as it leaves it Theres also a small opening above the water, which houses an air turbine. As waves pass the column, water enters and leaves the chambers, rising and falling inside the column  causing the air above it to change pressure. These changes in pressure force the air to pass by the turbine, generating electricity as they do. Source: Wave Swell Energy Advertisement

This means maintenance is only ever required to be performed on the easy-to-access regions well above the ocean.

The device uses resonance to make the most energy out of the moving water.

So the motion of the water inside the chamber get amplified because its resonating at the same frequency as the waves  it does this by modifying the surrounding wave field.

That gives it a capacity factor  which is the ratio of the average power a system can generate to its peak  of about 47 percent, compared to the 30 percent that other wind and wave energy systems usually manage.

The company claims its system should be able to produce electricity for a cost of about $0.07 per kWh, which is roughly the same price as coal.

The technology is set to be trialed off the coast of King Island, which lies between Tanzania and Australia.

The technology is set to be trialed off the coast of King Island, which lies between Tanzania and Australia. It has a tiny population of 2,000, which is why its been a testing ground for other renewable energy sources before

It has a tiny population of 2,000, which is why its been a testing ground for other renewable energy sources before.

Energy organizations have collaborated on a project to combine wind and solar energy to supply about 65 per cent of the islands energy.

In 2015, the island was run off 100 per cent renewable energy for a period of 33 hours.

This combined strategy can help with the fact that renewable energy sources like waves being intermittent.

One of the goals of the team is to increase the amount of time the islands population can run fully on renewable energy.

As waves pass the column, which measures 20 x 20 x 18 m (66 x 66 x 59 ft), water enters and leaves the chambers, rising and falling inside the column  causing the air above it to change pressure

So far the company has completed the design and a prototype of the system and a unit should be up and running off King Island by mid 2018  in the future, they hope to install more in other areas, and Hawaii could be a possible target.

Because Hawaii is isolated, its energy is mostly powered by diesel and electricity is expensive - even though the Island has waves which can be used as an energy resource.

But cost isn't the only issues - using diesel increases reliance on foreign oil, and if there's an oil supply problem in the world, Hawaii could find itself unable to afford the cost of generating power, or they may just be cut completely.

So far the company has completed the design and a prototype of the system and a unit should be up and running off King Island by mid 2018  in the future, they hope to install more in other areas, and Hawaii could be a possible target

'It's one thing to not be able to run cars when that happens, but it's another to not have any power at all, for refrigeration and in hospitals,' said Dr Denniss.

Wave Swell Energy plans to scale up quickly, and Dr Denniss says he'd like to see projects on the scale of 100 MW or more running within five years.

The larger the scale, the cheaper the energy becomes to produce, and in the long run, the company believes it will be possible to get the price down to $0.04 per kWh.
Alligators produce low pitched rumbling roars called 'bellows' to signal their size to rivals and potential mates.

These bellows act as cues to other alligators, and can help to avoid direct physical confrontations during territorial fights, as larger alligators are more likely to win.

Alligators produce these sounds year round, but most frequently as a signal during mating season, as females only accept males larger than themselves.

The researchers, led by Dr Tecumseh Fitch, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Vienna, found that the bellowing displays differ between the sexes.

Only male alligators produce what's known as a 'water dance' - when water droplets sprinkle over their backs directly before the bellow.

These bellows act as cues to other alligators, and can help to avoid direct physical confrontations during territorial fights, as larger alligators are more likely to win

This finding is also in line with previous finding by the study co-author Dr Kent Vliet from the University of Florida.

Curators from the St Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida worked with the researchers to measure the head and total body length of all the alligators using measuring tapes and a hand-held laser-distance-measurement device

For this new study into alligator bellows as a signal of their size, researchers recorded the bellows of of 43 adult American alligators as the St Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park in Florida.

Curators from the Park worked with the researchers to measure the head and total body length of all the alligators using measuring tapes and a hand-held laser-distance-measurement device.

When the researchers analyzed the acoustics of each alligator's bellow, they found that the frequencies produced by the vibrating tissue, such as vocal cords, hardly correlated with the alligator's size at all.

However, a specific type of sound frequency, called resonance frequencies, did act as an almost perfect signal of body size.

'Resonance frequencies depend on the length of the vocal tract,' said Dr Stephan Reber, a researcher at the University of Vienna and the co-lead author of the study.

'Larger alligators have longer vocal tracts and therefore lower resonances.'

(a) Only male alligators produce what's known as a 'water dance' - when water droplets sprinkle over their backs directly before the bellow, but both sexes raise their head and tail above the surface (b) On land, both females and males raise the head but not the tail when bellowing

This is the same biological pattern previously found by Dr Fitch in several bird and most mammal species, including humans, but it was so far unknown in reptiles.

Because birds and crocodilians share a common ancestor with all extinct dinosaurs, 'it is thus plausible that also dinosaurs communicated their body size to rivals and potential mates via vocal tract resonances', Dr Reber said.
The invigorating Arctic breeze was blowing in my hair and as we hit a slightly larger wave, my downward dog required a little more core strength than usual.

I've done yoga in some pretty sublime places, from sunset rooftops in Morocco to rocky outcrops in the Caribbean.

But doing the practice on the decks of a former Russian research vessel, close to the North Pole, had to be the most breathtaking spot yet.

MailOnline's Sadie Whitelocks took part in an Arctic yoga course, close to the North Pole

The session took place while I was embarking on a two-week expedition around Baffin Island, one of the most remote spots on earth.

The average temperature of the island - the fifth largest in the world - comes in at a frosty minus 7 Celsius, due to the whipping northerly winds.

Luckily we were setting sail in the Arctic summer, where the weather stayed mostly above zero, with some glorious bouts of sunshine to boot.

The ship program, organised by One Ocean Expeditions, included a daily schedule of kayaking, on shore excursions, educational presentations and also - to my joy - yoga.

Arctic gales: The yogis kept bundled up as they took to the outer deck

Big thaw: Luckily the passengers were setting sail in the Arctic summer, where the weather stayed mostly above zero, with some glorious bouts of sunshine to boot

Setting sail: The ship program, organised by One Ocean Expeditions , also included a daily schedule of kayaking, shore excursions and educational presentations

The classes were led by the ever-smiley Annie Lalanne, who grew up in Quebec, eastern Canada, but has lived all over the world.

She did her yoga teacher training in Massachusetts before moving to Australia, where she stayed for 15 years.

Along with yoga, Annie also offered massages on board the boat.

Asked what the trickiest thing about teaching yoga on board a polar cruise liner was, Annie replied: 'When it's really rocky, we can't stand up, so I stick to floor poses.'

The hour-long classes took place at 7am most mornings, before the abundant breakfast buffet was rolled out.

Asked what the trickiest thing about teaching yoga on board a polar cruise liner was, teacher Annie replied: 'When it's really rocky we can't stand up, so I stick to floor poses'

Bend and stretch: There were about six to seven of us - out of some 50 passengers - who were early risers and hit the mat each morning

There were about six to seven of us - out of some 50 passengers - who were early risers and hit the mat each morning.

A mother and daughter from Brazil, a lady from British Columbia and another woman from Chester, England, were among the mix.

For the first few days we stuck to the basement presentation room for classes, as the blustery Arctic gales weren't conducive to outdoor escapades.

However, when the blue skies broke, we swiftly moved the class to deck seven.

It was a pretty glorious stint of stretching as we looked out over the endless ocean.

Birds circled overhead and the crackling lapping of ice could be heard as the boat continued to push on.

Sublime setting: The average temperature of Baffin Island - the fifth largest in the world - comes in at a frosty minus 7 Celsius, due to the whipping northerly winds

Meeting the locals: Along with yoga, there was plenty of wildlife to see on the Arctic voyage

As the class progressed, I had to take off my fleece jumper as I was getting too hot.

Others opted to keep their woolies on, with a slight nip lingering in the air.

The next morning, the swaying of the boat meant we had to resort to stretching against the presentation room walls.

The 90-degree angling meant I could pack in some in some deeper stretches - something that came back to haunt me the next day.

After my Arctic yoga course I definitely felt as if some cobwebs had been blown away.
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On a balmy evening by the shore of a lake in the centre of Hanoi, we sat enraptured as Su-Su sang to us, just the two of us. Meanwhile, in the red glow from a nearby floodlit Buddhist temple, couples sedately practised their newly acquired ballroom dance steps. Strictly Vietnam.

We imagined Su-Su thought we were a couple, as two middle-aged men together on holiday could only be. In fact, Id gone to Vietnam with one of my oldest friends: Jimmy, an Australian who has written books about Aussie Tunnel Rat troops in the Vietnam war, and organised several tours for veterans.

But really, this was just a pair of old hacks on an adventure without our womenfolk, fired up by a rereading of The Quiet American. We sought our inner Graham Greene, but after much beer-fuelled analysis of old England versus Australia Test matches, we settled for our inner Graham Gooch.

Bright spectacle: The town of Hoi An is full of beautifully preserved buildings

Kieran Prendiville, pictured here pondering lunch, went to Vietnam with one of his oldest friends: Jimmy, an Australian who has written books about Aussie Tunnel Rat troops in the Vietnam war, and organised several tours for veterans

A woman prepares meals on the streets of Hanoi

Su-Su was our enchanting guide and it was her delightful way to end the evening. Youve never heard that tune from Frozen until youve heard it in a Vietnamese accent with ukulele backing, competing with traffic. I can hear it still: Let it go, let it go...

This was our first night in Vietnam and, as Jimmy and I would discover, whether you are crossing a road in Saigon or clambering into a secret Vietcong cave, let it go was the best advice we could have had.

This first expedition started off as a privately guided street food tour of Hanoi, the capital. Hiring a guide is less expensive than youd think and allows for much more interaction with local people. But youll interact anyway. One of the most charming aspects of Hanoi was the way schoolchildren would approach you with their English homework and ask you to correct it.

Su-Su, a tourism student, led us into the Old Quarter of Hanoi. We ate on the pavement, we ate down side streets, we ate in what looked like a motorcycle repair shop  six stops in all, not one of which we would have stumbled across if we tried.

We ate all manner of spring rolls, rice noodles, sweet sticky rice, salty sticky rice, all kinds of Pho  the ubiquitous meat and noodle broth  we drank sugar cane juice, coconut milk, coffee with raw egg...

OK, enough. But it wasnt enough, it was never enough. And then theres the fish sauce. Made from rotting, fermenting fish and sea salt, I cant think of a meal we had in Vietnam that wasnt accompanied by a saucer of the always tangy, often pungent liquor. Apparently the Americans once mistook a fish sauce factory for a chemical weapons plant. But smelly sauces are not the most confronting aspect of Vietnam. Crossing the road is. There are two million scooters and motorbikes in Vietnam and they followed us everywhere. But thats OK. Let it go.

Step out into the road, walk steadily across and all two million bikes will flow around you like reeds in a river. Very Zen very scary, too, at first. But after a while, its a breeze and locals will applaud your madness. A Vietnamese sees their scooter the way a Texan sees his pick-up truck: a way to move big items, large quantities of stuff or families. One guide showed us a photograph of a man riding his Honda 90 with a live cow on the pillion.

From Ho Chi Minh City, still widely called Saigon, we took two more private tours. In the Mekong Delta we hired bicycles to take in the rice paddies and visited a market where we declined to gaze at skinned live frogs, ready for the pot.

An idyllic riverside scene in Hoi An, with fishing boats moored on the gentle water

In a forest on the slopes of the Long Hai mountains, another guide took us up rocky paths to the Minh Dam Secret Zone. Here, in the heart of the jungle darkness was a large wartime Viet Cong command base.

Only accessible by squeezing carefully between boulders and crawling on hands and knees beneath others, the cave network below was worth the effort, even with my dodgy back.

We also took the regular tours that werent so far off the beaten track: Halong Bay is so beautiful you want to laugh out loud when you see it for the first time.

Further south, the town of Hoi An has beautifully preserved temples and merchant houses, and skilful and speedy tailors.

However, the endless, relentless haranguing to buy, buy, buy makes you wonder: is this really a communist country?

And so to Saigon and the Cu Chi tunnels. Take the boat if you can  its a blast powering up the Saigon River at James Bond speed.

One guide showed Kieran a photograph of a man riding his Honda 90 with a live cow on the pillion

Charming: People gather on a beautifully ornate and colourful bridge in Hoi An

If you think the War Remnants Museum is a snappy title, consider what this Saigon institution used to be called: Exhibition House for US and Puppet Regime Crime.

Still not quite hitting the sweet spot, it became Exhibition House for Crime of War of Aggression.

As old hacks, we spent a lot of time in the press photos gallery, marvelling at the bravery and skill of wartime photographers.

Theres plenty more to see around the city, including its own Notre Dame cathedral and the fabulous Central Post Office built by one M. Eiffel.

So, wherever you are in Vietnam and whenever your plans take an unexpected turn, just let it go. Its more fun that way.
If your life has a Riverdale shaped hole in it and you've already ploughed your way through 13 Reasons Why, the big question is what should you binge watch next?

Well, Twin Peaks - a cult classic first aired in the 90s - is back from its long hiatus, with a brand new third series airing on Stan. It was the show that paved the way for the golden age of tv we are presently basking in and the third series is set to get EVERYONE talking.

At its heart, the original Twin Peaks was a murder mystery but being a David Lynch production it very rarely focused on that.

A host of eccentric characters, kooky dialogue and mystery proved so captivating that the moment Laura Palmer was discovered dead on a river bank, wrapped in plastic with the letter 'r' inserted under a fingernail, the world was hooked.

Welcome back! After more than two decades away from the small screen cult classic Twin Peaks is back with a third series, available on Stan

Back in the day: Kyle MacLachlan as FBI Agent Dale Cooper in 1990 when the show first aired. Kyle reprises his role in the new series and fans cannot wait to see what happens

Now, the hotly-anticipated third series is back with a stellar cast, spine-tingling suspense and an enthralling plot that will leave you on the edge of your seats.

Here are the ten reasons why Twin Peaks was so special and why you NEED to tune into the new series.

1) THE MYSTERY

'Who killed Laura Palmer?' It was the question on everyone's lips when Twin Peaks was first broadcast in 1990 - and a direct influence on Veronica Mars and their 'Who Killed Lily?' campaign.

Lynch and writer Mark Frost never wanted to reveal the killer. For them it wasn't about the whodunnit, something the makers of British phenomenon Broadchurch and the Nordic Noir The Killing followed, it was all about the people directly affected and the small town community it shattered.

Unfortunately for the Peaks makers, the network didn't agree with their philosophy and they were forced to answer the big question.

Who knows what questions will be asked in the third season?

Mystery: 'Who killed Laura Palmer?' was the question that everyone was asking when the first series aired in 1990

2) THE EYE-CANDY

The glamorous inhabitants of Twin Peaks may have been mixed up but they were certainly easy on the eye.

From homecoming Queen Laura Palmer and Audrey Horne to bad boy Bobby Briggs (Dana Ashbrook) and the exquisite Josie Packard (Joan Chen) and the delightful Shelly Johnson (Riverdale's Madchen E. Amick), the beautiful young cast spent as much time gracing magazine covers as they did on screen.

It's a template that remains today. Have you seen anyone less than gorgeous starring in Gossip Girl or 13 Reasons Why? Thought so.

Hot stuff: Madchen Amick, as waitress Shelly Long, and Sherilyn Fenn, as Audrey Horne, set pulses racing

3) FAMILIAR FACES

Kyle MacLachlan's FBI Agent Dale Bartholomew Cooper, who was named after the epitaph given to an unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft in 1971, is one of television's greatest creations.

A wide-eyed boy scout with a coffee addiction, an eye for Tibetan mind techniques when solving crimes and a very sweet tooth, Cooper's enthusiasm for life and his oft quoted mantra is a delight. Beneath the thumbs up exterior, there lies a sad past that becomes entwined in the dark events of the show.

Kyle return to the show for the third series alongside the likes of Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, Michael Cera, Jim Belushi and Jennifer Jason Leigh. What a cast!

New recruits: Naomi Watts and Laura Dern join the cast for the new series

4) THE NEW PLOT

The intricacies of the plot remain under lock and key but a brief glimpse at what is to come was revealed by Showtime president and CEO David Nevins told audiences that, 'the core of it is Agent Coopers odyssey back to Twin Peaks.' David Lynch also told the same crowd that the last seven days of Laura Palmers life are very important to the new season.

The only other clues are available to die-hard fans willing to dive into the pages of Mark Frosts epic tome The Secret History Of Twin Peaks. Written in the form of a dossier, nothing concrete is revealed but the minutiae is there for the eagle-eyed.

5) THE MUSIC

Angelo Badalamenti's haunting Twin Peaks score has become synonymous with the show, especially when Julee Cruise lends her vocal talents to the opening theme.

Heavy hitters like DJ Shadow and Run The Jewels's El-P have sampled the soundtrack, songbirds Lara del Ray and Sky Ferriera have both been massively influenced by the dusky strains of Badalmenti's melancholic music and Britpop indie kings Bastille have a song called Laura Palmer.

Music makers: Angelo Badalamenti's haunting Twin Peaks score has become synonymous with the show and the music has inspired many modern day bands

6) THE ODDBALL CHARACTERS

David Lynchs films have always been inhabited with oddballs and weirdos. From his debut Eraserhead, its been obvious that the self-proclaimed Eagle Boy Scout dances to a beat of a different drum and, likewise, so do many of his Peaks characters.

Theres a lady who talks to a log called you guess it, The Log Lady, a cop who bursts into tears whenever he arrives at a crime scene and a middle-aged curtain drape runner obsessed woman who awakens from coma, regresses to her teenage years, develops super human strength and joins the wrestling team!

Who's your friend? There are many kooky characters including The Log Lady - who will return in series three

7) THE TEENAGE SLEUTHS

While the grown-ups try to discover who killed Laura Palmer, the school kids of Twin Peaks take the law into their own hands to find out who murdered their friend.

Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) goes undercover in a brothel, Lara Flynn Boyle's Donna Hayward takes Laura's meals-on-wheels route and meets the agoraphobic orchid fanatic who has Laura's secret diary in his possession.

Teens in shows like Riverdale, Veronica Mars and even younger sleuths in Stranger Things like nothing more than indulging in a bit of amateur detective work. Even if it means putting themselves in tense situations.

8) THE FASHION

Style and substance: The original wardrobe was as eclectic as the characters on the show

From Donna Hayward's classic '90s stylings to sharp dressed Special Agent Cooper's de rigueur black suits; the sartorial style of Twin Peaks was Fifties glamour meets '90s grunge.

The most iconic look was owned by Sherilyn Fenn's Audrey Horne, the daughter of local tycoon and sleazy gadabout Benjamin Horne.

With a penchant for tighter sweaters, high-waisted skirts, bobby socks and Oxfords, Audrey was luckily her father owns Horne's Department Store.

One thing is for certain in Season three, the cast will be television's best dressed.

9) IT WILL GET EVERYONE TALKING

Brand new Madchen Amick and Peggy Lipton in the third series of Twin Peaks

The big reveal was always going to be a shocking one but no one could have predicted how brutal the moment actually was.

As the omnipresent malevolent spirit Bob possesses Laura Palmer's father Leland (Ray Wise), he brutally kills Laura's cousin Madeleine (also played by Sheryl Lee). It's all the more disturbing for the ideas its set in motion.

How could a father do what he did to his daughter? As the blood flowed it paved the way for shows like The X-Files, Hannibal and The Sopranos to spill the claret and indulge in a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Brutal: Ronette Pulaski (Phoebe Augustine) is discovered bloodied and bruised

10) THE DAVID LYNCH WEIRDNESS

From fishes in the percolator to spirits being trapped in drawer knobs, Twin Peaks is littered with moments of director David Lynch's trademark weirdness.

It's no wonder Mel Brooks, who produced Lynch's The Elephant Man, nicknamed the director as 'Jimmy Stewart from Mars.' Lynch's askew view of the world was no more apparent than in the iconic second episode moment when Agent Cooper drifts of to sleep and visits The Red Room.

Greeted by a finger-clicking dwarf who speaks backwards and a resurrected Laura Palmer, the pair, talking in riddles, revealing to the agent who killed Laura.

He's back: David Lynch nearly pulled out of the third series over pay. Luckily whatever numbers had to be crunched, were crunched

There was a point where Lynch's involvement in the third series was thrown into doubt when he tweeted last year: ' After one year and four months of negotiations, I left because not enough money was offered to do the script the way I felt it needed to be done.'

Luckily whatever numbers had to be crunched, were crunched.

Lynch has directed 18 episodes as one continuous movie from a 400-page script. Its a huge undertaking by anyones standards but then David Lynch has very different standards.

It Is Happening Again TWIN PEAKS  22 May Same Day as U.S. Only on Stan.
They just wrapped their second week of co-hosting Live.

And Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest are already dealing with rumors that there is tension on set as the reboot of American Idol is looking for a host.

However, despite reports that Ripa, 46, is fearful of Seacrest, 42, leaving for Idol, sources said: 'Kelly and Ryan have open and transparent conversations. There will be no surprises.'

Tension on air: Kelly Ripa, 46, and Ryan Seacrest, 42, are dealing with rumours of a feud after only two weeks of co-hosting Live

'People want to create drama but there really is none,' the source insisted to E! News on Friday.

Industry insiders believed Ripa dreaded reliving the controversy when her former Live co-host Michael Strahan jumped ship suddenly to join Good Morning America.

It was reported that this was not the case, as a source said: 'They respect each one another. She supports his other commitments and he supports hers.'

'Ryan and Kelly have the same work ethic and values,' the source continued, 'That's why it works so well.'

Jump ship: Sources said Ripa was afraid Seacrest would leave Live to host the reboot of American Idol; (both pictured April)

Past horror: Insiders believed Ripa dreaded reliving the controversy when her former co-host Michael Strahan jumped ship suddenly to join Good Morning America; (pictured 2014)

However, Seacrest has not said if he will indeed host the reality competition as details of the reboot are still being fleshed out.

'There is no contract for Idol. He is in early conversations. His deal with Live was made independent of Idol,' a rep for Seacrest said.

And Ripa seems supportive of the extra gig as she joked with him on Monday's show: 'I went into seclusion when American Idol was canceled. Are you going to host it? Please tell me yes.'

Slammed: Sources refuted those rumours and said the two are open with each other and that there will be no surprises

'You can do this! You can disconnect for that! On days where it's the day after...You won't even have to think. I'll do it all!' she said in full support.

'She is having the best time with Ryan and truly feels she has a partner in her co-host," Ripa's rep said.

'Should Idol happen, she feels Ryan Seacrest is the heart and soul of American Idol and therefore she's 100 percent on board.'

American Idol will return in 2018 on ABC.
Bindi Irwin has broken her silence on rumours her mother Terri is 'in love' with actor Russell Crowe, and the pair are about to go public with their 'romance'.

Speaking on E!s Daily Pop, the wildlife warrior said while her entire family 'love' the Braveheart star, her late father Steve is still 'very much' her mother's 'soulmate'.

'Theres lots of crazy rumors,' she said. 'You know we do love Russell, but mum and Russell arent actually in love!'

Going public: But according to new reports, Terri Irwin and Russell Crowe will soon be 'announcing their love to their world' on their 'big day'

'My dad is still very much my mums soulmate. And I think that no matter what, Mum always says that theyll always be married,' she added.

'And to her, Mum and Dad, theyre always going to be together. So in this life and the next, theyre a couple and a team. So I think thats really important.'

The teen went on to praise Russell for his contribution to Australia Zoo and insisted that her mother and the Hollywood star are 'just friends'.

'Russell is a wonderful wildlife warrior. He was a dear friend of dad's, now a dear friend of ours. He feels like family to us, but mum and Russell? Just friends. For sure,' she said.

Despite Russell and Terri repeatedly denying they're an item, this week a magazine continued to claim the pair will soon be 'announcing their love to their world' on their 'big day'.

Still in love: Speaking on E!s Daily Pop , the wildlife warrior said while her entire family 'love' the Braveheart star, her late father Steve is still 'very much' her mother's 'soulmate'

New Idea reported that the pair are set to walk the red carpet together at the Steve Irwin Gala Dinner in LA on May 13.

A source allegedly told the magazine: '(Terri) keeps calling it their, 'big day' - they're both really excited. No more hiding, no more secret getaways - they're both keen to be seen together'.

Russell and Terri have 'enjoyed the fact that they've kept the early stages of their relationship to themselves' but are ready to go public, the magazine claims.

The pair had feared there may be a negative response to Terri finally moving on after the tragic death her husband Steve Irwin in 2006, but, 'those fears are behind them' the magazine alleges.

More rumours: Despite Russell and Terri repeatedly denying they're an item, this week a magazine continued to claim the pair will soon be 'announcing their love to their world' on their 'big day'

The report comes after speculation that Academy Award winning actor is set on moving Terri into his sprawling ranch in the small village of Nana Glen, NSW.

Russell is said to be busy renovating the love nest for his 'girlfriend', who is mother to Bindi and Bob Irwin, according to an earlier report in New Idea.

The publication claims that Russell has been busy 'dramatically overhauling' his famous ranch.

Family affair: Bindi is very close to her entire family

He is reportedly settling into Nana Glen community life, after having reportedly bought the local community swimming pool for the village.

The magazine's source reportedly said: 'He's known Terri for a long time and has given Nana Glen a real facelift with her in mind.'

While the property is a five hour drive and in another state, a friend close to the naturalist told the publication: 'Terri doesn't mind - she's used to driving long distances because most of her wildlife activities are in really remote places.'
Luxury brand Chanel has issued an apology after actress Gabourey Sidibe wrote about being racially profiled at one of their boutiques earlier this week.

In their statement, the French fashion house expressed their 'sincerest regrets' over the incident, acknowledging that Gabby's treatment was 'absolutely not in line' with Chanel's 'high standards'.

The apology comes on the heels of the Empire actress' candid essay about her unpleasant experience in Chanel's Chicago boutique, published on Lenny Tuesday.

Sincerely sorry: This week luxury brand Chanel issued an apology after Gabourey Sidibe published an essay about being racially discriminated against at their Chicago boutique. Above you can see the starlet March 11 at this year's SXSW

The luxury brand released a full statement on Wednesday, writing:

'Chanel expresses our sincerest regret for the boutique customer service experience that Ms. Sidibe mentioned in this essay. We are sorry that she felt unwelcome and offended.'

'We took her words very seriously and immediately investigated to understand what happened, knowing that this is absolutely not in line with the high standards that Chanel wishes to provide to our customers.

'We are sorry that she felt unwelcome and offended': The luxury brand's apology comes on the heels of the actress's essay published Tuesday on Lenny

Their statement: In their response, Chanel expressed their 'sincerest regret for the boutique customer service experience that Ms. Sidibe mentioned' and that they 'are sorry that she felt unwelcome and offended.' Above Gabby is pictured May 1 in New York

Chanel's Statement: 'Chanel expresses our sincerest regret for the boutique customer service experience that Ms. Sidibe mentioned in this essay. We are sorry that she felt unwelcome and offended.' 'We took her words very seriously and immediately investigated to understand what happened, knowing that this is absolutely not in line with the high standards that Chanel wishes to provide to our customers. 'We are strongly committed to provide anyone who comes in our boutiques with the best customer service. 'We do hope that in the future Ms. Sidibe will choose to come back to a Chanel boutique and experience the real Chanel customer experience. ' Advertisement

'We are strongly committed to provide anyone who comes in our boutiques with the best customer service.

'We do hope that in the future Ms. Sidibe will choose to come back to a Chanel boutique and experience the real Chanel customer experience. '

In Gabby's Lenny essay, she describes an encounter with a salesperson that left her feeling unwelcome and embarrassed in the Chicago shop.

While shopping for glasses at a Chanel boutique, the actress crossed paths with a dismissive salesperson who suggested the star instead shop at the discount eyeglasses store across the road.

'Just to be sure of what was happening, I made her tell me to leave, in her pretend-polite way, three times,' Gabby explained.

'I knew what she was doing,' she continued. 'She had decided after a single look at me that I wasnt there to spend any money.'

'Even though I was carrying a Chanel bag, she decided I wasnt a Chanel customer and so, not worth her time and energy.'

After several of the store's employees of color recognized the American Horror Story actress, her sour salesperson changed their tune.

Luxe: Even though Gabby said she was already carrying a Chanel purse, she felt the salesperson made her feel like she was 'not worth her time and energy.' Above you see an image from Chanel's runway show in Paris on May 3

Her experience: In her essay, the actress wrote that the Chanel salesperson seemed to have 'decided after a single look at me that I wasnt there to spend any money' and proceeded to dismiss the Oscar nominee. Above, she's seen at NAACP Image Awards on February 11

'Just like that, I went from being an inconvenience to a customer.'

In the essay, the Grimsby actress revealed that the experience wasn't brand new for her and that she's faced discrimination while shopping throughout her life.

'This actually happens to me a lot. My whole life. Both before and after I became a recognizable actress.

'No matter how dressed up I get, I'm never going to be able to dress up my skin color to look like what certain people perceive to be an actual customer.'

Chicago shop: The Empire actress described her Chanel experience in an essay for Lenny published on Tuesday. Above you can see the exterior of the Chicago boutique

Gabby's been finding her voice with writing recently.

In addition to her Lenny essay, the star debuted her book This Is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare on May 1.

The memoir, published through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has been praised for its 'full-throttle honesty' as well as 'Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional.'

This Is Just My Face: Try Not To Stare is available in hardcover at bookstores now.
Jessica Chastain expressed her annoyance that Johnny Depp, whom she's never worked with, employs a full-time sound engineer to feed him his lines on set through an earpiece.

The revelation came Monday after the 53-year-old movie star's former management company, TMG, filed a counter lawsuit detailing the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spends on a sound man - according to Page Six.

Upon hearing this, the 40-year-old Golden Globe winner rolled her eyes, shook her head, and smiled before explaining precisely how she memorizes dialogue.

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Ugh: Jessica Chastain expressed her annoyance that Johnny Depp, whom she's never worked with, employs a full-time sound engineer to feed him his lines on set through an earpiece

Not impressed: The 40-year-old Golden Globe winner rolled her eyes, shook her head, and smiled before explaining precisely how she memorizes dialogue

Lazy actor? The revelation came Monday after the 53-year-old movie star's (L) former management company, TMG, filed a counter lawsuit detailing the hundreds of thousands of dollars he spends on a sound man

'I guess my technique is working hard,' the Juilliard grad told BBC News on Thursday.

'So on the weekends before I would go into my work week, I memorize. I will spend my entire day working on the script and the scenes that I have coming ahead.'

Jessica was in London promoting her role as the titular, ambitious lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane in the political thriller Miss Sloane, which finally hits UK theaters on Friday.

'[Memorizing the script] was so important playing this character because she's the smartest person in the room,' Chastain said.

The Juilliard grad told BBC News on Thursday: 'I guess my technique is working hard'

The Cali-born, NY-based redhead continued: 'On the weekends before I would go into my work week, I memorize. I will spend my entire day working on the script and the scenes that I have coming ahead'

Articulate: Jessica was in London promoting her role as the titular, ambitious lobbyist Elizabeth Sloane in the political thriller Miss Sloane, which finally hits UK theaters on Friday

Chastain said: '[Memorizing the script] was so important playing this character because she's the smartest person in the room...It had to be so second nature to me, and the only way to do it is to spend the hours doing it'

Sophisticated: For her segment at BBC Studios, the two-time Oscar nominee donned a baby-blue pussy-bow blouse, black pants, and matching pumps selected by stylist Elizabeth Stewart

'She knows more about it than anyone else so I had to say it in a way that, umm, I couldn't search for my lines like I just did. She doesn't talk like that. It had to be cold. It had to be so second nature to me, and the only way to do it is to spend the hours doing it.'

For her segment at BBC Studios, the two-time Oscar nominee donned a baby-blue pussy-bow blouse, black trousers, and matching patent leather pumps selected by stylist Elizabeth Stewart.

The Zookeeper's Wife stunner will next join Cannes President Pedro Almodovar on the esteemed jury of the 70th annual film festival taking place May 17-28 in France.

Jessica - who boasts 2.3M social media followers - tweeted: 'Im so excited to hang with these incredible artists! #Cannes2017.'

'Im so excited!' The Zookeeper's Wife stunner will next join Cannes President Pedro Almodovar on the esteemed jury of the 70th annual film festival taking place May 17-28 in France

Make-up room: On April 26, Jessica wrapped her role as poker entrepreneur Molly Bloom the Aaron Sorkin drama Molly's Game alongside Kevin Costner, Idris Elba, and Chris O'Dowd

On April 26, Chastain wrapped her role as poker entrepreneur Molly Bloom the Aaron Sorkin drama Molly's Game - due out later this year - alongside Kevin Costner, Idris Elba, and Chris O'Dowd.

On the personal front, the Women's Marcher has been romancing Italian fashion executive for Montcler Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo for the last five years.

Meanwhile, troubled Johnny spent his Thursday in Shanghai at the world premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, which hits UK/US theaters on May 26.

'So happy to be together!' On the personal front, the Women's Marcher has been romancing Italian fashion executive for Montcler Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo for the last five years
A nephew who was accused of abusing Katherine Jackson is demanding the music matriarch pay the legal expenses he ran up fighting the case.

Trent Jackson claims the 87-year-old receives enough money every month that she can afford to stump up for the $58,000 bill he amassed before the legal action collapsed.

In a court filing her former caregiver alleges the mother of music legend Michael receives a $67,000 monthly stipend from the Prince Of Pop's estate.

Demand: Katherine Jackson's nephew Trent (seen together in 2014) wants her to pay for the legal fees her racked up fighting her elder abuse lawsuit

According to TMZ, he says she distributes the money among her children.

In legal documents he claims she told him she gives $12,000 per month to son Jermaine, $7,000 per month to daughter Rebbie and another $30,000 per month to daughter La Toya.

He also claims she pays $9,850 per month for a rental in the posh Calabasas area of Los Angeles, where the children of sons Jermaine and Randy stay.

Trent has claimed that she was put up to filing her case against him by her children.

Stumping up: He alleges she hands over thousands every month to support her children

Charity begins at home: He claims she forks out almost $10K per month in rent for a house where the children of her sons Jermaine and Randy stay

Sisters of mercy: She also allegedly stumps up thousands to daughters La Toya and Rebbie

Last month a California judge dismissed Katherine's elder abuse lawsuit nephew.

She had a temporary restraining order against in February.

The ailing matriarch and her attorneys were 'unprepared to go forward' with a full-blown trial on Tuesday.

The Jehovah's Witness had previously claimed the 52-year-old son of her estranged husband Joe Jackson's brother Luther abused her and stole $40K from her accounts as her caretaker and driver since 2009.

Jackson was allegedly so afraid of Trent she fled to London for two months to be with her daughter Janet.

A right royal sum: The mother of Michael Jackson gets a mammoth monthly stipend from the Prince Of Pop's estate
Salome (Royal National Theatre)

Rating:

Ham? Nay! The new Salome at the Royal National Theatre in London is, my dears, superior to ham. This is pulled gammon.

It is artisan-chic fare, so pseudishly elevated  dark-clad figures creaking round a smoke-infested stage to the yowl of Middle Eastern chants  that it is a wonder playwright-director Yael Farber is not prey to incessant nosebleeds.

Salome was the Biblical princess who demanded the head of John the Baptist. History has found her a nasty little minx. Ms Farber, feminist auteur (an auteur is a luvvie with an inflated sense of self-importance), thinks history has been sexist.

What a Carry On! Isabella Nefar and Paul Chahidi in Salome

She presents Sister Salome as a rape victim who plots with John the Baptist to create a political flashpoint to overthrow imperialist Rome. Christianity would not have happened without Salome, argues Farber. Oh. Right. So much for Jesus, then.

The show opens with growly ambient noise  always a bad sign  and Judean caterwauling from two female figures. For the first two minutes I thought, Ooh, thats quite evocative. After another 98 minutes of it, I could have chewed cotton wool.

The script is so bad, it could have been written by Private Eyes resident poet E.J. Thribb (17). Salomes character is split in two. We have her old self, a white-haired crone called Nameless, played by Olwen Fouere with bulging eyes. She stands at the front of the auditorium, bare limbs whitened by lime.

Miss Fouere looks a bit like the late Dick Emery. Nameless talks a lot, her delivery freighted by seriousness. When she eventually has her tongue plucked out it is hard not to cheer.

Young Salome (Salome so-called) is played by Isabella Nefar, silent for the first half of the show. After about 60 minutes she removes her clothes. At a risk of a feminist thunderbolt from Ma Farber, I must say she is jolly fit.

There is jetting dry ice, tableaux of the Last Supper, a John the Baptist (Ramzi Choukair) in a nappy, speaking foreign gibberish, the translated surtitles impossible to read because a ladder is in the way. Paul Chahidi plays King Herod, paddling over young Salome like a Carry On film sex maniac.

A lunatic figure is occasionally to be seen at the back of the stage, walking in slow motion. Maybe it was Miss Farber.

I saw a few walkouts. A bloke to the left of me slept soundly for about half an hour, lucky devil, but woke in time to see the cast take a curtain call, their faces still rigid with pretension.

Occupational Hazards (Hampstead Theatre)

Rating:

We sometimes moan that todays MPs have little experience of life. Tory MP Rory Stewart was formerly a soldier, diplomat and more (he has been a tutor to Princes William and Harry).

In 2003, at the age of 30, he was put in charge of Iraqs Maysan province and tried to persuade warring tribes to adopt nascent democratic rule. In a few months Stewart saw plenty of life. Occupational Hazards is an earnest, watchable stage adaptation of a book he wrote about that experience. Turbanned sheikhs rage at each other. The British Army looks on, worldly but understaffed. In the middle of the fist-shaking Iraqis, as they surge with what a psychiatrist might call unresolved issues, stands the slim, boyish figure of Stewart, played by Henry Lloyd-Hughes.

The storys chief merit is historical. It dramatises an impossible task: the West telling Iraqis they must bend to democracy.

Adaptor Stephen Brown and director Simon Godwin serve up a tidy, tight-clipped evening (about 100 minutes long). Mr Lloyd-Hughes is watchable, but underplays the real Stewarts twinkly humour and his personal ambition. Solid support comes from John Mackay, Johndeep More, Waj Ali, Vincent Ebrahim and Aiysha Hart among others.

Rory Stewart, now an International Development Minister, was admirably honest in his book about the Wests political failure in Iraq. He is a good egg and a credit to our elite. But stage drama demands deeper analysis of the central human character. Im not sure we have that here.
Morocco To Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure

Rating:

This is more like it  a voyage to strange lands with a companion who is a genuine traveller, not some smug comedian on an all-expenses-paid junket.

Writer Alice Morrison was exploring the Atlas Mountains of North Africa in Morocco To Timbuktu: An Arabian Adventure (BBC2)  and she didnt bring her ego along as extra baggage.

It was a welcome change from the likes of stand-up comics Ed Byrne and Dara O'Briain on their excursion to Malaysia at the weekend, where they did nothing but whinge about the transport and snigger at the local customs.

Alice made an expert guide. She not only lives in Marrakech, but is an endurance runner well used to the tough terrain bordering the Sahara.

We didnt have to listen to her moaning about why she missed her hotel bed or how she suffered for the sake of television.

'Alice made an expert guide. She not only lives in Marrakech, but is an endurance runner well used to the tough terrain bordering the Sahara'

When she woke on the stony ground, in a Berber tent more than a mile up the mountainside, and told us it was deathly cold, she wasnt complaining. She was simply stating a fact.

This was the first leg of a trek across the desert to the fabled city of gold, Timbuktu, along the so-called salt roads that brought merchants to Africas ancient economic centre. It was an almost mythical quest, filled with sights that belonged in a fairy tale.

In the marketplace of her home town, she listened to a toothless storyteller spinning fables of the untold wealth buried beneath the sands.

Then she went shopping at the butchers stall, where a camels head swung from a pole above the counter.

She bought a few flakes of fat from the unfortunate animals hump, which looked like a giant scoop of lard.

Not afraid to get her hands dirty, Alice then discovered how those impossibly supple leather goods on sale in the souk are made.

First, she stripped the hairs off cowhide with gypsum, then trampled the skins in vats of pigeon excrement. It was primitive and highly effective  thank heavens we couldnt smell it.

As heavily laden mules wove their way through the cobbled streets, and Alice broke the ice on bowls of water to splash her face before watching the freezing dawn, it was all impossibly romantic. Youd be a brave traveller to want to experience all this for yourself, but to see a seasoned explorer on the trail did ignite the imagination.

Thats why we need presenters like Alice Morrison  not self-satisfied show-offs taking a sabbatical from cheesy panel games. One quibble: since most of the people she met were Berber nomads, who have lived in this part of the world for thousands of years longer than the Arabs, why was this subtitled An Arabian Adventure?

Joanna Lumley's Postcards

Rating:

Joanna Lumley with villagers in Greece

Just as engaging a tour guide was Joanna Lumley, who supplied another recap of her travels in Joanna Lumleys Postcards (ITV), this time on the Greek islands. Joanna is less eager to fling herself into the mucky jobs  and flatly refused to milk the mountain sheep on Crete, for instance.

But her enthusiasm for seeing the world is unfeigned  and the more glamorous, the better.

She looked utterly at ease on the beautiful sailing yacht Christianne B, scudding between the islets. If the shipping magnate who owned the boat had proposed an elopement, he might have been in luck.

Joannas adventures are the sort that ordinary viewers would love to share.

The trouble is, most of us could never dream of affording them.
She may be back in the UK after enjoying an exotic trip to the Caribbean.

But that hasn't been stopping Kimberley Garner from posting throwback photos from her idyllic holiday in Anguilla.

The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, showed off her enviable figure in a cut-out leopard print swimsuit on a white sand beach in an Instagram snap, proving that she's pining for the tropical paradise.

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Holiday snap: Kimberley Garner posted a throwback photo in a cut-out leopard print swimsuit on a white sand beach in idyllic Anguilla on Thursday as she pined for her recent trip

The entrepreneur beamed at the camera and knelt on the beach as the sun set behind her on the remote island.

Kimberley showed off her cleavage in the plunging neckline, while cut-outs around her waist displayed her bronzed skin.

The star, whose windswept blonde hair floated in the breeze, captioned the photo: 'Golden Labrador.'

In another photograph, Kimberley posed beside the ocean, flinging her head back as she stood on a balcony overlooking open water.

Green with envy: The former Made In Chelsea star, 27, posed in a green and white swimsuit on a balcony overlooking the ocean in another holiday picture

Carefree: The swimsuit designer showed off her perfect physique when she leapt into the sky, throwing her hands into the air

The model, who was wearing a green and white swimsuit - which she designed - steadied herself against her balcony as she arched her back and bent her right knee.

Her balcony boasted enviable views of the ocean, a swimming pool and a rocky beach.

Kimberley's fans were quick to praise the star's good looks, which proved to be equally enviable.

One wrote, 'Beautiful girl, and a beautiful suit', while another said, 'I can't stop looking at you, Kimberley. You've a beautiful body and that suit shows you off marvelously!'

Caribbean queen: Last Friday, Kimberley treated fans to another enviable glimpse at her idyllic surroundings on the annual West Indies trip

Bit of a stretch: In a second shot, the London based swimwear designer kept her eyes trained on the camera as she extended her arms and arched her back

Last Friday, Kimberley showed off her undeniably toned physique in a black swimsuit while leaning against a colourfully painted veranda during her annual trip.

Offering the camera a coquettish glance, Kimberley was in fine form, sipping from a bottle of mineral water ahead of an off-road trek across the eastern Caribbean island.

Captioning the image, she wrote: 'Today, we're exploring.'

This time, budding musician Tallia Storm was just one of Kimberley's admirers, and simply wrote: 'Slay sista,' beneath the picture.

Soaking up the sunshine:Kimberley looked worlds away from the chilly climes of her native London

Baby got back: The swimsuit-clad beauty also gave a glimpse of her perky bottom as she modelled her swimsuit line

Speaking to MailOnline, Kimberley recently admitted that her annual pilgrimage to the tropical island will soon be coming to an end.

'It's a very small and isolated island. I visit every year - have even learnt to walk here,' she said. 'I'm over for a family wedding as was bridesmaid. I'm coming back to London in a few days and very excited to be coming back!'

Shots of herself basking in the balmy sunshine on the picturesque island's sandy beaches have filled up her feed recently.

Being a swimwear designer, the blonde has also been serving as her own model for her high-cut patterned bathing suits.

'Ice cream and cheesebugers in paradise!' Kimberley has been filling up her feed with teasing pictures of her break

Poser: The leggy blonde stood proudly, flaunting her taught abs and endless pins in a busty white bikini top and tiny denim shorts, her tresses swept on top of her head

Kimberley hasn't appeared on the show that made her famous - Made In Chelsea - since its third season, where she was seen causing a stir amongst the likes of Spencer Matthews, Jamie Laing and Richard Dinan.

Eventually she and Richard became a couple, with the businessman whisking Kimberley off on romantic dates and eventually a holiday to Italy.

Ollie Locke, Binky Felstead and Cheska Hull ended up tagging along, which resulted in an almighty tiff between Cheska and Kimberley over Richard.

Kimberley didn't return to the show for the fourth season and hasn't featured since.

Delicious: Taking to her Instagram stories, Kimberley fleshed out the post with a video of her chomping on a huge burger, a glint in her eye as she did so

It's been a while...: Kimberley hasn't appeared on MIC since its third season, where she was seen causing a stir amongst the likes of Spencer Matthews, Jamie Laing and Richard Dinan
Kim Kardashian took daughter North to an ice cream museum on Thursday, along with an entourage.

The reality star, 36, was flaked by bestie Jonathan Cheban, assistants and security while Keeping Up With The Kardashians cameras were naturally never far from the mother daughter duo while grabbing the sweet treat.

Kim flashed her famous curves into a clingy spaghetti-strap black knit dress for the outing and accessorized with an eye-catching gold double pendant while superstar offspring North looked super trendy.

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Treat: Kim Kardashian poured her curves into a clingy sleeveless black knit dress as she treated daughter North to an ice cream cone on Thursday in LA

The form-fitting number fell to mid-calf and she went bare-legged in black sandals.

North, who turns four next month, wore an overall dress over a black t-shirt and sported black sneakers.

Not with the pair were Kim's husband and North's father Kanye West nor North's younger brother Saint, one.

But they did have the company of Kim's older sister Kourtney, 38, and her children Mason, seven, and Penelope, four.

Stunning silhouette: Her outfit of choice stretched over her famously ample derriere as her long fake hair flew out behind her

Entourage: The reality star, 36, was accompanied by bestie Jonathan Cheban, assistants, security and cameras for her family's Keeping Up With The Kardashians reality TV show

For the cameras: The group paid a visit to the Museum Of Ice Cream in Downtown Los Angeles to shoot scenes for KUWTK

Famous tot: North, who turns four next month, wore an overall dress over a black t-shirt with black snakers

Not now: Little North tried to hold her mom's hand but Kim was holding her cell phone

Fed up: Kim's child looked slightly bored of schlepping around the shops

What's up? Kim was attentive with her little girl

The family group and their entourage paid a visit to the Museum Of Ice Cream in Downtown Los Angeles.

They traveled in a small convoy of luxury vehicles.

Kim was seen exiting from the rear of an upmarket silver sedan while Kourtney appeared to be driving herself and her kids in a dark luxury car.

Kim was in full contour make-up mode and also accessorized with eye-catching gold double pendants

Standing tall: Her high heels added inches to her height as she strode past a large SUV that was part of the entourage's convoy

Looked after: The wife of rapper Kanye West also made sure to keep a burly bodyguard close by after beefing up her personal security following her Paris robbery ordeal last October

Her best accessory: North is her eldest child with Kanye; the couple also share son Saint, one

Woman in black: Kim strutted her stuff in a sleek dark number

Bared some skin: Kourtney Kardashian was also on the ice cream outing, flashing her midriff in a crop top and leggings paired with a burgundy jacket

Family affair: Kourtney, 38, brought along her two eldest kids - Mason, seven, and Penelope, four. Their father is her estranged partner Scott Disick

Her eldest: Mason wore shorts and a white t-shirt along with a gold name pendant and slip-on shoes

Naturally, Kim shared her outing with her social media followers.

She posted videos to Snapchat from inside the location as they enjoyed a tour.

Later on in the outing, Kim and Kourtney were joined by younger sister Khloe, 32.

By design: Kim's hour glass shape seemed as defined as ever

Trifecta: Later on, Kim and Kourtney were joined by younger sister Khloe Kardashian, 32

Odd one out: Khloe, like Kourtney, wore skintight athletic leggings with a baggy jacket leaving Kim looking a tad overdressed compared to her siblings

Close: The three held hands

Pink lady: Kim's daughter was treated to an ice cream on the warm spring day

Coming through: The tot squeezed past her aunt, the car door and the wall

Meanwhile, Caitlyn Jenner recently confirmed that she and Kim, her former stepdaughter whom she parented from childhood, are no longer speaking.

It comes after Kim opted to take her mother Kris's side after Caitlyn published her tell-all in which the transgender celebrity dissed on her marriage to Kris with whom she shares two biological daughters, Kendall and Kylie Jenner.

'To be honest with you, I really havent talked to (Kim) in a long time,' she told Australia's Today show. 'Ive kind of let everything calm down. So I kind of keep my distance.'

'Any time I express my opinion, you know, with my family, theres always challenges in doing that,' she added.

Posted: Kim naturally shared the outing with her fans on Snapchat complete with an ice cream cone emoji
Frantz (12A)

Verdict: Post-war melodrama

Rating:

French director Francois Ozons lovely-looking, nicely acted, but ultimately rather soppy romantic melodrama whisks us back to a time when France and Germany werent the best of buddies, as they are today.

The film is set just after World War I, and the people of each country hate the other for what they consider to be the wholesale slaughter of their best and brightest young men.

Pierre Niney and Paula Beer in Frantz, pictured, a film that focuses on the aftermath of the First World War in a small German town

In a small German town, Anna (Paula Beer) is mourning the death, shortly before the end of hostilities, of her fiance Frantz.

She lives with Frantzs parents, who treat her like a daughter. Then a mysterious Frenchman arrives, claiming to have been Frantzs best friend in Paris before the war.

This is Adrien (Pierre Niney), a sensitive musician whose emotions are as tightly strung as his violin bow. In due course he is embraced by Anna, and by Frantzs parents.

But who is he really and why is he there? I should think most audiences will work this out long before Anna.

Beer's Anna, right, is in mourning for her fiance Frantz but is intrigued by the arrival of mysterious Frenchman Adrien, left, played by Niney

The film is stylishly shot in black and white, morphing into colour whenever a character is in danger of having a good time.

But it is overlong, and I began to tire about half-way through of the soulful, doleful Adrien, who moons around with such fluttery, fragile sensitivity that it is a wonder his pencil moustache doesnt begin to droop with the rest of him.

Nonetheless, Beer, switching effortlessly between German and French, and still only 22, gives a beguiling performance.

And the film has valid things to say about war, national enmities and the nature of forgiveness.
She broke her silence on reportedly 'tense' exchange with Hubby Chris Hemsworth on Friday.

And just hours later, Elsa Pataky, 40 bundled up the couple's twin boys Sasha and Tristan and opted to fly back to their Byron Bay home in a private helicopter.

Taking to Instagram, she shared an adorable snap of the three-year-olds engrossed in the stunning view from outside their helicopter window, adding the caption 'Can't see papa!'

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Looking fly! Elsa Pataky bundled up her twin boys Sasha (L) and Tristan (R) and opted to fly back to their Byron Bay home in a private helicopter on Friday

In the snap, Long-haired son Sasha had his blonde hair in a ponytail, clutching a furry soft toy friend as his brother joined him in gazing upon the Australian beach town's idyllic, crystal-clear blue water.

Tristan also held a large soft toy, as adult-sized headphones sat on his shorter-styled locks, allowing the twins to hear their stunning mother and the pilot.

Their cute little feet barely hung off the edge of leather helicopter set, while the headrest towered over their growing frames.

Clearly in better spirits in the wake of controversy surrounding hubby Chris, 33, the Spanish model added the hashtags 'another adventure,' 'fun' and 'traveling family.'

Broken! The flight came just hours after the 40-year-old Spanish beauty broke her silence on a very public and 'tense' exchange with Hubby Chris Hemsworth

Elsa also took to her Instagram story to document the flight in progress, revealing what life was like from the front seat.

The beauty and her hubby's elder daughter India Rose, 5, appeared to be sitting on her mum's lap as she shared video from high above a dense green forest with the beach visible on the horizon.

'See you soon Byron!' she captioned the clip, but sadly it looks like the family wouldn't be heading for a swim, with the footage revealing it was a rainy, overcast day.

Sky high! Elsa also took to her Instagram story to document the flight in progress, revealing what life was like from the front seat.

Shotgun! The beauty and her hubby's elder daughter India Rose, 5, appeared to be sitting on her mum's lap as she shared video from high above a dense green forest

No swimming! 'See you soon Byron!' she captioned the clip, but sadly it looks like the family wouldn't be heading for a swim, with the footage revealing it was a rainy, overcast day

The flight came after the blonde beauty broke her silence over photos that appeared to show her having a heated exchange with hubby Chris, along with a report claiming 'tension is brewing' between the couple.

The mother-of-three, took to Instagram on Thursday to announce the pair were still very much in love.

Brewing: Elsa broke her silence over photos that appeared to show her having a heated exchange with hubby Chris, along with a report claiming 'tension is brewing' between the couple

Elsa, who captioned her bilingual post with a laughing-face emoji, adding hashtags: '#seeyoutomorrow' and ' #loveyou'.

She used a promotional picture of the actor pointing with a brooding stare in a Tag Heuer watch advert, with the slogan 'don't crack under pressure.'

Playing on the theme, Elsa wrote: 'Don't worry love, I would be mad too if some magazines keep trying to keep us apart.'

In love! The mother-of-three, took to Instagram on Thursday to announce the pair were still very much in love, using a pic of her hunky hubby with the slogan 'don't crack under pressure'

The svelte star is referring to pictures that recently surfaced of the Hollywood couple in NW Magazine looking displeased with each other in Byron Bay.

Elsa is seen looking a little unhappy with her husband as sources claimed 'tension is brewing' between the power couple to the magazine.
Film-maker and actor Idris Elba goes behind the camera on Monday to direct his first feature movie.

Yardie is a major project about a Jamaican gangsta out to crack the cocaine market in North London  but Elba wants it to be a morality tale, not a glamorising piece.

He has picked Aml Ameen  a British actor who has worked on both sides of the Atlantic in films such as Kidulthood and The Maze Runner  to play the lead role of D, a small-time dealer who slips into London from Kingston, Jamaica, on a fake passport.

Gangsta roles: Idris Elba (left) and his star in Yardie, Ami Ameen

He hatches a plan to emulate the other drug kingpins, and then take over their territory, using a campaign of cold-blooded terror.

Theres a powerful exchange in the films source material (the cult novel of the same name by Victor Headley) where D meets Piper, a sage Rastafarian who bemoans the fact that the streets of London are flowing with blood because the calculating D wants to remove all rivals and enemies. Permanently.

Its Ds way of doing business. But Piper, speaking in Jamaican patois, questions Ds methods: One time, if two man have a quarrel, dem would fight it out with dem strength.

At the worst, one would get cut up but noting more. Nowadays, its pure killing.

Its noteworthy that Elba is playing Piper, a man trying to eschew violence.

And its of further significance that the project  set in the Eighties  is being made at a time of worsening turf violence in certain districts of London.

Elba and his collaborators at Warp Films, StudioCanal and BBC Films, have cast some superb young actors. They include Naomi Ackie  who appears alongside Florence Pugh in the acclaimed BFI movie Lady Macbeth; Duramaney Kamara, who was in Leo Butlers play Boy at the Almeida Theatre last year; Anthony Foster, who was in A Midsummer Nights Dream at the Haymarket (as well as Elbas music video, Unstoppable); and Calvin Demba, sublime in Patrick Marbers play, Red Lion, at the National two years back.

Shantol Jackson will play Ds Baby mama.

Elba will take his Yardie cast and crew to shoot on locations in Jamaica in late June.

Pinocchio should be far from wooden...

Hes got no strings, but Joe Idris-Roberts will still be playing the title role in Pinocchio, the musical based on the classic Walt Disney film, which is being directed at the National Theatre by John Tiffany  the man who also put Harry Potter on the stage.

Idris-Roberts played the mischievous marionette in some workshops Tiffany put on in recent weeks that were designed to see which bits of the show, written by Dennis Kelly, worked and which were, well, wooden.

Joe Idris-Roberts will be playing the title role in Pinocchio. The musical is based on the classic Walt Disney film (right)

The National declined to comment about Idris-Robertss casting in the musical, which will begin performances at the Lyttelton Theatre on December 1, and feature such great songs as Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee and When You Wish Upon A Star from the movie, plus numbers from the Disney back catalogue.

But I heard folks left the workshops giving a little whistle.

Hello sailors! The rocking rival that will make waves

Director and choreographer Drew McOnie said some people think  wrongly  that On The Town is a period piece. But the 70-year-old musical was certainly not showing its age during rehearsals in the East End this week.

When the show came out in 1945, the creators were young, McOnie explained, referring to Jerome Robbins (the choreographer), Leonard Bernstein (who wrote the score) and Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who penned the book and lyrics.

I wanted to create something that feels as immediate as the original, he told me after I watched his cast  including Danny Mac, Fred Haig, Samuel Edwards, Siena Kelly, Lizzy Connolly and Miriam-Teak Lee  being put through their paces in some exhilarating dance routines.

Exhilarating: The cast of musical On The Town strike a pose during rehersals

These included the opening number where three sailors (Mac, Haig and Edwards), who havent had female company for heaven knows how long, go on shore leave in search of girls on Manhattan.

Youve got three, puppy-like sailors  all in white  and the women have a wonderful time corrupting them, McOnie observed.

Connolly, as Hildy the female taxi-driver, saucily begs Chip (Haig) to Come Up To My Place.

Its very current: shes not being wooed  shes wooing him! Connolly told me, while mentioning something about dating sites Tinder and Bumble.

Its great to portray these strong women, agreed Ms Lee, who plays Claire, an anthropologist.

Ms Kelly said her character, Ivy, is seen as a cute little girl. But, she insisted: Ivys no damsel in distress!

Wheres a guy to go after that? Along with the women, obviously.

Mac said the three servicemen discover that, in New York, the women are wearing the trousers. Theyve been running the town! he said.

He also made the (valid) point that, in letting off steam during their shore leave, the friends are celebrating the fact that theyre still alive.

Edwards added that the visit changes the men. His character, Ozzie, boasts initially that he wants to be with eight women. But hes shown that theres more to life; and he goes away to war with a sense of real love in his heart.

Or, as Haig put it, sometimes plans fall by the wayside in the most wonderful way.

Then he used the phrase maximum enjoyment.

Thats pretty much what I felt just watching that rehearsal. The real thing will begin performances at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park on May 19.

Colin Morgan  Merlin in the BBCs hit series, will star with Ellie Kendrick (Meera in Game Of Thrones), Sian Clifford, Bayo Gbadamosi and Kae Alexander in Branden Jacobs-Jenkinss blistering drama Gloria, which is being directed by Michael Longhurst at Hampstead Theatre from June 15.

Jacobs-Jenkins has a keen eye for human behaviour (he studied anthropology at Princeton). And Gloria, which is set in the airless office of a New York-based magazine, is a closely observed shocker about what can go wrong in a hothouse environment.
She nursed him back to health after a terrifying stint in intensive care for a severe chest infection in March.

And Sir Bruce Forsyth's wife of 34 years Wilnelia was seen for the first time at a public event since the health scare out in London on Thursday night.

The Puerto Rican former beauty queen, 59 - also known as Lady Forsyth-Johnson - showed off her timeless beauty as she oozed understated elegance as she mingled with the stars at the annual Fortnum & Mason Food and Drink Awards.

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Rare: Sir Bruce Forsyth's wife of 34 years Wilnelia was seen for the first time at a public event since the health scare in March out in London on Thursday night

The 1975 Miss World winner wore a midnight blue silk shirt, embellished with a Chanel pearl string necklace.

Showcasing her slender pins, she teamed it with a pair of figure hugging metallic trousers, accentuating her height with a pair of boots.

And wearing her glossy raven locks loose, she added a touch of lipgloss and a pair of pearl earrings, letting her natural beauty do the talking.

Ageless: The Puerto Rican beauty queen, 59- also known as Lady Forsyth-Johnson, showed off her timeless beauty as she oozed understated elegance

Chic: The 1975 Miss World winner wore a midnight blue silk shirt, embellished with a Chanel pearl string necklace

In March, Sir Bruce Forsyth's daughter revealed that the TV legend is 'doing great' after spending five days in intensive care with a chest infection.

The 89-year-old former Strictly host returned to his Surrey home after his hospital stay and was nursed by Wilnelia.

The TV icon's daughter, Julie Forsyth, from his first marriage to Penny Calvert, told The Sunday People that the family is 'rallying' around the ailing presenter.

'I have been to see him and he's doing great,' she told the publication.

'He is getting over a chest infection so it's a bit difficult, but he's doing good.'

Bruce is dad to Julie, Debbie, Louisa, Laura, Jonathan and Charlotte. He also has nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

On the mend: Sir Bruce Forsyth's daughter Julie revealed in March that the star was 'doing great' after his stint in hospital

Caring daughter: Bruce's daughter Julie revealed that the broadcaster's six children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren had rallied around the ailing star

Loving wife: The 89-year-old legendary entertainer was nursed back to health at his Surrey home by Wilnelia (the pair are pictured above in 2014)

Julie said all the relatives had been by his side over the past few weeks.

'We were all up there, all the girls rallied round, and his son.'

Fans feared for the entertainer when he was rushed to hospital with a severe chest infection.

A friend of the national treasure said: 'He was rushed to St Peter's and put straight into ICU because of his age, and the nature of his illness. He was in a lot of pain, but has been very stoical throughout.

Family man: Sir Bruce's family have rallied around - here his daughters Laura (left) and Charlotte and son Jonathan pose with the legendary broadcaster after he was knighted in 2011

The veteran broadcaster was forced to cancel several public outings last year due to poor health.

In 2015, Sir Bruce underwent keyhole surgery following a fall at his home in October 2015 after two aortic aneurysms were discovered.

Although he was expected to take two months to recover, the process took much longer.

Indeed, he did not appear out in public at all during 2016, and was not well enough to attend the funerals of close friends Ronnie Corbett and Terry Wogan.
Lily James liked the idea that the heroine she plays in the long-awaited film version of best-seller The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society was an independent woman.

In the movie, which has the less cumbersome working title of Guernsey, Lily plays Juliet Ashton, a columnist and writer in 1946 London.

Shes stuck writing these whimsical columns, making light of the war in a Keep Calm and Carry On kind of way, and she feels quite trapped, the actress said of the central character in the picture, which is being directed by Mike Newell.

Costume drama: Lily James in Guernsey, her third wartime film in a row

But once Juliet begins corresponding with people in Guernsey  and hearing how they coped during the war, when the Nazis occupied their island  she finds fulfilment, and a story worth telling.

Many found the book by Mary Ann Shaffer utterly captivating; and a lot of time went into developing the film, and then finding the finance and the right cast for it.

Those who signed up include Jessica Brown Findlay, Penelope Wilton and Matthew Goode. Yes, like Lily, all of Downton Abbey lineage.

Others playing various roles include Tom Courtenay, Glen Powell, Michiel Huisman and Katherine Parkinson.

Lily during filming. In the movie, which has the less cumbersome working title of Guernsey, Lily plays Juliet Ashton, a columnist and writer in 1946 London

Guernsey is the third war-themed film Lily has shot recently.

In The Exception, she plays a Dutch woman who may or may not be working with the Resistance. Last month, an image from that movie  of her unclothed  was leaked, accompanied by smutty headlines.

Though initially horrified, she was able to make a joke about it when we met  consoling herself with the thought that at least her derriere might have wound up being used for chip paper  she loves chips.

The other film was Darkest Hour, in which she portrays one of Winston Churchills executive assistants. Hed be having a bath, while shed be sat on the other side of the door, taking down his speeches, she told me.

Lily James liked the idea that the heroine she plays in Guernsey was an independent woman

Gary Oldman  thanks to amazing make-up and prosthetics  looks the mirror image of the great man.

I feel like I only met Gary a handful of times, Lily said. The rest of the time, I never saw him out of his full prosthetics. He was completely transformed.

This latest project, Guernsey, brought home to her that, for all its horrors, the war made women more independent.

And many of those independent women were very brave indeed.
She showed off her bum lift and the results of her full body liposuction at the British Asian Awards last week.

And Abi Clarke flaunted her curves once again in a fitted black dress on Wednesday.

The former TOWIE star, 25, wore a low-cut jersey dress to Fubar Radio in London, where she posed with socialite Lizzie Cundy.

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Revealing: Former TOWIE star Abi Clarke showed off her new surgically enhanced curves in a skin-tight black dress and thigh-high boots as she posed with Lizzie Cundy on Wednesday

Abi paired her revealing dress with a pair of thigh-high black boots and accessorised with a simple necklace and watch.

She wore her highlighted hair down, which fell in loose waves over her shoulders.

Lizzie, 47, left little to the imagination in a lacy black top with a crimson bra.

The TV presenter wore the top with a choker, wet-look leggings and a pair of strappy black heels.

Former reality star: Abi, 25, wore her highlighted hair down, which fell in loose waves over her shoulders

Lizzie wore her raven hair poker straight and accessorised with a bracelet and rings.

The personality interviewed Abi with Stephen Leng on Fubar Radio about her botched surgery.

In April, she was spotted returning from Turkey, where she had a full body liposuction.

Results of surgery: Abi showed off her newly acquired curves at the British Asian Awards in London last Friday after she got a bum lift and had full body liposuction

Putting a damper on it: When she was spotted returning from Turkey, where she had her procedures done, she had leaking kneecaps

After the procedure, she was spotted at Stansted Airport with leaking kneecaps.

Lizzie, who appears on This Morning, also met up with model and TV personality Jo Wood at Fubar Radio.

Jo, 62, who used to be married to Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, rocked out in a plaid shirt and a pair of shiny jeans.

Short-lived reality career: She appeared on TOWIE in March 2013, but had left the reality show by the end of the month

Racy: Lizzie (pictured with Jo Wood), 47, left little to the imagination in a lacy black top with a crimson bra, which she paired with wet-look leggings

The Strictly contestant paired her shirt with a plain black t-shirt and finished off the look with heeled black boots.

Her blonde locks fell naturally and she lined her eyes with thick black kohl.

On Friday May 5 Abi, who has rebranded herself as a nutritionist, showed off the results of her surgery as she attended The Asian Awards held at London Hilton Park Lane in London.

Rock chic: Jo Wood rocked out in a plaid shirt and a pair of shiny jeans, which she wore with a plain black t-shirt and black heeled boots

Leaving little to the imagination: Lizzie wore her raven hair poker straight and accessorised with a bracelet and rings

She appeared on TOWIE in March 2013, but had left the reality show by the end of the month.

After she left the constructed reality show, she was criticised for getting her breasts enhanced.

Even though she is now a nutritionist, the former reality star still advocates surgery.
She lost half her body weight to get her health back on track.

And Last Resort star Sharday McAvoy's has now revealed she required breast implants and a full reconstruction after her staggering 60kg slim-down.

'They looked like empty ball sacks,' the 27-year-old told to The Fix, confessing her lack of chest left her confidence diminished.

New lease on life: The Last Resort star Sharday McAvoy's has revealed she required breast implants and a full reconstruction after her staggering 60kg slim-down

The blonde bombshell told the publication that because she lost her weight steadily, there was no excess skin anywhere else on her body.

'Except my boobs,' she revealed. 'Honestly they looked like empty ball sacks - that's why I had them done.'

Four months before the show the mother-of-one sought help from a cosmetic surgeon, who undertook extensive work to help restore the beauty's bust.

Diminished: The blonde bombshell told the publication that because she lost her weight steadily, there was no excess skin anywhere else on her body, except her breasts

'It wasn't just an implant...There was nothing left, I had no boobs whatsoever - which is why I did it,' Sharday explained.

'Because my confidence was shot in regards to how my boobs looked.'

However, before her weight loss, Sharday said she still felt confident rocking a skimpy two-piece.

'I was still confident at 120kg, I still rocked a bikini, I owned it,' she told OK! Magazine.

But that's not to say the reality star isn't more happy with her new figure.

'Being fat was crap. I was bullied in high school. Then I got out of high school and I was like, "I don't want to be like that, it's not who I am."'

It was just this week when Sharday revealed she was once an obese, unhappy teenager who gorged on meat pies to hide away from the pain of being bullied.

Weight loss: It was just this week when Sharday revealed she was once an obese, unhappy teenager who gorged on meat pies to hide away from the pain of being bullied

Bullied: Between the ages of 18 and 21, the now-27-year-old lost 60 kilos gradually after being bullied at school

Between the ages of 18 and 21, the now-27-year-old lost 60 kilos gradually after quitting her bad habit of constantly eating 'a s***load' of snacks.

'I remember having a whole loaf of garlic bread for lunch, and a meat pie. Just whatever I could get my hands on to try and fill that pain,' she told TheFix on Monday.

Sharday has quickly become a controversial character on The Last Resort after it was revealed she lied to her partner Josh, 25, about the paternity of their daughter Tyla.

The twosome hope to try and save their romance via the relationship rescue show, which was left severely damaged after Sharday told Josh their baby wasn't his.

Lies: Sharday has quickly become a controversial character on The Last Resort after it was revealed she lied to her partner Josh, 25, about the paternity of their daughter Tyla
They announced their relationship in December last year.

And things between Tim Dormer and Ash Toweel appear to be getting serious.

The Big Brother 2013 winner engaged in a steamy make-out session on the beach with his newly blonde partner.

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From Here to Eternity! Big Brother star Tim Dormer enjoyed a VERY steamy beach romp with partner Ash Toweel at a Sydney beach recently

The former reality star was also spotted wearing a ring on his engagement finger during the outing.

The lovebirds spent a carefree day at a watering hole as they passionately embraced each other.

They spent ample time standing in the crystal clear water as they kissed and canoodled.

Both dressed for a swim in board shorts, the starry-eyed couple affectionately held each other, with Ash happily gripping his partner's behind at one point.

Hold on tight! Both dressed for a swim in board shorts, the starry-eyed couple affectionately held each other, with Ash happily gripping his partner's behind at one point

Carefree: The lovebirds spent a day at a secluded watering hole as they passionately embraced each other

Loved up: The Big Brother 2013 winner engaged in a steamy make-out session at the beach with his newly blonde partner

Intimate: The lovebirds apparently couldn't take their hands off each other

Pause: The two took a brief moment to separate before being drawn to one another again

They eventually took their cavorting onto the shore, where they dried off and donned singlets before they locked lips again standing on the sand.

The twosome proceeded to lay back on their beach towels as they engaged in an even steamier session of passionate embrace.

At one point Tim put on a long-sleeved cardigan for the chillier temperatures.

Evolving: The couple, who share an apartment in Bondi, couldn't keep their hands off each other

Attraction: They eventually took their cavorting onto the shore, where they dried off and donned singlets before they locked lips again standing on the sand

Steamy: The pair were engaged in a steamy cinch

Adventurous: The bubbly television and radio host said he has 'always been fluid in his sexuality' in an interview conducted when he debuted his relationship with Ash in December

The bubbly television and radio host said he has 'always been fluid in his sexuality' in an interview conducted when he debuted his relationship with Ash in December.

He met Ash at a party in 2013 after winning Big Brother.

The couple, who share an apartment in Bondi, appear to be advancing to the next stage of their romance.

Tim, who has said he 'finally found love' with Ash, knew there was 'something special' between the duo after they spent a weekend away together in Byron Bay in 2014.

Representation for Tim at Chic Talent Management has confirmed the couple are yet to get engaged.

'Tim and Ash are not engaged,' offered a spokesperson. 'The ring Tim has is a peace ring.'
Brad Pitt was spotted driving himself in a Tesla as he left his art studio in LA on Wednesday night.

The actor, who has admitted to having sought help for an alcohol addiction, has been taking his mind off his divorce from Angelina Jolie by focusing on sculpture.

Brad, 53, looked a little tired after another long day working on his secret project overseen by his close friend and mentor, British sculptor Thomas Houseago.

At the wheel: Brad Pitt was spotted driving his Tesla after leaving his art studio Wednesday night in Los Angeles

Brad continues to sport a graying goatee and his recent weight loss has given him a more chiseled appearance.

The star revealed in a candid interview with GQ published May 3 that his 'boozing' led to his family being 'ripped apart'.

Angelina filed for divorce last September and has temproary primary custody of their six children - Maddox, 15, Pax, 13, Zahara, 12, Shiloh, 10, and eight-year-old twins Vivienne and Knox.

He told GQ Style magazine that the split was 'self-inflicted' and when asked if the last few months had felt like he was grieving a death, he simply replied: 'Yeah.'

Keeping busy: The actor, 53, has been working on a secret project with mentor and British sculptor Thomas Houseago as he tries to take his mind off his divorce from Angelina Jolie

Meanwhile, his movie star ex was seen meeting for dinner with her father, actor Jon Voight, in Beverly Hills.

Angelina left a sushi restaurant on Wednesday with her dad and kids Pax, Zahara, Vivienne and Knox, E! News reported.

Voight and the Maleficent actress reconciled after years of estrangement in 2010, after Brad convinced her to mend fences.

Support: Meanwhile, Angelina, pictured in March, was seen leaving a restaurant in Beverly Hills Wednesday night with four of her six children with Brad and her father, actor Jon Voight
She's missing Mother's Day and going on a trip to Japan to view Louis Vuitton's 2018 Cruise runway show collection this weekend.

And Roxy Jacenko showed she was a proud supporter of the luxury label on Thursday as she walked through Sydney Airport and headed for her flight to Osaka.

The 36-year-old was dressed in the high-priced brand, and spotted with her wedding ring from husband Oliver Curtis on, after recently ditching during various outings.

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Flying high: Roxy Jacenko was seen heading to Japan on Thursday where she will attend Louis Vuitton's 2018 Cruise runway show

The high-profile publicist wore a black graphic T-shirt emblazoned with the brand's name and additional script as she left the check-in counter alone with her Louis Vuitton carry-on.

Her Horizon 55 Monogram rolling suitcase retails in Australia for $3,750.

She paired her T-shirt with a black sweater that hung over her shoulders, ripped black jeans and white Nike sneakers.

Back on! The 36-year-old was dressed in the high-priced brand, and spotted with her wedding ring from husband Oliver Curtis on, after recently ditching during various outings

She wore minimal makeup for her long-haul flight and her long blonde locks out with a stylish middle part.

Although the married Sweaty Betty PR founder was captured kissing her ex-boyfriend Nabil Gazal earlier this month, she was seen wearing her wedding and engagement rings.

In the past she explained the frequent absence of her wedding bling is due to her frequent gym sessions.

'I dont know who goes to the gym with their jewellery on,' she stated during an interview with Channel Seven's The Morning Show in March.

Casual: The high-profile publicist wore a black graphic T-shirt emblazoned with the brand's name and additional script as she left the check-in counter alone with her Louis Vuitton carry-on

Roxy confirmed to Daily Mail Australia on Thursday she is spending four nights in Japan as a guest of Louis Vuitton.

She celebrated Mother's Day early on Wednesday with her two children Pixie, five, and Hunter, two.

'Pixie is now in school and attendance is important so she cannot travel with me as usual, so she will stay with my mother, Doreen, and her brother Hunter,' she said.

'Pixie is now in school and attendance is important so she cannot travel with me as usual, so she will stay with my mother, Doreen, and her brother Hunter,' she said

Photos of Roxy kissing her ex-boyfriend Nabil emerged last month, and she has so far declined to comment on them.

She previously dismissed speculation she had privately split with her husband Oliver before his imprisonment last year.

Oliver could be released as early as June 23 if he qualifies for good behaviour.
Denzel Washington got his feet wet on the set of his upcoming crime drama in Los Angeles Thursday.

The 62-year-old actor was smiling as cameras rolled during the seaside shoot, with a relaxed hairdo with a patterned merlot red shirt with black shorts with blue checker patterns. He has glasses on for some of the shoot.

The charismatic entertainer seemed to get the chills as he waded up to his stomach in the Pacific Ocean, stopping by to chit-chat with an ice cream vendor at one point.

Superstar of the sea: Denzel Washington, 62, was snapped emerging from the Pacific Ocean in LA Thursday while filming an upcoming thriller formerly titled Inner City

The film - which is written and directed by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dan Gilroy - was originally titled Inner City, but that title has since been pulled.

It's 'set in the underbelly of the overburdened Los Angeles criminal court system,' according to Sony, with Washington playing a standout lawyer named Roman Israel.

Fun, fun, fun: The actor smiled as he waded up to his stomach in the water on the California day

Snack time? The Hollywood veteran was snapped perusing the choices from an ice cream vendor

Chilly! The star shook off some chills as he waded in the waves as cameras rolled on his movie

In the film, the attorney is recruited by a 'cutthroat lawyer' played by Colin Farrell, who looks to sign him on to his firm after his business partner dies.

A course of events lands Israel in a crisis situation in the film, which also features Hugo Armstrong, Ashton Sanders, Andrew T. Lee and Brittany Ishibashi.

Momentum: Denzel is coming off critical and commercial success for his directorial and acting efforts in last year's Fences

Repeat engagement: Washington has played a lawyer many times in his career, most notably opposite Tom Hanks in 1993's Philadelphia

Washington has played an attorney in a number of previous movies, including the 1990 comedy Heart Condition, the 1991 thriller Ricochet and the 1993 classic Philadelphia.

The 6ft1 actor won his Oscars for 1989's Glory and 2001's Training Day. The latter made news this week after an Orlando, Florida-area lawman was terminated from his position when he re-enacted one of Washington's monologues from the movie as he gesticulated with a gun and stun gun February 16 in front of a trainee.

Former Lake County Deputy Dean Zipes was subsequently let go April 21 in connection with the incident, WESH 2 News reported.
With her super hip style, she fast becoming a fashion darling.

But on Thursday, Sofia Richie went for a more subdued look while fetching dinner with friends in Los Angeles.

At the trendy eatery TAO, the 18-year-old star donned hip camouflage pants and a baggy long-sleeved shirt which oozed cool kid chic.

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Peace and love: Sofia Richie was spotted looking laid back while dining with friends at TAO in Los Angeles on Thursday

The chill fashionista flashed a peace sign at the trendy eatery.

Her look was decidedly low-key, draping her body with a large white shirt that featured Gothic lettering down the sleeves and a bible verse on the front.

She covered her thin legs with a pair of camouflage pants that cinched at her waist with a drawstring.

Laid-back fashionista: The 18-year-old draped her body in a baggy white tee which featured a biblical verse on the front

Dropping verses: The starlet's shirt featured verse 2 Timothy 2:12 which reads, 'If we continue to endure / We shall also share God's throne'

Shady lady: Clearly too cool, the daughter of Lionel kept her sunglasses on after dark

Sofia's trendy accessories made it clear she was on the cutting edge.

Clearly too cool for school, the daughter of Lionel Richie kept her shades on after dark while a pink choker gave the look heaps of nineties sass.

On her feet, Sofia sported chunky Adidas with the brand's classic three stripe design.

Blending in: The starlet tucked her top into her camouflage pants, which cinched at the waist with a drawstring

Sassy: Sofia added some '90s attitude to her look with a cute pink choker while her Adidas looked classic-as-ever

Low profile: She she left the bash and made a beeline for her car, the model kept a low profile

Before Sofia got to enjoy a night out with friends, she endured a trip to the dentist.

At the office, the star had some jitters, sharing a Snapchat which showed her feet and read 'dentist' besides the 'grimacing' emoji.

Later on, she posted a candid selfie which showed her dentist hard at work with the words 'lol help me' written on top.

A geo-filter at the top reads 'WeHo', a local nickname for West Hollywood.

Guest: Restaurateur and reality TV star Lisa Vanderpump was also in attendance at the event

Jumpsuit: Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Taylor Armstrong arrived in a red jumpsuit

Toned: Her off-the-shoulder number was backless, allowing her to show off her toned arms

Casually cool: Veteran singer Macy Gray stepped out looking casually cool in a grey sweater

Black to basics: Jennifer Lopez's ex-boyfriend Casper Smart donned an all-black ensemble

Though she's getting used to life in the spotlight, Sofia is still her daddy's little girl.

Thursday night the California girl posted a sweet tribute to her Hello crooning papa, sharing a black and white picture of the star in a helicopter.

Her caption read, 'So proud of you daddy! You're not only my best friend but the most inspiring person I know.

'Thank you for teaching me how to love unconditionally. I love you, you truly deserve the achievement this weekend.'

Making waves: Musician Macy gave onlookers a friendly wave as she made her exit

Graceful exit: British beauty Lisa displayed the graceful way to enter a car as she left

This is how she rolls: Lisa flashed a grin as she rode off in the luxury white vehicle with her pals

Cleaning her chompers! Before the starlet got to enjoy a night out with friends, she endured a dentist appointment

Dare to share! Of course Sofia made sure to document her dentist appointment on Snapchat
She's getting ready for spring with her floral blouse.

And Keri Russell, 41, looked elegant and pretty as she attended a dinner launch party for the children's clothing website Maisonette.com on Thursday night in New York City.

The mother-of-three was joined by model Karlie Kloss, 24, who opted for an elegant black long-sleeved top and white high-rise dress pants with a large bow.

Flower power: Keri Russell, 41, looked elegant and pretty as she attended a dinner launch party for the children's clothing website Maisonette.com on Thursday night in New York City

Sophisticated: Karlie Kloss, 24, opted for an elegant black long-sleeved top and white high-rise dress pants with a large bow

Keri opted for a much more casual look than Karlie with a pair of light jeans to go with her floral blouse.

She tucked the whimsical shirt into her high-rise jeans and slipped on a pair of black pumps to add a little glamour to her outfit.

The Felicity star wore her light brown hair in an updo along the nape of her neck.

She wore dark eyeliner around her eyes to make them pop and added a shot of color to her face with bright fuchsia lipstick.

Springtime glow: Keri tucked the whimsical shirt into her high-rise jeans and slipped on a pair of black pumps to add a little glamour to her outfit

For her part, Karlie wore her blonde hair down around her shoulders and kept the style straight and simple.

She opted for very little makeup on her gorgeous complexion.

The Victoria Secret model completed her look with pointy black boots and a hunter green clutch.

Stylish night: Maggie chats with Maisonette CEO Sylvana Ward Durrett at the prestigious event

NYC outing: Maggie Gyllenhaal chats with Vogue's Virginia Smith at the event

Anna Wintour and Maggie Gyllenhaal also made appearances at the elegant dinner in the Big Apple to support the children's boutique store.

Maisonette is a site that brings together children't luxury brands and independent boutiques all in the one place.

The company claims it can 'add style to your child's life and simplicity to yours.'

Fashion royalty: Anna Wintour poses with Jet.com's Elizabeth Cordry Shaffer at the Maisonette.com launch party

Fashion sandwich: Anna Wintour was joined at dinner by (from left) Masionette co-founders Luisana Medoza de Roccia and Sylvana Ward Durrett

Glamorous: Wendy Deng looked exquisite in her frilly number

Group shot: (From left) Karlie Kloss, Joshua Kushner and Bertold Zahoran joined Wendi
She is joining Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama at an annual summit.

And supermodel Cindy Crawford looked ready for action on Thursday as she jetted into Washington DC for the Partnership for a Healthier America Summit.

The 51-year-old was on a mission for a good cause as the meeting is focused on ending childhood obesity.

Ready to help! Cindy Crawford looked ready for action on Thursday as she jetted into Washington DC for the Partnership for a Healthier America Summit

Cindy, who is a proponent of healthy living, will be attending the last day of the summit.

The model looked in fine form as she arrived at the country's capitol in casual attire.

The former catwalk star donned a v-neck t-shirt, jeans, and a comfy tan jacket for he day of travel.

Fighting for health: The 51-year-old was on a mission for a good cause as the meeting is focused on ending childhood obesity

In good company: She is joining Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama at an annual summit

Cindy has just returned to the USA with husband Rande Gerber following their fun-filled trip to London to surprise Rande's best pal George Clooney.

The Money Monster actor was left 'totally surprised' after his pals Cindy Crawford and her husband Rande flew over for the weekend to party with him and his 39-year-old wife Amal.

Festivities included a boat ride along the River Thames and Cindy had shared an amusing snap to Instagram where Clooney appeared to be photobombing her and Rande.

Late arrival: Cindy, who is a proponent of healthy living, will be attending the last day of the summit

Muscling in: Cheeky George Clooney photobombed the pair as they enjoyed a boat ride along the River Thames

The 56-year-old couldn't help himself as he saw his friends cuddling up together and George made sure to pull a funny grimace for the camera as he intruded on what would have been an idyllic photograph of the pair.

Although, the supermodel clearly saw the funny side, as she captioned the shot on Instagram: 'We can always count on him for the photobomb.'

She and Rande were in England to celebrate the Ocean Eleven star's 56th birthday.
She's the high-flying PR Queen jetted off to Japan on Friday to view Louis Vuitton's 2018 runway show on a cruise ship.

But just because the boss is away, doesn't mean the staff at her Sweaty Betty firm get to slack off.

Many of the 36-year-old's staff took to Instagram Friday to document the installation of the socialite's lavish new work desk, which was so big it needed to be air-lifted into her office by a crane.

Special delivery! Roxy Jacenko's staff took to Instagram Friday to document the installation of the socialite's lavish new work desk, which was so big it needed to be air-lifted into her office by a crane

The mother-of-two's business will likely also foot the bill for the massive crew of at least eight tradies that were needed to get the desk into the top floor suite.

Images from several of her staff captured the hilarity, with one snap showing the crew struggling to lifting the enormous structure through an open window.

Before the task turned tough, the beauty's employees had some fun, teasing their absent boss for missing out on a bit of eye candy.

Sharing a snap of a group of burly tradies, publicist Holly Asser added the caption 'Look what you're missing @roxyjacenko.'

Absent! The 36-year-old PR Queen wasn't at work Friday, as she's currently in Osaka, Japan as a guest of Louis Vuitton

Moments later, she posted another picture that showed the beam of a large crane being lowered in the direction of Roxy's open office window, as yet another worker helped from inside.

Fellow blonde staffer Brittany Kerin also got in on the fun, revealing the sheer extent of the task by snapping a shot from a window, looking down on the cling-wrapped hunk of wood.

Onlookers had gathered on the adjacent cul-de-sac to witness the desk being lifted into the air by a pair of straps attached to the metal winch.

The crew: Before the task turned tough, the beauty's employees had some fun, teasing their absent boss for missing out on a bit of eye candy

The crew! Moments later, staffer Holly Asser posted another picture that showed the beam of a large crane being lowered in the direction of Roxy's open office window

While the boss is away! Several of the PR Queen's blonde staff documented the epic delivery

Inside, no less than 9 workers huddled around the open window, attempting to pull the special delivery into the office space.

Eight minutes later, the crew finally managed to complete the task, with an image captioned 'Success!!' revealing the furniture had safely reached it's destination.

On Wednesday, Roxy spent her last few hours in Sydney with adorable kids Pixie, 5, and Hunter, 3, celebrating Mother's Day a early in order to work around the busy beauty's schedule.

Huge effort: Fellow blonde staffer Brittany Kerin also got in on the fun, revealing the sheer extent of the task by snapping a shot from a window, looking down on the cling-wrapped hunk of wood

Just a bit of help! Inside, no less than 9 workers huddled around the open window, attempting to pull the special delivery into the office space

Finally! Eight minutes later, the crew finally managed to complete the task, with an image captioned 'Success!!' revealing the furniture had safely reached it's destination

While the kids were left in the care of their grandmother Doreen, their mum took to the skies, touching down in Osaka, Japan, where she'll act as a guest of Louis Vuitton and view their 2018 Cruise runway show collection.

The show is being held this Sunday, which also happens to be Mother's Day in Australia, Canada and the United States.

Roxy confirmed to Daily Mail Australia on Thursday that she would be spending four nights in Japan as a guest of the brand, of which she is a frequent customer.
Simon Cowell's not going to be involved with ABC's reboot of American Idol.

The 57-year-old, speaking with Extra on Thursday, said that he passed on the opportunity to star on the talent program he was a huge part for more than eight years.

'I was asked to do it, and the answer is, "No,"' the British media mogul told the show's correspondent (and his ex) Terri Seymour. 'I have no interest.

Thanks but no thanks: Simon Cowell, pictured earlier this month filming Extra in Hollywood, told the show he's passed on being involved with ABC's American Idol reboot

Simon said that he preferred to let things be, enjoying the success he shared alongside Randy Jackson, Ryan Seacrest and Paula Abdul when the show debuted to huge ratings on Fox in 2002, making an overnight star of its first victor, Kelly Clarkson.

'My memories are when we first started,' he said. 'It was a different time with Randy, Ryan and Paula. You cant recreate that.'

The father-of-one took a 'You can't go home again' mentality toward the franchise, as he was not apart of the show's final six seasons, which saw a revolving door of musical megastars including Mariah Carey, Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez attempting to fill the void he left.

Comfortable: The British mogul dropped the big TV news to his ex, Extra's Terri Seymour

Leading the charge: (L-R) Howie Mandel, Mel B, Heidi Klum and Simon Cowell, seen here in March, are preparing for America's Got Talent's 12th season

'Last time I watched, it was not the same show, just the same name. I left for a reason and I never regretted that.'

The London native remains a mainstay on Americas Got Talent, leading the charge as the show racked up its highest-rated season since 2011. Cowell replaced radio shock jock Howard Stern on NBC's summer program after the 2015 season.

The gang's all here! Original cast members Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul, Cowell and Ryan Seacrest were present for the show's finale last April in Hollywood

Organic chemistry: Cowell said part of the reason he didn't want to return was that he wanted to keep his memories of the original show intact

They go way back: Seacrest and Cowell, seen here in 2003 in NYC, remain atop the media mountain with their multiple endeavors

The show noted that at least one original member of the crew - Seacrest - continues to be in talks with ABC about reprising his hosting role with the returning program, which he stayed with for the duration of its run from 2002 thru last year.

Seacrest, who's since landed alongside Kelly Ripa on the network's Live with Kelly and Ryan, was noncommittal in speaking with Extra about a potential stint on the reboot.

'I would love to do it, but I got this job right now,' he said.
Her highly anticipated superhero movie Justice League will no doubt be an action extravaganza.

But Diane Lane's latest movie, the romantic comedy Paris Can Wait is a decidedly lower-key affair.

But Lane, who plays Superman's adoptive mother, did join Faye Dunaway who starred in the 1984 Supergirl film making the night for DC fans to remember.

Having fun! Diane Lane joined Faye Dunaway at the Paris Can Wait premiere in West Hollywood on Thursday

The 52-year-old Unfaithful star kept things simple in a white, safari-inspired top and skirt by Bottega Veneta that fell to her calves.

The airy, white garment featured utility pockets on either side of the chest and two small, integrated belts with corresponding buckles.

Some nude strappy heels, a gold bracelet and a small charm necklace rounded out the Oscar-nominated actress's premiere night ensemble.

Her chestnut tresses were parted on the right and fell in silky waves just past her shoulders.

Ready for adventure! The 52-year-old Unfaithful star kept things simple in a white, safari-inspired top and skirt by Bottega Veneta that fell to her calves

Ready for her closeup! Some blush, delicate eye make-up and pale crimson lipstick ensured the star glowed on the red carpet

Some blush, delicate eye make-up and pale crimson lipstick ensured the star glowed on the red carpet.

Of course other celebs were on hand for the screening as well, including Hollywood legend Faye Dunaway.

The Chinatown star looked ready for an evening on the town, thanks to her cordial look.

She layered a black blazer with oversize, gold buttons, over a navy blue camisole on top, while a pair of white, pressed trousers completed the sartorially sophisticated outfit.

Smile! Of course other celebs were on hand for the screening as well, including Hollywood legend Faye Dunaway

Classic: She layered a black blazer with oversize, gold buttons, over a navy blue camisole on top, while a pair of white, pressed trousers completed the sartorially sophisticated outfit

Ivory flats with large bows and an elaborate jewel-encrusted necklace rounded out her classic look.

The 76-year-old star appeared remarkably youthful, thanks to subtle make-up and a dash of dark mauve lipstick.

Of course her blonde locks were parted on the left and primped to perfection.

Though she didn't actually co-star in the Paris Can Wait, the Oscar winner has been keeping busy, and has recently completed two feature films, Inconceivable and The American Connection.
They're like two peas in a pod at the best of times.

And Kylie Jenner, 19, and mother Kris, 61, were showing off their cute side on Thursday as they both boarded a jet in matching onesies.

Dressing for comfort, the Jenners were leaving Peru - where they had been on a charity trip - and each wore the same comfy all-in-one scattered with stars.

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Twinning through the air! Kylie Jenner and mother Kris wear matching onesies emblazoned with stars as they board a jet to fly home from Peru

Kylie clutched onto a blanket and sported fuzzy slippers for the journey home.

Kris decided to match her daughter in the exact same outfit and also carried a black blanket with her.

She wore dark sunglasses on her face as she boarded the private jet.

The pair reportedly left their trip early just days after Kylie complained of altitude sickness in the Inca city of Cusco.

She wants her luxurious life back: The duo were seen boarding a private jet in matching star outfits with Kylie holding onto a blanket and wearing fuzzy slippers for the journey home

The mother-daughter duo were in the South American country on a medical trip to support Smile Train, an organization that provides free surgeries to repair cleft pallets for children living in developing countries.

Before giving up early, the mother-daughter duo managed to squeeze in a little sight-seeing.

Kylie later posted Snapchat photos of herself on the airplane snuggled up in her onsie.

She looked relaxed as she played with the Snapchat filters and put a dog face on top of her own.

The KUWTK star appeared to be laying on a bed on the private yet for the photos.

Taking it easy: She later posted Snapchat photos of herself on the airplane snuggled up in her onsie.

Earlier in the day, Kylie was sporting a sequined leather jacket and the same leggings.

She wore her long dark hair down in waves around her shoulders and appeared to be wearing her usual TV makeup.

The 19-year-old beauty mogul spent the day getting acquainted with an alpaca.

Tourist: Kylie seemed more interested in what was going on with her phone than she was learning about the region

Taking photos: Kris was in good spirits earlier in the day as she took photos while exploring the Inca empire

Kylie took to Snapchat to share photos of herself and her friends embracing the animal, as well as cuddling up to a baby goat.

She appears to have gotten better for her trip after suffering from altitude sickness earlier in the week.

Kylie was then shown inhaling supplemental oxygen from a tube connected to a tank.

Having fun: Kylie took to Snapchat to share photos of herself and her friends embracing the animal, as well as cuddling up to a baby goat

Kylie and her mother also visited a medical facility in Lima, Peru on Tuesday on behalf of the charity.

The young reality star is a Smile Train ambassador who last year developed a limited edition shade for her Lip Kit designed for the organization.

Smile Train CEO Susannah Schaefer raved about Kylie's generosity when speaking with the magazine.

'Kylie has a beautiful smile herself, yet we were most impressed with her selflessness, huge heart and extremely generous giving spirit.

'Everyone here at Smile Train, and all of the cleft children around the world that she has helped, couldnt be more grateful.'
Having announced their six month milestone as a couple this week, it seemed Ariel Winter and Levi Meaden were in the mood to celebrate.

The pair stepped out in the evening in West Hollywood where they selected Catch LA to celebrate their six month anniversary.

The pair looked as loved up as ever after dinner at the hot spot.

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Six month mark! Ariel Winter puts on a VERY busty display in a tiny plunging minidress for an anniversary night out with boyfriend Levi Meaden

The Modern Family actress, 19, slipped into a tiny plunging minidress for the night out with Levi - who is ten years her senior.

Flaunting her curves, the sleeveless dress clung to the starlet and dipped into a busty 'U' shape to show off her ample bust.

She wore strappy black heels, embellished with clear jewels, showing off her vibrant red pedicure.

She wore the same shade of brilliant red on her long fingernails too.

Cause to celebrate: The pair stepped out in the evening in West Hollywood where they selected Catch LA to celebrate their six month anniversary

Pretty: She wore her sleek black locks straight around her face and her bare shoulders

She wore her sleek black locks straight around her face and her bare shoulders.

The TV star had layered a heavy black mascara onto her long lashes, and a light red gloss onto her pout.

The rest of her make-up was otherwise fresh.

The pair held hands as they made their way through the street, with Levi sporting an all-black ensemble save for green and black chequered open shirt.

Flawless: The TV star had layered a heavy black mascara onto her long lashes, and a light red gloss onto her pout

On Wednesday's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Winter confirmed she is living with her boyfriend Levi.

'I do have my own house  last year I bought my first house. My boyfriend and I live together,' she told the late night host.

The couple might be on the move, as they were seen checking out an open house in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

'Im the worst wifely person,' Winter said of her skills in the kitchen, insisting that Levi does all of the handy stuff around the house.

Not a wife type: The actress told Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday she's not very wifely and that Levi cooks and handles all of the handiwork at home

In the Instagram post celebrating six months together, Ariel wrote, 'Happy six month anniversary to my horrendous human being/cheese to my peanut butter.'

'I love you baby. Thank you for being so amazing. Here's to many, many more,' she wrote in the gushing message.

The pair were set up by her friend Sterling Beaumon, who co-starred in The Killing with Levi.

It has just been announced that Ariel's show Modern Family has been renewed for seasons nine and ten.

Red carpet debut: They made it official at the SAG awards on January 29, 2017 in LA

Ariel has been transitioning from child star to young adulthood.

Of her co-stars, she says, 'They definitely treat me like an adult. Its weird for them because we were 10 and 11 years old when we started, and now that were all semi-adults, its different.'

In 2015, she was emancipated from her mother Chrisoula Workman after a three year battle.

Claims of emotional and physical abuse were made against Workman and Ariel's older sister Shanelle Gray became her legal guardian.

When asked by Ellen if she or her sister have a relationship with their mother, she replied, 'Neither of us do.'

In 2015, she publicly announced her decision to get breast reduction surgery after dealing with public scrutiny of her F-cup breasts.
She often joins beau Ryan Libbey in an array of scantily-clad holiday snaps - making no secret of their shared love of exercise and one another.

And Louise Thompson was up to her usual tricks once again on Thursday as she shared a number of sizzling snaps from her Greek getaway to entertain her one million Instagram followers, this time with a super soppy snap of the duo.

The 27-year-old Made In Chelsea star posed in a bikini while being cradled by her personal trainer boyfriend, as she admitted she was in 'paradise' before poking fun at her beau's 'man bun' hairstyle.

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Come here you! Louise Thompson was up to her usual tricks once again on Thursday as she shared a number of sizzling snaps from her Greek getaway to entertain her one million Instagram followers, this time with a super soppy snap of the duo

Sun-kissed Louise looked overjoyed to be spending time with her beau as her diminutive frame was cuddled by her enamoured boyfriend.

With both posing in swimwear and showing off their now-famously ripped bodies, the brunette beauty locked lips with Ryan before teasing him about his hair.

After chopping off his 'man-bun' last year, it seems disgruntled Louise was less than pleased to see the return of the debatable do'.

She penned a caption reading: 'paradise found. (and the man bun is back) but I still luv you' - clearly as loved-up as ever.

Sun-kissed: The 27-year-old Made In Chelsea star posed in a bikini while being cradled by her personal trainer boyfriend, while admitting she was in 'paradise' before poking fun at her beau's 'man bun' hairstyle

Back at it: Sun-kissed Louise looked overjoyed to be spending time with her beau as her diminutive frame was cuddled by her enamoured boyfriend

Earlier in the day, Louise posed in a sizzling gold bikini which showed off her taut abs and incredibly tanned skin - the result of her frequent getaways.

She matched the look with a gold wing pendant and assorted bead bracelets, no doubt collected from her many, far-reaching travels.

In another photo, shared a few hours before, Louise put on another stunning display in a turquoise and white two piece.

She wore her lightened locks in tousled curls that fell past her shoulders and tucked one side of her tresses behind her ears to show off her statement earrings.

Stunning: Louise wore her lightened locks in tousled curls as she filled up her newsfeed with pictures of the glorious break

Relaxing: Louise was pictured in a fine knit metallic maxi dress with a risque split later that day, proving that she does spend holiday time out of a bikini, too

Golden girl! Loyal Ryan got behind the camera to snap Louise in a series of gorgeous bikinis

Proving that she does sometimes cover up, a third snap on the same day, shows Louise kicking back in a fine knit metallic maxi dress, with a risque split.

Louise matched the look with matte black Wayfarer sunglasses, that offset her brunette locks.

The reality TV star is on her sixth holiday of the year as she enjoys the weather in Greece with hunky Ryan. She has already jetted off to the Maldives, Sri Lanka, two Paris trips and a Dubai jaunt so far in 2017.

Since the duo have become known for their selfie snapping ways, they looked happy to be back in front of the cameras.

Proving his strength, honed at length in his work as a personal trainer, Ryan lifted his girlfriend in the air while the duo spent time posing, instead of hitting the beach.

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

Good for some! Louise looked absolutely jaw-dropping on her Greek getaway

The duo arrive in paradise over the weekend, letting fans know: 'We arrived in Kefallinia checked into our beautiful room @f_zeen_retreat now time to explore and book some yoga classes.'

Shamelessly promoting the brands using her well-followed social media accounts, the brunette didn't neglect to mention the name of the swimwear she was modelling and the resort at which they were lucky enough to be staying.

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 celebrated daughter Amada's first birthday with wife Eva Mendes, earlier this month.

Therefore it was up to doting dad Ryan Gosling to invest some time in his first-born on Thursday, as he was seen taking out cute two-year-old Esmeralda in Los Angeles.

The Oscar-nominated actor, 36, hoisted his little one up to eye level with one arm and was spotted chatting intently to the toddler during a daddy-daughter day out.

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Devoted: Ryan Gosling cuddled his daughter Esmeralda, two, after a fun day out in Los Angeles on Thursday

The Oscar-nominated actor looked laidback in a graphic blue T-shirt covered with images of motorcycles and a pair of understated brown chinos.

The La La Land star finished off his casual look with a pair of functional brown leather shoes.

His sweet daughter was dressed in butterfly leggings and ballet slippers, hinting at her girlie nature.

Casual look: He wore a silver watch on his right arm and a silver pedant around his neck, as well as a pair of designer sunglasses

Ryan is married to actress Eva, who was absent from the day out, and along with Esmeralda they share another daughter, Amada, who was born in May 2016.

Gosling and Mendes started dating in 2011 after meeting on the set of joint film venture, The Place Beyond The Pines.

Professionally, Ryan this week caused a storm among fans by appearing in a new trailer for the long-awaited sequel Blade Runner 2049 last week.

In the teaser, a bloodied Ryan is seen searching for Harrison Ford in the harrowing landscape of a dystopian future.

Robin Wright is featured as well as she growls: 'That's what we do here, we keep order.'

Together: Ryan started dating his future wife Eva Mendes in 2011 - with whom he shares daughters Esmeralda and Amada - after meeting on the set of The Place Beyond The Pines (picture here together in September 2012)

The teaser opens with a mysterious figure walking alone as it cuts to Gosling holding a gun.

Afterwards, Gosling is walking in a desert landscape as he comes upon a strange towering temple.

Soon Ford approaches with a gun in hand as Gosling is seen screaming.

The teaser ends with Gosling firing his own gun as these words appear: 'See the official trailer in 3 days'.

Build-up: In last week's Blade Runner teaser, a bloodied Ryan is seen searching for Harrison Ford in the harrowing landscape of a dystopian future

Denis Villeneuve, coming off Arrival, directs a screenplay by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green based on the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista and Jared Leto co-star.

The sequel arrives in cinemas on October 6, 2017.
She's been at the centre of drama throughout the first season of The Real Housewives of Sydney.

And now, fan favourite Lisa Oldfield is causing more controversy after skipping a cast photo call on Friday to spend the day at her sons' school Mother's Day lunch.

Speaking with Daily Mail Australia, the 41-year-old revealed she was happy to avoid the photo shoot, calling her co-stars 'deads**t women'.

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Absent: Real Housewives of Sydney star Lisa Oldfield missed a cast photo-shoot Friday, opting to spend the day with her boys rather than her 'deads**t women' co-stars

'It was either "Do you want to spend time with these deads**t women or go and have time with your boys?"' she said about her choice to miss the event.

Opting instead to spend the day with sons Albert, four and six-year-old Harry, Lisa took part in their special Mother's Day luncheon.

Taking to Instagram to document the fun-filled day, Lisa posted a clip of son Bertie jumping around, as well as a photo of the preschooler presenting her a homemade gift.

Choices: 'It was either "Do you want to spend time with these deads**t women or go and have time with your boys?"' the 41-year-old said about her choice to miss the event

Time with the boys: Opting instead to spend the day with sons Albert, four and six-year-old Harry, Lisa took part in their special Mother's Day luncheon, taking to Instagram to post a photo of son Bertie giving her a homemade gift

Meanwhile, the remainder of the RHOS women put on their friendliest faces at Chiswick restaurant in Woollahra as they posed for pictures.

Despite their various ongoing feuds, the ladies looked like close pals as they huddled together in their designer wares.

While they wore mostly muted tones, AthenaX Levendi and Nicole O'Neill added a pop of colour to the perfect portrait, donning a turquoise blazer and hot pink dress respectively.

Picture perfect: Meanwhile, the remainder of the RHOS women put on their friendliest faces at Chiswick restaurant in Woollahra as they posed for photos

Happy families? Despite their ongoing feud, the ladies looked like close pals as they huddled in for the camera in their designer wares

The girls didn't seem to be missing Lisa's presence, with the mother-of-two renowned for her outlandish and unapologetic ways.

Despite her happy Mother's Day appearance, last week Lisa once again insulted her family during a no-holds barred radio interview with Nova's Smallzy.

'I think people appreciate that I'm real, my kids are d**kheads, I hate my husband,' she said, referring to former One Nation co-founder David Oldfield, 58.

'My kids are d**kheads': Despite her happy Mother's Day appearance, last week Lisa once again insulted her family during a no-holds barred radio interview

Explaining further, the businesswoman said: '(My sons) use much worse language than I do, in fact the four-year-old called me this morning a "s**t-eating c**k master".'

'So there you go, a d**khead seems kind of tame,' she then added.

Despite making plenty of fans for her outlandish ways, Lisa has yet to confirm whether she will back for another season on the show.
She raised a glass of red wine on morning television on Thursday as she claimed her ex-husband Steve Pollock had cheated on her NUMEROUS times.

And Mel Greig showed him what he's missing by flaunting her cavernous cleavage in a plunging top on Instagram in what she labeled 'boob Friday'.

The radio star, 34, chose to flirtatiously unbutton her blouse below her bra while attending a Sydney event in Bondi.

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Va-va-voom! Mel Greig celebrates 'boob Friday' by flaunting EXTREME cleavage in plunging top at Sydney event... after claiming ex-husband Steve Pollock cheated on her

She claimed on Thursday's The Daily Edition that ex-husband Steve Pollock, who she was married to for 18 months between 2014 and 2016, was unfaithful during their union.

The buxom beauty appeared in high spirits as she gave an eye-popping display while holding a glass of white wine at the midday event.

She captioned the photo: 'A delicious lunch at Blanca with Mr Abs Mav Van Der Hoeven @thatsfuntastic.'

Cheating claims! She claimed on Thursday's The Daily Edition that ex-husband Steve Pollock, who she was married to for 18 months between 2014 and 2016, was unfaithful during their union

Their past: Mel and Steve wed in November 2014 in Byron Bay and had undergone gruelling IVF treatments in a bid to conceive when they were together

A day earlier, after alleging her ex-partner engaged in cheating and affairs during their relationship, Mel proved that looking good was the best revenge as she arrived at a Twinings Tea event in Sydney.

She showed off her ample assets and toned legs in a sheer black top, tucked into a white mini-skirt.

Looking good is the best revenge! Mel showed off her ample assets and toned legs in a flirty ensemble at a Twinings event in Sydney on Thursday, after claiming ex-husband Steve Pollock was unfaithful the VERY SAME day

Monochrome: A round-neck black top offered a glimpse of cleavage, paired with a white mini-skirt that revealed the radio star's bronzed and lean legs

The sighting comes shortly after Mel revealed on Thursday's The Daily Edition that ex-husband Steve Pollock was unfaithful during their union.

The couple parted ways in April last year after 18 months of marriage.

Mel made the claim following a recent holiday to Las Vegas, where she celebrated her 'divorce party'.

The former Celebrity Apprentice contestant stated her 'now ex-husband announced he has a new partner through social media,' which is 'why I have this wine,' Mel stated, while clutching a beverage.

Letting her hair down: Mel appears in high spirits at the event, choosing to sip on Champagne while aboard the boat party

She then announced: 'Some women have come forward saying that they have had liaisons with my ex-husband.'

'I want to put it out now. My husband was unfaithful, I am aware of it, he is aware of it,' she continued.

'He is sorry for it, he is not proud of it,' Mel added.

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Mr. Pollack for comment.
She's something of a hit on the red carpet with her glam sense of style.

And Lily Collins was positively gleaming in her gym gear on Thursday, rocking an olive coat and leggings combo while grabbing an iced coffee in Los Angeles.

The Rules Don't Apply actress, 28, strode along the tarmac with a pair of oval sunglasses atop her flowing brown mane and a Chanel handbag slung over one shoulder.

Workout wonder: Make-up free Lily Collins looked beautiful in an olive jacket and workout leggings ensemble while grabbing a coffee in Los Angeles in Thursday

She opted for a grey hoodie to wear with her Cotton On Body leggings and coat, also adding a pair of white and grey APL trainers as she walked to and from her luxury 4x4.

Lily was no doubt in need of a energising workout, after experiencing a hectic working schedule over the last few weeks.

Earlier this month, the daughter of musician Phil Collins had jetted across to the Big Apple to attend the star-studded Met Gala.

Ice cool: The Rules Don't Apply actress, wearing Cotton On Body leggings, strolled along with a pair of oval sunglasses and grey APL sneakers

A far cry from her meeker looks, the model had showcased her slender physique in a fitted black corset with embellished cups as she posed fiercely at the annual event in NYC.

The Mirror Mirror star teamed it a statement puffball pink gown, complete with ruffle panel, as well as a Geisha-inspired blunt fringe and raven bob wig, to enhance the dramatic effect.

Wasting no time however, the beauty was then spotted touching down at LAX only a day later to return to her working commitments.

Glamorous: Lily was no doubt in need of a energising workout, after experiencing a hectic schedule over the last few weeks, including a night out at the Panthere De Cartier Party at Milk Studios

Having starred in Amazon series The Last Tycoon last year, Lily appears to be turning her attention to film for 2017.

The beauty is set to star in a whopping three flicks in the coming months - including Netflix drama To The Bone, which co-stars Keanu Reeves.

Having premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January the film, which sees Lily portray a young women with anorexia, is scheduled to debut on the site in July.

She will also see the release of her South Korean-American action film Okja, which she filmed in New York, in July, ahead of Halo of Stars - based on Anthony Lucero's long horror poem The Clown.
She's moved on from her failed romance with former Bachelor Blake Garvey.

And it seems Louise Pillidge is making her foray into TV presenting on what appears to be a real estate program.

The 28-year-old took to Instagram to share a behind-the-scenes snap of herself to her legions of followers.

Doing what she does best! Louise Pillidge is making her foray into TV presenting on what appears to be a real estate program

In the photo the beauty, who recently grew out her shorter blonde hair into a long brunette do, appears outside stunningly designed luxury property on Queensland's Surfers Paradise.

Dressed in a black suit, she looked every part the professional real estate agent for the camera.

Louise captioned her post: 'BTS on location filming in the exclusive suburb of Paradise Waters #MillionDollarListing #LUXURE #ArchitecturallyDesigned #Realestate.'

A real estate queen in the making? In the photo she appears outside stunningly designed luxury property on Queensland's Surfers Paradise

Keeping it professional: Louise dressed in a black suit, she looked every part the professional real estate agent for the camera

Fans of the social media identity liked and wrote supportive messages to the brunette beauty.

One commented: 'Looking GREAT, Lou! So proud of you, Beautiful Girl :-)'

Another said, 'Looking amazing brunette!' while one more fond commentator added, 'Gorgeous girl.'

Daily Mail Australia has reached out to Louise for comment.

Solo stunner: Louise's fans liked and wrote supportive messages to her about her new career path

Former Bachelor Blake Gravey controversially broke Sam Frost's heart by choosing Louise two weeks before the finale went to air.

However, Louise and Blake were only together from 18 months.

'The negativity has been draining, plus it took months to deal with the fact I was Blake's third choice of partner,' she told news.com.au.

'In the end, I had to build a bridge and get over it if I was serious about making a go of our relationship,' she added.
From American Hustle to The Fighter, she's known for totally immersing herself in her film roles.

But Hollywood star Amy Adams, 42, cut a more relaxed figure as she went for a stroll along a Los Angeles boulevard on Thursday.

The Oscar nominee let the tension of showbusiness melt away as she donned a comfy athleisure wear ensemble for a solo outing.

Sporty: Hollywood actress Amy Adams cut a relaxed figure in black running leggings and trainers with a grey long sleeve Van Halen t-shirt while walking in Los Angeles on Thursday

Amy wore a loose fitting Van Halen long sleeve T-shirt with and shin length fitness leggings and off-white running shoes.

Looking cool, she wore black Wayfarer sunglasses to shield her eyes from the LA sun.

She let her fiery locks fall past her shoulders, which offset her large retro style shades.

Amy is gearing up for her next big screen role - reprising Lois Lane in the first Justice League film.

Casual: Looking cool, she wore black Wayfarers to shield her eyes from the LA sun

Big project: Next, Amy is gearing up for her next big role - reprising Lois Lane in the first Justice League film

On the small screen she is also taking on the lead role in HBO's upcoming series Sharp Objects, based on the novel of the same name by Gillian Flynn.

In it she plays a reporter recently discharged from a psychiatric hospital, who returns to her hometown to try solve the murder of two young girls.

In her personal life, Amy has been married to artist husband Darren Le Gallo, 42, since 2008, and at present her home life appears to be pretty perfect.

The couple have a daughter six-year-old Aviana.

Adding to Amy's run of good fortune it was announced in April she is to be honored with the 2017 American Cinematheque Award at the ceremony.

Rick Nicita, American Cinematheque Chairman, said: 'The American Cinematheque is extremely pleased to honor Amy Adams as the 31st recipient of the American Cinematheque award at our celebration this year.

'Amy Adams is one of the most beloved, admired, and respected actresses in movies today.'
As Brits prepare to go to the polls for June 8's General Election, it appears that Guy Ritchie has yet to familiarise himself with the two most likely victors.

On Friday, BBC Daily Politics reporter Adam Fleming shared a video of himself probing the film-maker on who was set to get his vote out of Prime Minister Theresa May and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn - but Guy, 48, failed to recognise either one.

As the ex-husband of Madonna stood on the streets of London, he was approached by the journalist, who toted cardboard cut-outs of the politicians, with the question - but stared back blankly as he stated: 'I don't know who they are. Why are they?'

Who? Guy Ritchie claimed he didn't know who Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn were when he was approached by BBC Daily Politics reporter Adam Fleming in a video shared on Friday

Race: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and Prime Minister Theresa May are the candidates most likely be prove victorious at June 8's General Election, with Prime Minister May the frontrunner

At the start of the 30-second clip, Adam Fleming is heard saying in a voice-over: 'While filming for the BBC Politics Facebook page with some cardboard cutouts, I stumbled into film director Guy Ritchie, who seemed a bit confused.'

He then approaches Guy, who is in the midst of promoting his new movie King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword, and asks: 'Who are you going to vote for in the election out of these two? Who do you prefer?'

'I dunno who they are. Who are they?' a seemingly nonchalant Guy responds, prompting his impromptu interviewer to explain that they're Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May.

Don't you know who I am? BBC journalist Adam Fleming approached guy on the streets of London while carrying cardboard cut-cutouts of the famous politicians

No idea: Guy looked blank when he was asked who he was set to vote for in the election

Name game: The journalist promptly explained who each one was, but Guy was unmoved

Appearing to be no more enlightened following the clarification, the father-of-five doesn't change gears as he reiterates: 'I don't who they are!'

While Guy seemed intent on showing limited current affairs knowledge, his links run deep: his late stepmother was Shireen Olive Ritchie, Baroness Ritchie of Brompton - a Conservative councillor for Kensington & Chelsea's Brompton Ward.

Having recently returned to London after jetting around the globe to promote his new King Arthur film - starring the likes of Charlie Hunnam, Jude Law and Eric Bana - Guy has perhaps had little time to immerse himself in politics.

Bluffing? The film-maker, who was once married to Madonna, could well have been joking

Busy on the promotional trail: The father-of-five has been busy promoting his latest movie King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword

Speaking on Friday night's instalment of The Graham Norton Show about attending the premieres of his own films, he said: 'Theyre not designed for fun. You are never off the clock.'

When questioned over whether he sits through the entire movie, he responded: 'I can watch my films. I like them and I have this funny thing that I completely forget I make them.

'It starts and Im like, "Oh, what happens next" or "Look behind you!" Im surprised at the number of times I can watch them.'

When asked about his latest directorial piece, Guy said: 'I tinkered around with it for eight years and finally it turned into something. Its like nothing you have ever seen.

Political connections: While Guy seemed intent on showing limited current affairs knowledge, his late stepmother was Shireen Olive Ritchie, Baroness Ritchie of Brompton - a Conservative councillor for Kensington & Chelsea's Brompton Ward. She is pictured in 2005

'I didnt want to see a traditional Arthur, but we captured the essence of the story and we were respectful of that but thereafter we didnt pay any attention to any rules. Hopefully we have created something really fresh.'

Chatting about David Beckham making a cameo in the big budget fantasy film, Guy said: 'We are sort of mates  our children go to the same school, we drink in the same pub and we go to the same gym and one thing led to another.

'I love him, hes on the same frequency as me and it made sense for him to be in the film.'

Jet-setter: The British director has been jetting around the globe promoting his new movie

The ex factor: Director Guy was married to pop superstar Madonna from 2000 until 2008
With six children between them no doubt these celebrity moms will get very spoilt on Sunday.

But that did not stop Laura Dern, Jaime King and Ali Larter from having an early and a bit more of an adult Mother's Day celebration.

The trio were perfectly styled for spring as they spent the afternoon sipping on rose in Beverly Hills, California, on Thursday.

Cheers to moms: Jaime King, Laura Dern and Ali Larter attended the Perrier-Jouet's Mother's Day celebration at Georgie at the Montage Beverly Hills on Thursday

The actresses and other high profile mummies gathered at Montage Beverly Hills for Perrier-Jouet's Mother's Day celebration.

Taking inspiration from the champagne's iconic floral bottle, all three women wore floral ensembles for the celebration.

Laura wore a pastel pink long sleeve dress which featured water-color tubular yellow and pink flowers across it.

The star wore her long hair out and in voluminous waves and accessorized the look with some nude heels.

Floral and feminine: Laura wore a pastel pink long sleeve dress which featured water-color tubular yellow and pink flowers across it

Finishing touches: The star wore her long hair out and in voluminous waves and accessorized the look with some nude heels

An insider tells the Dailymail.com the mom of two - Ellery, 15, and Jaya, 12 - gushed about the amazing mothers and women she starred alongside with on Big Little Lies, which includes Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon.

Sipping on Belle Epoque Rose from a flower covered glass, the 50-year-old was overheard speaking about how hopeful she is that there will be a second season of the HBO drama.

Ali - who is a mom of two little ones - also wore pastel to the event, opting for a soft blue dress.

More lies to come: Sipping on Belle Epoque Rose from a flower covered glass, the 50-year-old was overheard speaking about how hopeful she is that there will be a second season of the HBO drama, Little Big Lies

Got the blues: Ali - who is a mom of two little ones - also wore pastel to the event, opting for a soft blue dress

Details, details: The Needle & Thread dress featured delicate embroidered flowers

The frock by Needle & Thread featured delicate embroidered flowers and finished just above the knee.

Decided to take a different approach to embracing floral design was Jaime.

The 38-year-old mom of two - James Knight, 3, and Leo, 22 months, - wore a heavier maroon velvet dress.

Doing it her way: Decided to take a different approach to embracing floral design was Jaime, who wore a heavier maroon velvet dress.

Hey girlfriend: Jaime was very excited to see Ali at the event giving her a big hug before chatting away

The ankle-length dress had a floral pattern worked into the velvet material.

The actress wore the look with pointed toe ankle booties and left her blonde locks out in small waves.

Jaime was very excited to see Ali at the event giving her a big hug before chatting away.

Peonies everywhere: The Hart Of Dixie star was also spotted loading up on fresh blooms at the flower cart

Stunning blooms: The cart has been set up at the hotel for those wanting to stop by and put together something special for their mom

Instagram ready: The trio and the other lucky moms were treated to a meal and, of course, lots of champagne at a stunningly appointed table

The Hart Of Dixie star was also spotted loading up on fresh blooms at the flower cart which has been set up at the hotel for those wanting to stop by and put together something special for their mom.

The trio and the other lucky moms were treated to a meal and, of course, lots of champagne at a stunningly appointed table.

Ali certainly had a blast sharing a snap of herself with the other actresses in Instagram, saying: 'I had such a beautiful Mother's Day lunch with these lovely ladies drinking champagne and talking all things life, love, and family! Big kiss and thanks to my friends.'

Bottle wore it first: Taking inspiration from the champagne's iconic floral bottle, all three women wore floral ensembles for the celebration




He's preparing to don his cape again for the upcoming Superman sequel Justice League.

And Henry Cavill seems to be remaining in character, taking a cheeky Instagram selfie in front of a statue of the superhero in his likeness at a museum exhibition in Paris on Thursday.

Wearing a black top and sporting a healthy layer of stubble, the 34-year-old posted the image with the playful caption, 'Superhombre and Superman seen together for the first time!'

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We can be heroes: Henry Cavill, 34, snapped a cheeky selfie in front of a statue of Superman at an exhibition in Paris on Thursday

Henry was taking a look at the history of comic book heroes at an exhibition titled, Art of DC - Dawn of the Superheroes.

The British actor told his followers: 'It was a fantastic opportunity to see the evolution of the most well known DC Superheroes.

'The incredible talent of some of the more prominent artists over the years is proudly on display along with the actual costumes from movies past and present.

'Without the great minds and talents of those creators, artists, inkers and filmmakers we would be missing a major part of today's modern pop culture. Thank you to them all!'

Alter ego: It was announced just last month that Henry had joined the cast of the latest installment in Tom Cruise's action franchise, Mission: Impossible 6

A teaser for Justice League was released in March, but intriguingly this didn't include Henry himself.

At the beginning of the trailer, dizzying landscape shots of snow-capped mountains and vertiginous ledges accompany voice-over from Batman's alter ego Bruce Wayne.

'We have to be ready - you, me, the others,' the tycoon-turned-vigilantee warns. 'There's an attack coming from far away.'

Rugged: Behind-the scenes shots saw the British star sporting a thick moustache - a far cry from his normally clean-cut look

Wonder Woman replies gravely: 'Not coming, Bruce. It's already here. The others - where are they?' From there, the Justice League begins to array.

It was announced just last month that Henry had joined the cast of the latest installment in Tom Cruise's action franchise, Mission: Impossible 6.

Behind-the scenes shots saw the handsome star sporting a thick moustache - a far cry from his normally clean-cut look. This seems to have now been ditched in favour of a less bushy look.
She highlighted her slim figure on Tuesday for the Marc Jacobs Daisy campaign launch bash.

And two days later, Amelia Gray Hamlin stepped out in a sheer paneled top and fitted bottoms for dinner at West Hollywood hot spot Catch LA.

The 15-year-old aspiring model complemented her lace and leather look with an oversized denim jacket from Sophodes featuring an Angelina Jolie quote as well as her image.

Trendy teen: Amelia Gray Hamlin stepped out in a sheer paneled top and fitted bottoms for dinner at West Hollywood hot spot Catch LA on Thursday

Statement piece: The 15-year-old aspiring model complimented her lace and leather look with an oversized denim Sophodes jacket featuring an Angelina Jolie quote as well as her image

Amelia looked trendy in her cover up, which read: 'When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, I kind of wanted to be a vampire.'

The jacket also had a picture of Angelina's face as she licks blood; the image is based off a 2003 portrait of the movie star by Martin Schoeller for his Close Up series.

The teen, who is the daughter of Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna, looked chic in her delicate top.

She hit the pavement in sneakers, adding layers of gold jewelry for pops of sparkle.

Heading home: Amelia looked trendy in her cover up, which read: 'When other little girls wanted to be ballet dancers, I kind of wanted to be a vampire'

The brunette styled her locks center parted with brown shadowed lids and gloss on her lips.

Amelia wore a $1,100 skirt by Marc Jacobs for their bash on Tuesday, which celebrated the launch of their new #MJDaisy campaign.

The teenager chose the Marc Jacobs beaded waist tweed skirt, adding a silver crop top and coordinating jacket.

Fancy: Amelia wore a $1,100 skirt by Marc Jacobs for their bash on Tuesday, which celebrated the launch of their new #MJDaisy campaign

Amelia posed up a storm with the star of the bash - Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia Gerber.

Kaia, 15, is the face of the new Daisy campaign for Marc Jacobs.

Amelia is the younger sister of Delilah Belle Hamlin; the 18-year-old signed with IMG Models last month.

Fun: Amelia posed up a storm with the star of the bash - Cindy Crawford's daughter Kaia Gerber; (from l to r) Kaia, Cayley King, Presley Gerber and Amelia on Tuesday at the Daisy party

Family first: Amelia is the younger sister of Delilah Belle Hamlin, 18; pictured with parents Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna and sister Delilah on May 5 at the Race To Erase MS Gala in LA
The Miami heat was on full blast as Kelly Rohrbach made her way through the Magic City on Friday.

The model-turned-actress wore a short multi-colored dress that showed off her slender pins as she promoted her new movie Baywatch with co-stars Zac Efron and Priyanka Chopra on Despierta America.

Pink high heels added additional height to her 5ft9in frame.

Stepping out: Kelly Rohrbach shows off her long legs in a short dress as she arrives at her Miami hotel on Friday after taping Despierta America

Miami heat: It wasn't hard to see why the blonde star was chosen to be a lifeguard in Baywatch

At one point, Kelly and Zac were seen wearing aprons for a cooking segment where they held carrots.

They appeared to be making a salad on the Spanish-language show based in Miami.

It was yet another stop on the packed schedule the stars have before their Baywatch reboot hits theaters on May 25.

Healthy: The 27-year-old model took a bite from this carrot during filming of Despierta America

Chef Efron: Zac Efron looked ready to toss a salad with this tray of vegetables

Weeks before the Baywatch remake hits screens, the film's red band trailer has been released.

The clip kicks off with the main stars Zac Efron and Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson sharing a kiss underwater.

The scene appears to be a dream of Zac's character - Matt Brody; in the clip, he is seen swimming up to Alexandra Daddario and locking lips with the actress.

Co-stars: The movie lifeguards posed backstage after the taping came to an end

A dream in tangerine: Priyanka Chopra rocked a bright orange off-the-shoulder jumpsuit

Star in stripes: Alexandra Daddario wore a beige biker jacket over a striped romper

Pucker up: In the new red band trailer for the Baywatch reboot, Zac shares a kiss with Alexandra Daddario in a fantasy sequence -- but it ends up being Dwayne Johnson

Full couch: The Baywatch stars pose with Despierta America hosts Ilfenesh Hadera, Alexandra Daddario and Jon Bass

When Zac pulls back, he is shocked to see it is Dwayne, who plays Mitch Buchannon.

In the background the voice over says, 'You never forget the one who steals your heart, or the one who kicks your a**.'

The raunchy new red band trailer also shows plenty of skin, in the form of running on the beach in swimsuits and riding a jet ski.

Enjoying the view: Later she was pictured on her hotel balcony

Alluring: She posed for a few snaps

Chill mode: Later on she was spotted relaxing in nothing but a towel
Chris Pine got rave reviews for his hosting gig on Saturday Night Live on May 6.

And on Thursday, the show released an unaired sketch from his episode, parodying the first-ever black Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay.

The role of Lindsay is played by Sasheer Zamata and she is seen meeting her potential suitors for the first time in the spoof.

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'Hey, soul sister': First-ever black Bachelorette Rachel Lindsay (played by Sasheer Zamata) meets her contestants in an unaired SNL spoof released Thursday

Nope: Chris Pine's character is rejected instantly as he arrives in 'African' wear

In the clip, a voice over introduces the show by stating, 'One charming and accomplished lawyer. Twenty-five hot dummies.'

The first suitors are all white men who cannot seem to talk about anything other than race.

Then, Chris Pine walks out wearing 'African' clothing over his suit, exclaiming, 'Hey, soul sister,' to which the character of Rachel immediately dismisses.

Another shot: After initially rejecting Pine's character, she gives him a second chance after he tells her she's special

He blew it: The fictional contestant reveals he has used a racial slur, but only while singing along to rap music

Pine is given a second chance later in the sketch.

'I know I got off on the wrong foot back there, I'm just nervous. Can you give me another shot?,' he asks.

He second chance is blown after he reveals he has used a racial slur, but only when he sings along to rap music.

Final straw: Pine's character suggests that they are both systematically oppressed

Get out: 'Rachel' then hits him with a bouquet of flowers, demanding that he leaves

The final straw comes as Pine's character suggests they are both 'systematically oppressed.'

'White males are the new minority,' he says before getting cut off by Lindsay's character.

'Get out,' she demands while hitting him with a bouquet of flowers.
She's just spent several days in Peru in the name of charity.

And on Friday, Kylie Jenner shared a selfie while on her private jet back to the states, captioning it 'home sick.'

The 19-year-old wore a star emblazoned $99 onesie by brother Rob Kardashian's company Arthur George - with full hair and makeup.

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Up in the air: On Friday, Kylie Jenner shared a selfie while she on her flight back to the states, captioning it 'home sick'

Kylie got her makeup done on the plane; she showed off her flawless look, which consisted of a soft brown shadow on her lids and matte pink lips.

Hairstylist Andrew Fitzsimons did her hair as they flew back to LA; she opted her short locks with big waves and a deep side part.

She was also on the plane with her best friend Jordyn Woods and her personal assistant Victoria Villarroel Gamero.

Getting ready on a plane: The 19-year-old wore a star emblazoned onesie by brother Rob Kardashian's company Arthur George with full glam

Pucker up: Kylie showed off her flawless makeup, which consisted of a soft brown shadow on her lids and matte pink lips

In her eyes: Hairstylist Andrew Fitzsimons did her hair as they flew back to LA; she opted her short locks with big waves and a deep side part

While her trip to Peru has been eye opening, it has not been without drama.

Kylie suffered from a case of altitude sickness, as she told fans on Snapchat.

The teenager snapped herself while using an oxygen mask; Cusco, Peru has an altitude of over 11,000 feet.

Flight companion: She was on the plane with her best friend Jordyn Woods (pictured) and her personal assistant Victoria Villarroel Gamero

Deep breaths: Earlier this week, Kylie suffered from a case of altitude sickness, as seen on her Snapchat getting oxygen

Kylie was in Peru for the past few days to meet with children with cleft palates and cleft lip, in association with the Smile Train organization.

The teenager recently raised $500,000 for the charity with the help of a limited edition Kylie Cosmetics lip kit - titled Smile.

According to People, her donation will fund 1,800 surgeries for kids born with the facial malformation.

Good heart: Smile Train shared a photo to their social media on Friday, writing: 'Thank you @KylieJenner for bringing smiles to our patients #PowerOfASmile'

Taking a quick break: The teenager created a special limited edition color for a Kylie Cosmetics lip kit - titled Smile - with proceeds going to the Smile Train charity; she has donated $500,000

Kylie has a busy summer ahead of her.

The founder of Kylie Cosmetics landed her own reality series, with the first peek released on Thursday.

In the show, titled Life Of Kylie, cameras follow her as she runs her makeup and clothing empire as well as balance life with friends and family.

Kylie is also rumored to be dating rapper Travis Scott; they have most recently been seen hanging out in Miami - before she jetted off to Peru; she attended his New York birthday party last month.

Mini shoot: Kylie posed up a storm in between meeting kids for the Smile Train charity

Life Of Kylie: The founder of Kylie Cosmetics landed her own reality series, with the first peek released on Thursday
Jenna Dewan Tatum was in the spring of things as she showed up to the AOL building in New York City on Friday afternoon.

The 36-year-old actress wore a matching yellow two-piece shorts suit with a white floral pattern on it as she prepared to do interviews for her new show World Of Dance.

Jenna hosts the new competition show that features Jennifer Lopez, Derek Hough and Ne-Yo as judges.

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Short and sweet: Jenna Dewan Tatum arrives at the AOL building in New York on Friday

A peak of Jenna's toned tummy could be seen in the outfit that also showed off her slender legs.

She is often seen hiking in Los Angeles and looked proud to show off the results of her hard work.

Her look was finished with a pair of white heels.

She's got sunshine: Her two-piece shorts suit was bright and perky, just like the star

Hoofer: The former Janet Jackson and NSYNC backup dancer finished her look with white heels

The night before on Late Night With Seth Meyers, Jenna joked that she took the role on World Of Dance for one reason.

'I was like, I'm going to do this show, I mean, I love her, but also I want to find out her beauty secrets,' she said of co-star Jennifer Lopez, speculating, 'There's some random herb in Botswana she's taking.'

Dewan continued the J-Lo praise by adding, 'She's like Benjamin Button.'

Strike a pose: Channing Tatum's wife showed off her wedding bling in this hand-on-hip pose

Chatty: She sat down for another round of interviews about her show World Of Dance

On Friday, Jenna posted a photo of herself jumping into bed wearing a navy bra and panties set.

She captioned the mid-flight photo, 'Meet Me Up High!'

The star seemed to be having fun with social media, also posting some behind the scenes looks at her Sirius appearance.

Bra-vo: Jenna posted this revealing photo of her jumping into bed on Instagram Friday
She's on a rare visit to the UK, promoting her tell-all new book.

And Caitlyn Jenner naturally timed her visit to coincide with the British LGBT Awards, attending the glitzy ceremony in London on Friday night.

The 67-year-old star, who recently confessed she had finally undergone gender reassignment surgery, opted for a classic party look, donning a glittering black gown.

Guest of honour: Caitlyn Jenner opted for a classic party look to attend the British LGBT Award in London on Friday night

Caityln dazzled in the simple yet chic bodycon number, featuring an asymmetric neckline.

The Keeping Up With The Kardashians star showed off just a hint of leg in the midi number, set off with pointed black stilettos.

The TV personality went all out with her hair and beauty look, styling her locks in glossy curls and opting for a liberal amount of bronzer.

Caityln appeared to be having a blast at the event, mingling with a host of British celebrities.

All that glitters: The 67-year-old star, who recently confessed she had finally undergone gender reassignment surgery, opted for a classic party look, donning a glittering black gown

Making new friends: Caitlyn worked the room, chatting to British celebrities including X Factor 2015 winner Louisa Johnson

Beaming: Alan Carr and Melanie Sykes looked particularly delighted to be meeting the star

Despite having no prior knowledge of stars including Michelle Heaton and Louisa Johnson, she got into the spirit of things and posed for numerous snaps.

Caitlyn and former X Factor 2015 winner Louisa Johnson in particular appeared to be getting along famously, taking endless selfies together.

The star spoke candidly about her sex life and gender reassignment surgery in an interview with friend and TV legend Larry King on Thursday.

When King asked Jenner why she has elected to not speak about her surgery, which she underwent this past January, the former Olympian said it was out of 'respect' that she elected to stay quiet.

Say cheese! Despite having no prior knowledge of stars including Michelle Heaton, she got into the spirit of things and posed for numerous snaps

Hey girl! Caitlyn and Louisa appeared to be getting along famously, posing for endless selfies

She later said of the procedure: 'It's not as bad as you think.'

Jenner was also asked to speak about her sexual orientation, and revealed that she still was not sure which sex she was attracted to at this time.

That is when King, 83, told Jenner that she still had some 'pretty good sexual years' left at the age of 67 before asking: 'What are you doing later?'

This caused Caitlyn to light up, laughing and blushing as she said: 'I just got hit on by Larry King!'

'Who do you desire? Do you desire women or men?' asked King.

'I don't know. I don't really know. I don't even go there Larry,' said Jenner.

New BFFs: Tears singer Louisa looked thrilled to be rubbing shoulders with the A-list star

Making new friends: Caitlyn was seated next to Alan Carr's partner Paul Drayton

King then asked Jenner how old she was, before stating she had 'good sexual years' ahead of her, which made Jenner smile.

'Do you want to talk about that? Do I have hope?' asked Jenner, who paused for a few seconds and looked at King before bursting out in laughter.

'Yeah,' said King, before asking Jenner about her plans later that day.

Jenner only recently announced that she had undergone reassignment surgery, sharing the news in her recently released memoir.

She has been reluctant to speak in depth about what she underwent in her recent wave of interviews, but did open up a bit while speaking with King.

'Those things are very personal, wouldn't you agree,' said Jenner.

'Just because your trans doesn't mean you have to answer every question. I understand that people are fascinated by that stuff.'

Tell-all interview: The star spoke candidly about her sex life and gender reassignment surgery in an interview with friend and TV legend Larry King on Thursday.
Brad Pitt worked behind the scenes to reunite Angelina Jolie and her father Jon Voight following one of Hollywood's most bitter family feuds.

And while Brangelina may be no more, it seems the once-strained father-daughter relationship Brad helped repair is finally flourishing.

Angelina and her father were pictured on a rare outing in Beverly Hills on Wednesday.

Healing: Angelina Jolie bonds with the father she once despised as Jon Voight joins her for dinner with the children

Bonding: Angelina's famous father Jon Voight joined her for dinner in Beverly Hills

The two took four of Angelina's six children - Pax, Zahara, Vivienne, and Knox - to a sushi restaurant for dinner.

As always, Angelina, 41, was dressed in black - in this case a long flowing black net skirt with a scoop neck bodysuit up top.

Her hair was worn half tied back, and sunglasses shade her eyes as she walked from the family's luxury vehicle to the building with her children.

Classic Ange: As always, Angelina, 41, was dressed in black - in this case a long flowing black net skirt with a scoop neck body beneath

Little Vivienne carried a large stuffed animal and wore her hair in pigtails as she walked to the restaurant with her twin brother and two older siblings. Shiloh and Maddox were not seen.

Jon, who wore a shirt and jacket, completed the family group.

It is still rare that the 78-year-old is seen with his grandchildren, following the end of his six-and-a-half year estrangement from Angelina.

The star still best known for his appearance in the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy split from wife Marcheline Bertrand when their daughter was only an infant, with the two divorcing by the time Angelina turned four.

Family dinner: The father and daughter took her children Pax, Zahara, Vivienne, and Knox to a sushi restaurant for dinner

Family ties: It is still rare that the 78-year-old is seen with his grandchildren, following his six-and-a-half year estrangement from Angelina

Jon and Angelina had only sporadic contact during her childhood, yet in her early TV and film work she still used her full name of Angelina Jolie Voight.

But, perhaps because she did not want to be seen as trading on her father's fame, she had dropped the Voight in favour of her middle name by the time she appeared as Lara Croft, a female version of Indiana Jones.

It is not known what caused her to fall out with Voight, who played her father Lord Croft in the movie.

Twins: Vivienne and Knox carry bags as they leave the restaurant; the logo is from the fancy Beverly Hills Hotel

Strained relationship: Jon and Angelina had only sporadic contact during her childhood

Single mother: Pax follows Angelina out of the building

Sisters: Zahara and Vivienne are pictured heading back to their car

By July 2002, however, she was applying to have her non-acting name legally changed to Angelina Jolie, losing the Voight.

The following month, Voight gave an interview on U.S. television in which he claimed his daughter, who had just adopted a Cambodian boy named Maddox, had 'serious mental problems'.

'I'm broken-hearted... because I've been trying to reach my daughter and get her help, and I have failed and I'm sorry,' he said.

'Really I haven't come forward and addressed the serious mental problems she has spoken about so candidly to the press over the years, but I've tried behind the scenes in every way.'

Patched up: Voight repeatedly tried to regain contact with his daughter, particularly after her mother's death from cancer in 2007; Pax and Zahara are seen at dinner

Angelina responded by cutting off her father completely, saying that, as a new mother, she did not think it was healthy to associate with him.

In an interview a year later, she said Voight's comments were damaging because they could have affected her relationship with Maddox.

'They could have decided he's right, she's crazy, let's remove that child from her custody, and that's unforgivable.

'My father and I don't speak. I don't believe that somebody's family becomes their blood. Because my son's adopted, and families are earned.'

Inner circle: Following news that Angelina had filed for divorce from Brad late last year, Jon spoke out in her support

Daddy's girl: Vivienne's resemblance to father Brad is obvious, as she walks beside her twin

Closer than ever: Following news that Angelina had filed for divorce from Brad late last year, Jon spoke out in her support

Gift? Jon is seen handing his granddaughter Zahara an object at the end of the evening

Voight repeatedly tried to regain contact with his daughter, particularly after her mother's death from cancer in 2007.

And finally, with Pitt's blessing, she is said to have finally responded in 2009. To the surprise of many, Jon and Angelina were first pictured together in 2010, when he visited her on the Venice, Italy, set of The Tourist.

A friend of the actress told the Daily Mail at the time: 'Angie made the initial contact. Brad has been supportive - a key factor in her reaching out.'

Casual dinner: The sisters chat amongst themselves as they head home

Close bond: Having been absent from his children's lives for years, Voight is now in contact

Twins: Vivienne and Knox, eight, are the youngest of the Jolie-Pitt brood

Following news that Angelina had filed for divorce from Brad late last year, Jon spoke out in her support.

'Angelina's OK. She's holding on,' he said, adding that he planned to spend the festive season with his grandchildren.

Now, as Angelina begins her new life as a single mother, it seems she has forged a closer bond with the father she once despised.
She jetted into London earlier this month to shoot scenes for her upcoming movie Red Sparrow.

And Jennifer Lawrence took a break from her gruelling European filming schedule, as she enjoyed a night out at the British capital's Phoenix Artist's Club and Bunga Bunga club on Thursday.

The 26-year-old actress, who is playing a sexy Russian spy in her new flick, was dressed to impress in a faux-fur coat and thigh-high boots as she mingled with her pals.

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Letting loose: Jennifer Lawrence, 26, took a break from her Red Sparrow filming schedule, as she enjoyed a night out at the London's Phoenix Artist's Club and Bunga Bunga club on Thursday

Jennifer looked in a great mood during the night as she enjoyed a cigarette break with her group of pals.

The Oscar winner was hard to miss in the animal print coat which fell at a saucy level and was paired perfectly with the racy boots.

She was joined by three friends, but had her attention affixed on one particular man as they puffed away.

Last week, Jennifer was on much more professional terms as she shot scenes for Red Sparrow in a platinum blonde wig.

Night out: The actress, who is playing a sexy Russian spy in her new flick, was dressed to impress in a faux-fur coat and thigh-high boots as she mingled with her pals

Chilling: The Oscar winner looked in a great mood during the night as she enjoyed a cigarette break with her group of pals

She sashayed across the set in a long camel trench coat with a typically spy-like black ensemble beneath the coat.

Previously seen in Austria shooting other scenes, the internationally renowned stunner, who has been coy about her relationship with Rachel Weisz's ex Darren Aronofsky, looked serious and steely as she shot the covert scenes.

Jennifer plays a young intelligence officer whose dreams of becoming a prima ballerina are shattered when she breaks her leg.

Filming: Last week, Jennifer was on much more professional terms as she shot scenes for Red Arrow in a platinum blonde wig

The sought-after star plays Dominika Egorova, who is recruited for a secretive Russian spy agency where she is assigned to seduce a first-tour CIA agent who handles the CIA's most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence.

Meanwhile, off-screen, Jennifer has remained schtum about her tryst with film director Darren, 48.

And rumours of a serious romance between the Harvard-educated film buff and Jennifer have intensified over the past months, despite the pair rarely being seen together in public.

Role: Jennifer, who has been shooting for her new movie across Europe, plays a young intelligence officer whose dreams of becoming a prima ballerina are shattered when she breaks her leg

'Jennifer is comfortable with an older guy because she is mature and focused,' source told People about the gaping 22-year age gap.

The two met while working together on drama Mother! which is set for release later this year.

The source continued: 'Jen has been mesmerised by his talent and brains since she started working with him.'

They are very sweet together and seem happy,' another source told the magazine. 'They hold hands. They Keep to themselves and don't seem to want a lot of attention.'
They've been dating - and working out together - for two years.

And Kym Marsh and her personal trainer boyfriend Matt Baker enjoyed a night off on Friday, partying in style at the relaunch of Bar Ca Bar in Manchester.

The Coronation Street star stood out from the crowd in a neon orange vest top, keeping the rest of her look casual.

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Date night: Kym Marsh and her personal trainer boyfriend Matt Baker enjoyed a night off on Friday, partying in style at the relaunch of Bar Ca Bar in Manchester

Kym toned down the fluorescent top with a black blazer and skinny jeans, paired with pointed stilettos.

Matt sported grey chineo and a beige mackintosh, cutting a suave figure in his glasses.

The couple were joined by the usual Manchester soap star crowd, including Hollyoaks favourite Nikki Sanderson.

Bold and bright: The Coronation Street star stood out from the crowd in a neon orange vest top, keeping the rest of her look casual

Keeping it simple: Kym toned down the fluorescent top with a black blazer and skinny jeans, paired with pointed stilettos

Stunner: The couple were joined by the usual Manchester soap star crowd, including Hollyoaks favourite Nikki Sanderson

The brunette beauty wowed in a white lace dress with a nude underlay, her locks styled in voluminous curls.

Corrie star Lucy Fallon was also in attendance, taking a break from her character Bethany Platt's distressing grooming storyline.

The blonde sported a Japanese inspired silk skirt and an embroidered leather jacket, cutting a cool figure at the event.

Soap star: Corrie star Lucy Fallon was also in attendance, taking a break from her character Bethany Platt's distressing grooming storyline

Cosying up: Lucy was in attendance with her boyfriend Tom Leech, who previously revealed he couldn't bear to watch her intense Corrie storyline

Love Island lovebirds: Kady McDermott (L) and her boyfriend Scott Thomas (R) were joining in on the fun

Hand-in-hand: Kady and her fellow reality star arrived at the launch party in style

Pregnant Dannielle Lloyd put in an appearance, covering up her baby bump in a military inspired jacket.

Kady McDermott and her boyfriend Scott Thomas were flying the flag for the Love Island contingeant at the event.

The brunette beauty was the picture of style in a pair of leather trousers and a hip-flashing bodysuit.

Bumping along nicely: Danielle Lloyd - who is currently expecting her fourth child - was also putting in an appearance

Joining forces: The star cosied up to her pals as the event got underway

Meanwhile, Kym recently revealed she was in no rush to tie the knot with boyfriend Matt.

She told OK! magazine: 'I'm in no rush to get married. We're not really bothered about that  we want to get the house sorted first.'

Kym got hitched to actor Jamie Lomas in 2012 and they share six-year-old daughter Polly.

But the estranged pair parted ways in 2013 and their divorce was finalised in 2014.

The actress also has two children 21-year-old David and 19-year-old Emilie with former flame Dave Cunliffe.

Beaming: Lucy sported a Japanese inspired silk skirt and an embroidered leather jacket, cutting a cool figure at the event
They've been together since 2014, but keep a low profile on their relationship.

But Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk made a rare appearance out as a couple on Thursday, as they stepped out together for a romantic dinner.

The 44-year-old actress looked in perfect harmony with the Glee co-creator as they headed to Gjelina in Venice, California.

Stepping out: Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Falchuk made a rare appearance out as a couple on Thursday, as they stepped out together for a romantic dinner

The Sliding Doors beauty showcased her sense of style and stunning figure in olive green cargo pants.

She teamed them with a form-fitting black turtle neck and carried a blazer over her arm.

Although she's already 5ft 9in tall, she added extra inches with chunky-heeled black boots.

Harmonious: The 44-year-old actress looked in perfect harmony with the Glee co-creator as they headed to Gjelina in Venice, California

Brad looked handsome and relaxed in camouflage pants and a leather flight jacket with shearling collar.

The couple only became Instagram-official in March, on Brad's 45th birthday.

She shared a cosy snap of the pair, captioned: 'Happy birthday, handsome.'

The Seven beauty rarely comments on her relationship with Brad - who also created Scream Queens, but seems to be making it clear that they are consciously-coupled.

Low-key: The couple only became Instagram-official in March, on Brad's 45th birthday

It's one of the very few times he's popped up on her social media - he made an appearance in a montage at Thanksgiving but is noticeably absent most of the time.

He has shared a few pictures of the Shallow Hal star - who shares her two children Apple, 12, and 10-year-old Moses with her Coldplay frontman ex, from whom she split in 2014.

He posted a picture of his girlfriend alone outside the White House, after they attended Barack Obama's farewell party in January, as well as a snap together on vacation in Iceland last year.

Brad shares his two children Brody and Isabella with his ex-wife Suzanne Bukinik.
Protester wears a President Donald Trump effigy outside the White House during a demonstration for an independent probe into allegations his campaign colluded with Russia

The White House Wednesday slapped down calls for a special prosecutor to investigate allegations that Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia, after the US president abruptly fired his FBI director.

Trump's shock dismissal of James Comey -- the man overseeing federal investigations into suspected Kremlin interference in the 2016 vote -- has sparked a political firestorm in Washington and plunged his young presidency in turmoil.

Comey himself was measured about the abrupt turn of events in a letter to FBI agents and colleagues, urging them not to be concerned for him.

"I have long believed that a president can fire an FBI director for any reason, or for no reason at all. I'm not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed. I hope you won't either," he said.

The fall of James Comey

"It is done, and I will be fine, although I will miss you and the mission deeply," he wrote.

"In times of turbulence, the American people should see the FBI as a rock of competence, honesty, and independence," he added.

Furious Democrats, however, suggested the FBI's work will now be hopelessly tainted and demanded a special prosecutor akin to those appointed during Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal or the run-up to Bill Clinton's impeachment.

"We don't think it's necessary," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, batting back that demand.

Sanders said the White House wanted the FBI probe -- and parallel congressional investigations -- to continue and to wrap up their work. "No one wants this to be finished and completed more than us."

The White House says Comey's firing was motivated solely by concerns over his handling of the high-stakes probe into Hillary Clinton's emails.

A US official said the president had been "losing confidence" in his FBI chief for several months, and that after watching Comey testify before Congress as part of the Russia probe last week Trump was "strongly inclined to remove him."

The president personally defended his summary dismissal of Comey and rejected suggestions it was linked to the Russia investigation.

Under James Comey, the FBI concluded Russia tried to sway the election in President Donald Trump's favor through an influence and cyber-hacking campaign

"He wasn't doing a good job, it's very simple, he was not doing a good job," Trump told reporters as hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the White House chanting "shame on you!"

Trump's comments came shortly after he hosted Russia's top diplomat at the White House, in his highest-level Kremlin encounter since taking office.

- 'Fabrications' -

Trump described an Oval Office meeting with Sergei Lavrov, the highest-profile Kremlin official to visit the White House in years, as "very, very good."

Under Comey, the FBI concluded that Russia tried to sway the election in Trump's favor through an influence and cyber-hacking campaign.

The bureau has been probing whether Trump's campaign colluded with such an effort -- something the president rejects as "fake news."

Lavrov, who last set foot in Washington in August 2013, dismissed all claims of election meddling as "fabrications."

In a sharp new development, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced Wednesday it issued a subpoena to Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn for Russia-related documents, which he had previously declined to provide.

Flynn was sacked for lying to Vice President Mike Pence about his discussions with the Russian ambassador to Washington.

US Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he was "troubled by the timing and reasoning" for James Comey's dismissal

Trump's decision to terminate Comey's tenure, effective immediately, stunned Washington and drew comparisons to the Watergate scandal that brought down Nixon.

The Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell, on Wednesday dismissed calls for a special prosecutor. He said such an individual would only "serve to impede the current work being done."

But Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal said even among Republicans there was a "growing feeling of disquiet and doubt about the direction that the president is taking."

He raised the prospect that White House stonewalling on a special prosecutor could trigger a drastic congressional response.

"I would oppose confirmation of a new FBI director until there is support for a special prosecutor," he told reporters.

- Backlash -

A defiant Trump took to Twitter to defend his decision, vowing: "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!"

But White House officials privately expressed surprise at the level of backlash, particularly from leading Republicans.

Several members of the president's own party, including Richard Burr -- head of the Senate Intelligence committee -- sought to distance themselves from the White House.

"I am troubled by the timing and reasoning of director Comey's termination," he said in a statement. "His dismissal, I believe, is a loss for the Bureau and the nation."

Before Tuesday only one FBI director had been fired in the bureau's century-long history. The post is normally considered above politics, with incumbents serving one 10-year term.

Comey played an outsized -- and controversial -- role on the American political stage over the past year, lobbing one bombshell after another that rankled both parties in Washington.

He first angered Republicans by closing the email probe against Clinton in July, then infuriated Democrats by reopening it days before the November election.

Clinton blamed Comey for her loss to Trump, arguing that reopening the probe had scared off voters, stopping her momentum.
Soldiers patrol on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on May 10, 2017

More than 24,000 people fled their homes as the Philippine military used airstrikes and artillery against Muslim extremists who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, authorities said Thursday.

Almost a week of attacks on members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) in the strife-torn southern island of Mindanao has displaced residents of six towns, said Jofelle Delicana, spokeswoman for the civil defence office.

About 24,300 villagers were forced to take refuge in schools, makeshift tents or with relatives after the military launched their assault on May 5, she told AFP.

Local army spokesman Captain Arvin Encinas said that reports from civilians and intelligence sources indicate that as many as 31 BIFF guerrillas have been killed including the group's leader, Commander Ismael Abubakar, also known as "Bungos", as well as two of his aides.

"We believe they are among the dead considering our information that they were there in the location hit by airstrikes," he told AFP.

He said however that no bodies had been recovered and that the death toll could not be verified.

Seven soldiers have been slightly wounded in the fighting, he added.

"We used all available air assets and artillery assets and armour," the captain said, declining to give details.

Six Indonesians from the Islamic State group who were training the BIFF in bomb-making were part of the remnants of the group that is being surrounded by the army, he added.

"Our assessment is they have less space to move while we are conducting our airstrikes because all our available troops have been deployed," Encinas said.

The group of almost 100 BIFF were targeted after they were involved in the planting of make-shift bombs and a number of murders in recent months.

The BIFF split from main Muslim rebel group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2008 after the MILF opened a peace process with the government.

Since then, its leaders have been seen in videos pledging allegiance to the IS movement that has taken control of vast swathes of the Middle East.

Encinas said Bungos had been trying to forge closer connections with IS so he could get more overseas assistance.

While the Philippines is largely Catholic, the southern third is home to a sizable Muslim minority and extremist groups and guerrillas like the BIFF who are fighting for a separate Islamic state.
The Emir of Kano Muhammadu Sanusi II (centre) faces allegations of embezzlement, abuse of office and improper conduct

Lawmakers in northern Nigeria have opened an investigation into corruption claims against one of the country's leading traditional rulers, whose progressive views have caused controversy in a conservative region.

The local legislature in Kano state on Wednesday set up a committee to probe eight allegations against the Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II, over the "embezzlement of funds belong to the emirate council".

Other claims include abuse of office and improper conduct.

The eight-member committee is expected to report its findings to the state house of assembly within two weeks.

The announcement came two weeks after the Kano state anti-corruption agency began looking into the finances of the state-funded emirate council -- the equivalent of a royal court.

That probe centres on the use of six billion naira ($19 million, 17 million euros) of palace funds to pay for luxury cars, chartered flights, phone and internet bills as well as other personal expenses, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The council has denied the allegations.

Supporters of the emir, who before his appointment in 2014 was governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, claim he is being targeted for his progressive views.

Muhammadu Sanusi II, paraded through the streets of Kano with his entourage during the July 2016 Eid al-Fitr festival marking the end of the Islamic holy fasting month of Ramadan

The Western-educated ruler has broken with royal tradition, speaking out about the need for social reform in a deeply conservative region, pitching him against political and religious interests.

The state assembly investigation comes after the house committee chairman on works, Ibrahim Ahmad Gama, listed the eight accusations against the emir.

- Image 'tarnished' -

In his motion, which was supported by a majority of lawmakers, Gama accused Sanusi of "introducing strange religious issues and involvement in politics".

He accused the ruler of claiming Kano state governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje and lawmakers mismanaged state resources on a trip to China to secure $1.8 billion in funding for a light rail project.

"We only spent four days (in China) and our mission was to find out the capability of the company to handle the rail project but not to secure any loan as alleged by the emir," Gama told the assembly.

Sanusi criticised the light rail project last month at an investment forum attended by Ganduje and other northern governors.

Gama said the emir had tarnished "my image, that of the state government and the assembly".

The Emir of Kano (centre) is accused of sending his daughter to represent him at public functions instead of royal aides

He also accused Sanusi of "intentionally attacking President Muhammadu Buhari whenever he got an opportunity to speak at a public gathering", which he said contravened the culture of the traditional ruler.

Sanusi had come under public criticism for sending his daughter, Shahida, to represent him at public functions instead of royal aides, as is the usual protocol.

Last month, there was outcry when she read his speech at a three-year anniversary of the kidnapping of the more than 200 Chibok schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram.

Gama said her appearance "tarnished the image of the emirate" and "downgraded the honour of the emirate council".

"The mode of dressing of the emir's daughter at the event was an embarrassment not only to the emirate council but the entire people of Kano," he added.
India allows religious institutions to govern matters of marriage, divorce and property inheritance in the multi-faith nation

India's highest court Thursday began considering the legality of a controversial Islamic practice that allows men to leave their wives instantly by reciting the word "divorce" three times.

"Triple talaq" is legal for Muslims under the Indian constitution but it has come under scrutiny with reports emerging of men divorcing their wives via letters, Skype and WhatsApp messages.

Several women divorced by triple talaq have petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn the practice.

"We told the court that the practice has no basis in the law or in the Koran," said Balaji Srinivasan, a lawyer for Shayara Bano whose husband split from her by writing "divorce" three times on a piece of paper.

The practice has been challenged in lower courts but this collective appeal is the first time India's Supreme Court will consider whether triple talaq is fundamental to Islam and therefore legally binding.

A panel of five judges from India's major faiths -- Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism and Zoroastrianism -- will consider the matter and is expected to deliver a verdict next week.

India allows religious institutions to govern matters of marriage, divorce and property inheritance in the multi-faith nation, enshrining triple talaq as a legal avenue for its 180 million Muslims to end unions.

But the right-wing Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has backed the petitioners in this landmark case, declaring triple talaq unconstitutional and discriminatory against women.

Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has long pushed for a uniform civil code to be enforced but the issue remains highly sensitive in India, where religious tensions often lead to violence.

Many Muslim groups have been critical of any attempts to meddle with religious laws, arguing it curtails their constitutional right to govern their affairs.

The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), a grouping of Islamic organisations, told the court they opposed any efforts to change the law.

"Triple talaq is reprehensible and sinful way to divorce, and we have spoken against it, but we want the court and government to stay off," AIMPLB's convener Zafaryab Jilani told AFP.

Some Islamic scholars say there is no mention of triple talaq in the Koran, which instead details a different process for divorce based on mediation.
Ismail Haniya (R-2), leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, gives a press conference in Gaza City on May 11, 2017, announcing the arrest of the suspected killer of one of its key military commanders, Mazen Faqha

Hamas has arrested the suspected murderer of one of its key military commanders in Gaza, the Palestinian Islamist movement's leader said Thursday, while maintaining Israel was behind the March assassination.

The killing of Mazen Faqha in the heart of Hamas-controlled Gaza shocked the militant movement and raised fears of a fresh conflict with Israel.

"We announce that the killer and criminal that carried out the orders of the officers of the Zionist security services is in the hands of the (Hamas) security services," Ismail Haniya told journalists in Gaza City, referring to Israel.

"He has confessed to the crime."

No details were provided on the suspect's identity, though Hamas has previously suggested Palestinian collaborators had worked with Israel on the assassination.

"Punishment will be carried out against the murderer," Haniya added.

Hamas recently executed three men it accused of collaboration with Israel.

Faqha was shot dead on March 24 near his house in Gaza City.

He had been in charge of forming cells for the movement's military wing in the occupied West Bank.

Hamas, which has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, immediately blamed its arch-enemy Israel, with which it has fought three wars since 2008.

Israel never confirmed or denied involvement in the killing.

Haniya's press conference was held outside Faqha's house in Gaza City and attended by his widow and Yahya Sinwar, Hamas's Gaza chief.

A Hamas source said on condition of anonymity that the suspect had "participated in the morning in a reconstruction of the crime", after numerous security forces were seen in front of Faqha's home earlier in the day.

- Offer to collaborators -

The widow (C) of the Islamist movement Hamas's slain military commander Mazen Faqha speaks alongside the group leader Ismail Haniya (R) at a press conference in Gaza City on May 11, 2017

Immediately afterward, Hamas authorities closed the only passenger crossing into Israel, while exit by sea was also banned, effectively sealing off the enclave.

Rights groups slammed the closure as collective punishment for Gazas two million residents, with those in need of medical treatment among those prevented from leaving.

The restrictions were later lifted.

On April 5, Hamas offered Israeli "collaborators" a week to turn themselves in in exchange for clemency.

A day later, it hanged three people they accused of being collaborators in cases not related to Faqhas death.

Faqha was one of more than 1,000 Palestinians released from Israeli jails in an exchange deal for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.

According to Hamas, he formed cells for their military wing in the West Bank cities of Tubas, also where he was born, and Jenin.

It says he played an important role in major assaults, including a suicide attack in the Israeli settlement neighbourhood of Gilo in east Jerusalem in 2002 that killed 19 people.

They were part of a wave of suicide attacks that killed hundreds of Israelis during the second intifada, or uprising, between 2000 and 2005.

Israel sentenced him to nine life sentences plus 50 years, but he was released in the 2011 deal for Shalit, an Israeli soldier Hamas had detained for five years.

The Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli blockade for a decade, while Egypt's crossing with the enclave has also remained largely closed in recent years.
A photograph released by the family of Hannah Bladon, who was stabbed to death on a Jeruslam tram in April 2017

Israeli authorities on Thursday charged a Palestinian with murder over the fatal stabbing of a young British woman on a Jerusalem tramway last month, the justice ministry said.

Jamil Tamimi, 57, from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, was charged with premeditated murder, the ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said Tamimi had entered the tramway with the intention of committing a murder and stabbed 20-year-old Hannah Bladon seven times.

It said he chose her as a victim because she seemed incapable of defending herself.

The April 14 attack took place on a tram close to the Old City, where thousands of Christians from around the world were marking Good Friday and as Jews marked the week-long Passover holiday.

An off-duty policeman travelling in the tram overpowered the attacker with the help of another passenger.

Israeli authorities have described the attacker as mentally disturbed, while Haaretz newspaper reported he had been released from a psychiatric hospital the day before the murder.

Bladon was an exchange student at Jerusalem's Hebrew University from Britain's University of Birmingham.

She had only started studying in Jerusalem in January and had been due to complete a single semester.

A wave of Palestinian knife, gun and car-ramming attacks erupted in October 2015, and Israeli authorities allege a number of the assailants have been motivated by psychiatric or personal problems in addition to others driven by more specifically political reasons.

The violence has greatly subsided in recent months.
The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces are focused on driving the Islamic State group out of the jihadists' de facto Syrian capital Raqa

With hostilities subsiding on Syria's western battlefronts, President Bashar al-Assad's army is seeking to head off US-backed forces fighting jihadists further east, analysts and military sources in Damascus say.

Violence has diminished in parts of central and western Syria after a deal signed last week in the Kazakh capital Astana to introduce four "de-escalation zones" aimed at paving the way for a lasting ceasefire.

The agreement, brokered by rebel backer Turkey and government allies Iran and Russia, leaves out valuable border lands in eastern Syria, including the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor.

Observers say Syrian government troops plan to seize swathes of that territory from jihadists -- but also from rival groups backed by the United States.

"This truce will allow a part of the Syrian army to redeploy east towards positions held by the Islamic State group, chiefly near the Iraqi border and towards Deir Ezzor city," said Waddah Abed Rabbo, editor-in-chief of the Al-Watan daily.

Under a deal signed last week in the Kazakh capital Astana, "de-escalation zones" will be created in four areas of Syria including Eastern Ghouta near Damascus

"It's a question of refusing to allow the US and the forces it supports to occupy the country's east," said Abed Rabbo, whose paper is close to the government.

Under the Astana deal, "de-escalation zones" will be created in four areas: the northwestern province of Idlib, parts of the central province of Homs, the south, and the opposition enclave of Eastern Ghouta near Damascus.

But the eastern Syrian desert, which is not included, is divided between IS, Kurdish militia, the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and an Arab rebel group known as the Maghawir al-Thawra (Commandos of the Revolution).

- Three-pronged approach -

The SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, is focused on driving IS out of the jihadists' de facto Syrian capital, Raqa, but analysts expect they will turn towards Syria's coveted eastern border next.

"Once this happens, it's better for the Syrian army to advance east too," said Fabrice Balanche, a Syria expert at the Washington Institute.

"If Assad wants to keep Syria united, he also needs the so-called 'un-useful' part of the country too," he added.

Indeed, Assad's forces appear to be on alert for a Washington-backed drive for the frontier territory.

"The US is pushing the groups it supports to take full control of the Syrian-Iraqi border," a Syrian government official said.

A senior military source in Damascus told AFP that, in response, Syria's army would push east in a three-pronged approach.

First, troops were working through territory in Hama province, which lies adjacent to the province of Deir Ezzor.

Second, government fighters in Homs province would sweep east from the ancient city of Palmyra, which they recaptured from IS in March in a Russian-backed offensive.

They would aim for Sukhnah, a key town on the highway between Palmyra and Deir Ezzor.

The third axis would focus on Al-Tanaf, a strategic border crossing between Syria and Iraq that lies on a highway linking the capitals of the two countries.

The first two assaults would aim to break IS's two-year siege on Deir Ezzor city, where a Syrian military expert says 7,000 government troops are trapped.

"At least 15,000 fighters will be needed to lift IS's siege," said the expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The third drive for Al-Tanaf, though, would put Syrian troops in confrontation with the US-backed Maghawir al-Thawra.

Maghawir al-Thawra's fighters were trained by both the US and Jordan, and have recently captured a series of towns near Syria's southeastern borders with both Iraq and Jordan.

According to the military expert, Syria's army "is trying to reach Al-Tanaf in coordination with the Russians to prevent the Americans from spreading further east."

Reconquering Syria's east will be a tall task for government troops, whose numbers have been strained by deaths and defections during the deadly six-year war.

More than 320,000 people have been killed since the conflict erupted with anti-Assad protests in 2011.
Presidential military personnel patrol Bouake, Ivoy Coast in January after soldiers mutinied demanding extra payment

Some 8,400 Ivory Coast soldiers who mutinied in January apologised to President Alassane Ouattara in an orchestrated ceremony that was aired on national television.

Organised without the knowledge of the press, the event -- broadcast after it took place at the presidential palace -- signalled a dramatic end to the protest movement.

As well as apologising the rebels said they were giving up all their financial demands.

Ouattara said of the rebels that he "believed their words were sincere" and they would now be "exemplary soldiers".

A spokesman for the rebels, named as Sergeant Fofana said: "We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands."

He then, in a sign of allegiance, saluted the president, the images showed.

Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara said of the rebels' apology that he "believed their words were sincere" and they would now be "exemplary soldiers"

At the start of January, former rebels integrated into army ranks staged a mutiny that paralysed activity in several towns of the west African country while they pressed for bonuses.

In meeting the demands of the ex-rebels, who controlled the northern half of Africa's biggest cocoa producer between 2002 and 2011, the authorities provoked a fresh mutiny by other troops and paramilitary gendarmes.

Clashes claimed four lives in the political capital Yamoussoukro.

The mutineers, who demanded 12 million CFA francs (18,000 euros) in payments for each soldier, obtained 5 million francs (7,500 euros) in January and had been due to receive the rest of the sum this month, the rebels had told AFP.

The government had refused to give details of the negotiations.

Ouattara said Thursday the country was going through a "very, very difficult time" after a fall in the price of cocoa led to "a net loss of 150 billion francs CFA (230 million euros)" to the state budget.

The mutiny had "scared Ivorians, as well as those who want to invest in and visit the country," he said.

He also announced that the government had given up plans to build new schools, a health centre and cultural centres across the country, as well as the delay to 2018 of a key election promise -- bringing electricity to every village with more than 500 inhabitants.

Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel as well as purchases of materiel worth 1.2 billion euros.

Part of the plan provides for the departure of several thousand men, particularly ex-rebels, who will not be replaced.
National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers confirms US concerns about the security software giant Kaspersky

Top US intelligence chiefs on Thursday publicly expressed doubts about the global cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labs because of its roots in Russia.

Six leading intelligence officials told a Senate hearing on external threats to the United States of their concerns over the firm's broad presence, without specifying any particular threat.

Asked if he was aware of a security threat tied to Kaspersky software, Federal Bureau of Investigation acting director Andrew McCabe replied: "We are very concerned about it and we are focused on it very closely."

Defense Intelligence Agency director Lieutenant General Vincent Stewart said his agency is avoiding the company's products.

"There is, as well as I know, no Kaspersky software on our networks," he said, adding that the agency's private sector contractors are also steering clear.

Also indicating their concerns in brief were the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the Director of National Intelligence.

"I am personally aware and involved as director of the National Security Agency in the Kaspersky Lab issue," NSA head Mike Rogers said.

Kaspersky was founded in Moscow in 1997 by Eugene Kaspersky, a computer engineer who served in the Russian military.

The company quickly expanded to a global presence, with 3,600 employees, 400 million users of its software, and revenue of some $620 million in 2015, according to its website.

Its antivirus programs regularly rank in the top five of such software for personal and business computers.

But US officials have expressed doubts over its recruitment of some staff with alleged links to Russian defense and intelligence bodies.

Some worry that it might offer Russian intelligence a secret backdoor into users's computers. US officials are particularly worried that foreign hackers could penetrate US infrastructure via suspect software and malware.

Kaspersky denied having ties to any government.

"The company has never helped, nor will help, any government in the world with its cyber espionage efforts," it said in a statement Thursday.

"Kaspersky Lab believes it is completely unacceptable that the company is being unjustly accused without any hard evidence to back up these false allegations."

Commenting on Reddit Thursday, Eugene Kaspersky also said his company had no links to the Russian government, offering to testify in the Senate.

"I respectfully disagree with their opinion, and I'm very sorry these gentlemen can't use the best software on the market because of political reasons," he said, referring to the intelligence chiefs.

- Front-door access -

The allegations against Kaspersky come amid heightened US concerns over Russian hacking after what intelligence chiefs say was a significant effort directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin to interfere with last year's election.

President Donald Trump's former national security advisor Michael Flynn is under investigation for his links to Russia, which include being paid $11,250 to speak at a Kaspersky function.

But Sean Kanuck, a former CIA officer who was the first US national intelligence officer for cyber issues, said the worries about Kaspersky have mainly come from US lawmakers who don't understand that it gets paid by companies and US government agencies to have "front-door" access to their systems.

"That means that any Congressional questions about 'back doors' in Kaspersky products reflect a certain naivete, because many of Kaspersky's clients are intentionally paying for full-content monitoring on their networks."
Yemeni fighter loyal to the Saudi-backed Yemeni president walks through a position captured from Shiite-Huthi rebels northwest of the city of Taiz

Rifts are growing within the ranks both of Yemen's government and the rebel alliance, further dimming the prospects of an end to the country's two-year-old war.

On the government side, a push for self-rule in the formerly independent south is gaining traction.

Local governors in south Yemen on Thursday announced they had launched an autonomous authority for the region, a rebuttal against President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi's decision to fire two key members of his government.

In the north, a power struggle is emerging in the alliance between Yemen's Shiite Huthi rebels and the forces of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Caught in the middle are millions of Yemenis who face spiralling violence, looming famine and a political crisis that analysts say is unlikely to be resolved anytime soon.

- Southern discontent -

A Yemeni man scavenges through piles of rubbish lining a road in Sanaa after sanitation workers went on strike over weeks of unpaid wages

On April 27, Hadi dismissed cabinet minister Hani bin Breik and Aidarous al-Zoubeidi, then the governor of the southern province of Aden where Hadi's government is based.

The move sparked mass protests in support of Zoubeidi and Breik, both historically in favour of southern autonomy.

Zoubeidi and Breik are both board members of the newly-announced Southern Transitional Council.

The two also played a key role in restoring security to Aden and adjacent provinces in 2015, after Huthi insurgents were driven out of the area by government forces supported by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.

Insiders say the recent events have deep roots.

South Yemen was an independent state until 1990, when it was unified with North Yemen and Ali Abdullah Saleh elected president.

Saleh remained in power until 2012, when he resigned after a year of mass protests and was succeeded by Hadi, his vice president.

Yemenis wave flags of the southern separatist movement during a demonstration in the southern city of Aden in support of a governor sacked by the president

The ex-president realigned himself at the side of the Shiite insurgents, who staged a coup against Hadi in 2014.

Hadi fled the capital Sanaa and briefly relocated to his hometown of Aden before settling in Saudi Arabia, which along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a crucial military ally of Hadi's government.

But Hadi's dismissal of Zoubeidi and bin Breik, both reportedly close to the UAE, appears to have reignited southern separatist sentiment.

"The extent of this rift reverberates in the Arab coalition, particularly as the sidelined southern leaders are supported by the UAE," a government official told AFP, requesting anonymity.

The UAE played a key role in providing military and economic support in Hadi's campaign to retake the five southern provinces in the summer of 2015 and continues to support leaders in the south.

Abu Dhabi is also a key supporter of Breik, who is close to salafist groups in southern Yemen.

And analysts say the spread of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group in government-held parts of Yemen, where the jihadists have taken advantage of the political chaos, damages Hadi's ties to both the United Nations and the West.

- 'Unnatural alliance' -

Power struggles have also created a rift in the north, which is controlled by the Huthi-led alliance.

"This alliance, which has held up so far, is tactical but unnatural and is showing signs of cracking," said Yemen analyst Najib Ghallab.

"The Huthis don't necessarily believe in partnership... They build their own authority directly linked to Abdel Malek al-Huthi," head of the rebel group, Ghallab said.

In a structural power play, the Huthis this month announced they had promoted 29,000 policemen to positions in the interior ministry, all chosen from within their ranks.

But the transfer last year of the central bank from Sanaa to Hadi's stronghold of Aden drained the rebels of the means to pay civil servant salaries, fanning popular discontent.

Dissatisfaction among supporters of Saleh is also rising, and the ex-president this week said he was open to dialogue with rival Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia's powerful Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has hinted that Saleh could begin to distance himself from the Huthis.

"Saleh is now under Huthi control," Prince Mohammed said. "If he were to leave Sanaa, he would adopt a different position".

The World Health Organization estimates more than 8,000 people have been killed since 2015 in the war between the Saudi-supported government and the Iranian-backed Huthis.

The UN has warned that two-thirds of the population of Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world even before the war, faces a serious threat of famine this year.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange addressing the media from the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in central London in February 2016

The enigmatic champion of a global movement for transparency and democracy. A Russian stooge. A West-hating attention-seeker. A cold fish with questionable attitudes and alleged diabolical sexual mores.

Julian Assange has been labeled all of these -- and many things besides -- since starting out as a media-savvy Robin Hood figure, wrestling facts from the powerful and serving them up unexpurgated for the masses.

Now, a fugitive from justice dogged by accusations of sexual assault and living a hermetic existence in London's Ecuadoran embassy for the last five years, he cuts a more embattled, slippery figure.

"Risk," a new documentary by Oscar-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, starts out as an unsettlingly ambivalent portrait of the award-winning iconoclast but ends up revealing a darker side to Assange.

Filmed over six tumultuous years and taking in the 2016 US presidential election, it takes viewers closer than any previous film crew into Assange's inner sanctum.

"This is not the film I thought I was making. I thought I could ignore the contradictions, I thought they were not part of the story. I was wrong. They are becoming the story," Poitras says in a voiceover.

US cable network Showtime announced in April it had partnered with Neon to roll out the film at 36 US locations during May, before a television premiere later in summer.

WikiLeaks, founded by Assange in 2006, specializes in large-scale breaches of classified data that have made headlines around the world, as well as challenging the ethics of security services.

The 45-year-old computer programmer has claimed political asylum at the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012, having taken refuge to avoid being sent to Sweden.

- Misogyny -

There is an international arrest warrant out to get him to face allegations of unlawful coercion, sexual molestation and rape dating back to 2010.

Poitras's profile of Assange, who denies any wrongdoing, is a follow-up to her Academy Award-winning "Citizenfour" (2014), about fugitive leaker Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal.

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of "Risk" is its success in shedding light on the ugly misogyny that runs through so much of the tech world, showing Assange describing the sexual assault allegations against him as the product of a feminist conspiracy.

He even suggests that if the alleged victims said sorry to him, he would "apologize for anything I did or didn't do to hurt their feelings."

"Risk" also gets up-close with security expert and close Assange ally Jacob Appelbaum, revealing that he is also facing accusations of sexual misconduct, which he too denies.

Assange doesn't accept that he and Poitras fell out, but appears through messages she reads out on camera to become colder with her, bruised by the fact that she didn't use WikiLeaks to publish Snowden's NSA material.

"That kind of created I think, as you see in the film, a tension between myself and Julian," the 53-year-old said during a Q&A following the North American premiere at the Art of the Real festival in New York last week.

At its height, WikiLeaks could claim to have provided valuable insights into the war on terror, helped bring about the Arab Spring and shone a light on civilian deaths in Iraq.

- Potent force -

Regardless of Assange's plummeting stock in the bourse of public opinion, the organization he founded remains undeniably relevant -- a potent force in geopolitics.

"Risk" underlines its continued influence in the confusion surrounding Assange's intervention in the US presidential election, and his suspected ties with Russia and with members of the Trump campaign.

In July WikiLeaks published 20,000 hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, some innocuous but others hugely damaging to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.

By October, WikiLeaks was publishing thousands of emails from Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, prompting effusive praise from then-candidate Donald Trump.

Assange denies that Russia or any other state was behind the leak.

Despite its focus on the murky world of espionage, "Risk" does have its lighter side, including a hilarious cameo by Lady Gaga paying a visit to Assange.

But had Poitras filmed for a few more months, her documentary could have had a romantic coda.

In a bizarre twist in the Assange saga, ex-Baywatch star Pamela Anderson has recently emerged as a rumored love interest of the secretive Australian, and in a poem posted on her website she complains about the "narrow lens Laura has picked."

The 49-year-old actress has reportedly visited the fugitive several times in recent months.
This photo taken March 28, 2016 shows people leaving flowers and toys in memory of a three-year-old girl who was decapitated on a Taipei street near a metro station. The man who killed her was Friday sentenced to life in prison

A schizophrenic Taiwanese man who decapitated a three-year-old girl in public on a busy Taipei street escaped the death penalty Friday as he was sentenced to life in prison for what the court called an "appalling" crime.

Wang Ching-yu, 34, had pleaded guilty to killing the child in a crime that shocked the generally peaceful island after overpowering her mother near a metro station.

He beheaded the girl with a kitchen knife as horrified bystanders tried to stop him.

Wang had told the court that he hallucinated he was a Chinese emperor from Sichuan province and believed that killing the girl would bring him concubines to "carry on his family line," according to reports.

When asked in court if he knew why murder was wrong, he had said he knew he had made a mistake because no Sichuan woman had come forward to bear him children after the killing.

Prosecutors called the crime "extremely cold-blooded" and demanded the death penalty.

But judge Tsai Shou-hsun told a Taipei district court Friday that he would instead be jailed for life as he had a "mental handicap".

Wearing black-framed glasses, a white T-shirt and track pants, his head shaved, Wang remained calm as he listened to the verdict, responding: "I understand".

The victim's family were not in court.

In a statement after the verdict, the court said the decision was in accordance with international human rights covenants protecting those with mental illnesses.

It said Wang had been expelled from school and had gone through drug rehabilitation, but was reclusive and isolated, developing schizophrenia and hallucinations.

However, the statement also described the killing as "grotesquely violent", adding that Wang had known murder was illegal and had dodged supervision in order to commit it.

"He has not shown empathy and regret, and after assessment the chance of committing crime again is still high," the statement said.

- Death penalty debate -

Taiwan resumed capital punishment in 2010 after a five-year hiatus. Executions are reserved for serious crimes such as aggravated murder.

Some politicians and rights groups have called for its abolition, but various opinion surveys show majority support for the death penalty.

After the decapitation in March last year, hundreds of Taiwanese, many dressed in black and wearing stickers reading "Death penalty is necessary," called for Wang to be executed.

The killing came less than a year after the throat of an eight-year-old girl was slit in her school restroom in Taipei. It sparked widespread public anger and fresh debate about capital punishment.

Prosecutors in Wang's case said during court hearings that he should be put to death as a psychiatric report had found him to be mentally sound enough to be responsible for his actions.

But his defence had argued that Wang suffered from a mental disorder, so should be given a limited-term imprisonment or sent for treatment, local media said.

Police said he had previously been arrested for drug-related crimes. He was attacked by an angry mob while in custody.

Prosecutors said blood tests showed he was not under the influence of drugs at the time of the murder.
Avi Issacharoff covered the Palestinian territories as a journalist before co-creating the TV show "Fauda" with its complex view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Hisham Suleiman now hears calls of "Abu Ahmad" when walking down the street -- a sign of the popularity of a television drama that dares to present a complex view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The show "Fauda," or chaos in Arabic, sees Arab Israeli actor Suleiman portray Abu Ahmad, a Hamas militant being pursued by an Israeli undercover unit.

Its first season captivated viewers by showing the more human aspects of characters often portrayed in black and white, while at the same time keeping them on edge with tense storylines.

It is the first Israeli television show in both Hebrew and Arabic.

A second season is now in preparation, and Netflix has also picked it up, with the first season available with English subtitles and dubbing.

Avi Issacharoff, co-creator of the show and who for years covered the Palestinian territories as a journalist, said: "We tried to show both sides of the story."

"We wanted to show that even the bad guys are very different from what the average Israeli thinks."

- 'Honest and nuanced' -

The series follows Doron, a retired member of the undercover Israeli unit who breaks with the peaceful family life he had transitioned into and rejoins the fight at the request of his former chief.

Suleiman's character -- the member of the Palestinian Islamist movement -- is behind a series of suicide attacks that killed more than 100 Israelis.

Doron thought he had killed him, but it turns out he is still alive, so the former agent returns to finish the job.

The 12 episodes of the first season depict the pursuit that follows, with the story portrayed in meticulously constructed scenes reflective of the daily lives of Israelis and Palestinians.

That includes pervasive security constraints, attacks and nighttime raids by the Israeli army in Palestinian territory.

Two-thirds of the show is in Arabic, with the characters played by Jewish and Arab Israelis.

Avi Issacharoff TV show "Fauda" follows an undercover Israeli unit pursuing a Hamas militant

In 2016, it won six Ophir prizes awarded by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television, including best dramatic series.

It has also gained fans globally both due to its availability on Netflix and its appearance at international festivals.

American writer Stephen King has been among the fans praising it.

Issacharoff said it was difficult at first to garner interest in the show.

"At first, everyone said 'no' because it was too expensive due to numerous action scenes and because everybody here is tired of the subject," he said, referring to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The power of the series comes across in its realism.

While "Fauda" was written for an Israeli audience and Hamas can be seen as the "bad guys", all characters are portrayed with a rare complexity.

"The way in which the screenwriters have illustrated the conflict is very fair, honest and nuanced," said Einav Schiff, television critic for Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot.

In one episode, Amal, a young Palestinian woman whose fiance was killed at their wedding ceremony by a member of the Israeli undercover unit, decides to take revenge.

She brings a bomb in an Israeli bar where the girlfriend of one of the Israeli agents works.

Inside the bar, while holding the bag with the bomb inside, Amal hesitates, her eyes darting, seemingly staggered by the kindness of the waitress, the agent's girlfriend, who asks if something is wrong. A harrowing scene then follows.

- 'A kind of catharsis' -

Suleiman, who comes from the northern Israeli city of Nazareth and, like many Arab Israelis, sees himself as a Palestinian, said he appreciated that the show's creators allowed him to play a Hamas member more complex than the typical "violent and macho" portrayal.

He says he has been inundated with messages from fans from a range of backgrounds.

"Jews, Christian and Muslim Arabs, people from the left and right, even settlers from Kiryat Arba," he said, referring to a hardline Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Suleiman says that the show's blurring of lines is another sign that the conflict may not be as intractable as it seems.

Issacharoff called it "a kind of catharsis for all post-traumatic Israelis and Palestinians".

"It gives them the possibility to be both inside, since it is their story, and outside at the same time, since it is only a series -- to look at reality in a detached way," he said.
US health insurer Cigna is free to leave a proposed merger with Anthem, with a judge declining a request for a preliminary injunction to block the exit

The US health insurer Cigna is free to leave a proposed merger with Anthem, with a judge declining a request for a preliminary injunction to block the exit.

The Delaware Court of Chancery's rejected Anthem's request to stop Cigna from terminating the deal between the health insurance titans, which a federal court has blocked on antitrust concerns.

The judge did stay the ruling's implementation until Monday, allowing Anthem to decide whether to appeal.

"We look forward to closing this final chapter," Cigna told AFP.

Following Thursday's ruling Anthem did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.

Cigna had initially been favorable to Anthem's takeover plan, a $54 billion merger that would have created the largest US health insurer.

But the company threw in the towel in mid-February after the deal was successfully opposed in federal court by the Department of Justice with backing from eleven US states.

Anthem petitioned the US Supreme Court last week to intervene in that dispute.

Cigna has also filed suit against Anthem demanding a $1.85 billion breakup fee plus more than $13 billion in additional damages.

Anthem rejected the claim -- calling Cigna's "purported" termination of the deal "invalid."

Another proposed health insurer merger, between Aetna and Humana, was blocked in January with a US federal judge ruling that the combination would stifle competition in the health sector.

Those companies said they had mutually agreed to end the merger agreement, with Aetna saying it would pay Humana a $1 billion breakup fee as set by the agreement.
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Nepal on Friday signed up to China's new Silk Road drive, a massive infrastructure project spanning some 65 countries at the centre of the Asian giant's push to expand its global influence.

The long discussed deal between impoverished Nepal and its much bigger neighbour comes just days before China hosts a summit for 28 leaders near Beijing, showcasing the ambitious plan.

The One Belt, One Road Initiative (OBOR) spearheaded by President Xi Jinping would see 60 percent of the global population and around a third of global GDP linked through a network of Chinese-bankrolled ports, railways, roads and industrial parks.

The deal will see China plough money into Nepal for a series of projects including boosting its road network, power grid and a new railway connecting the capital Kathmandu with Lhasa in Tibet.

"We believe China will bring more investment to Nepal, helping the country overcome its status as a landlocked and least developed nation," said Nepal Foreign Minister Prakash Saran Mahat at the signing of the deal on Friday.

Analysts have expressed concern over the Asian giant's attempt to take a lead in global commerce, cautioning that an integrated world trade system where China's Communist party sets the rules could come with serious risks and hidden costs.

New York-based Fitch Ratings said that political motivations might trump "genuine infrastructure needs and commercial logic", leading to "a heightened risk of projects proving unprofitable".

Struggling countries could be saddled with Chinese loans requiring payment regardless of project performance, Fitch Ratings said.

In Kathmandu, China's Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong appeared aware of such criticism and described the plan as a "symphony performed by an orchestra" not China's "solo show" in a short speech at the signing ceremony.

"The Initiative is not going to be China's solo show. A better analogy would be that of a symphony performed by an orchestra composed of all participating countries," Yu said.

"The One Belt, One Road Initiative will bring new opportunities for China-Nepal cooperation and South Asia development," she added.

The newly inked deal will be closely watched by Nepal's other large neighbour, India, which has traditionally played the role of big brother to the much smaller country.

Landlocked Nepal remains dependent on India for the majority of its imports, but the previous administration aggressively courted China as part of a nationalist drive to decrease the country's reliance on New Delhi.
Ainnurul Aisyah Yunos, wife of Turkish businessman Ihsan Aslan, had begged the Malaysian government not to deport her husband

Malaysia has deported three Turkish nationals wanted by Ankara for alleged links to a US-based preacher accused of being behind a failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

National police chief Khalid Abu Bakar tweeted that the men were "deported back to Ankara" Thursday night, despite concerns from rights groups who fear Malaysia is bowing to pressure from Turkey.

Turgay Karaman and Ihsan Aslan were arrested last week under a security law which allows detention without trial for 28 days. Two days later Turkish academic Ismet Ozcelik was also detained -- ostensibly for national security reasons.

"Police investigations showed they were involved in FETO activities and are wanted by Turkey," Khalid said in a separate statement.

Turkish authorities allege last year's coup attempt against Erdogan was masterminded by US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen and his so-called Fethullah Terror Organisation (FETO).

Khalid said the men's travel documents had been cancelled by Ankara and so they were regarded as illegal immigrants in Malaysia.

But rights groups have said they fear Malaysia may be responding to pressure from Turkey, which has mounted a huge crackdown on perceived opponents since the failed coup.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said via a statement Friday that the Malaysian government's "duplicity and crass abuse of the rights of these three men really sets this case apart."

"It's like Malaysia just hung a signboard around its neck that reads 'handmaiden of Turkish repression'."

Robertson added that Malaysia's decision to deport the men meant that they could face possible torture and prolonged detention, followed by an unfair trial.

The UN Human Rights Office for Southeast Asia said it "condemned" the deportation.

"We have serious concerns regarding their safety upon their return to Turkey," it said via its Facebook page.

"We have concerns that other Turkish nationals with alleged links to the Gulen movement may be similarly arrested and deported from Malaysia."

Last week, the organisation had urged Malaysia to refrain from deporting the men to Turkey.

Erdogan's government has detained or sacked tens of thousands of people under a state of emergency imposed after the attempted power grab.

The crackdown focuses on alleged supporters of Gulen.
Japan, one of the world's wealthiest countries, accepted just 28 refugees in 2016 out of the 8,193 applications reviewed by the Immigration Burea

Some 20 foreigners held at an immigration detention centre in Tokyo are on a rare hunger strike in an apparent bid for improved treatment, an official said Friday.

Activists, lawyers and migrants in Japan have complained for years about harsh treatment by some immigration officials and over conditions at detention centres.

"The detainees began refusing food provided by the centre from Tuesday evening and it is still continuing," Atsushi Sakai, a spokesman at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, told AFP.

It remains unclear exactly why the detainees are refusing food, Sato said, adding the bureau is investigating details, including their nationalities.

"We assume that they're on a hunger strike to complain about treatment at the centre and applications for provisional release," he said, saying this kind of protest action was rare.

A rights group called Provisional Release Association in Japan, wrote on its blog that the hunger strike participants were from 12 countries including China, Myanmar, and Bangladesh, and were aged between 25 and 55.

Currently about 580 people are being held at the immigration centre, Sakai said.

The bureau did not confirm whether asylum seekers were also in custody there but the Japan Association for Refugees, a Tokyo-based charity, said refugee status applicants were held at immigration centres.

Japan, one of the world's wealthiest countries, accepted just 28 refugees in 2016 -- one more than the previous year -- out of the 8,193 applications reviewed by the Immigration Bureau.

Officials defend the low number, saying applicants are mainly from Asian countries seeking access to Japan solely for economic reasons.

Campaigners and applicants, however, say that the acceptance process is arduous and that it can be difficult to gain acceptance as a foreigner in Japanese society.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi (C) addresses an international Buddhist conference in Colombo, where he declared his desire for a "quantum jump" in relations with Sri Lanka

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared Friday his desire for a "quantum jump" in relations with Sri Lanka, as New Delhi jostles with regional rival Beijing for influence in the island nation.

India had always considered its smaller neighbour to be within its sphere of influence but watched Sri Lanka drift closer to China under former strongman President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Modi's visit to Sri Lanka -- his second since coming to power in 2014 -- is being seen as New Delhi's attempt to win back support and counter Beijing's push for closer ties with the Indian Ocean nation.

"I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. An opportunity to achieve a quantum jump in our partnership across different fields," Modi told a Buddhist conference in Colombo.

His comments came as Sri Lanka rebuffed a Chinese request to dock a submarine at one of its ports.

Chinese-backed projects soared under Rajapakse, who relied heavily on Beijing for economic and diplomatic support as Western nations threatened his administration with sanctions over atrocities committed during the decades-long civil war which ended in 2009.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in January 2015 promising to review Chinese-funded projects signed by his predecessor and rebuild ties with India.

Modi pledged India's commitment to their "Sri Lankan brothers and sisters" and the "indivisible" ties between the two neighbours.

"We will continue to invest in driving positive change and economic growth to deepen our development co-operation," he said.

As Modi touched down in Colombo for a two-day visit Thursday, a top Sri Lankan defence official confirmed Beijing had been denied permission for a port call by a Chinese submarine.

In Beijing, China's foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuan said they were aware of the reports, but stressed both sides maintained "good cooperation".

"China and Sri Lanka enjoy good friendship," he said.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's office announced he will travel to Beijing on Saturday to participate in China's maritime silk route initiative of economic diplomacy.

"Attention will be paid to the collective benefits for the countries participating in the initiative of President Xi Jinping," Wickremesinghe's office said in a statement Friday.

Pro-China Rajapakse's political allies had called for a black flag protest during Modi's visit to Sri Lanka, accusing India of trying to grab land in a strategic port district.

But the former president sought a meeting with Modi on Thursday night and the two had a "cordial" discussion, confirmed Indian diplomats who provided no further details.

-Tea diplomacy-

Modi flew to the island's tea growing central district of Nuwara Eliya on Friday to open an India-gifted hospital and address tens of thousands of plantation workers of Indian origin.

The nearly one million ethnic Tamils in central Sri Lanka are descendants of indentured labour brought to work in coffee, rubber and tea plantations by British colonial rulers in the 19th century.

"As some of you may have heard, I have a special association with tea," he told workers, referring to his modest beginnings selling tea in the Indian state of Gujarat when he was a child.

"It is a tremendous honour to be the first Indian Prime Minister ever to visit this beautiful region of Sri Lanka."

He promised another 10,000 houses in addition to the 4,000 that India is currently funding for ethnic Tamil plantation workers who are among the poorest in the country of 21 million.

He left on Friday evening after receiving a special blessing at the temple of the Tooth, Sri Lanka's holiest Buddhist shrine, in the town of Kandy.
Various corruption scandals have hit President Jacob Zuma's administration, sparking street protests and criticism from within his own party

The former chief executive of South Africa's state-owned power utility is to return to the post, officials said Friday, less than five months after he resigned over a corruption scandal that rocked the government.

Brian Molefe, a close ally of President Jacob Zuma, resigned from Eskom and was sworn in as a member of parliament, with many observers expecting him to be promoted into the cabinet.

But on Friday he stepped down as a lawmaker and was re-appointed to Eskom, in the latest surprise political move after Zuma sacked his respected finance minister in a cabinet purge in March.

"Definitely` he is coming back on Monday," Eskom board spokesman Khulani Qoma told local media.

Qoma said Molefe was re-appointed because the corruption report that forced his resignation was "not conclusive" and also due to a dispute over his proposed 30 million rand ($2.2 million) pay-off.

"The board decided to rescind its initial decision to grant him early retirement," he said.

Molefe was implicated in a public ombudsman report detailing corruption involving the wealthy Gupta business family, who are alleged to have influence over Zuma.

Respected finance minister Pravin Gordhan, seen as bulwark against corruption, was sacked in March in a reshuffle announced at midnight.

The sacking caused the rand to plummet and the country's sovereign credit rating was downgraded to "junk status" by global agencies Standard & Poor's and Fitch.

It also triggered unprecedented criticism from within the ruling African National Congress and spawned public protests calling for Zuma to leave office.

The ombudsman report revealed Molefe's extensive contact with the Guptas when they were in the process of acquiring a mine that supplies Eskom with coal.

Molefe denied any wrongdoing but resigned as Eskom chief.
The World Health Organization estimates more than 8,000 people have been killed since 2015 in the war between the Saudi-supported government in Yemen and the Iranian-backed Huthis

The government of war-ravaged Yemen on Friday rejected a self-proclaimed autonomous body in the formerly independent south whose formation is seen as an open challenge to the president's authority.

An official statement issued after President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi met his advisors in the Saudi capital "categorically rejected" the South Transition Council whose 26 members include the governors of five southern provinces and two government ministers.

The body was announced on Thursday by Aidarous al-Zoubeidi, the recently fired governor of the southern province of Aden.

"Such acts remain baseless and will never be accepted," the presidency statement said, adding that the move only served the Huthi rebels who have been fighting Hadi's internationally recognised government for more than two years.

It urged those listed as council members "to declare a clear position" towards the new body.

Hadi, a southerner, has been based in Riyadh since March 2015, when the Shiite Huthis closed in on his refuge in Aden after seizing the capital Sanaa and other areas.

Although government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition have recaptured five southern provinces, including Aden, Hadi has only returned to the port city for short visits as the grip of his security forces remains weak.

South Yemen was an independent state until 1990, when it was unified with North Yemen.

Four years later, it launched a separatist rebellion which culminated in its occupation by northern forces.

The Huthis also rejected the new council, which spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam slammed as a "threat to the territorial unity of the Yemeni republic," and a part of a "colonial plot".

Hadi sacked Zoubeidi on April 27 along with cabinet minister Hani bin Breik, in a move widely seen as reflecting divisions among his supporters.

The two men, who played key roles in restoring security to Aden and adjacent provinces after rebels were pushed out in 2015, are believed to be close to southern independence activists.

Thousands of southern Yemenis responded to the sackings by demonstrating in Aden, Hadi's hometown where his government is based, and urged Zoubeidi to set up a new leadership body to represent the south.
Japan's Kei Nishikori in action at the Madrid Masters

Novak Djokovic moved into the semi-finals of the Madrid Masters on Friday without hitting a ball as Kei Nishikori withdrew citing the recurrence of a wrist injury, tournament organisers said.

The Japanese world number eight missed the Barcelona Open late last month due to the injury.

Nishikori is now also a major doubt for the Rome Masters next week with 10 days to go until the start of the French Open.

Djokovic will either renew his rivalry with Rafael Nadal or face Belgium's David Goffin in the last four on Saturday.
Pakistani security officials examine the site of a powerful explosion near Quetta on May 12, 2017

A suicide bomb blast that targeted the convoy of a top senator in southwest Pakistan killed at least 17 people and wounded more than 30 others, officials told AFP Friday.

The attack in Mastung district, roughly an hour east of provincial capital Quetta, struck a vehicle carrying the deputy chairman of Pakistan's upper house Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri.

It was later claimed by the Islamic State group, which has been making inroads in the country through alliances with local militant outfits.

"I am alive, Allah has saved my life, it was a sudden blast, broken pieces of the windscreen hit me, I am injured but safe. The driver and other people sitting next to me were badly injured," Haideri said on private TV channel SAMAA.

Survivors, several covered in blood, were picking up body parts that lay scattered in the road among vehicles twisted by the blast.

Paramilitary troops and a bomb disposal squad were deployed outside a nearby madrassa where the convoy had been headed for a graduation ceremony.

Pakistani, Afghan, Chinese and Bangladeshi flags -- the nationalities of students at the seminary -- were on display ahead of the ceremony.

Pakistani volunteers help a wounded victim after a blast in the restive southwestern Balochistan province on May 12, 2017

"The death toll has reached 17 and more than 30 people have been injured," said Dr Daad Muhammad, a hospital administrator.

A local government official and a senior police official confirmed to AFP that it was a suicide bombing and the attacker came riding a motorcycle and blew himself up close to Haideri's vehicle.

Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility via its Amaq news agency.

"A martyrdom-seeker from the Islamic State targeted with his explosive vest a convoy of the deputy chairman of the Pakistan Senate, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, in Mastung district, south of the city of Quetta," the group said.

Haideri is a top official of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), one of the country's most powerful religious political parties.

JUI-F has been targeted by the Pakistani Taliban in the past -- even though the party leaders have acted as negotiators between the militants and Pakistan government on several occasions.

Pakistan has been battling Islamist and nationalist insurgencies in mineral-rich Balochistan since 2004, with hundreds of soldiers and militants killed in the fighting.

Bordering Iran and Afghanistan, it is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces, but its roughly seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.

A greater push towards peace and development by Pakistani authorities has reduced the violence considerably in recent years.

The push includes starting work on a massive Chinese infrastructure project -- the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor -- which gives Beijing a route to the Arabian Sea through Balochistan's deep sea port of Gwadar.
Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel

Rebel soldiers surrounded Ivory Coast's army headquarters in Abidjan on Friday, firing shots in the air just hours after a spokesman for the protesters publicly apologised for an earlier mutiny.

The gunfire erupted after disgruntled troops sealed off the area in the Plateau district of the Abidjan, the country's economic capital, an AFP correspondent said.

The soldiers took up position in front of the military headquarters as other troops and police established a security perimeter, the correspondent said.

It followed sporadic gunfire overnight in a military barracks in the country's second city of Bouake where troops staged an uprising in January.

The shots came just hours after national television broadcast a ceremony in which a soldier presented as a spokesman for 8,400 former rebels, many of them based in Bouake, said they wished to apologise to President Alassane Ouattara for the mutiny.

In January, former rebels integrated into army ranks staged a mutiny that paralysed activity in several towns of the west African country while they pressed their demands for bonuses.

Ex-rebels block access to Bouake, their former stronghold in central Ivory Coast, on May 8, 2017 to press pay demands

In meeting the demands of the ex-rebels, who controlled the northern half of Africa's biggest cocoa producer between 2002 and 2011, the authorities provoked a fresh mutiny by other troops and paramilitary gendarmes.

Clashes claimed four lives in the political capital Yamoussoukro.

The mutineers, who demanded 12 million CFA francs (18,000 euros) in payments for each soldier, obtained five million francs (7,500 euros) in January and had been due to receive the rest of the sum this month, according to the rebels.

The government had refused to give details of the negotiations.

The AFP journalist said gunfire was heard throughout the night at the 3rd infantry battalion's Bouake barracks, and soldiers also fired in the air at the northern entrance to the city.

There was no immediate indication as to the reasons for the gunfire.

Banks and many shops were also closed in the city Friday.

- Mutiny 'scared investors' -

Organised without the knowledge of the press, the orchestrated ceremony -- broadcast after it took place at the presidential palace -- appeared to signal a dramatic end to the protest movement.

As well as apologising the rebel spokesman, named as Sergeant Fofana, said they were giving up all their financial demands.

Ouattara said of the rebels that he "believed their words were sincere" and they would now be "exemplary soldiers".

Fofana said: "We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands."

In a sign of allegiance, he then saluted the president, the images showed.

Ouattara said Thursday the country was going through a "very, very difficult time" after a fall in the price of cocoa led to a net loss of 150 billion francs CFA (230 million euros) to the state budget.

The mutiny had "scared Ivorians, as well as those who want to invest in and visit the country," he said.

He also announced that the government had given up plans to build new schools, a health centre and cultural centres across the country, as well as delaying until 2018 a key election promise -- bringing electricity to every village with more than 500 inhabitants.

Last year, Ivory Coast launched an ambitious plan for the modernisation of the military, including an overhaul of personnel as well as purchases of material worth 1.2 billion euros.

Part of the plan provides for the departure of several thousand men, particularly ex-rebels, who will not be replaced.
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 EU and the United States will hold talks next week on a possible US airline ban on carry-on computers amid concerns it could cause massive disruption as the hectic summer travel season gets underway.

The US Department of Homeland Security sparked deep concern in Europe on Tuesday when it said was close to a decision on extending to European airlines an existing ban on eight mostly Muslim countries.

A European Commission spokeswoman said a telephone call between top EU officials and their US peers had provided "a very constructive exchange of views".

"No ban on electronic devices or any other decision has been announced," she said.

The EU officials -- Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc -- recalled the bloc's longstanding cooperation with Washington on airline security.

- 'Assess potential risks' -

At the same time, Bulc "highlighted the potential safety implications of putting a large number of electronic devices in the aircraft hold," the spokeswoman said.

"The EU invited the US to come to Brussels next week for talks at political and expert level ... to jointly assess the potential risks and review future measures," she added.

No date was announced.

A US ban on now ubiquitous laptops could cause havoc with more than 3,250 flights a week scheduled to leave EU airports for the US this summer, according to industry data.

Some experts believe there is also a security risk in putting them in the hold given the danger of their batteries catching fire.

Avramopoulus and Bulc earlier this week sent a letter asking Washington to work together with Brussels on the issue.

In March, Washington banned passengers from eight countries in North Africa and the Middle East from carrying on board laptop computers, tablets and other electronic devices larger than cellphones.

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 amid concerns that jihadist groups were devising bombs disguised as batteries in consumer electronics items.

A bomb that blew a hole in the fuselage of a Somali airliner in February 2016, killing one person, is believed to have been built into a laptop computer carried into the passenger cabin.
A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces stands at the Tabqa dam on May 11, 2017

US-backed fighters said Friday they were preparing for a final assault on the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion Raqa, likely next month, with new weapons and armoured vehicles promised by Washington.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) earlier this week captured the city of Tabqa and an adjacent dam, a major prize in the offensive for Raqa, the Syrian heart of IS's self-proclaimed "caliphate".

"The attack on Raqa will take place in the beginning of the summer," SDF commander Rojda Felat told AFP in Tabqa, which lies on the banks of the Euphrates River about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Raqa.

Rojda Felat, a commander in the Syrian Democratic Forces, at Tabqa dam on May 11, 2017

She later specified that it would probably start in June based on "military and tactical considerations".

SDF commanders announced the looming assault at a news conference in Tabqa, which the alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters captured from IS on Wednesday along with the nearby dam in one of their most important victories yet.

On Friday, an AFP team entered Tabqa and the adjacent dam -- Syria's largest -- and saw rows of sandbags, mangled cars and craters from heavy bombardment dotting the structure.

The battle for Tabqa was marked by fears that the dam would be severely damaged and collapse, leading to massive flooding downstream.

The body of an alleged IS fighter was seen on Friday floating in the reservoir created by the dam.

- US arms arriving 'soon' -

The SDF fight for Raqa -- dubbed Operation Wrath of the Euphrates -- has already seen the alliance capture large swathes of the surrounding province with help from the US-led coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria.

Tabqa

The SDF is working to tighten the noose around Raqa before a final assault.

At their closest point, the US-backed forces are just eight kilometres (five miles) from the city.

They are backed by coalition air strikes, American special forces advisers and even a US Marines artillery battery.

SDF deputy head Qahraman Hassan said: "In the beginning of the summer, we will storm and liberate (Raqa) city."

His forces would receive "special weapons and armoured vehicles" to enter the city, Hassan said, after President Donald Trump changed US policy to allow arms deliveries to the SDF's Kurdish component.

No newly authorised aid had been delivered yet, Hassan said, but he added that "I believe this support will arrive soon."

A US defence official told AFP earlier this week that the equipment would include small arms, ammunition, machineguns, armoured vehicles and bulldozers.

- 'Prepare to fight' -

Members of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) ferry displaced and wounded civilians on Lake Assad, an enormous reservoir created by the Tabqa dam, on May 11, 2017

Inside Tabqa, AFP's correspondent saw destroyed shops in the main marketplace, where jihadists had scrawled many of their slogans.

Signs sticking from a street post read "Know that paradise is achieved through combat," and "Prepare to fight with all your strength".

Tabqa residents began returning to their homes on Friday, but Shahhour Zuair, 46, told AFP the situation remained difficult.

As the fight around Tabqa intensified around two months ago, he fled with his six children and elderly parents. He made his way back two days ago when he heard the SDF had recaptured the city.

"The civilians are coming back but there is a lack of water, electricity, bread and food," he said, sitting in front of a pile of sandbags.

Mutia, 41, told AFP she was glad to be back in Tabqa after fleeing during the ferocious offensive.

"The fighting was really tough -- there was artillery, warplanes, snipers... We wouldn't even know where the shelling was coming from," the mother of five said.

"We really wanted to be done with (IS). We hated them, but we're afraid they'll come back to Tabqa," she added.

The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), seen by the US as an indispensable ally in the fight against IS but considered a "terrorist group" by Turkey.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units are seen by the US as an indispensable ally in the fight against the Islamic State group

The US change in policy has reignited a dispute with Ankara, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for an "immediate" reversal.

More than 320,000 people have been killed and millions more displaced since the conflict in Syria broke out in March 2011.

It began with protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad but has since widened into a multi-front conflict that has drawn in world powers.

On Friday, more than 1,200 people were bused out of rebel-controlled districts of Damascus as part of a settlement bringing Syria's government closer to controlling the whole capital.

The evacuees, both opposition fighters and civilians, left the districts of Barzeh and Tishrin.
North Korea has accused the CIA of plotting with South Korea to assassinate Kim Jong-Un, amid soaring tensions in the flashpoint region

North Korea on Friday demanded the extradition of the South's spy chief, a Chinese businessman, and unnamed US CIA agents over a supposed conspiracy to assassinate leader Kim Jong-Un.

Last week Pyongyang's powerful ministry of state security said it had foiled a plot by the US and South Korean spy agencies to kill Kim using a biochemical weapon.

The accusations came amid tensions over the North's nuclear and missile programmes and with Washington considering whether to re-designate Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism.

That follows the February killing of Kim's estranged half-brother Kim Jong-Nam by two women using the banned nerve agent VX -- a murder widely blamed on Pyongyang.

The North's Central Public Prosecutors Office said Friday it was opening the prosecution of those responsible for what it called "state-sponsored terrorism" against Kim Jong-Un.

It named South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) director Lee Byung-Ho, an NIS team director surnamed Han, NIS agent Jo Ki-Chol, and Chinese businessman Xu Guanghai as suspects, along with "masterminds in CIA".

"We urge the relevant authorities to immediately detect and arrest and hand over" the wanted individuals, who were "targets of due heavy punishment", it said in a statement carried by Pyongyang's state media.

"None of the brutal perpetrators of hideous state-sponsored terrorism aiming at the removal of the DPRK supreme leadership will survive on this planet," it added, using the acronym for the North's official name.

Rights groups accuse the North of widespread abuses, including an absence of fair trials.

The North is technically still at war with the South and has no diplomatic relations with the US, but China is its sole major ally.

Xu was described as director general of the Qingdao NAZCA Trade Co. Checks by AFP on Chinese databases show a company of that name was founded on March 7 this year, with Xu named as its legal representative.

A spokesman for the NIS said the South's spy agency had no information about the alleged assassination plot.

Pyongyang has said a North Korean citizen named only as Kim was bribed and blackmailed to carry out the attack.

But any attempt on Kim would be extremely difficult to pull off due to supertight security around him and Pyongyang's extensive surveillance of its own population.
Myanmar troops patrol in Rakhine State, near the Bangladesh border, in October 2016

Myanmar's army chief defended his military's violent crackdown on Rohingya Muslims by comparing it to Britain's campaign to tackle sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland, according to a statement released by his office Friday.

UN investigators believe Myanmar's security forces may have carried out ethnic cleansing of the persecuted minority during a months-long operation in the north of Rakhine State.

The military campaign has left hundreds of Rohingya dead and forced some 75,000 to flee across the border to Bangladesh, bringing harrowing accounts of rape, torture and mass killings by soldiers.

Myanmar has repeatedly rebuffed the allegations, saying troops were carrying out necessary counter-insurgency operations after Rohingya militants attacked police border posts in October.

On Thursday Myanmar's army chief Min Aung Hlaing compared the crackdown to Britain's operations in Northern Ireland in a meeting with Jonathan Powell, a former top British negotiator in the peace process.

Powell, who was chief of staff to former British prime minister Tony Blair, helped broker the Good Friday agreement in 1998 that ended decades of violence between Catholic Irish nationalists and Protestant British unionists in Northern Ireland.

After the "terrorist attack... the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) helped the police take security measures," the army commander said, according to a statement released on Friday.

"Such occurrence was similar to that of Northern Ireland."

He also used the meeting to denounce any claim to citizenship by the more than one million Rohingya Muslims who live in Rakhine.

Stripped of citizenship by Myanmar's former military leaders in 1982, the Rohingya, who have lived in Rakhine for generations, are loathed by many in the Buddhist-majority country who claim they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and refer to them as "Bengalis".

Deadly communal violence in 2012 forced more than 120,000 Rohingya into squalid displacement camps where they live in apartheid-like conditions with little access to food, healthcare or education.

"First, they must accept themselves Bengalis, not Rohingya," Min Aung Hlaing said.

"Then, those who reside in that region need to accept enumeration, registration, and citizenship scrutiny under the law."

Powell was Britain's chief government negotiator on Northern Ireland from 1997 to 2007 and now heads conflict resolution NGO Inter Mediate.
A Myanmar riot policemen patrols the streets of Yangon, on May 10, 2017

Four Myanmar nationalists were held on Friday for inciting violence during anti-Rohingya protests in Yangon last year, after a week that saw scuffles between Buddhist hardliners and minority Muslims in the city.

Dozens of police kept back crowds of protesters as the men were escorted out of court on their way to prison, where they will be remanded in custody until a hearing next week.

The men are charged over holding protests outside the US embassy in April last year denouncing the Americans' use of the word 'Rohingya' to describe more than a million Muslims who live in Rakhine State.

Myanmar's outspoken Buddhist nationalists have long railed against the Rohingya, who they denounce as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

But their rhetoric has crescendoed since Rohingya militants attacked police posts on the border with Bangladesh last year, sparking a bloody, months-long army crackdown.

Friday's hearing came days after a violent confrontation between nationalists and Muslims in downtown Yangon left at least one man injured.

Police have arrested two people and issued warrants for five more, including two monks, in connection with the incident.

A crowd of hardliners had stormed into the mainly Muslim Mingalar Taung Nyunt township on Tuesday night hunting for "illegal" Rohingya Muslims they said were hiding out in a local house.

Wary residents in the township told AFP they were tired of the violence and feared becoming targets.

"We want to live peacefully here. I'm sick of this kind of thing happening," said a local Muslim man, who used to own a teashop several years ago before it was destroyed by nationalist monks.

In recent months hardliners have also shut down religious events across the country and forced two Yangon schools accused of illegally doubling up as mosques to close their doors.
The US Justice Department is due to probe whether Uber stole self-driving car technology from Google parent company Alphabet's Waymo unit

A federal judge has asked for a criminal justice review in the case brought by Alphabet self-driving car unit Waymo accusing Uber of stealing its technology.

Judge William Alsup, in an order posted late Thursday, said he was referring the case to the Justice Department "for investigation of possible theft of trade secrets."

Alsup said he made the recommendation "based on the evidentiary record," but "takes no position on whether a prosecution is warranted."

The case stems from the lawsuit filed in February by Waymo, formerly known as the Google self-driving car unit, which claimed a former manager took technical data with him when he left to launch a competing venture that went on to become Otto and was later acquired by Uber.

Alsup also ordered the civil trial to proceed and granted Waymo's request for a partial injunction -- filed under seal -- which could prevent Uber from deploying the technology.

Uber said in a statement to AFP that it would not comment on the injunction, adding that "the order is currently under seal so we can't speculate about what it says."

The company also said it was disappointed that the judge rejected the ridesharing group's request to settle the case through arbitration instead of trial.

"It is unfortunate that Waymo will be permitted to avoid abiding by the arbitration promise it requires its employees to make," the statement said.

"We remain confident in our case and welcome the chance to talk about our independently developed technology any forum."

Alphabet did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Waymo argued in the lawsuit that a "calculated theft" of its technology netted Otto a buyout of more than $500 million and enabled Uber to revive a stalled self-driving car program.

California-based ride-sharing service Uber acquired commercial transport-focused tech startup Otto late last year as the company pressed ahead with its pursuit of self-driving technology.

Anthony Levandowski, a co-founder of 90-person startup Otto, was put in charge of Uber's efforts to develop self-driving technology for personal driving, delivery and trucking.

Waymo's lawsuit contended that Levandowski in December 2015 downloaded more than 14,000 proprietary files from a highly confidential design server to a laptop.
Israeli forces take up positions during clashes with Palestinian protesters in the West Bank village of Beit Furik, east of Nablus, on May 12, 2017

A Palestinian youth was shot dead during clashes with Israeli forces in the occupied West Bank on Friday, the Palestinian health ministry said.

The man was shot during the protests which are held weekly near the village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah, and later died in a nearby hospital, the ministry said in a statement.

The dead man was named as Saba' Nidal Obaid, 20.

The Israeli army said in a statement to AFP it was "aware of reports" that a protester had been killed but could not confirm it.

"A violent riot involving dozens of Palestinians hurling rocks at (Israeli army) forces broke out earlier today," a spokeswoman said.

Palestinians tend to an injured demonstrator during clashes with Israeli forces in the West Bank village of Beit Furik, on May 12, 2017

"Dispersal means," including firing live ammunition, were used "in response to that imminent threat".

A wave of unrest which erupted in October 2015 has claimed the lives of 263 Palestinians, 41 Israelis, two Americans, one Jordanian, an Eritrean, a Sudanese and a Briton, according to an AFP count.

Most of the Palestinians killed were carrying out knife, gun or car-ramming attacks, Israeli authorities say.

Others were shot dead during protests or clashes, while some were killed in Israeli air strikes on the Gaza Strip.
President Donald Trump sacked FBI chief James Comey (pictured)

President Donald Trump on Friday warned his sacked FBI director against "leaking" information to reporters, as the White House refused to deny that the president records his conversations with visitors.

Capping a week in which Trump faced a slew of criticism for firing the man investigating his campaign's possible ties to Russia, Trump told James Comey there could be retribution if he tells the press about their private conversations.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump said, in a morning Twitter tirade that painted a picture of a president under siege and lashing out.

Furious with the news coverage of the White House's shifting explanations on Comey's sacking, Trump suggested the media was wrong to expect his spokespeople to be 100 percent accurate.

"As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!" he tweeted.

No caption

Trump then went on to suggest scrapping the traditional White House briefings that have existed in some form since the Woodrow Wilson administration almost a century ago.

A briefing was nevertheless held Friday, and spokesman Sean Spicer pushed back against charges that the Republican billionaire president had threatened Comey.

"That's not a threat. He's simply stating a fact," Spicer said tersely. "I'm moving on."

When pressed about whether Trump recorded his conversations with Comey or others, Spicer responded: "The president has nothing further to add on that."

Trump's bareknuckle comments immediately fueled fresh comparisons between his administration and that of disgraced president Richard Nixon, who famously recorded his conversations -- a fact that sped his downfall during the Watergate scandal.

James Comey

"Presidents are supposed to have stopped routinely taping visitors without their knowledge when Nixon's taping system was revealed in 1973," tweeted presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

- Angry Democrats -

Congressional Democrats fumed, with House Intelligence Committee vice-chairman Adam Schiff challenging Trump.

"The president should immediately provide any such recordings to Congress or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading -- and in this case threatening -- statement," Schiff said.

Images of President Donald Trump meeting with Russia's Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office were issued by the Russian state news agency TASS, and subsequently published by much of the global media

In his morning tweetstorm, Trump brought the issue back to Russia, referring to the assertion by the former head of national intelligence that Trump was, to his knowledge, not colluding with Moscow.

"When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" Trump tweeted.

The White House initially asserted Comey's dismissal had nothing to do with the Russian investigations, which continue to be an albatross around the neck of Trump's presidency.

Instead, they said, the president fired Comey on the advice of senior Justice Department officials including Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who in a memo expressed concern about Comey's handling of a 2016 probe into Trump's election rival Hillary Clinton.

But Trump shattered that explanation himself Thursday when he said he had always intended to fire Comey, and that his decision was linked to the ongoing investigation into his campaign's Russia ties.

- 'Made up story' -

"When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story," Trump said in an interview with NBC on Thursday.

The startling admission fanned suggestions Trump may be interfering with the investigation and promoted Comey allies to refute Trump's account of events.

The Comey controversy has rattled lawmakers across the political spectrum. In a bid to allay concerns, Senate leaders invited Rosenstein to brief all 100 senators next week.

When pressed about whether Donald Trump recorded his conversations with James Comey or others, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer responded: "The president has nothing further to add on that"

Rosenstein accepted, although the date was being finalized, a Senate aide said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee invited Comey himself to testify Tuesday behind closed doors. But panel aides told AFP that Comey has declined.

Trump told NBC that he had asked Comey on three occasions whether he was personally under investigation.

"I actually asked him, yes. I said, 'If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?' He said, 'You are not under investigation,'" Trump recounted, repeating an assertion made when the White House announced Comey's firing Tuesday.

US presidents are normally at pains to avoid any suggestion of interference or even commenting on ongoing investigations.

The FBI typically does not confirm their existence.

Noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe told AFP that if Comey did indeed answer Trump's question, it would violate Department of Justice rules and "would be unthinkably unethical and unprofessional in this situation."

Trump also said that at the dinner, he and Comey discussed whether the US top cop would continue his 10-year term.

Asking such a question "would come close to bribery... or at least obstruction of justice, which Comey would've had to be an idiot to fall for by offering the assurance sought," Tribe said.
A French pilgrim prays at the Ghriba synagogue in the Tunisian resort island of Djerba on during the annual Lag BaOmer Jewish festival

An annual Jewish pilgrimage to Africa's oldest synagogue on Tunisia's Djerba island began on Friday under tight security but in a festive mood.

An AFP journalist saw dozens of pilgrims from the North African country and from France heading to the revered Ghriba synagogue to pray, light candles and write wishes on eggs.

Some celebrated the centuries-old Lag BaOmer festival by sipping glasses of boukha, a liqueur made from figs.

"My parents brought me to Djerba when I was a little boy and each year since I have returned," said Sylvain, who travelled from Paris.

"This year I came with my oldest brother and some friends. We are happy to be here," said the 55-year-old interior decorator.

Organisers expect the two-day festival to attract up to 3,000 visitors, 1,000 more than last year when Tunisia was still reeling after a series of jihadist attacks.

They said pilgrims were expected from Belgium, Spain, the United States and even Israel, despite the government there warning its citizens for the third consecutive year against taking part.

"Each year they say the same thing but personally I feel at home here, the welcome is excellent and the people are warm," said Aziz Baroum, 55, who travelled from the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon.

Israeli pilgrims light candles at the Ghriba synagogue in the Tunisian resort island of Djerba. They travelled to Tunisia despite a warning from their government

Baroum, whose parents were born in Tunisia, said he took part in last year's festival and noted there were more pilgrims this time.

The festival passed off without incident last year and in 2015.

Since its 2011 revolution, Tunisia has experienced an increase in jihadist attacks that have cost the lives of dozens of members of the security forces and 59 foreign tourists.

The country has also been under a state of emergency since November 2015, when a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State group killed 12 presidential guards.

"We trust the Tunisian authorities to guarantee security," the head of the synagogue, Perez Trabelsi, told AFP. "I am optimistic."

"Things are going very well," added his son and co-organiser Rene Trabelsi. "We're making progress."

Tunisian security forces stand guard in front of the Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian resort island of Djerba

A helicopter overflew the area and checkpoints were set up around the synagogue which was heavily guarded by police, soldiers and members of the anti-terror brigades.

But despite the heavy security, several hundred pilgrims took part in afternoon rituals, some ululating while others sang religious songs.

The number of pilgrims visiting the synagogue has fallen sharply since a suicide bombing claimed by Al-Qaeda struck Ghriba just before the 2002 pilgrimage, killing 21 people.

Before then the event attracted as many as 8,000 people a year.

Believed to have been founded in 586 BC by Jews fleeing the destruction of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, the Ghriba synagogue has long been a destination for pilgrims, especially for Jews of Tunisian descent.

Some 1,500 Jews live in Tunisia, down sharply from an estimated 100,000 before the country won independence from France in 1956.
Former Pakistani child labourers make their way home past a brick kiln after attending classes at a school on the outskirts of Lahore, following a scheme that gave cash to their parents

A government cash-incentive scheme has helped place almost 90,000 underage Pakistani brick kiln workers into school, officials said Friday, an initiative aimed at easing the long-standing problem of indentured labour.

Campaigners estimate there are more than two million Pakistanis trapped in a vicious cycle of debt bondage to factory owners that continues for generations, a practice often referred to as modern slavery.

Pakistan has the third highest population of such labourers, behind India and China, according to the Global Slavery Index.

Under the terms of the Punjab provincial government scheme, which began in January 2016, nearly 88,000 child brick kiln workers were selected for a stipend comprising an initial $20 per child, followed by a recurring monthly payment of $10.

The initative "lowered the opportunity cost of not sending children to school... and families were able to mobilise this stipend to pay their debts," a spokesman for Punjab's education minister Rana Mashhood said.

Eleven-year-old former Pakistani child labourer, Shumaila Bibi, speaks to AFP during an interview at a school on the outskirts of Lahore

Officials now hope to extend the $9 million scheme, with monitoring assisted by Britain's government aid agency, to other areas where underage labour is prevalent.

Teachers at a government school on the outskirts of Punjab provincial capital Lahore said the recently freed child workers -- previously exposed to noxious smoke, brick dust, and fierce sun that pushes summer temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius -- made for the most eager learners.

Fauzia Elahi, the school's headteacher, said many of the 40 ex-brick kiln workers at her school initially had teething problems adjusting to their new life, but soon overcame them.

"They are brilliant students, and now they are gaining knowledge and along with that they are gaining social skills," she said.

Critics have questioned the viability of an open-ended cash transfer scheme, however, and say not enough is being done to implement existing laws against bonded labour, such as arresting kiln owners who employ indentured workers.

The scheme has removed almost 90,000 children from dangerous brick kilns and made it possible for them to attend school

But Fasi Zaka, a development consultant, said: "Those things weren't solving the problem over 20 years. Legal protections are hard to come by for people in some rural areas, and here you're incentivising the parents."

Shumaila Bibi, a 11-year-old student at the Lahore school, began working at a brick kiln with her brothers and sisters four years ago after their father was injured in an accident.

"Nobody wants to work in the kiln, we do it out of necessity," her mother Shamim Bibi said.

"But I'm really happy with this help that we're getting and that Shumaila is back in school. She will finish her education and go on to become a teacher."
A Syrian boy looks on at a staging point in the Barzeh rebel district of the capital Damascus on May 8, 2017 as people wait to be evacuated

More than 1,200 people including rebels left two opposition-held districts of Damascus on Friday under an agreement that will bring Syria's government closer to exerting full control over the capital.

For more than two years, the government of President Bashar al-Assad has touted such "reconciliation deals" as the best way to end the country's brutal war.

Friday's evacuations were part of the first such deal for the Syrian capital itself.

According to Syrian state news agency SANA, 718 rebels were among a total of 1,246 people evacuated from the Damascus districts of Barzeh and Tishrin.

"The exit of armed fighters and their families will be completed in several waves in the coming days until the district is completely free of any signs of armed people," the agency said.

Earlier on Friday, SANA said that 664 people including 103 rebels had left the northern district of Barzeh, but it did not give a number for Tishrin.

A source from the pro-government National Defence Forces confirmed the same number of evacuees from Barzeh and told AFP they left on 12 buses.

"The evacuations are part of the deal reached first in Barzeh, to which the neighbouring northeastern district of Tishrin was later added," the source said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that months of negotiations had been held to secure the evacuations of three rebel districts of Damascus: Barzeh, Tishrin and Qabun, also in the northeast.

The deal for Barzeh was agreed first and the evacuations began on Monday, with 1,022 people including 560 rebels leaving the district and heading to the country's north.

Talks over Tishrin continued in secret throughout the week until Friday, according to Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

No deal has yet been reached on Qabun, where government forces on Thursday seized control of a number of apartment blocks and a power station, the Observatory said.

Abdel Rahman said the advance was part of efforts to push rebels there to join the evacuation agreement.

Syria's government has announced its intent to include more Damascus neighbourhoods in the deal, among them Qabun and the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk in the south.

"We are working on Qabun and there is the Yarmuk camp, where talks are under way for the evacuation of armed groups," Foreign Minister Walid Muallem said earlier this week.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir has played down fears of potential instability, three days after dismissing his powerful army chief

South Sudan's president insisted Friday that the security situation was "normal" and that people had no reason to worry, three days after dismissing powerful army chief Paul Malong.

President Salva Kiir's dismissal of Malong on Tuesday night has raised concern among the population who fear confrontation between soldiers loyal to each man.

Speaking at the presidential palace in Juba, Kiir presented Malong's dismissal as "routine work".

However, Kiir berated Malong who he said had erred by failing to thank him for the job he held and by not congratulating his successor, James Ajongo, on his new appointment.

"I was talking to him, I said, Malong, you did a mistake: the first thing that you should have done was to thank me personally for the period I have given you to serve the people of South Sudan. Secondly you are supposed to call James Ajongo and also congratulate him for his new assignment," Kiir said.

Kiir said that when he last spoke to Malong he was "in a fighting mood".

"I tried to calm him down but he was rather wild," said Kiir adding that the situation would be "contained".

Malong was due to return to the capital Juba later Friday.

The general is widely regarded as 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.
The Ebola epidemic that began in west Africa in 2013 killed 11,300 people and led to a clinical vaccine trial

The first Ebola outbreak since the crisis in West Africa that killed 11,300 people has been declared in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization said Friday, after the virus caused three deaths in the area.

In a television address, Health Minister Oly Ilunga confirmed the cases while urging the population "not to panic".

The country "has taken all necessary measures to respond quickly and efficiently to this new outbreak", he said.

The DR Congo outbreak is the first there in three years. The three deaths all occurred since April 22.

The WHO said it was working closely with DR Congo authorities to help deploy health workers and protective equipment in the remote area, which is difficult for teams to access, in order to "rapidly control the outbreak".

The organisation underlined the importance of tracing people who had contact with confirmed victims to prevent the disease spreading.

Sufferers are advised to keep themselves isolated while awaiting treatment for a disease whose incubation period is 21 days.

- Remote area -

The WHO said the outbreak, the eighth to date in DR Congo, had affected an equatorial forest region difficult to access in Bas-Uele province, bordering Central African Republic.

The last instance of Ebola in Congo in 2014, which was not linked to an outbreak in neighbouring states at the time, was quickly contained and killed 49 people according to official figures.

That outbreak saw 66 registered cases hit the district of Boende some 800 kilometres (500 miles) northeast of Kinshasa for an official fatality rate of 74.2 percent.

The United Nations at the time saluted the "immense work" DR Congo authorities had put in to contain the disease spread.

In 2013, an Ebola crisis began in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Liberia was the last of those states to be declared clear in January 2016. Congo's outbreaks have all been in areas not linked to the West African cases.

The WHO was criticised at the time for responding too slowly and failing to grasp the gravity of the latest outbreak of a disease first recorded in DR Congo in 1976.

Last week, the WHO said almost 12,000 people had participated in a ground-breaking vaccine trial the agency organised in Guinean capital Conakry through to January last year.

Final results from the trial published in The Lancet released last December showed the experimental vaccine offered protection against the virus and would help to bolster an early response to future outbreaks.

The WHO led the trial with Guineas ministry of health, Medecins sans Frontieres and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, in conjunction with other international partners.

The vaccine is now awaiting formal licensing clearance.

Graphic showing how the Ebola virus attacks following the latest outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Ebola is a viral illness whose initial symptoms may include a sudden fever, aching muscles and a sore throat, with subsequent symptoms including diarrhoea and vomiting and, on occasion, internal and external bleeding.

Humans can catch the illness from close contact with infected animals.

Inter-human transmission can then occur through direct contact with infected blood or bodily fluids. Mourners can also catch it if they have direct contact with the bodies of victims at funerals.

- Coordinated response -

The WHO said specialist teams were headed for the area and hoped to arrive within 48 hours.

It said the health zone at Likati some 1,300 km from Kinshasa was very difficult to access but stressed it was crucial to pinpoint who had had contact with those affected in order to nip the latest outbreak in the bud.

"RDC has very experienced human resources to do this," the WHO noted in calling on partner organisations to rally and provide a "coordinated and appropriate" response.

The Alliance For International Medical Action said in a statement one of its teams was on its way to Likati with protective gear and medicine to treat "suspected and confirmed cases."
Rebellious soldiers near the entrance of Ivory Coast's army headquarters are demanding the rest of promised back pay

Disgruntled Ivorian soldiers took to the streets of Abidjan and two other cities on Friday, firing angrily into the air a day after publicly apologising for a string of recent uprisings.

Rebellious troops surrounded the military's headquarters in Abidjan after a spokesman for the protesters publicly apologised to the president for a January mutiny which triggered months of unrest.

At the heart of the matter is an unresolved dispute over pay, with the soldiers demanding hefty pay rises in a protest which has found echoes across the country.

Troops took up position in front of the sprawling Gallieni military camp in the Plateau neighbourhood of Abidjan, the country's economic capital, as other soldiers and police set up a security cordon, an AFP journalist said.

With ammunition belts slung round their chests, berets or camouflage caps on their heads, they fired sporadically into the air, blocking off access to the surrounding area.

"Money or death!" roared one of the soldiers, as the noise of the gunfire sent a colony of bats nesting in the nearby trees shooting into the air.

One soldier could be seen wandering around with a rocket launcher, another carried a machinegun with a string of bullets looped around his shoulders, Rambo style.

Angry Ivorian soldiers fired shots in the air in renewed protest despite an 'apology' to the president over their recent uprisings

The renewed shooting which also affected two other cities, began hours after national television broadcast a ceremony in which a soldier presented as a spokesman for the rebellious troops said they wished to apologise to President Alassane Ouattara for the mutiny.

"This is our answer to yesterday's announcement," one of the rebel soldiers told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We're not like teachers who express themselves with pens, our profession is guns."

- 'Very frightened' -

Among those stranded in Abidjan was a school teacher who had come to the area to collect a document from a nearby administrative building.

"It's not good for the country, we don't know what's going to happen and everyone is very frightened," he said, without giving his name.

A handful of civil servants could be seen hiding behind walls, watching the situation as the soldiers let off sporadic rattles of gunfire to keep the curious at bay.

"They began to shoot at around 8:00 am, military trucks drove past and soldiers got out. They've been firing in the air every couple of minutes," one civil servant told AFP, whose offices overlook the camp.

Shooting was also heard overnight in Korhogo, a town in the north, witnesses told AFP.

And in Bouake, Ivory Coast's second city where the protest movement began in January, angry soldiers could be seen driving round in trucks or wandering the streets, firing potshots into the air.

Most of the city's shops were closed along with its university.

- 'Ouattara must pay us' -

January's uprising saw former rebels who had been integrated into the army's ranks staging a mutiny over their demand for bonuses.

The ex-rebels turned soldiers say they have only received five million CFA francs (7,500 euros) in back pay are still owed seven million francs each

The troops, one-time rebels who backed Ouattara and controlled the northern half of the country between 2002 and 2011, were demanding the government pay them 12 million CFA francs (18,000 euros) per soldier.

They received five million francs (7,500 euros) in January and had been due to receive the rest this month, rebel sources say.

"Twelve minus five is seven! They still owe us seven. There is nothing to discuss," said one of the soldiers.

"Ouattara must pay us. The fact he's still in power is down to us," explained another.

Thursday night's ceremony, which was organised without knowledge of the press, appeared to signal a dramatic end to the protest movement.

As well as apologising, a spokesman for the former rebels, identified as Sergeant Fofana, said they were giving up all their financial demands

"We apologise for the various situations we know we have caused. We definitively renounce all our financial demands," he said, in remarks hailed by Ouattara as "sincere".

The world's top cocoa provider, Ivory Coast has an army numbering around 22,000 soldiers, among them many former rebels who were integrated into the armed forces after years of conflict.

Last year, the government unveiled an ambitious plan to modernise the military, part of which would involve the departure of several thousand men, particularly ex-rebels, who will not be replaced.
Australia's Caleb Ewan of the Orica team celebrates after winning the 7th stage of the 100th Giro d'Italia on May 12, 2017

Australian Caleb Ewan eclipsed a "difficult" week to snatch his maiden Giro d'Italia stage on Friday as race leader Bob Jungels looked ahead to the pink jersey battle.

Ewan, who won a stage at the Vuelta a Espana two years ago, came agonisingly close to opening his Giro account for the Orica team at the start of the 100th edition.

But on the opening day he was among the sprinters outfoxed by Austrian Lukas Postlberger's audacious late attack and a day later the Sydney native's left foot dislodged from his cleat as he readied to challenge Andre Greipel in a fast and furious finale won by the German sprint giant.

Pressure was growing on the 22-year-old's shoulders but the 'Pocket Rocket' delivered in style, expertly negotiating a technical finish to power his way to the slimmest of victories on the uphill finish line.

Colombian Fernando Gaviria, the winner of two stages on his Giro debut with the Quick Step team, finished a close second with Ireland's Sam Bennett (Bora) in third.

"As every sprint went by that I didn't win, the pressure was building because I came here with a lot of expectations," said Ewan, whose biggest victory to date was the Hamburg Cyclassics one-day race last year, which he won after Frenchman Nacer Bouhanni was disqualified.

Pink Jersey Luxembourg's Bob Jungels from team Quick-Step rides during the 7th stage of the 100th Giro d'Italia from Castrovillari to Alberobello on May 12, 2017

"But there's no better way to thank your teammates than to take the victory. It's my second Grand Tour stage now. With the sprint field here, it's probably one of my biggest victories after Hamburg.

"This win probably brought me the most joy."

Gaviria's finishing drive to the line was impressive, but it came a fraction too late and he said: "I made a mistake at the end, but I think Ewan deserved the win. I just didn't have the legs to catch him."

Lotto sprinter Greipel finished fourth, with Jungels among a peloton that arrived seconds later following a largely flat 217km ride from Castrovillari that saw a two-man breakaway end with 18km to race.

Until then, it had been uneventful. Jungels was nonplussed, but knows it will be a different affair on Sunday's ninth stage and the second summit finish of the race at Blockhaus.

"We didn't exactly stop for a coffee, but it might have been more boring for you guys (media) than for us," said Jungels, who remains six seconds ahead of Welshman Geraint Thomas (Sky), and 10 ahead of Italy's defending champion Vincenzo Nibali (Bahrain) and Colombian race favourite Nairo Quintana (Movistar).

"Actually for me it's been a really good day. Of course I don't want to lose time, or lose the jersey, but you shouldn't think too much about things you cannot change."

There's a hungry chasing pack behind the Luxemburger, who expects Thomas and other rivals to try and loosen his grip on Sunday's 149km stage, which concludes after a 13.6km climb featuring sections with steep gradients of 14 percent.

"Geraint Thomas is sitting only six seconds behind me, so of course if there's a split in the peloton then I can lose the jersey," said Jungels when asked if he felt under pressure from Sky in recent days.

"Their goal is the same as ours, to stay in the front and not lose any time. But it doesn't make sense now for them to attack... they should probably wait until Blockhaus."

The eighth stage on Saturday is an undulating 189km ride from Molfetta to Peschici that favours sprinters with uphill finishing abilities.
The UN report found that Pakistani police commonly engage in torture throughout the region, in the hopes of recording confessions from arrested persons

A UN committee has condemned the "widespread practice of torture" in Pakistan by police, the military and intelligence agencies in a report published Friday, and called on Islamabad to implement urgent reforms to the law.

"The police engage in the widespread practice of torture throughout the territory, ... with a view to obtaining confessions from persons in custody," the UN Committee against Torture wrote in its first report on the situation in the country, made public after months of investigation.

"The Committee is seriously concerned at reports that members of the State partys military forces; intelligence forces (...)and paramilitary forces (...) have been implicated in a significant number of cases of extra-judicial executions involving torture and enforced disappearances."

It urged Pakistan to "incorporate into its legislation a specific definition of torture" that can be applied without exception, including to the army, which is regularly accused of abusing its powers.

The UN highlighted that the Torture, Custodial Death and Custodial Rape Bill, presented several years ago, has yet to be put to a vote.

Pakistan, which ratified the Convention against Torture in 2010, presented its first report on the situation in the country this year -- four years late.

In its findings, the UN referred to the torture of several Pakistani bloggers who had criticised extremism and the authorities, leading to weeks in arbitrary detention.

The committee said that Pakistan had failed to launch an investigation into any of these cases, or into the numbers disappeared or killed in detention.

The National Commission of Human Rights, an organisation linked to Pakistan's parliament, welcomed the report, saying "the publication could help start a conversation about torture" in the country.

A "total" ban on torture is an "unequivocal prerequisite to effectively fight terrorism", it added.
"It was good experience, and we are now looking forward to the next game, against New Zealand" said Bangladesh cricketer Shakib Al Hasan

Shakib Al Hasan expects Bangladesh to improve the longer the Tri-Series in Ireland goes on after conceding it took time to get used to the conditions in their opening game against the hosts on Friday.

Bangladesh lost their first four wickets inside 15 overs but an unbroken stand of 87 between Tamim Iqbal and Mahmudullah put them back in control before rain ended the game after 31 overs.

"It is different to what we are used to early on and it was not easy, but as the ball got older and softer the ball was coming nicely onto the bat," said Shakib who was captaining the team in place of Mashrafe Mortaza, who was serving a one-game suspension.

"It was good experience, and we are now looking forward to the next game, against New Zealand (on Wednesday)."

Tamim Iqbal's hopes of scoring the first century of the series were cut short by the rain when he was 64 not out, having hit eight boundaries but Shakib was impressed by his batting as the opener led his side's recovery after losing four wickets for 70.

"Tamim played beautifully," said Shakib. "He applied himself really well and so did Mahmadullah (who was 43 not out). That partnership changed the momentum and we started controlling the game."

The rain in Dublin cut short a fine innings by Bangladesh cricketer Tamim Iqbal

Indeed, Shakib believed that on the small Malahide ground, which will stage all four Ireland games in the six-match series, 300 is only a par score and they remained on course for that at 157 for four, with 19 overs remaining.

The New Zealanders may have 10 players still involved in the Indian Premier League but Shakib expects them to provide formidable opposition when they meet at the nearby Clontarf ground on the next two Wednesdays. They will also be seeking revenge from the last time they met the Blackcaps.

"They have a new team, as they are still in the IPL so they will be missing some experience, but they are still the second ranked (sic) team and they will come hard at us," he added.

"We played them a few months back, it wasn't a good memory as we didn't too well in New Zealand but these are different conditions, a different scenario and we are hoping to do well."

Ireland captain William Porterfield was pleased with his side's early bowling as they took advantage of the green pitch, having won the toss under overcast skies.

No-one was more impressive than Peter Chase, their 23-year-old opening bowler who, playing on his home ground, followed up his five wickets in last weekend's ODIs against England with another three-wicket haul.

"My confidence is going up every time I play, taking wickets obviously helps and hopefully I can continue doing that throughout the series," said Chase.

Ireland's next match is against New Zealand on Sunday.
(COMBO) This combination of pictures shows a file photo of three Israeli paratroopers next to the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City right after its capture in the 1967 war and the veterans (R) at the same spot on May 11, 2017

Three paratroopers in an iconic photograph of Israel's capture of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem's Old City during the 1967 Six-Day War have recreated the image 50 years after the conflict.

Zion Karsenti, Yitzhak Yifat and Haim Oshri, all aged 22 at the time, were fresh out of battle when they were first pictured in front of the most sacred site in Judaism.

After two days of fierce fighting, Israeli troops evicted Jordanian forces from east Jerusalem, site of the Old City which is also home to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and the Holy Sepulchre church.

"We kept on fighting until we reached the Al-Aqsa mosque," recalled Karsenti at a ceremony in the Old City organised by the Israeli foreign ministry, until their commander joyfully announced they had reached the Wailing Wall.

Veteran photographer David Rubinger, who died in March, took the shot which became a symbol of Israel's victory in the 1967 Middle East war, since when the Jewish state has annexed east Jerusalem, a move not recognised by the international community.
US First Lady Melania Trump, shown here at an event in April at a Washington hospital, is making the White House movie theater accessible to visitors

Visitors to the White House can now visit the cloakroom-turned-movie theater where Dwight Eisenhower used to sneak off to watch westerns and where Jimmy Carter screened "All The President's Men."

The decision to open up the private presidential theater -- set up in a large cloakroom by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1942 -- was made by Melania Trump, the president's wife.

"The White House belongs to the people of this country," the first lady said.

"I believe everyone who takes the time to visit and tour the White House should have as much access to its rich history and wonderful traditions as possible. It is my hope that our visitors truly enjoy the newest piece of the tour."

Among the biggest movie buffs to have occupied the Oval Office were Eisenhower, a fan of westerns and Gary Cooper flicks in particular and Richard Nixon, who liked black-and-white musicals such as "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

An even bigger cinephile was Carter, who held two or three movie nights a week.

Carter watched 480 movies while in the White House, more than any other president. His first White House movie showing was "All The President's Men," the story of the Watergate scandal that toppled Nixon.

Despite being a former actor, Ronald Reagan was not such a big viewer, although he did like to watch his own movies with his wife Nancy on his birthday, according to the White House Museum website. He did however remodel the screening room to have 51 tiered seats.

George W. Bush's tastes ran more to the Austin Powers spy spoof series, although -- as the wars he launched in Afghanistan and Iraq ground on for years -- he was said to have turned more to gritty combat movies like "Black Hawk Down" and the Vietnam film "We Were Soldiers."

Barack Obama screened "To Kill a Mocking Bird" to mark the 50th anniversary of the film about racial prejudice in the US South.

The first movie put on by Donald Trump when he came to office in January was "Finding Dory," the animated tale of a fish looking for its parents.

It was screened the same weekend that protests broke out across the US over Trump's travel ban on visitors entering the US from seven predominantly Muslim states.

The theater is located in the East Wing of the White House, which also feature Roosevelt's WWII bomb shelter.

The first movie ever screened in the White House was "Birth of a Nation," a 1915 movie about the Civil War that sparked controversy for glorifying the Ku Klux Klan.
Known as Wolf, Jerry Garcia's guitar last sold in 2002 for nearly $800,000

One of Grateful Dead legend Jerry Garcia's most famous guitars is going back on auction, where it could fetch more than $1 million to back a civil rights group.

Known as Wolf, the electric guitar was custom-made by luthier Doug Irwin. Garcia debuted it at a 1973 concert in New York before the instrument -- along with Hell's Angels bikers -- became ever-present during the Dead's perpetual touring.

Dan Pritzker, a music-loving philanthropist who is an heir to the wealthy Chicago family known for the Hyatt hotel chain, bought Wolf for $789,500 from the auction house Guernsey's in 2002.

Pritzker, who occasionally loaned the guitar to musicians, decided to put it back on auction, announcing that all proceeds would go to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which wages legal battles against white supremacists and other hate groups.

"He called me three months ago to say he was concerned about the divisive things that are going on in the country and wanted to do something meaningful," Guernsey's president Arlan Ettinger said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has voiced alarm at a spike in hate crimes, especially targeting immigrants and Muslims, since President Donald Trump launched his campaign in 2015.

"As extremism moves from the fringe to the mainstream, we have a lot of work to do," the Alabama-based center's president, Richard Cohen, said in a statement.

"This remarkable act of generosity only strengthens our resolve," he added of the guitar sale.

Guernsey's will sell Wolf at a May 31 concert at the Brooklyn Bowl music venue, to which the auction house is hoping to draw major artists. Online bids will also be accepted.

Ettinger said it was difficult to estimate Wolf's sale price, but that it could near record territory.

Wolf was last sold alongside another guitar Irwin made for Garcia, Tiger, which fetched just under $1 million, a record at the time.

In 2015, the Gibson on which John Lennon played "Love Me Do" and other early Beatles songs sold for $2.4 million, another record for a historic guitar.

Formed near San Francisco, The Grateful Dead became one of the emblematic bands of the hippie era, drawing "Deadhead" fans who found a sense of community traveling from show to show to experience the ever-evolving jam rock.

Garcia, who died in 1995, bequeathed his famous guitars to Irwin, who had become destitute. After initial objections from the rest of the band, the luthier took control and put the instruments on auction.
The International Monetary Fund head of delegation for Egypt, Chris Jarvis (L) and Egypt's Minister of Finance Amr al-Garhy attend a joint press conference in Cairo on August 11, 2016

The International Monetary Fund said Friday it will release the second tranche of a $12-billion loan to Egypt, in a "vote of confidence" in the country's economic reform programme.

The amount of $1.25 billion must still be endorsed by the IMF board following an "expert-level agreement" announced after a visit to Cairo, an IMF statement said.

According to Egypt's finance minister, Amr al-Garhy, the tranche should be disbursed in the second half of June.

"This agreement is a vote of confidence by the IMF staff in the continued implementation of the Egyptian authorities' programme" on economic reform, the IMF statement said.

Ratings agency Standard and Poor's in a statement said it anticipated "ongoing fiscal consolidation in Egypt over 2017-2020, supported by the three-year IMF programme".

S&P "affirmed its 'B-/B' long- and short-term foreign and local currency sovereign credit ratings on Egypt".

"The outlook is stable," its statement said.

Since the 2011 revolt against Hosni Mubarak, the Arab world's most populous country has seen a sharp decline in tourism revenue and reduced foreign investment, caused by political instability and security issues.

In November last year, the IMF approved the $12-billion three-year aid package for Egypt, at the time releasing an initial $2.75 billion.

To obtain the IMF lifeline, Cairo undertook to implement drastic reforms, adopting value added tax, cutting public energy subsidies and in November floated the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound.

Before November, the official rate was 8.83 Egyptian pounds to the US dollar, but it has since weakened and on Friday was averaging 18 pounds per dollar, according to the Central Bank's website.

Friday's IMF announcement comes after a visit to Cairo by a delegation charged with reviewing Egypt's economic reform programme, its statement said.

"This agreement is a vote of confidence by the IMF staff in the continued implementation of the Egyptian authorities' programme," the statement said.

"Foreign exchange shortages are resolved and interbank market activity is recovering. Egypt has regained investors' confidence," it said.
The Security Council has imposed six sets of sanctions on Pyongyang since 2006 to significantly ramp up pressure and deny Kim Jong-Un's regime the hard currency revenue needed for his military programs

North Korea on Friday accused the United States of using threats and intimidation to force countries at the United Nations to implement sanctions, describing the drive as "hysteric madness."

The North Korean mission at the United Nations urged UN member-states to "reconsider" applying sanctions adopted by the Security Council, arguing that their legality was questionable.

The statement followed a series of meetings held by the UN sanctions committee with regional groups to encourage countries to step up implementation of two sanctions resolutions adopted last year.

North Korea accused the United States of resorting to "every conceivable scheme" to encourage countries to apply sanctions, "even intimidating others into the implementation, openly threatening that they would be faced with 'strong measures of sanction' by the US," said the statement.

The United States has threatened to impose sanctions on third countries that have business dealings with North Korea that violate restrictions imposed under UN resolutions.

The sanctions committee, led by Italy, has held a series of closed sessions with countries from each regional group at the United Nations to press them to submit reports on how they are implementing the sanctions.

Of the UN's 193 countries, only 54 have presented reports on the sanctions resolution adopted in November last year and 89 have done so for a previous set of measures decided in March 2016.

The North Korean mission accused the sanctions committee of pushing sanctions against businesses such as North Korean-owned restaurants, arguing this was "expanding the interpretation" of the UN resolutions.

The United States has the "illusion of ordinary business of restaurant management as manufacturing factories for nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles," said the statement.

Washington and the UN sanctions committee are "making fools (of) themselves before the international community for (their) hysteric madness on 'sanctions'," it added.

North Korea has called for an international forum of legal experts to review the UN sanctions.

The Security Council has imposed six sets of sanctions on Pyongyang since 2006 to significantly ramp up pressure and deny Kim Jong-Un's regime the hard currency revenue needed for his military programs.

North Korea is seeking to develop a long-range missile capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead, and has so far staged five atomic tests, two of them last year.
Tunisian then-Defence Minister Ridha Grira speaks to the press upon arrival to attend the first ministers session, on January 20, 2011 in the government palace in Tunis

A Tunis court has sentenced Ridha Grira, the last defence minister under ousted president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, to six years in jail for corruption, the judiciary said Friday.

Spokesman Sofiene Sliti told AFP that the verdict against the 61-year-old "fugitive" was issued late Thursday by a court which also ordered him to pay a fine of 402,000 dinars ($164,000/150,000 euros).

Grira was jailed in September 2011 over corruption cases linked to the Ben Ali regime which was overthrown in a popular uprising that year.

But in March 2014 a court ordered his release, as he was suffering from cancer.

The Tunisian League for the Defence of Human Rights group had called for his release because of his poor health.

Relatives and former officials in the government of Ben Ali, who fled with his wife to Saudi Arabia in early 2011, were jailed after the uprising but some managed to be freed subsequently on health grounds.
Artist Jeff Koons says he hopes his Seated Ballerina installation in New York will give people of all ages "a sense of hope and optimism for the future"

Artist Jeff Koons on Friday unveiled an enormous inflatable blonde, silver-limbed ballerina in one of the busiest plazas in New York.

Seated on a stool and attending to a blue pointe shoe, the nylon figure in a light blue tutu towers a whopping 45 feet (nearly 14 meters) above the Rockefeller Center just off Fifth Avenue where she will remain through June 2.

The public installation, which marks the third time that the "king of kitsch" has exhibited his work in the plaza, was designed to bring awareness to America's National Missing Children's Month which falls in May.

"I really hope that Seated Ballerina can represent to people of all ages a sense of hope and optimism for the future, but specially that young children can look at this and can get a sense of their own potential," the artist told reporters.

He took inspiration from a small porcelain figurine of a seated ballerina, which he then enlarged into a stainless steel sculpture before thinking that an inflatable version would have a "tremendous" impact.

The use of inflatable nylon, colored metallic, is a play on Koons's famous Balloon Dogs that appear to be inflatable but are actually stainless steel.

"Every time we take a deep breath and expand our lungs, we are inflatable and that's kind of a symbol of optimism," Koons explained.

The statue was built to withstand high winds, but can be deflated if necessary.

In 2013, Koons set an auction record for the highest price paid for any work by a living artist when his Balloon Dog (Orange) sold for $58.4 million.

The 62-year-old artist told AFP on Friday that the Donald Trump presidency, which has much of liberal America up in arms, was a great time to make art.

"Administrations come and go," he told AFP. "It's a great time to create art and communicate what's relevant and profound to you."

But Koons is no stranger to controversy.

He is still famous for his short-lived marriage to a former Italian lawmaker known in the porn world as "Cicciolina" and for channeling their sex life into explicit art.

In 2014, one of his sculptures was pulled from the Pompidou Center in Paris after he was accused of ripping off a French clothing ad.
The seizure of Tabqa in the north of Syria after weeks of fighting represents one of the most important victories for the Syrian Democratic Forces

The Pentagon said Friday it played no part in an unusual deal in which Islamic State jihadists were allowed to leave a key town in Syria -- only for some of them to be killed anyway.

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces had independently cut a deal with the jihadists that let a group of about 70 of them leave Tabqa, an important city by a dam near the IS stronghold of Raqa.

But as soon as they left the city, US aircraft tracked and killed several of them, officials said.

"This was an agreement for them to leave the Tabqa dam and to leave the remaining portions of the city that ISIS held," Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said.

"It doesn't change the fact that when we see ISIS fighters on the battlefield and have a clean shot at them, we will continue to take it."

Davis stressed the jihadists were not considered to have surrendered.

According to a US official, the SDF deal had been in the works for a couple of weeks.

The US knew about it, but "it wouldn't have been our preference," the official told AFP.

The SDF, a Kurdish-Arab alliance fighting IS in Syria, allowed the fighters to leave Tabqa in return for dismantling bombs surrounding the dam, surrendering their heavy weapons and quitting Tabqa city.

Nothing about that precluded the jihadists from being pursued, Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway said.

"This is combat. They didn't make a deal with us," he said.

Members of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) gather at the entrance of the Syrian town of Tabqa, on May 12, 2017

Military leaders frequently say the objective is to annihilate IS, and for the most part the jihadists have fought to the death rather than surrender to security forces in neighboring Iraq or the SDF in Syria.

The US official said America always observes the laws of armed conflict and Geneva Conventions, meaning an unarmed IS fighter waving a white flag would not be targeted.

The seizure of Tabqa in the north of Syria after weeks of fighting represents one of the most important victories for the SDF.

Davis said a dam-assessment team was headed to the structure to make sure it had not been damaged by IS, although so far there had been no issues detected.

Last week the Pentagon announced President Donald Trump had approved supplying arms to the Kurdish contingent of the SDF, a controversial decision that has angered Turkey, which views the fighters as terrorists.

"We are very mindful of the Turkish concerns on this," Davis said.

"We are going to assure that every step of the way that we are receiving assurances from the SDF that they are using (the weapons) only to fight ISIS. We will be monitoring it in real time."
Britain's National Health Service reported a cyber attack on a number of hospitals on May 12, 2017

A fast-moving wave of cyberattacks swept the globe Friday, apparently exploiting a flaw exposed in documents leaked from the US National Security Agency.

The attacks -- which experts said affected dozens of countries -- used a technique known as ransomware that locks users' files unless they pay the attackers a designated sum in the virtual currency Bitcoin.

Affected by the onslaught were computer networks at hospitals in Britain, Russia's interior ministry, the Spanish telecom giant Telefonica and the US delivery firm FedEx and many other organizations.

Britain's National Cyber Security Centre and its National Crime Agency were looking into the UK incidents, which disrupted care at National Health Service facilities.

"This is not targeted at the NHS, it's an international attack and a number of countries and organizations have been affected," British Prime Minister Theresa May said.

Russia's interior ministry said that some of its computers had been hit by a "virus attack" and that efforts were underway to destroy it.

The US Department of Homeland Security's computer emergency response team said it was aware of ransomware infections "in several countries around the world."

Jakub Kroustek of the security firm Avast said in a blog post update around 2000 GMT, "We are now seeing more than 75,000 detections... in 99 countries."

Kaspersky researcher Costin Raiu cited 45,000 attacks in 74 countries, saying that the malware, a self-replicating "worm," was spreading quickly.

In a statement, Kaspersky Labs said it was "trying to determine whether it is possible to decrypt data locked in the attack -- with the aim of developing a decryption tool as soon as possible."

- 'Kill switch' -

On Saturday, a cybersecurity researcher told AFP he had accidentally discovered a "kill switch" that can prevent the spread of the ransomware.

The researcher, tweeting as @MalwareTechBlog, said the discovery was accidental, but that registering a domain name used by the malware stops it from spreading. Computers already affected will not be helped by the solution.

However @MalwareTechBlog warned that the "crisis isn't over" as those behind it "can always change the code and try again".

The malware's name is WCry, but analysts were also using variants such as WannaCry.

"It's unequivocally scary," said John Dickson of the Denim Group, a US security consultancy.

Dickson said the malware itself, which exploits a flaw in Windows, was not new but that adding the ransomware "payload" made it especially dangerous.

"I'm watching how far this propagates and when governments get involved," he said.

Forcepoint Security Labs said in a statement that the attack had "global scope" and was affecting networks in Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Mexico.

In the United States, FedEx acknowledged it had been hit by malware and was "implementing remediation steps as quickly as possible."

Britain's National Health Service declared a "major incident" after the attack, which forced some hospitals to divert ambulances and scrap operations.

Germany's Deutsche Bahn computers were also impacted, with the company reporting on Saturday morning that display panels in the stations were affected.

- Message to users: 'Oops' -

Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of $300 (275 euros) in Bitcoin, saying: "Ooops, your files have been encrypted!"

It demands payment in three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received in seven days, the files will be deleted, according to the screen message.

A hacking group called Shadow Brokers released the malware in April claiming to have discovered the flaw from the NSA, Kaspersky said.

Although Microsoft released a security patch for the flaw earlier this year, many systems have yet to be updated, researchers said.

"Unlike most other attacks, this malware is spreading primarily by direct infection from machine to machine on local networks, rather than purely by email," Lance Cottrell, chief scientist at the US technology group Ntrepid.

"The ransomware can spread without anyone opening an email or clicking on a link."

The sort of ransom demands have been growing precedent at medical facilities. In February 2016, a Los Angeles hospital, the Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, paid $17,000 in Bitcoin to hackers who took control of its computers for more than a week.

"Ransomware becomes particularly nasty when it infects institutions like hospitals, where it can put people's lives in danger," said Kroustek, the Avast analyst.

A spokesman for Barts Health NHS Trust in London said it was experiencing "major IT disruption" and delays at all four of its hospitals.

"Ambulances are being diverted to neighboring hospitals," the spokesman said.

Two employees at St Bartholomew's Hospital, which is part of Barts Health, told AFP that all the computers in the hospital had been turned off.

Some said the attacks highlighted the need for agencies like the NSA to disclose security flaws so they can be patched.

"These attacks underscore the fact that vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and criminals around the world," said Patrick Toomey of the American Civil Liberties Union.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - A strike that has shuttered Puerto Rico's largest public university for more than a month will continue indefinitely in defiance of a court order, students decided Wednesday.

Thousands of students approved extending the strike at a mass meeting where they also demanded an audit of Puerto Rico's $73 billion public debt and the resignation of the interim president of the University of Puerto Rico amid looming budget cuts.

The students are in part upset that the interim president is supporting a modified version of cuts being forced on the school due to the U.S. territory's economic crisis. A federal control board overseeing the finances of Puerto Rico's government has proposed $450 million in cuts for the school, although Gov. Ricardo Rossello has proposed that the cuts be reduced to $241 million. That issue has not been resolved.

The previous president of the University of Puerto Rico was among several top-level officials who resigned in February to protest the cuts. The university already faced more than $300 million in cuts in recent years.

An appeals court has ordered the university to reopen early Thursday following a lawsuit filed by students seeking to resume their studies. University officials have warned that a court could impose penalties on all those involved if the students do not reopen the university's gates.
BEIRUT (AP) - The Latest on Syria (all times local):

3 p.m.

The main Kurdish force in Syria says it will seek "neighborly relations" with Turkey, which views it as a terrorist organization.

In this undated photo released Thursday, May 11, 2017, by Hawar News, the news agency for the semi-autonomous Kurdish areas in Syria, shows fighters from the Kurdish-led Syria Democratic Forces, patrolling on a street in Tabqa, northern Syria. Syrian Kurdish-led forces say they are carrying out mine-clearing operations at the country's largest dam and the nearby town of Tabqa a day after seizing them from Islamic State militants. Concerns were raised earlier this year that the dam could be damaged in the fighting or degraded by lack of maintenance, or that the extremists might sabotage it to flood the surrounding areas. (Hawar News Agency, via AP)

Redur Khalil, the spokesman for the Kurdish militia known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, on Thursday called on Turkey to let go of its "unjustified" fears of the group, which is battling Islamic State militants with the help of U.S.-led airstrikes.

The Trump administration says it will supply the Syrian Democratic Forces, of which the YPG is the main component, with heavier weapons ahead of a push on the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the IS group's de facto capital.

Ankara views the YPG as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been waging a decades-old insurgency in Turkey. The U.S. and other Western nations also view the PKK as a terrorist group.

Khalil dismissed the label, saying the U.S. would not supply arms to terrorists.

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2:15 p.m.

The U.N.'s Syria envoy says a plan crafted by world powers to establish safe zones in the war-battered country should only be seen as an "interim" arrangement and not a precursor to partition.

Staffan de Mistura said Thursday that the proposal agreed upon by Russia, Iran and Turkey last week could lead to increased access by aid groups. But he said the safe zones should not be used as launch pads for new military operations.

De Mistura spoke ahead of a planned resumption of U.N.-mediated talks between the Syrian government and opposition next week in Geneva.

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1 p.m.

Syrian Kurdish-led forces say they are carrying out mine-clearing operations at the country's largest dam and the nearby town of Tabqa a day after seizing them from Islamic State militants.

The media office of the Syrian Democratic Forces said Thursday a special operation was underway to de-mine the dam and the surrounding area.

Concerns were raised earlier this year that the dam could be damaged in the fighting or degraded by lack of maintenance, or that the extremists might sabotage it to flood the surrounding areas.

The capture of Tabqa seven weeks after the launch of the SDF offensive, with help from the U.S.-led coalition, sets the stage for an advance on Raqqa, the de-facto capital of the extremists' self-styled caliphate, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) to the east.
PITTSBURGH (AP) - The estate of billionaire financier Henry Hillman will largely benefit foundations controlled by his relatives, which will receive $800 million from his fortune.

David Roger, president of the Hillman Family Foundations, tells the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (http://bit.ly/2q8uaE0 ) that $700 million will go to the Henry L. Hillman Foundation. The Pittsburgh-based charity plans to expand its annual grants from about $7 million to about $40 million.

The rest of the money will go to foundations headed by Hillman's four children and nine grandchildren.

Forbes magazine estimated Hillman's worth at $2.6 billion, but Roger says that likely includes assets already transferred to family members.

Hillman died last month at age 98. In his decades in finance, he transformed his family's firm, Hillman Co., by shedding industrial holdings in favor of technology and real estate investments.

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Information from: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, http://www.post-gazette.com
BRUSSELS (AP) - An Iraqi refugee and his Belgian teacher are dismayed to have been given a French lesson book with references to bomb throwers and jails, suggesting that migrants might be extremists.

Raad Al Azzawi, 38, has been taking French lessons at a school in a Brussels suburb since September. He was given the book to learn and practice the language.

The text contained sentences such as: "Daddy throws a bomb and goes to prison."; "I am eating sandwiches in prison."; "He shows me the bomb and the prison."

Iraqi refugee Raad Al Azzawi shows a lesson book at the house of his Belgian French tutor in Anderlecht, Belgium on Thursday, May 11, 2017. Read Al Azzawi and his tutor are both dismayed to have been given a French lesson book with references to bomb throwers and jails, suggesting that migrants might be extremists. (AP Photo/Sylvain Plazy)

Al Azzawi told The Associated Press Thursday that "in Iraq, there is a lot of misery, and I saw these writings and frankly, I was very sad."

His teacher, Catherine Lemaire, said it suggests asylum-seekers are "considered either as stupid or as terrorists and for me this is unacceptable."

She took photos of the pages and published them on Facebook when she found out they were given to migrants and asylum-seekers to help them learn French.

Lemaire met Raad when she volunteered with the Red Cross to host refugees. Al Azzawi lived with her for four months before he found his own place, but he still visits her almost every morning to practice French.

"At first I could not even dare to translate it to him, because it was very serious and I felt a bit shameful that Belgium could offer such material," said Lemaire, who does not work at the Erasme school in Anderlecht that handed out the book.

The school's director, Bernard Delecluse, has apologized for the "mistake," saying the offending pages had gone unnoticed for about three years. The "unfortunate sentences" have now been removed, Delecluse said.

Iraqi refugee Raad Al Azzawi shows a lesson book at the house of his Belgian French tutor in Anderlecht, Belgium on Thursday, May 11, 2017. Read Al Azzawi and his tutor are both dismayed to have been given a French lesson book with references to bomb throwers and jails, suggesting that migrants might be extremists. (AP Photo/Sylvain Plazy)
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) - A spokesman says Zimbabwe's 93-year-old president isn't sleeping in meetings. He's just protecting his eyes.

The state-run Herald newspaper on Thursday quoted spokesman George Charamba as saying President Robert Mugabe can't take bright lights. He spoke after Mugabe left this week for medical treatment for his eyes in Singapore.

"I feel like a failure when there is this reading that the president is sleeping in conferences, no," Charamba said.

Mugabe's weakening health is being watched carefully in this southern African nation. Images of him struggling to walk on a red carpet and toppling from a raised lectern in 2015 have trended on social media and become the butt of jokes.

He has been in power since 1980 and says he will run for election again next year.
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The Palestinian Health Ministry says six protesters were wounded by Israeli fire at a West Bank demonstration in support of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike.

It's the latest rally in support of hundreds of prisoners held by Israel who are on an open-ended strike, now in its 25th day.

The ministry says the protesters sustained light leg injuries from low caliber bullets at Thursday's rally, during which some Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli soldiers.

Palestinian activists stand around a 5x4 meter (16.5x13 feet) mosaic portrait of Marwan Barghouti near an Israeli military installation in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Tuesday, May 9, 2017. Israel released a video they say claim Barghouti secretly eating in his cell while leading Palestinian prisoners hunger strike in Israeli jails. Barghouti supporters say video is a fabrication intended to break the prisoners' morale. (AP Photo/ Nasser Shiyoukhi)

Palestinians say the strike seeks to improve their prison conditions.

Israel says strike leader Marwan Barghouti, widely seen as a potential successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is using it to raise his profile.

Earlier this week Israel released footage it said shows Barghouti breaking his fast. Palestinians say the video is a fabrication.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on the Senate intelligence committee's hearing on global threats (all times local):

10:40 a.m.

The Trump administration's national intelligence director says the U.S. sees Iran working to maintain last year's nuclear agreement.

Tehran's rationale is that by sticking to the deal, it gets relief from U.S. sanctions and preserves some nuclear capabilities.

Dan Coats tells the Senate intelligence committee that the deal extended the amount of time Iran would need to produce enough material for a nuclear weapon.

He cites the Obama administration's estimates that the timeline has been delayed from a few months to about a year.

Coats also says the deal has enhanced transparency of Iran's nuclear activities.

But, he says, the U.S. doesn't know if Iran will eventually decide to try to build nuclear weapons.

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10:40 a.m.

The security situation in Afghanistan will continue to deteriorate and the Taliban will make ongoing gains, especially in rural areas.

That's according to National Intelligence Director Dan Coats, who is testifying Thursday before the Senate intelligence committee.

Coats says intelligence agencies believe that the performance of Afghan national security forces battling the insurgents will worsen due to weak military leadership, ongoing desertions and combat casualties.

He noted that the Taliban effectively handled its second leadership transition in two years following the death of its former chief, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike. Coats called the Islamic State's branch in Afghanistan only a low-level developing threat to Afghan stability.

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10:35 a.m.

The director of national intelligence says Russia and other countries, including China, North Korea and Iran, are using cyberspace to target U.S. and its allies, and will do so in future.

The Senate intelligence committee is holding a hearing on worldwide threats, and intelligence director Dan Coats says Russia is a threat to U.S. government, military, diplomatic, business and critical infrastructure.

Coats says Iran also is making use of its high-tech capabilities. In 2013, an Iranian hacker intruded into the industrial control system of an American dam. In 2014, there was a data-deletion attack against a U.S.-based casino.

Coats says China is targeting the U.S. government and American businesses. He says such activity has diminished since U.S.-China cyber commitments in 2015.

Coats' comments are coming in his prepared remarks.
PARIS (AP) - The Latest on French presidential transition (all times local):

4:50 p.m.

Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has been rejected by President-elect Emmanuel Macron's movement as it tries to reshape politics.

French President-elect Emmanuel Macron poses with supporters after a ceremony commemorating the abolition of slavery, in Paris, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)

It's a tough blow for the once-popular Valls, who cracked down on security as France was hit with extremist attacks and had been seen as potential presidential material himself.

Valls asked to run for parliament next month as part of Macron's movement Republic on the Move, but party secretary Richard Ferrand said Thursday that his request was denied. That was because he has already served three parliamentary terms, one of the criteria for ruling out potential candidates as the party tries to put fresh faces in politics.

However, Ferrand said the party would not present a candidate to run against Valls in his constituency of Evry south of Paris.

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4:40 p.m.

President-elect Emmanuel Macron's party has revealed a list of 428 people running for parliament next month - half of them women, most who have never held elected office - as he tries to remake France's political system.

The secretary-general of Macron's Republic on the Move, Richard Ferrand, told reporters Thursday that 95 percent of the candidates are not part of the outgoing National Assembly. All 577 seats in the lower house of parliament are up for grabs in the elections.

Ferrand says the average age of Macron's candidates is 46, compared to 60 for the outgoing assembly. The list includes a few unemployed people and students as well.

Ferrand says the movement received more than 19,000 dossiers from people answering its call for candidates.

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2:00 p.m.

One led the elite French police unit that took down an Islamic State cell, another lost a sister in the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris. There is also a computer whizz who started working at age 16, a farmer, a primary school director whose family is known for its sparkling wine, and a journalist who covered conflict in Africa. Their shared goal: to deliver President-elect Emmanuel Macron the parliamentary majority he needs to be effective.

Macron's Republic on the Move party was unveiling Thursday its eclectic choice of hundreds of candidates for legislative elections in June. Like him, many are new to politics.

An initial batch of 14 legislative candidates previously announced in April gave a taste of how Macron's grassroots-style movement has sought to recruit from outside of the circle of career politicians. Split 50-50 between men and women, as Macron promised, the 14 included Jean-Michel Fauvergue, who the elite RAID unit during the 2015 siege in which Abdelhamid Abaaoud, a ring leader of the Paris attacks a few days earlier, was killed.

Also in that first batch was Claire Tassadit Houd. Her sister, Djamila, was among the 130 killed in the Nov. 13, 2015, Paris attacks.

French President-elect Emmanuel Macron attends a ceremony commemorating the abolition of slavery, in Paris, Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia's governor has appointed a panel to investigate the charges pending against a sheriff accused of exposing himself in an Atlanta park.

DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann was arrested Saturday after a police officer said Mann exposed himself to the officer in Piedmont Park and then ran.

Mann faces charges of indecency and obstruction of an officer. He has said it was a misunderstanding.

State law allows the governor to convene a panel of two sheriffs and the state attorney general to investigate and to recommend whether a sheriff facing criminal or ethics charges should be suspended.

In an executive order Thursday, Deal instructed Attorney General Chris Carr, Newton County Sheriff Ezell Brown and Peach County Sheriff Terry Deese to investigate and make a report within 30 days.
LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) - A district court has approved the search of a laptop used by the man accused of attacking students with a machete at a coffee shop at Transylvania University in central Kentucky.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports (http://bit.ly/2qv6A7p) the affidavit in support of the search warrant for 19-year-old Mitchell W. Adkins' laptop cites his 2015 post on BuzzFeed as a community contributor titled "Discrimination of Conservatives in Liberal Arts." Lexington police detective Steve McCown says Adkins "proclaimed his distaste with Transylvania's political atmosphere and intolerance for political affiliation" in the post.

A witness says Adkins asked about the political affiliations of the cafe patrons before the April 28 attack.

Police say two victims suffered non-life-threatening injuries. He pleaded not guilty to five criminal charges May 1 and was released on $25,500 bond.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions sidestepped talk about the open FBI director's post in an appearance in West Virginia at a conference on stopping drug addiction.

Sessions spoke at the University of Charleston on Thursday at a Drug Enforcement Administration meeting on heroin and opioid addiction.

It was his first public appearance since President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.

University spokesman David Traube had said Sessions was scheduled to hold a news conference after his speech. But U.S. Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said Wednesday night that Sessions would not be available to reporters. Sessions quickly left the auditorium after his speech.

Sessions' speech focused on helping cities and regions battle the prescription drug abuse epidemic and the violent crime associated with it.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The once-feared man who commanded the National Police in El Salvador when a 12-year civil war killed 75,000 people was wheeled into a federal courtroom Thursday, hunched over and pale.

The colostomy bag Inocente Orlando Montano Morales has worn since bladder cancer surgery wasn't visible under his orange jumpsuit. The judge said he didn't need to stand.

Montano has "a number of life-threatening or limiting conditions," U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle said Thursday. He said he's leaning toward releasing him from jail while he reviews extradition laws for the U.S., El Salvador and Spain.

FILE - In this Aug. 22, 2013 file photo, former El Salvadoran military Col. Inocente Orlando Montano departs federal court, in Boston. More than a year after a his extradition was ordered, the former Salvadoran colonel remains far from answering charges of plotting the 1989 deaths of six Jesuit priests as an American judge considers legal entanglements still reverberating long after the country's civil war. Now the failing health of 75-year-old Inocente Orlando Montano Morales raises the question of whether he will live long enough to face trial in Spain or El Salvador. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

"I think the only safe disposition is to allow his family to care for him until his habeas petition is resolved," said Boyle, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

More than a year after a lower-level judge ordered his extradition to Spain to face terrorist murder charges, the former Salvadoran colonel hasn't come close to answering allegations that he helped plot the 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests, five of whom were born in Spain, along with their housekeeper and her daughter.

Montano is now 75, and his failing health is casting doubt over whether he'll live long enough to face trial. "He can raise his arms only with great effort, and even then, not enough to reach his head," his lawyers told the court in April.

Boyle said he may let Montano live with a sister in South Carolina, and would issue a written decision later. He recently tried to send Montano to a prison hospital, but there were no available beds.

Montano's infirmities belie the power he once wielded in the inner circle of U.S.-trained military officers that had key government positions during the civil war that ended in 1992. Montano oversaw the National Police as vice minister of public security, according to court documents.

The right-wing government and FMLN rebels had begun peace talks, with Father Ignacio Ellacuria serving as intermediary, when top officers decided the priests were siding with the leftists. Montano met with other top officers, and the group decided to kill Ellacuria and leave no witnesses, the documents say.

There had been other atrocities, but outrage over the priests' massacre led to a U.S. congressional investigation, which found that most of the Salvadoran counter-insurgency force that carried out the murders had been trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. Money and weapons sent by the Reagan administration declined, hastening the war's end.

Montano, who denies involvement in the killings, has been behind bars for about four years.

He arrived in the U.S. in the early 2000s and worked for six years at a candy factory in a Boston suburb. He was arrested in 2011 and sentenced to nearly two years for immigration fraud and perjury, serving his time in a federal prison in North Carolina. He's been held since then in state jails pending extradition to Spain.

A federal magistrate in North Carolina, Judge Kimberly Swank, ruled that evidence presented by U.S. prosecutors showed Montano helped plot the killing of the priests. She approved the extradition request in February 2016, pending final State Department approval.

Montano's lawyers then challenged the decision, and Boyle rejected prosecutors' arguments that the matter had already been settled.

Montano's lawyer James Todd said Thursday that U.S. immigration officials have filed a detainer against him so that if he isn't extradited to Spain, he can more easily be deported to El Salvador, where changes to a long-standing amnesty law could expose him to prosecution.

Meanwhile, his defense is pleading for his health care. They say he has diabetes, his colostomy makes him susceptible to bacterial infections in jail, and he suffers neck pain after fainting and hitting his head during a head-count in jail.

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Follow Drew at www.twitter.com/jonldrew

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This story has been corrected to fix the spelling of the judge's first name to Terrence, not Terrance.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California lawmakers blasted state water officials Thursday for their oversight of the half-century-old dam that anchors the state's water system, in a hearing focusing on the design problems and aging that contributed to the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream.

"This frightens me, that this was built in this manner," state Assemblyman Jim Frazier, a Democrat, and an engineer by training, told the state officials overseeing the Oroville Dam, the nation's tallest.

Frazier cited post-crisis inspection reports of concrete as thin as the width of the palm of a hand on Oroville's main spillway. "We have some things we need to address so this doesn't happen again."

David Gutierrez, a consultant for the Department of Water Resources., answers a lawmaker's questions concerning the damaged spillways of the Oroville Dam during a joint Assembly committee hearing Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Lawmakers cited emerging technical reports from two independent teams of experts on the Oroville Dam's two spillway's, citing concrete that was thinner than modern standards call for, cracks, tree roots that had blocked spillway drains and bedrock anchoring the dam that was far weaker then assumed as some of the reasons for the near collapse of the spillways that caused the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream of the Oroville Dam in February. At left is Resources Secretary John Laird, in the center is Bill Croyle, acting Director of the California Department of Water Resources. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Both water-release spillways at the 770-foot (235 meter) high dam, completed in the late 1960s, washed away during heavy rain and snow in February. Authorities ordered the evacuation of people in parts of three counties downstream, for fear that water was about to spill out of the lake - the state's second-largest - and roar through cities and towns.

In a hearing in Sacramento on the crisis, lawmakers cited emerging technical reports from two independent teams of experts on the Oroville Dam's two spillways. Problem areas identified so far include concrete that was far thinner than modern standards call for, cracks, tree roots that had blocked spillway drains, and bedrock anchoring the dam that was far weaker than assumed.

Public and private dam-safety officials say the investigation into the problems at the Oroville Dam are being watched nationally, for lessons and warnings about the nation's other aging dams.

"The culture of monitor, watch, patch, and paint the crack, must be corrected," said James Gallagher, a Republican Assemblyman who had been one of the people downstream of the dam evacuating with an hour's notice on Feb. 12. "It risks the lives of my constituents and the complete shut-down of California's water system."

California Department of Water Resources officials have repeatedly acknowledged that the earthen dam was designed to looser standards than today. David Gutierrez, a consultant for the state water agency, told lawmakers that the state's inspections of the spillways before the crisis had fallen short.

"Obviously we've got to take a look at the process, because it didn't work," Gutierrez said of the state's routine for inspections of the Oroville dam's main spillway.

A sheriff ordered the evacuation when the main spillway and then the emergency spillway at Oroville collapsed over several days, raising fears that several dozen feet of the earth and concrete that made up the emergency spillway could give way.

Bill Croyle, acting director of the state water agency, rejected complaints from some critics that the state had focused on Oroville Dam as a water supply for roughly two dozen water companies and about 26 million Californians, rather than as a flooding threat to communities below. "The decisions we've had to make ... are focused on public safety as No. 1," Croyle said.

Additionally, Croyle and John Laird, the state's secretary of natural resources, pointed to water districts that get their water from Oroville as the main entities responsible for paying to repair this winter's damages. The state currently puts the cost of managing the spillway crisis and repairing the damage at more than a half-billion dollars.

The Department of Water Resources said earlier this week it was asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fund 75 percent of all construction costs, on the grounds it was a public-safety emergency. Federal authorities have not yet responded publicly.

Asked by lawmakers to explain the state's plans for funding the repairs, Laird pointed to water districts in Central and Southern California that get water via the Oroville Dam.

"We've got a contract with the state water contractors, so that's where it starts," Laird said. "They pay."

Bill Croyle, the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, flanked by Resources Secretary John Laird, left, discusses the damaged spillways of the Oroville Dam during a Assembly committee hearing Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Lawmakers cited numerous factors emerging from technical reports done by two independent teams of experts on the Oroville Dam's two spillway's, that contributed to the near collapse of the spillways that caused the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream of the Oroville Dam in February. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

Bill Croyle, center, the acting director of the Department of Water Resources, flanked by Resources Secretary John Laird, left, and consultant David Gutierrez, discusses the damaged spillways of the Oroville Dam during a joint Assembly committee hearing Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. Lawmakers cited numerous factors emerging from technical reports done by two independent teams of experts on the Oroville Dam's two spillway's, that contributed to the near collapse of the spillways that caused the evacuation of nearly 200,000 people downstream of the Oroville Dam in February. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
COTTONPORT, La. (AP) - A Louisiana State Police trooper and at least one other officer were shot Thursday during a standoff with a man who they'd tried to serve a warrant on in rural Avoyelles Parish.

State police spokesman Maj. M. Doug Cain said the officers were taken to area hospitals for treatment of non-life threatening injuries. Their names have not been released.

Cain said the suspected gunman was taken into custody about 7:20 p.m. He had been barricaded inside his house in Moreauville.

Avoyelles Parish Sheriff Doug Anderson told The Advocate (http://bit.ly/2qZxWCk ) Brandon Carpenter, 35, barricaded himself after he rammed his vehicle into officer's vehicles during a chase on Highway 316 near Hessmer. It was unclear how the chase began.

Anderson said Carpenter fired a shotgun, apparently loaded with bird shot, and hit the trooper in the shoulder and the officer in the lip.

Carpenter had a warrant for domestic abuse battery, Anderson told The Advocate.

Avoyelles Parish is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Alexandria.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Beijing will open its borders to U.S. beef, while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to landing on American supermarket shelves under a U.S.-China trade agreement.

Trump administration officials hailed the deal as a significant advance toward boosting U.S. exports and closing America's trade gap with the world's second-largest economy. U.S. trade experts offered a more muted assessment, calling the agreement a modest fulfillment of past assurances made by China.

Among other things, the deal enables U.S. companies to export liquefied natural gas to China. It will also lower long-standing barriers that have affected matters ranging from agriculture to the operation of American financial firms in China.

FILE - In this April 6, 2017 file photo, Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, smiles at U.S. President Donald Trump as they pose together with their wives for photographers before dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla. China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting the American market as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement. Trump administration officials hailed the deal as a significant step in their efforts to boost U.S. exports and even America's trade gap with the world's second-largest economy. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross hailed the agreement, coming on the heels of President Donald Trump's April meeting with President Xi Jinping, as "a herculean accomplishment."

"This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade," Ross told reporters Thursday evening at the White House.

In Beijing, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told reporters the early results of the agreement showed that economic collaboration between the two sides "couldn't be closer."

But trade experts questioned the magnitude of the deal.

"These are modest moves which by themselves will not have much effect on the U.S. economy," said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Treasury Department official.

The beef exports and electronic payments in the agreement have long been promised by China. And the agreement does little to address some key issues of trade friction, such as automobiles or social media. While the Trump administration has touted a surge in U.S. manufacturing, this agreement does little to help that goal.

"The challenge is selling manufactured goods into China - there isn't anything in this deal to suggest China is going to become more open to U.S.-manufactured exports," said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It remains unclear how far China will go to allow more American exports. Previous administrations have hailed market-opening agreements only to be left disappointed.

"The key in these negotiations is specifics that are enforceable - literally, the devil is in the details," said Scott Mulhauser, a former chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

"The more these agreements include real, concrete outcomes rather than platitudes, rehashing old ground or punts to the future, the better they are," Mulhauser said. "American companies, workers, farmers and more are eager for more access to Chinese markets, and they'll look to ensure reality matches the rhetoric of these promises."

Trump made America's wide trade deficits and especially the gap with China a major issue in his campaign and during the early days of his administration. He's argued that America's perennial trade gaps have cost millions of factory jobs and he has pledged to take a tougher stance in trade negotiations to lower the imbalances.

Under the agreement, the United States is inviting Chinese companies to import U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas. The Energy Department has authorized natural gas shipments of 19.2 billion cubic feet per day to China and other interested countries that lack a broader free trade agreement with the United States, the Commerce Department said.

China is turning more to natural gas as a way to reduce its dependence on coal and combat the country's extensive air pollution. The move would allow China to diversify its supply and provide a major market for American suppliers, though the expansion could lead to higher prices for U.S. consumers.

The agreement would also ease import restrictions on agricultural goods, including ending China's ban on beef imports, which was imposed in 2003 after a case of mad-cow disease. In exchange, the U.S. would allow the sale of cooked Chinese poultry - a move Ross said could be done safely.

The agreement would also streamline the evaluation of U.S. biotechnology product applications; pave the way for allowing American-owned suppliers of electronic payment services to begin the licensing processes in China; and facilitate the entrance of Chinese banks into the U.S. banking market.

The agreement grew out of negotiations the countries agreed to start after Trump's meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate with the Chinese president.

America's trade deficit in goods and services with China totaled $310 billion last year, by far the largest imbalance with any country.

The two countries have also agreed to hold talks this summer to be led by Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Vice Premier Wang Yang to work on a one-year plan.

While Trump had earlier said China could receive more favorable trade terms from the U.S. in return for help in persuading North Korea to cease its nuclear and missile activities, Zhu downplayed any suggestion of a link between the two.

"Both sides have a deep and close understanding that the U.S.-China economic relationship can't be politicized." Zhu said.

___

Associated Press writers Gerry Shih in Beijing and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

A woman shops for chicken at a supermarket in Beijing, Friday, May 12, 2017. China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting the American market as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

A clerk, right, helps a woman shop for chicken at a supermarket in Beijing, Friday, May 12, 2017. China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting the American market as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

A woman pushes her shopping cart past a display of domestically produced Chinese beef at a supermarket in Beijing, Friday, May 12, 2017. China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting the American market as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2003 file photo, a Chinese shopkeeper stands behind a row of beef products at an open air market in Beijing, China. China will finally open its borders to U.S. beef while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to hitting the American market as part of a U.S.-China trade agreement. Trump administration officials hailed the deal as a significant step in their efforts to boost U.S. exports and even America's trade gap with the world's second-largest economy.(AP Photo/File)
AMHERST, Mass. (AP) - U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren took a quick jab at President Donald Trump on Friday while urging newly minted University of Massachusetts-Amherst graduates to get more involved in the democracy of public policy and pursue issues they care about.

During her commencement address, she ticked off a list of possible causes, including student debt, access to voting, bullying and free speech.

The Democrat then wryly suggested the students also could fight for "the principle that no one, no one in this country is above the law and we need a Justice Department, not an obstruction of justice department."

Senator Elizabeth Warren. was the keynote speaker at the 2017 University of Massachusetts Commencement was held at the McGuirk Alumni Stadium in Amherst, Mass., Friday, May 12, 2017. Warren took a quick jab at President Donald Trump on Friday while urging newly minted University of Massachusetts-Amherst graduates to get more involved in the democracy of public policy and pursue issues they care about.(Don Treeger /The Republican via AP)

That last recommendation received big cheers from the crowd. It was a reference to Trump's firing this week of FBI Director James Comey, whose agency is investigating allegations of collaboration between Russia and Trump's Republican presidential campaign last year.

Trump has denied any Russian connections, expressing frustration with "this Russia thing" and dismissing the investigation as "a hoax."

Warren, first elected in 2012, was a pointed critic of Trump during the presidential election, regularly attacking him on Twitter. Since his election, she has continued her criticism, most recently calling for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the Trump campaign and Russia following Comey's sudden ouster.

On Friday, Warren spent much of her address stressing the importance of democracy and how politicians need to hear from everyday people like the graduates, not the corporate CEOs, Wall Street and others "who spend buckets of money" to make sure their interests are heard.

"Here's the thing: Your elected officials are increasingly working only for the few, the very wealthy few, and they are setting policies that only benefit the few, the very wealthy few," she said. "And if that doesn't change soon, then this country will fundamentally change. It is your world, your future on the line."

UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said Warren, who's a consumer advocate, is a strong role model for students.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was the keynote speaker at the 2017 University of Massachusetts Commencement was held at the McGuirk Alumni Stadium in Amherst, Mass., Friday, May 12, 2017. Warren took a quick jab at President Donald Trump on Friday while urging newly minted University of Massachusetts-Amherst graduates to get more involved in the democracy of public policy and pursue issues they care about.(Don Treeger /The Republican via AP)

Graduate graduate Riley Duggan of Camden, Maine lets out a cheer during the 2017 University of Massachusetts Commencement Friday, May 12, 2017, in Amherst. (Don Treeger /The Republican via AP)

Stanley Rosenberg, Massachusetts Senate President, left, and keynote speaker, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Warren was the keynote speaker at the 2017 University of Massachusetts Commencement in Amherst, Mass., Friday, May 12, 2017. Warren took a quick jab at President Donald Trump on Friday while urging newly minted University of Massachusetts-Amherst graduates to get more involved in the democracy of public policy and pursue issues they care about.(Don Treeger /The Republican via AP)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea's new president is taking on a challenge that has defied all of his predecessors: reforming the big family-controlled conglomerates that dominate the economy.

While jobs are a top priority, strong public pressure following a corruption scandal that toppled his predecessor, Park Geun-hye, leaves him with little choice about going after the chaebol, as they are called.

"As I promised during my campaign, I will take care of the employment issue first. At the same time, I will take the initiative in reforming chaebol," Moon Jae-in said in his inauguration address Wednesday.

FILE - In this May 1, 2017 file photo, members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and citizens shout slogans during a May Day rally in Seoul. South Korea's newly elected president, Moon Jae-in says jobs top his agenda for Asia's fourth largest economy, but a larger challenge awaits him in reforming the powerful family conglomerates, called chaebol, that dominate the economy. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

"Under the Moon Jae-in administration, the word meaning cozy relations between political and business circles will completely disappear," he proclaimed.

Moon knows firsthand that the job won't be easy. He was a top aide in the administration of the late president Roh Moo-hyun's, whose efforts to rein in the chaebol yielded disappointing results.

Conglomerates like Samsung and Hyundai play a huge role in South Korea and their founding families have complicated stock ownership structures, non-profit charity foundations and other arrangements to preserve their wealth and managerial influence.

Many view close, murky ties between politicians, bureaucrats and those big businesses as the reason corruption has thrived.

The public mood following former President Park Geun-hye's impeachment over alleged influence peddling and bribery may give Moon a bit of a honeymoon.

"I'd like to hope that this government will be different," said Kim Seong-jin, a lawyer at People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, one of the largest civic groups in South Korea. "This is an essential task that the citizens are watching closely."

Moon has promised to empower South Korea's fair trade regulator to impose harsher punishments on companies that meddle in regulatory investigations and decisions. To do so he must drum up support from other parties. Passage of needed revisions of commercial and fair trade laws would require 60 more votes than the 120 out of 299 legislative seats controlled by his Democratic Party.

Luckily for Moon, apart from the conservative Liberty Party, three other smaller opposition parties backed chaebol reforms during the recent presidential campaign.

His presidency comes at a time of growing recognition that South Korea needs to end the chaebol-centered growth model that has been in place since the era of former President Park's father, who ruled from 1961-79.

Park Chung-hee, an army general-turned-dictator, gave cheap loans and trade protection to chaebols while quashing unionized labor. That enabled the conglomerates, and South Korea itself, to recover quickly from the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War.

That top-down business model, largely driven by exports, is wearing thin as job creation and increases in wages slow. For decades, businesses and capital investment were prioritized at the expense of workers' rights and social welfare. Now consumer spending is suffering as families feel the pinch of job insecurity and lagging incomes.

South Koreans who in the past may have viewed the chaebol as national champions now increasing consider them elites who are hogging wealth while crushing small businesses and stifling innovation.

There are limits to how far reforms can go.

Most of the country's small and medium-sized companies depend on business from the chaebol, as suppliers or subcontractors, though they complain of not getting fair prices for their work. And jobs at chaebol like Samsung and Hyundai are considered the most desirable, given the uncertainties and poorer conditions of employment in most smaller companies.

Still, instances of chaebol founding families using elaborate schemes, often unethical and sometimes illegal, to preserve or build their wealth and managerial influence are adding to public outrage.

Millions of South Koreans took to the streets for months in peaceful but vehement demonstrations to protest over allegations that Park, the former president, was colluding with a close associate and allowing her to meddle in government affairs, brought

Park was impeached and arrested in March and faces a trial later this month that could send her to prison for life if she is convicted. Meanwhile, Samsung vice chairman and chaebol heir Lee Jae-yong is facing trial, charged with using Samsung funds to bribe Park and her friend.

One other way to push for reforms is to have the powerful national pension fund, the biggest investor in many chaebols with $530 billion in assets, advocate more forcefully on behalf of minority shareholder and public interests.

So far, the pension fund has refrained from voicing criticism over corporate mismanagement. Former pension fund executives are among those facing trial in the current corruption scandal.

The tendency of chaebol companies and other institutions to favor founding family interests over those of ordinary shareholders in publicly listed companies is so ingrained that many global investors say they routinely impose a "Korea Discount" on investments in South Korea.

"This election proves there is strong public support for a better system of governance," said Kwon Young Sun, an economist at Nomura Securities.

"If corporate governance of Korea Inc. were to improve meaningfully with the passage of the economic democracy reform bills and adoption of a Stewardship Code by the National Pension Service, we would become more bullish on the market."

___

Lee can be reached on Twitter: www.twitter.com/YKLeeAP

FILE - In this May 10, 2017 file photo, South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in waves to neighborhoods and supporters upon his arrival outside of the presidential Blue House in Seoul. South Korea's newly elected president, Moon says jobs top his agenda for Asia's fourth largest economy, but a larger challenge awaits him in reforming the powerful family conglomerates, called chaebol, that dominate the economy. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)

FILE - In this April 13, 2017 file photo, Lee Jae-yong, center, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., arrives for his trial for bribery and other charges at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul, South Korea. South Korea's newly elected president, Moon Jae-in says jobs top his agenda for Asia's fourth largest economy, but a larger challenge awaits him in reforming the powerful family conglomerates, called chaebol, that dominate the economy. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The effort by former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca and his underlings to derail an FBI investigation into beatings in the jails he ran was dubbed Operation Pandora's Box.

Like the Greek myth the name was based on, it contained troubles the conspirators never anticipated when federal investigators uncovered the scheme and went after Baca and his associates for obstructing justice.

Baca was the final casualty when he was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison by a judge who rebuked the longtime lawman for failing to live up to the lofty values he preached, bringing shame to his department and forever tarnishing his legacy.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, center, talks to the media surrounded by his attorneys, David Hochman, left, and Nathan Hochman, right, outside federal court in Los Angeles Friday, May, 12, 2017. Baca was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran. The 74-year-old Baca, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, was sentenced by a judge who has shown little leniency when it comes to Baca's role atop a department rife with corruption. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson, who exceeded a two-year term recommended by prosecutors, said Baca would have received five years behind bars if not for nearly a half-century of public service and because he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

The judge, however, took exception to a defense contention that Alzheimer's is a sentence of its own.

"As awful as Alzheimer's disease is, it's not a criminal penalty," said Anderson, who said the suggestion was an insult to millions of others suffering from the condition who have not committed federal crimes. "Alzheimer's disease is not a get-out-of-jail card."

Baca, 74, was the most prominent defendant in the case that expanded from a civil rights investigation of beatings by guards in the nation's largest jail system into a broader corruption scandal that led to the top of the department. In addition to Baca and his top lieutenant, 19 others were convicted of crimes ranging from assaults to obstructing justice.

The sentence was a blow to Baca, who had been seeking probation and home confinement.

Baca, dressed in a light blue suit, delivered a scattered address from hand-written notes outside the courthouse after the sentencing in which he thanked the people of Los Angeles County, his lawyers and his wife standing by his side, who he couldn't immediately locate.

He declined to comment on the sentence. But as he waited to cross a street, he said he was a man of faith who believes life is precious.

"I love life no matter where I am," Baca said.

He was ordered to surrender to federal prison authorities July 25. He was convicted in March of obstructing justice, conspiring to obstruct justice and lying to federal authorities.

Baca and others launched Operation Pandora's Box after discovering a jail inmate with a contraband flip phone was acting as an FBI informant. The group conspired to hide the inmate by changing his name in computers, moving him among different facilities and threatening to arrest his FBI handler.

Furious about the investigation, Baca confronted the local FBI head and top federal prosecutor saying he was ready to "gun up" for battle with them.

"Rather than stop the abuses in the jails, he entered into a conspiracy with his subordinates to obstruct a federal civil rights investigation to protect his legacy," acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown said. "He made a decision to protect what he called his empire, his jails and then simply to protect himself."

Baca, who served 15 years as sheriff and nearly half a century in the department, abruptly resigned in 2014 under a cloud.

He escaped charges until last year when he agreed to plead guilty and face no more than 6 months in prison. Anderson rejected the deal as too lenient, and Baca withdrew his guilty plea and went to trial.

The convictions tarnished Baca's reputation as a soft-spoken, peaceful, progressive reformer who promoted education and rehabilitation for inmates and preached tolerance and understanding among different cultures and faiths.

Defense attorney Nathan Hochman said Baca's misdeeds over six weeks in 2011 and four false answers to 400 questions during a voluntary interview with authorities in 2013 had to be balanced against an "extraordinary record of public service" and his condition, which has progressed to mild dementia.

More than 200 friends and supporters wrote letters of support for Baca, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, Hollywood executives, clergy and former jail inmates.

"For 48 years, he served the people of Los Angeles with all his might, with all his heart," Hochman said.

Baca plans to appeal, challenging several of Anderson's rulings, including a decision not to allow medical experts to testify whether Baca's medical condition impaired his memory when he lied to federal authorities.

Anderson said Baca's fall was tragic, but he knew he was doing wrong and the actions by deputies who brutalized inmates had ruined lives and done lasting damage to the community.

"Your actions are an embarrassment to the thousands of men and women who put their lives on the line every day," Anderson said. "Blind obedience to a corrupt culture has serious consequences."

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, third from left,, with his wife, Carol, left, walks with attorneys, David Hochman, second from left, and Nathan Hochman, fourth from left, as they leave federal court in Los Angeles Friday, May, 12, 2017. Baca was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran. The 74-year-old Baca, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, was sentenced by a judge who has shown little leniency when it comes to Baca's role atop a department rife with corruption. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca speaks outside federal court in Los Angeles, Calif., Friday, May 12, 2017. Baca was sentenced to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran. (AP Photo/Brian Melley)

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, third from left, with his wife, Carol, walk with attorneys, David Hochman, left, and Nathan Hochman, right, outside federal court in Los Angeles Friday, May, 12, 2017. Baca was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran. The 74-year-old Baca, who is in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, was sentenced by a judge who has shown little leniency when it comes to Baca's role atop a department rife with corruption. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca leaves federal court in Los Angeles, Friday, May, 12, 2017, after he was sentenced to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, middle, waves as he walks with his attorneys, David Hochman, left, and Nathan Hochman, third from left, as they federal court in Los Angeles, Friday, May, 12, 2017, after Baca was sentenced to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
FATIMA, Portugal (AP) - Pope Francis urged Catholics on Friday to "tear down all walls" and spread peace as he traveled to this Portuguese shrine town to mark the 100th anniversary of one of the most unique events of the 20th-century Catholic Church: the visions of the Virgin Mary reported by three illiterate shepherd children and the "secrets" she told them.

Thousands of pilgrims lined Francis' motorcade route and tossed flower petals, evidence that Latin America's first pope has a huge following in this largely Catholic country. Cheers of "Viva o papa!" - "Long live the pope" - erupted when Francis pulled into Fatima's main square, which had been doused by heavy rains but was treated to a brilliant warm sun by the time he arrived.

There was no official crowd estimate, but the main square has a capacity of 600,000 and was overflowing. Authorities said they expected 1 million people.

Pope Francis prays at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

"It is a big emotion because it is the first time he comes here, and we are always hopeful that something can improve," said Laurindo Pereira, a 55-year-old carpenter. "It is faith. In everything, it is about faith and it is a beautiful thing."

Francis is spending fewer than 24 hours in Fatima to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and canonize two of the three shepherd children. He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of World War I, will resonate with the Catholic faithful today.

During an evening vigil at the chapel built on the site of the apparitions, Francis bowed his head in silent prayer before the statue of the Virgin and left a gold-leaf rose at its base, following a tradition of popes leaving golden roses at Marian shrines.

In a prayer, he urged the faithful to follow in the footsteps of the young shepherds and spread peace even in times of war.

"We will tear down all walls and cross every frontier, as we go out to every periphery, to make known God's justice and peace," he said.

The Fatima mystery has fascinated Catholics and non-Catholics alike for a century, blending visions of the Virgin, supernatural meteorological events and apocalyptic messages of hell, World War II, communism and the death of a pope.

It all began on May 13, 1917, when three cousins, aged 7-10, Francisco and Jacinta Marto and Lucia dos Santos, reported that they had seen a vision of the Virgin Mary as they grazed their sheep. They returned to the same spot in the coming months and reported similar visions.

Portuguese church officials initially doubted them. Many doubters, though, became believers after the so-called "miracle of the sun" on Oct. 13, 1917. The children 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.

The children reported that the Madonna revealed to them three "secrets," and urged them to pray for peace and turn away from sin. Francisco and Jacinta Marto died of influenza two years later, and will be declared saints by the pope Saturday, the 100th anniversary of the initial vision.

Lucia, who later became a nun and wrote of the children's experiences, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case couldn't begin until after her death in 2005.

Francis' deputy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, has said the importance of Fatima lies in the fact that poor, illiterate children - not the wealthy, the learned or intellectuals - were able to convey a powerful message of love and forgiveness at a time of war, when "the talk was of hatred, vendetta, hostilities."

Fatima has long been associated with St. John Paul II, given that the Polish-born pope credited the Virgin Mary with saving his life in 1981 when a would-be assassin shot him on Fatima's feast day - May 13 - in St. Peter's Square. John Paul made the first of three pilgrimages to Fatima the following May, and one of the bullets fired at him now adorns the crown of the Madonna statue at the shrine.

In 2000, the Vatican disclosed the long-awaited third secret of Fatima, describing it as foretelling the 1981 assassination attempt and the persecution of other Christian faithful.

Like John Paul, the Argentine-born Francis is exceedingly devoted to the Madonna, thanks in large part to the strong role that Marian devotions play among Latin American Catholics.

Before every trip he takes, Francis brings a bouquet of flowers to an icon of Mary at the Rome basilica dedicated to her name, St. Mary Major.

On his first foreign trip as pope, to Brazil, he prayed at the shrine to the Madonna at Aparecida. He has done the same at the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, at the shrine of Caacupe in Paraguay and the Virgin of the Charity of Cobre in Cuba.

One shrine he has avoided visiting is in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, where six youngsters reported repeated visions of the Virgin starting in 1981. A Vatican-appointed doctrinal commission finished its study years ago, but Francis hasn't released the results.

He has cautioned against such tales of near-daily visions, however, and has said devotion must be to "the real Madonna. Not the Madonna who's like the head of a post office who every day sends a different letter saying, 'My children, do this,' and then the next day says, 'Do that.'"

The church says the Fatima case is altogether different.

In his evening prayer, Francis said God's mercy was made real on this spot 100 years ago when a "Lady robed in white" appeared to the young children and confided her secrets of love and peace to them.

"As a bishop robed in white, I call to mind all those who ... desire to live in God and tell the mysteries of Christ in order to obtain peace," Francis said.

___

Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

Pope Francis offers the 'Golden Rose', recognition at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Jose Sena Goulad/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis presides a vigil prayer and candle blessing at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Nuno Andre Ferreira/Pool Photo via AP)

Faithful hold candles at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis has attended the traditional Blessing of the Candles at the Fatima shrine, a world-famous pilgrimage site in Portugal which the pontiff is visiting for less than 24 hours. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Francis presides a vigil prayer and candle blessing at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Nuno Andre Ferreira/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis kisses a child as he arrives at Monte Real Air Base in Leiria, Portugal, Friday, May 12, 2017. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday in Fatima two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Paulo Cunha/Pool Photo via AP)

Two nuns attend a mass at the Chapel of the Apparitions in the Fatima Sanctuary Thursday, May 11 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A pilgrim carrying white roses wears a T-shirt with an image of Our Lady of Fatima and Pope Francis at the Fatima Sanctuary, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Pope Francis arrives at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Nuno Veiga/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis is greeted by three children dressed as shepherds as he arrives at Monte Real Air Base in Leiria, Portugal, Friday, May 12, 2017. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday in Fatima two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Paulo Cunha/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis prays at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (Jose Sena Goulao/Pool Photo via AP)

A nun holds a candle at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis has attended the traditional Blessing of the Candles at the Fatima shrine, a world-famous pilgrimage site in Portugal which the pontiff is visiting for less than 24 hours. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Faithful hold candles at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)
WASHINGTON (AP) - In ways both overt and subtle, the acting director of the FBI undermined White House explanations for the firing of former Director James Comey.

Andrew McCabe, testifying before Congress Tuesday in place of his fired boss, contradicted the administration's characterizations of an investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the presidential election.

McCabe told lawmakers a counterintelligence investigation that a White House spokeswoman dismissed a day earlier as "one of the smallest things" on the FBI's plate was actually "highly significant." And though the White House has asserted Comey lost the backing of rank-and-file agents, McCabe flatly said, "that is not accurate."

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe sits with a folder marked "Secret" in front of him while testifying on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 11, 2017, before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on major threats facing the U.S. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

"I can tell you that the majority, the vast majority of FBI employees, enjoyed a deep and positive connection to Director Comey," said McCabe, who called it the "greatest privilege and honor in my professional life to work with him." Comey, he added, "enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

McCabe's testimony undercut a White House narrative that has evolved in the two days since Comey was ousted. The White House initially said President Donald Trump made the call at the recommendation of the top two officials at the Justice Department, but in an NBC News interview that aired Thursday, the president said he would have fired Comey even without the recommendation.

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, McCabe repeatedly - and at times bluntly - rejected some of the claims the White House has used to explain the firing and to describe the investigation.

In one of the more dramatic exchanges, he was asked whether the investigation was - as White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders maintained Wednesday - a small investigation in relation to the other work the FBI is conducting.

"Sir," he told Sen. Angus King of Maine, "we consider it to be a highly significant investigation."

He also said he would refrain from discussing the investigation with the White House, pledged to report to the committee any efforts to interfere in it and said the dismissal of the director would do nothing to impede the probe.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he declared.

Trump maintains Comey told him that he was not under investigation, but McCabe suggested under questioning that was highly improbable.

He refused to comment on what Comey did or didn't say, but when asked whether it would be common for an FBI director to notify someone they were not the target of an investigation, said "I'm not aware of that being a standard practice."

McCabe's willingness to cut against White House talking points may reflect an understanding that he may not serve for long as acting director. The Justice Department seemed to be laying the groundwork for that possibility even before his congressional appearance, with leaders there interviewing four other candidates for the interim job Wednesday.

McCabe, a career FBI agent who ran the Washington field office and oversaw national security investigations out of headquarters, was a target of Trump's on the campaign trail following reports that his wife had accepted campaign donations from a close ally of Hillary Clinton during a failed bid for the state Senate.

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MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (AP) - After campaigning on repealing the health care law and voting to gut it, an Iowa Republican is cautioning constituents fearful of losing coverage that the House GOP replacement is just "a tweak of Obamacare" that would have gone further had he had his way.

Two-term Rep. Rod Blum, who represents a swing district that includes Dubuque and Cedar Rapids, is among the conservative House Republicans who campaigned angrily against then-President Barack Obama's signature health law for two years, only to accept a bill they say did not undo enough of the 2010 law. And in so doing, Blum and others are understating the impact of the bill that, if enacted, could drop millions from their insurance by next year.

"We did not repeal," Blum told about 200 people at a community college in central Iowa on Thursday. "Only about 10 percent of Obamacare was changed with this bill that we passed in the House, only 10 percent."

Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, speaks during a town hall meeting, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Marshalltown, Iowa. Blum is reassuring Iowans fearful of losing health coverage that the House GOP bill is just a "tweak of Obamacare," after campaigning on repealing the health care law _ and voting last week to gut it. The second-term Blum says "only about 10 percent of Obamacare was changed with this bill," referring to the measure narrowly passed in the GOP-controlled House last week. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

A week ago, the House narrowly approved a bill that would gut major portions of the Obama law by overhauling government subsidies for private health insurance and winding down Obama's expansion of the Medicaid health care program for the poor, while also rolling back funding for traditional Medicaid and cutting taxes on upper-income people that Democrats used to finance the Affordable Care Act's coverage expansion.

Congressional analysts estimate that 24 million more Americans would be uninsured by 2026, including 14 million by next year.

"I don't see how he can say this won't affect people on Medicaid," Mike Poe, a 62-year-old Marshalltown farmer, said after the Blum event. "People like me, not yet eligible for Medicare, are the ones who are vulnerable."

President Donald Trump and dozens of House Republicans celebrated the bill's passage in a Rose Garden ceremony. Back home in their congressional districts, many of those Republicans have had to explain their vote.

Blum, a businessman, former high school basketball coach and onetime real estate developer, won his seat in the Republican wave of 2014 on the promise of repeal.

"Quite frankly, this bill is a tweak of Obamacare," Blum said Tuesday in Dubuque before the first of four meetings across his district, which spans central Iowa to the Mississippi River.

Blum insisted people would not lose Medicaid coverage, if they don't let their coverage lapse. "If you're on Medicaid, nothing's going to change," he told the audience in Marshalltown, which broke into a chorus of loud objections.

However, some people typically enter and leave Medicaid coverage due to temporary employment, making the change in the bill potentially harmful to people who change jobs frequently.

Blum was among the roughly 30 conservative House Freedom Caucus members responsible for scuttling the earlier version of the bill. He said he grudgingly supported the revised measure because it allows states to opt not to abide by the Obama law's requirement on essential benefits and coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. Even that was a hard choice to make, he said.

"You can't get what you want all the time," Blum told the group in Marshalltown. "So in the end I compromised."

It was an unusual statement from a member of the typically unyielding Freedom Caucus. Blum, on the first day of his term, was one of 25 Republicans in January 2015 who refused to back the more pragmatic John Boehner for House speaker. Months later, in September, the Freedom Caucus hastened Boehner's departure.

While the Senate works on its version of the health care bill, the House measure continues to face strong public opposition, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

The poll found that only 21 percent of voters approve of the House-passed bill, while 56 percent disapprove.

With the exception of Republicans, majorities of people disapproved across demographic groups. That included 81 percent of Democrats and 60 percent of independents, 54 percent of men and 58 percent of women.

"There's a moral obligation to protect people's health. I just think he sees it only in terms of money," 65-year-old retired teacher Anne Michael of nearby Tama said after the Blum event.

Blum also cast doubt on a consensus bill emerging from the Senate, where Republicans hold a narrower majority than in the House, and have tea party conservatives Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, along with moderate Susan Collins.

"Getting something done this year for Iowans I think is going to be a heavy lift," Blum later told The Associated Press.

A fellow Iowa Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley, said Senate Republicans were not "going to go through the public relations problems that the House of representatives had for a month."

Speaking during a taping for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program, Grassley was referring to House GOP leadership's call for a vote in April when there weren't enough votes to pass the original bill, and members complained they hadn't had time to review it.

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Follow Thomas Beaumont on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/TomBeaumont

Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, speaks during a town hall meeting, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Marshalltown, Iowa. Blum is reassuring Iowans fearful of losing health coverage that the House GOP bill is just a "tweak of Obamacare," after campaigning on repealing the health care law _ and voting last week to gut it. The second-term Blum says "only about 10 percent of Obamacare was changed with this bill," referring to the measure narrowly passed in the GOP-controlled House last week. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Marcia Kupka, of Clutier, Iowa, asks Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, a question during a town hall meeting, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Marshalltown, Iowa. Blum is reassuring Iowans fearful of losing health coverage that the House GOP bill is just a "tweak of Obamacare," after campaigning on repealing the health care law _ and voting last week to gut it. The second-term Blum says "only about 10 percent of Obamacare was changed with this bill," referring to the measure narrowly passed in the GOP-controlled House last week. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Rep. Rod Blum, R-Iowa, center, speaks during a town hall meeting, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Marshalltown, Iowa. Blum is reassuring Iowans fearful of losing health coverage that the House GOP bill is just a "tweak of Obamacare," after campaigning on repealing the health care law _ and voting last week to gut it. The second-term Blum says "only about 10 percent of Obamacare was changed with this bill," referring to the measure narrowly passed in the GOP-controlled House last week. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Marine in full combat gear moves through dark, frigid water, gripping an M-16 rifle, before plunging under barbed wire and through a submerged drainage pipe. It is only when the fighter shouts an order over the sound of explosions does the historical nature of the TV advertisement become clear: the Marine is a woman.

For a Corps that has struggled with the perception that it is the least welcoming of women among the military services, the new ad is part of a campaign to appeal to a new generation of Marines. It is also a bid for more female recruits for "the few, the proud," particularly athletes capable of meeting the tough physical standards required.

"The water was 27 degrees and coated with a layer of thick ice," said Marine Capt. Erin Demchko, describing the great difficulty of the gauntlet, all while being surrounded by camera crews. "Giving the film production staff what they wanted, while maintaining my bearing as a Marine officer and trying not to look cold, was a challenge."

FILE - In this April 5, 2017, file photo, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington. The Marine Corps is struggling with the perception that it is the least welcoming of women among the military services. But it is seeking more recruits for the "few, the proud," particularly athletes who could meet the tough physical standards required. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Demchko, a deputy commander at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, Japan, is part of the Marine Corps' expanding effort to recruit women. The smallest military service has the lowest percentage of women, and wants at least 10 percent representation by 2019. While female Marines occasionally have appeared in ads and been featured in online videos, this is the first time a woman is the focus of a national television commercial for the Corps.

The service is battling an image problem, especially after a recent scandal involving nude photos shared online. Many were accompanied by crude, derogatory or even violent comments about women. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service is investigating the matter and several Marines have been disciplined.

But the perception of the Marines as a male domain goes back further. They were the only service to seek an exception when the Pentagon moved to allow women to serve in all combat jobs. That request was denied in late 2015 by then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

Since then, 74 women have moved into combat jobs previously open only to men. In total, women make up about 8.3 percent of the 183,000-strong Corps.

The Marines want more. And the ad aims to increase awareness among women about new opportunities, said Maj. Gen. Paul Kennedy, head of Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

The message is for potential recruits to "not think that we are only looking for a few good men, that we're actually using all of our recurring efforts to find good women as well," he said.

The Marines don't expect instant results. Low unemployment rates, competition among employers, and the need to increase the overall size of the Marine Corps make recruiting women a challenge.

"We're facing headwinds now that we didn't have even a year ago," said Kennedy, who huddled with counterparts from the other military services last week. "There's a train wreck coming for some folks. They're not getting tail winds that they used to have - the high unemployment, the money that was associated with enlistment bonuses."

Still, he said he expects female recruits to comprise almost a tenth of the Marines entering the service this year.

The ad is being released Friday. It shows a young school girl interceding when students bully another girl. It then follows her as she plays rugby and trains and serves as a Marine. Titled "Battle Up," the commercial seeks to show the Marines' fighting spirit and how it carries from youth through combat missions.

For Demchko, filming the commercial was unlike anything she'd ever done.

Small scenes were shot again and again, with multiple cameras following her every move. At a school for Marine Corps officer candidates in Virginia, the crew chopped through a thick layer of ice to film the scenes in the water. They followed her as she pulled herself over logs and barbed wire in the obstacle course at Quantico, known as the Quigley. And she and others shot live rounds during a convoy scene.

While the maneuvers and combat actions were familiar, "everything felt different with all the staff and cameras," said Demchko, who grew up in Hackensack, N.J., and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy. She already has served a tour in Afghanistan.

While the ad "is targeted at young women who are seeking a way to challenge themselves," she said it could entice anyone who wants to fight for their country.

"I am extremely humbled to be a part of such a big production," she said. "Professional actors can keep their jobs, though. I'd rather be a Marine."
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed hope on Friday that his upcoming visit to Washington will constitute a new "milestone" for the troubled relations between the two NATO allies.

Speaking to reporters before leaving for trips to China and the United States, Erdogan said he was confident that talks with U.S. President Donald Trump next week would lead to a "breaking point" in the U.S. decision to arm Syrian Kurdish rebels.

Turkey has been angered by a U.S. decision to provide arms to Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkey considers terrorists and a serious threat to its security. Turkey says the group is an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK.

Ties have also been strained by Turkey's demand for the extradition of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Turkey blames for last year's failed coup attempt.

The U.S. considers the Syrian Kurdish fighters, known as the YPG, as the most effective group in the fight against Islamic State militants in their Syrian stronghold of Raqqa.

Turkey has called for the decision on arming the YPG to be reversed, criticizing what it calls a strategy of using one terrorist group to fight another. Turkey is also concerned about the possibility that the weapons could end up in the hands of the PKK.

"I see this trip as a new milestone in Turkey-U.S. relations," Erdogan said. "I want to consider all the information we have received so far (on U.S. arming Syrian Kurds) as hearsay... And I think this trip will be a breaking point on this issue."

Hurriyet newspaper said Friday Erdogan would provide Trump with a list of weapons seized from the PKK that were allegedly given to the YPG by the United States or other NATO allies in the past for the organization to fight the IS group.
THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) - A Greek court has convicted two Swedish nationals of belonging to the Islamic State group, and sentenced them to 15 years imprisonment.

The men's lawyer says they were also found guilty of arms possession - a pair of hunting knives - with the intent of supplying a terrorist group.

The men, aged 30 and 21, were convicted Friday in the northeastern town of Alexandroupoli. They were arrested in February last year at a bus stop near the Turkish border.

Police said the pair had bought tickets for a village near a border crossing.

Their lawyer, Angelos Nestoridis, told The Associated Press that his clients, who were born in Bosnia and Yemen, denied wrongdoing and said they were in Greece for tourism.
BERLIN (AP) - Austria's foreign minister, an influential figure in the country's junior governing party, is calling for early elections after the vice chancellor announced his resignation.

Sebastian Kurz is considered the center-right Austrian People's Party's likeliest new leader after Reinhold Mitterlehner quit Wednesday, citing persistent party infighting. The conservatives are junior partners in an often bad-tempered "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats of Chancellor Christian Kern.

Kurz, 30, didn't specify Friday whether he will take the party leadership. A decision on an interim leader is expected Sunday.

Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz speaks at a news conference at the foreign ministry in Vienna, Austria, Friday, May 12, 2017. Kurz, an influential figure in the country's junior governing People's party, OEVP, is calling for early elections in Austria after Vice Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner resigned earlier this week. (AP Photo/Ronald Zak)

Kern has said he hopes to keep the governing coalition alive until an election due late next year.

But Kurz said: "I personally think early elections would be the right way to make change possible in Austria."
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korean officials said Friday they've found many fragments of suspected human bones from a ferry that was retrieved three years after it sank, killing more than 300 people.

Most of the 304 dead were high school students on a field trip and nine bodies haven't been recovered yet. The ferry Sewol was raised and transported to a port in March. Workers haves since found four pieces of suspected human bones, three from the recovered ferry and one from its sinking site.

The Oceans Ministry said its search team found "many" more such bone fragments Friday from the ferry's stern parts but didn't say how many. The area is close to a room where many female students stayed at the time of the April 2014 sinking, according to local media reports.

Workers search for bone fragments from the wreckage of the salvaged ferry Sewol at a port in Mokpo, South Korea, Friday, May 12, 2017. South Korean officials said Friday they've found many fragments of suspected human bones from the ferry that was retrieved three years after it sank, killing more than 300 people. (Lee Sang-hack/Yonhap via AP)

Ministry officials said about one month of DNA tests is needed to confirm whether the remains belong to any of the missing victims. The bone pieces recovered earlier this month were under similar DNA tests, the officials said, requesting anonymity because of department rules.

The government in March said it had found bones believed to be from missing victims before correcting they belong to animals.

The Sewol's sinking, one of South Korea's deadliest maritime disasters, triggered a rare outpouring of national grief and outrage over a botched rescue works.

The public anger later contributed to the ouster of President Park Geun-hye, who was removed from office and arrested in March on corruption charges. Her liberal rival Moon Jae-in, who has taken the initiative in criticizing Park over the sinking, took office earlier this week after winning the election.
Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about today:

1. SHIFTING WHITE HOUSE EXPLANATIONS FOR FBI DIRECTOR'S FIRING

President Donald Trump is now declaring he had planned to fire that "showboat" all along.

A pilgrim sits in the front row at the Fatima Sanctuary in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday, May 11, 2017, more than 24 hours ahead of the arrival of Pope Francis. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

2. A HIGH-STAKES INTERNATIONAL GATHERING FOR CHINA'S PRESIDENT

The "Belt and Road Forum" opening Sunday will showcase Xi Jingping's signature foreign policy effort envisioning a future world order in which all roads lead to Beijing.

3. JORDAN SENDING THOUSANDS OF REFUGEES BACK TO SYRIA

Entire Syrian families have been sent back for the first time, including large numbers of children, which a rights groups says is a violation of international norms.

4. POPE FRANCIS VISITS FATIMA TO HONOR CHILDREN WHO CHANGED CHURCH

Pilgrims from around the world are flocking to the shrine town in Portugal to honor two illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

5. WORLD'S TOP FINANCE OFFICIALS TO HEAR ABOUT TRUMP'S TAX AND TRADE PLANS

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is due at the gathering in Italy to explain the president's push for what he considers more balanced trading relationships.

6. ARGENTINA'S FEDERAL POLICE WELCOMES BACK TRANSGENDER OFFICER

Analia Pasantino served in Argentina's federal police as a man for 20 years before being forced to resign when she came out as a transgender woman.

7. NEW TV AD AIMS TO RECRUIT MORE WOMEN FOR US MARINES

The smallest military service has the lowest percentage of women, and wants at least 10 percent representation by 2019.

8. WHO IS FACING PRISON TIME FOR OBSTRUCING AN FBI INVESTIGATION

Former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca is relying on a lifetime of public service, letters of support and his diagnosis of Alzheimer's in a bid for probation at his sentencing hearing.

9. WHY NEW ZEALAND WANTS TO GET RID OF ALL OF ITS RATS

The plan is part of an ambitious - some say impossible - goal of ridding the entire nation of non-native predators to save its birds.

10. NEW YORK COUPLE TO WED AFTER LOSING ALMOST 600 POUNDS TOGETHER

Ronnie Brower was on a four-year fitness journey when he met Andrea Masella at his gym where she was similarly trying to lose a lot of weight.

Analia Pasantino smiles during an interview with The Associated Press in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, May 11, 2017. Pasantino says she was forced to take a leave of absence at the police department when she came out as a transgender woman in 2008. Every three months, she would present a psychiatric evaluation hoping to rejoin the force. But a committee reviewing her case kept on extending her leave. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korea has ordered Hyundai and Kia to recall 240,000 vehicles for five types of defects initially raised by a whistleblower.

The Transport Ministry said Friday it also asked prosecutors to investigate if South Korea's largest auto group intentionally covered up the defects that could compromise safety.

Twelve models including Avante, i30, Genesis and Sonata sedans and Tucson, Santa Fe and Sportage sport utility vehicles are subject to the recall. It is the government's first compulsory recall for any local carmaker.

Hyundai Motor Co. and its smaller affiliate Kia Motors Corp. are part of the world's fifth-largest automaker Hyundai Motor Group.

The move is a blow to Hyundai and Kia, which are reeling from a recall last month of 1.4 million vehicles in the U.S., Canada and South Korea.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Police say Taliban fighters have launched an attack on a market in northern Afghanistan, killing four security forces.

Ekramuddin Sarih, provincial police chief for Baghlan province, says Taliban fighters launched the attack early Friday morning in the Burka district. He says the fighting has been heavy and is ongoing.

Sarih says 15 Taliban fighters were also killed.

Sarih says government forces were able to push back the Taliban fighters from the central bazaar and government reinforcements were on their way to help police.

There was no immediate comment from the Taliban.
ISTANBUL (AP) - Turkish police on Friday detained the editor of a leading opposition newspaper for questioning over an article he wrote.

Oguz Guven, the editor of pro-secular Cumhuriyet newspaper's online edition, tweeted Friday "I'm being detained."

The state-run Anadolu news agency said Guven was taken under custody for a news article on the death of prosecutor Mustafa Alper in a traffic accident Wednesday. Details about the article in question have not been released.

Alper, chief prosecutor of Denizli province in southwest Turkey, filed the first indictment against the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen following last summer's coup attempt.

The Turkish government blames Gulen for orchestrating the coup, which he denies.

Twelve journalists and senior staff members of Cumhuriyet are also behind bars pending trial on "aiding terrorist organizations."

Meanwhile, authorities also detained a writer and television commentator days after he claimed on a TV channel that one of the adopted daughters of Turkey's revered founding leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was in fact his mistress - sparking outrage in the country.

Prosecutors issued a warrant for Suleyman Yesilyurt' arrest accusing him of insulting Ataturk this week. Accompanied by lawyers, he arrived at the office of a prosecutor in Istanbul and a court later ordered him detained on charges of "insulting Ataturk's memory" and of "inciting hatred and enmity."

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim and several celebrities were among those who condemned Yesilyurt's comments.
BERLIN (AP) - The German Defense Ministry says two assault rifles and a pistol have been stolen from inside an armored vehicle at a military facility in northern Germany, in another embarrassment for the armed forces.

The news comes as the military investigates an alleged far-right plot by two soldiers to assassinate prominent political figures. Prosecutors say one of those soldiers managed to pass himself off as a Syrian refugee and they were planning to blame the attack on migrants.

In raids connected with that investigation, authorities found multiple rounds of munitions believed to have been stolen from the military. However, Defense Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff said Friday there is no indication yet that the February theft in Munster, in northern Germany, was in any way linked to the plot.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Latest on President Donald Trump and the FBI (all times local):

8:35 p.m.

Justice Department officials on Saturday will interview four candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey.

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 11, 2017, while testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

They include acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Two people familiar with the process say others set to be interviewed include Alice Fisher, who formerly served as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

Michael J. Garcia, an associate judge on the New York's highest court, is also on the list.

So is Sen. John Cornyn, a former Texas attorney general.

The four will interview with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The people familiar with the process say others may also interview. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

- By Sadie Gurman

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7:30 p.m.

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr says he expects James Comey will soon speak privately with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the former FBI Director declined an invitation to testify before the panel next week.

Burr is the Republican chairman of the committee investigating Russia's meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election and whether there was any collusion with members of President Donald Trump's campaign.

One of Burr's aides said Friday that Comey declined an invitation to appear before the committee Tuesday. The committee had hoped to hear from Comey in closed session following his abrupt firing this week by Trump.

Burr said in Raleigh, North Carolina, that the committee's staff would likely "work something out in the not-too-distant future" for a meeting with Comey.

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7:15 p.m.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says three associates of President Donald Trump have responded to requests for information and documents related to the panel's investigation into Russia's election meddling.

North Carolina Republican Richard Burr notes, however, that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn hasn't yet responded to a subpoena demanding documents. It was just issued Wednesday.

Burr said Friday in Raleigh, North Carolina, that "we're trying to assess the value of the responses" from the other three.

The Associated Press has reported that letters seeking information about contacts between people affiliated with the Trump campaign and Russian officials or representatives have been sent to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, longtime Trump associate Roger Stone and former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page.

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4:50 p.m.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says he doesn't think the FBI investigation into alleged links between President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia is the reason Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

North Carolina Republican Sen. Richard Burr adds that, "To date, there has been no evidence of collusion."

But Burr also says Trump's tweet Friday about Comey was "inappropriate."

On Friday morning, Trump wrote on Twitter that Comey "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Burr spoke to reporters Friday before touring a bus plant in his home state.

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4:35 p.m.

Former FBI Director James Comey has declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week.

That's according to an aide to the committee's chairman, GOP Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina.

The committee had hoped to hear from Comey in closed session following his abrupt firing this week by President Donald Trump.

The Intelligence Committee is in the midst of a broad investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and ties with Trump's campaign.

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4:30 p.m.

President Donald Trump says he won't discuss whether his White House conversations are tape-recorded.

He tweeted earlier Friday that ousted FBI director James Comey should hope "there are no 'tapes' of our conversations."

Trump says in an interview with Fox News that he can't - and won't - talk about any possible tape recordings.

He says: "All I want is for Comey to be honest. And I hope he will be."

Trump's remarks follow earlier statements that Comey gave him three separate assurances - at a dinner and in two phone calls - that he was not under investigation.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to discuss the potential tape recordings.

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3:45 p.m.

President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.

White House officials say the list includes Texas Sen. John Cornyn, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.

Others include former Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher, former federal judge Michael Luttig, former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

That's according to two White House officials briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans.

Trump is considering naming an interim director from a group of current FBI officials, along with nominating a permanent replacement.

- By Jill Colvin and Ken Thomas

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3:05 p.m.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will brief the full Senate next week amid controversy over President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's office confirmed Friday that Rosenstein had accepted the invitation extended by Schumer and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The time and date are not yet finalized.

Rosenstein wrote a memo critical of Comey that the White House initially cited as justification for Trump's firing of Comey. But the story subsequently changed as Trump said he would have fired Comey anyway.

Senators have many questions for Rosenstein, and his responses may help determine how the still-developing controversy plays out.

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3 p.m.

Top House Democrats are calling on President Donald Trump to release all his communications with former FBI Director James Comey.

In a letter to White House Counsel Don McGahn, they request "all documents, memoranda, analyses, emails and other communications" with Comey.

The letter was sent by Reps. John Conyers Jr. of the House Judiciary Committee, and Elijah Cummings of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Trump tweeted Friday that Comey "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Conyers and Cummings also wrote that Congress should immediately seek the testimony of Comey "to better understand the circumstances surrounding these events, although no House committee chairman has yet agreed to any such hearings."

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2:05 p.m.

The White House is denying that President Donald Trump asked then-FBI director James Comey for his loyalty during a White House dinner in January.

Press secretary Sean Spicer is refuting that account during his daily briefing. He says the president wants "loyalty to this country and to the rule of law."

An associate of the fired FBI director confirmed Friday that Trump asked for Comey's loyalty during the private dinner. The associate with knowledge of the conversation confirmed an account of the conversation in The New York Times is accurate.

During the dinner, Comey refused to pledge his loyalty and instead offered the president his honesty.

The FBI is looking into Russia's influence in the 2016 presidential election and any potential ties to Trump's campaign.

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2 p.m.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is declining to say whether President Donald Trump taped conversations he had with fired FBI Director James Comey.

Spicer says: "The president has nothing further to add on that."

Spicer was asked multiple times during the daily White House briefing about the president's Friday morning tweet stating that, "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Spicer said the tweet was "not a threat" warning Comey not to talk to the press.

But Spicer insists that, "the tweet speaks for itself."

Trump suddenly fired Comey on Tuesday. The FBI is investigating Russia's meddling in the 2016 election and possible collusion with Trump's campaign and aides.

Trump has dismissed those allegations as a "hoax."

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1:45 p.m.

The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee is asking the president to hand over to Congress any recordings that might exist of his conversations with former FBI Director James Comey.

California Rep. Adam Schiff says if recordings exist, it would be because President Donald Trump made them.

Trump fired Comey Tuesday and on Friday threated Comey in a tweet that he'd "better hope there are no 'tapes' of our conversations."

As he defended his decision to fire Comey, Trump revealed the two men dined alone at one point and during the dinner Trump asked whether he was under investigation.

The FBI has been investigating Russia's election meddling and possible ties between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

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1:40 p.m.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's chairman and top Democrat are demanding to be updated on the status of the FBI's probe of Russian influence in the 2016 election and any possible ties to the Trump campaign.

Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Dianne Feinstein of California say their committee oversees the FBI and should get the same information the Senate Intelligence Committee receives. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein met Thursday with the leaders of the intelligence panel.

Grassley and Feinstein sent a letter Friday to Rosenstein and acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe. They say former FBI Director James Comey had briefed them in mid-March on the bureau's Russia probe. They now want the whole Judiciary Committee to be brought up-to-date.

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1:10 p.m.

Former national intelligence director James Clapper says ousted FBI Director Jim Comey was uneasy about having dinner with President Donald Trump on Jan. 27.

Clapper tells MSNBC on Friday that he spoke briefly with Comey about the dinner before they attended a retirement celebration for Clapper.

He says Comey mentioned that he had been invited to have dinner with Trump and was "uneasy with it." Clapper says Comey was concerned about the "optics" of that because it might appear that he or the FBI was not working independently of the White House.

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12:20 p.m.

The nation's former top spy is pushing back against President Donald Trump's tweeting.

The president tweeted Friday that when former national intelligence director James Clapper "says there is no collusion" between the Trump campaign and the Russians, then when does the "witch hunt" end?

Trump was referring to Clapper saying that there was no evidence of collusion included in the intelligence agencies' report on Russian interference in the election. That assessment was released before Trump took office.

Clapper, who retired in January, says he didn't know about the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Clapper says he does not know if there's evidence of collusion or not because he was not privy to that FBI probe, nor should he have been.

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12:35 p.m.

An associate of fired FBI director James Comey confirms President Donald Trump asked for Comey's loyalty during a White House dinner in January.

The associate with knowledge of the conversation says Friday that an account of the conversation in the New York Times is accurate.

During the dinner, Comey refused to pledge his loyalty and instead offered the president his honesty.

The White House has disputed this account. Trump told NBC News Thursday that Comey assured Trump twice during a dinner and again by telephone that he isn't under investigation.

The FBI is probing Russia's influence in the 2016 presidential election and any possible ties to Trump's campaign.

Comey hasn't commented publicly since he was dismissed. The associate spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose details of a private conversation.

- Contributed by Jake Pearson

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11:10 a.m.

The No. 2 Senate Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, says President Donald Trump is "dangerous."

Durbin says Trump is "dangerous because he may be obstructing justice" in the investigation of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election and possible ties to Trump's own campaign.

And, Durbin says, "his credibility has been destroyed."

Durbin says: "When you're the leader of the free world you need to be credible" - in your own country and around the world. The Illinois Democrat says Trump has lost credibility, given his firing of FBI Director James Comey and a constantly shifting explanation for why it happened.

Durbin made his comments Friday on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC.

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10:10 a.m.

President Donald Trump's lawyers say a review of his last 10 years of tax returns do not reflect "any income of any type from Russian sources," with some exceptions.

The lawyers did not release copies of Trump's tax returns so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions.

The letter says there is no equity investment by Russians in entities controlled by Trump or debt owed by Trump to Russian lenders. It does reflect income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

The White House says Trump asked his lawyers for a letter following a request from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who heads one of the congressional committees investigating Russia's interference in last year's election.

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8:45 a.m.

President Donald Trump is warning that former FBI Director James Comey "better hope" that there are no "tapes" of their conversations.

Trump tweeted Friday, "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, later saying that "he wasn't doing a good job."

In the termination letter to Comey, Trump thanked him for telling the president "three times" that he personally is not under investigation for collusion with Russia during his 2016 campaign.

Trump said in an NBC News interview Thursday that Comey told him once over dinner and twice by telephone that he isn't under investigation.

Comey has not commented since he was fired.

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8:30 a.m.

President Donald Trump is reiterating his view that reports about collusion with the Russian government by members of his 2016 campaign are "fabricated."

The president tweeted early Friday that "Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians & Trump campaign was fabricated by Dems as an excuse for losing the election."

He added, "The Fake Media is working overtime today!"

In an interview with NBC News Thursday, Trump said he asked FBI Director James Comey point-blank if he was under investigation and was assured three times he was not.

Trump sent Comey a letter Tuesday firing him. In it, he thanked Comey for the three assurances.

Trump showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in an active FBI probe.

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8:20 a.m.

President Donald Trump says his busy schedule makes it "not possible" for his staff to speak at the podium with "perfect accuracy."

Trump on Friday defended the struggle by his administration to come up with a consistent timeline and rationale for the abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey this week.

Trump tweeted, "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"

He added, "Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"

The president's advisers said Trump fired Comey in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, then said Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless.

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3:45 a.m.

President Donald Trump is contradicting previous White House explanations for the firing of James Comey as FBI director.

Trump says in an interview with NBC News that he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of the recommendations of top Justice Department officials.

Initially the White House cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision.

On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House's assertion that Comey had been fired in part because Comey had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file.

In the NBC interview, Trump derided Comey as a "showboat" and "grandstander" and said Comey had left the FBI in "virtual turmoil."

President Donald Trump talks to reporters during a meeting with Dr. Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor under President Richard Nixon, in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, May 10, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 11, 2017, while testifying before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on major threats facing the U.S. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Former FBI Director James Comey walks at his home in McLean, Va., Wednesday, May 10, 2017. President Donald Trump fired Comey on Tuesday, 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/Sait Serkan Gurbuz)
SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) - An Iowa woman has been imprisoned for duping dozens of people into buying nonexistent tickets to the Super Bowl and other big events.

The Sioux City Journal reports (http://bit.ly/2ps2UTV ) that Ranae Van Roekel, of Boyden, was sentenced Thursday in U.S. District Court in Sioux City to 51 months. The judge also ordered her to pay nearly $468,000 in restitution. Van Roekel had pleaded guilty to mail and income tax fraud.

Prosecutors say Van Roekel was a self-employed ticket broker who ran the business Get 'em Now Tickets from January 2008 to June 2012. Victims say she falsely claimed to have personal relationships and ties to events that gave her an inside track for deeply discounted tickets, hotel rooms and VIP passes.

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Information from: Sioux City Journal, http://www.siouxcityjournal.com
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) - A Verizon worker in Massachusetts who was locked in an unventilated underground vault nearly four years ago has settled his lawsuit against the man convicted in the case.

The Telegram & Gazette (http://bit.ly/2q8LtXC ) reports that a lawyer for the plaintiffs says terms of the settlement reached May 10 are confidential.

Michael Hathaway and his wife sued Howard Cook Jr. in November 2014.

Authorities say the 74-year-old Cook sealed Hathaway in the vault in Westborough in August 2013 by pulling up the ladder, locking the hatch and placing large rocks on top. The ventilation system automatically shuts off when the door is closed. Hathaway called police on his cellphone.

Cook was reportedly angry that Hathaway had parked on his grass.

Cook pleaded guilty to kidnapping last year and was sentenced to a year of probation.

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Information from: Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Mass.), http://www.telegram.com
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) - The Palestinian Health Ministry says a Palestinian has been killed by Israeli fire during clashes at a West Bank rally in support of hunger-striking prisoners.

It says a 20-year-old was shot Friday near Ramallah. The military says soldiers opened fire after dozens of Palestinians hurled rocks at them.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel are on an open-ended strike, now in its 26th day, saying they seek to improve their prison conditions.

Israel says strike leader Marwan Barghouti, a potential successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, is using it to raise his profile.

Israel has released footage it says shows Barghouti breaking his fast. Palestinians say it is a fabrication.

Barghouti is serving five life terms after being convicted by Israel of directing two shooting attacks and a bombing.
BARI, Italy (AP) - The Latest on the meeting of finance officials from the Group of Seven nations (all times local):

5:30 p.m.

Canada says Finance Minister Bill Morneau rejected U.S. duties on softwood lumber as "baseless" in a meeting with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, center, smiles as he takes a walk in the Puglian town of Bari, southern Italy, which is hosting a G7 of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, Thursday, May 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

A Canadian ministry statement says Morneau and Mnuchin engaged in a "productive discussion" and that Canada committed to working out a durable solution of the issue. It said Morneau emphasized that trade between the two countries was balanced and supported middle-class jobs.

Morneau and Mnuchin met on the sidelines of the Group of Seven finance ministers' meeting in Bari, Italy. Trade is not formally on the agenda but that doesn't prevent ministers from taking the matter up in one-on-one meetings.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he would consider retaliating against U.S. coal imports. Mnuchin tweeted only that he enjoyed his discussion with Morneau.

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3:25 p.m.

The head of an international organization representing many advanced economies says that a new, multinational tax treaty will be of "massive consequence" in preventing big companies from avoiding taxes.

Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, says the multilateral tax treaty negotiated among 100 countries will make it harder for multinationals to shift profits to low-tax countries. Many of those countries are expected to sign the final deal at a ceremony in in Paris on June 7.

The aim of the treaty is "helping countries collect what we believe is a fair share," Gurria told The Associated Press on Friday on the sidelines of a meeting of finance officials from the Group of Seven advanced economies.

Making sure big companies pay tax means less burden on "locally based middle class citizens" and small businesses which can't move their income among countries.

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7:00 a.m.

Top finance officials from the Group of 7 advanced economies have gathered to hear about U.S. President Donald Trump's economic policies. They'll also look for ways to promote growth and combat terrorist financing and tax avoidance by major corporations.

The meeting in the southern Italian seaside town of Bari is to kick off Friday with a discussion of how to make economic growth benefit more people.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is due to explain Trump's plans to cut business taxes and regulation, and explain Trump's push for what he considers more balanced trading relationships.

The meeting prepares the way for a summit of leaders in Taormina, Italy, on May 26-27. The G-7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, the U.S., and U.K., with the EU also attending the meeting.

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This story has been corrected to show that the summit in Taormina will be held May 26-27, not May 25-26.

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde arrives for the opening session of the G7 of Finance ministers in Bari, southern Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Federal reserve Chair Janet Yellen arrives for the opening session of the G7 of Finance ministers in Bari, southern Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Japan's Finance Minister Taro Aso arrives for a G7 of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, in Bari, southern Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Bank of England governor Mark Carney arrives for the opening session of the G7 of Finance ministers in Bari, southern Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin arrives for the opening session of the G7 of Finance ministers in Bari, southern Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Canadian Finance Minister William Morneau speaks during the opening event of a G7 of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, in Bari, southern Italy, Thursday, May 11, 2017. (Ciro Fusco/ANSA via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Even as fierce political battles rage in Washington over school choice, most Americans know little about charter schools or private school voucher programs. Still, more Americans feel positively than negatively about expanding those programs, according to a new poll released Friday.

"I wonder what the fuss is about," said Beverly Brown, 61, a retired grocery store worker in central Alabama. Brown, who doesn't have children, says American schools need reform, but she is not familiar with specific school options and policies. "Educational standards have to be improved overall."

All told, 58 percent of respondents say they know little or nothing at all about charter schools and 66 percent report the same about private school voucher programs, according to the poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump talks to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. Even as fierce political battles rage in Washington over school choice, most Americans know little about charter schools or private school voucher programs. Still, more Americans feel positively than negatively about expanding those programs, according to a new poll released Friday, May 12, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

Charters are schools funded by taxpayer money, but they operate independently of school districts and thus have more freedom in setting their curriculum and hiring staff. Vouchers are publically funded scholarships given to low-income families to help cover tuition in private schools, including religious ones.

Using taxpayer money to aid struggling public schools or diverting it to fund more charter schools or make private schools available to more families has been hotly debated since Donald Trump was elected president. During the campaign, Trump promised to fund a $20 billion school choice program. He picked a long-time charter and private school advocate, Betsy DeVos, as his education secretary. Last week the president welcomed a group of students who were voucher recipients to the White House and asked Congress to work with him to make school options available nationwide.

Those efforts face fierce resistance from Democrats and teachers unions, who say that school choice drains funds from public schools while leaving charter and private schools unaccountable in terms of academic standards and civil rights protections.

Patrick McGuin, an education professor at Drew University, said he was surprised by the fact that most Americans had little knowledge about school choice options.

"That's pretty remarkable given the growth and high-profile politics around charters," McGuin said. "As much as policymakers are talking the heck about this, the debate really hasn't permeated the general public's discussion yet."

Charter schools currently operate in 42 states and the District of Columbia. D.C. has only the federally funded voucher program, while 30 states have voucher or similar education choice programs.

Even though they are unfamiliar to many, Americans have largely positive reactions to charter schools and vouchers. While 55 percent of respondents say parents in their communities had enough options with regard to schools, about 4 in 10 feel that that the country in general would benefit from more choice. Forty-seven percent say they favor opening more public charter schools, 23 percent are opposed, and 30 percent feel neutral about it. Meanwhile, 43 percent of respondents support giving low-income families tuition vouchers for private schools, 35 percent are opposed and 21 percent don't have a strong opinion either way.

Republicans are slightly more likely than Democrats to favor opening more charter schools, 53 percent to 42 percent, but there is little partisan variation for voucher programs. At the same time, opposition to vouchers is highest among those who have heard the most about them.

John Rekers, a 46-year-old mortgage broker in California, has five kids and all of them are attending charter schools. He believes charter schools are more innovative and progressive. "They are not so oriented to sitting at desks and doing stuff," he said.

"The charter school is much better oriented in teaching children," Rekers said. "They have higher standards."

Marc Culbreath, a janitor in Philadelphia, spent several years renting a house in the suburbs so that his children could go to quality public schools, but when the family moved into the city, they were appalled by neighborhood schools.

"Kids in the city - their public schools are terrible," Culbreath said. Culbreath sent his son, now in 10th grade, to a charter school and he is now on track to go to college. "They treat the kids in the city same as they treat the kids in the suburbs," he said of the charter school.

But Madolyn Stall, 22, a college student in Kansas, doesn't support voucher programs. "If you cannot afford to go to a private school, then public school is fine," she said. "I don't really want to pay more of my tax money to send people to private school when they can go to public school."

About 7 in 10 respondents feel that both charter schools and private schools funded with taxpayer money should meet the same education standards as public schools. School choice critics point to the fact that most private school don't need state accreditation to operate and that some private schools teach creationism in science classes.

Still, Americans are more likely to say that private schools, both locally and nationally, provide a good quality of education than say the same of public schools.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,036 adults was conducted April 20-23 using a sample drawn from NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using address-based sampling methods, and later interviewed online or by phone.

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Online:

AP-NORC: http://www.apnorc.org/
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Growing up in the foster care system, Brian Morgantini attended a dozen different schools. He ultimately graduated, although his reading ability was on a ninth-grade level.

"I was always the new kid who had just lost another family and was trying to cope with that," said Morgantini, who was taken away from his drug-addicted parents by the state of Pennsylvania when he was 4. "Trying to learn, even trying to make friends while you're not sure if you're moving again in six months or a year - that was just something I had a hard time with."

Nationwide, only about half of all foster children graduate from high school by age 18, well below the U.S. rate of 83 percent. They miss about five weeks of school a year on average, and just 4 percent graduate from a four-year college by the age of 26, according to the advocacy group Children's Rights.

In this May 10, 2017 photo, Brian Morgantini poses for a photo in Seaside, Ore. Morgantini attended numerous different schools while growing up in Pennsylvania's foster care system, making it hard for him to keep up with his schoolmates in and out of the classroom. Now 22, Morgantini works as an advocate for foster children in Oregon, and is part of a new national campaign by the advocacy group Children's Rights to bring attention to the problem of educating foster children. (Don Frank/Children's Rights via AP)

To make it easier for foster children to complete their education, a new federal law calls for better collaboration between educational systems and child welfare agencies. The foster care provisions in the Every Student Succeeds Act took effect in December and require states to ensure that foster students remain in their school of origin or, if that is not in their best interest, immediately enroll them in another school, cutting through the red tape of finding records and proof of residency.

Children's Rights launched a campaign this month, dubbed #FosterMyEducation, to push compliance with the new federal requirements and encourage states to do more to help foster children succeed.

"School mobility leads to less time in school, absences," said Sandy Santana, the executive director of Children's Rights. "Foster children fall behind and school mobility is correlated very strongly with kids dropping out of school."

The group is sharing the stories of some 30 former foster kids in public service announcements and social media posts to bring attention to the problem.

Morgantini, 22, of Seaside, Oregon, now works as an advocate for foster children. As a child, he said, moving from school to school made it difficult to keep up with his peers.

"I was having a lot of trauma in my life and a lot of teachers just attributed my behavior to being a bad kid," he said. "Nobody taught them the skills to prepare them for a youth like me."

Advocates, who are also pushing for more trauma training for teachers, say several states have been ahead of the curve.

New Jersey, for one, presumes that children should stay in their school of origin and shares the cost of transportation between the state's education system and the child welfare agency, which work together. Minnesota has a system to reimburse foster parents for any costs associated with transporting children to school.

Connecticut's Department of Children and Families has its own school district, which works with school systems around the state to monitor the education of children in its care and assist in things such as transportation, record transfers and registrations. The state also has a "virtual learning academy" that provides online tutoring, SAT preparation and make-up classes to foster children. The state will pay up to the cost of attending a four-year state university for foster children.

Ro Okane, 28, attended 10 different schools while in foster care in New York. He said it was impossible to keep up when one school would be "on page 15 of the book and the next would be on page 41."

Okane eventually earned a GED diploma, while in prison for robbery. He is out now and working as a recording engineer. He said he met many others in prison who had been foster kids - something he said could have been prevented if public officials and educators had taken more interest in their future.

"There needs to be stability for these kids," Okane said.
BANGOR, Maine (AP) - Several former opponents of the Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument are now asking President Donald Trump and Maine Gov. Paul LePage to let it be.

The group gathered Friday in Bangor to defend the 87,500-acre property managed by the National Park Service and to push back on a federal review ordered by Trump. They contend the federally managed land is already serving as a catalyst for economic growth.

The group included several opponents who now see the land in a positive light. Jon Ellis, who owns markets in two Maine communities, said the land designation has "brought new energy to our towns."

Gail Fanjoy of the Katahdin Area Chamber of Commerce said the federal review is casting a cloud of uncertainty and potentially "chasing away investments."
ISLAMABAD (AP) - Pakistan's army says Pakistan and Afghanistan military officials have agreed to increase the number of bilateral interactions through various command and staff channels to foster an environment of mutual respect, trust and cooperation.

A military statement released Friday says the two sides met to discuss measures for improving military to military coordination and cooperation.

The Chaman incident, which left casualties on both sides of the border last week, border control and management,and measures to curb cross-border fire violations were also discussed in the meeting attended by military officials..
FATIMA, Portugal (AP) -

Pope Francis has arrived in Portugal where he is to visit the shrine at Fatima, one of the world's most popular Catholic pilgrimage sites.

Two Portuguese Air Force F-16 fighter jets escorted the pope's plane as it came in to land at the Monte Real Portuguese Air Force base, which lies amid pine forests a short distance from the rural town of Fatima. A guard of honor has lined up on the runway next to the plane.

Pope Francis waves as he embarks his flight to Monte Real, Portugal, from Fiumicino's International airport, near Rome, Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. The pope is traveling to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima where on Saturday he will canonize two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)

The pontiff's first official event Friday is a brief private meeting with Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa at the air base.

Fatima is famous for being the place where three Portuguese shepherd children said the Virgin Mary appeared to them in 1917. The pope will make two of them saints on Saturday.

A group of pilgrims from Lisbon embrace after their arrival at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A police officer checks the backpack of a pilgrim entering the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will travel to Portugal where he will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

A police officer holds a body scanner as he patrols a street leading to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will travel to Portugal where he will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

A white dove is tied to a wooden crucifix carried by pilgrims arriving at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Two nuns attend a mass at the Chapel of the Apparitions in the Fatima Sanctuary Thursday, May 11 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Pope Francis shakes the hand of a Carabinieri paramilitary officer as he embarks his flight to Monte Real, Portugal, from Fiumicino's International airport Leonardo Da Vinci, near Rome, Friday, May 12, 2017. The pope is traveling to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima where on Saturday he will canonize two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pope Francis waves as he embarks his flight to Monte Real, Portugal, from Rome's International airport of Leonardo Da Vinci, in Fiumicino, Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. The pope is traveling to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima where on Saturday he will canonize two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

Pilgrims walk by a 26 metre tall giant glow-in-the-dark rosary, titled "Suspension" by the Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, above the entrance of Basilica of the Holy Trinity, in Fatima, Portugal, Thursday, May 11, 2017. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Pilgrims, one of them holding a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, arrive at the Fatima Sanctuary Thursday, May 11 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A pilgrim sits in the front row at the Fatima Sanctuary in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday, May 11, 2017, more than 24 hours ahead of the arrival of Pope Francis. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Pilgrims equipped for the rain sit in the front row at the Fatima Sanctuary in Fatima, Portugal, on Thursday, May 11, 2017, more than 24 hours ahead of the arrival of Pope Francis. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

A pilgrim holds a staff decorated with images of Our Lady of Fatima as another walks on his knees paying penance at the Fatima Sanctuary, in Fatima, Portugal, Thursday, May 11, 2017. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A group of pilgrims from Tanzania walk at the Fatima Sanctuary, in Fatima, Portugal, Thursday, May 11, 2017. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A pilgrim carrying white roses wears a T-shirt with an image of Our Lady of Fatima and Pope Francis at the Fatima Sanctuary, Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis is visiting the Fatima shrine on May 12 and 13 to canonize two Portuguese shepherd children whose "visions" of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago turned the sleepy farming town of Fatima into a major Catholic pilgrimage site. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

A wax figure burns with candles thrown in a furnace by pilgrims and worshippers as a sign of their devotion to the Holy Lady of Fatima, at the Sanctuary in Fatima, Portugal, Friday, May 12, 2017. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Young pilgrims from Madrid wait for the arrival of Pope Francis at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Pilgrims walk on their knees on their way to the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A nun with a South African flag protects herself from the sun at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal as she waits for the arrival of Pope Francis. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A group of pilgrims hold their hands as they wait for Pope Francis' arrival at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A group of pilgrims pray as they walk on their knees towards the Chapel of the Apparitions at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12, 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

Pilgrims and worshippers show their devotion to the Holy Lady of Fatima by throwing candles in a furnace, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima, Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)

A group of pilgrims enters the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Friday, May 12 2017, in Fatima, Portugal. Pope Francis will canonize on Saturday two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church. (AP Photo/Paulo Duarte)
MADRID (AP) - The government says several Spanish companies have been targeted in ransomware cyberattacks.

The Industry Ministry said Friday the attack affected the Windows operating system of employees' computers, blocking files and demanding a ransom to free up the system.

It said the attacks had not affected the companies' services or data protection of their clients.

Microsoft issued a security update on March 14 about vulnerabilities in the Windows system.

There were no details on which companies were targeted but telecommunications company Telefonica said it had detected a cybersecurity incident that had affected computers of some employees. It said it had activated the necessary measures but gave no further details.

There were no details available on the origin of the attack.

Spain's intelligence agency recommended companies should carry out Windows updates.
DARDANELLE, Ark. (AP) - The Latest on deaths of a sheriff's deputy and two others in rural Arkansas (all times local):

10:15 a.m.

Arkansas' governor has ordered the state flag to be flown at half-staff in memory of a sheriff's deputy who was killed along with two other people.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson issued a proclamation Friday ordering the honor for Yell County Sheriff's deputy Lt. Kevin Mainhart.

State Police say 42-year-old James Arthur Bowden was jailed Thursday afternoon for the killings after a five-hour standoff at a home in Dardanelle, a rural community about 65 miles (106 kilometers) west of Little Rock.

Police say Mainhart was shot after he pulled over a vehicle believed to be linked to a disturbance call at a home where the two female victims were found dead in the yard.

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6:45 a.m.

Authorities say an Arkansas man faces three counts of capital murder in the killing of three people, including a sheriff's deputy who was fatally shot during a traffic stop.

State Police said Friday that 42-year-old James Arthur Bowden was jailed Thursday afternoon after a five-hour standoff at a home in Dardanelle, a rural community about 65 miles (105 kilometers) west of Little Rock.

Police initially gave a different age and middle name for Bowden, who is accused in the death of Yell County Sheriff's Lt. Kevin Mainhart and two female victims whose names haven't been released.

State police say Mainhart was shot after he pulled over a vehicle believed to be linked to a disturbance call at a home where the two female victims were found dead in the yard.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A former North Carolina legislator who helped lead the fight against the state's law limiting LGBT protections is going to Washington.

Equality North Carolina announced Friday that Chris Sgro ('SKROH) is stepping down as executive director to become communications director for the national advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.

Sgro was a leading voice opposing House Bill 2, the law that governed public restroom use by transgender people and limited other LGBT protections. It was replaced this year with a law that advocacy groups say still exposes people to discrimination.

Sgro was appointed last year to fill the seat of a deceased North Carolina House member, but didn't seek a full term.
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) - Brazilian President Michel Temer celebrated his first year in office on Friday with a discreet ceremony, expressing optimism about the weak economy and vowing to push a series of reforms through Congress despite job approval ratings verging on nil.

During a meeting with allies, Temer praised lawmakers for passing austerity bills that he says will put Brazil in the path of growth. He promised to deliver labor, pension and tax overhauls before his term ends in December 2018.

Brazil's economy has struggled in recent years and is expected to grow by less than 1 percent this year. Unemployment figures released last week showed joblessness up to 14 million from 13 million.

Brazil's President Michel Temer speaks during a ceremony celebrating his first year in office, at the Planalto presidential palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, May 12, 2017. Temer celebrated with a discreet ceremony, expressing optimism about the economy despite a surge in unemployment. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

A recent Datafolha institute poll found 71 percent of Brazilians reject Temer's reforms and only 9 percent approve his job performance a year into office - four points below Rousseff's standing at the time she was suspended.

If Temer ran for re-election in 2018, 2 percent said they would vote for him, according to the poll, which interviewed 2,781 people April 26-27 and had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.

The former vice president took over one year ago after congress impeached and later convicted President Dilma Rousseff for breaking fiscal laws.

"We are on the right track, with a long recession coming to an end," the embattled president said. "We started preparing the country for a new phase of development."

Temer said Brazil's high unemployment figures are "a heritage of uncontrolled spending" and promised to deliver "a restructured and happy" country in his second anniversary in office.

Brazil's President Michel Temer attends a ceremony marking his first year in office, at the Planalto presidential palace, in Brasilia, Brazil, Friday, May 12, 2017. Temer celebrated with a discreet ceremony, expressing optimism about the economy despite a surge in unemployment. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawyers for President Donald Trump said Friday that a review of his last 10 years of tax returns did not reflect "any income of any type from Russian sources," but the letter included exceptions related to previously cited income generated from a beauty pageant and sale of a Florida estate.

The letter represented the latest attempt by the president to tamp down concerns about any Russian ties amid an ongoing investigation of his campaign's associates and Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.

The attorneys did not release copies of Trump's tax returns, so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions. Their review also notably takes into account only Trump's returns from the past 10 years, leaving open questions about whether there were financial dealings with Russia in earlier years.

FILE - In this May 4, 2017 file photo, President Donald Trump speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. Trump, in an apparent warning to his fired FBI director, said Friday, May 12, 2017, that James Comey had better hope there are no "tapes" of their conversations. Trump's tweet came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasn't under FBI investigation. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)

The lawyers offered no supporting documents to back up the claims made in the letter.

Trump has refused to release his income tax records, despite pressure from Democrats, breaking with a practice set by his predecessors. The president has said he would release his returns when the Internal Revenue Service completes an audit. The tax returns, the attorneys say, largely reflect income and interest paid by the web of corporate entities that made up The Trump Organization prior to Trump taking office.

In a letter released to the AP and dated March 8, the attorneys said Trump's last 10 years of tax returns don't reflect equity investments by Russians in entities controlled by Trump or debt owed by Trump to Russian lenders. Under U.S. tax law, not all financial ties would be required to be reported on a personal tax return.

The letter said that the returns do reflect some income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

The White House said Trump asked his lawyers for the letter to outline information on any ties Trump might have to Russia. The letter was then provided to Sen. Lindsey Graham. Graham leads one of the congressional committees investigating Russia's interference in last year's election.

The letter came amid an active FBI probe into the Trump 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia's election meddling and days after Trump's stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey.

"I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever," Trump said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. "I don't have property in Russia. A lot of people thought I owned office buildings in Moscow. I don't have property in Russia."

The president said he "had dealings over the years," including the Miss Universe pageant and the sale of a home to "a very wealthy Russian." ''I had it in Moscow long time ago, but other than that I have nothing to do with Russia," he said, referring to the pageant.

Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee, said "Trump's attempt to hide his Russia connections is misleading and pathetic."

The unnamed Russian billionaire cited by the Trump company's lawyers is Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose financial empire springs from his companies' production of potash, often used for fertilizer.

Trump had purchased the 62,000 square-foot estate for $41.35 million in 2004 and he sold the mansion to Rybolovlev in July 2008 for $95 million. The deal was widely reported at the time, including by The Associated Press.

When Trump was pressed during a campaign conference last year about his ties to Russia, he said: "You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach," adding that "I sold it to a Russian for $100 million."

The letter, written by attorneys Sheri Dillon and William Nelson from the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, simultaneously leaves open the possibility of other Russian ties while attempting to dismiss them.

The letter doesn't vouch for any of Trump's personal federal tax returns that predate the past decade. The attorneys also write that over the last 10 years, it is likely that the Trump Organization sold or rented condos, or other products, that "could have produced income attributable to Russian sources."

"With respect to this last exception, the amounts are immaterial," the attorney wrote.

Dillon worked with the Trump Organization to develop plans for the organization's future and addressed reporters in January at a New York news conference before Trump's inauguration. Her law firm was honored by Chambers & Partners' 2016 Chambers Europe guide as Russia Law Firm of the Year.

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Associated Press writers Chad Day and Stephen Braun contributed to this report.

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View the letter: http://apne.ws/2r1WBX6
ALBEROBELLO, Italy (AP) - After three top-10 finishes in the opening week, Caleb Ewan of Australia finally won a stage in the Giro d'Italia on Friday.

The Australian rider with the Orica Scott team claimed Stage 7 in a sprint finish for his first career Giro victory while Bob Jungels held on to the pink jersey.

Ewan finished half a wheel ahead of Colombian rider Fernando Gaviria to erase memories of his second-place result in Stage 1 and ninth- and eighth-place finishes in Stages 2 and 3, respectively.

Australia's Caleb Ewan, center, sprints ahead of Sam Bennett, left, and Fernando Gaviria, to win the 7th stage of the 100th Giro d'Italia, Tour of Italy cycling race, from Castrovillari to Alberobello, Italy, Friday, May 12, 2017. (Alessandro Di Meo/ANSA via AP)

"It feels so good after the first few disappointments I've had. I don't think I've felt so good before," Ewan said.

Ewan also won a stage in the Spanish Vuelta two years ago.

Sam Bennett of Ireland crossed third while sprinting standout Andre Greipel was fourth after the mainly flat but lengthy 224-kilometer (139-mile) route from Castrovillari to Alberobello, which featured an undulating final 40 kilometers.

Jungels, of Luxembourg, maintained his six-second advantage over Geraint Thomas of Wales. Fellow Briton Adam Yates remained four seconds further back, with most of the overall favorites.

"It's not a disappointment for our team to not win with Fernando Gaviria today, because he did a great sprint and the team helped him," Jungels said. "It's no shame to lose against Caleb Ewan who is very fast."

Located in the southern region of Puglia, Alberobello is known for its trullo dwellings made from white limestone with conical roofs, and is designated a World Heritage site.

The stage began in the Calabria region and three riders - Simone Ponzi, Dmitriy Kozontchuk and Giuseppe Fonzi - broke away from the pack almost immediately. Ponzi quickly had a mechanical problem, leaving Kozontchuk and Fonzi at the front.

The duo swiftly built a lead of four minutes and stayed in front for five hours before being caught by the main pack with 18 kilometers to go.

There was little other excitement until Slovenian rider Kristijan Koren attacked on an uphill section shortly after the five-kilometer mark.

Team Sky quickly chased down Koren to protect Thomas' position, then it was whittled down to only a handful of riders contesting the final sprint.

Ewan had the best line coming around the final corner and narrowly held off the charging Gaviria, while Greipel appeared to lack some energy.

"I had to do some work with three kilometers to go so I was a little tired for the sprint," Ewan said. "But Luka (Mezgec) did a great lead out, so it was perfect."

Jungels should face more of a test over the next two stages.

Stage 8 on Saturday is a 189-kilometer (117-mile) leg from Molfetta to Peschici that features a short, steep uphill finish. Then a serious climb to Blockhaus comes a day later.

"This year all the finals are tricky," Jungels said of the concluding kilometers. "All day long it was pretty relaxed and then the last 10 kilometers were crazy."

The 100th Giro ends in Milan on May 28.
WASHINGTON (AP) - There's the federal criminal investigation into Wells Fargo's opening of unauthorized client accounts.

And the probe of Fox News's business practices.

And the investigation of Baxter International, Pfizer and ICU Medical over their medical pricing and dealings with competitors.

FILE- In this May 3, 2017, file photo, FBI Director James Comey listens on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Donald Trump's firing of Comey added a new layer of uncertainty to the agency's corporate criminal investigations. What might an FBI without a permanent leader, even for a short time, mean for ongoing cases of corporate misconduct? (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

For investors and others with an interest in such companies, President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey has added a new layer of uncertainty to the government's corporate criminal investigations. What might an FBI without a permanent leader, even for a short time, mean for ongoing cases of corporate misconduct?

Comey's dismissal comes just as questions have already been raised about whether corporate crime will be a priority for the Justice Department in the Trump administration.

The FBI partners with the network of federal prosecutors around the country who report to the Justice Department leadership in Washington. Agents collect evidence and interview witnesses, laying the groundwork that the U.S. attorneys use to prosecute cases. With complicated corporate cases, that process can take many months.

Doubts have already been swirling around whether local U.S. attorneys' offices will involve themselves aggressively in such cases. Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in March asked 46 U.S. attorneys around the country who served under President Barack Obama to step down. That total represents half of all U.S. prosecutors. None of their proposed replacements has yet been confirmed by the Senate.

While it's customary for a new president to replace nearly all the U.S. attorneys, it often occurs more incrementally.

In the aftermath of Comey's firing, some experts foresee delays in the FBI's pursuit of corporate cases.

"What we're seeing right now is chaos," says Jimmy Gurule, a law professor at Notre Dame who was an assistant U.S. attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration. "I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these investigations disrupted. Who benefits? It's only the defendants."

The FBI director sets the agenda and orders priorities for the agency, thereby determining how its roughly $9 billion annual budget is spent.

"It's critically important that there be a full-time director named to lead the FBI," says Robert Mintz, a former assistant U.S. attorney now in private law practice at McCarter & English in New Jersey.

Here are some of the business cases recently under FBI and Justice Department investigation that could be affected. Several were begun under the Obama administration. Federal criminal probes don't necessarily result in charges. None of the companies or their executives has been charged.

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Wells Fargo & Co.

Investigators have been looking into the actions taken by bank employees to open up to 2 million unauthorized accounts in a drive to meet punishing sales quotas. The scandal erupted in September at the third-largest U.S. bank, triggering the resignation of its CEO, emotional hearings in Congress and over $300 million in civil fines from regulators and in class-action settlements.

The bank's board of directors conducted its own investigation. It found that the problems dated back at least 15 years but that executives avoided dealing with them until they burst into public view. The board pinned blame on former executives, notably ousted CEO John Stumpf and Carrie Tolstedt, who ran the retail division where the misconduct occurred. Tolstedt has denied responsibility and said the board is trying to shift blame. Federal bank regulators have found the board was aware of some problems with sales practices as early as 2005.

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Medical Companies

An investigation has focused on whether big producers of injectable medicines like saline solution conspired to create supply shortages and drive up prices. Intravenous saline, which hospitals use for hydrating patients, has marked price increases of 200 to 300 percent in the past three years. Health care company Baxter International, drug maker Pfizer and ICU Medical have disclosed that they are under investigation and have been ordered to provide documents on their pricing practices for intravenous solutions and their dealings with competitors.

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Theranos Inc.

The blood-testing company's claims about its technology are under scrutiny by federal investigators. Last month, the company settled a lawsuit by Arizona's attorney general over alleged faulty technology and clinical lab practices. It agreed to pay $4.6 million to reimburse affected Arizona residents but has denied wrongdoing.

Theranos, a privately held company based in Silicon Valley, closed its labs in several states and its wellness centers inside Arizona Walgreens stores in October and laid off much of its workforce. The move came after federal regulators barred company founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes from owning or running a medical lab for two years.

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21st Century Fox:

A federal grand jury investigation has looked into how the company led by Rupert Murdoch and his sons handled the scandal involving accusations of sexual harassment by female employees at its Fox News TV network. An issue is whether Fox sought to hide from shareholders the payments it made in settlements with alleged victims.

Fox News has confirmed that it's been in communications with the U.S. criminal authorities and said it will continue to cooperate with all inquiries.

When Fox News chairman Roger Ailes was forced out last July, the company said it was determined to change the culture to make it a more respectful workplace.
BERLIN (AP) - A man armed with fake weapons held a taxi driver hostage for about six hours Friday at a bank in a small Austrian town.

The standoff with police in Erpfendorf, an Alpine town near the German border in Tyrol province, started late Friday morning. Police said the explosives he claimed to have with him turned out to be fake as was his gun, the Austria Press Agency reported.

The bank's employees were able to leave the building unharmed.

Austrian police have closed the street to Erpfendorf in the Austrian province of Tyrol, Friday May 12, 2017, after a person has been taken hostage during a bank robbery. Further details weren't immediately available. (AP Photo/Kerstin Joensson)

After several hours of negotiations, police say the hostage-taker agreed in the late afternoon to free his victim. The kidnapper, a 28-year-old local man, then left the bank himself and was arrested.

The victim was a 32-year-old taxi driver who had brought the hostage-taker to the bank. Police official Edelbert Kohler said the two men knew each other.

The hostage-taker claimed to have put an explosive belt on his victim, but that turned out to be a belt filled with stones. It wasn't immediately clear what his motive was.
DENVER (AP) - The Latest on a Mexican immigrant leaving a Denver church after being granted a deportation delay (all times local):

2:25 p.m.

A woman who lived in Denver churches for three months to avoid immigration authorities is one of 30 immigrants who are being allowed to stay in the United States for two years as they fight to get legal status.

Surrounded by her children, Jeanette Vizguerra, front center, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in a church to avoid immigration authorities for the past three months, steps out of the church early Friday, May 12, 2017, in downtown Denver. Supporters say that Vizguerra has won a two-year deportation delay. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Jeanette Vizguerra (vihz-GEHR'-uh) left the First Baptist Church near the state Capitol on Friday after winning the deportation delay following the intervention of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.

Bennet filed bills to help her and another Colorado Mexican immigrant, Arturo Hernandez, remain in the United States under a process that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently announced would be scaled back.

ICE says 30 immigrants who had bills filed before May 5 will be grandfathered and given two-year deportation delays.

From now on, the relatively small number of immigrants who get bills filed on their behalf will only be eligible for stays up to six months with the possibility of one 90-day extension.

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11:50 a.m.

A Mexican immigrant who lived in a Denver church for three months to avoid immigration authorities is vowing to fight for another woman still in hiding.

Jeanette Vizguerra (vihz-GEHR'-uh) left the First Baptist Church near the state Capitol on Friday surrounded by her children and supporters after they say she won a two-year deportation delay.

Speaking to the crowd while holding her daughter's hand, she said she is happy to be with her family for Mother's Day but sad that Ingrid Encalada Latorre is still living in a Quaker meeting house in Denver because she's facing removal from the United States.

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado introduced a bill in March to help Vizguerra stay and says she should never have been targeted for removal.

Immigration officials haven't issued any updates on her case.

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9:15 a.m.

A Mexican immigrant who lived in a Denver church for three months to avoid immigration authorities left Friday morning after supporters say she won a two-year deportation delay.

Jeanette Vizguerra (vihz-GEHR'-uh) was joined by her children and supporters as she walked outside.

She says she is happy that she will get to spend Mother's Day with her children and grandchildren. But she says she is still sad because another woman is still living in another Denver church to avoid deportation. She vowed to help fight for her case now.

Activists say another man who once took refuge in a Denver church and was arrested by immigration agents last month, Arturo Hernandez, has also been granted a two-year deportation delay after first winning a 30-day delay.

Sen. Michael Bennet introduced bills to help both Vizguerra and Hernandez. He says they shouldn't have been targeted for removal.

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7:40 a.m.

A Mexican immigrant who has been living in a Denver church to avoid deportation plans to leave Friday after supporters say officials granted her a two-year delay.

Jeanette Vizguerra (vihz-GEHR'-uh) moved into a church basement three months ago after skipping her scheduled check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Her attorney, Hans Meyer says the mother of four has been trying to get a visa granted to crime victims which would allow her to stay in the country.

Jeanette Vizguerra, front, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in a church to avoid immigration authorities for the past three months, is surrounded by her family and supporters as she heads to speak after leaving the church early Friday, May 12, 2017, in downtown Denver. Supporters say that Vizguerra has won a two-year deportation delay. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

Jeanette Vizguerra, a Mexican immigrant who has lived in a church to avoid immigration authorities for the past three months, smiles after leaving the church early Friday, May 12, 2017, in downtown Denver. Supporters say that Vizguerra has won a two-year deportation delay. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
LAND O'LAKES, Fla. (AP) - A "body farm" where researchers can study how corpses decompose will open next week in the Tampa Bay area with the burial of four donated bodies.

Officials broke ground Friday on the Adam Kennedy Forensics Field, a five-acre patch of land north of Tampa. It's the seventh such facility in the nation and the first in Florida's subtropical environment. The oldest and most famous body farm in the U.S. is at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

Officials in Florida hope their farm, to be used at first by detectives and forensic anthropologists at the nearby University of South Florida, will draw scientists from other countries and grow to be the largest in the world.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco speaks with Abigail Kennedy and her daughter, Hannah in Land O'Lakes, Fla., Friday, May 12, 2017. The Adam Kennedy Forensics Field, also known as a body farm, was dedicated and named after Abigail Kennedy's husband, who died in a car crash in January. Dead bodies will be placed in a five-acre patch of land near the Pasco County jail so that researchers can study different facets of decomposition, including how the environment, weather and other factors affect the body. (AP Photo/Tamara Lush)

"Our forensic crime scene investigators will get premium training as a result of this," said former Pasco County Sheriff Bob White. "This will enhance our training tenfold."

Dr. Erin Kimmerle, a forensic anthropologist at USF, predicts that by studying how bodies react in Florida's sweltering humidity, more evidence will be preserved and breakthroughs made in real-life-cases. The research also would benefit other countries with subtropical and tropical climates, she said.

Bodies are obtained by donation. The first four will be buried next week, and in January, Kimmerle and other researchers will hold a course for detectives on exhumation. Later, other bodies will be exposed to water and buried during different seasons to determine how different factors affect decomposition and evidence. After the bodies are studied, the skeletons will be cleaned and preserved and made available for future research.

"The legacy of the donations, it is forever," said Kimmerle.

About 30 people have already filled out paperwork to donate their bodies to the farm when they die. Kimmerle said if someone who wants to donate dies within 200 miles of the facility, researchers will pick up the body at no cost. Anyone beyond that range would have to pay for their body to be transported to the facility.

While the center is currently a field and grove of trees near the Pasco County Jail, officials eventually hope to build an indoor-outdoor training center that would include classrooms, a morgue, a training facility and evidence storage.

The Florida Legislature tucked $4.3 million for the facility in this year's state budget, but it's unclear whether Gov. Rick Scott will approve the budget. Kimmerle and Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco said they'll also raise outside money for the project.

For now, researchers are concentrating on the science. The field is named after one of the people who will be buried next week.

Adam Kennedy, a 46-year-old principal at a local elementary school, died in a car wreck in January. His widow Abigail Kennedy said her husband always wanted to donate his body to science. On Friday, she spoke to a crowd at the forensics field.

"There's so much bittersweet in all of this. Adam wanted to continue teaching after his death," she said. "It would be my last gift to education, he'd say. This couldn't be more perfect."

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Follow Tamara Lush on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tamaralush
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) - Top state lawmakers are trying to work out a system allowing Iowa residents to start buying medical marijuana oils and pills in Minnesota, a novel arrangement that could raise issues with the federal government.

It's not a done deal yet. The legislation creating a tightly controlled medical marijuana program is still awaiting Gov. Terry Branstad's signature. And Minnesota lawmakers would need to approve too.

But the bill specifically allows Iowa residents to buy their supply from Minnesota and directs state regulators to contract with two licensed manufacturers in Minnesota.

It's comes from discussions between Iowa House Linda Upmeyer and Minnesota House Speaker Kurt Daudt. Upmeyer says it could provide Iowans immediate access while the state sets up its program.
KIRKERSVILLE, Ohio (AP) - The Latest on the fatal shootings of an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees (all times local):

10:30 p.m.

Authorities have identified the gunman and two nursing home employees who died during a shooting at an Ohio nursing home.

Emergency personnel arrive to the scene of a shooting outside Pine Kirk nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio on Friday, May 12, 2017. Authorities say Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department, and two nursing home employees have been killed by a gunman who was later found dead inside the care facility. (Doral Chenoweth III/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)

Officials say 43-year-old Thomas Hartless killed Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario and two female employees at Pine Kirk Care Center Friday. Hartless was found dead with the employees, Marlina Medrano, a nurse, and 48-year-old Cindy Krantz, a nurse's aide.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine says Medrano, whose age wasn't available, had a relationship with Hartless. She lived on the same street as he did in the nearby village of Utica.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says Disario was killed while responding to reports of a man with a gun.

Kirkersville is about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus. Utica is about 26 miles (41 kilometers) north of Kirkersville.

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6:15 p.m.

Authorities say they've searched two cars belonging to the man suspected of fatally shooting an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said Friday that two search warrants were issued for the cars.

One of the vehicles searched was at a nearby gas station in Kirkersville in central Ohio.

Media reports also say police searched a house in the nearby village of Utica on Friday.

Police say a gunman killed Kirkersville Chief Steven Eric Disario and two female employees at Pine Kirk Care Center. The gunman was found dead with the employees.

Kirkersville is about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus. Utica is about 26 miles (41 kilometers) north of Kirkersville.

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4:30 p.m.

A sheriff says a gunman who killed an Ohio police chief and two female nursing home employees took two random people as hostages shortly before the shootings.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says the gunman took two passers-by hostage behind the nursing home in a wooded area Friday.

Thorp says it was in that area that Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario was killed while responding to reports of a man with a gun.

Thorp says investigators don't know if Disario fired his weapon. The sheriff says the hostages escaped when a shot was fired at the chief.

Thorp says Pine Kirk Care Center is a secure facility and investigators don't know how the gunman got in.

Kirkersville is about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.

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4 p.m.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sihk) has ordered flags flown at half-staff following the fatal shooting of a village police chief in an attack that also killed two nursing home employees.

Authorities say the gunman also was found dead Friday.

Kasich ordered flags flown at half-staff at the Statehouse and at all public buildings and grounds throughout Licking County in central Ohio, where the shootings happened.

The order lasts through sunset Tuesday.

The Republican governor says the gesture honors those who lost their lives in "senseless acts of violence" in Kirkersville, a village about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.

Investigators identified the slain Kirkersville police chief as 36-year-old Steven Eric Disario, who had been on the job for only three weeks and had six children, with a seventh on the way.

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3:30 p.m.

A woman who works about a block from where an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees were killed says she heard gunshots followed by screaming and then sirens.

Kathy Rogers owns a thrift shop on the same block as Pine Kirk Care Center.

Rogers said Friday she could hear a man yelling and screaming but wasn't sure what he was saying.

Rogers says she went across the street to a neighbor's home and hunkered down with a group of about nine adults and eight children.

Authorities say a gunman shot Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario, who'd only been on the job for about three weeks.

Investigators say two nursing home employees were also shot and killed. The gunman was later found dead.

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12:45 p.m.

Authorities say a gunman has fatally shot the police chief of an Ohio village and two nursing home employees.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says the suspected gunman was also found dead Friday.

Thorp identified the slain police chief as 36-year-old Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department. Thorp says Disario had only been on the job for three weeks.

Thorp says Disario was found outside the Pine Kirk Care Center. Thorp says two employees of the center and the suspected gunman were found dead inside the nursing home.

Thorp says Disario was a father of six children with a seventh child on the way.

CORRECTS BYLINE TO DORAL CHENOWETH III- A person is removed from the Pine Kirk nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio on Friday, May 12, 2017. Authorities say Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department, and two nursing home employees have been killed by a gunman who was later found dead inside the care facility. (Doral Chenoweth III/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)

Law enforcement officials, including Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp, center, walk toward a news conference regarding a shooting at a nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio on Friday, May 12, 2017. Authorities say Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department, and two nursing home employees have been killed by a gunman who was later found dead inside the care facility. (Tom Dodge/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)

Law enforcement officials gather outside the scene of a shooting outside the Pine Kirk nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio on Friday, May 12, 2017. Authorities say Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department, and two nursing home employees have been killed by a gunman who was later found dead inside the care facility. (Tom Dodge/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)

Emergency personnel arrive to the scene of a shooting outside Pine Kirk nursing home in Kirkersville, Ohio on Friday, May 12, 2017. Authorities say Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department, and two nursing home employees have been killed by a gunman who was later found dead inside the care facility. (Tom Dodge/The Columbus Dispatch via AP)
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is celebrating a student model rocket named after ... him.

Trump asked the students from Victory Christian Center School in Charlotte, North Carolina, why the rocket was named for him.

A student replied, "Simply because it conquers all." Trump then said "they're never going to put that on television," referring to the reporters who were brought into the Oval Office for the visit.

President Donald Trump speaks during a visit by the Victory Christian Center School from Charlotte, N.C. rocket team, Friday, May 12, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The students are among 100 teams scheduled to compete Saturday in the finals of the Team America Rocketry Challenge, a national competition being held in Northern Virginia.

Trump said the rocket "better work well." He also told the students to come back to the White House for a celebration if they win.

President Donald Trump meets with members of the Victory Christian Center School from Charlotte, N.C. rocket team, Friday, May 12, 2017, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - A man who held officers at bay for 35 hours in a standoff in New Jersey was charged Friday with killing a bystander.

Tyleeb Reese, 35, was charged with murder in the shooting death of Robert Powell Jr., 56, in Trenton, authorities said.

Agents with the U.S. Marshals Service were at Reese's home to serve a warrant for failing to appear in court for a Megan's Law offense, officials said. Reese had prior convictions for criminal sexual contact with a minor and failing to register as a sex offender.

A police officer operates a robot during a standoff with a man in a home in Trenton, N.J., on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Police said they are trying to negotiate with the suspect after a fatal gunfire exchange with police. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Powell was caught in the crossfire after Reese began shooting at law enforcement Wednesday morning, said Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri. He said Powell was killed by a shot to the back and was also hit in an ankle and his hip.

Powell's wife said they had been married for 30 years and their daughter is expecting her first child.

"I miss him so much," said Antoinette Powell. "I just want him back."

She said she walked past the standoff earlier, unaware that her husband had been injured there.

"He was already dead, and I didn't know," she said.

Reese surrendered Thursday. Mayor Eric Jackson credited Reese's friends and family members for convincing him to surrender without violence. He was evaluated at a hospital before being taken to jail.

Three Mercer County sheriff's officers suffered minor injuries in the shooting and were treated at a hospital. Reese also is charged with five attempted murder and weapons offenses.

It wasn't immediately clear if Reese had an attorney to comment on his behalf.

Police move in during standoff with a man in a home in Trenton, N.J., Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Police said they are trying to negotiate with a man holed up in a home after a fatal gunfire exchange with police. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Police stand next to an armored vehicle during a standoff with a man in a home in Trenton, N.J., on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Police said they are trying to negotiate with the suspect after a fatal gunfire exchange with police. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

A police officer helps to move a woman to safety during a standoff with a man in a home in Trenton, N.J., on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Police said they are trying to negotiate with the suspect after a fatal gunfire exchange with police. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Woman react during a standoff between police and a man in a home in Trenton, N.J., on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Police said they are trying to negotiate with the suspect after a fatal gunfire exchange with police. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

Police stand guard at the perimeter of a standoff with a man in a home in Trenton, N.J., on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. Police said they are trying to negotiate with the suspect after a fatal gunfire exchange with police. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Eds: Major scheduled events for the week of May 14 - 20. Note that many events are subject to change at the last minute.

The following economic reports will be issued in Washington (all times EDT), unless otherwise noted:

SUNDAY: No events of note.

MONDAY: National Association of Home Builders releases housing market index for May, 10 a.m.; Treasury releases international money flows data for March, 4 p.m.

TUESDAY: Commerce Department releases housing starts for April, 8:30 a.m.; Federal Reserve releases industrial production for April, 9:15 a.m.

The Home Depot Inc. reports quarterly financial results before the market opens.

WEDNESDAY: Target Corp. reports quarterly financial results before the market opens.

THURSDAY: Labor Department releases weekly jobless claims, 8:30 a.m.; Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, releases weekly mortgage rates, 10 a.m.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. reports quarterly financial results before the market opens.

FRIDAY: No events of note.

SATURDAY: No events of note.

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SUNDAY, MAY 14

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MONDAY, MAY 15

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court issues orders and opinions.

WASHINGTON - National Geographic Bee, through May 17.

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TUESDAY, MAY 16

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump meets with Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

WASHINGTON - Senate Intelligence Committee has asked former FBI Director James Comey to appear before the committee in a closed session.

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WEDNESDAY, MAY 17

President Donald Trump speaks at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy's commencement.

WASHINGTON - Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing on the health and safety of American athletes.

WASHINGTON - Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the country's transportation infrastructure.

WASHINGTON - Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of former Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., to be ambassador to New Zealand.

WASHINGTON - Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue testifies before the House Agriculture Committee on the state of rural economy.

WASHINGTON - House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the challenges facing law enforcement.

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THURSDAY, MAY 18

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump meets with Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos.

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testifies before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on domestic and international policy.

WASHINGTON - Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination of William Francis Hagerty IV, co-founder of a private equity firm, to be ambassador to Japan.

WASHINGTON - House Foreign Affairs subcommittee hearing featuring wives whose husbands have been jailed in China for being human rights lawyers or activists.

WASHINGTON - House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Africa.

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FRIDAY, MAY 19

President Donald Trump is expected to begin a trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, the Vatican, Belgium and Italy, through May 27.

BAD NEUENAHR, Germany - Labor ministers of the Group of 20 world powers conclude a two-day meeting.

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SATURDAY, MAY 20

Vice President Mike Pence speaks at Grove City (Pa.) College's commencement.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) - A Tucson woman is accused of substituting flour for infant formula in containers returned to several local stores for refunds, and police have warned the public to check formula containers' seals for tampering.

One child got sick from ingesting tampered formula but is in good condition after being treated at a hospital and released May 5, police said late Thursday.

Police Chief Chris Magnus held an unusual nighttime news conference to disclose the arrest and to warn the public. "We're concerned about this and wanted to get the information out as quickly as possible to avoid any other children from becoming sick," Magnus said.

This photo released by the Tucson Police Department shows Jennifer LaPlante, 30, who was arrested Thursday, May 11, 2017, in Tucson, Ariz., on suspicion of fraudulent schemes and artifices and child endangerment. LaPlante is accused of substituting flour for infant formula in containers returned to several local stores for refunds, and police have warned the public to check formula containers' seals for tampering. (Tucson Police Department via AP)

Police said the suspect was motivated by money and apparently took place over at least several days and possibly for up to two months. The formula was either purchased or stolen, police said.

Dr. Francisco Garcia, chief medical officer for Pima County, said tests are being conducted to determine whether other substances were put in formula containers along with flour, such as something to make it more palatable.

Police said Jennifer LaPlante, 30, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of fraudulent schemes and artifices and child endangerment.

LaPlante remained jailed Friday. It wasn't immediately known whether she has an attorney who could comment on the allegations.

Police listed two Fry's grocery stores and two Wal-Mart stores, all on Tucson's eastside, that are linked to the incident.

Officials at Arkansas-based Wal-Mart said they don't restock baby formula and are "deeply disturbed" by the Tucson incident.

"Our customers deserve safe, quality foods, and we have policies in place to help ensure that returned baby formula is not put back on our shelves," Wal-Mart spokesman Ragan Dickens said in a statement.

A police department spokesman, Sgt. Pete Dugan, said Friday he wasn't aware of additional reports of tampered formula.

However, detectives remained "smack-dab in the middle of the investigation," Dugan said. "They need to find out if there's others involved. They need to find out if there's other stores involved."

Officials advised recent purchasers of infant formula from Tucson businesses to check seals on containers and to see whether the formula smelled normal.

Parents shouldn't feed infants with any formula if there's any question of possible tampering, Garcia said. "Those seals should be intact," he said.
NEW YORK (AP) - For the first time since an Oval Office taping system was removed by President Richard Nixon's chief of staff nearly 44 years ago, a president has hinted that White House conversations might again be secretly recorded. If so, President Donald Trump is following a problematic precedent.

While several presidents secretly recorded conversations without problems, the practice is most associated with Nixon. His recordings became prime evidence during the Watergate investigation that ultimately led to his resignation. Sooner or later, recordings are likely to become public.

"The lesson for presidents since Nixon was, do not tape your Oval Office conversations," said Timothy Naftali, a professor at New York University and the first federal director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California. "It can only get you in trouble."

FILE - In this Feb. 16, 1969, file photo, President Richard M. Nixon, is shown at his desk in the White House. For the first time since an Oval Office taping system was removed by Nixon's chief of staff nearly 44 years ago, a president has hinted that White House conversations might again be secretly recorded. If so, President Donald Trump is following a problematic precedent. While several presidents secretly recorded conversations without problems, the practice is most associated with Nixon. His recordings became prime evidence during the Watergate investigation that ultimately led to his resignation. Sooner or later, recordings are likely to become public.(AP Photo/File)

Trump tweeted Friday that former FBI Director James Comey "better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press."

The extraordinary if ambiguous tweet came three days after Trump fired Comey, who was overseeing the bureau's investigation into Russian meddling in the presidential election and whether anyone in Trump's campaign was involved.

Trump has rejected the probe as "fake news," and claimed Comey assured him at a dinner and in two phone calls that he wasn't under investigation. Comey hasn't spoken publicly since he was fired, but an associate said Trump's claims are puzzling, adding that Trump sought a loyalty pledge from Comey during the Jan. 27 White House dinner, which the ex-director declined to give.

That and similar reports apparently led to Trump's tweet.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer didn't comment when asked whether Trump recorded Comey or if recording equipment exists in the Oval Office.

Under a post-Watergate law, the Presidential Records Act, recordings made by presidents belong to the people and can eventually be made public. Destroying them would be a crime. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, has already seized on the tweet and asked that Trump give Congress any recordings of conversations with Comey.

Federal law allows the secret recording of conversations so long at least one person in the conversation is aware of the recording. Trump's home state, New York, has a similar law. But in Florida, where Trump has his Mar-a-Lago estate, both parties must consent to any recording.

There is a rich history of secret presidential recordings since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Tapes of John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office helped cement his reputation as a strong leader during multiple crises. Lyndon Johnson also recorded conversations.

But Nixon's recordings are the most famous. His dismissal of a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who subpoenaed the White House for the president's tapes marked the beginning of the end of his presidency. Nixon chief of staff Alexander Haig had the recording system - complete with five listening devices in the president's desk in the Oval Office - removed on July 16, 1973, but it was already too late. Nixon resigned a year later.

Trump "is emulating some of the worst aspects of Richard Nixon and for those of us watching from the outside, we have to ask why," said Naftali. "Why would he bring up the taping system? Why? I'm not saying he has one, but why would any president after Nixon even jest about a taping system?"

Trump worried about recorded conversations - and recording his own conversations - well before he got into politics, according to former Trump Organization executives.

After Trump tweeted in March that President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap on his phones in Trump Tower, three ex-employees told The Associated Press that as a businessman, Trump not only worried about possible listening devices in his phones and office but had also occasionally taped his own phone conversations. Trump once denied doing so.

And at his New York office during the campaign, workers believed Trump had a system set up to record phone calls.

"I would note that New York is a one-party consent state and President Trump has always abided by the law," said Sam Nunberg, a former campaign aide, referring to the law that permits taping conversations without the knowledge of one of the participants.

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White House Correspondent Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.

White House officials said Friday the president was moving expeditiously to find an interim FBI director along with a permanent replacement for Comey, who was fired Tuesday. Four candidates - Texas Sen. John Cornyn, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, attorney Alice Fisher and judge Michael Garcia - have interviews scheduled Saturday.

The list also includes South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, according to two White House officials briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

FILE - In this April 26, 2013, file photo, Raymond Kelly speaks to the media opposite 51 Park Place in New York. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)

Here's a look at the 11 candidates under consideration as a permanent replacement for Comey.

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SEN. JOHN CORNYN

Cornyn is the No. 2 Senate Republican and a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice. He has been a member of the Senate GOP leadership team for a decade and serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the aftermath of Comey's dismissal, Cornyn said Trump was "within his authority" to fire him and said it would not affect the investigation of possible Russian ties to Trump's presidential campaign.

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REP. TREY GOWDY

The South Carolina Republican is best known for leading the congressional inquiry into the deadly attacks on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, a panel that oversaw a lengthy grilling of Hillary Clinton in 2015. A former federal prosecutor and state attorney, Gowdy was elected to Congress in the 2010 tea party wave and has focused on law enforcement issues. He originally endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for president before backing Trump in May 2016.

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FORMER REP. MIKE ROGERS

Rogers is the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He served Michigan in Congress for more than a decade before stepping down in 2015. Rogers worked for the FBI as a special agent based in Chicago in the 1990s and briefly advised Trump's transition team on national security issues. His name was floated as a possible replacement for then-FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2013, and he received support from an association of FBI agents before President Barack Obama chose Comey.

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RAY KELLY

Kelly was commissioner of the New York City Police Department for more than a decade, serving two mayors. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he created the first counterterrorism bureau of any municipal police department and oversaw a drastic reduction in crime. But Kelly also came under fire for his use of aggressive police tactics, including a program that spied on Muslims and a dramatic spike in the use of stop-and-frisk, which disproportionately affected non-white New Yorkers.

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J. MICHAEL LUTTIG

Luttig, the general counsel for Boeing Corp., is viewed as a conservative legal powerhouse from his tenure as a judge on the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and his time as a Justice Department lawyer. He was considered for two U.S. Supreme Court vacancies that went to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Luttig clashed with the Bush White House on a prominent terror case, rebuking the administration for its actions in the case involving "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla.

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LARRY THOMPSON

A deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush, Thompson served as the department's No. 2 from 2001 to 2003. Among his most high-profile actions was allowing Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar to be deported to Syria, where he was tortured, after being falsely named as a terrorist. Thompson also served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia and held several high-level positions at PepsiCo.

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PAUL ABBATE

Abbate is a senior official at the FBI, currently responsible for the bureau's criminal and cyber branch. He previously led FBI field offices in Washington, one of the agency's largest, and in Detroit. He's been deeply involved for years in FBI efforts to fight terrorism, serving in supervisory roles in Iraq and Afghanistan and later overseeing FBI international terrorism investigations as a section chief. He's been with the FBI for more than 20 years, and is one of the FBI officials who interviewed this week for the role of interim director.

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ALICE FISHER

Currently a partner at the law firm Latham & Watkins specializing in white-collar criminal and internal investigations, Fisher formerly served as assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Fisher faced resistance from Democrats during her confirmation over her alleged participation in discussions about detention policies at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba. She also served as deputy special counsel to the Senate special committee that investigated President Bill Clinton's Whitewater scandal. If selected, she would be the bureau's first female director.

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ANDREW MCCABE

A Duke-educated lawyer, McCabe was named last year as the FBI's deputy director, the No. 2 position in the bureau, overseeing significant investigations and operations. Since joining the FBI more than 20 years ago, he's held multiple leadership positions, including overseeing the FBI's national security branch and its Washington field office. McCabe became acting director after Comey was fired, but has shown a repeated willingness to break from White House explanations of the ouster and its characterizations of the Russia investigation.

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MICHAEL GARCIA

A former New York prosecutor, Garcia has served as an associate judge on the New York Court of Appeals - the state's highest court - since early 2016. He served as the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan from 2005 to 2008, and previously held high-level positions in the Commerce Department, the Justice Department and Homeland Security.

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JOHN SUTHERS

A former U.S. Attorney and Colorado attorney general, Suthers was elected mayor of Colorado Springs in 2015. He is widely respected among state law enforcement and many Colorado Democrats. Suthers was inspired to become a prosecutor after he spent part of an internship in the Colorado Springs district attorney's office watching the trial of a gang of soldiers convicted of killing various citizens, including actor Kelsey Grammer's sister, during a crime spree in the 1970s.

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Follow Colvin and Thomas on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj and https://twitter.com/KThomasDC. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Nick Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.

FILE - In this March 21, 2017, file photo, Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File)

Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe listens on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 11, 2017, while testifying before a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on major threats facing the U.S. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

FILE - In this Nov. 29, 2015, file photo, Colorado Springs, Colo., Mayor John Suthers talks to a reporter as police investigators gather evidence near the scene of Friday's shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

FILE - In this June 1, 2016, file photo, New York Court of Appeals Associate Judge Michael J, Garcia, listen to oral arguments on whether criminal defendants should be allowed to use allegations made in civil rights lawsuits against police witnesses to question their credibility during cross-examination at the Court of Appeals in Albany, N.Y. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/Hans Pennink, File)

FILE - In this Sept. 18, 2014 file photo, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., questions witnesses during a full committee hearing on the threat posed by Islamic extremists, on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

FILE - In this March 20, 2017, file photo, House Intelligence Committee member Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., questions then-FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers as they testify on Capitol Hill in Washington. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - In this March 15, 2017, file photo, assistant FBI director Paul Abbate, speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington. President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
MIAMI (AP) - The U.S. Coast Guard is hailing a landmark: Last month was the first in seven years when no Cuban migrants were caught trying to reach the U.S. by sea.

Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft told The Wall Street Journal that no vessels were seized in April, and Coast Guard officials confirmed the data on Friday.

That's a sea change from 2016, when 5,000 Cubans were apprehended in the water, the highest number the agency had seen in a decade.

The agency credits the end of a policy granting residency to any Cuban who steps on American soil. After President Barack Obama ended the "wet foot, dry foot" policy in January, interdictions dropped sharply across the Florida Straits and through the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.
CHICAGO (AP) - Authorities say a woman shot and wounded a Chicago police officer during a traffic stop but that a protective vest likely saved his life.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi (goo-lee-EHL'-mee) says two officers observed suspicious activity by two people and stopped a vehicle in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. When officers approached on foot, the man fled and the woman pulled a gun and fired on the officers.

Guglielmi says one officer was shot in the chest. He was able to return fire, striking the woman in the abdomen. The unidentified woman in her 20s was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition.

The officer was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood suffering bruises to the chest. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson says the vest saved the officer's life.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - California Gov. Jerry Brown will travel to China to discuss clean energy policy with international leaders next month, his office announced Friday.

He'll attend an international energy conference in Beijing with delegates from nearly two dozen countries during his visit during the first week of June.

He will also visit Chengdu in Sichuan province and Nanjing in Jiangsu province during the weeklong trip. Both provinces are, along with California, part of the Under2 Coalition of regions that have pledged to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Brown's office says the trip will strengthen California's climate, clean energy and economic ties with China. The Pacific Rim county is the world's top carbon polluter. The United States generates the second-largest amount of carbon pollution.

Combatting climate change is one of the governor's signature issues. He has led California to adopt some of the most ambitious anti-pollution policies in the United States, even as President Donald Trump's administration in Washington works to boost the U.S. coal industry and threatens to pull out of the Paris climate accord.

China is now outpacing the U.S. in transitioning to cleaner energy sources.

Brown's efforts to strengthen ties with China also put him at odds with Trump, who has historically been critical of the country.

Brown previously visited China in 2013 on a trade policy trip.

In recent years, the governor has also traveled to France, Italy, Canada and Mexico for climate change talks.
SAN DIEGO (AP) - The federal government said Friday that it has settled on finalists to design President Donald Trump's proposed border wall with Mexico, but it won't identify them.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it will notify finalists over the next several days. It won't say how many there are, but it has said previously that it would pick up to 20 for contracts expected to be valued between $200,000 and $500,000.

An agency document released last month by Senate Democrats says authorities plan to select winners by June 14 to build prototypes in San Diego on a short stretch of land near the Otay Mesa border crossing with Mexico. It picked San Diego partly because the land is federally owned and to compare the prototypes to existing fencing nearby that was breached 800 times in a single year.

The prototypes should be about 30 feet (9 meters) long and 18 to 30 feet (5.5 to 9 meters) high. The agency says it should be impossible to scale without help and that it should be impenetrable to sledgehammers and battery-operated tools for at least an hour. It should also be aesthetically pleasing from the U.S. side.

Building a wall on the Mexican border was a cornerstone of Trump's presidential campaign and a flashpoint for his detractors. A stopgap measure to fund the government through September doesn't provide money for construction.
The Green Party has said it will not field a candidate in the marginal south London seat of Eltham in a bid to prevent Labour being ousted by the resurgent Tories.

As nominations closed for the General Election on June 8, the local Greenwich Green Party said they had taken the decision following discussions with the local Labour Party.

In a statement posted on their website, they said they had received assurances from Labours Clive Efford - who is defending a 2,693 majority - that he would stand up for the environment, protect the NHS and oppose a harmful Brexit.

(Andrew Matthews/PA)

Help me win in Eltham - we're knocking on doors every day. Join the team:https://t.co/319JK9YnRS #LabourDoorstep pic.twitter.com/7uJ2Ti9Kwd  Clive Efford  (@CliveEfford) April 29, 2017

The decision was not made as part of a so-called electoral alliance but to protect a marginal seat from falling into Conservative hands, the statement said.

Ann Garret, who had been selected as the Green candidate, said: The decision was made for the greater good of the country, which is facing severe public funding cuts as a result of a disgraceful seven years of Tory rule.

It's the air we breathe, the water we drink & the food we eat, yet its rarely talked about in British politics. We're here to change that. pic.twitter.com/bNMk0W1IKb  The Green Party (@TheGreenParty) May 11, 2017

Green co-leader Caroline Lucas has actively encouraged local deals among progressives to block the Conservatives and the party has already said it will not field candidates in a number of other marginal London seats including, Ealing Central and Acton, Brentford and Isleworth and Ilford North.

Elsewhere, the Liberal Democrats have not put up a candidate against Commons Speaker John Bercow in Buckingham, having previously said Sarah Lowes would be their candidate in defiance of the convention that the main parties do not challenge the speaker.

In Bradford East, former Liberal Democrat MP David Ward is standing as an independent having being suspended from the party over allegations of anti-Semitism.
US President Donald Trump is to sign an executive order launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the US election system, according to three White House officials.

One official says Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will lead the commission, which will look at allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and nationally.

Mr Trump has alleged, without evidence, that three to five million people voted illegally in his 2016 campaign against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

US Vice President Mike Pence

The official says the panel will include Republicans and Democrats and include current and former state election officials.

It will aim to ensure confidence in the integrity of federal elections while looking at vulnerabilities in the system and the possibility of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration and voting, the official added.

Potential panel members include former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, the official said.

During his campaign, Mr Trump repeatedly alleged that the election system was rigged and after his election argued that such massive, widespread fraud kept him from the popular vote.

Hillary Clinton

Mr Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College victory despite losing to Mrs Clinton by nearly three million votes.

Voting experts and many lawmakers have said they have not seen anything to suggest that millions of people voted illegally, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz.

The Utah Republican said his committee will not be investigating voter fraud.

In a lunch meeting with senators in February, Mr Trump said that he and former Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state.

New Hampshire officials have said there was no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.

Mr Trump had previously identified Mr Pence as the person to oversee the long-awaited commission.

Mr Kobach advised Mr Trumps transition team and has been a leading GOP proponent of tighter voting regulations.

The secretary of state championed Kansass proof-of-citizenship requirement as an anti-fraud measure that keeps non-citizens from voting, including immigrants living in the US illegally.

Critics contend it suppresses voter turnout, particularly among young and minority voters, and that there have been few cases of fraud.
The Conservative Partys messaging on social media is pitching the election as a battle between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, while Labour has instead focused on issues, an election analysis by Press Association has found.

While the Conservatives are using the medium to promote leader Theresa May, attack Labour and focus on Brexit, Labour are giving more prominence to issues, such as health, crime and education, according to a study of the parties official accounts on Facebook and Twitter since the election was called on April 18.

Well transform education #ForTheMany with a new National Education Service. Take a look at our promise to learners & RT  pic.twitter.com/4PMZbHWu7W  The Labour Party (@UKLabour) May 11, 2017

Seventy-five per cent of posts from the Conservatives have mentioned either Mrs May or Mr Corbyn by name since the election was announced, compared with just 19% of posts from the opposition partys accounts.

In contrast, the posts on both Conservative accounts have featured almost no mention of the NHS, police or schools  with these topics appearing in just 2% of all posts, compared to almost 20% of Labour posts.

Brexit features in a third (30%) of all social media posts from the Conservatives, in comparison to only 2% of those sent by Labour.

Your vote in this election is important to me, it is important for the UK's future and it is important to families. Please watch and share. pic.twitter.com/SNSt2JnVRO  Theresa May (@theresa_may) April 27, 2017

Strong and stable

Thirty-one percent of Conservative Party posts used the exact phrase strong and stable leadership, while the notion of strength - such as the need for a strong hand in Brexit negotiations  features in almost half of the partys posts (49%) since the election was called.

But while Labours slogan of building a Britain for the many, not the few emerged at around the same time as the Conservatives strong and stable leadership, it has not had the same kind of heavy promotion on social media. Only 11% of Labours Facebook posts feature the phrase, and just 6% of tweets.

An amazing few days on the campaign trail. This is what me & my team love doing: going out and meeting people and having real conversations. pic.twitter.com/NDqWFCk7yM  Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) May 11, 2017

The other parties

The Green Party were the third most popular party on Twitter and Facebook in terms of engagement, with posts about the partys local election successes and the collapse of Ukip garnering the most likes and shares across both platforms.

It's the air we breathe, the water we drink & the food we eat, yet its rarely talked about in British politics. We're here to change that. pic.twitter.com/bNMk0W1IKb  The Green Party (@TheGreenParty) May 11, 2017

Despite Ukips high number of followers, particularly on Facebook, social media users have been less likely to share or engage with posts from the party which once threatened to lure voters on the right away from the Conservative Party.

The leaders

The Corbyn camp has long celebrated the Labour leaders popularity on social media but, while he has more followers on Facebook than the other main party leaders combined, Theresa May has received higher average likes and shares for posts on her account in the election campaign so far.

How the party leaders are faring on Facebook graphic

Despite being the least active of all the party leaders on social media, Mrs Mays posts have been shared or liked roughly twice as often as Mr Corbyns on Facebook, on average.

How the party leaders are faring on Twitter graphic

There was a similar story on Twitter, with Mrs May sending just 23 tweets during the period, compared with Mr Corbyns 275. But the prime minister received three times the number of retweets and favourites per tweet, on average.

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron and SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon came in behind Mrs May and Mr Corbyn in terms of engagement on Twitter.
A senior Cabinet minister has claimed Brussels top official is trying to get him sacked in the latest sign of the Tory conflict with the European Commission.

Brexit Secretary David Davis claimed European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was trying to force him out of his job.

Theresa May has claimed Brussels figures are trying to influence the outcome of the June 8 General Election and has made the need for a bigger majority to strengthen her position in forthcoming Brexit talks a key part of her pitch to voters.

Brexit Secretary David Davis (Yui Mok/PA)

Leaks about a difficult meeting between Mrs May and Mr Juncker at Downing Street appeared designed to undermine the Prime Minister and suggested that Mr Daviss future could be in doubt.

Mr Juncker admitted earlier this week the leaking of accounts of his dinner in No 10 to discuss Brexit with the PM had been a serious mistake, although he denied responsibility for the move.

Mr Davis told the Daily Telegraph: I think to be honest he has now learned his lesson - he is not going to be meddling in British politics any more or at least if he does he will get the same reaction.

He added: All these stories are briefing against me, trying to get me sacked - which, of course, is a compliment by the way.

Tonight the Prime Minister met European Commission President @JunckerEU. Read more about their meeting: https://t.co/wVOiL3y0ky pic.twitter.com/EoaqJX12ax  UK Prime Minister (@10DowningStreet) April 26, 2017

If they dont want me across the table, there is a reason for that - it is in Britains interests, not theirs.

Mr Davis said an election victory for Mrs May reinforces her negotiating hand, adding: One of the things that may have led to that briefing is the fact they know a big mandate from the British people is a big mandate in the negotiation and helps (us) and doesnt help him.

The Brexit Secretary said he was confident that an early agreement would be reached on the rights of EU citizens in the UK and British expatriates on the continent, which is set to be one of the first items on the agenda once negotiations start.

I see no reason why we cant have an in principle agreement straight away for EU nationals and British nationals abroad, he said.

Once it is agreed people can relax. We want people not to be anxious.

Margaritis Schinas, Mr Junckers spokesman, declined to comment directly on Mr Daviss claims when asked about them during a European Commission press briefing.

He said: We dont have much to say on that. We know there is a campaign in the United Kingdom. We had a chance to discuss this a few days ago. We have no comment on and no interest in the composition of any government in member states. This is not our job.
The parents of a boy killed by an allergic reaction to his school dinner have hit out at staff after an inquest heard he may have survived if given his EpiPen as he lay dying on the floor.

Nasar Ahmeds mother accused authorities at Bow School of failing in their duty of care by not administering adrenaline to the teenager after he collapsed, turned blue and began foaming at the mouth in a school exclusion room.

She spoke after a catalogue of errors were revealed at the inquest into the November 2016 death of the 14-year-old  who had a history of severe asthma and food allergies  after eating tandoori chicken containing milk.

The inquest heard an early adrenaline injection may have saved Nasar, but staff did not do so. Instead he died four days later in the Royal London Hospital from a massive brain injury caused by the reaction.

(Left-right) Nasar Ahmed's parents Ashrafuz and Ferdousi Zaman and family spokeswoman Sani Begum speak to reporters outside Poplar Magistrates' Court in London (David Wilcock/PA)

Returning a narrative conclusion, coroner Mary Hassell said she would write five Prevention of Future Death (PFD) reports, including to the London Ambulance Service (LAS), whose paramedic told staff not to give Nasar adrenaline before they arrived.

Speaking outside the inquest, Nasars mother Ferdousi Zaman told reporters her son had been a jolly boy who dreamed of becoming a politician, and whose friends still hoped maybe Nasar is coming back.

She criticised school staffs medical training, saying: If he has anaphylaxis I give him his EpiPen. They are first-aiders, they are more knowledgeable than me. They have failed their duty of care.

Ashrafuz and Ferdousi Zaman (David Wilcock/PA)

In a statement read by family solicitor Lochlinn Parker, she and her husband Ashrafuz added that they were deeply saddened to now know of the missed opportunities to save Nasars life.

We strongly believe that if Nasars care plan had been completed correctly, if staff had been aware of the care plan and if it had been followed properly, including administering an EpiPen as soon as possible, that Nasar would be alive today. Following our painful loss of Nasar we hope that important lessons about the care of children suffering from asthma will be learnt and other lives saved.

Ms Hassell said she would be writing PFD reports to the school, his GP, Barts Health NHS Trust, LAS and the Chief Medical Officer for England, the latter to suggest EpiPens be widely available alongside heart defibrillators in public places.

Returning her conclusion, Ms Hassell told the inquest: If the EpiPen had been used promptly and Nasar had been administered adrenaline, there is a possibility but not a probability that this would have changed the outcome.

Outlining her PFD to the ambulance service, she added: The paramedic said dont give the EpiPen because there were no classic symptoms of anaphylaxis.

The reality of giving a dose of adrenaline is that it is unlikely to do any significant harm, whereas the potential good of giving an EpiPen is lifesaving.

In a statement, Bow Schools executive headteacher Cath Smith said it had rigorously reviewed all of our safety procedures and are providing more training for staff across the board. We will now consider the advice from the coroner very carefully to see what further action we should take.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has dismissed Jeremy Corbyn as a guy who has campaigned all his life to weaken the UKs defences.

Mr Johnson spoke out on the day Mr Corbyn accused Theresa May of "pandering" to Donald Trump during a speech in which the Labour leader insisted he was "not a pacifist".

Speaking during a Conservative Party campaign visit to an indoor market in Newport, south Wales, Mr Johnson said: "I am genuinely worried about some of the things Jeremy Corbyn stands for and believes in.

Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson

"This is a time of great uncertainty in the world. We have Russia causing all sorts of trouble in eastern Europe and elsewhere, not least Syria.

"We have a global threat from terrorism and we have to be firm, we have to support Nato and we have to have a very robust response to the threat of terrorism.

Last month, Mr Johnson signalled the UK could join any US military action against Syria without parliamentary approval and when questioned by reporters on Friday he said he stuck by those comments.

The clear choice: A leader who supports our armed forces or one who wants to abolish them? Corbyn & your security is too big a risk. #GE2017 pic.twitter.com/8DASfvUKoH  Conservatives (@Conservatives) May 12, 2017

We saw what happened last month at Khan Sheikhoun after the attack by chemical weapons by the Assad regime on his own people, again, he said. The Americans did decide to respond a few days later and they sent some Cruise missiles.

There may be an occasion again but it is an entirely hypothetical question, we would have to see how we responded. I stick absolutely by what I said.

Asked whether parliamentary approval would be sought first, Mr Johnson replied: It is a hypothetical question and as I said then and I say now we would have to decide.

It would have to be a matter for the Prime Minister and the Government.

The crucial thing is that there is a sharp distinction between a Government that is willing to stand up for this country, which is willing to make sure this country is properly defended and a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn that would simply chuck away our ability to defend ourselves.

I think that is crazy and is not the way I want to go.

Best defence for Britain is a government actively engaged in seeking peaceful solutions to the worlds problems  @jeremycorbyn #CHcorbyn pic.twitter.com/6MmweLhsOq  The Labour Party (@UKLabour) May 12, 2017

Mr Corbyn has said if he was in Downing Street there would be no more hand holding with President Trump  a reference to Mrs Mays meeting with the new president in the White House.

Asked about those comments, Mr Johnson replied: Whatever you may think of the American administration, it is vital we have strong relations with Washington. Jeremy Corbyn is a guy who has campaigned all his life to weaken the UKs defences.

"What this country needs is a strong, clear and robust approach to our defences and I am afraid Jeremy Corbyns approach is chaotic and offers the reverse."
Nicola Sturgeon has blamed Conservative austerity policies for the growth of food banks in Scotland.

The SNP leader warned a greater Tory majority at Westminster following next months General Election would lead to an even greater burden of needless austerity.

On a visit to the Highland Foodbank in Inverness, she said: The growth of food banks is a damning indictment of just how damaging Tory austerity has been to communities across Scotland.

SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon

The SNP have worked to protect household incomes by keeping council tax bills low, and by supporting families at every stage of their life  from the baby box and support for new parents, to free university education, to free medicine and free personal care.

In contrast, the Tories have argued for years that the sick should pay for their medicine, that the young should be forced into debt to pay for tuition, and that the elderly should face costs for personal care.

There can be no doubt that the Tories at Westminster would use a bigger majority at this election to make ordinary families bear an even greater burden of needless austerity. Now more than ever, it is vital to have strong SNP voices standing up for Scotland.

Only then can we protect Scotland from the dangers of an unopposed Tory government at Westminster and continue to make Scotland the best country it can be.
JK Rowling has urged Harry Potter fans not to buy a hand-written prequel to the series after the manuscript was stolen by burglars.

In a message to her 10 million followers on Twitter, the author reposted a West Midlands Police appeal for information to trace the 800-word work, which raised 25,000 for charity when it was auctioned in 2008.

The prequels owner also lost irreplaceable items of jewellery with links to his late father when safes were stolen from his home in Kings Heath, Birmingham, between April 13 and 24.

JK Rowling

PLEASE DON'T BUY THIS IF YOU'RE OFFERED IT. Originally auctioned for @englishpen, the owner supported writers' freedoms by bidding for it. https://t.co/ljEQyyj9yY  J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) May 12, 2017

Speaking to the Press Association, the Harry Potter fan, who does not wish to be identified, thanked Rowling for taking to Twitter to publicise the police appeal.

The documents owner said: I was in Bangkok and I got an email from my sister to give her a call urgently.

She said Your home has been broken into and your safes are gone  then I knew my sentimental items had gone out the door.

It (the prequel) was something I have been responsible for for nine years  its a bit of a shock and it took a little while for it to settle in.

The handwritten postcard by @jk_rowling was purchased to raise money for charity. #Harrypotter fans if you have any info please call 101  pic.twitter.com/ijBtgrxHIL  West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) May 12, 2017

Responding to news of the theft, Rowling retweeted a picture of the manuscript with the message: PLEASE DONT BUY THIS IF YOURE OFFERED IT. Originally auctioned for @englishpen, the owner supported writers freedoms by bidding for it.

The extremely valuable prequel, penned on both sides of the A5 postcard, was sold at Sothebys to raise funds for English PEN, which promotes understanding through literature, and Dyslexia Action.

West Midlands Police issued a plea for information about the break-in in the hope that the appeal goes far and wide among Harry Potter fans throughout the world.

Investigating officer Pc Paul Jauncey said: The only people who will buy this unique piece are true Harry Potter fans.

We are appealing to anyone who sees, or is offered this item for sale, to contact police.

We are asking #HarryPotter fans to help share our appeal after a rare Harry Potter prequel by @jk_rowling was stolen https://t.co/NLH79kAoLf  West Midlands Police (@WMPolice) May 12, 2017

Reportedly set three years before Harry Potters birth, the prequel features the schoolboy wizards father, James Potter, and godfather, Sirius Black, when they were teenagers.

They are confronted by two muggle policemen after a high-speed motorbike chase but manage to escape on broomsticks.

Anyone who knows the whereabouts of the postcard, or who has information about the break-in, is urged to contact West Midlands Police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Eric Bailly could be hit with an extended ban after being sent off in Manchester Uniteds Europa League semi-final against Celta Vigo.

The 23-year-old has impressed in his first season at Old Trafford but lost his composure towards the end of Thursdays 1-1 draw.

Bailly was handed a straight red card for pushing John Guidetti in the face, with Celta defender Facundo Roncaglia following him down the tunnel after raising his hand to the Ivorian in retaliation.

Eric Bailly, third left, (David Davies/Empics)

UEFA Control, Ethics & Disc' Body looking at Bailly case & others on July 20. Different incident, but Alli given three-game ban in March  Simon Peach (@SimonPeach) May 12, 2017

Both players are suspended for at least one European club competition match, meaning United centre-back Bailly will miss the Europa League final against Ajax on May 24.

The duo could also have their bans extended when their cases are heard by the UEFA Control, Ethics and Disciplinary Body on July 20.

In March, Tottenham midfielder Dele Alli had the length of his suspension increased to three European club matches for his reckless tackle on Gents Brecht Dejaegere in the Europa League.

Stockholm here we come! What a great team effort tonight! One more battle to win the ! #UELFinal @ManUtd #mickimagic pic.twitter.com/yNQVtF4u9F  Henrikh Mkhitaryan (@HenrikhMkh) May 11, 2017

The England international will miss the first three games of next seasons Champions League campaign as a result.

Meanwhile, United were charged by UEFA for kicking off late against Celta Vigo.
Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art has a real treat for those who love art that celebrates the state of Nebraska.

"150 Artists, 150 Artworks, 150 Years of Nebraska in Miniature" is now open through July 30. One visit may not be enough.

More than 150 artists submitted an original work of agrarian art honoring the state of Nebraska and its 150th year of statehood.

This major exhibition and sale celebrates and features many Nebraska artists, their craft, and this great state. It includes works from artists who have connections to Nebraska through having exhibited at Bone Creek Museum or through family ties.

Amanda Mobley Guenther and Gabrielle Comte teamed up to get the exhibition ready ahead of the May 3 opening so that visitors on the weekend of April 29 and 30 enjoyed a preview. There is now a link to images of all 150 works of art on bonecreek.org and more photos on the Facebook link for the museum.

Visit on May 27

The traditional opening reception to the public will be Saturday, May 27. It is just one of a number of events that connect to this exhibition. Each year Bone Creek hosts a reception to display its current exhibition to visiting guests who are in town for the David City Schools Alumni weekend or for other events.

All are welcome to enjoy the art and light refreshments during the 1 to 4 p.m. reception. Some of the artists will be present for this first reception. The closing reception for the 150 for Nebraskas 150th exhibition will be Saturday, July 29 when many of the artists plan to attend.

This exhibition received major funding from Butler County Area Foundation Fund, the Butler County Arts Council and many generous donors. Bone Creek Museum is honored that this exhibition was selected to be a signature event for the Nebraska Statehood 150 celebration.

If you go

Tours may be scheduled by contacting the museum at 402-367-4488 or emailing artinfo@bonecreek.org. Normal visiting hours are Wednesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Sunday 1-4 p.m. and Thursday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. The museum is at 575 E Street David City, NE..
Ofcom has launched a probe into the rising costs of calling some telephone services.

The industry regulator announced it will be carrying out a review into the use of 070 numbers, as well as directory enquiries numbers which begin with 118.

Campaigners are now calling for the 070 number range to be scrapped.

Given the rising cost of calling these service numbers, Ofcom is launching a Call Cost Review, to ensure that prices are transparent and fair to consumers, the regulator said.

Phone box

Our Call Cost Review will consider whether consumer harm is arising out of deliberate misconduct or market failure, and what action may be required.

Ofcom said it expects to publish detailed proposals this year. The regulator has revealed it is concerned that 070 numbers may cause confusion, and said there is evidence of scams designed to make people think they are actually calling a mobile phone.

When people call the 070 number back, they are actually dialling a service costing up to 3.40 a minute, the body said.

David Hickson, of the Fair Telecoms Campaign, said: The 070 range is an anomaly, it is left over from an old idea that never took off  because of the costs.

118 scam story kicks off (1/2) - see our news release https://t.co/zZ9H40kPsZ. pic.twitter.com/9DTe5UYxwc  fair telecoms (@fairtelecoms) May 9, 2017

The lack of price transparency on the range is being exploited by a few  most notably operators of hospital bedside phone services. Our recommendation to Ofcom is that this range be simply scrapped, so that those who wish to offer premium rate services may do so properly.

Ofcom will also probe 118 directory enquiries numbers, with currently more than 400 services available and offering a variety of options and prices ranging from 35p per call to 9 and higher.

The regulator said it has been monitoring the costs of more expensive services which have risen significantly in recent months as fewer people use them.

Latest figures show enquiries made through the four biggest 118 providers cost at least 5.50, with calls made through 118 118 costing 8.98 as a minimum before an additional access charge is added.
The deputy leader of Pakistans senate escaped an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber targeted his convoy in the countrys south-western Baluchistan province, killing 25 people and wounding dozens more.

Islamic State (IS) took responsibility for the attack on its official Amaq News Agency.

The bomber struck soon after Abdul Ghafoor Haideris convoy left a madrassa, an Islamic religious school, in the town of Mastung, not far from the provincial capital of Quetta, according to local government official Munir Raisani.

The area has been a hotbed of militant activity in the past, although most of the previous attacks near Mastung have been on Pakistans minority Shiite Muslims by the violent radical Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, left, with his leader Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam Fazl-ur Rahman in 2003 (Muhammad Sajjad/AP)

However, IS carried out a brutal attack against lawyers in Quetta last year killing nearly 70 people, most of them young lawyers, as well as at a shrine in the remote Kuzdar area where more than 60 died.

Fridays attack underscored the militants continued ability to carry out high-profile attacks despite a protracted military crackdown that is under way in several parts of the country, including Pakistans border regions with neighbouring Afghanistan.

Shaken but with only minor cuts and bruises, Mr Haideri told a local news channel that he could not speculate on the reason for the attack.

I was sitting in the front seat when the strong explosion occurred, he said. The windshield of my vehicle broke and the door was destroyed. Broken glass and splinters hit me in the hand but thank God I did not suffer any major injury.

Mr Haideris political party, the pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, has hundreds of Islamic Sunni seminaries throughout Baluchistan. It is headed by Fazlur Rehman, who is known for his anti-US stance.
A metal detectorist who discovered the richest collection of rare Viking artefacts ever found in the UK is set to receive a reward of almost 2 million.

Derek McLennan uncovered the 10th-century hoard, which includes silver bracelets and brooches, a gold ring, an enamelled Christian cross and a bird-shaped gold pin, in a Dumfries and Galloway field in 2014.

He passed it on to experts and the body which rules on ownerless goods and property, the Queens and Lord Treasurers Remembrancer (QLTR), has now ruled the 100 or so items should be allocated to National Museums Scotland (NMS) for display, provided it pays 1.98 million to Mr McLennan.

What is the Galloway Hoard & why is it so vital to Scotland's heritage? Find out here https://t.co/irWGlbSBkm #SavetheHoard pic.twitter.com/ygB7oHk94f  National Museums Scotland (@NtlMuseumsScot) May 12, 2017

The amount is ex gratia and has been set to reflect the market value of the find.

Rules on discoveries in Scotland mean only the finder receives payment, differing from the rest of the UK where awards are split with the land owner. NMS has six months to raise the funds.

QLTR David Harvie described the Galloway hoard as of international significance and one of the most important finds ever discovered in Scotland.

A Carolingian vessel was part of the hoard (Galloway Viking Hoard Campaign/PA)

Dr Gordon Rintoul, director of NMS, said: The Galloway hoard is of outstanding international significance and we are absolutely delighted that QLTR has decided to allocate it to NMS.

We now have six months to raise 1.98 million to acquire this unique treasure for the nation and ensure it can be enjoyed by future generations both at home and abroad.

The bulk of the hoard is silver jewellery but it also contains textiles and an outstanding range of exceptional precious metal and jewelled items, including a rare gold ingot, beads, crystals and a decorated silver-gilt cup thought to be of Byzantine origin.

A pectoral cross was one of the finds (Galloway Viking Hoard Campaign/PA)

NMS said other finds around Britain or Ireland have been exceptional for a single type of item but the Galloway hoard is unique in bringing together a variety of objects hinting at previously unknown connections between people across Europe in the 10th century.

The Galloway Viking Hoard campaign group had been calling for the items to be displayed in the south-west of Scotland close to where they were discovered.

NMS said it supports the call and will work with Dumfries and Galloway Council to have some of the hoard on display in the region.

SAFAP chair Evelyn Silber said: The panel is grateful to the finder for reporting these stunning artefacts which include decorative glass beads, silver bracelets and brooches, a gold ring, a bird-shaped gold pin and a highly-decorated gilt vessel recognised as being one of only three known examples.

Cathy Agnew, chair of the Galloway Viking Hoard campaign, said: The support from the public, from academics, politicians of all parties, and so many others  across Scotland and the world  to keep the hoard in Galloway, where it would be cherished, has been magnificent. It is a real shame their voices and their passion have gone unheeded.

Dumfries and Galloway Councils bid was outstanding. It would have saved the hoard for the region and the nation in a superb, specially designed exhibition area at the new Kirkcudbright Gallery  near to where it was found.
Rain wiped out any chance of a result in Irelands first tri-series one-day international against Bangladesh in Dublin.

There was time only for 31.1 overs in which Bangladesh opener Tamim Iqbal was leading a recovery to 157 for four after the tourists stuttered at one stage to nine for two.

Sadly, call has been made and @Irelandcricket v @BCBtigers will see no more play today, next #WaltonTriSeries match is Sunday #BackingGreen  Cricket Ireland (@cricketireland) May 12, 2017

Ireland seamer Peter Chase finished with a career-best three for 33 from his six overs, having also taken three wickets against England in Irelands defeat at Bristol last week.

Tamim Iqbal (Nigel French/Empics)

Tamim (64no) stood firm, however, reaching a hard-working half-century in 76 balls and going on to share an unbroken stand of 87 with Mahmudullah before the bad weather swept over Malahide and refused to relent.

Irelands next fixture is on Sunday against New Zealand at the same venue.
British star Ben Maher produced a stylish performance to win Fridays feature international showjumping class at the Royal Windsor Horse Show.

Maher, a member of Great Britains London 2012 gold medal-winning team alongside Nick Skelton, Scott Brash and Peter Charles, landed the Bahrain Pearl Stakes on Tic Tac.

Maher was last to go in a seven-horse jump-off, having seen former Olympic individual champion Eric Lamaze set a scorching pace with Fine Lady 5.

Ben Maher (Owen Humphreys/PA)

Terrific win for GB's @BenMaher1 in the feature international class at @windsorhorse today.  Andrew Baldock (@balders2) May 12, 2017

But Canadian Lamazes time of 37.53 seconds could not hold off Maher, who clocked 37.23 to take the 11,000 top prize, with Germanys David Will and Copain third.

The days opening international class  the Manama two-phase competition  went to American Laura Kraut in impressive fashion.

Kraut, riding Whitney, clocked 27.94 seconds for the jump-off section of her round, edging out Britains former world number one Brash and Irish star Billy Twomey.

Good morning Diva from Windsor Horse Show @OgilvyEq pic.twitter.com/xbAKEo9hnL  Ben Maher (@BenMaher1) May 12, 2017

Scotsman Brash guided Hello Forever to a time of 28.10 seconds, which Twomey and Kimba Flamenco matched for a tie of second spot.

The five-star show reaches its climax on Sunday with the Rolex Grand Prix, which is followed by a public retirement ceremony for 59-year-old reigning Olympic individual champion Skelton and his Rio ride Big Star.
The Patients Association condemned the criminals behind the cyber attack on the NHS but said lessons from earlier incidents had not been learned.

In a statement the group said: We should be clear that responsibility for todays apparently extensive attack on NHS IT systems, and for any harm that occurs to patients as a result, lies with the criminals who have perpetrated it.

From reports so far, the attack appears to have been highly coordinated and aggressive and a police investigation will no doubt be required. However, that something of this sort could happen will surprise few people.

An NHS walk-in centre (Dave Higgens/PA)

Please see our comment on the #nhscyberattack pic.twitter.com/k0WtcSMCaU  Patients Association (@PatientsAssoc) May 12, 2017

It has long been known that the NHS struggles with IT in multiple respects and that this includes serious security problems.

Though todays may be the largest attack of this sort, it is not the first - yet the lessons from earlier incidents have not been learnt.

The power of IT in transforming services for patients is undoubted, yet the NHS has struggled to harness it: centralised approaches have failed badly, while smaller scale local projects can easily give rise to huge variations in both quality and security.

We are seeing today that IT security is critical to patient safety. Addressing it effectively and quickly is essential and requires appropriate investment.

Our statement on the reported ransomware issues: https://t.co/Pt47dvpbiR #nhscyberattack  NHS Digital (@NHSDigital) May 12, 2017

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the attack was a real worry for patients.

Our hard-working NHS staff are already operating under unprecedented pressure and should be given every support to help the public in the face of these malicious and disturbing actions.

Latest news from GEH Update: Suspected cyber attack at GEH - We are currently dealing with a suspected cyber at... https://t.co/BZ95rLwmI8  @GEHNHSnews (@GEHNHSnews) May 12, 2017

We are aware of an IT issue affecting NHS computer systems. Patients are asked for understanding whilst the issue is resolved  Sheffield Health and Care Partnership (@SheffieldHCP) May 12, 2017

We apologise but we are having issues with our computer systems. Please do not attend A&E unless it's an emergency. Thank you.  MorecambeBayNHSTrust (@UHMBT) May 12, 2017

Please note our Trust is currently experiencing difficulties with our email system. For phone numbers please visit: https://t.co/HBzYlbRnzq  Northants Healthcare (@NHFTNHS) May 12, 2017

This incident highlights the risk to data security within the modern health service and reinforces the need for cyber security to be at the heart of government planning. The digital revolution has transformed the way we live and work but we have to be ready for the vulnerabilities it brings too.

The Government needs to be clear about whats happened and what measures they are taking to reduce the threat to patients.

The safety of the public must be the priority and the NHS should be given every resource to bring the situation under control as soon as possible.

How to prevent a ransomware incident and what to do if your organisation is infected https://t.co/YSmFYATtAK pic.twitter.com/cKsLwWQzJK  NCSC UK (@NCSC) May 12, 2017

Dr Kubo Macak, senior lecturer in International Law at the University of Exeter and an expert on cyber warfare, said: Regardless of the origin of the attacks, the situation confirms how important it is to maintain resilience of the national critical infrastructure, including in the public health sector.
Rafael Nadal booked a semi-final clash with Novak Djokovic at the Madrid Open after a comfortable last-eight win over David Goffin on Friday.

Nadal took just under two hours to see off the Belgian 7-6 (7/3) 6-2 and move closer to a third straight title after wins in Monte Carlo and Barcelona.

But if he is to progress Nadal must get the better of Djokovic, who eased into the semi-finals after scheduled opponent Kei Nishikori withdrew with a wrist injury.

Rafael Nadal in Madrid ( Francisco Seco/AP)

Not an easy decision @keinishikori but health is priority. Wishing you fast recovery and hope to see you in Rome!  Novak Djokovic (@DjokerNole) May 12, 2017

Djokovic has won the last seven meetings between the pair, including three on clay, with Nadals last victory coming in the 2014 French Open final.

Goffin put up a spirited fight against the Spaniard until the tie-break, which was dominated by Nadal who converted his second set point.

Nadal claimed the first break in the second game of the second set and maintained his recent momentum to earn what was ultimately a comfortable win.

Argentinas Pablo Cuevas also booked his place in the last four with a 3-6 6-0 6-4 win over Alexander Zverev of Germany.

Cuevas will face Dominic Thiem in the semi-finals after the Austrian brushed aside Andy Murrays conqueror Borna Coric in a one-sided last eight clash.

World number nine Thiem blazed through the opening set, breaking his opponent twice, and maintained his dominance in the second to record a 6-1 6-4 win.
Keepers are celebrating the birth of a giraffe calf whose father passed away two months ago.

The male giraffe calf, named Gus, was born on Thursday evening to eight-year-old mother Genny.

Staff at Noahs Ark Zoo Farm in Bristol closely monitored the birth, which took place in the giraffe house.

IT'S A BOY! Welcome to the world little Gus, born 7.07pm on May 11th  pic.twitter.com/WwjawMTRLJ  Noah's Ark Zoo Farm (@Noahs_Ark_Zoo) May 12, 2017

Gus was fathered by giraffe Gerald before his death in March, at the age of 12.

Emma Green, Africa section head keeper at the zoo, said: Im really happy for Genny and her family, a real positive after the sad passing of dad Gerald earlier this spring and a lasting legacy for our special family.

Gus is very cute and has taken his first shaky steps, well monitor him and mum over the next few days.

Gus was born at Noah's Ark Zoo Farm in Wraxall ( Ben Birchall/PA)

Gus will join siblings George, four, and Geoffrey, two, at the 100-acre zoo.

Giraffes are a protected species and classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Gus with mum Genny (Ben Birchall/PA)

Wild populations are continuing to decline, with 97,500 estimated in Africa in 2015.

Since 1985, the total giraffe population has fallen by more than 35%.
By Ben Hirschler

May 11 (Reuters) - The world needs greater transparency on the pricing of medicines, and an overhaul of some approaches, in order to increase access to life-saving drugs, global health experts said on Thursday.

Drugmakers are under growing fire as a wave of new treatments for serious conditions like cancer and hepatitis C come to market at sky-high prices, putting them out of reach of many patients and national health services.

"The problem has become global," said Suzanne Hill, head of essential medicines at the World Health Organisation (WHO).

"Many of these (drugs) are now on the WHO model list of essential medicines but their high price is limiting access."

Hill was speaking after a one-day forum on fair pricing sponsored by the U.N. health agency and the Dutch government in Amsterdam.

The meeting - involving governments, industry and civil society - was convened as a first step to drawing up concrete plans on drug pricing.

WHO assistant director-general Marie-Paule Kieny said there was agreement that industry needed reasonable returns on research and development, but governments should play a stronger role in setting prices and directing the drug research agenda.

A lack of transparency on drug development costs, how prices are set and the varying amounts charged for the same medicines in different countries are all viewed as obstacles to building a fairer system.

"More transparency is absolutely vital to give us evidence for future action," Kieny told reporters.

Drugmakers are acutely sensitive to the issue, after Donald Trump accused them of "getting away with murder" on prices shortly before he was inaugurated as U.S. president - and it is also rising up the agenda in many other countries.

In a bid to placate payers, patients and politicians in the all-important U.S. market, several companies - most recently Sanofi - have pledged to limit price rises there.

Still, firms remain reluctant to specify exactly how they come up with drug prices and prefer to stress the value that their medicines bring.

So-called value-based pricing has become a mantra for much of the industry, but Kieny said she had "serious reservations" about a system that essentially puts a value on a life and then allows a drug to be priced up to that level.

"We think value-based pricing is not feasible for a product that is indispensable," she said.

Thomas Cueni, head of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, said the Amsterdam meeting had been constructive, despite differences of opinions.

"What we would recommend firmly is not to shoot for the stars and get bogged down on ideological debate, but rather focus on one or two areas where there is consensus to think outside the box, like antimicrobrial resistance and shortages," he said.

There is general agreement that new market models are needed to promote the discovery of novel antibiotics, which may end up being reserved for emergency use. Shortages of some off-patent generic medicines, caused by unsustainably low prices for some old drugs, is another shared concern.

(Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Brad Brooks and Anthony Boadle

SAO PAULO/BRASILIA, May 11 (Reuters) - Former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's combative testimony before a federal judge this week did little to dismantle the graft case against him and improve his chances of securing a new term in office.

Lula, a founder of the leftist Workers Party (PT) that controlled Brazil's presidency from 2003 until last year, can only run in next year's presidential election if he avoids a conviction that is upheld on appeal.

Steady questioning by crusading Judge Sergio Moro on Wednesday uncovered no bombshell revelations to shake supporters' steadfast belief that Lula is innocent and the victim of a political witch hunt. Nor did it do much to knock down corruption charges that stand between Lula and a third shot at the presidency.

"Lula left the courtroom the same size as he went in. His testimony will not legally save the former president," said the centrist Green Party congressman Alvaro Dias.

"But politically, there was a repercussion that both fuels the PT's followers and enrages his opponents, as he tried to transform a legal procedure into a political show."

In recent polling, Lula sits atop surveys of potential candidates for the 2018 election but he also has the highest rejection rate, showing strong opposition to him among many Brazilians.

Lula's case is part of an investigation known as "Operation Car Wash" which unearthed how Brazilian construction firms paid billions in political kickbacks and bribes in return for contracts at state-run oil company Petrobras and other government-controlled companies.

The investigation has seen more than 90 prominent businessmen and politicians convicted. Scores of sitting federal congressmen across the political spectrum as well as one-third of conservative President Michel Temer's cabinet are being investigated.

Prosecutors allege Lula was given a beach apartment by construction firm OAS in exchange for helping it win lucrative government contracts.

"DEAD OR ALIVE"

Lula portrayed himself during his testimony as a victim of a vengeful, elitist media that wanted to get him "dead or alive." He also said Brazil's upper class could not stomach his social welfare programs that helped lift millions out of poverty during his eight years in office.

Still beloved by many working class Brazilians, Lula stepped down in 2011 with an 83-percent approval rating.

A former union leader who led strikes in the early 1980s that helped dismantle a two-decade military dictatorship, Lula rose from poverty to the presidency on the back of his ability to electrify crowds at campaign rallies.

He convinced Brazil's legion of poor voters that one of their own could finally rule the continent-sized country.

Moro deployed calm, persistent questioning to prevent the ex president from using his oratory skills to piece together a convincing, coherent explanation of the accusations against him.

Moro consistently interrupted to rein in Lula when his testimony veered toward what the judge labeled political stumping.

"If Lula's supporters hoped to turn May 10, 2017, into a landmark in his quest to return to the presidential palace, the repeated doubts in his testimony and the lack of an overwhelming street demonstration by supporters clouded that ambition," wrote Igor Gielow, a political analyst for the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper, Brazil's largest.

The uncertainty of Lula's fate as he faces five corruption trials, and the political polarization that has encompassed Brazil, demonstrate how the country's institutions have matured, said Carlos Pereira, a professor of public administration at the Getulio Vargas Foundation.

"It's a historic moment that a Brazilian president is on trial at all, it shows the degree to which our system of checks and balances has strengthened," he said.

Pereira noted that corruption has been endemic in Brazil for hundreds of years and leaders had acted with impunity until recently. But the autonomy given to investigators and courts in the 1988 constitution as the nation emerged from dictatorship paved the way to end that.

"Politicians held great sway over the judicial system, but now they are under its thumb. That is a new twist in Brazil," he said. "It is amazing, ironic and astonishing for an emerging democracy." (Reporting by Brad Brooks and Anthony Boadle; Writing by Brad Brooks; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Andrew Hay)
COLUMBUS  A Columbus driver who was found sleeping while slumped over the steering wheel of his running pickup, with an open beer can in his lap and fresh paint transfer on his vehicle, pleaded no contest to third-offense drunken driving.

Brandon LaPointe entered his plea in Platte County Court stemming from a Sept. 3 incident in which the city mans 2001 Chevrolet pickup, with the defendant sleeping inside, was found idling while parked with the headlights on in the 2500 block of Ninth Street.

Platte County Court Judge Frank Skorupa scheduled LaPointe for sentencing on the Class W misdemeanor on June 14. The charge carries a maximum penalty of one year in jail and a $10,000 fine.

LaPointe was previously convicted of driving under the influence in July 2006 and November 2008 in Platte County.

In exchange for his plea, the county attorneys office dismissed charges of leaving the scene of an accident, refusal of a preliminary breath test and possessing an open container of alcohol.

Court documents describe an investigation that began shortly after 2 a.m. Sept. 3 with the report of a hit-and-run accident in the 1000 block of 25th Avenue.

Columbus Police Officer Jorge Magdaleno found a parked 1997 Honda Civic that had been struck on the rear passenger side by an unknown vehicle. A couple of blocks away, the officer found the sleeping LaPointe inside his pickup.

There appeared to fresh damage to the front bumper of the sleeping drivers pickup, Magdaleno wrote in his probable cause arrest statement.

I also observed an open Steel Reserve can in LaPointes lap, Magdaleno wrote.

During an inspection of the defendants pickup, the officer said he found fresh blue paint transfer on the passenger-side front bumper that matched the Honda Civic.
LIMA, May 11 (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition is asking other Latin American countries to pressure President Nicolas Maduro's government into implementing a "democratic agenda," opposition leader Julio Borges said on Thursday.

Borges, the president of Venezuela's opposition-led National Assembly, traveled to Lima to meet with Peruvian legislators and President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who has been one of Maduro's most vocal critics among Latin American leaders.

He said the humanitarian crisis and strong protests against Maduro's socialist government had crossed Venezuela's borders because of a wave of refugees across the region.

"It's important - fundamental - that we get several governments in the region to unite in the short term to make sure in Venezuela there exists nothing other than a popular and democratic agenda," Borges told Reuters.

Venezuela has suffered through more than five weeks of violent anti-government protests in which 39 people have died. The opposition has decried Maduro as an autocrat who has wrecked the OPEC member's economy, and demanded elections to resolve the political crisis.

Peru recalled its ambassador to Caracas in late March.

Appearing together with Borges in the Presidential Palace later on Thursday, Kuczynski said he had "no desire to interfere in the internal matters of other countries" but that countries in the region must support the wellbeing of Venezuela's people and provide "humanitarian assistance."

Kuczynski said he told Borges that "we're prepared to help with this, to help as part of a group of American countries that are worried about an important neighbor. Venezuela is the number one issue in America."

Borges said the aim of the strategy of street protests and calls for international pressure was to "break the conscience of the armed forces and the political groups" that still support Maduro, and to avoid more deaths.

He told Peruvian reporters after his speech to Peru's congress that he would travel to Brazil next week to convene a summit with congressional leaders from across the region to push for a "democratic transition" in Venezuela.

Socialist Venezuela has lost many regional allies as several Latin American countries have moved to the right in recent years.

"There's a new map in Latin America that I'm sure will strongly support this democratic agenda for Venezuela," Borges said.

Last week, Borges met with U.S. President Donald Trump's national security advisor H.R. McMaster, where they agreed on the need to bring Venezuela's crisis to a quick and peaceful conclusion. (Reporting by Reuters TV and Marco Aquino; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool)
By Joyce Lee

SEOUL, May 12 (Reuters) - Netmarble Games Corp stumbled in its market debut on Friday as a regulatory ban on minors playing its mega-hit game spooked some investors who had clamoured to buy into the success of the South Korea's largest smartphone games maker.

The stock opened at 165,000 won ($146.65), above the IPO price of 157,000 won, and rose as high as 9.2 percent in early trade before falling as far down as its IPO price at one point before recovering back to near opening levels. The KOSPI index was down 0.5 percent as of 0424 GMT.

A Netmarble spokeswoman on Friday confirmed media reports that the gaming regulator had barred anyone aged 18 and under from playing its mega-hit game "Lineage II: Revolution" until the company changes an in-game item trading system.

The spokeswoman said the company would change the feature in the age 12-plus role playing game, which gaming data provider SuperData named the world's biggest earning game in February even though it was only available at home.

Media reports had said the ban was expected to last for at least two weeks, but Netmarble and the regulator declined to comment on the timeframe.

South Korea is the world's fourth-largest gaming market, with annual revenue of about $4 billion, data from researcher Newzoo showed.

Analysts described the ban as a temporary setback and said Netmarble's ability to churn out hits in a crowded smartphone gaming market made it a sound bet. The follow-up to Lineage II - "PentaStorm" - is the most popular game on the Google Android store in South Korea on Friday.

"Compared to other Asian game developers such as Mixi or GungHo that have not had a notable follow-up after they released mega-hit games, Netmarble has steadily released hits," said Shinyoung Securities analyst Jang Won-yeol.

A shortage of tradeable shares will also help support the stock, brokers said.

About 17.6 million shares out of 84.7 million total are available for trade, with the rest - almost all owned by controlling and strategic shareholders such as Netmarble founder Bang Jun-hyuk and China's Tencent Holdings - in a six-month lock-up.

Netmarble said in April it expects to have a war chest of some $4.4 billion for acquisitions after the listing to realise its goal of becoming one of world's top five games companies by 2020 with 5 trillion won in annual revenue.

The company had priced its April IPO, which last month raised $2.3 billion in South Korea's second-largest initial public offering, at the top of an indicative range.

($1 = 1,126.1000 won) (Reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Miral Fahmy)
By Prak Chan Thul and Matthew Tostevin

PHNOM PENH, May 12 (Reuters) - As a political crackdown intensifies in Cambodia ahead of elections, critics of veteran strongman Hun Sen fear a change in U.S. priorities under President Donald Trump will reduce pressure to respect human rights.

Although not a top U.S. concern, the Southeast Asian country of 15 million people offers a window into the shift to an "America First" foreign policy that Washington says could put its traditional values behind security and trade.

"Trump is lowering the bar for authoritarian behavior around the world and it has affected us in Cambodia," said Naly Pilorge of the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defense of Human Rights.

Activists said fresh concern had been raised by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's recent comment that promoting U.S. values such as freedom, human dignity and "the way people are treated" can get in the way of policy on security and economic interests.

That marked a shift towards the non-interference stressed by China, which has courted Cambodia with billions of dollars in infrastructure loans - with no political conditions - and has made Hun Sen one of Beijing's closest allies in the region.

Hun Sen, Cambodia's prime minister since 1985, railed against lectures from the Obama administration on rights, democracy and corruption.

And the former Khmer Rouge guerrilla openly favoured Trump for election, has sympathised with Trump's antipathy to the media and drawn comparisons with his own rule.

"The months since Trump's inauguration have coincided with a precipitous and severe deterioration in the human rights situation," said Chak Sopheap, executive director of the Cambodian Center for Human Rights said. "Changes in policy and rhetoric in Washington are not going unnoticed."

Opponents accuse Hun Sen of stepping up political attacks ahead of local elections in June and a general election next year, while the 64-year-old strongman has said rights must be balanced against stability.

CIVIL WAR THREAT

During his rule, Cambodia has emerged from one of the 20th century's most murderous conflicts to clock annual growth rates above 7 percent. Life expectancy has risen from 50 years to 70.

This week, Hun Sen told soldiers that if his Cambodian People's Party doesn't win elections it would mean civil war. He told them to be prepared to crack down on any election protests.

Demonstrations have been suppressed; defamation cases have targeted opposition members; activists have been detained; a legal change has cleared the way for the state to shut down parties at will.

Saying he feared his party would be dissolved if he stayed on, opposition leader Sam Rainsy resigned. Rainsy already lives in exile to escape a defamation conviction.

The State Department has voiced concern at the political party law and the prolonged detention of five high-profile activists.

"Support for human rights, democracy, and rule of law remains an important component of the U.S.-Cambodian relationship, which also includes trade, development, security cooperation, people-to-people ties, and much more," U.S. Embassy spokesman Jay Raman said in an email to Reuters.

"The United States regularly discusses these issues in public and private at all levels of government and with a range of civil society voices."

But Hun Sen's critics believe less overt attention is being paid to human rights than under President Barack Obama.

Comparing postings on the U.S. embassy's Facebook page from the period since Trump's inauguration with the same period a year earlier, there are markedly fewer mentions of human rights or of meetings with activists.

"The new U.S. administration have been very quiet. Perhaps they are not organized as yet," said Son Chhay, a parliamentarian from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party. "Trump doesnt seem to care much about human rights and democracy anyway."

A government spokesman said that during a recent visit by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State W. Patrick Murphy, human rights had not come across as a top priority.

"They talked about their own interests," Siphan Phay told Reuters. To the fore was stopping North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile programme, he said.

Despite Hun Sen's professed admiration for Trump, there has been no sign of relations improving rapidly.

In fact, Cambodia this year cancelled an exercise with U.S. forces, expelled a U.S. military aid unit and said it wanted to renegotiate a deal that has allowed the United States to repatriate hundreds of Cambodians convicted of offences there.

Hun Sen has also frequently emphasised what a good friend Cambodia now has in China. (Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
By Minami Funakoshi

TOKYO, May 12 (Reuters) - The Japanese government for the first time released a nationwide list of over 300 companies that have violated labour laws, hoping this name-and-shame tactic would help eliminate abuses and prevent "karoshi," or death by overwork.

In the list published this week on the labour ministry's website, major companies such as advertising agency Dentsu Inc and electronics maker Panasonic Corp are named for illegal overtime, and a local unit of Japan Post, a subsidiary of Japan Post Holdings Co, is mentioned for failing to report a work-related injury.

Abuses such as illegal overwork have become so common in Japan in the past decade that such companies have been dubbed "black" companies in the media. Public outrage over long working hours and the suicide of a young worker at Dentsu in 2015, later ruled by the government as karoshi, have pushed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to make labour reform a key policy plank.

The labour ministry's list includes 334 companies that have received warnings for excessive overtime and other labour violations between last October and this March. Regional labour bureaus had already individually made these cases public, though they had sometimes withheld the company names.

However, not all companies under investigation are publicised or included in the list, a labour ministry official said. The ministry publicises the companies' names only when it decides doing so would help encourage compliance and would be in the public good, she added.

The nationwide list will be updated every month.

Abe's government in March endorsed an action plan for sweeping reforms of employment practices, including caps on overtime and better pay for part-time and contract workers.

The proposals, which may come into effect from 2019, will only add to strains already felt by firms grappling with a deepening labour shortage due to a rapidly ageing population. That said, more pressure to boost productivity is seen as long overdue and could boost growth in the long term.

Lawyers and activists, however, have said the steps the government has so far proposed do not go far enough.

A spokesman for Dentsu declined to comment, and Japan Post could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Panasonic said the company takes the labour violation case seriously and that it will work to prevent such future cases. (Reporting by Minami Funakoshi; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)
By Marta Nogueira

OIAPOQUE, Brazil, May 12 - Deep beneath the waters of the Atlantic off Brazil's most northern coast, French major Total SA is hunting for what it hopes will be Latin America's next big oil discovery.

Metal drill bits, pipes and containers filled with equipment sit in the tropical port of Belem, near the mouth of the vast Amazon River, ready to sink the first exploratory wells 120 km (75 miles) offshore.

Some geologists say the area, known as the Foz do Amazonas Basin, may contain as many as 14 billion barrels of petroleum, more than the entire proven reserves of Mexico.

But another underwater discovery threatens to derail Total's plans: a massive system of coral reefs just 28 kilometers from where the French firm and its partners, Britain's BP PLC and Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, plan to drill.

Brazilian scientists had suspected since the 1970s that the area might be home to a sizeable reef. But the unusual depth of this formation - reaching more than 100 meters (400 ft) - coupled with the Amazon silt clouding the waters, delayed that confirmation until just five years ago, just as the government was putting drilling leases out for tender.

Environmentalists, led by campaigner Greenpeace, are now pressuring regulators to block oil exploration in the area. They believe the thriving reef system, which is more 1,000 kilometers long and dotted with brightly colored coral and giant sponges, may be home to new marine species.

Scientists fear an oil spill could damage this treasure before it has even been studied. Leaked crude from Foz do Amazonas wells could also potentially wreak havoc on Brazil's far north Amapa state, home to the world's largest belt of mangroves and thousands of square miles of virgin rainforest, says environmental scientist Valdenira Ferreira.

"In terms of environmentally sensitive environments, this is the biggest in Brazil," said Ferreira, a researcher at the Institute for Scientific Research of Amapa, who is helping prepare a study for the nation's Environment Ministry.

Total says it is scrupulously complying with all requirements by Brazilian authorities and is taking every precaution to ensure that drilling would be safe.

The dispute highlights pressures facing Brazil to protect its unique environmental patrimony as its tries to foment jobs and economic growth for its citizens.

It is also reviving concerns that Brazil, which ranks among the Western hemisphere's least open economies, remains a difficult place to do business despite a new conservative government's efforts to cut red tape and woo foreign investment as it seeks to drag the economy out of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

Four years after Total and its partners paid 622 million reais ($196 million) for five exploration blocks, they are still waiting for the go-ahead from Brazil's environmental regulator, Ibama.

The agency has given no indication as to when it will make a ruling.

"It's an area that is very sensitive. We're concerned about everything there," said Alexandre Souza, environmental analyst for Ibama.

The delay has Total's Chief Executive in Brazil, Maxime Rabilloud, suggesting the company might sit out three offshore oil license rounds that Brazil has scheduled for this year.

He said Total had already invested some 200 million reais ($64 million) in developing its fields in Foz do Amazonas, with no guarantee yet that it will be able to proceed.

"It's complicated to ask for more money to enter into more exploration blocks without clarity about when the earlier blocks can be evaluated to see if they have any oil," he said in his office in Rio de Janeiro in March.

Such uncertainty could prove damaging for Brazil in a year when oil companies have 25 auctions to choose from around the world, says Antonio Guimaraes, executive secretary of exploration and production at the Brazilian Petroleum Institute (IBP), an industry group.

He has urged President Michel Temer's government to speed passage of legislation currently pending in Congress that would make it easier for companies to win environmental licenses, an effort that has alarmed environmentalists.

DEEPSEA DRILLING

Deep-water discoveries during the 2000s off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in an area known as the pre-salt made Brazil one of the oil sector's hottest destinations, prompting then-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to declare "God is Brazilian".

The announcement of the massive Libra offshore prospect in 2010 - the worlds biggest in decades - heightened the excitement around the area.

Today, the pre-salt region accounts for almost half of Brazil's oil production, and is rising fast. Success there has piqued interest in other offshore regions of Brazil, including Foz de Amazonas.

The basin was the most hotly disputed area of Brazil's 2013 oil auction. In addition to Total and BP, Brazil's OGX and Queiroz Galvao Exploration and Production (QGEP) secured blocks in the area.

Helping fuel optimism was a May 2015 offshore discovery by ExxonMobil in nearby Guyana in an area with similar geology.

"I would say in terms of the opening of a new frontier in Brazil, the Amazon Basin is a strong candidate," said geologist Pedro Zalan, who did exploration work for Petrobras in the area.

Total, which said it hopes to receive a decision from Ibama this year, plans to drill nine exploratory wells at water depths of more than 1,900 meters.

Environmentalists say such extreme depths bring greater risks, making it harder to plug and contain any spill. BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. waters, was from a deep-water well of similar depth.

In a 64-page document submitted to Ibama, reviewed by Reuters, Total said the environmental risks were fully understood.

"We are very aware of the sensitivity of the ecosystems," Rabilloud said. He said the company was using a well design that has been used in similar conditions in French Guiana without any incidents.

In the event of an accident, Rabilloud said an emergency response could be activated within two hours.

In contrast to findings by Ferreira, the environmental researcher in Amapa, Total has concluded that ocean currents would carry any pollution away from the coast of Brazil.

Rabilloud expressed confidence in receiving a green light from Ibama but said the uncertainty over the delay made operations difficult.

"Right now, Total is ready to invest," he said. "Now, if you ask me when I will get the license, I can't tell you."

FISHING AND UNEMPLOYMENT

President Temer's government has proposed plans to simplify environmental licensing and hand companies a greater say in a bid to avoid lengthy delays.

The Ibama environmental agency has also seen its budget slashed as the government scrambles to curb a massive deficit.

Packed with members of the farming and business lobby, the government has been accused of downplaying environmental damage, including rising levels of deforestation.

The government denies neglecting environmental rules or planning to dilute them. It says, however, its top priority is creating jobs and bringing an end to Brazil's harshest recession in decades.

In Amapa, the Brazilian state with the highest rate of unemployment last year, many residents are eager for potential benefits from the oil industry.

However, in the remote town of Oiapoque near the border of French Guiana, many suspect that will pass them by.

Fishermen in the poor town fear the oil industry may instead hurt their livelihoods.

"If we have an oil spill here, the fish will die and what will the fisherman do," said Rodolfo Antonio Ferreira da Silva, 63, who has fished for nearly 50 years, casting his net into the river.

For Adair Jeanjaque, a member of the Kalina indigenous people, the oil venture smacks of colonialism.

"It will be the same as when the Portuguese came here and took everything without any benefit," Jeanjaque said in his village on the outskirts of Oiapoque. ($1 = 1.7910 marka) ($1 = 3.1740 reais) ($1 = 3.1497 reais)

(Writing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Daniel Flynn; Editing by Marla Dickerson)
SOFIA, May 12 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

SEGA - A new draft law envisages expansion of the rights of Bulgarians interior ministry and intelligence services to check the property of high level politicians and public figures.

-- Prime Minister Boiko Borisov said he expected Bulgarian economy to grow between 4.5 and 6 percent next year, double on the finance ministry forecasts for a growth of around 3 percent. (Sega, Duma, Standart, Monitor, 24 Chasa, Trud)

-- The salaries of teachers may rise by at more than 15 percent as of September, Finance Minister Vladislav Goranov said, pointing that the raise would not lead to a higher fiscal deficit. Bulgaria targets a fiscal shortfall of 1.4 percent of gross domestic product in 2017. (24 Chasa, Standart, Duma, Monitor, Trud)

SEGA - Only 26 officials were sentenced to prison on corruption charges last year, and neither is a high ranking official, a report of the prosecution showed.
By Alexander Cornwell, Agnieszka Flak and Tim Hepher

DUBAI/MILAN/PARIS, May 11 (Reuters) - The naming of a new boss at Etihad Airways presents the Gulf carrier with an opportunity to rethink its aggressive expansion strategy after the failure of minority-owned Alitalia underlined the big barriers to global growth.

Ray Gammell was appointed interim CEO this week, days after Alitalia sought bankruptcy protection with $3.3 billion of debt. He replaces veteran boss James Hogan.

Hogan's strategy was to buy up minority stakes in myriad airlines but the struggles of that strategy, most recently with Alitalia, are emblematic of a quandary peculiar to the industry.

The path to growth for airlines often lies in gaining access to rivals' routes. Yet in the European Union, which mainly operates as one nation in aviation, foreigners cannot majority-own an airline. At Alitalia, the lack of full control meant that Etihad could not deal effectively with labour problems.

Since 2011, Abu Dhabi state-owned Etihad has spent billions of dollars buying minority stakes from Europe to Australia as it races to catch up with regional rivals Emirates and Qatar Airways.

Alitalia was Etihad's eighth and most high-profile bet. But the 560-million-euro ($609 million) investment lies in tatters, placing Hogan's wider strategy under the microscope, after staff overwhelmingly rejected its latest restructuring plans.

Now the future of Etihad's other leading investment, in Air Berlin, is also in doubt as the Gulf carrier pursues a strategy review that began last year. Like Alitalia, the German carrier has made big losses and it said two weeks ago it was seeking a new partner, which could include a new investor.

An Etihad spokesman said its review was ongoing but declined to comment on how its strategy might change or the impact of Alitalia's failure on its global plans.

But a senior source at the Gulf carrier said lessons would be learned from the Italian investment and they would play a role in shaping future strategy.

CONTRASTING TACTICS

Etihad's strategy has allowed it to cut costs by pooling items like airplane procurement, while offering a larger network; it says it brings together 600 destinations and over 700 aircraft.

Hogan's "approach to partnerships did not pan out, but a few of his principles are still valid", said Will Horton, senior analyst at Australian aviation consultancy CAPA.

Etihad's efforts to grow through minority stakes have at times been compared to Swissair's failed "Hunter" strategy of the 1990s. Swissair's buying binge, often acquiring stakes in ailing airlines, contributed to huge losses which eventually saw it grounded in 2001 and sold to Germany's Lufthansa in 2005.

Hogan has always rejected the comparison, saying Etihad was doing things differently to Swissair and had demonstrated it could control costs.

Etihad and its rivals have demonstrated spectacular growth but are increasingly pressured by a slowing Gulf economy due to relatively low oil prices. They have chosen different strategies to sidestep the regulatory dilemma governing foreign ownership and pursue global expansion.

Qatar Airways, like many other carriers, has entered one of three global alliances. These give some access to other carriers' traffic rights without breaking ownership rules, but allow only limited control over route-planning and costs.

Dubai's Emirates, by contrast, mainly operates alone - an approach that gives it control of over its network and costs but also means it carries all the risk. The Middle East's largest airline, reported a drop in annual profit on Thursday for the first time in five years

As the youngest of the three major Middle Eastern carriers, 14-year-old Etihad has looked to catch up, and followed a third path of buying into other airlines to expand its reach.

ITALIAN WOES

When Hogan rescued Alitalia in 2014 after months of negotiations, he had been encouraged by two reformist prime ministers, Enrico Letta and his successor Matteo Renzi. Letta flew to Abu Dhabi to help clinch the deal.

"When Etihad arrived in 2014, we thought this time it would finally work, that this was it," said Alitalia pilot Stefano Di Cesare of the Fit-Cisl union.

Yet Italian industry leaders say Etihad underestimated the country's tangled politics and chronic labour strife.

Italian executives, officials and unions said in interviews with Reuters that alienating Alitalia's workforce was among a series of mis-steps that ended Etihad's Italian dream. Many also say Etihad underestimated the blistering growth of low-cost carriers Ryanair and easyJet.

Without a majority stake, Etihad's influence was limited despite being the largest single investor on 49 percent. And despite the lure of Italy's important tourism market, it was forced to watch Alitalia's efficient rivals mop up the benefits.

"There is no doubt that the idea to manage the company from Abu Dhabi was a very serious mistake," Italian Industry Minister Carlo Calenda told parliament last week.

The Etihad spokesman said Alitalia had been in financial trouble for decades and that its investment was welcomed wholeheartedly in Italy. Etihad believed the new restructuring plan developed by Alitalia's management would have addressed its problems, he added.

AIR BERLIN

In Germany too, Etihad had seen Air Berlin, its first investment in 2011, as the door to unrestricted access in a market where it has limited traffic rights with its own planes.

But that airline has seen losses widen to a record 782 million euros in 2016.

For now, Etihad continues to provide funding. Air Berlin says Etihad has granted another loan facility of 350 million euros and a letter of support for at least 18 months.

But industry sources say Etihad could exit Air Berlin by seeking a deal with German flag carrier Lufthansa, with which Etihad is keen to work.

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr said on Friday he had held talks with Abu Dhabi about the future of Air Berlin, but that it was up to the emirate to resolve Air Berlin's 1.2-billion-euro debt problem, which also prevents Lufthansa buying it.

"Air Berlin and Alitalia have proven extremely tough challenges," said UK aviation consultant John Strickland.

Etihad's new CEO will need to address losses already incurred and then "assess lower risk methods of extracting value out of the important German and Italian markets," he said.

Other investments such as Air Serbia and Air Seychelles have been more successful. There, Etihad was given hands-on management control and benefited from close diplomatic ties.

Even as the carrier picks up the pieces of its European adventure, Etihad faces its own restructuring that sources close to the company say has seen near-daily redundancies.

This may also weigh on the strategic decision facing Irishman Gammell as he takes up his interim post this week, followed in coming months by a permanent successor to Hogan.

"Etihad is likely to look to growth markets for further organic growth such as the Indian Sub-Continent and Asia, but as ever this will be dependent on traffic rights," Strickland said.

($1 = 0.9196 euros) (Additional reporting by Stanley Carvalho in ABU DHABI, Stefano Bernabei and Isla Binnie in ROME, Victoria Bryan in BERLIN and Mark Bendeich in MILAN; Editing by Pravin Char)
By Marine Pennetier and Maya Nikolaeva

PARIS, May 12 (Reuters) - Centrist French President elect Emmanuel Macron sought to woo conservative members of parliament to his cause on Friday and head off a row with an ally as he bids for victory in elections for parliament next month.

Macron, until last year economy minister in the outgoing Socialist administration, blew apart the traditional political boundaries of French politics on May 7 when he won the presidency under the banner of his own one-year-old Republic on the Move (REM) party.

His main task now is to try to secure enough seats for REM in the June parliamentary election to give him a majority to push through a set of business-friendly economic reforms.

On Thursday, he named 428 people - around half of whom had never held elected office before - to stand for REM in France's 577 constituencies.

However, a row broke out with centrist ally Francois Bayrou whose MoDem party, which backed Macron in the presidential election, protested that they were underrepresented in the list.

Bayrou said late on Friday that a "solid and balanced" agreement had been reached after day-long talks between officials of both parties in which Macron was involved.

Among the names were also 24 defecting MPs from the outgoing Socialists and on Friday the party reached out to moderate conservatives to join the cause.

"There is a group among The Republicans (France's conservatives) ... saying 'we want to be useful to the country, but we do not want to 'Macronise' ourselves', Macron's head of candidate selection Arnaud Leroy said on BFM TV, naming a number of leading figures among The Republicans.

"We, being responsible people, are open to discussions. I am not closing any doors," he said.

In a sign of how sensitive the reconstructing of the French political landscape is, Alain Juppe, a moderate conservative ex-prime minister, swiftly denied on Twitter reports that he had struck a government deal with Macron.

"There is obviously no Juppe/Macron deal!!!!" Juppe said on his Twitter account.

RTL radio had minutes earlier reported that there was such a deal and that conservative Edouard Philippe, a lawmaker and mayor of Le Havre, would become prime minister.

Philippe and Richard Ferrand, secretary general of Macron's REM party, have been touted over the past few days by French media as possible prime ministers.

"RECYCLING OPERATION"?

Macron has already made room in the parliament he wants to see for former Socialist prime minister Manuel Valls. His team promised on Thursday not to put up a candidate against a man who represents a wing of the party whose political views are close to Macron's.

REM has made clear the way is open for more deals of this kind with other leading Socialists from the party's right wing and with left-leaning lawmakers among The Republicans.

In seats held by people who are potential allies it is holding back from putting forward a REM candidate, for the time being.

Macron, an ex-banker who was elected on May 7 with 65 percent of a run-off vote to beat the far right's Marine Le Pen, will take over power this Sunday from Socialist President Francois Hollande at a ceremony at the Elysee Palace.

Thursday's publication of Macron's partial candidate list produced the first sign of tension within his camp since he was elected.

Gaspard Gantzer, communications adviser to outgoing President Francois Hollande, declined a nomination on Friday after constituents of the region he was due to represent criticised the move, Ferrand said late on Friday.

Bayrou said that a candidate from his MoDem camp would replace Gantzer.

(Additional reporting by Claude Canellas in Bordeaux, Cyril Camu and Ingrid Melander and Baye Felix in Paris; Writing by Andrew Callus and Bate Felix; Editing by Richard Balmforth and Ralph Boulton)
By Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO, May 12 (Reuters) - Japan's economy is expected to expand for a fifth straight quarter in January-March led by a recovery in consumer spending and solid offshore demand, a Reuters poll found, suggesting a firm trend in the making.

Analysts project the economy will continue to expand as exports rise, while capital spending is expected to recover reflecting strong corporate earnings and growing business confidence.

But the analysts noted that U.S. trade policy will be closely watched for developments as President Donald Trump's protectionist policies could hurt Japan's exporters.

The economy was expected to expand at an annualised rate of 1.7 percent in the first quarter, the fastest growth rate since a 2.2 percent rise in April-June 2016, the poll of 18 analysts showed.

The forecast figure would translate into 0.4 percent growth on a quarter-on-quarter basis following a revised 0.3 percent rise in the final quarter of last year.

"The economy in fiscal 2017 is expected to continue to pick up with a tailwind of such as the global economic recovery and a weak yen," said Hidenobu Tokuda, senior economist at Mizuho Research Institute.

"Uncertainty over the overseas political situation has eased but risks such as the prospects for the Chinese economy remain."

Private consumption, which accounts for roughly 60 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), was seen rising 0.4 percent in the first quarter, after it showed no growth in the October-December period.

Offshore demand - or exports minus imports - was expected to add 0.1 percentage point to growth, the third straight quarterly positive contribution to the economy, the poll showed.

Analysts say global recovery in the manufacturing sector is behind strong exports - especially in Japan's shipments to Asia.

Capital spending likely slipped 0.4 percent in the first quarter after a robust 2.0 percent gain the previous quarter, the poll found. But analysts believe, given upbeat business sentiment, that firms' willingness to invest has not diminished.

The Cabinet Office will announce the GDP data on May 18 at 8:50 a.m.(2350 GMT, May 17).

A separate Reuters' survey last month showed that confidence among Japanese manufacturers had risen for an eighth straight month to a level not seen since before the 2008 global financial crisis, reflecting output and export gains led by overseas economic recovery.

Key data next week include March core machinery orders, which are expected to show a 2.1 percent rise from the previous month, up for a second straight month.

The core orders, a highly volatile data series regarded as a good indicator of capital spending in the coming six to nine months, were seen rising 0.6 percent in March from a year ago following a 5.6 percent rise in February.

"Exports and factory output have been favorable helped by overseas economic recovery and a softer yen...Uncertainty over the Trump administration's trade policy raises worries, which makes firms cautious about capital spending," an analyst at SMBC Nikko Securities said in the survey.

The Cabinet Office will release machinery orders on May 17.

The Bank of Japan's corporate goods price index (CGPI) due on Monday, which measures the price companies charge each other for goods and services, was forecast to rise an annual 1.8 percent in April.

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko; Editing by Eric Meijer)
MOSCOW, May 12 (Reuters) - The following are some stories in Russia's newspapers on Friday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- The search tool Sputnik, launched by Russian telecommunication company Rostelecom in 2014, has failed. Now the project should be either closed or restructured, the daily reports, citing sources.

- A wine company, believed to be majority owned by VTB President Andrey Kostin, has acquired 1,088 hectares of vineyards in the Crimea.

- S7 Group, Russia's second largest air carrier, has opened four new routes from St. Petersburg using regional airplanes Embraer and will base part of its local fleet in the city's Pulkovo airport, the daily reports citing the general manager of the group as saying.

- Russia's 10 largest private pension funds in Russia for the first time exceeded combined assets of 2 trillion roubles ($35 billion).

- The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), along with Chinese and Middle Eastern investors, plans to invest $1.5 billion in the project Bank City, which aims to build 1 million square meters of housing and offices in the Moscow region Tushino, the newspaper said citing sources.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- Dutch company Hendrix Genetics plans to build a complex in Russia to produce 6.5 million turkey eggs a year. The company may win a 13 percent share of Russia's market for the product, the daily reports.

RBC

www.rbc.ru

- The cost of Russia's state programme on developing the Arctic can be cut from 209.7 billion r0ubles ($3.7 billion) to 50.9 billion roubles ($891 million). The newspaper reports that the Economy Ministry has proposed proposed to exclude a number of infrastructure projects and the construction of icebreaker "Leader".

($1 = 57.1161 rubles) (Reporting by Margarita Popova; Editing by Dmitry Solovyov)
LINCOLN  Political critics left an angry sign with a vulgar word on the lawn of Rep. Jeff Fortenberry's home in Lincoln, prompting a Twitter rebuke from the congressman.

"This sign was placed on my lawn last night," Fortenberry posted on Twitter and Facebook.

"Be angry with me, direct your protest at me," he wrote, "but do not frighten my children in their home."

The sign, which Fortenberry posted along with his message, stated: "Traitors put party above country. Do the right thing for once, ----head."

"Nebraska Betsies" took credit for the sign, tweeting that they "decided to help Jeff Fortenberry enhance his home's curb appeal."

Fortenberry's Facebook post prompted nearly 300 comments, overwhelmingly supportive of him.

"This is not acceptable," the Nebraska Democratic Party tweeted in reply. "Signs like this do not change your mind and don't reflect movement wanting affordable health care."

The Republican congressman and his wife have five daughters.

Fortenberry declined further comment about the incident, which was reported to Lincoln Police.

Timing of the act appeared to be connected to the congressman's vote in favor of a Republican health care reform bill that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The House passed the bill last week.
By Duncan Miriri

NAIROBI, May 12 (Reuters) - Serena Hotels operator TPS Eastern Africa is optimistic about prospects for this year after an 8 percent rise in bookings for safaris in Kenya for second half, its chief executive said on Friday.

Bookings are up even though Kenya goes to the polls on August 8, a decade after a disputed presidential election led to violence, which left more than a thousand dead and the vital tourism sector on its knees. A series of attacks by al Shabaab militants from 2013 has also hit Kenya's tourism industry.

TPS CEO Mahmud Janmohamed told Reuters there were hopes that the election would pass off fairly peacefully, after a peaceful vote in 2013. The increase in bookings was also a reflection of stronger demand from Chinese, American and Indian visitors.

"At the moment, the Kenya safari circuit is looking better during the second half of this year despite the elections," he told Reuters in an interview.

But Janmohamed said Kenya's traditional European source markets had not yet recovered fully after the al Shabaab militant attacks in 2013.

Tourism, which is a top hard currency earner for Kenya, had an improvement in arrivals and revenue last year, but the performance was still way below 2011, when visitors jumped to a record high, a year considered as a benchmark.

The country earned 99.7 billion shillings ($965.15 million) from tourism last year, up from 84.6 billion shillings in the previous year, according to government statistics.

TPS Eastern Africa operates a chain of luxury hotels, lodges and tented camps in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, using its Serena brand. Janmohamed said they had also won a contract to manage a new hotel in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, which will start operations next year.

The group returned to profit last year, after a loss in 2015, thanks to good earnings from the Tanzanian and Ugandan businesses.

This year, the group will still have to rely on the performance from those markets to shore up earnings, as it renovates and expands its main hotel in Nairobi, a 200-room five star property, which is currently operating at half its capacity due to the renovations.

Janmohamed said TPS was investing $24 million in the project, which was likely to be fully completed by June next year.

"Nairobi will give us a healthy return on our investments so that is one area which we are working on, which in short term is obviously costing us money and losing of a lot of revenue," he said.

Similar renovations at the group's hotel in Kampala had been completed, the chief executive said.

Janmohamed called on the Kenyan government to boost its marketing budget for the tourism sector, and to keep developing new source markets for tourists, to avoid an over-reliance on traditional European markets.

"Africa has the potential," he said.

($1 = 103.3000 Kenyan shillings) (Editing by Jane Merriman)
GENEVA, May 12 (Reuters) - An attack on Yemen's Hodeidah port would displace more than 400,000 people, the U.N. International Organization for Migration said on Friday, doubling its previous minimum estimate.

"A minimum of 400,000 people will flee the city eastwards, once Al Hudaydah is under attack," IOM's Director of Operations and Emergencies Mohammed Abdiker said in a statement, using a different English spelling for the port's name.

The U.N. has previously warned against any attack by Saudi-led coalition forces on the Houthi-held port, the aid lifeline for millions of people in desperate need of food, saying that 200,000-500,000 people could be displaced. (Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
By Nita Bhalla

JAMMU, India, May 12 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It was around 3 a.m. when Abdul Kader was awoken by his children's screams as flames spread through their corrugated iron and wood shack and dense smoke filled the air.

The 37-year-old burkha seller and his family escaped last month's blaze unhurt, as did the six other Muslim Rohingya refugee families living there, but it has left the community in India's northern city of Jammu fearful and on edge.

"The police said it was an electrical short circuit, but we think it wasn't an accident," said Kader, sitting on the floor of a madrasa in a slum in Jammu's Narwal area.

"They don't like us here and want us to leave. We were driven from Burma, then Bangladesh and now they want us to leave India. The situation is bad for us wherever we go."

For almost a decade, India has been a safe haven for thousands of Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar. Around 14,000 Rohingya live here, with half residing in the Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

But rising tensions with bordering Pakistan and a spike in separatist violence in neighbouring Kashmir, coupled with nationalist anti-Islamic sentiment globally, are threatening the Rohingya once again as demands grow for their eviction.

Right-wing political parties, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party, blame them for crime in Jammu, straining public resources, and claim they pose a threat to security.

As a result, India has started registering and monitoring the Rohingya, a move which activists fear could eventually force them back to Myanmar where they face atrocities, including murder, rape and arson attacks.

"Indian authorities know very well the abuses the Rohingya community have been facing in Myanmar," said Amnesty International India's Raghu Menon. "Deporting them and abandoning them to their fates would be unconscionable."

MOST PERSECUTED COMMUNITY

Often described as the most persecuted community, the minority Rohingya have for years faced discrimination, repression and violence in northwestern Myanmar.

Denied citizenship by the largely Buddhist government since the 1990s, they face apartheid-like conditions. Hundreds have died in communal violence, and thousands have sought refuge in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India and Bangladesh.

Around 75,000 people have fled to Bangladesh just since October as the military cracks down on Rohingya insurgents.

Mass killings and gang rapes by the army in recent months have been documented, prompting the U.N. to claim this could be seen as crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

Some 7,000 Rohingya refugees live in Jammu, mostly residing in urban slums, eking out a meager living selling garbage or doing manual work for Indians, often underpaid and exploited.

"They are extremely poor and settle wherever they find safety," said Suvendu Rout from ACCESS, a Delhi charity providing Rohingya refugees with literacy and skills training.

"Many are construction workers and are contributing to building India's infrastructure, while others collect rubbish which helps keep our cities clean."

PARASITES, CRIMINALS, SECURITY THREAT

But a contrasting narrative is being spun in J&K, a troubled state which is disputed by bordering Pakistan, and where a separatist insurgency has simmered for almost three decades.

Over the last six months, Jammu has witnessed a string of anti-Rohingya public protests by political parties, Hindu groups, student bodies and the business community.

Billboards demanding refugees "Quit Jammu" have been put up, local media have branded them "parasites", Rohingya effigies torched on the streets, and a petition filed in the High Court seeking their eviction from J&K.

Arun Gupta, spokesman for Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is also part of J&K's coalition government, says public hostility towards them is growing.

"Jammu is a small place, and with this kind of influx, it is problematic. They are into a lot of illegal activities and since they are poor and idle, they are easily accessible to anti-national elements seeking to destablise Jammu," said Gupta.

"Kashmir is already on boil. We do not want this to spread to Jammu. People here have started to realise this and believe these refugees should leave as of yesterday."

Many advocating for the eviction even suggest rival Pakistan may be behind the Rohingya migration here, with the aim of stoking trouble but evidence to support these claims is scarce.

Police in Jammu, for example, say only 11 cases against Rohingya refugees have been registered in the last six years. These include illegal border crossing, rape and theft.

They also been no cases or evidence to suggest links to separatist militancy in Kashmir, connections with Pakistan, or their involvement in Islamic radicalisation, the police add.

Political analysts say the Rohingya are getting caught up in two different, yet equally nasty undercurrents: a global wave of xenophobic sentiment and the local Indian and Pakistan dispute.

"Pakistan certainly has a history of meddling in Kashmir, and we can't rule out the possibility that it would want to use the Rohingya to serve its interests in Kashmir," said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the South Asia Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre.

"But even if there's something to these allegations, this doesn't justify the draconian measures being called for against the entire Rohingya community, most of whom we can safely assume are perfectly law-abiding folks simply trying to make a living."

LITTLE PROTECTION FOR REFUGEES

The home ministry has responded positively to the eviction demands and last month directed all states to register and identify Rohingya refugees as a first step.

A home ministry official said after this identification process they would decide on the next step.

"Can't really say at this stage if it will be deportation. They are Myanmar nationals who have come to India from Bangladesh. Diplomatic consultations are on with both Myanmar and Bangladesh about this," the official said.

Those backing the deportation stress India is under no legal obligation to provide the Rohingya refuge.

India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, which spells out refugee rights and state responsibilities to protect them. Nor does the country have a domestic law to protect the almost 210,000 refugees it currently hosts.

They also argue Rohingya are technically "illegal", pointing to Article 370 of the constitution which gives J&K "special status" and prevents outsiders from permanent settlement.

Human rights groups disagree, saying deporting the refugees to Myanmar violates the internationally recognised principle of non-refoulement that forbids forcibly returning people to a country where they are at risk.

In the Rohingya slum in Jammu's Narwal area, many feel the intensifying anti-Rohingya rhetoric is leading to hate crimes such as assaults or suspicious fires in their settlements.

The U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says while India has not informed them of any change in policy towards the Rohingya, there are signs the space in Jammu is shrinking for them.

"A few Rohingya families have informed UNHCR they had to leave Jammu due to fear," said the UNCHR in a statement, adding it was helping them resettle in other parts of India.

Madrasa teacher Kafayat Ullah Arkani, 32, say most have no choice but to stay in Jammu for the time being.

"If Rohingya commit crimes, then lock them up. Don't punish an entire community by sending them to be massacred," said Arkani. "We want to go home, but we can only go when it's safe." (Reporting by Nita Bhalla @nitabhalla. Additional reporting by Krishna N. Das. Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit http://news.trust.org)
By Gul Yusufzai

QUETTA, Pakistan, May 12 (Reuters) - A bomb exploded next to a convoy of the deputy chairman of the Pakistan Senate on Friday in the violence-plagued province of Baluchistan, killing at least 25 people, officials said.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bombing. The group's Amaq news agency said a bomber wearing an explosive vest carried out the attack.

At least 35 people were wounded in the blast near the town of Mastung, 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial capital of Quetta. Television footage showed a vehicle mangled by the blast.

Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the explosion he believed he was the target and he had sustained minor injuries.

"There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone. Haideri is a member of Jamiat e Ulema Islam, a right-wing Sunni Islamist political party that is part of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's coalition government.

District health official Sher Ahmed Satakzai said the death toll had risen to 25 and 10 were in critical condition in hospital.

Security in Pakistan has improved since a crackdown on militancy began in 2014, but a fresh wave of attacks that left more than 100 people dead in February has increased pressure on Sharif's government.

Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber, adding Haideri's driver was among those killed.

The senator, who is being treated in hospital, was on his way back to Quetta after distributing graduation certificates to students from a madrassa, or religious academy.

Separatist militants in Baluchistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province's resources.

Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. A U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last year in Baluchistan.

The province was rocked by a series of attacks late last year that claimed over 180 lives and raised concerns about a growing militant presence.

A judicial report released after an attack on the province's lawyers left more than 70 dead criticised security provisions in the region and called for increased clampdowns on extremists. (Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Nick Macfie and Toby Davis)
By Stephen Jewkes

MILAN, May 12 (Reuters) - Europe's biggest utility Enel is not interested in large acquisitions but is looking for opportunities to buy grid networks around the world, including in South America, CFO Alberto De Paoli said on Friday.

Enel, which recently bought Brazilian power distribution company Celg-D, already owns generation and distribution assets in Brazil and is the biggest private energy player in South America.

"We are interested in making more grid acquisitions in Brazil if opportunities arise from market liberalisation," De Paoli told Reuters in a phone interview after the group's first quarter results.

Enel is looking to its grids and green power businesses to drive growth, especially in emerging markets and North America.

"In Europe we could be interested in buying small-size renewable energy concerns and retail businesses," De Paoli said.

Enel, which became Europe's biggest utility last year when it re-absorbed its green energy unit, controls Spanish utility Endesa.

There have been media reports that investment funds could be interested in buying Endesa, but De Paoli said it was not for sale.

"We are happy with our Spanish investments and have absolutely no plans to sell down our stake," he said.

In first quarter results on Friday Enel's core earnings were impacted by lower margins in its Iberian businesses.

De Paoli, who confirmed Enel's 2018 business targets, said business in Argentina and Brazil was improving and the company intended to continue investing in Latin America.

There has been some media speculation that the group is considering selling down its business in Chile, but De Paoli said that was not the case.

"There are no plans to scale back our investments in Chile," he said. (Reporting by Stephen Jewkes; Editing by Susan Fenton)
By Ju-min Park

SEOUL, May 12 (Reuters) - North Korea sent a rare letter of protest to the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday warning that a new package of tougher sanctions would only spur its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea's state media reported.

The protest was lodged by the recently revived Foreign Affairs Committee of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, which said the U.S. House of Representatives was "obsessed" with a sense of disapproval and warned it of dire consequences.

"The U.S. House of Representatives should think twice," the committee said in its letter, a copy of which was published by the KCNA state news agency.

Tension has been high for weeks over North Korea's nuclear and missile development and fears it will conduct a sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation this month to tighten sanctions by targeting North Korea's shipping industry and companies that do business it.

The U.S. legislation was intended to cut off supplies of cash that help fund North Korea's nuclear programme, and increase pressure to stop human rights abuses such as the use of slave labour, the bill's sponsor said.

The North's committee said it would fail.

"As the U.S. House of Representatives enacts more and more of these reckless hostile laws, the DPRK's efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrents will gather greater pace, beyond anyone's imagination," the committee said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Last month, North Korea reconvened the Foreign Affairs Committee, which was abolished in the late 1990s, in what analysts saw as an attempt to improve relations with the outside world amid its deepening isolation.

The committee is chaired by Ri Su Yong, a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un and a career diplomat. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Robert Birsel)
NAIROBI, May 12 (Reuters) - A showdown between South Sudan's President Salva Kiir and his ousted army chief intensified on Friday after the general failed to return to the capital Juba following his dismissal amid a worsening civil war.

General Paul Malong, who has been leading Kiir's military campaign against rebels supporting his political rival Riek Machar, left Juba with a convoy of vehicles for his home state of Aweil in the northwest on Tuesday, raising speculation over his next move.

"When I talked to him (Malong) last, he was not in a good mood, he was in a fighting mood," Kiir told reporters on Friday. "I tried to calm him down, but he was rather wild."

Kiir said Malong should have thanked him and formally handed over the command of the military to his successor instead of leaving the capital. Kiir wants Malong to return, but so far the general has refused.

"I have assured him (Malong) of his safety as soon as he arrives in Juba. I have given the security organisation all the necessary orders," Kiir said.

"It is the concern of everybody and nobody wants ... Malong to run into such unplanned problems. There are so many foreign hands that are now being seen behind General Paul as pushing him," he said, alluding to unspecified foreign interference.

On Thursday, Malong said he had gone home for a rest but on Friday he refused to board a plane that was sent to fly him to the capital unless all his bodyguards accompanied him, presidential spokesperson Ateny Wek Ateny said.

"He should not have more than four bodyguards by law," Ateny told Reuters, adding that a committee of elders from Malong's home state has been sent to "persuade" him to come to Juba.

Malong was not available for comment.

His sacking followed the resignations of several senior military figures who alleged that there was ethnic bias in the army and that war crimes had been committed. Some of them later vowed to topple Kiir.

South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011 but has been in a civil war since 2013 when Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy, Machar, from the rival Nuer community.

The move triggered a conflict that has pitched parts of the oil-producing country into famine, paralysed public services and forced a quarter of the population -- 3 million people -= to flee their homes. The United Nations has said the violence amounts to ethnic cleansing and risks escalating into genocide. (Editing by Aaron Maasho Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)
ABIDJAN, May 12 (Reuters) - Ivory Coast's national security council held an emergency meeting on Friday, a defence ministry source said, after disgruntled soldiers left their barracks and staged a revolt over a bonus payment dispute.

Soldiers in several towns and cities across the country went into the streets and fired gun shots in the air.

The council includes President Alassane Ouattara, the defence and interior ministers and the senior leadership of the West African nation's security forces.

(Reporting by Joe Bavier; editing by RIchard Lough)
By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA, May 12 (Reuters) - President Hassan Rouhani will defend his efforts to open up Iran to the world on Friday in a final televised debate against the hardline challengers who aim to topple him in an increasingly acrimonious election next week.

Rouhani, swept into office in a landslide four years ago on promises to reduce Iran's international isolation, is seeking a second term after negotiating an agreement with world powers to curb Iran's nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions.

Normally measured in his public speeches, he has taken the gloves off in recent days, accusing his opponents of human rights abuses and openly voicing the grievances of reformers who say they have been oppressed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

"I am surprised. Those of you who talk about freedom of speech these days... (you are) those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut," Rouhani told a rally on Monday in a thinly-veiled attack on Raisi, a former jurist involved in mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s.

"Our people want political and social freedom ... In the election they will not vote for those who knew only executions and prison for 38 years," Rouhani said in a rally on Tuesday.

He faces five challengers, led by two prominent hardline frontrunners who say he has sold Iran's interests too cheaply to the West and allowed the economy to decay through mismanagement. The first round is on May 19, with a run-off a week later if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.

Although Iran's political system puts ultimate power in the hands of an unelected supreme leader, and all candidates are vetted by the conservative clergy, elections are nevertheless hard-fought contests that can bring dramatic change.

In two earlier, bruising debates, the main challengers, cleric Ebrahim Raisi and Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, tore into Rouhani's economic record, arguing that he failed to bring Iranians a better life despite the lifting of sanctions.

Rouhani's biggest worry is that some of the voters who carried him to a single-round victory in 2013 will stay home, disillusioned that the lifting of sanctions has brought few economic benefits and the pace of social change has been slow.

"Rouhani is trying to reach out to voters who guaranteed his election four years ago by hoping to have a freer Iran," said a former official close to Rouhani's government.

Rouhani's deal to lift sanctions won the cautious backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei and his hardline loyalists criticise its failure to boost the economy. Benefits have been slow to arrive, in part because of unilateral U.S. sanctions still in place over Iran's missile programme, human rights record and allegations it supports terrorism.

"CROSSING RED LINES"

Although Rouhani won more than three times as many votes as his closest challenger four years ago, he only narrowly avoided a second round with just over half the total votes. If he sheds just a bit of that support now, he could face a dangerous second round against a single opponent who unites the hardline faction. "I wanted to boycott this election because I am so disappointed with Rouhani's failure to bring more freedom to Iran," said teacher Reza Mirsadegh in the central city of Yazd.

"But I have changed my mind. I will vote for Rouhani to prevent Raisi's win."

Iran's ultimate authority Khamenei has warned the public against protests like those that broke out after the disputed election of 2009, when reformers disputed the victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Those who deviate from this path will be slapped in the face," Khamenei said in a televised speech on Wednesday.

The powerful Revolutionary Guards force, its affiliated volunteer Basij militia and many Friday prayer leaders have thrown their support behind Raisi, a veteran jurist whose name has also been mentioned as a future supreme leader.

Qalibaf, a charismatic former Guards commander, lacks Raisi's backing from the clerical establishment but also has millions of supporters for a hardline message on security and a populist economic platform. He has made a run-off more likely by resisting calls from other hardliners to step aside.

Rouhani, meanwhile, has crossed traditional red lines in his rallies by openly criticising the security forces, trying to fire the enthusiasm of reformist voters.

"Those who over the past years only imposed bans ... please dont even breathe the word freedom for it shames freedom," Rouhani said in a rally in the city of Hamedan. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Peter Graff)
By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA, May 12 (Reuters) - President Hassan Rouhani defended his efforts to improve Iran's economy and hit out at his hardline opponents in a final televised debate on Friday against challengers who aim to topple him in an increasingly acrimonious election next week.

Rouhani, swept into office in a landslide four years ago on promises to reduce Iran's international isolation, is seeking a second term after negotiating an agreement with world powers to curb Iran's nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions.

"If we want a better economy, we should not let groups with security and political backing to get involved in the economy," Rouhani said during the debate, in an unmistakable swipe at the Revolutionary Guards Corps, an elite military force with a vast business empire, which has backed his main hardline opponent Ebrahim Raisi.

Normally measured in his public speeches, Rouhani has become increasingly forceful in recent days, giving voice to the grievances of reformers who say they have been oppressed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution by security forces like the Guards.

"I am surprised. Those of you who talk about freedom of speech these days... (you are) those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut," Rouhani told a rally on Monday in a thinly-veiled attack on Raisi, a former jurist involved in mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s.

"Our people want political and social freedom ... In the election they will not vote for those who knew only executions and prison for 38 years," Rouhani said in a rally on Tuesday.

He faces five challengers, led by two hardliners, cleric Raisi and Tehran Mayor Mohammed Beqar Qalibaf, who both say Rouhani has sold Iran's interests too cheaply to the West and allowed the economy to decay through mismanagement. The first round is on May 19, with a run-off a week later if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.

Although Iran's political system puts ultimate power in the hands of an unelected supreme leader, and all candidates are vetted by a hardline watchdog body, elections are nevertheless hard-fought contests that can bring dramatic change.

As in two earlier, bruising debates, the main challengers tore into Rouhani's economic record, arguing that he failed to bring Iranians a better life despite the lifting of sanctions.

Raisi described a litany of poor economic performance under Rouhani, saying 250,000 small businesses had shut and cash payments to the poor should be raised: "Unemployment is high. People's purchasing power has dropped dramatically," he said.

Rouhani's biggest worry is that some of the voters who carried him to a single-round victory in 2013 will stay home, disillusioned that the lifting of sanctions has brought few economic benefits and the pace of social change has been slow.

"Rouhani is trying to reach out to voters who guaranteed his election four years ago by hoping to have a freer Iran," said a former official close to Rouhani's government.

Rouhani's deal to lift sanctions won the cautious backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei and his hardline loyalists criticise its failure to boost the economy.

Benefits have been slow to arrive, in part because of unilateral U.S. sanctions still in place over Iran's missile programme, human rights record and allegations it supports terrorism.

Rouhani's allies say the hardliners oppose deeper change and exposure to international competition in part because of the economic interests of the Guards, which gained control of swathes of Iran's industry during its years of isolation.

"CROSSING RED LINES"

Although Rouhani won more than three times as many votes as his closest challenger four years ago, he only narrowly avoided a second round with just over half the total votes. If he sheds just a bit of that support now, he could face a dangerous second round against a single opponent who unites the hardline faction. "I wanted to boycott this election because I am so disappointed with Rouhani's failure to bring more freedom to Iran," said teacher Reza Mirsadegh in the central city of Yazd.

"But I have changed my mind. I will vote for Rouhani to prevent Raisi's win."

Iran's ultimate authority Khamenei has warned the public against protests like those that broke out after the disputed election of 2009, when reformers disputed the victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

"Those who deviate from this path will be slapped in the face," Khamenei said in a televised speech on Wednesday.

The Guards, their affiliated volunteer Basij militia and many Friday prayer leaders have thrown their support behind Raisi, a veteran jurist whose name has also been mentioned as a future supreme leader.

Qalibaf, a chisel-jawed former Guards commander, lacks Raisi's backing from the clerical establishment but also has millions of supporters for a hardline message on security and a populist economic platform. He has made a run-off more likely by resisting calls from other hardliners to step aside.

Rouhani, meanwhile, has crossed traditional red lines in his rallies by openly criticising the security forces and judiciary, trying to fire the enthusiasm of reformist voters.

"Those who over the past years only imposed bans ... please dont even breathe the word freedom for it shames freedom," Rouhani said in a rally in the city of Hamedan. (Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Peter Graff)
LINCOLN  A proposal that could require Nebraska third-graders to be held back in school if they aren't reading at grade level led to impassioned debate Thursday in the Legislature.

Sponsored by Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Elkhorn, the bill would also require school districts to craft personalized reading-improvement plans for students in kindergarten through third grade if they underperform on state-sanctioned reading tests.

"Too many school districts still have a large percentage of students not reading at grade level when they are promoted to fourth grade," Linehan said. "There's little evidence that a child who leaves third grade not able to read will ever catch up."

Her proposal (LB651) drew fierce opposition from education officials, who argue it takes the wrong approach to improving reading proficiency and would burden districts without providing extra funding.

"Clearly Sen. Linehan wants children to be able to read, and clearly she does not want to hurt children," said Lincoln Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, an opponent of the bill. "Some people have said this is a strange way to show it, and I would agree."

Lawmakers adjourned for a long weekend without taking action on the proposal.

Linehan would need support from 32 fellow senators to secure more time on the agenda for a potential vote this year.

"I think I'm very, very close," she told reporters following Thursday morning's debate.

Last year, 18 percent of third-graders failed to meet state reading standards, down from 28 percent in 2011.

Some of that improvement can be attributed to districts adopting policies such as those in Linehan's bill, she said.

Lincoln Public Schools tries to avoid retaining students at any grade level, and such decisions are made on a student-by-student basis with consultation by parents, teachers and administrators, said Jane Stavem, associate superintendent for instruction.

Stavem said studies show requiring students to repeat a grade doesn't necessarily have a big enough impact to be beneficial, and can actually be harmful in some circumstances.

"It's not something we would typically want to do," she said.

Linehan's original proposal would require almost all third-graders who don't meet reading goals to be held back, with exceptions for students who have a disability, have already repeated grades, or have demonstrated mastery of third-grade reading standards through other testing or work samples.

Linehan has since proposed an amendment to let parents opt their children out of being held back.

Pansing Brooks said giving parents that responsibility doesn't resolve her concerns. "We've got parents themselves who can't read," she said.

The proposal appears to have majority support in the Legislature. Lawmakers voted 30-13 last week to bring it forward for debate after it languished for months in the deadlocked Education Committee. But the measure must overcome a filibuster to reach a final vote, which requires support from 33 senators.

In Iowa, lawmakers decided this year to scrap plans for a similar third-grade retention program because of concerns about its cost and effectiveness.

Passed in 2012 with support from Gov. Terry Branstad, Iowa's law would have required third-graders who fail reading tests to participate in a summer reading program in order to be promoted to fourth grade.

Nebraska lawmakers plan to examine strategies for addressing dyslexia and reading literacy as part of a study this summer sponsored by Pansing Brooks, Linehan and other senators.

"We're going to be able to present a much stronger bill about reading next year," Pansing Brooks said. "I think we can more clearly and precisely address the issues and the needs."

Sen. Justin Wayne, a former Omaha school board member who supports Linehan's bill, said it would add urgency to the situation.

"Things get better when there's pressure applied."
BARI, Italy, May 12 (Reuters) - French finance minister Michel Sapin said he and other ministers from leading economies had told U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin it was "unthinkable" that globally agreed policies in areas such as trade and financial regulation could be weakened.

Sapin told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of top finance officials from the Group of Seven economies on Friday that policies could be adjusted as the world economy changed.

"But it is unthinkable, and it will not happen, that one can destroy these collective achievements that give more stability and more ability to grow and which at the end of the day are truly in everyone's interests," he said.

The G7 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting in Italy are hoping to get a better sense of the plans of U.S. President Donald Trump who has threatened to upset the international consensus of recent decades on issues such as trade, foreign exchange and climate change. (Writing by William Schomberg)
By Nqobile Dludla

JOHANNESBURG, May 12 (Reuters) - South Africa's state power company on Friday reinstated its former chief executive Brian Molefe just five months since he stepped down after being implicated in a report by the country's anti-graft watchdog into alleged influence-peddling.

The return of Molefe, an ally of President Jacob Zuma, is likely to deepen a division within the ANC ahead of a conference in December where the party will choose its next leader.

It will also raise concerns among investors about mismanagement and transparency at Eskom given the allegations of Molefe being influenced by the Gupta family, who are close to Zuma.

Molefe resigned in November last year after a report by the Public Protector, a constitutionally mandated corruption watchdog, raised questions over coal deals between Eskom and a company controlled by the Gupta family.

Molefe and the Gupta family have denied any wrongdoing.

The ANC formally criticised Eskom's decision to reinstate Molefe, calling it "unfortunate and reckless", given that the Public Protector's report has not yet been completed.

But Public Enterprises Minister Lynne Brown supported Molefe's reinstatement and a senior ANC source told Reuters President Zuma also backed the return of one of his allies.

Zuma's spokesman did not answer Reuters' calls requesting comment.

The ANC has become increasingly divided as it prepares to pick Zuma's successor. A faction supportive of Zuma wants former African Union chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma to take over, while another section backs Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.

"Molefe's comeback is just going to make a bad situation worse in the party," the ANC source said.

His return follows a refusal by Brown to approve his 30 million-rand ($2.24 million) pension payout.

"Most of the options discussed were not mutually agreeable and the board decided that it was actually optimum to rescind its decision to grant him early retirement," said Khulani Qoma, spokesman for Eskom's board. "By virtue of that, then legally ... you need to then proceed and reinstate him."

NUCLEAR POWER

Molefe is supportive of a proposed project to build a fleet of nuclear power plants in the country that could cost up to $75 billion. Investors see the project as a major risk to South Africa's financial stability.

"The Brian Molefe-Eskom saga as it unfolded further on Friday would be rejected as too improbable if submitted as a script for soap opera," NKC African Economics political analyst Gary van Staden said in a note.

"It is the reality of a twisted and distorted political environment in South Africa."

The main opposition Democratic Alliance called for Molefe's reinstatement to be set aside by a court.

"In view of the spurious reasons given and the complete irrationality of the decision, we will once again be approaching the courts, this time to set aside Brian Molefes redeployment by the ANC government to Eskom," DA shadow Minister of Public Enterprises Natasha Mazzone said in a statement.

Molefe, who quit as a member of parliament on Friday after less than three months in the role, was widely touted to replace Pravin Gordhan as finance minister but lost out to Malusi Gigaba in a cabinet shake-up in late March.

When he stepped down from Eskom a week after the release of the Public Protector's "State of Capture' report, he said that quitting was not an admission of wrongdoing but was in the best interests of Eskom and good corporate governance.

Eskom said it was excited to have Molefe back as the CEO and he would resume his duties on the terms of his original employment agreement. Reuters was not immediately able to contact Molefe for comment via Eskom.

Molefe's first stint at Eskom began in April 2015, when he was drafted in from state rail freight firm Transnet as the utility battled against power shortages. He is largely credited with stabilising electricity supply.

He returns to Eskom in the middle of the construction of three coal-fired power stations. ($1 = 13.4182 rand) (Additional reporting by Mfuneko Toyana, Wendell Roelf; Writing by Joe Brock and Tiisetso Motsoeneng; Editing by Jane Merriman and David Goodman)
By Ernest Scheyder and Scott DiSavino

HOUSTON/NEW YORK, May 12 (Reuters) - Cheniere Energy Inc said on Friday it has had extensive negotiations with China about increasing U.S. liquefied natural gas exports, as a new trade deal paves the way for a second wave of LNG investment in the world's fastest growing gas supplier.

The Trump Administration on Thursday said it reached an agreement with China to increase trade access for some U.S. companies to China, which is expected to include LNG exports.

That should benefit several companies building LNG export terminals in the United States, as the U.S. is forecast to become the third largest LNG exporter by the end of next year.

Cheniere is currently the only company able to export large cargoes of LNG from the continental United States, giving it a leg up now to ink long-term contracts with China, the world's largest growth market for gas.

"Were heartened by this trade deal for its potential to increase Chinese access to American LNG," Cheniere spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder told Reuters.

"We have had extensive negotiations with the Chinese over the last month," he said. Cheniere has also shipped LNG to 20 other countries around the globe, and is in talks to ship to more.

Shares of Cheniere jumped as much as 5 percent to $49.50 on Friday to their highest since February, and the stock has more than doubled since Cheniere's Sabine Pass terminal first opened in February 2016. Shares closed up 3.3 percent to $48.68.

Since the shale boom in the U.S. a decade ago, energy companies have been building export facilities, with as much as 6 billion cubic feet per day of capacity due by the end of 2018.

"In the longer term, the deal paves the way for a second wave of investment in U.S. LNG," said Massimo Di-Odoardo, Head of global gas and LNG research at natural resources consultancy Wood Mackenzie.

"Developers will now be able to target Chinese buyers directly, potentially supporting project financing. It could also support direct Chinese investment into liquefaction and upstream developments on U.S. soil," he said.

Those companies include Dominion Resources Inc, Kinder Morgan Inc, Sempra Energy and Freeport LNG, which are building LNG export terminals, and Exxon Mobil Corp , Veresen Inc, Venture Global LNG and Tellurian Inc, which hope to build new export terminals.

Under the plan, which falls under the framework of the U.S.-China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, Chinese companies can now negotiate long-term contracts to source LNG from U.S. suppliers, the U.S. Commerce Department said.

"We are happy for all support in moving forward with U.S. LNG exports...We view this announcement as a step forward in improving the balance of trade," said Joi Lecznar, a spokeswoman for Tellurian, which is developing the $13-$16 billion Driftwood LNG export facility in Louisiana, expected to enter service in 2022.

Until now, Chinese buyers have not bought long-term LNG supplies from the U.S. directly.

China, however, has bought U.S. LNG through short-term, or spot, deals. The only long-term contracts it has for U.S. LNG are with companies, like Royal Dutch Shell PLC, which themselves have agreements to buy gas from Cheniere's Sabine Pass or other U.S. export terminals.

Sabine Pass in Louisiana entered service in February 2016, making it the first and only big LNG export facility in the lower 48 U.S. states. The United States has been a net importer of natural gas for 60 years; that is expected to change in 2017 as a result of LNG exports.

China was the third biggest importer of U.S. LNG in 2016, having imported 17.2 billion cubic feet (bcf) on six vessels, according to federal energy data. For the first two months of 2017, China imported 30.9 bcf of gas on 10 tankers.

One billion cubic feet is enough gas for about five million U.S. homes.

By 2030, Wood Mackenzie projects Chinese LNG demand will reach 75 million tonnes per annum or 10 bcfd. That would be worth $26 billion a year at current prices ($7 per million British thermal units).

"The U.S. is keen for a slice of the pie," Di-Odoardo said, noting that U.S. LNG accounted for about 7 percent of total LNG imports into China in March.

The Trump Administration earlier announced plans to expedite the environmental permitting process for other new facilities, such as Veresen's Jordan Cove project on the Pacific Coast in Oregon.

(Editing by Marguerita Choy)
By Nick Carey

DETROIT, May 12 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Labor Relations Board has filed an unfair labor practices complaint against Volkswagen AG for hiking health insurance premiums and changing working hours of a group of skilled workers who voted for union representation in 2015.

The complaint is part of a lengthy battle over the NLRB's recognition of the vote by roughly 160 skilled workers at VW's Chattanooga plant in Tennessee to be represented by the United Auto Workers union.

The German automaker has argued against allowing a small group within the plant to have union representation, maintaining that all 1,500 hourly workers should be treated as one unit.

The union sought to represent only a portion of the plant's workers after it narrowly lost a February 2014 election to represent all hourly workers at the plant.

The NLRB complaint states that issues like working hours and conditions of employment are "mandatory subjects for the purposes of collective bargaining."

In an emailed statement, VW spokesman Scott Wilson said, "We fundamentally disagree with the decision to separate" the skilled workers from the rest and "will continue our effort to allow everyone to vote as one group on the matter of union representation."

In an affidavit provide by the UAW, a worker at the plant said that the company has "refused to bargain with the Union over" the changes.

The UAW has never been able to win an organizing vote at a foreign-owned auto assembly plant in the U.S. south. A victory, even for only a portion of workers at the VW plant, would give the union a stronger foothold in the south, where most foreign-owned auto plants are located.

Steven Bernstein, a Tampa-based labor attorney at Fisher Phillips LLP, said the NLRB complaint will likely be followed by others in a legal process that could take three to four years.

"VW is rolling the dice and betting they will eventually get relief through the courts," he said.

Bernstein said that if VW loses, it could be forced to compensate the skilled workers in Chattanooga. But the consequences of allowing a small group to unionize could be much broader as it would affect other companies across the U.S. south.

"Both sides have a lot to lose in this case," he said. (Reporting by Nick Carey; Editing by Leslie Adler)
MEXICO CITY, May 12 (Reuters) - Mexico is looking forward to talks on the North American Free Trade Agreement now that U.S. President Donald Trump's pick for trade representative has been approved, the country's foreign minister said on Friday.

Luis Videgaray said he and Mexico's Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade, Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo and Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong would visit Washington, D.C., next week as the two countries seek to end a dispute over sugar exports and prepare for talks over renegotiating NAFTA.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the North American Free Trade Agreement as being bad for U.S. workers and has threatened to withdraw the United States from the deal with Mexico and Canada if it cannot be changed.

Months of uncertainty about the fate of NAFTA, which has underpinned regional trade since 1994, has affected growth forecasts in Mexico, shaken the peso and curbed investments.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved Robert Lighthizer, Trump's nominee for U.S. Trade Representative, allowing the president to trigger the process for opening NAFTA for revision.

"There's finally a trade representative," Videgaray told reporters. "For us it's good news that the process is closer to starting. Mexico is ready to enter into a serious negotiation."

Mexico's Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo said he thought talks would probably start towards the end of August.

Guajardo said all three countries must recognize NAFTA's positive contributions before starting.

"We can't start negotiating if there isn't a recognition that this treaty has benefited and enriched the three nations. If not, the conditions aren't there to negotiate," Guajardo said at an event in the northern city of Monterrey.

Videgaray said Mexico wanted grow its ties with China, and said meetings with Chinese officials had been planned for this year.

On Thursday, Guajardo sent a stark message to the United States, saying an upcoming visit by Mexican officials to China showed Latin America's second largest economy had other places to export to if Trump decided to tear up NAFTA. (Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez in Mexico City and Dave Graham in Monterrey, Mexico)
Indian premier Narendra Modi addressing just one ethnicity during his visit was a slight to the majority Buddhist population in the country, the National Joint Committee (NJC) said today.

Member of the committee Ven. Elle Gunawansa Thera said they had no issues with the Indian government or its Prime Minister. We do have an issue with the Sri Lankan government, the Thera said.

The government sometimes moves towards India, sometimes towards China or America. We would like to remind the government that this is a country and not something that can be auctioned to other countries or parties, the Thera said.

The citizens have a responsibility to protect the country and its assets, the Thera explained. People can come here as they want but they cannot sell or break any part of the country as they please, the Thera said.

The ETCA would lead to unemployment not just among the Sinhalese but also among the Estate tamil population, the Thera explained.

Tamil is also an official language in the country now. We were never against this. The move made by the Prime Minister will only destroy the reconciliation fought for by the people, the Thera said.

The government had a responsibility to protect the independence and sovereignty of the country, therefore the government should publicize the agreements signed with India. Hiding these agreements leads us to believe that they are not advantageous to the country, the Thera said.

Politicians will gamble at the expense of the country, but if they were to lose the bet it would be the citizens who would have to bear the brunt of the cost, the Thera said. (Thilanka Kanakarathna)
Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte pictured at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France

We dont have a classic family, thats an undeniable reality. There is no less love in our family. Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron, the former Economic Minster won the race for French presidency by a considerable margin, a groundbreaking triumph that launches the political beginners push to revamp Frances economy and reverse a wave of nationalism prevalent in the European Union. The term macron has a meaning Webster says; A mark - placed over a vowel to show that the vowel is long.



Lets talk about Macron and his long vowel in real life and political drama.

Macron, with his blue eyes and bright smile, hand in hand with his loving wife and close advisor, Brigitte Trogneux will walk into Elysee Palace, the 18th century presidential residence in Paris in a few days. When Emmanuel met Brigitte at High school he was only 15, she was 24 years his senior and his teacher. Working together in producing dramas, two years later at 17 he vowed to marry the 41 year old teacher of speech and drama. Without her, I wouldnt be me, Macron now 39 affirmed after winning the first round of voting in April, 2017. Trogneux, 64 with seven grandchildren has become Frances first lady. Unlike in America, the spouses of French Presidents have customarily held no important roles in public affairs.



He wants to give the idea that, if he was able to seduce a woman 24 years his senior and a mother-of-three children, in a small provincial town, without opprobrium and mockery, he can conquer France in the same way. --His biographer to BBC



Brigitte Trogneux Macron, the Drama Teacher

The 39 year-old Emmanuel Macron who took over as the twenty-fifth President of the French Republic, is the youngest French President who is known to be a free-trade centrist defeated his rival far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen. Macron, who has been criticized as being technocratic, theoretical and sometimes lacking in sympathy baffled crowds at rallies with his lofty proposals. Macron has never contested an election before. He was trained in privileged French academies to become a top class civil administrator, but changed to a career in investment banking with Rothschild & Cie., at the peak of the financial catastrophe.



Will the world wake up to welcome the sight of Macron, and the 64 year-old Brigitte Macron whos daughter from her first marriage was in the same class with her second husband at their school in Amiens in northern France. Certainly, the defeating of anti-immigrant, Putin-loving Marine Le Pen from the Presidential stakes for the control of the worlds third largest nuclear arsenal would be a welcome move. Brigitte Trogneux divorced the first husband to be with Macron, and they have ahead of them all the makings of a few classic real-life political drama.



Gap of 24 years between the pair, the same as that between Donald and Melania Trump

Its because she is 24 years older than me that lots of people say, This cant be tenable, it cant be promising. If I had been 24 years older than my wife, nobody would have thought for a single second that I couldnt be an intimate partner, he said this in response to speculations about his sexuality and what he illustrated as parallel lives the media had attached to him. They stimulated the interest of the French print media. Giving an interview to a leading newspaper in Paris last year, she let some light on the early days of their courtship when she said, Emmanuel was only 17 when he said to me: Whatever happens, I will marry you!Trogneux left her husband and began a relationship with her former pupil, finally marrying him in 2007.



Unlike the 46-year-old Slovenia-born Americas first lady Melania Trump, who shun publicity or white house life with her husband Donald 71, the billionaire, who in a remarkable co-incidence is 24 years her senior, speculation rife that Brigitte Macron will go against tradition and accept an official position as First Lady, in government. When youre chosen president, you give your days and nights, you give your private life and your public life, Macron told media. In contrast with her precursors she will run an office. The person who lives with you must have a responsibility and be acknowledged in that role, with no emoluments he said. Being a former teacher, Brigittes main interests would be education and working for disadvantaged children. Macrons predecessor President Francois Hollande, whose term ended on May 14, 2017, assigned his wife/partner Valerie Trierweiler, a staff of five, at an annual cost of $265,000, whereas Nicolas Sarkozy, Former Presidents wife Carla Bruni had a team of advisers, costing taxpayers $ 489,000 a year.



Brigittes eldest daughter, Laurence, is the same age as Macron. For years, they avoided the public eye, presumably aware that their unconventional marriage risked overshadowing Emmanuels lofty political plans. But since launching his presidential bid last year, having previously served for two years as economics minister in Francois Hollandes unpopular socialist government, something has shifted. She told the press, I have to pay attention to the whole thing, do the maximum to look after him. Every night we debrief jointly and we repeat what we have perceived about each other, Her three children, Sebastien, Laurence and Tiphaine, are having a close relationship with their stepfather and were seen campaigning for Macron bearing T-shirts; En Marche!



Mr. Macron, the 39-year-old former investment banker gained 65% of voters cast ballots. He has vowed to undertake controversial labour reforms as part of a push for larger economic convergence among the European Unions member states.



Men want a woman who is grounded, confident and mature -- but they often cant find that in their own age bracket. On the flip side, women want a man who is ambitious, attentive and attractive. Given those variables, its only logical that the older woman-younger man relationship can actually work.-Anon
The United Nations Vesak Day will be celebrated in Sri Lanka this year with the participation of Buddhist leaders from around the world, making it a landmark celebration. The three-day celebration will begin on 12th May in Colombo. Vesak marks the birth, enlightenment and the attaining nibbana of the Buddha. The significance of Vesak lies in the Buddhas teaching of cessation of suffering and universal peace to all humankind. It is a message of peace and perfect harmony between human beings and nature. The United Nations General Assembly accepted the importance of Vesak and in 1999 by a resolution acknowledged that Buddhism as one of the oldest religions in the world contributing to the spirituality of humanity for over two-and-half millennia and will be commemorated annually at the United Nations Headquarters and UN Offices. In 2017, United Nations International Day of Vesak will be hosted by Sri Lanka under the theme Buddhist Teachings for Social Justice and Sustainable World Peace. The events include an International Buddhist Symposium with the participation of over 400 delegates from 100 countries. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Nepali President Bidya Devi Bhandari will be attending the UN Vesak Day celebrations in Sri Lanka.

Sri Lankas foremost real estate major, Blue Mountain, is stepping forward to be a part of the landmark UN Vesak Day celebrations. The world-class real estate developer is proud to partner with UN Vesak Day celebrations with their humble contributions by placing over 600 lanterns on either sides of Japan Friendship road and Denzil Kobbakaduwa mawatha, since the roads lead to the venue of the UN Vesak Day celebrations. The 6-feet tall lanterns in the shapes of lotus flowers and stupas (daagaba) will be placed at every six metres, illuminating a distance of over 6kms to light up the streets and spread the joy of Vesak which will be witnessed by all the dignitaries.

Commenting on the gesture, Dr. Hiran Hettiarachchi (MBBS-Colombo & MBA-Australia), Group Chairman of Blue Mountain, said, Blue Mountain is privileged to participate in the historic UN Vesak Day celebrations in May this year. As a home-grown local company constructing world-class real estate projects, Blue Mountain is proud to make a contribution to the rising profile of Sri Lanka as an important investment destination. We are proud to engage in spread light during the celebrations and we invite the public to come and embrace the Vesak atmosphere and the joy of Vesak at the UN Vesak zone.

Blue Mountain Apartments has built a reputation for offering conveniently located luxury apartments at reasonable prices. It is a key subsidiary of the Blue Mountain Group, which is recognised as one of the countrys most reliable and trusted real estate companies with diversified interests extending across the areas of land sales, apartment development, construction and health and fitness.
Brasilia (dpa) 12th MAY, 2017 - Brazil has declared an end to the state of emergency imposed 18 months ago over the Zika virus epidemic and the surge in birth defects it was believed to have caused.



Between January and April there were only 7,911 new cases of Zika reported, according to the Health Ministry on Thursday, compared to 170,000 cases in the same period last year, a drop of 95 per cent.

The number of babies born with microcephaly, a birth defect in which the brain does not develop properly and the baby has a smaller head, had dropped correspondingly, the ministry said.



However the government would continue to treat the issue as a priority, the ministry added, including encouraging research and maintaining support to victims.



Zika is transmitted by the bite of the yellow fever mosquito, aedes aegypti, but can also be transmitted through sexual intercourse.



After the virus spread across the Americas, the World Health Organization declared a global public health emergency in February 2016 and advised women in some areas to avoid getting pregnant.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has today parried questions on reports that Sri Lanka has rejected China's request for its submarine to dock at Colombo next week after a similar visit in 2014 triggered a strong protest from India, the PTI reported today.

"I have just read the relevant information. I suggest you raise it with the defence ministry for more details," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said when asked whether China has expressed dissatisfaction to Sri Lanka for refusing to let its submarines to dock in Colombo port.

The remarks came as China gets ready to host Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for the high-profile Silk Road summit on May 14-15.

"What I can tell you is that China and Sri Lanka enjoy traditional friendship. The two sides maintain sound cooperation in the fields of politics, economy, culture and military to military exchanges," Geng said.

According to PTI, China continues to pressure Sri Lanka for docking its submarines despite assertion by Sirisena government that it will not permit them due to concerns from India.

India has expressed concern over the previous Mahinda Rajapaksa's government for permitting a Chinese submarine in Colombo harbour in 2014.

China's request to dock its submarines coincided with the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Colombo.

China says it wants docking facilities for its submarines to take part in the anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.

PM Wickremesinghe and Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif are the only two top leaders from South Asia to attend the conference in which India is yet to confirm its participation owing to its objections to the USD 46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The other South Asian countries would be represented by either ministerial or official level delegation. China is yet to release the list of delegates participating in the event.

During his visit, PM Wickremesinghe is expected to finalise the Hambantota Port deal as well as a Chinese free trade zone in the area which were stalled by public protests.
In California, a state known for its love of driving, high-priced gasoline and history of tax revolts, a rebellion is brewing against Gov. Jerry Brown s massive gas-and-car tax increase.

In the two weeks since the Democrat signed Senate Bill 1, opponents have launched an initiative drive to repeal the $52.4 billion transportation package as well as a recall campaign to eject a vulnerable Democratic state senator who is seen as the deciding vote for the law.

The voters are enraged, said Assemblyman Travis Allen , the Orange County Republican behind the repeal initiative, which is pegged to the November 2018 ballot.

Gas is already expensive in California  the state vies with Hawaii for the nations highest per-gallon prices  and SB1 will make it more so by dinging motorists with a 12-cent-per-gallon excise tax hike on gasoline, a 20-cent increase on diesel and higher vehicle registration fees in order to fill potholes, repair roads and bridges, and expand mass transit.

What has Mr. Allen fuming is that lawmakers pushed through the largest fuel tax hike in state history without bringing it before the voters. Instead, they cobbled together a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Democrat-controlled Legislature with no votes to spare.

Only one Republican  state Sen. Anthony Cannella  voted in favor of SB1, and that was after his Central Valley district received $500 million for a commuter rail extension and completion of a parkway to the University of California, Merced.

The California voters were absolutely left out of the loop, said Mr. Allen . There was certainly not substantive buy-in from the California people, who, according to all of the polling data, are overwhelmingly against raising gas taxes.

In Fullerton, three Southern California radio talk show hosts kicked off a campaign Thursday to recall state Sen. Josh Newman , a first-term Democratic legislator who barely edged out his Republican opponent in November, in retaliation for his vote.

Thats the only thing that works, is to take one of their team members out, politically, said Ken Chiampou, who hosts with John Kobylt John and Ken on KFI-AM in Los Angeles. If theres no consequence, no punishment, then theyre going to keep right on doing this crap.

The Los Angeles hosts, joined by Carl DeMaio of KOGO-AM in San Diego , drove home the point by launching their recall campaign at an Arco gas station.

They were backed by Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, who announced the formation Thursday of Californians Against Car and Gas Tax Hikes in order to target Mr. Newman , whose Senate District 29 is based in Brea.

For years, the state has been diverting gas tax revenue away from roads, only now, with this massive 43 percent tax increase, are they promising to fix them, Mr. Coupal said in a statement. We have heard this before, but the only thing Californians can count on is higher taxes.

The organizers are no strangers to ballot fights. Mr. DeMaio was instrumental in placing pension reform before San Diego voters in 2012, and John and Ken fueled the 2003 recall of Democratic Gov. Gray Davis.

Mr. Newman was chosen for a reason: He barely won. Hes unknown. Hes only been in office a few months, and its a district thats been the scene of other recalls, Mr. Kobylt said.

Plus, we have a lot of audience there, he said. Its one of our strongest areas. It was picked for all the right reasons. If youre going to do something, you want it to have a good chance of working.

California voters have a history of turning against their state leadership. They ignited a national tax revolt by passing Proposition 13 in 1976 and stunned the Democratic establishment by turning out Mr. Davis over an energy crisis and an increase in vehicle licensing fees.

Since then, however, the state has undergone a political shift to the left as middle-class residents leave for less-expensive pastures, raising doubts about whether California has enough feisty anti-tax voters left to upend SB1.

The state has drifted leftward in the past decade, so the prospects for another tax revolt are questionable, said John J. Pitney, a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College. But if the economy goes down or gas prices shoot up, anti-tax sentiment could surge again.

The new law is expected to raise $5.2 billion per year over 10 years. The fuel tax hikes take effect on Nov. 1, and the additional transportation improvement fee assessed on each vehicle kicks in on Jan. 1.

Safe and smooth roads make California a better place to live and strengthen our economy, Mr. Brown said in his April 28 announcement. This legislation will put thousands of people to work.

In response to criticism that the Legislature routinely diverts road repair dollars to the general fund, lawmakers agreed to place a constitutional amendment on the June 2018 ballot that bars SB1 funding from being used for anything but transportation.

None of the funding goes to creating new roads or expanding existing ones, which irks opponents, given the states well-known congestion woes.

This new gas tax will do absolutely nothing to alleviate traffic because it explicitly states that this will not build any new capacity, no new lanes, anywhere in California, said Mr. Allen . So if Californians dont like their traffic today, theyre going to like it even less in the future when theyre stuck in the exact same traffic and paying even more for their fuel.

The repeals odds of success may be presaged by the outcome of the recall. The proposal needs 63,593 valid signatures by Oct. 16 to qualify for the ballot, but Mr. DeMaio predicted on the air that it would take as little as six weeks to meet the threshold.

Mr. DeMaio, a former San Diego City Council member, said the recall has been dismissed in Sacramento as nothing more than just a bunch of radio talk show hosts just stirring the pot, but that the political winds may be shifting.

He said the scuttlebutt is that a Democratic state senator recently screamed at her colleagues, in particular the state Senate leader Kevin de Leon. She said that shes hearing an earful from her constituents on this car-and-gas tax, and she feels like they made a bad decision.

Mr. Newman is taking the recall seriously. He has hired the San Dimas political consulting firm Overland Strategies to help fight the recall effort and defended his vote in an interview on the Hourly Struggle podcast.

It wasnt an easy vote, Mr. Newman said. I dont like raising taxes. I asked I think appropriate questions as to: Is this necessary, what are the alternatives? And again I was persuaded that in the current fiscal environment that there werent alternatives. That was the basis for my vote.

In addition, Mr. Brown has taken the unusual step of agreeing to headline a May 23 fundraiser for Mr. Newman in Sacramento, according to the Los Angeles Times.

When voters learn the facts on the recall effort, I dont think theyre going to be too happy about a special election being pushed on false pretenses by a failed politician from San Diego and which is going to cost the taxpayers over $2 million, Mr. Newman said in a statement. Its just more politics as usual, and its exactly what I ran to change in the first place.
Dr. Sagara Karunathilaka, the father of Osteo Healingpathy, the most senior practitioner at Osteo Clinic, Malabe and the doctor who treated even the hard-to-cure diseases such as Parkinson and paralysis was honoured with the title of Nights of Truth in Great Britain recently.

It is a celebrated moment in Sri Lankan medical history.

The title is in recognition of his generous service rendered to the Buddhist and other religious priests, to people with physical disabilities andhigh-profile figures in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Karunathilaka was nominated by Prof. Steve Russel, the father of Holopathy. Dr. Karunathilaka was also invited to open medical clinics in Athens and Los Angeles. Osteo Clinic is a pioneering health center located in Athurugiriya Road, Malabe, and has opened Sri Lankan doors to a consortium of internationally-renowned Osteo Healingpathy treatments focused on treating misalignments of the vertebrae, all other spine related disorders, neurological disorders and bone disorderswithin a short period of time without any side effects.
From left: CCPSL Council Member Dr. Sameera Sennanayake, CCPSL Secretary Dr. Shiromi Maduwage, HNBA Chief Operating Officer Prasantha Fernando, HNBA and HNBGI Chief Executive Officer Deepthi Lokuarachchi and HNBA & HNBGI Head of Marketing Dinesh Yogaratnam

For the second consecutive year, HNB Assurance PLC (HNBA) entered into an MOU with the College of Community Physicians of Sri Lanka (CCPSL) recently with the sole objective of educating the general public on a number of causes which has an immense impact on a healthy lifestyle.

Commenting on this MOU, DeepthiLokuarachchi, Chief Executive Officer of HNBA and its fully owned subsidiary HNB General Insurance Limited (HNBGI)stated, As a socially responsible brand, we take every measure to ensure that people in todays society is protected by all means, especially from unfortunate health conditions. We strongly believe that protection begins in ones own household and is propagated to the surrounding environment; hence individuals should be aware of various health conditions and diseases.

Through this partnership we hope to educate the general public on a number of topics which has a significant impact on our societys health and wellbeing. Sharing views on this partnership formed with HNBA, Secretary of CCPSL Dr. Shiromi Maduwage stated, We are indeed pleased to join hands with a brand that has taken a stand to propagate the concept of healthy living on a much larger scale. Each year CCPSL carries out a number of activities, Island wide under a main theme with an aim of educating the general public on a number of topics related to health and wellbeing.

This year CCPSL has introduced the theme strengthening the health system for improving quality of care and patient safety. Accordingly, CCPSL has planned to carry out a number of national, provincial, district and regional level activities including a number of health symposiums to communicate the importance of health and wellbeing.
ESCAPE (Eradicating Sexual Child Abuse Prostitution & Exploitation), the child protection division of Leads, recently organized a training programme for over fifty care givers from childrens homes in Colombo, Gampaha and Kalutara districts on providing quality care for children in institutions.

Each caregiver was recognized with a certificate of completion for their hard work and dedication in providing utmost care to institutionalized children.

The training focused on childrens mental and physical behaviors, feelings and controlling of emotions, problem solving skills and the rights of child was conducted by staff members of Leads. The occasion was also an opportune moment for the care givers to be appreciated and valued. In the opening lines Nayomi Silva, Manager for Advocacy of LEADS said Help light the lamp for a child. When a child goes to sleep in the childrens homes it may be you that s/he has in mind in the image of a mother, and a father. You are important to them. Not only do you provide their basic needs but also love and assurance, she added.

LEADS, a National NGO with approved charity status is a child focused community development organization committed to reaching the most vulnerable. ESCAPE, the Child Protection Division of Leads works with abused and vulnerable children by providing counselling, therapy, legal support and also works with families of those affected with the intention of reintegrating them back to society. The organization is unique in that it offers the only registered residential therapeutic centers in Colombo and Jaffna, working in partnership with the ministries of Justice, Health, the probation and child care services, and Provincial Council.

The Commissioner of the Department of Probation and Child Care Services  Western Province, Chandima Dissanayake was the chief guest with the probation officers in-charge of Kalutara, Colombo and Gampaha districts too being present.

Congratulating Leads on this initiative of strengthening child care givers in institutions, Dissanayake noted, In Sri Lanka, over 12,000 children are in Institutional Care. Out of which 4,000 children are provided care in the Western province region. We are mothers and fathers of many children. So many children look up to us for that love thats missing because of broken families. I encourage you to reach out to many as possible and to make a change in their lives. Dissanayake related several stories to prove how involving and challenging this task could be and stated the importance of providing training to caregivers in order to uplift their skills and knowledge.

The training taught me two important things. Firstly we as the care givers of children should be happy and capable of taking care for them. Secondly my initial idea on child rights was confirmed during the course - in addition I learnt that children could earn their rights by fulfilling their responsibilities said Upeksha Dilrukshi, Warden of Gunasekera Childrens Home.

The Chief Executive Officer of Leads, Roshan Mendis reiterated that acting in the best interest of the child is the fundamental principle that is supposed to guide local, national, and international policy, programming, research, and care for children.

He quoted a recent study of seven South Asian countries where Institutionalizing abused and neglected children are the most convenient choice both parents and the government is making. He went to clarify that often due to socio-economic and other circumstances these were better equipped to provide the needs of the child. So, while, there is nothing necessarily bad about living in an institution that seems to be inherently bad for a child, as more and higher quality data from low- and middle-income countries emerge, the idea that it is emerging is that it is the quality and characteristics of the care within an environment, rather than the type of environment itself, that most likely impacts a childs health and well-being.

So, the training to increase capacity and quality of care in the absence of sufficient alternate care systems was timely and much needed. He also stated, however we could explore other options that keep children happy  family based options like living with a close relative or alternative options like adoption and foster care.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the spirit of Indian-origin Tamils in Sri Lanka and announced the construction of additional 10,000 houses in upcountry areas.

Prime Minister Modi assured Tamils that the government and people of India are with them in their journey towards peace and greater prosperity.

He also announced a series of sops for the Sri Lankans like setting up of vocational training centres, ten engineering training centres and labs to impart suitable skills, computer and science labs in plantation schools.

Prime Minister Modi was hailed by a mammoth crowd when he referred to their leaders like Saumiyamurthy Thondaman and appreciated their bid to keep the social fabric of the beautiful nation intact.

"Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Sinhala and Tamil people and languages existed harmoniously, we need to strengthen not separate these threads of unity harmony, Tamils of central Sri Lanka are the best placed for this. We remember and salute the struggle of Tamil people of central Sri Lanka, their forefathers and leaders like Saumiyamurthy Thondaman," Prime Minister Modi said.

Recalling visit of Mahatma Gandhi to the country's central area 90 years ago to spread the message of socio-economic development, Prime Minister Modi said that in commemoration of Gandhiji's historic visit, Mahatma Gandhi International Centre was set up with Indian assistance in Matale in 2015. (PTI)
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met former president Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo in an apparently unscheduled late night meeting, The Hindu said today.

Indian High Commisioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu has told that the meeting was held at Mr. Rajapaksas request.

The meeting comes ten days after MP Wimal Weerawansa called for a black flag protest around Mr. Modi's visit.

Mr. Rajapaksa has earlier blamed India for his defeat in the January 2015 presidential polls, but in a recent media interview said that he admired Mr. Modi, the article said.

Former defence secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa and former minister G.L. Peiris had also taken part in the meeting held with the Indian Premier, informed sources told Daily Mirror.
Indian Express: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, announced that from August this year, Air India will operate direct flights between Colombo and Varanasi.

My Tamil brothers and sisters will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath, he said while addressing a crowd at the opening ceremony of International Vesak Day at Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall in Colombo, Sri Lanka yesterday.

Varanasi is the Prime Ministers Lok Sabha constituency. In a similar 2014 visit to Japan, Modi had signed a partnership agreement between Varanasi and Kyoto, both historically significant cities, making them sister cities.

PM Modi is participating in the International Vesak Day celebrations in the island country. Later in the day, he inaugurated the 150-bed multi-specialty Dickoya Hospital which has been built with Indian assistance.

Upon his arrival in Sri Lanka on Thursday, PM Modi met President Maithripala Sirisena and PM Ranil Wickremesinghe, who had earlier visited India in April. In an unscheduled meeting, Modi reportedly also held talks with former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

PM Modi said that he believed that India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity with regards to relations and said that Sri Lanka would find a friend and partner in India who will their nation-building endeavours.

Speaking about the importance of Buddhist teachings and learning in Sri Lankan culture, the Prime Minister said that Lord Buddhas message from two and a half millenia ago is as relevant today.
Nepal President Bidya Devi Bhandari today left to Colombo on a five-day official visit, The Himalayan Times reported today.

Bhandari will visit Sri Lanka at the official invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and is scheduled to attend the UN Vesak Day-2017 Conference to be held in Kandy as the Chief Guest on May 14.

Vice President Nanda Bahadur Pun, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, House Speaker Onsari Gharti, Cabinet members and top government officials bade Bhandari farewell at the Tribhuvan International Airport, where she also received a 21-gun salute from the Nepal Army.
From left to right: Ruwan Welikala, Nestle Vice President - Ambient Dairy; Kalpana Hewawitharana, Nestle Brand Manager - Milkmaid; Shivani Hegde, Nestle Managing Director; Yashasvi Liyanage, Digital Communication Manager; and Radhini DeCosta, Nestle Assistant Vice President -Marketing Services

Digital Initiatives Win Award of Merit for Best Advertising and Marketing by a Website



Milkmaid, synonymous with mouthwatering desserts, and Sri Lankas household favourite for over 100 years, bagged the Merit Award for Best Advertising and Marketing by a Website at the recent BestWeb.lk 2017 Competition. Milkmaid shone brightly amongst the rest of the Food and Beverage (F&B) brands, as it was the only F&B brand to have won an award in the competition.

Said Ruwan Welikala, Vice President-Dairy Milkmaid has been a trusted and versatile dessert ingredient for generations. Our sweet treat search engine has made the brand even more appealing to its digitally savvy consumers ensuring that the sweet treats they love can be found in one easy-to-use platform. We are deeply honoured to have been recognised by BestWeb.lk for the hard work put in by our Milkmaid and Marketing Services teams, as well as our agency partner, Publicis to make Milkmaid.lk what it is today; the best dessert search engine website in Sri Lanka to have reached and delighted its consumers, enabling them to celebrate lifes sweet moments in a simpler way

Milkmaid.lk (www.milkmaid.lk/) is Sri Lankas first mobile friendly dessert-making digital platform that shares appealing 3 step recipes, and do-it-yourself videos by recipe name, occasion and cooking time to make that perfect Milkmaid treat at ones convenience. The platform has increased the brands Share of Attention amongst its target audiences, delighting even the most difficult to reach consumers with mouthwatering desserts.

Milkmaid.lk Website

Milkmaid has also been in the forefront of digital communications in Sri Lanka and boasts of having the largest fan base for its Facebook page, in the F&B category (www.facebook.com/NestleMilkmaidSweetDelights/).

The winners of the competition were selected by a panel of judges with broad expertise in websites. The participants were judged on the quality of design, creativity, traffic, technical achievement and the number of public votes.

BestWeb.lk 2017 is the most prestigious competition held for Sri Lankan websites. Conducted for the seventh time since 2009, it recognises the best websites developed and maintained by companies over a wide range of industries in Sri Lanka.

Milkmaid is made from the highest quality fresh milk, collected from 21,000 Sri Lankan dairy farmers. It is manufactured at Nestles state-of-the-art factory in Kurunegala, upholding the high quality standards Nestle is renowned for across the world.
THE HINDU, 12th mAY, 2017- Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.



Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan, Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.



These groups will present a sustained threat to the United Statess interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan, Mr. Coats said.



Pakistan, he has rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.



In South Asia, the intelligence community has assessed that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.
Sri Lanka faced a major setback in fish exports due to the EU ban and the removal of GSP Plus.

The fish exports from Sri Lanka went down drastically and we lost our market share to our competitors in Maldives, Vietnam and Indonesia. It was not only the seafood exporters that were affected due to this EU ban and removal of GSP Plus it did also effect the chain of people that were involved down the line from the fishermen and their families, the boat owners that was a link to the fishery exports.

The GSP Plus will help us to increase the export volumes, bring in additional revenue to the country and once again we will be placed in the threshold of being the number one tuna exporter from Asia to the EU.

After the lifting of the EU fishery ban for Sri Lanka, GSP Plus was the next big thing that SEASL expected to come. Sri Lanka became eligible to apply for this facility after the EU ban was lifted.

The Government of Sri Lanka worked hard on the application process and SEASL with its members were confident that the Government of Sri Lanka will receive a positive response from EU Commission and we will be successful in getting the GSP + back in 2017 and this we have accomplished today. This is going to be a complete game changer in the region. The team that worked hard to lift the EU ban continued with the same spirit to bring about a truly international seafood export industry in Sri Lanka.

The Government of Sri Lanka, The Department of Commerce and the Foreign Ministry of Sri Lanka and other related agencies worked round the clock to do the balance to meet, what was expected to come was the GSP Plus.

GSP Plus will pave a way for increased exports with zero duty access and will help the country to realize the dream of the Sri Lankan Government to achieve 1.5 billion seafood exports within the next four years.
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Mr Grzybowski's opinion, which was adopted during the Thursday 11 May plenary session, calls for more cooperation with the public and private sector to help better match employee skills with labour market needs. It underlines that the implementation of various initiatives requires stronger local and regional government involvement as they have the knowledge and expertise about the specific, local or regional characteristics of an area.

The European Solidarity Corps is a new EU initiative for young people aged 18-30, which creates opportunities to volunteer or work in projects that benefit communities and people around Europe for a period of two to twelve months. After completing a registration process online, participants could be invited to join a wide range of projects, such as helping to prevent natural disasters or rebuild afterwards, assisting in centres for asylum seekers, or addressing different social issues in communities. More than 27,000 young people have signed up to date.

"I would like to call for the Commission to attribute appropriate funding to the European Solidarity Corps, without endangering in any way the implementation of successful programmes as the Erasmus+. Enabling young people to acquire additional skills by means of work and volunteering benefits both public and private sectors. Therefore, I would like to underline the importance of working with the private sector to couple public and private funds available to support the ESC's initiatives", Mr Grzybowski, Mayor of Rypin, said.

The opinion stresses the need to establish tools to monitor and support the young people participating in order to ensure the quality of the activities offered by the European Solidarity Corps, and also to ensure the young people are properly trained and prepared for the various activities. Furthermore, hosting organisations should follow the principles and standards such as those outlined in the European Quality Charter on Internships and Apprenticeships in order to guarantee quality jobs placements.

Contact:

Lauri Ouvinen

Tel. +32 22822063

lauri.ouvinen@cor.europa.eu grz
Seylan Bank offers its esteemed credit card members fabulous holiday experiences at exquisite Cinnamons resort properties this season.

Through its exclusive partnership with Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts, Seylan Bank offers its credit card members amazing deals which break down all barriers to revelling in their dream holiday! Seylan cards have earned a reputation as the best cards to own for the best deals. No holiday can be truly fulfilling without the swipe of a Seylan credit card and the amazing benefits and the best value it offers.

Seylan Bank Deputy General Manager Retail Banking Tilan Wijeyesekera said, Our discerning credit card members have come to expect unprecedented offers from Seylan Bank and we are delighted to fulfil their expectations year after year by extending exclusive holiday offers that unfailingly exceed their expectations. We engage closely with customers to understand their aspirations and hope for their dream holiday and will continue to offers such exclusive lifestyle experiences for our valued credit card customers through future offers and benefits in the months ahead.

This year too, Seylan Bank has risen to the occasion by extending impressive 40 percent savings for Seylan credit card members and 25 percent savings on Seylan debit cards at Cinnamons resort properties. The card members can also avail of a further 10 percent discount on dining at Cinnamons resorts and a 25 percent discount off full body massages at the Balinese Azmaara Spa. All these offers are valid until May 31, 2017. The discounts on the dining and spa can even be used independently of a stay at the resorts, perhaps on long drives to any nearby Cinnamons resort property to spice up a weekend.

The fact that customers can convert their payment into Seylans Easy Pay Plan offers further unmatched convenience for holiday-goers. It is the only payment plan in Sri Lanka to give the flexibility of choosing from multiple monthly instalment plans. As one of Sri Lankas premium hotel chains, Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts offers a range of signature vibrant experiences at its stunning properties.

Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts Head of Sales and Marketing Leisure Resorts Sri Lanka and the Maldives Romesh Walpola added, We are delighted to partner with Seylan Bank on this promotion and we are confident that this will encourage more of the banks clientele to join our constantly growing database of local guests. The domestic market is one of the largest contributing markets to our overall guest nationality mix and we remain committed to growing this market year-on-year. With the view to provide all our guests with the very best products and services, we look forward to more mutually beneficial initiatives, such as this in the future.
HINDUSTAN TIMES, 11th MAY, 2017

A family of five and a fire officer died and two young children were rescued when police raided a suspected Islamist hideout in Bangladesh early Thursday, a senior officer said.



Sumit Chowdhury told AFP police shot dead all five family members after they emerged from the suspected hideout in southwest Bangladesh.



One of the five stabbed the fire officer, who later died of his injuries, while two others hurled grenades at police.



We were surprised by the attack. Two of them threw grenades and another attacked a fire service officer with a sharp rod. He later died in hospital, said Chowdhury.
Sri Lankas GSP+ application was approved by the Council of Ministers of the European Union (EU) Thursday evening resuming the much-awaited trade concession to the country, Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Harsha de Silva said.

He said the concession would come into effect in less than two weeks. It would only take 10 or 12 days for the EU to issue a gazette making it the law now. This is a huge victory for the government of Sri Lanka as well as the exporters of the country, Dr. de Silva told Daily Mirror.

It was only in late April a resolution submitted by a group of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) saying that the GSP+ should not be granted to Sri Lanka, was defeated by a majority of votes in the European Parliament in Belgium.

A total of 436 members voted against the resolution while 119 voted in favour. Twenty two members abstained from voting on the resolution.

Dr. de Silva was also in Belgium to assist the Sri Lankan mission in laying groundwork to defeat the resolution.

Upon returning on April 29, the Deputy Minister said that regaining the GSP+ trade concession should be used as a platform for a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU.

The GSP+ concession will be in practice for four years at most. This is why we need to sign a FTA with the EU, Dr. de Silva told a news briefing held at the Foreign Ministry.

The GSP+ allows a developing country to pay less or zero duties on its exports to all 28 EU member-states.

The EU withdrew the GSP+ trade facility given to Sri Lanka in 2010 owing to significant shortcomings in respect of the countrys implementation of three UN human rights conventions relevant to qualify for the benefits under the scheme. (Lahiru Pothmulla)
REUTERS, 11th MAY, 2017

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 organization, Erdogan told a news conference in Ankara, saying he would convey Turkeys stance to Trump next week and at a NATO summit later this month.
Opposition supporters use a giant sling shot to throw a Poopootovs, a bottle filled with feces, which is a play on Molotov, during a rally against President Nicolas Maduro.

REUTERS, 11th MAY, 2017- Young Venezuelan protesters lobbed bottles and bags of feces at soldiers who fought with tear gas on Wednesday to block the latest march in more than a month of nationwide protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.



The extraordinary scenes, in what was dubbed the Shit March on the main highway through Caracas, came as thousands of opposition supporters again poured onto the streets decrying Venezuelas economic crisis and demanding elections.
The controversy over EVMs goes to the very root of our democracy. The questions raised about their credibility, if found true, will destroy the democratic structure of the country.

The confident Election Commission (EC) has vehemently refuted all allegations of tampering and has publicly invited everyone to demonstrate the tampering of EVMs used by the commission. Nothing can be more transparent and fair than this.

Much heat and distrust has been generated due to material posted on social media and demonstrations on TV Channels. As a layman, it is difficult to analyse technical issues, but it has a massive impact on public. It is essential to clear the cloud of confusion and doubts.

This fine job is the constitutional obligation of the EC, provided that all those having objections and materials demonstrate the tampering of machines used by the commission.

It is a Catch-22 situation, since use of EVMs has its own advantages but if tampering is possible it is disastrous. An extraordinary matter of this nature must be established by cogent evidence of tamperability and not just perception or by generating public opinion.

The methodology adopted by Arvind Kejriwal rushing to the Assembly in the first instance, ignoring the EC, was apparently an attempt to play to the gallery and, if he would have adopted the right course to show tampering, contentious issues would have been resolved by now.

Undoubtedly, it is a grave and sensitive matter and must be addressed appropriately to sustain credibility of the electoral process. Now that the onus is on him and his team, they must prove their allegations.

If they succeed in proving tampering, the 2014 Lok Sabha and subsequent Assembly elections would be null and void, calling for a fresh mandate, but if they fail, the AAP government and MLAs must face the brunt - resign - and the party must be derecognised and deregistered. Either way, things may be concluded by the EC as a constitutional authority on the material relied upon and may be provided by Kejriwal.

In fact, the issue is not of recent origin. Ever since the deployment of EVMs, on experimental basis in 1982 in one Assembly constituency in Kerela, questions about credibility have cropped up.

Petitions challenging viability and deployment of machines were filed in various courts but were unsuccessful. The ceaseless efforts by authorities did not change the mindset and over the years, the issues have attained a more aggressive posture.

The material posted on social media or by channels was never investigated to ascertain the truth. The general perception is that when major democracies in the world have discarded machines, why are they used in India, continues gaining credence.

If we go in retrospect, the EC was looking for an alternative system to get over the practical hazards of handling bulk paper ballots. Electronic machines found place as a viable alternative for convenient voting and expeditious results.

According to initial plans, the EVMs were to be launched from 1990 onwards, but the plan was deferred due to serious apprehensions. Essentially, the machines had to be tamper-proof and function accurately even if manufactured and maintained by public sector undertakings.

In fact, in 1980 a demonstration in the presence of all political parties was conducted and found satisfactory but subsequently doubts were raised that the machines could be doctored in favour of some selected candidates.

The voting pattern and trends of election results contrary to expected lines contribute majorly to apprehensions. The Uttar Pradesh polls are the latest example, but the statement by the state election commissioner, published on April 14, 2017, that EVMs manufactured prior to 2006 have outlived their utility and if new machines are not provided, he would use paper ballots for 14 municipal corporations, 193 municipal boards and 427 nagar panchayat elections should be an eye-opener.

AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj demonstrates EVM tampering in Delhi Assembly.

Even in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the vote pattern going to BJP was noticed by election officials at Jorhat parliamentary constituency and two more EVMs were removed and seized by the EC on identical performance from Bhopal.

Recently, a machine for the Ater Assembly by-poll was brought from Gobind Nagar constituency in UP. The commissions version is that the used machines are kept in a strong room until expiry of 45 days for filing of election petition, but the machines kept in reserve, in ready condition for replacement in case of any technical snag, if not used, are shifted to other places. The data already loaded is erased before use at the second destination, but the demo in Ater was conducted without erasure of data.

If we to go to the background, in 1990 the Goswami committee for electoral reforms and a special subcommittee of technical experts in the field of electronics, to study all technical and functional aspects, were constituted before deployment of EVMs. Laws were amended to legalise use.

Now, years later, after a notice by the apex court, the plan to provide VVPAT machines as a safeguard is in process, and perhaps the tampering issue may not survive. But the core issue surviving is about the tamperability of EVMs being highlighted and demonstrated.

It is a matter of record that a group of activists filed a petition in 2009, namely VV Rao & Ors vs UOI & Ors raising the issue of EVM tamperability in the apex court. The court directed them to approach the commission.

Some activists did demonstrate on TV the tampering of machines, but ultimately the conclusion of the commission was that the particular machine was stolen from a warehouse in Mumbai and certain components were changed, thus the entire exercise was futile. I hope Kejriwal has done his homework and his agitation over EVMs does not turn out into a fiasco.

It is expected that this issue will be taken to its logical conclusion shortly. There may still be some issues to focus on, regarding deployment/redeployment, storage, transportation, maintenance, workability and programming/data feeding of EVMs, including the conduct of demos and random checks at various levels and the credibility of persons involved, even by outsourcing the job, and to make the process more transparent and open, to obviate any malpractice, even if tampering is ruled out.
Page Content

European Committee of the Regions presses for all urban-related policies to consider health implications

Cities will play an important role in promoting good health in the because of increasing urbanisation. European cities are amongst the best places in the world to live and are known for their competitiveness, innovation and quality of life. Simultaneously in the urban context the rates of chronic and non-communicable diseases is on the rise due to not only genetic, physiological but also environmental and unhealthy lifestyle factors. The European Committee of the Regions highlights the critical importance of European cities in improving public health during Plenary Session on 11 May.

Regional and local politicians call for more comprehensive and sustained attention to health issues in urban-related policies such as transport, environment, and energy as more than 72% of all Europeans live in cities and this percentage is expected to rise to 80% by 2050.

Roberto Pella (IT/EPP), Rapporteur of the opinion on Health in cities adopted on 11 May, said that "thinking globally and acting locally is the correct approach to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in facing the emerging challenges from health issues. Local and regional authorities are the key players in creating a network of institutions, businesses, NGOs and citizens that can create a shared and fair urban cooperation for improved health in cities as a common good. We should also aim for a specific partnership dedicated to health, to be launched under the Urban Agenda for the European Union."

Vytenis Andriukaitis , Commissioner for Health and Food Safety commented on the issue: "I never tire repeating this old adage 'prevention is better than cure'. Health and lifestyle equipment such as pedestrian zones and cycle paths or food procurement schemes for schools and healthier canteens are often in the hands of the municipalities and regions. Also, it is in our regions that we are particularly well situated to address health inequalities by reaching out to young mothers, women on lower incomes, ethnic minorities and the elderly. Locally developed projects can make real difference involving community actors such as social workers, midwives, chefs, charities and hopefully more and more businesses bringing about real, sustainable change."

Critically, the opinion "Health in cities" argues that EU approaches to transport and urban issues should pay more attention to small and medium-sized towns and cities, which are home to over half the EU's population. The rapporteur, Roberto Pella (IT/EPP), is himself mayor of a small town, Valdengo in Italy's Piedmont region. Greater integration of health concerns across policy areas would cut mortality rates, reduce pollution, lower the costs of physical inactivity (estimated at more than 80 billion annually), ease the integration of migrants, and help the elderly, the opinion suggests.

As an extra incentive for action, the opinion recommends that investments "in promoting and implementing healthy lifestyles" should be exempt from the EU's Stability and Growth Pact. Mr Pella urges local and regional authorities to make greater use of opportunities already offered by the EU  to secure funding, improve planning, raise awareness, and engage the public  and calls for the EU's decision-makers to increase the budget of the LIFE programme, through which the EU helps countries, regions and cities develop green infrastructure, protect nature, and support education. Among the other ways in which the EU could help regions and cities improve health, the opinion highlights the value of studies (of the impact of pollution and a lack of exercise) and greater integration of regions and cities into EU and UN initiatives.

The CoR's Commission for Natural Resources (NAT) and the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region organised a seminar on health in cities in Brussels on 10 May chaired by Roberto Pella. The aim of the meeting was to bring together the wealth of knowledge of the United Nations' WHO, four European Commission directorates general (Environment, Education and Culture, Mobility and Transport, and Regional and Urban Policy), and high-level municipal representatives so as to explore the synergies between health, sport and education, environment, climate change, mobility and other urban policies. The event offered opportunities to reflect on how European, national and local policy-making can make a positive impact on European citizens' health outcomes.

Notes for editors:

1/ The European Committee of the Regions is the EU's assembly of regional and local representatives. Created in 1994, its mission is to involve regional and local authorities in the EU's decision-making process and to inform them about EU policies. The European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission consult the Committee in policy areas affecting regions and cities. Its 350 members and 350 alternates either hold an electoral mandate or are politically accountable to an elected assembly in their home regions and cities. Click here for more details on your national delegation.

2/ Other documents:

CoR opinions:

Contact:

Wioletta Wojewodzka

Tel. +32 2 282 22 89

wioletta.wojewodzka@cor.europa.eu
Ecopetrol S.A. operates as an integrated energy company. The company operates through four segments: Exploration and Production; Transport and Logistics; Refining, Petrochemical and Biofuels; and Electric Power Transmission and Toll Roads Concessions. It engages in the exploration and production of oil and gas; transportation of crude oil, motor fuels, fuel oil, and other refined products, including diesel, jet, and biofuels; processing and refining crude oil; distribution of natural gas and LPG; sale of refined and petrochemical products; supplying of electric power transmission services; design, development, construction, operation, and maintenance of road and energy infrastructure projects; and supplying of information technology and telecommunications services. As of December 31, 2021, the company had approximately 9,127 kilometers of crude oil and multi-purpose pipelines. It also produces and commercializes polypropylene resins and compounds, and masterbatches; and offers industrial service sales to customers and specialized management services. It has operations in Colombia, the United States, Asia, Central America and the Caribbean, Europe, South America, and internationally. The company was formerly known as Empresa Colombiana de Petroleos and changed its name to Ecopetrol S.A. in June 2003. Ecopetrol S.A. was incorporated in 1948 and is based in Bogota, Colombia.
Allergan plc, a pharmaceutical company, develops, manufactures, and commercializes branded pharmaceutical, device, biologic, surgical, and regenerative medicine products worldwide. The company operates in three segments: US Specialized Therapeutics, US General Medicine, and International. It offers a portfolio of products in various therapeutic areas, including medical aesthetics and dermatology, eye care, neuroscience, urology, gastrointestinal, women's health, and anti-infective therapeutic products. The company also offers breast implants and tissue expanders; and RM-131 (relamorelin), a peptide ghrelin agonist for the treatment of diabetic gastroparesis. In addition, it develops medical and cosmetic treatments; therapies for non-alcoholic steatohepatitis and other liver diseases; inhibitor for the treatment of psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders; atopic dermatitis drug candidate; peri-ocular rings for extended drug delivery and reducing elevated intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients; and treatments for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's disease. Further, the company develops RST-001, a novel gene therapy for the treatment of retinitis pigmentosa; small molecule therapeutics for inflammatory and fibrotic diseases; topical medicines for fat reduction; and delivery system and botulinum toxin-based prescription products. It has collaboration, option, and license agreement with Lyndra, Inc.; and strategic alliance and option agreement with Editas Medicine, Inc. Allergan plc also has licensing agreements with Assembly Biosciences, Inc.; MedImmune; and Heptares Therapeutics, Ltd. The company was formerly known as Actavis plc and changed its name to Allergan plc in June 2015. Allergan plc was founded in 1983 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland.
Snap Inc. is a social media company operating globally. The company was founded in September 2011 by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. Originally known as Snapchat, the company changed its name to Snap in order to represent its offerings better as it grew over the years. The companys headquarters are in Santa Monica, California and it is a very tightly held company. The original founders, Evan Speigel and Bobby Murphy own a combined 45% of non-dilutable shares with ownership transferable to the other upon death. The two remain active in the company today serving on the board and acting as CEO (Speigel) and CTO (Murphy).

The company was formerly known as Snapchat, Inc. and changed its name to Snap Inc. in September 2016. Snap Inc. was founded in 2010 and is headquartered in Santa Monica, California. Over the years it has been courted by most of the big tech companies including Facebook and Google but has always opted to remain a standalone company. The business went public in 2017 and raised $30 billion on its opening day which is about 10 times the expected amount.

Today, Snap operates as a camera company internationally. The companys main revenue streams are Snapchat, a mobile app for cameras and communications, and Spectacles, a wearable augmented reality device. Snapchat is a camera app that allows users to take pictures and tell stories, the platform also permits ad sales which is an integral part of the revenue and earnings. The companys mission? To empower people to express themselves in todays digital world.

Spectacles is a hardware device that can connect with Snapchat to deliver pictures and video from a point-of-view perspective. The company has since made three upgrades to the original version and has a Next Generation model available too. The Next Generation of Spectacles are not intended for sale but will be made available to creators who wish to push the boundaries of video and digital communications.

In October 2022 the company reported it had more than 347milion daily active users with more than 250 million engaging with AR each day. The platform had more than 250,000 Lens creators (Lenses are AR experiences) with more than 2.5 million lenses created. There were more than 6 billion lens plays each day and more than 75% of 13-34-year-olds in 20 countries were users.
A single-car crash late Friday morning broke a utility pole, knocked out power to about 1,200 people and forced the closure of Garth Road for most of the afternoon.

Albemarle County police are investigating the crash, which occurred at about 10:30 a.m. on a rain-soaked stretch of road in the 2100 block of Garth Road. Officers said the car hydroplaned and crashed into a power pole just west of Free Union Road.

The impact snapped the pole in half, briefly catching surrounding tree branches on fire when the power lines attached the pole fell on them, according to authorities at the scene.

Emergency crews cut into the drivers side of the vehicle to get the driver out. Police said the driver was taken to the University of Virginia Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.

The driver will not be charged in the wreck, police said late Friday afternoon.

The road was at least partially closed from about 11 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. as police cleared the wreck and Dominion Energy crews could replace the pole and return power.
Community members had a chance to share their opinions on the Rio+29 Small Area Plan on Thursday night as the second phase of the plan gets underway.

The goal of the plan is to incorporate the Rio Road grade-separated intersection with future land use, transportation and capital projects in the area.

Phase 1 of the plan was coming up with the vision, which led to the creation of three nodes and the decision to focus on the node surrounding the Rio Road-U.S. 29 intersection first. Phase II will last through October and will be focused on the detailed design of the node.

A committee meeting and an open house were held Thursday for residents to comment on the beginning of Phase II.

Were going to take this vision and we have to hone out and develop the concept to something that is implementable and workable, said Andrew Gast-Bray, Albemarle County planning director. That doesnt mean we have the exact details of implementation, but we want to know what we want to implement first so that we can do a better job of implementing it.

Area business representatives, community members and county staff who make up the plans Phase II technical committee groups met prior to the open house and came up with sketches of what the area could look like. They divided into three groups and discussed the topics of a mission for the area, amenities, land use and scale of the buildings.

Virginia Roy, Places29-Rio Community Advisory Committee chairwoman and member of one of the technical committee groups, said all the groups seemed to want something similar to Charlottesvilles Downtown Mall in the Rio-29 area. At the meeting, maps of the mall were available.

The space we have to play with out here is huge, and the challenge is large and expensive, she said. Theres a whole lot of interest in green space and walking space. That seems to be the predominant thing that people want, as far as I can tell.

Roy said theres a concern about what businesses will look like in the area, and how the future of some types of businesses, such as retail, will play into the growth.

You want to be sure you have a place for businesses to be near where the residences are, she said.

At the open house, held at Albemarle Square, community members could comment on the sketches and add their own remarks on the topics.

Places29-North CAC Chairman Steven Janes attended the open house and said he thinks the biggest stumbling block for the county will be getting the owner of Albemarle Square to work with the county to redevelop the property.

This is such a big piece of valuable property in such a choice location to be wasted, he said.

Emily Kilroy, community engagement specialist for Albemarle, said county staff thought they were going to get three distinct ideas from the technical committee.

We got three complementary concepts and that demonstrates that the needs are clear and theres fairly strong consensus among the cross section of stakeholders that we have represented on those groups about what the needs are and what the future should be for the Rio-U.S. 29 area, she said.

The next step, Kilroy said, will be to polish the ideas and bring them back to the community for more feedback.
Doyle the dummy was in a precarious position. Dangling from the side of the Fontaine Fire Station, the injured window washer desperately needed medical attention. Rope in hand, Charlottesville firefighter Kelly Jackson swung out over the edge.

On Thursday, Charlottesville and Albemarle County firefighters finished an intense four-day Technical Rope Rescue class. Taught by instructors from the Virginia Department of Fire Programs, 17 firefighters learned how to use carabiners and ropes to rescue people in treacherous positions on the side of buildings.

Its critically important in a community like ours that is building vertically to be prepared to handle rescues in that environment, said city Fire Chief Andrew Baxter. We refer to rope rescue and other special operations as high-risk, low-frequency events.

They dont happen all that often, so you cant count on experience to give you the skills you need.

The city and county fire departments hope to put together a regional technical rescue team that specializes in advanced rescue skills, but its still a long ways off, Baxter said. Currently in the visionary phase, the firefighters will need more training in different skills  such as rescues in confined spaces, building collapses and more advanced rope skills  before a team will be ready.

The ultimate end goal is to have a deployable team, where people know ahead of time what their roles and responsibilities are, Baxter said. Think of it as an extension of how we operate on a daily basis in the fire and EMS world.

By starting the training now, Baxter and Training Capt. John Burruss, who helped to teach this weeks course, want to get the ball rolling. With so many additional courses needed before a regional team can be put together, the firefighters need to start training as soon as possible.

It will take literally years to get everyone through everything, but were slowly working through it, Burruss said.

On Thursday, the class took everything they learned during the week and applied it to a rescue scenario. With Doyle the dummy hanging off the side of the building, one firefighter was tasked with climbing a thin rope and scaling the wall to gain access to the building. Once in, the firefighters then sent Jackson over the edge of the roof to reach the patient.

I love stuff like this; its super fun, Jackson said, following the exercise. You always have to have a little fear in you because when you dont, thats when you get hurt. I was having a great time. I trust all my guys around me, so that helps a lot.

Attaching herself to the patient, Jackson then waited as her team cinched ropes and hauled her back up to the top of the building. Standing around the edge of the roof, the firefighters untangled and knotted a complicated series of ropes and pulley systems. With safety in mind, the firefighters checked and re-checked every knot.

Once Jackson and her patient were brought back up, Doyle was carefully dragged up onto the roof, where he was back-boarded to prevent any further injuries to his head and neck. The next task was to get him down the stairwell to a waiting ambulance.

Charlottesville firefighter Andy Soccodato went up to bat as the patients attendant. After making sure Doyle was securely strapped to a basket, Soccodato and his team prepared to lower him to the ground through the stairwell, rather than try to carry him down all four flights of stairs.

I have one of the easier jobs because Im just sitting there, riding, Soccodato said. The guys above are doing all the lowering and making sure myself and the patient are safe while were descending.

Sitting to the side of Doyle in the basket, Soccodato stabilized the patient while using his feet to make sure the basket did not hit the banisters and walls on the journey down. His main job, he said, is to make sure the patient remains stable until they can get him to the ambulance.

It feels pretty cool, said Soccodato. Youre kind of sitting there, dangling, and you really have to pay attention, especially in the stairwell. You have to make sure you position yourself right; otherwise youre going to get hung up on the railings and banisters.

In the future, the class will complete a Rope Rescue II course, which focuses on rescues between buildings. The horizontal area demands an entirely different set of rope skills, but the two fire departments are poised to take the next step toward creating a regional team.
Members of the Esmont community and those with current and longtime ties to Yancey Elementary spoke before members of the Albemarle County School Board on Thursday to urge them to keep the school open.

The board asked in April for more information about what options there are to close or keep Yancey open after it was informed the school is in danger of losing $395,000 in federal funding and that student enrollment numbers are down.

Staff prepared a report for the meeting, but the board first heard the concerns and frustrations of residents who packed Lane Auditorium, many of whom feel their community school is constantly up for discussion to close.

Enrollment at Yancey has been declining for several years and is projected to continue to go down. Enrollment currently is 118 students and is projected to be 108 next school year, according to the report.

A separate report from the University of Virginias Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service projects enrollment will be 110 next school year and down to 99 students in the 2021-22 school year.

The staff report identifies Red Hill and Scottsville elementaries as the schools to relocate Yanceys students if the School Board were to go through with the closure.

About a third of Yanceys enrollment could go to Red Hill and the remaining two-thirds could go to Scottsville, according to the report.

The advantage to sending students to Red Hill is that its existing building layout and size could accommodate the number of students who could come from Yancey. Current class sizes are small enough to take in additional students, the report states.

But moving students to Scottsville Elementary would be challenging but workable in the short-term, according to the report.

Scottsville Elementary is already slightly over building capacity. Moving approximately 70 students from Yancey to Scottsville would require as many as three additional classrooms.

Several ideas were laid out in the report as possibilities to solve the classroom space issue. But in the long-term, the report suggested accelerating capital work to construct additional classrooms if this is the direction the School Board decides to take.

Yancey was identified as a priority school in the fall of 2014 based on Standards of Learning scores from the 2013-14 school year.

Priority schools are required to work with another institution to help them plan and implement reforms to improve student performance. Yanceys partnership is with UVas Curry School of Education.

The school has received $253,517  a portion of the funding it could lose  through a School Improvement Grant for the past two years to assist the partnership. Yancey is also on the verge of losing $141,984 from the 21st Century Community Learning Center Grant that has supported afterschool activities.

Its uncertain whether these federal funds will be renewed again, based on changes in the national political landscape, schools staff said.

Three options were given at the end of the report. Yancey could remain open as is; the School Board could decide to close it at the end of the current school year; or the board could close the school at the end of the 2017-18 school year.

Peggy Scott, an Esmont resident, said during the public comment period of Thursdays meeting that Yancey isnt just a school in the southern part of the county  its a place where the community can congregate and people can see each other and come together.

Joy Waring, whos had three children go through Yancey and has another currently enrolled there, called Yancey one of the best kept secrets in Albemarle County.

Yanceys importance to the African-American community was stressed several times during the meeting.

Lorenzo Dickerson, an employee of the school divisions Department of Accountability, Research and Technology, recently debuted his documentary film Albemarles Black Classrooms. The film examines the history and significance of the countys African-American schools, with mentions of the Esmont community and Yancey.

It has always been a place of great importance to the community as African-Americans have historically leveraged education as a tool to obtain freedom and equality, he said in an email last week.

Graham Paige, Samuel Miller District representative on the School Board and an Esmont native, defended keeping the school open. He has said its an important asset to the community.

Board Chairwoman Kate Acuff reminded board members its their responsibility to ultimately make a decision about Yancey  at a later date  that is for the good of all students in the school division, all options considered.

The School Board voted to hold a public hearing May 25 before voting on the three options regarding Yancey, with members Steve Koleszar, Jason Buyaki and Paige voting against the public hearing.

Staff will bring the School Board more information ahead of the May 25 meeting, and there was an interest among board members to hold community meetings before that meeting.
RICHMONDThe battle of words over the budget vetoes escalated again today, when Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order telling state agencies to honor his vetoes that the General Assembly has refused to recognize.

McAuliffe cited dangerous legislative overreach in telling agencies to ignore the decision by the House of Delegates to ignore two of his vetoes, including one that would strip the budget prohibition that prevents the governor from accepting federal money to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Brian Coy, the governors spokesman, said there has been no conclusion by the administration whether to test his constitutional position by seeking to appropriate federal money to expand Virginias Medicaid program without the legislatures express approval, as required under the Stanley Amendment, sponsored by William M. Stanley Jr., R-Franklin, and adopted in 2014 after a bitter budget standoff between McAuliffe and Republican leaders.

This about protecting the governors prerogative against dangerous legislative overreach, Coy said.

House Republicans, in turn, laughed off the executive order to require state agencies to recognize budget vetoes that House Clerk G. Paul Nardo, as keeper of the rolls, refused to publish because he said they were constitutionally invalid.

This isnt Washington, D.C.it doesnt quite work that way in Virginia, House Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones said. This is pure politics.

McAuliffe says House Republicans are the ones playing politics, first by using the budget to block expansion of Medicaid, as well as to prevent the state from awarding contracts for public-private transportation projects that require use of project labor agreements with unionswhich the state doesnt do unless the project involves union-friendly Maryland.

This is the third year that House Republicans, led by Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, have refused to recognize his veto of the Stanley Amendment, noting that he would have to also veto the associated appropriationin this case, the entire $107 billion budget.

But McAuliffe said Nardos refusal to publish the two vetoes as part of the final budget act represents a profound abuse of authority, purporting to endow an unelected ministerial officer with some extraconstitutional power to override the governors vetoes based on his own legal opinions.

This is entirely improper, the governor states in the order, and it must be addressed in a manner reflective of the seriousness of the issues involvedkeeping Virginias fiscal house in order.

Howell brushed off the governors order with a bristling response.

The idea that an executive order can supersede the Constitution, decades of Supreme Court precedent, and longstanding legislative practice is nonsensical, the speaker said in a statement. This is the culmination of four years of executive overreach, disregard for the law, and contempt for a duly elected branch of government by this governor.

McAuliffe also challenged Nardos decision to publish a budget provision adopted by the General Assembly that would require the Virginia Economic Development Partnershipa quasi-independent authority that reports to the secretary of commerce and tradeto get final approval of legislative leaders before the state can release $1.5 million appropriated last year before a scathing report about the partnership prompted major reforms.

The governor didnt veto the provision, but called it unconstitutional for giving a legislative group final say over an executive branch appropriation. He has instructed the comptroller to ignore it, although he previously said he would work with the assemblys budget committees to ensure that the partnership produces plans for reforms before receiving the funds.

Howell said McAuliffe has no legal way to expand Medicaid without General Assembly approval and vowed, The General Assembly not only will vigorously defend its prerogatives and closely scrutinize any gubernatorial actions, we will take any and all actions necessary to ensure that the budget law is enforced as passed, signed, and printed by the Keeper of the Rolls of the Commonwealth.
Democrats need to get their story straight.

First they tell us the GOP replacement for the Affordable Care Act is going to doom Republicans at the polls. Democrats in Congress were so confident on the point they even taunted Republicans with the hey-hey, goodbye chant.

Then former President Obama urged lawmakers to summon the courage not to repeal Obamacare in remarks he made after receiving the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.

Courage does not always mean doing what is politically expedient, Obama said at the JFK Library Foundation, but what they believe deep in their hearts is right.

That is certainly how political courage is usually defined. But wait a secif the GOP health-care bill is so widely reviled, and therefore so politically toxic, then Republicans showed much bravery in passing it. Since theyre going to get trounced at the polls for doing so, they must be men of great conviction. Why didnt they get a prize for courage?

The Democrats are right, of course. Leave it to the GOP to foul up the repeal of an unpopular law so badly that Americans decide maybe they like it after all. For years a majority of Americans has opposed the ACA. Now a majority supports it and hates the replacements.

Little wonder, when the replacements look like such a dogs breakfast. The first version was described, accurately, as Obamacare Lite. The new version is not what anyone would consider a quantum improvement. As Reason magazines Peter Suderman has explained well in The New York Times, it looks less like an attempt to put right all that is wrong with the American health care system and more like a hastily cobbled-together prerequisite for tax reform. By cutting $1 trillion in taxes over 10 years, the American Health Care Act lowers the revenue baseline, thereby meeting certain procedural conditions in the Senate. (We cant get to tax reform until we do this, House Speaker Paul Ryan said at one point.)

Another factor in the unpopularity of the GOP proposal is the immediate Two Minutes Hate the press launched against it.

To judge by the coverage, you would have thought that Obamacare had achieved the Platonic ideal of Pareto optimality by making millions of people much better off without making anyone worse offand that the House bill would, therefore, make millions of people worse off without making anyone better off (except for rich people, who dont count).

You had to search long and hard to discover that 60 percent of small businesses still want Obamacare repealed. The employer mandatewhich requires employers to provide insurance for workerskicks in at 50 employees. Not surprisingly, a survey of more than 600 small businesses has found that a tenth of them have reduced hiring in order to stay under the 50-employee ACA threshold for small employers. On top of that, the law adds an estimated $480 to $590 to the cost of each employee each year.

Obamacare also has been a raw deal for young people. As Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, points out: Before Obamacare, premiums for older people were about five times as much as for younger people. But, under Obamacare, older people can be charged only three times as much as younger people. Since insurance companies could not lower premiums for the old, they raised premiums for the young. A lot.

Premiums are soaring for everyone, in fact. Before leaving office the Obama administration projected they would rise 22 percent to 25 percent this year alone. Gosh, its almost as if artificially inflating demand by forcing people to buy a product and then giving them government subsidies to pay for it drives up prices.

And yet the state marketplaces set up by Obamacare are imploding; Aetna, which announced last week that it would leave Virginias individual market, is only the latest in a long line of exits. Facing steep losses, Humana, United, and other insurers have pulled out of all or most of the state exchanges, often leaving consumers with only a single provider.

To be fair, Obamacare has done some good, e.g., by reducing the proportion of uninsured Americans to historic lows. But its gargantuan flaws seem to have been conveniently forgotten because the House GOPs replacement also has gargantuan flaws.

So will the Senate bill, whenever it arrives. And so will every other proposal, because no reform ever addresses the root cause of what ails U.S. health care: The nearly universal demand for unlimited medical care, with the bill sent to somebody else through the political process.

Americans simply dont want to face the harsh reality that, like any other good or service, health care is finite and must be rationed. If it is not rationed through prices set by the marketplace, it will be rationed through rules set by the bureaucracy. At some point, one or the other is going to say no. And thats the one word nobody in politics is ever allowed to say.
Isuzu has finally introduced its new 7-seater SUV, the MU-X in the country. It has a starting price of Rs 23.99 lakh (ex-showroom, Delhi) and looks quite similar to the D-Max V-Cross pick-up truck. It is based on the same platform as the Chevrolet Trailblazer and replaces the Isuzu MU-7 in India. As the details of the SUV were leaked ahead of its launch, it was already known that the MUX would be available in only one trim.

Prices:

Isuzu MU-X 4x2: Rs 23.99 Lakh

Isuzu MU-X 4x4: Rs 25.99 Lakh

Under the hood of the MU-X is a 3.0-litre, 4-cylinder turbo-diesel engine that cranks out 177PS of power and 380Nm of torque. Mated to the engine is a 5-speed automatic transmission with sequential shift and brake shift technology. The oomph is transferred to the road via an all-wheel-drive system which is accompanied by a shift-on-fly transfer box with 4x4 Low and 4x4 High drive modes. The company claims that the big, brawny SUV is capable of returning a fuel-efficiency of 13.8kmpl (4x2 AT variant) and has a ground cleanance of 220mm.

To ensure all of the available power is utilised efficiently and to ensure that the SUV doesnt feel scary on the move, Isuzu has equipped the MUX with electronic stability control (ESC), traction control system (TCS), hill-start assist (HSA), 4-channel, 4-sensor anti-lock braking system (ABS) setup with electronic brakeforce distribution (EBD) and emergency brake assist (EBA). In terms of safety, the MU-X features dual-airbags, rear parking camera, impact-sensing automatic door unlock with airbag release, front seatbelts with pretensioners and load limiters and three ISOFIX child seat anchorages in the second row.

In terms of creature-comforts, the Isuzu ticks almost all the boxes. The feature list includes electrically-adjustable drivers seat, a power outlet each for all three rows, automatic climate control, a roof-mounted 10-inch DVD monitor, cruise control and a 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system with 8-speakers and iPod and Bluetooth compatibility. On the outside, MU-X gets LED daytime running lights (DRLs), projector headlamps, 17-inch diamond-cut alloy wheels and two-tone front and rear bumpers.

The Isuzu MUX is available in four colours options for the body - Silky White Pearl, Orchid Brown Mica, Cosmic Black Mica and Titanium Silver Metallic. The SUV will be locally manufactured at the Japanese manufacturers Sri City-based manufacturing facility in Andhra Pradesh. Its list of rivals include the Toyota Fortuner, Ford Endeavour and the Chevrolet Trailblazer.

Source: Cardekho.com
The operating profit was at Rs 2,421.15 crore, up by 56. 32 per cent from Rs 1,548.87 crore.

Coimbatore: Public sector Vijaya Bank would be raising Rs 1,000 crore capital from the market, though it has adequate capital compared to other banks, a top bank official said today.

"We have adequate capital and not requested the Govermnent to infuse more capital. But the bank is targeting f CRAR (Credit Adequacy Ratio) of 13 plus per cent by close of the fiscal," Vijaya Bank Managing Director and CEO, Kishore Sansi told reporters here.

The board has cleared the proposal to raise the capital and the bank will hit the market by the end of first quarter of this financial year or latest by the beginning of second quarter, Sansi said.

The official, who was here to participate in Debt Swap Scheme for the benefit of farmers to clear the loans taken from money lenders, said the profit of the bank has zoomed and NPAs have come down during the 2016-17.

For the entire 2016-17 fiscal, the bank's net profit nearly doubled to Rs 750.45 crore as compared to Rs 381.80 crore in the previous fiscal, he said. The operating profit was at Rs 2,421.15 crore, up by 56. 32 per cent from Rs 1,548.87 crore, he said.

The bank continued to focus on Retail and MSME sector and the retail advances increased to Rs 29,235 crore, up by 24.33 per cent, which was 30.29 per cent of gross advances, he said. Gross NPA was down to 6.59 per cent from 6.64 per cent. The bank also plans to open 100 more branches during this fiscal, Sansi said.
New York: An amendment to the Banking Regulation Act will create an environment that will make it possible for banks to address some of the stressed assets, Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa has said.

"The government has been concerned about the Non- Performing Assets (NPAs) of the banks as well. Recently the government came up with an amendment in the Banking Regulation Act which empowers the central government and the Reserve Bank of India to make institutional arrangements and the entire system more effective in dealing with the NPAs," Lavasa told PTI yesterday.

He stressed that the government has sent a "very clear" message both to the banks as well as the borrowers that "there should be responsible lending and there has to be responsible utilisation of credit which is borrowed".

The Cabinet this week approved promulgation of an ordinance to amend the Banking Regulation Act for resolution of the NPA crisis. Lavasa, who is in the US to attend a global investors conference, said with the amendment to the Banking Regulation Act, "we feel that in this new environment, it will be possible for the banks to find resolutions of some of the stressed assets".

"Ultimately of course they will have to operate within the financing documents. So this will mean that promoters will also have to come forward and actively participate," he added.

Lavasa outlined that the financing documents which banks sign with borrowers when the loans are given deal with provisions that pertain to several eventualities. He said whenever a settlement is done, it is done within the parameters of those financing documents - whether it entails rescheduling instalments, infusing additional equity or capital or converting interests into term loan or undertaking hair cuts.

"So all that is part of the settlement process. I think bankers will have to take a decision on a case-by-case basis on what is to be done. This will also include the borrowers themselves having to contribute in order to make that loan viable" or stepping out of that loan, he said.

On whether there is appetite for the stressed assets, Lavasa said people look for investment opportunities and this is considered to be one of the ways in which many investors like to enter into projects.

"But that eventuality arises when the original borrowers want to step out and the situation is such that the bank will look for replacements," Lavasa added that whether a person is a willful defaulter has to be determined by the banks.

"Those defaulters who are willing to use this as an opportunity to make their project viable again, they will of course be treated differently. The banks will have to work out a package of rehabilitating these loans and that rehabilitation package contains several components including the right to replace the original borrower," he said.

On concerns of a protectionist wave sweeping developed nations, particularly in the US, Lavasa said any policy which restricts movement of people "certainly does not help in the growth of global trade".

"In the long run, countries will have to take a very hard look whether these (protectionist) measures are sustainable because the interdependence of countries and economies is so much today that this will be done at the cost of affecting their own interest as well. These decisions are to be very carefully seen," he said.

While noting that every country has a duty towards its industry and so nations will take measures to protect its interests, he said protectionism necessarily does not mean restricting interaction or dealings with other countries.

"There are ways in which conducive environment can be created for industry to grow and prosper without curtailing its global activities," he said.
New Delhi: With the ambitious regional air connectivity scheme taking wings, authorities have set up a trust for disbursing viability gap funds to the participating airlines. Airports Authority of India (AAI) is the nodal agency for the scheme -- UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) -- that aims to connect un-served as well as under-served airports and make flying affordable for the masses.

As at least half of the seats in UDAN flights are to be offered at subsidised fares, the participating carriers would be provided a certain amount of Viability Gap Funding (VGF) -- an amount shared between the Centre and the state concerned.

AAI Chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra said a trust has been set up to disburse the VGF to the carriers operating under UDAN. The trust, headed by the AAI chief, also has officials from the Civil Aviation Ministry and the national airports operator to administer it.

"The trust has been formed and all the necessary formalities have been done. All the exemptions required are also being done. That will soon start working," Mohapatra told PTI in an interview.

According to him, the trust would be in charge of providing VGF to the airlines for participating in the scheme. To raise money for the VGF, a levy of Rs 8,500 per departure is levied from airlines operating in major domestic routes, including Mumbai and Delhi.

When asked about local carriers moving court against the levy, Mohapatra expressed hope that the issue would be resolved soon even as he asserted that the scheme would not suffer due to court case.

"The scheme will not be affected by virtue of this dispute... These are all government of India schemes and they don't suffer on account of some court cases. They are sovereign commitments," he emphasised.

The first UDAN flight started operations last month flying from Shimla to the national capital. In the first round of UDAN bidding, five airlines won bids to operate on 128 routes connecting 70 airports of which 31 are un-served. In March, Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju informed the Lok Sabha that over Rs 1.15 crore has been garnered towards the regional connectivity fund.

An amount of up to Rs 8,500 is being levied from scheduled airlines operating in major routes to raise money towards the fund. The Ministry started collecting the levy from December 1, 2016.

The Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) has already challenged the collection of levy from carriers for the RCS fund in the court. Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir are members of the FIA.
Mumbai: Salman Khan and the team of Tiger Zinda Hai are currently shooting in Abu Dhabi and director Ali Abbas Zafar has been sharing scenic pictures from the location.

Katrina Kaif, who plays the leading lady in the film, recently flew down to join the films crew in Abu Dhabi, to shoot for her portions.

Seemingly, the actress, who recently joined Facebook and Instagram, got bitten by the social media bug in a massive way and is barely able to resist her urge to post beautiful pictures.

However, we got our hands on this picture posted by Ali Abbas Zafar on his social media account.

The actress looks drop-dead gorgeous in this picture with her 'tiger' Salman Khan.

A very serious Katrina kaif and super focused @BeingSalmanKhan on the set of @TigerZindaHai #behind the scenes. Friday Feelings :) pic.twitter.com/YC8hn5g1YT  ali abbas zafar (@aliabbaszafar) May 12, 2017

She looked no less than a fairytale princess with Salman being her perfect prince charming. How dreamy do they look?
Mumbai: Shah Rukh Khans recent debut at TED Talk in Vancouver, is the most talked-about thing currently.

His speech at the show was undoubtedly an inspiring one, with him talking about the important aspects of life in a light and witty manner, and the audience seemed to be amazed by his sense of humour and intellect.

The 51-year-old spoke about the struggle and hardships he faced in life and how from being anonymous to the city, he has managed to achieve something in life.

Well, we think from an anonymous, the actor has gone on to become a synonym with the nations name, and admits to being self-obsessed.

Sharing some pages of his life when he was 20 years old, SRK said, "I thought celiac was a vegetable and you married the first girl that you dated. I really thought that gay was a sophisticated English word for happy. And that lesbian was the capital of Portugal, as you all know."

This definitely got the audience burst out in laughter.

He further went on to add, "We relied on systems created by the toil of generations before, to protect us and we felt that governments worked for our betterment. Science was simple and logical and Apple was still just a fruit. Eureka was what you scream when you wanted to run naked on the streets. You went wherever life took you for work and people were welcoming of you. Most importantly, you were who you were and you said what you felt."

Talking about the changes that took in his life after moving to Mumbai from New Delhi, he said, In my late 20s, I headed to Mumbai. I met people who had descended from all over the world. All the systems seemed overwhelming to me. Almost too thick to hold on to the diversity of mankind, and I saw the human need to progress and grow. By the time I was 40, I was really, really flying. I had done 50 films by then and 200 songs. I had been given the highest civilian honour by the French government, the title of which for the life of me I cannot pronounce even now."

Watch the video here:
Mumbai: Anyone who has ever secretly hoped that the stylish Bollywood couple- Malaika Arora and Arbaaz Khan- to contemplate reconciliation will be heartbroken to learn that the duo has been granted divorce by Bandra Family Court, just a day after they attended the Justin Bieber Purpose Tour together.

Arbaaz and Malaika filed for divorce by mutual consent last November, ending their 18-year marriage. On Thrusday, at 11:30 AM, they appeared for the final hearing and then met the principal marriage counsellor VS Athavale for mere 5 minutes. The duo was granted divorce by the Family Court Judge.

A leading tabloid spoke to their respective lawyers, Kranti Sathe and Amurta Sathe Pathak, The court has granted divorce to Arbaaz and Malaika, which was filed on mutual consent terms. Malaika has full custody of their son Arhaan and Arbaaz has been granted complete access to his son whenever he wants. The model-actress has neither asked for alimony nor property.

The couple, who filed for divorce on November 8, was given a mandatory six-month waiting period to return to court with a decision on whether or not they want to end their marriage.

The now estranged couple, along with their 14 YO son Arhaan, had attended the Justin Bieber concert held at DY Patil stadium just a day before their divorce got finalised.

Both Arbaaz and Malaika have been amicable with each other since separation and always attend family functions together.
It has been a year and a half since Varsha Bollamma had a release in Tamil. Known for her Dubsmash videos, she was labelled as Nazriya Nazims doppelganger, which bagged her film opportunities.

Sathuran was her last release and she is pinning her hopes on three films that are at different stages of production. Its been a long time since I had a release. Ivan Yaarendru Therigiradha is expected to release next month and it would be good to see myself back on screen. In this hiatus, I dont think people have forgotten me, she begins her conversation.

Varsha portrays the role of a sub-inspector in Ivan Yaarendru Therigiradha, which has TV actor Vishnu playing the lead. People say that I have an innocent look and many were apprehensive about my role in the movie. Some even questioned whether I can pull off the character or not. I think I did justice to the film. It is not an action entertainer, but a comedy film, she shares.

However, in her next project Seemanin Seemati, Varsha takes the village route by playing a naive girl in a village. She quips, Even in a rural film like Vetrivel, I wore churidhars. But, in Seemanin..I am seen in paavadai-sattai and it was difficult to imbibe the body language. The film is in post-production.

Talking about her Telugu debut, her eyes light up. I got the opportunity a year back, but the shoot got postponed for unknown reasons. I play a bubbly girl which I havent done so far in my career. At this point, I wont be able to reveal much. I am paired opposite a popular actor and we start shooting from June, she adds.
A year ago, Alyssa Barnhart was coasting through life under the mistaken belief, It cant happen to me.

She was sitting on a hill behind Carlisle High School not paying close attention to the mock accident demonstration taking place the day before her senior prom in May 2016.

Instead, Barnhart was chatting up friends and fiddling with her phone. She had heard it all before from the speakers brought in by Justin Kretzing, the drivers education teacher.

On alternating years, he would organize an assembly or mock crash to raise awareness of the dangers of drinking and driving, driving while texting and not buckling up.

Graduation for Barnhart was weeks away. Like many teenagers, she thought herself invincible.

Five months later, on Oct. 12, she was seriously injured in an auto accident in York County and her dream of being an emergency medical technician was shattered.

Barnhart was not distracted by her cellphone. She had no alcohol or drugs in her system. She was not texting. She almost died after experiencing a severe headache, blacking out and hitting a tree head-on.

The trauma broke seven bones from her waist down and compressed a vertebra in her back. Luckily, Barnhart would walk again  right into the high school auditorium on Thursday with a message.

I was wearing my seat belt that day, she told them. It prevented me from going through my windshield or going anywhere else. They had to cut me out of my car. I never thought it could happen to me.

The accident convinced Barnhart to live each day to the fullest. She plans to attend Shippensburg University in the fall to study to become a special education teacher.

For an hour Thursday afternoon, speakers donated their time in the hope of reaching Carlisle High School students to prevent them from becoming a statistic. None of the speakers expected the worst, but they all learned to work through it.

Jodi Bales remembered how her daughter Alicia Nicholson looked as though she was wearing shoulder pads underneath her burial clothes. It was her sternum, Bales said. Her childs body had to be cut open for the autopsy.

Nicholson, 23, a 2011 graduate of Boiling Springs High School, died on Feb. 6, 2016, after her car was struck broadside by another driver who was charged with failure to stop at an intersection because she was texting.

She was broken, Bales said of Nicholson, who left behind a husband and two daughters. It was multiple blunt force trauma.  She was dead on impact.

Instead of gathering as a family to enjoy a Super Bowl party, Bales spent the weekend calling relatives and making funeral arrangements. The last time she saw her daughter she was in a casket.

Her message to students Thursday was to avoid texting while driving. She urged them to support legislation barring it and to educate their family and friends. She mentioned an app that delays notification of incoming text messages while the person is behind the wheel.

There is no such thing as multitasking, Bales told students. Five seconds and they are gone.

Missy Sweitzer of Glen Rock, York County, talked about the dangers of drinking and driving. Her 20-year-old son Zac was seriously injured in a DUI-related accident on Nov. 27, 2008. He was declared brain dead three days later.

When Sweitzer saw her son at York Hospital, he looked peaceful, almost as if he was sleeping. His head was heavily bandaged. He had a bit of road rash, but Zac was not as bruised, battered or swollen as she had imagined he would be.

Then she noticed how his chest rose and fell in time with the breathing machine that kept him alive. Her last farewell was a goodbye kiss and the act of pulling a blanket over his head in the coffin. He was in the prime of his life, she told the students.

Sweitzer lost her son to a 19-year-old woman who was drinking with her husband before she climbed into a car and drove early Thanksgiving morning.

Every day we are faced with decisions, Sweitzer told the students. There are repercussions to every one of our decisions. Her decision took my sons life. Her decision took a huge part of her life. She is now a felon convicted of vehicular homicide. That felony charge will follow her the rest of her life.
The team of Vivegam has constantly kept the audiences curiosity at its peak by releasing stills of lead actor Ajith every now and then. Yesterday, the team unveiled the teaser and received a humongous response.

Half an hour before the scheduled release, a low-res version of the teaser found its way to the Internet. However, that did not deter Thala fans. Once the official video was released on YouTube, it was celebrated like the films FDFS. One of the interesting facts about the teaser is its run-time. Since Vivegam is Ajiths 57th film, the team decided to cut a 57-second teaser for the fans.The teaser has clocked in over 5 million views on YouTube.

Meanwhile, a source in the know tells us, The team will wrap the shoot today and will be heading back to Chennai in a couple of days. The post-production of the movie is crucial as it has a lot of high-octane stunt sequences and few VFX scenes.

Vivegam, directed by Siva, stars Kajal Aggarwal, Akshara Haasan and Vivek Oberoi in important roles. The film is slated to hit the screens on August 11.
Rating:

Director: Akshay Roy

Cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Parineeti Chopra

Bollywood films often face criticism for their cliched plots and melodramatic ends but YRFs latest offering Meri Pyaari Bindu is slightly different from run-of-the-mill love stories. Debutante director Akshay Roy comes up with a light hearted film which will melt your heart.

Abhimanyu aka Babula Roy (Ayushmann Khurrana) is a bestselling author based out of Mumbai. After garnering fame with his most recent horrotica novels, publisher pleads him to write a love story. Babula struggles to write one and one fine day he decides to introduce Bindu (Parineeti Chopra) as the central character of his upcoming novel. The story travels back to 1983 when Bindu shifts next to Babulas house in Calcutta. Babula falls for her in the first sight and two become best friends. But what happens next is not what you see often in Indian films, especially, the climax which will leave you with an unusual thought of acceptance.

Director Akshay Roy seems to be a fresh minded filmmaker who is away from the regular formula of love stories. He is definitely good at his craft of telling a simple story in a quirky manner. His film surely breaks the idea of 90s about two individuals cant be just best friends. Childhood love, college friendship, heartbreaks, Meri Pyaari Bindu has every conventional trope ingredient of a love story, but still stands out in the crowd. The noticeable part of the film is its screenplay written by Suprotim Sengupta. The journey of two people, spanning three decades is not less than a nostalgic trip to the old cities in 80s and 90s.

However, the film has its own share of glitches. One might not connect to a few emotions unless they have experienced it which makes Meri Pyaari Bindu a very niche film. (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and Dear Zindagi being the recent examples). When Karan Johars controversial film Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna released in 2006, the audience panned the film and criticised the behaviour of the characters since they werent justified in the film. This can be one of the threats to Meri Pyaari Bindu but again films are essentially the director/writers prerogative and they may easily take that creative liberty to deal with their subject. The film might appeal to die-hard fans of Parineeti and Ayushmann, but may not find takers outside of them. The two obviously add commercial value to the film. Sachin-Jigars music is extremely apt and novel. Maana Ke Hum Yaar Nahin, Haareya and Afeemi are not just incredibly hummable but also have been shot beautifully.

Ayushmann Khurrana, who marked his acting debut in 2012 with Shoojit Sircars Vicky Donor, had created quite a stir with his natural portrayal of the typical north Indian guy followed by Bewakoofiyaan which was a disaster. He tried to do something different in Hawaaizaada but the film didnt work well at the box-office.

However, his last outing Dum Laga Ke Haisha was a sleeper hit, where he played a small town guy from Haridwar. Ayushmann is natural in the film but the problem is he is the same in every film. Also, the light hearted scripts given to him could be blamed. He might change his game with Sriram Raghavans upcoming thriller. Parineeti Chopra herself is repetitive as the bubbly girl but that doesnt take anything away from her convincing portrayal. One scene in particular, where she breaks down in the hospital, will leave you in tears. Another one where she converses with her father is moving as well. Rest of the cast is hilarious and apt in their respective roles but there is hardly much to do, Ayushmann and Parineeti being central characters.

Meri Pyaari Bindu is watchable but dont expect the quintessential Bollywood romance. If you are into slow paced films, this one might excite you.
Rating:

Director: Ram Gopal Varma

Cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Amit Sadh, Jackie Shroff, Manoj Bajpayee, Yami Gautam, Ronit Roy, Supriya Pathak

Why director Ram Gopal Varma would make the third instalment in the Sarkar franchise after nine long years, is beyond ones comprehension. Tight close ups, ear-piercing background score, over the top treatment and typical low angle shots- Sarkar 3 has every imaginable Ram Gopal Varma trope.

Subhash Nagre aka Sarkar (Amitabh Bachchan) is living a peaceful life with ailing wife Pushpa (Supriya Pathak) after his two sons dies. Gokul (Ronit Roy) and Raman (Parag Tyagi) are earnest disciples of Sarkar. Their lives change upside down when Sarkars grandson Shivaji Nagre aka Cheeku (Amit Sadh) comes to stay with them. He is a hot blooded man with strict principles and is in love with Annu (Yami Gautam). Deshpande (Manoj Bajpayee) and Michael (Jackie Shroff) plan to bribe Cheeku to kill his own grandfather (Sarkar). What happens next forms the rest of Sarkar 3.

Sarkar which released in 2005 was quite a brave attempt from the director but as the time passed by, the director lost the hold on the thrill of it. Back then, the film was compared with Godfather but the franchise fails to impress later. Sarkar 3 is the weakest of all three films so far. The plot of the film is sloppy and dysfunctional. The tagline says angrier than ever but the film is nothing but a yawn fest.

RGV has a certain style of shooting a film but it is annoying to see how he captures objects better than the characters in the frame. The faux scary dog on the dusty furniture, the laughing Buddha and Abhishek Bachchans framed photo are the most entertaining parts of the film. The dim lit rooms are familiar thanks to the previous two films and tight close ups of Amitabh slurping tea from the saucer are funny to the core. The most hilarious part is that Sarkar 3 has nothing to do with the continuity of the last one.

Amitabh Bachchan shot Sarkar Raaj in 2008 so naturally he has aged in the third film. He surely leads this not so thrilling film with his captivating performance but he is losing his impeccable script sense. Rohini Hattangadi and Supriya Pathak are passable in their cameos.

Manoj Bajpayee is completely wasted in this political mishap of a film. Ronit Roy and Amit Sadh are good in their intense roles but Yami Gautam looks stoned throughout. She is just a pretty prop who is heart-stricken by her fathers death. The funniest of all, however, surprisingly is Jackie Shroff, who tries to ape Don (SRK) in every possible manner and makes a fool out of himself. His dialogues are unintentionally funny and his constipated face in the climax will leave you in splits! Parag Tyagi and Bharat Dhabolkar are mere pushovers in the film.

Sarkar 3 is an avoidable affair this weekend. Make your and everyone elses weekend by getting RGV banned from making a highly plausible Sarkar 4.
Generally, the dubbing process of a film could take two to three days for an actor and if the character is special, it might take an extra day. But for his upcoming film DJ: Duvvada Jagannadham, actor Allu Arjun has taken more than ten days to dub.

The actor apparently, is working very hard to render the dialogues in the right accent as he plays a Brahmin cook in the film. And that particular accent is not easy. Allu Arjun started the dubbing process but is struggling to come up with the right accent. There is still a lot of work to do and it will take a few more days, says a source.

The actor has been arriving at a private film laboratory at around 9.30 am and according to sources leaves the place only at 9 pm. And though he is finding it difficult to dub for this project, he views it as a challenge.

Meanwhile, the actor is gearing up to finish the climax, for which he will start filming from May 15. A set is erected near Medchal, in which Allu Arjun and other actors are expected to shoot, adds the source.
Bengaluru: An alert software engineer, who was molested in a moving bus a month ago, identified the culprit when he got into the same bus again on Wednesday and alerted the police.

In a swift operation, the Bellandur police intercepted the BMTC bus and nabbed the accused within 15 minutes. The accused, Madhusudhan Rao, 47, a resident of Uttarahalli, is a consultant in an MNC. Incidentally, the 26-year-old victim also works with the same company, but different campus.

According to the police, the woman was molested by Rao in the moving BMTC Volvo Bus on April 10. Then, she had managed to click the photograph of the accused, who had escaped when the passengers tried to nab him.

Exactly a month after the incident, on Wednesday evening, Rao boarded the same bus, which was going to Uttarahalli. Unaware of the fact that the woman he molested a month ago was in the bus, he sat right in front of where the woman was seated.

The woman identified him and immediately searched for the jurisdictional police station with the help of a mobile application. Later, she called and informed the police control room staff, who in turn alerted the jurisdictional Bellandur police. A Pink Hoysala patrolling team was put on the job. Head Constables B Mahesh, Arif Pasha and woman police constable Pavithra Banagar intercepted the bus in 15 minutes on Inner Ring Road and nabbed the accused, police said. The Bellandur police have booked the accused under section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) of the IPC.

How the drama unfolded
The pastor had been slapped with charges under both POCSO and Indian Penal Code (IPC). (Photo: Representational Image)

Thrissur: A pastor in the Salvation Army Church was sentenced to life imprisonment until death by the Thrissur special court on Friday for raping multiple times a 13-year old girl since 2014.

Pastor Sanil K James is already serving a 40-year sentence for raping a 12-year old twice during December 2013.

The pastor was initially convicted in March 2016 under the Protection of Children from Sexual Harassment (POCSO) Act.

The pastor had been slapped with charges under both POCSO and Indian Penal Code (IPC). The 13-year-old victim revealed the abuse to her teacher, who alerted a child helpline.

The issue was then brought before the Child Welfare Committee, which informed the police and a case was filed. The pastor was arrested after the medical report found the girl had been raped.

The trial was held in the POCSO court with the victim standing in a specially arranged box so that others could not see her. The prosecution produced 32 witnesses, 16 documents and four pieces of material evidence. Public prosecutor Pious Mathew appeared on behalf of the victim.

James is currently lodged at the Viyyur Central Jail.
Thrissur: The POCSO court here on Thursday found a pastor guilty of raping a 13-year-old dalit girl. Sessions judge Nickson M. Joseph will order the quantum of punishment on Friday. The accused, Sanal K James, 35, who was a pastor in the Salvation Army Church at Peechi, near here, abused the girl on several occasions at his official residence from 2013 to 2015.

He had also sexually abused another minor girl during the same period for which he was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment by the same court a few months ago.

The pastor was slapped with charges under both POCSO and IPC. The victim revealed the abuse to her teacher who alerted the Childline. The issue was brought before the Child Welfare Committee, which later informed the police and a case was filed. The pastor was arrested after the medical report found the girl had been raped.

The trial was held in the POCSO court with the victim standing in a specially arranged box so that others could not see her. The prosecution produced 32 witnesses, 16 documents and four pieces of material evidence. Public prosecutor Pious Mathew appeared on behalf of the victim.
Hyderabad: Customs officials at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport nabbed two air passengers and seized 784 grams of gold worth Rs 22.50 lakh from their possession in two different cases. The passengers were smuggling gold in the form of kadas (bangles).

According to authorities, based on a tip off, officials from the Air Intelligence Unit at Shamshabad intercepted the flyers.

In the first case, the passenger arrived from Chicago via Dubai by Emirates Flight EK 524. He was found carrying 385 grams of foreign origin gold worth Rs 11,09,950 in the form of two kadas and a 24 karat gold coin.

In the second case, the passenger arrived from Sharjah by an Air Arabia flight no G9 458 and was found carrying 399 grams of gold in the form of three 24 karat kadas, worth `11,45,130.

Both the passengers were arrested and the smuggled gold was seized from their possession. The case is under investigation.
Chennai: In a case of a long fight to get back her long lost son, a 37-year-old woman from Anna Sathya Nagar approached the Thirumangalam police in Chennai on Thursday saying that her son who went missing 13 years ago, is living as the son of a contractor in Kamarajar Nagar.

The woman Vijaya and her husband Velu claimed that their son was 'kidnapped' by Gnanasekharan, their former neighbour, who had now become a successful contractor and is settled in Kamaraj Nagar in Thirumangalam.

Vijaya happened to see Gnanasekharan in a television programme aired by Zee TV Tamil on May 4 and went to the office of the channel seeking details of her son's 'abductor'. Officials at the TV channel then tried to arrange a meeting with Gnanasekharan and Vijaya, but when he came to know that Vijaya was there, he skipped the scheduled meeting and went away.

Vijaya collected his address and then approached the Thirumangalam police on Thursday seeking their help to get back her 'kidnapped' son Vikram, alias Manoj Kumar, who was just two years old then.

Police, on their part, summoned Gnanasekharan who had a completely different version of the incident to narrate. According to him, Vijaya had four children and Vikram was born on a new moon day and had jaundice and so she gave the boy to him. The boy has been living as the son of Gnanasekharan's third wife Santhi and is now a student of class IX in a school in ICF.

Police called the boy on Friday and put him through a counselling session to explain the background of the case. The boy was not very comfortable about the idea of going back to his biological parents overnight as he always believed that Ganasekharan and Santhi were his parents.

Vikram finally agreed to go to Vijaya's house on weekends, but she was not ready to accept the arrangement and wanted her son to be always with her. With the boy going back to Gnanasekharan's house on Friday, police now believe that case may end up in a court with both sides fighting for Vikram (a) Manoj Kumar.
Hyderabad: Two women from the city complained that they were offered jobs as beauticians but were being made to work as domestic helps in Saudi Arabia.

Mr Md. Ibrahim Ali of Golconda said his wife, Ms Arshiya Begum, had been offered the job by an agent named Adil from First Lancer. She left on September 20 last tear, and was told upon landing that she would have to go to Jeddah.

Once she landed there, she was told she would have to work as a domestic help. She refused initially but had no alternative, Mr Ali said.

She was promised a salary of 1,500 riyals; she was paid for three months and had not been paid after that, he said.

He said the employer was demanding 15,000 riyals to release her. When I approached the agent he demanded Rs 70,000, he said. Mr A;i then went to the police.

Golconda inspector Syed Fayaz said the police had begin a probe and advised Mr Ali to write to the external affairs ministry.

Ms Haleemunnisa, 31, of Falaknuma was also similarly cheated.

She was promised a beauticians job and a salary of Rs 70,000 by an agent named Viquar of Dabeerpura. She left for Saudi on March 19.

Her brother Md Asif said she was being made to do household work, and was being harassed by the employers family. He said she was being asked to pay Rs 6 lakh to be relieved.

He went to the police on April 13 but there was no action, he said.

Falaknuma inspector P. Yadagiri said a cheating case had been lodged against the agent. He said Mr Asif had been asked to write to the MEA.

Videsh Sampark to help out expats

The ministry of external affairs has launched a programme through the stage government titled Videsh Sampark to strengthen the engagement with Indian diaspora, ensure welfare and protection of Indians abroad, promote safe and legal migration and bringing passport services to the doorstep.

Dr E. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy, Regional Passport Officer said, The main aim will be to provide an opportunity to brainstorm how the state government and ministry can strengthen ongoing cooperation to address issues and problems pertaining to these areas. A meeting for the purpose will be held on May 13, with external affairs MoS Gen. V.K. Singh (retd), state minister K.T. Rama Rao, Nayani Narsimha Reddy and officials.

The regional passport office doesn't have the details of individuals from Hyderabad who are staying in the Gulf. It is hoped that with Videsh Sampark, a database can be created to maintain individual records. He said the issues of migrants will be discussed in the May 13 conference.
State funding of public education has dropped by about half during his many years on the Carlisle Area School Board, according to Gerald Eby.

They are not doing a real good job, he said of lawmakers Thursday as the board voted unanimously to adopt an $84.3 million school district budget for 2017-18 that calls for a 2.9 percent tax hike.

Each year the state reduces how much money they want to put towards education, Eby told board members minutes before they agreed to increase the tax rate by .3956 mills to 14.0365 mills. A final vote on the budget is set for 7 p.m. June 15 in the large group instruction room of the Fowler building of Carlisle High School.

Eby, who is chairman of the budget and finance committee, said the majority of the state House and Senate members were educated in a public school system. Yet they are more absorbed by debate over rules and regulations than providing an adequate subsidy to school districts to support quality education.

Mismanagement of the Public School Employees Retirement System has forced taxpayers into the position where they have to pay more money to replace what had been invested the first time, Eby said. The teachers had paid their part of retirement. The school district has paid its part of it but now we have to do it again because they [state officials] screwed it up the first time and they are not trying to fix it.

Fix broken system

Fellow board member Rick Coplen called on state lawmakers to repair the broken pension system and increase the financial commitment to public education across Pennsylvania.

A lot of work went into this.  We recognize and appreciate that, Coplen said of the school district budget. We are maintaining our academic programs and are hiring new teachers for the right reason.

The budget adds five teachers including the equivalent of 1.5 new positions to implement full-day kindergarten at Crestview Elementary School. Thats well worth every penny we spend, Coplen said. I am glad we were able to go from a 3.2 percent increase in taxes to 2.9 percent  thats clearly helpful to all our taxpayers.

Board member Deborah Sweaney said she struggled with the 2017-18 budget but was happy the district was able to keep the tax hike below the 3.2 percent Act 1 Index permitted by law.

Part of the struggle was finding the right ratio of draw down from reserves with a tax increase that takes into account the burden a millage hike would have on the districts property owners, Sweaney said. She added board members know money transferred out of reserve was money lost in future years.

The budget is balanced through a combination of $1.16 million in new revenue from the proposed tax increase and $3.765 million in transfers from reserves. As a management tool, the district has separate reserve funds designated to offset anticipated increases in the annual PSERS contribution and health insurance costs.

The district cant keep drawing money from reserves, said Eby, adding eventually that money would be depleted. Im really not happy with this budget, but it is the best we can do.

Realistic budget

Board member Bruce Clash called the budget realistic given the boards commitment to maintaining a quality education program and healthy student-teacher classroom ratios. Two of the five new teaching positions are for projected enrollment growth at the elementary schools while a part-time reading instructor and full-time high school arts and humanities teacher are to meet increased program needs.

Like Sweaney, Clash said reducing the tax increase from 3.2 percent to 2.9 percent was a fair compromise made in the interest of district taxpayers. Clash said there have been dramatic increases in key cost drivers, including special education, which has seen a 26 percent to 30 percent increase in expenditures over the past three to four years.

The PSERS increase for 2017-18 amounts to at least $400,000 off-the-top, Clash said. We have no say over that.

Board President Paula Bussard said the board is obligated to take the long view on district finances and plan for not only the upcoming school year, but years beyond that. If we are not mindful, we would be doing a disservice for the generations that follow, Bussard said.

She said the long view played into the management of reserves the district had built up over the years to better absorb the spikes in pension and health care costs. Money put aside also enabled Carlisle to implement access to technology at all grade levels so that its students are able to go out and compete in the current workforce, Bussard said.

The use of reserves has enabled the board and its administration to plan for building upgrades and facility maintenance. The worst thing we can do is to try to maintain facilities on the cheap Bussard said.
GST will greatly help in removing economic distortions and in development of a common national market, Khandu said. (Photo: ANI/Twitter)

Itanagar: Arunachal Pradesh on Friday became the 12th state in the country and second in North East after Assam, to ratify the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill. Chief Minister Pema Khandu introduced the Arunachal Pradesh Goods and Services Tax Bill, 2017 during a day-long special session of the assembly, in the newly constructed assembly building in Itanagar.

The bill aimed at making a provision for levy and collection of tax on inter-state supply of goods or services or both by the state and matter connected therewith or incidental thereto.

Various members cutting across party lines while participating in the discussions supported the bill saying that it is aimed at 'one nation one tax', which would benefit the state immensely. Khandu while summing up the discussion said that consuming states like Arunachal Pradesh would benefit from the landmark tax regime.

The chief minister revealed that almost all the district headquarters in the state have the required infrastructure in place to embrace GST. "Work on optical fibre-laying is being undertaken on war footing to connect far-flung rural populace so that each and every citizen of the state benefits from IT connectivity," Khandu said.

"GST will be simple and easy to administer, ensure better control on leakages with robust IT infrastructure, higher revenue efficiency, and relief in overall tax burden and with destination based tax, it will greatly help in removing economic distortions and in development of a common national market," Khandu added.

The chief minister appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi for bringing in an investment-friendly tax reform that would be of immense benefit to Arunachal Pradesh. "GST will remove a complex tax structure and lead to decrease in prices of commodities," he said.

Once GST is implemented, all entry gates erected for collecting various taxes will be abolished leading to check in revenue leakages, he said. The chief minister further added that five regional offices would be set up at Pasighat, Namsai, Jairampur, Bhalukpong and Itanagar for GST implementation and officials in all districts trained in handling the new tax system.

He added that NITI Aayog and the ministry concerned were asked to address gap in IT infrastructure for successful implementation of GST. Khandu said that the government would work out the GST registration process towards checking dilution of trading license and tax evasion by non-Arunachalee traders.

The chief minister said that the Centre would compensate the states tax losses by increasing 14 per cent every year to the tax collected by the state during 2015-16 for a period of five years. The year 2015-16 has been kept as the base year for compensation, he added. Later the members present in the house passed the bill by voice votes before Speaker Tenzing Norbu Thongdok adjourned it sine die.
Hyderabad: The growing number of beggars near the Charminar is a matter of concern to the tourists that flock to see the iconic structure, and to shoppers.

The number of beggars increases a month before Ramzan, when more people are out shopping in this locality. The beggars come from neighbouring Tandur, Vikarabad, Zaheerabad, Mahbubnagar, and Guntur and even from other states such as Bihar, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.

Varsha Bhargavi, a child rights activist, says that many of them are not actually beggars and do odd jobs at other times of the year.

During Ramzan, these people take to begging as a part time business and they camp in the old city for the whole month. Food is not a big problem for them. This is just an additional source of income for them.

Since Ramzan is a holy month for Muslims, they are more generous and this generosity is being taken advantage of, says Ayesha Siddiqui, a resident of Moghulpura.

She added, People from all corners of the city shop at Charminar during Ramzan and the number of stalls and shops increase. The irritating thing is that whenever we are engrossed in shopping, the beggars keep on disturbing us until we give them some money.

They carry children around with them to gain sympathy and the children keep pulling at our dresses or shopping bags, she said.

Mohammed Abdul Shukoor, who owns a perfume shop near Macca Masjid, said that beggars do roam the streets on other days too but during the month of Ramzan, their number increases. Their numbers have increased in the past 15 days, and a new trick is carrying a photo and bio-data of some person they claim is a cousin, who is in hospital and needs money for an operation.

Deputy commissioner of police, south zone, V Satyanarayana, told this newspaper that more police will be deployed as the beggar problem is known to the police.

To avoid any problem to visitors and devotees, we will deploy more police and they will be in civil uniform to monitor each and every activity. Last year 20 petty cases were booked against troublemakers, he said.

Alms to beggars is not zakaat: Experts

Ramzan is a holy month for Muslims, when they are enjoin-ed to do zakaat or charity. But there is a difference between doing zakaat and giving alms to beggars, say religious scholars.

People should not confuse the two. If a person is giving alms to a beggar, then it is completely his choice. But for zakaat there is the condition that it should be 2.5 per cent of the total income a person earns in a year, said Maulana Abdul Mannan.

He says that a person should do zakaat only if he is qualified to do it. Also, the first preference for doing zakaat is ones poor relatives. Apart from this, anyone doing zakaat should follow the edicts.
Nagpur (Maharashtra): Dubbing the steady stream of cease-fire violations, infiltrations and support to stone-pelting in the Valley as a 'sign of weakness' by Pakistan, Minister of State (MoS) for Home Affairs Hansraj Ahir on Friday said the Defence Ministry is ready to give an appropriate response to Islamabad on all counts.

"Pakistan killed Ummer Fayaz and it is very saddening indeed. Our agency is working on this and the Defence Ministry is also ready to give an appropriate response to Pakistan," Ahir said.

Earlier, Ahir had asserted that India's patience must not be viewed as its weakness, adding that the government will come to a conclusion on ways to stop repeated ceasefire violations by Pakistan.

"We are not weak, we are working with patience. We do not want to hurt any civilian. Our army is working well. The government will soon take a decision in connection with the ceasefire violations by Pakistan, "Ahir said.

Once again Pakistan violated ceasefire on Friday morning by opening fire as a warning to the Border Security Force (BSF) troops deployed in Arnia sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

"Today morning Pak Rangers fired few bullets warning our troops working ahead of fence with tractor in Arnia area and our troops also retaliated with few rounds of fire," said the BSF in a statement.

Few shells of small mortar firing also took place from both sides but no loss and damage have been reported so far.

Earlier, two Pakistan Army soldiers were injured in retaliatory firing from the Indian side post a ceasefire violation in the Nowshera sector of Jammu and Kashmir on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday.

A woman was killed and her husband was injured in the ceasefire violation. Pakistani troops reportedly fired 120 mm mortars early morning in the area.

Indian Home Minister Rajanth Singh had said earlier that he has given the BSF a 'free hand' in dealing effectively with Pakistan over cross-border firing.

"There is my standing order to the director-general of the Border Security Force ( BSF) that first bullet shouldn't be fired from our side but if Pakistan fires bullet then bullets fired from our side shouldn't be counted," he said.
Chennai: A city court on Friday ordered production of AIADMK (Amma) faction leader TTV Dhinakaran before it from Tihar jail in New Delhi to face its proceedings in a FERA violation case against him.

Economic offences court-II Judge S Malarmathi issued a Prisoner on Transit (PT) warrant against Dhinakaran to enable Enforcement Directorate to bring him to Channai court from Tihar jail.

Dhinakaran has been lodged in Tihar jail following his arrest in a case involving his alleged bid to to bribe an Election Commission of India official to secure the AIADMK's Two Leaves poll symbol for Amma faction of the party.

Dhinakaran is facing two cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against him for alleged violations of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) in 1994.

On April 19, the economic offences court had framed charges against Dhinakaran for FERA violation in the Dipper investment case in which he has been accused by the ED of transferring USD one crore illegally.

The second case pertains to the transfer of 44.37 lakh pounds through West Bank Ltd, Ireland, allegedly breaching FERA provisions.

As the Delhi police has arrested him in the alleged bribery bid case, he had not appeared before the court for framing of charges in the second case.

The public prosecutor for ED submitted details of his arrest following which the judge issued the PT warrant to enable the ED to produce him before the court on June 8.

The judge then adjourned the matter to the same date.

Dhinakaran was arrested in Delhi on April 25 the night after four days of questioning for allegedly attempting to bribe an unidentified EC official to get the undivided AIADMK's 'Two Leaves' election symbol.

His faction hoped to obtain the symbol for a bypoll to the R K Nagar Assembly seat in Tamil Nadu which was later cancelled by the Election Commission (EC). He is in judicial custody till May 15.
Farmers wait for buyers for their chilli produce at the Enumamula agricultural market yard in Warangal. (Photo: DC/Representational Image)

Hyderabad: The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) on Friday directed the Khammam police to submit a report over the incident in which ten farmers, accused of vandalism, were brought to a court by police allegedly in handcuffs.

Ten chilli farmers, who were arrested for allegedly vandalising the Khammam Agriculture Market Yard office on April 28, were produced in the court in Khammam town near here in handcuffs yesterday.

Advocate T Rajnikanth Reddy today filed a petition in the SHRC, seeking a thorough inquiry into the incident.

Based on Reddy's plea, the SHRC here asked the Khammam District Superintendent of Police to submit a report by June 5.

In his petition, Reddy said, "Police handcuffing the chilli farmers and producing them before the court violated their fundamental rights."

"It is highly shocking that the poor farmers were brought to the court handcuffed. The farmers had brought chilli to Khammam market yard hoping to sell the produce for a better price, however, there was sudden drop in prices," the plea said.

Handcuffing is in violation of the rules and the Supreme Court guidelines, Reddy added.

The ten chilli farmers had been arrested for allegedly carrying out violent protests and damaging the Khamman market yard office.

As the handcuffing incident sparked an outrage, the police department suspended two Armed Reserve Police sub-inspectors and also ordered an inquiry.

The ten farmers were yesterday granted bail by the court and released.

The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee and Telugu Desam Party had blamed the TRS government for the incident.

Farmers in Telangana have been demanding better price for chilli as the price has dipped to around Rs 6,000 per quintal this season as against Rs 12,000 per quintal last year.
Some of the Cognizant techies who were recently removed approach the labour commissioner seeking justice on Thursday.DC

Hyderabad: The $150 billion Indian IT industry has been adversely affected by the recent decisions taken by the Trump government in the United States. In order to provide more salaries to H1B employees and jobs to Americans, IT companies have adopted a layoff rule and are issuing ultimatums to employees in India, especially Hyderabad.

Most Indian companies depend on American markets and the destination of about 78 per cent of exports is the United States. In order to gain goodwill from the US Government, Infosys has already announced 10,000 jobs for Americans in the next two years. It has received appreciation from the White House. The IT major, which experienced 13.3 per cent growth in 2015-16, was disappointed with 8.3 per cent in 2016-17.

Now, majority of IT companies are targeting seniorsthose with experience between 10 and 20 years. In the second phase, experts expect more jobs at lower levels to be affected.

As per reports, nearly 1,000 employees in level-6 or more, including designations such as group project managers, project managers and senior architects, will be directed to Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS).

Meanwhile, unskilled employees at other levels will lose their jobs by the end of this year.

Last month, during an internal meeting, Wipro heads announced that the performance of each employee will be reviewed and those whose performance doesn't match up to the required standard may lose their job. As per estimates, 10 per cent of the 1.81 lakh employees face this threat. However, Wipro is saying that it plans new recruitments soon.

Cognizant has already announced VRS policy and asked a few programme directors, associate vice presidents and senior vice presidents, amounting to a total of 1,000 executives, for VRS.

As per estimates of the IT industry, about 2.3 per cent of employees face this threat. Cognizant used to register 20 per cent growth rate; it recorded between 5-10 per cent in the last quarter.

France-based Capgemini, which took over I-Gate in 2015, is also trying to lay off employees. Capgemini has over 1.95 lakh employees, of which 1.13 lakh work in India. IT experts estimate a threat to 5 per cent of employees in India. About 200 employees in the Mumbai office have been issued notices for VRS.
Hyderabad: The prestigious Hyderabad Metro Rail project is adding to the financial burden on the cash-strapped state government. The project cost has mounted to Rs 18,829 crore from Rs15, 073 crore.

Project concessionaire L&T has asked the Telangana State government to pay the additional amount of Rs 3,756 crore to complete the project. L&T managing director and chief executive officer Shivanand Nimbargi has written to the TS government on this issue.

On March 24, 2017, TS Chief Secretary S.P. Singh held a meeting with Hyderabad Metro Rail and L&T representatives. L&T representatives said the project cost had gone up and asked for additional funds. Mr Singh asked them for cost break-up of the additional financial support, which was complied with.

L&T had written earlier to the government on August 17, 2016, requesting for the additional money as the cost of project had increased. But there was no response.

Mr Nimbargi said the delay in Right of Way (ROW) beyond May 2017 would lead to additional cost impact. He said the Raidurg extension will be at additional cost as per change of scope, adding that this increased cost of the project was as of March 31, 2017.

According to the physical progress report sent by L&T, only depot equipment work has been completed. The rest of the work such as construction of stations, track work, signalling, security equipment and others are at various stages, ranging from 25 per cent to 90 per cent.

This is the first time in India that a project is being implemented with communication-based train control (CBTC) technology.
Shiv Sena activists burn the Pakistan flag and raise slogans against Hurriyat leaders over ceasefire violation and killing of army officer in Kashmir recently, at Jammu on Thursday. (Photo: PTI)

Jammu: Jammu and Kashmir Congress on Thursday strongly condemned the continued ceasefire violations and unprovoked Pakistani shelling on Indian positions and civilian areas in the state in which a woman was killed.

Jammu Kashmir Pradesh Congress Committee (JKPCC) spokesperson Ravinder Sharma said it is tragic that Pakistan is repeatedly violating ceasefire and it was unfortunate that the firing in Nowshera sector on the intervening night between Wednesday and Thursday resulted in the death of a woman.

Sharma along with several other senior leaders of the party visited Pukharni village and attended the funeral of the woman. He lashed out at Pakistan for repeated ceasefire violations and expressed deep anguish at the killing of innocent persons besides causing great loss to property.

"The people have to shift and migrate from their residences and abandon their fields and cattle due to regular feature of ceasefire violation," he said. He demanded all necessary measures for the safety of the people and provisions for timely medical facilities.

He termed the Centre and state government as total failure on all fronts and blamed them for the present situation of the state. He also demanded the government to immediately fulfil the promise of allotting plots to the identified population of border and LoC in order to accommodate them in safer zones so that innocent lives are not lost in firing.

Shiv Sena and Dogra Front also held protests against the government amid anti-Pakistan sloganeering against ceasefire violations and killing of a Kashmiri army officer. They burnt Pakistani flags and condemned the killing of Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz, the young army officer from Kulgam.
CHENNAI/CUDDALORE: After giving a slip to police teams from three states by spreading the news that he was travelling to Srikalahasti, the Calcutta HC judge, Justice C S Karnan, appears to have stayed put in Chennai and even held discussions with his lawyer on the next course of action.

When Justice Karnan left his room in the State Guest House at Chepauk on Wednesday morning, he told the staff and others around that he was proceeding to Srikalahasti to offer prayers. A high-level police team from West Bengal, which landed here a few hours later, rushed to the pilgrim town, about 120 km north of Chennai in Andhra Pradesh, looking for him. Police teams from AP and Tamil Nadu too joined in the search at Srikalahasti. The WB and TN teams returned to Chennai in the night, without the judge.

But lawyer Mathews J. Nedumpara said he had met Justice Karnan in Chennai Wednesday. I was staying at a hotel on RK Salai. His son met me at about 11.30 pm and handed over all the papers and the vakalat to me to represent Karnan in the Supreme Court", the lawyer told Deccan Chronicle. He declined to disclose where he had met the judge.

Mr Nedumpara presented Justice Karnan's petition for 'recall' of the jail sentence before the Supreme Court on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the WB team went to the house of Sugan Karnan, son of Justice Karnan, at Choolaimedu to make enquiries. The police team met Karnan's wife Saraswathi and their son Sugan to find out where the judge was. They also searched the room at government guest house where Karnan was staying till Wednesday morning, a senior police official said.

In Chennai, cyber police are working overtime to trace his location using his mobile phone signal since Wednesday afternoon as soon as the WB team headed by an officer in the rank of DGP sought help from city police commissioner Karan Singha. By the evening, the judge had switched off his two mobile phones.

We are still on the job. We have taken out his call records and are trying to find out details of people with whom he was keeping in touch. We strongly believe he is very much in Tamil Nadu, the police official said.

Judges native village protests against sentence

Mangalam, a sleepy village in this district, on Thursday erupted in protest against six months imprisonment to its son of the soil Justice C. S. Karnan, judge of Calcutta High Court.

The villagers raised black flags atop their houses on Thursday as police teams from three states  West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh  failed to locate him for the last two days. They also held a protest demonstration in the village demanding that the Supreme Court reconsider its decision of arrest order against Justice Karnan.

The high court judge was born and raised in this village and his family members still live here.

My brother has not fled the country. He will never do that. He is sitting silently in Chennai and taking a call on his next course of action. He is a learned person and he will always respect the law of the land, Arivudai Nambi, Justice Karnans brother, said.

He also alleged that his brother was being targeted since he exposed corruption in higher judiciary. Mr Nambi also said the villagers want the sentencing by the Supreme Court be withdrawn.
Chennai: The Madras High Court on Friday granted conditional bail to sand mining baron J Sekhar Reddy and his associates in a money laundering case.

High Court Judge Baskaran granted bail on the condition that Reddy should furnish sureties of Rs 10 lakh and two of his associates P Kumar, K Sreenivasulu have to furnish sureties of Rs. five lakh each and should appear and sign paper at Delhi's Enforcement Directorate (ED) office.

Earlier in March, the Enforcement Directorate had arrested Reddy and his two associates post demonetisation.

The trio was arrested under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) after they were called for questioning by the Enforcement Directorate.

Reddy and his two associates were later produced in a court which had sent them to jail till March 28.
Voters going to the polls Tuesday for the local primary races will be confronted with a long list of offices  and most likely not enough candidates to fill them, depending on your location.

May 16 is Pennsylvanias primary day for local races, where registered Democrats and Republicans select their candidates for the November 2017 election. The odd-year race presents a massive number of county and municipal offices, a phenomenon somewhat unique to Pennsylvania.

For most citizens, these are the people who collect their property taxes, who decide their zoning  but its something most people just get used to and dont think about, said Terry Madonna, a political science professor and polling analyst with Franklin and Marshall College.

This year, Madonna said, he has seen considerable interest from political groups and the press as to whether local races will see increased participation due to political furor at the national level.

Inspired by Trump-ism  either for or against it  a number of previously uncompetitive races in parts of the nation have been receiving considerable attention as bellwethers for 2018.

But if this is the case, Madonna said, it so far hasnt seemed to trickle down to Pennsylvanias hyper-local offices. Those positions that have been competitive in years past remain so. Those that are rarely contested, or go unfilled, remain so as well.

In Cumberland County, two of the seven row officers positions  clerk of court and prothonotary  have a competitive race for the Republican nomination. No competition on the Democratic side exists. Three of the seven have no Democratic candidate at all.

The countys magisterial district judge seats all have candidates, and most are competitive, although MDJ candidates can cross-file to both parties, and most candidates do. The same goes for most school boards, where even the competitive races are nonpartisan.

But when one gets down to the municipal level, the selection gets slimmer. While some borough council races have a healthy number of candidates, townships are more often than not unable to get enough to fill the ballot.

One of the issues with the post-Trump narrative, Madonna said, is that concern about national politics doesnt necessarily translate down to a change of the local environment. Madonna referenced F&Ms latest poll, which showed that 96 percent of Pennsylvania Clinton voters and 94 percent of Trump voters still say they are satisfied with their vote.

If youre in a rural area that voted for Trump, the bulk of your neighbors are still hanging in there with him, Madonna said. Mobilizing anti-Trump sentiment is not going to be easy.

Further, as reported in November, the Sentinels analysis of Cumberland Countys election results showed that most municipalities had galvanized. Republican-dominated rural townships voted for Trump by an even stronger margin than they voted for Romney. On the other hand, Carlisle  the countys Democratic stronghold  voted for Clinton by an even larger margin than for Obama.

For local races, that means that liberal candidates in conservative areas are now facing a tougher climb, and vice-versa for conservative mobilization in liberal areas.

The only exception in the county, according to November returns, was Camp Hill borough, which flipped from Romney to Clinton. Camp Hills borough council race has four Democrats and four Republicans running for four seats, a larger field than it has seen at least since 2011, according to data from the countys elections bureau.

The other issue is the size of Pennsylvanias jurisdictions. South Newton Township, for instance, has two township auditor positions open, neither with a candidate from either party. But with a census population of only 1,383 people, it isnt exactly unexpected.

In many ways, Pennsylvanias commonwealth structure is the inverse of other states in the nation. Most have only a few municipal governments outside of county-level control, but give those municipal governments a certain amount of autonomy to determine their own structures.

Pennsylvania, on the other hand, has over 2,600 local government units. But their structures are almost entirely dictated by the state, including the number and nature of their elected positions.

Most of Pennsylvanias townships are defined as second class entities under the state code, according to information provided by the states Local Government Commission. But, the LGC points out, the state code seems to assume that, in many cases, not all of these positions will ever be filled.

State requirements for second-class townships stipulate that positions such as auditors, while they must be listed on the ballot, can simply be appointed by the township supervisors in the case that no one actually runs, which seems to be most of the time.

Further, and possibly most critically, the terms and compensation of local elected positions are also set by state fiat, and can only be changed if a municipality goes through the process of establishing so-called home rule.

As regulatory requirements on local governments have increased, the state Legislature has rarely changed how much local officials are paid, or how long they serve.

I think the answer to the lack of candidates lies largely in the fact that positions like school board are entirely unpaid. And even something like township supervisor is a six-year commitment to spending a huge amount of time for very little money, Madonna said. A lot of people arent willing to put themselves in that situation.
New Delhi: Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra's mother has written a letter to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of spreading lies regarding her son.

On Thursday, several Aam Aadmi Party leaders had tweeted a picture in which Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari and Mishra were seen in one frame.

The sacked minister's mother, Annapurna Mishra, a former mayor of Delhi, claimed that the picture was clicked at an event to felicitate AAP leader Kumar Vishwas' father and was attended by Kejriwal and all his ministers.

She said Kejriwal had pursued her to convince Mishra to join politics despite the latter not being interested. In the letter, she also alleged that Kejriwal's men had started calling her corrupt while he has maintained a stoic silence over the issue.

Mishra's mother claimed that she was the one who had organised mohalla sabha in 2007 and reminded Kejriwal that he had attended it and it was even mentioned in his book Swaraj.

You said that when the AAP MLAs had their first meeting at the Constitution Club after winning 28 seats, they were shown a video of a mohalla sabha organised by me, she said.

She also expressed disappointment at Kejriwal's silence on the questions being posed by her son. Annapurna also said that she was proud of her son who is on a hunger strike and hadn't eaten for the last three days.

The former mayor said Mishra is only an agent of truth and would keep soldiering on as he is very stubborn. She urged Kejriwal to share the information being sought by her son.

After his removal as a minister and his suspension from the party, Mishra launched a fast demanding that the AAP divulge details of foreign tours undertaken by five leaders of the party which, in turn, has accused him of following a script penned by the BJP.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Friday declined to stay the income tax proceedings against Young India Ltd in the National Herald case, which involves Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.

A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Chander Shekhar asked the company to approach the Income Tax assessing officer, after which the firm withdrew its petition.

The court then dismissed the plea as it was withdrawn. Young India had approached the high court seeking a direction to stay the IT proceedings and quashing of notices against it with regard to the National Herald misappropriation of assets case.

Earlier, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi had opposed as vague and devoid of material particulars of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Subramanian Swamys plea seeking summoning of witnesses in the National Herald case.

The Gandhis, who are accused in the case along with some other Congress leaders, contended that Swamys plea was in the nature of a fishing and roving enquiry which is not permissible in law. The submissions were made in the reply filed to Swamys list of witnesses and other evidence given to metropolitan magistrate Lovleen in the case.

The application preferred by the complainant (Swamy) is vague and devoid of material particulars and is in the nature of a fishing and roving enquiry which is not permissible in law.

Swamy has proceeded to enlist the witnesses and enumerate a number of documents without divulging the dates or relevant period for most of the documents sought to be summoned through the said witnesses, the written reply filed by the accused said.

The court, thereafter, listed the matter for further hearing on 22 April after Swamy sought time to go through the submissions made before arguments on the matter could begin. The accused claimed, Swamy, through this application, is seeking to summon witnesses and call for documents without divulging their necessity and desirability on the basis of the allegations made by him in the complaint.

The persistent attempt on the part of the complainant to have access the documents is clearly an attempt to make out a new case which is impermissible in law, they said.

Swamy, in his private criminal complaint, has accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs50 lakh through which Young Indian Pvt. Ltd (YI) obtained the right to recover Rs90.25 crore which Associate Journals Ltd (AJL) owed to the Congress.

The Gandhis and other accusedMotilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitrodahave denied the allegations levelled against them. The court had summoned the accused persons, besides YI on 26 June, 2014. On 19 December, 2015, it had granted bail to Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to summons. Pitroda was granted bail on 20 February, 2016 when he had appeared in the court.

Swamy had on 10 February filed the list of witnesses before the court which had on 26 December last year given him the last opportunity to submit the list. The list includes the names of eleven persons including All India Congress Committees general secretary Janardan Dwivedi, several officials of AJL and government officials.

In a relief to Sonia and Rahul Gandhi, the court had earlier rejected as fishing enquiry a plea of Swamy seeking a direction to the Congress party and AJL to produce certain records relating to the case. Sonia, Rahul, Vora (AICC treasurer), Fernandes (AICC general secretary), Dubey and Pitroda were summoned for alleged offences under section 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read with section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.
Jammu: The Jammu and Kashmir government on ordered closure of schools along the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district for two days following the shelling of civilian areas in yet another breach of ceasefire by Pakistan.

The Deputy Commissioner issued orders for closure of all the schools situated along LoC in Rajouri district on Thursday and Friday, a senior officer said.

"All schools close to the LoC were shut in the district as a precautionary measure today following the death of a woman and injuries to her husband in shelling by the Pakistan army", the officer said.

A 35-year-old woman was killed while her husband was injured as Pakistani army violated the ceasefire along the LoC in Nowshera sector.

The shelling has affected five-six hamlets along the LoC including Sheri Makeri, Namakdali and Khamba since Wednesday night.

As many as 27 families have been affected due to the shelling in which many houses, including a school, have been damaged partially or severely, he said.

More than 40 farm animals are also reported killed in firing, he added.

Two relief camps have been established in Nowshera where 50 persons comprising around 15 families have been settled.

District administration has also earmarked additional camps which may be required in case of further ceasefire violation.
Jammu: Pakistani troops on Friday violated the ceasefire by firing mortars along the International Border in Jammu district, leaving a BSF jawan injured. BSF troops posted along the border retaliated.

This is second ceasefire violation along the Indo-Pak border in Jammu and Kashmir in as many days.

"Pakistani Rangers fired few bullets warning troops working ahead of the fence in Arnia area in Jammu. Our troops retaliated with few rounds of fire this morning", a senior BSF officer said.

"They also fired mortar shells. Some exchange of mortar shells also took place", he said.

A BSF jawan suffered minor injuries, he said. Pakistani troops had yesterday shelled civilian areas near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, killing a woman and injuring her husband and provoking retaliation by the Indian army in which two Pakistani soldiers were injured.

In the wake of the Pakistani action in Naushera tehsil of Rajouri district, the schools in the area were closed down and an evacuation plan was activated under which over 1200 people from various border hamlets are being shifted to safer places.

After the Pakistani shelling, Sub-Divisional Magistrate (SDM) of Nowshera tehsil had issued an order, directing closure of all schools in the area as a precautionary measure.

"All schools close to the LoC were shut in Nowshera tehsil of Rajouri district as a precautionary measure today following the death of a woman and injuries to her husband in shelling by the Pakistan Army," a senior police officer had said.

An evacuation plan has been put in place in view of the intermittent shelling and firing along LoC, the officer had said.
Justice Karnan's lawyer told the apex court that he wanted to tender an unconditional apology, but the apex court registry was not accepting his application. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: Calcutta High Court judge Justice CS Karnan's lawyer on Friday requested the Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar (CJI) to stay the arrest order.

The CJI asked Justice Karnan's lawyer to file an application and told him that Karnan can be heard when all seven judges would be available for the hearing.

Justice Karnan's lawyer told the apex court that he wanted to tender an unconditional apology, but the apex court registry was not accepting his application.

Justice Karnan yesterday sought relief from the apex court in the contempt of court matter.

Advocate Mathew Nethumpara, who was appearing for Justice Karnan in the apex court was asked for the documents to prove that he is the lawyer of Karnan.

Nethumpara told the apex court that he has the 'wakalatnama' and authorisation letter.

Earlier on Tuesday, the apex court sentenced Justice Karnan to six months in jail while holding him guilty of contempt of court.

It was a landmark ruling, as it is for the first time ever that a sitting High Court judge has been sentenced.

The apex court had ordered the immediate arrest of Karnan.

The seven-judge bench of the apex court headed by CJI Khehar was hearing the contempt petition against Karnan.

Justice Karnan earlier on Monday sentenced the Chief Justice of India and six other apex court judges to five-year rigorous imprisonment after holding them guilty under the SC/ST Atrocities Act-1989 and amended Act of 2015.

Along with the Chief Justice of India, six judges - Justice Dipak Misra, Justice J. Chelameswar, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, Justice Madan B. Lokur, Justice Pinaki Chandra Ghose and Justice Kurian Joseph - had initiated suo motu contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan in February after he had named 20 "corrupt judges," seeking a probe against them.

Justice Karnan had alleged this was done because he is a Dalit.

Justice Karnan earlier on May 2 directed the court's registrar to issue non-bailable warrant against these seven Supreme Court judges.

He tagged the apex court judges as 'accused' for not being present.

On May 1, in response to the apex court ordering an examination of his 'mental health', Justice Karnan asserted that he would issue a suo moto suspension order against West Bengal Director General of Police (DGP) if he forcefully conducted a medical checkup.

Karnan further asserted that the DGP should take all the seven accused judges for medical test too.

Earlier, the apex court constituted a medical board to examine the mental condition of Justice Karnan on May 5 and also directed the DG West Bengal to assist the medical board to get justice Karnan examined.

The apex court said in its order that High Courts, any tribunal and authority would not take any cognizance on the orders passed by Justice Karnan.

Earlier, in an unprecedented move, the apex court had invoked its powers to initiate contempt proceedings against Justice Karnan, for writing letters casting aspersions on several judges.

Justice Karnan has been accused of circulation of disparaging letters against sitting High Court judges of the Madras High Court. He also allegedly wrote about Supreme Court judges in his letters to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
Hyderabad: After more than nine months of investigation, the Telangana State police finally suspended five police officers for having links with Maoist-turned-gangster Mohammed Nayeemuddin, who was killed in an encounter in Mahbubnagar last year.

Additional superintendent of police, CID, Maddipati Srinivas Rao, ACP Mirchowk, Mallineni Srinivas Rao, ACP Detective department, M Chintamaneni Srinivas, Inspector Kothagudem Rajagopal, and Inspector Traffic, Sangareddy, Mastan Vali were shown to have direct links with the gangster.

Telangana State Director General of Police Anurag Sharma, who issued the suspension orders on Thursday, also ordered an oral inquiry of four other officers and ordered that department action be taken against 16 other officers who were found to be associated with Nayeem and worked hand in glove with him when he operated in the then Nalgonda, Mahabubnagar and Rangareddy districts in Telangana.

These are the cops against whom action has been taken.

The officers are Additional SP Amarender Reddy, Additional SP Chandrashekar, DSP Tirupathanna; Inspectors namely Srinivas Naidu, Kishan, Srinivas Rao, Venkat Reddy, Majeed, Surya Prakash, Ravi Kiran Reddy, Balwantaiah, Narender Goud, Ravinder, head constables, Dinesh Anand, Mohammed Miya and constable Balaiah

The DGP said that the inquiry revealed that around 25 officers had links with Nayeem and were involved in various activities with him.

According to sources, the suspensions come after Inspector General of Police Y. Nagi Reddy who headed the Special Investigation Team appointed to probe the case, submitted a report that established the links the officers had with Nayeem, his gang members and his activities.

The suspended officers received direct benefits from Nayeem in various forms during their service in the areas in which he operated.

Probe: Benefits were given in cash and kind

The benefits were monetary as well as in the form of settling land disputes and civil issues, and they had also purchased land in huge quantities.

The oral inquiry has been ordered against deputy superintendent of police (Mahbubnagar) M. Sai Manohar, DSP (Yellandu) G. Prakash Rao, DSP Venkata Narsaiah and inspector (Gadwal) G. Venkataiah. Nayeemuddin killed IPS officer KS Vyas in 1993. He is also involved in 14 murders.

Nayeem was attracted to Naxal ideology in the late 1980s, Ge was arested at 19 with a tapancha and a grenade. After release, Nayeem joined the PWG Alair dalam. He was arrested by 1993 and expelled from the PWG for indulging in extortion and settlements. He later formed gangs to extort and murder people.

Who was Nayeemuddin

Mohammed Nayeemuddin was a renegade Naxalite, gangster and extortionist.

He was a former member of PWG.

He was accused in the murder of IPS officer and Greyhounds founder K.S. Vyas.

Timeline

Aug. 8 2016: Nayeem killed in an encounter in Shadnagar

Aug. 10: Special Investigation team formed to probe cases related to Nayeem

Aug. 13: ACP Kukatpally N. Bhujanga Rao appointed investigating officer

Aug. 19: IG Y. Nagi Reddy appointed chief of SIT

Sept. 12: Additional DG Anjani Kumar to monitor investigation

Tally so far

205: Number of cases registered by Special Investigation Team on Nayeem

127 persons arrested

25 chargesheets file

14 detained under PD Act
Chandigarh (Punjab): Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said that students and youth of Kashmir, wherever they are in the country should be treated nicely and decently and provided comfortable environment.

Rajnath said this while attending the Northern Zonal Council meeting in Chandigarh on Friday.

He advised all the Chief Ministers, ministers and chief secretaries in this regard.

He stressed that all the youth of India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are our own children and should be treated accordingly.

The 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council consisted of the states of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, National Capital Territory of Delhi and Union Territory of Chandigarh under the chairmanship of Rajnath.

The meeting was attended by the Chief Ministers of Haryana and Punjab, Administrator of Union Territory of Chandigarh, Lieutenant Governor of Union Territory of Delhi, Deputy Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Ministers of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi as well as the senior officers from Central and state governments.

The deliberations of the Council were warm and cordial in the true spirit of cooperative federalism and ended with the decision to host the next meeting in Rajasthan.

The Zonal Council discussed and deliberated upon 18 items of common interest among the member states.

The major items discussed were 'Need for fiscal and infrastructural harmony in Northern States, Joint efforts for export of fruits, flowers and vegetables from the states, sharing of water of various rivers of the region and also hydropower among states, controlling pollution in the region by setting up Common Effluent Treatment Plants and Treatment, Storage and Disposal Facility (TSDF) for disposal of hazardous waste, contamination of water in canals of Rajasthan off-taking from Harike Barrage and setting up of mini hydel projects on Bhakra Main Line Canal at 27 Sites with total 63.75 MW of power in Punjab.

Out of the 18 items discussed today, seven were resolved in the meeting.

There are interstate problem of effluents generated from industrial areas as well as from sewage from towns draining in River Yamuna and Ghaggar as well as canals of Rajasthan.

In a major step forward all the member states unanimously agreed to jointly tackle the problem of water pollution under the guidance of Central Pollution Control Board.

For export promotion of fruits, flowers and vegetables APEDA has sanctioned projects to Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan.

The states were urged to try to settle the contentious matters of sharing water and hydropower amicably through the mediation of the concerned Union Ministries of Water Resources and Power. This will help harnessing potential hydel power at very low cost.

The five Zonal Councils were set up under the States Reorganization Act, 1956 to foster Inter-state cooperation and coordination among the states.

They are mandated to discuss and make recommendations on any matter as a cooperative endeavour for states linked with each other economically, politically and culturally.

Being compact high level bodies, they are capable of focusing attention on specific issues taking into account regional factors, while keeping national perspective in view.

The present Central Government revitalized the zonal councils.

Nine meetings of various zonal councils and 11 meetings of their Standing Committees have been held since 2015.

Overall 699 issues were discussed in these meetings and 345 have been resolved.
New Delhi: Banning triple talaq will not benefit Muslim women, vice-president of All India Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari on Thursday claimed, amid a raging debate on the issue.

"Even if tripe talaq is outlawed, those who want to trouble their wives will still continue to do so and stop giving conjugal rights to their wives. This will lead to many complications and jeopardise the woman's stature and dignity," he said.

Incidentally, the Supreme Court on Thursday said it would examine whether the practice of triple talaq among Muslims is fundamental to their religion, but it may not deliberate upon the issue of polygamy as it began hearing petitions challenging the practice.

Umari, also president of Islamic forum Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) reiterated that the problem of divorced Muslim women has been blown out of proportion and statistics don't support the claim of this problem being endemic within the Muslim community".

National Convener of 'Muslim Personal Law Awareness Campaign' Muhammad Jafar also briefed about the campaign during the press conference. The pan-India campaign ran from April 23 to May 7.

"The objective of the campaign was to create awareness within the Muslim community regarding their personal laws as well as to remove the misconceptions and misgivings among fellow countrymen regarding the family laws in Islam that are related to the way Muslims marry, divorce and inherit," he said.
Activists of Joint Movement Committee protest on the issue of triple talaq at the Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. (Photo: PTI)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday said the practice of triple talaq was the "worst" and "not desirable" form of dissolution of marriages among Muslims, even though there were schools of thought which termed it as "legal".

There are "school of thoughts (which) say that triple talaq is legal, but it is the worst and not desirable form for dissolution of marriages among Muslims," a five-judge constitution bench, headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar, said on the second day of continued hearing on the matter.

The observation came when former Union Minister and senior advocate Salman Khurshid, who is assisting the court in his personal capacity, told the bench that it is not an issue where judicial scrutiny is required and moreover women have the right to say 'no' to triple talaq by stipulating a condition to this effect in 'nikahnama' (marriage contract).

The court asked Khurshid to prepare a list of Islamic and non-Islamic countries where triple talaq has been banned.

The bench was then informed that countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia do not allow triple talaq as a form to dissolve marriages.

Senior advocate Ram Jethmalani, appearing for one of the victims, was blunt in his arguments and assailed the practice of triple talaq on various constitutional grounds including the Right to Equality.

"The right of triple talaq is available only to the husband and not to the wife and it breaches the Article 14 (Right to Equality) of the Constitution," Jethmalani said.

"There is no saving grace for this method of granting divorce. One-sided termination of marriage is abhorrent, and hence, avoidable," he said.

"Triple talaq makes a distinction on the ground of sex and this method is abhorrent to the tenets of holy Quran and no amount of advocacy can or will save this sinful, repugnant practice which is contrary to the constitutional provisions," he added.

No law can allow a wife to become an ex-wife "at the fancy of the husband" and it is "the highest kind unconstitutional behaviour", Jethmalani said.

The high profile hearing on a batch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of triple talaq will continue after the lunch break.

Maintaining the same stand on the much debated triple talaq, the Centre on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it opposes the system and wants to fight for women equality and gender justice.

However, All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) counsel Kapil Sibal told the apex court that triple talaq falls under the Muslim board and therefore, should not intervene.

"The Central Government makes rules but in my opinion, the apex court should not interfere with it," Sibal said.

Earlier in the day, the apex court observed that it would examine whether the issue is fundamental to religion or not.

A five-judge bench of the apex court further observed that it would not hear polygamy issue along with the triple talaq case.

The apex court is hearing several pleas filed by Muslim women rejecting the practice of triple talaq.

Relentless debates on the validity and plausibility of this practice were instigated soon after one petitioner, Shayara Banu, challenged the Muslim personal law over instantaneous application of triple talaq (talaq-e-bidat), polygamy and nikah-halala.

Supporting the stance of ending the practice of triple talaq, the Allahabad High Court had earlier asserted that the rights of any person, including Muslim women, cannot be violated in the name of 'personal law'.

In December last year, the Allahabad High Court termed the Islamic practice of divorcing a woman by uttering the word "talaq" thrice "unconstitutional".

The court further observed that triple talaq sanctioned under Muslim Personal Law that governs marriage, property and divorce violates the rights of Muslim women.

"Triple talaq is unconstitutional. It violates the rights of Muslim women," ruled the high court, adding that no personal law board was above the Constitution.
New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) on Friday said that all future elections would be held on VVPAT-enabled Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs)

EC on Friday also said it will offer political parties an opportunity to prove that electronic voting machines used in the recent assembly polls were tampered with.

A "challenge" is on the cards, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi told a meeting of political parties in New Delhi, going on record for the first time regarding the EC's proposed move to counter allegations of EVM tampering.

"Although use of VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail system) with EVMs will ensure total credibility and transparency and put to rest all controversy, the Commission will, after today's meeting, hold a challenge," he said.

It will offer opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that EVM used in recent elections were tampered with or that EVMs can be tampered with even under strict technical and administrative safeguards as applicable during elections, Zaidi said.

He, however, did not give any date for the proposed challenge which he announced in his opening remarks at the meeting.

Zaidi also said the commission has "no favourites" and it was equidistant from all parties.

"You should be convinced that EC has no favourites ... we maintain equidistance from all parties and groups. It is our constitutional and moral duty to stand dead centre of the circle drawn around us by 56 political parties (seven national and 49 state recognised parties)," he said.

His remarks come against the backdrop of Delhi Chief Minister and AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal reportedly questioning the independence of two Election Commissioners A K Joti and O P Rawat.

He had claimed in an interview that the two ECs were close to the BJP governments in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

Following the allegations, Rawat had recused himself from the cases related to disqualification of AAP MLAs the Commission is hearing.
'CASO' to be Reintroduced as Part of Counter Terrorism Operations

Published: May 12, 2017

Indian Army has planned to re-introduce cordon and search operations (CASO) as a part of its counter terrorism operations after a gap of 15 years. The major objective behind the reintroduction of combing operations is to bring the situation in the Kashmir Valley under control. Hereafterwards, Army will carry out CASO in a major way to flush out militants in the militancy-hit areas of Kulgam, Pulwama, Tral, Budgam and Shopian in south Kashmir, indicating a change in strategy.

Background

CASO was a regular feature of Armys counter-terrorism operations in the 1990s. The security forces made use of area domination and sweep operations in the 1990s. During those times, such operations were commonly conducted by the Indian Army. Later, following the complaints of discomfort caused to the local population, the Army switched to specific intelligence-based operations involving small teams and CASO was discontinued.

The recent decision to re-introduce CASO comes against the backdrop of the recent killing of unarmed Kashmiri Army officer Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz in Shopian by militants.

Recently, the Army, security forces and police had also carried out a massive cordon and combing operation in south Kashmirs Shopian district following the recent militant attacks on policemen and banking facilities. It was the first time in 15 years that the combing operation of this magnitude involving 4,000 troops was conducted by the security forces.



Month: Current Affairs - May, 2017

Category: Defence Current Affairs

Topics: Indian Army  internal security  National

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CHENNAI: DMK working president M.K. Stalin on Friday demanded immediate appointment of Vice Chancellors to the Madras University and Anna University and urged Governor Ch. Vidyasagar Rao to bar the state government from using the temporary administration to provide degree certificates to students.

It is doubtful if reputed Indian Universities and foreign universities would accept certificates without the signatures of Vice Chancellors, he said and added that this is causing concern among students going for higher education.

Even students going for research and those looking for jobs are facing such worries and parents are afraid if the future of their children would be affected.

Stalin said the officials should not be allowed to sign degree certificates as it would be a threat to the future of students. He said the state government is using a temporary arrangement for more than one and half years and this practice is damaging the administration.
The station will be formally inaugurated on Sunday (May 14) at 10 am by chief minister Edappadi K. Palanisami and Union Minister for urban development, Vekaiah Naidu.

CHENNAI: To demonstrate the strength of the underground systems in case of a fire or smoke, Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) officials demonstrated the smoke detection and removal system, which consists of four tunnel ventilation fans, two on each side of the swanky Thirumangalam station.

In the case of smoke between any two stations, officials said, the huge fans would remove it in less than three minutes.

Once smoke is removed in one direction, in the other direction, people would be evacuated. Fan from one station, say Thirumangalam, would suck the smoke and fan from the other station, say Anna Nagar tower, would push air in, said VK Singh, chief general manager (Underground Construction).

A workers reflection as seen on the platform screening door at Thirumangalam underground station. (Photo: DC)

Each station is equipped with air conditioning on the three levels  street, concourse, and platform levels. The platform level offers ticketing services and the control room, from which people move to platform levels for boarding trains.

The platform level has platform screening doors, which will open and close with the train doors. The fare from airport to Nehru Park is likely to be fixed at `60.

We are working with the state transport department to introduce more feeder buses so that our patronage would increase. Also being planned is a tie-up with cab operators like airports so that as soon as people arrive or land at metro stations, they would find cabs easily, said a senior official.

Senior metro officials said that direct metro services between airport and the stations on the green line are likely to be mulled.

The station will be formally inaugurated on Sunday (May 14) at 10 am by chief minister Edappadi K. Palanisami and Union Minister for urban development, Vekaiah Naidu.

Salient features at metro station

Station features

Each station has four entries and exits, and two emergency exits for the evacuation of people. On the underground stretch, for emergency evacuation, there are cross passages at every 250 meters.

Cameras

Each station is fitted with about 60 cameras, Shenoy Nagar, the largest station on the stretch, has about 80 cameras.

Fans

When an incident causes smoke inside the Metro tunnel passage, four huge ventilation fans swing into action and produce air that removes the smoke and pushes it out of the station through passages.

While smoke is removed in one direction, people are evacuated in the opposite direction. (If there is a fire and smoke between Anna Nagar Tower and Thirumangalam stations, if smoke is pushed out in the direction of Tower station, people will be evacuated from Thirumangalam station.)

Ventilation shafts: All stations have four of these shafts - two on both sides. They are used for ventilation of the stations and for removal of smoke.
Hyderabad: The state government plans to make the third Telangana state formation day celebrations on June 2 a memorable event. Incidentally, the TRS government also completes three years in office on the same day.

Cultural programmes highlighting the culture and traditions of TS were part of the celebrations in the two earlier anniversaries, but this year, the government plans to celebrate the event by launching new welfare schemes.

The new schemes are being readied for the launch by Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on June 2.

Mr Rao had announced single woman monthly pension scheme, KCR Kits for pregnant women, sheep rearing scheme, residential degree colleges for ST girls etc. over the past few months.

A few beneficiaries of these schemes will be invited for celebrations and government will hand over allotment letters/ benefits to them on the occasion. While CM will hand over the benefits in state capital, in-charge ministers will distribute them in districts and MLAs in local constituencies.

Nearly 10,000 acres of land will also be distributed as part of 3-acres land distribution scheme for Dalits.

Beneficiaries of single woman pension scheme will be given Rs 2,000 at a time for the months of April and May on June 2. From July 1, they will receive Rs 1,000 per month, said Jupally Krishna Rao, panchayat raj minister.

The government changed the theme of celebrations this year with election atmosphere setting in for 2019 general elections.

All departments are working overtime to finalise the list of beneficiaries for various welfare schemes for June 2 launch. The CMs speech to be delivered on the occasion will focus on welfare schemes, the significant chunk of the Budget being spent for the welfare of people and the number of people to benefit from these schemes, TRS sources said.

During 2015 and 2016 anniversary celebrations, cultural programmes were held on a grand scale on Tank Bund and Necklace Road.

With T-sentiment running high following the formation of Telangana state after an nearly a near 60 years of struggle, the government has set the theme for celebrations highlighting the culture and traditions of Telangana citing that they were neglected in undivided AP.
TPCC chief N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, TJAC chairman M. Kodandaram and leaders of all political parties stage a protest seeking reopening of the Dharna Chowk at Indira Park, in front of the Assembly on Friday.  DC

Hyderabad: The entire Opposition, including various social and political organisations, staged a silent protest at Gun Park near the state Assembly on Friday against the closure of Dharna Chowk at Indira Park.

The protesters warned the government to reopen it by May 15 or face a huge protest rally on that day. Organised by Telangana Political Joint Action Committee and its chairman M. Kodandaram, the silent protest was attended by leaders of various Opposition parties including N. Uttam Kumar Reddy (Congress), L. Ramana (TD), T. Veerabhadram (CPM), Aziz Pasha (CPI), N.V.S.S. Prabhakar (BJP) besides academicians like Chukka Ramaiah.

Prof. Kodandaram later told newsmen that the people and peoples organisations and representatives were equally concerned over the state governments abrupt decision to close the Dharna Chowk. He said that everyone was concerned about suppression of the democratic right to dissent.

He said that the TJAC was giving government till May 15 to rescind the prohibitory orders imposed on the Dharna Chowk.
Kottayam: The encroachers in Munnar include two CPM committee offices, four Jacobite and Catholic churches and one branch of the SNDP union. This is as per the consolidated list prepared by the revenue officials.

Most of these lands come under the category of illegal construction in non-patta land, illegal building in government land or illegal occupation. The lands are spread over Kanan Devan Hills, Pallivasal, Chinnakanal panchayat, Santhanpara, and Mannamkanda. According to the list submitted by the revenue officials to the Idukki district collector which has been accessed by Deccan Chronicle, the CPM has constructed two offices at Mannamkandan encroaching on 66m2 of land and 0.0139H. The place numbered 109 and 116 in the list mentions the construction of the party offices at these places.

The number 36 in the list refers to the illegal occupation of four cents of land by St George Jacobite Suriyani Church, Thokkupara, at Kunchithanny, and another illegal occupation of five cents in the name of St George Catholic Church at Kunchithanny, 20 cents in the name of the vicar of St Joseph Church, Suriyanelli, and 2.88 acres of land occupied at Pallivasal by the St Sebastians Church, Thokkupara. Ten cents of land was occupied by the president of the Perumbnkuthu SNDP Union at Mankulam near Munnar.

The list shows that among the 154 encroachments identified by the revenue officials, 94 possess lands ranging from two cents to 30 cents. It is alleged that the big encroachers were not included in the list.

Those behind the controversial prayer group Spirit in Jesus, including Boby Sacaria and Jimmy Sacaria, own 12 acres and six acres respectively in Chinnakanal panchayat.

The name of high-profile encroachers, including M.M. Lamboadaran and Toms Sacaraia, are absent in the list.

Lijeesh Lambodaran, son of M.M. Lambodaran, illegally occupies seven-and-a-half acres of land at Chinnakanal. Tissin J. Thachankary, a close relative of ADGP Tomin J. Thachankary, has seven acres and seven cents of land at Chinnakanal.

The name of V.S. Albin, a local CPM leader, is in the list of those occupying 10 cents of land in Chinnakanal panchayat.
Hyderabad: TPCC president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy on Friday said that Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan has condemned the handcuffing of a few farmers by the Khammam police while being produced before the local court.

Mr Reddy led a delegation of Congress leaders to represent the farmers sufferings to the Governor.

When we explained to him the Khammam incident, Mr Narasimhan told us that he read the news reports this morning and condemned the incident saying that the police should not have handcuffed the farmers. He told us that he would speak to the authorities concerned to know further details, Mr Reddy said.

The delegation requested the Governor to initiate steps to see that the serious cases slapped on the innocent farmers are withdrawn unconditionally.

The delegation comprised senior leaders Ponnala Lakshmaiah, Mohd. Ali Shabbir, Dr. J. Geetha Reddy, Ponguleti Sudhakar Reddy, K.R. Suresh Reddy, Gudur Narayana Reddy, K. Nagaiah and Nerella Sharada.

Mr Reddy alleged that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao was acting against poor farmers of Telangana.

The handcuffing of poor, small and marginal chilli farmers Khammam yesterday while being produced in court has shocked the entire state, he said in the memorandum.

The delegation alleged that the TRS government did not make any effort to help agriculturists.

Amidst such a crisis prevalent in the state, why is it that the CM has not found time to visit the agricultural market yards and interact with the farmers who are unable to sell their products at remunerative prices? Have the CM and ministers become so insensitive that they are accusing genuine farmers in distress of being rowdies and anti-national? they asked.

Elsewhere in the state, Congress leaders and workers staged dharnas on roads and burnt effigies of the Chief Minister condemning the handcuffing of farmers by the Khammam police.
Last year, the total tomato production was of 31.95 lakh metric tonnes but the price varied all through the years  from Rs 5 per kg to Rs 30 per kg.

Hyderabad: Tomato, the most-sought-after vegetable, is also the most-perishable; that will have farmers either make a fast buck or lose out!

One often hears truckloads of tomatoes being dumped on roads, markets, due to a glut in the market, due to poor returns that is some times less than even the production and transportation costs. Out of the 1.71 lakh hectares of vegetable cultivation in Telangana, tomato occupies 0.57 lakh hectares.

Last year, the total tomato production was of 31.95 lakh metric tonnes but the price varied all through the years  from Rs 5 per kg to Rs 30 per kg. The crop is of three-and-half months, and is grown all through the year in Medak over 14,921 hectares, Mahabubnagar 10,882 hec-tares, and Ranga Reddy 4,662 hectares, besides other districts. Its the most-sought-after vegetable and the most perishable, a horticulture officer said.

It requires an investment of about Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 per acre. If the crop is good and there is a demand in the market, you will get good returns. Now, traders are buying tomato at Rs 100 to Rs 150 per box of 23 kg, which means Rs 4.30 per kg to Rs 6.50 per kg, says Swami Das, a farmer in Kuppanagar near Zaheerabad.

Like many other farmers, Swami Das too sells the farm produce to traders who pay immediate cash. Retail rate ranged from Rs 11 to Rs 18 per kg in Hyderabad including Rs 17.90 per kg in Big Basket etc, he explained.
Hyderabad: TD working president A. Revanth Reddy on Friday wrote to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, demanding the resignations of T. Harish Rao and Tummala Nageswara Rao from the TS Cabinet for the arrest of chilli farmers in Khammam and their subsequent humiliation by way of being paraded around and marched to court in chains and handcuffs.

He said that Mr Harish Rao, being marketing for marketing, failed to estimate the chilli arrivals to the Khammam market and also failed to prevent commission agents and traders from colluding with each other and denying fair price to farmer.

It was at the behest of Tummala Nageswara Rao that cases were booked on the innocent farmers, he said.

Aggravating the situation, the two ministers issued statements that those responsible for the incident were rowdies, Mr Revanth Reddy wrote. He accused the ministers of pressurising the local police and ensuring the farmers were slapped with grave and serious cases merely to cover up their own failures.

He wrote that when the accused produced pattadar passbooks and Aadhaar details showing there were genuine farmers, the cases against them were still not withdrawn. Instead, they were chained and handcuffed, which is atrocious, Mr Revanth Reddy wrote, demanding the Chief Minister immediately look into the affair and take serious action against the ministers.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah releases Nudidanthe Nadiyuthiddeve booklet to mark the fourth anniversary of his government in Bengaluru on Friday. Congress MLC Ugrappa is seen

Bengaluru: Having completed four years in office and basking in the victory of his party in the two recent bypolls to Nanjangud and Gundlupet, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah appeared in no mood on Friday to entertain the recent chargesheet released by the Bharatiya Janata Party against his government.

Speaking to reporters here, he called it baseless and politically motivated. Who can file a chargesheet against us? These are a list of baseless allegations. Several BJP leaders, including its state president, B S Yeddyurappa are themselves facing charges in various courts. But none of the Congress leaders are in such a predicament, he noted.

Taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party for calling the byelection results an indicator of things to come in 2018, he claimed that after its humiliating defeat in both constituencies, it was now desperate and stooping to making baseless charges against his government. Mr Yeddyurappa and Mr Shettar are trained in telling lies, he added caustically.

While he asserted in response to a question that the Congress would return to power in the 2018 elections, Mr Siddaramaiah was unwilling to commit on whether he would be Chief Minister again, saying it was upto the party high command to decide. When reminded of his earlier statement that he would be the next Chief Minister, he claimed he had said this in a different context.

Someone said that I should continue as Chief Minister and I replied that I would. But it is the legislature party that elects the Chief Minister and this has to be endorsed by the party high

command, he added. Visibly irritated when his attention was drawn to a survey that called Karnataka the most corrupt state in the country, he shot back, How can the views of 6,000 people in a state with a six crore population become the voice of everyone? Besides the survey was done by an organization sponsored by Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and lacks credibility.

When it was pointed out that Centre for Media Studies was a reputed organisation, Mr Siddaramaiah said the report was released by a member of Niti Ayoga and the survey was done at his behest.

Referring to the Bharatiya Janata Partys allegation that his government had not taken off and was pro-Ahinda, the Chief Minister said that while he was keen on programmes for the poor, they were not confined to any particular caste.

Mr Shettar alleges that our government is anti-GLB (Gowdas, Lingayats and Brahmins). But our programmes reach the poor from all castes, he said, adding that although the BJPs slogan was  sab ka sath, sab ka vikas, it made no mention of Christians and Muslims.How can that be sab ka vikas then?' he asked pointedly.

As for Mr Yeddyurappas demand for waiver of farmers loans he recalled that when he was Chief Minister he had flatly refused to waive them. He has not brought up the issue even once in parliament, he regretted.

In perhaps an indication of things to come, the Chief Minister did not say a word against the Janata Dal (Secular), although he did not spare even former Chief Minister, S M Krishna, who joined the Bharatiya Janata Party before the Nanjangud and Chamarajnagar byelections.
Anti-cheating rules are framed to ensure there is a level playing field for all in an exam crucial to the career of anyone aspiring to qualify for medicine or dentistry. (Representational image)

What happened when NEET, the common medical entrance exam, was held in Kerala was not so much overzealousness by invigilators as sheer mindlessness. What was the teacher thinking when she asked the girl to remove her bra?

Anti-cheating rules are framed to ensure there is a level playing field for all in an exam crucial to the career of anyone aspiring to qualify for medicine or dentistry. What took place was beyond the pedantic  the way they were asked to change clothes or long sleeves were cut and anything metallic was suspected to be a Bluetooth-capable device. Imagine the plight of youngsters being treated like criminals on the eve of a vital exam!

The NEET exam itself raised several issues  held in multiple languages, with question papers based on different syllabuses. What the CBSE, with its vast experience in holding exams, should do is to lay out the rules in clearer terms in future so that the intrusive and disruptive elements are taken out of the process even as it strives to ensure the test is secure.

Its no mean task to present the right atmosphere for 11 lakh students in close to 2,000 centres across India. Given that sophisticated gadgets like jammers are accessible to those holding the exam, it is a fair expectation that the job be done without causing embarrassment to students. The IITs run the common entrance test for aspiring engineers at two levels without causing heartaches. CBSE must build a model for NEET on similar lines.
On Sunday, May 14, sons and daughters in large parts of the world will be celebrating what could be called the sweetest day of the year  Mothers Day. I wonder if one could think of any other sweeter day. For, except Gods love, which is sometimes difficult to experience tangibly, what could be sweeter than mothers love?

I have spent considerable time living in at least four different cultures: my motherland India; the Philippines; England and now Austria. I have also travelled to quite a few other countries. One obviously finds substantial differences in the various cultures of the world, which are not only in the way people speak, dress, eat or worship but also their choices of sports, films, music and even emotional expressions. But one thing that remains absolutely constant in every culture is the expression of a mother loves for her child/children.

An unknown author expresses beautifully the mothers love that most of us have taken for granted in life: A mothers love is made of deep devotion and of sacrifice and pain; It is endless and unselfish and enduring come what may; It believes beyond believing when the world around condemns. And it glows with all the beauty of the rarest, brightest gems. It is far beyond defining and it still remains a secret like the mysteries of creation. A many-splendored miracle man cannot understand. And another wondrous evidence of Gods tender guiding hand.

There are also those who become loving mothers, like Saint Teresa, to some unfortunate one of us, who, for one or the other reason missed out on the love of our biological mothers and fathers.

The Mothers Day this year also almost coincides with 100th anniversary of the heavenly Mother Marys apparition to three shepherd children in Fatima (Portugal) on May 13, 1917. She continued appearing to Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta till October 13 that year, when according to the childrens promise, a crowd of 70,000 people witnessed something extraordinary from her, changing their lives forever.

Many Christians continue to approach her to intercede for them to her son Jesus, who, during his earthly life had experienced her tender loving care. One of the popular names Mother Mary is addressed by her devotees is, Mother of perpetual help. Like our earthly mothers she never tires of helping people. Thus, one common prayer to her starts with: Remember O! Most gracious Virgin Mary, never was it known, that anyone who fled to thy protection or implored thy help or sought thine intercession was left unaided

And so for a believer like me, besides having had an earthly mother who helped me become what I am today, I also have a heavenly mother in Mary whose love, care and protection I continue to experience everyday.
Public memory is usually short, specially these days when information is booming. Its only a finite amount that the brain can absorb. Reminders are thus often necessary to understand issues regarding Kashmir, which though security-related often have far broader implications. Infiltration is one, and then there are fidayeen attacks, the terrorist term for suicide strikes  where do they fit in, how are they different from other forms of terrorism. There is also a vast network of financial conduits behind the scenes, without which separatist activity will come to a grinding halt. There is also a maze of links and structure to keep the information war in place and organise events that are needed to remain relevant.

There is also the increasing propensity to target local Kashmiris linked to the police or the military. Answers to these questions are needed in the public domain to allow the people to appreciate the complexity of the situation in the Valley and the need to fight in different domains to defeat it. Its not just young men in the streets with stones in their hands but the overall threat picture which will help people comprehend what exactly Kashmir is all about now.

As stones continue to be thrown at the security forces and mobs build up at encounter sites, it is important for Pakistan and its proxies in the Valley to promote other activities to support the street turbulence which has in the last nine months become the core activity to keep the proxy war alive. The low strength of terrorists (around 250 now) was the reason in 2008 for Pakistan and the separatists to select street turbulence as the means to remain relevant. Some say it was the Palestinian intifada that acted as the model. However, the inspiration had probably come from American thinker Gene Sharp, who in his seminal book From Dictatorship to Democracy had spelt out the 198 Ways of Non-Violent Revolution.

There is no doubt that someone in the adversary camp pulled out this book, dusted it and read it. He probably had it translated into Urdu and Punjabi and sent it across the LoC to the Valley. The philosophy of the second Palestinian intifada, the commencement of the first round of which predates the book by six years, also seems to have been taken from these famous lines of Gene Sharp: As soon as you choose to fight with violence youre choosing to fight against your opponents best weapons, and you have to be smarter than that.

It seems the Valleys separatists took this rather seriously, tested street turbulence in 2008, awaited triggers for more in 2009, exploited those that came their way in 2010 and made stone-throwing a virtual art. About 2016, the less said the better. Its not easy to explain to the public that in the international perception the stone versus the bullet is considered a non-violent weapon although both are missiles and have tremendous scope to cause harm.

It was the control on infiltration that triggered the hunt for alternatives like stone-throwing. The LoC fence constructed in 2003-04 provided the means to give counter-infiltration a fillip as did the ceasefire. Residual numbers of terrorists started reducing as more were neutralised in the hinterland and the LoC than could infiltrate. Now Pakistan would wish to give the terror angle another fillip as the sustenance of the street turbulence carries no guarantee; its so contingent upon public stamina and the antipathy that can be driven.

A smart adversary carries out contingency planning for alternative courses should the ongoing successful course suddenly flounder. It is therefore infiltration which should be of major concern to the Army in the coming season. More innovations from the adversary should be expected; less employed routes, larger numbers to allow filtration with casualties, attempting difficult terrain and rogue actions against our LoC deployment to force stronger deployment, thus throwing open more gaps.

There is just one problem with strengthening the counter-infiltration grid. You can put any amount of technology for surveillance but the eventual stopping of the tracks is only by physically neutralising them. These are very troop-intensive operations and take up much energy. The LoC can take as much additional deployment as probably exists today, and yet the Army wont give you any guarantee of zero infiltration. The counter-infiltration grid being optimised also has implications in the rear areas. Bases like Uri and Panzgam will then always be lightly-manned. The surveillance equipment, always in short supply, will be placed right up in front. That is why the scope for the other activity increases  fidayeen or suicide attacks. Teams of two or three terrorists, usually foreigners, focus on locating garrisons where the guard is lower and gaps in the security evident.

If there are no security walls and just administrative elements deployed along with a few transients in dispersed barracks, the situation is tailormade for sneak suicide attacks. Panzgam was just that, and there can be many more. The dilemma should be evident. The same happened in 1999-2000 when J&K was hit by similar phenomenon; a revisit of tactics is common in such an environment. Then there was a flurry of activity to allot resources for security infrastructure. Hopefully it will be the same this time.

The November 2016 demonetisation did hit the separatist and terror networks quite badly, but they appear to have re-emerged. Its possible that legitimate bank accounts fuel the movement, and there is little time for the intelligence agencies to focus on these, given that there are overground workers even in the banking networks to prevent clandestine checks. That is where the experience of the demonetisation exercise should come in handy. Big data analysis and large money transfers should come under the scanner.

If lakhs of accounts could be put under surveillance for disproportionate deposits and expenditure patterns did not match earning profiles, such accounts could be placed under the scanner. Innovative ways of surveillance over financial conduits and neutralising them is the surest way to paralyse separatist activism. Trans-LoC trade, long suspected for its uncanny ways to beat the system, must no longer be treated with kid gloves.

The killing of five policemen, two bank guards and now a young recently-commissioned Army officer on leave, all Kashmiris, points to the direction in which the militancy is headed. The viciousness is likely to increase manifold and there will be no qualms about targets. In such an environment, the minorities and servicemen on leave are extremely vulnerable. Its the States duty to protect them.

The information domain forms one more sphere by which separatists and terrorists have dominated the narrative. The Internet ban may not have neutralised all networks as alternatives seem to have been found given the high-technology capability of the new generation. This cant be taken as the final position in terms of the States response, which has more resources to bank upon, including high-end technology and the backup of a vast IT sector. Not much thought has been given to this, although technology and capability can be developed if the State is willing to invest time, money and energy. There seem to be few takers for research on this, as data-handling and information are two domains which are emerging the new frontiers of hybrid warfare.
Four unfortunate incidents over the past one month and India and Pakistan are back to normal  at each others throats. It all depressingly began again with the chief of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, confirming the death sentence of Kulbhushan Jadhav handed down by an opaque general court-martial process. Almost concurrently, the confirmation coincidently coincided with the disappearance of a retired lieutenant-colonel of the Pakistani Army, Habib Zahir, in Nepal. His last reported whereabouts were in the Buddhist pilgrimage town of Lumbini. Then there was a terror attack on an Indian Army camp in Kupwara that led to the death of three Indian Army personnel, including a captain.

This was followed by the barbaric beheading of two Indian jawans, Naib Subedar Paramjit Singh, a 42-year-old junior commissioned officer with the 22nd Sikh Regiment, and 45-year-old head constable Prem Sagar of the BSFs 200 Battalion, who were ambushed by a Border Action Team of the Pakistani Army and decapitated on the Line of Control in the Krishna Ghati Sector in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir. This incident took place right after the Pakistan Army Chief ostensibly visited Haji Pir on April 30.

With the television media in India on an overdrive and competitive jingoism being unleashed by the Pakistani media too, the only winners of this zero sum game are the prophets of doom who thrive on hostility, hatred, conflict and chaos. For the Pakistani civilian government that otherwise pays lip service to the cause of peace between the two countries, this standoff is a welcome distraction after the pyrrhic Supreme Court victory in the Panama Papers case. However, for the Indian establishment, these portentous developments come at a time when there is a dangerous drift in the internal security situation.

The situation in J&K is belly up for the lack of a better word. Stone-pelting has become the everyday norm rather than the exception. Banks are being looted on a daily basis. The voter turnout in the recent Srinagar bypoll was an abysmal seven per cent, down from a high of 65 and a half per cent in the Assembly elections held in the autumn of 2014.

The Election Commission had to cancel the Anantnag parliamentary bypoll because the security situation is extremely volatile and non-conducive to a free and fair democratic franchise.

All these developments underscore one basic fact  that the experiment of ideological incompatibles BJP and PDP has proven to be a non-starter. Nothing underscored this failure better than the extremely poignant lament of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti after her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi: We are where Vajpayee left us, she bemoaned.

The Chief Minister obviously did not have the courage to say that the situation during the 10 years of the United Progressive Alliance was far better, for to do so in the current atmosphere would be nothing short of blasphemy. However, it may just be worth recalling the roller coaster ride that India-Pakistan relations went through during the Vajpayee era, specially after the Agra Summit held in July 2001.

For those who may have forgotten, that after the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee publicly vowed there would be an aar-paar ki larai (a fight to the finish). His Cabinet Committee on Security greenlighted the largest-ever mobilisation of the Indian Army after the 1971 war. The deployment, codenamed as Operation Parakram, saw a million men and women on both sides of the border staring each other down eyeball to eyeball.

In the midst of this unprecedented tension another terrorist attack, this time on an Army camp in J&K, almost tipped the balance. On May 14, 2002, near the town of Kaluchak, three militants attacked a tourist bus from Himachal Pradesh and killed seven people. After that they entered the family quarters of the Army and fired indiscriminately at the inmates, killing 23 people, including 10 children, eight women and five Army personnel. The age of all the children killed ranged from four to 10 years. Thirty-four people were injured in the attack. Incidentally, the next attack of this magnitude on an Army camp happened 14 years, later on September 19, 2016, in Uri, that left 17 solders dead and almost two-dozen injured.

The Kaluchak outrage sent alarm bells ringing across the world. In New Delhi the embassies of Western powers ordered the evacuation of all non-essential personal. The N word was bandied about carelessly on both sides.

Back-channel persuasion by the US and other influential powers had a salutary effect on both the countries. The US and their allies were heavily committed in Afghanistan. They did not want a full-scale escalation between two nuclear weapon states to add to their bundle of woes. After 10 months of mobilisation, the Indian Army was asked to stand down and return to its barracks without a shot being fired. The Indian Army lost over 1,800 officers and men during this operation. In reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha on April 30, 2003, then defence minister George Fernandes stated: The number of Army personnel killed or wounded in J&K and the western sector during the mobilisation, Operation Parakram, from December 19, 2001 to October 16, 2002 was 1,874.

Finally, on April 18 and 19, 2003, Mr Vajpayee travelled to Srinagar where he extended an olive branch to both the Hurriyat and Pakistan simultaneously for he had figured out in the five years of his prime ministership till then that the separatist movement in Kashmir could not be untwined and dealt with separately. It had been tried, but a number of Hurriyat leaders who had mustered the courage of striking out on their own had been assassinated by the deep state in Pakistan.

That initiative led to the ceasefire agreement of November 25, 2003, which by and large held the field throughout the UPA years, only to be rudely shattered in September 2014, when unprecedented firing from both sides started off and is still continuing along the international border, Line of Control and the Actual Ground Position line (AGPL).

Fifteen years later, the summer of 2017 bears an eerie resemblance to the summer of 2002. India-Pakistan relations are at a nadir, jingoism is at its peak, negotiating space is getting constricted. The N word is irresponsibly invoked on television channels by hawkish former military types from both sides. The difference, however, is that the situation in J&K in 2002 was better than it is today. A new PDP-Congress government under late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed had assumed office and there was hope of a better future in the air, which is not the case today.

Though Mr Modi and his strategic team feel that they are on top of the situation, they would be well advised to revisit those fateful years and draw a leaf out of former Prime Minister Vajpayees book, who was fond of saying that you cannot choose your neighbours. He told Parliament on April 23, 2003: I assured the people of J&K that we wish to resolve all issues  both domestic and external  through talks. I stressed that the gun can solve no problem; brotherhood can. Issues can be resolved if we move forward guided by the three principles of insaniyat (humanism), jamhooriat (democracy) and Kashmiriyat (Kashmirs age-old legacy of amity). In my speech, I spoke of extending our hand of friendship to Pakistan. At the same time, I also said that this hand of friendship should be extended by both sides. Both countries should resolve that we need to live together in peace.

Perhaps, like Mr Vajpayee, it would take Mr Modi also another few years to learn this lesson  by then it may be too late. The wheel of democracy can behave rather quirkily that Prime Minister Vajpayee too discovered to his peril.
The move to bring iTunes on Windows Store can prove significant for both firms given the past reluctance to make their respective services, like Microsoft Office, compatible with each other.

It seems that longtime competitors have put aside their differences for the sake of business. Microsoft during its annual Build conference announced that Apples iTunes music app will be made available for users through Windows Store by the end of 2017.

The move to bring iTunes on Windows Store can prove significant for both firms given the past reluctance to make their respective services, like Microsoft Office, compatible with each other. It will also improve the perception that Microsoft is more open to collaborate with other firms.

Microsoft also said that it would allow users to download three different versions of the Linux OS from the Windows Store. Apple is also likely to make profit through the deal if more users are able to download its music streaming service.

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Users can also avail 400 minutes of calling per day on any local network, with a weekly limit of 1,500 minutes. Micromax Canvas 2 will be sold only through offline retail channel.

Airtel and Micromax has announced their partnership for the Micromax Canvas 2 smartphone, the telecom giant will offer one year of 4G service unlong with unlimited calling to the Canvas 2 buyers.

Speaking on the launch Shubhajit Sen, Chief Marketing Officer, Micromax said "Micromax Canvas 2 will come with one year of unlimited Airtel to Airtel calling, unlimited data at no extra cost for both existing and new Airtel customers."

Micromax Canvas 2 buyers will get 1GB of 4G data every day from Airtel. Users can also avail 400 minutes of calling per day on any local network, with a weekly limit of 1,500 minutes. Micromax Canvas 2 will be sold only through offline retail channel.

Specifications wise, the smartphone runs on a MediaTek quad core chipset paired with 3GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage which is expandable up to 64GB using a microSD card. The company also plans to launch 15 more smartphone in the same price bracket in the coming days.

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Buenos Aires (Argentina): Analia Pasantino served in Argentinas federal police as a man for 20 years, and then she came out as a transgender woman and was forced to resign.

She is smiling these days, though, beaming with pride to be wearing a police badge again. And the sign on her office door reads: Chief.

Nearly a decade after psychiatric reports said Pasantino suffered from an irreconcilable illness that made her unfit to serve, she was welcomed back to the police force this week and appointed deputy police commissioner in the judicial communications department.

This is a milestone, Pasantino, 49, said on Thursday. Im the first transgender police chief in Latin America. Its an unprecedented and important step to show Latin America and the world that we are an open institution.

She has backed me with everything, Pasantino said about Mauro, who is also a lawyer. She has been my pillar of support.

Pasantino said she was forced to take a leave of absence from the police department after coming out as a transgender woman in 2008. Every three months, she would present a psychiatric evaluation hoping to rejoin the force, but a committee reviewing her case repeatedly extended her leave.

It was always seen as an illness, she said. As crude as it sounds, the final diagnosis was: a disturbance in gender identity that made me unrecoverable to the police force.

Then the leadership of the federal police changed and she won reinstatement, Pasantino said.

She also credits the efforts of Mara Perez, a transgender woman who leads the diversity division at Argentinas security ministry. Maras efforts were priceless, Pasantino said. When they said no under previous governments, she kept insisting until she succeeded.

This week, Pasantino was flooded by messages of support from former colleagues and requests for interviews, after she was welcomed back into the police force at a televised press conference with Argentinas security minister and the federal police chief.

At first I was a bit overwhelmed by so much attention. But Im proud to tell this story, she said. And I hope it helps others as well.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has established a special unit to keep tabs on the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea.

The Korea Mission Centre would harness resources, capabilities, and authorities of the agency in addressing the challenges being posed by the North Korean regime, CIA director Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday.

Creating the Korea Mission Centre 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, he said. It also reflects the dynamism and agility that CIA brings to evolving national security challenges, he added.

A veteran CIA operations officer has been selected as the new Assistant Director for Korea and will preside over the Mission Centre, an official release said. The new unit will work closely with the US intelligence and national security community.

Just as the threats facing our nation are dynamic, so too must the CIA continue to evolve to address them, CIA spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak said. Tensions between the US and North Korea rose after a tense exchange between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which prompted President Trump to announce the deployment last March of the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence system (THAAD) in South Korea.

However, a former CIA official downplayed the importance of establishing a mission centre dedicated to North Korea, calling the move cosmetic.
Washington: Six top US intelligence officials told Congress today they agree with the conclusion that Russia acted to influence last year's election, countering President Donald Trump's assertions that the hacking remains an open question.

Asked whether they believed the intelligence community's January assessment that Russia was responsible for hacking and leaking information to influence the elections was accurate, all six spy and law enforcement bosses appearing before the panel said "yes."

They included Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA director Mike Pompeo and acting FBI director Andrew McCabe, newly installed after Trump fired the agency's chief James Comey this week.

In an overview, Coats told the panel: "We assess that Russia is likely to be more aggressive in foreign global affairs, more unpredictable in its approach to the United States, and more authoritarian in its approach to domestic policies and politics."

He also cited and quoted the intelligence community's annual "Worldwide Threat Assessment" released today, which details past, present and future threats from Russia.

"Moscow has a highly advanced offensive cyber program, and in recent years the Kremlin has assumed a more aggressive cyber posture," it said.

"This aggressiveness was evident in Russia's efforts to influence the 2016 US election, and we assess that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized the 2016 US election-focused data thefts and disclosures, based on the scope and sensitivity of the targets."

The assessment comes amid a mushrooming crisis for the Trump team as questions swirl over why the president fired his FBI director, who was overseeing an investigation into Russian election meddling and possible connections between Trump campaign associates and Russia last year.

Trump has repeatedly denounced as "fake news" the accusations that members of his circle coordinated or colluded with Russian officials.

Asked again late last month in a CBS News interview whether he believes Russia tried to interfere in the election, Trump said "I don't know... Could've been China, could've been a lot of different groups."
Many agents working in field offices across the country learnt about their directors firing in much the same way he did: from news channels. (Photo: AP)

FBI agents are still reeling from director James Comeys unceremonious dismissal, their surprise at the manner of his ouster coupled with questions about who will next lead the bureau.

Many agents working in field offices across the country learnt about their directors firing in much the same way he did: from news channels. They privately described a day spent after processing the news, swapping praise about their former boss, and grappling with angst that Mr Comey wasnt given a chance to notify employees. Many saw him as a strong and supportive leader even if some believed he at times set the bureau on the wrong path. And many did not want to see him go, especially in the midst of the bureaus investigation into whether President Donald Trumps campaign had ties to Russias meddling in the election.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Wednesday that countless FBI employees had lost faith in Mr Comeys leadership. But president of the FBI Agents Association Thomas OConnor said he was known to be responsive to their concerns, and he called the firing a gut punch.

As part of the backup for the firing, the White House released a memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that blasted Mr Comeys handling of the probe into Hillary Clintons emails, namely his announcement that she should not be charged before reopening the investigation days before voters went to the polls. That placed FBI agents in an uncomfortable position of having their historically apolitical work thrust into the center of a national election.

Retired FBI assistant director Ron Hosko said some agents believed Mr Comey went too far. There are those voices inside, but I think he still enjoyed broad support and great respect by the workforce, Mr Hosko said.
Patel pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas

Washington: A 28-year-old Indian national in the US has pleaded guilty for his role in a multi-million dollar scam in which individuals from call centres located in India impersonated US tax and immigration officials to defraud victims across America.

Harsh Patel, who most recently lived in New Jersey, is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty to this scam that targeted hundreds of Americans.

Till date, Patel, over 50 other individuals and five India-based call centres have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury last year in October.

He pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas. Sentencing is scheduled for August 7, 2017.

According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Patel and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which individuals from call centres located in Ahmedabad impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service or US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the call centre operators targeted US victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government.

Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centres would immediately turn to a network of "runners" based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds.

Since January, 2015, Patel worked as a "runner" operating primarily in New Jersey, California and Illinois. Patel is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty in the call centre scam.

Bharat Kumar Patel, 43, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the fraud and money laundering scheme. Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, 28, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in liquidating and laundering victim payments generated through various telephone fraud and money laundering schemes via India-based call centres.
The White House also issued a timeline claiming how Mr Trump lost confidence in Mr Comey over the course of the last several months and dismissed criticism of Mr Trump firing Mr Comey.(Photo: AP)

The White House has ruled out the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the allegations of Russian interference in last years general elections.

We dont think its necessary. Youve got a House committee, a Senate committee and Department of Justice all working on this, White House principal deputy secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters.

Ms Sanders said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has strong bipartisan support and is independent enough to carry out the investigation.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Wednesday met Acting FBI director Andrew McCabe to discuss the situation and morale at the agency after the firing of the James Comey a day earlier.

The White House also issued a timeline claiming how Mr Trump lost confidence in Mr Comey over the course of the last several months and dismissed criticism of Mr Trump firing Mr Comey.
'Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use,' Coats warned. (Photo: Representational Image/AP)

Washington: The Donald Trump administration on Thursday blamed Pakistan for deteriorating India-Pak relations and warned that the ties might worsen further if there is another "high-profile" terrorist attack from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by terrorists crossing into India from Pakistan.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting India's pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

"Easing of heightened Indo-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation," Coats said.

Last year, heavily-armed terrorists sneaked in from across the border and attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. The attack had claimed the lives of seven security personnel while four terrorists were killed.

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against India's rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," said the top US intelligence official.

In his remarks ahead of the possible release of the Afghanistan policy of the Trump Administration, he said "Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan."

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, he said anti-Pakistan groups are likely to focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan's internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ui-Ahrar, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhare Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi ai-Aiami," he said, adding that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

"Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use," Coats warned.

"Early deployment during a crisis of smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons would increase the amount of time that systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site, increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon," he said.
Donald Trump dismissed the notion that with Comey's dismissal the agency's investigation into Russian meddling will be affected. (Photo: AP)

New York: President Donald Trump has assured that his firing of FBI Director James Comey will not end the agency's investigation into Russia's alleged meddling into the US presidential elections.

Trump said his decision of firing Comey might confuse people but he termed this exercise as a "right thing for the American people."

He dismissed the notion that with Comey's dismissal the agency's investigation into Russian meddling will be affected.

Rather he wanted the FBI's investigation into Russia's election interference to be "absolutely done properly," CNN quoted Trump as saying.

FBI has been investigating Russian influence in the US elections and the contact of Moscow with Trump campaign officials.

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Comey firing may hasten the agency's investigation into Russian meddling.

"We want this to come to its conclusion, we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity," she said, referring to the FBI's probe into Moscow's interference in last year's election. "And we think that we've actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen."
Washington: Donald Trump said Thursday he asked his now-fired FBI director on three occasions whether he was the target of ongoing investigations, stoking allegations of presidential interference.

The US president also acknowledged that Russia was on his mind when he made the decision to sack James Comey, who had been heading a probe into suspected Russian influence in the 2016 election.

"When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story," he said in an interview with NBC, appearing to link Comey's firing with the investigation.

Trump said he had asked Comey if he was the subject of counter-intelligence probes -- twice in conversations over the phone and once over a White House dinner.

"I actually asked him, yes. I said, 'If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?'"

"He said, 'You are not under investigation,'" Trump recounted, repeating an assertion made when the White House announced Comey's firing Tuesday.

"All I can tell you is, well I know what, I know that I'm not under investigation. Me. Personally. I'm not talking about campaigns. I'm not talking about anything else. I'm not under investigation."

Trump's comments to NBC raised questions about whether he had acted inappropriately and whether Comey had broken government guidelines.

US presidents are normally at pains to avoid any suggestion of interference or even commenting on ongoing investigations. The FBI typically does not confirm their existence.

Noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe told AFP that if Comey did indeed answer Trump's question, it would violate Department of Justice rules and "would be unthinkably unethical and unprofessional in this situation."

Trump also said that at the dinner, he and Comey discussed whether the US top cop would stay in his role and continue his ten-year term.

Asking such a question "would come close to bribery... or at least obstruction of justice, which Comey would've had to be an idiot to fall for by offering the assurance sought," Tribe said.

The White House rejected the suggestion the exchange was inappropriate. "I don't see it as a conflict of interest," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

In the interview, Trump insisted that he always intended to fire Comey, undercutting the initial White House explanation that he acted on the recommendation of top justice officials who criticized the FBI chief's handling of a probe into Hillary Clinton's emails.

"I was going to fire him regardless of recommendations," said the president. "He's a showboat, he's a grandstander."

What's the reason?

Opponents have claimed that Comey's shock sacking was a bid to stall an FBI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which is also looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's team.

Trump's interview was released on the same day the interim head of the FBI told the US Congress that Comey's sacking would not derail the Russia investigation.

"There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date," acting director Andrew McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a hearing that capped two days of high drama provoked by the dismissal.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he said. "All of the agents involved in the investigation are still in their positions."

Trump told NBC that had Russia interfered in the 2016 election, it would have been "horrible."

He repeated denials of links between his campaign and Moscow. "There's no collusion between me, my campaign and the Russians," he said.

'Broad support'

While Trump said the outgoing FBI director had left the agency in "turmoil," McCabe rejected any suggestion that Comey had lost the support of the rank and file.

"Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does today," he told the committee.

Echoing a widely-held view in opposition ranks, the senior Democrat on the Senate committee, John Warner, called the timing of Comey's dismissal "especially troubling."

"He was leading an active counterintelligence investigation into any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government or its representatives, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts to interfere in our election."

"For many people, including myself, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the president's decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation."

McCabe gave no information on the status of the FBI probe, which dates back to July last year when the agency became aware of alleged Russian hacking of Democratic party computers and communications. He also pledged not to discuss the Russia investigation with the White House.
Trump has also strongly refuted the allegations that there was any collusion between him or his campaign with the Russians. (Photo: AP)

Washington: US President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to cancel the White House press briefings and instead issue written responses to questions "for accuracy", escalating his tiff with the media that has questioned the administration's shifting stance on the FBI chief's firing.

Describing himself as a "very active president", Trump said it was becoming very difficult for his surrogates to explain things with perfect accuracy to reporters at the news conferences.

"...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" Trump said in a series of tweets. His latest attack on the media came after his administration's shifting narrative on the firing of James Comey as FBI chief was questioned by the media.

The president's advisers said this week that Trump fired Comey in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Later, however, they said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless.

Slamming the media, Trump said, "The Fake Media is working overtime today!" Trump's comments came after acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe directly contradicted the White House's claims that the "rank and file" agents had lost faith in Comey.

"Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe said on Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Trump has also strongly refuted the allegations that there was any collusion between him or his campaign with the Russians.

"Again, the story that there was collusion between the Russians and Trump campaign was fabricated by Democrats as an excuse for losing the election," he said. "When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" Trump asserted.

Trump also warned sacked FBI chief Comey not to "leak" details of their conversations to the media, suggesting they may have been taped.

"James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" he said. "China just agreed that the US will be allowed to sell beef, and other major products, into China once again. This is REAL news!" Trump said.

The suggestion to cancel briefings is not the first time the administration has threatened to limit media access. Trump's aides had floated the idea of moving the media from the White House to the nearby Executive Office Building to accommodate media interest. However, the move was interpreted as a bid to limit media access.
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.(Photo: AFP/ Representational Image)

The Trump administration is likely to expand a ban on laptops on commercial aircraft to include some European countries, but is reviewing how to ensure lithium batteries stored in luggage holds do not explode in midair, officials briefed on the matter said on Wednesday.

Any expansion of the ban could impact US carriers such as United Airlines (UAL.N), Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N) and American Airlines Group (AAL.O).

Six US and European officials said they expect the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to make an announcement but declined to say when.

DHS officials plan to meet with airline industry officials on Thursday to discuss security issues, two people briefed on the matter said. Also on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly will give a classified briefing to senators about domestic threats and airline issues are expected to be discussed, a congressional aide briefed on the matter said.

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.

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 US from Britain.

DHS spokesman Dave Lapan said Kelly hasnt made a decision but we continue to evaluate the threat environment and have engaged in discussions about the threat.

Some US airlines have been making plans in the event of an order to require them to bar passengers from travelling to the US without larger electronics in the cabin, airline officials briefed on the matter said.
The North also announced last week that it thwarted what it claims was a CIA-backed attempt to assassinate Kim. (Photo: AP)

Tokyo: A North Korean parliamentary committee sent a rare letter of protest to the US House of Representatives on Friday over its new package of tougher sanctions.

The sanctions were condemned as a "heinous act against humanity" by the foreign affairs committee of the North's Supreme People's Assembly, according to a state media report.

It was not immediately clear how the protest was conveyed - if it was sent by mail or how it was addressed - since North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations and virtually no official channels of communication. The report, carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, said the letter was sent Friday.

The Republican-led House overwhelmingly voted May 4 to impose the new sanctions, which target North Korea's shipping industry and use of what the bill called "slave labour."

It's not unusual for Pyongyang to condemn Washington's moves to censure it, but direct protests to Congress are exceptionally rare. Pyongyang normally expresses its displeasure with Washington through statements by the Foreign Ministry or other institutions, or through representatives at its United Nations' mission in New York.

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said it's not unprecedented for the North to directly contact the US legislature or government. Pyongyang sent letters to the United States in 1984 calling for the opening of three-way talks between Pyongyang, Seoul and Washington.

But he said Friday's protest was also notable in that it was sent by the recently revived parliamentary foreign affairs committee, which was discontinued by Kim Jong Un's father, Kim Jong Il, in 1998.

The move to restart the committee has been seen as an attempt to create a "window" for contacts with the outside world - Seoul and Washington in particular. Pyongyang has had more than its usual share of criticism for Washington in recent months.

It has been in a high-indignation mode for the past two months because of military exercises between the US and South Korea that it sees as a prelude to invasion. This year's war games were the biggest ever, and reportedly included training for precision strikes and assaults intended to take out Kim Jong Un and his top lieutenants.

The North also announced last week that it thwarted what it claims was a CIA-backed attempt to assassinate Kim. On Friday, its Central Public Prosecutor's Office issued a statement suggesting the United States and South Korea are harbouring suspects and should extradite them to the North immediately.

At the same time, however, a senior North Korean Foreign Ministry official reportedly flew to Oslo, Norway, to meet with former US diplomats and scholars in what is known as "track 2" talks on bilateral issues. The talks, which are held intermittently, are an informal opportunity for the two sides to exchange opinions and concerns.

The US Senate would need to approve the new sanctions next before they could be implemented. The House bill bars ships owned by North Korea or by countries that refuse to comply with UN resolutions against it from operating in American waters or docking at US ports.

Goods produced by North Korea's forced labour would be prohibited from entering the United States, according to the legislation.
Seoul, South Korea: South Korea's new President Moon Jae-In on Friday scrapped state-issued school history textbooks introduced by his ousted predecessor, saying they represented an "outdated and one-sided" view of the past, his office said.

The previous Park Geun-Hye administration had introduced state-authored history textbooks at middle and high schools, arguing that some existing tomes reflected left-leaning and pro-North Korea ideologies.

Park's conservative government began publishing the new textbooks this year despite opposition from liberal critics, who saw them as an attempt to glorify the dictatorship of Park Chung-Hee, the late father of the impeached president.

"As efforts to normalise history education, the president has ordered the abolition of state-authored textbooks," said top presidential spokesman Yoon Young-Chan, adding they "symbolise outdated and one-sided history education and attempts to divide the people".

Moon believed "history education must no longer be used for political purposes", Yoon said.

The previous government initially planned to make the state-authored textbooks as the only option available to educators but later said that schools would be able to choose between them and approved texts from commercial publishers.

Some 80 middle and high schools in South Korea, just 1.5 per cent of the total, have said they would adopt the state-issued books.
In bias-motivated crimes, four Muslim women in Australia were allegedly punched in the face by a 39-year-old journalism student from Paraguay.

One of four Muslim women targeted in four successive and unprovoked Islamophobic attacks on Wednesday said she was randomly punched in the face as she walked through the city wearing her headphones.

Maria Claudia Gimenez Wilson, a 39-year-old journalism student from Paraguay, is charged with assaulting the four women, aged 18-23, as they walked along busy roads near University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Ultimo, Sydney Morning Herald reported.

All four women were wearing hijab, and were allegedly punched in the face. Officers are treating the assaults as bias-motivated crimes after Wilson allegedly told police she was motivated by a hatred of Muslims, the report said.

One of the alleged victims, Hanan Merheb, posted on Facebook that she was walking past UTS listening to music and in a pretty good mood when she was punched out of nowhere. [I was] staring absent-mindedly ahead of me when some lady... came up to me and punched me in the face, she said.

She didnt speak to me, didnt run away, she just punched me and walked off, as casually as if she had just come to say hello. Ms Wilson, who moved to Australia to study, was ordered to undergo a psychiatric assessment on Thursday after her Legal Aid solicitor, Vanya Hampel, told the court that her client was seeking to be dealt with under mental health legislation.
Berlin: German Chancellor Angela Merkel will host Emmanuel Macron for talks in Berlin on Monday, on his first trip abroad as French president.

The German leader had welcomed Macron's resounding election win on Sunday, saying he "carries the hopes of millions of French people and also many in Germany and across Europe".

Merkel and her government had thrown their support behind the centrist Macron against far-right and anti-EU challenger Marine Le Pen during the election campaign.

She spoke by telephone with Macron just minutes after his victory and praised his commitment to the European Union. He is due to take office on Sunday.

The two will meet on Monday afternoon, Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Friday, adding that further details would be released later.

A Macron aide noted that Merkel "was the first among foreign leaders to ring him, given the importance of the relations between our two countries in restarting the European project".

"There is a wish to work together on several priorities: security, economy and investments as well as (social) protection," said the aide.

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Thursday underlined common ground with Macron in Germany and France's bid to bolster the EU, which has been buffeted by Britain's decision to quit the bloc.

Schaeuble said both he and Macron are in favour of creating a parliament for the 19-country eurozone.

"A eurozone parliament could be set up, made up of European parliamentarians, which would have consultative powers" for moving forward the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Schaeuble said.

The Luxembourg-based ESM, operational since October 2012, is a bailout fund for eurozone countries.

In a separate interview with Spiegel weekly, Schaeuble kept up Germany's pressure on France to reduce its budget deficit to the EU ceiling of three percent. France can make it," he said.

Macron visited Berlin twice during the hard-fought electoral campaign.
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Houston: A Muslim family's reunion in a Texas town turned ugly after a man at a beach allegedly hurled racial abuses and told them "Donald Trump will stop you".

14 members of the family were on a week-long reunion in South Padre Island when the man, who was identified as Alexander Downing, of Waterford, Connecticut, approached them at a beach.

Downing was recorded in a viral video screaming obscenities and phrases like, "Donald Trump will stop you," to the Muslim family on the beach, San Antonio Express-News reported.

He was arrested last week and was charged with public intoxication.

Police determined Downing "was intoxicated in a public place and was a danger to himself and others," according to the South Padre Island Police Department incident report.

A video posted on YouTube by Noria, whose family asked their last names not be used for safety reasons, described in detail the moments before Downing was arrested.

Downing approached Noria and her family and yelled multiple expletives at the family. "You will never ever, ever, ever stop me," he tells the family.

"My Christianity will rise above your Sharia law. Guess what? ISIS don't mean (expletive) to me..." Noria said in the video's description that two women asked her father for help as a man was harassing them. Her father approached Downings and asked him to let everyone enjoy the beach. Downings walked away but eventually came back and began yelling at the family.

"You're a (expletive) Muslim," he said. Noria was quoted as saying that she was in town for a family reunion.

Ahmed, another family member, said the family shared the footage to get Downings charged with indecent exposure, as he made several explicit gestures toward the family which included children between the ages of 2 and 4.

"First and foremost, we are Americans who happened to be Muslims. Never have I ever experienced such a thing. We did not do anything to provoke him," Ahmed was quoted as saying. The incident comes amid a series of intimidation and expletive-laden rants targeting Muslims being reported from across the country.
Thessaloniki (Greece): A Greek court on Friday handed 15-year prison sentences to two suspected jihadists with Swedish passports trying to enter Turkey carrying combat items, a local justice source said.

The suspects' lawyer said the men, who have refugee status in Sweden, would appeal against the sentence. They will remain incarcerated until their next trial, a date for which was not given.

The pair - a 29-year-old of Bosnian descent and a 19- year-old of Yemeni origin were caught in January 2016 near the border with Turkey.

Inside their luggage police found two machetes, army uniforms and other combat paraphernalia. The suspects insist the items had been legally purchased

in Athens as souvenirs.

The 29-year-old had been arrested in Bosnia in 2005 after a police raid at his house found a suicide belt, explosives and a video showing a man with a covered face threatening terrorist acts against the US Capitol and the White House.

He was sentenced to up to 14 years in Bosnian prison, but was released in 2011.
United Nations: North Korea's UN Mission is calling what it says was a "terrorist" plot by the US and South Korean intelligence agencies to kill leader Kim Jong Un a "declaration of war."

A statement on Thursday from the mission said a "Korean-style anti-terrorist offensive will be commenced to mop up the intelligence and plot-breeding organisations of the US and South Korea."

It reiterated the government's determination "to hunt down and mercilessly smash every single one of the terrorist maniacs of the CIA and the South Korean" Intelligence Service.

The mission urged all UN member states to support North Korea in its efforts. The statement said the organisers infiltrated a "terrorist" into the country who had satellite communications equipment.
A pilgrim walks on his knees at Fatima Sanctuary, central Portugal, on Thursday. Two of the three child shepherds who reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Fatima, Portugal, one century ago, will be declared saints on May 13 by Pope Francis. (Photo:AFP )

Carlos Gil, 52, is a payer-off of promises, at least that is the way the Roman Catholic refers to himself. But he is commonly known as a rent-a-pilgrim.

The Portuguese national takes on pilgrimages by proxy  in the name of others  especially Catholics unable because of sickness to undertake the journey or too busy or lazy for the week-long spiritual walk to the central Portuguese town of Fatima. He can be hired for 2,500 euros ($2,700).

Gil is one of the nearly one million Catholics who will descend at the weekend upon the town where three child shepherds reported visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago. Two of the children will be declared saints on May 13 during a visit by Pope Francis.

But Gil almost certainly will be the only pilgrim to make the trip on foot and invoice his walk. Its not about making money, but being in the service of others, he said at his home before setting off. Its a deal we strike with God.

The 2,500-euro price is a fixed rate  the lighting of a candle costs an additional 25 euros, while asking him to recite the rosary is another 250 euros. The rate also goes up if the client wants Gil to shuffle the last 400 metres (quarter of a mile) on his knees, from the shrines public square to the chapel where the visions are said to have taken place in 1917.
Ferguson admitted to the crime and sobbed in the dock while the video was being played, the report said.

London: A 32-year-old man from United Kingdom who set his girlfriend on fire by pouring petrol on her, has been jailed for at least eight years.

According to a report in Daily Mail, Lee Ferguson attacked his live-in partner Jordan Jade on February 19, 2017. Jade suffered 13 per cent burns and required surgery and skin grafts.

The couple, who were in a relationship for 12 years and have two children, were seen arguing outside a pub in CCTV footage produced in Newcastle Crown Court. The footage then shows the victim lying on the ground, screaming in agony, with her clothes burnt off.

During his trial in court, Ferguson admitted to the crime and sobbed in the dock while the video was being played, the report said.

Witnesses, who saw the lady engulfed in fire, heard Jordan 'shouting and then screaming'.

After acting in a fit of rage, Ferguson realised his crime, stamped out the fire and covered the victim in a coat to stop the flames.

The victim though did not make a statement in court about why or how she was attacked.

Prosecutor Paul Rowland said, An emergency operation was carried out. There was cleaning and dressing of the burns and also a laser scan undertaken.

Fergusons defence lawyer, John Wilkinson said his client realises the effect of what he did to the victim. He added that Ferguson expressed genuine remorse for what has occurred.

While awarding jail for eight years to Ferguson, Judge Robert Adams said, It seems to me the horror of what you had done and the injury inflicted became clear to you soon after you committed this offence.
A former London oil and gas trader was ordered to pay his estranged British wife 453 million (41.5 per cent of his wealth) in a divorce settlement.

A former London oil and gas trader was ordered to pay his estranged British wife 453 million (41.5 per cent of his wealth) in a divorce settlement. This is one of the biggest settlements in English legal history

The 61-year-old man, who was not named, met his wife, now aged 44, in 1989 in Moscow where she was studying. They married four years later, according to a judgment handed down at Londons High Court on Thursday.

The man, who was born in the Caucasus, earned a fortune in Russias energy sector, selling shares in a Russian company he set up for $1.37 billion in 2012.

The woman, originally from eastern Europe who was a housewife throughout the marriage, became a British citizen in 2000 and brought up their two children in Surrey, south of London, where they were educated at private schools before going to university in England.

She said that her estranged husbands wealth amounted to just over 1 billion and argued that the wealth was acquired and built up during their long marriage by the parties equal contributions to the welfare of the family, the judgment said.

The man, who has been granted indefinite leave to live in Britain, did not contest the proceedings, for reasons which the judge said were unclear, but had contended that he had made a special contribution to the familys wealth.

The woman, referred to in the judgment as W, said she needed a house in London to be near her sons and a villa in the south of France so she could see her sons during their holidays, a maintenance claim which amounted to 224 million. In the absence of any countervailing evidence, I find that these figures are justified on the evidence before me, given the lifestyle which to which W has become accustomed during her married life and leads, the judgment said.

I find that these figures are justified, given the lifestyle which to which W has become accustomed during her married life, the judgment said.

The previous largest reported divorce settlement in Britain was the $530 million awarded to the estranged wife of hedge fund billionaire Christopher Hohn in 2014.

Hefty settlements

1.5 billion: Reportedly the biggest divorce settlement paid by US billionaire Alec Wildenstein to his ex-wife Jocelyn

Three years earlier, Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky featured in a multi-million pound divorce case. It was reported that his former wife Galinan Besharova had agreed to accept between 165million and 220million as part of a settlement.

In late 2014, Jamie Cooper-Hohn, wife of financier Sir Chris Hohn, was awarded more than 330million. Legal experts said the Cooper-Hohn award was 'certainly' one of the biggest made in the UK.
Al-Qaedas Yemeni branch, one of the most active in the militant network, has taken advantage of the chaos in the country to strengthen its positions, particularly in remote southern regions. (Photo: AP/Representational)

Dubai: Al-Qaeda has started reaching out for recruits in Yemen by handing out quiz sheets, with an AK-47 assault rifle as top prize, residents and media said.

Militants have been touring the south-western city of Taiz in the build-up to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, putting up posters advertising the contest, residents reported. They encourage people to pick up the sheets from group members. Most of the questions focus on the organisations interpretation of Islam.

Name three articles of the (Yemeni) constitution which contradict Islamic Law, read one on a sheet seen by Reuters.

Any person who follows a law other than Islamic law is an infidel who must be killed. List three (scriptural) references for this, asked another.

The first prize was a Chinese-made AK-47, the second a motorcycle and the third a laptop.

Others included a pistol and cash prizes of 20,000 rials ($80).

The sheets did not give details on where to submit entries, but residents told Reuters the groups offices and mosques in the city were widely known.

Al-Qaedas Yemeni branch, one of the most active in the militant network, has taken advantage of the chaos in the country to strengthen its positions, particularly in remote southern regions.
Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced that India's flag carrier Air India would begin direct flights between Colombo and the holy city of Varanasi from August.

Modi, who is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, made the announcement of the beginning of the flights during his address at the inauguration of the International Vesak Day, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

He said the flights will allow "my Tamil brothers and sisters" to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath. At a distance of 10 kilometres from Varanasi, lies

Sarnath, one of the most revered Buddhist pilgrimage centres.

It is believed that after attaining the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, it was in Sarnath that Lord Buddha preached his first sermon, sanctified as Maha Dharm Chakra Parivartan.

The direct flights will aid pilgrims from Sri Lanka, a Buddhist-majority country, to visit Sarnath. Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh is the parliamentary constituency of the prime minister, from where he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

This is Modi's second visit to Sri Lanka in two years. He arrived on Thursday primarily to attend the International Vesak Day celebrations and his vist is aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka.
Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday cautioned the international community on the growing "arc of violence" and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not

necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

"The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion," he said, apparently referring to Pakistan, which is accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks inside India.

"The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

Modi said he believes that "Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world." Lord Buddha?s message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.

"Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings," he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy."

The themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings; they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected, Modi said.

He said the countries of south, central, south east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

Prime Minister Modi assured India's support to Sri Lanka for the island's nation-building endeavours. Modi said that he believes that both India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity in its relationship.

"You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours," he said and called on the two countries to uphold ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.

The prime minister lit a lamp - a traditional practice - initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.

Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded. Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event.

"Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said.

"Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said.

Modi arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, left, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, center, and Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe hold hands and wave to Sri Lankan tea plantation workers of Indian origin during a rally in Norwood, about 140 kilometers (87.5 miles) east of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, May 12, 2017. (Photo: AP)

Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday did a balancing act in Sri Lanka of keeping Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamils 'close' that has definitely left the Dragon sulking.

After inaugurating the International Vesak Day function, Modi offered India's continued support to 'friend' Sri Lanka.

"As you make important choices for harmony and progress of our society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building efforts. I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka," he added.

Prime Minister Modi not only extended India's full support to the Sri Lanka on economic and development fronts but also soothed the emotions of Indian origin Sri Lankan Tamils through his 'medical diplomacy' via Dickoya Glengairan Hospital, which is a super-specialty hospital built with the Indian assistance of Rs 150 crore.

India's total development portfolio to Sri Lanka now exceeds $2.6 billion, of which the grant component is more than USD 436 million.

After inaugurating the hospital, when Modi said health and well being of people of Sri Lanka "is a shared priority" then he actually was sending message to the Sri Lankan non-Buddhist Tamils that India cares for them, who are a minority in Sinhalese-Buddhist dominated country.

Later, when he addressed the Sri Lankan Tamils in the presence of Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirirsena and community leaders then he soothed the emotions of Sri Lankan government by saying that "I am aware the Government of Sri Lanka is taking active steps to improve your living conditions including a 5-year National Plan of Action".

Modi's superficial agenda of Sri Lanka was apolitical as 'officially' he went there mainly to participate International Vesak Day function as a chief guest, but unofficially his visit was much more important diplomatically.

Modi carried along with him a 'complexed diplomatic responsibility' to keep Sri Lanka out of the influence of China, which enjoyed hegemony in Colombo during the rule of former Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

Rajapaksa has been backing hard line Sinhala-Buddhist elements, who completely oppose India's diplomatic and trade interests in Sri Lanka.

In fact, India's business interests in Sri Lanka are being opposed vehemently by Rajapaksa backed politicians and trade unions.

Before Modi's visit, Srisena had to openly denounce the call by the Sri Lankan opposition to show black flags to Modi.

Opposition Parliamentarian Wimal Weerawansa alleged that "they (Sri Lanka Government) are trying to sell Sri Lanka to India".

In fact, Beijing's grip over Sri Lanka loosened when Rajapaksa lost his bid for a third term in 2015. Had Rajapaksa been in power then instead of Modi Chinese President or Prime Minister would have been given privilege to open International Vesak Day function.

The Sri Lankan opposition and the Dragon definitely would not have liked Srisena's presence everywhere wherever Modi went on Friday.

It is pertinent to mention here that new Sri Lankan President Sirisena has put several Chinese projects on hold temporarily. It needs to be watched whether Modi's diplomacy is able to keep Srisena away from Beijing permanently or not.
Islamabad: An Indian woman who has sought refuge at the Indian mission here petitioned the Islamabad High Court on Friday to provide security for her journey back to Delhi and to issue duplicate travel documents which were allegedly stolen by her Pakistani husband.

Uzma's lawyer, Malik Shah Nawaz Noon and First Secretary to the Indian High Commission Piyush Singh filed the petition on her behalf in the IHC stating that her husband Tahir Ali had deceived her as he was already married and that he stole her passport and other travel documents.

She has alleged that she was sexually abused after her forced marriage to a Pakistani man at gunpoint. In her statement, recorded before a magistrate, Uzma has said that she came to Pakistan to see her relatives and not to marry Ali. She has said she did not know Ali was already married and had four children.

However, Ali said she knew about his marriage and children. He said he had told her about his family and that he lived in mountains away from the main cities. Uzma, 20, has been staying at the Indian mission in Islamabad and refused to leave the High Commission premises until she is repatriated to India.

The petition sought security for her journey back to India via the Wagah border and requested that her husband is restrained from harassing her, the Dawn reported.

It also sought an exemption on Uzma reporting to the police and requested her repatriation to India.

Uzma in her request claimed, "My five-year-old daughter Falak is ill, and I have to meet her." "Tahir deceived me and forced me to marry him at gunpoint. He even stole my passport and travelling documents," she said.

"I urge the court to ask the Foreign Office to issue duplicate travel documents so that I may travel back to India," the application stated. The request also asked the court to hold a hearing regarding the matter immediately.

Uzma, a resident of New Delhi, on May 8 filed a plea with an Islamabad court against Ali, alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him.

Earlier this week, the Foreign Office (FO) said Uzma would only be repatriated back to her homeland once all her legal requirements were completed.

She has said she did not know Ali was already married and had four children. Uzma reached Pakistan on May 1 and travelled to Buner district in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to marry Ali on May 3. The couple reportedly met in Malaysia, where Tahir worked as a taxi-driver.

The case has attracted attention on both sides of the border. On Thursday, Tahir had pleaded the High Court here for a meeting with his wife to clear all "misunderstandings".
Karachi: Pakistan's Senate deputy chairman on Friday escaped an assassination attempt with injuries when a powerful blast damaged his car, killing 25 people and wounding 35 others in the volatile south-western Balochistan province.

The blast targeted Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri when he came out of a mosque after addressing a gathering shortly after the Friday prayers in Mastung area of the province.

The area where the explosion took place is approximately 70 kilometres from provincial capital Quetta. Mastung Hospital PRO Malik Jibran said that 20 dead and over 35 injured were brought to the hospital.

He said more than 15 injured were in critical condition. Senior police officer Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that 30-40 people were injured. He said Haideri was slightly injured.

Haideri belongs to Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazal (JUI-F) of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Most of the people killed were workers of his party.

Chairman Senate Raza Rabbani said that it was suicide attack which targeted the deputy chairman. "I have talked to the chief secretary of Balochistan and asked him to airlift Haideri to Quetta," he said. Citing sources, Geo TV said Haideri has been shifted to the Civil hospital.

Haideri later told Dunya TV in a brief chat that he received minor injuries. "It was a powerful explosion. I have received injured but I am safe. I am sorry for the death of innocent of people," he said.

TV footage showed Haideris vehicle was badly damaged. His driver was killed in the attack. The District Police Officer Mastung, Ghazanfar Ali, said Haideri escaped as he was not sitting in the car when the blast took place.

"It could be a suicide bomb attack but it is too early to say for sure," he said. Islamic State group says on its Aamaq news agency it carried out the attack.

Balochistan government spokesman Anwarul Haq Kakar said it was too early to say anything about the nature of the attack. "Probe has been launched to determine the nature of the bombing," he added.

Balochistan has been hit hard by attacks from terrorists and separatists in recent years and Mastung has seen a lot of unrest despite constant security operations in the area.
Pakistan and Iran have set up a joint commission to ensure better border management, two days after Islamabad summoned the Iranian envoy to express concern over Tehrans assertion that it will hit terror safe havens in its neighbouring country.(Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

Pakistan and Iran have set up a joint commission to ensure better border management, two days after Islamabad summoned the Iranian envoy to express concern over Tehrans assertion that it will hit terror safe havens in its neighbouring country.

Pakistan on Tuesday summoned the Iranian ambassador to express its concern over Iran army chiefs remarks that Tehran will hit safe havens of terrorists in Pakistan until Islamabad takes steps to stop militants from carrying out cross-border attacks. The commission has been set up to ensure better border management.
Colombo: Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday night called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and praised bilateral cooperation over the years.

"Rajapaksa's talks with Modi was a very cordial discussion and he was happy with India-Lanka cooperation over the years," Indian High Commissioner Taranjith Singh Sandhu said.

Modi met Rajapaksa at the latter's request, the High Commissioner said.

Earlier, Rajapaksa claimed that India and Sri Lanka may have signed deals on economic cooperation before Prime Minister Modi's arrival in the country.

"The information I have is that all deals have already been signed. So the Indian prime minister's arrival or non- arrival would be immaterial," Rajapaksa said reporters in the central town of Kandy, hours before Modi touched down in Colombo.

The Sinhala strongman who ruled the country for a decade said he held nothing against Modi's visit. "The problem will be only if they sign agreements. I understand these have already been signed," he said. Briefing media on Modi's engagements in Colombo, Sandhu said the prime minsiter will not be signing any agreements with Sri Lanka during the visit.

He said the prime minister has expressed India's commitment and support to Sri Lanka and India will be a strong development partner for the island nation's growth and prosperity.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, is primarily to participate in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

The two countries were set to sign an agreement to lease out oil tanks to India to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.

But Sri Lanka's opposition parties have objected to the deal, saying the government was selling state assets to India Rajapaksa's joint opposition has led a resistance to the Sririsena government's plan to enter into economic cooperation pacts with India, more particularly the Trincomalee venture.
Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the country's powerful Army that his meeting with Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal last month was part of a back-channel diplomacy, a media report said today.

BBC Urdu reported that Sarif has taken Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa into confidence on his meeting with Jindal on April 27 at the hill resort of Murree, BBC Urdu reported.

The civilian leadership informed the military authorities that Sharif's hour-long meeting with Jindal was a part of back-channel diplomacy. And Jindal had the backing of some important Indian officials for the meeting to defuse ongoing tension between the two countries, the report said.

India-Pak ties are strained over a series of cross-border terror attacks in India and over the death sentence to Jadhav.

India has denied Pakistan's allegations and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence agencies. The report quoting a ruling PML-N leader said Sharif was tight-lipped on his meeting with Jindal.

However, the only detail of the meeting he shared with his aides was that Jindal was making efforts to defuse tension between India and Pakistan.

It said the military leadership also took its officers into confidence on the meeting. Gen Bajwa told his officers that the meeting was a part of a back-channel diplomacy.

The Sharif-Jindal meeting had triggered intense speculation with several politicians and analysts suggesting it could be the precursor to a possible meeting between the two premiers in the near future.

Pakistan prime minister's adviser on foreign affairs Adviser Aziz told reporters yesterday that if India shows interest, Pakistan will look into the possibility of a meeting between Sharif and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO summit on June 8-9 at Astana in Kazakhstan.

Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly expressing concern over the "secret" meeting. It had also alleged that Jindal conveyed Modi's "message" to Sharif on the death penalty to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav on spying charges.

Jindal is said to be the man who had arranged a meeting between Modi and Sharif in Lahore on December 25 in 2015 on Sharif's birthday and the day when Sharif's granddaughter Mehr-un-Nisa was married.
More than 1,00,000 Chinese have poured at least $24 billion in the last decade into golden visa programmes across the world that offer residence in exchange for investment.

When the sister of President Donald Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner promoted investment in her familys new skyscraper from a Beijing hotel ballroom stage earlier this month, she was pitching a controversial American visa programme thats proven irresistible to tens of thousands of Chinese.

More than 1,00,000 Chinese have poured at least $24 billion in the last decade into golden visa programmes across the world that offer residence in exchange for investment.

Nowhere is Chinese demand greater than in the US, which has taken in at least $7.7 billion and issued more than 40,000 visas to Chinese investors and their families in the past decade.

The Chinese investors flocking to these programmes are people like Jenny Liu, a doctoral student in the coastal city of Nanjing, who sold her apartment two years ago and moved in with her parents.

She used the money from the sale to invest $5,00,000 in a hotel project in the US. If the project creates enough jobs in two years, shell get a prized green card and a pathway for a less stressful education for her 9-year-old son.The market leader is the US EB-5 programme.

But Portugal has drawn $1.7 billion over four years from Chinese investors willing to buy property to support its faltering real estate market. Spain and Greece offer similar programs.Chinese have bought the most visas in all three countries.

Countries in demand

$2,50,000

The minimum price of citizenship in Antigua & Barbuda.

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Fitch Ratings today said Indian authorities are making a more concerted push to clean up bad loans in the banking sector but the move would impinge on banks' profitability in the short-term.



It said that asset resolution would be a dominant theme in the sector over the next few years and further losses may push some weaker banks closer to breaching minimum capital requirements, unless they receive pre-emptive capital injections.



"Recent regulatory actions in India suggest the authorities are making a more concerted push to tackle banks' bad loan problems. "In the short-term, this is likely to create provisioning costs that will mean continued pressure on bank profits," Fitch said.



Moreover, the clean-up exercise undertaken by the government may bring about consolidation in the banking space. "We believe it has become more likely that the number of state banks will fall in the medium term," it said.



Banks are straddled with anywhere between Rs 9 lakh crore and Rs 12 lakh crore of stressed assets - made up of bad loans, restructured debt and advances to companies that cannot meet servicing obligations.



The government earlier this month through an ordinance amended law to give powers to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to order banks to initiate insolvency proceedings against defaulters and create committees to advise them on recovering NPAs.



The increased powers given to the RBI to clean up asset quality, and to intervene at an early stage when risks build, represents an "important positive step" toward ensuring a healthy banking system in the future, Fitch said.



"RBI direction that pushes banks into initiating insolvency processes against borrowers could help to break a deadlock caused by concerns among bank officials that decisions on troubled borrowers will attract investigation by anti-corruption agencies," the US-based agency said.



It also said there is a "stronger intent and willingness" from the authorities to address the NPA problem. There will be significant implementation challenges, but asset resolution is likely to strengthen over the next few years.



"The resolution of non-performing loans is likely to require significant haircuts if the re-priced loans are to attract attention from private investors and asset- reconstruction companies," it said.



State-run banks, which hold the bulk of stressed assets, are likely to report low returns on assets for the current fiscal. "Further losses at some of the weakest small-to-medium sized state banks could pressure them to shrink, or to eventually exit the system by entering into forced mergers," it said.



Fitch said the authorities should manage this in a way that is least disruptive for the financial system, but the process will entail risks for investors of capital securities, at least in the case of weakest banks.



Large state banks will also face higher provisioning costs, Fitch said adding these could eventually receive more capital from the government than has already been budgeted.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.





Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, the prime minister said that the themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings.



"The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he told the audience which included Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.



"It is from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence," he said, adding that the menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion.



He said Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago.



Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy."



Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.



The prime minister lit a lamp - a traditional practice - initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.



Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.

Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event.



"Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said.

"Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said.



Modi arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
Justice Leila Seth, India's first woman chief justice of a state high court who passed away last week, lives on as "Aunty Leila" for those who spent time with her in Patna.



Seth's death has opened a floodgate of memories for advocate K D Chatterji who was a little boy when Seth, then a barrister, moved to Patna from Calcutta for her practice in 1959. What endures more than her brilliant career is her love for children, said Chatterji, whose father was Seth's senior at the time and a family friend.



"Aunty Leila's presence around us school kids made us so happy. She would host lovely birthday parties at her beautiful 'White Pillars' bungalow and, after a trip abroad, she would bring us gifts," he told PTI.



"Till her last days she retained that kindness and warmth that we had experienced as children. And I believe that is what really set her apart from others in the legal fraternity as judges tend to be aloof and reserved with people, even after retirement," he said.



A condolence meeting will be held by the entire Patna High Court today (Friday).Seth, who passed away on May 6 at the age of 86 was a pioneer in many ways.



She returned to India after topping the bar examination in London in 1958 to much acclaim in the British press. Because she was already a mother when she passed law, The Star newspaper's story on her was headlined "Mother in Law," and was accompanied by a picture of Seth holding her second child Shantum, who was six months old at the time.



Her eldest son, Vikram, now an acclaimed novelist, was born five years earlier, and the youngest, daughter Aradhana, was born in Patna. Shantum went on to become a peace activist and Aradhana a filmmaker.



Seth was the second woman lawyer at Patna High Court when she moved there in 1959. And, as she said in an interview to PTI last year, she "still was the second lawyer" when she left Patna in 1969. The first was the feisty Dharmshila Lal who was her senior. After moving to New Delhi from Patna, she became the first woman judge of the Delhi High Court in the 1970s.



"She never rested on her laurels or basked in her glory," said Chatterji, who practices at Patna High Court. She had her share of both exclusivity and struggle during her initial days in Patna, he recalls.



"Barristers had a separate lunch room in those days and these two women, both barristers, were the only women practicing in the court," he said, recalling the bathroom troubles this situation created. "The key to the ladies bathroom would be kept with Dharmshila Lal. She would sometimes not be there, creating a crisis of sorts, an issue that was later resolved."



US-based biotech scientist, Jaya Ghosh, who grew up in Patna, said many people were sad when Seth and her family left Patna for Delhi.



Seth's husband, Prem, was the regional manager of Bata, and 'White Pillars', their palatial residence given to them courtesy the shoemaking company, was as much talk of the town as the amiable Seths themselves.



"I recall Justice Seth from her time at Patna. I did not know her. But our mother knew her and was very fond of her  Leila Seth and Dharmshila Lal were the only two women barristers but had very different personalities. While Lal came across as an aloof person, Seth was very humble and cordial. She will be missed," Ghosh said.



Like Ghosh, Navin Kumar, too, left Patna several decades ago but the links of nostalgia are strong and abiding.



"I remember her going to the Patna High Court in her shining Plymouth car from her chamber at the corner of the junction of S P Verma Road and Dak Bungalow Road," said Kumar, now a doctor based in England.



Seth, who later went on to become the chief justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court who authored 'Talking of Justice: People's Rights in Modern India', had also written a book for children, 'We the Children of India', based on the Preamble of the Constitution. She had once said at a literature festival that it was the company of children which kept her active and "young at heart".



"She really loved children. I have very fond memories of the Seths," said Kolkata-based photographer Rajiv Soni who remembers birthday parties at 'White Pillar'.In the PTI interview also Seth had talked about Patna as having a "very special" place in her heart.



And Seth had a special place in many people's hearts. Close family friend Tehmina Punwani, 61, recalls that Seth took care of her when she was little. Her father Akbar Imam was Seth's senior at the Patna High Court.



"I used to copy her so much that I went to the same school that she went to. I even used to carry the same bindi pattern (big red one with a black dot below). When I got designated as a senior advocate, she gave me her judge's gown and coat," said Punwani.




Modi, who is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, made the announcement of the beginning of the flights during his address at the inauguration of the International Vesak Day, the biggest festival of Buddhists.





He said the flights will allow "my Tamil brothers and sisters" to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath.At a distance of 10 kilometres from Varanasi, lies Sarnath, one of the most revered Buddhist pilgrimage centres.



It is believed that after attaining the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, it was in Sarnath that Lord Buddha preached his first sermon, sanctified as Maha Dharm Chakra Parivartan.





The direct flights will aid pilgrims from Sri Lanka, a Buddhist-majority country, to visit Sarnath.Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh is the parliamentary constituency of the prime minister, from where he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election.





This is Modi's second visit to Sri Lanka in two years. He arrived yesterday primarily to attend the International Vesak Day celebrations and his vist is aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced that India's flag carrier Air India would begin direct flights between Colombo and the holy city of Varanasi from August.
Girls once again outperformed boys in the plus two state board exams conducted by the Tamil Nadu government this year.



According to the results, which were announced on Friday, the overall pass percentage for 2017 was 92.1 per cent, 0.7 per cent higher than last year.



Of the 8.93 lakh students, who appeared for the exams through schools, girls outscored boys with a pass percentage of 94.5 per cent against 89.3 per cent scored by boys.



A total of 8,93,262 students appeared for the exam held in March this year of which 8,22,838 cleared it--a pass percentage of 92.1 per cent.



As per the School Education Department announcement, it was decided to scrap the long followed practice of ranking students at the State and district levels in plus two and SSLC exams on the basis of aggregate marks secured by them in a bid to provide relief to students going through high stress levels.



Among the top five districts, Virudhunagar was on the top of the leader board again with the highest pass percentage of 97.85 percent, followed by Ramanathapuram (96.77), Erode (96.69), Tuticorin (96.44) and Namakkal (96.40). Chennai district stood a distant 16th with a pass percentage of 92.99 per cent.
The Delhi High Court today declined to stay the income tax proceedings against Young India Ltd in the National Herald case, which involves Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.



A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Chander Shekhar asked the company to approach the Income Tax assessing officer, after which the firm withdrew its petition.The court then dismissed the plea as it was withdrawn.



Young India had approached the high court seeking a direction to stay the IT proceedings and quashing of notices against it with regard to the National Herald misappropriation of assets case. The company was issued notices regarding the assessment year 2011-12.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi today assured Sri Lanka of India's support in its nation-building efforts, saying New Delhi will be a friend and a partner, amid China's forays into the important Indian Ocean country.



Making Lord Buddha and his ideals the central theme of his charming address at the inauguration of the International Vesak Day - the biggest Buddhist festival, Modi called on India and Sri Lanka to uphold those ideals and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.



"Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings," he said, pointing out the significance of the "shared heritage" between the two peoples.



Modi said he believes that India and Sri Lanka were at a moment of great opportunity in their relationship. Explaining how Sri Lanka contributed to revive Buddhism in India, he said "you took us back to our own roots."



"The friendship between India and Sri Lanka was etched in time by the 'Great Master'... As close neighbours, our relationship spreads across many layers. It draws its strength as much through our interconnected values of Buddhism as it does from the limitless possibilities of our shared future. Ours is a friendship that lives in the hearts of our peopleand in the fabric of our societies," he said.



He reiterated India's commitment to the economic prosperity of "our Sri Lankan brothers and sisters". "We will continue to invest in driving positive change and economic growth to deepen our development cooperation."



"You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours," he said.

"We believe that free flow of trade, investments, technology, and ideas across our borders will be to our mutual benefit. India's rapid growth can bring dividends for the entire region, especially in Sri Lanka," he said.



India and Sri Lanka are in talks to jointly operate oil tanks at the strategic Trincomalee port. A deal in this regard is yet to be announced and some workers' union and opposition parties have protested against any such agreement wioth India.



Modi, however, said, "In infrastructure and connectivity, transport and energy, we are poised to scale up our cooperation."



The prime minister stressed that the social and economic weel-being of the Sri lankan people is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians. "Because, whether it is on land or in the waters of the Indian Ocean, the security of our societies is indivisible."



His remarks about the Indian Ocean and security assume significance as the Chinese strive to make inroads into the island-nation. Sri Lanka is finalising a plan to lease 80 per cent of its Hambantota port to China for 99 years.



Yesterday, a top Sri Lankan defence official said that the Chinese had requested to dock its submarine at the Colombo harbour next week but the country refused it permission.



A similar visit by two Chinese submarines in 2014 had invited strong protest from India, which said it undermined its security interests.



Later addressing the Tamil workers of the Lankan tea industry, he said India will fully support "active steps" of the country to improve living conditions of Tamils of central Lanka.



He said all the people of the two countries needed to strengthen, not separate, the threads of unity and harmony.



"Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Sinhala and Tamil people and languages existed harmoniously," he said.



The prime minister also found a way to add his popular election programme 'Chai pe Charcha' in his address, saying it "is mark of deep respect for dignity and integrity of honest labour."
Cow vigilantes thrashed five persons who were caught illegally slaughtering a buffalo inside the premises of a private dairy in Gandhi Park area here, police said.



Giving details of the incident, they said the owner of the dairy, Kalu Baghel, was operating from his compound in Panna Ganj locality. As one of the buffaloes had stopped yielding milk, he decided to sell it.



Imran, a cattle trader, offered to buy the buffalo provided the dairy owner gave permission to slaughter the animal in the premises of the dairy itself.



A group of five persons, including four butchers and the cattle trader, were in the process of slaughtering the buffalo when the blood of the animal oozed out of the gates of the dairy and was spotted by some bystanders.



Alarmed by the sight of blood, some activists rushed to the spot and barged into the dairy premises. By then, a huge crowd of protesters had converged on the spot after which the cow vigilantes started thrashing those slaughtering the buffalo, police said.



Later police managed to control the situation before it went out of hand.



The police have arrested the five persons along with the owner of the dairy for carrying out illegal slaughter. However, no case has been registered against the assaulters.



Station Officer in-charge, Gandhi Park police station, said investigations are on in this matter.



There has been a spike in the cases of cow vigilantism in the country recently with many such incidents reported in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat.
China has managed to rope in the US at the last minute for its Silk Road summit besides South Korea, the EU and Japan, leaving India to be the only major country yet to confirm its participation in the high-profile event.



The Trump administration announced that Matt Pottinger, Special Assistant to the President and senior director for East Asia of National Security Council of the White House, will lead the US delegation to the attend the One Belt and One Road Forum.



"The United States recognizes the importance of Chinas One Belt and One Road initiative and is to send delegates to attend the Belt and Road Forum May 14-15 in Beijing," a joint statement by China's finance and commerce ministries said.



Twenty-nine world leaders are taking part in the summit.



The US attendance at the summit was a concrete result of Chinese President Xi Jinping's trade plan, finance vice- minister Zhu Guangyao told media here.



The key announcement before the summit regarded as prestigious by officials here for Xi's multi-billion dollar initiative. The US participation came after the two sides clinched a lucrative trade agreement which will boost shipments of American liquefied natural gas, beef and other products to China. In turn, Chinese banks and poultry will get access to the US market.



The deal follows pledges by US President Donald Trump and Xi during a summit in Florida to address a USD 350 billion trade imbalance in China's favour by coming up with concrete measures within 100 days.



Analysts say the US participation was in line with Trump's policy of working out deals by negotiating on key strategic issues.



The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that besides the US, South Korea, EU and Japan will be sending high-level delegations.



"As for India's attendance at the forum, there are Indian scholars coming to attend the forum," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here today.



In New Delhi, Spokesman of the External Affairs Ministry said yesterday that the matter is under consideration.

While Japan deputed a senior leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) along with Vice Minister, South Korea is sending a top legislator to take part in the forum.



The European Union has deputed a top official. UKs Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond will represent his country.



The forum will showcase China's Belt & Road (B&R) initiative that has put India in a piquant situation as it included the USD 46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which goes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.



In the last few days, China is trying to assuage Indias feelings by asserting that the commercial corridor will not have any impact on its stand that the Kashmir issue should be settled by India and Pakistan through dialogue.

The CPEC is expected to take the centre stage at the forum which is being covered by over 4,000 local and foreign media.



Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the meeting to highlight the progress of the CPEC which is regarded as flagship project of the B&R.



Besides Sharif, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe will attend the forum while other countries in Indias immediate neighborhood will be represented by second rung leaders and officials.



Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara will lead the country's delegation, Geng said.



"India is dithering to take part in the B&R initiate I can understand why India doing so," Wang Dehua, Co-Director, Centre for South Asia Studies, Tongji University in Shanghai told PTI here.



"India may be still skeptical of the B&R because it views it as a threat its national core interests," he said.

"Sooner or later, Indians will know that the only objective of China's initiative is cooperation and win-win with all foreign countries," he said.



The B&R includes a maze of connectivity projects connecting China with Euro Asia besides the neighborhood.

It includes 21st century maritime Silk Road to connect China with different ports in the world as well as the CPEC and the Bangladesh, China India Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor.



India has reservations over the maritime Silk Road as it impacts Indias security interests in the Indian Ocean. However, New Delhi has backed the BCIM.
The Election Commission on Friday put on display the security procedures of an electronic voting machine when it is deployed at polling booths.



Even as it held a meeting with all political parties at the Constitution Club in New Delhi, the commission sought to dispel doubts over the credibility of EVMs.



It put on display, in the same venue, the security features the EVMs are subjected to  right from the first-level checking (FLC) before the day of the polls till the day of counting.



According to a poll panel official, FLC begins with physical cleaning, including removal of old tags.



This is followed by physical checking, which covers the entire machine, including doors, stands, buttons, latches, cables, connectors, slide switches, LEDs and serial numbers.



The electrical check includes examination of the display, buzzer, LED status, date and time.



A mock poll was also conducted in front of the representatives of the candidates or the parties, with 50 votes on all the 16 buttons.



Subsequently, stored EVMs are randomised by computer software twice, once for allocation of machines to Assembly constituencies and second for polling stations in the presence of candidates or their representatives before they are distributed for use in individual polling stations.



During the process of candidate-setting on the EVMs, the ballot paper is fixed on the ballot unit and EVMs are prepared for the number of candidates in the fray in a particular constituency, the official added.



On election day, a mock poll by casting at least 50 votes is conducted at every booth by the presiding officer in the presence of the representatives of the candidates or polling agents.



After the voting concludes, the presiding officer presses the close button on the control unit of the EVM in the presence of the polling agents.



The entire EVM is then sealed.



Candidates and their agents are allowed to put their signatures on the seals, which they can check for the intactness before counting.




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A former soldier's wife, shaken by recent attacks on Indian troops by Pakistan, has sent a 56-inch blouse to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an apparent reference to claims that he had a 56-inch chest, largely seen as a symbol of courage.



In a letter to the prime minister, Suman Singh, wife of ex-armyman Dharamvir Singh, reminded Modi that the Bharatiya Janata Party had before the 2014 Lok Sabha polls claimed if it came to power, Pakistan would not "dare" attack Indian soldiers.



"But the situation is even worse now," she wrote.



Her husband told reporters here that the letter addressed to the Prime Minister, along with the blouse, had been submitted to the Zila Sainik Board in Fatehabad.



Dharamvir, who claimed he was a former district observer of the Aam Aadmi Party, said he had served in the Army from December 1991 to 2007 and retired as a havaldar. Being an ex-army man's wife, he said, Suman had expressed anguish at the recent spate of killings.



"She told me that women send their sons, brothers, husbands to the border to defend their motherland and not to get beheaded and get pelted with stones. Where has the 56-inch chest gone now, she asked," the Fatehabad resident said.



The ex-serviceman was asked if the gesture could be seen as an insult to the office of the prime minister.

"You tell me one thing -- are we not being insulted? Our prime minister used to say never ever will our soldiers have to go through what they went through before. But what is happening under the present regime is even worse," he said.



Suman wrote in her letter that videos had surfaced "in which our soldiers are seen being slapped, humiliated and pelted with stones". Two soldiers were beheaded by Pakistan, she wrote.



She referred to Lance Naik Hemraj, who was beheaded by Pakistans Border Action Team in January, 2013.



"At the time of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, we felt that no more of our soldiers will be beheaded like Hemraj and enemy will think ten times before doing such action, but they have been repeated," the letter said.



She urged the PM to give the Army a "free hand" to tackle the situation on the border.



"The way the hands of our soldiers are tied they are unable to take the situation head on, which is most unfortunate," she wrote.



Dharamvir said he was deployed in Jammu and Kashmir for over 11 years.



"I was part of several counter insurgency operations. I also got the Sena Medal from the President on two occasions. My son is also preparing to join the forces," he said.
Diageo-controlled United Spirits (USL) is bullish about its growth prospects in India, and expects a double-digit growth in topline, despite the regulatory uncertainties, according to a top company official.



Three years ago, we set our vision to become the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer goods company in India. To achieve that we set out a medium-term goal to grow top line double-digit and improve organic operating margin to mid-high teens, USL CEO Anand Kripalu said in a presentation to investors in London.



Kripalu also said that the Supreme Courts order to ban alcohol sales on national and state highways is unlikely to have a major impact on the company. This (order) is creating a short-term impact, which is expected to go through to the first half of FY18 since some of the outlets have time till September 2017, to comply. We expect the impact to be mitigated eventually, Kripalu said.
The district has topped the state in SSLC examination with 84.23% results. Udupi was deprived of excellence last year.



It had topped the state in 2009, 2012 and 2015. This time, however, the results have declined by 5.29% when compared to previous years. In 2016, the districts overall pass percentage was 89.52%.



As many as 14,315 students appeared for SSLC examinations this year while 14,880 students had written the exam last year. This number does not include the repeaters and private students.



In 2007, the district was in second place while in 2008, it was placed third; in 2009, the district had topped the state; in 2010, it was in fourth position; in 2011, it was ranked sixth and in 2012, the district was in the top position. In 2013, it was in third place and in 2014, it stood 16th in the state. In 2015, the district excelled and in 2016, the district was in second position.



The overall pass percentage across the state has witnessed a decline of 8% and this has affected the districts pass percentage. DDPI Diwaker Shetty told DH that the continuous efforts to ensure that the schools in the district have rigorous and disciplined study schedule has resulted in this success.



Shetty said they were expecting 92% results. A well-planned schedule was put forth and the teachers took two hours extra classes for the students. The students were guided how to face the examination and also were given extra training in difficult subjects. The teachers were also trained.



The meetings of headmasters and headmistresses were held regularly every month. In turn, they conducted meetings with teachers and told them to chalk out a well-planned training programme for the students. BEOs were also directed to be part of the special teaching process in schools, especially during the parents meetings which were held frequently.



He said their hard work has yielded better results. However, the district failed to get the expected percentage, he said. In 2016, the district had received 89.52% results. In 2015, the district scored 93.37% and in 2014, the pass percentage was 85.36 %. In 2013, the district had recorded 87.68% results. The district had topped the state in 2012 and Chikkodi took over the position and again in 2015, the district topped the state and this year, the district is first in state. The last years topper Bengaluru Rural has been pushed into the 10th position.



Top scorers



Saraswati Vidyalaya in Gangolli and Government High School in Gundmi have secured 100% results.

The toppers in the district are Manjesh Sherigar (622 marks) of Government PU College, Baindoor; Rakshitha (622) of Government PU College, Uppunda; Shreya Shetty (620) of Venkataramana English Medium High School in Kundapura; Pallavi Prabhu (620) of Anantheshwara English Medium school, Udupi; Ananath Nayak (618) of Government Composite High School, Olakadu, Udupi; Kishen Nayak (618) of Government Composite High School, Olakadu, Udupi and Shashank (617) of Government PU College, Bidkalakatte respectively.


Dakshina Kannada has improved its position in the SSLC examination this year by scaling to the second position with a pass percentage of 82.39 from the third position last year.



Efforts put in to improve performance on slow learners in the district have yielded results. The district was in the 26th position in the state in 2013 and seventh in 2012. In 2013-14, the pass percentage had increased to 79.15 while the position had slipped to 29.



With a pass percentage of 73.9, Dakshina Kannada had stood third in 2005. In 2006, the district stood in the 11th position when its pass percentage slipped to 72.87. In 2007, it stood fifth with 82.09%, sixth in 2008 (76.6%), fourth in 2009 (82.02%), eighth in 2010 (72.75%). Though the percentage had increased in 2011, the position had slipped to 21 in 2011 and the position had increased to seventh in 2012.



G S Shashidhar, Block Education Officer (BEO) of Puttur, had brought together a team of teachers and subject experts to launch an initiative Mission 95 Plus, an initiative to improve performance of students, especially the slow learners. The mission involved conducting special classes for slow learners and monitoring their preparation as well as conducting night classes where the students stayed back in schools at night in February and March months. Teachers from private and aided schools and elected representatives were involved in the exercise.



Its all hard work



DDPI Walter DMellow told DH that the district could returned to its glory due to the hard work of the teachers and students. Teachers have worked hard for improving the results since the beginning of the academic year. In addition, the elected representatives, under the leadership of zilla panchayat standing committee on education Shahul Hameed, conducted several motivational camps, especially for children from minority communities. The camps in all the taluks motivated the children to excel in the examination, he added.



To improve the results, special classes were conducted in schools for the students who were weak in studies. Night class programmes were conducted for slow learners as part of Mission 95 Plus in Puttur. Under this programme, the teachers had focused on those students who had scored between 0 and 35 marks in the mid-term exams. A programme called Vidyarthi Mane Mana Bheti was launched to instil confidence and also encourage them to work hard to do well in the exam. Under the programme, a team of two teachers visited the houses either in the morning or evening to instil confidence among students. Joint efforts put in by teachers, school managements and our block education officers have paid off, he explained.



Top scorers



Bantwal SVS High School student K K Maina Anjum has scored 621 marks. She is the daughter of zilla panchayat standing committee on health and education president K K Shahul Hameed and Sara Mehzan. Maina Anjum wants to pursue Science at PUC level.



Pratheeksha P Rao Kayyorguthu of Canara High School has scored 618 marks. Alake Sri Satya Sai Loka Seva High School students Somashekar and Sushanth M Nagannavar have scored 614 each in English medium while Indulekha, Sindoora and Sandesh have scored 620, 617 and 614 respectively in Kannada medium.



Alvas students shine



Alvas Kannada Medium School has secured 100% results for the eighth consecutive time and the English medium students have secured 99.15% results.



Alvas English Medium School student Dheeksha M N and Akash M Nayari have scored 623 marks while Vishma P Hegde (622), Anvesh Jain (621). In Kannada medium, Lakshmi Ishwaranagatane has scored 621 marks. Thirty-five students in Kannada medium and 28 students in English medium have scored more than 600 marks.



Dheeksha, a native of Chamarajanagar district, said she has not yet decided on her future career and will continue her PUC at Alvas College. Guidance of the teachers and friends helped her to score well, she said. She is the daughter of Nandish and Manjula B S.



Akash M Nayari said being attentive in classroom helps one to achieve success. He is the son of Manjunath and Geetha from Bengaluru. Vishma Hegde is the daughter of international athlete Pushparaj Hegde.




As many as 1.75 lakh people died in road accidents in 2015 in India while about 52.5 lakh were hospitalised, according to a report on road safety released on Friday at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (Nimhans).



Prepared by Nimhans and American Safety Certification Company UL, the report shows that the maximum number of accidents took place in Uttar Pradesh whereas Karnataka ranked fourth in the list. In South India, Tamil Nadu ranked first whereas Karnataka stood second. Andhra Pradesh and Kerala were in the third and fourth positions respectively.



The report entitled Advancing Road Safety in India: Implementation is the Key was released by Transport Minister R Ramalinga Reddy to mark the Fourth UN Global Road Safety Week.



Reddy said peoples attitudes had to change. Rules are there even in the Constitution but implementation is important. People should also obey the rules.




Four employees of a security agency entrusted with transporting Rs 7.5 crore from the Axis Bank currency chest at Yeyyadi here to the branch at Koramangala in Bengaluru have driven off with cash.



The employees of Sis Prosegur Holdings left with Rs 7.5 crore in a Mahindra Bolero for Bengaluru at 8.30 am on Thursday but did not reach the state capital till Friday morning. The car was found abandoned at Arasu Kallahalli in Hunsur taluk of Chamarajanagar district on Friday evening.



Sis Prosegur Holdings chief Sachin filed a complaint at the Kankanady police station against the security guards, Basappa, Poovanna, custodian Parashuram and driver Karibasava. Their mobile phones have been switched off. A police source said it was too early to say whether more people were involved in the daring heist. Bheemayya, the younger brother of Poovanna, who works as an office assistant in the Bengaluru branch of the security agency, has also gone missing. The siblings are said to be cousins of Basappa.



In a statement, a spokesperson for Axis Bank insisted that the cash transfer systems and processes of the bank were robust and fully compliant with existing regulations. In this incident, the cash was being transferred by Sis Prosegur Holding Pvt Ltd, a cash transfer agency, and the amounts being transferred were fully insured. Neither the van in question nor the staff involved belonged to the bank, the statement read.



Mangaluru Police Commissioner M Chandra Sekhar has formed a special team under ACPs Shruthi N S and Valentine DSouza to crack the case.
Former corporator V Nagaraj and his sons Gandhi and Shastri were on Friday remanded in police custody till May 22.



The three had gone absconding after the police raided their house on April 14. They were detained in Tamil Nadu on Thursday afternoon by the Bengaluru police. The three are reportedly involved in a money laundering case.



They were brought to the city late on Thursday night and were examined at Ambedkar Medical College.

The police produced them before the 11th ACMM court in Mayo Hall on Friday. K S Jyothishi, the judge, remanded them in police custody till May 22, said a senior police officer.



Nagarajs advocate pleaded against the remand for 15 days saying he was suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes. Moreover, the city police have already collected information about him, he contended. The judge rejected the plea and remanded him in police custody, the officer stated.



Meanwhile, the police custody of Nagarajs 11 associates expired on Friday. The court extended the police custody of Saravana and Jayakrishna for five more days, while the others were remanded in judicial custody.



Nagarajs advocate requested the judge to direct the police to question his clients in keeping with Supreme Court directions and instruct the police not to torture them.



Sriram Reddy, the senior advocate who represented Nagaraj and his sons in the money laundering case, withdrew from the case saying Nagaraj did not heed his advice in the money laundering case.



Rs 2L for late arrest?



The action by the police in Nagarajs case has led to speculation. The delay in arresting Nagaraj and swift action after he released the second video is hard to understand, a former city police commissioner said.



The Bengaluru city police unit is one of the best forces in the country. The police knew the complete background of Nagaraj, including his informants in the police department. Such a unit could have caught him in less than 48 hours. The delay indicates pressure on the police in acting against Nagaraj for various reasons, he said.



Another officer, who headed the citys crime wing, echoed similar views and termed the arrest a possible stage-managed show. The officers criticised the decision to reward the team involved in the arrests with Rs 2 lakh.



The Rs 2-lakh cash reward for arresting a man whose antecedents the police knew very well after a delay of 27 days is a mockery of the police establishment. It is actually a reward for delaying action, he charged.


With less than a year to go for the Karnataka Assembly elections, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has begun to aggressively promote the schemes he has launched over the past four years keeping the rural masses as the focal point.



The government has organised a public function Soulabhya Vitaraneye Sambhrama (distribution of benefits is a celebration) in Chitradurga on May 13 to mark the completion of its four years in power. It is meant to remind people about what his government has done for them over the years. The party will bring workers from various districts to the programme where a few of them would turn into beneficiaries of the welfare schemes.



It has strategically chosen Chitradurga, which is reeling under severe drought, to send a message that it is empathising with people, in particular farmers. The government had announced that it was not inclined to celebrate the occasion because of drought. But finally, the chief minister, it seems, is in no mood to miss an opportunity to talk about his schemes and programmes.



Siddaramaiah, since he came to power in 2013, has mainly focused on implementing welfare schemes. And Ahinda (Kannada acronym for minorities, backward classes and Dalits) has been the priority of all five budgets he has presented. Now, efforts to consolidate his position have begun, sources in the party observed.



The Congress has decided to fight the next Assembly elections under Siddaramaiahs leadership. The party high command is also likely to give him a lot of freedom in chalking out the election strategy  the way Amarinder Singh in Punjab fought the elections recently. Siddaramaiah has emerged stronger in the Congress after the partys impressive victory in Nanjangud and Gundlupet Assembly byelections recently. But much depends on who would head the party in the election year.



If Siddaramaiah has to remain active and aggressive, then the party should be headed by a person of his choice, the party insiders said.

The chief minister has been claiming that of the 165 election promises his party made, 155 have been implemented. But many of those related to urban areas, especially Bengaluru, have remained unfulfilled.



For instance, the promise to improve governance in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike by dividing it into two or smaller corporations remains on paper. Besides, no major infrastructure project pertaining to easing traffic has been implemented.





Govts achievements according to CM





8 Bhagya schemes  Anna, Ksheera, Krishi, Vasati, Rajiv Arogya, Soura, Nirmala, Pashu  introduced.

Indira Canteens in Bluru (yet to be opened).

Bluru emerges as Startup Capital of India.

Law preventing diversion of SC/ST welfare funds.

Law to regularise land in favour of farm labourers.

Setting up of Skill Development Department.

Pension to widows of farmers who committed suicide.

Launched Vidya Siri (students), Mansvini (women), Ksheeradhare (farmers) schemes.







Oppns charges against govt
Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Friday asked Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to probe the controversial land deals involving political ally and RJD chief Lalu Prasads children.



A day after an expose on land brought at throwaway prices and through questionable means by Lalus daughter and Rajya Sabha MP Misa Bharti, Ravi Shankar Prasad sarcastically remarked that Misa had perfected the Vadra model of development  a reference to the land scam that Congress president Sonia Gandhis son-in-law Robert Vadra is reportedly involved in.



The BJPs attack is also seen as an attempt to corrode the clean image of Nitish Kumar, who has the potential of being the Oppositions prime ministerial candidate in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.



Ravi Shankar Prasad said that Misa and her husband had grabbed land worth crores for a pittance in the national capital. She bought land in Bijwasan, which was worth Rs 50 crore, for merely Rs 1.47 crore. He appealed to the government to look into this.



The law minister said that Misa had not disclosed to the Election Commission that she and her husband owned the controversial property when she sought election to the Rajya Sabha.



It is a serious case of misrepresentation and has very grave implications, Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

The law minister said Lalu represents the politics of loot.



At a time when the Opposition is trying to come together to contest the presidential polls, which will be a precursor to its 2019 Assembly polls, the minister wondered whether the proposed alliance is meant to be a cover for corruption and that if there will be corruption in the garb of secularism.


A PhD scholar has been dismissed from his research programme after it emerged that he played both the examiner and an evaluator for a test he took.



Devesh Ojha, a doctoral student at the civil engineering department of Lucknows Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), used his position of both a research scholar and a teacher at the same department to allot himself a topic that was part of the subject he taught.



This enabled him to set question papers for the pre-PhD course exam he took as part of the University Grants Commission norms. As it turned out, Ojha evaluated his own answer sheet and emerged as the topper.



We found it odd that the evaluator, examinee and the person who prepared the question paper had the same name, IET director A S Vidyarthi said. It was shocking to find that one man had actually played all the three roles.



Allotment of a topic that came under the subject a research scholar also taught at the department is violation of the norms, which Ojha was aware since each researcher was informed about it beforehand.



Vidyarthi said that show cause notice has been issued to the members of the board of studies for appointing Ojha as the examiner for the subject.
Notwithstanding the brouhaha over generic medicines, doctors will not be prohibited from writing popular brand names of medicines in prescriptions, government officials have clarified.



The government is in no position to make it mandatory for the doctors to write only generic names, as there are multiple legal and technical challenges, officials in the pharmaceuticals department said.



The generic versus branded medicine debate intensified following Prime Minister Narendra Modis recent comments which suggested that the government was considering legal steps to make it mandatory for doctors to write generic names in prescriptions.



The government is now aiming to encourage doctors to write both. We are promoting generic medicines. But we are not banning the writing of brand name of a medicine, said Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers Ananth Kumar.



Kumar has been pushing for the establishment of Janaushadhi stores to sell top quality generic medicines. The existing law doesnt allow a pharmacist to substitute a drug apart from what is written in the prescription.



Its impossible to transfer legal authority of a doctor to a chemist or pharmacist, who need not even have to see the patient before handing over the medicine. Who would be responsible if a doctor prescribes a particular brand of generic medicine and the pharmacist gives a poor quality one, leading to clinical complications, former consultant to the World Health Organisation (WHO) C M Gulhati told DH.



The idea of widespread use of generic medicine was first proposed by the Hathi Committee in the 1970s, but the proposal could not be implemented due to stiff opposition from the industry. The margins for branded generic drugs are in the range of 201-1016%, according to a study conducted by the Delhi University in 2010.



Kumar said the number of Janaushadhi stores has gone up to 1,320 from 88 in 2014.


A day after the police blamed a Hizbul Mujahideen module for the killing of Lt Ummer Fayaz, the outfits chief commander on Friday claimed its ultras were not involved in the incident.



In an emailed statement issued to a local news-gathering agency KNS, United Jihad Council (UJC) spokesman Syed Sadaqat Hussain quoted the outfit chief Syed Salah-ud-Din as saying: Our militants are not involved in the murder of Lt Ummer Fayaz. Such a killing is condemnable.



An officer from a pro-freedom family was murdered by the Indian agencies, and militants are being accused of it to shield the real face of the Indian agencies, he said.



Salah-ud-Din, who heads the UJC, an umbrella unit of militant organisations based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, also distanced themselves from international terror organisations like the al-Qaeda, the IS and the Taliban. Salah-ud-Din accused India of trying to create a group like the IS to defame the militant outfits .
After almost three decades, the Indian Army is set to receive at least two types of new artillery guns.



Earlier this week, the defence ministry signed a Rs 4,500-crore contract with Larsen and Toubro (L&T) for 100 155mm/52 calibre tracked self-propelled guns. This is the largest order for an Indian company from the defence ministry.



The army will receive the guns within 18 months of signing the contract (by September 2018). The entire order will be executed in 42 months (by the end of 2020).



Built with Korean technology, the K9 Vajra-T guns, having a range of more than 40 km, were field-tested extensively in the Pokhran desert and other areas in the western sector, a company official told DH.



These guns, however, will not be used in the mountains in the north and the east. For high altitude warfare, the army will receive the M777 ultra lightweight Howitzers. The first two guns are likely to arrive by June 8. Twenty more guns will follow in the next two years.



In a government-to-government contract, India, in December 2016, had signed a $737 million (about Rs 5,000 crore) deal with the US to purchase 145 M777 Howitzers from BAE Systems. The agreement was signed a week before US Secretary of Defence Ashton Carters visit to India on December 8. While the first 25 M777 guns are to be imported in two years, the rest will be assembled at a factory in Faridabad that Mahindra set up in partnership with BAE Systems.



The entire order is to be executed in 54 months. At half the weight of other 155mm-towed Howitzers, the ultra lightweight Howitzers provide a rapid reaction capability.



Since they can be carried by Chinook helicopters  which India is buying from the US  they can be quickly moved to areas close to the border.



The K9 Vajra-T gun, on the other hand, is an enhanced version of South Korean major Hanwha Tech Wins K9 Thunder  a self propelled Howitzer, customised and co-developed by L&T and the Korean firm to suit the requirements of the Indian Army, including desert operations.



Since the induction of the Bofors guns in the 1980s, the army did not have any artillery guns. An ordnance factory in Jabalpur is now making indigenous Dhanush artillery guns, using the Bofors technology. These guns, however, are not anywhere close to induction.




After a hue and cry over EVMs, most political parties supported the introduction of the voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) for all elections.



At the all-party meeting convened by the Election Commission here on Friday, the parties wanted greater transparency and verifiability in the voting process.



Only a few political parties wanted the Election Commission to go back to using ballot paper for the conduct of elections, a leader of a national party said.



The day-long meeting was attended by representatives of seven national parties, and 35 of the total 48 state-recognised political parties.



Congress representative Vivek Tankha said the electoral system should be trustworthy enough to satisfy the public that their votes were cast in favour of the intended candidates. He also pitched for longer display of the VVPAT slip to voters to increase transparency.



On action against candidates facing charges, Tankha said no arrest should be made without the commissions nod. The poll panel should ensure transparency, verifiability, and authenticity of the election process, he said.



Last month, 16 political parties had approached the commission with demands to return to the use of paper ballots for elections, contending that peoples faith in EVMs has been eroded. DMK leader Tiruchi Siva said he was satisfied with the detailed presentation on the infallibility of EVMs.



AIADMKs M Thambidurai wanted the poll body to count the VVPAT slips along with the EVM tally to remove any doubt about the poll process.



Besides the EVM issue, several parties demanded state funding of elections as a means to weed out black money.



Some parties also suggested that the poll authority should set up a fund wherein the corporate sector can make donations, which could be distributed among political parties proportionately.
The Jayanagar police have arrested three people on the charge of murdering financier and realtor Suresh Poojari (38) at his apartment near JSS Circle in Jayanagar on May 9.



The arrested are Rakesh (35), Suresh Gowda (32) and Narayana, all from Bilekahalli on Bannerghatta Road, police said. According to police, the trio have confessed to the crime. During interrogation, it emerged that the suspects had lent Rs 2 crore to Poojary who had promised that he would double the money in just a year. The suspects had pooled money from their families, friends and relatives and had handed over it to Poojary about a year ago, police said.



When the suspects demanded their money back, Poojary told them that the real estate market was down and had turned worse after demonetisation. When the suspects persuaded Poojary to return their money, he not only refused to repay but also threatened them of dire consequences. Enraged by this, the suspects decided to eliminate him, the police said.



As per their plan, the suspects arranged a party at Poojarys flat. When he was in his drunken stupor, they plastered his mouth.



One of them slit Poojarys throat and then rolled the body in a bed-sheet before fleeing the spot. Poojary, who had several criminal cases against him in Kundapura in Udupi district, had shifted his base to Bengaluru and was living here, police said. Poojarys wife and two children live in Kundapura.



Rakesh, one of the suspects, is a native of Mangaluru and has settled in Bengaluru. He owns a beauty parlour run by his sister. While Gowda is a businessman, Narayana is a relative of a former councillor. There are a few more suspects and their roles are being verified, a senior police officer said.


Allottees awaiting sites in the jinxed Arkavathy Layout will soon get a site of the same dimension in Kempegowda Layout and at the same cost.



A decision in this regard was taken at the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) review meeting chaired by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday.



Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Bengaluru Development Minister K J George said that after a detailed discussion a decision was taken to allot alternative sites.



Allottees will be given sites of the same dimension allotted to them in Arkavathy Layout and at the same price. If people are interested, they can approach the BDA with an application and, alternative site will be allotted at Kempegowda layout, he said.



BDA members and Congress MLAs S T Somashekar and Byrathi Basavaraj, who were present at the meeting, said a final decision on this will be taken at the BDA board meeting scheduled on May 23.



Around 4,000 Arkavathy allottees need to be given alternative sites. The BDA has also been directed to complete the infrastructure works at the earliest at Kempegowda layout, they said.



A BDA official said that earlier the government had agreed to give alternative sites at market rate in Kempegowda Layout. But, Arkavathy allottees were not interested to pay more for the plots. The BDA hopes to allot them sites surrendered by allottees at Kempegowda Layout.



New road



Siddaramaiah gave in-principle clearance to the BDA to construct a 10.5-km long and 100-metre wide road from Rajarajeshwarinagar hospital to Seegehalli on Magadi road.



The BDA will acquire 321 acres for the work. He also cleared the proposal for constructing a four-lane Kunigal to Byadarahalli road at a cost of Rs 343 crore and eight-lane Kumbalgod to Mysuru corridor at the cost of Rs 10,000 crore. The projects will be funded by the Central government, Somashekar said.



He also gave his approval for amending the BDA Act and, land losers land sharing ratio from 60:40 to 50:50.



To implement the 50:50 land sharing ration, the BDA rules need to be amended. The BDA has been told to prepare its draft which will be cleared at the board meeting on May 23. It will then be sent to the government for final clearance. Those who will be losing their land for the road construction between Rajarajeshwarinagar and Magadi Road will be given sites under 50:50 sharing scheme, Somashekar said.



If farmers are losing less than an acre, say, 10 to 20 guntas, they will be given monetary compensation. But, if it is above an acre, then the compensation will be in the form of land. This road is part of the Kempegowda Layout via Kumbalgod.


Though the Union government had asked states to increase the minimum wages of nurses to Rs 20,000 in 2016, nurses in the state continue to be poorly paid.



A nurse in a private hospital in Karnataka earns just between Rs 3,000 and Rs 15,000 while in a government hospital, a nurse earns around Rs 10,000. This has led to a dearth of students opting for nursing studies in the state.



Over 5,000 nurses from across the state came together to voice their grievances at Town Hall on Friday. They had assembled as part of the International Nurses Day Jatha2017 organised by Trained Nurses Association Of India (TNAI), Karnataka Branch. The nurses marched from Cubbon Park to Town Hall where they held discussions with doctors, lawyers and activists.



The nurses highlighted issues ranging from vacant teaching posts at government colleges to poor quality of education and inadequate infrastructure at private medical colleges.



Around 80% of the teaching posts are vacant in 22 government colleges across the state. Also, the teachers who are deputed for teaching are contractual hospital staff who have no in-depth knowledge of the field, said Girijamba Devi, secretary of TNAI, Karnataka.


Kannada film actor Sruthi Hariharan has urged the police to trace those who morphed her photographs and posted them on social media.



The actor visited the Bengaluru city police commissioners office on Friday and lodged a complaint.



Unidentified people have used her photographs and morphed them. They selected only her face and pasted it against the face of adult stars. Faces of leading actors are used to replace the faces of adult stars and such photographs are uploaded on social media platforms, she stated in the complaint.



It is a matter of concern for women and their safety. Uploading of such photographs will have an adverse effect on women and children. Police should trace suspects and arrest them, she said.
Bengaluru Development Minister K J George on Friday said that the route for providing Metro link to the Kempegowda International Airport has been finalised with most of the line running parallel to the airport road.



Replying to a query on the sidelines of the BDA review meeting, George said the government has finalised Nagawara-Ramakrishna Hegde Nagar-Jakkur-Yelahanka route to the airport.



An officer said the airport link will be an extension of the 21.25-km Gottigere-Nagawara line to be built under Phase 2. From Nagawara, the line will pass on Thanisandra road till Hegde Nagar, where it will turn left and pass through Jakkur. The line will meet the airport road near University of Agricultural Sciences and continue along the right side of the road. At the trumpet flyover, the line will turn right and reach the airport, he said.



The Metro line will run on the right side of the airport road (NH44) and enter the airport near its present entrance, he said. The government already has five-metre-wide land along the airport road, which will help speed up the project, besides making it cost-effective, the officer added.



The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation has set 2020 as the deadline for Phase 2, which includes the Gottigere-Nagawara line, which is a prerequisite for providing Metro service to the airport.



The finalised airport line requires more studies before preparing the detailed project report. A source said the minister will make a detailed announcement soon.



Another source said that Agriculture Minister Krishna Byre Gowda wanted the lines that passed through Kannur and Bagalur to connect the IT and hardware industries.



It was later decided that a parallel line may be provided in future to boost connectivity to the IT and hardware sector, the source added.


The Election Commission (EC) on Friday announced that it would deploy Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) devices with all the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in all future polls.



Also, the commission will hold a challenge to give all political parties a chance to prove their claim that the EVMs used in the recently concluded Assembly elections were tampered with or that the EVMs can be tampered with even under the laid down technical and administrative safeguards, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said.



The dates for the challenge will be announced soon. The EC also decided that it would ensure the mandatory counting of a certain percentage of VVPAT paper slips in addition to the results displayed electronically on the EVMs.

The commission announced the decisions at a meeting held with seven national and 35 of the 49 state recognised political parties in New Delhi on Friday  amid a controversy over the credibility of the EVMs.



The VVPAT system generates paper slips for all the votes cast on the EVMs linked to them. The EC at present does not count the paper slips in all the cases.



Zaidi and the two Election Commissioners, O P Rawat and A K Joti, held the meeting with political parties in view of the doubts expressed by several of them over the credibility of the EVMs.



You should be convinced that EC has no favourites...We maintain equidistance from all parties and groups. It is our constitutional and moral duty to stand dead centre of the circle drawn around us by 56 political parties, Zaidi earlier said in his opening remarks at the meeting.



Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal had earlier accused Joti and Rawat of being close to the ruling BJP in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Sixteen political parties, including the Congress, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the AAP, had on April 10 urged the EC to use ballot papers instead of EVMs in future elections. On April 12, several political parties called on President Pranab Mukherjee to draw his attention.



Saurav Bhardwaj, an AAP MLA, staged a demonstration in the Delhi Assembly to buttress the partys claim that the EVMs could be tampered with.



Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon, Kejriwal tweeted on Friday, indicating that his party was not satisfied with the challenge the commission agreed to hold.



At present, VVPATs are deployed in select polling booths. The government last month cleared the commissions proposal to procure 16.15 lakh VVPAT devices worth Rs 3,173.47 crore by September 2018.
In a first, a commander of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen on Friday threatened to kill separatist leaders if they continue to term the Kashmir struggle a political movement rather than Islamic, and hinder the way of the Mujahideen.



We warn these Hurriyat people not to interfere in our matters and remain with their dirty politics, otherwise we will cut their heads and hang them in Lal Chowk (Srinagar city centre), Hizb-ul-commander Zakir Bhat alias Musa says in an audio message that was shared on social media on Friday.

The remarks, however, go against the policy of the Mujahideen, which is a staunch advocate of Kashmirs accession to Pakistan, and almost all separatist leaders.



Without naming any Hurriyat leader, Musa called them hypocrites, and asked why they were using masjids and other Islamic symbols and slogans if they believe that the struggle is political.



Musa, who took over the reins of Hizbul from slain commander Burhan Wani last year, called for establishing an Islamic caliphate in Kashmir, stating that militants were not fighting for freedom. The warning, the first of its kind released by any commander of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen 27-years after the Kashmir insurgency began, came just days after top separatist trio of Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik distanced the struggle from global terror organisations like Islamic State and al Qaeda.



Our movement has nothing to do with these world-level groups and practically they are non-existent in the state. There is no role for these groups in our movement, they said in a statement on Monday.



Last week, Musa, who is believed to be operating from south Kashmir, also urged women student protesters to abandon stone-pelting and stay in classrooms, saying it was un-Islamic. I want to tell the sisters that whatever you are doing is against Sharia (Islamic ruling) as pelting stones without veil is un-Islamic. In Islam, there are no such protests and that is why Allah is punishing us in the form of occupation, he had said in an audio message.




The Director of Neurodevelopmental Genetics and endowed chair at Rady Childrens Institute for Genomic Medicine Joseph Gleeson, MD, a Carmel Valley resident, is the first recipient of the Constance Lieber Prize for Innovation in Developmental Neuroscience.

The award recognizes transformative contributions in developmental neuroscience leading to new treatments by an investigator under 55 years of age. It was established by the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD), an affiliate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. The award includes a $100,000 cash prize and will be presented to Gleeson in June at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Dr. Gleeson is a highly regarded and accomplished developmental neuroscientist, said LIBD Director and CEO Daniel R. Weinberger, MD. His latest work to uncover the molecular origins of developmental behavior disorders made him a unanimous choice for the inaugural recipient of this prize.

At the Rady Childrens Institute of Genomic Medicine, Gleeson is building a program in neurogenetics that seeks to understand the genetic basis of diseases such as epilepsy, autism and mental disability to develop new treatments. His pioneering work is supported by a $2.5 million endowment for neuroscience provided by Rady Childrens Hospital Auxiliary.

I am absolutely thrilled and humbled to receive the Constance Lieber Prize for Innovation in Developmental Neuroscience, said Gleeson. My hope is that someday children and families with brain disorders can benefit from the work were doing in what I call assembly neuroscience, that is, how the human brain is assembled, and to which I feel honored to have contributed.

In addition to his leadership role at Rady Childrens, Gleeson is also a professor of Neuroscience and Pediatrics at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor with The Rockefeller University, and Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institution.

The Lieber Institute for Brain Development established the new prize to honor Connie Lieber, one of the Institutes founders, for her leadership in the area of mental health research and her prescient insights about the central role of brain development in psychiatric illness. More information about the prize can be found at www.clprize.libd.org
11 May 2017 (Alfred Wegener Institute)  By the second half of this century, rising air temperatures above the Weddell Sea could set off a self-amplifying meltwater feedback cycle under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, ultimately causing the second-largest ice shelf in the Antarctic to shrink dramatically. Climate researchers at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), recently made this prediction in a new study, which can be found in the latest issue of the Journal of Climate, released today. In the study, the researchers use an ice-ocean model created in Bremerhaven to decode the oceanographic and physical processes that could lead to an irreversible inflow of warm water under the ice shelf  a development that has already been observed in the Amundsen Sea. When it comes to the fate of the great Antarctic ice shelves, the sea ice surrounding them is of central importance. For example, in the southern Weddell Sea so much sea ice forms during the autumn and winter months that the amount of salt released in the process turns the water around and below the 450,000 km2 Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf into a massive protective sheath. So far, this barrier of extremely salty water, with an average temperature of ca. minus 2 degrees Celsius, has protected the shelf from the inflow of water masses that are 0.8 degrees warm, which the Weddell Gyre transports along the edge of the continental shelf (see graphic). New simulations from climate researchers at the AWI now indicate that this cold-water barrier could be permanently lost in the course of the next few decades. The reason: rising air temperatures over the Weddell Sea, which could cause less sea ice to form. We can already see the first signs of this trend today. First of all, less sea ice is forming in the region, and secondly, oceanographic recordings from the continental shelf break confirm that the warm water masses are already moving closer and closer to the ice shelf in pulses, says Dr Hartmut Hellmer, an oceanographer at the AWI and first author of the study. These comparatively small-scale changes may mark the beginning of a fundamental and irrevocable transformation in the southern Weddell Sea. The researchers expect the effects to become noticeable by 2070. Our simulations show that there will be no turning back once the warm water masses find their way under the ice shelf, since their heat will accelerate the melting at its base. In turn, the resulting meltwater will produce an intensified overturning, which will suck even more warm water from the Weddell Gyre under the ice. As such, according to our calculations, the hope that the ocean would someday run out of heat wont pan out in the long run, Hellmer explains. As a result of the dramatic melting on its underside, the shelfs grounding line will shift further south and the ice will gradually lose direct contact with the seafloor. To date, frictional contact with the seafloor has helped to slow down the ice flow. Once this natural brake is gone, the draining of ice from the Antarctic Ice Sheet will quicken. The meltwater feedback cycle under the ice shelf will only slow down once the shelf has collapsed, or no more glacial ice flows in from inland to take its place. So were talking about processes that will continue over several centuries, says co-author and AWI model designer Dr Ralph Timmermann. The researchers forecasts are based on the AWIs BRIOS (Bremerhaven Regional Ice-Ocean Simulations) model, a coupled ice-ocean model that the team forced with atmospheric data from the SRES-A1B climate scenario, created at Britains Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter. The dataset includes e.g. information on the future development of winds and temperatures in the Antarctic, and is based on the assumption that the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere will reach 700 parts per million by the year 2100. Accordingly, our model used climate data that is similar to the IPCCs (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) current business-as-usual scenario. The results clearly show that even limiting global warming to two degrees Celsius wont be enough to save the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, says co-author and AWI researcher Dr Frank Kauker. In addition, the authors believe the predicted changes in the Weddell Sea offer a new perspective on current developments in the Amundsen Sea. As Hartmut Hellmer explains, When it comes to the Amundsen Sea, where warm water has already reached the continental shelf and even the grounding line of some ice shelves, we can safely say that this inflow of heat cannot be stopped; the climate regime change has already taken place. In other words, the losses of mass of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet will intensify  just like the models predict. To measure the forecasted inflow of warm water under the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf, in the past two Antarctic summers scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the British Antarctic Survey drilled through the ice at seven sites to deploy oceanographic recording devices below it. Thanks to their efforts, every night fresh data on the water temperature, salinity, flow speed and flow direction is transmitted to the AWI facilities in Bremerhaven via satellite. However, it will take a few years before we can use this latest data to reliably document the changes, says Hellmer. Hartmut Hellmer, Frank Kauker, Ralph Timmermann, Tore Hattermann: The fate of the southern Weddell Sea continental shelf in a warming climate, Journal of Climate, DOI: 10.1175/JCLI-D-16-0420.1
Jimgorn said: I believe the entire political left, in this country, is going a collective mental melt-down...... Damn!!....It's so much fun to watch... Click to expand...

You aren't having fun, you are having a **** fit because your king is being exposed for the liar and crook he is. You will never admit that fact but we all know.
Its that time of the week where we get you a line-up of new movie, TV and game trailers to watch. This week, we got our first look at The Dark Tower movie, inspired by Stephen Kings legendary fantasy novel series. Wonder Woman is back for a final glimpse before the movie releases on June 2 and Ryan Reynolds teams up with Samuel L Jackson for a Shanghai Noon-style action comedy. So, sit back, relax and hit play

The Hitmans Bodyguard

The worlds best bodyguard gets a new client - a hitman who needs saving. The trailer shows Ryan Reynolds team up with Samuel L Jackson for some action-packed chase sequences and a few laughs. Watch out for the scene where Reynolds crashes out of a windshield and comes out unscathed on the other end.

Cars 3

In this second trailer of the third installment of the Cars movie franchise, you will get a sneak peak at the new racer in town - Jackson Storm. Storm challenges Lightning McQueens racing career and the second trailer is all about McQueen training to beat Storm at his game. Its a cute one. Youll like it.

Blade Runner 2049

We now have the full trailer of the Blade Runner reboot film. The next chapter of the American neo-noir science fiction series, Blade Runner 2049 features Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling in lead roles. Gosling, an LAPD cop unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to create chaos in whats left of society...including an ailing Ford, a former LAPD Blade Runner, who resurfaces after 30 years!

Wonder Woman

We dedicated a whole article to this trailer, so you might as well go read that. Or, just watch this final trailer of the Gal Gadot starrer superhero flick below.

Dunkirk

You know when Christopher Nolan makes a movie, Hans Zimmer comes as a package deal. This World War II story is no different. Zimmer lends his dark and dramatic music to Nolans upcoming film about allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire, Canada, and France stuck in a battle on the seas with the Germans. Need we say more?

The Dark Tower Trailer

The Dark Tower is a cult fantasy series written by the master of mystery, Stephen King. The movie takes shape with British actor Idris Elba playing the famous gunslinger and Matthew McConaughey donning the role of the villain - The Man in Black. However, peeps here who have read the books tell me the movie alters the original storyline to a great extent. Time to get to some reading...

Hasan Minhaj: Homecoming King

You want to know what it feels like to be born American in an immigrant family? Hasan Minhaj is all set to tell you in this Netflix stand-up special. The comedy special will show up on Netflix on May 23.

IT - New First Look

Stephen King is on a roll this year. IT, another one of his classic horror novels, is being made into a movie. IT follows the story of seven friends haunted by a shape shifter, who takes the form of an evil clown to target kids. Watch this one with the lights off.

War Machine

A Netflix original film that features Brad Pitt and Ben Kingsley is definitely up our alley. At the story's core is Brad Pitt's sly take on a successful, charismatic four-star general who leapt in like a rock star to command NATO forces in Afghanistan, only to be taken down by a journalist's no-holds-barred expose.War Machine releases on Netflix on May 26.

Orange is the New Black Season 5

Even though 10 episodes of the new season of OITNB were leaked by hackers a few days ago, we are still excited to see the official trailer of this prison drama. Looks like the ladies are done being mistreated and are taking matters in their own hands. Will they kick up a riot?

13 Reasons Why Season 2 Announcement

13 Reasons Why was one of the few teenage dramas on Netflix that we liked watching this year, and looks like Hannah Bakers story has a second part to it. Another set of tapes perhaps? Or an exciting court-room battle? All we know for now is that a second season is on the way.
The report notes that India's smartphone penetration grew 16 percent in the first quarter of 2017 and is seen as the next major focal point for smartphone vendors around the world

The smartphone penetration in India saw a growth of 16 percent in the first quarter of 2017. According to Kantar Worldpanel study, Indian smartphone penetration reached 48 percent due to the rapid expansion of 4G infrastructure and low-cost 4G data services from Reliance Jio. The research shows that smartphone sales have surpassed 90 percent of the potential market in the US, China and the European Union. The sales in markets like Latin America especially Brazil and Mexico have reached 80 percent. With a penetration of 48 percent, India is seen as the next major focal point for smartphone vendors around the world.

Korean and Chinese smartphone players are seen to dominate India's smartphone market share. "Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, and Lenovo have made significant investments in India to disrupt the local vendors," the report says. The Chinese vendors have increased their sales share in India from 27 percent in Q1 2016 to 50 percent in Q1 2017. Samsung continues to maintain the lead with 27 percent sales followed by Xiaomi and Vivo tied for second place with 12 percent sales. Lenovo Moto and Oppo were third and fourth with 11 percent and 10 percent of total sales. The sales of Micromax has dropped to 5 percent and it is trying to stage a comeback with the launch of new products like Dual5 and Evok Note. "Local brands Micromax, Intex, Lyf, and others now capture only 12% of India smartphone sales."

Kantar says Apple's sales for the quarter accounted for 3 percent but the company is making strategic moves in India. Lauren Guenveur says Apple's move to partner with Reliance Jio to offer free 4G service for one year with iPhone 7 and 7 Plus and plans to manufacture iPhones will help it expand its footprint. A recent report suggested that Apple is planning to make iPhone 5s available for Rs 15,000 only on online retail channels and make iPhone SE - the entry-level iPhone in the offline market.

4G is now seen as the decisive sale driver in the smartphone segment while "quality of the camera and battery life remain the top motivators." Over 50 percent of smartphone users in India plan to upgrade their device over the next 12 months. Almost 26 percent of these users prefer Samsung as their next smartphone brand while Apple is favoured by 15 percent users. Between 7 and 8 percent of consumers plan to buy a Vivo or Oppo smartphone. This contradicts Strategy Analytics' previous report that claimed 26 percent Indians prefer Xiaomi as their next smartphone brand.

The report also shows the divide between online and offline retail segment. Only 21 percent smartphones are being sold online while 68 percent smartphones are sold via brick and mortar stores. "While many consumers in India don't initially consider Oppo and Vivo they pick up share because of their strong in-store presence," the report adds. It says more than two-thirds of the market continues to spend less than $180 (around Rs 12,000) on a smartphone. Yet, there has been sales growth for vendors like Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo in the price range of $180 to $300. Apple and Samsung dominate the over $300 price segment but it is a small fraction of the market.
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PENDLETON, Ore. (AP)  The Eastern Oregon city of Milton-Freewater is getting its first new school since 1922.

The East Oregonian newspaper reports a ceremonial groundbreaking was held last week in the city of 7,000 residents.





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ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  The number of visitors coming to Orlando, Florida continued to grow last year, despite a series of tragic headlines coming out of the region.

Tourism officials announced Thursday that more than 68 million visitors came to Orlando in 2016, a 3 percent increase over the previous year.





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SEATTLE  The Upstairs-Downstairs Apartments at 4538 18th Ave. N.E. has sold for $11.2 million, according to King County records.

The seller was Trinity Partnership 3 LLP, which acquired the property in 1992 for $2.47 million.





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PM Modi announces direct flight from Varanasi to Colombo

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a direct flight between Colombo and Varanasi during his address at the 14th International Vesak Day celebrations, a day that marks the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

Sri Lanka is hosting the International Vesak Day for the first time. The theme of this year's event is 'Buddhist teachings for social justice and sustainable world peace'.

Modi, who is on a two-day official visit to Sri Lanka, met Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and interacted with leading Buddhist spiritual leaders in the country.

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday evening where he was received at the airport by Sri Prime Minister Wickramsinghe and other senior ministers.

Both prime ministers later arrived at the Seema Malaka Temple, where they were received by the chief monk of the Temple, among other dignitaries.

The prime minister offered flowers at the altar of the temple. Modi and Wickramsinghe together pressed a switch for the lamp-lighting ceremony on the eve of Vesak Day, characterised by brilliant multi-coloured lights and a fireworks display.

He said the direct flight between Colombo and Varanasi will begin from August this year, adding that the flight will ease "travel to the land of Buddha."

"My Tamil brothers and sisters will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath," Modi said.

The Prime Minister also mentioned terrorism in his speech stating that it is a "clear manifestation of this destructive emotion."

The prime minister is set to inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital, which has been built with assistance from India. Reports state that India will give $2.6 billion as aid for the hospital. The prime minister is also scheduled to meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (CWC) and hold a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBA).

Modi will then arrive at the President's Palace for a lunch hosted by the Sri Lankan President. He is also set to visit Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple (The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), where he will sign the visitor's book and interact with Mahanayaks.

Although no bilateral talks are scheduled between the countries during the prime minister's visit, the meeting of the leaders is set to give a fresh boost to India-Sri Lanka relations.

"I will be in Sri Lanka for a two-day visit starting today, 11th May. This will be my second bilateral visit there in two years, a sign of our strong relationship," Modi had said before arriving in the country.
Sri Lanka has rejected China's request to dock one of its submarines in Colombo harbour some time this month, two senior Lankan government officials said on Thursday, as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed is in the island nation in the evening for a two-day official visit.

Sri Lanka last allowed a Chinese submarine to dock in Colombo in October 2014, which triggered fierce opposition from India, which is concerned about growing Chinese activity in Lanka and across the Indian Ocean region.

The Sri Lankan official, who preferred to remain anonymous, said Colombo was "unlikely" to agree to China's request to dock the submarine at any time, given India's concerns.

Besides political issues, there are commercial considerations as well involved in Sri Lanka's move, as more than 70 per cent of the trans-shipment in Colombo port comes from India.

A defence ministry official, meanwhile, said China's request to dock this month had been rejected while a decision on a further docking had been postponed.

"It might happen later," a Reuters report quoted the official as saying, adding that China's request to use the port around 16 May came "sometime back".

Chinese embassy sources in Colombo confirmed that China was still awaiting a response to its request for permission for the submarine port call.

China, looking for investment avenues for its huge surpluses, has invested heavily in Sri Lanka in recent years, in airports, roads, railways and ports, aggravating India's concerns of Chinese meddling in the Indian Ocean region.

Sri Lanka, despite the Liberation Tiger issue, has traditionally been the closest economic partner of India.

Sri Lanka is finalising a plan to lease 80 per cent of its loss-making Hambantotata port to China for 99 years, but the deal has been delayed because of opposition from trade unions.

The Sri Lankan government also wants to establish a petroleum hub with the help of India in the eastern port city of Trincomalee, where Lanka IOC, the subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation, handles 15 out of 99 oil tanks.

Also, India and Sri Lanka are bound by a 1987 accord that states that the two countries would not allow their respective territories to be used for activities deemed prejudicial to each other's unity, integrity and security.
The US intelligence community's first global threat assessment report under the Trump administration says India-Pakistan ties could worsen unless there is a significant reduction in cross-border terror attacks. Putting the responsibility for improving relations squarely on Pakistan, the report says relations between India and Pakistan could worsen in 2017 unless there is a ''sharp and sustained'' drop in cross-border terror attacks from Pakistan. The report, titled Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community, warns of Pakistan's tactical nuclear weapons being captured by non-state actors, and of ''persistent but diffuse'' threats from Pakistan-based terrorist groups to the US and the West. Terror acts against the US homeland, it said, will be ''conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups''. The report, submitted to the Congress each year, has inputs from all 17 state agencies and covers an entire range of threats from cyber to terrorism to weapons of mass destruction and new emerging challenges, such as artificial intelligence. The report's assessment that India-Pakistan relations ''might deteriorate further in 2017'' comes on the back of ''another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan''. The report puts the responsibility for improving relations squarely on Pakistan, arguing, ''Easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation.'' The report, which corroborates India's stated position that Pakistan had failed to curb its support to anti-India terrorists, said New Delhi's ''growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack'' caused a deterioration of relations last year. Terrorists belonging to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad attacked an Indian Air Force base in Pathankot on 2 January 2016, killing six soldiers. The attackers were killed in an operation lasting three days. The US intelligence report also worries about Pakistan's tactical nuclear weapons, the existence of which has been officially confirmed by Islamabad, saying its ''pursuit (of these weapons) potentially lowers the threshold for their use''. Pakistan's stated willingness to deploy such weapons ''early during a crisis'', the report warned US lawmakers, ''would increase the amount of time that systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site, increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon''. Pakistan is believed to have the world's fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, and Islamabad has publicly owned up to the existence of tactical nuclear weapons, which are smaller and designed for use on the battlefield, aimed at offsetting India's heavy superiority in conventional weapons. Concerns about these smaller weapons being more prone to theft were raised publicly by former president Barack Obama in April 2016, at the conclusion of a nuclear summit in Washington attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He had said, without naming countries, ''nuclear arsenals are expanding in some countries, with more small tactical nuclear weapons which could be at greater risk of theft''.








Last week up to 200 people affected by Lyme Disease held a rally outside the Dail to highlight the condition.

Sufferers and their families believe there is its lack of recognition by health and political authorities of the disease.

Lymes is a bacterial disease transmitted ticks. Symptoms include joint pain, swollen glands and severe fatigue.

Clare McCahill from Ramelton contracted the disease in 2006 when she was living in Portugal's Algarve.

The disease turned her life upside down and she battled it for five years before she began to return to normal.

The impact of the disease left her so low that she researched the possibility of travelling to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end her life.

Clare was not at the protest in Dublin last week due to the busy life she now lives since recovering from the disease.

She has returned to live in Donegal and has got her life back. But she fully supports the campaign led by Tick Talk Ireland, the support group which organised the protests.

Her experience of the disease in Portugal differs with the knowledge of it in Ireland, she says.

It is quite common there and people knew what it was. There was no fuss, it was an ordinary thing.

Here, there are a lot of gaps in the knowledge of it and it's mainly only people coming from abroad who have it. Theres a lack of awareness in the medical profession and lack of acceptance.

A lot of people will go a long time before they are diagnosed. They are diagnosed with different things first and doctors can be sceptical.

When Clare contracted the disease, initially it was like a bad flu . But she had heard of the disease which is known locally as tick fever.

In Portugal, I occasionally volunteered at a friend's beauty salon when she was teaching massage students. In April 2006 I had suffered a couple of mosquito bites but nothing else notable before a student gave me a deep-tissue, full-body massage.

Bite

Unbeknownst to any of us, I had been bitten by a tick, or an infected mosquito, the jury's still out on that one, and the massage was one of the worst things that could've happened to me.

The infection was pushed around my body and within a few days, I was seriously ill.

She developed severe headaches and terrible aches and pains which left her confined to bed. After she got back on her feet, her joints began to swell up.

She found it difficult to walk and bend and developed a rash. That was the sign that indicated to her partner that it was Lyme Disease.

My legs were swollen like tree trunks, I couldn't bend my knees or ankles. I had shuffled onto the road to hell and there were no exits. My partner saw an article about Lyme Disease in a local magazine and knew immediately that I had succumbed.

He carried me to the car and took me straight to the ER at Portimao Hospital.

The first six months left her with an incapacitating exhaustion. The joint pains moved up my body into my arms. I could not lift a cup of tea, lift a brush to brush my hair or brush my teeth. I could not think properly, I was sleeping around the clock. I could not talk properly, I was babbling.

It was five years before I was back on my feet again properly. It was a very slow process as I had to learn how to do things for myself again.

Clare is a photographer, having first held a camera at the age of four and it was a long time before she could operate a camera again properly.

She had also been a classical guitarist but that is a hobby that has been lost to her.

Yet she is proud of her recovery, having gone from needing a stick to walk to holding down two jobs.

One in five people who suffer from Lyme Disease dont survive, so although she had a severe case of it, she knows she is very lucky.

I feel lucky now but at some point, I felt so bad that I thought about going to Switzerland and to Dignitas. I went as far as researching the process. Depression is a huge issue for people with Lyme Disease. Despite the emotional trauma of losing the best years of my life, home, family, friends, career and more, I am lucky. Not lucky to be alive, lucky to have had the medical care I needed, when I needed it.

Fortunate is a better way of putting it. Luck had nothing to do with the awareness and acceptance that lead to my diagnosis and treatment.
Minister for Social Protection Leo Varadkar will be visiting Donegal today and tomorrow.

The minister will be visiting the Department of Social Protection offices in Buncrana and Letterkenny today, Friday.

He will be attending a Fine Gael party event in Gaoth Dobhair this evening where he will update party members on the governments strategy on Brexit.

The event has been organised by the Glenties district executive of the party and will take place at Amharclann Gaoth Dobhair.

He will also have meetings will Donegal groups on Saturday which are yet to be confirmed.

The minister is expected to be a leading contender to be the next leader of Fine Gael.

A party source said the visit was planned some time ago and isn't related at all to any future leadership campaign.

Minister Varadkar is a member of the Cabinet sub-committee on Brexit and has already held a series of bilateral meetings with his UK, French, German, Estonian, Maltese, Danish and Austrian counterparts in recent months.

He represents Ireland at the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO) council which meets quarterly in Brussels and Luxembourg and is involved in the governments work and strategy on the Common Travel Area with the UK.

The minister is a member of the World Economic Forum Young Political Leaders in the Europe Community alongside ministers, young prime ministers and MEPs.

He is a former Vice-President of the Youth of the European People's Party and has attended several European Peoples Party Congresses
Sessions moves to lengthen drug sentences



Attorney General Jeff Sessions is reversing one of the central elements of the Obama administration's criminal justice reform agenda: a Justice Department policy that led to prosecutors in drug cases often filing charges in a way that avoided triggering mandatory minimum sentences in federal law.Sessions is withdrawing a 2013 directive from Attorney General Eric Holder that instructed federal prosecutors not to specify the amount of drugs involved when charging low-level and non-violent drug offenders. That policy effectively gave judges discretion to set sentences lower than the mandatory punishments ranging from five years to life in prison federal law dictates when someone is convicted of a crime involving a certain quantity of illegal drugs.In a memo distributed to federal prosecutors nationwide Thursday, Sessions said the department default in future cases will return to a previous policy of filing the most serious charge available against a defendant under the provable facts.
Professor Mary Daly, retiring president of the Royal Irish Academy, will open this years Micheal O Cleirigh Summer School this evening in Rossnowlagh.

The summer school opens at 7pm this evening, Friday, May 12th, in the Friary Hall in Rossnowlagh.

The annual summer school was established in Rossnowlagh in 2013 and the first summer school took place in May of 2014.

The purpose of the school is to celebrate the life and achievements of Micheal O Cleirigh and his colleagues, the other members of the Four Masters. The school also remembers the work of the Franciscan friars of that time who lived in Donegal and in Louvain.

At 7.45pm this evening, Dr. Alison Forrestal of NUI Galway will describe the Europe that Micheal O Cleirigh and the Irish friars encountered after 1607 in the discussion, Europe of the Regions.

Tomorrow, Saturday, May 13th, the summer school will run from 10am throughout the day. At 10.40am, prize-winning journalist and author Deaglan de Breadun will address the issue of Brexit: The Potential Fallout in Political and Constitutional Terms.

Professor John McCafferty, director of the Micheal O Cleirigh Institute at University College Dublin, will deliver the keynote address, From Donegal to Purgatory (and back) at 5.30pm on Saturday.

The full programme for the summer school is available at the Micheal O Cleirigh Summer School website, http://mocleirigh.ie.
A top Lockheed Martin official encouraged hundreds of Enterprise High School students to pursue jobs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) during a speech Wednesday.

Dave Anderson, director of production operations at the companys Pike County operations north of Troy, said well-paying jobs await those who pursue jobs in technical fields.

Engineering degrees are in high demand. By 2018, its estimated 2.4 million engineering jobs will be available, he said. Keep in mind, you must put a plan in place. Opportunities wont fall on you. Youve got to find your opportunities.

Anderson described the many products the Pike County plant builds, which include HELLFIRE II missiles, Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff (JASSM) cruise missiles, Javelin missiles and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles.

In the woods there, were building some of the most sophisticated weapons in the world, he said. These are used in theater every day. We cannot build them fast enough.

Anderson began his career as an entry-level missile technician, but he said he desired more. He went to college at nights and eventually earned a degree in production operations.

My degree, it took a long time to get going at night, but the day I received that degree was one of the best days of my life, he said.

Now Anderson manages a 382,000 square-foot plant that produces the missiles that allow the U.S. military to conduct its operations.

Every one of you have that opportunity. Its not easy, but it is rewarding, he said. Put a plan together. Always set a 5- to 10-year plan.

Anderson noted Lockheed has several research positions as the company invests $70 million a year into research and development.

He said good-paying jobs as technicians await those without college degrees, too.

You can hire in out of high school, he said. Go to AIDT (Alabama Industrial Development Training). On your resume, talk about what youve done mechanically, whether its wiring a house or working on your familys farm equipment. Thats what AIDT looks for.

If you are interactive and energetic, the opportunities are boundless.
Geneva County authorities continue to face a proliferation of methamphetamine and other illegal drugs in the county, Sheriff Tony Helms said recently.

Helms said he has seen the problem escalate from marijuana to several other kinds of illegal drugs over time.

Drug crimes are constantly growing, Helms said. This is a problem I take very seriously. At one point in time, marijuana was the most common drug; that is no longer true. We are seeing an increase in prescription drug usage, meth, and we are even seeing a few cases involving heroin. But, I must say, I believe the drug we are seeing the most cases in is meth.

Helms said the overcrowded prison situation in Alabama leaves many members of law enforcement scratching their heads.

With the prisons being overcrowded, we have been informed no more criminals with drug charges should be sent to prison, Helms said. In return, they believe ordering individuals to attend drug programs are more beneficial. But, statistics show, only 14 percent of nationwide drug users, actually come off drugs. The other percentage is known as repeat offenders.

Helms stated many individuals have the misconception drugs are only affecting teenagers.

Drugs are a problem for teenagers, yes, but I have one in my jail right now that is 65 years old I believe, and he is hooked on meth, Helms said. Actually, this is his second-time here in one month. He has a rap sheet a mile long, and each time he comes back, he is a little worse off. Meth is a very dangerous drug. We are doing all we can to help keep this and all drugs off our streets.

This would be a lot easier if we had a drug task force, like years ago, but we dont. My deputies are doing all we can do, from doing traffic stops, theft of property cases to drug arrests, and I dont have a large force," Helms added.

Geneva County has also seen an increase in theft of property cases during the past few months, and Helms believes a lot of the theft of property and burglary cases are related to drug usage.

People need to realize if someone is using drugs, and they dont have a job, or they dont receive a check from the government, they will find a way to get their drugs, Helms said. They basically will steal anything they can get a dollar for. My advice to everyone is keep your property locked up. If you have storage buildings, check on the building frequently and ... keep track of all serial numbers located on all items. This is the easiest way we can retrieve stolen property. Also, be very cautious of purchasing items off eBay, Craigslist and the many different 'buy, sell and trades' available through Facebook. Items for sale on these sites are not regulated, and you never know when you are purchasing stolen items. You just have to be careful.

Helms is also working with several areas throughout the county to establish Neighborhood Watch programs.

It is time for neighbors to look after neighbors, Helms said. If you dont know your neighbor, get to know them. I cant stress the importance enough of reporting any and all suspicious activity. Everyone needs to help each other. I want our residents to get involved.

According to Helms, Geneva County is not the only county being affected by drugs and an increase in the crime rate.

I am stressing the drug problem to everyone. It is not just here in Geneva County, it is everywhere. But, my job is to protect Geneva County. Studies are showing these drugs are causing mental health issues related to long-term use, and they are just destroying those who use them. They cant hold a job, and all they do is steal. Enough is enough. We have to educate everyone on the dangers of drugs. Years ago, we would see drug education videos, warning everyone of the dangers of drugs. You dont see those videos anymore. I believe if more individuals actually knew what kind of damage these drugs actually cause, maybe they would think twice before using that drug.
A controversy involving Columbias senior center and a government program to provide meals for the elderly has roiled one of the areas oldest towns, prompting calls for a criminal investigation into the mayor, Lanny Lancaster, and his wife, Sandra, who recently resigned as director of the senior center.

Thats the best approach to settling this dispute, and should be initiated as quickly as possible.

The controversy began when officials with the Southern Alabama Regional Council on Aging determined that fewer eligible people were receiving the meals SARCOA provides than had been reported. A review of several months of sign-in sheets at the center showed about 900 names had been forged.

SARCOA sent a letter to the city informing officials there that food service would be suspended at the end of May because of the improprieties found.

At a subsequent town council meeting, the council met in a dubious executive session and emerged to set a meeting with SARCOA officials and hold a vote to repay SARCOA almost $4,500 for the cost of the ineligible meals. Angry residents questioned the appropriateness of tax funds being used to pay for the misappropriated meals.

Those residents may well have a valid point. However, what exactly happened cannot be determined without a full investigation. Considering that the food program is underwritten by public funds, a full criminal investigation should proceed with the utmost transparency and urgency if for no other reason than to ensure that eligible seniors continue to receive their meals without interruption.
Up front, the Honda Jazz facelift resembles the new City sedan which was recently launched in India. The headlamps, front grille and the bumper, have been redesigned with the thick gloss strip flanked by the LED headlights.

The fog lamp housing and the front air intakes look chiselled compared to the previous model. As for the side profile, the Honda Jazz facelift gets new designed alloy wheels along with small sill extensions.

With the partially revealed image of the rear profile, the Honda Jazz facelift receives LED inserts in the taillights. We expect a revised rear bumper to compliment the front profile's design language.

Inside the cabin, the Honda Jazz facelift's dashboard remains the same as the outgoing model along with dual-tone upholstery.

The new Honda Jazz facelift boasts of new safety features such as pedestrian collision mitigation, collision mitigation braking, traffic sign recognition, adaptive cruise control and lane-keep assist function. As for the India-bound model, not sure if the model will receive these safety features.

The Japan-spec Honda Jazz facelift will be available with 1.3- and 1.5-litre four-cylinder petrol engines, as well as a hybrid drivetrain.

The current Jazz model in India completed its second year in India. Hence a facelifted Honda Jazz could be still some time away.

When it does come to India, the new Jazz could sport with similar styling updates along with extra equipment and could be equipped with the same infotainment system seen in the new City. The powertrains will continue to be the same as the current Jazz model: 1.5-lite diesel and the 1.2-litre petrol units.
Santa said: Nope, Federal over reach. It's none of her nosiness, she has business lecturing other parents about anything either. Click to expand...

She has as much right as anyone. In fact, IMO more since she knows a lot about this subject.I suppose you want laws like Indonesia has where you get thrown in prison for criticizing the king.
The deal will see the Italian firm create a vehicle architecture capable of underpinning at least four different vehicles, the first of which is expected to be a mid-sized passenger car.

The deal will also cover product development via virtual and physical validation for mass production and it will even support to start production for the Iranian automotive company.

According to Pininfarina chief executive Silvio Pietro Angori, "The agreement with Iran Khodro represents another important step in the growth strategy of Pininfarina on markets of the new Silk Road and the Middle East. We are happy to contribute to the development of the Iranian Automotive industry through a very significant style and engineering program for our company".

The agreement, which is aimed to last three years, is not the first time for Pininfarina. Pininfarina has expanded its product range to include full engineering projects like the recent Hybrid Kinetic Group turbine cars and Pininfarina Fittipaldi EF7.

The famed design house is also preparing an electric supercar, with ties to parent company Indian automotive giant Mahindra's association in Formula E.

The Mahindra group had announced to acquire Pininfarina for over 50 million euros (nearly Rs 370 crore) after months of discussions back in 2015. Tech Mahindra and Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) own 60 percent and 40 percent, respectively in the design firm.
Last month, the Android 7.1.1 Nougat update had been received by Nokia 6 users in China. HMD Global has announced that the software update would now be rolling out to Nokia 6 users in Taiwan and Hong Kong along with the May security patch.

The Nokia 6 is the first Nokia branded Smartphone. It was first released in China and was made available to the rest of the world in the MWC 2017 expo. HMD has decided to widen the Android 7.1.1 Nougat update rollout to Taiwan and Hong Kong. As reported by Nokia Power User, the company has announced the update and said that they are happy to be delivering their promise of monthly security updates as well as regular system updates.

The Nokia 6, released back in January, has a 5.5-inch Full HD display with 1080x1920 pixels resolution and 2.5D Gorilla Glass. The Smartphone runs on a Snapdragon 430 chipset and 3 GB of RAM. It is a dual-SIM device with a 3000 mAh battery that supports fast charging.

Nokia 6 has sported a 16 megapixel rear snapper with features like Phase Detection Autofocus and dual-tone flash along with an 8-megapixel secondary camera. The Smartphone runs on Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box and its other specs include a fingerprint scanner, Dolby Atmos audio enhancement and stereo speakers.

The Android software update would let users enjoy a number of new features in their Nokia 6. According to Giz-China, the Android 7.1.1 Nougat brings with it features like gender counterparts for certain emojis as well as support for GIFs with compatible apps like Google Messenger, Google Allo, and Hangouts.

The update size is 1.8 GB and users will notice many software improvements and bug fixes. With the Android 7.1.1 Nougat update, one will also be able to launch actions within an app by a simple long press on the app's icon.

The Nokia 6 is a budget phone, priced under $400. The fact that HMD Global is widening the domain of the Android 7.1.1 Nougat update so rapidly, is a big plus point to Nokia 6 users.
To stop a leakage of bright, entrepreneurial minds from Australia, chartered accountants Domenic Saporito and Gerard Holland have partnered on a venture that makes it easier for international students and graduates to break into the local start-up ecosystem.

Holland has previously worked with middle-market and early-stage companies as a business advisor, while Saporito has a c-suite resume and has founded multiple businesses including Cadence Recruitment, which he owned for 14 years. In early 2016, the duo co-founded Outcome.Life. The Melbourne start-up provides internationals with independent advice around transitioning from study into a career plus help securing ideal employment, through professional year placements and internships, paid for by education providers, with established businesses as well as innovative, early-stage companies.

According to Holland, Outcome.Life is not only placing more than 50 internationals in internships per month, it has directly assisted many into paid employment, either as their internship or after their internship. As well as investing their own funds into the business, Saporito and Holland have attracted $550,000 in seed capital from their network connections plus private investors, with the first couple of hundred thousand coming out of the USA. In addition, they have received a $94,000 grant from LaunchVic, the independent agency tasked with overseeing the allocation of the state governments $60m innovation fund.

The latest offering from Outcome.Life is Outcome-Hub, which had its official launch yesterday (11 May). Located on Cardigan Street in Carlton, Melbourne, Saporito said the sixty-desk facility is the first co-working space and innovation hub for international graduates seeking to start their own business in Australia: were filling a void.

Saporito and Holland spoke to Dynamic Business about Outcome-Hub including the value educated internationals generate for the Australian economy.

DB: How did the two of you become business partners?

Holland: Dom and I first met at an AFL Grand Final lunch back in 2010. The next year, while undertaking my Masters in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, I reached out to him. The course required me to interview an entrepreneur and Dom immediately came to mind. Although I allowed for a 45-minute interview, we ended up speaking for three hours. From that day on, Dom and I caught up every fortnight. A few years later, I sent Dom a business plan for Outcome.Life. He called me immediately and to say, lets do it  and so now here we are!

DB: What problem does Outcome-Hub address?

Saporito: Melbourne hasnt made it into Start-up Genomes top 20-start-up ecosystems list since 2012, when it ranked 18th. Together with our many partners, including LaunchVic, were seeking to raise the ecosystems profile by encouraging and supporting international graduates to start their business here, rather than their country of origin.

By starting a business in Victoria, international graduates not only create a valuable source of local employment, they also support the economy through the consumption of business-related goods and services (e.g. rent, internet, telephone, office supplies) and, eventually, the payment of business taxes.

In terms of what international graduates can bring to Melbournes start-up ecosystem, they are highly motivated and dedicated  in many cases, this is because theyve moved here to create a better life for themselves. They also bring cultural diversity, which translates to unique business insights and opportunities.

When an international graduate opts to return to their home country to start a business, rather than do so here, often its because they lack local business knowledge how to register a company, tax registrations, who are the lawyers they should be using, what banks do they use, some of that fundamental stuff we take for granted. Also, the support available is often inadequate  for instance, some government grant exclusions leave internationals at a disadvantage. This is a missed opportunity for Australia because another country becomes the beneficiary of the potential economic and financial benefits that flow from that start-up and the founders expertise.

DB: What value does the hub offer internationals?

Holland: To mitigate the risk of internationals returning home to start a business, Outcome-Hub provides support across the following areas: opportunity assessment, business structuring, accounting, government grants, corporate partnerships, technology choices, capital raising, commercialisation, recruitment and integration into the local business community.

It costs from $20 per day for internationals to operate a start-up out of the Outcome-Hub co-working space, which includes stand-up desks, meeting areas, an events space, a cafe style kitchen and high speed internet. There are different packages depending on how much time theyre committing to the space and theres no requirement to sign a long-term contract.

Importantly, there are opportunities for internationals to engage with like-minded peers, collaborate on entrepreneurial projects, attend networking and knowledge-building events and gain access to expert advice on all areas of small business  relevantly, we employ around ten people, including three founders.

Internationals can also take advantage of Outcome.Lifes intern database. Interns are a low-cost and Fair Work compliant labour resource, which is advantageous for business just starting out. Plus, many boast business contacts from back home, which helps to facilitate cross-border activity. For example, one of the Melbourne businesses weve put an intern into has built POS software mainly for the Indian market, so by giving them an intern who is of Indian descent, theres multiple advantages, as he understands the country, culture and workings of the economy. Residents of Outcome-Hub do not have to pay rent for an intern if they decide to take one (or multiple) on.

DB: Is membership curated or is there entry criteria?

Saporito: There are no rules. We will help anyone who has passion, determination and drive  most internationals have this in spades.

DB: Do you assist people to gain permanent residency?

Holland: While we are not migration agents, the students and graduates that go through the professional year program are on a pretty certain path to permanent residency. What would be great, however, is if there were special visa rules for internationals who either want to start their own business in Australia or get involved with a start-up.

DB: What has been the response to Outcome-Hub?

Saporito: A number of IT start-ups have already taken up residence at Outcome-Hub alongside ventures including Teaching Me (a tutor/student marketplace), interior Not That Kind of Studio (interior design), Clubs United (sporting club buying group) and Pleased.Property (a rental relationship management platform). Prior to the official launch of Outcome-Hub (11 May), we had a few days where the finished half of the co-working space was full. The space is now complete and we have the capacity to expand as theres another spare space in our building. Further, several residents have taken advantage of interns to assist them in the commercialisation of their business.

We have also hosted numerous events at Outcome-Hub with an average attendance of 70 people, although 200 came to our launch. These events vary greatly from showcasing the latest start-up technologies to strategies on how international graduates can secure their first job, including in a Victorian start-up.

DB: Will you expand Outcome.Life into other states?

Holland: We already do internship placements in other states but the core of our business is currently focused on Victoria. Our objective is to lift the employability of all international graduates in Australia, particularly the ones that want to be involved in start-ups, so we intend to expand our model beyond Victoria in due course.
How many ways can you slice and dice $109,000? That is the challenge facing the Corvallis Budget Commission.

Commissioners heard 96 minutes of public testimony Thursday night at the downtown fire station, with a series of community groups making their case for a piece of that unallocated pie.

The commission meets again Tuesday to discuss amendments and deliberate on the $130 million spending plan, with the City Council set to review the commissions recommendation at at a June 5 public hearing.

Commission members  the nine city councilors plus nine citizen volunteers  could choose to tweak other sections of the budget or pull from reserves to alter the budget math somewhat, but the essential conundrum remains the same: How do you pay for $500,000 in requests with $109,000?

Here is a look at the requests, in descending financial order:

 $132,000 from the Housing Opportunities Action Council, which is working to find a replacement for the mens cold weather shelter and pay for future operations. A section of the draft spending plan includes $75,000 for homeless issues, but that money, a combination of city and Benton County funds, only pays for program manager Shawn Collins, who is a United Way staffer.

 $80,000 to $90,000 for staffing and studio space for the Corvallis Access Media public television station, which has been led by a part-time employee since moving to city jurisdiction.

 $66,000 for lighting in the downtown area. The request came from the Downtown Corvallis Association, which says additional lighting will make the district safer and more attractive to shoppers and diners.

 $60,000 for The Arts Center, which already has $35,000 earmarked for its programs in the draft plan. Center officials and their backers who numbered perhaps as many as 20 of the standing-room-only crowd  are hoping to get their funding restored to 2011 levels.

 $55,000 as a first installment to pay for system development charges for the $6 million expansion of the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis. The club expansion would double the number of teens it can serve. The total request is for $220,000  but spread out over four years.

 $42,500 to help pay for studies of establishing an urban renewal district in South Corvallis. Willamette Neighborhood Housing Services would match that funding level for the Living Southtown project.

 $21,000 for an initiative led by Oregon State University that would put on 30 late-night alcohol-free events at the Majestic Theatre, which generally charges a rental fee of $700 per night. The group is hoping the city will waive the fee.

 $20,000 for the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition to pay for an outreach specialist who would work with area businesses in a Saving Green campaign to reduce their energy consumption and help meet the goals of the city's Imagine 2040 vision project.

 $15,000 for Oregon RAIN, the innovation network, which would use the money to help raise capital for area start-ups.

 $5,000 for da Vinci Days, which reduced its request from the $15,000 it has asked for in the past two years.

In addition, a representative of the bargaining unit of the Corvallis Fire Department urged the commission to find a way to increase staffing to the level noted on a page of unmet needs in the budget document. The cost would be more than $1 million per year, but city staff and commissioners likely will not consider that request until it examines long-term budget and revenue issues after the passage of this years budget.
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The $230,000 prize for the ninth annual Willamette Angels Conference on Thursday was split between two companies  Hemex Health of Portland, which has created inexpensive, fast and portable tests for malaria and sickle cell anemia, and Diatomix of Beaverton, which developed a photocatalytic method of improving indoor air quality with a wall paint additive.

Hemex Health also won the Peoples Choice Award at the conference, which was held at the Whiteside Theatre in Corvallis.

Peter Galen, Hemex Health chief innovation officer, said the funding was great, but just as critical for his business was the stamp of approval from the conference and how investors connected with his company.

Were doing something important in the world, and we can make money, Galen said.

Affordable treatments are available for malaria and sickle cell anemia, but diagnosing the diseases is the problem in developing countries.

Roughly half of the worlds population is at risk from malaria, and theres a need for 1 billion tests per year, according to the World Health Organization. Tests currently take 20 minutes or more and arent reliable, Galen said.

The Hemex Health test will cost $1, take one minute and be more effective, he added.

In total, $830,000 in awards were announced at the WAC.

Elevate Capital also announced $50,000 investments in both Hemex Health and Heritage Laboratories, another 2017 Angels Conference finalist. Heritage Laboratories is a luxury skincare supplement brand targeting Asian-American women.

The other finalist at the Angels Conference was OpConnect of Portland, which operates a platform-as-a-service that manages electric car chargers.

Business Oregon announced $250,000 loans from its Small Business Expansion Program for Moonshadow Mobile, which won the 2015 edition of the conference, and DulsEngery, an applicant for the conference this year.

Stoney River Sinkers, a lead-free stone fishing weights company out of Yachats, won $3,500 in the speed pitch category.

It is crazy to be throwing toxic lead weights into our rivers, lakes and oceans, said Jesse Dolin, an avid angler who created the business.

Dolin started the company for environmental reasons, but found that stone worked better than lead for fishing, partly because fish are spooked by the sound of lead weights bouncing along rocks.

The Willamette Angels Conference is an investment group that connects early stage and seed startups with angel and venture investors.

Applicants receive funding, mentoring and connections to other advisory resources.

Throughout its existence, the Angels Conference has invested more than $3 million in startup businesses.

The 2018 event will be held on May 17 in Eugene.

The conference is produced in partnership by the Corvallis Chamber of Commerce and Oregon RAIN (Regional Accelerator & Innovation Network), as well as the Eugene Area of Commerce and the Corvallis-Benton Economic Development Office.
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When grain processing giant Cargill recently tweeted that it was working closely with the Non-GMO Project about verifying the companys ingredients, GMO [genetically modified organism] supporters had a Twitter fit.

Canadian farmer Chris Allam called the companys work with the Non-GMO Project, a slap in the face. I have a problem with Cargill dealing with someone who is staunchly against it, he wrote.

Monsantos director of millennial engagement (interesting title!) Vance Crow wrote, In case you missed it @Cargill is now proudly talking about working closely with the non-GMO verified project-the fear mongers themselves.

Careful what you tweet  especially if youre a company kicking your suppliers in the face, chimed in @farmdaughterusa (Amanda Zaluckyj).

The media followed with articles like Cargill Link to Anti-GMO Group Spurs Criticism From Farmers by Bloomberg and How a moment that looked like PR win for Cargill turned into a kerfuffle by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Cargill defended its work with the Non-GMO Project in a statement:

Cargill is working with the Non-GMO Project to verify several of our non-GMO ingredients because of consumer demand for non-GMO foods, and the Non-GMO Project is the most-requested third party certification among our food and beverage customers.

Just a few months earlier, Cargill CEO David MacLennan told the Wall Street Journal: Theres a growing group of people who dont want GMO ingredients. So lets develop a supply chain for that, rather than say, Youre wrong if you dont want GMOs. Our mind-set is were going to empathize and understand the consumer on what they want in their food.

And Cargill built that non-GMO supply chain to help their food manufacturing customers provide consumers with non-GMO food options. Other major grain processors such as Bunge and Ingredion have also introduced Non-GMO Project Verified ingredients.

This is Business 101, meaning give the customer what they want, a no-brainer. Cargill, Bunge and Ingredion understand that, but GMO proponents dont seem to get it.

John Phipps, a farmer and contributor to AgWeb, also understands that the customer is right. In a blog, Phipps wrote: This grumbling at Cargill then violates my #1 marketing rule: Do not go to war with your customer. The Non-GMO Project has established itself with both grudging suppliers and skeptical users as the gold standard for GMO verification.

Attacks on big companies like Cargill when they announce non-GMO plans are not new. In 2015, GMO supporters went ballistic when Chipotle announced they had removed GMOs from the ingredients served in their restaurants. The same thing happened to yogurt-maker Dannon in 2016 when they committed to using non-GMO ingredients and animal feed.

I think there is an underlying factor that caused the backlash against Chipotle, Dannon and now Cargillfear. Supporters of genetically modified foods see Cargills non-GMO moves as a threat to GMO technology and its billion dollar industry.

Megan Westgate, executive director of the Non-GMO Project, expressed that in an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Monsantos hometown newspaper.

I can understand why this feels threatening, she said. Theres a big paradigm shift happening. The largest food companies in the world are looking for non-GMO ingredients and thats really changing the supply chain.

GMO proponents hate that large companies like Chipotle, Dannon, Del Monte, Nestle, General Mills, Post, Hersheys, Cargill and others are developing non-GMO products. It threatens their worldview that GMOs are going to feed the world, reduce pesticide use and make food more nutritious, along with other unsubstantiated claims. So, they react with anger and a Twitter fit: How dare Cargill align with fear mongers?'

The simple reason is that more and more people dont want foods containing GMOs. If GMO technology is so great maybe proponents should proudly feature it on food labels instead of trying to hide it and attacking companies and people that dont want to use or eat the technologys dubious fruits.
The U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) halted new drilling Wednesday on the Rover Pipeline until it addresses its 2 million gallon spill of drilling fluids into Ohio wetlands.

The decision was made just days after the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) slapped parent company Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) with a $431,000 fine over numerous water and air pollution violations along the route of the $4.2 billion project. ETP is the same company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, which also happened to leak 84 gallons of oil in South Dakota early last month.

Terry Turpin, director of FERCs Office of Energy Projects, said in a Wednesday letter to the developer that FERC staff has serious concerns about the sizable spill, its environmental impacts and the lack of clarity regarding the underlying reasons for its occurrence, and the possibility of future problems.

The two spills of betonite mud were discovered April 13 and 14 in Stark and Richland County wetlands and was caused by pressure during drilling that allowed mud to rise to the surface, the Ohio EPA said.

Although the mud is nontoxic, officials worry that it could smother wildlife, plants and affect the wetlands water chemistry.

ETP cannot conduct any new horizontal directional drilling activities until it complies with certain measures to help prevent spills, the FERC letter said.

The action taken Wednesday by FERC is a step in the right direction, Ohio EPA spokesman James Lee told NBC News.

According to S&P Global Platts, FERCs order affects horizontal directional drilling in eight out of 30 drilling areas associated with the project. The regulators have also required Rover to obtain independent third-party consultants to study the companys drilling plans.

The drilling ban will remain in place until FERC authorizes it to start again. The company can still finish drilling activities it already started or other non-drilling construction work.

We have received the letter from the FERC. We continue to work with them and the [Ohio Environmental Protection Agency] on a resolution to this matter, Alexis Daniel, Energy Transfer Partners spokeswoman, told Platts.

But Ohio EPA Director Craig Butler told acting FERC chairman Cheryl LaFleur that Rover has taken the position that Ohio has no authority to enforce violations of its federally delegated state water pollution control statutes, water quality standards or air pollution control statutes  Ohio EPA strongly disagrees with Rovers position.

The finished 713-mile Rover Pipeline will carry fracked gas across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan and Canada, and crosses three major rivers, the Maumee, Sandusky and Portage, all of which feed into Lake Erie. The pipeline is designed to transport 3.25 billion cubic feet of domestically produced natural gas per day.

ETP said the pipeline will enter service in two phases in July and November.
We are broadcasting from Washington state, where the Department of Energy declared a state of emergency at the Hanford nuclear site after a tunnel storing contaminated radioactive materials collapsed.

The collapse, which was discovered Tuesday, forced hundreds of workers to take cover to avoid potential exposure. Hanford is the nations most polluted nuclear weapons production site. The site has been leaking radioactive waste on and off for years.

The Energy Department claims no radioactive contamination has been reported so far from Tuesdays tunnel collapse. But Edwin Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists said, Collapse of the Earth covering the tunnels could lead to a considerable radiological release.

Now the Washington state Department of Ecologys Nuclear Waste Program has announced on Twitter that it has taken legal action against Hanford. We speak with Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, which advocates for workers at the Hanford nuclear site.

Watch the interview below:

Heres a transcript of the interview:

Amy Goodman: We turn now to our last segment, and we continue to focus on whats happening at a state and local level thats happening all over the country. Next week, well be traveling throughout California and broadcasting throughout there. You can check our website at democracynow.org to see where well be. But right here in Washington state, where the Department of Energy declared a state of emergency at the Hanford nuclear site after a tunnel storing contaminated radioactive materials collapsed, is the subject of our last segment. The collapse, which was discovered Tuesday, forced hundreds of workers to take cover, to shelter in place, to avoid potential exposure. Local station KING 5 obtained this video from a worker describing the scene.

PA Announcer: All personnel report to their respective lunchrooms for further information and/or instruction. All personnel should refrain from eating or drinking until told it is safe to do so.

Hanford Worker: Well, so, its either a drill or an emergency. Gotta take cover.

Amy Goodman: Hanford is the nations most polluted nuclear weapons production site. The site has been leaking radioactive waste on and off for years. The Energy Department claims no radioactive contamination has been reported so far from Tuesdays tunnel collapse. But Edwin Lyman from the Union of Concerned Scientists said, quote, Collapse of the Earth covering the tunnels could lead to a considerable radiological release, unquote. Well, now the state of Washingtons Department of Ecologys Nuclear Waste Program has announced on Twitter its taken legal action against Hanford.

For more, were joined here in Seattle by Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, which advocates for workers at the Hanford nuclear site.

Tom, welcome to Democracy Now! Explain whats taken place. I mean, given whats happening in Washington, DC, theres very little national awareness about what youre dealing with here in Washington.

Tom Carpenter: Ok, so this is the nations most contaminated site. In the state of Washington here, it was built to make nuclear weapons and plutonium for those weapons. And now were left with this legacy of radioactive waste. And so, what recently happened on Tuesday morning was one of the facilities at the site suffered a collapse of a tunnel, holding vast quantities of very highly dangerous radioactive materials. Now, the government is saying that none of that escaped, except, you know, radiation itself into the sky, but no particles escaped. And so, now the question really remains is: Is that true? Were workers contaminated? It appears not. But what is the nextyou know, what is the next shoe thats going to fall? So, whats in this tunnel, right? So, we know that there are chemicals. There are explosive materials. There could be fires that happen. So were all watching with bated breath.

Amy Goodman: Can you explain what the PUREX is, the Plutonium Uranium Extraction Plant?

Tom Carpenter: Yes. So, this was a facility that was used to dissolve spent nuclear fuel made in nuclear reactors on the shores of the Columbia River. They had nine reactors. And this facility would dissolve this stuff in acid, separate out the plutonium. And they had this very large inventory of highly radioactive and chemical waste products left over. Thats whats at Hanford now.

Amy Goodman: Can you explain the history of the Hanford site and its role in the U.S. nuclear program?

Tom Carpenter: Sure. Hanford was the first production facility that came out of the work at Los Alamos during World War II. So, it made the plutonium for the very first nuclear test in the deserts of New Mexico and was the plutonium dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in the Fat Man bomb. So, it went on then to make more and more plutonium. And it does this by irradiating uranium slugs and then taking that irradiated uranium, dissolving that in a process called reprocessing. And Hanford became the most contaminated facility as a result.

Its hard toits hard to describe exactly how bad this place is. Its got two-thirds of the nations high-level nuclear waste. There are just 56 million gallons of this waste in underground, leaking tanks. This one little tunnel that was the subject of Tuesdays collapse was really a small thing compared to what else is out at that site. So, you can imagine a collapse of a nuclear waste tank containing millions of curies of radioactivity. Youre talking about a multistate disaster. And those tanks are in no better shape than this tunnel. And thats the concern, is that the federal government spent trillions of dollars to make nuclear weapons, but its shortchanging us on the cleanup at these sites. Its supposed to take years and years. The money is being stolen. Its a fraud factory, in a way. And, you know, so the public is really getting shafted on this one.

Amy Goodman: So, very quickly, you have sued the federal government on behalf of the workers at Hanford. We have less than a minute. Can you explain what you have sued over, what youre demanding and, with this latest accident, what needs to happen?

Tom Carpenter: Ok. So we brought a lawsuit along with the union at the Hanford site, the pipefitters union in the state of Washington, to force the government to provide better protections for the workers out there who inhale chemical vapors and then get sick. And, you know, sadly, people are not being protected, even though there are some pretty grave health injuries that result. And we are demanding that people are protected with respiratory protection in the future and that they do something to protect these people. And, you know, this latest incident is a great illustration of how workers are on the front lines of harm out there.

Amy Goodman: Well, Tom, I want to thank you for being with us, Tom Carpenter, executive director of Hanford Challenge, which advocates for workers at the Hanford nuclear site.

That does it for our show. Im heading back to New York on Friday night, as we continue our multicity tour, Covering the Movements Changing America. Ill be speaking in New York City Friday night at The New School at the Tishman Auditorium on 5th Avenue just under 14th Street at 7:00 p.m. On Saturdaythat is May 13Ill be in Olympia, Washington, at the Capitol Theater at 11:00 a.m., then at Powells Books at Cedars Hills Crossing in Beaverton, Oregon, right outside Portland, Saturday night at 5:00. Then off to California, well be stopping in Eureka Sunday at noon at the Sequoia Conference Center at 7:00 p.m., Berkeley at the First Presbyterian Church, and then on Monday in Santa Cruz. In the evening, well be in Palo Alto, Tuesday in San Diego, then Los Angeles, then Santa Barbara. And were going beyond. Well be in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Well be in Tempe, Arizona, and finally in Houston, Texas.

Reposted with permission from our media associate Democracy Now!
What Is Climate Change? Is It Different From Global Warming?



Climate change is actually not a new phenomenon. Scientists have been studying the connection between human activity and the effect on the climate since the 1800s, although it took until the 1950s to find evidence suggesting a link.

Since then, the amount of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases) in the atmosphere have steadily increased, taking a sharp jump in the late 1980s when the summer of 1988 became the warmest on record. (There have been many records broken since then.) But climate change is not a synonym for global warming.

The term global warming entered the lexicon in the 1950s, but didnt become a common buzzword until a few decades later when more people started taking notice of a warming climate. Except climate change encompasses a greater realm than just rising temperatures. Trapped gases also affect sea-level rise, animal habitats, biodiversity and weather patterns. For example, Texas severe winter storms in February 2021 demonstrate how the climate isnt merely warming.

Related: What Are The Top States For Solar Incentives?

Why Is Climate Change Important? Why Does It Matter?





Marc Guitard / Moment / Getty Images

Despite efforts from forward thinkers such as SpaceX Founder Elon Musk to colonize Mars, Earth remains our home for the foreseeable future, and the more human activity negatively impacts the climate, the less habitable it will become. Its estimated that Earth has already warmed about one degree Celsius, or two degrees Fahrenheit, since the start of the Industrial Revolution around the 1750s, although climate change tracking didnt start until the late 1800s. That warming number may not sound like much, but this increase has already resulted in more frequent and severe wildfires, hurricanes, floods, droughts and winter storms, to name some examples.

Environmental Impacts

Then theres biodiversity loss, another fallout of climate change thats threatening rainforests and coral reefs and accelerating species extinction. Take rainforests, which act as natural carbon sinks by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But as rampant deforestation is occurring everywhere from Brazils Amazon to Borneo, fewer trees mean that rainforests are becoming carbon sources, emitting more carbon than theyre absorbing. Meanwhile, coral reefs are dying as warming ocean temperatures trigger bleaching events, which cause corals to reject algae, their main food and life source. Fewer trees, coral reefs and other habitats also equate to fewer species. Known as the sixth mass extinction, a 2019 UN report revealed that up to a million plant and animal species could become extinct within decades.

Human Impact

It can be easy to overlook climate change in day-to-day life, or even realize that climate change is behind it. Notice theres yet another romaine lettuce recall due to E. Coli? Research suggests that E. Coli bacteria are becoming more common in our food sources as it adapts to climate change. Cant find your favorite brand of coffee beans anymore? Or that the price has doubled? Climate change is affecting that too. Climate change is also worsening air quality and seasonal allergies, along with polluting tap water. Not least, many preliminary studies have also drawn a line between climate change and the deadly COVID-19 pandemic that is still gripping much of the world. Future pandemics are likely to happen more frequently until the root causes, such as deforestation, are addressed.

Speaking of larger-scale issues, global water scarcity is already happening more frequently. The Caribbean is facing water shortages due to rising temperatures and decreased rainfall; Australias dams may run dry by 2022 as severe wildfires increase and Cape Town, South Africa has already faced running out of water.

As touched upon earlier, its one thing to be inconvenienced by a lack of romaine lettuce for a couple of weeks or higher coffee bean prices, but reports warn how climate change will continue to threaten global food security, to the point of triggering a worldwide food crisis if temperatures surpass two degrees Celsius.

Many of these factors are already contributing to climate migration, forcing large numbers of people to relocate to other parts of the world in search of better living conditions.

Unless more immediate, drastic action is taken to combat climate change, future generations will have to contend with worst-case scenario projections by the end of the 21st century, not limited to coastal cities going underwater, including Miami; lethal heat levels from South Asia to Central Africa; and more frequent extreme weather events involving hurricanes, wildfires, tsunamis, droughts, floods, blizzards and more.

Related: What Are The Best Solar Companies?

Whats Happening and Why?

Fiddlers Ferry power station in Warrington, UK. Chris Conway / Moment / Getty Images

The Earths temperature has largely remained stable until industrial times and the introduction of greenhouse gases. These gases have forced the atmosphere to retain heat, as evidenced by rising global temperatures. As the planet grows warmer, glaciers melt faster, sea levels rise, severe flooding increases and droughts and extreme weather events become more deadly.

The Greenhouse Effect

In the late 1800s, Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius studied the connection between the amount of atmospheric carbon and its ability to warm and cool the Earth, and while his initial calculations suggested extreme warming as carbon increased, researchers didnt start to take human-induced climate change seriously until the late 20th century.

But proof of human-led climate change can be traced to the 1850s, and satellites are among the ways that scientists have been tracking increased greenhouse gases and their climate impact in more recent years. Climate researchers have also documented warmer oceans, ocean acidification, shrinking ice sheets, decreased snow amounts and extreme weather as among the events resulting from greenhouse gases heating the planet.

Numerous factors contribute to the production of greenhouse gases, known as the greenhouse effect. One of the biggest causes involve burning fossil fuels, including coal, oil and natural gas, to power everything from cars to daily energy needs (electricity, heat). From 1970-2011, fossil fuels have comprised 78 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

Big Ag is another greenhouse contributor, particularly beef production, with the industry adding 10 percent in 2019. This is attributed to clearing land for crops and grazing and growing feed, along with methane produced by cows themselves. In the U.S. alone, Americans consumed 27.3 billion pounds of beef in 2019.

Then theres rampant deforestation occurring everywhere from the Amazon to Borneo. A 2021 study from Rainforest Foundation Norway found that two-thirds of the worlds rainforests have already been destroyed or degraded. In Brazil, deforestation reached a 12-year-high in 2020 under right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro. As it stands, reports predict that the Amazon rainforest will collapse by 2064. Rainforests are important carbon sinks, meaning the trees capture and remove carbon from the atmosphere. As rainforests collapse, the remaining trees will begin emitting more greenhouse gases than theyre absorbing.

Meanwhile, a recent study revealed that abandoned oil and gas wells are leaking more methane than previously believed, with U.S. wells contributing up to 20 percent of annual methane emissions.

Not least is the cement industry. Cement is heavily used throughout the global construction industry, and accounts for around eight percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

Natural Climate Change

Granted, natural climate change exists as well, and can be traced throughout history, from solar radiation triggering the Ice Ages to the asteroid strike that rapidly raised global temperatures and eliminated dinosaurs and many other species in the process. Other sources of natural climate change impacts include volcano eruptions, ocean currents and orbital changes, but these sources generally have smaller and shorter-term environmental impacts.

How We Can Combat Climate Change

Participant holding a sign at the climate march on Sept. 20, 2020, in Manhattan. A coalition of climate, Indigenous and racial justice groups gathered at Columbus Circle to kick off Climate Week with the Climate Justice Through Racial Justice march. Erik McGregor / LightRocket / Getty Images

While the latest studies and numbers can often feel discouraging about societys ability to prevent the worst-case climate scenarios from happening, theres still time to take action.

As a Society

In 2015 at COP 21 in Paris, 197 countries came together to sign the Paris Agreement, an international climate change treaty agreeing to limit global warming in this century to two degrees Celsius, and ideally 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels; its believed that the planet has warmed one degree Celsius since 1750. Studies show that staying within the two-degree range will prevent the worst-case climate scenarios from happening. Achieving this goal requires participating parties to drastically slash greenhouse gas emissions sooner rather than later. However, there have already been numerous setbacks since then, from former U.S. President Donald Trump withdrawing from the Paris Agreement in 2020 to world leaders, such as China, the worlds biggest polluter, failing to enact aggressive climate action plans. Yet many of the treaty participants have been slow to implement changes, putting the world on track to hit 3.2 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century even if the initial goals are met. However, its worth noting that U.S. President Joe Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement in 2021, and pledged to cut greenhouse gases in half by 2030.

Then theres the Montreal Protocol, a 1987 global agreement to phase out ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons, chemicals that were commonly used in air-conditioning, refrigeration and aerosols. Recent studies show that parts of the ozone are recovering, proving that a unified commitment to combatting climate change issues does make a difference.

On a smaller scale, carbon offset initiatives allow companies and individuals to invest in environmental programs that offset the amount of carbon thats produced through work or lifestyle. For example, major companies (and carbon emitters) such as United Airlines and Shell have pledged to achieve net-zero carbon emissions in part by participating in carbon offset programs that remove carbon from the atmosphere. The problem is that these companies are still producing high levels of fossil fuel emissions.

While individuals can make a small impact through carbon offsets, the greater responsibility lies with carbon-emitting corporations to find and implement greener energy alternatives. This translates to car companies producing electric instead of gas vehicles or airlines exploring alternative fuel sources. It also requires major companies to rely more on solar and wind energy for their energy needs.

In Our Own Lives

While its up to corporations to do the heavy lifting of carbon reduction, that doesnt mean individuals cant make a difference. Adopting a vegan lifestyle, using public transportation, switching to an electric car and becoming a more conscious consumer are all ways to help combat climate change.

Veganism

Consuming meat relies on clearing land for crops and animals, while raising and killing livestock contributes to about 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UNs Food and Agricultural Organization. By comparison, choosing a plant-based diet could reduce greenhouse gas footprints by as much as 70 percent, especially when choosing local produce and products.

Public Transportation

Riding public trains, subways, buses, trams, ferries and other types of public transportation is another easy way to lower your carbon footprint, considering that gas-powered vehicles contribute 95 percent of transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions.

Electric Vehicles

Electric cars and trucks have come down in price as more manufacturers enter the field, and these produce far lower emissions than their gas counterparts. Hybrid vehicles are another good alternative for lowering individual emission contributions.

Conscious Consumption

Buying locally produced food and items is another way to maintain a lower carbon footprint, as the products arent shipped or driven long distances. Supporting small companies that are committed to sustainability is another option, especially when it comes to clothes. Fast fashion has become a popular option thanks to its price point, but often comes at the expense of the environment and can involve unethical overseas labor practices. Not least, plastic saturates every corner of the consumer market, but its possible to find non-plastic alternatives with a little research, from reusable produce bags to baby bottles.

Climate Activism

Those interested in becoming even more involved can join local climate action organizations. Popular groups include the Sunrise Movement, Fridays for Future, Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, to name a few. Voting, volunteering, calling local representatives and participating in climate marches are additional ways to raise your voice.

Takeaway

Its taken centuries to reach a climate tipping point, with just a matter of decades left to prevent the worst-case climate scenarios from happening. But theres still hope of controlling a warming climate as long as individuals, companies and nations make an immediate concerted effort to lower greenhouse gas emissions. As the world already experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic, a rapid unified response can make all the difference.

Meredith Rosenberg is a senior editor at EcoWatch. She holds a Masters from the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism in NYC and a B.A. from Temple University in Philadelphia.
A former United steel Workers Union employee and her husband face charges they took more than $50,000 from a union fund at the Albany-based company.

Jennifer Marie Cummins, 37, of Monmouth, turned herself in to Albany police Wednesday, five days after her husband, Christopher Gene Cummins, 42, an ATI employee, was arrested while at work on a first-degree theft charge, after a secret indictment alleged he took more than $15,000 from the fund through credit card purchases.

That same indictment named Jennifer Cummins and leveled the charges against her. She faces three counts of first-degree theft, a class C felony, and two counts of aggravated theft, a class B felony. Those charges carry potential sentences of five and 10 years, respectively.

According to APD detective Travis Giboney, Jennifer Cummins had admitted to the fraudulent purchases when questioned by a union auditor. She is also reported to have signed a document with which she admitted to having taken $42,693.32.

Jennifer Cummins was terminated as a result of the revelation.

The charges are the result of two years worth of investigations by union officials. Albany Police detectives executed a search warrant at the couple's Monmouth home the same day she surrendered to police. They found a gun safe valued at $1,000, which had been purchased through the fund's credit card and delivered to their home. Detectives also found several receipts from Amazon.com for a variety of purchases connected to the case.

Both Jennifer and Christopher Cummins have been released from custody, with Jennifer agreeing to the condition she appear in Linn county Circuit court on May 17.

The funds were part of an educational program through the Institute of Career Development. Created in 1989 as a result of contract negotiations between the United Steelworkers and major steel companies, it is a joint initiative, with labor and management working to provide educational services to Steelworkers union members.
By Carey Wedler

The Guardian reported last Tuesday that Lulu, the full-grown whale who died, was a member of the UKs last resident pod and a postmortem also showed she had never produced a calf. The pollutants, called PCBs, are known to cause infertility and these latest findings add to strong evidence that the pod is doomed to extinction.

The levels of PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, found in Lulus blubber were more than 100 times the 9mg/kg limit above which damage to the health of marine mammals is known to occur, the Guardian noted. Lulu had 950mg/kg in her blubber. The average orca in the North-Atlantic ocean has 150mg/kg.

Polychlorinated biphenyls were first used in the 1930s until they were banned by the U.S. government in 1979. According to the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), PCBs are synthetic organic chemicals found in old fluorescent lighting fixtures, electrical devices or appliances containing PCB capacitors made before PCB use was stopped, old microscope oil and old hydraulic oil. When released into the environment, they take long periods of time to break down.

They have been found to cause damage to human health. As ATSDR notes, Some studies in workers suggest that exposure to PCBs may also cause irritation of the nose and lungs, gastrointestinal discomfort, changes in the blood and liver and depression and fatigue.

The Guardian explained the effects these chemicals have on marine life, as well:

PCBs, which cause cancers and suppress the immune system, are especially harmful to top predators because they accumulate in fat up the food chain. Killer whales can live for many decades, meaning they can end up with very high levels of PCBs.

Though Lulu died after getting caught in ropes used for fishing, according to Andrew Brownlow, head of the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme, Given what is known about the toxic effects of PCBs, we have to consider that such a high-pollutant burden could have been affecting her health and reproductive fitness.

Lulus apparent infertility is an ominous findingwith no new animals being born, it is now looking increasingly likely that this small group will eventually go extinct. One of the factors in this groups apparent failure to reproduce could be their high burden of organic pollutants, he said.

According to Monsantos website, the company was deeply involved in the proliferation of the chemicals:

The former Monsanto Company produced and sold PCBs to manufacturerssuch as General Electric and Westinghousethat incorporated the fluid into their products. The former Monsantos PCB products bore the trade name Aroclor (although not all Aroclor products were PCB products).

Although the former Monsanto Company was the principal manufacturer of PCBs in the United States, its share of the global production was about 45 percent. There were many manufacturers in other countries, including West Germany, East Germany, Japan, France, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Italy, Poland, Russia and China. Production and use of PCBs continued in many of these countries into the 1990s.

Though the company maintains it is not responsible for all global production, its share of nearly half the worlds PCBs is still staggeringly large. It also appears the company is leaving out some key details. According to Dr. Ellen Griffith Spears, an associate professor at the University of Alabama, Monsanto knew of the dangers of PCBs long before they discontinued their manufacture. In fact, they increased production between 1966when scientists first discovered their dangersand 1977, when the company finally stopped producing them:

During that time, Monsantos Ad Hoc Committee acknowledged that PCBs may be a global contaminant. The committee even considered halting production. Significantly, however, Monsantos Board of Directors had responded to the news about PCB hazards by increasing production. The preferred strategy for the present, as one official scribbled in his marginal notes, was to sell the hell out of them.'

The company had also produced them in the UK, the closest country to Lulus environment.

Though Monsanto takes credit for voluntarily discontinuing production of PCBs before the U.S. government banned themand other companies, like Bayer, produced them to a lesser extentin recent years they have aggressively evaded responsibility for the effects they have had on the environment.

Though it is ultimately difficult to determine Monsantos exact degree of responsibility for the struggles marine animals now face as a result of human pollution, it is clear man-made chemicals propagated by massive corporations are still taking their toll.

PCBs have also been found in dolphins in the north-east Atlantic, beluga whales in Canada and polar bears in the arctic.

Once PCBs get into the marine environment, they are difficult if not impossible to remove, Brownlow told the Guardian. There are still many PCB stockpiles in Europe, and it is absolutely essential that these toxic reserves do not reach the marine environment.

Reposted with permission from our media associate MintPress News.
Dewees Named ECSUs Student Teacher of the Year

Michelle Dewees has been named Elizabeth City State Universitys 2017 Student Teacher of the Year. She will advance to the North Carolina Student Teacher of the Year Competition where five finalists and the North Carolina Student Teacher of the Year will be named.

The North Carolina Student Teacher of the Year Initiative is sponsored by NC-ACTE with an award of $2,500, presented to the Student Teacher of the Year, and $500 awards to each of the five finalists. As ECSUs Student Teacher of the Year, Dewees will receive a $500 award, sponsored by Natasha Holley, an ECSU graduate, and clinical director for Integrated Family Services.

Following an accounting career working with national corporations, and small local businesses, Dewees found her true calling after moving to Edenton, North Carolina and volunteering at her sons school. Dewees says the big corporate salaries paled compared to the fulfillment that she experienced while working with children and White Oak Elementary School. She quickly switched her career to education and began working toward earning a degree in elementary education.

After graduating from College of the Albemarle with honors, Dewees continued her education at ECSU where she will graduate this spring with a 3.91 grade point average, and a Bachelors Degree in Elementary Education, with a psychology concentration.

Dewees was nominated for the Student Teacher of the Year Award by her cooperating teacher, Lee Powell, a second grade teacher at White Oak Elementary School in Edenton. Near the end of her yearlong internship, Powell said working with the Dewees was more like working with a co-teacher rather than a student teacher. White Oak principal, Shelia Evans, described Dewees as the best student teacher that she has observed during her 29-year career as an educator.

In addition to taking advantage of all available training opportunities at White Oak Elementary, Dewees completed training with Sonya Rinehart on the North Carolina Educator Evaluation System and Differentiated Instruction, and recently completed a five-day Reading Research in Classroom Practice Series sponsored by the Perquimans County and Pasquotank County School Systems.

Michelle Dewees is the wife of Lyle Dewees, mother of Lyle III, Jennifer and Matthew, and grandmother of Landon, Betsy, Lyle James, Ryleigh, and Hadley.
In the past 20 years, parents have taken to heart public-awareness campaigns urging them to read to their children every night. But math initiatives have not gained as much tractioneven as emerging evidence suggests early math may be one of the most critical school-readiness skills.

A survey last month of more than 2,500 parents found that they generally rank math and science as lower in importance and relevance to their childrens lives than reading. Moreover, 38 percent of parents, including half the fathers surveyed, agreed with the statement Skills in math are mostly useful for those that have careers related to math, so average Americans do not have much need for math skills, according to the survey by the Overdeck and Simons foundations.

Nobody is proud to say, I can barely read, but plenty of parents are proud to stand up and say, I can barely do math, I didnt grow up doing well in math, and my kids not doing well in math; thats just the way it is,  said Mike Steele, a math education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who was not associated with the study.

We need to shift the mindset that math is just some innate ability that has a genetic component, and you are either a math person or you are not, to a conception that everybody can do math with effort and support  and to understand why thats important.

Early Math Critical

In fact, some evidence suggests early-math skills can be crucial to students overall school careers. In a 2007 study, Greg Duncan, an economist and education professor at the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues used six large-scale longitudinal studies of students to look at what most affected a students long-term school outcomes. They found that a childs math ability at the start of kindergarten was the best predictor of his or her academic performance in 8th grade, even more than early-reading scores, attention, or social-emotional development. That held true regardless of gender, race, or family income.

Analyses of federal longitudinal data released last year showed that school-readiness gaps between poor and wealthier kindergartners have narrowed by 16 percent in the last 20 years, partly credited to low-income parents reading to their preschool-age children more frequently. However, math-readiness gaps shrank by only 10 percent during that time, though its difficult to tell whether parents engaged their children more in math during that time. The federal data, which asked specific questions about the number of books in a childs home and the literacy activities parents did with their children, did not have explicit questions about math activities.

Moreover, the same socioeconomic gaps seen in early literacy show up in math, too. For example, while low-income preschoolers are exposed to fewer words in general than their wealthier peers, there are also particular gaps in exposure to words related to math, such as numbers or size and shape comparisons, according to a forthcoming study in the journal Zero to Three. Parents were recorded for 7 hours over 16 months, when their children were 1 to about 2 years old, and researchers led by Susan Levine, an education professor at the University of Chicago, found wide differences in how often parents used number words and spatial descriptions, like shape or size.

We find theres a 60-fold difference in the amount of number talk, Levine said. At the low end, at 1 to 3 years of age, the kids are getting about 1,500 number words from their parents; at the high end, they are getting more than 100,000. The gap was similar for spatial words.

In addition, children exposed to more math-related words as toddlers had better number and spatial sense by the time they were preschool age, Levine found. Although there were socioeconomic gaps in math exposure, it wasnt uniform; there were also gaps for parents who were more or less anxious about math.

Parents do generally teach their toddlers to count to 10 around the same time they teach the ABCs, but dont go beyond that to skills that have been found to be predictive of long-term math achievement, such as identifying the size of a small group by sight, according to Laura Overdeck, a board member of the Overdeck Family Foundation and the creator of Bedtime Math, a free app-based program that provides short math puzzles for parents to do with children of different ages. Parents dont pick [math activities] up again until the child is in school, and then math is homework and quizzes and tests, she said.

Last month, Jon Schultz, a middle school special education teacher in Queen Annes County public schools in Maryland, and his wife, Erin Anderson, a sociologist at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., were taking their daughters to the National Math Festival in Washington. They described one of them, Grace, 7, as a math lover who just competed in the St. Jude Math-a-thon, a competition for children.

Grace and her 5-year-old sister, Claire, have both been in a comprehensive preschool since they were 2 and have been learning math there"and from Sesame Street the year before that, Anderson said. But generally, they said parents have been told more about literacy activities to do at home than about math activities.

I think its much easier to tell parents, Here, read a book, than Go do math problems,  Schultz said.

Anderson added, I think math is something thats always kind of parceled outand I was totally guilty of this as a kidthat youre either good at math or not good at math. Reading is for everybody, but we kind of divide up who are the people who are good at math, Anderson said.

Overdeck agreed.

One reason reading efforts have been more successful so far, I think, is parents are more willing to try reading; they have less anxiety. Math is different because theres a whole culture of math anxiety in this country, so in many cases, schools are asking parents to take a subject they hated and do it with their children, Overdeck said.

Whats more, Overdeck said, changes in the way schools teach math have been more visible to parents than the changes made to the way reading is taught, making them feel less confident that they can help their children with even elementary-level homework.

You look at the homework and say, Whoa, I didnt do it that way,  said Johanna Olexy. Math is the favorite subject of her 3rd grade son, Jackson. With reading, its easy to say, I can read, I can pick a book and sit with my kids. But theres always a certain point with math that I go, Wait a minute, what is this again? 

Solving Generational Math Fear

Increasing parent involvement in early math means changing what parents think math means, said Rebecca Parlakian, the senior director of programs at Zero to Three, a nonprofit early education advocacy group.

While it seems really clear what to do for early literacyread to your child, talk, think out loud, say stories and rhymeswe dont always make it clear what it looks like to do math with your kids every day, she said. What we hear from the general public is these subjects are supercomplex and really for later in school experiences.  Its assumed math is something thats taught in elementary school.

It can be helpful, she said, if preschool and early-elementary teachers explain to parents how the art projects, board games, or puzzles children do in class relate to math skills. For preschoolers, simply playing a board game with dice or sorting toys by different rules builds early math understanding. It may not look like what parents think math looks like in their heads, but thats part of the learning process, Parlakian said.

The University of Wisconsins Steele, who is expecting his first child, said he would start introducing math long before school, asking the child at age 2 or 3 about the patterns he or she sees all around.

Math is all about quantifying and describing the world. I might ask, How many windows do you think there are in this building? Count a few, look for patterns, figure out how you would decide how many there are, Steele said. I could look at a bookshelf and ask how many of those smaller books do you think would fit on that shelf, compared to the larger books below it? Really straightforward things like that get kids thinking about how they see mathematics in everything around them and get them into the habit of looking at the world through a mathematical lens.

The Overdeck and Simons foundations are building up an inventory of math- and science-engagement projects crafted by teachers, which they and parents can do with students outside the classroom. So far, more than 1,000 projects have been submitted nationwide, and more than 700 have been funded. Eventually, the foundations hope to distribute materials or lesson plans from teachers proposals to other schools and parents.
Even before journalist Peggy Orensteins daughter reached adolescence, Orenstein was concerned about what the experience might mean for her child. As the author of four books and a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Orenstein had written about self-esteem and the sexualization of girls and young women. She considered herself an expert at decoding what she calls the mixed messages of girlhood. But when it came to what was aheadtroubling stories of teenage sex seemingly dominated by hook-ups, social-media scandals, objectification, blurred lines of consent, and all-too-easy access to the internetshe wanted a better handle on what to expect, and how to help her daughter navigate healthy choices.

Orensteins most recent book, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape, which was published last year, explores teenage girls attitudes, expectations, and perceptions of sex and intimacy. She interviewed more than 70 young women ages 15 to 20 from across the countryAfrican-American, Arab-American, Asian-American, Latina, and whiteabout their personal experiences. Orenstein doesnt claim to represent the experiences of all young women; those she spoke with expected to attend, or were in, college. A large majority are heterosexual; 10 percent identify as lesbian or bisexual.

The result is a more personal portrait of the current landscape, one complicated by cultural expectations of beauty, the silence surrounding girls own pleasure and choice, and the tricky social scene of a dating culture influenced by the media and the internet. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 40 percent of high school students have had sexual intercourse , yet only 24 states and the District of Columbia require public schools to teach sex education . Orenstein laments that many schools take an abstinence-only route, and she is a strong advocate for a more open and comprehensive conversation.

Commentary Associate Kate Stoltzfus spoke to Orenstein recently by phone about how parents and educators can help young women make healthy choices about their most personal relationships.

Whats changed over time? What about the current landscape of sex is new?

There is this disconnect between the new entitlement that young women feel in the public realm and their disempowerment in the private realm. At the same time, they are encouraged more than ever to present themselves as sexy"not about being attractive or beautiful, but a very narrow, commercialized idea of sexy. Whats particularly complicated is theyre sold that idea [of sexiness] as being a source of personal power. There is a complete disconnect between that image of sexiness and an understanding of their bodies, their own wants, needs, desires, and limits, what those might be, having those respected. Theres a way that this image of sexiness has not just been conflated with sexuality, but actually replaced it.

According to a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 percent of high school girls say they have been forced to have sex . Every girl you spoke to said she had faced harassment in middle school, high school, college, or, often all three. But sexual-assault statistics in K-12 schools are also rarely reported. Why the reluctance to report these incidents?

[Young women] are almost conditioned, starting in middle school, to have their bodies publicly commented on by young men, [and] they dont think they have any power to really stop it. I think thats a fair assessment, given that most schools are not stopping it, unless there is something so egregious that they have to step in. The everyday chipping-away of girls self-worth by reducing them to their bodies is completely ignored. When the reason for the dress code is that girls are distracting boys, you have basically put a rape culture in place. Boys need to be responsible for their own reactions and responses and able to live in the world without thinking that because a girl is dressed a certain way or behaves a certain way, they have license to comment, touch, or assault. And they need to learn that lesson from the get-go.

How can educators and parents improve the ways they talk to young people about healthy sexuality and relationships? What role, if any, should public schools play in these conversations?

What has happened in our school systemswhich is a huge tragedy and is responsible in part for a culture in which girls and many boys are harassed and assaulted, and in which we have a hook-up culture that often dehumanizes kids in their sexual encountersis that weve have had in place this abstinence-only garbage for years. And when it goes away, rather than replacing it with something better, theres nothing. Kids are educated by the culture, and theyre often educated by pornography. And thats not where we want our children to learn about how people interact sexually. Decades of evidence show that abstinence-only education doesnt change significantly when children engage sexually . It results in more oral and anal sex; it results in more pregnancy; it results in more disease.

In some independent schools, where they have more leeway and less political pressure, theres a kind of sex education in place that is about these issues of ethics and responsibility and reciprocity and mutuality. That doesnt mean youre saying, "And go do it. When Ive been talking to kids whove had a really holistic education that involves consent, thinking about it from a human rights perspective, talking about the impact of pornography on kids, talking about reciprocity, they are really thoughtful, and they have a much higher bar for their sexual experiences. They are more compassionate, they humanize their partners, and its so impressive. And theyre not being sexual with each other at any greater rates than other kids I see, but they are a lot happier with the results.

We tend to silo conversations about sex as if it is not about the same values of compassion, kindness, respect, mutuality, and caring that we want our children to embody in every other aspect of their lives. Youre really, as a parent, wanting to build a scaffolding from the time your child is very small. Parents of infant boys tend to name all their parts, whereas parents of girls go right from navel to knee. Then girls go into partnered encounters, and we believe that somehow theyre going to have a voice, or theyre going to be able to express their needs, their wants, their limits, their desires, or even know what those might be. So we have basically set them up for inequality. We have got to change that conversation.

The age of the internet has paved a whole new way for teenagers to engage with sex and relationships. How is this changing the landscape for young people in terms of their sexuality?

Unfortunately, the first thing kids google is porn. The average age that kids today are exposed to porn, either intentionally or not, is 11 . We have to ask what it means that kids are learning about sex from that realm before theyve even had their first kiss and how thats shaping them, their attitudes toward sexuality, and their expectations of sex. Ive seen parents protesting because sex education wants to talk about porn. What people want is to teach kids to apply the same critical lens that we teach them to apply to the mediaand the things that they read in schoolto pornography. If we dont teach them to not look at it uncritically, they wont. They need some very clear discussions about why thats not real, what the dynamics are, not only in terms of gender, but in terms of race and sexuality.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
JEFFERSON  Jefferson students will be out for the summer earlier than expected this year so crews can get started on seismic improvements for Jefferson Elementary School.

The last day of school for all students will be a half day on Wednesday, June 7. Fifth-grade promotion ceremonies have been moved to that morning at Jefferson Elementary. Graduation is still scheduled for June 2 and eighth-grade promotion is still scheduled for June 7.

The calendar change, made official Monday by the Jefferson School Board, eliminates a four-day addition to the end of the year to make up days lost to snow and ice this past winter.

According to the district, Superintendent Kent Klewitz reviewed school calendars and determined schools will still meet state instructional minutes with a June 7 end date.

Teacher contracts state any time lost to bad weather will be made up at the end of the year, but the association agreed to drop the extra days to let the elementary school have enough time to move, said Karen Wusstig, the school board's executive assistant.

"Staff are rallying to help out," she said.

In the mid-valley, Jefferson, Sweet Home and Harrisburg school districts all were tapped a year ago to share in $50.3 million in state grant funds to make school buildings safer in case of an earthquake.

Jefferson received a little more than $1 million. The money is earmarked for complete seismic rehabilitation of the original brick core of Jefferson Elementary School, meaning crews will add new shearwalls and add connection hardware to tie the foundation, walls and roofs together as a unit.

A new roof also will be part of the work. HMK Co. of Salem is managing the project.

The seismic projects are separate from work the district hopes to complete with a $14.4 million bond that voters will decide next week. If that measure passes, the district plans to build a new middle school adjacent to Jefferson High School, but will retain use of the gym and cafeteria building at the current middle school.

The bond also would be used to build another classroom wing and a gym at Jefferson Elementary and make repairs at the high school.

Oregon lawmakers approved the sale of $175 million in bond funds in 2015 to make the seismic grants possible. A new round of grants was announced in April.

Jefferson also received a share of the new funding, with $1,459,645 set aside for Jefferson Middle School's gym complex and attached areas, including locker rooms, band room, cafeteria and storage areas. Another $1,423,600 will go back to the elementary school for work on an eight-classroom wing to the northeast.

Both the new projects will follow the same approximate schedule as the initial seismic grant work, starting with a year's worth of planning and organization. Work is to be completed during the summer of 2018.
LINN COUNTY COURTHOUSE

Sex abuse charges  3 p.m. Thursday, Linn County Courthouse. Jeffery James Allen, 43, of Lebanon, was arraigned on four counts of first-degree sexual abuse, one count of attempted unlawful sexual penetration, two counts of first-degree unlawful sexual penetration and one count of first-degree attempted rape. According to the police report, Allen fled and then fought with officers as they arrested him at his place of employment in Gilchrist. He was ordered held on $100,000 security.
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Aaron Carter, the singer-rapper who began performing as a child and had hit albums starting in his teen years, was found dead at his home in Southern California. He was 34. Representatives for Carters family confirmed the singers death Saturday. They did not provide any immediate further comment. A sheriff's official says deputies responding to reports of a medical emergency found a person deceased at the home in Lancaster. Aaron Carter, the younger brother of Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys, performed as an opening act for Britney Spears as well as his brothers boy band, and appeared on the familys reality series, House of Carters.
Almost exactly a year before he was elected the youngest President in the history of the French Republic on 7 May 2017, Emmanuel Macron was in Orleans, the city of Joan of Arc. She had a crazy dream. Like an arrow, her trajectory was direct. Joan pierced the system, he said, harking back to the extraordinary journey of Frances historic and legendary heroine, burned at the stake by the English in 1431.

Macron, who will assume office, whether by intention or coincidence, on 14 May, Joan of Arc Day, was making a barely veiled reference to his own meteoric rise to come. He was then still the economy minister of a socialist government, barely known to the public. It was in Orleans, addressing a crowd of 60,000 persons on 8 May 2016, that Macrons dizzying political journey to the top truly began.

The evocation of the Maid of Orleans was no accident. The 39-year-old former banker, whose extraordinary rise has stunned the world, is a meticulous planner and executor. For many long years, the extreme-right National Front has captured the symbol of revolt and resistance that Joan of Arc embodies, twisting it into one of fervent nativism and passionate patriotism that excludes anyone with a whiff of foreignnesswhether Muslim, Jewish, or French nationalwhat Jean-Marie Le Pen, the partys founder calls citizens of fresh date.

Macros Message

Macrons message in the Maids hometown was clear: the National Fronts idea of France was in utter dissonance with his notion of an open, welcoming, moderate, and liberal Republic. Although he did not explicitly mention the Le Pens, father, daughter or granddaughter, he made clear he would speak out strongly and openly against the exclusion, finger-pointing, divisions, and hatred that the National Front was peddling.

His clarity has paid handsome dividends. The French heard his call. Of those who cast their vote, 66% came out in his favour, decisively rejecting the mantra of France for the French, Down with the European Union (EU) or Out with Islam, that had been Marine Le Pens clarion call.

Only Jacques Chirac before him had won with a bigger margin. In 2002, when Marines father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, surged past serving socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to enter the second round, 82.2% of the French turned out to bar the extreme rights road to power. Since then, the National Front has steadily gained ground, doubling its score, appealing, like Donald Trump, to frustrated, disenchanted voters on the political extremes, mining the rich vein of persistent unemployment, discontent and marginalisation. Departmental polls in 2015 (minor elections which usually generate little enthusiasm and a high abstention rate) saw Marine Le Pen win an unprecedented 25% of the vote.

One of the most significant results of this election is the atomisation of the traditional left and right parties that have governed France. Political wisdom has handed down that France, split down the middle between two major voting blocks, the conservatives and the socialists, with extreme left and right formations on the margins, is ungovernable from the centre. This time around the traditional parties have been unceremoniously dumped and appear to be heading for implosion, if not extinction, to become the new mastodons of French history.

Vote to Block the National Front

Although Macrons win is historic, unprecedented, astonishing even, given that three years ago he was a completely unknown quantity, has never held electoral office, and launched his movement En Marche! (On The Move!) less than a year ago, a closer look at the results shows that a significant segment of the electorate were not entirely convinced either by his youth or by his image of a middle of the road, liberal moderniser. They voted not for him, but to block the National Front.

A full 12% of those who voted performed their civic duty but decided to protest what they saw as an unsatisfactory choice by spoiling their ballots or refusing to vote for either candidate. The number of voters rejecting both the centrist and the extreme right candidate has more than doubled since the last presidential poll in 2012 and is the highest ever experienced since the present Fifth Republic was established in 1958. The rate of abstention too, at 25% (or 12 million voters) was exceptionally high. In effect, 43% of registered voters voted for Macron, which is just a tad better than Nicolas Sarkozys score in 2007.

An Ipsos poll that sampled 4,838 registered voters, shows an interesting break-up of how votes shifted from the 11 candidates in the fray in the first round to the two second-round contestants.

Of those who plumped for conservative right candidate Francois Fillon of Les Republicains in the first round, 48% moved to Macron, while 20%, mainly practising Catholics, voted for Le Pen in the second round. Significantly, 32% of his first round supporters abstained or spoiled their ballot.

From the hard left, 41% of Jean-Luc Melenchons candidates stayed away while 52% voted for Macron. Only 7% crossed the floor to Le Pen. The Socialist vote was more predictable with 71% going to Macron, 2% to Le Pen, and 27% abstaining or spoiling their ballot.

What helped Macron in the final days of campaigning was Marine Le Pens dismal performance during an extremely vituperative, two-and-a-half-hour-long televised debate. Her needlessly combative, aggressive style, riddled with smirks and insults undid years of painstaking work during which she tried to convince voters that the National Front was no longer the anti-Semite party of yore but a legitimate political formation like any other. Macrons score shot up by a full three percentage points in the last two days before the election. The publication of leaked documents from the Macron campaign by the American Alt-Right, relayed with joy and schadenfreude by members of the National Front boomeranged, turning away several potential voters.

Support for Macron

Macrons victory has been ample and convincing enough to allow him to dream of obtaining a presidential majority in parliament. His political movement En Marche! which has since been re-baptised La Republique en marche! (Republic on the Move!) will contest all 577 seats in parliament. Several prominent members of the traditional right and left parties have decided to support him, and one of his campaign managers has dropped heavy hints that the next prime minister could be someone from the right, with a government of national unity from both sides of the political spectrum in the offing.

Early support for Macron came from a man who has tried desperately hard to launch a centrist political party in France and who made several unsuccessful bids for the presidency himself, FranCois Bayrou. He has been tipped as a possible prime ministerial hopeful. In Frances unique system, the president has far-reaching, almost regal powers. The election of the president through universal suffrage is seen as a direct dialogue between a man (or woman, although that remains an unrealised option), and the country.

The prime minister and his government often act as a fuse, summarily dismissed as a sop to public opinion when the heat is on, or when presidential ratings drop. FranCois Hollande, the outgoing president, is now on his third prime minister. And there have been periods, three since 1958, when a president had to navigate without a majority in parliament and face a parliament, prime minister and government who come from opposition ranks. Both the Presidents, Chirac and Mitterrand, had to deal with such cohabitation. And although the French electorate has always overturned these periods in subsequent elections, backing their presidential choice with a sizeable working majority in parliament, they have not been averse to cohabitation with a sizeable section of the population even relishing it.

Seeking Majority

While it is true that in France, parliament and the government is considered a junior partner in the exercise of power, subservient to the Presidency and the accompanying Elysee cabinet of advisers, a hostile parliament can constrain the president, limit his options and margin for manoeuvre. For Macron to succeed, especially in the areas he plans to reform such as workplace flexibility, massive public sector job cutbacks or other economic austerity measures, he desperately requires a presidential majority.

If the electorate suspects his intention or ability to bring about a true refounding and recomposition of the political landscape, if he is seen to bow to pressure giving electoral tickets to several old dinosaurs both from the left and the right, instead of introducing competent new parliamentarians, he could well find himself without a parliamentary majority. The president-elect had promised that members of civil society would be encouraged to join his movement. That is now proving more problematic than initially imagined.

Macrons declared intention was to bring about a dislocation of the party system and the entrenched political establishment in France. He has attained that goal. A parliamentary recomposition in his favour is not an unrealistic dream. The Socialist party is in the process of imploding with Benoit Hamon, the failed candidate, launching his own left-oriented political movement.

Manuel Valls, the former Prime Minister who betrayed his own and is now desperately trying to hitch his wagon to the Macron star is being made to cool his heels. The knives are out for Marine Le Pen within her own party and her poor showing (despite the alarming 33.9%) has thrown a damper on how the fight in the legislatives should be led on the far right. Jean-Luc Melenchon has split with the Communist party and Les Republicains have seen several desertions in favour of En Marche! The field is therefore wide open. But failure to get that precious majority will create major problems for the new president.

Conscious Political Choices

France is Europes most self-consciously ideological state. While many have been seduced by the siren song of the extreme right, a majority of the French have chosen to shun that brand of divisive politics. Despite the experience of Vichy or perhaps because of it, the French are chary of flirting with fascism again. This election has shown how the people have interiorised the tenets of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. Ingrained deep in their collective psyche, the spectre of the French Revolution continues to guide their political choices.

French malaise is difficult to comprehend. Yes, there is a rust belt in France too. Industrial areas in the north and north east of the country have lost thousands of jobs. Agriculture, particularly cattle farming in the south-west is taking a beating. There is a clear north and south versus west and centre divide. There is also a massive chasm separating the sophisticated, smart, ultrachic and remarkably productive side of France with its glittering cities and historic towns that contrasts severely with the more rustic paysanerie (peasantry) or the undereducated and poorly-skilled working classes of underprivileged suburban zones.

Macrons supporters are mostly upwardly mobile, young, middle class, urban and educated. Marine Le Pens voters are in the age group of 3580 years. In the main, they come from rural zones and small towns and their education and income levels are low. Creating skills and jobs to beat persistent unemployment that has stubbornly hovered at 10% of the population remains the elusive golden key.

The French economy has been so decried as un-reformable, sluggish, rigid, fossilised and sclerotic that most commentators have refused to see its upside. France remains one of Europes most productive economies (comparable to and even outperforming Germany), despite the fact that they have the shortest working hours in the European Union.

Coupled with this are a new investment climate with small, several niche start-ups that receive state funding, a redoubled effort towards innovation through new financial institutions like Bpifrance (the French bank for public investment) and an emerging confidence visible at events like the Las Vegas technology fair. France continues to have a positive birth rate and growth ratealthough the latter remains below 2%. Pensions and unemployment benefits are amongst the highest in Europe, paid holidays are guaranteed by law and universal healthcare is perhaps the best in the world. The living is good in France.

So why are the French complaining? Why do almost 35% of them appear to suffer from mass anxiety, a sense of alienation with the governing classes? Certainly there are problems, the worst being unemployment. Repeated terrorist attacks have also spooked the population creating Islamophobia, especially and ironically, in zones where the immigrant population is limited or absent. Poor integration has created suburban immigrant ghettos. Their existence has given grist to Marine Le Pens hate mill. Cutting back unemployment, changing and transforming the countrys incomprehensible and complex tax and labour laws, while embracing globalisation without sacrificing a welfare system that has stood the test of time but is now beginning to crack under the burden of an ageing population and an ever-narrowing worker/contributor base, are the challenges Macron faces.

Above the Fray of Petty Politics?

The Kid as a section of the French press has taken to calling him, is, however, not without an arrow or two in his quiver. The tremendous popular elan that has carried him forward, the fact that he has won a victory that seemed utterly impossible only a couple of months ago, and the evident desire for change that the French public has expressed through this vote are all to his advantage. Should he fail to get a substantial majority in the legislative elections scheduled to take place on 11 and 18 June, France will be in real trouble. The National Front hopes to capture between 40 and 60 seats in the 577-chamber house. Melenchon and the ecologists, Les Republicains and the rump socialists all hope to win back a slice of the cake. At the moment, a profound realignment of forces with four big political formations, the left, the centre, the right and the extreme right, almost equidistant to each other, is underway. This scattering could work to Macrons advantage if he chooses his candidates wisely and well, pushing away tired old diehards who have lost the confidence of the public and zeroing in on persons with clean records and reputations for competence.

In the week ahead, the president-elect will spend his time in intense consultations. He has already resigned from his fledgling movement, portraying himself as a president of the entire French nation, above the fray of petty politics. Several key people will be with him at all times, his wife Brigitte Trogneux, his former drama teacher whom he met when he was a stripling of 16, and married when he was 29 and she 54, and Alexis Kohler, his former head of cabinet at the finance ministry who will almost certainly become his right-hand man at the Elysee presidential palace.

So what could stop this unusually gifted man who appears to have won every challenge he has faced (except his entrance exam to Frances prestigious Normal Superieur institute of higher studies which he failed twice in succession)? Arrogance and a touch of hubris is the answer. He is exceedingly conscious of and revels in the monarchical side of the French presidency, as the elaborate and somewhat pompous choreography of his victory speech suggests. And, by all accounts he does not suffer fools gladly.

He assumes office on 14 May, on Joan of Arc Day, which falls on the second Sunday of May every year. Then begins a double or quits presidency.
U.S. government agencies would need to increase the annual salaries of information security personnel by approximately $7,000 to equal the annual salaries of their private sector counterparts, a recent survey of 2,620 U.S. Department of Defense, federal civilian and federal contractor employees found.

The survey [PDF], sponsored by (ISC)2, Booz Allen Hamilton and Alta Associates, also found that 87 percent of respondents said hiring and retaining qualified information security professionals is key to securing an organizations infrastructure.

Its crystal clear that the government must enhance its benefits offering to attract future hires and retain existing personnel given its fierce competition with the private sector for skilled workers and the unprecedented demand; unfortunately, the layers of complexity involved in fulfilling that goal are significant, (ISC)2 managing director Dan Waddell said in a statement.

According to respondents, the most effective initiatives for attracting and retaining cyber security professionals include offering more training programs (62 percent), paying for professional cyber security certifications (62 percent), improving compensation packages (57 percent), and providing more flexible work schedules (56 percent).

Notably, 70 percent of respondents said their organization offers a program that encourages diverse hiring in information security, compared to 55 percent in the private sector.

In todays environment where cyber talent is scarce, organizations must recruit and train untapped talent pools, focusing on women, minorities, veterans and older workers, Booz Allen Hamilton senior executive advisor Ron Sanders said.

And while it can be difficult for government agencies to compete on salary alone when vying for these cyber warriors, they can appeal to a recruits sense of mission and purpose, tout the cutting-edge work being done and highlight opportunities for advancement, Sanders added

Security Challenges

Separately, the federal government edition of the 2017 Thales Data Report, based on a survey of over 1,100 senior executives conducted by 451 Research, found that 34 percent of federal respondents experienced a data breach in the past year, and 65 percent have experienced a data breach in the past.

And while 61 percent of federal respondents are increasing security spending this year, fully 98 percent said they remain vulnerable to a breach  and 47 percent said theyre very or extremely vulnerable.

While 92 percent of federal respondents plan to use sensitive data in an advanced technology environment (cloud, big data, IoT, and containers) this year, 71 percent believe this will occur without proper security in place.

Fifty-three percent of federal respondents cited a lack of budget and a lack of staff as the top reasons for data insecurity.

The U.S. federal government is racing to boost data security against odds not generally faced in the private sector today, 451 Research principal analyst Garrett Bekker said in a statement. A major challenge in securing the far-flung systems in the U.S. federal government is the plethora of aging legacy systems still in place, with one example being a 53-year-old Strategic Automated Command and Control System at the Department of Defense that coordinates U.S. nuclear forces and uses 8-inch floppy disks.

In short, this perfect storm of very old systems, tight budgets and being a prime cybercrime target has created a stressful environment, Bekker added.

Trust in Government

An?Accenture survey of almost 3,500 U.S. citizens found that 74 percent of respondents lack confidence in governments ability to keep their data private and secure, and 63 percent said increased data security measures would increase their satisfaction with government agencies.

Still, respondents who interact with the government daily or several times a day were more than twice as likely to express confidence in the governments ability to protect their data as those who dont  and millennials were more than twice as likely as senior citizens to express confidence in the governments data protection abilities.

While government agencies face many cyber security challenges, the research found strong citizen support for government organizations to take steps to increase data security and protect citizen information, Accenture public service strategy lead Peter Hutchinson said in a statement.

Government agencies that take a comprehensive end-to-end security approach by integrating cyber security deep into their organizations will not only secure their data, but also win the trust and confidence of the citizens they serve, Hutchinson added.
The European Union is about to deploy its biggest monitoring missions ever to supervise the upcoming election in Kenya due to the fears that the ethnic clashes during the 2007 election could happen again. The clashes erupted unexpectedly and left up to 1,500 people dead and displaced some 600,000. The mass killings across ethnic and tribal lines lasted for several months.

This time, Brussels will send 100 electoral observers who will spend two months in the African country before and after the 8 August election to ensure that it is stable. Kenya is the EUs key partner in the Horn of Africa and as such it receives 100 million euros a year in development aid. Kenya hosts around half a million refugees from South Sudan, in the Dabaab and other camps. The north of the country is struggling with extremism originating from Somalia.

Claudia Wiedey, head of the Horn of Africa and East Africa unit at the European External Action Service, said that Kenya was an extremely important country for the EU. It is stable, it is on the move, it has achieved a lot but it is in an extremely fragile neighborhood. The EUs mission will not end with the this mission, but the EU will be also doing, as Ms. Wiedey explained, follow-up missions, to support the electoral process, to support civil society organizations. Riccardo Chelleri, policy officer for Democracy and Electoral Observation at the EEAS, added that this is the most important [electoral observation mission] of the year for the European Union.
J Walter Thompson South Asia appoints Raji Ramaswamy as the CEO of Contract Advertising with effect from July 3, 2017. She replaces Rana Barua as he moves out due to personal reasons.

With over 25 years in marketing and brand management at J Walter Thomson, Ramaswamy is a seasoned communications professional with depth and width of experience. She is driven by all the opportunities in todays communications landscape including digital, activation, design and integrated marketing. Over the years, she has worked with some of the most high-profile companies and brands, in Mumbai and later in Kolkata, including Kelloggs, DeBeers, ITC, Tata Steel, Berger Paints and Exide, to name a few.

As the head of JWT Kolkata, she has led a large team to significant business wins and expanded the operations. She has been instrumental in nurturing a workplace that has a diverse pool of creative talent and capability. Under her leadership, JWT Kolkata has consistently held the leadership position in the region and continues to grow.

Her key achievements are leading teams in Category Development, Strategic Planning, Brand Insights, Communication Development and Brand Management. Ramaswamys deep understanding of the business plays an important role in enabling her to orchestrate multidimensional brand solutions.

Speaking on the appointment, Tarun Rai, CEO, JWT South Asia, said, I have known Raji for over a decade. She is a consummate advertising professional. Her passion and energy are infectious. She leads from the front and is totally committed to her work and to her clients. She understands the power of collaboration, is a team player and an excellent leader. I am very confident that she will do exceptionally well in her new role and help in meeting our clients business objectives and in taking Contract to greater heights.

On her new assignment, Raji Ramaswamy, CEO, Contract India, said, Contract Advertising has always been an iconic brand and respected for its commitment to building great brands. With this opportunity, I hope to leverage my vast experience in brand building across categories by creating meaningful communication that will deliver on brand objectives and create campaigns that will work for our clients and the agency.

Commenting on Barua, Rai said, Over the last four years, Rana has built an excellent team of professionals, helped in developing new capabilities, built business and reputation. As a result of his efforts, Contract continues to be counted as one of the best agencies in the country. He will be missed and I am sure he will make a success of whatever he chooses to do next. We wish him all the very best.

Speaking about his movement, Barua said, It's been an outstanding and fulfilling four and a half years for me at Contract and I have enjoyed every moment of this journey. Contract is now clearly among the top few agencies of the country and poised only to get bigger and better.

Ramaswamy is a member of the Global Diversity and Inclusion Council at J Walter Thompson and a recipient of The Telegraph She Leadership Awards 2016.

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I would offer the same guidance as I offer my colleagues at work - get a quote from a Perth company as when your goods arrive in Perth, you can sort out any problems with the shipment with a company that is ear to you.



If you arrange shipment with a Dubai company and they make a mess, or play silly with you, you're too far away to put ay pressure on them.



Cheapest is by sea, shared container which can take a bit longer but is undoubtedly cheaper.
Yeah, I was gonna say Jet, Sta Rosa, Laguna isn't rural anymore. Very built up and overbuilt for the infrastructure in many places with traffic headaches galore. It was great in 2008 or so, but now a traffic mess....one of the reasons we are likely to cross it off our possible retirement landing spots. Still good places to go hangout, eat, drink, golf, etc from the friends I have there now.
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Its a common practice in counseling that a clients norms and culture hold sway during a session. And so the counselor adjusts.

That is something Mehmet Avci can say hes mastered  and not just because hes getting his degree in counseling.

When you enter a different environment, you learn different things, even with teaching, he said. I moved here and had to adjust.

Avci came to San Antonio seven years ago, leaving his home in Ankara, Turkey, as part of a government scholarship program.

After I came to the United States, I had culture shock, some obstacles, you know? he said. When I first attended classes, I was very silent. I was understanding everything, but I couldnt speak.

On Saturday, the 34-year-old will be graduating from St. Marys University with a doctorate in counselor education and supervision.

Were very pleased to have had Mehmet as a student. Weve learned as much from him as hes learned from us, said Alfredo Varela, executive director of the Center for International Programs at St. Marys.

More Information Upcoming graduation ceremonies UTSA 10 a.m. Saturday, Alamodome 4 p.m. Saturday, Alamodome 2 p.m. Sunday, Alamodome Our Lady of the Lake 4:30 p.m. Sunday, Freeman Coliseum Trinity 9 a.m. Saturday, Parker Chapel 10:30 a.m. Saturday, Laurie Auditorium St. Mary's 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Alumni Athletics and Convocation Center Incarnate Word 7 p.m. Friday, Alice McDermott Convocation Center 10:30 a.m. Saturday, McDermott center 6 p.m. Saturday, Freeman Alamo Colleges St. Philip's College: 7 p.m. Friday, Freeman San Antonio College: 10 a.m Saturday, Freeman Northwest Vista College: 7 p.m. Monday, Freeman Palo Alto College: 3 p.m. May 20, Freeman See More Collapse

The Turkish program that brought Avci here sends the nations undergraduates across the world to pursue their masters and doctoral degrees. The program pays for tuition and gives the students monthly stipends in exchange for them agreeing to return to Turkey and teach at a public university. Avci also got his masters degree through the program, from the University of Texas at San Antonio.

We know he will make a difference in the lives of people back in Turkey, Varela said.

Its important to understand how the time students spend in such a welcoming community  like St. Marys University and San Antonio  can affect their perceptions of the world, he added. The influence of their experiences here can have far-reaching effects.

Because of the program, Avci was able to become the first of his lower-to-middle-class family to travel outside of Turkey.

But when he first arrived in the U.S., there were some cultural differences he had to deal with  while men in Turkey regularly link arms in the street and sometimes kiss each other on both cheeks in greeting, thats not exactly common here.

He was also used to a more homogenous population. Its a multicultural environment in Texas, so that made it difficult, he said. There is no one behavior.

But fast-forward seven years, and Avci has made a home for himself in San Antonio. Even the student cashiers at the campus Starbucks, after weeks of mishearing and misspelling his name when he first enrolled, dont even have to ask him his name anymore  although hes become just Met to them.

Avci said that knowing hell be headed back home is strange for him. Hes excited to see his family and begin teaching at Recep Tayyip Erdogan University, but hes sad to leave the place hes spent the last seven years growing in as an academic and a person.

The mixed feelings, you cannot explain, he said. Even if you are a counselor or a psychologist, you cannot explain that kind of feeling.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net
After suing Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath last year over the latest optional, statewide teacher assessment system, several teachers organizations in Texas and the commissioner have reached an agreement on teacher evaluations.

The compromise involved how to incorporate student performance when evaluating teachers. The Texas Education Agency agreed to strike out specific student performance measurements, including test results, and allow districts more freedom in how to grade teachers.

The Texas State Teachers Association called the compromise a win for teachers. But Tim Regal, director of instructional leadership at the TEA, said that was misleading. In a news release, the TEA said the agreement affirms key components of teacher evaluations in Texas.

The dispute centered on the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System, or T-TESS, which the states school districts could choose to adopt. Many smaller districts lack the resources to create their own assessment systems and rely on the states. One of the components of the states assessment is student growth.

The Texas Administrative Code originally gave districts four methods to choose from to measure student growth: student learning objectives, student portfolios, pre- and post-test results on district-level assessments, or value-added data based on student state assessment results.

But the TSTA, along with the Texas Classroom Teachers Association, the American Federation of Teachers Texas affiliate and the Association of Texas Professional Educators, sued last year, saying the T-TESS violated state law by basing teacher evaluations on student testing performance.

The compromise was reached after all parties agreed to strike out the specific options and instead allow districts to choose how to measure student growth.

We are happy that Commissioner Morath has agreed to remove a provision from his evaluation system that not only has been discredited by experts but also violated state law, TSTA President Noel Candelaria said in a statement.

Clay Robison, spokesman for the teachers association, said: They (the TEA) dont want to acknowledge they had a legal problem with the (assessment), but obviously they did because they agreed to settle and not go to court.

TEA officials, however, point out that student testing remains an option for measuring student growth and, in turn, teacher performance.

The only thing were changing in rule is the four different ways to pursue measures for growth, which they had the option to choose from. So clearly thats not illegal, Regal said.

A note at the end of the agreement clarifies that while districts are required to include student growth and classroom management in local teacher appraisal systems, they are free to weigh those factors how they choose as well as to add additional factors.

The T-TESS is currently being used in more than 1,000 school districts across the state.

sfosterfrau@express-news.net
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Texas is on the verge of eliminating straight-ticket voting, which supporters say would force voters to pay attention to every race on a ballot but critics say could decrease turnout and put the state at risk of yet another civil rights lawsuit.

I disagree that (straight-ticket voting) is a right, I believe it is an option, said Rep. Ron Simmons, R-Carrollton, author of House Bill 25. I believe this will provide better candidates, better elected officials and I do not believe it will harm voting down the ballot.

Statewide, 63 percent of Texas voters cast straight-ticket ballots during the November general elections, according to Texas Election Source, a non-partisan data-driven public policy group. In Bexar County, the figure was 57 percent with 340,847 voters casting straight ticket ballots for either all Republicans, all Democrats, all Libertarians or all Green Party candidates out of a total of 598,691 votes cast. Forty percent of all straight ticket ballots were for the Republican Party; 57 percent went to the Democrats.

The figures are similar for previous years; more than half of Bexar County voters have cast straight ticket ballots in the last four presidential election years.

When voting a straight ticket, also known as one punch voting, a voter only has to punch one button to vote for all the candidates in the voters chosen party instead of having to click on each individual race, which in some years and some larger cities could number as many as 100.

While critics of the bill are largely Democrats, observers over the years have noted that both major parties have unexpectedly lost down-ballot races when there is heavy straight-ticket voting.

HB 25 was approved by the Senate Business and Commerce Committee, 7-0 with two absent, on Thursday morning and is now headed to the full Senate. It already has passed the House; if the bill is approved by the full Senate without any changes, it will be sent to Gov. Greg Abbott.

During the House floor debate last week, Simmons said the bill would help all Texans by ending blind one-punch voting, with most voters not even thinking about the candidates that are down the ballot.

According to Texas Elections Source, Texans cast a record 5.6 million one-punch votes in 2016, a 13 percent increase over the previous record set in 2012, placing the state first nationwide.

In this past election cycle, 90 percent of county offices were uncontested on the November ballot and that is largely because were in a cycle where straight-party, one-punch voting continues to fuel the self-reinforcing cycle that drives down the number of choices that voters ultimately have in general elections, said Jeff Blaylock, publisher of Texas Elections Source.

Texas is one of only 10 states that still allow straight-ticket voting. North Carolina eliminated it in 2013, and Blaylock said Texas Elections Source ran various analyses after that change but found no systematic decrease of turnout.

Democrats have said that some ballots contain as many as 100 offices or more, and that forcing people to vote item by item would significantly increase waiting lines, which in turn could lead to voter suppression.

At Thursdays hearing, Sen John Whitmire, D-Houston, expressed concerns similar to those of House Democrats at last weeks debate. He said that one-punch voting is used by Texans who are clear on their party affiliations, and that eliminating the option would leave the public at a loss of what to do, especially with down-ballot candidates such as judicial and school board races.

I dont know how you expect people of any persuasion to understand down-ballot candidates, Whitmire said. I am shocked, quite frankly, that the people in charge of the state right now want to go there because theyre doing pretty damn good under the current system, but I do think it will certainly confuse a lot of voters that will just give up.

Glen Maxey, member of the Texas Democrats executive committee and former Texas legislator, said that having the bill heard by the Senate Business and Commerce Committee instead of Senate State Affairs is what federal courts have noted as abnormal legislative procedure in past litigation.

The chair of the Senate Business and Commerce Committee is Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, who is the author of HB 25s Senate companion bill.

Since March, federal courts have ruled against Texas three different times in cases of discriminatory intent against African-American and Hispanic voters. In March, courts ruled that the Legislature knowingly discriminated in 2011 when it drew three congressional districts. Last month, the same judges found that lawmakers redrew House districts during the same year for the same purposes.

A federal judge also ruled in April that the Legislature intended to discriminate on racial grounds when it approved Texas voter ID law in 2011, in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act.

Simmons said on the floor that he was unaware of the court decisions.

Maxey also noted that the Legislature has not conducted any impact study to determine whether eliminating straight-ticket voting would disproportionately impact minority citizens right to vote, which is protected by federal law.

Precincts with higher percentages of African-American and Hispanic voters have more straight-party ticket voting than precincts with lower African-American and Hispanic voters, Maxey said. This takes away one method of voting that minority voters overwhelmingly use to choose the candidates of their choice.

elutz@express-news.net

@elenamejialutz
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An Army maintenance crew worked on an Abrams tank parked in an open-walled vehicle bay that offered the soldiers only partial protection from the whims of the weather.

This wasnt Iraq, Afghanistan or another war zone where U.S. troops expect to repair vehicles while exposed to the elements. The setting on a recent afternoon was Fort Hood, one of the countrys largest Army bases operated by a military generally considered the most potent in history.

The problem facing the crew  the tanks are too big for most of the posts indoor bays  exemplifies a gathering crisis as the Army confronts an $11 billion maintenance backlog that forces soldiers to work and live in obsolete buildings on posts nationwide.

Fort Hood alone accounts for more than 20 percent of that figure, with $2.3 billion in overdue upgrades of motor pools, aircraft hangars, barracks and other facilities, along with roads, dams and bridges. Hundreds of the posts 6,000 buildings date to the 1950s and 60s and were last renovated a quarter-century ago.

The Pentagon has rated the condition of 33,000 Army post facilities, or one in every five, as poor or failing. The maintenance backlog has received scant attention despite President Donald Trumps promise of a great rebuilding of the military, and Army officials caution that further neglect of bases could impair preparation of soldiers and equipment headed to war zones.

Our installations are a reflection of troop readiness, said Lt. Gen. Gwendolyn Bingham, assistant chief of staff for Army installation management. To train, fight and win, you need the proper facilities and infrastructure.

Base maintenance has fallen as a funding priority for the Army as a result of 16 years of uninterrupted war and, since 2013, budget caps imposed by federal lawmakers on military and nonmilitary spending.

The chances of either side of that equation changing appear small as Trump sends more troops into global hot spots and a budget fight looms over his plan to gut various nonmilitary programs to boost defense spending by $54 billion next year. (The budget that Congress passed two weeks ago added $12.5 billion in new military funding for this year, less than half the amount he sought.)

The Army has deferred base renovations in response to the more urgent demands of preparing soldiers to deploy and bolstering its arsenal. Retired Maj. Gen. Anthony Cucolo, who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan during his 35-year military career, described the choice between investing in new barracks or sufficient training as undesirable yet obvious.

The American people might feel bad for a soldier sleeping under a leaky roof here at home, said Cucolo, an associate vice chancellor with the University of Texas System. But they will not accept  at all  soldiers dying on foreign soil because they havent received the training they need.

Trump has given approval to military commanders to increase the number of ground forces in Iraq and Syria, and over the next several weeks, he is expected to send as many as 5,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to join 8,400 already there.

The moves coincide with a rise in tensions between the U.S. and North Korea, Russia and Iran, and have raised the prospect of a mass deployment of troops. If that happens, military experts assert, the corrosive effect of maintenance delays could cause equipment lines to rupture.

Infrastructure is not very sexy but its vital, said retired Maj. Gen. Kendall Cox, a former deputy commander at Fort Hood. And the concern in a major conflict is whether all the necessary equipment would be ready to roll out when its needed and soldiers have had enough time to train on it.

Like musical chairs

Marchilla Isom recalled his tour to South Korea last year as he stood beside a Bradley fighting vehicle in an indoor maintenance bay at Ford Hood. A chief warrant officer 3 with the 7th Cavalry Regiment, he and his maintenance team worked in a state-of-the-art facility overseas that enabled them to complete a full inspection of a Bradley in 10 days.

The Fort Hood bay, part of a motor pool built 40 years ago, has slots for seven vehicles. But only four Bradleys fit at a time, and the low ceiling requires the crew to drive vehicles outside to remove turrets and engines. The space constraints can extend the turnaround time to two weeks or longer.

Its like musical chairs, said Isom, 35, an Iraq War veteran. You definitely get creative because you have to figure out what youre going to do outside. Its a little frustrating.

Two-thirds of Fort Hoods 68 motor pools fail to meet Army requirements for capacity and facility equipment. The base needs $700 million to renovate or replace 29 motor pools, including 13 built as far back as the Korean War. The Pentagon has approved construction of one in 2023.

The cramped facilities lead to incremental delays in repairs that can limit the availability of vehicles and, over time, disrupt training schedules.

There definitely is an impact on our readiness based on the lack of functionality of our motor pools, said Brian Dosa, Fort Hoods director of public works.

Building maintenance lags at other Army posts in Texas. The cost of overdue repairs at Joint Base San Antonio, comprised of Fort Sam Houston and two Air Force installations, Lackland and Randolph, approaches $28 million. The amount exceeds $61 million at Fort Bliss in El Paso.

Some 37,000 troops are stationed at Fort Hood, and units based at the sprawling installation outside Killeen remain in heavy rotation in the militarys war operations.

A brigade combat team with the 1st Cavalry Division sent 3,800 troops and 2,800 vehicles to Kuwait earlier this year to support the campaign to oust Islamic State from Iraq and Syria. Hundreds of other soldiers with the 1st Cavalry and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment are deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army has slashed spending for base construction and maintenance from $13 billion in 2009 to $1 billion this year. During the same span, the Army has halved its budget for modernizing equipment to $25 billion, a reflection of Congress trimming the Pentagons war funding as the military withdrew most of its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior leaders contend the pace of overseas rotations and the cap on military spending dictated the cuts, and that those cuts, in turn, create maintenance delays and equipment shortages that weaken the forces state of readiness.

Gen. Daniel Allyn, the Armys vice chief of staff, told federal lawmakers in January that two-thirds of its 58 brigade combat teams lack enough soldiers, training and equipment to deploy within 30 days.

Talk of a large mobilization of forces has amplified under Trump, who has diverged from former President Barack Obamas policies by providing greater latitude to military leaders to fight ISIS. The lobbying of the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who three months ago called for more troops to aid Afghan forces battling the Taliban and ISIS, appears to have succeeded. His counterpart in Europe has made a similar appeal amid Russias ongoing aggression in the region.

The musical-chairs predicament that besets Isom and his crew as they work on armored vehicles at Fort Hood exists across the Armys bases to varying degrees. Cucolo suggested that a repeat of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq in 2007 or Afghanistan two years later would expose how the glut of obsolete buildings affects soldiers deploying to war zones.

You have to give troops time to train, and if equipment and vehicles arent ready, then you have the 21st-century version of training with wooden weapons, he said, referring to the Armys scarcity of firearms when the U.S. entered World War II.

Cucolo added that the repair delays would slow shipment of vehicles to Iraq, Syria or elsewhere, deepening the risk for forces on the ground.

The initial shock effect of mobilization is where the impact of deferred maintenance will really be felt, he said. But thats the American way of war: We wait until were in a crisis to address problems weve known about.

Absence of planning

Army officials tend to blame Congress for the $12 billion drop-off in the construction and maintenance budget since 2009 while ignoring their own culpability. Mark Cancian, a defense budget analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a bipartisan policy research group in Washington, identified them as principal architects of the dilemma.

The Army made the decision to live off prior construction, and you cant do that forever, he said. No one has forced the Army to under-invest in its facilities. Thats the Armys choice based on what it assesses as its priorities.

Army troop levels reached 570,000 in 2010 in the midst of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The National Defense Authorization Act that Congress passed in December allocated funding for 476,000 soldiers, halting a drawdown that would have lowered the active-duty force to 450,000 by next year.

The rapid increase in the number of troops as the wars intensified brought at once an expansion of the Armys infrastructure and a misguided sense of funding security among senior officials. They were unprepared when federal lawmakers placed limits on military and nonmilitary spending, a process known as sequestration, starting in 2013.

Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, faulted that absence of planning, in part, for the $11 billion maintenance backlog.

It was the Armys decision to support a larger force structure, and it did so on the hope that the budget would grow, he said. They assumed that the spigot of money would stay turned on.

The funding that flowed to military installations in the decade after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 largely bypassed Fort Hood, where more than 55,000 soldiers were stationed in 2010. The post had received upgrades in the 1980s and 90s, and Army officials gave precedence to other bases.

Fort Hood opened a $500 million medical center two years ago, and the Army has approved a handful of construction and renovation projects totaling $250 million through next year.

But as with the motor pools, the barracks on the 75-year-old base attest to decades of deterioration, with the condition of 54 of the 99 buildings rated as poor or failing by Army standards. Plumbing, electrical, lighting and ventilation problems have forced the closure of two barracks and portions of others.

Replacing the 10 barracks in the worst condition and renovating the other 44 would cost $560 million. Cucolo, who served as commanding general at Fort Stewart in Savannah, Georgia, regards that kind of investment as essential for persuading young soldiers to re-enlist.

If they live and work in lousy conditions at home when theres not necessarily a good reason for those lousy conditions, he said, theyre not going to feel like sticking around.

BRAC inertia

The Pentagon reported last year that the military carries 22 percent in excess base capacity. The study has prompted top officials to urge Congress to shut down more installations through another round of base realignment and closure, or BRAC.

The process claimed Kelly AFB in San Antonio in 2001 and established Joint Base San Antonio four years later, when the Pentagon merged Fort Sam Houston with Lackland and Randolph.

The closing of 120 bases during five BRAC cycles has saved the military an estimated $12 billion a year. A new round would yield annual savings of $2 billion that then could be reinvested in existing infrastructure at Fort Hood and other large bases that possess ample space and facilities for thousands of more troops.

The impediment to that solution is political in nature. Cox, who retired as Fort Hoods deputy commander two years ago, explained that closing bases represents a third rail to federal lawmakers.

Theres a fear with BRAC, especially on the congressional side, that if they lose their installation, it will have an impact on their constituents, he said.

The inertia has drawn criticism from Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. In January, he derided his colleagues as cowardly for ducking a discussion of BRAC in recent years, and he has vowed to push the topic in coming months.

McCain has proposed a $640 billion military budget for next year, or $37 billion above what Trump has requested. Yet regardless of the eventual figure in 2018 and beyond, most observers expect the maintenance backlog to persist given the scope of the Armys war operations.

The question always is where to put that first dollar, said Cox, head of the Heart of Texas Defense Alliance, an advocacy nonprofit based in Killeen. And the reality is, its not going to go toward infrastructure. Combat readiness is always going to need to be the priority.

In that context, maintenance delays at Fort Hood qualify as collateral damage in the countrys forever wars. Retired Lt. Gen. Paul Butch Funk, who served as the bases commander in the mid-1990s, described that circumstance as outside the militarys control.

All the funding has been going to fight all these wars that political leaders are sending us into, he said. That hasnt been up to the Army.

mkuz@express-news.net

Twitter: @MartinKuz
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 1,378 people, 76 of them in South Texas, as part of a gang roundup between March and early May.

ICEs Homeland Security Investigations division, which investigates a range of federal crimes, regularly conducts such roundups targeting gang members and associates. This was the largest to date, according to ICE.

Only four of those arrested in the San Antonio area of responsibility, which includes Austin, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley, were immigrants. One was charged with illegally re-entering the country.

Those targeted were involved in crimes that have an effect not only here locally, but nationally and trans-nationally, so were focusing on gangs and organizations regardless of citizenship, said Brian Vicente, the assistant special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio.

Of those arrested, 1,098 were charged with state and federal crimes and 280 were put into deportation proceedings, according to a news release from ICE. The most common gang affiliation for those arrested in San Antonio and South Texas was with the Tango Orejon and Mexican Mafia prison gangs and Bloods street gang.

These organizations run themselves as a business, Vicente said. You cant run a business and procure the contraband youre buying and selling without a connection to other organizations. We certainly dont produce cocaine here in the United States, so they have to branch out.

One of those arrested was Gilbert Vasquez III during an April 5 raid by the San Antonio Police Department Violent Crimes Task Force Initiative at his home on Canvas Back on the far West Side. During the raid, officials found guns, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and $48,390 in cash, according to an affidavit by an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Vicente said ICE is a member of the task force and works with other agencies during the gang roundups, which began in 2005. Since then the agency and its partners have made more than 45,000 gang-related arrests, an ICE news release.
Few tales of the 1836 siege and Battle of the Alamo capture the essence of sacrifice more vividly than the story of the Immortal 32 from Gonzales who entered the fortress five days before the early-morning attack that ended in the deaths of all 189 defenders.

A marker, erected 100 years after the men from Gonzales filed into the compound, stands today on the Alamo grounds, in grateful recognition of the supreme act of heroism of the thirty two men from Gonzales who gave their lives in response to pleas for help from Lt. Col. William Barret Travis, garrison commander.

Gonzales, named for Rafael Gonzales, 1820s governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, had a key role in the Texas Revolution. It was the westernmost Anglo-American settlement and the town closest to San Antonio. In September 1835, as tensions grew between townspeople and Mexican officials, dragoons were sent to retrieve a cannon the town had been supplied with four years earlier for defense.

Eighteen militia members who initially confronted the dragoons outside of town at the Guadalupe River would forever be known in Gonzales as the Old Eighteen. On Oct. 2, 1835, the Texans rallied, fired the cannon and raised a white Come and Take It banner, repelling Mexican forces that retreated to San Antonio. The skirmish became known as the Battle of Gonzales  the first battle of the war.

On Oct. 11, Stephen F. Austin took command in Gonzales and made preparations for an assault in San Antonio, 75 miles west. The Oct. 28 Battle of Concepcion, ending in a victory for the Texans in San Antonio, set the stage for the Siege of Bejar and the pivotal Dec. 5-9 Battle of Bejar, resulting in a Mexican surrender.

When Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna arrived with his army in San Antonio and demanded surrender on Feb. 23, 1836, Lt. Albert Martin, one of the Old Eighteen from Gonzales, was in the Alamo. He would ride out the next day, carrying the famed Victory or Death letter from Travis that urged the people of Texas & all Americans in the world to come to our aid, with all dispatch.

Nine men from Gonzales were already in the Alamo, including Almeron Dickinson, or Dickerson, another of the Old Eighteen and a Siege of Bejar participant, with his wife, Susanna, and young daughter, Angelina. Another was Dr. Amos Pollard, the garrisons surgeon general.

Martin reached Gonzales on Feb. 25 with the Travis letter and handed it to courier Launcelot Smither to continue east. Martin added a postscript that we were short of ammunition when I left.

Hurry on all the men you can in haste, Martin wrote. When I left there was but 150 determined to do or die.

Martin gathered 25 men in Gonzales who were later joined by seven others. They entered the Alamo on March 1 with John W. Smith, a scout and courier from San Antonio. Smith would later ride east to retrieve a 25-man force from San Felipe but would not return in time for the battle March 6, 1836.

According to Bill Groneman, author of Alamo Defenders, Pennsylvania native George C. Kimbell, a Battle of Gonzales participant, had mustered into the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers as its commander the day the Alamo siege began. Supplies he carried into the Alamo included 52 pounds of coffee.

Travis is believed to have given a cats-eye ring of gold with a black agate stone that now is part of the state-owned Alamo collection to Angelina Dickinson, who was not even 18 months old. Travis reportedly ran a string through the ring, tied it and placed it around Angelinas neck.

Susanna, Angelina and about 20 other women, children and slaves survived the battle. But all 189 known Alamo defenders, including the 41 from Gonzales, lost their lives. The victory would be costly for the Mexican side, leaving 300 to 500 soldiers dead or wounded and riling Texans and Americans to rally to aid the fight for independence  secured about six weeks later in the Battle of San Jacinto.

In his book, Sacrificed at the Alamo, Alamo historian-curator Bruce Winders recounted that Gen. Sam Houston arrived at Gonzales on March 11 to find more than 300 volunteers ready to assist the Alamo. That same day, though, two rancheros from Bejar arrived with word of the Alamos destruction, he wrote.

Houston initially had the two men held as spies. But Susanna Dickinson and Joe, Travis slave, later arrived and confirmed the sad news, Winders added.

The Gonzales 32 included Jacob C. Darst, a Kentucky native and frontiersman who served in the Battle of Gonzales and took his son to the battle site to record it for posterity. Dolphin Ward Floyd, who had a wife and three children, died at the Alamo on his 32nd birthday. George Washington Cottle, a 25-year-old Battle of Gonzales participant, would have twin sons born after his death at the Alamo.

Jesse McCoy, whose beating at the hands of a Mexican soldier six months earlier angered the townspeople of Gonzales, died at the Alamo at 32. Also killed was 16-year-old Galba Fuqua, who had a broken jaw but was still alive near the end of the battle, Susanna Dickinson would recall. William Philip King, who persuaded his father to stay home and let him go to the Alamo instead, was the youngest of the 189 defenders  15 years, five months.

The fall of the Alamo left lingering scars on the people of Gonzales. According to research by the Gonzales County Historical Commission, one woman, Sidney Gaston, lost her husband, John Kellogg, 19; ex-husband, Thomas Miller, 41; and brother, John Gaston, 17.

In an 1891 interview with teacher-journalist John W. Hunter, recorded in a manuscript in the Texas State Library, Texian soldier Creed Taylor said, the screams and lamentations of the mothers, wives, children and sisters of these brave men who gave their lives for Texan liberty will ring in my ears so long as memory liveth.

Early-Texas historian John Henry Brown, in History of Texas from 1685 to 1892, would recall the men from Gonzales who willingly entered the beleaguered walls of the Alamo, to swell the little band under Travis  and the families who never saw them return.

It was my privilege to personally know and live near many of their widows and little ones and to see the latter grow into sterling manhood and pure womanhood. I never met or passed one without involuntarily asking upon him or her the blessings of that God who gave the final victory to Texas, Brown wrote.

shuddleston@express-news.net

COMING SATURDAY: An Essay by Cary Clack: The Sutton family from San Antonios East Side nourished ambition.
A San Antonio man who was freed from life in prison by President Barack Obama pleaded guilty Thursday to another drug charge he received after crashing his car while fleeing from officers.

Robert M. Gill, 68, whose life sentence for cocaine and heroin distribution conspiracy was commuted by Obama in 2015, was profiled last year in the San Antonio Express-News about his readjustment to life on the outside.

Behind bars from the time of his arrest in 1990, Gill earned a legal education inside prison libraries and successfully petitioned Obama for a second chance after his court appeals were exhausted.

In February, back in San Antonio, he picked up a backpack with a kilo of cocaine at a supermarket parking lot on the West Side from a confidential source working with Homeland Security Investigations. Gill sped away from Bexar County sheriffs deputies who tried to pull him over, crashing into another car at Callaghan and Bandera roads, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bettina Richardson.

Gill tried again to get away, but agents vehicles disabled his car, she said.

He told agents that he was going to sell (the cocaine) to make $26,000, Richardson told U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez.

Gill pleaded guilty to possession with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine. Five hundred grams is a little more than 1 pound.

He had been one of about 1,700 federal inmates whose sentences Obama commuted as part of a broader campaign to release nonviolent offenders serving long prison terms that dated to a frenzied period in the nations war on drugs. In the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of offenders were punished under mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for federal drug crimes that now carry shorter sentences.

Obama wrote in a signed notification that he granted Gills application because you have demonstrated the potential to turn your life around.  Now it is up to you to make the most of this opportunity.

In interviews last year, Gill said he maintained hope even as his three co-defendants died behind bars.

I believed there were people in government with rational minds who sooner or later would realize that the sentence wasnt fair, Gill said then. Yes, you have the thought that youre going to die in prison  thats a human reaction. But theres always the possibility that theyll acknowledge the injustice.

After his release in 2015, he began working as a paralegal for local criminal defense law firm LaHood & Calfas, and he appeared to make the most of it. A Vietnam veteran who succumbed to drugs, he said he sought to reform himself. He brought several clients to the practice through contacts he made while living at Crosspoint, a halfway house, attorney Neil Calfas, who hired him, told the Express-News last year.

His employer was unaware of his illegal activity in February, Calfas said.

The judge set sentencing for Aug. 16. Gill faces five years to 40 years in prison, and he also faces up to two years in prison in a revocation case stemming from his prior drug case.

gcontreras@express-news.net
In Sundays paper I told the story of Monty McCann and Joe Farris Jr., two San Antonio police officers dedicated to homeless outreach.

They are not doing typical police work. They hand out supplies and monitor the homeless. They help the homeless restore their IDs, a crucial step in restoring ones life.

They are more interested in getting the homeless into services than putting them into handcuffs. They are the HOPE team, which stands for Homeless Outreach Positive Encounters. And they are true to this name.

As McCann told me in April, We are probably one-third social worker, one-third case manager, one-third police officer.

Thats an extraordinary statement for someone who is 100 percent cop.

One question readers have raised is, why cant we do more of this? Its a compelling question, and the appeal of this holistic type of police work is obvious. Its humane, creative and focused on solutions. It is the exact opposite of the police-community conflict we so often see in the media.

It also has the potential to save money and reduce calls because it focuses on people in crisis. It might just save lives.

As Sgt. John Cooley said, the HOPE team (and similar efforts such as the Mental Health Unit) represents the last bastion of police work that everyone can get behind.

The short answer is, yes, more police work like this is possible and necessary. But the longer answer is complicated due to limited resources and the realities of the job.

Estimates vary, but the San Antonio Police Department has been short roughly 100 to 150 officers the past few years. This creates serious pressure on officers. It means overtime, which creates fatigue. It means potentially delayed response times for nonemergency calls. It also creates obstacles for innovation.

How then do you expand the HOPE team with so many vacancies creating so much strain?

Its a fair question. As Eugene ODonnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said in an interview, the grind of police work is relentless. He saw immense value in the HOPE team, but someone still has to take those domestic violence and rape calls.

There are cops who are not doing this kind of work who are going to domestic violence calls and arresting people over the objection of the victim, he said. And thats their job to do that.

He also cautioned about idealizing one form of policing over another.

There has been a narrative sold to people that police who are positive and nice to people are good, he said. And police who are in conflict with people are bad.

The reality, he said, is there is a part of policing that creates enemies.

Notice, he said, part. Not all of it.

So, yes, taking this view, the HOPE team can be expanded, and it should be. But that expansion has to coincide with filling those vacancies. It also shouldnt be viewed as a better form of police work  particularly in an era of cellphone videos  but as one part of the police-community equation. And so far, the department has taken that approach. McCann and Farris have trained a number of officers.

There is also the question of the short and long game. Outreach takes a long time. It might take months for McCann and Farris to convince someone on the streets to make a change. But if the homeless are pestering convention visitors or downtown businesses, the need to do something is immediate. Thats one reason cops keep ticketing the homeless  even though we know thats a failed response.

To their credit, McCann and Farris were sympathetic to all of this. They werent seeking to be popular with the homeless. They dont want panhandlers disrupting businesses, and they want uniform officers to apply pressure. They just want discretion when police respond to people in crisis.

Its probably a safe assumption that most cops get into the job to make a difference and help people  but responding to call after call can numb even the biggest heart. What the HOPE team has tapped into is meaningful policing that has become a community resource.

Agencies and the San Antonio Municipal Court call the HOPE team when they have clients or defendants who could benefit from this type of outreach. Desperate parents call the HOPE team to try to track down their adult children who are living on the streets.

Those guys make a difference, said John Bull, presiding judge at San Antonios Municipal Court. I would expand that team.

I would, too. Probably most of us would in a heartbeat. But that means filling vacancies and realizing outreach supplements traditional police work.

jbrodesky@express-news.net
(Scroll down to view Sec. Sonny Perdues video announcement)

SALEM, Ohio  U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced May 11 three major changes to the structure of the USDA.

First, the creation of an undersecretary for trade and foreign agricultural affairs in the USDA, a recognition of the ever-increasing importance of international trade to American agriculture.

The new undersecretary position is a sign of Perdues efforts to promote the U.S. agricultural industry, even as President Donald Trump has sought to undo trade pacts that benefit it.

On his second day in office last month, Perdue helped persuade Trump not to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada, arguing that doing so would hurt U.S. farmers. Trump has said he will work to renegotiate the pact instead.

As part of the USDA reorganization, Perdue also announced the creation of a newly named Farm Production and Conservation mission area to have a customer focus and meet USDA constituents in the field.

Finally, Perdue announced that the departments Rural Development agencies would be elevated to report directly to the secretary of agriculture, in recognition of the need to help promote rural prosperity. But, this change will eliminate the Rural Developments Senate-confirmed undersecretary.

Farm bill

Perdue issued a report to announce the changes, which address Congressional direction in the 2014 farm bill to create the new undersecretary for trade. The changes are also a down payment on President Trumps request of his cabinet to deliver plans to improve the accountability and customer service provided by departments.

Food is a noble thing to trade. This nation has a great story to tell and weve got producers here that produce more than we can consume, said Perdue. Our people in American agriculture have shown they can grow it, and were here to sell it in markets all around the world.

A reduction in USDA workforce is not part of the reorganization plan, the first of its kind since 1994.

Hesitation

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, raised concerns after hearing the plans. He supports the new trade position, he said, but it should not come at the expense of the Rural Development Program.

The program has awarded Ohio nearly $6 billion in loans and grants between 2009 and 2016, he said.

I welcome the extra emphasis on trade and look forward to working with USDA to sell Ohio ag products around the world, Brown said.

But I do not support eliminating the Undersecretary for Rural Development. Ohio counts on USDA Rural Development for support for everything from combating opioids, to building hospitals, to securing loans for local businesses to grow and create jobs.

The Center for Rural Affairs Policy Associate Anna Johnson also disagrees with the change in Rural Development.

If he makes this change, Perdue will be removing the position of the most significant rural advocate within USDA. Rural America stands to suffer as a result, she said.

Exports

The emphasis on trade comes at a time when U.S. agricultural and food exports account for 20 percent of the value of production, and every dollar of these exports creates another $1.27 in business activity.

Additionally, every $1 billion in U.S. agricultural exports supports approximately 8,000 American jobs across the U.S. economy.

As the global marketplace becomes even more competitive, the United States must position itself to retain its standing as a world leader, Perdue said.

Our plan to establish an undersecretary for trade fits right in line with my goal to be American agricultures unapologetic advocate and chief salesman around the world. By working side by side with our U.S. Trade Representative and Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, the USDA undersecretary for trade will ensure that American producers are well equipped to sell their products and feed the world, Perdue said.

Logical order

The second factor in the reorganization seeks to place agencies in more logical order. Under the existing structure, the Foreign Agricultural Service, which deals with overseas markets, and the Farm Service Agency, which handles domestic issues, were housed under one mission area, along with the Risk Management Agency.

The shuffle moves FAS under the new undersecretary for trade.

Additionally, a new undersecretary will be selected for a newly named Farm Production and Conservation mission area, which is to focus on domestic agricultural issues, and will provide oversight for FSA, RMA, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Under the reorganization plan, the undersecretary for natural resources and environment will retain supervision of the U.S. Forest Service.

Rural development

Having the Rural Development agencies report directly to the secretary of agriculture will ensure that rural America always has a seat at the table, Perdue said.

USDA employees and members of the public may comment on the reorganization plan by visiting this page hosted by the White House.

(2017 Farm and Dairy. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. AP contributed to this report.)
No one carries cash these days. Checks are prehistoric. Credit and debit cards are the way modern consumers prefer to buy farm goods and services. Farmers market vendors, roadside stand and agritourism operators that sell direct to consumers must accept credit cards to remain viable in todays marketplace.

Processing credit cards is easier and less expensive than you think. New technology for small businesses allows farmers to process payments anywhere sales happen  at the market, on the farm or online.

1. Mobile credit card processing

Companies like Square, PayPal Here and Payline Data offer mobile credit card processing to fit farmers needs. Plug a mobile card reader into your smartphone or Wi-Fi enabled tablet and then swipe, insert, tap, or key-in credit card numbers. Contactless chip readers securely process EMV (Europay, Mastercard, and Visa), and NFC (Near Field Communication) like Apple Pay. Card readers cost anywhere from $0 to $149 depending on the host company and technology. The average per transaction fee is 2.7 percent per swipe, insert or tap. Key-in fees average 3.5 percent + .15 per transaction.

2. Retail point-of-sale terminal processing

Terminal systems take point-of-sale (POS) processing to the next level. These systems might be more than a roadside stand seller needs but are a good fit for farm retail stores and agritourism operations that have a stationary checkout. Retail POS terminal systems allow farmers to insert, tap, swipe or key-in credit card numbers. Terminals start at $600. Monthly processing service starts at $30. The average per transaction fee is 2.7 percent per swipe, insert or tap. Key-in fees average 3.5 percent + .15 per transaction.

3. Online credit card processing

Farmers can process credit cards on their home computer with no additional hardware or equipment. Companies like Authorize.net and PayPal offer credit card processing services for merchants. PayPal and Amazon Pay allow customers to purchase farm products from your website using the information already stored in their PayPal and Amazon accounts for a fee of 2.9 percent + .30 per transaction. Farmers can embed Buy Now buttons and hosted shopping carts into an existing farm website to transform it into an e-commerce site.

Shopify provides an online platform for farmers to build an e-commerce website from scratch. Shopify also provides tools to help farmers sell products and process credit card payments from sales on social media.

Other considerations

Review each processors website, watch videos and demos.

Ask about volume and speed of processing.

Choose a company with a good reputation for security to protect both yourself and your customers.

Check pricing for set-up, software, hardware, monthly and transaction fees.

Ask about service limitations.

Be realistic about your technical ability.

Note customer service and technical support hours.

When your agribusiness grows, will the service grow with you?
Press Release



Palmerston, ON  The economics of growing wheat are an important factor for farmers as they consider their crop and variety selections. A unique new line of highly functional Canada Eastern Hard Red Winter wheat from C & M Seeds plans to increase return on investment for wheat growers and shift millers perception of Ontario winter wheat.

C & M Seeds has always been focused on innovation, says Ellen Sparry, General Manager at C & M Seeds. Wheat seed is our product focus, so when we were thinking about what could be the next big thing for wheat in Ontario we really saw promise in this new line of highly functional genetics.

With the goal of developing varieties to meet end use requirements, C & M Seeds engaged with Parrish & Heimbecker as the marketing channel for this pilot program.

We partnered with C &M Seeds on this project, because like them, Parrish & Heimbecker is looking to provide unique and profitable opportunities for Ontario farmers, says Andy Wilder, Wheat Merchant, Parrish & Heimbecker.

With a solid agronomic profile, high protein and great baking functionality, Arnold (registration pending) CEHRW wheat is in its third year of commercial field testing and has been supported by the Ontario Cereal Crop Committee for full variety registration.

We are hopeful Arnold (registration pending) will be fully registered for the fall 2017 planting season, Sparry states. For 2017, a limited number of contracts will be available on a contract production basis.

The variety will be produced under a C & M Seeds production contract as an identity preserved WheatPRO variety for Parrish & Heimbecker.

What makes Arnold unique is it offers Ontario growers a replacement for spring wheat, says Wilder. There is great potential for Ontario growers to grow a higher yielding crop with the functional profile of a traditional spring wheat.

For over 30 years C & M Seeds has been conducting research to find a variety of winter wheat with the functional profile of spring wheat. Arnold (registration pending) is showing great promise in achieving this profile, which will let us increase the overall usage of Ontario wheat with the milling industry, notes Sparry. Were committed to this program, and this is just the first variety were releasing in this niche class of functional winter wheats.

Currently, only about a third of wheat grown can be used domestically due to the quality profiles of the classes grown. C & M Seeds are hoping to shift usage with the development of this and other functional wheat varieties.

We want to grow the acreage and demand for wheat in Ontario and access markets that were previously unavailable to growers, says Sparry. Arnold (registration pending) has the potential to be a strong performer based on return on investment. Were excited to deliver a great program for growers with this unique niche of highly functional winter wheats  this is just the beginning.

Source : redwheat.com
Sampling work continues by Agrimin Ltd on Lake Mackay in north-east WA but Salt Lake Potash Ltd has taken the lead in the race to be first to produce Sulphate of Potash fertiliser from brine with plans to build a pilot production plant at Lake Wells, 190 kilometres north-east of Laverton.
Professor Ray Willis is the director of the solar energy company Sun Brilliance, which plans to have the 100-megawatt solar farm up and running by the end of the year.
Among those sites, I had areas within the site that I used a classification system to say  this is a degraded part, this is a more pristine part and then this is a part that was degraded and has been restored.
We hope that it could work everywhere, were definitely keen to get something going up in the Wheatbelt because I think they need it even more than us because we do have such a thriving young community and theres just a bit more distance between farms up there, Sophie said.
The future of Fauquier Times now depends on community support. Your donation will help us continue to improve our journalism through in-depth local news coverage and expanded reader engagement.

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Despite our literary reputation, Ireland does not have a long history in the genre of crime fiction. However, over the past couple of decades there has been an explosion of Irish crime writers winning awards and enjoying success both at home and abroad, although many choose to set their work outside of Ireland, often in the States.

Andy Carter

One exception is Jo Spain, author of the Inspector Tom Reynolds series. Her debut novel With our Blessing, published in 2015, is an uncomfortable but utterly gripping read which explores a shameful episode in our past. When the body of an elderly woman is found crucified in the Phoenix Park, it emerges that the woman was a nun. Inspector Tom Reynolds and his team realise that they may have a personal vendetta on their hands when they discover that the dead woman was Mother Superior in a rural convent outside Limerick which housed one of the notorious Magdalen Laundry mother-and-baby homes. Spains books are brilliantly written page-turners, with a real edge.

There is a view that in order for crime fiction to flourish in Northern Ireland, the conflict had to end. And although Stuart Nevilles debut The Twelve is set in Belfast after the start of the peace process, it is still a chilling depiction of sectarian violence. Part thriller and part ghost story, it tells the tale of former IRA hitman and heavy drinker Gerry Fegan, who is haunted by the twelve people he has killed during the troubles. The ghosts are seeking revenge and have selected Fegan as the instrument of that revenge. The Twelve is a book that stayed with me long after I finished it.

Eoin MacNamee, Booker-nominated for his novel Blue Tango, is a beautiful, lyrical writer. I particularly loved Orchid Blue (part of the Blue trilogy) which explores the murder of nineteen-year old Pearl Gambol, a real-life crime which led to the last public hanging in Northern Ireland. It is an atmospheric novel full of lilting, rhythmic prose.

It is impossible to leave out the wonderful Tana French when discussing crime fiction set in Ireland. Her debut In the Woods was a huge success but my favourite of hers remains The Likeness in which detective Cassie Maddox goes undercover to investigate the death of Lexie Madison, a woman who is her doppelganger. She moves into the womans house and the resulting story is eerie and claustrophobic as she finds herself torn between with her commitment to investigate and her developing relationship with the dead womans house-mates, who are suspects in the murder. Almost a gothic tale.

The Convictions of John Delahunt set in Victorian Dublin and written by archivist Andrew Hughes tells the true story of a paid informer for Dublin Castle who is convicted of the murder of a child. Packed with vivid period detail but with a lightness of touch which allows the murder mystery to develop, it also has a contemporary resonance: Delahunt is working as an informer because he has lost his home to the banks.

There are so many other novels and writers I could have chosen for this list, but I wanted to reflect the array of sub-genres existing in Irish crime writing today: thriller, police procedural, whodunit, psychological, historical.

My own books are traditional mysteries, with a murder at the beginning, a limited cast of suspects and a solution at the end, but with an emphasis on place. My story starts with setting and so I couldnt imagine locating my books anywhere but Ireland. And the sea-ravaged coastline of the wonderful and remote Inishowen peninsula in Co. Donegal, with its towering headlands, long white beaches, deserted forts and small communities were ideal for the books that I wanted to write.

Treacherous Strand by Andrea Carter is published by Constable, 8.99
Noel Gallagher has been described as a "chippy bloke" by Russell Brand.

Noel Gallagher

The 41-year-old comedian has a long list of celebrity pals, including the former Oasis band member, who he believes is a "normal" person, and will occasionally show a hint of "wisdom" when the air are together.

Speaking to NME magazine about the musician, the 'Forgetting Sarah Marshall' actor said: "Sometimes he's just a normal, quite chippy bloke from Manchester, but t other times you glimpse his wisdom."

And Russell has revealed musician Morrissey - whose full name is Steven Patrick Morrissey - is "always obtuse and vague".

He explained: "He is his art. I asked him what a bit of 'Now My Heart is Full' meant and he just went mysteriously: 'Oh you know ... the gang.' He's always obtuse and vague."

However, out of every celebrity he has met Oprah Winfrey is the most "powerful" woman.

Speaking about the 63-year-old television personality, who launched her own namesake chat show 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' in 1986, Russell said: "I remember seeing her direct a show and she was an eminent force. She'd taken her shoes off and was directing barefoot. She was in her flow. That woman is powerful."

by Charlotte Hough for www.femalefirst.co.uk


Theres a huge amount of change coming to the Square on EastEnders, as lies, betrayal and revelations come to light whilst residents struggle to keep their dark secrets under wraps. With the soap promising some life-changing surprises as the soap rolls on, old faces will make their return while new families embark onto Albert Square for the first time. Check out a trailer teasing some of the big twists and turns coming throughout the next few months below:

Following their rehousing from a nearby estate, Ted and Joyce Murray will be arriving in Albert Square with a piece of the past dragged along with them. Settling in and with the residents seemingly enjoying their new additions, the Taylors burst onto the scene and get off to an immediate bad start with the neighbours.

Meanwhile, Mick returns home to The Queen Vic, where tensions are running higher than ever before. Oblivious to the fact he no longer owns the pub, Mick will face a rude awakening when the truth eventually creeps out. Whitney is also dealing with the ramifications of ending her relationship with Lee, facing a fresh start but struggling to decide which life path she wants to go down.

Denise struggles with no income, but her pride doesnt allow her to ask or even accept the help she clearly needs. Patricks return is right around the corner, so shell be looking to get back on track, but with no clear path to making that comeback its harder than she imagined.

On the other side of the Square, Lauren is hoping to impress her employer but leaves Steven feeling like hes losing her. Happy to go as far as is necessary to keep her by his side, there could be some shady dealings in the near future for the couple. The two becomes a love triangle too, when Josh fails to hide his feelings for Lauren. Will she remain faithful?

Then we have Charlies battle to take Jack to Ireland, leaving Jack not only grieving following the loss of his wife, Ronnie, but scared of the future. Unaware that Max is involved, Jack takes drastic action to ensure hes successful in keeping Matthew on the Square. When the Chairman makes an appearance however, theres no telling exactly how much things are going to change on EastEnders.

EastEnders continues throughout the week on BBC One.

by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk

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LVMH has announced the launch of its multi-brand e-commerce website called 24 Sevres in collaboration with Le Bon Marche, a French department store. The website will be launched in early June and offer products of over 150 luxury brands such as Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton. It will stock women's fashion, beauty products and accessories.

24 Sevres will initially be available in 70 countries and will subsequently expand to 5 more countries. A few million euros have been invested by LVMH in this new venture.

The name 24 Sevres has been taken from the Paris address of Le Bon Marche  24 rue de Sevres. The new shopping portal can be expected to have standout customer service along with features like click-and-collect for Paris, express delivery in 75 countries and guidance from fashion experts based in Paris via web chat, in English and French.

LVMH has announced the launch of its multi-brand e-commerce website called 24 Sevres in collaboration with Le Bon Marche, a French department store. The website will be launched in early June and offer products of over 150 luxury brands such as Christian Dior and Louis Vuitton. It will stock women's fashion, beauty products and accessories.#

LVMH will also collaborate with artists and innovators to give a cultural twist to fashion by sharing innovative content on its platform, according to media reports. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Roberto Cavalli SpA has announced the appointment of Paul Surridge as creative director, with responsibility over all the group's brands and for all creative functions. The appointment is with immediate effect. Surridge's first season as creative director will be Women's Collection Spring/Summer 2018, which will be showcased in Milan in September 2017.

Surridge worked at Calvin Klein during the 90s and then joined Christopher Bailey at Burberry from 2003 to 2007. In 2007 he was appointed Jil Sander's design director men under Raf Simons' leadership. From 2011 to 2014 Surridge was creative director of Z Zegna and then creative consultant of Acne Studios, with responsibility for the coordination and supervision of all activities related to men's wear collections.

"I have worked with Surridge, and I had the opportunity to appreciate his creative talent as well as his managerial abilities. Surridge has a 360-degree vision on brands and branding. He is passionate, mature and an amazing team player. We all believe that he is the ideal candidate to complete our management team and contribute to implement the ambitious development plans for Roberto Cavalli, which we have agreed with our stakeholders," said Gian Giacomo Ferraris, chief executive officer of Roberto Cavalli SpA.

Roberto Cavalli SpA has announced the appointment of Paul Surridge as creative director, with responsibility over all the group's brands and for all creative functions. The appointment has immediate effect. Surridge's first season as creative director will be Women's Collection Spring/Summer 2018, which will be showcased in Milan in September 2017.#

"I am honoured and proud to carry forward the legacy of this extraordinary Italian house. This is a unique opportunity to contribute a new chapter to the Roberto Cavalli universe, which positively celebrates the beauty, sensuality and power of women. It is my intention to show the passion I share for the codes and vision on which Roberto Cavalli built his brand while celebrating the excellence of Italian craftsmanship," added Surridge. (KD)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
VF Corporation, a global leader in branded lifestyle apparel, footwear and accessories, has released its first-ever animal derived materials policy and announced that its brands will no longer use fur, angora or exotic leather. The policy lists prohibited animal materials and sets guidelines for procurement and use of approved materials by its brands.The progressive new policy, developed in partnership with the Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International, sets formal guidelines for the procurement and use of approved materials by the companys brands and global supply chain partners. The animal derived materials most often used by VF and its brands are leather, down and wool.

VF Corporation, a global leader in branded lifestyle apparel, footwear and accessories, has released its first-ever animal derived materials policy and announced that its brands will no longer use fur, angora or exotic leather. The policy lists prohibited animal materials and sets guidelines for procurement and use of approved materials by its brands.#

VF believes that all animals within the global commercial supply chain should be treated with care and respect. As we continue to promote the development of viable commercial substitutes to animal materials, this policy will help to ensure that the materials we use today are procured from sources that prioritise animal welfare and responsible business practices, said Letitia Webster, VFs vice president of global corporate sustainability.VFs new policy adds another milestone to the companys history of animal welfare actions. VFs Timberland brand partnered with other footwear brands, tanneries and retailers to form the Leather Working Group to promote responsible practices within the leather industry. In 2014, The North Face brand announced its Responsible Down Standard (RDS), a global standard through which any brand can evaluate and certify its complete down supply chain. The RDS was developed in partnership with Control Union and Textile Exchange, which now manages the programme. VF also participates in programmes centred on best practices in the wool industry."The Humane Society of the United States applauds VF for demonstrating compassionate leadership in the apparel and footwear industries. This robust policy sets a bar to which others in the industry should aspire, said PJ Smith, manager of fashion policy for The HSUS.We commend VF for committing to stop using fur and other animal materials in their products. As a leader in the global apparel industry, VFs policy sends an important message to the industry that animal suffering has no place in fashion, said Kitty Block, vice president of HSI. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Ricoh has unveiled RICOH Ri 3000/Ri 6000 direct to garment printers, designed to make professional, high-quality apparel printing easier, faster and more flexible. The printers take garment printing to the next level by enabling direct printing on shirts, socks, and canvas grocery bags, and producing metallic foil applications to create eye-catching output.The printers boast an incredibly short route from design to print, thanks to intuitive software and print speeds as fast as 27 seconds a shirt. These devices print at 600 dpi quality even on traditionally difficult media, such as dark poly 50/50 blend.

Ricoh has unveiled RICOH Ri 3000/Ri 6000 direct to garment printers, designed to make professional, high-quality apparel printing easier, faster and more flexible. The printers take garment printing to the next level by enabling direct printing on shirts, socks, and canvas grocery bags, and producing metallic foil applications to create eye-catching output.#

Meanwhile, Ricoh's own industrial-grade printheads empower businesses to reliably produce high-volume orders as well as a custom one-off prints. These features combine to provide an excellent springboard for those looking to launch garment printing as a standalone business or who want to expand their print portfolio.The RICOH Ri 3000/Ri 6000 printers build upon AnaJet's (a Ricoh company) history of fast, high-quality garment printing. These efficient, flexible and highly productive printers open new worlds to print shops and their customers.Media options can include high-quality, durable prints on natural fibres, light poly and dark garments with up to 50/50 blends. Water-based inks deliver soft, long-lasting and eye-catching vibrant designs. Built-in white ink circulation dramatically improves ink flow and minimises waste while making high-quality prints viable on even the darkest of garments. The 2.3 inches of laser-assisted table height automatic adjustment eases printing on thick materials, such as hoodies with zippers. Granular drop-size controls help create even sharper applications.For those looking to bring the printing of branded apparel in-house, the printers low turn times and high quality can help reduce outsourcing costs for gift shops, universities and promotional products printers alike. These devices are designed specifically to make DTG printing fast and easy. A new, easy-to-use colour touch screen control panel further streamlines the print process. The included AnaRIP software enables users to print files directly from a USB flash drive or any networked PC without manual colour separation, a time-consuming process traditionally required for screen printing.Designs can be easily previewed and modified based on the colour of fabric they are being printed to, so designs look the same on the screen as they will on the garment. This minimises the need for costly test prints and in-depth technical tinkering. A print can be finished in as little as 27 seconds on the RICOH Ri 6000 or 51 seconds for RICOH Ri 3000 and then the ink is cured via heat press or tunnel dryer."Branded garments are one of the most popular graphic arts applications in the world. Offering them can encourage customers to turn to your business for more work. But for many businesses, it's difficult to find a powerful, capable, flexible device they can use comfortably and efficiently," said John Fulena, vice president, commercial and industrial printing group, Ricoh USA."So we wanted to make DTG printing both as flexible and as streamlined as possible. With the RICOH Ri 3000 and Ri 6000, our customers can start bringing lucrative, high-quality garment-printing in-house easily. A job can now be finished in under 30 seconds with just a few simple clicks. That's an amazing profit-per-second ratio," Fulena said. (SV)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Robert Lighthizer has been confirmed as the new United States Trade Representative (USTR). The United States Senate elected Lighthizer by a vote of 82 to 14. Lighthizer has previously served as staff director of the Senate finance committee and as deputy USTR. He also had a distinguished legal career specialising in international trade law.

Lighthizer succeeds Michael Froman, who held the position under Democratic president Barack Obama. National Council of Textile Organizations (NCTO) and National Cotton Council (NCC) have welcomed the appointment of Robert Lighthizer as the new USTR.

"In my estimation, Ambassador Lighthizer is likely the most qualified individual ever to be confirmed to this important post," said NCTO President and CEO Auggie Tantillo.

Robert Lighthizer has been confirmed as the new United States Trade Representative (USTR). The United States Senate elected Lighthizer by a vote of 82 to 14. Lighthizer has previously served as staff director of the Senate finance committee and as deputy USTR. He also had a distinguished legal career specialising in international trade law. #

Between ambassador Lighthizer and US department of commerce secretary Wilbur Ross, President Trump has assembled a first-rate team to handle trade and manufacturing matters," Tantillo continued.

The US textile industry is excited to work with secretary Ross and ambassador Lighthizer to fashion policy that will lead to more US textile production, investment and jobs," Tantillo added.

"Ambassador Lighthizer has extensive trade policy and trade negotiation experience with a career that includes work on Capitol Hill, at USTR and in private practice focused on trade policy and trade enforcement issues. The US cotton industry looks forward to working closely with him on short-term trade and export objectives as well as some longer term initiatives that are vitally important to a healthy US cotton industry," NCC chairman Ronnie Lee said.

Lee, a Bronwood, Ga., cotton producer, said the NCC will emphasise to Ambassador Lighthizer that strong exports and fair trade are critical components to a viable US cotton industry. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk  India
Read What Madhuri Dixit Has To Say About Sanjay Dutt

She told a daily, "For where I am today, this [the topic of Dutt] has become redundant. Life has come a long way since then. I don't know where these reports are coming from. In any case, it doesn't make a difference to me."

Sanjay & Madhuri Dated In The 90's

Sanjay Dutt and Madhuri Dixit's closeness was the hot topic of discussion in the 90's.

Why It Ended?

Their relationship ended when Sanjay Dutt was arrested in the year 1993. Madhuri did not even go to meet him in the jail.

After Sanjay's Arrest, Madhuri Gave Her Statement To The Press

After Sanjay Dutt was arrested, Madhuri Dixit announced to the media that she had nothing to do with Sanjay Dutt and they were not dating.

Later Madhuri Went To America

After that Sanjay Dutt married twice and Madhuri Dixit went to America for an arranged marriage.

When Madhuri Dixit Called Hirani

Rumour has it that when Madhuri Dixit came to know about the biopic on Sanjay Dutt, she called Rajkumar Hirani and asked him to remove her reference from the story.

Madhuri Also Took Salman's Help?

It is said that Madhuri Dixit also requested Salman Khan to talk to Sanjay Dutt about removing her scenes from the biopic.

On A Related Note

Ranbir Kapoor is playing the role of Sanjay Dutt in this biopic.
Diwanji Moola Grand Prix is the fourth directorial venture of popular film-maker Anil Radhakrishnan Menon. The film, which features Kunchacko Boban in it has Nyla Usha playing an important role in the movie.

Now, here is an update on Nyla Usha's role in the movie. According to a report by Times Of India, the actress will essay a character named Effymol, who is a corporation councillor.

Reportedly, Nyla Usha's character in the film doesn't believe in make-up and hence, she will be seen in a de-glam avatar. Interestingly, actor Kunchacko Boban will essay a character named Sajan Joseph, who is an IAS officer.

Much like the previous ventures of Anil Radhakrishnan Menon, the title of this film too holds lot of curious elements in it.

Meanwhile, it is after a brief break that Nyla Usha is appearing in films. She was previously seen in Jayasurya starrer Pretham, in which she did a cameo appearance.

Before that, she essayed an important role in Mammootty starrer Fireman. Her stint as a television host also went on to be successful with the show Minute To Win It gaining popularity.
In Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai, finally, the misunderstandings between Naira (Shivangi Joshi) and Kartik (Mohsin Khan) are cleared and the couple reunite.

But new problem has cropped up for Kartik and Naira in the form of Aditya. Only Naira and Naksh knew about Aditya's bad nature. In the upcoming episode, Kartik also will get to know that Aditya is torturing Kriti.

Kartik & Naira Decide To Expose Aditya According to the latest promo, Kartik and Naira will be seen asking Kriti to reveal Aditya's truth to family members and free herself. Kartik & Naira While Naira asks Kriti not to hide her problem, Kartik tells Kriti that there is no point in being in relationship with a person who doesn't respect you. Dadi Do Not Support Kriti But, Dadi interrupts by saying that in a relationship, small cracks are obvious. They have to forgive and forget to move on. Kriti Wants To Divorce Aditya According to the latest spoiler, Kriti decides to divorce Aditya, which leaves Dadi and Manish in shock. Kartik and Naira will support Kriti's decision. Reason Why Dadi Doesn't Want Kriti To Divorce Aditya... But, Dadi doesn't want Kriti to divorce Aditya as his company is merged with Manish's company. Manish values his business merger. Aditya Accuses Kriti Of Having Extra-Marital Affair With Naksh! Also, Aditya will be using Kriti and Naksh's friendship for his gain. He accuses Kriti for having an extra marital affair with Naksh! Aditya Will Kartik and Naira stop Dadi from sending Kriti to her sasural? Will they be able to expose Aditya and free Kriti? Stay locked to this space for the latest updates of the show...

During Kartik's birthday, Aditya tries to torture Kriti. But, Naira gets to know this and makes him fall. Kartik watches Naira and questions her.

Previously, Naira had revealed about Aditya's truth, but no one believed her. Naira doesn't want to repeat the same mistake. So, she decides to tell him about Aditya, when she has a proof.

Aditya follows Kriti to the room and forces her to eat the cake and sandwiches. Naira asks Kartik to go to Kriti's room to know the truth. Seeing Kriti hurt and suffer, Kartik is upset and realises that Naira was telling truth. He is extremely angry at Aditya and goes to hit him, but Naira stops him.

Kartik is shattered to know that his sister was suffering and he didn't even know it. He feels that he is not a good brother. But, Naira consoles Kartik. Finally, Kartik vows to teach him a lesson and expose him.

On the other hand, Dadi and Manish are happy that Kartik is back in the Goenka house. They are also happy that Naira didn't get Mansi arrested as she was responsible for Akshara's death.

Dadi decides to perform havan in the house. Dadi feels that girls are welcome in 'myka' but after marriage, their 'sasural' is their house. So, she also decides to send Kriti back to her sasural.
"Co-operation agreements are absolutely vital in fostering an environment of fintech innovation on a global scale."

Under the agreement, the FCA and SFC will co-operate on information sharing and referrals of innovative firms seeking to enter one anothers markets.

Having signed a similar agreement with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority in December 2016, todays announcement means that the FCA now has agreements with a number of key regulators in Hong Kong.

It has previously entered into fintech agreements with The Financial Services Agency of Japan and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition at the FCA, said: Co-operation agreements are absolutely vital in fostering an environment of fintech innovation on a global scale. In the last few months alone weve signed agreements with colleagues in China, Japan, Canada and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. Working with other regulators internationally, we want to build a common understanding of the principles of good innovation and we look forward to working closely with the SFC.

Ashley Alder, the SFCs Chief Executive Officer, added: This agreement will help both regulators stay abreast of innovation in financial services while providing innovative fintech firms seeking to develop and grow their businesses internationally with enhanced channels for communicating with regulators."
CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/11/17 -- Enbridge Inc. (TSX: ENB)(NYSE: ENB) (Enbridge or the Company) held its Annual General Meeting today, the first since combining with Spectra Energy Corp (Spectra Energy) and becoming North America's largest energy infrastructure company. Addressing shareholders, President and CEO Al Monaco provided an update on the Company's accomplishments and future opportunities, and its priorities of safety, execution of the growth plan and focus on customers and communities. He outlined the benefits to shareholders of Enbridge's combination with Spectra Energy, which closed in the first quarter. Mr. Monaco's full address to shareholders can be found on Enbridge's website under Events and Presentations.

During the regular business proceedings at the meeting, shareholders approved the election of all nominated directors. The detailed results of the vote for the election of directors are set out below.

Election of Directors

On a vote by ballot, each of the following 13 nominees listed in the Management Information Circular, dated March 13, 2017, were elected as directors of Enbridge:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nominee Votes For Votes Withheld -------------------------------------------- # % # % ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pamela L. Carter 1,065,529,082 99.57 4,619,594 0.43 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clarence P. Cazalot, Jr. 1,052,651,150 98.36 17,497,526 1.64 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marcel R. Coutu 1,043,181,275 97.48 26,967,401 2.52 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gregory L. Ebel 1,045,508,912 97.70 24,639,764 2.30 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- J. Herb England 1,054,143,631 98.50 16,005,045 1.50 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Charles W. Fischer 1,065,590,858 99.57 4,557,818 0.43 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. Maureen Kempston Darkes 1,029,074,847 96.16 41,073,014 3.84 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael McShane 1,064,262,122 99.45 5,886,554 0.55 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Al Monaco 1,034,315,312 96.65 35,833,364 3.35 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Michael E.J. Phelps 1,051,800,067 98.29 18,348,609 1.71 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rebecca B. Roberts 1,052,653,454 98.37 17,495,222 1.63 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dan C. Tutcher 1,051,800,067 98.29 18,348,609 1.71 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Catherine L. Williams 1,052,653,454 98.37 17,495,222 1.63 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

About Enbridge Inc.

Enbridge Inc. is North America's premier energy infrastructure company with strategic business platforms that include an extensive network of crude oil, liquids and natural gas pipelines, regulated natural gas distribution utilities and renewable power generation. The Company safely delivers an average of 2.8 million barrels of crude oil each day through its Mainline and Express Pipeline, and accounts for nearly 68% of U.S.-bound Canadian crude oil production, and moves approximately 20% of all natural gas consumed in the U.S. serving key supply basins and demand markets. The Company's regulated utilities serve approximately 3.5 million retail customers in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and New York State. Enbridge also has a growing involvement in electricity infrastructure with interests in more than 2,500 MW of net renewable generating capacity, and an expanding offshore wind portfolio in Europe. The Company has ranked on the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations index for the past eight years; its common shares trade on the Toronto and New York stock exchanges under the symbol ENB.

Life takes energy and Enbridge exists to fuel people's quality of life. For more information, visit www.enbridge.com.

Contacts:

Enbridge Inc. - Media

Suzanne Wilton

(403) 231-7385 or Toll Free: (888) 992-0997

Email: suzanne.wilton@enbridge.com



Enbridge Inc. - Investment Community

Jonathan Gould

(403) 231-3916 or Toll Free: (800) 481-2804

Email: investor.relations@enbridge.com






WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX) - U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco Thursday granted final approval for the 3.0-litre Volkswagen AG's (VKW.L, VLKAF.PK, VOW.BE) diesel-emissions settlement.



The Judge approved the $1.2 billion deal, which involves around 82,500 vehicles with 3-liter engines, including newer Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche cars and sport-utility vehicles.



The 3-liter settlement brings Volkswagen's tab for civil payments in the emissions scandal to around $17.4 billion, U.S. Justice Department attorney Joshua Van Eaton reportedly said in court Thursday.



Resolution of the civil case comes after another federal judge ordered the German auto maker in April to pay a $2.8 billion criminal fine as part of a plea deal with U.S. prosecutors. The company continues to face a criminal probe in Germany.



The 3-liter deal, which was given initial approval in February, offers a mix of buybacks for older models and the prospect of an emissions modification for the rest. If a modification doesn't win government approval, Volkswagen must buy back all the vehicles, which could increase its price tag from $1.2 billion to as much as $4 billion.



Separately, Judge Breyer also gave final approval to a $327.5 million settlement with German parts supplier Robert Bosch GmbH that resolves civil allegations that the company helped create the so-called defeat device software for use during emissions testing. An attorney for Bosch said the money is ready to be distributed.



The defeat devices made the vehicles appear to be compliant with emissions standards when in reality they were emitting illegal levels of pollutants. Volkswagen has admitted to installing the software on nearly 600,000 diesel-powered vehicles in the U.S. and some 11 million vehicles globally.



Separately, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. announced that it has appointed Stephanie C. Davis to serve as Chief Compliance Officer, effective immediately.



In her newly elevated role, Davis will direct strategy for and drive a culture of compliance and integrity that ensures adherence to legal and statutory requirements and the highest ethical principles. She will sit on the executive leadership team and report to Hinrich J. Woebcken, President and CEO of Volkswagen Group of America.



Davis joins Volkswagen Group of America from KPMG LLP, the audit, tax, and advisory firm, where she was a Director in the National Forensic Practice based in Washington, D.C. She has more than a decade of experience in compliance program and process design, implementation and oversight in corporate, advisory and academic settings in the United States.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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CUPERTINO (dpa-AFX) - Apple Inc. (AAPL) disclosed in a regulatory filing that it issued $7 billion in corporate bonds. Apple noted that it consummated the issuance and sale of $500 million aggregate principal amount of Apple's Floating Rate Notes due 2020, $750 million aggregate principal amount of Apple's Floating Rate Notes due 2022, $1 billion aggregate principal amount of Apple's 1.800% Notes due 2020, $1 billion aggregate principal amount of Apple's 2.300% Notes due 2022, $1.75 billion aggregate principal amount of Apple's 2.850% Notes due 2024 and $2 billion aggregate principal amount of Apple's 3.200% Notes due 2027, pursuant to an underwriting agreement dated May 4, 2017 between Apple and Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC, as representatives of the several underwriters named therein. The Notes are being issued pursuant to an indenture, dated as of April 29, 2013, between Apple and The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company, N.A., as trustee, together with the officer's certificate, dated May 11, 2017, issued pursuant to the Indenture establishing the terms of each series of Notes. 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.
International CRO continues its global conferences and speaking engagements in June

SynteractHCR, a full-service, international contract research organization (CRO), will attend and exhibit at various biotech and pharma conferences around the globe in June. The conferences include The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2017 Annual Meeting on June 2-6, the Pharmaceutical Contract Management Group (PCMG) Annual Conference 2017 on June 7-9, the Drug Information Association (DIA) 2017 53rd Annual Meeting on June 18-22, the BIO 2017 International Convention on June 19-22, The Development of Medicines: Comparing Research on Young and Older People on June 26, and Outsourcing in Clinical Trials (OCT) U.K Ireland on June 28-29.

ASCO 2017 brings together more than 30,000 oncology professionals from around the world to discuss the latest technologies and therapies in the field of cancer. SynteractHCR's Vice President, Strategic Development Etienne Drouet will be attending the five-day event in Chicago to discuss the latest treatments and the company's experience in oncology and immunotherapy drug development.

The SynteractHCR team will then head to Denmark to attend the PCMG Annual Conference, the premier event for clinical development outsourcing professionals.

At DIA 2017 in Chicago, SynteractHCR will exhibit in booth #2022. As the longest running event in the life sciences industry, DIA 2017 hosts more than 8,000 professionals in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device communities. SynteractHCR operational leadership and recruitment specialists will be available to discuss the capabilities the CRO brings to the industry and global career opportunities within the company.

Mathew Lampshere, senior director of contract services, will present "Best Practice Indemnification Provisions" on Monday, June 19, at 2:30 p.m. at the BIO 2017 International Convention in San Diego. More than 16,000 biotech and pharma professionals are expected to attend the convention, organized by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO).

Dr. Martine Dehlinger-Kremer, global vice president of medical and regulatory affairs, will co-chair the opening session of The Development of Medicines: Comparing Research on Young and Older People on "Ethical & Regulatory Considerations" on Monday, June 26, at 9:05 a.m. The day-long workshop, organized by European Forum for Good Clinical Practice (EFGCP) Children's Medicines Geriatric Medicines Working Parties, will be held at University College London.

SynteractHCR will wrap up its June conference schedule at OCT U.K Ireland in London. On Wednesday, June 28, at 9:45 a.m., SynteractHCR Director Regulatory Affairs Dr. Ludwig Baumann will present "The New EU Clinical Trials Regulation: As it Becomes the Law in 2018, Are You Prepared for its Impact to Drug Development in the EU?" He will discuss the advantages of the new EU clinical trial regulation and the impact that this will have on sponsors. SynteractHCR will also exhibit during the conference at booth #19.

Attendees interested in meeting with the SynteractHCR team at these events may contact Chief Commercial Officer Matt Smith at 760-268-8200 or matt.smith@synteracthcr.com.

Visit SynteractHCR's full schedule of events and follow its social channels on LinkedIn and Twitter for live updates during all conferences.

About SynteractHCR

SynteractHCR is a full-service contract research organization with a successful two-decade track record supporting biotechnology, medical device and pharmaceutical companies in all phases of clinical development. SynteractHCR has conducted Phase I-IV studies on six continents and 60 countries, offering expertise across multiple therapeutic areas, with notable depth in oncology, immunotherapy, CNS, infectious disease, endocrinology, cardiovascular and respiratory, among other indications. With its "Shared Work Shared Vision" philosophy, SynteractHCR provides customized services collaboratively and cost effectively, ensuring on-time delivery of quality data to help bring tomorrow's treatments to patients.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170531005574/en/

Contacts:

SynteractHCR

Nikki Sachman, 760-230-2424

nikki@clearpointagency.com
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

The Board of Directors ofQuadRealProperty Group today announced the appointment of Dennis Lopez as Chief Executive Officer, effective June 5th, 2017.

Mr. Lopez is a leader in global real estate. He comes toQuadRealwith deep relationships with real estate leaders around the world and a track record of success in CEO, CIO and MD roles at large real estate asset management and investment firms.

"From the outset,we believed that a successful search for a globally recognized real estate leader would complement our strong Canadian and growing international capabilities," said Paul Cantor, Board Chair,QuadReal. "Mr. Lopez has earned a reputation as an innovative, dynamic real estate executive who is focused on creating and delivering value."

Mr. Lopez' real estate career includes three decades of leadership experience, along with a background in real estate acquisition, development,M&A, financing and investment trusts.

Mr. Lopez will work with the company's Board of Directors and Executive Management to set and execute global and domestic real estate investment, development and management strategy across our core business lines - industrial, office, residential and retail. Implementation will include the enhancement of these lines and the underlying business services to support them, such as human resources and technology.

"QuadReal'smandate to become a leading institutional real estate investment firm, with properties in Canada and around the world, captures my imagination and inspires me to lead this team," said Mr. Lopez. "I am excited byQuadReal'spotential, and look forward to working with my new colleagues to deliver peerless service to our tenants and residents, desirable investment returns, and a rewarding work experience for every team member."

AboutQuadReal

QuadRealis a global real estate company with managed assets totalling more than $18 billion, including some of Canada's most well-known properties. Headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia,QuadRealis owned bybcIMC, one of Canada's largest institutional investors, and was established to manage its real estate assets.QuadRealis a Canadian investment and management company that operates in a global market. It aims to deliver prudent growth and strong investment returns and to create and sustain places that bring value to everyone - not just for now, but for the benefit of future generations.

Media contact:

Ian Noble

Edelman

+1-604-648-3482

ian.noble@edelman.com


The Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in NIBE Industrier AB took place on Thursday 11 May 2017 in Markaryd, Sweden, where the parent company is headquartered.



Markaryd, Sweden, 2017-05-12 08:48 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Just over 700 people attended the AGM at NIBE's Marketing Centre in Markaryd, which was packed with a lively audience. As usual, the meeting was opened and closed with music and the presentation of the NIBE Entrepreneur Award scholarship.



In his address, MD and Group CEO Gerteric Lindquist commented on the company's performance in 2016 and the start of 2017. He described NIBE's increasingly extensive internationalisation in all three business areas and the importance of continuous product development and growth. He also emphasised the significance of sticking with the success factors that have formed the basis of the Group's achievements so far and continuing to expand the sustainability targets, which are expected to become increasingly important in the future.



The decisions reached by the AGM included the following:



Dividend The AGM approved the Board's proposal to pay a dividend of SEK 0.88 per share. The record date for the payment of the dividend is 15 May 2017.



Members of the Board Re-elected to the board were Georg Brunstam, Gerteric Lindquist, Hans Linnarson, Eva-Lotta Kraft, Anders Palsson and Helene Richmond. Hans Linnarson was re-elected as the Chairman of the Board.



Auditors KPMG AB was elected as the company's auditor for the period until the 2018 AGM, with authorised public accountant Dan Kjellqvist appointed as principal auditor.



Mandate for the Board to decide on a new share issue in conjunction with corporate acquisitions The AGM approved the Board's proposal to authorise the Board to decide on the issue of new class B shares in conjunction with the company's acquisition of other companies or business operations. This mandate does not include the right for the Board to decide on a cash issue without regard to the shareholders' preferential rights. This mandate is restricted to a maximum of 10% of the number of shares issued at the time of the AGM.



Guidelines on remuneration and other terms of employment for senior executives The AGM approved the Board's proposal that, in addition to generally accepted employment terms, executive employees shall as incentive be able to have a variable salary part which is paid if the goals that have been set up are met. The variable salary shall be limited to four monthly salaries. In addition thereto, an extra monthly salary may be paid as remuneration provided that the executive employee uses this extra remuneration and an additional monthly salary of his/hers variable remuneration for acquisition of NIBE-shares. A condition for the extra remuneration is that the executive employee keeps the annually acquired NIBE-shares for at least three years. Normally, the executive employee's acquisition of NIBE-shares will be made once a year in February/March and then with application of the insider rules in force. The managing director shall not be included in any incentive program.



The board of directors may deviate from the guidelines if there are particular grounds therefor in an individual case.



Benny Torstensson CIO: +46 433-73 70



Christel Fritiofsson Investor Relations: +46 433-73 078



Attachment:

https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=631045

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Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The euro slipped against its most major rivals in early European deals on Friday. The euro edged down to 1.0856 against the greenback and 1.0945 against the Swiss franc, from its early highs of 1.0874 and 1.0955, respectively. The single currency hit a 4-day low of 123.31 against the yen and an 8-day low of 1.4684 against the aussie, off its previous highs of 123.78 and 1.4744, respectively. Reversing from an early high of 1.5912 against the kiwi, the euro slipped to 1.5855. The next possible support for the euro is seen around 1.07 against the greenback, 1.08 against the franc, 122.00 against the yen, 1.57 against the kiwi and 1.45 against the aussie. 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.
MoneyTV with Donald Baillargeon television program, Copyright MMXVII, all rights reserved. MoneyTV does not provide an analysis of companies' financial positions and is not soliciting to purchase or sell securities of the companies, nor are we offering a recommendation of featured companies or their stocks. Information discussed herein has been provided by the companies and should be verified independently with the companies and a securities analyst. MoneyTV provides companies a 3 to 4 month corporate profile with multiple appearances for a cash fee of $11,995.00 to $17,250.00, does not accept company stock as payment for services, does not hold any positions, options or warrants in featured companies. The information herein is not an endorsement by Donald Baillargeon, the producer, publisher or parent company of MoneyTV.

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 and HONG KONG, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/14/17 -- Sunshine Oilsands Ltd. (the "Corporation" or "Sunshine") (HKSE: 2012) today announced its financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2017. The Corporation's condensed consolidated interim financial statements, notes to the condensed consolidated interim financial statements and management's discussion and analysis have been filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and with The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (the "Hong Kong Stock Exchange") (www.hkexnews.hk) and are available on the Corporation's website (www.sunshineoilsands.com). All figures used in this release are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated.

MESSAGE TO SHAREHOLDERS

On March 1, 2017, the Corporation achieved a key milestone. The Project commenced commercial production. Hence, effective March 1, 2017, the Corporation started recording revenue, expenses and depletion of the West Ells Project.

Sunshine's Capital Raising Activities

On April 5, 2017 the Corporation entered into a subscription agreement for a total of 140,874,000 class "A" common shares at a price of HKD $0.241 per share (approximately CAD $0.041 per common share), for gross proceeds of HKD $33.95 million (approximately CAD $5.8 million). On April 13, 2017 the Corporation completed the closing of this subscription agreement.

On May 31, 2017 the Corporation entered into a subscription agreement for a total of 67,511,000 class "A" common shares at a price of HKD $0.237 per share (approximately CAD $0.041 per common share), for gross proceeds of HKD $15.88 million (approximately CAD $2.74 million). On June 7, 2017 the Corporation completed the closing of this subscription agreement. In addition, a placing commission of HKD $122,314 (approximately CAD $0.02 million), was incurred in relation to the Closing.

Summary of Financial Figures

2Q17 net loss narrowed to CAD$19.5 million.

For the second quarter of the 2017, the Corporation's net loss narrowed to CAD $19.5 million from CAD $21.2 million for 2017 Q1 and from CAD $20.7 million for 2016 Q2, representing a net loss per share of CAD $0.004, CAD $0.004, and CAD $0.005 for the 2017 Q2 period, 2017 Q1 period and 2016 Q2 period respectively.

The Corporation's external auditor has not performed a review of the condensed consolidated interim financial statements for the three and six months ended June 30, 2017. As at June 30, 2017 and December 31, 2016, the Corporation notes the following selected balance sheet figures.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Canadian $000s) June 30, December 31, 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cash $ 4,544 $ 13,635 Trade and other receivables 4,627 2,654 Prepaid expense and deposits 2,556 5,054 Exploration and evaluation assets 293,281 291,716 Property, plant and equipment 686,688 684,531 Total liabilities 397,876 390,135 Shareholders' equity 593,820 607,455 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

2017 Outlook

Due to the extensive damage associated with the disastrous wild fire in Fort McMurray in May 2016, start up at West Ells was interrupted and delayed. Significant progress has been achieved since then. On March 1, 2017, the West Ells Phase I project commenced commercial production. The West Ells Phase I project is expected to ramp up to its Phase I designed capacity of 5,000 bbls/day. The Corporation continues to focus on carefully improving production performance and developing SAGD chambers, which will increase production at West Ells.

Hong Luo, Chief Executive Officer

Qiping Men, President & Chief Operating Officer

ABOUT SUNSHINE OILSANDS LTD.

The Corporation is a Calgary based public corporation, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since March 1, 2012. The Corporation was also listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange from November 16, 2012 to September 30, 2015, when it chose to voluntarily delist. The Corporation is focused on the development of its significant holdings of oil sands and heavy oil leases in the Athabasca oil sands region. The Corporation owns interests in oil sands and petroleum and natural gas leases in the Athabasca region of Alberta. The Corporation is currently focused on executing milestone undertakings in the West Ells project area. West Ells Phase 1 is operational and has an initial production target of 5,000 barrels per day.

FORWARD LOOKING INFORMATION

This announcement contains forward-looking information relating to, among other things, (a) the future financial performance and objectives of Sunshine; (b) the plans and expectations of the Corporation; and (c) the anticipated closings of the current private placements and the timing thereof. Such forward-looking information is subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors. All statements other than statements and information of historical fact are forward-looking statements. The use of words such as "estimate", "forecast", "expect", "project", "plan", "target", "vision", "goal", "outlook", "may", "will", "should", "believe", "intend", "anticipate", "potential", and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are based on Sunshine's experience, current beliefs, assumptions, information and perception of historical trends available to Sunshine, and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, those associated with resource definition and expected reserves and contingent and prospective resources estimates, unanticipated costs and expenses, regulatory approval, fluctuating oil and gas prices, expected future production, the ability to access sufficient capital to finance future development and credit risks, changes in Alberta's regulatory framework, including changes to regulatory approval process and land-use designations, royalty, tax, environmental, greenhouse gas, carbon and other laws or regulations and the impact thereof and the costs associated with compliance. Although Sunshine believes that the expectations represented by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions and factors discussed in this announcement are not exhaustive and readers are not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as the Corporation's actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied. Sunshine disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, subsequent to the date of this announcement, except as required under applicable securities legislation. The forward-looking statements speak only as at the date of this announcement and are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing lists are not exhaustive and are made as at the date hereof. For a full discussion of the Corporation's material risk factors, see the Corporation's annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2016 and risk factors described in other documents we file from time to time with securities regulatory authorities, all of which are available on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at www.hkexnews.hk, on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com or the Corporation's website at www.sunshineoilsands.com.

By Order of the Board of Sunshine Oilsands Ltd.,

Sun Kwok Ping, Executive Chairman

Hong Kong, August 14, 2017

Calgary, August 14, 2017

As at the date of this announcement, the Board consists of Mr. Kwok Ping Sun, Mr. Hong Luo, Mr. Qiping Men and Ms. Gloria Pui Yun Ho as executive directors; Mr. Michael John Hibberd, Ms. Linna Liu and Ms. Xijuan Jiang as non-executive directors; and Mr. Raymond Shengti Fong, Mr. Jeff Jingfeng Liu, Ms. Joanne Yan and Mr. Yi He as independent non-executive directors.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited take no responsibility for the contents of this announcement, make no representation as to its accuracy or completeness and expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from or in reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this announcement.

This announcement appears for information purpose only and does not constitute an invitation or offer to acquire, purchase or subscribe for securities of Sunshine Oilsands Ltd.

(a corporation incorporated under the Business Corporations Act of the Province of Alberta, Canada with limited liability)

Contacts:

Sunshine Oilsands Ltd.

Mr. Hong Luo

Chief Executive Officer

(1) (403) 930-5677



Sunshine Oilsands Ltd.

Qiping Men

President & Chief Operating Officer

(1) (403) 984-5142

investorrelations@sunshineoilsands.com

www.sunshineoilsands.com




Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards presented to extraordinary industry leaders in Sao Paulo

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --Frost & Sullivan honored recipients at its Excellence in Best Practices Awards Ceremony held May 11th, in Sao Paulo, at the Unique Hotel.

Photo: http://mma.prnewswire.com/media/510324/Awards_Ceremony_Frost_Sullivan.jpg

The Best Practices Awards are presented each year to companies that are predicted to encourage significant growth in their industries, have identified emerging trends before they became the standard in the marketplace, and have created advanced technologies that will catalyze and transform industries in the near future.

"Our Awards program has now been in existence for more than fifteen years," said Jeff Frigstad, Global Sr. Vice President, Best Practices, Frost & Sullivan. "These Awards come from the rigor used by our talented team of 2,000 thought leaders from over 45 global offices working with over 200,000 clients, to locate the best."

Awarded companies included:

A10 Networks, Inc. - 2016 Latin American Application Delivery Controllers Enabling Technology Leadership Award

Algar Tech - 2016 Brazilian Contact Center Outsourcing Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award

Atento Mexico - 2016 Mexican Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market Leadership Award

Avaya - 2017 Latin American Enterprise Communications Platforms & Endpoints Product Line Strategy Leadership Award

CIPHER - 2016 Brazilian Managed Security Services Market Leadership Award

Comarch SA - 2016 Latin American Telecommunications Network Solutions and Services Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award

Deelo Contact Center & BPO - 2016 Argentinean Contact Center Outsourcing Services Customer Value Leadership Award

Embratel - 2017 Brazilian Data Center Services Provided by Telecommunication Companies Market Leadership Award

GlobeNet - 2017 Latin American Carrier of Carriers Services Company of the Year Award

inConcert - 2016 Latin American Contact Center Applications Enabling Technology Leadership Award

Level 3 Communications - 2016 Latin American Enterprise Services Provider Company of the Year Award

Omnize - 2017 Brazilian Cloud Contact Center Technology Innovation Award

Polycom Inc. - 2017 Latin AmericanEnterprise Communications Endpoints Company of the Year Award

Teleperformance - 2016 Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Nearshoring Services Market Leadership Award

Verint - 2016 Latin American Robotics New Product Innovation Award

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices.

For further information about the Awards Ceremony, please contact a member of the Best Practices Team.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, collaborates with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that could make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, Frost & Sullivan has been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector, and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Claudia Toscano

P: 210.477.8417

F: 210.348.1003

E: claudia.toscano@frost.com
TORONTO, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- Constellation Software Inc. (TSX: CSU) today announced that the Maryland Transit Administration has awarded a significant contract to Trapeze Group, a business unit of Volaris Group Inc., for the provision of an intelligent transportation system (ITS). The Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) provides subway, light rail, and bus service in the greater Baltimore region and is one of the largest multi-modal transit systems in the United States.

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
STOCKHOLM, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Key positions to assist in the development and commercialization of Radspherin have been filled, bringing valuable expertise and experience to the company

Oncoinvent is pleased to announce today that the following people will be joining the Oncoinvent team:

Kristine Lofthus started the 2 May as Head of Quality Assurance. Kristine comes to Oncoinvent from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) where she has worked as QA and QP responsible for the release of radiopharmaceuticals and for quality systems for the past five years. Prior to working at IFE, she was Head of the Manufacturing Department at the Oslo University Hospital Pharmacy. Kristine Lofthus has a cand.pharm. from the University of Oslo and a post-graduate degree in radiopharmacy.

Kristin Fure started the 2 May as Production Engineer responsible for production of Ra224 and Radspherin. Kristin also comes to Oncoinvent from the Institute for Energy Technology (IFE). Kristin is a Research Scientist that has seventeen years' experience in the manufacturing of radioisotopes. Kristin graduated with a cand. scient. in Nuclear Chemistry from the University of Oslo.

Ole Peter Nordby who has been acting as Oncoinvent's interim CFO has been appointed Chief Financial Officer as of May 2. Ole Peter has more than fifteen years in positions as portfolio manager, investment director and financial analyst at several funds and investment companies. Through the main part of his career as fund manager and analyst he has been occupied with listed Nordic companies in the Life Science sector. He holds a MBA from the Norwegian Business School BI and is a Certified European Financial Analyst (CEFA).

Kari Skinnemoen has accepted the position of Head of Regulatory Affairs and will be starting 1 June. Kari has thirty-seven years' experience within development and registration of new products in the pharmaceutical and medical device industry, including twenty-eight years' experience in global regulatory affairs, most recently at Alere Technologies AS. She has also held managing positions within Quality Assurance and R&D. Kari holds acand.real. degree in OrganicChemistry from the University of Oslo.

"We are very pleased that we have been able to attract such qualified and experienced people to the Oncoinvent team. Their addition will greatly help the company in the commercialization of Radspherin and the development of the company" said Jan A. Alfheim, Oncoinvent's CEO.

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

Jan A. Alfheim, Chief Executive Officer

Cell: +47-46-44-00-45

Email: alfheim@oncoinvent.com

IR enquiries:

Ole Peter Nordby, Chief Financial Officer

Cell: +47-41-28-71-79

Email: nordby@oncoinvent.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

http://news.cision.com/oncoinvent-as/r/oncoinvent-strengthens-management-and-research-teams,c2264362

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TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - May 12, 2017) - Gran Colombia Gold Corp. (TSX: GCM) announced today that its consent solicitation process (the "Consent Solicitation") concluded yesterday and holders of 77.4% of the total principal amount of the Company's issued and outstanding 2020 Debentures consented to the Company's proposal to amend the Amended and Restated Indenture dated as of January 20, 2016, as amended January 1, 2017, (the "Indenture") to provide holders the option to extend the maturity date of their 2020 Debentures to January 2, 2024 (the "Extended Debentures"). In addition, holders of a total of US$47.0 million of 2020 Debentures elected to extend their 2020 Debentures to 2024.

Commenting on the results of the Consent Solicitation, Serafino Iacono, Executive Co-Chairman of Gran Colombia said "we are very pleased with the strong support we have received from the holders of our 2020 Debentures in this process to improve our capital structure. As we move ahead, we will continue to execute our strategy and we remain committed to systematically reducing our issued and outstanding senior secured debt with our excess cash flow."

The Company expects to enter into a supplemental Indenture with its trustee shortly to implement the amendments described in the Consent Solicitation. It is also expected that the extension of the 2020 Debentures will be made effective May 31, 2017. Interest on the Extended Debentures will be paid monthly at an annual rate of 8% over the then remaining term of the Extended Debentures with the first full monthly interest payment to be paid on June 30, 2017.

The Company has received conditional listing approval from the Toronto Stock Exchange for the listing of Extended Debentures and it is anticipated that the Extended Debentures will be posted for trading under the symbol "GCM.DB.X", subject to satisfaction of the listing conditions.

About Gran Colombia Gold Corp.

Gran Colombia is a Canadian-based gold and silver exploration, development and production company with its primary focus in Colombia. Gran Colombia is currently the largest underground gold and silver producer in Colombia with several underground mines in operation at its Segovia and Marmato Operations. Gran Colombia is continuing its expansion and modernization activities at its high-grade Segovia Operations.

Additional information on Gran Colombia can be found on its website at www.grancolombiagold.com and by reviewing its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking information", which may include, but is not limited to, statements with respect to anticipated business plans or strategies, the anticipated effects of the extension of the maturity of the 2020 Debentures, the anticipated timing in respect of the extension of the 2020 Debentures and the anticipated listing of the Extended Debentures . Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Gran Colombia to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements are described under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Information Form dated as of March 30, 2017, which is available for view on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and Gran Colombia disclaims, other than as required by law, any obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, results, future events, circumstances, or if management's estimates or opinions should change, or otherwise. 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, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

For Further Information, Please Contact:

Mike Davies

Chief Financial Officer

(416) 360-4653

investorrelations@grancolombiagold.com
ICONplc (NASDAQ: ICLR), a global provider of drug development solutions and services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries, today announced that all resolutions at the Annual General Meeting of the Company (AGM) held on July 25, 2017 (which resolutions had all been recommended by the Board) were all duly passed by shareholders. These resolutions were set out in the Notice of the AGM sent to shareholders dated June 23, 2017 and are available on the ICON plc website.

The final results of the voting are as follows:

RESOLUTION NUMBER RESOLUTION TOTAL NUMBER OF VOTES VOTE FOR VOTE AGAINST VOTE WITHHELD 1.1 To re-elect Prof. Dermot Kelleher 45,317,741 44,238,348 1,032,397 46,996 1.2 To re-elect Prof. Hugh Brady 45,317,741 44,918,234 352,536 46,971 1.3 To re-elect Ms. Mary Pendergast 45,317,741 44,917,849 351,464 48,428 1.4 To re-elect Mr. Ronan Murphy 45,317,741 44,630,167 640,062 47,512 2 To receive accounts and reports 45,317,741 45,142,850 3,142 171,749 3 To authorise the fixing of the auditors' remuneration 45,317,741 41,762,920 3,548,967 5,854 4 To authorise the Company to allot shares 45,317,741 44,310,484 865,120 142,137 5** To disapply pre-emption rights 45,317,741 44,917,093 238,190 162,458 6** To disapply pre-emption rights for funding capital investment or acquisitions 45,317,741 44,918,013 237,460 162,268 7** To authorise the Company to make market purchases of shares 45,317,741 45,177,034 9,283 131,424 8** To authorise the price range at which the Company can reissue shares it holds as treasury shares 45,317,741 44,962,079 121,491 234,171

** Special Resolution. All resolutions are ordinary resolutions unless otherwise stated.

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and information currently available, including current economic and industry conditions. These statements are not guarantees of future performance or actual results, and actual results, developments and business decisions may differ from those stated in this press release. The forward-looking statements are subject to future events, risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the statements, including, but not limited to, the ability to enter into new contracts, maintain client relationships, manage the opening of new offices and offering of new services, the integration of new business mergers and acquisitions, as well as economic and global market conditions and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in SEC reports filed by ICON, all of which are difficult to predict and some of which are beyond our control. For these reasons, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements when making investment decisions. The word "expected" and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are only as of the date they are made and we do not undertake any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement, either as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. More information about the risks and uncertainties relating to these forward-looking statements may be found in SEC reports filed by ICON, including its Form 20-F, F-1, S-8 and F-3, which are available on the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov.

ICON plc is a global provider of drug development solutions and services to the pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device industries. The company specialises in the strategic development, management and analysis of programs that support clinical development from compound selection to Phase I-IV clinical studies. With headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, ICON currently, operates from 84 locations in 38 countries and has approximately 12,300 employees. Further information is available at www.iconplc.com.

Source: ICON plc

ICON/ICLR-F

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170726005085/en/

Contacts:

ICON plc

Investor Relations

1-888-381-7923

or

Brendan Brennan

Chief Financial Officer

+ 353 -1-291-2000

or

Jonathan Curtain

Vice President Corporate Finance and Investor Relations

+1 215 616 3000


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Crude oil futures were flat Friday morning, holding recent gains amid expectations OPEC will extend its supply quota plan in order to re-balance markets.



OPEC meets May 25 in Vienna. The cartel's six-month supply quota plan with Russia has failed to alleviate the global supply glut due to robust U.S. and Canadian production. OPEC predicts non-OPEC supplies surged by 64 percent, according to their latest report.



Also, output from top exporter Saudi Arabia inched up last month.



WTI light sweet crude oil was little changed at $47.82 a barrel, on track for a gain of about 3% for the week. Prices touched their lowest of the year in May, but the Energy Department has reported U.S. stockpiles are dwindling a bit over the past few weeks.



The Baker Hughes North American rig count that tracks weekly changes in the number of active operating oil & gas rigs, will be released at 1.00 pm ET.



On the economic front, the Labor Department's Consumer Price Index for the April will be released at 8.30 am ET. The economists are looking for CPI growth of 0.2 percent.



The Commerce Department's retail sales data for April will be issued at 8.30 am ET. The forecasters are looking for growth of 0.6 percent.



A pair of Federal Reserve speakers are also on tap. Chicago Federal Reserve President Charles Evans speaks at 9 am ET, while Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank President Patrick T. Harker speaks at lunchtime.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Mitsui Co., Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, is one of the largest general trading companies in Japan. With approximately 43,600 employees worldwide, Mitsui is engaged in trading of commodities and provision of services in the area of iron and steel, mineral and metal resources, machinery and infrastructure, chemicals, energy, lifestyle innovation corporate development. Mitsui's diversified activities also include development of natural resources, coordination of infrastructure projects, development of consumer-related businesses, and much more. For more information, visit Mitsui's website at http://www.mitsui.com/jp/en/index.html

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- NetworkNewsWire ("NNW"), a multifaceted financial news and publishing company, today announces the publication of an editorial featuring Kootenay Zinc Corp. (CSE: ZNK) (OTCQB: KTNNF), an NNW client focused primarily on discovering large-scale sedimentary-exhalative ("SEDEX") zinc deposits.

The publication is entitled, "With Zinc Prices and Global Deficit on the Rise, Savvy Mining Companies are Poised to Profit." It provides an overview on worldwide shortage of zinc, and the various mining companies cashing in on the opportunity to shrink the gap between supply and demand while taking advantage of rising value.

To view the full publication, visit: https://www.networknewswire.com/zinc-prices-global-deficit-rise-savvy-mining-companies-poised-profit/

"Among these frontrunners is Kootenay Zinc Corporation, a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, BC. Kootenay Zinc is engaged in discovering large-scale sedimentary-exhalative (SEDEX) zinc deposits and is currently focused on its Sully Property, which is located just 18 miles from the historic Sullivan Mine. The Sullivan Mine was in operation for approximately 100 years and was one of the world's biggest SEDEX silver, zinc and lead deposits, boasting production that, at today's prices, would be valued at US $49 billion. An exciting factor for Kootenay Zinc is that its Sully Project could be, subject to positive drill data, of similar size to the Legendary Sullivan -- an exciting prospect, indeed.

"Drilling at the Sully Project, to date, has been a near miss -- which means a strike could be close at hand. Initial surveying at Sully indicated a shallow mass was only narrowly missed by drilling in 2004, and work performed since that time indicated the target was deep. Downhole temperature and magnetic field readings in 2014 indicated the target may have been missed by as little as 100 meters. Geochemical data shows anomalous zinc and lead in the soil, which is possible leakage on structures related to the East mass. New gravity data have confirmed and better defined the mass. The next step for Kootenay Zinc is to target this East mass, and the company has commenced a drilling program."

About Kootenay Zinc Corp.

Kootenay Zinc Corp. is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, British Columbia that is presently targeting the Sully Property. The company is focused on discovering large-scale sedimentary-exhalative ("SEDEX") deposits. The Sully Property comprises 1,375 hectares located approximately 30 kilometres east of Kimberley, B.C., and overlies rocks of similar age and origin as those which host the world-class Sullivan deposit, owned by Teck Resources Ltd. Sullivan was discovered in 1892, and is known to be one of the largest SEDEX deposits in the world. Over its 100-year lifetime, Sullivan produced approximately 150 million tonnes of ore, including approximately three hundred million ounces of silver, eight million tonnes of zinc and eight million tonnes of lead. The equivalent level of strata as at Sullivan and that formed on the margin of that same basin are present at the Sully Property. The Company cautions that past results or discoveries on proximate land are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be achieved on the Sully Property.

For more information, visit http://www.kootenayzinc.com.

About NetworkNewsWire

NetworkNewsWire (NNW) provides news aggregation and syndication, enhanced press release services and a full array of social communication solutions. As a multifaceted financial news and distribution company with an extensive team of journalists and contributing writers, NNW is uniquely positioned to best serve private and public companies who need to reach a wide audience of investors, consumers, journalists and the general public. NNW has an ever-growing distribution network of more than 5,000 key syndication outlets across the country. By cutting through the overload of information in today's market, NNW brings its clients unparalleled visibility, recognition and brand awareness. NNW is where news, content and information converge.

For more information, visit https://www.NetworkNewsWire.com

Please see full disclaimers on the NetworkNewsWire website applicable to all content provided by NNW, wherever published or re-published: http://nnw.fm/Disclaimer

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain as they are based on current expectations and assumptions concerning future events or future performance of the company. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which are only predictions and speak only as of the date hereof. In evaluating such statements, prospective investors should review carefully various risks and uncertainties identified in this release and matters set in the company's SEC filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements.

NNW Contact:

NetworkNewsWire (NNW)

New York, New York

www.NetworkNewsWire.com

212.418.1217 Office

Email Contact




SAN DIEGO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- ImageWare Inc. (OTCQB: IWSY), a leader in mobile and cloud-based, multi-modal biometric identity management solutions, announced today that it has been recognized as one of the "Top 25 Cyber Security Companies for 2017" by CIO Applications. This award is based on an evaluation of ImageWare's GoVerifyID Enterprise Suite, an innovative, multi-modal, multi-factor biometric authentication solution for the enterprise.

GoVerifyID Enterprise Suite is the first ever end-to-end biometric platform that seamlessly integrates with an enterprise's existing Microsoft authentication ecosystem. It offers businesses a turnkey biometric solution for quick deployment and provides organizations with a choice of a wide range of biometrics. The annual list of companies is selected by a panel of experts and members of CIO Applications' editorial board to recognize and promote technology entrepreneurship.

"We are pleased to announce that ImageWare is among the Top 25 Cyber Security Companies in 2017," said Sarah Wilson, Managing Editor of CIO Applications. "ImageWare has long been a leading player in the cyber security landscape, and their secure, flexible and low-friction multi-modal biometric authentication solutions for workforces and consumers are impressive. We commend ImageWare for its innovative and exemplary solutions. ImageWare is committed to simplifying the user authentication experience while increasing IT security by providing frictionless, multi-modal biometric solutions using face, voice, fingerprint, or any other preferred biometric."

ImageWare's patented biometric product line includes a highly scalable, multi-modal biometric engine capable of working with a wide array of sensors, modalities, and algorithms. ImageWare's identity management products are also used for secure credentials, national IDs, passports, driver's licenses, and smart cards as well as both application and physical access control systems.

"We're honored to be featured in the 2017 list," said Jim Miller, Chairman & CEO of ImageWare. "Data breaches are costing organizations millions of dollars, and even costing C-suite executives their jobs. "Over 80% of data breaches involve the use of compromised passwords. So, adding strong multi-factor biometric authentication is the best way of mitigating this risk. With our decades of experience providing biometric solutions, we offer industry-proven, flexible, and secure authentication products, while enhancing the user experience."

About ImageWare Systems, Inc.

ImageWare Systems, Inc. is a leading developer of mobile and cloud-based identity management solutions, providing biometric authentication solutions for the enterprise and the consumer. The company delivers industry-proven biometrics as an interactive and scalable cloud-based solution. ImageWare brings together cloud and mobile technology to offer multi-factor authentication for smartphone users, for the enterprise, and across industries.

ImageWare's products support multi-modal biometric authentication including, but not limited to, face, voice, fingerprint, iris, palm, and more. All the biometrics can be combined with or used as replacements for authentication and access control tools, including tokens, digital certificates, passwords, and PINS, to provide the ultimate level of assurance, accountability, and ease of use for corporate networks, web applications, mobile devices, and PC desktop environments. ImageWare is headquartered in San Diego, Calif., with offices in Portland, OR, Ottawa, Ontario, and Mexico. To learn more about ImageWare, visit https://iwsinc.com; follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook.

Additional Online Resources

Read the IWS blog

For regular news updates, bookmark IWS' newsroom

Learn more about ImageWare's GoVerifyID

Newsletter with Gartner Research

About CIO Applications

CIO Applications is a technology print magazine, published from Fremont, CA that is a prime platform for CIOs to discuss and ponder about innovative enterprise solutions. While analyzing the U.S. media landscape, it is a comprehensive tool that helps the upcoming enterprise IT vendors to engage and showcase the solutions for the enterprises. It helps technology leaders with the analysis on new technologies and gives a better understanding of the role that enterprise solutions play in achieving the business goals.

For more info: http://www.cioapplications.com/

Investor Relations:

Liolios

Cody Slach

Tel 1-949-574-3860

Email Contact




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- Zazu Metals Corporation (TSX VENTURE: ZAZ) ("Zazu")is pleased to announce that is has closed its previously announced secured convertible debenture (the "Debenture") financing in the amount of US$1.5 million (the "Financing"). The Debenture is secured by way of a general security and pledge agreement and bears interest at a rate of 5% per annum. The Financing will assist Zazu in completing a previously announced business combination (the "Arrangement") with Solitario Exploration & Royalty Corp ("Solitario"). In certain circumstances, the Debenture is convertible at the option of Solitario into common shares of Zazu ("Zazu Shares") at a price of US$0.22 per Zazu Share. The securities issued in connection with the Financing will be subject to a four-month hold period, in accordance with applicable securities laws. Please refer to a joint news release filed by Zazu and Solitario on April 27, 2017 for more information on the Arrangement and the Debenture.

Furthermore, Zazu is pleased to announce that it will be holding an annual and special meeting of shareholders (the "Meeting") on Thursday, June 29, 2017 at 10:00 am (Vancouver time). At the Meeting Zazu shareholders will be asked to approve by special resolution the Arrangement with Solitario. Full details of the Meeting will be contained in the Management Information Circular prepared for the Meeting which will be mailed to Zazu's shareholders and available for review under Zazu's profile at www.sedar.com.

About Zazu

Zazu is a Canadian-based exploration company traded on the TSX Venture Exchange ("ZAZ"). Zazu has a 50% operating interest in the Lik zinc-lead-silver deposit in Northwest Alaska, which is large tonnage, high grade and potentially open pittable. Zazu completed a positive PEA in 2014 and has the exclusive right to obtain 80% of the property by meeting certain spending commitments by 2018. Additional information about Zazu including a company presentation is available at www.zazumetals.com.

Cautionary Language

The TSX Venture Exchange has not approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation service providers accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-looking Statements

Statements contained in this news release, which are not historical facts, are forward-looking statements that involve risk, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. 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. All forward-looking statements included in this news release are based on information available to Zazu as of the date hereof. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results of Zazu, as applicable, to differ materially from the conclusion, forecast or projection stated in such forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors include, but are not limited to factors referenced in Zazu's other continuous disclosure filings, which are available at www.sedar.com. Readers should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Zazu does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities laws.

Contacts:

Zazu Metals Corporation

Matthew Ford

President

(210) 858-7512



Zazu Metals Corporation

Gil Atzmon

Founder, Chairman & CEO

(604) 878-9298

www.zazumetals.com




VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 08/11/17 -- China Gold International Resources Corp. Ltd. (TSX: CGG)(HKSE: 2099) (the "Company" or "China Gold International Resources") reports on the Company's financial and operational results for the three months ("Q2", or "second quarter 2017") and six months ("first half" or "six months 2017") ended June 30, 2017. This news release should be read in conjunction with the Company's Financial Statements, Notes to the Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis.

Selected Production and Financial Highlights: Q2 2017 Compared to Q2 2016

-- Revenue increased by 40% to US$97.9 million from US$69.9 million for the same period in 2016. -- Mine operating earnings increased by 114% to US$25 million from US$11.7 million for the same period in 2016. -- Net profit after income taxes increased to US$20.6 million from a net loss of US$7.4 million for the same period in 2016. -- Gold production from the CSH Mine decreased by 6% to 45,798 ounces from 48,867 ounces for the same period in 2016. The decrease in gold production is mainly due to the lower recovery rates during the current period. -- The total production cost of gold for the three months ended June 30, 2017 increased compared with the same period in 2016, due to higher depletion and depreciation costs. The cash production cost of gold for the three months ended June 30, 2017 decreased by approximately 5% from US$695 per ounce for the three months ended June 30, 2016 to US$659 for the three months ended June 30, 2017 due to lower waste removal costs. CSH Mine Three months ended June 30, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total production cost(1) (US$ per ounce) 1,075 1,042 Cash production cost(1)(US$ per ounce) 659 695 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Non-IFRS measure. -- During the three months ended June 30, 2017, both cash production cost and total production cost of copper per pound decreased, mainly because of the higher ore grade mined during the period. Jiama Mine Three months ended June 30, ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2017 2016 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Total production cost(1) (US$) of copper per pound after by-products credits(2) 1.08 1.36 Cash production cost(3) (US$) of copper per pound after by-products credits(2) 0.73 0.94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Production costs include expenditures incurred at the mine sites for the activities related to production including mining, processing, mine site G&A and royalties etc. (2) By-products credit refers to the sales of gold and silver during the corresponding period. (3) Non-IFRS measure. -- Copper production from the Jiama Mine increased by 38% to 6,918 tonnes (approximately 15.25 million pounds) from 5,014 tonnes (approximately 11.05 million pounds) for the same period in 2016.

Selected Production and Financial Highlights: First Half 2017 Compared to First Half 2016

-- Revenue increased by 33% to US$180 million from US$135.5 million for the same period in 2016. -- Mine operating earnings increased by 128% to US$44.1 million from US$19.3 million for the same period in 2016. -- Net profit after income taxes increased to US$27.0 million from a net loss of US$10.9 million for the same period in 2016. -- Gold production from the CSH Mine decreased by 6% to 80,338 ounces from 85,570 ounces for the same period in 2016. -- Copper production from the Jiama Mine increased by 59% to 14,500 tonnes (approximately 31.97 million pounds) from 9,120 tonnes (approximately 20.11 million pounds) for the same period in 2016.

Mr. Bing Liu, the CEO and Executive Director of the Company, stated, "I am pleased to report that China Gold International saw a strong second quarter with increased revenue and reduced production costs. The Series I of Jiama Mine's Phase II expansion will achieve full capacity in the second half of the year which will increase copper production significantly. As the CSH Mine enters into what is traditionally its peak production quarter, we are optimistic that we can utilize the prime operating conditions to increase gold production. In addition, the Company continues to pursue growth opportunities and optimize its capital structure through strategic initiatives intended to build shareholder value."

Analysts, investors, media and general public are encouraged to visit the Company's website at www.chinagoldintl.com, The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited's website at www.hkex.com.hk or SEDAR at www.sedar.com to view the complete set of the financial statements and MD&A or contact the Company with any questions.

About China Gold International Resources

China Gold International Resources Corp. Ltd. is based in Vancouver, BC, Canada and operates both profitable and growing mines, the CSH Gold Mine in Inner Mongolia, and the Jiama Copper-Polymetallic Mine in Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. The Company's objective is to continue to build shareholder value by growing production at its current mining operations, expanding its resource base, and aggressively acquiring and developing new projects internationally. The Company is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX: CGG) and the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (HKSE: 2099).

For further information on China Gold International Resources Corp. Ltd., please refer to its SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com or www.chinagoldintl.com.

Cautionary Note About Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information regarding China Gold International Resources contained herein may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements may include estimates, plans, expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections, guidance or other statements that are not statements of fact. Although China Gold International Resources believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to have been correct. China Gold International Resources cautions that actual performance will be affected by a number of factors, most of which are beyond its control, and that future events and results may vary substantially from what China Gold International Resources currently foresees. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include market prices, exploitation and exploration results, continued availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. The forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. The information contained herein is stated as of the current date and subject to change after that date.

Contacts:

China Gold International Resources Corp. Ltd.

604-609-0598

info@chinagoldintl.com

www.chinagoldintl.com




NEW YORK, NY -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- In Ovations Holdings Inc. (OTC PINK: INOH), a minority owner of Aquarius Brands, is pleased to announce a special promotion for Atmospheric Water Solutions' (a member of the Aquarius Brands group) global-award-winning AquaBoy Pro II -- please use the special promo code "2017DWMAB" at checkout http://www.atmosphericwatersolutions.com/shop/ to receive your discount. Their innovative and patented world-class appliance makes 2 to 5 gallons of purified great tasting water from the air -- higher quality and less expensive than bottled water -- and it uses none of our increasingly scarce groundwater resources.

The AquaBoy Pro II has won the following awards:

1. Winner - (2 Categories) 2017 NAHB International Builders' Show - "Best Product in Show" winner and "Best Kitchen Product" winner;

2. Finalist - (4 Categories) 2016 NAHB International Builders' Show - "Best of IBS Awards";

3. Winner - 2016 International Home and Housewares Show Global Innovation Awards - best "Kitchen Electrics" product winner; and

4. Winner - 2015 International Hotel, Motel and Restaurant Show (HX: The Hotel Experience) - Editor's Choice Awards - "Best New Product".

INOH is pleased to be able to offer this special pricing to our shareholders and hope that you will purchase an AquaBoy Pro II before the May 31, 2017, deadline for this discount.

Financing is available starting as low as ~$15/month. http://www.atmosphericwatersolutions.com/financing-programs/.

ABOUT

Atmospheric Water Solutions ("AWS") is a controlled subsidiary of Aquarius Brands, a group of companies specializing in water generation, conservation and education for homes, businesses, hotels, restaurants, schools, utility companies and more. Aquarius Brands products include AWS AquaBoy air to water generators, Boomerang high-capacity compact bottling machines, Retrax solar solutions and DroughtBuster water saving devices.

In Ovations Holdings, Inc. is a minority owner of Aquarius Brands. Also, through its subsidiary, Electro Verde Inc., it has entered into a marketing distribution agreement with Seychelle Water Environmental Technologies, Inc., which manufactures and supplies revolutionary water filtration systems featuring breakthrough technology, most notably, Ionic Adsorption Micro Filtration. Seychelle is a prominent company in the fast-growing water filtration industry, who markets a complete line of top-quality portable water filtration products and brands in North America and worldwide.

Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=3138988



In Ovations Holdings

Email: inovationsholdingsinc@gmail.com

Website: www.inovationsholdings.com

Facebook: InOvationsHoldings

Twitter: @inohotc



Aquarius Brands

The Conservation Company

12260 SW 53rd Street, Suite 603

Cooper City, Florida, 33330, USA

Office Phone - (954) 306-6763

Email: RGoldstein@AquariusBrands.org

www.AquariusBrands.org

www.AtmosphericWaterSolutions.com



Seychelle Water Filtrations Systems

http://www.seychelle.com




Co-organized with CPME1

Lysogene (Paris:LYS) (FR0013233475 LYS), a leading clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company specializing in gene therapy technology applied to central nervous system diseases, announced today that Karen Aiach, CEO and Founder of Lysogene, won the Women's Entrepreneurship's Innovation New Technologies Trophy co-organized by the Women's Entrepreneurship Association and the CPME rewarding her "spectacular breakthrough in the exclusive arena of rare diseases."

On Thursday 11th, during the prestigious ceremony held at the Economic, Social and Environmental Counsel in Paris, and hosted by Francois Asselin, Chairman of CPME, the jury rewarded an entrepreneurial mother's tenacity and applauded that a "family issue turned into a medical research and entrepreneurial goal

According to Francois Asselin, these trophies highlight talented, resourceful, bold and tough female directors who launch and establish their companies abroad in order to promote the entrepreneurship "a la francaise"."

"I am greatly touched by this reward. I dedicate it to children suffering from rare diseases and their families, as well as to my own team and shareholders who believe in Lysogene" said Karen Aiach. "I am proud to run a company where diversity goes without saying. I will always fight so that women occupy the place they deserve in the business world."

About the Women's Entrepreneurship Association

https://www.eaf-club.com/

About CPME

The CPME French Small and Mid-Caps Confederation is a private, independent, inter-branch employer organization, whose representativeness is officially accepted. It ensures all sectored industry, trades, services, craftsmanship small and mid-caps' representation and defense, both at national level alongside public authorities and social partners and international level. It simultaneously gathers professional federations, trade unions and territorial structures.

For more information: http://www.cpme.fr/

About Lysogene

www.lysogene.com

1 French Small and Mid-Caps Confederation

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005377/en/

Contacts:

Media:

Europe

NewCap

Annie-Florence Loyer

+ 33 6 88 20 35 59

+ 33 1 44 71 00 12

afloyer@newcap.fr

or

North America

RooneyPartners

Marion Janic, 1 (212) 223-4017

mjanic@rooneyco.com

or

Investors:

LifeSci Advisors

Chris Maggos, +41 79 367 6254

chris@lifesciadvisors.com
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 12, 2017 / The Law Offices of Vincent Wong announce that a class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of investors who purchased Patriot National, Inc. ("Patriot National") (NYSE: PN) securities between August 15, 2016 and March 3, 2017 .

Click here to learn about the case: http://www.wongesq.com/pslra/patriot-national-inc?wire=1. There is no cost or obligation to you.

The complaint alleges that on August 15, 2016, Patriot National confirmed that the special committee of its board of directors was working with Ebix, Inc. to possibly combine the two businesses. Then, on November 8, 2016, Patriot National announced that it was rejecting a $475 million proposal from Ebix. In a conference call with analysts, Steven M. Mariano, Chief Executive Officer of Patriot National, stated that the Ebix transaction was rejected because the Company had a better offer from someone else. However, the complaint alleges that Patriot National officials failed to disclose that the special committee was beholden to Mariano, was operating for the benefit of Mariano, did not independently assess the merits of the Ebix transaction, and was not exploring strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value.

If you suffered a loss in Patriot National, you have until May 15, 2017 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. Your ability to share in any recovery doesn't require that you serve as a lead plaintiff. To obtain additional information, contact Vincent Wong, Esq. either via email vw@wongesq.com, by telephone at 212.425.1140, or visit http://www.wongesq.com/pslra/patriot-national-inc?wire=1.

Vincent Wong, Esq. is an experienced attorney that has represented investors in securities litigations involving financial fraud and violations of shareholder rights. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.

CONTACT:

Vincent Wong, Esq.

39 East Broadway

Suite 304

New York, NY 10002

Tel. 212.425.1140

Fax. 866.699.3880

E-Mail: vw@wongesq.com

SOURCE: The Law Offices of Vincent Wong
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 12, 2017 / Pomerantz LLP is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Home Capital Group Inc. ("Home Capital" or the "Company") (OTC PINK: HMCBF). Such investors are advised to contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888-476-6529, ext. 9980.

The investigation concerns whether Home Capital and certain of its officers and/or directors have engaged in securities fraud or other unlawful business practices.

[Click here to join a class action]

On February 10, 2017, post-market, Home Capital disclosed that the Ontario Securities Commission ("OSC") had reached the preliminary conclusion that Home Capital failed to meet its continuous disclosure obligations in 2014 and 2015, and that the OSC had served the Company with an enforcement notice related to its 2015 disclosure that information on certain loan applications had been falsified. On this news, Home Capital's share price fell $1.49, or 6.57%, to close at $21.16 on February 13, 2017.

On March 27, 2017, post-market, Home Capital announced the departure of the Company's Chief Executive Officer ("CEO"), Martin Reid. On this news, Home Capital's share price fell $1.39, or 6.75%, to close at $19.29 on March 28, 2017.

On April 19, 2017, post-market, the OSC alleged that Chief Financial Officer ("CFO"), Robert Morton, and two former CEOs of Home Capital, Gerald Soloway and Martin Reid, had unlawfully misled shareholders of the Company during their respective tenures. On this news, Home Capital's share price fell $3.57, or 21.54%, to close at $13.00 on April 20, 2017.

On April 24, 2017, Home Capital announced that Gerald Soloway, the Company's founder, was resigning from Home Capital's board, and that CFO, Robert Morton, would be reassigned to a new role within the Company. On this news, Home Capital's share price fell $1.10, or 7.74%, to close at $13.10 on April 24, 2017.

On April 26, 2017, Home Capital disclosed that the Company was seeking a $2 billion line of credit to backstop a significant decline in deposits at its Home Trust subsidiary. On this news, Home Capital's share price fell $8.68, or 66.25%, to close at $4.42 on April 26, 2017.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.

SOURCE: Pomerantz LLP
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Fyre Media founder Billy McFarland has reportedly informed employees that the company's payroll has been indefinitely suspended. According to a audio clip obtained by Vice News, in a meeting between Billy McFarland, Ja Rule, and employees, McFarland said that the company's is unable to proceed with the payroll. 'After conferring with our counsel and all financial people, unfortunately we are not able to proceed with payroll. We're not firing anyone, we're just letting you know that there will be no payroll in the short term,' McFarland said. 'We're not firing anybody. We're just letting you know that there will be no payroll in the short term. That said, if you want to stick with us, we'd love to have you and we'd love to work together and hunker down and get back to a place where everything resumes to business as usual as usual,' he added. When an employee asked during the call that why aren't the company firing them so that they could collect unemployment. McFarland replied, 'If that impacts you, you can email me.' Fyre Media recently became infamous for organizing the promotional Fyre Festival that was promoted by McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. The festival turned out to be a disaster, which media dubbed as the Hunger Games for rich. Promoted as a luxury event in the Bahamas, organizers provided substandard food and accommodation in repurposed disaster relief tents, which infuriated rich attendees, some of whom paid up to $12,000 to attend the program. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- The Executive Director of the British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) has issued a notice of hearing alleging that three B.C. men and three companies committed fraud against two investors.

Alan Braun and Jerry Braun of Surrey, B.C. are the only directors of Braun Developments (B.C.) Ltd. (Braun Developments) and they were also directors of 0985812 B.C. Ltd., which did business as TerraCorp Investment Ltd. (TerraCorp).

Steven Maxwell (a.k.a. Steven Fassman), a B.C. resident during the relevant period, was the de facto director of 8022275 Canada Inc. (275 Co.) and he was an executive vice president of TerraCorp.

The notice alleges that the respondents took $450,000 from two investors and told the investors their funds would be used to purchase specific properties in Edmonton, Alberta to generate returns. Both investors were told they would receive a 50 per cent return on investment within 60 days. 275 Co. was the purported owner of the Edmonton properties.

The Executive Director alleges that the respondents never used the investors' funds to buy the Edmonton properties and that 275 Co. never owned the properties. Instead, Braun Developments, Alan and Jerry Braun, Maxwell, and 275 Co. spent the investors' funds on other things, including a personal mortgage and credit card payments, and cash withdrawals.

These allegations have not been proven. Counsel for the Executive Director will apply to set dates for a hearing into the allegations before a panel of commissioners on June 27, 2017 at 9 a.m.

You may view the notice of hearing on our website, www.bcsc.bc.ca, by typing Alan Braun, Jerry Braun, Steven Maxwell, Braun Developments (B.C.) Ltd., 8022275 Canada Inc., 0985812 B.C. Ltd., TerraCorp Investment Ltd. or 2017 BCSECCOM 114 in the search box. Information about disciplinary proceedings can be found in the Enforcement section of the BCSC website.

Please visit the Canadian Securities Administrators' (CSA) Disciplined List for information relating to persons and companies disciplined by provincial securities regulators, the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) and the Mutual Fund Dealers Association of Canada (MFDA).

About the British Columbia Securities Commission (www.bcsc.bc.ca)

The British Columbia Securities Commission is the independent provincial government agency responsible for regulating capital markets in British Columbia through the administration of the Securities Act. Our mission is to protect and promote the public interest by fostering:

-- A securities market that is fair and warrants public confidence -- A dynamic and competitive securities industry that provides investment opportunities and access to capital

Learn how to protect yourself and become a more informed investor at www.investright.org.

Contacts:

Media Contact:

Alison Walker

604-899-6713



Public inquiries:

604-899-6854 or 1-800-373-6393 (toll free)

inquiries@bcsc.bc.ca




Regulatory News:

Total Gabon (Paris:EC):

Main Financial Indicators

Q1 17 Q1 16 Q1 17

vs.

Q1 16 Average Brent price $/b 53.7 33.9 +58% Average Total Gabon crude price $/b 48.7 28.4 +71% Crude oil production from fields operated

by Total Gabon kb/d1 53.7 55.6 -3% Crude oil production from Total Gabon

interests2 kb/d 46.0 47.0 -2% Sales volumes Mb3 3.79 4.91 -23% Revenues M$ 201 161 +25% Funds generated from operations M$ 95 14 x7 Capital expenditures M$ 18 36 -50% Net income (loss) M$ 11 (16) N/A

(1) kb/d: thousands of barrels a day.

(2) Including tax oil reverting to the Gabonese Republic as per production sharing contracts.

(3) Mb: million barrels.

First-Quarter 2017 Results

Selling Prices

Reflecting the higher Brent price, in first-quarter 2017 the selling price of the Mandji and Rabi Light crude oil grades marketed by Total Gabon averaged 48.7 $/b, up 71% compared to first quarter 2016.

Production

Total Gabon's equity share of operated and non-operated oil production1 declined 3%, thanks mainly to an increase of Anguille's produced water content partly offset by the impact in first-quarter 2016 of the planned shutdown on Coucal Avocette in February for work on the digital control system and the unblocking of the flowline of well ATO012.

Revenues

Revenues were 201 Million USD (M$) in first-quarter 2017, up 25% over the first quarter 2016 thanks mainly to higher selling prices of the crude oil grades marketed (+19.8 $/b or +88 M$), partly offset by lower volumes sold over the period, linked to the lifting schedule (-697 kb or -43 M$), and lower revenues from third parties (-5 M$).

Funds generated from operations

Funds generated from operations were up 81 M$ compared to first quarter 2016 thanks to higher revenues and lower operating costs as a result of the cost-cutting program implemented by the Company.

Capital expenditures

Capital expenditures were 18 M$ down 50% compared to the first quarter of 2016 and included mainly work to improve the integrity and longevity of offshore facilities (Anguille, Torpille, Grondin) and onshore (Cap Lopez terminal) and geophysical and development surveys and studies.

Net Income

A net income of 11 M$ was reported, a 27 M$ improvement over the first quarter 2016 16M$ loss primarily due to higher revenues in the context of higher crude prices and lower operating costs.

Highlights since the beginning of first-quarter 2017

Refocusing of Total Gabon on its principal offshore assets

On February 27, 2017 Total Gabon announced its refocusing on its principal offshore assets via the sale to Perenco of interests in five mature fields and the Rabi-Coucal-Cap Lopez pipeline network. Production from the fields being divested represents about 5,000 b/d, or 10% of Total Gabon's 2016 production. The transaction represents a value of 177 M$ before adjustments and is subject to approval by the authorities.

Board of Directors Meeting on April 4, 2017

The Board of Directors approved on April 4, 2017 the accounts for the year ending December 31, 2016. The annual Shareholders' Meeting was scheduled for May 19, 2017.

Pre-emption rights exercised on the Baudroie-Merou license

On April 24, 2017 Total Gabon announced that it had exercised its pre-emption right to acquire the 50% interest in the Baudroie-Merou license held by MPDC GABON Co., Ltd. Total Gabon owns the remaining 50% interest and at completion of the transaction will become 100% owner and operator of the license. The transaction represents a value of 40 M$ and is subject to approval by the authorities.

1 Including tax oil reverting to the Gabonese Republic as per production sharing contracts.

Societe anonyme incorporated in Gabon with a Board of Directors and share capital of $76,500,000

Headquarters: Boulevard Hourcq, Port-Gentil, BP 525, Gabonese Republic

www.total.ga

Registered in Port-Gentil: 2000 B 00011

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005502/en/

Contacts:

Total Gabon

Media Contact :

Florent CAILLET

florent.caillet@total.com
OTTAWA, ONTARIO -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- Treasury Board Secretariat

The Government of Canada tabled a motion today to move forward with Bill C-7, legislation to create a new labour relations regime for Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) members and reservists.

The Government's motion addresses the Senate's views on Bill C-7 by proposing to increase the scope of issues that can be bargained and accept Senate amendments that remove restrictions on what may be included in collective agreements and arbitral awards that are specific to the RCMP.

These amendments will allow the employer and any future RCMP member bargaining agent to engage in meaningful discussions in good faith on topics of importance to RCMP members and reservists, such as harassment, that were excluded from collective bargaining under the original version of Bill C-7.

Bill C-7 was drafted following consultations with regular members of the RCMP. The Bill also takes into account the results of engagement undertaken with jurisdictions that have RCMP Police Services Agreements. The Government of Canada will continue to work with Parliament in an open and engaged manner throughout the legislative process.

Quotes

"The Government has considered the Senate's amendments to Bill C-7 and meaningfully addressed their concerns. At the same time, we have ensured the operational integrity of the RCMP as a police service and demonstrated our continued commitment to protecting the safety and security of Canadians."

- Ralph Goodale, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

"I thank the Senate members who have helped in the development of this Bill. Their work has given us a better opportunity to improve Canada's RCMP labour relations regime, and to serve the men and women who benefit from it."

- Scott Brison, President of the Treasury Board

Quick Facts

The Government's proposed response to the Senate would:

-- accept the removal of all the restrictions on what may be included in collective agreements and arbitral awards that are specific to the RCMP. This includes matters such as harassment, transfers and appointments, and appraisals of RCMP members -- implement a more targeted management rights clause than that adopted by the Senate, that focusses on protecting the authorities that the RCMP Commissioner needs in order to ensure effective police operations -- maintain limitations on restrictions that replicate those applying to other areas of the federal public service, such as restrictions preventing pensions from being bargained -- not proceed with the requirement for a secret ballot vote for the certification of a bargaining agent to represent RCMP members and reservists -- reject expanding the mandate of the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board to hear grievances on a wider range of matters relating to terms and conditions of employment

The legislation continues to include the following elements:

-- the freedom for RCMP members and reservists to choose whether to be represented by a bargaining agent -- independent, binding arbitration as the dispute resolution process for bargaining impasses, with no right to strike -- a single, national bargaining unit for RCMP members appointed to a rank and reservists -- the requirement that the RCMP bargaining agent have as its primary mandate the representation of RCMP members -- the exclusion of officers from representation -- the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board as the administrative tribunal for matters related to collective bargaining for the RCMP members and reservists, including grievances related to the interpretation or application of a collective agreement

Associated Links

- Mounted Police Association of Ontario v. Canada (Attorney General)

- A New Labour Relations Regime for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police

- Government of Canada to introduce RCMP Labour Relations Bill

- Government of Canada Introduces Legislation to Create a New RCMP Labour Relations Regime

Follow us on Twitter at: @TBS_Canada and @Safety_Canada

Contacts:

Jean-Luc Ferland

Press Secretary

Office of the President of the Treasury Board

613-369-3163



Media Relations

Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

613-957-9400

media@tbs-sct.gc.ca



TTY (telecommunications device for the hearing impaired)

613-369 9371



Scott Bardsley

Office of the Minister of Public Safety and

Emergency Preparedness

613-998-5681



Media Relations

Public Safety Canada

613-991-0657




WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum Friday establishing stricter charging and sentencing policies for the Justice Department. The memorandum issued by Sessions calls on prosecutors to charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense. 'This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency,' Sessions said in the memo. 'This policy fully utilizes the tools Congress has given us.' He added, 'By definition, the most serious offenses are those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences.' The memo reverses Justice Department policy under President Barack Obama that led prosecutors to file charges that avoided mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders. Sessions has suggested that moves to reduce the implementation of mandatory minimums sentences should come from Congress rather than the Executive Branch. However, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond, D-La., accused Sessions of doubling down on a policy that is 'ineffective and discriminatory.' 'The CBC will fight to expose this harmful action for what it is-an attack on our communities,' Richmond said. 'Jeff Sessions, who lied to Congress under oath about contact with the Russian government, should be ashamed of himself.' Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Repealing and replacing Obamacare and reforming the tax code are two of President Donald Trump's top priorities, but the results of a Quinnipiac University national poll show weak support for the proposals backed by the president.



Just 21 percent of voters approve of the Republican healthcare plan passed by the House last week, while 56 percent disapprove of the bill.



A plurality of Republicans support the GOP bill, but Quinnipiac said every other listed party, gender, educational, age and racial group opposes the plan.



The House voted 217 to 213 in favor of the healthcare bill last Thursday, although Senate Republicans have indicated they plan to craft their own legislation.



Democrats are likely to maintain their fierce opposition to any GOP proposal to repeal Obamacare amid expectations the strategy will benefit them in next year's midterm elections.



The poll also found that 52 percent of voters disapprove of the tax reform plan the Trump administration unveiled last month, although 30 percent approve.



Quinnipiac said disapproval of the tax plan rises to 74 percent, including 66 percent of Republicans, if the plan 'significantly increased the national deficit.'



Trump's tax reform plan would reduce the number of income tax brackets from seven to three and lower the corporate tax rate to 15 percent from the current 35 percent.



Voters said 49 percent to 38 percent it is a 'bad idea' to reduce the number of tax brackets and said 55 percent to 39 percent it is a 'bad idea' to lower the corporate tax rate.



A majority of voters also said it is a 'bad idea' to eliminate all tax deductions except for mortgage interest and charitable giving.



However, voters said 54 percent to 35 percent it is a 'good idea' to increase the standard deduction and said 48 percent to 43 percent it is a 'good idea' to eliminate the estate tax.



Sixty-three percent of voters predicted wealthy Americans would benefit most from the tax plan, while 27 percent said the middle class will benefit most.



The Quinnipiac survey of 1,078 voters was conducted May 4th through 9th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Technavio analysts forecast the global body armor market for military applicationsto grow at a CAGR of almost 7% during the forecast period, according to their latest report.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005571/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global body armor market for military applications from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of global body armor market for military applicationsfor 2017-2021. The market is segmented on the material (metals and alloys, aramid, and thermoplastics), product (soft body armor and hard body armor), and geography (the Americas, EMEA, and APAC).

The market for body armor for military purposes will witness a robust growth due to the high emphasis on enhancing personal protection for armed forces and ground troops by the defense agencies in developed countries such as the US, Canada, and France. Emerging economies like South Korea, China, and India are focusing on increasing their spending on the defense sector and replacing legacy military equipment with the modern equipment. Technological advances in body armor such as liquid body armor will drive the market.

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Technavio analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global body armor market for military applications:

Increase in improvised explosive device (IED) attacks

Increase in defense expenses

Rise in security threats

Increase in improvised explosive device (IED) attacks

IED are unconventional explosive weapons that can be activated in a variety of ways and can cause mass destruction. IEDs can cause serious injuries and deaths in the combat field as it is made of biological toxins, toxic chemicals, and radiological material. In 2010, NATO developed a plan focusing on training the military and defense forces to face IEDs.

Sayani Roy, a lead research analyst at Technavio, says, "Many instances of IED attacks have been reported across the world. For instance, a suicide bombing attack using IED in Kabul, Afghanistan, injured military personnel, and civilians. The increase in the use of IEDs will drive the demand for specialized body armor that protects against IEDs."

Increase in defense expenses

The military and defense expenditure of a country is based on the political and social environment. The defense expenditure in regions such as APAC, the Americas, and Western Europe is increasing. The US allocated over USD 500 billion on defense spending in 2015.

"The Make in India campaign, initiated by Government of India has given a boost to the country's growing defense expenses. This campaign aims to boost the manufacturing of arms, concentrating particularly on the private sector to increase the investment in plant, machinery, and technology," adds Sayani.

Rise in security threats

The world has been observing several conflicts such as ISIS conflict, Indo-Pak conflict over Kashmir, Syrian civil war, the Lebanon conflict, and the US-North Korea tensions over the past decade. In the combat fields, 95% of injuries sustained by military forces are caused by falling or flying glass, explosive fragments, and mortar shrapnel.

Manufacturers have innovated ballistic protection equipment by introducing lightweight and flexible body armor, ballistic armor for women, advanced ballistic materials. Moreover, they are focusing on offering breathable and fireproof fabric clothes that can protect the wearer from slash-type attacks. The upgraded features of body armor will fuel the demand for the global body armor market for military applications during the forecast period.

Top vendors:

MKU

3M

BAE Systems

Ballistic Body Armor

Browse Related Reports:

Global Protective Workwear Market 2017-2021

Global Disposable Respirator Market 2017-2021

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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.

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UK: +44 208 123 1770

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Technavio analysts forecast the global automatic espresso machines marketto grow at a CAGR of almost 7% during the forecast period, according to their latest report.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170512005650/en/

Technavio has published a new report on the global automatic espresso machines market from 2017-2021. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The research study covers the present scenario and growth prospects of the global automatic espresso machines marketfor 2017-2021. The market is segmented by product (fully automatic espresso machines and semi-automatic espresso machines), by distribution channels (supermarkets, hypermarkets, mass merchandisers, and department stores, specialty stores, and online retail), and by geography (Europe, North America, APAC, and ROW).

The global automatic espresso machines market is expected to reach to USD 3,210 million in 2021. The demand for coffee remains unaffected by price changes in most regions. The International Coffee Organization states that despite the volatility in the prices of coffee beans, the consumption of coffee is expected to grow by 2021. Countries like China and India largely drive this rise in the consumption of coffee.

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Technavio consumer and retail analysts highlight the following three factors that are contributing to the growth of the global automatic espresso machines market:

New product development and innovation

Manufacturers of automatic espresso machines are developing new products. They are coming up with product innovations to attract a wide customer base. This enables them to attain a competitive edge in the market. They also add user interface panels that increase convenience and add to the aesthetics of the machines and focus on enabling more customization. The latest product innovations ensure that these machines produce coffee that is on par with that produced using professional espresso machines, in terms of taste and quality.

Poonam Saini, a lead retail goods and services research analyst at Technavio, says, "Vendors have also started introducing varieties in espresso machines, like the ones that are compact and do not consume space in the kitchen and dining area. Market leaders, such as Nestle Nespresso, have patented extraction technologies

Premiumization achieved through improved functionality and features along with branding

Many vendors offer innovative and customizable features in their espresso machines, such as scheduling, updates, adjustable brew timings, cool-to-touch, and spill proof features. The features also give notifications when the machine needs more water or when it is running low on coffee beans. There are other value-added features, such as the self-clean function, that are integrated into many automatic espresso machines. Smart apps can also learn individual user routines and suggest the number of times they might want a cup of coffee.

"One of the major players in the market, Nestle Nespresso, offers Nespresso Prodigio, which is equipped with Bluetooth connectivity. Users can control their Nespresso Prodigio remotely and can schedule their coffee at specific times," says Poonam.

Growing demand for espresso coffee and increasing penetration of espresso machines

The demand for espresso machines is also increasing among residential customers. Coffee aficionados are interested in different varieties of coffee. The vendors in the market are launching various espresso machines that provide varieties of coffee. For instance, Philips had launched the Saeco Avanti app to cater to the demand of such customers. This app enables users to acquire knowledge about more coffee varieties and share their recipes via social media. The company has launched the Saeco Brand Ambassador Program to fortify brand engagement and retain customers. This facilitates users to enroll in coffee connoisseur classes and receive tips for maintaining their espresso machines.

Top vendors:

Breville

De'Longhi Appliances

Groupe SEB

Koninklijke Philips

Nestle Nespresso

Browse Related Reports:

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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/20170512005650/en/

Contacts:

Technavio Research

Jesse Maida

Media Marketing Executive

US: +1 630 333 9501

UK: +44 208 123 1770

www.technavio.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



28 June 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, 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 the results of the Scheme Meeting and Extraordinary General Meeting



ATHLONE, Ireland, June 28, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Innocoll Holdings plc ("Innocoll" or the "Company") announces today that in relation to the recommended offer for Innocoll by Gurnet Point L.P. (acting through its general partner Waypoint International GP LLC) ("Gurnet Point") through its wholly owned subsidiary Lough Ree Technologies Limited ("Gurnet Bidco"), the resolutions required to approve the scheme of arrangement under Chapter 1 of Part 9 of the Irish Companies Act of 2014 (the "Scheme") were passed by the requisite majorities at the scheme meeting (the "Scheme Meeting") and the related extraordinary general meeting ("EGM") held earlier today.



The detailed voting results of the poll taken in respect of each of the resolutions at the Scheme Meeting and EGM are set out below.



1. Scheme Meeting:



Resolution: THAT the Scheme in its original form or with or subject to any modification(s), addition(s) or condition(s) approved or imposed by the High Court be agreed to.



Number of % of Innocoll Number of % of Innocoll Number of Innocoll Shareholders Innocoll Shares voted Innocoll Shareholders who voted Shares voted Shares voted who voted as a % of Innocoll Shares* For 18 94.74 21,970,315 99.70 73.00 Against 1 5.26 65,251 0.30 0.22 Total 19 100 22,035,566 100 73.22 Withheld 1 5.26 419,427 1.90 1.39



*The total number of Innocoll Shares in issue at the Voting Record Time was 30,095,931.



2. Extraordinary General Meeting:



Resolution 1 - Special Resolution: Amendment of Memorandum of Association



Number of Innocoll % of Innocoll Shares Number of Innocoll Shares voted voted Shares voted as a % of Innocoll Shares* For 21,983,381 99.71 73.04 Against 63,350 0.29 0.21 Total 22,046,731 100 73.25 Withheld 420,583 1.91 1.40



*The total number of Innocoll Shares in issue at the Voting Record Time was 30,095,931.



Resolution 2 - Ordinary Resolution: To Approve the Scheme of Arrangement



Number of Innocoll % of Innocoll Shares Number of Innocoll Shares voted voted Shares voted as a % of Innocoll Shares* For 21,981,945 99.71 73.04 Against 64,841 0.29 0.22 Total 22,046,786 100 73.26 Withheld 420,528 1.91 1.40



*The total number of Innocoll Shares in issue at the Voting Record Time was 30,095,931.



Resolution 3 - Special Resolution: Cancellation of Cancellation Shares



Number of Innocoll % of Innocoll Shares Number of Innocoll Shares voted voted Shares voted as a % of Innocoll Shares* For 21,960,733 99.63 72.97 Against 81,861 0.37 0.27 Total 22,042,594 100 73.24 Withheld 424,720 1.93 1.41



*The total number of Innocoll Shares in issue at the Voting Record Time was 30,095,931.



Resolution 4 - Ordinary Resolution: Application of the Reserve arising on the Reduction of Capital in Paying up and Issuing Shares



Number of Innocoll % of Innocoll Shares Number of Innocoll Shares voted voted Shares voted as a % of Innocoll Shares* For 21,977,415 99.70 73.02 Against 66,130 0.30 0.22 Total 22,043,545 100 73.24 Withheld 423,769 1.92 1.41



*The total number of Innocoll Shares in issue at the Voting Record Time was 30,095,931.



Resolution 5 - Special Resolution: Amendment of Articles of Association



Number of Innocoll % of Innocoll Shares Number of Innocoll Shares voted voted Shares voted as a % of Innocoll Shares* For 21,980,296 99.71 73.03 Against 64,490 0.29 0.21 Total 22,044,786 100 73.25 Withheld 422,528 1.92 1.40



*The total number of Innocoll Shares in issue at the Voting Record Time was 30,095,931.



Completion of the Acquisition remains subject to satisfaction or waiver of the other conditions set out in the Definitive Proxy Statement (as defined below), but is expected to occur in July 2016. In order for the Scheme to become effective, the sanction of the Scheme by the High Court of Ireland at a hearing is required.



It is intended that, on 30 June 2017, Innocoll will apply to the High Court of Ireland to fix a date for a hearing to sanction the Scheme, which date is expected to be 21 July 2017.



ENQUIRIES



Innocoll Holdings plc



Anthony Zook, Chief Executive Officer TZook@innocoll.com



Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements



Certain statements included in this announcement are forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can typically be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology, such as "expects", "believes", "may", "will", "could", "should", "intends", "plans", "predicts", "envisages", "estimates", "forecast", "outlook", "guidance", "possible", "projects", "potential" or "anticipates" or other similar words and expressions and include, without limitation, any projections relating to results of operations and financial conditions of either Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or Innocoll and their respective subsidiary undertakings from time to time, as well as plans and objectives for future operations, expected future revenues, financing plans, expected expenditures, expected synergies and divestments relating to Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or Innocoll and discussions of Gurnet Point's, Gurnet Bidco's or Innocoll's business plans. All forward-looking statements in this document made by Gurnet Point and / or Gurnet Bidco are based upon information known to Gurnet Point and / or Gurnet Bidco on the date of this document and all forward-looking statements in this document made by Innocoll are based upon information known to Innocoll on the date of this document. Except as expressly required by law, Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco and Innocoll disclaim any intent or obligation to update or revise these forward-looking statements. None of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or Innocoll undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, save as may be required by law. Although none of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or Innocoll undertake any obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, you are advised to consult any additional disclosures that any of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or Innocoll may make directly to you or through reports that any of Gurnet Point, Gurnet Bidco or Innocoll, in the future, may file with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this document is as of June 28, 2017.



It is not reasonably possible to itemize all of the many factors and specific events that could cause the forward-looking statements in this document to be incorrect or could otherwise have a material effect on the future operations or results of the Company. Further information on the primary risks of the business and the risk management of the Company is contained in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, which is filed with the SEC.



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. ("Piper Jaffray"), which is a securities broker-dealer registered with the U.S. SEC and subject to regulation by the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, 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.



No Offer or Solicitation



This announcement is not intended to, and does not, constitute or form part of any offer to purchase, sell, subscribe for, exchange or otherwise dispose of, or the solicitation of an offer to purchase, sell, subscribe for, exchange or dispose of, or an invitation to purchase, sell, subscribe for, exchange or otherwise dispose of, 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, invitation 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 Innocoll, all 'dealings' in any 'relevant securities' of Innocoll (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 Innocoll, 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 Innocoll 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 Innocoll 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 Gurnet Point website at www.gurnetpointlpoffer.com and 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. The contents of Gurnet Point website, Innocoll website nor the contents of any other website accessible from hyperlinks are incorporated into, or form part of, this announcement.

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VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwired) -- 05/12/17 -- Ten Peaks Coffee Company Inc. will hold a conference call to discuss its financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2017 on Monday, May 15th at 9:00 am Pacific Time (12:00 pm Eastern Time). To participate, please dial (866) 682-6100 (toll free) or (862) 255-5401 (international) approximately five minutes before the call and provide the company name. A replay will be available through May 29, 2017 at (877) 481-4010 (toll free) or (919) 882-2331 (international) passcode: 10397.

Ten Peaks Coffee Company Inc. (TSX: TPK) ("Ten Peaks" or "the company") today reported financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2017. This period represents the first quarter of the company's 2017 fiscal year. Ten Peaks is a leading specialty coffee company doing business through two wholly owned subsidiaries: Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company, Inc. ("SWDCC") and Seaforth Supply Chain Solutions Inc. ("Seaforth"), the company's green coffee handling and storage subsidiary. SWDCC is a premium green coffee decaffeinator located in Burnaby, BC, which employs the proprietary SWISS WATER Process to decaffeinate green coffee without the use of chemicals. This is the company's primary business, and the results reported here reflect SWDCC's operating performance.

During the three months ended March 31, 2017, Ten Peaks recorded increases in gross profit, operating income, net income and EBITDA, compared to the first quarter of last year. The gains were due to improved margins and lower cash expenses, as quarterly processing volumes were unchanged from 2016.

"We are pleased to see that recent initiatives to grow our margins and reduce our operating costs are having the intended effect," said Frank Dennis, President and CEO of Ten Peaks. "This has enabled us to improve our financial results for the quarter, while continuing to take steps to grow our business in the future."

Performance Highlights

In $000s except per share amounts 3 months ended (unaudited) March 31 2017 2016 -------------------------- Sales $ 19,223 $ 20,653 Gross profit 3,035 3,017 EBITDA(1) 1,677 1,263 Net income (loss) 1,435 1,188 Earnings per share,(2) basic 0.16 0.13 Earnings per share,(2) diluted 0.08 0.13 (1) EBITDA is calculated and defined in the section on 'Non-IFRS Financial Measures' below. (2) Per-share calculations are based on the weighted average number of shares outstanding during the period.

A key metric for the company is shipped volumes. Total shipments in the quarter were flat, year-over-year. Volumes shipped to SWDCC's large commercial accounts decreased by 5% year-over-year, while volumes to its smaller specialty accounts rose by 9%. Looking at volumes by customer type, shipments to coffee importers rose by 24% over Q1 2016, while volumes to roasters fell by 9%. A decline in orders from large roasters during the period weighed on SWDCC's overall volume growth.

A large amount of orders were shipped in the last week of March, and those with 'delivered' contract terms were not recognized in revenue in the first quarter. 'Delivered' terms mean that title to the coffee does not change hands until the shipment is received by the customer. A total of 6% of SWDCC's volumes for the period were shipped under 'delivered' terms in the first quarter and were not received by the customer until April. As a result, the associated revenue will be recognized in the second quarter.

First quarter revenue totaled $19.2 million. This was down by 7% from the same period last year, largely due to the timing of shipments and a change in sales mix. Process revenue (the amount SWDCC charges its customer for decaffeinating green coffee) decreased by 3%, while green revenue decreased by 9%. These declines were partially offset by increases in distribution revenue (the amount SWDCC charges its customers for shipping, handling and storing coffee), which rose 13% in the first quarter.

Cost of sales for the quarter totaled $16.2 million, down by 8% compared to the same period last year. The decrease reflects lower green coffee costs owing to the change in sales mix, as well as reduced repair and maintenance costs. This was partially offset by increased depreciation, which related to the capacity expansion project completed at SWDCC's Burnaby, BC facility at the end of Q1 last year.

First quarter gross profit increased by 1% compared to 2016, as lower costs of sales more than offset a decrease in revenue.

Sales and marketing expenses for the period were $0.6 million, down marginally from Q1 2016.

Administration expenses decreased by 5% to $1.1 million from $1.2 million in Q1 of last year. The decrease was mainly due to lower professional fees as well as staff and staff-related expenses, partially offset by higher stock-based compensation expense.

Operating income for the quarter was up by 9% to $1.3 million, due to higher gross profit and lower expenses.

First quarter net income of $1.4 million was up by 21% from the same period last year. A fair value adjustment on the embedded option associated with Ten Peaks' convertible debenture boosted net income, which was partially offset by increased finance expenses in the quarter and a loss on risk management activities.

Quarterly EBITDA of $1.7 million was up by 33% compared to the same period last year. Lower cash expenses drove the increase in EBITDA for the period.

Outlook

In 2017, management is focused on executing the company's expansion plan, while growing SWDCC's market share in the US and internationally. Overall, management expects volumes to increase in 2017, with volume growth skewed to the second half of the year.

Recent market research from STUDYLOGIC shows that decaf consumption is growing faster than regular coffee(1). Another study by the National Coffee Association(2) indicates that younger consumers are driving this trend, with consumption in the 18-25 age group showing the strongest growth. This same study shows that all consumers are very conscious of their caffeine consumption, particularly the younger demographic.

"Multiple research sources support what we have been saying for some time," said Dennis. "When consumers become aware that they can have Amazing Coffee Without Caffeine any time of the day or night, they choose to drink more coffee. This enables roaster retailers, in turn, to extend their coffee sales later into the day and thus grow their business."

Specialty decaffeinated coffee is showing particularly strong sales gains, with growth outpacing the total coffee market as a whole. This is positive news for SWDCC, as its SWISS WATER Process decaffeinated coffees are already well-recognized within the industry and by consumers for their superior quality. In addition, the long-established integrity of SWDCC's 100% chemical free process, together with its brand recognition, position it (and its customers) to respond to growing consumer demand for healthier, higher quality foods. As a result of these trends, and the ongoing work SWDCC is doing to increase its market share, the company is confident that SWDCC's volumes will continue to grow over the coming years.

As announced previously, Ten Peaks is preparing to build a state-of-the-art production facility, which will house a new production line in order to meet anticipated long-term growth in demand. Importantly, the site is large enough to accommodate growth well into the future. Construction of the new facility began earlier this month.

(1) STUDYLOGIC report March 2017

(2) National Coffee Association, National Coffee Drinking Trends, 2017

Quarterly Dividends

On April 17, 2017, Ten Peaks paid an eligible quarterly dividend of $0.0625 per share to shareholders of record on March 31, 2017.

Non-IFRS Financial Measures

EBITDA

Ten Peaks defines EBITDA as net income before interest, depreciation, amortization, impairments, share-based compensation, gains/losses on foreign exchange, gains/losses on disposal of capital equipment, fair value adjustments on the embedded option, and provision for income taxes. EBITDA also reflects unrealized gains and losses on undesignated foreign exchange forward contracts.

The reconciliation of net income to EBITDA is as follows:

(In $000s) (unaudited) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 months ended 3 months ended March 31, 2017 March 31, 2016 ------------------------------------ Income for the period $ 1,435 $ 1,188 Income taxes 144 407 ------------------------------------ Income before tax 1,579 1,595 Finance (income) expense 205 (74) Depreciation & amortization 533 398 Unrealized (gain) loss on foreign exchange forward contracts 238 (218) Fair value adjustment on embedded option (850) - (Gain) loss on foreign exchange (47) (254) Share-based compensation 19 (184) ------------------------------------ EBITDA $ 1,677 $ 1,263 ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Additional Information

A more detailed discussion of Ten Peaks' recent financial results and management's outlook can be found in the company's MD&A for the three months ended March 31, 2017. This document, along with Ten Peaks' condensed consolidated interim financial statements, will be posted on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) and on the company's website (http://www.tenpeakscoffee.ca) on or before May 15, 2017.

Readers are cautioned that the summary information contained in this press release is not a suitable source of information for readers who are unfamiliar with Ten Peaks. This press release should be considered a precursor to, and not a substitute for, reading the financial statements and MD&A, which provide more detailed information related to the company's performance and future prospects.

Company Profile

Ten Peaks is a publicly traded company that owns all of the interests of the Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company Inc. (SWDCC), a premium green coffee decaffeinator located in Burnaby, BC. It also owns and operates Seaforth Supply Chain Solutions Inc. (Seaforth), a green coffee handling and storage business located in Metro Vancouver.

About SWDCC

SWDCC employs the proprietary SWISS WATER Process to decaffeinate green coffee without the use of chemicals, leveraging science-based systems and controls to produce amazing coffee that is 99.9% caffeine free. The SWISS WATER Process is a 100% chemical free water process for coffee decaffeination, as well as the world's only consumer-branded decaffeination process. It is certified organic by the Organic Crop Improvement Association.

SWISS WATER Process decaffeinated green coffees are sold to many of North America's leading specialty roaster retailers, specialty coffee importers and commercial coffee roasters. SWDCC also sells coffees internationally through regional distributors.

About Seaforth

Seaforth provides a complete range of green coffee logistics services including devanning coffee received from origin; inspecting, weighing and sampling coffees; and storing, handling and preparing green coffee for outbound shipments. Seaforth's warehouse and handling operation is certified organic by Ecocert Canada.

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release may constitute "forward-looking" statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. When used in this press release, such statements may include such words as "may", "will", "expect", "believe", "plan" and other similar terminology. These statements reflect management's current expectations regarding future events and operating performance, as well as management's current estimates, but which are based on numerous assumptions and may prove to be incorrect. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, risks related to processing volumes and sales growth, operating results, supply of coffee, general industry conditions, commodity price risks, technology, competition, foreign exchange rates, construction timing, costs and financing of capital projects, and general economic conditions.

The forward-looking statements and financial outlook information contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Except to the extent required by applicable securities law, Ten Peaks Coffee Company Inc. undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any such statements to reflect any change in management's expectations or in events, conditions, or circumstances on which any such statements may be based, or that may affect the likelihood that actual results will differ from those described herein.

Contacts:

Sherry Tryssenaar

Chief Financial Officer

Ten Peaks Coffee Company Inc.

604.444.8780

stryssenaar@tenpeakscoffee.ca

www.tenpeakscoffee.ca




New Delhi: , May 11 (PTI) The Competition Commission has ordered a detailed probe against major telecom players for allegedly trying to block the entry of newcomer Reliance Jio, according to sources.

The fair trade regulators decision comes on a complaint filed against leading incumbent players -- Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular -- and industry body COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India).

A senior official said the regulator has decided to investigate allegations of unfair business practices made against the incumbent telecom players.

Sources said the regulator would also examine the overall conduct of the COAI, especially since the allegations of anti- competitive practices have been made against three of its key members.

The probe by the Director General (DG) has been ordered for allegedly trying to restrict the entry of Reliance Jio, the official added. DG is the investigation arm of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). Cases where the watchdog finds prima-facie evidence of competition norms violations are referred to the DG for detailed probe.

When contacted for comments on the CCI ordering the probe, an Airtel spokesperson said, "We have not received any such communication from the CCI and would, therefore, not be able to comment."

"We have already stated that we have always responded with alacrity and provided a staggering quantum of PoIs (Point of Interconnections) to Reliance Jio in record time," the spokesperson added.

Emails sent to Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio did not elicit any response.

"Though we have not seen the order as it has not been published yet, we are disappointed at the apparent news (if confirmed), that the CCI has decided to go forward with an investigation into the complaint filed by Reliance Jio," COAI Director General Rajan Mathews said.

"We believe the COAI and its members will be fully vindicated in the matter and truth will prevail," he said.

Last year, billionaire Mukesh Ambanis venture Reliance Jio stormed into the Indian telecom market - the second largest market globally with 1.2 billion subscribers - with disruptive offerings and has since been at loggerheads with the incumbent operators.

Reliance Jio had accused incumbent players of not providing sufficient network connectivity (leading to call failures on its network) while the latter countered the claims saying the newcomer was unleashing "tsunami" of free traffic from its mobile network.

The two sides have also clashed on other contentious issues like free voice and data offers, and customised retention plans.

Sources said the watchdog has concluded that dominant telecom players allegedly colluded and used the platform of COAI to deny point of interconnection to Reliance Jio. The COAIs role would be looked at in the context of Section 3 of the Competition Act that pertains to anti- competitive agreements.

It is pertinent to mention here that Reliance Jio, last year, had filed two complaints of anti-competitive practices against the COAI as well as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

According to the official cited earlier, a decision with respect to complaints filed by the incumbents against Reliance Jio is yet to be taken. It was alleged that the new entrant was indulging in predatory pricing ways. So far, the regulator is believed to be of the view that only an established or dominant player can resort to predatory pricing.

(Disclosure: : Firstpost is part of Network18 Media & Investment Limited which is owned by Reliance Industries Limited.)
New Delhi: As many as 60.5 lakh taxpayers have been enrolled under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the first phase out of a total of 84 lakh taxpayers who will come under the new indirect tax net, Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia said.

"As on 30 April, when Phase-1 of enrolment was closed, 60.5 lakh taxpayers out of 84 lakh had enrolled," Adhia said here on Wednesday after holding detailed review of the IT-preparedness for GST system at the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) office.

The enrolment window will be re-opened for 15 days from 1 June to give another opportunity to taxpayers to enrol, he said.

Expressing satisfaction with the preparation for the roll-out of GST from 1 July, Adhia said that out of 62,937 tax officials, nearly 24,668 have been given hands-on training on the application software on live system while the remaining officials will be trained by 15 June this year.

GSTN, which is creating the information technology (IT) backbone for the new indirect tax regime, is also conducting a pilot on GST system software from May 2-16, where 3,200 taxpayers drawn from each state, union territory and Centre will be participating.

"This pilot will also give an opportunity to test all the modules by a large set of users in real life environment so that all possible scenarios get tested. All stakeholders involved in the GST system from taxpayer to bank to Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to accounting authorities are participating in this exercise, which is like a rehearsal for the real rollout," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

The feedback from the pilot will be used to further improve the GST Software, it said.
New Delhi: IT firm HCL Technologies Ltd on Thursday said a majority of its 12,000-strong workforce in the US are locals and expressed confidence in being able to navigate through any visa-related challenges that may emerge.

The comments assume significance as companies like Infosys and Cognizant are ramping up their workforce in the US to mitigate the impact of tightening of work visa norms. The Donald Trump administration has been critical of outsourcing firms for unfairly taking jobs away from the US workers, instead replacing them with cheaper manpower from countries like India.

Today, we have 12 centres in the US, a lot of them at a significant scale. Overall, we have 12,000 employees in the USgreater than 50% of them are locals, HCL Technologies president and CEO C. Vijayakumar said.

He added that the company has been proactively creating more resilient delivery models by setting up onshore centres. Over the past few months, there has been a growing sentiment of protectionism in not just the US but also markets like Singapore, Australia and New Zealand as they seek to safeguard jobs for locals and raise the bar for foreign workers. So, I think our overall business model and what we have done over the last few years is really helping us navigate any situation that could potentially come up, Vijayakumar said. The US market accounted for the largest chunk of the companys revenues at 62.6% at the end of the March 2017 quarter.

For the industry too, the North American market is the largest contributor to revenues. The US had recently accused Indian firms Infosys and TCS of unfairly cornering the lions share of Americas H-1B work visas. Indian IT firms are ramping up their operations in the US by hiring more locals in order to comply with norms. The tightening of visa norms not only pushes up operational costs for these tech firms but also makes movement of skilled workforce difficult.
Infosys has deferred the pay hikes for the current financial year and also denied any planned layoffs amid reports of heightening panic among IT sector employees.

According to a letter by chief operating officer Pravin Rao, quoted by a report in NDTV, the second largest IT exporter is planning to roll out the salary increments on 1 July for the job level 5 staff. For others, the hike will be in the subsequent quarters, the letter said.

He also sought to quash rumours that the company is planning large-scale layoffs. However, Rao has said that there will be performance-based exits after the appraisal.

"As has been the case in the past, we will primarily see some performance based exits," the letter said.

Earlier a post on the Infosys Confessions Facebook page had mentioned the letter and its contents.

The post said with the deferment of the salary hike, employees will lose three months of increments. "In the name of cost cutting, Infy has been doing the unthinkable. In such conditions, why would they still spend money on shining the white pebbles in front of K9 Bldg, BBSR DC?" the post added.

Here is the full post:

Earlier Infosys had said that it is planning to soon lay off an unspecified number of its techies for non-performance.

A continued low feedback on performance could lead to certain performance actions, including separation of an individual, the company had said in a statement.

As a bi-annual exercise, the IT majors management would make performance assessments of its employees, keeping in view the business goals set for individuals.

Performance assessments are done with reference to the goals individuals have on business objectives and other strategic priorities," the company said.

Media reports had said citing sources said Infosys could be laying off staff in hundreds at middle and senior levels, working in its development centres across the country and a few in its overseas offices or subsidiaries.

The proposed sacking by the troubled company follows similar layoff moves by rivals Wipro, TCS and Congnizant to right size their human resources and reduce cost of operations in a tough environment, with disruptive technologies and declining IT spend by enterprises worldwide due to sluggish economy.

The US-based Cognizant of Indian promoters last week announced a voluntary separation programme to some of its top-level executives, including directors, associate vice-presidents and senior vice-presidents with a golden handshake.

With inputs from PTI
An Economic Times report, quoting SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya, said: The new ordinance that empowers RBI to nudge banks to deal with stressed assets will improve transparency and provide higher assurance when dealing with bad loans." The news report went on to add: Indias largest lender had lobbied to involve government agencies in dealing with bad loans."

SBI chairman has reasons to be happy that her lobbying bore fruit; that after resorting to reckless banking practices for years, when the time came to take huge haircuts on the banks capital position, the bankers would not to be left to take the blame alone. They would now get the protection of the RBI and the government, courtesy the new ordinance. With protective arm of government agencies around them, the bankers like Arundhati Bhattacharya are now assured that the long arm of the law would not be able to reach them.

The ordinance that carried out amendments to the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, last week has empowered the RBI to set up oversight panels that will shield bankers from any probe by agencies looking into loan recasts.

We were told by the honourable finance minister that there was a decision paralysis in banks as bankers were afraid of investigations and enquiries if they write down big losses. These bankers also did not want to suffer the fate of the IDBI Bank chairman Yogesh Agarwal who was arrested last January as the CBI investigation found that he had advanced loans of Rs 950 crore to Vijay Mallyas Kingfisher Airlines (KFA), in contravention of established industry practices.

After all, it was not the IDBI Bank alone; SBI and several other public sector banks had advanced loans to Mallyas KFA in complete disregard of its credit rating. When Vijay Mallya declared bankruptcy, then apart from the IDBI, the chairmen of at least half a dozen public sector banks including the SBI, should have been sent to jail for advancing money to KFA without due diligence  without taking cognizance of the fact that Mallya was fraudulently diverting most of the loan advances abroad instead of investing in the revival of the KFA. Arundhati Bhattacharyas et al were complicit in this fraud, going by the CBIs parametres.

No wonder, all these bank chiefs cried foul when Yogesh Agarwal was taken to custody. They called his arrest an  unwarranted retribution and threatened that if the loan sanction process was questioned by the investigative agencies, then the banking industry would be thrown into the chaos and Indias economy would be derailed.

These worthies claimed that even if they have sunk Rs 10 lakh crore of the public money into the drain, they must not be questioned as they did it in good intent for larger national interest, even as it may have turned out to be national fraud!

In this banker-business complicity, Vijay Mallya was only one player, albeit a small player, with just about Rs 9,000 crore loans. But then our wily bankers have advanced much bigger loans to many more players and are now saddled with just the rump. Take the case of the Bhushan Steel; it is a company that banks happily poured money into without a check on where the money was headed.The companys debt now stands at over Rs 46,000 crore and its market capitalisation today is less than Rs 2,000 crore!

But then KFA or Bhushan Steel are not isolated examples. There are scores of such companies that have diverted much of the money advanced to them and now that banks and the RBI have become pro-active to settle the debt issue once and for all, these business groups are happy that they would get away by forfeiting only a fraction of what they had received. The banks are left with no option but to write off a major part of their loans.

In fact, the Economic Survey this year put it pointedly: About 33 of the top 100 stressed debtors would need debt reductions of less than 50 percent, 10 would need reductions of 51-75 percent, and no less than 57 would need reductions of 75 percent or more.

Why have things come to such a sorry pass?

Just about a year ago (April 13, 2016), an SC bench headed by the then Chief justice of India T S Thakur had raised a similar question to the RBI: Why does it happen that some people take loans worth thousands of crores of rupees to set up companies, declare the companies sick and enjoy with public money? On the other hand, why are poor farmers harassed for repayment of a few thousand rupees they take as loan in distress and made to suffer?.

The blunt answer to this question is the unholy nexus between some bankers and some businessmen; bankers wink at credit rating principles while advancing big loans while they are meticulous in enforcing these principles while advancing relatively smaller loans to retail customers who have no capacity to bribe them.

That is the irony: the State Bank of India chairman, Arundhati Bhattacharya, cried hoarse when the Uttar Pradesh government decided to waive off the outstanding loans of the marginal farmers. She said that farmers loan waiver adversely affected the credit discipline; once their loan is waived, these farmers begin to believe that it would be waived again and again and get into the habit of not paying back, she said.

But the same SBI chairman who insists that farmers must be made to pay back the few thousand rupees they take as loan, despite the adverse weather conditions and crop failure, has no qualms in going around pleading that the businessmen who have taken a few thousand crores of rupees as loan must be shown mercy and their loan should be written off or whittled down as their failure to pay is on account of adverse economic conditions, not bad intent.

In Ms Bhattacharyas scheme of things, the loan waiver given to the big business does not affect the credit discipline! No wonder, the bank she has been at the helm has taken the lead in writing off more than Rs 400,000 crore of outstanding loans of businessmen since 2000!

That is the essence of crony capitalism. Bankers go on recklessly advancing money to the businesses (the suspicion persists that they would not do it without kickbacks) and they claim to do it in the larger national interest; after all, when the businesses thrive and prosper, the countrys economy would get a boost, they aver.

But when the same businesses go bust, these bankers again plead mercy on behalf of these business houses, ostensibly again in national interest! Look at the series of interviews to TV channels that the SBI chairman has given in the last few days insisting that wilful defaulters are few and far between!

No wonder, when the Supreme Court asked the banks and the RBI to furnish the list of businessmen who have defaulted on the repayment of loans of more than Rs 500 crore (mind you, more than Rs 500 crore) the likes of Ms Bhattacharya have stiffly opposed the plea saying that revealing the names of the big defaulters would undermine Indias economic stability!

That is a signal how deep the business-banker nexus is. The crony capitalism would not, however, thrive without the patronage of the political class.The ruling politicians have invariably come to the rescue of the public sector bankers and the businessmen by allowing the massive write-offs of the loans and then recapitalising the banks for the lost money on account of the write-offs.

When Finance Minister Arun Jaitley set aside Rs 70,000 crore for the recapitalisation of the public sector banks, the SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya had taken the lead to plead that the amount was peanuts and the public sectors banks needed much more money if they have to function normally for Indias economic progress!

The public sector bankers clearly live by the principle: sink the taxpayers money in dubious deals and when you go bust ask for more taxpayers money to carry on the cycle! After all, the mai-baap sarkar is there to extend protection to them!

So far, the protection from the political class had come in the form of huge recapitalisation of banks; now it has extended another form of protection by promulgating an ordinance last Friday (5th May) which would protect our bankers from the prying eyes of the investigative agencies.

The circle of crony capitalism is now complete. We have institutionalised a system whereby bankers, businesses and politicians will have a cosy time, without someone lurking from behind.

As always, the taxpayer will be asked to pick up the tab to sustain this cosy club.
Filmmaker Vipul Shah, after producing a host of action films like the Force franchise, the Commando franchise and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, is planning to return to direction after seven years, as his last directorial was the 2010 film Action Replayy.

Mumbai Mirror reports that the subject of his next film will be that of medical science. It will address the issue of drug testing on humans that Shah read up on back in 2009. The report quotes him as saying, "The project kept getting delayed but its a story waiting to be told. The facts are real. Its the story of a doctor who stumbles on this conspiracy which is a work of fiction.

While he is tight lipped about the star cast of the film as the project is still in the scripting stage, the report speculates that he has approached Saif Ali Khan to play the protagonist, the role of a doctor. The Times of India reports that Khan was offered yet another film by Shah over a year ago.

This film was the Hindi remake of Rowan Joffe's 2014 psychological thriller Before I Go To Sleep, the remake rights of which Shah acquired over a year ago. However, that film did not materialise for reasons best known to the filmmaker and the actor.

But if Khan gives a nod to Shah's medical drama, it will be an interesting role for him. After the failure of Vishal Bhardwaj's period drama Rangoon, Khan still has three releases to look forward to this year. He has Raja Krishna Menon's comedy Chef in which he plays the titular role, Akshat Verma's Kaalakandi and Gauravv K Chawla's Baazaar. Thus, he will explore a range of professions on the celluloid, from a chef to a stock market dealer to a medical professional.
When the climax of the first film in your series packs the punch that Sarkars ending did in 2005, be aware that each sequel is a potential victim of the can it throw up a surprise to match that one? syndrome. Chances are, viewers have spent your entire film guessing 10 likely twists in the finale. The only way you can live up to expectations then, is to think up an 11th option no one else could possibly envision.

Director Ram Gopal Varmas Sarkar 3, the follow-up to 2008s Sarkar Raj, has a decent enough conclusion  not breathtaking, not astonishing as a whole, but with at least one unexpected touch that helps it pull through. The film is pulled down by another symptom of sequelitis though: fatigue. Varma tries hard to conjure up the same intimidating atmosphere here that he created in Sarkar and Sarkar Raj, but his direction lacks zest, the writing by P Jayakumar lacks depth and the film ends up looking like a tired effort to cash in on the success of its precursors.

What happens then in the closing minutes of Sarkar 3 matters less than it otherwise might have, because of the soporific effects of the preceding two hours.

Amitabh Bachchan returns in Sarkar 3 as the Godfather-like Maharashtra gangster-politician Subhash Nagre, known to everyone as Sarkar. Nagre continues to be loved by the masses yet misunderstood by many who assume that he fakes altruism to front his underworld activities. With his sons Shankar and Vishnu gone and his wife (played by Supriya Pathak) bedridden, Nagre leans heavily on his loyal lieutenant Gokul Satam (Ronit Roy). Enter: Shivaji Nagre (Amit Sadh), the son of Vishnu who, you will recall, was killed in the first film by Shankar.

Shivaji wants to join his granddads business, but his arrival on the scene leads to tension within the gang, making them vulnerable to manipulation by Nagres rivals.

Who is truly committed to Sarkar? Who is pretending? These are the questions the film throws our way as it rolls along.

It has been nine years since the release of Sarkar Raj. In that film, Aishwarya Rai Bachchans Anita appeared to take over the reins of Sarkars empire, if not fully then at least in part. She is nowhere on the scene in Sarkar 3. While this could be because the actress has made herself unavailable, that is no excuse for why the screenplay does not bother to explain the characters absence, considering how crucial she was in Sarkar Raj. If you want an example of how dispensable women  artistes and fictional characters  are considered in Bollywood series, you have it here. Repeated references are made to Vishnu and Shankar in Sarkar 3, but there is no mention of Anita, the bosswoman who might have been.

This is the least of the films failings though. The fact is the storyline has little by way of excitement, and frankly, it is natural to wonder why Sarkar 3 was made at all. The first half hour is promising because potentially interesting characters are introduced  in particular, the self-righteous neta Govind Deshpande played by Manoj Bajpayee  and you wonder where they will take the plot. Soon though, boredom sets in.

The novelty of hearing Bachchan speak in that gravelly-voiced rumble is now past. The clash between Deshpande and Nagre turns out to be a damp squib. And the bombastic conversations written by Ram Kumar Singh are poor cousins of the seeti-worthy dialoguebaazi we Bollywood buffs have grown up on  you can either go the natural way, as many films have since the 1990s, or go the whole hog in the opposite direction to revive memories of grandiose 1970s-80s Hindi cinema that Bachchan was so much a part of. Sarkar 3 tries to be the latter, but cannot pull it off.

Bachchan is one of the many cast members lost to this films unimaginative writing. The veteran has nothing new to offer in Sarkar 3, coming up with a performance he may well have delivered with his eyes closed. Bajpayee, still fresh from his brilliance in Aligarh (2016), is completely wasted here. Jackie Shroff as a Dubai-based gangster is a bit of a joke, participating in Sarkar 3s many leery scenes featuring what seems like double entendre aimed at the breasts of his bikini-clad moll.

Sadh has been remarkable in some of his previous films, most notably Abhishek Kapoors buddy flick Kai Po Che (2013) and in a small role in the unfortunately little-known Maximum (2012). He tries to infuse life into Shivaji Nagre, but cannot do much in the face of dull penmanship.

Another promising young artiste who suffers similarly is Yami Gautam playing Shivajis girlfriend Anu, one of Sarkar 3s many cursorily written characters. With little meat for her to sink her teeth into, our takeaway of Anu from the film is Gautams beauty, nothing more.

The politics of the underworld  or the overworld for that matter  in any country, state or city is always rich material for a good writer. India today is as fascinating as when RGV gave us his fabulous Siva (Telugu, 1989), Shiva (its Hindi remake in 1991), Satya (Hindi, 1998) and Company (Hindi, 2002). There are so many hooks that Sarkar 3 could have pegged itself on, not the least of them being a fellow called Deven Gandhi (Bajrang Bali Singh) who is no Gandhiji, although one character  quite amusingly  does refer to him as such. It required a greater talent to carry that forward.

This is not to say that Sarkar 3 is insufferable. It is not. It is certainly a far cry from Ramus worst, which remains Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag (2007). The problem is that we have seen this mans best. And his best was such bloody darned genius, that it is hard not to be pained by the ordinariness that has been the hallmark of so many of his films in the past decade.

Sadly, Sarkar 3 too is lacklustre and ordinary. Coming from the House of Ram Gopal Varma, in some ways that counts as worse than being bad.
The opening scene of Meri Pyaari Bindu was my favourite in director Akshay Roys film. The setting is Kolkata and no movie located in that city is complete without a visual reference to Durga.

Except this time it is a little quirky and quite original. Its also the scene that introduces the narrator of the story  Abhimanyu Roy (Ayushmann Khurrana), a highly successful writer of horror-sex pulp fiction trying to break out of a three-year long writers block. His books, with titles such as Draculas Lover and Chudail Ki Choli are a guilty pleasure derided by critics who say All his characters are negative, angry and horny like him.

But when Abhi returns home to Kolkata after several years, hes reminded of his lifes great, unrequited love story. The discovery of a long forgotten mix tape uncorks every memory associated with a friendship turned into a love story between Abhi and his neighbour, Bindu (Parineeti Chopra). Traversing two decades, from the 1980s to present day, the songs soundtrack the story of growing up, growing together and growing apart.

Bindu is the blueprint version of a contemporary Yash Raj heroine: somewhat shallow, rather selfish, effervescent and commitment-phobic. Abhi is a more staid and down to earth chap, working a bank job and dreaming of a happy married life in a 2BHK with two kids.

Suprotim Senguptas story follows these two characters and tries to see if their lives ever intersect. Do all love stories have happy endings?

Several familiar narrative devices are used  the style is a little bit Nora Ephron in parts. For instance, when as young adults Bindu and Abhi live in different geographies but maintain a correspondence which, over years, shrinks from pages to paragraphs. The use of background music and some scenes also remind one of the French film Amelie with an obvious hat-tip to Woody Allens Annie Hall.

Like Allen, Sengupta too keeps the dialogues natural and Roy makes them fly fast, but the attempt to be glib and breezy does not really translate adequately into wit.

As with all such stories, you await the point of breakdown, its built up nicely  on the back of disappointment, frustration, a stark and honest look in the mirror by one the them.

As Abhi continues to tap away at his typewriter, bashing out page after page of his latest work, titled Meri Pyaari Bindu you understand that at some level this narration is Abhi's rose tinted memory of Bindu, his muse and the mix tape serves as a catalyst for catharsis.

Sounds charming, and it could well have been. Theres no faulting Chopra or Khurrana for effort but somehow you never buy into their romance or passion. And this is in part owing to the absence of any scenes of honest, deep, thoughtful conversation and shared experiences.

The tonality also chops around a bit. The extended Bengali family is depicted as unnecessarily jovial, while Bindus Tamil father is too problematic. However to their credit Rajatava Datta, Aparajita Adhya and Prakash Belawadi bring in the required balance of comedy, empathy, concern and tragedy to their respective parts.

Nostalgia is one of the strongest characters in Meri Pyaari Bindu, but its unlikely that the target audience for this kind of frothy romcom would warm up to that, and those who would are perhaps seeking more heft.
He comes from a family of politicians, but producing and acting in films is what makes him tick. Udhayanidhi Stalin, the grandson of former Tamil Nadu chief minister Dr M Karunanidhi, is looking forward to his film Saravanan Irukka Bayamaen that hits theatres on Friday, 12 May. Speaking to Firstpost from Dubai, where hes attending the movies premiere, Udhayanidhi gives us the lowdown on the film and more. Edited excerpts from the interview:

Its quite brave of you to release your film now with Baahubali 2 doing so well.

My film is a completely different genre as compared to Baahubali 2. Saravanan Irukka Bayamaen is a comedy and people will be entertained thoroughly. Its like I have a solo release because no other Tamil films are releasing on May 12!

Tell us about director Ezhils Saravanan Irukka Bayamen.

This movie, like I said, is a comedy, a family entertainer and its complete Ezhil film. He has roped in Soori and unlike my other films where I have a comedian as a friend, in this film Soori is not my friend. In fact, theres a large ensemble of actors who are comedians like Robo Shankar, Manobala, Mansoor Ali Khan, Madhan Bob, and Yogi Babu. All the credits and debits go to Ezhil. [Laughs] I kept asking Ezhil where does this story take place and he told me that it takes place wherever the audience is watching the film!

Comedy seems to be your favourite genre.

Unlike my other films like OKOK or Nanbenda, this movie is not city-based. For the first time, I have done a story that takes place in a rural setting and its a completely commercial flick.

Santhanam has always been your partner-in-crime. How was it working with comedian Soori?

Both of them are actually quite different. Santhanam is usually the heros friend and he pokes fun at the hero constantly. And in this film Soori not my friend  hes the villain! Soori has a certain slang (Madurai) when he speaks, his body language is different and its slapstick comedy.

Regina Cassandra and you have paired up for the first time.

Regina has done many commercial films in Telugu but not in Tamil. This movie is her first complete commercial outing in Tamil. It was great fun working with her. She plays Thenmozhi and were constantly fighting with each other in the movie. Its like watching Tom and Jerry. Shes wonderful in the song Oorellaam Unnai Kandu and gave valuable inputs while shooting the song.

Is director Ezhil different from your other directors?

Yes! He is completely chilled out. In nearly every scene in the film, there are about 10 actors/comedians on screen. And what used to happen was that when the director shouted action, most of them used to mouth their own dialogues instead of what was given to them. It was hilarious. But Ezhil was never fazed by this because he believed that the movie will turn out well and it has.

Another important aspect is that among all the films I have produced, Ezhil is the only director (after Udhayanidhis wife Kiruthigas Vanakkam Chennai) to have completed the film within the budget allotted. He said hed need 40 days to shoot and he completed the film in 39 days. I was very happy.

What did Ezhil say about your performance?

He didnt say anything at all! That was my biggest problem. I got really worried after the first two days of shoot because he didnt give me any feedback. He used to say action and not even cut. [Laughs] He wont even ask for one more take  you need to fight with him to get another take. If I had doubts about my dialogue delivery, hell say, Its okay; well adjust it during dubbing.

Sexism in films is being widely spoken about now. Whats your opinion?

Personally, I think we should avoid sexism in films. Good films have been made without it. But unfortunately, the masses expect glamour in a film. Thats the conundrum for filmmakers I guess. Im trying to avoid it in my films.
There is a world of difference between 2005, when the first Sarkar released, and 2017 when the third in the franchise, Sarkar 3, makes it to a cinema near you.

After a long time, almost a decade, the average viewer would be enthused about a Ram Gopal Varma film hitting the screens. Most of the buzz is because the film reunites Varma with Amitabh Bachchan and Manoj Bajpayee, an actor who was practically discovered by filmmaker and transformed into a sensation with Satya (1998).

Even though the initial response to the film has been far from overwhelming, Sarkar 3 in some little way, makes you want to believe in Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) again.

Ironically enough, Sarkar 3 releases forty-four years later on the same day as Zanjeer (1973), a film that established Bachchan as a major talent to look out for. If Zanjeer ushered in the Angry Young Man, Sarkar gave Bachchan one of his most memorable characters in the recent past in the form of Subhash Nagre. The role is rumoured to be fashioned on Don Corleone from The Godfather (1972) and the Shiv Sena supremo the late Balasaheb Thackeray.

Back in 1973 when Bachchan featured as the upright cop who is pushed to take the law into his own hands in Zanjeer, he was a near non-entity. A bevy of then well-established stars right from Dev Anand, Dharmendra and Raaj Kumar had refused the film before either Pran or Om Prakash suggested his name. The two veterans were featured in pivotal roles in Zanjeer and Om Prakash had shared the screen with Bachchan in Parwana (1971) where Bachchan had played an anti-hero.

Even then director Prakash Mehra wasnt too keen but asked writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar to go take a look at Bachchan in Bombay to Goa (1972), the only film featuring the actor playing in cinemas at the time. Impressed with Bachchan in the action sequences, the writers convinced Mehra that it would be the right move to cast the lanky young actor and the rest, as the idiom goes, is history.

Today, Bachchan-RGV and Sarkar look like a match made in heaven but in the initial days of the shoot, Bachchan began to have doubts about the project.

Besides Sholay (1975), The Godfather is a film that Varma hails as his film school and by the time he got around making yet another version of The Godfather (Dharmatma, Zulm Ki Hukumat, Aatank Hi Aatank being the others), it would be practically impossible to imagine Sarkar without Bachchan as the desi Don Vito.

Sarkar was the first time that Bachchan was working with RGV and even though his son, Abhishek  who was his co-star in Sarkar and had also worked with RGV before (Naach, 2004)  assured him that it would all turn out okay, Bachchan sensed something amiss. It is said that RGV then shot Bachchan sipping chai from the saucer, edited the sequence, added music and effects to make a small teaser and showed it to Bachchan to give an idea of what he had in mind.

Legend has it that once Bachchan saw it, not only was he a converted man but also began to trust RGVs vision. The two later teamed up for Nishabd (2007), an Indianised version of Lolita and perhaps his implicit faith in RGV was the reason why Bachchan agreed to be a part of the misfire called Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag (2007).

Sarkar in an oblique way is RGVs tribute to not just The Godfather but also Amitabh Bachchan and Bruce Lee, two actors who have made a tremendous contribution in his life. Enter the Dragon (1973) is one the films that RGV had watched over 30 times in the theatre and one of the most recalled dialogue from Sarkar  Subhash Nagre ek aadmi hai... Sarkar ek soch... Aadmi ko maarne se pehle, uski soch ko maarna zaroori hai - can be traced to one in Enter the Dragon where Shaolin Abbott (Roy Chiao) telling Lee (Bruce Lee), the enemy has only images and illusions behind which he hides his true motives. Destroy the image and you will break the enemy.

Interestingly enough, the years when we first saw Subhash Nagre, 2005, and Zanjeers Vijay, 1973, were also important phases in Amitabh Bachchans career.

In 1973, Bachchan featured in Namak Haraam (1973), the film that consolidated the Angry Young Man image that the actor would don across Deewar (1975), Trishul (1978) and Kaala Patthar (1979), and Saudaagar (1973). In 2005 besides Sarkar, Bachchan also featured in Black (2005), a film that won him critical acclaim besides fetching him his second National Film Award for Best Actor. He also had a special appearance in Bunty Aur Babli (2005), one of the biggest hits of the year.

A lot has changed in the twelve years since the first Sarkar released, or even in the nine years since its sequel, Sarkar Raj (2008).

There is no denying that RGV is not even a pale shadow of the colossus that he was once considered, a fact that can be gauged from the detail that he has directed over 20 films and most of them have been washouts.

Even the Sarkar 3 poster, lacklustre as it is, featuring Manoj Bajpayee, Amit Sadh and Yami Gautam in addition to the Sarkar (Bachchan) reveals how the times have changed.

Yet for many out there who witnessed the impact that RGV has had on Hindi cinema in the last three decades, the idea of Varma directing Amitabh Bachchan, Manoj Bajpayee and Jackie Shroff, who featured in Varmas Rangeela (1995), somewhere suggests that he might be finally done with the assembly line production that his filmography had begun to resemble.

Of course, when it comes to Ram Gopal Varma there is no formula and optics mean zilch.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had barely settled in his high-profile seat when violent inter-caste clashes began rocking some sensitive areas in his state, meriting firm and effective handling. Saharanpur, the important west Uttar Pradesh district, saw the violence of the worst kind in the very recent past when the Rajputs and the Dalits clashed over issues asserting supremacy over one another.

Violence erupted first on 20 April when a procession marking Ambedkar Shobha Yatra held under the aegis of the Dalits was allegedly targeted by the Rajputs and that reportedly incurred the wrath of the Dalits who retaliated with fury. Then on 5 May, there was another nasty clash between the two castes.

The whole issue now stands heavily politicised and there is an evidently vertical division between the Rajputs and Dalits. There are also allegations that the BSP, smitten by the recent rout in the Assembly elections provoked the Dalits to take on the upper caste  a charge that's contested by the BSP leadership. Authoritative sources, meanwhile, also point out that it's all about electoral prospects and politics of vote bank. Sadly enough, Saharanpur has not had local body elections for the last ten years allowing political parties to exploit the situation resulting in intercaste riots. Saharanpur has seen Hindu-Muslim riots but caste based violent incidents are gaining currency as there doesn't seem to have been any sincere attempt by the political players to narrow down their differences due to parochial reasons encouraging violence time and again.

It is really ironical that violence erupted thrice in the last three weeks claiming two lives and saw so many houses set ablaze. Significantly, a police post was also set ablaze by a frenzied mob. Such was the intensity of the clashes that senior police officers had to escape the onslaught by running away to safety. This indicates that law and order machinery was caught unawares in coping with the extraordinary situation and the district magistrate admitted that the local intelligence did not anticipate the extent of violence.

Both the warring castes are using the names of their icons to the hilt. The Rajputs wanted to observe the birthday of Maharana Pratap which was violently objected to by the Dalits. Similarly, the Dalits wanted to hold a mahapanchayat last Tuesday but fearing clashes, police did not accord permission thus further escalating the prospects of violence.

As the warring castes were drifting apart due to lack of anticipation by the administration as also due to indifference, over the years saw the emergence of Bheem Army formed by the Dalits to take on their adversaries.

The architect of this army as well champion of the Dalit cause is a young lawyer called Chandrashekhar. He is seen as a firebrand leader of the Dalits who left no stones unturned in exploiting other national issues affecting the Dalits. Notably, he highlighted the suicide of Rohith Vemula and also brought into focus the Una incidents when Gaurakshaks allegedly beat up and perpetrated physical acts of violence on the Dalits. The division between the two castes is so sharp in Saharanpur that last year most objectionable and unparliamentary language was used in front of the statue of Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar as charged by the activists of the Bheem Army.

To infuse fresh confidence among the people of Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh government has removed two superintendents of police bringing in two new faces. Yet, people are gripped with fear and uncertainty. Saharanpur has a sizeable Dalit population and they remain fraught with fears of attack by the upper castes. The same sense of feeling is nurtured by the Rajputs.

The recent incidents have unfortunately split Saharanpur under two iconic leaders of history. They tend to distort history by conveying a message that Maharana Pratap stands for the Rajputs alone and Ambedkar only for the Dalits. This misconception must be dispelled at the earliest for larger peace and caste amity. A tiny spark in Saharanpur has the potential to ignite sensitive districts in Uttar Pradesh which have already been volatile. Writings on the wall must be carefully read by the new Uttar Pradesh government or else it may be too late to control a very complex province already saddled with multiple challenges.

In the meantime, reports trickling in indicate that the eastern Uttar Pradesh district, Deoria is tense following caste-linked problems. Immediate damage control is need of the hour. Adityanath has carefully chosen a competent DGP heading the humongous police force. Expectations run high among the public from Sulkhan Singh to rein in any disturbing trend affecting peace in the state lest it goes out of control. Saharanpur seems to be a test case from the law and order point of view. Should it succeed, people would feel assured and live in a carefree and secure environment.

The writer is a retired IPS officer of Uttar Pradesh cadre and a senior fellow with the India Police Foundation. Views expressed are personal.
Jammu: Pakistani troops again violated the ceasefire with India on Friday, by firing mortars along the international border in

Jammu district, leaving a BSF jawan injured. BSF troops posted along the border retaliated.

This is second ceasefire violation along the border in Jammu and Kashmir in as many days. "Pakistani Rangers fired few bullets warning troops working ahead of the fence in Arnia area in Jammu. Our troops retaliated with few rounds of fire this morning", a senior BSF officer said.

"They also fired mortar shells. Some exchange of mortar shells also took place", he said, adding that a BSF jawan suffered minor injuries.

Pakistani troops had shelled civilian areas near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, killing a woman and injuring her husband and provoking retaliation by the Indian Army, in which two Pakistani soldiers were injured.

In the wake of the Pakistani action in Naushera tehsil of Rajouri district, schools in the area were closed and an evacuation plan was activated under which over 1,200 people from various border hamlets are being shifted to safer places.

After the Pakistani shelling, sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) of Nowshera tehsil had issued an order, directing closure of all schools in the area as a precautionary measure. "All schools close to the LoC were shut in Nowshera tehsil of Rajouri district as a precautionary measure, following the death of a woman and injuries to her husband in shelling by the Pakistan Army," a senior police officer had said.

An evacuation plan has been put in place in view of the intermittent shelling and firing along LoC, the officer had said.
Editor's note: This is the fourth piece in a multi-part series on the nature of human excesses that have imperiled the fragile ecosystem of the Western Ghats, home to at least 325 globally threatened species of flora and fauna, by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's reckoning.

The hitherto hushed voices of the people of Karnataka's Malnad region, particularly those from Kodagu, are becoming louder and more angered of late. They want to protect their Cauvery river, which sustains a large number of people from Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Environmentalists say that the protection of their Kodagu region is directly linked to the survival of the Cauvery, whose water flow is already showing signs of dwindling, and faces extinction in the long run.

The Coorg Wildlife Society (CWS), a group of environmentalists from Kodagu district, has now decided to take their fight to protect Kodagu and the Cauvery to the prime minister, by making a serious effort to involve people living in the Cauvery delta  from Mysuru in Karnataka till Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu. The urban conglomerations dotting the Cauvery delta, including cities like Mysuru and Bengaluru that solely depend on the river water for their drinking needs, are also being drawn in to this battle.

The CWS' recent SOS (Save Our Souls) letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought his intervention in the issue, and it highlighted how the ill-conceived encouragement of economic activities in the guise of boosting tourism and modern facilities is denuding the dense Western Ghats. The letter also highlighted how the government, timber mafia and real estate developers are slowly choking the inflow of water into the Cauvery.

The letter also highlighted how wrong policies of successive governments have contributed in some way or the other to the destruction of this green cover, causing the Cauvery to choke.

Of the total inflow into dams in the Cauvery delta, 70 percent is from Kodagu, with numerous streams and rivulets flowing from the region's forests, through coffee plantations and paddy fields, forming its arterial network. But the CWS has held that state and central governments are fast-tracking urbanisation projects to explore the hills' tourism potential and to link it to other parts of the world.

"Urbanisation's onslaught is so intense and serious that according to records built up by CWS, more than 2,800 acres of coffee plantations and paddy fields in this small district have been converted for commercial purpose and to build layouts," said KA Machaiah of CWS. "Soon, Kodagu will have two big urban habitations. One will be in South Kodagu comprising Virajpet, Gonikoppalu and Ponnampet; and one in Kushalnagar. Tourism is the main aspect in the issue, and it's taking a toll on Kodagu's environs," he said.

"Much of the degradation of forests and plantations and conversion of paddy fields for non-agricultural purposes is due to uncontrolled and unbridled tourism activities by both government and private agencies," he claimed.

He argued that Kodagu district, which has a population of 5.5 lakhs, received 13 lakh tourists last year, which automatically puts pressure on the environment.

Machaiah feels that all resorts and homestays should be closed during the summer months, to conserve the water sources which are being exploited by them.

In addition to real estate activities, the laying of a 400 KV power line to supply power to Kerala, and the proposed construction of highways and a new rail line between Kushalanagar and Mysuru have aggravated the situation in Kodagu, placing even more pressure on the Cauvery.

Machaiah says that in addition to these anti-forest activities, the influx of people from neighbouring Kerala state and their business activities, further enabled by them buying properties of Kodavas (natives of Kodagu) at exorbitant prices has forced the Kodagu environment to the brink of destruction.

"All these activities by non-Kodavas who have come to Kodagu have the tacit support of local politicians and leaders in the present Congress government, whose leaders have also migrated here long ago," he charged, stressing on the need to broadbase their movement and struggle to protect Kodagu's environment and forest, which in turn would automatically restore the Cauvery's grandeur.

Though the state government has not brought in special laws to boost tourism, it has indiscriminately allowed people to start homestays. Local people who own homestays are felling trees on their estates to construct huts and resorts in addition to creating recreation facilities.

Laws about Jamma lands have also been diluted. Jamma lands are wetlands that were earlier used to grow paddy and its peripheries used to grow fodder for cattle. Owners of these coffee estates were not allowed to fall trees, and permission from central government's environment department was mandatory earlier, but the law was amended in 2013 to ensure that they have rights over the lands and the trees, and are free to sell the former and fell the latter with permission from the concerned district administration.

What can boost the morale of those like CWS environmentalists, who have picked up cudgels against the government and real estate mafia active in the district, is the support from MC Nanaiah, a veteran politician and senior lawyer. Speaking to Firstpost, Nanaiah said the issues raised by CWS are relevant and appropriate for the protection and survival of environment in Kodagu district and the Cauvery river.

"Governments at both the Centre and state should act in unison to bring in laws and rules to curb activities which affect forests and environment of Kodagu, which has its own contribution and history in the country's political, economic and social fields," he said vehemently.

Nanaiah demanded that the Madhav Gadgil Committee's recommendations be implemented. The Gadgil Report, as it's more commonly called, recommended stringent protection and conservation of the Western Ghats spread over 142 taluks of Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka, which together encompass 13 national parks and several sanctuaries.

Nanaiah asked why are governments having second thoughts on going ahead with the implementation of the report, when it has explicitly said no activity that endangers the environment should be encouraged in the Western Ghats. "I am not against encouraging tourism activities, but there should not be creation of human habitation in the guise of encouraging tourists stay," he argued, pointing to examples like Madakeri town, which has over 1000 homestays.

"Anybody can imagine how much garbage and waste is generated from these homestays and resorts, which have mushroomed in these districts," he pointed out.

Nanaih urges the government to go ahead with implementation of the Gadgil Report rather than the subsequent report of the Kasturirangan Committee, which he feels has diluted the definition of eco-sensitive zones.

Young environmentalist Raghav Poovaiah too is worried about Kodagu's environment and forests. He says the Malnad region, which forms a part of the Western Ghats, has permanent scars, with a mosaic of resorts and homestays defacing it. Not only do they desecrate the natural beauty of the landscape, they also cause a tremendous loss of biodiversity, he felt, adding that the destruction of natural habitats obstructs the free movement of wildlife, with 70 percent of India's tigers living in the forests of Western Ghats, particularly in the forests of Mysuru and Kodagu.

"These habitat changes will lead to intensified man-animal conflict over a period of time," said Poovaiah. "Resorts also blatantly divert streams for their water use, not only affecting wildlife, but also people living downstream."

One major concern is the flow of Cauvery water, which is obstructed when streams are diverted. Most of the resorts either block or divert the flow of fresh water streams  which flow through Cauvery  on the higher reaches of the hills, to meet their commercial needs. Thereby fresh water ecosystem is increasingly being affected, he said. Reduced water flow will alter the vegetation type downstream and reduce water availability for agriculture and basic sustenance of people's livelihood, Poovaiah pointed out.

Water pollution due to increased human activities and clearance of coffee estates and grasslands by both public and private lands to build resorts are altering the land use pattern. Bad tourism practices have already altered habitats, disturbed local wildlife, depleted water sources, and caused noise and water pollution.

Poovaiah asked why is Malnad facing a drought for the first time in recent history, forcing the river Cauvery  a perennial river  to dry up. "Drought in Malnad and Kodagu is particularly a situation never witnessed by the people here. It is the result of all these antiforest, antienvironment activities," he said.

Politicians though appear to be insensitive to this "aranya rodhana" (forest cry) of the people in general and CWS in particular.

One such politician is BJP legislator Appachu Ranjan, from Kodagu's Virajpet constituency. Speaking to Firstpost, he dubbed any effort to protect Cauvery and Kodagu by various groups as "antipeople" and "anti-development". He alleged that "these people" (CWS, led by Colonel Muthanna) who lead a luxurious life in cities and coffee estates, do not want the poor to develop economically.

"I want to ask these people how they felled timber trees on their estates and sold in open market?" he said, terming those demanding implementation of Gadgil and Kasturirangan reports as "pseudoenvironmentalist naturalists". "I will not allow government to implement any report which affects the villages and small human habitations where only poor labourers live," he declared and said Kasturirangan Report has faltered on many issues.

The Karnataka government last month rejected the recommendations of the Kasturirangan Report. "We have unanimously received resolutions from 1,776 villages and gram panchayats that fall under the ESZ category of Kasturirangan Report, and they don't want the recommendations to be implemented. The cabinet has hence decided to reject recommendations to add further areas into the ESZ category. We will ask the Centre to drop the panel's recommendations," state law minister TB Jayachandra told the media recently.

But the CWS wants to widen its struggle and create more awareness. "First we want to create awareness among people in the Cauvery delta and cities on the seriousness of the problem and then spread the agitation to these nonKodagu areas and plain lands. Now we have made a beginning and we will not stop, as it is a life and death question for people in Kodagu and Cauvery delta," Machaiah added. "It is now or never situation for the survival of Kodagu, and the Cauvery river."

Previous articles part of our drought series:

Part 1: Urbanisation demands see hills sacrificed to whims of mining, industry lobbies

Part 2: How deforestation saved ecologically-sensitive hills in Kerala

Part 3: Ambulance service supplies water to 700 families in Kerala's Kottayam

Part 4: In Kerala's Wayanad, acute water scarcity leading to man-animal conflict
Colombo: Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday night called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and praised bilateral cooperation over the years.

"Rajapaksa's talks with Modi was a very cordial discussion and he was happy with India-Lanka cooperation over the years," Indian High Commissioner Taranjith Singh Sandhu told media.

Modi met Rajapaksa at the latter's request, the High Commissioner said.

Earlier, Rajapaksa claimed that India and Sri Lanka may have signed deals on economic cooperation before Prime Minister Modi's arrival in the country.

"The information I have is that all deals have already been signed. So the Indian prime minister's arrival or non-arrival would be immaterial," Rajapaksa told reporters in the central town of Kandy, hours before Modi touched down in Colombo.

The Sinhala strongman who ruled the country for a decade said he held nothing against Modi's visit.

"The problem will be only if they sign agreements. I understand these have already been signed," he said.

Briefing media on Modi's engagements in Colombo, Sandhu said the prime minsiter will not be signing any agreements with Sri Lanka during the visit.

He said the prime minister has expressed Indias commitment and support to Sri Lanka and India will be a strong development partner for the island nation's growth and prosperity.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, is here primarily to participate tomorrow in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

The two countries were set to sign an agreement to lease out oil tanks to India to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.

But Sri Lanka's opposition parties have objected to the deal, saying the government was selling state assets to India.

Rajapaksa's joint opposition has led a resistance to the Sririsena government's plan to enter into economic cooperation pacts with India, more particularly the Trincomalee venture.
India is all set to have its first uterine transplant as a 26-year-old Baroda-based woman will undergo the surgery in Pune on 18 May, according to The Indian Express. The woman has suffered four abortions, lost two two babies after carrying them full-term and has a scarred uterus.

The womb will be transplanted from the recipient's mother, according to this report in DNA. Pune's Galaxy Care Laprascopy Institute (GCLI), where the surgery will take place, has also scheduled two more uterine transplant procedures  one for 19 May and the other will be conducted in June.

The three surgeries will be conducted for free by a 12-member team of gynaecologists, endocrinologists and IVF specialists, Zee News reported. In all the cases, the women will be receiving wombs from their respective mothers.

The first womb transplant was first performed in 2012 in Sweden. The first baby, born to the recipient in 2014, delivered prematurely through Caesarean section. The donor in the case was a family friend of the 61-year-old recipient, BBC News reported.

To learn about the transplant procedure, the GCLI surgical team visited Sweden and later practiced on human cadavers in Germany and the US. "Before going ahead in our hospital, we followed a rigorous process while choosing the donor and the recipient of womb," Dr Shailesh Puntambekar, medical director, GCLI, told Hindustan Times.

Maharashtra's directorate of health services gave GCLI a green signal in April for the uterus transplant procedure. According to India Today, around 25 transplants have been attempted in the world so far, out of which 10 cases have been successful.

A Bengaluru-based fertility clinic, Milann, will also be conducting two uterine transplants in June. The clinic, which has received an approval from Indian Council of Medical Research(ICMR), has collaborated with Dr Mats Brannstron, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, to perform uterus transplants in India.
After results of second-year pre-university education examinations of Karnataka state board were declared on Thursday, the education department will announce results for the Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC) exams on Friday.

Students who appeared for their Class X can check their results at 3 pm on Friday. After the official announcement is made, the results will be put up on kseeb.kar.nic.in or karresults.nic.in, where students can check the result using the requisite login credentials.

State education minister Tanveer Sait confirmed the declaration of results through in a tweet on Thursday.

Much awaited PUC results to be announced on 11th may Thursday 2017 at 3.00 PM and SSLC results on 12th may Friday 2017 at 3.00 PM - official  Tanveer sait (@Tannsworld) May 9, 2017

The Class X exams were held in Karnataka from 30 March this year, and 8.77 lakh students had appeared for this. This included 4.69 boys and 4.07 lakh girls.

As this report on The Indian Express mentioned, the board issued separate question papers and answer sheets this year, so that students can take the question papers home. The board also allowed students coming in 15 minutes late into the exam hall after protests from parents. Apart from this, other measures put in place by the education board meant 1,184 examination centres across the state were under the cover of CCTV surveillance, while 40 cameras were also placed at the board offices to avoid cheating.
The break-up between Hurriyat and the militants of Hizbul Mujahideen has finally happened.

In a video statement circulating on social media, Zakir Musa, the militant commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen, has purportedly threatened Kashmirs separatist leadership, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, of violence if it terms Kashmir issue as political rather than religious.

A few days back, the joint resistance leaders issued a statement saying Kashmir struggle is political and it has nothing to do with religionWe warn these Hurriyat people not to interfere in our matters and stick to their dirty politics, otherwise we will cut their heads and hang them in Lal Chowk, Musa said in the now viral video clip.

His statement has predictably caused a flutter among Kashmirs azaadi brigade. Expect in the coming days, attempts by many Kashmiris and the azaadi sympathisers to question the credibility of the video, or how it is an "insider job" or how Doval and company are trying to divide the Kashmiris.

Whatever allegations are levelled and questions raised, it is clear that this break-up was long in the making. And ironically, Hurriyat has brought it upon itself.

Its seeds were sown when Geelani proclaimed then Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, after the 9/11 attacks, as the leader of the Muslim Ummah. He had repeatedly urged the Al-Qaeda to include Kashmiri Muslims "struggle" in its list of concerns. He had repeatedly urged the Al-Qaeda to include India in its list of enemies which at that time included United States and Israel. The Hurriyat wanted to look "cool" and maintain its relevance as Kashmiris were getting frustrated with its history of flip-flops and mainstream politics was making a comeback. Little did the Hurriyat realise that it was playing with fire which will ultimately consume itself.

Even as the Al-Qaeda was leading the global jihadist movement, a far more extremist band of terrorists was coming together, under the leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, which wanted to outdo the Al-Qaeda in brutality and the violence that it carried out. Armed with the pan-Islamic ideology and the rising social media profile, this group which now came to be known as the Islamic State quickly stole the thunder from Al-Qaeda and emerged in no time as the leader of the global jihadist movement. The youth of Kashmir who were getting frustrated with the slow or lack of political engagement and the futility of their street protests lapped it up. The radicalisation that was spawned by the Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosques mushrooming in the Valley only aided the process.

Some of these youth then joined Hizbul Mujahideen, which at that time was on a decline, to quickly transform it from a group which played second fiddle to the Pakistani anti-India terrorist groups  Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad  to one which would single-handedly lead Kashmirs armed insurgency.

All this is the story between 2001 and 2015, with later years witnessing a quick turn of events. Burhan Wani, who was killed last year in July, was the product of that process and Musa is merely carrying that mantle forward. Wani's killing sparked a wave of protests in south Kashmir and the Hurriyat wanted to lead those, but it was too late for it to tout its credentials. In desperation, Geelani then claimed that in his last hours, Wani had called up Geelani and reposed faith in the latters leadership. But it failed to yield the protestors.

This is the logical evolution of Hurriyats kowtowing before the Al-Qaeda without realising that the Al-Qaeda and Islamic States ideology is in fundamental contrast to the history of Kashmir and how Islam has flourished in the region.

And the consequences are there for everyone to see. Hopefully Hurriyat realises what it has allowed to unleash and does a course correction, howsoever difficult, to accommodate with India. The more it takes time to decide its course of action, the more Kashmir will witness spilling of blood of ordinary Kashmiris, pushing the Valley in the vortex of civil war.
The militants who killed Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz, the 22-year-old officer of 2 Rajputana Rifles who was shot dead in south Kashmir on Tuesday night, were reportedly led by local Hizbul Mujahideen operative Abbas Ahmad Bhat. Bhat was wanted for two earlier homicides, including one of a local doctor, The Indian Express reported.

Witnesses also said in the report that two men called Ishfaq Ahmad Thokar and Ghias-ul-Islam Thokar had accompanied Bhat.

The Jammu and Kashmir police on Friday released posters of the three militants, saying they were responsible for the killing of Fayaz, according to IANS.

Bhat was released on bail in April last year after five years in jail under trial for the murder of Shopian doctor Masood Ahmad in 2011. Bhat's father said that he had skipped bail and gone missing from his home on 25 September last year.

PTI had reported on Thursday that six militants from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen were involved in the abduction and killing of Fayaz. A massive manhunt has been launched to catch them.

"We have identified six militants who were involved in the killing of Fayaz. The militants are from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen," PTI had quoted a source as saying.

Security forces are carrying out searches in various areas to nab the six militants, the source had said.

Fayaz, the son of a farmer and an avid sportsman, had gone to attend the wedding of the daughter of his maternal uncle at Batapura, about 74 km from Srinagar, from where he was abducted by the militants around 10 pm on Tuesday night.

The bullet-riddled body of Fayaz was found in Harmen area of Shopian on Wednesday morning, hours after he was abducted by militants from Batpura village. His killing has triggered anger among the locals who demanded action against the culprits.

The army had on Wednesday vowed to punish the killers of Fayaz and said the incident marks a watershed moment in the Kashmir Valley, as people there will decisively turn the tide against terrorism.

Calling the attack a "dastardly act of cowardice" by militants, Defence Minister Arun Jaitley had said Fayaz's sacrifice reiterates the nation's commitment to eliminate terrorism from the Valley.

With inputs from agencies
Yes, you!! Freeze, dont cross the street. Or the road. Or the highway. It does not matter what compulsions you have, even if it just a simple desire to get to the other side. Just stop in your tracks and hunt for a zebra crossing.

For, it has been decreed by a Mumbai magistrate that if you are knocked down, and get hurt, or worse still, killed, you may not be entitled to help from the law. Crossing of the road has to be only at a zebra crossing and an accident leaves the driver of a vehicle free of guilt.

The magistrate, not identified, said in his ruling that "Admittedly, the boy was crossing the road not from (sic) the zebra crossing. Admittedly, there was also no signal pole at the place of accident. Under such circumstances, it cannot be said that there was fault or negligence of the accused."

The interpretation may not be wrong, in fact, could be right, for modern transportation systems which include roads, assign spaces for each kind to use. The carriageway for cars to drive on, that being the space between the footpaths on its either side. It is not anybodys right to walk into a car coming.

That is why the boy, Vishal Walmiki, who was crossing a busy spot near Haji Ali, Mumbai, at just the spot he thought was convenient to him  the direction a crowd can take from one side to side, the shortest  and was run over. He was at fault, of course. He was a jaywalker.

Now, let us move from the law to the reality which pedestrians face every day.

Jaywalking is wrong and puts ones life and limbs at risk. But even at what should be the places where a pedestrian does not have to jaywalk but have protection from a vehicle, such provisions are missing.

For instance, count the number of zebra crossings that are, let us say, Mumbai, Thane, and Navi Mumbai and find out. Not that it is a typical issue with this metropolitan region alone.

There would be hardly any significant in number, and if they are, such crossings could be barely indistinguishable because they have borne the brunt of vehicles going over them over and over and remain erased. In places they ought to be, they may be missing entirely for they have not even been put in place.

Therefore, would crossing in such places save you? The motorist may not be able to see it to allow the pedestrian the right of way.

But thats the way it works in most urban spaces. There may be a zebra crossing, officially, but not visible. Not even at road junctions where traffic lights and traffic constables are present. And if they and the zebra crossings are present and even visible, cars may have encroached upon it, edging forward in readiness to throttle their way forward. They then hide and obstruct the pedestrians their right of way.

Given the intensification of road transport by way of private cars and bikes in contradistinction to the inadequacy of public transport that could keep the private ownership and use of two-wheelers and four-wheelers low, city and town roads should have less zebra crossings than required.

In a country which is now car and bike-dependent for quick transport, and over 50,000 of them are brought to the roads every day, the management of transport is in favour of motorised conveyance. Mumbai too has more than enough to choke the roads.

All this, despite the Indian Road Congress Guidelines on Pedestrian Facilities being, according to a city municipality official in the region, "something we should adhere to". But they dont. Because the traffic police dont tell them where such crossings are required for the civic body to provide them.

"It is at the suggestion of the traffic police that the civic bodies provide the infrastructure," he said, but "Yes, there is not enough attention being paid to it."

The Indian Road Congress lists zebra crossings not only as a requirement but also provides the specifications, including their width given the breadth of the roads: "delineated with the help of alternate black and white strips which should have embossed texture for easy detection by persons with vision impairment". Thermoplastic paint with "5 mm embossed texture" is recommended.

Not only that. "A zebra crossing must always be accompanied by a STOP line" which is "not sited within 150 m of the crossing". There are specifications for the zebra crossings at "un-signalised intersections" and those which are signalised. There have to be refuge islands at the crossings which are at the median point of the carriageway.

Contractors mischief and official willingness to wink at them ensure use of normal, ordinary white paint on road surfaces where they are, only periodically, applied, to disappear within a few weeks, probably within a month.

However, if the vehicles have the right of way on the carriageway and the pedestrian is restricted to the zebra crossings, there is another issue: the sidewalks themselves, which is another story.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday cautioned the international community on the growing "arc of violence" and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

Here is the prime minister's full speech in Colombo:

Most venerable, Maha Naayakonthero of Sri Lanka

Most venerable, Sangarajathairos of Sri Lanka

Distinguished religious and spiritual leaders

Honble President of Sri Lanka, Excellency Maithripala Sirisena

Honble Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Excellency Ranil Wickremesinghe

Hon'ble Speaker of Parliament Excellency Kaaroo Jayasuriya

Most venerable Dr. Brahmin Pandit, President of the International Council for the Day of Vesak

Esteemed Delegates

Friends from the media

Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen

Namaskaar.Ayubuvan.

Vesak is most sacred of days.

A day for humanity to revere the birth, the enlightenment and the Parinibbana of Lord Buddha, the "Tathagatha". A day to rejoice in Buddha. A day to reflect on the supreme truth and timeless relevance of Dhamma, and the four noble truths.

A day to contemplate the ten perfections of  (generosity);  (proper conduct);  (renunciation);  (wisdom);  (energy);  (tolerance);  (truthfulness);  (determination);  (loving kindness) and  (equanimity).

It is a day of enormous significance for you here in Sri Lanka, for us in India, and for Buddhists around the world. And, I am most grateful to Excellency President Maithripala Sirisena, Excellency Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and the people of Sri Lanka for extending to me the honourto be the Chief Guest at the International Vesak Day festivitiesin Colombo. On this auspicious occasion, I also bring with me the greetings of 1.25 billion people from the land of the Samyaksambuddha,the perfectly self awakened one.

Excellencies, and Friends,

Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings. Bodh Gaya in India, where Prince Siddhartha became the Buddha, is the sacred nucleus of the Buddhist universe. Lord Buddha's first sermon in Varanasi,which I have the honour to represent in the Parliament,set in motion the wheel of Dhamma. Our key national symbols have taken inspiration from Buddhism. Buddhism and its various strandsare deep seated in our governance, cultureand philosophy. The divine fragrance of Buddhism spread from India to all corners of the globe. Mahindra and Sanghamitra, the worthy children of King Ashokamade their journey from India to Sri Lankaas   to spread the biggest gift of .

And, as Buddha had himself said: , meaning, the gift of  is the biggest gift of all. Today, Sri Lanka takes pride in being among the most important nerve centres of Buddhist teachings and learning. Centuries later,Anagarika Dharmapala undertook a similar journey, but this time, from Sri Lanka to India to revive the spirit of Buddhain the land of its origin. In some way, you took us back to our own roots. The world also owes a debt of gratitude to Sri Lanka for preserving some of the most important elements of the Buddhist heritage. Vesak is an occasion for us to celebrate this unbroken shared heritage of Buddhism. A heritage that connects our societies across generations and through centuries.

Friends,

The friendship between India and Sri Lanka was etched in time by the "Great Master". Buddhism imparts an ever present radiance to our relationship. As close neighbours, our relationship spreads across many layers. It draws its strength as much through our interconnected values of Buddhism as it does from the limitless possibilities of our shared future. Ours is a friendship that lives in the hearts of our peopleand in the fabric of our societies.

To honour and deepen our links of Buddhist heritage, I have the great pleasure to announce that from August this year,Air India will operate direct flights between Colombo and Varanasi. This will ease travel to the land of Buddha for my brothers and sisters from Sri Lanka, and help you directly visit Sravasti, Kusinagar, Sankasa, Kaushambi and Sarnath. My Tamil brothers and sisters will also be able to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath.

Venerable Monks, Excellencies and Friends,

I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. An opportunity to achieve a quantum jump in our partnership across different fields. And, for us, the most relevant benchmark for the success of our friendship is your progress and success. We are committed to the economic prosperity of our Sri Lankan brothers and sisters. We will continue to invest in driving positive change and economic growth to deepen our development cooperation. Our strength lies in sharing our knowledge, capacity and prosperity. In trade and investment, we are already significant partners. We believe that free flow of trade, investments, technology, and ideas across our borders will be to our mutual benefit. Indias rapid growthcan bring dividends for the entire region, especially in Sri Lanka. In infrastructure and connectivity,transport and energy,we are poised to scale up our cooperation. Our development partnership stretches across nearly every sector of human activity such as agriculture, education, health, resettlement, transport, power, culture, water, shelter, sports, and human resources.

Today,Indias development cooperation with Sri Lankaamounts toUS Dollars 2.6 billion. And, its only aim is to support Sri Lanka in realizing a peaceful, prosperous and secure future for its people. Because, the economic and social well being of the people of Sri Lankais linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians. Because, whether it is on land or in the waters of the Indian Ocean, the security of our societies is indivisible. My conversations with President Sirisena and Prime Minister Wickremesinghe have only reinforced our will to join hands in achieving our common goals. As you make important choices for the harmony and progress of your society, you will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours.

Venerable Monks, Excellencies and Friends,

Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the twenty first century as it was two and a half millennia ago. The   , the Middle Path shown by Buddha, speaks to all of us. Its universality and evergreen nature is striking. It has been a unifying force among nations. The countries of South, Central, South East and East Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

The themes of Social Justice and Sustainable World Peace,chosen for the Vesak day,resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings. The themes may appear independent. But, they are both deeply interdependentand interconnected. The issue of Social justiceis linked to conflictwithin and among communities. This arises principally because of  or ( in Sanskrit), the thirst, which in turn stems from greed . Greed has driven the mankind to dominate and degrade our natural habitat. Our desire to achieve all our wants has created income inequalities in communities and disturbed social harmony.

Similarly, the biggest challenge to Sustainable World Peace today may not be necessarily from conflict between the nation states. It is from the mindsets,thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence. The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion. Sadly, these ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are not open to dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction. I firmly believe that Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world.

And, not just a negative notion of peace defined by the absence of conflict. But, a positive peace where we all work to promote dialogue, harmony and justice, based on compassion and wisdom. As Buddha said,"", "there is no higher bliss than peace". On Vesak, my hope is that India and Sri Lanka will work together to uphold the ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, accommodation, inclusiveness, and compassion in the policies and conduct of our governments. This is the true path to free individuals, families, societies, nations and the world at large from the three poisons of greed, hatred and ignorance.

Venerable Monks, Excellencies and friends,

On the blessed day of Vesak, let us light the lamps of knowledge to move out of darkness; let us look more within; and let us uphold nothing else but the truth. And, dedicate our efforts to follow the path of Buddha whose light shines all over the world.

As the verse 387 of Dhammapada says:

,.

, .

,.

Meaning:

The sun shines by the day,

The moon lights up the night,

The warrior shines in his armour,

The Brahmin shines in his meditation,

But, the awakened one shines all day and night by his radiance.

Thank you once again for the honour to be with you.

I look forward to paying homage at the Sri Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic, in Kandy today afternoon. May the Triple Gem of Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha bless us all.

Thank you, Thank you very much.

With inputs from PTI
Colombo: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena had a meeting in Colombo on Thursday night during which the two leaders are understood to have reviewed the status of the bilateral relations.

"Delighted to meet President @MaithripalaS in Colombo," tweeted Modi, who arrived at Colombo earlier on a two-day visit aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.

"It is wonderful to meet this great human being @narendramodi in Colombo again. Thank you for gracing #InternationalVesakDay," tweeted Srisena.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, is here primarily to participate on Friday in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

He will inaugurate a hospital built with India's assistance of Rs 150 crore. He will also address the Indian-origin Tamils against the backdrop of India's insistence that Sri Lanka should undertake devolution of power to the ethnic community as part of the reconciliation process.

Prior to his departure from New Delhi, Modi said, "This will be my second bilateral visit there (to Sri Lanka) in two years, a sign of our strong relationship."

In a Facebook post, he said, "My visit brings to the fore one of the most abiding links between India and Sri Lanka - the shared heritage of Buddhism."
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the country's powerful army that his meeting with Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal last month was part of back-channel diplomacy, a media report said on Thursday.

BBC Urdu reported that Sarif has taken Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa into confidence on his meeting with Jindal on 27 April at the hill resort of Murree.

The civilian leadership informed the military authorities that Sharif's hour-long meeting with Jindal was a part of back-channel diplomacy. And Jindal had the backing of some important Indian officials for the meeting to defuse ongoing tension between the two countries, the report said.

India-Pakistan ties are strained over a series of cross-border terror attacks in India and over the death sentence to Jadhav. India has denied Pakistan's allegations and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence agencies.

The report quoting a ruling PML-N leader said Sharif was tight-lipped on his meeting with Jindal.

However, the only detail of the meeting he shared with his aides was that Jindal was making efforts to defuse tension between India and Pakistan.

It said the military leadership also took its officers into confidence on the meeting. General Bajwa told his officers that the meeting was a part of a back-channel diplomacy.

The Sharif-Jindal meeting had triggered intense speculation with several politicians and analysts, suggesting it could be the precursor to a possible meeting between the two premiers in the near future.

Pakistan prime minister's adviser on foreign affairs Adviser Aziz told reporters on Wednesday that if India shows interest, Pakistan will look into the possibility of a meeting between Sharif and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO summit on 8-9 June at Astana in Kazakhstan.

Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly expressing concern over the "secret" meeting. It had also alleged that Jindal conveyed Modi's "message" to Sharif on the death penalty to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav on spying charges.

Jindal is said to be the man who had arranged a meeting between Modi and Sharif in Lahore on 25 December in 2015 on Sharif's birthday and the day when Sharif's granddaughter Mehr-un-Nisa was married.

Journalist Barkha Dutt in her book This Unquiet Land: Stories from India's Fault Lines had also claimed that Jindal had in 2014 facilitated a secret and deniable hour-long meeting between Modi and Sharif in his hotel room in Kathmandu on the sidelines of the SAARC summit, The Economic Times had reported.

The report also talked about how Sharif had reportedly visited Jindal's home for tea when he had gone to Delhi for Modi's swearing-in ceremony.

However, an article in Firstpost had questioned the role of Jindal's involvement in international diplomacy, saying that his role would have been much smaller than what was portrayed by the media.

With inputs from PTI
Sri Lanka has rejected China's request to dock one of its submarines in Colombo this month, two senior government officials said on Thursday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in the island nation for a two-day visit. Sri Lanka last allowed a Chinese submarine to dock in the capital of Colombo in October 2014, a move that triggered fierce opposition from India, which worries about growing Chinese activity in a country it has long viewed as part of its area of influence.

A senior Sri Lankan government official told Reuters that China's request to dock one of its submarines in Colombo this month had been rejected. He said Sri Lanka was "unlikely" to agree to China's request to dock the submarine at any time, given India's concerns. The official asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the matter.

The second official, at the defence ministry, also said China's request to dock the submarine this month had been rejected but that a decision on a further docking had been postponed.

"It might happen later," the second official told Reuters, adding that China had requested approval to use the port around 16 May "sometime back". A source close to the Chinese embassy in Colombo confirmed that China had requested permission for the submarine visit but was still awaiting a response.

In January this year, while on an official visit to India, Vice-Admiral RC Wijegunaratne sought to assuage Indian concerns about the presence of Chinese submarines in Colombo port. He was quoted by PTI as having said that the the submarines were docked at the Sri Lankan port for 'purely economic reasons'. The vice-admiral was also by PTI as having added, "We assure the Indian government that nothing against India will happen in Sri Lankan land and waters around it."

Certainly, China has invested heavily in Sri Lanka in recent years, funding airports, roads, railways and ports  installations that can be ostensibly considered to be for economic reasons. But this has unsettled India, traditionally the closest economic partner of the island nation of 21 million people. After all, more than 70 percent of the trans-shipment in Colombo port comes from India. The Sri Lankan government also wants to establish a petroleum hub with the help of India in the eastern port city of Trincomalee, where Lanka IOC, the subsidiary of Indian Oil Corporation, handles 15 out of 99 oil tanks.

Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is finalising a plan to lease 80 percent of its loss-making Hambantota port to China for 99 years, but the deal has been delayed because of opposition from trade unions.

However, Beijing is widely known to use its economic imperative to push its strategic agenda. A case in point: The string of pearls, wherein China is developing ports and coastal facilities for 'economic reasons'. India sees this as China's way of encircling it in the Indian Ocean Region, which is why it has been suspicious of the development of Hambantota, Gwadar and Chittagong ports in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh respectively. With Chinese submarines  clearly not intended for trade  docking in Colombo, New Delhi's suspicions naturally went through the roof.

It will be interesting to see now whether Colombo has indeed taken note of India's concerns or whether the rejection of China's request to dock its submarines in Sri Lanka was a one-time thing only.

With inputs from agencies
Hyderabad: The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) Friday directed the Khammam police to submit a report over the incident in which ten farmers, accused of vandalism, were brought to a court by police allegedly in handcuffs.

Ten chilli farmers, who were arrested for allegedly vandalising the Khammam Agriculture Market Yard office on 28 April, were produced in the court in Khammam town in handcuffs on Thursday.

Advocate T Rajnikanth Reddy filed a petition in the SHRC, seeking a thorough inquiry into the incident.

Based on Reddy's plea, the SHRC here asked the Khammam District Superintendent of Police to submit a report by 5 June.

In his petition, Reddy said, "Police handcuffing the chilli farmers and producing them before the court violated their fundamental rights."

"It is highly shocking that the poor farmers were brought to the court handcuffed. The farmers had brought chilli to Khammam market yard hoping to sell the produce for a better price, however, there was sudden drop in prices," the plea said. Handcuffing is in violation of the rules and the Supreme Court guidelines, Reddy added.

The ten chilli farmers had been arrested for allegedly carrying out violent protests and damaging the Khamman market yard office. As the handcuffing incident sparked an outrage, the police department suspended two Armed Reserve Police sub-inspectors and also ordered an inquiry.

The ten farmers were Thursday granted bail by the court and released. The Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee and Telugu Desam Party had blamed the TRS government for the incident.

Farmers in Telangana have been demanding better price for chilli as the price has dipped to around Rs 6,000 per quintal this season as against Rs 12,000 per quintal last year.
The Tamil Nadu government will announce results for Class XII board examinations on Friday, and students may check their marks on the official website at 10 am. The results will be available on the following web pages: tnresults.nic.in, dge1.tn.nic.in, dge2.tn.nic.in. Students have been advised to keep all relevant details like roll numbers handy to avoid delays.

A major change this year is the lack of ranking system, with the state government abolishing the practice to promote "healthy competition". According to a report in The Times of India, school education minister KA Sengottaiyan made the announcement on Thursday, after holding a high-level panel meeting with education department officials.

"Ranking is a way of discriminating among students and causes mental agony , not just for students but also for parents. Hence, we have abolished the system. A GO has been issued regarding the same," the minister said.

What this means is that the first three rank holders at state and district levels will not be announced alongside the results. So nobody will know who the state topper is. Sengottaiyan expressed hope that parents, teachers and students would welcome the move and see the positives it would offer.

This move comes on the back of CBSE and other state education departments, which also don't announce ranks during results.

Nearly nine lakh students appeared for their Class XII exams across Tamil Nadu, held in March this year. Class X results are likely to be declared on 19 March.
Around 6 a.m. on May 11, after an entire night on the machan, Mangal Chaudhury, 46, couldn't hold back nature's call any longer. With his two other compatriots on the tree perch failing to dissuade him, he climbed down. As he squatted behind a bush, Matkasur, one of Tadoba's most aggressive tigers, attacked and killed him instantly. The Maharashtra park's annual machan census was marred, wisdom by hindsight confirming that the methodology placed untrained numerators perilously close to one of 100 tigers or even sloth bears and leopards.

It was the morning after the full moon night of Buddha Poornima, when the annual machan-based census takes place across Indias forests - typically, one forest department guard and two volunteers sitting on perches and checking off the numbers that they notice at the watering holes within their eyeshot.

Will Matkasur be branded maneater, chased down, tranquilised and bundled off to a zoo? Mercifully not. Government guidelines protect a tiger for three killings of humans. But political pressure to advance this threshold is common, prompting the question: who is encroaching on whose territory?

As we stand today, tigers occupy just 7% of their historic range, only 1,000 of the wild tigers worldwide are breeding females, poaching and habitat loss stare these stunningly beautiful cats.

We spoke to Tadoba conservation worker and TEDx alum Hans Dalal on what may have happened, what can be fixed, and whats already out of our hands.

Our conversation, run on Firstpost Facebook is lightly edited for brevity.

Firstpost: What happened?

Hans Dalal: Yesterday was the census and there are people on the machans making note of which animals come to the watering hole to drink. There were three enumerators and one of them got down to use the loo, the other two on the machan saw the tiger coming towards this guy and warned him but it was too late. The tiger, most likely Matkasur, caught this guy, dragged him in and killed him.

FP: Will the tiger be blamed (or the local)?

Hans: The Forest department has built toilets for villagers and the new generaion uses them; but the older village folk still prefer to go outdoors.

FP: Whats the association with the full moon night?

Hans: The census happens on Buddha Poornima night because a lot of things come together. It's summer and because most of the watering holes have dried up, there are only a few water sources for the animals. The full moon allows for better sighting and forest animals have only limited watering holes to come to. So, its easier to count.

FP: The tiger killed this man but did not eat him up

Hans: In the village, many of these people are thin and scrawny, they are malnourished. When they are squatting, they may even be confused for monkeys. And monkeys are on the tigers menu. Most of the time its a case of mistaken identity. Humans are not on the tigers menu.

FP: Tadoba is spread across 600 sq km. Are tigers getting more aggressive because of shrinking habitat?

Hans:Every forest has a core zone and a buffer zone. Think of it as a half fried egg. The yolk is the tigers habitat - the core - where theres no human presence at all and the white often has direct human interference. A female tiger typically needs 30-40 sq km of territory, males need around 80-100 sq km. Theres only that many tigers a park can handle. What's happening right now is that the carrying capacity is only that much and tigers are flowing out of these reserves and going closer to human habitation. If you look at Tadoba, we have 100-120 tigers living in protected areas but there are 48 tigers living outside protected areas. Thats going to keep increasing - and the conflict too is going to keep increasing. The only way out is to increase the forest cover.

FP: How do you do that in an already landlocked society, where cities are outgrowing their outer flanks.

Hans: Corridors. Thats what the answer is. There are already patches of land that connect forests called corridors which are not protected right now - theres a lot of human habitation there right now. Humans have to move away from the forest corridors. Very difficult to do but thats the only solution there is.

FP: How do you prevent Matkasur being led away to the zoo?

Hans: According to National Tiger Conservation Authority of India (NTCA) guidelines, a tiger is given three chances. So if he kills three humans, he is not called a maneater but the minute he kills a fourth person, he is called a maneater, tranquilised and sent to a zoo. Sometimes we even get shoot at sight orders and we have to finish him off. So Matkasur wont be sent to a zoo right now for this is the first time he has killed a human.

FP: Should civilians be stopped from going into all-night machans?

Hans: You can allow civilians as long as the facilties exist on these machans - water, food, portable toilets and wireless handsets to hail a vehicle and so on...

FP: Sitting on a machan, can you tell for certain that you are not double counting a sloth bear or a tiger?

Hans: Sitting on a machan, we can certainly identify animals - say a sloth bear from a sambhar but you cant differentiate between individuals. For example, in sloth bears we can't even know whether its a male or female (because of their fur cover).

FP: Giving the shrinking habitats, even if you do all you can to save the tigers that remain, where is the space to keep them?

Hans: Yes, that's a problem...Basically because of the lack of space, there's a lot of inbreeding and that takes a toll on the immunity system of tigers. Even a scratch can kill them because their immunity is so fragile. Corridors exist, they need to be protected territory so that the gene pool becomes better. Think of the elephant corridors in South India. For generations, elephants have been using these corridors and now there are tea plantations along those corridors. It for the humans to move out, not for the elephants to stop walking there.
Jammu: Authorities have set up two relief camps in Rajouri district as Pakistani troops on Thursday resorted to shelling on civilian areas near the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir, killing a woman and injuring two others.

"Two relief camps have been established in Nowshera where 50 persons comprising around 15 families have been settled," Deputy Commissioner Rajouri, Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, said in Jammu on Thursday.

District administration has also earmarked additional camps which may be required in case of further ceasefire violation.

The shelling has affected five-six hamlets along the LoC including Sheri Makeri, Namakdali and Khamba since Wednesday night.

As many as 27 families have been affected due to the shelling in which many houses, including a school, have been damaged partially or severely, he said.

More than 40 farm animals are also reported killed in firing, he added.

A woman, identified as Akhtar Bi, was killed in Pukharni village on Wednesday night. Her injured husband, 40-year-old Mohammad Haneef, has been given a compensatory sum of Rs 1 lakh. Another villager also received minor injuries.

The district deputy commissioner has also directed the essential services department to mobilise their services for ongoing evacuations. The Naushera sub-divisional magistrate and a team of doctors have been tasked with ensuring coordination as well as the emergency response.

Divisional Commissioner Jammu, Dr Mandip Bhandari, along with Deputy Commissioner Rajouri Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, visited various areas affected by the shelling.

He also convened a meeting of representatives and affected families from various villages including Pukherni, Qila Darhal, Sarya, Khamba and Jhangar.

Issues related to compensation, loss assessment, cultivation of crops, coordination with Army, construction of bunkers, provision of power supply and availability of ambulances were discussed during the meeting.
Deoria: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday presented a cheque for Rs 4 lakh to the family of BSF head constable Prem Sagar who was killed and his body mutilated by Pakistani troops on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir last week.

Adityanath, who met Sagar's family in his native village Tikampaar to offer condolences, also promised employment to the children after completion of their studies, officials said.

The CM said a 'shaheed smarak' (martyr's memorial) and a girls' inter college will be set up in the village in the memory of the deceased.

He also said that a road will be built to connect the village to the main road, the officials said.

To a demand for a gas agency for the family, he said a recommendation for the same will be sent to the central government.

Agriculture Minister Surya Pratap Shahi had earlier given a cheque for Rs 20 lakh to the family on behalf of the state government.

Sagar and Army's Naib Subedar Paramjit Singh were killed and their bodies mutilated when Pakistani troops sneaked across the LoC upto 250 metres inside the Indian territory last week.
New Delhi: The Delhi High Court upheld a trial court order framing charges of tampering of evidence against real estate barons Sushil and Gopal Ansal in a case related to the 1997 Uphaar fire tragedy.

A bench of Justice Siddharth Mridul held that there was adequate material on record before the magisterial court which justifies framing of charges against Ansals and others.

"The material gave rise to strong suspicion that accused committed the offence for which charges were rightly framed," the bench said.

It also directed the magisterial court to proceed with the trial in the case.

A magisterial court had on 31 May, 2014, ordered framing of charges against seven accused for abetment of offence, causing disappearance of evidence, criminal breach of trust by a public servant and criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code.

Theatre owners Gopal Ansal and his brother Sushil Ansal, Anoop Singh, Prem Prakash Batra, Harswaroop Panwar, Dharamveer Malhotra and Dinesh Chandra Sharma are accused of tampering

with evidence in the case, pending since 2006. All the accused have denied the allegations against them.

The high court had in March last year allowed a plea of Delhi police seeking transfer of revision petitions of the accused which are pending before a sessions court.

The high court had transferred the matter to itself, saying it was warranted in order to protect and uphold dignity and majesty of judicial system and to ensure faith of the citizens in the court of law.

The order was passed after all the parties gave their consent for transfer of petitions before the high court. Ansal brothers, Malhotra and Singh, had approached the sessions court challenging the order passed by a magisterial court framing charges against them in the case.

Later, the Delhi police approached the high court seeking transfer of revision petitions, pending in the court of an additional sessions judge at the Patiala House court, to some other competent court having jurisdiction.

On 13 June, 1997, a fire had broken out at the theatre during the screening of Bollywood film Border, killing 59 people and injuring over 100.

A court had on 31 January, 2003, ordered an inquiry after some documents related to the Uphaar case had gone missing from the court's record room. After an inquiry, a court employee was dismissed from service.
Washington: The Donald Trump administration on Thursday blamed Pakistan for deteriorating India-Pakistan relations and warned that the ties might worsen further if another "high-profile" terrorist attack emanates from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting India's pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

"Easing of heightened Indo-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation, Coats said.

Last year, heavily-armed terrorists sneaked in from across the border and attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. The attack had claimed the lives of seven security personnel while four terrorists were killed.

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against India's rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean, said the top US intelligence official.

In his remarks ahead of the possible release of the Afghanistan policy of the Trump Administration, he said "Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups, he told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, he said anti-Pakistan groups are likely to focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan's internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ui-Ahrar, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhare Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi ai-Aiami, he said, adding that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

"Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons potentially lowers the threshold for their use, Coats warned.

"Early deployment during a crisis of smaller, more mobile nuclear weapons would increase the amount of time that systems would be outside the relative security of a storage site, increasing the risk that a coordinated attack by non-state actors might succeed in capturing a complete nuclear weapon, he said.

Read Coats' full report here:

SSCI Unclassified SFR by Firstpost on Scribd
As of now, no one knows whether the Kapil Mishra's allegation that Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal accepted a bribe of Rs 2 crore from Satyendar Jain is true. However, this allegation points to the seedy underbelly of Delhi: The politics of water.

In Delhi, water equals power and money. Sangam Vihar, in south Delhi, is a large unorganised colony with adjoining slums. With its population of nearly 10 lakh, it is a sad example of this dark reality.

We buy every drop of water from private water suppliers. We do not have water supplied to us through pipes, said Rasheed Khan, who sells parathas at a roadside shop in Sangam Vihar.

Being an unauthorised colony, Sangam Vihar does not get water from the Delhi Jal Board. It is living proof that the Aam Admi Partys bijli half paani maaf slogan is a farce. We have to pay a private supplier Rs 500 for 2,000 litres of water, he said, while serving a customer.

Private water suppliers do brisk business in areas such as Sangam Vihar, which are outside the ambit of the Delhi Jal Board. These suppliers collect water mostly from private borewells in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon and sell it at a premium.

While the Delhi Jal Board has also started reaching out to these areas with water tankers, Umar Nayees, who works for a butcher, tells Firstpost:  Their service is not always available. Normally, the government water tankers visit our area once every eight to ten days. So we mostly have to depend on private players."

Significantly, this misery is meant for the poor, who form the majority of the population, while a handful of affluent families make money from the water crisis.

The people who are rich enough to dig a borewell for themselves never run out of water. In fact, they sell water to the private players at Rs 300 per 2,000 litres. And the private players turn around and sells it to the public at Rs 500 per 2,000 litres," Nayees adds.

Radheshyam Tyagi, member of Water Connection, Delhi Jal Board, told Firstpost that the board has taken over all borewells that have been dug outside homes. But there may be some borewells on private property," Tyagi adds.

In Delhi, digging a borewell for personal use is barred. However, people are allowed to dig and extract water from borewells for the purposes of the community.

The few rich families in the area who are good at flouting groundwater extraction norms without getting caught are making merry. The rest are have-nots.

The lack of water sets the poor living in Sangam Vihar apart from folks living in the nearby authorised colonies of south Delhi: Chittaranjan Park, Malviya Nagar and Greater Kailash, who get up to 20,000 litres of water free of cost every month from Delhi Jal Board.

While the have-nots in Sangam Vihar jostle with each other in front of a tanker every morning for their daily supply of water, the luxury vehicles of the haves are washed with the water they get free from the Delhi Jal Board.

The politics

There are 1,669 unauthorised colonies like Sangam Vihar in Delhi. All of these colonies suffer similar water scarcity, said Radheshyam Tyagi, Delhi Jal Board.

As per the records maintained by the Delhi Jal Board, the city needs 800 million gallons of water every day. However, the city gets only 650 million gallons of water every day, leaving millions of people water deprived.

These water deprived folks constitute a huge votebank for political parties to mobilise during election season.

During every election, all political parties approach us. They promise to build pipes and supply us water. But after they gain power, they just defer the project," Nayees said.

In the 2015 Assembly election, the AAP rode to power in Delhi on the promise of supplying free water through pipes.

Arvind Kejriwal vigorously took up the issue of water crisis in Delhi and promised the people of jal swaraj. He promised every household up to 20,000 litres of free water each month. He also accused the Congress, which had been ruling Delhi for three consecutive terms, of being hand-in-glove with water mafia and depriving the unauthorised colonies of piped water supply.

AAP is committed to clamping down on Delhis powerful tanker mafia, and prosecuting the political leaders who protect and control the water mafia, said the AAP manifesto.

Though the promise of water has always been an election plank in Delhi, in 2015, the AAP created a new narrative around water and captured the imagination of the people by promising to end the disparity in water distribution.

No wonder the 2015 Assembly election saw more than 1 lakh votes cast in Sangam Vihar and AAP candidate Dinesh Mohaniya winning after bagging nearly 65% of the votes. However, even after the AAP won in a landslide, the disparity inherent in the Delhi's water distribution system did not change.

Sangam Vihar, like many other unauthorised colonies, remained beyond the ambit of Delhi Jal Board's piped water supply scheme. Tankers still charged exorbitant sums from residents for water.

The Delhi governments initiative to supply free water through Delhi Jal Boards tankers has also met a foul end. It has been alleged that this scheme is used by some local AAP leaders to maintain their clout over voters.

Only the high and mighty with links to the government and AAP get water. The rest of us have to buy water from private players, says Nayees.

A source in the Delhi Jal Board, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirms this allegation. When we go to supply water in Sangam Vihar, we have to follow instructions given by the MLAs men. They tell us to supply water to certain individuals and not to give water to others. We have to obey, for the sake of our safety."

If this disparity helped AAP to come to power, the continuation of this system seems to have helped the party stay in power. Despite the AAP's dismal performance in dealing with Sangam Vihar's water problems, the party won two MCD ward out of the five wards in the area. The rest were won by the BJP and an independent candidate.

The money

Piped water supply seems to be the only solution to the woes of Sangam Vihar and other unauthorised colonies.

But Radheshyam Tyagi of Delhi Jal Board said: We cannot supply water to these colonies until the government notifies them as authorised. We can proceed only after the government takes this policy decision.

But why has the Delhi government dithered? More than two years after it came to power, why has it not fulfilled its election promise of supplying piped water to every household?

Despite repeated attempts by Firstpost, Dinesh Mohaniya, MLA, Sangam Vihar, remained unavailable for comment.

In a public meeting held in Sangam Vihar before 2015 Assembly election, Arvind Kejriwal alleged an unholy nexus between the Sheila Dixit-led Congress government and the water mafia. It will take only 24 hours to connect Sangam Vihar with piped water supply. But the government does not do that because it will hurt the Rs 1,000 crore business of private water sellers, he alleged.

After taking power, the AAP claimed to have unearthed a Rs 400 crore water tanker scam during the Sheila Dixit regime.

But after Kapil Mishra trained his guns on Arvind Kejriwal and accused him of accepting a bribe from Satyendar Jain, many have questioned whether the AAP did not provide drinking water to Sangam Vihar and other unauthorised colonies for the same reason.

This is a question only Arvind Kejriwal can answer. His best answer may be fulfilling his promise and supplying Sangam Vihar and other unauthorised colonies water through pipes.
Mumbai: The BJP in Maharashtra will soon launch a 'sanvad yatra' from 25 May to reach out to the people, including farmers, and counter the Opposition's recently held 'sangharsh' campaign.

It is going to be a 15daytour of Maharashtra, state BJP chief Raosaheb Danve said today.

"Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and I will start the yatra from two different locations so that we can cover a larger part of the state", he said.

"We will meet farmers in their fields, hold discussions and also try to answer their queries about the

state government's schemes and provisions made for their benefit", he said.

Danve said all the MLA's and elected representatives of BJP will participate in the yatra in their respective areas.

"If we work hard today and establish a better communication with people, it will be easier for us in the next elections," he said.

Fadnavis had last month said that the Opposition failed to reach out to the people through its 'sangharsh yatra'.

"The people of this state are not responding to the sangharsh yatra as they have reposed their faith in us and they are expecting communication from our side", he said.

"So, we are going to start a reachingout campaign, wherein the party workers in the state will go to the people. There will be target of reaching out to 25 lakh farmers.

"As they (opposition) call their campaign a sangharsh yatra, we will call ours a sanvad yatra", Fadnavis had said.

The Opposition Congress and NCP recently held the 'sangharsh yatra' to express solidarity with farmers over their demand of loan waiver.

As a part of the campaign, the leaders of the two parties held meetings with farmers at various places and addressed public gatherings.

The Opposition also criticised Danve for his alleged derogatory comments made a few days back on 'tur dal' growers.

However, Danve yesterday expressed regret over what he said but asserted that he has always been a farmers' sympathiser.
Jammu: Jammu and Kashmir Congress on Thursday strongly condemned the continued ceasefire violations and unprovoked Pakistani shelling on Indian positions and civilian areas in the state in which a woman was killed.

JPCC spokesperson Ravinder Sharma said it is tragic that Pakistan is repeatedly violating ceasefire and it was unfortunate that the firing in Nowshera sector on Wednesday night resulted in the death of a woman.

Sharma along with several other senior leaders of the party visited Pukharni village and attended the funeral of the woman.

He lashed out at Pakistan for repeated ceasefire violations and expressed deep anguish at the killing of innocent persons besides causing great loss to property.

"The people have to shift and migrate from their residences and abandon their fields and cattle due to regular feature of ceasefire violation," he said.

He demanded all necessary measures for the safety of people and provisions for timely medical facilities.

He termed the Centre and state government as total failure on all fronts and blamed them for the present situation of the state.

He also demanded the government to immediately fulfil the promise of allotting of plots to the identified population of border and LoC in order to accommodate them in safer zones so that innocent lives are not lost in firing.

Shiv Sena and Dogra Front also held protests against the government amid anti-Pakistan sloganeering against ceasefire violations and killing of a Kashmiri army officer.

They burnt Pakistani flags and condemned the killing of Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz, the young army officer from Kulgam.
New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal claimed the Election Commission has "backed out of the proposed hackathon" to ascertain the reliability of EVMs and said it was a "sad" move.

His remarks come hours after the poll panel told an all-party meeting that it would offer them an opportunity to prove that EVMs used in the recent Assembly polls were tampered with.

"Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon," Kejriwal tweeted. The all-party meeting convened by the EC to discuss the reliability of EVMs, and other electoral reforms, saw a debate

over the definition of 'hacking'.

After the meeting, Kejriwal's deputy Manish Sisodia sought to know why the poll panel was "scared" of holding a 'hackathon' when electronic voting machines cannot be hacked into.

"We had tampered with an EVM in the Delhi Assembly few days back. We request the Election Commission to give us one of the EVMs used in the five state Assembly polls and we will

also hack into it," the deputy chief minister told reporters.
Opposition parties will, in all likelihood, again tell the Election Commission of India about their "loss of faith" in EVMs and to ensure trustworthy mechanism for polling, when an all-party meeting on the issue is held in New Delhi on Friday. The meeting will also discuss electoral reforms and is scheduled to begin at 10 am on Friday.

The poll panel is likely to seek suggestions for its proposed "EVM challenge", which will provide a chance to those doubting Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to prove that these can be tampered with. The meeting comes in the wake of doubts repeatedly raised by many political parties on functioning of the EVMs once results of Assembly polls in five states  Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Punjab and Manipur were declared on 11 March. The Bharatiya Janata Party swept to power with a historic mandate in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

Leaders of 13 parties met Election Commission officials in April to convey their "complete loss of faith" in the EVMs and to demand use of VVPAT (voter-verified paper audit trail) and paper ballots in future polls. These opposition parties had also conveyed their concerns on the EVMs to President Pranab Mukherjee.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati had raised apprehensions about tampering of EVMs the day Uttar Pradesh assembly election results were out. The Aam Admi Party, which lost the assembly elections in Punjab, and later the municipal corporation elections in Delhi, also raised its voice on the issue. Ever since, the issue has not been

What Supreme Court said on EVM tampering allegation

In April 2017, the debate over the possibility of tampering of EVMs echoed in the Supreme Court as well which decided to examine the allegations that these machines were not "foolproof" without a paper trail. The apex court's decision came on a petition filed by Mayawati and her BSP, which after the drubbing in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, has claimed large scale tampering of EVMs.

A bench of Justice J Chelameswar and Justice Abdul Nazeer had in April issued notices to the Centre and the EC asking them to respond to the plea challenging the use of EVMs without paper trail. "Technically, we agree that any technology can be tampered with, but you have to have sufficient grounds for raising doubts, the court told senior counsel P Chidambaram, who was appearing for BSP, in an oral observation. "The EVM itself was introduced to stop practices and larger evils like booth capturing and others. This is a work in progress, the court, which fixed the matter for further hearing on 8 May, said.

The matter came up for hearing before the apex court after the ECI threw an "open challenge" to political parties and experts to come and try to hack the EVMs and show that they can be tampered with. While senior Congress leader P Chidambaram claimed that almost every political party has protested against the use of EVMs, senior advocate Kapil Sibal said Congress will also intervene in the matter saying "every technology can be hacked" and this was a cause of serious concern.

Sibal's submission had assumed significance in the apex court as Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh categorically had said that he had no problem with the EVMs. His colleague and senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily had in personal remarks also said that going back to the ballot paper would be a regressive step.

While reminding Sibal that the EVMs were introduced when Congress was in power, the top court had directed the Centre and ECI to respond to BSP's petition within three weeks after Chidambaram raised doubts over the accuracy of voting through EVMs only.

"The petition is challenging the use of EVMs in elections without a voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT)," the senior counsel said. He argued that ECI had said they have been asking the government to provide funds for procurement of VVPATs but enough money was not given to it. "The ECI acknowledges and recognises that EVMs are not foolproof. They want VVPAT and they have recommended to the government and asked for money to procure VVPAT. ECI had sent 10 reminders to the government for release of funds. The letters were sent to the Prime Minister by the Chief Election Commissioner," Chidambaram claimed.

He told the bench that the use of EVMs without VVPAT created serious doubts about the accuracy of voting and a paper trail was needed so that the voter gets a feedback of the vote cast by him. He said to ensure accuracy in the voting process, paper trail is needed as there were chances of tampering with EVMs as there were reports that both the hardware and software of these machines are "vulnerable".

"There is no way that a voter can verify as to whether the vote cast by him has gone to the right candidate. Without a paper trail, there is no way to verify it. In EVMs, a voter is only pressing the button and he does not know whether the machine is recording his voting correctly or not. There is doubt over it," Chidambaram said.

To this, the bench asked, "you are having doubts, but on what basis?" Responding to the court's query, Chidambaram said EVM is a machine and "one can make a machine while the other one can tamper with it. There are issues of hacking as well".

Referring to an earlier judgment of the apex court, he said the court had observed that the paper trail with EVMs was an indispensable requirement of fair elections. The lawyers also told the bench that around three lakh VVPAT attachments were required for the entire country and it would could cost around Rs 3,000 crore.

During the hearing, Chidambaram referred to some of the reports given by experts and said they "demonstrated that both the hardware and software of EVMs are vulnerable and unless there is no paper trail, the accuracy cannot be verified". At the very end of the hearing, Sibal told the court that Congress party would also intervene in the matter.

"Nowhere in the world, except in one country, these EVMs are being used," Sibal said, adding, "Every technology can be hacked and that is our concern." To this, the bench said, "Do not tell us that this system is used in only one country. This system was introduced when your party was in power".

What other political parties are saying

Aam Aadmi Party leader Saurabh Bharadwaj threw a fresh challenge before the poll panel on 11 March by saying his party can prove how the EVMs used in assembly polls were pre-programmed to favour a particular party. The AAP recently sought to demonstrate how an EVM can be tampered with in the Delhi assembly, though the Election Commission debunked the claim by saying the machine used was a mere "prototype".

The AAP also contended that it could show how EVM motherboards can be changed in 90 seconds. AAP activists even protested outside the Election Commission headquarters here on Thursday against alleged EVM tampering. The Congress, Trinamool Congress and several other parties have raised their concerns over EVMs.

The AAP and Congress had demanded polling through ballot papers for last month's Delhi MCD polls but the the Delhi State Election Commission said EVMs were "completely safe". The Election Commission too has repeatedly asserted that the EVMs cannot be tampered with.

On 4 May, the poll panel released a "Status Paper on Electronic Voting Machines" describing the security measures adopted to make them tamperproof. Congress leader and MP Vivek Tankha, member of the Congress delegation at the all-party meeting, told IANS that the Election Commission has to take a call on making the election process trustworthy.

He said EVMs do not enjoy their trust any more.

"The Election Commission has to take a call. At the end of the day it (elections) is all about trust," Tankha told IANS.

Amid concerns raised by the opposition, the Union Cabinet last month cleared the Election Commission's proposal to buy VVPAT machines for the EVMs to ensure transparency in the voting process.

The proposal involves getting 16,15,000 VVPAT units for EVMs at a cost of around Rs 3,173.47 crore for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
In 1953, then U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower in a speech to the UN General Assembly proposed the Atoms for Peace program, including the establishment of what would become the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, to facilitate the exchange of nuclear technology for peaceful uses and safeguard against their diversion to weapons.

Since that time, the United States has been a leader in international civil nuclear cooperation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. It is the single largest contributor to technical cooperation activities of the IAEA, helping Member States apply nuclear technology to address national development needs. The assurances provided by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the safeguards of the International Atomic Energy Agency have helped make todays vibrant exchange of nuclear energy, science, and technology possible.

On May 9, the U.S. delegation delivered its statement on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy to the First Session of the Preparatory Committee for the 2020 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Andrew Schofer, Charge dAffaires of the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, reaffirmed the U.S. governments $50 million pledge to the Peaceful Uses Initiative for 2015 to 2020 and reported specific progress toward that commitment. Mr. Schofer said in his statement, The effects [of cooperation] have been real and felt worldwideWe have helped fund important capacity-building efforts to address urgent needs, such as the Ebola and Zika crises, global disparities in access to cancer therapy, transboundary animal diseases and water shortages, food safety and quality, and environmental effects from the Fukushima nuclear incident.

In addition to supporting such life-saving programs through the IAEA, the United States has 50 partners and 23 agreements on bilateral nuclear cooperation. IAEA States with nuclear power programs can make full use of the international commercial market for nuclear fuel. The United States already operates the American Assured Fuel Supply.

The IAEA has nearly completed the creation of a low enriched uranium reserve to provide another international mechanism to ensure reliable fuel services. Additionally, fuel from such reserves can be made available in the event of a severe supply disruption.

Through programs that facilitate scientific exchange and building partnerships that safeguard against proliferation, the United States and all Member States benefit from peaceful nuclear cooperation, which the Non-Proliferation Treaty helps make possible. In the words of Charge Andrew Schofer, States that uphold their nonproliferation commitments should know that they have a strong partner in the United States toward that end.
Panaji: The Congress on Fridfay accused Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar of trying to "misuse" the government machinery in the run-up to upcoming Panaji bypoll, a day after he addressed reporters in his official chamber to announce his candidature from the seat.

"Parrikar is staring at defeat during the upcoming Panaji by-election. That is the reason he is attempting to misuse his official position," AICC secretary Girish Chodankar told reporters.

Referring to a press conference held by Parrikar in his official chamber Thursday to announce his candidature, Chodankar said, "Parrikar could have addressed media persons from his party office, but he did it purposely from his official chamber. Parrikar has started misusing his official position".

The by-election in Panaji constituency is necessitated after the sitting BJP MLA Siddharth Kuncalienkar resigned to make way for Parrikar to get elected to the House. Election Commission has yet to announce the poll schedule.

"If Parrikar is really sure about his victory, he should first step down as chief minister and then face the by-election. Parrikar should provide a level-playing field to the opponents by not indulging in tactics which are against the ethos of election process," Chodankar added.

Parrikar took over as chief minister in March after resigning as defence minister, after the BJP, which failed to get a majority on its own, succeeded in cobbling together a coalition with the support of regional outfits. He has to get elected to the Assembly within six months for continuing as the chief minister.

The Panaji constituency has been Parrikar's bastion. He represented the seat from 1994 till 2014, before he moved to the Centre as defence minister in the Narendra Modi Cabinet.

Kuncalienkar, who was then attached to the office of Parrikar, was given the ticket by the BJP to contest the by-election in the constituency, left vacant by Parrikar. He retained the seat in the state Assembly elections held in February this year, though his winning margin thinned.
Kannur: An RSS office bearer accused in the murder of a CPM worker last year was hacked to death near here on Friday.

The state BJP leadership has accused CPM activists of the crime.

The RSS worker, Biju, in his early 30s, is the 12th accused in the murder of CPM worker Dhanaraj, that took place near Payyanur here in July last year. Biju was out on bail.

The police have cordoned off the area and probe has begun.
Why would not the Congress just say go ahead and get done with the probe against the Gandhis in the National Herald case? The more it seeks legal options to evade the probe, the more it seems to be trying to escape from something uncomfortable. In its desperation to shield Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi from scrutiny, it could be damaging its image more than doing any good to it.

The decision of the Delhi High Court, allowing an Income Tax investigation into Young Indian Private Limited, has been followed by the usual reaction from the Congress. Besides calling it political witch-hunting, it has decided to move the Supreme Court for relief. The Congress president and vice-president are directors in the company with a majority  76 percent  stake in it.

This is what party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala had to tell Firstpost in reaction to the ruling: Young Indian had raised certain fundamental jurisdictional issues challenging authority of Income Tax authorities. The Delhi High Court directed Income Tax authorities to decide all the issues raised in petition before the high court. Being satisfied with it, Abhishek Singhvi, advocate for Young Indian, has himself withdrawn the petition."

Surjewala added, "Incidentally, Young Indian is a 'not for profit' company that only runs the 'National Herald ' paper which is the last vestige of freedom movement which contributed to India's freedom struggle. No one can withdraw a single rupee of profit, salary or dividend from it or benefit from it any manner as per the Companies Act. We are proud of protecting this important symbol of the freedom struggle and will always protect this trust of people of India. Witch-hunt or malice of the current BJP government will not deter us from upholding our bounden duty to the nation.

The case pertains to BJP leader Subramanian Swamys 2012 complaint that the Gandhis had committed fraud and breach of trust while acquiring Associated Journals Limited, which brought out the now defunct National Herald, through Young Indian Private Limited. The latter, according to his complaint, took over the assets of the company, worth about Rs 2,000 crore, to make a profit. He had named six Congress leaders, including Sonia and Rahul. The Congress has been maintaining that Young Indian was a non-profit organisation and it was making no financial gains out of the transaction. Moreover, no illegality was involved in the transaction.

The case has been good ammunition for the BJP to target the Gandhis with over the last five years. Its like the Robert Vadra land deal case which becomes staple for raucous media debates at routine intervals. In fact, these are two cases which directly bring the Gandhi family in the line of fire. For the BJP, the outcome of these cases is less important than the perceptional damage these cause to the Congress leadership. It serves the BJP well if the debate lingers without a conclusion.

The Congress may well cry witch-hunt and have valid ground objecting to an Income Tax probe. The department, after all, works under the government and there could be questions on its neutrality. However, the fact is it is fait accompli if the Supreme Court too agrees with the high courts order. Wouldnt it be good for its image if it faces Swamys challenge and concedes to a probe? Whats better if the offer comes from the Gandhis themselves?

Right now, the impression is that the party is running away from a probe. What aggravates matter for it are other cases related to Associated Journals properties in Haryana and Mumbai. The CBI has already registered an FIR against Haryana former chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and others. It is alleged that the process of allocation of a plot in Bandra, Mumbai is full of legal loopholes. How does the party get out of the mess? Its options are limited.
The Delhi High Court verdict, upholding the trial court order, to allow the Income Tax Department to investigate Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the National Herald case comes as yet another shock to the Congress party's first family.

The problem for the Congress is four-fold. First, it is faced with the ignominy of losing a case in higher court which concerns the Nehru-Gandhi family.

Second, once the Income Tax Department begins its investigation and starts scrutinising the books, no one can be sure what it would lead to and what additional matters it could unearth, especially now when the Narendra Modi government is going strong.

Third, the verdict yet again reinforces the public perception that the Nehru-Gandhi family were involved in wrongdoing.

Fourth, it comes at a time when Congress strategists are trying hard to put Sonia on the forefront, to stitch some kind of Opposition unity for the coming presidential election, and since she was leading the consultation process with the regional Opposition leaders, the Congress president is being positioned as the leader of a hypothetical UPA 3.

The timing of the Delhi High Court order could not have been worse for the Congress party.

As the case stands, Sonia and Rahul are the accused in a case of cheating and breach of trust and are out on bail. Together, they have 76 percent of the share, Young India Private Limited controls 38 percent of the share and the remaining 24 percent is held by their trusted party and family loyalists Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitradoa. The original charge against them, as filed by Subramanian Swamy, is that they used dubious means to acquire Associated Journalists Limited, which owned National Herald. The crux of the charge is that National Herald may have been a defunct print media outlet but it had real estate assets worth over Rs 2,000 crore in prime areas of important cities across India and the Gandhis, with the allegiance of some other Congress leaders, allegedly gained control over all the properties illegally.

The morale of Congress workers is currently at its lowest point. The Congress party is now reduced to a single digit figure of seven seats. Moreover, it could not form the government in Goa and Manipur despite having the majority. It's performance in urban civic bodies and rural panchayat elections held in different parts of the country have been dismal too.

Despite the resolution of the Congress Working Committee, Rahul is reluctant to take up the post of Congress president. His all-round electoral failure as a leader, Robert Vadra's land deal cases and even Priyanka Gandhi's name figuring in some dubious land deals have further compounded the problems for Congress.

Priyanka had stood surety when Rahul was granted bail on December 19, 2015 in a Patiala House court in New Delhi, while AK Antony had stood surety for Sonia.

When Sonia and Rahul were forced to appear before the trial court, following Supreme Court's refusal to step aside a lower court order that they must appear in person before the court, the Congress party had created quite a show. Hundreds of party workers chanted slogans while the Congress top guns accompanied the two inside the court room.

Though this was a legal issue, the Congress had disrupted the Winter Session of Parliament in 2015. Thankfully, this time around there is no Parliament session and the Monsoon Session will start only in July.

Moreover, some of its present and potential allies like RJD, BSP and TMC, for a grand opposition unity for presidential polls against ruling BJP, too are facing corruption charges.

The only solace for the Congress is that party spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi, who argued the case in the high court, looked cheerful during the afternoon media briefing at the party headquarter and claimed that the court's order was actually favourable to them.
In probably one of the biggest setback for the Gandhi family, the Delhi High Court on Friday, cleared all decks for an Income Tax investigation into Young Indian Private Limited in which Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and party vice-president Rahul Gandhi are directors.

The Young Indian Private Ltd is now likely to move the Supreme Court.

Going gets tough for Gandhi's in national herald case : sources say records above board .. accuse political witch hunting  pallavi ghosh (@_pallavighosh) May 12, 2017

A bench of Justice S Muralidhar and Justice Chander Shekhar asked the company to approach the Income Tax assessing officer, after which the firm withdrew its petition. The court then dismissed the plea as it was withdrawn. Young India had approached the high court seeking a direction to stay the IT proceedings and quashing of notices against it with regard to the National Herald misappropriation of assets case. The company was issued notices regarding the assessment year 2011-12.

Sonia and Rahul have been accused of conspiring to "cheat and misappropriate funds" by paying Rs 50 lakh through which Young Indian Pvt. Ltd obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which Associate Journals Ltd (AJL) owed to the Congress. Speaking to CNN-News18, BJP leader and Rajya Sabha member Subramanian Swamy said that these cases will see the light of day. "If Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not do anything, people will say that he only gives speeches."

In the first official reaction from the Congress, spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala, said, "The Gandhis have the option of approaching the Supreme Court. The I-T (department) cannot open a one-sided investigation. Swamy is not in-chare of I-T."

Others accused in the case, which was filed by Swamy, include Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda. The court had summoned the accused, besides Young Indian on 26 June, 2014. On 19 December, 2015, it had granted bail to Sonia, Rahul, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to summons. Pitroda was granted bail on 20 February, 2016 when he had appeared before the court.

All you need to know about the National Herald Case

In 1938 during the freedom struggle, Jawaharlal Nehru, who went on to become Independent India's first prime minister, started the National Herald newspaper. The paper originally served as a mouthpiece of the Congress and was published by The Associated Journals Limited (AJL). However, over the decades, circulation dropped and finances dried out, and it finally closed in 2008 accruing a debt of Rs 90 crore.

In a bid to keep AJL afloat, the Congress party gave the company unsecured, interest-free loans for some years up to 2010. On 23 November, 2010, AJL was taken over by a newly-floated company called Young Indian Private Limited (YIL) with Gandhi family loyalists Dubey and Pitroda as directors.

The All India Congress Committee (AICC) decided to assign the nearly Rs 90-crore debt it was owed by AJL to YIL, thus making it the owner of the debt in the books. In December 2010, AJL decided to transfer its entire equity to Young Indian in lieu of YIL owning its Rs 90 crore debt. The firm paid Rs 50 lakh for this acquisition.

The AJL, which originally owed Rs 90 crore to the Congress party, became a fully-owned subsidiary of Young Indian by virtue of this decision and transaction. In December 2010, Rahul was appointed its director and in January 2011, Sonia also joined the board as a director. Vora and Fernandes too were appointed to the Young Indian board on the same day.

As per documents, Sonia and Rahul have individual shareholdings of 38 percent each in the company while Vora and Fernandes hold the remaining 24 percent in equal parts.

In 2012, Swamy filed a complaint before the trial court alleging that Congress leaders were involved in cheating and breach of trust in the acquisition of AJL by YIL. The Gandhis and others will be tried on charges of dishonest misappropriation of property (section 403 IPC), criminal breach of trust (section 406), cheating (section 420) and criminal conspiracy (section 120 B).

Swamy alleged that YIL had taken over over the assets of the defunct outlet in a "malicious" manner to gain profit and assets worth over Rs 2,000 crore. Swamy alleged that YIL had paid just Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that AJL had owed to the Congress party, given earlier as a loan to start the newspaper.

Metropolitan magistrate Gomati Manocha, had issued summons to Gandhis and other on 26 June, 2014 and noted that all accused persons had allegedly acted "in consortium with each other to achieve the said nefarious purpose/design". The court had asked all accused to appear before it on 7 August, 2014.

The Congress leaders on 30 July, 2014 moved the high court, which stayed the summons. On 7 December, 2015, the high court dismissed the appeals filed by the Congress leaders, observing that prima facie the case "evidenced criminality".

The high court also raised questions regarding the legality of the initial loan granted to AJL by the Congress party. Following the high court's order, on 8 December, the trial court had directed them to appear on 19 December.

A notice appeared in Lucknow-based newspapers of Friday giving notice for an extraordinary general meeting of the AJL on 21 January, 2016 to transform it into a not-for-profit company.

With inputs from agencies
The term of President Pranab Mukherjee ends in July. The BJP-led NDA appears to have an advantage as it has a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha and rules many of the bigger states.

The electoral college for the election of president consists of elected members the two Houses of Parliament and members of the legislative assemblies and councils.

Parties supporting NDA

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) rallied around the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), stating that the regional party could support the coalition's candidate if it helped Telangana. "We have been with the NDA whenever it benefited Telangana. We are not with the NDA if it is against Telangana," the TRS leader in the Lok Sabha, AP Jitender Reddy, told PTI. With Opposition trying to put up a common nominee for the poll, Reddy's comments would boost the NDA's chances of installing its candidate in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Reddy said the TRS would take a final decision on the matter at an appropriate time after assessing whether the NDA needed its support. The presidential election has to be held before 24 July when President Pranab Mukherjee's term ends.

TRS was one of the six political parties (AIADMK, BJD, YSRCP, AAP and INLD) who cumulatively hold a 13 percent vote-share in the Presidential Electoral College and has the potential to make the contest interesting. TRS, before announcing their support for NDA, maintained equidistance from BJP as well as Congress in their domestic state-level political considerations.

Congress needs the support of these six regional parties to even out the contest between ruling and Opposition. "The opposition's 35.47 percent votes combined with the 13.06 percent voteshare of these six parties give them a total of 48.53 percent  just short of the NDA's vote share of 48.64 percent in the presidential contest," Economic Times reported.

Here are plans of Opposition

Opposition parties, after holding discussions in the past few days, appear to have considered a few names, including former governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, former speaker Meira Kumar, NCP chief Sharad Pawar and JDU leader Sharad Yadav, to pick a common candidate for the upcoming presidential election.

Though a decision on the candidate will take some time, the process of evolving a consensus is gaining momentum. Congress president Sonia Gandhi has initiated the process of bringing Opposition together for the election slated in July in a bid to evolve a consensus on a candidate.

This also being seen as a precursor to the possibility of opposition parties coming together to take on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, who was secretary to the President when R Venkataraman held the post, is also said to have a good equation with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, when he was governor there. He himself has acknowledged that he has been approached.

Sonia has over the past few days met Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar, National Conference's Working President Omar Abdullah, Janata Dal-United leader and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Communist Party of India-Marxist chief Sitaram Yechury, CPI leader D Raja, and spoken to Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad.

Gandhi, who was admitted to the Sir Ganga Ram hospital due to food poisoning on 9 May, is believed to have spoken to Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee from the hospital. The two are likely to meet on 16 May. She will also meet DMK leader MK Stalin and Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati in the coming days.

"Sonia Gandhiji is trying to build a consensus on the presidential election over phone, and even by meeting leaders of the opposition parties. But we are waiting for the BJP to announce their candidate. Let them first declare their candidate," JD(U) leader KC Tyagi told IANS.

Asked if consensus has been arrived at on any candidate, Tyagi said: "A consensus has not been yet reached on any of the names. Let the notification be issued. But we have done our homework already. We will all contest the elections together."

Asked about the names of probable candidates doing the rounds, Tyagi said: "Gopalkrishna Gandhi is a good name, but no consensus has been reached on that. Meira Kumar is also a good name, Sharad Yadav is also a good name."

"No consultations have taken place formally on the names together. Till the BJP announces its candidate or till the election date is announced, all this is just preliminary talk," he added.

A senior Left leader told IANS that the united opposition will wait for the BJP to announce their candidate. He also said that they will announce the name in the end.

"Announcing the name may land the candidate in a legal entanglement, like BJP patriarch LK Advani. Immediately after his name started doing the rounds for presidential candidature, the Supreme court revived the conspiracy charge against him on the Babri Masjid demolition," said the leader.

Janata Dal-Secular leader Danish Ali said they will first wait for the government to announce its candidate and only then will they take a stand on it.

"If the government proposes a consensus candidate it will be good for democracy. The government should consult the opposition parties before taking any decision.

"If we don't agree with the government's proposal and if the candidate is not suitable for Rashtrapati Bhavan, if he comes from the right-wing ideology, then the opposition will be forced to field a candidate in that scenario... And JD-S will stand by the opposition parties," Danish Ali told IANS.

AIADMK leader V Maitreyan told IANS: "We'll have to see who are the candidates first (from both sides) and also how the Tamil Nadu scenario unfolds. It's too early to comment on this."

However, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal and Shiv Sena, which have been non-committal on the issue so far, will play a crucial role in the presidential elections.

Sources in the BJD said that if Jharkhand Governor Draupadi Murmu's name is proposed by the ruling establishment, the party may have difficulty in opposing her. Murmu's name has been doing the rounds for the top post. She is a tribal politician, who hails from Odisha.

Opposition parties are also trying to garner support from the Shiv Sena and some of the its leaders are in talks with Shiv Sena leaders. A Congress leader said that if Sharad Pawar becomes the opposition candidate, the Shiv Sena may extend support to him. In another unity move, DMK leader Kanimozhi met Sonia Gandhi last week and invited her for her father and DMK chief M Karunanidhi's 94th birthday celebrations in Chennai.

Karunanidhi's birthday on 3 June is likely to be attended by leaders from several opposition parties, including Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad, Sitaram Yechury, D Raja, National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah and Sharad Pawar. Kerala Chief Minister and CPM leader Pinarayi Vijayan may also attend.

With inputs from IANS
New Delhi: The Congress on Friday made it clear that a united Opposition is committed to win the presidential election by putting up a joint candidate against the NDA nominee and all synergies are being constructively pooled for that endeavour.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said deliberations in this regard are underway "without any fear, favour or ego". "The widest spectrum of opposition is committed to ensuring the most credible and winning face in the presidential election to give a befitting reply to fight and win the presidential election against the government NDA nominee. I can tell you with assurance that every possible effort

in that direction is underway without fear or favour or restriction or ego and all synergies of the wider opposition are being constructively polled for that endeavour and for that result," he told reporters when asked on the issue.

Without disclosing possible names that have cropped up for the presidential election due in July to replace Pranab Mukherjee, he said, "We are fighting to win, let me be very clear."

Singhvi said many meetings have been held already in this regard and more such meetings will take place in the coming days to select a credible candidate who has a countrywide appeal. "A widest consultative process alone can generate that degree of consensus when everybody's private individual predilection or ego is submerged for the larger common good," he said. He admitted that this is an ongoing process and not a process which is "episodic".

Sources said the Congress is working with a majority of opposition parties to put up a consensus candidate. Though the NDA is short of around 20,000 votes in the election, it is banking on the support of some parties like the YSR Congress and the AIADMK.

The Congress, however, is hoping of a split in the NDA if the opposition decides on a candidate who has a "grand all- India stature" and has mass appeal and personality. "Presidential election is more fought by personality rather than by numbers," said a leader, adding that the opposition is trying to get "floaters and stranglers" to vote for its candidate.

The leader admitted that the NDA has more numbers as of now but everything will depend on the candidate. NCP chief Sharad Pawar, Congress leader and former Speaker Meira Kumar, senior JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav and former West Bengal Governor Gopal Gandhi are among the names being considered by opposition parties as their joint candidate.
New Delhi: Sacked Delhi minister Kapil Mishra's mother has written a letter to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of spreading lies regarding her son.

On Thursday, several Aam Aadmi Party leaders had tweeted a picture in which Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari and Mishra were seen in one frame.

The sacked minister's mother, Annapurna Mishra, a former mayor of Delhi, claimed that the picture was clicked at an event to felicitate AAP leader Kumar Vishwas' father and was attended by Kejriwal and all his ministers.

She said Kejriwal had pursued her to convince Mishra to join politics despite the latter not being interested. In the letter, she also alleged that Kejriwal's men had started calling her "corrupt" while he has maintained a stoic silence over the issue.

Mishra's mother claimed that she was the one who had organised mohalla sabha in 2007 and reminded Kejriwal that he had attended it and it was even mentioned in his book Swaraj.

"You had said that when the AAP MLAs had their first meeting at the Constitution Club after winning 28 seats, they were shown a video of a mohalla sabha organised by me," she said.

She also expressed disappointment at Kejriwal's silence on the questions being posed by her son. Annapurna also said that she was proud of her son who was on a hunger strike and hadn't eaten for the last three days.

The former mayor said Mishra was only "an agent of truth" and would keep soldiering on as he was very stubborn. She urged Kejriwal to share the information being sought by her son.

After his removal as a minister and his suspension from the party, Mishra launched a fast demanding that the AAP divulge details of foreign tours undertaken by five leaders of the party which, in turn, has accused him of following a script penned by the BJP.
After Shiv Sena MLAs were directed by party chief Uddhav Thackeray to visit drought-hit villages in their constituencies in Maharashtra, one enterprising MLA sent a former corporator in his stead, CNN-News 18 reported.

Shiv Sena MLA Gautam Chabukswar reportedly sent Yashodhar Fanse, a former corporator, as his "substitute" to visit a drought-hit village in Osmanabad district. Fanse reportedly posed as Chabukswar and met the villagers, according to media reports.

I am shocked. The BJP-Shiv Sena govt has taken the whole farmer issue very lightly: Ex-Maharashtra CM @prithvrj to CNN-News18 #SenaNakliMLA pic.twitter.com/6M22QaOVCt  News18 (@CNNnews18) May 12, 2017

Sources told Firstpost that Chabukswar is on a holiday somewhere in North India.

Thackeray held a meeting in Sena Bhavan in Mumbai and has issued a warning to Chabukswar, sources said.

Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant, who is also the party spokesman, told Firstpost, "I don't know anything about this."
In the limited context of Andhra politics, the Narendra Modi-Jaganmohan Reddy meeting in New Delhi on Wednesday has set the cat among the Telugu Desam Party pigeons. The YSR Congress chief who was not able to get an audience with the prime minister all of last year, succeeded at last.

The Telugu Desam, the BJP's ally both in Amaravati and New Delhi, has good reason to be upset. Jagan gave the prime minister a copy of the YSRC-sponsored book on Chandrababu Naidu's alleged corruption titled  rather unflattering to the Andhra chief minister  Emperor of Corruption.

What's more, the six-page memorandum also listed out how Naidu unethically encouraged defections from the YSRC, even alleging that 20-odd MLAs were bought. References to the Agrigold scam and the Telangana cash-for-votes scam were also included in the complaint to the prime minister, besides pleading with him again for special status for Andhra Pradesh, a promise made by former prime minister Manmohan Singh on the floor of the House.

The TDP was livid even though in politics, to show nervousness is usually considered not-so-smart a thing to do. But blame it on poor advice or sheer lack of political sense, TDP leaders almost immediately questioned Jagan's move to meet the prime minister. It was a silly question to ask given that Jagan is no political untouchable and as the Leader of Opposition, he has every right to seek an audience with the prime minister.

Met Shri @narendramodi ji to discuss issues in AP and requested his help in their resolution. https://t.co/ZNzBYxxvZw pic.twitter.com/Yvy5yv50qM  YS Jagan Mohan Reddy (@ysjagan) May 10, 2017

It only betrayed the TDP's nervousness that Jagan was trying to build bridges with the BJP at a time when Naidu was not even in India. What's more, the TDP was caught unawares as the PMO's decision to grant time to Jagan was a last-minute one. That Jagan reportedly spoke to Modi one-on-one for 40 minutes, was enough to make TDP perspire, given that the party prides itself as an outfit that has its ear to the ground in New Delhi and is good at sniffing out political developments.

But was the TDP overreacting or was it justified in its criticism? To be fair to the TDP, it has enough reason to feel insecure because without a doubt, the meeting was not just about handing over a memorandum. Both the BJP and the YSRC intended to send across a message that neither were political untouchables for the other. This Jagan made clear by announcing that his party will support the NDA candidate in the Presidential Election.

All these years, both parties did not show any keenness to do political business with each other. While the BJP looked at Jagan as a tainted politician, who was embroiled in corruption cases, the YSRC prided itself as a secular party that enjoyed significant support among minorities and therefore, the BJP was anathema.

The meeting has meant that many in the YSRC can possibly begin to daydream.

First, the party has realised that the BJP, despite its lack of strength on the ground in Andhra and lacking a strong regional leader, brings other pluses to the table. The Modi name works in urban areas and its impressive victory in Uttar Pradesh and an urban civic body like Delhi has given it momentum. Second, if Jagan could convince Modi and Amit Shah to dump Naidu and tie-up with him, it will send the impression that he is seen as a clean leader. Third, Jagan could offer the BJP far more seats in the Lok Sabha election than Naidu would.

The TDP's argument is that all that Jagan is interested in is the Centre's help to get off the hook in cases that have been slapped against him by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.

All this does not mean that the BJP will dump Naidu after just a meeting with Jagan. This is basically to send a message to the TDP not to take the BJP for granted.

In 2014, Naidu drove a hard bargain, almost pulling out of the alliance if the BJP stayed adamant on the number of seats it wanted to contest. The BJP wants to let Naidu know it is no longer the BJP of 2014, and will argue at least for more Lok Sabha seats to contest from a position of strength.

At the same time, the BJP also will rework its Andhra strategy. While Shah is working on activating the party's booth committees in the state, he will also be aware that actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan is no longer part of the NDA mix. His absence could cost the alliance critical votes among the Kapu community and also the youth. While Naidu would hope his son Nara Lokesh, who was made minister last month, would succeed in keeping the youth vote in the TDP kitty, the BJP would probably look closely at the probability of success.

Jagan's decision to woo the BJP also means bad news for the Congress. The party which was whitewashed in Andhra in 2014 after its decision to create Telangana, has no MP and MLA from the state. It has been trying hard to woo Jagan and convince him to do a ghar wapsi but YS Rajasekhara Reddy's son who was almost pushed out of the party, is not too keen. His decision to back the NDA at a time when Sonia Gandhi is trying to cobble together Opposition unity will not be music to Congress ears.

As far as the TDP is concerned, it cannot do much beyond fretting and fuming. Given that the the BJP has an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha, Naidu cannot arm-twist Modi. Moreover, he needs to be on the right side of the BJP to get maximum funds for the residuary state.

It is ironic that the party that is the weakest of the three is the one that is being wooed by the two principal parties. It is not a position the BJP will mind one bit.
By Gul Yusufzai

| QUETTA, Pakistan

QUETTA, Pakistan A bomb exploded next to a convoy of the deputy chairman of the Pakistan Senate on Friday in the violence-plagued province of Baluchistan, killing at least 25 people, officials said.At least 35 people were wounded in the blast near the town of Mastung, 50 km (30 miles) from the provincial capital of Quetta. Television footage showed a vehicle mangled by the blast.Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the explosion he believed he was the target and he had sustained minor injuries."There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack from the many militant groups operating in Baluchistan.

Haideri is a member of Jamiat e Ulema Islam, a right-wing Sunni Islamist political party that is part of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's coalition government.District health official Sher Ahmed Satakzai said the death toll had risen to 25 and 10 were in critical condition in hospital. Security in Pakistan has improved since a crackdown on militancy began in 2014, but a fresh wave of attacks that left more than 100 people dead in February has increased pressure on Sharif's government.

Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber, adding Haideri's driver was among those killed.The senator, who is being treated in hospital, was on his way back to Quetta after distributing graduation certificates to students who had graduated from a madrassa, or religious academy.

Separatist militants in Baluchistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province's resources.Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran. A U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mansour last year in Baluchistan.The province was rocked by a series of attacks late last year that claimed over 180 lives and raised concerns about a growing militant presence. A judicial report released after an attack on the province's lawyers left more than 70 dead criticised security provisions in the region and called for increased clampdowns on extremists. (Writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Nick Macfie)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
SHANGHAI China's Hebei province is not properly enforcing policies to cut pollution or reduce chronic overcapacity in major industrial sectors like steel and coal, the environmental bureau said.Hebei produces more steel a year than the whole of the European Union, and it aims to cut total annual production capacity to less than 200 million tonnes by the end of the decade, down from 286 million tonnes in 2013.However, despite plans to shed 60 million tonnes of capacity over the 2013-2017 period, Hebei actually saw production increase in 2016. The northern province, one of China's most polluted regions, has launched a campaign to hold officials accountable for enforcing environmental policies and to tackle "grass roots micro-corruption".

The provincial environmental protection bureau said in a statement late on Thursday it has launched its own campaign to root out "ineffective mobilisation" by officials in the battle against pollution.One of the key problems was the failure to implement industry overcapacity rules, it said.

During campaigns to cut excessive steel, iron, cement, glass, coking coal and coal capacity, some illegal plants were suspended but not shut down, allowing dead facilities to spring back to life or relocate, it said. Also, shuttered "zombie" firms did not have their power or water supplies cut off or their facilities demolished, allowing them to re-open, it said.

Policies aimed at converting villages from coal to gas or electricity were not being implemented properly or according to schedule.Hebei surrounds Beijing and is estimated to be the source of about a third of the particulate matter drifting over Beijing.As the province strives to meet 2017 air quality targets, it has launched a series of campaigns aimed at punishing polluters and "normalising compliance".The war on pollution in Hebei has also come amid broader efforts to boost "discipline" and crack down on graft in the province. (Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Stephen Coates)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
(Corrects WHO spokesman Kabambi's first name in para 4)KINSHASA A person in the Democratic Republic of Congo who died of a hemorrhagic fever has tested positive for the Ebola virus, signaling the start of a new outbreak, the Health Ministry and the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday.The case was confirmed from tests on nine people who came down with a hemorrhagic fever in Bas-Uele province in the north of the country on or after April 22, a ministry statement said. Three people have died of fever.

"Our country must confront an outbreak of the Ebola virus that constitutes a public health crisis of international significance," the ministry said.

The WHO's Congo spokesman Eugene Kabambi told Reuters: "It is in a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky. We always take this very seriously."The last outbreak of Ebola in Congo was in 2014 and killed 42 people.

Ebola killed more than 11,300 people and infected some 28,600 from 2013, as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia and caused alarm around the world.In June last year WHO declared Liberia free of active Ebola virus transmission. Liberia was the last country still fighting the world's worst outbreak of the disease. (Reporting by Aaron Ross; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

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By Ben Blanchard and John Ruwitch

| BEIJING/SHANGHAI

BEIJING/SHANGHAI The United States warned China on Friday that North Korea's attendance at a weekend summit on China's new Silk Road could affect the participation of other countries, casting a shadow over what is Beijing's biggest diplomatic event of 2017.Two sources with knowledge of the situation said the U.S. embassy in Beijing had submitted a diplomatic note to China's foreign ministry, saying that inviting North Korea sent the wrong message at a time when the world was trying to pressure Pyongyang over its repeated missile and nuclear tests.China's Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of working hours in China. The ministry said on Tuesday that North Korea would send a delegation to the summit but gave no other details.Asked about the invitation to North Korea to attend, Anna Richey-Allen, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department's East Asia Bureau, said the United States expected China to push its neighbour to return to "serious talks" on denuclearization."That includes taking steps to make clear to the (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un regime the political, economic, and diplomatic consequences of its reckless and unlawful actions."The United States did not think it would be appropriate for North Korea to play a prominent role at the Belt and Road Forum, according to one of the sources familiar with the U.S. concerns.The United States will send a delegation led by White House adviser Matt Pottinger to the summit, China's Foreign Ministry said earlier on Friday.U.S. President Donald Trump has asked China to put more pressure on North Korea, and has praised Chinese President Xi Jinping's role in trying to rein in Pyongyang.

A source with knowledge of the note said that some Western countries could walk out of the specific session of the summit the North Koreans were attending if they were given too important a role, but that no decisions had been taken yet."This has generated a lot of concern," the source said.It was not immediately clear which sessions North Korea would attend. There are several sessions happening on Sunday afternoon, including on trade, finance and people-to-people exchanges. China has given few details about attendees.North Korea's chief delegate may also appear on stage in a group photo with other participants, said the same source, who is familiar with the planning for the summit.

China has not announced who that chief delegate will be, but South Korea's Yonhap news agency said Kim Yong Jae, North Korea's minister of external economic relations, will lead the delegation.CHINA SAYS SILK ROAD A WIN-WIN

Leaders from 29 countries will attend the forum in Beijing on May 14-15, an event orchestrated to promote Xi's vision of expanding links between Asia, Africa and Europe underpinned by billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.Some Western diplomats have expressed unease about both the summit and the plan as a whole, seeing it as an attempt to push Chinese influence globally.

They are also concerned at the presence of leaders from countries with poor human rights records.China has rejected criticism of the plan and the summit, saying the scheme is open to all, is a win-win and is only about promoting prosperity.Some of China's most reliable allies and partners will attend the forum, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev.However, the only leader from a G7 nation to attend will be the Italian prime minister, according to China's foreign ministry.Despite Chinese anger at North Korea's repeated nuclear and missile tests, China remains the isolated state's most important economic and diplomatic backer, even as Beijing has signed up for tough U.N. sanctions against Pyongyang.China has over the years tried to coax North Korea into cautious, export-oriented economic reforms, rather than sabre rattling and nuclear tests, but to little avail. (Additional reporting by Michael Martina in BEIJING and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON; Editing by Mike Collett-White)

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BERLIN Germany and Turkey want to improve their ties, the German foreign minister said after meeting Turkey's prime minister on Thursday, seeking to reverse a deterioration in relations over an increasingly authoritarian tone from Ankara.Speaking after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in London, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said the countries needed to do more to get on better.

"We above all spoke about how we can get back to reasonable relations," Gabriel told German broadcaster ZDF.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this month Europe should not push Turkey away despite worries about President Tayyip Erdogan's tightening grip on power, seeming to play down talk that its aspirations to join the European Union are over.

Germany's emphasis on good ties with Turkey comes despite its frustration earlier this year about Erdogan repeatedly accusing it of applying "Nazi methods" by banning rallies aimed at drumming up support among Turks in Germany for a referendum vote that strengthened the power of his presidency. (Writing by Paul Carrel; Editing by Alison Williams)

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Baghdad: Jihadists preparing for a desperate last stand in Mosul are booby-trapping homes with civilians inside and welding doors shut on starving families to prevent the population from fleeing, residents say. Iraqi forces are closing in fast on the Old City and its narrow streets, where the Islamic State group is expected to focus its significantly depleted military capabilities.

The most violent group in modern jihad has repeatedly resorted to human shields to cover its movements but in Mosul the jihadists appear to be taking the tactic to new levels. "Daesh came to our house and welded the door. They gave us a small amount of water and a white cloth and said: 'Here's a shroud for you'," said one resident of Zinjili neighbourhood.

The woman sent a voice message to a relative living in the "liberated" eastern side of Mosul and said she was now trapped in her own house with her husband, her four children and no food.

Resources were already scarce when the huge government offensive to wrest back Mosul from IS was launched in October last year. After more than six months of fighting, the living conditions of residents of the last neighbourhoods IS still holds are beyond dire.

A 35-year-old man who gave his name as Abu Rami and lives in the Old City of west Mosul said IS was desperate to keep the population from running away. "They have been doing this lately. When they suspect a family of intending to escape to the security forces, they lock them in," he told AFP by phone.

"They have detained several families like this here, and in some cases they weld the doors to be sure," he said. Houses in Mosul often have barred windows or are built around walled courtyards with a single door onto the street. "Those families have a choice of dying of hunger, disease or shelling."

Abdulkarim al-Obeidi, a civil activist from Mosul, said an estimated 250,000 people were still trapped in the Old City and the handful of other areas that remain under IS control.

"Daesh is locking doors on families inside those areas that have not yet been liberated. They are detaining people," he said. He put the number of IS fighters defending their last redoubts in west Mosul at around 600, meaning that the jihadists are massively outnumbered and making the resort to human shields an increasingly important part of their defence strategy.

"Daesh members have everything they need because they raided people's homes and took their food stockpiles," Obeidi said, advocating airdrops to save thousands from starving to death.

"Daesh wants to sow terror among civilians with this filthy tactic of welding doors shut on people," said Hossameddin al-Abbar, a councillor for Nineveh, the province of which Mosul is the capital.

"There are people dying of hunger and disease now, especially children and elderly people," he said, adding that it was impossible to know exactly how many. "At this stage, hunger is killing more than shelling and fighting."

Another method residents say IS has used to prevent a civilian exodus is booby-trapping, a weapon the jihadists had previously used mainly to kill or maim the advancing government forces.
Bari: IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Friday urged eurozone lenders to be "far more specific" in their commitment to a debt-relief package for Greece. The International Monetary Fund has made a package easing Greece's repayment burden a condition of its participation in a 86-billion-euro (USD 94-billion) bailout.

But several eurozone governments are dragging their heels, insisting on more evidence of debt-plagued Greece delivering on reforms as a condition of green-lighting the third rescue package of its kind since 2010.

"We will carry on working on this debt relief package," Lagarde said after talks on the issue on the sidelines of a meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in the southern Italian port of Bari. "There is not enough clarity yet but I hope that the European partners will continue to progress in that."

The former French finance minister added that the IMF's position had not changed in the long-running saga. "We have two issues, policies which are being voted on now, I hope, by the Greek authorities. Much progress has been made and we certainly hope that the Europeans will be far more specific in terms of debt relief, which is also an imperative."

Eurozone ministers agreed in principle last year to extend the repayment terms of part of Greece's debt if Athens delivered on pensions and tax reforms aimed at making the country's public finances more sustainable.

They have also said they will consider providing new lines of credit to replace more costly IMF loans, a move that would save Athens billions in interest every year.

A decision on the shape of the relief package is required soon. Athens needs the first tranche of the bailout to be delivered by July to ensure it can repay seven billion euros

(USD 7.6 billion) in maturing loans.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Germany, where the provision of debt relief to Greece is seen as a vote loser in the run-up to general elections in September.

On the other side of the debate, many economists have said a reluctance to write off some of Greece's debts has been counter-productive because of the negative impact deep cuts on public spending have had on economic activity.
By Michelle Nichols

| UNITED NATIONS

UNITED NATIONS North Korea made a global appeal in a letter released on Friday for states to reconsider enforcing U.N. sanctions on the Asian nation as Washington seeks to step up pressure on Pyongyang to end its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.The United Nations Security Council first imposed sanctions on North Korea in 2006 and has strengthened the measures in response to its five nuclear tests and two long-range rocket launches. Pyongyang is threatening a sixth nuclear test.In the letter to 192 U.N. members and two observer states - dated Thursday - North Korea urged them to "reconsider any of their implementation activities until the legality of those 'sanctions resolutions' are to be clarified."North Korea has repeatedly requested that an international forum of legal experts be established by the United Nations to clarify the legal basis for the U.N. sanctions.

The U.N. Security Council North Korea sanctions committee has been meeting with regional blocs at the United Nations to push for enforcement of existing sanctions and assist countries with questions on how to implement the measures. In a press statement attached to its letter, North Korea's U.N. mission accused the United States of trying to intimidate countries into fully implementing U.N. sanctions by "openly threatening that they would be faced with 'strong measures of sanction' by the U.S."

North Korea argued that there would be no need for Washington to "beg or threaten" countries to implement the measures if the sanctions had a clear legal basis. The United States is negotiating with Pyongyang ally China on strengthening U.N. sanctions. North Korea has in the past year stepped up its ballistic missile tests, firing dozens of various types of rockets, according to South Korea.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last month urged the Security Council to act before North Korea does.North Korea also sent a rare letter of protest to the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday warning that a new package of tougher sanctions would only spur its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea's state media reported.Last month, North Korea reconvened the Foreign Affairs Committee, which was abolished in the late 1990s, in what analysts saw as an attempt to improve relations with the outside world amid its deepening isolation. (Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Tom Brown)

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Imagine this: You have a home. Your neighbour on the left snatches your room by force. Then, the neighbour on the right, a chum of the neighbour on the left, paints the walls of the illegally occupied room. And to celebrate his wonderful feat, the neighbour on the right decks up his own home with flowers and festoons and throws a gala. Then, with a mischievous smile, the neighbour on the right invites you to join the fun.

Would you attend?

China is doing something as audacious as this by inviting India to the Belt and Road Forum (Barf) summit in Beijing on 14-15 May.

With two days to go for the event, India hasnt confirmed it will attenddespite Chinas insistence that it shouldIndia is unlikely to attend, unless it chooses to send an official representative at the last minute, as a token.

The Indian opposition to the summit is understandable.

Last year, China had the temerity to kick off a series of projects in Pakistan, as well as Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, as part of the US $ 57 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (Cpec). This corridor is part of Chinas One Belt One Road (Obor) initiative, a pet global infrastructure dream of president Xi Jinping that takes in its sweep Asia, Africa and Europe. China has called the Barf summit to discuss raise a toast to Obor.

Pardon me for the flurry of bewildering names and acronyms. Blame the Chinese penchant for arcane terms designed to inspire awe, except that the unsavoury meaning of the word barf perhaps did not occur to Beijings Mandarin-English translators.

China is miffed that India, an important country in the region, should be sulking about attending a summit called to talk about something as grandiose as Obor.

Leaders of 29 countries, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pakistans Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, and officials many other nations are travelling to Beijing to discuss Obor, and China hopes that more than 50 agreements will be signed on transportation, energy and communications projects.

Along with India, Japan is staying away from Barf while the US is likely to send a delegation after initial hesitation.

China has unleashed a major media blitzkrieg to promote the summit.

Whats Obor?

Obor can be confusing. Its neither an organisation nor a single project. It seeks to connect Asia with Europe and even Africa, on the way, with a network of roads, ports, railways and other infrastructure projects.

Its a concept that Xi Jinping came up with in late 2013, a year after he took over, and he first called it a silk road economic belt. He spoke of the revival of the Silk Road, the ancient network of routes that traders in Asia and Europe had taken some two thousand years ago. Obors new connectivity includes both land and sea routes: Belt is maritime, while the road is overland.

A Reuters report quotes Chinese officials as saying that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $ 304.9 billion in belt and road countries.

The Economist says by financing around US $150 billion of infrastructure spending a year in countries to Chinas south and west, Xi hopes to create new markets for Chinese firms and new spheres of influence for his government.

China insists that Obor is the only way to speed up the worlds slowing economies. But analysts see it as Chinas economic tool aimed at spreading its influence across continents and stretching its military capabilities beyond its own borders and maritime boundaries.

Xi aims to establish a Eurasian trade identity, and keeping the US out. Obor has become so integral to his foreign policy that any Chinese raising as much as an eyebrow against it runs the risk of being tossed into the nearest jail.

Why India must shun Obor

On 6 May, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told the media in Tokyo where he was on a visit: ... I have no hesitation in saying we have some serious reservations about it (Obor), because of sovereignty issues. These issues were too well-known to the world for Jaitley to elaborate.

The chief issue for India, of course, is Cpec, the Pakistan arm of Obor. India should not only boycott the Beijing show because of it but must continue to raise serious objections to Obor.

With a network of roads, highways, railways, power and other infrastructure projects, Cpec extends from Kashgar in Chinas Xinxiang to the Gwadar port in Balochistan. Pakistan gets improved infrastructure but for China, it means killing many birds with one stone.

Cpec helps Chinese exports reach Europe and Africa faster. And it also means multiple military spin-offs. On land, Cpec will provide China with more than enough excuses to have a large presence in sensitive areas not far from the Indian border. And easy access to a port of Arabian Sea brings a bonanza of strategic benefits to the Chinese navy.

India not alone in opposing it

While those in Kashmir who want to be part of Pakistan welcome it, those who want an independent Kashmir detest it. They find that Pakistan and China are conspiring to shatter their dream of independence.

Besides, there is significant opposition to Cpec in Gilgit-Baltistan, once part of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir.

Says Shabir Choudhry, the Kashmir-born director of London-based Institute of Kashmir Affairs in an article: There are reports that land is acquired illegally and without paying any compensation to the local people for the Cpec projects; and this is adding to the resentment of the suffering people. Sad thing is, if people complain or protest against this injustice, they are accused of being anti-Pakistan and agents of India. Some unfortunate people are facing sedition charges.

And those fighting for the independence of Balochistan are upset that Cpec gives Pakistan a ruse to increase its armed presence, even if its meant to protect the new projects.

Pakistani suspicions about Cpec

The Cpec infrastructure projects are not coming cheap to Pakistan. Most of the Chinese money pouring into Pakistan is coming as high-interest loans.

Says Pakistans leading daily Dawn in a recent editorial: There is a fear lurking in the shadows of Cpec that a time will soon come when the Chinese will start dictating terms and priorities rather than negotiating them. As an increasing number of Chinese enterprises acquire stakes in Pakistans economy, and as the government takes out more and more loans from Chinese state-owned banks for balance of payments support, the space to negotiate and protect our own interests diminishes.

Such fears also exist in other small countries where Obor projects are either underway or are being proposed. But leaders of many cash-starved small nations are signing up either to improve their infrastructure or to win over people with development.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers says: There are many challenges for China and the other countries involved, just some of which are rough terrain, persistent regional conflicts, thriving corruption and skepticism amongst various countries towards China and its intentions. The sheer amount and variation of challenges will make the realisation of the belt and roads initiative a very complex endeavour.

For India, its a question of sovereignty, and having hostile Chinese presence on all sides instead of just one.
Islamabad: A senior Indian diplomat had to apologise after he was caught taking photos inside the Islamabad High Court during the hearing of a case filed by a Pakistani man accused of forcing an Indian woman into marriage at gun point, a media report said.

The official identified as Piyush Singh, first secretary at the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, snapped three photos inside the court, including a picture of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, during the hearing of the case filed by Tahir Ali seeking the high court's intervention to meet his Indian wife Uzma.

When courtroom officials brought the incident to the notice of the judge, he ordered confiscation of Singhs cellphone, The Express Tribune reported.

Terming it a serious violation of the court decorum, the judge ordered the Indian diplomat to submit a written apology before the court after Singh verbally apologised for the said incident.

However, later the diplomat issued a written apology. The court accepted his apology and warned him not to repeat the act, the report said. "I fully apologise for the attempt of using mobile in court by mistake. It is requested that I may kindly be pardoned for this," said Singh in his statement.

Uzma, a resident of New Delhi, on 8 May filed a plea with the Islamabad court against Ali, alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him. Uzma reached Pakistan on May 1 and travelled to Buner district in the northwestern province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa to marry Ali on 3 May.

The couple reportedly met in Malaysia, where Tahir worked as a taxi-driver.

The case has attracted attention on both sides of the border.
Kathmandu: Nepal and China on Friday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on bilateral cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative, a media report said.

Nepal Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi and Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong signed the MoU here at a ceremony, Xinhua news agency reported.

Bairagi said the agreement is an important milestone in the Nepal-China relationship, bringing bilateral ties to a new height.

"Nepal is aspiring to benefit from the rise of China which is our close neighbour," he said.

"Nepal has just become a member of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, thanks to the Chinese leadership for introducing such a wide concept that seeks to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation between China and various countries and regions around the world," Deputy Prime Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara said.

He believed that Nepal can benefit in various sectors through the initiative in the days to come.

"Nepal is gradually moving forward from the status of least-developed country, our economic growth is rising, and is full of possibilities, so with the Chinese assistance, we can attain economic prosperity," he said.

The Belt and Road Initiative was introduced in 2013 aiming to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along the ancient trade routes.
On the day Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Sri Lanka to take part as the chief guest in International Vesak Day celebrations  the most significant day in Buddhist calendar  Chinese President Xi Jinping was giving final touches to the first Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a super-massive infrastructure project connecting China with Europe and Middle East. Nearly 30 world leaders have flown to Beijing to take part in Sunday's maiden forum.

China has already invested more than $50 billion into the project and global ratings agencies suggest the final figure could be as high as $900 billion, connecting 100 countries through the ancient 'Silk Road Economic Belt' (the belt) or '21st Century Maritime Silk Road' (the road) across five continents with Chinese investment estimated to cross billions and billions of dollars in over 60 countries.

Let's take a deep breath.

It is obvious that India does not have the resources to a engineer such a sphere of geopolitical influence. It has neither the money to invest in such a cross-Continental economic initiative, nor does it have the political will to do so.

Moreover, decades of post-Independence isolationism has lessened India's sub-continental sway compared to what it was during even the British Raj. Two churns roughly in the same timeline of history  our policy of looking inward and the rise of China as a mercantile superpower  have hurt India's regional commercial ties and subsequently, minimised our geo-economic influence.

In the decades that we were pursuing self-limiting economic policies, China put in place policies that triggered rapid growth since the turn of new millennium. As Brookings points out in a study, "During the six years up to 2007 Chinas GDP grew at an average rate of 11 percent, with investment equaling 41.5 percent of GDP. The current account surplus was rising in this period, reaching over 10 percent of GDP."

It is obvious that China needed to harness the economic surplus and has since undertaken countless economic initiatives to channel that capacity, in turn increasing exponentially its geopolitical influence. Countries that have been traditionally and culturally close to India and fall within our immediate strategic sphere have also naturally been co-opted within the Chinese geostrategic sphere.

To give an idea about the scale in which this is taking place, Sri Lanka, our largest trading partner in Saarc, whose port in Colombo receives more than 70 percent trans-shipment from India, has received around $15 billion funding and investment from China in 2016 alone, according to a Financial Express report. Most of these, says the report, are in "major infrastructure projects, especially ports and airports" and some are also in roads and railway network.

It will be wrong to view Beijing's actions solely from the lens of geopolitics. Economic integration is important in a globalised world. However, China's economic activism is restricting India's footprint, inevitably harming our commercial interests.

This is the context in which we must place Modi's visit to Sri Lanka, his second since assuming office. The challenges that the PM faces are immense. He must resurrect the ties from the morass of mutual distrust, salvage goodwill from the baggage of recent history and create an atmosphere conducive to greater economic and cultural integration.

Arising out of constricted political opportunism, India's Sri Lanka policy consisted of an ill-advised interventionist strategy that eventually gave rise to bad blood between the two nations. So much so that former president Mahinda Rajapaksa saw India more as a regional bully and showed a pronounced China tilt to balance the equation. Modi's first task was to effect a rebalance.

Recent media reports suggest that prior to Modi's visit in Colombo, Sri Lanka turned down China's request to dock one of its submarines in Hambantota port so as not to upset India's sentiments. Reuters, quoting a senior government official, reports that not only has Chinese urge been denied, Sri Lanka is "unlikely" to agree to China's demand even at a later time "given India's concerns."

Under Modi, Sri Lanka-India relationship has taken a sharp positive turn. Both countries have been willing to engage in high-level diplomacy and bilateral visits have increased manifold. President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe have been to Delhi thrice each and this is Modi's second visit.

This is a far cry from October 2014 when Sri Lanka allowed a Chinese submarine to dock in Colombo, raising a furious protest from India. Ho and why did this change? The answer lies in Modi's novel approach. Since assuming office, the PM has moved with intensity and speed to repair India's ties with one of its most important strategic partners. And he has brought a refreshing approach to foreign policy by tying it with India's soft power.

Modi has shown that he understands India's shortcomings in conventional diplomatic and economic resources and has therefore leaned on using India's considerable soft power  by way of cultural and human resources  to shape India's foreign policy. This has been his signature approach.

On Modi's Sri Lanka initiative, Carnegie India director C Raja Mohan points out in his column for The Indian Express: "Modi has also sought to restore the deeper cultural connect between the two nations as part of his effort to go past the divisive discourse of the last few decades and rebuild mutual trust between Delhi and Colombo. That, precisely, is where an important dimension of Modis second visit to Colombo comes in: the bonds of Buddhism that bind India and Lanka."

The moorings of Modi's cultural connect with Sri Lanka lies in this context. Through the message of Buddhism, Modi has sought to take the relationship away from baggage of Tamil politics and place it within the ambit of cultural unity: India being the birthplace of Buddha. This not only rekindles the 2,500-year-old ties between the two nations, it shows India as a benign power interested in Lanka's well-being, not a challenge to its sovereignty.

Note Modi's opening remarks during his speech as the chief guest of International Vesak Day, where he said: "On this auspicious occasion, I also bring with me the greetings of 1.25 billion people from the land of the Samyaksambuddha, the perfectly self-awakened one."

His announcement, that from  "August this year, Air India will operate direct flights between Colombo and Varanasi. This will ease travel to the land of Buddha for my brothers and sisters from Sri Lanka, and help you directly visit Sravasti, Kusinagar, Sankasa, Kaushambi and Sarnath"  not only carries forward this theme, it also reflects his effort to project India's soft power by way of proposing closer ties between trans-international cities to bring forge greater partnership.

US foreign policy journal Foreign Affairs has noted how Modi, "...used a visit to Japan to initiate a sister city agreement with Kyoto. He similarly used Chinese President Xi Jinpings visit to Ahmedabad to strike up a partnership with Chinas manufacturing powerhouse of Guangzhou. As part of his visit to Australia for the G-20 Summit, Modi proposed a sister city agreement between Hyderabad and Brisbane and argued that relationships between countries can prosper fully only if we bring our states and cities together."

Modi is challenging the key tenets of India's foreign policy and bringing his own dynamism into it. The Sri Lanka outreach provides immediate and clearest example.
At least 25 people were killed and more than 30 have been injured, including deputy chairman of the senate Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, in a powerful blast on Friday in Pakistan's south-western Balochistan province.

The bombing targetted Haideri when he came out of a religious seminary after addressing a gathering in Mastung area of the province shortly after the weekly Friday prayers. The area where the explosion took place is approximately 70 kilometres from provincial capital Quetta.

Senior police officer Abdul Razzaq Cheema said that 30-40 people were injured. He said Haideri was slightly injured.

"I am alive, Allah has saved my life, it was a sudden blast, broken pieces of the windscreen hit me, I am injured but safe. The driver and other people sitting next to me were badly injured," Haideri said on private TV channel SAMAA.

Citing sources, Geo TV said Haideri has been shifted to the civil hospital. Haideri later told Dunya TV in a brief chat that he received minor injuries.

Television footage showed Haideris vehicle was badly damaged. He was sitting in the car at the time of blast. His driver was killed in the attack.

Haideri is a top official of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F), one of the country's most powerful religious political parties. JUI-F has been targeted by the Pakistani Taliban in the past, even though the party leaders have acted as negotiators between the militants and Pakistan government in the past.

So far no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

"It is not yet clear whether it was a planted bomb or a suicide attack," police official Safar Khan told AFP as he gave the toll.

Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy chairman of the upper house of parliament, told Reuters minutes after the blast that he believed he was the target and he had sustained minor injuries.

"My convoy was going to Mastung and there was an explosion. There are many casualties as there were many people in the convoy," he said by telephone.

Mastung police official Ghazanfar Ali Shah said the convoy appeared to have been hit by a suicide bomber and at least 17 people were killed, including Haideri's driver.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has condemned the bombing attack on the deputy leader of the Senate that killed at least 25 other people in the country's southwestern Baluchistan province.

Government official Munir Raisani says the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the assault on Friday in the town of Mastung.

A statement from the prime minister says he is praying for the swift recovery of Haideri. Sharif also requested authorities ensure the best medical care for those wounded in the attack.

Separatist militants in Balochistan have waged a campaign against the central government for decades, demanding a greater share of the gas-rich province's resources. Taliban and other Islamist militants also operate in the province, which shares borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

Pakistan has been battling Islamist and nationalist insurgencies in mineral-rich Balochistan since 2004, with hundreds of soldiers and militants killed in the fighting.

Bordering Iran and Afghanistan, it is the largest of Pakistan's four provinces, but its roughly seven million inhabitants have long complained they do not receive a fair share of its gas and mineral wealth.

A greater push towards peace and development by Pakistani authorities has reduced the violence considerably in recent years.

The push includes starting work on a massive Chinese infrastructure project, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which gives Beijing a route to the Arabian Sea through Balochistan's deep sea port of Gwadar.

With inputs from PTI
ISLAMABAD:  Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will be travelling to Beijing to attend a twoday international gathering promoting China's plan for a vast trade network.

Sharif's office said in a statement that the premier leaves for China on Friday at the invitation of the President Xi Jinping to attend the event which is part of "Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road" initiative, which was launched by Xi in 2013.

The event starts from Sunday,14 May and will be attended by delegates of 27 countries.

China is currently working on a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads in Pakistan to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Europe and Africa.

Taking a strong exception to ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor(CPEC) passing through PoK, India is expected to boycott the event.
By Idrees Ali

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON The security situation in Afghanistan will further deteriorate even if there is a modest increase in U.S. military support for the war-torn country, the top U.S. intelligence official said on Thursday, as President Donald Trump's administration weighs sending more forces to Afghanistan. Afghan army units are pulling back, and in some cases have been forced to abandon more scattered and rural bases, and the government can claim to control or influence only 57 percent of the country, according to U.S. military estimates from earlier this year."The intelligence community assesses that the political andsecurity situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in (the)military assistance by the United States and its partners," Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said in a Senate hearing.

In February, Army General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said he needs several thousand more international troops to break a stalemate with the Taliban.Reuters reported in late April that Trump's administration was carrying out a review of Afghanistan and conversations are revolving around sending between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. and coalition troops to Afghanistan.Deliberations include giving more authorities to forces on the ground and taking more aggressive action against Taliban fighters. This could allow U.S. advisers to work with Afghan troops below the corps level, potentially putting them closer to fighting, a U.S. official said.

In the same hearing, the head of the military's Defense Intelligence Agency said the situation would worsen unless U.S. trainers worked with Afghan soldiers closer to the front line, their numbers increased and there was greater intelligence and surveillance. Trump has not been formally presented with the options yet.

Some U.S. officials said they questioned the benefit of sending more troops to Afghanistan because any politically palatable number would not be enough to turn the tide, much less create stability and security. To date, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and over 17,000 wounded.President Ashraf Ghani's U.S.-backed government remains plagued by corruption and divided by factions loyal to political strongmen whose armed supporters often are motivated by ethnic, family, and regional loyalties.Coats said that Afghanistan would struggle to decrease its reliance on the international community "until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban." (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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By Mfuneko Toyana

| JOHANNESBURG

JOHANNESBURG The leader of South Africa's opposition Democratic Alliance, Mmusi Maimane, said on Friday it could win the 2019 election with the help of other parties as the African National Congress becomes increasingly divided under President Jacob Zuma.The ANC has comfortably won every parliamentary election since it swept to power under Nelson Mandela at the end of apartheid in 1994 and the DA had previously made ruling South Africa a long-term ambition.Most analysts put the chances of a DA-coalition victory in 2019 as low but believe it is achievable in 2024 if the ANC continues to disappoint its poor black support base.The ANC has lost popularity under Zuma following a string of scandals and a failure to address slow economic growth, high unemployment and gaping inequality.The DA hit a new high last year by taking control of three of the largest cities from the ANC in local elections as part of coalitions with the hard-left Economic Freedom Fighters and smaller opposition movements.

The results took many politicians and political analysts by surprise and opened a divide in the ANC ahead of a conference in December where it will choose Zuma's successor as party leader. Zuma can stay on as South African president until 2019.Maimane told Reuters the local election results and Zuma's unpopularity will give the DA the edge in two years time."The people must be aware that the project ultimately is about the removal of the ANC and in 2019 there must be a DA-led coalition of governments, as weve seen in the cities, said Maimane, a former preacher and the DA's first black leader.

"Im convinced that the starting point is Zuma."The ANC won 62 percent of the vote in the 2014 national election, down from 66 percent in 2009. The DA increased its share to 22 percent, from 17 percent. If the ANC falls below 50 percent, the DA could rule under a coalition.Although Maimane has helped to broaden the DA's appeal, one of its biggest challenges is changing the perception that it is a party for the white-minority, an accusation the ANC promotes.

"The criticism that we protect white interests is ANC propaganda. They want to say there are black parties and there are white parties," Maimane, who is married to a white South African, said."The dream is always for a non-racial party."Zuma has faced public protests calling for his resignation in the last month after he fired his fourth finance minister in less than two years, shaking investor confidence.Zuma also faces a no-confidence vote in parliament this month following the cabinet reshuffle that the DA and some opponents in the ANC said was intended to insert loyalist who will prevent him from being removed. (Editing by Joe Brock and Janet Lawrence)

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By Ju-min Park and Christine Kim

| SEOUL

SEOUL South Korea's new president launched international efforts to defuse tension over North Korea's weapons development on Thursday, urging both dialogue and sanctions while also aiming to ease China's anger about a U.S. anti-missile system.Moon Jae-in, a liberal former human rights lawyer, was sworn in on Wednesday and said in his first speech as president he would immediately address security tensions that have raised fears of war on the Korean Peninsula.Moon first spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping and later to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The conversations were dominated by how to respond to North Korea's rapidly developing nuclear and ballistic missile programmes, which are in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions."The resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue must be comprehensive and sequential, with pressure and sanctions used in parallel with negotiations," Moon's spokesman, Yoon Young-chan, quoted Moon as telling Xi."Sanctions against North Korea are also a means to bring the North to the negotiating table aimed at eliminating its nuclear weapons," Yoon told a briefing, adding that Xi indicated his agreement.Moon has taken a more conciliatory line with North Korea than his conservative predecessors and advocates engagement. He has said he would be prepared to go to Pyongyang "if the conditions are right."Moon's advocacy of engagement with North Korea contrasts with the approach of the United States, South Korea's main ally, which is seeking to step up pressure on Pyongyang through further isolation and sanctions.U.S. President Donald Trump, who spoke with Moon on Wednesday, this month opened the door to meeting North Korea's Kim Jong Un, saying he would be honored to meet Kim under the right circumstances.U.S. officials have said they see no value in resuming international talks with North Korea under current circumstances and that Pyongyang must make clear it is committed to denuclearisation.Katina Adams, a spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, said Washington had worked closely with Seoul on North Korea and would continue to do so."We remain open to talks with the DPRK but need to see that the DPRK will cease all its illegal activities and aggressive behavior in the region," she said, referring to North Korea by the acronym for its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.Regional experts have believed for months that North Korea is preparing for its sixth nuclear test. It has also been working to develop a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the United States, presenting Trump with perhaps his most pressing security issue.On Thursday, the U.S. director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that North Korea posed "a very significant, potentially existential threat to the United States that has to be addressed."

Trump told Reuters in an interview last month major conflict with North Korea was possible but he would prefer a diplomatic outcome.North Korea says it needs its weapons to defend itself against the United States which it says has pushed the region to the brink of nuclear war."Threats from North Korea's nuclear and missile development have entered a new stage," Japan's Abe told Moon in their telephone call, according to Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda."How to respond to North Korea ... is an urgent issue. I would like to closely cooperate with the president to achieve the denuclearisation of North Korea," Abe told Moon.But Abe also said "dialogue for dialogue's sake would be meaningless" and he called on North Korea to demonstrate "sincere and concrete action," Hagiuda said, adding that Moon shared Abe's views.Japan has been concerned that Moon will take a tough line on feuds stemming from the bitter legacy of its 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula and could fray ties at a time when cooperation on North Korea is vital.

Moon told Abe to "look straight at history" and not make the past "a barrier," though he raised South Korea's dissatisfaction with a 2015 agreement meant to put to rest a dispute over Japanese compensation for South Korean women forced to work in Japanese brothels before and during World War Two, Korea's presidential office said.'IMPROVE UNDERSTANDING'

While South Korea, China and Japan all share worry about North Korea, ties between South Korea and China have been strained by South Korea's decision to install a U.S. anti-missile system in defence against the North.China says the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) undermines its security as its powerful radar can probe deep into its territory.China says the system does little to curb the threat posed by North Korea's nuclear and missile programmes, which Pyongyang has been pressing ahead with in defiance of U.S. pressure and U.N. sanctions.The deployment of THAAD was agreed last year by South Korea's previous administration after North Korea conducted a long-range rocket launch that put an object into space. Moon came to power with a promise to review the system and he told Xi North Korea must cease making provocations before tension over the deployment could be resolved, officials said.

In the first direct contact between the South Korean and Chinese leaders, Xi explained China's position, Yoon, the South Korean presidential spokesman said, without elaborating."President Moon said he understands China's interest in the THAAD deployment and its concerns, and said he hopes the two countries can swiftly get on with communication to further improve each other's understanding," Yoon told a briefing.South Korea and the United States began deploying the THAAD system in March and it has since become operational.Xi told Moon South Korea and China should respect each other's concerns, set aside differences, seek common ground and handle disputes appropriately, China's foreign ministry said.As well as clouding efforts to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions, the THAAD deployment has also led to recriminations from Beijing against South Korean companies.Moon explained the difficulties faced by South Korean companies that were doing business in China and asked for Xi's "special attention" to ease those concerns, Yoon said.China has denied it is retaliating against South Korean businesses. (Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in BEIJING, Kiyoshio Takenaka in TOKYO and David Brunnstrom in WASHINGTON; Writing by Jack Kim; Editing by Paul Tait, Robert Birsel and Bill Trott)

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CAIRO Sudanese Prime Minister Hassan Saleh announced a new government on Thursday, with changes to economic ministers including the oil, investment and finance chiefs.Sudan's constitution was amended in December to introduce the position of prime minister, a demand of opposition parties that took part in a national dialogue with the government, with the aim of redistributing some of the president's extensive powers.President Omar Hassan al-Bashir's long war against various rebel groups has coincided with a severe economic downturn. This year's budget foresees a growing deficit and slower growth.

The economic problems have been building since the south seceded in 2011, taking with it three-quarters of oil output, the main source of foreign currency and government income."This government comes to implement the recommendations of the national dialogue, the country's largest political event after independence in 1956. The government's priorities are to increase production and people's livelihoods and achieve peace," Saleh said at news conference on Thursday.

Mohamed Othman Rukabi, a former army lieutenant general, was appointed as finance minister, Saleh said.Mubarak Fadel al-Mahdi was appointed as minister of investment, while Abdulrahman Othman Abdulrahman was appointed as oil minister.

Saleh also announced that Hamed al-Mannan was appointed as minister of interior.Saleh was appointed prime minister on March 1. It was the first time that Bashir has appointed a prime minister since he came to power in 1989 in an Islamist and military-backed coup. Saleh, a long-time ally, is the last member of the group of officers that launched the coup to remain at Bashir's side. (Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Asma Alsharif; Editing by Alison Williams)

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By Patricia Zengerle and Arshad Mohammed

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump on Thursday ran into resistance for calling ousted FBI chief James Comey a "showboat," an attack that was swiftly contradicted by top U.S. senators and the acting FBI leader, who pledged that an investigation into possible Trump campaign ties to Russia would proceed with vigour.In his first interview since firing Comey on Tuesday, Trump appeared to try to underscore that Comey's dismissal was about his performance at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and not about the Russia probe.Trump faces accusations from Democrats that he fired Comey to hinder the FBI investigation into U.S. intelligence agency allegations that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump. The probe has hung over Trump's presidency since he took office in January and threatens to overwhelm his policy priorities."He's a showboat. He's a grandstander," Trump told NBC News. "The FBI has been in turmoil. You know that, I know that, everybody knows that."Trump's characterization was odds with that of the top Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the Senate Intelligence Committee.At a hearing on Thursday, the Republican chairman of the panel, Richard Burr, and the top Democrat, Mark Warner, praised Comey. Warner said he was offended at Trump's remarks.Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, testifying in place of Comey, contradicted Trump's appraisal of turmoil at the FBI, saying Comey had "broad support" from the rank and file "and still does to this day," McCabe said.Officials familiar with internal FBI politics said Trump's action has hurt morale and would make it hard to attract and retain staff. Trump had been expected to soon visit FBI headquarters, but MSNBC reported that plan had been thrown out after agency officials told the White House that Trump would not be greeted warmly following his firing of Comey.Former Republican Representative Mike Rogers is being considered as a candidate to replace Comey, a senior White House official said. The nominee must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. PROBE TO PROCEED

McCabe promised to tell senators of any White House meddling into the agency's probe on Russia. Democrats have called for a special counsel to look into the matter."It is my opinion and belief that the FBI will continue to pursue this investigation vigorously and completely," McCabe told the senators.Moscow has denied interference in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.Trump said in the NBC television interview that he never pressured Comey into dropping the FBI probe, adding: "If Russia did anything, I want to know that." Trump said there was no "collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians," but that "the Russians did not affect the vote."His explanation of why he fired Comey ran counter to previous administration explanations of Comey's dismissal.

The White House and Vice President Mike Pence had said Trump fired Comey on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and No. 2 Justice Department official Rod Rosenstein.On Thursday, Trump said he would have taken the action regardless. "I was going to fire Comey. My decision," Trump said. "I was going to fire regardless of recommendation."Rosenstein, who met privately with some senators on Thursday, was invited to brief all 100 senators next week, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. Schumer said he hoped that Sessions would also speak to senators separately on the firing of Comey.In the House of Representatives, Justin Amash, a Republican member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, said on Twitter that he had signed onto Democratic-sponsored legislation calling for an independent, bipartisan commission to probe Russian meddling in last years U.S. election campaign.U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to disrupt the election that included hacking into Democratic Party emails and leaking them, with the aim of helping Trump.Leaders of the U.S. intelligence agencies, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA chief Mike Pompeo, testified to the senators on Thursday that they agreed with that finding.

Trump, in his interview, also gave further details of his account that Comey had told him on three separate occasions that he was not under investigation in the Russia matter.Trump said he had asked Comey once over dinner and twice by telephone. "I said: 'If it's possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation?'" Trump told NBC. "He said: 'You are not under investigation.'"Trump said the dinner with Comey was at the White House and Comey wanted to discuss staying on as FBI chief. "We had a very nice dinner. And at that time, he told me: 'You are not under investigation.'" White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she believed it was not a conflict of interest for a president to ask the FBI chief such a question.Comey has not publicly discussed any conversations he had with Trump.At the Senate hearing, McCabe testified it was not typical practice to tell people they were not a targets of an investigation.Republican chairman Burr asked McCabe whether he ever heard Comey tell Trump the president was not the subject of investigation. McCabe sidestepped the question, saying he could not comment on an ongoing probe.Warner, the top Democrat on the panel, said it was "hard to avoid the conclusion" that Trump's firing of Comey was related to the Russia investigation."And while it's clear to me now more than ever that an independent special counsel must be appointed, make no mistake our committee will get to the bottom of what happened during the 2016 presidential election," Warner said. (Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell, Richard Cowan, Eric Beech, Susan Heavey and David Alexander; Writing by Will Dunham and Roberta Rampton; Editing by Peter Cooney and Grant McCool)

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By Matt Spetalnick

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump will express support for Palestinian self-determination during a Middle East trip this month, a senior aide said on Friday, suggesting Trump is open to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict despite not having publicly embraced the idea so far.The comment by U.S. national security adviser H.R. McMaster came just nine days after a White House visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in which Trump vowed to seek a historic peace deal but stopped short of explicitly recommitting to the eventual goal of Palestinian statehood, a longtime bedrock of U.S. policy.Previewing Trumps first foreign trip, McMaster also said he would use a visit to Saudi Arabia, his first stop, to encourage Arab and Muslim partners to take bold new steps to confront those from Iran, Islamic State, al Qaeda and Syrian President Bashar al-Assads government "who perpetuate chaos and violence."Trumps travels, which begin late next week and will also include stops in Israel and Rome, are intended to broadcast a message of unity by visiting holy sites of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, McMaster told reporters.

Trumps meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, currently due to be held separately, will be closely watched for whether he begins to articulate a cohesive strategy to revive long-stalled negotiations. Most experts are sceptical of Trumps chances of brokering a peace accord that eluded his predecessors.Trump plans, in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to "reaffirm America's unshakeable bond to the Jewish state" and in a meeting with Abbas to express his desire for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians, said McMaster, a decorated Army general with extensive Middle East experience.

Trump is expected to meet Abbas, the Western-backed head of the Palestinian Authority, in Bethlehem in the West Bank, Palestinian sources say.Palestinians were disappointed when Trump failed to mention a two-state solution in a joint appearance with Abbas on May 3.

Trump sparked international criticism in February when, during a news conference with Netanyahu, he appeared to back away from a longstanding U.S. commitment to Palestinian statehood, saying he would leave it up to the parties to decide.An independent state is not only the aspiration of the vast majority of Palestinians but has been the objective of successive U.S. administrations and the international community.Asked whether Trump would bring Netanyahu and Abbas together in the same room during the visit scheduled for May 22-23, McMaster said that would be up to the president and the other leaders. The final plans arent set yet, he said. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and David Alexander; Editing by Chris Reese and Mary Milliken)

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By David Alexander and Susan Heavey

| WASHINGTON

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump warned ousted FBI Director James Comey on Friday against talking to the media, suggesting there might be tapes of conversations between the two men that could contradict his account."James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump said in one of a string of Twitter messages.The warning appeared to suggest that if Comey gave his version of events, the administration might produce tapes of conversations to counter that, although it was not clear if such tapes exist.His veiled threat was likely to add to the storm roiling Washington over Trump's abrupt firing of Comey on Tuesday.Critics have assailed Trump for firing the FBI chief at a time when the agency is investigating alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, and possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump presidential campaign.Trump said in his brief statement about firing Comey on Tuesday that the FBI chief had told him three times that he was not under investigation in the Russia probe. In an interview on Thursday with NBC News, the president said Comey gave him this assurance during a dinner and in two phone conversations.Comey has not publicly discussed any conversations he has had with Trump.The man who took over as acting FBI director, Andrew McCabe, sidestepped a question during a Senate hearing on Thursday on whether he ever heard Comey tell Trump that the president was not the subject of investigation.

The FBI probe and parallel congressional investigations have hung over Trump's presidency since he took office in January and threaten to overwhelm his policy priorities. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign of interference in the election, U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in January, aimed at tilting the vote in Trump's favor. Moscow has denied interference in the election, and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.'PRESIDENT TRUMP IS DANGEROUS'

The New York Times reported on Friday that Comey had resisted a request from Trump that he pledge loyalty to the president. The ousted director has told associates he was summoned to the White House for a one-on-one dinner with Trump just seven days after the Jan. 20 inauguration, according to the paper.During the dinner, the president asked the FBI director to pledge loyalty to him, the Times reported. Comey declined to make that promise but told the president he could count on his honesty, the paper said.

According to Comey's account to associates, Trump was not satisfied with the FBI director's answer and told him again later in the dinner that he needed Comey's loyalty, the Times reported. Comey again promised his "honesty," but did not pledge loyalty, the Times reported. The U.S. Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Richard Durbin, slammed the president after Friday's tweet about Comey."I think we ought to get to the bottom line here: President Trump is dangerous," Durbin told MSNBC, the cable news channel. "He's dangerous because he may be obstructing justice in terms of the investigation ... and secondly his credibility has been destroyed."

In a series of tweets on Friday, Trump also responded to media reports questioning the credibility of White House statements on the Comey firing, which have changed over the course of the week. "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!" Trump said."Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" The White House has said Comey's firing was unrelated to the Russia probe, but in the interview with NBC News on Thursday, Trump said he knew he ran the risk that by firing Comey he would "confuse people" and "lengthen out the investigation" into ties to Russia."In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won," the Republican president told NBC.He said he never pressured Comey into dropping the FBI probe, adding: "If Russia did anything, I want to know that." Trump said there was no "collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians," and that "the Russians did not affect the vote."The White House initially said Comey was fired on the recommendation of the two top officials at the Justice Department. On Thursday Trump said he would have fired Comey regardless of any such recommendations. (Writing by Frances Kerry; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

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London: A draft of the election manifesto yet to be formally approved and launched by Britain's Labour Party was leaked to the media on Thursday, in which the opposition pledged to re-nationalise the country's energy industry, railways and the Royal Mail.

The document, seen by the BBC, is the most detailed draft with a 20-point plan on workers' rights alone. It was yet to be signed off by most senior party figures, including the shadow cabinet and Labour's national executive committee.

The party leadership moved quickly to try and quell negative headlines around the leak. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn emerged from a party meeting in London in the day to tell reporters that the party had "unanimously" approved an amended draft at a meeting, to be made public next week.

"We have just unanimously agreed the contents of (the manifesto), we have amended a draft document that was put forward in the most informed, interesting, sensible discussion and debate in our party. Our manifesto will be an offer, and I believe the policies in it are very popular, an offer that will transform the lives of many people in our society," he said, refusing to address any questions around the leaked draft.

The final version will form the foundation of Labour's bid to win over voters in the 8 June general election. The detailed document has been branded as "socialist" and filled with "class envy" by many sections of the British media as it proposes nationalisation of the country's railways and the postal service and having at least one State-owned electricity supplier.

"We do not comment on leaks. We will announce our policies in our manifesto, which is our plan to transform Britain for the many, not the few," a spokesperson for Corbyn said.

The ruling Conservative party termed the draft as a sign of the chaos that a Labour-led government would unleash on the UK if it were to win the general election. "This is a total shambles. Jeremy Corbyn's plans to unleash chaos on Britain have been revealed. The commitments in this dossier will rack up tens of billions of extra borrowing for our families and will put Brexit negotiations at risk. Jobs will be lost, families will be hit and our economic security damaged for a generation if Jeremy Corbyn and the coalition of chaos are ever let anywhere near the keys to Downing Street," a Conservative party spokesperson said.

Other details of the manifesto include abolishing tuition fees for students at university, spending an extra 8 billion pounds on social care and not making "false promises" on immigration.

It also said Labour would "negotiate transitional arrangements to avoid a cliff-edge for the UK economy" if no Brexit deal was reached during talks with the EU.

Labour's shadow chancellor John McDonnell said he did not know who was behind the leak, which he called "disappointing".
Tabqa, Syria: USbacked fighters said on Friday that they were preparing for a final assault on the Islamic State group's Syrian bastion Raqa, likely in next month, after seizing a key city to the west.

The Syrian Democratic Forces earlier this week captured Tabqa and an adjacent dam, a major prize in the offensive for Raqa, the Syrian heart of IS's selfproclaimed "caliphate".

"The attack on Raqa will take place in the beginning of the summer", Syrian Democratic Forces commander Rojda Felat told AFP.

She later specified that it would likely start in June based on "military and tactical considerations."

Felat spoke at a press conference in Tabqa, which the SDF captured from IS on Wednesday along with its nearby dam in one of its most important victories yet.

Tabqa lies on the banks of the Euphrates River, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) west of Raqa.

On Friday, an AFP team entered Tabqa and the adjacent dam which is Syria's largest, and saw rows of sandbags, mangled cars and craters from heavy bombardment dotting the structure.

The battle for Tabqa was marked by fears that the dam would be severely damaged and collapse, leading to massive flooding downstream.

The body of an alleged IS fighter was seen on Friday floating in the artificial reservoir created by the dam.

The SDF's fight for Raqa  dubbed Operation Wrath of the Euphrates, has already seen the alliance capture large swathes of the surrounding province with help from the USled coalition bombing IS in Iraq and Syria.

The SDF are working to tighten the noose around Raqa before a final assault. At their closest point, the USbacked forces are just eight kilometres (five miles) from the city.

The joint ArabKurdish forces have received significant support from the USled coalition in the form of air strikes and special forces advisers.

SDF deputy head Qahraman Hassan said, "In the beginning of the summer, we will storm and liberate (Raqa) city".

His forces would receive "special weapons and armoured vehicles" to enter the city, Hassan said, after President Donald Trump changed US policy to allow arms deliveries to the SDF's Kurdish component.

No newly authorised aid had been delivered yet, Hassan said, but he added that "I believe this support will arrive soon".

The SDF is dominated by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), seen by the US as an indispensable ally in the fight against IS but considered a "terrorist group" by Turkey.

The US change in policy has reignited a dispute with Ankara, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan calling for an "immediate" reversal
Washington: The US has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by Hafiz Saeed's JuD group as part of an effort to disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks.

The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu'ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISIS-Khorasan. Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, northern Afghanistan and parts of India.

The sanctions in particular have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu

Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the welfare and development organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawah for Quran and Sunnah (WDO).

"These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, director of the treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

"The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities," Smith said.

"The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said. "The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added.

OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Islamic State, and IS-Khorasan.

Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan. Inayat-ur Rahman has been slapped with sanctions for acting for JDQ and the Taliban, and for providing material and financial support to LeT and the Taliban.

A long-time leader of JDQ, he worked directly for Haji Hayatullah. OFAC designated the WDO for being controlled by Inayat-ur Rahman. As of 2015, he was the director, chairman, and president of WDO.
Beijing: China has managed to rope in the US at the last minute for its Silk Road summit besides South Korea, the EU and Japan, leaving India to be the only major country yet to confirm its participation in the highprofile event.

The Trump administration announced that Matt Pottinger, Special Assistant to the President and senior director for East Asia of National Security Council of the White House, will lead the US delegation to the attend the One Belt and One Road Forum.

"The United States recognises the importance of Chinas One Belt and One Road initiative and is to send delegates to attend the Belt and Road Forum May 14-15 in Beijing," a joint statement by China's finance and commerce ministries said. Twenty nine world leaders are taking part in the summit.

The US attendance at the summit was a concrete result of Chinese President Xi Jinping's trade plan, finance viceminister Zhu Guangyao told media here.

The key announcement before the summit regarded as prestigious by officials here for Xi's multibillion dollar initiative. The US participation came after the two sides clinched a lucrative trade agreement which will boost shipments of American liquefied natural gas, beef and other products to China. In turn, Chinese banks and poultry will get access to the US market.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that besides the US, South Korea, EU and Japan will be sending highlevel delegations.

"As for India's attendance at the forum, there are Indian scholars coming to attend the forum", Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a media briefing here today.

In New Delhi, Spokesman of the External Affairs Ministry said yesterday that the matter is under consideration.

While Japan deputed a senior leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) along with Vice Minister, South Korea is sending a top legislator to take part in the forum and EU has deupted a top offical

The forum will showcase China's Belt & Road (B&R) initiative that has put India in a piquant situation as it included the USD 46 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which goes through Pakistanoccupied Kashmir.

In the last few days, China is trying to assuage Indias feelings by asserting that the commercial corridor will not have any impact on its stand that the Kashmir issue should be settled by India and Pakistan through dialogue.

The CPEC is expected to take the centre stage at the forum which is being covered by over 4,000 local and foreign media.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the meeting to highlight the progress of the CPEC which is regarded as flagship project of the B&R.

Besides Sharif, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickramasinghe will attend the forum while other countries in Indias immediate neighbourhood will be represented by second rung leaders and officials.

Nepal's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara will lead the country's delegation, Geng said.

"India is dithering to take part in the B&R initiate I can understand why India doing so," Wang Dehua, CoDirector,

Centre for South Asia Studies, Tongji University in Shanghai told PTI here.

India has reservations over the maritime Silk Road as it impacts Indias security interests in the Indian Ocean. However, New Delhi has backed the BCIM.
Washington: Donald Trump's administration was left red-faced on Thursday after the Moscow surprised it by releasing pictures of a closed-door meeting between the US president and Russia's top diplomat.

The images  issued by the Russian state news agency TASS, and subsequently published by much of the global media  showed a grinning Trump shaking hands with Sergei Lavrov and the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting.

That Wednesday meeting was already being seen as a major diplomatic coup for the Kremlin, a red carpet welcome just months after being hit with US sanctions for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Veteran diplomats questioned why Trump agreed to host the diplomats  a rare honor for non-heads of state, much less for those at the center of major US political scandal.

US administrations often treat Oval Office meetings as a type of currency, dangling the prospect of a high-profile sit-down to gain leverage or concessions in negotiations.

But the emergence of photos compounded the perception that Russia had won a diplomatic victory and that the Trump White House was outmaneuvered.

"Congrats Kollegi (colleagues) at getting these photos! Huge coup," said former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul.

Publicly, the White House put on a brave face.

Trump "should be meeting with the foreign minister," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lambasting critics.

"For them to try to attack him for doing his job, maybe they should spend a little more time doing their jobs and we wouldn't have all the problems that we do."

Privately though White House officials seethed at what they described as a breach of trust.

Cyber-risks

Officials said that Vladimir Putin had requested the meeting, a quid-pro-quo for his recent face-to-face with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow.

The White House was told an official Russian photographer would be present, implying the images would be for the historical record and not necessarily made public.

"Our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that's it," said one aide shortly after the meeting.

But when the images were published across the world via state media, the White House raged that Moscow had misled them.

Two officials admitted they were not told that the images would be made public.

Asked whether the Russian delegation informed the White House that they planned to release the photos, one official said tersely: "No they did not."

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, writing on Facebook, countered: "The American side did not ask us to refrain from publishing these photographs."

The photographer involved  Alexandr Scherbak  also took to Facebook to address what he called the "hysteria around my photoshoot," which raised hackles among US media denied access to the meeting.

"There was nothing unusual about the photoshoot," he said, adding that the images were taken as part of a regular collaborative deal between his employer, TASS, and the Russian foreign ministry.

"I was scanned, patted down, and then sniffed by canines," he said. "We worked for just a minute and that's all."

Former US intelligence officials have suggested allowing a Russian photographer access to the Oval Office could pose a potential cyber-security risk, and the director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers, was grilled on the subject by the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.

Rogers told the hearing he had not been consulted beforehand.

The Oval Office pictures could hardly have come at a worse time for Trump, deepening suspicions that he is too cozy with Putin's government.

His campaign faces a slew of investigations about whether it colluded with the Kremlin to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.

The Lavrov meeting came just hours after Trump fired his FBI director James Comey, the man responsible for investigating the allegations of collusion between his team and Russia.

The embarrassment was compounded by Ambassador Kislyak's presence. He is at the centre of a series of questions about contacts between Trump's inner circle and the Russian government.

Michael Flynn's failure to disclose meetings with Kislyak eventually led to his departure as national security advisor and made the Russian diplomat a virtual household name.

"I could have done without the attention" Kislyak told AFP recently.

The White House later released its own pictures from the meeting, which did not feature Kislyak.
Washington: The White House for the first time today opened its movie theatre for general public after US First Lady Melania Trump called for it.

The theatre was opened as part of the The White House's self-guided tours in the East Wing.

"The White House belongs to the people of this country. I believe everyone who takes the time to visit and tour the White House should have as much access to its rich history and wonderful traditions as possible. It is my hope that our visitors truly enjoy the newest piece of the tour," said the First Lady.

In July 1942, the East Terrace cloakroom was converted into a movie theatre under the direction of the then President Franklin D Roosevelt. In 1982-1983, during the Reagan administration, a major remodelling introduced 51 seats in tiered rows.

The most recent refurbishment in 2004-2005 was inspired by theatre interiors of the early 20th century. To commemorate the opening, the White House Visitors Office passed out White House candy to children and spoke with some of the visitors.

"The history of this is all so exciting. To think that so many Presidents and their families have watched movies or entertained guests in this room, and to be one of the first to see it is just amazing," said Ginna Felts from Nashville, Tennessee.

"We're witnessing history!" exclaimed Dan White, visiting from Denver, Colorado, who was especially excited by the movie theatre.
This blog covers software patent news and issues with a particular focus on wireless, mobile devices (smartphones, tablet computers, connected cars) as well as select antitrust matters surrounding those devices.
Youve seen them on the streets, on your commute and in your office; fidget spinners. The three-pronged pieces of plastic that are flicked for fun were originally designed as a therapeutic tool for children with ADHD and Autism to help calm fidgety behaviors and promote concentration. Kids (and adults alike) are buying spinners by bulk. Despite often times being a nuisance in the classroom, they have become a national trend.

These spinners have also created an economic boom that the toy industry has never seen before.

Right now we are in the midst of the biggest, fastest moving trend that I have ever seen in the toy industry, says Jackie Breyer, editorial director for The Toy Insider.

The fidget movement made its first major appearance at the North American International Toy Fair in February of 2017. Its estimated that over 200 million spinners have already shipped to retailers.

Smart manufactures and retailers began stocking the shelves in early March. Zing, a Portland, Oregon based toy manufacturer saw the writing on the wall. They noticed a growing trend on social media for everyday carry (#EDC) toys and quickly dove into the market. Once they saw spinners taking off, they fast-tracked their stackable, LED lit Spinzipz into production.

A fidget spinner is great for smaller companies because we can react quickly, and get the orders, we can ship fast, says Josh Loerzel, VP of sales and marketing for Zing.

Zing has already shipped over a million units, on track for two with the possibility of shipping out 4 million Spinzipz a month. Shipping several million pieces a month that still constitutes such a small piece of the actual overall demand, says Loerzel. For a small company like us, its a godsend.

Since the spinner trend is still turning, retail groups and associations cannot provide specific data on just how much spinners will add to retailers pockets. However, selling for $5-$10 a pop, Breyer suggests that if the 1,500 specialty retail shops in the nation can keep the momentum going past May, they could see $130,000-$150,000 in revenue.

Toys R Us for example are going to have licensed spinners - DC and Marvel comics spinners - so when you take that all in to account we could be looking at a half a billion dollars, says Breyer.

This makes our whole year, adds Loerzel.

Be sure to watch the video above for more insight on this spinning trend.
Former WWE superstar Dwyane The Rock Johnson said he is considering running for president one day, which doesnt surprise his former boss Linda McMahon.

I was a little surprised when I heard him because I didnt think he had any interest in that but it doesnt surprise me from Dwaynes point of view. Hes a very, very popular and charismatic and smart young man. Clearly hes made his mark in WWE and Hollywood, McMahon told the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo.

The billionaire wrestling magnate, who now heads the Small Business Administration, also discussed how to unleash growth in business. In her opinion, lowering the corporate tax rate to 15% would be a big boon for small business.

They would take that money, they would hire more people, they would grow their businesses and of course that creates more jobs  but the regulatory environment as well, she said.

President Trump has pledged to roll back regulations and break through barriers that have burdened small businesses across the nation.

When it can take you days and weeks to open a hair salon through all of the licensing and all of that  its really tough and theres no small business that says we dont need regulation, they just want it to fit the industry and not to be so voluminous, she said, also pointing out how many small businesses dont have the resources or the time that many other big businesses have to comply.

Often the small business operators, the CEOs, the janitor and every other thing  they cant afford accountants and lawyers to comply and often they dont even know what regulations they have to comply with, she said.

Despite this, McMahon says small business owners across the nation are optimistic and more invested in the economy.
The head of the U.S. Small Business Administration urged American businessmen and entrepreneurs to enter the global market, telling the United Nations on Thursday that just 1 percent of small businesses are currently exporting overseas.

Linda McMahon said the nearly 29 million small businesses in America "are the engine of our economy" and create two out of three new jobs  but she stressed that exporting is a key component of small business growth.

"Businesses that export are less likely to go out of business and more likely to grow faster," she told the Small Business Knowledge Summit.

"That's because 96 percent of all of the world's consumers and over three-quarters of the world's purchasing power are outside of the United States," she said. "Yet right now, only 1 percent of all of America's small businesses are exporters."

McMahon conceded that becoming an exporter, especially for small businesses, isn't easy.

"Small businesses are challenged by access to information, capital and barriers to market entry," she told several hundred government and business officials and diplomats at the summit organized by the International Council for Small Business.

McMahon said the Trump administration and her agency are committed to ensuring equal access for small businesses to international markets, expanding export opportunities, and reducing or eliminating "trade and investment barriers that disproportionately impact small businesses."

She said small businesses are hardest hit trying to finance trade deals and by compliance challenges.

"Globally over half of all declined trade finance requests to banks were submitted by small businesses," McMahon said. "In the United States, over one-third of all of our small businesses find trade finance hard to obtain for foreign sales."

She said the Small Business Administration works with banks to try to address this challenge and find "tailored, trade finance products" so that small businesses can finance foreign growth when the private sector is unable or unwilling to provide loans.
Next to paying bills on time, few things can tank your credit score faster than running up debt balances. In fact, credit utilization, or debt divided by total available credit, accounts for 30% of your FICO credit score. One common tactic cardholders use to improve their credit scores is to request a credit limit increase. But will doing so hurt your credit score?

In the previously recorded Facebook Live video below, Motley Fool analysts Nathan Hamilton and Michael Douglass answer a user-submitted question about credit scores and increasing your credit limit.

5 Simple Tips to Skyrocket Your Credit Score Over 800!Increasing your credit score above 800 will put you in rare company. So rare that only 1 in 9 Americans can claim they're members of this elite club. But contrary to popular belief, racking up a high credit score is a lot easier than you may have imagined following 5 simple, disciplined strategies. You'll find a full rundown of each inside our FREE credit score guide. It's time to put your financial future first and secure a lifetime of savings by increasing your credit score. Simply click hereto claim a copy 5 Simple Tips to Skyrocket Your Credit Score over 800.

Michael Douglass:Daryl asks, "Willasking for a lineincrease account as an inquiry?" I'mtaking that to mean increasing the amount of credit available to you on a credit card.I can actually answer this for me personally,because me and my wife were talking to our credit unionabout this and they said, "Well,sometimes it will result in a hard inquiry, andsometimes it will result in a soft inquiry, it just depends basically on how ourautomated system works." The fact of the matter is, it may. That's something, when asking for that, you need to consider. In my shoes, for a minute. I'mlooking to reduce mycredit utilization in part because I'm planning to, hopefully, buy a house in the next year or so. It would be worth it to me,in my personal circumstances, to go ahead and get that increase,even if it resulted in a hard inquiry and reduced my credit score by a little bit fora couple of months, because I'm not planning onbuying a house tomorrow, I'm planning on doing it six to nine months down the road when, frankly, that should be largely rolled off as an issue. Ifyou're trying to buy a car tomorrow,it's a different ball game.Nathan Hamilton: Yeah. And more times than not, there's not a hard inquiry. Itdepends on the bank. WhatI would ask is, whenyou're looking for a credit limit increase, just ask your bank, is there a hard inquiry for this credit limit increase, to see if it's available? If there is, OK, then there's a potential impact. If not, then you're more than fine, and there is no impact, there'snothing reported to your credit report.

Michael Douglass has no position in any stocks mentioned. Nathan Hamilton owns shares of Facebook. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Heralding a new U.S.-China trade agreement, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross puffed a bit too hard in describing its greatness.

"It was pretty much a Herculean accomplishment to get this done," Ross said in describing a trade plan involving U.S. beef and liquefied natural gas exports to China. "This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade."

That would be a tall order, given a history that encompasses President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China, which ended a two-decade freeze between the two countries and laid the groundwork for the United States' largest trading relationship. U.S.-China exchanges of goods last year totaled nearly $579 billion, nearly one-sixth of all U.S. trade.

In addition to its provisions on beef and liquefied natural gas, the trade deal lowers long-standing barriers on the operation of U.S. financial firms in China, allows the import of cooked poultry from China, and will send U.S. delegates to a Chinese forum on building infrastructure in Asia and Europe.

Ross declined to say exactly what he meant by his characterization at a Thursday briefing. But trade experts questioned its magnitude, and the limited agreement on 10 items joins a list of tectonic shifts between the world's two largest economies.

Another is China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, an event that caused a surge in Chinese exports to the United States and created an economic shock that caused the loss of more than 1 million factory jobs, according to research by economists David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson. President Donald Trump has made closing the U.S. gap with China  it totaled $347 billion last year  one of his major policy goals.

Trade experts were quick to point out that the agreement, which largely focuses on agricultural goods, energy and financial products, does nothing for U.S. manufacturers, long a source of tension in the relationship with China.

"These are modest moves which by themselves will not have much effect on the U.S. economy," said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Treasury Department official.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has picked Corning (NYSE:GLW) as the first company to get an investment from its new $1 billion manufacturing fund. The maker of gorilla glass, among other products, will get $200M from Apple's new fund to invest in U.S. companies that do advanced manufacturing.

Corning, which makes break-resistant glass for phones and tablets, has been an Apple supplier for at least 10 years, starting with the first iPhone. The investment will be in the Harrodsburg, KY plant. This investment will ensure our plant in Harrodsburg remains a global center of excellence for glass technology said said Wendell P. Weeks, Cornings chairman, chief executive officer and president in a statement.

Ticker Security Last Change Change % AAPL APPLE INC. 134.96 -4.54 -3.25% GLW CORNING INC. 32.04 -0.94 -2.85%

Apple CEO Tim Cook, like many of his U.S. counterparts including Ford (NYSE:F) and Boeing (NYSE:BA), have received sharp criticisim from President Donald Trump for manufacturing products overseas. That pressure is resonating with corporate America as many companies dial back plans for overseas plants. Carrier, a unit of United Technologies (NYSE:UTX), was among the first to make commitments to creating U.S. jobs under the new administration.

In the U.S., Apple now supports 2 million jobs across all 50 states, including 450,000 jobs attributable to Apples spend and investment with U.S.-based suppliers. Last year alone, Apple spent over $50 billion with more than 9,000 domestic suppliers and manufacturers.

As the worlds most valuable company, Apple has a record amount of cash $257 billion, as of the most recent quarter with 93% of it sitting overseas.
Britain's National Health Service (NHS) said it had suffered a major cyber attack on Friday, disrupting surgeries and hospitals, mainly in England.

The NHS said it had been hit with malicious software known as 'ransomware' that locks up computers and demands payment to restore access, but that so far it did not believe patient data had been accessed.

Below is what is known about the incident so far. For the latest updates, see:

* Hospitals have reported major disruption to their IT systems. People have been asked not to visit unless they need immediate medical attention.

* The attacks span the length of England. The NHS said 16 of its organisations - some containing several hospitals - have been affected.

* It was not immediately clear whether patients had suffered as a result of the attack. Some regional NHS trusts said they had cancelled cancer and outpatient appointments scheduled for the weekend.

* In addition to London, there have been media reports of disruption in Northumbria in the northeast, Merseyside in the northwest, and Essex in the south. There are no reports of attacks on hospitals in Scotland or Wales so far. A handful of local doctor surgeries in the south of Scotland had been affected, Scottish newspapers said.

* The NHS said it believed the malware variant was called "Wanna Decryptor".

* Spain's government also warned on Friday that a large number of its companies had been attacked by ransomware cyber attacks.

* The NHS said it did not have any evidence that patient data had been accessed.

* A reporter from the Health Service Journal said the attack had affected x-ray imaging systems, pathology test results, phone and bleep systems, and patient administration systems.

* Britain's National Crime Agency said it was investigating the attack.

* In January, the Barts Health NHS Trust - which runs major London hospitals - suffered an IT attack caused by a computer virus rather than ransomware.

* Freedom of Information (FOI) requests revealed that 30 percent of NHS Trusts had suffered a ransomware attack, according to security firm SentinelOne in January. No NHS Trusts reported paying a ransom or informed law enforcement of the attacks; all preferred to deal with the attacks internally, said SentinelOne, which received responses from 94 of 129 NHS Trusts.

(Compiled by Andy Bruce, Additional reporting by Kate Holton, Michael Holden and David Milliken; editing by Stephen Addison)
The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia cruise liner that crashed into a reef in 2012 and capsized, killing 32 people, was headed to a Rome prison after losing his final appeals bid Friday.

The Court of Cassation, Italy's highest criminal tribunal, upheld Francesco Schettino's lower court convictions and his 16-year prison sentence.

Schettino was convicted of manslaughter and causing the shipwreck while captaining the luxury liner sailing near Giglio Island off Tuscany. He was also convicted of abandoning the capsizing vessel with passengers and crew still aboard.

"Finally, Schettino begins to pay for his wrongdoing," Michelina Suriano, one of the lawyers representing passengers, said after the ruling.

Defense lawyer Saverio Senese called the ex-captain a scapegoat and expressed "great bitterness" over the final decision.

He said Schettino, when told by phone about the verdict, said he respected the decision and was standing outside Rome's Rebibbia Prison on Friday evening, ready to begin serving his sentence.

Senese said he would study the court's ruling to see if there were grounds to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. Lawyers for passengers have also expressed disappointment that only Schettino ultimately was going to prison, since they contended that others working for the cruise ship company also shared some blame.

"For our clients, a chapter has been closed," said Massimiliano Gabrielli, a lawyer who represented some passengers. "We are sorry that the only one who will go jail tomorrow is Schettino."

Some 4,200 passengers and crew were aboard the Costa Concordia during a Mediterranean cruise when the ship collided on Jan. 13, 2012, during dinner hour with the reef. The rocky reef speared the vessel's side, allowing tons of water to rapidly pour inside.

Prosecutors argued that Schettino had steered the ship too close to the island's coastline. They also contended he downplayed the severity of the crash, wasting valuable rescue time.

Some of the dead drowned in the sea, others perished in the ship's elevator shafts when the vessel capsized and sea water rushed into the space. Some survivors were plucked to safety by helicopters after the liner overturned, while others swam to safety to the island in the dark, cold winter's night.

The wreckage, raised in a dramatic engineering feat, was eventually towed to the Italian mainland to be broken up for scrap.

___

Giulia Saudelli contributed to this report.
Beijing will open its borders to U.S. beef, while cooked Chinese poultry is closer to landing on American supermarket shelves under a U.S.-China trade agreement.

Trump administration officials hailed the deal as a significant advance toward boosting U.S. exports and closing America's trade gap with the world's second-largest economy. U.S. trade experts offered a more muted assessment, calling the agreement a modest fulfillment of past assurances made by China.

Among other things, the deal enables U.S. companies to export liquefied natural gas to China. It will also lower long-standing barriers that have affected matters ranging from agriculture to the operation of American financial firms in China.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross hailed the agreement, coming on the heels of President Donald Trump's April meeting with President Xi Jinping, as "a herculean accomplishment."

"This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade," Ross told reporters Thursday evening at the White House.

In Beijing, Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao told reporters the early results of the agreement showed that economic collaboration between the two sides "couldn't be closer."

But trade experts questioned the magnitude of the deal.

"These are modest moves which by themselves will not have much effect on the U.S. economy," said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former Treasury Department official.

The beef exports and electronic payments in the agreement have long been promised by China. And the agreement does little to address some key issues of trade friction, such as automobiles or social media. While the Trump administration has touted a surge in U.S. manufacturing, this agreement does little to help that goal.

"The challenge is selling manufactured goods into China  there isn't anything in this deal to suggest China is going to become more open to U.S.-manufactured exports," said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

It remains unclear how far China will go to allow more American exports. Previous administrations have hailed market-opening agreements only to be left disappointed.

"The key in these negotiations is specifics that are enforceable  literally, the devil is in the details," said Scott Mulhauser, a former chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

"The more these agreements include real, concrete outcomes rather than platitudes, rehashing old ground or punts to the future, the better they are," Mulhauser said. "American companies, workers, farmers and more are eager for more access to Chinese markets, and they'll look to ensure reality matches the rhetoric of these promises."

Trump made America's wide trade deficits and especially the gap with China a major issue in his campaign and during the early days of his administration. He's argued that America's perennial trade gaps have cost millions of factory jobs and he has pledged to take a tougher stance in trade negotiations to lower the imbalances.

Under the agreement, the United States is inviting Chinese companies to import U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas. The Energy Department has authorized natural gas shipments of 19.2 billion cubic feet per day to China and other interested countries that lack a broader free trade agreement with the United States, the Commerce Department said.

China is turning more to natural gas as a way to reduce its dependence on coal and combat the country's extensive air pollution. The move would allow China to diversify its supply and provide a major market for American suppliers, though the expansion could lead to higher prices for U.S. consumers.

The agreement would also ease import restrictions on agricultural goods, including ending China's ban on beef imports, which was imposed in 2003 after a case of mad-cow disease. In exchange, the U.S. would allow the sale of cooked Chinese poultry  a move Ross said could be done safely.

The agreement would also streamline the evaluation of U.S. biotechnology product applications; pave the way for allowing American-owned suppliers of electronic payment services to begin the licensing processes in China; and facilitate the entrance of Chinese banks into the U.S. banking market.

The agreement grew out of negotiations the countries agreed to start after Trump's meeting at his Mar-a-Lago estate with the Chinese president.

America's trade deficit in goods and services with China totaled $310 billion last year, by far the largest imbalance with any country.

The two countries have also agreed to hold talks this summer to be led by Ross, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Vice Premier Wang Yang to work on a one-year plan.

While Trump had earlier said China could receive more favorable trade terms from the U.S. in return for help in persuading North Korea to cease its nuclear and missile activities, Zhu downplayed any suggestion of a link between the two.

"Both sides have a deep and close understanding that the U.S.-China economic relationship can't be politicized." Zhu said.

___

Associated Press writers Gerry Shih in Beijing and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.
JCPenney (NYSE:JCP) joined a growing list of big-name retailers reporting disappointing same-store sales in the first quarter, sending shares to an all-time low.

The company said its net loss widened to $180 million or 58 cents per share during the quarter, from 22 cents per share the year prior. Excluding one-time charges associated with the chains restructuring efforts, the company said adjusted net income improved by $116 million to six cents per share, compared to a net loss of $97 million the year prior. Wall Street analysts had expected a loss of 21 cents per share for the quarter.

Revenue dipped from the year prior, coming in at $2.71 billion, slightly below expectations for $2.77 billion. Meanwhile, sales at stores open at least a year  a key metric for retailers  dropped 3.5% for the quarter. The company said it saw positive sales growth in its home, Sephora, fine jewelry, and salon categories, an area that CEO Marvin Ellison told analysts on the companys earnings call Friday morning he wants to be dominant in.

We continue to make encouraging progress in the companys competitive and financial position despite our top-line performance during the quarter, Ellison said in a statement. Our teams remain committed to executing on our strategic growth initiates and we are confident in our ability to drive sustainable growth and long-term profitability for JCPenney.

Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

JCPenney has been pressured by e-commerce competitors including Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) online and TJX (NYSE:TJX) brands Marshalls and Home Goods as shoppers prefer convenience and treasure hunt experiences over traditional department-store formats. Over the last several quarters, Ellison and his team have reiterated their focus on better positioning the company toward e-commerce platforms, leveraging some of its bricks-and-mortar stores that can serve as online-order distribution centers.

Earlier this year, the company said it would shutter 138 stores in 41 states in mid-June, but delayed the planned liquidation and closure processes to July 31 after shoppers flocked to those locations seeking discounted products.

The key to driving sales growth after the store closures, Ellison said, will be leveraging the companys e-commerce business and loyalty programs. He pointed to the recently launched mobile app that allows JCP to push coupons, rewards, promotions, and gift cards to customers in one place.

Its one-stop shop access for all the things they earned from JCPenney, he said. It will drive a great opportunity for us to engage our customers on an ongoing basis and do a variety of other things: Price checking, pick up orders.

Whats more, he added that with declining mall traffic, marketing efforts alongside e-commerce tools will take increased importance on an ongoing basis. Ellison vowed to make changes to the marketing strategy to identify the right offerings to the appropriate customers.

JCPenney shares declined more than 13% on the session to as low as $4.48. So far this year, the stock has shed 36% of its value. Shares of other department-store retailers fell alongside JCPenney for the second-straight day including Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN) and Macys (NYSE:M)  both of which reported earnings results on Thursday, as well as Sears (NYSE:SHLD), Kohls (NYSE:KSS), Dillards, and a host of others.
Former NBC Universal CEO Bob Wright said you don't have to look far to find examples of the mainstream media's bias against President Trump. "It's everywhere," Wright told the FOX Business Network's Stuart Varney. Its just unfortunate, but it doesn't seem to be hurting...he's accomplishing a great deal."

Wright pointed to the US trade agreement with China and the governments budget surplus as examples of the administrations achievements so far.

I saw [Commerce Secretary] Wilbur Ross this morning. This trade agreement with China, thats usually a four-year discussion to get something like that moving. Things that are happening, you know, hitting that surplus was just billions and billions of dollars.

When Varney pressed Wright on whether he was correct that the media was going after Trump in a very extreme and personal way, Wright responded, Of course you are.

But Wright says Trump should focus on his political agenda, because he can't control the media.

Theres very little you can do about it, except ignore it or work through it. His level of accomplishment is what sets him aside right now and its very unfortunate."
President Donald Trumps lawyers said Friday a review of the commander-in-chiefs tax returns from the past 10 years shows no income of any type from Russian sources."

In a letter sent to the president from his lawyers, they explained your tax returns do not reflect  any debt owed by you or [The Trump Organization] to Russian lenders  any equity investments by Russian persons or entities in entities controlled by you or [The Trump Organization], or any equity or debt investments by you or [The Trump Organization] in Russian entities.

There are a few exceptions, according to the letter obtained by FOX Business, including a property sold to a Russian billionaire for $95 million in 2008 and the 2012 Miss Universe pageant, which was held in Moscow, and could attribute a substantial portion of its foreign income to the Moscow event.

The White House said Trump asked for the letter after Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is part of a committee looking into Russian interference in the U.S. election, made a request.

Trump has been under fire to release his returns ever since his election victory, though he has repeatedly said his lawyers have advised against it because he is under audit. On Thursday, President Trump floated the idea of waiting until after his presidential tenure to make his returns available to the public.

In the wake of the Trump administrations decision to fire FBI Director James Comey earlier this week, there has been renewed focus on the president and his cabinets connections to Russia. A New York Times report earlier this week that Comey had asked for extra resources for the Russia probe just days prior to his dismissal added fuel to the fire, although the Department of Justice denied the report Wednesday and White House Spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday the president was unaware of the request. However, a source told Fox News Wednesday the request may have been communicated directly to Senators, not the DOJ.
The U.S. and China are working together on a trade deal that would allow the sale of beef, chicken and other major products between the worlds two largest economies.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the FOX Business Networks Neil Cavuto, the deal takes three gigantic steps to chip away at the nations crippling trade deficit.

For more than a decade weve been trying to get legitimate U.S. beef exports into China and they had expressed some concerns about the mad cow disease use of hormones. Now weve overcome those obstacles and as of July 16, the U.S. will be free to export livestock to China, he said, adding that the U.S. would now have access to a $2 billion market.

President Trump touted the deal on Twitter this morning and fired back at critics saying this is real news.

China just agreed that the U.S. will be allowed to sell beef, and other major products, into China once again. This is REAL news!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Additionally, Ross said they have worked on a new regime for liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, which will allow China, the worlds largest importer of LNG, to sign long-term contracts with U.S. exporters.

There had been some regulatory snafus frankly on both sides of the equation which we now have cleared up, he said. LNG prices have been languishing for quite a little while because, frankly, we have a good deal of oversupply. So it seemed weird, we have too much of it, its much cleaner than coal would be, and yet we werent really doing a big job of exporting it to China.

The agreement would also open negotiations on biotech.

China had been resistant to biotech, to genetically engineered products coming from the U.S. into China. There have been eight applications that have been stalled, and stalled and stalled," Ross said. "Now weve worked out this whole regime where there will be a definitive hearing on it before the end of this very month, and then theres a whole process for fixing whatever imperfections there may be left over after that."

On the campaign trail, President Trump accused China of rigging their currency and being untrustworthy, but Ross says the deal will hold them accountable.

They are pinned down to very specific actions on very specific very near term dates, he said. Weve never had trade deals before, we didnt with them or with anybody that had this level of precision to solving long-standing problems.
Chaotic moments are captured on police body camera after a car crashed into a convenience store.

Rocky River police responded to an alarm early Sunday morning at the convenience mart on Hilliard Boulevard, and discovered that a car traveling at around 40 mph had crashed through security poles and drove into the middle of the store.

The clerk was trapped under debris and told police he had just closed for the night, when the car crashed into the front of the store. He reported that the driver got out of the vehicle, told him he needed a beer and went inside the store's cooler.

Police said the driver, Robert Mason, 45, of Rocky River, was suffering from issues related to his service in the military, and as an officer with the Federal Protective Service.

Mason was barricaded inside the beer cooler and challenged the officers to shoot him, but they attempted to negotiate a peaceful resolution.

DODGE CHALLENGER SRT HELLCAT WRECKED AFTER JUST 18 MILES

While negotiators spoke to Mason, an officer was able to deploy his Taser. Mason put up a fight but was eventually handcuffed before he could harm himself or police. He is facing charges that include OVI and reckless operation.

The employee who was hit by the car said he was saved by the deli case. The car was going so fast that when it hit the case, it shoved it and the employee ten feet backwards.

"Had the car been over a couple more feet, he was hurt, it could have been serious bodily injury, even possibly death. I mean that's a four, five thousand pound automobile coming at 30, 40 miles an hour. He was lucky, very lucky," said Rocky River Police Chief Kelly Stillman.

The clerk said he is in a lot of pain, but suffered no broken bones.

MORE NEWS FROM FOX 8 CLEVELAND
[Spoiler alert! The following article contains spoilers from the latest episode of The Big Bang Theory]

After last weeks penultimate episode of The Big Bang Theory Season 10, Amy and Sheldon agreed to embark on the biggest test of their relationship so far - long distance dating. Although Sheldon seemed concerned that Amy might meet an equally brilliant man with hair like Thor while at Princeton, it turns out she was the one that had to worry about someone else.

The episode opened with the couple happily video chatting about how much they missed one another.

Its so strange, earlier today I ended a sentence with a preposition and you werent there to correct my grammar, Amy says.

Im sorry you had to go through that, he retorts.

Everything seems to be going well until the next day. Sheldon reveals to the guys at work that Dr. Ramona Nowitzki, a former colleague who was previously obsessed with Dr. Coopers work, is back in town and the two are getting pretty chummy. Theres laughter over lunch and even an odd hand touch. While Sheldon is too obtuse to think anything of it, the others are nervous.

The next time Sheldon and Amy unpack their day via video chat, hes upfront about his lunch with Ramona. Despite all assertions that things between them are chaste, Amy calls up Penny and Bernadette to yell at them, which in turn causes Leonard and Howard grief. The two hatch a plot to get Raj to ask Ramona out in the hopes that a new flame will extinguish her apparent passion for Sheldon. Sadly, she shoots him down in near-record time.

After that, things only ramp up as the duo go swimming and Sheldon he invites Ramona to dinner with the gang. While there, the gang makes every attempt to stop them from getting close to each other. Bernadette even goes above and beyond by awkwardly squeezing her way between them on the couch. However, when Sheldon brings up having correspondence with a scientist he and Ramona both admire, they quickly sprout up and go to his apartment to look at the letters.

Correct me if Im wrong, but isnt that exactly what we were supposed to stop from happening? Penny asks.

Eventually, things get so suspicious that Penny sits down to have a little talk about boundaries with Sheldon, who is unwilling to entertain the notion that Ramona would bother courting romantic feelings for him given that he has a girlfriend. However, the following day she arrives at his office with homemade sandwiches for both of them. Assuming he already knows the answer, Sheldon asks Ramona if she is seeking romance with him.

What if I were? she asks.

As Sheldon begins what would likely have been a long speech about the complications of such a situation, Ramona goes rogue and kisses him. The move surprises him, but he collects himself. Sheldon quickly stands up, excuses himself from the room, gets in a cab, goes to LAX, flies to New Jersey and knocks three times at Amys door at Princeton. When she opens it, shes greeted to the surprise of her life and the biggest cliffhanger of the shows history.

Sheldon goes to one knee with a ring in his hand and pops the big question. As for what Amy will say, fans will just have to wait until Season 11 to find out.
Women representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia are gearing up to showcase their talents at the 2017 Miss USA Competition this weekend  but only one will win the coveted crown.

The glitzy tournament, which takes place live on Sunday night from Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, will highlight a diverse lineup of ladies all with unique talents that best exemplify their hometown. However, a select few have quickly made their mark. Here's who we'll be keeping an eye on as the competition kicks off:

MISS USA 2006 TARA CONNER: TRUMP'S SUCCESS IS THE COUNTRY'S SUCCESS

Dinaleigh Baxter  Miss Ohio

Dinaleigh Baxter had an infection that almost killed her while she was in college. The 24-year-old suffered congestive heart failure, prompting her organs to begin shutting down. While doctors only gave her a 30 percent chance of living, she survived and now owns five tech LLCs. These days, Baxter is pursuing a law degree at Chase Law School in Northern Kentucky University and hopes to bring home the crown to show others in Ohio that women can achieve anything, despite challenges that may come their way.

Brittany Winchester  Miss Indiana

Just a few years ago, in 2015, Brittany Winchester was diagnosed with skin cancer when doctors discovered three basal cell carcinomas on her body. She beat the illness and made a full recovery, and the 27-year-old now uses her experience to help her community. "Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States," she said. "Prior to my personal experience, I never really heard a lot about this topic and loved to tan. It was these habits that likely caused the disease to progress." She now works to educate students in local Indiana schools about sun safety, as well as skin cancer awareness and prevention. "As Miss USA, I would use my voice to educate the world on how to prevent and protect themselves from getting this terrible disease." The graduate of Purdue University is currently working as an architectural interior designer and is pursuing a career as a fitness model. She shares a home with Kansas -- her 20-year-old cat.

FORMER MISS USA ALYSSA CAMPANELLA EXPLAINS WHY BLONDES DON'T ALWAYS HAVE MORE FUN

Kara McCullough  District of Columbia

Kara McCullough was born in Naples, Italy, but was raised in Virginia Beach by her mom, a now-retired United States Navy Chief Petty Officer. The 25-year-old has had the chance to travel throughout Sicily, Japan, South Korea and Hawaii thanks to her upbringing and she currently works for the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which serves to protect public health and safety related to nuclear energy. McCullough earned her Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry with a concentration in radiochemistry from South Carolina State University and has a personal community outreach program, Science Exploration for Kids (SE4K). It features hands-on science activities, as well as match and science tutoring for children ages 6-11. "As Miss USA I not only want to inspire children and students to pursue STEM careers, but I want to start the inspiration during the early childhood development years," she explained. "Those years are the most influential in a child's life and I foresee a generation of STEM leaders in the energy sector that will enhance our world even more."

Baylee Jensen  Miss Utah

Baylee Jensen is no stranger to the pageant world. Her mother, Gretchen Polhemus, won Miss USA 1989 representing Texas. "I am the first daughter of a former Miss USA to compete for the same title," she explained. "I feel so blessed to be raised by a single mother who is classy, independent, caring and strong. To many peoples surprise, I was not raised or 'trained' to do pageants, but rather to follow my ambitions and be true to myself. My mom taught me to work hard for my passions and be gracious." The 23-year-old is aiming to make a name for herself as the eldest of five children and recently graduated with honors as a communication studies major and dual minor in sociology and criminal justice. While Jensen hopes to work in marriage and family therapy, she has kept busy participating in the Childrens Justice Center. If she wins, Jensen aims to continue advocating for the rights of children in abusive situations.

Madelynne Myers  Miss Kentucky

Madelynne Myers has plenty on her plate these days. In addition to participating in this years pageant, the 22-year-old will graduate this May from Vanderbilt University with a molecular and cellular biology major, along with a chemistry and Spanish minor. Myers plans on attending medical school after graduation to pursue her dream of becoming a surgeon. Shes already done medical mission work in Africa, Nicaragua and Honduras, which has inspired her determination to show the world that poverty and gender inequality can be eradicated through education. "I am excited for the future of science and medicine," she said. "As Miss USA, I would empower women to pursue the study of science and to embrace, not back away from, professions that are male-dominated. I would continue to increase awareness of theimportance of healthy lifestyles."

MISS KENTUCKY SKIPS GRADUATION FOR MISS USA PAGEANT

Alyssa London  Miss Alaska

Alyssa London, an Alaska Native Tlingit tribal member, founded Our Culture Story in 2014 to focus on sharing the stories and art of her background to the world. The 27-year-old Stanford graduate is a celebrated speaker who enjoys advocating the importance of honoring multi-cultural identities. London travels throughout Alaska to visit schools, hospitals and other local venues to spread her message to women and children on embracing ones heritage. "What I learned at Stanford University is that we can make an impact in the world with the skills we develop during our time in school," she said. "It's very rare to have an Alaska Native/American Indian graduate from Stanford, and as a result of my time studying at this amazing institution, I have a thriving entrepreneurial spirit and mindset. As Miss USA, I would encourage other women to look to entrepreneurship to achieve independence and self-sufficiency."

Miss USA airs this Sunday, May 14 at 8 p.m. on FOX.
Former "Sons of Guns" star Will Hayden will spend the rest of his life in prison after his April conviction for raping two girls in Louisiana.

According to multiple media outlets, 51-year-old Hayden was sentenced to two life sentences to run concurrently in addition to 40 years to run consecutively. The East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore He says Hayden is not eligible for probation, parole or suspension of sentence.

Hayden was found guilty April 7 on two counts of aggravated rape and one count of forcible rape for raping two young girls over the course of two decades.

The accusations and Hayden's arrest led to the cancellation of the television show. Hayden was also removed as owner of his company, Red Jacket Firearms.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A hiker in Arizona recently found himself suffering from mild stages of hypothermia after embarking on a quest for free pizza.

The 30-year-old man, who has not been named, was taking part in a contest organized by Pizzicletta pizzeria in Flagstaff, Ariz., which had challenged patrons to meet at a peak on nearby Mount Elden in exchange for a golden ticket worth one free pie.

But during his trek to the top on Tuesday morning, the hiker, who was reportedly wearing only shorts and a tank top, found himself stuck near the snowy summit, reports AZCentral.

We never want anyone to risk their life for pizza, said Caleb Schiff, the owner of Pizzicletta, in a phone call to KPNX-TV. Its certainly not worth it.

THE PIZZA THAT WAS BLESSED BY THE POPE

Schiff says he originally issued the challenge as a way to encourage patrons to lead healthy, active lifestyles, but hoped that his contestants would be wary of the changing weather conditions and prepare themselves accordingly.

In truth, what we really want is people to make great decisions about their health and be active, Schiff said.

But according to the Coconino County Sheriffs Office, the 30-year-old hiker raced to the summit despite heavy snow conditions.

"The weather at the time was moderate to heavy snow, with approximately 3 to 5 inches of snow on the ground," the Sheriffs Office said in a statement.

Schiff, who was also climbing the mountain, admitted that the storm escalated pretty quickly, but made it to the top with a separate group.

By 9 a.m., the hiker had called for assistance, and an employee with the U.S. Forest Service retrieved the man and brought him inside a lookout tower.

Sgt. Aaron Dick, the search and rescue coordinator for the Sheriffs Office, also confirmed to KPNX that the hiker was shivering heavily and probably at mild stages of hypothermia.

The man was later escorted home by a friend after warming up, authorities say.

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As evidenced by the pizzerias Instagram account, Schiff has continued to stage his contest in the days following the incident. (There were at least six different opportunities to participate in the challenges.) That said, hes quick to caution participants on taking the correct safety precautions.

We always encourage people to not get in over their heads, to make smart decisions, said Schiff.
Marissa Hermer may be best known as one of the posh Americans on Bravo's hit show Ladies of London, but now, as a new cookbook author, she's not worried about a little mess when it comes to cooking her favorite foods.

Released in April, An American Girl in London features 120 recipes all built around the idea of nourishing your family. It also includes tips on how to prep multiple meals at a time and even batch cook favorites that store well for days.

Though not a professionally trained chef Hermer has been thinking about food for a long time. While helping develop menu ideas for her husbands London eatery Bumpkin, Hermer realized she wanted to incorporate more quinoa, avocado and healthier, fresher flavors into the traditional dishes based on British comfort food. Those ideas became the basis for her freshman cookbook effort.

But the book is also a deeply personal remedy to Hermer who penned many of the recipes while on bedrest during a difficult third pregnancy.

When I was pregnant with Sadie I was hearing some very scary things from the doctors office and the book almost gave me a respite from all that, says Hermer of being able to work on her recipes while confined to the house for medical reasons. It gave me an escape from all the things I was having to deal with. Cooking and chopping and stirring for me is very therapeutic.

BEST MOTHER'S DAY GIFTS FOR THE MOM WHO LOVES TO COOK

Now, the busy wife and mother of three knows plenty about what it takes to keep everyone in her family well-fed-- and it doesn't mean cooking a bunch of different things.

I think like a lot of busy moms, Ill cook one meal for everyone, says Hermer. Whether its her own take on an Indian curry, a protein-packed salad, or veggies and quinoa, Hermers dishes are meant to appeal to a range of palates. My kids, they eat what were eating.

Hermer may be well on way her domestic diva stardomshe's already sold her first solo restaurant venture, Top Dog, a gourmet hot dog eatery in Londonand she has plenty of recipes under her belt. But in her early career days working for several high profile public relations firms in New York City, Hermer wasnt always so keen on cooking for herselfor others.

The truth is, I havent been cooking that long. I lived in New York City before I lived in London and I lived across the street from Dean and Deluca, so I had takeaway, Hermer acknowledges. I only really started cooking when I had a family.

That changed soon after she met her now husband Matt Hermer, a nightblucb owner and restaurateur-- and Marissas mother told her the old adage that a way to mans heart was through his stomach. Just two years after meeting, Matt and Marissa got married and she moved to the U.K. in 2008 where she helped grow the family's nightlife-restaurant business. After nearly a decade overseas, the Hermers decided it was time for some California sunshine.

FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK FOR MORE FOX LIFESTYLE NEWS

After moving her family back to the U.S. late last year, Hermer says shes looking forward to incorporating more California ingredients back into her weeknight staples. And shes excited to bring a little taste of London to the notoriously casual West Coast dining scene.

Matt is so excited about the opportunity to open up restaurants in L.A. which is great, says Hermer. Theres certainly an exploding food scene there but theres a lot of room for growth.

As for what the busy mom really wants this Mothers Day? A little time with the familybut mostly some time just to relax.

Her ideal day would start with breakfast in bedwithout the mess  followed by a massage, a run or a hike, and time alone to take a relaxing bath.

For more of Hermers recipes or to ask about her new food ventures, follow her on Instagram @MarissaHemer. An American Girl in London was released in April 2017 by publishing house Rodale.
A 32-year-old man in Portugal went to the hospital after experiencing stomach pain, vomiting and fever. The culprit? A parasitic worm called Anisakis in the sushi he had just eaten.

The incident highlights an increasing number of infections from a parasite found in raw fish that doctors are seeing in Western countries, as sushi dishes rise in popularity, according to a new report.

27 ODDEST MEDICAL CASE REPORTS

In the report, doctors in Portugal describe getting to the bottom of the man's stomach pains. When he revealed his sushi consumption, they suspected he might have a parasitic infection. Using an endoscope  a flexible tube with a camera  doctors examined the man's upper digestive tract, and were able to see the parasite attached to his gut lining. Doctors removed the parasite and determined that it was indeed an Anisakis worm. Illnesses caused by this worm are known as anisakiasis.

Previously, cases of anisakiasis were mainly seen in Japan. But "owing to changes in food habits, anisakiasis is a growing disease in Western countries, which should be suspected in patients with a history of ingestion of raw or undercooked fish," the researchers wrote in the May 11 issue of the journal BMJ Case Reports.

9 DISGUSTING THINGS THAT THE FDA ALLOWS IN YOUR FOOD

Common sources of this parasite include cod, haddock, fluke, pacific salmon, herring, flounder and monkfish, as well as squid, according to Stanford University. Because this parasite is found in fish, anyone who eats raw or undercooked fish is at risk of contracting the parasite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thus, the best way to prevent this illness is to avoid consuming raw or undercooked fish, the agency says.

The Food and Drug Administration recommends cooking seafood to an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius) to kill parasites. Freezing raw fish at minus 4 degrees F (minus 20 degrees C) or below for 7 days, or freezing raw fish at minus 31 degrees F (minus 35 degrees C) until solid and storing at minus 4 degrees F (minus 20 degrees C) for 24 hours, is also sufficient to kill parasites, the FDA said.

Original article on Live Science.
Within hours of President Trumps firing of James Comey, I went on television and told CNNs Don Lemon the key question is whether Rod Rosenstein initiated the decision to fire Comey by writing the memo on his own, or whether President Trump directed Rod Rosenstein to write a memo that would justify his firing the FBI Director. The next day, I warned that Rosenstein may well turn against President Trump, particularly if he were to appoint a replacement for Comey who was, or appeared to be, partial to the President.

Now evidence has emerged that my concerns may have a basis in fact. President Trump has now acknowledged that he decided to fire Comey before receiving the Rosenstein memo. And The Washington Post is reporting that Rosenstein is threatening to quit if the White House continues to point the finger of blame at him for the decision to fire Comey.

Rosenstein bears some of the responsibility because he knew, or should have known, that his memo would be used to justify the firing. If he did not believe that Comey was being fired because of his advised actions regarding Hillary Clinton during the campaign, then he should not have provided that cover. Now he must do something to restore his integrity and the credibility of the American justice system.

President Trumps motives in firing Comey will always remain a matter of dispute. But reasonable Americans of both parties can plausibly believe that he did not fire Comey for the reasons so eloquently set forth in Rosensteins letter.

Only President Trump can prove that he was motivated by the public interest rather than by personal considerations. He can prove that by appointing a replacement for Comey who is at least as tough and independent as Comey himself. If he appoints such a person, he will allay doubts, at least among reasonable and objective Americans, that he was motivated by a desire to weaken the investigation of the Russian connection. But if he appoints someone who is less likely to be vigorous in uncovering the truth, he will confirm the suspicion of those who question his intentions.

President Trump can also allay doubts if he were to announce his support for an independent commission, modeled on the 911 Commission, to investigate all aspects of the alleged Russian connection, including the leaks growing out of the current investigation. All Americans should be interested in learning the unvarnished truth about these important issues.

The ball is now in the Presidents court. There is a great deal at stake in how he handles this potential crisis. President Richard Nixon ended up losing his office because of how he mishandled the investigation being conducted by Archibald Cox. President Trump can avoid endangering his presidency if he does the right thing now, even if he did the wrong thing in firing Comey.

Nixon lost his presidency largely because fellow Republicans turned against him despite his overwhelming victory in the 1972 election. The firing of Archibald Cox turned into the Saturday Night Massacre when his own Republican appointees, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, resigned in protest over his firing of the respected Special Prosecutor. None of this has yet happened in the current situation. But fellow Congressional Republicans and even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein may well turn against President Trump were he to appoint a replacement for Comey who was, or appeared to be, partial to the President. It is in the Presidents interest, as well as in the interest of the country, that Comeys replacement is beyond reproach or suspicion.

Virtually all the pundits who have commented on the Presidents actions have either attacked him vociferously or defended him uncritically. When dramatic events like this occur, the first casualty is nuance. I have chosen, while criticizing the President for his decision to fire Comey, to focus on the future. It is imperative that the President look forward to the impact that his nomination will have on the country, on his party, and on his presidency. He did what he did, and he been justly criticized for creating the appearance, if not the reality, of conflict of interest. The past is not necessarily prologue. President Trump can learn from his mistake and lean over backwards to do the right thing going forward. That right thing begins with who he nominates to replace Comey, and it continues with his support of a truly independent and non-partisan investigative commission.

All Americans have a stake in seeing President Trump do the right thing now.

Rod Rosenstein helped to create this problem. Now he can help solve it by recommending that the President do the right thing.

Follow Alan Dershowitz on

Twitter: @AlanDersh

Facebook: @AlanMDershowitz
Theres no evidence that hacking had any impact whatsoever on the results of the 2016 election.

Butin an age of rapidly rising cybersecurity threats and quickly aging voting infrastructuretheres no guarantee that elections in 2018, 2020, and beyond will be safe. While alleged Russian hacking has received huge attention this year, the cyber-threat to American electoral democracy could come in the future from Russia, China, North Korea, ISIS, Anonymous, or any of a number of potential players with cyber capacities.

This is a serious matter of national security. Policymakers should treat it as such.

Its no secret that Americas voting systems need security upgrades. According to a recent study, 43 states use electronic voting and tabulation systems that are at least a decade old  dangerously near to the estimated lifespan for such systems. A new survey of 274 election officials in 28 states found that most administrators need upgrades but lack the resources to obtain them. On this past election day, voters in North Carolina, Texas, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Massachusetts complained of problems with electronic voting systems ranging from calibration errors that temporarily flipped votes to malfunctioning optical scanners.

These arent just inconveniences. Antiquated systems are inherently more vulnerable to hacking. There are now 52 different kinds of voting machines in use around the country, including Direct Recorded Electronic (DRE) machines and optical scanning machines. Increasingly sophisticated agents can tamper with these systems simply by gaining brief physical access, by inserting a memory card, or by remotely hacking the computers on which the systems are programmed and calibrated. Beyond the dreadful scenario of a foreign power or non-state actor directly manipulating a voting count, we could also face risks like "denial of service" attacks that could crash systems, create confusion, or force voters at targeted precincts to wait hours.

Federal policymakers helped sow the seeds of this insecurity nearly two decades ago, when, after the "hanging chad" fiasco of the 2000 election, the government spent billions on the purchase of computerized voting machines without paper ballots  or even paper trails  and few, if any, cybersecurity safeguards.

We need hardened cybersecurity for Americas voting systems. Local control of elections is essential and Congress cant solve the problem alone. Still, federal agencies should seek to undo the damage of earlier policy decisions by setting high-quality national standards for cybersecurity as a condition of new federal funding for voting systems.

Ultimately, we believe the solution to election insecurity lies in President Reagans famous old adage: trust but verifysay by paper trails permitting valid recounts. We should trust that Americas votes are being counted correctly, but we should be able to verify that this is, in fact, the case. Verification requires the presence of at least a paper trail: voter-marked paper ballots that can be used to check the results, if necessary, of the electronic tally. This used to be the norm in American voting systems, and it should be once again. Paper ballots are both cost-effective and secure.

On the morning of Election Day, November 8th, President Trump went on Fox News to explain his views on the issue: "Theres something really nice about the old paper ballot system," he said. "You dont worry about hacking." The President is right. We need to return to safe and simple elections with paper ballots providing the check against the electronic tally.
President Trumps eccentric behavior, especially in the past week, raises a serious question: Does he want to be president?

His Twitter threat against James Comey, whom he fired as director of the FBI, suggests he might have secretly recorded their conversations. Banning American news media from his Oval Office conversation with Russias foreign minister while allowing a TASS photographer to record the event may be payback against a press corps he despises. But it also fuels suspicions that he is indebted, somehow, to the Kremlin. Recently, he retweeted Rosie ODonnell, surely a first for a sitting president.

His undisciplined tweets give the public contradictory information, and a sense that he wants to run the country via social media instead of democratic debate.

The question is: to what end?

Most of Trumps executive orders  there have been 36 so far  are in keeping with his campaign promises, and they have been well-received by his political base  those voters who felt they were being ignored by traditional politicians and wanted, as Trump put it, to drain the swamp of Washington.

Tighter immigration restrictions are popular with Americans who believe we have lost control of our borders. The process of repealing ObamaCare faces an uphill battle in the Senate, but that cannot be blamed on the president.

The military action against Syria after it attacked its own citizens with deadly nerve gas was honorable and justified. It also sent a message to rogue nations like North Korea to tread carefully.

The new trade deal with China that increases American exports and will lower our trade deficit is long overdue. The tax code needs reform and this administration is preparing just such an overhaul.

Why then does the president muddy the political waters by ranting against Democrats who oppose him, against news organizations that ask tough questions, against foreign leaders who pursue policies different from his? Why does he obsessively remind Americans that it was he, and not Hillary Clinton, who was elected president? Why must he spar with television personalities who dislike him?

Bellwether wonders whether Trump actually plans to stay in office for four years. Could he be considering a shorter stay in the White House, passing the baton to the widely respected Vice President Mike Pence? Might Trump feel that if and when he achieves his major goals  tighter borders, lower taxes, more American-made goods  he can declare victory and return to his successful career in the private sector?

The president, in his first four months in office, has accomplished much of which to be proud. Like Ronald Reagan, his optimism about Americas future is contagious. The stock market, which many predicted would tank if he were elected, has rebounded convincingly. Consumer confidence is up. Several major employers have announced that they will create thousands of jobs in America.

But his random tweets, his crude public use of insults and threats and his blatant disregard for decorum and the integrity of the office of president raise questions about his willingness to fulfill those duties for the long run.

Trump is slowly accomplishing his mission. If he plans to walk away from Washington once he feels he has fulfilled his promise to the American people, he should say so. Both his supporters and his growing list of opponents would probably respect his candor, and they might work together to give him what he wants, so he will go away.
Where is Hillary Clinton? Surely she must be rejoicing over President Trumps firing of FBI Director Comey. After all, it was just last week that Hillary Clinton again blamed the FBI Director (along with Russia and sexism, for good measure) for her epic loss to Donald Trump.

Speaking at a conference in New York sponsored by Women for Women International, Mrs. Clinton pinned her defeat on the intervening events in the last 10 days, meaning Comeys surprise announcement that he was re-opening the email investigation.

Soon after the election, Mrs. Clinton said that Comeys October 28 announcement stopped our momentum; her aides complained that the reemergence of the email scandal knocked undecideds off the fence, in favor of Trump.

Alan Dershowitz: Comey firing puts Rod Rosenstein in the hot spot

If Hillary Clinton honestly believes that James Comey  and not her own missteps  caused her unexpected defeat, she has got to be applauding President Trump for giving him the boot.

Hillary Clinton, who was odds-on favorite to become Americas first female president, must loathe James Comey.

Lets be honest; Clinton and her retinue never in a million years imagined that the blustery, non-political, incendiary real estate magnate could upend her billion-dollar campaign.

If she honestly believes that James Comey  and not her own missteps  caused her unexpected defeat, she has got to be applauding President Trump for giving him the boot.

If she is willing to admit it, and she probably wont, shell be the only honest Democrat in town. Her colleagues in Congress and the media are practicing political yoga, contorting themselves into denying both Comeys trustworthiness and Trumps right to fire him.

For sheer Democrat nuttiness, Maxine Waters takes the cake, again. The California Congresswoman said in an interview with NBC's Peter Alexander that she would have supported Hillary Clinton firing James Comey, had she won the election, but does not support President Trump axing the FBI Director. Even Alexander was stumped, saying, So she should have fired him but he shouldn't have fired him. This is why I'm confused.

That speaks for most Americans, who recall how Democrats vilified Comey just a few months ago.

Comey took a beating from Republicans who were outraged that he didnt press charges against Hillary Clinton for using a private email server and obstructing an investigation, but was then harpooned by angry Dems when he once more inserted himself into the election.

Furious that Comey had again put his thumb on the scale, party leaders went berserk. New Yorks Chuck Schumer, never at a loss for words, said on November 2 that he no longer had any confidence in Comey; Nancy Pelosi said maybe Comey wasnt in the right job; Tennessees Steve Cohen and New York Rep Jerry Nadler said Comey should resign; Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in January that Comey was no longer is able to serve in a neutral and credible way; Steve Cohen, Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy and others suggested he should quit. Harry Reid called Comey a Republican operative.

Those were love notes compared to the reaction from the hyperventilating media. Steven Colbert slammed the FBI chief last October for meddling in the election, but heard echoes of Watergate in Trumps dismissal of Comey, and Keith Oberman tweeted #FireComey on November 6, before recently calling for Trumps impeachment for doing just that.

No wonder the publics confidence in the media and our political leaders is so dismal.

We havent had a Men in Black moment; we remember how both the Dems and the Republicans howled over Comeys varying takes on Hillarys extremely careless handling of state secrets. Comey became a polarizing figure to those on the right and the left. By the time he was dismissed, most Americans had come to view him as political, though not everyone agrees on which side he was favoring.

When he published 15-year-old documents related to Bill Clintons controversial pardon of financier Marc Rich just before the election, Dems cried foul; when he failed to investigate the Clinton Foundation, Republicans were incensed. Overall, he had become too big for his britches, had ignored too many long-standing Justice Department norms, and was leading a divided FBI.

Trump was right to fire him, even though the timing and optics were terrible. The fall-out could be significant.

The country elected Donald Trump because he offered an agenda that would boost growth, jobs and wages. The faux Russia scandal, and now the firing of James Comey, threatens to undermine progress on fixing ObamaCare, cutting taxes and rebuilding our infrastructure. Optimism could wane, which will hurt markets, investing and hiring.

Thats what Democrats want. They want to destabilize and obstruct the Trump White House, fearing that success will usher in more demolition of Obamas progressive agenda.

Thats apparently what Hillary Clinton wants, too, confirming recently that she had joined the Resistance.

At what point does their resistance become unpatriotic?

Voters will let us know.
There is no better place on earth to be a gun owner than the United States. Let me explain that bit of patriotic fervor; Im an Air Force veteran and fourth generation military veteran, married to you guessed it, a veteran. Being pretty open about what is important is a crucial part of being in media, which is why as a radio host I often share that; Im a Jesus lover, family first chick who proudly supports the NRA as a member and gun owner. Being open and out there with a social media presence was part of the reason that the St. Louis Post Dispatch asked me to balance their opinion editorial page by writing a weekly column last fall.

On April 28, my column Guns and the media appeared online and in print after going through our weekly routine of submission via email, editing and approval by the opinion editor.

The column was a strong defense of law abiding gun owners and members of the National Rifle Association from a spurious comparison to the Islamic State. Later that same day email notice of my columns suspension was sent. Apparently being an open supporter of the NRA, gun owner, marksman qualified Air Force veteran and regular television and radio pundit werent enough disclosure for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. After a number of email exchanges made it clear that the truth wasnt what the editor was after, I chose to terminate the contract.

This is yet another example of the often unhinged and unexplainable tendency of the left to demonize guns and gun owners regardless of how factually unsupportable the claims may be.

Each day gun owners work, eat, pray, worship, and otherwise move freely about the country with people who do not own guns.

Guns and the media called print journalists to account for guest columns that appeared in two different newspapers. In the St. Louis American, a weekly paper distributed in the St. Louis metro area, a guest columnist wrote, Gun owners love their guns more than they love their children. This is a demonstrably false generalization that a good editor would have refused to print. Instead of allowing this blanket insult towards millions of law abiding American gun owners the editor should have worked through the writing process to assist the writer to honestly present a perspective about children killed in separate incidents around the country.

The second item appeared in the Columbia Missourian and was written by a Missouri State University journalism school professor emeritus. In his column titled, The NRA's influence is a danger to us all. Professor George Kennedy compared NRA members to the Islamic State. Of course this isnt factually supportable, nor does it advance the cause of constructive dialogue among readers. It serves only to inflame and alienate anyone who owns a firearm or has membership in the NRA.

Do either of these two writers realize that they are constantly interacting with people who own firearms? Each day gun owners work, eat, pray, worship, and otherwise move freely about the country with people who do not own guns.

If we were really anything even remotely akin to the Islamic State (with roughly 360 million guns in this country) there would be a constant internecine war every day in every location. Surely Professor Kennedy knows this, and if not, then a lunch meeting with an ISIS member would certainly disabuse him of the idea.

If these two columns were isolated incidents simply calling them out would suffice. Yet, they arent. There is a total lack of self-awareness present in the idea that by appearing on television, or guest hosting for NRA programs, my assertion that NRA members are not like ISIS somehow becomes false. And lets not forget the double standard: there is no chance that a comparison of abortion supporters to ISIS would ever have made it to print.

If the left wants a discussion on guns they must begin by getting out of their feelings and into facts. We are beyond tired of the hysterics.

Stacy Washington is host of the "Stacy on the Right Show," broadcast on Urban Family Talk Monday through Friday from 2-3pm in St. Louis, Missouri. Click here for more.
It was way back in 2014 when I first introduced you to Walt Tutka, of Phillipsburg, New Jersey and a member of Gideon's International.

Gideon's is a Christian service organization. They give people Bibles. You've probably seen one of their Bibles in a Holiday Inn -- on a bedside table.

Click here to join Todd's Facebook page - a great gathering of Conservative patriots!

Mr. Tutka also happened to be a substitute teacher in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. But he was fired from that job after he gave a student a Bible.

The student happened to be the last person entering through a door. Mr. Tutka told the youngster, "The first shall be last, but the last shall be first."

The student later inquired on several occasions about the origins of the quote. He showed the student the verse in his Bible, which led to the student asking for a personal copy of the Bible. And being a good Gideon, Mr. Tutka gladly supplied the child with a copy.

It did not seem to matter to the school district that the student had asked for a copy of the Good Book.

First Liberty Institute took on Mr. Tutka's case -- and eventually scored a victory with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They agreed that the school district had discriminated against Mr. Tutka on the "basis of religion and retaliation."

And on the eve of First Liberty's deadline to file a federal lawsuit, the school district agreed to a settlement.

That means Mr. Tutka can once again become a substitute teacher -- effective today.

"We are really pleased we accomplished the mission we set out to achieve -- restoring Walt Tutka as a substitute teacher in Philipsburg," First Liberty Institute's Hiram Sasser told me. "We always knew Walt complied with all school district policies and federal laws, the EEOC agreed, and now Walt is returning to his service to the community in Philipsburg."

And we hope the Phillipsburg School District learned a very important lesson. It's not nice to bully people of faith -- and it's also illegal.
Taya Kyle is the author of the New York Times bestseller American Wife. She founded the Chris Kyle Frog Foundation (CKFF) in honor of her late husband Chris Kyle, legendary U.S. Navy SEAL and author of the bestsellers " American Sniper " and " American Gun. " The foundation is devoted to strengthening the marriages of veterans and first responders. An active public speaker, Taya Kyle makes frequent appearances at fund-raisers and other events, inspiring others to find strength and persevere through struggles. She and her two children live in Texas.
President Trump said Thursday that he wants the FBI investigation into possible ties between members of his campaign and Russian officials to be "absolutely done properly," shortly after he called it a "made-up story" and "an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election they should have won."

Trump also told NBC News that he had decided to fire FBI Director James Comey before he received a recommendation to do so from a top Justice Department official.

"I was going to fire regardless of recommendation," Trump said in an interview with "NBC Nightly News." "Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey, knowing there was no good time to do it."

After Comey was dismissed Tuesday, the White House released a memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommending the FBI director's termination.

Discussing his thought process, Trump told NBC that, "I said, I probably, maybe will confuse people ... I might even lengthen out the [Russia] investigation, but I have to do the right thing for the American people. Hes the wrong man for that position.'"

Trump again denied that his campaign had any ties to Moscow, saying, "There was no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians. The other thing is, the Russians did not affect the vote and everybody seems to think that."

The president also denied that he had any business dealings or holdings in Russia that might present a conflict of interest.

"I just sent a letter to [Sen.] Lindsey Graham [R-S.C.] from one of the most prestigious law firms in the country [stating] that I have nothing to do with Russia," Trump said. "I have no investments in Russia. None whatsoever. I dont have property in Russia ... I'm in total compliance in every way."

Despite dismissing the investigation into his campaign, Trump did say "if Russia did anything having to do with our election, I want to know about it."

Trump also defended the 18-day wait to fire National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in February after then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates told White House Counsel Don McGahn that Flynn could be susceptible to blackmail.

"It did not sound like an emergency," Trump said. "[McGahn] didnt make it sound like ... it had to be done immediately. I believe that it would be very unfair to hear from someone whom we dont even know and immediately run out and fire a general."
Former FBI Director James Comey has declined an invitation to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next week, a spokesman for the committee confirmed to Fox News Friday.

Comey had been invited to testify before a closed session in the wake of his controversial firing by President Trump earlier this week, but he declined to do so.

Trump fired Comey Tuesday after receiving a recommendation to do so by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, citing Comey's handling of the Clinton email probe last year. However, Trump later clarified that he would have fired Comey even without Rosensteins recommendation.

Democrats and some Republicans have expressed concern at the timing of the firing, noting the FBIs current investigation into alleged interference by the Russian government in the U.S. presidential election.

Fox News Kara Rowland contributed to this report.
Trump administration officials have flatly denied two key allegations surrounding the James Comey firing  that the decision came after he asked for more resources for the FBIs Russia probe, and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein later threatened to resign  after the claims gained traction among Trump critics.

The denials arent attracting anywhere near the media attention of the original allegations.

The latest came from Rosenstein himself. The Washington Post initially reported Wednesday night that the senior Justice official threatened to resign after reports began painting him as the primary mover of the decision to sack Comey, given his scathing memo condemning the ex-FBI directors handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe.

But aside from White House and DOJ denials, Rosenstein himself told Sinclair Broadcast Group reporter Michelle Macaluso he didnt threaten to quit and would not be doing so.

No, Im not quitting, he said.

President Trump also has since shifted the administrations account of what led to the firing, telling NBC News that he would have fired Comey regardless of any recommendation, after officials pointed to Rosensteins memo as the driving force.

Meanwhile, The New York Times and other outlets reported in the wake of the Comey ouster that he had recently asked the DOJ for more resources in the bureaus probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Fox News also was told that Comey had asked for more resources  however, sources said he discussed that issue with lawmakers. A Justice spokeswoman stressed that Comey never asked Rosenstein himself for more money or resources for the Russia investigation.

The denial got high-level backup on Thursday, when Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe also denied the reports at a Senate hearing.

McCabe said he thinks the probe is adequately resourced and noted the FBI normally would not ask for more resources for a single investigation.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders picked one heck of a week to fill in for Press Secretary Sean Spicer at the White House podium -- but it could be part of a trial by fire.

Speculation is mounting that the deputy press secretary is being eyed for a bigger role, amid a tumultuous week where she became the face of the administration's response to President Trump's decision to fire FBI boss James Comey.

Sanders took plenty of hits from the press, especially when the president seemed Thursday to contradict the original White House narrative that he was merely acting on the recommendation of a top Justice official.

But she rarely wavered, and the president apparently is watching closely.

Were all under the impression that [Sanders] is auditioning for a greater role in the Trump administration and dont rule out Spicers job, a White House aide told Fox News, backing up a report in Politico that Trump is eyeing Sanders as a possible replacement for Spicer.

Spicer, up until Friday, has been absent from the briefing room for the past week while on Naval Reserve duty. Sanders was thrown into the proverbial fire when Trump abruptly fired Comey, a decision that left staff scrambling. Despite Spicer's absence, a Washington Post report said Trump faulted Spicer and his team for a shaky response to a decision for which they apparently had little notice.

But since the communications team has launched a full-throated defense of the firing, the daughter of former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and veteran campaign operative is said to have impressed Trump.

The president likes her, a senior White House official told Fox News on Wednesday.

The situation for Spicer was not improved by the release of a trailer for the upcoming "Saturday Night Live," with Melissa McCarthy reprising her brutal impression of the White House spokesman.

For his part, Spicer has brushed off the speculation over his own job security.

And other White House sources have pushed back on the idea of Sanders being in an audition of sorts. One called it "totally ridiculous." Another stressed that Spicer was merely out because of "pre-planned" Reserve duty, "nothing surprising."

Spicer was indeed back at the podium on Friday.

Sanders, in her role as deputy press secretary, also is no stranger to the press corps and has engaged daily with media since the start of the administration. But her official on-camera briefing debut came last Friday when the passage of the health care bill in the House and executive actions related to religious freedom were the primary stories.

Sanders then displayed a lighter touch in pushing back at the media firestorm over Comey.

Not to sound like a broken record, but since you guys keep asking the same questions, I guess it's only fair that I keep giving the same answers, she said in response to a question about Trumps changing opinions about Comey.

Sanders is better at briefing than Spicer, noted Wall Street Journal columnist John Harwood.

She was the consummate professional. She answered questions directly and came to the briefing extraordinarily well-prepared, said Bob Wickers, a Republican media strategist who first met Sanders when she interned for him.

She and Spicer have different approaches and I think you could argue that both are effective -- Spicer gets the numbers, there is no denying that, said Sarah Lenti, a Republican political consultant. Whether you like President Trump and his policies or not, I think both Spicer and Sanders are succeeding in their roles.

Even critics complimented her approach, albeit back-handedly.

Sarah Sanders parries, spins and obfuscates, too. But she's not condescending and seems comfortable at the podium doing it, tweeted Josh Dawsey of Politico.

"One Trump supporter emails that the temperature in the briefing room has come down dramatically," Maggie Haberman of The New York Times tweeted on Wednesday.

Yet, as the Comey story developed and the president gave interviews that appeared to contradict statements from the press office, Sanders found herself in the same firing line as Spicer.

Overall she has done as well as can be expected of anybody in that position, but a spokesman is only as good as their relationship with their boss and the information they are given, said Alex Conant, a partner at Firehouse Strategies and former communications director to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

I certainly dont envy whoever is in that role, Conant said, who contends that Trump is not serving his staff well by providing staff with inaccurate information.

Even on the conservative wing, the credibility of the White House was in doubt.

This kind of despicable lying is just an example of the collapse of all standards, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders should hang her head in shame, asserted New York Post columnist John Podhoretz on Twitter.

In a Friday morning series of tweets, President Trump all but conceded the White House had been inaccurate in its statements.

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!.... he said, suggesting briefings should just be canceled.

Fox News' Kaitlyn Schallhorn contributed to this report.
When President Trump sat down with Lester Holt yesterday, he essentially altered the version of James Comeys firing that his top aides have been pressing in public.

I was going to fire regardless of recommendation, he told the NBC anchor. The recommendation in question was a two-page memo from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had been on the job for two weeks.

Rosenstein is highly respected, Trump said, he made a recommendation, but regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey (who he called a showboat and a grandstander).

At Wednesdays press briefing, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked: So it's the White Houses assertion that Rod Rosenstein decided on his own, after being confirmed, to review Comeys performance?

Absolutely, she replied. And I think most of America had decided on their own that Director Comey was not the person that should be leading the FBI.

But if the president asked for a review to buttress a move he planned to take anyway, then Rosensteins letter isnt the crucial document that was being advertised.

Sanders told ABCs Jon Karl yesterday she hadnt had the chance to ask the president that question about whether he had already made up his mind. Nobody was in the darkYoure trying to create this false narrative, she said.

None of this affects the core question of whether the president acted properly in canning his FBI director. But it does underscore that the administrations rollout of this controversial decision has been shaky.

The media narrative has moved on to whether the White House is engaging in some kind of coverup, with newspaper accounts challenging some of the administrations key points.

Chief among them: Trumps contention that Comey told him three times that he wasnt under investigation in the Russia probe. The Wall Street Journal quoted a Comey associate yesterday as saying that was almost farcical.

If true, would that have been improper on Comeys part? I dont see that as a conflict of interest, Sanders said yesterday.

The Washington Post reported that Rosenstein had threatened to resign after being portrayed as the catalyst for Comeys dismissal. NBC followed up by quoting two unnamed Justice Department officials as saying that wasnt true.



The New York Times reported that in private, aides said, Mr. Trump has been nursing a collection of festering grievances, including Mr. Comeys handling of the Russia investigation, his seeming lack of interest in pursuing anti-Trump leaks and the perceived disloyalty over the wiretapping claim.

That would undermine the White House contention that Trumps decision was mainly about Comeys handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation and not the Russia probe.

Some of this gets down in the weeds. But its being fueled by the apparent conflicts between the White House explanations and the press accounts. And Holt elicited key information with his solid questions.

Sarah Sanders told reporters that unlike the public, they are obsessed with this story. Maybe so. But a president firing an FBI director under these circumstances is an earthquake that will have aftershocks for some weeks to come.
Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway told Fox News' "Hannity" Thursday night that the mainstream media was engaged in a "rush to judgment" over President Trump's motive for firing FBI Director Jim Comey earlier this week.

"The President made a decision this week, it was his decision to make, he was resolute and decisive," Conway told host Sean Hannity. "and people who are questioning that just need to listen to him ... He said he had thought about it for a long time and he made the decision and its final."

Conway also noted that many of the Democrats who condemned Comey's firing had harshly criticized the now-former FBI Director for his actions during last year's presidential election campaign.

"Democratic leaders were out there trashing this guy all through the fall," Conway said. "And now they want to make him a martyr."

Conway also slammed media reporting about the circumstances surrounding Comey's termination, saying many stories were printing the "opposite" of what was true.

"Somebody close to the White House  I dont know if they mean at the sandwich shop or the coffee ship across the street  but somebody close to the White House said that [Deputy Attorney General Rod] Rosenstein had threatened to resign," Conway said. "The Department of Justice today said thats simply not true. ... Theres this presumptive negativity and it makes these people lose their minds and become hypocrites."
North Korea's parliament sent a rare letter of protest to the U.S. House of Representatives over its new package of tougher sanctions, state media reported Friday.

The sanctions were condemned as a "heinous act against humanity" by the foreign affairs committee of the North's Supreme People's Assembly, the report said.

It's not unusual for Pyongyang to condemn moves to censure it by Washington, but a direct protest to Congress would be rare.

It was not immediately clear how the protest was conveyed since North Korea and the United States have no diplomatic relations and virtually no official channels of communication.

The report, carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency, said the letter of protest was sent Friday.

The House passed the sanctions package bill on May 4.

The House overwhelmingly voted to impose new sanctions over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs. The vote, 419-1, targets North Koreas shipping industry and use of slave labor.

It also requires that the Trump administration report to Congress within 90 days on whether North Korea should be reinstated on the governments state sponsors of terror list. Such a designation would trigger more sanctions, including restriction on U.S. foreign assistance.

Adm. Harry Harris Jr., the top American military officer in the Pacific, has warned lawmakers that it's a question of when, not if, Pyongyang successfully builds a nuclear-tipped missile capable of striking the U.S.

Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., was the sole member to vote against the measure. The Senate will take it up next.

The bipartisan legislation is aimed at thwarting North Korea's ambitions by cutting off access to the cash the regime needs to follow through with its plans.

The measure is sponsored by Rep. Ed Royce of California, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York, the committee's senior Democrat.

Specifically, the bill bars ships owned by North Korea, or by countries that refuse to comply with U.N. resolutions against it, from operating in American waters or docking at U.S. ports. Goods produced by North Korea's forced labor would be prohibited from entering the United States, according to the legislation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday that he has told prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against criminal suspects  a stunning reversal of Obama-era policies, and a move that infuriated civil rights groups.

We will enforce the laws passed by Congress pure and simple, he said at an awards ceremony in Washington D.C, adding that prosecutors deserved to be unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington.

This is a key part of President Trumps promise to keep America safe, Sessions said. Were seeing an increase in violent crime in our cities  in Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, Milwaukee, St. Louis and many others. The murder rate has surged 10 percent nationwide  the largest increase since 1968.

In a letter to 94 U.S. attorneys Thursday night, Sessions called it a core principle that prosecutors charge and pursue the most serious and readily provable offense. Sessions defined the most serious offenses as those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence.

Sessions noted that there will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application of the policy is not warranted, but that any exceptions must first be approved by a U.S. attorney, assistant attorney general, or a designated supervisor.

The move, which will send more criminals to jail and for longer terms by triggering mandatory minimum sentences, explicitly reverses policies set in motion by President Obamas former Attorney General Eric Holder  who implemented the Smart on Crime drug sentencing policy that focused on not incarcerating people who committed low level, non-violent crimes. DOJ officials call it a false narrative and say unless a gun is involved, most of those cases arent charged period.

Officials say Holders Smart on Crime policy convoluted the process, and left prosecutors applying the law unevenly, which they said is not Justice.

But civil rights groups blasted the process, with the American Civil Liberties Union describing the move as a move that will reverse progress and repeat the War on Drugs, which it called a failed experiment.

With overall crime rates at historic lows, it is clear that this type of one-dimensional criminal justice system that directs prosecutors to give unnecessarily long and unfairly harsh sentences to people whose behavior does not call for it did not work, Udi Ofer, director of the American Civil Liberties Unions Campaign for Smart Justice.

The policy was also criticized by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said mandatory minimums have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated too many minorities for too long.

Attorney General Sessions new policy will accentuate that injustice. Instead we should treat our nations drug epidemic as a health crisis and less as a lock em up and throw away the key problem, he said.

However, the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys backed the move, saying it would make the public safer and give prosecutors to tools that Congress intended to lock up drug dealers and dismantle gangs.

Fox News Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer Friday accused the press of turning daily briefings into a game of gotcha, just hours after Trump mulled on Twitter about canceling the White House briefings.

Trump tweeted out Friday morning -- apparently in response to claims that members of the press team had given inaccurate information about the timeline of FBI Director James Comeys firing -- that he was considering ending the press briefings in favor of written responses.

Asked about the tweets at the daily press briefing, Spicer declined to say if Trump was considering cancelling the briefings, but noted Trumps dismay about the press turning the forums into a game of gotcha.

I think hes a little dismayed, as well as a lot of people, that we come out here and try to do everything we can to provide you and with the American people with what hes doing on their behalf  and yet we see time and time again an attempt to parse every little word and make it more of a game of gotcha as opposed to really trying figure out what the policies are, why its being pursued or what the update is on this.

I think thats where theres a lot of dismay and I dont think its alone what the president feels, he added.

The president's press team took heat after the president himself seemed to contradict the White House narrative on Comey's ouster.

The White House had said earlier this week that Comey was fired only after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recommended it in a meeting with Trump on Monday.

But in an interview with NBCs Lester Holt Thursday, Trump said he would have fired Comey regardless of the recommendation.
The White House announced Thursday that the U.S. and China have reached an agreement on trade polices related to beef, poultry and natural gas that are expected to increase American exports.

As part of the deal, China will open its borders to U.S. beef. In return, the U.S. has agreed to remove obstacles to Chinas imported poultry meat. The United States would also allow U.S. companies to ship liquefied natural gas to China

The biggest points in the 10-point plan deal with the American agriculture and financial sectors, which are being promised greater access in a range of areas, the Wall Street Journal reported. In addition to beef, China agreed to accelerate the process for approving U.S. biotechnology products.

Trump administration officials hailed the deal as a significant advance toward boosting U.S. exports and close America's trade gap with the world's second-largest economy.

U.S.-China relationships are now hitting a new high especially in trade, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in unveiling the package at the White House.

"This is more than has been done in the whole history of U.S.-China relations on trade," Ross told reporters. "Normally trade deals are denominated in multiple years, not tens of days."

The trade talks between the two countries began after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort home in early April.

The Journal reported that it is unclear if agreement reduces the US' $347 billion deficit.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lawyers for President Donald Trump said Friday that a review of his last 10 years of tax returns do not reflect "any income of any type from Russian sources," with some exceptions. It's the latest attempt by the president to tamp down concerns about any Russian ties amid an ongoing investigation of his campaign's associates.

The attorneys did not release copies of Trump's tax returns, so The Associated Press cannot independently verify their conclusions. Their review also notably takes into account only Trump's returns from the past 10 years, leaving open questions about whether there were financial dealings with Russia in earlier years.

In a letter released to the AP, the attorneys said there is no equity investment by Russians in entities controlled by Trump or debt owed by Trump to Russian lenders. But it did reflect some exceptions, including income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

The White House said Trump asked his lawyers for the letter following a request from Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for information on any ties Trump might have to Russia. Graham leads one of the congressional committees investigating Russia's interference in last year's election.

The letter came amid an active FBI probe into the Trump 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia's election meddling and days after Trump's stunning firing of FBI Director James Comey.

"I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever," Trump said Thursday in an interview with NBC News. "I don't have property in Russia. A lot of people thought I owned office buildings in Moscow. I don't have property in Russia."

The president said he "had dealings over the years," including the Miss Universe pageant and the sale of a home to "a very wealthy Russian." "I had it in Moscow long time ago, but other than that I have nothing to do with Russia," he said, referring to the pageant.

The unnamed Russian billionaire cited by the Trump company's lawyers is Dmitry Rybolovlev, whose financial empire springs from his companies' production of potash, often used for fertilizer.

Trump had purchased the 62,000 square-foot estate for $41.35 million in 2004, he sold the mansion to Rybolovlev in July 2008 for $95 million. The deal was widely reported at the time, including by The Associated Press.

When Trump was pressed during a campaign conference last year about his ties to Russia, he said: "You know the closest I came to Russia, I bought a house a number of years ago in Palm Beach," adding that "I sold it to a Russian for $100 million."

The letter, written by attorneys Sheri Dillon and William Nelson from the law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP, simultaneously leaves open the possibility of other Russian ties while attempting to dismiss them.

The letter doesn't vouch for any of Trump's personal federal tax returns that predate the past decade. The attorneys also write that over the last 10 years, it is likely that the Trump Organization sold or rented condos, or other products, that "could have produced income attributable to Russian sources."

"With respect to this last exception, the amounts are immaterial," the attorney wrote.
President Trump took on the media and James Comey in a string of fiery tweets Friday morning, warning the ousted FBI director not to leak details of their conversations while suggesting he could cancel future press briefings -- in response to the media uproar over his team's changing narrative on Comey's firing.

In doing so, the president also gave cover to his embattled representatives who have scrambled to reconcile the president's recent statements and the administration's original explanation.

As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy! Trump wrote. Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???

Trump then fired a shot across the bow at his terminated ex-top cop: "James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

This comes as details from a supposedly private dinner conversation between Trump and Comey emerged in The New York Times.

As for Trump's warning to the press, he was responding to coverage of his claim to NBC News that he was going to fire Comey regardless of any recommendation from his team -- in spite of prior claims suggesting otherwise.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Tuesday night said Trump fired Comey after receiving a written recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, along with a letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions. That memo cited Comeys mishandling of the investigation into Hillary Clintons secret email server as the primary reason for his firing.

That was a DOJ decision, Spicer said.

Vice President Pence, speaking at the Capitol on Wednesday, also pinned the impetus for the firing on Rosenstein and Sessions.

Let me be very clear that the Presidents decision to accept the recommendation of the deputy attorney general and the attorney general to remove Director Comey as the head of the FBI was based solely and exclusively on his commitment to the best interests of the American people and to ensuring that the FBI has the trust and confidence of the people of this nation, Pence said.

Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also said on Wednesday that Trump was merely following the guidance of his top advisers.

I think its real simple, Sanders told MSNBC. The Deputy Attorney Generalmade a very strong recommendation. The president followed it and he made a quick and decisive action to fire James Comey.

But Trump blew up that narrative on his own Thursday during his sit-down interview with NBC. During a conversation in which Trump said Comey was a showboat and grandstander, he was also clear he had made up his mind to fire Comey long ago, no matter what Rosenstein and Sessions told him.

I was going to fire regardless of recommendation, Trump said.

That interview aired less than an hour before Sanders took the podium at the White House press briefing to face a hostile group, upset that what they were told on Wednesday was not the same as what Trump said Thursday. Sanders denied the information she previously supplied was inaccurate and contended the narratives actually matched closely. She also said the White House had not been trying to pin Comeys firing on Rosenstein.

Trumps apparent explanation shift to NBC News has only stoked the battle on Capitol Hill over Comeys firing.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats on Thursday cited the shift in asking DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to probe Trumps firing. They noted that Trump originally cited the memo from Rosenstein in his dismissal of Comey. However, the Democrats letter cited reports that the White House and Justice Department had been working to build a case against Comey, and Trumps own statement to NBC News that he was going to fire Comey regardless of any recommendation.

We believe these circumstances merit a thorough review, and we urge you to address this matter with the utmost urgency. We look forward to your review and a report on your findings, they wrote.

Rosenstein, meanwhile, is being invited to brief all senators as early as next week.
NASA succeeds in its historic spacewalk on Friday, although it all began with a micro-gravity curveball.

International Space Station Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Jack Fischer floated in space and into the record books after the two astronauts made the 200th spacewalk in support of the orbiting laboratory.

But as the astronauts were suited up and preparing to go into the de-pressurization airlock, they noticed a water leak at the connection point of Fischers spacesuit and the stations cooling and power system umbilical cord. That delayed things for a couple hours. But since Fischers spacesuit was unaffected and fine, the historic spacewalk went on, although it had to be shortened from six hours to four.

LAVA WAVES SWEEP ACROSS JUPITER MOON IO'S MASSIVE MOLTEN LAKE

Whitson and Fischer completed the first and most important spacewalk task faster than usual. They replaced an avionics box that supplies data and electricity to the ongoing and critically important science experiments.

Outstanding, Peggy, came the voice from Houstons Mission Control. Were going to have you attach the crewlock bag and lock it.

Whitson and Fischer were so speedy, they were then able to tackle a few other tasks which, due to the water leak delay, NASA doubted could be done in the limited time.

Whitson and Fischer proved them wrong.

Whitson then installed a connector to route data to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which measures cosmic rays, 100 billion cosmic rays to date.

And Fischer installed some thermal insulating over on the Japanese robotic arm.

WORLD'S OLDEST SPACEWOMAN SETS SPACEWALKING RECORD

The 1st spacewalk in support of construction, maintenance or repair of the space station happened in 1998, when the NASA still used space shuttles and the space station itself was like a tiny, New York City apartment compared to the expansive space mansion that it is today.

Above the bay of space shuttle Endeavor, NASA astronauts Jerry Ross and Jim Newman rode the big Canada arm during the STS-88 mission, attaching and outfitting the US Unity module with Russias Zarya module, the first 2 components of the infant station.

After Fridays four-hour spacewalk was complete, and the astronauts were re-entering the airlock to re-pressurize to the 14.7 psi inside the space station, Fischer addressed the end of the 200th spacewalk and how far the space station has come and all the astronauts and support personnel down on Earth over the years.

Its humbling to be a part of their legacy.

And there were actually two records set 250 miles above us on Friday. Peggy Whitson successfully completed her 9th spacewalk, the most of any female astronaut.
Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic has just partnered with startup Boom Technology to build a supersonic aircraft, Boom Technology announced. The plane would zip through the skies faster than the Concorde jet or any other commercial aircraft today, Boom Technology said.

Aircraft that fly faster than the speed of sound were first developed in the mid-20th century. But regulations and technical challenges halted innovation and expansion of the concept, said Boom Technology, which has headquarters in Denver. The aviation startup said it aims to change that by developing a modern, supersonic passenger jet that travels at Mach 2.2. That's twice the speed of sound, or 1,451 mph (2,335 km/h). The Concorde, a now-retired supersonic passenger jet, flew at speeds of up to about 1,350 mph (2,180 km/h).

Boom also aims to set a new speed record for civil aircraft, according to a blog post by Blake Scholl , CEO and founder of Boom. [ Supersonic! The 11 Fastest Military Airplanes ]

At Mach 2.2, passengers could travel between New York City and London in 3 hours and 15 minutes, the company said. The supersonic jet could fly between San Francisco and Tokyo in 5.5 hours, or between Sydney and Los Angeles in 6 hours and 45 minutes.

"Building a supersonic airplane is not easy  but it is important," Scholl wrote, describing the startup's motivations. "While we love the hard engineering and technical challenges, what really drives us is the enormous human benefit of faster travel."

Commercial air travel's last major speed improvement occurred in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with the introduction of commercial jets, Scholl said. Such jets, he said, made possible the "Hawaii vacation," shortening a 15- to 16 -hour flight to just 5 to 6 hours.

Supersonic commercial travel could have a similar impact, making the farthest regions of the planet more accessible, Scholl said.

"Imagine traveling across the Atlantic [Ocean], getting business done [in Europe] and being home to tuck your children into bed," Scholl wrote, "or saving two whole days of a typical round-trip itinerary to Asia.  When time is no longer a limit, where will you vacation? Where will you do business?"

Boom recently raised $33 million in new funding to develop the startup's first supersonic passenger jet. The company will first build the "Baby Boom," a prototype of the eventual full-size Boom aircraft, Air Transport World (ATW) reported .

Baby Boom's first test flight is planned for 2018, Scholl announced at the International Air Transport Association (IATA) Wings of Change conference this week, according to ATW. The full-size Boom, which would carry up to 55 passengers in an all-business-class configuration, is targeted for tests in 2020 and certification from the Federal Aviation Administration by 2023, ATW reported.

Original article on Live Science .
Cyber attacks that hit 74 countries across Europe and Asia Friday, impacting the public health system in Britain, apparently involved a leaked hacking tool from the National Security Agency.

The attack used ransomware, which is malware that encrypts data and locks a user from their data until they pay a ransom. The tool, which was leaked by a group known as Shadow Brokers, had been stolen from the N.S.A. as part of a wide swath of tools illegally released in 2016.

TRUMP CAN WIN THE CYBER WAR (BY FOLLOWING CHURCHILL'S APPROACH)



The Department of Homeland Security released a statement late Friday that read, in part:

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects a computer and restricts users access to it until a ransom is paid to unlock it. ... Individual users are often the first line of defense against this and other threats, and we encourage all Americans to update your operating systems and implement vigorous cybersecurity practices at home, work, and school. These practices include:

Update your systems to include the latest patches and software updates. Do not click on or download unfamiliar links or files in emails. Back up your data to prevent possible loss, whether you are at a home, work, or school computer.

Microsoft said that they had rolled out a patch to fix the issue, but certain targets, including the hospitals in Britain, had not yet updated their systems.

The malware was sent via email with a file attached to it. From there, it subsequently spread.

Tom Donnelly, a spokesman for N.H.S. Digital, said the attack was still "ongoing" and that that the organization was "made aware of it this afternoon," according to an interview in The New York Times.

The impact of the attacks caused phone lines to go down, appointments to be canceled and patients to be turned away, but there has been no reported evidence of patient data being breached.

"It's one of the widest sperad attacks we've ever seen," said Michael Balboni, President of Redland Strategies, a consulting firm that specializes in cybersecurity. Balboni, who is also a former homeland security advisor for the state of New York, said that the possiblity of another attack this size is possible.

"We're entering an age known as cyber-insecurity," Balboni added. "There's going to be a huge response from the public now that doctors and hospitals are being affected, there is going to be a huge shift in how people think about this."

There were a number of pictures posted to social media highlighting the ransomware, which asked for $300 in Bitcoin.

NHS Digital, which oversees cybersecurity in Britain, said the attack did not specifically target the NHS and "is affecting organizations from across a range of sectors." In total, 16 NHS organizations said they were affected.

British Prime Minister Theresa May addressed the hacks, saying it's not just targeted at the NHS.

"This is not targeted at the NHS, its an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected," May said in a statement. "The National Cyber Security Centre is working closely with NHS digital to ensure that they support the organisations concerned and that they protect patient safety."

May added that though she was not aware of any leaked data, vigilance must be taken.

"Of course, it is important that we have set up the National Cyber Security Centre and they are able to work with the NHS organisations concerned and to ensure that they are supported and patient safety is protected," May said.

In addition, several Spanish companies had also been affected via a ransomware attack. Spain did not say which companies were affected, but Telefonica, a telecom giant said it had detected an incident which affected some of its employees.

UK HOSPITALS TURN AWAY PATIENTS AFTER RANSOMWARE ATTACK

Hospital operator NHS Merseyside tweeted "following a suspected national cyberattack, we are taking all precautionary measures possible to protect our local NHS systems and services."



Bart's Health, which also operates a number of London-based hospitals, activated its major incident plan, which included canceling routine appointments and diverting ambulances to different hospitals.
A recent render of the upcoming iPhone may be the closest thing yet to what to expect from Apples overhaul of its flagship phone.

Images and a video appeared this week that offered a compelling take on the design, including a depiction of an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) display  a first for an iPhone  that occupies the entire front of the phone from edge to edge.

The render is based on a leaked CAD image from Onleaks and may offer the most accurate look yet at what the iPhone 8 could look like, according to a report from 9to5Mac, an Apple enthusiast site.

The display in the images and video comports with reports that the OLED screen may be flat  or at least flatter than the curved OLED display on the Samsung Galaxy S8. A recent blog post from an IHS Markit analyst echoes that view.

Appleis said to be launching its first [OLED] iPhone in the third quarter this year, with the company adopting the 18:9 aspect ratio for the first time, wrote IHS Markit analyst David Hsieh this week. Unlike Samsungs dual-edge design, we believe Apple will be using a flat design with no bezel, or what some call [a] full-screen display.

The aspect ratio refers to the height and width of the display. For instance, the new LG G6 phone has an 18:9 format display.

Hsieh adds that smartphones with no bezel will be a trend for major Chinese brands, which are expected to bring out phones with full-screen, borderless displays. The top Chinese brands have developed similar no-bezel product plans, he wrote.

Other rumored iPhone 8 features

The render also shows a vertical dual camera on the back. The vertical alignment of the dual camera is rumored to be related to augmented reality technology expected on the device.

Other conspicuous changes worth noting are stainless steel edges, a la the iPhone 4, as well as an all-glass back. The phone also appears to be slightly thicker than the current iPhone 7.

The render aside, there is no consensus on what will happen to the fingerprint sensor. Some reports claim it will be integrated into the front glass, while others place it on the back. Others claim that Apple is having a tough time integrating the Touch ID fingerprint sensor underneath the glass and may ultimately abandon that approach.

A recent report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, via MacRumors, questions whether OLED iPhone cancels Touch ID (fingerprint recognition).

iPhone 8 delays?

There are also rumors of a delayed launch of the new device, which typically pop up a few months before Apple delivers a new iPhone.

Analyst Kuo believes that there is a "rising probability of worst-case scenario for iPhone shipments." Kuo believes that the production ramp-up for the iPhone 8 could be pushed back to "as late as October-November," according to MacRumors.

A recent research note from investment bank Morgan Stanley said that the new iPhones [are] expected to launch in the month of September and ramp in volume during the December [fourth] quarter.
This is a rush transcript from "Your World," May 11, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: All right, word that Apple is investing a billion bucks in a data center in Nevada.

The former Apple CEO John Sculley is here.

And I only mention it, John, with you here because you're doing other bigger, cooler things now, but that that seems unusual, because that seems to be doing exactly the kind of thing that Donald Trump wants to see. Yet Tim Cook and the president are hardly on the same page.

Is this a quid pro quo? What did you think?

JOHN SCULLEY, CHAIRMAN, RXADVANCE: Well, data is the most valuable resource in the world today. And you see what Amazon and Google and Facebook are doing building data centers as fast as they can.

CAVUTO: But this is one here. And then the president is very big on do more stuff here. Apple is famous for shipping all that abroad.

SCULLEY: Hey, it makes total sense to build it here. Why not?

And Apple wants to expand into services, so why not? It makes total sense, I think.

CAVUTO: I did want to pick your brain a little bit about you make of the Comey dust-up and everything else. Is it distracting? My view is, it distracts from his economic agenda. Whether you like it or not, it's going to push that back, at a minimum.

As a business guy, what do you think?

SCULLEY: Well, here's what I think as a business guy. I'm not a politician.

As a business guy, I believe that every president, including this president, needs a COO. Jim Baker was a COO for President Reagan.

CAVUTO: Like a chief operating officer.

SCULLEY: Absolutely, chief operating officer.

He needs to have somebody who is experienced in the White House that get things done, helps him avoid these unforced errors.

CAVUTO: Well, he has a very good Cabinet. You're talking his immediate advisers aren't...

(CROSSTALK)

SCULLEY: The Cabinet is terrific. He has got a terrific Cabinet.

And he needs to have something comparable to that in the White House, where they're not making the announcements, as they did with Comey, where he sees it on the television, or where they put out the immigration policy. You remember they filed a draft. And it wasn't well-thought through.

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: Well, I understand what you're saying.

There's an argument the president couldn't win no matter when he fired Comey, and he has the perfect right to do that, but that the timing of this was bad. If you were advising him, would you have done it now?

SCULLEY: Well, I would have advised him. And he knows this. He's built buildings all over the world.

CAVUTO: Sure.

SCULLEY: He understands execution is where business, where the rubber hits the road.

And it's no different in government. You have got to be able to execute, but you're doing it in front of the whole world. So, I think they could have done a much better job on execution.

I think the communication needs to be better and I think the execution needs to be better. And the president needs to have somebody who he trusts as a COO. Maybe it's Gary Cohn. I don't know. That's up to the president. That's his choice.

CAVUTO: But it's not the people he has now.

SCULLEY: That's up to his -- his choice.

CAVUTO: OK.

Your latest undertaking is RxAdvance. What is that? Explain.

SCULLEY: Well, this is the most interesting business I have been involved with since Apple. And I have been involved with a lot of pretty cool businesses since then.

What RxAdvance is doing is going in and introducing digital transparency into the entire care continuum of the health care system. We have got in one bucket the most expensive patients who are the chronically ill, about 5 percent of the population, $1.5 trillion of expense.

And there's not good coordination between the physicians. Maybe they have nine different chronic care diseases, taking 15 to 25 pills a day. There needs to be a lot more coordination with actionable analytics.

(CROSSTALK)

CAVUTO: So, to avoid all the overlap and the redundancies.

SCULLEY: Exactly.

McKinsey Global Institute estimates $450 billion of potential savings every year, every year. That could more than pay for health insurance the -- every American.

CAVUTO: Well, who is friendlier to this type of technology, the ObamaCare plan or what the Republicans are cooking up?

SCULLEY: Well, I think Obama plan made a big mistake, as they did with a lot of things they did, where they looked to regulation as being the answer for everything.

And the reality is that, in ObamaCare, there are federal mandates, which are the 10 essential benefits, controlled at the federal level, which are not required in every state. So, giving the states more responsibility and authority makes total sense, particularly for Medicaid.

CAVUTO: All right, are you worried when you hear that Aetna now is going to be out of these exchanges by next year? They're running out of -- people forget, with ObamaCare, the way it is now, it's not sustainable math-wise, right?

SCULLEY: Well, I'm not surprised.

CAVUTO: Yes.

SCULLEY: We have already seen UnitedHealth pull out. Aetna says they're pulling out.

These exchanges were badly conceived. It was kind of the default position, when they couldn't get single-payer system in. So they created the exchanges with the assumption that turned out to be totally wrong that young people would balance the older risk pool. And it just didn't work.

And these health insurance companies are losing hundreds of billions of dollars. So, we need something much better-thought-out.

CAVUTO: Both sides need to talk to entrepreneurs.

SCULLEY: Exactly.

CAVUTO: Which I guess would be you.

John Sculley, the former CEO of Apple, now RxAdvance, this guy's mind is always percolating. I would just, like, maybe watch TV for a little bit.

END

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This is a rush transcript from "Your World," May 11, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: With us right now is Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley on what the president said, when he said it.

Senator, very good to have you. Thanks for taking the time.

SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY, R-IOWA: Thank you.

CAVUTO: I know there is not much you can tell me about private meetings you had with the former FBI director. But you did come very close to verifying what the president just told Lester Holt of NBC News when you talked about Mr. Comey briefing you and the ranking member, Senator Feinstein, on the targets of various investigations.

You said that: "It wouldn't be appropriate for me to reveal those details before the professionals conducting the investigation are ready."

You went on to say, sir, that, on Tuesday: "The president's letter said that Director Comey told him he was not under investigation. Senator Feinstein and I heard nothing that contradicted the president's statement."

So, it sounds like you're saying -- and I don't want to put words in your mouth, Senator -- the president was telling the truth.

GRASSLEY: I -- I can only stand by what I said.

And I was very careful how I said it, because I didn't want to violate anything that goes on in those secured briefings. But I can say I didn't hear anything that indicated or contradicted what the president said. Now, you -- a lot of people are getting into, was it appropriate for the president to ask those questions?

I think the question ought to be who -- it isn't who asked the question. Is it appropriate for the people that answered the question to answer the question to the president?

And, of course, that would have been Comey. And I will leave it up to Comey whether or not that was permissible for him to ask the question. But I could ask the FBI, am I being investigated? And it would be up to them to say I was being investigated or not being investigated.

CAVUTO: So, you seem to be casting doubts as to whether it's appropriate for Director Comey to be telling the president.

GRASSLEY: I will leave it up to Mr. Comey whether or not he violated anything by telling the president that, because I can't make that judgment.

CAVUTO: All right, I understand that, Senator. But it would have happened no fewer than three times.

Now, the reason why this is getting to be such an issue, as you already outlined, is that there's confusion about who relayed what and when. I didn't even know about this dinner that the FBI director had, Mr. Comey and the president, and obviously that issue came up.

Do you think that an issue, regardless who is asking that, that that kind of thing should come up at a dinner?

GRASSLEY: I one time asked an FBI director -- and I don't want to say which one it was -- I said, could I see what is in my file? And the FBI director said, I don't even know what is in my file.

So, I think it's a pretty closely watched situation that nobody gets into those things, unless there's a very good reason for doing it.

CAVUTO: OK.

Senator, you also pointed out, "Now Mr. Comey is no longer the FBI director, you said, but the FBI should still follow my advice. It should confirm to the public whether it is or is not investigating the president. Because it has failed to make this clear, speculation has run rampant."

GRASSLEY: Well, I prefaced that in my remarks by saying that, normally, for the average American person, it shouldn't be made public.

But I think, when you're talking about high-level public officials that -- and there ought to be a reason for letting the public know whether somebody is being investigated. And I don't want to say whether it's the president or the vice president, member of Congress or the Senate or a Cabinet maybe.

But there's some point where the public's business ought to be more public, if you're going to have accountability in government.

CAVUTO: This comes at a time, sir, when your North Carolina Republican colleague Senator Burr and Justin Amash in the House have said, you know, that maybe now is the time to create an independent Russia commission.

What do you think?

GRASSLEY: I think the reason we got into this way back in January is because we want transparency, we want to get to the bottom of whether or not Russia -- what role they played in the election. There's no evidence whatsoever now that they changed one vote, but that suspicion is out there.

And if you're going to have people be less cynical about the institution of the government, we ought to get to the bottom of it. Well, that's -- we're in the process of doing that.

A special counsel has been suggested. A special counsel never releases any information unless there's an indictment. It's going to take a while to crank up a special commission. And they obviously would give a report. But that's delaying things.

We have got four committees of Congress working on it. We don't need any lost time. We ought to proceed where we are and get to the bottom of it the way we're doing it.

CAVUTO: The reason why I mention is, Senator Burr went on to say: "I'm troubled by the timing and reasoning of Director Comey's termination. His dismissal further confuses an already difficult investigation by the committee," hence going back to this idea of an independent commission.

Others have recommended a special prosecutor. They argue that, left in the hands of committees that are dominated by Republicans, you will never got to the bottom of that. What do you say?

GRASSLEY: There's great cooperation evidenced by Burr and Senator Warner of Virginia, very bipartisan.

You're seeing Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Graham of South Carolina working very closely in the subcommittee of my committee. I don't know about the House of Representatives, but those two environments in the House, there's a great deal of bipartisanship. I don't think that's legitimate.

CAVUTO: All right, that's good to hear.

Acting FBI Director McCabe went in the hot seat today, Senator, and said there's no widespread loss of confidence at the FBI, directly contradicting President Trump, who said, in light of what was going on with Comey and how he handled the whole Clinton e-mail mess, that there was.

What did you think of that?

GRASSLEY: I think that that's a judgment people make.

And I think there's a great deal of rallying among troops, whether they be Marines or whether they be FBI agents, behind the organization.

CAVUTO: Senator, is it your sense that whoever the president appoints to replace Director Comey, they shouldn't have been actively involved in his campaign, thereby potentially ruling out Chris Christie, Rudy Giuliani, people like that?

Do you agree?

GRASSLEY: I believe that, with all of the problems that we have getting a new administration going, for reasons beyond just Comey and that vacancy, there ought to be every safety taken to make sure we don't become more controversial.

CAVUTO: Senator, I would ask you, it's not as if you guys don't have other things to do. You have a big economic agenda, an effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, move on tax cuts. Are you worried that this is going to get delayed?

GRASSLEY: No, because we have a division of government between executive, legislative and judicial, and Congress has its own role. And we're not being affected by it if we have a determination to move forward.

CAVUTO: All right.

As chairman of this committee, then, Senator, I just want to be very clear. Is it your view, vantage point of heading Judiciary here, that any push for an independent prosecutor or an independent commission is unwarranted right now, even with what you heard from Mr. McCabe today?

GRASSLEY: That's my personal view. And I thought you were quoting Burr to have a special commission, and not McCabe.

CAVUTO: No, no, I was. I was. That was from Burr before.

GRASSLEY: OK.

CAVUTO: I'm just saying, the initial things that and the conflicts and the contradictions you heard from McCabe today on other matters, the one I alluded to before.

GRASSLEY: Well, I would be expressing a lack of confidence in what I respect about Warner and Burr, what they're doing on the Intelligence Committee, and what Whitehouse and Graham are doing on the subcommittee of my full committee.

CAVUTO: I did want to get you a -- one last answer as well to respond to Democrats who keep using the term Nixonian, who go back to Saturday Night Massacre, referring to the time when Richard Nixon get rid of Archibald Cox, the Watergate prosecutor, as well as his acting attorney general and deputy.

What do you think of that? They constantly bring that up and they constantly use that as what's going on here today.

GRASSLEY: Well, the other day -- and I want to give a longer answer.

But the other day, I said they ought to suck up and move on. But let me give a further explanation. You have got to remember that a key person in this decision, because the president asked them for their advice, was a memo by Rosenstein. He was approved by the United States Senate 94-6. He served under both Republican and Democrat presidents.

And he has wide respect. And the president appointed him. And if you're a member -- a Democratic member of the Senate and talking about Nixonian, you're really saying that you're losing confidence in one of the people you voted for that President Obama had great respect for and kept in his administration. It doesn't add up to me.

CAVUTO: Do you buy what The Washington Post is reporting, Senator, that Rosenstein was upset with being fingered making and being responsible for these chain of events and pushing Comey out?

GRASSLEY: I think that -- well, it's my understanding that, since then, that's been discredited. That's all I can respond to at this point.

CAVUTO: So, you don't believe that? You don't believe that story?

GRASSLEY: No.

CAVUTO: OK.

GRASSLEY: I think -- I think -- I think Rosenstein is a principled man, that he wouldn't make a big deal out of it. He would just go.

CAVUTO: All right.

Senator Grassley, very good catching up with you. Appreciate it, sir.

GRASSLEY: Thank you.

CAVUTO: All right.

END

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Micaela Bensko and her service dog, Blue Belle, have a bone to pick with Virgin America.

Bensko, who is wheelchair-bound and suffers from arachnoiditis and complex regional pain syndrome as a result of an accident in 2011, is alleging that Blue Belle was denied entry into Virgin Atlantics lounge on May 10 at John F. Kennedy International Airport-- despite having the necessary credentials for a service animal and paying extra to use the facilities.

According to Bensko, Virgin Atlantic staff were worried about the possible discomfort of others, and requested a doctors note before allowing Blue Belle to enter.

Bensko told Fox News that she and her dog were turned away after she already obtained clearance to use the Virgin Atlantic lounge from an attendant at the check-in desk.

BLIND WOMAN CLAIMS SHE AND HER SERVICE DOG WERE KICKED OFF AMERICAN AIRLINES FLIGHT

I had gone to the Virgin desk to check in, I told them my condition, that I had to get into the lounge, said Bensko, adding that she needed the use of the lounge because she cant sit upright for extended periods of time without suffering spinal contractions and acute pain. I paid $75 to use that lounge  they even printed me a special ticket [to get in].

However, when Bensko finally arrived at the lounge, a Virgin employee said her special ticket wasnt enough to gain entry. She began filming incident and recently posted the video to YouTube.

Its not policy, an employee can be heard telling Bensko.

Bensko responds by saying she was well aware of the laws and regulations regarding service animals, and that she needed no such note to bring Blue Belle into the lounge.

It is a federal law that [Blue Belle] does not need a letter, said Bensko, who was flying from JFK to LAX on Virgin America, but paid the extra to use Virgin Atlantics lounge. She performs a service for me. I cannot get around without her because my neck is compromised.

In some places, youre not even allowed to ask which services she performs for me, added Bensko.

Virgin Atlantics regulations stipulate that passengers present an identification card for any service animal, a harness, or give a credible verbal statement. Emotional support animals, on the other hand, require further documentation.

Regardless, the Virgin employee continued to deny Bensko and her dog entry into the lounge. Bensko then asked if she could to lay on the ground near the entrance of the lounge, as her back was bothering her but was told to wait for a supervisor.

After pleading with the Virgin employee, Bensko eventually wheeled herself to a different area in order to lay down.

Im devastated, Bensko says through tears. I know a lot of people are doing videos now about airline, but this just hits home for so many people, because we go through so much stuff already.

Bensko also told Fox News that shes not planning to file a lawsuit against Virgin  she merely wants the airline industry to better train their employees on how to deal with passengers with disabilities.

My main issue with this, and what I constantly encounter with service  theres just no training as to the laws, the federal laws, mandated by our government between service animals and emotional support animals, she said.

I pressed record because nobody sees these things, with disabled people, added Bensko of her motivation to film the incident. People can see us, but they dont look because they dont wanna see.

Virgin Atlantic says they are currently investigating the incident. In a statement obtained by Fox News, the airline apoligzed for the experience Bensko endured, and stated that all customers [with] support dogs are welcome in our Clubhouses.

As soon as we were made aware of this incident, we sent an urgent reminder to our Clubhouse teams to clarify the policy around support dogs, and will be investigating further to improve the way the situation was handled, wrote Virgin. It is never our intention to disappoint our customers and were keen to speak directly with the customer to understand what improvements we can make to ensure this doesnt happen again, and to offer our heartfelt apologies.

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But while Bensko has yet to hear from Virgin Atlantic directly, she tells Fox News that her grievance goes so far beyond anything that can be managed by a phone call.

She has penned an open letter to the airline industry, because, when it comes to this issue, she says shes physically unable to keep quiet.

[I] hope it can somehow spark a change in how airlines and corporations train (or in this case, don't train) their employees as to the federal laws mandated specifically to protect the disabled.

I hope my experience opens this conversation much needed between the airlines and the ADA community.
Sgt. Pepper fever is sweeping the globe. Thankfully, Indiana isnt inoculated.

Jeffersonville locals and visitors are getting an apropos celebration May 25-29 that coincides with the 50th anniversary of one of the more iconic albums ever produced.

"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" was released on June 1, 1967, and quickly became one of the Beatles most beloved albums.

To this day, it remains a treasure with hits like the eponymous Sgt. Peppers, With a Little Help from My Friends and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

If you're in the area and have your bright-colored military uniform handy, head over to WAVE 3 News Abbey Road on the River festival. Its easy to spot, as this year the event is being held at the Big 4 Station Park, located at Chestnut and Pearl Streets.

Beatles fans from all over will be in attendance to celebrate not just the entirety of the bands catalog but this years selection of honor.

Like any good guest, dont tell the album its turning 50. Nobody wants to hear how old theyre getting.

But chin up, because there is good news even if you happen to remember when this record actually dropped. For one, the album itself is getting a special re-release on May 26. The festival is also hosting a kick-off concert on May 25 that will help you shed any blues you might be carrying.

That particular concert is thanks to a collaboration with 91.9 WFPK Independent Louisville. Jake Clemons, the saxophonist from Bruce Springsteens E Street Band, will be in attendance to do his thing along with other musicians who plan to regale crowds with live music starting at 2:00 p.m.

The May 25 concert is free all day. However, you'll have to pay to get into the festival. Prices range from $25 for Friday entry all the way up to $219.95 for the Ultimate Ticket to Ride.

Your money gets you into one heck of a party with various talks planned on the weekend, featuring the likes of Bruce Spizer (Beatles historian), Beatles artist Shannon and expert Scott Freiman. Concerts will feature Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone, The Family Stone, The Grass Roots, the above-mentions Jake Clemons and more.

Dont worry if you cant get out to Indiana. You can still celebrate your favorite band thanks to Googles immersive Inside Abbey Road experience. You could also gawk at silly tourists making fools of themselves at the nearby Abbey Road online.

Then again, there is something to be said for simply taking out one of your albums and throwing it on the turntable.

Regardless, lets all cheers a 50-year-old masterpiece.
A Louisiana State Police trooper and at least one other officer were shot Thursday during a standoff with a man who they'd tried to serve a warrant on in rural Avoyelles Parish.

State police spokesman Maj. M. Doug Cain said the officers were taken to area hospitals for treatment of non-life threatening injuries. Their names have not been released.

Cain said the suspected gunman was taken into custody about 7:20 p.m. He had been barricaded inside his house in Moreauville.

Avoyelles Parish Sheriff Doug Anderson told The Advocate (http://bit.ly/2qZxWCk ) Brandon Carpenter, 35, barricaded himself after he rammed his vehicle into officer's vehicles during a chase on Highway 316 near Hessmer. It was unclear how the chase began.

Anderson said Carpenter fired a shotgun, apparently loaded with bird shot, and hit the trooper in the shoulder and the officer in the lip.

Carpenter had a warrant for domestic abuse battery, Anderson told The Advocate.

Avoyelles Parish is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Alexandria.
Military drills on Guam in which four countries were to practice amphibious landings and moving their troops have been postponed indefinitely after a French landing craft ran aground Friday.

The weeklong exercises involving the U.S., U.K., France and Japan were intended to show support for the free passage of vessels in international waters amid concerns China may restrict access to the South China Sea.

The French landing craft ran aground just offshore and didn't hit coral or spill any fuel, said Jeff Landis, a spokesman for Naval Base Guam. No one was injured. Friday's landing was meant to be a rehearsal for a drill at Tinian island on Saturday, Landis said.

U.S. Navy Capt. Jeff Grimes, chief of staff for Joint Region Marianas, said the authorities involved were working to assess the situation and didn't know when the drills would resume.

"I have directed that we stop all operations associated with this exercise until we conduct a further assessment of the situation as we gather all the facts," Grimes said.

"NOAA in Honolulu is aware and is collecting information about the incident," said Michael Tosatto, administrator of a National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration regional office.

The drills around Guam and Tinian islands were scheduled to include amphibious landings, delivering forces by helicopter and urban patrols.

Two French ships on a four-month deployment to the Indian and Pacific oceans were to be involved. Joining were Japanese forces, U.K. helicopters and 70 U.K. troops deployed with the French amphibious assault ship FS Mistral. Parts of the exercise were to feature British helicopters taking U.S. Marines ashore from a French vessel.

China claims virtually the entire South China Sea and has tried to fortify those claims by building islands  some with runways, radars and weapons systems  on seven mostly submerged reefs. The reclamation work is opposed by other governments that claim the atolls and by the United States, which insists on freedom of navigation in international waters.

China says its work is intended to improve safety for ships and meet other civilian purposes. It has said it won't interfere with freedom of navigation or overflight, although questions remain on whether that includes military ships and aircraft.

This week members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expressed concern that the U.S. hasn't conducted freedom-of-navigation operations since October. Republican Bob Corker, Democrat Ben Cardin and five other senators wrote the letter to President Donald Trump, saying they supported a recent U.S. military assessment that China is militarizing the South China Sea and is continuing a "methodical strategy" to control it.

The letter, dated Wednesday and obtained by The Associated Press, urged the administration to "routinely exercise" freedom of navigation and overflight.

Japan, which sent 50 soldiers and 160 sailors and landing craft, has been investing in amphibious training so it can defend its own islands. Japan controls a group of rocky, uninhabited outcrops in the East China Sea that Beijing also claims. Japan calls the islands Senkaku while China calls them Diaoyu.

Japanese defense officials said they were waiting for further details, including what happens to the rest of the exercise in Guam, from the U.S. side. The four militaries were to move to the Tinian islands for more training next week.

Guam and Tinian are about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) south of Tokyo and about the same distance to the east from Manila, Philippines.

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This story has been corrected to describe the French vessel as a landing unit, instead of a twin-float catamaran.

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McAvoy reported from Honolulu. Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington and Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report..
The Latest on the manslaughter trial of Betty Jo Shelby, a white Tulsa police officer, in the fatal Sept. 16 fatal shooting of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man (all times local):

8 p.m.

The supervisor of a white Oklahoma police officer who shot an unarmed black man told her to say nothing about the incident because he knew the shooting would be racially explosive.

Tulsa police Cpl. Wyett Poth testified Thursday about his directions to Officer Betty Jo Shelby after the shooting of Terence Crutcher. He said he walked up to Shelby at the shooting scene to make sure she knew she had the right to say nothing.

The testimony came in the second day of Shelby's manslaughter trial for the Sept. 16 shooting.

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10:40 a.m.

Six witnesses have testified that an unarmed black man who was fatally shot by a white Oklahoma police officer didn't say or do anything indicating he posed a threat to officers at the scene.

A police officer who was inside a police helicopter hovering overhead last September described 40-year-old Terence Crutcher as looking "like a bad dude" who "could be on something." Moments later, Tulsa officer Betty Jo Shelby shot Crutcher.

Officer Michael Richert's statement outraged Crutcher's family, who said it indicated racial bias. Richert told prosecutors Wednesday he "had no idea" if Crutcher was on something when he was shot.

Prosecutors charged Shelby with manslaughter, saying she overreacted when she fatally shot Crutcher because he was obeying her commands.

Shelby has pleaded not guilty. Her trial continues Thursday.
A suspect is in custody after three Louisiana police officers were shot Thursday during a standoff following a car chase.

A spokesperson with the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff's Office told WAFB-TV a Louisiana State Police trooper, a Marksville police officer, and a Simmesport police officer, were hurt in the shooting.

All three suffered non-life threatening injuries and were transported to local hospitals, officials said.

The incident took place in Moreauville, located about 80 miles northwest of Baton Rouge.

Sheriff Douglas Anderson told WBRZ-TV the standoff happened after a car chase earlier Thursday afternoon that started near the town of Hessmer.

The trooper and local officer approached the window of a home, to negotiate with a man barricaded inside, when he aimed a shotgun at the officers and pulled the trigger, according to Anderson.

The suspect has been identified to WAFB-TV as Brandon Arthur Carpenter.

Read more from WAFB.

Read more from WBRZ.
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President Donald Trump is considering nearly a dozen candidates to succeed ousted FBI Director James Comey, choosing from a group that includes several lawmakers, attorneys and law enforcement officials.

White House officials said Friday the president was moving expeditiously to find an interim FBI director along with a permanent replacement for Comey, who was fired Tuesday.

The list includes Texas Sen. John Cornyn, South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy, former Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers and former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, according to two White House officials briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

Here's a look at the 11 candidates under consideration as a permanent replacement for Comey.

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SEN. JOHN CORNYN

Cornyn is the No. 2 Senate Republican and a former Texas attorney general and state Supreme Court justice. He has been a member of the Senate GOP leadership team for a decade and serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the aftermath of Comey's dismissal, Cornyn said Trump was "within his authority" to fire him and said it would not affect the investigation of possible Russian ties to Trump's presidential campaign.

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REP. TREY GOWDY

The South Carolina Republican is best known for leading the congressional inquiry into the deadly attacks on a U.S. facility in Benghazi, Libya, a panel that oversaw a lengthy grilling of Hillary Clinton in 2015. A former federal prosecutor and state attorney, Gowdy was elected to Congress in the 2010 tea party wave and has focused on law enforcement issues. He originally endorsed Florida Sen. Marco Rubio for president before backing Trump in May 2016.

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FORMER REP. MIKE ROGERS

Rogers is the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He served Michigan in Congress for more than a decade before stepping down in 2015. Rogers worked for the FBI as a special agent based in Chicago in the 1990s and briefly advised Trump's transition team on national security issues. His name was floated as a possible replacement for then-FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2013, and he received support from an association of FBI agents before President Barack Obama chose Comey.

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RAY KELLY

Kelly was commissioner of the New York City Police Department for more than a decade, serving two mayors. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, he created the first counterterrorism bureau of any municipal police department and oversaw a drastic reduction in crime. But Kelly also came under fire for his use of aggressive police tactics, including a program that spied on Muslims and a dramatic spike in the use of stop-and-frisk, which disproportionately affected non-white New Yorkers.

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J. MICHAEL LUTTIG

Luttig, the general counsel for Boeing Corp., is viewed as a conservative legal powerhouse from his tenure as a judge on the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and his time as a Justice Department lawyer. He was considered for two U.S. Supreme Court vacancies that went to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. Luttig clashed with the Bush White House on a prominent terror case, rebuking the administration for its actions in the case involving "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla.

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LARRY THOMPSON

A deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush, Thompson served as the department's No. 2 from 2001 to 2003. Among his most high-profile actions was allowing Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar to be deported to Syria, where he was tortured, after being falsely named as a terrorist. Thompson also served as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia and held several high-level positions at PepsiCo.

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PAUL ABBATE

Abbate is a senior official at the FBI, currently responsible for the bureau's criminal and cyber branch. He previously led FBI field offices in Washington, one of the agency's largest, and in Detroit. He's been deeply involved for years in FBI efforts to fight terrorism, serving in supervisory roles in Iraq and Afghanistan and later overseeing FBI international terrorism investigations as a section chief. He's been with the FBI for more than 20 years, and is one of the FBI officials who interviewed this week for the role of interim director.

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ALICE FISHER

Currently a partner at the law firm Latham & Watkins specializing in white-collar criminal and internal investigations, Fisher formerly served as assistant attorney general for the Criminal Division of the Justice Department. Fisher faced resistance from Democrats during her confirmation over her alleged participation in discussions about detention policies at the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba. She also served as deputy special counsel to the Senate special committee that investigated President Bill Clinton's Whitewater scandal. If selected, she would be the bureau's first female director.

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ANDREW MCCABE

A Duke-educated lawyer, McCabe was named last year as the FBI's deputy director, the No. 2 position in the bureau, overseeing significant investigations and operations. Since joining the FBI more than 20 years ago, he's held multiple leadership positions, including overseeing the FBI's national security branch and its Washington field office. McCabe became acting director after Comey was fired, but has shown a repeated willingness to break from White House explanations of the ouster and its characterizations of the Russia investigation.

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MICHAEL GARCIA

A former New York prosecutor, Garcia has served as an associate judge on the New York Court of Appeals  the state's highest court  since early 2016. He served as the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan from 2005 to 2008, and previously held high-level positions in the Commerce Department, the Justice Department and Homeland Security.

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JOHN SUTHERS

A former U.S. Attorney and Colorado attorney general, Suthers was elected mayor of Colorado Springs in 2015. He is widely respected among state law enforcement and many Colorado Democrats. Suthers was inspired to become a prosecutor after he spent part of an internship in the Colorado Springs district attorney's office watching the trial of a gang of soldiers convicted of killing various citizens, including actor Kelsey Grammer's sister, during a crime spree in the 1970s.

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Follow Colvin and Thomas on Twitter at https://twitter.com/colvinj and https://twitter.com/KThomasDC. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Nick Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report.
An Oklahoma woman struck gold when she found a 2.65-carat diamond at an Arkansas state park in less than 10 minutes.

Victoria Brodski and her family visited Crater of Diamonds State Park on Saturday after she heard someone found a 7.44-carat diamond there in March, according to the Arkansas State Parks website.

Brodski, 25, picked up a shiny object she thought was a pretty piece glass minutes after she arrived that morning. She dropped it in her pocket and kept searching for diamonds for the rest of the day.

$7.7 MILLION BID FOR SIERRA LEONE 709-CARAT DIAMOND FAILS

Brodski realized hours later that she picked up more than a piece of glass when she was at the park's Diamond Discovery Center.

"I was looking at pictures of diamonds on display and noticed their similarity to what I had found, Brodski told the park.

A park staff confirmed she found a brown diamond, which she later named Michelangelo  after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. It was one of the three diamonds found that day and the second largest uncovered at the park so far this year.

"Its about the size of a bead, with a dark brown color, like raw honey. It has a smooth, rounded surface and appears free of blemishes, inside and out," Park interpreter Waymon Cox said.

GEORGIA COUPLE ADOPTS 7 SIBLINGS WHO SPENT YEARS IN FOSTER CARE

Brodski said she will be selling the diamond and splitting the money with her family.

"We made a contract before we came, that we would split anything we found among the four of us," she said.

Brodski found the diamond where water flows through and deposits gravel.

Since diamonds are heavier than most small rocks, they're often found near heavy minerals.
A Barnesville, Georgia man recently proved it's never too late to achieve your dreams.

Horace Sheffield, more commonly known as "Pop," has become an internet sensation after graduating from college at 88-years-old.

Mr. Sheffield graduated from high school in 1959 and enrolled at Shorter University in Rome in 1961; however, he never was able finish college and left in 1965. At the time, his oldest daughter, Judy, was about to begin college herself.

"My grandfather and grandmother were married young," Sheffield's granddaughter, Jill Brazier, told FOX 5 News. "They had kids and he ended up dropping out to help educate his own children."

Horace and Bernice Sheffield had three children together, five grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.

"He's a family man," Brazier said. "He took care of my grandma, grandkids and great-grandkids, but now it's time to focus on himself."

Brazier describes her Pop as an incredibly determined man, so she wasn't surprised when he told her he wanted to go back to school and earn his college degree.

"That's one thing in his life that he had never finished," she said.

Sheffield enrolled at Shorter University two years ago and was able to pick right back up where he left off, with 115 hours of study. Not only was his tuition free, but he was able to take all of his classes online.

According to Brazier, Amanda Brannock, who attends their church, played a huge role in helping him graduate. Sheffield had a week to complete assignments, which he would write down on paper. Then, Brannock helped him by typing them up and submitting them online.

"She's so proud," Brazier said. "We are very thankful for her."

Following countless hours of hard work, Sheffield earned his Bachelors of Science in Christian Studies and was a proud member of the 2017 graduating class.

"We are very, very proud of him," Brazier said. "It's been a long time coming."

Click for more from Fox 5 Atlanta.
An Arizona man landed back in jail after investigators said his text about a drug deal went to the wrong number: a parole officer.

Christopher Willmon allegedly was trying to sell heroin on Tuesday when he arranged the pickup at his home in Kingman, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. But instead of texting the customer, he contacted his parole officer.

GAMESTOP SOLD A USED VIDEO GAME FILLED WITH METH

Officers found Willmon hiding in a shed with a cellphone and the heroin he was trying to sell, the newspaper added.

Willmon was arrested and charged with possession of narcotic drugs for sale and parole violation warrant.

Six other people, including the property owner, Jon Dudek, were arrested on Tuesday. Dudek admitted to officials that he had been selling methamphetamine for more than 50 years, KNXV reported.

They also face several charges including possession of dangerous drugs for sale.
California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that he is withholding $50 million from the University of California in light of an audit last month that claimed to have found a stash of $175 million in secret funds while officials requested more money from the state.

In his latest budget proposal for Californias 2017-2018 fiscal year, Brown said the money will only be released when UC makes progress in fixing its financial problems in addition to meeting other conditions set by his office, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Brown said he wants more transparency and financial reporting from the school system. He also criticized administrators' salaries as being too high.

I put the $50 million (the amount he is withholding) in there to hold their feet to the fire, Brown said.

A state audit found that under university system President Janet Napolitano, former Department of Homeland Security chief, UC administrators hid $175 million from the public while increasing tuition and asking the state for more money.

The UC Board of Regents in January voted to increase in-state tuition and fees by $336 next academic year. Some lawmakers called for a reversal of the tuition hike in the wake of the audit.

When asked if he still has confidence in Napolitano as president, Brown defended her, saying the governing Board of Regents and others generally think she is doing a good job.

State Auditor Elaine Howle told lawmakers earlier this month that she faced an unprecedented lack of cooperation from Napolitano's office while it was under audit. She detailed efforts by the office to edit responses from individual UC campuses to survey questions from auditors.

Napolitano's office "inappropriately screened" the campuses' responses and altered statements and ratings that were initially critical of the office, the audit said.

Napolitano said she coordinated with the individual campuses on their audit responses to ensure they were accurate.

"My team made the decision to work with our campuses to ensure they understood the purpose of the audit and the audit's scope," Napolitano said. "I am sorry that we did it this way because it has created the wrong impression and detracted from the important fact that we accept the recommendations in the audit report."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Authorities say a woman shot and wounded a Chicago police officer during a traffic stop but that a protective vest likely saved his life.

Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi (goo-lee-EHL'-mee) says two officers observed suspicious activity by two people and stopped a vehicle in the West Garfield Park neighborhood. When officers approached on foot, the man fled and the woman pulled a gun and fired on the officers.

Guglielmi says one officer was shot in the chest. He was able to return fire, striking the woman in the abdomen. The unidentified woman in her 20s was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition.

The officer was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood suffering bruises to the chest. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson says the vest saved the officer's life.
With guns drawn, two women navigate the halls of a high school under siege in a realistic police simulation. Theyre not police cadets, but clergy learning about the difficult shoot or dont shoot decisions officers face in high-pressure situations.

After completing the drill, the Rev. Yvette Massey said she was eager to share the lessons she learned with her congregation.

I do want to help them to see the pressure that law enforcement are under when it comes to making split-second decisions, the United Methodist pastor in Atlanta told Fox News.

'FERGUSON EFFECT' LEGIT? POLICE LAUD FBI REPORT THAT SAYS COP KILLINGS 'NEW NORM'

Putting faith leaders through computer simulations and live-active shooter drills is part of a new initiative called One Congregation One Precinct (One COP). The program uses houses of worship as liaisons between police and the communities they serve.

No one benefits from screaming at each other, said the Rev. Markel Hutchins. We only benefit when we have the courage to talk to each other. And a lot of the protests and the demonstrations, while passionate and understandable, have fallen short of actually being curative.

This week, organizers of the Atlanta-based initiative announced they were taking One COP nationwide. Through activities and community meetings, they hope to resolve conflicts before they turn violent.

DALLAS SNIPER WHO GUNNED DOWN 5 COPS 'WANTED TO KILL WHITE PEOPLE,' CHIEF SAYS

According to Hutchins, getting police and residents to know each other on a human level is key to preventing violence. Police need contact with law-abiding residents, not just criminals, in the neighborhoods they patrol. And residents need contact with officers outside of traffic stops and criminal investigations.

Such initiatives become all the more important when police live outside the communities in which they work.

In large measure, the police-involved tragedies  whether it is the assassination of police officers in Dallas or the killing of Walter Scott or whatever the issue has been across this country  most of it has been fear based, Hutchins said. It is very easy to fear those whom you dont know. But its very difficult to fear those whom you do know. Our whole point is the police have got to know the communities and the communities have got to know the police.
Police have identified the man accused of killing three people at a nursing home in Ohio on Friday morning.

An officer on scene confirmed to FOX 28 that 43-year-old Thomas Hartless is the man suspected of shooting Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric DiSario and two employees at the Pine Kirk Care Center in the small community of Kirkersville.

The shooter killed 36-year-old Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario who was responding to a 911 call from the Pine Kirk Care Center, Fox 28 reported. Investigators later found three bodies inside the home including the killer, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorpe said.

When the shooter got close the nursing home, he took two passers-by as hostages; they were both later released, unharmed.

A motive for the shootings was unclear.

Authorities said at a Friday press conference that a search warrant will be executed for the shooters home in Utica and that search warrants were already executed for two of his vehicles.

The last radio transmission from Disario informed dispatch that he had the gunman in his sights. When backup units arrived, they found Disario's body in the street.

The names of the other two victims, both women who worked at the nursing home, have not been released.

Disario had six children and another baby on the way, Thorpe said.

VIDEO: RELATIVE OF MURDER VICTIM LUNGES AT KILLER IN COURT

Thorpe set another news conference for later Friday afternoon.

Witness Jeffrey Griffin said he heard the gunshots while dropping his kids off at a babysitters house. He said people took off running from the Pine Kirk Care Center, and he was pretty stunned.

INDIANAPOLIS 'PURGE' KILLER SENTENCED

Police had previously told people in the area to stay inside their homes. Kirkersville Elementary School went on lockdown during the incident and closed for the day.

Kirkersville is about 24 miles east of Columbus.

The shooting closed down the main street in the village, which was flooded with police officers from several surrounding agencies and with ambulances.

The state Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the probe into what happened.

Click for more from Fox 28.

Fox News' Mike Arroyo, Cody Derespina and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
On July 9, 1962, Hawaii was hit by a massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, which within minutes took down the states communications systems and traffic lights  virtually everything that ran on electricity.

The EMP wasnt an attack by a foreign government; rather the U.S. government had set off a 1.4-megaton nuclear warhead at a height of 248 miles above Johnston Atoll in an operation the military named Starfish Prime. The test caused radio disruptions in Hawaii, California, and Alaska, and knocked out six satellites above the Pacific.

No one expected the test to impact Hawaii, because it was 850 miles away, said Toby Clairmont, deputy administrator for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, which is located within one of Hawaiis most recognizable landmarks, Diamond Head. This kind of blast does not hurt people, but as weve seen, it shuts down power and phones and goes after infrastructure and could cause problems at medical facilities.

With North Korea developing its nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities, Hawaii defense experts are concerned North Korea could target the 50th state with an EMP attack. Such an explosion, if executed high enough in the atmosphere, could be hundreds of miles from Hawaii and still damage its operations and communications.

This is not theoretical. It has already happened, said Clairmont, noting significant damage was done to both civilian and military electrical and communications systems.

The concern regarding the threat of an EMP attack on Hawaiis electrical grid and communications systems is real and must be taken seriously, U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, told Fox News.

Almost every aspect of our lives is reliant on electricity, much more so than in 1962  everything from banking to health care to communications to automobiles  so you can imagine the devastating impact such an attack could have, Gabbard said.

In Hawaii, there is an added layer of risk even if the attack were not directed at Hawaii, Gabbard said.

If an attack occurred on the mainland and the electric grid were shut down on the West Coast, it would create a crisis in Hawaii through the total disruption of our food and energy supply chain, Gabbard said.

Hawaii is possibly a more desirable target than other states, warned Dean Cheng, senior research fellow with the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, in part because the headquarters for the United States Pacific Command at Camp Smith is on Oahu, and the state has 11 military bases, including Pearl Harbor.

Dave Benham, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Command, said his agency is ready to counter any threat to U.S. interests in an area of responsibility that spans half the globe.

The No. 1 threat in the region continues to be North Korea, due to its reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing program of missile tests and pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, Benham said.

While some experts claim an EMP attack isnt a likely concern, National Geographic notes a Congressional commission of scientific and military experts warned in 2004 that an EMP attack could cause a massive blackout and damage financial and power networks.

Depending on the specific characteristics of the attacks, unprecedented cascading failures of our major infrastructures could result, the 2004 commission warned in a statement. In that event, a regional or national recovery would be long and difficult and would seriously degrade the safety and overall viability of our Nation.

A later report in 2008 by the Congressional Research Service confirmed that an EMP attack could cause substantial damage.

One solution Gabbard is advocating for is utility companies upping their security in preparation for any kind of attack.

Ive long advocated for investing in hardening our core infrastructure and electrical grid against the threats of today and tomorrow, whether it be an EMP attack or a cyberattack, she said.
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was sentenced to three years in prison Friday for disrupting an FBI probe that was investigating abuses at the jails he oversaw.

Baca, 74, was sentenced after he was convicted in March of obstructing justice, lying to federal authorities and conspiring to obstruct justice.

Baca was ordered to turn himself in on July 25 to begin serving his sentence.

LAS VEGAS DOCTOR ACCUSED OF HAVING SEX WITH DRUGGED PATIENTS STANDS TRIAL

Baca, who was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease last year, advanced his position from guarding inmates to running the nations largest jail system and biggest sheriffs department.

U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson said he would have sentenced Baca to five years in prison if it were not for his years of service and the Alzheimers diagnosis.

As awful as Alzheimers disease is, its not a criminal penalty, Anderson said. Alzheimers disease is not a get-out-of-jail card.

Defense attorney Nathan Hochman urged the judge to spare Baca of any prison time because his Alzheimers disease will get worse over time and he would not receive the proper medical care needed in jail, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Hochman also argued that Bacas more than 48-year law enforcement career shouldnt be tainted by the former sheriffs misdeeds over a six week period in 2011 and four false answers to 400 questions during a voluntary interview with authorities in 2013.

TEXAS MAN SENTENCED FOR KILLING HIS PROBATION-OFFICER-TURNED-GIRLFRIEND

FBI agents started a probe into Los Angeles Countys Mens Central Jail in 2010 over reports of mismanagement, and regular abuse of inmates and that deputies had covered up, often times without the supervisors knowing, according to the LA Times.

Baca instantly resigned in 2014 as the probe netted several lower-ranking people who plotted to hide an inmate informant from his FBI handler when they learned the jails were being investigated.

20 members of the department have been convicted for their involvement in the crimes.

When he was a sheriff, Baca traveled around the world often to speak about his approach to law enforcement, denied any involvement in the scandal, but admitted he had fallen out of touch with what was going on in his department.

PHILADELPHIA TOP PROSECUTOR SET FOR BRIBERY TRIAL JUNE 19

Bacas reputation as a respected law enforcement official who promoted progressive ideas such as education and rehabilitation were tarnished from the crimes.

Originally Baca plead guilty to a single count of lying to federal investigators in a deal that would have required no more than six months in prison. But that deal fell apart when Judge Anderson said it was too lenient.

Prosecutors then hit him with the two additional obstruction counts. At Baca's first trial, a jury deadlocked 11-1 for acquittal and a mistrial was declared. He was convicted three months later by a different jury at his second trial.

More than 200 friends and supporters, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, wrote letters of support to the court on behalf of Baca.

Hochman plans to appeal, challenging several of Andersons rulings that he said were improper and showed bias toward Baca, including a decision not to allow medical experts to testify whether Bacas medical condition impaired his memory when he lied to federal authorities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
FBI agents raided the office of a Republican consulting firm in Maryland in connection with an investigation into the 2013 Virginia governor's race.

The FBI confirmed it served a search warrant Thursday in Annapolis, Maryland, but declined to elaborate. Kelley Rogers, president of Strategic Campaign Group, told reporters the investigation relates to work the consultant did for former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP's 2013 gubernatorial candidate.

Rogers told reporters that his firm settled a lawsuit brought by the Cuccinelli campaign after he lost the governor's race to Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Rogers said the investigation appears to have stemmed from allegations in that lawsuit.

Rogers' firm also did campaign work for Maryland Republican lawmakers. Republican state legislative leaders said they wouldn't do further work with the firm unless it is cleared in the investigation.

Cuccinelli sued Strategic Campaign Group in 2014, alleging that the company and a political action committee duped donors. Cuccinelli said the Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised $2.2 million in 2013, largely by promising donors the money would help Cuccinelli in his ultimately unsuccessful Virginia campaign against McAuliffe. The PAC only gave $10,000 to Cuccinelli's campaign, which was heavily outspent by McAuliffe.

Cuccinelli's lawsuit described the StrikeForce PAC as being "controlled by" Strategic Campaign Group. The company and the PAC settled with Cuccinelli in 2015, agreeing to pay his gubernatorial campaign $85,000.

Cuccinelli said Wednesday in a statement to The Associated Press that he'd not spoken to any federal law enforcement officials about Strategic Campaign Group but is "curious" to see where the case goes.

Rogers was a senior consultant to one-time White House party crasher and former reality television figure Tareq Salahi's run for Virginia governor in 2013, according to a campaign news release. Rogers said on his company's website that he's worked for numerous Republican politicians at every level.
Police officials say an internal FBI report released in April highlights what they have been saying all along: The Ferguson effect is negatively impacting law enforcement and could eventually lead to an increase in crime.

The report suggests the media, politicians and Black Lives Matter have weakened police officers and turned people against them  which in turn has caused an uptick in attacks against police. It has also emboldened people into refusing to comply with police orders, the report says, causing a de-policing in law enforcement agencies across the country, which the assailants have exploited.

The study amplifies things we have been saying about what was going on across the countrythe trendssince Ferguson. Ken Winter, executive director of Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, told Fox News. His organization posted the report on its Facebook page, calling it an interesting study.

FBI: BLACK LIVES MATTER-INSPIRED COP KILLINGS 'THE NEW NORM'

But a Black Lives Matter activist said the the four-page report is inaccurate and partly puts blame on a movement that is one of love, peace, harmony and justice.

[The report was released to] make it seem that black folks are killing people because of the Black Lives Matter movement, said Amir Islam, a BLM organizer and Seattle activist, adding that narrative is inherently untrue.

The April report showed 64 law enforcement officers were killed in 53 incidents in 2016. About 42 were killed the year before. In 2016, 28 percent of the assailants expressed a desire to kill law enforcement officers prior to carrying out their attacks, the report said.

Specifically in the Dallas, TX, and Baton Rouge, L.A., attacks, the report added, the assailants said they were influenced by the Black Lives Matter movement, and their belief that law enforcement was targeting black males.

I cant speak for those people, nor do I know what was really said. Amir Islam told Fox News. The information was given by law enforcement, who I heavily distrust, and those of us in our movement distrust.

In broader terms, the study cites a chill wind on law enforcement as a major contributing factor in these attacks, saying since 2014 multiple high-profile police incidents across the country have occurred that law enforcement officials believe influenced the mindset and behaviors of the assailants.

THE LATEST: DISTRICT ATTORNEY COMPLAINED ABOUT COP'S CONDUCT

The report specifically cited the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and the social disturbances that followed. The shooting, the report said, sparked a movement perpetuated by the media and politicians that made it socially acceptable to challenge and discredit the actions of law enforcement.

The report placed part of the blame on the media, which seemed to focus on stories that portrayed police officers as overly aggressive and corrupt.

But it was particularly harsh on politicians, saying police officers routinely felt politicians failed to stand up for them and instead fueled hostile feeling toward those upholding the law.

Nearly every police official interviewed agreed that for the first time, law enforcement not only felt that their national political leaders publically stood against them, but also that the politicians' words and actions signified that disrespect to law enforcement was acceptable in the aftermath of the Brown shooting, the report said.

Because of those politicians, the report said, criminals felt empowered to defy police officers and treat them in a hostile manner.

Winter told Fox News police officers now are less proactive because they dont want to end up in a situation where they have to use deadly force. That, he said, is leading to mediocrity.

SESSIONS ORDERS REVIEW OF FERGUSON-STYLE POLICE REFORM DEALS

One of the cornerstones of being effective is proactive policing. Winter added What we have seen since Ferguson, is a lot of police officers are choosing not to be proactive due to the backlash they are concerned about. Communities are suffering, citizens are suffering, and crimes are being committed that may not have been otherwise.

In the long term, Winter said, it will lead to an uptick in crime. And everyone will be impacted by the changes, he said.

For example, if shoplifters arent being arrested, people will pay more for items in stores who have to make back that lost money, or pay more for private security, he said. These are the types of effects that are occurring on a local level.

The report also concluded that criminal justice reforms that reduce prosecutions and incarcerations, specifically among drug offenders, put criminals back on the street with an attitude of beating the system.

This will also lead to negative outcomes, Winter said.

There is a split second decision inside a criminals head now that they can get away with it, he said. They are coming to that conclusion.
The U.S. Coast Guard is hailing a landmark: Last month was the first in seven years when no Cuban migrants were caught trying to reach the U.S. by sea.

Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft told The Wall Street Journal that no vessels were seized in April, and Coast Guard officials confirmed the data on Friday.

That's a sea change from 2016, when 5,000 Cubans were apprehended in the water, the highest number the agency had seen in a decade.

The agency credits the end of a policy granting residency to any Cuban who steps on American soil. After President Barack Obama ended the "wet foot, dry foot" policy in January, interdictions dropped sharply across the Florida Straits and through the Mona Passage to Puerto Rico.
General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeff Immelt is keen to double the conglomerate's purchases from Mexican suppliers next year, the Mexican president's office said in a statement on Friday, a move that could upset U.S. President Donald Trump.

Immelt met with Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto in Mexico City and will spend a few days in Latin America's No. 2 economy at a time of tension between the neighboring countries and major trading partners.

Trump has threatened consequences for U.S firms that move operations overseas and has promised to revive manufacturing in the United States by luring jobs north. He has also threatened to ditch the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), a lynchpin of the Mexican economy, if he cannot renegotiate better terms.

THE WEEK IN PICTURES

"Immelt ratified the company's confidence in Mexico and its national industry, by expressing his interest in doubling purchases from national suppliers in 2018," the Mexican president's office said.

GE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Immelt's visit coincides with more lobbying by Mexico and Canada to push U.S. business leaders to help them defend NAFTA. Immelt sits on a Trump-appointed manufacturing council that Mexico has identified as a target for lobbying to protect NAFTA.

In his meeting with Pena Nieto, Immelt highlighted GE's plans to expand its operations in the northern industrial city of Monterrey and in an oil and gas plant in the state of Nuevo Leon, the president's office said.

MEXICO BLASTS STUDY LABELING IT SECOND DEADLIEST CONFLICT ZONE BEHIND SYRIA

On Thursday, General Electric announced that it won a contract to supply two new gigawatts of power in Mexico and had also signed a separate $120 million, multi-year deal to provide service to gas and steam turbines in Mexican power plants.

Earlier this month Immelt warned the Trump administration to avoid protectionist policies, while calling on it to level the playing field for U.S. companies with tax reform, revive export financing and improved trade agreements.

GE employs more than 11,000 people and has more than 17 manufacturing plants in Mexico, the president's office statement said. It said GE has helped develop Mexican industry as a strategic partner for more than a century.
Immigrant advocates are decrying a reported Trump administration search for evidence of criminality among Haitian immigrants, many of whom have temporary permits to be in the U.S., as a prelude to deportation. But others praise checks for criminal activity among immigrants, including Haitians, as an overdue attempt to ensure Americans safety.

According to a story by The Associated Press earlier this week, internal U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) emails reveal that the agencys policy chief inquired about data on any possible criminal conduct by Haitian immigrants.

That AP report comes as some 50,000 Haitians remain in the U.S. under Temporary Protective Status (TPS), a humanitarian program that aids foreigners whose homelands have been hit with natural disasters or war.

The Obama administration included Haiti in the program shortly after the January 2010 earthquake killed as many as 300,000 people, destroyed much of the capital and caused widespread damage in southern part of the Caribbean nation. Since then, Haitians have been eligible to stay regardless of how they entered the United States  legally or illegally  as long as they were residing in the U.S. before Jan. 12, 2011.

The TPS of those 50,000 Haitians will expire on July 23, and because the Trump administration must give 60 days notice of its decision, May 23 looms as an important date for those Haitians.

The CIS emails that the AP reported on dont make clear if Haitians misdeeds will be used to determine whether to renew their TPS or not.

David Lapan, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, criticized the AP report as inaccurate.

"The AP story mischaracterizes the nature of the emails it received," Lapan said. "It is inaccurate to claim the administration (through DHS) 'is hunting for evidence' of crimes committed by Haitian immigrants."

The secretarys decision [on whether to renew Haitians' TPS] will be based on a thorough assessment of the conditions in the country, he said regarding Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly's decision on possible TPS renewal. Separately, he has asked the staff for detailed information to increase his understanding of how the program operates. The two actions are separate and distinct."

Still, immigrant advocates are concerned.

Steven Forester, the immigration policy coordinator with the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti, said that the focus on criminal records is puzzling because immigrants cannot obtain TPS without an FBI background check.

The TPS process makes any criminal ineligible, Forester told Fox News.

Advocates for better enforcement of existing immigration laws praised any effort to improve screening of immigrants and said the T in TPS is being ignored.

Its perfectly reasonable for the administration to review cases to make sure the program is being used properly, that people arent taking advantage of it," Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, told Fox News.

"If people are playing by the rules, they shouldnt be concerned about it. At some point these things (TPS) need to be terminated."
Students at Harvard University raised $27,000 for a graduation ceremony honoring the effort of black students at the school.

Student organizers of the Black Commencement 2017 said it is the first university-wide graduation ceremony for black students and is designed to celebrate their achievements and struggles at an elite institution with historic ties to slavery, the Boston Globe reported.

The commencement will take place on May 23 at Holmes Field near Harvard Law School. More than 120 grads are registered to attend, Fox 25 Boston reports.

Similar ceremonies have been organized for students at other schools.

Michael Huggins, the president of the Harvard Black Graduate Student Alliance, said its not about segregation. Students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds will be allowed to attend.

Huggins added that students attending the event will also attend the universitys official commencement on May 25.
An immigrant in the U.S. illegally for more than 20 years -- after his family in Guatemala got death threats -- has been granted a two-year stay of deportation, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., announced Friday.

Luis Barrios, a 51 married father of four U.S.-born children, had received a 30-day reprieve hours before he was to be put on a plane from New York to Central America earlier this month.

Blumenthal said he was unaware of the reasoning behind the stay. However, he said he "can think of no more compelling case" for a reprieve.

Barrios left Guatemala in 1992 after his father received death threats, the Hartford Courant reported. His father was later murdered and his brother was killed in 2004. Some of his wife's relatives have also been killed in recent years.

ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT DEPORTED 15 TIMES ARRESTED IN HIT-RUN CRASH THAT HURT 6-YEAR-OLD BOY

Barrios, who is seeking asylum, was ordered to be removed from the country after he failed to show up at a 1998 hearing, the New Haven Register reported.

Barrios' immigration status was flagged after a 2011 traffic stop for a broken tail light. He began to receive one-year stay of deportations that year. There was no attempt to deport him until President Donald Trump made immigration enforcement a priority.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
The Latest on the fatal shootings of an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees (all times local):

4:30 p.m.

A sheriff says a gunman who killed an Ohio police chief and two female nursing home employees took two random people as hostages shortly before the shootings.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says the gunman took two passers-by hostage behind the nursing home in a wooded area Friday.

Thorp says it was in that area that Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario was killed while responding to reports of a man with a gun.

Thorp says investigators don't know if Disario fired his weapon. The sheriff says the hostages escaped when a shot was fired at the chief.

Thorp says Pine Kirk Care Center is a secure facility and investigators don't know how the gunman got in.

Kirkersville is about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.

___

4 p.m.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich (KAY'-sihk) has ordered flags flown at half-staff following the fatal shooting of a village police chief in an attack that also killed two nursing home employees.

Authorities say the gunman also was found dead Friday.

Kasich ordered flags flown at half-staff at the Statehouse and at all public buildings and grounds throughout Licking County in central Ohio, where the shootings happened.

The order lasts through sunset Tuesday.

The Republican governor says the gesture honors those who lost their lives in "senseless acts of violence" in Kirkersville, a village about 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.

Investigators identified the slain Kirkersville police chief as 36-year-old Steven Eric Disario, who had been on the job for only three weeks and had six children, with a seventh on the way.

___

3:30 p.m.

A woman who works about a block from where an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees were killed says she heard gunshots followed by screaming and then sirens.

Kathy Rogers owns a thrift shop on the same block as Pine Kirk Care Center.

Rogers said Friday she could hear a man yelling and screaming but wasn't sure what he was saying.

Rogers says she went across the street to a neighbor's home and hunkered down with a group of about nine adults and eight children.

Authorities say a gunman shot Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario, who'd only been on the job for about three weeks.

Investigators say two nursing home employees were also shot and killed. The gunman was later found dead.

___

12:45 p.m.

Authorities say a gunman has fatally shot the police chief of an Ohio village and two nursing home employees.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp says the suspected gunman was also found dead Friday.

Thorp identified the slain police chief as 36-year-old Steven Eric Disario, who headed the Kirkersville Police Department. Thorp says Disario had only been on the job for three weeks.

Thorp says Disario was found outside the Pine Kirk Care Center. Thorp says two employees of the center and the suspected gunman were found dead inside the nursing home.

Thorp says Disario was a father of six children with a seventh child on the way.
The United States Marine Corps released a first-of-its-kind TV ad on Friday featuring a female Marine captain  the military branch's bid to recruit more women to become "the few, the proud."

The TV ad, titled "Battle Up," centers on Marine Capt. Erin Demchko, of Hackensack, New Jersey. It starts with her as a young student and moves through her life to the Marines. Demchko is seen in combat, moving through frigid water while gripping an M-16 rifle. It's the first national television Marine Corps commercial that focuses on a woman.

"I am extremely humbled to be a part of such a big production," Demchko said.

US MARINES AWARDED RARE ARCTIC SERVICE RIBBON

The Marine captain exemplifies the Americans who Marine Corps leaders say they need  people capable of meeting the tough physical standards required to be a Marine.

"The water was 27 degrees and coated with a layer of thick ice," Demchko said. "Giving the film production staff what they wanted, while maintaining my bearing as a Marine officer and trying not to look cold was a challenge."

A deputy commander at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, Japan, Demchko is part of the Corps' expanding effort to recruit women. Her military experience began when she applied to the U.S. Naval Academy after 9/11, according to the Pentagon.

After her first year at the academy, she said she knew she wanted to serve in the Marine Corps because of its prestige and honor. She was commissioned on May 25, 2007.

The Marine Corps is the smallest military branch under the Pentagon and has the lowest percentage of women. Though women have served in the Corps since 1918, they still make up only about 8.3 percent of the 183,000-strong Corps.

The Marine Corps has aimed to increase the percentage of women to at least 10 percent by 2019.

LESSONS FOR LIFE FROM A TEA PARTY WITH A MARINE

The Marines don't expect instant results.

Low unemployment rates, competition among employers, and the need to increase the overall size of the Marine Corps make recruiting women a challenge.

"We're facing headwinds now that we didn't have even a year ago," Maj. Gen. Paul Kennedy, head of Marine Corps Recruiting Command, said.

"There's a train wreck coming for some folks. They're not getting tail winds that they used to have  the high unemployment, the money that was associated with enlistment bonuses," Kennedy added.

While the ad "is targeted at young women who are seeking a way to challenge themselves," Demchko said it could entice anyone who wants to fight for their country.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A Medal of Honor recipient and World War II veteran, who was hailed a hero for almost single-handedly holding off counter attacks by elite German troops, died on Tuesday in Washington State.

Wilburn K. Ross, who was originally from Kentucky, was 94.

Ross was awarded the Medal of Honor on April 23, 1945 for his actions that went beyond the call of duty near St. Jacques, France six months earlier, according to his Medal of Honor citation.

'HE EARNED IT': LAWMAKER FIGHTS FOR MEDAL OF HONOR FOR MARINE WHO DIED IN FALLUJAH

The day of the attack, Ross, then a 22-year-old Army Private in Company G, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division, placed his light machine gun 30 feet away from German troops to absorb an enemy counterattack. His company had lost 55 out of 88 men, but instead of retreating, the machine gunner stood his ground  even as bullets flew in his direction and a German soldier crawled toward him with a hand grenade.

Despite the hail of automatic fire and the explosion of rifle grenades within a stone's throw of his position, he continued to man his machine gun alone, holding off six more German attacks, the Medal of Honor citation said.

With so many men down and his ammunition depleted, Ross was advised to withdraw. He declined to do so. Suddenly, more ammunition arrived and he opened fire on enemy troops, killing 40 and wounding 10 others.

He broke the assault single-handedly, and forced the Germans to withdraw, the citation said. He remained at his post for 36 hours until he was certain that all the German troops retreated.

NEVADA VETERAN FINALLY AWARDED WITH MEDAL OF HONOR

Ross returned to Kentucky after the war was over and became a highway patrolman with the state. He eventually returned to the Army and became a Master Sergeant. During a stint in Korea, his last combat duty, he was badly wounded. The injury was the fourth time he was wounded in the line of duty, UPI reported.

He eventually retired and settled in DuPont, Washington, where he became a bus driver for a Veterans Administration hospital.

He was twice honored with a commemorative stamp, in 1983 and 2013. Ross, a widower, is survived by his six children.

There are 73 Medal of Honor recipients alive today, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway told Fox News' "Hannity" Thursday night that the mainstream media was engaged in a "rush to judgment" over President Trump's motive for firing FBI Director Jim Comey earlier this week.

"The President made a decision this week, it was his decision to make, he was resolute and decisive," Conway told host Sean Hannity. "and people who are questioning that just need to listen to him ... He said he had thought about it for a long time and he made the decision and its final."

'HANNITY' CONWAY TALKS ABOUT MEDIA REACTION TO COMEY FIRING

'HANNITY' ARI FLEISCHER SAYS HYPOCRISY FROM THE LEFT IS APPALLING

'THE FIVE' GRADS HECKLE EDUCATION SECRETARY

AUDIT FALLOUT

California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that he is withholding $50 million from the University of California in light of an audit last month that claimed to have found a stash of $175 million in secret funds while officials requested more money from the state.

YOU'VE GOT MAIL

North Korea's parliament sent a rare letter of protest to the U.S. House of Representatives over its new package of tougher sanctions, state media reported Friday.

The sanctions were condemned as a "heinous act against humanity" by the foreign affairs committee of the North's Supreme People's Assembly, the report said.

TRUMP ADMIN PRAISES TRADE AGREEMENT

The White House announced Thursday that the U.S. and China have reached an agreement on trade polices related to beef, poultry and natural gas that are expected to increase American exports.

As part of the deal, China will open its borders to U.S. beef. In return, the U.S. has agreed to remove obstacles to Chinas imported poultry meat. The United States would also allow U.S. companies to ship liquefied natural gas to China.

ICE CRACKDOWN

The Trump administration has concluded a six-week nationwide sweep of suspected gang members with 1,378 arrests  the largest such gang sweep conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to date.

COMING UP ON FOX NEWS CHANNEL

1:30 PM ET: White House briefing with Sean Spicer.

1:30 PM ET: The Republican National Committee holds Day 1 of its Spring Meeting in Coronado, CA.

COMING UP ON FOX BUSINESS

7:30 AM ET: Linda McMahon, administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, will be on "Mornings with Maria"

11:45 AM ET: Bob Wright, will be a guest on "Varney & Company"

4:00 AM ET - Dr. Zeke Emanuel, Obamacare Architect will be on "After the Bell"
The Navy is continuing to clean up about 94,000 gallons of jet fuel spilled at an air station in Virginia Beach.

The Navy says in a Friday press release that it has contained the fuel that leaked from a tank at Naval Air Station Oceana on Thursday and spread onto adjoining properties and waterways.

Crews have removed almost 20,000 gallons from areas outside the base. Crews have placed water booms on Wolfsnare Creek, and vacuum trucks and skimmers have joined the cleanup effort.

Experts have been called in to respond to reports of affected wildlife. Response teams are also monitoring water and air quality.

Cleanup efforts are expected to continue through the weekend.
A North Carolina high school recalled its yearbooks after officials saw a senior's quote which read "Build that wall" ascribed to President Donald Trump -- but the move drew criticism online.

Yearbooks for Richmond Early College High School in Hamlet were recalled because some senior quotes were considered controversial, The News & Observer reported.

"Earlier this week, it was discovered by school administration that Richmond Early College yearbooks had errors and inappropriate comments," the school district said on Facebook Tuesday. "The principal immediately collected the distributed yearbooks."

The school district apologized and said it was working on making corrections with the yearbook publisher.

"As a district, we do not and will not tolerate inappropriate conduct toward any of our students," the post said.

UNIVERSITY HIRING 'SOCIAL JUSTICE ADVOCATES' TO POLICE FELLOW STUDENTS FOR 'BIAS INCIDENTS'

School and district officials found several quotes deemed inappropriate, school district spokeswoman Ashley-Michelle Thublin said. She said that included the "Build that Wall" comment that became one of Trump's campaign slogans last year.

"Only a handful of annuals were distributed before the mistake was discovered by the principal," Thublin said in a statement. "Those were taken back up the same morning and the rest were not distributed."

She did not answer a question from Fox News about which other senior quotes aside from the "wall" one were considered inappropriate.

SCHOOL OFFICIAL WHO CURSED AT TEEN PROTESTERS RESIGNS

An image of the senior quote was posted on Facebook Tuesday by user Artney Ellerbe, the Richmond County Daily Journal reported.

"So Richmond county school system allowed this to be printed in their 2017 year book," Ellerbe captioned the post. "I already knew this city was racist. Get a court date you'll find out. This doesn't surprise me at all." Ellerbe's caption concluded with "#Share."

"I feel that young lady only stood up for her freedom of speech by using the quote of her choice," Charity Davis, a mother of a freshman at the school, told the Daily Journal. "Every senior was given the opportunity to choose a quote. It was her right as an American to choose any quote under the sun."

Thublin said none of the students are being disciplined.

It's too late to get the books reprinted so students are being refunded. They cost $30 to $39 dollars based on time of purchase.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Two kayakers are home safe after being rescued by members of the New York City Police Department after their kayak capsized in Burke County, officials said.

The NYPD team was training below the dam at Lake James on the Catawba River when the kayakers became distressed, according to Burke County Emergency Management. The group was able to rescue the two people from the water after they lost control of their kayak.

"Nice job ESU, while participating in a swift water rescue course in North Carolina they assisted a kayaker that was stranded after capsizing," NYPD Special Ops tweeted.

Click here for more from Fox 46.
Passengers on a United flight out of Houston were delayed for hours Thursday after reports of a scorpion emerging from a customers clothing, the airline said in a statement.

Flight 1035 was set to fly from Houston to Ecuador. The plane reportedly left the gate at George Bush Intercontinental Airport when the arachnid appeared. The scorpion was seen crawling away from a passengers clothes.

One of the passengers on board Thursdays flight tweeted, The captain of my flight just told us its a scorpion on the plane???!!!!! Good job United!

The plane returned to the gate and paramedics examined the customer-- who declined medical treatment-- and determined that the unnamed passenger had not been stung.

The airline removed passengers out of precaution and they were ushered onto a new aircraft.

Fox 13 Now reported that this is the airlines second scorpion-related incident in less than a month. The station reported that in a separate incident April 14, a United passenger was reportedly stung by a scorpion on a plane out of Houston.

United has recently been the focus of the national media's attention. Last month, a passenger was videoed being dragged off a plane. Earlier this week, owners of giant rabbit threatened to sue the airline over its death.

Simon, the rabbit, was alive after the flight from London to Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, but was found dead in his crate at the airport by a kennel representative from the airline, the airline said.
A Georgia sheriff accused of exposing himself in a public park in Atlanta has apologized to his constituents but said he plans to remain in his job.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports (http://bit.ly/2pHlMKF) that DeKalb County Sheriff Jeffrey Mann stood next to his attorney Noah Pines during a press conference Friday as Pines read a statement from Mann.

Mann was arrested May 6 after a police officer said Mann exposed himself to the officer in Piedmont Park and then ran, leading the officer on a chase.

The statement said Mann apologizes for the "unfavorable light" cast on the county by his arrest.

The newspaper reports that Pines also sent the governor a letter saying he believes the governor was wrong to convene a three-person panel to investigate the charges against Mann.
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A woman who escaped unharmed from a house fire near Bath, South Dakota, was saved by her hero dogs, investigators said.

Barking dogs woke up their owner Chastidy Pletten early Wednesday and alerted her to the flames, Brown County Emergency Manager Scott Meints told Aberdeen News.

Pletten thought her pets Maddie and Jax just wanted to go outside, according to KSFY.

"Opened the bedroom door, went out in the hallway to let 'em out in the backyard," she told the station. "There was kind of smoke, you know, but I thought maybe it was my contacts."

A glass panel leading to the backyard was entirely black, KSFY reported. Pletten said she attempted to turn on a kitchen light, which didn't work, and ran her dogs out of the house.

TEXAS HOUSE FIRE: 3 CHILDREN KILLED, 3 FAMILY MEMBERS CRITICALLY INJURED

"Flames up above the trees, everything else the house was then getting engulfed in flames, the entry way... so we ran over, got them in the kennel, put my mom's dog in the house and called 911," she said.

Pletten and her pets weren't harmed, though the house was extensively damaged. The cause of the fire is under investigation.

JUDGE ORDERS PROSECUTORS TO CHARGE AMTRAK ENGINEER IN DEADLY CRASH

The fire began in a garage behind the house, Brown County Sheriff's Office investigator Damian Bahr told Aberdeen News.

"I had a space heater in there, and it wasn't on that I was aware of, but it was one that has push buttons on kind of the floor, so if one of the dogs bumped it, it could have been turned on," Pletten said. "I don't think that they're 100 percent sure that's what it was."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A white police officer in Michigan is claiming he was subjected to racial taunts including being called Kunta by his colleagues after a genetic test revealed he was part black.

Sgt. Cleon Brown of the Hastings Police Department said his father always claimed he was part Native American but when his daughter, now 18, was diagnosed at birth with an illness he said typically was found in African-Americans, he was suspicious.

OHIO COP SHOT AND KILLED IN INCIDENT NEAR NURSING HOME

Last fall, Brown, 47, took a genetic test through Ancestry.com, which to his surprise revealed he was 18 percent black and 0 percent Native American.

I was shocked, but Im very proud, he told Fox 2 Detroit. Im shocked because I thought I was Native American, and it answered a whole bunch of my questions.

When he "proudly" shared the results to his colleagues, he said they were welcoming, but eventually the congratulations turned into racial jeers.

I just never thought it would be in Hastings, saying, like, racist comments to me," he told The New York Times. "All the years Ive been there we never joked about race.

Last month, Brown filed a lawsuit against the police department and its chief, Jeff Pratt, who he alleges called him Kunta  in reference to an African slave from the novel and TV miniseries Roots.

MASSACHUSETTS MAN ALLEGEDLY STOLE POLICE CRUISER AFTER FOOT CHASE

And it made me so mad, Brown said. I remember saying to the chief, I cannot believe you just called me that.

He is seeking at least $500,000 in his lawsuit.

Brown is a combat veteran who served in the U.S. Army during the Gulf War and has worked in law enforcement for 20 years.

In the lawsuit, Brown charges some members of the department of whispering Black Lives Matter while pumping their fists as they walked past him. He said last December, a fellow sergeant put a black Santa figurine that had 18% written on its beard into his Christmas stocking at the station.

Not a good thing for the public to see, Brown told Fox 2 Detroit.

DELAWARE OFFICER SAVES SUICIDAL MAN FROM BRIDGE

In a lengthy statement, the city disputed the charges saying it was Brown who started joking about race after receiving the test results.

In fact, Sgt. Brown joked about it in racially derogatory ways such as suggesting the he now knows why he likes chicken so much; the 18% is all in my pants; and other similarly inappropriate and derogatory comments and stereotypes, the city said.

In regards to the figurine, the city acknowledged that it was left, but said Brown told Pratt that he was not upset and that he was proud of his African heritage.

However, Brown insists that he was taunted and denied the citys accusations.

He told the New York Times that he always tried to take a race-neutral approach to policing.

It wouldnt even cross my mind to say something like that the city claims, he told Fox 2 Detroit. Its their attempt to shift blame. What else can they do at this point?

Brown said the experience has given him a new appreciation for the effects of racism.

I feel my eyes are being opened now to that, he told the Times.
Authorities say hundreds of Nigerians deported from Libya have arrived back home, including one who sustained a gunshot wound.

The deputy director of the National Emergency Management Agency, Bandele Onimode, says some of the 258 returnees are suffering from depression and malnutrition. Four children and an infant were among the group that arrived in Lagos late Thursday.

This is the second time in less than a month that hundreds of deportees have been brought back to Nigeria from Libya.

The North African nation is a major transit route used by human traffickers to smuggle Africans to Europe. Aid groups have expressed alarm at reported abuses along the way.

Thousands of Africans have lost their lives attempting passage to Europe. Many lack the money to return home if their efforts fail.
As Yemen continues to battle civil war and stave off famine, militants with the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's (AQAP) branch Ansar Al Sharia are seizing upon the latest unrest to attract people to jihad.

This week jihadis launched a contest in the city of Taiz offering prizes, including an automatic rifle, a pistol and other incentives to entrants who listen to a series of audio lectures on jihad, study accompanying text and then write a 30-page review of the syllabus.

LEADER OF AL QAEDA IN YEMEN MOCKS TRUMP AFTER RAID

Flyers, handed out by gun-toting militants, state that the contest entitled, Our Message, was launched in honor of the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan with entries due on the middle on the 15th of Ramadan.

A total of 10 prizes have been promised, including a brand new AK-47 automatic rifle for the winner and a motorcycle for the runner-up. The various other prizes include a pistol, a laptop and a cellphone, as well as cash prizes.

They also handed out a review sheet containing questions on the syllabus.

8 AL QAEDA OPERATIVES KILLED IN DRONE STRIKE IN YEMEN, INCLUDING KEY LEADER

"Name three articles of the (Yemeni) constitution which contradict Islamic Law," reads one of the questions, in the quiz seen by the Reuters news agency.

"Any person who follows a law other than Islamic law is an infidel who must be killed. List three (scriptural) references for this," reads another.

For more, go to Foreign Desk News.
The German Defense Ministry says two assault rifles and a pistol have been stolen from inside an armored vehicle at a military facility in northern Germany, in another embarrassment for the armed forces.

The news comes as the military investigates an alleged far-right plot by two soldiers to assassinate prominent political figures. Prosecutors say one of those soldiers managed to pass himself off as a Syrian refugee and they were planning to blame the attack on migrants.

In raids connected with that investigation, authorities found multiple rounds of munitions believed to have been stolen from the military. However, Defense Ministry spokesman Jens Flosdorff said Friday there is no indication yet that the February theft in Munster, in northern Germany, was in any way linked to the plot.
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Austria's foreign minister, an influential figure in the country's junior governing party, is calling for early elections after the vice chancellor announced his resignation.

Sebastian Kurz is considered the center-right Austrian People's Party's likeliest new leader after Reinhold Mitterlehner quit Wednesday, citing persistent party infighting. The conservatives are junior partners in an often bad-tempered "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats of Chancellor Christian Kern.

Kurz, 30, didn't specify Friday whether he will take the party leadership. A decision on an interim leader is expected Sunday.

Kern has said he hopes to keep the governing coalition alive until an election due late next year.

But Kurz said: "I personally think early elections would be the right way to make change possible in Austria."
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack targeting a lawmaker in Pakistan's southwest Baluchistan province on Friday. 25 people were killed in the violence but Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, the deputy leader of Pakistan's Senate, survived the attack in Mastung with cuts and bruises.

The lawmaker's driver and aide were killed, according to The New York Times.

Haideri told a local news channel that he could not speculate on the motive for the attack. ISIS took responsibility on its official Amaq media agency.

"I was sitting in the front seat when the strong explosion occurred," he said. "The windshield of my vehicle broke and the door was destroyed. Broken glass and splinters hit me in the hand but thank God I did not suffer any major injury. ... I can't say why the blast (happened) or what led to it."



MOAB DAMAGE IN AFGHANISTAN EXTREME, WIDESPREAD

Mastung is a stronghold of the violent radical Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which has openly supported ISIS.

It was the third major attack by ISIS in Baluchistan. Last year, the militants carried out a brutal attack against lawyers in Quetta killing nearly 70 people, most of them young lawyers.

More than 60 people were killed in a separate attack at a shrine in the remote Kuzdar area.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

PENTAGON CONFIRMS DEATH OF AFGHAN ISIS LEADER
A Greek court has convicted two Swedish nationals of belonging to the Islamic State group, and sentenced them to 15 years imprisonment.

The men's lawyer says they were also found guilty of arms possession  a pair of hunting knives  with the intent of supplying a terrorist group.

The men, aged 30 and 21, were convicted Friday in the northeastern town of Alexandroupoli. They were arrested in February last year at a bus stop near the Turkish border.

Police said the pair had bought tickets for a village near a border crossing.

Their lawyer, Angelos Nestoridis, told The Associated Press that his clients, who were born in Bosnia and Yemen, denied wrongdoing and said they were in Greece for tourism.
A man armed with fake weapons held a taxi driver hostage for about six hours Friday at a bank in a small Austrian town.

The standoff with police in Erpfendorf, an Alpine town near the German border in Tyrol province, started late Friday morning. Police said the explosives he claimed to have with him turned out to be fake as was his gun, the Austria Press Agency reported.

The bank's employees were able to leave the building unharmed.

After several hours of negotiations, police say the hostage-taker agreed in the late afternoon to free his victim. The kidnapper, a 28-year-old local man, then left the bank himself and was arrested.

POLICE LAUD FBI REPORT THAT CALLS COP-KILLINGS 'NEW NORM'

The victim was a 32-year-old taxi driver who had brought the hostage-taker to the bank. Police official Edelbert Kohler said the two men knew each other.

The hostage-taker claimed to have put an explosive belt on his victim, but that turned out to be a belt filled with stones. It wasn't immediately clear what his motive was.
A retired Idaho school teacher who claims a Mexican hospital is holding her hostage will be released on Friday on condition she pay the remainder of her $40,000 medical bill, according to her family.

Vikki Moormann, a former English teacher at Coeur dAlene High School in Idaho, was vacationing in the Mexican coastal city of Nuevo Vallarta with her sister-in-law in late April when she began vomiting uncontrollably.

After checking into the Hospital San Javier Riviera Nayarit, she was told by doctors that she had a urinary tract infection and was on the brink of pneumonia  a diagnosis that seemed strange to Moormann, who said that aside from her stomach issues she felt fine. She was later diagnosed with Ketoacidosis and placed into a medically induced coma so that doctors could use an intubation tube to treat her condition, according to her family.

Moormann's son, Ryen, told Fox News his mother is expected to be released on Friday but said the family is forced to pay thousands of dollars in fees -- a bill Moormann said might be part of an extortion plot.

Ryen Moormann said he paid the hospital $5,000 in addition to the $1,000 already paid in cash by his mother and $3,000 from her credit card. He said the family must still pay $31,000 in fees from her stay, which began on May 1.

"We just want to get her home as soon as possible," Moormann told Fox News from his home in Idaho.

"This has been so hard on my mom. She's basically been held hostage," he said. "If we have to, well mortage the house. We need her home."

The family has set up a GoFundMe page to raise money to cover the bill.

When questioned about Moormann, a representative from the hospital told Fox News on Thursday that the patients family is working with the hospital to pay the bill.

The hospital representative, who refused to identify herself by name, said that the retired educator was "content" and blamed the media and Moormanns son for the reports that she was being held against her will.

"We cant physically hold her in the hospital," the representative said. "No one is going to hold her against her will."

The representative said Moormann is scheduled to leave on Saturday but her son said the hospital changed the date to Friday after media coverage of her ordeal.

Ryen Moormann noted that a representative from the U.S. Consulate told him it was "illegal" for the hospital to hold his mother against her will. Moormann is expected to arrive in the U.S. late Friday.

The trip to Mexico was supposed to be a way for the former schoolteacher to relax as the one-year anniversary of her husbands death approaches.

"Im just so frustrated," the 67-year-old Moormann told Fox News from her hospital room on Thursday. "I feel like Im a hostage here."

Since ending her teaching career, Moormann has become a published author, penning a series of murder-mysteries set in Coeur dAlene along with fellow retired educators Yvonne Deitz and Susan Schreiber.

Fox News' Cristina Corbin and Andrew O'Reilly contributed to this report.
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani attacked his hardline rivals in the final televised presidential debate on Friday, a week before the election.

Rouhani, who is seeking a second term on May 19, defended his economic policies that include pulling the country out of international isolation, according to the Hindustan Times.

"If we want a better economy, we should not let groups with security and political backing to get involved in the economy," Rouhani said at the debate.

The Iranian president has criticized openly the country's Revolutionary Guards. He faces five opponents, one of which is hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, a close ally of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Raisi has accused Rouhani of failing to boost the country's economy through mismanagement.

"Unemployment is high. Peoples purchasing power has dropped dramatically," Raisi said of Rouhani before.

During Friday's debate, Tehran's mayor and presidential candidate Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf accused Rouhani and candidate Eshaq Jahangiri of receiving "highly subsidized" properties from the government. Ghalibaf added that Rouhani's administration had facilitated large loans to "particular individuals" through state-run banks, while average citizens still struggle to secure small loans.

IRAN ELECTION'S THEATRICS, FRANK DISCOURSE PUSH BOUNDARIES

In 2012, Rouhani won the election in a landslide, but barely enough to avoid a runoff vote. A candidate has to win 50 percent of the votes to win the election in the first round.

Rouhani's moderate administration struck the 2015 Iran nuclear deal with world powers, which lifted international oil and financial sanctions in the country. In return, Iran agreed to limit its uranium production, curbing its nuclear program. However, Rouhani's opponents claim the president bowed down to Western powers too easily.

"There is no evidence that the U.S. and the Western countries are abiding by their commitments," Raisi told an Iranian-backed news agency in Lebanon in a report released Wednesday.

Raisi said though he criticized Rouhani, he would not pull out of the nuclear deal.

Meanwhile, local news outlets in Tehran reported that windows of one of Rouhani's campaign offices were smashed. They said another office previously had been targeted as well.

Khamenei spoke during a graduation ceremony in Tehran on Wednesday, urging people to keep the country's peace and prevent any unrest around the upcoming election. 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," said Khamenei, according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

IRAN'S ROUHANI FACES RENEWED CHARGES AS ELECTION LOOMS

Authorities are trying to avoid repeating the violence that followed the country's disputed 2009 poll.

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.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A key battle in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria is expected to unfold this summer, a commander said on Friday.

U.S.-supported Syrian Kurdish forces are moving ahead with plans to retake Raqqa in the northern part of the country. The region has served as the de facto capital for ISIS.

But the battle to capture the area can't happen until the Kurds receive heavy weapons from the U.S. military, according to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) commander. The commander, identified by The Associated Press as Abdelqader, didnt specify dates at a news conference announcing the plans, citing tactical concerns.

The deputy head of the SDF said the fight would start in the beginning of the summer.

We will storm and liberate (Raqqa) city, Qahraman Hassan told AFP.

LIFE INSIDE ISIS CAPITAL RAQQA: IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE, IMPOSSIBLE TO LEAVE

The announcement followed news of a Trump administration plan to arm the Kurdish elements of the SDF. The plan, publicized earlier this week, was met with an outcry from Turkish officials opposed to the involvement of the Syrian Kurdish forces. Turkish government officials have offered their own troops, saying they dont want the Syrian Kurds, whom they consider terrorists, to take Raqqa.

Still, the SDF said that it would move on with the plan regardless of any Turkish opposition. They can solve their problems in their country, Abdelqader said of Turkey. We do not want any other forces to participate with us.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has claimed he would convince Trump to reverse his support of the SDF in a meeting between the two leaders at the White House next week.

ISIS SURRENDERS CONTROL OF KEY SYRIAN CITY OF TABQAH, US CENTRAL COMMAND SAYS

Around 3,000 ISIS fighters are believed to still be in Raqqa, according to The Telegraph, with an estimated 300,000 people living under jihadist rule.

The area had been considered to be the caliphate capital of ISIS since the terror group swept into the city in 2013, but recent reports say the group is now centered in Deir ez-Zur, approximately 90 miles southeast of Raqqa.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
North Korea is threatening U.S. citizens detained in its country, saying it has the right to ruthlessly punish them. This comes after the so-called hermit kingdom announced it had detained of a fourth U.S. citizen.

Kim Hak Song, a Korean-American who taught at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, was arrested by North Korean authorities last Saturday for unspecified hostile acts.

Also detained in the country are Otto Warmbier, a college student arrested in 2016 who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for trying to take a piece of North Korean propaganda back home for a church friend who asked him to bring it to him in exchange for a new car; Tony Kim, a Korean-American professor arrested in April after teaching accounting for a month at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology and Kim Dong Chul, a businessman arrested in 2015 who is serving a 10-year sentence for espionage.

NORTH KOREA DETAINS ANOTHER AMERICAN OVER ALLEGED HOSTILE ACTS

Pyongyangs state-run media, KCNA news agency, said the crimes committed by the most recent detainees would soon be disclosed, adding that U.S. statements that the arrests are simply being used as a bargaining chip for North Korea are pure ignorance.

Recent Americans detained are being interrogated by relevant legal authorities for criminal acts against the Republic, said KCNA, according to the NY Post.

The news agency went on to say it is an exercise of the legitimate right of a sovereign state to deal with the criminals according to its law. Recent reports say the reason they will punish criminals is so the republic can reliably defend its state and social system.

A State Department official told Fox News that Americans should be aware of the risks involved when traveling to North Korea.

N.KOREA DETAINS US CITIZEN; AT LEAST 3RD AMERICAN BEING HELD

U.S. citizens in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea are at serious risk of arrest and long-term detention under North Koreas system of law enforcement, the officials said. The U.S. government has no diplomatic or consular relations with North Korea; we have no means to provide normal consular services to U.S. citizens there.

The State Department was unable to comment specifically on the cases of the four Americans who have allegedly been arrested by the North Korean government.

In regards to reports of recently detained U.S. citizens, the State Department said, we have no further comment due to privacy considerations.
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Pope Francis and pilgrims from around the world are flocking to a Catholic shrine town in Portugal to honor two poor, illiterate shepherd children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

Francis arrives Friday in the town of Fatima to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and canonize the children. He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of World War I, will resonate today.

Francis' deputy, Cardial Pietro Parolin, said the importance of Fatima lies specifically in the fact that poor, illiterate children were able to convey a powerful message of love and forgiveness at a time of war when "the talk was of hatred, vendetta, hostilities."
An armed Russian fighter jet flew alarmingly close to a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft flying in the Black Sea on Tuesday  just one day before Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Washington.

The Russian jet came as close as 20 feet to the American aircraft and remained that close for five minutes, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

The Russian jet was carrying six air-to-air missiles under its wings, making this episode highly provocative, one official told Fox News.

It is very rare for a Russian jet to intercept a U.S. aircraft while visibly armed, officials said.

Later Thursday, a Russian Su-24 attack jet flew into South Koreas Air Defense Zone prompting the South Korean military to scramble two F-16 fighter jets to the Sea of Japan.

The Russian jet came within 70 miles of the USS Carl Vinson Strike Group, which isnt very far when you are talking about jets, a defense official told Fox News.

Earlier, officials described the encounter between the reconnaissance plane and the fighter jet as mostly being "safe."



"While this one was considered by the flight crew to be safe and professional, this sort of close encounter certainly has the possibility to become dangerous in a hurry," the defense official said.

A Su-27 Russian jet made the close approach to the P-8A Poseidon while the Navy plane was in international airspace.

The Su-27 was scrambled reportedly after the Poseidon appeared to be approaching Russia's border. The Poseidon soon changed its course.

In a statement issued Friday, the Russian officials called the jets intercept a greeting maneuver.

After approaching a plane at a safe distance the Russian pilot visually identified the flying object as a U.S. surveillance plane P-8A Poseidon, the Russian military said in the statement.

Unlike Russian intercepts in the past, this Russian jet approached the U.S. Navy recon plane "slowly," according to the defense official. The entire encounter lasted about an hour.

"It goes on almost every day of the week," the official said. A separate official said about 60 such incidents have occurred since 2007, RT reported.

The latest Russian incident in the Black Sea comes a month before the U.S. military kicks off a series of military exercises in the region.

POKEMON GO IN CHURCH IS 'RELIGIOUS HATRED,' JUDGE RULES IN RUSSIAN BLOGGER CASE

In February, Russian fighter jets buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Black Sea on the same day the U.S. Army unloaded dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers in a nearby Romanian port along the Black Sea.

The same destroyer the Russians buzzed in February  USS Porter  was one of the warships which launched cruise missiles into Syria last month.

In September, a Russian jet buzzed a Navy spy plane over the Black Sea, the aircrafts coming within 10 feet of each other during that encounter.

When asked about the timing of Tuesday's incident coming a day before Lavrov's visit to Washington to meet President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the defense official asked, "What were we doing flying that day?"

PALESTINIAN LEADER HAILS TRUMP'S MIDEAST PEACE EFFORTS

The latest Russian provocation comes a week after a pair of Russian Bear bombers and fighter jets flew near Alaska on several consecutive nights, prompting the U.S. Air Force to dispatch F-22 stealth fighter jets to intercept the Russian formation.

NBC News was the first to report Tuesday's intercept.

Also on Thursday, a new Russian missile shipment arrived in Syria, which Fox News first reported was heading to the port city of Tartus. The new Russian missiles doubling the number of Russian missiles now in Syria less than a week after Moscow backed a new ceasefire agreement along with Iran and NATO-ally Turkey.

A U.S. defense official says American satellites observed new launchers and dozens of new SA-21 surface-to-air missiles for the advanced Russian S-400 air defense system being offloaded in Tartus.

Days ago, Russia sent roughly 21 artillery pieces to Syria to help Assad forces fighting a rebellion in the country that has stretched over six years.
The World Health Organization says it does not plan to invite a delegation from Taiwan to attend its upcoming annual assembly, for the first time since 2009.

However, Dr. Tim Armstrong, who heads the department of governing bodies at the U.N. agency, said "negotiations are still going on" to possibly allow Taiwan to attend as an observer at the World Health Assembly starting May 22.

China has used its clout as one of five veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council to exclude Taiwan from the U.N.

Armstrong said that this year, no "cross-strait understanding" exists between Taiwan and China like the ones that allowed Taiwan to send delegates since 2009.

He insisted Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to WHO's Geneva headquarters in January "had nothing to do with it."
President Trump has committed himself to ensuring the return of an American pastor wrongfully imprisoned in Turkey since last fall, according to the U.S. attorney who represents him and his family.

The Rev. Andrew C. Brunson, who pastored a Protestant church in Turkey's West Coast town of Izmir for 23 years, was detained along with his wife, Norine, last October. They were accused of supporting terrorism, but his wife was released 12 days later. Then in December Brunson was moved to a prison, although authorities had not filed a formal indictment against him.

On Thursday, Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), met with both Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the results of that meeting have provided a glimmer of hope for the family of Brunson, 48.

The president and vice president have taken a personal interest in resolving this, Sekulow told Fox News regarding his recent meeting in the Oval Office. They are fully engaged. The vice president has told me that he has been in talks with officials in Turkey.

Sekulow says that he respectfully urged Trump to bring up Brunsons case in his planned meeting next week with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"I have seen the tremendous struggles he is experiencing. I wake every morning with a deep sadness.  Pam Brunson, mother of Pastor Andrew Brunson

I have full confidence that this matter will be successfully resolved in short order, Sekulow told Fox News.

Sekulow and the ACLJ have long worked for the successful release of other Americans wrongly detained across the globe. Lately they have focused their efforts on the Brunson case. Sekulow said that, besides appealing to the White House, he and the ACLJ are working through the U.N. Human Rights Commission and have heard from nearly 230,000 people demanding Brunson's release.

Although the Turkish government has not indicted Brunson, officials accused him of having ties to an American-based Muslim cleric, Fetullah Gulen, whom Erdogan blames for a coup attempt last July.

Brunsons troubles began on Oct. 7 of last year when he was officially summoned to a local police station in Izmir, according to his family. Brunson thought he was being called there to receive a long-awaited permanent residence card.

Instead, he was told he was being deported for being a "threat to national security."

Brunson was arrested and fingerprinted while awaiting deportation. His personal items were confiscated, including his phone, and he was denied access to a Bible. Turkish authorities also prevented him from consulting with an attorney and kept him in isolation for an extended period of time.

After 63 days of captivity, Brunson was taken to a counter-terrorism center where, after further questioning, he was charged with "membership in an armed terrorist organization" and a judge ordered he be imprisoned instead of deported.

ACLJ and Brunsons family maintain that the pastor is being held for his Christian faith and he should be released immediately and allowed to return to the United States.

"For 23 years, I saw him love and serve the people of Turkey. It was a shock when this peaceful man was accused of being part of an armed terrorist group, an accusation that is clearly nonsense, Pam Brunson, the pastors mother, said in a statement to Fox News.

He has been in prison seven months, and having visited him there [this past January], I have seen the tremendous struggles he is experiencing. I wake every morning with a deep sadness. Yet, because of the huge outpouring of prayers by God's people, God has sustained him and I believe he will be delivered."

Due to the current state of emergency in Turkey, Brunsons file has been sealed and all visits from his attorney are recorded and notes are copied. The only official written charge has been, membership in an armed terrorist organization.
An editor at a leading opposition newspaper in Turkey has been detained for questioning.

Oguz Guven, the editor of pro-secular Cumhuriyet newspaper's online edition, tweeted Friday "I'm being detained."

Turkey's state-run Anadolu news agency said Guven was detained for a news article on the death of prosecutor Mustafa Alper in a traffic accident Wednesday. Details about the article in question have not been released.

Alper, chief prosecutor of Denizli province in southwest Turkey, filed the first indictment against the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen following last summer's coup attempt.

The Turkish government blames Gulen for orchestrating the coup, which he denies.

Twelve journalists and senior staff members of Cumhuriyet are behind bars pending trial on "aiding terrorist organizations."
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Britain's main opposition leader has accused Prime Minister Theresa May of pandering to an "erratic" U.S. administration, as defense and security take center-stage in the U.K. election campaign.

May was the first world leader to visit Donald Trump after his inauguration, and has stressed the importance of the trans-Atlantic "special relationship."

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn says "waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isn't strong leadership. And pandering to an erratic administration will not deliver stability."

Corbyn, who opposed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, said in a speech Friday at the Chatham House think tank that he supports military action "as a last resort."

May's Conservatives see Corbyn's opposition to military intervention and nuclear weapons as a major weakness to be exploited in the election campaign.
When the dozens of teams involved in Westmoreland Countys American Cancer Society Relay for Life start raising money each year, the cheddar rolls in.

Teams grouped by churches, neighborhoods, businesses and clubs use every fundraising method they can think of to find money that goes toward cancer research.

They hold Gospel sings and set up womenless beauty pageants, have yard and bake sales, organize raffles and cookbook sales and sell everything from gift wrap to treats at Valentines Day.

Dont even try to match the dinners they hold, as everything from pigs feet and fried fish to spaghetti and barbecue brings in crowds that throw down serious green for the cause.

When the money from the fundraisers joins pledged donations at the annual Relay for Life event, the Westmoreland team arrives with more than $100,000 a year.

Thats why the effort based in Westmoreland Countywith the counties of King George, Richmond and Essex joining inhas received a prestigious national award for two years running.

The back-to-back National Top 10 Per Capita awards recognize the efforts of Relay for Life of Westmorelands 100 volunteer fundraisers and the collection of $100,000 in both 2015 and 2016.

Organizers Wanda Fones and Kirsten Self said the award is gratifying, but what really drives the teams from Westmoreland and surrounding counties is making a difference in fighting cancer.

So many people are touched by cancer, said Self, noting that many of the volunteer fundraisers are either cancer survivors or have family members touched by the horrible disease.

She got involved with the effort through her church, Nomini Baptist just outside of Montross, and has been one of the team co-chairs for years.

She said the teams often form through churches, businesses or civic groups, and then organize and hold their own fundraising events.

Self said there is a good-natured spirit of competition among the teams, which is valuable because it drives up the total that comes together at the Relay for Life.

This years main event is at Washington and Lee High School on June 10. From 10 a.m. until 9 p.m., people will walk or run laps to earn pledge dollars. Other fundraising and fun events are scheduled for the day as well.

One of the top teams each year is Cople Episcopal Parish, with their total tally reaching as high as $16,000.

John and Joyce Sydnor said they always take part in the effort because cancer has touched their family. They are more than willing to get out and take part in raffles, bake sales and more.

Peggy Mothershead, who has put in years as part of the Westmoreland Rurtan Clubs Relay for Life fundraising team, said theyve done everything from selling clothing to holding a Green Eggs and Ham dinner, which she mentioned was quite successful.

Lucy Kelly of the BC Fun Bunch team, centered in the Zacata area of Westmoreland, said the 14 members of their team held a Gospel sing event where pigs feet were also a big draw.

A representative from the regional American Cancer Society office in Richmond said that the Northern Neck effort, where Westmoreland County provides the lions share of the fundraising, has generated around $1 million over the past decade or so, an effort that stands out nationally.

The two Westmoreland team coordinators said that work is proceeding to hopefully match that $100,000 tally again this year, though its always a push that comes right down to the day of the event.

We have fun with this, said Self, and we also feel like were making a difference.

In addition to the Relay for Life event being held in Montross June 10, theres another called the Northern Neck and Essex County Bark for Life on Oct. 21, from noon to 4 p.m., at Times Square Shopping Center in the town of Warsaw.

To donate or find out how to get involved in Relay for Life, go online to relayforlife.org and search for the team in your area. To donate to the Westmoreland effort, go to that website and search out Relay for Life of Westmoreland.
Internet access can be hard to come by at the farms and houses that dot rural Spotsylvania County near Lake Anna and Mineral.

But that is changing, thanks to a new partnership between the county and the Central Rappahannock Regional Library. Its resulted in a weekly pop-up library equipped with WiFi at the Belmont Community Center, 7124 Belmont Road. Library patrons, and even those without a library card, can stop by from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays to use one of its 15 Chromebooks and a wireless printer, as well as other library services.

Its an area that doesnt have a lot of broadband network service, so were really excited to bring these kinds of services outside of our branches and down here in the southern part of Spotsylvania, said Chris Glover, the librarys assistant director for information technology. Its just a great partnership that is really providing a service for this end of the county that they havent been able to have before.

Glover and Jane Reeve, Spotsylvanias director of information services, serve on the countys Cable Commission and came up with the idea while talking after one of its meetings. Efforts to have the CRRL partner with some of the countys schools to provide access hadnt panned out, and they realized they could use the Belmont and Berkeley community centers instead.

Both are near Spotsylvania fire stations, which are connected to the countys internal network equipment. They figured it would be fairly simple to provide those buildings with Crossroads Connection, the countys public wireless access.

We were just brainstorming and the light bulb went off, Glover said. Youve got fiber. Weve got computers.

The CRRL then approached the Belmont Ruritan Club and the Belmont Club of Women, which own the community center, to see if members were interested.

The library said, We have a deal for you that would be a new role and visibility for the building,  said Gary Jackson, the Ruritan Clubs IT committee chairman. We told them, Were all in. 

The library had been offering limited services at the community center so patrons could check out and return books, audiobooks and videos from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. every other Monday. It began offering the expanded services on April 10, but only began publicizing it recently. Few people have taken advantage of its broadband connection so far. Use is expected to pick up once word spreads.

Were anticipating that the kids, particularly, will take advantage of it, Jackson said. Theyve got to do homework. Theyve got to do research.

Willie Biscoe, who served on the Spotsylvania County School Board for 16 years in the 1970s and 1980s, stopped by the community center Monday with her granddaughter-in-law and three young great-grandsons, mainly so they could get books.

I think thats good, she said of equipping the building with broadband. Im sure there are children who do not have access.

WiFi will be available at the Belmont Community Center 24/7, so people can tap into it even when the library isnt there or the building is closed.

Weve done a survey of the parking lot to see how far coverage goes, said Jackson. We figure people will pull up and use it.

Reeve said the Cable Commission has been looking at ways to provide broadband access to the countys rural areas for some time. The main option people living there have had until now is satellite internet service or a cellular Wi-Fi hotspot, or to go to a public facility like the library.

That can get expensive for home use, she said of using a hotspot. If youre not careful, you can rack up a pretty hefty bill.

Spotsylvania and the CRRL see the pop-up library at the Belmont Community Center as a pilot project. Theyre considering teaming up to provide similar services at the Berkeley Community Center, which is just down Partlow Road from Spotsylvania Fire Station 3.

Our hope and dream is to continue to partner with Spotsylvania to expand service to additional locations, said Martha Hutzel, CRRL director. Wed love to be at Belmont twice a week. We could do family night movies on Fridays since we have license agreements. We could do popup libraries at farmers markets, festivals or whatever.  The possibilities are endless.
Residents who found themselves with waterfront property when Stafford County built the Rocky Pen Run Reservoir may soon get some relief from the higher tax bills that came with the lake.

The General Assembly earlier this year approved a bill giving Stafford supervisors the authority to defer up to 95 percent of the tax increase on landowners whose property values soared with the creation of the reservoir.

In the early 1990s, the Stafford Board of Supervisors voted to build the 520-acre reservoir to address the countys long-term water needs. Dedicated on May 29, 2015, and named Lake Mooney, it is expected to meet the water demands of Stafford beyond 2050.

The reservoir is open for boating, and fishing will eventually be allowed. But swimming is prohibited because it is a drinking-water source.

But property values of the parcels fronting the newly formed lake skyrocketed from 10 percent to as much as 260 percent, thereby increasing the property owners tax assessments.

Some residents feared they would be taxed out of their homes. Supervisor Gary Snellings and Commissioner of the Revenue Scott Mayausky organized a community meeting Wednesday evening at Gayle Middle School in Stafford to discuss a new program designed to prevent that from happening.

Mayausky explained that Sen. Richard Stuart, RStafford, and Del. Mark Dudenhefer, RStafford, introduced two bills in the recent session of the assembly: one granting tax relief and the other deferring the tax bill.

The tax relief bill failed, as expected, because it would have required an amendment to the state constitution, which requires that property be assessed at its fair market value. But state legislators did pass the bill authorizing Stafford to create a program that would allow those who qualify to defer up to 95 percent of the increase in their tax levy from 2015 to 2016.

The deferred taxes would have to be paid back to the county, with interest, once the owner dies, or if the property is sold or transferred.

So if you live there 20 years and die, your kids will owe $40,000? Lake Mooney resident Jody Lochmiller asked. And all because of a lake you can look at it, but you cant swim in and where you cant fish.

The program is open to any resident whose 2016 assessment increased by more than 25 percent as a result of Lake Mooney.

I am surprised we got passed what we didas imperfect as it is, Mayausky said. They dont like passing laws that can impact local revenues. They limited this to Stafford County, which put to rest the fears of other delegates.

Snellings echoed Mayauskys position that tax deferral is far from a perfect solution, but said it does give some relief to those who are in a financial bind.

I know its not perfect and its not what we asked forbut it can help keep people in their houses, Snellings said.

It is now up to the Board of Supervisors to adopt an ordinance to create the tax deferral program. Lake Mooney residents will have the opportunity to voice their concerns at a public hearing before the Board Supervisors on June 6.

Several residents in attendance agreed theyd like to continue the fight for a better solution in Richmond. Snellings encouraged them to sit down with their state legislators and offered to help facilitate a meeting.

We will certainly continue this, he said. We need to get state legislators in this room in front of you.
If one message came through during a community meeting about the opioid epidemic, its that the people who get hooked on prescription pain pillsthen advance to heroin because everything in their system is set on getting the next highdont look like some strung-out junkie in a movie.

They look like an all-American cheerleader and honor student. An Eagle Scout. An executive making $122,000 a year or the mother of a newborn baby.

They could be any one of us, said Dr. Rebecca Bigoney, chief medical officer for Mary Washington Hospital.

She was addressing an audience of almost 200 community leaders, law enforcement officers and representatives of social service agenciesas well as family members who had lost loved ones to overdoses or had struggled with addiction for years.

The crowd gathered Wednesday at the hospital campus for a forum called, A Community Effort to Address the Crisis: The Opioid Epidemic.

Before a panel answered questions about local treatment options and signs of opioid abuse, the organizers showed a powerful documentary that painted an eye-opening picture of the all-too-common leap from popping pain pills to shooting heroin.

The film, Chasing the Dragon, was put together by the FBI to educate young people about the way one dosage of pills could lead to addictionor one shot of heroin to a fatal overdose.

If you know somebody who is using drugs or even thinking about using drugs, say something, said Chuck Rosenberg, acting administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration, in the film.

Once the addiction starts, it is often too late, added James Comey, former FBI director, in the introduction.

PROFILES OF PAIN

Local viewers saw profiles of several addicts, including an executive who fell down some steps one night and later took two pain pills a co-worker gave her. She was immediately hooked.

It got to the point she needed 40 pills a day to function, and when she no longer could get them, she turned to heroin. She, too, ended up in jail and lost everything her six-salary figure had provided, as well as her freedom.

A mother, who was given OxyContin to dull the pain after her youngest daughter was born, became so addicted to pills, then heroin, her husband threatened to stop putting gas in the family van to prevent her from driving to the city to get drugs.

Thats when she left him and her three childrenand moved into a crack house to get a fix whenever she wanted.

GOING TO GET WORSE

Then there was Cierra, a cheerleader and gymnast who was well-loved and successful in school. She had everything she ever wanteduntil she took a wrong turn at age 17, experimented with marijuana, then became hooked on opioids.

After stealing to feed her habit, she was a convicted felon at age 18.

She spent seven months in jail, free of drugs. She seemed happy, healthy, the way she was before the first pill, said her mother, Trish.

Six days after she came home from jail, she told her mother she was going out for cigarettes. She returned from the errand, went up to her room and didnt come down for dinner.

I open that door, and my little girl is on the floor dead, the mom said.

Michael Barbuti, a DEA special agent in Richmond, told the audience the film was shot, not in New York or Los Angeles, but in Virginia.

Its here, he said. I dont use words like epidemic lightly, but I think there really are no other words to describe it.

Last year in Virginia, 1,100 people died from opioid overdoses, part of the 52,000 deaths nationwide. Preliminary reports from the Virginia Department of Health say 72 deaths were in Fredericksburg and the counties of Caroline, King George, Spotsylvania and Stafford.

Unfortunately, were on track for even more this year, Barbuti said. The problem is going to get worse before it gets better.

IN THE MEDICINE CABINET

Mary Washington Healthcare and the Rappahannock Area Community Services Board teamed with local agencies and leaders to present the forum. About 50 community leaders met all day Wednesday to learn more about the problem and to brainstorm solutions. That night, organizers showed the documentary and had a panel answer questions from the audience.

Xavier Richardson, an executive vice president with Mary Washington Healthcare, said he wanted people to learn that opioids arent some random, or even unusual, drug bought and sold in dark alleys.

Theyre often right in your medicine cabinet, he said. Theyre prescribed after surgery or for those with an injury. They have well-known names such as Vicodin and OxyContin, codeine and fentanyl, morphine and Demerol.

The opioids that tend to make headlinesbecause theyre illicitare heroin and opium.

Theres little difference between the content of legal and illegal ones, or the way they can affect people, said Dr. Ronald Gaertner, psychiatrist and medical director at Snowden.

One comes in a prescription bottle, and another comes in a bag, he said.

PILLS TO HEROIN

One of the purposes of the gathering was to educate participants about the ways people get hooked on pain pills in the first place. Seven of every 10 teenagers get them from a friend or relative, said Annie Medina, a consultant who helped with Wednesdays session.

They find them in the medicine cabinet, a friend offers one at a party or theyre having a bad day and need a pick-me-up. Likewise, four of every five new heroin users start their road to addiction with pills they got after surgery or an injury.

Its a prescription they got from a doctor, therefore it must be safe, Medina said about the mistaken notion that prescribed drugs wont lead to misuse.

Medina told the group that not every person who experiments becomes addicted. But to those whose brains respond to the need for opioids, pills are easy to come by and when they run out, heroin almost always comes next, she said.

Whats different about this epidemic, Barbuti said, is that it crosses all economic, social and racial lines, and its prevalent in the city and suburbs, urban areas and rural counties.

Weve always had a heroin issue, he said, but nothing like were seeing now.
The special agent in charge of the FBIs Richmond division is under consideration as the bureaus interim director after the firing of James Comey.

Adam S. Lee was selected by Comey to lead the Richmond office in January 2014, not long after Comey took office in September 2013. The Richmond location, one of 56 division offices across the country, was the first Comey visited just a few days after his appointment as director.

Prior to Lees appointment to Richmond, he was the chief of the FBIs Public Corruption and Civil Rights Section and oversaw the FBIs global Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and antitrust investigative programs.

Lee could not be reached for comment Thursday. He has been in Washington on temporary duty, said a spokeswoman.

According to the Justice Department, Lee was one of four to have been interviewed Wednesday to serve as the interim director in addition to Andrew McCabe, now the acting director.

The department said no timetable had been set. A permanent director must be confirmed by the Senate.

Others are said to be the director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; the assistant director of the FBIs Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch; and the special agent in charge of the Chicago office.

The Richmond division has six field officesin Bristol, Charlottesville, Fredericksburg, Lynchburg, Roanoke and Winchesterand covers 82 of Virginias 95 counties, virtually all of the state except for those areas covered by the Norfolk and Washington offices.

According to the FBI, Lee is a lawyer licensed in California and prior to joining the bureau in 1996 he served as a fellow in the California Senate. He is married to Melinda Lee, and they have a son and twin daughters.

From 1996 until 2005, he primarily investigated public corruption and white-collar crime in the FBIs San Diego division and served for seven years on the divisions SWAT team. He joined the FBI cyber divisions executive staff in 2005.

From 2009 through 2012, he was the assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Offices operational HUMINT Program, where he led operations affecting national security.

Comey is a 1982 graduate of the College of William & Mary. He worked for the McGuireWoods law firm in Richmond and taught at the University of Richmond School of Law. From 1996 to 2001, he was the lead federal prosecutor in the Richmond division of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
BLACKSBURG  Ben Epperlys entire body moves to music.

Sitting down in front of a piano, his fingers dance across the keys as his legs rock up and down quickly and his head nods as he channels his energy into creating song.

The music is a release of tension in a way that the 24-year-old with high functioning autism uses to speak his mind, a communication that means everything.

If you can express yourself you can go out into the world and you can do things, he said.

On Friday, Epperly, who grew up in Blue Ridge and Roanoke, will graduate from Virginia Tech with a degree in music technology  and a mastered ability to express himself  in a journey thats been as twisting and frantic as the movements and evolution of the songs channeled through his fingertips.

The ceremony will mark the undergraduate college ending to an education that started when he was barely out of diapers, a young boy with autism who got onto a bus in Botetourt County and never looked back. It will also be a testament to a young man who had his autism recognized early, the right support system and a drive to better himself through a discovered passion as he grew up.

Music is his life, said his mother, Susan Hensley. He eats, sleeps and breathes it.

Moved by music

When Epperly sits down at a piano he feels most comfortable. Its a time when hes totally in control.

When hes talking to someone, he doesnt think they can tell he has autism. When hes playing the piano or singing with the Tech Men, a university male student choir, he knows they cant.

Its a way to mask it, Epperly said.

One thing he doesnt mask is a depth of knowledge for memorizing songs. From listening to Epperly play or sing with perfect pitch, its instantly apparent he has a musical mind.

I used to tell people that Ben had 2,000 songs memorized in his head, said his stepfather, Darrell Hensley. But now, I have to tell them I was wrong. He can play 5,000.

That doesnt mean there havent been challenges along the way in developing into a competent musician.

Vicky Elliott, his first piano teacher who taught him between 2006 and 2012, said Epperly sometimes would focus on improvising instead of the task at hand.

I know she didnt always like my style, Epperly says now, with a grin.

Elliott, though, was able to focus Epperly. Shed been charged by his mother, whom she knew from church, to teach him how to read music. So thats what she did. She said she had never taught a student with autism before and she gathered as much from Epperly, she estimates, as he learned from her.

I learned not to put limits on what students can accomplish, she said.

As a piano student, Epperly became active in the National Piano Guild student auditions. In those contests, students are rated for their abilities and Epperly often would rake in the highest awards .

Elliott said shes still amazed with everything the young man was able to do in his growth as a musician. She even bumped into him at Tech, while listening to another students recital, and thought he looked happy.

I never saw as much change in a student as I saw in Ben, Elliott said.

A transformative childhood

Epperly was diagnosed with autism at age 3.

At that point, he had difficulty with words. His mother estimates he had a vocabulary of someone half his age and he didnt really eat anything but baby food, she said.

It was his grandfather, a former educator in Botetourt County Schools, who recognized the importance of enrolling in school early, so Epperly started in the Botetourt Schools preschool program. His mother put 3-year-old Epperly on a bus by himself for his first day of school .

That was one of the hardest days of my life, Susan Hensley said.

But it paid off for the child who got careful attention from a wide group of really good teachers, Susan Hensley said. Through trials and tribulations  at times made difficult because of autism  Epperly would just work harder to complete school while funneling excess energy into taking part in track and field at Lord Botetourt High School and always focusing on the piano.

However, one of the biggest challenges of his childhood had nothing to do with autism.

Losing his father

Epperly rattles off the date without hesitation: June 22, 2004.

He was on a family vacation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and his father, Gary Epperly, wanted to take him swimming in the evening. The pair left their hotel and went to the beach to swim .

About 8 p.m., a wave knocked the pair down and separated them. Young Ben swam to shore but his father was swept away. Epperly remembers frantically searching for his father, until he noticed a group of people trying to resuscitate someone farther down the beach. He ran up and saw his father lying there . He later died at a local hospital.

According to a story in The Roanoke Times, it was the third drowning in that area of the beach in a month and it led to a study of the ocean floor by local researchers looking for rip currents in the area of the drownings.

Susan Hensley remembers the panic. She said she and Ben both went to counseling for some time afterward and were able to find comfort with other members of the congregation at Bonsack Baptist Church, she said.

As time passed, she later met Darrell Hensley, who has served as a stepfather for Epperly and is a person whom he respects, Epperly said.

When asked how he feels when he thinks about losing his father, Epperly doesnt hesitate.

Its OK, Epperly said, looking toward the ceiling. Hes in a better place.

Making a college career

There are a lot of things that have stressed Epperly out about college, he said.

He worked hard enough in high school to go to Virginia Western Community College. He worked even harder there, which opened the door to Virginia Tech.

At Tech, hes been worried about living away from home and passing all his exams. But by far one of the craziest times was when he prepped for his audition to get into Techs music school as a transfer student from VWCC.

At that time, he said he knew he wanted to focus on piano because its what he loved to play. However, he wasnt sure if he had the skills to get into a rigorous, collegiate program, he said. So he practiced and practiced. He knew hed have to play a classical piece, different than the freewheeling jazz he enjoys most.

When audition day came, Virginia Tech music professor Richard Masters said it was apparent that he had put a lot of work in. By the end of the audition  of which Masters stressed Epperly was not given any leeway because of his autism  faculty from the music school found it acceptable to let him into the music technology program.

Masters began teaching Epperly classical piano, and the practice that was evident in the audition became even more evident.

The thing that impresses me most about Ben is how hard he works, Masters said. He works harder than almost any other student Ive had.

Masters, like Elliott, said he learned more from Epperly about how to teach and where to convey clarity in his teaching than Epperly probably learned from him.

For his part, Epperly is grateful for his three years at Tech.

Beyond learning about music and stage direction, hes done a lot of self-discovery on the campus. His time management skills and sense of direction have been tested to the limit in Blacksburg. Hes also found way to create better relationships with classmates and people involved in a worship band he plays for on Thursday evening.

Its helped me maintain focus in my life toward a goal, he said.

Gigging around

Like his classmates, Epperly isnt sure what the future holds other than opportunity.

He has a job helping out at Lee Hartman and Sons in Roanoke lined up after college. He said hell continue what he did as an intern there, moving around equipment and learning about how to set up a stage.

One thing is for sure, he wont ever be away from a piano for long. According to Masters, Epperly has the ability to play for a crowd, like hes done in the past and should do in the future. Epperly said he doesnt plan to stop composing music in his head.

Whether its in public or when nobody is around, people in Southwest Virginia should be looking out. Ben Epperly wants to make music for them.

Ill be gigging around, he said.
LAST WEEK, I voted to roll back key components of Obamacare. My vote was consistent with the promises I made to constituents since I first ran for office three years ago. The American Health Care Act is a start to keep the promise Republicans have made for the last seven years. In fact, House Republicans voted 50 times to repeal part or all of Obamacare.

Since Obamacare became law, it has been a string of broken promises and yearly double-digit premium increases. Next year, Virginians are expected to see a 20 percent increase in their premiums on the individual market. Obamacare is another federal government program like Medicare and Social Security that will be insolvent in 20 years. We have already piled on $20 trillion in debt and $100 trillion in unfunded liabilities onto our kids.

It is imploding, and economic theory predicted this from the beginning. Ask small business owners about the price tag for providing health care to their employees and you will hear an earful on how it hurts their ability to create jobs and promote economic growth. This isnt fair for anyone, and it is unsustainable.

The AHCA is not perfect, but it is a proactive response to policies that are failing American individuals and families.

When the AHCA text was released in March, I did not support the bill. I believed it kept the core structure of Obamacare intact and did not tackle lowering the cost of health care.

Currently, the average young adult cannot sign up for affordable health care coverage because of the hoops insurance providers must jump through to comply with insurance regulations. And under Obamacare, people with pre-existing conditions are eligible for health insurance, but it is too often health insurance they cannot afford because of sky-high premiums and deductibles.

Through constructive dialogue and discussions with President Trump, Vice President Pence, House leadership and the work of House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, RN.C., we were able to come to agreement on a path forward for the AHCA. That process required compromise from conservatives and moderates.

The AHCA did not include all of the provisions I supported in the Freedom Caucus health care repeal proposal introduced by Rep. Mark Sanford, RS.C. However, the final version of the AHCA included three amendments to give states more flexibility to meet the needs of their residents and work toward lowering health insurance costs and premiums.

The MacArthur amendment addressed the concerns of the House Freedom Caucus and those of my more moderate colleagues. This amendment improved the legislation by addressing the core driver of health care costs, which is insurance regulations. It allows for a more free-market driven system where we can have more competition and choice.

The amendment gives states a choice to waive certain costly insurance regulations while protecting those with pre-existing conditions.

Health care is personal and many have expressed concerns about protections for those with pre-existing conditions. I agree these individuals must be protected and I have told my constituents that over and over again. Contrary to media reports, the MacArthur amendment clearly states, nothing in this Act shall be construed as permitting health insurance issuers to limit access for health coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions.

Also, keep in mind the AHCA applies only to those in the individual health insurance market who have seen the highest premium and deductible increases. It will change absolutely nothing for the 179 million Americans who receive employer-sponsored health insurance, Tricare, VA, Medicare or Medicaid.

Even then, those receiving insurance on the individual market without significant gaps in coverage will see no changes to their coverage. If anyone with a pre-existing condition loses coverage and sees premium increases, the legislation provides $138 billion in funding for states to offset costs through high-risk pools.

There have been critics of the process. I was one of them, from the beginning. The way this bill was initially brought to the House floor for consideration was not as transparent as it could have been, and we should have had a final Congressional Budget Office score before passing it.

To dispel one final concern, the House passed companion legislation to ensure that members of Congress, who are still required to receive coverage from Obamacare exchanges, cannot be exempted from any of the provisions in the AHCA.

This bill was about keeping our word, but our work to repeal Obamacare is not done. Now it moves over to the Senate, and I look forward to working with my Senate colleagues to improve the bill.

Dave Brat is an economist and member of the House of Representatives, serving Virginias 7th congressional district. He is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access of the House Small Business Committee.
First Dates

8 p.m. (4) (NBC) (12) (NBC)

You Wrote a Song About My Plant? One dater brings a game on the date to get the questions flowing and the restaurant seems to be jealous of his tactic. (N) (HD)

Undercover Boss

8 p.m. (6) (CBS) (9) (CBS)

Celebrity Undercover Boss: Darius Rucker Darius Rucker travels to Austin, Texas on an undercover journey to discover the next great musical acts. During his time undercover, Darius runs an open mic night, works as a roadie and strolls along Austins famous Sixth Street. (N) (HD)

Hawaii Five-0

9 p.m. (6) (CBS) (9) (CBS)

Ua Mau Ke Ea O Ka Aina I Ka Pono McGarrett risks his life when Five-0 attempts their most dangerous rescue yet of young girls trapped in the sex trafficking ring they have been tracking all year. Also, Kono, deeply affected by the case, makes a life-changing decision. (N) (HD)

Shark Tank

9 p.m. (7) (ABC) (8) (ABC)

Pitches include a futuristic smart notebook that erases handwriting, hair-care products infused with pheromones and an undergarment for brides so they can use the bathroom on their own. (N)(HD)

House Hunters

10 p.m. (HGTV)

Settling in St. Petersburg, Florida A man brings his family of five to his hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, so he can open a guitar shop with his father. Hes hoping to find a stately Colonial home with a screened-in sunroom but his wife is looking for a house with a pool. (N) (HD)
8 pm.

(5) (FOX) (35) (FOX) Lucifer When it is discovered that the flaming sword is the only hope for the family returning home safely, the pressure is on for Lucifer to control what he has never been able to control before, his emotions, in order to ignite it. (R) (HD)

(7) (ABC) (8) (ABC) The Toy Box Inventions include a candy press, a curly-haired doll and plushes with interchangeable parts. (N) (HD)

(20) (MNT) American Ninja Warrior The top 30 contestants from the Orlando Qualifier tackle the finals course. (R) (HD)

(32) (PBS) Lets Have Some Church Detroit Style Hear about the tale of the ups and downs of the Hallelujah Sisters, a Detroit gospel group.

(DISN) Stuck in the Middle The kids must entertain themselves for an entire weekend without using technology or devices. (R)

(FX) Star Trek Into Darkness (2013, Sci-Fi) Captain Kirk organizes a manhunt to find one man who is bent on mass destruction.

(HGTV) My Lottery Dream Home Down-and-out pro-boxer Damian hit hard times in Lancaster, California, before his dream came true and won $1 million on a scratcher. He immediately moved his family to Las Vegas, Nevada, and called in a design expert to help decorate. (R) (HD)

(HIST) Ancient Aliens In nearly every culture there are stories of opposing forces at work here on Earth, forces of a supernatural or otherworldly nature. Explore whether or not these forces really exist and what is the true nature of the dark forces. (R) (HD)

(NGEO) Naked Science Many scientists believe that an immense cosmic boulder, similar to the one that knocked out the dinosaurs, could happen again, causing global mass extinctions. (R) (HD)

(OXY) Snapped When a young Marine goes missing, police uncover his troubled marriage and a deadly plot. (R)

(SYFY) Hook (1991, Fantasy) A grown-up Peter Pan must return to Neverland to rescue his kids from Captain Hook. (HD)

9 pm.

(5) (FOX) (35) (FOX) Lethal Weapon Riggs and Murtaugh are forced to work with DEA agent Karen Palmer again, to protect Leo Getz, an ambulance-chasing attorney who was linked to the Cartel. (R) (HD)

(7) (ABC) (8) (ABC) Shark Tank Pitches include a futuristic smart notebook that erases handwriting, hair-care products infused with pheromones and an undergarment for brides so they can use the bathroom on their own. (N) (HD)

(23) (PBS) Bill Murray: The Mark Twain Prize Celebrate beloved actor and comedian Bill Murray, the latest recipient of The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. From the stage of The John F. Kennedy Center, a star-studded lineup salutes the achievements of the comedic trailblazer. (R)

(CNBC) American Greed: Scams, Scoundrels and Scandals Michigan doctor Farid Fata pumps poisonous chemotherapy into cancer-free patients and pockets $17 million in fraudulent payments. Two Chicago-area bank robbers escape the Metropolitan Correctional Center rappelling 17 stories to freedom. (R)

(COMC) South Park Cartman and Butters get their hands on a drone and take it for a spin around the neighborhood. (R) (HD)

(FOOD) Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives This trip, Guy Fieris digging into a righteous mashup of flavors. In Orlando, Fla. Joey Fatone is riding shotgun to a potato-centric palace, plus a trip to his very own hot dog hangout. (N) (HD)

(HALL) The Middle After learning that Axl text-invited the wrong girl to the prom and plans to solve the situation by standing her up, Frankie and Mike demand that he meet the girl face-to-face in a timely manner to gently break off the date. (R) (HD)

(HLN) This Is Life With Lisa Ling Lisa Ling goes to one of Americas hardest hit cities, Chicago, to investigate whether a gentler approach to heroin use is being applied equally to the rich and poor, black and white.

(NGEO) Breakthrough A look inside the shadowy world of hackers, where good battles evil, with the security of the world at stake. (R) (HD)

(SPIKE) Cops An officer of the Springfield Police Department in Missouri tasers a suspect and retrieves a stolen wallet after the subject makes a run for it at a traffic stop. (R) (HD)

10 pm.

(30) (MHz) Tatort: Cologne The body of a wealthy real estate magnate is found, his pores emanating a familiar odor: bitter almonds. His death is thought to be an assisted suicide, but it is soon discovered that he was poisoned. (N)

(CNBC) American Greed: Scams, Scoundrels and Scandals A once $100 million publishing fortune pits mother against son when hes accused of squandering millions on sex, diamonds, and fraud. (R)

(COMC) South Park Stan, Kyle, Kenny and Cartman form their own boy band, Fingerbang, and search for a fifth member. It is also Carmans latest scheme to make a million dollars. (R) (HD)

(DISC) Mayday Nigeria Airways Flight 2120 takes off from Saudi Arabias Jeddah airport, headed for Nigeria, but the pilots get a warning that their plane is not properly pressurizing. While trying to return to the airport, the plane erupts in a fireball. (R) (HD)

(HALL) The Middle With only three days left until summer vacation, Frankie is ecstatic that shes made it through another school year with the family. Her happiness turns to panic when she and Mike learn that Brick needs to write a daily journal or risk failing. (R) (HD)

(HGTV) House Hunters A man brings his family of five to his hometown of St. Petersburg, Florida, so he can open a guitar shop with his father. Hes hoping to find a stately Colonial home with a screened-in sunroom but his wife is looking for a house with a pool. (N) (HD)

(HLN) This Is Life With Lisa Ling Lisa Ling gains unprecedented access to the Los Angeles County Jail to understand what it takes to manage the countrys busiest jail.

(NGEO) National Geographic Explorer Jeff Goldblum investigates why many in Japan are choosing to disappear. (R) (HD)

(NICKJR) PAW Patrol Rubble is set to perform in the Adventure Bay Talent Show but must help Farmer Al first. Bettina accidentally tips over hot BBQ coals onto piles of corn, which causes the maze to fill with popcorn. (R)
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...
Credit Union opens ATM at college

ELKO  Elko Federal Credit Union recently went live with an ATM capable of distributing $1 and $20 bills to users on campus at Great Basin Community College. The ATM is located in the Tech Center, which is a shared space with Elko High School.

According to Elko Federal Credit Union CEO John Kelly, Students, faculty and staff of both Great Basin Community College and Elko High School expressed a need for convenient, on-site ATM access. As Elkos local credit union, were able to respond quickly to the needs of our community, and are excited to be able to bring this convenience to the campus.

Founded in 1960, Elko Federal Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative with more than 14,000 members and $152 million in assets. As Nevadas ninth largest credit union, Elko FCU has locations in Elko and Spring Creek. For more information visit elkofcu.org.

Blair-Martin named to international list

ELKO  Vicky Blair-Martin of Elko, a sales associate/representative with Coldwell Banker Algerio Q-Team Realty, has earned membership in the companys International Presidents Premier. This award represents the top one percent of all sales associates/representatives worldwide in the Coldwell Banker system qualified for this distinguished award.

Vicky Blair-Martin has been presented with the Membership of the International Presidents Premier in recognition of her contributions to both Coldwell Banker and the real estate industry, said Budge Huskey, president of Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC. Vicky is dedicated to her customers, and exemplifies the standards of excellence for which Coldwell Banker sales associates are known.

Jim Winer, broker/owner of Coldwell Banker Algerio Q-Team Realty, stated, Its amazing and a testament to the hard work and dedication to the real estate profession that Vicky has been able to achieve the level of success she has and to be one of the top Coldwell Banker real estate professionals in the country, right here out of rural northeastern Nevada.

Coldwell Banker Algerio/ Q-Team Realty located at 700 Idaho St. in Elko and 114 Tonka Lane in Spring Creek, can be reached at 738-4078 and 738-9866 and can be viewed on the web at www.CBElko.com.

Free energy-efficiency workshop

ELKO  NV Energy will host a free workshop May 16 for business customers that want to trim operating costs and lower energy use.

Representatives from PowerShift by NV Energy will provide information on Commercial Energy Services, which provides incentives to help business customers offset the cost of making energy efficient upgrades to their facility  helping reduce their energy usage and costs.

The workshop is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Elko Convention Center.

Registration is required and complimentary lunch will be provided. Representatives from NV Energy are available for interview.

For additional information, visit http://bit.ly/NVEnergyBusinessSeminar.
Story Highlights 18% say healthcare most important problem in May

Government dissatisfaction/Poor leadership ties healthcare for top concern

31% satisfied with way things are going in U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans became much more concerned about healthcare this month, with 18% naming it as the most important problem facing the U.S. Mentions of healthcare tie with mentions of "dissatisfaction with government/poor leadership" at the top of the most important problems list. This is the highest percentage mentioning healthcare since November 2013, amid the troubled rollout of the government healthcare exchanges.

These results are based on a Gallup poll conducted May 3-7, in the midst of the House vote on the American Health Care Act, the replacement bill for the Affordable Care Act. That vote followed a failed effort in the House in March to bring the original version of the bill to a vote. The Senate will now act on the healthcare legislation.

The percentage of Americans naming healthcare as the most important problem hit a recent peak of 26% in August/September 2009, amid angry town-hall meetings nationwide about the Affordable Care Act. Mentions of healthcare averaged 20% from August 2009 through March 2010, when President Barack Obama signed the bill into law. After that, fewer Americans cited healthcare as the most important problem until the exchanges got up and running in late 2013. As concerns about the Obamacare website increased, the percentage naming healthcare as the most important problem was often in the teens.

Still, mentions of healthcare are lower than they were in the mid-1990s, during the Hillary Clinton-directed push for universal healthcare. At that point, they reached the upper 20s and low 30s, peaking at 31% in January 1994.

Currently, 24% of Democrats rate healthcare as the most important problem, while 14% of Republicans and 17% of independents say the same.

Dissatisfaction With Government Remains High

Dissatisfaction with government and poor leadership tie with healthcare in May as the most important problem. The 18% who mention government dissatisfaction is down slightly from 21% in April, though this issue has remained one of the top problems for the last several years.

Healthcare, Government Dissatisfaction Lead as Most Important U.S. Problems What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?

[Open-ended] March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 % % % Healthcare 7 9 18 Dissatisfaction with government/Poor leadership 18 21 18 Immigration/Illegal aliens 12 8 7 Economy in general 8 8 6 Unemployment/Jobs 9 5 6 Race relations/Racism 6 4 6 Gallup

After healthcare and government dissatisfaction, the next-highest-ranking issues are immigration, the economy in general, unemployment and race relations. The 7% who name immigration is down from 12% in March as President Donald Trump's plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border begin to retreat from the news.

The "economy is general" is typically one of the top-ranking issues on Gallup's list. However, the 6% who mention it now is the lowest it has been since July 2007, just before the Great Recession.

Satisfaction With the U.S. Holds Steady

Another key indicator of the national mood -- Americans' satisfaction with the way things are going in the U.S. -- is at 31% in May, virtually unchanged from April.

Satisfaction has been over 20% since August of last year, though never exceeding 37%. Satisfaction has not hit 40% since July 2005, and the majority of Americans haven't been satisfied since January 2004.

Bottom Line

Healthcare has been an ongoing public policy issue for decades, with several presidents attempting to tackle the problem of affordable coverage, dating back to Franklin Roosevelt. President Bill Clinton, along with first lady Hillary Clinton, tried to secure universal healthcare in the mid-1990s but were unsuccessful.

With the repeal of Obamacare a distinct possibility, Americans believe healthcare is one of the most important problems in the U.S. As the Senate debate over a new healthcare law wears on, this issue is likely to loom as a top-of-mind concern for months, if not years, to come.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.
Story Highlights More in U.S. disapprove (46%) than approve (39%) of Comey's firing

More approved than disapproved when Bill Clinton fired his FBI director

Nearly eight in 10 Republicans approve, while as many Democrats disapprove

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- President Donald Trump's decision to relieve FBI Director James Comey of his duties this week drew more disapproval than approval from Americans. Forty-six percent disapprove of the firing, 39% approve and the remaining 15% express no opinion. That reaction is far more negative than the one Americans had the last and only previous time a president fired his FBI director. In July 1993, 44% of Americans approved and 24% disapproved of Bill Clinton's removal of William Sessions. Thirty-two percent did not have an opinion.

Reaction to Presidential Firings of FBI Directors, Today and in 1993 Approve Disapprove No opinion % % % 2017: Trump's removal of James Comey 39 46 15 1993: Clinton's removal of William Sessions 44 24 32 Gallup, May 10-11, 2017; July 19-21, 1993

Gallup measured U.S. adults' reaction to Comey's removal in Gallup Daily tracking May 10-11, commencing one day after Trump informed Comey he was being dismissed.

The difference in public reaction to the Comey and Sessions firings does not merely reflect the popularity of the sitting president making the decision. Trump has averaged 41% job approval in the three days since firing Comey, and that matches Clinton's 41% approval rating at the time he fired Sessions in July 1993.

The context for the firings may be the greater factor. Comey's firing has been more controversial than Sessions' given the confusion swirling around Trump's reported reasons for letting the director go. The White House initially said Trump fired Comey at the recommendation of his deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions because of Comey's alleged mishandling of last year's FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server. However, Trump has since offered two competing explanations. One is that he thinks Comey was acting like a "showboat" and had lost the confidence of his staff. The other is because he felt Comey's investigation into possible links between Trump associates and Russian meddling in the 2016 election was an inappropriate effort to discredit Trump's victory.

Clinton likely sparked less partisan reaction with his firing of Sessions because it was a fairly uncontroversial move made after the Justice Department issued a report raising serious ethical questions regarding Sessions' taxes and possible misuse of government property.

Republicans and Democrats Have Opposite Reactions to Comey Firing

A comparison of the partisan differences in views of the 1993 and 2017 FBI director firings underscores the heightened partisanship in the years since Clinton was president. Republicans and Democrats often express knee-jerk support or opposition to a president depending on his political party and may do so now more than in the past.

Exemplifying this, roughly eight in 10 Republicans (79%) approve of Trump's decision to fire Comey, while 78% of Democrats disapprove. By contrast, in 1993, 57% of Democrats approved of Clinton's move against Sessions, with many offering that they didn't know enough to say either way. At the same time, Republicans were evenly split between approval and disapproval at 34%.

Political independents currently lean more to the Democrats' view, with 32% approving and 45% disapproving of firing Comey. In 1993, independents were more inclined to agree than disagree with Clinton's decision.

Reaction to Presidential Firings of FBI Directors, by Party ID Republicans Independents Democrats % % % 2017: Trump's removal of James Comey Approve 79 32 14 Disapprove 13 45 78 No opinion 8 24 8 1993: Clinton's removal of William Sessions Approve 34 42 57 Disapprove 34 26 14 No opinion 32 32 30 Gallup, May 10-11, 2017; July 19-21, 1993

Bottom Line

Trump's letter of dismissal to Comey on Tuesday explained that the firing was intended to restore "public trust and confidence" in the FBI. However, with more Americans disapproving of this dismissal than approving amid confusion over its reasoning, it is not clear if the change will have the intended effect. The outcome will likely hinge on how respected Comey's permanent replacement is as an independent law enforcement official. Meanwhile, most Republicans continue to stand by Trump while Democrats still oppose him, and for now there has been no change in public approval of the president, which has been steady near 41% in the three days since Comey's removal.

Historical data are available in Gallup Analytics.
ELKO  An Elko man was bound over to district court on a charge of sexually assaulting a woman at her residence in 2015.

Daniel Clay Goerdt, 28, is charged with one count of sexual assault, a category A felony, and was held over to Elko District Court by Judge Mason Simons on Friday.

District Attorney David Buchler told the court the victim was assaulted against her will April 1, 2015, referring to testimony the victim gave that she said 15 occasions to stop and cease the sexual activity and tried to keep the assault from continuing.

The woman testified during the preliminary hearing she became acquainted with the suspect at a local gym when he signed her up for a membership a few weeks prior to the incident and they began to text each other, and they kissed and had at least one physical encounter with her consent.

On April 1, the victim said she received a text from Goerdt and invited him into her residence when he appeared on her doorstep.

The woman claimed Goerdt told her he was a predator during the incident, which she said unnerved her.

Goerdt is currently a registered Tier 2 sex offender in Nevada related to a case in 2009 where he served time at Idaho State Prison, according to the Nevada Sex Offender Public Website.

Tier 2 offenders are considered to have a moderate risk of recidivisim.

Public Defender Kriston Hill said in her closing argument she found it peculiar that the victim didnt want to get a TPO against (the defendant) and she waited, in my mind a significant amount of time (9 days) to determine if this person  gave her any sexually transmitted diseases, asking Simons not to find slight or marginal evidence for the state.

Ms. Hills finding that some of the facts are peculiar does nothing to negate the evidence presented here, said Buchler in his closing argument, adding that the defendant performed intercourse on the victim against her will.

A date for Goerdts arraignment has not been set.
Councilwoman Suzie Price and Vice Mayor Rex Richardson are in the running for the city's top political post.
Valeria Davila takes a yellowed newspaper article out of a manila folder, carefully unfolds it and spreads it out face-down on a flatbed scanner in the archives department of Oregon State University's Valley Library.

It's from the Feb. 16, 1930, edition of the Los Angeles Times, a full-page photo spread that shows close-up images of a mountain lion and her cubs in the wild.

The pictures were taken by William L. Finley, a pioneering wildlife photographer from Oregon whose work with early collaborator Herman T. Bohlman and later with wife Irene Finley helped popularize the cause of conservation in the early part of the 20th century. Their efforts also called attention to the ravages of plume hunters on wild bird populations and spurred President Theodore Roosevelt to create wildlife refuges at Three Arch Rocks, Malheur Lake and Klamath Lake in Oregon.

"For a photographer to make those kinds of things happen is very important," said Davila, an Argentine film studies major doing graduate work at OSU. "And also they are very good images. Photographically speaking, I love them."

Davila is part of a team of 10 people at OSU and the Oregon Historical Society working to scan more than 6,000 photographs and 8,600 pages of documents.

When the project is finished at the end of June, it will produce a single digital collection that combines OSU's holdings  500 of Bohlman's photographs and a treasure trove of newspaper clippings, lecture programs and other ephemera discovered in the attic of the Finleys' Portland-area home  with the Oregon Historical Society's extensive selection of Finley's wildlife photos. It will also include some of the short nature films that Finley produced in collaboration with his wife.

"We call these split collections in the archives world, and for a couple of years now we've been thinking that with digital technology we could bring these collections back together," said Larry Landis, director of OSU Libraries' Special Collections and Archives Research Center. The original materials will stay with the repositories that own them, but the end result will be available on the project website.

The digitizing process involves more than simply scanning images and documents; each one must also be tagged with keywords and other metadata to make the entire collection computer-searchable.

Scannings easy, Landis said. But if you dont have the metadata, its hard to find anything online.

Combining the holdings of both institutions in a single database will be a boon to researchers, Oregon Historical Society archives specialist Laura Cray believes.

Researchers who have been using these collections have been having to go back and forth between OHS in Portland and OSU in Corvallis because a lot of the material that explains the photographs at OHS is in the OSU library archives, she said.

That can be especially important for scholars studying the early work of Finley and Bohlman, who teamed up on a number of photography expeditions from 1900 to 1908 and shared the heavy labor of hauling cumbersome box cameras and heavy glass plates to nearly inaccessible bird colonies in marshes, on seastacks and in the tops of trees. Its not always clear who tripped the shutter on a particular photograph.

The provenance on a lot of those is kind of mixed, Cray said. It was definitely a collaborative effort.

The collaboration essentially ended in 1908, as the newly married Bohlman became engrossed in his home life and his familys plumbing business. So Finley began a new professional partnership with his wife, Irene. After their marriage in 1906, the couple worked together for 30-plus years on photography projects, nature books and a series of short wildlife films, which they showed to eager audiences on tours of the United States and Europe. Both Finleys wrote articles on natural history, and William was in wide demand as a lecturer on the subject.

Individually and collectively, all three made important contributions to the cause of wildlife protection.

As far as conservation in the state of Oregon, they really were at the forefront of people talking about those issues, Cray said. They helped make issues like plume hunting relevant to people in Portland and elsewhere by showing the true cost of things like that hat with the ridiculous egret plume in it.

Their photographs  widely reproduced in newspapers and magazines  not only documented the rich diversity of bird and animal life in the Wests remaining wild spaces, but they also captured the popular imagination by chronicling the exploits of the photographers themselves.

They brought people along on their adventures, Cray said.

William Finley, in particular, was a well-known public figure in his time, but today he is rarely remembered except perhaps as the namesake of a 5,600-acre wildlife refuge a few miles south of Corvallis. By making Finleys work (and that of his collaborators) widely accessible in online form, Landis is hoping the digitization project will remind people of his important conservation legacy.

Finley gained national prominence as a wildlife conservationist. Hes one of those people who Oregonians today have heard of, but they dont know his backstory, Landis said.

Hopefully, this will help change that.
The idea is intriguing: Enlist the Oregon State University College of Forestry to help manage the controversial Elliott State Forest.

But we're a long way from inking any kind of deal between OSU and the state  and OSU officials, in particular, should proceed with caution.

The Elliott State Forest has been at the center of controversy for years. It covers 82,500 acres of low-elevation woodlands in the Coast Range north of Coos Bay and features significant strands of old-growth trees.

The forest, like other forests managed by the state, is supposed to generate revenue through timber harvests for the Common School Fund. Here's where the tricky issues start to kick in.

Logging revenues have fallen short of expectations in recent decades, in part because the Oregon Department of Forestry also is managing these lands for other values such as wildlife habitat, clean water and outdoor recreation.

The decline in revenue from the Elliott forest has triggered some recent saber-rattling on the part of the Oregon School Boards Association, which has threatened legal action. (If this general legal argument rings a bell, it's because this is essentially the same case that a variety of Oregon counties  including Linn and Benton  have brought in a lawsuit against the state. In fact, attorney John DiLorenzo, who's leading the counties' lawsuit, also represents the Oregon School Boards Association.)

The most recent furor surrounding the Elliott fired up last year, when the State Land Board proposed selling the forest for $220.8 million. Environmental groups worried that an accelerated timber harvest could harm threatened and endangered species, while hunters and anglers worried about losing access to the forest.

In a remarkable turnaround, the three members of the Land Board (Gov. Kate Brown, Secretary of State Dennis Richardson and Treasurer Tobias Read) voted this week to keep the forest publicly owned. Brown pushed through a plan to use $100 million in taxpayer-generated bonds to generate money for schools without threatening the forest's old-growth trees, riparian areas and steep slopes.

Decisions about managing the rest of the land would be entrusted to a plan that would determine where logging could occur and where habitat for threatened species would be protected.

Still unanswered is the question of who would actually manage the land. That's where OSU potentially could enter the picture: Before the board's vote this week, Read reached out to OSU officials, suggesting that the university could buy the forest for $121 million after the state's initial $100 million payment.

OSU's response: It's an interesting idea. OSU President Ed Ray and Thomas Maness, dean of the College of Forestry, were intrigued enough to travel to the Land Board's meeting.

We understand some of the appeal: As Maness noted, the university's 15,000 acres of timber holdings don't include any old-growth habitat for threatened species; adding the Elliott to its portfolio would give OSU a chance to research how best to manage those lands and species. And OSU officials have to be tempted by another high-profile opportunity to position the university as an institution that's prepared to help solve some of the state's vexing problems.

But here's a situation in which discretion may turn out to be the better part of valor. To list just one loose end: OSU doesn't have $120 million to spend on the purchase and would have to use revenue from logging on the forest to finance the deal. But you can be sure that any plan for logging the Elliott will draw very close attention, if not legal action, from environmental groups.

We suppose that spending time defending logging plans in court could be good preparation for OSU's forestry students. But this may not be precisely the kind of hands-on experience the university has in mind. (mm)
Its been a long and sometimes grueling process, but the City of Elkos redevelopment program is finally getting off the ground.

The Redevelopment Agency approved four storefront projects this week, in which the City will provide matching grant money raised from taxes within the redevelopment district. Of course, $66,000 doesnt go far in the construction business, but at least its a start.

By far the most involved and interesting project to receive funds is the Hessons Hardware Building on Commercial Street. Renovations are already underway on this historic structure, and the goal of owner Jeff Dalling is to return it to its former glory  complete with the original hardware store sign that was kept preserved by Northeastern Nevada Museum.

After his success renovating what is now the Coffee Mug, we look forward to seeing the results. The RDA is contributing $25,000 toward what Dalling says will be a million-dollar project. He plans to open a banquet hall on the lower floor and rent office spaces upstairs. When completed, the currently unoccupied 111-year-old building at the corner of Sixth Street will be an asset that helps pull together the downtown corridor.

A block away, at Fifth and Commercial streets, J.M. Capriola will be getting more than $5,000 to help with remodeling of its storefront. Capriolas has its own long history in downtown Elko, continuing the tradition of handcrafted western gear. This store is an asset not only for northeastern Nevadans, its also a destination for some movie stars and top country musicians such as Charlie Daniels.

Another building packed with history is the old Pioneer Hotel. The nonprofit Western Folklife Center will receive $20,000 for replacement of the 62 windows in the 104-year-old structure. The Folklife Center is home to the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering, and a cornerstone of the downtown district with its year-round gift shop, art gallery, saloon and theater.

The fourth grant recipient is the Gerber Law Offices at Fourth and Court streets, which was once the home of the Elko Daily Free Press. The building was renovated into office space in the early 1990s, and the $15,000 grant will go toward giving the stucco facade some architectural depth as well as steel awnings and better outdoor lighting.

The RDAs current storefront budget is only $50,000 a year, so part of this years funding is borrowing from the future. Other applicants that did not receive grants have also proposed worthwhile projects that could be funded in coming years  such as the old NV Energy headquarters, which is being remodeled into the Cowboy Arts & Gear Museum.

The first stages of the Citys redevelopment program began in 1981 and it took until 2007 before a formal plan was adopted. Another 10 years later and we are starting to see actual work getting done.

The challenges ahead seem daunting, particularly because of the loss of downtown businesses in recent years. The RDA will only be successful to the extent that private business owners are willing to invest their time and money in improving their properties.

Congratulations to the grant recipients, and may they inspire more business owners to step forward and help turn the tide in downtown Elkos favor.
Time for a survey

To the Editor: Its time for a St. Paul survey One of the mistakes of the past with respect to deciding on the future of St. Pauls is that previous...

Election for St. Pauls

To the Editor: Perhaps someday there will be an election where some folks decide about St.Pauls. If the election is conducted in the most popular way, the outcome might not...

Proposal on the ballot

To the Editor: On the bottom of your ballot you will be asked to vote yes or no on creating a state bond which will amount to $4.2 billion. Subject coverage should be...

Botched RFP process

To the Editor: During the last several weeks, village officials sent out RFPs (requests for proposals) seeking candidate firms to provide them with comparative analysis and cost estimates -- ...
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.
Interruptions for Train Lines RB48, MRB26 and RE5 : Crowding at Bonn Central Station "is life-threatening"

Bonn An expert on the Loveparade disaster in Duisburg has strong criticism for the conditions at the Bonn Central Train Station. Railroad tracks and trains have been overcrowded for days.

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Since the beginning of the construction work on the overhead lines between Sechtem and Bruhl at the beginning of the week, the situation at the Bonn main station has hardly improved. Because of the long-term renovation on Platform 1, passengers have to push themselves onto the area between Platforms 2 and 3. Commuter Barbara Krausz can think of only one thing, This is life-threatening.

The computer scientist knows what she is talking about. In her doctoral thesis, the Bonn resident, who commutes daily to Cologne for work, has addressed the Love Parade disaster in Duisburg. In July of 2010, 21 people died of suffocation and hundreds more were injured due to overcrowding in an underpass. She has approached the question: To what extent can a video recording foresee a mass panic? In the current commuter traffic during peak hours of the morning at the Bonn station, she says one could not rule out such a mass panic.

Additional railway staff point out that passengers need to keep their distance from the tracks, but it is not possible with this many people. As well, there are some areas with uneven pavement, which could lead to some people tripping. Also at the Mehlem and Bad Godesberg train stations, people are lumping together.

Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) had reacted by spacing the trains. Commuters traveling towards Cologne are now entering from the northern platform but it is extremely narrow there. A sign reads Verengter Bahnsteigbereich. Hier kein Aufenthalt, which means narrow platform, do not stand here.

There is also criticism from Krausz and fellow commuters about false announcements, which leads to people having to change positions. When it comes to planned interruptions in train service, German Rail has set up a bus service. Two buses are permanently shuttling passengers between Bonn Central Train Station and Bruhl. But many do not see the situation as having improved.

Until May 22, the trains will run only once an hour. A Dusseldorf spokesperson for Germany Railway said this limited period of time brings an additional burden. It was hoped that the extra buses would bring some relief. Some long distance trains are being released for commuter use and these are made known through announcements. German Rail has the App DB Navigator to keep people informed of most recent timetable information.

Responding to the potential dangers on the platforms, the spokesperson said supervisory authorities had visited the area in recent weeks. There have been no accidents so far. Asked about Platform 1, where it appeared that little work was being done at the moment, the spokesperson said that the canal systems had now been completed.
Bonn Central Train Station : Fire temporarily halts train traffic

Bonn Train traffic came to a halt on Thursday for nearly two hours at Bonns Central Train Station. Undergrowth at the railway embankment had caught fire.

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Alert passengers reported a fire near the Bonn Central Train Station at around 5 pm on Thursday evening. At first, the level of danger was unclear. Callers had reported a fire in the roof structure, prompting authorities to shut down all train traffic as a precaution.

When firefighters, including eight vehicles arrived at the scene, they determined that the fire was at the railway embankment. The brush and undergrowth there had caught fire, covering about 50 to 60 square meters. As well, very strong smoke had developed, said chief of fire operations, Jorg Schneider. Because of the smoke and the danger of the overhead lines becoming damaged, train traffic was kept at a standstill.

The south entrance from Quantiusstrae was blocked off for all buses, trams and motorists. Tram Lines 61 and 62 were also stopped for a time. To accommodate passengers, buses were set up to shuttle them between the Haus der Jugend and Hauptbahnhof stops.
Changes in the composition of magma may have caused variations in the Panama Canal volcanic rock formations, according to a study published May 10, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Farris from Florida State University, and colleagues.

The Earths crust is divided into tectonic plates and a chain of volcanoes can often appear in areas where one plates is pushed under another. Studying these locations can improve our understanding of how the Earths crust is formed.

The authors of the present study examined volcanic formations along the Panama Canal, which formed when the Panama block and South America collided approximately 21 to 25 million years ago. The researchers constructed geochemical models of these rock formations, and they identified some significant differences in their physical structure and chemical composition.

The researchers found that the Oligocene Bas Obispo Formation and other older rock types had more abundant water-borne elements compared to the younger Pedro Miguel volcanic rocks. This Miocene unit is composed of multiple shallow maar volcanic craters with alternating layers of explosively formed pyroclastic rocks, and fine-grained dark basaltic rock, formed from cooling lava flows. These layers suggest that multiple episodes of magma eruption and recharge occurred within the Pedro Miguel rock formation.

The authors suggest that along the Panama Canal, changing tectonic conditions were brought about by the collision of the Panama block and South America. They state that changes in the composition of volcanic rocks likely drove a transition from water-bearing magmas to dry, hot magmas over time, and these magmas in turn caused different types of volcanoes to form. Additional research could further explore the relationship between magma composition, physical properties and volcanic forms in other areas of the world.

Dr Farris notes: This study examines the relationship between arc magmatism and tectonic change in a sequence of volcanic rocks along the Panama Canal. These rocks contain a change from wet to dry arc magmatism associated with the onset of collision between the Panama block and South America. In addition, the onset of hot, dry magmatism led to formation of explosive maar volcanic structures.

Reference:

David W. Farris, Agustin Cardona, Camilo Montes, David Foster, Carlos Jaramillo. Magmatic evolution of Panama Canal volcanic rocks: A record of arc processes and tectonic change. PLOS ONE, 2017; 12 (5): e0176010 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176010

Note: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by PLOS.
When guards at Spains Estremera prison searched Arndt Meyers cell last October in search of a phone, they stumbled across a photograph of the actress he was convicted of trying to murder in 2009. It was pasted in an album along with photos of seven other actors, leading the authorities to categorize him as a sick obsessive.

Arndt Meyer in court in 2010. JuanJo Martin (EFE)

In 2010 Meyer, who was sentenced to eight years for attempting to kill actor Sara Casasnovas with a crossbow as she emerged from the theater where she had been performing, had attached a note to each photo. This is exactly my type of body and skin, says one. In an ideal world, a girl like this would be the kind of woman I would make sweet love to and have children with. I would marry her, says another. The love of my life should have a face like this, reads the next.

The eight actors were called to the courthouse in Plaza Castilla and ushered in through the back door to avoid media attention to be told by a judge that their photographs were in the album belonging to Meyer, 48, who has been diagnosed with a personality disorder. They were also told that Meyer is due to be released on May 30, having served his sentence.

Prison reports on Meyer say he is potentially dangerous and could approach and attack in the future. Consequently, the actors are now under police protection and will not be named by the media.

Casasnovas lawyer, meanwhile, has asked Madrid's regional government and its Provincial Court for an immediate expulsion order upon the stalkers release. The request has been rejected by the Provincial Court while the regional government has agreed to an ordinary expulsion order, which gives Meyer 30 days to leave the country voluntarily following his release.

Actress Sara Casasnovas in a promotional picture.

The search for a phone in Meyers cell followed a series of anonymous calls reported by Casasnovas in the early hours of the morning between 2015 and 2016. She also told police about the existence of a Facebook page featuring 80 photos of herself. The title of the page was Tied Up and the photos were shots from a play showing the actress gagged and bound with a gun to her head. The page was taken down but an investigation failed to prove a link to Meyer.

After scrutinizing Meyers notes, prison staff became aware of scorn toward Sara Casasnovas, with his obsession shifting to the seven other actors, six of whom are Spanish and one American. I don't want her features for my children, he wrote of Casasnovas. I only want her to introduce me to the world of television so I can get to know women that I really like.

This doesn't mean Casasnovas is out of danger, however, say the authorities. We can't rule out the possibility of Meyer trying to find the victim to make her understand she is not his type and that he is looking for a different kind of girl, says the prison report.

Obsession

Arndt Meyer arrived in Spain in 2009 with an obsessive need to declare his love to actress Sara Casasnovas. After sending a number of letters to the actress and receiving no reply, he decided it was time to act. He began by gifting her a lighter engraved with both their names. Then he sent her a rose and a letter. Their last encounter took place on June 9, 2009, at 9:30 PM.

Meyer was waiting for Casasnovas at the exit of the Reina Victoria Theater on Carrera de San Jeronimo in Madrid. Casasnovas appeared with a group of actors after the evening performance of The Night of the Iguana. The German asked her about the letters. Casasnovas brushed him off. So Meyer took a military crossbow from his rucksack and shot an arrow that hit the sleeve of another actor. No one was hurt. Casasnovas and her companions were able to hold Meyer while they called the police.

The theater in Madrid where Meyer tried to kill Spanish actor Sara Casanovas. Luis Sevillano

On his arrest, Meyer was found to be carrying two crossbows, a Taser-style gun, a defense aerosol and 13 metal-tipped arrows. He told the judge that working in security in Germany had made him paranoid and fearful of an attack on his person.

Meanwhile, Meyer said a prison visitor working for a religious NGO sent him the photos in three installments in 2016, the last arriving a month before the raid on his cell. The visitor was stopped from having any contact with Meyer.

In less than four weeks Meyer will be released and at large for 30 days in Spain, despite the fact that only last October he was denied a temporary seven-day release from prison due to the security threat he is believed to pose.

The risk of Meyers 30 days at large Sara Casasnovas, the actor Arndt Meyer attempted to kill in 2009, has requested the prisoners expulsion from Spain on his release on May 30. Madrid's Provincial Court has rejected the request, ordering Meyer to wear a tracking device to make sure he complies with a restraining order to keep him away from Casasnovas until 2020. The regional government, however, has agreed to an ordinary expulsion order that will oblige Meyer to leave the country within 30 days, during which time he will have freedom of movement. The prisoner has been given a month to leave Spanish territory voluntarily according to the ordinary procedure. Having served out his sentence, an immediate expulsion is not feasible, said a police statement addressed to the Madrid Provincial Court. Nor can he be sent to a detention center for illegal aliens, as he needs to be free to leave the country voluntarily. In fact, all prisoners serving more than one year in jail for crimes affecting public order and safety can face immediate expulsion. According to judicial sources, it is Meyers European citizenship that has let him off the hook. But Casasnovas' lawyer argues that Spanish alien law says nothing about exceptions being made for Europeans and insists that, considering the prisoner is nursing an unhealthy obsession for eight women, an immediate expulsion is necessary and appropriate. Immediate expulsions oblige the government to finance the journey of the person expelled. This is more expensive, which explains why most expulsion orders are not preferential, say judicial sources. Naturally, some prisoners facing an ordinary expulsion order use their 30 days of grace to simply disappear.

English version by Heather Galloway.
felicilin at 12-05-2017 02:34 PM (5 years ago) (f)

Claire Mwaninki, as local media are calling her, was part of a gang of four that had been on a robbing spree before being confronted by police and killed in a shootout alongside another gang member. According to the police she married a wanted gangster.

Claire Mwaninki, as local media are calling her, was part of a gang of four that had been on a robbing spree before being confronted by police and killed in a shootout alongside another gang member. According to the police she married a wanted gangster. At 3.16am on Wednesday, undercover police officers in Kayole, Nairobi, received a message from a colleague on their WhatsApp group. Four suspects who had escaped their dragnet on Manyanja Road at 11pm were in Lower Chokaa, on Kangundo Road, he said.

The officer had been called by a greengrocer, who informed him that four people, including a woman, were robbing residents.

AMBUSH

Some officers did not see the message and so he called members of his company, one by one. They then called their driver to pick them up and asked for reinforcement from uniformed colleagues on night patrol.





At 3.16am on Wednesday, undercover police officers in Kayole, Nairobi, received a message from a colleague on their WhatsApp group. Four suspects who had escaped their dragnet on Manyanja Road at 11pm were in Lower Chokaa, on Kangundo Road, he said.The officer had been called by a greengrocer, who informed him that four people, including a woman, were robbing residents.AMBUSHSome officers did not see the message and so he called members of his company, one by one. They then called their driver to pick them up and asked for reinforcement from uniformed colleagues on night patrol.

Post Reply Posted: at 12-05-2017 02:34 PM (5 years ago) | Hero
Metal-unibody design

According to the images, the Gionee S10 is going to sport all metal body along with a U-shaped antenna design. There is a round circle with company logo inside on its back, which could be the fingerprint sensor. You can also see the Gionee branding at the bottom.

New color variant

It has become a trend among manufacturers to release unique color variants of their smartphones. Gionee seems to be following the same suit. The latest leak shows that the Gionee S10 is going to come in two color options: Gold and a Gentle Green.

The Green one looks soothing yet attractive. Notably, companies like Huawei and Oppo has also launched Green versions of their handsets.

Optics

We have already mentioned, The Gionee S10 will flaunt quad cameras. The rear dual camera setup is said to be consisting of 16MP + 8MP sensors, the front of the device will house one 12MP and another 8MP sensor. There is no doubt that this smartphone will catch the attention of photography enthusiasts and selfie lovers.

Rest of the specs

The Gionee S10 is likely to be fueled by an Octa-core processor clocked at 2.5GHz. It will also have 6GB RAM coupled with 64GB inbuilt storage.

On the software front, the device will run on Amigo OS based on Android 7.0 Nougat.

Under the hood, there will be a decent 3450mAh battery to keep the lights on.
New ZTE K92 Tablet gets certified by FCC News oi -Chandrika It is probably going to be a lower mid-ranger

Yesterday, a new ZTE tablet with the model number K92 received the FCC certification. Apparently, the Chinese electronic giant put the device for testing at the beginning of March. The company also asked the American equivalent of TENAA to keep the device behind the curtains for six months.

It means, that we could see the ZTE K92 come up in September. As of now, we don't know much details about the tablet. The only piece of information revealed by the documents published by the federal agency is that the device will provide support for LTE/WCDMA. Back in April, the same ZTE K92 model was certified by Bluetooth SIG and it said the same thing.

Nokia Phones' are likely to launch in the first week of June in India

If we consider ZTE's past pattern with tablets, the upcoming one is touted to be a lower mid-ranger. While the company is known for making premium devices as well, it mainly releases affordable products in the US market due to the plethora of high-end devices available there.

The ZTE K92 may be launched as a Wi-Fi-only variant. Still, we are not denying the possibility of a 4G-LTE-supported model.

In addition to this, a sketch revealing the placement of the product label on the tablet has appeared on the internet. According to the sketch, the corners of the ZTE K92 will be slightly rounded. The sketch further shows that it will feature a single camera at the top-right corner on the back.

Hopefully, we will get to know more about the upcoming tablet from ZTE in the following days.

Source

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Panasonic P85 with 4000mAh battery launched at Rs. 6,499 News oi -Samden Sherpa Here's a new budget friendly smartphone from Panasonic.

Adding another powerful smartphone to its portfolio, Panasonic India has just introduced a new smartphone today.

Dubbed as P85, this smartphone will be available in Grey and Gold color variants at Rs. 6,499. The smartphone will go on sale from 15th May onwards exclusively on Flipkart. All in all, this smartphone has been aesthetically crafted. "The stylish P85 is so alluring that it creates an immediate impression," says the company.

Asus ZenFone 3 smartphones get a significant price cut in India

Commenting on the launch, Mr. Pankaj Rana, Business Head - Mobility Division, Panasonic India, said, "Smartphones coupled with mobile applications have turned the device into an ultimate powerhouse. Moreover, multitasking and faster processing further demand a steady power supply. Keeping these aspects in mind, Panasonic India has designed the P85. The affordable smartphone not only offers exciting features but also a solid battery back-up to run the applications seamlessly. We understand the underlying needs of our customers and therefore, aim to deliver an experience with great power and looks."

Ayyappan Rajagopal, Senior Director - Smartphones, Flipkart said, "Flipkart's partnership with Panasonic is set to achieve new heights with the exclusive launch of Panasonic P85 on the platform, a budget-friendly smartphone, whose design and specifications coupled with our affordable consumer financing options will be a winning combination for our customers."

However, let's look at what the smartphone brings to the table.

Features and Specifications Featuring a sleek design, the dual sim smartphone has 12.7cm (5-inch) HD IPS Screen. The handset is powered by a 1.0 GHz Quad-core processor which is paired with 2 GB RAM to speed up large size applications. Panasonic P85 comes with 16 GB of internal storage which can be further expanded up to 64 GB via micro SD card. Battery and Camera Panasonic P85 is backed by a 4000mAh battery. The company further says that the smartphone comes with an optimized power management software which ensures longer usage without having to put the device for charge again and again. The smartphone also runs on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. SEE ALSO: Asus ZenFone Go 5.5 is up for sale in India via Amazon As for the optics, the new P85 is integrated with 8 MP AF rear camera along with flash. There's a 2MP front camera which offers numerous photography options for different scenarios. Connectivity options The smartphone provides connectivity options like 4G, LTE, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. The phone supports 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi Hot Spot, Wi-Fi Direct. Moreover, the smartphone further supports FM, therefore, allowing users to listen to music wherever they go.

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BSNL launches new plan "Ananya" News oi -Priyanka The company is giving 30 minutes of local and STD calling on any network for 30 days after that users will have to pay 0.8 paise per minute, along with 50 MB free data and 200 local.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has recently announced its new plan "Ananya" in which the company is offering voice, data, and SMS benefits for prepaid customers at Rs. 85.

The company is giving 30 minutes of local and STD calling on any network for 30 days after that users will have to pay 0.8 paise per minute, along with 50 MB free data and 200 local and STD SMS per month.

The plan is valid for 180 days only for residents of Karnataka.

Meanwhile, the company recently has announced its new plan at Rs.339 Special Tariff Voucher (STV).

The STV is offering 3 GB per day of 3G data, instead of 2 GB earlier for 28 days. It also includes unlimited local and STD BSNL-to-BSNL calls and 25 minutes of local and inter-circle calls made to other networks.

"There is nothing better than this," BSNL said in the twitter post. The telecom is also planning to launch unlimited off-net plan soon.

Currently, the company has limited the off-net calling for 25 mins/day, which is very less than what other telcos are providing.

We have also reported earlier that the company has revamped its five postpaid plans ranging from Rs. 99 to Rs. 725. The first starts with Rs. 99 which will now offer 250 MB data, however, there were no data earlier in this plan, the second plan at Rs. 225 used to offer 200 MB but now user will get 1000 MB data, the third plan at Rs. 325 is offering 2000MB which used to give 250 MB earlier, the fourth plan at Rs. 525 is giving 3000 MB instead of 500 MB and the last plan at Rs. 725 is providing 5000 MB data which was offering 1000MB data before.

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CIA opens new center to monitor North Korea

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 6:19AM

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has announced the establishment of a Korea Mission Center, which it says will focus on countering military threats coming from North Korea.

"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," CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Wednesday.

"It also reflects the dynamism and agility that CIA brings to evolving national security challenges," he added.

The mission center would be run by "experienced officers from across the Agency" under the leadership of a veteran officer as the new Assistant Director for Korea, the agency said.

The is the CIA's eleventh center. Mission Center for Africa, Mission Center for Counter-intelligence, Mission Center for Counter-terrorism and Mission Center for Near East are some of the other centers.

Dedicating a center to a country instead of a region shows the North's importance to the administration of President Donald Trump, which has been locked in a standoff with Pyongyang over its development of ballistic missiles and nuclear deterrents.

"Just as the threats facing our nation are dynamic, so too must the CIA continue to evolve to address them," said CIA spokesperson Heather Fritz Horniak.

Washington has become furious over Pyongyang's unwillingness to drop its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs.

The Trump administration has on many occasions threatened the North's leader Kim Jong-un with a military response to new tests, sending warships and a nuclear submarine to Korean waters.

Trump even ordered two major attacks in Syria and Afghanistan last month, both of them viewed as stern warnings to the North.

North Korean leaders, in response, have increased their missile tests and even hinted at a new nuclear test in the coming weeks. They have also warned the US and its regional allies like South Korea, Australia and Japan of a strong military response in case of any invasion.

The mission center's establishment came on the same day as the South's new president, Moon Jae-in, was declared president in a decisive election victory.

Moon, who has faced criticism from opponents in his country for being anti-American, reassured them that he was on the "same page" as Trump.

Pompeo traveled to South Korea for what the US embassy there described as an "internal meeting" earlier this month.

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Counter-ISIL Strikes Hit Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 11, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 22 strikes consisting of 66 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 15 strikes consisting of 19 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, two strikes destroyed two ISIS headquarters.

-- Near Raqqa, 11 strikes engaged five ISIS tactical units; destroyed seven vehicles, three fighting positions, an ISIS barge, a vehicle bomb factory, a weapons storage facility; and damaged two ISIS supply routes.

-- Near Tabqah, two strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed two fighting positions.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted seven strikes consisting of 47 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Mosul, three strikes engaged three ISIS tactical units; destroyed five rocket-propelled grenade systems, three fighting positions, three mortar systems, two vehicles, an ISIS staging area, a command-and-control node, a weapons cache; damaged 18 ISIS supply routes, three fighting positions; and suppressed two ISIS tactical units.

-- Near Rawah, a strike destroyed a rocket storage facility.

-- Near Tal Afar, three strikes destroyed two tactical vehicles, two mortar systems, an anti-air artillery system a vehicle bomb factory, and a supply cache.

Additionally, 10 strikes were conducted in Syria on May 9 that closed within the last 24 hours:

-- Near Raqqa, 10 strikes engaged six ISIS tactical units; destroyed nine fighting positions, a vehicle bomb factory, an ISIS headquarters; damaged a bridge, a road; and suppressed an ISIS tactical unit.

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.

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U.S. Department of Defense

Press Operations

News Release

No. NR-174-17 May 11, 2017

Navy to Christen Expeditionary Fast Transport City of Bismarck

The Navy will christen its newest Expeditionary Fast Transport, the future USNS City of Bismarck (T-EPF 9), during a 10 a.m. CDT ceremony Saturday, May 13, at the Austal USA shipyard in Mobile, Alabama.



The future City of Bismarck, designated T-EPF 9, will be the first ship in naval service to honor the city of Bismarck, the capital of the state of North Dakota.

The principal speaker will be Air Force Gen. Darren McDew, commander, U.S. Transportation Command. The Honorable Jane Harman, former congresswoman from California, will serve as the ship's sponsor. In a time-honored Navy tradition, she will christen the ship by breaking a bottle of sparkling wine across the bow.

"We are honored that former Congresswoman Harman will serve as sponsor for the newest ship in our fleet," said the Honorable Sean Stackley, acting secretary of the Navy. "She has had a distinguished career working to improve our nation's security and her relationship with Bismarck and its crew will be a continuation of those efforts."

The EPF is a shallow draft, all aluminum, commercial-based catamaran capable of intra-theater personnel and cargo lift providing combatant commanders high-speed sealift mobility with inherent cargo handling capability and agility to achieve positional advantage over operational distances.

EPF is designed to transport 600 short tons of military cargo 1,200 nautical miles at an average speed of 35 knots. The ship is capable of operating in shallow-draft ports and waterways, interfacing with roll-on/roll-off discharge facilities, and on/off-loading a combat-loaded Abrams Main Battle Tank (M1A2).

The EPF will include a flight deck for helicopter operations and an off-load ramp that will allow vehicles to quickly drive off the ship. EPF's shallow draft (under 15 feet) will further enhance littoral operations and port access. This makes the EPF an extremely flexible asset for support of a wide range of operations including maneuver and sustainment, relief operations in small or damaged ports, flexible logistics support, or as the key enabler for rapid transport.

Media may direct queries to the Navy Office of Information at 703-697-5342. For more information about the Expeditionary Fast Transport: http://www.navy.mil/navydata/fact_display.asp?cid=4200&tid=1400&ct=4

http://www.defense.gov/News/News-Releases/News-Release-View/Article/1179499/

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The Spanish Health Ministry and the Spanish Association of Thalidomide Victims (Avite) are in talks to draw up a census of people who were affected by a drug that was manufactured by a German company in the 1950s. Thousands of babies born to women given thalidomide to combat morning sickness were born without arms and legs in the 1950s and 60s throughout the world.

Thalidomide victims in Congress in 2015. Julian Rojas

The idea, said a ministry spokeswoman, is to learn exactly how many victims there are in Spain, and then, at a later date, to seek a way to award them compensation.

The victims have been battling in the courts for years. But in September 2015, the Spanish Supreme Court ruled that these victims are not owed compensation because the statute of limitations on the case has run out.

Authorities in Franco-era Spain did not want an investigation into thalidomide

Avite and ministry representatives have met once, and a second meeting is scheduled for May 17. Jose Riquelme, the president of Avite, said that this initiative is the result of a non-binding motion that Congress passed in November of last year. The motion, which seeks greater protection for thalidomide victims, was introduced by the centrist party Ciudadanos, which has agreed to back the minority government of the Popular Party (PP) in exchange for support on issues such as this one.

The first step in this new cooperation is to determine exactly how many Spaniards were affected by the drug. Officially, thalidomide was only on the market between 1957 and 1961, but victims say that the product recall was not complete.

Back in 2010, the Spanish government made an attempt to recognize the victims, but only 24 people were included in the official list. In 2012, 186 victims filed a class action suit to demand 204 million in damages. Although the original ruling was favorable to them, it limited compensation to the victims on the government list. Furthermore, the German drugmaker Grunenthal appealed the decision, and an appeals court upheld the claim, leaving victims without compensation. The Supreme Court later ratified this position.

Manuel Bloque, a Spanish victim of thalidomide. Carlos Rosillo

The difficulty is, it is nearly impossible to find physical evidence such as doctors prescriptions or medication packages from 60 years ago. But victims note  as so do experts such as Claus Knapp, the Spanish physician who discovered the link between thalidomide and the birth defects  that patients can easily be recognized because these deformities are very characteristic, and include missing bones in the extremities.

Avite says it has around 300 members, but that there may be more who have not signed up (and even some paying members who are not truly thalidomide victims, admits Riquelme). He offers a ballpark estimate of around 600 across Spain.

Victims say they should be eligible for a special pension like the ones enjoyed by victims elsewhere in Europe

After a reliable census is drawn up, the next step would be to provide financial aid to the victims. But Riquelme does not support a lump sum payment like the one that the government awarded to a handful of people in 2010. Instead, he says they should be eligible for a special pension, like the ones enjoyed by victims elsewhere in Europe.

Many of those European pensions have in fact been funded by Grunenthal. The Spanish case is different because at the time of the births, Spain was under Francoist rule and the regime did not want an investigation into what had gone wrong, much less to find any culprits, as that would have involved the authorities. By the time the victims were able to seek redress, 40 years had elapsed, making everything more difficult.

English version by Susana Urra.
Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) - Patriot PAC-3 and GEM-T Missiles

Media/Public Contact: pm-cpa@state.gov

Transmittal No: 17-21

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2017 -- The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for Patriot PAC-3 and GEM-T missiles. The estimated cost is $2 billion. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on May 10, 2017.

The Government of the United Arab Emirates has requested the possible sale of sixty (60) Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) missiles with canisters and one hundred (100) Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) missiles. Also included are canisters, tools and test equipment, support equipment, publications and technical documentation, spare and repair parts, U.S. Government and contractor technical, engineering and logistics support services, and other related elements of logistics and program support. The estimated cost is $2 billion.

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of an important ally which has been, and continues to be, a force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East. This sale is consistent with U.S. initiatives to provide key allies in the region with modern systems that will enhance interoperability with U.S. forces and increase security.

The proposed sale will enhance the UAE's capability to meet current and future aircraft and missile threats. The UAE will use the capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense. The UAE has fielded the Patriot system since 2009 and will have no difficulty absorbing these additional missiles into its armed forces.

The proposed sale of these missiles will not alter the basic military balance in the region.

The prime contractor for the PAC-3 Missile is Lockheed-Martin in Dallas, Texas. The prime contractor for the GEM-T missile is Raytheon Company in Andover, Massachusetts. There are no known offset agreements proposed in connection with this potential sale.

Implementation of this proposed sale will require additional contractor representatives to the UAE. It is not expected additional U.S. Government personnel will be required in country for an extended period of time. U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Life Cycle Management Command (AMCOM) currently maintains a field office in UAE in support of UAE Patriot systems.

There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.

This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.

All questions regarding this proposed Foreign Military Sale should be directed to the State Department's Bureau of Political Military Affairs, Office of Congressional and Public Affairs, pm-cpa@state.gov.

-30-

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NATO Secretary General, German Chancellor discuss preparations for NATO leaders meeting

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

11 May. 2017

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg thanked Germany for its outstanding contributions to NATO in talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin on Thursday (11 May 2017). The two leaders discussed preparations for the upcoming meeting of NATO leaders in Brussels on 25 May, where burden sharing and fighting terrorism will top the agenda.

In response to a changing security environment all Allies in 2014 agreed to stop the cuts in defence spending and move towards spending 2 percent of GDP on defence within a decade. "Burden sharing is not just about money", the Secretary General stressed; "it is also about modern capabilities and contributions to NATO missions and operations. Germany makes key contributions on all these aspects."

Turning to the fight against terrorisms, Mr Stoltenberg recalled that NATO has been active in this field for a long time, with its biggest mission in Afghanistan. NATO is also training forces in Iraq, and supporting the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIL with AWACS surveillance planes. "Training local forces is a key tool against terrorism," Mr Stoltenberg said. "We will discuss what more NATO can do when we meet in Brussels on May 25".

The Secretary General is also holding talks with members of the SPD party parliamentary group as part of his continuing engagement with German parliamentary parties. His agenda also includes an address on the Koerber Stiftung think-tank on current security challenges.

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Santa Fe visits Yokosuka during Indo-Asia-Pacific Patrol

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170511-07

Release Date: 5/11/2017 10:21:00 AM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Brian G. Reynolds, Submarine Group 7 Public Affairs

FLEET ACTIVITIES YOKOSUKA, Japan (NNS) -- The Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Santa Fe (SSN 763) arrived at Fleet Activities Yokosuka, May 11, for a visit as part of its Indo-Asia-Pacific deployment.

The visit strengthens the already positive alliance between the U.S. and Japan through the crew's interaction with the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force. It also demonstrates the U.S. Navy's commitment to regional stability and maritime security in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations.

Santa Fe is a Los Angeles-class submarine with some of the most advanced submarine systems in the world. Its speed, stealth, mobility and sheer firepower make it one of the most powerful weapons in the U.S. national defense arsenal. This submarine is capable of executing anti-submarine warfare, anti-surface ship warfare, strike, naval special warfare, irregular warfare and mine warfare.

Measuring more than 362 feet long and weighing more than 6,500 tons when submerged, Santa Fe is one of the stealthiest submarines in the world.

Homeported in Pearl Harbor Hawaii, Santa Fe is named for the city of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Santa Fe was commissioned on Jan. 8, 1994.



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Ex-governor defies Hadi, forms autonomous body in Aden

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 3:52PM

Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi's governor for Yemen's port city of Aden, recently fired by the Saudi-backed former president, has launched an autonomous body to manage the war-wracked country's south.

Maj. Gen. Aidarous al-Zubaidi, who has fallen out with Hadi but is close to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), formed the new "transitional political council of the south" on Thursday.

The new council is made up of 26 members, including the governors of five southern provinces and two Hadi ministers.

The sacked governor said the new council would "manage the provinces of the south and represent (them) domestically and internationally".

Hadi dismissed his governor for Aden and his state minister Hani bin Breik on April 27 over their alleged close ties with the United Arab Emirates.

In a recent interview with Middle East Eye online news portal, Hadi accused the UAE of acting "like an occupation power in Yemen rather than a force of liberation."

The two men are also believed to be close to southern independence activists.

The move was a new blow to Hadi's efforts to keep together loyalists and reflected divisions among his supporters. Hadi has relied heavily on the militia recruited in the south, where separatist sentiments run deep.

The announcement on the formation of the council also comes days after thousands of people held a demonstration in Aden to denounce the sacking of senior officials by Hadi.

During last Thursday's protest, organizers called on Zoubeidi to set up a "national leadership to represent the south" and pledged their allegiance to it. Supporters of the separatist Southern Movement were among the demonstrators.

Aden, Yemen's second largest city, used to be the capital of the once-independent South Yemen before unification in 1990.

According to some sources, Saudi Arabia's King Salman tried to intervene to calm tensions, meeting with Hadi last weekend to smooth things over between him and the UAE but it is unclear if he made any progress.

Saudi Arabia, backed by its allies such as the UAE, has been leading a brutal military campaign against Yemen since 2015. The kingdom has also imposed an aerial and naval blockade on its southern neighbor.

Yemen's army, backed by Houthi Ansarullah fighters and popular forces, has been defending the country against the Saudi invasion which began in March 2015 with the aim of reinstalling Hadi.

The Saudi aggression has killed over 12,000 Yemenis, according to recent tallies. The US, Britain and some other Western countries have provided huge amounts of arms and military training to the Saudi forces.

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No part of Israel immune to resistance missiles in any future war: Nasrallah

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 3:16PM

The Secretary General of Lebanon's Hezbollah resistance movement, Sayyad Hassan Nasrallah, says no part of the occupied Palestinian lands will be immune to resistance missiles and its fighters in any future conflict.

Nasrallah made the remarks on Thursday, during a speech made to honor the movement's top military commander, Mustafa Badreddine, who lost his life while fighting foreign-sponsored Takfiri terrorist groups in Syria last year.

Honoring the memory of the slain commander, the Hezbollah chief said Israel knows that any future conflict will be inside occupied Palestine.

Nasrallah noted that Israel will be defeated during any military confrontation with Hezbollah fighters.

The Hezbollah leader went on to say that Lebanese resistance fighters have fulfilled the task of securing the border area with Syria and dismantled militant outposts in the region.

He stressed that Hezbollah has made enormous sacrifices to defend all walks of the nation irrespective of their religious background.

Nasrallah also strongly dismissed allegations that Hezbollah is seeking demographic changes in neighboring Syria, emphasizing that Takfiri militant groups, backed by the United States, Turkey and some Persian Gulf states, are forcing such changes in Syrian towns and cities.

Elsewhere in his remarks, Nasrallah pointed to the step taken by Israel to build walls along its borders with Lebanon and the besieged Gaza Strip, saying that building walls along Lebanon and Gaza borders was admission of the failure of the greater Israel plan.

He added that the fact that Israel hides behind two walls in Lebanon and Gaza proves its weakness, noting that resistance fighters had convinced Israel that there was no place for it in Lebanon.

The Hezbollah chief also underlined that the Lebanese resistance movement will keep cooperating with the Syrian army in the fight against terrorist groups.

Nasrallah also stressed that no disagreement exists between Hezbollah, Iran and Russia concerning the implementation of a nationwide ceasefire in war-ravaged Syria.

The ceasefire was brokered last December between the Syrian government and militants by Russia and Turkey with the support of Iran.

On the back of the truce, the three states have mediated several rounds of peace negotiations between the Syrian government and opposition groups in Astana, Kazakhstan, since the beginning of 2017.

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Hekmatyar's Fighters Refuse To Lay Down Arms In Afghanistan

RFE/RL's Radio Free Afghanistan May 11, 2017

Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's group said on May 11 that it will not hand over its weapons, despite pledging to do so as part of a peace deal signed with the government in September.

The decision prompted a rebuke from President Ashraf Ghani's office, with a spokesman urging Hezb-e Islami to adhere to the agreement, under which the militant group pledged to lay down its arms and end its insurgency.

Under the deal, Hezb-e Islami fighters interested in joining government forces could be integrated into the Afghan security forces.

Hezb-e Islami's refusal to lay down their arms will raise concerns over the deal with Hekmatyar, one of the country's most notorious warlords, who returned to Kabul last week following more than two decades in self-imposed exile.

Hezb-e Islami spokesman Qareem ur Rahman said on May 11 that it was "necessary" for the group's 3,500 militia fighters to keep their weapons for protection from extremist organizations such as the Taliban and Islamic State (IS).

"Our [fighters] have come under attacks from militants," said Rahman. "If they put down their weapons who will guarantee their safety?"

Rahman said the group's fighters would not fight "against the government" and was willing to battle militants alongside national security forces.

A spokesman for Ghani, Dawa Khan Menapal, said the security of the country was the government's "responsibility" and that Hezb-e Islami's concerns were "unwarranted."

"Under the peace agreement signed with Hezb-e Islami, their protection is the responsibility of the government," said Menapal.

Vetting Members

Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said preparations were under way to integrate Hezb-e Islami members, provided they met selection criteria.

"Joining the national army is voluntary and anyone who meets certain eligibility criteria can join to serve, and that includes Hezb-e Islami members," he said.

Hezb-e Islami has drawn up a list of 3,500 fighters for vetting and has handed over some 80 names, mostly senior officers, to a special government commission set up to oversee the integration, said Karim Amin, one of Hekmatyar's advisers.

The controversial peace deal has been criticized by many Afghans and by Western rights groups, which accuse Hekmatyar's forces of gross human rights violations during Afghanistan's civil war in the 1990s and cite their deadly attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces since the U.S.-led invasion that drove the Taliban from power in 2001.

Hekmatyar founded Hezb-e Islami in the mid-1970s. The group become one of the main mujahedin factions fighting against Soviet forces following their invasion in 1979, and then one of the most prominent groups in the civil war for control of Kabul after the collapse of the communist government in 1992 in the wake of the Soviet army's withdrawal from Afghanistan three years earlier.

Hekmatyar, who had been prime minister in the mujahedin government from 1993 to 1994 and then briefly again in 1996, was one of the chief protagonists of the civil war. Rights groups accuse Hekmatyar of shelling residential areas of Kabul in the 1990s as well as orchestrating forced disappearances and establishing covert jails where torture was commonplace.

With reporting by Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/afghanistan-hekmatyar-fighters- refuse-lay-down-weapons/28480653.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Fired FBI Director Was Seeking To Expand Probe Of Russian Meddling

RFE/RL May 11, 2017

FBI Director James Comey was seeking to expand his agency's investigation into possible collusion between Russia and U.S. President Donald Trump's campaign in the days before Trump fired him, U.S. media reported on May 10.

The White House has insisted that Comey was fired for making "missteps and mistakes" unrelated to the Russia investigation, which Trump has called "a hoax."

But congressional Democrats on May 10 stepped up their accusations that Comey's removal was intended to undermine the investigation and took steps to try to force Congress to authorize an independent investigation removed from White House influence.

As the two parties battled in Washington, demonstrators gathered in Washington, Chicago, and other cities to demand that the Russia investigation be turned over to independent prosecutors.

U.S. media reported that Comey asked the Justice Department for additional money to hire more people to staff the FBI's Russia probe in the days before he was fired. Comey later informed lawmakers of his request for more funding.

Dick Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's No. 2 Democratic leader, said that he couldn't be certain Comey's funding request triggered his dismissal, but it's clear the FBI "was breathing down the neck of the Trump campaign and their operatives and [the dismissal] was an effort to slow down the investigation."

The Justice Department and White House denied on May 10 that Comey had asked for more funding or that the funding matter had any relation to his firing.

Reuters reported that Comey also infuriated the White House last week by refusing to preview for top Trump aides his planned testimony before a Senate committee.

Reuters, citing White House officials, said Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein asked Comey for a heads-up about what he would say at a May 3 hearing.

When Comey refused, Trump and his aides considered that an act of insubordination and it was one of the catalysts leading to Trump's decision to fire him, Reuters said.

While the White House denied that Comey's testimony had anything to do with the firing, White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders on May 10 indicated that Trump viewed Comey as insubordinate, saying Comey had committed "atrocities in circumventing the chain of command."

The administration has said Comey's firing stemmed from his mishandling of an election-year FBI probe into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's e-mails. Trump has expressed astonishment that Democrats did not rally behind Comey's dismissal for that reason.

While Democrats have complained about Comey's handling of the Clinton probe -- particularly his decision just days before the November election to announce that he was reopening the probe in a move that Clinton blamed in part for her election loss -- they have nearly unanimously condemned Comey's dismissal because of his critical role this year overseeing the Russia investigation.

Democratic leaders in Congress on May 10 stepped up calls for a special prosecutor to handle the Russia investigation, in light of the White House's removal of Comey.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she would try to force a vote on a bill creating an independent committee to investigate the Russia matter if Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives, doesn't call up the legislation "immediately" when the House returns from recess next week.

Through a "discharge" petition, a majority of House members can force a House vote on legislation without going through the usual committee procedures, which are controlled by the Republican majority.

Pelosi said the "fireworks at the Department of Justice demand that we remove the investigation from the Trump-appointed Justice Department leadership."

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has called on Rosenstein to make good on his pledge to Congress to appoint a special prosecutor if needed to ensure the White House does not try to control the probe.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said on May 10 that a special prosecutor isn't needed and appointing one would only interfere with probes already under way in the Senate's Intelligence and Judiciary Committees.

But more than a dozen Republican senators have expressed concern about Comey's firing, including several who said they are open to appointing a special prosecutor.

Some Democrats have compared Trump's move to the "Saturday Night Massacre" of 1973, in which President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of an independent prosecutor investigating the Watergate scandal. The furor that erupted over the firing eventually led to Nixon's resignation.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told MSNBC that Trump, like Nixon, faces "mounting evidence" against him.

Blumenthal said that evidence increasingly suggests that informal Trump adviser Roger Stone, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, and fired national security adviser Michael Flynn "all face serious criminal culpability, and that evidence if pursued could lead to the very top."

Comey made his first comment since his firing late on May 10, telling FBI staff in a farewell letter that he had "long believed that a president can fire an FBI director for any reason, or for no reason at all," and that he would not spend time dwelling on Trump's decision "or the way it was executed."

Comey is due to testify at a closed hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 16.

With reporting by AP, Reuters, and New York Times

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/fired-fbi- director-comey-seeking-expand-investigation- russian-election/28479519.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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U.S. Senate Panel Subpoenas Flynn Documents In Probe Of Russian Meddling

May 11, 2017

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee on May 10 subpoenaed former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, demanding documents related to its investigation into Russia's election meddling.

Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Vice Chairman Mark Warner said the panel had first requested the documents from Flynn on April 28, but Flynn's lawyer declined to cooperate.

It was the committee's first subpoena in the Russian investigation.

Flynn was fired by Trump in February after less than a month on the job. 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 has become a major focus of several congressional investigations into Russia and the election.

Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates testified this week that she had warned the White House that Flynn had been compromised by his contacts with Russia and could have been vulnerable to blackmail.

The subpoena was announced a day after Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, who had been leading the bureau's investigation of Russia and the election.

Burr is one of several prominent Republicans who have expressed strong doubts about the timing of Trump's action.

Based on reporting by AP, dpa, and Reuters

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-senate-intelligence-committee-subpoena- flynn-documents-russian-meddling-probe/28479514.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Trump to Navy: Digital Catapult 'No Good', 'You Going to Goddamned Steam'

Sputnik News

17:52 11.05.2017(updated 17:55 11.05.2017)

Donald Trump said he told the Navy the new digital system would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was "no good".

WASHINGTON (Sputnik)  President Donald Trump said in an interview published on Thursday that the ordered the US Navy to stop using a new digital Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) for launching planes from the Ford-class aircraft carriers and return to the old catapult method.

"You know the catapult is quite important," Trump said in an interview with TIME. "It sounded bad to me. Digital [so] I said no you're not. You going to goddamned steam."

The EMALS is intended to launch planes from aircraft carriers using a linear induction motor and replace the old steam piston method. The system is still under development by General Atomics.

Trump said he told the Navy the digital system would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and it was "no good."

The aircraft carrier Gerald Ford is the first to use EMALS and the John F. Kennedy is set to use the new system.

On May 2, the US Defense Department awarded two contracts totaling $90 million for engineering maintenance to modernize US aircraft carriers.

 Sputnik

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Afghan Security Forces Flush Taliban Out of Two Districts in North-East

Sputnik News

16:20 11.05.2017

The Afghan security forces on Thursday regained control of two districts in the country's northeastern province of Badakhshan, which had been previously captured by the Taliban radical movement.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  The Afghan forces liberated a number of villages on the thirteenth day of the battle in the Zebak and Ishkashim districts of the Badakhshan province, which is located near the border of Tajikistan and Pakistan, the TOLOnews broadcaster reported.

"The villages of Ishkashim have been cleared of the enemy and around 20 posts of the enemy have been taken by security forces. Two tanks belonging to the enemy were destroyed during the operation," Jalaluddin Yaftali, the head of the Afghan Special Forces local unit said, as quoted by the outlet.

On Wednesday, the country's security forces pushed back Taliban terrorists from the northern city of Kunduz on the seventh day of the battle.

The Taliban movement, infamous for numerous acts of violence in Afghanistan, has captured large territories across the country. The Afghan National Defense and Security Forces are currently conducting joint offensive operations to combat the movement as well as other terrorists, such as Daesh.

 Sputnik

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Venezuelas President Nicolas Maduro has fired his health minister , Antonieta Caporale, three days after her ministry published a report charting an increase in infant and maternal deaths in the country, as well as epidemics, over the last two years.

Maduro holds a copy of the Venezuelan Constitution during a speech. HANDOUT (REUTERS)

More information El Gobierno de Maduro destituye a la ministra que difundio el informe sobre la mortalidad infantil

The report was published on Monday in Venezuelas weekly Epidemiological Bulletin, which has been published since 1938, but was suspended in 2014 to avoid political interpretations, according to government sources. The report looked at last year, citing statistics that show a 30% increase in infant mortality and a 65% increase in maternal deaths. At the same time, diphtheria, which had been eradicated decades ago in Venezuela, has reappeared, with some 300 cases reported. Malaria has become endemic, with around 250,000 cases.

One of the oppositions main demands throughout the crisis has been for the government to allow a humanitarian aid channel in the country, to alleviate the countrys dire health situation.

Malaria is now endemic in Venezuela, while diphtheria has returned decades after it was erradicated

Meanwhile, two Brazilian political campaign strategists jailed for million-dollar payments from bribe money in the sprawling Odebrecht graft investigation have accused President Maduro of paying $11 million in cash for them to manage the 2012 re-election campaign of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez.

The married couple, Monica Moura and Joao Santana, currently serving eight-year sentences, revealed the information as part of a plea-bargain.

Maduro received Monica in his office, he handed her attache cases of money and he gave her an armed security escort, said Moura in a statement made public by the Brazilian Supreme Court on Thursday.

He added that the money came from two multinational construction firms that have been awarded public contracts in Venezuela: Odebrecht and Andrade Gutierrez. She added that Maduro demanded the payment be made in cash, adding that the two companies paid $9 million into a Swiss bank account for the campaign, along with the $11 million in cash handed over by Maduro in Caracas.

Moura says in her statement that the Chavez campaign never paid a further $15 million agreed. She also says that the former Brazilian ambassador to Venezuela, Maximilien Arvelaiz was the intermediary between the construction companies and the Chavez campaign.

The statements by Moura and Santana, who became internationally known after managing the successful campaigns of former presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff, are another chapter in the Odebrecht scandal, which has implicated several governments and leading politicians throughout Latin America.

English version by Nick Lyne.
Venezuelan Officials Say 39 Killed in Clashes, Dozens More Injured

Sputnik News

03:17 11.05.2017

The death toll in Venezuela clashes has risen to 39 as a young man was killed in Caracas on Wednesday, according to officials.

MEXICO CITY (Sputnik)  Another young man died Wednesday in clashes that have engulfed the Venezuelan capital of Caracas, bringing up the death toll to 39, a district mayor said.

"It is with deep sorrow that I report the murder of another youth today, Miguel Castillo (26), who died of an intercostal wound in Las Mercedes," Baruda mayor Gerardo Blyde tweeted.

The official death toll now stands at almost 40 people, although opposition activists have put it higher.

At least 93 people were injured when security forces moved in to disperse crowds protesting against the government in Caracas, according to Chacao district mayor Ramon Muchacho. Two were hospitalized with gunshot wounds, he said.

The oil-rich South American nation has suffered from an economic meltdown triggered by a slump in oil prices that caused shortages in basic consumer goods. The opposition blames President Nicolas Maduro for the crisis and has been calling for an early election.

 Sputnik

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Security Council welcomes commitment of Colombian Government and FARC-EP to peace process

11 May 2017  The opposition in Colombia has begun to lay down arms, a move welcomed today by the United Nations Security Council which recently visited the country to see the peace efforts first-hand.

In a statement to the press, the 15-member Council today welcomed "the peaceful arrival of almost 7,000 members of the FARC-EP [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army] in the agreed zones and points." The Council welcomed also the "continued commitment of the parties to work together to enable FARC to lay down their individual weapons" by 29 May, which marks 180 days after the final peace agreement came into force.

Observers from the UN Mission in Colombia, are actively involved in the process of laying down arms by registering and identifying all the weapons present in FARC-EP camps within all 26 war zones, storing and then neutralizing and extracting the arms. The weapons include munition, mines and explosives.

The Council visited Colombia from 3 to 5 May, to witness first-hand implementation of the peace agreement between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP, and to observe the progress as well as the challenges to the agreement that ended the 50-year old conflict.

The visit included meetings with President Juan Manuel Santos and senior representatives from the Government, as well as leaders of the FARC-EP and members of various representatives in Congress.

The Council Members, led by Ambassador Elbio Rosselli of Uruguay  which holds the Council's presidency during the month of May  also met with members of civil society and local communities.

In today's press statement, the Council also paid tribute to the courage of Colombians who have embarked on "the path of peace." They noted that violence is at its lowest level in over 40 years and underlined the significant benefits that a lasting peace could bring to the entire country.

Colombia's peace process has the potential "to be a positive example to the rest of the world," the Council said.

In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the FARC-EP. That deal was the culmination of four years of talks hosted in Havana, Cuba, between the parties, and which led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November 2016.

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International support for Somalia must focus on rebuilding security, averting famine - UN chief

11 May 2017  Opening a major conference on Somalia, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres today urged the international community to support security efforts in the country battling Al-Shabaab and aid the more than six million Somalis affected by the violence and a deadly drought.

"We are here to listen to Somalia's leadership  and to agree on a framework for cooperation," Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the heads of State and Government from across East Africa and other key partners at the London Somalia Conference 2017.

Mr. Guterres noted that Somalia is at a moment which is both "tragic and hopeful" and "can be in the near future the kind of good news that we badly need" in the world.

A legitimate Federal Government was established in 2012 in Somalia, and Al-Shabaab was pushed out of several key cities by the UN Security Council-mandated African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

Fighting continues to devastate the country, however, with violations of human rights and international humanitarian law occurring with impunity, Mr. Guterres noted.

He highlighted the need for predictable funding for AMISOM, and suggested the possibility of assessed contributions. The AU force was created 2012 and began fighting before it had helicopters, night vision systems or armoured vehicles.

"This is something that we need to solve to give AMISOM the capacity to really create the conditions to allow the Government and the new security institutions of Somalia to then be able to assume the responsibility of the security of their own country," he said.

Mr. Guterres also called for greater coordination in support of the Somali Government to build up the Somali National Army and the Somali Police to create the conditions for a unified national army and a unified police front.

UN chief calls for $900M to fight drought

Somalia is facing prolonged drought which has left more than half the population of the country in need of humanitarian assistance. The situation continues to deteriorate and the possibility of famine in 2017 remains very real, despite an already massive scale-up of assistance since the beginning of the year.

The ongoing conflict is exacerbating the drought, leading to what could be one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Guterres called for an additional $900 million to aid the 6.2 million people whose crops have withered, livestock has died and waterholes have dried up.

Some 275,000 malnourished Somali children are currently at risk of starvation, according to UN figures.

"If there is an image that I will never forgetin my life it is [the one] of children dying already, where they could [have been] assisted because they just arrived too late," Mr. Guterres said speaking at an event on a response to the humanitarian crisis.

The UN chief had travelled two months ago to the capital, Mogadishu, and Baidoa, in the south-western Bay region, to ask the people in Somalia if they were receiving aid and to appeal for more support from the international community.

"Somalia now hangs in the balance between peril and potential. Here in London, we can tip the scales from danger to safety," said Mr. Guterres.

At the end of the day, Mr. Guterres spoke alongside Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and Mohamed Somali President Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo.

"This conference was an unmitigated success," Mr. Guterres said.

He reiterated that the international community needs to massively support Somalia by responding to its humanitarian appeal, fully support the Government in building up national institutions and AMISOM, and support the new National Development Plan of Somalia.

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Afghan Diplomat Alleges Pakistan Behind Resurgent Taliban

By Ayaz Gul May 11, 2017

Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan has accused the neighboring country of contributing to the continuous violence in his war-ravaged nation by not cutting ties to the Taliban.

Omar Zakhilwal told an international conference in Islamabad Thursday that neighboring and regional countries need to create a "broader" consensus to help end hostilities in Afghanistan and promote political reconciliation there.

"We do not believe that Pakistan has yet given up on "strategic depth" in Afghanistan, unfortunately. Despite the rhetoric, we do not believe that it has changed its policy. They contribute to the continuous violence in Afghanistan," the ambassador asserted.

Islamabad has long been accused of supporting the Taliban and harboring leaders of the Haqqani network in a bid to gain an upper hand over security and political developments in Kabul so it could counter rival India's growing influence there.

The so-called policy of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan has been at the center of Kabul's political tensions with Islamabad.

"Taliban could not [have] come back at the strength they are without support from here [Pakistan]," Zakhilwal said.

Pakistani officials, however, dismiss the charges as "mere perceptions" and say their contacts with the Taliban are meant only to encourage them to end violence and join peace talks.

During his visit to Afghanistan last month, U.S. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster also called on Islamabad to rethink its policy toward the neighboring country.

"The best way to pursue their interests in Afghanistan and elsewhere is through diplomacy, not through the use of proxies that engage in violence," McMaster said.

Zakhilwal Thursday also sounded skeptical about a Russia-led multi-nation process aimed at promoting peace and stability in Afghanistan.

"Even though we do participate [in it], there are suspicions with respect to the motives, with respect to the recent contacts [with the Taliban] and those need to be addressed," Zakhilwal noted. He was indirectly referring to overt contacts Russia and Iran have maintained with the Taliban.

The ambassador went on to suggest that unless prevailing "doubts and suspicions" are removed, Moscow-led efforts many not be effective even if primary stakeholders are participating in them.

Russia has hosted three meetings of Afghanistan's immediate and far neighbors since December 2016 to try to find ways to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table for talks with the Afghan government.

Pakistan, Iran, China, India and former Soviet Central Asian states, as well as Afghanistan, are part of the process.

But the U.S. administration refused to attend when Moscow invited it to the last meeting in April, saying it was not given enough time and Washington was unclear about the motives.

The U.S. military alleges Russia's stepped up Afghan diplomacy is meant to undermine international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. Russian leaders have rejected the charges as groundless.

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US Intel Chief: Situation in Afghanistan Will 'Almost Certainly Deteriorate'

By VOA News May 11, 2017

The United States' top intelligence official believes the military conflict in Afghanistan will likely deteriorate in the coming years, even if the U.S. commits more troops to the 16 year-old fight.

Speaking Thursday during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said the Taliban is likely to make gains in rural regions while the government is being undermined by the country's "dire economic situation."

"Intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners," he said.

Coats said Afghanistan is likely to struggle to curb its dependence on foreign support until it can either contain the insurgency or reach a peace agreement with the Taliban, though he said he is not optimistic about the Afghan military's ability to defeat its enemies.

"Afghan security forces' performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertions, poor logistic support and weak leadership," he said.

President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing whether to send as many as 5,000 more troops to Afghanistan. The U.S. currently has about 8,400 troops stationed in the country.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Trump has asked military advisers "to relook at the entire strategy" in Afghanistan.

Trump is expected to make a decision on the plan sometime in the coming days.

North Korea, Russia

In addition to the situation in Afghanistan, Coats said North Korea is becoming an "increasingly grave national security threat" as leader Kim Jong-Un takes a more aggressive approach to the U.S. and attempts to improve his country's nuclear weapons and missile capabilities.

"North Korea updated its constitution in 2012 to declare itself a nuclear power. And its officials consistently state, 'nuclear weapons are a basis for a regime survival,' suggesting Kim does not intend to negotiate them away," Coats said.

Coats said Russia is "likely to be more aggressive towards the United States" in the coming years and will likely use its military intervention in Syria and the threat from the Islamic State group to expand its role in the Middle East.

"Russians have spread across the globe," he said.

Coats told the committee his organization is "still assessing the impact" of Russian meddling during the 2016 presidential election but the intelligence community hasn't yet "put a grand strategy together" to deal with the issue moving forward.

Coats said he spoke recently with Montenegro Prime Minister Milo Dukanovic, who told him Russia was now attempting to interfere in that country's elections after it joined NATO earlier this year.

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UN's Guterres Seeks $900 Million for Somalia

By Mohamed Olad Hassan May 11, 2017

Somalia needs genuine international support for its reconstruction and stabilization plans to prevent a slide back into anarchy, leaders said at the start of a one-day conference on Somalia in London.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for another $900 million for the drought-stricken country, reports the Associated Press.

"Somalia now hangs in the balance between peril and potential,'' Guterres said at the opening of the conference Thursday. "Here in London we can tip the scales from danger to safety.''

Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed said his country also needs a "robust economic program" to fully recover from a quarter-century of war and chaos.

"The insecurity situation cannot be changed without addressing its root causes, which is abject poverty and mass unemployment. Too many of our young generation are sitting idle, creating fertile ground for terrorists to recruit from," said the president.

For 10 years, troops with the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) have battled al-Shabab militants and pushed the al-Qaida-linked group out of Mogadishu and other Somali cities.

But the militants continue to attack AMISOM bases around the country and public places in Mogadishu, causing hundreds of deaths per year.

The Somali president predicted his government will defeat the militants within the next few years  but called for the total lifting of an arms embargo on Somalia so the army has the firepower to defeat al-Shabab.

"The longstanding arms embargo on Somalia severely restricts our ability to procure heavy weapons, despite the partial lifting of the embargo in 2013. Time has come for Somalia to be able to get access to qualitatively better weapons than terrorists," he said.

The London conference will focus on improving security, governance and the economy in Somalia. Talks on security will focus on rebuilding the Somali National Army and how to counter terrorism while protecting human rights.

The conference is co-chaired by the Somali president, Guterres and British Prime Minister Theresa May.

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Trump Defends Firing of FBI Director, Calls Him 'Grandstander'

By Steve Herman, Michael Bowman May 11, 2017

President Donald Trump asserts in a NBC-TV interview Thursday that he would have fired FBI chief James Comey even if Justice Department officials had not recommended it, calling Comey a show-off.

"He's a showboat. He's a grandstander. The FBI has been in turmoil," Trump said to the network in his first interview since his surprise dismissal on Tuesday of Comey, who was directing an investigation into connections between the president's election campaign last year and Russian officials, along with possible Russian meddling in the election.

"I was going to fire Comey. My decision," Trump said. "I was going to fire regardless of [Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's] recommendation."

The White House on Thursday continued to defend its dismissal of the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and denied the White House had tried to blame Rosenstein for the abrupt removal, which sparked a political firestorm.

"I don't think there was ever an attempt to pin the decision on the deputy attorney general" for Comey's firing, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House principal deputy press secretary.

Rosenstein Memo at center of controversy

At the center of the scrutiny is whether Rosenstein, was instructed to draft a memo justifying the removal of FBI Director James Comey or whether he decided to write the document without direction.

Rosenstein was upset with suggestions made by the White House that his memo suggested he called for Comey's firing, according to the Washington Post and ABC News.

White House officials on Thursday denied any such reaction by Rosenstein, telling reporters the veteran prosecutor came up with the memo on his own and not necessarily at Trump's direction.

The president is expected to visit FBI headquarters as soon as Friday, according to White House officials.

Trump sent Comey a letter on Tuesday informing him of his immediate removal.

Accompanying memos by Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions mentioned Comey's mishandling of last year's investigation into Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

News media reports, however, have been quoting sources in Washington asserting Comey was ousted because he wanted to intensify the Russia investigation.

The firing has prompted Democrats to amplify their calls for an independent investigation of the Russia case. The attorneys general of 20 states are also calling for an independent special counsel.

Senate Democrats say they are seeking details from the Justice Department on whether Comey, before his firing, requested additional funds and personnel for the FBI's probe of Russia ties.

Some Republicans are also expressing concern about the timing and reason for Comey's abrupt removal.

Trump, Comey conversations on investigation

White House officials say Trump had been contemplating firing Comey since last November's presidential election.

In an interview Thursday with NBC News, Trump said that in a previous conversation, he had asked the FBI director if he was under investigation. Trump said the FBI director replied "no" to him.

Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange "highly inappropriate" at a minimum.

"There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation. Difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation. If he had said he was, what was Trump going to do? What was the purpose of him asking? What was his motive? Did he ask him to back off on any other targets of the investigation? Did he ask who the targets were?" said Moss, who heads The James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability.

Former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers is under consideration to succeed Comey, according to senior White House officials.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent, chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Acting FBI chief on Comey support

At a Senate intelligence hearing on Thursday, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe pledged to inform lawmakers about attempts to interfere with the bureau's investigation into Russia's meddling in the presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," McCabe added.

The agency's acting chief also rejected White House claims that Comey had lost support within the FBI.

"I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day. We are a large organization," McCabe said. "I can confidently tell you that the majority, the vast majority of FBI employees, enjoy a deep and positive connection to Director Comey."

Several senators asked McCabe if he could confirm or deny Trump's assertion in his dismissal letter to Comey that the FBI chief had informed the president "on three separate occasions" that he was not under investigation. McCabe steadfastly declined to do so.

"I can't comment on any conversations the director [Comey] may have had with the president," McCabe replied.

The committee's chairman, Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina, asked McCabe about the president's letter to Comey, but did not comment on the dismissal or the resulting furor engulfing the administration. Burr said Wednesday he found it difficult to understand the timing of the FBI director's firing, but noted that Trump had full authority to do so.

The committee's vice chairman, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, expressed skepticism.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the president's decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation [of Russian meddling]. And that is unacceptable," Warner said. "President Trump's actions this week cost us an opportunity to get at the truth  at least for today."

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Acting FBI Chief: Comey Firing Has No Impact on Russia Probe

By Michael Bowman May 11, 2017

The acting head of the FBI said President Donald Trump's firing of former agency director James Comey has had no impact on an ongoing Russia investigation, but declined to comment on an eye-popping claim the president made in a letter notifying Comey of his dismissal.

"The world of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstances," acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday. "There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date."

Several senators asked McCabe if he could confirm or deny Trump's assertion that Comey had informed the president "on three separate occasions" that he is not under investigation by the Department of Justice, which is conducting a probe of Russian meddling in last year's U.S. presidential election. McCabe steadfastly declined to do so.

"I can't comment on any conversations the director [Comey] may have had with the president," McCabe said. McCabe, however, dismissed White House assertions that Comey had lost the confidence of his peers within the FBI.

"I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day. We are a large organization," McCabe said. "I can confidently tell you that the majority, the vast majority of FBI employees, enjoy a deep and positive connection to Director Comey."

Comey's dismissal Tuesday continued to reverberate on Capitol Hill and beyond. The Senate Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, Mark Warner of Virginia, noted that Comey had been expected to testify at Thursday's hearing.

"It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the president's decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation [of Russian meddling]. And that is unacceptable," Warner said. "President Trump's actions this week cost us an opportunity to get at the truth  at least for today."

"Director Comey should be here this morning, testifying to the American people about where the investigation he's been running stands," said another Democrat, Ron Wyden of Oregon.

The committee's chairman, Republican Richard Burr of North Carolina, asked McCabe about the president's letter to Comey but did not comment on the dismissal or the resulting furor engulfing the administration. Speaking with reporters Wednesday, Burr said he found it difficult to understand the timing of the FBI director's firing, but noted that Trump had full authority to do so.

Comey has been invited to speak with the committee behind closed doors next week.

Flynn subpoenaed

In addition, the committee has subpoenaed President Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, for documents pertaining to the Russia probe. In a statement, Burr and Warner said the committee first requested the documents in a letter to Flynn last month, but that Flynn declined to cooperate.

Flynn was dismissed in February amid media reports that Flynn had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about conversations with Russia's ambassador to the United States.

On Monday, former acting attorney general Sally Yates told a Senate panel she met twice with senior White House staff in late January to inform them of Flynn's deception and warn that he could be subject to blackmail by Russia.

At Thursday's Intelligence Committee hearing, Wyden asked CIA Director Mike Pompeo if he was aware of the Justice Department's concerns about Flynn in the early weeks of the Trump administration.

"I have no firsthand information with respect to the warning that was given. She [Yates] did not make that warning to me," Pompeo replied.

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Controversy Over Trump's FBI Firing Seen as Playing Into Russia's Strategy

By Jeff Seldin May 11, 2017

Political acrimony over President Donald Trump's controversial decision to fire FBI Director James Comey is playing into the hands of a longtime U.S. adversary, several current and former U.S. intelligence officials say.

"From a geopolitical standpoint, the real winner is Russia," said Luke Hartig, a former senior director at the National Security Council under former President Barack Obama.

'Could Russia want anything more?'

Jeffrey Ringel, a recently retired 21-year veteran of the FBI now serving as director of The Soufan Group, echoed similar sentiments about how the current political dynamic is playing out.

"Could Russia want anything more?" Ringel asked of Comey's sudden dismissal. "Russia is probably very happy with the results of this action because this action is going to bog down the [FBI's] investigation."

Trump said he fired Comey because "he wasn't doing a good job."

A memo from the Justice Department criticized Comey's handling of the investigation of whether former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton mishandled classified material.

Democrats and some Republicans see the FBI's investigation into Russia's ties to the Trump campaign as the real reason Comey was fired.

Adding fuel to the controversy was Wednesday's meeting between Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, one day after Comey was fired. The White House did not let the media into the meeting for a customary photo opportunity. The only pictures of the meeting came from the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Before meeting with Trump, Lavrov, at the State Department, made light of Comey's departure, joking with American reporters who asked whether his dismissal cast a shadow over the foreign minister's visit.

"Was he fired?" Lavrov coyly asked them at the first mention of Comey. "You are kidding. You are kidding."

Denied collusion allegations

While continuing to deny that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, White House officials maintained Wednesday that Comey's firing would have no impact on the FBI investigation.

Still, there are those who worry that no matter how the investigation plays out, it could be advantage Russia.

"They're trying to exploit whatever cultural fissures there are within a country," a U.S. official told VOA on condition of anonymity when asked about Russian President Vladimir Putin's evolving strategy for the U.S. and its allies.

"The intensity is new. Some of the tools are new," the official added. The pattern, however, is not.

"He will do anything to fracture traditional alliances that he sees as threatening to his power," the official said.

And there are fears that every victory, no matter how slight, will only further embolden Putin and Russia.

Russian-linked hackers

Already, the U.S. National Security Agency has accused Russian-linked hackers of trying to sow confusion in France during its recent presidential election.

And NSA Director Adm. Michael Rogers noted Tuesday that the U.S. was seeing "similar things" in Britain and Germany.

"The first objective was to sow discord and dissension, which they certainly did," former U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate panel Monday, when asked about Russian interference in the U.S. presidential elections.

"They're going to continue to do it," Clapper added. "And why not? It proved successful."

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AFLCMC awards major long range radar contract

By Benjamin Newell, 66th Air Base Group public Affairs / Published May 12, 2017

HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. (AFNS) -- The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center here awarded the Raytheon Company a $52.6 million contract May 11, 2017, for the three-dimensional expeditionary long-range radar system.

The 3DELRR system will replace the aging AN/TPS-75, or Tipsy 75, as the principal Air Force ground-based sensor for long range surveillance, detection and tracking of aerial targets in support of theater commanders.

"Our warfighter customer has been waiting to replace its aging AN/TPS-75 for a long time," said Col. Michael Harm, the AFLCMC-Hanscom's senior materiel leader and program manager for 3DELRR. "Awarding the 3DELRR contract is a huge step toward that end."

The 3DELRR will enhance battlespace awareness through detection and reporting of highly maneuverable, small radar cross section targets. Moreover, it will provide air controllers with a precise, real-time picture of sufficient quality to conduct control of individual aircraft under many operational conditions.

"Our charge is to deliver a modern and sustainable 3DELRR capability to operators and maintainers in the field," said Lt. Col. Michael Alexander, the AFLCMC-Hanscom's materiel leader and deputy program manager for 3DELRR. "We are excited about what the future holds, particularly as it relates to the performance and affordability of 3DELRR."

The contract was originally awarded in October 2014, but the program re-entered source selection due to protests and appeals. The solicitation was amended in 2016 to include full-rate production options in order to maximize benefits of a competitive environment and set the table for faster fielding of capability after government testing. Full replacement of the AN/TPS-75 systems is expected by 2029.

"Air dominance doesn't happen without tactical command and control," said Lt. Col. Johnny McGonigal, the 729th Air Control Squadron commander at Hill AFB, Utah. McGonigal's unit currently operates the Tipsy 75 and will eventually field its replacement, the 3DELRR. "At any minute, of any day there's an Air Operations Center relying on tactical C2 provided by airborne assets like the E-3 Sentry (AWACS) or E-8C Joint STARS, and/or ground-based radar provided by a control and reporting center, which is able to be more persistent once established."

According to program managers, the new award balances radar performance with long-term sustainability and maintainability. In addition, 3DELRR incorporates exportability features and open systems architecture early in the design to reduce per-unit production and total life costs.

"3DELRR will offer improvements over older equipment, some of which still contain vacuum-tube technology," said McGonigal. "We're really going from the analog age to digital, and that's going to make us even more effective."

The contract award covers the engineering and manufacturing development of three production representative units, but allows the ability to exercise options for low-rate production, interim contractor support, and full rate production when appropriate.

"From both an operational and life cycle sustainment perspective, 3DELRR will greatly improve our current capability," said Alexander. "It will incorporate an upgradeable open systems architecture."

In addition to improving battle space awareness, 3DELRR is designed to be readily transportable, decreasing the time between a combatant commander's request for persistent, ground-based command and control, and when it can be delivered.

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Around a dozen major Spanish firms including former state telecommunications company Telefonica are among the victims of the worldwide malware attack which has affected over 150 countries and 200,000 Windows users in recent days.

Over 150 countries have been affected by the ransomware attack. @fendifille/Twitter/PA | VIDEO REUTERS

More information How last weeks WannaCry ransomware attack affected businesses in Spain

The Spanish National Cyber Security Institute (Incibe) on Friday confirmed a number of Spanish firms had been affected by the WannaCry malware virus that locks down computers and demands users pay a ransom in the virtual currency Bitcoin for their machines to be unlocked.

Spanish telecommunications firm Telefonica was the largest victim of the cyberattack in Spain with the malware affecting the computers of personnel working at the central headquarters in Las Tablas, Madrid on Friday. The computer virus caused computers to crash, leaving blue screens and rendering devices useless.

The malware virus could gain new traction on Monday when people turn on their work computers

Hours later, the cryptology branch of Spains National Intelligence Center (CNI) confirmed that the virus was affecting a number of other organizations. There has been a warning over a massive ransomware attack on a number of organizations and that affects Windows systems, encrypting all of their files and the network units to which they are connected, infecting the rest of the Windows systems on the said network, the CNI said.

Unconfirmed reports were also being circulated on Friday that the same virus was affecting other companies in Spain, such as consultancy firm KPMG, bank BBVA, power company Iberdrola and telecoms giant Vodafone.

But Spains Industry Ministry later in the day issued a statement saying service provision had not been affected while Incibe also informed the public that the initial effects of the attack had been mitigated after the taking of preventative measures.

However, Europol Director Rob Wainwright on Sunday warned the virus could gain traction again on Monday when people turn on their work computers. Speaking to UK broadcaster ITV, Wainwright said that authorities were working on the hypothesis that criminals, and not terrorists, were responsible for the virus, adding that people should not pay the ransom requested.

At Telefonica, the incident did not have any effect on the systems that control the internet, fixed line and cellphone services that the company provides for its more than 15 million customers, a spokesperson told EL PAIS on Friday.

Sources from the company said that around a hundred computers had been affected, although other, non-official sources spoke of many more, prompting an internal email to be sent out to all employees in the building instructing them to turn off their computers, and not switch them back on until further notice.

The internal communication from the companys security team stated that malware that affects your data and files has been detected as having entered the Telefonica network. The memo called on the recipient to warn all colleagues of the situation, as well as instructing them to disconnect their cellphones from the corporate Wi-Fi network.

The former state telecommunications company is a Spanish multinational internet, telecommunications and television provider, and has 350 million customers across Europe, Asia, and North, Central and South America under brand names including Movistar, O2 and Vivo. It is the biggest Spanish multinational by market capitalization and one of the largest private telecoms companies in the world.

English version by Simon Hunter and George Mills.
Military Strikes Continue Against ISIS Terrorists in Syria, Iraq

From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release

SOUTHWEST ASIA, May 12, 2017  U.S. and coalition military forces continued to attack the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria yesterday, conducting 34 strikes consisting of 106 engagements, Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.

U.S. Central Command continues to work with partner nations to conduct targeted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria as part of the comprehensive strategy to degrade and defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS.

Officials reported details of yesterday's strikes, noting that assessments of results are based on initial reports.

Strikes in Syria

In Syria, coalition military forces conducted 23 strikes consisting of 40 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Abu Kamal, a strike engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS vehicle.

-- Near Dayr Az Zawr, three strikes destroyed three ISIS oil processing items and two ISIS wellheads.

--Near Raqqa, eight strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed four fighting positions, three vehicle bombs, two ISIS oil storage tanks, two ISIS oil stills, two excavators, a front-end loader, an improvised explosive device, and an ISIS staging area.

-- Near Tabqah, 11 strikes engaged 10 ISIS tactical units and destroyed seven fighting positions, seven tactical vehicles, a vehicle and a supply cache.

Strikes in Iraq

In Iraq, coalition military forces conducted 11 strikes consisting of 66 engagements against ISIS targets:

-- Near Mosul, six strikes engaged four ISIS tactical units; destroyed six fighting positions, three mortar systems, two sniper positions, a tactical vehicle, a command-and-control node, a vehicle bomb, a front-end loader; damaged 24 ISIS supply routes, three fighting positions; and suppressed six mortar teams and two ISIS tactical units.

-- Near Sinjar, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed an ISIS staging area.

-- Near Tal Afar, three strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units and destroyed two front-end loaders, a fighting position, an ISIS staging area and an ISIS-held building.

Additionally, 13 strikes were conducted in Syria and Iraq on May 10 that closed within the last 24 hours:

-- Near Raqqah, Syria, seven strikes engaged seven ISIS tactical units and destroyed 12 fighting positions, an ISIS headquarters, a command-and-control node, a supply cache, an ISIS staging area, a tactical vehicle, and a vehicle.

-- Near Tabqah, Syria, two strikes engaged an ISIS tactical unit and destroyed a fighting position, an ISIS headquarters and a vehicle bomb facility.

-- Near Mosul, Iraq, four strikes engaged two ISIS tactical units: destroyed five rocket-propelled grenade systems, three vehicles, two vehicle bombs, two heavy machine guns, two medium machine guns, an ISIS staging area, a fighting position, a command-and-control node, a weapons cache; damaged 19 ISIS supply routes and a fighting position; and suppressed five mortar teams.

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.

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NSF Redzikowo Signs Premiere Training Agreement with Polish Forces

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS170512-26

Release Date: 5/12/2017 12:25:00 PM

By Lieutenant Alex Perrien Navy Region Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia Public Affairs

REDZIKOWO, Poland (NNS) -- Naval Support Facility Redzikowo Commanding Officer Capt. Ricky Gilbert signed Memorandums of Agreement May 10 with the Polish Force Protection Battalion, JW5718 and the 7th Coastal Brigade.

The Memorandum will allow American Sailors and Polish Soldiers to train together in all disciplines of military operations, and is an essential step to improving the interoperability of American and Polish forces, increasing base security, and strengthening relationships and communications between the many organizations involved.

"The Memorandums of Agreement signed this afternoon mark an important milestone in our relationship with our Polish partners," said Rear Adm. Rick Williamson, commander, Navy Region Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia. "These agreements are a tangible demonstration of the U.S. and Polish commitment to NATO's ability to protect itself from the growing threat posed by proliferation of ballistic missiles from outside the Euro-Atlantic area, and allows us to jointly enhance NATO's collective defense."

Representatives from the United States European Command, Navy Region Europe, Africa, Southwest Asia, the U.S Embassy in Warsaw, NSF Redzikowo, the Missile Defense Agency, the 7th Coastal Brigade, the Polish Force Protection Battalion, JW5718, and the local police force attended a two-day Joint Security Working Group culminating in the signature of three memorandums.

NSF Redizkowo is an operational platform that provides key support to the Aegis Ashore Missile Defense System (AAMDS) including security, safety, housing, and core capabilities: fuel, water, and power, which are essential to keep installations running. The installation and its facilities remain under construction, as does AAMDS Poland.

"The agreements signed today represent an immense amount of coordination and communication between the security forces and parent commands of both Polish and American forces," said Capt. Rick Gilbert. "We look forward to productive training and building a 'one team one fight' concept."

As a persistent shore presence for the U.S. Navy in Europe, NSF Redzikowo will cooperate with the host nation and Polish forces to strengthen our relationship in order to increase peace and security throughout the region. Once complete, AAMDS Poland will be integrated into the NATO ballistic missile defense (BMD) infrastructure. The AAMDS Poland is part of the European Phased Adaptive Approach, which will improve collective defensive coverage against medium- and intermediate-range threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area.

The EPAA is the United States' effort to field capabilities offered as the U.S. voluntary contribution to the NATO Ballistic Missile Defense mission to counter threats from outside the Euro-Atlantic area. This multi-year, multi-phase effort includes Aegis BMD-capable ships based in Rota, Spain; AAMDS sites in Redzikowo, Poland, and Deveselu, Romania; a forward-deployed radar in Turkey; and a command and control network located at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

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More Afghanistan troops as West digs in for long haul

Iran Press TV

Fri May 12, 2017 9:20AM

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says his government is "open" to sending more troops to Afghanistan, as requested by the United States.

Turnbull said on Friday that he was considering providing additional resources to Afghanistan, where Australia currently has stationed almost 300 troopers for training and advising Afghan forces.

"We are certainly open to increasing our work there," Turnbull said but did not specify the details of a request made US Defense Secretary James Mattis during a visit to Afghanistan late last month.

"It is very important that we, and our other allies in the effort in Afghanistan, continue to work together to build up the capacity of Afghanistan's own security forces so that they can keep that country secure from the threat of terrorism," he said on Friday.

Turnbull said, however, that his government first had to examine its existing defense commitments in the region and other parts of the world.

Australian troops are expected to remain in Afghanistan for at least two more years.

The US State Department recommended earlier this month that 3,000 to 5,000 additional troopers be sent to Afghanistan. US officials claimed that the military needed a bigger role in the Asian country to push the Taliban militant group back to the negotiating table. They have also called for authority to target Taliban leaders in airstrikes.

NATO officials have called for new deployments to Afghanistan.

Germany, a member of the military alliance, has already refused to increase its troops or expand its military's role in Afghanistan.

Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that her country will continue to lead NATO's military training mission in Afghanistan but was not ready to take on more responsibilities there. In a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Merkel said she would wait to see the outcome of NATO's assessment of a request from the alliance's military authorities to send more troops to the Asian country.

NATO has currently about 13,450 troopers, including about 6,900 US military forces, in Afghanistan.

The military alliance announced an end to its combat operations in Afghanistan in 2014, but the push to increase the deployment now is an indication of how the military alliance is increasingly being drawn back into fighting in the country.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan on October 7, 2001 as part of Washington's so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but after more than one and a half decade, insecurity is high and foreign troops continue to be deployed to the country.

In addition to the Taliban, the Takfiri Daesh terrorist group has also gained ground and recruited militants across Afghanistan in the recent past.

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Trump Warns Fired FBI Chief About 'Leaking' To Press

RFE/RL May 12, 2017

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump has issued a comment on Twitter apparently warning former FBI Director James Comey against "leaking to the press," suggesting there might be "tapes" of their private conversations.

Trump's comments came in a series of Twitter posts early on May 12 in which he also suggested he might cancel daily White House press briefings.

Trump fired Comey on May 9, and later in an NBC News interview called him "a showboat" and a "grandstander" and stating that the FBI was in "turmoil."

U.S. media, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, have reported differing accounts of meetings between Trump and Comey before his firing.

The FBI and at least two congressional committees are probing allegations of Russian interference into the 2016 U.S. presidential election and possible collusion by the Trump campaign team.

Trump has said that Comey on three occasions -- during one meeting and two phone calls -- told him he was not personally the subject of an investigation.

Meanwhile, U.S. media, citing unnamed FBI sources, reported that Trump pressured Comey to pledge his personal loyalty to the U.S. president, which the reports say Comey refused to do.

Trump issued a comment on Twitter in apparent response to the news leaks, which CNN, The Washington Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post, and other media, characterized as a "threat" to Comey.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" he wrote.

Representative Gerry Connolly (Democrat-Virginia) accused Trump of witness intimidation after the Comey tweet.

"First obstruction of an investigation. Now witness intimidation from the Highest Office. A sad moment for even this White House. Unhinged?" he tweeted.

Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat-California), a vocal critic of Trump, said in a tweet said that the president should release any tapes that might exist.

"Mr. President, if there are 'tapes' relevant to the Comey firing, it's because you made them and they should be provided to Congress," Schiff wrote.

The White House declined to comment further on the suggestion of recordings of the conversations.

Cancel Press Briefings?

Trump also issued a tweet about White House press briefings, suggesting he might end the daily event that has been accused by some of providing misleading information.

Brian Fallon, a former Justice Department spokesman who also served as press secretary to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, told Politico that the briefings had "become a forum for exposing the absurdity and falseness of claims made by the president."

Trump wrote on Twitter that "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"

"Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" he added.

The president of the White House Correspondents Association, Reuters reporter Jeff Mason, told MSNBC that his association would object to any move to cancel the press briefings.

"Having regular press briefings is key to giving journalists the ability to do their jobs," Mason said. "It is also key to allowing there to be transparency at the highest levels of government, whether that's the president of the United States or the people who work for him."

In a separate development, the Associated Press is reporting that Trump's lawyers have released a letter saying a review of his tax returns over the past 10 years did not show "any income of any type from Russian sources," with two major exceptions.

The exceptions listed are income from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that Trump organized in Moscow and a property sold to a Russian billionaire in 2008 for $95 million.

Trump has come under pressure to release his tax returns amid questions about his connections to Russian government or business officials.

With reporting by AP, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Washington Times, CNN, BBC, Politico, and The Hill

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/us-trump-warns-fbi- comey-about-leaks/28482999.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Trump: No Collusion Between Campaign, Russia; Says He'd Always Planned To Fire Comey

RFE/RL May 12, 2017

WASHINGTON -- U.S. President Donald Trump said he had planned to dismiss FBI Director James Comey even before receiving recommendations from top Justice Department officials.

"I was going to fire Comey. My decision," Trump told NBC News on May 11. "I was going to fire him regardless of recommendation."

The comments apparently contradict the administration's earlier explanation for Comey's firing.

Comey had been overseeing a criminal investigation into suspected Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and potential ties to the Trump campaign. The firing on May 9 stunned lawmakers and roiled Washington politics.

Trump also said that he spoke with Comey once during dinner and twice in phone calls, during which time he says Comey told him "you are not under investigation."

Trump said he initiated one phone call, and Comey initiated the other.

In his termination letter, Trump thanked Comey for informing him "three times" that he is not under investigation.

Initially, the White House said the firing was at the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Democratic lawmakers, and some Republicans, publicly doubted the justification Trump gave for firing Comey -- that the FBI chief had not properly managed the investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and her e-mail practices.

Over the next 48 hours, the reasoning for the firing apparently changed.

In his first comments on the matter at the White House on May 10, Trump said Comey was fired because he "was not doing a good job" as FBI leader.

During the NBC interview, the U.S. president added that Comey is "a showboat" and a "grandstander" and that the FBI was in "turmoil," making it necessary to fire the director.

Trump insisted he never pressured Comey to drop the Russia-related FBI investigation.

Democrats have pressed for an investigation to determine whether the Trump team colluded with the Russians in an effort to interfere in the 2016 election.

During his NBC interview, Trump restated his earlier comments that Comey had assured him three times that he was not under investigation.

With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trump-planned- fire-comey-russia-fbi/28480998.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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DR Congo: UN agency appeals for support as 'steady stream' of refugees crosses into Angola

12 May 2017  With violence and insecurity continuing to force people to flee Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region and seek refuge in neighbouring Angola, the United Nations refugee agency has called for a suitable place to shelter them as well as additional resources to support those in urgent need.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 20,000 new arrivals have been recorded since early April, with nearly 3,000 over the past few days.

"[We] continue provide food and relief items to those arriving [and our] partners are pitching tents and distributing plastic sheeting to provide adequate shelter, prioritizing the most vulnerable people," Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the UN agency, told journalists today at a regular media briefing at UN Office at Geneva (UNOG).

UNHCR is also supporting Angolan authorities identify a suitable site to relocate refugees from temporary reception centres that have become overcrowded as the number of arrivals increase.

However, there are particular concerns for women and girls  who form about 70 per cent of new arrivals  as well as for a number of children who arrived unaccompanied and separated.

Furthermore, many people the recent arrivals included those with severe wounds and burn injuries, who had been transferred to a local hospital to receive urgent medical attention. About 70 are receiving treatment at local hospitals.

However, detailed information on the injuries was difficult to ascertain as the situation was unfolding in a very remote area, the north-eastern part of Angola, with people fleeing from the Kasai region also from a very remote area, explained Mr. Mahecic.

Also in its response to the situation, the UN agency has airlifted first-aid kits, solar lanterns, tents, and plastic sheets and rolls.

However, as the influx continues, more resources are needed to cope with the demand. In particular, UNHCR has made an appeal for $6.5 million to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, including food, nutrition, health and relief items for refugees.

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Trump Escalates Feud with Ousted FBI Director Comey

By William Gallo May 12, 2017

President Donald Trump has escalated his feud with ousted former FBI director James Comey, implying there are secret recordings of one of their private conversations from earlier this year.

In an early morning tweet Friday, President Trump said, "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

Clapper clarifies comments

In comments to MSNBC Friday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he did not know whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. Nor should he have, he said, because the issue is FBI territory.

Clapper said his practice is always to defer to the director of the FBI "on whether, when and what to tell me about a counterintelligence investigation."

His comment contradicted a Trump tweet saying Clapper did not believe there was collusion.

Trump on Tuesday fired Comey, who was leading an investigation into alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 election, as well as possible collusion between Moscow and the Trump campaign.

White House officials insist the firing had nothing to do with the Russia probe, though the president appears to have undermined that assertion during a televised interview Thursday.

Much of the controversy centers around a White House dinner meeting earlier this year between Trump and Comey.

A New York Times report late Thursday said that Trump asked Comey to "pledge his loyalty to him" during the dinner meeting.

The report said Comey refused to make the pledge, but instead told Trump that he would "always be honest with him." Trump pressed Comey several times for his loyalty, and finally Comey told the president he would have the FBI director's "honest loyalty," according to the newspaper account.

White House officials dispute the accuracy of that account, which relied on unnamed sources who reportedly have spoken with Comey about the meeting.

Comey himself has made no such allegations. In a farewell note to FBI staff, Comey played down the dispute, saying: "I have long believed that a President can fire an FBI Director for any reason, or for not reason at all."

The issue is unlikely to go away, however, especially in light of Trump's tweet on Friday implying that the conversation had been recorded.

In a television interview Thursday with NBC News, Trump gave a different account of the dinner. The president said Comey requested the meeting because the FBI director wanted to keep his job. The president did not mention a loyalty pledge request.

The president also said he had asked the head of the nation's prime law enforcement agency whether he was being investigated.

Trump said he asked Comey "if it's possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, 'You are not under investigation.'"

The president, in the television interview, repeated "I am not under investigation" when asked about Comey's sworn testimony that there is an ongoing probe into his 2016 president campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government.

'Highly inappropriate'

Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange "highly inappropriate" at a minimum.

"There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation," Moss told VOA.

But Moss, deputy executive director of The James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability, added it is "difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation."

Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor specializing in constitutional law, wrote on Twitter it is "now totally clear that Trump's firing of Comey was an obstruction of justice. That was the first article of impeachment against Nixon."

That is a reference to former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 less than a month after the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against him.

Trump asserts in Thursday's interview he would have fired Comey even if top Justice Department officials had not recommended it, calling former President Barack Obama's appointee "a showboat. He's a grandstander."

Comey was directing investigations into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, along with possible meddling by Moscow in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Rosenstein memo

The White House on Thursday continued to defend its dismissal of the FBI chief and denied it tried to put the responsibility on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo for the abrupt removal.

"I don't think there was ever an attempt to pin the decision on the deputy attorney general" for Comey's firing, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House principal deputy press secretary.

Sanders, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and even Vice President Mike Pence earlier had asserted, though, that Trump's firing decision was based on the deputy attorney general's memo.

At the center of the scrutiny is whether Rosenstein was instructed to draft a memo justifying Comey's dismissal or whether he decided to write the document without direction.

Rosenstein was upset with suggestions made by the White House that his memo suggested he called for Comey's firing Tuesday, according to The Washington Post and ABC News.

Rosenstein's memo mentioned Comey's mishandling of last year's investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was secretary of state.

Russian investigation

News media reports quote sources who assert Comey was ousted, however, because he wanted to intensify the Russia investigation.

The firing has prompted Democrats to amplify their calls for an independent investigation of the Russia case. The attorneys general of 20 states also are calling for the appointment of a special counsel.

Comey was appointed by Obama in 2013. FBI directors serve 10-year terms to insulate them from political interference, but can be removed by presidents.

Until now, the only other time an FBI director had been dismissed was in 1993 when President Bill Clinton removed William Sessions, who refused to leave voluntarily amid ethical concerns.

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Russia charges three suspects with terror in St. Petersburg metro bombing

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 5:46PM

Russian prosecutors have charged three suspects over involvement in last month's bombing attack in the Saint Petersburg metro.

Russia's Investigative Committee said on Thursday that the three, Bakhram Ergashev, Ibragimzhon Ermatov and Makhamadyusuf Mirzaalimov, were charged with involvement in a "terrorist act."

Investigators said the trio was also charged with having illegally used explosives in the April 3 attack, which killed 15 people. The committee added that seven other suspects will be charged in the near future.

Meanwhile, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) said that another suspect head been arrested on Thursday over links to the metro bombing.

The FSB said the individual who bore the last name Ermatov had reportedly been involved in the "illicit trafficking of explosives linked to" the bombing.

A group suspected of links to al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the bombing was a response to Russia's involvement in the war against militants, apparently making a reference to Moscow's campaign against terrorists in Syria.

Russian investigators had initially suspected that elements linked to the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group were behind the attack. Akbarjon Djalilov, a 22-year-old of Kyrgyz origin who died in the blast, is through to have carried out the attack.

Russia started a military campaign in Syria in September 2015 at the official request of the government in Damascus.

The airstrikes, which initially targeted Daesh east of Syria, later expanded to attack positions of groups linked to al-Qaeda in the north. That greatly boosted Syria's position in the war as the Syrian military and its allies managed to purge militants from the key city of Aleppo late last year.

Estimates suggest that thousands of Russian nationals have joined the militant groups in Syria since the war began six years ago.

Besides helping Damascus with the anti-terror campaign, Russia has defended its military presence in Syria as a preemptive measure aimed at preventing possible terror attacks on its soil when militants return home.

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DPRK says to bring to justice "terror suspects" against top leader

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 16:18, May 11, 2017

PYONGYANG, May 11 (Xinhua) -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) said Thursday it will bring to justice the "terror suspects" involved in what the country alleged was an assassination plot against its top leader Kim Jong Un.

"The Central Prosecutor's Office will ask for the handover of those criminals and prosecute them under the relevant laws of the country," Han Song Ryol, vice foreign minister of the DPRK, told foreign diplomats and reporters here.

"Korean-style anti-terror war" will be launched immediately and in a "consecutive and intensive way" against the United States and South Korea, whom Pyongyang has accused of sponsoring the murder, the official added without elaborating.

The DPRK said last week it had foiled an attempt by the United States and South Korean intelligence services to assassinate Kim with bio-chemical and radio-active substances during his public appearances in mass celebrations on April 15, the day when the DPRK marked the birth anniversary of its founder Kim Il Sung.

The DPRK's Ministry of State Security said in a statement that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) had infiltrated a terrorist group into the DPRK to carry out the assassination plan, which was hatched in nearly two years' time.

In response, Kim ordered a team to carry out the top secret arrest mission this year, according to the DPRK authorities.

It is not known how many people have been arrested in the case so far, but the DPRK has vowed to "hunt down to the last one of the suspects in every corner of the earth."

Pyongyang has arrested two American citizens recently for alleged "hostile activities" against the country. It is not known if the arrests were relevant to the case.

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CIA, Seoul Paid Hit-Man $300K to Kill North Korea's Leader, Ambassador Claims

Sputnik News

16:42 12.05.2017(updated 17:59 12.05.2017)

The US and South Korean intelligence agencies handed over about 300,000 dollars to 'Kim', a North Korean citizen, to stage an alleged plot to assassinate North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un, the country's Ambassador to Russia said.

Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Friday, North Korean Ambassador to Russia Kim Hyun Joong claimed that the US and South Korean intelligence agencies had handed over about 300,000 US dollars to 'Kim', a North Korean citizen, to assassinate North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

Kim Hyun Joong declined to reveal the full name of the failed hit-man, who was allegedly recruited by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) in June 2014, when he worked at a logging enterprise in Russia's Khabarovsk Territory.

A covert assassination of the North Korean leader was allegedly to be carried out during a festival with the help of biochemical substances, such as radioactive or toxic agents "in the form of nanomaterials" which would allow the assassin to kill Kim Jong Un without approaching him.

"Once, they [the CIA and the South Korean intelligence service] handed this person $20,000 twice and a satellite reception-transmitter," the ambassador said.

According to him, Kim was threatened with reprisals against his family and upon returning to Pyongyang, he received instructions from South Korean intelligence via satellite.

Over the last year, Kim and his US and South Korean intelligence contacts had four conversations, during which the alleged assassin was offered several methods of accomplishing the task.

In the second half of 2016, Kim was allegedly tasked with creating a "communications control point abroad to safely supply equipment, materials and money." To this end, as well as to bribe the accomplices, he was sent another $200,000, Kim Hyun Joong said.

During a meeting in the Chinese border town of Dandong in March-April 2017, Kim received another $50,000 and a new satellite receiver-transmitter. By the end of April, preparation for the alleged assassination plot was wrapped up.

It was conducted on a top-secret basis in order to prevent a war on the Korean Peninsula. In total, Kim received more than 80 orders from South Korean intelligence services, according to the North Korean ambassador.

He pledged to find and "mercilessly destroy the alleged organizers of terror from the CIA and the NIS who dared to raise a hand to the top North Korean official."

Meanwhile, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Friday that North Korea's intelligence services had allegedly named key suspects who they claimed were behind the planned attack on the country' leader Kim Jong Un, including NIS head Lee Byung-ho.

According to the news outlet, Pyongyang has named two other South Korean intelligence officers as well as Xu Guanghai from the company Qingdao Nazca Trade as suspects and demanded their extradition from whatever country they were currently residing in.

Pyongyang reportedly stressed that the suspects would be investigated under North Korean law, regardless of their citizenship.

 Sputnik

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US Alerted France of Russian Cyberattacks During Presidential Election

By VOA News May 11, 2017

The United States informed French officials that Russia had hacked France's computer networks during the country's presidential election before the cyberattacks became public, the National Security Agency chief told Congress on Thursday.

"We are aware of specific Russian activity directed against the French election cycle, in the course, particularly in the last few weeks," Admiral Mike Rogers testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. "We think it was important enough that we actually reached out to our French counterparts to inform them."

France's election campaign commission said Saturday that "a significant amount of data," some of it likely fake, had been leaked on social networks after a cyberattack on the presidential campaign of centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron.

The leak came 36 hours before France's runoff election Sunday in which Macron beat far-right candidate Marine Le Pen.

French election officials said the leaked data apparently came from the computer systems and email accounts of Macron and some of his campaign managers.

Before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Rogers compared the cyberattacks on Macron's campaign to those in the U.S. on the Democratic National Committee and a close aide to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton before the November presidential election that was won by Donald Trump.

Evidence points to Russia

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the evidence indicates Russia was responsible for the hacks.

Rogers also has said that there has been no reduction in the volume of attempted Russian cyberattacks and that the U.S. needs to take tough action against nations that attempt to undermine American democracy.

To do so, Rogers said, the U.S. must continue to develop a comprehensive cyberpolicy and improve its ability to defend itself in the cyberdomain.

Later Thursday, Trump signed an executive order aimed at bolstering the federal government's cybersecurity and protecting the nation's infrastructure from cyberattacks.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump's homeland security adviser, Tom Bossert said global cyberattacks on the U.S. were increasing. "The trend line is going in the wrong direction," he said.

Bossert said the executive order was not motivated by Russia, but partially by the need to develop and implement a deterrence strategy  something he said President Barack Obama's administration "had an obligation to do."

Russia continues to deny allegations it is responsible for cyberattacks with the intent to interfere in foreign elections.

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India Left With Four Minesweepers Against Chinese Subs, Experts Fear for Safety

Sputnik News

18:01 11.05.2017

With just four minesweepers out of the 24 required to secure its region from minefields, the Indian Navy is in dire straits with the existing four also due to be decommissioned next year without any news of any induction of new minesweepers.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The Navy recently decommissioned two minesweepers ships, INS Karwar and INS Kakinada. It has left for only four minesweepers against the requirement of at least 24 minesweepers to secure its region from minefields.

The Navy expressed its concern to the Ministry of Defense on this issue during the four-day long Naval Commanders' Conference which ended concluded on May 5, wherein the "top-level leadership of the Navy reviewed readiness to deploy over the entire range of missions in the maritime domain".

By the end of next year, the Indian Navy would have decommissioned all its existing minesweepers, without new inductions.

"This is certainly a cause for concern for India's maritime security, particularly considering the increasing operational deployments of Chinese submarines in the Indian Ocean Region. It is well known that the stealth attribute of submarines makes them the most appropriate platforms for laying an offensive minefield in the enemy's littoral waters," Naval Captain Gurpreet S. Khurana, Executive Director, National Maritime Foundation (NMF), said.

Indian Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba emphasized the need for continued efforts to modernize and expand the Navy's operational footprint so as to be a stabilizing force in Indian Ocean Region.

"For India, inadequate minesweeping and mine-hunting capabilities constrain the Indian Navy to provide security assistance to the regional countries during dire contingencies necessitating such assistance," Naval Captain Khurana said.

Arun Jaitley, the Indian Defense Minister, has assured the Indian Navy that due impetus through appropriate defense procurement policies is being given to make good the critical capability shortfalls, such as Mine Counter Measure Vessels (MCMVs). If government reaches an agreement to build 12 new MCMVs with South Korean company Kangnam Corporation at Goa Shipyard, it is unlikely that the delivery of the first MCMVs will be done before 2021. This means that the Indian Navy will have to cope without any MCMVs for more than three years.

India had bought six MCMVs from the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 1970s. Last year, the Indian government agreed to build 12 new MCMVs with the South Korean collaboration at Goa Shipyard. The Indian Navy needs at least 24 MCMVs to plug the shortfall. On the other hand, China has more than 100 minesweepers and MCMVs.

 Sputnik

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India's Indigenous Fighter Jet Successfully Fires Derby Missiles in Radar Mode

Sputnik News

19:11 12.05.2017(updated 19:26 12.05.2017)

India's home-made light combat aircraft (LCA) Tejas has successfully fired the beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile (BVRAAM) Derby in radar-guided mode on Friday at Chandipur-on-sea. The aircraft took off from Kalaikunda base in the eastern state of West Bengal.

New Delhi  Tejas manufacturer Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) was assessing the Derby integration with aircraft systems onboard Tejas including the aircraft avionics, fire-control radar, launchers and missile weapon delivery system and to verify its performance. It is expected that all tasks for the final operational clearance will be achieved by the end of this year.

"The missile launch was performed in Lock ON after Launch mode for a BVR target in the look down mode and the target was destroyed. A safe separation was followed by missile guidance towards the radar-acquired target. The flawless launch was demonstrated with all onboard systems performing satisfactorily and the missile scored a direct hit on the target with a complete destruction of it," India's Ministry of Defense said.

HAL has so far handed over four Tejas aircraft to the Indian Air Force (IAF). The Tejas is, however, still not combat-ready. Its final phase of weapon trials, including the firing of BVR (beyond visual range) missiles, is under way. Moreover, the fighter is to get an AESA (active electronically scanned array) radar and advanced electronic warfare (EW) suite, and mid-air refueling capability, for the Mark-IA version that the IAF actually wants. Import content in LCA is 40% by value.

 Sputnik

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India Signs Largest Private Defense Contract for Korean Self-Propelled Guns

Sputnik News

17:32 12.05.2017(updated 17:44 12.05.2017)

India's Ministry of Defense has formally awarded a $676 million contract to Larsen & Toubro, India's multinational engineering conglomerate, for the supply of 100 units of 155mm/ 52 caliber tracked self-propelled gun systems to the Indian Army.

New Delhi (Sputnik)  The technology for the weapon is being provided by South Korean firm Hanwha Techwin (HT). L&T had bid for this 'Buy Global' acquisition program of India's Ministry of Defense in 2011.

The K9 VAJRA-T gun is an enhanced version of HT's K9 Thunder, customized and co-developed by L&T & HT to suit the specific requirements of the Indian Army including desert operations.

"The deal envisages delivery of the 100 guns in 42 months with associated engineering support package and maintenance transfer of technology to support these Howitzer regiments throughout their life cycle. These guns will have over 50% indigenous content and will be delivered from L&T's manufacturing facilities, including a new Armored Systems Complex at Hazira," an L&T statement said.

Among 4 bidders for the program RFP, L&T emerged as the sole qualified bidder, after a series of User Trials and Evaluations, based on the performance of the K9 VAJRA-T self-propelled Howitzer.

The 47-ton K9 Vajra-T is powered by a German 1,000 hp MTU MT 881 Ka-500 V8 diesel engine which can fire up to 40 km. The burst rate of fire would be three rounds in 30 seconds while it can fire 15 rounds in three minutes in intense range. The Indian Army had intended to own a howitzer with high ground clearance for use across varied terrain.

 Sputnik

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JCPOA belongs to international community: Mogherini

ISNA - Iranian Students' News Agency

Wed / 10 May 2017 / 14:20

Tehran (ISNA)  Pointing that European Union backed the full implementation of multilateral nuclear deal with Iran known as JCPOA, the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini emphasized that the deal belonged to the international community.

"I spoke with American officials over the full implementation of the deal and Iran's role in the region, especially in Syria and Yemen. I told US officials that EU backs the full implementation of JCPOA and all sides need to comply with the accord," Federica Mogherini said during the meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

"We are monitoring the implementation of the accord through the joint commission. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also confirmed in five reports that Iran complies with the JCPOA so all of us should adhere to our commitments particularly the related sanctions to nuclear activities," she added.

"The nuclear deal with Iran shows the way forward to us, the Europeans. It set a milestone for non-proliferation which makes the world safer. World powers negotiated the deal, and the agreement was immediately ratified by the Security Council so the deal now belongs to the entire international community not only to us who were in that room in Vienna," said the top EU diplomat.

Elsewhere in her speech, Mogherini called on the US to keep funding UN agencies and remain committed to the climate change deal.

End Item

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Iraqi army launches large-scale operation against Daesh in Anbar

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 2:16PM

The Iraqi army has launched a large-scale operation against Daesh in the desert areas of the western Anbar Province as the terrorist group is being dealt final blows in the country's fight against the Takfiri terrorists.

An Iraqi army lieutenant colonel said the military, backed by local tribal fighters, began the operation against militant hideouts early Thursday.

"The security forces are advancing from an area called 'Kilometer 160', west of [Anbar provincial capital city,] Ramadi, towards [the town of] Nukhayb," the officer added.

Furthermore, Iraqi Major General Mahmud al-Falahi, the head of Anbar Operations Command, said the Anbar push was aimed at flushing Daesh out of the desert regions and securing the town of Rutbah.

Anbar is the largest Iraqi province and borders Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. It has been a militant stronghold since 2014 when Daesh swept through Iraq.

The Iraqi forces have managed to retake most of the towns and cities in Anbar, but the terrorists still control areas near the Syrian border.

Separately on Thursday, the head of the security committee of the Diyala governorate's general office announced that a Daesh ringleader, identified as Abu Ghatibah, was killed in a rocket attack on the terror outfit's hideout near the city of Baqubah.

Abu Ghatibah was close to Daesh leader, Ibrahim al-Samarrai, also known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the official pointed out.

Three years ago, Daesh unleashed its campaign of death and destruction in Iraq and declared the northern city of Mosul as its de facto capital in the Arab country.

Since October 2016, the Iraqi army soldiers and allied volunteer fighters have been leading a major operation to retake Mosul.

Iraqi forces took control of eastern Mosul in January and launched another offensive in the west in February.

The full liberation of Mosul would likely spell the end for Daesh's so-called caliphate.

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Iraqi forces liberate more areas in northwest from Daesh

Iran Press TV

Fri May 12, 2017 9:54AM

Iraqi armed forces are pressing ahead with operations to dislodge Daesh Takfiri terrorists from the northwestern areas of the country.

Fighters from the Popular Mobilization Units, also known as Hashd al-Sha'abi, launched an all-out operation to liberate al-Qairawan district in Nineveh Province. They also managed to regain control of a village near the city of Tal Afar.

An Iraqi army commander has expressed hope that government troops will have fully recaptured Mosul within the next two weeks.

Meanwhile, witnesses in western Mosul say the Takfiri extremists are booby-trapping homes with civilians inside and welding doors shut on starving families to prevent the population from fleeing.

The Interior Ministry's elite Rapid Response forces say they have found several families stuck in booby-trapped homes since the operation in northwestern Mosul started last week.

Many of the civilians, who are not locked in by Daesh, have been hiding in basements with whatever food supplies they still have. Reports say many have been eating plants and boiled papers.

An estimated 250,000 people are still trapped in Mosul and some other areas that remain under Daesh control.

Local sources put the number of Daesh terrorists in western Mosul at around 600, meaning that the Takfiri terrorists are resorting to human shields as a last resort in their defense strategy.

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.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the UN chief, 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.

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.

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Political Unity in Libya One Step Closer as General Haftar Named New Army Chief

Sputnik News

18:41 11.05.2017

Libya's Foreign Minister Mohammed Siyala, has named Khalifa Haftar, the long-time opponent of the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and the chief of the self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), as the head of the country's military on the condition that he recognize the UN-backed GNA as the sole governing authority.

Field Marshall Haftar, whose LNA took control of a number of Libya's key oil ports in the country's east back in September, is a popular figure. However he has always rejected the legitimacy of the UN-backed GNA which was established as the "sole legitimate executive authority in Libya."

The success of Haftar and his LNA in taking the oil crescents out of the control of a GNA-backed rebel group, and his success in repelling Islamist groups from parts of the east of Libya, have contributed to his widespread popularity. This however, dealt a serious blow to the legitimacy of the GNA in the same region, including in Libya's second city, Benghazi.

In an unprecedented move at a press conference in the Algerian capital of Algiers on Monday, May 8, Mohammed Siyala, who is an official in the GNA, referred to Haftar as the "commander-in-chief of the Libyan army." Later on, Siyala attached the disclaimer that Haftar must first recognize the Tripoli-based GNA as Libya's "sole authority."

The UN-brokered deal of 2015 gave no political role to Haftar and his LNA forces, but the GNA and its international backers have had little choice but to recognize the authority Haftar commands, as he has slowly but surely become a force to be reckoned with on the Libyan political scene.

The Algiers conference was attended by a number of influential characters from the region, including Abdelkader Massahel, Algeria's Minister of Maghreb (North West Africa) Affairs, African Union and Arab league members, and UN envoy to Libya, Martin Kobler.

The announcement comes on the heels of a meeting early May, that took place in the United Arab Emirates, between the GNA's head, Fayez al-Sarraj and Haftar. The meeting was spearheaded in the hope of ending Libya's political deadlock by bringing both sides together to forge a power-sharing agreement.

The international community, including Russia and Egypt, have been pushing for months for Serraj and Haftar to sit down at the negotiating table to discuss hashing out the main issues with the UN-mediated agreement.

After the meeting in the UAE, both leaders made a joint statement that Libya must reach a political resolution. Serraj also added that they had agreed to "form a unified Libyan army."

Libya has been tormented by chaos since the 2011 ouster of former leader Muammar Gaddafi, with rival militias and political factions engaging in fratricidal war for the oil-rich country.

 Sputnik

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Suicide Bomber Kills 25 in Southwestern Pakistan

By Ayaz Gul May 12, 2017

A suicide bomber has struck the convoy of an Islamic party in southwestern Pakistan, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 40 others. Most of the victims were activists with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI-F), a religious-based political party.

Police say Friday's attack occurred in the town of Mastung, about 50 kilometers from the provincial capital of Quetta. The blast apparently was targeted at Abdul Ghaforr Haideri, the deputy Chairman of the Pakistani Senate, the upper house of parliament.

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing.

The Senator was slightly wounded but driver and the director staff at the senate accompanying him both were killed, officials confirmed.

Haideri is a central leader of JUI-F, which is part of Pakistan's ruling collation headed by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's party.

The cleric told reporters he was returning from a graduation ceremony at a religious seminary when their convoy was struck.

"It was ally very sudden. I am injured but alive. God has saved my life. Broken pieces of the windscreen hit me. My driver and other people sitting next to me were very badly injured," Haideri said.

Police and witnesses said the bomber was on a motorbike and his body parts have been retrieved from the site in the province of Baluchistan. It's the largest of all four provinces where a number of militant groups operate, while ethnic Baloch insurgents often attack government installations.

IS has stepped up attacks lately in Pakistan. The Syria-based terrorist group also took credit for the suicide bombing of a Sufi shrine in the southern city of Sehwan in February that killed more than 70 people. Victims were mostly members of the minority Shi'ite Muslim community.

Baluchistan borders Afghanistan and Iran, and officials in both the countries have long alleged militants waging terrorist attacks on their soils operate out of the Pakistani province. Islamabad denies the charges.

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China willing to work with S. Korea, Xi tells Moon in phone conversation

People's Daily Online

(CNTV) 14:26, May 11, 2017

Chinese President Xi Jinping congratulated South Korea's newly-elected President Moon Jae-in in a phone conversation on Thursday.

President Xi said China and South Korea are important countries in the region, and bilateral relations have brought fruitful results and benefited people of both nations. The relationship has contributed to regional peace and development since the two countries established diplomatic ties 25 years ago, he added.

Xi also said China is willing to work with South Korea to strengthen political mutual trust, enhance negotiations and handle disputes.

President Moon said that South Korea puts a high value on the relationship between the two nations, and is willing to improve the bilateral relationship with China, as well as resume the Six-Party Talks on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Moon also expressed appreciation for the Belt and Road Initiative, and said he is looking forward to the prosperity the project will bring to countries including South Korea.

During the phone conversation, Xi also expressed condolences for the five South Korean children killed in Tuesday's bus accident in east China's Shandong Province, and asked Moon to convey his sympathy to the families of the victims.

Moon expressed appreciation for Xi's words, as well as the immediate measures and support in dealing with the accident taken by the Chinese government.

The two leaders agreed to keep in touch and both look forward to their first face-to-face meeting.

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S Korea ready for talks with North under right conditions: Intelligence chief

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 6:24AM

The new head of South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), who is credited with the arrangement of two inter-Korean summits in the 2000s, stresses the need for a Seoul-Pyongyang meeting, but says it would be possible only when calm returns to the region.

"(The president) can visit Pyongyang only once the military tension on the Korean Peninsula is eased considerably and the North Korean nuclear problem begins to settle," Suh Hoon told reporters on Wednesday shortly after his appointment to the post.

"It is too premature to talk about a next inter-Korean summit ... But we need it," he added.

Moon Jae-in, the newly-elected South Korean president, nominated Suh as the head of the NIS with the background experience of working for the intelligence agency for 28 years. The appointee played a key role in holding two summits between the Koreas in 2000 and 2007.

The 63-year-old was also involved in a plan to build a nuclear reactor for Pyongyang during the 1990s as part of a deal with the United States to freeze and ultimately dismantle North Korea's weapons programs. The accord later collapsed due to mutual distrust.

The newly-elected South Korean president has adopted a conciliatory approach toward Pyongyang and is seen as more willing to cooperate with North Korea than his conservative predecessors.

Just moments after Moon officially began his term, he declared his willingness to work for peace with North Korea.

On Thursday, the new South Korean leader discussed North Korea with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, as well as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the phone.

Yoon Young-chan, a spokesman for South Korea's presidential Blue House, said Moon and Xi agreed that all sides must work together to ease tensions over Pyongyang's weapons program.

Meanwhile, Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Koichi Hagiuda also said Abe and the South Korean president called for "close cooperation on the North Korean problem, which is an urgent issue."

Moon's victory in the presidential election was praised by US President Donald Trump in a telephone conversation on Wednesday, with the two counterparts agreeing to cooperate closely to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.

Tensions have escalated on the Korean Peninsula in recent weeks, with Washington and Pyongyang trading a barrage of military threats.

The US, a close ally of South Korea, has expressed concerns over the North's missile and nuclear programs.

North Korea, under a raft of sanctions for its missile and nuclear programs, says it is developing arms as deterrence against the US. It says it will not abandon the missile and nuclear programs unless the US ends its hostility toward Pyongyang.

Seoul and Washington reached an agreement over the deployment of the US-made THAAD missile system to the South in July last year. Pyongyang, whose nuclear and missile tests have provided the pretext for the THAAD's deployment, has expressed strong opposition to the move.

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South Korea to Send Envoys to China to Discuss THAAD, North Korea

By VOA News May 11, 2017

South Korean President Moon Jae-in's office said Thursday he plans to send a delegation to Beijing to discuss North Korea's nuclear program and China's concerns about a U.S. missile defense system being deployed in South Korea.

The leaders spoke by telephone a day after Moon was sworn in to replace the ousted Park Geun-hye.

Denuclearize peninsula

Moon's spokesman said the presidents agree on the "common goal" of denuclearizing the Korean peninsula, and that Moon understands China's concerns about the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

South Korea has worked with the United States to develop THAAD to help protect it in case of a North Korean missile attack. The first part of the system became operational early this month, and the full capabilities are expected to be set up by the end of the year.

China views THAAD as a threat and a destabilizing influence in the region, and has retaliated against South Korea with limits on tourism and imports.

Diplomatic effort

Moon said at his inauguration Wednesday he is prepared to lead a major international diplomatic effort to find a peaceful resolution to the tense security situation.

"If needed I will fly directly to Washington. I will go to Beijing and Tokyo. And if conditions are met I will go to Pyongyang. In order to bring about peace and security on the Korean Peninsula I will do everything that I can," he said.

Moon wants to increase dialogue and engagement with North Korea while also maintaining pressure and sanctions to encourage change. His position conflicts with that of U.S. President Donald Trump, who seeks to increase pressure on Pyongyang through further isolation and sanctions.

Korea Economic Institute analyst Troy Stangarone told VOA that Moon has stated he would only negotiate with North Korea after consulting with the United States.

"I would think that the [U.S.] administration would like to hear out what he has in mind, how viable that might be, and how it might fit into their policy, which is maximum pressure and engagement," he said.

Stangarone also added that whatever international plans Moon has, the economic situation in South Korea and the fact that he was elected following an impeachment mean that domestic issues will constrain what he wants to do.

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Kremlin 'Cautiously Optimistic' After Lavrov-Trump Meeting

RFE/RL May 11, 2017

The Kremlin expressed "cautious optimism" about the prospects for an improvement in relations with the United States following a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the comment on May 11, adding: "We have a lot of work ahead of us."

He also said a G20 summit in Germany in July would be a "good occasion" for Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet face-to-face.

Trump and Lavrov met at the White House on May 10, the highest-level meeting the U.S. president has had with a Russian official since taking office in January.

Trump described the talks as "very good" and voiced optimism on the prospects for cooperation on ending the war in Syria, saying: "I think that we are going to do very well with respect to Syria."

However, a White House statement said that Trump urged Lavrov to "rein in" Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iran.

It also said that Trump "stressed Russia's responsibility to fully implement the Minsk agreements," which called for a cease-fire and set out steps to end the deadly conflict between the Ukrainian government and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Relations between the United States and Russia have sunk to lows unseen since the Cold War amid rancor over Moscow's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, its backing of separatists in Ukraine, the Syrian civil war, and other issues.

Based on reporting by Reuters, TASS, and Interfax

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/lavrov-trump-meeting- kremlin-cautiously-optimistic/28480222.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Russia's patience with US in diplomats case has limits: Kremlin

Iran Press TV

Fri May 12, 2017 5:25PM

Moscow has not ruled out the possibility of retaliation against Washington over the expulsion from the United States of 35 Russian diplomats late last year, a Russian official says.

Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign policy aide, said on Friday that Russia was also looking forward to the return of two diplomatic compounds impounded in the United States as part of decisions made under the administration of former US President Barack Obama in December 2016.

"We are waiting for the return of Russian diplomatic property illegally impounded before the New Year by the previous US authorities," Ushakov said at a news briefing.

"We decided not to respond immediately to this escapade, but no one has yet abolished the principle of reciprocity in diplomacy ... Our patience is not without limits," the Russian official added.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had brought up the issue of the compounds during his visit to Washington this week, the official said.

In December 2016, Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, accusing them of being spies. Washington also imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over allegations that they had interfered in the 2016 presidential election in the US through cyber attacks.

Back then, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided not to expel US diplomats in reprisal for Washington's sanctions, saying Moscow would watch the policy of President-elect Donald Trump when he took office on January 20 to decide on ties between the two countries.



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Russian Army's Most Combat-Ready Formations to Be Designated 'Shock Troops'

Sputnik News

21:46 12.05.2017(updated 21:53 12.05.2017)

Russia's most battle-worthy army units will soon be given the 'shock troops' designation, and will receive their own distinctive heraldry, Lieutenant-General Ivan Buvaltsev, head of the Main Administration of Combat Training of the Russian Armed Forces, has confirmed.

In a recent article for Krasnaya Zvezda ('Red Star'), the official newspaper of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Buvaltsev wrote that in addition to the designation, the new shock units will receive their own distinctive heraldic sign.

According to the officer, 78 units, subunits and formations are currently being considered for the 'shock unit' title. Buvaltsev added that the title may be given to forces including motorized rifle troops, tank units, marines, airborne, air assault and other units and subunits.

Later this month, the selected units will undergo checks from a Defense Ministry commission, after which a final decision on whether or not to confer the 'shock unit' designation will be made.

 Sputnik

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Tahrir al-Sham Denounces Syrian Support for De-Escalation Zones as Treachery

Sputnik News

15:10 11.05.2017(updated 15:26 11.05.2017)

A coalition of groups spearheaded by al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria has issued a stern warning against the implementation of safe zones, saying those groups who adhere to the Astana accord would be deemed traitors of the Syrian revolution.

The fatwa essentially aims to warn moderate rebel groups against abiding by the Russian, Iranian and Turkish-sponsored ceasefire agreement.

The statement released by Tahrir al-Sham, led by al-Qaeda's former arm in Syria, Jabhat Fateh al-sham, also known as the the Nusra Front, threatened to wage an unrelenting war on other Syrian rebel groups, such as the so-called Free Syrian Army, if those groups follow the terms of the agreements signed by Russia, Iran and Turkey recently.

The deal propounds the idea of dividing Syria into "de-escalation zones," areas in which fighting and bombing would be prohibited. Tahrir al-Sham dismissed the deal, arguing that it is a conspiracy theory by the powers against the Syrian revolution. Subsequently, the jihadi coalition argued it would begin launching attacks against any and all Syrian rebel groups that support the zones.

"Accepting the Astana agreement is a betrayal of god, his messenger and the believers, as it is the betrayal of the blood spilt in efforts attempting to liberate al-Sham [Syria] from the hands of the disbelievers," said the group in a statement.

"For this reason, abolishing groups that are attempting to thwart our Jihad is Jihad in itself. It is a duty upon every Muslim. This ruling includes those groups as well as their collaborators or those who allow them to work under their banner. All of these are bad and should be killed," the group added.

Tahrir al-Sham was born in February 2017 out of al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria, Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, as well as other groups, including the ultra-puritanical group, Ahrar al-sham. The coalition is concentrated in the city of Idlib in northwestern Syria, and its formation was seen by analysts as a way for the jihadi groups  with the exception of Daesh  to come together in order to dominate swathes of western Syria.

The Nusra Front is said to be the second strongest militant group in Syria after Daesh. Both however, metastasized out of al-Qaeda and seek to topple the Assad government and impose an ultra-puritanical Islamic state.

The Nusra Front has made rapid territorial acquisition since its establishment in 2011. By mid-2016, the group had vast territory in northern, western, and small pockets in southern Syria under its control, including most of the Idlib province.

Before it severed the ties with al-Qaeda, the Nusra Front had a long history of following the received diktat of Osama Bin Laden's successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri. However, in July 2016, Zawahiri released an audio statement in which he conceded that the Nusra Front's continued subservience to al-Qaeda Central was "conflicting with unity and working as one body." Following this, Nusra went its own way by declaring a formal divorce from al-Qaeda. Some analysts suggested that the separation from al-Qaeda was an attempt for the group to refashion itself in a more moderate suit, in the hope that this could attract more largesse from Gulf state financiers sympathetic to the jihad being waged in Syria.

The Nusra Front and its tacit allies, such as Ahrar al-Sham, adhere to a Salafist-jihadist ideology which has the aim of establishing a Caliphate  or Islamic state  in areas under its sway.

Back in 2012, the group released a video introducing itself to the Syrian maelstrom. In the video, a Nusra ideologue outlined the group's primary objectives. He spoke of jihadists coming to Syria to "restore god's rule" and to "avenge the Syrians' violated honor and spilled blood." Years later, when the group's leader, Abu Muhammad al-Julani, announced Nusra's separation from al-Qaeda, he exclaimed that this was not "compromising or sacrificing our [Nusra's] solid beliefs or laxity in the necessity of the continuity of the Jihadi."

It would however, be a mistake to assume that Syria is the Nusra Front's exclusive sphere of operation. It also has cells in Lebanon, and stands accused of sponsoring some of the attacks seen in Europe since the Syrian civil war broke out in March 2011.

It is very likely that Nusra and its Tahrir al-Sham coalition see the establishment of the de-escalation zones in Syria as a direct threat to the contiguity of the territory they control.

The proposed "zone one" will be set up in the Idlib province, not far from the areas controlled by Nusra. As part of the Astana agreement, the ceasefire in these areas will be enforced by armed monitoring groups, which could spark clashes with Nusra. Moreover, potential increased support for the safe zones among the Syrian people and moderate opposition factions could lead to a decrease in support for Tahrir al-Sham, dealing a blow to the group's ability to move cross-country without continuously running into opposition.

It must be considered that the opposition groups on the ground in Syria, many of which receive largesse from overseas patrons, will be steered toward supporting the Astana outcome to avoid risking the continuity of their weapons supplies.

Regional states, namely Turkey, have been frantically trying to forge a new umbrella group of moderate Syrian rebels to repel the tumorous Tahrir al-Sham coalition. However, not only is this effort moving slowly on the ground in Syria, it has also garnered little support for the US, who says that it only condones supporting factions that it has vetted.

Turkey can expect little sympathy from Washington after President Erdogan condemned the Trump administration's decision to continue arming the Kurdish YPG in Syria.

President Erdogan said that any US failure to take into account Turkey's concerns over Kurdish groups in Syria will, "surely have consequences and will yield a negative result for the US as well." He also said that "we want to believe that our allies will prefer to side with us, not with a terrorist organization."

 Sputnik

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Islamic State Defeated at Tabqa Dam

By Carla Babb May 11, 2017

U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces have defeated Islamic State fighters in the city of Tabqa and have seized Tabqa Dam, a key objective for the militias before a planned attack on the terror group's de-facto capital, Raqqa.

The SDF, a multi-ethnic group which includes Kurdish fighters and Syrian Arab Coalition (SAC) fighters, had been battling Islamic State for weeks in Tabqa, about 40 kilometers west of Raqqa, with the help of coalition airstrikes and U.S. special forces advisers.

"This is yet another victory by the SAC and the SDF, our most committed and capable ground force partners in the fight against ISIS," coalition spokesman U.S. Col. John Dorrian said in a Central Command statement released Thursday.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said approximately 70 Islamic State fighters had conceded to the SDF's terms, which included dismantling bombs surrounding the dam, surrendering their heavy weapons and withdrawing all remaining fighters from Tabqa.

The SDF accepted the IS surrender in order "to protect innocent civilians" and to preserve the Tabqa Dam infrastructure, which hundreds of thousands of Syrians rely on for water, agriculture, and electricity, Central Command said.

After Wednesday's SDF victory, the coalition said it tracked fleeing Islamic State fighters and targeted those who could be hit without harming civilians.

The coalition said Thursday that Islamic State had moved its external attack planning operations to Tabqa after their defeat in Manbij in order to avoid coalition airstrikes in Raqqa.

"The operation to seize the Tabqa Dam, airfield and city disrupts ISIS operations in Raqqa and their ability to defend the city and plan and execute external attacks against the West," the coalition said.

U.S. airmen had airlifted SDF forces behind IS lines to launch the attack that captured the Tabqa airfield in late March, U.S. General Carlton Everhart, commander of the Air Force's Air Mobility Command, told VOA after the March assault.

American engineers and crews were repairing and restoring the airfield while the SDF continued its fight for Tabqa city and Tabqa dam.

The seizure of Tabqa and Tabqa Dam comes just days after President Donald Trump authorized the Pentagon to equip the Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces.

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.

A military official told VOA the United States will provide Kurdish forces around Raqqa with small arms, machine-guns, ammunition, and armored vehicles to counter improvised explosive devices and construction equipment.

"Weapons will be meted out to achieve limited military objectives," the military official said Tuesday.

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.

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Syria's Tabqa City Liberated, Key Development for Raqqa

By Lisa Ferdinando DoD News, Defense Media Activity

WASHINGTON, May 12, 2017  Partnered forces in Syria have liberated the Syrian city of Tabqa, a key development in the eventual defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Raqqa, Syria, the Pentagon's director of press operations said today.

The Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian Arab Coalition liberated Tabqa, which is southwest of Raqqa, Syria, as well as the Tabqa Dam and a nearby airfield May 10, Navy Capt. Jeff Davis told reporters today at the Pentagon.

"The multi-ethnic SDF forced the surrender of Tabqa Dam and the remainder of Tabqa city, continuing the trend of ISIS's diminished control of territory and people," Davis said.

Putting Pressure on ISIS

The SDF's increased pressure on ISIS from each flank allowed the partnered forces to accelerate the pace of the fight, clear the final neighborhoods of Tabqa and isolate the dam, he said.

"The SDF now has further isolated ISIS in Raqqa, which is the group's stronghold, and will continue to pursue the military defeat of ISIS throughout Syria," he said.

About 70 ISIS fighters conceded to SDF terms for Tabqa, which included dismantling improvised explosive devices around the dam, surrendering all heavy weapons and forcing the withdraw of all remaining fighters from the city, according to Davis.

"The SDF accepted ISIS's surrender of the city to protect innocent civilians and to protect the Tabqa Dam infrastructure, which hundreds of thousands of Syrians rely on for water, agriculture and electricity," he said.

Davis added, "The coalition tracked fleeing fighters and targeted those that could be safely hit without harming civilians."

Isolating Raqqa

Raqqa is nearly isolated, Davis said, noting the bridges that cross the Euphrates River have been disabled. An ISIS-controlled dam farther up river is essentially the terrorists' only way across the river, he explained.

"They are now pinched from the north, the east and the west otherwise, as well as just [from] the natural geography of the river," he said.

Coalition strikes in Syria continue, he said, noting strikes yesterday around Abu Kamal, Raqqa and Tabqa.

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MND dismisses speculation about alleged espionage case

ROC Central News Agency

2017/05/11 18:15:01

Taipei, May 11 (CNA) The Ministry of National Defense (MND) on Thursday dismissed speculation that former Air Defense Missile Command Commander Hsieh Chia-kang () spied for China because he was unhappy at being removed from his post in January.

The military launched an internal investigation into Hsieh as early as last year after he started to behave suspiciously, according to MND spokesman Chen Chung-chi ().

It was based on that investigation that the military appointed Hsieh deputy commander of Matsu Defense Command on Jan. 1, Chen said.

Hsieh allegedly traveled several times to third countries such as Thailand and Malaysia to meet with unidentified Chinese contacts.

Hsieh's residence in Pingtung was searched on Tuesday and the case turned over to the Ciaotou District Prosecutors Office in Kaohsiung for further investigation.

He was later released on bail of NT$100,000 (US$3,300) but barred from leaving the country.

Hsieh had served at the Air Defense Missile Command since graduating from the R.O.C. Military Academy in 1987 and is said to know about the nation's major missile systems and their deployment.

During that time, Taiwan deployed indigenous Hsiung Feng III cruise missiles and U.S-supplied PAC-3 missiles. Last year, Taiwan sent a dozen military officers to the U.S. to participate in exercises involving the PAC-3s, according to sources.

(By Chen Chun-hua and Y.F. Low)

ENDITEM/AW

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Taiwan denounces exclusion from WHA meeting: MOFA

ROC Central News Agency

2017/05/12 22:50:16

Taipei, May 12 (CNA) The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) on Friday denounced Taiwan's exclusion from this year's World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting, saying that it goes against the purpose of the World Health Organization (WHO).

Commenting on World Health Organization (WHO) official Tim Armstrong's quotes in a report by The Associated Press that the WHO had not sent an invitation to Taiwan because of an absence of a cross-strait understanding, the foreign ministry issued a statement saying that the government rejects this "unilateral and inaccurate" characterization by the WHO.

"The WHO is obliged to abide by the basic principles of its Constitution, which calls for the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health, regardless of race, religion, political belief, and economic or social condition," the MOFA stated.

Meanwhile, it also expressed its disappointment that "the WHO has failed to abide by its Constitution and ignored widespread support in the international community for Taiwan's participation in the WHA, instead bowing to political pressure from a certain member by excluding Taiwan from the WHA."

Disease knows no boundary, it said, and political conditions should not to be prioritized over the basic right to health.

"This is also the gold standard under which our government strives to improve the well-being of the 23 million people of Taiwan," said the MOFA.

In its closing statement, the MOFA again called for the WHO to recognize the importance of Taiwan's participation in the WHA, adding that there should be no gap in the global disease prevention network.

Beijing is widely believed to have pressured the WHO to not invite Taiwan to attend the meeting later this month.

In the past few years, Taiwan had been invited to attend the annual gathering as an observer, even though it is not a member country of the United Nations. But that was when relations with mainland China were good.

Tensions between the two sides have risen since Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May 2016 ignoring Beijing's condition for building ties -- that she accept the 1992 Consensus under which China defines Taiwan and the mainland as part of one China.

(By Scarlett Chai and Ko Lin)

Enditem/cs

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US committed to Turkey's security, Mattis tells Turkish PM Yildirim

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 3:28PM

US Defense Secretary James Mattis has assured Turkey that Washington is committed to protecting its NATO ally, while Ankara is infuriated by a US plan to arm Kurdish fighters.

Mattis met with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim in London on Thursday in what appeared to be the highest level talks between the two nations since Tuesday, when US President Donald Trump approved a plan to directly arm Syrian Kurds against Daesh terrorists to retake Raqqah.

"Yesterday the president authorized the Department of Defense to equip Kurdish elements of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) as necessary to ensure a clear victory over ISIL in Raqqah, Syria. The SDF partnered with enabling support from US and coalition forces are the only force on the ground to successfully seize Raqqah in the near future," White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer confirmed on Wednesday.

Shortly after, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Washington to immediately overturn its decision to arm Kurdish fighters that Ankara regards as members of a terrorist group.

Erdogan further emphasized that he would mention the issue in upcoming discussions with Trump when the two are scheduled to meet in Washington on May 16 in their first formal encounter as heads of state.

Mattis said that Washington will be cooperating with Turkey to liberate the Daesh-held northeastern Syrian city of Raqqah.

"We'll work out any of the concerns," Mattis said referring to Turkey's concerns.

This is while Yildrim said, "There is still an opportunity for the United States to take Turkey's sensitivities into consideration. Otherwise, the outcome won't only affect Turkey, a negative outcome will also emerge for the United States."

The US currently provides air support for members of the SDF -- a Kurdish-dominated and anti-Damascus alliance. They have largely surrounded Raqqah and are expected to begin an offensive soon.

The SDF is led by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) which Ankara views as a terrorist organization over its alleged links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Ankara views the YPG as the Syrian extension of the PKK militant group, which is labeled a terrorist organization by both Ankara and Washington. The PKK fights for an independent Kurdish region in Turkey.

The Syrian government has censured and protested the US and Turkish support for armed militants in Syria, and has vowed to resist any moves by foreign-sponsored militants to seize territories inside the Arab country.

Different foreign-backed terrorist groups have been wreaking havoc in Syria since 2011.Over the past few months, Syrian forces have made sweeping gains against Takfiri elements who have lately increased their acts of violence across the country following a series of defeats on the ground.

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Turkey regrets Germany's move to accept asylum requests

Iran Press TV

Thu May 11, 2017 2:26PM

Turkey has criticized Germany for granting political asylum to a group of military personnel, whom Ankara accuses of involvement in a failed coup last year.

"The German decision is a step that is not in line with the spirit of alliance and multi-faced relations between our countries," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday, after reports in German media suggested that Berlin had OK'd the asylum petitions of Turkish nationals holding diplomatic passports.

Germany has yet to confirm the move, which media reports suggest could cover more than 400 military personnel, diplomats, judges and other high-ranking Turkish officials and their family members.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry urged Germany to review the decision, saying "accepting asylum requests of some former military personnel" linked with Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric blamed for orchestrating the coup bid, would mean "tolerating and embracing a pro-coup mentality."

Turkey launched a massive crackdown following the July 15 coup attempt. The action has mostly targeted followers of Gulen, an opposition cleric who has denied any involvement in the coup.

Germany and several other Western governments have repeatedly criticized the arrests and dismissals from work of more than 100,000 people, saying Ankara has acted beyond the rule of law.

Turkey defends the crackdown and insists that European governments have failed to properly condemn the coup.

Ankara also accuses Berlin of giving sanctuary to outlawed Kurdish militants and allowing their sympathizers to stage anti-Turkey rallies and demonstrations across Germany.

Relations between Germany and Turkey hit a new low during a Turkish referendum in April, which was meant to boost President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's powers while the two countries have also clashed over the arrest of a Turkish journalist working for a major German daily.

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Erdogan Calls on US to Annul Decision to Arm Kurdish 'Terrorist Organizations'

Sputnik News

01:55 11.05.2017

Turkey expects its allies to support the country and not terrorist groups, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik)  On Tuesday, the United States, Turkey's ally within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), announced the approval of its plan to arm Kurdish militia fighting Daesh terror group (banned in Russia) in Syria despite objections from Turkey.

"Every development in Syria and Iraq is a matter of national security for us. We would like to believe that our allies will prefer to side with us and not with terrorist organizations," Anadolu Agency quoted Erdogan as saying during a joint press conference with Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma.

The Turkish president expressed hope that the United States would suspend its decision to arm the Syrian Kurds before his visit to the country for the talks with US President Donald Trump scheduled for May 16.

Erdogan noted that he would express his concern over the situation during the meeting with Trump, as well as the summit of NATO, which is planned to take place on May 25.

According to the Turkish leader, the fight against Daesh "should not be carried out with the help of another terrorist organization."

Turkey and the United States disagree on the US support of Kurdish militias in Syria as Ankara considers them connected to Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is outlawed as a terrorist organization by Ankara. In 2015, Turkey started a military operation against PKK in the Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkish regions.

 Sputnik

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US Reaffirms Commitment to Protect Turkey

By VOA News May 11, 2017

U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis has reiterated its pledge to protect Turkey, as the country opposes a recent U.S. decision to arm Syrian Kurdish fighters in an attempt to oust Islamic State militants from their stronghold in Raqqa.

Mattis reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to its NATO ally after meeting Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, the highest level talks between the two countries since Washington announced on Tuesday plans to provide arms to the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurds, also known as the YPG.

Turkey is strongly opposed to the arms deal and has called for its reversal. Turkey believes the YPG is a terrorist group, an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) -- which is considered a terrorist group by Turkey, the U.S. and Europe.

On Wednesday, Yildirim publicly criticized the U.S. decision, maintaining the U.S. cannot use one terrorist group to fight another.

Yildirim and Mattis met Thursday before the start of an international conference in London on security and humanitarian issues in Somalia.

An unnamed senior U.S. official said Thursday the U.S. will increase intelligence sharing with Turkey to help the country better target terrorists. U.S. officials hope the move will help allay Turkish concerns the weapons will end up in the hands of its enemies.

The U.S. official also said weapons have not yet been shipped to the Kurds. U.S. Colonel John Dorrian said Wednesday, however, the first shipment of weapons are ready for delivery and could reach the Kurds "very quickly."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has demanded that the U.S. reverse its decision, is scheduled to visit Washington next Tuesday. Erdogan has said he would discuss the issue with U.S. President Donald Trump when they meet.

The Syrian Kurds have been fortifying their positions around Raqqa, as it prepares for what the U.S. military has predicted will be a long battle to recapture the city.

Some material for this story comes from AP, AFP and Reuters.

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Turkey Successfully Test Fires Its First Indigenous KAAN Missile System

Sputnik News

18:08 12.05.2017

Turkey has successfully test fired a rocket using its state-of-the-art KAAN missile system for the first time; the weapons system is produced by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)-affiliated company Roketsan AS. The launch was made over the Black Sea and was watched live by the country's Defense Minister and the Undersecretary for Defense Industries.

"The missile launch was made from the province of Sinop on the Black Sea: the missile covered a distance of 280 km from the rocket launch and was watched live by the Minister of National Defense Fikri Isik and Undersecretary for Defense Industries Ismail Demir," said the reports of the Turkish media.

Developed by Roketsan, the missile has a 610-milimeter caliber and a 280-kilometer range. The system is able to deliver a 470-kilogram warhead to top-priority targets.

It was earlier showcased at the biennial International Defense Industry Fair (IDEF) where many brand-new products, including a record number of items made by Turkish companies, were on display.

According to the Daily Sabah, the KAAN missile "provides excellent fire support to maneuvering units by creating timely, accurate and effective fire and opening intense firing capabilities on high priority targets in all weather and terrain conditions, day and night."

The KAAN missile will be able to shoot targets precisely thanks to its inertial guidance system, which is supported by a Global Positioning System (GPS). It can be stored, transported and launched as an in-pod missile configuration, placed in an insulated pod.

The launching of the missile can be carried out from other platforms with an interface suitable for integration with the ROKETSAN-produced KAAN weapon system.

KAAN creates a deterrent force with its long range and ability to fire intensively. In addition to standard tactical tasks connected with supporting a maneuvering unit, the KAAN weapon system can take on a number of crucial tasks with a wide range of uses ranging from peacekeeping operations to fire attacks.

Thanks to its high-tech navigational and automatic orienting systems, it successfully implements the "shoot-and-scoot" tactic. For this purpose, it includes a navigation system and automatic operating system, which is integrated with the weapons management system.

The weapons system is equipped with the mechanical, electrical and electronic subsystems required for activities such as preparation, planning, commissioning, ballistic calculation and orientation for execution of a shooting mission. The system can be designed in different versions depending on the user's logistics, infrastructure and case-by-case needs, including tools, radio, a power system, a navigational system and more, in different brands and models.

 Sputnik

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Poroshenko: Visa-Free EU Travel Marks Ukraine's 'Divorce From Russian Empire'

RFE/RL May 12, 2017

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says a visa-liberalization deal with the European Union marks his country's "divorce from the Russian Empire."

Poroshenko spoke on May 11, after the deal that will enable Ukrainians to travel to EU Schengen Area countries without a visa cleared a key hurdle in Brussels.

"Today, Ukraine has finalized its divorce from the Russian Empire," he told 1+1 television in an interview, in a remark that was posted on his website on May 12.

"This is precisely how we should view this in philosophical terms," he said. "It is an exit from a more than 300-year history...and today Ukraine is returning home."

European Council and European Parliament representatives are expected to rubber-stamp the long-awaited visa-liberation decision on May 17, and the visa-free regime is expected to enter into force on June 11.

Large portions of present-day Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire beginning in the 17th century, and Ukraine was under Moscow's thumb as a Soviet republic for most of the 20th century. It gained independence in the Soviet collapse of 1991.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv have been severely strained since Russia seized Crimea in March 2014 and fomented unrest in eastern Ukraine, where a war between government forces and Russia-backed separatists has killed more than 9,900 people.

The Ukrainian military said on May 12 that two of its servicemen were killed and six wounded in the previous 24 hours. It said government positions were attacked more than 50 times by the separatists, mostly between 6 p.m. and midnight on May 11.

Also on May 11, U.S. President Donald Trump posted photos of his separate meetings with the top diplomats of Ukraine and Russia on Twitter and urged the two nations to "make peace."

"Yesterday, on the same day -- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin," Trump tweeted under separate photos of himself smiling broadly by each minister in the Oval Office.

"LETS MAKE PEACE!" he wrote.

Trump met with Klimkin after a meeting with Lavrov, who earlier on May 10 met with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at the State Department.

Russia's interference in Ukraine, where Kyiv and NATO say it has supported the separatists with troops, weapons, and other backing, prompted the European Union and the United States to impose sanctions on Moscow.

The State Department said that in their meeting, Tillerson told Lavrov that "sanctions on Russia will remain in place until Moscow reverses the actions that triggered them."

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/poroshenko-ukraine-visa-free- travel-divorce-from-russian-empire/28482268.html

Copyright (c) 2017. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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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

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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

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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
New U.K. Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt has reversed most of an economic package announced by the government just weeks ago, including a planned cut in income taxes. Hunt said Monday he was scrapping almost all the tax cuts announced last month by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Liz Truss, and also signaled that public spending cuts are on the way. It was a bid to soothe turbulent financial markets spooked by fears of excessive government borrowing. The move raises questions about how long the beleaguered prime minister can stay in office, though Truss insisted she has no plans to quit. She vowed to lead the Conservatives into the next general election, but many in the party want her gone.
London, England - Gabriel Resources Ltd. (Gabriel or the Company) announces the publication of its First Quarter Financial Statements and Managements Discussion and Analysis Report for the period ended March 31, 2017.

Summary

The Companys core focus is the progression of its arbitration case against Romania before the World Banks International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) under applicable treaties for the promotion and protection of foreign investment to which Romania is a party (ICSID Arbitration).

The tribunal appointed to hear and determine the ICSID Arbitration (Tribunal) has issued a procedural timetable for the ICSID Arbitration which requires Gabriel to file its memorial on the merits and quantum of its claims (Memorial) no later than June 30, 2017.

Gabriels Romanian subsidiary, RoEia MontanA Gold Corporation S.A. (RMGC), remains subject to investigations by the Romanian National Agency for Fiscal Administration (ANAF) which Gabriel considers are abusive in scope and duration and were initiated by the Romanian authorities solely in retaliation for the filing of the ICSID Arbitration.

One such ANAF investigation relates to a re-run of a previously quashed value added tax (VAT) assessment relating to amounts claimed by RMGC in the period 2011 to 2016. On May 2, 2017 RMGC received a preliminary report indicating an amount of VAT assessed as owing by RMGC of RON 26m ($8.5m)[1], which does not include any penalties or fines. This preliminary report is subject to a review period in Romania and RMGC intends to dispute this claim as without merit and unlawful.

As at March 31, 2017, the Company held $55.1 million of cash and cash equivalents.

The net loss for the first quarter of 2017 was $9.3 million (Q4 2016:$13.2 million).

Jonathan Henry, Gabriels President and Chief Executive Officer, stated:

Gabriel remains fully committed to safeguarding its rights and investments in Romania and will continue to focus its efforts and resources on filing its Memorial by the end of June. The Memorial will present the strong factual and legal arguments supporting Gabriels claims against the Romanian State and the significant quantum of damages sustained as a consequence of Romanias unlawful acts. Meanwhile Romania continues its discriminatory, abusive and retaliatory activities against RMGC. The Company believes any requests from the Romanian fiscal authorities for VAT refunds are completely without merit.

Further information and commentary on the operations and results of the Company in the first quarter of 2017 is given below. The Company has filed its Unaudited Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements and Managements Discussion & Analysis on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and each is available for review on the Companys website at www.gabrielresources.com.

[1] Assumes the May 2, 2017 Bank of Romania exchange rate of RON 3.05 to the $

For information on this press release, please contact:

Jonathan Henry President & Chief Executive Officer Mobile: +44 7798 801783 jh@gabrielresources.com Max Vaughan Chief Financial Officer Mobile: +44 7823 885503 max.vaughan@gabrielresources.com Richard Brown Chief Commercial Officer Mobile: +44 7748 760276 richard.brown@gabrielresources.com

Further Information

Status of the ICSID Arbitration

The ICSID Arbitration seeks compensation for all of the losses and damages suffered by the Company and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Gabriel Resources (Jersey) Ltd. (together Claimants), resulting from the Romanian States violations of its obligations under certain bilateral investment treaties which provide protections against expropriation, unfair and inequitable treatment and discrimination in respect of the Claimants investments in Romania. These losses and damages arise not only due to the enormous wasted costs associated with the Rosia Montana gold and silver project (Project) and related licenses, but also to the loss of value of the Claimants investments as a consequence of Romanias acts and inactions which have substantially deprived the Claimants of the use, benefit and value of their property rights.

The Tribunals most recent decision, Procedural Order No.4 issued on January 10, 2017, sets out the procedural calendar for the ICSID Arbitration process with specific dates for the filing of submissions by the parties and other necessary procedural matters (Procedural Calendar). The Procedural Calendar requires that the Claimants submit their Memorial no later than June 30, 2017, wherein factual and legal arguments supporting their claims against Romania will be detailed. The Memorial will also include details of the claimed quantum of the damages sustained due to Romanias treaty breaches.

A hearing on the merits of the claims before the Tribunal is currently scheduled to occur in Washington D.C. from September 9 to 20, 2019.

A summary of the procedural aspects of the ICSID Arbitration is available on ICSID's website at the address given below. In addition, certain procedural orders and decisions of the Tribunal, together with certain of the principal submissions filed by the parties during the ICSID Arbitration, will be published on the ICSID website at the following location: https://icsid.worldbank.org/en/Pages/cases/casedetail.aspx?CaseNo=ARB/15/31.

RMGC Investigations

As previously announced by the Company, ANAF raised an assessment against RMGC in July 2016 demanding the repayment of VAT deductions claimed by RMGC in the period 2011 to 2016 which, together with interest and penalties, amounted to RON 42.9 million (approximately $13.7m). This was challenged with the authorites by RMGC as, among other matters, it was contrary to the conclusions of eighteen prior ANAF audits relating to similar suppliers, transactions and activities. In late September 2016 the General Directorate for the Settlement of Challenges, a division of ANAF, partially quashed that assessment and directed the VAT inspection to be re-run for the same period but using a new inspection team. On October 12, 2016 ANAF commenced a new VAT inspection.

On May 2, 2017 RMGC received a preliminary report from ANAF including a provisional assessment in respect of VAT deductions claimed by RMGC in the period 2011 to 2016 (the Assessment). The amount of VAT assessed as owing by RMGC is RON 26m ($8.5m), which does not include any penalties or fines that the Company understands could also be levied. This preliminary report is subject to comment from RMGC and a review meeting between RMGC and ANAF before it is finalized.

In parallel with the Assessment, and for over eighteen months to date, a separate directorate of ANAF has continued to pursue an ad hoc investigation of a broad range of operational activities and transactions of RMGC and a number of its consultants and advisors over an extensive period spanning 1997 to 2016 (the ANAF Investigation). ANAF has continually demanded, to short and often unachievable deadlines, that RMGC provide voluminous amounts of information and explanations in respect of, amongst other matters, transactions with its suppliers and financing transactions of RMGC. Although RMGC is co-operating in good faith with the ANAF Investigation, Gabriel believes that there is no justification for the ANAF Investigation, that the breadth and depth of ANAFs demands are intentionally abusive, and that it has been initiated in an attempt to intimidate and harm RMGC and the Claimants in view of the dispute with the Romanian State and the Claimants filing of the ICSID Arbitration. Neither the Company nor RMGC has received any feedback on the status of the ANAF Investigation.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

Liquidity

The Companys average monthly cash usage during Q1 2017 was $1.7 million, including costs in respect of the ICSID Arbitration (Q4 2016 monthly average: $2.1 million, Q3 2016 monthly average: $1.3 million). At the end of Q1 2017, accruals for costs in respect of the ICSID Arbitration amounted to $4.6 million (Q4 2016 $1.9 million).

Capital Resources

Cash and cash equivalents at March 31, 2017 amounted to $55.1 million.

Financial Performance

The net loss for the first quarter of 2017 was $9.3 million, an increase from a loss of $7.4 million in the corresponding period in 2016, primarily due to incremental legal and other advisory costs pursuant to the ICSID Arbitration. In addition, there was a $0.7 million increase period-on-period in the accreted finance on the convertible notes in issue, partially offset by a reduction in payroll costs.

Project Development (including Permitting and Litigation)

In the context of the above disclosures concerning the ICSID Arbitration, the complete lack of positive Romanian Government engagement on the Project and the change in core focus of Gabriel, and the group of companies of which it is parent (Group), readers are advised to refer to the Annual Information Form of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2016 (AIF) published on March 29, 2017, a copy of which is filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, for information relating to the status of the Project, RMGCs exploitation license in Romania, the Groups exploration and development activities in Romania, the Project approval and permitting process, and reported gold and silver resources and reserves. Except as disclosed in the Companys public filings thereafter, there has been no material change in the information therein from the date of publication of the AIF to the date of this press release. The Company has also filed its first quarter 2017 quarterly Managements Discussion & Analysis on SEDAR and it is available for review, together with the AIF, on the Companys website at www.gabrielresources.com

About Gabriel

Gabriel is a Toronto Stock Exchange listed Canadian resource company. The Companys principal focus has been the exploration and development of the RoEia MontanA gold and silver project in Romania. The Project, one of the largest undeveloped gold deposits in Europe, is situated in the South Apuseni Mountains of Transylvania, Romania, an historic and prolific mining district that since pre-Roman times has been mined intermittently for over 2,000 years. The exploitation license (License) for the Project is held by RoEia MontanA Gold Corporation S.A., a Romanian company in which Gabriel owns an 80.69% equity interest, with the 19.31% balance held by Minvest RoEia MontanA S.A., a Romanian state-owned mining company. It is anticipated that the Project would bring over US$24 billion (at US$1,200/oz gold) to Romania as potential direct and indirect contribution to GDP and generate thousands of employment opportunities.

Since the grant of the License in June 1999, the Company has focused substantially all of its management and financial resources on the exploration, feasibility and subsequent development of the Project. Despite the Companys fulfilment of its legal obligations and its development of the Project as a high-quality, sustainable and environmentally-responsible mining project, using best available techniques, Romania has blocked and prevented implementation of the Project without due process and without compensation.Accordingly, the Companys current core focus is the ICSID Arbitration.

For more information please visit the Companys website at www.gabrielresources.com.

Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking information (also referred to as forward-looking statements) within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements are provided for the purpose of providing information about managements current expectations and plans and allowing investors and others to get a better understanding of the Companys operating environment. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements.

In this press release, forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company at this time, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies that may cause the Companys actual financial results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied herein. Some of the material factors or assumptions used to develop forward-looking statements include, without limitation, the uncertainties associated with: the ICSID Arbitration, actions by the Romanian Government, conditions or events impacting the Companys ability to fund its operations or service its debt, exploration, development and operation of mining properties and the overall impact of misjudgments made in good faith in the course of preparing forward-looking information.

Forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors including those set out below, that may never materialize, prove incorrect or materialize other than as currently contemplated which could cause the Companys results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, identified by words or phrases such as expects, is expected, anticipates, believes, plans, projects, estimates, assumes, intends, strategy, goals, objectives, potential, possible or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events, conditions or results may, could, would, should, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of fact and may be forward-looking statements.

Numerous factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, including without limitation:

the duration, required disclosure, costs, process and outcome of the ICSID Arbitration against Romania;

changes in the liquidity and capital resources of Gabriel, and the Group;

access to funding to support the Groups continued ICSID Arbitration and/or operating activities in the future;

equity dilution resulting from the conversion or exercise of existing securities in part or in whole to Common Shares;

the ability of the Company to maintain a continued listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange or any regulated public market for trading securities;

the impact on business strategy and its implementation in Romania of: unforeseen historic acts of corruption, uncertain fiscal investigations; uncertain legal enforcement both for and against the Group and political and social instability;

regulatory, political and economic risks associated with operating in a foreign jurisdiction including changes in laws, governments and legal regimes and interpretation of existing and future fiscal and other legislation ;

volatility of currency exchange rates, metal prices and metal production;

the availability and continued participation in operational or other matters pertaining to the Group of certain key employees and consultants; and

risks normally incident to the exploration, development and operation of mining properties.

This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Companys forward-looking statements.

Investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and investors should not infer that there has been no change in the Companys affairs since the date of this press release that would warrant any modification of any forward-looking statement made in this document, other documents periodically filed with or furnished to the relevant securities regulators or documents presented on the Companys website. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by this notice. The Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements or the foregoing list of assumptions or factors, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, subject to the Companys disclosure obligations under applicable Canadian securities regulations. Investors are urged to read the Companys filings with Canadian securities regulatory agencies including Gabriels Annual Information Form for the year ended December 31, 2016, which can be viewed online at www.sedar.com.


Ministry official charged with bribery

The preliminary investigation of the criminal case investigated in regard to the incident of receiving a bribe by an official of the State Service for Food Safety, RA Ministry of Agriculture, and forgery of a veterinary certificate is over at RA Special Investigation Service (SIS). As a result, it has been ascertained that the chief specialist-inspector of the mentioned Inspection Hakob Hakobyan, being in charge of state control of veterinary sphere in the territory of Ararat marz, using his official position incited the veterinary of Ararat village Armen Manutsyan to draw up and realize a backdated forged veterinary certificate for a bribe, the SIS said on its website. More particularly, it has been ascertained by investigation, that the flock of sheep moved by Ararat village resident Hakob Sargsyan without corresponding veterinary certificate to Vayots Dzor marz on Yerevan-Meghri highway underwent a car collision in consequence of which 59 heads of lambs and sheep were killed. H. Sargsyans brother- Levon Sargsyan, who had arrived at the place of occurrence immediately after the collision, learning that there was no veterinary certificate empowering the moving of the flock of sheep from marz to marz, as well as necessary for insurance compensation connected with the mentioned accident, with the purpose of provision of such applied to the SSFS chief specialist-inspector of RA Ministry of Agriculture Hakob Hakobyan. The latter, agreeing to L. Sarsgyans suggestion of providing a backdated veterinary certificate for a bribe, commissioned the veterinary of Ararat village Armen Manutsyan to draw up the mentioned false certificate  coming to agreement with L. Sargsyan in regard to the bribe. As a result, H. Hakobyan, not realizing his powers undertaken ex officio in the sphere of veterinary medicine, without veterinary checkup and necessary medical-prophylactic examination of the flock of sheep, through A. Manutsyan received a bribe from L. Sargsyan for taking unlawful actions in favour of the latter  providing a forged veterinary certificate. For committion of the above-mentioned criminal actions H. Hakobyan has been indicted pursuant to part 2, article 311 and part 1, article 38-325 of RA Criminal Code, A. Manutsyan  pursuant to parts 1, articles 313 and 325 and L. Sarsgyan- pursuant to parts 1, articles 312 and 325 of RA Criminal Code. The preliminary investigation of the criminal case is over. The case together with the indictment has been passed to the prosecutor carrying out procedural supervision to confirm and send it to the court. Notification: a person that is suspected or accused of an alleged crime, is considered innocent until his/her guilt is proved by a court judgement that has come into legal effect pursuant to the procedure determined by RA Criminal Procedure Code.
Randy Hultgren, a Republican, has since 2011 represented Illinois' 14th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he is a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Hultgren was elected to the DuPage County, Ill., Board and County Forest Preserve Board in 1994, to the Illinois House in 1999 and to the Illinois Senate in 2007. He later became a vice president at Performance Trust Investment Advisors in Chicago. He graduated from Bethel College in 1988 and later attended Chicago-Kent College of Law, graduating in 1993.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who repeatedly has made questionable claims of rampant voter fraud, will co-chair President Donald Trump's new Commission on Election Integrity -- and civil rights groups and top Democrats are outraged.Critics ridiculed the very creation of the commission on Thursday, as well as Kobach's role, saying it's intended to perpetuate the president's false claim that millions voted illegally in November.The 12-member bipartisan commission will review claims of improper registrations and voting, fraudulent registrations and voter suppression, White House officials told McClatchy. Members will provide the president with a report in 2018 and may issue recommendations to the states.Trump on Thursday named Kobach vice chairman of the commission. Vice President Mike Pence will serve as chairman."I'm very excited and honored to have this opportunity to serve the country," said Kobach, who explained that Trump first asked him to serve on the commission in February. He pushed back on the idea that the commission was set up with the specific goal of validating Trump's voter fraud claims."The commission does not begin with foregone conclusions," he said. "All members of the commission are approaching it with an open mind. ... The objective is to go where the facts lead us."Almost immediately after his victory, Trump said that millions of people had voted illegally and deprived him of a popular-vote victory. He also said that there was unspecified voter fraud in three states he lost: California, New Hampshire and Virginia.Critics said the commission's findings will be used to justify unnecessary restrictions on the right to vote."This commission is a fraud. And President Trump has chosen a fraud to be in charge of it," said former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, a Kansas City Democrat who founded Let America Vote, a national organization dedicated to defending voting rights.The real purpose of the commission, Kander said, is to use taxpayer dollars to create the false impression that there is widespread election fraud to make it easier to pass restrictive voting laws at the state level."For over a decade," Kander said, "the Republican Party has made it a central part of their political strategy to push the myth of widespread voter fraud ... when the real problem they're trying to solve is there are certain groups of Americans who are unlikely to vote Republican."Kobach, who is weighing a run for Kansas governor, said his position would be part-time and unpaid aside from travel reimbursement. He said it would not interfere with his duties as Kansas secretary of state.Kobach said the commission would conduct the most expansive study of the issue of voter fraud to date and would have full-time staff from the vice president's office and the Department of Homeland Security."This is really a first-of-its-kind enterprise," Kobach said. "For the first time having a national body gather data from all 50 states. The objective of the commission is to bring those hard facts together on a national level."Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed the commission as a "clear front" meant to restrict access to the ballot box for Americans who are poor, older, African American or Latino."Putting an extremist like Mr. Kobach at the helm of this commission is akin to putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department," Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement.The American Civil Liberties Union called on election administrators, academics and other public servants to refuse to participate in the commission. The panel is nothing but a pretext for disenfranchising Americans, said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project."Skeptical doesn't even begin to describe our view of this," Ho said. "We have a president who has said he won the popular vote when he did not. We have a commission that will be led for all intents and purposes by the king of voter suppression, Kris Kobach. So there's no reason to believe that this commission will be anything other than a sham."Ho said Pence is unlikely to play a very active role on the commission because he has so many other duties, so Kobach will wield significant power. Pence's office did not immediately respond to questions on Thursday.Kobach is the only secretary of state in the nation with prosecutorial power. During his tenure as Kansas' top election official, he has championed some of the strictest voting laws in the country, including the state's controversial proof of citizenship law. That law requires voters to provide a birth certificate or passport to register.Kobach expanded and continues to oversee the Interstate Crosscheck Program, which is used by 32 states to identify duplicate voters. Critics of the program say it has resulted in false positives. Kobach said that Crosscheck would release data on the 2016 election in the near future that will be relevant to Trump's claims of illegal votes.Kobach has successfully prosecuted nine cases of voter fraud in Kansas since he took office six years ago, most recently the conviction of a man for voting in both Kansas and Texas. Preston Glen Christensen pleaded guilty and paid a $1,000 fine and court costs.While other secretaries of state, as well as government and academic studies, say occurrences of voter fraud are rare, Kellyanne Conway and other top Trump advisers cited Kobach as the source of the president's unsupported claim that millions of illegal votes tipped the popular vote in Democrat Hillary Clinton's favor.Kobach has provided no hard evidence, however. The author of one study he cited, the Cooperative Congressional Elections Study, has said it actually shows a rate of noncitizen voting of about zero.Mark Kahrs, Kansas' Republican National Committeeman, said Kobach is an "inspired pick" for the commission, calling him a "leading voice on voter election fraud." Kahrs worked closely with Kobach on voting issues as a member of the Kansas Legislature."I think he's got strong opinions and positions, so I think it's more than likely that he'll go in with ideas about what needs to be done to reform our election law," Kahrs said.Judges who have ruled against Kobach in voting rights cases have accused him of engaging in "word play meant to present a materially inaccurate picture of the documents" and dismissed his assertions about voter fraud because they were backed by "scant evidence" or based on "pure speculation."After the election, Kobach appeared to be a contender to lead the Department of Homeland Security. He was photographed taking a plan for the agency into a Nov. 20 meeting with Trump.That plan contained a reference to voter rolls and is now part of a legal battle between Kobach and the ACLU, which is seeking its disclosure as part of an ongoing voting rights lawsuit against Kobach's office. The ACLU argued that if Kobach lobbied Trump on changes to the National Voter Registration Act, then the documents may contain material relevant to the case.A U.S. federal magistrate judge in April ordered Kobach to turn over the plan. On Wednesday, a U.S. federal district court judge upheld the order and gave Kobach until Friday to produce the documents. Kobach said Thursday that he has still not decided whether to appeal the ruling to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. He said the documents "aren't nearly as exciting as all of the briefing on them suggests."
The FBI raided a Republican campaign consultant's Annapolis office Thursday, causing Maryland Republican lawmakers to say they will stop doing business with the firm.Kelley Rogers, president of Strategic Campaign Group, said half a dozen FBI agents arrived at his Main Street office about 8:30 a.m. with a warrant to search and seize records. The FBI confirmed it conducted a raid in Annapolis but would not say where. An individual carrying a backpack marked FBI was seen leaving the firm's office.Rogers, whose firm has previously worked with campaign committees for Maryland House of Delegates and Senate candidates, said the FBI investigation concerns work the firm performed during the 2013 Virginia gubernatorial campaign of former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican. Rogers insisted the investigation did not involve Maryland politics and that the firm had done nothing wrong.He said that if any clients want to be released from their contracts, he will free them.Maryland Republicans quickly took him up on that offer. Senate Minority Leader J.B. Jennings, of Baltimore County, and House Minority Leader Nic Kipke, of Anne Arundel County, confirmed that campaign committees for GOP senators and delegates had hired the firm to raise money and do other work before the 2017 session. Both said their committees would not use the firm again until its legal issues were resolved."I'm shocked by what has come to light today and we will not be working with them on any new projects until the legal process is completed and they are cleared," Kipke said just hours after the raid.Jennings said the company did satisfactory work last year but added that GOP senators haven't been in touch with the firm since the session ended last month."I think should we hire a company, we would look elsewhere," he said.According to Rogers, his firm settled a civil suit brought by the Cuccinelli campaign after he lost the 2013 Virginia governor's race to Democrat Terry McAuliffe. Rogers said the investigation appears to stem from allegations brought in that suit.The Cuccinelli suit alleged that Strategic Campaign Group and the associated Conservative Strike Force Political Action Committee _ an independent group not affiliated with the candidate _ raised about $2.2 million by assuring donors it would spend the money to help elect the GOP candidate. The suit alleged that the PAC and Strategic Campaign Group failed to follow through on promises of an extensive media campaign on Cuccinelli's behalf.Rogers said his firm settled the dispute for what he recalls as $75,000. Press accounts put the amount at $85,000. Rogers insisted Thursday that the Cuccinelli campaign claims have no merit.The GOP strategist and firm vice president Chip O'Neil spoke to reporters while FBI agents were still working in the office Thursday. Both spoke without lawyers present.Rogers praised the professionalism of the agents and predicted the investigation would clear his name and that of the firm."The truth shall set you free," he said.Rogers said agents arrived without notice and presented a search warrant. He said they took records and downloaded other information from the firm's computers.FBI spokeswoman Lindsay Ram said the investigation is being conducted through the bureau's Washington field office, which has jurisdiction in the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia. She said agents from the office sometimes cross over into other jurisdictions when the entity they are investigating has offices in multiple locations. She declined to provide more details.
For people living in cities, the constant sight of red lights and sound of sirens can be taxing. Their omnipresence can be particularly frustrating given that around 80 percent of calls to 911 aren't actual emergencies.To cut back on these expensive and often unnecessary trips to the hospital, cities are revamping their emergency services programs. Houston, a sprawling metropolis made up of more than 2 million people, is leading the charge.In 2014, the city launched a telemedicine service that has reduced 80 percent of the number of unnecessary emergency visits. The program is called ETHAN, which stands for Emergency TeleHealth and Navigation. It works like this: When paramedics arrive at the scene of an emergency and realize a patient doesn't need to be rushed to a hospital, they use a tablet to video chat with a specialist. For instance, a patient can chat with a nurse to get a prescription refilled or get an appointment scheduled on the spot with their primary care doctor for joint pain.Michael Gonzalez, ETHANs program director, says the program is approaching its 10,000th patient encounter and has prevented 6,000 unnecessary ER transports. The average teleconference visit clocks in at about seven minutes, and the cost of treating a patient virtually is around $220 -- substantially less than the $2,200 it costs to transport someone to the ER.As a result, Houston's use of telemedicine in emergency services is catching on. Gonzalez says he's had about 300 teleconferences with health agencies from around the world since ETHAN launched. A handful of American cities are also about to launch their own EMS telemedicine programs similar to Houston's.Its very clear to us that telemedicine has a place in EMS," says Vince Robbins, president of the National EMS Management Association. "It depends on the agency, and how effective it would be for them, but its a good technology and can have good value.This is Houston's third effort in a decade trying to modernize emergency services. In the first iteration in the early 2000s, the city went with a hotline, where chronic 911 users could call and chat with a nurse. The problem, however, was getting someone who normally calls 911 to dial a whole new number.It was like fitting a square peg in a round hole, says Gonzalez.Houston then created a computer-based algorithm to triage patients. Once paramedics arrived at a scene and again realized it wasn't an emergency, they would connect a patient with a paramedic at headquarters. But it turned into a headache for paramedics: It was time-consuming and often required immediate transport to a hospital anyway.While Houstons latest approach to redirecting people away from the ER is novel, Robbins says there are other ways to use telemedicine that can make emergency care better for everyone.A couple of localities -- including Minneapolis and Berks County, Pa. -- use telemedicine to treat stroke victims en route to the hospital. These programs can shave 20 minutes off of a patients treatment time once at a hospital, which is important because in a stroke, time is of the essence," says Robbins. "If you can intervene early enough, you can even reverse the symptoms.The goal behind these efforts is not only to reduce the number of "frequent fliers" -- those who repeatedly show up at the ER -- but also to reduce the overall number of red lights and sirens that residents have to deal with on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.Theres a public expectation when you call 911 that you want an immediate response, so we as an industry need to re-educate the public," says Robbins. "We need to let people know that there is strong medical literature that shows there are some instances where your condition is not going to get any worse, and we have time to better help you.
Three years ago, the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., triggered widespread civil unrest that eventually spurred a movement against discrimination in policing and mass incarceration. Federal investigators at the time discovered deep-seated practices of racial bias in the citys police force, which ticketed, arrested, stopped and searched black citizens at staggeringly disproportionate rates to their white counterparts.But there was a less expected finding, too: Investigators revealed that municipal courts in Ferguson were using public safety and court fines as a revenue source for the city, disproportionately affecting low-income people of color.In other words, the city, its police force and its court system were issuing tickets to black people for all manner of offenses (broken taillights, rolling through a stop sign, even loitering), and then using the funds from those fines to prop up the city budget. The federal report called it conduct that routinely violates the Constitution and federal law.And the problem wasnt isolated to Ferguson: The whole St. Louis area was engaging in similar Since then, Missouri has passed broad reforms capping court revenues, limiting fines for traffic and city ordinance violations and banning jail time for failure to pay. Yet even after these changes, the system is still riddled with problems.In April, the Missouri state auditor released a damning report on Fergusons municipal court system, charging it with incompetence, disorganization and the collection of at least $26,000 in illegal fees. In general, navigating the court system in St. Louis County is still a daunting challenge.But a new website seeks to change that.Last week, the Civic Tech and Data Collaborative of St. Louis , a group of public interest initiatives, tech partners and local community organizations, launched YourStLCourts , where users can punch in their ticket number, drivers license number or look up the general area where they got pulled over, and find information about the violations theyre being charged with, along with their court dates, potential fine amounts and any outstanding warrants. Users can also sign up through the site for text message alerts to remind them of their court dates.Such an innovation was urgently necessary in St. Louis County because of the opaque nature of the previous system, says John Cruz of RISE, a local community partner with CivTech St. Louis who's helping roll out the tool. There are nearly 90 municipalities in the county, all with different court systems, so its not always clear which jurisdiction your ticket is in and where you should go to court, he adds. Sometimes, people dont have the bandwidth to figure it all out on their own.Weve talked to a lot of people with kids and two jobs and they just forget about [their court dates], Cruz says. And then they get in a car accident or are the victims of a crime, and the police show up and have to arrest them [for an outstanding warrant].So far, the implementation of the tool has been successful. The prototype was developed at the 2015 Global Hack competition, and in 2016 the county and the University of Missouri St. Louis received a MacArthur Foundation grant to help bring the project online. CivTech St. Louis and its partners are now trying to promote awareness of the tool, running a radio campaign and distributing promotional materials in county libraries.But there are some logistical barriers left to overcome.Right now, the tool only works for the county court system. Municipalities, which have their own systems, have not yet been included. The logistics of connecting so many different jurisdictions -- and so many different software vendors -- and culling all the relevant data into one user-friendly site is a tall order. But Cruz says he's confident it will begin happening soon.In the meantime, CivTech St. Louis will be measuring the success of the current site by tracking the number of people who use it and whether that results in a reduction in failure-to-appear charges and, over time, a reduction in the countys overall incarceration rate.Phone and text reminders, online tools -- these are helpful things to have, says Nusrat Choudhury, a staff attorney at the ACLUs racial justice program who works on cases involving municipal courts and debtors' prisons. Courts need to be more accessible to people because the reality is that most people want to comply.However, Choudhury says, states and localities should be careful not to rely solely on increased transparency to fix the problem.These kinds of tools dont solve two critical issues: These courts are generating money for the city, and sometimes the state as well, and as long as theyre relied upon to do that, we wont see justice in the courtroom. The second thing is [these tools] do not address what judges are doing in the courtroom.For that, Choudhury suggests going the way of localities like Biloxi, Miss., which created a public defenders office specifically to help people caught up in the churn of the court system. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court created bench cards instructing all state judges how to assess peoples ability to pay and how to use incarceration as a last resort, not as a first reaction. Steps like these, says Choudhury, can have a dramatic effect on eliminating debtors prisons.At the end of the day, YourSTLCourts itself doesnt address these systemic issues. Nonetheless, it's a valuable tool, says Steven Bosacker of Living Cities, another CivTech partner (and a partner withon the City Accelerator project).No one is going to tell you this is going to solve all the problems in our criminal justice system, he says. But if it makes what feels like a hostile system or a foreign system understandable [to people], then thats a big step.
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GIS - 12 May 2017: The imperative for Mauritius to switch to sustainable production and consumption patterns (SPC) to address challenges posed by climate change was stressed by the Acting Minister of Social Security, National Solidarity, Environment and Sustainable Development, Mrs Fazila Jeewa-Daureeawoo, at the launching of the SWITCH Africa Green National networking forum yesterday in Ebene.

The National networking forum is being held from 10 to 12 May under the Networking Facility component of the SWITCH Africa Green (SAG) project. The programme is designed, developed and funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by the United Nations Environmental Programme in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Office for Project Services.

The SAG project is a pilot initiative which aims at fostering green economy transformation in six African countries namely Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda through support and assistance to a number of projects and initiatives under the national development plan and national indicative programmes. The project which kick-started January 2014 is in its third year of implementation in Mauritius.

Speaking on the threats and impacts associated with climate change that are already affecting the country, Minister Jeewa-Daureeawoo pointed out that Governments expenditure to deal with climate change has risen to 8% of the Gross Domestic Product. The effects of climate change are visible along the coast line and we are increasingly exposed to extreme weather events, which in turn have ripple effects on key economic sectors like tourism, agriculture, fisheries and fresh water, among others, she said.

With regard to the bold measures taken for the transition towards a green economy, including a ban on plastic bags, the Minister recalled that in October 2016, Government had endorsed the Country Implementation Plan formulated under the SAG Programme. The Plan provides strategic direction and business opportunities to further enhance the greening of the economy. She called for more synergies among various actions plans with regards to climate change adaptation and mitigation, green economy and SCP, for better efficiency and scaling up of existing activities.

The UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative, Mr Simon Springett, who was present at the event, acknowledged the proactive support and commitment of the Government of Mauritius to make the transition to an inclusive green economy. He recalled that the United Nations has been assisting the mainstreaming of sustainability and the sustainable development goals within the Government vision 2030 and the Marshall Plan against Poverty.

For her part, the Ambassador of the EU, Ms. Marjaana Sall, expressed her satisfaction that projects under the SAG programme are being implemented by several actors ranging from research institutions, government bodies, local authorities to non-governmental organisations and the private sector. In light of the success and the interest shown to the SAG project, the EU has decided to allocate additional funds for a second phase. In that context, a call for proposal, open to the current beneficiary countries, was launched in February 2017, and the evaluation process is still ongoing. The Ambassador anticipated that many innovative projects from Mauritius and Rodrigues would be retained in that second phase.

SWITCH Africa Green National networking forum

The main objective of the three-day SAG national networking forum is to discuss the opportunities, challenges and barriers faced by the private sector in scaling up and replicating green business, transition to an inclusive green economy and promotion of SCP practices and patterns in Africa.

The forum also fosters networking between different project entities with other stakeholders involved in green business development and SCP activities. An exhibition from participating enterprises is being concurrently in the margins of the forum.

Government Information Service, Prime Ministers Office, Level 6, New Government Centre, Port Louis, Mauritius. Email: gis@govmu.org Website:http://gis.govmu.org
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GIS  12 May 2017: The State depends on the level and quality of education dispensed to its youth and Government is working to creating conducive conditions whereby the youth are provided with values promoting their personal growth, enhancing their critical thinking and encouraging them to innovate and adapt themselves in an inclusively globalised environment.

This statement was made yesterday by the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, at the annual prize giving ceremony of the Royal College Port Louis.

The Minister highlighted the need for the youth to fully develop their potentials and talents and to become responsible citizens imbued with right values. According to her, an inclusive approach should be adopted to ensure that all children are taken on board and youngsters of the country should be at par with the young people in any part of the world.

Speaking about the educational reforms which is in line with Government Vision 2030, the Minister underlined that the Nine-Year schooling and post secondary educational training aim at providing an inclusive and equitable quality education for the youth. She also pointed out that her Ministry is working on a new strategy for physically impaired children with special educational needs.

Furthermore, Minister Dookun-Luchoomun lauded the concerted efforts of the students in their academic performances as well as their talents and encouraged them to continue in this success path. On this occasion, the Minister also launched the newsletter of the college which showcases the school life and the extracurricular activities of the students.

The prize giving ceremony is organised annually at the college to acknowledge the achievements of the students and reward them in academic and non-academic subjects.
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GIS -12 May 2017: Mauritian investors and entrepreneurs are being encouraged to participate in Expo 2020 Dubai, a platform aimed at showcasing and exploring new ideas in the business sphere while at the same connecting people from across the world.

This intent was evoked by the outgoing Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to the Republic of Mauritius with residence in Islamabad, Mr Essa Abdulla Al-Basha Al Noaimi, during a farewell call on the Prime Minister, Mr Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, yesterday afternoon at the New Treasury Building in Port Louis.

In a statement, Mr Essa Abdulla Al-Basha Al Noaimi spoke about deepening both bilateral and economic relations between the UAE and Mauritius while highlighting the large investment flows from UAE to Mauritius. He recalled the agreements signed between the two countries to enhance trade and investment and expressed interest to expand the air links connecting both countries so as to boost tourist arrival from UAE to Mauritius and vice versa.
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GIS - 12 May, 2017: The second Mauritian collection of Ducere African Childrens Stories, that form part of the African Childrens Stories Project, was launched yesterday at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute, Moka. The ceremony was held in presence of the Minister of Education and Human Resources, Tertiary Education and Scientific Research, Mrs Leela Devi Dookun-Luchoomun, Ms Susan Coles, Australian High Commissioner and other eminent personalities.

On that occasion, Minister Dookun-Luchoomun congratulated the young writers for their prolific creative skills as showcased in their stories and illustrations. She emphasised on the need of having such platform for the promotion of a reading culture and the development of writing skills among youngsters.

The holistic development of young learners is central to the education reform currently being implemented, emphasised Minister Dookun-Luchoomun , as students should be equipped to live and adapt to the constantly changing world. She pointed out that i t is essential to p rovide a conducive environment for learners so as to unleash and tap out talents from them. The young participants will benefit in joining the creative thinking bandwagon and that in turn will enable their grooming and acquisition of key skills, she added.

Reflecting on todays technology-driven generation, she underlined the importance of creative writing as a means to help children for language learning , to unleash their creative potential and improve communicative skills as well as to find meaning in their life and time for self-reflection.

The African Childrens Stories Project

The second collection of the African Childrens Stories Project consists of eleven stories of different genres, ranging from stories with a moral tinge, fantasy to fiction. The stories will be published and distributed in various African countries. Some 17 African countries are taking part in the project.

The principal aim of the project for the African Continent relates to the preservation and sharing of African literary heritage and oral traditions and to ensure the provision of culturally appropriate reading materials to African children.
About five or six years ago, the state of Washington went through a significant procurement reform process to where now, Washington Technology Solutions (WaTech) is now exempt from procurement regulations that the rest of the state has to follow, according to CIO Michael Cockrill.At the NASCIO Midyear conference held last month in Arlington, Va., Cockrill toldthat it's neither the law nor the procurement regulations that need to change, "It's actually our culture that needs to be overcome."The state Legislature, he said, intentionally created WaTech so that it could act like a private-sector company. "We could just find the stuff that we want and buy it and make it as quick as possible," Cockrill said. "We had to write our own policy and have that policy be bought off on, but we don't have a procurement law. We're exempt from it."Cockrill notes, however, that procurement law is there for a reason  and it's a good reason."The public sector spends the people's money almost to the tune of a third of the U.S. economy. It's an enormous amount of money," he said. "And if the government doesn't create a level playing field for people to buy, who ever will? So while we want to act like a private company, we also have to honor that procurement. The background  the rationale  is to make sure that everybody gets an opportunity to do work on the people's dime."And those two things end up being in conflict, he said, largely because of the culture more than the law.So Washington has been looking at the way it has structured its own procurement regulations and policy, and then selectively restructuring it to address some of the biggest problems."A concrete example is it takes way too long to get a tail circuit [a point-to-multi-point circuit] into a storefront for the Department of Licensing in Spokane," Cockrill said. "It could take up to a year for us to get that done because of the way our contracts are structured."But the legislative intent was for WaTech to streamline such things, so he said the department is now restructuring both its contracts and procurement regulations with the goal of getting needs met within a week."And then we'll go back and go through a longer more even process so that we get both the business need of the agency met and the larger goal of having a level playing field," Cockrill added, "and making sure everybody gets an opportunity to get a contract with the people's money."
(TNS) -- Internet access can be hard to come by at the farms and houses that dot rural Spotsylvania County, Va., near Lake Anna and Mineral.But that is changing, thanks to a new partnership between the county and the Central Rappahannock Regional Library. Its resulted in a weekly pop-up library equipped with WiFi at the Belmont Community Center. Library patrons, and even those without a library card, can stop by from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays to use one of its 15 Chromebooks and a wireless printer, as well as other library services.Its an area that doesnt have a lot of broadband network service, so were really excited to bring these kinds of services outside of our branches and down here in the southern part of Spotsylvania, said Chris Glover, the librarys assistant director for information technology. Its just a great partnership that is really providing a service for this end of the county that they havent been able to have before.Glover and Jane Reeve, Spotsylvanias director of information services, serve on the countys Cable Commission and came up with the idea while talking after one of its meetings. Efforts to have the CRRL partner with some of the countys schools to provide access hadnt panned out, and they realized they could use the Belmont and Berkeley community centers instead.Both are near Spotsylvania fire stations, which are connected to the countys internal network equipment. They figured it would be fairly simple to provide those buildings with Crossroads Connection, the countys public wireless access.We were just brainstorming and the light bulb went off, Glover said. Youve got fiber. Weve got computers.The CRRL then approached the Belmont Ruritan Club and the Belmont Club of Women, which own the community center, to see if members were interested.The library said, We have a deal for you that would be a new role and visibility for the building,  said Gary Jackson, the Ruritan Clubs IT committee chairman. We told them, Were all in. The library had been offering limited services at the community center so patrons could check out and return books, audiobooks and videos from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. every other Monday. It began offering the expanded services on April 10, but only began publicizing it recently. Few people have taken advantage of its broadband connection so far. Use is expected to pick up once word spreads.Were anticipating that the kids, particularly, will take advantage of it, Jackson said. Theyve got to do homework. Theyve got to do research.Willie Biscoe, who served on the Spotsylvania County School Board for 16 years in the 1970s and 1980s, stopped by the community center Monday with her granddaughter-in-law and three young great-grandsons, mainly so they could get books.I think thats good, she said of equipping the building with broadband. Im sure there are children who do not have access.WiFi will be available at the Belmont Community Center 24/7, so people can tap into it even when the library isnt there or the building is closed.Weve done a survey of the parking lot to see how far coverage goes, said Jackson. We figure people will pull up and use it.Reeve said the Cable Commission has been looking at ways to provide broadband access to the countys rural areas for some time. The main option people living there have had until now is satellite internet service or a cellular Wi-Fi hotspot, or to go to a public facility like the library.That can get expensive for home use, she said of using a hotspot. If youre not careful, you can rack up a pretty hefty bill.Spotsylvania and the CRRL see the pop-up library at the Belmont Community Center as a pilot project. Theyre considering teaming up to provide similar services at the Berkeley Community Center, which is just down Partlow Road from Spotsylvania Fire Station 3.Our hope and dream is to continue to partner with Spotsylvania to expand service to additional locations, said Martha Hutzel, CRRL director. Wed love to be at Belmont twice a week. We could do family night movies on Fridays since we have license agreements. We could do popup libraries at farmers markets, festivals or whatever.  The possibilities are endless.
(TNS) - New York state officials and lawmakers are working to get more help to areas along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River affected by severe flooding.Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that the state Department of Financial Services is setting up mobile command centers to provide assistance to residents in affected areas, and he has requested assistance from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.The USACE later said it would activate four-person field teams, consisting of hydraulic and hydrology engineers, geotechnical engineers, coastal engineers, and operation and technical service personnel, that can be deployed to flood zones.Water levels are continuing to rise, threatening homes and businesses in the Lake Ontario region, Gov. Cuomo said. By deploying these mobile command centers to help residents with insurance claims, we continue to take aggressive action to protect the people who live and work in the affected communities.Thus far, more than 771,000 sandbags have been delivered to shoreline communities, including 70,000 for Jefferson County alone. Also deployed to Jefferson County was a crew of inmates from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to help fill sandbags.In St. Lawrence County, 10,000 sandbags have been delivered, and 60,000 have been delivered to Oswego County.Gov. Cuomo declared a state of emergency in Cayuga, Jefferson, Monroe, Niagara, Orleans, Oswego, St. Lawrence and Wayne counties last week for repair and reconstruction efforts. The governor also sent a Lake Ontario Rapid Response Team to the area comprised of members from the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services, State Police and Office of General Services.State Sen. Patricia A. Ritchie, R-Heuvelton, has also cosponsored legislation to expedite state assistance.The bill would accelerate the availability of emergency funding under the Clean Water Infrastructure Act of 2017, slashing the 120-day wait period for funding availability.As it stands, municipalities in need of funding will have to wait until Aug. 18.It is critical that we move as quickly as possible to provide the increased resources communities need to respond to damage caused by rising waters as well as protect public health and safety, Sen. Ritchie said.The bill passed the Senate unanimously and will go to the Assembly next.Residents who are affected by flooding and in need of assistance are encouraged to contact the states Flood Assistance Hotline at 866-244-3839.2017 Watertown Daily Times (Watertown, N.Y.)Visit Watertown Daily Times (Watertown, N.Y.) at www.watertowndailytimes.comDistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Lack of resources, passive attitude of national authorities key obstacles for the protection of minority languages in Armenia

Armenia and its inhabitants have a respectful attitude to cultures and languages; its legislation and regulations comply with the countrys obligations in promoting the use of regional and minority languages in public life. However, more needs to be done to raise awareness of the countrys minority languages and cultures, to address the problem of the lack of funds, and to change the attitude of the authorities to protecting the languages. These are the key findings of the new report that looks at how Armenia implements its undertakings under the European Charter for Regional and Minority languages. The report covers the period up to the end of May 2016, and places special attention on the measures taken to promote the five languages that Armenia recognized as minority ones and protects under the Charter: Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish, Russian and Yezidi. On the positive side, a number of measures were introduced to promote these languages; and progress has been noted in the publication of school textbooks. The situation of Russian does not give rise to any concerns: this is the only minority language in which bilingual education is provided at various educational levels. In contrast, the situation of Greek does not comply with the obligations Armenia took upon itself. There is a danger that Pontic Greek will disappear as a minority language in Armenia. Resolute action by the public authorities is essential to support the Greek language. There are certain shortcomings in the promotion of Assyrian, Kurdish and Yezidi languages. These three minority languages have only a marginal presence in the public and private media, despite favorable legal provisions. There is a lack of well-trained teachers. The shortcomings are primarily due to the lack of funds which particularly affects teaching and the media. Support given to minority languages in Armenia, the report says, is often limited to folklore festivals or the provision of premises for various events initiated by the minorities themselves. The Council of Europe experts note a tendency on the part of the Armenian authorities to assign responsibility for implementation of the Charter to the local authorities and the national minority communities, and use this as justification for the lack of proactive measures. The passive attitude of the authorities gives the impression that the protection of the minority languages is the responsibility of the minorities themselves. However, the Charter places obligations on the authorities, and not the minorities, to promote and protect minority languages, the experts stress. Armenia has joined the Charter for Regional and Minority Languages in May 2002.
(TNS) -- ABOARD A NASA C-130 OVER WESTERN VIRGINIA -- Mike Obland sat facing backward in the belly of this converted cargo plane as it dropped bouncily through the clouds of an approaching squall line. One of the screens at his computer workstation showed live video of the ground below near Harrisonburg  creeks, farms, forests and ponds flashing by faster and faster as the aircraft descended.Were trying to get down into the boundary layer, the lowest part of the atmosphere, Obland said after the biggest bump yet shook everybody aboard. Thats where most of the action is happening, the gases we measure.In this phase of his work, atmospheric research, turbulence goes with the territory. You count on it, if not hope for it.It means theres a good chance youre where you need to be.Obland, who works out of NASAs Langley Research Center in Hampton, is the project manager for an airborne experiment called Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America  ACT-America, for short.Begun last year, its a five-year, $30 million study of two key greenhouse gases  carbon dioxide and methane  and the brainchild of Ed Browell, a longtime Langley pioneer in using lasers for atmospheric research.Thirty years ago this summer, Browell led a laser-equipped team out of Langley that flew from Chile on more than a dozen 11-hour flights over Antarctica. Their mission: to help track a worrisome and growing hole in the ozone layer. It was part of an international scientific response to an emergency in that section of the stratosphere, more than seven miles up, that shields Earth from most of the suns ultraviolet radiation.Before 1987 was over, a global treaty had established a protocol for phasing out a class of manmade chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. Three decades later, the ozone layer is still growing healthier as a result.The steady buildup of gases, like CO2, that are throwing a heat-trapping blanket around the globe, has proven harder to explain  and address. Though the vast majority of climate researchers believe the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities are major factors in global warming, they say not nearly enough is known about various sources of greenhouse gases. The same goes for what are known as sinks  the forests and other environments where more carbons are absorbed than generated.Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has threatened to yank the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a United Nations accord for cutting carbon emissions that has been signed by nearly 200 countries. Trump has called global warming a hoax perpetrated by China.Browell, who retired from NASA in 2007 and now works as a consultant to the agency, declined to wade into climate politics. But he said programs like ACT-America are vital because they collect the data necessary for sound decisions.We need to be continuing to investigate and refine and better understand whats happening in the atmosphere, he said, because if we dont, were just rolling the dice.Obland said the ACT-America researchers' goal can be summed up in two words: "air truth."The experiment focuses largely on the eastern half of the United States, and takes in some parts of Texas and the Midwest as well. Before its over, researchers from NASA-Langley and partners including Penn State and Colorado State universities will have flown in all seasons and through a wide range of weather conditions.Oftentimes theyre aboard two planes traveling at different altitudes simultaneously. One of them typically barrels through the boundary layer, as close as 1,000 feet above ground, where variations in carbon concentrations are the most pronounced.The program is believed to be the most comprehensive regional study of greenhouse gases ever.One of the main focuses is monitoring how weather systems affect the movement of CO2 and methane. Continuously measuring as they fly lines that sometimes stretches hundreds of miles, the scientists are assembling a huge geographic database of the gases concentrations. All of this should help climate scientists refine their estimates for how much of the gases are absorbed or generated, everywhere from cornfields to abandoned coal mines. And over time, Browell said, it should also improve the accuracy of large-scale climate change models, including those that look well into the future.Sometimes, the researchers fly under a satellite that tracks CO2 with instruments that use sunlight reflected from Earth. They're hoping to better calibrate the orbiting lab's measuring equipment.Browell envisions ACT-America as a bridge toward a time in which greenhouse gas-tracking lasers pointing down from space are routine. They'll be key to a continuous, detailed, comprehensive picture of the gases, he said.Aboard the C-130 and its companion plane, a B-200, the researchers use a variety of measuring tools, but lasers are the prime focus.Several of them were put to use on this flight on a March morning out of NASAs Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore.Obland was in charge of monitoring a system, crafted for potential space use, that employs technology known as differential absorption lidar. On the C-130, it involves shooting two continuous laser beams toward the ground. One is tuned to an on wavelength that allows it to be absorbed by a target, like CO2. The other is tuned off from the gas. The difference in the signals that bounce back is run through a computer, and out comes a continuously updating calculation of how many parts per million of the gas, on average, are in the column of traveling laser light.On this day, CO2 was measuring between 406 and 412 parts per million, methane between 1.85 and 1.9 parts per million.Up in the C-130s cockpit, Ken Davis kept an eagle eye out for any differences. The Penn State atmospheric and climate science professor is the principal investigator for ACT-America. Davis said he and Browell first talked around 2010 about the possibility of such a program. Theyre hoping that it will be followed by a similar experiment in the tropics overseas, perhaps in South America.Davis said every ACT-America flight adds to a more complete picture of carbon fluxes  the exchange of greenhouse gases between Earths surface and the atmosphere.Roughly a quarter of fossil fuel emissions are removed from the atmosphere, he said, by natural processes like plants' photosynthesis. But will shifts in weather patterns due to climate change alter that trend? The researchers' flights through different kinds of weather could help answer that question.Davis said one of the biggest benefits of the program will be the detailed information collected on methane, considered 25 times more potent a warming gas than CO2. The researchers are trying to learn more about its sources, from old coal mines to brand-new gas-fracking operations.But this days flight out of Wallops wasnt going nearly as first planned.A cold front was coming out of the northwest, and some warmer air from the southwest was ahead of it. Ideally, Davis said, the plane would pick its way through and measure the change in transport in greenhouse gases on both sides of the systems. All the way to Michigan.Unfortunately, there was that squall line at the forward edge of the warmer air. It ran for hundreds of miles north to south, with no calm lanes to slip through. The normally turbulence-tolerant crew agreed all around that crossing this one wasnt worth the risk.So theyd fly west until they ran up against it, then head back east and out over the Atlantic before turning back to Wallops.The B-200, after taking off from Langley Air Force Base, would do pretty much the same  but lower, where the going would be really rough, down around 1,000 feet much of the way.For Davis and his team, what had started out as a planned five-hour flight ended after three hours and six minutes.The most interesting part of the C-130s trip was around the squall line, Davis said, as CO2 was measured at concentrations at 19,000 feet that were at roughly the same levels as in the boundary layer. Normally, concentrations are lower up there.Which could mean that thunderstorm line was sucking the air up and dumping it out in the upper atmosphere, he said.Afterward, the scientists and flight crew gathered in a conference room adjacent to the Wallops hangar bay. It was worth the short time in the air, Davis said.But a bummer we couldnt get across that sucker, he said. It would have been fun: the data. Not the flying. The data.
(TNS) -- Battalion Chief Jeff Kleven stood onshore peering through the predawn darkness. He couldnt see if anyone was inside a car partially submerged in the middle of Alameda Creek, Calif.s storm-swollen waters.Instead of sending a rescue team into the debris-filled current, Kleven deployed the Fremont Fire Departments newest life-saving tool  a drone equipped with a night-sight camera.Kleven flew the drone about 40 yards, close enough to look inside the window and see there was no one in there, he said. We came to find out the driver was able to get out, swim to shore and hike up the road. A passing car picked him up and took him to a store.That late- January rescue mission off Niles Canyon Road exemplifies a nationwide trend: Public safety agencies are increasingly using drones to detect hot spots in fires, catalog crime scenes and capture armed suspects. A report last month by the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College in New York cataloged 347 state and local police, sheriff, fire and emergency units that have acquired drones in the past eight years, nearly half of them last year alone. Many are the same types of drones that consumers fly.Some are concerned about the implications of drone use. The Bay Area, a hotbed of innovation, often rushes to deploy such new technologies. But its residents are also on guard against digital incursions into their rights.Locally, the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, the Alameda County Sheriffs Office and the Fremont Fire Department are already flying regular missions. The Moraga-Orinda Fire District is close to launching its drone program.Last week, San Francisco approved a new policy that will eventually allow the Fire Department and four other city agencies to use drones  two years after a citywide moratorium was enacted.Privacy concerns have helped ground drone plans in San Jose and Berkeley.It needs to be regulated so it doesnt become a way to spy on the general public and innocent civilians who are not doing anything wrong, said Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington.Some critics also worry the drones could crash into buildings or airplanes. But fire and law enforcement agencies say the technology can save time, money and lives.This technology is not just awesome, its a game changer, said Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman, whose department is hosting a June 2 drone symposium for fire departments from throughout California.Alameda County has 10 drones that have flown during several high-profile incidents, such as Decembers deadly Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland. Tom Madigan, the Sheriffs Office commander and drone units chief, said the drone involved in that fire carried a thermal-imaging camera to search for hot spots  areas where the fire is most active or embers could reignite  and victims.In January, Fremont and Menlo Park drones helped search for a woman whose car crashed into Alameda Creek on Jan. 21 and a man whose kayak capsized in the bay.The drones did not immediately locate either victim, but they saved time by quickly covering big swaths of search area. And three weeks later, the drones did help locate and identify the kayakers body, after someone fishing off a pier reported what looked like a body floating in the bay.The Fremont Fire Department has four drones, which can stream live images to an iPad mounted to the drones remote control and to a monitor inside Klevens battalion chiefs vehicle. Theyve been used on about 15 missions since the department launched its program Jan. 1, including searching for a missing Alzheimers patient, directing fire crews to the source of a smoky car-parts lot fire and surveying the extent of a hazardous gas plume outside a store.This tool, as far as technology is concerned, is probably going to be the biggest advancement the fire service has seen for a long while, Kleven said.The drones helped police involved in an April 9 shootout with a man on Decoto Road. When the man fled into a dark corner behind a shopping center, a California Highway Patrol helicopter couldnt get close enough to determine what he was doing or if he still had a gun.Kleven flew the drone in for a closer look, which revealed the man lying with a gun by his side. An autopsy later revealed that he had shot himself. DJI , a Chinese company, makes the most popular consumer drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles, with models ranging from $500 to about $2,000. That compares with one $8,000 commercial-grade drone that San Jose police bought in 2013.You can accomplish most of what you need with hobbyist-grade unmanned aerial vehicles, Madigan said. The technology is moving so fast that theres no need anymore to spend a significant amount of money.DJI, which has a software development office in Palo Alto, recently unveiled a new model built to withstand colder temperatures and stronger winds, based on feedback weve received from rescue services around the world, said Adam Lisberg, the companys North America spokesman.Schapelhouman of Menlo Park envisions a future generation of drones that will let fire services launch them automatically. That would, for example, allow an autonomous drone to fly itself over a burning building or a freeway crash as soon as the first alarm comes in, he said.The public is more open to firefighters, rather than police, using drones, Schapelhouman noted. In 2014, his department began working on a drone policy and held public hearings before launching its fleet. The San Jose Police Department acknowledges that it should have proposed a similar public policy before buying its drone in 2013.The San Jose City Council authorized the purchase, made with federal funds, without any debate, said Nicole Ozer, technology and civil liberties policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. It was an intern of ours months later who saw this in the (council) minutes. Then the public heard about it, and there was very, very significant concern.That forced the city to ground the drone until it could draft a policy and meet with neighborhood organizations. Not consulting the public first was a blind spot, said San Jose police Capt. Jason Dwyer. One major concern police heard, he said, was about mission creep: Youre telling us thats the mission today, but tomorrow, how will we know youre not going to use it for surveillance purposes? It seems innocent enough until someone sees it fly over their backyard.The department has agreed to categorically not use it for surveillance, and to not record or store images, he said. The drone is to be used only any time theres a danger to human life, he said.Though the policy is now in place, the drone remains grounded because staffing cutbacks prevented the department from getting an officer trained and certified by the FAA to fly a drone.In Berkeley, a two-year moratorium banning police use of drones, but allowing the Fire Department to employ them in the event of a disaster, recently ended without the City Councils adopting an official drone use policy.Councilman Worthington supported the moratorium but ultimately is open to police using drones. Last months violent clash between supporters and opponents of President Trump would have been a perfect time for a drone to help identify who was being the bad actors, he said.Still, government bureaucracies around the world, including in our own wonderful country, have spied on us too much, he said. A healthy suspicion of government overreach in surveillance is a prudent public policy.
(TNS) -- Two bills have been filed in the Texas Legislature to address the ever-growing problem of cyberbullying.The Texas Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 179 last week, commonly known as called Davids Law.The Texas House Public Education Committee held a hearing recently where parents of students who took their own lives after aggressive online harassment told the panel they wanted cyberbullies to face more consequences for their actions.SB 179, authored by state Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, and state Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, makes cyberbullying a misdemeanor and gives school districts the ability to intervene in cyberbullying cases.Cleburne ISD Communications Director Lisa Magers said cyberbullying is addressed in the districts Student Code of Conduct in the section relating to the misuse of technology resources and the Internet.Students shall not send, post or possess electronic messages that are abusive, obscene, sexually oriented, threatening, harassing, damaging to anothers reputation or illegal, including cyberbullying and sexting, either on or off school property, if the conduct causes a substantial disruption to the educational environment, according to the code.Magers said all students are held accountable for their behavior and are subject to discipline consequences as outlined in code.Changes to the Code of Conduct are the result of legislative action and/or the Texas Education Agency, Magers said.The bill also allows courts to issue subpoenas to reveal cyberbullies and permits victims to sue in civil court if parents of the cyberbully had the opportunity to intervene but did not.State Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, said he voted against SB 179 when the bill passed out of the Senate Committee on State Affairs in late April.My chief concern with the bill as then-written was that it created a new criminal penalty by presuming a direct causal relationship between an individuals words and the decision of another to inflict upon ones self severe harm or commit suicide, Birdwell said. While I believe bullying of any kind is detestable and should not be tolerated, it is often only one of many factors that can lead to such action. This assumption of causation between the two actions would have set a dangerous precedent in the law, which I could not support.However, understanding the importance of the issue, he said was determined to not give up on this piece of legislation and continued to work with Menendez to craft an appropriate criminal penalty to deter cyberbullying but one that does not presume causality.After much collaboration, Sen. Menendez accepted my proposed changes as an amendment [last week] on the Senate floor, he said. Moreover, rather than creating a new criminal penalty all together, my amendment modernizes and builds upon an existing criminal offense concerning harassment.By including 21st century technologies in its application  text messaging or social media  an offense constituting harassment now applies to cyberbullying. Further, my amendment guarantees a greater severity in punishment if it is found that an individual is repeatedly cyberbullying a child with the intent for the child to commit suicide or engage in conduct causing serious bodily injury.By revising the bill in this manner, he said they are eliminating the causality presumption outlined in the original bill, while still maintaining an adequate criminal penalty deterrent for cyberbullying and an increased penalty for most abhorrent forms of cyberbullying.He said he commends Menendez for the hard work he has put into this legislation and thank him for working with Birdwell to pass the best possible law.It brought me great pride to vote for SB 179, as I believe it will provide greater resources to prevent and deter bullying, and send a strong message that this conduct will not be tolerated in the State of Texas, he said.State Rep. DeWayne Burns, R-Cleburne, said recently HB 306 is still pending in the House Public Education Committee and, so he can only give some broad-stroke answers about his concerns surrounding cyberbullying and what needs to be done to curtail it.Bullying of all types has always been a problem in schools, but with the advent of cyberbullying it is often harder to detect because its not happening in front of a teacher or administrator on the playground or the locker room or the hallway, Burns said. Of course the primary responsibility of policing the social media habits of a child lies with their parents, however schools certainly have a responsibility if they identify a situation where cyberbullying is taking place. Pinpointing the offenders, informing parents and also informing the authorities in cases where threats are being made against a child is critical.Burns said death threats or any kind of language/action used to threaten bodily harm to another student is a criminal act.It should be treated as such, and I believe the state can offer clear guidance to school districts in these types of cases as to their responsibility to intervene, he said. However, I would caution against creating another unfunded mandate or other state-driven requirements that get in the way of local parents, teachers and administrators finding the best solutions that work in their schools and communities.
'This won't hurt'

(TNS)  SUNBURY, Pa.  Because she can't, Sunbury police Chief Tim Miller has opened a Facebook page for Barbara Miller.The chief is hoping it will lead to closing a case that's been cold for what will be 28 years in July. The Facebook page is called Barbara Miller-Cold Case , the chief said Tuesday at the city's police department.Barbara Miller was 30 when she vanished on July 1, 1989. Her boyfriend, former Sunbury police detective Joseph Walter Mike Egan, dropped Miller off at a Milton bar and was the last person to see her. He reported her missing on July 4.Tim Miller arrived in Sunbury last July and said one of the biggest things he wanted to do was resurrect this case, which has been discussed for nearly three decades. The chief, who is not related to her, said Tuesday he soon will begin conducting interviews with potential witnesses after spending three months reviewing the case files."I have been methodically going through the mountains of information looking for a needle in the haystack," Tim Miller said. "I have definitely seen a few things that have jumped out at me, and I believe there are some things yet to be done."One of those, Tim Miller said, is to open a social media page in a bid to open some doors."Let's see what shakes loose and where this road leads us," he said. "Hopefully to the front door of the person or persons that hold the key."The Facebook page will be a place where Tim Miller said people can leave tips, emails and information they believe will be useful to police. There will be a public section and a private message section, which the chief and other law enforcement officals will check.Tim Miller spoke with Northumberland County District Attorney Tony Matulewicz about opening the social media page in an attempt to find leads in the case. The DA agreed it is a good idea."It's another tool, and why not use everything technology has to offer?" Matulewicz asked. "It's free, it's well known and it's used by almost everybody."He added: "This won't hurt. We will vet out the reponses, and and I think we will get information that we can use."Chief Miller said he has seen several key pieces of information in the investigation files he has reviewed and believes social media will reach other people who may have information."It can reach from coast-to-coast and touch the far ends of the earth," he said. "We can go from just a couple of sets of eyes and ears to millions and millions. This can be a great tool and may just provide the vehicle necessary to break this thing wide open."Matulewicz said the chief has been in contact with his office several times in the past few months, including using county detective Degg Stark."I said absolutely. No one in the world wants to solve this case more than Degg Stark," Matulewicz said.Stark, a former Sunbury police officer, was one of the key investigators on the case.Barbara Miller's son, Eddie Miller Jr., of Milton, spoke with The Daily Item in December 2015 and said he lives though each day wishing he could find out what happened to his mother."We are going to do everything we can to find out," Tim Miller said.Barbara Miller didnt just wander off, but as the chief and other investigators before him believed, was murdered.After years of investigations came up empty, county Judge Charles Saylor declared Barbara Miller dead on Oct. 10, 2002.Her body has never been found.Then-county District Attorney Robert Sacavage said in 1990 that Barbara Miller received several threats by mail accusing her of being a narcotics informant.She reported those threats to city police 15 days before she vanished, according to police.Police also believe Barbara Miller had information in a 1986 homicide that saw Rickey Wolfe, of Mifflinburg, beaten to death. Wolfe's body was found near Montandon in December 1986.The chief and Matulewicz would not discuss details of the current Barbara Miller investigation, but Matulewicz said his office has met with the Pennsylvania State Police Criminal Investigation Assessment Unit, a group of troopers who work on unsolved homicides.Matulewicz said the group agreed to look at the case. In the meantime, one of the top administrators of the unit took another job.The group still is in the process of hiring an administrator, but Matulewicz said they will help Chief Miller in the future."It is a Sunbury case, but our office is here for whatever they need," the DA said. "We will provide any help we can."
A former Ferrari spokesman has confirmed his return to formula one.

Earlier, we reported that Luca Colajanni, a prominent member of the famous Italian team in the Todt-Schumacher era, had been signed up to lead Liberty Media's F1 communications team.

Colajanni confirmed that his four-year F1 absence is now ending.

"I was invited and I started work on Wednesday," the Italian told Finland's Turun Sanomat newspaper.

(GMM)
Mercedes has revealed the most striking car upgrade among its top team rivals in Barcelona.

Before the Spanish grand prix weekend, all the talk was of Red Bull and its plans for a supposed 'B' car after an uncompetitive start to 2017.

But then the RB13 was seen in the Barcelona pits looking conspicuously similar to the one that raced in Russia.

"I don't want to underestimate Red Bull, but it will probably take some time before they can catch up to us," said Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas in Spain.

Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo agrees: "Hopefully we will be closer, but we cannot expect to go out there and win. The gap was too big for that.

"Even if the upgrade gives us a second, Mercedes and Ferrari have not sat around doing nothing.

"It's still the same car," the Australian explained. "We've changed a lot of things but don't expect too much."

Indeed, more visually impressive is the upgrade brought to Barcelona by Mercedes, featuring a radically thinner nose that had to undergo new crash testing.

But most experts doubt the car upgrades will significantly shake up the 2017 hierarchy.

"It's not a new season that's starting here," said Haas driver Romain Grosjean.

"Mercedes and Ferrari are still going to be at the front, and we'll have to see how much closer Red Bull can get," he told France's RMC.

(GMM)
Finnish manufacturer of electric drivetrains for heavy vehicles Visedo has signed a supply and purchase agreement with Asias largest electric motor producer TECO Electric & Machinery Company. Under the agreement, Visedo will benefit from TECOs significant production capacity and ability to service major tender projects worldwide and particularly in Asia. In turn, TECO will have access to Visedos expertise in developing synchronous reluctance assisted permanent magnet (SRPM) power systems ( earlier post ).

The agreement will also assist Visedo in further developing commercial opportunities across Asias emerging markets. This follows Visedos opening of a new Hong Kong office last month and signing a letter of intent with VC firm, Beijing Capital Investment, to help the company access Chinas booming EV marketalready the worlds single largest.

Our synchronous reluctance assisted permanent magnet (SRPM) technology allows Visedo to deliver the markets most efficient hybrid and fully electric solutions that are also smaller and lighter than our competitors. Visedo can already guarantee better performing hybrid and fully electric drivetrains in a more compact and robust product partnership with TECO will allow Visedo to also compete at the scale and volume of our Tier One OEM rivals. Visedo CEO Kimmo Rauma

Visedo SRPM technology combines the benefits of PM and synchronous reluctance technology, and feature increased torque capability over a wide speed range and the ability to produce torque to higher speeds. Machine efficiency at lower speeds is also good.

The supply current to the machine stator windings create a rotating magnetic field, which in turn rotates the rotor containing permanent magnets. In the synchronous permanent magnet machine, the rotation of the rotor (shaft) is synchronized with the frequency of the power supply current. The reluctance technology maximizes the pullout torque of the machine.

Visedo drivetrain motors are liquid-cooled and designed to work as traction motors in harsh operating environments. Compared to conventional technologies such as induction machines (IM) or standard permanent magnet motors (PM), Visedo SRPM motors offer smaller dimensions, lighter weight and higher efficiency, the company says.

The motors are available in various speed and torque ratings in both Visedo machine series:

PowerDRUM with power up to 4,000 kWhigh torque with high efficiency

PowerDISK with power up to 75 kWshort axial length to fit in tight spaces

The Finnish company has developed and installed its technology to power fully electric buses in the Finnish capital Helsinki and in the Swedish city of Umea. In the marine segment Visedo has also helped deliver Asias first hybrid electric ferry; Finlands first all-electric ferry; and is currently developing the power system for the worlds largest electric E-ferry in Denmark.
GREENSBORO  For weeks, activists have accused the Greensboro Police Department of filing false charges and mistreating a teenager during last years Fun Fourth Festival.

They chastised police officials and City Council members in hopes that the charges against Jose Charles would be dropped.

On Thursday, they declared victory when a judge agreed to dismiss those charges as part of a plea deal offered by the Guilford County District Attorneys Office.

Charles, 16, stood before District Court Judge Angela Fox and pleaded guilty to two counts of felony breaking and entering and conspiracy of breaking and entering.

If he hadnt accepted the deal, he potentially couldve been sentenced to serving time in a juvenile detention center until he was 18.

As part of his plea deal, the judge dismissed 10 other juvenile petitions  four stemming from the controversial Fun Fourth incident.

That controversy has been fueled by the fact that the altercation was captured on video by cameras worn by four officers  footage that Charles mother, Tamara Figueroa, has fought unsuccessfully to get released to the public.

On Thursday, the courtroom was packed in anticipation of what would happen to Charles.

However, the Fun Fourth incident was never specifically mentioned and only referred to by the Aug. 12 date when Figueroa was served with the petitions.

Activists considered it a victory, but it was an anticlimactic end to an emotionally-charged story.

What was most outrageous is that ... it was so secretive, said Lewis Pitts, a local activist. You could have walked out of the courtroom and not known these charges were dismissed.

Figueroa said that in July 2016 Greensboro police took her then-15-year-old son into custody during the citys Fun Fourth Festival after he was attacked by several teenagers and then restrained by a police officer, who grabbed Charles around the neck.

Figueroa said her son tried to tell officers that he was choking on his own blood, but when officers helped him off the ground, he coughed, splattering blood in the officers face.

Those details had been relatively unknown for seven months as Figueroa worked behind the scenes to get the footage released to the public.

When that didnt happen, Figueroa made her fight public in February.

It was a fight that ultimately became a movement. An investigation followed and the results led to more controversy.

Police Chief Wayne Scott, several council members and City Manager Jim Westmoreland said the officers acted appropriately. Members of the Police Community Review Board disagreed.

The conflicting opinions led to three resignations from the review board, protests and a takeover of City Council chambers by Charles supporters during a meeting last week.

Those bracing for another disturbance Thursday morning didnt get it  the proceedings went without incident. There were no marches, protests or outbursts.

Activists, family and friends filled the courtroom to support Charles.

Others stood outside hoping the district attorneys office would drop the charges.

Im glad he can accept responsibility for what hes done, Figueroa said, but I did not want him to plead guilty for something he did not do.

When supporters learned about the plea deal, there were cheers outside the courthouse.

I know a lot of people are here to support Jose, Fox said. I want you to know that juvenile court is not to punish juveniles but to give salvation to children.

The hearing also had some unexpected revelations. Prior to the July 4 incident, Charles had one pending juvenile petition from February and had received eight additional petitions after the altercation, three of those for breaking and entering.

Also revealed in court was that Charles is expecting a child in September, had been caught with marijuana and was a gang member.

Ordinarily, juvenile court cases are private. Prosecutors and judges dont use a minors name and court officials seal those records in an attempt to make sure the alleged crimes dont follow the child into adulthood.

This case has been different because Figueroa revealed her sons identity, believing that police mistreated him.

Assistant District Attorney Monica Burnette asked the judge to close the courtroom, but Charles, Figueroa and attorney Craig Martin requested the hearing to be open.

After admitting to breaking and entering, Charles asked the judge to be lenient with his sentence.

I dont want to continue my education in jail like my parents did, Charles told Fox. I dont want to be like my father and hear my baby be born during a 15-minute phone call.

Charles also told the judge he wanted to support his child by getting a job and attending college.

Fox ordered Charles, a freshman at Northeast Guilford High School, to talk with his guidance counselor about college and gave him permission to work.

Fox told Charles if he got into trouble again he would spend 14 days in a detention center. He was put on probation for a year and ordered to wear an ankle monitor for 90 days  which Figueroa requested.

Fox also told Charles that if he leaves his house for anything other than work and school he has to be with his mother.

He grimaced.

It could be worse, Fox said.

Outside the courthouse, as people celebrated around her, Figueroa said she is still fighting for the release of the Fun Fourth video.

I dont want the footage to be destroyed, Figueroa said. I still want it to be released to the public. I have no faith in the police department.
ARCHDALE  U.S. Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., told reporters here Friday that he has no regrets about supporting President Donald Trumps campaign and that Trump is acting within the bounds of the executive branch as he decides who should head the FBI.

Make no mistake: The president has every right in his job to pick the head of the FBI and to trust the head of the FBI. Clearly, the president lost trust in James Comey. Why? Thats a question the president will have to answer, said Burr, chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Trump fired Comey this week ostensibly because of his handling of the FBIs investigation of Hillary Clintons use of a private email server; critics say that Trump is trying to quash the agencys investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the presidential election. Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, testifying before Congress on Tuesday in place of his fired boss, said the agencys investigation was highly significant.

Burr said Tuesday he was troubled by the timing of Trumps firing of Comey. But on Friday, before a tour of the Thomas Built Buses manufacturing plant, Burr said that, as things stand, Trump apparently was not involved with Russias attempt to influence the results of the election.

To date, there has been no evidence of collusion, Burr said.

Conversely, Burr said Trumps tweet about Comey on Friday was inappropriate.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Trump wrote on Twitter.

The tweet came the morning after Trump asserted Comey had told him three times he wasnt under FBI investigation.

In the afternoon, White House press secretary Sean Spicer repeatedly refused to say definitively whether recording devices had been placed in the White House, and he tried to downplay the notion that the president threatened the former FBI director.

The president has nothing further to add on that, Spicer said when questioned about a recording system. The tweet speaks for itself.

Comey has not confirmed Trumps account of discussions that included the FBIs probe of Russias interference in the 2016 presidential election and allegations of Trump campaign collaboration with the Russians.

On Friday, a person close to the former director recounted a Comey-Trump dinner in January at which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty, The Associated Press reported. Comey declined, instead offering honesty. When Trump then pressed for honest loyalty, Comey told him, You will have that, recounted the Comey associate.

As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr invited Comey to speak with committee members Tuesday in a closed session. But Comey declined in the invitation on Friday.

Burr also reiterated his opposition to a special prosecutor, saying that it would delay the investigation.

This is our job, Burr said.

Meanwhile, the Senates No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Friday that Trump was dangerous and that his credibility has been destroyed.

On MSNBCs Morning Joe, Durbin suggested that the presidents move to fire Comey amid its Trump-Russia investigation was dangerous because he may be obstructing justice.

Trump, in an interview Thursday with NBC, said he had been intending to fire Comey for months and that it had nothing to do with the Russia investigation.

But he also said, In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.
Guilford County Schools staff spent extensive man hours figuring out how a simple state mandate made in 2016 to lower class sizes in all North Carolina K-3 classes impacted the 2017-18 school year budget.

The mandate sounds great. However, like most things that sound too good to be true, there is usually a catch. The catch was the cost, which for GCS was a $16.6 million budget shortfall that would require it to make deep budget cuts, provide additional classroom space and find quality candidates during a teacher shortage.

The other huge catch is the lack of funding for elementary special teachers  music, art and PE. Teacher allotments are based on a teacher-to-student ratio. For example, 1:20 for 200 students equals 10 teachers. In 1985, the Department of Public Instruction decided to fund special teachers by keeping the same ratio and simply putting more students in a class. Instead of 20, you put in 22, which means fewer core teachers were needed for K-3 classes than were allocated. Districts would then use the freed-up teacher position for specials while still complying with the maximum class-size restriction established by DPI.

The catch: The 2016 state mandate drastically reduced the maximum numbers  by three for kindergarten, five for first grade and four for second and third grade  basically putting an end to the policy documented in the Basic Education Program constructed under General Assembly statute by the DPI that spells out the special teacher funding process.

State school board members, superintendents, principals, teachers, parents and others pleaded with the N.C. House Representatives, explaining all of the above and the resulting drastic budget cuts required to meet the mandate. The House responded and passed HB 13, which cut the maximum class size by two students in first grade and one in second and third grades, resulting in a $4.6 million shortfall. Still a tough bill to swallow but a huge improvement.

The Senate, however, angrily reprimanded school districts about their misuse of dollars given for class-size reduction over the last two years, even though districts followed the policy.

GCS has lost $120 million of funding and 500 positions since 2009. Philip Price, recently retired DPI chief financial officer, laid out the funding issues school districts have dealt with:

2011-12: The state funded a class-size reduction worth $62 million, then required districts to give back $429 million of allocated funding.

2012-13: The state required districts to give back $359.7 million of allocated funding.

2013-14: The state increased class size in K-1 by one. Allocated funding was decreased by $286.4 million.

2014-15: The General Assembly appropriated $42 million to reduce class size in grades K-1 to 2012-13 class sizes.

2015-16: No changes.

2016-17: The state funded $27 million to reduce class sizes in grade 1 to 1:16 (a reduction of one).

Since 2011-12, the state has increased K-3 funding by $131 million and cut funding for K-3 class sizes by $286.4 million.

The Senate did pass a revised version of HB 13. However, the catch is that the revisions increased the cost of HB 13 from $4.6 million to $6.6 million, which GCS did not anticipate.

Another major issue is this bill only gives a one-year reprieve from the full impact of the 2016 appropriations bill. In the 201819 school year, GCS will need to hire approximately another 150 core elementary teachers. If additional funding is not provided for special teachers in the new two-year appropriations budget, GCS anticipates an additional $10 million impact to its budget.

On May 10, with extreme anguish, Guilford County's Board of Education passed a budget. Middle and high schools lost media positions, teaching positions and school operational funding. An alternative middle school was closed. Another catch, due to Federal Title I dollar reductions, our most impoverished schools ended up with class sizes increased while other elementary schools saw a decrease in class size.

Something is wrong here. Our state needs to fund our schools. K-3 class size is not the problem. North Carolina is 43rd in the nation in per pupil funding. If the state does not increase K-12 per pupil funding and provide funding for special teachers in this budget, we are looking at huge budget cuts for 2018-19, which means more lost teaching positions, school operational funding reductions and school closures.

The Senate just passed its budget with no funding for special teachers.

Linda Welborn is a member of the Guilford County Board of Education.
MAYODAN  Tragedy has struck McMichael High School for the third time in nearly seven months and the Fighting Phoenix student body is reeling, following the death of another fellow classmate and friend.

Hannah Priddy, 18, of Eden, died Wednesday, May 10 at Wake Forest Medical Center in Winston-Salem of an illness.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, May 13 at Fair Funeral Home in Eden.

It is with a heavy heart we confirm that Hannah Priddy, a 12th-grade student from McMichael High passed away, said the Rockingham County School District in a statement sent to RockinghamNow on Friday. Grief counselors have been at the school and will remain in place as needed. At this time, on behalf of the family, we request their privacy. Please keep the Priddy and McMichael High family in your thoughts.

On Wednesday, a community outpouring of support from school organizations, friends, classmates and teachers flowed through social media, in memory of the senior.

Ive known you since elementary school, said Nancy Serrano on her personal Facebook page. I cant believe you are gone. Its crazy to think that we were just in class together last week. We finished elementary and middle school together and it breaks my heart to know that we wont finish high school together. Fly high Hannah Priddy, you will be highly missed.

Friends posted tributes filled with touching words and images reliving moments shared with sweet Hannah  a member of the class of 2017  who loved animals, going four-wheeling in West Virginia and enjoying pontoon boat rides on Buggs Island Lake in Virginia.

Priddy, who volunteered on occasion for the Rockingham County Animal Shelter in Reidsville, loved animals so much that she often told her mother Kelly that she wanted a farm so she could keep all the ones she encountered.

Most of all, Hannah loved her family.

The only-child is survived by her parents, Peyton and Kelly Kulpa Priddy of Price Grange Road in Eden, grandparents Barbara and Randy Blevins of Clemmons and grandfather J.T. Hale Jr. of Eden. The soon-to-be high school graduate was also loved by numerous aunts, uncles and close friends.

She is so, so, so, sweet, Priddys mother told RockinghamNow on Friday. Hannah loved all her friends and family and she touched many lives  many more than I ever knew. We are going to miss her so much. She was our angel and was supposed to graduate next month. I was so excited for that.

The McMichael family continues to cope with ultimate tragedy.

This is shocking and devastating, read a post on the McMichael High School Phoenix PRIDE page. The group unites parents and McMichael educators, with the goal of cultivating excellence in the student body.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the entire Priddy family, the students and staff of McMichael, and the entire community who have all been touched by Hannah's life. Hug your children tight tonight and never take a second for granted.

Priddys death comes nearly two months after the loss of Jason Messer  a McMichael junior who tragically died following a hiking accident at Hanging Rock State Park in Stokes County.

Messers death came exactly six months after the loss of Celine Alamiri  a fellow junior who died following a car accident on Sept. 18 that occurred on N.C. 68 after McMichaels 24-16 home win against Rockingham County.

As we experience yet another loss to our McMichael Family, I was at a loss of hot to respond or feel, said Diane Cannon, who serves as the McMichael FCA teacher sponsor, in a portion of a message sent through the groups Twitter account.

Im hurting, the same as all of you. Its like a wound that just wont heal.
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Las Vegas has never been steamier.

The Miss USA contestants are in the Las Vegas area touring, filming, rehearsing and preparing in advance of the beauty pageant competition on Sunday, May 14.

CONTROVERSY: Winner of 'Miss Black University' receives hate for not being black enough

The girls have been busy since they arrived in Sin City on May 4. Since their arrival, they've participated in a Yandy Swim Fashion Show, Valley of Fire State Park photo shoot, a street murals photo shoot in downtown Las Vegas and a meet-and-greet with local teen girls at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino.

The gallery above has the glam-shots of the contestants along with information about the girls' passion projects, including getting their degree, ending racism and traveling the world. Click through the gallery to see the competitors' glamorous photos.

Miss USA 2017 will be crowned live at 8 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, May 14 on your local FOX network.

OTHER COMPETITIONS: The weirdest hobbies of the 2017 Miss Universe contestants
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GREENWICH  A new direction is being mapped for Greenwich Alternative High School.

Over the past five years, enrollment in Greenwichs alternative program, tucked away on Riverside Avenue and which currently targets students who are lacking the course credits to graduate on time or may have emotional or behavioral issues, has dropped by 82 percent to 24 students.

Literally, we were on the brink of extinction, said Greenwich High School Headmaster Chris Winters. But Winters and other school officials put forth a plan to change that at the Board of Education meeting Thursday.

The district plans on revamping the program  starting with the name  in order to make it more attractive to career oriented students who are struggling to graduate in a traditional setting.

Opening in September, the new Windrose School will attempt to shed the stigma of the alternative high school and, like a compass rose, chart more students onto a new path, administrators said.

Our primary goal for the targeted population of students (is) to graduate ready for college or career, explained Rosemarie Ampha, program administrator for GAHS, who along with Winters and Mary Forde, director of pupil personnel services, made the presentation

The school board will vote on the proposal May 25.

School board members expressed their satisfaction with the proposal; Peter Sherr, chair of the BOE, said it is likely that Windrose will receive its approval.

I think this sets forth a real solution, said Laura Erickson, a BOE member.

Greenwich is required to offer an alternative high school program by Connecticut state law.

The current program was born in 2012 out of the combination of the Arch program for special education students and the Community Learning Program for general education students.

A lot of what we are talking about here (is) kids who are disconnected, kids who had a history of failure, said Forde. You find a higher percentage of students with involvement with the law, drugs.

Over the years, Greenwich Alternative High School has gotten a bad rap, which has impacted enrollment, school officials said.

Unfortunately, at some point, the student body became much more externally acting out and was developing a reputation of being a place where bad kids were sent and bad things were happening, said Forde. It started getting a reputation that we couldnt break. Kids who really needed to be off-campus, who really needed to benefit from some other kind of education, were not going there because of the reputation and the kids who were going there were just feeding the reputation."

Winters said the programs academic offerings also created some of the blame.

Maybe we werent offering the right kind of program that would attract students and retain students and give students what they needed," said Winters. We said If ever a group needed a personalized approach to learning, this is it. How can we make that happen?

Windrose hopes to change all that.

The new program will target students who have fewer high school credits than they should due to failed classes, are older by a year than their grade-level peers, have a GPA below a 1.5 or express that they do not feel connected to the high school and their learning.

Windrose students will take interdisciplinary courses, like STEM and humanities, that connect learning to real world careers. Next year, students will study police forensics, using math and science skills to investigate crime scenes, and history skills to examine law in America, administrators said.

After completing a course designed to help students practice time management and organization, students will be eligible for internships that are woven into their school day, the school board was told.

Windrose will work with Greenwichs Department of Human Services and Family Centers to offer work experience in the arts, automotive, construction, culinary, fashion, medical and retail industries, among others.

Students will be assigned a mentor from among the schools five-person staff and meet for regular progress meetings with school officials and their parents.

The school will be open to 25 juniors and seniors next year and aims to expand to sophomores in the future.

Some school board members questioned the programs overlap with the Comprehensive Support Program, which provides a largely separate learning experience for some special needs students at the high school. High school administrators said Windroses location away from the high school was a critical difference.

These are students for whom working at Greenwich High School has not been optimal, said Winters. They benefit from a smaller setting and more one-on-one attention.

School officials said they hope Windrose will reduce the districts chronic absenteeism rate and the six-year graduation rate for high needs students, both of which exceed state targets according to the Connecticut Next Generation Accountability Report 2015-16.

Some 12 percent of high needs GHS students  those who receive special education or free or reduced-price lunch, or are English language learners  are chronically absent, missing more than 10 percent of the school year. The state target is less than 5 percent of students chronically absent.

In addition, 91.5 percent of high needs students graduate from GHS in six years, where as the state target is 94 percent.

emunson@greenwichtime.com; Twitter: @emiliemunson
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STAMFORD  A familiar scene unfolds outside the Sixth Street Planned Parenthood a few times a week.

About a dozen members of two groups  a line of immigrants clutching rosary beads as they recite prayers and another who call themselves Sidewalk Advocates  gather outside the health care clinic. The latter hands out literature and tries to engage patients entering the building.

At the entrance wearing neon-pink reflective vests are Planned Parenthood volunteer escorts, whose job is to make patients feel safe and supported going inside.

These interactions can veer in any direction. They can be peaceful or heated. The police  who patrol nearby on Wednesdays and Fridays when the groups are out  are often called.

Tensions flared outside Planned Parenthood more than usual this week, several advocates on both sides said. It was a departure, they said, from how these encounters have played out since the clinic moved last year from East Main Street to its new Ridgeway location. Stamford has the only Planned Parenthood in Fairfield County that performs on-site surgical abortions.

The level of excitement and noise is more than usual, said Jennifer, a volunteer from Norwalk who, like most of the people outside the clinic, did not want to share her full name. She was one of four Planned Parenthood escorts stationed in the buildings driveway late Wednesday morning, across from LA Fitness and a Chinese buffet.

A few feet from her on the sidewalk stood Michelle, 64, a nurse who lives in Stamford.

Were here to be sure they have a choice and theyre not being coerced, she said. Michelle speaks softly and smiles broadly. She asked that her name not be shared with the clinic volunteers.

Michelle is a member of Sidewalk Advocates for Life, a pro-life group based in Texas that claims to have a following throughout the world. Its mission is to be the hands and feet of Christ, offering loving, life-affirming alternatives to all present at the abortion center, thereby eliminating demand and ending abortion, according to its website.

The site says the group has saved some 1,700 babies, encouraged 43 abortion workers to leave their practice and closed six abortion clinics.

The things we have promoted as a society are not good for these kids, Michelle said. The kids she refers to are the young women seeking services at Planned Parenthood, which provides a range of reproductive health care for women.

The quality of birth control, ignoring STDs and promoting this real lax approach. I could go on and on. They want better medical care thats not delivered here.

Standing across the street with the prayer partners was Rosario Pugleiese, an 83-year-old with a thick Italian accent.

Its the worst thing in life, he said of abortions.

Pro-choice Planned Parenthood supporters disagree.

A clinic worker who was not authorized to speak to the media said their goal is getting women in and out of the facility safely and providing needed services.

Were here for our patients, no matter what, said Kafi Rouse, vice president of public relations and marketing for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, the umbrella organization for 17 Connecticut affiliates. For the women, men and young people we serve, the care we provide is not about politics  its about their well being, and we remain focused on ensuring our patients are able to access the health care we provide in a safe and caring environment.

These protests are designed to shame patients who seek basic health care services from Planned Parenthood and to intimidate the health care professionals who work here. Women should be able to get health care without fear of violence, harassment or intimidation.

Planed Parenthood of Southern New England serves 70,000 patients a year, including 4,000 in Stamford. More than half of those served in Stamford live below the federal poverty line, according to the organization.

Stamford police Capt. Sue Bretthauer, who oversees the district that includes Sixth Street, said demonstrators have been at the site since the clinic moved, though none have been arrested.

She suspects tensions could be running higher since President Donald Trump came into office and police will need to be vigilant. Trump has promoted legislation that chokes funding for groups like Planned Parenthood that perform abortions.

I understand its a heated topic and an emotional topic, the captain said. I have sat down with both sides and told them what the rules of engagement are.

Being impartial is necessary.

You should never have any idea of what a police officer personally believes, she said. Thats not our job. When youre working to enforce the law, you strive for equality on both sides.

Both sides have rights and are protected. Even Planned Parenthood has said theyre not opposed to people getting literature. They just dont want people being blocked and harassed.

Determining who is on the right side of the law  or the right side of the street  is challenging. The truth is often somewhere in between, Bretthauer said.

Many of the disputes between the two sides are he-said-she-said.

Sometimes Im on the sidewalk speaking to women and (Planned Parenthood volunteers) interrupt, Michelle said. They get into my body and dont let me talk. We just cant seem to stop that. Honestly, we need witnesses and it helps to have the prayer partners here.

Her only objective is to give women alternative health care options, Michelle said.

I dont judge them, she said. I feel the love. Theyre good people.

Another Sidewalk Advocate, Gabriele, a 47-year-old from Stamford who works in real estate, said his group seeks to be non-aggressive and non-intimidating.

I have so much to do. I have seven kids and my own busy life, he said. I had driven by and saw the signs. Then I was walking by and they were talking to me and they handed me this card. I thought thats a real alternative to really give someone a choice.

But its absolutely their prerogative if they choose to listen, Michelle said.

Its not easy for them, she said.

eskalka@stamfordadvocate.com
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Published on 2017/05/11 | Source

Actress Song Hye-kyo and professor Seo Kyeong-deok who have been supplying Korean guidebooks to major museums and art galleries around the world, supplied them to the Royal Ontario Museum.

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ROM in Toronto, Canada is one of the best natural history museums in the world that withholds over 6 million unique collections and it is one of the most important places to visit when visiting Toronto, Canada.

The Korean guidebooks that are being supplied this year are second in issue since 2015 have been redesigned. It introduces the collections in the museum and details about the museum as well.

Professor Seo claimed, "There are still many museums and art galleries in the world without Korean guidebooks. We want to aid in the convenience of Korean tourists who visit them".

"There are also many foreigners who don't know that the Korean language even exists. Placing Korean guidebooks in world famous museums like ROM will help to promote our language as well".

Song Hye-kyo said, "When I visit a foreign country museum but don't see a Korean guidebook, it's inconvenient. I will work harder to improve this".

The two have been supplying the New York Modern Museum, Boston Art Gallery and others with Korean guidebooks and video guides in Korea.

Seo and Song have constantly been working on supplying Korean language aid to provisional government office in China, Shanghai Yoon Bong-gil Memorial Hall, Ahn Chang-ho Memorial Hall and historical sites related to Korea in Tokyo as well as other Korean Independence movement sites.
Published on 2017/05/12 | Source

Added episodes 1 and 2 captures for the Korean drama "Suspicious Partner" (2017)

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Directed by Park Seon-ho-I

Written by Kwon Ki-yeong

Network : SBS

With Ji Chang-wook, Nam Ji-hyun, Choi Tae-joon, Kwon Nara, Lee Deok-hwa, Nam Gi-ae,...

Formerly known as "Watch out for this Woman" (  , i yeo-ja-leul jo-sim-ha-se-yo)

40 episodes - Wed, Thu 22:00

Synopsis

"Suspicious Partner" will be a romantic comedy in a judicial setting with a killer thrown into the mix. A Taekwondo practitioner turned judicial trainee turned murder suspect.

Broadcast starting date in Korea : 2017/05/10

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FROM CALIFORNIA TO NEW YORK: THE COST OF LIVING ACROSS AMERICA

From GoBankingRates.com, May, 2017

From coast to coast, here's a breakdown of the most and least expensive states to call home.

Thinking it's time for a change of pace  and place? If you're considering moving to the state you've always loved, you should know that radically different incomes are required to maintain the same standard of living in different parts of the country.

This cost-of-living comparison measures each state against the average cost of living in the United States as a whole. Based on 2016 data provided by the Missouri Economic Research and Information Center, GOBankingRates examined six critical living expenses: housing, groceries, utilities, transportation, healthcare and miscellaneous expenses. Together, they form each state's overall cost of living index.

The best states to live in aren't always the cheapest ones. Read on to find out which states are far pricier than others.

HAWAII #1

Hawaii is the most expensive state to live in America by a long shot. Residents of the islands pay an astronomical 67.4 percent more than the national average. There are very few saving graces, with housing costs topping the national average by 130.3 percent. Utilities cost 106.5 percent more than average, and groceries cost 55 percent more. With high grocery prices, residents should explore creative ways to save on groceries.

* * * * *

YOULL NEED THIS MUCH MONEY TO LIVE COMFORTABLY IN THE 50 BIGGEST CITIES IN AMERICA

Using the 50-30-20 budgeting rule, find out if you're making enough money to live comfortably in your city  or if the cost of living is too high.

HONOLULU: $75,698

50 percent for necessities: $37,849

30 percent for discretionary spending: $22,709

20 percent for savings: $15,140

Income needed to live comfortably: $75,698

Hawaii has a notoriously high cost of living, which contributes to it being the state where you're most likely to live paycheck to paycheck. It's also one of the worst states for retirees.

However, Honolulu residents almost earn the ideal level of income. Honolulu's median household income of $74,460 is only $1,238 less than the income needed to live comfortably.

read  50 Cities
Theres No Place Like Home

From Grasroot Institute, May 12, 2017

Last week, the Grassroot Institute released a short video about the large number of locals who are forced by economic considerations to leave Hawaii for the mainland. It was one of our most successful videos to date and touched a chord with the large group of "expat" locals who knew exactly what it means to be so far from home. Today, I would like to turn my weekly commentary over to our own expat-in-residence, Policy Director Malia Blom Hill, who works for Grassroot Institute from Washington, D.C.

It's not hard to meet someone who has been to Hawaii. I've had enough conversations about people's honeymoons in Maui to last a lifetime. But you endure it for those rare moments when someone throws you a lifeline: "No, I'm from Pearl City/Lihue/Hilo." And then the inevitable: "We moved out here for my job."

We're the Hawaii expats. The ones who bring pancit and haupia to potlucks. Who roll our eyes when we hear about how some trendy chef downtown is making "upscale" spam musubi and poke. And who -- more than anything else -- want to come home again.

According to the Census Bureau, more families than ever before are leaving Hawaii for the mainland. And according to the IRS, most of them are leaving for states with lower tax burdens. (Although, technically, most states have lower tax burdens. And that's before we get into the issue of average salaries.)

There's no mystery about why we leave home. We have to. We can't afford to do otherwise. The cost of living in Hawaii is prohibitive. Not only do you have to contend with high taxes, but there's also the hidden costs, the way that everything -- from milk to filling up your car -- is just a little more expensive.

But there's something else going on, and it's something that should worry Hawaii policymakers a whole lot more that it does. It's the absence of opportunity. No one wants to leave home -- at least, not when your home is a paradise. But young people and families are looking at the employment opportunities and the economic future and saying, "I don't think I can make it here."

And watching Hawaii policy in action doesn't give anyone the feeling that things are getting better. Instead, we see huge spending projects (like Rail), taxes upon taxes, bigger government, more union power, and a complete surrender to the politics of obstruction (e.g. the telescope, GMOs, etc.). It doesn't make you hopeful that things are going to change anytime soon.

So we go where the jobs are, where we can afford a house and a nice life. But we're always on the lookout for those reminders of home. We send each other YouTube videos from Merrie Monarch festivals and try (and fail) to make malasadas and manapua. (Well, maybe that's just me.) And when we run into each other, we always have the following conversation:

"So, do you think you're going back?"

"I want to. Some day. Maybe when we're older and the kids are done with school."

"Yeah. Us too."

The other day, I spent a full hour on YouTube, watching May Day hulas from different high schools and thinking about all the things my kids are missing out on by growing up so far from Hawaii. I thought about the sense of 'ohana, the warmth of the aloha spirit, and the way that the sun looks when it sets over the ocean. I remembered the way that the Honolulu airport always smells of plumerias and airplane fuel, and how you distinguish between dressy and casual slippas.

And then I did what I always do ... and what the thousands of other locals away-from-home do too. I remembered the reasons why I can't move back. Not yet, anyway.

Maybe someday.

E hana kakou (Let's work together!),

Keli'i Akina, Ph.D.

President/CEO
The skillsets desired by employers are changing rapidly  are our tertiary education institutions keeping up?



In particular, Australia has experienced a rapid decline in the number of STEM graduates over the past 10 years, said Rob Carroll, director human resources, Optus Business.



The resulting skills gap will threaten our growth potential unless we take urgent action, he said.



Carroll added that universities have a key role to play here but employers must also do their part.



In 2016, Optus partnered with Macquarie University to establish the Cyber Security HUB as a centre of excellence for cyber education, skills and research and development.



Together, we will train more than 1,000 people in cyber technologies over the next 10 years, he said.



Industry-university partnerships such as this one could serve as a useful blueprint for addressing gaps in technology skills in Australia.



Alison Sibree, VP of HR, APAC & Japan, Oracle, added that digital transformation means we need new employee skillsets.



This includes a global mindset, agile thinking, and very strong interpersonal skills because employees have to deal with new ways of working.



I think there are some universities that are becoming more geared to what industries want, she said.



Traditionally, universities have churned out what they believed was needed, and thats why we sometimes had gluts or a dearth of certain disciplines at any one time.



However, I was recently contacted by one of the universities in Melbourne to say they were doing an industry round table in Singapore in an effort to understand from various employers what type of capabilities, attitudes and disciplines we are looking for.



So theres definitely a greater willingness from universities to work with industries.



Meanwhile, Rose Thomson, CHRO at Travelport, said she thinks there will always be a delay in what you learn at university and what is happening in business.



To use my own education background as an example, I did psychology as my undergraduate degree, she said.



It really wasnt until I hit the workforce as part of IBMs graduate program that I got clarity on where I wanted to go in my career. I went back to Macquarie to the Graduate School of Business and did a Masters degree majoring in HR and marketing.



When I undertook subsequent HR jobs, I learnt the most from roles I felt I was completely out of my depth in. Thats when you learn the most.



So yes, organisations can help bridge that skills gap, but sometimes doing is more effective than studying.
In Dhaka, Bangladesh, the Bhola Slum is a consequence of the many factors that have prompted people to migrate from traditional rural livelihoods to urban centers in the precarious hope that they will find safe haven and a brighter future.

Some migrations are voluntary and center around migrants strategies to decrease levels of financial instability, escape poverty, and secure greater economic opportunity. Yet, other migrants are often forced from their homes by conflict, prolonged political instability, persecution, natural disasters and climate change, and other conditions of insecurity.

The decision to migrate requires members of any household to make a tough calculation and weigh multiple factors. In the case of the Bhola Slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh, history provides an example of the many reasons that cause people to leave rural lifestyles behind and make the move to urban centers.



Initial migration to the Bhola Slum can be traced back to a set of historic events in the early 1970s that coincided with the founding of Bangladesh. Named after Bhola Island, about 180 miles south of Dhaka, Bhola Slum is host to a stream of migrants who have been moving from their rural island home to the urban center of Dhaka for almost five decades.

Bhola Island sits in the delta of the Bay of Bengal where it has been buffeted by extreme events, both natural and man-made. On Nov. 12, 1970, a category five cyclone struck the island, killing an estimated 200,000 residents alone  almost one-fifth the total population. Considered one of the worst natural disasters of the last century, the official death toll across the greater Ganges Delta was between 500,000 and one million. Beyond the human losses, the devastation of the means to secure local livelihoods was absolute: 75 percent of rice crops, more than a million head of cattle and countless fishing boats were lost in the disaster. The response was tragically slow and ineffective.

Four months later, the Liberation War with East Pakistan broke out, in March 1971. This battle, which resulted in Bangladeshs independence, was so brutal that it forced 10 million people to seek refuge in neighboring India. Nine months later, the war was won, but at terrific costs. Agricultural production suffered and 1974 brought terrible famine to the young nation.

All these events taken together contributed to the systemic tide of human migration that slowly created the Bhola Slum.

Since then, Bhola Island has succumbed to continued assaults on its territorial integrity and the flow of rural migrants to the capital continues. The low-lying area is fed by three of Asias most powerful rivers, which are experiencing increased glacial melt from the Himalayas as a result of rising temperatures, and in turn are leading to rising sea levels along the coast. Annual monsoon flooding, subsidence, cyclones, and riverbank erosion have resulted in the island losing half its actual land mass in the 40-year period between 1965 and 2005. The prognosis for the next three to four decades is one of continued land loss, such that this island may soon vanish.

Another issue impacting residents is a lack of economic opportunities as agricultural livelihoods are subjected to natural hazard events that wipe out crops and leave farmers heavily indebted.

The Bhola Slum provides insight into what the future might look like if rates of rural-to-urban migration across the globe continue to increase. The rapid pace of urbanization in cities has reduced the amount of available land and raised real estate prices  forcing those who come in search of better livelihood options to take refuge in overcrowded, hazardous urban slums. For the migrants who have come to this urban enclave, the choice of where to live is driven by practical considerations, such as the affordability of housing, proximity to employment, social networks and kinship ties. Affordability for the poor means a trade-off, as many are forced to accept great risks to be near an urban center where they hope to earn a stable income.

This dynamic of continuing expansion into risk zones is a challenge for governments, urban planners and development organizations. These informal settlements lack municipal services and infrastructure and feature unsafe construction practices. Coupled with conditions of extreme poverty, these settlements are highly susceptible to destruction from natural and man-made disasters. Lack of potable water, non-existent drainage systems, flood waters that mix with sewage flowing in the streets, and density that makes the threat of home fires a serious reality are all vulnerabilities that face settlements such as the Bhola Slum.

And so the question remains: Are the risks that migrants face shrinking or growing? We must do more by investing in resilient forms of basic infrastructure that meet the needs of growing populations, ensuring safe and affordable transport and access to better future livelihoods. We must provide the needed resources and hope for future waves of migrants that will continue to flow into our cities.

Laura Olson is a Senior Research Fellow with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University's Global Forum on Urban and Regional Resilience, and a Senior Consultant with the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP) Recovery Unit and World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction (GFDRR). She works on the transfer of best practice knowledge to communities trying to adapt to climate change and rebuild after natural disasters.
Immigration and Finland was another big theme. While Finland was one of two EU countries to fulfil its pledge in relocating migrants over the last two years, the countrys Finance Minister has been quoted by Reuters as saying that less welcoming countries shouldn't receive the same amount of funds from the EU.

Finlands trial of a basic monthly income was discussed in The Independent this week, with the British newspaper reporting that the policy leads to a reduction in stress levels.

In other news, plans for a Finnish grand mosque has led to mixed opinions and the BBC takes a look at Finlands history of Formula One success.

Finland's universal basic income reduces stress levels

The Independent

Citizens receiving a basic monthly income as part of a radical Finnish pilot scheme have seen a reduction in their stress levels, an official leading the trial has said.

The first of its kind in Europe, the scheme sees 2,000 people receive 560 euros (473) every month for two years. Recipients do not have to report whether they are seeking employment or how they are spending the money, which is deducted from any benefits they are already receiving.

Marjukka Turunen, head of KELA, the legal unit at Finland's social insurance agency, said as well as cutting bureaucracy, reducing costs and tackling poverty, the scheme was having an indirectly positive effect on people's mental health.

There was this one woman who said: I was afraid every time the phone would ring, that unemployment services are calling to offer me a job, Ms Turunen told US-based broadcaster Kera News.

Original article was published by on 08/05/2017 and can be found here.

Finland is leading the way in migrant relocation

EUobserver

Over the last two years, Finland has used the EU relocation scheme to provide shelter to a large number of vulnerable children.

Only two countries  Finland and Malta  are set to fulfil their initial pledges before the scheme, which aimed to relocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece to other EU member states, closes in September.

According to European Commission figures from 5 May, Finland has already relocated 1,433 out of 2,078 people, fulfilling 69 percent of its quota.

"For the remainder of our allocation, we pledge to take 100 people from Greece and 50 from Italy every month and we hope to receive our full allocation by the due date of 26 September," said Monna Airiainen, relocation officer at the Finnish immigration service.

Original article was published by on 10/05/2017 and can be found here.

Countries should receive less EU funds if they are unwilling to accept migrants, says Finnish Finance Minister

Reuters

The European Union should attach more conditions to development funds earmarked for some member states in its next budget framework, Finland's finance minister said on Thursday, saying they should do more to share the cost of taking in migrants.

Eastern EU countries that are among the main beneficiaries of development funds, such as Poland and Hungary, have refused to accept migrants allocated to them under an EU quota scheme meant to handle a migrant influx into Europe since 2015.

"Supporting new and developing member states is an important part of the European project," Petteri Orpo told Reuters.

"But when we look forward, and at the migrant crisis, we just cannot stand by when payments from the net contributors are welcomed, but burden sharing is not."

Original article was published by on 11/05/2017 and can be found here.

Plans for a grand mosque cause friction

Middle East Eye

It is Friday in a suburb of Helsinki and Pia Jardi makes her way down a narrow staircase to sit on the worn carpet of a small, stuffy room.

Today she is one of the lucky ones. Others who cannot fit into this small "cellar mosque" will have to pray out in the snow.

As a Muslim she feels welcome here, but as a Finn she does not. The imam delivers his sermon in Somali, a language she cannot understand. She says her prayers, then leaves.

These scenes could be a thing of the past if Jardi, 51, has her way. She is leading a campaign to build Helsinki's first grand mosque.

Original article was published by on 02/05/2017 and can be found here.

Whats the secret behind Finlands Formula One success?

BBC

An interesting bunch, the Finns. For starters, the Finnish word for computer translates as "knowledge machine", while a Finn in a bad mood would be moping around like "a bear shot in the backside".

Perhaps most pleasingly of all, a passing Finn wondering after your sanity might question whether you are in possession of "all the Moomins in the valley".

Clearly, the Finns have much they can teach us. It is certainly the case so far as motorsport goes, particularly Formula 1.

The Nordic country may have a population of about five and a half million people, but that has not stopped them producing three world champions and - following Valtteri Bottas' maiden win at the Russian Grand Prix on 30 April - no fewer than five race winners.

Original article was published by on 07/05/2017 and can be found here.

Dan Anderson  HT

Photo: Lehtikuva / AFP / Alexander Nemenov
The Bank of Finland warns in its regular financial stability assessment that the housing demand that has bottled up during the last few years of sluggish economic growth could be set to erupt as the national economy continues to pick up steam.

The Bank of Finland has floated the idea of introducing a mortgage lending cap in an attempt to curb borrowing amid skyrocketing house prices.

The eruption, in turn, would boost the housing market and mortgage lending especially in population centres.

The Bank of Finland estimates that new measures are consequently required to prevent mortgage borrowers from going into insolvency. Such measures include introducing a new income-based mortgage lending cap, limiting mortgage re-payment terms and obliging mortgage borrowers to make re-payments, state Jukka Topi and Jukka Vauhkonen, both senior advisors at the Bank of Finland.

They provide an example of the effects of an income-based mortgage cap set at 500 per cent of annual income on a middle-income household: A family with 20,000 euros in savings, 40,000 euros in annual earnings and no assets  with the exception of the house they are interested in buying  to pledge as collateral would be able to take out a mortgage of 200,000 euros and, as a result, afford a house valued at a maximum of 220,000 euros.

The income based mortgage lending cap would thereby have no impact on the plans of the family, as the required loan-to-value ratio of 90 per cent would limit their mortgage to 180,000 euros.

The cap would, in the other hand, inhibit the familys ability to take out a new mortgage in the event that they start looking for a larger or otherwise more valuable house.

Topi and Vauhkonen calculate that if the value of the current house rose by 10,000 euros and the family continued to earn 40,000 a year, they would be able to take out a new mortgage of a maximum of 200,000 euros and, as a result, afford a house worth 230,000 euros. The current loan-to-value ratio requirements, in contrast, would allow the family to borrow as much as 270,000 euros.

Although an income-based mortgage lending cap is similar to the loan-to-value ratio requirements, its structure makes it a more suitable means to curb borrowing in circumstances where house prices are rising rapidly. An income-based cap ties mortgage amounts to income developments, which are typically stabler than house prices, write topi and Vauhkonen.

They also acknowledge that supplanting the loan-to-value requirements with an income-based mortgage cap could lead to homeowners taking out mortgages exceeding the value of houses.

Such households would be extremely vulnerable to disruptions in their personal or the public economy, which would increase the likelihood of banks suffering credit losses. It would therefore be justified to have both an income-based mortgage cap and the loan-to-value requirements in place simultaneously, they argue.

Aleksi Teivainen  HT

Photo: Jarmo Stenmark  Lehtikuva

Source: Uusi Suomi
Prince Charles showed his sporting prowess when he belted a sliotar across the grounds of Kilkenny Castle.

The Prince of Wales and the Duchess Of Cornwall became the first British royals to visit the Marble City since 1904.

Legendary Kilkenny manager Brian Cody and Henry Shefflin - the only 'King' Kilkenny recognises these days - were impressed with the Prince's valiant effort.

Afterwards, Charles expressed relief that he had not disgraced himself by "missing the goal and hitting a member of the press corps between the eyes".

Welcome

Among those giving Charles and Camilla a warm welcome were Nina Kavanagh (15), Ruth Grace (16) and Lauren Caldbeck (15), all of whom had taken the day off school especially.

"It's OK though," said Ruth. "Our parents know. It's all above board."

Camilla was wearing a sage green suit in light tweed made from a bolt of Magee fabric she was presented with in Donegal last year.

The Prince wore a light grey suit in his very own Prince of Wales check with a pink handkerchief emerging with a flourish from his top pocket.

The couple took their time with the crowds, shaking hands and chatting - mostly about the glorious weather.

Then they enjoyed a spot of shopping at the farmers' market outside the castle.

Camilla bought chocolate truffles and a pottery jug with a 20 note proffered by a lady-in-waiting.

Were the chocolates a little gift for Charles, perhaps? "No, they're for me," the Duchess said rather firmly.

The Prince was offered a herbal shot but sniffing cautiously, recoiled.

"The most fiendish-looking drink I've ever seen in my life," he described it later in his speech.

Charles and Camilla checked out the award-winning animation work being done at Cartoon Saloon before splitting up.

Camilla spent the afternoon at the Irish National Stud while Charles dropped in on the United Nations Training School Ireland in the Curragh where personnel prepare for peace missions.

Charles described the relationship between Ireland and the UK as being "very special".

"I have every intention of making it even more so if I can.

"Coming to Ireland gives us the opportunity to show the enormous strength and warmth of our relationship and build on reconciliation."
Peter Jennings has not yet indicated how he intends to plead

A Dublin man has been sent for trial accused of having child pornography at his home in the north of the city.

Peter Jennings (49) had a book of evidence served on him when he appeared at Blanchardstown District Court.

Mr Jennings, of Dunsink Road, Finglas, is charged with one count of possession of child pornographic images and video files.

The offence is alleged to have happened at his home address on July 13, 2010.

A state solicitor said the case was before the court for the service of a book of evidence. This was ready and was served on the defendant.

The state solicitor said there was a single charge contained in the book and the Director of Public Prosecutions was consenting to the case being returned for trial to the present sittings of Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Judge McHugh gave the defendant the formal notice that he must provide details of any alibi he intends to rely on in the course of his trial to the prosecution within 14 days.

Interview

He assigned free legal aid to cover a solicitor and one junior counsel in the circuit court, after an application was made and a statement of the defendant's financial means was handed in to court.

There was no garda objection.

The judge also ordered disclosure by the prosecution to the defence of copies of the video of the Mr Jennings' garda interview.

He remanded the defendant on bail under the same terms and conditions set down while his case was previously before the district court.

The case was adjourned to May 19, when the defendant will appear before court number five in the Criminal Courts of Justice.

Mr Jennings, who has not yet indicated how he intends to plead to the charge, did not address the court during the brief proceedings.

He left the court after signing a new bail bond.

No details of the allegations against him were disclosed in court.
The mother of a 13-year-old boy who was airlifted to hospital after being attacked by two teenagers has spoken out about her son's terrifying ordeal.

Keane Gallagher-Payton, from Ennistymon, Co Clare, was assaulted by two boys aged 14 who are pupils at a different school in the town.

Speaking yesterday, Keane's mother Clare said he was "very lucky" that his injuries weren't more serious.

"It was a very difficult thing to go through for us all but hopefully Keane will be okay," she said.

Doctors say Keane will make a full recovery but Ms Gallagher is concerned about the impact it will have on him psychologically.

"I'm worried he may struggle in the coming weeks and months with his confidence and that he won't feel safe," she said.

When asked about the attackers, Ms Gallagher said: "I'm angry and upset about what they did to my son but I'm hoping it just got out of hand and they didn't actually intend on hurting him so much.

"I suppose that's what happens in a lot of these cases, but young ones in particular don't seem to think about how simple it can be to cause such potentially life-threatening injuries."

Awful

Keane was recently in the news for coming first in his age group at the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge in Maynooth, which attracts entries from pupils across Ireland.

"I didn't expect him to be in the news again so soon, especially in these circumstances," Ms Gallagher said.

"We are hoping he will be released from hospital this evening if his stats remain stable. He has recovered well and has shown no other signs of seizing."

She said the two boys who assaulted him were known to Keane and would not be considered troublemakers, which made it all the more shocking.

The assault took place between 1.15pm and 2pm while the teenagers were on their school break.

It is believed Keane was knocked to the ground, resulting in him suffering a head injury.

After being assessed by paramedics, the decision was made to airlift him to University Hospital Limerick for treatment.

Ms Gallagher flew on the helicopter with him and admitted it was an awful experience, but is thankful he is on the mend.

"It was extremely frightening. We're lucky I suppose, it could have been much worse."
The damage caused by a massive apartment blaze in west Dublin could cost hundreds of thousands of euro to repair and see nearly 100 people forced out of their homes for many months.

Dozens were left homeless when 24 properties were badly damaged by the fire, which was believed to have been started when a barbecue on a balcony ignited the roof of a block in the Verdemont apartments complex on Snugborough Road on Wednesday night.

The fire tore through the roof space of the apartment to neighbouring properties, and then spread into those flats when the ceilings collapsed.

Ten Dublin Fire Brigade units fought the blaze using a turntable ladder and, as a result, the apartments underneath the blazing units suffered extensive water damage.

Investigators combed the scene yesterday as they gathered evidence to confirm the cause of the fire. The remains of a barbecue were taken away for analysis.

Meanwhile, residents were critical of what they said was poor access for the fire brigade to the main area of the fire.

"Dublin Fire Brigade were brilliant, but they had to fight the fire from the car park because they can't get their engines around the other side of the building, where the fire started on a top balcony," said one woman.

Some of the property owners and tenants wept and were comforted by friends and family as the true extent of the damage became clear yesterday.

Challenge

Jim O'Connor, of the O'Connor Property Management Company, explained to residents that they were waiting for structural engineers and insurance assessors to examine the scene before allowing anyone in to retrieve their belongings.

He said a lot of people had been put up by family members on the night of the fire, while Fingal County Council and the Civil Defence had provided temporary accommodation for a handful of families.

"The real challenge here will be accommodating people in the long term," said Mr O'Connor.

"The building won't be reinstated for months and there are 24 properties affected in the main block and two adjacent properties as well."

Local TD Ruth Coppinger said the situation for tenants was particularly concerning. "Renters have less control, they are trying to contact landlords to find out about insurance and need somewhere to live," she said.

"There are many questions. Does the management company cover the provision of alternative accommodation or is it down to Fingal County Council?

"And does the landlord's insurance cover the contents of those renting or is that up to the tenants?

"These questions need to be answered."

Meanwhile, it has emerged that a previous fire in 2002 claimed the lives of two young people at Verdemont, close to where Wednesday's fire happened.

Louise Wall (20) and her friend Mick Farrell (24) were found dead in her apartment. There had been a fire in the kitchen in the hours before the bodies were found.

Pungent

Firemen responding to the fire noticed a pungent, toxic-like smell and observed that plastic light fittings had melted in the heat.

The fire went out by itself, indicating a lack of oxygen in the apartment.

Ms Wall's body was found in the bath - she appeared to have fallen in after becoming unconscious. Mr Farrell's body was found in the bedroom.
Early voting for Sullivan Countys municipal elections Tuesday ended Thursday and the total number of votes is lower than in 2015.

A total of 3,094 people voted early this year  885 from Bristol, 116 from Bluff City and 2,093 in Kingsport, which is 12 percent, 45 percent and 14 percent of registered voters, respectively, according to Sullivan County Administrator of Elections Jason Booher. Early voting began April 26.

Two years ago, a total of 3,371 voted early, 261 from Bristol, 69 from Bluff City and 3,401 from Kingsport.

In Bristol, Tennessee, three seats each on City Council and the Board of Education are up for grabs and the only contested race is the South District City Council seat held by Councilwoman Margaret Feierabend. She faces a challenge by Bryan Boyd, a former Sullivan County commissioner.

Incumbent Council members Chad Keen, who is mayor, and Lea Powers are running unopposed, as are Board of Education members Jill Morgan, Nelson Pyle and Jim Butcher.

In Bluff City, three seats on the Board of Mayor and Aldermen will be filled.

In Kingsport, the mayoral post, four alderman seats, and two Board of Education seats are on the ballot.

Polls are open from 8 a.m.  8 p.m. Tuesday. Federal or state photo identification is required to vote unless an exception applies. College student identifications are not accepted.

Voting locations and sample ballots are available at the commissions website, www.scelect.org. Voter registration status and a comprehensive guide to voter registration are also available.
BRISTOL, Va.  A large amount of crystal methamphetamine and a loaded weapon were discovered Wednesday during a traffic stop in Bristol, Virginia, that involved a search and two arrests, according to court records.

At 3:38 p.m., Wednesday, Virginia State Police C.J. Lewis initiated a traffic stop on a 2006 Lincoln Navigator at the corner of East Valley Drive and Lee Highway. Lewis said in a criminal affidavit that he attempted to stop the vehicle for a dangling object.

Its unlawful in Virginia for objects to obstruct a drivers view, according to state code.

The Navigator, which was occupied by four men, pulled over into the Roadrunner Market parking lot next to a gas pump. The driver and a passenger fled on foot, Lewis wrote in the affidavit.

A rear passenger, identified as Joshua Clark, 34, of Bristol, Virginia, was told not to move, but he crawled out the front drivers side window and ran through the parking lot, the trooper said. The officer said he tackled the man, who began to resist. He continued to push and attempt to get away, the trooper said.

With help from two civilians, I was able to put handcuffs on subject," the trooper wrote.

State Police confirmed the man was also pepper-sprayed during the scuffle.

Clark was charged with one felony count of assault on a police officer, one misdemeanor count of eluding police and one count of resisting arrest.

One of the men who fled on foot, Benjamin B. Roberts, of Bristol, Virginia, was captured a short time later and was charged with one misdemeanor count of eluding police. He was issued a citation and released by police.

The other man who fled, identified in the affidavit as Gary. W. Coulter, 39, was captured by Bristol Virginia Police Department Detective Aaron Hankins about 7 p.m. Wednesday. Coulter was then handed over to State Police, who charged him with possession of drugs with intent to manufacture, sell or distribute, felon in possession of a loaded weapon, driving on a revoked license and eluding.

The vehicle was searched, and a loaded pistol, 7 ounces of crystal meth, bags and a digital scale were found, the affidavit states.

A fourth person in the vehicle did not attempt to flee and was not charged, police said.

Clark and Coulter are being held without bail at the Bristol Virginia jail. They are scheduled to appear in Bristol General District Court on July 27.
According to a new Associated Press report, 4,549 sexual assaults were reported in Virginias elementary and secondary schools during the four school years between 2011 and 2014. It was the second most reported by any state during that four-year period.

Florida reported 165. Iowa didnt report any.

Whats going on here? Is there really that much sexual violence going on in Virginia schools compared with schools in other states?

Good question. The upshot, as AP sees it, is that school district and state reporting practices vary so widely, with some states collecting data meticulously while others gather no information at all, that its next to impossible to get an accurate picture. Its not just comparing apples and oranges, its comparing apples, in many cases, with a complete absence of fruit.

It may seem unfair to tag Virginia with all those reported incidents because it is diligent in its record-keeping and upfront in its record-sharing. The reality is that Virginia is leading by example. California was tops in the country with 4,630 incidents reported. After Virginia, the number drops to 900 in New Jersey.

Unlike the tracking and reporting of sexual assault on the nations college campuses, there is no requirement for states to maintain records of such incidents in elementary and secondary schools. The AP refers to a case in Indiana, one of 18 states that does not collect any data on student sexual assaults. There, the case of a rape in a high school bathroom would not have been identified as an in-school incident had the details of the case not played out in court with a guilty plea by the boy.

Information coming out of states that have no reporting policy would be nonexistent if not for here-and-there reporting by districts that believe its important to bring in-school incidents to light. They can turn to the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a database of participating states crime reports collected by the FBI.

Those states that do file data have vastly different reporting standards, AP found, and categorize offenses in ways that blur the particular circumstances and make reaching conclusions difficult. At least one state reports forced kissing.

What makes this issue even more complex is that schools are being urged these days to deal administratively with as many behavioral problems as possible, and limit the infamous school-to-prison pipeline. But sexual assault cannot be dealt with like a playground fight or backtalk to a teacher. It is a crime.

AP begins its report with the story of a junior high school student in Maine who starting at age 12 complained to teachers and administrators of being taunted and bullied. There were physical attacks that eventually escalated into rape, three times. That part of the story he couldnt bring himself to tell until a year later.

A lawsuit brought in his case cites his school for failing to protect him by taking no action despite his continued reports of bullying.

Under pressure from superiors to keep information about incidents contained, schools may not even suspend an offending student, let alone report him to police. Certainly, that would help explain why data from some school districts and states is so inconsistent or lacking.

After all, if reporting is voluntary, why collect data in the first place? Well, might it be worthwhile to bring attention to the problem and maybe prevent another young student from becoming the victim of a life-changing crime?

In Virginia, school districts are required by the state Department of Education to report all incidents of sexual assault by students, regardless of whether they resulted in discipline. That helps explain Virginias high figures, but it begs the question: How can an incident that merits reporting not merit some form of discipline?

Virginia officials reported four specific forms of sex assault: rape/attempted rape, sexual battery, aggravated sexual battery and offensive sexual touching.

The categories are straightforward, which should translate to a manageable collection of data. Other states should follow Virginias lead and cooperate in order to create a national database of comparable information.

In its report, AP quoted Charol Shakeshaft, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who specializes in school sexual misconduct: Schools are required to keep students safe. It is part of their mission. It is part of their legal responsibility. It isnt happening. Why dont we know more about it, and why isnt it being stopped? We have to agree.
Marylanders vote to legalize recreational marijuana

Question four on the 2022 midterm election ballot asked for the voters to decide if marijuana should be legalized in Maryland.
Vietnamese NA Standing Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong receives the APPF Presidency from Fiji Parliament. (Photo: VNA)

Addressing the ceremony, Deputy Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of Fiji Ruveni N. Nadalo expressed his honour to transfer the APPF presidency and hosting of the 26APPF to the Vietnamese National Assembly (NA). He stressed that the Fiji Parliament believed the Vietnamese NA would organize the 26APPF successfully, pledging that the Fiji Parliament would assist the Vietnamese NA in organizing the event.

Authorized by Vietnamese NA leader Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, NA Standing Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong spoked that the nation was proud to be assigned the APPF Presidency and to chair the 26th APPF meeting in January 2018.

She appreciated APPF activities and contents in promoting the friendly and cooperative relations among parliaments; reinforcing dialogue mechanisms and exchange among parliamentarians; raising the role of parliaments in addressing common issues in the region, ensuring peace, stability and sustainable development.

Since its APPF membership in 1995, the Vietnamese NA has made great efforts in realizing its responsibilities in APPF activities, especially in 2005 when the Vietnamese NA, for the first time, organized the 13th APPF meeting in Quang Ninh province, which left deep impressions in international friends hearts.

Following the success of the Vietnamese NA in multilateral parliamentary activities, including at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU-132) and the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA-31), the Vietnamese NA pledged to do its utmost to successfully organize the 26th APPF meeting.



The Vietnamese NA hopes to receive continued support from IPU President and Secretary-General, as well as the coordination from parliaments, said Ms Phong./.
(JNS.org)-In his Independence Day message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled the "moment of triumph" in the 1948 creation of the state of Israel and praised the Jewish state's resilience.

"It was a moment of triumph for our people. We had been scattered around the world for millennia. And then we returned to our ancient homeland, to build a safe haven, where we could live, and thrive," Netanyahu said in a video message.

Netanyahu went on to praise the Israeli people for their ability to flourish in the face of annihilation.

"Now, many doubted that this tiny state of Israel would survive. We were surrounded by hostile enemies, who attacked us again and again. So perhaps, for some, this skepticism was warranted. But survive we did. Much more than that. We thrived," he said.

"And I have no doubt that in the coming 69 years, Israel will continue to thrive, be strong and prosperous," Netanyahu added.

President Reuven Rivlin said for Independence Day, "Sixty-nine years ago, in the moments just after [Prime Minister] David Ben-Gurion declared the birth of the state of Israel, we all went out to dance in the streets. We celebrated a hope which came true: to be a free people in our land, in Jerusalem."

Rivlin also lauded Israelis for their democratic society and technological prowess, saying Israel is "a shrine of freedom of expression, and a hub of innovation."
(JTA)The Center for Jewish Life at Princeton University denied space to the local chapter of J Street U for an exhibition created by the left-wing Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence.

The J Street U chapter decided to go forward with the exhibit, to be held Tuesday and, in another campus space, despite the possibility of causing a rift with the Center for Jewish Life, or CJL, which is affiliated with Hillel International, the Daily Princetonian student newspaper reported.

We do not take this step lightly, J Street U Princeton wrote in a statement posted on Facebook. Our relationship with the CJL is deeply important to us, and we consider the CJL and the Princeton Jewish community to be a home for us on campus. We want to continue to be a part of this community.

Following a meeting with Rabbi Julie Roth, the centers executive director, J Street U Princeton President Dylan Mittag told the Daily Princetonian that their relationship is intact.

J Street will remain a CJL organization, Mittag said.

J Street U has been affiliated with The Center for Jewish Life since 2014.

The center did not oppose J Street bringing the organization to speak on campus, Roth told the student newspaper.

However, given the sensitivities related to the timing of the event overlapping with Yom HaZikaron, the day commemorating Israeli soldiers killed in battle and in terrorist attacks, and Yom HaAtzmaut, the celebration of Israels Independence Day, we did not want to host the program in the building, she said

Breaking the Silence is an Israeli military veterans group that alleges the Israeli army abuses Palestinians. The photo exhibition it plans to bring to the Princeton campus includes soldiers testimonials and deals with the moral and strategic dilemmas that operating in the West Bank creates for the Israel Defense Forces.

We specifically wanted to bring Breaking the Silence to the CJL because of these issues deep relevance to the Jewish and pro-Israel communities at Princeton, the J Street U statement said.

Hillel Internationals guidelines prohibit its chapters from partnering with or hosting organizations, groups or speakers that deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders; Delegitimize, demonize, or apply a double standard to Israel; Support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions [BDS] against... Israel; [or] exhibit a pattern of disruptive behavior towards campus events or guest speakers or foster an atmosphere of incivility.

The center sponsored a group of students to attend the J Street national conference earlier this year and arranged for them to meet with J Streets national president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, a Princeton graduate.

Roth said in an email to the campus newspaper that the center has been engaged in a spirit of partnership with J Street U-involved students and noted that her organization sponsored several of them on a trip to Israel and the West Bank, where they met with both Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
(JTA)We Americans use the phrase the greatest generation to describe those who grew up during the Depression, prevailed in World War II and contributed to Americas postwar prosperity and influence. But on a visit last week to Jewish communities in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Belarus Minsk and Bobruisk, I came to realize that elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union deserve this recognition as well.

In many ways they are the other greatest generation, whose quiet heroism is inspiring and humbling. While their American Jewish counterparts have mostly enjoyed unprecedented security and comfort, elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union have confronted five almost unimaginable challenges.

First, many are Holocaust survivors. Take Maya, who I met at a Holocaust memorial service in Minsk. She talked about the day the authorities took her mother away to fill out paperwork for the family. Although Maya offered to join her mothernot knowing what would happen on that fateful dayher little brother vetoed the idea. Because he asked Maya to stay with him, their sister went instead.

Tragically, Mayas mother and sister never returned.

Maya found her mothers body hanging in the town square and never learned what happened to her sister. While the barbarity of what happened to them is hard for us to imagine, the family dynamics she describes are familiar. In any family, the youngest child might insist that one of his siblings should stay with him, so the other ends up going on an errand instead. In so many ways, the Holocausts victims were just like us

A second challenge is that many of these elderly Jews lost fathers in the war, among the millions of Soviet men who never returned. For example, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in the spring of 1941, Reuvens father was drafted and sent to the front. A few days later, the family left their home in Bobruisk to stay ahead of the advancing German army. Shortly thereafter, Reuvens father returned to help his family escape, but all he found was a crater where the family home had been. He returned to the front and eventually died in battle. Seventy-six years later, Reuven cried telling us that his father perished without knowing whether his family was alive.

Third, after the war ended, although proudly victorious in defeating Nazism, this generation of Jews continued to endure persecution in the Soviet Union. The regime enforced strict quotas to limit the access of Jews to education and professional opportunities. In addition, because of the regimes hostility to religion in general, and to Judaism in particular, Jews were not allowed to study Jewish texts, observe Jewish holidays, pass on Jewish traditions to their children, join synagogues or operate other Jewish communal institutions.

Fourth, because of this discrimination, as well as the lack of economic opportunity more generally in the region, elderly Jews in the former Soviet Union are the poorest Jews in the world despite their advanced education and well-known appetite for culture and the arts. A retired engineer or doctor in Ukraine has a pension of approximately $2 per day, and her counterpart in Russia has a pension of perhaps $5 per day. I visited an elderly woman in Bobruisk who lives in what once was a stable. She has no indoor plumbing and relies on a small wood stovewith fuel for only a couple of hours a dayto combat the effects of a Belarus winter. Thousands of elderly Jews live in this sort of poverty throughout the region. The conditions are hard to imagine for those who have not seen them firsthand.

Finally, many of these elderly Jews are alone in confronting these harsh conditions. In the past quarter century, a million Jews have left the former Soviet Union for Israel, and hundreds of thousands have gone to the United States and Western Europe. Obviously, this emigration has been a great success for the immigrants themselves, and for the new communities they now call home. But those left behind have had to fend for themselves. Unlike their Christian neighbors, who depend on their children for care, elderly Jews often are on their own.

These Jewish heroes deserve our help, and improving their lives is much easier than you might think. Today, the organization I lead, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, helps care for 110,000 elderly Jews, including 50,000 victims of the Nazis. With partners such as the Claims Conference, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and Jewish federations, we provide food, medicine, home care and other forms of critical support. The cost of home care averages about $4 per hour. For those of us who arrange care for relatives in the U.S., this number is astonishingly low. The cost of our daily cappuccino is enough to change the life of one of these Jewish heroes.

It is no secret that the American Jewish community is divided about many important issues today. But there can be no disagreement about the sacrifice and heroism of this generation, or about the life-saving impact we can have assisting them. Indeed, by helping them, we find the profound satisfaction of putting into action the sacred values and obligations that unite us as a people.

David Schizer is the CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee [JDC].
(JNS.org) As millions of Israeli and Diaspora Jews marked Israels 69th Independence Day, the United Nations cultural body UNESCO voted Tuesday, May 2, to adopt its latest resolution denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem.

The resolutionwhich passed in a 22-10 vote, with 23 abstentionsstates that all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which have altered or purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and in particular the basic law on Jerusalem, are null and void and must be rescinded forthwith.

The 10 countries voting against the resolution were the U.S., U.K., Italy, Netherlands, Lithuania, Greece, Paraguay, Ukraine, Togo and Germany. Among those voting in favor of the measure were Brazil, China, Egypt, Iran, Russia, South Africa and Sweden.

Italy was the only European Union country to publicly oppose the resolution ahead of the vote.

Our opinion is very clear, Italian Foreign Minister Angelino Alfano said. UNESCO cannot be the place for a permanent ideological confrontation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday, There is no nation in the world for whom Jerusalem is more holy than for the Jewish people, adding that UNESCO is trying to bury this truth. We will uphold it.

Israels Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon called the resolution distorted and shameful, and said it will not change the fact that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

Last October, UNESCO passed two separate resolutions ignoring Jewish and Christian ties to Jerusalems holy sites.
(JTA)All 100 members of the U.S. Senate signed a letter to the leader of the United Nations urging a comprehensive effort to remedy the organizations anti-Israel agenda.

The letter, which was sent April 27 to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, praised his recent decision to disavow an anti-Israel report from the U.N.s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia and identified four specific areas where further action could be taken to rectify the unacceptable treatment of Israel at the world body.

The senators urged Guterres to eliminate or reform various standing committees focusing on issues relating to Israel, press members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to stop advancing measures targeting Israel, reform the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, and to seek change in the Human Rights Councilin particular the elimination of Agenda Item VII, the only country-specific item on the councils agenda, which specifically targets Israel.

Too often, the U.N. is exploited as a vehicle for targeting Israel rather than as a forum committed to advancing the lofty goals of its founders, the senators wrote. These actions have at times reinforced the broader scourge of anti-Semitism, and distracted certain U.N. entities from their original mission.

The letter comes just days after Guterres, in an address to the World Jewish Congress in New York, denounced anti-Semitism and said Israel deserves to be treated at the United Nations like any other country.

As secretary-general of the United Nations, I can say that the State of Israel needs to be treated as any other state, with exactly the same rules, Guterres said Sunday.

In their letter, the senators issued no threats regarding funding to the United Nations, though they did note that the United States is the single largest contributor to the organization. Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced it had canceled funding for the U.N.s Population Fund, which provides family planning and contraception services to women in 155 countries.

As duly elected representatives of the American people, we take seriously our responsibility to conduct rigorous oversight of U.S. engagement at the United Nations, the letter said. We are deeply committed to international leadership and to advancing respect for human rights. But continued targeting of Israel by the U.N. Human Rights Council and other U.N. entities is unacceptable.

According to The Times of Israel, the letter was authored by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Christopher Coons, D-Del.
New York State Police enlist publics help to find cemetery vandals

(JTA)The New York State Police have called on the public to help find the vandals who defaced a Jewish cemetery with anti-Semitic graffiti.

The brick wall surrounding the Beth Shalom Cemetery in Warwick, a suburban town located about 90 minutes north of Manhattan, was vandalized with black spray-paint including the words Heil Hitler, swastikas and SS lightning bolts. The attack occurred in October, just days before the observance of Yom Kippur.

A Catholic cemetery across the street owned by Temple Beth Shalom of the Village of Florida was not vandalized.

Both state police and Town of Warwick police are investigating the vandalism, the Times Herald-Record newspaper reported. The police have put out a call in the local media for assistance, including publicizing the numbers for their tip lines.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Orange County is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in the case.

Family of Palestinians killed in arson attack sues Israel for $2.8 million

JERUSALEM (JTA)The family of a 6-year-old Palestinian boy whose parents and brother were killed in an arson on their West Bank home has filed a lawsuit against the State of Israel demanding $2.78 million in compensation, saying its settlement policies led to the attack.

Right-wing Jewish extremists were indicted in the July 2015 firebombing in the Palestinian village of Duma in the northern West Bank. Ahmed Dawabshe, then 4, was the only survivor of the attack that killed his brother, Ali, 18 months old; father, Saad; and mother, Riham.

The lawsuit filed Monday in the Nazareth District Court charges Israel with criminal negligence, saying that the state failed to demolish illegal outposts, including the one from which the alleged attackers came, The Times of Israel reported.

The writing was on the wall and it was clear to everyone that the leniency toward the hilltop youth, outpost residents and lawbreakers would quickly spill over from property damage and non-fatal attacks to deadly attacks that would end the lives of the innocent Palestinian residents, the lawsuit said, according to the news website.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said late last month that Ahmed Dawabshe was not eligible for compensation because he does not qualify as a terror victim, the law does not apply to Palestinians and that there was no request on file for such compensation.

Liberman was responding to Arab Joint List lawmaker Yousef Jabareen, who had asked why the boy had not received money from the state.

Ahmed is being cared for by his grandparents.

Prince Charles will not be visiting Israel, Britains Foreign Office says

(JTA)Prince Charles of Britain will not be visiting Israel, despite media reports citing senior officials saying he would, according to a London newspaper.

Charles, the heir to the throne, would have been the first member of the royal family to make an official state visit to Israel since its founding.

Her Majestys Government makes decisions on Royal Visits based on recommendations from the Royal Visits Committee, taking into account advice from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a Foreign Office spokeswoman said in a statement. The Committee never proposed a royal visit to Israel for 2017. Plans for 2018 will be announced in due course.

The British tabloid The Sun reported Sunday that the decision made by the Foreign Office may have been taken to avoid upsetting Arab nations in the region.

Though the visit was not officially announced, senior officials had been cited in the British and Israeli media in recent weeks saying that Charles or another member of the royal family would travel to Israel to mark the 100th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which stated the British governments support for the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin extended an invitation for a royal state visit to Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson at a meeting in Jerusalem earlier this year. The Sun reported that the invitation never officially reached the royal family.

In October, Charles made a private trip to Israel to attend the funeral of former Israeli President Shimon Peres. While there he visited, in secret, the grave of his grandmother, Princess Alice of Battenberg, who is buried in the Church of Mary Magdalene on the Mount of Olives. She died in 1969 in London and was transferred to a crypt in the church in 1988 in accordance with her wishes.

In general, the British royal family refrains from official visits to Israel except for state funerals; it does not recognize eastern Jerusalem as part of Israel. The few royal visits to Israel have been defined as private. Prince Philip visited in 1994 for a ceremony at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial to honor his mother. Prior to the ceremony, Philip and his sister, Princess Sophie, visited their mothers coffin.

Kushner Companies apologizes for name dropping Jared during China investors pitch

(JTA)Kushner Companies, the company owned by the family of senior presidential adviser Jared Kushner, reportedly has apologized for using his name during a real estate sales pitch to Chinese investors.

Nicole Meyer, Kushners sister, made the pitch on Saturday in Beijing to more than 100 Chinese investors. Meyer said the project means a lot to me and my entire family and specifically mentioned her brother, the son-in-law of President Donald Trump.

In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO, and recently moved to Washington to join the administration, she said at the conference.

In a statement issued the following day, the Kushner Companies said that the company apologizes if that mention of [Meyers] brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. Jared Kushner has nothing to do with this project, spokeswoman Risa Heller told the Daily Beast.

Ms. Meyer wanted to make clear that her brother had stepped away from the company in January and has nothing to do with this project, the company said in the statement, which was cited Monday by CNN.

Kushner, who is married to the presidents daughter, Ivanka Trump, reportedly has played a key role in smoothing U.S.-China relations. Kushner served as a manager or president at six entities associated with the New Jersey real estate project until January, according to The New York Times, citing Kushners government ethics disclosure form.

According to the Times, during the Beijing meeting, Meyer talked about how family values had shaped Kushner Companies and spoke about her grandparents, who survived the Holocaust. She also spoke about her father, Charles Kushner, the company founder who spent time in prison for illegal campaign donations, tax evasion and witness tampering.

Meyer also spoke to investors in Shanghai on Sunday.

Chairman of US Joint Chiefs of Staff arrives in Israel for official visit

JERUSALEM (JTA)Gen. Joseph Dunford, the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Israel for an official visit.

Dunford landed Monday in Israel, where he will be the guest of his Israeli counterpart, Lt. Gen Gadi Eizenkot. It is Dunfords third visit to Israel.

Along with Eizenkot, Dunford is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman and additional military commanders to discuss cooperation between the two countries armies and mutual challenges, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

On Tuesday, Dunford will be greeted with an official military honor guard at the Kirya, the IDFs headquarters in Tel Aviv. He is also scheduled to tour the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.

Texas bill would allow adoption agencies to deny couples based on religion

(JTA)Texas lawmakers are set to vote on a bill that would allow state-funded or private faith-based adoption agencies to reject couples seeking to adopt children if they are Jewish.

The state House proposal also would allow potential adoptive couples to be rejected if they are Muslim, interfaith, gay or single, according to reports.

A vote on the bill in the Republican-controlled House scheduled for Saturday was pushed off until Monday, CNN reported.

Proponents say the measure will support the religious freedom of adoption agencies and foster care providers. Opponents say it violates the Constitutions requirement of equal protection under the law.

The bill also could require children in the foster care system to comply with a familys faith-based requirements, including sending gay children for conversion therapy or denying them access to birth control.

Five other states have approved similar laws protecting faith-based adoption organizations that refuse to place children in families based on religion or lifestyle. South Dakotas law is the most similar since it also covers agencies that receive state funding.

French Jews relieved Macron won but worried over Le Pens electoral gains

(JTA)Leaders of French Jewry expressed relief at the defeat of the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the presidential election but concern that she received more than a third of the vote.

Le Pen, whom the chief rabbi of France and the CRIF umbrella of Jewish communities have decried as dangerous to democracy and minorities, received 34.2 percent of the vote compared to the 65.8 percent for the centrist candidate, Emmanuel Macron, according to a report by Le Monde based on exit polls from Sundays final round of the elections.

I am happy with the result of Emmanuel Macron being elected president, which constitutes a veritable relief for all our nation and for the Jewish community of France, Joel Mergui, the president of the Consistoire, wrote Sunday evening in a statement by his group, which is responsible for providing religious services to Jews.

Chief Rabbi Haim Korsia, who is employed by the Consistoire, also spoke of his satisfaction from the vote. But in his statement, Korsia also referenced concerns over the support shown to Le Pena nationalist who seeks a ban on wearing Jewish and Muslim religious symbols in public, ritual slaughter and the provision of pork-free meals in school cafeterias.

The vote was the best electoral result ever obtained by her National Front party, which was established in the 1970s by her father, the Holocaust denier Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has multiple convictions for inciting racial hatred against Jews. He clinched 18 percent of the vote in the 2002 presidential electionsthe first time that National Front made it to the final round.

Well aware that many voices have been raised in favor of the candidate of the National Front, the Chief Rabbi calls on all political leaders to take seriously the voters cry of despair and anger in order to review their platforms and to regain the enthusiasm and support of the citizens, the statement by Korsias office read.

Francis Kalifat, president of CRIF, called the victory incontestable and congratulated Macron.

Everything starts right now, Kalifat, who has lobbied intensively in favor of Macron in recent days, wrote optimistically on Twitter.

The president of European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor, said in a statement: We remain extremely concerned by the still large support for parties of the far right, not only in France but across Europe. He also wrote that the result was a victory against hate and extremism by the French people.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the president of the Conference of European Rabbis, said in a statement that while Macrons election is extremely encouraging, his group is concerned that a third of the French population voted for a dangerous political leader. This, he said, is part of a worrying political landscape in Europe and the increase in far-right rhetoric which has swept the continent.

Macrons positions on Israel, its conflict with the Palestinians and the Middle East in general correspond with those of the government of Frances outgoing president, Francois Hollande, Macron told a predominantly Jewish crowd in March during a town hall meeting organized in Paris by CRIF.

Hollande is one of Frances least-popular presidents. Citing dismal approval ratings, he had withdrawn from the presidential race to better the chances of his party to remain in power.

The economic policies of Macron, a former banker who at 39 will be the youngest president in the history of the Fifth Republic of France, differ significantly from those of the Socialist Party. A believer in free-market economy, he is calling for an economic reform opposed by labor unions and advocates of Frances relatively generous welfare amenities.

This has alienated many left-wing voters in what could explain a historically low turnout in Sundays vote.

According to Le Monde, a quarter of registered voters did not show up to vote, making the turnout of 75 percent the lowest recorded in any final round of the presidential elections since 1969.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not address National Fronts gains in the vote in a statement congratulating Macron. He said that one of the greatest threats facing Israel and France is radical Islamic terror which has struck Paris, Jerusalem and so many other cities around the world, adding he was sure the two countries will continue to deepen our relations.

President Donald Trump congratulated the people of France on their successful presidential election. Trump, who said last month that Le Pen was the strongest candidate on borders, added: We look forward to working with the new President and continuing our close cooperation with the French government.

Turkeys Erdogan accuses Israel of massacring Palestinians

JERUSALEM (JTA)President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Israel of massacres against the Palestinians and chided the international community for its silence.

Erdogan made his comments on Monday at the Al-Quds Forum in Istanbul, a two-day international event that brings together representatives of foundations, experts, academics, ministers and high-ranking officials from around the world to discuss the state of Muslim heritage in Jerusalem.

Speaking of Israel, the Turkish leader was quoted as saying in the Istanbul-based Daily Sabah newspaper, They feel they are immune to any punishment for their crimes, but the international community needs to stand up against them. It is impossible to establish peace in the region if the international law remains indifferent to massacres and cruelty.

Israels Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded to Erdogans comments in a statement issued on Monday night.

Those who systematically violate human rights in their own country should not preach to the only true democracy in the region, the statement said. Israel consistently protects total freedom of worship for Jews, Muslims and Christiansand will continue to do so despite the baseless slander launched against it.

Also at the forum, Erdogan called on Turks to visit the Al-Aqsa mosque often to protect its Muslim identity.

Turkey attaches great importance to the justified resistance of the Palestinians and will not yield to Israeli attempts to change the status quo in the Al-Aqsa mosque, Erdogan said. We as Muslims should visit the Al-Aqsa mosque more often; every day that Jerusalem is under occupation is an insult to us.

The mosque, under the control of the Muslim Waqf, is located in Jerusalem on what Jews call the Temple Mount.

Erdogan also criticized a bill being considered in Israel that would limit the volume of the Muslim call to prayer.

It is disgraceful for those who lecture us about the freedom of religion to turn a blind eye to this attempt. Turkey will not let these attempts against freedom of belief [prevail], Erdogan said. Why are they afraid of the call to prayer? Are they unsure of their own fate? We do not and will not treat our Jewish citizens like that.

State Department: Saudi Arabia video that removed Israel in Trump trip announcement was inadvertent mistake

(JTA)The State Department called the posting of a video by the U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia that removed Israel from an announcement about the presidents upcoming trip to the region an inadvertent mistake.

On Monday, Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., criticized the State Department for editing out Israel in the video posted on the Riyadh embassy website and Arabic-language Twitter account. The videos were no longer available on Monday afternoon and a video on the embassy site contained the announcement that included Israel.

At a time when the United States should be encouraging the governments of the regionand their peopleto promote tolerance, respect and mutual recognition, this video implies that the U.S. accepts Saudi Arabias public rejectionist position toward Israel, Engel, the Jewish ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

A State Department official told JTA in a statement that the embassy had taken the video from the social media account of a private Saudi citizen without realizing that Israel had been edited out.

Upon learning this, the U.S. Embassy immediately corrected the error, took down the video, and loaded the correct version to its social media accounts, the official said. The Embassy expresses its regret for this inadvertent mistake.

A video posted by the Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee claimed to show the version first posted by the embassy, edited so that Trump appears to say he will visit Saudi Arabia and the Vatican but does not mention Israel. Trump said Thursday that he will visit the three countries on his first overseas trip.

Pope and delegation of Hasidic Jews meet, dance at Vatican

ROME (JTA)Pope Francis danced with a delegation of Hasidic Jews and discussed with them issues including the protection of Jewish cemeteries in Europe and combating child sex abuse.

The pontiff held a 45-minute audience at the Vatican on Monday with the group, which was led by Rabbi Edgar Gluck.

A video on the Yeshiva World News website and also posted to YouTube shows the pope swaying to the music as members of the delegation dance and serenade him with the song Long years shall satiate him.

Yeshiva World News quoted Glucks son Zvi, who was part of the delegation, as saying the pontiff pledged to work toward enacting stronger rules against destroying Jewish cemeteries to build roads or homes.

Zvi Gluck, the founder and director of Amudim, an organization dedicated to helping Jewish victims of abuse and addiction, also tweeted that the pontiff had pledged zero tolerance for the sexual abuse of children and said We need to keep kids safe.

Born in Germany, Edgar Gluck, 80, divides his time between Brooklyn and Poland, where he holds the title of chief rabbi of Galicia. In the United States, where he has long been politically active, he was a co-founder of Hatzolah, one of the largest volunteer ambulance corps.

He has been involved in the preservation of Jewish cemeteries in Eastern Europe for decades and long served as a member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of Americas Heritage Abroad.

Gluck and Pope Francis met and discussed the plight of Jewish cemeteries last year when the pontiff visited Krakow for Catholic World Youth Day and, according to Yeshiva World News, the pope invited Gluck to continue the discussion at the Vatican.

German president takes swipe at Netanyahu during Hebrew U lecture

JERUSALEM (JTA)German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, in a gibe at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told an audience at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem that diverse voices are the oxygen of democracy.

Steinmeier, who met earlier on Sunday with Netanyahu, was criticizing the prime minister for canceling a meeting last month with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel after he refused to nix a meeting with representatives of two left-wing NGOs: BTselem, a human rights watchdog, and Breaking the Silence, a veterans group that alleges the Israeli army abuses Palestinians.

I believe that civil-society organizations which are part of the social debate deserve our respect as democrats, even when they take a critical view of a governmentin Germany, but also here in Israel, Steinmeier also said.

Steinmeier said that many had warned him that this was the wrong time to visit Israel, particularly in light of the Gabriel incident.

Preserving the miracle that is this friendship is an unshakable task incumbent on us Germans. It was therefore clear to me that my first trip outside Europe as federal president would take me here to Israel. The events of the past two weeks have done nothing to change thison the contrary, these discussions have strengthened my resolve to talk about democracy here in Israel, Steinmeier said.

There was no media coverage of Gabriels meeting with the NGOs and afterward he made no comment.

Israeli ministers praise Trump, bash PA at Jerusalem Post conference

NEW YORK (JTA)A parade of Israeli Cabinet ministers praised President Donald Trump and lambasted the Palestinian Authority at The Jerusalem Posts annual conference.

Five ministers from Israels right-wing governing coalition, as well as its consul general, spoke at the conference Sunday in New York City. They presented variations on the same message: The Trump administration is pro-Israel, and peace with the Palestinians is close to impossible.

The United States of America, after a few years in which the situation was completely different, sees eye to eye [with Israel] the danger posed by Iran, said Dani Dayan, Israels consul general in New York. The United States of America and Israel have a common view, and almost an exact view, of the situation.

Trump vowed recently to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, but even ministers opposed to Palestinian statehood expressed confidence that Trump is in Israels corner. Several thanked him for his impending visit to Israel this month.

I was personally encouraged that the Trump administration did not automatically adopt the two-state solution narrative, said Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked of the pro-settler Jewish Home party. I think the Trump administration will continue to positively surprise us.

Education Minister Naftali Bennett, Jewish Homes chairman, also reiterated his opposition to a Palestinian state, instead calling for a Trump Plan to invest in the Palestinian economy, modeled on the Marshall Plan that gave aid to Europe following World War II. Science and Technology Minister Ofir Akunis likewise promised to prevent a Palestinian state.

The settlements in Judea and Samaria are not the obstacle to peace, Akunis said to cheers, using the biblical term for the West Bank favored by Israels right. So long as I am elected to serve my country, I will ensure that a Palestinian state will not be created.

Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz called the Palestinian Authority anti-Semitic, and echoed a frequent Israeli government claim in saying peace with the Palestinians would be impossible until Palestinian schools stop inciting against Israel.

Can the extremist, corrupt, split, dysfunctional, totalitarian, anti-Semitic Palestinian Authority become a genuine partner for genuine peace in the Middle East? he asked, calling the question rhetorical. He was answered with cheers and cries of no.

Transportation Minister Israel Katz called for increased settlement in West Bank settlement blocs around Jerusalem, and called on Trump to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Israeli Labor Party Chairman Isaac Herzog also praised Trump, but unlike the other speakers, expressed confidence in his effort to reach a deal.

I commend President Trumps effort to bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians, Herzog said in an interview with Yaakov Katz, The Jerusalem Posts editor in chief. I believe hes adamantly committed to this cause. So far, the way hes handled this mission is impeccable. I think there is a spirit of change that needs to be seized.
Vietnams dishes introduced at the event (Source: Vietnamese Embassy in Morocco)



This is the second event promoting national cuisines held in Morocco. The event this year aimed to promote 140 traditional dishes of 70 countries, including Vietnam, with a cookbook called "Saveur du Monde - A la table des Ambassadrices" (Tastes of the World - At the Table of Ambassadors).



Along with famous dishes of countries around the world, two Vietnamese dishes of beef noodle and Vietnamese spring roll are honoured with introductions in this book.



"This is a good and useful book because it collects a full range of traditional quintessential dishes from all continents around the world and it also symbolizes the friendship among nations with Morocco," famous Moroccan chef Moha Fedal said, speaking at the event.



With the aim of promoting the richness and diversity of Vietnamese cuisine, the Vietnamese Embassy in Morocco introduced chicken baked with honey and lemon leaf, a traditional delicious dish but less known by international friends.



According to Vietnamese Ambassador to Morocco Tran Quoc Thuy, cuisine promotion is also a way to promote Vietnamese culture to international friends. Therefore, Ambassador Tran Quoc Thuy was honoured to be at the event and hoped that through the dishes, the friendship among nations maybe stronger.



In addition to cuisine promotion of countries, the event also raised charitable funds with the proceeds from the sale of book to be donated to the Moroccan disabled people and children's charity fund./.
J Street, the left-wing group that claims to be staunchly opposed to Israeli settlements, has embraced an Israeli settlement.

What? How can that be?

This strange but true story began when the Israeli Knesset overwhelmingly adopted a law to prohibit the entry of foreign citizens who actively promote the BDS movement against Israel. The law does not prevent Israeli citizens from boycotting Israel. Their right to seek the destruction of their own country remains protected. The law does not block the entry of foreigners who happen to agree with BDS. Their right to believe what they want to believeand still enter Israelremains intact. The new legislation keeps out people who actively seek to undermine Israel.

For some reason, that was too much for J Street, which claims to be pro-Israel. For some reason, J Street, which claims it does not support BDS, wants Israel to open its doors to BDS organizers.

Even though the Anti-Defamation League has described the BDS movement as anti-Semitic, J Street wants BDS activists to have unfettered access to Israel. Fortunately, Israels lawmakers have more common sense than the radical-chic activists of Scarsdale and Potomac. Most Members of Knesset from the left-wing Zionist Union party joined MKs from the right in supporting the anti-BDS bill.

Last week, J Streets campus division, J Street U, mobilized 575 Jewish students to write a letter to Taglit-Birthright Israel demanding that it refuse to cooperate with Israeli law. The letter demands that Birthright refrain from any screening of applicants for its trips to Israel to determine if they are BDS activists. Or, to put it another way, J Street wants BDS promoters to be able to exploit Birthright and gain access to Israel under its cloak, so they can avoid being caught by the Israeli border authorities.

Then, this gets really interesting.

The 575 signatories described themselves as having already taken part in Birthright trips, or are planning to participate in them in the near future. And the letter mentioned what it said is Birthrights policy of not traveling to the West Bank, and thus supposedly recognizing a distinction between pre-1967 Israel and Jewish settlements beyond the 1967 lines. But when the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on the letter of the 575, it attached to its report a photo of Birthright participants (maybe even including some of the 575 signatories) posing and smiling in front of the best-known Jewish settlement beyond the 1967 lines.

Oops!

Thats right, in the photo we see smiling young Jewish men and women visiting a site beyond the 1967 linesa settlement, in occupied territory. Its on the itinerary of every single Birthright trip. Every J Street U student who has gone on Birthright must have visited it. Its called the Western Wall.

Thats rightthe Palestinian Authority considers the Western Wall occupied Arab territory. So does every single Arab country, and most other countries, for that matter. In their eyes, the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter surrounding it are illegal settlements.

Its a safe bet that many Birthright trips visit other parts of Jerusalem that the Arabs likewise consider settlementsFrench Hill, Ramot, Gilo, Talpiot Mizrach and more.

My point is not that the J Street U kids who visit these Israeli settlements are hypocrites. Maybe some are. Or maybe theyre just naive. Maybe theyre so poorly informed that they dont even realize that when they visit the Western Wall and many other parts of Jerusalem, they are visiting settlements.

No, my point is that theyand the entire Jewish leftare kidding themselves if they think that Jewish settlements that are out in the hills of Judea and Samaria are the obstacle to peace. Theyre fooling themselves if they think that getting Birthright to boycott Shiloh or Beit El or Kiryat Arba is going to advance the cause of peace. It wont. Because if the day ever comes that Israel tears down Shiloh or Beit El, that wont bring peace. The Arabs consider the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter to be settlements, too. And if they ever take over those places, then Haifa and Tel Aviv will be next on their march to liberate Palestine.

Stephen M. Flatow, a vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, is an attorney in New Jersey. He is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.
When the Obama administration managed to avoid a congressional vote on its nuclear deal with Iran in the fall of 2015 courtesy of a Democratic Senate filibuster, the argument surrounding the controversial agreement seemed to be over. Thats why Democrats are reacting with impatience and skepticism about statements from the Trump administration about re-evaluating the deal.

Yet rather than an impotent gesture designed to distract us from a decision not to tear up the accord that President Donald Trump blasted throughout the 2016 election campaign, the administrations talk of reopening the issue should be taken seriously. Trumps foreign policy team is coming to grips with the fact that everything it hopes to accomplish in the Middle East as well as threats to U.S. security are connected to an Iranian regime immeasurably strengthenedboth politically and economicallyby Obamas misguided effort to create detente with Tehran.

At best, the pact with Iran merely kicked the can down the road on the nuclear threat, since the accord will expire in a decade. With its advanced nuclear infrastructure and research ability left intact, Iran will soon be in position to achieve its nuclear ambitions while having its economy bolstered by revived ties with the West. Yet by deliberately ignoring Irans role as the worlds leading state sponsor of terrorism, its illegal testing of ballistic missiles, and its military adventures in Iran and Yemen, Obamas deal essentially made the Islamist regime even more dangerous to its Arab neighbors, as well as to Israel and the West, while seemingly leaving Trump with no choice but to live with the mess he inherited.

President Barack Obama left office certain that the unwillingness of Americas Western allies and the Russians to think about re-imposing sanctions on Iran essentially foreclosed any effort to revisit the deal. Western Europeans wish to benefit from the lifting of sanctions, while Moscow has worked closely with Iran in Syria as they pursue a joint war to keep the barbarous Bashar al-Assad regime in power. That effort ensures Islamic State will never be defeated, since so long as Assad and his Shia Iranian and Hezbollah forces are let loose in the country, the Sunni population will look to the terrorists for protection. Irans increased ability to deploy its terrorist allies also poses a threat to any effort to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians, or between Israel and the Arab world.

But those who assumed the Trump administration would give up and deem the problem insoluble may be wrong. Contrary to his critics assumptions, Trump doesnt need to tear up the deal to attempt to undo its consequences. The pact gave broad leeway to its signatories to interpret its terms. This means Trump can police Iran far more strictly than Obama did. By tightening restrictions on terror groupssuch as Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has a hand in much of the countrys economic activitythe U.S. can start to recreate the leverage over the ayatollahs that Obama threw away in his feckless drive to get a deal at any price.

By designating any company involved with the IRGC as a terrorist entity, the U.S. could use existing American laws to essentially re-impose economic sanctions in a way that would put the brakes on Irans efforts to reconnect to the global economy. Moreover, though the Europeans and the Russians may not agree, Washington could force the rest of the world to follow its lead by making it clear that those who do business with terrorists wont be able to also conduct commerce with American companies or use U.S. banks.

Support for such a policy should be bipartisan and ought to be strengthened by growing knowledge of Obamas disinterest in enforcement of the nuclear agreement. Politicos expose about the prior administrations decision to abandon the curbing of illegal Iranian efforts to procure military and nuclear material makes clear not only the mendacity of Obamas effort to sell the deal, but the need to re-open the issue of sanctions.

Re-opening this issue is the only course of action the U.S. can take to curb the growing power of Iran, and to have any hope of creating stability in the Middle East or defeating Islamist terror. Rather than dismissing this as mere Trumpian bluster, those who purport to care about Israel or peace should be applauding the effort to revisit the Iran deal.

Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributing writer for National Review. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.
HICKORY  Colleagues and friends of deceased Mayor Rudy Wright are expressing their shock and sadness at his death and remembering him for his love of people and devotion to the city.

Several city council members reacted with shock to Wrights death.

I feel like Ive been hit by a UFO or something, and Im sure thats going to be the consensus of the rest of the council, Councilman Vernon Tarlton said over the phone.

Im at a loss for words. Its a complete and total surprise to me. Its a terrible tragedy.

Councilman David Zagaroli said he was terribly, terribly upset, by the news, adding he has a world of respect for him.

I think hes done a great job for Hickory and its a great loss for us, Zagaroli said.

Mick Berry, who served as Hickory city manager for 12 years during Wrights time in office, said in a phone interview he was heartsick at the news and his thoughts and concerns are with Wrights family.

Those who knew Wright well and served with him were united in their recollections of Wright's personability, generosity and commitment to the community he served for nearly 16 years.

Salvation Army Development Director Steve Aaron said over the phone he has known Wright for more than 30 years and has been a neighbor of Wrights for the last few years.

And you know, he was one of the most, I guess, giving people Ive seen, Aaron said. I mean, he was just one of those special people that, he gave so much to the community.

Councilman Hank Guess said Wright never met a stranger.

Berry said Wright was always strongly supportive of city staff, making a point to attend functions to honor members of the staff.

Councilwoman Jill Patton spoke of Wrights personal warmth and optimism.

He was a great man, funny, just thought he was a wonderful person, Councilwoman Jill Patton said over the phone.

He was always looking on the positive side of things, and sharp mind, sharp wit and he was a pleasure to work with.

Reaction to Wrights death extended beyond the local level, with U.S. Rep. Patrick McHenry offering his condolences in a statement.

Mayor Wright was synonymous with Hickory, displaying his love for the city during the entirety of his nearly two decades of service as mayor," McHenry said in the statement.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Donna and the entire Wright family as they mourn this loss."

Several of those who returned calls Thursday evening said they had spoken with Wright about his future plans.

Councilman Danny Seaver said he had planned to accompany Wright on a trip to Hickorys sister city, Altenburg, Germany, in August.

Both Seaver and Cliff Moone, who was in the Rotary Club with Wright, said they believed the mayor planned to run for another term.

Seaver spoke of Wrights passion for the citys bond projects, and the mayors desire to stay in office to see progress made on them.

Wright was adamant about getting the projects he was passionate about, projects like the Zahra Baker All Childrens Playground, moving, Seaver said.

But he could be a real mover and shaker when he wanted to be, and he was real touched by the death of that young girl, as were touched by his, Seaver said.
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Chinas proposed meeting in Beijing in mid-May this year is as much to showcase its strategic geo-economic initiative of One Belt, One Road (OBOR)  now called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)  as to try and convince detractors, including inside China, of the viability of the project. Part of the propaganda effort is the release this week of video clips on the BRI in the form of childrens bedtime stories by the state-owned official English-language China Daily!

Essentially, this US$ 4.4 trillion project (US$ 1.4 trillion estimated for the land-based component and the balance for the maritime route) is a grand Chinese vision that seeks to link production centres in China with markets and natural resource centres around the world through a China-built communications artery. Beijings plan is for China-led financial institutions to lend money to countries willing to participate in the OBOR to create the required infrastructure, deploy the surplus Chinese manpower to build them and ensure that Chinas hitherto idle State-owned enterprises construct them. Chinas huge idle resources will thus generate revenue while giving a boost to the stagnating Chinese economy. At the same time Chinas armed forces are being upgraded and reoriented to protect Chinese investments and personnel abroad. According to informed estimates, Chinas Navy, for instance, plans to build 400 warships and 100 submarines by 2030.

There is an equally important strategic imperative. If it materialises, the OBOR, which will girdle the globe, will extend Chinas economic, diplomatic and military power well beyond its borders and across the world and place China virtually on par with the US. Chinas ambition is to achieve this by 2049, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China.

In the process, the OBOR will potentially squeeze the strategic space of Chinas neighbours and bend borders as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)  which is the first leg of OBOR where work has commenced  has already begun to do. By announcing the CPEC, Beijing discarded the ambiguity it had maintained for decades regarding Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), Gilgit and Baltistan and, ignoring Indias sovereignty and territorial concerns, chose to back Pakistans illegal occupation of these territories. The CPEC has also brought into sharp focus the military content of the CPEC and potentially collusive aspect of the strategic alliance forged between China and Pakistan.

A number of articles, commentaries and conferences in recent months, mostly inspired by Beijing, have advocated that India should come aboard this new economic initiative warning that otherwise it would be isolated. They have alluded to benefits that such participation would yield but been unable to quantify these. The four proposals advanced by the Chinese Ambassador in his speech at the United Service Institute in New Delhi on May 5 have been pointed to as new. However, the proposals were an obvious bid to soften India and get it to endorse the OBOR, ideally by sending a government delegation to attend the Summit in Beijing. All the proposals spoke of future objectives.

The proposals were: first, start negotiation on a China-India Treaty of Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation; second, restart negotiations for a China-India Free Trade Agreement; third, strive for an early harvest on the border issue; and fourth, actively explore the feasibility of aligning Chinas One Belt One Road Initiative (OBOR) and Indias Act East Policy. None of the suggestions is new.

The Treaty of Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation is a new undefined proposition. China presently has the following grades, in order of importance, of partnership with foreign countries: all-weather strategic partnership (only with Pakistan); comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation (only with Russia); all-round strategic partnership; comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership; comprehensive strategic partnership; strategic cooperative partnership (includes India); strategic partnership; and other types of partnerships, which omit the word strategy.

China has been pushing for a Free Trade Agreement for years and India is unwilling for obvious reasons to conclude it. Similarly regarding the border issue, India has been urging its early resolution for decades with China putting off its settlement to the next generation. The nub of the Chinese Ambassadors propositions was, therefore, clearly that India aligns with Chinas One Belt One Road Initiative.

Significantly, in his speech Chinas Ambassador Luo Zhaohui on four occasions said: Even we can think about renaming the CPEC. This was the first time ever that a Chinese official has publicly spoken of renaming the $ 51 billion CPEC project but, pertinently, this sentence was deleted from the text of the Ambassadors talk within hours of being posted on the Embassy website. It was given out that this was because of a protest by Pakistan. Chinese analysts including in Chinese think-tanks have, however, recently suggested that Beijing had perhaps been hasty in announcing the OBOR and CPEC and not adequately consulted certain key countries.

Jayadeva Ranade is a former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India and is President of the Centre for China Analysis and Strategy

The views expressed are personal
The recent spells of unrest in Kashmir (the challenge of stone-pelting street protesters besides active theatres of terror) have led many to conclude that the acceptable threshold of violence has been crossed, pushing the situation back to the nineties. This situation looks all the more daunting in the light of the claim that young and intelligent minds are being drawn to the terror fold. The claim does not bear the scrutiny of empirical evaluation.

The profiling of new age terror across the globe fits the stereotype of young, educated and radicalised youth being attracted to it. But to what extent does such a profiling square with the ongoing Kashmir conflict? When it comes to joining the ISIS, the West witnessed a trend very similar to the description of educated and affluent youth being a part of it. Bangladesh has also been faced with a situation where the young and the affluent are perpetrators of terror crimes. Not long ago, pursuing credible leads in India several persons mostly from urban centres with sound educational backgrounds were found involved in terror-related activities and are currently facing prosecution. Among these ,there is only one individual from Kashmir.

So where exactly does the Valley stand? In South Kashmir, at present more than 80 locals are operating in tandem with outlawed terror outfits HM, LeT and JeM. This figure is by no means alarming when compared to that of a decade ago. In terms of local recruitment to the terror fold in South Kashmir ( which remains the hub of activities for home-grown recruits) the stereotypical profiling does not seem to hold good. Interestingly, of the educational profiles of 89 individuals with different terrorist outfits , 37 are under matriculate, 42 are just matriculate, six are graduates from local colleges, two post-graduates again from local institutions and two have technical backgrounds. With an exception of three or four, none had been outside the State. Most of them were from humble backgrounds.

The new face of terror is coming from rural Kashmir and not from the urban centres ,a departure from the trends elsewhere. Apparently increasing economic activities and exposure to outside world have contributed to this. Until a few years ago, the top echelons of the terror groups used to be in the urban centres in the Valley, which is not the case today.

These statistics bust some of the popular myths advocated in the national media.The first myth is that individual recruits to terror outfits have a sound educational background. Investigation has established that in all most all cases, the academic brilliance attributed to them is far from the truth.The second myth is that the recruits are all radicalised youth. The reason for joining militancy in most of the cases has been found to be peer-group contact and not a strong radical lineage. Of course, after joining the terror fold, expressing radical thoughts in the social media at times becomes a potent weapon in some cases. This is seen to gain attention give them the high moral ground to defend their acts of violence.

Not surprisingly, therefore, we have not yet come across lone-wolf attacks in the Valley which are a prominent tactic of radicalised elements elsewhere in the world. In the words of Marc Sageman ,the CIA veteran-turned-scholar, lone-wolf attacks constitute leaderless jihad. The present form of terrorist violence in the Valley does not reflect this. Consequently, almost all the suicide attacks are the handiwork of foreign terrorists from across the border and not homegrown ones.

Finally, the activities of these groups are largely seen as purely criminal acts involving robbery, killings ,extortion and so on. Some of the recent incidents of weapons snatching and bank robberies have established that the individuals involved in them are more prone to crime in the garb of militancy and are seen gloating about their achievements on social media rather than displaying any radical commitment.

The local elements in terror folds operate like gangs with no centrally organised hierarchy or command structures, hence Pakistan plays a key role in coordinating and organising them.

The challenge lies in handling them effectively through the legal instruments of the State. Studies across the world have revealed that a robust legal framework involving effective prosecution of these entities can scale down terror incidents and win the trust of society.

Swayam Prakash Pani is an IPS officer serving in Jammu and Kashmir. The views expressed are personal
Visualise some breathtaking landscapes  the mountains, the beaches, the transit pathways. And right in teh middle of the picturesque view, imagine a woman trapped in a box. Shocked? Thats exactly the expression that the works of Kuwaiti photographer Farah Salem seeks to evoke.

One of the pictures from Farah Salems performance-based photography from the series Cornered. (Farah Salem)

Salems works are displayed along with 44 photographs by 11 photographers, who were selected from a total of 785 applications, received from 84 countries. The entries were sent for International Women Photographers Awards  and the works of the finalists are on display at an exhibition in the Capital.

The captivity shown in Farahs works is not just by society but even ourselves; and Farahs pictures show how a woman is sometimes her own enemy, says Arantza Haramburu-Hamel, one of the organisers of the show. She adds that it was an open competition for which anyone (be it an amateur or a professional) could send their photographs.

A picture titled Red Bird from Haruhi Fujiis series that explores the concept of borders. (Haruhi Fujii)

From India, Kolkata-based Ranita Roys black and white frames narrate the story of her grandmothers life. Since my childhood I have seen her as a spirited woman. Now in her 80s, shes still the source of positivity, strength and motivation for all of us in the house. Though my grandfather died 5-6 years ago, she never let that hit her and is an inspiration for others to learn to live life independently, without allowing negativity to get to you, says the 22-year-old Roy, an MSc student who pursues photography as a hobby.

This picture by Ranita Roy, of her grandmother, symbolises the life of an Indian woman. (Ranita Roy)

The lives of many such strong women, like Roys grandmother, are depicted in the photos, which are clicked by other women.Most of the participants portrayed the subjects of freedom and border(s) in their work, adds Arantza.

Prior to Delhi, this exhibition was put up in Dubai and will now travel to Port Said, Egypt.

CATCH IT LIVE What: Exhibition by international women photographers Where: Alliance Francaise, Lodhi Estate On till: June 11 Timings: 11 am to 8 pm Nearest Metro Station: Jor Bagh on Yellow Line

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What happens when a present-day court issues summons to Mirza Ghalib, the 19th century Urdu poet? A play being performed in Delhi today is premised on this imaginative scenario. Ghalib turns up in the court to defend himself against charges of being an anti-nationalist.

Written by Danish Iqbal, a professor of Mass Communication at Jamia Millia Islamia and a Delhi-based playwright, the story starts when a filmmaker sues a rival filmmaker for using lyrics that are allegedly offensive. The lyrics are the words of Ghalib, a famous ghazal he had written:

Ibn-e-Maryam hua kare koi

mere dukh ki dava kare koi

(Let anyone the son of Mary be

How will I know till I find remedy,

translation from Rekhta.org)

Danish Iqbal has been writing plays for over two decades, including a popular play on Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, whom Iqbal calls the first martyr of secularism. He was working on the assimilation of all syncretic religions. He was killed for his secular ideals, says Iqbal. The play on Ghalib is being performed for the first time and is based on a Kafkaesque situation  the scenes flit between the real and the imagined and the plot keeps the audience guessing about what is happening even when it is real.

The act of summoning Ghalib to defend lines that he wrote over 150 years ago serves as a sharp commentary on todays India where whenever a film is released, people find things to object to and file frivolous litigations. In the play, one of the characters takes offence from the very first line of Ghalibs ghazal where Jesus is mentioned (Ibn-e-Maryam).

Iqbal suggests that it was in fact director Amit Bajajs idea to give it a contemporary twist. Today, expressing any opinion can make one an anti-national. But what happens when you look at Ghalibs works through todays lens? says Bajaj. His verses when placed in todays context end up hurting religious sentiments or compromising national security.

When Ghalib is summoned by the judge, to the surprise of the courtroom, he comes to defend himself. Placed in the current political context, Ghalib is termed an anti-national by the opposition lawyer for the following verses.

Na suno gar bura kahe koi

na kaho gar bura kare koi

(If someone speaks ill pay no heed

Stay silent if behave they sinfully)

But Ghalibs defence, laced with his customary wit, leaves the courtroom in splits. We all wait for Ghalibs return to his beloved city.

What: Anti-National Ghalib

When: 6.30 pm, May 13

Where: Shri Ram Centre, 4, Safdar Hashmi Marg, Mandi House. Call: 23714307

Entry: Tickets priced at Rs.300 - Rs.500

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A bank security guard killed his wife and two neighbours, both brothers, when he fired indiscriminately at people in a fit of rage before committing suicide at Madhya Pradeshs Ashok Nagar on Friday afternoon.

According to police, the guard Lakhan Raghuvanshi, said to be allegedly mentally unstable, had a fight with his wife and then created ruckus in his residential area under Kotwali police station while hurling abuses at people. After listening to his shouting, people came out of their houses. He then suddenly started firing indiscriminately with his licensed rifle.

In the firing, he killed his wife and two neighbours Vikas Jain and Sanjay Jain, both brothers. Another local resident was injured. Raghuvanshi also fired at least 20 rounds in air. When police force reached the spot, he shot himself dead.

The incident created panic among residents in the area. Police took the situation in its control.

Superintendent of police Ashoknagar Santosh Singh Gour said, It couldnt be known immediately who were the persons killed by the guard. Later, their identity was established and it came to be known that the woman killed by him was in fact his wife.

He said Raghuvanshi was allegedly mentally unstable. Police were investigating the matter to find out the reason behind the guards act.

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Actor Sanya Malhotra shot to fame after she played the role of Aamir Khans on-screen daughter in her debut film Dangal (2016). Even four months after the film released, Sanya feels terrible if anyone calls her lucky to have bagged a role in the path-breaking film. I feel Im blessed because I worked really hard. Luck toh nahi hai, kaafi mehnat kari hai iske liye. Im blessed for the kind of people I got to work with in my first film, says Sanya.

Actor Sanya Malhotra portrayed the role of wrestler Babita Phogat in Dangal, a biopic on wrestler Mahavir Phogat.

A few days ago, there were reports that the actor wasnt too satisfied with her performance. On being prodded further, she says, Im never happy with my performance. Even for the ballet dance video that I posted on my Instagram, I asked some hundred people before posting it, whether I should do it or not. I didnt like the choreography that I did. So yes, Im never content, which I feel is good for me.

Aamir sent me a letter of two pages that why I am such an important part of the film. It was so sweet of him to do that.

The actor laughs that the day she gets satisfied with her work, she will head home to Delhi. I shouldnt be happy because jis din khush ho gai, I will pack my bags and go back to Delhi and do something else. If you feel satisfied, growth ruk jaati hai, feels the actor, who has also shared this thought with her mentor Aamir Khan. And how did Aamir respond? He wrote a two-page letter to me, appreciating my presence in the film.

However, Sanya agrees that after a film like Dangal, more doors have opened for her in the film industry. Dangal was the best film to get at the beginning of my career. Honestly, I didnt expect the film to get this kind of reaction. I thought I will have to start from zero again, but Im happy to see the adulation that the film has received, says Sanya.

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Actor Arjun Rampal attended the much touted Justin Biebers maiden Indian concert in Mumbais DY Patil Stadium, along with his two daughtersMyra and Mahikaa. Soon after the gig got over, there were reports that his daughters were troubled and molested during the concert on May 10. Some of the reports suggested that Arjuns daughters were uncomfortable when photographers came too close to them to click pictures and the actor even shouted out at them.

Miffed with these false reports, Arjun took to twitter and lashed out at those who started these rumours. He posted a series of tweets and set the record straight with his side of the story. Just read now,photographers at the Bieber concert were unruly with my daughters. Utter nonsense.They infact helped us get thru. #fakenews, he wrote.

Just read now,photographers at the Bieber concert were unruly with my daughters.Utter nonsense.They infact helped us get thru. #fakenews  arjun rampal (@rampalarjun) May 12, 2017

The actor urged the media to report things right and not cook up stories.

Jesus,what is wrong with the media?My request to you is to report the truth,that's ur job.Not pushed any photographer.Pls prove if I have.  arjun rampal (@rampalarjun) May 12, 2017

Calling the reports baseless, Arjun also said that the instead of being rowdy, the photographers helped them instead.

My daughters and I watched the whole concert peacefully. Went home peacefully. To make up ur own stories is pathetic so please do clarify.  arjun rampal (@rampalarjun) May 12, 2017

The Bieber concert that brought thousands of Beliebers under one roof, was a hit among the youth, including Arjuns two daughters. The actors tweets urged that people should not make stories in their head.

You have no right to make up absolutely baseless stories about people. It's not cool. #fakenews  arjun rampal (@rampalarjun) May 12, 2017

Biebers Purpose Tour concert was attended by Bollywood celebrities such as Alia Bhatt, Kriti Sanon, Anu Malik, Raveena Tandon, Malaika Arora Khan, Arbaaz Khan, Sonali Bendre, among others. The Canadian popstar is reported to have left the country the same night without attending the Bollywood party planned for him or any photo opportunity.

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Adding yet another first to his huge repertoire of firsts, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan addressed the audience in a conference at TED Talks in Vancouver, Canada.

SRKs TED talks are full of inspirational instances, intelligently woven with motivational words.

The 51-year-old actor representing India at the global platform has been earlier graced by the likes of remarkable people like former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, astronaut Mae Jemison, Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to name a few.

In his TED Talk, the Chak De! India star said, My country has taught me the capacity for a human being to love is akin to godliness. It shines forth in a world which civilization, I think, already has tampered too much with. In the last few days, the talks here, the wonderful people coming and showing their talent, talking about individual achievements, the innovation, the technology, the sciences, the knowledge we are gaining by being here in the presence of TED Talks and all of you are reasons enough for us to celebrate the future us. But within that celebration the quest to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion has to assert itself, has to assert itself, just as equally.

He added, The people of this ancient land embraced me in their limitless love and Ive learned from these people that neither power nor poverty can make your life more magical or less tortuous. Ive learnt from the people of my country that the dignity of a life, a human being, a culture, a religion, a country actually resides in its ability for grace and compassion. Ive learned that whatever moves you, whatever urges you to create, to build, whatever keeps you from failing, whatever helps you survive, is perhaps the oldest and the simplest emotion known to mankind, and that is love. A mystic poet from my land famously wrote.

The King of Bollywood then proudly narrated a Sanskrit Shlok and translated it for the audience.

He added, My country has taught me the capacity for a human being to love is akin to godliness. It shines forth in a world which civilization, I think, already has tampered too much with. In the last few days, the talks here, the wonderful people coming and showing their talent, talking about individual achievements, the innovation, the technology, the sciences, the knowledge we are gaining by being here in the presence of TED Talks and all of you are reasons enough for us to celebrate the future us. But within that celebration the quest to cultivate our capacity for love and compassion has to assert itself, has to assert itself, just as equally.

The actors speech was received with a standing ovation at TED.
Shah Rukh Khan has clarified that his three-year-old son AbRam is not the lovechild of his first son, Aryan. Delivering his first TED Talk in Vancouver, on April 28, the actor rubbished reports that surfaced four years ago, when AbRam was born.

Four years ago, my lovely wife Gauri and me decided to have a third child. It was claimed on the net that he was the love child of our first child, who was 15 years old. Apparently, he had sown his wild oats with a girl while driving her car in Romania. And yeah, there was a fake video to go with it, he said.

The 51-year-old actor said that he and the entire family were disturbed when the rumours first started circulating. We were so disturbed as a family. My son, who is 19 now, even now when you say hello to him, he just turns around and says, But bro, I didnt even have a European driving license, he said.

In the 17-minute talk, SRK reflected on his youth, growing up in Delhi, losing both his parents by the time he was in his 20s, and then, moving to the sprawling metropolis of Mumbai, to follow his dreams of becoming a movie star.

He will soon host the Hindi version of the popular international show.

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The Competition Commission has ordered a detailed probe against major telecom players for allegedly trying to block the entry of newcomer Reliance Jio, according to sources.

The fair trade regulators decision comes on a complaint filed against leading incumbent players -- Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular -- and industry body COAI (Cellular Operators Association of India).

A senior official said the regulator has decided to investigate allegations of unfair business practices made against the incumbent telecom players.

Sources said the regulator would also examine the overall conduct of the COAI, especially since the allegations of anti- competitive practices have been made against three of its key members.

The probe by the Director General (DG) has been ordered for allegedly trying to restrict the entry of Reliance Jio, the official added.

DG is the investigation arm of the Competition Commission of India (CCI). Cases where the watchdog finds prima-facie evidence of competition norms violations are referred to the DG for detailed probe.

When contacted for comments on the CCI ordering the probe, an Airtel spokesperson said, We have not received any such communication from the CCI and would, therefore, not be able to comment.

We have already stated that we have always responded with alacrity and provided a staggering quantum of PoIs (Point of Interconnections) to Reliance Jio in record time, the spokesperson added.

Emails sent to Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Reliance Jio did not elicit any response.

Though we have not seen the order as it has not been published yet, we are disappointed at the apparent news (if confirmed), that the CCI has decided to go forward with an investigation into the complaint filed by Reliance Jio, COAI Director General Rajan Mathews said.

We believe the COAI and its members will be fully vindicated in the matter and truth will prevail, he said.

Last year, billionaire Mukesh Ambanis venture Reliance Jio stormed into the Indian telecom market - the second largest market globally with 1.2 billion subscribers - with disruptive offerings and has since been at loggerheads with the incumbent operators.

Reliance Jio had accused incumbent players of not providing sufficient network connectivity (leading to call failures on its network) while the latter countered the claims saying the newcomer was unleashing tsunami of free traffic from its mobile network.

The two sides have also clashed on other contentious issues like free voice and data offers, and customised retention plans.

Sources said the watchdog has concluded that dominant telecom players allegedly colluded and used the platform of COAI to deny point of interconnection to Reliance Jio.

The COAIs role would be looked at in the context of Section 3 of the Competition Act that pertains to anti- competitive agreements.

It is pertinent to mention here that Reliance Jio, last year, had filed two complaints of anti-competitive practices against the COAI as well as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Idea Cellular.

According to the official cited earlier, a decision with respect to complaints filed by the incumbents against Reliance Jio is yet to be taken. It was alleged that the new entrant was indulging in predatory pricing ways.

So far, the regulator is believed to be of the view that only an established or dominant player can resort to predatory pricing.
The apex Indian IT industry body Nasscom on Friday dismissed reports appearing in a section of the media about mass layoffs by software firms.

Recent media reports of mass layoffs by IT companies in India are incorrect, said the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) in a statement in Bengaluru.

Claiming that the industry continued to be a net hirer, with over 1.5 lakh people being employed on a net basis each year, the apex IT body said the focus was shifting from scale to skill.

Talent and skills are the key building blocks for the industry, which is intensifying investment in skilling or re-skilling its workforce to strengthen its foundation on a continuous basis, said Nasscom.

Noting that workforce realignment linked to performance appraisal processes was a regular feature every year, the industry watchdog said skilling and workforce realignment were essential to remain competitive in international markets.

Workforce realignment is a normal part of the internal process of companies based on their operational imperatives, pointed out the statement.

Companies evaluate their priorities and business imperatives and align talent to serve their needs and enhance competitiveness.

No significant changes have been reported or observed this year, the statement added.
Information technology (IT) companies in India are in the midst of the industrys largest retrenchment drive, with seven of the biggest IT firms planning to ask at least 56,000 engineers to leave this year.

The number is at least twice the employees laid off by the companies last year, reflecting their under-preparedness in adapting to newer technologies and dealing with the fallout from US President Donald Trumps protectionist policies.

The companies include both Indian and multinational firms with a large footprint in India.

The seven companiesInfosys Ltd, Wipro Ltd, Tech Mahindra Ltd, HCL Technologies Ltd, US-based Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. and DXC Technology Co., and France-based Cap Gemini SAand which together employ 1.24 million people, plan to let go of 4.5% of their workforce in 2017.

Most of them will end the year with fewer employees than they started with, despite continuing to hire young engineers, according to the HR heads at two of the seven companies.

The numbers were collated by Mint after extensive interviews with 22 current and former employees across these seven companies.

Preparing the ground for layoffs, each of these seven companies has already put a higher number of employees on notice by awarding them the lowest ratings. Cognizant has placed more than 15,000 employees in the lowest category (bucket IV), and Infosys has placed more than 3,000 senior managers in the category of employees needing improvement.

DXC Technology is in the midst of a three-year plan to reduce the number of offices in the country from 50 to 26. The company plans to ask 5.9%, or 10,000, of its 170,000 employees to leave this year.

All seven companies are still in denial mode and attribute the planned exits to a marginal increase in the number of poor performers on account of a more rigorous performance evaluation process.

Cognizant has not conducted any layoffs, a spokesman said, adding that the performance-based reviews this year are consistent with past ones.

Our performance management process provides for a bi-annual assessment of performance, a spokeswoman for Infosys said, declining to share the number of employees asked to leave in the current quarter. We do this every year and the numbers could vary every performance cycle

Performance appraisal may also lead to the separation of some employees from the company and these numbers vary from year to year, said a Wipro spokesperson.

Spokespersons for Wipro, Infosys and Capgemini termed the numbers cited in this article, in terms of employees being laid off, speculative. A DXC spokesperson declined comment.

We continue to implement strategies to meet the changing demands of business in the current global economic environment. As a performance driven organization, we assess employee performance on a regular basis and take necessary actions wherever necessary, said a spokesperson for Tech Mahindra.

A spokesperson for HCL said that the company does not have any plans to ask more employees to leave in the current year.

In the past, between 1% and 1.5% of a large Indian IT firms employees would be asked to leave every year on account of poor performance. The number was 3% for foreign companies with large Indian operations. This year, the range is likely to be 2-6% across Indian and foreign companies.

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), the largest IT employer with close to 390,000 employees, does not have any plans to ask anyone to leave this year, said a spokeswoman.

At the heart of the problem is the fundamental change in the business model that Indian IT companies are wrestling with. Its as if the world has become digital, and they havent (at least, not enough).

Digital revenue is still less than a fourth of traditional business. Meanwhile, traditional business is slowing. All of us have to re-look at the existing talent pool to make sure it is aligned to future needs, one of the HR heads cited above said on condition of anonymity.

As IT companies start working on newer technologies such as cloud computing, they are fast moving from a people-led model, which means they need fewer employees. Meanwhile, many of the IT companies have embraced automation tools to perform the mundane, repeatable tasks that were performed by an army of engineers earlier.

The entire pyramid structure (organizational structure) is getting disrupted, the second HR head cited earlier added.

That speaks of a bigger problem, said an expert.

What required 50 programmers, analysts or accountants 5 years ago can be done by a handful of smart thinkers and much smarter systems, said Phil Fersht, CEO of US-based HfS Research, an outsourcing-research firm. If I were Prime Minister Narendra Modi, I would be very concerned that a whole workforce generation needs reorienting to address work activities that are growing in demand.

Poor growth and pressure on profitability has prompted most companies to save on costs. In the year ended March 2017, for the first time since 2009-10, TCS, Infosys and Wipro grew slower than industry body Nasscoms 8.6% growth forecast in constant currency terms, even as profitability of all the companies declined.

Trumps protectionist policies mean more Indian IT companies are asking Indian H-1B Visa holders to return home.

Infosys has already announced that it plans to hire 10,000 US citizens over the next two years. Wipro has hired over 2,800 Americans over the last 18 months and expects half of its total workforce in the US to be locals by the end of June 2017.

Cognizant, Capgemini, Wipro and Tech Mahindra started letting go of employees in February while Infosys, HCL, and DXC are expected to do so later this month. Most employees being asked to leave are engineers with at least six-eight years experience.

IT industry grew on the twin premise of talent and mobility. Now both these are being questioned. Because of protectionist policies across the world, we have to go for more localization. And the business requirements of clients are in newer areas such as data analytics. Traditional maintenance work is getting automated. So we are seeing a more stringent appraisal process and more people being asked to go, the first HR head cited above said.
One Sunday afternoon in February 2014, as the national elections in India were hotting up, I attended a meeting of Narendra Modi fans in a small restaurant in London. I wanted to observe how members of this Modi Tea Club were hoping to support him from thousands of kilometres away.

One member stood up to say he welcomed Americas decision to meet Modi, adding that British Gujaratis would also make themselves heard. The pressure we put [on the government] in the UK makes a difference around the world. They were halfway around the world but the future PM of India could count on their money and influence. The following month he congratulated them on their efforts via satellite. For the Modi Tea Club this was enough.

Non-Resident Indians, or NRIs as we are frequently called, have always been integral to the image and power of India abroad. Our traditional role was seen as ambassadors: to represent its culture and heritage, tell the world about India and explain the news from back home. Our parents had always hoped to eventually go back.

But as NRIs have started settling down abroad for good, that relationship has changed. Moreover, the new PM has taken his message to the world himself. He has visited foreign countries with an unusual and frenetic pace. He tweets and reaches foreign journalists quicker than Indian ones can. So what role can they play now?

Lets ask this in a different way. Why is someone like me, a journalist and writer from London, writing for Hindustan Times? Why should you care what I think about Indian society, or issues I discuss with you? The answer to that is important because it holds the key to what it means to be Indian in the future.

Modi has tapped into NRI money and power in a way no PM has done before. As Indians abroad have integrated into western society, they have become more politically connected and powerful. They have worked with their governments to form trade delegations and advise them on investment opportunities in India. They have helped Indian companies get a foothold in new markets abroad. They have become instrumental to connecting India to the rest of the world.

More than that, they are also using their wealth, skills and talent to help Indians at home. A few years ago Paul Ramesh, a doctor who had previously moved to Britain, came back to Chennai to work at a hospital there. There are many more like him. Charities by NRIs in Britain and America send money to good causes back in India and that philanthropy is only set to grow.

Indians receive more money from friends and family abroad than any other country in the world. In 2015 estimated remittances were 69 billion dollars, more than even China. That money goes directly into the Indian economy and helps the foreign reserve accounts too.

The growing size of the global Indian population now makes it impossible to ignore.

There are more Indian-born immigrants living abroad than from any other country in the world. 15.6 million Indians now live and work abroad. Mexico is second on the list with 12.3 million living abroad. But people like me dont count on that list since I was born in Britain. I am of Indian origin and our total number is second highest in the world. There are only greater number of people of Chinese origin living abroad. We take Indian culture, food and language to every part of the world.

Almost everyone of Indian origin abroad has a family connection back home. We are tied not just by culture but by blood. NRIs havent abandoned India, they play their part in the countrys development from abroad. They too are affected by what happens in India. They always have been and always will be part of the global Indian identity.

Sunny Hundal is a writer and lecturer on digital journalism based in London

The views expressed are personal

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The Ministry of Environment & Forests (MoEF) has asked the Uttarakhand government to ensure that the area around Vishnuprayag Hydroelectric Project on Alaknanda River in Chamoli is notified as a no development activity zone.

The letter (dated April 18) issued by Ajay Kumar, additional principal chief conservator of forest (APCCF) MoEFCC to chief secretary S Ramaswamy said that the centre took stalk of the project between January 6-9.

It was observed during monitoring no development activity zone is required to be declared in upper catchment as required under one of the conditions of the said Environment Clearance and also committee by the state government, considering fragile nature of the catchment area, said the letter, a copy of which is with HT.

Declaring the area as a no development activity zone will mean a ban on developmental activities around the site, including road construction work.

The 400 MW project was commissioned in 2007 but the state government is yet to comply with the no development activity zone condition. A private company, Jaiprakash Power Ventures Ltd (JPVL), has the project.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) had been also filed in 2015 demanding decommissioning of the project, one of the biggest in the private sector. Referring to the 2013 deluge that damaged the project and was later restored, the plea highlighted impacts of the project on the fragile ecosystem.

Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve (NDBR) is nearly 40 km from the site. The PIL raises concern that the project will block movement of wild animals.

According to the Supreme Court, unless it is declared as an eco-sensitive zone, developmental activities are banned only in 10km around the protected area. This site is far away from the reserve, Digvijay Singh Khati, chief wildlife warden told Hindustan Times.

However, authorities are concerned that declaring it as a no development activity zone will put a blanket ban on various construction activities.

The zone will restrict activities like roads that are necessary for that area. We have recently received the letter and I am sending it to the conservator of forest for an analytical report, said Jai Raj, principal chief conservator of forest (PCCF) projects, who has been asked by the government to submit details.

HT failed to contact S Ramaswamy, chief secretary, after repeated attempts. Umakant Panwar, secretary hydroelectric projects is out of country.

Bharat Jhunjhunwala, who filed the PIL, in an email, said, I will need to see the letter. But it could be a welcome step. But this could be a camouflage for approving other projects like the GMRs Alaknanda Project near Badrinath.

Meanwhile, the construction agency, JPVL, did not respond to HTs e-mail query.

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The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Uttarakhand will promote Baba Ramdevs private FMCG brand Patanjali through cooperatives to save them from losses.

State cooperatives minister Dhan Singh Rawat has plans to run Patanjali stores in remote areas, which will sell products of the yoga gurus company and local items.

You can term it as promotion, but we cannot deny the fact that Patanjali products are popular. So, we have decided that cooperative societies will run Patanjali stores and also sell local products at the same stalls, Rawat told Hindustan Times on Friday on the sidelines of a conference.

The decision will help 30% of 759 cooperative societies in the state overcome losses, he said.

Rawat will change the name of cooperative societies to multipurpose cooperative societies as they will take up other services, such as running petrol pumps and channelising unorganised handicrafts sector. This initiative, he said, will provide employment opportunities to locals and help curb migration.

Cooperatives will also be engaged in running home stays. The government will provide 3 lakh loan to the societies, the minister said.

The cooperatives now have 10 lakh farmers with bank accounts, and about 9.20 lakh others.

A dedicated website will be launched on Saturday on the occasion of a seven-day inter-state cooperative investment event being organised in the state capital. The website aims at linking 10 lakh additional farmers and in future at least 30 lakh people.

The event will be inaugurated by union agriculture minister Radhamohan Singh and chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat.

Similar events will be organised in Pithoragarh, Almora, Haldwani, Haridwar and Gauchar. The Open University in Haldwani will be roped in to provide rural training and education about cooperatives to farmers and others interested.

Dhan Singh Rawat said the Centre is ready to contribute 5,000-10,000 crore for strengthening of cooperatives in the state.

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The Uttarakhand government has stopped the ongoing work for a new ISBT complex at Golapar in Haldwani district, days after human skeletal remains and grave-like structures were found at the site.

State Transport Minister Yashpal Arya, who visited the site Thursday evening, directed Nagarjuna Construction company to stop the development work there which had been underway since 2014, an official release said.

Terming the recovery of human skeletal remains in such large numbers as a serious matter, the minister said it will be investigated by conducting a DNA test of the recoveries.

Arya, however, said that the emergence of the skeletons and graves does not mean that the ISBT would not come up there. He said the construction work would commence once the inquiry is over.

The construction work is yet to begin at the site where only developmental work such as clearing of the land and defining of the boundaries was being carried out.

The discovery was made by workers engaged for the developmental work earlier this week setting off a debate among officials, experts and people in general about how old they could be, said Arya, who hails from Haldwani.

Several theories are doing the rounds over the origin of the graves and skeletons. One theory is that the remains could belong to Rohilla chieftains from Bareily who fought against the British in 1857 and were killed. Another theory said the remains could be of those who died of epidemics, malaria or famine. Yet another theory is that the people from the nearby areas of Golapar and Banbhoolpura might have burying their dead at the site.

Locals say they have no memory of a burial ground being located near the ISBT site even as some experts say they could date back over a hundred years.

However, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said nothing could be said without a scientific analysis of the remains.
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has decided to move the Delhi High Court against the R 2,950-crore arbitration award to the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. (Rinfra) in connection with the tussle over the airport express metro.

DMRC has decided to seek legal remedies under the Arbitration Act 1996 and decided to file an objection petition before the High Court of Delhi on this matter under Section 34 of the Arbitration Act, said Anuj Dayal, executive director, corporate communication, DMRC.

The DMRC says the termination notice issued by Delhi Airport Metro Express Line (DAMEPL), a Rinfra subsidiary, was legally untenable and was against the provisions of the concessionaire agreement.

The arbitration was decided by a three-member committee after more than three years of hearing.

After Rinfra pulled out of line in 2013, the three-member committee was formed for an out- of-court settlement, sources said. Rinfra wanted back the money invested in the project but DMRCs contention was who was at fault.

The 22.7-km line connects the New Delhi railway station with airport terminal T3 and was jointly developed by DAMEPL and DMRC as public a private partnership (PPP) project.

Its operations were suspended in July 2012 after DAMEPL complained of construction defects in the rail lines built by DMRC. In 2013, DAMEPL terminated the agreement and the tussle ended in arbitration.

We welcome the award and hope it will encourage the private sector to participate in the nation-building process, said a Rinfra spokesperson.

Under the guidelines approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs and issued by Niti Ayog last year, DMRC is expected to pay 75% of the award amount against a bank guarantee even if they challenge the order.

Therefore, RInfra is expected to get Rs 2,210 crore as per the guidelines against bank guarantee in case DMRC proposes to challenge the award, the company statement said.

Sources in the company said DMRC will also have to pay interest charges, which may take the compensation to Rs 4,800 crore.

Experts have long pointed out the challenges of developing metro rails through the PPP model, as the cost of development is high and the return on investment is low because ticket prices are subsidised.

E Sreedharan, the man behind Delhi Metro, had warned against the delay in the Hyderabad metro project and bearing that may have on a private company.

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@MumbaiPolice: Joey doesnt share food, least you can do is not share personal information online. Love your password like your pizza #AFriendsAdvice

@DelhiPolice: Same passwords across accounts is a disaster in waiting #cybersafety.



Which tweet are you likely to share?

The Delhi Police now plan to catch up with their Mumbai counterparts, who have made witty tweets, hilarious posts and pun filled campaigns their forte over the last few months.



To make its social media handles more quirky, trendy yet relevant, Delhi police will now hire professional social media watchers, who will manage their otherwise dull content online. The rationale is to use social media as a medium of broadcast for better and larger reach. If the content is interesting and trendy, it will definitely have a wider reach. The purpose is to make sure that it is read and shared widely so that the message reaches the masses, Special Commissioner of Police Dependra Pathak told HT.

A tweet by the Mumbai Police.

The Delhi police, which joined Twitter in 2015, has 117000 followers and 8738 tweets. On the other hand, the Mumbai Police, which joined much later in 2015, already has as many as 2.77 million followers and over 20000 tweets.

So far, the content on Delhi Police handle, comprises not so impressive photos of alleged criminals arrested in several cases, out of focus clicks of events being held, blurred photos of men in khaki patrolling on foot and alerts on missing persons. The content was being uploaded by inspectors and constables apart from the individual Twitter handles of senior officers. Though all tweets posted from these handles are informative, they lack spunk and have thus failed to connect with the audience.

We are police officers, we know how to investigate, interrogate. How do we make the content witty enough? For this we need professionals who can present the information in an interesting manner. We just know how to dispense information and that is what we do. But to connect with the audience better, it will need more work, an officer said.

Taking a cue from the Mumbai Police, the Delhi Police will now hire media watchers to make their content more engaging.

These media watchers, who will soon be hired through an agency, will be asked to present the content given to them by the police in a lively form. These people will ensure that the tweets are dynamic, vibrant, upmarket, trendy yet relevant. The content will be given by us, they will just process it. We as a law enforcement agency definitely need to be very sensitive and cautious about the content when it is put out on the social media, so we will be constantly monitoring them. So the steering of content will remain with us, Pathak said.

The police have contacted several agencies for the job and will soon be hiring. The experts will be hired to improve the content on the Delhi Police website and Facebook, Twitter handles. We are also looking at other states who are using these agencies for their content and will then use the best available resource, Pathak said.

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She lifts the small white envelope from inside the table drawer, carefully takes out the fragile piece of paper within, and unfolds it carefully with a tweezer.

It is merely a bookstores cash memo  Rs 290.94  for a book titled Remembrance of Things Past.

Thats the English translation of the seven-volume French novel by Marcel Proust, which today costs more than Rs 4,000.

We are in south Delhis Safdarjung Enclave at a bungalow of the family that owns Bahrisons Booksellers. The seemingly banal record of a commercial transaction is in the possession of Aanchal Malhotra, the eldest daughter of the couple who runs the capitals oldest surviving English-language bookshop in Khan Market.

Aanchal, a writer, is finishing her first book  on the Partition. The receipt was handed to her mother a week ago by Dalip Mehta, a retired foreign service officer.

Mehta was casually flipping through his copy of Prousts novel he purchased in 1982. He discovered the little chit pressed between the musty pages and returned it to the people at the bookshop, hoping they might be interested in it for sentimental reasons.

Mehta, who graduated from Cambridge in England, has been going to Bahrisons since his childhood days in Delhi. His wife Nandini, a journalist and publishing house editor, also used to frequent it as a college student.

Balraj Bahri

She once wrote in a magazine how after buying James Thurbers Is Sex Necessary from the bookstore, its founder-owner Balraj Bahri called her mother, saying, I want to warn you, your children are reading very unsuitable books.

Balraj Bahri died a year ago.

Looking at the receipt, his granddaughter Aanchal says she is always trying to piece together the traces of Bahri sahab as a young man in the earlier decades of his career. By returning this old receipt, Mr Mehta has also given us a tiny sliver of Bahrisons history.

Nandini and Dalip Mehta

The next day we head to Dalip Mehtas bungalow in Vasant Vihar.

Mehta retired as the dean of the Foreign Service Training Institute in 2002. His wife quit her publishing job a few months ago on turning 70. The couple often reads in the bedroom.

A couch beside the double bed is the husbands favourite reading spot and was a gift to his wife from Kawal Malik, who was married to late author Khushwant Singh.

Mehta escorts us to his study and shows us the three paperbacks of the Proust novel he purchased from the Khan Market bookstore more than 30 years ago.

Remembrance of Things Past was one among the many books on France he and his wife acquired that time in a preparation to acclimatize to a new city.

Mehta was moving with Nandini to Paris to take up the post of Number two (deputy head of mission) in the Indian embassy.

We lived in rue de Franqueville in the 16th arrondissement, he says.

While residing in Prousts city, the Mehtas acquired a few rare French books on India from secondhand bookshops. However, like many other well-meaning readers, they never got around to reading Prousts long novel. Even so, Proust travelled with them to the exotic places they lived after Paris, such as Thimpu and Tashkent.

We always carried Proust with us because we had the noble intention of reading him some day, says Mehta.

On our request for a special photograph, Dalip settles down on his bedroom couch with one of his unread Prousts. Nandini sits on the bed with a book on Sicily. Their world seems perfect, with or without reading Marcel Proust.
The Delhi High Court on Friday pulled up Delhi Police over the manner in which the probe into the disappearance of JNU student Najeeb Ahmad, missing since October last year, has been conducted. It said it gives an impression that investigation was not being done properly.

A bench of Justice Vipin Sanghi and Justice Deepa Sharma said the conduct of the police showed it was trying to sensationalise the matter or looking for a way out.

Why was the status report filed by the Delhi police in a sealed cover? Why the police commissioner, the SIT (special investigation team), or the Investigating Officer thought it was so crucial, damaging (in the report), the bench said.

It (status report) does not show that he (Ahmad) was accessing any fundamentalist website, the bench noted when senior advocate Colin Gonsalves, appearing for Ahmads mother, contended that a newspaper had quoted a police source in a news report that claimed that before his disappearance Ahmad had been looking for information on Islamic State (IS).

We have to keep in mind the possibility that the police is trying to sensationalise or trying to find an escape route, the bench said, adding the police should have carried out an internal inquiry as to who was the officer who had leaked or planted that information.

The court pulled up the police for not questioning the nine students suspected to be behind Najeebs disappearance on day one itself and not taking them into custody.

What is the point of sending 400 men across the country to find Ahmad, when you have not probed any of the suspects, the bench said.

Noting that the WhatsApp messages of the suspected students have not yet been examined, the bench said if the messages of the period when Najeeb went missing have been deleted, then that in itself is incriminating.

The bench told the police officer, probing the case, not to be judgmental about the medical condition of Najeeb.

Najeebs mother, Fatima Nafees, sat on one of the benches in the courtroom and wept the entire duration of the proceeding. The court has posted the case for further hearing on Monday.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday claimed the Election Commission has backed out of the proposed hackathon to ascertain the reliability of EVMs and said it was a sad move.

His remarks comes hours after the Election Commission told an all-party meeting that it would offer them an opportunity to prove that EVMs used in the recent Assembly polls were tampered with.

Chief election commissioner Nasim Zaidi had said a challenge is on the cards, going on record for the first time regarding the ECs proposed move to counter allegations of EVM tampering.

Although use of VVPAT (voter verifiable paper audit trail system) with EVMs will ensure total credibility and transparency and put to rest all controversy, the Commission will, after todays meeting, hold a challenge, he said.

However, Kejriwal  who along with his Aam Aadmi Party, has been the most vocal about EVM tampering  took to Twitter to share his disappointment.

Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon.  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 12, 2017

The all-party meeting convened by the EC to discuss the reliability of EVMs, and other electoral reforms, saw a debate over the definition of hacking.

After the meeting, Kejriwals deputy Manish Sisodia sought to know why the poll panel was scared of holding a hackathon when electronic voting machines cannot be hacked into.

We had tampered with an EVM in the Delhi Assembly few days back. We request the Election Commission to give us one of the EVMs used in the five state assembly polls and we will also hack into it, the Deputy Chief Minister told reporters here.

Kejriwal reportedly even questioned the independence of two Election Commissioners AK Joti and OP Rawat.

He had claimed in an interview that the two ECs were close to the BJP governments in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh respectively.

Following the allegations, Rawat had recused himself from the cases related to disqualification of AAP MLAs the commission is hearing.

Apart from Kejriwal, a host of opposition parties including the Mayawati-led Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) have alleged that EVMs were tampered with in the February-March assembly elections in 5 states and the just concluded civic polls in Delhi.

(With inputs from PTI)
A 37-year-old property dealer was arrested on Thursday for allegedly attempting to murder the husband of a woman he was obsessed about and had been stalking since 2012, police said on Friday.

Vivek Kumar Aggarwal had made two attempts to kill the womans husband in less than two months this year. He was jealous with the man because he thought the husband was the reason why he couldnt get close to the woman.

In the first attempt on February 4, the bullet fired allegedly by Aggarwal missed its target and the womans husband escaped unhurt. The man did not file a police complaint because he was not sure that he was the attackers target. On April 20, the couple survived a near-fatal attack when Aggarwal allegedly fired a bullet at them when they were on a motorbike, and it hit the husbands shoulder.

Rishipal, deputy commissioner of police (Rohini district), said that a case of attempt to murder was registered at the Vijay Vihar police station. During the investigation, the police identified the motorcycle that the attacker was riding and zeroed in on Aggarwal. He was finally arrested from his home in Budh Vihar.

The woman didnt even know Aggarwal. Nor had she seen his face because Aggarwal never met her in person or expressed his feeling. According to police, Aggarwal stalked and followed her in Metro trains, buses and on road. He had once proposed friendship and love to the woman through text messages. But even then, he hadnt revealed his identity. It was only when her colleagues reprimanded him and threatened to file a police complaint that Aggarwal stopped harassing her over phone, said a police officer.

Rishipal said that Aggarwal got the idea of constantly stalking the woman and attempting to kill her husband after watching a popular Hindi film Darr, where the actor is shown as a stalker.

According to Rishipal, after attacking the womans husband the second time, he threw a letter at her parents home in Sector2, Rohini. In the letter, he identified himself as the brother of a girl who committed suicide because of the womans husband. In the letter, he wrote that the womans husband had destroyed his (fictitious) sisters life by getting her pregnant, said the DCP.

Aggarwals objective behind sending the letter was to ruin the womans married life by creating a suspicion against her husband in her parents minds. He thought that after reading the letter, the woman and her parents will file for a divorce, and after the divorce, he could approach her with his proposal, said Rishipal.

During the interrogation, when the DCP reportedly asked what if the bullet had killed the woman, Aggarwal replied that he would have killed himself had she died.

A school dropout, Aggarwal had first seen the woman at a real estate office in Kirti Nagar, where she worked. He fell in love with her at first sight. During the interrogation, Aggarwal claimed that he had been seeing the woman in his dreams since 2008-09. And when he first saw her in 2012, he straightway believed that she was his dreamgirl, added the DCP.
Selected for 63 scholarships from among nearly 24,000 applicants, Indian students were the second largest beneficiaries after Brazil of the European Union (EU) funded Erasmus Mundus scholarship programme. They will be studying for joint masters degrees in Europe and will have all costs of study covered for about two years. About 1,345 students from all over the world have been awarded the scholarships in 2017.

Erasmus Mundus started as a mobility scheme for higher education in 1987 with just 3,200 students in the first year. It now benefits 300,000 students per year.

An EU report released recently said the 2017 awardees were selected from nearly 24,000 applicants. EU students and others from five countries that have signed up and pay to take part in the Erasmus programme will get 25% of the scholarship. The remaining 75% will go to students in partner countries. Scholars from over 120 countries will benefit from the EU-funded scholarships.

Brazil leads the sending countries with 79 scholarships, followed by India (63), Iran (59), Bangladesh (58) and Mexico (49). The US, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Philippines and Ukraine also figure prominently in the list.

Currently, there are 100 Erasmus Mundus joint masters degree programmes on offer, involving 513 institutions. Each programme is offered by a consortium of at least three higher education institutions.

The programme provides opportunities for study periods and traineeships or apprenticeships for both higher education and vocational education and training, youth exchanges, volunteering and staff exchanges in all fields of education, training, youth and sport.

1,345 students from all over the world have been awarded the scholarships in 2017 (EC-DG EAC, European Commission)

Around 5,000 Indian students from all parts of India have been recipients of the Erasmus Mundus Masters scholarships between 2004 and 2016, making India the single largest beneficiary of the programme.

About 40 new Masters programmes will be added to the Erasmus Mundus programme this summer. Existing offers include a wide range of subjects, including astrophysics , economics, nanotechnology and business.

The application period for the next selection round will run from October 2017 to January 2018.

There are about 33 countries currently participating in the programme. These include all the 28 EU member states as well as Turkey, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

One of EUs main programmes supporting higher education, training, youth and sport up to 2020 is the Erasmus+ . It has a budget of 14.7 billion with an additional 1.68 billion reserved for third country beneficiaries via the EUs external action budget. India is a partner country of the Erasmus+ programme, which means that most awards, particularly in the fields of higher education, are open to India, Indian students and Indian higher education Institutions.



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Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) announced the results of Class 12 board examinations on Friday on its official website.

Click here to check your results. Key in your roll number and submit to see the results.

According to MPBSE chairperson SR Mohanty, the decision to declare the results both of Class 10 and Class 12 together was taken to make students stress free.

The state government will pay the tuition fees of those who score more than 85% in the Class 12 exam to help them continue higher education. Students who score less than 85% marks will be given the facility of an interest-free loan to pursue higher education in the best institutes of India.

Time to interview: Toppers busy in interviews to TV channels during felicitation function of the meritorious students of the MP state board examinations in Bhopal on Friday. (Mujeeb Faruqui/HT Photo)

Nearly 5.50 lakh students wrote the class 12 exam.

The evaluation of the answer sheets was done in two phases and evaluators were asked to check them carefully. If a student applies for a revaluation and their doubt is legitimate, the evaluators will have to pay a fine.

Teachers were paid Rs 11 to check a Class 10 an answer sheet and Rs 12 for Class 12.

Note: You can also check your results here

(With inputs from Shruti Tomar in Bhopal)
Chennai: Tamil Nadu Board Higher Secondary Exam (TNBSE), Class 12 results were declared by the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Education on Friday, 10 am.

Click here to check your results. Key in your registration number and date of birth and click on get marks. Your results will be displayed on the screen.

About 8,98,763 students appeared for the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations.

Heres how students can check their results:

Log on to the official website

Submit roll number, other details

The results will be displayed.

Take a printout for future reference
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said that a program to attract low cost airlines to the country is being drafted.

"We are drafting an absolutely coordinated program to attract a large number of airlines, so called low cost airlines, to Ukraine that would allow organizing a round trip ticket for several dozens of euros," he said in an interview with 1+1 TV channel late on Thursday.

He said that many low cost airlines see Ukraine as a promising market with cheap tickets.
Scores of students could not appear for the Telangana Engineering Agriculture and Medical Common Entrance Test (EAMCET)-2017 which was held across the state on Friday, thanks to the one-minute-late-no-entry rule enforced by Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU), which conducted the exam.

Though the exact number of students who could not write the examination because of the rule is yet to be ascertained, there were reports from different parts of the state that the authorities denied entry to several students who could not make it to the examination centre for various reasons, including traffic jams, lack of proper transport facility and difficulty in locating the centre.

Students Appearing Eamcet-2017 Exams at Engineering College, Osmania University. In some examination centres, the authorities were liberal in allowing students running into the centres in the last moment, ignoring the one-minute rule, but in majority of the centres, the authorities ensured that the gates were locked on dot. (Kodam Hari/HT photo)

Otherwise, the EAMCET went off peacefully in 246 centres for engineering and 154 centres for the Agriculture and Pharmacy stream. The examination was also held in Andhra Pradesh in five centres in Tirupati, 11 in Vijayawada and three in Visakhapatnam. As many as 2,20,248 students, including 1,41,054 for engineering stream and the remaining for other streams, registered themselves for the entrance test. The EAMCET-2017 was held from 10 am to 1 pm in case of engineering and for agriculture, medical stream, it was held from 2.30 pm to 5.30 pm.

For the first time, the test will not be held for medical courses including MBBS, BDS and Ayush as they were held as part of the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET).

In some examination centres, the authorities were liberal in allowing students running into the centres in the last moment, ignoring the one-minute rule, but in majority of the centres, the authorities ensured that the gates were locked on dot. For example, at New Nagarjuna Junior College, the authorities refused to entertain the request of a girl candidate to enter the hall, as she came five minutes late. At Paloncha in Bhadradri Kothagudem district, the authorities strictly enforced the one-minute rule and did not allow two students to enter the hall as they came a minute late. In Sangareddy district, too, the authorities followed the same rule and denied entry to two students.

EAMCET Chairman A Venugopal Reddy said the candidates had been warned well in advance about this rule and asked them to start from their homes early to reach the examination centre well in time, since Friday was a working day.

Students Appearing Eamcet-2017 Exams at Engineering College, Osmania University. For the first time, the test will not be held for medical courses including MBBS, BDS and Ayush as they were held as part of the National Eligibility Cum Entrance Test (NEET). (Kodam Hari/HT photo)

The authorities said the answers key for the Telangana EAMCET-2017 would be released shortly and hosted on the official website: eamcet.tsche.ac.in.

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Its that time of the year again  Hindustan Times Education is launching its Campus Journalists (CJs) programme, inviting six bright students to share a big moment in their lives with the world  the move to college from school.

Writers and storytellers who have just finished their Class 12 finals are invited to document their journey to college through a series of stories, blogs and videos over the next two-and-a-half months. They have to be good writers and photographers, hard working, disciplined, and active on social media.

So if youre someone who will be starting your hunt for a college in India or abroad the moment your Class 12 results are out, or are taking a drop year, send us a 200-word write-up on Why I think Ill be a great Campus Journalist  and email it to hteducation@hindustantimes.com by May 15. Your entry should be marked CJHunt2017, should include a phone number where you can be contacted and the name of your school. Selected entries will be invited for an interview before the final six are announced.
Tamil Nadu witnessed a marginal improvement in the performance of its students in Class 12 results, which were announced on Friday. The overall pass percentage recorded a marginal increase to 92.1%, as compared to 91.4% last year.

According to the directorate of examinations, 1,171 students scored over 1,180 out of 1,200 marks.

There has been a hike in number of students scoring 100% marks, barring chemistry, in individual subjects too. In physics, there were 187 centums this year as compared to only five in the last. Likewise, the number of students scoring 100% marks was 3,656 in mathematics, as compared to 3,361 last year. A total of 8,301 scored 200/200 in commerce as compared to just 3,084 last year. While the number of centum scorers went up to 5,597 from 4,341 last year in accountancy, business mathematics saw the figure double from 1,072 to 2,551.

The directorate of examinations said of the 8,93,262 students who took the exam, 8,22,838 have passed.

Girls performed better with a 94.5 pass percentage, as compared to 89.3% for boys. Virudhnagar topped all the districts with a pass percentage of 97.85%.

The state did not release the names of the toppers as per a policy decision taken by the government to prevent putting pressure on students. State education minister KA Sengottaiyan had reasoned in a high-level meeting on Wednesday that naming the toppers would put additional pressure on students who score a shade less than the toppers.

Upgrading school curriculum to help students take on national-level competitive examinations was also recommended at the meeting. Students across the state welcomed the governments decision to refrain from naming the toppers immediately.

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Delhi Public School Ghaziabad (DPSG), Palam Vihar, has decided to keep the school closed until they get recognition from the Haryana government, causing distress among parents regarding the future of their wards.

The school claims that the summer vacation has begun starting Friday for the primary wing and the senior sections vacations will begin from next Friday. The school will reopen on July 3.

A team of district education officers including Neelam Bhandari, and district elementary education officer Ram Kumar Phalaswal visited the school on Thursday. They will submit the report to the divisional commissioner.

A group of parents had been protesting against the school increasing fees yearly. The parents decided to meet Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Saturday at Hotel Oberoi, Udyog Vihar, where he is supposed to be the chief guest and will inaugurate First Convention on Real Estate and Infrastructure in Gurgaon. Latest reports, however, said that the CM is likely to address the conference through video conferencing.

We are disappointed that despite so many efforts and protests against the fee hike in the school, authorities are taking no action. Parents are forced to take leave continuously from their offices, which is impacting the finances of our households. We are only demanding rollback of the unjustified fees, not any favour from authorities or government, said Yashesh Yadav, a parent.

No one is concerned about the future of the children, it is not easy for a parent to switch a school. The authorities and school management are not looking at loss of studies of the children, or the plight of parents, said Dev Kumar.

DPSG has also written a letter to the divisional commissioner on Thursday stating that the Form 6, as per rules, is filed only by a recognised school. Since DPSG is still awaiting recognition, there was no need to submit Form 6, the letter stated.

The school has duly filed form I as per Rule 20(I) of the Haryana Education Rules and had obtained permission to start the school. Soon after, Form II was filed with all documents on September 16, 2016, for recognition by the department of education, which despite several reminders is still awaited, said Sudhir Chitnis, senior administrator, DPSG.

The management had written to the divisional commissioner on Thursday and requested his advice if the school should continue to operate under the circumstances explained in the letter or not. We requested the same to protect the interest of our students, Chitnis said.

D Suresh, divisional commissioner, who is also chairman of FRRC committee, said, Parents had come and informed that the school has been shut, no management can shut the school without prior permission of General Managers District Industry Center. They need to apply for permission and can shut it down after 90 days. The school is not yet recognised and the earlier school was registered as Chiranjeev Bharti School. We have held a meeting on May 23, where we have called parents and management to ensure the students do not suffer.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazars Revenge is mere weeks away, and Disney is terrified - not about whether or not the film will do well, but about star Johnny Depps sinking public image.

In a lengthy Hollywood Reporter article about Depps legal troubles with his former managers (he sued the managers for misappropriation of funds, and got countersued with a flurry of explosive details about his lavish lifestyle), Depps antics on the sets of the fifth Pirates movie are detailed.

Youve got to understand the kind of pressure Johnny was under in Australia, says producer Jerry Bruckheimer. At times helicopters would follow him home. There would be so many media outside his gates that trucks were feeding them. There was so much stuff made up about him: that Johnny had a fight on set and had gone back to the States, which we both read about while we were in his trailer.

Despite Bruckheimers defence, sources close to the production told THR that Depps excessive drinking, physical fights with (ex-wife Amber) Heard and constant lateness on set, often left hundreds of extras waiting for hours at a time. Often, the report says, Bruckheimer and a team of executives would huddle together to formulate plans of how to deal with the stars behaviour.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer (L) and Johnny Depp. (Shutterstock.)

There were certainly days when our plans were challenged, says production chief Sean Bailey. But no one should underestimate Johnnys passion and commitment to this character and franchise.

Often, sources say, a production staffer was stationed in an unmarked car outside the Coomera, Queensland, compound that Depp was living in, and would alert the crew the moment the first light had been switched on.

Actor Johnny Depp arrives on the red carpet for the global premiere of the film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, in Shanghai. (REUTERS)

When he got up, hed turn on the light, and the moment the light went on theyd call the line producer, who would then call the directors (Joachim Ronning and Espen Sandberg): Hes up! Hes getting ready!  says an on-set source. They even had a special code term, like The eagle has landed. Johnny had no idea this was going on.

Filming shut down at one point when Depp injured his finger That was pretty serious, says Bruckheimer. But he wont confirm if the injury was due to a marital argument. We dont really know. He got it caught in a car door, or he got it caught in a sliding door. Ive heard a couple of versions.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazars Revenge opens on May 26.

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Jack Sparrow, Willy Wonka, the Mad Hatter and now Gellert Grindelwald. The ever experimental Johnny Depp, who will reprise his role as the dark wizard in the sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, says he feels lucky to have been chosen to join the franchise.

Potter fans were in for a magical treat when Depp made an appearance as Gellert Grindelwald at the end of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The first instalment of the Harry Potter spin-off franchise had ended with the big revelation that Percival Graves (played by Colin Farrell) has transformed into Gellert Grindelwald (played by Depp), the evil wizard who has been hunting for an Obscurus, a dangerous magical parasite.

The 53-year-old actor says he always believes in experimenting with his movies and Fantastic Beasts is another step towards achieving it.

I made an appearance in the film. I want to experiment with new films. The idea is that. It is an amazing story. She (J K Rowling, author) is an amazing woman, So, I feel lucky to be chosen to be a part of Fantastic Beasts, Depp told reporters at the red carpet of the world premiere of Pirates of The Caribbean: Salazars Revenge in China. The fifth part of the Pirates franchise, which has Depp playing the swashbuckling pirate Captain Jack Sparrow, will release on May 26.

Gellert Grindelwald, a feared, dark wizard, and had appeared briefly in the Harry Potter franchise as Albus Dumbledores arch nemesis.

Jude Law has been announced to take on the role of young Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts sequels, which will tell the story of his life as a professor at Hogwarts and his friendship and eventual enmity with Grindelwald.

The yet-to-be titled movie will also mark the return of Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander and Katherine Waterson. The David Yates-directed film is set for release later next year.

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American actor Tyrese Gibson sent the Internet into a tizzy recently, all thanks to an Instagram post by the Fast and Furious star. On Thursday, he uploaded an image of himself as the John Stewart version of the popular DC superhero, Green Lantern, (played and completely ruined by Ryan Reynolds earlier) and captioned it, Its Time. This got DC fans speculating the possibility of the actor bagging the role of Green Lantern.

Actor Henry Cavill, who plays Superman in the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), has been teasing the possibility of a Green Lantern cameo in the upcoming Justice League movie for quite some time now, and this might just confirm that.

Dont believe us? Have a look at Gibsons post here:

It's time A post shared by TYRESE (@tyrese) on May 10, 2017 at 12:43pm PDT

If this does really happen, Gibson will join the list of stars from the Fast & Furious franchise who have levelled up to superhero status. Gal Gadot has played Wonder Woman in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Dwayne The Rock Johnson has been cast as Black Adam, Kurt Russell played Ego, and Vin Diesel voiced Groot in the latest Hollywood event film, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.

Are you excited about the possibility of Gibson becoming Green Lantern, or do you have anyone else in mind who might be better? Tell us about it in the comments.

Follow @htshowbiz for more.

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In a mountain valley in Kashmir, plans are underway for Chinese engineers guarded by Pakistani forces to expand the lofty Karakoram Highway in a project that is stirring diplomatic friction with India.

The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. The Asian Development Bank says the region, home to 60% of the worlds people, needs more than $26 trillion of such investment by 2030 to keep economies growing.

The initiative is in many ways natural for China, the worlds biggest trader. But governments from Washington to Moscow to New Delhi worry Beijing also is trying to build its own political influence and erode theirs.

Others worry China might undermine human rights, environmental and other standards for lending or leave poor countries burdened with debt.

India is unhappy that Chinese state-owned companies are working in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Indian leaders see that as an endorsement of Pakistani control.

We have some serious reservations about it, because of sovereignty issues, said Indias finance and defence minister, Arun Jaitley, at an Asian Development Bank meeting this month in Yokohama, Japan. China has tried previously to mollify Indian anxiety by saying in January its highway work targets no third country.

Chinas new Silk Road initiative is ramping up as President Donald Trump focuses on domestic issues, downplaying foreign affairs.

American officials say Washington wants to work with China on infrastructure. But some diplomats and political analysts say Beijing is trying to create a political and economic network centered on China, push the United States out of the region and rewrite rules on trade and security.

At a Senate hearing in Washington on Thursday on global threats, Dan Coats, the US director of national intelligence, identified the Silk Road strategy as part of a pattern of aggressive Chinese investments and other actions around the world.

They clearly have a strategy, through their investments, Coats said. You name a part of the world, the Chinese are probably there, looking to put investments in. The Silk Road process, he said, is a different way to address nations that theyve had difficulty connecting with.

William A Callahan, an international relations specialist at the London School of Economics, said China is trying to change the way the political structure of the region works.

We will have to see whether it can achieve this, he said.

Trumps decision to pull out of the proposed 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deprives Chinas neighbours of a tool they hoped would counter its rising influence, said Max Baucus, the US ambassador to Beijing until January. Baucus called the move a large geopolitical mistake.

Southeast Asian countries would tell me We want you, we want the TPP, then we can balance China with the United States. But when youre not there, there is a void that Chinas going to fill, Baucus told The Associated Press.

Dubbed One Belt, One Road after ancient trade routes through the Indian Ocean and Central Asia, the initiative is Chinese President Xi Jinpings signature project.

Details such as financing are vague. But since Xi announced it in 2013, Beijing has launched dozens of projects from railways in Tajikistan, Thailand and Kenya to power plants in Vietnam and Kyrgyzstan, financed mostly by Chinese loans.

Countries including Pakistan and Afghanistan welcome it as a path out of poverty. India, Indonesia and others want investment but are wary of Chinese strategic ambitions, especially after Beijing started building artificial islands to enforce its claim to most of the South China Sea, a busy trade route.

Indonesias political elite have a fear of regional hegemony by China, said Christine Tjhin, senior researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta.

Moscow worries Beijing is diluting Russian influence in Central Asia by linking Uzbekistan and other countries more closely to Chinas more dynamic economy.

Russian President Vladimir Putin responded last June by proposing a Great Eurasia Project, with Beijing leading on economics and Moscow on politics and security.

This vision enables the Kremlin to maintain an appearance that it retains the political initiative in its neighbourhood, Marcin Kaczmarski and Witold Rodkiewicz said in a report for the Center for Eastern Studies, a Warsaw think tank.

Perhaps trying to defuse unease, China has invited governments to a two-day forum starting Sunday and led by Xi to brainstorm on interconnected development.

Leaders from 28 countries including Putin are due to attend, but none from major Western countries.

Police officers patrol outside the China National Convention Center, the venue for the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, in Beijing on May 11. China hosts on May 14 a summit showcasing its ambitious drive to revive ancient Silk Road trade routes and lead a new era of globalisation, just as Washington turns inward in favour of America First policies. (AFP Photo)

GOING GLOBAL

One Belt, One Road is the biggest of a series of initiatives launched by Beijing in the past decade in pursuit of global influence to match its economic success.

Starting in 2004, the communist government opened Confucius Institutes with universities in Asia, Europe and the Americas to teach Chinese language and culture. After the 2008 global crisis, Beijing lobbied successfully for more voting rights in the US- and European-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Chinese officials reject suggestions One Belt, One Road is a power play by Beijing.

The Chinese government has never wished to control any other countrys government, a cabinet official, Ou Xiaoli, told The AP. We feel in contacts between countries, we need to talk about studying benefits, studying mutual profit.

The bulk of Chinese financing is to be loans, which Ou said will be mostly on commercial terms based on market principles. That might add to debt burdens in countries where dealing with Beijing can be politically sensitive.

Sri Lankas former president suffered a surprise election defeat in 2015 after his challenger criticised him for running up an estimated $5 billion in debt to China. Villagers protesting a $1.2 billion Chinese port project there violently clashed with government supporters as recently as January.

China often is the only entity willing to finance big projects in poor countries. That gives Beijing leverage to require use of Chinese builders and technology.

The state-run China Development Bank announced in 2015 it had set aside $890 billion for more than 900 One Belt, One Road projects across 60 countries in gas, minerals, power, telecoms, infrastructure and farming. This year, the governments Export-Import Bank of China said it would finance 1,000 projects in 49 countries.

Beijing will provide only part of the financing and wants projects to attract private investors, Ou said.

We must consider economic viability, he said.

China is far from alone in promoting infrastructure investment.

Japan has given Southeast Asian governments tens of billions of dollars in grants or low-interest loans. The Asian Development Bank lent $32 billion last year.

South Korea launched its Eurasia Initiative in 2013 to develop rail, trade and energy links across the two Koreas and Russia to Europe. That stalled last year due to trade sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons development.

US allies Britain, South Korea and Australia signed on as founding members of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, launched in 2015 to finance roads, ports and other projects. The US and Japan have so far stayed away.

Ou said AIIB will operate separately from One Belt, One Road and any loans made by the bank will be decided independently.

In Pakistan, the proposed $1.3 billion effort to expand the Karakoram Highway is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which involves dozens of projects including power plants, roads and railways spanning the length of the country. It links Chinas far western region of Xinjiang with the Chinese-built port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean.

It threatens no one. It benefits all, most of all the common man who shall see a boom in jobs and businesses, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said in April.

In this November 13, 2016 file photo, a Pakistan Navy soldier stands guard while a loaded Chinese ship prepares to depart from Gwadar port that links to China's far western region on a new international route exporting goods to West Asia and Africa, about 700km (435 miles) west of Karachi. Pakistan. (AP)

TRADE CONCERNS

One Belt, One Road could help Chinas exporters by encouraging countries to adopt its industrial standards for railways and other products, locking buyers into sticking with them for repairs or additional technologies. Chinas premier has cited the promoting of Chinese standards abroad as one of Beijings goals.

This has some countries in the region concerned about Chinas dominance, Baucus said. Were going to have to bow to their standards and if theyre Chinese standards, then Chinese companies are going to have an advantage over our companies in our country, the former US ambassador described officials as telling him. Theyre very concerned.

Chinese rail technology is poised to make inroads into the European Union with a plan for state-owned companies to build a high-speed line from Budapest, capital of EU member Hungary, to Belgrade in neighboring Serbia.

The $2.9 billion project, financed by Beijing, faces obstacles after EU officials said they will look into whether Hungary broke trade bloc rules by agreeing to the Chinese deal without competitive bidding.

In Pakistan, officials say much of the Chinese money for power projects is investment, not loans. They have given few details, raising questions about whether other projects can pay for themselves.

China is giving most contracts for energy projects to its own companies without even consulting Pakistan, said Azeem Khalid, a lecturer at the Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South, a non-government group in Islamabad. I feel that our several generations will have to repay these Chinese loans for decades.

In Indonesia, the Chinese effort could fit with President Joko Jokowi Widodos Maritime Axis Policy to transform the country into a sea power. China muscled aside Japan in 2015 to win a contract to build a $5.2 billion high-speed rail line from the capital, Jakarta, to the city of Bandung.

But Indonesian leaders also are wary of a backlash in a country where resentment of ethnic Chinese billionaires simmers.

The Jokowi government must balance its desire for capital and expertise with a need to guard against a populist, anti-Chinese backlash, said Hugo Brennan, an analyst at political risk firm Verisk Maplecroft.

(Ahmed reported from Islamabad. AP writers Stephen Wright in Jakarta, Indonesia, Matthew Pennington and Bradley Klapper in Washington, and Muneeza Naqvi in New Delhi contributed to this report)
Election Commission calls for all-party meeting to discuss EVM row and poll reforms

The Election Commission will meet representatives of all recognised political parties on Friday to dispel doubts about the security features of electronic voting machines (EVM) and discuss modalities of a hackathon that will be hosted later this month. The meeting is part of the poll panels outreach to dismiss allegations that EVMs were manipulated to suit the ruling dispensation. At the hackathonthe date for which is expected to be announcedparty representatives will be given a chance to prove that the EVMs used by the EC can be tampered with.

Read the story here.

A sustained threat: US spymaster says Pakistan-based terror groups plan to attack India, Afghanistan

Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said. Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan, Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats. These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan, Coats said.

Read the story here.

Seven top IT firms to lay off 56,000 this year, new tech and Trumps policies blamed

Information technology (IT) companies in India are in the midst of the industrys largest retrenchment drive with seven of the biggest IT firms planning to ask at least 56,000 engineers to leave this year. The number is at least twice the employees laid off by the companies last year, reflecting their under-preparedness in adapting to newer technologies and dealing with fallout from US President Donald Trumps protectionist policies. The companies include both Indian and multinational firms with a large footprint in India.

Read the story here.

PM Modi to participate in Vesak celebrations in Sri Lanka

On the second day of his visit to Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists, and address the Indian-origin community. He will also inaugurate a hospital built with Indias assistance of Rs 150 crore and visit the Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple.

Alarming rise in swine flu cases in India as 345 killed this year alone

Most parts of India are in the grip of swine flu with western and southern states of the country the worst hit. Tamil Nadu and Karnataka account for more than 55% of all cases, while Maharashtra has recorded half of all deaths. India had 8,648 cases and 345 swine flu deaths till May 7 this year, compared to 1,786 cases and 265 deaths in 2016, reveals data from the ministry of health and family welfare.

Read the story here.

Strategy through investments: Why Chinas Silk Road plan is giving India, US, Russia the jitters

In a mountain valley in Kashmir, plans are underway for Chinese engineers guarded by Pakistani forces to expand the lofty Karakoram Highway in a project that is stirring diplomatic friction with India. The work is part of a sprawling Chinese initiative to build a new Silk Road of ports, railways and roads to expand trade in a vast arc of countries across Asia, Africa and Europe. Governments from Washington to Moscow to New Delhi worry Beijing also is trying to build its own political influence and erode theirs.

Read the story here.

Gujarat after Modi: Gender is the buzzword but true emancipation distant for women

Womens representation in local bodies has increased to 50%; the state also increased womens quota in all government departments, including police, from 27% to 33%. Yet, on a range of indicators, the gender balance in Gujarat remains skewed  and this remains among the most serious social issues in the state.

Read the story here.

Trump says he might release his tax returns once his term ends

US President Donald Trump has said that he might release his tax returns once his tenure ends. In an interview to the Economist, Trump was asked whether he would release his returns in exchange of the support from Democrats on tax reforms. I dont know. Thats a very interesting question. I doubt it. I doubt it. Because theyre not going to, nobody cares about my tax return except for the reporters. Oh, at some point Ill release them. Maybe Ill release them after Im finished because Im very proud of them actually. I did a good job, Trump answered.

Read the story here.

Opinion: The Kulbhushan Jadhav case in the ICJ changes the goalposts for India and Pakistan

Indias approaching the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to resolve the Kulbhushan Jadhav case in Pakistan is a break from tradition, where India has always been reluctant to bring bilateral relations to an international forum. But this move could mean that relations between India and Pakistan are headed in a new direction. Read the article here.
Madhya Pradesh minister Vishwas Sarang on Friday stirred a controversy by saying all those who love the nation would support the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and vote for them.

There is no second thought that all those who love their nation would support the BJP and vote for them. I said this thing and I stand by my words, that who loves BJP, loves the nation as well, Sarang told ANI.

#WATCH: Madhya Pradesh minister Vishwas Sarang says in Jhabua "those who love India, will vote for BJP". pic.twitter.com/ohMtxcTEhd  ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

Sarang further said that in past 70 years the Congress Party has done nothing but betrayed the nation and destroyed its unity and integrity.

This is not what I am saying. Indias history supports my remark. If the BJP carries out a surgical strike and the Congress raises question on that, is that patriotism? asked the minister.
Vasil Kisil & Partners law firm has denied information that the company has a branch that represented the interests of Odesa Port-Side Chemical Plant (OPP) in the Odesa region's appeal court on May 10.

Acting Head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPF) Dmytro Parfenenko gave information that the law firm has this branch at a government meeting on Thursday. He said that a subsidiary of Vasil Kisil & Partners represented the interests of OPP. Its lawyers filed a number of motions to appeal, however they did not appear in court on May 10.

"Vasil Kisil & Partners law firm celebrates the 25th anniversary this year. Over this period we have never had any representative offices, branches or subsidiaries neither in Ukraine nor outside the country. It is interesting for me where the information presented at the government meeting was taken from. I demand to confirm it or urgently contradict it officially," the press service of the law firm said, citing its Senior Partner Vasil Kisil.

He also said that the law firm is waiting for refutations from the SPF.

As reported, the Odesa region's appeals court on May 10 upheld the decision of the Yuzhne city court to comply with a motion filed by Ostchem owned by Dmytro Firtash to implement on the territory of Ukraine the decision of the Stockholm Arbitration Court for collecting $193 million from OPP, not including fines and penalties.
Timely police intervention prevented a Bulandshahr-like tragedy (in which a Muslim man was beaten to death) from occurring in Nandrauli village of Sambhal district on Wednesday night.

Enraged by the elopement of a girl from their community with a Muslim youth, the Yadavs of the area vandalised over six Muslim households. A motorcycle was also torched in protest.

The police have arrested six people on charges of rioting, and raids are underway to arrest the remaining nine named in the FIR, said cops.

Three teams are working on tracing the couple who eloped from the village on May 8, said DIG of Moradabad range, Omkar Singh.

Meanwhile, heavy police force has been deployed in and around Nandrauli to prevent any further clashes. After the couples elopement, the girls family had lodged a case of kidnapping against two Muslims. Later, on Tuesday, angry Yadavs had attacked some houses belonging to Muslims. To control the situation, police was deployed in the village.

Despite that the very next day, Yadavs vandalised around six Muslim households and also set a motorcycle on fire.

On being informed of the escalation, DIG Moradabad range rushed to the village along with the Sambhal SP, Ravishankar Chabi, and controlled the situation. The Muslims lodged a case of robbery and attack against 15 villagers.

A meeting of members of both communities was organised to keep their trust in each other intact, said DIG Moradabad range.

Reportedly, the Yadav girl and the Muslim youth were in a relationship but the girl was married off in November, last year .

The tension between the two communities suddenly escalated after she eloped with her lover. Since then, the Yadavs had been mounting pressure on Muslims to trace the couple.

In a similar case, communal tension in Sohi village of Bulandshahr district, after a Muslim youth eloped with a Thakur girl in April, led to activists of a Hindutva group allegedly mounting pressure on Muslims to trace the couple. The rising tension had eventually led to an elderly Muslim being beaten to death.

The victims son had lodged an FIR and the cops had booked Hindu Yuva Vahini Pahasu city president and two workers in the case.
Amid continued unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, the Centre has asked the state government to be tough against those taking the law into their hands but ensure no innocent person is harassed.

The message was put across by Union home secretary Rajiv Mehrishi during the meetings he had with top civil and police officials in the course of his visit to the Kashmir valley on Thursday.

The message of the central government is clear that security forces have to be tough against militants and those involved in stone pelting but no innocent should be harassed, official sources said on Friday.

The home secretary told the security forces to be tough but just, sources privy to the meeting said.

Mehrishi, however, did not broach the issue of political dialogue with his interlocutors as the matter was within the purview of the political leadership.

During the visit, the home secretary had called on governor NN Vohra and chief minister Mehbooba Mufti, and discussed with them the security situation as violent clashes between locals and security forces continued to rock the Valley.

In his meeting with civil and police officials, Mehrishi was briefed about the ground situation and the steps taken to restore normalcy in the Valley, which is witnessing uninterrupted violence, including the killing of a Kashmiri army officer by militants two days ago.

The home secretary was told that the Army along the Line of Control was fully alert to checking infiltration attempts from Pakistan as summer has set in and snow has started melting, sources said.

Jammu and Kashmir had witnessed large-scale violence during the April 9 bypoll to the Srinagar Lok Sabha seat in which eight people lost their lives in more than 200 incidents.

The Election Commission had cancelled the May 25 bypoll to Anantnag Lok Sabha seat, noting the situation there was not conducive to holding election.

There have been protests by students in the Valley last month against alleged police excesses. Students, including girls, were seen pelting security personnel with stones.
With assembly elections set to be held next year in Karnataka, the BJP on Thursday released a booklet which it termed was a chargesheet against the Siddaramaiah government.

Leader of the opposition in the Assembly, Jagadish Shettar has alleged maladministration under the Congress leadership.

Here are some of the prominent accusations:

Fiscal irresponsibility: BJP targeted the Congress government for borrowing heavily over the past four years and accused the chief minister of being reckless about it.

The saffron party claimed that the Congress government plans to reduce outstanding loans by Rs 37,092 crore but its borrowings over the period are Rs 1.26 lakh crore.

Deceit of welfare: The BJP has alleged that the Congress government has been misleading people by announcing welfare schemes that never get implemented.

The reduction in allocation for crucial sectors in the state budget is extremely strange, it said, noting that while the outlay for the agriculture sector formed 3.62% of the budget in the year the government came to power, it reduced to 3.53%.

Even social sectors faced the brunt, the booklet said, listing that from 15.67% allocation four years ago, it came down to 10.02%.

Breakdown in law and order: Bengaluru has come to be known as the rape city from Indias Silicon Valley under the Congress regime, the BJP alleged, noting that in four years, 1,24,655 cases have been lodged in Bengaluru alone, and it was ranked the third highest among cities in number of crimes against women and children.

Unchecked illegal sand extraction mafia: At least 1.92 lakh cubic-metres of sand was extracted illegally between 2013-14 and 2016-17. Despite 7,432 cases being lodged, there has been no progress in the cases against the offenders, the party alleged.

Unutilised funds in education: The government has earmarked a total of 7,821 crore for primary and secondary education over the past four years. Of this, only Rs 5,215 crore has been released and only Rs 4,253 has been utilised, the booklet said.

Women & child welfare ignored: BJP cited similar numbers to target the Congress on the women and child welfare sector. Despite announcing Rs 12,475 crore for the Women and Child Welfare department, only Rs 11, 457 crore was released and only Rs 9,529 crore has been used, it said.

Farmers neglected: The saffron party said 2,573 farmers have committed suicide in the last four years. However, the government has refused to accept this figure and set the number at 1,700.

Urban development: The party again rued the under-utilisation of funds in the urban development sector, saying of the Rs 45,404 crore announced for various development works in cities, only Rs 32,900 crore was released and Rs 34,393 crore spent.

The BJP noted that by announcing huge amounts for various sectors and not utilising the whole amount, the Congress had only increased the loan burden of the exchequer.

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Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who was admitted to a city hospital on Sunday for food poisoning, was discharged on Friday.

The doctors, who treated her at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, were satisfied with her recovery.

Mrs Sonia Gandhi, who was admitted on Sunday, 7th May, 2017, for food poisoning has recovered, said Dr DS Rana, chairman, board of management, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital.

Mrs Gandhi was discharged around 7pm. Her condition at the time of discharge was stable, he said.

This is the second time so far this year that 70-year-old Gandhi was admitted to the hospital. She was last admitted in January, with complains of fever and chest congestion.

Gandhi has a history of asthma and is usually under the care of chest specialist Dr Arup Basu at Ganga Ram.

Prior to that, she was twice admitted to the hospital.

She also underwent a shoulder reconstruction surgery last year, after she had collapsed during a rally in Varanasi last August.

Gandhi was flown to Delhi and rushed to Army Hospital Research & Referral from the airport, and later shifted to Ganga Ram where she underwent the shoulder surgery.

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Congress is gearing up for another round of organisational changes, with the party leadership firming up names of a few general secretaries, state chiefs and other office bearers, especially for Bihar, Karnataka and Odisha.

In Bihar and Karnataka, the party is hunting for new chiefs as incumbents Ashok Chaudhary and G Parameshwara are also their ministers, education and home, respectively.

In Bihar, the names of Akhilesh Prasad Singh, Ashok Ram and Kishore Kumar Jha are doing the rounds.

While Parameshwara is trying to retain the party chief post in Karnataka, which goes to polls in April-May 2018, leaders such as D K Shivakumar, M B Patil, S R Patil are said to be in the race.

Lok Sabha MP from Kerala, KC Venugopal, who was last month named the general secretary in-charge of Karnataka, had on Wednesday said all the confusion regarding the post of PCC president will be cleared this month itself.

According to sources, during Venugopals deliberations with over 430 Congress leaders of the state, many had expressed their displeasure against Siddaramaiah and Parameshawara while stressing on the need to fight the 2018 polls under a collective leadership.

Venugopal, however, said the differences were very less in Karnataka compared to other states and it can be resolved by party leaders.

Venugopal had replaced Digvijaya Singh, who was divested of the charge of Goa and Karnataka following BJPs return to power despite Congress securing the most number of seats in the assembly polls. Congress had failed to finalise a coalition with smaller parties.

In order to spruce up its digital presence, the grand old party on Thursday announced actor-politician from Karnataka, Ramya as the head of the partys social media team, replacing Rohtak MP Deepender Singh Hooda who had requested the leadership to relieve him of the responsibility.

Ramya (34) will head the 20-member social media team that handles the grand old partys website www.inc.in and the Twitter account @INCIndia.

Hooda (39) is expected to be given an organisational responsibility in the ongoing restructuring process initiated by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

The party had made a few organisational changes a fortnight back, appointing Avinash Pande as general secretary in-charge of Rajasthan and Sunil Jakhar and Pritam Singh as chiefs in Punjab and Uttarakhand units and Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh Vivek Tankha as the head of the partys legal department.

With Amarinder Singh taking over as Punjab chief minister, the post of the partys deputy leader in the Lok Sabha which held has become vacant.

Congress leader in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge was recently appointed as the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, a parliamentary panel that audits the revenue and expenditure of the central government.

However, there is no clarity if the Congress will name his replacement or let him continue, given that he is just a floor leader of the party and does not enjoy the status of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha.

Rahul had also met a party delegation from Odisha who sought a replacement for current state chief Prasad Harichandan, arguing that he has failed to resurrect the party and re-energise the cadre.

(With PTI inputs)

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The Election Commission will meet representatives of all recognised political parties on Friday to dispel doubts about the security features of electronic voting machines (EVM) and discuss modalities of a hackathon that will be hosted later this month.

The meeting is part of the poll panels outreach to dismiss allegations that EVMs were manipulated to suit the ruling dispensation.

At the hackathonthe date for which is expected to be announcedparty representatives will be given a chance to prove that the EVMs used by the EC can be tampered with.

After allegations by parties such as BSP and AAP that the EVMs used in the five assembly polls in FebruaryMarch were manipulated to benefit the BJP, 13 parties marched to the EC to register their lack of faith in the EVMs and demanding the use of paper ballots.

A day before the meeting, AAP threw a fresh challenge to the poll panel, saying that given a chance it could prove how voting machines used in the assembly polls were pre-programmed to favour one party.

AAP MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj, an IT engineer, used a lookalike machine in Delhi Assembly on Tuesday and claimed to have demonstrated how EVMs could be manipulated by tampering with its code and changing its motherboard.

The opposition parties had also conveyed their concerns to President Pranab Mukherjee.

The Election Commission too has repeatedly asserted that the EVMs cannot be tampered with.

Amid concerns raised by the opposition, the Union Cabinet last month cleared the Election Commissions proposal to buy VVPAT machines for the EVMs to ensure transparency in the voting process.

The proposal involves getting 16,15,000 VVPAT units for EVMs at a cost of around Rs 3,173.47 crore for use in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Also on the agenda for Fridays meeting is the ECs proposal to make bribery and undue influence during elections a cognisable offence.

The Commission has suggested amendment to make the penal provisions in this regard more stringent. It has proposed inserting a new section, 58B, in the Representation of People Act (RP Act) to take appropriate action, including countermanding of election, in the event of incidents of bribery of electors.

The EC will also discuss the proposal for disqualification on framing of charges for the offence of bribery in elections. As of now, Section 8 of the RP Act, 1951, provides for disqualification on conviction for the offences mentioned in sub-sections (1), (2) and (3) of that section.

The poll panel has recommended disqualification even prior to conviction by a court in the case of serious offences. It wants for offences punishable by imprisonment of five years or more for a case registered at least six months earlier, disqualification should commence from the stage the charges

Views of the political parties will also be sought on recounting rules, use of VVPAT machines and transparency in political funding.

To prevent the inflow of illegal money into the political system, the Commission has proposed that donations in cash should not exceed Rs 20 crore or 20% of the total donations in a year, whichever is less. For donations received in cash, it has proposed that income tax exemption should be restricted to Rs 20 crore or 20% of the total donation received by the party, whichever is less.

(With IANS inputs)

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Taunting of a man for his failed job foray to Saudi Arabia degenerated into a festering dispute, culminating in an exchange of fire between two groups of people that left eight persons injured in a south central Bihar town, late night on Thursday.

The firing that took place around 9.30 pm in Dharhara locality under the town police station of Bhojpur district headquarters town of Ara, about 75 km west of state capital, Patna. Dharhara is located at the eastern edge iof Ara town.

.The police identified the injured as Dharhara resident Mohammad Mahangu and six of his associates, including Tanveer Alam, Mohammad Mantu, Mohammad Vicky, Mohammad Meraj and Mohammad Chunnu. From the opposite side, Sheikh Tullu was stated to be the lone person injured.

Officials said the injured were rushed for treatment to the Ara sadar hospital, where their relatives caused a ruckus claiming inadequate facilities. From there, Mahangu and Tullu, both injured seriously, were referred to Patna for better treatment.

Early Friday, relatives and associates of Mohammad Mahangu blocked the Ara-Patna road, to press for the arrest of members of the rival group, which, they claimed, has started the firing. Thereafter, four persons were detained in connection with the incident.

Ara Town police station house officer (SHO) J P Singh said that the incident presented an unfortunate example of how taunting could cause lasting enmity, leading to firing and possible loss of lives of innocent persons, without sufficient cause.

Singh said when he visited the house of Mahangu at Dharhara, the women there told him that the genesis of the dispute lay in members of the rival party directing barbs at a close relation of Mahangu, who went to Saudi Arabia for a job a few months ago but failed to land a decent one..

When the man returned empty handed, they laughed at him and asked him tauntingly whether he had gone Saudi Arabia to tend to buffaloes. The taunts caused a sharp deterioration in the relationship between the two sides, which led to the Thursday night firing, the SHO told HT.

He said the two sides had got into a scuffle on Thursday, which culminated into the late night firing. One of the associates of Mahangu had lodged an FIR in connection with the incident, he confirmed.
The wife of a former Bihar minister became the latest victim of motorcycle-borne chain snatchers in Patna on Friday.

Unidentified criminals robbed Suprabha Singh, wife of Mithilesh Kumar Singh, a minister in Ram Sundar Das-led government in late 1970s, of her gold chain at gunpoint when the couple was taking morning stroll at Kankarbagh in central Patna.

The incident, which took place around 6.15 am, has triggered panic among residents of the colony, who have witnessed over half-a-dozen similar cases within a month.

CCTV footage revealed that three persons on a motorcycle had done a recce of their target twice before accosting Suprabha Singh and forcing her to handover the ornament to them.

Chachi chain de dijiye nahin to main goli mar doonga (Auntie, hand over the chain, else I will shoot you), is what the criminals told me, she said. She Finding no way out, I hurled the chain to another woman on morning walk. However, before she could pick it up, the snatchers collected it and sped away, she added.

READ: Two traders shot in Bihar; BJP says jungle raj has returned

Her husband Mithilesh KumarSingh said when he resisted the loot attempt, one of the robbers threatened him with dire consequences.

We have filed a police complaint but are not hopeful of the robbers being caught, said Suprabha Singh, adding that the criminals also attempted to snatch the gold chain from other women, but failed.

READ: Jeweller shot dead in Bihars Vaishali district

I even tried to note down the registration number of their motorcycle but it was handwritten and illegible, she said.

An earlier victim of chain snatching, Mukta Singh, said A couple of such incidents were reported from the area, barely few days ago. It seemed the criminals had no fear of police, she said.

The footage of CCTVs cameras installed in the area showed that three criminals had made two rounds of the area before targeting Suprabha Singh, said a police official.

City superintendent of police Chandan Kumar Kushwaha said, We have registered an FIR and trying to trace the robbers through CCTV footage.

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Former Maoist sub-zonal commander-turned renegade, Kundan Pahan, accused of nearly 120 cases of violence, is a young, ever-smiling and sober looking man whose looks defy his antecedents. Unlike the general perception pervading the minds of people, he doesnt look so brutal as accounts describe him and has an easy approach towards life.

HT had met him last year at his hideout in the jungles of Bundu, his stronghold for last 18 years. Though he spoke at length about the rebel organization, the charges against him, family and future plans, he had requested not to publish the same till a favourable time.

Now that he has reportedly walked into the police custody voluntarily and is being interrogated by various agencies, including state police, special branch, Intelligence Bureau and the CRPF, HT is producing excerpts of the interview.

Among the several crimes he had allegedly committed during his 15 years of association with CPI (Maoist), Pahan became a much-talked about and dreaded name when he allegedly beheaded special branch inspector, Francis Induwar, a tribal officer, after abducting him while he was discharging his duties in the forest area on October 6, 2009. Police had put a bounty of Rs 15 lakh on his head.

Induwars Taliban style murder--his severed head was found at least 10 feet away from the body on the NH33had led to widespread outrage against the Maoists menace across India and overseas with the Centre deciding to launch an all out war against the left insurgents in Jharkhand. Several politicians including Congress vice-president, Rahul Gandhi had visited the bereaved family of Induwar in Ranchi and expressed solidarity.

Why did he kill the special branch inspector? I did not kill him but the blame went to me as the incident occurred in an area under my control, Pahan said, lamenting the incident.

Platoon commander, Kishore Munda, who reported into me, killed Induwar, keeping me in the dark, he said, adding, Munda was later killed in an encounter with the forces.

Pahan stressed that Induwars killing also stirred a debate in the underground organization with several top leaders disapproving of such killings. The leaders feared killing of tribal officers would make the tribals revolt against them and they would lose ground in the villages and countryside, whose support was paramount for the organization to survive and grow.

Following the incident, the leaders, he said, issued a new set of instructions to the foot soldier on the ground.
Having a bad hair day? Imagine if all your hair were gone. Abhaya* lost hers when she was battling a tumour in the neck a year ago. I had long, lustrous hair and when the chemotherapy took it, it hit me hard. I didnt want to face anyone without it. I didnt feel like myself, she says.



Its not just women. Sumeet* was diagnosed with a brain tumour at 10 and is now 29. His hair never grew back. I didnt like seeing myself in pictures. I was so self-conscious about how I looked, he says.

Both Abhaya and Sumeet got in touch with NGOs that turn donated hair into wigs for cancer patients. Sumeet poses confidently for pictures now. Abhaya is in remission and her own hair is returning.



Hair is easier to donate than blood or a kidney, but not many people know its an option. So NGOs such as Madat Charitable Trust, HairAid, Sarga Kshetra Cultural and Charitable Centre and Hair for Hope are working to spread awareness online and offline, organisation donation drives in metros across the country, helping link donors and recipients. They organise hair donation events, carefully collect the hair donated, and then take it to affiliated wigmakers, who make the wigs for free.





Before chemotherapy starts, we generally advise patients to get a wig that resembles their hairstyle, says Dr Sujata Vasani, medical oncologist and haematologist at Mumbais Breach Candy hospital. Its a relatively small thing, but the relief it can bring to someone is immense. Especially in cases where, for instance, a parent doesnt want their kids to know they have cancer.



Its not cancer alone. Donated hair is used to make free wigs for patients who have alopecia or have had extensive brain surgery. A good wig costs about Rs 30,000, and the cost of treatment is so high in such cases that even middle-class people often cant afford one, says Premi Mathew, founder of Hair for Hope India. So dont throw away hair when you get your summer cuts. Come to us, and well use it to bring a smile to a chemo patient.

(* Names changed on request)

Meet some of the donors

Before and after pictures of Sunita Wazir, 40, and her 13-year-old daughter Ameya. Sunita, an HR business consultant from Mumbai, and Ameya donated their hair in October via NGO Madat Charitable Trust. My sister Kavita died 18 years ago after a painful tryst with cancer, Sunita says. This contribution is our small way of celebrating her life by helping someone cope with cancer. Im even prouder that my daughter Ameya joined me in this. Bringing a smile to someone is our biggest reward.

Sherin Mathew, 26, a contracts manager with a PSU, decided to go bald when donating her hair. It occurred to me that if I cut it short, people would comment on the new haircut. I decided to go bald so I could spread awareness every time someone asked why. It was also my way of showing my solidarity with people who had lost their hair. It was a difficult decision to take, but everyone has supported me and, one month one, I am very glad I did it, she says. Mathew donated her hair via NGO Hair for Hope India.

Lendle Sunny, 24, is an IT professional who grew his hair extra-long, just so he could donate it. It was while vacationing in Kerala that I heard about hair donation. The pictures online of people donating hair for cancer patients inspired me. So I grew mine for a year. My mom oiled it every day so it would grow faster. Every time people asked why I was growing my hair, I got a chance to spread the word. And as a result two other people pledged to donate their hair too, at an event we organised in Mumbai. I feel very happy that I was able to do something to bring happiness to someone who needed it, he says. Sunny donated his hair via NGO Hair for Hope India.

So what happens to the hair once its been cut and collected? Take a look

Pankaj Bhupatkar runs a wig-making company called Rajkamal Wigs & Hair and also works with NGO Madat Charitable Trust, making wigs for free out of donated hair. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

Gray or wavy, frizzy or straight, anyone can donate hair. All you have to do is make sure its at least 12-15 inches long, collect it carefully when you cut it so the ends are not mixed up with the roots, and then send it to an NGO that collects hair for wigs. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

Donated hair is sorted carefully into plaits based on length, colour and texture. Each plait is then brushed carefully to remove all knots. It is now ready to be rooted into a cap. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

Each wig base or cap is made to fit a specific persons head. This is a very crucial stage of the wig-making process because if this measurement goes wrong, the wig will never fit right. We are very careful to not to make any mistakes, says Bhupatkar. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

The cap is made using monofilament net imported from Korea. This fine mesh fits close to the scalp and is virtually invisible, making the wig look even less wig-like. The mesh is also thin and breathable, making the wig comfortable and well-ventilated over long hours of use. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

This is the knotting stage, where the real skill comes in. Two or three strands of hair are knotted into the net at a time. This needs total concentration and a keen eye for detail, says Bhupatkar. Its almost like fine carpet-making. If the hair is not knotted delicately and exactly, the hair wont fall right. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

After the knotting, the hair is cut, shampooed, conditioned and styled just as it would be in a salon  except that no hair dryer is used. Hair, once separated from the scalp, becomes dry and gets brittle if exposed to intense heat or friction. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

It takes about a week to make one wig. But once its done, its yours to play with. You can change the parting; tie it and style it as you wish, just like you would your own hair. I wore a donated wig for eight months and it was so me, I didnt even feel sad about losing my original hair. I went to school wearing it and no one knew, says a 16-year-old college student and cancer survivor. When I told friends, they were surprised. That made me happy and confident in my appearance. (Satyabrata Tripathy / HT Photo)

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Ukraine's Energy and Coal Industry Ministry intends to discuss a possibility of supplying coal from the United States with representatives of this country, Minister Ihor Nasalyk has said on 112 TV Channel.

"An expert group from the United States arrives on May 22. We will discuss the possibility of supplying U.S. coal," he said.

The minister said that now Ukrainian power generating companies have signed contracts to ship coal from South Africa. Coal is also supplied from Russia.
Justice Tarlok Singh Chauhan has recused himself from the hearing of the matter regarding divulging details of Priyanka Gandhi land deal under Right to Information (RTI) Act.

On Thursday, when the matter was taken up for hearing, an order read, Subject to the approval of Acting Chief Justice, list before another bench. Now, the matter will be listed before another bench.

One of the respondents, Debashish Bhattacharya, had moved an application seeking details in the case relating to Priyankas land purchase at Chharabra from the Shimla deputy commissioner office, which rejected his plea. Following this, Bhattacharya appealed to the state information commission.

The land purchased by Priyanka Gandhi at Chharabra. (Deepak Sansta/HT Photo)

Earlier, on July 7 last year, the Himachal Pradesh high court had stayed the information commissions order to divulge the information regarding the land. Since the commission carried on with the proceeding other than divulging information, Priyanka had moved a contempt petition and on August 7, the court issued contempt notices to the then chief information commissioner Bhim Sen and information commissioner KD Batish. Both of them had to tender an unconditional apology before the court.

In its order on June 29 (stayed by the high court later), a division bench of Sen and Batish summoned the Shimla deputy commissioner (DC) and the additional magistrate. Countering the security grounds cited by the DC, Batish argued, Even top political figures like the Prime Minister and former prime ministers with SPG (Special Protection Group) protection provide information about their immovable and the movable assets in their election affidavits.

Bhattacharya later wrote a letter to the high court citing the alleged conflict of interest for the presiding judge. He said the judges wife had contested municipal polls on Congress ticket in 2012. Bhattacharya demanded to transfer the case from here to New Delhi.

Bhattacharya also said when chief minister Virbhadra Singhs case was enlisted before former chief justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur, he recused himself from the hearing saying that he knows Virbhadra Singh.

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A 28-year-old Indian national in the US has pleaded guilty for his role in a multi-million dollar scam in which individuals from call centres located in India impersonated US tax and immigration officials to defraud victims across America.

Harsh Patel, who most recently lived in New Jersey, is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty to this scam that targeted hundreds of Americans.

Till date, Patel, over 50 other individuals and five India-based call centres have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury last year in October.

He pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas. Sentencing is scheduled for August 7, 2017.

According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Patel and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which individuals from call centres located in Ahmedabad impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service or US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the call centre operators targeted US victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government.

Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centres would immediately turn to a network of runners based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds.

Since January, 2015, Patel worked as a runner operating primarily in New Jersey, California and Illinois.

Patel is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty in the call centre scam.

Bharat Kumar Patel, 43, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the fraud and money laundering scheme.

Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, 28, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in liquidating and laundering victim payments generated through various telephone fraud and money laundering schemes via India-based call centres.
India plans to launch next month its most powerful rocket that is capable of transporting a heavier 4-tonne communications satellite and described as a game-changer in the first of its kind space mission.

Aiming for a greater share of the multi-billion dollar global space market and to reduce dependency on international launching vehicles, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said on Friday it is hoping to launch the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle(GSLV) Mark-III in the first week of June.

A successful launch of this rocket will be yet another major step towards being self-reliant in the countrys space programme.

The ISRO currently has the capability to launch payloads of up to 2.2 tonnes into the intended orbit and anything above that it had to tap foreign launch facilities.

GSLV Mark-III is our next launch. We are getting ready. All the systems are in Sriharikota. The integration is currently going on, ISRO Chairman AS Kiran Kumar told reporters in Hyderabad.

The whole process of assembling the various stages and then integrating the satellite into the heat shield, these activities are going on. First week of June is when we are targeting this launch, he said.

The ISRO views operationalisation of this rocket as a game-changer mission.

GSLV Mark-III will be Indias most powerful launch vehicle built to lift the heaviest Indian communications satellites to space. It can put satellites weighing 4 tonnes in space, double the weight that the current GSLV-Mark-II can lift.

It will also enable ISRO to launch from India heavier communications spacecraft to geostationary orbits of 36,000 km. Because of the absence of a powerful launcher, ISRO currently launches satellites above 2 tonnes on European rockets for a big fee.

Noting that communications satellites built beyond the capacity of 2.2 tonnes have to be launched from foreign soil, Kiran Kumar said efforts are on to launch satellites upto four tonnes and even beyond in India itself.

The GSLV Mark-III is intended to launch satellites into geostationary orbit and as a launcher for an Indian crew vehicle.

It features an Indian cryogenic third stage and a higher payload capacity than the current GSLV.

The satellite would carry Ka and Ku-band payload along with a Geostationary Radiation Spectrometer (GRASP) payload to monitor and study the nature of the charged particles and influence of space radiation on spacecraft and electronic components.

It would also employ advanced spacecraft technologies including bus subsystem experiments in electrical propulsion system, indigenous Li-ion battery and indigenous bus bars for power distribution, among others.

The technology on lithium ion batteries developed by ISRO is good for space programme in terms of cost-effectiveness, but it requires the efforts of industry to develop it to reduce costs, Kiran Kumar said.
A Jet Airways flight to Bangkok turned back to Mumbai on Friday on account of a suspected tail strike, an official said.

The flight 9W 70 landed safely and all 180 passengers and 8 crew were deplaned, said a Jet Airways spokesperson.

Acting proactively in the interest of safety, the crew of Jet Airways flight 9W 70, BOM-BKK of May 12, 2017 executed an air turn back to Mumbai on account of a suspected tail strike, the spokesperson said.

The aircraft was being inspected by Jet Airways engineering team and ground personnel.

Regretting the inconvenience caused to passengers, Jet Airways said the flight was expected to depart at 12.45pm.

Jet Airways has been hit by a string of incidents in the recent past.

On May 7, the tail of a Patna-bound Jet Airways plane clipped the starboard wing of the airlines flight for Srinagar when both aircraft were taxiing for take-off at the New Delhi airport.

The 260 passengers and crew in the planes were safe, but they survived a major scare as the wings of an aircraft carry large quantities of highly-inflammable jet fuel that can explode during a collision and reduce the flight into a fireball.

This is the first case in many years of two aircraft colliding at one of Indias busiest airports, which handled 82 flights in an hour in November 2016, breaking its record of 77 take-offs and landing, according to civil aviation officials.
The turmoil in Kashmir may see the Opposition parties make their own road map to reach out to the youth in the Valley, signalling another area of confrontation with the Narendra Modi government.

The Opposition parties are frequently discussing the Kashmir situation among themselves and Congress President Sonia Gandhi has been urged to call a meeting of the non-NDA parties.

I have told her to call a meeting to send a message to the Kashmiri youth. She told me some other leaders have also told her the same, CPI leader D Raja said.

Students protest and violent agitation are continuing in Srinagar, pelting stones at police personnel and vandalising government properties. In some incidents, girl students have also been seen protesting.

Two days ago, Indian army soldier Ummer Fayaz, 22, was abducted and killed by militants, when he had come home to attend a marriage function. The incident comes amid increasing tensions in the Valley between civilians and security forces following a series of videos that allegedly showed human rights excesses by security forces.

About a week ago, a rogue Pakistani army team killed and beheaded two security personnel, triggering outrage across the country and prompting the government to vow a strong response.

Earlier this week, National Conference leader and former J&K chief minister Farooq Abdullah met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and complained about Mehbooba Mufti-led J&K government. Later Abdullah also called a few Opposition leaders at his Delhi residence and said that there should be a clear message from New Delhi for Kashmir.

While no Opposition party wants any compromise with terrorists, they want the political parties to reach out to the Kashmiri youth and demand that the government initiate dialogues to diffuse the tension.

A senior Opposition leader told HT that at times, parleys on Presidential polls turns out to be discussions on Kashmir. Last week, JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav met former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for a threadbare discussion on Kashmir situation.

WE cant keep quiet, Abdullah has told many Opposition leaders.

A group of MPs, led by home minister Rajnath Singh had visited Kashmir a few months ago to interact with the people of Kashmir. The visit, however yielded little result as the violence in Kashmir valley has aggravated over time. Opposition, however, squarely blames the Centre and points out that it has not taken forward any of the suggestions made by the MPs group.

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PATNA A 62-year-old man was killed and a minor boy injured when an improvised explosive device (IED), suspected to have been planted by Maoists, and left unattended by the police, went off at Madanpur village of Aurangabad district on Friday morning.

The blast occurred when Ram Charitra Singh Bhokta of Babu Bandh village in Auranabad, about 145 km west of state capital, Patna, was toying with an unidentified article he had picked up from the forest area nearby, at a roadside shop in the vicinity.

Bhokta died on the spot while 16-year-old Ravindra Kumar, who was sitting next to him, sustained injuries. The injured boy was admitted to a local primary health centre (PHC), a police officer said..

Fearing the Maoists, family members of Bhokta quietly cremated his body. However, informed by the village chowkidar, a police team from the Madanpur police station rushed to the village and lodged an FIR against unidentified Maoists.

A Bomb Disposal Squad (BDS) was rushed to the blast spot for investigations.

Sources said the police had left the unidentified article lying where it was, after recovering some explosive material from under the road. Maoists had apparently planted the explosives to deter the movement of vehicles of security forces.

Another police team was supposed to defuse the explosive during the day. But before it could reach the spot, the old man (Bhokta), picked it up to end up in fatality, said an official.

Aurangabad SP Satya Prakash told HT that prima facie, the explosive was planted to target security forces during their patrolling in the region.

Subsequently, security forces were rushed to the spot to find out whether more bombs have been planted underground or in surrounding areas, he added.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a two-day state visit to Sri Lanka, participated in the opening ceremony of the 14th International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo on Friday. Sri Lankan leader thanked Modi for the visit

Modi, who is the chief guest, arrived at the venue on Friday morning and was received by Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe amid traditional fanfare. Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena was also present.

Vesak Day marks the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for visiting the country.

Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank PM Modi for being the Chief Guest during the celebrations, Indias PMO quoted Wickremesinghe as saying.

Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank PM Modi for being the Chief Guest during the celebrations: PM @RW_UNP pic.twitter.com/TGuK4yJKVV  PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 12, 2017

Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in todays world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice, Wickremesinghe said.

Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice: PM @RW_UNP pic.twitter.com/NennMIXntY  PMO India (@PMOIndia) May 12, 2017

Indias external affairs ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said Sri Lanka termed Prime Minister Modi as one of their own

Sri Lankas minister for justice N Buddhashasana said Modis presence speaks of deep reverence for Buddhism.

.@narendramodi @MaithripalaS Minister for Justice N Buddhashasana says PM @narendramodi one of their own for , his presence today spks of deep reverence for Buddhism  Gopal Baglay (@MEAIndia) May 12, 2017

It is Modis second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after March 2015. The visit follows an invitation from Sirisena.

This is the first time that Sri Lanka is hosting the International Vesak Day, recognised by the UN. The theme of the event is Buddhist teachings for social justice and sustainable world peace.

Later on Friday, Modi will open an India-funded 150-bed multi-speciality hospital at Dickoya in the central hill district which is home to Tamil tea plantation workers of Indian origin.

Modi will also pray at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic at Kandy. The golden-roofed Kandy temple houses Sri Lankas most important Buddhist relic -- a tooth of Lord Buddha.

In Pallekele, 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 Indias grant assistance.

Although no bilateral talks are scheduled, the visit is expected to give fresh boost to India-Sri Lanka ties. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe had visited India in April.

On Thursday, President Sirisena called PM Modi a great human being and said it was wonderful to meet him.

It is wonderful to meet this great human being @narendramodi in Colombo again. Thank you for gracing #InternationalVesakDay. pic.twitter.com/xjt6Zd9Agh  Maithripala Sirisena (@MaithripalaS) May 11, 2017
Nearly six out of the ten toilets built by the government under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan dont have proper water supply, making them unusable, a government survey has found.

The findings have put a question mark over Prime Minister Narendra Modis ambitious target of declaring India open-defecation free by October 2019.

A survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) found in 2015-16 that while the countrys sanitation infrastructure has seen a slight improvement, a lot is still left to be desired.

Since the NDA took charge in 2014, around 3.5 crore new toilets have been built using government subsidy, which is double the 2001 numbers.

The improvement in sanitation coverage was a result of the governments decision to give a subsidy of Rs 9,000 to poor households and Rs 3,000 to others for toilet construction, with an aim to ensure that every house has a toilet by the next general elections.

The impressive infrastructure achievement, however, has its pitfalls also. Around 55.4% of people in villages are still opting for open defecation in the absence of water supply and proper drainage in the toilets, the National Sample Survey Office found in a survey of over one lakh households. In cities, 7.5% of the population defecated in the open.

The surveys findings highlight the hygiene-related risks the limited sanitation coverage poses to the 833 million people living in villages and the 377 million residing in cities.

In the past, there have been instances of people using newly-built toilets as storerooms and kitchen in parts of Madhya Pradesh and UP in the absence of water and a proper drainage.

The survey also pointed out that the number of rural households with a toilet have increased but their percentage in cities has fallen primarily because of a rise in rural to urban migration owing to farm sector distress in the last three years.

Ramon Magsyasay awardee social activist Bezwada Wilson said the Swachh Bharat mission failed to take a note of manual scavenging. The toilets are being built without any cleaners, he said.

The survey found that in Assam, Punjab and Odisha no agency was appointed for cleaning even the community toilets built under the mission.

The governments first big toilet survey found that 40% of toilets in villages were not connected to a drainage system.

In majority of these villages, the survey said, the toilet waste was being released directly into local water bodies, thereby polluting the limited water

resources.

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The Centre on Friday exempted NRIs, senior citizens and residents of Jammu and Kashmir as well as certain northeastern states from having to mandatorily quote their Aadhaar number to obtain PAN cards and file income tax returns.

While presenting the Union Budget 2017-18, the government had inserted Section 139AA in the Income Tax Act to make the unique identity number compulsory for filing income tax returns and obtaining PAN card numbers from July. However, a notification issued by the government has now exempted residents of Assam, Jammu & Kashmir and Meghalaya, non-resident Indians and those above 80 years of age from the rule.

Government officials said this was done because many people in the three states are yet to get Aadhaar cards, and there was a dearth of agencies to collect the data.

The notification comes at a time when a case challenging the mandatory use of Aadhaar for such services is still pending in the countrys apex court.
The total ban on liquor in Bihar since April 2016 and a tough message from chief minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday that there could be no let up in its implementation, has put the police under renewed pressure to completely block liquor smuggling.

But in Kishanganj district of eastern Bihar, around 400 km from state capital, Patna and close to the Indo- Bangladesh border, security personnel are focussing all their vigilance on consignments of another commodity - small bottles of cough syrup, mainly Phensedyl.

This is because of rampant smuggling via Bihar of expectorants such as these to neighbouring Bangladesh, where, like in many parts of Bihar and the country at large, they are consumed to get a liquor like kick out of its intoxicating ingredient.

Here, we keep closer tabs on cough syrup consignments as Kishanganj is a prominent route for the smugglers to push it into Bangladesh via the Indo-Bangla border, where it is sold at a high rate, said a senior BSF officer, posted at forces sector headquarters at Kishanganj.

He said a 100 mg bottle of Phensedyl fetched a price ranging from Rs 300 to Rs 700, in various parts of Bangladesh. In India, the cough syrup reportedly sells at less than Rs 100 for a small bottle.

Codeine-based cough syrups, including Phensedyl and Corex, are among the 344 fixed-dose combinations (FDCs) banned by India in February last year. But they continue to be sold in the black market, say medicine shop owners. Several companies have gone to court for overturning the ban.

 Most of the consignment come from Himachal Pradesh, a pharma manufacturing base, said another BSF officer, highlighting how huge consignments of the cough syrup loaded in trucks got seized from time to time, based on tip off from intelligence sources.

Reports have it the issue of cough syrup smuggling has been high on the agenda for talks between India and Bangladesh, especially after India banned codeine-based cough syrups.

BSF personnel also confided how locals residing along the Indo- Bangla border, in Bihar and West Bengal, were hired by the drug smugglers to transport the cough syrup laden gunny bags across the border.

The smuggling is done as part of well-oiled network . Locals sit along the fence of the border and just throw the gunny bags with cough syrup across the barbed wires, mainly during night hours. Patrolling is intensive but the illicit trade remains a challenge, said another BSF officer.

In Kishanganj, illegal cough syrup trade is more rampant than smuggling of liquor, he said, pointing out how cough syrup was consumed as an intoxicant in parts of Araria and Kishanganj, Muslim-dominated districts of the state.

Reports suggest despite the ban, medicines shops in Araria still have roaring sale of cough syrups, mainly because the expectorant is consumed more as an alternative to alcohol.

However, some officials claimed the crackdown on drug smugglers in the past few years had brought a sharp reduction in instances of ferrying of the cough syrup bottles to other side of the fence.

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Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has approved the launch of a pilot project to sell small facilities being privatized via the ProZorro.Sales platforms.

The decision was made at a government meeting on Thursday.

"Jointly with the State Property Fund and the Economic Development and Trade Ministry worked out a pilot project and proposals for the pilot project to start small privatization using the ProZorro tool and trigger the process at open electronic auctions If it is success, we will be able to expand it to sale of most of small facilities being privatized," Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Vitaliy Sayenko said.

First Deputy Economic Development and Trade Minister Maksym Nefyodov said that amendments to the internal resolutions of the State Property Fund are to be made to launch the pilot project and harmonize the fund's procedures with the ProZorro procedures.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman said that the launch of the project would allow selling small state-owned enterprises in a transparent way, relaxing the process for buyers, removing corruption and red tape from the process.
A BSF jawan was injured after Pakistan Rangers opened unprovoked fire along the International Border in Arnia sector of Jammu district in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday morning.

A BSF officer said Pakistan Rangers fired a few shots warning the Indian troops conducting a cleaning and area domination drive using a tractor in the region.

Our troops also retaliated with few rounds fire. Some exchange of mortar shell also took place, BSF Jammu frontier DIG, Dharmender Pareekh said.

A BSF jawan suffered minor injuries when the Rangers targeted Pittal post along the border. He didnt suffer any bullet or splinter injury. While fleeing the tractor to escape enemy fire, the jawan got entangled in the vehicle and suffered a minor injury, he added.

The exchanges started around 7 am and lasted till 8.45 am.

The BSF from time to time undertakes anti-tunnelling and cleaning drives on the international border to find trans-border tunnels dug up by Pakistani forces to push militants into Jammu and Kashmir.

Such tunnels have been detected by the BSF from Samba district to Pallanwala sector of Akhnoor sub division in Jammu district.

Today, at about 0630 hours, while one BSF operational and area maintenance party was dominating the area ahead of border fencing in Arnia, Pakistani Rangers without any reason, fired on it. A bullet hit the tractor used by BSF in a field and as a result very minor scratch was sustained by driver of the vehicle, said a BSF spokesperson.

BSF troops on duty points gave swift and befitting reply to the Pakistan troops. However , Pak Rangers further tried to vitiate the situation by targeting our duty points with mortar fire, which was also responded in controlled and accurate manner by the alert BSF troops, he said.

Soon a strong protest will be lodged to Pak Rangers for the mischief by their forward troops. BSF is on high alert and fully committed to ensure sanctity of International Border, he added.

In Naushera sector of Rajouri district, at least 20 families comprising 50 people migrated from Jhangar to a government higher secondary school after heavy shelling by Pakistani troops on the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday.

However, there was no firing by Pak army on the intervening night of Thursday and Friday, Rajouri deputy commissioner Dr Shahid Iqbal Choudhary told HT.

A woman died and her husband was injured in Pak shelling early Thursday.

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Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan, Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan, Coats said.

He blamed Pakistan for deteriorating Indo-Pak relations and warned that the ties might worsen further if another high- profile terrorist attack emanates from across the border this year.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban, he said.

Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership, Coats said.

Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of Indias rising international status including Indias expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean, Coats testified before the committee.
Pakistan plans to argue the International Court of Justice has no jurisdiction in the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death for alleged espionage, because his purported activities are covered by the exceptions cited by Islamabad when it recognised the jurisdiction of the Hague-based institution.

Sources in Islamabad told Hindustan Times that attorney general Ashtar Ausaf Ali, who will leave for the Hague over the weekend to represent Pakistan at a hearing on May 15, will contend that Jadhavs alleged activities were covered by the exceptions on hostilities and matters of national security.

In a declaration made on March 29, 2017 regarding the recognition of the jurisdiction of the ICJ, Pakistan listed eight exceptions, including disputes relating tohostilities, armed conflicts and all matters related to national security.

Jadhav has been convicted by a military court for spying and subversive activities, including attacks in Balochistan and the attorney general will argue these amount to hostilities and matters of national security, said a source familiar with the developments.

India approached the ICJ on Tuesday and obtained a stay on the execution of Jadhav, a former naval officer. New Delhi has also dismissed the charges levelled against Jadhav as manufactured and contended that he was subjected to a sham trial in a Pakistani military court.

India has said Jadhav was kidnapped from Iran, where he was running a business after leaving the Indian Navy.

India referred to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations when it approached the ICJ, saying Pakistan had rejected 16 requests for consular access to Jadhav after Islamabad claimed he was arrested in Balochistan province in March last year. India has also sought the chargesheet and details of the military courts verdict, which are yet to be provided by Pakistan.

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Passengers of the New Delhi- Ranchi Rajdhani Express of May 10 complained to the railway officials in Ranchi that they were not served food on the train during the journey, railway officials said on Friday.

The Ranchi Railway Division has taken seriously the passengers dissatisfaction about food not served in the 12454 New Delhi-Ranchi Rajdhani Express on May 10 by the catering staff, the officials said.

Senior divisional commercial manager Neeraj Kumar was at the station with his team at Ranchi station when the train arrived on Thursday, according to a railway release here.

Kumar spoke to the passengers, who complained that they did not get food as there was no catering staff to serve food.

Following the complaint, the official ensured sufficient food and staff in the 12453 Ranchi-New Delhi Rajdhani express on Thursday.

There were staff vacancies in serving the food. Now everything is under control, said a senior railway official.

The train left on Thursday after inspection of cleanliness, pantry car and full staff strength and all other facilities, the release said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared Friday his desire for a quantum jump in relations with Sri Lanka, as New Delhi jostles with regional rival Beijing for influence in the island nation.

India had always considered its smaller neighbour to be within its sphere of influence but watched Sri Lanka drift closer to China under former strongman President Mahinda Rajapakse.

Modis visit to Sri Lanka -- his second since coming to power in 2014 -- is being seen as New Delhis attempt to win back support and counter Beijings push for closer ties with the Indian Ocean nation.

I believe we are at a moment of great opportunity in our ties with Sri Lanka. An opportunity to achieve a quantum jump in our partnership across different fields, Modi told a Buddhist conference in Colombo.

His comments came as Sri Lanka rebuffed a Chinese request to dock a submarine at one of its ports.

Chinese-backed projects soared under Rajapakse, who relied heavily on Beijing for economic and diplomatic support as Western nations threatened his administration with sanctions over atrocities committed during the decades-long civil war which ended in 2009.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena came to power in January 2015 promising to review Chinese-funded projects signed by his predecessor and rebuild ties with India.

Modi pledged Indias commitment to their Sri Lankan brothers and sisters and the indivisible ties between the two neighbours.

We will continue to invest in driving positive change and economic growth to deepen our development co-operation, he said.

As Modi touched down in Colombo for a two-day visit Thursday, a top Sri Lankan defence official confirmed Beijing had been denied permission for a port call by a Chinese submarine.

In Beijing, Chinas foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuan said they were aware of the reports, but stressed both sides maintained good cooperation.

China and Sri Lanka enjoy good friendship, he said.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghes office announced he will travel to Beijing on Saturday to participate in Chinas maritime silk route initiative of economic diplomacy.

Attention will be paid to the collective benefits for the countries participating in the initiative of President Xi Jinping, Wickremesinghes office said in a statement Friday.

Pro-China Rajapakses political allies had called for a black flag protest during Modis visit to Sri Lanka, accusing India of trying to grab land in a strategic port district.

But the former president sought a meeting with Modi on Thursday night and the two had a cordial discussion, confirmed Indian diplomats who provided no further details.

Tea diplomacy

Modi flew to the islands tea growing central district of Nuwara Eliya on Friday to open an India-gifted hospital and address tens of thousands of plantation workers of Indian origin.

The nearly one million ethnic Tamils in central Sri Lanka are descendants of indentured labour brought to work in coffee, rubber and tea plantations by British colonial rulers in the 19th century.

As some of you may have heard, I have a special association with tea, he told workers, referring to his modest beginnings selling tea in the Indian state of Gujarat when he was a child.

It is a tremendous honour to be the first Indian Prime Minister ever to visit this beautiful region of Sri Lanka.

He promised another 10,000 houses in addition to the 4,000 that India is currently funding for ethnic Tamil plantation workers who are among the poorest in the country of 21 million.

He left on Friday evening after receiving a special blessing at the temple of the Tooth, Sri Lankas holiest Buddhist shrine, in the town of Kandy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi cautioned the international community on Friday against the growing arc of violence and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion, he said in an apparent reference to Pakistan, which India has accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks across the Line of Control.

The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states, he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

Modi also said he believed that Buddhisms message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world.

Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.

Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy.

The themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddhas teachings; they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected, Modi said.

He said the countries of south, central, south east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

Prime Minister Modi assured Indias support to Sri Lanka for the islands nation-building endeavours.

Modi said that he believes that both India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity in its relationship.

You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours, he said and called on the two countries to uphold ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.

The Prime Minister lit a lamp  a traditional practice  initiating the UN Vesak Day celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.

Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.

Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event.

Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations, Wickremesinghe said.

Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in todays world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice, he said.

Modi arrived in Sri Lanka on Thursday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
The poor, common man has no voice and the police shoos them away because no money can be made and no high-up will call, the Delhi high court said on Friday.

The caustic observations came after the court was told by a mother of two kids that the police did nothing when she had gone to them and complained that her children had been forcibly taken away by her husband and the in-laws.

It is an unfortunate fact that a poor, common man in this country, this city, has no voice. The police shoos them away when he goes to the police station as no money can be made from him and no one from the top is going to call.

The police force today is not there for the common man. It is a very, very unfortunate situation, a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Deepa Sharma said.

According to the womans plea, she was thrown out of her matrimonial home on April 15 and she gone to her mothers place.

Four days later, her husband and the in-laws came to her mothers residence and forcibly took away her children to Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

She claims to have reported this to the nearby police station at Timarpur in North Delhi, but the officers there did nothing to help her.

The bench on Friday directed the station house officer (SHO) of the police station to act on her complaint and consider the information already gathered regarding the location of her children.

It also ordered the SHO to ensure that the two kids, the womans husband and her in-laws, who are named in the petition, are present in the court on the next date of hearing on May 23.

The woman has moved the high court seeking to know the whereabouts as well as the custody of her minor kids, one of them an eight-month old infant.
An irate mob attacked the police and resorted to arson after unidentified persons bludgeoned to death two persons and seriously injured another in Bihars Vaishali district on Friday.

The bodies of deceased Manish Kumar, 35, and his brother Niraj Kumar, 30, were found at Karnpura under industrial area police station at Hajipur, 25 km from Patna.

Relatives of the deceased turned violent while taking the bodies to Kaunharaghat here for cremation. They set on fire a police vehicle and chased away cops who had gone there to prevent an untoward incident during cremation.

READ: Bihar: Mob attacks police station after rumour of tribal mans death in custody

Earlier, police said during morning patrolling they had found three persons lying unconscious at a secluded place under industrial area police station.

They were immediately taken to Hajipur sadar hospital, where doctors declared Manish Kumar and Niraj Kumar brought dead and referred the injured to Patna Medical College Hospital, Patna, the police added.

Manish Kumar and Niraj Kumar were accused in a recent firing incident, the police said.

READ: Cop on morning walk shot dead in Bihars Gaya district

The police said injured Bunty Kumar, 25, during the brief period when he regained consciousness at the sadar hospital, revealed that they were on way to meet an acquaintance when unidentified persons stopped their vehicle near the block office, just 100 metres from sadar police station and attacked them with stones and bricks.

The criminals fled after dumping them at an isolated place at Karnpura, 1.5 km from the scene of the crime, the police quoted Bunty Kumar as saying.

READ:Bihar medicos go on rampage, set 10 vehicles on fire as police cane mob

Prima facie, the incident appears to be fallout of old enmity, a police officer, involved in the investigation said on the condition of anonymity.

He said Niraj Kumar and Manish Kumar were named accused in the FIR registered in connection with an incident of firing at a person, identified as Rajiv Kumar, a month ago.

Meanwhile, one person had been detained for interrogation, while raids were on to nab other suspects, he added.
A Rohtak court on Friday issued a bailable warrant against yoga guru Ramdev in a case over his controversial beheading remark made in the city last year.

The order followed the failure of Ramdev to appear before the court on its summon for April 29.

Ramdev was summoned under Section 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) for his remark that he could behead lakhs of people refusing to chant Bharat Mata Ki Jai if he werent bound by the law.

He was addressing a large gathering in Rohtak during a Sadbhawana Rally organised to put balm on the riot-hit state after violent Jat agitation for reservation where he had courted controversy with his statement.

A day after his remark, former home minister and senior Congress leader Subhash Batra had lodged a complaint with police against him. Batra later moved court after the police did not register a case. The court had on March 2 summoned Ramdev for April 29, but he failed to appear.

On Thursday, the court of additional chief judicial magistrate (ACJM) Harish Goyal directed Ramdev to furnish Rs 1 lakh personal surety during the execution of warrant and also to appear before the court on June 16.
An RSS office bearer accused in the murder of a CPI-M worker last year was hacked to death near Kannur on Friday.

The RSS-BJP combine has called for a shutdown in the district on Saturday to protest the killing. According to the police, he was waylaid and allegedly hacked to death by a group of CPI-M workers. He died on the way to a hospital.

The CPI(M) is trying to foment trouble in the district. We cant be a mute spectator if the party continued to let loose violence against our workers, said BJP Kannur district secretary Sathyaprakash. However, the CPI-M district leadership denied any role in the murder.

The state BJP leadership has accused CPI-M activists of the crime.

The RSS worker, Biju, in his early 30s, is the 12th accused in the murder of CPI-M worker Dhanaraj, that took place near Payyanur here in July last year. Biju was out on bail.

The police have cordoned off the area and probe has begun.

With inputs from IANS
The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and other international financial institutions (IFIs) retain the high level of confidence in Ukraine, Governor of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Valeriya Gontareva has said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

"We and our reforms have huge support both in the IMF and the World Bank. We visited meetings jointly with Finance Minister Oleksandr Danyliuk, the driver of reforms in the government. This is not support of only the NBU," she said.

She said that the provision of the third and fourth tranches by the IMF under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) without large breaks is also evidence of this confidence.

Asked about the attitude of new U.S. administration to Ukraine, Gontareva said that she did not feel any changes in her sphere.

"Maybe the only thing that could be felt is that not all levels of the power vertical were filled in. For example, earlier Jacob Lew was U.S Secretary of the Treasury, Nathan Sheets was Under Secretary of the Treasury, Ramin Tooloui was Treasurys Assistant Secretary and then Treasurys Financial Attache in the CIS Clay Berry. I met Berry, while [U.S Secretary of the Treasury] Steven Mnuchin has not yet appointed new Under Secretary and other top officials," she said.

Gontareva said that the reviewed EFF program with serious requirements for getting the fifth tranche from the IMF, among which is the start of the pension and land reform, as well as the launch of the anti-corruption court, is not evidence that confidence to Ukrainian authorities is falling.

"They [all the requirements] were earlier. They were simply moved and it was encouragement for us for the good purification of the banking system," she said.

Gontareva said that all benchmarks were met in the financial sphere. Now the banking sector should simply growing and developing in a usual way.

"All the rest structural reforms have not yet been completed What is the sense to move them? Where? I think that no one has doubts that they are to be done: neither the president nor the prime minister and finance minister," she said.

She believes that the situation with the launch of these reforms has really changed.

"I finally see real steps. This is good, as earlier there were promises. Now there are models and discussions," she said.
Six people, all likely to be minors, were arrested early on Friday in Assam on charges of allegedly raping and murdering a 21-year-old woman in West Karbi Anglong district on Wednesday night.

The accused allegedly raped and killed the girl while she was returning from a cultural programme with a male friend. Her body was found hanging from a tree on Thursday.

The accused were on the run. Six of them were arrested between 2:00 and 3:00am on Friday. We are awaiting a statement from the victims male friend to prove their involvement, superintendent of police Inamul Haq told the Hindustan Times.

The woman, a male friend and 2 others went to attend a Bihu function on Wednesday evening. The accused allegedly waylaid them from near a school when they were returning from the event.

While the 2 others were chased away with threats, 4 of the accused took the womans male friend to her house and told her family that both were found in a compromising position in the school and that the woman fled the scene.

All the six accused appear to be in their teens. They have confessed to being at the place where the incident happened but denied involvement in rape and murder. We are on the lookout for the seventh accused, Bharat Chandra Kunwor, in-charge of Baithalangso police station, said.

The remaining 3 allegedly raped the woman and the act was reportedly repeated by the other 4 accused who returned to the scene later. The woman was allegedly hanged on a tree later to make it appear as if she committed suicide.

The victims body bore several injury marks and it appears she was subjected to torture and rape. The body has been sent for a post-mortem and the report will confirm what exactly happened, Kunwor said.

A case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code for rape, murder, voluntarily causing grievous hurt and criminal conspiracy has been lodged. Efforts are on to verify the exact ages of the accused.

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Kalpana Yadav, 24, has been named brand ambassador for Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in Etah by the district magistrate and she aims to make the district open defecation free by year-end.

The decision was taken after Yadav displayed commitment for a hygienic lifestyle despite battling tragedy. Fifteen members of her family, including her brother and grandfather, had died in a road accident last Friday.

As the girl had shown courage to move on with her life , I enquired about her well being. At first she was hesitant but then said that her new house did not have a toilet. We appreciated her commitment for a healthy life, stated Etah DM Amit Kishore.

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Light combat aircraft Tejas on Friday successfully test fired an air-to-air missile, paving the way for powering the indigenously-built aircraft with missiles having beyond visual range capabilities (BVR).

The test-firing was conducted on a manoeuvrable aerial target at the interim test range in Chandipur in Odisha.

The defence ministry said the objective of the test was to assess integration of the Derby BVR missile with avionics, fire-control radar, launchers and missile weapon delivery system of Tejas.

The flawless launch was demonstrated with all on-board systems performing satisfactorily and the missile scored a direct hit on the target with complete destruction of it.

The test firing achieved all its planned objectives. The Derby firing is a major step towards clearing BVR capabilities on light combat aircraft for FOC (final operational clearance), it said in a statement.

The sensors at the interim test range tracked the target and the missile.

The missile launch was performed in lock on after launch mode for a BVR target in the look down mode and the target was destroyed, the statement by the ministry said.
A top Hizbul Mujahideen leader has threatened to behead separatist Hurriyat leaders for calling Kashmir a political struggle instead of a religious war for the creation of an Islamic state.

The threat is believed to be the first against the Hurriyat leadership who are acknowledged to represent the political views of a section of Kashmiris and had earlier held talks with the state and central governments many times.

The message was delivered through a video clip which contained a montage of slides showing Islamic quotes about Islam and Sharia. The person who is heard in the clip is not shown. He did not identify himself but is believed to be of local Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Musa.

Calling Hurriyat leaders hypocrites, infidels, followers of evil, the militant warned to chop off their heads if they create hurdles in the path of making Kashmir an Islamic state.

The militant also said the heads will be hanged in Lal Chowk in Srinagar, an area known as the nerve centre of anti-India protests. The clip appeared two days after militants suspected to be from the HM abducted and killed an army officer on leave in Shopian.

In a joint statement issued a few days ago, hardline Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani and two moderates -- Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Mallik -- had said the freedom struggle in Kashmir has nothing to do with ISIS or al Qaeda.

They said there was no role for these groups in Kashmirs political struggle.

Terrorism and freedom movement are polls apart, they said.

The video starts with a quote of a slain militant, Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, an American-born Muslim scholar and cleric who acted as spokesperson for al Qaeda.

We just want to ask these hypocrites if Kashmir is a political issue (then) why are you raising slogans like Azadi ka matlab kya (What is the meaning of freedom). La Illaha Ilallah, Pakistan say rishta kya (With is the relation with Pakistan). La Illaha Ilallah, the militant said, referring to the Hurriyat leaders frequent use of the phrase, There is no one but Allah.

Why do you come and address people in mosques?, the leader said in the clip which first surfaced on social media and has been circulated throughout the valley and beyond.

Hindustan Times could not verify the authenticity of the clip.

However, police sources said the voice matched Musas earlier video and audio clips.

Zakir Musa, who joined militancy after leaving his BTech course in Chandigarh, has been touted as the successor of militant commander Burhan Wani, whose killing last year sparked months-long streets protests in the valley.

Wani, son of a school headmaster, was the first militant to use social media to propagate messages.

The trend continued after his death though Kashmir experts believe militants post Burhan lack his communication skills.

Burhan sounded convincing, his messages had local appeal, Zakir lacks that, said a senior police officer from South Kashmir.

The clip, which has gone viral, has generated debate in Kashmir, with some calling it a handiwork of Indian agencies. Many expressed shock over targeting senior separatist leaders.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, the spokesman for the Geelani-led Hurriyat Conference, Ayaz Akbar said, the organisation was looking into the matter.

However, we stand by our earlier statement, he added.

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Two persons were beaten to death and two were injured by villagers on suspicion of them being child lifters in Jharkhand, police said on Friday.

Villagers beat up three men in the Jadugora police limit area on Thursday night because they suspected them of being child lifters. One succumbed to his injuries while two others were admitted to hospital by the police.

Another person was seriously injured after villagers thrashed him badly on Wednesday on the same suspicion in the area, police said, adding that the victim was rushed to MGM Hospital here, where he succumbed on Thursday.

Deputy superintendent of police (Musaboni) Ajit Kumar Vimal said no child was recovered from the victims who seemed to be mentally unsound and beggars.
The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessertmore food than an average person can eat in that time.

As soon as passengers start getting off the train, ragpickers jump in and start scrounging for waste material and leftoverssamosas, biscuits, plastic bottle, wraps and so on. They are a part of Indias massive reserve of ragpickerstheir numbers are estimated between 1.5 million and 4 million; Delhi itself has over 500,000.

Ragpickers sustain themselves by collecting, sorting and segregating waste and then trading it. In doing so, they help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually in India.

Given that rag-picking is a totally informal sector it is hard to quantify how much waste is collected in this manner, but there are rough indicators: Only 75-80% of the waste generated in India is collected by municipal bodies. And more than 90% of India does not have a proper waste disposal system.

A lot of garbage clearing thus is the done informally, by ragpickers who work without any job security, salary or dignity. Not just that, they are regularly exposed to cuts, infection, respiratory diseases and tuberculosis apart from poverty, humiliation, harassment, and sexual abuse on the streets, as IndiaSpend investigations found.

This informal sector has saved the country. They are doing a good job and I have decided to recognise their efforts. We will grant (a) national award, former environment minister Prakash Javadekar had declared in 2015 at an event on waste management in New Delhi.

It was declared that a cash prize of Rs 150,000 ($2,330) would be given to three ragpickers and three associations involved in innovative waste management. More than a year later there is no information available about the scheme.

Indias waste crisis is set to spiral450 million tonnes by 2050

The environment minister has stated that India will, in another couple of decades, generate nearly thrice the waste it currently does165 million tonnes by 2030 and 450 million tonnes by 2050. Only 22-28% of the waste now collected is processed or treated.

The problem is particularly acute in cities. Per capita waste generation rate in Indian cities ranges between 200 and 870 grams a day and is rising. Between 2001 and 2011, growing urban population and increase in per capita waste generation has resulted in a 50% increase in the rubbish in Indian cities. The government traced this to changing consumption patterns and consumer behaviour.

Why rag-picking is a free but critical civic service

Ragpickers actually complement the work of civic bodies, Shashi Bhushan Pandit, who runs the All India Kabadi Mazdoor Mahasangh, pointed out in this March 2016 interview.

According to the law under which a municipality is set up, it places dustbins according to the size of the population. It is assumed that the generator of the waste will drop it in the bin. After that, it is the responsibility of the municipality to collect it from there (the transfer station) and treat it at the landfill, Pandit said. However, it is not the responsibility of the municipality to pick up the garbage from the source. Thats why the informal sector has filled this gap.

Toxics Link, a New-Delhi based environmental NGO, classifies (opens as PDF) waste pickers into four categories: Those who carry sacks and collect anything of resale value from open drains and bins; the kabadi or bhangar men on bicycles who collect from households and then segregate glass, paper, and bottles from plastics; those who ride tricycles and collect almost 50 kg of waste each day and travel long distances to sell them, and finally, those who work for scrap dealers..

The occupation exposes these workers to toxins, the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health shows. They have little or no access to protective gear.

Treated with contempt, suspicion on the streets

Darkness Under the Lamps was a study undertaken by Harsh Mander and V Manikandan in 2011 at the Centre for Equity Studies in Madanpur Khadar, an urban village in south Delhi where many ragpickers live. They complained that they were treated with suspicion and derision, because of their extreme poverty, vocation of rag-picking, minority faith and suspicions that they are from Bangladesh by the middle-class community living around (sic). The children of ragpickers often carry on with the same occupation and are rarely educated.

The government treats them no differently. Pandit has demanded inclusive rights, health benefits, safety gear and social security for ragpickers because they provide services that benefit the environment. In Bogota, Columbia, every ragpicker is paid $2 per day by the municipality. In Brazil, they have made sure that only the ragpicker can pick the waste (from the source). Why cant India do it? he asked.

Ragpickers are destitute migrants, mostly from poor states

In September 2016, with the support of the Kachra Kamgar Union, we visited a ragpickers colony near Vasant Kunj, close to the Delhi airport. More than 250 families here depend on rag-picking to earn a living.

The men leave their homes early morning with their waste carts. A few of them work where the municipal corporation deposits waste, some scour the roads and others go to specific neighbourhoods looking for kabadi from homes.

Each ragpicker has a different story to tell, but they all suffered acute destitution once. Ranjit is a landless labourer from Bihar who came to Delhi seeking employment. Kundan once grazed cattle for a Chhatarpur farm in south Delhi. Another man washed toilets at the Delhi airport before settling down at the ragpickers colony.

Chandrika, who was a bonded labourer in Bihar and earned 1.5 kg of vegetables for a months work, came to Delhi in 1985 when she was very young. Only the destitute get into this work. Some of us are contracted into it by moneylenders who dump several people in a single room and pay them a pittance for their work. Then there are traders who employ ragpickers, she said.

Most ragpickers in this colony, however, work independently. Several men we spoke to agreed that they had tried their hand at other things but came back to rag-picking because it paid better. Migrants here also help their kin to move to Delhi and join the trade. This meant that most people in the basti (neighbourhood) came from two states: Bihar and West Bengal.

The women we met do not go out for picking, but are expected to sort waste at home. Even eight- or 10-year-old children join their parents in sorting waste.

If you work 12-14 hours a day, you can make a living. But rates have gone down significantly. A sack of rag that fetched us Rs 300 five years ago now gets us no more than Rs 175-200. See how much rice and vegetables cost nowit is impossible to survive, complained Kundan.

Police harassment is a common complaint. Young boys are picked up on false allegations and beaten up in police stations, said the residents. Sometimes they pick up mobile phones or other lost or stolen goods and then get arrested for committing a crime. However, in this colony, residents said the union ensures that they are not harassed much.

Yes, we deal with garbage, but we want to live in a clean space

Hair and plastic fetch the best rates but sorting waste is a difficult and hazardous job. We open sacks and there are soiled sanitary napkins in newspapers, human excreta in polythene, shards of glass, syringes or nails. We cut ourselves, develop rashes and infection. Rotten food makes us sick. But we have no pension, no recognition, no medical facilities, said a ragpicker.

When the main earner in a family falls very sick, he or she is packed off to the village to recover. The government hospitals, they alleged, do not want to treat them and they have to opt for expensive private dispensaries.

When waste is disposed in India, it is done with little concern for those who will be handling it later. For example, both soiled diapers and sanitary napkins need to be treated as medical waste: According to the Bio-Medical Waste (Management and Handling) Rules, 1998 any waste with faecal, blood, body fluid must be treated separately. But usually these are thrown into a common dust bin.

The colony, built on forest land, has no concrete houseslandowners will not allow any permanent construction. Only a third of the households had a ration card. There is no personal or public toilet in the colony, and no electric metres have been installed.

We asked a few women hailing from Uttar Pradesh for the one thing they would ask from the government. Disposal bins for the waste leftover from sorting, they said. Without bins, this waste simply piles up in their homes and lanes.

Give us that and access to water. We buy two buckets of water every other day and pay Rs 1,000-2,000 a month to the one person who has a hand pump. If we can get a tanker, we could bathe properly. Yes we deal with garbage, but we want to be able to live in a space that is clean, the women said.

(Bose and Bhattacharya are senior researchers with Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi.)

(Indiaspend.org is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit.)
Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces in Nowhatta area of Srinagar city and in Shopian town in south Kashmir on Friday, police said.

Groups of youth indulged in sloganeering and stone- pelting on security forces in Nowhatta in Srinagar soon after Friday congregational prayers ended at Jamia Masjid here, a police official said.

He said security agencies used force including tear smoke shells in a bid to chase away the protesters.

The clashes were going on till last reports came in, he said, adding no one has been hurt in the incident so far.

Similar violent protests took place at Singlu Chowk in Shopian district, 52 kms from here, prompting security personnel to use force, the official said.

Protests also broke out in Hajin area of north Kashmirs Bandipora district.
The Allahabad high court directed the Uttar Pradesh government on Friday to start issuing licences and no-objection certificates to meat sellers, potentially ending a stalemate over closing slaughterhouses that saw meat disappearing from local markets and popular eating joints.

The interim order of the HCs Lucknow bench came as a major relief for meat sellers, whose licences werent renewed by the government after March.

The bench of justices AP Shahi and Sanjay Harkauli also directed the government to file a reply on July 17  the next date of hearing  about the steps taken in compliance of the order.

The state government cannot shy away from its responsibility of regulating slaughter houses, said justice Shahi, while reading out the operative part of the order.

The order implies that traders can apply for fresh licences or for a renewal. Even those whose slaughterhouses were shut down can now apply.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath imposed a ban on all illegal slaughterhouses after assuming office on March 19, fulfilling a promise in the Bharatiya Janata Partys manifesto for the UP assembly elections.

Though the action was mainly aimed at curbing illegal slaughter of cow, meat sellers alleged that authorities harassed even legal abattoirs. A section of meat sellers had even gone on a strike while Lucknows popular eating joint Tunday -- known for its kebabs -- had shut shop for a day due to non-availability of meat.

Many also alleged that most slaughterhouses in the state were illegal because of lax procedures and lack of oversight.

The court also directed district magistrates and divisional commissioners to take appropriate action to regulate meat shops and slaughterhouses.

Along with a PIL, the court had clubbed all writ petitions seeking renewal of licences of meat shops filed by individuals.

While advocate general Raghvendra Singh represented the state government, advocate BK Singh pleaded for the petitioners.

Earlier, the advocate general pointed out that after the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, came into force, all other laws related to food and safety had become redundant.

The court, however, observed on Friday all provisions in local acts (nagar panchayats) had not been incorporated in the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006.

During the hearing of the case, the advocate general also pointed out that the UP governments directive was against illegal slaughterhouses and not against establishments operating legally.

The courts order is not against the state government. It is also a clear direction to the state government to regulate meat trade, lawyer BK Singh told HT.

Illegal slaughterhouses and meat shops will no longer be able to operate as they used to do earlier.

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The US has approved $75 million-worth high-tech chemical protective clothing for the Indian armed forces that will protect soldiers from biological and chemical warfare.

The Joint Service Lightweight Integrated Suit Technology (JSLIST) consists of 38,034 each: suits, pairs of trousers, pairs of gloves, pairs of boots and NBC bags; 854 aprons; 854 alternative aprons; 9,509 Quick Doff Hoods; and 114,102 M61 filters.

The entire package also includes 38,034 M50 general purpose masks.

The Defence Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) made a notification to the Congress on May 10 after the State Department made a determination in this regard.

India had made a request for these special clothing as part of its military modernisation programme.

In its notification to the Congress, the DSCA said this proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States, by helping to improve the security of a friendly country which has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in South Asia.

The Indian government, it said, intends to use these defence articles and services to modernise its armed forces.

This will contribute to the Indian militarys goal to update its capability while enhancing the relationship between India and the United States, DSCA said.

The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region, the DSCA said.
In a tragic incident, a 25-year-old groom died of a heart attack during his wedding procession in Borsad town of the neighbouring Anand district.

As the wedding procession was proceeding on Tuesday night for the brides home with the family members dancing in a joyous mood in Borsad, about 60 km from here, the groom, Sagar Solanki, who was sitting on a friends shoulders, suddenly collapsed.

He was rushed to a nearby hospital where the doctors declared him dead, Sagars father Rajesh Solanki said.

The deceased, hailing from Ranoli village in Anand, worked in a private company.

The incident came as a shock to the families of both the groom and the bride and they immediately called off all the celebrations.
PrivatBank (Dnipro) has proposed repaying UAH 13.8 billion debt on refinancing to the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), which will free ex-co-owner of the financial institution Ihor Kolomoisky from personal guarantees, NBU Head Valeriya Gontareva has said.

"The bank wants to repay this refinancing to us, but then they will rid Kolomoisky of all the guarantees and we will lose these pledges. Therefore we do not want PrivatBank to repay the debt," she said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

Gontareva said the refusal of such repayment of refinancing, issued to the bank before its nationalization at the end of last year, was stipulated in the memorandum with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"If we repay this refinancing, we will lose the pledges of third parties - real assets belonging to [former owner of PrivatBank Ihor] Kolomoisky and his personal guarantees," the NBU head explained.

She stressed the central bank issued this refinancing before the nationalization of the bank only under real assets and the personal guarantees of Kolomoisky, whereas there are no such real assets to secure the corporate portfolio of loans issued by the bank itself.

"We told PrivatBank: take these pledges under available loans and then repay us refinancing or mortgage us these pledges. But they do not take it!" Gontareva said.
A total of 453 runs were scored in an epic game between Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab at the Wankhede stadium, but Glenn Maxwells team held their nerve to clinch a seven-run win. The result not only means that Kings XI Punjab stay alive in the race for the IPL 2017 play-offs, but Kolkata Knight Riders, Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rising Pune Supergiant face some nervous moments as they aim to seal their spot. (SCHEDULE | RESULTS)

Following Kings XI Punjabs victory, here are the play-off scenarios for each of the five teams

1) Mumbai Indians

P - 13, W - 9, L - 4, Points - 18

Next game: vs Kolkata Knight Riders (May 13)

What they need to do: Mumbai Indians might have sealed qualification for the play-offs, but defeat in their last two games has robbed them off momentum. They must win their last game against Kolkata Knight Riders to finish in the top two. If they lose their last game and Rising Pune Supergiant win their last two games, then they will slip to third.

2) Kolkata Knight Riders

P - 13, W - 8, L - 5, Points - 16

Next game: vs Mumbai Indians (May 13)

What they need to do: Their last league game has potentially become a must-win for Gautam Gambhirs team. If they lose to Mumbai Indians, then they must hope Rising Pune Supergiant do not win one of their games by a big margin. They will be hoping that Sunrisers Hyderabad do not win their last game against Gujarat Lions and that Kings XI Punjab do not register a huge win against Rising Pune Supergiant

3) Rising Pune Supergiant

P - 12, W - 8, L - 4, Points - 16

Next games: vs Delhi Daredevils (May 12), vs Kings XI Punjab (May 14)

What they need to do: For Steve Smiths team, a win in any one game will seal their place in the play-offs. If they lose both their games, they must hope that Sunrisers Hyderabad do not win their last game. If they lose against Delhi Daredevils and Sunrisers Hyderabad win their game, then their final clash against Kings XI Punjab becomes a virtual shoot-out.

4) Sunrisers Hyderabad

P - 13, W - 6, L - 6, N/R - 1, Points - 15

Next game: vs Gujarat Lions

What they must do: For the defending IPL champions, their game against Gujarat Lions is a must-win. If they lose, they must hope that Rising Pune Supergiant defeat Kings XI Punjab in their last league encounter. A win will help them seal their place in the play-offs.

5) Kings XI Punjab

P - 13, W - 7, L - 6, Points - 14

Next game: vs Rising Pune Supergiant

What they must do: Kings XI Punjab have stayed alive in the contest with brilliant wins against Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians. Their final game against Rising Pune Supergiant is again a must-win. Their path will become even easier if Sunrisers Hyderabad lose to Gujarat Lions. If that result happens, then their last league game is a straight shoot-out.

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Manoj Tiwary chipped in with his most vital knock in IPL 2017 as his maiden fifty in this edition put Rising Pune Supergiant on course for a win against Delhi Daredevils at the Feroze Shah Kotla on Friday. (DD vs RPS: T20 MATCH BLOG)

Tiwary, who has chipped in with some vital knocks but has never gotten past fifty in IPL 2017, was instrumental in hilding together Rising Pune Supergiants innings on a tricky wicket. Along the way, he survived some chances. (DD vs RPS: T20 MATCH SCORECARD)

On 35, he mistimed a pull shot off Marlon Samuels to deep mid wicket but Sanju Samson could not hold on to the catch running in. On 40, he survived another chance, this time off Zaheer Khan as he looked to loft a full ball over cover but Karun Nair spilled the catch at cover.

Read | Zaheer Khan enters elite club, Delhi Daredevils captain takes 100 wickets in IPL

Tiwary shared a 51-run stand with Ben Stokes who batted with confidence but on 33, he mistimed a full toss to long off. The right-hander notched up his sixth IPL fifty off 40 balls by pulling Pat Cummins for a six over deep backward square leg. His knock has put Rising Pune Supergiant on course to seal their spot in the play-offs for the first time.

He almost got Rising Pune Supergiant close to a victory with another six off Pat Cummins but the bowler held his nerve to give Delhi Daredevils a close win.

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A heavy wind almost disrupted everything at the Green Park Stadium on Friday evening, and Sunrisers Hyderabad had to stop their training for a while as nets around the training wicket started flying in the air.

But it didnt deter David Warner and his men, who kept their batting and bowling practice on. A win against hosts Gujarat Lions here would put SRH through to the play-offs of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2017 and they didnt want to miss even few minutes of practice ahead of the big game.

On the other hand, Suresh Raina-led GL would love to finish the 2017 edition on a high. They would like to play party-poopers for the defending champions for whom its a do-or-die battle. SRH are currently at the fourth spot with 15 points and are being closely followed by Kings XI Punjab (14 points).

Read | Sunrisers Hyderabads Kane Williamson blown away by local talent in IPL 2017

Studded with local players, including Raina himself, the Gujarat Lions would again be banking on their track record at this ground where they have won two matches out of three.

Their experience of the last match at this venue against Delhi Daredevils, which they lost by two wickets with just two balls to spare on Wednesday, would count much and key batsmen like Ishan Kishan, Dwayne Smith and Aaron Finch have to come up with their best for one last time.

A win would help Sunrisers join Mumbai Indians in the top-four. What they need to do in the match against Gujarat Lions is to repeat their all-round performance, which they had against table-topper Mumbai Indians in their previous encounter.

Read | Sunrisers Hyderabad will stay cool in Kanpurs intense heat, says Tom Moody

As expected, even in a day game situation, the centre wicket of the Green Park stadium would be helpful to bat on early as some light rolling on Friday afternoon was a clear indication of the wicket being a batsmen paradise at least in the second innings.

Besides having hard-hitting batsmen in the ranks like David Warner, Sunrisers have the luxury of having Shikhar Dhawan, Kane Williamson, and Moises Henriques to let their bats do the talking, and on such a wicket Yuvraj Singhs potential to go for big hits may be a reality.

In the bowling department, the side is studded with T20 specialist Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Afghan duo Rashid Khan, Mohammad Nabi, Siddarth Kaul and Mohammed Siraj.

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Bharatpur: Jawahar Singh is lucky to be alive. Recuperating at a private hospital, the 32-year-old, however, cant stop cursing his fate.

A resident of Malipur village in Bharatpur, he was present at the marriage ground in Bharatpur Wednesday night when a 13-ft high and nearly 90-ft long boundary wall at the venue came crashing down on the wedding guests leaving 24 people dead and nearly four dozen injured. Among the victims were Jawahars wife, 28-year-old Anuradha, and son, eight-year-old Prince.

Jawahar escaped as he had moved to the other side of the venue to get ice-cream that his son wanted.

A dust storm was raging and rain was coming down in torrents when the wall of the Annapurna Marriage Home came down burying people having dinner there under bricks, mortar, and concrete. Jawahar had been gone for only a few minutes  long enough for his life to have changed forever.

We were having dinner when Prince said he wanted ice-cream. He insisted on having it immediately so I left him and wife there to get the ice-cream from the other side. By the time I came back, my wife and son were dead, Jawahar said.

The food for the feast and the dishes lay scattered everywhere as were the bodies of the dead and the injured. Shrieks and cries of help could be heard coming from inside the debris.

The wedding guests helped each other in rescuing people and retrieving the bodies. Among the victims were Ashok Saini, Madan Saini, and Vinod Saini and his wife Geeta Devi --- all relatives of Kirorilal Saini, the father of the bride.

A resident of Malipura village, Kirorilal had fixed his third daughter Ashas marriage with Johri Bazar resident Deepchand Sainis son Dharmendra.

We wanted to hold the wedding function at my resident but agreed Deepchand wanted to go for a bigger venue as he intended to invite some VIPs. He selected Annapurna Marriage Home, Kirorilal said.

The bride and groom were getting ready for the rituals when tragedy struck. The wedding rituals were completed at Kirorilals resident late in the night.

Also among the victims were Sewar residents Gulraj Jatav, 42, and his wife Rajkumari, 40. Their 6-year-old son Dev survived.

Those who survived and the victims families are sore at what they termed as government apathy and fleecing by the hospitals.

The site where the incident took place (HT PHOTO)

Jagvir Singh lost a son, 18-year-old Krishan Kumar, in the incident. His other son Satvir Singh is admitted to a private hospital.

Jagvir said they first rushed Satvir to the district hospital for treatment. However, the there was a power cut and hospitals back-up generator was also not functioning so they moved Satvir to a private hospital.

We paid 10,500 to the hospital for treatment. The chief minister and the health minister had assured of free treatment, he said.

Hours after the mishap, health minister kalicharan Saraf had announced compensation of 2 lakh to the kin of the deceased and 50,000 to the seriously injured. CM Vasundhara Raje who visited Bharatpur late Thursday announced free of cost treatment to the injured.

Jawahar Singhs father Uday Singh said he would send a memorandum to the CM seeking strict action against all the marriage homes in the district. He also alleged that the gold jewellery that the women victims had been wearing was found stolen.

District Collector of Bharatpur Narendra Kumar Gupta, however, said they have not received any such complaint of ornament theft. We will inquire into it, he added.

Meanwhile, tourism minister and Nadbai MLA Krishnendra Kaur Deepa reached district hospital Friday to meet the injured, nearly 36 hours after the incident. Asked for the reason behind the delay, she said, I was busy in a programme in Rajsamand.

Marriage hall owner held

Police late Thursday arrested the Annapurna Marriage Homes director, Bharatlal Sharma, and manager Vinod Jatav. Both have been booked under Sections 304, 308 of Indian Penal Code. Bharatpur district collector N K Gupta had Thursday said that as per preliminary investigation, there was no permission with the marriage home owner to run the establishment. Twenty-four people, including five children, were killed when the boundary wall of the marriage home collapsed Wednesday during a wedding.
A storage and distribution centre of Aanchal Mothers Milk Bank will be set up at Zenana Hospital in Ajmer, officials said.

The state government has set up the milk bank at 11 government hospitals with an aim to reduce neonatal and infant mortality rates, and eradicate malnutrition.

According to the Sample Registration Survey (SRS) 2012, the neonatal (first 28 days) mortality rate in in Rajasthan is 35 per 1000 live births, against national average of 29.

To reduce neonatal mortality, the government has approved setting up of a milk bank centre in Ajmer, which will hopefully be operational by the end of this month, said an official.

Excess milk is collected at the 11 Aanchal Mothers Milk Banks in various districts; now the excess milk will be transported to the storage centre in Ajmer, said Devendra Agarwal, adviser to the state health department for the mother milk bank project.

The excess milk will be provided to newborns admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in Jawahar Lal Nehru hospital and other hospitals attached to JLN Medical College, he told Hindustan Times on Friday.

Newborns and premature babies, whose mothers are not able to breastfeed them, will also be given milk from the storage centre.

Referring to studies, Agarwal said, Out of 100 newborns that die in NICUs, 16 can be saved with mothers milk; possibility of newborns survival increases by 16% and their recovery in NICUs becomes faster by 40%.

Asked about plans to start such storage and distribution centres in other districts, he said, It is an innovation, and if successful, it will be replicated in other government medical colleges.

The storage and distribution centre will be built at Zenana Hospital with a cost of 3 lakh. The Rajasthan State Medical Services Corporation Limited will bear the centres maintenance and running cost.

The corporation will also bear the cost of transportation of mothers milk from 11 Aanchal banks to this centre. Mothers milk will be provided free to the needy newborns, Agarwal said.

The government decision is praiseworthy and it will help save many newborns, said Sanjay Sharma, a general manager of Save the Children, an NGO.

22% of newborns deaths are because of two major reasons -- diarrhoea and pneumonia; these deaths can be avoided by giving mothers milk, Sharma said.

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Looking at the enthusiasm of anglers from Rajasthan and other states like Punjab, Delhi, Karnataka and Maharashtra, the state government will develop Bisalpur Dam as an angling hub.

Anglers from different districts of Rajasthan often go to the dam for angling. They have even organised two angling competitions so far.

The government will provide boats, fishing rods and accommodation to people to promote angling as tourism at states biggest dam at Bisalpur in Tonk, said agriculture minister Prabhulal Saini. We have bought 10 fishing rods, a paddle boat, floating platform and mechanised boat, he added.

Bisalpur Dam, which supplies drinking water to Jaipur, is spread over 22,000 hectares and has more than 70 species of fishes.

The state wants to diversify its tourism activities and look beyond desert and heritage tourism, Saini said. He said that angling will be permitted both upstream and downstream.

The minister said an angling complex will come up near the dam, which will have a rest house with four rooms. Assistant director of the fisheries department, CP Juyal, said that the state government and the National Fish Development Board have given 66 lakh for the project.

Fisheries development officer at the dam, Jagdish Raizada, said 30,000 seeds of game fish, Mahasir, were recently brought from Maharashtra and are being reared at a local fishery. The fish will be released into the dam within a fortnight, he added.

Raizada said more than 300 anglers from Jaipur, Tonk, Kota, Alwar and Sawai Madhopur go angling at the dam regularly.

Juyal said anglers will be allowed to catch only one or two fish for consumption.

State secretary of All India Game Fishing Association Sumit Edwin welcomed the decision and said that the Bisalpur Dam is the best angling site in the state. The chances of catching fish here is high, he said. The complex will be a boon for angling tourism, he added.

Besides angling, the fisheries department has also alloted a contract for commercial fishing at the dam for 8.5 crore a year.
Controversial Kolkata cleric Noor-ur-Rehman Barkati said on Friday he will remove the red beacon atop his car if Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other minister scrapped their security arrangements.

Barkati, the imam of Kolkatas Tipu Sultan Mosque, stirred a controversy this week when he refused to comply with a central government order to remove red beacons atop all cars, saying the British had permitted its use.

Let the prime minister and his cabinet members give up their security including black cat commandoes, and other privileges such as flying in helicopters, and I will give up my red beacon, a defiant Barkati told the media.

The imam reiterated that chief minister Mamata Banerjee didnt ask him to take the beacon off. A police complaint was lodged against him late on Thursday night, demanding his arrest.

This was the second police complaint against the imam, who flaunts his proximity to Mamata Banerjee. On January 8, a complaint was lodged against the controversial cleric demanding his arrest after he slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi and issued a fatwa against the BJP leader.

The imam described the police complaints against him as awards for him. The RSS are trying to create a divide between the Hindus and Muslims. If RSS members are so brave they should go to the borders and fight, Barkati remarked.

He also said that if he were given the charge of the armed forces, he would give a fitting reply to Pakistan. Make me the general and I will show how to fight the enemies of the country. We know how to fight, Barkati said.

Reacting to CPI(M)s jibe that his statement was actually helping RSS to spread its tentacles in West Bengal, Barkati said, First let the Left parties put up a fight against RSS. They day they will do so, I will shut my mouth.

Asked whether he had a word with the chief minister on the police complaint filed against him, Barkati said he did not feel it necessary to speak to her on every issue.

Barkati is better known as the fatwa imam for issuing fatwas against personalities ranging from Taslima Nasreen to Narendra Modi. Other prominent names to have drawn his ire include author Salman Rushdie and Canadian columnist Tarek Fateh. The exiled Bangladeshi author, Nasreen, in fact, had three fatwas issued against her -- once in 2004 for her anti-Islamic comments, then in 2006 and again in 2007. With each fatwa, Barkati hiked the bounty on her head

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We are a joint family living in a city slum. Not just my in-laws, even my husbands cousins live nearby. With so many members around, two square meals a day dont come easily.

As my husbands daily wages arent enough to run the family, I too started working as a cook in some houses in a posh locality of Lucknow.

I have a six-year-old daughter. So, while I would go to work, she would be there at home with her grandmother and all other members of the family. Children played together and had free interaction with every member of the family and the relatives who live in the vicinity.

How the trauma came to fore It was only when the girl was being shown a good and bad touch video in school that she began to cry. Teachers counselled her and came to know that the chachu had abused her. The victims mother decided to lodge a complaint against her cousin-in-law with the help of her daughters school teachers. An FIR was registered and the case continued. But the culprit proved himself a juvenile and was saved from harsh punishment.

Among our relatives was my husbands cousin whom my daughter called chachu. She would play with him and could never imagine that he could be so cruel. He sexually abused my little girl and she never shared it with me. Though she complained of pain in the stomach, I thought it was because of worms or other reasons.

It was only when she was being shown a good and bad touch video in school that she began to cry. The teachers counselled her and came to know that the chachu had abused her. She told that she was in pain but couldnt explain.

The teachers called me to school and narrated the story. I asked my daughter and she also told me about whatever he did to her regularly, on the pretext of a game.

I couldnt tolerate this with my daughter and strongly objected to it. My parents-in-law and all other members of the family, including my husband, did not support me. They said that I should ask my daughter to forget about it as raising voice against the incident would only spoil relationships and bring a bad name to our family and daughter.

I am not literate. I know that such cases cant be left so simply. My daughter had undergone so much physical and mental pain and I could not tolerate it.

So, I decided to lodge a complaint against my cousin-in-law with the help of my daughters school teachers. An FIR was registered and the case continued. But the culprit proved himself a juvenile and was saved from harsh punishment.

For the poor and illiterate like us, such problems are common. But there is no support from family. I too have been boycotted for raising my voice. But I couldnt forgive my childs perpetrator.

(As told to Richa Srivastava)

Read more| HT Forum: Beware, children can fall prey to online predators
The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court will deliver its judgment on the grant or renewal of licences to slaughterhouses and meat shops in Uttar Pradesh on Friday.

The bench of justice AP Shahi and justice Sanjay Harkauli completed the hearing of litigations related to the operation of slaughterhouses on Thursday and reserved the judgment for Friday.

The Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006 It is an act to consolidate laws relating to food and establish the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India for laying down science based standards for articles of food and to regulate their manufacture, storage, distribution, sale and import, to ensure availability of safe and wholesome food for human consumption and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto.

Along with the public interest litigations, the court also clubbed all writ petitions seeking renewal of licences of meat shops filed by individual shop owners.

Advocate general Singh, who appeared on behalf of the state government, pointed out that after the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, came into force all other laws related to food and safety have become redundant.

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath imposed a ban on all illegal slaughterhouses in the state after assuming office on March 19. Action against such slaughterhouses was promised in the Bharatiya Janata Partys manifesto for UP assembly elections.

The advocate general also pointed out that the UP governments directive was against illegal slaughterhouses and not against those establishments which are operating legally.

Focus on cow smuggling and consumption of cattle meat has risen since the BJP won power in 2014, but the issue returned to spotlight after chief minister Adityanath clamped down on illegal slaughterhouses and cattle smuggling last month.

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Stay safe online

Always call your client if you get an email asking you to deposit money in an account different from the one you usually use.

Tell your employees about the techniques used by cybercriminals. Give them information on email spoofing and man-in- the-middle attacks so they can take steps to avoid being cheated.

Install a good anti-virus on your computer.

If you receive an email from a stranger telling you about a good offer, do not click on the links. They may contain viruses

Never make the email ID you use to discuss financial transactions public.
After the European Union (EU) introduces a visa free regime for Ukrainian citizens some countries of Latin America and Asia would also introduce the visa free regime for the country, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said.

"One more pleasant news: over 35 countries of Latin America and Asia that signed visa free agreements with the EU would automatically allow Ukrainians to travel to these regions," he said in an interview with 1+1 TV channel late on Thursday.

He also recalled that Ukrainians will be able to travel to Norway, Switzerland and Lichtenstein without visas.
There will be no mid-term polls in Maharashtra, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar said on Thursday.

His comments come at a time several top Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in the state said they were ready for midterm polls to capitalise on the partys soaring popularity. That the polls could end the constant bickering with ally Shiv Sena is another reason the BJP is keen, sources said.

But at a party meeting on Thursday, Pawar told his party workers, Whatever talk is going on over mid-term polls, they are all just rumors. I can say there is no such possibility.

Pawar, however, said the state Assembly and Lok Sabha polls may be conducted together.

READ: Not in the race for President, NCP doesnt have enough strength, says Sharad Pawar

The only possibility which I see is both state Assembly polls and the Lok Sabha polls may be conducted together. In the past too, the two elections have been held together, and you (party workers) should be ready if such a situation arises, he said.

Pawar pointed out that the BJP cannot lose the Senas support until the Julys presidential elections, as it needs the Senas votes.

Just three months ago, however, Pawar had said he would prefer mid-term polls and declared that his party will not support the BJP if the Sena decided to pull out of the coalition government in the state after the Mumbai civic body elections.

Thursday meeting was called to review the NCPs performance in local body elections over the past few months.

At the meeting, Pawar asked party leaders to take a stand against cow vigilantes for attacking the innocent.

He also pulled up his leaders and asked them to take on the ruling BJP.

Despite being in the government, the Sena is making tours in the hinterland. Now the BJP is preparing for one (Samvad Yatra), but we are happily doing nothing even after two and half years of regime change. We need to change our mentality. Need to travel across the state. People have expectations from us and if this is done, I am sure the picture will change, the former agriculture minister said

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The helicopter in which chief minister Devendra Fadnavis travelled to Maoist-affected Gadchiroli district on Friday developed a technical snag after it landed, forcing him to return to Nagpur by road.

As a result, he had to cancel other evening engagements scheduled in Nagpur district.

According to a source, after winding up a day-long programme in the Gadchiroli district, Fadnavis left for a helipad at Aheri where he was told that his chopper had developed some technical snag rendering it unable to fly.

The officials tried to arrange for another helicopter that was given to the anti-Maoist squad in the district. But it was not available as the helicopter was sent for maintenance, the source said.

Fadnavis immediately left for Nagpur by road as he had a few more programmes lined up, including a lawyers function at the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court building.

Earlier, in a function, Fadnavis said his government was committed to the development of Gadchiroli district. We are committed to the development of Gadchiroli and our main focus is to provide employment to locals, he said after handing over land for the proposed sponge iron plant of Lloyds Metals and Energy Ltd at Konsari village in south Gadchiroli. Maoist menace has put hurdles in the development of Gadchiroli district all these years.

He appealed to youths who joined the ultra-left movement to join mainstream and contribute for the development of the tribal district. He said Lloyds plant is being set up to process iron ore and provide employment to locals. The company announced adoption of Alapalli ITI in Gadchiroli for providing training to the locals.

Fadnavis also handed over cheques to 37 farmers who gave 100 acres for the proposed sponge iron plant.

Mining iron ore has been tough in Gadchiroli considering the Maoist threat and opposition from tribals, the original inhabitants of this region who fear destruction of their livelihood from the forests and their culture. Though mining operations were restarted last year after a gap of eight years, work had to be stopped owing to threats from Maoists who torched 81 vehicles of the Lloyds Metals. However, since then heavy police force has been deployed.

Read

Policeman succumbs to injury after Maoist attack in Maharashtras Gadchiroli
In a city where a new restaurant opens nearly every week, and several close down with just as ruthless regularity, restaurant owners will try anything. Weve seen floating restaurants, Prohibition-themed bars, menu prices set like a stock exchange, foreign chefs, grandma recipes, buffets and takeaways. In recent years, one more aspect has been giving entrepreneurs sleepless nights: what to name their restaurant?

New eateries have been christened with names that stand out rather than blend in. They range from the bizarre (like Acqua Caelum) to the banal (Poetry by Love And Cheescake) and everything in between.

Restaurants are usually named keeping their target audiences, cuisines, or locations in mind, says Ravi Wazir, founder-CEO, of the restaurant-consulting firm Phoenix. The more adventurous a promoter, the more likely he or she is to pick a distinctive name.

There are lazy shortcuts. Many promoters will borrow from a popular international franchise (Londons Chor Bizarre) or a former local restaurant (the upcoming Bombay Brasseire). But the name is only half the battle, Wazir says. The rest is about how you empower that name, build a brand, and form connections with patrons.

So, what makes a certain name click? Seven founder-promoters tell us why their establishments are so distinctively named:

Hoppipola (Malad, Powai, Khar, Lower Parel)

Hoppipolla (in the original spelling) is Icelandic for jumping into puddles.

First thought: A restaurateur discovered Icelandic band Sigur Ros a decade after everyone else, and slapped the name of their famous single on his signboard.

On a serious note: Hoppipolla (in the original spelling) is Icelandic for jumping into puddles. Avik Chatterjee, head of innovation and new formats at Speciality Restaurants, says the name evokes fun and playfulness. When we were finalising the name, the team shut their eyes and said some shortlisted names out loud. Hoppipola brought a smile or smirk to everyones face. So we went with that, says Chatterjee.

Its a mouthful, they agree. Weve come across mispronunciations like Happypola, he says. But it becomes a conversation starter, with people either correcting you or talking about the place. Thats good for brand recall.

Koinonia Coffee Roasters (Bandra)

Koinonia is Greek for joint participation or communion and hence was the uniform pick of co-founders Siddhartha Marchant, Clement Sissa, and Shannon DSouza.

First thought: The word koinonia occurs 20 times in the New Testament. This better be good coffee.

On a serious note: Koinonia is Greek for joint participation or communion. The name of this coffee brewery and cafe in Chuim Village was the uniform pick of co-founders Siddhartha Marchant, Clement Sissa, and Shannon DSouza.

Koinonia is an ecosystem. Not just of us and customers, but also of our farmers in south India who grow the coffees, explains director Marchant, who doubles as Koinonias roaster.

Mispronunciations abound, but thats a good thing, they say. When somethings difficult to pronounce, its registered in your long-term memory, because you make more of an effort into getting it right, believes Marchant. Its great to have people come over and ask us about the genesis and meaning of the name. What better way to connect with customers?

Shizusan (Lower Parel)

Shizusan loosely translates as collector of maps in Japanese and in this case refers to a collector of cuisines, culture and traditions too.

First thought: A Shih Tzu dog emigrated from Osaka to Mumbai and earned the Japanese honorific -san.

On a serious note: Shizusan loosely translates to collector of maps. Deepti Dadlani, VP of marketing and communications at Bellona Hospitality Services says it refers to a collector of cuisines, culture and traditions.

In colonial times, shophouses were also called pleasure houses. The first level was an opium den, the second level functioned as a brothel. Over time, these places were converted into casual dining eateries, explains Dadlani.

No, they do not deal in opium or other pleasures. The restaurant serves casual, street, and home-style food from Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, and The Philippines.

Papacream (Oshiwara, Juhu, Churchgate)

Founder Tanvi Chowdhri didnt want a name thatd be too fancy, so when her father-in-law joked that he be made brand ambassador, she took him only too seriously.

First thought: Nothing that connects Papa and Cream is printable.

On a serious note: Mumbai is overflowing with ice cream parlours that use liquid nitrogen and savoury flavours. So what makes Papacream different? Some people suggested a name pertaining to liquid nitrogen or freezing, but none of them struck a chord, says founder and CEO Tanvi Chowdhri. Ice cream is for everyone, so I didnt want a name thatd be too fancy or difficult to pronounce. One day, I was sitting with my family and brainstorming over a name, when my father-in-law joked that he should be made brand ambassador. He said, Why not name it Papacream?

The joke stuck.

Three Chicks & A Bear (Lower Parel)

Kainaz Messman-Harchandrais burger joint is a nod to her dad  whos very tall  hence the bear, and his daughters, who are the three chicks. (Photo: Beynaz Mistry)

First thought: A grizzly gatecrashes a hen coop. You wont believe what happened next.

On a serious note: Kainaz Messman-Harchandrais burger joint is a nod to her family. Specifically her mother.

My mum used to make and supply burgers, sandwiches, and rolls to Mafco stalls and throw hamburger parties back in the 80s and 90s, she recalls. This was at a time when burgers were virtually unheard of. She always wanted a burger place of her own.

She adds that the Messmans were one of the first families in the neighbourhood to own a Maruti car. The vehicle was so small, Mum would joke that my dad  whos very tall  looked like a trapped bear in it. So hes the bear, and the three chicks are us three daughters, she says laughing.

Door No. 1 (Bandra)

Door No. 1 is the first property in Bandra Reclamations ONGC Colony Lane, hence the name.

First thought: A film starring Govinda, at a televised game show.

On a serious note: Door No. 1, popular for its music, board games and books, was named because of its location.

Its the first property at Bandra Reclamations ONGC Colony lane and also the first restaurant for our group, S&S Foods, says co-founder Mihir Bijur. We wanted to be the first choice for everyone looking for a place they can call home. Door No. 1 is the first name we came up with, and since we got such good response from friends and family, we didnt look back.

True Tramm Trunk, True Tramm Trunk Terrace (Juhu)

First thought: Someone likes tongue twisters.

On a serious note: Hand it to owner Ankit Anand, he makes no bones about wanting to get patrons sloshed.

Our idea was to stand out by offering good food and drinks, but also be a place that would leave people Too Damn Drunk, he says. When youre drunk and the words slur, too damn drunk sounds like True Tramm Trunk, which we thought made for a perfect name. Mumbai needed a place where one could simply go to wholeheartedly enjoy drinks. Their interiors also keep to this theme. The signs read Alcohol you later or Trunk Measure.

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Recurrent marine animal deaths along the shore of Maharashtra has prompted the state to plan animal rescue centres in its coastal districts.

The state has allocated Rs 1 crore to build marine animal rescue centres along its 720 km coastline  at Dahanu, Boisar, Palghar, Mumbai, Alibaug, Velas, Dapoli, Ratnagiri and Sindhudurg. These centres will also take care of marine animals that are found stranded along the coast.

Since 2015, there have been 73 cases of carcasses of large marine mammals washing up along the coast. This year, 13 carcasses were found on Mumbais beaches. In the last two years, carcasses of 60 dolphins, six whales and finless porpoises were found along the Mumbai and Maharashtra coast. Reason for most of the deaths are not known. There have also been instances when large mammals like whales got stranded on beaches and shallow creeks. The rescue centres will have trained personnel to rescue these animals and escort them safely into the sea.

These centres will have a network of people working together to reduce marine animal beaching cases. Locals will be trained to assist these teams and will be sensitised about the importance of protected marine species, said N Vasudevan, assistant principal chief conservator of forest, state mangrove cell.

The mangrove cell, through its Mangrove and Marine Biodiversity Conservation Foundation, has allocated another Rs1 crore for the study of marine biodiversity issues along the Maharashtra coast. A central research team will accumulate data, deploy qualified scientists and experts in necroscopy (examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death ), collect tissue samples from the animals carcass for further research, said Vasudevan. While the impact of climate change could be one of the primary causes, only a detailed study can reveal why there have been so many cases.

Experts said it was high time that such facilities were provided to safeguard the marine biodiversity. Prior to this, there has not been any domestic funding to rescue or study marine animals in the state. It is a welcome step by the government, said Vinay Deshmukh, marine biologist and former chief scientist, Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (CMFRI). There have been a series of such cases, which is worrisome, and an allocation of Rs 2 crore will begin addressing the issue.

Whats causing marine animal deaths?

While there is no conclusive proof for over 70 marine animal deaths over the past two years, there have been several speculations. HT takes a look at some of them:

-Pollution close to coastlines leading to extremely poor water quality

-Plastic trash at sea choking these species

-Injuries after being hit by large vessels at deep seas

-Climate change and sea level rise

-Lunar tides  marine animal beaching taking place during full moon and new moon nights after the tides recede

-Fishermen alleged that oil companies carrying out seismic surveys - seismic blasts from ships to the ocean floor to identify oil and natural gas  that disorient the communication pattern for marine mammals leading to accidents

-Marine animals getting caught at large nets close to the shore and deep sea

-Oil spills at dockyards and at deep seas choking marine animals

-Rise in sea surface temperatures pushing mammals closer to the surface of the ocean and then getting hit by large vessels

Major incidents of marine animal deaths in 2017

-May 6 to May 9: Decomposed bodies of two Olive Ridley turtles and one finless porpoise spotted at Juhu beach

-April 16: Decomposed carcasses of three Olive Ridley turtles were spotted at Vasai and Uttan beaches,

-April 15: A dead Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin was found at Bhuigaon, Vasai.

-April 14: Carcass of an Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphin and an Olive Ridley turtle were spotted at Juhu and Versova, respectively.

-February 25: The carcass of a four-foot finless porpoise washed ashore at Bhuigaon beach, Vasai

-January 15: The carcass of a three-foot finless porpoise washed ashore, opposite Taj Hotel, Nariman Point in south Mumbai

-January 1: A five-foot dolphin carcass had washed ashore at Nariman Point. Mangrove cell officials said that the mammal had lost direction and hit a hard surface of a ship or rock several times.

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An autorickshaw driver hit a deer on the western express highway (WEH) in Goregaon east on Friday. The deer was taken to the Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) where it succumbed to the injuries.

The incident took place around 2am, when the driver was heading on the southbound stretch of the highway.

According to officials at Aarey police station, the driver was on the service road when the deer came in front of his vehicle. Unable to apply brakes, the driver ended up hitting the animal, said police.

Our rescue team took the injured deer to SGNP. A medical officer at SGNP declared the animal dead, said Santosh Kank, range forest officer, Mumbai.

#Mumbai Deer killed after being hit by an auto-rickshaw at Western Express Highway in Goregaon, late last night. Rickshaw driver injured pic.twitter.com/bMrWAgCyEV  ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

Veterinarians at SGNP said a post-mortem will be conducted on Friday. The deer suffered a severe head injury and there was a lot of blood loss. We are awaiting a letter from the Aarey police, after which we will do a post-mortem to ascertain the exact cause of death, said Dr Shailesh Pethe, veterinarian, SGNP.

The autorickshaw overturned with the impact. The driver has suffered injuries, but his condition is stable, said Jyotsna Rasam, senior inspector at Vanrai police station.

The Vanrai police station have recorded the statement of the driver.

While there is no official census for deers, SGNP official Rajendra Pawar said there are close to 10,000 deers spread across 103 sqkm of SGNP and Aarey Colony.
Tilak Nagar police on Friday arrested Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Corporator from Dombivli for attacking Shiv Senas Dombivli unit chief with ink. Mahesh Patil and three others were arrested and produced in the Kalyan court, which granted them bail against surety of Rs10,000.

Patil, with 50 others, smeared Bhau Chaudharys face with ink outside his house on Thursday. A video of the ink attack went viral on social media soon after.

Angered by the attack, senior Sena leaders and party workers protested outside BJP office in Dombivli and Tilak Nagar police station for four hours. The party workers even burnt an effigy of BJPs state unit chief Raosaheb Danve.

Sena leader and Thane guardian minister Eknath Shinde, along with several senior leaders, visited Tilak nagar police and demanded Patils arrest. He even threatened a day-long bandh in Dombivli against police inaction. Moreover, the party also put up hoardings to condemn the ink attack.

Based on Chaudharys complaint, Tilak Nagar police booked Patil and 50 others under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code. Patil and his three associates were arrested and produced in court. They were released on a bail bond of Rs 10,000, said an officer of Tilak Nagar police station.

Cops said it all started after Sena workers protested against Danve for allegedly making anti-farmer remarks while addressing BJP workers in Jalna. This irked Patil, who along 50 workers, cornered Chaudhary outside his house and smeared his face with ink.

The remarks made by Danve are unacceptable, which is why we protested against him. The BJP corporator attacked me outside my residence. This has irked our party seniors, said Chaudhary.

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The police have launched a search for a self-proclaimed godman who allegedly raped and kidnapped a 20-year-old college student in Palghar.

According to the police, the man, Trimbakmuni Mangalmuni Das, lured the woman by offering her a job. Das told the woman she was victim of a curse that only he could cure, said police.

The woman met Das on April 29 at his ashram at Kuded village in Vikramgadh to get treated for piles. Das said he would cure her, find her a husband and a job at a reputed firm in Gujarat, said police.

Police said Das kidnapped the woman and took her to Bhilad in Gujarat, where he confined her to a room for five days and did not give her food and water. He raped her repeatedly, said police inspector P Bhoye.

He threatened the woman, saying an evil spirit had possessed her. He said that if she was raped, the cleansing process would drive the spirit away.

The woman escaped and complained to us. We registered case under section 363 (kidnapping), 366 (kidnapping a woman and compelling her in marriage), 376 (rape), 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code, said Bhoye.

The police have arrested the three men who allegedly helped Das. They have been remanded in police custody till May 15.
Vaibhav Vasant Kamble placed an order for two new phones with online shopping portal Flipkart. The package was delivered on time, but Kamble was in for a nasty surprise  the box didnt contain a phone but had a bar of soap and a packet of washing powder instead.

Police in Mumbais Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) have now registered a case of cheating against Flipkart for delivering soap instead of the Samsung phone.

According to police, Kamble, who hails from Diva, placed an order for two phones from his office in BKC on May 3. The phones were to be delivered on May 6 and 8, respectively.

However, a delivery boy from Ekart, a logistics company, came to his office with both the mobile phones on May 6. Kamble told him that he wanted only one phone for now and if he liked the phone, he would take the other on a later date, said a police officer .

After paying Rs 14,900, Kamble took the package inside his office. Kamble didnt open the box initially, Later, when he opened it, he found a bar of soap and a packet of washing powder. It was too late for him to catch the delivery boy, said the officer.

Police said Kamble telephoned Flipkart and even wrote mails to their representatives.

Initially, the company said they would help him and asked him to call later. But later, they ignored his calls, the police officer said, adding that Kamble then registered a complaint against both Flipkart and EKart.

Police sub-inspector Padasalkar Somnath, posted at the BKC police station, said, We have registered a case against Flipkart and EKart and we shall be calling every official concerned to the police station.

Flipkart was yet to officially react to the issue.

In January, two people working for companies that delivered products sold on Amazon.com were arrested for allegedly stealing gold coins worth at least Rs 13 lakh ordered by customers.

The two were identified as 27-year-old Rahul Pisal from Sakinaka, and 28-year-old Vaibhav Sawant, a Jogeshwari resident.

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Two days after the students protested over the delay in opening the university sub-centre in Kalyan, the University of Mumbai announced that it would open the campus in June.

Students from Kalyan, Kasara, Karjat and nearby places can get admission in the school of engineering and enrol for 100 courses of the Institute of Distance and Open learning at the university sub-centre from June.

The decision was taken in a meeting with members of the Students Action Front (SAF), Kalyan, and the academic council of the university.

READ: Mumbai Universitys Kalyan sub-centre under construction since 2006, students protest

It was decided to start the school of engineering with a M.Tech in computer science and admission process, enrolment of students, books distribution of 100 different courses by the Universitys Institute of Distance and Open learning.

We had also demanded making all the administrative works possible at the sub-centre. However, the academic council members said the entire procedure can be done online. So there is no need to travel to the university, said Prashant Ingle, president of SAF.

He added that the vice-chancellor would visit the Kalyan sub-centre at Mauje-Gandhare in Kalyan (West).

The SAF has been protesting against the universitys failure to open the sub-centre that was inaugurated in 2011.

We had already planned to open the sub-centre this academic year. We called them for a meeting and discussed the demands. We will open the sub-centre in June without any delay, said an official of Mumbai University.

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Science students of the university of Mumbai will soon have a wider range of subjects to choose from. The curriculum for 55 courses in the University of Mumbai (MU)s science faculty will be upgraded from the upcoming academic year and the choice based credit system (CBCS) will be revised to allow students to choose science subjects apart from their core subject.

Until now, a physics student could only choose subjects related to physics but now he can take up chemistry or biology as elective subjects.

The decision was taken at the academic council meeting of University of Mumbai on Thursday. The council also decided to introduce multiple subjects for post graduate students to choose from.

Second year BSc students will be allowed to choose one of the three elective subjects from a course other than their own. This means a physics student can choose a subject from the computer science course, and vice versa, said MA Khan, registrar, MU. Since these changes are applicable from the upcoming year, MU plans to start workshops for principals and teachers from the faculty in the next two weeks to tackle the changes.

Third-year BSc students will be allowed to choose a project work of their choice , said a senior official from the academic council. In a few courses like zoology, students will also get to choose an applied component for their course, which will differ from one region to another, said Vijay Joshi, dean (in-charge) science and technology, MU.

The university had introduced CBCS for the first-year undergraduate and post-graduate courses last year, with a plan to gradually strengthen them in the subsequent years. In the first year of undergraduate courses, students had to study subjects from their own department. However, they will now get to earn credits by taking up subjects from other disciplines. The academic council approved the CBCS syllabi for the upcoming academic year, including the new syllabi for the second year of all branches of engineering. Each faculty will offer different elective subjects to choose from, said Suresh Ukarande, faculty coordinator for technology.

Principals said this move will help students look forward to a broad curriculum. For a student majoring in a particular field, itll be helpful to find another related subject that could compliment their own. This is similar to double majors, offered by various universities, said Tushar Desai, principal of DG Ruparel College, Matunga. He added that such options will help students grow beyond the curriculum and explore other subjects.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has announced a state visit to Malta in the coming days.

"The other day I am leaving for Malta on a state visit and it was under the chairmanship of Malta [in the EU] when this great progress took place," he said in an interview with 1 plus 1 TV channel on Thursday evening.

According to the Interfax-Ukraine agency, the visit will take place on May 16-17 this year.
How can you be sure that the milk you have bought from a neighbourhood store is safe to drink? A small strip of paper, coated with chemicals, is all it takes.

The milk adulteration strip, developed by the state unit of Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), changes colour to indicate if the milk has been adulterated. It will be available in the market in the next three months. Each strip will cost anywhere between Rs50 to Rs60.

How will this help? We dont have enough food inspectors to check what millions of milk vendors are selling, so this milk tester will help empower residents and urge them to examine what they are drinking, said FDA commissioner Dr Harshdeep Kamble. He added that it will act as a huge deterrent to miscreants who sell adulterated or synthetic milk. Once residents are alert, such businesses wont be able to survive, he said. The product will also help milk collection centres that provide milk to chilling plants, where it is packed. Milk collection centres will be able to check the quality of the milk easily before sending to be supplied. This will reduce the chances of adulterated milk being mixed with fresh and natural milk, he added.

To test milk, just add two drops of it to the centre of the strip. It will change colour at both ends depending on the adulterant. The white strip, which resembles a litmus paper, will turn from yellow to red to indicate the presence of urea, while it will change from white to brown to show glucose. A change from yellow to brown indicates salt.

This is a revolutionary answer to the problem of milk adulteration in our country. All those who want to ensure that the milk their family is consuming doesnt have synthetic or hazardous elements, will be able to check the quality of milk in two minutes, said FDA commissioner Dr Harshdeep Kamble, who worked with scientists to develop the tester.

Dr Kamble said the research process for research started six to seven months ago when the group of scientists working on cancer research came to meet him. I asked them to come up with a scientific and affordable solution to the problem of milk adulteration, he said.

FDA officials and scientists will demonstrate how the strip works to Girish Bapat, minister for food and civil supplies, next week. When we informed the minister about the product, he was keen on it being introduced to the market, said Dr Kamble.

Dr Jayant Khandare, director and scientist, Right To Research, Pune, which developed the tester, told HT it was a challenge to make something innovative at an affordable cost.

We found that major milk adulterants were urea, salt, glucose, H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) and starch. The group developed strips that could be used to detect adulterants in milk in multiple channels simultaneously, he said.

The colour changes at both ends. We call this simultaneous detection. This will give us a double confirmation that the test isnt false or negative, said Khandare.
NCP leaders Ajit Pawar and Sunil Tatkare are about to embark on a four-month statewide tour to strengthen its party roots. During the tour  which will begin on June 11 and conclude on July 22  the leaders will visit every district where the party has a foothold, meet all the leaders and workers, and ask them for suggestions to improve their partys performance for the next polls.

This came amid speculations about the possibility of mid-term polls following political parties appeared to be in a rush to connect with the farmers and help to solve their problems.

While the opposition parties led by Congress and NCP carried out a sangharsh yatra to express solidarity with farmers over their demand of loan waiver, the Shiv Sena launched shiv sampark abhiyan to meet distressed farmers in Marathwada which sees the maximum number of farmer suicides. Now, to counter the Oppositions campaign, BJP is ready to kick off its samvad yatra from May 25 to spread awareness among the farmers about the ways in which the government has been trying to help them.

There are talks that the Senas decision to play hardball over approving Goods and Services Tax (GST) draft bill has irked the BJP top bosses in the state and they are now preparing for a possible early Assembly polls.

On Thursday, however, NCP chief Sharad Pawar, ruled out the possibility of mid-term polls in the state saying that the BJP needed Sena for the presidential polls scheduled in July this year.

Through this tour, we want to strengthen the organisation right from its roots keeping in mind the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections scheduled in 2019, said Tatkare.

We will hold meetings with district unit members in the morning, hold separate meetings with youth cells, women wing, minority cells etc in the afternoon and consult senior leaders for further action, the state NCP chief told HT.

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The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) will be receiving only 185 of the 303 new buses it had ordered from Tata Motors, as the undertaking has cancelled the order for 118 buses citing delay in delivery.

The administration informed its decision to BEST committee, the policy-making body of the century-old undertaking, on Thursday. BEST is supposed to spent Rs90 crore it received from the civic body for purchasing new buses.

However, Ravi Raja, senior Congress leader on BEST panel, alleged that the administration cancelled the order after the civic body refused to allot more funds for the project.

The BEST management cancelled the order because its parent organisation, the BMC, refused to allot funds more than Rs90 crore, said Raja. He also slammed the BEST administration for keeping the panel in the dark about the cancellation.

The BEST had made several changes to the design and interiors of the new single-decker buses it had ordered. The new buses will have several mobile charging points, LED lights, wider doors, centralised ventilation system and several other passenger-friendly features. The officials said each bus is worth Rs55 lakh. Sources added that while 75 of the 185 buses arrived last week, the rest would be joining the existing fleet by May-end.

Meanwhile, the committee also gave nod for scrapping 50 old buses whose chassis had developed cracks .

Sunil Ganacharya, senior BJP member on the BEST committee, alleged that the officials kept them in the dark about the poor condition of the old buses when the proposal for buying 303 buses was cleared last year.

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As prices of flats in Mumbai continue to rise, most seem to have put their home dream on hold. The number of unsold apartments, including ready and under-construction houses, in the city now stands at 1lakh, compared to 89,000 three months ago, according to a survey.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), which includes the city and its neighbouring suburbs of Navi Mumbai, Thane, Raigad and Palghar, too, has 2.60 lakh unsold homes since February.

In 2016, the real estate sector recorded its worst performance in seven years, with the sale of a measly 60,374 units in the MMR, a steep drop from the 1.08 lakh units sold in 2010.

Liases Foras, the realty research firm, which conducted the survey, said most people found the houses unaffordable. Homebuyers cant afford to buy apartments in the city, said Pankaj Kapoor, CEO, Liases Foras. Living in rented flats seems to be a viable option. Also, builders outside Mumbai are creating affordable flats and we are witnessing sales, he added. The MMR covers area like Navi Mumbai, Thane, Raigad and Palghar apart from Mumbai.

Some builders are not convinced with the figures. Nibhrant Shah, CEO, ISPRAVA, a real estate firm, said, The figures are exaggerated. With the current market, any developer cant have such a huge inventory unsold.

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The Shiv Sena, which is reaching out to farmers in drought-affected areas of Maharashtra, found themselves amid a controversy on Friday after a Sena MLA allegedly sent another person as his proxy to address farmers in his constituency.

Sena MLA Gautam Chabukswar from Pimpri in Osmanabad district sent former Mumbai corporator Yashodhar Phanse to visit a drought-hit village in his constituency on Friday. Phanse was allegedly introduced as Chabukswar at the meeting under the partys shiv sampark abhiyan. Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray had launched the campaign recently and directed party MLAs to visit drought-hit areas in the state.

Following the incident, senior Sena leaders termed it as one persons mistake and not as an embarrassment for the party. Sena MP Arvind Sawant from south Mumbai called it a non-issue and said that the media was blowing it out of proportion. Has this issue caused any harm or damage to the country or the poor people? A person made a mistake and the party leadership will look into it, Sawant told HT.

The Opposition, meanwhile, slammed Sena over the matter. Former Maharashtra chief minister Prithviraj Chavan slammed the BJP and the Sena over their lackadaisical approach towards farmers problems. It is shocking that the MLA sent an impersonator. Sena needs to look into the matter but the ethics committee should also hold an enquiry because this is a serious issue, Chavan said. He added that the BJP and the Sena are hardly bothered about problems faced by farmers and organised their yatra to counter the Oppositions sangharsh yatra.

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A forum of parents teachers association (PTA) wrote to the Maharashtra transport department on Thursday to stop vehicles which have not signed common standard agreements from ferrying school children, from the coming academic year, 2017-18.

The order was issued in response to a public interest litigation filed by PTA United Forum complaining about private vans and small vehicles ferrying school children without following any safety norms

It directs the Maharashtra government to see that proper care and caution is taken avoid or stop such vehicles which do not come under the Common Standard Agreement guidelines.

Read: New definition of school buses worries van owners

The petitioners said that even though the school bus policy was formulated by the government, containing over 2,000 safety measures to be followed by school buses, many schools allowed their children to travel in light motor vehicles, which were not following the safety measures. It added that schools would not sign the CSA with school buses fearing responsibility.

Light motor vehicles are causing traffic congestions and risking security of the children. They are often crammed into the cars or made to sit on engines, said Rama Subramanian, advocate. She said that schools were still allowing such vehicles because it was cheaper than hiring a school bus complying with safety norms. These light vehicles are run by fly by night operators, who do not take any responsibility for safety of the students, she added. Enforcement agencies, too, were not monitoring them properly.

Read: Mumbai: Schools, drivers to be awarded for students safety in buses

Additionally, the petitioners have asked the government to prepare a separate category for private vans and small vehicles. A notification issued by the central government on September 8, has stated that the minimum seating capacity of a school bus must be at least 13, which effectively means that vans or smaller vehicles will not be allowed to ferry school children.

Earlier private vans were also considered under the category of a school bus, but now the government will have to create a separate category for them, said Subramanian.

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Maharashtra has over 40,000 RTI appeals pending before various state information commissioners appointed in seven revenue divisions, including Mumbai, according to former central information commissioner Shailesh Gandhi. With the average annual rate of disposal of 3000 cases per commissioner, the disposal of these pending cases may take over one and a half years. Hence, Gandhi in a formal letter dated May 11, has urged chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to immediately fill the four vacant posts to safeguard the spirit of the RTI Act.

Gandhi has also urged the state government to consider eminent RTI activists for the job.

Read: Maharashtra information commissioner wants RTI Act to be amended

More than 5000 cases are pending in the Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad and Amravati divisions, including over 10,000 in Nashik alone. The disposal rate of each commissioner is 300 cases per year, and with this rate, the disposal of pending cases would need at least one more year, if they decide to speed up the disposal to 5000 cases,Gandhi told HT

This pendency is defeating the provision in the law, which says the citizen has fundamental right to get the information in 30 days. The law has the provision of appointing 11 commissioners, and I have requested chief minister Fadnavis to fill all the posts at one go, he said.

In his letter, Gandhi has also requested the appointment of at least two commissioners from the fraternity of the RTI activists, who know the Act thoroughly and would work transparently in the interest of serving the purpose of the law.

He also has urged the CM to not keep the post of the chief information commissioner vacant after the incumbent Ratnakar Gaikwad retires later this month. You are also requested to consider a transparent process for the short listing of a panel out of which the final selection is done by the committee, as laid down in section 15(3)of the RTI Act. The thriving RTI regime will help you to achieve your aim of transparency, the letter stated.

Maharashtra has seven information commissioners and one Central Information Commission (CIC).

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Agitated parents, intellectuals and students staged a sit-in at the city magistrates office on Friday over the alleged failure of the Noida Police to track down and rescue Kashish Rawat, the missing five-year-old girl, for the last one year.

On May 12, 2016, Kashish Rawat, then four-years-old, went missing from outside her residence in H block of Sector 22. Fearing she had been abducted , her parents lodged a missing complaint at the Sector 24 police station.

However, the police was unable to trace her whereabouts in the first few days after the complaint was filed.

Since the five-year-old went missing, the city reported a series of similar abduction cases. Alarmed, the parents took to the streets and hit out at the police over its inaction.

Jolted by the protests, the police formed a special team and rescued two of the abducted kids. However, even a year since Kashish went missing while out playing, the police still havent been able to make much headway in the case.

On Friday morning, around 100 people representing the citys civil society assembled at the city magistrates office and registered their protest against polices inaction in the case.

We have been looking for our daughter for the last one year , but slowly but surely, we are beginning to lose hope. What is even more disappointing in this case is the response of the police. We demand the police speed up their investigation into the case and bring my daughter back home safe, Sanjay Rawat, Kashishs father, said.

Read I Ghaziabad: Family of missing 12-year-old alleges police laxity, puts up posters

We have knocked on every possible door since the day our daughter went missing, but no action has been taken. Its been a year since Kashish went missing and they still have no clue on where she might be. What have they been doing all this time? I just want my daughter back, said Rita Rawat, mother of the five-year-old.

The civil society also submitted a memorandum to the city magistrate demanding speedy investigation into the case. The memorandum was addressed to UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, requesting his intervention in the case.

Whatever hopes we have of finding our daughter is diminishing by the day. Despite having definite leads in the case, the police have chosen to ignore them. Every day that goes by and the girl isnt found makes her chances of recovery even more slim. We request CM Yogi Adityanath to intervene in this case and provide justice to the family, Anil Panth, spokesperson, Uttarakhand Ekta Manch, said.

School students, too, came out in support to the girls parents.

What happened to Kashish could happen to anyone of us. The police must take urgent steps to ensure safety of children, said Pankaj Kumar, a student of Dharam Public School at Sector 22.

City magistrate Ramanuj Singh said that he has heard the plea of the aggrieved parents and has sent his recommendation seeking immediate action.

I have written a letter to the superintendent of police seeking a status report on the progress of investigation into this case. In the memorandum that the civil society members sent to CM Yogi through me, I have asked the police to explain the delay in investigation, Singh said.

Vinay Prakash, station house officer of Sector 24 police station, said, Noida police did the initial investigation before the case was transferred to the Anti Human Trafficking Unit of the district.

Superintendent of Police (crime) Ramyash Singh was not available for comments.

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The Gautam Budh Nagar district magistrate BN Singh on Friday issued an order seeking legal action against officials found to have not taken necessary measures to stop the burning of garbage in their respective office premises.

He held a meeting with officials at the Sector 27 camp office and directed members of the UP pollution control board, Noida authority and the police to deal strictly against those causing pollution and violating norms laid down by the National Green Tribunal (NGT).

In the last one week, no government agency in the district has taken any action against the violators. I have instructed all officials to act strictly against violators, the DM said.

The DM also instructed officials to conduct a campaign across the district to educate farmers about the risks associated with the burning agricultural waste.

Many farmers are in habit of burning agricultural waste in their fields because they are unaware of the impact of burning garbage. It runs the risk of driving up the air pollution levels. It is the duty of officials to ensure that farmers are aware of the NGT guidelines and fine that could be imposed on anyone found burning waste, the DM said.

Read I Noida and Greater Noida authorities to select agency for processing solid waste

As per NGT norms, a fine of 5,000 will be levied on those burning waste in the open. It is illegal for farmers to burn residue of harvest as it contributes to smog that is a direct fallout of rising pollution levels.

Uttar Pradesh special secretary (administration), NK Singh, directed all district magistrates (DMs) to encourage farmers to make compost out of agricultural waste instead of burning it in a bid to prevent air pollution.

Following directions from the National Green Tribunal (NGT), state chief secretary Rahul Bhatnagar had on February 10, 2017, issued directions that farmers should be encouraged to make compost out of agricultural waste. Subsequently, the special secretary directed all DMs to ensure implementation of the order.
The Ghaziabad police is yet to track the son of 65-year-old Ishwar Tyagi who allegedly shot his father dead. Tyagi was found dead with a bullet injury to his head on Thursday morning at his Raj Nagar residence.

After Sanjeev Tyagi, an IPS officer among the five siblings, reached Ghaziabad from Lucknow on Thursday afternoon, the family registered a police complaint against the victims younger son, Anuj alias Dabbu, and alleged that he had killed Tyagi. A case of murder was lodged against the accused at Kavi Nagar police station.

We have come to know through the CCTV footage that he left his fathers Raj Nagar residence and escaped in a Fortuner car around 4.45am on Thursday. He also left behind his mobile phone and did not take it along with him. The post-mortem examination report indicated a single gunshot injury to the head of the victim, possibly with .32 calibre weapon, said Manish Mishra, circle officer (city).

The police said that the licensed weapon of the victim is yet to be traced and suspect it was used in the incident. However, they said that the family will confirm whether the licensed weapon is missing or has been placed somewhere inside the residence.

Sources said that Anuj had also withdrawn a large amount of money from the bank recently but the police said that it was done around April 25-26 and cannot be connected to the murder yet. The police are also finding it hard to trace the accused as he left behind his mobile home and has not been traceable through electronic surveillance methods.

We are yet to trace the accused and have pressed in three teams to pinpoint his whereabouts. The motive and the incident will be clear once the man is nabbed. Since he suffered from schizophrenia and was not taking medicines for past couple of days, we suspect that his mental condition could have triggered the attack, Mishra said.

The police said that Anuj had suffered a loss in a business he was a partner in, after which he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was undergoing treatment at Vimhans Hospital in Delhi. Anuj is fourth among five brothers and had been staying in Kavi Nagar. Sources said that he used to approach the residence often to meet his father. Sanjeev is presently posted with the cooperative cell in Lucknow.

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President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko believes that after receiving a visa-free regime, Ukraine finally departs from Russia and returns home to Europe.

"I would say that today Ukraine has finally drawn up its divorce with the Russian Empire and that's the way we should philosophically perceive it," he said in an interview with 1 plus 1 TV channel on Thursday night.

According to him, from now on three freedoms will operate - freedom of movement of goods, capitals and people.

"It's not just about visa-free border crossing, it's about returning Ukraine to a historical place in the European family of nations," the president said.

He said that there were obstacles inside the country and even some Euro-optimists had publicly appealed to the leadership of the European Commission and the European Union with an appeal not to grant a visa-free regime to Ukraine.

Also, according to Poroshenko, there were external obstacles, in particular, attempts to mobilize anti-European forces within the EU in order to prevent Ukraine from obtaining visa-free regime.
Indianness has become a knotty idea. Those who dont make it palpable-- by cow vigilantism, yoga adherence or swearing against Pakistani actors  dont fit the new charter of a nationalist identity. Like a demanding deity who must be regularly appeased with ritualistic fuss, Indianness is now a mantra, a jap to be repeated as proof of devotion. Not all such chants are divisive or disappointingSwachh Bharat positions certainly are not, for instance. Yet some indeed are. The so-called outrage over Vogue Indias May 2017 cover with American model Kendall Jenner sits on that side of that spectrum.

That a section of Indians are upset with the countrys most known fashion glossy for putting an all-white model on the cover of one of its special issues in its 10th anniversary year is a meaty enough piece of news to make it to international newspapers is news itself. But this indignation that many deserving Bollywood celebrities (to quote from Twitterverse) and top Indian models were left out to celebrate Jenner instead represents numerous cross currents.

One is the cusp we are at in our socio-political constructs. From being the colonised we are learning to colonise ourselves. Where we rebel against being boxed, defined or caricatured because of our Indianness wherever we may be in the world. Yet we find those very peculiarities useful in our nationalist self-definitions. The Indian narrative is moving away from validations or reflections of India in a Western mirror to create new myths of Indianness back home. In this case, we favour brown against an all-white fashion model. If this about a thoughtful stand against the white skin bias of fashion magazines, we must cry wolf every time the white-hot Shahrukh Khan and Inc (Siddharth Malhotra, John Abraham, Deepika Padukone, Shahid Kapoor etc) who sell fairness potions climb on to the glossy covers. Or might this mean that we would have been okay with the non-Indian but fabulously brown Naomi Campbell but the chalky gradation of Jenners skin colour is the real issue?

The Kendall on Vogue India fuss is more delicate than this trite positioning, as some will argue. It is perhaps about Indian versus American, national versus global, us versus them. What we may be saying is that some kind of brownness validated by country of passport, some kind of Indianness by origin, some kind of Bollywood-ness by profession or some kind of Priyanka Chopra-ness by achievement is now a requisite to be a cover girl for special editions of Indian glossies.

No social media activist from this Be Indian, Feature Indian club however turns watchdog when Priyanka Chopra the metaphor and the star gets featured on dozens of American and other global titles. That is applauded as the worlds gesture of inclusivity and diversitycurrently also the number one trend in global fashion-- but Jenner on one of our fashion magazines is seen as deference to whiteness.

I am no fan of Jenner. She is one among many where fashion oomph goes and thats regardless of her silly Pepsi ad that invited deserved backlash last month. But I would defend Vogue Indias choice anyway and ask whether a similar hue and cry would have ensued even if the very white and meaningful Meryl Streep had been the face of this cover? For if we are arguing for meaning, thats a different debate altogether.

It is also perhaps the right time to ask if some of us will soon expect news magazines to put British Prime Minister Theresa May in a sari (she did wear one for her Sri Someshwara temple visit during her November 2016 visit) on their covers should they feature her? Or, if Nikki Haley would be rated by Indians as a better American ambassador to the United Nations than the former Samantha Powersince Haley is at least of Indian origin? Perhaps not, lets guess as our reasoning is strictly limited to fashion models. Glamour is fair game after all, right?

What is disappointing about the Vogue India cover shot by Peruvian photographer Mario Testino, who also guest edited this special issue is the artists cliched interpretation of India. A painted Rajasthani facade at Hotel Samode Palace near Jaipur as Jenners India backdrop? Really? What about searching for Indias visual karma beyond its excessively photographed, pretty palaces?
Three members of proscribed CPI (Maoist), including a self-styled zonal commander, were arrested from Bihars Muzaffarpur district, 71 km north of Patna, on Thursday night.

Muzaffarpur senior superintendent of police (SSP) Vivek Kumar said Musafir Paswan, self -styled zonal commander and member of the banned outfits central area committee, and two other Maoists were arrested by a joint team of Muzaffarpur police and Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB) from Ramnagar village in Sakra police station area. The team also recovered firearms, explosives and Maoist literature from their possession, the SSP added.

Kumar said he had constituted the joint team under additional superintendent of police (operation) Rana Brajesh following a tip-off. I had specific information that Paswan and some of his associates would come to attend a wedding at Bharthipur village, also in Sakra police station area. The team cordoned off the area and arrested the Maoists from Ramnagar, where they were sleeping after attending the marriage ceremony, said the SSP.

Paswan is a top leader of the Maoist outfit in north Bihar. He has been associated with the Reds for nearly 20 years. Even his son Rohit Paswan is a hardcore Maoist and is at present lodged in the divisional jail at Hajipur in the neighbouring Vaishali district, the SSP added.

Kumar said Musafir Paswan and his associates had confessed to their involvement in more than 50 incidents of Maoist violence in Muzaffarpur, Samastipur, Sitamarhi, Sheohar, Vaishali. East Champaran and West Champaran districts.

This is the second major catch of Maoists by Muzaffarpur police in two days. On Wednesday night, the Muzaffarpur police had arrested Rambali Paswan, a self-styled area commander of CPI (Maoist) in Saraiyya police station area of the district.
At a time when the crime rate is on rise in the Chandigarh that was once deprived of such concerns, revelation made under an RTI inquiry has become a matter of concern for the residents as well as Chandigarh Police.

As per the information received under a Right to Information (RTI) application, the maximum period of storage, which the closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras installed by administration in Chandigarh possess, is merely seven days. The first-day recording of CCTV cameras gets automatically replaced by the eighth day and the process continues.

The RTI was recently moved by Manju Risan, a resident of Mauli Complex, Chandigarh. She was perturbed by her daughter being falsely implicated in a case of Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, who is currently under trial in a local court. Curious to discover the CCTV footage of the spot from where, the cops claimed to recover the drugs from the alleged drug peddler, she filed an RTI.

As per information given by the deputy superintendent of police, traffic, admin-cum-CPIO, Chandigarh, it has emerged that maximum period for which, a recording can be stored, is only seven days.

A series of murders, rape cases, some of these in broad day light besides snatching and thefts in City Beautiful had reflected poorly on the city police, who are better equipped and larger in number than their counterparts in SAS Nagar and Panchkula.

Concerned over this, senior superintendent of police Eish Singhal said there was a need to review the system applicable for CCTVs here.

Meanwhile, the RTI applicant had also sought information on the number of CCTV cameras installed at the Delhi-Chandigarh road till Tribune Chowk and from Tribune Chowk, till the transport light point, Chandigarh. The information revealed that total five CCTV cameras had been installed in the former, and another 10 (five till Centra Mall light point and other five till Transport Light point) installed in the latter.

In the city, where its police boast of an effective beat system, criminals manage to escape after committing crimes, even in posh areas, raising a question mark on the claim.

Given how CCTV cameras are known to act as deterrents to keep a tab on miscreants, a plan was mooted to install these at all the sensitive points of Chandigarh with the help of non-government organisations (NGOs) and Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs), but that also has been left in limbo.

Jasminder Singh, counsel for the woman accused in the drug case, said, Citizens will not feel secured if they know that cameras installed here have the storage capacity of just seven days. Even the cameras installed personally by people have at least 15 days storage.

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The Monday evening incident in which two drunk women in their 20s assaulted a traffic cop after he apprehended them for jumping a signal is not an isolated one.

In the past four years, more than 50% cases of people roughing up UT police officials on duty have women named as the accused.

According to data provided by Chandigarh Police, 107 people have been arrested for assault on or causing hurt to a public servant to deter them from performing their duty between 2014 and May 2017.

Of these, while 51 accused were men, as many as 56 were women. This year, three women have been arrested for the crime so far. All of them later got bail.

Two sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) apply in such cases. While Section 353 pertains to the action of assault or criminal force, Section 332 covers the impact, i.e. causing hurt to the public servant attacked. Both sections cover officials on duty.

In 2016, eight women were arrested in five cases, while the number stood at as high as 37 in 2015. In 2014, there were eight women who were arrested for the crime.

In cases of drunken driving, too, city women have found themselves on the wrong side of law. In 2016, 23 women were challaned after being caught driving in an inebriated condition, while till May this year, six women have been fined.

Commenting on the trend, UT senior superintendent of police (SSP) Eish Singhal said: Each citizen must respect law, be it a woman or a man.

Law too lax for women, says roughed-up cop

Monday was like any other day for head constable (traffic) Manjit Singh, till he saw two women jumping the signal. Deployed near the Sector-43 bus stand as usual, the cop gave their Maruti Suzuki Swift car a chase in a PCR vehicle and finally caught them as their car got stuck in traffic near the district courts.

What followed, Manjit Singh says, he cant ever forget. Not just I, my whole family is upset and in fact in shock. We feel embarrassed after the video of the two drunk women assaulting and abusing me has gone viral, the head constable told HT on Thursday.

Watch the video here:

The video shows the woman driver starting an argument with the cop. Going on to create a further scene, she allegedly went on to smash a beer bottle that she had been carrying in the car on her own head. The accused did not stop there and went on to tear the cops uniform.

I believe the government shows too much laxity when it comes to framing law for crimes involving women accused. They are given too much freedom in the name of rights . The women abused and manhandled me, but the police did not even have the authority to arrest them as the incident took place in the evening. Why such discriminatory laws when women are equal to men in every field? he said.

The accused were arrested from the main gate of the Sector 43 bus stand on Tuesday afternoon and were later produced before court, where they got bail.

Singh said if he were not in his uniform, he wouldnt have allowed the accused to hurl abuses at him. The woman staged a drama by hitting herself with a beer bottle. Blood was oozing out of her neck and even a hand. She was doing all this so that she could claim I had injured her. At least one woman, who is married, should have been jailed to set an example. But they were let off after furnishing a bail bond, he said.

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Six days after he was caught doing private practice against the rules, Dr BS Bal as replaced as principal of Government Medical College, Amritsar, on Friday. Dr Sohan Singh has been appointed as the new principal.

Dr Bals private practice was busted by the vigilance bureau that sent a detailed report to the head office, following which the action was taken by the authorities concerned . The Punjab government had banned private practice by all government doctors in 2003.

Director, medical education and research, Dr Sujata Sharma, however, said, The government must have taken this step. I am yet to be informed about the same. The government must have done this.

However, confirming the news, Dr Sohan Singh, the new principal, said, I will be joining the office tomorrow (Saturday) at 9.15 am. I am happy and hopeful about the tenure. Dr Sohan Singh is one of the seniormost among faculty at the college.
Family members of Gurpreet Kaur, 26, in Balachaur town of Punjabs Nawanshahr district are in a state of shock ever since they were told about her being found dead under mysterious circumstances at her workplace in Manurewa, South Auckland, on May 10. Gurpreet worked at a private IT company.

Gurpreets mother and two elder brothers live in Balachaur, while her father works in a construction firm in Dubai. The family is awaiting the post-mortem report.

Her father, Balbir Singh, is returning home on Sunday after which the family will take a call on where to perform the last rites.

According to sources, Gurpreets employer found her dead at the workplace with injury marks on her neck at 5 pm on May 10. Police were called to the scene, and the body was sent for post-mortem. The case has been referred to the coroner.

WENT TO AUCKLAND TWO YEARS AGO ON STUDY VISA

Gurpreet Kaur and husband Satwinder Singh, in a photo shared by her brother Sukhbir Singh.

Gurpreet had gone to New Zealand two years ago on a student visa and completed her diploma from an Industrial Training Institute in Auckland and lived with her husband Satwinder Singh, who works in an electrical firm, and mother-in-law.

She was married in 2014, and her husband joined her in New Zealand only six months ago.

Her husband and mother-in-law are in a state of shock and unable to talk to anyone, Daljeet Singh from NZ Sikh Society said.
Now, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER) will have two deans  one for research and one for academics. The institutes proposal aimed to boost research was approved at the governing body (GB) meeting of the institute.

The GB meeting, chaired by Jagat Prakash Nadda, Union minister of health and family welfare, was held in New Delhi on Thursday.

One of the main focuses of Dr Jagat Ram, PGIMER director, is to boost research in the institute, which is lacking since the last few years. For this purpose, the director is frequently interacting with the researchers and is trying to solve the issues faced by them.

A proposal was made to have two deans in the institute for academics (Dean 1) and research (Dean 2). The agenda was presented at the GB meeting and the president of the institute, JP Nadda, has given in principal approval, said a senior officer from the PGIMER.

The proposal was made on the pattern of AIIMS, which has two deans.

A note will be sent to the president of the institute, wherein three names of the senior most doctors will be sent for these two posts, said PGI official.

Most likely, names of Dr Rajesh Kumar, head, school of public health; Dr A Rajwanshi, head, department of cytology and Dr D Behera, head of pulmonary medicine, will be sent to the minister.

Dr S Varma, current PGIMER dean is retiring in July. The decision will be implemented post his retirement only.

Respite for Dr AK Gupta

Bringing respite to Dr AK Gupta, medical superintendent of PGIMER, the governing body of the institute has regularised his much talked about 90-day long foreign leave.

With the regularisation of his day long foreign leave to Nepal, Dr Gupta may not have to pay nearly Rs 10 lakh, one third of the amount he earned during his foreign assignment. which he was bound to pay earlier. However, this issue was not discussed in the governing body.

The issue dates back to 2014, when Dr Gupta disobeyed the then health ministers orders and went ahead to Nepal on an assignment of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

His leave was cancelled by the then health minister. However, he stayed back and filed an appeal with the ministry seeking permission, but got no reply.

He was chargesheeted in July 2016, but he got a stay on it. Following this, he was asked to pay one-third of his fee, which he earned during his foreign visit.

Now, the matter was placed in the governing body to regularise his leave. The foreign leave has been regularised, it is a big relief for MS, said an officer from PGIMER.

Truth and rules have prevailed while dropping warning and orders of depositing 33% fee in excess of Rs 1,500 by GB now, said Dr AK Gupta.

Other important decisions

 Plagiarism rules formed by PGIMER dean have been regularised. These rules define what will count as plagiarism. Now, a committee has been constituted to decide upon the penalty for those found guilty of plagiarism

 Recruitiment of 32 doctors have been regularised

 Director has been given power to issue tenders up to Rs 5 crore, earlier he had power to issue tender till Rs 2.5 crore.

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Kundan Pahan, the once dreaded CPI (Maoist) commander infamous for mercilessly killing police officers and his bete noires in the organisation as well as civil society, has walked out of the jungle and has voluntarily landed in the police hands.

Though police are tightlipped about his surrender, HT has learnt from his close aides in his village and former colleagues in the rebel organisation that Pahan had laid down arms before senior police and IB officials around a week back. He is being interrogated at secluded places and asked to make his other former colleagues in the rebel group, who reported into him, to surrender.

Reliable sources in Tamar, a LWE hit block in Ranchi district, told HT that Pahan has been seen moving in police vans over the last couple of days. An influential politician of the locality said, He had made up his mind to surrender long time back. Hence, his surrender is no surprise development.

HT had met Pahan in 2016 in his stronghold besides the picturesque Dassam Fall. He seemed disgruntled by the organisation and had spoken about severing ties with the revolutionary outfit. However, he didnt let the correspondent feel that he had already walked out of the organisation.

On his request, HT had withheld publishing his photograph and excerpts of the informal chat.

His elder brother, Dimba Pahan, who was Maoists powerful Jharkhand Regional Committee (JRC) member, had also surrendered last year.

Around 40 years of age, dark, tall and healthy, Pahan carries a booty Rs 15 lakh on his head. He joined the rebel outfit in 2000 following a land dispute with influential people in his village Arki. He shifted to Bundu where he allegedly spilled the first blood of a Manki, head of a cluster of villages.

He soon became a sub-zone followed by a zonal commander in-charge of Bundu and Porahat areas. He was also shifted to Saranda, which was once the regional headquarters of Maoists in Eastern India, where he claimed to have trained with former Nepal President and Maoist leader Prachanda among others.

His became an internal terror when he allegedly beheaded special branch inspector, Francis Induwar, in Taliban style in 2009 for spying in his liberated zone. Worse in a daredevilry, he seized a cash van of ICICI bank from NH-33 in 2008 and vanished with the vehicle along with cash in the jungle.

When he killed the inspector and we waged an all out war against him, his family members came to me offering to negotiate for his surrender. I had tried my best to bring him out of the jungle when I was in-charge of the special branch but couldnt succeed, ADG Rezi Dungdung said.
Actor Dheeraj Kumar, who is also the chairman and managing director of Creative Eye Limited, recently met the Australian consul-general, Tony Huber, in Mumbai. During their meeting, Kumar informed Huber that digital content production is growing at a rapid pace in India. As a veteran of the Indian television industry, Kumar gave a detailed presentation of the Indian and global scenarios in the television market, highlighting stages where there are opportunities for growth.



Says Kumar, Huber said he was extremely impressed with the detailed, deep and encouraging information he received and he that had gained a good understanding of the Indian TV and media industry. He assured me that he will look for Australian production houses and media companies who are willing to associate with Creative Eye Limited and explore the possibility of global content production in Australia.

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Asha Khemka, from Sitamarhi in Bihar, arrived in the United Kingdom with her family in 1978 without English language skills. She went on to win several accolades for transforming the lives of many as an educationist, and has now been made the deputy lieutenant of the county of Staffordshire.

Ian James Dudson, lord-lieutenant of Staffordshire, appointed her the deputy lieutenant at a commissioning ceremony in Staffordshire councils County Buildings in Stafford, her office informed Hindustan Times on Friday.

The lord-lieutenant is Queen Elizabeths representative in the county. The role of deputy lieutenant is to help the lord-lieutenant with ceremonial duties, including representing him at civic and voluntary events and activities within the lieutenancy.

Khemka said: As a long-standing resident, I am proud and humbled to be asked to represent the Staffordshire Lieutenancy and serve the place where I have lived for almost 20 years. It is a huge honour to be appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of the county that I love so much.

Born and raised in Sitamarhi, Khemka married at the age of 15 and emigrated to the UK with her orthopaedic surgeon-husband Shankar and their three children. After 20 years as a housewife, she returned to education as a mature student.

Khemka began her career as a college business studies lecturer in 1987 and rose to establish herself as a leading educationist in the area of further education. She has been honoured the several awards over the years.

She was honoured with a damehood in 2014  the female equivalent of knighthood  after being awarded an OBE in 2009 for her services to education. She is also a recipient of the Dadabhai Naoroji Award in 2015, presented by former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj.

Khemka is the principal and chief executive of West Nottinghamshire College, Mansfield, 230 km north of London. Under her leadership, the college is considered one of the largest and most successful institutes in the UK. She is also involved in education projects in India.

Khemka was the second woman of Indian origin in 2014 to be made a dame, the top British honour for women since the order was instituted in 1917; the first was Maharani Lakshmi Devi of Dhar in 1931.

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On Thursday, May 11, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak met with representatives of the U.S. Congress, during which he informed congressmen about the situation on the territory of the Anti-Terrorist operation (ATO) in the east of Ukraine and on the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea.

"The U.S. has been providing consistent and serious assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of our struggle for territorial integrity. American instructors' assistance in the training of Ukrainian soldiers gives results on the battlefield, saves lives and allows us to effectively solve problems," the press service of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said.

Also, the Defense Minister of Ukraine told U.S. congressmen about the main achievements in the reform of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

We are amazed that in a short period of time Ukraine has built an army that protects the country, head of the delegation Michael McCann said.

Representatives of the delegation of the U.S. Congress noted that there are debatable issues in the Congress as in the parliament of any country, but their position on Ukraine is unified. "Ukraine must be strong and we must work on this together," the press service of the Defense Ministry quoted congressmen as saying.

In his turn, the Ukrainian defense minister said that "the Ukrainians are trying to build a strong and prosperous democratic country, ready to defend their values with lethal force and even give their lives, but it is important for us not to be alone in this confrontation, we need the support of partners."

"Having the strength of spirit and will and the help of foreign partners, we will definitely win," Poltorak said.
China on Friday refused to comment on reports that Sri Lanka had turned down a request to allow a Peoples Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) submarine to dock in Colombo.

A Reuters report from Colombo said Sri Lankan officials were unlikely to agree to Chinas request to dock a submarine anytime soon given Indias concerns.

It might happen later, a second official told Reuters, adding China had requested approval sometime back to use the port around May 16.

When asked about the news reports on Friday, foreign ministry spokesperson Geng Shuang said the queries should be raised with the defence ministry. He added that China and Sri Lanka maintain traditional friendship and cooperate across bilateral spheres.

Colombos decision to make the refusal public comes at the time when Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is visiting the island nation to attend a high-profile Buddhist summit on the occasion of Vesak, celebrated to mark the birthday of Buddha.

Modi met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Maithripala Sirisena on Thursday.

Wickremesinghe, incidentally, will be flying to Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum on Sunday and Monday.

Sri Lanka twice allowed Chinese submarines to dock in Colombo in 2014, triggering alarm bells in India.

China and Sri Lanka have deepened cooperation in all sectors over the years, including in defence, but the Sirisena government has seemingly tried to balance Indias concerns over an increasing Chinese footprint in the country.

In March, Sirisena had expressed his appreciation for China's consistent assistance for Sri Lanka in economy, agriculture, science and technology, education, defence and other areas.

He noted that Sri Lanka is an important country along the 21st century Maritime Silk Road, saying China would have to work together with Sri Lanka in promoting each other's development so as to benefit their two peoples, according to a report by state-run Xinhua news agency.
A Chinese official told local reporters on Friday to focus on the inclusiveness of Chinas Belt and Road initiative and refrain from reporting the amount of Chinese investment in specific countries along the route.

Leaders from 29 nations will gather in Beijing this weekend for Chinas ambitious new Silk Road initiative that aims to develop economic links between Asia, Africa and Europe. Chinese investment could reach up to $130 billion annually over the next five years.

A provincial official told a group of Chinese reporters after a press briefing that they should not report on Chinas investment in countries along the Belt and Road routes, an instruction that is different from past practices, due to the sensitivity of the matter.

You reporters should focus on the theme of developing together, not what we (China) do with certain countries, because that could make other countries uncomfortable, said the official from the eastern province of Fujian.

China has long used references to countries along the Belt and Road routes in its official communiques about the initiative.

Chinese media coverage of the two-day Belt and Road Forum, due to kick off on Sunday, has been relentlessly upbeat. China has also rejected suggestions that the new Silk Road is about Beijing trying to dominate the world and mould it to its liking, saying it is good for all and anyone can join.

Keeping the rhetoric on an initiative that is open to all nations, some officials at the Fujian press conference denied that there were just 65 countries under the Belt and Road initiative, saying there was no such specific number.

What I can tell you is that we have repeatedly said the Belt and Road is an open and inclusive proposal, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said on Friday.

The Belt and Road does not have this concept of members. Anyone can join it.

Even countries not situated on the Silk Road - old or new - have been welcome to join the initiative. The leaders of Chile and Argentina will be attending the summit, as well as representatives from the United States.

President Xi Jinping first proposed the Belt and Road initiative in 2013. Since then, he has used it to help portray China as an open economy, distinct from a rising wave of global protectionism.

The Belt and Road initiative should not just be a China solution for the world, a Chinese think tank said on Wednesday.

Belt and Road when it first started was a China solution. Afterwards it became that all solutions from any country are fine, said Wang Huiyao, head of the Centre for China and Globalization.

Developed countries can also make suggestions - any country can create a solution for Belt and Road.
UKs Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn on Friday played down recent overtures to India made by Prime Minister Theresa May by recalling that she spoke about the rise of India and China in a speech this year in the United States in alarmist terms.

A Labour government under his leadership after the June 8 election would not see India in those terms, he said in a major foreign policy speech at Chatham House that reiterated his views against war and promised a less gushing approach to US President Donald Trump.

Corbyn said: When Theresa May addressed a Republican Party conference in Philadelphia in January, she spoke in alarmist terms about the rise of China and India and of the danger of the West being eclipsed. She said America and Britain had to stand strong together and use their military might to protect their interests.

This is the sort of language that led to calamity in Iraq and Libya and all the other disastrous wars that stole the post-Cold War promise of a new world order. I do not see India and China in those terms.

A leaked draft of Labours manifesto this week suggested that the party will push populist promises such as scrapping 9,000 per year as university tuition fees for UK students and re-nationalising railways and posts.

Referring to the widely publishing photograph of Trump holding Mays hand in the White House during her visit in January, Corbyn said: Britain deserves better than simply outsourcing our countrys security and prosperity to the whims of the Trump White House. So no more hand holding with Donald Trump.

A Labour government will conduct a robust and independent foreign policy  made in Britain. A Labour government would seek to work for peace and security with all the other permanent members of the United Nations security council  the US, China, Russia and France. And with other countries with a major role to play such as India, South Africa, Brazil and Germany.

Reaffirming commitment to the United Nations, Corbyn said his governments foreign policy would be driven by human rights and social justice. It would immediately halt arms sale to Saudi Arabia and create a Minister for Peace to work across the ministry of defence and the foreign office.

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The deputy chairman of Pakistans upper house of parliament escaped an assassination attempt when an Islamic State suicide bomber targeted his convoy in the restive Balochistan province on Friday, killing 25 people and injuring dozens more.

Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, deputy chairman of the Senate and a senior leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl party, was among some 50 people injured in the attack in Mastung town, state-run Radio Pakistan reported.

Government officials confirmed 25 people were killed in the attack. JUI-F leader Maulana Abdul Malik said Haideris vehicle was targeted by the blast.

The Islamic State claimed the attack, saying through its Amaq news agency that a bomber wearing an explosive vest was responsible.

The bomber struck soon after Haideris convoy left a madrassa or seminary in Mastung, about 70 km from the provincial capital of Quetta.

I am alive...broken pieces of the windscreen hit meI am injured but safe, Haideri told a TV news channel soon after the attack. I was sitting in the front seat when the strong explosion occurred...I did not suffer any major injury. ...I cant say why the blast (happened) or what led to it.

The powerful blast damaged several vehicles in the convoy. Haideri, who was returning from an event at the madrassa, was taken to a nearby hospital. Media reports described his condition as stable.

Most of the dead and injured were workers of the JUI-F.

Paramilitary forces cordoned off the area and launched a search operation. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and interior minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan condemned the attack.

The Mastung region has been a hotbed of militant activity in the past, though most previous attacks in the area were carried out by the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi on the Shia minority.

The Islamic State carried out two major attacks in Balochistan last year. An attack on lawyers in Quetta killed nearly 70 people, most of them young lawyers, while an attack on a shrine frequented by Shias in remote Kuzdar area killed more than 60 people.
An Italian court has said divorce settlements should no longer guarantee spouses their previous standard of living but rather simply make sure they were financially independent.

The top appeals court ruling could bring an end to the huge settlements seen in some break-ups, such as the 1.4 million a month that former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has to pay his ex-wife, Veronica Lario.

On Wednesday, the court ruled in a case brought by the ex-wife of Vittorio Grilli, a former economy minister. But rather than back her request for more alimony, the judges said times had changed and the approach to divorce needed to be updated.

The judges said in a written verdict that getting married was an act of freedom and personal responsibility, that it should not be seen as a definitive settlement and that alimony should not be based on any previous standard of living.

In this context, it said courts needed to review the work prospects of a separated spouse and simply safeguard their future economic independence or self-sufficiency.

The court has ruled that marriage cannot be a business or a way of climbing up the social ladder (through big payouts), the head of Italys association of matrimonial lawyers, Gian Ettore Gassani, told Radio 24 on Thursday. Existing divorce settlements could also now be challenged in court, he said.

Divorce did not become legal in Italy until 1970. Originally, the law imposed a mandatory five-year separation period intended to make couples reconsider. In 1987, this was reduced to three years and slashed to just six months in 2015.

Gassani said in the 1970s, most women did not work, meaning divorcees depended utterly on their alimony to survive. However, times change and this ruling reflects that.
Contradicting previous White House explanations, President Donald Trump declared on Thursday he had planned to fire FBI director James Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

His assertions came as Comeys temporary replacement joined in, contradicting other administration statements on the snowballing controversy.

In an interview with NBC News, Trump also said hed asked Comey point-blank if he was under investigation and was assured three times he was not. Trump showed no concern that the request might be viewed as interference in an active FBI probe into his 2016 campaigns possible ties to Russias election meddling.

I said, If its possible, would you let me know am I under investigation? He said you are not under investigation, Trump told NBC. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.

Comey has not confirmed Trumps account.

The New York Times late on Thursday cited two unnamed Comey associates who recounted his tale of a January dinner with the president in which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty. Comey declined, instead offering honesty. When Trump then pressed for honest loyalty, Comey told the president, you will have that, said the associates, who told the newspaper they agreed to keep the story confidential while Comey was FBI director.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the report and said the president would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty.

But the account echoed wording in a comment made a day earlier to The Associated Press by longtime Comey friend Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, who said the president had removed somebody unwilling to pledge absolute loyalty to him.

The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticising Comeys handling of last years investigation into Hillary Clintons emails as the impetus for Trumps decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation  which he dismissed as a made-up story  was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a showboat and grandstander, added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

The White Houses explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White Houses assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBIs rank-and-file.

That is not accurate, McCabe said. Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day.

Unfazed, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted she had heard from countless members of the FBI who welcomed the presidents decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trumps version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not standard practice to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trumps comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

Trump and Comeys relationship was strained early on, in part because of the presidents explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.

The president was no kinder to Comey Thursday, calling him names and saying hed left the FBI in virtual turmoil. He said that while he received a scathing assessment of Comeys performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Monday, that memo was not a catalyst for his dramatic decision as the White House had said earlier.

I was going to fire Comey, Trump said. Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey.

Thats far different that the White Houses initial account in the hours after Comeys firing. Multiple officials, including Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

But it quickly became clear that the president had been stewing for days over the Russia investigation and Comeys refusal to defend him in appearances before lawmakers. By Wednesday afternoon, the officials, like Trump, were saying he had in fact been considering ousting the FBI director for months because of a lack of confidence in his ability to lead the agency.

And the Russia investigation was still on his mind.

In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won, he said.

Sanders attributed the disconnect in the weeks explanations to the fact that she had not directly asked Trump when hed made the decision to fire Comey until shortly before Thursdays press briefing.

The White House tried to move past the controversy, announcing that the president had signed an executive order creating a voter fraud commission and another on cybersecurity. Trump signed the orders privately and was not seen in public apart from his TV interview with NBC.

Trump had kept his decision to fire Comey from all but his closest advisers. Many in the White House were ill-prepared for the outraged response from Democrats and open concern from some Republicans.

The challenge they have is that the president sometimes moves so rapidly that they dont get a team around that gets it organized, said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker and a Trump ally. They need to decide what theyre going to say and they need to stick with it. Random change isnt helpful.

White House officials and others insisted on anonymity in order to disclose private conversations and internal deliberations.

The White House said Trump is weighing options for replacing Comey, a decision that could have broad implications for the future of the Russia investigation.

Some senior officials have discussed nominating Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who ran the House committee that investigated Secretary of State Hillary Clintons actions in connection with the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Trumps advisers have repeatedly tried to downplay the Russia-election matter, with Sanders saying Wednesday the FBI was doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation.

But McCabe characterized the investigation as highly significant and assured senators Comeys firing would not hinder it. He promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.

You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.

Days before he was fired, Comey requested more resources to pursue his investigation, U.S. officials have said. McCabe said he was not aware of any such request and said the Russia investigation is adequately resourced.

It was unclear whether word of the Comey request, said to have been put to Rosenstein, ever made its way to Trump.

The chairman and top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee abruptly left the hearing Thursday to meet with Rosenstein, who is McCabes boss. The senators said later that the Russia investigations were discussed but Comeys firing was not.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression, building upon his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

The White House said the presidents Advisory Commission on Election Integrity would examine allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and across the nation. Vice President Mike Pence will chair the panel and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be vice chair of the commission, which will report back to Trump by 2018.

We cant take for granted the integrity of the vote, Pence said in a statement. He said the commission would review ways to strengthen the integrity of elections in order to protect and preserve the principle of one person, one vote because the integrity of the vote is the foundation of our democracy.

Trump has alleged, without evidence, that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in his 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He has vowed since the start of his administration to investigate voter fraud, a process that has been delayed for months.

Last November, Kobach said he supported Trumps assertions that he would have won the popular vote if millions of people hadnt voted illegally.

Democrats and voting rights groups called the panel a sham, arguing there are few, if any, credible allegations of significant voter fraud. They warned that the panel would be used to lay the groundwork for stricter voting requirements that could make it more difficult for poor and minority voters to access the ballot box.

The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression, said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who challenged Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was a clear front for constricting the access to vote to poor Americans, older Americans, and  above all  African-Americans and Latinos.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would be bipartisan and composed of about a dozen members, including current and former state election officials and experts.

The president is committed to the thorough review of registration and voting issues in federal elections and thats exactly what this commission is tasked with doing, Sanders said.

The panel will aim to ensure confidence in the integrity of federal elections while looking at vulnerabilities in the system and the possibility of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration and voting, officials said.

The commission will include two Republicans, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell and Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson, and two Democrats, New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap.

Christy McCormick, a former Justice Department attorney and a member of the US Election Assistance Commission, will also be on the panel, and others will be named soon.

Trump repeatedly alleged that the election system was rigged during his campaign and later argued that massive, widespread fraud kept him from winning the popular vote. Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College victory even though Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes.

Voting experts and many lawmakers, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, have said they havent seen anything to suggest that millions of people voted illegally. The Utah Republican said his committee wont be investigating voter fraud.

But in a lunch meeting with senators in February, Trump said he and former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state. New Hampshire officials have said there was no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.

Michael Waldman, president of the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, said the commission was formed to find proof of the presidents absurd claim about millions of people voting illegally. He noted that it came in the aftermath of Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.

He fired the person investigating a real threat to election integrity, and set up a probe of an imaginary threat, Waldman said.

Trump had previously identified Pence as the person to oversee the commission. Kobach advised Trumps transition team and has been a leading GOP proponent of tighter voting regulations.

The secretary of state championed Kansas proof-of-citizenship requirement as an anti-fraud measure that keeps noncitizens from voting, including immigrants living in the U.S. illegally.

Critics contend it suppresses voter turnout, particularly among young and minority voters, and that there have been few cases of fraud.

After the announcement, the American Civil Liberties Union said it had filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information on what the Trump administration was using as the basis for its voter fraud claims.
In an upmarket suburb of Senegals seaside capital, a branch of Irans Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students Shia Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on his office wall.

The teaching includes Iranian culture and history, Islamic science and Irans mother tongue, Farsi. Students receive free food and financial help. The university is a Shia outpost in a country where Sufism, a more relaxed, mystical and apolitical form of Sunni Islam, is the norm.

Two miles away, the Islamic Preaching Association for Youth (APIJ) teaches the strand of Islam that predominates in Irans great religious, political and military rival  Saudi Arabia.

The APIJ funnels cash from donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai and Kuwait to mosques run by Salafists - conservative Sunni Muslims who are sworn enemies of Iran. The APIJs shelves are stacked with Salafist theology texts adorned with gold-leaf Arabic inscriptions  texts its imams use to preach in some 200 mosques across Senegal.

The two institutions embody a contest for influence in Senegal, and more widely in Africa, between Iran-backed Shias and Saudi-funded Sunnis. Its one strand of a broad power struggle in which each side is spending millions of dollars to win converts. At stake is huge political influence, on a resource-rich continent that has often served as the theatre for rivalries between world powers.

Interviews with teachers and converts on both sides shed light on the depth of the divide and the ways both sides try to gain an edge.

The Iranian director of Dakars branch of Al-Mustafa makes no secret of his concerns over his Saudi rivals. The Salafists came to Africa to destroy ... Islam, said Chiekh Abbas Motaghedi in February.

Up the road, in the APIJ building, the Salafists show equal passion. We cannot accept the Iranian influence in Senegal, and well do everything to fight it, said Chiekh Ibrahima Niang, the imam, sitting legs crossed in a silky white robe. We need to show the world that Shias are wrong.

Students pray outside the Grand Mosque de lOVead, a Salafist mosque of the Anta Diop University in Dakar. (Reuters)

But for Senegal, either influence would be a disruption. Its a society that has always leaned towards political moderation, thanks largely to a tradition of tolerance espoused by its Sufi orders or brotherhoods.

Where the brotherhoods are weak, as in eastern Senegal, is where the threat of radicalisation is highest, said Bakary Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute and a coordinator for the Observatory on Religious Radicalism and Conflicts in Africa.

Iran has often been a destabilising influence  in 2010, an Iranian arms shipment was intercepted in the Nigerian port of Lagos, which Senegal suspected were destined for rebels in its southern Casamance region. Dakar briefly cut ties with Tehran over it.

Salafism is the more troubling strand, Sufis say  it is largely free of political interference, but has shared cause with violence that Senegal has so far escaped.

Salafists in Senegal are cousins of those making jihad in Mali, Ahmed Khalifa Niasse, son of a deceased powerful Sufi imam and vocal critic of Gulf Arab religious influence, told Reuters. They see themselves as soldiers of God purifying Islam.

Salafists vehemently deny that link. Salafism has nothing to do with terrorism, says Niang. Yes, there are people who want to use force to impose the Salafist way, but we are very much against them. We are against violence.

Training Loyalists

Irans Khamenei supervises the activities of Al-Mustafa, which is based in the Iranian city of Qom and has branches in 50 countries. Thousands of students from across Africa receive enough Iranian money to enable them and their families to visit Qom while finishing their studies, said the son of a cleric based there who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Al-Mustafa is now Irans main tool for promoting Shia theology, said a professor, who declined to be named. Its aim is to train people to be loyal to the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader.

A top official at Al-Mustafa in Qom, also declining to be named, gave a different view. Our goal is purely cultural and educational. We want to promote higher education in Africa, he said.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and many other countries have built their religious schools in Africa. Alongside them, there are many American and British Christian schools, and even Hindu schools. So there is a rivalry in Africa and if we do not establish our presence there, we would fall behind.

In the 2016 Iranian budget, Al-Mustafa received 2,390 billion rials ($74 million). But the university receives more funding from the office of the Supreme Leader and other conglomerates under his command, one official said.

Simple Message

At the APIJ in Dakar, Imam Niang extolled the virtues of Sunni Islam. Salafism ... has a simple message, he said as he scanned an ornate Quran through reading glasses. To be a good Muslim, you must follow the practices of the Prophet Mohammed.

Niang went to Koranic schools from age 6 until 27 and later studied in Saudi Arabia. Immediately after he returned in 1989, he and fellow conservatives set up the APIJ in Senegal. Since then, hundreds of modest mint-green and sky-blue mosques financed by the APIJ have sprung up in suburbs of Dakar and fishing villages across the country.

A success for the Salafists was when they gradually took over worship at the main mosque at Dakars Anta Diop University in the 1990s.

Imam Ismaila Ndiaye, coodinator of Senegals Salafist movements and preacher at the university, said his strand of Sunni Islam offered an alternative to Sufism, asserting that Senegals secular state and liberal values were imposed on it by French colonisers. But he said Salafist mosques were not turning Senegalese youth towards jihad.

If the Catholics can finance projects in Senegal aimed at evangelising at people, then why shouldnt Saudi Arabia do the same thing? he said.

The Right Path

Judging who is winning the contest for influence is tricky. Imam Sherif Mballo, secretary general of the League of AhlulBayt, a pan-African Shia movement founded last August, says there are between 30,000 and 50,000 Shias in Senegal, where the population is 15 million.

There are no reliable figures on the numbers of Salafists in Senegal, said the Timbuktu Institutes Sambe. However, he said Salafists control several hugely popular mosques.

Peter Pham, Africa director of the Atlantic Council in Washington, said traditional Senegalese Sufi brotherhoods have more in common with the conservative Sunni strand prevalent in Saudi Arabia than they do with Shias, because Sufism is already part of the Sunni religion.

Some Senegalese find the Sufi traditions of their ancestors old hat and stifling. The opportunity to adopt other versions of Islam is liberating.
The Indian woman who has accused a Pakistani man of forcing her into marriage petitioned the Islamabad high court on Friday for duplicate travel documents and security so that she could return home.

There was drama within the courtroom when an Indian diplomat was reportedly spotted taking pictures with his mobile phone. He was let off only after he offered verbal and written apologies.

The petition filed by Uzma, the 20-year-old woman from New Delhi, said the Pakistani man, Tahir Ali, had deceived her as he was already married and that he stole her passport and other travel documents.

The petition, filed on Uzmas behalf by her counsel Malik Shah Nawaz Noon and Piyush Singh, first secretary (consular and visa) in the Indian high commission, also sought security for her return to India via the Wagah land border crossing.

My five-year-old daughter Falak is ill and I have to meet her, Uzma said in the petition, according to Pakistani media reports. Tahir deceived me and force me to marry him at gunpoint. He even stole my passport and travelling documents.

The petition added, I urge the court to ask the Foreign Office to issue duplicate travel documents so that I may travel back to India.

During the hearing, Piyush Singh was reportedly spotted taking pictures with his mobile phone. When court officials brought the matter to the notice of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, he ordered the confiscation of the mobile phone and said the action amounted to a breach of the courts decorum.

Media reports said Singh took three photos inside the courtroom, including one of Kayani.

Kayani ordered the Indian diplomat to submit a written apology to the court after Singh verbally apologised. Singh offered a written apology. The court accepted his apology and warned him not to repeat the act.

Uzmas petition asked the court to restrain Ali from harassing her. She also sought exemption for reporting to police and permission to return to India.

Ali had earlier sought the Islamabad high courts intervention to meet his wife in a free atmosphere so that he could clear up any misunderstandings. He claimed Uzma recorded a statement against him before a judicial magistrate under duress and pressure from her brother and officials of the Indian mission.

On May 8, Uzma informed the judicial magistrate that she was deceived, sexually abused and forced to marry Ali at gunpoint. Uzma said she had taken refuge at the Indian mission because she felt threatened and wanted to go back to New Delhi.

However, Ali has said that Uzma was aware that he was already married and had four children.

Earlier this week, the Foreign Office said Uzma would be repatriated only after all legal formalities are completed.
President Hassan Rouhani defended his efforts to improve Irans economy and hit out at his hardline opponents in a final televised debate on Friday against challengers who aim to topple him in an increasingly acrimonious election next week.

Rouhani, swept into office in a landslide four years ago on promises to reduce Irans international isolation, is seeking a second term after negotiating an agreement with world powers to curb Irans nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions.

If we want a better economy, we should not let groups with security and political backing to get involved in the economy, Rouhani said during the debate, in an unmistakable swipe at the Revolutionary Guards Corps, an elite military force with a vast business empire, which has backed his main hardline opponent Ebrahim Raisi.

Normally measured in his public speeches, Rouhani has become increasingly forceful in recent days, giving voice to the grievances of reformers who say they have been oppressed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution by security forces like the Guards.

I am surprised. Those of you who talk about freedom of speech these days... (you are) those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut, Rouhani told a rally on Monday in a thinly-veiled attack on Raisi, a former jurist involved in mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s.

Our people want political and social freedom ... In the election they will not vote for those who knew only executions and prison for 38 years, Rouhani said in a rally on Tuesday.

He faces five challengers, led by two hardliners, cleric Raisi and Tehran Mayor Mohammed Beqar Qalibaf, who both say Rouhani has sold Irans interests too cheaply to the West and allowed the economy to decay through mismanagement. The first round is on May 19, with a run-off a week later if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.

Although Irans political system puts ultimate power in the hands of an unelected supreme leader, and all candidates are vetted by a hardline watchdog body, elections are nevertheless hard-fought contests that can bring dramatic change.

As in two earlier, bruising debates, the main challengers tore into Rouhanis economic record, arguing that he failed to bring Iranians a better life despite the lifting of sanctions.

Raisi described a litany of poor economic performance under Rouhani, saying 250,000 small businesses had shut and cash payments to the poor should be raised: Unemployment is high. Peoples purchasing power has dropped dramatically, he said.

Rouhanis biggest worry is that some of the voters who carried him to a single-round victory in 2013 will stay home, disillusioned that the lifting of sanctions has brought few economic benefits and the pace of social change has been slow.

Rouhani is trying to reach out to voters who guaranteed his election four years ago by hoping to have a freer Iran, said a former official close to Rouhanis government.

Rouhanis deal to lift sanctions won the cautious backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei and his hardline loyalists criticise its failure to boost the economy.

Benefits have been slow to arrive, in part because of unilateral U.S. sanctions still in place over Irans missile programme, human rights record and allegations it supports terrorism.

Rouhanis allies say the hardliners oppose deeper change and exposure to international competition in part because of the economic interests of the Guards, which gained control of swathes of Irans industry during its years of isolation.

CROSSING RED LINES

Although Rouhani won more than three times as many votes as his closest challenger four years ago, he only narrowly avoided a second round with just over half the total votes. If he sheds just a bit of that support now, he could face a dangerous second round against a single opponent who unites the hardline faction.

I wanted to boycott this election because I am so disappointed with Rouhanis failure to bring more freedom to Iran, said teacher Reza Mirsadegh in the central city of Yazd.

But I have changed my mind. I will vote for Rouhani to prevent Raisis win.

Irans ultimate authority Khamenei has warned the public against protests like those that broke out after the disputed election of 2009, when reformers disputed the victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Those who deviate from this path will be slapped in the face, Khamenei said in a televised speech on Wednesday.

The Guards, their affiliated volunteer Basij militia and many Friday prayer leaders have thrown their support behind Raisi, a veteran jurist whose name has also been mentioned as a future supreme leader.

Qalibaf, a chisel-jawed former Guards commander, lacks Raisis backing from the clerical establishment but also has millions of supporters for a hardline message on security and a populist economic platform. He has made a run-off more likely by resisting calls from other hardliners to step aside.

Rouhani, meanwhile, has crossed traditional red lines in his rallies by openly criticising the security forces and judiciary, trying to fire the enthusiasm of reformist voters.

Those who over the past years only imposed bans ... please dont even breathe the word freedom for it shames freedom, Rouhani said in a rally in the city of Hamedan.
Political will is needed in the first place to settle the conflict in Donbas, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has said in an interview with BNS.

As for the conflict that continues in eastern Ukraine, she said, they know how to move forward, how to resolve the situation by peaceful means, fully respecting the territorial integrity of Ukraine. These are the Minsk agreements, Mogherini said.

First of all, we need political will to fully implement the truce, withdraw heavy weapons and improve the security situation, she said.

The EU and its member countries are actively supporting these agreements, she said. We are making the biggest contribution to the OSCE mission that is monitoring the situation on the spot. We also imposed sanctions against Russia that will be in effect until the Minsk agreements are fully implemented. This is part of our approach to the conflict resolution, Mogherini said.

She also said that it is also worth recalling that we closely cooperate with the Ukrainian government, support its aspirations for reforms and intend to do so in the future.

Mogherini takes part in the conference on the world crisis of trust starting in Tallinn on Friday.
Iraqs Shia paramilitaries launched an offensive on Friday to drive Islamic State from a desert region near the border with Syria as security forces fought the militants in the city of Mosul.

Spokesman Karim al-Nouri said the target of the operation was the Qairawan and Baaj areas about 100 km west of Mosul, where U.S.-backed Iraqi forces are advancing in their campaign to rout the militants from city.

Seven months into the Mosul campaign, Islamic State has been driven from all but a handful of districts in the citys western half including the Old City, where it is using hundreds of thousands of civilians as human shields.

The paramilitaries have been kept on the sidelines of the battle for the city of Mosul itself, but have captured a vast, thinly populated area to the southwest, cutting Islamic State supply routes to Syria.

Islamic State is losing territory and on the retreat in both Iraq and Syria.

The Iraqi military said in a statement its air force was supporting the operation by the paramilitary groups known collectively as Hashid Shaabi or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF).

Unlike regular Iraqi security forces, the PMF does not receive support from the U.S.-led coalition, which is wary of Irans influence over the most powerful factions within the body.

Officially answerable to the government in Baghdad, the PMF were formed when Islamic State overran around one third of Iraq including Mosul nearly three years ago and Iraqi security forces disintegrated.

Nouri said PMF control over the border would assist Syrian government forces when they push towards the Islamic State-held city of Raqqa.

On Friday, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said their assault on Raqqa, the militants biggest urban stronghold, would begin soon and that they were awaiting weapons including armoured vehicles from the U.S.-led coalition.

The PMF is not officially involved in Syria, but tens of thousands of Iraqi Shia militiamen are fighting there on behalf of the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which is backed by Iran.
Nepal and China on Friday signed a framework agreement on Beijings One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative, days ahead of a summit in Beijing to showcase President Xi Jinpings ambitious plan to build a modern day Silk Road.

Foreign secretary Shankar Das Bairagi and Chinese ambassador Yu Hong signed the memorandum of understanding on Cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative during a function at the foreign ministry in Kathmandu.

The ceremony was witnessed by deputy prime minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara and foreign minister Prakash Sharan Mahat, who described the MoU as a major step in Nepal-China relations. Nepal wants investments for road and railway connectivity, which are key to the countrys development, he said.

A statement from the foreign ministry said the MoUs major thrust is promoting cooperation on connectivity of facilities, trade and people, and financial integration. It also aims to promote people-to-people exchanges.

The MoU seeks to strengthen cooperation in connectivity sectors including transit transport, logistic systems, transport network and related infrastructure development such as railway, road, civil aviation, power grid, information and communication, the statement said.

A decision to sign the framework agreement on President Xis flagship initiative, which will invest billions of dollars in infrastructure projects including railways, ports and power grids across Asia, Africa and Europe, was taken by the Cabinet on Monday after months of extended negotiations.

A high-level Nepalese delegation led by Mahara will attend the Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in Beijing during May 14-15. Information and communications minister Surendra Kumar Karki and infrastructure and transport minister Ramesh Lekhak will also be part of the team.

Nepals signing of the MoU was highlighted by Chinese state media, indicating that Beijing was looking at it as a strengthening of bilateral ties despite New Delhis influence over Kathmandu.

China has a clear-cut approach toward China-Nepal-India trilateral relations. It hopes Nepal can become a bridge between China and India. By pushing forward the China-Nepal-India economic corridor, it can boost development in all three countries. No matter how India views cooperation between China and Nepal, such cooperation will continue to expand, as it fits the interests of both peoples, the nationalistic tabloid Global Times had said in a comment piece last month..
Police on Friday said Taliban fighters launched an attack on a market in northern Afghanistan, killing four security forces.

Ekramuddin Sarih, provincial police chief for Baghlan province, said Taliban fighters launched the attack early in the morning in the Burka district. He said the fighting has been heavy and is ongoing, adding 15 Taliban fighters were also killed.

Sarih said government forces were able to push back the Taliban fighters from the central bazaar and government reinforcements were on their way to help police.

There was no immediate comment from the Taliban.
Facebook Thailand could face legal action next week after Thai authorities warned Facebook Inc to take down content deemed threatening to national security or violating strict lese majeste laws, the telecoms regulator said on Friday.

Thailands military government has ramped up online censorship, particularly perceived insults to monarchy, since seizing power in a 2014 coup.

The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission said Facebook had failed to remove 131 of 309 web addresses on its platform which were threatened security or violated the lese majeste law, which makes it a crime to defame, insult or threaten the king, queen, heir to the throne or regent. They formed part of some 6,900 web addresses which Thai courts have ordered to be removed or shut down since 2015.

Takorn Tantasith, secretary-general of the commission, said he had given Facebook until Tuesday to remove the 131 addresses.

If Facebook still shows content declared illegal by court orders in Thailand, action must be taken against Facebook Thailand, Takorn told Reuters.

They could argue that they are not involved (in removing content), but Facebook Thailand is still operating here.

He said the ministry of digital economy would file a complaint with police next week to press charges against Facebook Thailand under the Computer Crime Act and commerce ministry regulations.He also said obtaining a search warrant for Facebook Thailand would be a possible step.
At a Roman Catholic high school in New Yorks Long Island suburbs, two dozen visiting Muslim students knelt and prayed while teens in uniform blazers from the host school looked on.

The trips agenda was simple: give students whose schools are just 10 miles (16 km) apart but culturally worlds away a chance to get to know each other.

It is also part of an ambitious initiative that will be adopted by nearly 80 U.S. Islamic elementary, middle and high schools starting in the fall to give Americans a better picture of U.S. Muslims at a time when many feel targeted by President Donald Trumps administration.

Sometimes Muslims in todays society are afraid of other people judging them, Laiba Amjad, a 19-year-old senior at MDQ Academy Islamic school in Brentwood, New York, said during the visit to Saint Anthonys High School in nearby Huntington.

Other people are also afraid, she said, referring to non-Muslims. Theyre thinking, What if that person is an extremist?

Americans are more likely to view Muslims, who make up 1 percent of the U.S. population, as extremists if they do not know one personally, according to a February poll by the Pew Research Center. The same survey found that 60 percent of Americans who know a Muslim believe there is little or no support among them for extremism but only 48 percent of those who do not know a Muslim believe that.

Students from the MDQ Academy Islamic School and Saint Anthonys High School speak during a field trip at the Roman Catholic school in Huntington, New York, U.S., April 26, 2017. (Reuters Photo)

I hadnt really interacted with many Muslims before this, 17-year-old Chris Beirne said while he and fellow Saint Anthonys seniors ate lunch with the visiting Muslim students.

Muslims typically today are put into this one group with extremists, Beirne said. I think the solution to that problem would be having events like this.

In an effort to overcome that perception, the Council of Islamic Schools in North America, the nations only accrediting agency for Muslim schools, is changing its curriculum. It will ask its 78 accredited or member schools, located across 24 U.S. states, to arrange meetings between their own students and those at other, non-Muslim schools.

People in this country, they want to know about Muslims, they want to know whats going on inside Islamic schools, said CISNA Director Sufia Azmat.

The Council is asking its educators to launch more volunteer projects outside the Muslim community, attend local government meetings and create a database of alumni to track their graduates success.

The move comes at a time when Muslims are under intense scrutiny, largely the result of extremist attacks carried out in the name of Islam in the United States and abroad.

In the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, an American-born gunman pledging allegiance to various Islamic militant groups shot 49 people to death at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, last June.

Mainstream Muslim religious leaders condemn the violence, saying their faith forbids it. Muslims are the second-most targeted religious group in the United States for hate crimes, behind Jews, according to the latest statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

A report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations released this month showed a 57 percent spike in the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes recorded in the United States last year compared with 2015.

In the 10 days following U.S. Election Day on Nov. 8, physical and verbal attacks against Muslims ticked up 6 percent compared to the same period the prior year, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.

BE OPEN

The details of the U.S. Islamic schools new curriculum are still being hammered out, but the purpose is clear, CISNAs Azmat said: Be open to outsiders.

A recent study of about a third of the nations Muslim high schools conducted by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia found that the students did not vary much from their non-Muslim peers in terms of interests and sense of being American.

These are very, very typical kids in a lot of ways, but also see themselves as Muslims and objecting to some things in American society just as a lot of Evangelical (Christian) and Jewish kids would, said Charles Glenn, an education policy expert who led the study of Islamic schools.

Students from the MDQ Academy Islamic School participate in daily prayers while students from Saint Anthonys High School observe during a field trip at the Roman Catholic school in Huntington, New York, U.S., April 26, 2017. (Reuters Photo)

Many of the nations Islamic schools have kept a low profile since the first school opened in the United States roughly 30 years ago, partly to avoid harassment.

The outreach efforts could face similar resistance to those of U.S. public schools that have attempted to teach about Muslims in social studies classes. Some parents in San Diego, California, and Chatham, New Jersey, recently objected to lessons about Muslims.

You have given your alliance to people that are against our own Constitution, Alice Kaiser, who is part of a group opposing the San Diego Unified School Districts anti-Islamophobia program, said about the program at a school board meeting late last month.

The Al Fatih Academy, an Islamic school in Reston, Virginia, has been used as a model by CISNA for community outreach.

On Election Day, a group of Al Fatih eighth graders concerned about anti-Muslim rhetoric asked voters at a polling station about the political issues they cared about most. Some of the longest conversations were with Trump supporters, many of whom said they had never spoken to a Muslim before, according to principal Afeefa Syeed.

At the end of the day, if we have more of these conversations and actions, its better for everyone, Syeed said.
US President Donald Trump has threatened sacked FBI director James Comey with tapes of their conversations to prevent him from revealing damaging information about their exchange, adding one more element to comparisons with Watergate, one of the darkest chapters in US politics.

Trump also threatened to cancel the daily news briefing at the White House, a longstanding practice, as he tried to assume control of the media coverage of Comeys firing for reasons that have continued to shift and change, reflecting a White House in complete chaos.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Trump tweeted on Friday, preceded by his threats to cancel briefings ...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???

The suggestion of the tape came as a chilling reminder of the Watergate scandal, during which it had emerged that former President Richard Nixon used to record conversations in the White House. Comeys dismissal has already been compared to Nixons sacking of a special prosecutor dealing with the case in what is now remembered as the Saturday Night Massacre.

Comey was investigating allegations of Trumps campaign aides being in contact with Russia, which the US intelligence concluded was meddling in the 2016 presidential election to damage Hillary Clintons chances and tilt the scales in Trumps favour.

After Comey was dismissed on Tuesday, the White House first attributed the decision to recommendations from the justice department, a version of events duly recounted by surrogates, including Vice President Mike Pence. However, the White House subsequently conceded it was Trumps own decision and that he had been wanting to let him go since his election.

Trump took full responsibility for it in an interview with NBC news on Thursday, calling Comey a showboat and a grandstander, saying it was my decision and I was gonna fire (him) regardless of the recommendation (of deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein).

As Trump sought to cap the story, blaming Comeys dismissal on his apparent unsuitability for the job, an alternative account began emerging of what might have gone wrong.

The New York Times reported Trump demanded loyalty from the FBI chief just seven days after assuming office. According to an account of the conversation which Comey conveyed to some associates, he told the president he could not give that pledge.

Comey told Trump he would be honest with him, to which, according to the published account, Trump asked if it could honest loyalty. The FBI director reportedly said yes.

Trump gave a different account of a dinner with Comey in his interview to NBC, saying the FBI director had sought it and had during the course of it asked to continue to head the investigating agency.

But his tweet about tapes could have been prompted by the New York Times report. And the tweet about press briefings was caused by criticism of the White House changing both the story and the timeline leading up to the firing.
The US State Department has approved the possible sale of 160 missiles to the United Arab Emirates for an estimated $2.0 billion, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

The UAE government has requested the possible sale of 60 Patriot missiles with canisters and 100 Patriot guidance enhanced missiles, among other military equipment, according to a Department of Defense statement.

This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of an important ally which has been, and continues to be, a force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East, it said.
The US is expected to broaden its ban on in-flight laptops and tablets to include planes from the European Union, a move that would create logistical chaos on the worlds busiest corridor of air travel.

Alarmed at the proposal, which airline officials say is merely a matter of timing, European governments held urgent talks on Friday with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The ban would affect trans-Atlantic routes that carry as many as 65 million people a year on over 400 daily flights, many of them business travelers who rely on their electronics to work during the flight.

The ban would dwarf in size the current one, which was put in place in March and affects about 50 flights per day from 10 cities, mostly in the Middle East.

Chief among the concerns are whether any new threat prompted the proposal and the relative safety of keeping in the cargo area a large number of electronics with lithium batteries, which have been known to catch fire. American officials were invited to Brussels next week to discuss the proposed ban, the EU said.

European Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen said the EU had no new information about a specific security concern.

U.S. officials have said the decision in March to bar laptops and tablets from the cabins of some international flights wasnt based on any specific threat but on longstanding concerns about extremists targeting jetliners.

Experts say a bomb in the cabin would be easier to make and require less explosive force than one in the cargo hold. Baggage in cargo usually goes through a more sophisticated screening process than carry-on bags.

Jeffrey Price, an aviation-security expert at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said the original ban focused on certain countries because their equipment to screen carry-on bags is not as effective as machines in the U.S.

A French official who was briefed about Fridays meeting said the Americans announced they wanted to extend the ban, and the Europeans planned to formulate a response in coming days. The official said the primary questions revolved around when and how  and not whether  the ban would be imposed.

The official spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the plan.

Jenny Burke, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, said no final decision has been made on expanding the restriction.

But Homeland Security officials met Thursday with high-ranking executives of the three leading U.S. airlines  American, Delta and United  and the industrys leading U.S. trade group, Airlines for America, to discuss expanding the laptop policy to flights arriving from Europe.

Two airline officials who were briefed on the discussions said Homeland Security gave no timetable for an announcement, but they were resigned to its inevitability. They spoke only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly.

The U.S. airlines still hope to have a say in how the policy is put into effect at airports to minimize inconvenience to passengers. The initial ban on passengers bringing large electronics devices into the cabin hit hardest at Middle Eastern airlines.

Emirates, the Middle Easts largest airline, this week cited the ban on electronics as one of the reasons for an 80 percent drop in profits last year. It said the ban had a direct impact on demand for air travel into the U.S. and it faced rising costs from introducing complimentary laptop loans to some passengers.

Alain Bauer, president of the CNAPS, a French regulator of private-sector security agents, including those checking baggage and passengers in Frances airports, predicted chaotic scenes initially if the ban was instituted.

Imagine the number of people who carry their laptops and tablets onto planes  not just adults, but also children, he told the AP.

He said it would slow passage through security checks as people try to negotiate a way of keeping their laptops.

Its not like losing your water bottle or your scissors. It will take more time to negotiate, he said.

You need a lot of time to inform them and a lot of time for it to enter peoples heads until it becomes a habit, he said. After a week of quite big difficulties, 95 percent of people will understand the practicalities.

The head of the International Air Transport Association said recently that the electronics ban is not an acceptable or effective long-term solution to security threats, and said the commercial impact is severe.

An industry-backed group, the Airline Passenger Experience Association, said the U.S. government should consider alternatives. That could include routinely testing laptops for chemical residues associated with bombs, requiring owners to turn on their devices, and letting frequent travelers keep their electronics with them.

The groups CEO, Joe Leader, noted that airlines have reduced service by more than 1 million long-haul seats in the 10 Middle Eastern and North African cities affected by the March policy. If it spreads to Europe, its simply a matter of time before laptops are banned in the cabins of domestic U.S. flights, he said.

At the Delta area of the Cincinnati airport, a sign warned passengers that beginning Friday on flights returning to the U.S. any electronic devices other than a cellphone would have to be placed in checked baggage. The airline flies between Cincinnati and Paris.

A Delta spokesman said the sign was posted in error by an employee at the airport. Asked if Delta had anticipated that the in-cabin ban on larger electronics would go into effect this week, the spokesman declined to comment.
The US and the newly formed government of South Korea will send official representatives to attend the two-day high-profile Belt and Road Forum (BRF) in Beijing, which begins on Sunday.

Representatives from the two countries will join 29 heads of state and official delegations from several other countries at the forum, where China is expected to share more details of President Xi Jinpings Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multi-billion dollar connectivity initiative comprising trade and infrastructure projects.

Also known as the One Belt, One Road project, the BRI comprises two connectivity initiatives  the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

India is yet to officially announce whether it will attend the BRF. Given its opposition to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project under the BRI, and apprehension that it will enhance and strengthen Chinas strategic and economic clout, it seems increasingly unlikely that New Delhi will be officially represented at the forum.

There are Indian scholars coming to attend the relevant events, Geng Shuang, ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson said on Friday at the regular ministry briefing.

On Friday, it was announced that Matt Pottinger, senior director for East Asia of the USs National Security Council, will lead the delegation from Washington.

The United States recognises the importance of Chinas One Belt and One Road initiative and is to send delegates to attend the Belt and Road Forum May 14-15 in Beijing, a joint release by Chinas finance and commerce ministries on Friday said.

Finance vice minister Zhu Guangyao said that Washingtons attendance at the summit was a concrete result of Xis trade plan.

On Friday, South Koreas participation was also confirmed, with Park Byeong Seug of the ruling Democratic Party expected to be present at the forum. Reports from Seoul quoted a government official as saying that the Chinese government had recently sent an official invitation to attend the forum.

Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will attend the forum as well.

Besides heads of states, the forum will be attended by UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, International Monetary Fund chief Christine Lagarde and World Bank President Kim Yong.
The Trump administration's ban of laptops on commercial planes might see the inclusion of more countries as the administration is considering expansion of the prohibition imposed on electronic devises. Some European countries might be included in the list of the countries which will not be allowed to carry anything larger than a cell phone.

Some European countries might see its inclusion on the list of countries that will be barred from carrying a laptop, or rather anything larger than a cell phone. The Trump administration has been imposing prohibitions related to travelling with electronic devices like laptops in its effort to prevent the lithium batteries from exploding midair, Reuters reported.

If Trump administration expands its ban to include some European countries, US based airline companies like American Airlines Group, Delta Air Inc, and United Airlines are expected to be impacted. The European officials have said that they are awaiting announcement from the US Department of Homeland Security, but refused to state when the announcement is expected.

However, in similar news, a US Transportation Security Administration spokesperson has said that there are no forthcoming changes that are expected on the ban of electronic devices, Business Insider reported. The representative further added that the security directives are being regularly assesses, on the basis of intelligence reports. And, if there are further expansions on the ban, it would be in the interest of the travelers so that they have a safe flight.

It is worth mentioning here that it was in March that the US announced about the restrictions on laptops due to fears of a concealed bomb being varied onto the aircraft. And, the ban was imposed on flights that originated from Turkey, UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This ban imposed by US was followed by Britain, which also imposed similar ban but on slightly different routes.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The European Union will not abolish sanctions against the Russian Federation while Crimea remains occupied and fighting continues in Donbas, Rebecca Harms, co-chair of the Group of the Greens - European Free Alliance faction in the European Parliament, has said.

We believe that sanctions should act without revision for at least a year, and it's wrong when every six months we consider the issue of their extension. And all those who think that the Europeans will abolish the sanctions are mistaken. As long as the situation in Crimea remains the same and as long as Crimea is occupied, we will not renounce sanctions. As long as the war continues in Donbas, we will not lift sanctions, she said at a press conference in Kyiv on Friday.

Harms said that the European Parliament held hearings on the situation with human rights in different parts of the European continent, in particular, in Abkhazia, Transdniester region and Crimea, and, according to her, the most difficult situation is observed in Crimea.

The European deputy also believes that more help should be provided to internally displaced persons in Ukraine, although it is not easy to do, and new ideas should be proposed to improve their current state.
China's President Xi Jinping met the newly-sworn South Korean President Moon Jae-in to discuss the current crisis in North Korea regarding the ongoing nuclear testing. This took place amidst the previous conflicts which resulted in the deployment of THAAD in South Korea which China condemns.

Latest reports were telling that Xi was able to talk with Moon reading on how the two countries will influence North Korea to stop its missile testing. It can be recalled that North Korea is said to be conducting its sixth missile testing soon.

China has always upheld and supported the denuclearization of North Korea and even attempted to cut its economic ties with the country once the latter will continue with its testing programs. According to U.S. News, Xi saw the opportunity to talk with Moon Jae-in for them to devise ways on how to address the crisis in North Korea.

With this, it only shows that China is extremely interested in talking with other countries in order to deal the problem with North Korea. As the two Asian leaders talked about the possibility of collaborating with each other, China is making sure that it will help to keep peace and prosperity in the Korean peninsula.

Reports were rife that North Korea has been depending on China in terms of its economy and trades. That's why President Xi was able to see the possibility to pressure North Korea by halting the importation of its crude oil.

Moreover, prior to the meeting of China's Xi and South Korean's Moon Jae-in, China already signed an agreement with the United Nations to impose tough sanctions against Pyongyang, North Korea. CNBC reported that this is the only way which UN deemed as necessary in order for North Korea to stop its missile testing.

However, the issue on the deployment of THAAD by U.S. in South Korea was first disregarded as China is somewhat more interested in securing peace in the Korean peninsula. With this, China is hoping that South Korea will really collaborate with them to promote the healthy development of partnerships.

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Informal gathering of EU FMs and Ukraine to take place in Brussels on May 15

An informal meeting of the foreign ministers of the EU countries and Ukraine will take place in Brussels on Monday, May 15, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has said.

"First and foremost, it is important that as many Ukrainians as possible use visa-free regime. I will speak about this on Monday, when taking part in the meeting "Ukraine + Group of Friends of Ukraine in the EU", that is all foreign ministers in Brussels," Klimkin said at a blitz briefing in Kyiv on Friday.

He also noted the importance of developing relations between Ukraine and the EU in the context of the Eastern Partnership program.
F antasy furnishings are the kind that dreams are made of, and designers have plenty of poetic pieces to pique the imagination.

Gufram is an Italian brand famous for its surreal take on furnishing. In Milan they pushed this to extremes, with a saucy edit they called "Moschino Kisses Gufram". Designer Jeremy Scott, creative director of the shock-happy fashion brand, has had a lot of fun.

The "Zipped! Lips" sofa in polyurethane foam with a gold polycarbonate zip is a fresh take on the original Dali-esque version of Studio65. It is a limited edition of 99, costing 10,150. The "Biker Cabinet" is a big bulky cupboard on wheels with a meticulously-styled "leather jacket" front, and storage at the back. "HIgh Heels" has a seat in one giant shoe and shelving in the other. The UK Gufram Gallery is at Jane Richards of Norwich with all pieces at janerichards.co.uk.

Big shoes to fill: Italian brand Gufram's giant High Heels have a seat in one shoe and shelving in the other

Maverick Dutch design duo Studio Job's shark-shaped Killer umbrella stand has been created for Italian web brand qeeboo.com.

A slot-together Donkey desk by French designer Benoit Convers has a built-in power point and USB port. It's 2,298, through limelace.co.uk.

The "Pack" is a sofa with a message, a comment on the melting ice floes by Francesco Binfare for Italian Edra, also launched in Milan. The back is a reclining polar bear. It costs 21,400 from Chaplin's huge furniture store at 477-507 Uxbridge Rd, Pinner (call 020 8421 1779); and in Design Centre Chelsea Harbour, SW10; chaplins.co.uk.

It's all Jaws: maverick Dutch design duo Studio Job's shark-shaped Killer umbrella stand, for qeeboo.com

Dream of a tropical island paradise with this Palm Tree brass lamp, by Mink Interiors design studio. Price is 380, at minkinteriors.com.

Artist Rachel Kozlowski paints animals from life and then makes them human on these imaginative porcelain plates. There are 11 versions at 9 each at West Elm, 209 Tottenham Court Road, W1. "My illustrations are the surprise at the end of the meal," she says. Call 020 7637 9150.
News, events, history, and other mid-week tidbits.

Tuesday, October 25, 4:30  7 p.m.

Orr Area EMS Open House

Brats and burgers will be served. Event includes a new ambulance tour and blood pressure screenings. For more info: 218-780-3798.

Orr Fire Hall

4540 Lake St., Orr

Tuesday, October 25, 12  6 p.m.

Essentia Health Job Fair

Talent recruiters and department managers will be on-site at Essentia Health-Virginia. Candidates from all backgrounds are encouraged to attendnurses, nursing and clinical assistants, surgery technicians, radiology technicians, respiratory therapists, human resource professionals, and those interested in environmental services or nutrition services. Essentia staff will greet candidates, conduct an initial screening and filter them to appropriate hiring managers for interviews. Select candidates will be verbally offered a position before leaving. Candidates are asked to bring a resume, but its not required. Attire is business casual. For more info: www.essentiacareers.org.

901 9th St. N., Virginia
Surviving in a highly competitive hospitality industry calls for definitive strategies to acquire prospective customers and convert existing ones into loyal brand ambassadors. One of the approaches that continue to play a winning role for hotels and other industry players are customized loyalty programs that easily help convert one-off guests into returning customers. The most important aspect of any incentive program that manages to influence guests' booking behavior is its packaging, keeping in mind the customers' diversity as well as individualism.

Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are good examples of this. For instance, members of certain programs will receive up to 10% to 20% exclusive discounts on hotels and flight bookings as well as holiday packages. Other loyalty programs include incentives such as early check-ins, late check-outs, and free airport pickups.

Moreover, such incentives are a major traction for corporates that have frequent executives travelling especially for business purposes. This is because in most cases they tend to have specific preferences like location and amenities that are most suitable for their business travels/stays. This not only helps incentivize travelers to, for instance, loyally book through the OTA, but also helps B2B partnerships thrive. That means that in the case of an online travel agency and a hotel, the OTA acquires loyal brand advocates, while the hotels get access to a customer-base of registered and frequent users.

Hotels also benefit from increased visibility and marketing on the OTA's special campaigns that promote the loyalty programs. The biggest catch is to ensure that the programs are designed in a way that even when there are targets to be met, customers also get to justly reap the benefits. Setting a target for the clients, such as receiving a special treat after earning certain points; is a great strategy to keep them returning.
Will Cuba Become the Caribbean's Best Destination?

Don't get them wrong: The all-inclusive, oceanside resort that Georgetown University Hospitality students visited during their recent trip to Cuba was wonderful, and all anyone could ask of  an all-inclusive, oceanside resort.

It just didn't say "Cuba."

"It was not like being in Havana, walking down the streets," said Kelleye Eller, one of 15 students from the Master of Professional Studies in Global Hospitality Leadership program (GHL) who traveled to the island this past fall. "Cuba is so different."

Indeed, the real Cuba is differentunique, reallyand it is this very exceptionality that could make it one of the most exciting new vacation destinations for Americans in the coming years.

"Cuba is the next frontier in hospitality for the Americas," said Gray Shealy, faculty for the program and former executive at Starwood Hotels. "It's been largely undeveloped because of the U.S. embargo, and yet it's so close. It's sort of like the forbidden fruit."

Rum and Cigars

A roadside scene in Pinar del Rio, Cuba Photo by Georgetown University

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has moved to normalize relations with this island nation of 11 million people. Only Congress can fully repeal the decades-long trade embargo, but Obama has lifted limits on importing Cuban rum and cigars, and has named longtime diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis (SFS '76), a Georgetown graduate, as America's first ambassador to the island in more than 50 years. (The GHL students met with DeLaurentis, as well as several other U.S and Cuban representatives, during the trip.)

Tourism is still officially off limits for U.S. citizens. "You aren't allowed to just go and sit on the beach as an American citizen," Shealy said. But educational tours are among 12 permitted categories of travel by the U.S. government.

When they arrived on the island in late October, the students encountered a unique cultural ecosystem, frozen in time. Beautifully restored American cars from the 1950s share the roads with clunky Soviet-era vehicles and buses shipped from China. Much of Havana has an otherworldly "European" feelalbeit a Europe where many of the graceful buildings are crumbling. Music pours from apartments in Old Havana; people sometimes dance in the streets. Shealy, who has traveled throughout the world, called it "the most artistic city" he has ever seen.

Hospitality students at local farm and paladarStudents tour a local farm and paladar with the ecologist-proprietor at Finca Agroecologica El Paraiso in Vinales, Cuba. Photo by Georgetown University

It's that sense of charm and authenticity that Cuban officials are determined to preserve, said Nelson Pimentel, a GHL student from the Dominican Republic who works as the Head Butler for the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C.

"A lot of people think we want to be changed," Pimentel recalled a local urban planner telling the group. "But we want to preserve our culture, preserve what we already have."

Those sentiments could mesh nicely with new generations of American tourists eager to experience the true cultures of the places they visit. In Cuba, that means eschewing the government-run restaurants with their canned vegetables and Soviet-era sensibilities, and sampling the many excellent privately-run paladars, some on the top floors of homes and apartment buildings. "Farm-to-table" dining might be a fashionable trend in the United States; in Cuba, it's a necessity and a way of life.

"If Cuba were able to modernize and still retain that authenticity, it would retain that brand cachet and become an even bigger draw," Shealy said.

A Host of Complications

1950s vehicle in CubaA 1950s-era automobilea common sightingin Velha Havana, Cuba. Photo by Georgetown University

But there are many complications. The Cuban economy is in the midst of a severe recession, caused in part by the economic implosion of Venezuela, its major oil patron. The island's population is aging, and the government of Raul Castro, the younger brother of the late Fidel, who died November 25, is an undemocratic gerontocracy.

"The question is, 'Who will take over?'" Shealy asked. "Will the new set of leaders continue to embody older ideologies, or will a younger, more progressive visionary emerge and redirect the island on a new path?"

Finally, there is uncertainty over the kind of policies Donald Trump will pursue as president. As the New York Times noted, during the campaign Trump was sharply critical of the "concessions" Obama has granted Cuba. That suggests a President Trump might roll back those agreements. On the other hand, Trump's business background might deter him from scuttling policies that have enabled U.S. firms such as Marriott and Airbnb to do business there.

These are big, difficult questions. But if they were resolved, Cuba could be poised for an unprecedented travel renaissance.

"If they manage it correctly," said Pimentel, "they could be the best destination in the Caribbean."
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Netflix has just uploaded the teaser trailer for its new 10-part thriller Gypsy, which will air from 30 June.

Gypsy is a psychological thriller that follows Jean Halloway (Naomi Watts), a Manhattan therapist with a seemingly picturesque life who begins to develop intimate and illicit relationships with the people in her patients' lives.

As the borders of Jean's professional life and personal fantasies become blurred, she descends into a world where the forces of desire and reality are disastrously at odds.

You can watch the teaser trailer here,,,



Gypsy was written by Hollywood newcomer, Lisa Rubin and Produced by Liza Chasin, Lisa Rubin, Rudd Simmons and Naomi Watts. The series is directed by Fifty Shades Of Grey's Sam Taylor Johnson

In addition to Watts,' Gypsy' also stars Billy Crudup (Spotlight) as Jean's husband Michael Halloway, Sophie Cookson (Kingsman) as Sydney, Lucy Boynton (Murder on the Orient Express) as Jean's patient Allison, and Karl Glusman (Nocturnal Animals) as Jean's patient Sam.
Richard Thorpe III knew he had to sell a section of his western Texas ranch for a line of electric transmission towers. But he also knew that the utility taking his property under eminent domain was lowballing him, offering less than $50,000 for mile-long swath of pasture and oak trees that abuts the family cemetery.

Thorpe appealed that price to a special commission of landowners, which pegged the value in excess of $600,000. Still, it was at best a partial victory for the cattle rancher, who spent more than half that amount on lawyer's fees, appraisals and other expenses to contest the utility's valuation.

"You are at a huge disadvantage," said Thorpe, who is also president of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association which represents 17,500 beef cattle operations. "The landowner loses and the condemning entity wins and we're stuck looking at an eye sore."

Thorpe is among the landowners who have found they can't recover their legal costs even if they win their cases, a provision of Texas law that they say provides incentives for utilities, pipeline companies and government entities to undervalue properties in eminent domain takings, discourages landowners from challenging low prices and ultimately leaves them with less than the full value of their property because of high costs of litigation.

The issue, which pits two of the sacred cows of Texas politics -- property rights and the energy industry-- against each other, has long simmered in Austin, where ranchers, farmers and other landowners have battled pipeline and transmission companies, as well as government agencies, which argue that allowing the recovery of legal expenses would only encourage more lawsuits and raise the cost of projects.

The debate has taken on increased urgency in recent years as economic and population growth has created a need for more transmission, more pipelines and new transportation projects -- all of which could require land takings. Those projects include a 240-mile high speed rail line from Houston to Dallas, the widening of Interstate 45 to the Sam Houston Tollway, and the expansion of Highway 249 to College Station to create a tollway known as the "Aggie Expressway."

The drilling boom in West Texas' Permian Basin has also increased the need for new and expanded pipelines to move crude and natural gas to Gulf Coast refineries, petrochemical plants and liquefied natural gas terminals. For example, Kinder Morgan of Houston and DCP Midstream of Denver, recently announced plans to build the new Gulf Coast Express Pipeline Project that would move natural gas from the Permian to the Gulf over 430 miles.

Kinder Morgan spokeswoman Melissa Ruiz said the project, if it attracts enough customers, would require easements -the right to use pieces of property for infrastructure improvements -from a variety of private landowners, she said. Eminent domain would come into play, she said, only if the company fails to negotiate agreements with landowners.

Eminent domain is the power of government to take private property for public use, such as building roads, building schools and laying water and sewer lines. In Texas, private companies approved by the Texas Legislature also have the power to take private property under eminent domain for projects in the public interest. The most common taking, according to the Texas A&M's Agrilife Extension Service, is to build oil and gas pipelines.

The entities taking the property -- whether private companies or government agencies - are required to compensate land owners for the market value of the property. In Texas, market value is the price property would fetch if both buyers and sellers were willing participants and both were free to walk away if they didn't like the price.

Landowners in Texas who believe they're not getting what the property is worth can appeal to special commissions of local landowners to contest the value, but they also have to factor in the cost of the legal fight. In Texas, unlike about half the states, the legal fees of landowners won't be reimbursed, even if they prove the offer was wildly off the mark.

In Texas, about 85 percent of landowners accept the last offer in eminent domain takings, said Justin Hodge, a Houston lawyer who specializes in eminent domain cases. But when those offers are challenged, the special commissions that hear the appeals typically find the property is worth significantly more, according to a survey by a coalition of landowners groups.

Texans for Property Rights polled three of its largest member organizations, including the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, the Texas Farm Bureau and the Texas Wildlife Association and found that 77 percent of the respondents who had contested property values reported they received at least 20 percent more than their final offer.

A study of nationwide eminent domain practices by Texas A&M School of Law found that landowners in Texas are in a "precarious position" from the onset. While Texas entitles landowners to recover the market value of their property, landowners -- not the entities taking the land -- have to pay for appraisals to determine the value.

"Landowners who challenge just compensation are often never made whole when their property is taken for public use," the report concluded, "because any amount they receive will be reduced by the fees needed to win the suit."

Property rights groups have tried for years to change state law to allow landowners to recover legal costs if their challenges in eminent domain cases succeed. A bill that would have done that during the 2015 session passed the Senate, but died in the House.

This session, landowners got behind proposed legislation that would have required utilities, pipeline companies and governments and utilities to reimburse legal fees if the special commissions of landowners assess values at 20 percent or more than the final offer.

The bill was fiercely opposed by some of the most powerful business interests in the state. Among those lobbying against the bill were BP America, a subsidiary of the British oil major, Enbridge Energy, a Canadian pipeline company, and Anadarko, The Woodlands oil and gas company, according to state lobbying records.

BP America and Enbridge declined comment; Anadarko did not respond to a request for comment.

Over the past few weeks, however, reimbursement of legal fees was stripped out of a broader eminent domain bill that would impose new requirements for land dealers and new regulations to tie offers to county tax valuations. The revised bill passed the Senate earlier this month and has been referred to the House Land and Resource Management Committee.

Opponents of the bill said that reimbursing landowners for legal costs would only increase the number of lawsuits, with most of the benefits going to lawyers instead of landowners. The Austin-based Texas Civil Justice League, which advocates for damage award limits in lawsuits, estimated that as many as 50 percent of landowners would challenge eminent domain values if the bill became law.

Julia Rathgeber, chief executive of the Association of Electric Companies of Texas, a trade group representing transmission and other power companies, agreed that reimbursing legal costs would lead to a burst of litigation that would slow projects, increase costs and lead to higher rates for customers. She said a better approach would be to provide more information to landowners so they can negotiate better.

But Hodge, the Houston eminent domain lawyer, said there's little evidence that allowing landowners to recover legal costs hurts development. Florida, for example, has continued to grow robustly despite an eminent domain law that permits reimbursement of legal costs, he said.

Hodge has a personal stake in the debate. On his family's land in central Texas, Hodge's grandfather struck water and began selling it to local municipalities, setting aside the income to pay for college for his descendents.

But the Texas Department of Transportation, planning to build a rest stop between Austin and Waco, offered the Hodge family $350,000 for 28 acres, including the area with the water. The family fought back, and a jury in Bell County determined in 2009 that it was worth $5.9 million, including $4.5 million for the groundwater.

The state of Texas appealed the following year to the Third Court of Appeals in Austin, arguing that future income from groundwater should not be part of the calculation to determine market value, according to a brief filed by then- Attorney General Greg Abbott. The Hodge family, after spending more than $1 million on lawyers, hydrologists, appraisers and other experts over six years, eventually ended up settling with the state for a confidential amount.

"I can look at a landowner in the eye," said Hodge, "and I can understand how you feel."
Dow Chemical said Thursday it's planning to spend $4 billion in further expansions in the Houston area, at its Michigan headquarters and in Europe.

The chemical giant will keep expanding its largest industrial campus - south of Houston in Freeport and Lake Jackson - to continue taking advantage of cheap and abundant shale natural gas that's used as the primary feedstock to make chemicals and plastics. The expansion will give Freeport the world's largest plant for making ethylene, the primary building block of most plastics, Dow said.

Dow this year is completing a separate $6 billion expansion along the Gulf Coast, primarily in Freeport. That includes a "crown jewel" ethane cracker, which turns ethane, a natural gas liquid, into ethylene. The plant is expected to churn out 1.5 million metric tons of ethylene a year.

The cracker project was completed in March, but won't commence operations for a few more weeks or so. The recent expansion added 500 permanent jobs in Freeport.

The upcoming Freeport expansion will add two heating furnaces to the cracker's existing eight furnaces, upping its total ethylene capacity to 2 million metric tons.

Dow also will build a new plastics plant to produce 600,000 metric tons a year, but hasn't announced whether it will be built in Freeport or Louisiana along the Gulf Coast. Dow will expand some its existing polyethylene facilities - polyethylene being the world's most common plastic - throughout to U.S. to increase its total capacity by 350,000 metric tons.

The company will invest $500 million by its Midland, Mich., headquarters for a new innovation center and to boost its Dow Corning business.

Dow will build a plastics facility with a 450,000-ton capacity somewhere in Europe as well, although the details are scarce.

Dow plans to complete its $130 billion merger with DuPont of Wilmington, Del., in August. The merged DowDuPont would later splinter into three separate companies in 2018 and 2019.

Dow CEO Andrew Liveris emphasized recently that Dow's Texas operations would see little effect from the merger.

One of the three splintered companies, to be named Dow, would continue to own and run the Freeport complex, as well as DuPont's facilities in Orange near the Louisiana border.

The materials science business would operate under the Dow name, the agribusiness under DuPont, and specialty products under a yet-to-be-determined brand.
It's possible that I'm not as memorable as I thought.

I worked eight years at a newspaper that now says it never heard of me.

True story, and I'm still stuck in the middle of it. Before moving to Houston, I worked at the newspaper in Phoenix. It was my first big city job. A few months ago, I heard that my old editor was retiring, so I called to congratulate him.

During our conversation, he mentioned that between Social Security, his 401(k) and pension payout, he will be making more in retirement than when he was working.

"Hold on," I stopped him, "pension payout?"

"We had a pension plan?"

Like Paul McCartney, I don't care too much for money. Or at least I didn't when I worked in Phoenix. All I cared about was making rent, putting something in the bank and getting my life rolling.

"Yeah, we had a pension plan," my former boss said. "I'm sure you were in it. You had to be in it."

I called the newspaper's human resources department. I said, "My name is Ken Hoffman. I'm told there was a pension program when I worked there. Can you tell me if I was part of that?"

I may have some found loot socked away.

The HR person put me on hold. A few minutes later, "I'm sorry, we have no record of your employment here."

Seriously? I started in Phoenix as a features writer and made my way up to television-radio columnist. I thought I did pretty well - my time there got me here. You'd think a newspaper could "look it up."

The HR person told me to contact the Social Security Administration office in Baltimore and get a statement of earnings for the years I claim to have worked in Phoenix. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. You don't remember me? I'm the guy who broke the story about the TV weatherman moving from Channel 10 to Channel 12. And the deejay who left Phoenix for a morning show in Chicago. That was powerhouse investigative reporting!

It costs $115 to get an itemized yearly statement of earnings, which the paper promised to reimburse me for if the records proved I worked there.

Here we go: Social Security number, tax number, best childhood friend, favorite song, mother's maiden name, etc.

True story, maybe. My mother's maiden name was "Linkin." I once asked her, how did that spelling happen? She said when her father came over on a boat from Russia, he went through Ellis Island like all immigrants of that era. The immigration agents couldn't spell those long, tongue-twisting Russian last names, so they went around the portraits of U.S. Presidents on the wall. "You're Washington, you're Adams, you're Jefferson," etc.

When it was my mother's father's turn, the officer looked at Honest Abe's portrait and wrote down "Linkin." Let's just say he wasn't presidential historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University  or a spelling bee champ.

Back to me. Two weeks ago, Social Security mailed me the earnings statement to forward to Phoenix. Of course I worked there. You'd think I'd be in the clear now, right?

Nope, first the paper needed a "proof of purchase" (I swear, those are the words they used) from the Social Security Administration so they could reimburse my $115.

Proof of purchase? What am I, sending away to Battle Creek, Mich. for a "Star Trek" decoder ring? There was no receipt or bar code on the Social Security statement. I told the paper, "Look, you got the statement, you know how much it cost, that's your proof of purchase."

Not good enough. Now I'm calling the Social Security Administration for a receipt that proves I wrote, therefore I was, for the paper in Phoenix.

I'm on hold. This is going to take a while.
Before she died nearly 20 years ago, my mother read one last book: "Angela's Ashes" by Frank McCourt. He was the Brooklyn-born son of Irish immigrants who grew up in grinding poverty. He called the 1996 memoir his "epic of woe."

My mother, born Mildred Ellman as the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, saw in that tale similarities to her own childhood in Depression-era Los Angeles. "It's a universal story of an immigrant family," she told me as she battled the ovarian cancer that eventually took her life.

Her childhood was not nearly as miserable as McCourt's. But her family did suffer. Her parents ran a dry cleaning business in East Los Angeles, then known as the Lower Eastside. As the Depression worsened, my grandparents lost the business. No one was going to work, let alone needing to have their clothes professionally cleaned and pressed  or having money for such a luxury.

My grandmother was a solid 4 feet, 10 inches. She described how almost daily men would come knocking on her front door: "Lady, do you have any work?"

She had a big heart and would give them a rake to clean up the yard or a hammer to fix the fence and make them a simple cheese or bologna sandwich they could eat on the front step.

Without income from the business, my grandparents couldn't afford to pay for my mother to continue at UCLA, which she entered when she was 16 or 17, having skipped several semesters in junior high. She went to school with a mix of other Jews and Mexican Americans who lived side by side there in Boyle Heights.

She dropped out and started to work to help the family, wrapping presents at Sears & Roebuck and taking shorthand as a secretary.

WHY MOTHER'S DAY IS HARD: Cort McMurray says thank you



My grandmother would walk or take the bus on shopping trips. She never learned to drive a car or write, other than a rudimentary version of her name. However, she would silently sound out one word at a time  running her index finger across the page to read her favorite Perry Mason mystery.

Not long ago, doing genealogical research, after several failed attempts, I located a shipping record for my grandmother, Luba Ratner. I had trouble finding her because she went by Luba, Libby and other names translated by immigration authorities. It gave me chills to finally find her under Lubbe Rattner. Records indicate she embarked from a Baltic seaport 110 years ago this month and arrived at Ellis Island as an 11-year-old.

It was a hardscrabble life. Four years later, Luba was working in a New York garment district sweat shop and told my father  her son-in-law  about leaving one Saturday afternoon in 1911 and seeing bodies from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire flying to the ground. It still is the deadliest industrial accident in New York City history.

My father absorbed the stories of his in-laws and their examples of kindness to those in need. I recall him going out of his way on Sundays to buy a newspaper from a Hungarian refugee and his two sons. Other times, he would bring that family clothes, either my hand-me-downs or samples from his business.

One recent night, I was reminded of the universality of the immigrant story in Houston as my mom envisioned. All we need to do is ask people we deal with everyday. Sometimes we are in such a hurry we forget that these real-life stories of immigrants are not about strangers but are as close as our own families.

When I went to my local Chinese restaurant to get some General Tso's chicken and other favorites, for once I paused and chatted with the teenaged girl at the cash register. These last 5 years I've seen her grow up, but I've never paused long enough to find out anything about her or her family who own the tidy eatery in Spring.

She's guarded the cash register as long as I've been a customer. While I waited for my food, she told me her parents had emigrated from China and worked at a relative's restaurant serving and mopping floors. They earned enough money to open this place.

Their daughter, however, told me she won't own a restaurant or make her children labor in one  too much work and too many missed Saturday nights out.





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Wow, a spa!

Well, not quite. But that impression washes over visitors to the serene alt-office Gensler designed for its suite, one of four small-scale, spec "DesignHive" projects commissioned by commercial real estate giant Brookfield for the 37th floor of its 1600 Smith Tower downtown.

Elegant acoustical sheers -- like large chiffon curtains -- separate the circular entrance couch Gensler installed near a long 'workbar' with a ceramic tile backsplash. Workers can feel "alone together," as principal Dean Strombom put it, when they choose to occupy the C-shaped, matte bronze cubicles that dot the open space, looking like they want to be minimalist bumper cars.

Each "DesignHive" space is about giving people a work place they'd actually want to stay in, ostensibly for the longer days everyone is expected to clock in the 21st century.

Across the hall, the inhabitants of Ziegler Cooper's colorful suite might be more inclined to play  perhaps even try cooking something in the Easy-Bake Oven. At the very least, they could caffeinate with a flat white in the open space presided over by the "receptionista." (Get it? That's half receptionist, half barrista.) And if they're millennials, they'd probably feel further at home amid the "millennial pink" and ochre walls. Those colors are partially offset by black rails that span the open space, holding electrical outlets that descend via pulleys; and a couple of dichroic glass walls that have the blue-pink-green sheen of unprocessed crude.

Rottet Studio's suite, in a calm neutral palette, evokes the aura of a boutique hotel on, say, the Moon. The conference room pull shades contain a panoramic image of Neil Armstrong at Tranquillity Base, above bean bag chairs covered in white shag. That room also has a pinball machine. Rottet designed two types of long, shared tables - one zig-zaggy, with a central rail for holding pencils and sticky notes; the other more of an open jigsaw puzzle of parts that can be configured dozens of ways. All the materials, down to the linoleum entry floor, work surfaces and textured, sound-absorbing Tectum walls are environmentally pure, free of chemical off-gas materials.

Inventure Design's black and white environment also has space influences, with a big video or TV screen inset into a curvy opening in a wall that looks borrowed from the Starship Enterprise. But mini-hedges of potted, perfectly manicured rosemary in each window keep it earthbound and seriously touchy-feely. Workers there would be encouraged to stop and smell the plants for a little energizing aromatherapy. After which they might engage in a gang of pinpong at the standing-height table near the door.

All four projects include a glass-walled private office or two but devote most of the square fottage to flex-space for "coworking" type situations, a staple of forward-looking companies. The "DesignHive" projects also embrace the you-don't-always-have-to-be-present model.

Brookfield gave each design firm a modest budget. Brookfield EVP Paul Frazier didn't want to disclose how much, but the spaces -- all of which are to be leased -- were built for less than $100 a square foot by O'Donnell/Snider Construction.

URBAN DESIGN: "Making Houston freeways a little less ugly"

They range from 3,576 to 5,305 square feet, democratically divided by the firms during a master-planning process. The suites' facing doorways avoid the typical "elevator exposure" issue that limits a floor to two major tenants. The spaces can be had with or without the optional cool furnishings and art that were installed for Thursday's unveiling party.

Frazier said Brookfield wants to attract "TAMI" tenants  an acronym for technology, advertising, media and information firms. With the oil and gas downturn lingering, Brookfield is courting emerging companies who want more flexible, dynamic office spaces that reinforce their brands -- not just to impress visitors but to instill the creative Kool-Aid organically among independence-minded workers.

Brookfield, which launched "DesignHive" in Los Angeles, has worked aggressively for years to make its properties more people-friendly in other ways. Rotating art exhibitions, curated by Sally Reynolds, are a mainstay of several Brookfield buildings on the west side of downtown, also exposing artists to commuters who don't frequent inner city galleries.

To create the "Earth and Light" exhibit on view in the 1600 Smith lobby through June 1, Reynolds collaborated with Gallery Sonja Roesch. The show features minimalist sculptures by Madeleine Dietz, Perla Krauze, Mario Reis and Regine Schuman.

Outside, visitors can take selfies with Colette Miller's "Angel Wings" paintings, which are drawn onto the building not far from a pristine lawn full of colorful Adirondack chairs that fill up on pretty days during the lunch hour.

Bookmark Gray Matters. It embraces the you-don't-always-have-to-be-present model.
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Greg Bell arrived at his Alvin gun shop early Wednesday morning to find the front door ripped off of its hinges, his glass display cases smashed and about $12,000 worth of assault rifles and handguns stolen.

It was the latest in a series of successful and attempted break-ins in recent months at the family-owned R&G Guns. After eight uneventful years in a strip mall on West Coombs Street, a pickup smashed through the store's front window in January 2016.

"I've fortified (the store) as best I can," Bell said. "But it's not going to stop some truck that's going to drive through the windows."

An uptick in burglaries and robberies of gun dealers nationwide and in Texas has led Houston store owners to take drastic, and often expensive, measures in recent years to keep their merchandise out of the wrong hands. One shop has even installed a high-tech fog machine to thwart burglars.

Almost a quarter of missing firearms in Texas turn up in Houston, prompting the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in April to dedicate an expanding group of employees to focus solely on thefts of firearms from licensed dealers in this region. The group is the first of its kind nationwide, said Nicole Strong, a special agent with the Houston division of ATF.

It aims to prevent gun store burglaries and robberies and better track organized crews stealing the weapons, Strong added.

Thefts at firearm dealers are up across the United States. In 2016, there were 58 burglaries and robberies of gun dealers in Texas, up 35 percent from 2015. The burglaries and robberies last year resulted in 790 stolen firearms, also an increase of 35 percent from 2015, according to ATF. Texas outstripped every state during 2016 in the total number of stolen firearms reported to ATF.

'I've gotten numb to it'

Gun shops are appealing targets for criminals, Strong said. They can use weapons they nabbed illegally to commit more crimes, without the risk the firearm will easily be traced back to them. Or, they can exchange guns for money or drugs. In Houston, where gangs are rampant, there is a demand on the street for firearms, Strong said.

In the meantime, gun shop retailers are taking matters in to their own hands.

James Hillin, owner of Full Armor Firearms in west Houston, has spent thousands of dollars on security.

Burglars have tried to break in to his business 16 times since he opened in 2011, Hillin said. He shelled out $55,000 on a vault to store his guns overnight. It is inconvenient to move the merchandise into the safe every night and then back again in the morning and costs him about $15,000 worth of labor. But, judging by burglars' attempts to get in, it's worth it, Hillin said.

His store's front doors have been ripped off, his windows smashed.

"It happens so often I've gotten numb to it," Hillin said.

About two years ago, he hired security guards to stay on the premises around the clock to deter crime.

"Nothing else worked," Hillin said.

In November 2015, Thom Bolsch opened his 33,000-square-foot Saddle River Range Firearms and Archery, which includes retail and firing and archery ranges. A retired Secret Service agent, he drew on his background when it came to designing his business. He's got a security system that cost a couple hundred thousand dollars including cameras and an alarm, and he designed the building with high windows and a double-entrance door to prevent cars from smashing into the building.

About 5,000 square feet houses his guns for sale. Should a burglar break in, a motion detector would trigger a dense fog to pour out of the ceiling. Within 45 seconds, it fills the portion of the store where the guns are sold "to the point you can't even see your hand in front of your face," Bolsch said.

"The premise behind that is, if you can't see the guns, you can't steal the guns, and you can't find your way out," he said.

Bolsch hasn't had a break-in yet.

A crash in the night

John Kleiber, owner of Class 3 Weapons on North Shepherd Drive in north Houston, has not been as lucky. Kleiber started having problems with security in 2012 when a burglar rammed a van into the door of his then-7-year-old business. The burglar nabbed a handful of pistols.

Kleiber already had bars on his windows, discreet signage and cameras, and an alarm system. He added iron posts around the entrance and made sure someone was at the business around the clock. It wound up being worth it.

In 2015, a crash woke him in the middle of the night while he slept at the store. The security camera had been jammed to point toward the ceiling. His 70-pound pitbull barked at the door. Two people had broken in. A third person was outside. They were armed. Kleiber armed himself, then shot at the suspects, hitting one would-be robber in the head.

The ATF has recommendations for gun retailers on deterring crime. They include loading guns into a safe at the end of the business day and installing metal grates that can be pulled down overnight to hide the storefront.

'I'm in a catch-22'

Bell, at R&G Guns in Alvin, has bars and mesh on the shop's windows, a deadbolt on the front door, surveillance cameras and an alarm system. But his family-owned business doesn't have the funds to pay what he estimates would be $20,000 for a safe. And as for a grate?

"I could spend $40,000 fortifying the front, and they'd come in the roof," Bell said.

Early Wednesday morning, burglars used chains and a Ford F250 to yank the front door of Bell's shop off of its hinges. In a minute and a half, the burglars nabbed 17 firearms, he said.

His business has had two bungled break-in attempts - not including Wednesday's - since April 24. He partially attributes the crime to limited lighting in the strip mall that houses his store. The first break-in originated at the neighboring Family Dollar. The second targeted only his business.

Bell plans to make one affordable security change: putting pillars up in front of his premises to stop burglars from backing trucks into his front window.

But, he admitted Thursday, even that could not have thwarted Wednesday's burglars. They could have diverted the chain used to pull off the door around pillars.

Bell, who co-owns his small shop with his father, is faced with the possibility of security costs that could outstrip his profits.

"I'm in a catch-22," he said.
AUSTIN - The state inspector general responsible for ensuring the integrity of one of the state's largest public agencies was fired by the governor amid revelations he was doubling as a consultant for the government of Iraq, which successfully sought to pull the country from the Trump administration's travel ban, officials confirmed Thursday.

Gov. Greg Abbott demanded Stuart Bowen Jr.'s, resignation Wednesday night after Texas Monthly's R.G. Ratcliffe began inquiring about the inspector general's communications and representation of the Iraqi government.

"This was a serious and unacceptable lapse in judgment by Mr. Bowen," said John Wittman, a spokesman for Abbott. "The day the governor was made aware, he took immediate action and asked Mr. Bowen to resign."

Documents obtained by Texas Monthly show Bowen was contracted to begin consulting services Jan. 1. His name appeared repeatedly in February letters from a Washington lobby firm representing Iraq Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi sent to members of the Trump administration.

The letters, which sought to arrange meetings with other representatives of the prime minister, came after President Donald Trump issued an executive order issuing a travel ban for people from seven majority-Muslim countries, including Iraq.

Weeks later, when Trump issued a new order after his first was halted by the courts, Iraq had been pulled from the list. The remaining countries include Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP, which contracted with Bowen for consulting services, said the former inspector general told the firm his work would not constitute a conflict of interest.

"Before any work started, Brownstein confirmed with Bowen that his employer's ethics adviser said consulting for Brownstein was permissible because it created no conflict with Bowen's work at the Texas Health and Human Services Commission," said Lara Day, a spokeswoman for the firm. She said he did not lobby or provide legal services for Brownstein or its clients, "nor did he work on any efforts to reverse the travel ban."

Moonlighting not disclosed

Attempts to reach Bowen were unsuccessful Thursday, but he told the magazine he consulted with an ethics adviser at HHSC and "fully complied with that advice." He said he was approached to help connect the firm with the governor of the Iraqi Central Bank and for advice on anti-corruption efforts related to the financial services sector.

"I have never worked for Iraq and was not involved in any law firm activities regarding the travel ban issue," he said.

The Texas Ethics Commission did not return calls for comment late Thursday.

HHSC spokeswoman Carrie Williams said Bowen had not disclosed his moonlighting for the Iraqi government until seeing a public information request related to requests for his correspondence.

"We wouldn't approve any outside employment that could be a potential conflict of interest with our work of the state," she said.

Bowen's brief resignation letter did not reference his lobbying efforts for the Iraqi prime minister but instead said he was leaving the department "so that I may pursue new opportunities that are before me."

Bowen was hired by Abbott in early 2015 to operate as a watchdog for the HHSC after former inspector general Doug Wilson resigned amid a no-bid contracting scandal.

Previously, he was working for the federal government to oversee $62 billion used for Iraq's reconstruction, obtaining dozen of convictions, producing hundreds of reports and securing nearly $2 billion in taxpayer benefits, according to the governor's announcement of his appointment little more than a year ago.

In addition to letters stating that Bowen was a senior adviser to the firm, Bowen also appeared in a photograph posted to al-Abadi's Twitter account. It showed them standing next to each other during a United Nations conference on April 6.

Firm name-dropped Bowen

Bowen was a long-time figure in President George W. Bush's administration, both when Bush was governor and president. In Washington, Bowen served several positions during Bush's tenure, including deputy assistant to the president, deputy staff secretary, special assistant to the president and associate counsel.

He later operated as Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction for nearly a decade, from 2004 to 2013 before Abbott appointed him in 2015 to work as Inspector General for HHSC, which oversees about $40 billion in public funds. The office searches for fraud, waste and abuse by performing audits, investigations.

With an office in Washington D.C., Brownstein contracted with Bowen to recommend strategies and tactics related to the firm's contracts with the government of Iraq beginning Jan. 1, 2017, according to documents obtained by the magazine.

While the firm registered with the federal government as a foreign agent in 2016, the firm's deal with Bowen stipulated he would not perform work requiring him to register. The contract outlined he would be paid $300 an hour not to exceed 33 percent of total payments made by the government of Iraq.

The firm repeatedly name-dropped Bowen as a senior adviser to the firm in letters to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly, then-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and others asking for an introductory meeting to discuss challenges in Iraq.
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Money has been pouring in to help students forced to eat cheese sandwiches or cereal because they can't pay their school lunch tabs.

Amina Ishaq, for example, raised more than $13,000 for Lamar CISD in recent weeks. Christopher Robinson received more than $18,000 to benefit Fort Bend ISD.

Advocates hope the attention encourages legislators to eliminate lunch shaming and provides free lunches for all students.

"I know it's possible, somehow," Robinson said.

A bill before the Legislature that seeks to help districts better address the problem earned recent approval from the House public education committee, but was withdrawn from the calendar Friday.

All 11 members of the state house public education committee last week supported the bill, proposed by Dallas-area Democrat Helen Giddings, which requires schools to contact families when accounts run out, mandates that officials protect kids' privacy and allows districts to use donations to cover debts.

On Tuesday, the bill was listed a first time on the local and consent calendar and knocked off the House floor, an act that Giddings called "unconscionable." She excoriated the action in an 11-minute speech that day, saying, "Members, we can do better for our children. They deserve better."

More for you The price of serving 'alternative meals'

Though it was withdrawn from consideration again Friday, the bill may still return a third time.

Of 32 school districts surveyed in the Houston area, only four did not serve different food to those who reached a charge limit on their empty accounts, the Chronicle reported last month. More than 78,000 students collectively owed more than $673,000 for unpaid meals at that time.

District nutrition directors say they provide the free alternate meals to help keep costs down. The solution is imperfect, but they worry the debt, which is typically paid off by the district from year to year, would otherwise continue to rise.

Practice unnecessary

The treatment is humiliating and unnecessary, advocates said. Two districts, Cypress-Fairbanks and Spring Branch, have found ways around it by setting up permanent funds to which people can donate. But complaints about the still-pervasive problem are gaining traction.

A recent front-page story in the New York Times covered school lunch shaming. It featured Houston ISD, which has stated that it does not serve alternate meals, and a local advocate. CNN this week published a segment on the topic, focused on Houston-area schools.

"I'm just glad we still have this in the news," said Kenny Thompson, the local advocate featured in the Times. "Exposure and people talking about it is a good thing."

Retired Houston lawyer Lee Arellano talks often about the issue. He asks people he helps with legal work to make a donation to HISD rather than pay him for his services. His mechanic even volunteered to contribute.

The problem prompted an immediate, personal reaction for Arellano, who felt strongly that a kid shouldn't be punished for a family's financial shortcomings.

"I'm going to help however I can," said Arellano. "I'm optimistic we'll be able to do more."

Fundraisers continue

Fundraisers hope their efforts won't be needed one day because the issue will have been solved by policy. But until then, they say, they will keep after it.

Their call to arms has caught wind across the state and country. Giddings, the representative, said in her Tuesday speech that she knew of a man in Dallas who went to several schools when he heard the story and paid off lunch accounts.

A 17-year-old high school student in Florida, too, read of the efforts in Texas. A junior who lives in West Palm Beach, Christian Cordon-Cano started a group called School Lunch Fairy a few months ago with a friend after hearing of the issue on the radio. They are encouraging other students to start chapters all over the country to help raise funds and are considering donating to districts in Texas.

"We want the public shaming to be gone," Cordon-Cano said, "and we want kids to be able to have a decent lunch."
A nationwide anti-gang operation led to the arrest of nearly 1,400 transnational and local gang members, including more than 200 in the Houston and Corpus Christi areas, federal officials said Thursday.

It was the largest round-up in the history of the Homeland Security Investigations, netting known members and affiliates from the Bloods, Crips, MS-13, Surenos and other gangs.

A cache of guns, drugs and money was also seized, including 238 firearms, 500 pounds of marijuana, 50 pounds of cocaine, 35 pounds of methamphetamine, seven pounds of heroin and a small amount of fentanyl, along with nearly $500,000.

"We targeted problem areas that are specific areas known to have gang-related crime and violence, specifically in Houston and Corpus and surrounding counties," said Sean McElroy, Houston's deputy special agent-in-charge for HSI, an investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security.

Of the 1,378 people arrested, 445 were foreign nationals from 21 countries ranging from Guatemala to Kazakhstan to Mauritania. The rest were U.S. citizens.

In the Houston region, 207 people were arrested - the highest number of any region in the nation, officials said. Sixteen of the suspects face federal charges, while the majority of the remaining suspects were arrested on state charges.

The operation led to 43 arrests in Houston - slightly higher than last year - and 164 arrests in greater Corpus Christi, up from just 68 last year.

At least five MS-13 gang members in Houston were among eight people in the region arrested on administrative warrants for being in the country illegally, McElroy said.

"We identify these individuals as gang members," he said. "They may not have committed a specific crime in the federal, state or local realm. However, they're here illegally, and we're going to put them into deportation proceedings."

A Mexican Mafia gang member wanted for homicide and a Tango Blast member carrying two kilograms of methamphetamine and three pistols were among those arrested in Corpus Christi.

The operation comes as gang crimes have caught renewed attention from city and state leaders, particularly after a member of the 52 Hoover Crips shot two Houston police officers conducting anti-burglary operations in February and as the city grappled with a rise in gang shootings in the southeast Houston earlier this year.

A Texas Department of Public Safety threat assessment released in January warned of the specific danger posed by transnational gangs such as Tango Blast, the Latin Kings and MS-13, also known as Mara Salvatrucha.

"These groups pose the greatest gang threat to Texas due to their relationships with Mexican cartels, high levels of transnational criminal activity, high levels of violence, and overall statewide presence," the assessment noted.

In response to some of the activity, Gov. Greg Abbott said he was putting more resources into anti-gang operations in the Houston region.

Gang membership has been slowly rising in Houston over the last six years, according to a recent report the Houston Police Department's Gang Division prepared for city leaders, which estimated that approximately 20,000 gang members from 350 gangs lived in and around the city.

HSI agents worked with task force members of Houston's Texas Anti-Gang Center in the round-up, which lasted several weeks.

"The impetus, more than anything else, was focusing on career individuals who took on characteristics of being criminals, being involved in violent crime," said George Rhyne, the TAG Center's administrator.

"Houston has been plagued with violent crime, especially related to aggravated robberies, aggravated assault and the increase in property crime," he said. "These are the people, typically, in most communities, that are committing property crime, violent crime, crimes against persons. So the objective is to remove these types of individuals to improve the quality of life."

The impact of the anti-gang operation remains to be seen, said Nathan Jones, an assistant professor of security studies at Sam Houston State University.

"When it's part of a comprehensive package - that includes working with local communities ... I can see it being a good thing," Jones said. "If it's just - 'we're sweeping up people with warrants, and they're going to be back on the street real quick' - then it would have a limited effect."
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When authorities booked Chelsea Schehr into the Waller County Jail last month, they determined during an intake interview that the 24-year-old needed to be on suicide watch. So they took away her clothes, as standard precaution, and issued her a thick blanket.

This complicated a personal matter: Schehr was on her period. Waller County does not provide tampons. And they do not let inmates deemed at risk of harming themselves wear underwear, so she could not have a feminine hygiene pad.

Schehr, who maintains she was not suicidal, said one word described her 28-hour detention: Dehumanizing.

"It's just ridiculous," she said.

Schehr's story, fueled in part by the intense scrutiny facing Waller County since the widely reported suicide of Sandra Bland there in 2015, has drawn attention to an uncomfortable issue in many jails - balancing inmates' dignity with the need to keep them safe.

Hundreds of jails in Texas have wide discretion on how to handle personal hygiene and clothing for thousands of inmates who may be suicidal or struggling with mental health issues, and Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith said proper protocol was followed in jailing Schehr with no clothes or feminine supplies.

Still, her case ultimately could mean better conditions for other women detained in local jails. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards is formulating statewide recommendations on how counties should handle personal hygiene and clothing for suicidal inmates, and is considering making them mandatory, said Brandon Wood, the commission's executive director.

Waller County is not alone in how it handles female hygiene and nudity. An informal Chronicle survey of local jails found that some officials likely would respond as Waller County did, providing only a blanket and perhaps toilet paper. Others offer basic supplies that pose limited risk.

Advocates such as Diana Claitor of the Texas Jail Project, however, say Schehr's treatment was inadequate and perhaps indicative of officials' general disrespect for women's needs. Claitor called it unethical to deny such products in the name of safety.

"It's wrongheaded," Claitor said. "I can't imagine that being standard operating procedure."

Veda Brown, a retired professor in Waller County pushing for statewide change, agreed that the policy caused more harm than necessary. She wants others to remember that inmates are humans, not numbers.Even John Abbatacola, 27, the father of Schehr's child, who called police the day Schehr was arrested, said in a recent court hearing that he felt badly about what followed.

"I don't want anyone to experience something like that," he said.

Stripped of clothes and dignity

The state jail commission earlier this month found Waller County's treatment of Schehr appropriate, though they discussed ways for the county to provide menstruation products in the future.

The state is also working to update procedures in Wharton County, where inmates on suicide watch have been denied clothing or covering. And state officials plan to issue a memo on menstruation and suicide watch, Wood said.

For jailers, the issue centers on risk. First, they must determine if someone is suicidal, a designation that often arises during booking.

Waller County jailers now use a mental health screening form updated by the state in late 2015, months after Bland was found hanged in a cell. A state trooper had pulled her over days earlier for an alleged traffic violation, which escalated into a heated confrontation. But she was not flagged as a risk to herself. The commission found the jail did not comply with staff training and observation requirements.

The new form is meant to improve efforts at catching warning signs.

The sheriff said because of the new form, more people are being marked for suicide watch than in the past. But he said Schehr's case was clear.

"There were multiple indicators on her screening form that placed her on suicide watch," he said. A mental health official evaluated her about four hours after she was screened and also recommended she be watched.

Her attorney, Andy Taylor, however, said her treatment was "completely improper," because jailers were making decisions that should have been determined by medical staff.

"They're acting like doctors when they're not," he said.

Authorities arrested Schehr on April 22 on suspicion of assaulting Abbatacola, with whom she'd had a son 14 months earlier.

After an argument that day, Schehr had gone to lie down in a closet, according to court testimony. Schehr said she was upset, wanted to pray and put on a scarf; Abbatacola saw her behavior as suicidal.

Abbatacola testified that she attacked him when he took a photograph. She said she believed he wanted to frame her as an unfit parent. Abbatacola called police.

"Whatever happened after that was out of his control," said Candace Demary, Abbatacola's attorney in a current custody dispute.

Schehr's mother, Colleen Schehr, said no one should have been arrested that day. And she believes her daughter certainly should not have been declared unstable based on the assertions of a man with whom she had a troubled past.

"Who determines when these women are suicidal, and if they should be stripped of their clothes and their dignity?" she asked.

Jailers aren't mental health professionals, agreed Glenn Urbach, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness for Greater Houston, though increasingly they are making decisions about mentally ill inmates.

The sheriff, however, said jail officials also rely on observations from arresting officers in determining whehther an inmate needs extra attention.

No one wants a case like Bland's to repeat.

Paper gowns and heavy smocks Counties diverge on what suicide watch entails. It might mean giving the inmate different clothing and him or her in an individual cell.

Some counties, including Dallas, provide paper gowns. Others, including Waller County, find those dangerous.

Problems with paper gowns abound. In Travis County, inmates requested several at a time for warmth. In Montgomery County, officials constantly replaced them due to sweat. Waller County inmates sometimes wet the gowns so they can form objects when they dried. All three counties have since decided to move away from using them.

In Wharton County, an inmate once used a paper gown to commit suicide. Now at-risk inmates there are housed naked.

"I wish there were better answers," newly elected Sheriff Shannon Srubar said.

But alternatives do exist. As a jail nurse in California, Lonna Speer felt certain people should not be left naked on what may be the worst day of their lives. In 1989, she launched a company to sell what she says was the first version of the product many now prefer: a heavy-duty smock. She also developed a blanket.

Items like these are now common. But the concept didn't solve the problem of menstruation. Speer's answer to that - a sanitary belt made of foam that breaks if twisted - has not been widely sought. It's imperfect even to Speer.

Jailers for now make do with what they feel appropriate. Waller County's standard of providing only a blanket is not unique.

Brazoria County offers toilet paper with the blanket. And Montgomery County provides a blanket in some cases, though a spokesman said they would change it out for a fresh one.

"The last thing that any jail or any law enforcement officer wants is for someone who was put in our custody to pass away," Montgomery County Sheriff's Office spokesman Scott Spencer said.

Schehr pleaded for underpants, sanitary napkins or tampons, her mother said.

The sheriff says his office has recently contacted a company about providing paper panties with pads for female inmates.

Other jails follow different procedure.

Fort Bend and Travis counties provide thin underwear with a pad, worn under a smock. Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office Lt. Daniel Quam said he didn't want any woman to be able to say basic needs were not met.

Travis County Sheriff's Office Capt. Sally Pena said, "It's just inhumane, plain and simple."Brown, the professor, recently gave Waller County commissioners, all men, what she said was a "starter kit" - pink sacks with tampons, sanitary wipes and paper panties with a pad, which she said were used in Lubbock.

Some counties offer underwear with close supervision. In Harris County, clothing is only removed by a doctor's order, but a woman without regular clothingwould be allowed sanitary products, so long as she were on close watch, said spokesman Jason Spencer.

In Dallas County, a woman on suicide watch would be monitored constantly and given underwear and a pad. By comparison, state hospitals always allow inmates to wear clothes.Chambers County Sheriff Brian Hawthorne, meanwhile, tries to house the mentally ill with the general population, who help keep an eye out.

'There has to be something better'A recent walk through the cell where Schehr was housed shows a basic, beige unit with a perfunctory shower, toilet and platform on which to sleep.

The floors were sticky and an eerie image of a person was etched into a wall.

Waller County may soon build a new jail. But the cell for now has a window, with a covering for guards to open after they give a warning first to female inmates.

Such cells are not ideal, but they can help keep an inmate safe and isolated from the jail's bustle, said Kit Wright, a jail nurse in Brazos County who spoke as a jail health advocate.

Danger can be found anywhere: in underwear, a pad, even the smocks, she said.

"If someone is really wanting to harm themselves, they're going to find a way," she said. "And so we have to do everything we can to prevent that from happening."

Schehr remains in limbo. For now, the Waller County District Attorney's office has not decided whether to file formal charges against her, but a custody battle is ongoing over the child.

To Schehr's mother, the decisions made at the jail worsened an already difficult situation for her daughter.

"There is basic human need," Colleen Schehr said. "There has to be something better."
AUSTIN - With the Texas Legislature just two weeks from its final curtain, the state's top officials are scrambling to keep many of their key initiatives from suffering a tragic ending.

Gov. Greg Abbott, still seeking victory for some of his top priorities, will be working to convince the Legislature to fully fund his $220 million super pre-K program that both legislative chambers left out of their budgets, along with ethics reform and new abortion restrictions that have been slow-walked so far in the House.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will be trying to sell pared-down versions of his controversial "bathroom bill" and school choice measures, hoping to get more than just a handful of his Top 25 priorities enacted into law.

House Speaker Joe Straus, continuing to face a leadership challenge from conservative Republicans who hijacked his chamber's agenda for several hours last Thursday, will be pushing child-protection reforms, property tax reform and Senate bills to keep his priorities alive.

And in the coming week, also look for the "Big 3" leaders to work behind closed doors to wrap up negotiations on the budget. The big dispute is a philosophical fight over whether it's best to use accounting maneuvers to plug a roughly $2.5 billion hole or to cover it with the state's so-called Rainy Day Fund.

Absent a budget agreement, the Legislature would have to come back for an encore performance, in a special session.

"At this point, I see the House coming to agreement, because if there is a special session, Straus and the House will run the risk of having the governor add the 'bathroom bill' to the agenda - something the House leadership doesn't want to have to deal with," said Rice University political scientist Mark Jones, a longtime observer of the Texas Legislature.

"Any deal the House can make on the budget in a special session will not be much better than one they will get in the regular session, and Straus knows that."

Negotiations a 'good sign'

Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said he thinks the next two weeks will probably move away from a special session, which the public may generally interpret as a negative in rating the Legislature "because they weren't able to get their work done."

"It's a good sign that Abbott is involved in the negotiations at this point, because that shows he is trying to get things worked out without a special session," Jillson said.

But working out everything may be a steep climb, House and Senate insiders say, given the acrimonious relationship between Patrick and Straus and the chasm between the two legislative chambers on a number of the remaining issues.

One example: property tax reform, an issue that appears to be slowing an agreement on the state budget.

The Senate-passed reform bill mandates rollback elections and new transparency in the tax appraisal process to give local residents more information about why their taxes are being raised and new tools to fight those increases.

On Friday, the House Ways and Means Committee approved a revised bill that removes the rollback election mandate, a deal-breaker for Senate leaders. House leaders said the change was the only way they could get the bill voted out of the committee and to the full House for approval.

Privately, leaders from both chambers confirmed they have agreed to negotiate a final version after the bill passes the House.

Another example is several key anti-abortion bills - a ban on fetal tissue sales and fetal dismemberment and a change to protect doctors from lawsuits for delivering babies with birth defects - that failed to pass the House by a Thursday deadline. Those measures, priorities of Abbott and Patrick, are reportedly to be added to a Senate bill already pending in the House to get it to Abbott's desk to be signed into law.

Only Abbott wins

Additional millions of dollars in funding that Abbott wanted for the state's deal-closing business fund and for higher education initiatives, among several other priorities, are already the focus of negotiations between the governor's office and legislative leaders as part of talks over the budget, according to lawmakers involved in the process.

"The governor is meeting on an almost hourly basis to discuss the issues that are still out there, but he's confident that our priorities will be addressed," said John Wittman, the governor's press secretary. He would not elaborate.

To be sure, while legislative leaders began openly discussing the growing possibility of a special session last week, most acknowledge that it would likely not be a win for anyone except Abbott, who would set the agenda and would have leverage to get his way by having hundreds of lawmakers' bills on his desk for a sign-or-veto decision.

It also might be of some benefit to Patrick, who could use the opportunity as a bully pulpit.

The political outsiders disagree. "A special session shows there has been a failure of the leadership to come together and a failure of the governor to bring everyone together," Jones said.

He added: "It's a loser for Abbott, because he will have to determine what gets on the agenda and what gets left off, and that would put him in a difficult issue on the bathroom bill. It would probably pass, and then he would either have to enrage the business community by signing the bill and face the likelihood that the Final Four would not come to San Antonio and other business would leave the state or veto it and antagonize his conservative Republican base of support."
Two brothers were sentenced to decades in prison for a Houston hair shop robbery, a subsequent car chase and shooting a witness, prosecutors said Friday.

Surveillance cameras captured Trey Donte Robertson, 24, and Troy Anthony Robertson, 25, wearing masks and gloves, and pointing guns as they entered "She's Happy Hair" in March 2015. The brothers allegedly stole $84,000 worth of the hair bundles, which were stuffed into pillow cases.
WASHINGTON  Texas U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway, who is leading the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections, pledged Thursday to "move forward" with the probe in the wake of President Donald Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey.

In a joint statement with Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the panel, Conaway also vowed to ensure that the integrity of the FBI investigation.

"The House Intelligence Committee is determined to move forward with its Russia investigation in a thorough and nonpartisan fashion," Conaway and Schiff said in their statement. "As a part of our responsibilities, we will be conducting rigorous oversight to ensure that the FBI's own investigation is not impeded or interfered with in any way."

Texas two Republican senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, have backed Trump's decision to fire Comey, who had come under heavy criticism from Democrats and Republicans over his handling of the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State.

On Thursday, several other Texas Republicans announced their support for Comey's dismissal, including Kevin Brady of The Woodlands, Randy Weber of Friendswood, and Brian Babin of Woodville. Others have stayed out of the fray so far.

One notable Republican exception is Will Hurd of San Antonio, who echoed Democrats' questions about the timing of Comey's firing as director while he was leading in investigation that could involve Trump and his political associates.

Another is Dallas Republican Pete Sessions, who told the Dallas Morning News that Comey, who was publicly fired without warning, should have been removed "in a more gracious way."

Conaway, a Republican from Midland, also chairs the House Agriculture Committee. He was tapped to lead the House Russia probe last month after Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes of California stepped aside in a controversy over his close ties to Trump, whose campaign associates could be subjects of the investigation.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump offered a new version of his decision to fire James Comey, saying on Thursday that he would have dismissed the FBI director regardless of whether the attorney general and his deputy recommended it.

It was just the latest in a series of statements, some of them contradictory, to whiplash Washington over 48 hours that began with Comey's firing on Tuesday evening. And it was unusually harsh: Trump castigated Comey as "a showboat" and "a grandstander," suggesting that his issues with the FBI director went beyond any previously stated concerns.

Trump said Thursday he had not relied solely on the advice from the Justice Department's top two leaders in deciding to dismiss Comey.

Earlier, the White House had said that Trump had acted only after Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, came to him and recommended that Comey be dismissed because of his handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email.

In his Tuesday letter terminating Comey, Trump said he had "accepted their recommendation." And Vice President Mike Pence, talking to reporters, echoed his boss.

But by the next day, that story had begun to unravel.

Timeline shared

Rosenstein and Donald McGahn, the White House counsel, spoke by telephone on Wednesday to review details that precipitated the firing, seeking to agree on a version of events that could be released to the public.

That conversation led to a new timeline that the White House shared with reporters hours later. It said that Trump had in recent weeks been "strongly inclined to remove" Comey, but that he had made his final decision only after receiving written recommendations on Monday from Rosenstein and Sessions.

And then on Thursday, the president himself brushed away that narrative, reversing his own aides' version of events.

In fact, the president asserted, he had decided to fire Comey well before he received the advice from the Justice Department officials. He said he was frustrated by Comey's public testimony regarding the FBI investigation into Russia's meddling in the 2016 campaign and its possible contacts with Trump's advisers.

"I was going to fire Comey - my decision," Trump told anchor Lester Holt in an interview broadcast on NBC on Thursday. "I was going to fire regardless of recommendation."

The president's comments appeared aimed at reassuring Rosenstein, who was reportedly upset at the White House's original narrative that seemed to suggest he had instigated Comey's firing. The White House has cited Rosenstein's reputation as a straight-shooter in justifying Trump's move.

But the president's storyline left the White House struggling to explain his motivation for firing his FBI director a day after calling the Russia investigation nothing more than a "taxpayer-funded charade" that should end.

Critics said the credibility of the White House had been badly damaged and renewed calls for a special prosecutor to take over the Russia investigation, independent of the administration.

Explanation under fire

The White House's explanation was challenged on Thursday in other ways as well. The president's spokeswoman said on Wednesday that Comey was fired in part because he had lost the support of rank-and-file FBI employees.

But on Thursday, Andrew McCabe, the new acting director of the agency, told the Senate that Comey enjoyed "broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

And while the White House said on Wednesday that the Russia probe was only a small part of the bureau's activities, McCabe called it "a highly significant investigation."

Throughout the rapidly shifting 48 hours, Rosenstein appeared to be caught in the middle.

Confirmed just last month, he made a trip to Capitol Hill on Thursday for a previously unannounced meeting with the Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In a brief hallway conversation with a reporter, Rosenstein denied reports that he had threatened to quit.

Rosenstein's memo, while highly critical of Comey's actions over the last year, stopped short of recommending the ouster. "Although the president has the power to remove an FBI director," he wrote, "the decision should not be taken lightly."

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, has agreed to invite Rosenstein to brief the Senate next week, said minority leader Sen. Chuck Schumer.
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AUSTIN - As hundreds of bills appeared to perish at a midnight deadline Thursday in the Texas House due to stalling by conservative Republicans, legislative leaders continued to work separately to keep several key measures from being doomed by political brinksmanship.

Among those was a major property-tax reform bill. House and Senate leaders worked throughout the day to resolve differences over the measure, with Senate leaders holding out for a rollback election provision that some House members had proposed removing to get the bill out of the Ways and Means Committee.

Those talks came against the backdrop of a chaotic late-night session in the Texas House that ended with lawmakers of both parties disgusted.

Conservative lawmakers angry at the House leadership for bottling up much of their agenda extended debate for hours on a single bill, essentially killing everything behind it. Debate degenerated into shouting and chaos just before the midnight deadline, reminiscent of events toward the end of the tenure of Speaker Tom Craddick.

After the deadline passed, many House members said they were angry about how the drama played out. Some blamed House Speaker Joe Straus for not better controlling the House debate.

House leaders said the slowdown in debate led by tea party Republicans, with help from Democrats, was prompted by Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, knocking a list of GOP bills off the local calendar earlier in the week.

In response, those Republicans killed the local calendar on Thursday, with plans to do the same on Friday, effectively dooming dozens more bills.

The faction relented with about 30 minutes left Thursday night after a tearful state Rep. Drew Springer, R-Gainesville, pleaded with colleagues to take up his bill focusing on adult stem cell research, which he said could help his wife.

"I hear an awful lot of people in this chamber who talk about disabilities, and I was trying to do things to help them, but I'll be damned if we don't have the chance tonight to hear the very next bill that opens up the doors of medical science to be done right here in Texas," he said. "I'd trade every one of my bills, every single one of them, to get the chance to hear HB 810 because I pray to God every time I close my eyes that one day my wife will have the opportunity again to walk."

The measure passed on a voice vote.

Earleir Thursday night, roughly a dozen House Republicans vowed to torpedo more than 100 bills on the chamber's Friday calendar.

At a hastily convened news conference, members of the House's Freedom Caucus complained that House leaders had used various procedural maneuvers to deny full chamber votes on their major proposals.

In retaliation, the caucus said it would present a letter to Speaker Straus notifying him that they intended to knock nearly 120 bills from the House's Friday calendar. According to House rules, five members' signatures can block a bill; that calendar is reserved for local or noncontroversial bills. Thirteen GOP members signed the letter.

"What we're doing is exactly what they did to our bills," said Rep. Jeff Leach, a Republican from Plano. "Members of this body want to hit us personally. Nine times out of 10, we'll rise above it and be happy warriors and go on. But this has crossed a line that we cannot be silent about."

Significant anti-abortion and property tax-cut legislation had yet to make it to the floor, they noted.

"If your voting record is too conservative, you will not be allowed to pass legislation," said Rep. Matt Shaheen, another Plano Republican. "That's undemocratic because what that means is, if you're too conservative, you cannot represent your district."

The property-tax reform measure was to have been approved and sent on its way Wednesday for a House vote, but fell three votes short of approval and has been stalled since then. Legislative leaders confirmed after a meeting with top aides to Gov. Greg Abbott that they were planning to pass whatever version they could get through - and then work out their differences with the Senate as the two chambers negotiate a final version.

"The property tax bill is one of the main bills holding up a deal on the budget, and until we can get those issues resolved, we can't make real progress on the budget," said a Capitol insider who is involved in the negotiations. "We're working to make the pieces come together, but it's a slow process."

House leaders have publicly played down the drama of Thursday's bill-passing deadline, saying that tensions increase every session at this time. Even so, Senate leaders continued ramping up efforts to pass more than 600 House bills they have received in the last two weeks - a number they said sets a record.

Unlike the last legislative session in 2015, when the governor kept a low profile, lawmakers in both chambers said Thursday that Abbott and his aides are now involved in trying to broker deals on many of the most contentious issues that remain. Their goal is to ensure that the governor wins approval for priorities ranging from an additional $220 million for pre-K programs to a new law that makes committing a crime against a police officer a hate crime.

Vouchers resurface

Also potentially imperiled in the late-session crush was a wide-reaching school finance overhaul that the House overwhelmingly approved last month.

Sen. Larry Taylor, the Friendswood Republican who chairs the Senate Education Committee, added a provision to a House bill that would create education savings accounts for students with special needs, allowing their parents to enroll them in private schools with the help of taxpayer funds.

Taylor's committee, stacked with Republicans who support vouchers, approved his changes in a 7-1 vote Thursday, sending the revised bill to the full Senate, where it was expected to pass. The Senate version would then go back to the House, which has steadfastly opposed voucher proposals favored by the Senate.

In fact, during a larger debate about the state budget in April, the House voted 103-44 to forbid any state dollars from funding voucher programs.

The two chambers would have to agree on a final version for the bill to become law.

House Public Education Committee Chairman Dan Huberty, the Humble Republican who authored the original bill, declined to comment on Taylor's changes Thursday, saying he had not read the revised bill. In the past, he has said he does not favor vouchers.

As passed by the House, the bill would pump $1.8 billion in new spending into the state's school funding formula and would reduce local taxpayer-funded payments to the state, known as "recapture," by $380 million in the next biennium. It also would provide more money for students with dyslexia or those who are learning English as a second language.

Anti-abortion victory

Three other controversial measures also remained in doubt, including bills that provide legal protection for doctors who deliver babies with birth defects, ban the sale of fetal tissue and prohibit so-called partial-birth abortions - defined in the bill as an act that kills a partially delivered fetus. That late-term procedure already is prohibited under federal law.

The fetal tissue measure, House Bill 200, was filed after a years-long battle between the state and Planned Parenthood clinics on the procurement of fetal tissue.

Despite growing tensions, which legislative leaders on Wednesday had characterized as leaving the Legislature close to a meltdown, at least two controversial bills were agreed to: One that would require health care centers to report abortion complications and another that could settle an ongoing fight over a bailout for the Dallas police and fire system.

Despite two hours of tense House debate, the abortion reporting measure by Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, passed on a 94-52 vote -marking a victory for discouraged anti-abortion advocates who had feared the Thursday deadline might doom the bill. House Bill 2962 had been a high priority for anti-abortion groups. A similar bill passed the Senate last week.

Texas already requires abortion providers to submit an abortion complication report to the Department of State Health services, but proponents of the bill say the requirement does not apply to hospitals or emergency rooms.

Before approving the bill, the House approved an amendment to Capriglione's bill from Rep. Matt Shaefer, R-Tyler, that requires complication reports to be made electronically and include the physician's name. The report would also include the patient's birth date, race, marital status and county.

Foes of the amendment argued that physicians' names could be released. "I think you're putting people's live at stake by offering this amendment," said Rep. Carol Alvarado, D-Houston.

The amendment was adopted 91-50.

Bobby Cervantes and Nicole Cobler contributed to this report.
Jon Shapley/Houston Chronicle

AUSTIN  Attorney General Ken Paxton is expected to appear in court next week to try to remove the judge from his felony securities fraud case.

Judge George Gallagher set a hearing for May 18 at the Harris County Civil Courts Building in Houston to hear arguments on a motion Paxton's criminal defense team filed this week with Presiding Judge Mary Murphy of the First Administrative Judicial Region.
AUSTIN - The Texas Senate on Thursday approved legislation designed to force local jails to ramp up mental-health supervision and training to prevent suicides like the one in Waller County two years ago that made national headlines.

The original bill had proposed sweeping changes in criminal justice arrest and detention procedures; the final version of the Sandra Bland Act mandates additional mental-health training for jailers, mental-health de-escalation training for law enforcement officers and improved supervision in jails of suicidal and mentally unstable prisoners.

The bill requires jails to ramp up around-the-clock monitoring of prisoners and to install sensors or cameras to ensure "timely in-person checks of cells" containing at-risk prisoners. The sensors and cameras would be paid for through a gubernatorial grant program, only required when funding to pay for them is available.

Sen. John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat and author of the measure, conceded that the more sweeping provisions had to be dropped to get it to the Senate for a vote. But he said the measure, approved 31-0, is a step forward and is designed prevent future tragedies.

"When you deny someone their liberty, you have the responsibility to take care of them," Whitmire said, noting that 16 jail inmates have committed suicide in Texas this year. "These people who go to jail, many for very minor offenses, are our constituents. This legislation is a preventive measure  a mental-health awareness and prevention bill that I think will go a long way to prevent future tragedies."

Similar bill failed

A similar measure by Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, died in a House committee because of the opposition from police groups, who carry considerable political clout at the state Capitol.

Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-Houston, called the measure perhaps the most significant mental-health bill of the legislative session, echoing sentiments of other senators.

The bill is named after the 28-year-old black woman from Illinois who was arrested after a traffic stop for a minor violation escalated into a heated exchange with a state trooper in July 2015. Days later she was found hanged in the Waller County jail, a death that was ruled a suicide. The Waller County jail was cited at the time for not complying with state standards regarding staff training and observations. The state trooper was later fired and indicted on a perjury charge.

Bland's death made national headlines and sparked protests, coming at a time when the use of police force against African-Americans was drawing more attention. It resulted in changes in jail procedures regarding suicidal inmates and a statewide campaign by criminal-justice and mental-health advocates to improve mental-health supervision and training in local jails to prevent suicides.

Cannon Lambert, who helped Bland's mother settle with Waller County and the Texas Department of Public Safety for $1.9 million in a federal wrongful death lawsuit, said Bland's family members have been crossing the country, giving speeches and reminding people about her legacy in hopes other families won't have to endure what they did.

Relatives encouraged

Lambert said Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, and her sisters were encouraged to see Bland's name being used to improve the conditions for people jailed in Texas, and they were hopeful state representatives would agree with the Senate on the benefits that could come from the reforms.

"The family is extremely happy with the idea that Sandy can help other people because they can't get her back," he said. "To the extent that Sandy has shed light on what otherwise was demanding attention, at least we can say that she is still being heard.  The reality is when the government steps in and takes complete control, it has to exercise that control with compassion and precision."

With Coleman's House bill stalled since April, Whitmire for weeks had tried unsuccessfully to get the original Senate bill out of his committee. Only after it was significantly modified was it approved last week and sent to the full Senate for a vote.

He had been working since then to have the necessary votes to bring it to a vote, and Republicans had wavered on whether they would support it.

The bill goes to the House for consideration.

Gabrielle Banks contributed to this report.
Tom Reel

AUSTIN  While lawmakers in both chambers agree the state needs to rethink how it funds public education, a bill proposing a series of changes could be in peril after the Senate Education Committee amended the bill to include a controversial school choice program.

Senate Education Chairman Larry Taylor introduced new language to House Bill 21 Thursday that would create education savings accounts for students with special needs.
How can you tell if a criminal is too mentally disabled to merit the death penalty?

If you're a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, you look at the prevailing standards of psychology and medicine.

If you're a judge on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), you look at his ability to hustle pool.

This mismatched standard has the state's highest criminal court rehearing the death sentence of Bobby Moore, who was convicted for shooting a grocery store employee during a robbery in 1980. Moore's lawyers have argued that he is mentally disabled and executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

In a 5-3 decision released in March, the Supreme Court found that the CCA failed to consider current clinical standards when determining Moore's intelligence and relied too much on invented standards that have no real basis in medicine or law. Among those invented standards were the facts that Moore "lived on the streets, mowed lawns, and played pool for money."

Now the CCA is going to reconsider Moore's death sentence, and we encourage them to listen to the dissenting judge who had it right the whole time: Judge Elsa Alcala.

Over the past several capital punishment cases to face the CCA, Alcala has refused to shy away from pointing out the flaws in our state's death penalty process. In fact, the former prosecutor and trial judge has twice called for the CCA to address the underlying constitutionality of the death penalty itself.

There are three key legal arguments to consider: Is the death penalty in Texas unconstitutionally arbitrary because race, rather than violence, is a better predictor of its application?

Is the death penalty in Texas unconstitutionally cruel because it essentially requires convicts on death row to sit in solitary confinement for years, if not decades?

Is the death penalty in Texas unconstitutionally unusual because, since 2010, capital punishment is practiced in only 16 counties out of more than 3,000 across the United States?

Beyond the legal realm of Alcala's expertise, Texas also needs to consider the deep questions of policy and morality wrapped up in the application of government-administered death.

Innocent people like Anthony Graves have been rescued from death row. Others, like Cameron Todd Willingham, were executed while questions of guilt still lingered.

There's no undoing a mistaken execution, yet Texas persists.

The death penalty doesn't save money - the constitutionally compelled appeals process is often more expensive than life in prison. And there's no conclusive evidence that it does a better job at deterring crime. In fact, states without capital punishment routinely have lower murder rates.

That's why the rest of western civilization has abandoned the practice. Countries like Iran, China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia sit among Texas' peers in executing criminals - not exactly the company the Lone Star State should want to keep.

Questions of life and death aren't a game - pool hustling or otherwise. Nor should executions be treated like a political pawn. The CCA and the entire state of Texas need to address the death penalty with a new and serious skepticism.
Health care

Regarding "Other countries have lower health costs, healthier populations" (Page B1, Wednesday), Chris Tomlinson's column should be shared with our entire legislative body as well as President Trump and all members of his Cabinet.

This article is concise and speaks to the out-of-control costs in our health care system.

Our Medicare program is well-managed and could be re-tasked to provide health care to all our citizens. As Tomlinson writes, there are too many hands in the till siphoning funds away from our citizens in need.

If Congress would be more concerned with our citizens and less concerned with their campaign war chests, just maybe they would make decisions based on common sense and not personal greed.

Bob Dimmitt, Missouri City

No nirvana exists

Tomlinson is correct arguing that "no health care system is perfect," but ours is the worst compared to our peers.

It's more important that a health system be inclusive, in terms of coverage and benefits, than perfect. Take Taiwan, described in the article as enjoying universal coverage and low per-capita costs, but facing a deficit due to inadequate funding.

A deficit is not ideal, but before universal coverage about half of Taiwanese people had no coverage. I'd wager Taiwan would rather deal with a deficit than the detrimental effects of fragmented health coverage, the U.S. being a prime example of the latter.

Decades of debate in the U.S. have revealed there is no nirvana of health systems. We should take cues from systems that function better than our particularly inefficient approach.

Kristyana Birmingham, Houston
WASHINGTON - It is implausible that FBI Director James Comey was fired in May 2017 for actions committed in July 2016 - the rationale contained in the memo by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

It is implausible that Comey was fired by Donald Trump for having been too tough on Hillary Clinton, as when, at that July news conference, he publicly recited her various email misdeeds despite recommending against prosecution.

It is implausible that Trump fired Comey for, among other things, reopening the Clinton investigation 11 days before the election, something that at the time Trump praised as a sign of Comey's "guts" that had "brought back his reputation."

It's implausible that Trump, a man notorious for being swayed by close and loyal personal advisers, fired Comey on the recommendation of a sub-Cabinet official whom Trump hardly knew and who'd been on the job all of two weeks.

It is implausible that Trump found Rosenstein's arguments so urgently persuasive that he acted immediately - so precipitously, in fact, that Comey learned of his own firing from TVs that happened to be playing behind him.

These implausibilities were obvious within seconds of Comey's firing and the administration's immediate attempt to pin it all on the Rosenstein memo. That was pure spin. So why in reality did Trump fire Comey?

Admittedly, Comey had to go. The cliche is that if you've infuriated both sides, it means you must be doing something right. Sometimes, however, it means you must be doing everything wrong.

Over the last year, Comey has been repeatedly wrong. Not, in my view, out of malice or partisanship (although his self-righteousness about his own probity does occasionally grate). He was in an unprecedented situation with unpalatable choices. Never in American presidential history had a major party nominated a candidate under official FBI investigation. (Turns out the Trump campaign was under investigation as well.) Which makes the normal injunction that FBI directors not interfere in elections facile and impossible to follow. Any course of action - disclosure or silence, commission or omission - carried unavoidable electoral consequences.

Comey had to make up the rules as he went along. He did. That was not his downfall. His downfall was making up contradictory, illogical rules, such as the July 5 non-indictment indictment of Clinton.

A series of these - and Comey became anathema to both Democrats and Republicans. Clinton blamed her loss on two people. One of them was Comey.

And there's the puzzle. There was ample bipartisan sentiment for letting Comey go. And there was ample time from Election Day on to do so. A simple talk, a gold watch, a friendly farewell, a Comey resignation to allow the new president to pick the new director. No fanfare, no rancor.

True, this became more difficult after March 20 when Comey revealed that the FBI was investigating the alleged Trump-Russia collusion. Difficult but not impossible. For example, just last week Comey had committed an egregious factual error about the Huma Abedin emails that the FBI had to abjectly walk back in a written memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here was an opportunity for a graceful exit: Comey regrets the mistake and notes that some of the difficult decisions he had previously made necessarily cost him the confidence of various parties. Time for a clean slate. Add the usual boilerplate about not wanting to be a distraction at such a crucial time. Awkward perhaps, but still dignified and amicable.

Instead we got this - a political ax murder, brutal even by Washington standards. (Or even Roman standards. Where was the vein-opening knife and the warm bath?) No final meeting, no letter of resignation, no presidential thanks, no cordial parting. Instead, a blindsided Comey ends up in a live-streamed O.J. Bronco ride, bolting from Los Angeles to be flown, defrocked, back to Washington.

Why? Trump had become increasingly agitated with the Russia-election investigation and Comey's very public part in it. If Trump thought this would kill the inquiry and the story, or perhaps even just derail it somewhat, he's made the blunder of the decade. Whacking Comey has brought more critical attention to the Russia story than anything imaginable. It won't stop the FBI investigation. And the confirmation hearings for a successor will become a nationally televised forum for collusion allegations, which up till now have remained a scandal in search of a crime.

So why did he do it? Now we know: The king asked whether no one would rid him of this troublesome priest, and got so impatient he did it himself.

Krauthammer's email address is letters@charleskrauthammer.com.
When the University of Texas System's clandestine land grab in Houston surfaced in fall 2016, I labeled it as a "Trojan Horse," a gift that would keep on taking. UT had the burden of persuasion then, but their advocates are trying to shift blame now, with a new narrative - that doofus University of Houston simply does not appreciate the opportunity that UT proffered. We are ingrates and malagradecidos

UT is used to getting its way, armed by a long head start and an extraordinary endowment derived from oil and gas revenues. And putting all us hayseeds in our proper place is just another part of this burden. But the real truth - then and now - is that the state actually has a legal requirement and statutory governance structure for siting new college campuses.

Chronicle columnist and UT-Austin graduate Chris Tomlinson recently chided the University of Houston, noting "UH needs to toughen up and play in the big leagues." At least he outs the project for what it is, a diagonal approach to locating yet another UT campus - a truth that UT's clandestine plans neglected, characterizing it as a "research center."

Yet Article 7, Section 18, Subsection C of the Texas Constitution holds: "Pursuant to a two-thirds vote of the membership of each house of the Legislature, institutions of higher education may be created at a later date as a part of The University of Texas System by general law, and, when created, such an institution shall be entitled to participate in the funding provided by this section for the system in which it is created."

This provision would require two-thirds of both the Texas House and the Texas Senate to establish UT-Houston as a component campus and instructional site. No scolding or editorializing can override this statutory requirement and inconvenient truth. The current Legislature is struggling to fund higher education at previous levels, and will surely not fully accommodate new enrollment growth. What would possess our legislators to add yet another institution in Houston, when it cannot fully fund those current institutions?

And what will happen if this doomed project disappears? Somehow, the arguments do not acknowledge the successful UH Energy Research Park, a nearly 75-acre office and industrial park complex, located at the former Schlumberger corporate site, adjacent to the UH campus off Interstate 45. It has almost three-quarters of a million square feet of space for office/warehouse, industrial and light manufacturing use, and will provide exactly the research infrastructure touted by UT and its partisans.

Tomlinson scolds UH and others for their blindness in not accepting the "brilliant idea" of focusing on data analytics, the proposed new focus of the proposed new "campus" in Houston. I am reminded of the meaningless and unhelpful advice proferred in the 1967 movie, "The Graduate," wherein Mr. McGuire imparts to the character, Benjamin, the importance of "Plastics." ("There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?")

I do not know whether to laugh or to cry.

We do not need wasteful and inefficient duplication, continued inequality across the state's far-flung higher-ed institutional map, and stealth tactics to gain political points.

This was a bad idea, not a great gift that the recipients simply failed to recognize.

UT, keep in your own lane.

Olivas is the William B. Bates Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of Houston. This commentary solely reflects his opinion and does not reflect UH or UH System policy.
Thank you, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, representatives in the House and Sens. Kel Seliger, R-Amarillo, and Robert Nichols, R-Jacksonville, for standing for what's best for all children and against school vouchers. There are more Texans than you know who support your courageous stand: from "educrats" to homeschoolers; private schoolers to charter schoolers; both Democrats and Republicans. We are watching and we know who stood up for kids and who shouted them down. We know who voted their conscience and who tried to hide behind the system. We know who claimed to be "in charge" and who really took charge and did what's best for all kids.

While we owe many in Austin our sincere thanks for standing firm thus far, the fight is not over yet. If you think vouchers were dead after the House voted not to fund them in the budget, think again.

Our senators and representatives are currently in conference committee to negotiate a reconciliation between the House and Senate budgets. Vouchers continue to loom in the background as the proverbial line in the sand drawn by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick months ago. Expect a final push for vouchers and expect it to be framed as being for the "poor, little special education" kids.

That's what happened Thursday when Sen. Larry Taylor, R-Friendswood, added vouchers to the school finance substitute bill CSHB 21. Taylor's amendment will allow vouchers for students who receive special education services in school districts with the Texas Education Agency indicator "Needs Assistance" for special education.

Please don't be fooled. Vouchers are no better for children with disabilities than they are for any other child. And as with other TEA indicators, "Needs Assistance" is not a good measure of any student's educational needs. As with other state-mandated indicators, this TEA determination is based largely on a school district's Performance-Based Monitoring Analysis System, which includes ratings based on an unmodified STAAR test. A general standardized test given to children with individualized education plans is not an accurate measure of what a child with a disability knows. If used at all, this indicator should be a basis for improving public schools, not as a reason to segregate children with disabilities from their neighborhood peers through vouchers.

More important, because of certain voucher requirements and legal considerations, most of the children the state claims to want to help will not even qualify for or be able to use a voucher.

What's more, Patrick's voucher "savings" calculations don't add up. Vouchers will not save the state money. What Patrick isn't saying is that the state is not paying the entire education bill to begin with.

Vouchers will only put a heavier financial burden on public schools and on taxpayers who have to foot the majority of the bill (currently over 60 percent statewide) through local property taxes. Fixed costs remain even if students leave the public school with a voucher.

More children are rejected under Senate Bill 3 (SB3) than are helped, and private schools may reject anyone: kids who struggle academically; kids who have language barriers; kids with disabilities; kids who don't have transportation; kids who don't have the money to make up the cost of tuition. All of these children will likely be rejected.

In addition, SB3 is funded with public dollars but requires no accountability or regulation for the school of "choice." This begs the question: If unregulated, publicly funded vouchers are truly good for kids, then why don't our legislators simply allow the same flexibility for public schools?

Many of us who serve Texas students everyday have begged lawmakers to work with us to find real solutions for all kids, replicate model programs in the state that are improving struggling schools, and ensure compliance and accountability for all schools so kids can stay in their communities. But, it seems, for some at least, this session has been more about ideology than what will really help all kids.

As we enter the final weeks of the session, don't let legislators hide behind procedures and closed-door meetings. Let them know you're watching. Let them hear your voice. Let them know we elected them to improve public education, not turn their backs on it and the millions of children who will be educated there, without a voucher or any other place to go.

Tassin serves as president of the Fort Bend ISD board of trustees and is a mother of three daughters, one of whom has a disability.
Two Texas County schools were among many in Missouri that received forgiveness from the state for days missed due to flooding.

Licking and Plato were both granted waivers from the Missouri Department of Education following the recent historic flooding that forced the districts to cancel classes. State officials said the situation was similar to 2011, when about 20 districts requested calendar waivers due to flooding.

Plato said it was forgiven for missing May 1. The districts last day is May 19.

Missouri schools are required to hold 1,044 hours of instruction time each year. Schools normally build extra days in to their years calendar to account for possible closures due to snow.

State law allows for the commissioner of education to grant a waiver to excuse school districts from the minimum school calendar requirement in these extreme cases.
TAIPEI, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Preferential policies allowing Taiwan residents to work, study and travel on the Chinese mainland embodied the goodwill and sincerity of the Chinese mainland, Taiwan academics told Xinhua Thursday.

The Chinese mainland Wednesday published a series of preferential policies for Taiwan residents, including easier access to transportation, employment, education and legal services.

The move was welcomed by academics in Taiwan, who believed it would help promote peaceful communication and cross-Strait relations.

"Cross-Strait ties have been at a deadlock as the administration of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has refused to recognize the 1992 Consensus," Wang Kunyi, professor at the Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies of Tamkang University, told Xinhua.

"However, these new measures showed that the Chinese mainland, has always and will continue to, adhere to the 1992 Consensus and promote people-to-people exchanges and cooperation, no matter which party holds power on the island," he said.

Ting Jen-fang, professor at the Graduate Institute of Political Economy of Cheng Kung University said not only would the new preferential policies improve the lives of Taiwan residents on the mainland, it would also increase their willingness to work and live there, and gain their support for peaceful development of cross-Strait relations.

Under the new measures, Taiwan residents can be employed in public institutions in six more provincial-level regions and Taiwan academics working on the mainland can apply for state-level research projects, including projects from the National Social Science Fund.

In addition, Taiwan residents can now purchase and collect tickets via self-service ticket machines in train stations in many major cities and provinces.

Lin Hsin-hsiung, Vice President of the Peace Research Center for the Cross-Strait at Shu-Te University, said these measures will have a positive impact on Taiwan residents, and therefore be good for cross-Strait relations.

"The measures are more targeted and detailed this time, with many serving a specific group or occupation. This means the Chinese mainland is opening its market to Taiwan, and more Taiwan residents are expected to benefit from it," Wang said.

In order to help Taiwan graduates from mainland higher education institutions find jobs, the Ministry of Education has told institutions to standardize enrollment regulations and protect the legal rights of Taiwan students, which Ting believed will open new doors for Taiwan graduates.

"Starting salaries for recent graduates in Taiwan are around 30,000 to 40,000 New Taiwan dollars (1,000 to 1,333 U.S. dollars), with very few opportunities in high-end industries. But if they go to the Chinese mainland, they will have a better chance at securing a higher paid job," he said.

"Preferential policies, such as more job opportunities in public institutions, offer Taiwan graduates a better quality of life and allow them to integrate into the Chinese mainland," Ting said.
A new facility for area teenagers to build friendships and their faith opens this weekend.

The grand opening of the Launch Student Center on the campus of Faith Fellowship is 7 p.m. Saturday. Doors open at 6 p.m.

The 4080 facility features two levels and many amenities for teenagers to worship, have fun and hang out.

This student center is going to be a huge blessing to our church, community and teenagers, said Jeff McNiell, youth pastor at Faith Fellowship. Our vision was to build a place where students can encounter Jesus, build faith-based friendships and safely spend Saturday nights.

The opening night will feature a service with contemporary worship. Afterwards, students in grades 7-12 can stay as late as midnight to enjoy the many features of the building. Among them are:

Rock climbing wall with two lanes.

Jeff Crites puts some of the final touches on the stage at the Launch Student Center.

Pool and ping pong tables.

Video gaming area with XBox One and Nintendo NES.

Regulation basketball goal.

Hoverboards.

Full kitchen for meals and snacks.

Also in the student center is a homework area  McNiell said an after-school program will kick off next school year  and seating as well as a stage with hazer and moving lights.

The student center will be used each Wednesday night for the churchs youth group, Launch Student Ministries. It will also be open the first Saturday of each month for a contemporary worship service and a place for teenagers to hang out.

The public is invited to attend the opening night. The church is just past Dogs Bluff on Highway 17 west of Houston.

We are grateful God has given us the opportunity to build this facility to reach our young people, McNiell said. Beyond the cool factor of the building and fun features, we are excited to have a place where students will begin or strengthen their relationship with Jesus.

For more information, contact the church office at 417-967-4680 or following Launch on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat or Instagram at @launch54.
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.
generate risk pooling to reduce financial pressure on workers made redundant

reduce insecurity and worry

complement existing programs under the Adapt and Grow initiative

the Career Support Programme for PMETs (professionals, managers, executives, and technicians)

the Work Trial Programme for rank and file workers

subsidies to equip workers with skills for new jobs

schemes like ComCare that provide short term-relief to Singaporeans while they are out of a job

Workers Party (WP) has once again called for a redundancy insurance scheme for workers in between jobs, after being encouraged by public feedback. Non-constituency Member of Parliament (MP) Daniel Goh outlined in Parliament on Monday the schemes three principles:Although redundancies declined by about 11.8% last quarter over the previous one, the government expects redundancies to remain elevated as some sectors continue to experience cyclical weakness and businesses restructure.Developed countries have implemented some forms of this scheme for years. However, Second Minister for Manpower Josephine Teo said it also comes with downsides.According to her, the city-state should not be compared to such countries, as their unemployment rates are generally significantly higher. Many people in these countries can see themselves having to depend on the payouts. As a result, their attitude is if we have to pay premiums, so be it.The most serious downside is that automatic insurance payouts reduce the incentive to find work. The minister cited studies in Denmark, which showed that that while many jobless persons do get a job within the payout period, many more wait until just before the benefits expire to take up available jobs.In other words, the jobs are there but the unemployed workers delay taking them up. This is a real pity, because the longer a person stays out of a job, the harder it is to find work. As a result, long term unemployment goes up.Another downside is the cost of redundancy insurance said the minister. Under opposition partys proposal, a 0.1% of monthly salary will be shared equally between employers and employees. She emphasized that rates were much higher in countries with similar benefits, such as Canada (4.4%) and South Korea (2.2%).She said a more realistic rate would be at least 1% to 2% of wages. [T]hen we have to consider how it will raise costs for employers. That worries me, especially for SMEs.The proposal also raises several other questions regarding employers obligations, said the minister. Will employers offset the premiums by paying their workers lower salaries? Will employers feel less obligation to retrain and retain, resulting in higher redundancies? Will employers be less willing to pay workers retrenchment benefits, since they have already paid the insurance premiums for redundancy?Teo said employment support is still the best way forward to guard against unemployment. She enumerated several initiatives already in place such as:We have not hesitated to give generous wage support and training subsidies, but always conditional on the worker making the effort, by attending a training course, or accepting a placement opportunity. This approach has worked, said Teo.
BEIJING, May 11 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks Thursday with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, and both agreed to boost bilateral all-round strategic cooperative partnership up to a new stage.

Xi recalled his meeting with Quang last November on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Economic Leaders' Meeting in Lima of Peru, in which they reached important consensus on deepening bilateral all-round strategic cooperation.

Xi invited Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) Central Committee, to visit China in January this year. Xi and Trong had in-depth exchanges on major issues of common concern, and clarified the direction of future China-Vietnam ties.

Xi said both sides should work closely to implement consensus reached by state leaders, cement cooperation in various areas, and boost their all-round strategic partnership to a new level.

"The two countries should boost maritime cooperation, accumulate consensus and expand common interests, and control their differences through dialogue," Xi said.

Quang agreed to properly handle disputes and step up bilateral maritime cooperation.

China firmly supports Vietnam's development path suitable to its national conditions, and will stick to a friendly policy towards Vietnam and facilitate sustained and stable growth of bilateral ties, Xi said.

He urged both sides to maintain high-level exchanges, keep timely contacts on bilateral relations and issues of common concern, and to adhere to the correct direction of bilateral relations.

Xi called on to make full use of the China-Vietnam steering committee on cooperation, combine their development strategies, accelerate the building of cross-border economic cooperation zones, and deepen cooperation in such areas as capacity, infrastructure building, investment and trade.

The Chinese president also proposed expanding cultural exchanges as well as cooperation in education, medical care, youth and cultural industries.

He asked both sides to cement coordination in multilateral frameworks such as the United Nations, APEC, China-ASEAN and the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Frameworks.

Quang is on a state visit to China from May 11 to 15, and will attend the upcoming Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15 in Beijing.

"The forum will help gather consensus and enhance global cooperation, to push forward economic globalization in a more open, inclusive, balanced and win-win direction," Xi said.

He called on the two countries to take the opportunity of the forum to synergize their strategies and boost substantial cooperation.

Quang, for his part, said it is a set policy and a priority of Vietnam to consolidate friendship with China and boost healthy and stable growth of ties.

The CPV, the Vietnamese government and people will never forget China's precious support for its national liberation and construction, he said.

Quang suggested both sides to keep high-level visits, expand cooperation in trade, agriculture, environment, infrastructure, tourism, culture, security as well as in the Belt and Road Initiative.

He congratulated China's development achievements in recent years, and wished full success of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China later this year.

The two presidents witnessed the signing of a series of bilateral cooperation agreements ranging from diplomacy, economic technology, e-commerce, to infrastructure building and education.

This is Quang's first visit to China since he took office in April 2016.

Altogether 29 heads of state and government leaders will attend the upcoming forum. It marks the highest-profile international meeting on the Belt and Road Initiative since it was proposed by China in 2013.
The initiative at Oxford High School calls on students to share their mental health stories and list the positive people in their life in an effort to combat teen suicide.

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Michigan high school gives students hope with "13 Reasons Why Not" to commit suicide. https://t.co/TdhknUuDlqpic.twitter.com/URGHLHBrrz  ABC News (@ABC) May 10, 2017

On May 1, the first recording went out on the school intercom, recited by 18-year-old Riley Juntti.

Hey, its Riley, Riley Juntti. Don't adjust your  whatever device youre listening on. Its me, live and in stereo. No return engagements, no encore and this time, absolutely no requests, the recording said, according to Today.com.

Junttis opening lines are the exact same monologue used by character Hannah Baker in 13 Reasons Why. In the show, Baker kills herself and leaves behind 13 tapes listing specific people and what they did to her to make her take such drastic action.

The schools 13 Reasons Why Not project is a stark contrast to the show, as it makes students focus on positive encounters that helped them get through tough times.

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The show often made it seem as though suicide is the only option when youre in a very, very dark place, Juntti, who suffers from depression and was previously in an abusive relationship, told WJRT. I think it glorifies suicide, especially to such a young audience.

Speaking to the Washington Post, the high school senior added, [The show] didnt raise mental health awareness, and it didnt give resources. That was very troubling for us; we wanted to fix that with our project.

As a result, Juntti and six other students took over the schools morning announcements to share positive mental health stories over 13 days. Their main goal was to remind students that they are not alone.

Dean of students, Pamela Fine, originally came up with the idea for 13 Reasons Why Not before handing it off to Juntti and the other students.

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"The show just took the viewer down a path of suicide is inevitable, but it is not inevitable."

There is never one reason why, there are not 13 reasons, there are not one million reasons why. So we started focusing on the why nots, Fine told Today.com about the project. Hannah Baker had a million why nots, but we didn't talk about those. The show just took the viewer down a path of suicide is inevitable, but it is not inevitable.

13 Reasons Why Not is especially significant to Oxford High School as the school community lost one of its students to suicide in 2013.

According to the Canadian Mental Health Association, Canadas youth suicide rate is the third highest in the industrialized world. Yet, only one in five Canadian children in need of mental health services receives it.

Want to know if your teen is mentally healthy? Here are the signs to look for.

Are you in a crisis? If you need help, contact your local crisis centre. If you know someone who may be having thoughts of suicide, visit suicideprevention.ca to learn how to talk about suicide with the person you're worried about.

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Youth Mental Health Issues And Suicide In Canada See Gallery
There are many phrases you should be wary of when speaking to a woman who has just given birth. "Is the baby supposed to be crying like that?" for one. "You look exhausted," for two.

But one thing you never want to say to someone who's given birth by caesarean section is this: "Oh, you got off so easy!"

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In an Instagram post that's gone viral, Melbourne-based blogger Olivia White put up a picture of her C-section scar from last year, noting, "This is what you really look like a few hours post c-section  To anyone who thinks it's the easy way out, we'll [sic] try having a 6 inch gash in your abdomen like a gutted shark  who had the body parts of the surfer  it ate retrieved! That's then sewn back together with fishing wire while it feels like your vital organs are trying to escape!"

White had faced plenty of criticism during her second pregnancy about being public with her choice to have an elective C-section. Her older daughter had been born via emergency C-section, and medical complications meant that White couldn't hold her or bond with her for the first few days.

"Constantly people remind me that I can still have a natural birth even after having a C-section previously. And some even go as far to suggest that electing to have the baby via caesarean is an easy way out and even made disparaging comment about being 'too posh to push'  insert blank stare of disbelief," she wrote in Mamamia last year.

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"So, going into this pregnancy I knew from day one how I was going to birth this baby, and it might not be for the reasons you think. While I know every birth is different and there certainly is a chance I could have this baby vaginally, the most important thing to me this time was having a positive and empowering birth experience."

At a time when there are many opinions about the "best" way to give birth, including many articles that warn of the dangers of C-sections, it's not surprising White felt the need to publicize her scar and the effort that came with it  because as she writes, "If it wasn't for the ability to deliver my babies this way, they might not be here today."

And while White received messages of support and praise, there are still plenty of people out there all too willing to dismiss the difficulties of a caesarean birth as compared to a vaginal one.

In 2016, a woman named Raye Lee posted pictures of her C-section scar on Facebook, accompanied by graphic images and a description of the emergency situation that led to her son's birth.

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She described not only the cut made to remove her son, but also the aftermath that many people don't consider.

"You use your core muscles for literally everything... even sitting down, imagine not being able to use them because they have literally been shredded and mangled by a doctor and not being able to repair them for 6+ weeks because your body has to do it naturally," wrote Lee.

"If it wasn't for the ability to deliver my babies this way, they might not be here today."

In White's comments, she's more than in agreement. The family blogger, who often posts glamour shots of her kids and husband, also points out the "kangaroo pouch" she now has and wouldn't change, which resonated hugely with commenters.

"Pouch sisters for life ," wrote one. "What about when you first get up out of bed (in most cases not even 24hrs after they slice you up) and you literally feel like your guts/vag are going to fall out "

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No matter how that baby comes out of a woman's body, it's hard work  not just during, but after too. And every mom could use support for that.
Winning the Miss Black pageant, put on by the University of Texas' Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, may have been a dream come true for journalism student Rachael Malonson. But not everyone was sure she was deserving of the title.

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Shortly after the school's National Association Of Black Journalists chapter announced that Malonson, who is biracial, was chosen, many questioned whether or not she was "actually" black, or "black enough" to hold the crown.

Introducing your 2017 Miss Black University of Texas. Our Vice President @RachaelMalonson  pic.twitter.com/DtBfd2AW98  UT NABJ (@UTNABJ) May 1, 2017

What is Miss Black UT's nationality?  honey  (@_ParisXO) May 2, 2017

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Miss Perhaps Maybe But Not-So-Black UT  Bandicoot (@GodComplex__) May 2, 2017

The pageant was established in 1982 by the frat's Texas chapter "to support and uplift African American women," who historically, they say, had limited access to scholarships on campus.

Sadly, the reaction came as no surprise to the student, who told ABC 13 in early May that she herself questioned whether or not she would be eligible to participate, despite having a black biological parent.

"I remember texting my sister before and I was like, honestly I don't even think I'm going to place," Malonson told the news network.

"I don't fit the stereotypical look that you would think a black person would fit."

"I don't fit the stereotypical look that you would think a black person would fit."

And the beauty queen isn't the first person in the spotlight to speak up on this issue.

Actress Meghan Markle, who is also biracial, penned an essay in Elle U.K. back in 2015 about not being able to land roles due to her racially ambiguous looks.

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"I wasn't black enough for the black roles and I wasn't white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn't book a job," she recalled.

But despite the backlash, Malonson is still standing up for herself.

Hey Graduation, I can see you right around the corner  #hookem A post shared by Rachael Malonson (@rachael212) on May 11, 2017 at 8:44am PDT

Describing herself as someone who has "fairly straight hair and an olive skin tone," she told Cosmo, "This was a beautiful opportunity that allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of who I am as a person ... I could genuinely be myself."

The student is also grateful that she was able to inspire other biracial women as well.

"One father personally reached out to me to tell me that his little daughter is biracial and struggles with her identity and that I was an inspiration for his daughter and his family," she said.

The fraternity also came to her defence, describing Malonson as "a perfect embodiment of the ideals and precepts of the Miss Black University of Texas scholarship pageant."

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The Iota Delta Chapter Releases a Statement Regarding the 2017 Miss Black University of Texas pic.twitter.com/uJ8wqmqvQG  Iota Delta NUPEs (@ID_NUPEs) May 5, 2017

Malson's win, the fraternity notes, was thanks to the community service portion of her presentation, which she intends to implement after graduation.

"Rachel introduced a program to help diversify journalism through mediums seldom explored by African-Americans," they wrote.

"The unfortunate reality is that her victory has been overshadowed by a constant barrage of negative commentary regarding her racial background. It is ironic that the very industry Rachel seeks to help reform has served as a source of legitimacy for the fringe elements who use social media to spew hate."

"It is ironic that the very industry Rachel seeks to help reform has served as a source of legitimacy for the fringe elements who use social media to spew hate."

As for the naysayers, Malonson is hopeful that through this experience, they can start to see blackness through a different lens.

"I hope their eyes can be opened to know that we come in all different shades and don't have to look a certain way to be black," she later explained to Cosmo. "I am humbly honoured to have already been able to impact people all around the world by standing up for who I am as a biracial black woman."

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A substitute teacher at a Bronx elementary school in New York got the boot from the City Education Department after allegedly ripping the hijab off the head of an eight-year-old girl because she refused to get out of his chair.

Police sources said that after Safa Alzockary misbehaved in her class at Public School 76 on May 2, the substitute teacher, 31-year-old Oghenetega Edah, demanded her to remove her hijab, a traditional headscarf worn by some Muslim women to demonstrate modesty or devotion to God.

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P.S. 76 The Bennington School, Bronx, New York

When the young student refused, that's when Edah allegedly ripped the hijab off her head. New York Daily News reports the incident caused irritation to Alzockary's right eye and the frightened girl had to be taken to Jacobi Medical Center where a doctor checked for damage to her eye.

No harm was caused, but the eight-year-old said she did not feel safe at school.

"He said, I want to see your hair, I thought he was joking," the young girl said during an interview with PIX11. "I was crying. For what are we coming to school? For learning? Or to fight with a teacher who is taking off the hijab of Muslim girls?"

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Alzockary said she repeatedly told her teacher "you can't" as he pulled off the headscarf, laughing. After the first yank, the student said she fixed her hijab, but after the second pull, she ran out of class.

"This alleged behaviour is completely unacceptable," a statement from Michael Aciman, a Department of Education spokesman, said. "This individual was removed from the school immediately and his employment has been terminated."

Alzockary's father noted during an interview with PIX11 that the police department are also looking into the case.

As for the little girl who experienced such hurt that day, she also learned a valuable lesson: one of standing up for who you are and what you believe in.

"I feel so proud of myself that I handled this," the eight-year-old told PIX11. "Even if the teacher still took off my hijab, I didnt go back to school without my hijab, I still wore a hijab. And Im proud of my religion."

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Cultural appropriation has become one of those Trump-era terms that gets people literally all a-twitter. But there's one thing you may notice when the topic hits your feeds and timelines -- the people who are dismissing it as a joke are, well, white folks.

Like late at night on May 11, when a host of media bigwigs "hilariously" started Twitter-organizing an actual "Appropriation Prize" in reaction to the resignation of Write Magazine's Hal Niedzviecki after online uproar surrounding his editorial calling for one.

(More on that in a sec.)

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It began with former Rogers' exec Ken Whyte. Soon, National Post editor-in-chief Ann Marie Owens, Maclean's editor-in-chief Alison Uncles and CBC managing editor Steve Ladurantaye joined in, along with many columnists from various publications.

By this morning Steve Ladurantaye had tweeted an apology for his "dumb glib tweet about a dumb glib idea" and Owens joined in with "Apologies for any offence caused by what began as free speech protest thread -- Twitter no place for glib."

But their not-glib point was made clear if you noticed the pale skin tone of everyone piling on in that thread.

"In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." -- Hal Niedzviecki

Before you bombard my feed and timeline, I'm not in anyway saying these white people (or others) are racist because they have an opposing view to mine about this issue. I'm saying that there's a reason why they don't think cultural appropriation is a big deal, and that reason is because to them it's not a big deal.

It's the same reason why so many men don't think catcalling is a concern -- they're not scared by it and, besides, it's just a compliment, right?

What is cultural appropriation? Consider Elvis who, as Public Enemy's Chuck D once pointed out in "Fight the Power," was "a hero to most but never meant shit" to him. The reason why is because Elvis appropriated the black minority's culture of music and made it palatable by repackaging it selling it to the white majority.

Now did he honestly love the music by the black artists before? Was he legitimately inspired by it? Sure was. Daily Beast even reported an interview he gave in 1957 where he said:

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"A lot of people seem to think I started this business. But rock 'n' roll was here a long time before I came along. Nobody can sing that kind of music like colored people. Let's face it; I can't sing it like Fats Domino can. I know that. But I always liked that kind of music."

Nevertheless, Elvis was already dubbed the "King of Rock'n'Roll" and embraced by the white media and white audiences. He wasn't alone, either. As the Cambridge History of American Music points out, "It seems that many Americans wanted black music without the black people in it." By the 1970s rock'n'roll was an almost entirely white genre.

That's the background for why the black community gets understandably upset when, say, a hip-hop Grammy goes to Macklemore instead of Kendrick Lamar and why you see headlines like "Iggy Azalea Doesn't Win Grammy for Best Rap Album, Twitter Sighs With Relief."

Now that last bit is funny because it's true. You're not hearing about cultural appropriation more nowadays because people weren't upset before. It's because social media has given the voiceless a voice and so minority complaints that once went unheard by the white majority are now being amplified online.

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Just ask Niedzviecki. He is the now-former editor of Write Magazine after publishing "Winning the Appropriation Prize," in which he encouraged white, middle-class writers to culturally appropriate even more! Oh, did I mention the issue was devoted to indigenous writing? Yes, really.

His editorial began with him proclaiming "I don't believe in cultural appropriation" -- as if a white person saying this could just make the whole issue go away already.

"In my opinion, anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities," he added. "I'd go so far as to say that there should even be an award for doing so -- the Appropriation Prize for best book by an author who writes about people who aren't even remotely like her or him."

He does not actually understand why people are upset.

His point was that CanLit is "exhaustingly white and middle-class" and the problem is that these people too often write about being white and middle-class. The solution, in his mind, is not to open doors for more people of colour, but to have those exhaustingly white and middle-class folks write about people of colour instead or, as he phrased it, "explore the lives of people who aren't like you."

Now Niedzviecki was the editor of a print magazine about writing -- published by the Writers' Union of Canada no less -- so it would be hard-pressed to claim that his argument wasn't intentional. I mean, the section was literally labelled "Writer's Prompt." But that didn't stop him.

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First social media blew up over the "clueless and thoughtless" editorial -- thanks to posts by the likes of editorial board member Nikki Reimer, the issue's indigenous contributors like Alicia Elliott, and indigenous scholars like Daniel Heath Justice.

Essence of appropriation debate: when so much has been forcibly taken from Indigenous peoples, it's unethical to demand voice & story too. -- Daniel Heath Justice (@justicedanielh) May 11, 2017

Next, the Writers' Union of Canada released an apology and Niedzviecki resigned.

But then he did an interview with the Globe and Mail in which he claimed "I had no intention of offending anyone with the article."

Of course he didn't. He does not actually understand why people are upset. FYI: It's not the "charged" term that is upsetting for people, it's the act of cultural appropriation.

It's the act of hipsters wearing headdresses at music festivals. It's the act of white girls dressing up as "Sexy Squaws" on Halloween and, as Niedzviecki of all people should be aware, it's the act of Joseph Boyden claiming indigenous heritage to sell books, occupying a too-limited space in exhaustingly white and middle-class CanLit that could have gone to indigenous writers.

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And, yes, it's the act of gaslighting the real existence of cultural appropriation in a magazine issue allegedly devoted to amplifying the voices of the historically appropriated.

White people do identity politics, too - they just call it "politics."

And, of course, while indigenous writers have taken to Twitter and Facebook to express their outrage, Globe columnist Elizabeth Renzetti is arguing "unpopular ideas shouldn't be silenced" as if that's all cultural appropriation is: "unpopular." (Note: the headline was later softened to "Cultural appropriation: Why can't we debate it?")

Because, to her, it's no big deal.

It's also no big deal to Walrus magazine editor Jonathan Kay, who tweeted "The mobbing of Hal Niedzviecki is what we get when we let Identity-politics fundamentalists run riot

Sad & shameful."

(White people do identity politics, too -- they just call it "politics.")

It's also no big deal to the National Post's Christie Blatchford whose column was headlined "Magazine editor the latest to be silenced for the sin of free speech."

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Let's look at how this could have played out instead.

This week was also supposed to be the opening of a gallery show by Toronto painter Amanda PL but it was cancelled after concerns that her art appropriates the indigenous Woodland-style of Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau.

Or as Newsweek put it "WHITE PAINTER LOSES ART SHOW OVER CULTURAL APPROPRIATION DEBATE."

Except Visions Gallery co-owner Tony Magee has said this just isn't true.

White people do need to "explore the lives of people who aren't like you." But you don't do that by stealing their stories.

"We didn't make our decision out of political correctness. We didn't do it as caving to pressure. We did it because we opened our eyes," Magee told the Canadian Press. "It's really offensive to have people accuse us of caving in and not being willing to stand up for what we believe in. Well, we are standing up for what we believe in."

Now that's the proper way to handle the concerns of marginalized people.

Niedzviecki was right about one thing, though -- white people do need to "explore the lives of people who aren't like you."

But you don't do that by stealing their stories. You do it by reading them, by listening to them and by sharing them.

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CORRECTION: A previous version of this blog described Ken Whyte as a current Rogers employee.

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"Mr. President, if you run the same campaign as you did in 2008, you are going to lose."

According to former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, he gave this blunt advice to Barack Obama after the U.S. president asked him to run his 2012 re-election campaign.

Messina recounted the conversation in a keynote address to delegates at the B.C. Liberal conference last November. His message resonated loudly among political insiders who wondered how Christy Clark would make her pitch to voters the following spring.

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In hindsight, Messina's message should have been given to Clark, too.

"Madame premier, if your campaign focuses on the same jobs-and-economy theme as in 2013, you will struggle to get voters' support."

Indeed, this is how the election campaign played out. The B.C. Liberals' re-election strategy was to campaign, as they say, "from the right," by touting their record on jobs and economic prosperity.

This is in spite of the fact that Clark had no political competition on her right. The current B.C. Conservative Party is moribund and leaderless.

It was a scenario that allowed the left-leaning B.C. NDP to partly occupy the political middle, through promised breaks on bridge tolls and new investments in social programs.

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Sticking to their tried-and-true economic message box may have cost the B.C. Liberals their majority.

In the end, Clark's B.C. Liberals won many rural seats, while the B.C. NDP held much of the Island and swept practically every swing seat in the Lower Mainland.

Party stalwarts I spoke to on election night agree that sticking to their tried-and-true economic message box may have cost the B.C. Liberals their majority in the Legislature.

With a balanced budget and strong economic indicators in place, the party could have afforded to show its kinder, gentler side to voters. A wise move would have been to mimic the successful strategy behind former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron's manifesto.

In the months leading up to the U.K.'s 2015 national election, the Conservative leader was deeply unpopular among voters. Opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband by contrast was seen as a rising star, and the presumptive prime minister in waiting.

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In response, the U.K. Conservatives crafted their manifesto. Much of the language could have been easily adopted for Clark's campaign.

"Over the last five years, we have put our country back on the right track... Britain is now one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world. We are getting our national finances back under control. We have halved our deficit as a share of our economy. More people are in work than ever before."

After the introductory boasts, the manifesto asks readers the following:

"How do we make sure that the recovery benefits every one of our citizens, at every stage of their lives? "For your newborn baby, there will be the world's best medical care. For your child, there will be a place at an excellent school. As you look for your first job, we are building a healthy economy that provides a good career for you with a decent income. As you look for that first home, we will make sure the Government is there to help. As you raise your family, we will help you with child care. And as you grow older, we will ensure that you have dignity in retirement."

These subjects sound a lot like the ones British Columbians are discussing among themselves, yet you barely heard about them mentioned on the campaign trail.

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Not surprisingly, Britons embraced the idea that they, too, could benefit from their country's prosperity. In return, they re-elected Cameron's Conservative government with a sizable majority, which led Miliband to resign as Labour's leader.

I am convinced that if the B.C. Liberals' campaign message spoke to those in our province who are trying to make ends meet, we would be looking at a much different electoral outcome for Clark and her party on May 9.

As for John Horgan -- in an ironic twist, his fate now rests in the hands of the B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver. If the B.C. NDP does not form government after 16 years in Opposition, the party will start wrapping the campaign tour bus with somebody else's face before you can count to 10.

The political futures of all three party leaders are hanging in the balance while we wait for those Courtenay-Comox absentee ballots to be counted.

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The five things you need to know on Friday, May 12

1) ARMS AND THE MAN

Today Jeremy Corbyn uses a speech at Chatham House to declare I am not a pacifist. But he adds the key rider that military action should only take place under international law and as a genuine last resort.

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And its those two qualifications, as well as his long record, that for many Labour working class voters turns this whole issue into a set of when did you last beat your wife? questions. For them, the more he talks about diplomacy, the more he sounds like a reluctant patriot. Add in worries about his decisiveness and competence and you can see why pollsters and focus groups show even the partys core vote worries it cant trust Corbyn in a crisis.

Now, of course the Iraq war was not popular with many voters of all political leanings. And Corbyns team think his stance plays to his strengths, of being on the right side of history, and can cite Wilson standing up to the US over Vietnam, for example. Corbyns speech makes clear he would end the special relationship with the States, preferring an independent foreign policy made in London, a big, big policy shift that risks getting overlooked. He may look more like Billy Bob Thornton than Hugh Grant, but this really is his Love, Actually moment.

Not for nothing was Corbyn referred to as the Foreign Secretary of the leftwing Campaign Group of Labour MPs in the 1980s and 1990s. This is his specialist subject and his passion. Yet his manifestos line on troop deployment - We will never send them into harms way unless all other options have been exhausted - could hamstring the armed forces in a rapidly-evolving situation. His own MPs point out that diplomacy is rarely exhausted by regimes who want to string you along.

Overnight, Tory minister Mike Penning has been quick to wrap their view of Corbyns stance on ISIS with hints about his Sinn Fein links and his wider defence stance, saying: you cant take tea with terrorists who order attacks on innocent civilians on our streets. (Corbyn's team point out it was Owen Smith, not the leader, who wanted talks with ISIS). But it will be Theresa May who really gets her political bayonet out today in a raid behind what used to be enemy lines in Labours North East heartland. Proud and patriotic working class people in towns and cities across Britain have not deserted the Labour Party  Jeremy Corbyn has deserted them. Jezza the deserter: thats the real message from the PM.

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2) JEZZA LIST MANIFESTO

Despite the shambles headlines, Team Corbyn are quite happy this morning that their manifesto has been covered extensively across the media for two days running. And with a wish-list as long as this, its no wonder they want as much time as possible (theres the formal launch next week dont forget) to tell the voters how different a Labour government would be.

In many ways, the very long policy document approved and amended yesterday isnt as left-wing as many newspapers make out. It is turbo-charged Milibandism rather than a revolution. Publicly owned railways, energy and mail are mainstream in many European countries. But it is at least honest about putting up taxes to pay for public services (though a big question mark remains on the income tax detail).

And as the Mirror/ComRes poll today shows, many of the individual policies are popular (on nationalisations, the pension age kept at 66, conductors on trains, taxing the rich). But that same poll includes the killer problem: 56% say Corbyn would be a disaster as Prime Minister, while just 30% think he should be given a fair chance at leading the country.

On policy, ComRes found the Tory plan to cap immigration at 100,000 a year is popular too. As we revealed yesterday, Labours manifesto was amended to include not just a reference to ending EU freedom of movement but also a line about control of immigration not just management of it. But Barry Gardiner on Newsnight seemed to undo the careful compromises by declaring Labour would put our economic policy before our immigration policy and that immigration numbers will always go both down and up according to the needs of the economy.

The one hope among centrist Labour types is that because Corbyn now owns the manifesto, he will have to own any catastrophic defeat. But many of them also know thats no comfort if they are swept away on the Tory tide and JC clings to the wreckage, blaming the media and the PLP. On Question Time last night, Tory minister Ben Wallace roadtested an attack line that will make Labour candidates wince. For them, Corbyns manifesto will be the longest P45 [note] in history, he said.

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3) OTHER THERESA

Theresa Mays LBC session last night was a largely dull affair, but at least she answered a range of questions from the punters (and Nick Ferrari) and we learned how sad she was not to have had children, her faith after her parents death and even (sharp gear change) how she could cook a slow-roast lamb for Donald Trump. She even coped with a Ferrari numbers test, responding swiftly with about 79,500 when asked how many soldiers were in the army. But on the big question of tax, she had a not exactly reassuring line that she had no plans to raise the level of tax.

Sadly, the PM was not asked about David Camerons foray into the election yesterday, when he said a big May majority would allow her to stand up to those backing an extreme Brexit. Yet today she will underline her ambition to get a landslide by launching that raid into Labour territory in the North East, where last week the Tories scored that remarkable victory in the Teesside mayoral election. Put your trust in me is the line, as well as jabs at people like Diane Abbott who cant add up

Last night Barry Gardiner suggested Labours local election losses were only in rural areas, to which Emily Maitlis had the zinger: Rural areas, like Glasgow. She could have added like Teesside or the West Midlands.

The PM is continuing to make the party in her own image and those words Theresa Mays Team really do describe the candidates list finalised at close of nominations yesterday. The Tories have a record number of women wannabe MPs (though its still only 30% to Labours 41%) but many are in winnable seats. A former co-founder of Women2Win, the Tory pressure group, May has succeeded in cajoling, persuading local associations to pick female candidates.

On BME candidates, senior Tories are delighted that - unlike Labour - they have a record of picking non-white candidates in majority white constituencies (Gyimah, Kwarteng, Cleverly, Patel, Vara) and have two more in this list (Kemi Badenoch in Saffron Walden and Bim Afolami in Hitchin and Harpenden). But the Times today reports unease that there are just five BME hopefuls in the top 100 Tory target seats.

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BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR

Watch a voter in Scotland tell Tim Farron which politician needs a kick up the arse.

4) ALLIANCE SHARE

While most parties nationally shun talk of deals, locally there are lots of examples of cooperation in mutual interest. Theres a Progressive Alliance by default, with the Greens, Lib Dems and Labour chopping and changing in various key seats to give the maximum chance of keeping out the Tories. The Greens are not standing in Derby North, nor in Eltham, both with tight majorities. In a total of 22 seats, from Hastings (Amber Rudd) to Chester (Chris Matheson), the environmentalists have opted to back Labour.

But that could well be dwarfed by the Regressive Alliance of the Tories and UKIP. Not only are Kipper voters flocking to the Conservatives in droves, and putting at risk scores of usually safe Labour seats, but UKIP are not standing candidates against Eurosceptic Tories they like. From the New Forest to Peterborough, its happening on the ground.

Of course much of this may be due to necessity as well as design, and as the 4pm nominations deadline passed last night, the cash-strapped Kippers were struggling to say they would have even 400 candidates nationwide. That leaves a massive 200 seats where they wont stand - including against Corbynistas Cat Smith and Margaret Greenwood and Corbynsceptics Paul Farrely and Mary Creagh.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems are hoping their various unofficial deals with the Greens will pay off too. And speaking of the yellow peril, heres our interview with Tim Farron on the stump, in which he kinda says hes Britains Emmanuel Macron.

5) DEATH N TAXES

One of the biggest ticket items in the Corbyn wish-list is the extra 8bn promised for social care, with 1bn in the first year. But it is also one of the vaguest, as there is no detail on how the pledge would be funded (unlike the NHS pledge, which is said to come from higher income taxes, though its unclear exactly how high).

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And the wording here in the draft manifesto was odd. Towards A National Care Service was a serious nod to Andy Burnhams big idea of merging budgets but the wording says only we will review options to create one, with options for sustainable funding. We may get the detail next week, but the fact this is left out so far could mean it really is a known unknown.

As it happens, earlier this week the Times and Mail both had what looked like well-sourced stories that May is set to approve a social care cap of 85,000, though again the funding is unclear. And today the FT reports that despite Philip Hammonds opposition to a death tax thats exactly what No.10 is now canvassing views on ahead of the manifesto next week. Policy chief Nick Timothy is said to be eyeing inherited wealth of the wealthy. Now that really would be a break with the Cameron-Osborne era, outflanking Labour on IHT. I have something on this very topic coming up today.

COMMONS PEOPLE

Our latest CommonsPeople political podcast (try saying that after a few sherberts) is out. Listen to us chew the fat over the Labour manifesto, Theresas personal touch, our HuffPost-Edelman focus group from Birmingham (one Labour Leaver said it was a democratic duty to vote Tory now) and more. Theres even a Tim Farron-on-the-road interview. Click HERE.

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The newly elected Mayor for Greater Manchester Andy Burnham began his time in office this week with pledges to tackle homelessness, create a free bus pass for 16-18 year olds in education and promote mental health and well-being through a range of talking therapies for anxiety, depression and eating disorders.

This emphasis upon young people is something which Burnham says makes him stand apart from other politicians. During the mayoral campaign, while all of the candidates talked about Brexit, housing and transport, Burnham presented his idea for a UCAS-style system for apprenticeships, and a new school-leaving route for young people wishing to start a business. While politicians usually target their messages towards the older voting population, one glance at his manifesto shows the kind of aspirational politics which has proved extremely popular in the past across a broad range of voters.

Indeed, one of Burnham's aims within Greater Manchester is to demonstrate Labour policy in action at a regional level. Already, he has pledged to reinstate nursing and midwifery bursaries for the region's health service, introduce a student bus pass to replace the loss of EMA (Educational Maintenance Allowance), and has made hints that by taking over the management of a devolved Department for Work and Pensions budget, he could reverse many of the benefit sanctions which, nationally, have resulted in increased instances of mental illness and suicide. It is this mix of social justice and aspirational vision which won Burnham an impressive landslide victory across Greater Manchester's 287 wards, even in traditionally Conservative-voting areas.

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Instead of asking people to choose between social investment and a growing economy, Burnham argues that we can do both. Key to this vision is investment in mental health. Mental health problems like anxiety and depression not only prevent individuals from reaching their potential, but impact on the economy too. According to the Mental Health Foundation, 70 million work days are lost each year due to mental health problems in the UK, costing approximately 2.4 billion to employers. There is a growing recognition nationally that mental well-being--everyday management of mental health in parity with physical health--is conducive to a motivated and more productive workforce, as well as healthier, happier lives.

It is no surprise either that poor mental health is closely linked to social deprivation. Children growing up in low-income households are more likely to self-harm and experience feelings of worthlessness, clinical depression and anxiety. If not properly treated, these mental health problems may escalate resulting in homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, patients presenting at A&E in a situation of crisis or taking their own lives. For young people, intervention is even more important. Experiencing episodes of depression or anxiety during GCSEs or A-Levels can affect people's career prospects for the rest of their lives. Coupled with mental health training for schools and community groups and the creation of mental health 'first aiders', talking therapies can ensure that mental health treatments remain as low-level interventions and do not escalate into high-cost psychiatric treatments. They can also help to bolster the success of Greater Manchester's future workforce.

Andy's vision for Greater Manchester is one of local government intervention aimed at helping people onto the housing ladder and into employment. It's a socialist message, but also a common sense approach to boosting the local economy. Investing in mental health is one key factor in Burnham's plan to getting the gears of Greater Manchester's economy turning. But, as with anything related to the devolution project, there is a massive question relating to funding. This week, Burnham donated 15 percent of his monthly Mayoral salary to start the Greater Manchester Homelessness Fund; a sign that community-driven action, supported by local businesses, may take the place of absent government funding from Westminster. Burnham will seek to promote this active, community-driven investment in the next 3 years, encouraging businesses to invest in his causes by stressing the benefits for the entire city of helping its worst-off.

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Kremlin says 'too early' to speak of thaw in Russia-US ties

The Kremlin said Thursday it was too early to speak of a thaw in ties with Washington, a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met US President Donald Trump.

"It's too early to draw this conclusion," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

But he added: "Of course the fact that a dialogue is taking place is very positive."

Peskov said both Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to be at the G20 summit in Germany in July, which "could serve as a good occasion" for them to meet.

Wednesday's meeting came as Trump was embroiled in a political firestorm over the investigations into allegations his US presidential election campaign had colluded with Russia.

Lavrov met both Trump and US counterpart Rex Tillerson in Washington, saying the US president was seeking "mutually beneficial" and "pragmatic" relations with Moscow.

"The goal of both President Trump and President Putin is to have concrete results which will be tangible and which will allow (us) to alleviate problems, including on the international agenda," he told reporters.

Tillerson also traveled to Moscow last month for talks with Lavrov.

Tillerson, who also had a closed-door meeting with Putin during his visit, deplored the "low level of trust" between the two powers, whose relations have sunk to a post-Cold War low over the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

"The world's two foremost nuclear powers cannot have this kind of relationship," the US secretary of state said.

In a shock move on Tuesday, Trump sacked FBI chief James Comey, the man overseeing federal investigations into suspected Kremlin interference in the 2016 US vote.

(Source: AFP)
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In the referendum last year, 60% of Londoners voted to remain within the European Union. But now, Londoners are being dragged along a road they had no desire to go down, driven by a Government which seems utterly indifferent to their wishes and concerns. The Prime Minister has magnified their disillusion by pledging to withdraw Britain from the Single Market and Customs Union, and thus aim for the hardest of hard Brexits.

Today, we and other Labour parliamentary candidates from London and around the country have co-sponsored a pamphlet which outlines the importance of the EU's Single Market and Customs Union to London and the whole of Britain. These institutions create the freest possible trade with the EU - our biggest trading partner, which buys 39% of London's exports. 650,000 London jobs depend on trade with Europe, and anything which creates barriers to this trade will mean lower growth and fewer jobs.

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The Government say we can leave the Single Market and Customs Union and yet negotiate a free trade deal that gives us the "exact same benefits." There is not a shred of evidence that this is possible. Instead, it is clear that any alternative deal the Government negotiates will be a distant second best. The worst outcome of all would be Brexit with no deal - a chaotic mess that would close London's international economy off from its global markets. The Prime Minister brags that "no deal is better than a bad deal." We are clear that neither is acceptable.

The Single Market is a framework of laws, including protections for working people and our natural environment. On the outside, these protections would be up for grabs, as ideologically fixated Tories could take the chance to overturn them in Parliament and challenge them in the courts.

Labour has always been the party that stands up for London's interests. That is why, as London Labour MPs, we are arguing wholeheartedly for Britain to stay in the Single Market and Customs Union. If re-elected, this is what we will be campaigning for when Parliament returns.

Labour has held the Government to account for the promises they have made, but with the election taking place in less than a month it is crucial we provide a positive alternative too. That must mean Single Market membership. Labour cannot gain peoples' trust by supporting a sub-standard future for our economy, or by putting workers' rights at risk. We need to choose, and we are clear that that choice must put protecting jobs and growth above all.

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We do not underestimate the challenge of connecting with the many Labour voters who supported Brexit. But we cannot reach out to communities that voted for Brexit by backing a policy that makes them poorer.

This general election in London is a choice between an uncaring Tory Government, dismissive of London's views and destructive to its economic interests; and Labour MPs who will fight tooth and nail against a hard Brexit that makes our constituents worse off. There is a better road for London, and we will spend the time between now and election day arguing passionately for it.

Chuka Umunna is the Labour parliamentary candidate for Streatham and former Shadow Business Secretary
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The French are at it again. For years, news from the other side of the Channel talked about the rise of Marine Le Pen's Front national. Then, last Sunday, the French decided to buck that trend and rejected Le Pen's presidential candidacy with a resounding majority of 66.1% for a centrist who loves Europe. Even though it has always been highly unlikely Le Pen would reach the Elysees Palace, her rise had been real. So where does this leave her - and her party the 'Front national' - after last week's defeat?

On the one hand, the 33.9% share of the votes Le Pen received last Sunday, or around 11 million votes, are a personal achievement for the candidate. She did not only manage to nearly double her father's 2002 score, but also normalised the far-right to achieve its highest ever result. On the other, however, the mood among FN activists is that of bitter defeat rather than the aftermath of an impressive performance.

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To some extent, these activists only have their own hubris to blame. For the last year, the FN has continuously insisted it was 'France's first party'. This slogan was supported by the party's triumph in the European elections and then by the polls that predicted Marine Le Pen to come on top of the first round of the presidential elections.

Activists did not necessarily expect victory on Election Day, but overall results that could entertain the impression that the FN was the party 'of the people': a leading position in the first presidential round and a narrower margin in the second. Instead, Le Pen came second in the first round and lost in the second by a greater margin than expected. To make things worse, Macron did not only win the overall vote, but also locally in most departments, and most notably in the FN's home turf in the South of France.

On election night, these results caught up with the FN's inner circle. Marine Le Pen was forced to promise a 'profound transformation' of the party, while her senior advisor and the face of the party's modernisation, Florian Phillipot, made untypically curt and incoherent appearances on different channels. On the other end of the spectrum, party activists immediately demanded heads to roll over a disastrous campaign.

The most obvious criticism was aimed at Le Pen. The weakness of her campaign was crowned by a performance on a televised debate that even the most ardent party supporters considered as abysmal enough to feel 'betrayed'. However, the heaviest arrows targeted Florian Phillipot. For many in the party's rank and file, the man on Le Pen's side is the brain behind the strategy of the last few years and the embodiment of technocratisation.

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In a party like the FN, which allows no free thought, let alone dissent from the party line, and where the only way to advance is to curry favour with its leader, this kind of open criticism demonstrates a budding crisis. And yet, is Le Pen's leadership - and with it the party's latest rise - really in danger?

The current situation highlights one of the FN's main successes and internal weaknesses: for the last decade and a half, the party has kept the otherwise notoriously fragmented factions of the French far-right more-or-less united. Under the party roof, old Vichyites, nostalgics of French Algeria, monarchists, reactionary Catholics and others came together for the promise of power. However, tensions between these groups have always simmered below the surface. Moreover, for many of the party's traditional supporters, Marine Le Pen's project of brand detoxification had gone too far in diluting the far-right's identity. They have often resented Marine's claim that the 'Front national' under her leadership was 'neither on the Right nor on the Left'.

Nonetheless, there is no immediate danger for the FN to break up. Older party activists remember the dangers of this kind of move after the 1998 split, when Jean-Marie Le Pen's then number two, Bruno Megret, left to found a competing party. The schism nearly buried the FN despite Le Pen father's subsequent rebound. Even more importantly, for the time being there is no potential heir to Marine. While older, established party members are usually tainted by their days under Le Pen senior, the party's strict centralisation has not allowed any younger stars to emerge.

There has been one notable exception to this rule, Le Pen's niece Marion Marechal-Le Pen. The 27-year old MP for the southern department of the Vaucluse has been the only prominent party member beyond Marine's immediate entourage. Popular with the party rank and file, she has been a vocal supporter of 'move to the right' and a critic of Phillipot's influence. However, she resigned from the party earlier this week. While her official statement put her decision down to 'personal issues', internal party sources reminded of her disillusionment with the party's 'amateurism'.

So where does the FN stand? For the time being, the party is in no real danger of imploding, at least until the legislative elections in June. There, the party will try to win at least 15 MPs and therefore - for the first time - establish itself as a true parliamentary presence. Such an achievement will give Le Pen a bone to pacify party activists and a real share of power. After receiving 11 million votes in the presidential elections, this should be a walk in the park. However, the two-round system of the French legislative elections will make it possible for local party branches to strike anti-Frontist deals and keep the FN at bay once again.

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Amid the turbulence surrounding the NHS, it can be easy to lose sight of the amazing work going on within. Nurses' Day, which takes place every year on 12th May, is an opportunity to celebrate nursing staff around the world and the incredible job they do.

Nurses' efforts to care for their patients are nothing short of heroic, which is why the RCN's theme for Nurses' Day this year is #nurseheroes. Tackling disease, saving lives and coping with acute pressure each and every day, nursing staff are the heroes of the health service and we've been calling on people to name the nurses who've made a difference to them at some point in their lives.

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Tales of superhuman strength, commitment and compassion have come in from far and wide. What we've found is that it's not the moments of great drama that people remember as much as the quiet moments of support, the kind words that help them to be brave.

John Haxby got in touch to thank the nurses who cared for his daughter when she fell life-threateningly ill while pregnant with her daughter.

"No words can sum up the thanks we have for the nurses at Scarborough Intensive Care Unit," he wrote.

"Their skill, compassion and dedication brought Emma and Ellie back to us and guided us through the most difficult period of our lives."

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Richard Mulvany also shared his gratitude. He said: "What would we, the public, do without you wonderful people? All nurses are just marvellous and we are blessed to have you."

Al Simpson described the support he received during his father's last days. He said: "The care and compassion shown by the nursing staff has helped us all come to terms with his passing. There were no 'if onlys' - Dad received outstanding care and everything was done to keep him alive."

Nurses themselves have also been sharing their nursing role models and #nurseheroes.

James Simpson wrote to us about his nursing mentor, Lynn. He said: "The best advice Lynn ever gave me was that in nursing you're never alone - there is always someone there for help and advice. I don't have a someone, I have a Lynn, and she is my inspiration."

Kirsten Forster-Alexander was inspired to become a nurse by her Godmother, Rose. She said: "Rose committed her life to nursing. She drove ambulances in World War Two and spent time nursing in Africa. I have been a nurse for 33 years and during this time I have often remembered Auntie Rose and tried to make her proud of me."

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An especially touching story came from a nurse called Julie who found a hero in her friend Rona. Rona was diagnosed with terminal cancer during her nursing training but was determined to continue on and gain her degree.

Julie said: "Sadly, her graduation ceremony came after Rona had left us, but her husband and children were invited to the ceremony and received her award on her behalf. I was just finishing my course at college so that I could get into university. If it wasn't for Rona pushing me to study, maybe I would never have got around to pursuing my dream."

We've heard countless examples of the heroic work done by nurses each and every day of the year, guiding patients and their families through what are often the hardest times of their lives. It takes someone really special to do this job. Nursing staff themselves don't claim to be heroes so it's only right that today we celebrate the work they do both here in the UK and around the world.
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On the 9th of May I gave a speech on stigma at my university, as a part of Mental Health Awareness Week 2017. The unedited transcript of this speech is what follows here. If you want to see a lecture that says everything that needs to be said about stigma, click here

My bedside was empty. For the most part, everyone's bedsides were empty. It was as though we'd been cordoned off from the world, ostracised like lepers. I'd been sectioned, and clearly it wasn't something people wanted to talk about. If I had broken my leg, or had a concussion, my bedside would be adorned with get well cards, flowers and chocolates. However because I was in hospital for my mental health, there were no get well cards, flowers, or chocolates. The absurdity wasn't lost on me, even in my depressive fog. I'd been in hospital many times for other things, my broken nose, my torn muscles, for various surgeries - and every time, there they were - flowers and cards, unprepossessing and minding their own business. In my mind, there was no difference between me being in hospital for my broken nose and being in hospital for my broken brain. Clearly, the majority of the population disagreed with me, as the empty bedsides of my fellow patients testified to.

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What can we do to make sure that no more bedsides are empty? Stigma is immensely complicated, and it's too complicated to go into great detail here. However let me say this. Stigmas lies in fear, a fear fostered and nurtured by misconceptions and inaccurate information being disseminated in the nation's best media outlets. Stigma doesn't occur in a vacuum - we are creatures that consume, that have a ravenous hunger for media. For instance, I found that people often had a perverse and cruel, draconian notion of what psychiatric wards are like, thanks mostly, I suspect, to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Friends of mine who suffer from schizophrenia have reported that the only conception the general population have of their illness is from the film, A Beautiful Mind.

Media, it cannot be denied, is immensely powerful. Over a third of the public think people with a mental health problem are likely to be violent - in fact people with severe mental illnesses are more likely to be victims, rather than perpetrators, of violent crime. Ten years ago, the Royal College of Psychiatrists surveyed over 2500 people, asking them about their perceptions of depression. Over half said that people with mental health issues were unpredictable, and a quarter said that people with mental health issues were violent. These ideas are largely fostered by misconceptions that are allowed oxygen by an ignorant and misinformed media. Any journalist can call us anything - wacko, nutjob, psycho, unstable, schizo - that simply wouldn't be tolerated if they were aimed at any other marginalized group. Any newspaper in the country can publish remarks that, if they were said of any other minority group, a journalist would immediately lose their job.

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50% of mental health issues emerge by age fourteen, and 75% emerge before the age of twenty five. The conservative estimate is that one in four people will suffer from a mental health issue in their lifetime, and this rate is probably higher in young people. Despite the enormity of our numbers, only 1.6% of students disclosed their mental health issues to their university. I know far too many students myself who are silent about their mental health, because of the fear of being penalised. It's a valid concern, and it's one I alone cannot soothe. Despite our enormous numbers, we cannot or will not demand what we need of our lawmakers, and our needs are not being met in party platforms. Such a lack of awareness isn't consistent with the large voting block that we truly are. Mental health should be front and centre in the general election, yet it's being relegated to the side-lines. Stigma keep people silent and people fear coming out due to stigma. Stigma becomes a Gordian knot in which no party comes out unscathed.

As I'm sure many of you are aware, the petition to make mental health education compulsory in primary and middle schools has reached enough signatures to be discussed in parliament. Ireland recently passed a similar measure, implementing mental health education into their curriculum. In their curriculum, pupils receive 300 hours of mental health classes. It's a simple, but unbelievably shattering and staggering strategy. Indeed, when I was in school we covered sexual education and how to write a CV so much that I could have recited the lesson back to front. We never had a lesson on mental health. When I first became depressed at age fourteen, I simply didn't know what was happening to me, I didn't have the language to express how I felt, and I had no knowledge about mental health issues of any kind. If I'd been educated about mental health earlier perhaps things would have been different.

Given today's climate - of perpetual mental health funding cuts, of denial and of recrimination - it is easy to give in to despair; to throw our arms up and scream, what can I do? It's easy to give into apathy. However I want to ask you to do something far bolder - hope.

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As I was writing this speech, I came across something extraordinary. I've been taking action to get into schools to talk about my experiences for some time, and things are finally coming to fruition. Up until a few weeks ago, I had one presentation, aimed at older students. However I knew that if it was done right, perceptively and sensitively, then mental health could be brought to primary schools or perhaps even nurseries. I quickly researched the area, expecting to find nothing but a lack of resources, a dry and arid desert. However I was pleasantly surprised. I was inundated with children's books that explained mental health issues, everything from PTSD and depression, to more obscure and misunderstood conditions, such as manic-depression, psychosis or schizophrenia.

Would these books have existed ten years ago? I doubt it. Slowly but surely, progress is being made, even though it may not feel like it at times. You mustn't forget that decades ago, cancer was severely stigmatised, nobody talked about cancer, and in many cases cancer sufferers were kept in the dark about their own cancer status and treatment. Such stigma is simply inconceivably today. It is my belief that mental health will eventually, though not fast enough for my liking, reach this blissful point.

So what can we do about stigma? Firstly, I think we can learn from the LGBT rights movement. In the eighties, nineties and still to this day, people like Harvey Milk urged gay people to come out, so that the heterosexual majority could realize that gay people, rather than being a minority, were all around them. Gay people were their mailmen, their brothers, sisters and aunties. It's something that, I believe, needs to happen in regards to mental health, though if you're liable to lose your job if you disclose your mental health condition, or if you face violence, then this simply isn't feasible.
So, for the third General Election in a row, the Conservatives have decided to retain the target of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands in their manifesto.

When I heard the news this week, all I could think was, why though?

Despite failing comprehensively to achieve this in either of the last two parliaments and regardless of the voices from all sides of the political spectrum calling for it to be dropped, Theresa May will not be swayed. To those of us who have seen Theresa May's approach to immigration as Home Secretary and PM, this is unsurprising. A government who baulks at a few hundred unaccompanied refugee children is unlikely to suddenly embrace a realistic immigration policy which accepts that the economy, families and our commitment to human rights cannot be restricted to an arbitrary numerical target.

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The foolhardiness of this decision, particularly at a time when businesses are increasingly anxious about accessing the skilled workers they need in a post-Brexit Britain, can be illustrated with a quick look at the breakdown of the categories of non-EEA migrants coming to the UK.

In 2016, there were 207,200 study related visas granted, excluding short-term study visas. There have long been calls to exclude students from the net migration figures as students generally only come to the UK on a temporary basis and the student visa category itself does not lead to settlement in the UK. If students remain part of the net migration figures however, then surely further restrictions on students coming to the UK are inevitable as it is impossible to achieve this target otherwise.

Will that benefit the UK? Will reducing the ability of UK Universities to capitalise on wealthy international students help them retain their status as some of the top educational establishments in the world? Is this a smart move at a time when the higher education sector already has to deal with the uncertainty of Brexit and what that means for their funding going forward? And if we do drastically cut the number of international students, who will plug this funding gap? Will the British student whose tuition fees have to rise to compensate really be grateful that at least net migration is down?

No, of course they won't. Cutting student migration simply to present more politically popular numbers is harmful to the UK and shows why the net migration target must be dropped.

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There were 163,882 work related visas issued in 2016, though many of these were for short term workers whose visas are capped. Although the overall number of sponsored skilled workers remained largely unchanged from 2015, there was an increase in the number of workers in the human health and social work activities sector. Even with these increased numbers the Public Accounts Committee warned in 2016 that the NHS in England was 50,000 people short of front-line staff, representing 6% of the workforce. This is not likely to improve as recruitment from the EU, where 5% of the NHS workforce come from (including 10% of doctors), is down following the decision in last year's referendum.

As well as critical skill gaps across the economy and a lack of interest in low skilled jobs (Pret-a-Manger revealed earlier this year that only 1 in 50 job applications comes from a British national) we have an ageing population and funding shortages for their social care. We are consistently told that we must get immigration down to 'sustainable' levels and that means the tens of thousands, in part due to the impact on public services. However, nowhere in this conversation do we address the fact that migrants are more likely to be net contributors to the economy, therefore playing a key role in actually funding these vital public services. Instead of addressing the question of investment in public services, which have been subject to significant cuts in recent years, the politically expedient decision has been taken to decry immigration and frame policy purely in terms of the net migration numbers. In the words of Stephen Martin of the Institute of Directors in response to the decision to maintain the target, "A target is a poor substitute for a proper immigration policy."

There were 38,119 visas issued to family members of British or settled persons in 2016. Despite this, a JCWI report in 2015 showed that thousands of families face separation, including 15,000 British Citizen children, due to the Immigration Rules introduced in July 2012 which made it much more difficult for families to meet the requirements for visas in the UK. The 2012 rule changes were seen by many as a way to reduce net migration. The heavy handed and often nonsensical way in which the new rules work appears as a deterrent rather than aimed at preventing reliance on public funds. Further cuts to migration of family members cannot be a just way to cut the numbers but seems inevitable if the target will not be abandoned.

In response to this 'Why though' question earlier this week, on her decision to retain the target, Theresa May reiterated her concerns about the impact net migration has on people and on public services. She said that she wants to get it down to sustainable levels. That means tens of thousands.

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I'm sorry Theresa May but that does not answer the question. Immigration is crucial to our economy, to the funding and functioning of our public services, to our highly respected education sector and to the stability and well-being of thousands of families in the UK. Our immigration policy should be designed to meet these needs rather than to meet a random number. Despite refusing to drop the target, Theresa May was coy as to whether it could actually be met by 2022. The net migration target, I would suggest, is neither realistic nor desirable.
Let's say you are invited to leave an online review ten years after a concert. It would surprise most of us as well as taxing our powers of recall.

Or perhaps you are asked to leave a review for a restaurant you have never been to and which in fact turns out to be a wheelie bin in a back street.

These are real-life examples of the kind of antics that have chipped away at confidence in online reviews, even though the vast majority of us still rely on them when we make a purchase, whether online or in a store[1]. The invitation to leave a concert review allegedly came from a ticket-resale website trying to counter negative headlines about its business practices, but ended up prompting further adverse publicity when the prehistoric-concert-review ploy was revealed in the media.

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It is very easy, when these stories gain prominence, for skepticism about online reviews to grow, which makes it all the more important that we tackle the whole issue of fake or engineered reviews.

It is not a trivial matter. Not only are reviews incredibly useful in offering us confidence and guidance, they can save us time in reaching a decision, whatever we are buying - whether it is light bulbs, holidays, cars or houses. Reviews can also be a real spur to a business, kicking it up the backside and enabling it to find out what we customers want and where things are going wrong.

The problem with this industry is that you or I can go online and buy ourselves some off-the-shelf reviews that make our new furniture store or roofing business look superficially wonderful. Only last year, the House of Lords European Union Committee issued a warning to companies for misleading consumers with fake reviews and bogus discounts.

What we need as consumers, are reviews we can believe in - that have gone through some process of authentication. Because not only do we use them to help us make the right choices[2], the evidence is that if we trust reviews we can be pretty canny about how to use them.

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Reviews need to be informative. A one-star review doesn't paint the full picture, and someone else's negative may in fact be another's positive. For example, when looking at hotel reviews, while the absence of children's play facilities is a gripe for a number of parents, it may be a positive indicator for an amorous couple looking for a quiet weekend away.

We also like leaving reviews. In fact, the bigger the purchase, or the more related to personal taste it is, the more likely we are to leave a short assessment, good or bad. It's clear that investing our hard-earned cash in a product or service entails a degree of emotional commitment that often requires an outlet. Just look at all the long chains of reviews that are left for cars and holidays.

All businesses need to wake up to the fact that in the age of social media, going online to share an experience is second nature to a growing number of us. If we cannot leave reviews on the company's website nowadays, we will simply head straight for Facebook or Twitter where we can be heard.

And there is no need for businesses to fear negativity - they can learn from it. For example, lousy star-ratings have often turned out to be about the failures of the delivery company and not the product. Using reviews to sort out these problems quickly means a business can improve its performance immediately without the risk of suddenly being roasted in a fire-pit of bad reviews on social media.

What's more, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) now make it possible to extract what is valuable to either the business or individual consumers from thousands of reviews they would never otherwise have time to comb through. If you are primarily interested in a new phone's battery life, the AI will extract succinctly what has been said on the topic of battery life from thousands of reviews.

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While I appreciate we are in the age of "fake news" and "post-truth" opinions, it's time for falsified or filtered reviews to be banished. Once they are, we won't just have more confidence in what and who we buy from, businesses will also learn more about how to improve their products and services and generate more sales. Ultimately, they can uncover what we truly think as consumers, rather than just relying on how many stars they receive.

1.82% of US consumers always or sometimes read online reviews before buying a new product - Pew Research Center, December 2016; 66% of UK consumers most likely to read online reviews after finding out price when considering a purchase - Feefo survey of 2,000 consumers, Feb 2017
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It's a day before my 32nd birthday and I am feeling particularly grateful. Grateful for my family, my amazing career, my lovely flat and my incredible friends of course. But today, and seemingly most relevant, I am feeling incredibly grateful for my health, my family's health and my friend's health. I am feeling incredibly grateful for our wonderful nurses and NHS.

Having moved over from America 14 years ago (almost to the day) I've spent almost half of my adult life being looked after by our NHS, and the lovely nurses that encompass it.

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Sure, I've spent time in waiting rooms, grunting about time wasted, wondering when I will be seen. Sure, I've had to go back to be seen again. Sure, there's been times when lines are busy, or things don't get done as quickly as I'd like.

These 'Sures' are quite insignificant when I think of how lucky I am to live in a country with healthcare like ours.

As a foreigner living in this country, I couldn't be more grateful for the people who have looked after me, both my physical and mental health, and with such assurance and comfort. I couldn't be more grateful to live in a country where healthcare is not an expense (or a luxury) I cannot afford.

This week, it has particularly resonated. While there's been a couple of instances I've had to use the NHS, the stand out was this past weekend.

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My Mom had to have surgery on her shoulder. She was put under anaesthetic, which meant she had to spend two nights in the hospital in Leeds. My Stepdad and I stayed with her until quite late each evening.

Throughout the duration of the two days, there wasn't a time when a nurse didn't come in to her room without a smile on their faces. Ben (our 'stand out' nurse, although all of them were incredibly gracious), made my Mom laugh, when she felt really down. The other nurses helped my mom to the toilet, gave her medications, checked up on her every two hours. They did this 24 hours around the clock, and never did it without a smile on their faces.

They seemed so happy. And so we felt happy. My Stepdad and I felt happy to leave my precious Mom in the caring hands of the Leeds Hospital nurses, knowing she would be looked after well.

Over tea on Sunday afternoon, I said to my Stepdad, it really puts things into perspective. While I can sometimes get frustrated with my day-to-day life and the most trivial things, these guys are really doing something important, and never without a smile on their faces.
This week, I was in Somalia, and the effects of drought were clear. What should have been green was dry with poor rains offering no respite.

Some rain is now falling, but it is too little too late. Authorities told me that 60-70% of livestock in some areas had already died and I met families who had trekked days to find food and water.

Somalia is on the brink of famine - the second in seven years - and I hope that the meetings at the London Somalia Conference will do all in their power to help avert it. The London Somalia Conference will focus on security, peace and prosperity, crucial for the future of the country. However, at this moment in time, ensuring children and parents have access to food, water, shelter, healthcare and emergency aid is essential for their very survival.

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While in Somalia, I spoke to many mothers visiting our mobile health clinics and all of them told me the same thing. 'My child is ill, and I don't have the food to give them or the medicines I need, our goats and camels have died and I don't know what to do'. When asked what they wanted for their children however, they all had hope that they can have a better life. Beyond the immediate sustenance required to ensure their child's survival they all said the same thing. 'Education'.

A woman and her child forced to move because of drought walk towards a mobile medical unit.  UNICEF/UN056035/Holt

We know from the devastating 2011 Somalia famine that we cannot wait for a famine declaration to take action. By the time it is announced - if it is announced - untold numbers of children will have already died. In the 2011 famine, some 260,000 people died - half of them young children and half of them before the famine was officially declared. If we wait until famine is declared it will already mean that we would have a situation where, if it were to occur in a city with the population of London, nearly 2000 people, mostly children, would be dying every day from famine related illness. It would be too late.

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The time for action is now. Already indicators are that the situation is worsening. Earlier this month, Unicef announced that the projected number of children who are or will be acutely malnourished has shot up by 50 per cent since the beginning of the year to 1.4 million, including over 275,000 who have or will suffer life-threatening acute malnutrition in 2017.

Severely malnourished children are nine times more likely to die of killer diseases like cholera, diarrhea and measles, which are also spreading. In fact, during the 2011 famine, the main causes of death among children were diarrhea and measles.

A medical practitioner measures a child for severe acute malnutrition at a mobile clinic.  UNICEF/UN057372/Holt

More and more people are now on the move in search of food and water. Since November 2016, some 615,000 people the vast majority women and children have been displaced by the drought. The journeys they make are perilous. They are often robbed or worse, both on the way to and in camps, and while there have been reports of sexual abuse, many women stay silent because of the stigma associated with rape.

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The drought has also forced some 40,000 children to stop attending school, as their families migrate or pull them out to help to search for food and water. There are reports of more children living on the streets, and of displaced children being recruited into armed groups.

Talking to some former Al Shabab child soldiers in a Unicef reintegration centre, they told me how their harsh living conditions led them to being recruited by this proscribed terrorist group. They saw no future, so they didn't resist when they were given a gun. With the help of Unicef they are now training to be businessmen, teachers, tradesmen and they are playing sport, laughing and being children. All because they have hope of a better future.

A child stands in front of the camel he looks after. His family have lost nearly three quarters of their livestock because there is no grass for them to graze.  UNICEF/UN057358/Holt

Unlike 2011, when the funding came too late, this year, some donors like DFID in the UK, have come forward. Not enough to meet all of the substantial the needs, but far more than 2011. This early planning and funding has made a huge scale up of assistance possible.

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As a result, UNICEF has set up and supported 330 new nutrition centres, bringing the total to 837 across the country. These new centres have made it possible to treat 56,054 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition since the beginning of the year, almost double the number of admissions over the same period in 2016, with a 92 percent recovery rate. We have also provided more than one million people affected by drought with safe water, up from 300,000 in January.

In addition to the life-saving assistance needed, I also hope that at this conference we will see the international community, and the Somali Government come together behind a comprehensive plan to achieve peace and stability in Somalia. It will not be easy, but without genuine ambition and commitment from those with the influence and power to make a difference, real change will not be possible. If we are to stop this type of famine situation occurring in the future we will need a real commitment to peace and stability, which will afford us the access we need to help normal Somali citizens survive and thrive. Without this, given the increasingly frequent droughts we are seeing, this will happen again.
'We don't always know how to describe everyone in our family,' says Jessica, whose friend Simon donated sperm to her and her female partner and welcomed them into his extended family. 'For instance, what do you call the mother of the wife of the man who helped you get pregnant?'

The theme of this year's International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOT) - love makes a family - reminds us that people don't have to be legally or genetically connected to become a family. They can even, like Jessica, create family relationships that they don't yet have the language to describe!

When we interviewed more than 70 parents and children for our LGBT parenting guide, 'Pride and Joy', we found that new forms of family like Jessica's, are blossoming everywhere. We spoke to families which included donor-dads, co-parents, donors, surrogates, friends, birth families of fostered or adopted children and extended family members.

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Some LGBT parents deliberately seek out friendships with other LGBT parents. When she was growing up, Bryony's mum and her mum's female partner had a close-knit group of friends who became like an extended family. She was always encouraged to look wider than her immediate family for love, support and to enrich her understanding of the world.

'I consider them very much as family. They have all had a massive influence on me,' Bryony says now that she is in her twenties. 'Our families are different to one another, but they are all different from the norm, and that is something we have in common. Knowing them has helped me to better understand my own family. The parents in all these families break societal norms in their own, individual ways and are happy being themselves. I suppose there is a culture that we feel we belong to.'

Sometimes such friendships end up becoming co-parenting or known donor arrangements. Jackie is a lesbian single mum who asked a straight male friend, Paul, to donate sperm to help her become a parent.

Over 20 years later their relationship still holds strong. 'If I made one good decision in my life, it was choosing Paul to be my son's father,' says Jackie. 'The relationship between them is phenomenal. It's everything I could have hoped for and more.'

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Paul agrees: 'My decision to be a donor has always been rewarding. It was a profound way I could do something positively life-changing for a good lesbian friend, but at the time, it didn't feel as if it would be particularly life-changing for me. The thanks of a dear friend, and the arrival of a human being were, in themselves, reward aplenty two decades ago. But the myriad of additional rewards over the years have been wonderful too, particularly from being part of my son's life and seeing him become the person he is today.'

For Nicholas and Michael, a gay couple who became parents through surrogacy, their relationship with Sarah - their surrogate - and her husband and children became extremely close. 'We didn't design it that way, we didn't even know we wanted it,' says Michael, looking back.

'There's an obvious end goal when you are trying to get pregnant: the relationship you and your partner will both have with your baby. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that the relationship with Sarah and her family would be equally important. They have become part of our extended family. We've not just got a baby now, we've got these wonderful, special people in our life.'

When a child is adopted or fostered, their birth family may still be part of their lives. Adoptive or foster parents may have to manage contact between their children and their children's birth families, and to build their own relationship with the birth families. They are another way in which LGBT parents can find themselves part of unconventional family structures.

'There's lots of people in our lives who wouldn't be there if we'd had our own children,' reflects Jay, who has a foster daughter and an adopted son. 'We deal with two families who are not our own.'

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Bryony, Jackie, Paul, Michael and Jay are just a few of the people who share their stories and advice in 'Pride and Joy' and who have found that their experience of family stretches far beyond the traditional nuclear family model, often in ways they did not expect themselves.

Of course, there can still be tensions and strains in these extended, unconventional families, like in any family. Making a family requires love and also requires hard work, generosity, understanding and a fair bit of give-and-take.
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It is rare that you can say the Eurovision Song Contest serves a wider political purpose. Yet in countries where there is still resistance to LGBT equality, the effect of hosting Eurovision (with its strong LGBT fan base) can be to start a discussion on a topic that many would prefer not to recognise. Sometimes we in the UK forget how important it is, in countries that are in transition, to see positive examples of LGBT acceptance. And a large televised multinational event that proclaims diversity in the way that Eurovision does can really help to educate its viewers.

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According to Simon Williams, head of the British Council in Kyiv, who spoke to us about the British support of Eurovision in Ukraine:

"Ukraine is going through an amazing transformation following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, part of which is manifested in a strong desire on the part of general society, especially young people, to be part of Europe. But it is also manifested in a greater sense, and more public discussion, of people's right to be who they are, including being different from the majority. This encompasses people with different first languages, different ethnicities, different faiths - as well as different sexualities."

The UK ambassador to Ukraine, Judith Gough, is an out lesbian who lives in Kyiv with her civil partner and two children. She has spoken to news outlets in Ukraine on the need for Ukrainian role models to lead the way in ongoing education and advocacy. In a country where LGBT support is not strong, many LGBT leaders are still in the closet. The stance of foreign role models is still important.

There are many countries in the world where homophobia is rife at the highest levels of government. Ukraine is struggling with a number of major issues at the moment (Crimea, its economy, ongoing Russian tension in the east) but the government in Kyiv is determined to show its embrace of 'Western' values as it tries to remove itself from Russia's sphere of influence.

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Ukraine has made some progress in LGBT rights; notably in 2015 discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment was outlawed and in the Global Open Data rating Ukraine rose to 24th place this year (from 54th last year) on a par with Austria. Yet same-sex partnerships are still not legal and gay couples cannot adopt. But whereas historically pride marches have been banned or overshadowed by violence, the pride march in 2016 passed off without violence and with the support of the Kyiv police.

According to Andriy Maymulakhin, co-ordinator of Nash Mir (the Ukrainian LGBT rights centre), the progress is good, and Eurovision is going to help:

"Our country is currently going through the process of a deep modernisation in every sphere of life. Only three years ago did real reforms start towards becoming a modern European society. Such events as Eurovision bring a picture of modern Western society to the mass consciousness of Ukrainian people. We anticipate that Eurovision's LGBTI audience will be a very positive part of this widely-watched celebration. The Ukrainian LGBTI community's main problem is that it is still mostly neglected by society as a whole. People in Ukraine often perceive that our identity and lifestyle are "non-traditional" for Ukraine; even the very term "homosexual" is often replaced with euphemisms like "non-traditional" (regarding orientation, the family etc.). So, we wish, please, that in conversations with Ukrainians you ask them what they know and experience about the daily life of their Ukrainian LGBTI compatriots - because we are here, we are queer, and this is our common country and our common world."

An event like Eurovision in Ukraine encourages and allows the authorities to discuss LGBT issues and challenge national attitudes as part of its duty to ensure the safety and security of visitors. For example, many of the embassies in Kyiv are working with the government to ensure suitable security is in place, and to promote details of safe spaces and helplines, not least because of the particular demographic of many Eurovision fans. The organisers of Kyiv Pride have joined with the organisers of Eurovision to offer a guide to gay-friendly bars, cafes and shops in Kyiv.

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It is not just a one-off event, even one as unique as Eurovision, that can provide ongoing support for LGBT activists on the ground. Every year, Stonewall hosts a training event in London for LGBT activists from several former Soviet Union countries (Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan). I attended the summary session last summer and it was Ukraine where the activists felt the most progress had been made.

There are some countries where we cannot directly change attitudes about homophobia. But in countries where we see movement, we should be exploring ways to continue discussions, advocacy and education. Government pressure from the FCO, empowering local activists and yes, even supporting gay-friendly events like Eurovision can all help. As Eurovision approaches, we wish everyone travelling a safe and exciting trip.

Our woman in Kyiv, the ambassador has been tweeting regularly about the excitement of Eurovision (you can follow her at @judithgoughFCO). I will leave the last word to Simon Williams (a die-hard Eurovision fan), on how he is coping with the run-up to the contest:
A Chinese worker talks to a Djiboutian worker (file photo/China.com)

Chinese companies have helped Djibouti, a country located in the Horn of Africa, develop infrastructure in the past few years, paving the way for the countrys economic development.

Djibouti has been attempting to renovate its ports over years since port economy accounts for 80 percent of its GDP. The countrys rise to prosperity was closely related to its geographical location in the Horn of Africa.

However, the countrys economy was hindered as the aging facilities could no longer satisfy the rising transportation needs.

China Merchants Group Limited (CGM) became the second-largest shareholder of the port after buying 23.5 percent equity stake from the latter in February 2013.

The multi-functional Doraleh Port, which started construction in August 2014, was completed after two years. The project consumed a total investment of $580 million, including a loan on favorable terms from the Export-Import Bank of China (EIBC).

The new port has a designed capacity of 7 million tons and is planned to hold 200,000 containers. With a water depth of 15.3 meters, the port can harbor 100,000-ton level vessels. The port is also equipped with large-scale facilities made in China, which have greatly improved its operation efficiency. The management of the port adopted Chinas experience.

The port has paid an accumulated $35 million tax to the government since 2013, becoming an important taxation source for the Djiboutian government.

The port is the lung for Djiboutis economic development, saidHoumed MohamedKamil, CFO of the port, adding that working with China has brought hope to his country.

With the acceleration of the Belt and Road initiative, investment in the construction of free trade zone, ports, rails and water delivery services came one after another. Those projects have made land price of some areas in Djibouti quintuple compared with a few years ago, according to Li Yao, a representative of the Djibouti office of CGM.

As development progressed, the 0.17-square-kilometer old free trade zone in Djibouti was also in need of expanding. In 2012, Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guellehdecided to introduce the development mode of Shekou Port in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, to the country, after a visit to the place.

The president thought the two places shared a lot of common places. The Shekou Port was developed by CGM.

The Djiboutian government allocated 48.2 square kilometers of land, 10 percent of the countrys available land area to develop an international free trade zone in the city of Djibouti.

Two companies in charge of investment and operation were co-built by CGM and the Djiboutian side. Djibouti hoped toduplicateShekous transformation from a small fishing village to an international new city by combining the development of port, industrial zone and new urban district.

The city of Djibouti will be built into a new engine for the countrys economy and a financial, shipping and trade center for East Africa, Li said.

The Chinese company is sincerely offering help to develop Djibouti, according to Guelleh. The cooperation with China has brought about real changes to Djibouti, Kamilechoed.

Djibouti aims at being the first trade hub in Africa, offering convenience for 80 percent of Africas cargo ships that have to spend an extra five days passing through the Port of Dubai, Li said, adding that an export manufacturing zone will be established in the free trade zone to lead the country toward initial industrialization and create more jobs.

An estimated 15,000 jobs will be added, a big figure for Djibouti, a country having less than 1 million people, according to Aboubaker, chairman of Djibouti Ports and Free Zones Authority.

Our cooperation with China is a typical win-win example. Chinas advanced management experience has helped cut costs, open new market and find unprecedented business opportunities for our country, Aboubaker said.

In recent years, Chinese people are more and more welcomed to visit Djibouti. Neima, who went to learn logistics management in Dalian Maritime University in 2013, said Africas future relies a lot on China, and thats why she chose to further her study in a Chinese university.

Neima said China has invested a heftyamount in Djibouti. The local people started to realize the importance of mastering the Chinese language. The number of Djibouti students in China has doubled in just a few years.

Djibouti will undergo exciting changes after 10 years, benefiting from the mutually beneficial cooperation with China, she added.

The Belt and Road initiative brings about a huge opportunity which will change the outlook of the African continent, said Idriss Ismail Abdi who works with the Djiboutian company of CGM port.

Idriss said he hoped to visit China in the future. The vision of China now outweighs that of the European countries among African youth, he said.
I've spent the last few months developing new ice cream flavours, which has resulted in endless ice-cream tasting and lots of discussion about the art and, believe it or not, science of ice-cream making. It may sound contradictory but there is a culinary art to creating beautiful tasting ice cream and at the same time a science behind combining the right balance of ingredients to create that magical cool creamy concoction we all know and love.

The origins of ice-cream are not exactly known, but history books have cited that ancient Greeks used to mix snow with honey and fruit and although questionable, I have read that Marco Polo introduced a frozen dessert from China to Italy, which has become the home of Gelato. It's certainly true that today no trip to Italy is complete without multiple trips to a Gelateria.

Even during my life time, ice-cream has come a long way. I remember loving the soft serve ice cream from vans as a child as well as being served 'choc blocks,' a rectangular block of soft airy ice-cream coated in chocolate, as a treat. When Haagen-Dazs was created, I bought the CD 'dedicated to pleasure' and the Haagen-Dazs store on Hampstead High Street was the place to hang out on a Friday or Saturday night.

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Since the 90s we have had an explosion of ice-cream brands selling the creamiest, tastiest ice-cream using milk from Devon or Dorset or Cornish cream. More recently 'posh' soft serve has made a comeback especially in restaurants such as Bone Daddies and artisan ice cream is more popular than ever before. You can now find people eating ice cream out of taco shaped waffle cones, piled on top of a 'freakshake' or biting into gelato spheres wrapped in hand-rolled soft mochi dough.

It is the small manufacturers that interest me, and I'm lucky to meet a lot of them in my role as co-founder of Little Moons. Recent examples include Yee Kwan who makes her ice-cream in small batches and Judes who make it on their farm. Like us they manufacture their own products and I really love the idea that they have crafted their own recipe and control every element of the ice-cream making process. There's really nothing more exciting than crafting new recipes. I've learnt so much on my journey of mochi making from finding out the effects different species of rice has on the flour it produces and how that affects the texture of mochi to which varieties of strawberry or mango produces the sweetest, richest flavour.

And it's not just us who are benefitting from an increased demand for well-crafted products. My friend Anabela Chan crafts the most exquisite jewellery herself from her boutique in the court yard of Ham Yard hotel. Her jewellery pushes the boundaries of art and craftsmanship and redefines the concept of fine jewellery. It's just another example of small producers who are tapping into Britain's demand for crafted products. This is never truer than in the chocolate market where I recently met with Phil Landers. He crafts his own chocolate in Bethnal Green buying his single origin cocoa beans directly from Central America and crafting his own couverture with a brand new complex variety of beans.
Princess Arunrasmy (R) (photo/People' Daily)

The Belt and Road initiative proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping will bring peace,prosperity and development to Cambodia, Southeast Asia, and even the world at large, said Princess Norodom Arunrasmy of Cambodia in a recent exclusive interview with People's Daily.

Arunrasmy is the youngest daughter of the late king father Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia and also an important member of the Cambodian royal family.

Forging an indissoluble bond with China long ago, the princess has been a witness and propeller of bilateral cooperation and friendship.

Arunrasmy shared her memory of Xi's visit to Cambodia last October, saying that she was entrusted by Queen Mother Norodom Monineath Sihanouk with the reception of Xi at the airport together with Prince Kong Sam Ol and Prince Norodom Chakrapong.

"It is indeed a family tradition of the Sihanouks," the princess recalled, explaining that she was once appointed as a representative of her father to welcome the guests at the airport when she was a little girl.

"China is Cambodia's closest friend, and it was my honor to be the Queen Mother's envoy to receive Xi at the airport," she said, adding that it also reflected the priority given by the royal family to China-Cambodia relations.

Arunrasmy and her husband Keo Puth Reasmey recounted the profound relationship between the Cambodian royal family and China.

The princess told People's Daily that she was born in 1955 when the King Father Norodom Sihanouk and former Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai made the historical meeting at the Bandung Conference.

"My husband and me got married in Beijing, and China is also the birth place of my daughter," Arunrasmy introduced, adding that her daughter is currently studying in Beijing.

It was China that lent a helpful hand to the King Father Norodom Sihanouk in 1970s when he was forced to be exiled because of the coup of Lon Nol administration. According to Arunrasmy, her father loved China very much, and he had even composed a song eulogizing the Cambodia-China friendship.

With a belief that to develop friendly relationship with China is one of the wisest decisions made by her father, she pointed out that till now, the country is still following his instruction to develop the ties with China.

"The world has witnessed the huge achievements brought by my father's brilliant decision," the princess noted.

Arunrasmy and her husband also hailed the time-honored friendship between the two countries. The Chinese envoy Zhou Daguan in Yuan Dynasty had stayed in Cambodia for a year, and his work, The Customs of Cambodia, has become the most important historical material to study Angkor.

Zheng He, who was sent to western oceans for expedition by Yongle Emperor Zhu Di of Chinese Ming Dynasty, had also stationed in Cambodia for times, they reviewed.

"In addition to caravans, silk, porcelains and advanced technologies, the Chinese have also brought peace and development at the same time to Cambodia and the countries in Southeast Asia," said the princess, stressing that it is totally different from the invasions and wars brought by the western colonists.
Ava Jones signing highlights NSD for Iowa women's basketball

Ava Jones' inspirational story added another chapter Wednesday when she officially signed with the Hawkeyes.
Development of the art form has helped draw tourists and bring prosperity to a rural community

For residents of Shoudong in Hebei province, grain is not just a food staple, but also the material used to make beautiful collages and mosaics, which have brought prosperity to the formerly destitute village.

Shoudong used to be a typical poor village, with most men moving to work in cities, leaving their wives, aging parents and children behind.

Now, through the creation of artwork made from cereals and pulses, women are able to earn an income working from home while taking care of their families.

"I'm proud that the income from my artwork is enough to cover our household expenses. I don't need to ask for financial support from my husband," said Shi Xianqiao, one of the artists.

Grain pictures are made by pasting various kinds of grain, such as wheat, rice and beans, on a hard backboard.

The village of 180 households is home to more than 80 such artists, and not all of them are housewives - some men have returned home, attracted by the profits to be made from the emerging craft.

The monthly income for each artist is about 2,000 yuan ($290), which is a result of them utilizing their spare time when they are not farming or looking after their family.

Residents of Shoudong first started making collages from grain in March 2014, when Zhang Haizeng, from the province's Guantao county, came to teach the craft to the villagers.

Zhang, an art graduate, had been an advertising designer, a welder, a security guard and taxi driver before gluing together his first picture using tree bark, cotton and green beans in 2008.

"I imagined that even if I earned 1 yuan from each picture, I would soon be able to buy an apartment and a car," Zhang recalled.

Unfortunately, his pictures decayed rapidly because the glue he used was not compatible with the grain. He tried using more than 100 different types of glue before finding the perfect solution. But then he realized that while he could make the pictures, he had nowhere to sell them.

"In the following two years, I only sold one piece of my work, and that was to a friend," he said, adding that the picture made him 260 yuan.

In September 2009, an art exhibition in the county changed both his mind and his fate. "I had told my family I would give up making these pictures, when a customer unexpectedly ordered eight pieces of my work at the exhibition," he said, smiling at the recollection.

As his business gradually developed, Zhang sought help from the county government, asking for land to establish a production base for his artwork.

Instead of a workshop in Guantao that he had dreamed of, the government offered him three houses in the rural backwater of Shoudong, free of charge.

"It was a perfect opportunity for rural poverty alleviation," said Xie Jijiong, Party chief of Guantao.

"Not only was the land cheaper in the village, having the factory there made recruiting workers easier."

Zhang's site, which covers 8,000 square meters, makes about 5 million yuan each year, and competitors from other provinces have been attracted to the village, forming an industrial cluster.

Tourists are also drawn to Shoudong, which is now full of cafes, inns and souvenir stalls. Visitors, especially children, are helped to make their own pictures as DIY gifts for their friends and family.

With all this activity, the average per capita income of villagers in Shoudong last year reached 15,000 yuan, helping to alleviate poverty, according to Zhang Furen, Party chief of the village.

Seeing the profit potential in collages, Shi Xianqiao has set up her own studio and is planning to expand her business.

"I plan to invest about 500,000 yuan in a brand-new workspace and office, so the current premises can be used as a family inn," she said.
The model railroad and architectural museum has an option to purchase Heritage State Park. The state park has been operated by the city for some 30 years. PreviousNext

Model Railroad Museum Options to Buy Heritage Park for $1.2M



The Redevelopment Authority, including new member David Bond confirmed on Tuesday, voted unanimously to enter into the agreement. NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  The proposed model railroad has taken out an option to purchase Western Gateway Heritage State Park and the former Sons of Italy property for $1.2 million.

The Redevelopment Authority on Thursday voted to enter into the agreement with the Extreme Model Railroad and Contemporary Architecture Museum being developed by museum maestro Thomas Krens.

The private for-profit development group will pay a non-refundable $20,000 payment for the one-year option effective on Friday and $30,000 should it request to extend the option a second year. It will also begin paying $1,500 a month for the space it currently occupies in the park beginning on Jan. 1, 2018.

Mayor Richard Alcombright said the selling the property was preferable to a long-term lease that would have obligated the Redevelopment Authority to continue to maintain the park.

"This is cash up front that buys the park so we no longer have the obligation to run a park, to manage a park," he said.

Ben Sosne, representing EMRCA, said possession of the property was critical in attracting capital investors because the "figures are set in stone."

"It's dependent on the fundraising but we want to move forward because we want to build this thing," he said. "There's no question that the project is at a point where we think it will attract a lot visitors."

The high-tech museum is expected to have more than 100 trains at 1:48 scale operating in environments ranging from the Empire State Building (at 37 feet tall) to the city's historic railroad and is projecting upwards of 300,000 visitors a year.

Originally sited for the current Hoosac Tunnel museum operated by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, the project grew in size and scope to include a "museum of time," cafe, retail and a boutique distillery to start. Last month, Sosne and project manager Andre Heller outlined the need to encompass the Sons property to the south.

The current tenants will not be immediately impacted by the option, although that will change should agreement be executed. Freight Yard Pub has been central to the project's plans but the nonprofit North Adams Museum for History and Science is expected to move. The museum, operated by the local Historical Society, has been in talks with other locations.

As for DCR, attorney Michael MacDonald, retained by the authority to negotiate the agreement, said "what the agreement contemplates is that the Redevelopment Authority and Mr. Krens' organization will work with DCR to come to some arrangement that is satisfactory to everybody."

He said the agreement also includes language to ensure that ERMCA does not diverge from the plans presented over the last year or so.

It would have to limit the park's development to "museum uses, distillery use, related cafe, retail and restaurant use as presented to the Redevelopment Authority," MacDonald read, adding that "the developer is required under the document to conduct their environmental due diligence and title due diligence on or before the date, which is six months from the option, so that we're not waiting out potentially two years to find there is a problem."

The agreement is in part based on an appraisal of the park done in 2014 for the failed Greylock Market project that sought to revamp the park into an artisan live/work space. The appraisal was $875,000 but only for the park, not the land to the south, MacDonald said.

In this case, an appraisal can be done that could affect the purchase price or the state Department of Housing and Community Development could issue a waiver for economic development based on the area's high unemployment and poverty rate.

The mayor said the authority has reached out DHCD to determine what it's next steps should be.

Alcombright thought that this agreement had been reached faster because the museum project's for-profit profile made it easier to develop financing than for Greylock Market, which never got off the ground.

"I think it's the premise of the significant amount of private sector investment in this," he said. "The other deal, as you recall, relied much more on government money, tax credits. The financing piece was much more complicated. This enhances the ability to move it along much more quickly."

The agreement gives the authority some funding whether the museum is developed or not, which was not the case with the market proposal. The mayor said it was "putting some dollar amounts in place that would incentive the Krens people to move as quickly as possible so we can see something come to fruition."

Alcombright said the sale would give the Redevelopment Authority an established fund to work with should it look to do further redevelopment in the downtown area. He said the administration is in talks with the state on how the funds could be used.

"The Redevelopment Authority, I'm guessing, would be able to make decisions about how to utilize that money," he said. "Whether to make further development of the downtown in a newly defined urban renewal area or further define our urban renewal zone ... it will take money to do that ...

"All of us would agree that any proceeds would need to be targeted back to development of the city."
Police Chief Richard Tarsa speaks at Wednesday's meeting of the Selectmen about a medical marijuana dispensary.

Adams Agrees To Host Agreement With Medical Marijuana Dispensary

ADAMS, Mass.  The Selectmen will provide a letter of non-opposition for a medical marijuana dispensary to open in Adams.



The board voted unanimously Wednesday to provide Mission Massachusetts' general manager Cory Ravelson with the letter that allows Mission to move further along in the state application process to sell medical marijuana.



Attached to the letter is a host community agreement that promises Adams 3 percent of all revenues if the dispensary opens.



"It's a small step in the process but I think it is a good step for the town overall," Town Administrator Tony Mazzucco said. "It would generate tens of thousands of dollars at the low end for the town ... It may not happen but this is the first step in the process ... so we are taking a 40,000-foot view and saying the door is open but there is quite a bit of work needed to make this happen."



Ravelson said his group has been working with Community Development Director Donna Cesan to pick out possible locations. The company is seeking a 2,000- to 4,000-square-foot building and has eyed properties at the town's gateways and downtown.



"We have identified properties that are available that fit the state regulations and our needs," he said. "Over the last month, we have really focused in on Adams ... we have had an interest in Western Mass and in the Berkshires and we are really excited to locate here specifically."



He said the facility would only be for retail and that the group's growing and processing facility will be in Worcester. He said they are in the construction phase of a retail facility in Worcester as well and they plan to open another in Burlington.



Mission Massachusetts is in the process of developing a 60,000 square-foot growing facility in Worcester.



Selectman Joseph Nowak, who has been a strong proponent for a dispensary since he was elected, had few concerns and welcomed the group to Adams.



"Anything that can help an individual that is struggling I am all for it ... I know some people that have conditions that have just taken their quality of life away from them," he said. "I think these days if you don't have quality of life then you are mission out on life."



Board of Health member Bruce Shepley, a registered nurse of 32 years, said a dispensary will go beyond creating a new stream of revenue in town by helping those in need.



"It is another case of access to health care and if you can imagine the need for a pharmaceutical agent to control pain whatever your diagnosis is and having to go out to get it or not have it available," he said. "It happens all too often. I know is it controversial and it keeps being redefined but I think it would be a very good thing for the Selectmen not to oppose this. It is a progressive thing."

Police Chief Richard Tarsa said that although he was "tepid" as a citizen and chief to welcome a dispensary, he did not see a reason to obstruct it.



"I have presented my side of this a few times and regardless of what I think, the pros and cons are at a personal level and my feelings as the police chief, I am also a realist," Tarsa said. "There is no doubt that there is a move to put it in Adams and that is a move I am in no position to fight against ... it's coming and it's here."



Tarsa said his main concern was security and that he had a great conversation with John Penders of Winmill Group, a security consulting firm representing Mission Massachusetts.



Penders, who attended the meeting, said Mission Massachusetts plans to go beyond state security regulations.



"We take a phased approach and we work with local law enforcement, fire and EMS and we conduct a risk assessment of the proposed property and work to mitigate any risk," he said. "We develop a tailored security plan for the applicant and we train them on how to use the system."



He said the system will have intrusion detection, video surveillance and access control. Employees will have pass cards so access can be controlled and monitored.


Lee Bank Official Named 2017 'Community Bank Hero'

LEE, Mass.  Lee Bank announces that Bruce J. Marzotto, senior vice president of commercial lending, has been named a Community Bank Hero by The Warren Group and Banker & Tradesman. Community Bank Heroes is an annual award that honors the achievements, commitment, and dedication of financial professionals who go above and beyond for their institution and community.



Award recipients are nominated by their peers and selected by Banker & Tradesman's editorial board; this year's class of 13 winners comes from community banks throughout Massachusetts.



Marzotto has been with Lee Bank for 10 years and has worked in banking in Berkshire County for 40 years. After receiving his associate's degree at Berkshire Community College, he continued his education through banking courses with the American Institute of Banking as well as the New England School of Banking at Williams College. As former treasurer of the Southern Berkshire Chamber of Commerce, Great Barrington Little League and the Boy Scouts of America-Troop 23, Marzotto is continuing his community involvement as a trustee of the newly organized Great Barrington Municipal Affordable House Trust. He lives in Great Barrington with his wife Judy and sons Mark and Kevin.



"It is a great honor to receive any award that has the word community associated with it, and in this case it's Lee Bank's commitment to our community that makes this award even more special," Marzotto said.



The Community Bank Heroes awards will be distributed at a dinner event on May 23 at the Hyatt Regency Boston hotel. Recipients will be featured in the May 22 issue of Banker & Tradesman.
Williams Seniors Awarded Florence Chandler Memorial Fellowships

WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.  Williams College seniors Sarah Cooperman and Ananya Mayukha have been awarded Class of 1945 Florence Chandler Memorial Fellowships, awards that provide a $30,000 grant to support a year of purposeful, independent study outside the United States.

Cooperman, a biology and environmental studies double major from Westport, Conn., developed a deep interest in bats after she took classes in ecology at Williams. During the summer of 2015, she studied the field ecology of little brown bats in Alaska under a National Science Foundation grant. As a part of her work, Cooperman helped researchers set up ultrasonic bat recorders and operate bat nets in the Chugach National Forest and at breeding sites located throughout the Prince William Sound and south central Alaska. Upon returning to Anchorage, she helped document and analyze thousands of bat recordings obtained at sites.



Her Chandler project, "Lucky Bats or Flying Rats? Exploring Global Perceptions of Bats," would take her to Japan, the Kingdom of Tonga, Australia, Ecuador and Latvia to experience a wide spectrum of reactions to bats across cultures  from disgust to honor. Her goal is to investigate human relationships with bats rather than the bats themselves to understand the societal aspects that influence human perspectives. Cooperman wants to examine how economics, historical interactions and folk stories shape the images of bats and what those perceptions mean for conservation efforts. She plans to record bat calls in each country and create vocal or instrumental pieces that capture the essence of each community of bats and to probe her own belief that bats are intelligent musicians rather than pests.



"I am beyond thrilled and grateful to have received the Chandler Fellowship," Cooperman said. "I'm excited to spend next year understanding what factors influence the many ways people around the globe react to bats, which I think are often very misunderstood critters here in the U.S. I think this project will be an immensely challenging, confusing, and stimulating experience, and I look forward to connecting and exploring my own identities as a musician and biologist throughout the year. This is a truly humbling opportunity, and I cannot wait to get going."



Cooperman, the daughter of Jonathan (Class of 1982) and Mary Cooperman, plans to pursue graduate studies in environmental history or policy to make science accessible as a science writer, environmental lawyer, or by working for a non-profit that seeks to better connect people to the outdoors. She hopes to write about species that are widely perceived as unappealing, yet are important to their ecosystems and human economies.



At Williams, Cooperman has been involved with Williams Outdoor Orientation for Living as First-Years (WOOLF), a member of the Williams Outing Club, a junior advisor for first-year students, rowed with the womens crew team, and sang with the a cappella group The Ephlats.

Mayukha, a psychology major from Ann Arbor, Mich., has long been interested in human connection. As a high school student, she devised a study to test the specific musical preferences of autistic children. During the summer between her freshman and sophomore year at Williams, she shadowed an oncologist at the University of Michigan Cancer Center, and says while she admired the doctor's honesty with her patients as she communicated about the fatal nature of their disease, she wondered if that honesty took away their hope. She returned the next summer with a study she created, interviewing cancer patients about the role of hope in their lives. The summer before her senior year at Williams, Mayukha spent time speaking to cancer patients again, but this time at the intensive care unit at the Mayo Clinic, exploring connection with strangers.
Minister Li Kexin of the Chinese Embassy in the US speaks at a roundtable discussion on the Belt and Road Initiative in Washington on Tuesday. Zhao Huanxin / China Daily

The US is "close to deciding" about sending a representative to the Belt and Road summit next week in China, according to a minister at the Chinese embassy in Washington.

Minister Li Kexin did not reveal the name or title of the potential US participant, but said it was "encouraging" news.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) comprises the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road.

The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, will be held in Beijing on Sunday and Monday.

"The main focus of the initiative is on the further connectivity, and it is open and inclusive," Li told a roundtable discussion at the embassy on Tuesday. "It is opening up great opportunities for other countries, including the US, and we welcome all parties to be a part of this."

Li noted that globalization and regional integration is also driving China to promote the BRI.

Anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise in the US and in some European regions.

"I don't think this is a good trend here in this country, because American companies complain about the investment environment in China, but vice-versa is that Chinese companies do face more and more serious problems here," Li said.

Tian Deyou, economic and commercial minister-counselor of the embassy, also said that the BRI is a huge project with major opportunities that go beyond a single country.

Citing World Bank statistics, Tian said that over the past 70 years, for every dollar spent on infrastructure projects in developing countries, 40 cents are used to buy equipment and services from developed countries.

"So in this way I can understand that Americans want to do something with this project," Tian said, noting that when the BRI was first raised, there had been skepticism among think tanks and American companies.

"They are changing their attitude and wanting to be aggressive about joining this project," Tian said, adding that American businesses can play a role in banking, financial support, consulting, construction, infrastructure engineering and manufacturing.

Cooperation is on the rise between Chinese enterprises and American enterprises in implementing projects in a third country, not in China or the US, but in Africa, for example.

"I think there are many examples, so I am sure in the future there will be more examples for the cooperation of the enterprises of the two countries through the initiative," said Li Bin, economic consul at the'embassy.

Sourabh Gupta, a senior specialist with the Institute for China-America Studies, said the BRI should be understood in terms of existing great and rising major powers, and how countries can create an international system that is inclusive and in which all participants can frame the rules.

"This is not overcoming a new order, but it is adding more content to a new order and more ideas to the new order, and especially in the area of development," he said.
Nurses stand to form the numbers 5.12 during an event to mark International Nurses Day at a hospital in Yangzhou City, East Chinas Jiangsu Province, May 11, 2017. International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth, to mark the contributions nurses make to society. (Photo: China News Service/Meng Delong)
The Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation is taking place at a time of profound change globally. To be attended by global leaders, heads of states and governments, intellectuals, businesses, and ranking figures from a wide spectrum, the Summit provides a wonderful forum to discuss ways to boost cooperation, build cooperative frameworks and share cooperation outcomes. It represents an effort to pool varied opinions and thoughts for an intellectually stimulating and mutually beneficial outcome.

Connectivity of people, the theme I will be taking up for my talk is so close to my heart. The idea of integration of the people resonates with my emotions while representing the finest illustration of deep-rooted people-to-people relations  China-Pakistans everlasting and ever soaring friendship.

The globe, and universe as well, has been the charter of curious men and women; who transcend territories and boundaries. In doing so, they imprint new pathways around the global landscape. Enterprise was, and is, at the heart of human circulation.

Indeed, it was Zhang Qian, an imperial Chinese envoy who established the fabled Silk Road some 2000 years ago. Resolute beings crisscrossed this route to trade silk  the most precious commodity of the time. It defined commerce of men and ideas, commodities and articles, and became the conduit of communication  interlocking distant lands and seas.

Statesmen who marshal a new era punctuate the march of time. President Xi Jinpings defining vision of One Belt One Road (OBOR) is epoch making. It is rooted in ancient but represents the prescient  sprawling network of physical connectivity; social and cultural collaboration; economic cooperation, diplomatic and political agreements. Spanning more than 60 countries, OBOR is a web of motorways and railways, waterways and airwaves, pipelines and gridlines, to circulate ideas and experiences, men and material, money and manufacture  indeed all elements of progress and development.

Globalization diffused political boundaries. It was spearheaded by the developed economies  the rest embraced it varyingly. Today, when many societies turn inwards and doubt the rationale and scope of globalization, Peoples Republic of China has commanded the unfinished agenda of globalization. But this global vision is more humane and mutual; it relies particularly on collaboration than competition. It does not only mind the interest of multinational, but predicates too on the ordinary and her aspirations. Thus, a new globalized complex is emerging  networked people. This could only be possible from a society which has people at its heart  people-to-people then is not only between countries - it extends from the neighbourhoods to the distant habitats.

China has articulated OBOR which is the path of increased connectivity through diplomacy, agreements, trade and economic cooperation. While global trade talks have stagnated, China seeks new trade routes and refurbishes old ones, helping developing countries restore physical and human infrastructure.

It is forging people-to-people partnerships  based on mutual respect and wellbeing. The Chinese concept of Shared Prosperity accepts that the community of all people is One Community. This Community cannot be prosperous with some winning and many losing  certainly the pristine principle that must eternally define local, national and international development agenda.

Traditional government-to-government relations were exclusively through political and diplomatic means. Information & Communication Technology has demolished this exclusivity and transformed the essence of inter-state relations: general public  scholars, opinion makers, celebrities, entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens are directly exchanging across borders. There are many layers that now shape the way people think about other countries. Peoples connectivity is thus becoming more and more important in formulation of relations between countries. This is of course also the most resilient basis for inter-state relations.

People-to-People connectivity is genuine empowerment of the people  it transfers power from elite to ordinary citizens. China has entered a new era of people-to-people diplomacy through which it hones the advantages of cultural exchanges with other countries.

As President Xi Jinping aptly remarked, we should strengthen inter-civilisation exchanges and mutual learning and people-to-people diplomacy represents the most profound force in promoting such exchanges and mutual learning (2014).

Pakistan has embraced the historic OBOR Initiative wholeheartedly. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is an unprecedented package of co-operation and development between China and Pakistan through this Initiative. As we breathe here, Ladies and Gentlemen, breathtaking progress is being made in the implementation of CPEC in Pakistan. More than USD 50 billion worth of projects are underway from Kashgar in Chinas Xinjiang province to Gwadar, a deep-sea port in Pakistans Baluchistan province. With transparency, efficiency and effectiveness, the building blocks of CPEC are being installed. These are not mere words - roads and highways, power plants and ports, are at advanced stages of completion. Industrial cooperation and long term plan of CPEC is at final stage of negotiations.

CPEC surely is the fastest manifestation of OBOR. It is an economic hallway benefitting both countries through promoting bilateral connectivity in trade, energy and industrial cooperation, integrated transport and IT systems, tourism and human resource development. It is reshaping the geo-economic landscape and is a game-changer not only for Pakistan but the entire region.

The Chinese people, leadership and government, have shown unprecedented and historical commitment to the restoration of Pakistans economy. These massive investments are reinvigorating Pakistans economy which has stabilized due to the prudent and sound policies of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Government.

Our Government took bold decisions to address the triple peril of extremism, economy and energy. On all three fronts, visible and verifiable progress has been achieved. And China has been our partner in this turnaround. We shall, forever, be indebted to our Chinese friends, who have stood by us in our hour of maximum need. Our Government too discharged its duty with utmost commitment, diligence and sense of purpose.

And with the same gusto, I have the honour to steer the course for Punjab during these momentous times. It has been both a privilege and a responsibility. When we commenced, the impediments in Pakistan were daunting. With single minded focus and resolve, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs Government has been able to meet the commitment and expectation of our Chinese friends.

Punjab, today, is recognized as the province in Pakistan which implements CPEC projects with unparalleled speed and determination. Thousands of Chinese now reside in Punjab and are participating in our development efforts. Highest attention is paid to their security and comfort. Many delegations and businesses from China regularly visit Punjab to work with us. We are very proud of this trust and confidence.

CPEC is also transforming the way Pakistanis look towards their brotherly neighbour. Chinese presence in Pakistan is now evident at a personal level too: in markets and daily life  in culture and the arts industry. Pakistans film industry, for the first time, has cast a Chinese hero in a new movie which came out last month. Our youth is fast learning Chinese language to interact and engage with their new neighbours and friends. People are connecting for prosperity and wellbeing. Connectivity of people is indeed foundational to lasting prosperity and peace. It is the only winning option.

(The writer is Chief Minister of Punjab Province of Pakistan)
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Having once been a box-office pull and Television show host, Russell Brands political campaign has been the stars central agenda for many years now.

During the 2015 election, Brand was outspoken, interviewing Labours Ed Miliband  for which the leader received much criticism  and endorsing the left-leaning party.

Having stepped away from the limelight, Brand is back, and just in time for the 2017 general election that will decide how the UK leaves the European Union.

Speaking to NME, the ex-film star decided not to reveal who hed vote for but spoke how democracy as we know it ends.

My opinion on voting is evolving, Brand told the publication. We might be witnessing the end of democracy, although it may be hard to observe in the timeframe of one human life.

It makes you question whether any real change can be delivered. Having said that, if you listen to the pledges that the Labour Party are making, they are talking about collecting corporate taxes, cancelling tuition fees, getting rid of zero-hour contracts. Which is weird, because it was only two years ago that there were two centrist parties.

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

Catch Brands Re:Birth tour going around the country until 2018.
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This year, more than ever, it feels appropriate to emphasise the fact that Roadburn is a place for community, friendship and positivity. Whatever your political leaning, your sexual orientation, your religion or the colour of your skin, the world around us lately has felt divisive, conflicted, and often difficult.

Roadburn has always been, and always will be a place for creativity to thrive, for relationships to flourish, bonds to be strengthened and unity to be celebrated. Feel free to consider Roadburn your safe haven. Whilst its important to stay switched on to the world around us, it doesnt hurt to take a few days off to recharge your batteries in an inclusive and accepting environment.

We hope you find solace, positivity and creativity here at Roadburn. Make yourself comfortable, pull up a chair around the table and dont be afraid to make your voice be heard. Its as vital as anybody elses, and more needed than ever.

Re-printed from the Roadburn 2017 official programme

Ulver performing at Roadburn 2017 (Jostijn Ligtvoet)

Roadburn festival is a Mecca for those seduced by the experimental dark arts of psychedelia and doom, a celebration of the avant-garde artists determined to push the boundaries of heavy music in extremis, whether that be sonically, emotionally or spiritually. For one long weekend each year in April, the quaint picturesque city of Tilburg becomes a hubbub of activity, as 4,000 or so cheery patrons soak up the most radical sounds of the metal underground. Roadburn seek to completely immerse their guests in an environment tailor-made for those who see music as high art rather than happy distraction. The organisers are acutely aware that theres much more to creating an immersive experience than merely chucking some bands on a stage and providing gallons of flowing amber brew.

Industrial black metal three-piece Mysticum performing at Roadburn Festival 2017 (Niels Vinck)

For several years, the festival has enlisted a special guest to curate portions of the line-up, with past collaborators including Opeths Mikael Akerfeldt, ex-Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, Electric Wizard and Sunn O))). Each curator brings their own unique flavour to proceedings and this year was no exception with the honour being bestowed upon Baroness frontman John Dyer Baizley. As well as bringing some of the most beloved bands of the weekend to the bill (Chelsea Wolfe, Oathbreaker, Amenra and Wear Your Wounds were all hand-picked this year by Baizley), the musician and illustrators stamp is all over the festival site, not least on the excellent artwork specially commissioned for Roadburn 2017 that adorns posters, merchandise and video screens across the whole site.

John Dyer Baizley of Baroness playing the Friday night of Roadburn 2017 (Niels Vinck)

Baizleys influence on Roadburn 2017 extended far beyond merely helping to put together a rich and radical line-up. As remarkable and varied as the Baroness back-catalogue is, most would point to Baizley's artwork as having the most lasting impact on the world of underground heavy music as a whole. Taking as much influence from the decorative art nouveau style of Alphonse Mucha as he does the comic-book death imagery of Pushead, Baizleys artwork is instantly recognisable and has appeared on various album sleeves by the likes of Kvelertak, Skeletonwitch, Pig Destroyer, Kylesa, Flight of the Concordes, Black Tusk, Darkest Hour, Magrudergrind and of course, Baroness.

In honour of their guest curator, Roadburn put on an art exhibition of silk-screened poster art in collaboration with Baizley and Minneapolis-based creative studio Burlesque of North America called Full Bleed. Named after a common screen printing term where silkscreen ink is printed beyond the cut edge of a poster, the exhibition showcased a variety of influential artists whose work has become synonymous with the music that soundtracks the festival. Artists included Converge / Wear Your Wounds vocalist and Deathwish Inc record label founder Jacob Bannon, notable comics creator for Tokyopop, Vertigo, Marvel and Dark Horse (amongst others) Becky Cloonan and celebrated New York illustrator of records by Sleep, Sunn O))), Earth, Grand Magus and High on Fire, Arik Roper as well as a selection of Baizleys own work.

Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Show all 11 1 /11 Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) All Full Bleed photos courtesy of Ben LaFond/BRLSQ Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Titled 'A Rumble Beneath' and 'As Above So Below', each of these Jake Bannon prints have a one of a kind paper treatment, signed and and numbered in editions of just 36 Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) The moment when John Baizley gifted Roadburn founder Walter Hoeijmakers the original painting of the art he created for Roadburn 2017 Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) One of the gallery walls, with test prints on the left, and Thomas Hooper's 'Lost in You' on the right Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Becky Cloonan's 'By Chance or Providence' which she created for the cover of her graphic novel to be released summer 2017 Becky Cloonan Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Jacob Bannon signing prints at the Full Bleed exhibition Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Thomas Hooper's tribute to Jacob Bannon's iconic 'Jane Doe' - titled 'Altar', these were an exclusive release for Full Bleed, each has a one of a kind paper treatment, signed and numbered in an edition of 65 posters Thomas Hooper Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) John Dyer Baizley's tribute to Jacob Bannon's 'Jane Doe' is a 10 color screen print. Signed, numbered, and embossed edition of 99 posters John Dyer Baizley Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) John Dyer Baizley, with Marald's father, getting an up close look at the prints Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Art alumni and heavy music visual luminary Arik Roper signing and numbering one of his Full Bleed releases: 'Berserker', a 7 color screen print, an edition of 96 posters Full Bleed Art Exhibition (Roadburn 2017) Some of the Full Bleed team and artists - from left to right: Ben LaFond, Wes Winship, Marald Van Haasteren, Jodi Milbert, John Baizley, Sarah Schatz, Tineke de Mug, Becky Cloonan, Arik Roper

Going far beyond the remit of most festivals, a daily publication is produced overnight and distributed on-site so that revellers can reflect on the music of the previous day and look forward to whats in store whilst nursing their hangover. Made-up to re-create the Xerox-copied, cobbled-together nature of fanzines from the 80s and 90s, the Weirdo Canyon Dispatch is a lovingly crafted touch, distributed for no other reason than to add depth to those experiencing the festival. To some, it may seem a triviality but its exactly this sort of attention to detail that lifts the experience above the corporate-sponsored muddy field cattle extravaganzas that clog up the market every summer. Roadburn unashamedly serves a niche but the organisers know that niche inside out, at least as well as their fans, who will proudly boast this this is their fifth, sixth or seventh Roadburn whilst describing their annual trip to Tilburg as a pilgrimage. The passion with which the festival is run is infectious and its nigh on impossible not to be swept up in it.

Hypnopazuzu performing at the 2017 edition of Roadburn (Niels Vinck)

The site is focused in on one small square hub in the centre of the city, which can be circumvented in 5 minutes at a brisk pace, 10 if youve been supping beer all day. The music is spread out among 5 indoor stages ranging from the 3,000 capacity 013 Poppodium right down to the tiny, cramped 150 capacity Cul De Sac. Special mention must go to the Het Patronaat stage; housed in the hall of the imposing yet beautiful 19th century neo-Gothic St. Jozef church, its wooden-beamed gable roof and stunning stained glass windows make for a beautiful if unorthodox environment to watch a whole heap of satanic black metal bands.

Het Patronaat provided a beautiful environment to watch bands in (Niels Vinck)

Roadburn has a reputation for mainly covering doom, psyche and black metal and whilst you could probably put around half the bands playing over the four days into one or more of those categories, there is a far broader range to the musical programme than one might imagine. The elegiac reverb-drenched melancholic folk of Emma Ruth Rundle completely hypnotises all that watch her, as does the trip-hop-tinged showgaze post-metal mastery of Les Discrets. Chelsea Wolfes gothic electro neo-folk manages to be paradoxically enchanting and disturbing at the same time, whilst Jacob Bannons second ever performance with his 16-years-in-the-making project Wear Your Wounds is utterly mesmerising, re-adjusting the parameters of what constitutes a heavy band.

Chelsea Wolfe proved spell-binding at Roadburn 2017 (Niels Vinck)

The passion with which Roadburn is run also brings out a desire in performers to play special sets unlikely to be repeated elsewhere. Bands playing an entire album has become a fairly synonymous part of the Roadburn experience; this year My Dying Bride, Warning, Ahab and Bongzilla all chose to dedicate their sets to one record. But the highlight of these special album sets came from Swiss black metal quartet Schammasch, who opened the Friday by playing their sweeping, majestic 3-disc 100-minute 2016 opus Triangle in full. Bathed in primary colour hues and clearly having a penchant for smoke machines, its a hell of a spectacle to witness at 2:30 in the afternoon and one that should see this currently modest bands profile rise steadily.

Schammasch performed their 2016 triple disc Triangle album in full at Roadburn 2017 (Niels Vinck)

Razors in the Night are a name unfamiliar to most, probably because theyve formed exclusively to play at this years event. Consisting of members of Baroness (including John Baizley and second guitarist Peter Adams) as well as legendary Neurosis luminary Scott Kelly, its mainly an excuse for these legendary figures to cut loose and play old-school punk covers by the likes of The Misfits, Iggy and the Stooges and Blitz (from whom they derived their moniker). Baroness mark the occasion of headlining Roadburn by playing a broadly chronological set which includes seldom played Red Album cuts Wanderlust and The Birthing, as well as the opening song from their imaginatively titled First EP, Tower Falls. The set expertly chronicles the divergent nature and broad growth that this incredible band has made over their 14-year career.

Members of Baroness and Neurosis came together to form Razors in the Night for a one of performance (Niels Vinck)

Like all the best festivals in the world, Roadburn is run by people fiercely dedicated to the music they feature, which inspires bands to bring something special to the plate. Few festivals can inspire that kind of dedication amongst artists and attendees but by focusing on the details, the community and the spirit of bringing passionate, talented people together from all over the world, Roadburn continues to be a place where creativity can thrive and unity can be celebrated.

Roadburn will return in 2018
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As the most intriguing yet most inscrutable member of the biggest boyband in the world, putting together a debut solo album must have felt like both a daunting and exciting prospect for Harry Styles.

Theres been far too much pressure on the 23-year-old to establish himself as the new Bowie or the new Mick Jagger (as if there could ever be such a thing), but what is immediately clear is that those two artists, among many others, have played a huge influence on the record.

On his self-titled debut Styles opens, not with the rowdy, up-tempo rock song you might expect but with Meet Me in the Hallway  a gentle, sprawling guitar track that meanders gently until it reaches Sign of the Times.

It still seems like a mistake to have released this song as the first single  not just because of what radio pluggers around the world would consider an obscene running time (clocking in at 5 minutes 41 seconds) but also because this epic, over-the-top Bowie homage is far from the best of what Styles has to offer.

Elsewhere, Jeff Bhaskers deft touches on production sees Styles move swiftly through each track without losing momentum.

Theres a slight hip hop influence in the huh sample on Woman that may be down to his work with Kanye West and as for the Rolling Stones nods, well, theyre pretty hard to miss.

Styles is a true child of the internet age, so this album doesnt stick to any one genre in particular, and there are references to everything from folk to funk to punk rock.

Carolina is a fun, swinging jam that loosens up the mood on the album after those two, fairly solemn tracks. For now well ignore the issue of the good girl (Shes a good girl/Such a good girl, Styles sings on the chorus) trope and instead look at the instrumentation because theres no way that riff wasnt influenced by Stealers Wheels Stuck In The Middle With You  so much so that this writer had to double check it wasnt a sample.

Upon revealing his first two singles plus one other song (Ever Since New York) Styles had already been confronted with some fairly petty accusations of ripping off tracks by Bowie (Sign of the Times) and The Beatles (Sweet Creature).

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In fact the case seems to be more one of Styles being unafraid to shout about the music that inspires him  he certainly wears his influences on his sleeve  but there are definitely a few times on this album, Carolina included, where he treads a very fine line.

Two Ghosts will surely have fans scrambling to uncover any and all references to his love life; if youre remotely aware of them you wont miss the Same lips, red. Same eyes, blue lyric that seems to nod to Taylor Swifts track Style, rumoured to be about her former boyfriend. Its the most explicit reference to his personal life on the album, that otherwise sees Styles tackle feelings about past relationships with mature subtlety.

Only Angel finally lands on the sound that many fans and critics expected from the first single. After its misleadingly drawn-out intro theres a fantastic fist-punch of a guitar hook and Styles throaty shout on lyrics about a girl who looks like an angel but shes a devil in between the sheets (again with the tropes).

During interviews Styles has come across as a progressive in his views about women and his female fans, so its a shame that he hasnt tried to break away from some of the more fatigued gender archetypes that dominate the rock music he clearly loves.

Woman has a similarly upbeat vibe to Only Angel  after touching snatches of conversation from Styles Netflix binges with his guitarist Mitch Rowland the song breaks out into a Bennie and the Jets style piano jam.

Finally closer From The Dining Room Table  which pays no attention to any one piece of furniture  sees Styles bare his soul a little bit more on lyrics that accuse a former lover of giving another man his shirt, or when he sings: Woke up the girl who looked just like you/Almost said your name.

Styles has opened himself up, as best he can, to his audience, and by gathering a solid team around him to help achieve that hes created an immersive, well-produced collection of songs that isnt trying to prove anything in particular to anyone.

And when you have that many people talking about you, that many column inches and gossip writers try to dissect your life like a school science project thats quite a feat for a debut album.

Harry Styles self-titled debut album is out now via Columbia Records
WASHINGTON, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The United States is to send delegates to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing scheduled for May 14-15, the U.S. government said on Thursday night.

The United States "recognizes the importance" of China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and it will send delegates to attend the forum, according to a statement released by the U.S. Commerce Department.

At the upcoming forum, all parties will identify major cooperative projects, set up working groups and establish an investment cooperation center. They will also sign financing agreements to support their cooperative projects.

During a meeting at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump that China welcomes U.S. participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.

In about one month following the meeting between the two leaders, the United States and China have also reached consensus on initial commitments in areas such as agricultural trade, financial services and energy to boost economic cooperation under a 100-day plan, according to the Commerce Department.

Under the agreement, the United States welcomes China to receive imports of liquefied natural gas from the United States, and the two countries will work to resolve outstanding issues for the import of China origin cooked poultry to the United States "as soon as possible."

Meanwhile, U.S. federal regulatory authorities remain committed to apply in the United States the same bank prudential supervisory and regulatory standards to Chinese banking institutions as to other foreign banking institutions, the Commerce Department said.

Currently, more than 100 countries and international organizations have voiced their support for the Belt and Road Initiative, among which more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013 and comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along, and beyond, the ancient Silk Road trade routes.
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Homeowners are being warned that potential burglars may be marking out empty homes using white pebbles.

An area co-ordinator for Neighbourhood Watch in Portishead, near Bristol, said that small white stones have been spotted outside properties, including under car tyres, in what could be a signal for opportunistic thieves.

Nick Gough, area co-ordinator for Portishead's Neighbourhood Watch, told MailOnline that the group believes certain roads are being targeted by burglars.

There are reports of a male leaving white stones outside of various properties, he said adding that the homes look unoccupied. The group believes the stones are being left beneath car tyres to test whether the homeowner or tenant is in.

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The male placing the stones is delivering charity bags for unwanted clothing, he added.

The report comes after fears markings known as the Da Pinchi Code were being etched onto pavements outside homes.

Five small circles were said to demarcate a homeowner who was wealthy, while two interlocking rectangles denoted that the resident was nervous or afraid.

But after investigating the markings, West Mercia Police later set about easing public fears and said that the drawings were in fact left by utility firms.
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Slathered on toast, mixed with honey to marinate chicken, or coated in sugary chocolate, peanut butter is one of the most versatile and cheap foods out there.

Mass-produced for the first time in the US where it was blended with stacks of sugar and artificial chemicals, peanut butter has gradually gained popularity across the world since the mid-twentieth century. Because - in its purest form - it is high in protein, the rise of online fitness gurus has helped it explode in popularity as a healthy snack. And upmarket peanut butters - like Pipandnut and Jackpot that supports live music venues - are the latest jars to hit store shelves.

But the history of the humble food which is eaten sandwiched between white bread with sticky jelly in the US has more lofty origins than you might imagine.

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Peanut butter is often thought of as a food created by slaves in the American south. But that myth is wrong, Andrew Smith, a food historian and author of Peanuts: The Illustrious History of the Goober Pea tells The Independent.

There is no evidence that is true. To make peanut butter you need a special grinder which wasn't invented until the late 19th century."And slavery was abolished in the US in 1865. "Its possible you could have done it with a pestle and mortar but peanut butter sticks all over the place," he adds.

The reason it became so popular in the US, he continues, is a vegetarian conspiracy. And it all comes down to John Harvey Kellogg - who manufactured cereal with his brother - and his Western Health Reform Institute for the well-heeled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He was a vegan and he ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek in Michigan, explains Smith. He creates this vegan meal programme that included all sorts of things including electric shock therapy. He was very popular and seen as cutting edge at the time, although his ideas were rejected later.

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At that time he was trying lots of new things and wondered how to replace butter in a vegan way. At that time, people had teeth problems so it was hard for them to eat things like granola, so he started grinding everything. One day he accidentally ground peanuts and ended up with what he have today.

But while his health-conscious clients loved the stuff and bought their own grinders, the average American wasnt so convinced by the nutty paste. Not until it was mixed up with sugar and fat, at least. Then, small peanut butter firms began popping up across the US. When the depression hit, peanut butter became a cheap food for cash-strapped families.

As well as Kellogg, botanist and inventor George Washington Carver also played a part in the rise of peanut butter. When boll weevils devastated the cotton crops of mainly African American tenant and small-crop farmers in the South, he encouraged them to grow peanuts because they were high in protein, could be used to make oil, and could be kept for long periods of time.

10 best American foods Show all 10 1 /10 10 best American foods 10 best American foods 4. Tabasco Chipotle and Cola Sauce While fiery Tabasco sauce is practically an American institution, this flavour is a fun twist on the nations favourite carbonated drink. Combining the sweetness of cola with a soft kick of chipotle, the rich, thick sauce is good on meat and for mopping up dry pizza crusts. 2.30, sainsburys.co.uk 10 best American foods 1. Oreo Ice Cream Sandwich The favourite American after-school snack now comes as an ice cream. Sandwiched between two wafers, vanilla ice cream with pieces of biscuit continues the cookies and cream theme, making for a delicious - if not harder to eat - alternative to a biscuit. 2, waitrose.com 10 best American foods 2. Bone Suckin Sauce If youre getting out the grill for Independence Day, this serves as a versatile marinade for any meat. Made with tomato puree, apple cider, vinegar, honey and mustard, it gives meat a succulent sweet, sour and tangy flavour. Try it on pork ribs and chicken wings. 4.99, lakeland.co.uk 10 best American foods 3. Reeses Peanut Butter Cups No other chocolate snack says the US quite like two cups of creamy, full-fat peanut butter covered in a thick layer of milk chocolate. Its enough to send your cholesterol through the roof by just looking at the retro bright orange and yellow packaging. 1.29, americansoda.co.uk 10 best American foods 5. Hersheys Milk Chocolate Bar The age-old debate on whether Cadburys or Hersheys chocolate is better is unlikely to be settled on Independence Day. Although most sane Brits will back Cadburys superior Dairy Milk every time, a minority crave Americas bitter alternative  and can enjoy in peace without the put-downs today. 70p, tesco.com 10 best American foods 6. Frenchs Classic Yellow Mustard This iconic yellow bottle makes this American staple instantly recognisable. The recipes been around since 1904; its milder than English mustard with a subtly tangy kick. For authenticity, try it on a hotdog. 1.79, ocado.com 10 best American foods 7. Udis Cinnamon & Sugar Bagel Chips These coeliac-friendly, crunchy bagel bites are a tasty alternative to the original Jewish breadstuff. Coated in sugar and cinnamon then air-dried, they make a nice snack when you cant quite decide between sweet and savoury. 3.25, tesco.com 10 best American foods 8. Strawberry Marshmallow Fluff This sugary jar of dreams may well keep you awake all night, but it will definitely be worth it. The fluffy paste makes an ideal snack on toast  or spread with peanut butter in a sandwich to make the all-American Flutternutter. Also comes in vanilla and raspberry flavours. 3, amazon.co.uk 10 best American foods 9. Franks Red Hot Original Created over 100 years ago, this original hot sauce was the key ingredient used when the first ever buffalo wings were concocted in New York in the Fifties. Aside from seasoning meat, use it to spice up pasta and rice dishes. 1.50, sainsburys.com 10 best American foods 10. Clarks Original Maple Syrup It may have originated in Canada, but maple syrup has been embraced en masse by Americans too. This Clarks Original is made from the sap of maple trees along with its key ingredient, carob, a brown powder used as a substitute for chocolate to give it extra depth of flavour. Enjoy with pancakes or bacon. 1.98, ocado.com

The first recipe for jelly and peanut was created in 1911. In 1895 Kellogg gives it to sanitarium clients and in six years the product is in recipe books. It was very popular before commercial companies made it en masse. It became a mainstream product very quickly.

Brands like Skippy peanut butter would advertise in kids magazines. Children were targeted because it was an easy way for parents to get them to make their own lunch, suggests Smith. That was a pattern in the US continues until advertising moved to TV in the 50s and 60s.

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But what surprised Smith the most about peanut butter when he was researching his book was how the legumes (peanuts aren't actually nuts) ended up in being an all-American food at all. Its origins, he realised, were pretty complex.

Peanuts originated in Central America. Europeans didnt come across them until they landed in the Caribbean, before spreading to the Mediterranean, Turkey and China. Peanuts were then transported to the US during the slave trade, which Smith believes is why some people believe peanut butter was eaten by Africans shipped to America. It didnt spread from the South to the North until the civil war. Italian immigrants then seized on the nut, frying and salting it, as a means of making money with street stalls.

And as peanuts are so cheap, and therefore make such a huge profit for manufacturers - Smith doesnt see the popularity of the peanut waning at all, particularly as people in India and China have started buying more of the stuff. It seems that, for the foreseeable future, we'll be nuts about peanut butter.
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Police officers in Durham will soon use artificial intelligence to determine whether a suspect should be kept in custody or released on bail.

The system, which is called the Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart), has been trained using Durham Constabulary data collected from 2008 to 2013, and will also consider a suspects gender and postcode.

It is designed to help officers assess how risky it would be to release suspects.

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

Hart will be used in an advisory capacity, according to the BBC.

It was developed alongside academics from the University of Cambridge and has been built to err on the side of caution to lower the risk of it recommending the early release of potentially dangerous suspects.

Hart is, therefore, likely to classify somebody as medium- or high-risk, something thats reflected in the results of tests conducted in 2013.

It was accurate 98 per cent of the time when it classified a suspect as low-risk, and 88 per cent of the time when it classified a suspect as high-risk.

I imagine in the next two to three months well probably make it a live tool to support officers decision making, Sheena Urwin, the head of criminal justice at Durham Constabulary, told the BBC.

While the system could prove useful, there are fears that it could also be seriously flawed.

A recent report found that artificially intelligent systems are being taught to be prejudiced by learning from humans.

An investigation into a separate algorithm used by US authorities to predict how likely a suspect is to commit future crimes, conducted by ProPublica last year, also found issues.

According to the report, the algorithm was twice as likely to incorrectly flag black suspects as future criminals than white suspects, and white suspects were incorrectly classified as low-risk more often than black suspects.

Could this disparity be explained by defendants prior crimes or the type of crimes they were arrested for? No, reads the report.

Hart will not be able to accurately risk-assess suspects with a criminal history from beyond Durham Constabularys jurisdiction.

Its creators believe they have mitigated any associated risks, and an auditing system explaining how the AI technology reached a decision will also be available if required.
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A police force has warned Facebook users against sharing missing children posts online, as they may be putting a life at risk.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) said that it can be dangerous to share posts on social media which feature information and or images of missing children because they may not be lost.

They [the children] may actually be hiding for their own safety, the RCMP stressed on its Facebook page.

For example - a parent who has been forbidden any access to their children through a court order might put their children's photos on Facebook and claim them as missing. The other parent and child may be in hiding for their own protection.

The post continued: By sharing these photos, you may be putting a life at risk.

The RCMP went on to urge the public to check the source of any image being shared. If the image did not originate from a confirmed police source of from a reputable media outlet showing that officers are actively searching, the post is likely not legitimate.

Highlighting how social media users can believe that they are helping children when they share such posts, people left comments underneath the post expressing their shock and thanking the RCMP.

I never thought of that I will be doing more research from now on. Thanks for sharing, wrote one Facebook user.
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Im sat in a candlelit room, not far from Euston station, one Tuesday evening. About 10 of us are gathered around a table, which is filled with plates of brownies, bowls of fruit, and cups of tea. Our host, a doctor, begins talking.

In my job, I have to have to have a lot of conversations with people who are going to die, she starts. And I realise they should have had these conversations much sooner.

Im at a death cafe, the most visible and well-known branch of the growing death positivity movement  a campaign that aims to remove the taboos surrounding discussion of death, and encourage us to plan for our own. This week is Dying Matters Awareness Week, with a whole host of events taking place around the UK  as well as death cafes youll find funeral and cemetery tours, talks on everything from Egyptian burial to how to write a will, and even dedicated festivals in Birmingham, Yorkshire and London.

Memento mori is a genre of art that includes symbols of life and death (Art Macabre)

The movement began in 2008 as part of a Government-backed campaign, Dying Matters. Real problems were happening because people were not preparing for their deaths adequately, Dying Matters Toby Scott tells me. Research showed this was because people were uncomfortable talking about it.

But while many public health campaigns struggle to engage people, this one took root and blossomed, resulting in a vibrant community and events that encompass theatre, art, poetry and more. The creativity people bring to it is just amazing, says Scott, who explains that most of the events are volunteer-initiated, rather than being run by the organisation themselves. Dying Matters has resources on its website for people to organise and promote their own events, such is the extent that its captured peoples imaginations.

One of those people is Nikki Shaill, who uses drawing as a means of addressing discussion of death through her Art Macabre (deathdrawing.com) workshops. This weekend, shell be appearing as part of the Matter of Life and Death festival in Birmingham. It originally started as body positive life drawing, then we did a Halloween-themed session that went down really well, she explains. I started researching more about how death has been presented in art throughout history and across cultures, and realised this was a whole subject I could dive into.

Her interest took a poignant turn when her co-founder and good friend took her own life. Chatting to lots of people at events, and confronting that fear of death through art, really helped me deal with the loss, she tells me. Its allowed me to become comfortable talking about it, and I know carrying on the events is a tribute to her. Shaills workshops have covered themes such as memento mori  a genre of art that includes symbols of life and death such as hourglasses and rotting fruit, to remind the viewer life is short  Victorian mourning jewellery, and burial shrouds.

If people dont know much about the event beforehand, or have come for the art rather than the death aspect, they can be a bit surprised or uncomfortable at first. But once they get going, they will say how interesting theyve found it. Some will have stories or thoughts that they want to share, that they havent felt able to discuss openly before. As talking about death is still so taboo, an activity like drawing gives people a gentle way in to it.

Death does not have to be a morbid or depressing topic (Art Macabre)

Both Shaill and Scott tell me that, far from being morbid, thinking and talking about death has been an enlightening, positive experience for them. Theres something very liberating about staring death right in the face, acknowledging that, yes, one day it will win, but for now youre going to get on with your life, says Scott. Writing your will and planning your funeral takes a weight off your shoulders too  it becomes something you no longer have to worry about.

Encouraging people to make plans for their burial, researching the different options out there  there are so many alternative types of burial that most people are unaware of says Scott  and making a plan thats accessible to someone close to you, is one of the primary objectives of Dying Matters. But how did we get to a position in the first place where, as a society, we are so scared to talk about death that we cant even face preparing for our own?

If you go back over 100 years, then death would have been a part of everyday life, explains Scott. People died young and they died quickly. They died at home rather than hospital, and funeral care was too expensive for most people. As medical care improved, people lived longer and died in hospital. Death became something that happened elsewhere; that was hidden away.

Artists use drawing as a means of addressing discussion of death (Art Macabre)

Of course thats not to say medical advancement is a bad thing, but Scott wants people to consider end-of-life options such as dying at home or in a hospice earlier on, and make sure those wishes are expressed. Most people, when given the option, would rather not die in hospital, and lots of NHS trusts offer home hospice care, he says. We can have the best of both worlds  medical treatment, but also a death in your own home with family and friends around you.

Back at the death cafe, its fascinating to hear different peoples motivations for attending. Some have experienced bereavement recently, some work in jobs such as healthcare where they witness death regularly, and others have noticed how differently the subject is treated in other cultures. For the majority (including me), its the first time weve sat down and had conversations such as this. It feels comfortable and  dare I say it  strangely freeing.

With art, we can think more abstractly about the subject of death and dying (Art Macabre)

This year, the focus of awareness week is What can you do?, and Dying Matters is encouraging people to think about how they can help others around them effected by grief and bereavement. At the death cafe, people remark that the things you need help with in the wake of a death are the same as after having a baby  practical assistant with chores such as shopping, cooking and cleaning.

Scott echoes this sentiment. Were totally relaxed, as a society, with birth. When someone has a baby were interested in whats happening and keen to help them out, he concludes. We need to get to a position where the end of life is as much a part of the everyday as the start of life.

Dying Matters Awareness Week runs from 8-14 May. See dyingmatters.org for the full programme of event
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What makes a man alpha? Perhaps hes confident, successful, strong, brave, charming, tall and attractive.

Men want to be him, women want to be with him. He gets his way and picks up women with ease. Everyone loves him.

Or so were led to believe.

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This James Bond-like idea of an alpha male - in contrast to beta males (shy, weak, nerdy - you know the stereotype) - is one that prevails in our culture. The same concept for women, however, is barely given a second thought.

But can men really be divided into alpha and beta (and perhaps even omega)? Or is it just a case of some people being more confident than others?

According to Stefan Djordjevic, not only do alpha males exist, but anyone can learn to be one.

Djordjevic runs an online course called How to Approach Women - Effective Ways to Be More Alpha. He believes that studying female behaviour is a science just like biology and physics and revealed to The Independent that hes been on over 150 dates in the past four years.

If Djordjevic is to be believed, men can learn to be more confident with women, and he endeavours to teach them his ways.

The course is designed for people who are shy, awkward or strange in some way, he says. I used to be extremely shy and awkward, until I learned the secrets to public speaking and female-male conversation. I don't think I'll ever go back!

As you might expect, the majority of his clients are single males between the ages of 18 and 27 who - in Djordjevics words - need an extra boost when it comes to talking to women. Whether that's fear of rejection, lack of confidence, or an underlying social phobia, the course helps to break through that barrier.

They all believe they can become alpha men and turn their lives around.

The trouble with the sound of Djordjevics course is that he seems to suggest theres a one-size-fits-all approach to picking up women, and that being confident with women is all it means to be alpha.

However todays idea of alpha males may actually be more to do with social dominance than anything else:

Studies have demonstrated that socially dominant men hold sway with many women, and can invoke feelings of inferiority among men, says clinical psychologist Dr. Vinita Mehta. Thanks to current research, these men may also be more readily identifiable.

But when you delve into scientific research, theres little evidence to suggest alpha males are anything more than a myth.

Its hard to believe considering how often the idea of alpha males appears in popular culture, but about 50 years ago, it wasnt a term that was used at all - not outside of the domain of primatology anyway.

The release of the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waals book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes in 1982 changed things though: I dont think the term alpha male was in use outside of primatology when I wrote Chimpanzee Politics, de Waal told New York Magazine.

Many primates have social hierarchies with one most dominant member at the top, but this isnt something that works for humans. If it was the same, that would mean there was only one dominant male in every community.

Men dont work like that - the guy whos the confident captain of his rugby team could be shy and retiring at work.

What too often goes missing in discussions about being alpha or beta is that status is context specific, says psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman.

A CEO of a Fortune 500 company has a high level of status in our society, but if he was thrown into the general population at Sing Sing Prison, hed find himself at the very bottom of the pecking order. You can be an alpha amongst one group, and a beta in another.

Whilst this might point to an obvious flaw in Djordjevics course, he believes all men have the capacity to be alpha or beta and can sway back and forth between the two.

For his part, Kaufman has a problem with the division of men into alpha and beta - he thinks it greatly simplifies the multi-dimensionality of masculinity, and grossly underestimates what a man is capable of becoming, but it also doesnt even get at the heart of what is really attractive to women.

One of the earliest studies into the link between dominance and attraction was conducted in 1987.

The researchers found that while dominance was considered sexually attractive, aggressive and domineering tendencies did not make men more attractive. Which will be unsurprising news to women the world over.

A further study broke down the idea of dominance into two types and found women respond differently to both: whilst being assertive and confident is considered attractive, being demanding, violent or self-centred is not.

In fact, the most attractive combination according to the women in the study was kindness and assertiveness (which, yet again, most women could have told you).

But does that mean the idea of typically alpha men being most attractive to women is a myth? Should males stop trying to become more alpha in the hopes of attracting women?

In our species, the attainment of social status, and the mating benefits that come along with it, can be accomplished through compassion and cooperation just as much (if not more so) as through aggression and intimidation, says Kaufman.

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

So social status can either be achieved through prestige or dominance. The latter would be the traditional alpha, but perhaps the former could be achieved by someone considered more of a beta.

Kaufman is of the opinion that dominance is a short-term strategy for success; prestige is a long-term one. Which suggests that no perceived alpha male will remain one forever.

How many of the most popular, attractive and confident boys from your teenage years at school grew into surprisingly beta adults? Exactly.

Recommended Having shorter relationships is a sign of being attractive

The black and white notion of alpha and beta men doesnt hold up because masculinity is much more multidimensional - as are people generally.

The most attractive male is really a blend of characteristics, including assertiveness, kindness, cultivated skills and a genuine sense of value in this world, says Kaufman. The true alpha is fuller, deeper, and richer.

As neuroscientist Dean Burnett suggested: Maybe the supposed human alpha male is a combination of disgruntled male wish fulfilment and borderline-pseudoscientific justification for resorting to bullying, intimidation and generally all-round unpleasant behaviour by men hoping to impose their will on a world they find too complex and unnerving so revert to their baser instincts to get what they want, despite knowing deep down they dont deserve it and shouldnt have it?

Maybe indeed.
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Once again a promising British technology company has had to source its growth capital from overseas.

Virtual reality firm Improbable has raised $500m (390m), in a funding round led by Japans SoftBank, which will take a non controlling stake in the business.

Its investment values the five-year-old company, set up by couple of former Cambridge University computer science students, at more than $1bn.

Not bad for a loss making venture. This is the sort of thing that you regularly see in Californias Silicon Valley, which boasts a small army of investors who are willing to take a punt on potential. On these shores, its a lot less common.

One of the other benefits of all that funding is that the Valley has been able to produce some big guns with sufficient resources to gobble up companies with potential like Improbable before they really get going, and then reap the benefit when they fly.

With SoftBank on board, however, the company, will be able to stay at home, and continue its development as an independent outfit.

Seeking to develop virtual world and massive-scale simulation technology primarily for games designers (but it could have other applications too) it will also be able to develop relationships with other SoftBank companies. That could come in very handy down the line.

It is the tech investment houses second big British investment of late. Shortly after the Brexit vote crushed the value of the pound, it cooked up a far bigger deal, swooping to buy chip designer ARM Holdings, just about Britains only established technology star, in a 24bn deal.

To avoid ruffling any feathers locally, it made, at the time, a legally binding commitment to keep it in Cambridge and to hire lots of staff there.

People started to get a mite twitchy after SoftBank flipped a quarter of the company over to a fund backed by a variety of largely Middle Eastern Investors.

But apparently the commitment will remain in force even if SoftBanks continuing majority ownership status changes.

And if that doesnt work out as intended, well, Britain will have only itself to blame.

For ARM, Improbable, and many of their peers, whether in London (where Improbable has offices) or in the little cluster that makes its home in Cambridges Silicon Fen, SoftBank is probably their best option. It's proven willing to give the companies in which it invests a lot of love, and it doesn't interfere too much in their development if things go well.

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.

While have a Business Angels Association here, and while the City has a venture capital industry, investors sometimes seem no less chary of putting their money into local ventures.

If there is going to be any future for the country's economy post-Brexit that really needs to change.

But how to make it happen? Its a problem that has defeated successive Governments, when theyve paid half a mind to it. Best just sit back and salute rising sun while it shines, then.
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Japans government has released a list of more than 300 companies that have breached labour laws, in a move designed to crack down on firms that are putting employees at risk of literally working themselves to death.

Numerous cases of people dying as a result of being overworked, known in Japan as karoshi, has marred the nations reputation and earlier this year a government survey revealed that a fifth of Japans workforce is at risk of killing themselves by putting in too many hours.

In 2015, a high-profile case of an advertising agency employee taking her own life after working 100 extra hours a month, prompted international outcry. The government now hopes that a name-and-shame approach will help eliminate the practice of extreme workaholism.

Recommended Japanese government tells people to stop overworking

The list published this week on the countrys labour ministrys website includes major firms like advertising agency Dentsu, where the 2015 death occurred, electronics maker Panasonic, as well as a local unit of Japan Post, according to Reuters.

All the 334 companies on the list received warnings for excessive overtime and other labour violations between October last year and March this year. But the labour ministry also said that not all companies that were being investigated had been made public.

It said that it only publicises company names if it deems that doing so would encourage stricter compliance and be for the greater good of the Japanese public.

The current list is due to be updated monthly.

In February, Japans government launched a campaign urging employees to leave the office at 3pm  so much earlier than usual - on every last Friday of the month.

As well as helping to eliminate 'karoshi', the government said it hoped the move would also provide extra stimulus to the economy.

The worst jobs for your health Show all 10 1 /10 The worst jobs for your health The worst jobs for your health 10. Surgical and medical assistants, technologists, and technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 57.3 What they do: Assist in operations, under the supervision of surgeons, registered nurses, or other surgical personnel and perform medical laboratory tests. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 69 The worst jobs for your health 9. Stationary engineers and boiler operators Overall unhealthiness score: 57.7 What they do: Operate or maintain stationary engines, boilers, or other mechanical equipment to provide utilities for buildings or industrial processes. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 99 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 89 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 84 The worst jobs for your health 8. Water and wastewater treatment plant and system operators Overall unhealthiness score: 58.2 What they do: Operate or control an entire process or system of machines, often through the use of control boards, to transfer or treat water or wastewater. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 97 2. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 80 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 74 The worst jobs for your health 7. Histotechnologists and histologic technicians Overall unhealthiness score: 59.0 What they do: Prepare histologic slides from tissue sections for microscopic examination and diagnosis by pathologists. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to hazardous conditions: 88 2. Exposure to contaminants: 76 3. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 The worst jobs for your health 6. Immigration and customs inspectors Overall unhealthiness score: 59.3 What they do: Investigate and inspect people, common carriers, goods, and merchandise, arriving in or departing from the US or between states to detect violations of immigration and customs laws and regulations. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 78 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 63 3. Exposure to radiation: 62 The worst jobs for your health 5. Podiatrists Overall unhealthiness score: 60.2 What they do: Diagnose and treat diseases and deformities of the human foot. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 87 2. Exposure to radiation: 69 3. Exposure to contaminants: 67 The worst jobs for your health 4. Veterinarians, veterinary assistants, and laboratory animal caretakers and veterinary technologists and technicians What they do: Diagnose, treat, or research diseases and injuries of animals and perform medical tests in a laboratory environment for use in the treatment and diagnosis of diseases in animals. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 81 2. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 75 3. Exposure to contaminants: 74 The worst jobs for your health 3. Anesthesiologists, nurse anesthetists, and anesthesiologist assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 62.3 What they do: Administer anesthetics or sedatives during medical procedures, and help patients in recovering from anesthesia. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to disease and infections: 94 2. Exposure to contaminants: 80 3. Exposure to radiation: 74 The worst jobs for your health 2. Flight attendants What they do: Provide personal services to ensure the safety, security, and comfort of airline passengers during flight. Greet passengers, verify tickets, explain use of safety equipment, and serve food or beverages. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 88 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 77 3. Exposure to minor burns, cuts, bites, or stings: 69 The worst jobs for your health 1. Dentists, dental surgeons, and dental assistants Overall unhealthiness score: 65.4 What they do: Examine, diagnose, and treat diseases, injuries, and malformations of teeth and gums. May treat diseases of nerve, pulp, and other dental tissues affecting oral hygiene and retention of teeth. May fit dental appliances or provide preventive care. Top three health risks: 1. Exposure to contaminants: 84 2. Exposure to disease and infections: 75 3. Time spent sitting: 67

Japans labour force and its population are shrinking and the country said that it wanted to reduce working hours to encourage women  even those who have caring duties  to work, while getting men more involved in raising children.

Increased leisure time should also mean more time between the sheets to boost the birth rate, Reuters at the time reported.

Additional reporting by news wires
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A fresh outbreak of the Ebola virus has reportedly killed at least three people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The central African country's Ministry of Health said that one case had been confirmed after tests on nine people who came down with a hemorrhagic fever in Bas-Uele province in the northeast of the country on or after April 22.

Two of the sufferers had died, it added.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said in a tweet the Ministry had notified them of a lab confirmed case of the deadly virus.

In 2014, a three-month outbreak of Ebola in the DRC killed 49 people.

WHO spokesman Eric Kabambi said the outbreak was in "a very remote zone, very forested, so we are a little lucky."

He added: "We always take this very seriously."

Ebola is a deadly hemorrhagic fever that occasionally jumps to humans from animals including bats and monkeys. Without preventive measures, the virus can spread quickly between people and is fatal in up to 90 per cent of cases.

An experimental vaccine was recently developed that WHO says could be used in emergencies.

It was created after a 2014 outbreak of the disease in West Africa, which claimed the lives of thousands of people, becoming the deadliest occurrence of the disease since its discovery in 1976.

Researchers from the New England Journal of Medicine traced the outbreak to two-year-old Emile Ouamouno, who died in December 2013 in Meliandou, a small village in south-eastern Guinea.

It subsequently spread across Liberia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the US and Mali.

In a pattern that came to characterise the spread of the deadly virus, health workers trying to treat the disease were infected. They then spread it to nearby districts.

In June last year WHO declared Liberia free of active Ebola virus transmission. It was the last country still fighting the world's worst outbreak of the disease.
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Thousands of weapons including samurai swords, axes and air guns have been seized from schools across the UK, latest figures reveal.

Police chiefs also highlighted a worrying increase in the number of young people carrying knives  with children as young as five found to be bringing a variety of weapons to school.

Information given to the Press Association by police forces in England and Wales found at least one in five reported incidents involved knives, while the data suggests an overall increase in the number of weapons found on school premises.

Analysis of data from 32 police forces that gave figures showed there were 2,579 weapons found from the 2015-16 financial year to this year.

The number is believed to be much higher, however, since many police forces declined to provide data, or offered only incomplete figures under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 2016-17 alone, 1,369 items were found - a rise of almost 20 per cent on the previous year, despite this not covering a full 12-month period.

According to the 24 forces that gave details on the type of weapon, just under 500 of those seized (nearly one fifth) were knives - including samurai swords.

The figures come amid a crackdown on knife crime in schools by some forces.

Previous reports show knife crime to be particularly prevalent among young people in London boroughs.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick spoke of her huge concern last month, shortly before the police force announced officers would be working with schools to highlight the potential consequences of carrying a knife.

Commenting on the latest figures, Pat Green from the Ben Kinsella Trust - which works with schools to educate pupils on the consequences of knife-crime - said children carrying weapons were likely to be emotionally vulnerable and in need of support.

He said: "Parents, teachers and pupils will be really concerned about these figures. We must act now to ensure that knife crime doesn't spread from the streets to the classroom.

"In our experience too many young people don't understand the dangers associated with carrying knives. Many young people who have been bullied or victimised choose to carry a knife for protection."

Children and young people were most often unaware that by carrying a weapon they are increasing their likelihood of serious injuries and even death, he added.

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 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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

Responding to the Press Associations information requests, police officials emphasised they were already working with schools to help educate young people on the dangers of carrying weapons.

Other items confiscated by police in the past year included at least 26 guns, including BB guns, air rifles and an imitation firearm.

More unusual contraband included a police baton, a rolling pin, a can of beer and a 15-inch metal rod.

One student fashioned an improvised battery device, it was reported, while another was caught with an unwound paperclip to use as an implement.

At least 47 children found with weapons were below 10 years old, the age at which someone can be prosecuted, police said.

This included three five-year-olds, one of whom was caught with a knife, while another was found with a missile - typically a brick or a rock.

 Police officer saves autistic child from drowning in pond

A handful of forces offered historical data illustrating weapons seized in previous years including a guillotine, a Taser gun and a ukulele.

In a minority of cases, depending how information was recorded, incidents could have involved the use of body parts such as a fist.

Forces in England and Wales were asked for information on the numbers of weapons seized in schools, along with details of the incidents.

National Police Chiefs' Council Lead for Knife Crime, Chief Constable Alf Hitchcock, said: Schools should be free of weapons and all children should be able to learn without fear or violence.

"Carrying a weapon of any kind in schools is not an issue for a school to deal with alone; police and partners will always be willing to work with them and take appropriate action.

We have recently seen an increase in young people carrying knives and this is worrying. We are responding to this trend by targeting those who carry them illegally and working with retailers to reduce the sale of knives to underage people through nationally coordinated operations.

Police involvement in schools, whether it be officers delivering talks and interactive sessions or based in schools themselves as part of the Safer Schools Partnership, helps us to educate young people and explain why carrying a weapon illegally is never acceptable.

Latest Government figures show that in 2014-15, primary and secondary school pupils in England were suspended on more than 132,000 occasions for assault or verbally abusing and threatening behaviour.

In addition, there were more than 2,100 permanent exclusions for these reasons.

Mr Green added: "We need to make knife crime awareness part of the national curriculum. Our work with schools demonstrates that helping young people to develop alternative strategies to dealing with conflict and teaching positive ways to stay safe massively reduces the likelihood of them ever carrying a knife."

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: Schools work closely with the police to protect and educate their pupils, and in some cases police officers are stationed in schools.

"Where appropriate, schools conduct searches and use metal detectors, and they implement robust disciplinary procedures against anyone found in possession of a weapon.

Young people are taught about the dangers of offensive weapons both in lessons and in talks delivered by invited speakers.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 12, 2017. Jargaltulga Erdenebat is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. (Xinhua/Liu Weibing)

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that Mongolia is welcome to actively participate in construction of the Belt and Road.

China supports Mongolia's efforts to be a bridge linking European and Asian continents, Xi told Mongolian Prime Minister Jargaltulga Erdenebat, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation scheduled for May 14 to 15.

The two countries should cooperate on areas including trade and investment, connectivity, agriculture and animal breeding, industrial capacity, and energy, so that the Belt and Road Initiative and Mongolia's Prairie Road development initiative can be effectively dovetailed, Xi said.

He called for efforts to promote the construction of the China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor to boost the common development of the three nations.

Xi said the Chinese side attaches great importance to the development of China-Mongolia ties. Both sides should uphold the principles of mutual trust, cooperation and win-win outcome, and take opportunities to broaden exchanges and cooperation in various fields and push forward their comprehensive strategic partnership.

He stressed that the developmental prospects for China-Mongolia ties are broad, adding that the two sides should care for each other's core interests and major concerns and deepen mutual trust to ensure that the development of bilateral ties will not deviate from the right track.

The president called for facilitating the study of a free trade zone and cross-border economic cooperation, and promoting cooperation on major mineral industry programs and infrastructure connectivity.

Efforts should also be made to increase exchanges between youth, media and local authorities, Xi said.

Erdenebat said carrying out friendly cooperation with China is a priority for Mongolia. The country adheres to the one-China policy, and is willing to strengthen bilateral high-level exchanges, economic and trade cooperation and people-to-people exchanges.

The prime minister said Mongolia understands the significance of the Belt and Road Initiative, which is open and inclusive, in solving the unbalanced and unstable development of mankind and boosting world peace and development.

Mongolia is willing to be a bridge linking Europen and Asian continents and will actively participate in mutually beneficial cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, Erdenebat said.
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Two Muslim men have been taken off a plane bound for Manchester after two women accused them of making gestures.

They were asked to re-trace their steps through security at Izmir airport in Turkey for extra checks sparked by claims including that they were going to the toilet to use their phones.

Their Thomas Cook flight was delayed for 80 minutes before the passengers were given the all-clear for the second time.

Witnesses said two British women told the planes cabin crew the men were seen skipping security scanners and making gestures, delaying the planes take-off on Wednesday.

Another woman on board told the Manchester Evening News the scene was an embarrassment as tourists waited to leave Muslim-majority Turkey.

Two innocent Muslim men were marched off plane and searched as two English ladies refused to fly with them on the plane, she said.

The result was a delay for everyone and the men flew, while the women were left behind.

 Video shows Muslims kicked off flight

The pair refused to fly with the men on board despite the initial security checks, choosing to return to the terminal instead.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook Airlines confirmed the concerns raised were unverified and thanked the men for their cooperation.

Two customers on this flight were asked to go through security a second time as a precaution, after unverified concerns were raised that the initial airport security check had missed them out, he said.

We'd like to thank these two customers for their patience and apologise for any inconvenience.

It was the latest in a string of incidents seeing Muslim passengers questioned or removed from planes.

In August, three British siblings were marched off an EasyJet flight at Stansted by armed police and MI5 agents after being falsely accused of having Isis material on their phones.

The offending messages emerged to be WhatsApp messages about Jeremy Corbyn.

Several Muslim passengers have been kicked off flights in the US, including an Iraqi refugee removed after speaking to his uncle in Arabic on the phone and a couple accused of suspiciously sweating.
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Police have dropped an investigation into a hate crime attack on a teenage refugee who says he was stabbed in the face by a racist gang  instead advising him not to be out alone at night.

The 17-year-old was knocked unconscious and lost several teeth when he was beaten up in Ashford, Kent, by at least five men or boys who allegedly told him they f****** hate black people. The attack left him with serious scarring.

Kent police said they could not identify the attackers due to a lack of descriptions and witnesses, despite the victim telling them that he has seen the men on the towns high street since the attack in April.

The boy, from Eritrea, said he called police when the men taunted and threatened him in the centre of town just days after the attack, but officers did not respond in time.

Kent Police said officers arrived within 10 minutes, but that after carrying out a search they were not able to identify or locate the attackers.

In an email seen by The Independent, Kent Police said: It looks like due to a lack of descriptions and witnesses it will not be possible to investigate it further. Sad to say it is probably unwise to be out alone at that time of night.

The force told The Independent all lines of enquiry had been exhausted and that the case was filed pending any further information coming to light.

"There was no report of a weapon being seen or used," they said, adding: No independent witnesses to the incident were identified and no clear description of the suspect was provided.

"Furthermore, no forensic evidence or CCTV opportunities were identified from enquiries made by officers."

The stabbing occurred less than a fortnight after a brutal attack on a Kurdish Iranian asylum seeker by a mob in Croydon, south London, made headline news.

Thirteen people have since appeared in court in relation to the attack on Reker Ahmed, also 17, which left the boy with a fractured spine, fractured eye socket and bleed to the brain.

Members of the public have so far donated nearly 60,000 to support his recovery.

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Croydon and Kent have among the highest numbers of young refugees and asylum seekers in the country.

Kent is believed to have more unaccompanied asylum seeking children in social services care than any other local authority. Many arrived in the port of Dover from Calais in France.

Earlier this year, Kent Police released figures showing a 66 per cent increase in hate crime between July and September 2016.

Razia Shariff, chief executive of Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN), which works with young unaccompanied asylum seekers and refugees in the area, said the charity had seen a spike in incidents recently.

We have been made aware of a number of hate crime incidents recently against the young people we work with, which is upsetting, she told The Independent.

At KRAN we want to ensure that young people feel safe in their community, so would welcome working with local communities and statutory sector providers to raise awareness and a more positive understanding of the challenges young refugees and asylum seekers face.

Sources say Kent social services were last week forced to move at least three young asylum seekers and refugees from a property in Canterbury, after the address was identified online and actively targeted by members of Britain First, who falsely claimed a rapist was living in the house.

Two leaders of the far-right group, Paul Golding, 35, and Jayda Fransen, 31, were arrested earlier this week on suspicion of inciting religious hatred after posting videos on social media, local media reports.

The pair have been bailed until next month.
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Tommy Robinson has been arrested after he attempted to video Muslims outside a court.

The former English Defence League leader shared a video claiming he was being arrested on his official Facebook account on Wednesday morning.

Mr Robinson said: Its 4.32 and the police are at my house, and Im being arrested for going to a court case in Canterbury and trying to video the Muslim paedophiles.

The clip then shows footage of two police officers inside what appears to be a kitchen and one of the officer's proceeding to tell him he cannot use his phone.

A message posted on Mr Robinson's Twitter account claimed he had been arrested on charges relating to attempted journalism.

A spokesman for Kent Police told The Independent an arrest had been made.

He said: As you know, we are unable to confirm or deny whether or not a named individual has been arrested for a particular offence. However, I am aware of the video that is currently online so am therefore able to provide you with the following.

On the morning of Wednesday 10 May 2017 officers attended an address in Luton, Bedfordshire, and arrested a 34-year-old man for contempt of court.

The arrest is in relation to an incident at Canterbury Crown Court on Monday 8 May 2017.

In Britain, any filming and recording of courts and court precincts is illegal under section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 and the Contempt of Court Act.

Kent Live reported that Mr Robinson and his cameraman from Rebel Media, a fringe right-wing Canadian media company, went to Canterbury Crown Court on Monday claiming they wanted to speak to the defendants of an ongoing rape trial.

On a separate note, Mr Robinson, who led the EDL from 2009 until October 2013, was condemned or launching into a tirade about Islamic extremism at the scene of the Westminster attack.

Mr Robinson announced he was leaving the EDL in 2013 in a joint conference with think tank Quilliam. His departure was widely covered, with the former leader later telling police he would help with their investigations into alleged racists within the extremist group.
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A row has erupted between parishioners and officials who banned yoga from their church because they considered it to be non-Christian.

The Parochial Church Council (PCC) ruled that non Christian activities would not be permitted in St Davids Church in Ceredigion, Wales, after plans were announced to turn part of it into a community centre. It followed complaints about a lack of local facilities from villagers.

The ruling would permit alcohol to be brought onto the premises but not sold, but yoga would not be allowed.

The decision angered some parishioners, who have threatened to boycott the church as a result.

Writing to the Tivyside Advertiser, one said he would not visit until a fair and non-bias community centre is built.

"I and no doubt some Blaenporth residents are not at all happy with the view the church has on community activities like yoga, tai chi, taekwondo, cash prize bingo and the like. It is supposed to be a community affair where old and young can enjoy a better quality of life, the letter read.

Joanna Penberthy, the Bishop of St David's has also stepped in and urged the PCC to find out more before banning yoga.

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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 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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. 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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

"While the Bishop of St David's respects the right of parishes to decide what does or does not take place on their premises, it is clear that many people in the diocese have found practising yoga to be of huge benefit," she said in a statement.

To criticise a long standing practice of another religious tradition out of hand without an in depth study and a good theological rationale is unwise. I would encourage the PCC to find out more about yoga before making a final decision.

The area Dean, Rev John Bennett, who chaired the PCC meeting when the matter was discussed, has also said he thinks the council would be prepared to review the decision, which did not go to a vote but was raised as part of a general debate about what might or might not be acceptable.
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Brexit Secretary David Davis has claimed Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission President, is trying to get him fired by leaking potentially damaging stories about him to the press.

Pointing to critical briefings given recently to German newspapers, he told The Telegraph: All these stories are briefing against me trying to get me sacked - which of course is a compliment by the way.

If they dont want me across the table, there's a reason for that  it is in Britains interests, not theirs.

His comments came after details of a tense Downing Street dinner attended by Mr Juncker, the Prime Minister and Mr Davis were leaked to a German newspaper earlier this month, sparking a diplomatic row.

The article in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) claimed Ms May was not amused by Mr Davis bringing up a legal challenge he issued against the Government in the European courts when he was a backbench MP, over the UKs powers of surveillance.

The visitors wondered whether Davis would still be in charge of the negotiations after the election, the report said.

Mr Juncker has since admitted that it was a serious mistake to leak details of the dinner, but denied he was behind the information getting out.

Both British and German newspapers had both speculated that Mr Junckers chief of staff, Martin Selmayr, was behind the revelations.

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 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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 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Haaland went on to score a hattrick, his third of the season in the Premier League. City beat United 6-3. Manchester City FC/Getty UK news in pictures 1 October 2022 Protesters hold up flags and placards at a protest in London. A variety of protest groups including Enough is Enough, Don't Pay and Just Stop Oil all demonstrated on the day AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 30 September 2022 British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who has not been seen in days, leaves the back of Downing Street after a meeting with Office For Budget Responsibility following the release of her governments mini-budget Getty UK news in pictures 29 September 2022 The Virginia creeper foliage on the Tu Hwnt i'r Bont (Beyond the Bridge) Llanwrst, Conwy North Wales, has changed colour from green to red in at the start of Autumn. The building was built in 1480 as a residential dwelling but has been a tearoom for over 50 years PA UK news in pictures 28 September 2022 Criminal barristers from the Criminal Bar Association (CBA), demonstrates outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London, as part of their ongoing pay row with the Government PA UK news in pictures 27 September 2022 David White, Garter King of Arms, poses with an envelope franked with the new cypher of King Charles III 'CIIIR', after it was printed in the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 26 September 2022 A gallery staff member poses next to a painting by Lucian Freud - Self-portrait (Fragment), 1956 - on show at a photocall for the Credit Suisse exhibition - Lucian Freud: New Perspectives at the National Gallery in London PA UK news in pictures 25 September 2022 Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer is interviewed by Laura Kuenssberg in Liverpool before the start of the Labour Party annual Conference which he opened with a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II and sang the national anthem PA UK news in pictures 24 September 2022 Handout photo issued by Buckingham Palace of the ledger stone at the King George VI Memorial Chapel, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle PA UK news in pictures 23 September 2022 A climate change activist protests against UK private jets while lighting his right arm on fire during the Laver Cup tennis tournament at the O2 Arena in London EPA UK news in pictures 22 September 2022 Woody Woodmansey, Lee Bennett, Kevin Armstrong, Nick Moran and Clifford Slapper attend the unveiling of a stone for David Bowie on the Music Walk of Fame at Camden, north London PA UK news in pictures 21 September 2022 A flock of birds in the sky as the sun rises over Dungeness in Kent PA UK news in pictures 20 September 2022 Flowers which were laid by members of the public in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II at Hillsborough Castle in Northern Ireland are collected by the Hillsborough Gardening Team and volunteers to be replanted for those that can be saved or composted PA

But Mr Davis insisted the European Commission President had deliberately been trying to undermine him by leaking stories including the account of the Downing Street dinner to the media.

He said he believed that Mr Junker and his team would like to see the Conservatives have problems at home, because they recognise a large majority will help the UKs negotiations to leave the EU by giving Ms May a strong mandate.

They understand that a vote for Theresa May reinforces her negotiating hand, he said.

One of the things that may have led to that briefing is the fact they know a big mandate from the British people is a big mandate in the negotiation and helps [us] and doesnt help him.

Mr Davis added that he believes Mr Junker has learned his lesson and will no longer meddle in British politics.

I think to be honest he has now learned his lesson," he said.
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Jeremy Corbyn is set to declare the bomb first, talk later approach to foreign policy has failed and that a Labour government would pursue a defence policy that is independent from the US and its erratic President.

He will also accuse Theresa May of pandering to the Trump administration, who last month ordered the firing of 59 Tomahawk missiles against Bashar al-Assads regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons.

In a major speech on foreign policy to an audience at Chatham House on Friday, the Labour leader will hit back at his critics, saying he is no pacifist and accepts that military action under international law as a genuine last resort is necessary in some circumstances.

Recommended Corbyn signals he would refuse to send more troops to Afghanistan

But Mr Corbyn, who was a staunch opponent of the Iraq war during Tony Blairs premiership, will add that the war on terror that followed the 9/11 attacks of 2001 and unilateral interventions have been a failure. They have not increased our security at home  rather the opposite  and they have caused destabilisation and devastation abroad, he will say.

Hitting out at Ms Mays foreign policy, he will add that waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isnt strong leadership and pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability.

Britain deserves better than simply outsourcing our countrys security and prosperity to the whims of the Trump White House, Mr Corbyn will add.

So no more hand-holding with Donald Trump  a Labour government will conduct a robust and independent foreign policy made in London.

This is the fourth general election in a row to be held while Britain is at war and our armed forces are in action in the Middle East and beyond.

The bomb first, talk later approach to security has failed. To persist with it, as the Conservative Government has made clear it is determined to do, is a recipe for increasing not reducing threats and insecurity.

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

But Mike Penning, the Conservatives armed forces minister, said: Jeremy Corbyn has spent a lifetime trying to disarm Britain but now hes pretending hes got what it takes to keep us safe. Its nonsense  we know he wants to scrap Trident, abandon our allies and would rather talk to Daesh than strike its barbaric leader.

We all want peace, but you cant take tea with terrorists who order attacks on innocent civilians on our streets.
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Voters overwhelmingly back policies set out in Labours leaked manifesto, including nationalising the railways, building more houses and raising taxes on higher earners, according to a poll.

The ComRes survey shows around half of people support state ownership of the train network (52 per cent), energy market (49 per cent) and Royal Mail (50 per cent).

Roughly a quarter of people (22, 24 and 25 per cent respectively) said they opposed the policies, outlined in the partys draft document, which was signed off by Labour executives at a meeting on Thursday.

 General Election polls and projections: May 11

All 43 pages of Jeremy Corbyns plan for a Labour government were leaked on Wednesday, days before the official manifesto launch.

The 20,000 word document revealed a radical plan for the country after 8 June; proposals that saw right-wing critics claiming the Labour leader wanted to drag Britain back to the 1970s.

Even some moderate Labour MPs were said to be in revolt over Mr Corbyn's programme of renationalisation and expanding public services, while Ms May branded them "disastrous socialist policies".

But the latest polling, conducted in the last 24 hours and published in the Daily Mirror, reveals wide-scale support for the proposals, even if the party leader remains unpopular.

On the plan to ban zero-hours contracts, 71 per cent said they backed the move, while just 16 per cent said they were against it.

Income tax hikes for the highest 5 per cent of earners on salaries of more than 80,000 also got the thumbs up from 65 per cent of voters, with 24 per cent opposed to higher levies.

 Cameraman 'run over by Jeremy Corbyn's car'

And more than half (54 per cent) of voters said they supported the policy of building 100,000 more council houses each year.

Voters are split on whether MPs should be given a final vote on the terms of the Brexit deal, a policy that also found its way into the Labour manifesto.

Thirty-six per cent supported Labours call for Parliament to have a say at the end of the negotiating period, while 35 per cent are opposed, the survey found.

Meanwhile, Theresa May's support for fox hunting is at odds with nearly eight out of ten (78 per cent) of those polled, who said they wanted the ban to remain in place.

Voters were less flattering about the Labour leader, the survey found, with 56 per cent saying Mr Corbyn would be a disaster as prime minister and 30 per cent saying he should be given a fair chance.

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 proposal for renationalisation of the railways is borne out by a Which? survey which reveals the extent of overcrowding and delays on the network.

More than half of travellers (53 per cent) could not get a seat at least once during the past six months, while one-in-seven (15 per cent) said this occurs "regularly".

Which? said it has been contacted by thousands of people sharing details of their nightmare train journeys.

However, in a speech on Friday to mark the mid-point of the general election campaign, an undeterred Ms May will say many people are "appalled" at the direction he is taking the party.

"We respect that parents and grandparents taught their children and grandchildren that Labour was a party that shared their values and stood up for their community.

"But across the country today, traditional Labour supporters are increasingly looking at what Jeremy Corbyn believes in and are appalled."
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Theresa May has refused to rule out a fresh vote in the Commons after the general election to authorise new air strikes in Syria alongside Donald Trumps US administration.

Asked by the BBC during a campaign rally in the north-east whether she would rule out having a prior-entry vote, the Prime Minister replied: As you know the United Kingdom is part of a coalition that is operating in Syria and Iraq with the United States and other countries too, to ensure that we acting to defeat Daesh [another name for Isis].

But also working not just in that action but diplomatically to ensure others that we can see a stable Syria for the future and a political transition for Syria away from Assad.

When I look at the decisions Ill be taking in terms of defence and foreign policy, there is one thing that will drive those decisions, and that is they will be taken in the British national interest.

It comes after the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn earlier on Friday accused the Prime Minister of pandering to the erratic presidency of Mr Trump in terms of foreign and defence policy. He added: Waiting to see which way the wind blows in Washington isnt strong leadership.

Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, has previously indicated that the British Government could bypass the Commons and join Mr Trumps military efforts in the war-ravaged region if asked by the US administration. Speaking last month, Mr Johnson said it would be very difficult to say no if the US asked the UK to join its efforts against Bashar al-Assads dictatorial regime in response to another chemical attack.

Ms May also used the event to deride Labours top team after a draft of the partys manifesto was leaked on Wednesday evening.

She said: He says he wants to change Britain  and thats true. But what we have learned in this campaign is that he wants to change it into the 1970s.

In just three weeks Labour have taken us back 40 years  or maybe 400 years according to Diane Abbott.

In a series of barbed comments aimed at the shadow Home Secretary  who struggled in a radio interview over the cost of her policy on police recruitment  Ms May said: Labour cannot add up.

And so far in this campaign they have retreated into ideological fantasy. They have shown during this campaign that they cannot be trusted.
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The Vice Chair of Donald Trumps new election integrity commission has been successfully sued four times for voter suppression, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Kris Kobach led restrictive voting initiatives that targeted minorities and perpetuated voter suppression, the not-for-profit legal advocacy group said.

Mr Trump signed an executive order establishing the commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression in the American election system.

Vice President Mike Pence and Mr Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State, will serve as Chair and Vice Chair of the commission that will "review policies and practices that enhance or undermine the American people's confidence in the integrity of federal elections and provide the president with a report that identifies system vulnerabilities that lead to improper registrations and voting."

After the 2016 election, Trump claimed widespread voter fraud explained why Hillary Clinton emerged with nearly 3 million more popular votes. To date, neither Trump nor his team has provided evidence to substantiate the claims, but they have promised an investigation.

Mr Kobach has been a faithful supporter of Mr Trumps election fraud claims. In April, he announced the first conviction of a non-citizen voting in the state of Kansas in the 2016 election.

However, the ACLU filed a freedom of information request to challenge the basis for the White Houses voter fraud claims.

ACLUs Voting Rights Project director said: President Trump is attempting to spread his own fake news about election integrity. Such claims have been widely debunked, but he is still trying to push his false reality on the American public.

It is telling that the presidents choice to co-lead the commission is none other than Kris Kobach, one of the worst offenders of voter suppression in the nation today. If the Trump administration really cares about election integrity, it will divulge its supposed evidence before embarking on this commission boondoggle.

The commission is expected to produce its first report sometime next year.
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West Virginia's highest court has ruled that the states hate crime protections do not extend to anti-LGBTQ attacks.

West Virginia currently has laws making sex-based hate crimes a prosecutable offence. But the Supreme Court of Appeals recently ruled that those crimes dont extend to hate crimes based on gender orientation.

Affording the undefined term sex its common and ordinary meaningwe find the word to be clear and unambiguous and to have a very different meaning and import than the term sexual orientation', Chief Justice Allen H Loughry wrote in the majority decision.

Recommended 1 in 5 millennials identify as LGBTQ

So far, that means at least one man wont face hate crime charges for allegedly punching a gay couple while voicing homophobic slurs.

In the early hours of 5 April 2015, the state alleges, Steward Butler pulled up to a stoplight and saw Casey Williams and Zackery Johnson kissing on the sidewalk.

He began directing anti-gay insults toward the couple, and then got out of his vehicle and struck both Williams and Johnson in the face with his fist, knocking Williams to the ground". Some of the altercation was captured on video.

Mr Butler was indicted for both battery and violations of an individuals civil rights  the states term for hate crimes  in May of that year. But Mr Butler challenged the decision, claiming that the states hate crime laws do not apply to sexual-orientation-based attacks.

The appeals court agreed.

Applying West Virginia Code  61-6-21(b), as it is currently written, the State cannot prosecute the defendant for an alleged criminal civil rights violation arising out of the victims sexual orientation, Mr Loughry wrote.

Mr Butler can now be prosecuted on two counts of battery only.

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

LGBTQ rights groups condemned the decision, calling it a step in the wrong direction.

"At a time when anti-LGBTQ hate violence is on the rise, this ruling reiterates the need to advocate for LGBTQ-inclusive hate-crime laws in all states across the nation, the president and CEO of LGBTQ monitoring group GLAAD, Sarah Kate Ellis, said in a statement to The Independent.

FBI data shows LGBTQ individuals are more likely to be the target of hate crimes than any other minority group aside from African Americans. The FBI documented more than 1,200 LGBTQ-related hate crimes in 2015 alone.

Protections for LGBTQ individuals, however, vary widely by state. West Virginia is one of six states that list sex- or gender-based attacks as a hate crime, but do not mention sexual orientation. Twenty states lay out specific protections for both sex- and sexual-orientation-based attacks. Six states list only sexual orientation.

A bipartisan bill to add language on sexual orientation to hate crime laws was referred to the West Virginia House Judiciary Committee in March. No further action was taken.
The China-funded Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), expected to be commissioned in June, has been hailed by the African community as an embodiment of thriving China-Africa ties, as well as a successful result of the Belt and Road Initiative.

As the largest infrastructure project in Kenya since the country gained independence, the SGR railway will connect the port of Mombasa to Kenyas capital city Nairobi, replacing a track built a century ago during British colonial rule. The major project will be able to move up to 22 million tons of cargo annually, and is expected to have enormous impact on the local economy.

The SGR is an extremely vital project that addresses transportation of goods from the port to the interior; it will greatly improve efficiency in trade, and will present other African countries with sound insight on how to modernize their transport systems, Kelebert Nkomani, the Zimbabwean ambassador and dean of the Diplomatic Corps in Kenya, told Xinhua News Agency.

The project has not only stimulated the local economy, it has also fostered the transfer of technology, which is immensely beneficial to younger Kenyans. According to Chinas Ministry of Commerce, the project will employ 1,452 Kenyans, and 80 percent of the staff will be Kenyan by the end of 2022.

In addition to creating job opportunities for locals, China has also trained Kenyans on railway construction and maintenance. According to CCTV, seven Kenyan women have been sent to China to study relevant technologies; they are expected to become the first female train conductors in Kenya.

I believe in Chinas Belt and Road Initiative, as it will connect all African countries together, in addition to connecting Kenya to the world, one of the future conductors told CCTV.
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A Mexican activist who pioneered a support network for the parents of missing children has been murdered by gunmen who invaded her home.

Miriam Rodriguez Martinez founded a local group of 600 families searching for their relatives five years ago after her daughter Karen was kidnapped and killed by the Los Zetas drug cartel.

Mrs Rodriguez lived in the municipality of San Fernando, one of the most crime-ridden areas in Mexico with the highest rate of kidnappings.

She was shot multiple times as she tried to escape the gunmen and died on the way to hospital.

In 2012 she provided police with information which allowed them to successfully capture her daughters killers, but reportedly began to receive death threats after one of the convicted gang members escaped from prison in March this year.

On one occasion she was forced to alert the federal army after Los Zetas attempted to kidnap her husband.

Mrs Rodriguezs friends from the support group claim she had asked for protection from the police but was ignored, an allegation denied by the state which said police patrols guarded her house three times a day.

Mexicos National Human Rights Commission (CNDH) condemned the murder of Mrs Rodriguez, claiming it was another example of the Mexican governments failure to protect its citizens, particularly its human rights advocates who were putting themselves in danger for the good of others.

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

Erika Guevara Rosas, Amnesty International director for the Americas, said Mexico had become a very dangerous place for those who devote their time to searching for kidnapped people.

The nightmare they face not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives and the dangers they face in their work, which they perform given the negligent response from the authorities, is alarming, she said.

According to figures released by the CNDH, the number of missing persons in Mexico rose to 30,000 last year, the majority of which are thought to be related to the cartels.
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Nearly 70 per cent of migrants suffer violence while travelling through Mexico towards the United States, and almost a third are victims of sexual violence, according to a report.

In addition, 39.2 per cent of migrants surveyed left their homes in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala because of violent attacks or threats.

Doctors Without Borders, also known as MSF, said their report was the most comprehensive medical data available on migrants travelling from Central Americas notorious Northern Triangle.

The charity said governments in the Americas should look at migration as a humanitarian issue, rather than purely through the lens of economic migration.

International group to fight corruption in Honduras

The report painted a picture of extreme levels of violence pushing people from their homes and making them vulnerable to further abuses while travelling to the US.

More than half of migrants from El Salvador surveyed had seen a relative killed within the last two years because of gang violence, along with 44 per cent of migrants from Honduras and Guatemala.

The countries have some of the worst levels of violence outside a war zone. Citizens are murdered with impunity, kidnappings and extortion are daily occurrences, MSF said.

In 2015, El Salvadors murder rate reached 103 per 100,000 people, in Honduras it was 57 per 100,000.

Forcible recruitment into gangs is also a significant issue, prompting many people to leave.

Those abused while in Mexico said the perpetrators "included members of gangs and other criminal organisations, as well as members of the Mexican security forces responsible for their protection," MSF said.

Doctors treated 166 female migrants for sexual violence. Of those, 60 per cent had been raped and the rest were subjected to other kinds of assault such as forced nudity.

A 35-year-old Honduran woman told MSF of her rape at the hands of a gang accompanied by a Mexican federal police officer.

They put a knife on my neck, so I did not resist, she said. I am ashamed to say this, but I think it would have been better if they had killed me.

Among 1,817 people treated for mental health issues, about 47 per cent had experienced physical violence during transit.

Bertrand Rossier, MSFs head of mission in Mexico, said: The unrelenting violence and emotional suffering endured by a significant number of people on the move from the Northern Triangle of Central America is not unlike what is experienced by people in conflict zones where MSF has been working for decades.

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

Murder, kidnappings, threats, recruitment by non-state armed actors, extortion, sexual violence and forced disappearancethese are the realities of war and conflicts also faced by people in this region of Central America.

While there are certainly people leaving these countries for better economic opportunities, the picture that emerges from our report is one of terrorised vulnerable people running for their lives and those of their families.

Attempts to stem migration by strengthening national borders and increased detention or deportation, as we have seen in Mexico and in the US, ignore a genuine humanitarian crisis and do not curb smuggling and trafficking. These strategies have devastating consequences on the lives and health of people on the move.

To play on public fears and merely view these people as a security or an economic issue is short sighted. This is a humanitarian crisis and MSF calls for urgent, coordinated action to ensure that people on the move are safe from violence and persecution, are welcomed with international protection rather than with more violence, and overall treated with dignity and humanity.
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Donald Trump has issued an astonishing apparent threat to James Comey, implying recordings of the pair's conversations could be released if the FBI director he fired "starts leaking to the press".

The last in a series of early-morning tweets, the President said: "James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!"

The tweets immediately drew comparisons to former President Richard Nixon, who secretly taped all meetings in his Oval Office before he was impeached in 1974.

Mr Trump's comments seemed motivated by recent reports of a post-inauguration meeting with Mr Comey, in which Mr Trump is said to have demanded his FBI director's loyalty. Mr Comey is said to have declined.

Associates of Mr Comey said they felt comfortable revealing the details of the dinner meeting to The New York Times now that Mr Comey had been fired. Rank-and-file members of the FBI are reported to be upset by the unexpected dismissal.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

Mr Trump, in his first interview after the firing, described the dinner meeting differently. The president told NBC's Lester Holt that Mr Comey used the meeting to request to keep his job as FBI director  a 10-year appointment of which he had served four years. Mr Trump said Mr Comey also reassured him during that meeting that he was not under investigation by the FBI.

White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Trump would "never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people."

The online tirade suggests the leader has become increasingly agitated by the fallout from his controversial dismissal of Mr Comey, who had been overseeing the FBI's investigation into Russian collusion with his campaign team during his election.

The White House maintains that Mr Comey was fired because of his improper handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clintons private email server. Leaks from inside the White House and FBI - and public contradictions from the White House itself  have cast doubt on this narrative.

Mr Trump's tweets followed previous posts in which he complained about what he described as "fake news", before making an unprecedented threat to cancel all future White House press briefings and only issue written statements.

Mr Trump followed his apparent warning to Mr Comey with another tweet referring to former national intelligence chief, James Clapper.

"When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" he said.
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Donald Trump reportedly pressed James Comey to declare his "loyalty" just seven days after being sworn in as President, but the FBI chief refused.

Mr Comey, sensationally fired by the President earlier this week, said he could only offer "honesty".

According to sources quoted by the New York Times, the pair eventually settled on "honest loyalty" after Mr Trump pressed Mr Comey a second time.

The exchange is said to have taken place during a dinner meeting to which Mr Comey was summoned early in the Trump presidency.

Mr Trump claimed in an interview with NBC News that it was Mr Comey who requested the meeting because he wanted to keep his job, which NBC said sources close to the investigator denied.

He said: "He wanted to have dinner because he wanted to stay on. We had a very nice dinner at the White House."

It was also at the dinner that Mr Trump said the FBI director informed him he was not personally under investigation over his campaign's alleged ties to Russia.

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 White House denied the New York Times' account.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy press secretary, said: "The integrity of our law enforcement agencies and their leadership is of the utmost importance to President Trump. He would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people."
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Donald Trump has defended the former national security adviser he fired earlier this year for lying to the Vice President, saying that he is a very good person with a strong record of public service.

Mr Trump pointed to Michael Flynns rank as Lieutenant General in the US army as the reason why he waited 18 days after receiving a warning from former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who had told the White House in January that Mr Flynn may be compromised by Moscow.

This man has served for many years, hes a general, Hes, in my opinion, a very good person, Mr Trump told NBCs Lester Holt. I believed itd be very unfair to hear from somebody we dont even know and immediately fire them, he continued, referencing Ms Yatess warning and the fact that she is not in his inner circle.

Mr Holt then interrupted to point out that Ms Yates was, at the time, the acting Attorney General of the United States  a title that carries with it a significant amount of credence.

Mr Trump said that he ultimately decided to fire Mr Flynn after learning that he had misrepresented the nature of a phone call he had during the presidential transition period with the Russian ambassador to the United States. Mr Flynn had told Vice President Mike Pence that he did not discuss American sanctions on Russia, a statement that was later shown to be wrong.

In contrast to those 18 days, the President said that he didnt think about how his meeting with Russian officials appeared to the public, after firing former FBI Director James Comey, whose bureau was investigating whether or not the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow during the campaign.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

I never thought about it, Mr Trump said when asked about meeting with Russians the next day. It was set up a while ago and, frankly, I couldve waited, but what difference does it make? Im not looking for cosmetics.

During the interview, Mr Trump also defended himself and his campaign aides against the swirling allegations that firing Mr Comey  and keeping Mr Flynn for so long  was a cover-up, saying that there was no collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians.
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Donald Trump has made an unprecedented threat to cancel all future press briefings and only issue written statements, after his administration was criticised for shifting its story about the firing of FBI Director James Comey.

In an early morning tweet that came after a barrage of criticism for the way the White House had repeatedly changed the details of its story over the axing of Mr Comey, the president said that because of his busy schedule and with lots of things happening, it was not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy.

He then tweeted: Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future press briefings and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???

Mr Trumps taunt will likely be criticised by media organisations around the world. The president has already been condemned for his relationship with the media, both in terms of the questionable accuracy of statements made by the White House, and his repeated criticism of the fake news he claims is written about him the press. His senior advisor, Stephen Bannon, has referred to the media as "the opposition".

And while Mr Trump has given frequent interviews to the media, he has been criticised for what many consider his contempt to the tradition of the White House press corps. On several occasions, he has been criticised for not informing the press corps or his movements, or of limiting access.

Just this week, the US media was angry about being kept out of a meeting between Mr Trump and the Russian foreign minister, while admitting a Russian photographer into the room where they were meeting.

 Donald Trump says James Comey told him multiple times he was not under investigation

Earlier, Mr Trump's press secretary, Sean Spicer, was criticised for holding a press briefing to which only selected media organisations were invited. When the Associated Press learned that not every outlet had permission to attend, its reporter boycotted the event in a display of journalistic solidarity.

Mr Trumps tweet came after he personally contradicting previous explanations provided by his White House over the sequence of events that led to the firing of Mr Comey.

Initially, a succession of officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, said Mr Trump took the decision after acting of the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

But in an interview with NBC, Mr Trump said he had made up his mind to fire the FBI Director before obtaining memos from the two senior officials i the Justice Department. Indeed, as it became clear that the documents had been hastily put together to create cover for Mr Trump, Mr Rosenstein reportedly threatened to resign.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey, Mr Trump said, referring to the ousted law enforcement official as a showboat and a grandstander.

The FBI has been in turmoil, Mr Trump claimed. You know that, I know that, everyone knows that.

Mr Trump also claimed in the interview that he had asked Mr Comey directly if he was under investigation personally as part of the bureaus investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russias alleged effort to influence the 2016 presidential election.

I said, If it's possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said you are not under investigation, Mr Trump said. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Mr Comey was asking to keep his job.

Mr Comey has not confirmed Mr Trumps account of the events. The New York Times cited two unnamed associates of Mr Comey who recounted his tale of a January dinner with the president in which Mr Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty.

Mr Comey declined, apparently, instead offering honesty. When Mr Trump then pressed for honest loyalty, Mr Comey told the president: You will have that.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the report and said the president would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty.

In another tweet, Mr Trump appeared to threaten Mr Comey not to speak to the media. He said: James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!
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Two scientists who advised the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have resigned over Donald Trumps environmental policies.

Dr Carlos Martin, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute, and Dr Peter Meyer, President and Chief Economist of The EP Systems Group, both resigned citing political reasons.

As Mr Martin told The Independent, he simply could not be a future prop for bad science".

Mr Martin posted their joint resignation letter on Twitter, and in it the pair said they felt the EPA was watering down credible science by putting politics where it did not belong.

On several occasions, Mr Trump has called climate a "hoax" perpetrated by the Chinese and is considering withdrawing the US from the global Paris Agreement on climate change. The US is one of the world's top emitters of carbon dioxide.

Mr Meyer and Mr Martin were members of the Sustainable and Healthy Communities subcommittee of the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) at EPA. The board, including all subcommittees, advises EPA scientists on various topics.

In the letter they detail the reasons for their immediate resignation, prompted by non-renewal of two BOSC members who served as co-chairs of their subcommittee.

On 5 May Dr Robert Richardson, a professor at Michigan State took to Twitter with an announcement. He had been trumped from his position.

Dr Courtney Flint, a professor at Utah State University also received notice that her term on BOSC would not be renewed.

An EPA spokesperson said they would be replaced by those in industry "who understand the impact of regulations on the regulated community".

Mr Meyer told The Independent that non-renewal is just a polite way of saying fired.

BOSC and subcommittee members are nominated by peers if they have significant scientific endeavours and have done research in the environmental field. Once approved, they normally serve two three-year terms.

Ms Flint and Mr Richardsons first term expired on 27 April, but they were expecting to be renewed. They were not political appointees under the previous Obama administration, but chosen for their scientific and research expertise.

As chairs of the subcommittee, they would coordinate recommendations and reports written by Mr Meyer and Mr Martin and present them to EPA scientists.

The decision to not renew their contracts was likely not financial despite Mr Trumps 28 per cent proposed budget cuts to EPA, Mr Meyer said.

Lisa Murray's climate change photography Show all 12 1 /12 Lisa Murray's climate change photography Lisa Murray's climate change photography Dinka cattle herders starting their migration in South Sudan Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography A Dinka woman fetches water in South Sudan Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Veronica in South Sudan preparing tea outside her home, recently ravaged by heavy flooding Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Children playing in Vietnam. When it floods, transport to and from school is a major challenge Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Sugeng, a fish and crab farmer from Indonesia who suffers financially every time the area floods Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Tan, a vegetable farmer, learning new methods through Oxfam in Vietnam Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Maluk, a 19-year-old from Tonj South, South Sudan Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Normally this farmer in South Sudan would be harvesting sorghum, but rains are late so the hunger season continues Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Herders bringing home their cattle in Afar, Ethiopia Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Farmers harvesting chilli in Ethiopia Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography A woman in Tigray, Ethiopia, scares birds away from her crops with a slingshot Lisa Murray Lisa Murray's climate change photography Irula tribe woman in Tamil Nadu Lisa Murray

The Office of Research and Development within EPA, to whom BOSC reports, would likely suffer a 40 per cent budget cut should Mr Trump's budget get approved.

Mr Meyer is an economist and Mr Martin is an engineer by trade, so BOSC and their subcommittee in particular are multidisciplinary in order to best serve EPA scientists holistically in making science serve you more cost effectively, as Mr Meyer explained.

He explained that subcommittee and BOSC members made approximately $50 (38) per hour for their consulting. They met for two to three days a year and worked some hours remotely in order to provide recommendations but Mr Meyer said it did not add up to significant dollars.

The only reason for new leadership is to undermine what we're doing, he said.

Mr Martin said the decision to resign rather than let their terms expire was because they felt a sense of confusion and lack of clarity about our future.

In addition to Mr Richardson and Ms Flint, seven other BOSC members contracts have ended that covered topics like air quality, fracking, and chemical safety.

Mr Meyers assumption is that agency administrators will get rid of all of us since many peoples terms are expiring.

Given that EPA head Scott Pruitt does not believe that humans cause climate change and Mr Trump's promise to bring back the coal industry, the question remains who will be nominated to take over on BOSC and the subcommittees.

Mr Meyer and Mr Martin both said they were only able to guess but do not doubt that the new members will be somewhat politically motivated nominations.

You can find another PhD in economics...their credentials on paper may be the same, but they may not have my independence, said Mr Meyers, adding that EPA administrators could nominate someone for the oil and gas industry.
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Attorney General Jeff Sessions has ordered federal prosecutors to pursue the maximum punishment for drug offences, in a sweeping rollback of Obama-era criminal justice policies.

Mr Sessions advised that all criminals be charged with the most serious, readily provable offence, or whichever crime has the longest sentence.

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, the US incarcerates more people per capita than any other country in the world.

Currently there are 2.4 million adults in all prison systems, approximately 211,000 of those are in federal prisons. That means nearly 1 in 110 Americans is in prison.

He is essentially reversing a 2013 memo from previous Attorney General Eric Holder, which advised federal prosecutors not to adhere to mandatory minimums for less serious crimes.

This meant that Assistant US Attorneys could use their discretion based on the circumstances of each case.

In particular, defendants charged with drug offences - 1 in 5 of those incarcerated are there for a drug charge - would be given a lighter sentence if they were not part of a gang, cartel, or trafficking organisation.

Mr Sessions change in policy furthers the discrimination in the US criminal justice system.

Senator Rand Paul, a medical doctor, said in a statement that mandatory minimums have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated too many minorities for too long.

Nearly 40 per cent of the total prison population is black and 19 per cent is Latino.

We should treat our nations drug epidemic as a health crisis and less as a lock em up and throw away the key problem, Mr Paul said.

Inimai Chettiar, the director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program said in a statement that Mr Sessions is leaving little to no room for prosecutors to use their judgement and determine what criminal charges best fit the crime.

Ms Chettiar said ignoring prosecutors discretion and issuing blanket mandatory minimums is what led to this mess of mass incarceration. It exploded the prison population, didn't help public safety, and cost taxpayers billions in enforcement and incarceration costs.

The Brennan Centers research shows that higher incarceration rates have not lowered overall crime rates.

Mr Sessions said in a news conference that he has in fact given prosecutors discretion to avoid injustice, but that does not mean they have the ability to ignore mandatory minimums.

He also repeated Donald Trumps campaign claim that violent crime in urban areas is on the rise.

Members of the US Council of Mayors, including mayors from New Orleans and Columbia, South Carolina, debunked that claim during the 2016 campaign.

According to data from the FBI, urban crimes rates have been in decline in the period from 1991 to 2014, the last full year of data available.

Mr Sessions also said that these are not low-level drug offenders we in the federal courts are focusing on.

However, data from the Prison Policy Initiative shows that over half of those in federal prison are there for drug offences.

The new policy mimics the 1994 Crime Bill introduced by President Bill Clinton. At that time the Department of Justice also established the "three strikes" policy, which gave offenders life in prison if they had been already had two prior felony convictions.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton came under fire for defending the law twenty years prior. At the time she said the law kept "the kinds of kids that are called super-predators" off the streets, which many in the African-American community felt perpetuated the stereotype of young black men being criminals.

Ms Clinton said on the campaign trail she regretted ever defending the law, however. It resulted in prison overcrowding, taxpayer money, and ultimately did not decrease the black population in prisons.

Ames Grawert, a counsel in the Brennan Centers Justice Program said Republicans, Democrats, advocates, and law enforcement are increasingly moving away from the exact approach [Mr] Sessions brought back today.
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Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey has left many conservatives hoping the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server can be reopened.

Lots of Republicans, and others on the right, were furious when Mr Comey announced last summer, that after probing her actions, he had decided against bringing criminal charges. The decision infuriated Donald Trump and his supporters, who started to to chant lock her up at his election rallies.

During one of the three presidential debates, Mr Trump even vowed to investigate her behaviour if he was elected. If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation because there has never been so many lies, so much deception, he said.

Now, in the aftermath of the firing of Mr Comey, with Democrats and opponents of Mr Trump infuriated over what they consider a blatant attempt to shut down the investigation into the Trump campaigns alleged links to Russias effort to influence the election, conservatives see an opening to restart the Clinton probe.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative legal activist group Judicial Watch, said there remained many unanswered questions about both Ms Clintons behaviour and the way Mr Comey led the investigation.

I think it needs to be reevaluated its not just because theres a new FBI Director, but under new leadership at the Justice Department, he told Fox News.

Comey misled the investigation by suggesting they needed to find intent, when common sense tells you they mishandled it, and they should have known that what they were doing was wrong, which was enough for a prosecution. Its gross negligence under the law.

 Donald Trump says James Comey told him multiple times he was not under investigation

He added: They need to reevaluate whats happening with the mishandling of classified material, and her taking records illicitly, destroying them, all sorts of things like that. We cant trust that last investigation to have got to the bottom of that.

In the aftermath of the decision not to prosecute Ms Clinton, there were widespread reports that a number of FBI agents were angry with Ms Comey. There were even accusations he had taken the decision because he, like many other elements of the Washington establishment, had expected her to in the election, and wanted to earn her favour.

This week, the new acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe acknowledged for the first time in public testimony that some agents were indeed angry with that decision.

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 think morales always been good, but there were folks within our agency that were frustrated with the outcome of the Hillary Clinton case and some of those folks were very vocal about those concerns, Mr McCabe said.

William Jacobson, a conservative blogger and a professor at Cornell Law School, wrote: James Comey now is fired. Loretta Lynch no longer is Attorney General. This seems to open up the possibility of a renewed investigation and potential prosecution.

Mr Jacobson told The Independent he believed it was unlikely that Mr Trump would ultimately decide to prosecute Ms Clinton, given he had even said as much after his electoral win. Yet he said, the Justice Department might revaluate the evidence, given that it was Mr Comey, rather than Ms Lynch, the then Attorney General, who had decided not to proceed with a prosecution. "The DoJ never made its own finding," he said.

When he announced last summer he was not going to proceed with a prosecution of Ms Clinton, Mr Comey said: 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.

He added: 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.

I know there will be intense public debate in the wake of this recommendation, as there was throughout this investigation.

A spokesman for Ms Clinton did not immediately respond to inquiries.
Mobile phone sales and market entry have seen impressive growth in Africa in recent times. While many Africans had been priced out of the market, several companies are now producing much more affordable handsets to meet demand, and one of them can be found in the Chinese province of Guangdong.

Shenzhen in Guangdong is the heart of the countrys mobile phone manufacturing industry with thousands of companies operating in the field. Among them is a little-known company called Transsion, which has managed to cut a niche for itself in Africa.

Transsion has spent the last decade trying to crack the African market. By the end of last year, it had seized nearly 40 percent of the market share in six African countries, including one of the continent's hotspots, Nigeria.

Transsion now has more than a hundred million customers in Africa, using very affordable brands like TECNO, INFINIX and Itel handsets.

Our intention when we went into Africa was to serve the community with something that can bring value, not just about making money. Because making money can be short-term, but adding value is long-term, said Arif Chowdury, vice president of Transsion.

Chowdury attributed the company's success to its huge investment in research.
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Donald Trumps tax returns over the last 10 years show no income of any type from Russian sources, with a few exceptions, his lawyers have claimed in a letter released by The White House.

They said the US President had received income from the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant that was held in Moscow and a property sale of $95m (73m) in 2008 to a Russian billionaire.

Mr Trump broke a long-held tradition by not releasing his paperwork during his presidential campaign and his critics want to know who he has been dealing with and if there are any conflicts of interest.

Recommended Donald Trump has been lying about the size of his Penthouse

However, there is no law requiring presidents to release their tax returns, but Mr Trump has found himself under public pressure and some information from a 2005 tax return was leaked to the media last month. It revealed he had paid $38m (31m) in tax on more than $150m (123m) income.

The latest letter did not include his tax returns, so the lawyer's claims couldnt be independently verified.

It said the tax returns show that Russians had made no equity investments in Trump entities and that Mr Trump had no debts owed to Russian banks.

The White House says that it asked for a letter reviewing Mr Trumps tax returns following a request from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who is leading a congressional committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The $95m (73m) sale in 2008 was for a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, that Mr Trump bought up during an auction in 2004 for $41.35m (32m). After buying it, Mr Trump made some minor renovations to the property before putting it back on the market in 2006 with a $125m (96m) price tag that made even those accustomed to the pricey Palm Beach market do a double take.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

The property struggled to find a buyer for for a couple of years  Mr Trump never lived there  before Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev, who was known to spend money freely to buy properties, put in a bid that ultimately led to the $95m (73m) sale.

Details about the sale are few and far between, but Mr Trump has said that he never met with Mr Rybolovlev during that time. The mansion was later torn down and the land has been separated into three parcels.
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The giant carcass of an unidentified sea creature has washed up on an island in Indonesia.

Asrul Tuanakota discovered the 15 metre-long body on Hulung Beach on Seram Island, and initially believed it to be a washed-up boat or shipping container.

Investigators found that the creature was dead for at least three days before it arrived on the shore and its blood had turned the surrounding water red, the Jakarta Globe reported.

Tourists immediately flocked to the beach to see the carcass as police attempted to cordon off the area.

Indonesias Marine and Coastal Resources Management said it was likely that the carcass belonged to a humpback whale, although others claimed it looked more like a giant squid. The cause of its death is yet to be confirmed.

The residents of Seram Island called on the national government to help them clear out and identify the remains of the creature as it had started to decay.

The discovery was said to baffle marine experts across the globe.

Deputy Head of the Forecasting department of the Sakhalin Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography, Nikolay Kim, said: Judging by the appearance of the head, this is clearly some big dolphin. According to a characteristic of the skin, it is a rare species.

I doubt that it lived in our waters. Most likely, the animal was brought by the warm current.

We often get tropical and subtropical species here and, when they cool down, they stay here and then die.

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 can confidently say that this is some kind of a dolphin. However, it has fur. Its unusual. Dolphins do not have any fur.
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Facebook has been threatened with legal action by Thailand's government unless it agrees to remove posts deemed critical of the monarchy.

The country has strict "lese-majeste" laws protecting the royal family from public criticism. Those found guilty of defamation face up to 15 years in prison.

The government has given Facebook until early next week to delete 131 posts it considers illegal and has vowed to seek compensation from the social media giant if it refuses to comply.

More than 100 people found posting, sharing or even liking critical Facebook posts about the monarchy have been prosecuted since the countrys military government seized power in 2014.

Takorn Tantasith, head of Thailands broadcasting commission, told the Bangkok Post: If even a single illicit page remains, we will immediately discuss what legal steps to take against Facebook. Everyone must comply with Thai laws and strictly follow rulings by local courts.

The commission praised Facebook for removing 178 of the 309 posts it had flagged up over the past few months, but questioned why the remaining posts had not been deleted and demanded an explanation.

This week the social network banned people from watching a controversial video of Thailands king wearing a crop top and showing off his tattoos which had been widely circulated.

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 leaked video of King Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun in a shopping centre infuriated the Thai authorities, who ordered Facebook to remove it immediately.

In January a Thai welder was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison for criticising the royal family in a series of online posts. A month later, a human rights activist was put on trial for sharing a BBC Thai-language profile of the new king which had been deemed offensive.

The UN and Amnesty International have repeatedly criticised the lese-majeste laws in the past.

But the government has fiercely defended them, saying it is not incompatible with international human rights law.
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Three Turkish men including a school principal are at risk of torture after being abducted and extradited from Malaysia, human rights groups have warned.

International school headteacher Turgay Karaman, academic Ismet Ozcelik and businessman Ihsan Aslan are believed to have been targeted over suspected links to a US-based cleric accused of leading an attempted coup against Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

His government has been attempting to round up Fethullah Gulens supporters around the world, while investigating more than 150,000 people in an ongoing crackdown that has generated international alarm.

Mr Gulen has denied any link to the coup, while international authorities have found no evidence for Turkeys claims or its designation of the movement as a terrorist organisation.

But purges have shown no sign of slowing, with the online editor of a leading opposition newspaper among fresh suspects including dozens of former Istanbul stock exchange traders arrested on Friday.

The three Turkish men detained in Malaysia were deported without warning overnight despite pleas from their families for authorities either to free them, allow them to leave for another country or grant them a fair trial in Malaysia.

Officials in Kuala Lumpur had released contradictory statements after claiming Mr Karaman and Mr Aslan had been arrested for offences related to national security.

 CCTV shows Turkish school principal being 'abducted'

Malaysias Deputy Prime Minister told media they were suspected of links to Isis but police chief Khalid Abu Bakar later confirmed the operation was over alleged ties to the Gulenist movement.

He said the men had also technically become illegal immigrants because Turkey had cancelled their passports.

Amnesty Internationals deputy south-east Asia director, Josef Benedict, said the trio had been arbitrarily detained, adding: By sending these three men suspected of links to Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey, the Malaysian authorities have put their liberty and well-being at risk.

They have already suffered a harrowing ordeal, being arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado.

Now, they have been extradited to Turkey, where they could face arbitrary detention, unfair trial and a real risk of torture.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, attacked the Malaysian government for using false allegations of Isis links to detain the suspects without trial.

The Malaysian government's duplicity and crass abuse of the rights of these three men really sets this case apart, he added.

Done in the middle of the night, with no notification to their families, Malaysia sent these three men to face a possible risk of torture and prolonged pre-trial detention, followed by a court trial that will likely fail to meet fair trial standards.

In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Show all 17 1 /17 In pictures: Turkey coup attempt In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Erdogan attends the funeral service for victims of the thwarted coup in Istanbul at Fatih mosque on July 17, 2016 in Istanbul, Turkey Burak Kara/Getty Images In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soldiers involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge with their hands raised in Istanbul on 16 July, 2016 Gokhan Tan/Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A civilian beats a soldier after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 REUTERS/Murad Sezer In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Surrendered Turkish soldiers who were involved in the coup are beaten by a civilian Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Soliders involved in the coup attempt surrender on Bosphorus bridge Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wave flags as they capture a Turkish Army vehicle Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt People pose near a tank after troops involved in the coup surrendered on the Bosphorus Bridge in Istanbul, Turkey, 16 July, 2016 Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers block Istanbul's Bosphorus Brigde Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt A Turkish military stands guard near the Taksim Square in Istanbul Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Pierre Crom/Twitter In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers secure the area as supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdogan protest in Istanbul's Taksim square AP In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Murad Sezer/Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish soldiers detain police officers during a security shutdown of the Bosphorus Bridge Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish Army armoured personnel carriers in the main streets of Istanbul Getty In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Chaos reigned in Istanbul as tanks drove through the streets EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan speaks to media in the resort town of Marmaris Reuters In pictures: Turkey coup attempt Supporters of President Erdogan celebrate in Ankara following the suppression of the attempted coup Reuters

The deportation of former university trustee Mr Ozcelik, who had person of concern status with the UN refugee agency in Kuala Lumpur, was a violation of international human rights, he said.

Rosli Dahlan, a lawyer representing Mr Ozcelik and Mr Karaman, said relatives were shocked and deeply hurt by the deportations, which came without notice.

They continue to fear for the safety of Ismet Ozcelik and Turgay Karaman who may face the same fate as [two other Turkish men] who were illegally removed from Malaysia and subjected to rendition to Turkey, who until today are still detained in a Turkish prison without trial, he told The Independent.

Relatives said both men had entered Malaysia legally and held valid visas, adding that they had committed no criminal offences either there or in Turkey and that there was no basis for allegations of terrorist links.

They are merely academicians trying to build a life in a country they deemed safe and peaceful and would not submit to any political ploy or pressure, a joint statement read.

Mr Karaman and Mr Aslan went missing on 2 May and were initially feared to have been abducted before police confirmed they had been detained. Two days later, academic Ismet Ozcelik was held.

He was already under the jurisdiction of the Malaysian court system over an unrelated charge of obstructing a public officer, having left Turkey after being fired from his university following July's coup.

Mr Ozcelik was arrested in Kuala Lumpur for allegedly resisting immigration officers who attempted to take away his passport, after receiving a letter from the Turkish embassy linking Mr Ozcelik with the Gulen movement.

 Wife appeals for husband's return after 'arrest' in Malaysia

He had been visiting his son Suheyl, a teacher at the Time International School headed by Mr Karaman, who was among the witnesses called for his defence.

The principal was detained by plainclothes officers in an underground car park the day before the case was due to start, being bundled into a car as he made his way to attend a legal meeting.

He is a gentleman and never hurt anyone, Mr Karamans wife said in an emotional appeal.

Meanwhile in Turkey, there was fresh alarm over the arrest of Oguz Guven, the editor of pro-secular Cumhuriyet newspaper's online edition.

Authorities also detained a writer and television commentator days after he claimed one of the adopted daughters of Turkey's revered founding leader, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was in fact his mistress - sparking outrage in the country.

More than 50 employees of the Istanbul stock exchange were additionally arrested over alleged links to the Gulen movement, after prosecutors ordered the detention of 102 people including former teachers at schools that were closed after the coup.

About 145,000 civil servants, judges, prosecutors, security personnel and academics have also been suspended or sacked as part of a the purge.

Turkey has applied pressure to countries around the world that are home to institutions backed by Mr Gulen, whose movement runs about 2,000 educational establishments in around 160 countries.
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The Playboy model who sparked outrage among the Maori community for sharing a photo of herself naked on a sacred mountain in New Zealand has now claimed Maori people are not indigenous.

Jaylene Cook, a 25-year-old glamour model from New Zealand, received fierce criticism for sharing a photo of herself wearing nothing but gloves, trainers and a hat at the apex of Mount Taranaki after hiking up the mountain.

Mount Taranaki, an active volcano on the west coast of the North Island, has long been considered sacred in Maori culture. As such, Maori academics accused Ms Cook of cultural insensitivity and disrespect for sharing the photo on Instagram.

 New Zealand model Jaylene Cook visits Fraser Island

The Playboy playmate has now stoked further controversy for arguing Maori people are not indigenous. The Maori people are the native Polynesian people of New Zealand and originated with settlers who came to New Zealand in a series of canoe journeys between 1250 and 1300 CE.

"Hey Jaylene, would you do a nude photo shoot at a church or a war memorial, or do you only like to disrespect Indigenous sacred sites? Hope your five minutes of fame was worth the curses that will haunt you for life," wrote Instagram user Maori Mermaid in comments now deleted but reported by the New Zealand Herald.

"Lol. Get a clue before you jump on the bandwagon. Maori are NOT Indigenous you ignorant twat," Ms Cook reportedly replied.

Recommended The hideous new travel trend on social media is flashing your bum

After the initial furore erupted, Ms Cook said both she and her boyfriend, Josh Shaw, who hiked up the mountain with her and took the photo, were "surprised" by the angry response they recieved. She argued they had done their research before undertaking the trip but confessed that she had not informed locals she was planning to go nude.

"It was something that just happened. There was nowhere that we read, or were told that it was a bad thing to do - and we believe that it still wasn't. We see nudity as art and natural," she said. Im sorry that people felt that we were being disrespectful, that was never our intention whatsoever.

When pressed about whether she would have refrained from taking the photo if she had been aware of the backlash it would cause, she said: No because it doesnt change my beliefs and my feelings towards the photograph. We have had overwhelming support from local Maori.

The folklore linked to the mountain means many members of the Maori community have never climbed Taranaki out of respect.

The New Zealand governments website says: Mount Taranaki has great spiritual significance to local Maori.

"The crater and summit is the sacred head of Taranaki, the rocks and ridge are his bones, rivers his blood and plants and trees are his cloak and offer protection from the weather Respect the mountain.

The mountain has a summit of 8,300 feet but visitors are advised to pay respect and to avoid the rock at the top.

Ms Cook, who has 398 thousand Instagram followers, posted the picture which has now received almost 28 thousand likes with the accompanying caption: This climb has forever changed me. I proved just how far I could push myself and I am truly proud of my accomplishment. This mountain was steep, rugged, ever-changing and just pure brutal! Safe to say, I will never do it again.
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Russian police have detained five activists who tried to deliver a petition to prosecutors in Moscow against the treatment of LGBT people in Chechnya.

Hundreds of thousands had signed the petition calling for an official investigation into the alleged torture and killing of gay men in the Russian territory.

Police said they arrested the men because their actions amounted to an unsanctioned protest.

Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported last month that authorities in the majority Muslim republic of Chechnya had rounded up over 100 men suspected of being gay and tortured them.

At least three of the men had been killed, the newspaper reported.

Chechen officials denied the report - and claimed gay people did not even exist in the republic.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in April that the Kremlin was following the treatment of gay people in Chechnya, in the North Caucasus, closely but that reports about gay men being tortured there could not be regarded as reliable.

Police detained the activists - four Russians and one Italian national - on Thursday as they walked along Moscow's Tverskaya Street holding mostly empty boxes with the words Justice for the Chechen 100 written on them.

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 activists also carried a USB stick with signatures in support of the petition.

Police said the activists' actions amounted to an unsanctioned protest. Officers put them in a police van and drove away.

The petition was signed by more than two million people around the world, more than the entire population of the Chechen republic, the Russian LGBT Network told the BBC.

It said they were demanding an unbiased investigation of illegal detentions of hundreds of people in Chechnya because of their homosexuality.

When asked about the alleged treatment of gay people in Chechnya, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric cited calls by UN special rapporteurs for the release of men detained in the republic for the perception they may be gay and for Russian authorities to condemn all homophobic statements.

It's clear from the Secretary-General's point of view that no one should be persecuted for perceived reasons of sexual orientation or who they may love, Mr Dujarric told reporters.

Additional reporting by Reuters
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Marine Le Pens Front National has been rocked with internal feuds and disputes, leaving the party at crisis point less than a week after the far-right candidate was defeated in Frances presidential election.

Ms Le Pen attempted to rally broad support in the final leg of a virulent campaign, which saw her going head-to-head with newly elected president Emmanuel Macron. But days after the vote, divisions within the Front National have burst into the open.

Meanwhile, the newly elected president Mr Macron is preparing for his inauguration ceremony at the Elysee Palace on Sunday, when he will officially replace outgoing president Francois Hollande, who will hand over his powers and Frances nuclear launch code.

Following its election defeat, the Front National is searching for the road to change, which could encompass some of its members' contrasting opinions over Frexit, gay marriage and economic liberalism.

But the party suffered a new jolt on Friday as the party's Vice President Florian Philippot, one of Ms Le Pens main advisers and significant influencer of Front National's direction, said he would quit if the it gave up its policy to leave the eurozone.

Speaking to French radio RMC, Mr Philippot said: I am not here to keep my position at all costs and to defend the opposite of my deep convictions.

Mr Philippots comments come at the end of a tough week for the Front National, which had to swallow a lower-than-expected 33.9 per cent of the votes in Sundays election. On Wednesday, the partys rising star Marion Marechal-Le Pen (who is also Ms Le Pens niece) announced she was temporarily retiring from political life.

The 27-year-old, who stands for the Front Nationals more traditional and conservative views, was also considered a potential successor to the partys leadership.

Reacting to the partys chaotic week, French political analyst and far-right expert Jean-Yves Camus told The Independent: In the last week, everything has been surprising.

There is discontent and disappointment regarding the election results. The party is going through an extremely difficult time.

Mr Camus said Ms Marechal-Le Pen distanced herself from the party because she knew she would not be able to reform it from within.

The party is gridlocked by the tandem of Marine Le Pen and Florian Philippot, he said.

 Marine Le Pen says France not responsible for WWII Jew round-up

But while tensions are mounting, the Front National has entered its next campaign challenge for the local elections in June, when the party desperately needs a good showing.

If Ms Le Pen fails achieve a good result, her leadership could be contested. Mr Camus said then no one could predict the direction the party would take.

On the night of the election results, Ms Le Pen said she will work to profoundly renew and transform her party in order to constitute a new political force, which would be given a new name.

If the move to change the partys name is an attempt to expunge the partys image of its founder Jean-Marie Le Pen's Holocaust denial and racists views, for Mr Camus this will not be enough.

The attitude of the Front National members towards their own partys name is surprising, because the young voters do not remember Jean-Marie Le Pen's times. Whether it takes a new name or not, I dont think the party has changed that much  what matters are its policies, he said.

Although the question of the Front Nationals identity has been postponed until its autumn conference to focus on the local elections, this weeks events show that the debate has already gripped the party.

World news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 World news in pictures World news in pictures 30 September 2020 Pope Francis prays with priests at the end of a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 September 2020 A girl's silhouette is seen from behind a fabric in a tent along a beach by Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 September 2020 A Chinese woman takes a photo of herself in front of a flower display dedicated to frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in Beijing, China. China will celebrate national day marking the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1st Getty World news in pictures 27 September 2020 The Glass Mountain Inn burns as the Glass Fire moves through the area in St. Helena, California. The fast moving Glass fire has burned over 1,000 acres and has destroyed homes Getty World news in pictures 26 September 2020 A villager along with a child offers prayers next to a carcass of a wild elephant that officials say was electrocuted in Rani Reserve Forest on the outskirts of Guwahati, India AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 September 2020 The casket of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seen in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol to lie in state in Washington, DC AFP via Getty World news in pictures 24 September 2020 An anti-government protester holds up an image of a pro-democracy commemorative plaque at a rally outside Thailand's parliament in Bangkok, as activists gathered to demand a new constitution AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 September 2020 A whale stranded on a beach in Macquarie Harbour on the rugged west coast of Tasmania, as hundreds of pilot whales have died in a mass stranding in southern Australia despite efforts to save them, with rescuers racing to free a few dozen survivors The Mercury/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 22 September 2020 State civil employee candidates wearing face masks and shields take a test in Surabaya AFP via Getty World news in pictures 21 September 2020 A man sweeps at the Taj Mahal monument on the day of its reopening after being closed for more than six months due to the coronavirus pandemic AP World news in pictures 20 September 2020 A deer looks for food in a burnt area, caused by the Bobcat fire, in Pearblossom, California EPA World news in pictures 19 September 2020 Anti-government protesters hold their mobile phones aloft as they take part in a pro-democracy rally in Bangkok. Tens of thousands of pro-democracy protesters massed close to Thailand's royal palace, in a huge rally calling for PM Prayut Chan-O-Cha to step down and demanding reforms to the monarchy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 September 2020 Supporters of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr maintain social distancing as they attend Friday prayers after the coronavirus disease restrictions were eased, in Kufa mosque, near Najaf, Iraq Reuters World news in pictures 17 September 2020 A protester climbs on The Triumph of the Republic at 'the Place de la Nation' as thousands of protesters take part in a demonstration during a national day strike called by labor unions asking for better salary and against jobs cut in Paris, France EPA World news in pictures 16 September 2020 A fire raging near the Lazzaretto of Ancona in Italy. The huge blaze broke out overnight at the port of Ancona. Firefighters have brought the fire under control but they expected to keep working through the day EPA World news in pictures 15 September 2020 Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny posing for a selfie with his family at Berlin's Charite hospital. In an Instagram post he said he could now breathe independently following his suspected poisoning last month Alexei Navalny/Instagram/AFP World news in pictures 14 September 2020 Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba and former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida celebrate after Suga was elected as new head of the ruling party at the Liberal Democratic Party's leadership election in Tokyo Reuters World news in pictures 13 September 2020 A man stands behind a burning barricade during the fifth straight day of protests against police brutality in Bogota AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 September 2020 Police officers block and detain protesters during an opposition rally to protest the official presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus. Daily protests calling for the authoritarian president's resignation are now in their second month AP World news in pictures 11 September 2020 Members of 'Omnium Cultural' celebrate the 20th 'Festa per la llibertat' ('Fiesta for the freedom') to mark the Day of Catalonia in Barcelona. Omnion Cultural fights for the independence of Catalonia EPA World news in pictures 10 September 2020 The Moria refugee camp, two days after Greece's biggest migrant camp, was destroyed by fire. Thousands of asylum seekers on the island of Lesbos are now homeless AFP via Getty World news in pictures 9 September 2020 Pope Francis takes off his face mask as he arrives by car to hold a limited public audience at the San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican AFP via Getty World news in pictures 8 September 2020 A home is engulfed in flames during the "Creek Fire" in the Tollhouse area of California AFP via Getty World news in pictures 7 September 2020 A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho AFP via Getty World news in pictures 6 September 2020 Novak Djokovic and a tournament official tends to a linesperson who was struck with a ball by Djokovic during his match against Pablo Carreno Busta at the US Open USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 5 September 2020 Protesters confront police at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia, during an anti-lockdown rally AFP via Getty World news in pictures 4 September 2020 A woman looks on from a rooftop as rescue workers dig through the rubble of a damaged building in Beirut. A search began for possible survivors after a scanner detected a pulse one month after the mega-blast at the adjacent port AFP via Getty World news in pictures 3 September 2020 A full moon next to the Virgen del Panecillo statue in Quito, Ecuador EPA World news in pictures 2 September 2020 A Palestinian woman reacts as Israeli forces demolish her animal shed near Hebron in the Israeli-occupied West Bank Reuters World news in pictures 1 September 2020 Students protest against presidential elections results in Minsk TUT.BY/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 31 August 2020 The pack rides during the 3rd stage of the Tour de France between Nice and Sisteron AFP via Getty World news in pictures 30 August 2020 Law enforcement officers block a street during a rally of opposition supporters protesting against presidential election results in Minsk, Belarus Reuters World news in pictures 29 August 2020 A woman holding a placard reading "Stop Censorship - Yes to the Freedom of Expression" shouts in a megaphone during a protest against the mandatory wearing of face masks in Paris. Masks, which were already compulsory on public transport, in enclosed public spaces, and outdoors in Paris in certain high-congestion areas around tourist sites, were made mandatory outdoors citywide on August 28 to fight the rising coronavirus infections AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 August 2020 Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows to the national flag at the start of a press conference at the prime minister official residence in Tokyo. Abe announced he will resign over health problems, in a bombshell development that kicks off a leadership contest in the world's third-largest economy AFP via Getty World news in pictures 27 August 2020 Residents take cover behind a tree trunk from rubber bullets fired by South African Police Service (SAPS) in Eldorado Park, near Johannesburg, during a protest by community members after a 16-year old boy was reported dead AFP via Getty World news in pictures 26 August 2020 People scatter rose petals on a statue of Mother Teresa marking her 110th birth anniversary in Ahmedabad AFP via Getty World news in pictures 25 August 2020 An aerial view shows beach-goers standing on salt formations in the Dead Sea near Ein Bokeq, Israel Reuters World news in pictures 24 August 2020 Health workers use a fingertip pulse oximeter and check the body temperature of a fisherwoman inside the Dharavi slum during a door-to-door Covid-19 coronavirus screening in Mumbai AFP via Getty World news in pictures 23 August 2020 People carry an idol of the Hindu god Ganesh, the deity of prosperity, to immerse it off the coast of the Arabian sea during the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Mumbai, India Reuters World news in pictures 22 August 2020 Firefighters watch as flames from the LNU Lightning Complex fires approach a home in Napa County, California AP World news in pictures 21 August 2020 Members of the Israeli security forces arrest a Palestinian demonstrator during a rally to protest against Israel's plan to annex parts of the occupied West Bank AFP via Getty World news in pictures 20 August 2020 A man pushes his bicycle through a deserted road after prohibitory orders were imposed by district officials for a week to contain the spread of the Covid-19 in Kathmandu AFP via Getty World news in pictures 19 August 2020 A car burns while parked at a residence in Vacaville, California. Dozens of fires are burning out of control throughout Northern California as fire resources are spread thin AFP via Getty World news in pictures 18 August 2020 Students use their mobile phones as flashlights at an anti-government rally at Mahidol University in Nakhon Pathom. Thailand has seen near-daily protests in recent weeks by students demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha AFP via Getty World news in pictures 17 August 2020 Members of the Kayapo tribe block the BR163 highway during a protest outside Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil. Indigenous protesters blocked a major transamazonian highway to protest against the lack of governmental support during the COVID-19 novel coronavirus pandemic and illegal deforestation in and around their territories AFP via Getty World news in pictures 16 August 2020 Lightning forks over the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge as a storm passes over Oakland AP World news in pictures 15 August 2020 Belarus opposition supporters gather near the Pushkinskaya metro station where Alexander Taraikovsky, a 34-year-old protester died on August 10, during their protest rally in central Minsk AFP via Getty World news in pictures 14 August 2020 AlphaTauri's driver Daniil Kvyat takes part in the second practice session at the Circuit de Catalunya in Montmelo near Barcelona ahead of the Spanish F1 Grand Prix AFP via Getty World news in pictures 13 August 2020 Soldiers of the Brazilian Armed Forces during a disinfection of the Christ The Redeemer statue at the Corcovado mountain prior to the opening of the touristic attraction in Rio AFP via Getty World news in pictures 12 August 2020 Young elephant bulls tussle playfully on World Elephant Day at the Amboseli National Park in Kenya AFP via Getty

Ms Le Pen said she wanted to widen the movement to all French patriots. However, her failure to rally in the second round of the election, beyond sovereignist candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan who received less than five per cent of the vote, shows that the Front National continues to be isolated from the rest of the political sphere.

Mr Camus told The Independent: The Front National is a party which has a solid base of voters and is able to disrupt the political game, but it is doomed to remain in the opposition as long as it is not able to make alliances with factions of mainstream right-wing parties.

Despite the strife, which has seized the party, Marine Le Pen collected a record number of votes (10.6 million), half of those collected by Mr Macron. She hailed the party as the main opposition to Mr Macrons incoming government.

Mr Camus said he did not believe the party would split, because there is not enough space on the political spectrum for more than one movement on the far-right  but we are not finished being surprised, he added.

On 11 and 18 June, French voters will once again head to the polls for two rounds of voting, in order to elect the country's 577 members of parliament.
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US-backed forces are battling towards Isis largest remaining stronghold after gaining control of a strategic dam, but questions remain over a deal struck with the terrorist group in exchange for its retreat.

Jubilant Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops took control of the deserted Tabqa Dam and a nearby town and airfield with minimal losses, following months of bloody battles to isolate the city of Raqqa.

US Central Command hailed the areas liberation, but conceded its allies held negotiations with Isis militants in order for force their surrender.

This is yet another victory by the [US-backed] Syrian Arab Coalition and the SDF, our most committed and capable ground force partners in the fight against Isis who remain hard at work erasing ISIS from the battlefield, liberating their own people and lands, said spokesman Col John Dorrian.

He said a group of around 70 Isis fighters conceded to unspecified terms laid down by the SDF, including the dismantling of IEDs and booby traps, the surrender of heavy weaponry and forced withdrawal of remaining fighters from Tabqa city.

The SDF accepted Isis' surrender of the city to protect innocent civilians and to protect the Tabqah dam infrastructure which hundreds of thousands of Syrians rely on for water, agriculture, and electricity, a statement from US Central Command said.

A member of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at the Tabqa Dam on 11 May (AFP/Getty Images)

Commanders would not confirm what was offered to Isis in the exchange, but said the US-led coalition tracked fleeing jihadis and targeted those who could be hit without civilian casualties.

Bashar al-Assads regime has been accused of making a series of deals with Isis over territory and oil but the evacuation is the first publicly acknowledged agreement struck by US-backed forces.

The Tabqa Dam sits on the Euphrates river just miles from Raqqa city, providing a key line of defence and channel for reinforcements, which have now been cut off.

The Pentagon said Isis had been using the dam as a key coordination hub after territorial losses in northern Syria saw the group move its foreign fighters and external attack planning to Tabqa in an effort to divert air strikes.

The operation to seize the Tabqa Dam, airfield and city disrupts Isis operations in Raqqa and their ability to defend the city and plan and execute external attacks against the West, a spokesperson added.

With its seizure, the coalition has prevented a potential humanitarian disaster and ensured local citizens will continue to receive the dam's basic services.

The dam houses a hydroelectric power station and holds back Syrias largest reservoir  Lake Assad  which irrigates land both sides of the river, provides drinking water for Aleppo city and supports its own fishing industry.

British jihadi Jack Letts, in a picture he posted on Facebook in May 2015 near the Tabqa Dam in Syria (Facebook)

Isis claimed damage from US air strikes had caused rising water levels and put it at imminent risk of collapse in March, although the SDF denied propaganda statements as civilians started to flee.

The military alliance said maintaining their safety and the integrity of the dam was a key priority as well as preventing civilian casualties, while claiming large numbers of Isis militants had surrendered to its fighters or been found hiding among civilians.

Footage broadcast by the SDF on Friday showed fighters scaling the deserted dam to throw Isis black flag to the ground, replacing it with huge banners bearing the logos of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and its women-only counterpart, the YPJ.

Among its fighters is British woman Kimmie Taylor, who told The Independent she was bracing for a bloodbath in Raqqa while preparing for the offensive earlier this year.

Socialist British and Irish volunteers are also on the SDFs frontlines as part of the International Freedom Battalion.

Monitors said forces were continuing to claim villages surrounding Tabqa including el-Rafi and al-Ansar as the operation to cut off Raqqa ahead of a final push continued under a hail of US-led air strikes.

The SDF urged local civilians to join its forces as battles continued, vowing that it would hand Tabqa over to a civic council after security the area and clearing mines.

In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Show all 11 1 /11 In pictures: Isis' weapons factories In pictures: Isis' weapons factories A mortar round fin manufactured by Isis in Gogjali, Mosul, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Isis rocket components discovered in Gogjali, Mosul, Iraq in November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Isis mortars discovered near Karamlais, Iraq, in November 2016 CAR In pictures: Isis' weapons factories An Isis rocket launch frame in Qaraqosh, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories A memo from Isis' COSQC on quality control at a manufacturing facility in Gogjali, Mosul, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Electrically-operated initiators manufactured by Isis in forces Gogjali, Mosul, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Isis mortar tubes at a manufacturing facility in Karamlais, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories An Isis mortar production facility discovered in Gogjali, Mosul, in November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories An Isis weapons manufacturing facilities near Mosul in November 2016 Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories Stocks of French-manufactured Sorbitol, Latvian potassium nitrate and Lebanese sugar at an Isis weapons factory in Iraq Conflict Armament Research In pictures: Isis' weapons factories A destroyed Isis weapons facility in Qaraqosh, Iraq, November 2016 Conflict Armament Research

We also declare that the Euphrates Dam is a Syrian national institution that will serve all Syrian regions without exception, a statement said.

The advance came after Turkey hit out at the US for allying itself with a terrorist organisation over its own troops, with Ankara claiming support for Kurdish SDF factions it considers extremist will have consequences.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched an intervention last year to push back both the YPG and Isis from Turkeys border and has been angered by the US-led coalitions continued links with Kurdish separatists.

"Both the PKK and YPG are terrorist organisations and they are no different apart from their names," said his foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu.

"Every weapon seized by them is a threat to Turkey."

James Mattis, the US defence secretary, said the Trump administration would work out any of the concerns.

"We will work very closely with Turkey in support of their security on their southern border, he added.

"It's Europe's southern border, and we'll stay closely connected."
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When I had to leave school it felt like the last day of my life, 12-year-old Ayesha says, sitting in an adult-sized chair from which her feet just about touch the ground.

I dont remember much about when Isis came. But I know that that was when they killed my father and it was the last time I got to go to school for a long time.

The little girl, now living in Hasensham Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp just outside Mosul, is frank in talking about what she and her family went through living under Isis cruelty for more than two years. But shes also clear-headed about what her future holds.

Ayesha (not her real name), looks at the drawings by other children at Hasensham IDP camp (Bethan McKernan)

School helps me be a strong person. It will help my generation and we can change the future if we have an education, she said.

Almost nine months into Operation Inherent Resolve launched by US-backed Iraqi coalition forces to liberate the countrys second biggest city from Isis, the fight is not quite over yet. The army and counter terrorism forces are close to backing the militants into a few remaining neighbourhoods in the city centre, and most analysts expect the battle to be over within a month.

Even when Mosul is declared fully under government control again, for those who fled the city and surrounding Nineveh province since Isis swept across a third of Iraq in the summer of 2014, normal life is still on hold.

Around 480,000 people in total are currently displaced by the fighting, the majority living in IDP camps around the region which have added annex after annex to cope with demand.

 Children of Mosul describe life under Islamic State

New arrivals fleeing the fighting in West Mosul arrive at the UN and Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) run camps every day, after either walking for hours or being picked up by the army.

Since the battle for the city began in October 2016, more than 620,000 have at one point had to brave Isis sniper fire and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to reach relative safety.

While some families have managed to return home to liberated areas, the US-backed assault has taken its toll on the area.

Just outside Hasensham camp, the neighbouring village of the same name is nothing but broken windows, cratered rooftops and crumbling walls from heavy coalition bombing.

The abandoned village of Hasensham was so heavily mined when Isis retreated it is unlikely families will ever return there (Bethan McKernan)

The village is still so littered with mines planted by retreating Isis fighters it is not safe to leave the main road.

It would take so much time and money to clear it and rebuild Hasenshams residents will probably have to abandon their homes for good.

Most people displaced in northern Iraqs camps are grimly preparing to be there for a few years. After having arrived in some cases with just the clothes on their back, many have no savings or income with which to return home and start rebuilding their lives.

Going back to school is one of the only returns to normality for children displaced by Isis. Children playing at Unicef-run child-friendly spaces are clearly delighted by the murals on the walls of the terrapin units and playgrounds; they provide the only colour breaking up the blinding whiteness of the tents and the dusty earth.

Many of the smaller children The Independent met are so traumatised theyve become mute. When others first arrived, hearing music  banned under Isis  made them cry because they associated it with punishment.

Group therapy, psychologist family visits and a special focus on making sure disabled children can access classroom learning are all part of the rehabilitative process  but the thing that mattered most to all the children The Independent spoke to was being back in school again.

In some cases children have missed three whole grades, but theyre eager to catch up.

In pictures: Mosul offensive Show all 40 1 /40 In pictures: Mosul offensive In pictures: Mosul offensive A doctor carries an Iraqi newborn baby at a hospital in Mosul, Iraq July 18, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi girls play at a yard of a school in Mosul, Iraq July 18, 2017alal Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A woman on crutches who is a relative of men accused of being Islamic State militants is seen at a camp in Bartella, east of Mosul, Iraq July 15, 2017. Picture taken July 15, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A displaced girl, who fled from home carries a doll at Hamam al-Alil camp south of Mosul, Iraq July 13, 2017. Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi federal police members and civilians celebrate in the Old City of Mosul on 9 July 2017 after the government's announcement of the "liberation" of the embattled city. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's office said he was in "liberated" Mosul to congratulate "the heroic fighters and the Iraqi people on the achievement of the major victory" AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A picture taken on 9 July 2017, shows a general view of the destruction in Mosul's Old City. Iraq will announce imminently a final victory in the nearly nine-month offensive to retake Mosul from jihadists, a US general said Saturday, as celebrations broke out among police forces in the city. AFP In pictures: Mosul offensive Members of the Iraqi federal police raise the victory gesture as they ride on a humvee while advancing through the Old City of Mosul on 28 June 2017, as the offensive continues to retake the last district held by Islamic State (IS) group fighters. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Smoke billows as Iraqi forces advance through the Old City of Mosul on 26 June 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the last district held by the Islamic State (IS) group. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi man wearing the green scarf of the Shi'ite faith kisses an Iraqi Army soldier on safely reaching the Iraqi forces position as Iraqi civilians flee the Old City of west Mosul where heavy fighting continues on 23 June 2017. Iraqi forces continue to encounter stiff resistance with improvised explosive devices, car bombs, heavy mortar fire and snipers hampering their advance. Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A picture taken from the inside of an Iraqi forces armoured vehicle shows residents walking through a damaged street as troops advance towards Mosul's Old City on 18 June 2017, during the ongoing offensive to retake the last district still held by the Islamic State (IS) group. Military commanders told AFP the assault had begun at dawn after overnight air strikes by the US-led coalition backing Iraqi forces. They said the jihadists were putting up fierce resistance. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi Army soldiers advance in a destroyed street after an Iraqi forces airstrike targeted an Islamic State sniper position 17 June 2017 in al-Shifa, the last district of west Mosul under Islamic State control. IS snipers, as well as car and suicide bomb attacks continue to hinder the Iraqi forces efforts to retake the final district. A series of airstrikes by Iraqi helicopter gunships attempted to hit multiple Islamic State sniper positions in al-Shifa. Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier frisks a displaced Iraqi man at a temporary camp in the compound of the closed Nineveh International Hotel in Mosul on 16 June 2017 which was recovered by Iraqi troops from Islamic State group fighters earlier in the year. A screening centre set up in the compound's fairgrounds sees a constant stream of Iraqis fleeing the battle for Mosul, awaiting their turn to be checked by the Iraqi forces who are searching for suspected Islamic State (IS) group members. The small fairground lies at the end of a pontoon bridge across the Tigris recently opened to civilians that is the only physical link between the two banks of the river. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqis staying at the al-Khazir camp swim in a river near the camp for internally displaced people, located between Arbil and Mosul on 11 June 2017. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi government forces drive on a road leading to Tal Afar on 9 June 2017, during ongoing battles to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi policeman carries a poster bearing an image of Mosul's iconic leaning minaret, known as the "Hadba" (Hunchback), on 22 June 2017. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqis stand in line to receive food aid in western Mosul's Zanjili neighbourhood on 7 June 2017, during ongoing battles as Iraqi forces try to retake the city from Islamic State (IS) group fighters. Living conditions in Mosul have again deteriorated since the start of the Iraqi government's offensive on the city in October in which they retook a large part of the west of the city. AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Displaced Iraqis carry lightbulbs and sacks as they evacuate from western Mosul's Zanjili neighbourhood as government forces advance in the area during their ongoing battle against Islamic State (IS) group fighters on 13 May 2017 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) flashes the victory gesture as he patrols in western Mosul's al-Islah al-Zaraye neighbourhood on 13 May 2017 AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi army soldiers from the 9th armoured division on a truck flash the sign of victory as they drive back from Mosul to the town of Qaraqosh (also known as Hamdaniya) Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Members of Iraqi forces flash the sign of victory on their vehicle as they advance towards Hammam al-Alil area south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi security forces gestures in Hammam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi children, one flashing the sign of victory, greet Iraqi army's soldiers from the 9th armoured division in the area of Ali Rash, adjacent to the eastern Al-Intissar neighbourhood of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Peshmerga forces look at a tunnel used by Islamic State militants near the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier takes a photograph with his phone as his comrade stands next to a detained man, whom the Iraqi army soldiers accused of being an Islamic State fighter, who was fleeing with his family in the Intisar disrict of eastern Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Iranian Kurdish female members of the Freedom Party of Kurdistan (PAK) hold a position in an area near the town of Bashiqa, some 25 kilometres north east of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi families, who fled their homes in Hamam al-Alil, gather on the outskirts of their town Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Displaced people walk past a checkpoint near Qayara, south of Mosul, Iraq AP In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi families who were displaced by the ongoing operation by Iraqi forces against jihadists of the Islamic State group to retake the city of Mosul, are seen gathering in an area near Qayyarah In pictures: Mosul offensive A boy who just fled Abu Jarbuah village is seen with his family at a Kurdish Peshmerga position between two front lines near Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi child eats a pomegranate upon the arrival of Iraqi forces in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive People who just fled Abu Jarbuah village sit as they eat at a Kurdish Peshmerga position between two front lines near Bashiqa, east of Mosul, Iraq Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive A couple who just fled Abu Jarbuah village are escorted by Kurdish Peshmerga soldiers Reuters In pictures: Mosul offensive Women carry a boy over a wall as civilians flee their houses in the village of Tob Zawa, Iraq AP In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier and a civilian ride a motorbike as smoke rises behind them, on the road between Qayyarah and Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi forces, wearing a skull mask, waits at a checkpoint for people fleeing the main hub city of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive An Iraqi soldier sits at a checkpoint in an area near Qayyarah Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi men prepare food portions for Iraqi forces deployed in areas south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi forces celebrate upon the arrival of vehicles bringing food to them Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive Iraqi childen smoke cigarettes upon the arrival of Iraqi forces in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty In pictures: Mosul offensive A member of Iraqi forces distributes drinks to children in the village of Umm Mahahir, south of Mosul Getty

When asked if theyd rather be on permanent vacation like some children in other countries would, a group of teenagers scoffed at the idea.

Isis made us leave school, 13-year-old Zahra said. Going back is our revenge against them. Im going to be a doctor.

When the militants seized new towns they either took over or closed all schools under their control, implementing their own curriculum. Mathematics textbooks used sums such as bomb plus gun equals... to indoctrinate children from a young age, causing many parents to pull their children out to avoid the extremist influences altogether.

13-year-old Zahra (left) is determined to become a doctor when she grows up (Bethan McKernan)

A headteacher from Singar now living in Dibaga camp described the day Isis stormed his village two years ago. The militants arrived, firing guns overhead, during the school day, prompting his staff to quickly send all the children home. He locked the gates to keep Isis out of the building.

A few days later, he and a few other teachers snuck back in to rescue students papers and textbooks.

Now teaching in Dibagas school, many others had continued working for free, he said.

Education will be the next front line against Isis, he continued. We must rebuild our school first when we get to go home. Its how you keep extremism out and you prepare to not let something like this happen again.

Maulid Warfa, Unicefs head of mission in Irbil coordinating the Mosul response, echoed the displaced headteachers thoughts.

There is an awful lot of ground to cover to get all displaced children back into school and make sure they do not become a lost generation, he said.

We need to restrategise for the future on radicalisation, he added. Iraqs youth are resilient and willing to rebuild their country. We need to give them the tools to be able to do that.

To read more about Unicefs work in Iraq and donate to the emergency appeal click here.
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The US has promised Turkey that it will track and take steps to defund the Kurdish militia PKK in an attempt to reassure Recep Tayyep Erdogan's government, after relations between Washington and Ankara came close to fracturing over Syria.

The Trump administration has decided to provide heavy weapons to some Kurdish groups fighting Isis, a move which has led to severe and prolonged criticism from Ankara. But Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, speaking in London on Friday said that the US has stressed it continues to regard the PKK as terrorists and will pursue the organisations money trail.

According to Mr Yildirim, the US has also promised that Kurdish forces that may enter Raqqa (Isis's de facto capital in Syria), as part of an American-backed offensive, will not be allowed to stay in the city.

Mr Yildirim said he had been given the commitment about pursuing the PKK by General James Mattis, US Defence Secretary, during a counter-terrorism conference in London. He was very clear that the US regards the PKK as a terrorist organisation and will start tackling the money of the PKK, said the Prime Minister.

We have also been told by the US that Kurdish groups will not stay in Raqqa; the demographic of the region will not change.

Mr Yildirim said that he understood Britain's position to be the same: that the UK views the PKK as a terrorist group. But he castigated the European Union for what he claimed was its backing of the Kurdish organisation. The PKK deals in drugs: it peddles heroin and cocaine to the European youth thats how they make money, he said.

Yet the European Union still supports this organisation. If they are doing this to punish Turkey, they should think about the health of their future generations.

Donald Trump will meet President Erdogan next week. Meanwhile, Turkey continues to protest the supplying of advanced arms to the Kurdish YPG (who the Americans consider the most effective of their allies against Isis), and the SDF, which has Arabs in its ranks but is led by Kurds.

The Turkish government holds that both the groups are tied to the PKK and arming them would have a negative effect both for Turkey and the US.

Mr Yildirim charged today: The PKK take different initials like YPG and SDF. But they are all the same. We will defend ourselves from them in Turkey. When they use Iraq and Syria to attack us, we will go against them and deal with them in Iraq and Syria as well.

Mr Yildirim wanted to stress that Turkey is fighting terrorism from Isis as well as Kurds. However, he maintained that there was no appreciation for that from the West, especially the European Union. He complained about lack of action by Brussels on an agreement to allow visa-free travel for Turkish citizens in Europe, and non-payment of money Ankara was supposed to get in return for stemming the flow of refugees into Europe. He also decried obstacles on Turkeys long-running application to join the European Union.

On the question of membership, we need the European Union to define its vision: to tell us how they see the future, said Mr Yildirim. Is it going to be a Christian club? Is it the case that we will not be accepted because we are a Muslim country? If that is the case, then we will respect that. But we need to be told.

We have completed all the requirements demanded by the European Union for visa-free travel, except one: changes to our counter-terrorist laws. We cannot do what they are asking while we are facing such a terrorist threat: not a threat just to us, but Europe. So we have not got visa-free travel. They have given this visa-free arrangement to the Ukraine, Georgia, countries in Latin America, the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) but not Turkey.

The EU was supposed to give $3 billion as part of the refugee agreement. But they have sent around $800 million. But this is not about money for us; we will continue with our end of the agreement.

The Turkish prime minister spoke of a bond between the UK and his country over Brexit, and how this will lead to flourishing trade. We have one country which cannot get into the EU, and another which wants to get out, so we are both outside and we have common interest, he said. I am sure there will be a quick trade agreement between us after Brexit. There are already deals done on defence, and there will be others as well.
Peking University will establish medical and business centers in Xiongan New Area, located in Hebei province, in an effort to support the central governments plan to develop the region.

[We] will utilize our resources, providing support to the new area in the fields of medicine and education, as well as sending talents to the region, said Hao Ping, chairman of Peking University Council, at a conference held on May 11.

According to Hao, Peking University will establish a medical center in the new area, which will serve as a platform for scientific research, medical education and medical services. The university will also build a business center to help train local entrepreneurs and management personnel.

Along with other prestigious universities, Peking University will deploy its outstanding educational resources in the new area, as well as strengthen its cooperation with local government, in an effort to provide intellectual support for the new areas construction, said Hao.

Development of the future satellite region to the southwest of Beijing will help ease the strain on resources in China's capital. It has been described as crucial for a millennium to come.
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A month ahead of mobile roaming charges being scrapped across Europe, a leading network has branded its rivals fees outside the EU a rip off.

Announcing an extension of its free roaming deal, Three said: "Roaming charges are a rip off."

Recommended O2 to scrap mobile roaming charges in 47 foreign countries this summer

Holidaymakers in the US, Turkey, and many other non-EU nations face charges of 1.50 per minute on some networks. Even in European destinations such as Albania - increasingly popular as a day-trip from Corfu and as a port on Adriatic cruises - a call from home lasting five minutes can cost the recipient 7.50.

Rates for using data abroad can also be extremely high. Critics say the telecom firms are levying charges that are way out of line with the actual cost of providing the service, and that international travellers are seen as a rich source of revenue

The European Commission started capping intra-EU roaming charges a decade ago. Fees for calls made or received anywhere in the 30 other EEA countries (the European Union plus Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein) are down to a few cents or less per minute on top of the domestic contract. The most a network can add for online access is 0.05 per megabyte.

Completely free roaming should prevail across Europe from 15 June. From the same date, the mobile network Three will extend the range of countries where it levies no roaming charges, adding Singapore, Brazil and five French-speaking Caribbean territories: Guyane, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthelemy and Saint Martin.

Read More: Compare contract providers and find the best deal for you with our Mobile Phone Deals page

They join the US, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Israel among the non-European nations already included in the Feel at Home scheme. The firm says that its free roaming deal covers 82 per cent of trips made by British holidaymakers. But users in Turkey, Thailand, South Africa and dozens of other popular destinations still incur roaming fees.

Dave Dyson, chief executive at Three, said: We are doing this proactively for the benefit of our customers and not because regulators are forcing us to do it. He said the network is moving quickly towards a goal of covering all overseas destinations.

Outside Europe, the only legal restriction is on data prices. Under EU rules the volume of downloaded data on a mobile device is capped, worldwide, at 50, unless the user has agreed to a different limit with their mobile network.
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We live on a planet bound by resolute, scientific principles and concrete facts. Up is up, down is down and blatant lies are blatant lies. Its all pretty straightforward, actually. But as the days and weeks slowly wither to ash, its become increasingly clear that Donald Trump doesnt live on the same planet that you and I have been occupying all this time.

You see, in Donald Trumps dystopian and suspiciously orange world, all truths are totally subjective  and everybody is a pathological liar with the memory of a haggard old goldfish. Its the only possible explanation left after this weeks anomalous FBI pantomime performance.

In case you havent been paying attention, on Tuesday the President sent one of Americas most crucial institutions into a full-blown crisis mode after pulling the rug out from under FBI director James Comey. Absolutely nobody outside Trumps inner-circle saw it coming  and the White House rationale for dismissing Comey confused political pundits from all sides of the political spectrum.

The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Show all 17 1 /17 The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort Mr Manafort is a Republican strategist and former Trump campaign manager. He resigned from that post over questions about his extensive lobbying overseas, including in Ukraine where he represented pro-Russian interests. Mr Manafort turned himself in at FBI headquarters to special counsel Robert Muellers team on Oct 30, 2017, after he was indicted under seal on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. Getty The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rick Gates Mr Gates joined the Trump team in spring 2016, and served as a top aide until he left to work at the Republican National Committee after the departure of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. Mr Gates' had previously worked on several presidential campaigns, on international political campaigns in Europe and Africa, and had 15 years of political or financial experience with multinational firms, according to his bio. Mr Gates was indicted alongside Mr Manafort by special counsel Robert Mueller's team on charges that include conspiracy against the United States, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading US Foreign Agents Registration Act statements, false statements, and seven counts of failure to file reports of foreign bank and financial accounts. AP The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation George Papadopoulos George Papadopoulos was a former foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign, having joined around March 2016. Mr Papadopoulos plead guilty to federal charges for lying to the FBI as a part of a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Mr Papadopoulos claimed in an interview with the FBI that he had made contacts with Russian sources before joining the Trump campaign, but he actually began working with them after joining the team. Mr Papadopoulos allegedly took a meeting with a professor in London who reportedly told him that Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The professor also allegedly introduced Mr Papadopoulos to a Russian who was said to have close ties to officials at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr Papadopoulos also allegedly was in contact with a woman whom he incorrectly described in one email to others in the campaign as the "niece" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Twitter The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Donald Trump Jr The President's eldest son met with a Russian lawyer - Natalia Veselnitskaya - on 9 June 2016 at Trump Tower in New York. He said in an initial statement that the meeting was about Russia halting adoptions of its children by US citizens. Then, he said it was regarding the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. In a final statement, Mr Trump Jr released a chain of emails that revealed he took the meeting in hopes of getting information Ms Veselnitskaya had about Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. He and the President called it standard "opposition research" in the course of campaigning and that no information came from the meeting. The meeting was set up by an intermediary, Rob Goldstone. Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort were also at the same meeting. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jared Kushner Mr Kushner is President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a key adviser to the White House. He met with a Russian banker appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in December. Mr Kushner has said he did so in his role as an adviser to Mr Trump while the bank says he did so as a private developer. Mr Kushner has also volunteered to testify in the Senate about his role helping to arrange meetings between Trump advisers and Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Rob Goldstone Former tabloid journalist and now music publicist Rob Goldstone is a contact of the Trump family through the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant, which took place in Moscow. In June 2016, he wrote to Donald Trump Jr offering a meeting with a Russian lawyer, Natalya Veselnitskaya, who had information about Hillary Clinton. Mr Goldstone was the intermediary for Russian pop star Emin Agalaraov and his father, real estate magnate Aras, who played a role in putting on the 2013 pageant. In an email chain released by Mr Trump Jr, Mr Goldstone seemed to indicate Russian government's support of Donald Trump's campaign. AP images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Aras and Emin Agalarov Aras Agalarov (R) is a wealthy Moscow-based real estate magnate and son Emin (L) is a pop star. Both played a role in putting on the previously Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. They allegedly had information about Hillary Clinton and offered that information to the Trump campaign through a lawyer with whom they had worked with, Natalia Veselnitskaya, and music publicist Rob Goldstone. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Natalia Veselnitskaya Natalia Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin. She has worked on real estate issues and reportedly counted the FSB as a client in the past. She has ties to a Trump family connection, real estate magnate Aras Agalarov, who had helped set up the Trump-owned 2013 Miss Universe pageant which took place in Moscow. Ms Veselnitskaya met with Donald Trump Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort in Trump Tower on 9 June 2016 but denies the allegation that she went there promising information on Hillary Clinton's alleged financial ties to Russia. She contends that the meeting was about the US adoptions of Russian children being stopped by Moscow as a reaction to the Magnitsky Act, a US law blacklisting Russian human rights abusers. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Mike Flynn Mr Flynn was named as Trump's national security adviser but was forced to resign from his post for inappropriate communication with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. He had misrepresented a conversation he had with Mr Kislyak to Vice President Mike Pence, telling him wrongly that he had not discussed sanctions with the Russian. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sergey Kislyak Mr Kislyak, the former longtime Russian ambassador to the US, is at the centre of the web said to connect President Donald Trump's campaign with Russia. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Roger Stone Mr Stone is a former Trump adviser who worked on the political campaigns of Richard Nixon, George HW Bush, and Ronald Reagan. Mr Stone claimed repeatedly in the final months of the campaign that he had backchannel communications with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and that he knew the group was going to dump damaging documents to the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton - which did happen. Mr Stone also had contacts with the hacker Guccier 2.0 on Twitter, who claimed to have hacked the DNC and is linked to Russian intelligence services. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeff Sessions The US attorney general was forced to recuse himself from the Trump-Russia investigation after it was learned that he had lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Carter Page Mr Page is a former advisor to the Trump campaign and has a background working as an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. Mr Page met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Mr Page had invested in oil companies connected to Russia and had admitted that US Russia sanctions had hurt his bottom line. Reuters The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Jeffrey "JD" Gorden Mr Gordon met with Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 Republian National Convention to discuss how the US and Russia could work together to combat Islamist extremism should then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump win the election. The meeting came days before a massive leak of DNC emails that has been connected to Russia. Creative Commons The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation James Comey Mr Comey was fired from his post as head of the FBI by President Donald Trump. The timing of Mr Comey's firing raised questions around whether or not the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign may have played a role in the decision. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Preet Bharara Mr Bahara refused, alongside 46 other US district attorney's across the country, to resign once President Donald Trump took office after previous assurances from Mr Trump that he would keep his job. Mr Bahara had been heading up several investigations including one into one of President Donald Trump's favorite cable television channels Fox News. Several investigations would lead back to that district, too, including those into Mr Trump's campaign ties to Russia, and Mr Trump's assertion that Trump Tower was wiretapped on orders from his predecessor. Getty Images The biggest names involved in the Trump-Russia investigation Sally Yates Ms Yates, a former Deputy Attorney General, was running the Justice Department while President Donald Trump's pick for attorney general awaited confirmation. Ms Yates was later fired by Mr Trump from her temporary post over her refusal to implement Mr Trump's first travel ban. She had also warned the White House about potential ties former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to Russia after discovering those ties during the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign's connections to Russia. Getty Images

According to the Trump team, James Comey was an incompetent and loud-mouthed loose cannon nobody liked. He was far too conceited and big-headed to run a government institution, and the guy didnt have a proper mandate for any of his unpopular actions. Sound familiar?

It took Comeys replacement all of a few hours to rubbish those claims, but whatever. Kellyanne Conway convinced us we should ignore whatever the FBI was saying, and promised none of this had anything to do with reports that Comey repeatedly refused to swear an oath of fealty to the President  and it definitely, definitely had nothing to do with the former FBI director launching a very public investigation into the Trump team's alleged dodgy dealings with the Kremlin.

In fact, our benevolent alien overlord only gave Comey the heave-ho because the US Attorney General made him do it. If Trump had gotten his way, things could have worked out a lot better for everybody.

Or that was the narrative for about half a day, anyway.

By Thursday night, Donald Trump appeared on the ultra-fake NBC News to tell us this Russian thing actually played a huge role in his decision to send Comey packing. But then again, maybe it didnt  because several minutes into the exact same interview, Trump sternly declared the FBI hadn't even been investigating him in the first place.

 Donald Trump says James Comey told him multiple times he was not under investigation

Apparently, this whole thing has just been the Democrats trying to distract hard-working patriots with pesky alternative facts. The President said Comey privately reassured him on three separate occasions that nobody in Washington actually believed Trump has anything to do with Vladimir Putin or seedy Russian saboteurs, and this so-called investigation we keep going on about doesn't even exist.

All those committee hearings and congressional subpoenas weve been watching? Didnt happen. Cabinet members resigning over secret talks with an old KGB spy recruiter? Liberal paranoia. And FBI director James Comey telling the world on live television that Trump and his team were under formal investigation for allegedly colluding with Russian hackers to steal the presidency? A figment of the globes twisted and deviously left-wing imagination.

Recommended Donald Trump gets two scoops of ice cream while everyone else gets one

Is this even real life?

Every time Donald Trump utters a single syllable, he tarnishes the integrity of his sacred station that much more. He treats voters like mindless meat bags incapable of independent thought, and whimsically wields his presidential powers like a toddler might curiously pull a cats tail. Hes got no clue how the world is supposed to work  and if nothing else, the repulsive duplicity hes demonstrated over the past four months has proven he doesnt very much care how its supposed to work, either.

In Donald Trump's imaginary world, this entire presidency is nothing but some sort of sick alien experiment to discover just how many lies it takes to bring the White House crashing down. At this point, he can't be too far away from finding that out.
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Many people view Donald Trump as the most dangerous man on the planet, but next week he flies to Saudi Arabia for a three-day visit during which he will meet a man who surely runs him a close second as a source of instability. This is deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, 31  the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia since his father King Salman, 81, is incapacitated by old age  who has won a reputation for impulsiveness, aggression and poor judgement in the two-and-half years he has held power. Early on he escalated the Saudi role in Syria, thereby helping to precipitate Russian military intervention, and initiated a war in Yemen that is still going on and has reduced 17 million people to the brink of famine. Combine his failings with those of Trump, a man equally careless or ignorant about the consequence of his actions, and you have an explosive mixture threatening the most volatile region on earth.

Prince Mohammed, who is also defence minister, is not a man who learns from his mistakes or even notices that he has made them. Less than a year after his father became king in January 2015, the BND German intelligence agency issued a warning that Saudi Arabia had adopted an impulsive policy of intervention abroad and blamed this on the deputy crown prince whom it portrayed as a naive political gambler. The degree of alarm within the BND about his impact on the region must have been high for them to release such a document which was swiftly withdrawn at the insistence of the German foreign ministry, but its predictions have been fulfilled disastrously in the following eighteen months.

The deputy crown prince is turning out to be not only a gambler, but one who recklessly raises his stakes when in trouble. Proof of this came in an extraordinary but under-reported interview he gave earlier this month, broadcast on al-Arabiya TV and Saudi TV, in which he threatens military intervention in Iran. We will not wait until the battle is in Saudi Arabia, but we will work so the battle is there in Iran, he says. Speaking in highly sectarian terms, he claims that the Iranian Shia leaders are planning to seize Mecca and to establish their rule over all the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. He believes that their logic is based on the notion that Imam Mahdi will come and they must prepare the fertile environment for his arrival and they must control the Muslim world. His diatribe is as anti-Shia as it is anti-Iranian and likely to provoke fears among Shia in Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia itself, where Shia make up a tenth of the population, that they will be the victims of an anti-Shia crusade.

 Donald Trump says James Comey told him multiple times he was not under investigation

It is absurd to imagine that the four or five Shia countries have the ambition or the ability to take over the fifty or more that are Sunni, though Sunni fundamentalists accuse tiny Shia minorities in countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Indonesia of plotting to do so. Prince Mohammed appears to give credence to the theory of a grand anti-Sunni conspiracy orchestrated by Iran, saying that, since the Iranian revolution in 1979, Iran has been trying to control Muslims in the Islamic world and spread the Twelver Jaafari [Shia] sect in the Islamic world so Imam Mahdi comes.

There is more at play here than Prince Mohammed whipping up religious and nationalist feelings in Saudi Arabia to secure his own power base and fend off his rivals within the royal family. None of his foreign ventures have so far achieved their aims: in Syria in the spring of 2015 Saudi Arabia gave support to the so-called Army of Conquest, consisting primarily of the al-Qaeda affiliate the al-Nusra Front and its then ally Ahrar al-Sham. This won a series of victories against pro-Assad forces in Idlib province but their success led to Russian military intervention later the same year that was a turning point in the war. Saudi influence was marginalised, something that he blames on former American President Barack Obama [who] wasted many significant opportunities he could have seized to achieve great change in Syria. In practice, Saudi Arabia was hoping for US military intervention to enforce regime change in Syria along the lines of Iraq in 2003 or Libya in 2011. Obama was privately critical of Saudi actions and the tradition of the Washington foreign policy establishment of giving automatic support to Saudi Arabia and its allies.

Nevertheless, in Yemen Mr Obama gave backing until the last days of his presidency to the Saudi-led bombing campaign which has been devastating the country since March 2015 but has so far failed to win the war for the Saudis local allies. It has brought terrible suffering to the Yemeni population of 27 million, of whom the UN estimates that 17 million are food insecure including 3.3 million pregnant and breast-feeding mothers and children, some 462,000 under the age of five, who are acutely malnourished or, in other words, starving. Saudi-backed forces are poised to attack the Red Sea port of Hodeida, through which come 80 per cent of Yemens imports which make up most of its food supplies. If the port is closed then Yemenis will face the worst man-made famine since Mao Tse-Tungs Great Leap Forward. Prince Mohammed says the war is all but won, though, mysteriously, in finishing off the other side, "thousands of our troops can fall victims. There will be funerals in all Saudi cities."

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

Trump has already ordered greater US support for the Saudi war effort in Yemen, but the deputy crown prince will be primarily bidding for US backing for his confrontation with Iran. Words are already turning into action with reports of the US and Saudi Arabia being at one in planning to stir up an anti-government insurgency among minorities in Iran such as the Baluchis in the south east, something that has been done before but with limited impact.

Saudi leaders were overjoyed by the election of Trump whom they see as sympathetic to them and the Gulf leaders whom he will meet after he arrives in Saudi Arabia on 19 May, before going on to Israel. It is a chilling tribute to the authoritarian instincts of Trump that his first foreign visit as President should be to the last arbitrary monarchies left on earth and to a state where women are not even allowed to drive. On the question of confronting Iran, he is unlikely to be restrained by his Defence Secretary, James Mattis, and his National Security Adviser, HR McMaster, both former generals scarred by Americas war in Iraq, where they see Iran as the main enemy.

The White House is doubtless conscious that the one-time Trump has won universal plaudits in the US was when he fired missiles in Syria and dropped a big bomb in Afghanistan. Trump and Prince Mohammed may be very different in some respects, but both know that fighting foreign foes and waving the flag shores up crumbling support at home.
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If you want to go back to the Seventies you dont need to hope Jeremy Corbyn enters Downing Street on 9 June and hoists the red flag over the black door of Number 10.

If you want to experience public ownership of industries you might try sending a letter in Norway, where Posten Norge is a state-owned company. You might ride on a train in Switzerland, where the Schweizerische Bundesbahnen (Swiss Federal Railways) is a corporation whose shares are wholly in the hands of the Swiss cantons.

You might try boiling a kettle in Paris, with energy supplied by the state-owned Electricite de France. Or maybe do the same in Hamburg, where the energy grid is in the process of being reacquired by the city government. While youre in Germany, you might like to open an account at one of the countrys hundreds of local government-owned Sparkassen, or savings banks.

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

It may surprise you to learn, given the hysterical reception being given to the leaked Labour manifesto and its proposals for a partial renationalisation of various British industries, that none of those above experiences in continental Europe will be a Soviet-style nightmare.

Indeed, one will find that many of those industries provide a superior service in countries with a strong element of public ownership, compared to their counterparts here in Britain where such things are left to the market. There are probably few Southern Rail commuters who wouldnt trade their experience with those Germans who enjoy services operated by the state-owned Deutsche Bahn.

But of course, we dont leave everything to the market here in Britain either. When you board a train here in Britain, you will step on to a privately-owned piece of rolling stock operated by a private franchise. But the maintenance of the tracks over which you travel is the responsibility of the publicly-owned Network Rail, founded after the collapse of the privately-owned Railtrack. And that private rail franchise may well be part of a larger European state-owned group. Arriva is an outpost of Deutsche Bahn. The Essex-operator C2c is part of Trenitalia, the Italian state rail company.

Similarly, if youre getting domestic energy supplied by EDF, its that same group that powers the Parisian kettle. As many have noted, we do have public ownership in UK rail and energy markets. Its just that the government ownership is by foreign governments.

The question of national versus private ownership is less important than many people imagine. What really matters is the structure of the wider sector, its degree of liberalisation, the incentives for managers, the quality of regulation and the political and social context in which firms operate.

 Jeremy Corbyn and Labour: All you need to know

The privatisations of British Airways, British Telecom and British Steel were a success not because high-quality private managers were brought in to replace low-grade state bureaucrats. The management teams were often the same before and after privatisation. What changed was the introduction of competitive pressures and the imposition of credible budget constraints, forcing these same managements to cut costs, work more productively, invest and innovate.

But its harder, if not impossible, to inject competitive pressure into natural monopolies such as rail and energy distribution, and utilities such as water, through privatisation. And because they are natural monopolies (with unsurmountable barriers to market entry by potential competitors) they are always going to be tightly regulated, even when they are in private ownership. It would be a brave politician who proposed to let a private water company charge households in its area whatever the market would bear.

The issue of the cost of renationalisation is also something of a red herring. When the state privatises an industry, presuming it sells the business to private investors for what it is actually worth, the state does not register a profit in a comprehensive accounting sense. What it gains in sale receipts it loses in future profits. The same is true in reverse. Assuming it doesnt overpay, the cost to the state of buying back, for instance, the Royal Mail or the National Grid will be balanced by the flow of future net revenues from those businesses.

The key question, from a public policy perspective, is whether the business assets are likely to be run more efficiently in the interests of the public in one form of ownership than the other. Will the absence of the risk of bankruptcy result in budget indiscipline from public managements? Will public managers be more attuned to the whims of ministers and the interests of employees rather than the needs of customers? Or, on the other hand, will private managers underinvest to increase dividends to shareholders and boost share prices? How likely are civil servants to draw up franchising contracts that will provide good value for taxpayers?

These ought to be empirical questions, informed by analysis, evidence (including from abroad) and judgement. Yet for much of the British media and political classes it is, alas, a matter of ideology.
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Today, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn tried to present himself as the heir to Robin Cooks ethical foreign policy. In reality, his foreign policy smacks of a hollow inertia that would neither uphold the international rule of law, nor keep Britons safe.

I was reminded of Robin Cook last week, while handing out election leaflets at Cobham train station. I served as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office lawyer when Mr Cook was Foreign Secretary, just after Britain joined Natos bombing of Serbia to protect Kosovan civilians from mass slaughter and ethnic cleansing. Predictably, any military intervention elicits claims of war crimes, however unfounded.

Sure enough, when I was posted to The Hague, I was tasked to respond to Slobodan Milosevics attempt to subpoena Mr Cook before the Yugoslavia Tribunal for his role in the Kosovo conflict. Milosevics legal support was the erudite UK barrister, Stephen Kay QC. What do you know, he now turns out to be a constituent, commuting to the London bar from Cobham. We briefly reminisced. The subpoena came to nothing. Mr Cook passed away shortly afterwards. But the chance encounter reminded me that, whatever else I feel about his politics, he had moral courage.

It is easy to forget how controversial the humanitarian intervention in Kosovo was at that time. Without approval from the UN Security Council, the legal basis was tenable, but hotly contested. After the hornets nest of the previous Balkan wars, Kosovo was feared as a morass. Targeting was fraught with the inherent challenges of hitting military targets and minimising civilian risk.

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

Still, after carnage in Bosnia, Mr Cook was not willing to stand idly by and watch another avoidable humanitarian disaster unfold in Europe. Asked today specifically on whether Britain was right to intervene in Kosovo, Mr Corbyn said a different way should have been found. In fact, the only UK military operations he could bring himself to endorse since the Second World War were the limited UN peacekeeping operations in East Timor and Cyprus.

I respect Mr Corbyns pacifistic idealism, however much he shuns the label, but its no way to defend Britain or international law.

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Mr Corbyn talked about how human rights must drive foreign policy. Yet his insistence that it must always be done by committee at the UN just looks naive. Asked what you do if unsavoury regimes veto action, the Labour leader mouthed platitudes about engaging more with Russia and China. Questioned on Syria, Mr Corbyn said he wanted to see the Assad regime prosecuted for war crimes. How exactly, without countenancing any conceivable use of force, would he plan to arrest Bashar al-Assad or any of his henchmen?

Mr Corbyn said he was haunted by US intervention in Vietnam, and would not hold hands with Donald Trump. And yet, this is the Labour leader who sets such a high prize on international co-operation, and is willing to collaborate with Russia and China  let alone some of the Latin American tyrants he has praised in the past.

After the second Iraq war, which Mr Cook resigned over, Britain has no appetite for open-ended or hubristic military interventions. Equally, punting every international threat off to the UN, inviting grinding global indecision, is not moral let alone political leadership. It means sitting on your hands, a green light to despots and dictators to savage their own citizens, and exposing Britain to greater risk from the likes of Isis and other international terrorist groups.

 General Election polls and projections: May 12

Anti-Americanism isnt a foreign policy. And Jeremy Corbyn is no Robin Cook. Mr Cook understood that sometimes military force is required to defend the vulnerable. He would have shuddered at Mr Corbyns recent questioning of UK military support for our Nato ally, plucky Estonia, faced with the real menace of Vladimir Putin on its doorstep.

Add to this his history of apologism for the IRA and Hamas, along with kooky past comments about abolishing the army and closing down Nato, and Mr Corbyn is not fit to lead the UK. His principled pacifism would make for an intriguing academic symposium, but in a prime minister it is positively dangerous.

Dominic Raab is the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Esher & Walton
EU chief negotiator on Brexit Michel Barnier and Tony Blair at a conference on Brexit in the Druids Glen Hotel, Wicklow, Ireland

There is always an answer to what shape the Irish border takes after Brexit, Michel Barnier said.

The EU's chief negotiator visited the Republic's frontier with Northern Ireland at the end of a two-day visit.

It will become the UK's only land border with an EU state after Brexit.

The Frenchman said: "There is always an answer, there is always a road when there is a will."

He had earlier raised the prospect of customs controls but struck a pragmatic note after meeting business owners badly affected by Brexit.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair has told a meeting in the Republic of Europe's centre-right political groups that a "hard border" on the island would be a disaster.

The former prime minister said a deal between Britain and Ireland on the issue was the best way of limiting damage from Brexit.

"If the UK and the Republic were able to agree a way forward on the border, then we would have the best chance of limiting the damage. It is in the interests of us all, including our European partners, for this to happen."

He said getting consensus on the border will be crucial in the negotiations.

On Friday, Mr Barnier visited a company producing ready-made meals for the UK which could be hard hit by Brexit.

He warned: "This negotiation once again will be extraordinary and very complex and difficult."

Mr Barnier said the talks would be financial, legal and technical but firstly human, social and economic.

"I want to listen, to meet the people on the ground, to come into the negotiation having the feet on the ground.

"I came to this county of Monaghan to listen, not to give solutions."

Businesses and politicians in the Republic and Northern Ireland want to avoid the restrictions on movement of the past.

Britain's Brexit Secretary David Davis has said the UK would adopt technology to cover the transport of goods between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

The British government wants a "frictionless" arrangement to avoid a return to the borders of the past when the area was heavily militarised because of the IRA threat.

On Thursday Mr Barnier warned Brexit would have consequences and said controls were part of EU border management, protecting the single market and food safety.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned that the external risks to Ireland's economy are high, listing Brexit and international corporate tax reform among the threats.

Meanwhile, the rise in housing pressures, is also said to be among the challenges faced by the country.

The IMF said that the government's Help-to-Buy initiative for first-time buyers may add to demand pressures and welcomed the planned review of the scheme.

It also stressed the need for a broad and stable tax base, particularly due to the government's intention to continue cutting the Universal Social Charge (USC).

The international financial institution this afternoon published a concluding statement from its 2017 Article IV review.

That's an annual mission in Ireland which was carried out over the last two weeks and included meetings with ministers and government officials.

The report says that "economic recovery is well under way" and that the medium term outlook "remains positive".

"Healthy growth is expected to continue, albeit at a moderating pace. Nonetheless, Ireland faces several challenges," it adds.

"Brexit represents the most pressing and far-reaching challenge for Ireland.

"While the impact to date has been modest, the overall effects over the medium term are expected to be negative and significant."

Risks are said to be most acute for traditional sectors depending on trade with the UK such as agri-food and tourism.

The report says that the special issues related to the border with Northern Ireland have also been recognised and "The authorities are actively engaging with partners in the UK and across Europe, and working domestically to develop a set of measures to respond."

"Ensuring timely and well-targeted action will be key," the IMF advises.

Ongoing changes in corporate taxation at the international level and discussion of further reforms in the US and the EU are contributing to "uncertainty".

This is due to "the sizable role of multinationals in the economy and their substantial contribution to the tax base".

Among potential tax changes in the US is President Donald Trump's wish to reduce the American corporate tax rate from 35pc to 15pc.

The uncertainty "further reinforces the need for a broad tax base, large fiscal buffers, and continuing efforts to reinforce the dynamism of the domestic economy," the IMF found.

The report says housing pressures have risen "driven by the mismatch between renewed demand and the lagged supply response following the real-estate bust."

It says that ensuring affordable housing is crucial for the well-being of the Irish population and important to economic competitiveness.

The IMF said the government's Action plan for Housing and Homelessness "appropriately focuses on support for vulnerable families" as well as measures to kick-start expansion in housing supply.

"While signs of progress are emerging, a more robust supply response will take time," the report says.

"The planned review of the recently introduced Help-to-Buy scheme, which may add to demand pressures, is welcome," it adds.

Spending pressures are said to be high while the fiscal space remains constrained.

"Pent-up demand will need to be managed carefully to ensure that resources are maintained to insulate the economy from emerging risks, meet priority social needs and increase investment to strengthen human capital and infrastructure and support broad-based economic dynamism," the IMF said.

Factors that should be considered include the need for a broad and stable tax base.

This is particularly the case "given calls for continued unwinding of the universal social charge and concentration risk associated with corporate taxes."

"A more comprehensive and evenly distributed tax on individual earnings is important if Ireland is to have the resources to address priority needs in a sustainable manner.

"In this context, a review of tax expenditures should be considered. At the same time, reduction of VAT exemptions and aligning property assessments to increasing market values would strengthen revenue," the IMF said.

Prioritising the use of limited fiscal space is said to be "critical"

"Given strong spending pressures, it will be critical to maintain sufficient room for priority social expenditures and needed restoration of growth-enhancing capital spending.

"To this end, the mission welcomes the current expenditure and capital reviews.

"The recently published report of the Public Service Pay Commission also provides support for a transparent and evidence-based process for upcoming discussions of public sector compensation within this broader context," the report says.
Fears that some form of border controls will be introduced in the wake of Brexit have been heightened by EU negotiator Michel Barnier's speech to the Dail.

While promising to keep Irish views to the forefront during the Brexit talks, Mr Barnier said: "We have a duty to speak the truth."

"The UK's departure from the EU will have consequences. Customs controls are part of EU border management. They protect the single market. They protect our food safety and our standards," the Frenchman told a joint sitting of the Dail and Seanad.

The comments led to calls for Taoiseach Enda Kenny to seek further clarity on what measure the EU is considering in relation to the Border. However, Government sources pointed to other passages of Mr Barnier's speech in which he said: "European integration helped to remove borders that once existed on maps and in minds. Brexit changes the external borders of the EU. I will work with you to avoid a hard Border."

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Mr Barnier said the EU "will be here for" Ireland throughout the negotiations and all member states recognise our "unique position".

"Today, in front of these two houses, I want to reassure the Irish people - in this negotiation Ireland's interest will be the Union's interest," he said.

During his contribution, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin spoke out against what he called the "ugly and negative" referendum held last year.

"There was no strategy for implementing Brexit, there was just a strategy for winning the vote through a combination of bluster and aggression.

"It was not a positive assertion of sovereignty; it was the culmination of 30 years of an increasingly corrosive scapegoating of Europe and immigrants for the home-grown divisions in British society," he said.

Mr Martin said "false prophets" promised an economic bonanza that won't be delivered.

"We have no nostalgia for a lost empire and no wish to assert superiority over others," he added.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said the Border had to remain open because the implications of customs posts "are enormous".

Mr Barnier was visibly engaged with People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett's contribution as he asked whether Ireland could trust his word.

"Can we trust Mr Barnier with international solidarity when Jean-Claude Trichet threatened to let off, I quote, 'a financial bomb' in Dublin if our Government even suggested burning the gambling bondholders who crippled our economy and whose activities inflicted cruel and vicious austerity on hundreds of thousands of our citizens?" he asked.
Food Wise 2025 maps out a 10-year vision for the Irish agri-food industry. The report identifies key areas such as sustainability, human capital, competitiveness, market development and innovation to drive growth opportunities in the years up to 2025.

Under the 'human capital' banner, the availability of labour and skill needs at farm level has been identified by a number of stakeholders as a major challenge for the industry to overcome.

During the Celtic Tiger years building sites were full of farm operatives, farm managers, even farmers as the attractive pay packets, regular hours and bank holidays proved more attractive than a 60-hour week on the farm.

Today in major towns and cities around the country the hard hats and high vis vests are back at service station deli counters; this is bad news for Irish farmers and the agri-food industry in general.

Initial studies carried out by Teagasc are predicting over 6,000 people will be needed to enter the dairy industry over the next nine years to replace retiring farmers and to meet the labour demands of larger scale dairy farms. The American dairy farmers have Mexicans, the New Zealanders have Filipinos - where are Irish farm workers going to come from?

In the past, a hidden work force was called upon to pull out the stops when help was needed on farm. Spouses, children, parents, siblings, neighbours and even visitors were called upon to lend a hand for TB testing, moving or dosing cattle, sheep shearing and stacking bales.

These days are well and truly gone. The onset of J1 visas, summer colleges and vacations abroad are good excuses for the teenagers to skip farm work. Farmer spouses generally have their own careers and the rest are simply too busy to lend a hand.

The historical small size of Irish farms has ensured Irish farmers have little or no experience of employing and retaining farm labour.

In contrast, our neighbours in Britain have extensive experience of employing and managing farm labour on their estates and large farms.

There certainly is a skills deficit to fill among Irish farmers but, if there are no people willing to work on Irish farms, it is a case of putting the cart before the horse - training farmers to manage labour is no use if the labour is not there in the first place.

So how do we solve this imminent problem?

Firstly, we need to set up a specialised task force to carry out a detailed study of the supply and demand for farm labour, then we need to make a plan.

There are two main areas to examine for attracting additional labour on-farm - inside the country and outside the country.

Inside the country, part-time farmers with spare time could work on neighbouring dairy farms.

They would have the livestock husbandry skills and it may also suit the inbuilt seasonality problem of the spring system of production.

Smaller dairy farmers wanting to earn more money could be accommodated on larger dairy farms instead of working on the aforementioned building sites.

There is also potential for part-time jobs on farms for stay at home mums while children are at school - this works very well in the egg industry.

When we examine opportunities for farm labour from outside the country, we immediately think of the many excellent Eastern European farm managers, assistant managers and operatives working on Irish farms today.

Free movement of labour within the EU has created this opportunity.

However, recruitment companies say the flow has slowed down considerably as the economies in their own countries improve.

Looking to recruit from outside the EU is next to impossible with EU and national regulation.

There are many farmers and farm operatives in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, The Philippines etc who would love the opportunity to work for a period on an Irish farm. The options of internships, apprenticeships, student exchanges etc would be mutually beneficial to all concerned and should be embraced by government.

Exchange programmes with seasonal southern hemisphere dairy farmers would certainly fit the dairy farming calendar.

These are just a selection of the many avenues available to the industry and government to avert this problem before it sucks the life out of our ambitious expanding dairy farmers. A stitch in time saves nine.

Mike Brady is an agricultural consultant and land agent based in Cork. email: mike@bradygroup.ie
Rose-colored mountains glow in sunlight in Ganquan, Shaanxi province, attracting visitors and scholars to enjoy their magnificent beauty. The mountains, a special land form made of reddish sandstone that has eroded and been pressed together over time, offer a typical Danxia tableau. (Xinhua)
A farmer has got High Court orders halting works to connect a windfarm in Co Sligo to an electricity substation in Co Leitrim.

It follows Ms Justice Marie Baker's ruling that An Bord Pleanala incorrectly decided the works do not require planning permission.

The orders restrains Kilronan WindFarm Ltd and Derrysallagh WindFarm Ltd (DWF) continuing to lay underground cables to connect a planned 12 turbine wind farm at Derrysallagh to an ESB substation at Garvagh Glebe, Co Leitrim .

About 70pc of the cables are already laid and those do not have to be removed, Ms Justice Baker said.

She made the orders after upholding arguments on behalf of Patrick Daly the grid connection works could not begin until there is permission for the wind farm development as a whole, including the grid works.

Mr Daly had in May 2012 lodged a submission expressing concerns about noise and visual impact of the turbines, loss of amenity value and impact on his grazing rights.

DWF has an electricity generation licence dated February 2016 and is authorised to distribute electricity within the State, the judge noted.

The laying of underground cables was generally exempt development unless that falls within certain provisions of the Planning and Development Act, in which case it requires an Environmental Impact Assessment or Appropriate Assessment.
Meat factory bosses have claimed electronic tagging is essential to export sheepmeat into the US.

Farming bodies have warned EID systems would hit profits and add to costs in the sheep industry.

We have a world class cattle traceability system. We should demand the same for our sheep system, said Meat Industry Ireland's Joe Ryan, as he addressed the Irish Grassland Associations sheep conference in Mullingar.

It is about market access and new markets. Mr Ryan said it would be vital for the US market.

However, farming bodies have queried the necessity of an electronic tagging system, warning a pair of EID tags would cost 1.30.

Mr Ryan said they still were standing behind their five year plan for the sector in spite of the challenges of Brexit. He said they still believed the countrys sheep breeding flock could hit three million and add an extra 150m into the sector.

However, he warned it does take considerable time and work to access new markets.

Teagasc economist Kevin Hanrahan warned the UK was the second largest net contributor to the EUs CAP budget and sheep farmers could feel the effects of a drop in subsidies post Brexit.

Bord Bias Declan Fennell said the high numbers of sheep processed so far this year, combined with sterling had impacted on prices.

There were 840,000 head of sheep processed by the factories from January to the end of April  almost 95,000 or 13pc extra compared with last year.

Average prices for the year to date are around 4.62/kg, compared with 5.20/kg last year.

Sterling has changed dramatically, Mr Fennell said. However, Mr Fennell pointed out the last time we had such had levels of animals through the factory the average prices were at 3.42/kg.

Same throughput but 10 years later the prices have improved, he said, adding there had been a stability in the sheepmeat sector. We are diversifying and going into other markets.

He emphasised they were headed to Shanghai next week as part of an EU-wide 3.7m advertising campaign to promote EU beef and lamb on the Asian market.
Donald Trump has warned that he will actively lure American multinational companies home from Ireland.

The US president heaped praise on Ireland for doing an "amazing job" in handling the financial crisis. He said he gave Ireland "a lot, a lot of credit" for not raising taxes.

Mr Trump said that as a result the country is "thriving" and a lot of companies have moved here - but he said: "We're going to be getting a lot of companies moving back."

"You look at Ireland. I own great property in Ireland that I bought during their downturn. And I give the Irish a lot, a lot of credit," Mr Trump told 'The Economist'.

"They never raised their taxes. You know you would have thought when they were going through that reallythey would've double and tripled their taxes. They never raised it a penny.

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"And they got through it and they are thriving now. Ireland's done an amazing job. A lot of companies have moved to Ireland and they like it. But we're going to be getting a lot of companies moving back and we're going to get very few companies leaving the United States."

Mr Trump has pledged to ensure US firms overseas shift operations back home and has raised the spectre of punitive tariffs for companies operating offshore that do not provide employment or pay tax in the US.

The Irish economy is unusually vulnerable to the knock-on effects of US tax policy. Mainly US multinationals support around 400,000 Irish jobs directly and indirectly and the US remains one of Ireland's biggest export markets.

Any policy shift that makes it less attractive for US firms to invest abroad or that hurts cross-border trade would hit Ireland hard, a concern since Mr Trump's election on an "America First" platform.

Mr Trump's administration announced a tax reform plan last month that proposes slashing the US corporate tax rate from 35pc to 15pc, a move which would put it in close competition with Ireland.

US officials called it the "biggest tax cut" in US history, proposing lower taxes for firms, the middle class and the wealthy.

But the one-page policy document presented by the White House left details of when the cuts will be implemented, over what time frame or how they will be paid for all unanswered.

There was also a proposal for a one-off tax deal to bring home $2.6tn (2.39tn) in profits parked offshore by corporations, and a longer-term shift to tax US firms' profits under what is called a territorial system, in which most foreign profits would be exempt from US taxes.

A territorial system would end practices that currently distort the global tax system, including US corporations shifting their tax domiciles to Ireland to cut bills.
The UK is the second largest importer of timber in the world. They cannot change that overnight, Coillte boss Fergal Leamy argues regarding the issue of Brexit

The amount of cash generated by Coillte surged 130pc last year to just over 15m, the semi-state reported yesterday.

The commercial semi-state is aiming for an operating cash flow of just over 60m by 2019, and had set a target of 12m for last year.

The forestry agency also reported record earnings of 98.3m for 2016, up 10pc on the previous year, while operating profit reached almost 65m.

Its dividend to the State increased by 24pc to 6.2m.

Coillte boss Fergal Leamy described the cash flow figure as the "most encouraging piece" of the annual results, published yesterday.

But despite being ahead of target so far, he sounded a cautious note on whether the company could meet that 2019 target.

"It is still quite a strong challenge," Mr Leamy said.

"I'd be very confident of the number being above 45m, and I'd be confident that we have all the plans in place to hit 60m. We're going to try and drive this thing as hard as possible."

He added: "We're two and a bit years into a four/five-year plan. We've made good progress so far but I wouldn't underestimate the challenge that we have to get up to that 60m."

Coillte is in the midst of a strategy to cut costs, which has seen the number of staff at its headquarters fall to 17 from 90. Mr Leamy said that has led to 4m in annual savings, and it has also saved up to 4m from a cut in the number of external help, including from lawyers.

He said the total staff numbers at the forestry body will be between 750 and 800.

On Brexit, Mr Leamy said that in core forestry the UK will always be the agency's biggest customer.

"The UK is the second-largest importer of timber in the world. They cannot change that overnight," Mr Leamy said.

But he added that even if there was a slowdown in the UK, Coillte would still be able to maintain its overall volume in part because of the recovery in the market here, and the ability to diversify into mainland Europe.

"We have model scenarios, what happens if the market's flat, or what happens if it declines. I think if there is a fall back in demand, it will be offset by two things," he said.

"We're seeing a significant rebound in the Irish market for materials, and... we would look to increase the European side. We are comfortable that we can sustain the volume."

Coillte refinanced its debt pile last year and agreed a 220m syndicated loan facility with five banks that it expects will save it about 35m over 10 years.

Just before the end of last year Coillte also secured a near 100m loan from the European Investment Bank.
The level of aid can be further enhanced where a Young Farmer is part of such a collaborative arrangement.. Stock photo

GARDAI are investigating the theft of 400,000 from a Co Cork credit union.

Fermoy-based Synergy Credit Union insists all the money taken from members accounts has been returned and the person responsible for the theft is co-operating with an investigation.

It comes months after Rush Credit Union in Co Dublin was shut down after a series of fraudulent activities were discovered.

Chief executive of Synergy Martina Cotter confirmed in a statement that it had discovered irregularities on a small number of member accounts last September.

Accountancy consultancy Grant Thornton was commissioned to undertake an investigation.

Ms Cotter said: The credit union also informed all relevant authorities as soon as the matter came to light, including An Garda Siochana, and all appropriate steps were taken to resolve the matter swiftly.

She said the internal probe by the credit union has now finished and affected accounts have been replenished to their correct balance.

The credit union is insured to deal with such matters and no members savings were lost, she added.

The 16,200 members of the Co Cork lender are due to attend its annual general meeting next Thursday, a meeting that is now expected to be a stormy affair.

It is understood that the theft amounts to 407,442, with the credit union having to spend another 160,00 on the probe of the money that went missing.

Some 29 accounts had money taken from them without the authorisation of the members.

The individual who is understood to be responsible for the loss of the money has accepted their role in it.

Ms Cotter said: We cannot comment in any greater detail on this matter, except to say that an individual has accepted responsibility, co-operated with the investigation in full and is no longer employed by the credit union.

The CEO of the credit union reassured members that their savings are safe and secure and continue to be protected by the Government Deposit Guarantee Scheme.

She stressed that Synergy Credit Union has a very strong balance sheet with reserves in excess of 14pc, which is above what is required by the Central Bank. Membership continues to grow and now stands at over 16, 200.

The credit union continues to operate as normal.
When leaders of 28 nations gather in Beijing next week for a summit to map out China's ambitious new Silk Road project, one question is likely to be on attendees' minds - what exactly is the Belt and Road Initiative?

Proposed in 2013 by President Xi Jinping to promote a vision of expanding links between Asia, Africa and Europe underpinned by billions of dollars in infrastructure investment, the project is broad on ambition but still short on specifics. Leaders of the 28 nations will gather in Beijing between May 14-15 for the summit which aims to map out a development strategy to expand links between Asia, Africa and Europe.

China has earmarked $40bn (36bn) to a special fund for the scheme, on top of the $100bn capitalisation for the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), many of whose projects will likely be part of the initiative.

But with a confusing name, that officially refers to the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, added to myriad economic and security risks, clouds hang over the plan.

Some diplomats are suspicious about China's aims.

"There's a lot of scepticism about China's plans. Yes, it is the kind of infrastructure that sounds attractive for parts of Europe, but we all know this is about China gaining influence," said a senior European Union diplomat.

However, with Donald Trump in the White House pursuing an "America First" agenda, more countries may be pushing for inclusion in China's grand scheme.

"Countries have actually been pressuring China to get an invite rather than the other way around," said a senior Asian diplomat, referring to the upcoming summit.

China says that between 2014 and 2016, its businesses signed projects worth $304.9bn in Belt and Road countries.

China has taken umbrage at suggestions that the new Silk Road is about it trying to dominate the world and mould it to Beijing's liking, saying it is good for all and anyone can join.

For example, the use of local currencies instead of the US dollar or other major currencies in the initiative will help to ensure financial stability, officials at China's central bank said this week.

That would gradually reduce dependence on major currencies and lower the risks of exchange rate fluctuations, said Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People's Bank of China.

"Western sceptics have failed to see the fact that the Chinese don't harbour a zero-sum mentality, but encourage win-win thinking," the Xinhua news agency said in an English-language commentary.

China has, though, outlined its ambitions in Chinese language pieces.

"This is the China solution for global economic revival," Xinhua said last month of the new Silk Road, in a commentary blazed across the front page of the official 'People's Daily'.

During next week's meeting, more than 50 memorandums of understanding, plans, co-operation letters and co-operation projects in transportation, energy and communications will be signed, Chinese government officials say.

Speaking last week at a meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Japan, Philippine Deputy Central Bank Governor Diwa Guinigundo said it was hard to pre-judge the new Silk Road. "It is still a vision. You have to translate that into some working parts," Guinigundo said. (Reuters)
(Xinhua) 18:43, May 12, 2017

BEIJING, May 12 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday called for broader cooperation with the Czech Republic, saying he expects the country to actively participate in the Belt and Road development.

Xi made the remarks when meeting with Czech President Milos Zeman, who is in Beijing to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, scheduled for May 14 to 15.

China is ready to work with the Czech Republic to advance their strategic partnership to a higher level, Xi said.

He urged stronger cooperation in such areas as high-speed railways, nuclear power and finance, as well as broader exchanges in education, culture, technology, health care, tourism and other fields.

More extensive exchanges between young people and closer cooperation in winter sports are also needed, he said.

The two sides should continue to base their relationship on mutual respect, Xi told Zeman.

Speaking of a Sino-Czech cooperation plan on the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi pointed out that it has a positive demonstration effect as the first bilateral plan of its kind signed between China and a European country. He said he believes that the Czech Republic will continue to actively participate in the Belt and Road development.

China hopes Central and Eastern European countries can align their development with the initiative, as an example to other European nations, Xi said.

He also reiterated China's stance of firmly supporting the European integration process.

Zeman said his country is a friend of China and has seen deepening friendship and cooperation with China in recent years.

The Czech Republic strongly supports the Belt and Road Initiative and stands ready to vigorously cooperate with China, especially in areas of trade, finance and infrastructure, Zeman said.

After the meeting, the presidents witnessed the signing of several documents on cooperation in such fields as the Belt and Road development, small- and medium-sized enterprises and health care.
The BBC is to blame for the UKs dismal record in the Eurovision Song Contest, our most recent winner has claimed.

Katrina Leskanich, who won the competition 20 years ago with Love Shine A Light, launched a scathing attack on the broadcaster, saying its championing of former X Factor contestants was one of the reasons the UK did not stand a chance of winning.

This years UK entrant is an ex-competitor from the ITV talent show, Lucie Jones, who will perform Never Give Up On You in Saturdays final.

Five other former X Factor contestants were among the hopefuls put forward by the BBC to compete in Kiev.

Katrina told the Daily Telegraph: A bunch of X Factor rejects? That just says it all. How horrible is that? Isnt it just a colossal waste of money not to take it a bit more seriously, and try a little harder?

Talking about the BBC choosing the representative internally from 2011 to 2015, she continued: We kept choosing such terrible representatives that you just knew from the get-go they werent going to win.

Katrina will appear on the BBC coverage of the show this Saturday, reading out the UKs votes.

The 57-year-old also spoke about the decision to allow Australia to join the contest in 2015.

She said: Why arent New Zealand in the contest? Why isnt Canada? I think a lot of countries are going to wonder why they cant be involved if Australia can. I think, possibly, the day will come when there will be a Middle Eastern division of Eurovision.

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The UK, Spain, France, Germany and Italy pay higher fees to enter the competition in return for a guaranteed place, but Katrina said the cost should be spread more equally according to each countrys GDP.

She said: These countries arent getting good scores, but theyre still having to foot the bill.

Meanwhile, Lucie has spoken about her Eurovision goals.

She said: I just dont want to come last, really. If we get no points Ill be disappointed, but anything else is going to be a win.

All Ive got to do is not go on and fall flat on my face, and hit a bum note.

The BBC has been contacted for comment.
The response of banks to loans linked to St Vincent's Hospital campus in Dublin is believed to be key to defusing the row over ownership of the new National Maternity Hospital.

Health Minister Simon Harris and his officials met with members of the St Vincent's Healthcare Group yesterday to discuss securing a lease which would allow the State to own the 300m maternity hospital to be built on the campus.

The revelation that the Order of the Sisters of Charity, which controls the group, will own the hospital caused a public outcry. This is despite the insistence that an agreement between the existing National Maternity Hospital in Holles Street and St Vincent's guarantees its independence.

The new effort by the State to gain ownership is complicated by the fact that the banks have fixed and floating charges on the entire campus.

The maternity hospital site is in the centre of the campus.

A spokesman for the minister said yesterday that he needs a period of time to talk to both hospitals.

He said: "The minister has asked for a period of time to allow himself and his officials to work with both hospitals to provide further detail on the arrangements which could be put in place to address issues of public concern.

"He has committed to reporting back to Government, the Oireachtas and to the public at the end of the May and will not be commenting publicly in the meantime."

The board of St Vincent's Healthcare Group has 12 members, including two members of the religious order. It is chaired by James Menton, formerly of KPMG, the accountancy firm.

It also includes a number of other top level business people including Myles Lee, the former head of CRH, the building materials company.

Another member is Frank O'Riordan, a corporate law specialist.
Emergency services at the scene of the fire at the Verdemont apartment complex in Blanchardstown. Photo: Colin Keegan

Dublin fire brigade tend to a fire at the Verdemont apartments in Blanchardstown

Almost 100 people have been left homeless after a blaze caused by a barbecue ripped through a Dublin apartment block.

The cost of repairing the damage caused by the fire at the Verdemont Apartment complex in Blanchardstown is likely to run into hundreds of thousands of euro.

It is also likely to take months to complete the repair work after 24 properties were badly damaged.

It is believed the blaze was started when a fire from a barbecue ignited the roof of a block on Wednesday evening.

Collapsed

The fire spread through the roof spaces to neighbouring properties, and then spread into the apartments when the roofs collapsed.

Ten units of Dublin Fire Brigade fought the blaze using a turntable ladder.

As a result, the apartments underneath the blazing units were extensively water-damaged.

Investigators combed the scene yesterday as they gathered evidence to establish the cause of the fire. The remains of a barbecue were taken away for analysis.

Meanwhile, residents were critical of what they said was a lack of access for the fire brigade to fight the blaze.

Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Firefighters at the scene of a fire in West Dublin. Photo: Mark Ward Firefighters at the scene of a fire in West Dublin. Photo: Mark Ward Firefighters at the scene of a fire in West Dublin. Photo: Mark Ward Firefighters at the scene of a fire in West Dublin. Photo: Mark Ward / Facebook

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Some of the property owners and tenants wept and were comforted by friends as the true extent of the damage became clear yesterday.

Jim O'Connor, from the O'Connor Property Management Company, explained to residents they were awaiting the arrival of structural engineers and insurance assessors to examine the scene before allowing anyone in to retrieve belongings.

Addressing the question of accommodation, he said a lot of people had been put up by family members on Wednesday night and Fingal County Council and the Civil Defence had provided temporary accommodation for around five families.

"The real challenge here will be accommodating people in the long term. The building won't be reinstated for months and there are 24 properties affected in the main block and two adjacent properties as well," he said.

Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar said the Department's local Community Welfare Service was working with Fingal County Council to support anyone affected.

"I want to assure residents affected that the department is on hand to discuss how it can best support those affected," he said.

"The Department's Community Welfare Service has already held an emergency multi-agency clinic offering advice and support, in tandem with the council and Citizens' Information.

"I want to thank Dublin Fire Brigade, the gardai, staff in my department and in Fingal County Council for their swift and effective response."

Tenant Michael Wilson said the chances of anything having survived in his apartment were slim.

"I live here with my sister Corrina and we don't have contents cover. I would advise anyone renting to make sure they have it," he said.
The former Tory Island home of Neville Presho before it was demolished

The Supreme Court has struck out an appeal over a 46,000 valuation placed on a man's Tory Island holiday home that "disappeared" while he was abroad over a number of years.

Film maker Neville Presho, from Holywood, Co Down, secured the valuation from the High Court in 2009, plus the costs of his lengthy legal battle over the destruction of his house on the island off the Co Donegal coast.

He had sued an adjoining hotel, alleging trespass and physical damage to the 19th-century stone house after it was gradually destroyed while he was living in New Zealand between 1988 and 1994.

In his case against Ostan Thoraigh Comhlacht Teoranta and its owner Patrick Doohan, he claimed that after he returned home in 1994, he found a car park for the hotel in the place where his house once stood.

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After he won in the High Court in 2009, both defendants brought appeals against that court's ruling.

When the matter came before the Supreme Court yesterday, it heard Mr Doohan, who was not in court, had stated he was not proceeding with his appeal. The appeal by Ostan Thoraigh Comhlacht Teoranta had been withdrawn last November.

In those circumstances, the court struck out Mr Doohan's appeal and affirmed the High Court orders. In its July 2009 judgment, the High Court held Mr Presho was entitled to a new house or its equivalent market value.
A Dublin man, who set up a fake Facebook account in order to meet his ex-girlfriend, told gardai he strangled her because she screamed when she saw the pellet gun, Stanley knife and cable ties hed brought to frighten her.

Eric Locke said he had just wanted to talk after Sonia Blount stopped all contact with him.

The 35-year-old is on trial at the Central Criminal Court, charged with murdering the mother-of-one in a room at the Plaza Hotel in Tallaght on the 16th of February 2014.

Mr Locke, with an address at St Johns Park East in Clondalkin, has pleaded not guilty, but admits causing the death of the 31-year-old, who was found strangled and suffocated.

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Detective Garda Camon Ryan said he began interviewing the accused that night, after hed handed himself in at a city garda station.

He told officers that hed been suffering with depression for years, but that meeting Ms Blount a few months earlier had brought him back up.

He said theyd finished about four weeks earlier and she had later ended communication with him.

It brought me back down, he said.

He said he set up a fake Facebook account in the name of Shane Cully, and arranged to meet her through it.

I went into town. I purchased masking tape, cable ties, a pellet gun and a Stanley blade, he recalled. I just wanted to frighten her. I didn't mean to do it.

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He said hed used the keycard that shed left at reception to let himself into the room.

She got a shock it was me, he said.

He said he told her he just wanted to talk and began asking her why shed finished it and cut contact.

He said she hadnt asked him to leave, but had wanted them to leave together.

I thought that once we got to reception she'd just scream and thats what stopped me, he said.

I took out the things and put them on the bed and she was terrified, he said. She was frantic. We had a fight and it happened.

I used my hands on her neck, he recalled.

He was asked what she had done while he had been strangling her and he pointed to scratches on his face. He was asked if she had said anything.

She said: Eric, what are you doing? but her voice was low, he replied.

He initially denied using anything other than his hands. However, he admitted using the cable of a phone charger briefly, after a bloodstained charger was shown to him.

He said he had put her top in her mouth because he panicked.

She was breathing heavy. I thought someone would hear, he explained.

He said he wasnt sure if she was dead when he left around 6am. He said he had attempted suicide before deciding to hand himself in.

He denied raping her, saying they had consensual sex before she saw the items hed brought.

I'm confessing to killing Sonia, not murdering, because i didnt intend for her to die, he said.

He was asked how he felt about her three-year-old son growing up without his mother.

Devastated, he replied. Hes never going to get to know his mother. Hell feel empty, he has no mother."

The trial continues this afternoon before Mr Justice Michael Moriarty and a jury of eight men and four women.

Evidence

Earlier, the court heard that Sonia Blount had wondered if a man she was meeting in a Dublin hotel could have been him.

Sonia Blount admitted to a friend Aisling Halloran that the "thought had crossed her mind".

However, Ms Blount told Ms Halloran she had asked "Shane Cully" to send her a selfie and she was satisfied from the picture that the man she was meeting wasn't Eric Locke.

She also told her sister Claire Reddan that Mr Locke was "a proper fruit loop".

Locke had been in a brief relationship with Ms Blount and a court heard he did not take the break-up well.

The prosecution case is that the Dubliner assumed a false identity online in order to lure her to a hotel bedroom, where he strangled her to death.

The jury has been told it will be asked to focus on the mental state of the accused at the time.

Aisling Halloran worked with Ms Blount and Mr Locke. She said the pair both seemed to like each other but they broke up after he called her a "sl*t" for talking to a young man when they attended a gig in Vicar Street.

She told the Central Criminal Court that Sonia was in "such a state" when Eric threatened to kill himself, but she "wanted to help him as that's the type of person she was".

On February 14, 2014, Ms Halloran said she and Sonia worked the early shift and she told her she was meeting Shane Cully later that night. She said it was just a "casual thing".

Ms Halloran told the jury she asked Sonia if the person she was meeting could be Mr Locke pretending to be someone else.

She said Sonia admitted the "thought had crossed her mind" but she had asked Shane Cully to send her a selfie and she was satisfied the person in the picture wasn't Mr Locke.

In her evidence, Sonia's sister Claire Reddan said Sonia was the eldest in a family of five siblings and she was the second eldest.

Ms Reddan said Sonia was in a relationship with her son's father, Lee, for three years, but he was "very controlling" and the relationship was "very on and off".

Ms Reddan said she believes Sonia stayed with him for her son as she "didn't want to break up the family unit".

She said the relationship broke up and Lee went to Canada in August 2013.

Ms Reddan said Ms Blount started dating Mr Locke in December 2013 but it was "casual", "nothing major".

Ms Blount broke up with Mr Locke following an argument in a taxi following a gig at Vicar Street.

She said Sonia told her she was "not going down that road again".

She said Sonia was concerned about Mr Locke's behaviour at work, as he "kept looking at her and it freaked her out".

When Mr Locke went missing and threatened suicide, Ms Reddan said Sonia was worried sick about it, wasn't sleeping and couldn't eat.

She told the jury that Sonia was going to ask to change shifts in work because of his behaviour, telling her he was "a proper fruit loop".

Detective Garda Kieran O'Neill said he found a letter sent by Mr Locke to Ms Blount in her bedroom after he searched it.

In the letter, he again apologised for his behaviour following the Vicar Street gig.

He also told her that he suffers from depression, as he feels his life has remained static while his friends are getting married, having children and getting mortgages.

He said he was getting counselling to deal with his issues. However, he admitted he was "surprised" that Ms Blount wasn't supporting him.

Detective Garda Fergal O'Flaherty said Mr Locke handed himself in to Store Street Garda Station around 8pm on February 16, 2014.

Gda O'Flaherty said there were scrapes on Mr Locke's face and his left eye was bloodshot.

He was later convened to Tallaght Garda Station, and was interviewed.

Asked about his demeanour as he was transferred to Tallaght, Gda Jennifer Brogan said Mr Locke was "very quiet and calm".

Detective Garda Camon Ryan said he interviewed Mr Locke late on February 16, 2014 and he admitted that he "hurt" Ms Blount.

He was given an opportunity to sleep over night and the interviews continued the next day.

The jury is continuing to be lead through Mr Locke's interviews with gardai.

The trial continues.
Beijing is taking measures to reduce traffic during the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation on Sunday and Monday, including the use of local government vehicles and urging Party, government and State-owned enterprise (SOE) employees to avoid driving their vehicles.

The use of all Beijing government vehicles, except those used for emergencies or for "extremely necessary" trips, will be suspended on Sunday and Monday. All government, Party and SOE employees are also being told to "travel green" and use public transport on those days, the Beijing Morning Post reported on Thursday. Government and Party offices have also been told not to hold meetings on Monday.

Beijing transportation authorities said they will implement temporary traffic restrictions in key areas and certain periods, especially around the China National Convention Center in Chaoyang district and in suburban Huairou district, the main site of the forum.

The Beijing Municipal Commission of Transport vowed that during the forum, public transportation will be enhanced to meet the greater demand, including more subway trains, public buses and taxis.

Beijing also tightened security measures. A Yunda Express courier told the Global Times that the Beijing Municipal Postal Administration has enhanced package inspections, and places special pass stamps on confirmed items.

Those traveling by train to Beijing are made to go through double security checks when they check in, said a traveler surnamed Shan, who took a train from Shanxi to Beijing in May.

"Since the Belt and Road Forum is just around the corner, we have been conducting stricter checks on Beijing subways, including checks on passengers' ID cards from 9 am every morning," a security guard at the Xingong subway station said.

"We always provide strict checks for safety purposes on the Beijing subway. This includes inspecting bags to see whether they have liquids or knives," said a security guard named Ye, who works at Beijing Jintai Xilu station.

Li Xuanyi, a student at the Yanqi campus of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times that the enhanced security measures are also a little inconvenient since even intra-campus trips require strict student ID checks.
The front page of the 'Irish Press' on April 6, 1970, was a busy mixture of domestic and foreign news: coverage of the funeral due to take place later that day of Garda Dick Fallon, murdered in the course of a bank raid in Dublin three days previously; intrigue in the Kremlin with rumours about the demise of Soviet premier Kosygin; and the ongoing Troubles in Northern Ireland. In the midst of that collection of stories was a 23-word piece headed "Relic stolen".

A visitor to my family's home in Santry might be forgiven for thinking that Fr John Sullivan must be the new curate in our parish, such was my mother's devotion to his cause and her frequent mentions of his name.

In fact, Fr Sullivan, who was born in 1861 to a wealthy and well-connected family (his father became Lord Chancellor of Ireland), was educated in Portora Royal School in Enniskillen and in Trinity College Dublin, and was raised in the Church of Ireland.

He converted to Catholicism in 1896, was ordained as a Jesuit priest in 1907 and was renowned for his holiness and his devotion to the sick, until his death in 1933. He was buried in Clongowes Wood College, but was reinterred in a specially built tomb in St Francis Xavier Church, Gardiner Street, in 1960. It became the practice that his relic was borrowed and brought to sick and dying people.

We regularly attended Mass in Gardiner Street and any time some extra help was needed, my mother always called on Fr Sullivan's intercession. His relic, a crucifix, was frequently brought to our home whenever anyone was sick.

I don't remember the first time I visited his shrine in Gardiner Street, but I am told that as an infant I was put sitting on his tomb.

The last time I saw his shrine opened was in February of this year, for the annual Mass for the cause of his beatification.

The next big occasion is tomorrow, when Cardinal Angelo Amato will beatify Fr Sullivan on behalf of Pope Francis. Beatifications of Irish people don't occur too frequently, and this may be the first time such a ceremony will have taken place in Ireland.

Getting back to the stolen relic. Contemporary newspaper accounts reported that detectives were "searching for a middle-aged man who was seen near the presbytery".

Such was the affection of ordinary Dubliners for Fr Sullivan that the story remained in the newspapers throughout the time that it was missing.

On April 11, 1970, the 'Irish Press' printed a letter to the editor from a Maura Tallon, from Dublin 12, who appealed "to the present holder who has thoughtlessly borrowed it 'unofficially', to send it back he is in a sense hampering the beatification cause of this saintly Dublin priest".

And what was my mother's connection to this theft?

One day, a neighbour arrived in our house and declared that she knew who had stolen the relic.

This certainly caught my mother's attention, because like many others she had been following the developments (or lack of same) in the newspapers.

The neighbour said that the person who stole the relic must have been my mother, because nobody else could have been as familiar with the relic, such was the frequency with which my mother borrowed it. Happily the relic was eventually recovered eight months later, and the 'Irish Press' reported on December 10, 1970 (on the front page, naturally) that it was undamaged.
Restoring pay equality for teachers would have "significant cost implications for the education and training sector," the secretary general of the Department of Education warned at the start of the current exercise on public service pay.

The comment - a code for saying that whatever extra goes on pay, will leave less in the budget for other spending - was made in a letter from Sean O Foghlu to the Department of Public Expenditure last August.

Mr O Foghlu was offering an opinion on the role and methodology of the Public Pay Commission (PCC) after it was established. The PCC reported this week, and the letter was published on its website.

The growing population has seen a dramatic increase in enrolments in schools and third-level colleges, which has required additional teaching staff.

The secretary general advised that there had been a significant level of recruitment of new entrants to front line teaching and academic grades in recent years.

"This is in contrast to many other sectors, where recruitment was restricted under the public service recruitment moratorium", he wrote.

In addition, Mr O Foghlu stated "the 2011 government decision in relation to new entrant pay had a more acute effect on teachers, when compared with other public servants".

While progress has been made on restoring pay equality, teaching unions are demanding a complete closure of the gap.

In its report this week, the PCC noted that the unions "very strongly" made the point on the issue of pay for new entrants, and, specifically, the need to restore the common basic scale for teachers. The absence of restoration of pay equality in the Lansdowne Road Agreement (LRA) was a key factor in the rejection by the Association of Secondary Teachers' Ireland (ASTI) of that deal. It has led to a dispute, that has caused considerable disruption to school life this year.

Now that the PCC has reported, talks on a follow-on to the LRA are expected to get under way soon.

Meanwhile, Ireland is facing a potential shortage of up to 1,380 GPs in less than a decade, according to the HSE's submission to the PCC.

The extent of the shortage will depend on how far free GP care for various groups of the population has extended by 2025.

It warned that if the shortfall is to be addressed by training more doctors, as opposed to recruiting from abroad, there will be a need to significantly increase the annual intake of GPs into specialist schemes.

The growing number of women in the profession means more GPs are working part-time, it said.

In a separate submission, the Brothers of Charity group, which is the largest body providing services to people with an intellectual disability, said it is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit suitable executives because of capped salary levels.

The HSE has capped the salary of a national chief executive of the organisation at 110,000. The charity's board had set the salary of 125,000.

The lower salary led to one suitable candidate for the post changing their mind about accepting the job.

The organisation receives 156m in public funding and has 2,783 staff so the salary of the chief executive should reflect this level of responsibility.
MORE than 27,000 has gone missing from a garda station  the third haul of cash to have disappeared while it was being held as potential evidence in a criminal court trial.

All three sums have gone missing from stations in the Garda's Dublin North division.

Senior officers are trying to establish whether the money has been stolen, as was the case with the previous two lodgments, or if it has been mislaid.

One officer told the Irish Independent last night: "This is embarrassing for us to lose three separate amounts in one division. But we will not know whether all of the incidents are linked until we have firmly established the circumstances surrounding the latest disappearance."

The latest quantity of cash to go missing was being kept in a safe at Malahide garda station after it was recovered by officers following a robbery at the Coolock branch of Woodies DIY chain on the Malahide Road, which took place in June 2009.

The raiders made off with almost 60,000 but only one robber's share of the money was retrieved by investigating gardai.

Officers stored the 27,000 at Malahide station during the trial of two accused at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court.

Gardai said last night that it was too early to determine definitively what had happened to the money and that they were hoping it might have been mislaid or placed by accident in another evidence bag.

But searches in Malahide and nearby stations failed to locate the missing money.

Gardai did not realise that the cash was missing until Woodies sought the return of the cash after the court case ended.

Last month, the court was told that the manager and a doorman had been responsible for the robbery and both men later shared the cash.

Trevor Knowles (40), of McAuley Avenue, Artane, pleaded guilty to the theft of almost 60,000 and was sentenced to five years in prison, with the final two years suspended.

The court was also told that Knowles's accomplice was the manager of the branch, Thomas McDermott.

McDermott (27), of Rockmarshall, Jenkinstown, Dundalk, was given a three-year suspended sentence in October 2010 after 27,450 was recovered during a search of his house.

McDermott said he helped with the robbery because he was being blackmailed by a woman he met in Thailand, who had videotaped them having sex.

McDermott had left the alarm off, the premises unlocked and allowed Knowles to punch him in the face and tie him up to make it look like a real robbery.

Knowles walked out of the store with a bag containing 58,092 in cash, 1,065 in cheques and 130 in vouchers.

His share from the raid was never recovered.

Knowles initially denied being involved with planning the robbery and claimed he had been paid 2,000 to collect a heavy bag from the shop.

But he changed his plea during his trial when faced with an "overwhelming" amount of evidence.

Last February, gardai discovered a discrepancy in a sum of money lodged in a safe at Balbriggan station.

When the money, which had been left in the evidence bag in the strongroom, was counted officers discovered that 9,000 was missing from the original amount of 26,000.

Inquiries later determined that the money had been stolen.

The Irish Independent disclosed that the missing sum was part of a 26,000 haul that had been taken in a robbery from the post office at Lusk, Co Dublin, in January.

GETAWAY

Gardai recovered the entire haul after intercepting and blocking a getaway car.

The money was forensically examined before it was bagged as potential evidence.

The discrepancy was discovered in February when John Wilson, the owner of the Costcutter shop where the post office is located, called to the station to seek the return of the cash.

Officers found a small tear in the bag and when they checked the contents they discovered there was only 17,000 still held in the safe.

In April, investigators arrested a rank-and-file garda and questioned him about the theft. He was released without charge.

Officers are currently preparing a file on that incident for the Director of Public Prosecutors, who will determine if criminal charges should be brought.

During the inquiries into the disappearance of that money, investigators also discovered that a separate haul of 4,000 had gone missing from a locker at Balbriggan station.

Gardai had seized the money during a search for drugs in the area in 2009 and it was kept in a locker as further inquiries into the seizure were being carried out.
Britain's Prince Charles has given a clear signal that life will go on after Brexit, describing the relationship between Ireland and the UK as being "very special" and adding: "I have every intention of making it even more so if I can."

Speaking at a civic reception at Kilkenny Castle, he thanked Ireland for the warm welcome it had given him and his wife, Camilla. He said: "I always longed to come to this part of the world, Kilkenny, having heard about it all my life.

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"I hope and pray that during the rest of my life before I drop dead I might have the chance to visit as many counties as possible of this great country."

The prince said he was looking forward enormously to visiting the other places during their stay.

Warmth

"Again, coming to Ireland gives us an opportunity of hope, just to remind everyone of the enormous strength and warmth of the relationship between the two countries.

"It is a very special relationship and I have every intention of making it even more so if I possibly can."

He said he admired President Michael D Higgins "greatly" for his work in reconciliation and looked forward to the opportunity of meeting "many, many more Irish people" - remarking that he meets a lot all around the world and in the UK.

Foreign Minister Charlie Flanagan remarked it was the royal couple's third visit to Ireland in as many years and said he was delighted they had come to explore Ireland's medieval east.

He recalled the prince's visit to Sligo in 2015 as being a "really important step" in our shared journey towards reconciliation and peace and said we continued on this journey together, with two ceremonies at Glasnevin Ceremony today, for those who lost their lives in WW1 and in the 1916 Rising.

He said this represented a "further enhancement of the relationship between our two countries as close friends, as neighbours".
It's very hard to know what Donald Trump means most of the time - but when he speaks, the world needs to listen.

When he talks about Ireland and tax, it's serious.

The transcript of his interview with 'The Economist' is full of the usual bellicose utterances and meandering statements with which we've become accustomed.

The fact, however, that the US president has singled out Ireland for particular mention - and fulsome praise it appears - is noteworthy in that it shows once again he has taken notice of us, and that we are lodged in his mind somewhere.

But what the significance of that is, is hard to understand.

The action taken by the country during the financial crisis clearly impresses him. As does the fact we've managed to build an economy on a lower corporation tax model.

He notes that Ireland never raised taxes during the crisis years, which of course isn't quite accurate. Extra taxes were imposed, most notably the Universal Social Charge, the effects of which we still see in our pay slips each month. We assume, however, that he's talking specifically about the corporation tax rate.

US companies, he said, were "pushed out" of America because of its corporate tax system, moved here and now like it. But his praise was quickly tempered yet again by the threat to bring those same US companies back home.

And that's a theme he returns to time after time.

The problem is, it's not entirely clear what companies he's talking about.

He makes specific reference at one point in the interview to the "disaster" of corporate inversions, in which US companies re-register overseas in order to avoid hefty tax bills at home. In an inversion, the American company typically buys a smaller foreign rival and relocates, at least on paper, to the rival's home country - such as Ireland - so that the new combined company is not based in the US. If those are the type of companies he's targeting, that's fine.

The Government has made it clear we don't want those anyway. But if it's companies that have moved here and generated considerable employment, that's a different prospect. The problem is, we simply don't know yet specifically what he means.
A baby miraculously escaped unharmed from a car which rolled off a pier into a lake in Clare.

The six-month old was strapped into a baby seat when the parked car he was in began to roll backwards into Lough Derg.

The babys parents had momentarily left the vehicle when the incident occurred around 1.30pm last Saturday.

Picking up speed as it rolled down the pier, the car narrowly missed angler John Barry, who promptly came to the babys aid. Mr Barry quickly realised the gravity of the situation when the babys mother shouted that there was a baby in the car.

Mr Barry told the Clare Champion: She was running towards the car at this stage. The woman and I both went to the car. It was taking on considerable water. The water was up to my waist and the car had gone past me; the water was well up to the seats of the car.

The baby and the car seat were taken from the car. There were shoes floating around and a few other bits and pieces and I took those out of the car and brought them up, as much as I could salvage, before it got too wet, he said.

While the parents, who were visiting the area from Dublin, were distressed by the incident, the baby emerged entirely unscathed.

Mr Barry recounted: The baby wasnt in any way traumatised. The baby didnt even get wet. I never saw such a happy baby in all my life. The baby was smiling in its mothers arms, going up the pier.

While Mr Barry said the incident had the makings of a tragic accident, he added that he did not believe the car would have gone out far enough for the baby to have drowned in it.

With the baby safe, Mr Barry assisted in towing the rapidly filling car from the water.

He said: The mother was very distressed but, when the two of us calmed down, I told her I had a ratchet strap in the back of my van. I managed to hook it to the back of the car and I pulled the car up out of the water and back up onto the pier. It took a considerable pull but I got it up.

Neither the couple nor the baby required medical attention following the incident.
The mother of a 13-year-old schoolboy who was airlifted to hospital after he was viciously assaulted by two students has told of her terror at his ordeal.

Keane Gallagher-Payton, from Ennistymon, Co Clare, was attacked by two other youths aged 14, who are students at a different school in the town.

The alleged assault took place in the vicinity of Monastery Lane in the town between 1.15pm and 2pm on Wednesday.

Local sources have indicated there may have been some discussion on social media about the incident before it occurred.

Keane's mother Clare Gallagher said her son was "very lucky" his injuries weren't more serious.

"It was a very difficult thing to go through for us all but hopefully Keane will be OK," she said.

Doctors say Keane will make a full recovery but Ms Gallagher is worried about the impact it will have on him as a person.

"I'm worried he may struggle in the coming weeks and months with his confidence and that he won't feel safe," she said.

When asked about the culprits, she said: "I'm angry and upset about what they did to my son but I'm hoping it just got out of hand and they didn't actually intend on hurting him so much.

"I suppose that's what happens in a lot of these cases but young ones in particular don't seem to think about how simple it can be to cause such potential life-threatening injuries."

Her son was recently in the news for coming first in his age group at the Bebras Computational Thinking Challenge in Maynooth - an international initiative where students from all over Ireland submit projects.

"I didn't expect him to be in the news again so soon, especially in these circumstances.

"He has recovered well and has shown no other signs of seizing," said Ms Gallagher.

She said the two boys who assaulted him were known to Keane and would not be considered troublemakers, which had made it all the more shocking.

The assault took place while the teenagers were on their school break.

It is believed Keane was knocked to the ground, resulting in him suffering a head injury.

After being assessed by paramedics, the decision was made to airlift him to University Hospital Limerick for treatment.

Ms Gallagher travelled on the helicopter with him and admitted it was an awful experience, but she is thankful he is on the mend.

"It was extremely frightening, at this stage he was still in and out of consciousness and vomiting in between so I tried to concentrate on Keane and it didn't really sink in until later that we'd even been in the helicopter.

"We're lucky I suppose, it could have been much worse when a head injury and concussion was involved."

Gardai are continuing to appeal for witnesses and have asked anyone who was in the Monastery Lane area of Ennistymon on Wednesday between 1pm and 2pm to contact them at Ennistymon garda station on 065 7072180.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Ilhama Isabalayeva  Trend:

Jordan supports Azerbaijan's fair position in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and the solution of the conflict only on the principles of territorial integrity and inviolability of borders of Azerbaijan, said Azerbaijani Prime Minister Artur Rasizade.

He was addressing a meeting with a delegation headed by Speaker of the House of Representatives of the parliament of Jordan Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh.

Artur Rasizade said that Azerbaijan and Jordan cooperate in tourism, trade, culture, investment and other spheres.

Atef Yousef Saleh Al-Tarawneh, in his turn, noted that Jordan attaches great importance to the relations with Azerbaijan and shows particular interest to cooperation with this most developed country in the region.
US President Donald Trump has said he admires our low tax policy, saying: "Ireland's done a great job."

Trump claimed that high taxes are driving businesses out of the US with high taxes and that he hopes some would return if they were lowered.

Speaking to the Economist, he said Ireland was smart not to boost our taxes during the recession.

He said: "You look at Ireland. I own great property in Ireland that I bought during the downturn. And I give the Irish a lot, a lot of credit.

"They never raised their taxes. You know you would have thought when they were going through that really they wouldve double and tripled their taxes. They never raised it a penny.

"And they got through it and they are thriving now. Irelands done an amazing job. A lot of companies have moved to Ireland and they like it."

But it wasn't all good news for Ireland as Trump pledged "were going to be getting a lot of companies moving back and were going to get very few companies leaving the United States".

"Because we went from the highest tax rate ofnot only major, you know they always say major countries, just about the highest tax rate period. And then when you add all the other things.

"And then when you add the regulations to the taxIve had people tell me, because Ive cut massive regulations and weve just started, believe me. But weve cut regulations massively," he said going on to say that 90pc of people who have given him feedback have praised the changes to regulation.
Housing Minister Simon Coveney is banking on the support of three out of four Fine Gael MEPs in the race to be the next party leader.

With Taoiseach Enda Kenny expected to formally fire the starting gun for the leadership contest next week, both Mr Coveney and Social Protection Minister Leo Varadkar continue to claim they have the upper-hand.

Mr Kenny took part in a series of events yesterday but declined to take any questions from journalists.

A media opportunity at a meeting of the European People's Party in Wicklow yesterday morning was cancelled and he again avoided questions while holding a briefing with Michel Barnier in his Government Building's office in the afternoon.

His office is still adorned with personal photographs and was devoid of any evidence that he may be moving in the coming weeks.

However, Mr Coveney and Mr Varadkar's strategy teams are operating on the assumption that they will publicly launch their campaigns next Thursday.

Sources in the Coveney camp told the Irish Independent he expects to win the support of MEPs Mairead McGuinness (Midlands-North West), Sean Kelly (Ireland South) and Deirdre Clune (South).

Dublin MEP Brian Hayes is understood to be backing Mr Varadkar.

During the contest, Mr Coveney intends to highlight his experience at EU level while agriculture minister, with sources noting the new leader will have to quickly engage with the Brexit negotiations.

"Sometimes people forget about the MEPs in the context of the parliamentary party but between them Mairead, Sean and Deirdre represent a huge section of the country," said one source.

The MEPs are considered part of the Fine Gael parliamentary party which will make up 65pc of the vote. Members account for 25pc and councillors make up 10pc.

Another Coveney source said they believe he is "slightly ahead" in terms of support from TDs, councillors and members.

However, sources close to Mr Varadkar dismissed this as wishful thinking.

"Leo is already 10 ahead among the 50pc of people who gave a preference to RTE during the week. That's nearly 2:1. So we're confident about how the numbers add up," the source said.

Part of the strategy by both sides is to unveil their high-profile supporters over the opening days of the campaign in the hope of gaining momentum.

Meanwhile, there is now a growing expectation that a third candidate will not enter the race.

Tanaiste Frances Fitzgerald and Education Minister Richard Burton have both remained quiet about their intentions.

"As she has previously stated the Tanaiste is seriously considering it. She will make her intentions clear when a vacancy arises," a spokesperson for Ms Fitzgerald said last night.

However, a number of well-placed party sources said both minsters are now more likely to try to secure their positions in Cabinet.

"There won't be a third candidate at this stage. The media are so focused on the two that are known there isn't room for a third now," said a TD.
On this week's Floating Voter, Niall O'Connor is joined by Philip Ryan and Cormac McQuinn to discuss the week in politics including the visit of Michel Barnier, the Enda Kenny leadership issue and the justice crisis continues.

Click here subscribe to the Floating Voter on iTunes.

The flowers and Sunday best were out in force in the Dail with the visit of Michel Barnier to address Brexit and Ireland. But how bad does Brexit have to be, wonders Philip Ryan? We know where Ireland the European Commission stands but the real test comes after the British election and see where the Tories stand then says Cormac McQuinn.

Next Wednesday will see Enda Kenny finally addressing e issue of when he's stepping down - or will it? He's survived this long, so what's to say he won't hang around a bit longer?

With news by the day seeming to emerge about the Garda Commissioner and the Garda force, how has the Commissioner survived this long? Fianna Fail doesn't have the balls to grasp the nettle because they're afraid of a general election being called says Philip Ryan.

Each week on the Floating Voter, INM's political team discuss the main issues affecting Irish politics, bursting the bubble around Leinster House. New episodes on iTunes and Independent.ie every week.
ELEMENTS of the Good Friday Agreement may have to be reworded in order to account for Brexit, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said.

The ex-Labour Party leader told a meeting of the European Peoples Party in Wicklow today that the peace deal was based on the assumption that the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland would both be in the EU.

Any move to rewrite the 1998 text could have significant politicians and may even require a referendum.

A hard border between the countries would be a disaster and I am sure everyone will and must do all they can to avoid it.

In addition, the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement was formulated on the assumption that both countries were part of the EU.

This was not only for economic but also for political reasons, to take account particularly of nationalist aspirations.

Some of the language will therefore require amendment because of Brexit, Mr Blair said.

He suggested this could be achieved with the minimum of difficulty if there is goodwill from other European countries.

Mr Blair said that while he has many disagreements with Theresa Mays approach to the Brexit negotiations, there is a consensus in Britain that Northern Ireland should be protected from the worst impacts of Brexit.

Such a consensus will be crucial.

Brexit uniquely impacts both the Republic and Northern Ireland. There has never been a situation where the UK, including Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland, had a different status in respect of Europe. We have either both been out or both been in, he said.

The Common Travel Area has meant ease of going back and forth across the border, vital for work and family connection has been in place for almost 100 years. And the absence of customs controls  both countries being in the Single Market and Customs Union  have meant a huge boost to UK-Irish trade.

Some disruption is inevitable and indeed is already happening. However, it is essential that we do all we possibly can to preserve arrangements which have served both countries well and which command near universal support.
One in four of the entire population now lives in Dublin city and its suburbs (Stock picture)

The urban-rural divide continues to widen with important regional towns losing their populations, while the capital and Leinster draws workers and their families in search of opportunities.

Almost two-thirds of the entire population now lives in an urban area, with one in four of us now residing in Dublin city and surrounding suburbs, the latest results from Census 2016 show.

And the Central Statistics Office (CSO) says the urban population continues to grow at the expense of rural Ireland, with 80pc of the population increase over the past five years recorded in towns and cities.

Stark figures from the 'Population Distribution and Movements' report, the second from Census 2016, shows that of the total increase in population of 173,613 between 2011 and 2015, almost 139,000 was in towns and cities.

Our urban population grew by 4.9pc between 2011 and 2015, while the rural population rose by just 2pc. One in four of the entire population now lives in Dublin city and its suburbs.

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But the report also shows that while Ennis, Sligo and Letterkenny remain the largest towns in their respective provinces, their populations are falling.

Other large towns with falling populations include Birr in Offaly, whose population fell by more than 1,400, a drop of almost 25pc; Bantry in Cork which lost 626 people (down 18.7pc), Ballybay in Monaghan which fell by 220, or 15pc, and Ballina in Mayo, whose population fell to just over 10,000, a drop of 915 or 8.3pc.

Conversely, the data reveals that the fastest-growing towns are in Dublin or the commuter belt.

Saggart in Dublin is the fastest growing small town in the State, with an increase of 46pc to 3,133 people. Maynooth in Kildare is the fastest growing large town with an increase of 16.6pc.

Eight of the 10 biggest towns in the State are in Leinster, with Drogheda in Co Louth the largest, with a population of almost 41,000, It is followed by Swords with 39,248 and Dundalk with 39,004.

In a statement which perhaps best outlines the dominance of Leinster, the CSO said: "Of the 41 settlements with a population of 10,000 or more, 27 are located in Leinster, nine are in Munster, three in Connacht and two in Ulster."

The report also sets out how people in urban areas are living closer to each other than five years ago. The population density, which measures the number of people occupying a square kilometre (km2), has risen to 70 from 67 in 2011 and 62 in 2006. In our urban areas, it stands at 2,008, compared with 27 in rural areas.

"The more densely populated areas are predominantly located within the Greater Dublin Area," the CSO said. "Kinsealy-Drinan was the most densely populated urban area with 5,830 persons per kiometre-squared, followed by Balbriggan with 4,514. Dublin City and suburbs had 3,677."

The report also illustrates how the number of people moving home throughout the country has dropped. In the 12 months to April 2016, when the Census was carried out, some 263,551 people moved home to a new house or apartment. This is a drop of 3.5pc compared with the year to April 2011, when the last Census was conducted.

But the results also reveal that 1.9 million people live within 5km of the coast, or 40pc of the population. Of these, 40,468 were identified as living less than 100 metres from the sea, of which almost half are living in Cork. Some 8,756 people live on the islands, a fall of 273; 17 islands which were unpopulated in 2011 now have residents.
A barbeque that fell over is believed to have caused of an apartment fire that left residents running for their lives.

Dublin Fire Brigade were called to the scene at the Verdemont Apartment on Snugborough Road, Blanchardstown, West Dublin at approximately 5.10pm yesterday.

Locals living within the complex claimed that the cause of the fire was due to the flames of a resident's barbeque falling into his home on the fourth floor.

The blaze quickly spread to the adjoining homes causing damage to the inside.

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Reports have also suggested that the apartments on the bottom floor were damaged by water as the fire services extinguished the flames.

Americans 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 didn't manage to take any of our possessions with us."

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The two 19-year-olds have been living in Ireland for two years and said a lot of possessions with sentimental value have been destroyed.

"We had a lot of family photos and personal things that are now gone.

"It's still sinking in to be honest, but I suppose it's out of our control. At this stage there's nothing we can do. We have to just move on," Brycen said.

Christina Farrell, a resident who lives near the affected apartments, said she was able to help alert her neighbours to 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 building] 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.

Traffic diversions around the complex remained in place last night. There were no reports of any injuries.
Armed detectives are keeping watch over gangland target James 'Mago' Gately as he continues to recover in Dublin's Beaumont Hospital.

Security has been increased in and near the hospital grounds over fears the Kinahan cartel will make another attempt on the 30-year-old's life.

The Dubliner is being treated for gunshot wounds to his neck and throat. It has emerged that doctors have managed to remove the bullet that was lodged in his jaw following his shooting at a north Dublin petrol station on Wednesday. The feared criminal was struck four times in the chest, but the bullets lodged into the bullet-proof vest he was wearing.

Armed checkpoints have now been set up in the area around the hospital to prevent any further attacks. Members of the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) have been patrolling the Beaumont area.

A source last night said the increased Garda activity was to protect both Gately and members of the public who could be injured if an attack were to be carried out.

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"The increase in armed and uniformed Garda activity is to protect both Mago and the general public. Undercover detectives are also carrying out patrols near Beaumont Hospital, because gardai are taking no chances in case the Kinahan cartel are audacious enough to attempt another hit," the source said.

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Gately was targeted on Wednesday afternoon as he got into his car at the busy Topaz service station in Clonshaugh, north Dublin. A hit team approached the father of two and, without getting out of their 08-D black Lexus, fired a number of shots.

They fled the scene along the M1 and their vehicle was later recovered burnt out in Ardee, Co Louth.

Gardai believe Gately's partner was placed under surveillance by members of the Kinahan cartel at her Coolock home in the days before the attack. It emerged Gately had returned to the north Dublin property days before the attempted murder.

Originally from the north inner city, the Hutch gang associate had been staying at various safehouses in Northern Ireland in recent weeks. The Kinahan gang had recently gathered detailed information on Gately's movements.

"He changed his car on an almost bi-weekly basis, but the cartel was aware of what vehicle he was driving and when he was returning to Dublin," a senior source said last night.

Gately had previously acted as an enforcer for the Kinahan mob, but aligned himself with the Hutch faction following the murder of his childhood friend Gary Hutch in September 2015.

Appealing for information on the shooting, Supt Finbarr Murphy said that bystanders could have been injured.

"What makes it more outrageous is that it was a sunny afternoon at 1.30pm," he said. "There were bullets in different directions. Any innocent person could have been injured in this attack."
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit the South Caucasus region in June or early July, said Richard Hoagland, the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

He made the remarks in Washington at the conference entitled The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
It was one of the most precious moments of her life, but blogger Sarah Cantwell was happy to share the birth of her daughter with more than 60k fans on Facebook.

The UK influencer (28) began live streaming from her home in Oxfordshire one hour before giving birth to baby Maeve Elizabeth on Thursday, with the help of a midwife.

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The mum, who already has a daughter Rosalie (2), broadcast a video to the Channel Mum Facebook page, and viewers around the world tuned into her home birthing experience.

Cantwell welcomed her new arrival at 5.30am, weighing 7lb10oz.

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In a later video posted to the channel, Cantwell sat with her husband Nick and their new bundle of joy. The blogger said it was strange to stream the experience, but she wanted to show how positive a home birth experience can be for mum and baby.

"It's quite crazy how many people were watching. I was only really expecting my friends and maybe some family to tune in," she said.

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"The midwives were amazing and looked after us wonderfully," she said.
Passengers on flights from the EU to the US face being forced to stow their laptops and other electronic devices in aircraft cargo holds.

The Trump administration plans to extend a ban that was recently introduced on flights from the Middle East and Turkey.

The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) fears that bombs could be concealed in laptops, with terrorists replacing batteries with plastic explosives for instance.

One of the EU's top transport officials said yesterday that there's still "no clarity" on when the ban might be introduced, or if indeed it will be.

However, news agency Reuters reported yesterday that US officials have already privately confirmed the ban will be introduced on flights from some EU countries.

Speaking yesterday on the sidelines of the CAPA aviation summit in Co Wicklow, the EU's director general for mobility and transport, Henrik Hololei, said EU officials held talks this week with counterparts with the TSA in Washington.

"At this stage, the information available to us is very limited," he said, adding that there was also an extraordinary meeting in Brussels of aviation advisers yesterday, to discuss the possible ban.

"The US side has communicated nothing formally to us and we are aware that they are contemplating the issue and there are on-going internal discussions," he said.The EU has already expressed concerns that storing possibly hundreds of electronic devices in cargo holds could present a fire safety risk due to poorly deactivated lithium-ion batteries.

Mr Hololei said that any security challenge for aircraft should not be mitigated by creating a safety challenge.

"What we want, and what is essential for aviation, is the highest level of safety and the highest level of security, and these have to co-exist," he said. "It is not possible to trade one for the other."

He also declined to say whether the EU agreed with the US laptop threat assessment.

"I don't want to comment on the security threat because they are classified," he said.

Mr Hololei said that rumours about the possible ban have been circulating for a number of weeks. "Let's see how things are going to shape up," he said, adding that he could not speculate as to whether or not the EU would take any retaliatory action against US flights to Europe if a ban was introduced by US authorities.

"I don't want to speculate at this stage about the next steps," he told the Irish Independent.

"It's clear that we have also looked into all the possible options."
Lawyers for a man jailed for life for murder have argued that his fair trial rights were breached because his jury did not specify whether he was convicted of being the gunman or a 'gopher' in a joint enterprise.

Garrett O'Brien (39), from Clover Hill in Bray, Co Wicklow, had pleaded not guilty to the murder of 27-year-old father-of-two Seamus O'Byrne at his home in Tymon North Park, Tallaght, in March 2009.

He was found guilty by a jury at the Central Criminal Court and was given the mandatory life sentence by Ms Justice Iseult O'Malley on November 6, 2012.

Last Thursday, O'Brien moved to appeal his conviction in the three-judge Court of Appeal, where judgment was reserved.

His barrister, Feargal P Kavanagh SC, said the case was based on 'circumstantial evidence'.

He said the prosecution opened their case on the basis that it was a 'joint enterprise' but ended up on the basis that O'Brien was the 'triggerman'.

The prosecution was effectively riding two horses, Mr Kavanagh said.

If the jury had a reasonable doubt that O'Brien may not have been the gunman, and the prosecution's case was that he was the gunman, then he should have been entitled to an acquittal, counsel submitted.

The problem was that O'Brien did not know at this juncture whether he had been convicted of being a gunman or a 'gopher' as part of a joint enterprise. That had consequences for him in the future such as when he goes before the parole board, counsel said.

Mr Kavanagh, who appeared with Michelle O'Sullivan BL, submitted that it was an inherent weakness in the procedure and O'Brien's 'fair trial rights' were breached.

Given that the prosecution were 'riding two horses', Mr Kavanagh said the jury should have been told by the trial judge to consider the case on a joint enterprise basis if they had a reasonable doubt that he was the gunman.

Mr Kavanagh further submitted that the trial judge erred in ruling that it was not necessary for the arresting garda to invoke search warrant provisions and that personal data was unlawfully obtained from a third party subcontractor rather than directly from the service provider, O2 Telefonica.

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions, Alex Owens SC, said the trial judge's direction to the jury was 'impeccable'.

Mr Owens said all the evidence pointed to O'Brien being the gunman and his participation in the offence did not start there.

He said O'Brien was ultimately involved in the preparation of the offence and he was the gunman.

If one was to go down the route of requiring juries to be more specific, Mr Owens said 'you might as well get rid of juries altogether' because they would be required to give written decisions. That was 'not the way it works,' he said.

Mr Justice George Birmingham, who sat with Mr Justice Alan Mahon and Mr Justice John Edwards, said the court would reserve its decision.
The ongoing campaign to secure an Educate Together national school in Fermoy will be the focus of a public meeting set to take place at the local Community Youth Centre at 8.30pm on Thursday, May 18.

In 2011 the government established the forum on Patronage and Pluralism in the primary sector, with the stated aim of increasing diversity and inclusiveness through the reconfiguration of Church buildings and school.

Parents in 43 areas were consulted on their school patron of choice, with those in Fermoy choosing Educate Together. However, progress in the intervening years has been slow, due in part to what Educate Together said was the Department of Education's insistence that it be 'no cost' process.

The public meeting in Fermoy, will be hosted by Educate Together regional development officer Niall Wall, who said the campaign has been re-energised in the wake of recent announcements by the Department of Education and Skills.

Mr Wall said that Educate Together had been encouraged by the Department's recently published Action Plan For Education, in which Minister Richard Bruton committed to "commence discussions with existing and prospective patrons on potential 'early movers' - schools in respect of which a desire for patronage reassignment has already been expressed."

This, said Mr Wall, had raised the hopes of Fermoy parents that they will finally get their Educate Together primary school. The latest development comes almost four years after Fermoy was one of 25 areas across the country promised an Educate Together school by the government under school patronage selection process.

On their website Educate Together said that given Minister Bruton's commitment to reinvigorating the process "now is the time to make the case that the government fulfil its obligation to families in Fermoy." Furthermore, say Educate Together, the Minister's plan to accelerate the 'reconfiguration' process through leasing buildings from the patron of the majority of school in Ireland, the Catholic Church, would indicate that the State is finally willing to invest in provision for school choice.

"Educate Together is patron of a thriving network of school that are in massive demand nationwide," said Mr Wall. "I have spoken to parents in Fermoy about the next steps for our campaign and am looking forward to working with them to establish an equality based primary school in the town," he added.

Fermoy resident Conor O'Mahony said he and other parents were keen to see the patronage process move forward. "It's important that families in Fermoy have more choice in relation to the schools they send their children to. I want an Educate Together school in the town because I agree with the ethos where children are all treated equally and learn about all religions," said Mr O'Mahony. For more information visit www.educatetogether/fermoy or visit the dedicated Educate Together Fermoy Facebook page.

About Educate Together

Educate Together has been operating in Ireland in 1978, when its opened its first school in Dublin.

It currently operates 81 primary schools (six in Cork) and nine secondary schools across the country.

It has opened more new primary and secondary schools than any other school patron over the past decade.

Its school's are 'child-centred' and teach the national curriculum.

A founding principle of its approach to education is that all children are treated with equal respect regardless of social, cultural or religious backgrounds.

For more information about Educate Together schools visit www.educatetogether.ie.
The wife of a man who was killed in an accident at a Drogheda company in 2014 says she has lost 'her best friend, the love of her life'.

Paddy Lambe was just 46 when he died while working at Premier Periclase at the Boyne Road in Drogheda on October 30 2014 and last week, the managing director of the company, Gerard Teeling, entered a guilty plea on the firm's behalf to a breach of health and safety legislation.

They were fined 100,000.

In her victim impact statement, read to the court by State prosecutor Kevin Seagrave, Mrs Lambe said: 'You never think for one minute the knock will come to your door. You think that when you go to work you will come home'.

She said she will 'never hear his key in the door, never hear him say: 'I'm home'. She said: 'There is no-one to make plans with'.
A father-of-two who assaulted a teenager on crutches after he was asked to leave his sister's wedding reception because he was drunk has been sentenced to four months in prison.

Bernard Fogarty (31) also kicked the wing mirror off a parked car on the evening.

The defendant claimed he 'blacked out' and doesn't remember anything of the evening, took the crutch off the teenager and knocked him to the ground. He then hit the young man on the leg with the crutch before being restrained by people in a nearby takeaway.

Fogarty, of Churchwell Crescent in Belmayne, Dublin 13 pleaded guilty to assaulting the teenager and causing criminal damage to the car mirror in Balbriggan on September 3rd, 2016.

Garda Colin Fitzpatrick gave evidence that at 9pm the defendant was asked to leave the wedding reception as he was intoxicated. He then kicked the car mirror and assaulted the boy outside Apache Pizza on Drogheda Street.

He knocked the boy down and took his crutch and started to hit the boy on the leg.

The defendant has 23 previous convictions, including one for assault and one for criminal damage.

Defence barrister David Costello said the 31-year old has difficulties with alcohol and is attending a psychiatrist in Beaumont Hospital. 'He is aware his situation is quite bleak,' said Mr Costello.

He said the apprentice worker is only back at work following a hernia operation but given time he can come up with money to pay for the wing mirror and is willing to do community service work.

However, Judge Dermot Dempsey asked: 'What about the 15-year-old boy on crutches? I can't see my way around not giving a custodial sentence.'

Judge Dempsey also noted the defendant was convicted three months prior to the incidents in June 2016 for a similar offence of assault. 'He's a menace, that's what he is. He has nothing here today to show he has done anything about his drinking.

'He had every opportunity to produce something and he has already been afforded community service work,' said Judge Dempsey and imposed the sentence.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Elmira Tariverdiyeva  Trend:

A seminar entitled Pakistan Relations with Central Asian Republics and Azerbaijan: Prospects and Challenges, organized by the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI) was held in Islamabad, Pakistan, dawn.com reported.

It was noted at the seminar that Pakistans relations with Azerbaijan and Central Asian republics do not face any challenges.

The seminar was held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Pakistan, Central Asian countries and Azerbaijan.

Present at the seminar Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Pakistan Ali Alizadeh told the participants that Azerbaijan re-gained its independence 25 years ago, and also was subjected to genocide, committed by Armenians in Khojaly town of Azerbaijan.

The ambassador also said that Pakistan was one of the first countries that recognized Azerbaijans independence and provided financial aid to the country.

Azerbaijan supports Pakistan in the Kashmir issue and says it should be resolved as per the resolution of the United Nations, he said, adding there is a strategic partnership between Pakistan and Azerbaijan.

Alizadeh noted that there are many opportunities to develop these relations further. He added that Pakistani citizens can now online obtain visas for visiting Azerbaijan.
On a celebratory visit to Skerries, the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins has honoured the dedicated volunteers of Skerries Tidy Towns and the community that supported them in their efforts in winning the National Tidy Towns competition, praising the coastal town's 'spirit of community and togetherness'.

Heaping well deserved praise on the local Tidy Towns volunteers, President Higgins said: 'To a passer by, the work of Tidy Towns volunteers may appear to consist of teams of people in high-visibility bibs picking litter or planting flowering plants. All of you involved in Tidy Towns know that it is this, but that it is also a lot more.

'It is work that involves keeping abreast of change, of environmental issues, learning about, and taking advantage of, what is unique to your own area, planning for the future and making small but important changes year on year - changes that support sustainability, help us manage our resources effectively, and promote these values in the wider community.'

The President added: 'Indeed real change requires a long term and inclusive view of what is needed to sustain a healthy and flourishing community. The Tidy Towns committee here in Skerries have chosen to believe in the power of collective action, to act in concert, and thus to make a positive difference to the life a the entire community.'

Turning to the power of volunteerism which thrives in Skerries, President Higgins said: 'Too often in this world we are given the opinion, often without asking, that our small actions, our moral and practical commitments, do not matter.

'In such a vein of cynicism, there are two different strands of thought: one being that we are all too small to make a difference; the other that small changes do not count as they will always fall short of ideals.

'Well, today we stand here to celebrate the triumph of ideas and collective endeavours over any such passivity or indifference. So let this day be an answer to any apathy or resignation, and be a celebration of those who chose to dream and to take action.'

He thanked the local volunteers and said they were the 'lifeblood of our society'.

Singling out some of the stalwarts that drive the Skerries Tidy Towns effort each year since the town started competing in 1959, President Higgins said: 'That first group of people who joined the competition had the vision, as well as the confidence, to aim to build a better Skerries, volunteering their own most precious resource, their free time, for the good of the community. Their names will be known to you, such people as Anne Doyle, Maeve McGann, Martina Grogan, Ann Duggan, Mary Conway, Maureen Byrne and Frances Owens, whose initiative we salute today.''
A legal dispute which was holding up the opening of the service station on the M11 at Ballyellen, Gorey, has finally been resolved, meaning work should start on fitting out the premises in the coming months. However, it could be up to a year before it's open.

Building work was finished on site in May 2015, and Topaz submitted the preferred tender to run it. In August that year, the SuperStop 2 Consortium, involving Applegreen and Tedcastles Oil Products, launched a challenge in the Commercial Court to the awarding of the Gorey tender, and two others at Kilcullen, Co Kildare, and Moate, Co Westmeath which have yet to be built.

It was reported in the Sunday Independent at the weekend that sources close to the deal said the two parties have reached a settlement, and have 'agreed to put their swords away'

As the preferred bidder, Topaz will become the awarded bidder in the next few months. Work will then begin on fitting out the premises, and it should be open within a year.

Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII), formerly the NRA, has set about re-covering over the motorway signs for the service station with temporary grey paint, as the previous paint had worn off.

The service station has been bogged down in controversy for a decade. As far back as 2008, local residents were involved in a high profile campaign against the facility An appeal to An Bord Pleanala against the granting of planning failed in 2010.

Work began on site in late 2013 despite a statement to the media by Applegreen in July that year questioning the need for it, and its financial viability. The company was planning to build its own rest stop at Cullenmore, Co Wicklow, at the time.

Since work finished at Ballyellen in May 2015, it has cost the TII almost 16,000 a month to keep the vacant premises secure and lit.

Attention is now turning to the services at the station. Topaz has a relationship with McDonald's fast food restaurants, and the two companies just last month officially opened a flagship site on the M9 in Co Carlow.

McDonald's has also been linked to the service station under construction in front of Tesco in Gorey town. The drive-thru is understood to be designed to be suitable for an operation like McDonald's. However, no announcement has been made as to the awarding of the franchise for this site.

The resolution of the legal dispute was welcomed by Cllr Malcolm Byrne who said it is in the interests of motorists in the county that it opens as soon as possible. 'It's been a regular cause of complaint,' he said.
Kirsten Rigney from Shanaknock, Kielduff, Tralee pictured at her home last week - she is looking for help due to the amount of chronic pain she has to cope with on an almost daily basis

A Kerry woman who is suffering from a number of severe and debilitating medical conditions has appealed to the government to allow her access to medical cannabis.

Kirsten Rigney (31), who is originally from Dingle but is now living in Kielduff, Tralee, suffers from severe depression and chronic pain which has left her almost fully bed-bound since Christmas.

Kirsten is affected by a number of medical conditions, including depression, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome and hyper mobility joint pain - all of which have left her in constant pain. On her best days, when she can leave the bed, she is sometimes forced to use a wheelchair.

"I am currently prescribed to take over 22 tablets a day and I want off them all. Recent blood tests have shown that my liver and kidneys are suffering because of all the pharmaceutical drugs I'm on; the opioid meds leave me like a zombie and sometimes I am left unable to hold a conversation," Kirsten told The Kerryman.

"I am so afraid to take the tablets, but the agony is so bad sometimes, you would do anything to make it go away; the pain is sometimes so bad that I don't want to live anymore.

She says she is no longer well enough to take care of her son, something that 'eats away' at her and she has had to give up her dreams of a new business.

"I was about to open my own business when my problems started, so I had to abandon my dream. I lose grip in my hands and, as an artist and a piano player, I am no longer able to do this - I have been left an empty shell."

Kirsten believes that the current government restrictions on medicinal cannabis is discriminating against countless people with various conditions that can be improved with the use of medicinal cannabis.

The government's stance on medicinal cannabis is that there is insufficient information on its safety in long-term usage for the treatment of chronic medical conditions.

"According to the Irish constitution, I am entitled to the right of 'bodily integrity' which means that I have a right not to have my body or my person interfered with and that the State may not do anything to harm my life or my health.

"By denying me access to something that I know will help maintain my bodily integrity, I believe that I am being denied my rights when they refuse me a medicinal plant that is likely to result in better health.

"I don't drink or smoke, I don't want to get high, I don't want to smoke marijuana - I just want to get medicine safely from doctors.

"I don't want to be a criminal or break the law and I don't want to be seen as a drug-user; I want people to see me as someone who is on medicine and not drugs.

"Please God, give me back my life. I've become a prisoner in my own body," she finished.
Pakistani security officials stand guard at the site of a suicide bombing which killed dozens of people and left many injured in Mastung district near Quetta (AP)

The deputy leader of Pakistan's senate escaped an assassination attempt when a suicide bomber targeted his convoy in the country's south-western Baluchistan province, killing 25 people and wounding dozens more.

Islamic State (IS) took responsibility for the attack on its official Amaq News Agency.

The bomber struck soon after Abdul Ghafoor Haideri's convoy left a madrassa, an Islamic religious school, in the town of Mastung, not far from the provincial capital of Quetta, according to local government official Munir Raisani.

The area has been a hotbed of militant activity in the past, although most of the previous attacks near Mastung have been on Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslims by the violent radical Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.

However, IS carried out a brutal attack against lawyers in Quetta last year killing nearly 70 people, most of them young lawyers, as well as at a shrine in the remote Kuzdar area.

There, more than 60 people were killed.

The shrine was frequented by both Shiites and Sunnis but it is a particular favourite of Shiites.

Friday's attack underscored the militants' continued ability to carry out high-profile attacks despite a protracted military crackdown that is under way in several parts of the country, including Pakistan's border regions with neighbouring Afghanistan.

Shaken but with only minor cuts and bruises, Mr Haideri told a local news channel that he could not speculate on the reason for the attack.

"I was sitting in the front seat when the strong explosion occurred," he said.

"The windshield of my vehicle broke and the door was destroyed.

"Broken glass and splinters hit me in the hand but thank God I did not suffer any major injury.

"I can't say why the blast (happened) or what led to it."

Mr Haideri's political party, the pro-Taliban Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, has hundreds of Islamic Sunni seminaries throughout Baluchistan.

It is headed by Fazlur Rehman, who is known for his anti-US stance.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the attack on Mr Haideri.

Anwar-ul Haq Kakar, a spokesman for the Baluchistan provincial government, said police had been escorting Mr Haideri when the attack occurred.

Several police were among the wounded. Local TV stations broadcast footage showing Mr Haideri's badly damaged car at the scene of the attack.

AP
NHS hospitals have been forced to divert emergency ambulances and cancel operations after their computer systems were hit by a massive cyber attack.

Hospitals and GP surgeries in England and Scotland were among at least 16 health service organisations hit by a ransomware attack, using malware called Wanna Decryptor  with reports that potentially dozens more were affected.

Theresa May has said the Government is not aware of any evidence that patient records have been compromised. Heres everything you need to know about the cyber attack.

Who has been affected?

English hospitals and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in London, Blackpool, Hertfordshire and Derbyshire were among those to report problems.

More than half of Scotlands health boards have been affected by a large-scale cyber attack on NHS computer systems.

Scotlands biggest health board, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, as well as NHS Tayside, NHS Dumfries and Galloway and NHS Forth Valley confirmed that some of their GP surgeries had been caught up in the incident.

What about elsewhere in the world?

It was later confirmed that the cyber attack has hit almost every corner of the world  Tech firm F-Secure said it has received reports from more than 60 countries.

Several companies in Spain were hit by ransomware attacks, with telecoms firm Telefonica one of those reporting problems.

Megafon, a top Russian mobile operator, said it has come under cyber attacks that appeared similar to those that crippled UK hospitals.

Security experts from Kaspersky Lab and Avast Software say Russia was the hardest hit, followed by Ukraine and Taiwan.

Whats caused the attack?

The malware used is called Wanna Decryptor. Its a piece of malicious software that encrypts files on a users computer, blocking them from view and threatening to delete them unless a payment is made.

The virus is usually covertly installed on to computers by being hidden within innocent-looking emails containing links, which users are tricked into opening. Expert Marco Cova has claimed it may derive from a tool known as EXTERNALBLUE which was developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA).

The tool was made public earlier this year when it was released as part of a data dump of NSA cyber tools by a group calling itself The Shadow Brokers.

What happened when the attack hit?

Staff were forced to revert to pen and paper and use their own mobiles after the attack affected key systems, including telephones.

Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of $300 worth of the online currency Bitcoin, threatening to delete files within seven days.

A spokesman for NHS Digital, which manages health service cyber security, said: At this stage, we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed.

We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this.

He added the attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors.

It is understood that several health trusts turned their computer systems off as a precautionary measure, rather than being shut down by the attack.

This has led to speculation that the total number of organisations crippled by the ransomware is not as high as some figures reported.

One health trust is believed to have been included among those hit by the malicious software  despite it actually suffering from a separate IT malfunction.

What did Theresa May say in response to the attack?

Theresa May said the Government is not aware of any evidence that patient records have been compromised in the massive cyber attack.

She also said the ransomware hit was not targeted at the health service but was part of a wider assault on organisations across a number of countries, and added that the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is working to support the NHS.

May said: We are aware that a number of NHS organisations have reported that they have suffered from a ransomware attack.

This is not targeted at the NHS, its an international attack and a number of countries and organisations have been affected.

The National Cyber Security Centre is working closely with NHS Digital to ensure that they support the organisations concerned and that they protect patient safety.

And, we are not aware of any evidence that patient data has been compromised.

Of course it is important that we have set up the National Cyber Security Centre and they are able to work with the NHS organisations concerned and to ensure that they are supported and patient safety is protected.

How has it affected hospital patients?

Outside the Royal London Hospital, wheelchair-bound patient Richard Harvey spoke of his disappointment as he wheeled himself home after waiting all day for a procedure that was eventually postponed.

The 50-year-old, who suffered injuries to his hip in a motorcycle accident three years ago, told the Press Association: Originally I came here because my leg and pelvis kept opening, I was due today to have it washed out and stitched up again.

I was actually in my bed most of the day, they prefer you not to get out of bed. I didnt have a time. The operation could have come at any time.

At ten to five I said to a nurse this is a bit late for an operation and she said theres been a cyber attack and I said well go and check.

She went away and came back and said that was it.
From arguments over employment figures to the leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats posing in front of a digger  here are some of the key moments from Fridays General Election campaign.

Quote of the day

So far during this campaign we have learned one thing about Jeremy Corbyn: proud and patriotic working-class people in towns and cities across Britain have not deserted the Labour Party  Jeremy Corbyn has deserted them  The Prime Minister, speaking in the north east of England.

Good day?

Its a good day for cannabis users after the Liberal Democrats announced they would legalise the substance.

The party have said they will create a legal market for the creation and production of the drug, predicting that up to 1 billion could be generated each year in tax revenues.

Bad day?

Its been a bad day for Brexit Secretary David Davis, who claimed European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was trying to force him out of his job.

With regards to the leaked story about Mr Junker meeting with Mrs May for dinner in Number 10, Mr Davis said: All these stories are briefing against me, trying to get me sacked  which, of course, is a compliment by the way. If they dont want me across the table, there is a reason for that  it is in Britains interests, not theirs.

Tweet of the day

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Buzzfeed reporter Jim Waterson spoke to Lord Buckethead, the candidate standing against Theresa May in Maidenhead.

Billed as the exclusive no one else wanted, his Twitter message conversation is reproduced via screenshots in the tweet.

Picture of the day

Scottish Liberal Democrats leader Willie Rennie visits a scrapyard in Fife.

In this picture he raises an arm in the air  the angle makes his outstretched hand coincide with a digger, making Mr Rennie look like a tourist holding up the Louvre, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

What do the polls say?

The Press Associations poll of polls has remained strong and steady  the Conservatives remain at 47%, Labour at 29%, Ukip at 6% and the Green Party at 3%. The only movers are the Lib Dems, who have gained one percentage point and moved from 9% to 10%.

Fake news of the day

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Diane Abbott shared a photo on Twitter encouraging people to register to vote which said: Since 2010 the Tories havehugely increased youth unemployment.

However, figures from the Office for National Statistics show otherwise. From May-July 2010, 921,000 people aged 16-24 were unemployed, compared with the latest figures of 558,000 for December 2016-February 2017.

Obscure election news of the day

A man has placed a 10,000 bet on Labours success  6,000 on Corbyn to be the next Prime Minister, 3,000 on Labour winning the most seats and 1,000 on them winning the majority of seats.

The anonymous better placed the wager in a Norwich Betfred store, and would be in for a 182,000 return if he lands the trio of results.
The White House has come under criticism after photos emerged of Donald Trump meeting with Russian officials.

The photos were taken by a Russian news service photographer in the Oval Office, which could constitute a security breach, as a senior official said the Trump administration was not aware of the cameramans role.

The source said they had been misled, and thought the man was the official photographer of Russias foreign minister Sergey Lavrov  they were therefore surprised to see the photos on Russian news agency Tass a short time later.

The photos show Trump laughing with Lavrov and the ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

US press photographers were not invited to the meeting, there had been no plans to immediately release images, and in an official White House account of the meeting, the presence of ambassador Kislyak was not mentioned.

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The photos came the day after the president fired FBI director James Comey, who had been running an investigation into whether the Trump administration colluded with Russia to influence the outcome of last years election.

The White House said Comey was fired for his incompetence as FBI director, as well as his mishandling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

But many politicians and commentators pointed to Comeys Russia investigation and questioned whether Trump had something to hide.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that it is proper protocol to close a meeting to the press when Trump is meeting a foreign official who is not a head of state. Barack Obamas staff frequently adopted a similar policy.

Officials dismissed any security concerns, saying Lavrovs entourage went through the typical visitor screening process and that the White House is routinely swept for listening devices.

But security experts still questioned the event.

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Colin Kahl, former vice president Joe Bidens national security adviser, asked if having a Russian photographer in the Oval Office was a good idea, to which David S Cohen, former deputy director of the CIA, replied no, it was not.
Sushi-lovers are being warned of the dangers of ingesting parasites from raw and undercooked fish

Rising levels of parasitic infections have been linked to sushi becoming increasingly popular in the West.

A report from the British Medical Journal has highlighted the trend caused by eating fish that is either raw or undercooked.

The BMJ notes that a man (32) who was admitted to hospital in Lisbon suffering from vomiting and abdominal pain told doctors that he had recently eaten sushi.

Medics removed a parasitic worm from his stomach and his symptoms resolved instantly.

It was determined that the parasite stemmed from a condition called anisakiasis.

The condition is caused by the consumption of contaminated seafood that is either raw or undercooked, the symptoms of which contain abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting, the report says.

The study mentions that most cases of this condition have been diagnosed in Japan, but that it was becoming more recognised elsewhere.

The findings noted: "Owing to changes in food habits, anisakiasis is a growing disease in Western countries, which should be suspected in patients with a history of ingestion of raw or uncooked fish."

Safefood advises the public to wash your hands thoroughly before and after handling raw fish to prevent the spread of bacteria, and to use separate utensils for raw and cooked fish.
Divorce should not be seen as a set-up for life, Italys supreme court has said, in a landmark ruling that strips divorced spouses of the automatic right to hefty maintenance payments.

Divorcees who have independent means or are capable of working will not automatically receive maintenance payments that in the past were assessed on the basis that ex-spouses have a right to retain the same tenor of life, after divorce, the judges of the Court of Cassation said.

The ruling is expected to change how family law is interpreted in the country and could herald an end to massive divorce settlements such as the 1.4m a month maintenance cheque that media magnate Silvio Berlusconis second wife Veronica Lario obtained when they split up in 2009 amid the bunga bunga sex party scandal.

The supreme court ruling was initiated by the case of American businesswoman Lisa Lowenstein and her ex-husband Vittorio Grilli, a former Italian minister of economy and finance, who had an acrimonious divorce in 2013. Mr Grilli (58) gave Ms Lowenstein a monthly maintenance payment of as much as 2m after they separated to maintain her lifestyle but legal wrangling continued over her attempts to get Mr Grilli to pay heavy debts she had run up.

Ms Lowenstein appealed to the Italian supreme court in 2014 in pursuit of a claim that she deserved to receive maintenance payments for life after the Milan Court of Appeal rejected her application on the grounds that her income tax returns were incomplete and that her ex husbands income had contracted in the meantime.

This is the end of a nightmare, Mr Grilli was quoted as telling friends after the ruling.

The Cassation Courts judges said times have changed and Italians must overcome the wealth-based conception of marriage understood as a definitive set-up.

Spouses applying for maintenance will have to be means tested, taking into consideration whether they have a house and are capable of working.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have common interests to help Azerbaijan and Armenia reach a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Richard Hoagland, the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

He made the remarks in Washington at the conference entitled The International Politics of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict.

There are documents already on the table and the challenge is to help the sides find political will to take a step forward to deliver the peace and stability that the populations deserve, Hoagland said.

Generations of young people have grown up in Armenia and Azerbaijan and they have no first hand contact with the other side, he said.

We focus on the principles and commitment that pertain to non-use or threat of force, territorial integrity and equal rights and self-determination of peoples, Hoagland said.

The Minsk Group co-chairs constantly work to bring the sides of the conflict together and develop new approaches for the peace process, according to him.

We havent given up, no one has given up, he said, adding everyone is still looking for that final peace.

We would like to see the [Azerbaijani, Armenian] presidents get together again, Hoagland said.

When such top level negotiations commence, the parties should reconfirm how they will implement the confidence building measures agreed about in 2016 at meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg, according to him.

Once we get into such peaceful negotiations, there is a much broader range of practical issues that we can put on the table to begin to benefit all sides immediately, including economic and commercial issues.

Hoagland said the US remains ready to help in any way it can, but of course, it is up to the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan to take the steps necessary for the lasting peace. They should consider measures, even unilateral ones, that will demonstrate their strong commitment to making progress, reducing tensions and improving the atmosphere for negotiations, and prepare their populations for peace not war, according to him.

I continue to be optimistic, Hoagland said.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
Police were called to a disturbance at a home near Dardanelle, 65 miles west of Little Rock

A man suspected of gunning down a sheriff's deputy and killing two other people has surrendered after a five-hour stand-off with police, authorities said.

James Michael Bowden, 32, gave himself up after releasing a woman he had apparently been holding hostage inside the home where two females were found dead, Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said during a news conference.

Investigators are questioning the woman.

Authorities said Bowden is suspected of killing Yell County Sheriff's Lieutenant Kevin C Mainhart during a traffic stop.

Lt Mainhart was responding to a call about a disturbance at the home near Dardanelle, about 65 miles west of Little Rock.

Investigators have not released the names or ages of the female victims, or said how they were killed.

Lt Mainhart had been an officer in Yell County for five years. He had previously worked for West Memphis Police Department for more than 20 years, according to a police news release.

Yell County Sheriff Bill Gilkey said Lt Mainhart was a great father and husband, as well as an excellent officer.

KATV broadcast an interview it said was with the suspect's father, James Bowden Sr, in which he said the incident stemmed from an argument his son had with his girlfriend.

Bowden's father also told the TV station that the deputy had fired a Taser at the suspect, who allegedly thought he had been shot and fired back, fatally wounding the officer.

The suspect's father said the woman who was apparently being held hostage was Bowden's girlfriend.

Governor Asa Hutchinson and attorney general Leslie Rutledge expressed their condolences to the deputy's family and praised his 25 years in law enforcement.

AP
ISILs Western fighters have fled Raqqa ahead of an impending battle for the groups self-declared capital, according to activists and US-backed forces on the ground.

The last of the European jihadists are said to have left in a convoy heading for Deir Ezzor province in eastern Syria late last month.

The city is now completely under the control of Arab fighters for the first time since 2013, said Tim Ramadan, an activist with the anti-Isil group Sound and Picture, who lives in Raqqa and uses a pseudonym for his safety. There are no Westerners left.

Several thousand British, French, Belgian and other Europeans travelled to Raqqa, the centre of Isils caliphate, which became a hub for planning attacks against the West.

Daesh needs to keep the foreigners safe, Aghiad al-Kheder, another member of the group, said from Germany, using the Arabic name for Isil. They are more important to them for propaganda reasons, for sending messages to the US and Europe to recruit more supporters.

He said Isil, anticipating the assault on Raqqa and coming under increasing pressure from coalition strikes and advancing US-backed troops, has effectively moved its capital to Deir Ezzor province, which lies 140km south and connects its territory in Syria and Iraq.

Deir Ezzor is largely flat desert land, making it much easier to defend. It is also home to Syrias largest oil deposit, the al-Omar, which has proved hugely lucrative for the group.

Asaad Almohammad, a Syrian research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Violent Extremism, said Isil has already moved vast sums of money and cash reserves, as well as its senior foreign leaders, to the city of Mayadin in Deir Ezzor.

Recently obtained information indicates that a large number of leading foreign and local members of Isil and their families were moved to the city of Mayadin and towns in close vicinity of it, he said. It is clearly viewed by Isil as a safe haven.

Shervan Derwish, spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a partner force of the US-led coalition, said that it tracked dozens of Western Isil fighters and their families from Raqqa to Deir Ezzor.

We know that many Daesh, mostly foreigners, headed south to Deir Ezzor on April 26, he said. The city is much better protected and much safer as Raqqa comes under attack from coalition forces.

It also means these fighters will be in Syria for a long time.

The development will be a concern for Western security services. Britons in Syria are thought to be in contact with sympathisers back home and their move away from Raqqa will see them even more deeply embedded.

There are estimated to be somewhere between 250-300 British jihadists still fighting with Isil in Syria and Iraq.

One member, Stefan Aristidou, defected last month, crossing into Turkey and surrendering to authorities at the border. Several dozen other Western fighters are understood to have contacted their embassies in Turkey from Isil-held Syria looking to return.

A total of around 3,000 Isil fighters are believed to be left in Raqqa, where an estimated 300,000 people are living under jihadist rule.

News of the Western jihadists flight emerged as the SDF, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters, captured the last major town on the approach to Raqqa, clearing one of the final obstacles ahead of an assault on the city.

The fighters drove Isil forces from the town of Tabqa and its nearby dam.

SDF troops have surrounded Raqqa from three sides, aiming to encircle the city before moving in for the final battle.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
An Irish-American mayor being sued by a man who claims he was paid to have sex with him when he was 15-years-old has announced he is ending his political career.

Mayor of Seattle Ed Murray (62) denied the allegations and said the lawsuit tried to "paint me in the worst possible historic portraits of a gay man."

After the first allegation emerged, three other men came forward and claimed they were sexually abused by Murray as teenagers.

Delvonn Heckard claims he was paid to have sex over a four to five year period, starting when he was 15 and addicted to cocaine back in the 1980s.

On Tuesday Murray announced that he would not be seeking a second term as mayor and said the allegations had "broken his heart".

Murray wore a green tie to the speech and spoke about his upbringing, his Irish heritage and his mother knocking on doors for President John Kennedy.

In his speech, he concluded with a quote from former New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart."

"Since I was 12 years old, politics has been my life and my dream. I lay on the grass of this beach, reading childrens books about FDR and JFK," he said, adding, From that came my career. And I have the best job in politics  mayor of the city of Seattle."

Live: Back home on Alki to share my thanks for all we've achieved together. Watch: https://t.co/gjxZRICmPN or https://t.co/gOUfKCJR4r pic.twitter.com/bQCXnTpLp7  Ed Murray (@MayorEdMurray) May 9, 2017

Serving you as mayor of the city I love has been the honor of a lifetime.  Ed Murray (@MayorEdMurray) May 9, 2017

One of the most shocking parts of Heckard's claim included a description of Murray's genitals as having an "unusual bump".

Murray's legal team then asked for the case to be dismissed following a medical exam by his doctor who found he had no distinctive mole or bump on his genitals.

"This is game-changing. This is the heart of the allegations, and theyre false," his lawyer told the Seattle Times.

"He has absolutely no credibility and the case should be dropped. And I ask his lawyers  now that they know  to drop the complaint."

Murray lived in Ireland for a short time and has family in Tipperary, Limerick and Down.

He had originally planned on joining the priesthood before going to college to study sociology.

In his later years, he came out as gay and has campaigned for gay and lesbian rights.
DONALD TRUMP has signed an executive order to create a commission to investigate voter fraud and voter suppression in the US.

Despite the firestorm triggered by his shock sacking of James Comey from his post as the FBI director on Tuesday evening, Mr Trump signed the order yesterday establishing the bipartisan Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

The US president has made several unsubstantiated claims that there was widespread voter fraud during the 2016 presidential election with several million illegals voting for the Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

While Mr Trump won the election by 304 electoral college votes to 227, Mrs Clinton comfortably won the popular vote, receiving around 2.9 million more votes than Mr Trump nationwide  a statistic that Mr Trump is said to be irritated by and still does not accept.

The commission, which will be chaired by Mike Pence, the US vice president, will investigate allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and across the nation. It is expected to take a year to compile a report.

The commission will review policies and practices that enhance or undermine the American peoples confidence in the integrity of federal elections  including improper registrations, improper voting, fraudulent registrations, fraudulent voting and voting suppression, an unnamed White House official said.

Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state, who has played a leading role in the drive to crack down on undocumented immigrants, will be appointed as vice president of the commission.

The move was immediately criticised by civil rights groups, who claimed it was a voter suppression tactic and that Mr Kobach would use his position on the commission to try to prevent minority groups from voting.

Kris Kobach being named to run a commission on voter integrity is like naming Bernie Madoff to run a commission on financial crimes, said Frank Sharry, the executive director of Americas Voice Education Fund.

He has dedicated his professional career to trying to deny people of colour the vote and to trying to drive millions of immigrants out of the country.

Mr Trump has previously claimed that between three and five million undocumented immigrants voted illegally last November.

They all voted for Hillary. They didnt vote for me. I dont believe I got one, he said in January.

In February, Mr Trump claimed he would have also won New Hampshire if it had not been for voters bussed in from outside the state. New Hampshire officials have said there was no evidence of major voter fraud.

Voting experts and both Democrats and Republicans have said there is no evidence to suggest that millions of people voted illegally, including Jason Chaffetz, the House oversight committee chairman.

Hurdles

Democrats have frequently accused Republicans of trying to suppress turnout among minority and low-income voters. They have accused Republicans of erecting unnecessary hurdles for voter registration and intimidating voters.

The new commission comes at the same time as several investigations into alleged Russian meddling in last Novembers presidential election.
Donald Trump has attacked James Comey as a showboat and a grand-stander in an interview seeking to justify his shock decision to fire his FBI director.

The US president also directly contradicted the narrative spun by his White House that he had fired Mr Comey following an urgent recommendation from the justice department.

Hes a showboat, hes a grand-stander, the FBI has been in turmoil, Mr Trump said. You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that.

Mr Trumps character assassination came even as members of the FBI rose to defend the reputation of their former boss, setting up the potential for what an informed source termed a war between the White House and the bureau.

Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Andrew McCabe, the acting FBI director, declared it the greatest privilege of his career to have served with Mr Comey.

The presidents letter firing Mr Comey, and accompanying letters from the Attorney Generals office, asserted that he was not capable of leading the bureau, and the White House suggested that he had lost the confidence of its staff.

Thats not accurate, Mr McCabe said. I can tell you that director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI, and still does to this day.

Mr McCabes testimony was supported by the heads of two associations representing current and retired FBI agents and other personnel.

His support within the rank and file of the FBI is overwhelming, said Thomas OConnor, a working FBI special agent who is president of the FBI Agents Association.

One official told the Washington Post that Mr Trump had essentially declared war on a lot of people at the FBI, and that there will be a concerted effort to respond.

In a statement made after he was fired, Mr Comey seemed to urge calm: Im not going to spend time on the decision or the way it was executed, he said. I hope you wont either. It is done, and I will be fine, although I will miss you and the mission deeply.

Mr Trumps firing of Mr Comey was described as Nixonian, with many pointing out that not since Watergate has a president fired the person leading an inquiry into their actions.

Mr Trump is reported to have been growing increasingly frustrated with the FBIs ongoing investigation into allegations of collusion between his associates and Russia.

Mr McCabe, long involved in the Russia investigation, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the inquiry would continue despite Mr Comeys dismissal. He also said he would refrain from giving the White House updates on it, and would tell Congress if there was any attempt to impede the probe.

He starkly disagreed with the White House characterisation of the Russia investigation as probably one of the smallest things on the FBIs plate.

We consider it to be a highly significant investigation, he said. You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing.

Mr Trump said yesterday that he had asked Mr Comey directly if he was being investigated, noting that he spoke with Mr Comey once over dinner and twice by phone. I said, if its possible would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, you are not under investigation.

Mr McCabe declined to confirm in his testimony whether he had ever heard Mr Comey telling Mr Trump that the president was not a target of the investigation.

Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on the FBI to say publicly whether it is investigating Mr Trump. He said: Because it has failed to make this clear, speculation has run rampant.

The comments came as the White House scrambled to create a coherent public narrative for the sacking. In the immediate aftermath of the dismissal, marking only the second time an FBI director has been dismissed in the agencys 109-year history, the White House said it had followed the recommendations of the justice department.

Deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who had been in post for two weeks, wrote a three-page memo criticising the way Mr Comey had handled the investigation into Hillary Clintons emails, but stopped short of recommending his dismissal.

Yesterday informed sources said Mr Rosenstein had threatened to resign, incensed that he was being cast as the prime mover for the decision.

And Mr Trump confirmed that he had long been planning to fire Mr Comey. Obsessed with loyalty, Mr Trump took Mr Comeys recent testimony that he had felt mildly nauseous that his investigation into Hillary Clintons emails could have influenced in the election, as a personal affront.

The dislike was mutual, with Mr Comey privately describing the president as outside the realm of normal, and even crazy, according to sources cited by the New York Times.

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022]
Pope Francis waves to the crowd as he arrives at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima

Pope Francis waves as he embarks his flight to Monte Real, Portugal, from Fiumicino's International airport, near Rome, Italy (L'Osservatore Romano/Pool Photo via AP)

Pope Francis and pilgrims from around the world flocked to a Catholic shrine town in Portugal to honour two poor children whose visions of the Virgin Mary 100 years ago marked one of the most important events of the 20th-century Catholic Church.

Pilgrims three-to-five deep lined his motorcade route and tossed flower petals as he zoomed by.

The huge crowd erupted in cheers and applause as the pontiff's open-topped, white pope mobile arrived at Fatima's vast square.

The rain that had poured down earlier in the day gave way to a brilliant, warm sun by the time Francis arrived.

There was no official crowd estimate, but authorities had previously said they were expecting one million people

Francis is in Fatima to celebrate the centenary of the apparitions and to canonise the children, brother and sister Francisco and Jacinta Marto.

He is hoping the message of peace that they reported 100 years ago, when Europe was in the throes of the First World War, will resonate with the Catholic faithful today.

Over the past several days, church groups, families and individuals have made their way to Fatima, 90 miles north of Lisbon, some completing the final leg of the pilgrimage on their knees in prayer.

Carrying candles, rosaries and roses, they have headed to the statue dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima.

"For me, it's the second time I am here with a pope, first with John Paul II and now with Papa Francisco," pilgrim Elisabete Fradique Conceicao said. "They are simple men and that simplicity makes sense when you think what happened here 100 years ago."

On May 13 1917, while they were grazing their sheep, the children saw the first of a half-dozen visions of the Virgin Mary.

They said she revealed to them three "secrets" - apocalyptic messages foreshadowing the Second World War, hell, the rise and fall of communism and the death of a pope - and urged them to pray for peace and turn away from sin.

At first doubted by the local Catholic Church and even by their parents, the children's story gained believers and was eventually accepted as an authentic apparition by the church in 1930.

The children, who were nine and seven at the time of the apparitions, died of influenza two years later.

Their cousin, Lucia dos Santos, at 10 the ringleader of the group and who became the main raconteur of their tale, is on track for beatification, the first step toward becoming a saint. Her case couldn't begin until after her death in 2005.

Francis' deputy, Cardial Pietro Parolin, said the importance of Fatima lies specifically in the fact that poor, illiterate children were able to convey a powerful message of love, peace and forgiveness at a time of war when "the talk was of hatred, vendetta, hostilities".

In a video message on the eve of his departure, Francis urged all faithful to join him, physically or spiritually, in Fatima.

"With all of us forming one heart and soul, I will then entrust you to Our Lady, asking her to whisper to each one of you: 'My Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and the path that leads you to God.'"

AP

In Fatima the basilica's bells rang out as the pontiff passed in his pope mobile through a sea of people waving flags from dozens of countries.

The crowd fell silent as Francis stood and prayed at the Chapel of the Apparitions, dedicated to the children.

After arriving in Portugal at a military air base, the pope travelled 10 minutes by helicopter to Fatima, before transferring to the pope mobile.

Later during evening prayer, Francis urged Catholics to "tear down all walls" and go to the peripheries to spread peace and justice.

He told the tens of thousands of pilgrims: "We will tear down all walls and cross every frontier, as we go out to every periphery, to make known God's justice and peace."

He spoke after spending several minutes in silent prayer before the statue of the Madonna at the chapel built in Fatima.

Francis attended the traditional Blessing of the Candles at the Fatima shrine.

He lit a candle at a night-time Mass traditionally popular with pilgrims. Behind the pope as he prayed were thousands of points of light as people held up candles in the shrine's vast, dark square.
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Poland Marek Calka visited Baku Higher Oil School (BHOS) and met with BHOS Rector Elmar Gasimov. Having informed the honorable guest about the Higher Schools history, achievements, teaching and learning activities, international relations and recent developments, Elmar Gasimov said that one of the BHOS main objectives is to prepare competent national specialists, whose professional qualifications meet high-level requirements.

Speaking about growing cooperation between Azerbaijan and Poland in political, economic, social, cultural and scientific fields, the rector emphasized the importance to enhance long-term close partnership in the field of education within bilateral relations between two countries.

The Ambassador Marek Calka dwelled on the prospects of further developing cooperation between Azerbaijan and Poland in various spheres. He expressed his pleasure to visit a higher educational institution, which meets the highest international standards, and highly praised BHOS activities for, and success in, training of young specialists.

The ambassador also expressed his willingness to provide all necessary support and assistance to BHOS in establishing the Higher School cooperation with technical universities in Poland and developing joint educational projects.

At the end of the meeting, the Rector Elmar Gasimov presented the Ambassador of Poland in Azerbaijan Marek Calka with BHOS Honorable Guest diploma.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan is heading to the US for talks (Presidency Press Service via AP)

Turkey's president has said he expects his upcoming visit to the US will constitute a new "milestone" for the troubled relations between the two Nato allies.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan also said he hopes that talks with US President Donald Trump in Washington will lead to a "breaking point" in the US decision to arm Syrian Kurdish rebels.

He was speaking to reporters before leaving for China, followed by the trip to Washington.

Turkey has been angered by a US decision to provide arms to Syrian Kurdish fighters that it considers terrorists.

The US considers the Kurdish fighters as the most effective group in the fight against Islamic State militants.

Ankara wants the decision reversed, concerned that the weapons will end up in the hands of Kurdish militants in Turkey.

Ties have also been strained by Turkey's demand for the extradition of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen whom Turkey blames for last year's failed coup attempt.

"I see this trip as a new milestone in Turkey-US relations," Mr Erdogan said.

"I want to consider all the information we have received so far (on US arming Syrian Kurds) as hearsay... And I think this trip will be a breaking point on this issue."

AP
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov before the start of the Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska (AP)

Rex Tillerson speaks at the welcoming ceremony to kick off Arctic Council events in Fairbanks, Alaska (AP)

Arctic nations have renewed calls for the world to address climate warming, but US secretary of state Rex Tillerson says Washington will not rush to make a decision on its policies.

Mr Tillerson spoke in Fairbanks, Alaska, at a meeting of the Arctic Council, an advisory group made up of the eight Arctic nations and indigenous groups.

The council adopted a nine-page Fairbanks Declaration 2017, which noted that the Arctic is warming at more than twice the rate of the global average.

The document noted the importance of reducing soot and methane emissions and said climate change is the most serious threat to Arctic biodiversity.

Mr Tillerson signed the document, but in opening remarks, he cautioned that the US is reviewing several important policies, including how the Trump administration will approach climate change.

"We are appreciative that each of you has an important point of view, and you should know that we are taking the time to understand your concerns," Mr Tillerson told other representatives on the council.

"We're not going to rush to make a decision. We're going to work to make the right decision for the United States."

The Arctic Council, he said, will continue to be an important platform as the Trump administration deliberates.

The president has said little about Arctic policy, but has taken steps to put US Arctic Ocean waters back in play for petroleum drilling.

The Arctic Council's goals are sustainable development and environmental protection of the Arctic. The council does not make policy or allocate resources, and its decisions must be unanimous.

The US, an Arctic country because of the state of Alaska, is joined on the council by Canada, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden.

Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallstrom said she walked away from a private conversation with Mr Tillerson hopeful of US intent in the region.

"He said, well, you know, we ought to first establish our climate policy and then decide on the Paris Agreement and how it relates," she said. "And I think that sounds reasonable to do so."

The worst-case scenario feared by some would be that Mr Tillerson used this gathering to announce the US would withdraw from the Paris Agreement.

"Then that did not happen, and I think that bodes well for the future," Ms Wallstrom said. "I believe that we will see a continued American engagement and commitment to the Arctic."

AP
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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

Trend:

UNEC offers the opportunities of Student and Teacher Exchange Program with 12 universities of the Europe within the Erasmus+ program funded by the European Commission and more than 40 higher education institutions of fraternal country Mevlana Exchange Program funded by the Turkish government in 2016/2017 academic year.

The number of the students who got the right to take part in the international exchange programs offered by UNEC has increased 6 times and the number of teachers 4 times within the last 4 years.

The current year, in general, 72 students of UNEC took a chance of benefitting in Exchange Programs. It is 4 times more than the indicator of 2013/2014 academic years. 28 of them were selected to study at Leicester University of Great Britain within the Erasmus+ program, Babesh- bolyai University Romania, Anatolian and Middle- Eastern Universities of Turkey, CEFAM and Montpellier Universities of France, Vrije Amsterdam University of Netherland, Lodz University of Poland and the Mykolos Romeris University of Lithuania for a term or two.

For the first time, six students from Germany, Romania and Turkey studies at UNEC within the Erasmus+ Program.

Six UNEC students participated in the Mevlana Exchange Program at the Universities of Gazi, Sakarya, Anatolia, Istanbul Aydin and Izmir Katib Chelebi of Turkey with the Scholarship offered by the Higher Education Council of Turkey. 6 of them are undergraduate and 1 is graduate students. At the same time, 1 student of the Istanbul University studied at UNEC within the Mevlana Exchange Program.

Twenty one Professors, teachers and academic staff members were invited to lecture and participate in the Erasmus+ Exchange Program at the CEFAM University of France, Poznan University of Economics and Business of Poland, University of Anatolia of Turkey, the Babesh-bolyai University of Romania and Dunaujvaros University of Hungary. This is the highest indicator in UNECs experience.

Ten Professors, teachers and administrative staff of CEFAM and Montpellier Universities of France, the Poznan University of Economics and Business of Poland, Dunaujvaros University of Hungary and the Mykolos Romeris University of Lithuania participated in the exchange within the Erasmus+ Program in the current year.

They joined UNECs teaching process actively by conducting a series of lectures and attending round- table discussions held by UNEC teachers and students. In general, within the recent ywo years, more than 20 employees from different countries of the Europe were on business at UNEC as visiting professors within the Erasmus+ Exchange Program.

UNEC is the brand of Azerbaijan State University of Economics. The brand of UNEC has been registered and patented by the State Committee on Standardization, Metrology and Patent on January 21 2016.
As the premiere date House of Cards Season 5 is approaching, the excitement of the audience is also reaching new heights. After roaring success of four seasons, the much-acclaimed political drama series has, once again, become the talk of the town.

The show that reveals the world of dirty politics is actually an adaptation of the BBCs namesake mini-series and is based on a novel by Michael Dobbs. However, it has often been under the radar as fans claim that it isnt a fictional show and is rather inspired by the real-life story of the Clintons; Bill Clinton portrayed by Kevin Spacey (Francis J. "Frank" Underwood) and Hillary portrayed by Robin Wright (Claire Underwood).

Recently, Kevin Spacey, who plays the lead role has dismissed all the rumours.

We felt very strongly we did not want people to think that's what we were up to. That was never our intention to play into the real world of politics. We wanted to be an alternative universe. And it may be a universe that some people prefer," Hollywood Reporter quoted the actor as saying.

timeincuk.net

Furthermore, he said that the makers are not even keen on keeping the show topical and that it is supposed to remain unpredictable for the viewers.

Meanwhile, House of Cards season 5 is all set to hit the small screens on June 3 on Zee Cafe. This will be the first season to show the presidency under Donald Trump, but has Frank lost his battle for the White House? Only time will tell!
Do you credit your dog with having a keen sense of smell far superior to yours? Well, it turns out that a person's sense of smell is just as sharp as those of rats and dogs, says John McGann a neuroscientist from Rutgers University as he calls for an end to a century-old myth to the contrary.

He claims that historical writings led to the misconception that the human sense of smell is inferior, according to the report in the journal Science .

Representational Image

For so long people failed to stop and question this claim, even people who study the sense of smell for a living, he said. The fact is that sense of smell is just as good in humans as in other mammals, like rodents and dogs.

Humans have long been believed capable of detecting about 10,000 different odours. In fact, the number is closer to one trillion, McGann said.

A 19th-century brain surgeon and anthropologist named Paul Broca provided the origin of the myth about humans poor sense of smell, the Science report said. In his 1879 writings, Broca cited the smaller volume of humans olfactory area in the brain compared to other, larger parts.

It meant that humans had free will and didnt have to rely on smell to survive like dogs and other mammals, he argued.

Representational Image

Brocas theory even influenced the Austrian neurologist and father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud, who believed peoples lack of smell makes them more susceptible to mental illness.

It has been a long cultural belief that to be a reasonable or rational person, you could not be dominated by a sense of smell, McGann said. Smell was linked to earthly animalistic tendencies.

The human olfactory bulb makes up just 0.01% of the brains volume compared to 2% in mice, McGann said.

But its absolute size in people is actually quite largein adults, it can reach around two inches (60 millimetres)and has a similar number of neurons compared to those of other mammals.

Representational Image

The difference between humans, dogs and rodents when it comes to a sense of smell may come down to different sensitivities to certain odours. We are capable of tracking odour trails, and our behavioural and affective states are influenced by our sense of smell, McGann wrote.

But although humans may be better at sniffing fine wines, dogs are likely to keep excelling at analysing the various types of urine on offer at the nearest fire hydrant.
Animals love unconditionally. Now a prison in US is using this to help rehabilitate rescued animals and in a way the inmates chosen to help them. The program in Maricopa County Sherrif's Office has seen success with animals being adopted after their training and inmates finding jobs in the pet industry after finishing their sentence.

1. Inmate Kristina Hazelett, 35, plays with a dog in a cell at the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit in a former jail that has become a shelter for abused and neglected animals seized in Maricopa County Sheriff's Office investigations, in Phoenix, Arizona. Hazelett had cats, birds and hamsters growing up, but she never knew much about dogs until she started serving a several-month jail sentence for drug possession. The 35-year-old inmate is part of a small team of women prisoners in Phoenix, Arizona who work with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Animal Safety Unit (MASH). The program is designed to help comfort and train mistreated and neglected animals rescued from deplorable conditions.

Reuters



2. Inmate Aubrey Herrera, 31, takes a dog to the roof for exercise. But the rehabilitation goes much farther than helping the abused animals. "Along the way, we provide the rehabilitation for not just the animals but for the inmates as well," William Sibole, a detention officer with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, told Reuters.

Reuters

3. An inmate walks a dog back into its cell at the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit. Six days a week the women in the program are transported to the animal shelter in a former men's jail where rows of cells, some adorned with dog portraits and animal murals, have been renamed Bow Wow Way, Purr Lane, 2nd Chance and Ruff Road.

Reuters

4. Two puppies look out through a cell door. Since the former men's jail was converted into a holding centre to provide a safe haven for the animals in 2000, thousands of mainly dogs, cats and horses have been cared for and adopted.

Reuters

5. Inmates interact with a dog at the jail outreach program of the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit. Once the animals are healthy and social some of them may be taken by detention officers to another program at the Maricopa County jail facilities to interact with other prisoners.

Reuters

6. Female inmates walk from their holding cell to the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit. MASH said it is the only agency in the United States that investigates animal cruelty complaints, rescues the animals, houses and cares for them and arranges adoptions.

Reuters

7. Inmate Kristina Hazelett, 35, wears a hazmat suit to play with a puppy infected with giardia. Hazelett and the other women in the female-only program that lasts at least 30 days are interviewed and rigorously screened before they are accepted. They work with detention officers and animal care technicians to acquire the training skills necessary to get the dogs ready for adoption. Some of the hundreds of graduates have gone on to jobs in the pet industry. Two are studying to become vet technicians.

Reuters

8. Inmate Kristina Hazelett strokes a dog in a cell. "I get so much out of it, probably more than the dogs do," Hazelett said in an interview. "It's very therapeutic for me as well, not just them, which was an unexpected, pleasant surprise."

Reuters

9. Inmate Aubrey Herrera plays with a dog. For Herrera, a 31-year-old woman serving time for a probation violation for theft and drug charges, caring for the dogs is the highlight of each day. Patience is what she said the program has taught her. "These dogs are locked up just like we are and they need love just like we do," she explained. "It's not about us when we come here. It's about the dogs and making sure they're taken care of and loved and bathed - that they know what it's like to feel loved."

Reuters

10. A dog watches inmates in leg chains walk past.

Reuters

11. Female inmates are searched at the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit.

Reuters

12. Inmate Aubrey Herrera, 31, (L) jokingly pat searches a dog on the roof of the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit.

Reuters

13. An inmate interacts with a dog at the jail outreach program.

Reuters

14. Inmate Aubrey Herrera, 31, cleans up dog feces on the roof.

Reuters

15. A dog is seen in a mirror next to a mural at the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit.

Reuters

16. Inmates interact with a dog at the jail outreach program.

Reuters

17. Pictures of rescued dogs hang on a wall at the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit.

Reuters

18. Maricopa County Sheriff's Office Detention Officer Leanne Weeks, 32, runs a dog back to the MCSO Animal Safe Haven (MASH) Unit.

Reuters
The Allahabad High Court has directed the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government to issue new licenses and renew licences of slaughterhouses and meat shops which had expired.

The court in an interim order asked local bodies to issue new licences to applicants complying with the standards set by the food safety department. Read more

1. US Calls Pakistan's Bluff On Pathankot Probe, Slaps Sanction On Pak-Based Terror Groups

The United States has blamed Pakistan for deteriorating its relationship with India and said that the tension might increase in the face of another high- profile" terrorist attack from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing. Read more

2. Hizbul Mujahideen Could Be Behind Lt. Ummer Fayaz's Murder, Cops Identify Three Terrorists

The gruesome murder of Ummer Fayaz, a young and promising Army officer left the entire nation in grief. The security agencies that are investigating the case have now hinted that terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen could be behind his killing as people involved having the links with the banned outfit.

"We have conducted preliminary investigations. It does point out to (the involvement of) a module of Hizbul Mujahideen active in Shopian," Inspector General of Police Kashmir S J M Gillani said. Read more

3. Yogi Adityanath Wants Potholes On UP Roads To Be Fixed In Just 40 Days, Gives Rs 1,400 Crores For This

UP has launched a drive to fill up potholes on as many as 11,107 roads within 40 days, with the Yogi Adityanath government allotting nearly Rs 1,400 crore for the work. The state government earmarked the money on May 6.

The work has to be completed by June 15, that is before the onset of monsoon rains in the state, as per the target fixed by the chief minister. Read more

4. Mustard Is All Set To Become The First Genetically Modified Food In India, Here's What It Means

While the world is going after organic and indigenous food crops, India is well on its way to use the controversial genetically modified (GM) mustard. It will be the first of its kind food item which will be cultivated commercially after it was cleared by the regulatory authority.

The biotech regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), on Thursday cleared the commercial cultivation of GM mustard in the country. The commercial cultivation of the GM seed can begin once the regulator's clearance gets the nod from Union Environment Minister, Mr Anil Dave. Read more

5. Vijay Mallya Plotted Criminal Conspiracy, Money Laundering, Indian Officials Tell UK

A joint team of CBI and ED, seeking extradition of Vijay Mallya, has informed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of UK that the former liquor baron laundered money taken on loan from state-owned banks as part of a "criminal conspiracy".

A joint team of CBI and ED, seeking extradition of Vijay Mallya, has informed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of UK that the former liquor baron laundered money taken on loan from state-owned banks as part of a "criminal conspiracy". Read more
While the world is going after organic and indigenous food crops, India is well on its way to use the controversial genetically modified (GM) mustard. It will be the first of its kind food item which will be cultivated commercially after it was cleared by the regulatory authority.

AFP/ Representational Image

The biotech regulator, Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC), on Thursday cleared the commercial cultivation of GM mustard in the country. The commercial cultivation of the GM seed can begin once the regulator's clearance gets the nod from Union Environment Minister, Mr Anil Dave.

AFP/ Representational Image

The GM mustard was developed by Delhi University-based Centre for Genetic Manipulation of Crop Plants (CGMCP) under the leadership of Deepak Pental, a former vice-chancellor of the university.

According to the developers, the GM mustard uses a system of genes from soil bacterium that makes the plant better suited to hybridisation than current methods.

AFP/ Representational Image

An estimated 5.05 million hectares of land, in mostly in Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Gujarat and Assam is used to cultivate mustard. Advocates of GM mustard claim the 5.07 million tonne annual production of the seed could drastically increase by the use of the modified seeds.

But the GM mustard has its fare share of opponents too, including the RSS-linked think-tank Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM).

AFP/ Representational Image

The 'Sarson Satyagraha', a broad platform of hundreds of NGOs representing farmers, consumers, scientists and others that have been at the forefront of resisting the approval of GM mustard in India' too condemned the green signal to the herbicide tolerant GM Mustard.

Mustard is not the first genetically modified food crop that was introduced in India. Earlier, the clearance for commercial cultivation of BT Brinjal which had also been cleared by GEAC was rejected by the then environment minister Jairam Ramesh.

AFP/ Representational Image

Other GM crops waiting in the pipeline include BT tomato containing an insect-resistant gene that can control crop damage due to the onslaught of fruit-borer insects.

BCCL

Currently, the only GM crop which is being commercially cultivated in India is BT cotton.

According to some estimates, 96 per cent of the cotton cultivation in the country uses BT cotton seeds, by US company Monsanto which charges a 'royalty fee' from the farmers.
The United States has blamed Pakistan for deteriorating its relationship with India and said that the tension might increase in the face of another high- profile" terrorist attack from across the border this year.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

Now the US has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's JuD group as part of an effort to disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks.

The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu'ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISIS-Khorasan.

Reuters

Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan and parts of India.

The sanctions, in particular, have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the Welfare and Development Organization of Jamaat-ud-Dawah for Quran and Sunnah (WDO).

"These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaida, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, director of treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

Reuters

"The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate terrorist activities," Smith said.

"The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said.

"The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added.

OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaida, ISIS, and ISIS-Khorasan.

Reuters

Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan.

Inayat-ur Rahman has been slapped with sanctions for acting for JDQ and the Taliban, and for providing material and financial support to LeT and the Taliban. A long-time leader of JDQ, he worked directly for Haji Hayatullah.

OFAC designated the WDO for being controlled by Inayat-ur Rahman. As of 2015, he was the director, chairman, and president of WDO.
A joint team of CBI and ED, seeking extradition of Vijay Mallya, has informed the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of UK that the former liquor baron laundered money taken on loan from state-owned banks as part of a "criminal conspiracy".

BCCL

CPS, which will argue on May 17 on why Mallya should be extradited to India, had asked for "strong points" of argument and the joint team of officials from CBI and ED briefed it last week. The Indian officers briefed them how Mallya first convinced the banks that he was taking a loan for the operations of Kingfisher Airlines, a budget carrier that he owned.

Lawyers of CPS were informed that Mallya had connived with Yogesh Aggarwal, the then chairman of IDBI Bank which extended a loan of Rs 900 crore to the airline which was already debt-ridden. The total outstanding loan with interest stands at Rs 9,000 crore.

ALSO READ: Indian Officials Reach London To Try And Speed Up Vijay Mallya's Extradition Back To India

BCCL

Officials also explained to CPS how Mallya diverted the money to either shell companies in India or abroad, said sources. Details of places where money was laundered, including companies/accounts in the UK, have already been shared.

Asked by CPS lawyers, Indian officials said they could rely on the statements given by several people, including bank officials and employees of now defunct Kingfisher Airlines while arguing for Mallya's extradition.

ALSO READ: Supreme Court Holds Vijay Mallya Guilty Of Contempt, Orders Him To Appear Before It On July 10

Another strong point which Indian officials explained to CPS lawyers was Mallya's escape to London on March 2 last year just as when criminal investigation were initiated against him on the complaints of banks. Mallya fled to London after selling stakes in his companies, which was pointed out by the Indian officials as "part of the criminal conspiracy" and showed there was "no intention" to repay the loans.

ALSO READ: Here's A Timeline Of 'Wilful Defaulter' Vijay Mallya's Rs 9,000 Crore Loan Default Case

BCCL

The CBI and ED officials also said Mallya's contentions have been turned down even by the Supreme Court. They said Indian courts have issued non-bailable warrants against Mallya after examining the "strong evidence" against him. Mallya's extradition proceedings will be heard by senior district judge Emma Arbuthnot at 81 Marylebone Road, London on May 17.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

Trend:

Mens volleyball competitions are underway as part of the Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games.

In a Group B match, Irans national volleyball team defeated the Saudi Arabian squad in all three sets  3:0 (25:18, 25:23, 25:18).

The Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games, the opening ceremony of which will take place May 12, started May 8 and will last until May 22 in Azerbaijans capital.
Artificial Intelligence is being experimented with in various fields right now, from diagnosing medical conditions to digital assistants. Yet, despite all the good work these sort of developments could do its refreshing to see the technology being applied to something a little more mundane for once.

Specifically, were talking about Google here, which has built a program that uses machine learning to let anyone create a customised emoji of their own face.

Images courtesy: Google

The tech has just been implemented in Googles chat app, Allo. From today, whenever you pull up your list of stickers to respond to a chat, theres an additional option that you might want to try called Turn a selfie into stickers. All you have to do is tap the the button and then take a selfie. Once thats done, Googles image recognition software maps your face and then translates it into a cartoon version of yourself using a custom-created kit.

As reported by Co.Design, Allo uses a specialized sticker kit her, created by artist Lamar Abrams, also responsible for creating the Steven Universe series on Cartoon Network. The kit has hundreds of of variations of eyes, noses, ears, and hairstyles, all drawn to best match any possible faces its tasked with creating. You dont need to stick with what Allo spits out of course, once the face is generated youre free to change any individual features you like. Reportedly, Google states the app is capable of generating at least 563 quadrillion unique faces. Select your preferred final result, and Allo then generates a set of 22 personalised stickers just for you.

Of course, Google wasnt just experimenting with making cartoons of people; their research could go a long way towards helping perfect their facial recognition software. Specifically, it could improve how machines recognise a persons face when in different kinds of lighting scenarios and while wearing accessories like glasses.

On the other hand, Allos custom stickers arent aimed at reproducing your face as accurately as possible. The Google team just decided to have fun, tweaking the program to represent all kinds of people as they want to see themselves.

Still, the implications are staggering. Googles research could eventually lead to custom-generated faces for the digital assistants on our smartphones, computers, and IoT hubs. Imagine being able to upload an image and then have a 3D modelled face help you interact with your devices, instead of a faceless voice. Truly, the future looks fantastic.
Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com.

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Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Vugar Imanov  Trend:

Opening Ceremony of the Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku promises to be incredibly beautiful and memorable, a tourist from the Kazakh city of Almaty, Albina Tuganova told Trend.

We are in Baku for the second time. We learned by chance that the Islamic Solidarity Games are held here. We decided to buy a ticket and watch the Opening Ceremony, which is said to be grandiose. I think it will be an exciting event, said Tuganova.

These Games have united many countries and are a real demonstration of the friendship among peoples, added Tuganova.

She also noted that she likes the hospitable Baku very much.

The Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games, the opening ceremony of which will take place May 12, started May 8 and will last until May 22 in Azerbaijans capital.
This post contains affiliate links For the last six years, I have helped organize a chili cook-off in my office. It is always around Valent...
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Samir Ali  Trend:

Fraternal Azerbaijan is demonstrating excellent organizational skills at the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games, Tamer Ozbay, tourist from Ankara, Turkey, told Trend.

We came to Baku to watch the Opening Ceremony of the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games. I visited Baku many years ago. This time I witnessed great development. The current Baku is a modern European city. I am sure that over time, it will become more and more beautiful, noted Ozbay.

The Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games started May 8 and will last until May 22 in Azerbaijans capital.
Prof. Tijani Bande was appointed by Nigeria was on Thursday as the Acting President to preside over the 81st Plenary Meeting of UN General Assembly at the UN headquarters.

Bandes presidency at the Plenary Meeting happened just nine days after he presented his credentials to the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Nigeria was appointed one of the 21 Vice-Presidents of the General Assembly on June 13, 2016, at the 71st session of the General Assembly.

Bande presided over the General Assembly following the absence of the President of the Assembly, Peter Thomson, who was on an official travel to the Central African Republic.

The opportunity for Nigeria to preside over the 193-member body became possible following the assumption of duty of the countrys Permanent Representative.

Bande had said that the goodwill Nigeria enjoyed since his assumption of duty last week was an indications that the international community had keenly awaited the appointment of Nigerias ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN more than a year after the last ambassador completed her assignment and returned home.

I intend to leverage on this and continue to leverage on Nigerias image in positive light, Bande said.

The 81st Plenary Meeting of the General Assembly under Nigerias Acting Presidency considered three reports.

The first report was Appointment of Members of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Question: report of the Fifth Committee, including the appointment of Mr Olivier Myard of France as a member of the committee from May 11, 2017, to Dec. 31, 2019.

The second report was Appointment of Members of the Committee on Contributions: report of the Fifth Committee, with the appointment of Ms Zhang Wei of China as a member beginning May 11, 2017, and ending Dec. 31, 2017.

The third report considered was the Organisation of Work, Adoption of the Agenda and Allocation of Items: Appointment of Members of the International Civil Service Commission: report of the Fifth Committee, with the appointment of Mr Vladimir Storozhev of the Russian Federation as a member effective May 11, 2017 to Dec. 31, 2020.

Bande, subsequently, after the consideration of the three reports and recommendations, adjourned the Plenary Meeting.

Prof. Tijani is Nigerias Ambassador/Permanent Representative
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Vugar Imanov  Trend:

Mehmet Garagapichi, a tourist who came to Baku from Istanbul, has told Trend that he is expecting that the 4th Islamic Solidarity Games will increase love in the world.

It is easy to sow enmity, but it is very difficult to share love, to promote its increase. The organizers of the Islamic Solidarity Games in Baku have successfully coped with this difficult task. Everything is fine and everything is organized at a high level, said Garagapichi.

He also noted that unity is one of the fundamental principles of Islam, which makes no distinction between people.

According to Garagapichi, he regularly visits Baku over the 25 years.

I come to Baku often. I am an engineer and I graduated from the current Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University, and I love Baku very much, he added.

The Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games started May 8 and will last until May 22 in Azerbaijans capital.
Shootin' the Bull about things remaining the same Swift Trading Company - 2 minutes ago Election results lead me to believe nothing will change. My belief, not to be confused with fact, is that action taken by the Fed, to increase interest rates will impact businesses and then the consumer. ...

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Cocoa Prices Mixed as Dollar Strength Weighs on NY Cocoa Barchart - 42 minutes ago December ICE NY cocoa (CCZ22 ) on Wednesday closed down -5 (-0.20%), and December ICE London cocoa #7 (CAZ22 ) closed up +48 (+2.34%). Cocoa prices Wednesday settled mixed, with London cocoa climbing to... CCH23 : 2,530s (+0.24%) CAH23 : 2,052s (+1.79%)

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Cocoa Prices Mixed as Dollar Strength Weighs on NY Cocoa Barchart - 17 minutes ago December ICE NY cocoa (CCZ22 ) on Wednesday closed down -5 (-0.20%), and December ICE London cocoa #7 (CAZ22 ) closed up +48 (+2.34%). Cocoa prices Wednesday settled mixed, with London cocoa climbing to... CCH23 : 2,530s (+0.24%) CAH23 : 2,052s (+1.79%)

Sugar Rallies as USDA Cuts its 2022/23 U.S. Sugar Production Estimate Barchart - 45 minutes ago March NY world sugar #11 (SBH23 ) on Wednesday closed up +0.38 (+2.00%), and Dec London white sugar #5 (SWZ22 ) closed up +6.20 (+1.15%). Sugar prices Wednesday added to this week's gains, with NY sugar... SBH23 : 19.38s (+2.00%) SWH23 : 523.70s (+1.22%)

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By Sam Hook

For years, experts have stressed the importance of having a mobile-optimized website for your self-storage business. Updating your website to ensure it performs well on mobile devices as well as desktop computers is significant. But weve finally reached the tipping point on this issue. How your site displays and performs on mobile devices is now more important than how it does on desktops. You can no longer think of your website as a desktop platform that works on mobile. Rather, you should consider it a mobile website that also works well on a desktop.

Google has always been at the forefront of understanding how users interact with the Web. In this article, were going to cover some of the search engines major changes over the past couple of years that demonstrate the shift from desktop to mobile and how they could affect your business moving forward.

An Increase in Mobile Searches

Google announced in 2015 that it tallies more searches by people using mobile devices than desktop. A more recent study from intelligence-gathering platform Hitwise puts the figure at 58 percent. It seems likely from trend data that the figure has increased.

Searches from mobile devices are even more important for self-storage companies than many other industries because a third of mobile searches have local intent, according to Search Engine Land, a source of search engine industry news and trends. Local intent means a person is searching for something related to a location, e.g., storage near me, or storage in Phoenix.

Googles Changes

Google is as a critical source of traffic to your website, so you need to pay attention to any changes it makes. The company has been trying to get business website owners to move toward mobile optimization for years. Here are some of the things its done to encourage the transition:

Accelerated mobile pages (AMP). This is a Google-backed project that provides a way for website owners to create pages that load quickly on mobile. How? By limiting the page content to little other than the main subject. The aim of AMP is to make browsing more pleasant for people who are using data on their phone. If youve started to implement AMP and want to know that you have everything set up correctly, you can use Googles AMP Test.

Mobile-friendly update. In April 2015, Google released the first version of its mobile-friendly update. This was a simple pass-fail test. Google looks over your site and checks whether its mobile friendly per certain factors. If your website doesnt pass, Google wont rank it as highly in the search results when someone is searching on a mobile device. Google updated this again in May 2016 to boost the effect.

My company recently completed a study to determine approximately how many self-storage companies passed this test. About 18.3 percent of U.S. and 31 percent of U.K. storage websites failed. Its likely this is an underestimate, and a higher portion of all storage sites would fail. If you want to check how your own site performs, you can use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. However, its been brought up recently that you can pass the test yet still be labeled as not mobile-friendly if your site takes too long to load.

Mobile-first index. This is the most important change, though it hasnt yet been released at the time of this writing. With this change, Google is going to look at your site as if its being searched by a mobile user. This is essentially Google saying your mobile site is more important to it than your desktop site. Why make this change? Companies sometimes show users different content depending on the device theyre using. Considering most searches are now done via mobile, Google wants to know its serving the best results for this majority.

These changes demonstrate how mobile is now more important than desktop for your storage companys website. That means making sure your website displays correctly on mobile devices but also optimizing it for users and search engines. If you dont keep up to date with the way things are progressing, youre going to get left behind!

Sam Hook and his brother, Ben, co-founded The Storage Agency, a digital-marketing agency that helps self-storage companies maximize their online exposure. The company provides website design, public relations, online marketing and link-building. For more information, visit https://storage.agency.
National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSAT), a Maryland real estate investment trust (REIT) specializing in self-storage, continues to expand its presence in Florida. The company acquired a 44,000-square-foot storage property in Manatee County, Fla., last month through its affiliate NSA Property Holdings LLC, according to the source. The $5.5 million purchase is on the southwest corner of State Road 64 and Lakewood Ranch Boulevard. The seller was Lakewood Ranch Express Storage LLC, an affiliate of Hide-Away Storage, which is an NSAT participating regional operator (PRO).

Hide-Away developed the self-storage facility after it acquired the 3-arce parcel two years ago from Pennsylvania-based Portal Crossing RT 64 LLC for $1.4 million, the source reported. Sarasota, Fla.-based Hide-Away Storage Services Inc. became NSATs seventh PRO a year ago. It contributed its 14 properties comprising about 1 million rentable square feet to the REITs self-storage portfolio for approximately $115 million.

Hide-Away founder Steve Wilson told the source in October that the company would continue to work on its growth alongside NSATs national expansion.

In March, NSAT signed an agreement to add Florida-based Personal Mini Storage as the REITs eighth PRO. Personal Mini manages 40 facilities in mid-Florida comprising approximately 2.7 million rentable square feet.

In November 2016, NSAT purchased several Florida self-storage facilities, including Lakewood Storage in Bradenton, Fla., for $7.6 million from Michael E. Edwards, owner of Manatee River Groves Inc. The company also bought a 26-property portfolio from Kayne Anderson Real Estate Advisors LLC, an investment-management firm, that included five facilities in Florida.

Headquartered in Greenwood, Colo., NSAT is a self-administered and -managed REIT focused on the acquisition, operation and ownership of self-storage properties within the top 100 U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Areas throughout the United States. The company has ownership interest in 456 storage facilities in 23 states. Its portfolio comprises approximately 28 million net rentable square feet. It's owned by its affiliate operators, who are contributing their interests in their self-storage assets over the next few years as their current mortgage debt matures.
Oil prices rose for a second day on Thursday, closing more than 1 percent higher as support grew for OPEC output cuts a day after the U.S. government reported a big draw in crude inventories, boosting confidence that a global glut might diminish, Reuters reported.

U.S. light crude oil CLc1 ended the day up 50 cents, or 1.6 percent, at $47.83. Brent LCOc1 settled at $50.77, up 55 cents or 1.1 percent. It was the highest closing price in a week for both benchmarks.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Department reported that U.S. crude stockpiles posted their biggest weekly drawdown since December as imports dropped sharply. Inventories of refined products also fell.

"People are hinging the optimism today on the recent drawdown in inventories and I think that might last as long as we dont have another inventory build," said Stewart Glickman, head of energy research at CFRA Research in New York.

In recent days major producers like Iraq, Algeria and Kuwait have voiced support for extending last year's deal from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other producers to cut supply by almost 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd).

On Thursday, non-members Turkmenistan and Equatorial Guinea said they would also join the cuts, though they are smaller producers.

On May 25, OPEC will meet to determine policy for the second half of 2017. Most analysts expect the group to extend cuts until at least year-end. If they don't, Glickman said, "theyll take the floor out from oil prices."

OPEC said Thursday that group production fell in April. Despite the reduction, there are few signs that supply has fallen significantly as other producers have continued to supply key customers, especially in Asia.

OPEC also said it sees more supply coming from non-member countries such as the United States. The cartel raised its estimate of total oil supply growth from non-OPEC producers this year to 950,000 bpd from a previous forecast of 580,000 bpd.

U.S. oil production C-OUT-T-EIA rose to more than 9.3 million bpd last week, highest since August 2015. Even with this week's drawdown in U.S. crude stocks, Glickman said the country has a way to go to reduce oversupply.

Youre going to have to have a few weeks of 5 million-barrel draws just to get back to square one," he said.
The U.K. is heading towards a youth unemployment crisis because people arent saving enough to retire.

Thats the warning from Euan MacLaren, the London-based head of Natixis Global Asset Managements institutional business in the U.K. and Ireland, who has been discussing potential pension reforms with government officials.

MacLaren met with officials at the U.K. Department for Work & Pensions prior to the beginning of purdah  a closed period when British civil servants cannot hold such meetings prior to a general election. The government officials have been meeting with asset management firms as part of an evaluation of what age people should be automatically enrolled in retirement savings plans.

There is a growing understanding that if a 70-year old doesnt move on and retire, then a company may not feel able to hire the 16-year old trainee that they would usually hire, MacLaren said in an interview. You will get social unrest from youth unemployment and then you have a major social issue on your hands.

The U.K. Department for Work & Pensions declined to comment on its review of auto-enrollment due to purdah.

Britain began requiring its largest employers to automatically enroll employees in retirement savings plans in 2012. The obligation, which started with employers with more than 250 staff, has been gradually rolled out to increasingly smaller U.K. firms. The government aims for 11 million people to be auto-enrolled by 2018.

Francois Barker, the head of Eversheds Sutherlands pensions group, agreed with MacLarens view that Britons retirement delay is creating a lack of job openings for youngsters, saying the issue doesnt get much attention because its a decades away issue for politicians.

If you have octogenarians that cant afford to retire, they are going to be a drain on the state, Barker said. If you have got lots of senior people still in work, who are not moving on, then that is going to inhibit an employers ability to recruit at the bottom.

Natixis has begun analyzing the mix of funds that are offered by default in U.K. company pension schemes to assess their appropriateness. The asset management firm is hoping to publish its findings at the end of the summer, using some of the information for its own sales process.

Companies are supplying defined contribution retirement plans that are "fit-for-purpose, but not optimum, said MacLaren. In many cases, a lot of the default funds are not the best they could be.

He said that a lot of people will be nearing retirement and realizing they dont have as much to retire on as they thought they would.

Insurance firm Aegon said this month that it found that one in seven people in the U.K. aged 55-65 are approaching retirement without any pension.

There is a portion of the population who either feel unable to or are unwilling to save for retirement, Kate Smith, head of pensions at Aegon, said in a company statement about its findings in the U.K. Others may consciously opt out of a workplace pension perhaps for affordability reasons.
A Perry Capital spin out and head of opportunistic investments for New York State Common Retirement Fund are among the names on this years list of hedge fund up-and-comers.

Institutional Investor magazine, along with its sister publication Alpha, today announced the 2017 Hedge Fund Rising Stars, a list of 30 up-and-comers in the hedge fund industry.

Split between those working at hedge funds and those working for allocators that invest in hedge funds, the Rising Stars are nominated by their colleagues and industry peers. The stars will be honored at Institutional Investors Hedge Fund Industry Awards gala dinner, which is taking place at the Mandarin Oriental in New York on Wednesday, June 21. The complete list of Hedge Fund Rising Stars follows. For more about the dinner and information on attending, please visit the awards website.

Alexander Ahari

Redington

Brooke Beck

Marcato Capital Management

Ben Block

Ardsley Partners

Stephen Blundin

Verizon Investment Management Corp.

Adri Chaikin

NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital

Martha deLivron

Texas Municipal Retirement System

Tim Garry

Pelorus Jack Capital

Nick Graziano

Venetus Partners

Edward Hetherington

UNC Management Co.

Cameron Khajavi

MIK Capital

Ryan Kus

New Holland Capital

William Maslovsky

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Allan Merrill

Eton Park Capital Management

Leigh Nisonson

Consonance Capital

Jed Nussbaum

Nut Tree Capital Management

Lynn OConnell

Aksia

Michael Orecchio

Schonfeld Strategic Advisors

Tyson Pratcher

New York State Common Retirement Fund

Andrew Rechtschaffen

Arex Capital

Jason Rector

State of Wisconsin Investment Board

Sarah Samuels

Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board

Devinder Sangha

Albourne Partners

Ruchit Shah

Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Co.

Amy Sutter

Jafra Capital

Tarek Turaigi

KAUST Investment Management Co.

Scott Werthamer

Fortress Investment Group

Todd Westhus

Olympic Peak Asset Management

Seth Wunder

Black-and-White Capital

Katherine Yearwood

Bessemer Trust

Mi Zhou

Citadel
Zurich Insurance Group saw its profits shrink in the first quarter compared to a year ago, and has confirmed major cost-cutting measures.



The insurers net income fell to $607 million in the first quarter of the year from $875 million in the first quarter of 2016, according to a Fox Business report. Base operating profit was $928 million in Q1, a 13% drop from the prior year. The decrease was due largely to the way that the UK calculates personal injury and accident claims. Zurichs first-quarter operating profit took a $289 million hit because of the change, known as the Ogden rate, Fox Business reported.



When that effect was excluded, operating profit was $1.2 billion, up 14% from Q1 of 2016.



Underwriting performance is improving and we have delivered another absolute reduction in expenses, said Zurich CFO George Quinn.



Quinn also said that changes to the Ogden rate wouldnt have a similar impact in future quarters, according to a Reuters report. He also said that the companys goal to reduce costs by $1.5 billion by 2019 was absolutely achievable.








Louisiana already has some of the highest property insurance rates in the nation. But they could creep higher stillan estimated $1.11 billion higher over the next decadeshould congressional tax-reform efforts limit insurance companies ability to use reinsurance, which is how the insurance industry pools the risk of very large disasters around the globe.

That estimate comes from a new report jointly published by the Pelican Institute and the R Street Institute on the impact of a border-adjustment tax, or BAT, which House Republicans have proposed as part of their Better Way tax-reform plan. Under a border-adjustment tax, corporations pay tax on domestic sales, but not international sales, and are allowed to write off the cost of goods and services bought from other U.S. companies, but not those purchased from abroad.

Reinsuranceor insurance for insurance companiesis by its nature an international business.

The global reinsurance market looks for uncorrelated risks from all over the world, bundling together the risk of earthquakes in New Zealand, flood in the United Kingdom, tsunamis in Japan and hurricanes in Louisiana, with the knowledge that all of those huge disasters are unlikely to occur all at once.

Should Congress adopt the border-adjustment taxor similar proposals like a reciprocal tax, territorial tax, a discriminatory tax on insurance affiliates or a minimum taxit would affect insurers ability to use reinsurance to spread risk globally. This would disproportionately harm consumers in states like Louisiana, where the threat of a major disaster always looms. In 2016, Louisiana accounted for $1.23 billion in insured catastrophe losses, the third highest total of any state in the nation.

Indeed, Louisianas insurance market is still recovering from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which at $49 billion in insured losses was the costliest catastrophe in U.S. history. In the wake of 2005s Katrina and Rita, many home insurance companies left or scaled back their exposure in the state. Within a few years, the taxpayer-backed Louisiana Citizens Property Insurance Corp. was writing coverage for more than one out of every 10 homes in the state. It took nearly a decadeand diligent work by state lawmakers and regulatorsfor competition to return and Citizens to shrink to a more manageable size. But the impact of a BAT could reverse that progress in a hurry.

Its not just home insurance that would feel the effects of punitive taxes on international reinsurance. Louisiana relies heavily on foreign insurance and reinsurance for the oil and gas industry, including $6.9 billion of commercial property insurance coverage provided by the industrys Bermuda-based captive insurance company. Of the 40 insurance companies to report losses from 2010s Deepwater Horizon disaster, 16 are based in Bermuda, 13 are European, nine are American, one is Australian and one is Japanese. Losing the capital these global insurers and reinsurers bring to Louisiana could cripple the states most important industry.

With the United States having among the highest corporate income tax rates in the developed world, there is no question that tax reform is necessary. But lawmakers in Congress should bear in mind that, if they want to impose a system like a border-adjustment tax, they should exempt insurance and other financial services. Thats what done in nearly all of the 160 countries that use the value-adjusted tax, or VAT, which like the BAT taxes imports, but not exports. Thats because they recognize such a tax would have the effect of destroying capital and hurting economic growth.

Apply a BAT to reinsurance also would concentrate catastrophe risk within the United States, which would also increase prices. Tax reform is welcome and necessary, but it shouldnt come at the expense of a state that already pays more than its fair share for insurance.

Topics Carriers Catastrophe USA Trends Louisiana Reinsurance Market
Delaware Insurance Commissioner Trinidad Navarro announced at The Delaware Captive Insurance Associations (DCIA) Spring Forum that Steve Kinion will continue his leadership as Captive Bureau Director for another year.

The announcement comes after Kinions contract expired on April 1 of this year.

It was mutually agreed that the best interests of the Captive Bureau will be served by extending Mr. Kinions contract, Navarro said in an emailed statement to Insurance Journal.

Insurance Journal previously reported in February that the Department had planned to transfer the role from a contractual position to an exempt, appointed full-time state employee position. A spokesperson for the Delaware Department of Insurance declined to comment on the Departments future plans for the role after extending Kinions contract.

Kinion has guided the Bureau for the last eight years as it has grown from less than 100 captive insurance entities to just more than 1,000. As Captive Bureau Director, he is responsible for regulating Delaware-domiciled captive insurance entities and overseeing the daily operations of the office, articulating the bureaus goals and objectives and ensuring a stable and competitive environment for captive insurance.
Bermuda-based Validus Holdings Ltd. announced that Kean Driscoll has been named president of the group, effective immediately. Driscoll will continue to serve as chief executive officer of Validus Reinsurance Ltd., a position he has held since 2012.

Driscoll was a founding member of the group, which was launched in 2005, and previously served as chief underwriting officer. He has more than 20 years experience as a reinsurance underwriter, and was previously with Quanta Re, and Zurich Re N.A., which later became Converium, the company said.

Driscoll holds a Bachelor of Arts in Literature from Colgate University and an MBA from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors.

Kean has been an outstanding leader and valued partner in guiding Validus Res successful growth and diversification since our founding, said Ed Noonan, chairman and chief executive officer of Validus. The entire Validus Group will benefit from Keans discipline and creativity and we are delighted to have him as our president.

Validus Holdings has not had a president since 2013 when Jeff Consolino  who also had been chief financial officer  left the company, a company representative explained. (Consolino has been executive vice president and CFO of American Financial Group Inc. since February 2013.)

Validus Holdings
A big change in the Ogden rate in the UK and higher natural catastrophe losses are dampening a wide range of Bermuda-based insurer and reinsurer results in the 2017 first quarter, Standard & Poors said in a new report.

Unfavorable reserve developments in UK auto insurance  also known as Ogden losses  and high natural catastrophe losses delivered a one-two punch to Bermudian re/insurers earnings in first-quarter 2017, according to the report titled Bermuda Re/Insurance Quarterly Insights: A Shaky Start To 2017.

The Ogden rate is used to calculate lump sum awards in UK bodily injury cases, and the UK recently cut the rate from 2.5 percent to -0.75 percent. As a result, insurers must pay much more to claimants.

Standard & Poors noted that this was a decrease of 325 basis points and the first rate change since 2001. As a result, losses from this, which S&P terms as casualty catastrophe, should land between $6.5 billion and $9 billion. About 80 percent will be absorbed by the global reinsurance market, and Bermuda will not remain unscathed, according to the report.

Based on announced estimated losses, Bermudians took about a $260 million hit  about 2.7 percentage points  to their loss ratios in first-quarter 2017, the S&P report noted.

Of course, Bermudian insurers and reinsurers have not been immune to the damage caused by a jump in natural catastrophe losses.

As S&P noted, reported natural catastrophe losses for the Bermudian insurers and reinsurers rose to $240 million in the 2017 first quarter. Thats more than double compared to the same period a year ago, and S&P said it is also more than 4.5 times the result from similar periods in 2015 and 2014.

Bermudians felt the sting of these losses, as the industrys combined ratio was adversely affected by 2.5 percentage points, compared with 1.2 points in the same period in 2016, according to the report.

Standard & Poors doesnt blame any single natural catastrophe event for this. Instead, it points to a number of smaller events including a jump in tornadoes, large hail and damaging wind events in the U.S. plains, Southeast and Midwest, plus active storms in the Central and Eastern U.S. Also, European windstorms had an adverse effect.

The first quarter is usually the quietest for global catastrophe losses, but with higher catastrophe losses so far, 2017 is off to a rough start, S&P said.

In the 2017 first quarter, the industrys combined ratio for Bermuda slipped to 94 in the 2017 first quarter, versus 90.7 in the 2016 first quarter.

One bright spot: net investment income boosted earnings for Bermudian insurers/reinsurers, jumping to $855.9 million in the 2017 first quarter, 27.4 percent higher than the previous year.

The full report is called: Bermuda Re/Insurance Quarterly Insights: A Shaky Start To 2017.

Source: Standard & Poors

A version of this article appeared in Insurance Journals sister publication, Carrier Management.

Topics Carriers Catastrophe Profit Loss Reinsurance
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Anvar Mammadov - Trend:

Financial Monitoring Service of Azerbaijans Financial Market Supervisory Authority has made changes to the list of persons subject to international sanctions for their support of terrorism, said a report of the service posted on its website.

In accordance with the changes, Iraqi citizen Ata Abdoulaziz Rashid, who was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in Germany July 15, 2008, has been removed from the list.

This is the 12th change made to the list in 2017. The list is updated in accordance with the UN Security Councils decisions and the information received from regional organizations.

According to an order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan, the international list is approved and updated by the Financial Monitoring Service based on the information received from the countrys Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Financial Monitoring Service of Azerbaijan was established Feb. 23, 2009.
Suspected Russia-backed hackers have launched exploratory cyber attacks against the energy networks of the Baltic states, sources said, raising security concerns inside the Wests main military alliance, NATO.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, all members of NATO and the European Union, are on the political front line of tensions between the West and Moscow. The Baltics are locked into Russias power network but plan to synchronize their grids with the EU.

Interviews with more than a dozen law-enforcement and private investigators, insiders and utility officials show hackers have quietly made incursions into Baltic networks over the past two years, in parallel with more serious attacks in Ukraine that plunged swathes of that country into darkness.

They say Russian state organizations are suspected of being behind the campaigns.

Reuters could not independently verify the sources allegations.

At the end of 2015, hackers attacked an internet gateway used to control a Baltic electricity grid, disrupting operations but not causing blackouts, a source familiar with the matter said. He declined to give details due to ongoing private investigations into the incident, which has not been previously reported.

The attack was a distributed denial of service (DDoS), where internet gateways are bombarded with large amounts of data, a blunt but sometimes effective technique in an age when energy networks are being modernized with digital technology.

The source also said suspected Russia-backed hackers had targeted a Baltic petrol-distribution system at around the same time in an unsuccessful denial of service attack that aimed to cause widespread disruption in petrol deliveries.

The system coordinates deliveries from storage tanks to a network of petrol stations, the source added.

In a separate malware attack on another undisclosed Baltic grid, also around end-2015, hackers targeted network communication devices, serial-to-ethernet converters (STEC), which link sub-stations to central control, two other sources said. The attack did not cause service disruption, they added.

Though these three incidents date back 18 months or so, cyber security consultants are still investigating some of them. They say hackers can remain dormant and undetected inside systems. In Ukraine, hackers had infiltrated the grids there for about six months before the lights went out in December 2015, consultants said.

STECs were also targeted in Ukraine by the so-called Sandworm team, a Russia-backed group that had attacked energy companies in Western Europe and the United States in a campaign in 2014, several sources said.

The two sources with knowledge of the STEC attacks said they had detected the presence of Sandworm in the Baltics, but they did not give evidence for their suspicion. One of them said Sandworm was still active in the Baltic states.

Its the same kind of slander as all the other similar accusations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said when asked by Reuters about the possible hacks.

Russia has never cut power flows to the Baltic states or threatened to do so.

Testing Times

The NATO sources and utility officials said the Baltic attacks raised concerns that hackers could disable the regions energy networks just as they had done in Ukraine, where government troops have been battling pro-Russian separatists since 2014.

The first Ukraine attack caused crippling blackouts in some parts of the country lasting several hours.

NATO and cyber security experts believe hackers are testing the Baltic energy networks for weaknesses, becoming familiar with how they are controlled in order to be able to shut them down at will.

On a daily basis there are DDoS attacks designed to probe network architecture, so it could well be possible that something (serious) could take place later on, a Brussels-based NATO official said, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

Lithuanian grid operator Litgrid said attacks on IT systems and the grid were constant but it had not seen DDoS attacks.

Litgrid maintains constant monitoring and runs regular tests to detect any cyber break-ins as part of its network defenses, the utility said in an emailed statement.

Latvias grid operator, AST, said it had not seen incidents in the last year. Estonias Elering said only that it had not seen any attacks at the time of the Ukraine incursions in 2015.

A security official based in the Baltics said cyber attacks usually increased when Russia carried out large military exercises near its borders with the Baltic states.

Last month, NATO helped stage a cyber-security exercise in Estonia in which hundreds of cyber experts from around the world competed in teams to protect a fictitious military air base from attacks on, among other things, a power grid system.

In its 2017 national security threat assessment, Lithuania said hackers had launched large-scale DDoS attacks in April last year against state ministries and institutions, Vilnius airport, media and other important Lithuanian cyber infrastructure.

A major part of executed cyber attacks against the state sector of Lithuania in 2016 were associated with Russian intelligence, the report said, without giving details.

Lithuanias state-owned energy holding group, Lietuvos Energija, said it had encountered untraceable attacks like zero-day viruses, among others, which exploit hidden vulnerabilities. Lietuvoss businesses include power distribution.

We do assume that we have adversaries who want to harm us, said Liudas Alisauskas, information security chief at Lietuvos.

Lietuvos runs drills to prepare for cyber attacks, including switching to manual operation of the grid, Alisauskas said.

In Ukraine, operators of older and technologically simpler networks were able to send workers out into the field to manually bring grids back up. This would be more difficult to achieve in modern, digitized networks, cyber consultants said.

(Additional reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius, David Mardiste in Tallinn and Jack Stubbs in Moscow; editing by Mark Bendeich and Andrew Roche)

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Topics Cyber Russia
Tokio Marine Kiln (TMK), the international specialist insurance business, has added construction to its One TMK broker portal.

The tailor-made construction insurance product is underwritten through a fully automated process, TMK said, noting the platform provides an efficient way for brokers to access specialist coverage from wherever they are, subject to meeting regulatory requirements and agreed business terms with TMK.

Clients are offered a starting limit of 3.5 million ($4.5 million) for projects lasting up to three years in the UK and Republic of Ireland.

Through One TMK, brokers answer a limited series of questions to generate an immediate quote and tailored wording, which enables them to bind construction risks in as little as seven minutes, TMK said.

The One TMK portal also features TMKs unmanned aerial systems product and Cargo 10, which enables brokers to secure cargo insurance coverage after completing just 10 questions.

The companys online specialist construction product was developed in response to be responding to broker and customer feedback, said Steven Norcliffe, head of Construction at Tokio Marine Kiln.

Enabling brokers to quote and bind construction risks online will speed up transaction times, deliver cost savings and enable us and our brokers to provide a better service for customers, he said.

Initially we are offering coverage for short-period projects in the UK and Republic of Ireland with a starting limit of 3.5 million, but we will look to extend these as the class develops online. Outside these parameters, clients can continue to access our specialist insurance offline in the usual way, Norcliffe added.

Tom Hoad, head of Innovation at Tokio Marine Kiln, added: Adding another class to the online portal demonstrates our continued commitment to broadening our range of products online and meeting the changing needs of our brokers and clients.

TMK was formed in 2014 through the integration of Kiln and Tokio Marine Europe.

Source: Tokio Marine Kiln

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Brokers can now quote and bind construction insurance online via onetmk.com

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Topics Agencies Construction
Extortionist hackers who may be using leaked computer exploits from the U.S. National Security Agency infiltrated computers in dozens of countries in a fast-spreading attack that forced British hospitals to turn away patients and breached systems at Spains Telefonica SA and organizations from Russia to Taiwan.

The ransomware used in Fridays cyber attacks encrypts files and demands that victims pay $300 in bitcoin for them to be decrypted, the latest in a vexing style of security breaches that, at the very least, forces organizations to revert to backup systems to keep critical systems running. The malicious software has infected more than 75,000 computers in 99 countries worldwide on Friday, most of them concentrated in Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan, according to Dutch cyber security company Avast Software BV.

The attackers were exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft Corp. software that was patched in March, according to cyber security researchers. Attack code targeting that vulnerability was released publicly by Shadow Brokers, a group that has been leaking stolen hacking tools purportedly from the NSA. That connection has given critics of U.S. hacking ammunition for their argument that governments finding flaws in commercial technologies and keeping them secret for the purpose of exploiting them can carry a public risk.

These attacks underscore the fact that vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies, but by hackers and criminals around the world, said Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Unions National Security Project. It is past time for Congress to enhance cyber security by passing a law that requires the government to disclose vulnerabilities to companies in a timely manner. Patching security holes immediately, not stockpiling them, is the best way to make everyones digital life safer.

While the victim tally is likely to grow, the ransomware, called WanaCrypt0r, only affects computers that havent applied Microsofts two-month-old fix, a reminder that individuals and organizations that dont routinely update their machines are vulnerable. Hospitals are notoriously slow in applying security fixes, in part because of how disruptive it is to take patient-facing equipment and databases offline. That has made them a reliable target of ransomware and identity-theft attacks, and why they routinely fall victim even to random mass attacks.

Hospital Warnings

In the U.K. on Friday, hospitals urged people with non-emergency conditions to stay away after the cyber attack affected large parts of the countrys National Health Service. Sixteen NHS organizations were hit, while a large number of Spanish companies were also attacked using ransomware.

A number of NHS organizations have reported that they have suffered from a ransomware attack, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters. Its an international attack and a number of countries and organizations have been affected. Were not aware of any evidence that patient data has been compromised.

Hospitals in London, North West England and Central England have all been affected, according to the BBC. Mid-Essex Clinical Commissioning Group, which runs hospitals and ambulances in an area east of London, said on Twitter that it had an IT issue affecting some NHS computer systems, adding Please do not attend Accident And Emergency unless its an emergency!

The impact on services is not due to the ransomware itself, but due to NHS Trusts shutting down systems to prevent it from spreading, said Brian Lord, a former deputy director of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K.s signals intelligence agency, who is now managing director of cyber security firm PGI Cyber. Lord, who described an attack of this type as inevitable, said the impact was exacerbated because most NHS Trusts had a poor understanding of network configuration meaning everything has to shut down.

Ransom Message

A screen-shot of an apparent ransom message, sent to a hospital, showed a demand for $300 in bitcoin for files that had been encrypted to be decrypted.

Workers across the NHS have since been sent emails from the health services IT teams warning not to open or click on suspicious attachments or links.

Spains National Cryptologic Center, which is part of the countrys intelligence agency, said on its website that there had been a massive ransomware attack against a big number of Spanish organizations affecting Microsofts Windows operating system. El Mundo reported that the attackers sought a ransom in bitcoin.

Today our engineers added detection and protection against new malicious software known as Ransom:Win32.WannaCrypt, Microsoft said in a statement. In March, we provided a security update which provides additional protections against this potential attack. Those who are running our free antivirus software and have Windows Update enabled, are protected. We are working with customers to provide additional assistance.

While Fridays attack could damage the reputation of Microsofts security, its likely to be limited, said Sid Parakh, a fund manager at Becker Capital Management, which owns Microsoft stock. There have been so many high-profile hacks that if a fix is available its the users responsibility to download it, he said.

Every time this happens it hurts the underlying products reputation, Parakh said. But Microsoft has been in a worse state in the past.

Unsuspecting Victims

Ransomware typically gets onto a computer when a person unsuspectingly downloads a file that looks like a normal attachment or web link. A hacker can then trigger the malware to freeze the computer, prompting a person to pay a ransom or lose all their files.

Hospitals have been a common target because the culprits know how critical digital records are for treating patients. There have been several incidents in the U.S., including one in Indiana where a hospitals IT system was taken down and patients had to be diverted to other facilities, according to a local news report.

Ransomware attacks have also been soaring. The number of such attacks increased 50 percent in 2016, according to an April report from Verizon Communications Inc. These types of attacks account for 72 percent of all the malware incidents involving the health-care industry in 2016, according to Verizon.

The large-scale cyber attack on our NHS today is a huge wake-up call, said Jamie Graves, chief executive officer of cyber security company ZoneFox.

Andrew Barratt, managing principal of Coalfire, a company which provides cyber security risk assessments to the health-care sector, said that many NHS hospitals used personal computers with outdated Windows-based operating systems, which have makes them easy to attack. He said many of these systems were too old to patch and that many NHS Trusts did not spend enough time on technical best practices and audits, leaving them vulnerable to a variety of potential cyber attacks, including ransomware.

With assistance from Thomas Penny, Adam Satariano and Dina Bass.

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics Cyber
Believe it or not, the planet could be much warmer in the next few years, according to new research.

The research, published this week in Geophysical Research Letters, indicates that Earth could be 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 C) warmer than in the late 1800s over the span of about nine years.

Global temperature is rapidly approaching the 1.5C Paris target, the paper states.

According to the paper, a natural cooling cycle the planet has been in that may have kept temperatures from rising even higher than they have could actually change sometime soon and send temperatures higher.

In the absence of external cooling influences like volcanic eruptions, temperature projections exceed the 1.5C target before the year 2029, the paper staes.

According to the paper, the phase of the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation, a natural oscillation in the climate system, will regulate the rate at which global temperature approaches the 1.5C level.

A transition to the positive phase of the IPO would lead to a projected exceedance of the target centered around 2026, the paper states. If the Pacific Ocean remains in its negative phase, however, the projections are centered on reaching the target around 5 years later, in 2031. Given the temporary slowdown in global warming between 2000 and 2014, and recent climate model predictions suggestive of a turnaround in the IPO, a sustained period of rapid temperature rise might be underway. In that case, the world will reach the 1.5C level of warming several years sooner than if the negative IPO phase persists.

Indy

Indiana University announced plans this week to create a $55 million Environmental Resilience Institute to forecast environmental change and predict how it will affect Indianas businesses and residents, the Indianapolis Star reported.

Fred Cate, the schools vice president for research, told the paper that whether people believe climate change is a result of human activities or just a part of a natural shift does not matter.

For the purposes of this project, it does not matter what you think is the cause of climate change, Cate said. In every county in the state, the majority believe that climate change is a reality. Theres a fight over how we got here; no fight at all over that we are here.

The Institute will focus on three main objectives, according to the article.

Scientists will aim to provide accurate forecasts for both the short term and long term to help businesses and communities prepare, law school professors will join with those in the liberal arts and the public and environmental affairs to advise government and businesses, while those in communication will focus on sharing the message and encouraging public engagement, the story states.

California Climate Change

Experts told California lawmakers on Wednesday that the states cap-and-trade program needs to be changed if they want to keep it beyond its 2020 expiration date.

The Senate Environmental Quality Committee heard from environmental groups and industry officials as the state Legislature begins discussions about whether to extend the program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reported Associated Press writer Jonathan J. Cooper.

The program, which caps carbon emissions and requires polluters to obtain permits to release climate-changing gases, was designed to help the state meet its goal of reducing carbon emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020.

Lawmakers adopted an even more aggressive goal last year of reducing emissions an additional 40 percent by 2030.

Lawmakers are considering several proposals, the story states.

We think we have a good program to work from but it can and should be improved, Alex Jackson, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Cooper.

Assembly bill 378 would continue the current program with some tweaks, including efforts to reduce air pollutants at industrial facilities. Senate Bill 775 would end the current program and put in place a new system that taxes carbon but does not have a hard cap on emissions. The bill would use much of the revenue to pay California residents to offset higher costs for gas and electricity, according to the article.

Tornadoes and Climate Change

Tornadoes are bad news for mobile homes.

Heres some worse news: A new study by Michigan State University researchers shows the volatility of climate change and the potential for massive property damage and deaths may be even higher in coming decades.

The number of mobile homes in the U.S. has risen to roughly 9 million, and the nation is the most tornado-prone country in the world, with an average of 1,200 twisters per year. Scientists predict climate change will continue fueling more unstable weather events including tornadoes.

The annual impact of tornadoes is expected to increase threefold over the next few decades due to the twin forces of increased climate variability and growth in the human-built environment, according to the study.

The authors recommendations include requiring communal shelters in mobile home parks and eliminating the tax breaks that mobile home owners receive and directing that extra revenue toward emergency management and public safety efforts.

If the climatologists are right about the continuing effects of climate change, said Mark Skidmore, MSU economics professor and co-author of the study, then people living in mobile homes could be particularly vulnerable to tornadoes in the years to come.

Past columns:

Topics California Legislation Climate Change Pollution
Todays insurers want to be there for their customersliterally.

With sensors of various kinds in policyholders cars, homes and personal devices, exposure data tracking is rapidly becoming a competitive imperative in personal lines underwriting and rating.

That was the message from two speakers on technological changes at the 2017 Ratemaking and Product Management Workshop of the Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), March 28 in San Diego.

Vehicle sensors that plug into car portals dont just track speed, braking and turning, said Sheri Scott, a principal and consulting actuary with Milliman. They can even determine what kind of traffic and weather youre driving in, she said.

With access to such extensive data in real time, auto insurers can now monitor the risk posed by a vehicle without relying on information provided by applicants and insureds about their driving habits, territory and garaging.

Autonomous Future

Exposure data tracking is the latest evolution of a change in personal auto insurance underwriting and marketing from direct call and Internet marketing to the development of advanced rating variables. And its all a prelude to the introduction of automated vehicles that will drive themselves largelyor entirelyon their own.

Scott said that major U.S. automakers will be marketing fully autonomous vehicles by 2020, and the early indications are that autonomous vehicles will have fewer accidents than cars driven by humans. She told attendees that an autonomous auto tested by Google accounted for 0.7 accidents per million miles driven compared to a typical average of 2.0 accidents per million miles involving drivers in the U.S.

Related: Will Technology Make Insurance Obsolete?

Exposure tracking and the advent of autonomous vehicles are shifting personal auto insurance risk exposure from dependence on driver skills, estimated distances driven and garage location to the precise determination of vehicle locations, driving habits, driving distances and traffic conditions, all determined through the collection of trip data gathered in real time.

Yet even these underwriting considerations will soon be supplemented, if not supplanted, by the loss experience of automated vehicles and their manufacturers.

This transformation will not be without risks of its own, Scott said. In particular, she cited disruption of networked communications as a hazard, especially as vehicle occupants become dependent on automated control and less practiced at taking control of a vehicle.

If some kind of communication goes down, there could be a very serious occurrence, she said.

Connected Homes

As individuals become accustomed to having their driving habits monitored electronically, they also find themselves returning home to dwellings with sensors to detect whats happening within and outside the house.

Thomas Smith, founder and president of Senteri, a rm focused on smart-home solutions for P/C carriers, told attendees that the Internet of Things now amounts to more everyday objects than cellphones connected to the Internet and collecting data.

Even with that, the IoT is still in its infancy, with a little more than 10 percent of homes in the U.S. equipped with smart thermostats, lighting, door locks, and smoke and CO2 detectors, plus monitors for security, heat and water use. However, such devices have become standard features of newly constructed homes.

Major carriers, including American Family, Liberty Mutual and State Farm have developed service packages for automated home monitoring with an eye toward attracting new business, improving retention, reducing losses and accumulating data as an asset for underwriting and ratemaking.

The early movers are those carriers with the most resources, Smith said. This indicates to the rest of the industry whats possible.

You can almost have any sensor to detect any peril. Its coming to be within the grasp of ordinary people.

Topics Auto Data Driven
A U.S. judge said he intends to give final approval to Volkswagen AGs $1.225 billion settlement with regulators and about 78,000 drivers of premium Audis, VWs and Porsches over the companys diesel cheating-scandal.

All told, VW is committed to spending upwards of $24.5 billion in North America to settle lawsuits and buy back or repair some 560,000 vehicles armed with algorithms intentionally installed to trick emissions tests. The accord presented Thursday for sign-off by U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco includes an additional $327.5 million that covers claims against technology provider Robert Bosch GmbH.

The agreement requires VW to compensate owners of 3-liter diesel engine vehicles, fix about 58,000 cars and buy back as many as 20,000 Touareg and Audi Q7 sport-utility vehicles. While the carmaker is on the brink of resolving the vast majority of consumer and government agency claims against it in the U.S., the company still faces criminal investigations and investor cases in Germany, the U.K. and elsewhere.

VW admitted in September 2015 that about 11 million diesel cars worldwide were outfitted with so-called defeat devices, embedded algorithms used to game emissions tests.Owners of unfixable cars will be eligible for cash compensation of as much as $13,880 in addition to a buyback, according to a statement from the plaintiffs lawyers. Drivers with vehicles that can be brought up to standard could receive as much as $16,114.

In April, a federal judge in Detroit approved VWs agreement to pay a $4.3 billion penalty for misleading U.S. regulators and customers. That includes $1.5 billion in civil penalties issued by the federal government and a guilty plea for conspiring to defraud regulators, obstruction of justice and making false statements.

Breyer said at a hearing Thursday he intends to issue a written order finalizing the three-liter settlement by May 17.

Robert Giuffra, an attorney for VW, told the judge the deal is an important milestone.

It would mean the company has reached a resolution for every single affected diesel car in the United States, he said.

Elizabeth Cabraser, the lead attorney for consumers, said in a statement that the agreements accomplish our goal of making the consumers harmed by Volkswagens emissions deception whole, while repairing or removing illegally polluting vehicles from our roads.

The case is In Re: Volkswagen Clean Diesel Marketing, Sales Practices and Products Liability Litigation, 15-02672, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

Related:

Copyright 2022 Bloomberg.

Topics USA Legislation
Government use of aerial drones became much easier when the Federal Aviation Administration flipped the switch on new regulations last year.

The Austin American-Statesman reports since then, a number of Austin-area public safety agencies, including the Williamson County sheriffs office and San Marcos police, are jumping in.

Some of those agencies say their drone use is narrowly defined, but the programs are too young to have policies in place that satisfy critics who worry that drones would threaten privacy.

When you put a very powerful tool like this in the hands of government, the first thought is about privacy, said Adam Schwartz, a senior lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Schwartz said concerns about drones and surveillance are far-reaching, and include fears that they could be used to monitor and photograph protesters.

Of the Central Texas law enforcement agencies recently contacted for this report, only Williamson County and San Marcos confirmed that they intend to use drones for law enforcement purposes. Round Rock police are considering drones, but a spokeswoman said that department is early in the process and that drones were being researched for community outreach efforts.

Austin police arent pursuing a drone program in any official capacity. However, the Austin police union is researching the technology and pushing for drones to be used by the department.

The Williamson County sheriffs office plans to purchase three drones that could be used in SWAT situations, patrols and missing-person cases, spokeswoman Kristen Dark said.

Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody declined to comment because his agency also is too early in the decision-making process. But a spokeswoman said no policy has been created outlining when or where authorities can use drones, and that budget negotiations will likely determine which and how many drones they purchase.

Meanwhile, the San Marcos Police Departments lone drone, which it already has purchased, will be used for investigations into vehicle crashes involving serious injury or death.

With any new technology, it makes sense for us to look at but also to deploy it intelligently, San Marcos Assistant Police Chief Bob Klett said. That is why we are delaying any other uses on it.

The FAA projects that drone use will explode in the coming years, according to a report last month predicting the number of drones flown in the United States to triple to 3.5 million by 2021. Their popularity continues to drive down costs  one of the more popular models for use by public safety agencies retails for about $1,000  allowing many departments to purchase drones without requiring the publics approval.

Schwartz said the publics input should be gathered before drones are used. In the case of San Marcos, the City Council did weigh in on the purchase of the DJI Phantom 3 drone, giving its approval. Williamson County commissioners could provide input during budget negotiations later this year. Round Rock hasnt purchased any drones.

Schwartz said public and political input is key to the use of government-operated drones. But even with public approval, he said, people need to remain vigilant about policies. Without a clear policy, nothing is in place to stop a police department from using drones for court-approved surveillance.

Concerns similar to Schwartzs had a role in ending an attempt by Austin police in 2012 to get their own drone.

We didnt feel like the council or community supported it, so it got dropped, said Ken Casaday, president of the Austin police union. Some were afraid that officers would abuse it in spying. It was silly, but people are concerned about that.

The unions research has an emphasis on search and rescue operations. Casaday said drones could be a force multiplier  a low-cost purchase that would increase the Austin Police Departments capabilities. But Casaday said he would want their use limited to life-saving operations.

It should be used for very specific circumstances, he said. I dont want to use it for surveillance, even though I think we might get to that one day.

Before the FAA created new regulations last summer, the Austin Fire Department had already been operating drones for more than a year under a rare exemption that made it one of the first public safety agencies in the country allowed to use drones.

The fire department had recognized their value in responding to wildfires in Bastrop.

I noticed the devastation and the distance, and I thought, `how can one cover this much distance? said Assistant Chief Richard Daviscq, who helped spearhead the acquisition of drones for Fire Departments Robotics Emergency Deployment Team.

Even with a skeptical public, the fire department got City Council approval for a program. They have since purchased three drones  a now largely decommissioned Leptroncq, a DJI Inspirecq and a DJI Maviccq, which is used in a dog and pony show for recruits and to tape promotional materials, Davis said.

Today, the drones are used in wildfire situations, for search and rescue missions and during floods.

In my mind, without question, they are very beneficial, Davis said. It gives us immediate feedback, better situational awareness. It is just a smart way of operating.

At a recent drone demonstration, firefighters in a concrete training tower paused to watch the buzzing quadcopters hover above the parking lot of the Southeast Austin training center.

Its still viewed as a novelty, Davis said. Then people see it being used and it is an `ah-ha moment.

But even a fire departments use of a drone raised concerns for Schwartz.

Once the fire department owns the drone, with the flip of a switch or a stroke of a pen that can be applied to the police, he said. Given the ease of the transference of all this equipment, it needs to be talked about.

Texas Search and Rescue, a volunteer group that assists public safety agencies around the state, also has a burgeoning drone program, said Brandon Goering, a founding member and a planning section chief of the group.

We have purchased our first drone, Goering said. That was the first step. Right now we are training with it, getting our ducks in a row to know what we can and cant do.

Texas Search and Rescue purchased a DJI Mavic, a nimble quadcopter that can fold up to about the size of a VHS tape. Austin firefighters already can essentially holster their DJI Mavic drone in a small pack, and one civilian fire official who operates the same model said he could see the drone easily being clipped to a belt loop.

Goering said he sees a lot of potential for the drone, especially with current camera technology. It already has a high-resolution 4K camera, but infrared cameras can be easily installed and some video software already has the capability to spot certain colors. For example, Goering said, a drone seeking a person wearing a yellow shirt could use a camera that pinpoint spots where that color is detected, possibly leading to faster discovery.

In disasters, such as floods, a drone can give quickly provide a map of the terrain. Eventually, authorities might be able to fly a drone capable of delivering a life vest to someone stranded in floodwaters.

I feel like we are just scratching the surface, Goering said. We have no lack of ideas. Each time we take it out, we come up with something new.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Agencies Texas Law Enforcement Training Development
Governor Mary Fallin recently named Assistant Attorney General Megan Tilly to serve on the Oklahoma Workers Compensation Commission, and now a workers comp attorney is challenging that appointment.

Tilly, of Oklahoma City, was appointed to a six-year term that expires in August 2023. If affirmed by the state Senate, she will replace Robert Gilliland, according to the announcement from the governors office.

The Associated Press reported that Attorney Bob Burke has asked the state Supreme Court to block Tillys appointment to the three-member commission.

The AP reported that Burke has alleged that Tilly doesnt have at least three years of experience in the workers compensation field that state law requires commission members to have.

According to the governors press release, Tilly assisted the workers compensation, insurance and Social Security fraud unit of the attorneys generals office in criminal fraud investigations through legal research and counsel.

She currently manages the multicounty grand jury unit of the state attorney generals office, which is made up of attorneys, investigators and support staff. The grand jury investigates and prosecutes crimes across the state, including public corruption, white collar crime and government fraud.

The Oklahoma Workers Compensation Commission was created in 2013 as mandated by the states landmark workers compensation reform law.

Source: Oklahoma Governors Office, Associated Press

Topics Workers' Compensation Oklahoma
Highmark Insurance, a Melbourne, Fla.-based leading provider of business and commercial insurance, general liability and workers compensation, has named Darrell Drake as underwriting manager.

In his new position, Drake, a resident of Palm Bay, Fla., will oversee Highmark Insurances commercial clients, including reviewing policies for accuracy, getting quotes, comparing coverage and issuing policies. He will also provide operational and technical analysis and diagnosis review of commercial P&C underwriting and claims by product, line of business, territory, trade group and performance. Drake formerly served as Highmark Insurances underwriter.

Prior to joining Highmark Insurance in March 2016, Drake served as an insurance consultant for commercial projects in China, Russia and the United Kingdom, where he worked closely with clients to identify trends pursuant to growth, market sector, area, risk size, premium and claims cost. Drake also held the position of underwriting manager for ACE Insurance Asia Pacific in Singapore, China.

Highmark Insurance is a full-service agency specializing in insurance for home, auto and property, as well as commercial and business insurance. Its offices are located in Melbourne.

Topics Florida Underwriting
Former coal executive Don Blankenship jumped back on Twitter on Wednesday, renewing his feud with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia 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 didnt 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.

Im 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 Blankenships release. I hope he used it wisely and will come out of prison ready to make amends.

It wasnt 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. attorneys office in Charleston referred questions to the Bureau of Prisons.

Blankenships attorney, William Taylor, didnt 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 didnt 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 Masseys safety programs were just a facade  never backed by more money to hire additional miners or take more time on safety tasks.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics USA Virginia
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Azad Hasanli  Trend:

The forecast aggregate value (weighted average volume) of investment portfolio of the State Oil Fund of Azerbaijan (SOFAZ) for 2017 was set at 51.24 billion manats in a decree of Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev approving main directions of the use of SOFAZ funds and investment policy for 2017.

The forecast for 2016 was at 51.3 billion manats, for 2015  28.2 billion manats, for 2014  27 billion manats, for 2013  25.2 billion manats and for 2012  23 billion manats.

In 2017, SOFAZ funds will be mainly used for: financing of some measures related to accommodation and improvement of social and living conditions for refugees and IDPs; transfers to the state budget of 2017; transfers to the Central Bank of Azerbaijan to ensure financial stability; financing of reconstruction of the Samur-Absheron irrigation system; financing of the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project; financing of the state program on education of Azerbaijani youth in foreign countries in 2007-2015; financing of Azerbaijans share in the Southern Gas Corridor projects.

Under the decree, the currency structure of SOFAZs investment portfolio is as follows: up to 50 percent of assets can be in US dollars, 35 percent in euros, 5 percent in British pounds and 10 percent in other currencies.

Meanwhile, SOFAZs investment portfolio can consist of four sub-portfolios: a portfolio of debt instruments and money market instruments  60 percent of total portfolio value, a portfolio of shares  25 percent, a portfolio of real estate  10 percent, and a portfolio of gold  5 percent.
The city of Tacoma, Wash. is considering suing the manufacturers of opioids such as OxyContin in its fight against homelessness.

Mayor Marilyn Strickland said at this weeks City Council meeting that the city is looking at possible litigation to hold opioid makers accountable for their decisions and actions.

In January, Everett sued Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, seeking to hold it accountable for social and economic damages to the community due to illegal trafficking of the powerful painkillers. The company has asked a federal judge in Seattle to throw out the lawsuit.

The News Tribune reported that the council also declared a public health emergency in its fight against homelessness. That allows the city to waive certain regulations as it creates or find sites for temporary housing.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Lawsuits Washington
Independent Agents Association Honors Insurance Industry Stars.

Indian Wells, CA, May 12, 2017- The BIG Independent Group, a leading association of independent agent and brokers, was pleased to bestow its BIGGIE Awards for the 8th year in a row. The 2017 awards, distributed at the associations annual convention held this weekend in Indian Wells, CA, is given to insurance professionals, companies and industry advocates for extraordinary contributions to insurance producers and the business as a whole.

BIG is honored to recognize the talent and dedication of these outstanding individuals and companies. Through their efforts, insurance agents and brokers are given additional tools for success. They truly make the industry better, commented BIG CEO Jon Spaugy. Our BIGGIE Awards are just a small token of appreciation for the tremendous skill set they bring to our industry.

Here are the winners of the 2017 BIGGIE Awards:

Standard Carrier Representative of the Year  Nancy Orozco from Alliance United

Standard Agency of the Year  City Best Insurance

Standard Carrier of the Year  Progressive Insurance

Preferred Carrier Representative of the Year  Paula Wiess from Mercury

Preferred Agency of the Year  AIS Auto Insurance Specialists

Preferred Carrier of the Year  Safeco Insurance

Community Advocate of the Year  Progressive Insurance

MGA of the Year  Arrowhead General Insurance Agency, Inc

Vendor of the Year  EZ Lynx

Technology Company of The Year  Progressive Insurance

Hall of Fame Award  John Wright from Pricewright Insurance

MVP  Matt Speed, president, BIG San Diego Chapter

Even though there could only be one winner in each category, all of the nominees are very deserving of these accolades, said Adam Meyerson, president of BIGs Carrier Council. It is very gratifying to know that so many people on the agency and company sides, as well as those providing support services and ancillary products, are focused on making the insurance industry better for everyone.

Media Contact

Jon Spaugy

BIG CEO

jspaugy@hotmail.com

Topics Agencies
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.

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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.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) significantly lowered Health Advisory levels for two chemicals and issued new levels for two more chemicals June 15.

Since December 2021, the tap water in Ames has been tested for chemicals four times and twice exceeded the new levels set last week. These chemicals are perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS).

These chemicals are part of a class of chemicals that is part of a group of about 5,000 other chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They are commonly referred to as PFAS. While they are nothing new, the city of Ames said that PFAS could pose a health risk.

Before last weeks changes, the advisory levels for PFOA and PFOS have been 2.2 parts per trillion and 4.6 parts per trillion (ppt), respectively, in Ames. Now, the new level will be set at 0.004 ppt for PFOA and 0.02 ppt for PFOS. Both exceed the amount the advisory suggests.

While the presence of these chemicals may seem discouraging to the public, the city of Ames has been doing its part to keep its citizens safe.

The Ames Water Plant has been closely monitoring both the science and the emerging regulatory framework around PFAS for several years, Water & Pollution Control Director John Dunn said. We have proactively undertaken perhaps the most comprehensive source water assessment of any utility in Iowa so that our customers will have information that is as complete and accurate as possible.

The Ames Water Plant has already taken measures to reduce PFAS. Researchers at Iowa State University have been contracted to do a full water investigation to keep an accurate account of how the drinking water in Ames is fairing.

Home filter systems can also provide an additional option for the citizens of Ames. Two classes of home filtersGranular Activated Carbon (GAC) filters and Reverse Osmosis (RO) systemscan be effective at reducing these chemicals.

The National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) maintains a listing of products that claim to remove PFOA and PFOS compounds on its website: https://info.nsf.org/Certified/DWTU/.

A full summary of all the detected chemicals/compounds, including concentrations from individual water wells, is posted on the citys website at www.cityofames.org/pfas.
The World Health Assembly offers a unique opportunity for Parliamentarians to get acquainted with current global health priorities and up-to-date scientific evidence, and to reflect on how this can be used to guide national political decisions, including on budget allocation. The aim of the side event Bridging the gap between evidence and policy: the role of Parliamentarians in advancing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is to facilitate dialogue between, on the one hand, Parliamentarians in their role as law makers and, on the other, the global health community. Participants will also have an opportunity to discuss how this interaction has worked thus far and how it can be strengthened, especially in regard to health issues such as immunization, sexual and reproductive health, as well as health aspects of climate change. The side event is organized by the IPU and WHO under the sponsorship of Austria, Bangladesh, and Cameroon. Simultaneous interpreting services will be provided in English, French, and Spanish. IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PARTICIPANTS The parliamentary meeting is open to all members of parliament and parliamentary staff who will be attending the 70th World Health Assembly as part of their national delegations. In order to be included in national delegations and attend the parliamentary event, members of parliament should contact their national Ministry of Health, which is the focal point designated by WHO for the composition and submission of national delegations. As is customary during meetings at United Nations Office at Geneva, security arrangements are very strict and no one may enter the United Nations premises without a special badge (for delegates and visitors). In keeping with normal practice, delegations and diplomatic missions in Geneva will be invited to attend to all matters relating to visas, UN Badges, hotel reservations and transportation. Participants must therefore request their badge from their country's permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva .
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

Trend:

Azercell Telecom LLC is launching next favorable campaign for subscribers. Starting from May 11th, Azercell subscribers can obtain 4G compatible LG Flex 2 phone for the monthly payment of AZN 45. In addition, they will receive LG watch as a gift. By obtaining this smartphone, the subscribers will also get free 5GB internet each month and favorable call terms (AZN 0.06/min). In order to benefit from the campaign, the customers are requested to visit Azercell Customer Services and choose one of the available offers.

Azercell will continue similar offers under 1001 Smartphone campaign during the summer.

For more information, please contact [email protected]



The leader of the mobile communication industry of Azerbaijan and the biggest investor in the non-oil sector Azercell Telecom LLC was founded in 1996. With 48% share of Azerbaijans mobile market Azercells network covers 80% of the territory and 99,8% of population of the country. Currently, 4,5 million subscribers choose Azercell services. Azercell has pioneered an important number of innovations in Azerbaijan, including GSM technology, advance payment system, 24/7 Customer Care, online customer services, GPRS/EDGE, M2M, MobilBank, one-stop- shop service offices Azercell Express, mobile e-service ASAN signature, etc. Azercell deployed first 4G  LTE services in Azerbaijan in 2012. According to the results of mobile network quality surveys of Global Wireless Solutions company and international systems specialized in wireless coverage mapping such as Opensignal and Testmy.net, Azercells network demonstrated the best results among the mobile operators of Azerbaijan.
A massive ransomware campaign appears to have infected a number of organisations around the world. Computers in thousands of locations have apparently been locked by a program that demands $300 (230) in Bitcoin. There have been reports of infections in more than 70 countries, including the UK, US, China, Russia, Spain, Italy and Taiwan.



Many security researchers are linking the incidents together. The UK's National Health Service (NHS) was also hit by a ransomware outbreak on the same day and screenshots of the WannaCry program were shared by NHS staff.



One cyber-security researcher tweeted that he had detected many thousands of cases of the ransomware - known as WannaCry and variants of that name - around the world.



"This is huge," said Jakub Kroustek at Avast. Another, at cyber-security firm Kaspersky, said that the ransomware had been spotted cropping up in 74 countries and that the number was still growing.



There were a number of reports that Russia had seen more infections than any other single country. Russia's interior ministry said it had "localised the virus" following an "attack on personal computers using Windows operating system". It had reportedly earlier denied having been affected. Several experts monitoring the situation have linked the infections to vulnerabilities released by a group known as The Shadow Brokers, which recently claimed to have dumped hacking tools stolen from the US National Security Agency (NSA).



A patch for the vulnerability was released by Microsoft in March, but many systems may not have had the update installed.



Microsoft said on Friday its engineers had added detection and protection against WannaCrypt. The company was providing assistance to customers, it added.



Some security researchers have pointed out that the infections seem to be deployed via a worm - a program that spreads by itself between computers.



'Turn off PCs' A number of Spanish firms were among the apparent victims elsewhere in Europe. Telecoms giant Telefonica said in a statement that it was aware of a "cybersecurity incident" but that clients and services had not been affected.



Power firm Iberdrola and utility provider Gas Natural were also reported to have suffered from the outbreak. There were reports that staff at the firms were told to turn off their computers. At least one local authority in Sweden also appears to have been a victim.



"We have around 70 computers that have had a dangerous code installed," the mayor of Timra, a town to the north of Stockholm, told the Reuters news agency.



Explaining the global ransomware outbreak Unlike many other malicious programs, this one has the ability to move around a network by itself. Most others rely on humans to spread by tricking them into clicking on an attachment harbouring the attack code. By contrast, once WannaCry is inside an organisation it will hunt down vulnerable machines and infect them too. This perhaps explains why its impact is so public - because large numbers of machines at each victim organisation are being compromised.





| Soruce: BBC |
Update 12.25pm: The Foreign Affairs minister says Ireland has to now work on cleaning up the mess that is Brexit.

Charlie Flanagan says the UK's departure from the EU is not what we wanted and now we have to deal with it.

Last night he told the BBC that Brexit is a "proper mess".

Speaking in Wicklow he was asked what he meant.

"It's a mess, it's a mess not of Ireland's making, it hasn't been Ireland's policy.

"We're very disappointed with the result of the referendum in the UK, acknowledging of course as I do - this was the decision of the British people.

"We have that mess now, and we have to clean it up. We have to deal with it in an orderly and constructive manner," he said.

Earlier: Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan has warned that Brexit is a 'proper mess'.

He has told the BBC that the UK's decision to leave the European Union is one of the greatest challenges facing Ireland since the Independence of the State.

The Foreign Affairs Minister says he sees no "upside" for Ireland as a result of Brexit.

Charlie Flanagan has also told the BBC's Hard Talk programme that while a United Ireland is more likely, he does not think now is the time for a border poll.

He will meet with the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier later who wraps up a two-day visit here.

Yesterday Mr Barnier said that a post-Brexit border will exist on this island in some shape or form - however he maintains that peace will remain a "top priority".

Former Taoiseach John Bruton believes Brexit will hurt the UK more than it will hurt Ireland.

And he has also suggested the British people could change their minds and decide to stay in the EU.

"At this stage it doesn't seem realistic at all, but if you think about it there's no reason why there shouldn't be a second referendum in Britain.

"The British electorate decided on this amd the British electorate should I think be given a say on whether they want to accept what the people that they delegated to negotiate on their behalf have come up with," he said.
Update - 5pm: Prince Charles and Gerry Adams have met at the site where the IRA killed a British ambassador in the 70s.

At an official function in Glencairn the two shook hands, with the Prince offering commiserations on the death of Martin McGuinness.

In 1976 the IRA set off a bomb at the site that killed an ambassador and a young civil servant.

After the meeting Gerry Adams spoke of the need for reconciliation.

He said: "The history's the history and it's really, really important, but the future hasn't been written and we need to write the future

"Particularly in these Brexit days, it needs to be a history that's based upon the best that we can get for all the people on this island."

Earlier: The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall have visited the grave of Michael Collins as part of a ceremony at a war memorial in Dublin on the final day of their tour of Ireland.

Charles and Camilla arrived at the Cross of Sacrifice in Glasnevin Cemetery for their first engagement of the day.

They attended the unveiling of Victoria Cross paving stones in memory of four Irish-born soldiers - Corporal John Cunningham, Company Sergeant Major Robert Hill Hanna, Lieutenant Frederick Maurice Watson Harvey and Private Michael James O'Rourke.

The soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross in 1917.

Charles paused at the paving stone of Corporal Cunningham after he unveiled the memorial stone.

The Duchess bowed her head as she unveiled the paving stone in memory of Sergeant Major Hill Hanna.

Prince Charles and Arts Minister Heather Humphreys then laid wreaths at the Cross of Sacrifice.

This is the final day of the royal couple's four-day visit to the island of Ireland.

In one of his last engagements of the day, the Prince of Wales will meet with Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

The royal couple also took part in a ceremony at a memorial marking the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising.

The short ceremony was held at the Necrology Wall, which bears the names of all who died in the rebellion, Irish and British, military, police and civilian.

Charles and Ms Humpreys laid wreaths at the wall.

A minute's silence was followed by a piper's lament.

The decision to include the names of all who had died was a cause of controversy last year and in April the wall was vandalised.

During a tour of the cemetery the royal couple paused to look at the graves of Eamon de Valera, Michael Collins and Maud Gonne, major figures in Irish nationalism.

They also stopped at the grave of James Joyce's parents.
The Dubai-based company will halt dividend payments to its government shareholder for the first time in at least a decade while stepping up savings efforts after net income tumbled 70% to 2.5 billion dirhams (626.5m) in the 12 months to the end of March.

The earnings slump comes as Emirates grapples with some of the toughest operating conditions in a 30-year history thats seen it become an industry heavyweight by exploiting the position of the Gulf as a natural crossroads for inter-continental flights. Adding to the carriers woes are a stronger dollar, concerns about the Brexit vote and Europes immigration crisis, and President Trumps laptops ban on US-bound trips from airports including Dubai.
In a new report, the tourism agency claims the high number of nights when hotels in the city have near-full occupancy rates is creating difficulties for visitors in finding accommodation, while also resulting in higher room rates.

It claims such compression not only deters tourists on the nights in question but also impacts on the overall perception of Dublin as an expensive destination.

The report said average room rates soared last year against a background of a 12% increase in overseas visitor numbers. A recent survey indicated hotels in the city centre and near Dublin Airport averaged room occupancy rates of around 90% on over half of all nights last year. The average room rate for a Dublin hotel with a 90% occupancy rate has increased from 95 in 2014 to 140 last year.

At lower occupancy rates, prices have remained largely unchanged over the past three years.

The report estimated room occupancy for hotels in Dublin city centre last year increased by one percentage point to 83% - a record high occupancy level.

It added that Dublin had the highest occupancy rate for hotels among major European cities last year and the third highest increase in average room rates after Kiev and St Petersburg.

The report estimated that new hotels and extensions to existing ones will provide almost 6,000 additional bedrooms in the city by 2020. At the start of last December, there were 69 projects in the pipeline in the city which will provide an additional capacity of 5,964 bedrooms.

The figures represent an update on a similar report published by Failte Ireland last year and show four extra projects providing more than 400 additional bedrooms.

The latest report maintains the conclusion of the original one that there will be an ongoing accommodation shortage in the capital up to 2018 but there will be surplus capacity for most of the time from 2019 onwards.

Investor sentiment about hotels in Dublin does not seem to have been too strongly dented by the general pessimism about the economic impact of Brexit on the Irish economy, it added.

The report noted some changes in the anticipated capacity of development as some hotels had returned to the drawing board to take advantage of new regulations about room sizes and maximum permitted heights.
The airline is to use Boeings 737 Max aircraft for its transatlantic itinerary, which include Corks first ever route to the US.

Norwegian will also fly from Dublin, Shannon and Belfast to Rhode Island and New York. Boeing said it had temporarily halted test flights of its new 737 Max aircraft due to an engine issue. It is jointly made by General Electric and Safran of France. The grounding comes days before Boeing was due to deliver its first 737 Max to a Malaysian airline and marks a high-profile delay in a program that Boeing had said was ahead of schedule.
Management at Synergy Credit Union, based in Fermoy, Co Cork, confirmed it had discovered the irregularities during an internal review in September of last year. It said all accounts had now been replenished.

The gardai and the Central Bank were subsequently informed. Accountancy firm Grant Thornton was commissioned to carry out an independent investigation into the irregularities.

A statement issued on behalf of the credit union confirmed an individual had accepted responsibility, and co-operated with the investigation. However, it is unclear if this person is subject to any possible criminal probe.

The credit unions approximately 16,200 members were told of the investigation at the end of the address of chairman Denis Granville which accompanied the recently circulated annual report for 2016.

Mr Granville confirmed unauthorised transactions had occurred on dozens of accounts amounting to 407,442 and that the cost of investigation and legal fees came to over 160,000.

I must inform the membership that during an internal review in September 2016, management identified potential irregularities which warranted further investigation.

I wish to assure you that the board of directors has taken all necessary steps to ensure the matter was fully resolved in a timely manner. The Central Bank of Ireland and all relevant authorities were immediately notified.

The independent investigation, which has been completed, identified a total of 29 member accounts and identified net unauthorised transactions on these accounts in the sum of 407,442, he said.

He then moved to assure all members their money was safe.

All accounts have been replenished to their correct balances with no member incurring any financial loss. The credit union has insurance in place and notification has been made to the insurers on the matter.

The associated professional accounting and legal fees for investigation and review of this matter amounted to 160,712. It is expected these costs will be covered by the policy of insurance.

In a statement to the Irish Examiner, CEO of Synergy Credit Union Martina Cotter said all accounts affected had been replenished and all appropriate steps were taken to resolve the matter swiftly.

The credit union is insured to deal with such matters and no members savings were lost. Synergy Credit Union would like to reassure members that their savings are safe and secure and continue to be protected by the Government Deposit Guarantee Scheme, she said.

The Irish Examiner put a series of questions to the credit union, including:

Was the insurance policy of the credit union used to replenish the 29 affected accounts or were the original monies recovered?

Over what period of time did the unauthorised transactions take place?

Is a Garda inquiry ongoing into the matter?

Ms Cotter declined to answer the specific questions but said one person had accepted responsibility and co-operated.

As there are still various third-party processes underway, we cannot comment in any greater detail on this matter, except to say that an individual has accepted responsibility, co-operated with the investigation in full.

She said this individual was no longer working at the credit union.

Ms Cotter also said the credit union was operating as normal and performing strongly.

The credit unions annual report for 2016 shows that combined savings increased by 3,642,348 to over 53.2m. Assets increased by 7.3% to 62.4m.
However, union representatives have also come out strongly against providing special deals for any sectors that may be struggling to recruit or retain staff.

Talks between the Government and public sector unions around a successor to the Lansdowne Road Agreement are due to begin shortly with the unwinding of the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest (FEMPI) Act. Contributions to pensions, recruitment, and retention all up for discussion.

While a date for talks has yet to be decided, the issue of public sector pay and conditions will be raised by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe at Cabinet on Tuesday.

Mr Donohoe has already stated that negotiations will begin before the end of the month. However, unions will be anxious to have a deal in place by the beginning of June to allow teachers to ballot before they take their summer break.

Nurses  who have been vocal about staffing shortages in the health sector  have already called for 12% wage increase on top of any wider restoration of pay agreed during the upcoming discussions.

However, speaking at the Impact Local Government Division conference, the unions national secretary, Peter Nolan, warned against any special agreement for specific groups, and said workers would not vote for an outcome that only gives with one hand and takes away with another.

Mr Nolan warned that an approach favouring certain groups over others would repeat the 2016 situation, in which gardai were awarded a 50m package that he claimed exceeded the benefits agreed upon under the Lansdowne Road deal.

Worse, we could be back to a spiral of uncontrolled, leap-frogging pay claims, with accompanying industrial action, said Mr Nolan. That is not sustainable for those who use and deliver our public services, or those who pay for them.

While the report of the Public Sector Pay Commission, published this week, argued in favour of the unwinding of FEMPI, it did not suggest a time-frame for this.

Writing in the Irish Examiner, Mr Howlin says the State should reward those who work in the public service with a decent wage and believes there is now a moral duty to restore public sector pay.

I dont regard the restoration of pay levels to those pertaining a decade ago as an extravagant demand, he said. The truth is that, for some grades, there is still some way to go to make a living wage a reality for all.

While those representing workers will be eager to accelerate the restoration of pay, the Government has warned that there is still a need to be prudent with public finances. Indeed, senior union sources close to the talks have conceded that 2018 will be a difficult year and have said a creative solution will have to be found when it comes to any restoration of pay next year.

However, delegates at the Impact conference in Donegal yesterday emphasised the need for a speedy unwinding of FEMPI.
Two thousand six hundred and twenty-five

By Thomas McCarthy

Its sixty-one years, and counting. George Hook, can they do it?

Remember how wildly your mind can get carried away

When you are place-kicking over and over, and Mr Kidney

Looking on? The Pres grounds must seem just like yesterday

And the world must be forever young. If you could see

How you carried all the yearnings of others, all the young

Hopes, all the dreams of glory on a rain-drenched field,

You would be over-whelmed with doubt. But some strong

Fibre has held you together and incessant rain yields

To you as you place the ball. You are forever banging at

The windows of your parents house because Donal Lenihan

Has made a late-night Lions call. There is always a Duncan

McRae wanting to punch you, but there are other days,

The final kick, the Grand Slam. You have a gift without limits,

OGara; youve given much more than a final twenty minutes.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 12

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend

A high-level roundtable discussion of the implementation of the new ombudsman law in Turkmenistan, effective from January 1, 2017, and of international standards, guidelines and good practices in establishing and strengthening national human rights institutions took place in

Ashgabat, the OSCE said in a message.



The newly-elected Turkmen Ombudsman and representatives of the Mejlis (parliament), the National Institute for Democracy and Human Rights under the President of Turkmenistan and other relevant state bodies participated in the event.

The establishment of the Ombudsman institution marks an important step in strengthening democratic principles in Turkmenistan, said Akja Nurberdiyeva, Chairperson of Turkmenistans Mejlis. Todays event will facilitate the exchange of best practices in the area of establishing and functioning of the Institute of Ombudsperson, which, in its turn, will contribute to the implementation of human rights standards Turkmenistan is committed to.



The participants discussed the new national legal framework and international standards and guidelines for national human rights institutions, as set by the UN Paris and Belgrade Principles.

The participants also exchanged views on the role of ombudsperson in protecting the rights of children, women and people with disabilities. An international expert from Finland invited by the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat shared good practices from the OSCE region.

The support of the OSCE in establishing and strengthening national human rights institutions is important for all of the Organizations 57 participating States, since the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms is central to its comprehensive concept of security, said Ambassador Natalya Drozd, Head of the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat.



The discussion was co-organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the OSCE Centre in Ashgabat, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Turkmenistan and the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner.
Gavin Clancy expressed remorse and described it as a reality check. Despite his previously clean record, the 24-year-old faced the possibility of a mandatory minimum jail term of 10 years.

Judge Gerard OBrien said he wanted to consider the matter and adjourned sentencing until May 19.

Detective Garda Rory OConnell went to the home of Clancy, at Elmside, Carrigaline, Co Cork, and found the drugs with the co-operation of the accused.

At Cork Circuit Criminal Court, Clancy pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of the drug on June 8, 2016, at a time when its street value exceeded 13,000.

Judge Sean O Donnabhain asked what the actual value was.

Imelda Kelly, prosecuting, said the street value was 31,000.

Sinead Behan, defending, said the defendant had not come to the attention of gardai before and there was no suggestion he was involved with drugs now. He is genuinely remorseful and appears to have changed his ways. There is clear urinalysis. Since this happened he has realised the gravity of the matter, Ms Behan said.

Ms Behan said he was attending a local drug counsellor and was in full-time employment.

He has written a letter of apology which expresses his sincere embarrassment and remorse, Ms Behan said.
James Gately narrowly escaped with his life, thanks to a bulletproof vest, after being shot at five times as he sat in his parked car at a busy service station in north Dublin.

The drive-by shooting took place in the early afternoon at a Topaz garage in Clonshaugh with gardai saying that innocent people could easily have been injured.

Gately received a gunshot wound to his neck and jaw, while three bullets hit his vest and a fifth went through his car and struck a sign on the far side of the road.

The 30-year-old is associated with the Hutch crime grouping and was a close friend of Gary Hutch, murdered by the cartel in Spain in September 2015.

His death was the first casualty of the feud, which has claimed up to 11 lives  all but one at the hands of the cartel.

The cartel launched a killing spree after the Hutch grouping sought revenge for Garys murder and carried out a military-style assault on the Regency Hotel in February 2016.

That attack, involving gunmen dressed as elite gardai armed with AK47s, led to the death of senior Kinahan figure, David Byrne, but missed its main target, Daniel Kinahan, the elder son of cartel boss Christy Kinahan.

Garda sources said they have saved Gately a number of times from being shot. We have sat down with him and said stay out of town, said one source.

Gately, from Dublins north inner city, has been in the North, but is understood to have visited Dublin more than once to visit family.

If he listened to us, he wouldnt have been shot, said a Garda source.

How many times have they tried to shoot him? But what does he do? He drives around Dublin. Everyone knows him. He cannot just wander around town, he would be spotted. The Kinahans were proactively seeking him and others.

Despite reports that the cartel was reeling, he said: A bit like the Provos, they havent gone away.

He said the cartel leadership is throwing money at gunmen, or those with access to a gun, to shoot Hutch associates. And he said the cartel is under mounting pressure because of Garda successes.

The Kinahans have lost people, guns and drugs. They are finding it extremely difficult to trade, said the source. He said that 25 attempted murders have been prevented by gardai tackling the feud.
Assistant national director for health protection, Dr Kevin Kelleher, told a meeting of the Oireachtas health committee that this reduction may be due to vaccine complacency, as many of the diseases are not visible now, due to the success of vaccination, or are not perceived to be serious and life-threatening.

Ongoing, concerted efforts are required from all healthcare professionals and opinion leaders to improve and maintain vaccine confidence in HPV and all vaccines.

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine was introduced for all 12 to 13-year-old girls in Ireland in 2010. Uptake has dropped from 87% to 50%.

Dr Kelleher said that because of parental concerns about HPV vaccine safety, which have no scientific basis, a large number of girls are at a future risk of cervical cancer.

The chairwoman of the National Immunisation Advisory Committee at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Prof Karina Butler, said HPV causes up to 420 cancer cases, and 130 cancer deaths, each year: HPV vaccine can prevent most of these cases. The evidence of benefit is very strong. HPV vaccines represent a major step forward in combatting cancer. They are safe.

Consultant obstetrician and gynaecological oncologist, Prof Donal Brennan, said he can understand why parents of 13-year-old girls could not imagine them dying of cervical cancer, but that survivors know the risk.

Prof Brennan said 3,000 women in Ireland are suffering the consequences of cervical cancer treatment. He attended a woman who was pregnant after six failed cycles of IVF. She had early bleeding in pregnancy and was found to have an advanced stage of cervical cancer: She has had a year of severe medical treatment and, unfortunately, her little girl, who is beautiful, has a significant hearing loss. I asked this lady, when I saw her last week, if she would vaccinate her daughter and she said: Well, what do you think, doctor?

Dr Kelleher said uptake of the flu vaccination among hospital healthcare workers remains low, at 31%, though this increased from 22% last year, with the rate for nurses doubling: Our problem has been primarily with nurses around their uptake of the vaccine, and we have been working very hard to try and understand that.

Leadership from the nursing profession makes a big difference, but so do incentives, according to Dr Kelleher, who said there is extremely good evidence in medical literature that giving nurses chocolates works.

However, the general secretary of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, Liam Doran, reacted angrily on RTE radio to the comments: Thats a perfect example, if you ever needed yet another one, of why Irish nurses and midwives walk away from the Irish health service. Yes, we would like the uptake of the flu vaccine to be higher, but it is not based upon a question of giving people chocolates.
Fresh flowers were out, security was increased and the best ties and dresses were worn. But his visit will probably be not so much about what Irish citizens and parliamentarians learnt from the erudite EU official but more what he took away himself.

Barnier was left in no doubt about Irish needs. Irish negotiators will be hoping that it will be these concerns, doubts and demands that will hang on the Frenchmans mind when he does battle with Britain on behalf of the 27 member states during the Brexit negotiations in the months ahead.

He was following in the footsteps yesterday of only a few non-Irish parliamentarians who have addressed the Dail  they include the late South African leader Nelson Mandela, three former US presidents, and former European Parliament president Martin Schulz.

Barnier, a former French cabinet minister, went to great lengths to praise Irelands progress, history and position in the EU project: The European Union has helped Ireland become what it is today. And Ireland has complemented and strengthened our union.

He said Irish people are hard working and open minded. There was a touch of ah, those little pixie heads, as one comedian has remarked about Europes opinion of Ireland at times. Nonetheless, Barnier left an impression that he would do us no wrong.

Michel Barnier speaking in the Dail yesterday. He is one of a handful of non-parliamentarians to address it. Picture: Maxwell Photography

Indeed, he suggested Ireland could be at the centre of relations for the EU going forward: I am convinced that Ireland will play a major role in these changes. As a centre for innovation. As a strong and sustainable agri-food producer. As a bridge across the Atlantic. As a supporter of the future relationship that we need to build with the UK.

We never knew we mattered that much. But this was more than just plaudits. A key win for Ireland in recent weeks was agreement by EU leaders that Irelands concerns, namely for the peace process, would be prioritised before future relations between the bloc and Britain are negotiated. Furthermore, the North would automatically join the EU again after Brexit in the event of a vote for reunification. The Good Friday Agreement was untouchable, EU leaders agreed.

Barnier noted the importance of talks on trade once Britain exits, and said the more important issue  no matter what  is peace across the island of Ireland: We first must make sufficient progress on these points, before we start discussing the future of our relationship with the UK. The sooner this will happen, the better.

Party leaders also shared opinions with the EU official.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny emphasised that a flexible and imaginative approach is needed for the Brexit talks.

Sinn Feins Gerry Adams said Ireland should get a veto on any final Brexit deal.

Labours Brendan Howlin warned of the impact on our energy and communications connections, mostly linked to Britain, after Brexit.

Fianna Fails Micheal Martin emphasised that some special status or legal structures will be needed to protect the North and the common travel area between Britain and Ireland.

Barnier will today visit the border area where no doubt the realities of Brexit for citizens there will be made known to him.
Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, May 12

By Huseyn Hasanov - Trend

The views on the prospects for cooperation in the oil and gas, energy, construction, transport and communication sectors were exchanged in Ashgabat as part of the meeting of the intergovernmental Turkmen-German working group, the Turkmen Foreign Ministry said in a message.

According to the message, the development of relations between the Turkmen and German Chambers of Commerce and Industry, as well as holding of business forums and exhibitions, were discussed.

"The fact that many well-known German companies have opened their branches and representative offices in Turkmenistan testifies to the German business circles desire to consolidate their positions in the Turkmen market," the Turkmen Dovlet Habarlary state news service reported.

According to the Neutral Turkmenistan newspaper, Turkmenistan is implementing a strategy of diversifying export routes for energy supply, including the European direction.

The initiatives, aimed at the formation of the North-South and East-West transit transport corridors, as well as the work carried out in Turkmenistan to upgrade the relevant infrastructure and create a combined transport system, are directed to optimize the partnership between Turkmenistan and Germany.

The German side expressed the local companies' desire to participate in major infrastructure projects, in particular, the reconstruction of the seaport in the city of Turkmenbashi.

German companies make a significant contribution to the implementation of long-term projects in Turkmenistan. Among them are such companies as Siemens AG, Daimler AG, CLAAS company, Rohde & Schwarz GmbH & Co KG, Dresser-Rand company.
Friday, May 12th, 2017 (12:37 pm) - Score 856

A new survey of 1,465 UK businesses by the British Chambers of Commerce has found that 70% of firms have suffered Mobile not spots (no signal) or partial not-spots (basic cover via only some networks), while 91% of those who suffered such issues are rural based (falls to 56% for urban firms).

The vast majority (96%) of those surveyed were small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), while 22% operated in the manufacturing sector and 78% in the services sector. Overall 42% of businesses were able to get a 4G connection and 29% claimed to suffer from unreliable Mobile Broadband connections (rising to 54% in rural areas).

The results arent terribly surprising, particularly since 6% of companies typically only obtain a bog standard 2G signal and 25% will generally only connect via 3G. The study noted that urban based businesses were more likely to have a 4G signal (54%) than those in rural areas (25%) and this is particularly true for big businesses (57% of firms with more than 500 employees connected via 4G but then those are more likely to be urban based).

Sadly only 41% of the smallest businesses (1-4 employees) were able to get 4G. The study appears to support recent research from OpenSignal (here and here), which found that what primary Mobile Network Operators (e.g. Three UK, Vodafone, O2 and EE) claim, in terms of network availability or performance, and what people receive are often two very different things.

Dr Adam Marshall, Director General of the BCC, said: All across the country businesspeople complain about patchy mobile coverage and unreliable internet connections in their local areas. Time and again, I hear from frustrated businesspeople who cant use their mobiles or access the internet when they need to  basic requirements for companies to work on the move, trade online, and connect with customers and suppliers. Rural businesses are particularly affected by poor mobile coverage and connectivity, but our research shows that not-spots are prevalent across the UK. Its incredible to hear that in this day and age there are even places in the City of London where businesses cant get reliable coverage. Some of the solutions are obvious. Relaxing planning laws to allow for taller masts would be a quick win for the next government to help improve mobile coverage.

Ofcom and the Government hope that virtually all UK premises should be able to receive a 4G signal by the end of 2017, although that commitment only reflects population and not geographic (landmass) coverage. The operator with the most advanced 4G cover is EE and they currently reach 80% of the UKs landmass (99% population), which should rise to 92% by September 2017 and then 95% by the end of December 2020.

However the BCC believes that Ofcom must do more to hold providers to account and they warn that otherwise the United Kingdom will be left lagging in the delivery of access to a world-class digital infrastructure  The Chamber Networks election manifesto specifically calls for these issues to be rectified, and for the next government to provide all businesses with super-fast and reliable broadband and mobile connectivity to boost confidence and productivity, said Marshall.
Friday, May 12th, 2017 (7:57 am) - Score 457

The Worcestershire County Council in England recently slipped under our radar when they issued a tender for Phase 3 of the Superfast Worcestershire project, which will commit up to 2,627,415 of public funding to expand the local availability of superfast broadband (30Mbps+).

At present the council is working to make superfast broadband services available to more than 95% of the county by the end of 2017 and theyre currently sitting at about 92%. The raw fibre footprint also reaches around 97% when including sub-24Mbps areas, with a total of 65,684 premises being covered as a result of the Broadband Delivery UK backed project (this falls to 54,772 when only looking at superfast speeds).

Since then another 3.7 million extension deal has been announced (here), which will see Openreach (BT) rolling out their FTTC and a bit of FTTP broadband technology to a further 3,000 homes and businesses in the county by around the end of 2018.

Otherwise the purdah (pre-election) period usually means that we dont hear about new state aid supported broadband contracts or procurement announcements, at least not until after the General Election (8th June 2017), although it looks as if Worcestershire has recently managed to slip another proposal out to tender.

The latest tender appears to be partly based on the feedback that WCC received following their last Open Market Review (OMR), which was conducted between 3rd September 2016 and 3rd October 2016 to establish existing and planned (within the next 3 years) coverage of broadband infrastructure across Worcestershire (details here).

The OMR identified that 25,156 premises werent currently covered by existing or planned superfast broadband networks, while a further 5,972 premises had been marked as under review because they have previously been indicated to have planned commercial coverage for NGA broadband (i.e. mapped as grey or black NGA), but those plans have been reported through the OMR as being at risk of not being completed.

The OMR noted that total public funding of up to 9.5 million may be committed via the forthcoming procurement, although the new Phase 3 tender currently only has confirmed funding of up to 1,127,415 from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and 1,500,000 from BDUK.

Sadly we dont get a lot of detail from the procurement documents, although it does state that the funding will be focused on eligible business premises.

Worcestershire Tender Summary Worcestershire County Council has previously invested significant public funds through two separate contracts (Superfast Worcestershire and Superfast Extension Programme) to extend the availability of NGA infrastructure in areas where no existing commercial deployment existed or there were no imminent plans for further deployment from the telecommunications market. Phase 3 aims to extend NGA coverage even further by selecting an infrastructure provider to build an NGA network to the remaining unserved white premises, focusing on the eligible business premises and utilising the public funding that is available in a gap funded model. The eligible white premises in the intervention area have been qualified formally through an Open Market Review and Public Consultation processes with the supplier market. The Contractor will be expected to provide investment in the network, as part of the gap funded model, and to own and manage the risks associated with developing and operating a wholesale broadband network, including but not limited to take-up risk.

The initial expressions of interest by suppliers are expected by 26th May 2017 and the contract itself is then expected to be awarded by 9th August 2017.
Autonomous vehicles are widely seen as the next multibillion-dollar business for computing. In the near future, cars will not only drive on their own but eventually generate four terabytes of information from onboard sensors every hour and a half. This conclusion is made by Intel, who is betting big on self-driving cars.

According to VentureBeat, Intel is currently engaged with 33 tier 1 automakers, and it has partnerships with car suppliers such as BWM and Delphi. Even though Intel is now busy testing self-driving cars, many critics believe that the company still has a long road ahead. Self-driving cars need to have dozens of radar, stable system network and camera sensors that can generate 45 terabits of data per hour.

As previously reported, autonomous cars will need a 5G network connection in order to successfully communicate with servers, which will enable cars split-second decisions ability. The final autonomous vehicles that will hit the road are said to needing 15 to 20 teraflops or 10 to 20 times the computing power than the usual cars existing today. To achieve this, Intel builds a new Advanced Vehicle Lab in San Jose, California, this week.

Kathy Winter, general manager and vice president of automated driving solutions at Intel, said that she is "taking things we already know but making them automotive-grade." It looks like Intel is making all the right moves since Winter is previously positioned as the vice president of Delphi's software and services for automated driving. The mobile business of Intel launched too late, however, its effort on having a nice project when it comes to autonomous vehicles seems like a good decision.

Along with BMW and Delphi, Intel showed off the first-ever highly automated vehicles at the event of Silicon Valley Innovation Center for Autonomous Driving. This new self-driving car is the pioneer car that the companies will be testing soon on the US roads, according to Engadget. Aside from that, Intel has also launched an artificial intelligence division of its own that will be working on the connectivity of the autonomous car.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

Tashkent hosted political consultations on strengthening of cooperation between Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, said the press service of the Uzbek Foreign Ministry.

During the consultations, the sides mulled the state of bilateral relations in the consular sphere, practical aspects of the protection of the Uzbek and Kazakh nationals rights and freedoms, as well as legal assistance in civil, family and criminal matters.

The sides also discussed implementation of the Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan agreements and international conventions.
A ransomware attack appears to be spreading around the world, leveraging a hacking tool that may have come from the U.S. National Security Agency.

The ransomware, called Wanna Decryptor, struck hospitals at the U.K.s National Health Service on Friday, taking down some of their network.

Spains computer response team CCN-CERT has also warned of a "massive attack" from the ransomware strain, amid reports that local telecommunications firm Telefonica was hit.

The ransomware, also known as WannaCry, works by leveraging a Windows vulnerability that came to light last month when a cache of mysterious hacking tools was leaked on the internet.

The tools, which security researchers suspect came from the NSA, include an exploit codenamed EternalBlue that makes hijacking older Windows systems easy. It specifically targets the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol in Windows, which is used for file-sharing purposes.

Microsoft has already patched the vulnerability, but only for newer Windows systems. Older ones, such as Windows Server 2003, are no longer supported, but still widely used among businesses, according to security experts.

That may have painted a giant bulls-eye for hackers to target these systems. The developer of Wanna Decryptor appears to have added the suspected NSA hacking tools to the ransomwares code, said Matthew Hickey, the director of security provider Hacker House, in an email.

Security firm Avast said it has detected the ransomware, largely attacking Russia, Ukraine and Taiwan.

Another security research firm, MalwareTech, has created a page monitoring the attacks. They appear to have gone worldwide.

The Wanna Decryptor ransomware strikes by encrypting all the files on an infected PC, along with any other systems on the network the PC is attached to. It then demands a ransom of about $300 to $600 in bitcoin to release the files, threatening to delete them after a set period of days if the amount is not paid.

Security experts are urging organizations to patch vulnerable systems, upgrading to the latest versions of OSes, and making backups of any critical files.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Anakhanum Hidayatova  Trend:

Ambassador-at-Large of Latvias Foreign Ministry, Igors Apokins, has met with representatives from the public administration institutions of Uzbekistan who had arrived in Latvia to gain experience in the sector of public administration reforms, said the Latvian Foreign Ministry in a message.

The visit is part of a broader project funded by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Uzbekistan and was arranged in association with the Latvian Foreign Ministry.

Solid and sustainable development of the Central Asian region is one of Latvias priorities in its development cooperation, says the message.

In his address, the ambassador emphasized the good relations and successful cooperation between Latvia and Uzbekistan.

Apokins said he was glad that those working for the public sector of Uzbekistan have appreciated reforms carried out by Latvia and are prepared to draw on Latvias experience in order to reform public administration in their country. Latvia will continue providing support through sharing expertise in the sectors such as good governance, the rule of law, economic and agricultural development, border security, introducing environmentally friendly technologies, and education.

Apokins highlighted in particular the highly successful cooperation in education, which is evidenced by the numbers of Uzbek students at Latvias universities increasing year on year.

The ambassador thanked the UNDP for fruitful long-term cooperation and reaffirmed Latvias readiness to work further together in development cooperation projects.

During their visit from May 7 to May 12, officials from Uzbekistan visited Latvian public authorities to explore public administration structure, personnel management in public administration and local governments, the system of remuneration of civil servants, corruption prevention in civil service, and the enforcement of the Civil Law and Administrative Law. The visitors had an opportunity to meet with officials at the State Chancellery, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, the Corruption Prevention and Combatting Bureau, the Riga City Council, and the School of Public Administration.

The Uzbek delegation included representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister of Uzbekistan, the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Labor, the Federation of Trade Unions, and UNDP Uzbekistan.
Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 12

By Demir Azizov  Trend:

Beijing hosted a meeting of Uzbekistans President Shavkat Mirziyoyev and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping with the participation of the two countries official delegations on May 12, the Uzbek presidents press service said in a message.

The Uzbek leader is on a state visit to China at the invitation of Xi Jinping.

During the meeting, an exchange of views was held on topical issues of bilateral and multilateral relations, in particular, on further development of cooperation in political, trade and economic, investment, cultural and humanitarian spheres.

It was noted that bringing the mutually beneficial cooperation to a new level, unanimity and similarity of positions of the two countries on regional and international issues is of great importance.

Mirziyoyev stated that the current negotiations are the logical continuation of the high-level dialogue.

Xi Jinping, for his part, noted that the Chinese-Uzbek relations are entering a new phase and advancing to a qualitatively new level and this is happening thanks to the large-scale cooperation in the sphere of high technologies.

Following the negotiations, Shavkat Mirziyoyev and Xi Jinping signed a joint declaration between Uzbekistan and China.

Meanwhile, a number of intergovernmental documents, including the agreements on technical cooperation, international road communication, exchange of intergovernmental notes on financing of projects for increasing the quality of education in comprehensive schools, a memorandum of understanding on stimulating the cooperation between small businesses and private entrepreneurs, a plan for cooperation in the field of agriculture for 2018-2020.

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 Uzbek president is also expected to take part in the international forum One Belt  One Way on May 14-15.
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Feds laud $83M to better Pell Bridge The congressional delegation of Rhode Island was in Jamestown to celebrate an $82.5 million grant to upgrade the bridge that connects Conanicut Island to Newport. U.S. Sen. Jack Reed, a...

Local author, illustrator collaborate on book A local woman has turned her digital cross-country teatimes with her granddaughter into a childrens book. Tuesday Tea, written by Debby Furness Saletin and illustrated by Maryann England, both of...

Local group asks for rental rules changes A group of residents is expected to present its recommendations on how to improve the ordinance that governs short-term rentals. Member Ron Ratcliffe said the item is scheduled to be...
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 11

By Emil Ilgar  Trend:

Irans oil output decreased by 34,700 barrels per day in April month-on-month to 3.759 million barrels per day (mb/d), OPEC reported May 11.

According to the report, Irans heavy oil price also decreased by 1.7 percent to $50.27 month-on-month.

However, the figure during January-April increased by more than 69 percent to 51.57 percent in average.

According to the report, OPEC members cut oil output by 18,000 b/d in April.

Demand for OPEC crude in 2016 now stands at 31.8 mb/d, which is 2.0 mb/d higher than in the previous year. In 2017, demand for OPEC crude is projected at 31.9 mb/d, around 0.2 mb/d higher than in the current year.

Platts reported Mar 9 that Irans oil exports also decreased from 2.35 mb/d in March to 2.16 million b/d in April.

OPEC members are preparing to discuss the extension of oil cut deal (1.2 mb/d) in 2H17. Eleven Non-OPEC producers also are expected to extend their commitment to decrease oil output by 558,000 b/d.
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A Dobson man avoided the death penalty and will spend the rest of his life in prison for the beating death of an 80-year-old Mount Airy woman.

Jordan Ross Lowdermilk, 29, of Briar Patch Lane, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Surry Superior Court to first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and larceny after breaking and entering. As part of the plea deal, Judge Andy Cromer of Surry Superior Court sentenced Lowdermilk to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He also pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder in connection to the stabbing of a man on Interstate 77. Cromer sentenced him to 15 years to 19 years.

He also received other consecutive sentences in connection to his convictions on burglary and larceny charges, according to court records.

Lowdermilk is accused of fatally beating Claudia Smith, who was found May 12, 2016, at her house at 409 Franklin St. Mount Airy police officers went to her house to do a welfare check. Smiths house appeared to have been broken into and her body showed signs of assault, police said at the time.

J.D. Byers, one of Lowdermilks attorneys, said Lowdermilk stole Smiths car and was accused of stabbing a man from Ohio on Interstate 77. Smiths car was found abandoned on I-77, near mile marker 99 in Surry County.

Lowdermilk made a statement to Smiths family, apologizing for what he did.

He gave a very, very remorseful statement to the family, Byers said.

Lowdermilk doesnt know why he committed the crimes. He was on drugs and alcohol at the time and had an underlying severe head injury and mental-health issues.

Byers and attorney Vince Rabil represented Lowdermilk.

Assistant District Attorney Tim Watson, who prosecuted the case, could not be reached for comment.
Tehran, Iran, May 12

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Irans President Hassan Rouhani has said he will not discard the cash subsidies plan if made president for a second term.

Speaking on a live debate show with rivals, Rouhani said his potential future government will continue to pay the 450,000-rial ($12) monthly payments to individuals, Trend correspondent reported May 12.

The candidates stance on the cash subsidies has turned into a decisive topic for Iranian candidates victory prospect. Many believe former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won his first candidacy because he promised the subsidies.

The cash subsidy payments has been affecting the government for a number of years. Each month, the government should pay about 34 trillion rials ($1.05 billion, each USD at 32,404 rials) to people as cash subsidies. The government has so far paid over 2.5 quadrillion rials as cash subsidies. A study by the Parliaments Research Center indicates that the cash subsidies have not helped fight poverty.
WASHINGTON  This will not stand.

President Trump performed his latest impersonation of a Third World strongman, firing FBI Director James Comey Tuesday in ham-handed fashion as it was becoming clear that the FBI probe into Trumps ties to Russia, which Comey was overseeing, was becoming a bigger problem for Trump while new testimony exposed dubious behavior by the president himself.

The sacking brought immediate outrage and obvious comparisons to President Richard Nixons Saturday Night Massacre, when the scandal-engulfed president ordered the Watergate prosecutor fired in a doomed attempt to keep that probe from ensnaring him. Trump, like Nixon, will fail, for a simple reason: The institutions he is assaulting daily are stronger than he thinks. His autocratic instincts have been checked every step of the way.

He attempted a variant of the Muslim ban he spoke of during the campaign, ordering a halt to travel by people from certain Muslim-majority nations. He was shot down in court.

He recklessly escalated tensions with North Korea and Iran and snubbed a key ally in Germanys Angela Merkel. But cooler heads in the Pentagon and the State Department have calmed jittery allies and restored some measure of stability, conveying to them that Trump is not really in charge.

He injected himself into the French presidential elections with his praise for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen  and French voters rejected her by 2-to-1, following Dutch voters rejection of another far-right populist in the Trump mold.

American public opinion has turned sharply against Trump, making it easier for Democrats to oppose him. In the spending bill that Congress passed last week, Democrats successfully repelled his border wall, deportation force and cuts to Planned Parenthood, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and more.

The plain truth is Trumps clumsy assaults on democratic norms are being resoundingly rejected. The Cook Political Report is already talking about the possibility of a midterm wave against Republicans, and it shifted ratings in 20 House races  all in Democrats direction. At town-hall meetings, House Republicans who were badgered by the White House into voting for Trumpcare last week are already backpedaling.

At Mondays hearing on the Trump administrations ties to Russia, only six Republicans spoke (versus nine Democrats) and not one of them attempted a real defense of the presidents actions on disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina openly mocked Trumps claims that the election hacking might not have been done by Russia but by a 400-pound guy sitting on a bed or any other country.

Many of us feared during the campaign that Trump would be a threat to democracy, operating outside the Constitution, using demagoguery to turn the country against immigrants and religious and racial minorities. That hasnt happened, though not for lack of trying on Trumps part. His instincts are authoritarian, but the Trump presidency has been one pratfall after another. He has proved to be a blundering bully and an inept autocrat.

At a single White House briefing Monday, the questioning revealed all manner of disarray. Conservatives, one questioner noted, were worried that the White House is woefully behind in filling administration posts and judicial vacancies. Trumps political website had, until this week, called the travel order a Muslim ban even as the administration insisted it wasnt. And 30 days into the 90-day period Trumps opioid commission has to issue a report, no members of the commission have been named.

Now we may have the clumsiest moment yet of this presidency. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who had a sterling reputation when he was confirmed two weeks ago, instantly turned himself into a Trump stooge Tuesday evening. Questions about Comeys performance are legitimate, but the timing of the firing, a day after a damaging hearing about Trumps Russia ties, left the clear impression this was all about killing the FBIs Russia probe.

Rosenstein has one chance to rehabilitate his reputation: He can name a special prosecutor to continue the probe. If he doesnt, the wave of rebellion against Trump so far will become a tsunami, and it will swamp Trumps protectors in the polls.
Tehran, Iran, May 12

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iran will deploy 260,000 officers to ensure the security of the May 19 presidential election, Deputy Minister of Interior for Security Hossein Zolfaqari said.

Besides police forces, the Revolution Guards have also been put on standby as backup forces, he said, Tasnim news agency reported May 12.

On May 19 Iran will hold elections for presidency, city and village councils, and parliament (midterm round).

Zolfaqari also mentioned that all military, intelligence, police, and judiciary organizations as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting are part of what he called the election security headquarters.

According to official reports, 63,500 polling booths will be set up to serve over 55 million potential voters on the election day.
Tehran, Iran, May 12

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Irans President Hassan Rouhani has said he is prepared to help lift Irans non-nuclear sanctions, a new, ground-breaking promise by Rouhani who fulfilled his promise of four years ago about lifting nuclear sanctions, Trend correspondent reported from Tehran May 12.

Non-nuclear sanctions on Iran include the US primary sanctions that were devised following the 1979 hostage crisis and now grapple the countrys banking ties with other countries.

Another important set of non-nuclear sanctions is named the ISA (Iran Sanctions Act), a 1996 act of Congress that imposed economic sanctions on firms doing business with Iran and Libya. On September 30, 2006, the act was renamed to the ISA, as it no longer applied to Libya.
JURIST Guest Columnist Royal F. Oakes of discusses the recent firing of FBI Director James Comey and its implications for wider investigations into the Trump administration

The Comey affair is shaping up to be a brass knuckle, brazenly partisan showdown that could turn into a Trump administration Armageddon.

The two sides couldnt be more different. The Trump perspective is: youve had a year, there is no smoking gun, lets move on. Weve all put up with a dysfunctional FBI Director who tore up the rule book and is more concerned with his gastrointestinal upset than doing his job. On the other hand, the loyal opposition is convinced this is Watergate all over again, and is prepared to fight the war on numerous fronts: ensuring that Comeys replacement wont be a Trump puppet; vigorous investigations by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees; continued aggressive pursuit of the FBIs look into possible collusion with Russia; and last but possibly not least, good old-fashioned litigation.

The lesson of how powerful a well-placed lawsuit can be has not been lost on the Democrats in the first hundred days of the Trump administration. Time and again, Trumps executive regulations have been thwarted by litigation that led to federal judges issuing national injunctions against the travel ban, and more recently, sanctuary city rules.

Whats all that have to do with the Comey affair, you ask? After all, the consensus emerged immediately that the FBI Director is an at-will employee, subject to termination at the discretion of the President. Well, again, Democrats may take a page from the Watergate playbook. After President Nixons administration fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, that termination was challenged in court, by a congressman. Watergate judge Gerhard Gesell ruled the firing was illegal. Cox refused to try to step back into the job, but his successor, Leon Jaworski, was a burr under Nixons saddle.

Its true, the court found the termination of a Special Prosecutor required demonstration of cause, but dont be surprised if Democrats take the position that whereas the president has lots of discretion in terminating an at-will employee, there are some things you cant get away with, like obstructing justice. The charge will be that Trump was running scared, that he heard Comey recently wanted more money for the Russian investigation, that Comeys people had recently served subpoenas on Gen. Flynns subordinates, and so the firing was motivated by a desire to prevent a lawful investigation.

On the other hand, the president can point to the fact the FBI itself confirmed this week that Comey had provided erroneous testimony in his recent statements before a Senate panel about Hillary Clintons aide Huma Abedins handling of classified emails. On May 9, the FBI sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee clarifying part of that testimony. Comey had said Abedin forwarded hundreds of thousands of emails to her husband. In fact, only a few chains of emails were involved.

But the way Trump fired Comey didnt do the president any favors. His Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was supposed to be out of the loop, having recused himself, but he was involved in the process of delivering the Department of Justice message to the president that they recommended Comeys firing. And now, it appears Sessions will be involved in the process of selecting Comeys replacement. Plus, why the abrupt firing? Was it necessary for Comey to learn about his termination when a big screen behind his back during a talk in Los Angeles blared the announcement, leading to him comment that this was a pretty good joke?

And the coup de grace was the bizarre insertion by the president in the termination letter of the comment that, I sure appreciate the fact that you three times assured me I wasnt under investigation. Perhaps the president thought that without that line, people might say, he fired the director because he was afraid of an investigation. Inserting the language only threw gasoline on the fire.

Another example of cognitive dissonance is Trumps firing of somebody who, lets face it, did him two huge favors last year. The FBI rule is, we dont talk about investigations. But because Comey thought that his own Department of Justice couldnt be trusted to be fair and objective about the case against Hillary Clinton, he felt he had to break the rules and give a lengthy lecture about how guilty Hillary Clinton was  although at the end of the speech, it was, nothing to see here, folks, return to your homes. Then, the second famous favor by Comey to Trump was the October 28 surprise, the reopening of the investigation in, shall we say, a highly public way, only to be shut down days later, after irreparable damage had been done to the Clinton campaign.

So given the fact that the president is perceived as being focused on one thing, namely, is somebody a friend of mine, its pretty strange that he would fire this guy.

So, the scene will soon shift to the investigations in the Congressional committees. The goal of Democrats will be to find someone in Trump-world who feels the screws tightening regarding allegations of collusion with Russia, who will flip, and point the finger at bigger fish up the food chain.

But, the fact is, people have been poking around looking for smoking guns for nearly a year, and it hasnt happened. At the end of the day, evidence of a crime is either out there, or it isnt. Until the tip of the iceberg of alleged evidence of collusion can be seen above the surface of the political ocean, the Democrats frustration will probably continue. It will be difficult to generate public support, much less congressional support, for aggressive investigations or creative litigation, without the American public having something to latch onto, in terms of concrete evidence of collusion.

Royal F. Oakes is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, School of law. Mr. Oakes has extensive experience in insurance, employment and general business law. In addition, Mr. Oakes is a nationally recognized legal analyst for ABC News, and has appeared on and hosted many nationally broadcast radio and TV programs.

Suggested citation: Royal F. Oakes, The Continuing Chronicles of the Comey Confrontation, JURIST  Professional Commentary, May 12, 2017, http://jurist.org/hotline/2017/05/Royal-Oakes-comey-constitutional-confrontation.php.

This article was prepared for publication by Sean Merritt, an Assistant Editor for JURIST Commentary. Please direct any questions to him at commentary@jurist.org
Connecticut Governor Danial Malloy [official website] on Wednesday signed [press release] into a law a measure to ban gay conversion therapy. House Bill 6695 [text] was passed by the legislature to end the practice of using various measures in order to force people to disavow their same sex orientation. The Governor immediately signed the bill to stop the controversial practice.

At a time when we see harassment increasing against anyone perceived as being different, at a time when we see the rights of our friends and neighbors being threatened by the national government, at a time when we see LGBTQ youth turning to suicide at record rates, to remain silent is to be complicitThis legislation is about protecting children and teens who have been forced to undergo this so-called therapy, despite the fact that it is not supported by any medical evidence and its only proven results have been harmful, destructive, and lasting

LGBT rights are still discussed in the global legal context. The US Supreme Court in May declined to hear [JURIST report] an appeal challenging Californias 2012 ban on gay conversion therapy. Nigerian prosecutors in Kaduna in April charged [JURIST report] 53 men for celebrating an LGBTQ wedding in violation of the states law against unlawful assembly and the Same-Sex Marriage Prohibition Act. Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups urged [JURIST report] UN Secretary General in March to investigate alleged abuse against LGBT people in Chechnya. The Nebraska Supreme Court in April upheld [JURIST report] a lower court decision overruling the state of Nebraskas long-time ban on same sex partner foster parenting.
The US District Court of Northern California [official website] gave final approval on Thursday for Volkswagens [corporate website] settlement [text] related to cheating on the emissions of their 3.0-liter vehicles sold in the US. The settlement [Reuters report] requires Volkswagen to pay at least $1.22 billion to buy back or fix 80,000 3.0-liter vehicles. Owners of the vehicles will receive between $7,000 and $16,000 from Volkswagen to fix the cars if the emissions remedies are approved. If regulators do not approve the fixes, Volkswagen could end up paying up to $4.04 billion. The amount of compensation the owners receive will be based on the year and model of their car. In total, Volkswagen must pay up to $25 billion related to the vehicles sold in the US. The final settlement related to the 2.0-liter vehicles was approved [settlement] in late April.

The Volkswagen scandal began in September 2015 when it was leaked that Volkswagen had intentionally circumvented emissions tests through installing technology to determine when emissions testing would take place and alter the cars emissions during inspections. The company has since undergone litigation in a number of countries throughout the world. In April, a German court upheld [JURIST report] the seizure of evidence against Volkswagen obtained during a raid of the law firm Jones Day. In December, South Korea announced [JURIST report] plans to fine the company for false advertising. In October, a Spanish court ordered [JURIST report] Volkswagen to pay a car owner 5,006 for the 10% decrease in the cars value due to the emissions cheating.
Former congresswoman Corrine Brown was convicted of fraud on Thursday. Brown represented the Jacksonville, Florida district from 1993 to 2017 as part of the Democratic party. She had lost re-election last fall after her indictment. Brown was convicted of 18 out of 22 charges related to the misuse of funds from the charity One Door for Education. The charity was meant to provide scholarships, but the court found [Florida Times-Union report] it had only given out one $1,200 scholarship to an unidentified person, despite bringing in $800,000 between 2012 and 2016. The rest was spent on lavish parties, trips, and shopping excursions. Browns former chief of staff, Elias Ronnie Simmons, and the charitys president, Carla Wiley, both previously pleaded guilty to misusing the charitys funds and testified against Brown. Sentencing is expected to take place in about 90 days. Brown, who is currently 70, could potentially spend the rest of her life in prison. Brown still maintains her innocence, blaming the theft solely on Simmons.

Brown was convicted of 12 counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, three counts of filing a false US individual tax return, one count of engaging in a scheme to conceal material facts, and one count of corruptly endeavoring to obstruct or impede the due administration of the Internal Revenue Laws. The conviction comes less than a year after a federal appeals court refused [JURIST report] to dismiss corruption charges against US Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. Menendez is expected to face trial [Washington Examiner report] this fall on those charges.
Moon Jae-in was sworn in as the 19th President of South Korea [press release] on Wednesday, later that day seeking international assistance on North Korean weapons threats. Moon had a phone call with US President Donald Trump focusing [KBS report] on the threat of nuclear attack from North Korea. Trump invited Moon to the Washington [press release] to discuss the issue at an early date, an invitation that Moon accepted. Moon also took calls from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Chinese President Xi Jinping [press releases], with an official statement from the presidents office stressing that North Koreas weapons program is a primary concern for all three countries. Denuclearization in Pyongyang [North Korea], and also across the peninsula, is our common goal, according to the statement.

President Moon inherits a difficult and long-standing challenge in dealing with the reclusive communist countrys nuclear ambitions. In February, Prime Minister Abe and President Trump strongly condemned [text] a North Korea ballistic missile test during a joint conference from Palm Beach, Florida. Kim Jong-un, leader of North Korea, announced [JURIST report] in his New Years address that the country is in the final stage of preparations to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic rocket. At the start of 2016, the US Congress approved additional sanctions [JURIST report] including the seizure of assets and limitation of commerce in response to reports that North Korea tested a hydrogen bomb [NYT report]. In April of 2016, the UN strongly condemn[ed] [press release] North Koreas testing of missiles and that February, UN Secretary General described North Koreas missile launching as deplorable [JURIST report].
Tehran, Iran, May 12

By Mehdi Sepahvand - Trend:

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said there are plans in Iran to increase oil output from the West Karun area to 700,000 bpd.

Rouhani who was speaking as a presidential candidate in a live TV debate said this plan is to prevent falling behind Iraq in tapping the shared oil fields, Trend correspondent reported from Tehran May 12.

Iran has prioritized the development of West Karoon block, including North and South Azadegan, Yadavaran and North and South Yaran fields with 64 billion barrels of reserves, which currently share about 6 percent in the country's total crude oil production.

He also noted that as recently Persian Gulf Star refinery came on stream, the country will stop exporting raw gas condensates and will instead treat them at the plan and produce added value.

Iran inaugurated the first phase of the Persian Gulf Star Refinery last week. The project consists of three phases, with 120,000 barrels per day (b/d) of oil processing capacity each one.

Defending his governments oil policy, he said, It was a source of pride for us to retake our OPEC quota from Saudi Arabia by increasing our crude output after the nuclear deal.
The North Korean legislature on Friday sent a letter [text, KCNAWatch] to the US House of Representatives [official website] protesting new sanctions [materials] raised against the country. The letter is a rare communication between the two nations, who do not have any formal ways to communicate. The letter stated [Hill report], As the U.S. House of Representatives enacts more and more of these reckless hostile laws, the DPRKs efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrents will gather greater pace, beyond anyones imagination. Condemnation of sanctions and US actions is not uncommon by North Korea, yet this formal approach is not common. In 1984 North Korea also sent a letter to congress, which led to talks between the US, South and North Korea. Some believe [TIME report] that this communication, which came from a recently revived commission may be a move to create possible dialogue between the isolated nation and the greater international community.

Tensions continue to rise throughout the international community in regards to the North Korean actions seeking to obtain functional nuclear missile. In January North Korea [JURIST background] announced [JURIST report] that it would attempt intercontinental ballistic missile test, furthering its effort to show strength to the world. It has been well documented throughout the world that these tests will be denounced by many prominent nations. With some mulling the idea of possible military intervention on the Korean peninsula, the more common rhetoric has been that increased sanctions on the country will force it to comply with the international communities wishes. That is what the United States did in January, when it choose to increase sanctions [JURIST report] on North Korea in regards to the countries violations of human rights.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [official website] issued a subpoena [press release] Wednesday compelling former National Security Adviser Lieutenant General Michael Flynn to provide documents related to the committees investigation into Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. In a joint statement from Chairman Senator Richard Burr and Vice Chairman Senator Mark Warner, the committee says that the documents being requested are the same documents they requested April 28. Flynn, through his attorney, refused to comply [JURIST report] with that request without immunity from prosecution [letter, PDF].

Allegations of Russian connections have been a problem for the Trump administration in the early stages of his presidency. Earlier this week former acting US Attorney General Sally Yates testified [JURIST report] before the Senate Judiciary Committee stating that she had warned about Flynns vulnerabilities to blackmail by Russia less than a week after President Donald Trump assumed office. In March, now-former 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 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.
President Trump signed an executive order [text, JURIST] on Thursday launching a commission to investigate allegations of voter fraud and suppression. Vice President Mike Pence will head the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity along with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach [official website], a voter identification advocate with a tough stance on immigration. The panel will consist of about a dozen election officials from both parties and will be tasked with finding vulnerabilities in the system such as fraudulent voter registration. During his campaign, President Trump repeatedly made unfounded claims [Fortune report] of voter fraud, insisting the election was rigged against him. After the election, he maintained that voter fraud had taken place by asserting to congressional leaders that had there not been millions of illegal votes [WP report] he would have won the popular vote against Hilary Clinton. The White House has yet to provide documentation backing up President Trumps claims.

Several states have enacted statutes to address voter fraud, often by setting a stricter requirement for what type of ID is necessary to be allowed to vote. Some have argued [JURIST commentary] however, that having stricter voter ID laws will not improve the integrity of elections. In April US District Judge Nelva G. Ramos found [JURIST report] that a controversial Texas voter ID law was passed in part with discriminatory intent. In February Texas officials claimed [JURIST report] hundreds of people were allowed to improperly cast ballots in the recent presidential election, evading the states stringent voter ID law, by signing affidavits in lieu of showing their photo ID. Also in February Democratic Federal Election Commission (FEC) [official website] member Ellen Weintraub [official profile] in a statement [JURIST report] urged President Donald Trump to present evidence of his claims of extensive voter fraud in New Hampshire. In January the US Supreme Court [official website] declined [JURIST report] to hear an appeal by Texas seeking to revive the states voter identification requirements. In April 2016 the Arizona Superior Court dismissed [JURIST report] a lawsuit alleging voter fraud during the 2016 primaries. In January the US Supreme Court refused to hear [JURIST report] a lawsuit about a Texas voter ID law, that would limit IDs that could be used to vote to seven specified government issued IDs.
US President Donald Trump signed an executive order [text, JURIST] Thursday designed to strengthen IT and cyber security frameworks in the country by having agency heads manage security risks and modernize the IT infrastructure. The order also mandates the use of the National Institute of Standards and Technology framework to manage risks and a creation of a new cyber secure network. The order calls on all agency head to submit a risk assessment within 90 days which will outline the goals and vulnerabilities within each agency.

Known but unmitigated vulnerabilities are among the highest cybersecurity risks faced by executive departments and agencies (agencies). Known vulnerabilities include using operating systems or hardware beyond the vendors support lifecycle, declining to implement a vendors security patch, or failing to execute security-specific configuration guidance. Effective risk management requires agency heads to lead integrated teams of senior executives with expertise in IT, security, budgeting, acquisition, law, privacy, and human resources.

The order mandates a report on security that will be released at the end of the year.

Cyber security is a growing threat around the world. The National Control Commission for the Election Campaign for the Presidential Election (CNCCEP) on Saturday cautioned [JURIST report] media outlets against sharing information leaked from an alleged hack of a presidential candidate. in April Roman Seleznev, the son of a member of the Russian Parliament, was sentenced [JURIST report] for hacking into more than 500 US businesses, stealing then selling millions of credit card numbers. Also in April the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced [JURIST report] that it had effectively disrupted the Kelihos botnet, a network of thousands of virus ridden computers used to glean personal information and login credentials by distributing malicious software through spam email.
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Elena Kosolapova  Trend:

Linking the Turkish Stream, which will supply Russian gas to Turkey and further to Europe bypassing Ukraine, with Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) and Trans Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP)  the parts of the Southern Gas Corridor  is a scenario that goes against the EU energy diversification strategy, believes Andreas Marazis, project manager and researcher in the Brussels-based European Neighborhood Council think-tank.

If Turkish Stream becomes operational and gets connected to TAPs or TANAPs capacity, Gazprom would retain its position in the South European markets and Turkey, competing with Azerbaijan, which is currently the sole gas supplier in the Southern Gas Corridor project, Marazis told Trend by email.

Russian Gazprom has been discussing possible use of the additional capacity of TAP or Turkey-Greece-Italy Interconnector (ITGI-Poseidon) for months. The idea to link Turkish Stream and TANAP was earlier proposed by Turkey.

Marazis noted that Turkish Streams proposed placement appears quite strategic: the last section of the pipeline would run up to Turkish city of Ipsala, just opposite the town of Kipoi, across the Greek border, where TANAP and TAP  the two main sections of the Southern Gas Corridor  are planned to connect.

He reminded that according to the rules set by the European Commission, TAPs expansion capacity is open for third party access, allowing Gazprom to enter the competition.

According to the expert, half of the Russian gas pumped via the Turkish Stream can further be potentially pumped through TAP or ITGI-Poseidon.

Marazis stressed that there is, of course, interest from Gazprom to pump gas through TAP to Europe, adding that this idea has been already supported by two TAP shareholders - the Italian SNAM and the Belgian Fluxys.

Ironically, the Southern Gas Corridor has been primarily promoted as a strategy to emancipate the EUs gas supply from Russia and improve energy security, he said.

Marazis said the Turkish Stream will also have negative effect on Ukraine. He reminded that Ukraine remains a major route for Russian gas to the EU.

According to the expert, in 2015, Ukrainian Naftogaz received $1.7 billion in transit revenues from Gazprom for transiting 64.1 billion cubic meters of gas.

In conjunction with the planned Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will have 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year capacity, Turkish Stream with a capacity of 31 billion cubic meters of gas per year will enable Moscow to terminate gas transit through Ukraine. For Ukraine, losing the gas revenues is bad news for its stabilization.

Russia and Turkey signed an intergovernmental agreement on the construction of two offshore strings of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline in October 2016. Each string is estimated to have an annual 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, Russia and Turkey planned to build four strings of the pipeline.

Gazprom started construction of the Black Sea section of the Turkish Stream last Sunday.

Follow the author on Twitter: @E_Kosolapova
Baku, Azerbaijan, May 12

By Orkhan Quluzade  Trend:

Turkey successfully tested its long-range missile Bora, Turkish media outlets cited the countrys Defense Minister Fikri Isik.

Bora was launched in Turkeys Sinop Province, he said, adding the missile fell onto its target in the Black Sea.

Turkeys Roketsan has been implementing a program for the development of Bora missiles and a platform for its launch since 2009.
Verde Farms, a US grass-fed and free-range beef supplier, has acquired California-based Estancia Beef, the import division of Uruguays El Raigon Natural Beef.

The Boston-based company described the acquisition as a natural next step in expanding its range, while maintaining its founding ethos of healthy soil, animals and beef. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Estancia grass-fed Angus and Hereford cattle are raised on sustainable family-owned farms in the Pampas region of Uruguay. The beef contains no hormones or growth-promotion antibiotics.

As the largest importer of organic 100% grass-fed beef, Verde Farms has annual revenues of more than US$50m and has continued to expand rapidly, via its distribution through on- and offline retailers including BJs Wholesale Club, Tops Markets, and AmazonFresh.

Verde Farms and Estancia Beef have collaborated over the years as mission-driven companies with aligned values on sustainability and humane raising principles, said Verde Farms founder and CEO Dana Ehrlich. As consumer demand for grass-fed beef continues to explode, this acquisition allows us to satisfy that demand with 100% grass-fed beef that meets our values and high standards.

Verde Farms, which straddles three continents in Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay and North America, lets its cattle graze in open pasture, are never subjected to feedlots or added growth hormones, and antibiotic use is strictly limited to when animals are ill.

El Raigon Natural Beef Company will continue to operate its domestic grass-fed beef production division, Pasture One.
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US Secretary of Defense James Mattis will participate in meetings with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan at the White House on Tuesday, US Department of Defense spokesperson Capt. Jeff Davis said in a briefing on Friday, Sputnik reported.

"Tuesday is the visit to Washington by President Erdogan of Turkey. The secretary [Mattis] will be attending part of those meetings at the White House," Davis told reporters.

The spokesperson noted that later on Tuesday, Mattis will host Turkish Minister of Defense Fikri Isik at the Pentagon.

The White House has previously said that Trump and Erdogan would discuss strengthening cooperation in anti-terrorism operations.
Russia is currently in contact with third party states that will possibly send their observers to monitor safe zones in Syria in accordance with a memorandum signed in Astana, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters.

"The memorandum assumes that observers from third party countries would be invited to ensure the proper functioning of these safe zones We are now in talks with possible participants of this process," Lavrov stated on Thursday. "We think that we will be able to discuss it in more details with our partners sometime soon."

Russia and Turkey are the guarantors of a nationwide Syrian ceasefire regime that came into force on December 30, 2016, and has been holding up in general, despite continued reports of violations. The UN Security Council passed a resolution in December 2016 supporting the effort, Sputnik reported.

Earlier in May, Russia, Turkey and Iran signed the memorandum on establishment of safe zones in the country as part of the Astana talks on Syrian settlement. The four zones include the northwestern Idlib province and parts of the neighboring Latakia, Hama and Aleppo, the north of the central Homs province, Eastern Ghouta near Damascus, as well as southern Daraa and Quneitra regions.
During his visit to Saudi Arabia, US President Donald Trump will express his idea that all of the United States' Muslim allies must take a strong stand against terror, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster said in a briefing on Friday, Sputnik reported.

"He [Trump] will develop a strong, respectful message that the United States and the entire civilized world expects our Muslim allies to take a strong stand against radical Islamist ideology, an ideology that uses a perverted interpretation of religion to justify crimes against all humanity," McMaster stated.
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The countdown has begun. I have a week before my fiances birthday, and Im struggling to find inspiration for a present he will remember for the rest of his life. Panic is setting in. Everyone always says its the thought that counts, but I want to give him something hell love, something hell actually use. Given that he likes his watches, I decide thats a reasonable avenue to explore. I begin the search for watch accessories that would go with his Jaeger-LeCoultre Reverso.

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Detective Dee (Photo : darkpazu/YouTube)

There are six films from China that IM Global will bring to Cannes as part of its sales lineup. IM Global is an independent studio that runs one of the leading film, TV and music production, sales and distribution platforms.



Among the investors in IM Global is Tang Media Partner, an investment fund in Shanghai. IM Global has a subsidiary in Hong Kong, IM Global China, which manages the distribution internationally of leading Chinese movies and the import of Hollywood films to China.



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Movies about Youth



Variety reported that IM Global picked up international sales rights to six Chinese movies. Two target young moviegoers. One is Youth by Feng Xiaogan and the second one is Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings from Huayi Brothers.



Youth, currently in post-production, is about the lives of a group of idealistic teens who are part of an army art troupe where they learn about love and growing pains associated with becoming adults. Based on a screenplay by The Flowers of War writer Yan Geling, the upcoming film stars Huang Xuan, Miao Miao and Zhong Chuxi.



In Detective Dee: Four Heavenly Kings, which is the third in the franchise, the detective defends himself from the accusation of Empress Wu while Dee investigates a crime wave. Mark Zhao, Carina Lau, Kenny Lin and Feng Shaofeng are the stars of the movie now in pre-production stages, led by Chen Kou-fu and Nansun Shi.



Offerings from Enlight Pictures



The four other Chinese films bound for Cannes sales lineup are produced by Enlight Pictures. These are The Guardian, an animated adventure; Return to the Wolves, a documentary; All About Secrets, a romantic drama; and City of Rock, a comedy-drama.



IM Global also added to its Cannes lineup Real, an action thriller from Cove Pictures of Korea. It is a movie about a man who wants to control the criminal world by opening the largest casino in Korea.


Drew Arellano and Iya Villania pose with Conan Altatis at the "Home Foodie" Season 3 blog conference at San Miguel Purefoods Culinary Center, Pasig City, Philippines on May 8, 2017. (Photo : Yibada/Conviron Altatis)

Iya Villania, 30, is returning as host of "Home Foodie." During the blog conference for the third season of the cooking show, I got to talk to her about a topic that is not commonly discussed, postpartum depression.



"Don't feel bad," Villania said, speaking directly to mothers experiencing postpartum depression. "It's real and it happens."



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Studies show that first-time mothers are more likely to experience postpartum depression than other new mothers. It is also reported that the risk is greatest during their first three months of motherhood.



People, particularly mothers, do not talk about post-partum depression as much possibly because they do not want to emphasize that it really happens, Villania pointed out. She reminded mothers who are suffering from it that it is just a phase and it will pass.



Villania herself is a first-time mother. On Aug. 30, 2016, she gave birth to Antonion Primo Arellano, her first child with her husband, Drew Arellano, 37, who is her "Home Foodie" Season 3 co-host.



After a 10-year relationship, Drew and Villania got married in Meditation Point, Kawayan Cove in Nasugbu, Batangas on Jan. 31, 2014.



In 2015, Drew hosted "Home Foodie" Season 1, which featured celebrity chefs Llena Tan-Arenas, Rene Cruz and RJ Garcia. They all returned in the second season in 2016 with Villania added as a host.



Born and raised in Sydney, Australia, Villania used to be a member of an Australian motivational band is called IRON AND CLAY, which addressed issues in schools and churches such as bullying, drunk driving and low self-esteem. She went to high school in the Philippines, particularly in Colegio San Agustin in Makati, where she graduated in March 2004.



Villania went on to study psychology at De La Salle University-Manila. She graduated on Dec. 16, 2008. Here is the video of the "Home Foodie" host giving a message to mothers experiencing postpartum depression:






The Crazy Goat Lady is what Jessi Pottebaum calls herself.

Jessi, who is originally from Grand Island, now lives on a Princeton, Ky., farm and raises goats with her husband, Josh.

Jessi moved to Kentucky to be closer to her husbands family. She and Josh moved to their first Kentucky home, which was on 10 acres.

My mother-in-law always wanted to have goats of her own but had too many things on her plate with all of her animals, so she gave me her Goat Handbook to read over. So you can thank my mother-in-law for getting me into goats, Jessi said.

The love was just be-goating to sprout. She got the book in 2008. She and Josh brought home their first kids in January 2009. All 32 adult and 21 kid goats have names, and most respond when called by it. The Pottebaums have pygmy, Nigerian dwarf, fainting and Boer/Nubian goats.

Josh and I decided that two miniature goats would be a perfect addition. We figured they could keep those 10 acres mowed down. They did a terrible job of keeping the yard under control, but I fell in love. Their antics and personalities could always put a smile on my face, she said.

But the goats were more than just cute animals that put a smile on Pottebaums face.

I had suffered from depression, anxiety and social anxiety for many, many years, and I actually credit the goats with helping me beat the depression. Theyre my reason to get out of bed every morning, Pottebaum said. Nothing else in the world can make me smile and laugh as much as the goats do.

Because the number of goats climbed, the Pottebaums decided they could create a revenue stream to help pay for the farm. They breed a few of the goats every year and sell the kids as pets, Jessi said. They also publish an annual calendar and have T-shirts for sale. Soon, goat greeting cards will be available. Its hard to imagine that anyone would be upset with a cute goat card on their birthday.

Jessi has a large social media following with her Goats Gone Grazing Acres Facebook and Instagram accounts. The social media presence goes hand in hand with the idea of selling goat-themed gifts, but creating separate accounts just to post photos of her goats wasnt her first intention.

I started photographing the goats immediately, so I could send photos to my mom back in Grand Island. No one could ever believe that I had goats. Im the girl who hated getting dirty. I tried so hard to catch their crazy antics on film because youd never believe it if you didnt see it with your own eyes, she said.

Jessi shared photos of her goat kids on her personal Facebook page so people could see them but then figured that people would get tired of constantly seeing her goats pop up in their feed. Thats when she started the Facebook page and then the Instagram account shortly after.

I thought the world needed to see what I saw in them, she said. Weve slowly built an audience over the years and made some wonderful friends over social media.

It helps that BuzzFeed featured her Instagram page in a story.

Theres so much negativity out there right now. I try so hard to keep everything lighthearted and happy, Jessi said. I try to keep people smiling and laughing because thats what the goats do for me.

Jessis nephew, Riley Hansen, visits the Kentucky farm each summer to help out. Hansen, who writes a column for The Grand Island Independent and who is a junior at Grand Island Senior High, has been helping his aunt since 2009 on the farm.

Riley said Jessi started out with about three goats and the next summer she had way more than three.

Riley helps out Joshs family and with taking care of the goats.

Theyre such fun animals, he said. Goats have unique personalities.

As for caring for the animals, Jessi said its a lot of work. Now, as a full time farmer, she works from sunup to sundown. And sometimes, thats not enough time. Theres feeding, cleaning, repairs and playing with the baby goats.

Rileys favorite memory is when he gave Shy Guy (the goat) his sunglasses. Of course, Shy Guy sported them with class.

Its like being with family, Riley said of the goats. Its like being around a bunch of different people.

He said spending his summer in Kentucky is one of the best parts of his year.

Jessi said what she loves about the goats is that they stay childlike their whole life.

I laugh and smile so many times a day, it starts to hurt after a while. They are also extremely intelligent and loving, she said.

Jessi said goats need to have their trust earned, which differs from most dogs. Goats are a little different than dogs.

Once you have that bond/trust with a goat, theres nothing else like it, Jessi said.

Though she sells the kids, Jessi said she feels happy she gets to be a part of the best three months of their lives.

I get to see them grow and learn, and its amazing, Jessi said. She said she has the best job in the world.

And the Grand Islander will never be shaken from Jessi, though she lives in Kentucky. Eileens Cookies, Amigos and Runza are some of the things she misses most, besides her friends and family. She said she loves the small town feel of her native G.I.

It always feels like home when I go back, even though it drastically changes every time, she said. Im always bragging about being from Grand Island.
Lawmakers acted courageously this week, voting 36-12 on Tuesday to approve the state of Nebraskas main budget bill for the next two years. Passage of the $8.9 billion spending document reveals a number of encouraging qualities about the Nebraska Legislature, a body of lawmakers some observers believed was too inexperienced, too young and too obligated to Gov. Pete Ricketts, who helped a good number of them win their seats in 2016.

Despite those perceived handicaps, members of the 2017 Legislature proved they possess the intellect and backbone to do the heavy lifting and address the unprecedented $1.1 billion revenue gap. Lawmakers appropriately reined in spending, prudently tapped the states cash reserve, and acknowledged Ricketts priorities by including added money for the Department of Corrections and education.

Lawmakers failed to achieve tax reform and meaningful property tax relief, a shortcoming that will displease property owners, particularly farmers and ranchers who carry too heavy of a burden.

Hopefully, after this year of hard-won experience, our legislators will return next year ready to craft a solution to our states nagging taxation and property valuation inequities.

Until then, and unless the governor exercises his options to veto the spending bill or certain spending line items, Nebraskans will live with current tax policies and hope some of the philosophies underpinning the $8.9 billion budget bear fruit.

Wisely, lawmakers agreed with Ricketts that education is a priority. Education is a great equalizer, and in hard times, it can be an economic engine. We in Kearney have a ringside seat. Through the University of Nebraska at Kearney we see how education changes lives and builds stronger communities.

Our states legislators approached University of Nebraska spending carefully. They cut with a scalpel rather than a buzz saw so the system will remain strong, not dismembered. NU has already absorbed $10 million in spending cuts and will make further spending and job cuts in the next two years. However, research will continue, departments wont be eradicated, and importantly, students wont face 20-percent tuition hikes.

To his credit, NU President Hank Bounds called early on for a hiring freeze, travel restrictions and other efficiencies. Today campus leaders and the NU Regents are further refining operations to be leaner and stronger, balance costs and quality, and preserve NU as a catalyst for economic development. The best cure for our states revenue crisis is economic recovery.
Then-U.S. Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins addresses a business luncheon in Halifax on Monday, Oct. 22, 2007. The New Brunswick government has appointed Wilkinsr as the province's special envoy on the softwood trade dispute. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail met on Wednesday British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson while participating in the London Somalia Conference in the UK capital, Ahram Arabic website reported.

Johnson expressed his gratitude to the Egyptian leadership and his appreciation for Egypt's participation in the conference, which is intended to speed up progress on security sector reform in Somalia.

Ismail and Johnson discussed in their short meeting the latest developments in the Middle East region, particularly in Libya.

Ismail also met on Wednesday with the UK's Minister of Defence Michael Fallon. The two discussed Egyptian-British relations and cooperation in security and military fields.

They also discussed bilateral coordination on several issues, including counter-terrorism efforts.

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Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski called his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry on Friday to thank Egyptian authorities for their cooperation following the recent death of a Polish tourist in Marsa Alam, Cairo has said.

Magdalena Zuk, 27, died earlier this month in a hospital at the Red Sea resort. Some media reports in Poland have alleged that her death was suspicious. Local sources have said that she committed suicide in hospital due to her unstable mental state.

The Egyptian Forensic Authority began conducting an autopsy on Wednesday, in the attendance of Polish investigators at the request of Warsaw.

Ahmed Abu Zeid, the spokesman for the Egyptian foreign ministry, said in an official statement on Friday that Shoukry told his Polish counterpart that Egypt will continue giving all forms of support, information exchange, coordination with the Polish side, until finishing the ongoing investigations.

In statement on Tuesday the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that its consular service remains committed to "cooperate closely and fully" with the investigation led by Egyptian prosecutors.

"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.

Polands President Andrzej Duda is set to visit Egypt in the second half of this year, which marks 90 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Abu Zeids statement added that both foreign ministers are looking forward to the visit.

Both Shoukry and Waszczykowski also expressed their aspiration towards further coordination and consultation onissues of mutual interest.

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Egypt's Prime Minister Sherif Ismail has re-extended President El-Sisis invitation to Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed to visit Egypt in order to consolidate bilateral relations, state news agency MENA reported.

Mohamed expressed his gratitude to the support and humanitarian aid offered by Egypt to the Somali people, a statement by Egyptian cabinet said Friday.

Ismail met on Thursday with the Somali president while participating in the London Somalia Conference in the UK capital.

The statement added that Ismail hopes the conference contributes to supporting Somalia, and enabling the proper environment for development and prosperity of the Somali people.

On Wednesday the UK hosted the two-day conference, in collaboration with the Somali government and the United Nations.

According to a British government statement, the conference brought together leaders from around the world who accelerated progress on security sector reform, built on the international response to the ongoing drought and humanitarian crisis and agreed the new international partnership needed to keep Somalia on course for increased peace and prosperity by 2020."

The Egyptian premier has also stressed the willingness of Egypt to fully support Somali government and to offer help in development field and fighting terrorism.

Ismail referred to a number of opportunities for trade and economic cooperation increase between both countries, such as agriculture, irrigation, mining, oil, gas, animal resources, fishing, meat imports, and education.

Ismail also stated the importance of the private sector, pointing to an expected visit by an Egyptian businessmen delegation to Mogadishu to search for fields of cooperation.

According to the Egyptian statement, the Somali president sent a message to El-Sisi that their meeting will mark a push towards enhancing relations between the two countries, and that he is looking forward to all joint projects to be carried out, especially as his country has started the reconstruction process and is in need of cooperation on many levels to achieve national economic.

Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, 55, was elected in February 2017.

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Barely ten years ago, 350,000 completely preventable AIDS deaths occurred in South Africa because of their presidents obstinacy. He recommended that women treat their HIV with beetroot and lemon juice.

Its hard to believe until you realize the same thing just happened here. HJ Resolution 43 was just signed into law by President Trump, giving states the ability to reject federal grants (called Title X grants) to family planning providers and clinics that help low-income patients receive physical exams, labs, prescriptions, contraception, mammograms, cervical cancer screenings, and  yes  referrals for STIs and HIV. As a medical student and mother raised in North Idaho, I know well the impact that this new law will have.

Title X is the nations only federal grant program providing these services. Theres nowhere else to go. One in four women who receive gynecological/reproductive health services do so at a publicly funded clinic. For these women, Title X clinics are their main source of basic health care. This is especially true for patients who do not qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance either. Without the services these clinics provide, the number of unintended pregnancies and STIs will surge. Abortions and preventable deaths will increase.

Women like my sister Jennifer Ellsworth, for example. Jennifer is a mother of three in Sandpoint, Idaho. She has been able to receive prenatal care, cervical cancer screenings and other basic health care services because Title X funding was available. As a red state, Idaho is likely to be among those states who choose to deny clinics Title X grants. Jennifers children, and she herself, are healthy today because of that funding. She is deeply concerned about her health and the health of her female friends and worries about her daughters future. Jennifer is an independent conservative in a conservative state, and yet, to her and many who share her views in North Idaho, this new law is an assault on women, families, and family values. As someone deeply opposed to abortion, she is concerned about the rise in abortions that will surely follow the defunding of womens health clinics in Idaho.

Much of the justification for leaving low-income women high and dry has to do with the debate over Planned Parenthood. Sadly, this debate has been misled by people with political agendas.

Lets consider the facts: 97 percent of Planned Parenthoods budget goes to providing basic health care to women and men in need. Real people, people like Jennifer, use and need these services. Whats more, no federal funding, including Title X funding, can be used to provide abortions. Let me be clear  these grants do not fund abortion services. And with this new law, unintended pregnancies and women seeking abortion services will rise. Thats not a talking point. Thats not politics  its a reality.

If Title X grants are discontinued in conservative states, approximately 4 million low-income women will be priced out of essential health care, with the greatest burden carried by women in conservative states. This means more babies born with preventable birth defects. It means more women dying from preventable breast cancer. It means more preventable deaths from AIDS. It means more abortions.

Beetroot and lemon juice are not going to keep us healthy. For that, we need common sense and continued Title X funding for essential health care services for women. We must come together, across political lines, to ensure the health and safety of our women and future children.

To my fellow physicians and physicians-in-training  we abide by an oath that requires us to advocate on behalf of our patients. This is what we signed up for, and our voice on these issues truly matters, particularly those of us who live or practice in red states likely to reject Title X funds for political reasons. I urge you to make your voices heard to your elected representatives. This is not a liberal, conservative or independent issue  it is a human issue. And this is not a time for silence; it is a time for action.

Sarah Lawrence is a medical student.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Soldiers in Ivory Coast's second city Bouake fired their guns into the air on Friday to protest an agreement some of their colleagues made over bonus payments, witnesses said.

The protest comes a day after a spokesman for soldiers in the commercial capital, Abidjan, said that talks with President Alassane Ouattara had led them to drop their demands for further bonus payments.

That pledge would ease pressure on government finances, which have been squeezed by a sharp decline in world cocoa prices and earlier payments to the mutinous soldiers.

"There was shooting all night because people are not happy with what their colleagues did in Abidjan," said a leader of the mutineers who declined to be identified. He said they would hold a meeting to decide on their next steps.

There was no indication the shooting caused any casualties.

The Bouake soldiers are mostly former rebels who battled for years to bring Ouattara to power. They seized control of the city in January in an uprising that spread, forcing the government to capitulate to some of their demands.

Ivory Coast has emerged from a 2002-2011 conflict as one of the world's fastest-growing economies. But the mutinies show that divisions persist, particularly in a military assembled from ex-rebel and loyalist fighters.

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The two Sheriff's Department employees under arrest for allegedly having improper contact with women in custody will face a district judge.

According to county records, both Fernando Garcia and Fernando Martell will have their first day in court on June 9.

Court documents state Martell had improper sexual contact with two women in custody at the jail. Garcia is accused of having improper sexual contact with one woman in jail.

Both cases will be heard before Judge Joe Lopez at the 49th District Court.
Since the start of his campaign, President Trump has been pushing for a border wall.

While many in the country have been divided on the idea of a wall, a lot of border towns have had a negative view on it.

For several communities along the border, the idea of a wall has been seen as arbitrary, but for one mayor it's an opportunity for a positive impact on his community.

For El Cenizo Mayor Raul Reyes, a border wall has always been seen as a form of keeping his community safe.

Reyes says his hopes for the wall are to keep immigrants wishing to pass along any form of crime at bay.

Reyes says he wants it to be known that he is no way in favor of President Trump or legislation that is against immigrants.

However, he says the wall is just a way for him and his community to feel comfortable and safe.

This fiscal year's spending bill did omit Trump's wall from funding but set aside, 1.5 billion for border security.
The Watershed sport and leisure facility in Kilkenny continues to show positive growth, with visitor numbers now almost double that of its opening year.

Close to 650,000 visitors came through the facilitys doors last year, and the business has been established and consolidated despite opening in the teeth of the recession nearly nine years ago.

The Watersheds chief executive Dermot Gaynor gave a presentation at a recent meeting of Kilkenny County Council. He told the members that the Watershed did not require an annual subvention to operate, but occasionally needed support (such as for the restoration of the running track). The facility largely pays its own way, but is a loss-making company after depreciation.

Weve achieved steady growth, but not phenomenal, he said.

The budget was 1.3 million in year one, and is 1.8 million this year. Payroll costs just over 1 million, with 47 staff between full time and part time. Mr Gaynor also noted that the Watershed has an excellent safety record.

As well as the number of visitors almost doubling over the years, pay as you go customers account for 20.5% of the business.

Last year saw the opening of the new running track, and Mr Gaynor it has been very satisfactory, and will serve well for the next 15 to 20 years. The track and infield area bring in about 30,000. Mr Gaynor noted this was a good example of investment in infrastructure which was not hugely commercial, but nonetheless a big part of Kilkennys sporting culture.

He said one of the biggest factors in the Watershed's success was clarity and a resolute defence of our business model.

Financial self-sufficiency is a must, he said.

The Watershed is not expensive to use. It's not cheap, but its not expensive. It is value for money.

Having to hold the line on this, he said, can be tough at times. However, Mr Gaynor said, it was not the job of the company to subsidise sport and leisure in Kilkenny.

We have tried to be consistent with how we price things, he said.

At the moment, the company is looking at switching to a UK-based software system which will be less labour intensive and more user-friendly for customers. It will facilitate online bookings.

The gym still has about 75% of its original equipment. Mr Gaynor said it is in good condition and well maintained, but is 'a bit like a car with a few miles on it'.

Councillor Peter 'Chap' Cleere said he was blown away by the figure of 650,000 visitors in one year.

Cllr Malcolm Noonan said the decision to invest in the initial development was testament to the success of the local authority. He agreed it was not the place of the Watershed to subvent sport and leisure. He also said he used the facility with his family and found it excellent value for money.
Kilkenny-based national organisation the Young Irish Filmakers (YIFM) have been invited to the National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) to present at its prestigious annual summer school.

The summer school is being held in County Wicklow this year.

The NYCI  which represents organisations working with over 380,000 young people nationwide  is calling on artists and those working with young people from around Kilkenny to join in its annual summer school.

The theme for this years event is Conquer Your Fear: Creative Digital Technology and Youth Work, and it takes place from May to June 1 in Kippure, near Blessington.

Were delighted to have Young Irish Filmmakers at the summer school this year, says Anne O Gorman of the NYCI .

Their workshop Overcoming Obstacles in Digital Film is proving really popular, and is sure to provide a fascinating insight into the filmmaking process.

No previous experience is necessary.

At this year's youth arts summer school, we're bringing together youth workers, volunteers and youth arts practitioners to look at new skills for delivering creative activities using new technologies  and the confidence to use them, said Ms O Gorman.

If you think you need to know more about all things digital, and would like to bring technology-enhanced activities spanning electronics, robotics and digital filmmaking into your work with young people then we would encourage you to book your place and join us in Kippure.

For more information see youtharts.ie, contact anneog@nyci.ie or call 01-4784122.

Participants can choose from two areas to focus on over the three days and the subsided cost (including accommodation) for each is:

Overcoming Obstacles in Digital Film: 300 non-members/250 members;

Makers Gonna Make: 350.00 non-members/300.00 members (includes 'maker-kit' worth 250).
Prince Charles left Kilkenny with a taste of the south of the county.

The Heritage Council, and a number of its partners, presented Prince Charles, Prince of Wales with a traditional handmade basket made from organic willows by Eamon Tobin Baskets from Tullogher, Co. Kilkenny at a private meeting in Kilkenny Castle .

Prince Charles interest in local heritage matters is well known as is his genuine concern for the environment.

Michael Starrett, Heritage Council CEO said Prince Charles was keen to meet with a wide range of people working in the heritage sector and to hear about the projects they are working on and the methods and approaches used to provide support to community engagement across Ireland.

It was an honour to meet with Prince Charles. He was especially interested in the Heritage Councils Traditional Farm Buildings Scheme, programmes focused on preserving the wildlife of the uplands and ways of engaging young people in our natural heritage, Mr Starrett said.

 It was a wonderful experience to hear the support he had for the voluntary work of people in the heritage sector, giving a boost to the efforts of those who volunteer in communities across the country, Mr Starrett added.
Malaysia said on Friday it had deported three Turkish men to Ankara over suspected links to a group blamed by Turkey for a failed coup last year.

Human rights groups condemned the deportations and the United Nations said Malaysia's action raised serious concern for the safety of Turkish nationals in the region.

Authorities detained school principal Turgay Karaman, 43, businessman Ihsan Aslan, 39, and academic Ismet Ozcelik, 58, last week, saying they posed a threat to national security.

Rights groups said they were concerned the action had been taken against the men because of pressure from Turkey.

At the time the men were detained, authorities did not say whether they were suspected of having ties to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has accused Gulen of orchestrating last July's failed coup, a claim Gulen and his followers deny.

Malaysian Inspector-General of Police Khalid Abu Bakar said the three were deported on Thursday on suspicion of being involved in FETO, a group of Gulen supporters that the Turkish government also calls the "Gulenist Terrorist Organisation".

The Malaysian police investigation found that the three men had been involved in FETO activities and were listed as individuals wanted by Turkish authorities, Khalid said.

The Turkish government had also cancelled their travel documents, he said.

"As such, their presence in Malaysia is invalid and their status declared as illegal immigrants," Khalid said.

'SERIOUS CONCERNS'

The U.N. Human Rights Office in Southeast Asia (OHCHR) said in a statement it had serious concerns regarding the safety of the men upon their return to Turkey and that other Turks in Malaysia could be targeted for alleged links to Gulen.

Laurent Meillan, acting regional representative of the U.N. Human Rights Office in Bangkok, told Reuters there was also concern that Turkey's crackdown on the Gulen movement could spread beyond Malaysia to other Southeast Asian countries.

"Our concern is that other Turkish nationals with alleged links to the Gulen movement from across the region may be similarly detained and deported," Meillan said.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also issued statements condemning the deportations. Amnesty said the men could face "arbitrary detention, unfair trial and a real risk of torture" upon their return to Turkey.

Karaman and Ozcelik, two of the men deported, were also listed as persons of concern by the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, their families said in a statement.

"As persons of concern, Malaysia has the responsibility to ensure that they would not be returned to a country where they risk facing detention without trial and even torture," the families said.

The Asia deputy director for Human Rights Watch, Phil Robertson, said in a statement Ozcelik's deportation was "a clear violation of international human rights law".

Turkish authorities have arrested 49,000 people in relation to the failed coup out of 150,000 investigated. About 145,000 civil servants, security personnel and academics have been suspended or sacked.

Turkey has also applied pressure on other countries that are home to institutions backed by Gulen, whose Hizmet movement runs some 2,000 educational establishments worldwide.

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* G7 meets in southern Italian port city of Bari

* Concern over Trump's intentions on trade, climate

* Final statement due with unchanged stand on trade, forex

* IMF: Europe must be clearer over debt relief for Greece

(Adds comments, background)

By William Schomberg and Gavin Jones

BARI, Italy, May 12 (Reuters) - Finance chiefs from many of the world's leading rich nations pressed the United States on Friday not to break a decades-long global consensus in areas such as trade and financial regulation criticised by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Inequality, international tax rules and cyber security headed the official agenda for Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers who kicked off a two-day meeting in the southern Italian port city of Bari.

But Trump's threats to end a multilateral approach to policies from trade to climate change dominated discussions inside the walls of a 12th century Norman castle.

"We need a strong United States to lead the global economy and global politics in a sustainable way," said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble when asked his message for U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.

Later, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said he and other ministers told Mnuchin not to weaken global policies that had been put together painstakingly over years and had helped the world economy recover from the financial crisis that broke nearly a decade ago.

"It is unthinkable, and it will not happen, that one can destroy these collective achievements that give more stability .. and at the end of the day are truly in everyone's interests," said Sapin, who is likely to lose his job soon following Emmanuel Macron's election as president this month.

European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said he hoped Trump would not abandon multilateralism and free trade. "We can discuss, we can have different appreciations, but we are in the same world and in the same boat," he told reporters.

Several officials at the G7 raised concerns about risks to global growth from the Trump administration's policy proposals, including tax reform, a senior U.S. Treasury official said.

Trump has vowed to revamp the U.S. tax code with major cuts for businesses and ease business regulatory burdens.

At a meeting in March of the larger Group of 20 finance ministers in Germany, ministers dropped their traditional pledge to keep global free trade open, bowing to an increasingly protectionist United States .

Mnuchin, who skipped the opening session in Bari where academics spoke on inequality and growth and arrived long after other ministers, told reporters he was "excited" about the emerging new U.S. trade policy.

"I think you probably saw last night we made an announcement of a 100-day economic plan with the Chinese, so I think we are very happy with how we are proceeding on trade," he said. In their closing statement on Saturday, the G7 will use the same language on trade, currencies and monetary policy as the G20 did in March, an Italian G7 official said. The G20's reference to trade said only that they were "working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies." The U.S. president has already pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and wants to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

GREEKS FOR BREAKFAST

Before the G7 meeting, several ministers and officials held an early-morning discussion of Greece's long-running debt crisis to prepare for a May 22 meeting of euro zone finance ministers on the disbursement of new loans.

Greece's creditors, including the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are in Bari. The IMF, which insists on debt relief for Athens, complained that the euro zone was still dragging its heels on the issue .

"There is not enough clarity yet," said IMF chief Christine Lagarde after the working breakfast. "Our European partners need to be more specific in terms of debt relief, which is an imperative."

But the priority for most officials in Bari was to get a sense of how far the Trump administration intended to go with its promises of reworking trade agreements, rules to prevent a repeat of the global financial crisis and other key areas.

Asked how pro-active the U.S. delegation had been on the first day of the G7, France's Sapin said they had been "quite discreet in their presence," and he appeared to take a swipe at Trump's frequent use of Twitter.

"You can express yourself with a tweet but you don't debate things with a tweet and you don't take decisions with a tweet. We have to do that in a more profound way ... and I think that is what is going on," he said.

(additional reporting by Silvia Aloisi, David Lawder and Gernot Heller, writing by Gavin Jones; Editing by Tom Heneghan)
The Herald reports:

Shariah prosecutors in Indonesias Aceh province say two men accused of having gay sex should each receive 80 lashes, in another blow to the countrys moderate image after a top Christian official was imprisoned for blasphemy. 

Aceh is the only province in Muslim-majority Indonesia to practice Shariah law, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a years-long war with separatists.
A Greek court on Friday handed 15-year prison sentences to two suspected jihadists with Swedish passports trying to enter Turkey carrying combat items, a local justice source said.

The suspects' lawyer said the men, who have refugee status in Sweden, would appeal against the sentence. They will remain incarcerated until their next trial, a date for which was not given.

The pair -- a 29-year-old of Bosnian descent and a 19-year-old of Yemeni origin -- were caught in January 2016 near the border with Turkey.

Inside their luggage police found two machetes, army uniforms and other combat paraphernalia.

The suspects insist the items had been legally purchased in Athens as souvenirs.

The 29-year-old had been arrested in Bosnia in 2005 after a police raid at his house found a suicide belt, explosives and a video showing a man with a covered face threatening terrorist acts against the US Capitol and the White House.

He was sentenced to up to 14 years in Bosnian prison, but was released in 2011.

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Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz called on Friday for a snap parliamentary election but stopped short of saying he would take over as head of the conservative party in the coalition government and force that move.

Kurz, 30, is widely favoured within his People's Party (OVP) to succeed party leader Reinhold Mitterlehner, who said on Wednesday he was stepping down.

Several polls suggest that Kurz's taking over would boost the OVP's support and leapfrog it into first place. Surveys have repeatedly shown the far-right Freedom Party to be the most popular in Austria, closely followed by Chancellor Christian Kern's centre-left Social Democrats.

"I personally believe early elections would be the right path," Kurz told a news conference.

The next elections are due by autumn 2018.

Whether a snap election is called is likely to depend on whether Kurz takes on the job of party leader. He said he would do that only if he were given more powers, to avoid the kind of in-fighting that prompted Vice Chancellor Mitterlehner to quit.

"Whoever takes over the leadership must have the possibility to set a party line, and he must above all be able to make staffing decisions," Kurz said, in an apparent reference to the strong influence within the party of figures such as the governors of Austrian provinces.

The party leadership is due to meet on Sunday to decide who should replace Mitterlehner.

Kern, who on Wednesday urged his conservative partners to stay in the government, had no immediate comment.

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Top EU and US officials will hold talks on Friday over a possible US ban on carry-on computers on European flights to the United States, an EU spokeswoman said.

The US Department of Homeland Security sparked deep concern in Europe on Tuesday when it said was close to a decision on extending to Europeans an existing ban imposed on eight mostly Muslim countries.

The policy could have a huge affect on the coming high travel season in Europe, with more than 3,250 flights a week scheduled to leave EU airports for the US this summer, according to industry data.

The ban would create a logistical nightmare for airports, airlines and law enforcement, with laptop computers now a ubiquitous carry-on item for millions of air travellers.

"There is a scheduled phone call later today with US Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and a number of European ministers," Commission spokeswoman Anna-Kaisa Itkonen told a news briefing in Brussels.

"Our interest is to stay informed so that we have a possibility to share... information with our member states," Itkonen said, adding that two EU commissioners would also take part.

If confirmed, the ban would heighten tensions between the EU and US, which have been at pains to see eye to eye under President Donald Trump.

The EU's Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc and Home Affairs Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos asked Washington to work with the Europeans on the issue in a letter to US officials earlier this week.

In March, Washington banned passengers on direct flights to the United States from eight countries from carrying on board laptop computers, tablets and other electronic devices larger than cellphones.

The affected countries are in North Africa and the Middle East and include Turkey.

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 Somali airliner in February 2016, killing one person, is believed to have been built into a laptop computer carried into the passenger cabin.



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Eximbank Chairman Choi Jong-ku, right, makes a cake with a child at SOS Children's Village Center in Seoul, Thursday. Courtesy of Eximbank



The Export-Import Bank of Korea (Eximbank) donated 36 million won ($31,900) to three childcare centers, the bank said Friday.



The bank said its employees made the donation to three SOS Children's Villages in Seoul, Daegu and Suncheon, South Jeolla Province. SOS Children's Village is an international non-governmental organization that tries to prevent family breakdown and provides care for children who have lost parental care.



On Thursday, Eximbank Chairman Choi Jong-ku and employees visited the Seoul center and baked cakes with 88 children who are under care at the center.



"I am thrilled that we can build family-like ties with the children through this charity work," Choi was quoted as saying. "I also sincerely hope the donation will be helpful for the children here."



The Eximbank is engaging in various charity works for vulnerable people, multicultural families and North Korea defectors.



The Seoul-based lender has been praised for its proactive corporate social responsibility programs.



"At least 2 percent of our annual profit is put aside for the foundation to conduct CSR activities," an Eximbank official said. "We are attempting really hard to become a responsible corporate citizen."



Included in its main CSR activities are scholarship programs, education promotion schemes, donations to educational institutes and healthcare services.



(Advertorial)
By Nam Hyun-woo





Ahn Min-soo, Samsung Fire and Marine CEO

Samsung Fire and Marine CEO Ahn Min-soo has managed the country's largest non-life insurance company quite well since he took charge of it in 2014. Hence, some expected he has a chance to become chief of a bigger Samsung unit of Samsung Life.

One significant issue that might sway the future of the 60-year-old chief executive is that his high school alumni Moon Jae-in became President of Korea, observers pointed out Friday.

Ahn also has another factor that can be related to Moon  he was born in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, just like former President Roh Moo-hyun. Moon worked together with Roh for decades and the former worked as an adviser and chief of staff when the latter was head of state in the mid 2000s.

"In the past, it was a great asset to have a high school alumnus as president. But things are much more complicated now. If Moon's alumni gain major promotions or extend their terms, they might be on the lips of critics," said an executive at a local financial company, who asked not to be named.

"Then, companies would be reluctant to give favorable treatment to those who have graduated from the same high school as President Moon. In other words, they can face a sort of reverse discrimination. In that sense, Samsung would wonder what it will do about Ahn's future."

Moon graduated from Kyungnam High School in Busan as did Samsung Fire chief Ahn. Included in other financial big shots from the school is Hana Financial Group Chairman Kim Jung-tae.

He said Ahn deserves better treatment from Samsung in consideration of his solid performance over the past four years. But he said Ahn may fall victim to reverse discrimination.

Under Ahn's stewardship since early 2014, Samsung raised its assets almost 40 percent to 67.9 trillion won as of the end of last year. Its profitability also improved substantially to match that of the firm's bigger sister company of Samsung Life, the nation's biggest insurance firm.

Another executive at a Seoul-based insurer echoed the same opinion.

"If I were in the shoes of Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, I would not promote him as a Samsung Life head. If I were Lee, I would also agonize over extending his term," he said.

"The thing is that the new administration has opposed cronyism such as network-based personnel intervention. Samsung and Lee would be in a dilemma on the future of CEO Ahn."

Samsung Vice Chairman Lee is the heir of the country's largest conglomerate. He is already a de facto leader of Samsung as his father Chairman Lee Kun-hee is hospitalized.

Unlike advanced countries where directors and shareholders decide who will take charge of their companies, founding owner families of Korean conglomerates exert a big influence on appointment of chief executives at their subsidiaries.

Many believe founding owner families designate chiefs of conglomerates' units and some actually have done so.

Indeed, expectations are high that Moon would eradicate the country's deep-rooted favoritism in personnel changes based on educational background or region both in public and private sectors.

In particular, his appointment of Cho Hyun-ock as senior presidential secretary for personnel affairs draws attention.

Political watchers noted that appointing the first woman in charge of public personnel management amply demonstrates the stance of the new administration.

"The appointment of a female secretary for personnel affairs showcases Moon's commitment to scrapping conventions of selecting people based on human networks, rather than their capabilities," political commentator Lee Kang-yun said.

"And the change at the presidential house would greatly affect not only the public sector but also the private segment. If Cheong Wa Dae changes, Samsung would follow and so will suppliers to Samsung."

When contacted, a Samsung Fire official refused to comment on the topic.
A customer at a bookstore near Seoul Station reads President Moon Jae-in's book "A Completely New Nation -- Questions from the Republic of Korea and Answers from Moon Jae-in," Thursday. / Korea Times photo by Baek Byung-yeul



By Baek Byung-yeul

With Moon Jae-in clinching victory in the May 9 presidential election, people who are curious about the new President of Korea are rushing to bookstores.

Right after election day, online and offline bookstores created sections solely focused on President Moon-related books. An official at Kyobo Book Centre in Gwanghwamun said books about Moon sold more than 1,200 copies a day after the election day while they only sold 57 copies a day on average last week.

Among those books covering President Moon, TIME magazine's latest Asia edition featuring him on the cover set a record here as the issue became the most-sold publication in a day at local online bookstore Aladin.

Aladin said Thursday it sold 7,024 copies of the magazine for 24 hours starting May 10 at 1:40 p.m. to break the bookstore's bestselling record. The company added it sold 3,151 copies of the special edition of the President's 2011 memoir "Moon Jae-in: The Destiny" on the same day.

The company said its previous record was Han Kang's "The Vegetarian." When its English translation won the Man Booker Prize on May 17, last year, the bookstore sold 5,523 copies of the novel. "Thoughts of Ahn Cheol-soo," written by Ahn Cheol-soo, who ran against Moon at Tuesday's presidential election, sold 5,226 copies on July 24, 2012.

TIME devoted its cover to Moon introducing him as "The Negotiator." Beginning with the story when the 64-year-old was engaged in a military operation as a Special Forces soldier following the 1976 axe murder incident, in which North Korean soldiers killed two U.S. Army soldiers in the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the magazine dealt with Moon's life as a human rights lawyer and presidential candidate along with his political philosophy.

The soaring popularity of the new President can be seen in the e-book market.

Aladin published an e-book version of President Moon's inauguration speech delivered at the National Assembly's Rotunda Hall, Wednesday. The e-book is available at the online bookstore for free.

The company also released a free e-book of written sentences of former President Park Geun-hye's impeachment ruling by the Constitutional Court of Korea on March 10. The book was also released at no cost and was downloaded more than 50,000 times.

The trend is continuing not only on his own books but also books analyzing him.

"From Destiny to Hope," a conversational 2017 book between Moon and psychologist Lee Na-mi, and "Who? Special Moon Jae-in," a biographical comic book for children, have been enjoying a sales boost after Moon's presidential victory.

A customer at a bookstore near Seoul Express Bus Terminal said he bought "A Completely New Nation -- Questions from the Republic of Korea and Answers from Moon Jae-in," written by the President in January as he wants to know more about Moon's vision of how he wants his government constructed. "After the removal of former President Park, I was deeply disappointed and worried about the future of this country as a father of two children. As I am expecting a lot from the new President, I just bought his recent book in a bid to share his plan for rebuilding Korea."
Wheaton College Concert Choir / Courtesy of FEBC-Korea

By Park Jin-hai

Wheaton College Concert Choir came to Seoul for an annual concert.

Starting Thursday evening with their Daejeon concert, the 50-member choir will travel to Seoul and Busan for concerts there until May 17.

Philip Ryken, Wheaton College president and well-known author of 2012 book "Loving the Way Jesus Loves," accompanied the choir.

Philip Ryken, Wheaton College president

"The Wheaton College Concert Choir is comprised of 50 beautiful, energetic voices. The young men and women come from all over the United States and from countries as far away from America as Egypt and Korea," Ryken said during the interview with The Korea Times. "Many of them are preparing for careers in music, but many are also pursuing university degrees in business, economics, biology, history, and many other subjects. Under the direction of John Trotter, the choir is known for its technical excellence and its passion for sacred music."

Invited by Far East Broadcasting Corporation Korea, the choir will perform spiritual, gospel, and Baroque chorals and Korean traditional folk songs during their ten-day visit.

Ryken who is here for the third time, said apart from the concert, he also wants to meet with leaders in education and the government. As the first stop, he and his choir visited the Daejeon Institute of Science and Technology and KAIST, Thursday.

"I hope to invite secondary students to consider attending Wheaton College, and preach the good news about Jesus in some of Korea's leading churches," he said. The mission of Wheaton, the college that is dubbed the Harvard of Christian schools, is to serve Jesus Christ and advance his kingdom through excellence in liberal arts and graduate programs that educate the whole person to build the church and benefit society worldwide, he says. "The university frequently shows up on lists of schools that offer the best value in higher education. We are known for combining academic excellence across all disciplines with a strong commitment to Jesus Christ. We are known for producing a very high number of students who go on to earn PhDs, and also for sending many graduates on to Christian ministry."

After the Korean tour, he will continue the trip as part of a student and faculty exchange with Tokyo Christian University and give lectures on "Faith and Learning for Growing Kingdom Leaders."

Former senior minister at Philadelphia's historic Tenth Presbyterian Church and the author who wrote or edited more than 30 books, including "Loving the Way Jesus Loves," and recently published "When Trouble Comes."

Regarding his latest book, published in December here, he said it is about the heroes of the Bible and how they overcome their troubles. "During a time of trouble in my own life, I wanted to learn more about what the great heroes of the Bible did when they were in trouble, and how God helped them," he said. "As it turns out, almost everyone we meet in the Bible had trouble. So we should not be surprised when we have troubles, too. Even Jesus suffered many troubles. But God has grace for all of us, in all our troubles, as I try to show in this little book."
By Kim Hyo-jin



President Moon Jae-in is set to send special envoys to major countries surrounding Korea  the U.S., China, Japan and Russia  sources said Friday, a move to make up for months of stalled diplomatic relations following the ouster of former President Park Geun-hye.





A Cheong Wa Dae official said the government plans to send the envoys but has not decided on whom, when to do so and to how many countries.



The plan signals the new President's move to establish diplomatic channels along with phone conversations with the heads of foreign countries including the U.S., China and Japan.



Although the government refused to confirm the envoy nominees, speculation is that Rep. Park Byeong-seug of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), a former deputy National Assembly speaker, may be sent to China.



Seoul-Beijing relations have been strained as the latter opposed the deployment of a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in South Korea to deter North Korea's missile threats.



Beijing had reportedly considered ruling out Seoul as a participant for a Chinese international summit slated for May 14 and 15 in protest of the THAAD installation. But it came to send an invitation in the end, in light of the inauguration of Moon who remained poles apart from his predecessor who pushed for the deployment. It is interpreted that Beijing expects the new leader could reconsider the previous government's THAAD decision.



Rep. Park will attend the summit for China's "One Belt, One Road" initiative. The forum attracted 29 national leaders all over the world including North Korea. Although the government said his summit attendance was a one-off, speculation is that Park, who has a wide Chinese network, may stay on in the role of special envoy.



Earlier in a phone conversation, Moon told Chinese President Xi Jinping he would send his envoys to discuss THAAD and North Korea's nuclear program. He also told President Donald Trump he would send a delegation "at the earliest possible time" to the U.S.



It is speculated that Hong Seok-hyun, former Korean ambassador to the U.S. during the Roh Moo-hyun administration and former chairman of the nation's second-largest newspaper JoongAng Ilbo and cable channel JTBC, may become the envoy to the U.S.



Hong earlier told reporters Moon requested he join Moon's possible administration to deal with diplomacy and unification. He replied that though he was unsure of a post in the Cabinet, he could accept an offer for special envoy to North Korea or the U.S.



Reps. Song Young-gil and Moon Hee-sang of the DPK are reportedly being considered as envoys to Russia and Japan, respectively.



Song, a former Incheon mayor, visited the Kremlin in 2013 on the invitation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the first such visit among city government heads here. Moon Hee-sang, a six-term lawmaker and former deputy National Assembly speaker, led an association of Korea-Japan lawmakers for four years since 2004.



The presidential office is speeding up filling in the list of ambassadors to the major countries as well. It is said former DPK lawmaker Noh Young-min may be tapped for ambassador to China and Chung Eui-yong, former head of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and ambassador to Geneva, for the U.S.




By Kim Bo-eun







President Moon Jae-in triggered questions with his remarks on the controversial 2015 sex slave deal in a telephone call with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Thursday. His statement is raising the possibility of a renegotiation of the bilateral deal, reached under the former President Park Geun-hye administration.



As Abe called for Korea to follow through with the agreement, Moon said, "The majority of the people are not accepting the deal." He added the two countries need to cooperate to resolve the issue.



In December 2015, the two countries agreed to put the long-disputed issue to rest, with Japan providing Korea with 1 billion yen in government funds.



However, Tokyo did not clarify whether the fund was for reparations or humanitarian assistance for the surviving victims. Some victims and civic groups have opposed the deal, claiming the Japanese government did not acknowledge its legal responsibility in forcing Korean women into sex slavery for the Japanese military.



The agreement also came under fire for being signed behind closed doors, and excluding victims' voices in the process.



In the race for presidency, Moon pledged to either nullify the deal or seek renegotiation. Japan, however, stressed that the agreement was irreversible.



To further complicate matters, the Korean government has already allocated funds to victims, after receiving the fund from Japan last September. Among 38 surviving victims, 34 have received 100 million won.



The Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, a civic group representing the victims, is calling for the government to return the fund and annul the deal.



In a radio interview Thursday, the council's president Yoon Mi-hyang said the government should return the 10 billion yen by making up the already allocated amount with government funds.



"The 2015 agreement was a diplomatic disaster of the Park Geun-hye administration, which imposed the removal of comfort woman statues and an irreversible resolution of the issue without providing a proper official apology or reparations," the group said in a statement.



"The agreement must be annulled, and new negotiations must take place."



Meanwhile, some say the new administration must take a cautious approach.



"Instead of opting for the extreme of nullifying or carrying out the deal, we must take a look at the content and clarify the disputed elements in the deal," said Lee Won-deog, director at Kookmin University's Institute of Japanese Studies. These include issues of reparations, comfort woman statues and the "irreversible" nature of the deal.



"Based on the spirit of the deal, the administration should make a realistic request such as Abe making a spoken apology. There would be no need to strain relations with Japan in the beginning of the new administration," he said.




President reinstates pro-democracy Gwangju Uprising song



By Jun Ji-hye



President Moon Jae-in ordered the abolishment of the controversial history textbooks authored by the former Park Geun-hye administration for middle and high school students, Friday.



The state-authored textbooks had been controversial throughout the conservative Park administration, with many historians saying such a state intervention would distort history and cause social divisions.



"Moon signed an executive order to abolish state-authored history textbooks to normalize history education and rebuild common sense and justice," Moon's chief press secretary Yoon Young-chan said at a press briefing.



Yoon called the state-authored textbooks a "symbol of the outdated, uniform education that stirred up divisions in the nation."



Moon's decision showed his firm belief that history education must not be used to further any particular political agenda, he said.



The final versions of the state-authored textbooks were published at the end of January after former President Park, who was removed from office in March, decided to reinstate such textbooks in 2015.



Park accused the textbooks authored by private publishers of being biased and pro-North Korea.



Critics, however, have accused Park of trying to glorify pro-Japanese activities during Japan's 1910-45 occupation of Korea as well as the military dictatorship of her father Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country for 18 years after a coup.



The liberal Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) has said the abolition of such books will be a "top priority for a new education minister under the new government," with Moon having pledged to abolish them during his campaign.



March for the Beloved'



As part of efforts to amend controversial decisions made by the Park government, Moon also ordered the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs to allow a symbolic pro-democracy song to be sung by all participants during an upcoming government-led ceremony commemorating the May 18 democratic uprising in Gwangju in 1980.



"Moon ordered the ministry to designate Imeul Wihan Haengjingok (March for the Beloved) as a song to be sung by all participants at the 37th memorial service for the May 18 uprising," Yoon said. "The decision reflected Moon's strong will to prevent the spirit of the movement from being damaged further."



The song, which was popular among student activists in the 1980s, had been sung by all participants at the memorial service until 2008. Then, the conservative Lee Myung-bak administration had the song performed only by a choir since 2011.



Far-right figures have claimed the song was sung by North Korean sympathizers, while liberals argued the song has been a symbol of the nation's pro-democracy movement.



Despite strong criticisms from the liberal lawmakers as well as relatives of those killed by soldiers during the movement, the Park government maintained the Lee administration's decision to have the song sung only by a choir.



Meanwhile, Moon also ordered his aides to speed up the establishment of an advisory committee tasked with setting up direction and aims of the government's policies.



"Such a committee is necessary as the new government was launched without a preparatory period with a presidential transition committee," Moon was quoted as saying.



The presidential office added it will establish on- and offline communication channels within the committee so every citizen can suggest various policy ideas.




President Moon Jae-in and first lady Kim Jung-sook wave to their new neighbors before entering Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, Wednesday, when the president was sworn in. / Yonhap



By Kim Ji-soo, Kim Rahn



After single former President Park Geun-hye spent more than four years in Cheong Wa Dae, the election of President Moon Jae-in means the nation again has a first lady, Kim Jung-sook.



Wearing a white dress under a stunning white jacket decorated with thin black floral prints reminiscent of Korean ink-and-wash paintings, Kim, 63, was smiling by her husband's side on Wednesday at Moon's inauguration ceremony at the National Assembly on Yeouido and their first entrance into Cheong Wa Dae.



It was the first time for a first lady not to wear "hanbok," the traditional Korean attire, at the inauguration ceremony. The unconventional outfit was seen as signaling she may not stick to the traditional role of first ladies who just stayed quiet beside their husbands without acting on their own.



Seen always beaming during the election campaign, Kim has been dubbed by the media as "pleasant lady Jung-sook," to refer to her bright personality that complemented her husband's sometimes brusque personality.



Media here have said her support, especially in her weekly visits to the southwestern Jeolla provinces since last Chuseok holiday in September, contributed to Moon's victory in that crucial region. The Jeolla provinces, home turf of the liberals, had supported the minor liberal People's Party in last year's local election, meaning voters there were likely to support People's Party candidate Ahn Cheol-soo.



On those visits, she listened to the residents and delivered their wishes to her husband, meeting people at public bathhouses and traditional markets.



Kim was born in Jongno-gu, Seoul, and graduated from Sookmyung Girls' Middle and High School, before advancing to Kyung Hee University to study vocal music.



She met Moon on a blind date when she was a freshman in 1974. They did not become a couple at that time, but later Moon woke up after being knocked out during a pro-democracy protest on the campus to find his wife-to-be wiping his face.



They married in 1981, after dating for seven years. During that time, Moon was jailed twice for student activism and conscripted into the Special Forces. He also passed the bar exam during this time.



It is well-known that Kim proposed to Moon  at that time it was very unusual for a woman to propose first. Moon earlier said, "I was with other friends, and she came and suddenly said, Jae-in, are you going to marry me or not? Tell me now.' Surprised, I said, okay."

Political watchers expect such a lively personality will distinguish Kim from her predecessors. She already said she would meet with citizens more often.



In tandem with the President's pledge to be a "people's President" who would have soju with citizens after work in Gwangwhamun, central Seoul, the first lady said she would like to have an ordinary person's life by going grocery shopping at Namdaemun Market.
Donald Trump warned his sacked FBI director not to talk to the press Friday, in a morning Twitter tirade that painted a picture of a president under siege and lashing out.

Capping a week in which Trump faced a slew of criticism for firing the man investigating his campaign's possible ties to Russia, Trump warned James Comey there could be retribution if he speaks to the press about their private conversations.

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" Trump said.

Furious with the news coverage of the White House's shifting explanations on Comey's sacking, Trump lashed out, suggesting the media was wrong to expect his spokespeople to be 100 percent accurate.

"As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!" he tweeted.

Trump then went on to suggest scrapping the traditional White House briefings that have existed in some form since the Woodrow Wilson administration almost a century ago.

"Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???" Trump suggested.

Again, Trump brought the issue back to Russia, referencing a former head of intelligence's assertion that Trump was, to his knowledge, not colluding with Moscow.

"When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?" Trump tweeted.

Trump's bareknuckle comments immediately fueled fresh comparisons between his administration and that of disgraced president Richard Nixon, who famously recorded his conversations -- a fact that sped his downfall during the Watergate scandal.

"Presidents are supposed to have stopped routinely taping visitors without their knowledge when Nixon's taping system was revealed in 1973," tweeted the presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

The White House initially asserted that Comey's dismissal had nothing to do with the Russian investigations, which continue to be an albatross around the neck of Trump's presidency.

Instead, they said, the president fired Comey on the advice of senior members of the Justice Department, who worried about his handling of a 2016 investigation into Trump's election rival Hillary Clinton.

But Trump shattered that explanation himself on Thursday when he said he had always intended to fire Comey and that his decision was linked to the ongoing investigation into his campaign's ties with Russia.

In an interview with NBC on Thursday, Trump also revealed that he had asked Comey on three occasions whether he was personally under investigation.

"I actually asked him, yes. I said, 'If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?' He said, 'You are not under investigation,'" Trump recounted, repeating an assertion made when the White House announced Comey's firing Tuesday.

"All I can tell you is, well I know what, I know that I'm not under investigation. Me. Personally. I'm not talking about campaigns. I'm not talking about anything else. I'm not under investigation."

The other two times Trump said he asked Comey whether he was under investigation were in telephone conversations.

Trump also revealed that he had the Russia investigation in mind when he fired Comey.

"When I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made up story."

That startling admission fanned suggestions that Trump may be interfering with the investigation and promoted Comey allies to refute Trump's account of events.

The New York Times reported that Trump pressed Comey for a pledge of loyalty over dinner only a week after his inauguration, according to an account by two associates of the lawman.

Comey, they said, declined to make such a pledge but told Trump he would always give him "honesty."

US presidents are normally at pains to avoid any suggestion of interference or even commenting on ongoing investigations.

The FBI typically does not confirm their existence.

Noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe told AFP that if Comey did indeed answer Trump's question, it would violate Department of Justice rules and "would be unthinkably unethical and unprofessional in this situation."

Trump also said that at the dinner, he and Comey discussed whether the US top cop would stay in his role and continue his 10-year term.

Asking such a question "would come close to bribery... or at least obstruction of justice, which Comey would've had to be an idiot to fall for by offering the assurance sought," Tribe said.

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By Kim Hyo-jin



President Moon Jae-in has sought cooperation from foreign leaders in resolving North Korea's nuclear issue in phone calls, Cheong Wa Dae said Friday.



In their first phone call, Moon and Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull agreed to coordinate closely on the North's nuclear provocations by holding a high-level official meeting between foreign and defense ministers. They also encouraged each other to fight protectionism and promote free trade.



Turnbull said he is highly interested in Moon's support for free trade. Moon replied, "Let's work together to fight the expansion of protectionism."



Moon called for support to curb the North's nuclear ambition in a conversation with U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May later in the day.



May responded positively, saying the British government would like to share with Seoul its experience in resolving Iran's nuclear impasse.



Moon said he is seeking closer cooperation with the U.K. in the field of nuclear power plants, noting he highly appreciates the country's developed technology for decommissioning aging plants.



On a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the newly elected President did not forget to seek support for unification of the Korean Peninsula, calling Germany "a nation that deeply understands the tragedy and pain of a divided country."



Merkel replied she would closely coordinate with South Korea, expressing interest in the direction of Moon's governance including North Korea policies.



She also asked Moon to visit Berlin for talks during his visit to the G20 summit in Hamburg, and Moon said he would try to do so.



Moon also exchanged opinions with Russian President Vladimir Putin on improving bilateral relations.




By Jason Lim





The last seven months in South Korean politics have surely been a whirlwind, concluding with the election of the liberal candidate, Moon Jae-in, as President. According to the breathless coverage from the international media, South Korea is now the epitome of liberal democracy and a model for all would-be democratic activists to follow, including the progressives in America who would undoubtedly like to see the U.S. follow a similar path to political change.



Not likely to happen, but hope springs eternal.



And it certainly does in South Korea this week, basking in the glow of a candlelit revolution well won. There is a palpable sense of freshness, rejuvenation and hope in the air. Moon has started off on the right foot, promising transparency and communication as his administration's core values. He has so far walked the walk, announcing his initial inner circle appointments in a personable, open and frank manner, which was a great contrast to the formal, stiff and opaque way the prior administration of Park Geun-hye went about its business.



But as the warm afterglow of the candlelit rallies darkens and the honeymoon ends, what will really have changed in Korea? As some declare, backed more with fervent dreams rather than any facts, has the old way of doing business in Korea Inc. changed in a fundamental way? Will the old cadre of elites and the nepotistic culture of corruption that drove the governance paradigm of South Korea magically give way to transparency, social justice, economic equality and other noble goals the candlelit crowd supported?



Not likely. Change is hard. Fundamental cultural change is even harder. The fight is just beginning, and guess what, the old guard still has more levers of powers than Moon ever will.



A quick look at a JoongAng Daily election results map is actually very enlightening. While Moon won overwhelmingly over his runner-up, conservative opponent Hong Joon-pyo, in terms of the number of votes  with the largest margin of victory in Korea's presidential election history  a number of small to mid-sized municipalities split fairly evenly down the middle between Moon and Hong.



The map looks strangely like the Blue/Red Yin Yang circle of the South Korean flag; the left side of the map is all blue (Moon) while the right side of the map is mostly red (Hong). The population density of the municipalities that Moon won is higher, leading to more votes; however, Hong also won an almost equal number of municipalities.

This tells me South Korea is still as divided as ever along the traditional demarcation lines of geography, generations and ideology. The red communist scare, otherwise known as the "northern wind" in Korea's political parlance, still lurks strongly just beneath the surface. Even in Seongju County whose residents are protesting the placement of the THAAD system in their backyard, Hong won 56 percent of the vote compared to Moon's 18 percent. Strange? Yes. Does it make sense? Yes, in Korea.



Further, the conglomerates that rule the day in the South Korean economy still have great wealth and influence. While Samsung was recently tainted in the Choi Soon-sil scandal and its de facto head might even be sentenced to jail, it's all a part of doing business. Samsung, along with other chaebols, will have an outsized voice in how Korea Inc. operates for the foreseeable future. And the powerful conservative media outlets that were obsessed in finding fault with former President Roh Moo-hyun (for whom Moon served as the chief of staff) are still powerful and ready to defend their turf against liberal encroachment.



At least Roh had the national assembly stacked in his favor. Moon's Democratic Party of Korea only commands 120 seats, which means he would have to find common ground with the conservative Liberty Korea Party that holds 94 seats in order to pass any meaningful legislation that goes against the status quo. In fact, there is very little incentive for the Liberty Korea Party to work with Moon at this point to help him win any victories  they would be doing everything they can to trip up his agenda for their own political advantage that can sweep them back in power in the next general election in 2018. In other words, politics as usual by either side.



This situation somehow reminds me of the first time Barack Obama was elected as president of the U.S. There was a fresh wave of youthful hope by the liberals that everything would change from now on: that America (and even the world) would enter into some type of idealistic era where deep-seated divisions would be magically overcome.

It didn't happen then in America. It won't happen today in Korea.



In his inauguration speech, Moon spoke eloquently of his desire to be President of all Koreans, even those who didn't vote for him: "Starting today, I will act as the President of all citizens. Those who did not support me are still my citizens and will be served as well."



The bigger question is: will they let him?





Jason Lim is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006. Reach him at jasonlim@msn.com, facebook. com/jasonlimkoreatimes or @jasonlim2012.
Moon's agenda to upend status quo



President Moon Jae-in dropped a couple of hints about what policy he seeks regarding three key powers _ the United States, China and Japan _ as well as North Korea.



To U.S. President Trump who called him to congratulate him on his election, the new President accepted an invitation for an early U.S. visit. Speaking to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he took issue with the popular discontent over the $8.8 million settlement for imperial Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women during its 1910-45 occupation. Moon asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to go easy on Korean firms being targeted for harassment in retaliation to the deployment of a U.S. missile interceptor. Moon more or less consented with Xi's way of dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile programs. Xi responded cordially.



Now, it is widely speculated that Moon has inherited the legacy of two late former presidents _ Roh Moo-hyun, his mentor and friend, and Kim Dae-jung, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning pioneer for inter-Korean reconciliation. But Moon is finding himself in a better position and more eager to push for his diplomatic agenda with zeal and a sense of purpose that may surprise those who are accustomed to seeing Korea a follower rather than leader.



Moon's moves will likely tip the delicate balance of power, now suspended in a temporary equilibrium between the U.S. and Japan together with South Korea on one side, and China, North Korea and, distantly, Russia on the other.



Moon and his team favor an independent line, the heritage from Roh, to put more distance with its traditional ally, the U.S., while bringing China closer to make up for the void. Even before his election, Washington had expressed concerns about Moon's rise but they may turn out to underestimate the potential chasm, when the unpredictable Trump factor is thrown in. Would Moon stand berating and blackmail from Trump and accept the fate of a small nation caught in the nutcrackers of the big powers as before? That is less likely.



Bad blood between Moon and Trump would give further rise to pro-Chinese members of Moon's camp, tempting him to use China as leverage. His sympathetic view toward the North is the strong currency that can smooth relations between Moon and Xi.



Then, with Japan, the Moon government will have no choice but to continue, however backward-looking it may be, a history war, sending their relationship back to the days prior to the December 2015 pact on comfort women. It was a kind of shotgun marriage ministered by the U.S. who needed the two neighbors to patch up their relationship, a pivotal element to the stand the U.S. was taking against expansionist China.



How would all these factors affect South Korea and the regional power balance? A drastic change may not be ruled out.




By Yoon Sung-won





Google Korea CEO John Lee Cisco Korea President Cho Bum-coo

President Moon Jae-in and the new administration are recommended to take measures against tax evasion by foreign enterprises. They may refer to a recent case where Google was charged 300 million euro in a penalty tax.



Besides Google, multinational enterprises including Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco have repeatedly been accused of dodging taxes although they generate handsome profits in Korea.



The new head of state has no reason not to follow the case in Italy because there are similar controversies in Korea involving multinational companies. If the Italian case is not enough for Moon to take heart, here are some other examples.



Zero tolerance against tax evasion



On May 4, Google said it will pay 300.6 million euro in taxes to make up for money it didn't pay over the last decade. Italy's tax authority investigated the IT giant, alleging that the company had not paid tax on the 1 billion euro in sales it generated in the country between 2002 and 2015.



The Italian tax authority argued that Google's sales generated by selling paid mobile applications or advertisements to Italian consumers were subject to taxation in the country.



Google had made Italian consumers directly deal with its European headquarters in Ireland through the internet. In this way, Google redirected the sales in Italy to its branch in Ireland, which has only a 12.5 percent of corporate tax rate compared to Italy's 24 percent.



Countries other than Italy, such as Britain, France, Russia, Australia and Indonesia are also pushing to levy tax on multinational enterprises which have avoided taxation by finding legal loopholes.



On April 2015, Britain introduced a law that levies a 25 percent penalty tax on multinational enterprises if they avoid tax by recording sales generated in Britain in another country. Following this law, the British government collected 130 million pounds from Google in January last year.



France is pushing to collect 1.6 billion euro from Google. The French prosecution raided Google's office in Paris over alleged tax evasion and money laundering charges in May last year. In June, Google's office in Madrid was also raided by the Spanish police for alleged tax evasion.



Last August, the European Commission (EC) ordered Apple to pay 13 billion euro of tax to Ireland. It said the Irish government's excessive tax benefits for Apple were a violation of European Union rules. Both Apple and the Irish government appealed the order.



The EC is also looking into Amazon for allegedly cutting taxes on its gains generated in Europe by registering it to its subsidiary in Luxemburg, which has a lower tax rate.



In 2015, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the G20 member nations started global cooperation against such tax-dodging by multinational enterprises.



The enterprises have also been criticized for sidestepping Korea's Tax Law.



Korean cases



Many foreign countries are increasingly tightening their taxation rights on multinational enterprises by strengthening investigations. The government should be able to collect the tax from multinational enterprises here on the massive gains they generate in Korea.



The country's tax authority is actually very good at this, so I wonder why it turns a blind eye only on foreign players.



According to the Korea Mobile Internet Business Association (MOIBA), Google generated about 4.5 trillion won in volume last year from the Google Play mobile app market in Korea. This is 58.2 percent of 7.6 trillion won of the nation's total mobile app market in 2016.



Considering that Google collects a 30 percent fee for the mobile app market, its sales is estimated at 1.34 trillion won last year. The association projected that Google's mobile app market sales will reach 1.6 trillion this year.



Google distributes mobile apps made by Korean developers not through Google Korea but Google Asia Pacific in Singapore.



Despite its heavy estimated gains here, the National Tax Service (NTS) has had difficulty in monitoring Google Korea as it is not obliged to open its books on revenue and taxation as it is a limited liability company.



As a result, the country fails to collect proper taxes from Google. The new president is required to change this.



For Oracle, the NTS recently levied 314.7 billion won in corporate tax on Oracle Korea for the money not paid between 2008 and 2014. Oracle filed a suit at Seoul Administrative Court in February to request the overturning of the tax authority's order.



Cisco, the dominant provider of network equipment in Korea, has also been accused of sidestepping tax here by making its smaller local distribution partners directly make deals with suppliers in other countries with lower tax rates.



The usual suspect in this kind of debate has remained silent about the issue. I think the tax authority should not let it do so.
By Oh Young-jin





President Moon Jae-in should check out on one thing, if he doesn't want to get sidetracked by big powers in determining the future of policy on North Korea.

Definitely, there are something fishy about how the United States, the supposed key ally of South Korea, and China, the new superpower.

U.S. President Donald Trump says that he respects Chinese President Xi Jinping. Xi has said few words in praise of Trump. After all, the old Asian tradition says that a serious man doesn't show much emotion. But he has more than compensated by action.

Xi has put more pressure on its blood-sealed ally than ever before. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiers died helping the North in its war against South Korea and the U.S. during the 1950-53 Korean War.

It is as if China has suddenly become unafraid of the North's implosion that entails a refugee crisis and the loss of China's buffer against the U.S. By some reports, Xi may go to the unthinkable extent of switching off oil supplies to the North or closing the borders that it relies on for 90 percent of its trade.

What has caused Xi to go after the ally communist China's founding father Mao Zedong called "lips" that protect the "teeth" that are China?

A clue or two can be found when retracing interactions between the two big powers since the Trump-Xi summit in Florida early last month.

Although the summit was eclipsed by the U.S. cruise missile attack on Syria for its use of chemical weapons against civilians, the two leaders apparently hit it off well.

Trump revealed a history lesson about Korea from Xi, who claimed that not just North but also South Korea used to be part of China. Historians dispute such a claim but Trump obviously became an obedient student appreciating Xi's fraudulent claim, when he observed that he came to understand the difficulty of solving the North Korean problem.

Days after their meeting, the two had a phone call consulting with each other on how to thwart the North from its plans to conduct a sixth nuclear test and launch an intercontinental ballistic missile to commemorate its two landmark national days _ the anniversary of the birth of its late founder Kim Il-sung and the anniversary of its army's foundation. Kim Jong-un, the North's 30-plus dictator, backed down and settled for two failed missile launches. China and the U.S. acted as if a champion pro-wrestling tag team _ China through its media and possibly official channels as well letting the North know it may stop being its guardian, while the U.S. made an impressive show of force.

China has pressed on through its mouthpiece, making abundantly clear that the North should not expect its benefactor to come to its rescue, even if the U.S. stages a pre-emptive strike against its asymmetric weapons. Blame was also heaped on the North's founding father for his recklessness that caused the death of hundreds of thousands of Chinese Liberation Army soldiers.

Harsh words may not break bones but they can turn friends into foes.

By all means, Xi appears willing to take the risk of that.

The U.S. has also played its part as a superb partner to China in what may turn out to be a danse macabre for the North.

U.S. Secretary of State Tillerson told a U.N. meeting that all options including military force are on the table but the U.S. doesn't want regime change and would talk to Kim, if the North stops developing weapons of mass destruction. But what Tillerson said may sound like an offer but to the North it is nothing but a demand for unconditional surrender.

To the young dictator, giving up the nukes would amount to letting go of his legitimacy as a leader and saying goodbye to his fear-based reign of terror over its elite and general population.

Without China's backing, U.S. threats would sound hollow.

Then, it comes back to the same question of why China is cooperating with the U.S. on the North as earnestly as ever. It didn't do that during the Obama administration or before.

Has Xi gotten scared by Trump's threats of economic sanctions? If the two giants come to an economic war, the U.S. couldn't escape unscathed. Maybe, Xi wants to avoid a fight with the U.S. that may jeopardize his pursuit of president for life. But it doesn't make sense because it would put him at Trump's beck and call. Besides, China would lose the strategic partner that stands between it and the U.S. and the collapse of the North could have refugees flood the borders. In terms of cost versus benefit, such a possibility should be crossed out.

Then, is Xi getting cold feet about having an unpredictable nuclear weapon state on its doorstep?

That possibility has been around all along. Rather, China has enjoyed the benefit of the nuclear-armed North that can keep the U.S. occupied?

Or Xi may have decided to go through the motions, agreeing to play along with Trump but being secure in the knowledge that Trump will be out of office well before the North Korean drama comes to its denouement. That is possible but its probability appears low.

That leaves a secret deal between the two as one outstanding possibility.

During their chat at the Mar-a-Lago summit, Trump may have guaranteed China's right after Kim is out and the North's missile and nuclear programs are rendered useless. The U.S. president also would throw in the South as well after being impressed by Xi's history lesson. They would seal the deal with a handshake. Trump is relieved of a headache, while Xi gets a beachhead for projecting China power into the region.

If it took place, it wouldn't be the last time as the big powers have cut such deals on the sly in the past. Trump has already declared the U.S. under his stewardship is renouncing its traditional set of values such as human rights, alliances and others.

Would Korea acquiesce to whatever given fate amid the changing dynamics of big power politics? Moon should confront the two to find out what they are up to.



Oh Young-jin is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer. Contact foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com. This column is an extended version of Tuesday's editorial, titled "Trump's gift to Xi" offline and "Trump bribery for Xi."
By Yoon Sung-won





Joseph Stinziano John Herrington

Samsung Electronics promoted two foreigners in its 2017 executive personnel, the company said Friday.



The Samsung Electronics headquarters in Korea promoted Samsung Electronics America (SEA) Consumer Business head Joseph Stinziano to senior vice president and SEA Home Appliance Division head John Herrington as vice president this week.



Promotion of Stinziano and Herrington came as a part of the electronics company's belated annual executive personnel change amid the absence of its leader Lee Jae-yong. Samsung Electronics and its affiliates used to announce their promotion and reshuffle plans every December.



"Samsung Electronics has made the reshuffle because we could not delay it too long," the company said in a statement.



Both foreign executives were promoted in the company's set business division, which is in charge of end-products such as home appliances and mobile devices. No foreign executive promotion was made in the component unit despite dramatic growth of the company's semiconductor business last year.



Stinziano and Herrington's promotion came after the performance improvement of Samsung's North American subsidiary.



In the face of global economic slowdown starting the latter half of 2014, SEA suffered a slump. But as the consumer sentiment in the North American market recovers, SEA has pushed to sell premium televisions, home appliances and smartphones in the market to boost profitability. In 2016, Samsung Electronics recorded over 42.64 trillion won in sales in the region, up 140.6 billion won from the previous year.



Stinziano has worked at SEA since 2009 and became vice president in 2012 for his contribution to the firm's solid leadership in the North American television market. Born in 1966, he studied engineering at Rutgers University in New Jersey.



Herrington joined SEA in 2014 and has headed popularity of the company's premium home appliances such as the Chief Collection kitchen appliances, the Family Hub refrigerators and the Add Wash washing machines. He was born in 1962 and majored in marketing at Wisconsin University.



Besides Stinziano and Herrington's promotions, Samsung Electronics appointed Tim Baxter as chief of SEA. Baxter joined Samsung Electronics in 2006, leaving Sony. He became the first foreign executive vice president of the company in 2013 for his contribution to achieve over 30 percent share in the U.S. television market.



Meanwhile, the number of foreign executives that Samsung Electronics promotes a year has continued to decrease since 2015. The company promoted eight foreign executives in 2012, 10 in 2013 and 12 in 2014. But the number has decreased to nine in 2015 and four in 2016.






By Eom Da-sol



A Japanese songwriter has written a song titled "Chin-goo-yah" ("my friend" in Korean) to support Korea and welcome Korean tourists to Japan.



The song calls Koreans "friends" and expresses support for them no matter how much the world is full of hardships.



Songwriter Natsumi Yu, 60, told Yonhap news agency, "I wanted to cheer up Koreans who have been confronted by many difficulties in politics and international diplomacy."



He defined himself as a Korean culture fan. "Even though the relationship between Korea and Japan has been strained, there still are a big number of Japanese citizens (including myself) who consider Korea as their friend," Yu said.



Yu wrote the song in Korean and Japanese and also as an instrumental version. Korean-Japanese Kim Hyun-hee sings the Korean version and Yu's student Minami sings the Japanese version.



The music video of "Chin-goo-yah" was released on YouTube on Apr. 28. Many people in Japan voluntarily starred in the video with placards expressing heartfelt messages.



An album with the three versions will be officially released this month. All profits will be donated to childcare homes in Korea.



"There is a Korean food counter at every supermarket in Japan," Yu said. "Korean culture is simply a part of our daily lives.



"Korea has the power to solve domestic and international problems. Everybody hopes the nation can solve them soon."




At least 11 activists were detained on Moscow's Red Square on Friday as they were reading Russia's constitution out loud, a group that monitors protest activity said.

OVD-Info, a website that tracks the detention of activists, said among the activists detained was Ildar Dadin, the first and only person in Russia to have served prison time for contravening a tough law clamping down on protests in the country.

The activists were taken to a nearby police station, OVD-Info said. It remains unclear whether they could face charges.

"A policeman approched us and warned us that if we don't leave, they will detain us," Dadin told TASS news agency. "Ten minutes later police detained us."

Lawyer Alexei Lipster told RIA Novosti news agency that Dadin was still in police custody but that officers had not written up a report.

Dadin, 35, was jailed in December 2015 for the supposed crime of holding repeated peaceful demonstrations against President Vladimir Putin's rule without official permission.

In a letter to his wife smuggled out from prison in November, Dadin alleged he had been tortured behind bars, as well as threatened with rape and murder.

His allegations exploded into the public eye, shining a spotlight on abuse that forced the Kremlin to pay attention.

Putin in January ordered a review of the penitentiary service's work, although it was not explicitly linked to Dadin's case.

In 2014 Russia controversially introduced criminal charges for those who breach rules at protest rallies twice or more in a period of 180 days.

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Gong Yoo did not need to do anything in his Hong Kong fan meeting but stand on stage to make his fans' hearts flutter but the "Goblin" did one better when he showed up in stylish outfits that would put magazine models to shame. The thousands of fans who attended the event at the sold out AsiaWorld-Expo were not disappointed.

According to a report by South China Morning Post, Gong Yoo put his impeccable fashion sense to work when he appeared before the fans with several outfit changes. While his style choices were not over the top or eccentric, the actor's choices were quite conservative but proved that he could pull off any look in dapper fashion.

Based on the report, Gong Yoo initially impressed fans with an all gray ensemble and black shoes. However, it was when the actor changed to a pink pants suits from Bottega Veneta did he truly show his fashion forward style. While most men would shy away from the color, Gong Yoo carried off the look with great ease as he serenaded his fans and answered their questions in a laid back atmosphere.

Gong Yoo, who recently won the award for Best Actor at the prestigious Baeksang Art Awards for his role in the hit drama "Goblin" shared that even though he is a well-known celebrity, he is not immune to the plight of regular film crews working on sought after Korean dramas. He said that film crews deserve a lot of credit for the effort they exert in making sure that high-quality dramas are shared with the world but remarked that there is a need to review long working hours that they have to undergo to complete the dramas.

He said that film crews and actors all grow weary of the grind because they too are regular people. On the rare occasions that he has a moment of rest, he said he exercises, listens to music or does what any regular pet owner does - clean up his cats' poop, Gong Yoo said in a report by Straits Times.
As Moline High School gets ready to wrap up its school year students running the Line O Type newspaper are rushing to meet their final deadline.

Right now we're working on our last issue of the year, said Co-Editor-in-Chief Pranjal Kadwe Thursday afternoon.

Section editors of Line 'O Type are racing towards the finish line. The final issue goes to print Tuesday, May 16.

The 2016-2017 year marked a milestone for this student-staff.

Its cool that we're all seniors too for it being our last year and it also being the 100th year, Kadwe said.

This long-running newspaper is not breeding the next great journalists.

Im going to University of Illinois at Chicago and I will be doing Pre-Med, Kadwe said.

Im going to Iowa State to study Mechanical Engineering, said News Editor Grafton Carlson.

Students say the paper is providing skills they can carry on far past high school.

[I learned] how to write better, and revise other articles, Carlson said. And I learned how to keep up with up to date issues that are going on in our society.

Kadwe says the paper has been an opportunity to explore a hobby.

Ive always liked writing, and creative writing type stuff has always been interesting to me.

She says her experience on the paper is helping her achieve her post high school goals.

It is something that looks great on college apps, and Ive had a couple interviews actually for some of the programs and actually for the college Im going to and they did talk to me about [Line O Type] a lot.

Faculty advisor Heidi Norcross is another Line O Type success story.

As a reporter I wrote for the Line O Type back then and it kind of just fostered my love of English, my love of writing which is why I teach today, Norcross said.

She says no matter what career students choose to pursue, the paper offers a lesson for everyone.

The idea of news and asking questions is timeless, she said. And I think it's a great lesson and life skill for students to learn.

The final 100 year edition of Line O Type will be released Friday, May 19.
The long-awaited Marine Coastal Management Plan, intended to provide guidance for the City to manage seals and sea lions and also various sea birds roosting and nesting in the La Jolla area, has been completed and submitted to the City of San Diegos Park & Recreation Department with measures that can be implemented.

Hanan & Associates authored the 91-page report, the same firm that produced the City-contracted Hanan Report of 2015-2016. Its being referred to as a living document that can be revised as conditions change and it covers Scripps Pier to WindanSea Beach.

Among its findings, the report lists Action Items that could be taken to address the problems caused by the burgeoning pinniped populations along La Jollas coastline, which have included dangerous human-pinniped encounters, interference with lifeguard rescues, and an intolerable stench permeating the Village with onshore winds. The stench has so impacted commerce that a group of businessmen filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against the City in December 2013 to force City Hall to deal with the issue.

In addition, La Jollas many community advisory boards have held meetings, formed a task force and proposed various sea lion deterrence solutions (such as power-washing the bluffs to remove animal excrement and rotating cylinders to keep the sea lions off the bluffs) but all were put on hold pending results of the Marine Coastal Management Plan.

The Plan states: The City will continue to implement an aggressive educational safety program to develop public awareness regarding the biology and behavior of seals and sea lions and expected public behavior with seals and sea lions occurring in the La Jolla area. This program will include: increased and informative signage, brochures, education, interpretive centers and a trained docent program.

Further, the report lists four items the City will do and a fifth the City can decide to do. It reads: 1) The City has decided to move forward to protect pinnipeds and the public by placing gates on the base of beach access stairs to prevent sea lions from coming up beyond the beaches and thus prevent problems associated with pinnipeds in urban areas; 2) The City will continue the enzyme spraying program to reduce waste build up and offensive odors; 3) The City will periodically review this plan and amend as necessary; 4) The City will continue to monitor pinniped presence and behavior at all sites within the plan area.

The optional action is to hire and equip additional rangers to increase City presence and education within the plan area.

Local reactions

At the La Jolla Town Council meeting, May 11, District 1 City Council member Barbara Bry issued a statement that was read by her representative Mauricio Medina: This report provides some initial steps to addressing a complicated situation that has impacted the community for years. I will be tracking the Citys implementation of (the Plans) action items. I remain committed to protecting coastal access for swimmers and beach-goers and enforcing the rules that prohibit human/sea lion interaction and advocating for effective management of the stench at the Cove ... The docent program is something (my office is) particularly excited about because we could provide an opportunity for youth education and volunteerism.

Dan Allen, former chair of La Jolla Parks & Beaches advisory group, said he read the report and saw it as a good-news/bad-news situation. The good news is that it looks to me like the report supports what La Jolla Parks & Beaches has been asking the City to do for the last two years, he said. Their expert consultant goes over potential actions and concludes with a two-part preferred alternative.

Conversely, he said, The final section of the Plan is the big disappointment. It appears to be the Mayors official response, specifically saying, The City may consider at a later date procedures to move sea lions from certain beaches. In other words, expect them to continue to do nothing  not even the consultants recommended trial effort.

Current La Jolla Parks & Beaches chair Ann Dynes said the report would be discussed at the next meeting, 4 p.m. Monday, May 22 at La Jolla Rec Center, 615 Prospect St. lajollaparksandbeaches.org

La Jolla Town Council has been working to find a solution to the pinniped problem through its Sea Lion Task Force. Ahead of the May 11 Town Council meeting, president Ann Kerr Bache said in a statement to the press: The City has so far chosen not to acknowledge the La Jolla Community input nor include representatives of the La Jolla Town Council Task Force in its discussion of how to proceed ... The next step is to move from study and discussion to action. The La Jolla community has offered to help. That offer remains valid should the City choose to accept it.

Other Plan details

The 91-page Plan includes a description of each of the beach areas studied, a history of pinniped presence in La Jolla, pinniped and sea bird use by area, a species list for the entire area, a history of coastal protection measures, goals of the Management Plan (which emphasize educating the public on living with and enjoying our wild resources), examples of sea lion/seal interactions and subsequent municipality actions in other areas of California, management options, and citations.

The Plan also outlines alternatives the City may consider, which include doing nothing with the caveat that this method would likely lead to loss of public beach areas as pinniped populations increase, all the way to low-voltage livestock fencing. However the preferred alternative would be a combination, chiefly: Implement expanded signage and docents to educate the public regarding pinnipeds and pinniped behavior (and) use the National Marine Fisheries Service approved harassment techniques to try and keep sea lions off La Jolla Cove Beach and any other selected haul-out areas. First test and then if this appears to work, use the technique at other sites chosen for public use.

While the previous Hanan & Associates study was to identify potential opportunities for changing the behavior or haul-out conditions of the sea lion colony now expanding along the La Jolla coastline it ultimately found Continual harassment of California sea lions off haul-out areas may temporarily reduce California sea lion presence and may temporarily reduce their interactions in the La Jolla Cove area, but they are not likely to abandon the area. Considering that California sea lions are not likely to leave the La Jolla area, the City is in the position to develop strategies of how to best live with them and hopefully take advantage of their presence.

La Jolla Light will continue to update this unfolding news story of great import ance to the businesses and residents of The Village.
PRESS RELEASE

Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting Reaffirms Cooperative Approach

May 11, 2017 (EIRNS)Media projections of geopolitical tensions at todays Ministerial Meeting of the eight member states of the Arctic Council in Fairbanks, Alaska were once again proven wrong. The rug was pulled out of that lie, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovs stop in the Washington on his way to the meeting.

Chairmanship of the Council rotates between the member states Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States every two years, and the Foreign Ministers of the twenty-year-old Council meet at the conclusion of each term or rotation to review where policies stand, and lay out prospects for the next two years. With military matters explicitly excluded from its agenda, the Council has served to foster cooperation between nations on developing this remaining frontier on Earth.

Among the outcomes of this meeting, chaired by the U.S., was the signing of a binding agreement to facilitate cooperation on scientific research in the region, which ensures that scientists, their equipment and data can flow more freely across international boundaries within the Arctic. An Arctic Shipping Traffic Database has been set up over the last two years; an assessment of telecommunications in the region led to the decision to establish a Task Force on Improved Connectivity in the Arctic; and a new Arctic Economic Council is now moving into the operational stage.

Both the Russian Foreign Ministry and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Balton (Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental Affairs) emphasized in statements prior to the meeting, that unlike other regions in the world, "the Arctic remains stable and peaceful," as Balton stated in his May 8 background briefing on the Council meeting.

As Balton elaborated:

"Through the Arctic Council, we have a venue that has been doing very well in promoting international cooperation among all the eight nations, including Russia. Whatever other differences may exist between the United States, Russia, and other members of the Arctic Council and Russia relating to other parts of the world, dont manifest themselves in the work of the Arctic Council. That has remained a very cooperative body."

The May 10 Russian Foreign Ministry statement pointed out that Arctic Council

"members are not divided into blocs, and all decisions are adopted by consensus. This makes it possible to maintain sustained Arctic cooperation."

Largely because of the Councils efforts, the policy of cooperation continued, "despite aggravated international relations. Not a single Arctic Council project has been terminated."

This policy must continue, even as

"major international players are now focusing on the Arctic more actively. This leads to rivalry and clashes of interests and ambitions of various countries, including those from beyond the Arctic region,"

it added.

"Russia views the Arctic as a territory of dialogue and cooperation and is determined to resolutely counter any attempts to bring tensions and a policy of confrontation to the region."

The policy of cooperation is expected to continue under the new chairmanship of Finland. It was reported when President Xi Jinping visited Finland on April 5, Finland agreed to bring Chinas voice into Council deliberations on how to improve Arctic affairs. A speaker at an event at the Finnish Ambassador to Londons residence today declared that "there will be no Cold War in the Arctic," Sputnik reported today.

The other hot issue projected for the Councils meeting, was the British Monarchys genocidal Paris climate change agreement. The problem of climate change in the Arctic is all over the final declaration adopted by all member states, but what is meant by "climate change" remains to be fought out.

President Putins dismissal of the man-made climate danger is well-known. Now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the Council in his opening remarks that
PRESS RELEASE

A New Korea Policy Starts To Emerge; Trump and Xi Jinping Pledge Cooperation With Moon Jae-in

May 11, 2017 (EIRNS)The election of Moon Jae-in as President of South Korea, who is known to favor a negotiated solution to the crisis on the Korean peninsula, signals motion towards a new policy.

Yesterday, President Donald Trump phoned President Moon to congratulate him on his victory, and according to the White Houses statement, invited him to visit Washington at an early date, which Moon accepted. "President Trump said he looks forward to working with President Moon," the White House reported.

Also yesterday, Chinese President Xi Jinping called Moon, in which the South Korean President said he wants to work closely with China to denuclearize the Korean peninsula, including restarting six-party talks with world powers, "and other methods, as soon as possible."

Global Times reports today that Xi emphasized the importance of the two countries working together to serve their common interests, which will be conducive to achieving regional peace and stability. According to the same report, Moon said he attaches great interest to his nations relationship with China and particularly underscored his appreciation for Chinas Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This will bring prosperity to all the nations along its routes, he said, including South Korea.

The two presidents agreed to stay in close contact and to meet at an early date. The New York Times today reports that soon, Moon will send a delegation to Beijing for the specific purpose of discussing the North Korean crisis.
PRESS RELEASE

Trump and Lavrov Comment on Their Meeting

May 11, 2017 (EIRNS)Both President Donald Trump and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov commented that they were pleased with their meeting. Afterward, TASS reports, Trump told journalists,

"We had a very, very good meeting. Were going to stop the killing and the death. I think that we are going to do very well with respect to Syria, I think things are happeningthey are really, really, really positive."

TASS reported significant comments by Lavrov.

"I had a bilateral meeting with Rex Tillerson, then the two of us were received by President Trump," Lavrov said. "We discussed, first and foremost, our cooperation on the international stage.

"At present, our dialogue is not as politicized as it used to be during Obamas Presidency. The Trump administration, including the President himself and the Secretary of State, are people of action who are willing to negotiate."

Lavrov described the background of their relations:

"The reason why our relations deteriorated to this state is no secret. Unfortunately, the previous administration did everything possible to undermine the basis of our relations, so now we have to start from a very low level. President Trump has clarified his interest in building mutually beneficial and practical relations, as well as in solving issues. This is very important."

On Syria, Lavrov said he believe the United States could contribute to the operation of de-escalation zones.

"We are ready for this cooperation and today have discussed in detail the steps and mechanisms which we can manage together. We have confirmed our interest in the U.S. most active role in those issues. I imagine the Americans are interested in this too. "We proceed from the fact they will take up the initiative,"

he said.

"We have thoroughly discussed the Syrian issue, particularly the ideas related to setting up de-escalation zones. We share an understanding that this should become a common step aimed at putting an end to violence across Syria. "At the current stage, we agree on the concept and even on practical steps concerning the geography of the de-escalation zones. The memorandum signed in Astana outlines further steps that would help the stakeholders come to terms on who and how will ensure the safety areas surrounding the de-escalation zones. "President Trump has reiterated that defeating terrorism is the United States main priority as far as Syria is concerned. We see eye to eye here. "We have agreed we will be working together in the format of Astana [talks] which the United States attends as an observer. We have praised the constructive contribution the U.S. made at the last meeting. "We will be cooperating in the format of the Geneva process which, according to [UN Special Envoy for Syria] Staffan de Mistura, will be resumed the very next week,"

he said.

Regarding anti-Russian sanctions, he said: "We did not discuss the sanctions. This is not our problem; these are unilateral actions that were taken against us."

Lavrov said that their talks addressed the Palestinian-Israeli settlement, the situation in Afghanistan, and also the fulfillment of the Minsk accords on the political settlement in east Ukraine. "We agreed to continue working contacts on these issues and look for ways to bring closer the positions of all the parties concerned."
Writing editorial columns. Refining his views on slavery. Condemning the Kansas-Missouri Act. Keeping a wary eye on Stephen A. Douglas and then tormenting him on the issue of popular sovereignty. Studying Euclid. Wrestling with the remnants of the Whig Party and then constructing the contours of the new Republican Party. In short, becoming Abraham Lincoln.

In the second volume of his massive political life of Lincoln, the Democratic operative and writer Sidney Blumenthal sketches a Lincoln in the wilderness  after his single term in the House, before his landmark Senate campaign against Douglas  that challenges the established notion that for more than half a decade the future president sat quietly and idly in Illinois, more a passive observer than an activist as his party, his vision of America and his country split apart, tumbling to civil strife and then to civil war. Lincoln was not only seeking a newer world, as Tennyson put it in a poem written a decade earlier, or the way to assemble one. He was also seeking his main chance.

Much of the prevailing view of Lincoln in this period (1849-1856) is from William Dean Howells, who portrayed Lincoln as [s]uccessful in his profession, happy in his home, secure in the affections of his neighbors, with books, competences, and leisure  ambition could not tempt him. Lincoln tolerated, even fostered, that view, as a counterweight to the notion that, as an Illinois newspaper put it at the time, Lincoln is undoubtedly the most unfortunate politician that has ever attempted to rise in the state.

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Wrestling With His Angel challenges and changes all that. In a book that barely introduces the main character of the narrative until page 129, Blumenthal argues that Lincoln entered his wilderness years a man in pieces and emerged on the other end a coherent steady figure.

This Lincoln lost a child, and his tortured wife, Mary, descended into depression, panic attacks and migraines. He toiled as a lawyer, traveling across the plains in a buckboard wagon, often working for the railroads, once having to sue for his fee because the company superintendent refused to pay it. This superintendents name was George B. McClellan. The two would collide again, eventually with President Lincoln firing Gen. McClellan, then with the embattled incumbent chief executive defeating Democratic presidential nominee McClellan for the White House.

Uneducated in the traditional sense, Lincoln nonetheless was educated in the classical sense. Much of that education occurred in this period, a good deal of it focusing on Eucilds Geometry, which Lincoln applied directly to his thinking, then to his arguments, especially his critique of Douglas, which provides the main spine of this volume: a series of ironclad logical proofs, Blumenthal argues, on the geometry of slavery and against its extension.

Always in this period Lincoln was preoccupied with Douglas, who dominated Illinois politics and was, like Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts more than a century later, regarded as the president next time but never the president this time. And he was obsessed by the politics that divided the country that he traversed as a circuit lawyer, a passion stoked by the American tour of Louis Kossuth, the romantic symbol of the Hungarian revolution for freedom of 1848.

What comes across clearly in this volume is that even in their early obscurity, Lincoln and Douglas were Illinois rivals, though the struggle between the two was seldom a fair fight, for Douglas was so much more polished, so much more eloquent, so much more powerful. Of this Blumenthal writes: His longtime principal rival within his home state, the leader of the Whigs there, had served only one term in the Congress and was now riding a horse on the dusty trails of the Eighth Judicial District of central Illinois; nobody remembered his name.

One of the principal lessons of this volume is the difference a decade can make  think of the contrast between 2007, when another Illinois politician, Barack Obama, was on his ascent, and 2017, when Donald J. Trump sleeps in the White House  especially when, in their time as in ours, events moved at a gallop or, to appropriate a loaded modern term, at warp speed.

In 1850 the country was dominated by the Great Triumvirate of Clay, Calhoun and Webster. By mid-decade the three were gone and Douglas was the man of the hour. By the end of the decade Lincoln would be elected president and the Compromise of 1850, which was supposed to render the issue of slavery moot forever, was itself in tatters, along with the country it was designed to save. The convulsion  the word was Daniel Websters  the compromise was supposed to avoid resulted in the dismembership of this vast country that Webster dreaded. He was right, but so was John C. Calhoun, who answered Webster by saying, Disunion must be the work of time.

It was Douglas and the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act that drew Lincoln back into politics for good  the double meaning of the phrase here is intended  and before long he was giving speeches and writing what we today would call op-ed columns. In 1854, Lincoln wrote in his 1860 campaign autobiography, his profession had almost superseded the thought of politics in his mind, when the repeal of the Missouri compromise aroused him as he had never been before.

Lincoln followed Douglas like a shadow, trailing him, taunting him, haunting him and, according to Blumenthal, found him unexpectedly vulnerable. For it was geography  their shared turf of Illinois  that transformed Lincoln, and not Charles Sumner or Salmon P. Chase or William H. Seward, into Douglas prime rival and antagonist. Douglas contended with all the powers-that-be in Washington, yet inevitably he had to return to earth  to Illinois, Blumenthal writes. While playing for the greatest national stakes, his base of support, his organization, and his right to office were rooted in his home state.

And Blumenthal argues that while the political arts may not have been his formal profession, politics was never far from Lincolns mind, nor from his activities, nor surely from his talents. Blumenthal achieved national attention with his work with Bill and Hillary Clinton, who prided themselves in dividing their lives into little boxes. Not so Lincoln. There was not a double Lincoln, split between the lawyer and the politician, writes Blumenthal, whose view of his historical subject was almost certainly shaped by his experience with his contemporary patrons. Whatever he gained in sharpening his method as a lawyer he knew or hoped he would apply in politics. For him the courtroom and the campaign were transferable arenas. His speeches in both were addressed to the jury.

The result, according to Blumenthal: a river of logic, history, metaphor, allusion, storytelling, and emotion that flowed until he finally ended Douglass ambition.

But this ultimately is the story of the redemption of Lincolns ambition, and in these pages we see the green shoots of the mature Lincoln  the notion, first, that his priority was saving the Union rather than eviscerating slavery; then the image, borrowed from the New Testament, of a house divided; and, finally, the rhetorical use of the preamble of the Declaration of Independence as a touchstone for his creed. What Blumenthal sets out in Wrestling With His Angel is really The Making of the President  of President Abraham Lincoln and of the nation that a man without religion (but suffused with faith and religious imagery) would help become born again.

David Shribman is executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Wrestling With His Angel: the Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. II, 1849-1856

Sidney Blumenthal

Simon & Schuster: 608 pp., $35
California strawberries are world-renowned for their size, color, firmness and flavor. Thats why theyre at the heart of a nearly $3-billion industry producing 87% of all the strawberries consumed in North America.

Theyre less well known as the source of bad blood that has boiled among breeders and growers and landed the University of California in court for the second time in three years.

But thats where things stand. Barring a last-minute settlement, opening statements will be heard Monday in San Francisco federal court, in a case pitting the university against two former professors who were among its most successful agricultural scientists and the private company set up to commercialize their work.

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It would be a shame to see those strawberry varieties thrown onto the ash heap of history.  Michael Cleugh, Eclipse Berry Farms

Watsonville-based California Berry Cultivars (CBC) was created in 2013 to exploit the talents of Douglas Shaw and Kirk Larson as they were preparing to leave UC Davis, where they had reigned for more than two decades as star strawberry breeders.

They were required as UC employees to assign their strawberry patents to the university in return for a share of the royalties. The arrangement benefited both sides: The patents are among UCs most profitable, bringing in about $7 million a year  almost $100 million over time  of which about $2 million a year has flowed to the scientists.

But all things must end, CBC says in its trial brief. Shaw and Larson notified UC in 2011 that they were planning to retire three years hence. At that point, the relationship between the professors and their university started looking like an ugly divorce.

The university accuses the professors of stealing strawberry varieties and infringing patents in order to advance their private business. The professors say UC has attempted in bad faith to keep CBC from continuing strawberry development as a private entity.

The dispute underscores the importance of UC as a public trust. For the agriculture industry, its a fount of research and innovation  and the strawberry breeding program is a leading example. UC established the program in the 1930s and moved it to Davis in 1959. Shaw took over in 1990 and Larson joined him a year later. The two turned the program into what they call the foremost strawberry breeding program in the world. Few would dispute that. Today more than half the states 30,000 strawberry acres are planted with UC Davis offspring.

The program occupies a vital position in the California strawberry industry. At the industrys base are hundreds of growers who depend on the university for an annual supply of new plants from popular strawberry breeds as well as new varieties bred for color, flavor, drought- and pest-resistance and other valued qualities. Because strawberry plants lose vigor year by year, growers buy cuttings from nurseries supplied by the UC program. Royalties and fees flow back to UC from the growers via the nurseries.

UC also operates as a commercial competitor of large strawberry growers with their own proprietary breeding programs, the best-known of which is Watsonville-based Driscolls. The proprietary breeders plant about 40% of the states strawberry acreage.

Independent growers say they need both UC and CBC to function as a counterweight to the big breeders, which charge steep royalties and commissions for use of their plants. If UCs program withers and CBC is prevented from operating, strawberry farmers would have no alternative but to become captive growers to the big agribusinesses. Decades of painstaking work also hangs in the balance  plant material currently in the possession of UC and not yet brought to market.

It would be a shame to see those strawberry varieties thrown onto the ash heap of history, said Michael Cleugh, a vice president at Eclipse Berry Farms, which cultivates 1,800 acres around Oxnard, Santa Maria and Salinas. Driscolls declined to comment for this column. Shaw didnt respond to messages left at his home and Larson, who has retired, couldnt be reached.

The federal court jurys main task will be unraveling the tangled ownership rights to biological material  plants on which CBC has continued to experiment, with the goal of producing new strawberry varieties for the industry. They took plants that belonged to the university and used them for purposes they were not authorized for, said Jacob Appelsmith, a UC Davis attorney. We consider that to be theft.

CBC says the plants were not yet at the patentable stage and therefore should be available for further experimentation by Shaw. The best outcome of the trial would be to clearly establish that CBC can keep developing with the material they invented, said Greg Lanier, a CBC attorney. He said UC still would be in line to collect royalties once the work reached the patentable stage. CBC also suggested that UC may have been in league with the big proprietary breeders such as Driscolls, who did not want competition from Shaw at UC, or at CBC after his retirement, according to the companys trial brief.

A complicating factor in the dispute is years of growing enmity between UC and the breeders, which first emerged in 2011, when Shaw and Larson announced their pending retirements. Not long after that, rumors percolated through the strawberry community that UC Davis was planning to shut down the breeding program.

Growers were mystified. We couldnt believe UC wanted to shut down the most successful public-private breeding partnership in the world, said A.G. Kawamura, an Orange County grower and former state agriculture secretary who is a part owner of CBC. The California Strawberry Commission, a state agency that represents the industry and had been supporting the breeding program financially for years, sued to keep it open.

The lawsuit was settled in 2015 after UC agreed to continue the program for at least five years and promised that UC-produced varieties would continue to be licensed to all growers. In the wake of the settlement, UC announced the appointment of a new strawberry breeder, Steven J. Knapp, a former global director for vegetable breeding at Monsanto.

The university says the rumors of a shutdown were always untrue  and that they were spread by Shaw and Larson themselves. When the scientists decided to retire, according to UCs trial brief, they told growers and nurseries they would have to join CBC or be shut out of new varieties. UC says they did no breeding work in 2013 and 2014 even though they were still university employees, and refused to give Knapp program data he needed to advance their research.

CBC says Shaw and Larson were trying to protect the programs heritage, not take it for themselves. UC Davis plant science department had proposed a partnership with Shaw for continued breeding, but that plan had been rejected by university administrators. Shaw felt increasing frustration with the bureaucracy at the university and didnt think the university was fulfilling its mission as well as it should, said Rick McKnight, another CBC attorney.

From the growers standpoint, the worst outcome of the battle would be a shutdown of the breeding work that made Shaw famous and the California strawberry the envy of the world. Some think UC should allow CBC to continue its breeding work while its own program remains in force. What would be ideal is for CBC to release their varieties through UC and pay them a royalty, Cleugh said. That would make this whole convoluted divorce more palatable for the industry.

He said CBC already has developed varieties that seem especially suitable to Southern California, where yields are lower than in the rest of the state.

What they have looks better than anything weve got, Cleugh said.

But the dispute has already produced at least a temporary suspension of breeding work at UC Davis. Knapps scientific approach, which focuses on genomics in contrast to the traditional technique of Shaw and Larson, is promising, but it will take time for his work to reach the growers.CBC has a head start, Cleugh said. The guys at UC Davis are having to reinvent the wheel. CBC already has selections that are going to be good. The industry doesnt want to see them thrown out in a lawsuit. That would be a crime scene.

The best outcome for growers would be to have CBC and the university reach a deal that allows both programs to continue, he said. The more breeding, the better. Competition is good.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

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A bill making its way through the California Legislature to remove membership in the Communist Party as a disqualification for employment by the state  64 years after the rule was imposed  prompts us to revisit how anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s almost destroyed the University of California.

The measure by Assemblyman Rob Bonta (D-Oakland) narrowly passed the Assembly on Monday and is now before the Senate.

Its more than a reminder of the toll that the Red Scare exacted on our public institutions. The measure also lends some perspective to the debate going on today about free speech on university campuses. As we observed recently, the uproar over a few isolated cases of speakers being barred or shouted down obscures how in most respects the debate actually is a marker of free speech, not a sign of suppression. That wasnt the case in the 1950s.

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Everybody lost, and no one won.  David Gardner, expert on the UC loyalty oath controversy of the 1950s

The Legislature enacted its employment ban on communists in 1953. Bonta doesnt go so far as to declare that the states action then was wrong, though he told my colleague Melanie Mason that the communist label could be misused or abused, and frankly, has been in the past, in some of the darker chapters of our history in this country.

The Red Scare impinged on the University of California most directly through the loyalty oath controversy of 1949-54, which I recounted in my recent book Big Science, about the career and work of the Nobel-winning UC Berkeley physicist Ernest Lawrence.

The controversy began in June 1949 with a vote by the UC Regents to add a statement disavowing membership in the Communist Party to an oath of allegiance already required of UC employees.

At that point, anti-communist hysteria was in full cry in California and across the country. The state legislature had echoed congressional concerns about subversion by establishing its own Committee on Un-American Activities in 1941, but the committee moved into high gear only in 1947, when its chairman, Sen. Jack Tenney, stages a clownish investigation of ostensibly lax security at Lawrences Radiation Laboratory at Berkeley (now the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab).

Tenneys probe went nowhere, but at the same time the Atomic Energy Commission was stepping up its own red hunt by establishing local panels to investigate employees of AEC contractors  including UC, which was running the Los Alamos atomic weapons lab in New Mexico for the government and which received heavy government funding for Lawrences lab. The chairman of the California AEC panel was UC Regent Jack Neylan, a renowned red-baiter. Lawrence was a dear friend of Neylan, and had to step in more than once to dissuade the regent from ordering the dismissal of Lawrence employees he suspected of communist sympathies.

In 1949, Tenney resurfaced with a package of 13 bills targeting suspected communists at the university and elsewhere in state government. Hoping to head off legislative interference in UC affairs, then-Chancellor Robert Sproul proposed a loyalty oath in which UC employees would disavow support of any organization advocating the overthrow of the United States government. The regents added the specific reference to the Communist Party.

Adding to political sensitivities within the UC administration was a speaking invitation tendered by UCLA to Harold Laski, a leftist political scientist from Britain. Sproul, who then had authority over UCLA as well as Berkeley, forced the campus to withdraw the invitation.

Neylan soon emerged as the outstanding hard-liner among the regents. In early 1950, when opposition to the loyalty oath already was coalescing among the faculty, he persuaded the board to fire any employees who refused to sign the oath. Among the majority siding with Neylan was Mario Giannini, son of A.P. Giannini, the founder of the Bank of America and himself a former regent; among those opposing the policy was newly elected Gov. Earl Warren, an ex-officio regent and the future chief justice of the U.S.

The loyalty oath split the UC faculty. A majority opposed the oath but nevertheless chose to sign. For many, being required to affirm ones political loyalty was so repugnant that the real choice became whether to stay at Berkeley at all. European-born scientists and other faculty faced a particular moral quandary: As I wrote in Big Science, even the most ardent anti-communists among them thought the oath an uncomfortably close reminder of the impositions on academic freedom they had suffered in their homelands.

The oath prompted a flow of resignations that sapped Berkeley of the core of its scientific faculty. Many had been attracted to the university by Lawrences fame as the inventor of the atom-smashing cyclotron, and were now appalled that his friendship with Neylan prevented him from speaking out against the oath  in fact, even trying to enforce it in his lab.

One who left was the brilliant young particle physicist Wolfgang Pief Panofsky, who was granted a personal audience with Neylan at Lawrences behest. Instead of persuading Panofsky to stay, Neylan hectored him about the evils of communism for two hours straight. Panofsky fled to Stanford, where he taught for the next 56 years.

The loyalty oath affair reached its climax with the firing of 31 non-signers in 1950. That also marked the beginning of the end. Two years later, the state Supreme Court ordered them all reinstated; in 1954 they won back pay for the period of their dismissal. One, David Saxon, would later become president of the university.

The loyalty oath began a subtle transformation in the universitys reputation as a haven for pure science. Instead, it began to seem a place where ones views on the fraught politics of national security loomed over ones career prospects. The atmosphere at Lawrences laboratory and the university as a whole did not make people who dissented feel they were welcome, Saxon observed at a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the affair.

What the episode really illustrated was the folly of trying to impose policies so central to the mission of a university by fiat.

Everybody lost, and no one won, David Gardner, a historian of the controversy and himself a former president of UC, said at the symposium. How could it be that a great university set out in 1949 to clarify a policy about communism and its place in the university, and a year-and-a-half later wind up dismissing 31 members of the faculty of the University of California against whom no charges were made?

At Berkeley, the loyalty oath experience continued to resonate through the 1960s and the birth of the free speech movement, which militated against Vietnam- and civil rights-era restrictions on political speech on the campus. And the issues continue to resonate today  not least as a reminder that the loyalty oath affair was fueled at least partially by UCLAs speaking invitation to Laski.

Free-speech challenges still erupt at Berkeley and other UC campuses, but wholesale disqualifications for ones political beliefs or even political statements havent been tried since. That doesnt mean they wont recur  political attacks on university faculty members are common, generally as right-wing attacks on supposed liberal leanings of university professors.

The California Legislatures consideration of a bill to wipe communist sympathies off the roster of disqualifying attributes for state employment is a good step, but it passed only narrowly, against opposition from legislators still cherishing the mistakes of the past: The whole concept of communism and Communist Party members working for the state of California is against everything we stand for on this floor, said Assemblyman Randy Voepel (R-Santee) during floor debate. But the politics of the 1950s have no place in the politics of the 21st century.

Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com.

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Hollywoods legendary Grandmaster Recorders building, where generations of artists recorded songs that became famous, has been sold to a developer who plans to turn it into restaurants or a lounge.

The two-story brick structure at 1518 N. Cahuenga Blvd. dates to 1920, when it opened as a silent-movie hall. In the 1970s, musician Alan Dickson bought it and turned the former Bijou Theater into the Hollywood Bijou Studio.

One of the first artists to work there was Stevie Wonder, who wrote and rehearsed his acclaimed 1976 double-album Songs in the Key of Life while the control room was still being completed, according to the studios website.

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In the early 1980s, nearby business owners complained that the place looked nearly abandoned, with shattered, boarded-up windows and the facade covered in grime and graffiti.

We like it this way, manager Jimmi Mayweather told The Times in 1984, nobody would ever think there was a studio back here.

Hidden behind the broken-down exterior was a luxurious, well-appointed studio with nearly $1 million worth of recording equipment, The Times said.

Later in the 1980s, Dickson changed the name of the place to Grandmaster Recorders.

Through the years, artists such as David Bowie, Ringo Starr, Johnny Mathis and Bonnie Raitt slipped in to record songs.

Among the albums recorded there were the Red Hot Chili Peppers One Hot Minute; the Black Crowes studio debut, Shake Your Money Maker, and Becks Midnight Vultures.

Dickson died last year. His family sold the property last week for $6.1 million to Los Angeles investment firm Cahuenga Investors, according to real estate broker Kathleen Silver of Silver Commercial Inc.

We loved this building from the minute we walked in the door, said Rick Moses of Cahuenga Investors. Moses was formerly chief development officer for Caruso Affiliated, where he worked on the Americana at Brand shopping center and other projects for the Los Angeles real estate company.

The recording operations ended with the sale, but the new owners may incorporate some of what Moses calls the funky appeal of its 9,200-square-foot interior into restaurants or a lounge. He said he hopes to have the new businesses open by next year.

The neighborhood around the former studio has changed substantially since those rougher days in the 1980s. There are at least 15 planned or ongoing developments nearby, including a proposed 275-room Marriott hotel next door at Cahuenga and Sunset boulevards, Silver said.

The $110-million Dream Hotel complex that includes multiple restaurants and nightclubs is nearing completion at Cahuenga and Selma Avenue.

Its a high-demand area, said broker Kay Sasatomi of Silver Commercial.

roger.vincent@latimes.com

Twitter: @rogervincent
Pat Yan is the owner and founder of Commerce-based AA Meat Products Inc., a meat supplier to some of Southern Californias most popular grocery chains, including Ralphs, Vons and 99 Ranch Market.

An immigrant from China who landed in Los Angeles with just $5 and a plastic bag filled with clothes, Yan now oversees a company with 1,200 employees, facilities in North America and Asia and more than $1 billion in annual revenue selling American meat.

And, after a Trump administration announcement Thursday that a ban on U.S. beef sales in China will be lifted, his business stands to gain even more. Yan built a meat-processing facility in China two years ago in anticipation of the rule change.

Fleeing poverty

Yan, 46, was born and raised in Kaiping, a rural city in Chinas southern Guangdong province. The region is famous for its diaspora, much of whom formed American cities first Chinatowns. Yan dropped out of high school to sell rice grown by his parents. There was little hope of escaping a life of poverty for his family. Yans older sister was first to leave, ending up in Canada under refugee status. At age 18, Yan tried to do the same, arriving in Los Angeles.

Rising in the U.S.

After three months in a refugee camp, Yan found work apprenticing at a Taiwanese bakery in El Monte where he worked long hours making cakes. I did five years of training in one year, said Yan, who became lifelong friends with one of his co-workers at the bakery  a friend hed eventually make chief financial officer of AA Meat Products. After learning the baking business, a cousin on the East Coast persuaded Yan to move to New Yorks Chinatown. There, Yan soon found enough friends and investors to help him open his own bakeries. I dreamed about being a business owner, Yan said. Its what motivated me.

From cake to meat

Through the same cousin, Yan developed contacts with wholesalers in the meat supply business in New Yorks Chinatown. Serving mostly Chinese stores, he began distributing popular meats such as chicken feet and a breed of chicken called Silkie, known for its white, puffy plumage and prized for soup. When meat prices would soar, Yan didnt always pass the added costs on to his customers. Instead, he decided it was worth shouldering some of the costs if it meant gaining customer loyalty. The meat business is dominated by big players, Yan said. I knew the way to be successful was to gain peoples trust and offer better service.

Yan also knew there was a much bigger and younger market to tap on the West Coast. So he moved back to L.A. and founded AA Meat Products in 1995 in Maywood before opening a bigger plant in Commerce. There are now also facilities in Vernon. The idea in the beginning was to call it Asian American Meats, said Yan, whose English remains a work in progress. But it was so long and so tough to spell, I just called it AA. The move back West paid off as Yans reputation grew and he scored business with Unified Grocers, one of the nations largest grocery suppliers, and Sysco, the countrys largest food service industry supplier. Yans company sells meats including beef, pork, chicken and lamb  as well as a variety of cuts, including steaks, tripe and tongue.

Trade deal feeds China taste for beef, won't close the U.S. trade deficit 

I dreamed about being a business owner. Its what motivated me.  Pat Yan, owner and founder of AA Meat Products

Global business

In addition to four facilities in Southern California, Yan has plants in New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Toronto, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and China. The latter is located in his native Guangdong province. Yan secured the 100-acre campus two years ago, confident China would eventually lift its 14-year ban on U.S. beef. Yan was rewarded Thursday when the Trump administration announced it had struck a deal with Beijing to lift the ban in exchange for allowing cooked Chinese poultry to enter the U.S. Right now, people in China have so much money that theyre eating richer food and drinking more wine, Yan said. They will want American beef.

Learning a lesson

Yan says hes a conservative businessman, even more so now after taking heavy personal losses during the financial crisis in bank stocks. At the time, the experience was so upsetting that his family did everything they could to shield him from TV and newspapers lest he read more bad economic news. I learned to really look more carefully into any investments and not rely on experts. You have to do your own due diligence, said Yan, who lives with his wife and four daughters in San Marino.

Education

Deprived of higher education himself, Yan has directed his philanthropy at underprivileged students in Chinas poorer provinces. Starting three years ago, he launched a foundation that has sent about 30 students from far-flung regions of China to Peking University. Yan pays for tuition and housing for high-achieving students who would ordinarily never consider one of Chinas most prestigious schools. Yan has plans to expand the foundation to other countries and universities and is in talks with UCLA. Yan also purchased a nonprofit, K-8 private school in Temecula last year and renamed it Oakhill Academy. The school will be run by the Yan Family Foundation and offer scholarships to students in the Temecula Valley.

Pat Yan at AA Meat Products in Vernon. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times) (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)

Frugal and sentimental

His humble beginnings made Yan loath to waste money. Despite owning a $1-billion business, he only recently agreed to start flying business class during his biannual visits to China. When hes there, he almost never ventures beyond his office and his hotel. Yan still works long hours, as he has since his days at the Chinatown bakery. He works so hard, we dont get family time like most other families do, said Yans wife, Kitty Jiang, who also manages the family business. And he still bakes cakes  he considers it relaxing.

So that he never forgets how far hes come, Yan makes a point of visiting his Maywood offices every Sunday after lunch. Hes often the only person there when he visits, but he still allots himself an hour to sit and reflect. Im so emotionally attached to the place, he said.
JetBlue Airways is promising that LAXs massive airline shuffle, kicking off Friday night, will allow it to do away with a big travel headache: lines.

By moving next week from Terminal 3 to Terminal 5 at Los Angeles International Airport, the New York-based carrier will eventually have enough space to double the number of check-in positions and self-serve kiosks that it currently has.

JetBlues move will take place Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, part of a major airline relocation at LAX, where 15 carriers are moving to new terminals to allow Delta Air Lines to gain more terminal space and get better access to the airports international terminal as well as the carriers partners, including Aeromexico, Virgin Atlantic and WestJet.

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By this summer, JetBlue plans to complete a redesign of the new terminal to include 10 check-in positions and 10 kiosks. The kiosks will allow passengers to tag their own bags and drop them onto a conveyor belt for screening.

JetBlue has installed a similar lobby design at bustling Terminal 5 of New Yorks John F. Kennedy International Airport. The set-up also can be found at airports in Atlanta; Boston; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Newark, N.J.; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The New York-based carrier has described the layout as a line-less lobby, free of the queuing ropes and stanchions that are ubiquitous in most terminals. But when pressed, JetBlue officials say there may be a rare occasion when crowds are big enough to have to form a line.

Our new self-service design eliminates the long, snaking lobby line common in airports, JetBlue spokesman Morgan Johnston said. Even at our busiest terminal  JFK T5  we rarely see a pre-security queue greater than four customers.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

To read more about the travel and tourism industries, follow @hugomartin on Twitter.
Fashion Police co-host Brad Goreski and director/producer Gary Janetti have bought a gated home in Beverly Hills for $5.6 million.

The two-story English country Traditional-style house, built in 1931, features a steep gabled roof, vaulted beamed ceilings, multiple fireplaces and French doors. The kitchen, which opens to a den, has marble countertops and a breakfast nook. There are four bedrooms and five bathrooms in the main house.

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A detached guesthouse contains two more bedrooms, a living room with a wet bar and two additional bathrooms. The quarter-acre lot has a swimming pool and is surrounded by mature hedges and trees.

Goreski, 39, has been a co-host on the E! series Fashion Police since 2015. As a style expert, his clients include such celebrities as Jessica Alba and Rashida Jones.

Janetti, 50, was a co-executive producer on the sitcom Will and Grace. His other television credits include the animated series Family Guy and the British sitcom Vicious.

Aaron Kirman and Neyshia Go of John Aaroe Group were the listing agents. Barry Dane of Keller Williams represented the buyers.

lauren.beale2@latimes.com

Twitter: @laurenebeale

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Despite being California born and bred, actress Marissa Hermer is better known as a mover and shaker in London, where she lived for nearly a decade.

But late last year, she returned to the Southland with her husband and three young children, upgrading from a cozy London home to 10,000 square feet of space in a six-bedroom, nine-bathroom estate in Pacific Palisades.

Hermers cookbook, An American Girl in London: 120 Nourishing Recipes for Your Family From a Californian Expat, was released last month. The third season of her Bravo show, Ladies of London, recently wrapped.

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She also helps her husband, Matt, run the Ignite Group, a company that operates London restaurant chain Bumpkin and cocktail bar Eclipse.

The TV personalitys London kitchen was tiny, but the one in her Pacific Palisades home is big enough so that we can all do cartwheels ... and not hit each other, she says. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

You call your kitchen the heartbeat of the house. Why is that?

This is where the cooking and eating happens. Its my boardroom, where I prep videos for social media. Its turned into the playroom as well, even though we actually have a separate playroom. The children have a play kitchen, because they want to cook when Im cooking.

The space is also enormous.

Theres a part of the kitchen thats for entertaining and also a side kitchen thats almost more industrial. There are three stoves, three ovens and four sinks. Theres a two-fridge, four-freezer situation and a wine fridge underneath the island.

That must be nice, especially compared with your much smaller kitchen in London.

We did the kitchen dance in London  that kind of shimmy when you try to open the fridge while someones cooking and someone else is reaching for a wine glass. There was a lot of climbing; it was like being Spider-Man trying to get things down from shelves. My kitchen was incredibly organized, down to the pasta. A fun Saturday night was me and my label maker.

But here, my pantry is the size of one of my childrens bedrooms. Its like I have a mini-Gelsons in my pantry. We can all do cartwheels in the kitchen and not hit each other.

Any great events in here so far?

My birthday is Dec. 31. We moved in on Dec. 28. My mom, dad and brother came, and so did a lot of childhood friends in L.A. It was a revolving door that day. There were cupcakes, cakes, kids building Lego towers on the island, lots of wine. Before we knew it, there were 40 people in the kitchen. It was a really nice christening of the room.

What are some of your favorite things to cook?

Im big on things I can make ahead of time. So, chicken and tarragon pie, sweet potato and feta salad, lemon tart. When it rains: lamb stew, lasagna, chicken soup. Im not an advanced chef at all  I like cozy comfort food thats not tricky and is nourishing.

Favorite place to grocery shop?

I do my shopping every Sunday at the Brentwood farmers market  I let my produce lead me. In London, I always had a recipe in my head, because access to local fresh produce is very different, very seasonally led.

Other key differences between London and Los Angeles?

Living in Chelsea in London, you fall out of your front door and are on Kings Road in a minute  its such a bustling city. Here, it takes two minutes just to drive out of my driveway.

hotproperty@latimes.com

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Once part of the vast holdings of Miguel Leonis, a former ranch hand who gained control of part of the San Fernando Valley thanks to a questionable common-law marriage, the neighborhood of West Hills is now the epitome of San Fernando Valley suburban living.

A hundred years before the first suburban ranch homes began to creep up the sides of the Simi Hills, Leonis drifted into the west end of the Valley and was taken on at the rancho as a shepherd.



For the record: A previous version of this article said New Community Jewish High School is a private high school in West Hills. The school changed its name to De Toledo High School two years ago.

There the Basque immigrant and former smuggler met Maria Espiritu Chijulla, the daughter of the Chumash owner of the holdings, and eventually took her as his common-law wife.

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The Chumash had been in the region for millennia, of course. El Escorpion rock is said to be a place of spiritual importance to them, and the nearby Cave of Munits is rumored to have been the home of a great shaman. That fact did not preclude the San Fernando Mission from granting Espiritus father more than 1,000 acres of land that rightfully belonged to his people. After his death, the land became Leonis.

When Leonis himself died after being run over by a wagon in the Cahuenga Pass in 1889, Espiritu was shocked to discover that he had not listed her in his will as his wife, but as his servant, with no claim to his estate. While she fought for her rightful inheritance, real estate speculators began to eye the San Fernando Valley with increasing enthusiasm, and the rancho was sold piecemeal by Leonis relatives.

Although Espiritu was vindicated by the courts in 1905, she died within a year, and the remains of the rancho  along with 44,000 additional acres of the Valley  was purchased by the Los Angeles Suburban Home Co. in anticipation of the coming of the Owens River Aqueduct. The Rancho El Escorpion became the town of Owensmouth, which was eventually renamed Canoga Park.

The expectations of investors notwithstanding, the western edge of Canoga Park was slow to develop relative to the rest of the Valley. In the 1980s, the homeowners in the shadow of El Escorpion peak petitioned the city to be recognized as the separate community of West Hills.

Neighborhood highlights

Take a hike: The Simi Hills, El Escorpion Peak and the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve offer great hiking just minutes from busy Topanga Canyon Boulevard.

Parks and rec: If watching your feet for sunbathing rattlesnakes is not your thing, there are plenty of municipal parks, including Shadow Hills Park and the West Hills Rec Center.

Shop till you drop: The nearby Topanga Westfield has been joined by the Westfield Village open-air marketplace, offering what is arguably the Valleys best shopping and dining destination.

Neighborhood challenges

Nightlife lovers need not apply: To be fair, you dont move to West Hills for the club or fine-dining scene. Its a better neighborhood for board games with the kids than dancing the night away.

Expert insight

Leslie Bashaar, a real estate agent and 20-year resident of West Hills, said the family-friendly, safe neighborhood is notable for its large number of homeowners.

West Hills only has five apartment buildings, she said. There are over 17,000 single-family homes in all of West Hills, and right now the inventory is very low.

Not surprisingly, its competitive everywhere right now in the San Fernando Valley, she said. Thats frustrating to buyers.

Bashaar recommends that buyers get pre-qualified right away so that theyre ready when a property hits the market.

Hikers cross a ridgeline in the Upper Las Virgenes Canyon Open Space Preserve. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

Market snapshot

In March, based on nine sales, the median sales price for single-family homes in the 91307 ZIP Code was $618,000, according to CoreLogic. That was a 1.5% decrease in median sales price from the same month the previous year.

Report card

There are nine elementary schools in West Hills, including Capistrano Avenue Elementary, which score 861 in the Academic Performance Index in 2013, and Enadia Way Elementary, which scored 855. Chaminade College Preparatory and De Toledo High School are private high schools in the neighborhood.

hotproperty@latimes.com

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Cybersecurity researchers said a malicious program that disabled computers at Britains National Health Service, Russias Interior Ministry and companies and homes across dozens of countries Friday originated with the National Security Agency.

Earlier this year, a hacking group calling itself Shadow Brokers published online what it described as stolen NSA documents. They were filled with information that hacking experts said could be used to secretly take over and pluck data from laptops, smartphones and even smart TVs.

Fridays attack appeared to target computers running Microsoft Windows and took advantage of a flaw in the operating system. Microsoft released a patch for the bug in March, but users who didnt update their systems remained susceptible to having their files locked up until they made a ransom payment to attackers.

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To cybersecurity experts, Fridays incident showed exactly why technology companies such as Microsoft, Google and Apple are so defensive about the idea of backdoors into their services and devices.

Law enforcement agencies may want a way into highly secure gadgets and apps to further their investigations  such as when the FBI pressed Apple last year to hack into the iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino terror attack. But the companies have repeatedly pointed out that theres no safe way to build an entry point just for trusted government organizations.

Though the NSA hasnt confirmed it was hacked, the purported leak of its tools shows that even supposedly secret vulnerabilities can get into the wrong hands.

It goes back to the mafia expression, said John Bambenek, threat research manager at Fidelis Cybersecurity. The only way to keep a secret is for three people to know it and two of them to be dead.

Bambenek and other researchers have called for the U.S. government to be more forthcoming with its hacking methods. Government agencies, they acknowledge, need to be able to engage in online espionage and warfare. But when flaws the agencies discover pose a threat to the nations businesses and consumers, they should be forced to help secure systems.

Intelligence agencies like hoarding secrets, Bambenek said. But at some point, their mission isnt hoarding secrets. Its protecting national security. Youre rarely the first person to find [a flaw to exploit] and youre not going to be the only one to know about it very long.

Microsoft issued a fix for the vulnerability that hackers capitalized upon Friday before the Shadow Brokers leak occurred, which experts have speculated suggests the NSA may have tipped the company off about the impending leak. But that sort of disclosure remains rare and too narrow, Bambenek said.

Theres a broad community beyond the software company [with the flaw] that could help protect consumers, he said. There was no disclosure made to us.

In addition to homes and government agencies, Fridays attack hit companies including delivery giant Fedex and Spains biggest telecom firm, Telefonica.

Researchers believe computers were infected after users opened a link in a phishing email. Bambenek said a message that was purportedly sent to workers at Telefonica carried a subject line referencing a wire transfer and asked them to check a website for more details. That link  when launched on a Windows computer suffering from the vulnerability discovered by the NSA  unleashed the WannaCry program that rendered files inaccessible.

As recently as last week, about 1.7 million computers connected to the Internet were susceptible to such an attack, said Sean Dillon, senior security analyst at security software start-up RiskSense. Even if not all of them were hit Friday, many could fall victim in the coming days to similar attacks. The supposed NSA leaks included four other infection methods.

This obviously was a well-planned and well-coordinated attack, Dillon said. This probably is just the beginning.

Nobody has claimed responsibility for carrying out the attack.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

paresh.dave@latimes.com / PGP

Twitter: @peard33

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UPDATES:

May 12, 5:50 p.m.: This article was updated to add comments from John Bambenek and Sean Dillon.

May 12, 3:35 p.m.: This article was updated with examples of companies hit by the attack.

This article was originally published May 12 at 3:10 p.m.
Scottish Ballets interpretation of Tennessee Williams 1947 play A Streetcar Named Desire begins with a single stark image: the fallen Southern belle Blanche Dubois, in a snow-white dress, fluttering beneath a naked light bulb.

Its no coincidence that Williams titled early drafts of the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama The Moth. That fact was very much in the mind of Eve Mutso, the dancer who portrays Blanche in the acclaimed ballet, which opens as part of the Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center series on May 19.

This delicate creature is attracted to the heart of the flame, she said by phone from Glasgow. You can see the heat building, and you can see her downfall, and you want to save her, but she cant help herself.

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This is pretty new to the field of ballet, to have a 20th-century play with a feminist perspective.  Rachel Moore, Music Center president and CEO

Mutso is part of a creative team dominated by women including director Nancy Meckler, choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and set and costume designer Niki Turner  a power dynamic that favors the female protagonists over the males, said Rachel Moore, president and CEO of the Music Center.

Its really exciting because women do have a different voice in dance and a different perspective on their place in the world, she said. This becomes Blanches story.

Thats not an exaggeration. The ballet includes almost 40 minutes of prelude devoted to Blanches back story. This material is told through flashbacks in the play, but in the ballet, it all takes place first.

Blanche is shown as a young woman who falls in love and gets married only to discover her husband with another man. Astonished and heartbroken, she tells him that he disgusts her, and he kills himself. The ensuing guilt causes Blanche to crack, and she slides slowly into madness.

When we see Blanche discover these two men being very intimate in her bedroom straight after the wedding, it hits home that this young woman is really quite naive and confused, Mutso said.

When the play begins, Blanche arrives at a squalid New Orleans flat that her sister, Stella, shares with her animalistic husband, Stanley Kowalski. The couple fights often and angrily but come back together like feral animals in heat. Stanley resents Blanche, and thinking that she has cheated Stella out of the family inheritance, he strips Blanche of her sanity with the force of his jealous brutality.

Marlon Brando played Stanley on Broadway and then starred in the 1951 film adaptation directed by Elia Kazan. His portrayal, filled with sex, sweat, sleek muscle and shuddering pathos, cemented the play in the popular imagination, ballet director Meckler said.

I think Tennessee Williams always wanted the audience to be sympathetic with Blanche, but because Marlon Brando was so attractive and always seemed to be suffering, it became difficult to get sympathy for her, she said.

The ballets first 40 minutes remedy this problem, she said, so by the time audience members meet Stanley, they are already firmly planted in Blanches corner.

Taking the plays testosterone down a notch was not the goal of the ballets creators at the outset, Meckler said.

Outgoing Scottish Ballet director Ashley Page commissioned the project in 2012 because he was interested in what would happen when a theater director took the lead on a ballet. He approached Meckler after seeing her theater work, which is very physical, and said he would pair her with the right choreographer. That was Lopez Ochoa, a Colombian-Belgian choreographer based in Amsterdam.

Meckler hit on the idea of doing Streetcar, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year. Lopez Ochoa was immediately all in. The pair set about deciding how to tell the story in dance, and they realized that the art form, by virtue of its sheer immediacy, doesnt lend itself to flashbacks. The logical answer was to show Blanches back story at the ballets outset, resulting in the elevation of one of dramas most beleaguered female characters.

This is pretty new to the field of ballet, to have a 20th-century play with a feminist perspective, said Moore, a former dancer and then executive at American Ballet Theatre before she left New York for the Music Center. Being here a little over a year, I wanted the dance season to speak to where the field is going. As women gain leadership positions in arts organizations and corporations, their voices do make an impact.

Moore said she made bringing this ballet to Los Angeles a higher priority than other leaders might have. She first saw Streetcar when it was at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in 2015, and she was immediately drawn to the fact that this Blanche was a worthy adversary to Stanley. Even a pas de deux between Stanley and Stella cedes control to the abused wife.

Williams work is powered by dreams and poetry, and it possesses a visceral physicality that naturally lends itself to dance, Meckler and Mutso said.

I let Nancy direct me and made the choreography as alive and organic as I could with my body and my limbs, Mutso said. The feeling of being trapped, and the heat of the city, and all the sex shes not having that everybody around her is having, and the frustration and the drinking  Nancy gave me a great many tools to build the character with.

The ballet ends as it begins, with Blanche beneath a naked bulb. This time, however, the light goes out.

         

Scottish Ballets A Streetcar Named Desire

Where: The Music Center, Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: 7:30 p.m. May 19 and 20; 2 p.m. May 21

Tickets: Starting at $34

Info: (213) 972-0711, www.musiccenter.org/streetcar

jessica.gelt@latimes.com

@jessicagelt

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The young Franz Schubert has a friend in Gustavo Dudamel. Last week, the Los Angeles Philharmonic began a cycle of Schuberts symphonies with the opening concert dedicated to the youths dying in protest marches in Dudamels native Venezuela. Among the dead was a teenage violist around the age that Schubert had been when he wrote the two symphonies on the program.

You never know from whence life can spring, and Dudamel made the tremendous gesture of approaching two works of juvenilia with the attitude that no note be taken as trivial. These symphonies, then, symbolized the ways in which roots of budding genius require nourishment. Feet off the brakes.

With the third and fourth symphonies Thursday night at Walt Disney Concert Hall, the tragedy of the loss of young life became the actual content of the program. An innovation in this cycle is to place a set of Mahler songs on each of the four programs between two Schubert symphonies, and this time it was Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children).

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With feet still off the Schubertian brakes, Dudamel here took the opposite, helpful approach of specifically not making every note matter. Instead, he smoothed out youthful excesses of one of the great prodigies in any field having reached an awkward age when his ambitions started getting ahead of his abilities.

Schuberts Symphony No. 3 is a jolly work by an 18-year-old who, the program notes reminded us, that year also wrote four operas, 145 songs and two masses. The symphony was cranked out in less than two months (after also completing his Second Symphony that year). It begins with a show-offy introduction and then takes off happily, following symphonic convention but with many instances of genuine invention and distinct personality. He is a happy Schubert feeling his oats with far more notes than he needs and in no mood to slow down or pare.

Dudamels grim determination of the previous week would have been of no use here. Instead he captured the joy. In a deceptively virtuosic display, he embraced symphonic innocence as play and without a trace of condescension.

This was, thus, the saddest of prologues to Kindertotenlieder, which opens with oboe and horn in desolate counterpoint, every pitch sounding a bottomless pool of sorrow. German baritone Mathias Goerne then sang the opening lines of the first song, describing the morning sun rising for all but he who has lost his children, with a haunting hollowness.

Mahlers five songs are five steps of mourning, from hopeless incomprehension to a longing for peace, for allowing light to be light. Goernes performance was one of ever striving for something larger than himself, from seeming to find something in himself from each phrase but not knowing what the something is and being surprised by every new phrase.

I saw the baritone do exactly the same thing last summer at the Salzburg Festival against a carefully controlled background of Vienna Philharmonic beauty enforced by Zubin Mehta, and Goerne seemed in constant danger of mannerism. Dudamel, though, allowed every wrenching voice in Mahlers spare orchestral writing to interact with Goerne in group processes that resolved in a long, pregnant silence at the end that was not so much sad but appreciative of all that remains.

Following Kindertotenlieder with Schuberts Fourth Symphony proved yet another programmatic inspiration. The Fourth is know as Schuberts Tragic Symphony, all sturm und drang, and it begins with an introduction fashioned after the Let there be light opening of Haydns oratorio The Creation.

Composed a year after the Third, the Tragic is Schuberts first symphony in a minor key and his most problematic orchestral work. Emotions roil with teenage indulgence, Schubert often barreling on in a barrage of notes and stormy effects.

Dudamel warmly yet astutely accommodated Schubert. In the first movement, he elucidated an underlying lyricism that showed where Schubert was really going. He also gave an extra punch to the movements over-the-top coda, again showing where the composer might ultimately take this kind of gesture. Someone in the audience loudly whooped his approval, and Dudamel amusing raised his fist in acknowledgement.

The Menuetto is, curiously, the symphonys most radical movement, with its irregular rhythms, which some conductors like to treat as proto-Stravinsky, but which then causes the bland middle trio section to seem especially weak. Dudamel found the novel solution of maintaining a sense of continual three-four time over a changing landscape, as though couples kept waltzing on a cruise ship as it sailed over rocky and smooth seas.

In the end, Dudamel trusted Schubert enough to place mood over matter when thats what mattered to one of musics most astonishing prodigies at this point in his development.

mark.swed@latimes.com
When film researcher Lillian Michelson was at DreamWorks Animation, shed bring her husband, famed storyboard artist and Oscar-nominated production designer Harold Michelson, to work with her.

He had to retire because he had many things wrong with him, said Michelson. I wouldnt leave him alone. All the artists found out who he was and theyd come in and talk with him about drawing. He was just beloved.

In fact, the couple were so beloved at the studio that the King and Queen in 2004s Shrek 2 were named Harold and Lillian.

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Their remarkable lives and careers are the subject of Daniel Raims compelling new documentary, Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, which opens in Los Angeles on Friday.

The documentary features interviews with such filmmakers as Mel Brooks, Francis Ford Coppola and Danny DeVito (an executive producer of the documentary), as well as vintage interviews with Harold and Lillian, new interviews with her, Harolds artwork and storyboards and scenes from the films they worked on.

Raim first encountered Harold Michelson 20 years ago when he was a guest at production designer Robert Boyles class at AFI. He taught us storyboarding technique, recalled Raim. Michelson was also included in Raims Oscar-nominated 2000 short on Boyle, The Man on Lincolns Nose and his 2010 documentary Somethings Gonna Live.

Lillian and Harold nurtured me and took me under their wing and showed me Hollywood is also filled with very loving people, said Raim.

Harold Michelson died a decade ago at the age of 87. Lillian Michelson, now 88, retired in 2010 and lives in a comfy room filled with photos, drawings and other mementos at the Motion Picture and Television Fund in Woodland Hills.

The diminutive Michelson may use a walker with wheels, but shes still a vital powerhouse. And on this recent warm afternoon, she and Raim discuss the documentary over lunch in a private area off the dining room.

Lillian Michelson grew up in orphanages outside of Miami. Harold was her friends brother who would joke around with her, but after he returned from World War II, he confessed he loved her. She accepted his invitation to come out with him to Los Angeles and the two married when she was 19 and he was 28.

She raised three sons in the 1950s; their eldest, Alan, was born autistic at a time when little was known about the disorder.

We were very lucky with Alan, she said. Hes such a gentle soul. Never, never angry. He would sit and rock and have all the classic symptoms, but he had the soul of an angel. (Alan Michelson would go on to graduate from college and have a successful career as a computer programmer).

While she was raising the children, Harold Michelson was building a reputation for himself as a storyboard artist who had an uncanny ability to turn the written word into innovative shot designs such as Moses parting the Red Sea in Cecil B. DeMilles 1956 The Ten Commandments or Mrs. Robinsons raised leg in the foreground with Benjamin in the background in 1967s The Graduate.

Can I ask a question?, Raim asked Michelson. How did Harold feel in 1967 when The Graduate comes out and the poster uses his image?

He was so thrilled, said Michelson, smiling. It was, like, huge. Just thrilled.

But he never really got credit for the work he did with his storyboards.

 Harold and Lillian exclusive clip, The Graduate.

He was a naturally humble person, a modest person, noted Michelson. He would never envision having his credits known. It just wasnt done in the Art Department. It was like a ceremony. When you finished your sketch you didnt hand it to the production designer or director. You handed it to the guy who managed the drafting room and he handed it to the production designer. It was that strict.

In fact, Michelson never met DeMille when he was working on The Ten Commandments.

Theres an excerpt in the film where he said the only time he ever saw DeMille was outside the window of the Art Department walking with his entourage, Raim said, laughing. It was a rabbi and a priest. They thought he [DeMille] was God. Thats Harolds joke.

Along the way, Michelson also did storyboards for the likes of Alfred Hitchcock (The Birds, Marnie) before he turned to production design, earning Oscar nominations for 1979s Star Trek: The Motion Picture and 1983s Terms of Endearment.

Lillian came into her own when she began working at the research library at Samuel Goldwyn studios in 1961, which had been run for nearly 30 years by Lelia Alexander. When Alexander retired in 1969, Lillian bought the library. The Lillian Michelson Research Library, which featured some 7,000 books and over a million clippings, first found a home at the American Film Institute and then in the early 80s at Francis Ford Coppolas Zoetrope Studio in Hollywood.

After Zoetrope closed, she and her library moved to Paramount and then to DreamWorks.

Classic Hollywood on Facebook 

Among the films she did research for over the decades are The Birds, Fiddler on the Roof, Rosemarys Baby, Chinatown, " the Rocky franchise and 1941, for which she received her first screen credit. She didnt just use her library to find information. When she was called to find out what type of undergarments Jewish women wore in Russia at the turn of the 20th century for Fiddler on the Roof, she went down to the Fairfax district and talked to elderly Jewish women. One woman not only remembered what she wore, she went home and quickly created a pattern for the clothing.

Michelson did get in a bit over her head when she talked to some shady characters doing research for the Brian De Palma film Scarface. One afternoon, federal drug agents dropped in. They were busy looking for these guys. And they sat and had tea and coffee and cookies. I was sweating until they left. I was fond of [the gangsters]. A person makes a mistake and hes labeled and pushed down a path that he never dreams of. You dont start out being a criminal.

Other than 20th Century Fox, all the studio research libraries have closed, but George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola bought them and moved them up to Northern California, she noted.

Like her husband, Lillian Michelson is modest about her accomplishments.

It was our job, she declares. We never thought that we were accomplishing anything because it was always another little problem to be solved the next day. Its like washing dishes. As soon as you get finished, well, you have another little problem. You have to eat breakfast.

calendar@latimes.com
On any given day, Angelenos can be treated to traveling art galleries rich with uniquely American culture and California-grown talent  if only they viewed lowriders, the custom old-school cars tricked out with candy-colored paint, the shiniest chrome and hydraulics, as the artistry in motion they are. Thats all that Estevan Oriol and Mister Cartoon really want.

I want people to realize that these cars are a work of art and our expression, says Cartoon, a.k.a. Mark Machado.

To us, Oriol adds, it's an art piece with an engine and wheels.

But when many people see lowriders cruising through the city, thoughts of gangs, drugs and violence come to mind. Such expectations, often rooted in stereotypes about the men and women found in the drivers and passenger seats, rob the long-standing tradition from the familial roots at its core. There truly is more to lowriding than meets the eye.

For these reasons, the two heavyweights in East L.A.s lowriding scene lent their expertise and names, as executive producers, to Lowriders, opening in theaters Friday. The film is being heralded as the first major feature inspired by the people and traditions of the lowrider culture.

Mister Cartoon, center, is flanked by Estevan Oriol, right, and Ricardo de Montreuill, of Lowriders. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

I think this movie will relax a lot of people, Cartoon says. They associate our cars with bank robberies and all this stuff [theyve seen in other movies], so they get scared when they see them. But now I think things are changing, where people get happy to see a bouncing car.

Lowriders, is a coming-of-age tale about a young street artist, played by Gabriel Chavarria (East Los High), straddling life between his father (a convincing Demian Bichir ), whos all about lowriders; his ex-felon brother (Theo Rossi of Sons of Anarchy), who hates their dad, and his need for self-expression. It also stars Eva Longoria , Tony Revolori (Dope, The Grand Budapest Hotel) and Melissa Benoist (Supergirl).

Oriol, a bouncer turned hip-hop act manager, photographer and music video director for the likes of Eminem, Travis Barker and Cypress Hill, has been documenting the car-building he and Cartoon have done for 25 years. The idea for the film, more than 10 years in the making, came out of those images. After staging an event for Nike at which they met Brian Grazer, the duo presented doc footage to the Oscar-winning producer known for A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster and 8 Mile. Inspired to create a feature, Jason Blum joined the project, which was initially set to be based on the duos lives.

Oriol and Cartoon spent more than eight years looking at different scripts. A few years ago, the films current approach was selected. Luke Cages Cheo Hodari Coker and Little Birds Elgin James were brought on as writers, though Kicks Justin Tipping and Joshua Beirne-Golden, both listed as co-producers on the film, also had some involvement.

The picture was directed by the Peru-born Ricardo de Montreuil, known for the Spanish-language films La mujer de mi hermano and Mancora. He says he was attracted to the story because of the amazing lowrider subculture, which he experienced after moving to L.A. from Miami 12 years ago  a culture uniquely Mexican American.

The Ultimate Riders Car Club gathers at Fairmount Park in Riverside. Lowriding was born on Los Angeles Eastside, and was exclusive to the Latino community before it began to be adopted by African Americans.

The art of lowriding, born on L.A.'s Eastside, gets supercharged 

Why is Hollywood not telling stories from this community?, he remembers thinking. I found it more interesting and diverse and vibrant than the typical Beverly Hills movie or Venice movie. Why not tell stories from this more relatable side of town?

De Montreuil believes the coming-of-age vantage from which the film is told is the perfect way in for those not familiar with lowrider culture  because at the core of the story is a universal theme of self-discovery.

When youre young, many people tend to try to fit in to be cool, he says, and a lot of times you run from your background because you dont want to be associated with it. The beautiful irony of it is that when you grow older, you realize that the most valuable thing you own is who you are and where you come from.

And in the case of Lowriders, the film and the culture, one realizes that this world created in Southern California by Latinos is part of the American cultural fabric, De Montreuil says, and influences the world.

Lowriders have taken Cartoon and Oriol to Amsterdam, Thailand and Tokyo, among other places. (There is even a vibrant scene in Brazil.) But neither of them thought the breadth of their reach was possible. They just wanted to be the best on the boulevard.

Everyone takes their car to the boulevard to compete. You battle with your paint jobs, your hydraulics.  Mister Cartoon

The boulevard is our Studio 54, our nightclub, Cartoon says. Everyone takes their car to the boulevard to compete. Most of its friendly; you battle with your paint jobs, your hydraulics. Its about showing off your cars paint job and your style, because that personality is reflected on that car. And you either have taste or your dont  or you have too much taste.

The foam on the latte are the people who have taste.

Being the best, however, gives rise to competition, friendly and otherwise. But all associations of gang violence are actually on the outside of it, Cartoon says, especially considering the history of the culture where, in the 70s, lowriders were looked at as pretty boys. While the lowriding community did have clashes with the LAPD, prompting a crackdown in the 1990s, a new generation of hip-hop cops who knew lowriders arent that bad, Cartoon says, helped usher in the cultures legal resurgence in the early 2000s.

In an effort to continue a sort of re-education of perceptions about the community, Cartoon and Oriol were responsible for all of the imaging in Lowriders, including the tattoos on actors arms, the prominently displayed graffiti and the car designs and murals. They even hand-picked cars to fit a particular color palette for the film, to help let people know why were attracted to it, the beauty of it, Cartoon says.

Shots of Pete Maciass 1961 Impala that appears in Lowriders. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Their participation gives the movie a palpable authenticity, especially necessary considering the controversy it caused when filming took place in El Sereno two years ago.

Eastside Cafe, a cultural and educational space next door to 3 C's Car Automotive, where a number of the movies scenes were shot, blasted the picture for perpetuating stereotypes and exploiting the mostly Latino community.

"Eastside Cafe does not support Low Rider exploitation film," said a sign posted at the establishment when the shooting was taking place.

On Facebook, the cafe criticized the film production for taking up parking spaces and blocking traffic and for painting "over a memorial mural that mourned the death of a young boy of our community."

"We're fighting on high moral ground for respect for the community," Roberto Flores, a coordinator with Eastside Cafe said to a Times reporter in 2015. "They're selling our culture and they never give anything back."

Cartoon, however, ensures that is not the case.

Its our work of art driving down Sunset or Crenshaw or Whittier Boulevard, he says. Were not trying to sell it. We just want people to peek in for a little bit.

Time staff writer Brittny Mejia contributed to this article.
Judging by the mildly naughty past-participle title, you might as well see Snatched as a raunchy female comedy version of Taken, assuming you care to see it at all. Goldie Hawn and Amy Schumer play a mother and daughter vacationing together in Ecuador, where they are kidnapped and held for ransom. Liam Neeson doesnt show up to save the day; the women manage that themselves, thank you very much. But saving the movie turns out to be an altogether more difficult proposition.

It begins promisingly enough. The character of Emily Middleton, a directionless New Yorker who loves sex, booze and Instagram, is very much in Schumers wheelhouse; she could be a not-so-distant cousin of the glorious loser-heroine Schumer wrote for herself to play in the vastly superior Trainwreck. In the opening scenes of Snatched, Emily is unceremoniously dumped by her musician boyfriend (Randall Park, rocking a very un-Fresh Off the Boat goatee), with whom she had already booked a vacation in Ecuador.

The tickets are nonrefundable, and Emily, after begging every friend she knows, winds up inviting her overbearing mother, Linda (Hawn), who refuses at first but eventually, reluctantly agrees to go along. For a while, were happy to do the same. It has, after all, been 15 years since we last saw Hawn on the big screen, in The Banger Sisters, and a sun-drenched tropical resort is hardly the least pleasant place to get reacquainted.

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 Amy Schumer, Goldie Hawn, Joan Cusack, Ike Barinholtz, Wanda Sykes and Christopher Meloni star in Snatched.

The characters cross-generational sniping is thin and familiar, if believable enough. Emilys a wild child; Linda loves cats and doesnt get Facebook. Hawn is in tamped-down mode, playing the cautious, sensible-minded foil to Schumers unruly comic engine. But the two leads have a certain spark that shines through nonetheless, even past the layers of sweat, grime, blood and tears that begin to pile up as their vacation quickly goes south.

Or north, rather. Making the mistake of falling for some hunky man-bait (Tom Bateman), Emily lands herself and her mother in Colombia, where they are imprisoned by a menacing crime boss named Hector Morgado (Oscar Jaenada). They manage to escape, but in the ensuing scuffle, a couple of Morgados henchmen die  and so too does the laughter, as slapstick devolves into splatstick and corpses start to pile up faster than fat jokes.

Its not that there isnt comedy gold to be mined from the sight of two American women trying to find their way through the Amazon  especially with help from a bumbling tour guide (Chris Meloni) and two legitimately fierce platonic friends (a nicely matched Wanda Sykes and Joan Cusack) with serious special-ops skills. The bigger problem is that side-splitting comedy and throat-splitting violence dont always make natural bedfellows, despite Hollywoods many, many attempts to convince us otherwise.

There have, of course, been a few welcome exceptions to the rule, among them the Melissa McCarthy vehicles Spy and The Heat. The latter movie, like this one, was scripted by Katie Dippold (she also wrote last years female-powered Ghostbusters remake), which makes it all the more regrettable that Snatched, under the uninspired direction of Jonathan Levine (The Night Before, Warm Bodies), should feel like such a lazy, laugh-deficient botch.

With a cast of Colombian characters that can be evenly divided between salt-of-the-earth villagers and gun-toting thugs, Snatched is more mindless than malicious. Its cloddishness is, if anything, a proud Hollywood staple. Even still, the movie wont do much to counter the widespread charge that Schumer, a genius at skewering male assumptions about femininity, sexuality and body image, is on much more questionable ground when it comes to using comedy to address issues of race and culture.

Its telling that the movies sharpest moment is a wordless bit of physical comedy involving a door, a mirror and some sensible if impromptu feminine hygiene. Its a classic Schumer sight gag, in which the hilarity stems entirely from the spectacle of messy, inconvenient female desire, not tucked politely away but goofily liberated for a change. Next to a gutbuster like that, tired jokes about the purported horrors of the Third World  scorpions, tapeworms, fatal cliff dives, non-English speakers  dont really stand a chance.

I dont mean to dwell on the xenophobia of Snatched, which is hardly the first studio release to mock its characters cultural cluelessness and wind up revealing its own. Even without the casual racism, the movie would still be hard-pressed to overcome its lukewarm Mothers Day-ready sentimentality, or to give a comic wonder like Hawn the razor-sharp big-screen comeback shes long deserved. Snatched may represent a failure of sensitivity, but its an even greater failure of nerve.

------------

Snatched

MPAA rating: R, for crude sexual content, brief nudity and language throughout

Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes

Playing: In general release

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justin.chang@latimes.com

@JustinCChang

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When I was a child, I remember the clink of her heels on the hardwood floor and the smell of Lauren perfume as she made her way on my fathers tuxedo-wearing arm to the door. (Zina Saunders / For The Times) (Zina Saunders / For The Times)

My mother believed in two things: the grace of Jackie Kennedy and the power of a fabulous gown. Measuring in at 5 feet 2 and weighing less than 100 pounds, she had to be particular as not to be swallowed whole by fabric.

Her favorite piece from her wardrobe was a black, burgundy and gold Mary McFadden floor-length number. Pleated like a classic Issey Miyake, it hugged her delicate figure. She often topped the look with a snug Chloe beaver jacket.

When I was a child, I remember the clink of her heels on the hardwood floor and the smell of Lauren perfume as she made her way on my fathers tuxedo-wearing arm to the door. Leaning down, shed tell me I should finish my homework, and before my parents left our house in Encino for the evening, shed plant a kiss of burgundy lipstick on my cheek.

I loved to shop with my mother. Often shed bring me along on impromptu evening trips to Neiman Marcus or Saks Fifth Avenue. At 11, Id remark with legs crossed, It looks like Escada, which was the kiss of death, or Its perfect, very Jackie, when something looked good on her.

Talking fashion with her felt intimate and special.

You know exactly what to say, shed tell me, which was the ultimate validation.

Id earned my fashion education eschewing cartoons for Style With Elsa Klensch on CNN on lazy Sunday mornings with the Los Angeles Times and New York Times style sections to follow over breakfast.

Talking about fashion with her felt intimate and special.

I didnt realize at the time that our shopping trips were her version of what we now like to call self-care. They usually followed an argument with my father or negative news from a doctor.

Sitting in my school uniform on the padded dressing room bench, my only thought was, Would I ever be as chic? It just didnt seem possible. She was, in a word, fabulous.

Her closet, a dark wood, Carrie Bradshaw dream, was filled with pieces that reflected her eclectic taste. Some days she was in head-to-toe black; others she would throw on a vibrant purple Claude Montana asymmetrical jacket or an orange patterned Byblos number.

She loved a shoulder pad, a piece of statement jewelry and very high heels. An Yves Saint Laurent suit with jeweled buttons was a go-to for black tie events. A navy Christian Lacroix shirt dress with its vibrant white pocket square was a favorite day look. An Elsa Peretti scorpion necklace looked like a piece of art hanging from her neck, and a red, vintage bolero sweater was one of my favorite pieces simply because it was so unbelievably soft.

My mother kept pieces from my earliest years alongside hers. It amused me years later, finding a winter coat from my toddler years, a green wool, Nordic-looking piece hanging alongside her wool Armani pants and Go Silk blouses.

My mother came by her stylishness naturally. (Zina Saunders / For The Times) (Zina Saunders / For The Times)

In her T-shirt drawer, she kept a tiny black floral bikini bottom that I had worn as a baby. It was no larger than a folded table napkin. She once told me she had bought it in France for me, and that it was, indeed, very chic to go topless, even for a baby.

Even her pajamas were on point.

When my mother was ultimately diagnosed with bone cancer in 1997, she managed against great odds to make her final hospital stay somehow look fashion-forward.

Sitting in bed in her pastel Fernando Sanchez silk robe with oval gold reading glasses perched on her nose, shed visit with her girlfriends, one more fabulous than the next. They came bearing Barneys New York bags filled with printed silk Natori caftans, issues of Vogue and Harpers Bazaar tucked under their arms and tiny tins of chocolate-covered espresso beans.

My mother came by her stylishness naturally. Her mother, an even smaller woman who had an immense personality, never left the house without being unquestionably pulled together. Midge, who earned the non-politically-correct nickname because of her 4-foot-11 frame, was rarely, if ever, seen without her oversized Christian Dior sunglasses. With ombre lenses, the purple and yellow shades were without a doubt her signature piece; one of many, shed argue.

Midge, a tried-and-true Angeleno, loved a scarf belt and would tell me, matter of factly, Its what Im known for, doll, when I complimented her on whatever silk number she had tied around her minuscule waist.

Midge, even in her 80s, believed in dressing and had strong opinions about everyone elses style, always unsolicited and always shared.

In 2005, a few years before she passed away, I paid her a surprise visit at her West Hollywood home. Midge had been tidying up and was in her cleaning outfit, navy-blue capri pants and a red gingham oxford, knotted at the waist. The look was straight out of Green Acres, totally Eva Gabor-inspired, appropriately.

My own style has been harder to unearth. Most days I keep it simple: black skinny jeans, a J. Crew T-shirt and my reliable Isabel Marant Etoile Dicker boots.

I wear very little jewelry but always slip on at least one piece that belonged to either my mother or Midge to hold them close. Now a stainless steel, gold and diamond Paloma Picasso ring that was made for my mother in the early 80s lives on my right hand.

I also keep pieces of theirs in my closet. The current rotation includes a black wool dress with a fur hem that belonged to Midge and a purple boucle Jean Muir bubble coat that belonged to my mother. They hang with my jeans and T-shirts.

Ill never wear either of them, but I love seeing them when I start my day. I like to think about who my mother and Midge were and what they wore, and how they were fearless, fabulous and totally, unapologetically themselves.

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Los Angeles is in the midst of pop-up-shop fever. Three of the areas newest temporary outposts include Spanish brand Quero (think personalized shoes) as well as Tamara Mellon (sexy stilettos and more) and Amiri (avant-garde offerings) from designer Mike Amiri.

However, pop-up shops arent the only sources of retail good times. New in the L.A. market and here to stay is Prism, a London-based brand that just put down roots in Culver City.

Quero sells custom shoe designs

Quero Shoes has a variety of shoes and boots for men and women such as this Chelsea boot ($285) available at its Venice pop-up shop. (Quero Shoes) (Quero Shoes / Quero Shoes)

Need a summer loafer but cant find one in the perfect color? Then go with a customized approach. Thats what new Spanish brand Quero is offering at its pop-up space, which opened in early May and closes in June.

Designer and co-owner Monica Shuken said shoppers can select from 17 mens and womens styles and 30 suedes and leathers, ranging from patent textures to ombre effects. Many of the details can be switched around: round toe or pointy, leather or rubber sole or the color of the laces.

We wanted customers to personalize shoes without spending a fortune, said co-owner Randy Shuken about the line, which generally ranges from $185 to $285. At the pop-up, shoppers can try on shoes for sizing and see the combinations of leather and suede. Orders are typically shipped from Spain within four to six weeks. New styles for summer include backless mules and leather sneakers.

Quero pop-up shop, 1301 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, querohms.com

Amiri offers an avant-garde experience

A look at distressed mens jeans with Swarovski crystals from Amiri. (Ken Tisu / Amiri)

Dont expect to see white walls and basic racks of clothing at the Amiri pop-up shop in West Hollywood. Instead, brand founder Mike Amiri envisioned an avant-garde experience at the labels first-ever pop-up, which runs from May 12-June 30.

Luxury retail needs to be more experiential rather than just a showcase of clothing in a room, said the Los Angeles designer, whose line hangs adjacent to Gucci and Balmain at prestige stores around the world.

The 2,500-square-foot venue is across the street from Maxfield, which was the first to carry the Amiri line when he launched in 2014. The space is primarily black and covered in mirrors, and light projects on top of and underneath the clothing, Amiri said.

Sounds like a fitting backdrop for his adventurous designs, which include distressed jeans artfully arranged with Swarovski crystals and bullet hole-riddled hoodies that were literally taken out to the desert and shot. Prices range from $225 to $11,950.

Amiri pop-up shop, 8818 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood, mikeamiri.com

Tamara Mellon adds new footwear pop-up

A look inside footwear label Tamara Mellons temporary store in Los Angeles. (Tamara Mellon) (Tamara Mellon / Tamara Mellon)

Within days of opening her pop-up space last month, shoe designer Tamara Mellon had sold out of the Frontline sandal, an architecturally spare construction of three partially translucent straps and a high heel.

We cant keep it in stock, Mellon said. One woman bought them in every color. Its a modern design that elongates the leg and goes with everything.

Mellon established the pop-up as a place for private fittings and to hold events. Its an intimate atmosphere, she said. Customers can have a glass of Champagne, feel the product and try things on. Were a digitally-led brand, but this is a nice way for our clients to be personally styled by us.

Mellons pop-up shop will run until July, and generally prices for footwear at the space go from $325 to $895, with the Frontline sandal options ranging from $395 to $425.

Tamara Mellon pop-up shop, 110 S. Robertson Blvd., Los Angeles, tamaramellon.com

Londons Prism moves into Platform

London-based retailer Prism, which sells a signature tiger-print swimsuit, has opened a new store in Culver City. (Prism)

For her first U.S. store, Prism founder Anna Laub chose Los Angeles because its geographically diverse, and my brand is about being outdoors. Laub, a former fashion editor, founded Prism in London in 2009 as an eyewear line, and it now also encompasses swimwear and footwear.

Ive been spending time in Los Angeles for the last couple of years, and there is a lot of movement here, Laub said. Its having a fashion moment, with lots of young creatives moving in. The 650-square-foot store, which opened May 10, carries the full Prism line. Top sellers include the Samar one-piece swimsuit in tiger print jacquard and the Istanbul sunglasses in rouge. Prices for items in the line range from $75 to $300.

The other places I sell in have a small selection, Laub said. It will be nice to set the stage and create my own environment.

Prism, 8850 Washington Blvd., Culver City, prismlondon.com

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For fashion news, follow us at @latimesimage on Twitter.

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Luxury labels have been bringing customers through the doors of South Coast Plaza for half a century, so its not surprising that some of them are paying homage to the golden anniversary with offerings that can only be purchased at the Costa Mesa shopping center.

Surprisingly, Starbucks brewed up something special for the occasion  a blend named after the centers carousel attraction. From lima bean fields to limited-edition coffee beans? Thats a California story arc if ever there was one.

Porsche Design

(Porsche Design)

This version of Porsche Designs 8478 aviator-style sunglasses with interchangeable lenses is limited to just 100 pairs (50 pairs in size 66 and 50 pairs in size 69) and features a gold-and-fuchsia, frame-and-lenses color combination as well as an engraving on the temple that reads South Coast Plaza  50 Years. $550, www.porsche-design.us

Gucci

(Gucci)

Gucci is offering a limited-edition large version of its Sylvie top handle bag. A special leather tag inside reads: Gucci Limited Edition. $2,890 (limited to 25 bags), www.gucci.com

Roger Vivier

(Roger Vivier)

Luxury shoe and accessories brand Roger Vivier is stepping into the exclusive offerings with this version of its Sneaky Viv Strass slip-on sneaker in leather. $1,325, www.rogervivier.com

Max Mara and Weekend Max Mara

(Max Mara and Weekend Max Mara)

The only Weekend Max Mara boutique in North America is offering an exclusive puffy Pasticcino (little pastry) clutch in red ($425, available this summer), while Max Mara will offer a hand-sewn, double-face belted cashmere and angora coat (at left, $2,890). www.weekendmaxmara.com, www.maxmara.com

Frette

(South Coast Plaza)

The blue color and monogram detail of this cotton velour, shawl collar two-pocket bathrobe are exclusive to the Frette boutique at South Coast Plaza. $300, www.frette.com

Charlotte Olympia

(Charlotte Olympia)

Exclusive-to-South Coast Plaza versions of Charlotte Olympias Perspex acrylic Kiss Me hard-shell clutch in black (left) or blush, with inlaid lips design and crystal beauty mark detail. $1,485, us.charlotteolympia.com

Brunello Cucinelli

(South Coast Plaza)

This reversible pinstripe vest in lightweight waterproof wool with a varsity jacket collar ($2,295) is one of two Brunello Cucinelli exclusives offered at the shopping center. www.brunellocucinelli.com

Tods

(Tods)

This version of Tods classic Gommino driving shoe combines tejus (a type of lizard) skin and a shade of blue inspired by the beaches of California. ($675, limited availability). The Italian luxury brand is also offering an exclusive light blue version of its Double T bag ($3,325). www.tods.com

Michael Kors Collection

(Michael Kors)

Michael Kors Collection is offering an exclusive version of its Yasmeen clutch with a river-snakeskin exterior and a goat suede lining and a convertible chain-link strap. $790, www.michaelkors.com

Marni

(Marni)

Marni has a Trunk bag in black cherry calfskin leather with an Ayers snakeskin flower motif available at South Coast Plaza. $2,900, www.marni.com

Starbucks

(Starbucks)

The Golden Carousel Blend of 80% Veranda blend and 20% single-origin Ethiopian is named in honor of South Coast Plazas signature painted-ponies attraction thats been a fixture for half a century. This bag of beans, described as having highlights of spice from Ethiopia and flavors of soft cocoa and toasted nuts from Latin America, wont be around anywhere near as long. Its only available there through the end of the year. $6.84 for an 8 oz. bag, www.starbucks.com

For more musings on all things fashion and style, follow me at @ARTschorn.

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Is Scott Conant the chef of record at the Ponte? Then the pasta al pomodoro is the elephant in the room, a plate of spaghetti in tomato sauce with which the chef has always been identified. The spaghetti has been praised on television by Anthony Bourdain and Ted Allen, among others; its recipe has been discussed in almost every publication and website that includes recipes; its cost  $22 at the Ponte, although it has been $24 at his other restaurants  tends to inspire shock and awe.

When Conants first Scarpetta opened in New York in 2008, New York Times critic Frank Bruni called the pasta pure Mediterranean bliss. When it appeared on the menu at the late Beverly Hills location of Scarpetta, former L.A. Times critic S. Irene Virbila praised its elegance. I thought Id described it as Botticelli on a plate when I reviewed his New York restaurant LImpero for Gourmet in 2002, but I turned out to have been talking about his mushrooms with polenta instead.

Does it mean anything in particular when a chef is identified with the most basic dish in the Italian repertoire? It is awfully good spaghetti, made with fresh plum tomatoes cooked down for 45 minutes, and tossed with grated Parmesan cheese and a slug of good butter right at the end. It is swirled into a column and served in a modest-sized bowl. It is a little soft for some tastes, but it does that magical thing where it is impossible to tell where the pasta ends and the sauce begins. There are strong, clear hints of chile, garlic and fresh basil, which apparently come from a splash of infused olive oil, and a subtle touch of creaminess from the butter.

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The Ponte isnt going to blow your mind, but the grilled octopus, the meatballs and the mussels and clams with tomato are pretty much a guaranteed good time. And while Conant has restaurants to tend in Las Vegas, New York, Arizona and elsewhere, the chef at Ponte, Freddy Vargas, was also the chef at Scarpetta.

You may have been to the location that is now the Ponte in its days as Pane e Vino, Sirena, or the meat-oriented Terrine, the last of which was also run by Stephane Bombet. As a proprietor, Bombet is brilliant at setting a nice table; constructing bright, fun environments that encourage lingering.

Mushroom boscaiola on polenta, with truffles and bacon at the Ponte on Beverly Boulevard. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

In a Bombet restaurant, be it Faith & Flower or Hanjip, you go from cocktails to wine and back again, order a bit of this and a plate of that, until you are tired and blissful, ready to be poured into an Uber, and not quite aware that you have perhaps spent twice as much as you had intended to  those small plates and lemon drops tend to add up. You will probably have some yellowfin tartare, two slices of squash blossom pizza and most of a citrus and fennel salad to eat at your desk tomorrow afternoon. You will have flashes of culinary epiphany: The gnudi with morels and asparagus! The preserved cherries with the chicken liver pate! But mostly you will remember a pleasant wash of sensation, and maybe the improbably 70s music  Grand Funk Railroad!  blasting out of the speakers overhead.

You are shown to your table, maybe in the bar room, maybe in the splendid, leafy patio at the rear. You are given bread and a bit of eggplant caponata to smear on it. You will probably be nudged into a cocktail. Bombets drinks guy, Ryan Wainwright, is excellent, and a flight of tiny Negronis  traditional, white and mescal-based, all served in the kind of gold-rimmed glasses in which your grandmother may have served liqueurs  is not a bad way to start here. Later will come the Verdicchio, the Valpolicella, or an unusual Piedmontese sparkling wine made from the grape usually associated with Barolo.

Is the chicory salad kind of a take on a Caesar? Sure, why not  the shower of cheese and the anchovy vinaigrette kind of read that way. Do you want the mushroom boscaiola on polenta? Of course you do; its salty, creamy and funky in all the right ways. Will the spicy, slightly over-roasted prawns school you in the mysteries of the sea? Not likely, although the chewy, ink-black farro it is served with is briny and not half-bad. Are you killing time until the pasta shows up? Most likely. The shishito peppers glazed with a fishy, glorious bottarga sludge will help with that.

So there is cheesy rigatoni with a light Bolognese sauce, fusilli in a meaty sauce with fresh fava beans and mint, and maybe stodgy agnolotti stuffed with duck and finished with a livery foie gras emulsion and peas. Those nuggets of ricotta gnudi with morels and asparagus can be splendid when the sauce isnt watery. And while perfectly nice sea trout, sliced rib-eye and roast chicken may await, you have undoubtedly ordered the famous pasta al pomodoro, or youd be in a different restaurant.

You may yearn for the roast goat and complex fricassees Conant used to make at the original LImpero, his intricate Alpine Italian cooking at New Yorks Alto or even the luxurious fish and hand-rolled pici with lobster at Scarpetta, but the spaghetti can also be read as a statement of principles: good ingredients, familiar flavors, careful execution and a subtle punch of heat.

::

The Ponte

Chef Scott Conants latest restaurant, and yes, theres that bowl of spaghetti

LOCATION

8265 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 746-5130, thepontela.com.

PRICES

Antipasti $14-$21 (more with truffles); charcuterie and salads $11-$20; pastas $21-$26; pizza $18-$19; entrees $26-$65; vegetables $9-$11.

DETAILS

Dinner 6 to 10 p.m. Sundays to Thursdays and 6 to 11:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; brunch 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Credit cards accepted. Full bar. Valet parking.

RECOMMENDED DISHES

Mushroom boscaiola with polenta; chicken liver pate; pasta al pomodoro; gnudi with morels and asparagus; shishito peppers with bottarga.

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jonathan.gold@latimes.com

@thejgold
Charles Barkley as a spokesperson on the race divide [Barkley Will Bring Bite to Race,  May 5]? Dont make me laugh. If I talk about something and never do anything about it, Im just talking, which is what has been happening. We know what the problems are, and more conversations are not going to solve them. So lets stop with the rope-a-dope and get to the antidote.

Willie James Weatherspoon, Gardena

A sour note about Dudamel

Regarding Dudamel Speaks Out on Venezuelan Violence [May 8]: No matter how much you try to sweeten this pill, Gustavo Dudamel has become the Wilhelm Furtwangler of Venezuela. Like the German conductor, Dudamel could have done much more a long time ago but refused, claiming that art must be above politics, while many of his people were repressed and killed by the brutal regime of Nicolas Maduro. The famous Venezuelan pianist Gabriela Montero, a California resident, has long been critical of Dudamel for refusing to take a stand while his country fell into chaos. The maestro might be a genius but has come too late to denounce the horrors perpetrated by the Venezuelan government.

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Raul De Cardenas

Los Angeles

Tosca violence was too much

Regarding The Power of Tosca Rings Out With Spirit [April 26]: On May 5 I saw Tosca for the fifth time (with Sondra Radvanovsky and directed by John Caird).

The violence of the John Caird production is overdone and very much detracts from the show. It was an unpleasant experience, which has caused me to never want to see another performance of Tosca. Oh, and the singing and other aspects of the show? Yeah, those were great.

Dan Persoff

Los Angeles

Sensitivity over teen suicide

Regarding Reasons Why This Resonates [May 6] This series was about creating enthralling, suspenseful television. Period. It succeeded in becoming a hit. I do not believe there was any considerate thinking of how it depicted suicide beyond that goal. What was their intended message of this series? Do they think they successfully delivered their intended message? What were the discussions during filming about their Hollywood depiction of suicide and the potential for negative consequences on fragile teens everywhere contemplating suicide as a solution to their treatable pain and angst?

Congratulations Netflix on making a wildly successful hit. Consider donating some of the revenue generated to the many agencies seeking to assist troubled teens.

David Brajac

San Mateo

Archduke shows poor judgment

Regarding Woe and Wit in Archduke  [May 9]: Apparently there is no nadir in iniquitous judgment for topics in modern theater. The tasteless attempt to create a comedic cast of assassins in the play Archduke is beyond words.

Michael Saint-Just

Rancho Mirage

Pippa Garners amazing works

Thank you to Christopher Knight for covering Pippa Garner [An Eye for the Folly of Modern Living, May 9]. Many of us have appreciated her work for years, always full of amazing and innovative ideas, contraptions that somehow make sense, hilarious videos and her beautiful drawings, even her [personal] transition was a work of art.

It is time to write more reviews for people who have been making art for many years, often in obscurity, and whose work can transcend much of what passes for art in todays world.

Lynn Leatart

Sherman Oaks

The Promise is enlightening

Regarding WWI Saga Puts Romance Over Atrocity [April 21]: What a great movie [The Promise], very enlightening story. I hope more people see this movie and learn about the Armenian genocide.

Barbara Brewer

Hacienda Heights

calendar.letters@latimes.com
Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Washington next week for his first face-to-face meeting with President Trump . A White House statement announcing the visit next Tuesday gave no hint of tensions, saying the two will discuss how to further strengthen our bilateral relationship and deepen our cooperation to confront terrorism in all its forms.

Although Turkey is a NATO ally and a key partner in the fight against Islamic State , an Oval Office encounter between a pair of headstrong leaders could nonetheless be an awkward one.

Heres why:

Members of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) raise the victory gesture as they stand on a building in the town of al-Karamah. (SOULEIMANDELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images)

1. Kurds and dismay

Turkey responded angrily to a Pentagon announcement this week that the United States would move to equip and arm Kurdish fighters in Syria. The U.S. has long had a relationship with the YPG, or Peoples Protection Units, operating under the umbrella of a larger armed Syrian rebel faction. Turkey, though, considers the YPG fighters to be terrorist comrades in arms of separatist Kurds across the border in Turkey, and tensions have been growing over the YPGs role in the looming battle for Raqaa, capital of Islamic States self-declared caliphate. Turkeys prime minister, Binali Yildirim, warned Wednesday that tighter U.S. ties with the YPG could lead to an unspecified negative result. Erdogan was quoted by Turkish media as saying he hoped the U.S. decision would be reversed at the earliest possible opportunity. Trump, then, needs to keep the Turkish leader close without undercutting his own military commanders, who consider the YPG the most effective allied ground fighting force in the confrontation with Islamic State.

A police officer stands guard during a rally by supporters of Turkeys President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Presidential Palace on April 17, 2017 in Ankara, Turkey. (Elif Sogut / Getty Images) (Elif Sogut / Getty Images)

2. Hail to the chief

Last month, Erdogan claimed victory  though a narrow one  in a nationwide referendum to vastly expand his constitutional powers. Although most Western governments and human rights groups viewed the measure as a heavy blow to democratic aspirations in Turkey, and although opposition parties challenged the result, Trump swiftly placed a congratulatory phone call to the Turkish leader. While that might have helped put the two men on a good personal footing, it played into the narrative of Trump as an admirer of authoritarian-minded leaders and a less-than-enthusiastic defender of democracy and human rights, both of which were previously pillars of U.S. foreign policy. Erdogan, meanwhile, continues to lash out at political foes as he smarts over failing to score a decisive win at the polls  a stance in some ways reminiscent of Trumps continuing sensitivities over his receiving fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton despite winning the electoral college vote.

Cleric Fethullah Gulen speaks to members of the media at his compound in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania on July 17, 2016 (Chris Post / AP) (Chris Post / AP)

3. Fugitive from justice?

After Erdogan emerged victorious from an attempted coup in July, he almost immediately cast blame on one man: the elderly self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, a onetime close ally who lives in Pennsylvania. In the intervening months, the U.S. has deflected Turkish demands for Gulens extradition to face charges of fomenting the coup, saying the decision is a legal one, not a political one, and therefore must make its way through the judicial system. Erdogan continues to seethe over this, especially as he felt that then-President Obama was not sufficiently supportive of the Turkish leader having weathered the attempted coup  or of the massive domestic crackdown on alleged conspiracists upon which Erdogan promptly embarked. The upside, for purposes of the Washington visit? Both the Turkish leader and Trump might be able to fall back on blaming Obama.

Russian President Vladimir Putin , right, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan shake hands after a news conference following their talks in Putins residence in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Wednesday, May 3, 2017. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP) (Alexander Zemlianichenko / AP)

4. Flirtation, or something more?

In the past, Turkey has reliably responded to tensions in its ties with Washington by making overtures to Moscow. Erdogan and Russian President Vladimir Putin have had their ups and downs, but they staged a very public reconciliation in August 2016, after nearly a year of sanctions-marked estrangement following Turkeys shooting down a Russian fighter jet on the Syrian border. Russia and Turkey still remain on opposite sides of the Syrian conflict; Putin is the principal ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad , while Turkey wants him gone. Turkey also joined the U.S. in condemning Assad forces use of a banned nerve agent in an attack on a Syrian village  a strike that the U.S. accused Moscow of either condoning or abetting. But Turkey and Russia have lately been cooperating  Putin and Erdogan met last week  most recently on the creation if de-escalation zones in Syria, with Turkey, Russia and Iran acting as guarantors  a move of which the U.S. has been wary. Ankara and Moscow are also in talks over Turkeys procuring of missiles for a domestic air-defense system.

Trump Towers, Istanbul are seen in the Sisli District on November 29, 2016. (Chris McGrath / Getty Images) (Chris McGrath / Getty Images)

5. Blurred lines
Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca remained defiant after his sentencing Friday morning, telling reporters outside the courthouse that he was in the right for actions he took in 2011 for which he will now serve a three-year prison term.

There is right and wrong, that Im clear with, said Baca, who chose not to make a statement to the judge at his sentencing hearing. When I stand tall, I stand right with what I think is right.

Baca was convicted in March of obstruction of justice and conspiracy charges for the steps he and his subordinates took after they learned of an FBI investigation into corruption and abuses in the sheriffs department-run jails.

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On the courthouse steps, Baca referred to the cellphone his deputies discovered on an inmate at Mens Central Jail and defended his actions. The phone had been smuggled into the jail by FBI agents as part of a sting.

Final comment: I will never accept a cellphone in a county jail given to a career criminal. I dont care who puts it in, the ex-lawman said.

Baca still defiant: "There is right and wrong...Final comment, I will never accept a cellphone in the cty jail given to a career criminal" pic.twitter.com/r9FrgiQbkL  Victoria Kim (@vicjkim) May 12, 2017

U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson, in remarks from the bench before handing down Bacas sentence, faulted Baca for refusing to accept responsibility and shifting the blame for the criminal actions of which he now stands convicted.

You placed yourself in this position, the judge said. You had opportunity after opportunity to put a stop to it.

Anderson said despite arguments from Bacas defense that it was his second-in-command, then-Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who was to blame, Baca was at least as culpable as Tanaka. He said the entire scheme may never have transpired were it not for Baca.

In the end, that is your legacy, Anderson said.

Baca, reading from a yellow legal pad, spoke for nearly five minutes without directly commenting on his sentence. He thanked the people of Los Angeles, his wife and his legal team, at one point reciting the Sheriffs Department core values and praising the media.

Ive taken a lot of hits over the years, but there isnt a police chief in America who hasnt taken a lot of hits because its freedom of speech, he said. And Im a protector of freedom of speech, even if its at my expense.

victoria.kim@latimes.com

For more California news, follow me on Twitter @vicjkim
A Beaumont city councilman was indicted Friday by a grand jury on charges of perjury and soliciting a bribe, according to the Riverside County district attorneys office.

Mark Orozco was charged in a 10-count indictment alleging he falsely identified campaign funds in a Fair Political Practices Commission disclosure form, Dist. Atty. Mike Hestrin said in a statement. Orozco is set to surrender to authorities on May 25 at a Riverside courthouse.

The charges  nine counts of perjury and one count of soliciting a bribe  stem from a complaint made by the city of Beaumont, and were investigated by the district attorneys Public Integrity Unit, Hestrin said.

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It was only with the partnership of the Beaumont officials that we were able to bring forth the indictment against Orozco, Hestrin said in the statement. It is important to hold our community leaders to the highest standards in our continued efforts to deter political corruption in our county.

The district attorneys office declined to disclose details about the charges because the indictment and grand jury proceedings will be sealed for 10 days.

Orozco was elected to the council in November 2014. His term is set to end in November 2018.

According to the citys website, Orozco is a married father of four and has also served as Beaumont Unified School District board member. The Beaumont resident operates a public and governmental relations consulting firm, the website said. He also teaches U.S. history and government.

If Orozco is convicted, he faces up to 13 years in state prison.

According to Hestrin, the charges are unrelated to a pending criminal case involving seven former top Beaumont city officials, who are accused of an elaborate scam involving the sale of municipal bonds for projects handled by companies in which they had a financial interest. Prosecutors also alleged that officials secured interest-free loans for friends and colleagues with taxpayer money.

That scheme dates back more than two decades and cost taxpayers nearly $43 million, according to the district attorneys office.

Beaumont Mayor Lloyd White said if the city receives a complaint about any elected or appointed officials, it is immediately reported to the appropriate agency.

We have zero tolerance for any type of criminal or unethical behavior, he said in an email. Beaumont has made great strides over the past two years. We have achieved financial stability and are on our way to becoming a premier city. 

The city is working to overcome its past problems by recently settling a major lawsuit with the Western Riverside Council of Governments that could have cost the city millions, White said. City officials have been working on a fiscally responsible budget that would add new staff and officers, he said.

It is a shame that for a while now the focus will be back on negative issues, White said. However, as elected officials we swear solemn oaths to uphold the laws of our land. We also swear to protect the health, safety and welfare of the community in which we serve.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA

UPDATES:

4:15 p.m.: This article was updated with comments from White.

This article was originally published at 2:30 p.m.
An off-duty Alameda County sheriffs deputy was killed Friday morning in a crash involving a Tesla employee bus on an East Bay freeway, authorities said.

The Sheriffs Office confirmed the crash took the life of our deputy. He was identified as Sroeuy Khin.

In Memory of Deputy Sheriff Sroeuy Khin who died today in a tragic vehicle accident. Our thoughts and prayers to his family and friends. pic.twitter.com/0Z0VZdTBiQ  Alameda County Sheriff (@ACSOSheriffs) May 12, 2017

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Khin had just gotten off work and was headed home on the eastbound Interstate 580 near Tracy in Alameda County, said Officer Derek Reed, a spokesman for the California Highway Patrol.

Khin, who was driving a Volkswagen Beetle, was stopped for an unknown reason in a freeway lane near Grant Line Road when the employee tour bus rear-ended the vehicle, he said.

The driver of the tour bus told officers that the sun glare was blinding and he did not see the Volkswagen, Reed said. The officer died at the scene.

Authorities investigating the crash draped an American flag over the officers body.

Reed said that of the 55 Tesla employees aboard the bus, only one was hurt as a result of the crash, but was not hospitalized.

On Friday afternoon, Tesla released a statement, saying the tour bus was an independently operated shuttle carrying Tesla employees.

All Tesla employees on the bus are safe and accounted for, however we are deeply saddened by reports that there was a fatality as a result of the accident, a Tesla spokesman said. We will lend any support that we can to the authorities who are investigating the incident.

veronica.rocha@latimes.com

Twitter: VeronicaRochaLA

UPDATES:

1:50 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from Tesla.

1:25 p.m.: This article was updated with the deputys identity.

10:20 a.m.: This article was updated with the Alameda County Sheriffs Office confirming a deputy was killed.

This article was originally published at 10:15 a.m.
He should have chosen a more popular movie.

A high-speed car chase that started in Hacienda Heights on Thursday night ended with the suspect trying to hide in a nearly empty showing of the Tom Hanks film The Circle in South Gate, police said.

Christopher Cook of La Mirada is suspected of stealing a bait package in Arcadia  an expensive item that Arcadia police shipped to a local home with a device that helps them track packages stolen from residents doorsteps.

The bait packages are equipped with a GPS device that alerts police when a parcel has been moved from a residence after it was delivered. Typically, the packages contain items worth more than $950 so that their theft constitutes a felony, police say.

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On Thursday, Arcadia police were alerted to a possible theft at 6:39 p.m.

Police tracked the package to a Hacienda Heights parking lot, where the chase began.

Cook, who police say was driving a stolen 2017 Hyundai Sonata, hit speeds of up to 110 mph as he led cruisers down the 60 Freeway, KTLA helicopter footage showed. At one point, the driver hit traffic and switched to surface streets  as any Southern Californian would.

Eventually the driver reached South Gate, abandoned his car in front of an Edwards Cinemas and ran inside, chase video showed.

Once indoors, he ran into a theater and sat in a corner seat before security entered and asked the three other people watching the movie to leave, one moviegoer told ABC 7.

At first, I was really scared.  Not knowing what was going on made me really scared, moviegoer Debbie Lopez told CBS.

Police then entered the theater and arrested Cook, 27, on suspicion of theft, evading arrest and possession of a stolen vehicle, Arcadia Police Sgt. Ernest Lopez said.

Cook is being held in lieu of $115,000 bail.

Reach Sonali Kohli at Sonali.Kohli@latimes.com or on Twitter @Sonali_Kohli.
Homicide investigators found gun accessories, including a full magazine, as well as syringes in the home of the man who shot seven people before San Diego police killed him, court documents show.

A search warrant affidavit also revealed that a sister of gunman Peter Selis rushed to the apartment complex on April 30, fearing that he might be involved.

Eve Selis told officers that her brother lived there and was extremely distraught and depressed over a recent break-up with his girlfriend.

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The affidavit by San Diego police homicide Det. David Spitzer set out facts of the case to support the need for a warrant to search Peter Selis apartment.

Among the items seized May 1 from a bedroom were a full gun magazine, found in the pocket of a chair, and a gun-cleaning kit in a closet. A gun lock was on a desk. Lying on the bed were a box for the lock, a bag containing a holster and gloves and a cardboard box containing syringes.

A computer tablet lay on the floor. A black bag of miscellaneous pills was in the bathroom.The affidavit did not describe the syringes or their possible purpose.

Selis, a 49-year-old auto mechanic, was deeply in debt after two bankruptcies and had been threatened with jail. Late on that Sunday afternoon, he went to the pool at the La Jolla Crossroads Apartments with a duffel bag and sat in a lounge chair.

The area was crowded, and many of the people were attending a birthday party.

According to the affidavit, Selis drank from a beer bottle, then pulled a pistol from the bag. He started shooting and, after firing two rounds, called his ex-girlfriend and told her what he was doing and that police were coming.

One of his victims, Monique Clark, 35, a mother of three, died. The search warrant document said she was shot once in the chest.

As news reports of the shooting were broadcast, Eve Selis rushed to the complex and described her brother for police, the court record says. Her description matched the shooters.

Fearing Selis may have potentially harmed any roommates or his ex-girlfriend, the decision was made to enter his apartment, the affidavit said. Seven officers went in, but found no victims. The warrant for a full search was obtained the next day.

pauline.repard@sduniontribune.com

Repard writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
University of California regents took the first steps Thursday to investigate allegations that central administrators improperly interfered with a state audit on the financial operations of the UC office of the president.

In a unanimous vote at a hastily arranged special meeting, the Board of Regents authorized the hiring of an independent investigator to assist in uncovering the facts surrounding the allegations.

Board Chairwoman Monica Lozano said she called the special meeting  regents participated via phone from throughout the state  to demonstrate that the board took the allegations seriously and would swiftly address them.

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I believe it is imperative for this board to send a strong signal to our many constituents that the entire board is fully engaged in this effort and committed to full transparency and accountability, Lozano said.

In her report last month, State Auditor Elaine Howle said her auditors sent confidential surveys to officials at the systems 10 campuses, asking them to evaluate services and programs provided by UC President Janet Napolitanos office.

But Napolitanos office improperly intervened, she said, previewing the campus responses and in some cases suggesting changes that resulted in more positive evaluations.

Napolitano has said her staff was responding to campus requests for help and had no improper motive. But she has apologized for the actions and reiterated Thursday that such coordinated efforts would not be repeated in any future audits.

I welcome quick action by the board, Napolitano said, supporting the call for an outside investigator. She added, however, that she hoped that all of the circumstances surrounding the surveys would be examined, including the campus confusion over them.

Lozano said she and four other regents will lead a fact-finding review of the allegations, assisted by the outside law firm or consultant hired. The full board will then decide what, if any, action should be taken.

Howle will present the audit findings to the regents at their May 18 meeting in San Francisco.

teresa.watanabe@latimes.com

Twitter: @teresawatanabe
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed his name Thursday to a document that affirms the need for international action against climate change, adding further uncertainty to the direction of climate policy under the Trump administration.

The document, signed by Tillerson and seven foreign ministers from Arctic nations meeting this week in Fairbanks, Alaska, says the participants concluded their meeting noting the entry into force of the Paris agreement on climate change and its implementation, and reiterating the need for global action to reduce both long-lived greenhouse gases and short-lived climate pollutants.

Called the Fairbanks Declaration, the document says the leaders signed it recognizing that activities taking place outside the Arctic region, including activities occurring in Arctic states, are the main contributors to climate change effects and pollution in the Arctic, and underlining the need for action at all levels.

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The Trump administration has been in conflict for months over what to do about U.S. involvement in the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord, which commits nearly 200 nations to establishing goals to reduce emissions that lead to climate change.

Trump has repeatedly questioned climate science, calling climate change a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese and vowing during his campaign to cancel the Paris agreement.

His administration has aggressively begun trying to dismantle many of the climate policies created under the Obama administration, including federal rules to phase out coal-fired power plants, increase restrictions on vehicle emissions and limit methane leaks from natural gas production. The administration has announced reviews of Obamas decisions to limit offshore drilling and is reconsidering national monument designations made over the last two decades.

While some of Trumps closest aides have urged him to do withdraw from the Paris accord, experts say such a move could stir diplomatic tension with other nations. Tillerson, the former chief executive of Exxon, is among those who have argued that the U.S. should keep its commitment.

The Fairbanks Declaration does not affirm that the U.S. will honor the Paris accord. Nor does it explicitly state that human activity is causing climate change.

And Tillersons spoken remarks at the meeting made clear that the administration is divided.

After vowing that the U.S. would continue to be vigilant in protecting the fragile environment in the Arctic, Tillerson said this about current U.S. climate policy:

In the United States, we are currently reviewing several important policies, including how the Trump administration will approach the issue of climate change. Were appreciative that each of you has an important point of view and you should know that we are taking the time to understand your concerns. Were not going to rush to make a decision. Were going to work to make the right decision, he added, pausing ever so briefly before ending with the phrase, for the United States.

A video showed at the meeting before his remarks that was produced by the State Department referred to ecological change, not climate change.

While Tillersons comments were vague  the phrase the issue of climate change falls short of saying climate change is real  few of his counterparts at the meeting minced words.

Timo Soini, the foreign minister of Finland, said Finns recognize that global warming is the main driver of change in the Arctic.

Bill Erasmus of the international Arctic Athabaskan Council, which represents indigenous Athabascan governments in the U.S. and Canada, said climate change and economic stability were the most important issues in the region.

Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom of Sweden mused, I wonder about what the planet would say if she had a seat at the table. She then offered some speculation, Perhaps our planet would say, Ive been your best friend since the Industrial Revolution. I have sent you no invoices but it is about to change.

The meeting in Fairbanks marked the end of the U.S.s two-year rotating role as chairman of the council. Created in 1996, the council largely focuses on international cooperation, environmental protection research and helping local communities in the region develop sustainable economies.

In addition to the U.S. and Sweden, the other council nations are Russia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Iceland. The council also includes six indigenous groups and formal observers from non-Arctic countries.

Several speakers on Thursday noted the peace the Arctic has enjoyed relative to other parts of the world, though participants have also expressed concerns that security could be threatened by Russias assertive pursuit of oil and gas development in the region. Those concerns have increased amid new tensions between Russia and the United States.

David A. Balton, a deputy assistant secretary of State who has worked on Arctic issues in previous administrations, told reporters on Monday that outside issues between the countries dont manifest themselves in the work of the Arctic Council. That has remained a very cooperative body.

No part of the world is warming faster than the Arctic.

Summer sea ice regularly shrinks to record lows, coastlines are eroding and wildfires are getting worse. Even the frozen tundra, a critical natural storage tank for carbon emissions, is no longer so frozen. Scientists reported this week that it is warming so rapidly that it now is emitting more carbon than it captures.

The Fairbanks Declaration includes several other references to climate change and taking action to mitigate it or adapt to it. It refers to reiterating the importance of climate science to our understanding of the changing Arctic region and our activities in the Arctic environment.

Environment groups praised its support for reducing soot (called black carbon) and methane from diesel, oil and gas emissions. The signatories also said they recognize the gains that some industries have already made in reducing the emissions and intensity of greenhouse gases.

Michael LeVine, a lawyer in Alaska for the nonprofit Oceana, said: We hope that this declaration is a meaningful step in the evolution of the Trump administrations approach to climate change issues. The United States has the opportunity and obligation to lead efforts to reduce climate impacts and to ensure the long-term sustainability of Arctic Ocean ecosystems.

william.yardley@latimes.com

@yardleyLAT

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You could say that it was with great interest Friday morning that Ken Hughes, a presidential historian with the University of Virginias Miller Center, saw what the current president was saying on Twitter.

 James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Donald Trump tweeted, issuing an unusual public warning to the recently fired director of the FBI as more news stories are published about the pairs contentious relationship. Trumps tweet suggested, of course, that the president was privately recording his conversations.

The first thing I asked is whether he realized that, if he does have tapes of his conversations with Comey, theyre evidence in any investigation of whether his firing of Comey amount to obstruction of justice, said Hughes in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.

If so, he added, they are evidence related to a criminal investigation and therefore they can be subpoenaed, either by Congress , or by a prosecutor, or special prosecutor if one is appointed, and Trump has to turn them over, as the Supreme Court ruled way back in 1974.

Hughes would know. He is one of the nations foremost experts on the voluminous secret recordings that President Nixon taped in the Oval Office, tapes that ultimately ended his presidency.

Nixon found out the hard way that having tape recordings of your conversations can backfire, Hughes said.

Democrats in Congress, aware of the parallels  and raising questions over whether Trump fired the FBI director for investigating his administrations possible ties to Russia  have pounced immediately, demanding any such Trump tapes be turned over to Congress. During a press briefing Friday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer repeatedly declined to deny that Trump is secretly taping his conversations, telling reporters, The president has nothing further to add on that.

The existence of Nixons secret tapes were revealed during the investigation into the Watergate burglary of Democratic offices in 1972, which had been directed by Nixons aides. A special prosecutor subpoenaed the tapes, and when Nixon objected, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the president couldnt claim executive privilege to keep the tapes secret.

(Front page on Oct. 20, 1973)

The tapes, once turned over, showed that Nixon had obstructed the investigation into the Watergate break-in. Nixon then resigned rather than face impeachment.

Today, the law is even less in favor of a president keeping such recordings secret.

The law was very different back then, said Luke Nichter, an associate professor of history at Texas A&M University who has published two books about Nixons tapes, and whose phone was ringing off the hook Friday. The tapes were his personal record. Today, if the president sends a tweet, its technically a public record.

Thats due to an avalanche of new public-records laws that Congress passed to increase executive transparency after the scandals of the Nixon presidency, including the Presidential Records Act and an amendment to the Federal Records Act, Nichter said.

Then there was the cultural impact.

When the Nixon tapes became public, what shocked people so much was the difference between what Nixon said in public and what Nixon said in private, said Nichter, who asked if Trump tapes would reveal the same thing  if there is a difference between the public and private Trump. If he did do taping, we might finally learn the answer to that question.

matt.pearce@latimes.com

@mattdpearce

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The Nashville district attorney general said Thursday that a white officer wouldnt faces charges for shooting and killing an armed black man after a traffic stop in February.

At a news conference, District Atty. Gen. Glenn Funk said Officer Josh Lipperts actions met the legal definition of self-defense when he shot and killed Jocques Scott Clemmons following a traffic stop.

Based on the facts of this incident and application of the law of self-defense in the state of Tennessee, Officer Lippert has a legally sufficient claim of self-defense, and therefore the state will not pursue criminal charges against Officer Lippert, Funk said.

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The decision drew swift outcry from the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, some clergy, Clemmons family and other community members.

We do not accept that this investigation was unbiased and we will continue to fight for justice for Jocques, said Michael Hoskins, a lawyer for Clemmons family.

Nashville NAACP President Ludye Wallace said black men were getting killed like this all over the country. He was critical of how Clemmons had been shot in the back.

In the Western days, when everybody has guns, you didnt shoot them in the back, Wallace said.

At one point during the altercation, the gun Clemmons was holding was pointed in Officer Lipperts direction, Funk said.

Jocques Clemmons never drew down on the officer and pointed it at him, Funk said. He had a gun in his hand. He picked it up in the middle of an altercation. Had he kept running and this was an unarmed person that was shot in the back, it would be a completely different situation.

Lippert shot Clemmons three times, striking him twice in the back and once in the left hip.

Clemmons was convicted of a cocaine felony in 2014, and as a convicted felon, he was violating state and federal law by possessing the pistol, according to police.

Authorities maintain that the incident happened within seconds. Funk said Clemmons was holding the gun when he was shot.

The public outcry after the shooting resulted in major changes in policing in Nashville.

Funk announced that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation would investigate all fatal police shootings going forward, instead of the Metro Nashville Police Department investigating itself.

After the shooting, Nashvilles Metro Council called for the immediate purchase of police body cameras. Mayor Megan Barry has proposed spending $23 million to equip police officers with body cameras and install dash cams in their vehicles.

Barry spoke at the news conference of the shootings effects on the community.

Two families were impacted that day. And those families and their lives will never be the same, sje said.

At the news conference, Funk also said he was instituting new policies aimed at helping black community members charged with low-level crimes, including a plan to let them avoid jail time and be released on their own recognizance while awaiting trial; reviews to ensure convictions are justified; and a proposal to help kids avoid being locked up. He also suggested minority hiring in law enforcement, among other ideas.

Funks office determined that aspects of the Police Departments review of the shooting could be perceived as biased, pointing out that an initial incident report filed hours after the shooting listed the offense as justifiable homicide and the investigation status as completed, among issues in other police investigative documents.

Funk said that he had spoken with Police Chief Steve Anderson, who did not attend Thursdays news conference, and that the chief will soon decide whether to discipline or fire Lippert.
Indonesia and Ireland are very different societies, but in both countries talking about religion can get you in trouble with the law.

On Tuesday, the Christian governor of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, was sentenced to two years in prison for blasphemy against Islam, a penalty that shocked many inhabitants of the majority-Muslim country known for its tolerance and pluralism. The blasphemy charge against Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama was based on a video in which he was recorded telling voters they were being misled if they believed that a verse in the Koran forbade them from voting for a non-Muslim.

On the other side of the world, the British writer and actor Stephen Fry is breathing easier after officials in Ireland announced that they wouldnt charge him for violating that nations blasphemy law for joking in a 2015 television interview that God, if he existed, was quite clearly a maniac.

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But the police had investigated Fry under the law, which, far from being a relic, was enacted in 2009. The law makes it illegal to utter or publish any material grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion in which the intent and result is outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion.

That language echoes a resolution passed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2010 calling on nations to combat defamation of all religions, the culmination of a long-standing campaign led predominantly by Muslim nations to have the international community equate defamation of religion with discrimination against religion.

Fortunately, more recent pronouncements by the U.N. have shown a greater appreciation for the importance of freedom of speech even while condemning behavior that is intolerant of religion. Yet many nations still have blasphemy laws on the books. Last year, Heiner Bielefeldt , the U.N.s special investigator on freedom of religion, called for the universal repeal of such laws, saying they restrict freedom of expression and promote intolerance toward minority religions.

That conclusion also has been reached by independent researchers. A 2010 study by Freedom House, a Washington-based human rights organization, examined laws against blasphemy and religious insults in Algeria, Egypt, Greece, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Poland. In general, the study found, the laws protected the majority faith. They also were used to target journalists, artists and political dissidents.

These laws should be repealed, even if they were enacted not for the traditional reason  to show reverence to a deity  but for the supposedly more progressive purpose of sparing the sensitivities of believers, including members of minority faiths.

Redefining blasphemy laws as laws against hate speech dont make them any more acceptable or any less susceptible to abuse and selective enforcement.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook
Opponents of President Trumps agenda are celebrating a nationwide injunction against his plan to defund sanctuary cities, issued last month by a federal judge. They are also hoping similar rulings against Trumps second travel ban are upheld in appeals courts this month.

But only a few months ago, liberals opposed such injunctions  because they were hobbling the Obama administrations agenda. In 2015 and 2016, conservative plaintiffs obtained nationwide injunctions in Texas courts, holding back a host of Obama initiatives on immigration, transgender rights, labor regulation and other issues.

Liberals were right to criticize the sweeping nature of those injunctions. Even if the government policy was unlawful, the argument went, a nationwide ruling was improper because a single federal judge shouldnt make nationwide law. A Texas judge, they argued, shouldnt decide what the law is in New York.

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Now that liberals are the plaintiffs and conservatives are the defendants, their arguments have flipped. But the issue at the heart of these cases  the appropriate role of the lower federal courts  remains the same. Nationwide injunctions were wrong then, and they are wrong now.

The structure and integrity of our federal courts are more important than the outcome of an individual case or two.

Its a bedrock principle of the federal judiciary that lower federal courts, meaning all courts below the Supreme Court, dont make nationwide law. There are 12 federal courts of appeal, each covering one region of the country. One circuits precedent isnt binding for another. The same government policy can be invalidated in the 1st Circuit but upheld in the 2nd Circuit.

Its set up this way because we want difficult questions of law to percolate among lower federal courts. As Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit has put it, rather than being decided conclusively by the first court to consider the issue, a difficult legal question is more likely to be answered correctly if it is allowed to engage the attention of different sets of judges. Lower court percolation fosters dialogue about the law, which leads to more reasoned and durable decisions in the long term. Nationwide injunctions cut this process short by preventing other courts from weighing in.

Concentration of power in the hands of a single judge also promotes gamesmanship by plaintiffs. When they know that the first judge to hear a case might have the final word on an issue, plaintiffs steer cases to specific circuits, specific districts and even specific judges in the hopes of finding a receptive audience. Indeed, Trump wasnt wrong when he accused his critics of judge shopping for nationwide injunctions.

Its not a coincidence that the cases against Trump were brought in California, Washington and Hawaii  all part of the 9th Circuit  and that the cases against Obamas initiatives were brought in Texas, which is part of the 5th Circuit. The 9th Circuit is commonly perceived as the most liberal circuit in the country, and the 5th Circuit is considered the most conservative.

Nor was it a coincidence that two challenges of Obamas transgender policies were brought in the remote Wichita Falls Division of the Northern District of Texas. The only active judge in that division, and thus the judge likely to decide the case, had a history of skepticism toward LGBTQ issues. Both cases were indeed decided by that judge, and both policies were enjoined nationwide.

We cant fault plaintiffs for acting strategically. Nevertheless, these tactics deepen the public perception that judges are partisan actors, which works to undermine the courts crucial role as a check on executive power.

A more prudent approach is for judges to limit injunctions to the borders of their regional circuit. One laudable example is the recent decision of a federal judge to strike down the travel ban, but to limit the injunction to the state of Virginia. She did this, the judge wrote, in part to avoid encroaching on the ability of other circuits to consider the questions raised. Similarly, a Wisconsin judge struck down the revised travel ban but limited the injunction to the family that filed the suit. These judges ensured that justice was done while honoring the geographic limits of the lower federal courts.

For those of us who oppose Trumps agenda, this piecemeal approach might be a hard pill to swallow. We see nationwide injustice, and we want nationwide remedies. Sweeping injunctions may seem especially appropriate given that conservatives employed them so successfully to obstruct Obamas agenda. In the long run, however, the structure and integrity of our federal courts are more important than the outcome of an individual case or two.

Most of the judges who examined Trumps travel bans ruled them invalid. And yet Trump was able to characterize their repudiations of his policy as the work of two jurists run amok. When policies are unlawful, we should welcome the opportunity for more judges, not fewer, to say so. A chorus is better than a solo.

Getzel Berger is a law student at New York University School of Law and the author of Nationwide Injunctions Against the Federal Government: A Structural Approach, forthcoming in the NYU Law Review.

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Much remains unclear about the sudden firing of FBI Director James Comey, but one point is beyond dispute: The original proffered reason for the dismissal  that Comey made improper public comments about the bureaus investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a private e-mail server  was pretextual.

Comeys public commentary on the email investigation was a violation of longstanding Justice Department policies, and a firing offense. But his comments were plainly not the reason the president lowered the boom: Candidate Trump loudly praised Comeys actions at the time. And the president has now shifted ground, admitting that the decision was unrelated to the email controversy.

When the administration, already operating under a cavernous truth deficit, offers a manifestly false account of such a significant action, the foreseeable result is that critics will assume the worst, and that comparisons to Watergate will swirl around the White House.

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In fact the move has been widely criticized as Nixonian, invoking the specter that the president acted to impede the FBIs ongoing investigation into the Trump campaigns dealings with figures from the Russian government. Maybe something sinister like this is at work. Or maybe the firing was just a fit of pique by this most erratic and adolescent of presidents.

No ingenious use of parking garages and potted plants is required today to publicize nefarious political interference by the White House.

But  and this is the key point that should calm patrons of the darkest fantasies  if the presidents goal in firing Comey was to scuttle the Russia investigation, he has overplayed his hand. An investigation is underway, staffed by handpicked agents of an organization that is acutely aware of  if not obsessed with  its image as the premier federal law enforcement agency in the country.

For these agents, the investigation is a career-making opportunity. And their motivation has now been augmented by outrage at Comeys firing, which the agency sees as an assault on its independence.

They are, moreover, sophisticated actors who know how to press the levers of Washington  including the press and the staffers of congressional investigative committees  to fight back against any effort to curb their work.

If, for example, the president were to replace Comey with a lackey who attempted to throw sand in the gears of the investigation, the effort would leak to the press in a Washington minute. And the likely outcome would be the swift appointment of an independent counsel, who would be able to insist on ample investigative resources and unfettered discretion.

The president has now waded into truly dangerous waters with his tweet war on Comey and his suggestion that Comey better hope that there are no secret tapes of their conversations. No one of any sophistication could possibly credit the presidents version of events.

In light of the comparisons to Watergate, it should not be forgotten that Deep Throat, the source who was instrumental in thwarting the conspiracy and bringing Nixon down, was the deputy director of the FBI. And that scandal took place in a pre-email era when leaking was a much more complicated enterprise. No ingenious use of parking garages is required today to publicize nefarious political interference by the White House.

Nor is it obvious that the president has the political maneuvering room to install a yes-man at the FBI. The choice will be the most scrutinized of his presidency, and the political establishment broadly wants to maintain the FBIs ethos of independence. It would take the defection of only a few Republican senators to reject a questionable nominee, or, far more ominous to the administration, to establish a bipartisan select congressional committee that can undertake its own investigation.

The administration will therefore be under pressure to select a candidate of known integrity with experience in the ways of the FBI, such as former Deputy Atty. Gen. Mark Filip.

Theres one last line of defense in the form of Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein, who will oversee the Russia investigation for the Justice Department.

Rosenstein, who wrote the memo about Comeys approach to the Clinton business, has already resisted the administrations efforts to paint him as the moving force behind the directors dismissal. And like the other players in the drama, Rosenstein has strong cards to play against White House overreaching. The strongest of these is a threat to resign, which would be a disaster for the administration. All indications are that Rosenstein is resolved to be seen as ensuring an independent investigation. Expect him soon to announce that additional resources have been devoted to the Russia case, as Comey reportedly had requested. The White House will have little choice but to feign support.

All this means that the Russia investigation is not going away any time soon, and that all the presidents men, and possibly the president himself, will remain squarely in the crosshairs of the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Harry Litman, a former United States attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, teaches at UCLA Law School and practices law at Constantine Cannon.

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Whenever President Trump talks about American history, it sounds like hes telling a joke. Andrew Jackson, Fred Douglass, and Honest Abe walk into a bar ... The punch line is hes not joking.

Does it matter? Granted, he may not realize that Frederick Douglass is retired and then some; he seems to have discovered only in 2016 that Lincoln belonged to the party of Lincoln; and he attributes his own ignorance to everyone else (People dont ask the question, why was there the Civil War?). Still, plenty of other issues demand our attention. Newt Gingrich dismisses the criticism, telling the New York Times, Theres a certain amount of hunting for what is it that Trump has done thats dumb? Fair enough. Barack Obama and George W. Bush both mangled the past on occasion. Trump is learning history as he governs, Gingrich added  on the job, like a kid on the soft-serve machine at a Dairy Queen.

One obvious problem with Gingrichs defense is that a president does not perform merely mechanical tasks. We entrust that person with the making of history  a job that requires a grasp of both historical content and the historical method. The president and historian alike live in a world of everything. Nothing lies beyond consideration. Every event, every matter of concern, swirls and bobs in a sea of trends, traditions, accidents, choices, costs, attitudes and beliefs. The ability to understand connections, interactions and unintended consequences is crucial.

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Take conflicts of interest. In refusing to produce his tax returns, Trump cites his election  as if the majority that voted against him doesnt matter. Hes not only breaking with the relatively recent tradition of such releases but with a belief dating all the way back to George Washington that the presidency is an office of special weight, responsible to all Americans.

Historical knowledge and thinking foster respect for opposing views and the complexity of important issues.

Then theres the Constitutions emoluments clause. Its one sign of how the Founders mortared a dread of corruption into the foundation of the republic. They believed in disinterested officeholders who would lack a stake in the scrum of the marketplace. That idea remains in our political DNA. Violating it weakens the president, perhaps fatally.

Historical knowledge and thinking foster respect for opposing views and the complexity of important issues. Our political DNA also contains a distrust of corporations, for example, but in rather contradictory strands, generating government regulation as well as anti-government populism.

Early American corporations were vehicles for directing private investment into public projects. States chartered them one by one for specific purposes, granting protections ranging from limited liability to monopolies. Trumps hero, Andrew Jackson, condemned corporations as bastions of exclusive privileges for the wealthy. He and his followers demanded free competition between natural persons. In an era before big business, radical populists embraced laissez-faire.

The rise of giant companies changed the terms of debate from privilege to power. Already our great corporations are fast emancipating themselves from the State, Charles Francis Adams Jr. warned in 1869. The new populists wanted regulation. We hold, a group of Grangers declared in 1873, that a State cannot create a corporation that it cannot thereafter control.

When struggling with the fraught issues of economic growth, liberty, inequality and oversight, a president can benefit from a grasp of this historical continuum, a legacy of both the right and the left.

Critics have thoroughly savaged Trumps appalling suggestion that the Civil War could have been avoided. But lets think through his hypothesis. No Civil War would mean no emancipation and no Reconstruction. That means no 14th Amendment, which establishes a race-neutral definition of citizenship and holds the states to the Bill of Rights. Before Reconstruction, states often violated civil liberties, banning abolitionist speech and imposing religious tests on voters.

In other words, African Americans did not merely win freedom and existing rights. Rather, the era redefined our concepts of citizenship and liberty, and so freed everyone. A president must understand this aspect of history more than any other. It is our diversity that gives us strength; it is the fight for freedom by the oppressed that frees us all.

And yet, as the Jim Crow era shows, every advance can be rolled back. Reconstruction laws and amendments remained on the books, but white Southern resistance eclipsed their enforcement; only the civil rights movement brought them back to life. A free and fair society depends on shared values, on fragile political norms that have emerged over time. These allow us to disagree and still function peacefully. History holds us together. If we become unmoored from it, I could even imagine a president who repeats Richard Nixons mistakes, abusing power to obstruct justice, or who falls under the influence of white nationalists.

T.J. Stiles is the author most recently of Custers Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, which received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History. He lives in Berkeley.

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The president apparently woke up in a bad mood Friday morning and took it out on his Twitter account. The Fake Media is working overtime today! he tweeted. He also pushed his stale argument that the investigation into questions of collusion between Russian meddlers and his presidential campaign is nothing more than a Democratic fabrication to explain away how that party lost the election. Then he suggested canceling daily press briefings because his spokespeople cant get the White House facts straight (never mind that the facts seem to change with every breath the president takes).

Buried in the morning rant was a dangerously worded warning to James Comey, the recently fired director of the FBI: James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

What exactly was the threat? That Trump did indeed record those conversations and he might release audio to rebut whatever comments Comey might make? That seems to be the clearest reading of a typically muddy Trump tweet. And if so, that means evidence should be available to shed light on how the president of the United States used a private meeting with his FBI director to seek inside information on the status of an investigation into the actions of some of Trumps campaign aides.

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In his press briefing Friday morning (yes, hes still holding them), just hours after Trumps tweets, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer refused to say whether the president had indeed recorded conversations with Comey (Democratic members of the House Judiciary Oversight Committee immediately requested copies of the tapes if they exist). And Spicer denied that Trump had asked Comey for his loyalty in a dinner meeting, as the New York Times reported. The story added that Comey declined but pledged that he would act honestly. Given how many lies, distortions and errors have come out of the White House press office since the inauguration, Spicers denial of the New York Times version doesnt bear much weight.

This is dangerous ground when the nations presumption whenever the president or his spokespeople say something has to be disbelief. Nothing can be taken at face value, from White House estimates of the size of the inauguration crowd, to Spicer denying that Trumps effort to block entry of refugees and travelers from a number of predominantly Muslim countries is a ban (the word Trump has used), to the events that led to Comeys dismissal.

Most alarming, though is that Trump himself doesnt understand that the president of the United States is powerful, but not omnipotent, something he seems to crave as part of an irrepressible authoritarian instinct. He doesnt want to be president, he wants to be emperor. He has praised Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, shrugging off the anti-crime crusaders admissions that he has murdered. He congratulated Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on a referendum that shifted power from the parliament to his own office. His adoration of Russian President Vladimir Putin borders on the embarrassing.

Leaks from the White House disclose a president who lashes out at aides when news coverage churns beyond his control. He has threatened to change libel laws to make it easier to sue over articles he doesnt like (and is seemingly oblivious to the fact that libel laws are state-level and beyond his reach). Never mind the Supreme Courts history of defending the medias 1st Amendment right to publish what it wants about public figures as long as the material is factual or that errors were not published with malice or reckless disregard for the truth. Though Trump also has disparaged the courts  again, after he didnt get his way.

This is dangerous ground when the nations presumption whenever the president or his spokespeople say something has to be disbelief.

Confronted with political opposition in Congress, Trumps response was to question the rules under which Congress operates and, defying the separation of powers, suggested he, as president, would try to change Senate rules.

There are archaic rules, and maybe at some point, were going to have to take those rules on, because for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different, Trump told Fox News. You cant go through a process like this. Its not fair, it forces you to make bad decisions.

So just because the president couldnt get Congress to bend to his will, he wants to change how Congress  which he doesnt control  operates. So much for the self-vaunted deal closer.

No one knows how this mess will settle out. Did Trump campaign aides collude with Russia in the run-up to the election? Has Trump gone further than breaking with tradition and meddled in a federal investigation with his questioning of Comey? Will the House or Senate committees ostensibly mounting investigations actually get anywhere? Will the FBI? Will the nation get the special prosecutor it so desperately needs to cut through the smoke, denials and obfuscations to get at least a semblance of a clear picture of whether Trump aides worked with Russia, and whether Comeys dismissal was an attempt to interfere with the investigation?

We can have the audacity of hope (a phrase Trump did not coin), I suppose, but as Benjamin Franklin warned: He that lives upon hope will die fasting.

scott.martelle@latimes.com

Twitter: @smartelle
To the editor: Faced with the firing by the president of the FBI director who was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells failure to live up to the sterling example set by former Sen. Howard Baker, an influential Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, after the Watergate Saturday Night Massacre is typical, depressing and inexcusable. (Spineless Republicans abdicate their responsibility to keep Trump in check, Opinion, May 10)

McConnell may hold power now, but he might wish to consider the cold, hard eye of history, which will have the last word (assuming it survives this tumultuous political era). In historys view, McConnells actions will be placed next to those of everyone ranging from the small-minded bureaucrats to the stellar tyrants who valued their power above all else.

Tony Shaftel, La Crescenta

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To the editor: Marcellus, an officer of the palace guard in Shakespeares Hamlet, saw the ghost of the king and mumbled, Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

This expresses my deep concerns about the future of our country. With the firing of FBI Director James Comey, it appears the rule of law is breaking down. My feeling is that public confidence in our institutions is at an all-time low, with our president accused of having conflicts of interest, showing little respect for the judiciary and, now, engaging in a cover up.

The president has many powers at his disposal, and he will use them as needed to thwart any investigation.  Allen Munro, Manhattan Beach

Lawmakers must now take action to restore faith in our institutions. This should be Congress top priority.

Craig Smith, Newport Beach

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To the editor: The White House is surprised by the reaction of the Democrats and many others. The Times quotes Deputy Press Secretary Sara Huckabee Sanders, responding to the question of whether President Trump anticipated this reaction, as saying, How could he have?

Really? Is the White House this out of touch with reality? If this is not part of a cover up, then this administrations top officials are foolish.

Add together Trumps remark that healthcare policy is unexpectedly complicated and his surprise over the reaction to Comeys dismissal, and one now has proof this White House is grossly unqualified. A timely exit back to bankruptcy court is Trumps best move.

Gavin Feehan, Granada Hills

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To the editor: It is clear that Comey was not fired for the reason that Trump gave: the former directors poor handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Pundits say Comeys dismissal has to do with the FBIs investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence. That is likely a big component.

I believe that Trump also wants to find a director who will pursue prosecution of Clinton. About a week ago, Trump telegraphed his continued irritation with Comeys decision last July to recommend no prosecution. He is like a dog with a bone  he spent years pursuing the Barack Obama birth certificate issue and appears to still be hanging onto his desire to lock her up.

It will be interesting to see the position taken by the new FBI director. Trump will almost certainly use it as a litmus test for candidates.

Kim Banco, Irvine

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To the editor: With due respect to pundits who are amused by Trumps naive belief that no one would be perturbed by his action, I dont believe that the chattering classes are the ones to whom Trump is sending a message.

Instead, he may be letting his possible co-conspirators in the Russian hack of the presidential campaign know that they do not need to accept any offer to cut a deal for testimony. The president has many powers at his disposal, and he will use them as needed to thwart any investigation.

He has their backs, no matter what.

Allen Munro, Manhattan Beach

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To the editor: If Trump was a student of history, which he is not, he might have read what was said of Emperor Napoleon III of France: that foolish ideas multiply in his head like rabbits.

Napoleon IIIs most foolish idea was to invade Mexico and impose as its emperor a European prince. Trumps foolish idea is to challenge democracy and the rule of law.

Ken Levy, Los Angeles

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Senate fails to back bill to delay the Aliso Canyon reopening, but lawmaker will try again Facebook

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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State Senate Democrats pass bills designed to protect against Trumps possible changes Facebook

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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 
Adding yet another twist to a shifting White House narrative, President Trump said Thursday that he had decided to fire FBI Director James B. Comey regardless of whether the Justice Department recommended it, calling the ousted director a showboat and a grandstander.

Trumps comments, which contradicted previous White House statements, further fueled the political and legal furor in Washington over his unceremonious sacking of Comey, who was leading an expanding FBI investigation into whether Trumps advisors cooperated with Russian intelligence agents during the presidential campaign last year.

In a bipartisan move that highlighted the mounting concern on Capitol Hill, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) invited Deputy Atty. Gen. Rod Rosenstein to brief all senators early next week on Comeys dismissal.

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Similarly, both parties leaders on the House Intelligence Committee, Reps. K. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) and Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), warned in a statement that their panel will be conducting rigorous oversight to ensure that the FBIs own investigation is not impeded or interfered with in any way.

The tumult overshadowed the White House and Congress for a third day in what appeared the most serious crisis of Trumps presidency so far. His aides scrambled to keep up with the presidents changing accounts, even as the acting FBI director separately rejected Trumps claim that Comeys tenure had left the bureau in turmoil.

Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does, Andrew McCabe, a career FBI agent who became acting director after Comeys abrupt ouster Tuesday, told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Look, hes a showboat, hes a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil.  President Trump commenting on James Comey

McCabe testified at an annual Senate hearing that reviews security threats around the globe. It instead featured extensive questioning about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Trumps campaign and Moscow, and Comeys dismissal.

McCabe said the FBI would continue to vigorously pursue the Russia investigation and would inform the committee if agents faced political interference from the White House.

You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, he said.

In an interview with Lester Holt of NBC News, Trump contradicted a statement released by the White House on Tuesday that said he had fired Comey based on the clear recommendations of Rosenstein and Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions.

I was going to fire regardless of recommendation, Trump said Thursday, repeating his intention a moment later.

Over the last two days, White House officials repeatedly had said Trump did not decide to sack Comey until after he met with Sessions and Rosenstein in the Oval Office on Monday.

At that meeting, Trump complained about Comey and asked the two top Justice Department officials for their opinions  then asked for them in writing. On Tuesday, the White House pointed in particular to Rosensteins response, a three-page memo that harshly criticized Comeys public statements about the FBI investigation into Hillary Clintons email practices.

But Rosenstein pushed to correct that narrative, resulting in a revised White House statement late Wednesday that made clear Trump already had been considering firing Comey. The Justice Department denied reports that Rosenstein threatened to resign over the dispute.

In his NBC interview, Trump seemed far more outraged by Comeys recent testimony to Congress than his criticism last year of Clintons email practices, which Trump had lauded at the time. The president said Thursday that Comeys penchant for publicity had damaged the bureau.

Look, hes a showboat, hes a grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil, Trump told Holt. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that.

In testimony to two congressional committees since March, Comey confirmed that the FBI was conducting a counter-intelligence investigation aimed at some of Trumps aides, forcefully rejected Trumps claims that President Obama had wiretapped Trump Tower, and said he was mildly nauseous at the thought his actions affected the election outcome.

Trump also described how he repeatedly pressed Comey for assurances he was not a target of the FBI investigation. While not illegal, its highly unusual for a sitting president to seek details on an ongoing criminal inquiry because of policies prohibiting political interference in FBI cases.

Trump said Comey told him he was not under investigation during a dinner at the White House after the inauguration. He said Comey asked to stay on as FBI director.

And I said Ill consider and well see what happens, Trump said. But we had a very nice dinner. And at that time he told me, You are not under investigation.

Trump distanced himself from those who worked for his presidential campaign, however. The FBI has interviewed at least two of his former advisors, and a grand jury in Virginia has issued subpoenas for documents.

Well, all I can tell you is  I know that Im not under investigation, Trump said. Me. Personally. Im not talking about campaigns. Im not talking about anything else. Im not under investigation.

Trump said he was not trying to stop the Russia investigation; he only wanted to speed it up.

This Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story; its an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won, he said.

McCabe, who was Comeys deputy, declined to confirm those conversations at the Senate hearing. But he said it is not standard FBI practice to inform subjects if they are under investigation. He also said it was unusual for someone not involved in a crime to ask the question.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House deputy press secretary, said Trump did nothing wrong by asking about the investigation while Comey was asking to keep his job. I dont see that as a conflict of interest, she said.

She dismissed questions about the shifting White House stories of the firing and said new leadership was needed at the FBI, partly to bring the Russia investigation to a swift close. I dont think that, you know, the back-and-forth makes that much difference, she said.

McCabe took issue with reports that Comey asked for additional resources for the Russia inquiry last week, saying that he was unaware of such a request and that the investigation had adequate resources.

It is my opinion and belief that the FBI will continue to pursue this investigation completely and vigorously, he said.

But he also took pains to emphasize the bureaus independence, vowing that he would not update the White House on the progress of the investigation.

A day after Sanders called the FBIs counter-intelligence investigation probably one of the smallest things that theyve got going on their plate, McCabe disagreed, calling it a highly significant investigation.

joseph.tanfani@latimes.com

david.cloud@latimes.com

brian.bennett@latimes.com

Times staff writer Michael A. Memoli contributed to this report.

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In Orange County on Tuesday night, Rep. Mimi Walters was nowhere to be found when more than 800 people showed up at an Irvine high school for an activist-organized town hall.

Outside Rep. Darrell Issas Vista office, hundreds of protesters, some dressed in hospital gowns or holding crutches, arrived for a sick in protesting his vote while the congressman raised money at a white sand beach resort in Florida. And about 130 miles north, the handful of people who showed up to the Simi Valley office of Rep. Steve Knight talked to a single staffer while others were met with a locked door.



For the record: A previous version of this story gave the distance between Issas Vista office and Knights office in Simi Valley as 80 miles. It is about 130 miles.

All three Republicans were reelected in districts won by Hillary Clinton and have been named as top targets by Democrats. All three, along with the rest of their Republican California colleagues, voted for the GOP plan to dismantle Obamacare last week. None of the three have announced public events in their districts this week even though the House is out of session.

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With the first major policy vote on President Trumps agenda complete, members of the so-called resistance and the members of Congress who represent them seem to have gone to their corners as they prepare for what Democrats hope will be a competitive 2018 election season. More and more, left-leaning activists in these Republican-held districts are shifting from attempts to engage with their congress member to promises to defeat them.

As a light drizzle fell Tuesday morning in Vista, at least 500 protesters toted umbrellas and signs reading Repeal and Replace Issa, alluding to a popular Republican rallying cry against Obamacare.

Protesters don hospital gowns and surgical masks outside Rep. Darrell Issas Vista office to protest his vote on the GOP healthcare bill. (Christine Mai-Duc / Los Angeles Times)

They sang an anti-Issa song to the melody of the Battle Hymn of the Republic: Issa, we will not grow tired/ Your replacement will be hired/ Pack your bags, because youre fired!/ Its time for you to go!

If anything good came of all this, its that [Issa] finally put his vote on the table so we know where he stood, Encinitas resident Ellen Montanari said afterward. He threw so many of his constituents under the bus. Others said they felt betrayed because Issa, who had kept mum on which way he was leaning, cast one of the final votes to pass the bill.

At the Vista district office of @DarrellIssa, 100+ people outside to protest his vote on Obamacare repeal and yelling," We saw your vote!" pic.twitter.com/JE1jhoszcT  Christine Mai-Duc (@cmaiduc) May 9, 2017

Inside Issas three-story building, the congressmans doors were locked, with signs warning of video surveillance and instructing visitors to ring a doorbell for service.

Issa has held at least one town hall meeting this year and has been known for impromptu appearances to address protesters outside his office. On Tuesday, Issa was at an annual fundraiser at the Longboat Key Club resort in Sarasota, Fla. Issa spokesman Calvin Moore said the congressman considers the healthcare bill a work in progress and is committed to strengthening the bill as it moves through the Senate, particularly the provisions addressing patients with preexisting conditions.

Continuing the status quo was unacceptable, Moore said. This is our shot and our best chance to begin undoing the damage that Obamacare has done to Californians healthcare.

Walters, unlike Issa and Knight, never waffled over her support for the GOP healthcare bill. In an interview at her Irvine district office Tuesday, spokesman T.W. Arrighi said that although the volume of calls and emails to the office ahead of the vote was heavy, many of the complaints came from people who live outside the district and were armed with wild misinformation pushed by liberal groups.

If she didnt vote for the bill, shed be doing a tremendous disservice and injustice to those who voted for her and wanted her to repeal and replace Obamacare, Arrighi said, pointing to the double-digit margins of Walters last two victories. Thats an overwhelming mandate for her to act the way she did.

A visitor log in Walters reception area showed about two dozen entries for constituents in April and early May, many of them asking her to hold a town hall. A television mounted to the wall was set to Fox News as the presidents dismissal of FBI Director James Comey unfolded, and phones rang only intermittently in the background in the otherwise quiet office.

A couple of hours later, hundreds gathered at Northwood High School a few miles away for an empty chair town hall that was scheduled to go on with or without their congresswoman. Walters didnt show. Her staff declined to say exactly where she was this week, but said she was meeting with constituents in the district.

Here's what the crowd looks like at the activist-organized "town hall" in Orange County in @MimiWaltersCA district. Walters is not here. pic.twitter.com/mAkkXyC3e4  Christine Mai-Duc (@cmaiduc) May 10, 2017

Before the town hall began, participants snapped photos with a handmade cardboard cutout of Walters dressed up as the title character of Wheres Waldo? and wrote messages on butcher paper for later delivery to her office.

In Walters absence, organizers played clips of Walters campaign ads and invited a panel of speakers to discuss topics such as the environment and immigration. Audience members asked questions about Walters positions and held up red and green cards to express approval or disagreement.

When a high-schooler stood to ask about how to improve bipartisanship and the political climate, law professor and panelist Jennifer Lee Koh replied, Real facts and real news. She added, to much applause, Not Fox News.

When the event ended, a trio of challengers already running against Walters chatted up potential voters.

Brooke Leys-Campeau, 41, of Tustin said she and other constituents grew frustrated after repeatedly trying to reach out to Walters. I wrote letters, sent emails, I called the office and my general impression was that she was not ever planning to legitimately engage with us, Leys-Campeau said. She had hoped she could convince her representative to at least stand up to [Trump] on certain issues, but said it soon became clear to her that Walters wouldnt. The shift went to, Well, weve got to get them out and get people in who will, she said.

Further north, three small groups of activists were able to speak with one of Knights staffers in Simi Valley, but by the time Peggie Noisette showed up later that afternoon, the door was locked and there was no answer. They should be responsive to their constituents, said Noisette, 76, of Simi Valley, as she slipped a letter under the door.

Later Tuesday, Knight, who is a military veteran, spoke to a small gathering at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Palmdale.

A spokesman for Knight defended his vote, noting that Knight sponsored an amendment adding $8 billion over five years to help cover insurance costs for those with preexisting health conditions, an approach advocates and policy analysts say fell flat in California and other states until Obamacare came along.

Rep. Knight continues to fight for protections for individuals with preexisting conditions, which is why he is a coauthor of the Upton-Long amendment, spokesman Daniel Outlaw said in an email.

Not everyone was lying low. Rep. Jeff Denham, who won reelection by just 3% in November, was grilled by constituents at a small gathering in the Central Valley town of Riverbank. Denham, who held no other public events this week, mostly took the heated questions in stride but suggested at one point that the Democrat Party had organized detractors to face off with him.

I am suffering and you dont care, said one woman who confronted Denham. I have talked to you  I have been civil and I get blank Blah, blah blah in response.

I know the Democrat Party has organized this this morning, Denham replied, before the group jeered at him.

Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist and editor of the nonpartisan election guide California Target Book, said the politicians responses could reflect how at risk they actually feel.

In the case of Denham, facing the music would make a lot of sense, Sragow said, given that Denham is one of only two California Republicans in Congress from a targeted district whose voters have shown a particular propensity to pick Democrats in statewide and presidential contests. The others may be more inclined to avoid the confrontation and the inherent risks in a town hall setting.

christine.maiduc@latimes.com

For more on California politics, follow @cmaiduc.

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As a large audience packed Temple Emanu El in Burbank Tuesday night for the 33rd annual Days of Remembrance commemoration of the Holocaust, the need to stand up against a renewed perception of global fear and hatred hung in the air.

It is a debt owed not only to those in the past, or of those from the past still present, but of those in the future, said Rabbi John Carrier of Temple Emanu El as he started the service. A future of which no one will fear murder for where they were born.

The ceremony and program, sponsored by the Burbank Human Relations Council, brought together an unprecedented 17 Burbank churches and synagogues as well as a mosque.

The crowd of at least 200 people heard from Holocaust survivors and lit candles to honor victims of all genocides.

Six candles were lit for the six million Jews killed by the Nazis, and a seventh candle was lit for five million other people, including the Polish, Russians, political dissidents, LGBT people and the physically and mentally handicapped who were murdered by the Nazis.

The seventh candle also honored the millions of genocide victims, including Armenians, Africans, the indigenous people of North America and South America and the multitude of Africans who died during the years of slavery while fighting for civil rights.

The Nazi assault against the Jews was unique, said David Meyerhof, a member of the human relations council. It was a total extermination of a group of people. No Jews were exempt.

Meyerhof organized this years commemoration, taking over from council member Sylvia Sutton, who is currently homebound, Meyerhof said. Sutton was instrumental in starting the annual event in Burbank.

Meyerhofs mother, Miriam, father, Walter, and grandfather, Otto, were among theindividuals honored during the candle-lighting ceremony.

Miriam Meyerhof escaped Germany on the Kindertransport rescue effort just prior to the beginning of World War II. Walter and Otto Meyerhof, who was a 1922 Nobel Prize winner in medicine or physiology, were both rescued by American journalist Varian Fry.

While all of David Meyerhofs immediate family survived, other members of his family were murdered in Auschwitz, Riga and Theresienstadt.

Over the last few months, the shadows of fascism have entered our communities, offices and schools, Meyerhof said. Today, people of all faiths and nationalities must stand together against hate.

Keynote speaker Erika Jacoby survived Auschwitz with her mother. As a young girl, they were both deported on March 19, 1944, when Germany occupied Hungary. Her memoir I Held the Sun in My Hands is a recount of her time spent at Auschwitz.

She was among those who escaped selection by Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi officer and physician who was responsible for those selected to be killed in gas chambers. With her mother, and her unrelenting faith, they endured and outlasted the Nazis.

Her film Swimming in Auschwitz was also available for purchase at the commemoration.

She said 90% of Jews in Hungary lost their lives in the Holocaust. It happened so quickly and so thoroughly, she said. When I came back [after liberation], I could not stay there or eat there. I felt nothing.

On the days leading to the liberation of Auschwitz, Jacoby said there were more shootings, and access to newspapers indicated American troops were getting close.

One day, we woke up and there were no guards, Jacoby said. They escaped. We had no celebration. We just tried to get out. I dug a hole underneath the electric fence and I walked.

Other local survivors recognized during the commemoration were Hilda Fogelson, from Berlin; Herbert Murez, from Vienna; Dorothy Greenstein, from Otwock, Poland; and Judy Mason-Benedict in honor of her mother, Doris Mason, born Doris Franzelore Goldschmidt in Schluchter, Germany.

After the commemoration, Daniel Amin Colman, congregant from the Burbank Islamic Center who read one of the 18 prayers from Temple Emanu Els religious co-sponsors, said he felt welcomed into Burbanks interfaith community.

He said about 500 people attend his mosque, and hes noticing that now there is second generation at the Burbank Islamic Center  and in the greater region  branching out into the interfaith communities, whereas the first generation focused more on first building its own foundation.

Im very grateful to be a part of the event, he said. It feels important to show the solidarity.

Matt Sanderson is a free-lance writer for Times Community News
After beating out dozens of competitors, UC Irvine student Crystal Sanchez took home the $25,000 grand prize in the 2015 National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge on Tuesday in New York City.

The Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship, a New York-based organization that works to help students refine their business skills, holds the competition to give aspiring business leaders from across the country the chance to present their ideas before a judging panel of chief executives and company founders.

Students pitched eco-friendly candles, a food truck for healthy smoothies, a needle-free device to help diabetics monitor their blood sugar levels and an app to help students find scholarships.

Sanchez won for Guardian Locket, which, while appearing to be a piece of jewelry, acts as a security signal. If attacked, the wearer can push a button on the locket and a cellular chip embedded in the necklace will send an alert to local authorities and emergency contacts.

Her idea was unique and special because she addressed a critical problem we have in society  sexual assault, said Estelle Reyes, executive director of the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship in Greater Los Angeles. It wasnt just a business she was creating based on a hobby or general interest she had. She made it her personal mission to address a big issue.

Sanchez began developing the idea as a 12th-grader at Environmental Charter High School in Lawndale.

Her prize included $5,000 in support for her business and a $5,000 college scholarship. The rest is devoted to various technical products and services.

I am thrilled and honored to win the National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge, Sanchez said in a statement. Ive learned so much from my teachers, classmates and fellow competitors.

The competition also awarded $5,000 each to runners-up Kenneth Huertas of Downey and Urbana Anam and Jannatul Rowshan of Queens, N.Y.

Huertas presented his idea for an environmentally friendly auto detailing service called A Touch of Eco. Anam and Rowshan presented Urbanalifa Hijabs, a business for fashionable and customizable head coverings for Muslim women.
Two men were arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday on suspicion of robbing a bank earlier that day in Huntington Beach, police said Friday.

Huntington Beach police responded at 2:10 p.m. Wednesday to a report of a robbery at the Bank of America branch at 18691 Main St.

Witnesses told police that a man with his shirt pulled over his mouth entered the bank, demanded cash and then fled in an SUV, authorities said.

The man had his hand in his jacket pocket, but it wasnt clear whether he had a weapon, police said.

A bank employee got a glimpse of the SUVs license plate and gave the information to police.

Through a records check on the plate and some investigation, detectives developed information that the suspect and a friend were on their way to the airport to fly out of the country, police said in a news release.

Both men were found at Los Angeles International Airport with assistance from the Los Angeles Police Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Marshals Service and Federal Bureau of Investigation, police said.

Wesley Lewison, 50, of Huntington Beach and Gregory Roberts, 47, of San Francisco were arrested on suspicion of robbery and conspiracy.

Both were booked into Orange County Jail without bail, according to jail records.

Customs and Border Protection spokesman Jaime Ruiz said the men were trying to board a flight to Germany when federal agents detained them.

They were quite surprised when they saw officers and FBI agents, Ruiz said. When they approached them, one of them resisted. They knew they were caught.

Ruiz said one of the men had $22,000 in his possession and the other had $200.

hannah.fry@latimes.com

Twitter: @HannahFryTCN

UPDATES:

5:20 p.m.: This article was updated with information from Jaime Ruiz.

This article was originally published at 12:20 p.m.
Jordan Wetzel lost her younger sister to terminal brain cancer six years ago.

Since then Wetzel has wanted to write a book sharing what its like to be a cancer sibling.



For the record: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said Mckenna Claire Wetzel died of terminal brain cancer eight years ago. It was six.

Now nearing the end of her final year at Edison High School in Huntington Beach, Wetzel will present her self-published book, Butterfly Sisters: The Life of Pediatric Cancer Siblings, to a panel of judges Saturday for her senior project.

The assignment was a gateway for Wetzel to begin and follow through with her passion project.

When I started the book I didnt know what I was going to write about, Wetzel, now 18, said. I started with my family story and built up to my own story and then added other cancer siblings to it.

In 2011, Mckenna Claire Wetzel, 7, was diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a tumor found at the base of the brain. Mckenna died six months after she was diagnosed, two weeks before her eighth birthday.

Since then the family has created the Mckenna Claire Wetzel Foundation and run it out of their Huntington Beach home.

Throughout the year-long book process, Wetzel dedicated about 784 hours to writing, interviewing cancer siblings, rewriting, editing and publishing.

It was cathartic but grueling, she said, but she was determined to offer a different perspective in her book.

I feel like cancer siblings dont get much appreciation when it comes to the cancer world, Wetzel said, describing them as silent supporters. In the headlines, its always about the parents and the kids themselves  theres never talk about siblings.

Jordan Wetzel, a senior at Edison High School, self-published this book about losing her sister, Mckenna Claire, 7, to brain cancer. (Scott Smeltzer / Daily Pilot)

While at first hesitant, Wetzel said she needed to include that she visits a therapist because cancer siblings often keep feelings to themselves.

Wetzel tries explaining the confusion she felt when she first heard of her sisters diagnosis. Then she describes how she burst into tears when she saw Mckennas cells in a petri dish after the family decided to donate Mckennas brain to Stanford University for research.

Apart from the harsh realities of cancer, Wetzel recounts visiting Hawaii with her family because of a wish granted by the Make A Wish Foundation and selling lemonade on her street with Mckenna.

Its hard to explain a sister, Wetzel said, but its someone who is always going to be there, no matter what happens. And I feel like shes still watching and encouraging me.

When her mother offered to help edit her rough drafts or her dad wanted to get a quick read of what she had written so far, Wetzel explained that she wanted the project to be something she did entirely on her own.

Even after she presents her book to a panel of judges for a letter grade, Wetzel plans to keep raising awareness and helping other cancer siblings.

Her next goal is to create a pen pal system specifically for cancer siblings, she said.

Priscella.Vega@latimes.com

Twitter: @vegapriscella
Laguna Beach is not afraid to try something new when it comes to transportation.

The city experimented last year with a program in which trolleys moved through some of Lagunas neighborhoods, expanding their reach from traditional routes along South Coast Highway and Laguna Canyon Road.

On Tuesday, the City Council unanimously agreed on rules for a pilot program involving seniors and Uber.

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For two months beginning in mid-June, Laguna Beach seniors can schedule free rides  up to 40 a month on the ride-sharing app, according to a city staff report.

For Uber, the partnership is the first-of-its kind related to senior transportation, Jarryd Davis, Ubers regulatory transit partnership manager for Southern California, told the council.

Laguna is budgeting $90,000 for a program city staff members say complements other transportation options, including rides through the nonprofit Sallys Fund.

The council approved the trial program in March, asking staff to return with guidelines.

Council members tweaked some of the eligibility rules the city had proposed, such as being 55 years or older and unable to drive a car.

Does someone need to demonstrate this to staff? Councilman Bob Whalen asked, eliciting chuckles from the audience.

Whalen suggested someone who is 55 and in need of a ride to a medical appointment should be able to get the discount, regardless of their ability to drive.

Councilman Steve Dicterow recommended that residents with a disability also be eligible for reduced fares, no matter their ages.

Under the policy, seniors would be reimbursed half the cost of a ride up to $5 within Laguna Beach and up to $8 outside of the city, the staff report said. These rates would become effective after two months.

Discounted prices would not affect a drivers pay rate. Laguna would subsidize the discount, City Manager John Pietig said.

Drivers will provide rides to medical appointments up to 15 miles outside city limits.

City officials said the service is not meant to replace Sallys Fund, which offers free rides to passengers at least 60 years old.

About half the rides per month take seniors to the Susi Q in a van. Door-to-door service and certain additional assistance for seniors in need have been available as well.

Uber rides will be relegated to Uber X vehicles, which allow up to three passengers. One fare will be charged per ride, regardless of the number of occupants.

Rides will be offered from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday.

The city will hold two outreach meetings to educate the public: 1 to 2 p.m. May 18 and 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. June 7. Both meetings will be held at the Laguna Beach Community & Susi Q Center at 380 Third St.

Residents need to sign up for an Uber account, fill out an application and bring it to the Susi Q so the the city can verify eligibility.

The city will assist residents who need help navigating the Uber app or scheduling rides by other means.

Applications will be available at the Susi Q, at City Hall at 505 Forest Ave. and online.

The city will gather data for a four-month period and report back to the council.

bryce.alderton@latimes.com

Twitter: @AldertonBryce
Tour Italy on foot and by kayak on a new nine-day adventure offered by Tofino Expeditions that links the Adriatic and Mediterranean seas.

Participants will spend two days exploring the Adriatic coast by kayak, then cross the Apennines to Assisi for lunch and a private tour.

Another two days are spent paddling in Lago Trasimeno, the largest lake in central Italy, and exploring several of its islands.

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The tour concludes with a day of kayaking in the Mediterranean along the Monte Argentario peninsula. Highlights include visits to the towns of Castiglione del Lago, Pienza and Sienna.

Dates: July 8-16, Sept. 2-10. Availability may be limited.

Price: $4,190 per person, double occupancy. Includes accommodations in agriturisimos (farm stays), most meals, ground transportation, entry fees, sea kayaks and equipment.

Info: Tofino Expeditions, (800) 677-0877

travel@latimes.com

@latimestravel

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Las Vegas yoga studio Silent Savasana has partnered with Maverick Helicopters for a one-of-a-kind experience that takes visitors to the red rock formations of Valley of Fire State Park, about 60 miles northeast of Sin City.

Heli-yoga Limitless, as its called, begins with a ride from a hotel on the Strip to Mavericks heliport beside McCarran International Airport. From there, guests fly in an Airbus Eco-Star helicopter to one of the highest points in the park.

Theres time to explore the other-worldly landscape before the 75-minute yoga session begins. Participants are given wireless headphones to listen to music selections and instructions.

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Silent Savasana classes emphasize balance, discipline, focus, determination and strength of mind, a news release says,

On the return trip, the pilot takes his passengers flight-seeing over downtown Las Vegas and high above the Strip.

The 2-hour excursion costs $3,499. A yoga mat, water and Champagne toast are included.

Info and reservations: Heli-yoga Limitless, (702) 261-0007.

Want something a little less pricey? Drive 90 minutes from the Strip to Valley of Fire State Park and create your own yoga moment. The 40,000 acres provide plenty of open spaces to chill out and practice your technique.

Admission is $10 per vehicle, and its open year round.

Allow time to check out the amazing Native American petroglyphs while youre there, too. (Theyre signposted and many are easy to find.)

Info: Valley of Fire State Park

travel@latimes.com

Twitter: @latimestravel

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April 9 marked the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the Bataan Death March in the Philippines, in which tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers died during World War II .

The forced march came after the defeat of the Allied army in the Battle for Bataan, four months after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. At the time, the Philippines was a U.S. colony, and a combined force of about 120,000 Filipino and American troops had been fighting to keep the islands from falling to invading Japanese forces.

Without reinforcements or supplies, the Allied forces surrendered after four months. Many were wounded, sick or weakened by the long and bloody battle. The surrender is the largest recorded in Filipino and American history.

American prisoners of war use improvised litters to carry casualties in April 1942 as they near a Japanese POW camp about 65 miles inland from the Bataan Peninsula. (Corbis via Getty Images) (Historical / Corbis via Getty Images)

The march began on the Bataan Peninsula and stretched 65 miles northeast to a prisoner of war camp inland. Without adequate food or water and struggling through intense tropical heat and humidity, many prisoners died along the way. Rampant brutality and wanton killing by Japanese soldiers characterized the march. Many POWs suffered from dysentery and malaria, and the Japanese summarily shot, bayoneted or beheaded those too weak to push ahead. Of the estimated 80,000 POWs who began the Bataan Death March, about 54,000 survived the ordeal.

During a recent Fulbright fellowship to the Philippines, I documented the route of the Bataan Death March and tried to capture the essence of the soldiers who struggled, died or were lucky enough to survive. Memorials and markers commemorating the march dot the landscape and serve as reminders in the daily lives of many Filipinos. The trail is easy to follow.

Clockwise from top left: Young men from Bagac reenact the Battle of Pockets, a counteroffensive against the Japanese on the Bataan Peninsula during World War II. Jayson Rafedo, left, and Raymond de la Pena take a break from repairing the road in Bagac, along the route of the Bataan Death March. Philippine Army cadets wait at the base of Mt. Samat to attend Day of Valor events to honor the fallen Filipino and American soldiers of World War II. Markers commemorate the route of the 112-kilometer Bataan Death March 75 years ago. (Jason Reblando / For The Times)

I met a woman selling homemade food at a roadside stand and imagined that long ago, she could have been one of many trying to provide nourishment to the suffering POWs.

I came across a farmer drying his rice harvest along the road. He methodically raked grains and covered his head from the blistering sun.

I talked with Florentino Platero, a veteran who served as a post commander during the war and stills celebrates the Bataan Day national holiday, which is now called Araw ng Kagitingan, or the Day of Valor.

Echoes of WWII punctuate the lush Philippine landscape. A motorized tricycle parked in a field harked back to a scorching day long ago. Verdant mountainsides and rice paddies lined the route. A warm breeze blew through the fronds of a coconut palm, alone in a dusty field.

I had many miles to go. And straight ahead, the road rolled through the undulating heat.
Last month, oil started flowing from a pipeline in coastal Myanmar to southern China, bypassing the Strait of Malacca choke point through which most of the larger nations crude imports pass by ship.

Earlier this year, Africas first electric transnational railway began running from landlocked Ethiopia to Djibouti, where China has set up a foreign military outpost. And last year, an inaugural freight train from eastern China arrived in Iran days after the easing of international sanctions on the Islamic republic.

Such projects represent Chinas most ambitious steps yet to reshape half the globe into a world order tethered more to its orbit than the United States and Europes.

Chinese officials aim to further that goal when 28 heads of state arrive this Sunday for a two-day forum in Beijing, where they will negotiate a vision for the so-called Belt and Road Initiative. The multi-trillion dollar proposal is President Xi Jinping s signature foreign policy project  an infrastructure plan that spans more than 60 countries and about one third of the global economy.

Workers last month install wires on the Golden Bridge of Silk Road structure outside the National Convention Center in Beijing. (Andy Wong / Associated Press) (Andy Wong / AP) (Andy Wong / AP)

The path loosely re-creates ancient Silk Road trade routes through Central Asia and the Indian Ocean. Chinas leaders call it an opportunity for global cooperation  orange banners lining Beijing highways promise common prosperity  but it will also spread Chinese investment and influence across Asia, Europe and Africa.

This forum offers Xi the chance to burnish his legacy before a Communist Party leadership shuffle this fall. It also allows him to reinforce China as a geopolitical alternative amid the United States turn inward under President Trump and the anti-free trade sentiments coursing through Europe.

State media has nicknamed the project Globalization 2.0.

The West and East are switching their roles, said Ni Lexiong, professor emeritus at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law. China is awakened.

Heres some more on what you need to know about the initiative and its first major forum.

Whose belt, what road?

The program has undergone several name reincarnations  from Silk Road Economic Belt to One Belt, One Road. (Officials avoided the literal English acronym for the summit, which would have read BARF. They are calling it the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, or BRF.)

The belt refers to a land route from western China through Central Asia to Europe. The road links to Europe by sea, connecting the country with Southeast Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Some analysts liken it to the Marshall Plan, the American-led infrastructure initiative that rebuilt European allies after World War II.

Xi launched the mega-project in 2013 to fuel growth, reduce excess capacity in industries such as steel, and enhance Chinas role abroad. Officials label it a win-win solution that benefits the entire region, particularly underdeveloped nations.

Four years on, its success is uncertain. Separate bridge and rail projects label themselves part of the initiative. No central institution tracks progress.

A train filled with textiles and T-shirts now chugs 7,500 miles from the Chinese factory town of Yiwu to London, cutting the delivery time of a ship by weeks. But its costlier and carries smaller amounts.

Certain efforts have sparked protests in places such as Sri Lanka, where some residents in the southern port town of Hambantota say Chinese firms take jobs and threaten national sovereignty. Pakistan is sending 10,000 soldiers to guard construction of an economic corridor, worth more than $50 billion, from militant attacks. India also sees the project as a challenge to its sovereignty, as it cuts through territory claimed by the country.

China is going to really struggle to win peoples trust, said Tom Miller, author of Chinas Asian Dream, a recent book about the New Silk Road. The forum needs to persuade people what they are doing is win-win and not a double-win for China.

Whos attending the forum?

Hundreds of senior officials and dignitaries will convene at a Beijing lakeside retreat, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. North Korea also will send a delegation, despite deteriorating ties with its ally China.

Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni plans to attend, the one representative from the Group of Seven nations, a disappointment for China. Matthew Pottinger, one of the Trump administrations main Asia policymakers, is expected to lead a small group. Heads of the World Bank , International Monetary Fund and the United Nations also are expected.

Bright orange and yellow signs plastered at Beijing bus stops announce the summits mutual benefits. Last week, the official New China News Agency ran more than 250 articles mentioning the initiative.

The state-run China Daily newspaper referred to the project as a new trajectory for mankind. It also released a series of videos this week featuring an American journalist telling his daughter a bedtime story  about the infrastructure plan.

Whats this meeting actually going to accomplish?

Analysts dont anticipate big surprises. Most deals, they say, were scripted long in advance.

As with much in China, the symbolism counts.

Officials are expected to emphasize the globalization Xi championed in his January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Theyll also try to soothe participants anxious about Chinas intentions and Western countries worried about transparency and oversight.

How, for example, will the project address corruption in Central Asia or environmental standards in Laos? What are the consequences to investing in highly volatile regions with questionable human rights and business records?

The summit is meant to satisfy, especially Western requests, for greater institutionalism of the whole project, said Jan Gaspers, head of the European China Policy Unit at Mercator Institute for China Studies in Berlin. Theres good reason to be skeptical.

Whos going to pay for this new Silk Road?

Right now, mostly China.

The government has created a $40-billion Silk Road Fund for the infrastructure projects. Money will also come from the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, a Shanghai institution for BRICS, an association of emerging markets led by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

China could funnel investments worth up to $502 billion over the next five years, according to a recent Credit Suisse report. Most funds, it said, will flow into countries such as Russia, Egypt, the Philippines and Iran.

Much of Chinese financing, officials insist, will come in the way of loans. But lending money to less stable regions also creates new hazards.

If it was easy to say, Were going to dump a bunch of money in Kazakhstan, it probably would have already been done by entities that have experience in this, said Andrew Polk, director of China research at Medley Global Advisors in Beijing.

Theres a risk China overextends itself abroad and some of this backfires.

Nicole Liu in the Los Angeles Times Beijing bureau contributed to this report.

Meyers is a special correspondent.

Twitter: @jessicameyers

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Francesco Schettino, the former cruise ship captain sentenced to 16 years for steering the Costa Concordia into rocks, was finally jailed Friday after his lengthy appeals process ran out.

Dubbed Captain Coward for fleeing the capsizing cruise ship in 2012 as 32 passengers and crew drowned, Schettino handed himself over to police on Friday evening after Italys supreme court upheld his 2015 conviction.

I trust in the justice system; the verdict must be respected. Im handing myself in right now, he told his lawyer, Saverio Senese, by telephone after the verdict, adding he was standing outside a jail in Rome.

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Schettino, 56, was convicted for shipwreck, manslaughter and abandoning ship after he steered too close to rocks on the Italian island of Giglio on Jan. 13, 2012, while showing off to a Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

The collision tore a hole in the hull of the 114,000-ton ship, which limped on without power before going aground in shallow water close to the shore of Giglio.

This file photo taken on Jan. 16, 2012, shows the wrecked cruise liner Costa Concordia in the harbor of the Tuscan island of Giglio after it ran aground after hitting underwater rocks. (Andreas Solaro / AFP/Getty Images)

Appearing bewildered and indecisive as the cruise ship slowly toppled onto its side, Schettino delayed lowering lifeboats then jumped into one himself, as 32 of the 4,229 passengers and crew on board died.

Some were sucked underwater by whirlpools caused by the keeling ship as they struggled to swim the short distance to shore, while others died trapped in the ships flooded elevator shaft.

Schettino was turned into both a laughingstock and a national embarrassment in Italy after a recording emerged of a coast guard official, Gregorio De Falco, urging him by radio to get back on board to look for passengers.

You may have managed to save yourself from the sea, but it will really go badly. ... I will create a lot of trouble for you. Get on board, damn it! De Falco shouted as Schettino meekly tried to justify being onshore.

Schettino later claimed he slipped and fell into the lifeboat. At his first trial, his then lawyer, Domenico Pepe, said, No one but Spider-Man could have stayed on his feet on that deck, which was tilted at 40 degrees with a slippery floor.

Schettino added, I will fight forever to prove that I did not abandon the Costa Concordia, a claim that prompted further jibes from the public as his name became synonymous with cowardice.

May God have pity on him because we cant, one prosecutor said.

During Schettinos two appeals, during which he was not held in custody, his lawyers tried to blame his Indonesian helmsman for the crash and claimed the breakdown of the ships emergency generator slowed evacuation.

The ships owner, Costa Crociere, paid a fine of 1 million euros for its role in the tragedy to avoid a trial, a payment that was criticized as being too low. Four crew members and a member of Costa Crocieres onshore emergency unit received short sentences for manslaughter and negligence after plea bargaining.

On Friday, defense attorney Senese asked to show the court a video detailing alleged malfunctions in the ships watertight doors, which he said contributed to the ships filling rapidly with water after it was holed. His request was denied.

Proof of that malfunction was destroyed, he said, when the ship was raised, towed to Genoa in Italy and scrapped.

In their summing up before the supreme court, prosecutors accused Schettino of unprecedented negligence and bringing dishonor to his profession.

Schettino was absent during the supreme court hearings, following memorable appearances at his initial trial, where he broke down in tears while addressing judges.

After the final verdict Friday, Senese said, I am extremely bitter that only Schettino has paid for this. As always happens in Italy, we need scapegoats.

On Twitter, Italians angrily claimed that Schettinos 16-year sentence would likely be reduced thanks to Italys generous cutting of jail time for good behavior.

But Michelina Suriano, a lawyer representing the victims, said she was grateful that the long appeals process had come to an end.

Finally, Schettino begins to pay for his wrongdoing, she said.

Kington is a special correspondent.

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A roadside bomb struck a convoy carrying the deputy leader of Pakistans Senate on Friday, killing 25 people and wounding more than 30 others, hospital sources said.

Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, leader of an Islamist political party, was wounded and his driver and private secretary were killed instantly in the attack in restive Baluchistan province .

Allah has saved my life, Haideri told the Samaa television channel.

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The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on its Aamaq news agency, according to the Associated Press.

The blast occurred in the Mastung district, about 30 miles southeast of the provincial capital, Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan. Haideris vehicle, designed to be bullet-resistant, was badly damaged along with several other vehicles in the convoy.

Sources said Haideri, general-secretary of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam party, had attended a graduation ceremony at which he conferred degrees on graduates of a seminary affiliated with his party.

Saleem Shahid, a senior journalist in Quetta, said the blast occurred when Haideris motorcade was heading from the seminary to another location.

Dr. Sher Ahmad, head of Mastung Hospital, said 25 bodies had been brought to the hospital after the attack. More than 30 people were wounded, many seriously, he said.

Haideri was being treated at Combined Military Hospital, a Pakistani army facility in Quetta.

It was all very sudden, Haideri said. Broken pieces of the windshield hit me. I am injured, but safe.

Haideris party, led by Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has significant support in Baluchistan. The party was a staunch ally of the Taliban-led Islamist government in Afghanistan that was toppled by the 2001 U.S.-led military invasion.

Rehman has survived at least three assassination attempts, including in Quetta in 2014. His party is part of Pakistans governing coalition, in an alliance with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

Baluchistan, along the border with Afghanistan, has long been beset by militant violence, including by ethnic Baluch groups agitating for self-government. Earlier this month, Pakistan closed its Chaman border crossing in Baluchistan after clashes between security forces from the two countries.

The Pakistani army said that nine civilians were killed and more than 40 wounded when Afghan forces fired on government teams carrying out a population census in border villages. In response, the Pakistani army said it killed dozens of Afghan soldiers, a claim that Kabul has denied.

Ali is a special correspondent. Times staff writer Shashank Bengali contributed to this report from Mumbai, India.

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A century has passed since three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, saw apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, according to Catholic leaders.

In Bethlehem, Holy Infancy Parish is marking the occasion with a special Mass and other events Saturday, the Diocese of Allentown says.

Holy Infancy, East Fourth and Taylor streets on South Side, is the only church in the five-county diocese where Mass is celebrated in Portuguese every week.

The special Mass is set for 5:30 p.m. Saturday, to be followed by an outdoor Rosary procession at 6:30 p.m. Both the Mass and the Rosary will be prayed in Portuguese, the diocese says.

The story of the Fatima apparitions describes the Blessed Virgin Mary, whom Catholics venerate as the Mother of God, appearing six times to the three shepherd children near the Portuguese town between May 13 and Oct. 13, 1917.

"Appearing to the children, the Blessed Virgin told them that she had been sent by God with a message for every man, woman and child then living," the Allentown Diocese says. "Coming at a time when civilization was torn by World War I and other violence, she promised that heaven would grant peace to the world if her requests for prayer, reparation and consecration were heard and obeyed."

Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the Fatima shrine in Portugal on Friday and Saturday to canonize two of the three children, Francisco and Jacinta Marto, The Associated Press reports.

On May 1, during their Provincial meeting, the Bishops of Pennsylvania affirmed their desire to dedicate each Catholic diocese and eparchy statewide to the protection of the Blessed Mother, according to a statement from the Diocese of Scranton.

"Our world today is just as much in need of healing and mercy as it was a century ago, and so we invoke the tender care of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Our Lord and our Mother," the Most Reverend Joseph C. Bambera, bishop of Scranton, stated.

Lengthy historic investigations. Decrees of "heroic virtues." Miraculous cures.

Here's more from the AP on this weekend's canonization:

HOW ARE SAINTS MADE?

A postulator - essentially the cheerleader spearheading the project - gathers testimony and documentation and presents the case to the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints. If the congregation's experts agree the candidate lived a virtuous life, the case is forwarded to the pope, who signs a decree attesting to the candidate's "heroic virtues."

If the postulator finds someone was miraculously healed by praying for the candidate's intercession, and if the cure can't be medically explained, the case is presented to the congregation as the possible miracle needed for beatification. Panels of doctors, theologians, bishops and cardinals must certify that the cure was instantaneous, complete and lasting - and was due to the intercession of the saintly candidate. If convinced, the congregation sends the case to the pope, who signs a decree saying the candidate can be beatified.

A second miracle is needed to declare the candidate a saint.

Martyrs - people killed for their faith - can be beatified without a miracle. A miracle is needed, however, for martyrs to be canonized.

___

THE MARTO CASE, A FIRST

Francisco and Jacinta Marto, who will be canonized Saturday, will become the Catholic Church's youngest-ever non-martyred saints. They are the youngsters who, along with their cousin, reported the visions of the Madonna 100 years ago.

Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martians pushed their case through the first phase of beatification when he was in charge of the Vatican's saint-making office. He says it was the first of its kind.

"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," Saraiva Martins said in an interview.

But the Marto siblings earned the designation by refusing - despite threats they would be fried in olive oil - to recant their visions. Aged 9 and 7 at the time, they held firm in their faith, and ultimately Portuguese church officials declared the apparitions authentic.

___

AND THE MARTO MIRACLE?

The miracle attributed to the Martos' intercession concerns the inexplicable healing of a Brazilian boy, Lucas Baptista, who in 2013 fell from a window and suffered such a serious brain injury that doctors said he likely wouldn't live.

His parents, Joao Baptista and his wife, Lucila Yurie, broke their silence on Thursday in Fatima to tell the story of his recovery on the eve of Francis' arrival. Doctors had told them that even if Lucas survived, he would be severely mentally disabled or be in a vegetative state.

The boy, however, woke up a few days later and is "completely fine ... with no after-effects," his father said.

"We thank God for Lucas' cure and we know in all faith from our heart that this miracle was obtained with the help of the little shepherd children Francisco and Jacinta," he said. "We feel immense joy to know that this was the miracle that led to this canonization, but mostly we feel blessed by the friendship of these two children who helped our boy and now help our family."

___

FRANCIS' REFORMS

Francis has issued two major reforms to the multi-million dollar saint-making process after the Vatican uncovered gross abuses that were revealed in two books. The books estimated the average cost for each beatification at around 500,000 euros ($550,000), with much of the proceeds going to a few lucky people with contracts to do the time-consuming investigations into the candidates' lives. The books found that well-financed causes sprinted ahead while poorer ones languished.

Francis last year issued new rules requiring external vigilance over individual Vatican bank accounts created for beatification and canonization causes, as well as regular budgeting and accounting to make sure the donations from the faithful are being used as intended.

The second reform concerned the miracle certification process: One new rule stipulates a potential miracle can no longer be presented for consideration if it fails to pass before the board of medical experts three times. Secrecy must be respected at all times. Medical experts can't have any contact with the postulator. Another rule says experts can be paid only via bank transfer, no longer in cash.

___

BUT HASN'T FRANCIS DONE AWAY WITH MIRACLES?

In his zeal to give the faithful even more role models, Francis has on several occasions done away with the Vatican's rules requiring two miracles. His most famous waiver involved St. John XXIII, whom Francis canonized along with St. John Paul II in April 2014. The Vatican said Francis had the authority to dispense with the miracle requirement for John.

He's not the only rule-breaking pope, however. John Paul waived the normal five-year waiting period for Mother Teresa's beatification process to begin and launched it a year after her 1997 death.

Pope Benedict XVI subsequently waived the five-year waiting period for John Paul in launching his beatification process weeks after his 2005 death.

In the end, John Paul beat Mother Teresa's record-fast beatification by just a few days when he was beatified May 1, 2011.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Pennsylvania State Police issued their findings Thursday on what led a tractor-trailer headed west on Interstate 78 to crash through the center concrete median and across all eastbound lanes last week.

The driver of the 1999 Mack Maxicruise towing a flat-bed trailer crashed first into the rear bumper of a 2017 Chevrolet Impala about 3:20 p.m. May 4 near mile-marker 51 of I-78 West in Upper Macungie Township, according to state police at Fogelsville.

The cab then struck the jersey barrier separating the westbound lanes from eastbound traffic and traveled across all eastbound lanes, police said.

The Mack came to rest on its driver's side on the ramp to Route 22 East where it breaks off from I-78 East. The Impala, its rear crumpled, came to rest facing east on the westbound right shoulder.

Neither the tractor-trailer driver, 47-year-old Dawn Hildreth, of St. Petersburg, Florida, nor two occupants in the Impala were injured, police said. Police did not identify the driver and passenger in the Chevrolet.

Police said they cited Hildreth for following too closely.

The Mack had disabling damage to its front bumper, hood, engine and front axle and was towed by Yocum Towing & Recovery. The Impala also had disabling damage, to its rear bumper, trunk deck and rear passenger compartment, and was also towed by Yocum.

The section of median damaged was restored the same day.

Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
MORE: Freedom High mourns loss of 19-year-old grad

If you had nowhere to go, Brenda Zellner always had a place for you at her table.

The 70-year-old from Upper Nazareth Township was a natural at designing, cooking, painting and just being a mom, recalled her youngest daughter, Kristen Zellner, of Harrisburg.

Brenda held an annual open house gathering each January just so familiar faces the family hadn't seen in awhile could reconnect. At Christmas, the halls were decked and a large lasagna was baking in the oven.

"She was like the Martha Stewart of Nazareth," Kristen said. "Everything she did was just perfect."

Brenda Zellner was pronounced dead following a crash Wednesday night.

She was a passenger in a Jeep driven by her 71-year-old husband, David Zellner, as the pair headed home from dinner.

The Jeep collided about 9 p.m. with an Acura driven by 19-year-old Jonathan Morales Lopez, of the 4000 block Scherman Boulevard in Bethlehem Township. The accident occurred just east of a curve on a downgrade between Michael's School Road and Penn Allen Road.

Morales Lopez and Brenda Zellner both died at the scene.

David Zellner was in stable condition and conscious Thursday at St. Luke's University Hospital in Fountain Hill, Kristen said.

Authorities were continuing to investigate what led to the crash. Police Chief William Cope said the vehicles were coming in different directions, but it was unclear if the crash was head-on.

Brenda already was planning her first summer trip with her 8-month-old granddaughter, Cora, to Fenwick, Delaware. The annual family trip was something Kristen and her older sister, Stacy Zellner, of Slatington, looked forward to each year.

Her life simply was cut too short prior to creating those new memories, Kristen said of her mother.

Aside from her daughters, granddaughter and husband, Brenda leaves behind Kristen's partner, Kelly Wiant, and Stacy's partner, Jose Matos. Services are pending.

Childhood sweethearts

Brenda met David Zellner when the pair lived across Hamilton Street from each other in Allentown. Both attended Dieruff High School, where Kristen said her father always had a crush on her mother.

But it wasn't until the pair both attended Kutztown University when they began dating and got married shortly after. They bought a house in Allentown before moving into their "dream home" in 1985 on South Penn Dixie Road in Upper Nazareth, less than a mile from Wednesday's crash.

Brenda became an optician for Westgate Optical in Bethlehem, where she remained employed for more than three decades. David Zellner still works as a salesman for Yurchak Printing Inc. in Landisville, Lancaster County.

Married for 51 years, the couple spent the weekends going to the movies, seeking out art shows, antique hunting and taking in concerts performed by Stacy Zellner's pop band, "Trick Stacy."

"They were just an amazing couple," Kristen said of her parents. "They were companions. Very funny and having dry humor. They just enjoyed each other and the same things."

Her mother also was an animal lover with two indoor cats and several stray outdoor cats that she took on, bringing them to the veterinarian for checkups and providing shelter and food for them.

When Kristen turned 14 and was experiencing the ups and downs of being an adolescent, Brenda introduced her daughter to horseback riding as a form of therapy. The family ended up rescuing a horse, named CK, they boarded at Edgewood Family Farms in Nazareth.

The horse was in the family for 23 years, Kristen said.

"When I went off to college, she bonded with CK," she recalled. "Animals and her family really were her pride and joy."

'Pride in her daughters'

Kristen in 1996 was hesitant how her mother would react when it came time to tell her she was gay. But the second she did, Brenda made all those worries go away, Kristen recalled.

"She said, 'If you were purple, I'd love you anyway,'" Kristen said with a laugh. "She was the most supportive of any parent I could imagine."

On her wedding day to Kelly, Kristen recalled Brenda telling her daughter it was one of the best days of her life to see her little girl get married. The memory is something Kristen said she'll always hold close to her heart.

"She was so proud and accepting of me -- her core pride was mainly who she was as a person," Kristen said.

The family plans to carry on Brenda's legacies through her holiday traditions. This past Easter, Kristen and Kelly already began hiding painted eggs and had all the adult in-laws go find them.

"Every holiday, she just did it up," Kristen said. "My mom was just the center of all of that. She really was just this amazing person."

Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
A man was taken to an area hospital after he crashed a Ford Explorer into a utility pole just before 7 a.m. Friday in Greenwich Township.

The wreck shut westbound Route 57 near Richline Road, but traffic got by in an alternating pattern in the eastbound lane. Traffic returned to normal about 7:45 a.m.

Township police were still compiling the report on Friday morning so the driver's name wasn't immediately available, but they said the injuries weren't life-threatening.

Township rescue personnel as well as the Stewartsville Volunteer Fire Company responded to the call.

Freelance photographer Rich Maxwell provided information for this report.

Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook.
Infrastruct AMS Ltd from Mountmellick has been officially announced by the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Mary Mitchell O Connor T.D. as a finalist in this years National Enterprise Awards.

Organised by the Local Enterprise Offices, the 2017 National Enterprise Awards celebrate the achievements of Irelands top small businesses and micro-enterprises from all parts of Ireland in a showcase of enterprise, innovation and ambition at Dublins Mansion House on May 25th.

The Laois finalist, Infrastruct AMS, was set up in 2012 and offers a range of specialist inspection, testing and investigation services on all types of structures. The company will be represented at the National Enterprise Awards on May 25th by company founder Dr. Thomas Callanan.

The other finalists this year are drawn from diverse business sectors, such as skin-care, ice-cream making, language courses and mobile game development. The announcement of finalists was made at the Mansion House by Minister Mitchell O Connor, accompanied by Sheelagh Daly and Oisin Geoghegan representing the Local Enterprise Offices, Brendan Flood of Enterprise Ireland and last years Overall Winner, Mark Clendennen of Applied Concepts in Offaly.

Local Enterprise Office Laois will be represented in the Mansion House by Evelyn Reddin, Head of Enterprise. She said: "Small business and micro-enterprises, including Infrastruct AMS, are making an outstanding contribution to our local economy. Last year, nearly 3,700 new jobs were created by over 6,800 micro-enterprises supported by LEOs all over the country. These entrepreneurs are continuously looking to grow by developing new products and services and investing in export markets. The National Enterprise Awards help to recognise the contribution that small businesses and micro-enterprises make to our communities every day."

Last years winner, Applied Concepts in Birr, manufacture and export blast machines used in construction and renovation projects in countries such as Spain, Denmark and Chile.

Previous winners nationally have also included Irish Yoghurts, Innovate, Grouse Recording Studios, Simtech Aviation, MyBio and Design Pro.

Twelve awards will be presented including eight regional awards. The overall winner will receive 10,000 to invest in their business.

Competition updates and results will be available through www.localenterprise.ie and by following #NEAwards on social media.

The Local Enterprise Offices are co-funded by the Irish Government and the European Regional Development Fund 2014-2020.
Tidy Towns groups in Laois are being urged to enter a special award in the National Tidy Towns competition which promotes the protection of pollinators.

Irish bees and other pollinators contribute 35 million a year to the Irish economy by pollinating our plants, trees and vegetables. They are under serious threat for survival because they dont have enough food to eat or places to live.

In response, in 2016 Local Authority Heritage Officers and Biodiversity Officers, in partnership with the National Biodiversity Data Centre, launched a new Tidy Towns Lets Get Buzzing- Local Authority Pollinator Award.

This Special Award encourages Tidy Towns groups to support the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan by making their communities more pollinator-friendly. There is an attractive prize fund of 9,000.

Ann-Marie Kelly is Tidy Towns Co-ordinator with Laois County Council.

We hosted various events to promote the role of pollinators over the last few months and these were well attended. It is clear there is a huge interest in making Laois more pollinator friendly. The interest shown by our Tidy Towns committees illustrates their ongoing commitment to enhancing our natural environment. My colleagues and I are very happy to help groups become more pollinator friendly and build on our joint commitment on an annual basis.

There was a great response to the award in 2016 with 58 Tidy Towns groups taking part. Monaghan Tidy Towns, national winner in the large town category, turned their town into an urban orchard, by encouraging residents to plant pollinator friendly fruit trees.

Most pollinator actions are not costly or too complicated explained Catherine Casey, Heritage Officer with Laois County Council.

They can range from simply changing the grass mowing regime, to planting pollinator friendly trees and shrubs, or raising awareness by promoting the Junior All-Ireland Pollinator Plan to youth groups and schools. Local communities can lead the way in creating an Ireland where pollinators can thrive," she said.

The National Biodiversity Data Centre has produced practical guidelines to help communities and Tidy Towns groups to take action. The guidelines and other useful resources can be downloaded here

The closing date for the award is May 25. Details and application forms are available here, or contact Catherine Casey, Laois Heritage Officer.
The Easyriders in Rathdowney are planning a big Barn Dance this month for their ahead as part of their annual fundraising charity cycle.

This years chosen charity is the Laura Lynn Foundation a very deserving charity as it is Irelands only childrens hospice. To help the foundation the south Laois group will cycle is from Rathdowney to Wexford town via Dungarvan on the August bank holiday weekend.

Launched in April, fundraising is already in full flow. A table quiz was held in in O'Malleys. Volunteers were at the Laois Shopping Centre in Portlaoise last month for face painting and bucket collection.

The group has thanked everyone who helped out so far with donations, collections and hosting the events. A big turnout is also hoped for at the Barn Dance and music night in Toughys Bar, Rathdowney on Friday May 19 at 9pm.

The Easyriders have cycled the length and breath of Ireland over the past number of summers raising thousands of euro for both national and local charities.

The chosen charity this year provides palliative care and support free for all children with life-limiting conditions.

Easyriders group training every Tuesday and Thursday nights leaving the square Rathdowney at 7pm.
A man is due to be sentenced later today for causing the death of Newbridge councillor Willie Crowley in a fatal hit-and-run shortly before Christmas in 2015.

Mr Crowley (56) died from his injuries in Naas Hospital a few days after he was struck by a vehicle on a Newbridge street.

Last March, Damien Klasinski (29), with an address at The Oaks, Newbridge, Co Kildare, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to dangerous driving causing the death of the independent councillor on Eyre Street, Newbridge, on December 15, 2015.

At the first day of the sentencing hearing in Dublin last Wednesday week, May 3, a victim impact statement was read on behalf of Cllr Crowleys widow Claire, who said that her sense of loss at her husbands death was overwhelming.

Judge Melanie Greally heard evidence that the defendant had been driving too fast on the night of the accident. One of the witness statements indicated that as he was leaving the scene, Mr Klasinski asked his passengers what am I supposed to do?.

He was remanded in continuing custody to today for sentencing.
Institute of Technology, Sligo is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr Michael Barrett as the new Head of School of Business and Social Sciences.

The Sligo town native succeeds Dr Perry Share who recently took up a new role as Project Manager of the Institutes bid (along with its Connacht-Ulster strategic Alliance partners GMIT and Letterkenny IT) to gain designation as a Technological University.

Dr Barrett is a past student of the former Sligo RTC, having studied Electronics. He joined the staff of IT Sligo in 1999 and since then has held senior Head of Department roles in Information Systems (Accounting & Computing), and in Business. He has also worked on a range of key strategic projects for the Institute.

More recently, this included the development of Irelands first honours degree apprenticeship programme in a landmark collaboration with the Insurance Institute and the wider Insurance Industry. The new BA (Honours) in Insurance Practice had its first intake of new apprentices in September 2016.

As a Sligo man with a deep connection to both the Institute and the region, it is a privilege to lead the School of Business & Social Sciences and its talented staff through the next stage of its development, said Dr Barrett.

I look forward to helping IT Sligo continue its path towards re-designation as a Technological University.

Congratulating Michael on his appointment, Dr Brendan McCormack, President of IT Sligo said, Michael has been a passionate advocate for IT Sligo over the years, and has taken the lead of a range of Institute-wide projects. His work ethic and drive to move IT Sligo forward have earned him the respect of both the student and staff body here. I know that he will continue to enhance that reputation in his new role.

Dr Barretts appointment comes as IT Sligo continues with the refurbishment of its School of Business & Social Sciences building. The multi-million euro project, which is due for completion in September, will provide a transformed learning environment for the Institutes Business and Social Sciences students.

Dr Barrett begins his new role at the end of May.
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At COP27, the battle for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty is underway

Tuvalu was the first country at COP27 to call for the treaty, which 100 Nobel Prize winners and the WHO have said is necessary to stop the expansion of coal, oil and gas.
May 1, 2021, 6 AM

Robert Weisz, the Chicago dealer who opened the citys Stamp King store in 1964, died May 6 at age 95.

By Michael Baadke

Robert Weisz, the Chicago stamp dealer who opened the citys Stamp King store in 1964, died May 6 at age 95.

He began his career in 1945 after serving in the United States Army Air Force during World War II as a co-pilot on the B-24 heavy bomber known as the Liberator.

In the 1980s, he became president of the Midwest Stamp and Coin Dealers Association, and of the Chicago chapter of the American Stamp Dealers Association.

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After selling his store in 1990 (the business continues today, owned by Charles Berg), Mr. Weisz became a mail-order dealer and participated at stamp shows. He retired in 2013 after almost 70 years as a professional stamp dealer.

When he sold his remaining stock through Regency-Superior auctions the following year, the auction firm included a tribute to the longtime dealer in its catalog.

Robert Weisz has spent a lifetime in stamps, and his reward was the thousands of satisfied customers who received countless hours of enjoyment from their stamps.  In his Chicagoland store, customers enjoyed his straight-talking honest style and his flair for telling stories.

In lieu of flowers, Mr. Weiszs family has requested that donations in his name be made to the American Philatelic Society.
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"Drones" exhibit takes off

(Image credit: Svetlana Jovanovic)

"Drones: Is the Sky the Limit?" at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, is the first exhibit to explore the ongoing story of drones  their origin and history, how their forms and uses have changed over time, and how we might deploy them in the future. [Read more about the drone exhibit at the Intrepid museum]

Early target drone

(Image credit: Courtesy of the National Archive)

Historic photo of the WW2-era radioplane TDD, an early target drone.

A military workhorse

(Image credit: Svetlana Jovanovic)

The Gyrodyne QH-50 Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH) was developed in the 1950s and was used by the military for 43 years to drop bombs capable of neutralizing submarines.

DASH in action

(Image credit: Courtesy of US Navy)

Crew members of USS Allen M. Sumner (DD-692) load a practice torpedo onto a QH-50 DASH. The DASH carried two Mk 44 torpedoes weighing 425 pounds (193 kg) each.

Boeing Insitu ScanEagle

(Image credit: Courtesy of Boeing Insitu)

The Boeing Insitu ScanEagle was the first drone approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for commercial use beyond line of sight, where the operator cant see it. Fishermen use the ScanEagle to locate schools of fish.

Rescue mission

(Image credit: Mindy Weisberger for Live Science)

The ScanEagle, on display in the exhibit, played a key role in the rescue of Capt. Richard Phillips by U.S. Navy SEALs during the 2009 hijacking of Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates.

RQ-2 Pioneer

(Image credit: Couresy of US Navy)

The RQ-2 Pioneer, developed jointly by the United States and Israel, was derived from an Israeli design called the Mastiff. The Pioneer was the first highly successful surveillance drone of the modern era.

Military might

(Image credit: Svetlana Jovanovic)

Drones were first engineered and used exclusively by the military, and many drones in use today were originally designed for military purposes.

Cormorant UAV

(Image credit: Photo by Mindy Weisberger for Live Science)

The Cormorant Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, designed by the Israeli firm Tactical Robotics, is still in the early stages of development, and could be used to transport supplies in military zones.

Scientific research

(Image credit: Svetlana Jovanovic)

Drones play an important role in scientific research, enabling scientists to gather data from locations that were previously inaccessible.

eBee drone

(Image credit: Courtesy of Duke University Marine Lab)

The eBee drone surveys 4.6 square miles (12 square km) in a single automated flight, making it an ideal tool for tracking large groups of moving animals.
The exhibit "Drones: Is the Sky the Limit?" recently opened at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum.

NEW YORK  Drones have come a long way since the clumsy, balloon-driven models that first took to the air during the 19th century.

Over the past few decades, and particularly in recent years, technology has rapidly improved to make drones smaller, faster, more robust and more maneuverable. Meanwhile, enterprising engineers and designers continue to push the limits for how drones can take on myriad tasks for military, industrial, scientific and personal purposes.

A new exhibit here at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, "Drones: Is the Sky the Limit?", is the first to explore the ongoing story of drones  their origin and history, how their forms and uses have changed over time, and how we might deploy them in the future. [See Photos of the Drone Exhibit at the Intrepid Museum]

"The exhibit's a fabulous vehicle  no pun intended!  for the interplay of all these big ideas: science, technology, history and the arts," exhibit co-curator Elaine Charnov, senior vice president of exhibits, education and programming at the Intrepid Museum, told Live Science.

There are plenty of actual drones on display, representing a wide range of sizes and uses  from the Boeing Insitu ScanEagle, which is launched from a catapult and was instrumental in a Navy SEAL rescue operation against Somali pirates in 2009, to Volantis, the "drone dress" co-designed and worn by Lady Gaga in 2013.

The "drone dress" Volantis was designed by TechHaus, the technology development division of Lady Gaga's Haus of Gaga, and can hover and maneuver up to 3 feet (1 meter) above the ground while carrying a person. (Image credit: Mindy Weisberger for Live Science)

One drone, which hangs from the exhibit ceiling, was used by scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to capture data from hurricanes, Joseph Cione, a research meteorologist at NOAA, told Live Science.

Drones are particularly well-suited for investigating the area in a hurricane where the ocean and the atmosphere meet, Cione said. This zone is too low for scientists to explore in an aircraft, but it is vital for understanding hurricane dynamics, because "that's where the energy exchange comes from," he explained.

Scientists had previously studied this region by dropping sensors attached to parachutes, but those provide only isolated snapshots of information, Cione said. However, a device like a drone  which is in continuous motion as it gathers data, and can stay aloft for up to 2 hours  can provide a more complete picture of what's happening inside a hurricane.

And more data helps researchers build better computer models, which, in turn, improves forecasting and can help to protect people and property, Cione said.

Scientists are even using drones in ways their designers may not have intended. For example, some marine biologists conduct DNA research on whales by deploying petri-dish-carrying drones that collect phlegm expelled from the whales' blowholes, according to Adam Lisberg, head U.S. spokesperson for drone-maker DJI.

"I promise you, DJI never imagined that as a use case when we were developing the drones," Lisberg told Live Science. "But it provides a huge advantage for the ability to monitor the health of whales without disturbing them."

"From scientists to construction firms to rescue services, they're putting our products to use in ways that we never even imagined," Lisberg said. [9 Totally Cool Uses for Drones]

Video screens at the exhibit display a variety of drones in action, while a "Drone Arts Theater" presents footage and still images shot by drones, showcasing the unique perspective that they capture by transporting cameras to otherwise inaccessible places. A kiosk with an array of touch screens offers the opportunity to explore predictions for possible future uses of drones  as pet sitters, dinosaur-fossil hunters or defense against disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The Gyrodyne QH-50 Drone Anti-Submarine Helicopter (DASH) was developed in the 1950s and was used by the military for 43 years to drop bombs capable of neutralizing submarines. (Image credit: Mindy Weisberger for Live Science)

Visitors can also peer through goggles that give them a drone's-eye view of a racecourse, or try their hand at flying a virtual drone. With the digital interactive tool "Take Control of a Drone," users navigate an aircraft over New York City, collecting tokens and avoiding the red "no-fly" zones. Those who are feeling especially adventurous can even take control of an actual tiny drone inside a net enclosure, and guide it through a series of obstacles.

Some of the drone technology described in the exhibit, such as flying cars, isn't quite ready for prime time just yet. But "we're closer than we've ever been" to these tantalizing visions of the future, said exhibit co-curator Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University in North Carolina.

"That's not to say it's going to be here tomorrow," Cummings told Live Science. "But the technology does exist, so it's only a matter of time before these things get cheaper and easier to fly. And the regulatory environment will be more friendly to drones in the future."

By presenting the past and present successes and challenges of drones, the exhibit could spark eye-opening conversations among visitors about how drones might inhabit our lives in the years to come, Charnov told Live Science.

"We hope this will prompt people to get more familiar with the range of possibilities that drone technology provides," she said.

"Drones: Is the Sky the Limit?" will be on display at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum from May 9 through Dec. 3, 2017.

Original article on Live Science.
The skull of an adult <em>Homo naledi</em> male that researchers dubbed "Neo." The skull, along with an almost-complete skeleton, was found in the Lesedi chamber of the Rising Star cave system near Johannesburg, South Africa.

Skeletons of Homo naledi, the primitive-looking relative to modern humans, discovered four years ago in South Africa lived more recently than was previously thought, according to a new study. Paleoanthropologists now also say the species was likely much smarter than the current understanding of the primitive hominins would suggest.

When researchers first examined bones of the previously unknown small-brained hominin, which were found in the Rising Star cave system near Johannesburg in 2013, they assumed the species likely co-existed with Homo sapiens' predecessor, Homo erectus. However, in a new study, researchers conducted six different dating techniques, and all arrived at a surprising conclusion, the investigators said. [Homo Naledi in Photos: Images of the Small-Brained Human Relative]

"We reported the date [of] between 335,000 years and 236,000 years [old]," said geologist Eric Roberts, an associate professor at Australia's James Cook University and one of the authors of a series of papers about Homo naledi published online May 9 in the journal eLife.

"That means that this small-brained hominin was sharing a landscape with early Homo sapiens, members of our own species," Roberts told Live Science.

Big vs. small brains

But their age was not the only surprising thing about the discoveries in the Rising Star cave. The skeletons were found crammed in the Dinaledi chamber of the cave. The scientists extracted 1,500 fossil specimens of Homo naledi belonging to at least 15 individuals from only a few cubic meters of sediment, suggesting someone must have put them there deliberately.

"We think that naledi was entering these deep parts of the caves and leaving bodies there," said John Hawks, an anthropologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who leads the research. "We can rule out other explanations for how the bones got in there. Like carnivores  there were no scratches on those bones. Thousands of bones and not a single scratch. It didn't wash into the cave either."

Until the discoveriesin the Rising Star cave, paleoanthropologists thought that complex behaviours, such as burying the dead, only occurred with the development of larger brains. Furthermore, the chamber where the bones bones were found is far away from the entrance to the cave, where no daylight reaches.

"It's completely dark there, total pitch black," Hawks told Live Science. "They must have had fire. We have not found physical evidence of fire, and it's one of the things that we are really pursuing. If they were using fire with any regularity, I think we will find evidence of it."

Even more unknowns

Hawks said the South Africa discovery raises more questions than it answers. Evidence of fire from 1.1 million years ago was, in fact, found at a site only half a mile (800 meters) away from the Rising Star cave. And until the breakthrough discoveries of Homo naledi, scientists did not question that this fire was being used by the bigger-brained ancestors of Homo sapiens.

"The stereotypes say that it's complex brains that makes complex behaviors possible," Hawks said. "It's possible, however, that complex brains can be small, that it's the organization of the brains and not the size. In fact, in living humans, the size of the brains is not very strongly connected with the functional things that the brain does, so why should we be expecting it to be true in the past?"

Similar to the fire, the delicate Homo naledi may have also produced ancient tools discovered in the area that were previously ascribed to larger-brained Homo species, according to Hawks. [The 10 Biggest Mysteries of the First Humans]

In the 63-page publication in eLife, the researchers also revealed that they had recently discovered an entirely new chamber in the Rising Star cave, called Lesedi, in which they found an almost-complete and well-preserved skeleton of an adult Homo naledi male.

"It is such a striking discovery. It's like Lucy," an Australopithecus skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, Hawks said. "Suddenly, you have an individual and his name is Neo  that's a Sesotho [a South African language] word meaning 'a gift.' We can see his face. The bones are very thin, fragile, but incredibly well-preserved."

A key discovery

Paleoanthropologists turned their attention to the Rising Star cave only in 2013. The system of narrow, underground corridors has been popular amongst cavers for decades, but not until four years ago did information about ancient-looking bones in the cave reach the right ears. When paleoanthropologists finally gained access to the cave, they quickly realized that they had hit the jackpot, the scientists said.

"Our first discovery in 2015 was a major worldwide story, because it was the largest discovery of fossils of any primitive hominin in Africa ever found," Hawks said. "Inside of these chambers, remain thousands of hominin bones, and we are moving to investigate the rest of the system.

"It is more than 2 kilometers [1.2 miles] of underground tunnels," he added, "and we have, near the surface, deposits that we want to investigate by digging to see whether we can find evidence of Homo naledi's behavior closer to the exit of the cave."

No DNA has been recovered from the skeletons, but the scientists said they think Homo naledi shared a common ancestor with modern humans about 2 million years ago. Chimpanzees, humans' closest living relatives, deviated from the Homo sapiens evolutionary branch 5 million years earlier.

Completely unknown only five years ago, Homo naledi is currently the best-documented hominin species, and with the treasure of bones still waiting to be retrieved, Hawks said he has no doubt the world will continue to hear about the cousin of modern humans for many years to come.

Original article on Live Science.
A 32-year-old man in Portugal went to the hospital after experiencing stomach pain, vomiting and fever. The culprit? A parasitic worm called Anisakis in the sushi he had just eaten.

The incident highlights an increasing number of infections from a parasite found in raw fish that doctors are seeing in Western countries, as sushi dishes rise in popularity, according to a new report.

In the report, doctors in Portugal describe getting to the bottom of the man's stomach pains. When he revealed his sushi consumption, they suspected he might have a parasitic infection. Using an endoscope  a flexible tube with a camera  doctors examined the man's upper digestive tract, and were able to see the parasite attached to his gut lining. Doctors removed the parasite and determined that it was indeed an Anisakis worm. Illnesses caused by this worm are known as anisakiasis. [Top 7 Germs in Food that Make You Sick]

Previously, cases of anisakiasis were mainly seen in Japan. But "owing to changes in food habits, anisakiasis is a growing disease in Western countries, which should be suspected in patients with a history of ingestion of raw or undercooked fish," the researchers wrote in the May 11 issue of the journal BMJ Case Reports.

Common sources of this parasite include cod, haddock, fluke, pacific salmon, herring, flounder and monkfish, as well as squid, according to Stanford University. Because this parasite is found in fish, anyone who eats raw or undercooked fish is at risk of contracting the parasite, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thus, the best way to prevent this illness is to avoid consuming raw or undercooked fish, the agency says.

The Food and Drug Administration recommends cooking seafood to an internal temperature of 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius) to kill parasites. Freezing raw fish at minus 4 degrees F (minus 20 degrees C) or below for 7 days, or freezing raw fish at minus 31 degrees F (minus 35 degrees C) until solid and storing at minus 4 degrees F (minus 20 degrees C) for 24 hours, is also sufficient to kill parasites, the FDA said.

Original article on Live Science.
Shaking up the family tree

(Image credit: Mark Thiessen/National Geographic)

Skeletons of Homo naledi, a primitive-looking relative to modern humans, were first found in the Rising Star cave system in South Africa in 2013. The discovery of this previously unknown small-brained hominin changed scientists' understanding of human evolution and the dawn of humanity. [Read more about recent Homo naledi findings]

Meet Neo

(Image credit: John Hawks/Wits University)

The skull of an adult Homo naledi male, along with an almost-complete skeleton, was found in the Lesedi chamber of the Rising Star cave system near Johannesburg, in South Africa. Researchers dubbed the nearly complete skeleton "Neo."

Skull comparison

(Image credit: John Hawks/University of Wisconsin-Madison)

This image shows how Homo naledi compared to other ancient humans that lived around the same time. On the left is a Kabwe skull from Zambia, an archaic human. At right, the "Neo" skull of Homo naledi.

Inside the cave

(Image credit: Marina Elliott/Wits University)

This schematic shows the layout of the Rising Star cave system near Johannesburg in South Africa. Skeletons of Homo naledi were first found in the cave system in 2013.

Small vs. big brains

(Image credit: Stefan Fichtel/National Geographic)

Researchers say Homo naledi likely shared a landscape with early Homo sapiens, which suggests Homo naledi lived more recently than scientists previously thought.

Fossil collection

(Image credit: Robert Clark/National Geographic)

A composite skeleton of H. naledi is surrounded by some of the hundreds of other fossil elements recovered from the Dinaledi Chamber in the Rising Star cave in South Africa.

Dinaledi chamber

(Image credit: James Cook University)

An illustration of the Dinaledi chamber in the Rising Star cave system. Skeletons of Homo naledi were found crammed in this chamber, and researchers extracted 1,500 fossil specimens belonging to at least 15 individuals.

Venturing in

(Image credit: James Cook University)

Geologist Eric Roberts, an associate professor at Australia's James Cook University, inside the Rising Star cave system in South Africa.
Monster of the deep? Or just a really funky dead whale?

A monstrously huge creature that washed ashore on a remote Indonesian beach, oozing a mysterious red fluid, is probably a baleen whale in an advanced state of decomposition, experts said.

The nearly 50-foot-long (15 meters) marine creature was lying on Hulung Beach on Seram Island, Indonesia, and was first discovered by 37-year-old local resident Asrul Tuanakota, who initially mistook the creature for a boat, the Jakarta Globe reported.

Despite the blob's bizarre appearance, it's clearly a baleen whale, said Alexander Werth, a whale biologist at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.

"There is lots of stuff in the ocean that we don't know about  but there's nothing that big" that remains unknown, Werth said.

Two dead giveaways revealed that the creature was a whale, Werth said: the grooves, or "throat pleats," and the upper jaw where the two racks of baleen plates, used for filtering out food in the whale's mouth, would have been. [Whale Photos: Giants of the Deep]

While scientists can say for sure that the whale belongs to the genus Balaenoptera, it's not clear exactly which species it is: It could be either a blue whale or a Bryde's whale, Werth said. However, Bryde's whales are not usually that big. The creature could also be a fin whale, said Moe Flannery, the collections manager in ornithology and mammalogy at the California Academy of Sciences. (The creature is definitely not a humpback, she added.)

Nasty gases

The beached whale is clearly in an advanced state of decomposition and likely has been dead for anywhere from two weeks to several months, Werth and Flannery said. The decomposition, and the gases produced by the associated bacteria, have inflated segments of the carcass like a balloon, Werth said.

"It must stink to high heaven," Werth told Live Science.

Baleen whales typically have many bacteria in their guts that produce gas, Werth said. These keep reproducing once the whale dies, creating a foul stench and inflating the bodies, he said.

"That's yet another reason you don't want to be close to these things, not because it's a scary, spooky creature, but [because] it would just be releasing some pretty foul, noxious gases," Werth said.

Though smelling the decomposing whale is not dangerous per se, people shouldn't be bathing in or drinking the water nearby, he added.

Normally, when a massive whale dies, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, where the corpse serves as a feast for a year or two for an entire ecosystem of worms, hagfish, sharks and other marine creatures, Werth said.

However, if a ship swiped the animal, causing internal injuries that did not allow gases to escape, or if the whale had a bacterial infection that produced huge amounts of gases, the animal could inflate like a balloon  enough to float to shore, Werth said. On the other hand, this ill-fated whale may simply have died in warm waters, which tend to fuel more bacterial growth. That, too, could rapidly produce enough gas after death to make the animal float rather than sink, Werth said.

"If it dies in really cold, polar waters, there's a greater chance it will sink," Werth said.

This phenomenon is not unique to whales: Two human bodies that presumably were submerged during colder weather popped up in a Central Park pond in New York during warmer weather, Werth said.

Tides or currents may explain why the floating whale carcass made it ashore, Werth added.

Mysterious cause of death

While it's tough to determine a cause of death in an animal in such an advanced state of decomposition, some clues can still be gleaned from the carcass, Flannery said. For instance, if the a ship struck the whale, signs of trauma such as fractured ribs would still be apparent. Identifying a bacterial infection would be difficult this far after decomposition. However, if the animal died of domoic acid toxicity, sometimes caused by algal blooms, a urine sample could reveal that, Flannery added.

At the least, researchers always try to take a tissue sample, which contains DNA that would reveal the species of whale and the gender, she said.

As for the reddish tinge in the water surrounding the whale, that is probably a combination of blood and grease, Flannery said.

"Whales are full of oil, and it's kind of orangey," Flannery told Live Science.

Originally published on Live Science.
The famous Niagara Falls, found at the border of New York and Ontario. The falls is actually made up of three waterfalls: the Horseshoe Falls, the American Falls and the Bridal Veil Falls.

Niagara Falls is a geological wonder and one of the most famous waterfalls in the world. Straddling the border between the United States and Canada, it has been a popular tourist attraction for over 200 years, as well as a major source of hydroelectric power.

Geography

Niagara Falls occurs on the Niagara River, a 36-mile (58 kilometers) channel that connects Lake Erie and Lake Ontario and separates New York from Ontario. The difference in elevation between the two lakes is about 325 feet (99 meters), and half of that height occurs at the falls, according to Niagara Parks.

Niagara is made up of three separate waterfalls: Horseshoe Falls (or Canadian Falls), American Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. According to the World Waterfall Database, Horseshoe Falls has a height of about 167 feet (51 m) and stretches over 2,700 feet (823 m) across at its crest; American Falls drops between 90 and 120 feet (27.5 to 36.5 m) and spans about 940 feet (286.5 m) at its crest; Bridal Veil Falls also has a drop of 90 to 120 feet but is only 45 feet (14 m) wide. Together, the average width of the entire falls is 3,950 feet (1,204 m).

The three cascades form the second largest waterfall in the world (after Victoria Falls in Africa), according to the Travel Channel. More than 6 million cubic feet (168,000 cubic meters), or about 70 Olympic-size swimming pools, of water go over the falls every minute. The water rushes over the falls at about 25 mph, according to the New York State Museum (NYSM). The deepest point in the Niagara River is just below Horseshoe Falls, at 167 feet (51 m) deep  equal to the height of the falls, according to Niagara Parks. The Niagara Gorge begins at the foot of the falls and ends 7 miles (11 km) downstream at Lake Ontario. Cliffs rise as high as 1,200 feet (366 m), formed by thousands of years of erosion.

Niagara Falls empties out into Niagara Gorge where the cliffs rise about 1,200 feet from the Niagara River. (Image credit: Tim Sharp)

Evolution of Niagara Falls

The geologic forces that formed Niagara Falls started working about 16,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. A glacier more than a mile thick covered the northern regions of the North American continent from Ohio to New York, according to the NYSM. As the ice retreated, it carved out the Great Lakes.

About 12,000 years ago, waters draining the lakes found a low-lying pathway and carved out a channel  the Niagara River. Lake Erie and Lake Ontario were split between higher elevations and lower elevations and the water drained from the upper lake to the lower over the Niagara Escarpment and eventually created a waterfall.

When Niagara Falls formed, it was about 7 miles (11 km) downstream from where it is today. Even now, erosion continues to push the falls farther upstream at a rate of about a foot a year. By some estimates, the river will erode back to Lake Erie in about 50,000 years, cutting through an escarpment and through soft shale and beginning to drain Lake Erie.

Tourists can walk to the bottom of Bridal Veil Falls, on the right, and American Falls. (Image credit: Tim Sharp)

History of Niagara Falls

Native Americans settled in the area between A.D. 1300 and 1400, according to Niagara Falls Info. One of the first native tribes called themselves the Onguiaahra, which French explorers turned into "Niagara." Also among the earlier settlers was an Iroquois group, the Atiquandaronk, who were called the "Neutrals" by French explorers because of the tribe's peacekeeping efforts between neighboring warring tribes. In the early 1600s, the Neutrals had a population of 20,000 to 40,000 people.

The first European to visit the falls was probably Etienne Brule, a French explorer who lived among the Neutral Nation in 1626. However, he left no written record, but he did report to his patron, Samuel de Champlain, who wrote about the falls. In 1632, Champlain was the first to draw and publish a map of Niagara. The first eyewitness account was written by Louis Hennepin, a priest who accompanied Robert de La Salle to the falls in 1678, according to American Journeys.

The French built the first fort above Niagara Falls in 1679, known as Fort Conti, according to Old Fort Niagara. The fort didn't last long, and Fort Denonville was built in its place in 1687. That fort only lasted for about a year. Fort Niagara, the first permanent fort, was built in 1726.

The British captured Niagara Fort in 1759 during the French and Indian War, which broke out in 1754 and raged all across the Niagara region. Niagara Fort assumed American control in 1796, was recaptured by the British in 1813, and ceded back to the United States after the War of 1812. Between 1813 and 1963, Niagara Fort served as a peaceful border post and as a barracks and training station for American soldiers. Today, Niagara Fort is a popular place that tourists can stroll through while visiting the waterfalls.

In the early 1800s, the number of visitors visiting the waterfalls was increasing, as was the demand for additional amenities. Hotels, resorts, and other tourist attractions began to spring up on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls while factories and mills were being built on the American side, according to New York Waterfalls.

The area built up quickly. The first man-powered ferry opened in 1820 to ferry passengers across the Niagara Gorge. The Niagara Falls Museum opened in 1827, and the Maid of the Mist opened in 1846 to carry passengers, livestock, and cargo across the gorge. The first suspension bridge opened in 1848, a railway extension brought steam engines to the waterfalls in 1854, and a railway suspension bridge opened in 1855 to allow trains to cross the gorge. A canal to divert water from the river to power plants was built in 1861, and the first electric streetcar began operation in 1887.

Niagara Falls also served as a part of the Underground Railroad in the mid-1800s, according to Niagara Falls Underground Railroad Heritage Area. Many residents were anti-slavery and were part of an established network in the area to help escaped slaves. Many hotels in the area offered employment to the growing African American population, including a great number of those who had recently escaped slavery.

According to Niagara Falls State Park, the Niagara Reservation, which encompasses Niagara Falls, was established as the first state park in the United States in 1885. The park covers more than 400 acres, which includes about 140 acres under water.

Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse designed and built the first hydroelectric power plant in the world in 1895, bringing clean electricity to the growing vicinity, according to the Tesla Memorial Society of New York. According to the Buffalo Library, power was even transported to Buffalo, New York, within a year.

The cities of Niagara Falls in New York and in Ontario were incorporated in 1892 and 1903, respectively, according to New York Waterfalls.

The areas on both the American and Canadian sides of Niagara Falls have continuously built up and are largely built on tourism. Today, approximately 12 million visitors visit the waterfalls per year, according to Niagara Falls Canada.

The Maid of the Mist takes tourists up to the bottom of Horseshoe Falls. (Image credit: Tim Sharp)

Stunts

From the first planned and recorded tourist stunt in 1827, dozens of people have tried to make history by going over the waterfalls or by crossing it in some unconventional manner. Some have succeeded in their efforts but, sadly, others have not.

The first known stunt was arranged in 1827 by William Forsyth of the Pavilion Hotel. It involved decorating a boat as a pirate ship and putting a number of animals onboard  including a bison, two bears, two raccoons, a dog and a goose  and sending it over the waterfalls, according to New York Waterfalls. The two bears escaped before the boat went over but the rest went down with the boat over the waterfalls.

The first person to jump down the waterfalls was Sam Patch (also known as the Yankee Leaper) in 1829 when he dove 85 feet (26 meters) down Horseshoe Falls. He survived the dive, as well as another the following week from a height of 135 feet (41 m).

Charles Blondin was the first to walk across the gorge in 1859 on a tightrope, according to New York Waterfalls. He walked across a 1,100-foot-long (335 m) rope that was 160 feet (49 m) above the gorge just past the waterfalls in approximately 20 minutes. He then followed with many other stunts including crossing his tightrope while blindfolded and pushing a wheelbarrow across.

Italian tightrope walker Maria Spelterini was the first and still the only woman to walk across the gorge on a tightrope in 1876. She repeated her stunt blindfolded, with baskets on her feet, and even once with her hands and feet bound, according to New York Waterfalls.

Captain Matthew Webb was the first to attempt to swim across the Whirlpool rapids in 1883 without any aids. Unfortunately, according to New York Waterfalls, he did not make it and his body was found a few days later.

Annie Edson Taylor, a schoolteacher from Michigan, was the first person to go over the waterfalls in a barrel in 1901, according to New York Waterfalls. She survived with minor injuries.

In 1951, shortly after another failed attempt at going over the waterfalls, the Ontario government made any stunting within the park boundaries illegal. This decree, however, has not stopped the occasional person from going over or crossing the waterfalls in some form or another.

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Not long after administrators learned a group of teens at Albany High School had been giving each other Nazi salutes in the halls and making racist posts on social media, anti-Semitic incidents spread to Piedmont High School, prompting an assembly and letter to parents this week.

There was an incident with kids forming a swastika as part of a dance routine. There have been German words and salutes in the hallways, swastika graffiti and stuff, said Rabbi Mark Bloom, whose son is a junior at Piedmont High.

The incidents  which also included racial slurs, anti-Semitic slurs and offensive gestures  had been happening for several months and were brought to the attention of school officials on April 24, according to an email sent to parents Monday.

At a school-wide assembly that day, four students read letters about how prejudice and bullying had affected them and their peers, with each letter centered around the theme of a particular type of bigotry, exploring prejudice against black, Asian, Jewish and LGBTQ students, Piedmont Unified School District Superintendent Randall Booker told The Chronicle on Thursday.

He added that he thought the students at the school had been moved by the assembly, which was intended to be by students, for students.

You could literally hear a pin drop in the gym. And thats a testament to the real culture at Piedmont High School, Booker said.

The recent incidents involved a group of fewer than ten students, and they were disciplined with suspensions, according to Booker.

Bloom said he sees the problems as part of a bigger trend.

Theres definitely an uptick, nationally and locally, he said of anti-Semitic incidents. Its everywhere and its really disconcerting.

Its definitely affecting teens more than it ever has. Ten years ago, maybe even five years ago, Id ask confirmation classes of tenth graders, have any of you ever experienced anything [anti-Semitic] personally, and the answer was usually no. Today, the answer is usually yes, he continued.

Booker said that over his 15 years working in the school district, the Internet has created new challenges.

Theres so much unfiltered information available at the push of a button, he said. Thats what has changed the most.

Some former students werent surprised to hear of the recent upheaval.

I saw racist graffiti in the bathrooms, knew kids who were too afraid to come out as queer, heard too many anti-Semitic remarks played off as jokes, one recent graduate observed on Facebook. Instances like this are absolutely NOT new here.

Bloom doesnt think the students involved are earnest neo-Nazis, and suspects the incidents stem from kids making insensitive jokes fueled by social media and Internet culture. He praised the school districts handling of the situation.

I think theyre trying very hard and actually doing a good job  but theyre obviously going to have to do more to solve it, he said. But I have no idea what that is.

School districts face pressure from all sides in dealing with hate incidents. At Albany High School, several students were suspended in connection with a racist Instagram account, and their return to school was protested by their peers, who staged a sit-in. Four of the students who were suspected are now suing the school district, charging they were wrongly disciplined and that their First Amendment rights were infringed.

Piedmont High School is launching a new tool, the Highlander Hotline, allowing students to easily report abuse and bullying online, Booker said. With the school year in its final weeks, administrators are meeting intensively with students and are working with police and community groups to devise a strategy for the fall.

Weve worked for years making the number one priority the social and emotional health of our students, he said.

Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi
Mexico sent a stark message to U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, saying an upcoming visit to China in September made it clear Latin America's No. 2 economy "has lots of other alternatives" amid tense trade negotiations.

Mexico is grappling with Trump's desire to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that underpins its economy, prompting the government to try and diversify away from the United States, which takes 80 percent of its exports.

"We will use [the China visit] geopolitically as strategic leverage," said Guajardo, answering questions from reporters. "It sends the signal that we have many alternatives."

Mexico has tried to deepen commercial links with China for years, and President Enrique Pena Nieto had hoped a Chinese high-speed train contract would presage more investment. However, the train deal was scrapped in 2014 after Pena Nieto and his then-finance minister became embroiled in a conflict-of-interest scandal.

The incident soured relations, but the election of Trump, who has voiced opposition to free global trade, has brought them closer again.


One day after a civil grand jury recommended the ouster of the Contra Costa County District attorney who had admitted to a host of campaign finance violations, the union representing dozens of county prosecutors voted Friday to affirm the panels decision.

The seven-member board of the Contra Costa County District Attorneys Association voted unanimously that it had no confidence in District Attorney Mark Peterson, meaning they believe he should step down, said Aron DeFerrari, the boards president.

I know that as a group were extremely disappointed in what Mr. Peterson has done, and we take the recommendation of the civil grand jury very seriously, DeFerrari said. As prosecutors, we place a great deal of trust in jurors.

The boards unprecedented vote in the county  which pits the union directly against their own boss  is largely symbolic and has no legal implications, but it levies more public pressure on Peterson to step down. The district attorney has been fending off calls for his resignation since he admitted in December to inappropriately spending more than $66,000 of his campaign money on himself.

The recommendation of the grand jury, though, does have a legal impact. Their findings will next go before a Contra Costa County Superior Court judge, who has the discretion of either appointing a special prosecutor or assigning the case to a willing district attorney from a neighboring county.

If Peterson is found guilty at trial  a process that could take well over a year  he would be removed from office. No criminal charges have been filed against him.

Though Peterson later repaid the misspent campaign funds, along with a hefty fine, and acknowledged his mistakes, a grand jury cited his willful misconduct and recommended his removal from office in the Thursday filing. A spokeswoman for Peterson declined to comment Thursday and did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

The union board cast its no-confidence vote during an emergency meeting at 8 a.m. Friday.

The board plans to meet Tuesday with the entire union membership, consisting of 90 deputy district attorneys, to discuss the no-confidence vote in Peterson. The union will collectively vote on whether to affirm the recommendation of its board on May 22, DeFerrari said.

Board members were concerned about possible consequences stemming from their vote, considering they had essentially determined that their own boss should be fired.

If were retaliated against, were retaliated against, DeFerrari said. Theres a lot of concern amongst the membership that taking action against the boss, the DA, could jeopardize peoples careers.

DeFerrari emphasized the importance, and the rarity, of a grand jury issuing such a finding against a public official, saying he believed the jury speaks for the people of the county.

The grand jurys report specifically cited 600 instances, or transactions, that Peterson admitted to making from his campaign funds over a four-year period beginning in 2011, referring to them as malfeasance.

Peterson  who spent the money on hotel stays, movie tickets and phone bills, among other expenses  later repaid the funds in full after a state audit was announced.

The district attorney, who served as the treasurer of his own campaign committee until 2015, told The Chronicle in a December statement that he was humbled and embarrassed by my mistakes, for which I take full responsibility, and I apologize for my regrettable errors.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @michael_bodley
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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.
Democracy: Stories From the Long Road to Freedom

By Condoleezza Rice

Twelve. 496 pp. $35

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Early this month, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson delivered a speech in which he separated American values from American interests. Even though values - in particular, U.S. support for freedom and human rights - are "constant," he assured, there will be times when overriding economic or security interests dictate that we set such values aside, or at least that we not make such a fuss over them "in every situation." Essentially, the United States has declared that it will stand for liberty only when the costs of doing so are sufficiently low.

Among Tillerson's influential backers is former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, who endorsed the onetime ExxonMobil chief executive for his new gig. So it is a deliciously awkward bit of timing that just days after Tillerson's speech, Rice has released a 500-page book implicitly repudiating the Trump administration's "America first" worldview, and warning against the pernicious effects of populism, nativism, protectionism and isolationism, dubbing them "the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

Rice worries that the advance of nationalism in the United States and elsewhere could upend the international order that has sought to spread freedom. "Democracy has gained adherents in the context of this global order," she writes. "Can it continue to do so if America and others withdraw from the responsibilities of the system they created? What will happen to those who still seek liberty in a world told to go its own way? What becomes of those still living in tyranny if we cease to tell others that democracy is a superior form of government and that its tenets are universal?"

In a travelogue of sorts, Rice takes us to Russia, Kenya, Colombia, Poland and Iraq, among other spots, and revisits each country's democratic struggles. She mixes realism and idealism; this is a book that gazes at the stars with its feet shackled to the ground. "There is no more thrilling moment," she writes, "than when people finally seize their rights and their liberty. That moment is necessary, right, and inevitable. It is also terrifying and disruptive and chaotic."

To temper that chaos, we have institutions, and Rice is nothing if not an institutionalist. Democracies endure when they strike a balance between central and regional authority; between civilian and military leadership; between the state and civil society; and, of course, among the legislative, judicial and executive arms of government. "In functioning democracies," Rice writes, "institutions are invested with protecting that equilibrium."

A free press. The rule of law. A vibrant private sector. Regular and fair elections. In the nations she considers, such institutions are not always present, or when they are, they're rarely strong enough.

In early post-Soviet Russia, Rice argues, "the abrupt shift to capitalism outpaced the establishment of rule of law and institutions that could regulate against its excesses." When Boris Yeltsin's promising government degenerated into oligarchy, corruption and erratic presidential behavior, it was not hard for Vladimir Putin to step in and concentrate power, leaving the Russian people with "no institutionalized way to express their views," Rice writes.

In Kenya and Colombia, solid institutional frameworks struggled to assert themselves against underlying social divisions. Kenyan tribalism overpowered regional and party affiliations, while Colombia's democratic traditions and practices "were unable to contain competing interests - rural and urban, rich and poor, social liberals and religious conservatives," Rice explains.

And she warns that Poland, a democratic success story for which she has "always had a soft spot in my heart," is veering off course, with the illiberal Law and Justice Party undercutting the judiciary and the news media. "In Poland today, the resurgence of deeply conservative social attitudes, including religious piety, is clashing with evolving and more liberal European values," Rice writes. "Poland's democracy is not likely to be destroyed by the current challenges. ... Yet the current circumstances in Poland remind us that democracy's development is never a straight line."

There is something slightly tautological about the institutional argument for democracy - if democracy survives, it must be because the institutions were strong enough; if it crumbles, clearly, the institutions were too weak. A similar logic pervades development economics, with emerging economies being told that what they really need for long-term growth is strong fiscal institutions, a proper regulatory framework, clear property rights and other items on an endless list of reforms.

Yes, institutions are vital, but they can also feel like a catch-all explanation.

Rice's writing style won't send me to the streets in protest, but it doesn't exactly inspire freedom from cliches, either. She is obsessed with "the narrative" - identifying it, rewriting it, sealing it - and in her tales of diplomacy during the George W. Bush years, excitement is always palpable, tasks are always unenviable, and words always go unminced. Some of her personal recollections, such as an unfortunate Ukrainian campaign poster that read "Vote for us and you'll never have to vote again," are memorable. But many of them feel dutiful, as though she were filling in Insert Anecdote Here prompts in her manuscript.

Rice devotes her longest chapter to the Middle East, where she defends past controversial positions and take the long view. She blames the Pentagon for committing too few troops to secure Iraq after the 2003 invasion and slams envoy Paul Bremer for disbanding the Iraqi army, among other screw-ups of imperial life. Rice confines her own failings to her role as national security adviser during Bush's first term, when the Pentagon and State Department often clashed. "I felt that I had failed to wire the various parts together into a cohesive whole," she writes. And she recalls an infelicitous remark during the 2006 Lebanon war - "We are experiencing the birth pangs of a new Middle East," she said - that she now thinks was correct. "The tumultuous events of the last decade have indeed torn apart the map of the area and cast aside the pillars of the old order," she writes. "A new Middle East is emerging through war, unrest, revolution - and in a few cases, reform."

Any discussion of U.S. foreign policy principles should recognize that there have often been gaps between values and interests; Tillerson may be merely acknowledging that reality. And Rice has fallen short of high-minded rhetoric, as when she relied on legalisms to defend enhanced interrogation techniques. But in diplomacy, messages matter, and a speech Rice gave in Egypt early in Bush's second term provides the sharpest contrast with Tillerson's remarks, especially because she upholds liberty as a universal value.

"For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East - and we achieved neither," Rice declared. "Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." Again, Rice believes that she will be proved right. "Despite regional circumstances less favorable today than in 2005, I stand by that statement," she writes. "A stable Middle East will one day have to be a democratic Middle East."

When an early version of this book arrived, the cover featured a note: "The epilogue found in this galley is currently being revised to include analysis of events from after the 2017 Inauguration." In the new epilogue, Rice does not mention President Trump by name - she refers only to America's "new president" - but she calls out those politicians who scapegoat immigrants, stoke nationalism and seek to tear down institutions rather than work through them.

Even so, she decides, the notion that American democracy is threatened is "alarmist and premature." It's an intriguing conclusion to a work obsessed with the institutional architecture of democracy, especially when Trump has been intent on delegitimizing judges, journalists and many norms of the office he holds. Democracy was built to weather disruptions, Rice argues, so perhaps we can trust that American institutions - our "spirit of constitutionalism," as she puts it - are up to the challenge.

But this book should give us pause. When modern democracies falter, it is usually "a story of executive authority that is outsized in comparison to other institutions," Rice explains. And strongmen, she says, are sneakier than they used to be. "In today's interconnected world, the creeping and subtle authoritarianism of illiberal elected leaders is a greater threat to democracy than if they were to crush it with tanks in the city square."

The story of the Trump presidency can feel like an epilogue endlessly rewritten, never caught up. So I'm grateful that Rice made the effort. But her arguments and conclusions don't always mesh. Perhaps it's early for definitive interpretations. Or maybe Rice's words are just a little bit minced.
Inheritance From Mother

By Minae Mizumura. Translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter

Other. 447 pp. $27.95

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At 51, I'm committed to the idea that I don't want to live if I'm a burden to my children. To that end, I have a widely distributed living will, decision-makers who understand my stance and an age at which I plan to discontinue diagnostic tests.

My mother, vibrant and hopeful at nearly 80, eyes me. "Let's see how you feel when you're my age," she says.

Ours is a tension between generations: hers the victorious World War II babies who marched into a world of prosperity, naming themselves the Greatest Generation; mine the motley Generation X, ambling in bleakness and clinging to adult life through a string of economic woes.

I would have thought this was a uniquely American dynamic. But Minae Mizumura's gorgeous and intimate novel, "Inheritance from Mother," paints the conundrum bright - both specifically, as a Japanese issue, and universally, as the developed world's aging population explodes.

In a 2014 op-ed in the New York Times titled "Please, Mother, Enough," Mizumura explained that "the myth of the selfless mother has a strong grip on Japanese heartstrings." To honor one's mother is seen as a virtue, and "to strive to extend her life by even one day is a solemn duty." Japanese women who live to 90 or even 100 are often seen as the ideal of health and happiness.

"Inheritance from Mother" has a very different story to tell.

Mitsuki, the heroine of Mizumura's novel, is a frail, fretful woman in her mid-50s. She is lonely, childless, underemployed (as an adjunct professor) and caring for Noriko, her querulous, hedonistic, elderly mother who has fractured a shoulder and hip. Mitsuki's older sister, Natsuki, is flighty and artistic; she married into wealth and assumes little responsibility. Mitsuki has not disclosed to either her mother or her sister that her rock-star academic husband, Tetsuo, is on his third and most flagrantly obvious affair.

On the very day Mitsuki finds evidence of the other woman, the hospital calls. She rushes there to find her mother lying in bed and wailing in fear. A surgeon stops by to explain the procedure where they will implant new, artificial bones. But, he warns, Noriko will no longer be able to walk.

"It might be a good idea to keep a portable toilet beside her bed," the doctor says. With this, Mitsuki knows her life is as good as over until her mother is dead.

Originally published in 2010 and 2011 as a serial novel in the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's most widely read daily newspaper, "Inheritance from Mother" went on to win the Osaragi Jiro Award. The English edition, translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter, has been named an O Magazine Reading Room selection for July.

One of the most entrancing things about this novel is that it retains the rhythm of a serial even in bound-book form. The book is divided precisely into two parts, each with 33 vignettes and chapter headings such as "A Husband Sipping Aged Sake" or "The Night the Sky Rained Stars."

Mizumura's writing is urgent yet thorough, and her plot - with its multiple divorces and infidelities, scheming, legends and deaths - just short of overwrought. But her prose is controlled and as dense as poetry. Here, she writes about the dank extended-care hospital where her father spent his dying days: "Dressed in pajamas much alike, males and females indistinguishable, they wove their way around in wheelchairs, drifting up and down the corridor like living ghosts."

Part 1 begins with Mitsuki "exhilarated, knowing that her mother was finally dead." Then it reels back to show her scrambling from a philandering husband to a bed-bound mother obsessed with her bowels. Mitsuki's tedious middle-aged life is drawn one tableau at a time. She was the lesser of two girls, not as talented as her sister, devoted to the father their mother spurned for a younger man.

Suffering from a malady she calls air-conditioningitis, Mitsuki experiences her mother's demands as "heavy, sticky filaments that dulled her skin as well as her heart." The prose here is beautiful but sometimes plodding, largely focused on establishing character and events.

In Part 2, after Noriko's death, Mitsuki sheds the filaments and begins to bloom. Whereas she was exasperating before, now she begins to interrogate her own part in the drama. Could her refusal to work full-time have damaged her marriage? Might the rabid resentment of her mother be hiding other disappointments? Could her decision not to have children backfire in her own old age?

This section is far more languid, with meditations on azaleas, architecture and "bovarism," the romantic practice of escaping real life by focusing on impossible dreams. There's a gratuitous mystery involving a psychic and a suicide at a mountaintop resort. Part 2 is a wandering, sometimes frustrating sequel to the very straightforward Hemingwayesque quality of Part 1. Yet so worth it. The resolution of "Inheritance from Mother" is natural and satisfying in myriad ways.

Here is the sentence that stopped me: "Perhaps her mother's rejection of old age had made Mitsuki too ready to embrace it."

This is a breakthrough for Mitsuki, who gracefully accepts her regrets and missteps and builds a whole new life. But I believe my own mother would say there is wisdom here for the rest of us, as well.

---

Bauer is the author, most recently, of the novel "Forgiveness 4 You."
The Dinner Party: And Other Stories

By Joshua Ferris

Little, Brown. 246 pp. $26

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I'm not divulging any spoilers when I say that the last sentence in the last story of Joshua Ferris' new collection, "The Dinner Party," is the most important one. It's a question that binds all of these pieces:

"What does a man do - and I mean a real man, now, what does a real man do - when he knows he's done something wrong?"

Plenty of novels, memoirs and cultural studies have explored the end of men or the failings of masculinity. But Ferris, a darkly comic writer who feels like the novelist equivalent of the filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, has managed to write a series of stories on the subject that feels fresh. His male characters mess up, in small and spectacular fashion, but their misdeeds often prompt our sympathy, thanks to Ferris' insightful narration. What's even more delightful is that his stories show men behaving badly in the most ordinary settings: an office, a Florida condo building or, in the case of the book's hysterical and yet sad opening piece, a dinner party that doesn't go as planned.

In that titular story, which, like many in this collection, first appeared in the New Yorker, a husband and his wife have prepared two racks of mustard-seasoned lamb and mushroom risotto for another couple. But their guests are running late. The wife, Amy, who is infertile, grows increasingly despondent that her friends, who are expecting a child, either got in an accident or forgot about their dinner party. Maybe, deep down, Amy thinks her friends have a better, more promising life, but maybe, deep down, her husband doesn't care. FOMO - fear of missing out - underpins her desperation and so many others in this book.

Finally, Amy's husband visits the couple's house, where, much to his surprise, they're doing something else. When he returns home, Amy seems to know her husband is shading the truth, and she punishes him for his patronizing fabrications. How does the husband fix this mess? He has no clue.

My favorite story involves pigs. In "More Abandon (Or Whatever Happened to Joe Pope?)" the main character stays behind at the office while everyone else has gone home. Pope noses around other people's offices, inspecting their knickknacks, including one woman's workspace adorned with pig pencils, pig notepads, pig stress relievers and just about every other form of pig tchotchke. Ferris, clearly, is having fun with the obvious male metaphor. (Ferris loves satirizing office culture. The Pope piece reads like an outtake from his 2007 novel, "Then We Came to the End.")

As the story unfolds, Pope winds up at another man's desk, where he picks up the phone and leaves desperate voice mails for his office crush, who is married and pregnant. It's here where Ferris elegantly plumbs the comically misguided mind-set of this narcissist, who, at the very least, is aware of his narcissism and, therefore comes off as more decent than he otherwise should.

"Why does her life cast a shadow over his own? Why does her happiness, hers and her husband's, follow him everywhere he goes, quietly qualifying the things that might normally bring him delight?" Ferris writes. "Why does a cab ride through the city without her make him an empty and unrealized dreamer? And since when, and by what right, has he hitched his happiness to hers and forsaken the power to be the source of his own contentedness?"

But what does Pope do when he realizes he's done wrong - that he shouldn't have left all those creepy voice mails for his female colleague?

As in all these stories, Ferris returns us to those pigs, those selfish pigs, in ways we don't expect.
The Wasting of Borneo: Dispatches From a Vanishing World

By Alex Shoumatoff

Beacon. 184 pp. $26.95

---

In approaching Alex Shoumatoff's impassioned new book, "The Wasting of Borneo," don't overlook its subtitle, "Dispatches From a Vanishing World." Shoumatoff has taken the occasion to examine his whole crusading career, starting with an elegiac reprise of his childhood - a surprisingly outdoorsy one, given that it took place in Westchester County, about 40 miles north of New York City. That's because much of the county was still forested in the 1950s, and Shoumatoff and his best friend at the time were allowed to explore it at will. They also had someone to emulate: Shoumatoff's father, a mainstay of the local Audubon Society who as a young man had gone butterfly hunting in Jamaica.

Flash forward six decades, and we find the two old pals about to renew their friendship by visiting Borneo together, a journey that will also be a milestone for Shoumatoff, completing what he calls "my tour of the world's great rain forests." In the interim he'd roamed the wild world, chronicling the loss of ecosystems and biodiversity for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Smithsonian magazines, and in such books as "The Rivers Amazon" (1978) and "In Southern Light: Trekking Through Zaire and the Amazon" (1986).

The world's third-largest island, Borneo is divided politically; the smaller, northern portion is Malaysian, the remainder Indonesian. On both sides of the border, however, the story is much the same: promiscuous logging of "some of the oldest and most species-rich and spectacular rain forest on Earth" and its replacement by a monoculture of palm trees whose oil is used, Shoumatoff writes, in "cookies, lipstick, dishwashing detergent, margarine, biodiesel, you name it. ... Forty to 50 percent of household products in countries like the United States, Canada, Australia, and England contain palm oil, and 80 percent of the stuff comes from Indonesia and Malaysia. It's a $40-billion business."

Before shoving off, Shoumatoff consults experts on how to mingle with the animals and indigenous peoples he is likely to meet. He tunes up his empathy at a South Carolina preserve for wounded or orphaned animals. On an earlier visit, Shoumatoff had bonded with Bubbles, the resident elephant. This time around, Bubbles not only picks her buddy out of a crowd; she "wraps her trunk around me and pulls me to her breast and raises her right foot for me to rest on." In an epic humblebrag, Shoumatoff notes that the Dalai Lama "didn't remember me when I went to see him again several years after a two-hour private audience with him in 1990 ... but Bubbles did, right away, and I was with seventy other people."

This isn't the only time in "The Wasting of Borneo" that Shoumatoff is a bit full of himself, but thanks to his obvious gusto for his work and causes, he can get away with it. Also, his wide knowledge, based on years of globetrotting and reporting, enables him to make comparisons that others might miss. For example, colossal as the loss of Amazonian rain forests has been, Shoumatoff argues that in a way, the lesser-known plundering of Borneo is worse, with a deforestation rate "unparalleled in human history."

One of Shoumatoff's objectives in Borneo is to spend time with Birute Galdikas, an authority on orangutans (and recently featured in a PBS "Nature" series about studying wild animals by infiltrating their habitats with camera-toting robots that look and move just like them). Shoumatoff's most fascinating encounters, however, are with the indigenous people being stripped of their hunting and gathering grounds as forests are felled and rivers are dammed. Many groups have had no choice but to adopt Western ways, and it's not uncommon to come upon a longhouse where, two generations after headhunting was last practiced, the inhabitants gather at night around a communal TV set.

Seeking out elders who are still conversant with their groups' mythology, Shoumatoff places high value on origin stories. Among many recounted in the book, this one stands out for its simplicity and beauty. The story, which comes from the Penan, who live near Malaysia's Mulu National Park, concerns the tajem tree, source of the poison in which darts are dipped before being inserted into blowguns:

"According to legend, Tajem was an extremely beautiful and clever woman. Many men fell in love with her. She felt pity for all of them, and thought that if she became close to one of them it would not be fair to the others, so she decided to become something useful for all of them and transformed herself into the tree whose blood they could use for hunting." Such tales contribute to a human cultural diversity that falls victim to indiscriminate logging and river-tampering as surely as biological diversity does.

Though by no means a cheerful book, "The Wasting of Borneo" ends on a moderately encouraging note. Local and international nonprofits appear to be making headway with the Malaysian and Indonesian governments (which can grant or deny permits for disruptive projects), and some of the families who have reaped immense profits from deforestation are now facing charges of illegal money laundering. Shoumatoff urges that "it's time to do our part at the consumer end. ... An alternative to palm oil must be found so this holocaust ends."

For readers willing to do their part immediately, this reviewer has checked the household larder and found one kind of cookie that does not contain palm oil: Fig Newtons.

---

Drabelle is a former contributing editor of The Washington Post Book World who writes frequently on the environment.
A relatively quiet story surfaced this week and was quickly buried under drifts of swiftly accumulating breaking news: The Trump administration is contemplating a new troop surge in Afghanistan, as the United States enters its 16th year of conflict in that country. For many observers, the announcement raised yet more questions about the ideological underpinnings and policy parameters - indeed, even the very existence - of a Trump Doctrine.

For a much smaller cohort, that speculation invited another, admittedly less pressing subject for discussion: What will Trump Doctrine movies look like?

Films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could be roughly categorized in two categories: Fouled-Up-Beyond-All-Recognition absurdism and the Cult of the Operator. The finest example of the former genre was actually made at the end of the Clinton era: David O. Russell's "Three Kings," which takes place during the 1991 Gulf War, set the gold standard for expertly deployed irony, its depiction of mercenary fervor and misplaced ideals earning it pride of place alongside such formative wartime satires as "Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" and "M.A.S.H." Although filmmakers attempted those heights in subsequent attempts at gonzo nihilism (the lamentable "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" and the downright offensive "Rock the Kasbah" and "War Dogs"), the so-called war on terror never produced sophisticated parody on a par with Russell's caustic masterpiece.

But what was left? In a post-Vietnam era when patriotic wholesomeness and unabashed jingoism could no longer be accepted at face value, Hollywood made movies that largely avoided explicit political stands and simply valorized the professionalism of the troops (and, by extension, the fecklessness of the political class putting them in harm's way). Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal won the Oscar in 2009 for "The Hurt Locker," a brilliant portrait of a bomb technician that subtly questioned the Iraq War, but concentrated its focus on the competence, physical courage and dedication.

A series of like-minded films followed - from Bigelow and Boal's "Zero Dark Thirty" to "Lone Survivor" and "American Sniper" - as did a startling piece of Pentagon-approved propaganda, the Navy SEAL adventure "Act of Valor" (conceived as both Hollywood blockbuster and recruiting tool). Filmmakers have used the contours of psychological thrillers to explore war's ethical quandaries, such as the drone-themed "Good Kill" and "Eye in the Sky," as well as this weekend's sniper standoff "The Wall." And of course they've milked wartime for pure action: Michael Bay's 2016 Benghazi movie "13 Hours" infused the Cult of the Operator with characteristic bro-down swagger, while taking contemptuous swipes at the pencil-necked civilian geeks they lost their lives protecting.

The new Brad Pitt movie "War Machine" makes similar comic hay of the brass-vs.-Beltway dynamic, but as a way to suggest that old vernaculars may no longer be that useful. The film, which will premiere on Netflix later this month, stars Pitt as Gen. Glen McMahon, a thinly disguised version of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, as he assumes leadership of the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan in 2009. Inspired by Michael Hastings's book "The Operators" - which itself was based on Hastings' Rolling Stone expose that led to McChrystal's dismissal in 2010 - "War Machine" will probably be of interest less for Pitt's Patton-esque depiction of McChrystal than Anthony Michael Hall's portrayal of a character based on McChrystal's most ardent loyalist, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Rather than McChrystal, who has largely disappeared from public view, it's Flynn - who was fired from his post as national security adviser for lying about his contacts with a Russian official - who has accidentally emerged as the film's most newsworthy character, his exploits part of an ongoing inquiry into the Trump-Russia connection that continues to reverberate after the sudden firing of FBI Director James B. Comey on Tuesday.

But if "War Machine" feels strangely prescient, it's less because of its present-day pings with Flynn and the new Afghanistan surge than its temperament, which strikes a novel, occasionally uneasy balance between farce and something more pensive. Netflix is marketing the movie as a dark comedy, and writer-director David Michod is clearly informed by the deadpan humor of Hastings' journalism. But the movie's most effective sequences are reserved for a U.S. military that has become a de facto state-building entity, putting troops in the impossible position of killing civilian opponents and helping civilian allies, without knowing which is which. "War Machine's" best scenes aren't played for laughs. They linger with a grievous sense of loss.

As both a solemn reflection on - and funhouse reflection of - recent history, "War Machine" turns out to be surprisingly apt for a time when breaking news continually invites us either to mock or to mourn - or do both simultaneously. We're at a point when nothing can be normalized, least of all war; when glib cynicism feels utterly inadequate to the moment and vicarious hero worship isn't credible, or earned. When the norms of democracy and global policy are fluid to the point of evaporation, we need a cinematic language that goes beyond FUBAR follies and high-functioning warrior-technocrats.

Once, the tricky tonal shifts and genre mash-ups of "War Machine" might have felt uncertain and contradictory. Today, they feel like the nascent, still-tentative attempts to capture an era when we're not innocent enough to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.
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Former KCYY-FM (Y100) morning personality Jeff Miles, who left many a disappointed fan behind when he departed his S.A. show last year for an on-air job in Boston, recently created a stir with an impassioned post on Facebook.

It indicated that the former "Miles in the Morning" host was troubled by what he characterized as negative talk about him by his Y100 successor.

That successor is J.R. Jaus  known simply as J.R. -- who now shares the country station's high-rated morning show, "J.R. & Beth in the Morning," with Miles' former air partner and another local listener favorite, Beth Chandler.

Jaus is remaining silent on the matter.

In a phone text, he wrote it's "out of my hands" and referred me to a Facebook message from Chandler that indicated the station's company "legal team said they would be handling it."

Both Chandler and Miles did speak on the phone about the situation, however.

The baffling Wednesday post, which prompted my chats with them, has since been taken down, but here's a sampling:

"I would like to state for the record that I have never met the guy who replaced me in San Antonio," Miles wrote.

"He and I had exchanged a few texts and couple phone calls about him taking the job there. I encouraged Beth to embrace him and that I felt he would be the best choice to team up with her. ... I helped this guy in every way possible. Yet for some reason he has an issue with me."

Miles went on to indicate how frustrated he felt. "He has taken it upon himself to go out of his way to talk very negatively about me to people in our industry and I just don't know what to do. Is it because Beth and I are still such good friends? Buddy, we were friends before we started doing the morning show together and will remain friends.

"All I want is to be able to provide for my family and do what I love doing. Entertaining people to the best of my ability.

Miles concluded with what he indicated was the last straw: "When he started I wished he and Beth all the success in the world and even told people to give you a chance when so many were sending me messages about how they didn't like the new show. But you are now messing with my family and my ability to provide for them and that has crossed the line with me."

In a phone chat with Miles Thursday, he brought me up to date on his work situation.

He said the job he had left San Antonio for, at country outlet WKLB-FM (102.5) in the larger market of Boston, "wasn't the right fit."

"We didn't have any ties to Boston," so he and his wife made a family decision to leave, he said.

Miles said they're now living in a little town just north of Atlanta, where his wife does have family and a job. As for him, Miles said he isn't doing much right now except for some voice-over work out of his house. Mostly, he's "a stay-at-home dad."

He said he'd love to get back to San Antonio, a city he holds dear. "Texas is home to me," he said, "but nothing's happening for me there now."

He indicated that he still has a relationship with some of his S.A. listeners through Facebook and Instagram. "Even to this day people are still reaching out to me all the time."

As for that emotional Facebook post, Miles acknowledged that he wrote it, but added: "I don't want to stir the pot. ... Hopefully things will blow over."

"I want to leave it alone because I want nothing but the best for Beth," he said, referring to his friend and former colleague Chandler. He said he took the post down because he didn't want it to affect her, "one of my favorite people."

As for what prompted the rant, he indicated how frustrating it's been for him of late to hear he's being talked about by someone he's never even met in person.

"I have no ill feelings towards him," he said of J.R. "I just don't understand where it came from to begin with  and that's the part that's pretty disheartening."

"Radio is a very small business and people tend to talk to this person and that person and next thing you know, it all gets back to the person you're talking to," he added.

In another call Thursday, Chandler characterized Miles' rant as "a big misunderstanding."

Mostly, she emphasized that she wanted to stay neutral as she is friends with both guys.

"Miles has one truth. J.R. has one truth," Chandler said. "It's not something that should be put on social media."

"J.R. would never talk about someone and try to make it be like that," she added. "What I've gathered is ... somewhere along the line, information was mis-said, misinterpreted, misworded, some kind of 'he said, she said,' blah, blah, blah.

"(Miles) and I talked, and we're fine; J.R. and I are fine," she added. "I was like, 'Can we not do this again, you guys, because it's kind of causing a lot of attention'."

She hit the nail on the head. Facebook isn't a confessional or a therapist's office. Anything put on those walls is public and can come back to haunt you.

jjakle@express-news.net
U.S. President Donald Trump acknowledged on Thursday that he had asked the head of the nation's prime law enforcement agency whether he was being investigated. FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump on Tuesday, creating a political firestorm and raising concerns in some circles about a constitutional crisis. Trump, in an interview with NBC News, said he asked then-FBI director Comey "if it's possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, 'You are not under investigation.'" The president, in the television interview, repeated "I am not under investigation" when asked about Comey's sworn testimony that there is an ongoing probe into his 2016 president campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government.

 'Highly Inappropriate' Legal analyst Bradley Moss, who specializes in national security issues, called such an exchange "highly inappropriate" at a minimum. "There is supposed to be a line that is not crossed, including asking the FBI if you yourself are the target of the investigation," Moss told VOA. But Moss, who heads The James Madison Project, a Washington-based organization that promotes government accountability, added it is "difficult to say if it is actually illegal, since Comey allegedly responded that Trump was not under investigation." Howard Tribe, a Harvard professor specializing in constitutional law, wrote on Twitter it is "now totally clear that Trump's firing of Comey was an obstruction of justice. That was the first article of impeachment against Nixon." That is a reference to former President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 less than a month after the House of Representatives began impeachment proceedings against him. Trump asserts in Thursday's interview he would have fired Comey even if top Justice Department officials had not recommended it, calling former President Barack Obama's appointee "a showboat. He's a grandstander." Comey was directing investigations into connections between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, along with possible meddling by Moscow in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The White House on Thursday continued to defend its dismissal of the FBI chief and denied it tried to put the responsibility on Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's memo for the abrupt removal. "I don't think there was ever an attempt to pin the decision on the deputy attorney general" for Comey's firing, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House principal deputy press secretary. However, Sanders, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer and even Vice President Mike Pence earlier had asserted Trump's firing decision was based on the deputy attorney general's memo. At the center of the scrutiny is whether Rosenstein was instructed to draft a memo justifying Comey's dismissal or whether he decided to write the document without direction. Rosenstein was upset with suggestions made by the White House that his memo suggested he called for Comey's firing Tuesday, according to The Washington Post and ABC News. The White House on Thursday denied any such reaction by Rosenstein, telling reporters the veteran prosecutor came up with the memo on his own and not necessarily at Trump's direction. Rosenstein's memo mentioned Comey's mishandling of last year's investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server while she was secretary of state.

President Donald Trump talks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on May 10, 2017. /AP

 Russian Investigation However, news media reports quote sources who assert Comey was ousted because he wanted to intensify the Russia investigation. The firing has prompted Democrats to amplify their calls for an independent investigation of the Russia case. The attorneys general of 20 states are also calling for appointment of a special counsel. Some Republicans are also expressing concern about the timing and reason for Comey's abrupt removal. Comey was appointed by Obama in 2013. FBI directors serve 10-year terms, to insulate them from political interference, but can be removed by presidents. Until now the only other time an FBI director had been dismissed was in 1993 when President Bill Clinton removed William Sessions who refused to voluntarily leave amid ethical concerns. Former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers is under consideration to succeed Comey, according to senior White House officials. Rogers, a former FBI special agent, chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. At a Senate intelligence hearing on Thursday, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe pledged to inform lawmakers about attempts to interfere with the bureau's investigation into Russia's meddling in the presidential election and potential ties to the Trump campaign. "You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," McCabe said. He also rejected White House claims that Comey had lost support within the FBI. "I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day. We are a large organization," McCabe said. "I can confidently tell you that the majority, the vast majority of FBI employees, enjoy a deep and positive connection to Director Comey." At Thursday's White House briefing, Sanders contradicted McCabe's assertion, saying she had "heard from a large number of individuals who work at the FBI who are happy with the president's decision" to fire Comey.
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A man pointed a handgun at a person during a road rage incident reported in central Laredo, according to authorities.

Albert Lee Barnes, 49, was arrested Saturday and charged with aggravated assault with a firearm.

He allegedly had in his vehicle a .9mm Ruger, a clip with 16 rounds and a black paddle holster, according to police. All items were seized.

Click through the gallery to see where incidents of road rage most often occur in the U.S.

The aggravated assault was reported at approximately 4:15 p.m. in the 900 block of FM 1472. Dispatch informed the responding officer that a white Dodge Ram and a gray Dodge Durango were involved in a road rage incident.

Police said the driver of the Ram pointed a weapon at the Durango driver. LPD located the vehicles as he approached the 11000 block of FM 1472. The driver of the Durango waved down the officer and pointed at the Ram, whose driver was identified as Barnes.

READ MORE: Laredo police: Man threatened to kill IBC employee after learning he'd have to wait for check money

Barnes allegedly did not allow the driver of the Durango to pass him on San Dario Avenue. At the stop light on Calton Road, Barnes pulled up next to him and began yelling, according to police.

Both exchanged words. Barnes then flicked a cigarette at the complainant, who in turn threw a sunglasses case at Barnes, according to police.

Barnes then allegedly pulled out a gun and pointed it at the complainant.
Mexicos army seized 12 assault rifles and over 1,100 pounds of marijuana from the riverbanks of Nuevo Laredo, authorities said.

Troops said they came across the contraband Tuesday night while patrolling an area. Authorities did not disclose the location where the items were seized.
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Laredo Mayor Pete Saenz wants to consider placing City Manager Jesus Chuy Olivares on administrative leave with pay.

According to Mondays City Council agenda, Saenz wants to consider the possible action until such time as outside counsel is retained to assess and make recommendations to the mayor and council on this and other FBI investigation-related matters.

"The fact that the FBI is interested in our city manager, that in itself presents an appearance of possibly wrongdoing, Saenz told Fox 39. I'm not saying that any wrongdoing occurred, but it's the appearance. As public officials we need to be beyond reproach, we should be beyond this appearance of wrongdoing."

READ MORE: Laredo police: Man threatened to kill IBC employee after learning he'd have to wait for check money

Saenz also wants to discuss whether to appoint an interim city manager.

Olivares was among the 17 target subjects identified in the search and seizure warrant that the FBI executed at City Hall in late April as part of a public corruption probe.

Four city buildings, four county offices and several Dannenbaum Engineering offices around Texas were closed as FBI conducted an investigation April 26. The investigation appears to focus on Dannenbaum Engineering, which has taken on high-profile contracts in Laredo.

No arrests have been made.

Laredos City Council voted recently to hire an outside attorney to assist the city in avoiding a situation similar to what occurred with the FBI raids.

Click through this gallery to see photos from the FBI raids across Texas.
Sue Ogrocki/STF

AUSTIN -- Instead of the House version, the lower chamber on Thursday passed the Senate's version of a measure aimed at promoting the use of American steel and iron in government construction.

The House version, HB 2780 by Rep. Chris Paddie, R-Marshall, was postponed time and time again over the past several days. Within seconds of the Senate version by Sen. Brandon Creighton coming up Thursday, Rep. Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas, called a point of order.
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Police discovered heroin, methamphetamine, Ambien and Xanax during a traffic stop for a suspected DWI May 8 in the 500 block of North Friendswood drive, authorities said.

The driver, a 24-year-old La Porte man already out on bond for an April DWI and methamphetamine possession arrest, received two controlled substance possession charges. The bonds on his charges total $6,500.

The passenger, a 33-year-old Houston man, also was charged with possession of a controlled substance, and his bond was set at $40,000.

THEFT

More than $10,000 in money orders was stolen from Bay Meadows Apartments, 17201 Blackhawk Blvd., according to a May 3 police report. The manager, who reported 18 money orders stolen, said the bank notified her one was cashed March 28.

Police charged a Pearland woman, 28, with shoplifting May 7 after she walked out of Kroger, 151 N. Friendswood Drive, with a basket full of groceries that were not bagged. When a manager followed her to the parking lot and asked for her receipt, she pushed the grocery cart toward the manager and fled. Police stopped her in the 18200 block of County Road 127 in Pearland. The merchandise totaled $279.94 and included toilet paper, diapers and personal hygiene products. Bond was set at $1,000.

FRAUD

A Friendswood woman received a call from her credit card company regarding suspicious transactions on her Chevron Texaco credit card, according to a May 1 police report. Three unauthorized transactions reportedly were made; she canceled the card.

Several credit cards were opened using a Friendswood man's identifying information, according to a May 6 police report. A preliminary investigation identified a suspect who has outstanding warrants in Texas and Nevada for illegal use of credit cards.

ASSAULT

An assault charge was pending after a woman arrived at the police department with bruises on the left side of her face, authorities said. She told police her boyfriend punched her repeatedly April 29 in the 2800 block of FM 528.

Police took a Friendswood man, 57, into custody for assault May 2 after a call to the 1900 block of Dove Court, where a man reportedly was acting violently toward his wife. Officers found the man exhibiting signs of intoxication and a woman with a knot on her head, police said. A witness told police the man had pushed his wife down, causing her to hit her head on a treadmill.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

A car was vandalized May 1 in the 1300 block of Osborne Drive, police said.

NARCOTICS

Police involvement in a woman's attempt to retrieve belongings from her ex-boyfriend's apartment may lead to the man's arrest for possession of anabolic steroids. Responding to a May 6 call to Reserve at Autumn Creek, 3102 West Bay Area Blvd., police reportedly observed marijuana paraphernalia in plain view in a bedroom as well as seven vials in the bathroom. An officer also found a foil-wrapped package containing six doses of Modvigil and two vials of Trenbolone on the ex-boyfriend, police said. Officers seized the suspected drugs for laboratory analysis before filing charges.

DRIVING WHILE INTOXICATED

Police charged a Lake Jackson woman, 23, with DWI after a witness reported an intoxicated driver May 2 in the 2300 block of Brighton Park Lane. The woman reportedly failed a field sobriety test and a breath test.

Police charged a Rosharon man, 32, with DWI, third offense, after he was stopped for speeding May 6 in the 1300 block of West Parkwood Avenue. During the traffic stop, the officer asked the man for his driver's license and insurance but he seemed confused at the request, police said. He reportedly became agitated and refused to answer questions or perform field sobriety tests. He also refused a blood test. Bond was set at $40,000.

A 21-year-old Friendswood woman was charged with DWI after police observed a vehicle traveling too closely behind another May 6 in the 400 block of East Parkwood. The woman, reportedly driving the vehicle in front, initially said she did not know the driver behind her but later recanted. She failed a field sobriety test and refused breath and blood tests, police said. During booking, an officer noticed the woman had spilled an alcoholic beverage in her purse. She also had an Adderall capsule, for which she did not have a prescription, police said. Bond was set at $1,000. The driver of the violator vehicle was released from the traffic stop.

TRAFFIC

Police charged a Pasadena man, 21, with an altered license plate and no driver's license after a traffic stop for an expired temporary license plate May 4 in the 500 block of East Parkwood. The man also had several warrants out of Pasadena and Deer Park, police said.

A Galveston man, 52, was charged with no driver's license, no insurance and fictitious license plate after an officer noticed his expired Texas dealer tag May 4 in the 16800 block of Blackhawk Boulevard. The driver also had outstanding Texas City warrants.

FOUND PROPERTY

For the second time in two weeks, a gun was found inside a rental car May 6, police said. The rental company called police and turned the firearm over for safekeeping.

Experts lead self-defense course May 18-21

Women can learn realistic self-defense tactics during a four-day course at Hope Lutheran Church of Friendswood, 1804 S. Friendswood Drive.

The RAD Systems - or Rape Aggression Defense - program focuses on awareness, prevention and risk reduction and includes the basics of hands-on defense training.

Course times are 6-9:30 p.m. May 18 and May 19, 4-8 p.m. May 20 and 2-6 p.m. May 21. Attendance each day is required.

The class, $25, is open to women 12 and older. For details, contact officer Kevin Crouch, kcrouch@friendswood.com or 281-996-3316.
Three Plattsburgh, New York, taxi cab companies will pay financial penalties for taking advantage of illegal immigrants fleeing the United States for Canada through practices including price gouging, the New York Attorney General's office said on Wednesday.

It said in a statement the fines came as part of a settlement after the three companies, Northern Taxi, Town Taxi and C & L Taxi, "admitted to not posting rates as required by law."

Illegal crossings from the United States into Canada have become increasingly common in the months since U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to crack down on undocumented immigrants, took office in January.
WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency has reached a legal settlement with a Canadian company hoping to build a massive gold, copper and molybdenum mine in Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed, clearing the way for the firm to apply for federal permits.

The settlement reached late Thursday between EPA and the Pebble Limited Partnership, a subsidiary of Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., could revive a controversial project that was effectively scuttled under Barack Obama. And it underscores how President Donald Trump's commitment to support mining extends far beyond coal, to gold, copper and other minerals.

While the move does not grant immediate approval to the Pebble Mine project, which will have to undergo a federal environmental review and also clear state hurdles before any construction takes place, it reverses the agency's 2014 determination that a large-scale mine in the area be barred because it would imperil the region's valuable sockeye salmon fishery.

In a statement, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said that the agreement "will not guarantee or prejudge a particular outcome, but will provide the Pebble a fair process for their permit application and help steer EPA away from costly and time-consuming litigation."

"We are committed to due process and the rule of law, and regulations that are 'regular'," Pruitt said. "We understand how much the community cares about this issue, with passionate advocates on all sides. . . We are committed to listening to all voices as this process unfolds."

A coalition of fishing operators, native Alaskans, environmentalists and local businesses have fought the mine proposal for more than a decade, ever since Northern Dynasty Minerals began exploring for minerals in 2004. While this area in southwestern Alaska contains a reservoir of gold worth an estimated $120 billion, its pockmarked lakes and tributaries feed into the headwaters of Bristol Bay, home to a fishery that generates $500 million a year.

In 2014 the EPA invoked a rarely used clause of the Clean Water Act, 404(c), to issue a proposed determination that the company could not apply to the Army Corps of Engineers for any permits because a massive mine could have "significant" and potentially "catastrophic" impacts on the region.

Alannah Hurley, executive director of the United Tribes of Bristol Bay, said in an interview that opponents of the mine "are outraged that this is happening."

"If there's damage to the watershed and the fisheries, then it would be devastating to our identity as indigenous people," Hurley said, adding that tribes and other local residents "invited" the EPA to intervene on the issue. "For the company to paint it as [unwelcome] federal intervention is completely misleading. The people of Bristol Bay basically cried out to EPA to help us."

The company has sued EPA on three different fronts, arguing that the agency violated the Clean Water Act, colluded with outside groups to reach its determination and violated the Freedom of Information Act. The suit concerning the outside groups, filed under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, was the one settled Thursday in federal court in Alaska.

Under the terms of the agreement EPA has agreed to start the process of withdrawing its proposed determination, which will be subject to public notice and comment. It will not take the next step in the process until 48 months from the settlement or until the Army Corps of Engineers issues its final environmental impact statement, whichever comes first.

The firm, which has never filed federal permit applications for Pebble Mine, would have to do so within 30 months.

Northern Dynasty declined to comment on Thursday, prior to the deal being finalized. But its stock prices have already been bolstered by Trump's victory. After dropping to as low as $0.25 a share at one point the price soared after the November election, jumping 25 percent overnight and reaching as high as $3.18 earlier this year.

The company has touted the likely benefits of having a new, friendlier administration in office. A series of investor presentations by the company's chief executive, Ron Thiessen, included a PowerPoint slide titled "Trump Election Victory -- A Return to Normal."

While many congressional Republicans, including Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas oppose what they've described as EPA's "preemptive" veto of the project, public opinion in Alaska on the mining proposal remains split.

Last fall a ballot measure passed with more than 65 percent that would require the state legislature to pass a measure approving any large-scale mine in the Bristol Bay region, and they would have to determine that such an operation would not imperil the area's sockeye salmon fishery.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, has said that constructing Pebble Mine "presents formidable challenges" given the valuable fishery and the rural village life that depends on it.

"Based on the information available to me now, I do not support the Pebble Mine," reads a statement from his 2014 campaign site.

Taryn Kiekow Heimer, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview that "the opposition in Alaska has grown stronger" since EPA blocked the mine's construction.

But in Washington, the political climate has shifted.

Administration officials are reopening the question of whether to construct Pebble Mine, and may even reconsider the Interior and Agriculture Departments' move in December to reject a mining company's request to renew a lease on the southwest border of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

In one of the last big mining decisions of the Obama era, the two departments rejected Twin Metals' lease renewal bid, and set in motion a formal review to examine whether all mining activities in 234,000 acres abutting the wilderness should be barred for the next 20 years.

Minnesota Reps. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., and Tom Emmer, R-Minn., met with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke on April 26 to discuss whether to reverse that decision, according to individuals who asked for anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

"I am optimistic that we will be able to work with the new administration to allow this initiative to move forward," Nolan said in a statement Thursday. "Having met with all the involved agencies and parties, I know renewing these leases is the sensible and correct thing to do."

And Hal Quinn, president and CEO of the National Mining Association, said in a statement that his industry stands to "benefit most from the administration's willingness to lift the regulatory burden that has impaired our ability to compete in the energy market."

That will ease restrictions on "access and development of much needed domestic minerals and metals," Quinn added, which "are needed for everything from infrastructure and manufacturing to cutting edge technologies."
Federal authorities on Thursday searched the offices of a political consulting firm in Annapolis, Maryland, that has worked with Republican candidates nationwide and was sued in 2014 on allegations of fraudulent fundraising practices.

Strategic Campaign Group says it supports Republican candidates on a range of services including mail, fundraising and telephone town halls. Its leaders include GOP strategists Kelley Rogers, Chip O'Neil and Dennis Whitfield.

The firm has close ties to Republican consultant Scott Mackenzie, a treasurer for multiple political action committees that have drawn scrutiny for spending little money on candidates and instead steering donations to consultants, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Rogers said in an interview that he helped lead one of those groups, the Conservative Strike Force.

On Thursday, six FBI agents showed up at the third-floor office of Strategic Campaign Group to gather computer files and documents related to the firm's direct mail and fundraising practices, Rogers said. Lindsay Ram, a spokeswoman for the FBI field office in Washington, confirmed that agents were "conducting law enforcement activity in Annapolis, off Main Street."

Rogers said agents appeared interested in his firm's work on former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli's 2013 gubernatorial campaign. Cuccinelli (R) sued the Strategic Campaign Group and the Conservative Strike Force in 2014, alleging they raised almost $2.2 million to support his campaign but steered little of that money to him.

"Our suspicion is that this is just a carry-over from that," Rogers said. "I think the facts speak for themselves, and we tried to give the agents all the information they could possibly need."

The Conservative Strike Force agreed to pay Cuccinelli $85,000 to settle the lawsuit, and Strategic Campaign Group said it would turn over donor information.

The Conservative Strike Force has paid Strategic Campaign Group at least $493,000 for services since 2011, according to federal records. Strategic Campaign Group also received at least $188,000 in that time period from the Conservative Majority Fund, another political action committee listing Mackenzie as its treasurer. Mackenzie did not immediately return a voice mail seeking comment.

Both groups have spent a small portion of the donations they receive on the candidates they aim to support, according to federal records, and reported high spending on consultants and other firms.

The Federal Election Commission has been struggling for some time with the issue of political action committees that are formed solely to enrich those running them. Unlike nonprofits, which are governed by boards of directors, PACs can be run by a single consultant. And although candidates are prohibited under federal election law from using campaign donations for personal use, traditional political action committees and their super PAC brethren face few limitations on how they spend their funds.

Critics say "scam PACs" have proliferated in recent years, driven in part by the advent of big-money super PACs in the wake of the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision. There has also been a surge in groups chasing small-dollar donors, often with misleading promises of how they plan to use those funds.

The Strategic Campaign Group has ties to Republicans in the Maryland state legislature, and Rogers has raised money for Gov. Larry Hogan (R), although Rogers said Thursday that federal agents did not appear interested in his local work.

In 2016, Strategic Campaign Group was paid by the campaigns of Maryland House Minority Leader Nicholaus Kipke, R-Anne Arundel, and GOP Maryland congressional candidates Patrick McDonough and Charles Faddis, state and federal records show. Kipke said Thursday that the state GOP House and Senate political operations would suspend work with the company until the investigation is resolved.

Strategic Campaign Group also worked to support Republican Kathy Szeliga's unsuccessful 2016 campaign for a U.S. Senate seat.

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The Washington Post's Alice Crites, Peter Hermann, Ann Marimow, Steven Rich, Elise Viebeck and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report.
A gunman shot and killed an Ohio police chief and two nursing home employees Friday morning in a small village outside Columbus, authorities said.

Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said at a news conference that Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario was responding Friday morning to a call about a man with a gun. When deputies arrived on the scene, Thorp said, they "discovered him out in the street" and then found the gunman and two employees at the nearby Pine Kirk Care Center dead inside the assisted-living facility.

"It's a hard day for all of us," Thorp told reporters. "The deputies that arrived on the scene and pulled him to safety, if you will, they're having a hard time."

Disario, who had been serving as the Kirkersville police chief for only about three weeks when he was shot and killed, had six children and a seventh on the way, according to the Associated Press. He was 38 years old, according to public records.

"We've lost a police officer," Thorp, the sheriff in Licking County, told reporters, according to NBC affiliate WCMH. "It's just a tragic event. I guess the only peace of mind is that the threat is over."

"Now is the time to process what happened and put our arms around that family," he added.

Thorp said Disario responded to the call about 8 a.m. Disario's last radio transmission was that he had the suspect in sight, Thorp said.

"So I can only assume that he engaged the subject," Thorp said at the news conference, according to WCMH. He added that investigators do not yet know whether there was an exchange of gunfire between the police chief and the gunman.

Authorities said at an afternoon news conference that as the shooter approached the nursing home, he took two passersby as hostages in a wooded area near where the police chief's body was later found.

The hostages were not injured, authorities said.

Thorp said that after the deputies discovered Disario, they received information that a shooter was in the nearby nursing home. There, deputies found three deceased people - the gunman and two employees, he said.

The three people have not yet been publicly identified.

Thorp said he did not know whether the nursing home had a protocol for such incidents, but deputies found residents barricaded in different areas of the building. He said the residents were taken to hospitals but that no other injuries were reported.

He said there are 23 residents who live at the facility.

Authorities are still unsure how the shooter got into the nursing home, which the sheriff said is typically secured, or what the shooter's motive may have been.

The fatal shooting occurred in Kirkersville, a small village of about 500 residents located some 25 miles from Columbus.

"I was in my driveway," Debbie Messer, who lives nearby, told the Columbus Dispatch. "My neighbor told me that someone had shot a police officer and to go inside and lock my doors and call 911, and that's what I did."

"This is a really small town, and everybody knows everybody," Messer told the newspaper. "These things don't happen here."

The shooting happened days before the start of National Police Week, which includes National Peace Officers Memorial Day on Monday.

Disario was at least the 48th law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty this year, according to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund. According to the nonprofit group, which tracks officer deaths, such fatalities are up by more than 30 percent over the same period in 2016 - an alarming trend, given that 135 officers died in the line of duty in 2016, the highest level in five years.

Of those 2016 deaths, 64 were firearms-related, a significant increase from 2015 figures. The nonprofit group's midyear report noted a troubling increase in some of those deaths occurring in "ambush" attacks.

Gov. John Kasich (R) said in a statement that Ohio is mourning the loss of the police chief in Kirkersville. "Join me in praying for his family, friends and colleagues, and for the others injured in this tragedy," he said.

The governor also ordered U.S. and Ohio state flags to be flown at half-staff throughout Licking County and at the Ohio Statehouse "in honor of the lives lost in the senseless acts of violence."

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation is heading the investigation into the incident.
The CIA on Wednesday launched a Korea Mission Center to deal with the North Korean nuclear issue, according to a press release.

The move is part of the Trump administration's new North Korea strategy of "maximum pressure and engagement."

"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," CIA Director Mike Pompeo said in a statement. "It also reflects the dynamism and agility that CIA brings to evolving national security challenges."

The CIA has been establishing mission centers since 2015 to effectively manage intelligence, but the Korea Mission Center is the first country-specific unit while the others are regional or mission-specific including the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and counterterrorism.

The aim is "to harness the full resources, capabilities, and authorities of the agency in addressing the nuclear and ballistic missile threat posed by North Korea," the press release added. The center "will work closely with the Intelligence Community and the entire U.S. national security community."

An intelligence source here said it will be headed by Andrew Kim, a leading Korean-American North Korea expert in the CIA who retired early this year.


The World Health Organization has confirmed an Ebola outbreak in a remote forested part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the first in that country since 2014. At least nine people are suspected of being infected, and three have died.

The outbreak has raised alarms about the possibility of a new epidemic.

"An investigation team led by the Ministry of Health and supported by WHO and partners has deployed and is expected to reach the affected area in the coming days", said Peter Salama, WHO's executive director for emergencies, in a statement.

The WHO said it was informed on Tuesday of a cluster of undiagnosed illness and deaths, including hemorrhagic symptoms, in the northeastern part of the country, bordering the Central African Republic. On Thursday, the DRC's health ministry informed WHO that of five laboratory samples tested, one tested positive for Ebola virus at a laboratory in Kinshasa. That confirmed case was one of the three people who died.

The Ebola infection was confirmed from tests on a group of people exhibiting symptoms since April 22 in the province of Bas-Uele in northeast DRC.

The ministry said it is beginning to trace the contacts of those who may have been infected and that it is issuing protective kits for the health workers involved.

"Our country must confront an outbreak of the Ebola virus that constitutes a public health crisis of international significance," the ministry said.

On April 22, the confirmed Ebola victim drove across part of the vast province on motorbike to reach medical care. He had blood in his vomit and stool. There are conflicting accounts of whether he was able to reach the regional hospital in Likati. A sample of his blood was taken to Kinshasa, but because Bas-Uele is so remote, it took 10 days before the sample arrived in Kinshasa, the capital, and was tested.

By that time, both the original patient and the driver of the motorbike who took him to the hospital, his brother, had died, according to Alima, a medical humanitarian organization working in the country.

The body of the original patient was taken back to his village for burial, and a follow-up ministry health team later identified six others who had fallen ill in the same village, according to officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who are participating in coordination meetings but not yet been asked to provide epidemiological or laboratory support.

The health workers who treated the patients without protective gear are now also in grave danger of contracting the disease. Because the confirmed case traveled across Bas-Uele, contact tracers will now have a more difficult task ahead of them, seeking and isolating possible Ebola cases in at least two disparate villages, according to Alima.

But health personnel dispatched to the region are hopeful that the outbreak will mirror previous, limited Ebola outbreaks in the country.

"There will be more cases, but it is more likely to look like other outbreaks in Congo, a smaller outbreak, ending faster," said Susan Shepherd, Alima's medical coordinator.

"It's very isolated there," said Silvain Yuma, chief of staff at the ministry of health

One of those previous outbreaks was in the neighboring province of Haut-Uele in 2012. There were 41 cases there and 18 deaths. The outbreak lasted for around four months.

DRC officials said the confirmed infection involved the Zaire strain, which was the most common one present during the 2014-15 outbreak. Scientists are in the late stages of developing a vaccine that targets that specific strain, and it is likely to be made available for use if the outbreak is found to be large enough to warrant such an intervention. The vaccine has not yet been approved the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but could be made available under an emergency use authorization.

An agreement between Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and Merck, the developer of the vaccine, ensures that the vaccine is available in case of an outbreak, said Gavi's chief executive, Seth Berkley, in a statement. "The fact that this is a country that has experience dealing with Ebola should give us hope that we won't see a pandemic on the scale of the 2014 outbreak that hit West Africa," he said.

The WHO and others will determine if and when deployment of vaccine into this outbreak is warranted. The WHO has previously said it was preparing to make an initial 300,000 doses of the vaccine available in case of an outbreak.

Yokouide Allarangar, WHO representative in the DRC, said in a statement on Friday that the first teams of specialists - including epidemiologists, biologists, and experts in the areas of social mobilization, risk communication and community engagement and also personnel specializing in water, hygiene and sanitation - are scheduled to reach the affected area, which is about 800 miles from the capital Kinshasa, "today or tomorrow."

Allarangar also appealed to other medical organizations to join in the response. A number of them, including Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), have already offered their support.

The CDC, which established an office in the DRC in 2002, also has staff in the country working on a vaccine trial for monkeypox, a rare viral disease that is endemic in the DRC.

Unlike the countries in West Africa that were hardest hit by the 2014 Ebola epidemic, the DRC has had much more experience with the disease, including seven previous Ebola outbreaks since the virus was first discovered in the country in 1976.

The DRC was not one of the main three African countries hit by the 2014 epidemic, but the toll on the country was significant. The WHO confirmed 66 cases with 49 deaths. Worldwide, more than 28,600 people were infected and 11,300 died. The countries at the epicenter of the crisis - Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia - have all been Ebola-free since at least June of last year.

That outbreak was a wake-up call for global public health officials whose response has been widely criticized for being slow and disorganized. Many new measures have been set up to respond to future epidemics, such as better communication systems and quarantine procedures, but there's still much more that is needed.

A review on the world's pandemic readiness published in the New England Journal of Medicine last year said that an investment of at least $4.5 billion is needed each year for improving detection and response tools. The paper, funded by philanthropic and academic groups, including the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Ford Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, had a sobering prediction: that at least one pandemic event will almost certainly occur in the next 100 years and that there is a 20 percent chance of four or more.

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The Washington Post's Kevin Sieff contributed to this report from Nairobi.
That's a nice reputation you've got there, President Donald Trump seemed to be saying to James Comey on Friday morning: It'd be a shame if something happened to it.

Facing a growing crisis over his White House's firing of the now-former FBI director, Trump seemed to issue a pair of not-so-veiled threats. He strongly suggested Comey shouldn't leak because there might be tapes of their conversations that would reflect poorly on him, and he said he might cancel White House news briefings after he and his top aides offered starkly contradictory explanations for Comey's firing - and got eviscerated for it.

The message in both cases was pretty obvious: Be careful running afoul of me.

"James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" said the president's twitter feed.

Then came:

"...Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"

This is part of a pattern for Trump. His tendency to issue veiled-but-also-not-so-veiled threats has been a mainstay of his campaign and now the early part of his presidency.

Just last week, he seemed to send a warning message to the former acting attorney general, Sally Yates, whom he also fired and who was preparing to testify on Capitol Hill.

"Ask Sally Yates, under oath, if she knows how classified information got into the newspapers soon after she explained it to W.H. Counsel."

He has also suggested media coverage he doesn't like may lead him to try to change libel laws.

The Tweet: "The failing @nytimes has disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws? "

Perhaps the most infamous examples are from the 2016 campaign. In one of his least-veiled threats, Trump said he would "spill the beans" on Ted Cruz's wife if he wasn't "careful." Spill the beans on what, it wasn't entirely clear. He never did.

"Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!"

And there's the time he seemed to suggested "Second Amendment people" might do something to stop Hillary Clinton from appointing anti-Second Amendment judges. Here's what he said:

"Hillary wants to abolish - essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, and if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people - maybe there is, I don't know. But I tell you what, that'll be a horrible day."

He said this wasn't a threat, of course, and that he wasn't referring to an armed response. I was skeptical.

Before the 2016 conventions, Trump sure seemed to suggest his supporters would riot if the GOP establishment tried to deprive him of his rightful nomination:

"I think we'll win before getting to the convention, but I can tell you, if we didn't and if we're 20 votes short or if we're 100 short and we're at 1,100 and somebody else is at 500 or 400, because we're way ahead of everybody, I don't think you can say that we don't get it automatically. I think it would be - I think you'd have riots. I think you'd have riots. I'm representing a tremendous, many, many millions of people."

He later clarified that this wasn't a threat, either. Of course, it wasn't hard to see it as him signaling that maybe, perhaps his supporters should raise hell if it came to that.

He has also suggested he might tax General Motors if it moves jobs overseas.

"General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to U.S. car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A.or pay big border tax!"

And he's offered a few threats to the conservative House Freedom Caucus to fall in line - before House Republicans addressed their concerns in the health-care bill.

Any one of these could be dismissed as a one-off. But today's threats are pretty crystal-clear, and the sum total paints a clear picture.
President Moon Jae-in spoke over the telephone on Thursday with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and hinted at scrapping an agreement for compensating the Korean victims of sex slavery during World War II.

In the 25-minute conversation, the two leaders agreed to meet in the near future and cooperate closely in dealing with North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Yoon Young-chan told reporters.

But Moon and Abe did not see eye to eye on a controversial deal struck with ex-President Park Geun-hye on compensating the Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II.

Moon asked Abe to cooperate in tackling issues arising from Japan's colonization of Korea from 1910 to 1945 so bilateral ties can develop further. But Abe reiterated that Japan expects the deal, reached in late 2015, to be implemented faithfully.

Tokyo agreed to pay 1 billion yen in indirect compensation to the victims but accepted no clear responsibility for the atrocity, and Japan asked Seoul to remove statues commemorating the victims from the immediate vicinity of Japanese diplomatic missions.

Moon told Abe that most Koreans "cannot accept the agreement," according to his spokesman. Japan's immediate gripe is a statue that has been set up outside the Japanese Consulate in Busan by a private charity. Moon told Abe that there is little the government can do to intervene in private activities and asked for more time to deal with the issue.


Venezuela's political crisis spilled over into the spirit realm this week, when the governor of the state of Amazonas threatened to put a shamanic curse on President Nicolas Maduro and his administration.

Broadcast live on the Periscope app, the threat was mostly political theater. But it pointed to a broader problem for South America's long-ruling leftist governments.

The indigenous minority groups fighting mining, deforestation and oil drilling in the region used to see left-wing leaders as their natural allies in a mortal struggle against global capitalism. Now, many see those leaders and their parties as just as rapacious as any foreign corporation, if not more so.

It's another telling example of the way the rise and fall of left-wing populism in South America has fractured the region's traditional political coalitions.

In Bolivia and Ecuador in particular, two nations with large indigenous populations, leftist leaders who rose to power with the backing of traditional native groups have seen some of that support flip to fierce opposition. It's also proving true in Venezuela, which has a much smaller indigenous population, but one that initially supported the late Hugo Chavez and has largely turned against Maduro, his unpopular successor.

The main reason for the breakup? Land-use conflicts across the region have grown mostly more intense, not less, because left-wing populists such as Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Bolivia's Evo Morales have financed their ambitious social welfare programs with revenue generated from the exploitation of natural resources.

"At the outset, indigenous groups mostly embraced these leftist governments because of their rhetoric behind land rights and social justice and inclusion," said Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank specializing in Latin America.

"But disenchantment quickly set in among some indigenous sectors as governments quickly discovered that, just like more right-leaning governments, they needed the revenue that comes from development projects in forestry, mining, oil extraction and dam building," Shifter said.

As the commodity boom of the millennium's first decade began to fade, those governments have tried to maintain spending levels by taking on new debt - mostly in the form of Chinese loans - in exchange for opening up more and more land to extractive industries. That has brought them in direct conflict with indigenous groups that expected the anti-capitalist rhetoric of leaders such as Correa and Morales to give them more control over their ancestral lands, not less.

In crisis-racked Venezuela, where deadly street protests have raged for the past six weeks, the cash-strapped Maduro government has opened up vast new areas of Amazonian territory to mining and other industries. As indigenous leaders in states such as Amazonas have defected to Venezuela's opposition, the strains with the government have worsened.

Gov. Liborio Guarulla, who has run Amazonas since 2001, said the government informed him this month that he had been banned from running for office again for 15 years, citing corruption accusations he denies. Guarulla responded by saying he'd hex Maduro and his administration with something called "the Curse of the Dabucuri."

"I assure you that they will not die without torment, and that before they die, they will begin to suffer and their souls will wander through the darkest and most pestilent places before they are able to close their eyes," said Guarulla, a member of the Baniva ethnic group.

Venezuela's economic downturn has hit indigenous groups hard. Hundreds of members of the Warao minority have left Venezuela's Orinoco Delta region for Brazil this year, according to Reuters, and now survive by begging on the streets of Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon basin.

The clashes between the oil-dependent government of Ecuador and the country's lowland tribes - some of whom eschew contact with the outside world - is even more acute. The government has entered into oil-for-debt agreements with China that have effectively opened up some of the Amazon basin's most ecologically sensitive areas to drilling. That includes national parks and indigenous reserves once considered off-limits, and as that territory is increasingly encroached upon by the noise of heavy construction equipment, deadly clashes have erupted.

During Ecuador's most recent presidential election, conservative candidate and former banker Guillermo Lasso was narrowly defeated by ruling party candidate Lenin Moreno, Correa's former vice president. But Lasso won in the Amazon lowlands and many of the country's Andean highland areas with large native populations, having secured the endorsement of Ecuador's largest indigenous party.

Lasso, a free-market conservative, had even promised to put new restrictions on high-altitude mining projects in a region where indigenous groups have resisted such plans.

Sebastian Hurtado, a political analyst in Quito with the Profitas consulting firm, said indigenous groups' environmental and anti-mining message long ago "put them in conflict with a government whose clear interest was the exploitation of natural resources in order to finance an ambitious spending and investment plan."

The government still enjoys the support of some indigenous leaders and organizations, Hurtado noted. In some areas of the Amazon basin where oil drilling has expanded, the government has preserved support by building new homes, roads and other infrastructure to offset the impact of the industry.

Moreno, who takes office May 24, has said he will continue with Correa's "Citizens' Revolution," which Hurtado notes has also produced tensions that aren't only about natural resources.

"The Citizens' Revolution has actively sought to limit the resources and abilities or civil society groups, through legislation and a more efficient use of police forces to control protests and demonstrations," Hurtado said.

Still, he said, it was unlikely that South America's rightward turn would give the region's indigenous peoples more political influence in their fight to protect land from development. "I think indigenous leaders have been and will continue to be aligned with 'the left,' " he said. "But many of them today - though not all - don't consider leaders to be part of it."
Thursday night, President Trump tweeted something kind of strange - a photo of him with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, pasted right next to a picture of him beaming near the gruff-looking Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin.

"Yesterday, on the same day- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin.#LetsMakePeace!"

Underneath, the president noted that those two meetings - between countries that are, effectively, at war - happened on the same day (though not at the same time). "Let's Make Peace!" He signed underneath, as if the quick photo-shop job was a commemorative poster.

In sending that tweet, Trump's aim seems pretty clear. He's being hammered in the media for inviting Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak to the Oval Office. Critics say it's just one more example of the administration's weakness toward Russia, and Trump's affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. This little missive was his way of undercutting that message, suggesting that he's not Putin's puppet. Otherwise, why meet with one of Putin's enemies? Why call for peace, something that will almost certainly involve Russia returning Crimea to its former owner?

Trump's administration seems to support Ukraine. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said that the United States will continue to support sanctions. "We do not and will not accept Russian efforts to change the borders of the territory of Ukraine," he said at a meeting of NATO ministers. Vice President Mike Pence reaffirmed that commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity at a May 10 meeting, according to a readout.

But Trump's tweet undermined that message, experts say. It was bad diplomacy, and may make it harder for the president to accomplish his goals.

Hosting both leaders in the Oval Office, they say, sends a clear message: that Trump views both countries as equals, and that he expects both to make concessions. That's antithetical to the official United States position.

"It seems odd, both in content and style, that a president would signal via Twitter that he is treating the two countries equally without consultation of NATO allies with whom we are joined in sanctions on Russia because of its behavior in Ukraine," Harvard Kennedy School Prof. Joseph Nye said in an email. Nye has served as a deputy undersecretary at the State Department; an assistant secretary of defense with a focus on international security; and chair of the National Intelligence Council.

Nick Burns, a former Foreign Service officer with decades of diplomatic experience, agreed. "Frankly, this is a superficial tweet that won't move the diplomacy forward," he wrote in an email. "There is little trust in his leadership in Europe and Ukraine." Much more impactful, Burns suggested, would be Trump publicly criticizing Russia for its actions.

Marc Berenson, an expert on the post-Soviet world at Kings College, said that he hasn't seen much reaction to the tweet in Russia or Ukraine. The Kremlin would not comment.

Marvin Kalb, a Harvard professor, went even further. The tweet, he said, made it seem like Trump had cut some kind of deal between the two countries. In fact, the leaders met separately. It's not clear that Trump even mentioned Ukraine to Lavrov. Russians and Ukrainians, he said, "know the difference and know that he is playing PR games, using them for domestic political reasons. It won't work, here in political Washington or in Russia or Ukraine, making ultimate negotiation that much more difficult."

What's more, he said, the very notion that Trump would meet with Lavrov because Putin asked him to is dangerous. "Trump coming through as too eager to strike some sort of deal with Russia, giving Putin the negotiating advantage," he wrote. "They will meet soon, but seriously doubt both can achieve anything more than a good story."
On his first overseas trip since being sworn in, President Donald Trump will continue to push NATO allies to increase defense spending and invest more in the fight in Afghanistan.

That message could fall flat with some allies who have been committing troops to the war effort for well over a decade and see more pressing and immediate threats coming from Russia in Europe and extremists gaining strength in North Africa.

National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster appeared Friday in the White House briefing room to outline the president's agenda when he travels to a NATO conference in Brussels later this month. The message will "stress the need for members to pay their fair share" in defense spending, McMaster said, a reference to Trump's call for all NATO allies to invest two percent of their GDP in defense spending.

"All of us have to be committed to achieving our objectives in Afghanistan," McMaster said.

But NATO allies have other concerns taking up their limited manpower and much smaller defense budgets, said Jim Townsend, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy in the Obama administration. Particularly for the new allies in the Baltics and the southeastern Europe "who are looking at Russia breathing down their necks," Townsend said, "they want NATO to be focused on the Russian threat."

Some of the newer faces in the alliance have also complained that NATO has been distracted by missions in Afghanistan and Libya, taking its eye off of problems closer to home, Townsend said. Other members are already stretched thin, and don't have a lot of excess capacity for new deployments to Afghanistan. France has 4,000 troops deployed on security and counterterrorism operations in northern and western Africa, and nations including Germany, Britain and Canada have sent troops to new missions in the Baltic states.

The alliance is also preparing to go on alert for Moscow's massive Zapad military exercise this summer in Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which will feature close to 100,000 troops moving on the border of several NATO nations.

But the needs in Afghanistan are real. A proposal put together by U.S. commanders in Kabul and backed by the brass in the Pentagon calls for the deployment of an additional 3,000 U.S. troops, on top of the 8,400 already there, to advise and assist Afghan forces battling the Taliban. The insurgent group has made steady progress since NATO ceased combat operations at the end of 2014, and now wields control over about 8.5 million Afghan civilians, up from about 5 million a year ago according to an unreleased U.N. report.

The broad outlines of the plan, first reported by The Washington Post this week and later confirmed by Defense officials, calls for the lifting of some restrictions on how U.S. forces operate, allowing troops to embed with Afghan army units closer to the fight to direct the battle near the front lines. It would also loosen rules on air strikes.

The Trump administration has yet to make a final decision on the plan, and it is unclear how Trump and his deputies will present the unfinished proposal in Brussels.

But American intelligence officials say that without the added authorities, the government in Kabul could lose even more ground. On Thursday, several top intelligence officials painted a dire picture of the security situation, predicting that the Taliban will continue to win back territory through 2018, even if Washington sends more troops to the fight.

Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats told a Senate intelligence panel that "the political and security situation in Afghanistan will also almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in the military assistance from the U.S. and its partners."

Taliban fighters have been encircling Kunduz in recent weeks, threatening to take back control of the city that U.S. and Afghan forces evicted them from in 2015. The insurgent group also attacked a military base in Mazar-e-Sharif in the north last month, killing over 150 Afghan soldiers in the deadliest assault of the 16-year-old war.

U.S. Marine Corps Gen. Vincent Stewart, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said that "unless we change something. . . the situation will continue to deteriorate and we'll lose all the gains that we've invested in over the last several years."
The United States plans to sell the United Arab Emirates $2 billion worth of Patriot missiles in an arms deal announced days before President Donald Trump begins a tour of Middle Eastern nations.

The weapons include 60 Patriot Advanced Capability 3 (PAC-3) missiles and 100 Patriot Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) missiles, along with supporting equipment and services from U.S. government personnel and contractors, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) said on its website. Congress was notified of the sale this week.

"The UAE will use the capability as a deterrent to regional threats and to strengthen its homeland defense," DSCA said.

The United Arab Emirates, one of the closest U.S. allies in the Middle East, has voiced alarm at what it sees as a rise in Iranian support for militant groups across the region, including in Yemen, where the UAE is part of a Saudi-led coalition battling Shiite Houthi rebels.

Trump will meet with leaders from Gulf nations, including the United Arab Emirates, in Saudi Arabia during his inaugural overseas trip, one that is expected to include discussion of the Iranian threat.

Patriot guided missiles are some of the most world's most sophisticated surface-to-air defense tools. The system, developed by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, can intercept incoming missiles or aircraft as small as a commercial drone.

The United Arab Emirates has used Patriot batteries since 2009, DSCA said.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said this week that the United States may move a long-range Patriot battery to Lithuania amid increasing tension with Russia. It would the first of its kind to be stationed in the Baltics.
Progress is being made in using a large-scale database of nearly all surgical procedures performed in the country. The aim is to more accurately understand data, such as national average mortality rates, and analyze trends in surgical outcomes based on factors such as hospital size. The database is expected to play an important role in improving the quality of medical care at individual hospitals, as well as help patients to select hospitals.

Data on surgeries performed throughout the country are recorded in the National Clinical Database, operated by the Japan Surgical Society and other academic entities. Individual doctors register data on surgical procedures performed to treat illnesses such as heart disease and cancer via the internet.

About 5,000 hospitals take part in the NCD system, covering over 95 percent of all surgeries performed in the country. The number of registered cases has been increasing year by year, topping 7 million as of the end of 2016, and the data have been utilized for a variety of studies and research projects to understand the current conditions surrounding surgery in the country.

In response to a series of deaths related to surgeries to resect livers at Gunma University Hospital, the Japan Surgical Society used the NCD to calculate the mortality rates associated with surgeries to resect major digestive organs. The national average percentage of patients who died within 90 days of undergoing highly difficult surgery to remove the liver without being discharged from the hospital was 3.7 percent, according to their calculations. The rate for highly difficult surgery to remove the pancreas was 2.9 percent. In comparison, at the hospital's former No. 2 surgical department, the mortality rates for these procedures were four times higher for the liver and two times higher for the pancreas than the average. These figures were seen as problematic.

Recently, a Japan Esophageal Society research team analyzed 16,600 cases of esophageal cancer surgery from 2011 to 2013 to examine mortality rates based on the number of surgeries annually performed by each hospital. The results showed the mortality rate at hospitals that performed 30 or more surgeries per year was 1.8 percent, while the rate was 2.6 times higher, or 4.7 percent, at hospitals that performed four surgeries or fewer. Supposing 100 people underwent surgery, there would be a risk of five deaths at a hospital that performs few surgeries, while at a hospital that performs many surgeries, this would be about two deaths.

"The analysis is based on a large-scale database, so the numbers are more reliable than in previous studies," said Hiroshi Okabe, chief surgeon at Otsu City Hospital in Shiga Prefecture, who conducted the study.

Unlike a survey on hospitals with good treatment records, a study using the NCD is based on comprehensive data from hospitals varying in size around the country, which is believed to result in less biased data.

Surgery is selected to treat cancer mainly in cases where it is in the relatively early stages, meaning surgeries to remove organs can be expected to completely cure the patient. However, as a patient who dies shortly after surgery has had their life cut short by treatment, efforts must be made to utilize the data to reduce the mortality rate as much as possible.

"The mortality rates and complications from highly difficult esophageal and hepato-biliary-pancreatic surgeries are affected not only by the surgery itself, but also significantly by the skills and experience of the medical team, including pre- and post-surgery management," said Norihiro Kokudo, former president of the Japan Surgical Society and a professor at the University of Tokyo who is an expert in hepato-biliary-pancreatic surgery. "The results of the study reflect that. They also show the need for consolidating hospitals that perform highly difficult surgeries."

This information can be useful for people selecting a hospital as well.

"From a patient's perspective, we feel that a 2-3 percent difference in mortality rates is huge," said Aya Miyoshi, secretary general of the Japan Federation of Cancer Patient Groups and herself a breast cancer patient. "I believe this is important information."

However, information on mortality rates is just one criterion in making a decision.

"While these numbers could make some people feel uneasy, it is important to consult with your primary physician or patient counselor instead of worrying about it alone," she said.

The NCD allows each hospital to study the mortality rate at their institution and compare it against the national average.

"If we can recognize our own problems and try to improve, that can drive improvement in the quality of care," says Tadashi Iwanaka, president of the NCD.

- - -

The esophageal cancer surgery study showed there was a tendency for the mortality rate to be lower among patients who underwent surgery at hospitals that performed many surgeries. However, it is possible for hospitals to have a high mortality rate despite performing a large number of surgeries in any given year.

At Gunma University Hospital, the number of surgeries to resect the liver was comparatively large, with about 30 performed per year by the No. 2 surgical department alone, and 50 or more at the hospital as a whole, but the mortality rate for the highly difficult liver removal was over 10 percent. This was perceived to be the result of performing an excessively large number of surgical procedures that the system in place was not equipped to handle.

Individual data are not made public, so patients cannot know mortality rates and such for individual hospitals. To collect accurate data more easily, it is done on the condition of confidentiality.

"For patients whose lives are on the line, this is information they definitely want to know," said Yoshiyuki Majima, president of the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Japan, expressing the feelings of patients. "I want them to disclose the data for all hospitals."

Even though the data on individual institutions are not made public, measures are being taken to improve situations at hospitals considered problematic. In the field of cardiology, specialists from the Japanese Society for Cardiovascular Surgery conduct hearings with and provide guidance to hospitals found via the NCD to have problems, such as high mortality rates. The next step will be to expand efforts such as these to other medical fields.

"If hospitals show their areas of specialization to patients by disclosing the number of surgeries they handle and the outcomes, and introduce other hospitals in areas where they have less expertise, it will improve specialization and safety of medical care while promoting a sound division of roles in community-based health care," said Hisashi Katsumura, head of a citizens' group seeking publication and disclosure of medical information. "The large-scale database should be used for this purpose."
A jury will hear a lawsuit between Waymo, the self-driving car arm of Alphabet, and Uber, the upstart betting on autonomous-vehicle technology, a federal judge ruled late Thursday. Federal prosecutors may also investigate criminal claims in the bitter dispute over robot-car trade secrets.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup rejected a request by Uber to send the case to arbitration, a quick and private method of resolving disputes, noting that while Waymo and a former employee who now works at Uber have an arbitration agreement, Uber and Waymo have no such agreement. Instead, the high-profile case will be heard in open court, most likely in October.

Alsups much-anticipated ruling on Waymos request to temporarily scuttle Ubers work on self-driving cars was provided to the companies under seal. They can request withholding of proprietary information before it is made public.

A filing said that order partially granted and partially denied the injunction request.

The case centers around Anthony Levandowski, formerly a star engineer at Waymo, which began as an experimental project at Google, also part of Mountain Views Alphabet. Waymo alleges that Levandowski illicitly downloaded 14,000 documents in December 2014, shortly before he quit to start a new company, Otto, that was subsequently acquired by Uber.

Waymo sued Uber in February, saying it is using the technology purloined by Levandowski in its self-driving cars.

In a brief separate ruling, Alsup referred the case to the U.S Attorney for investigation of possible theft of trade secrets.

Alsups ruling about arbitration had harsh words about Levandowski, who has asserted his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Levandowskis assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege has obstructed and continues to obstruct both discovery and defendants ability to construct a complete narrative as to the fate of Waymos purloined files, he wrote.

Waymo said that it welcomed the ruling.

This was a desperate bid by Uber to avoid the courts jurisdiction, it said of Ubers request for arbitration. We look forward to holding Uber responsible in court for its misconduct.

Uber had a different take.

It is unfortunate that Waymo will be permitted to avoid abiding by the arbitration promise it requires its employees to make, Uber said. We welcome the chance to talk about our independently developed technology in any forum.

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @csaid
Its time to accelerate the relocation of people living along the Yellow River floodplain and improve their lives, said Premier Li Keqiang during a visit to Central Chinas Henan province on May 8.

At a relocation center in the beach area in Fengqiu county, Xinxiang city, Premier Li presided over an on-site meeting, and discussed with related officials how to accelerate the relocation of local residents.

Before the meeting, Premier Li inspected the Yellow River beach area in rainy weather. Relocation is not just about 2 million peoples lives in such areas, but also about lasting harness and peace of the Yellow River, he said.

We are looking forward to moving out, said Yang Tianjie, one of the villagers who had paid a deposit for construction of a new house away from the floodplain.

Almost 2 million people live in the area with insufficient infrastructure facilities, across 3,100 square kilometers in 42 counties of Henan and Shandong provinces, making up a cross-provincial poverty belt.

For a long time, the issue of Yellow River concerned the countrys stability and development, said the Premier. Lifting people in the area out of poverty is an important part of the national poverty relief strategy, he added.

To ensure security during flood season, infrastructure and industrial projects are banned in those areas by related laws and regulations, leading to backward and unstable local residents lives.

The meeting gave priority to a three-year relocation task, which will be carried out in perilous low-laying beach areas, to secure the Yellow River and develop the beach areas.

In the past 70 years, more than 30 floods occurred in the Yellow River beach areas, and the one in 1996 affected nearly 1.2 million people.

Villager Li Qinghe is one of the residents relocated from the poor living situation in the Yellow River beach to residential buildings with elevators. So far, more than 2,000 households from Lis village have moved into new homes.

The residents in the floodplain used to live in constant fear of flooding. The relocation has brought them settled lives with newly built infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, said the Premier at the on-site meeting, adding that the relocation has brought actual benefits to the people.

He also said at the meeting that the relocation work in the Yellow River floodplain is concerned with the national overall situation, so detailed plans should be carefully developed.

As local conditions vary, residents willingness should be respected during the relocation, and the government should give more investment support, raise funds through multiple channels, and give more support in poverty alleviation, infrastructure and industrial development, said the Premier.

He then asked people in charge from related departments to give full support to the relocation work along the Yellow River beach areas. The relocation is not only of strategic importance to ensure the long-term stability in the region along the Yellow River, but also a fundamental policy to help the people out of poverty, said the Premier.
A 20-year-old man in New Braunfels faces a possible sentence of life in prison after he was convicted Tuesday for molesting a 12-year-old girl on a school bus, according to the Comal County Criminal District Attorneys Office.

A jury deliberated for about two hours before coming back with a guilty conviction for Fredys Olifier Rios-Barahona on a first-degree felony charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child and a second-degree felony charge of indecency with a child by sexual contact, a news release said Wednesday.
The Harlingen Police Department announced that a $25,000 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who is responsible for the death of a teen who went missing last year.

Nahomi Rodriguez, 19, went missing July 17, 2016, at the McDonalds located at 602 N. 77 Sunshine Strip in Harlingen. She was last seen leaving in a light or dark two-toned SUV, possibly a Ford Escape, occupied by at least one man. Rodriguez was wearing a black shirt, black pants and a black cap, according to a news release.
It was a joyous weekend in Granard as the local community gathered together at St Mary's Church to celebrate its 150th anniversary.

On Friday evening a prayer service was held and afterwards former Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, Dr Colm O'Reilly launched the commemorative book - A Living Legacy.

On Sunday, 11:30am Mass was celebrated by Bishop Francis Duffy who was joined by Fr Ned OHara; Fr Seamus Connell, Bishop Colm OReilly; Fr Tony Gilhooley and Fr Simon Cadam PP.

During the launch of the book on Friday night Dr OReilly said A Living Legacy was a book about God's people in Granard.

It is your story and it is even my story too," he told those gathered.

For the first nine years while I was in the priesthood, here in Granard is where I was.

This beautifully produced book has records dating back to 1967 and is filled with the names of people from that time.

The title of this book is a way of connecting the past, the present and the future of this community and there are splendid photographs as well.

Dr OReilly then spoke about his own ancestors and their connection to the north Longford church.

They were our ancestors of the faith and this book is about faith; it is good to link up with that history of our past - that is what the 150th anniversary celebrations are all about.

The former bishop then made reference to the significant role of the Sisters of Mercy in Granard over the last 150 years and he spoke, too, about the future of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and the vital role that lay people everywhere will play in that.

Lay people are fulfilling a lot more roles now in the church, Dr OReilly continued making reference to the fact that A Living Legacy, too, made reference to the role of women and young people in the church since 1867.

The church as it is now is going to need all these lay people and their dedication to the church, continued Dr OReilly.

The parish of Granard has a very proud tradition and has wonderful people here.

A number of couples who were married in St Mary's Church in 1967 also had their golden wedding anniversaries acknowledged on the evening.

These included former Granard town councillor and county councillor, Maura Kilbride Harkin and her husband Mickey who will be married 50 years in September.
Local News, Community, Charity & Cause, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 12 2017

Colonel Eric Hesse, Director of the New York State Division of Veterans Affairs, to Deliver Keynote Address.

Suffolk County, NY - May 12, 2017 - Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today announced Suffolk County will hold its annual Armed Forces Day ceremony on Saturday, May 20 at 11:00 a.m. to recognize and honor those who have served in uniform. The event will take place in the Armed Forces Plaza, located at the Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone today announced Suffolk County will hold its annual Armed Forces Day ceremony on Saturday, May 20 at 11:00 a.m. to recognize and honor those who have served in uniform. The event will take place in the Armed Forces Plaza, located at the H. Lee Dennison Building in Hauppauge

Suffolk County is home to the largest Veterans population in the State and we remain committed to supporting these brave men and women as well as their families," said County Executive Bellone. I look forward to hosting this annual event to honor those who have served our nation to protect the very freedoms we enjoy here at home."

Colonel Eric Hesse, Director of the New York State Division of Veterans Affairs, will provide the keynote address. Hesse is a retired U.S. Army Colonel with a distinguished record of more than 26 years of service that included deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Eric J. Hesse, Director of the Division of Veterans Affairs, said Suffolk County is home to so many heroic individuals who have dedicated their lives to protecting this nation and thanks to the leadership of Governor Cuomo, we are doing more than ever to help connect them to vital services. We have always enjoyed a strong partnership with Suffolk County and we are looking forward to being a part of this event."

Thomas Ronayne, Suffolk County Veterans Services Agency Director, said: Suffolk County has a long and proud history of supporting our veterans. Programs like our Armed Forces Day ceremony are one of the many opportunities that County Executive Bellone, me and the entire Suffolk County Veterans Team take to demonstrate our sincere commitment and great pride in our veterans community."

Approximately 200 local veterans and residents are expected to attend, including veterans who served from World War II through the present day as well as residents from the Long Island State Veterans home in Stony Brook

Colonel Hesse will place a wreath at several monuments, including World War II, Korean War and Women Veteran Statues, the Vietnam War Monument and the Middle East, Iraq and Afghanistan War plaques. There will also be a special recognition for Suffolk Countys Gold Star Families to honor the fallen heroes that made the ultimate sacrifice.

Suffolk County Veterans Service officers and Suffolk County Joseph Dwyer Program representatives will also be in attendance. The Suffolk County Joseph Dwyer Program, named to honor the memory of war hero Joseph P. Dwyer, is a peer-to-peer program for Veterans facing the challenges of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. Established in Suffolk County, this program is actively serves the needs of veterans in 16 counties across New York State. Suffolk County has established itself as the leader in this effort and the Suffolk County Program model is now replicated statewide and throughout the country.
Local News, Business & Finance, Travel & Local Attractions, Politics

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 12 2017

Cuomo: "The situation at Penn Station has gone from bad to worse to intolerable."

New York, NY - May 12, 2017 - New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie today issued a joint letter to the CEO of Amtrak calling for a private operator at Penn Station.

The text of the letter is below:

"The situation at Penn Station has gone from bad to worse to intolerable. Every commuter in the New York/New Jersey area agrees with us that drastic action must be taken to immediately remedy the situation. The time, energy, and suffering of our commuters in both states require nothing less.

"Decades of underinvestment by Amtrak have produced the continuing string of infrastructure failures at Penn Station. This is particularly unacceptable given the enormous payments made by our states to Amtrak to assure the state of good repair of Penn Station . It now will require drastic and continuous improvement of these conditions by real experts over a sustained period of time to have the effect of improving commuting conditions for our citizens.

"Intense and immediate repairs are clearly necessary but they are not enough: longer term changes in the management of these assets must go hand in glove with the emergency repairs.

"Between New York and New Jersey we pay approximately $150 million a year for our respective use for the facility. As Amtrak's management of Penn Station continues to produce multiple failures, we believe systemic changes cannot wait. A professional, qualified, private station operator must be brought in to take over the repairs and manage this entire process going forward.
Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 12 2017

Joseph Santiago was struck and killed by a vehicle that was traveling westbound on Ridgeway Avenue on August 23, 2013.

SCPD are seeking the publics help to identify the driver of a vehicle that struck and killed Joseph Santiago (pictured) in Setauket in 2013.

Setauket, NY - May 12, 2017 - Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Major Case Unit detectives are seeking the publics help to identify and locate the driver of a vehicle that struck and killed a pedestrian in Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Major Case Unit detectives are seeking the publics help to identify and locate the driver of a vehicle that struck and killed a pedestrian in Setauket in 2013.

Joseph Santiago (pictured above), of Setauket, was struck by a vehicle that was traveling westbound on Ridgeway Avenue on August 23, 2013 at approximately 1:20 a.m. Santiago was pronounced dead at the scene by a physician assistant from the Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner.

The vehicle involved in the fatal hit-and-run crash, is a white 1999 to 2006 Hyundai sedan. The vehicle possibly sustained front-end damage on the passenger side and/or undercarriage damage.
Trio Arrested for Nassau and Suffolk Knifepoint Robbery Spree Plead Not Guilty at Riverhead Arraignment

Local News, Crime

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 12 2017

Shane Cashmore, Paul Drab, and Julianna Pantaleone, are accused of numerous robberies of retail businesses.

Above are the mug shots of (L to R) Julianna Pantaleone, Paul Drab, and Shane Cashmore.

Riverhead, NY - May 12, 2017 - The man charged with eight knifepoint robberies in Suffolk County pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment on an indictment in The man charged with eight knifepoint robberies in Suffolk County pleaded not guilty to the charges at his arraignment on an indictment in Riverhead today, Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota said.

Shane Cashmore is charged with eight counts of robbery in the first degree; three Carvel stores, a Baskin-Robbins, two Subway shops, and two Dairy Barn stores from February 13 to May 1 in Suffolk County

His alleged accomplices, Paul Drab, 26, and Julianna Pantaleone, 31, are charged in the same indictment with one count of robbery in the first degree; of the Huntington Station Carvel on May 1, the night the trio was arrested. Each pleaded not guilty today.

Judge Timothy Mazzei set cash bail for Cashmore at one million dollars or $2 million bond, and $500,000 cash or one million bond for Drab and Pantaleone.
School & Education, Local News, Community, Charity & Cause

By Long Island News & PR Published: May 12 2017

They were selected based on superior performance and outstanding achievement in academics, competitions, cadet involvement and community service.

Mastic Beach, NY, May 12, 2017  For the second time in the past three years, the William Floyd Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (NJROTC) has been selected as a Distinguished Unit for NJROTC Area 4, among the highest designations a unit can receive. William Floyd is one of only 17 Area 4 units receiving this honor for the 2016-17 school year. They were selected based on superior performance and outstanding achievement in academics, competitions, cadet involvement and community service during the school year.

Competition is always extremely tight, said Commander Jay Tweed, Senior Naval Science Instructor, William Floyd High School, noting how proud he is of the cadets. Commander Tweed added that this latest award brings the number of streamers to nine that the unit has earned over the past 11 years, including the two Distinguished Unit Awards (2015 and 2017) and seven Unit Achievement awards (2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2016).

Senior Chief Dwight Becherer, Naval Science Instructor, William Floyd High School, had the privilege of announcing this award to cadets in class, stating, We have been recognized for having a great year, he said, adding, and its all because of you!
Yesterday, the US Treasury Department added three members of Jamaat ul Dawa al Quran (JDQ), a jihadist group that is based in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as JDQs Welfare and Development Organization, to its list of specially designated global terrorists. JDQ is a perfect example of the complex and evolving network of jihadist groups that operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The three JDQ leaders who were listed by Treasury were identified as Hayat Ullah Ghulam Muhammad, Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, and Inayat ur Rahman. They have provided support and funds to the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, al Qaeda, and the Islamic State.

The US listed JDQ as a terrorist organization in May 2016 and noted that it is based in Peshawar, Pakistan, and eastern Afghanistan and has long-standing ties to al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba. It is known to operate in Kunar province, Afghanistan. In 2010, the group pledged allegiance to Mullah Omar, the founder and first emir of the Taliban. However, it is not known if JDQ swore an oath to Mullah Mansour or Mullah Haibatullah.

The US military has targeted JDQ operatives in several raids in Afghanistan. Several members of the JDQ were once held at the American detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One of these former Guantanamo detainees, Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil, was identified as the JDQs overall leader.

Hayat Ullah Ghulam Muhammad

According to Treasury, Muhammad, who is better known as Haji Hayatullah, is a senior JDQ leader who has also worked for Lashkar-e-Taiba, and has provided material and financial support to the Taliban, al Qaida, ISIS [Islamic State], and ISIS  Khorasan.

Haji Hayatullah has supported al Qaeda and the Taliban in the past, but appears to have moved to the rival Islamic State camp since its founding in 2014. He was one of the JDQ leaders who swore bayat to Mullah Omar. Since 2011, he provided material and financial support to al Qaeda militants, members, and senior leaders, and has been linked to Nayf Salam Muhammad Ujaym al-Hababi, who is better known as Farouq al Qahtani. The US killed Qahtani in an airstrike in Kunar province in Oct. 2016.

In 2013, Haji Hayatullah served as a commander for LT [Lashkar-e-Taiba] in Afghanistan, and as of 2013, Haji Hayatullah oversaw the training of LT operatives. By 2014, After Abu Bakr al Baghdadi formed the Islamic State, he began to help establish its Khorasan province in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He provided weapons and cash, and started to recruite for the group. Additionally, he supported ISISs recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and their travel to Syria and Iraq.

Ali Muhammad Abu Turab

Abu Turab is described by Treasury as a JDQ facilitator working to provide thousands of dollars to Pakistan-based JDQ leadership, including Inayat ur Rahman. Additionally, he supports al Qaeda-linked Taliban leader Fazeel-a-Tul Shaykh Abu Mohammed Ameen al Peshwari, who is better known as Mohammed Aminullah.

As a JDQ facilitator, he helped the group raise money in the Gulf and supported the movement of tens of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan. He also helped Lashkar-e-Taiba fundraise in the Gulf states and also facilitated the establishment of LT training camps in collaboration with Abdul Aziz Nuristani, a US-designated terrorist.

Interestingly, Abu Turab helped Aminullah, who in 2009 was placed on the United Nations Sanctions Committees list of individuals and entities associated with al Qaeda, traveled to the Gulf in 2014. Aminullah is a notorious Taliban leader who in 2012 was identified as the head of the Peshawar Shura, one of four regional military commands for the Afghan Taliban. Aminullah uses his network of madrassas in Pakistan to recruit and train jihadists for jihad in Afghanistan. [See Taliban appoint al Qaeda-linked commander to lead Peshawar shura.]

Inayat ur Rahman

Rahman is described as a long-time leader of JDQ who has worked for Haji Hayatullah and as of 2015 managed JDQs day-to-day operations. He provides support for both Lahskar-e-Taiba and the Taliban, and is described as an important LT figure. Additionally, he serves as a a military leader in the Taliban leadership council in Peshawar, Pakistan, which means he is a member of the Peshawar Shura. In that role, he coordinated activities to provide support for al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In July 2012, along with Shaykh Aminullah, Abdul Aziz Nuristani, and other militants, Inayat ur Rahman came to an agreement with al Qaeda and LT members to provide weapons, ammunition, and financial support to the Taliban and discussed how to improve Taliban tactics against Coalition forces, Treasury noted.

As a Lashkar-e-Taiba leader, he provided financial support, weapons, and transportation to the group and helped establish three training centers. Additionally, he recruited madrassa students in Peshawar to join Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Welfare and Development Organization of JDQ

JDQs Welfare and Development Organization (WDO) is currently run by Rahman, who has been the the director, chairman, and president since 2015. Rahman has used the charitable front to raise money for jihadist activities.

WDO ostensibly collects money for charity, but in reality funds insurgent activities, Treasury noted. WDO was used to collect intelligence and conduct logistical work in support of Afghan militant operations. For a number of years, Afghan insurgents have received regular funding through WDO from organizations, including NGOs, in Gulf countries.

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.
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Simplifying the process of election Offering identity cards to the voters Strict measures are taken against any offensive activities of the political leaders Computerization of the whole procedure and others

Last Updated on 28 September 2012

Founded in 1950, theis a Constitutional Body. The Commission is responsible for monitoring the whole process of election in India. It has been entrusted with the task of conducting fair and free poll in Parliament as well as in State Legislature. The Commission is headed by Chief Election Commissioner and also consists of 2 Election Commissioners assisting the former.The President of India has the power of appointing the Chief Election Commissioner as well as Election Commissioners. The Chief Commissioner can only be removed from his post if the Parliament of India charges him with any offence. They are supposed to serve the country for a time span of six years. Shri B.B Tandon is the present Chief Election Commissioner of India.The main office ofis at New Delhi . The office consists of around 300 officials working under the Commission. The senior officers holding various important posts in the Commission are selected from the civil service of India. The Election Commission of India comprises several branches and divisions. The main sections of the Election Commission are Judicial, Planning, Administration, Media and Secretariat Co-ordination and Information Systems. The Commission has made separate divisions for the convenience of proper administration and distribution of work.All the state level elections are supervised by an officer selected by the Commission. In the districts, the election is controlled by Electoral Registration Officers, Returning Officers and District Election Officers. These officers are generally helped by few personnel for successfully conducting the poll. The Election Commission - India involves a huge force for conducting the poll throughout India.The Commission holds talks with several political parties regarding elections in India. Meetings are held to inform the leaders about the new measures taken for the forthcoming election. The Election Commission has the power of disqualifying a candidate if he fails to produce his list of election expenses in time.It also issues authority letters to the media persons for entering polling stations. At the time of election, the Commission holds briefings for the electronic as well as print media on a regular basis. In recent years, it has taken several steps for improving the election scenario in the country. Some of these are:The contact details of the Election Commission of India are as follows:Nirvachan Sadan,Ashoka Road,New Delhi-110001Tel: 011-23717391Fax: 011-23713412
Checking In on US Household Financial Health

Whenever a negative or perceived negative arises, you can count on investors hunting far and wide for signs of real trouble. So it has gone this year with inflation and household finances. Undoubtedly, inflation has been a burden for many, stretching budgets and forcing some people and families to make tough decisions. Yet on the macroeconomic front, there isnt much sign of major trouble yet. Consumer spending is still growing, even adjusted for inflation, albeit slowly. Wages are rising, maybe not as much as inflation, but they are up. Hence, the hunt for the signs of deeper trouble finally arriving. This week, the hunt centered on consumer debtspecifically credit card debt, which the latest reports estimate could hit $1 trillion by yearend. This allegedly signals that cash-strapped households are borrowing to make ends meet, storing up trouble for later. However, when we take a broader look at household balance sheets, we think this observation falls flat as an economic risk.

One of the most common pitfalls in assessing data is viewing debt in absolute termsthe amount outstandingand getting hung up on the big numbers. Those numbers are usually meaningless, as debt is just one part of a balance sheet. Think about a middle-American household with a car loan and a mortgage. This hypothetical family may have $400,000 in debt. But they also have assets: the house, car, savings accounts, retirement accounts and investment accounts. And they dont have to repay the debt all at once. Income, perhaps combined with assets, enables these folks to handle the debt.

So rather than looking at credit card debt in a vacuum, we think it makes more sense to view it as one ingredient of households broader finances. One way to do that: compare it to total financial assets. Exhibit 1 does this, using the Feds quarterly data since 1995, when granular data on household credit card debt begins. As you will see, while credit card debt is up lately, it has more than halved since the 1990s and finished Q2 below 1.0% of total assetsand even this overstates matters a bit, as it compares the combined credit card debt of households and nonprofits, which is the most granular measure available, to the total financial assets of households only. Even if you add in the roughly $40 billion in credit card debt that separate Fed data show the country has taken on this year, it isnt enough to move the needle. If the US economy and consumer spending could grow just fine at higher credit card debt ratios in the past, we doubt the present uptick is problematic.

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STUART  Otis Turner cant wait until May 26  thats the day hell graduate from Patrick County High School. While the majority of students who will walk the stage before and after him will be in their teens, Turners been waiting a bit longer for this day to come. No, Tuner wont be 17 when he receives his diploma  hell be a direct inverse at 71.

During the Vietnam War, Turner and a friend tried to join the United States Army. They traveled with their mothers to the nearest recruitment center, ready to serve their country, but they were turned away.

They didnt want us at that time, Turner said.

Not long after, the service contacted Turner. While had been turned away from volunteering, his name had come up in a different system.

Well, I was drafted, Turner said.

In December of 1965, Turner started pulling a six-year obligation with the Army, with two years of active duty.

While he didnt go overseas during his time in the service, he faithfully served his country stateside.

I was at Fort Carson in Colorado, Turner said.

In the service, Turner worked as a mechanic and performed multiple training exercises. While hes proud to have served his country, he never found the time to complete his high school degree upon returning to civilian life.

I always wished Id completed high school, Turner said, but timing didnt allow. I had to go to work. I had a wife and a child by that time.

Even though his diploma was always in the back of his mind, Turner felt the opportunity had passed; that is until the Patrick County school officials announced that theyd be honoring veterans in May who had given up their degrees to serve their country in one of three wars: World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. School officials offered to give the veterans an honorary high school diploma.

Turner couldnt believe it. In fact, hes still in shock.

I was real honored and humbled by that, Turner said. I really appreciate it.

Family ties

Theres one aspect of Turners graduation that sweetens the deal  hell be walking the stage directly after watching his first grandson, Patrick County High School senior Jake Martin, attain his diploma.

Martins just as excited about the special opportunity as Turner.

I have no doubt that it will be very humbling to walk across the stage on the same graduation day as my grandpa, Martin said. I would have never imagined to be able to experience something like this, so I am grateful to have the ability to be a part of this event with someone so dear to my heart.

While the day will be a happy occasion for both grandfather and grandson, the paths to reach the conclusion of both students high school journeys didnt come without sacrifice, which Martin acknowledged.

It really is humbling to think that my grandpa would sacrifice so much to fight for our country. It shows a very high level of character that I have always seen in my grandpa and something that I hope to maintain in myself, Martin said. I am more than proud of what he did. I couldnt imagine how hard it must be to give up the life you know to defend our country. Its truly one of the most admirable things someone could do.

When the county school officials first presented the idea, Martin couldnt think of a person more worthy of the honorary diploma than Turner.

The fact that he is able to receive his degree in this stage of his life is very representative of the integrity and support that the county feels toward out veterans and it exemplifies the immense gratitude that I think we all possess for the veterans in our country, Martin said. It just shows that the least that we can do for the people that decided to fight for us is give to them what was never possible to attain.

As the day draws near, excitement and nerves are reaching a peak for the elder graduate.

Ill probably be really nervous, Turner said about the moments leading up to walking across the stage. Im kind of a nervous person.

For Martin, graduation day is pure anticipation.

My grandpa is very deserving of this recognition and I cannot wait for that moment, Martin said.

Not only being able to see his first grandson graduate, but also graduating himself after five decades of waiting, Turners looking forward to the ceremony, despite the butterflies he assumes hell feel the day-of.

Well, its just great, Turner said. I just cant put it into words. Im humbled and honored.

Over 50 years in the making, when he walks across the stage, an unfinished chapter will reach a happy ending in Turners life story.

I think Ill think, Finally, Turner said. Thats what Ill think.
Meanwhile, staff of the corporation told the Crime Branch that the letter pad issued in the name of the mayor was fake.
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Al Norman, executive director of Mass Home Health Care, speaks Friday in Holyoke pushing for an increase in pay for elder home care workers.

(JIM KINNEY/ THE REPUBLICAN)

HOLYOKE -- When Dalia Colon of Holyoke sees one of her home health care clients, she has an hour to get to the person, get them up out of bed, to the bathroom, bathed, dressed and fed breakfast.

"When I leave they are in another room, active and doing something," said Colon, who works for Victory Home Healthcare in Holyoke.

She'll get paid about $13 for that hour's worth of work. That's not much for this single mom of two growing daughters. And that $13 is less than what she would end up making in retail or fast food after a couple of pay bumps -- raises she knows she'll never see as a home health aide.

"But I know that the work I do is important," she said Friday at an advocacy meeting pushing for an increase in state reimbursement rates that would lead to home health aides and homemakers/personal care homemakers like her getting higher pay.

The state Senate is expected to take up a budget amendment next week that would put $14 million in unspent federal money toward raising state reimbursement rates and thus salaries for the home health workers, said Lisa Gurgone, executive director of the Home Care Aide Council, a statewide advocacy group.

About 100 people in the industry gathered with state Reps. Aaron Vega and John Velis and others Friday morning at WestMass ElderCare in Holyoke. WestMass ElderCare gets money from the state and then contracts with agencies to provide care in the home whole monitoring quality.

Approval of the unspent federal money would mean an 80-cent-per-hour bump for homemakers and personal care homemakers and a 40-cent-per-hour bump for home health aides. The average homemaker makes $13.05 now. The average home health aide, who has more medical training, earns $13.78.

Homemaker rates have not been adjusted since 2014, and aides have not seen their pay adjusted since fiscal 2007, Gurgone said.

Statewide there are about 30,000 workers who would be covered, she said. Massachusetts has more than 64,000 older people and people with disabilities who make use of home care services.

The closeness of those two numbers, basically a 1:2 ratio, points to the the need for more workers, Gurgone said.

"Right now we need workers everywhere," she said, adding that the demand is strongest in rural areas where transportation is an issue.

"They provide care that elders and disabled individuals need to stay in their homes," Gurgone said. "They are primarily women, mostly immigrants and single moms. They often have to leave the business because they can do better elsewhere."

It's a national issue, she said.

The problem, Vega said, is that the federal money, obtained during the Obama administration, will only last two years. After that, paying for the raises will be a state budget responsibility.

"And everyone is so uncertain about where federal health care funding is going and what will happen in the future," he said.

Vega said pay raises would help the state budget because when the workers earn more they won't depend on public assistance like child care vouchers and WIC or food stamps. Many women in the home care industry turn down working more hours because they'd loose eligibility for benefits and could never earn enough to make up the difference and come out ahead.

Al Norman, executive director of Mass Home Care, said home health care saves the state in other ways by keeping people at home and out of nursing homes, where Medicare costs are higher. From 2000 to 2016, Massachusetts cut the nursing home population by 37 percent. That worked out to a $1 billion savings in nursing home costs in 2016 alone, he said.

Priscilla L. Chalmers, executive director of WestMass ElderCare, said her agency services 4,000 people in Holyke, Hadley, Chicopee, South Hadley, Granby, Belchertown and Ware.

"And we are seeing more people who are sicker and less able to care for themselves," she said.

Chalmers said other personal care workers, such as those who work in nursing homes or work directly for patients who pay them with Medicare, have already gotten raises. Those who work through agencies have been left behind, she said.

The number of home care patients is sure to go up as the state's population ages, said Jacob Waah, president and CEO of Victory Home Healthcare.

"The only way you are not going to need these services yourself is if you die before your time," Waah said. "If you live out your natural lifespan, you will need this type of care eventually.

Waah said he'd like to give his workers raises, but the reimbursements are so tight he cannot do so and meet his other overhead expenses like training, insurance and bookkeeping.

Fran O'Connell, owner of O'Connell Care at Home and a former candidate for mayor of Holyoke, was also there with a group of workers.

"We do need to decide as a society what value we want to place on the work that these people do," he said.
Each week, MassLive showcases pets available for adoption at shelters at rescue organizations across Massachusetts.

With the participation of the shelters listed below, many animals should be able to find a permanent home.

We also provide some pet-related news items that we hope you will enjoy.

Pet of the Week: Maya, Survivor Tails Animal Rescue

The Republican Newsroom

BOSTON Meet Maya, a one-and-a-half-year-old female Pitbull female who is looking for a foster home or an adopter.

Maya

Maya is currently at the Survivor Tails Animal Rescue in Boston where the volunteer staff described her as a beautiful, very smart dog who is a bit of a diva, but loves when you pet her.

Maya is currently in a training program where she has learned commands and even some agility. She would be a great dog to enjoy the outdoors on a walk or hike and can compete in rally or nose work too.

Maya will need a dog savvy owner and if you have older kids or other dogs, she'd like to meet them first.

Want to learn more about Maya? She has her very own Facebook page with tons of cute photos.

Interested in adopting or fostering Maya? Fill out an application here: www.survivaltails.org.

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MASSACHUSETTS SHELTERS:

Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society

Address: 163 Montague Road, Leverett

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 548-9898

Website: www.dpvhs.org

Address: 171 Union St., Springfield

Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, 12:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 781-4000

Website: www.dakinhumane.org



Thomas J. O'Connor Animal Control and Adoption Center

Address: 627 Cottage St., Springfield

Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, noon-4 p.m.; Thursday, noon-7 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 781-1484

Website: tjoconnoradoptioncenter.com

Westfield Homeless Cat Project

Address: 1124 East Mountain Road, Westfield

Hours: Adoption clinics, Thursday, 5-7 p.m.; Saturday, 11 a.m.-3 p.m.

Website: http://www.whcp.petfinder.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/westfieldhomelesscatprojectadoptions



Westfield Regional Animal Shelter

Address: 178 Apremont Way, Westfield

Hours: Monday-Friday, noon-5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 564-3129

Website: http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/ma70.html

Franklin County Sheriff's Office Regional Dog Shelter and Adoption Center

Address: 10 Sandy Lane, Turners Falls

Hours: Monday-Thursday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m., Friday-Saturday, 9 a.m.-1 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 676-9182

Website: http://fcrdogkennel.org/contact.html

Polverari/Southwick Animal Control Facility

Address: 11 Depot St., Southwick

Hours: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-1 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 569-5348, ext. 649

Website: http://southwickpolice.com/chief-david-a-ricardis-welcome/animal-control/

Berkshire Humane Society

Address: 214 Barker Road, Pittsfield

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-4 p.m.; Thursday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Sunday, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 447-7878

Website: http://berkshirehumane.org/

Purradise Feline Adoption

Address: 301 Stockbridge Road, Great Barrington

Hours: Monday and Tuesday: Closed; Wednesday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m.; Thursday 10 a.m.- 6 p.m.; Friday,10 a.m. - 4 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Sunday, noon-4 p.m.

Telephone: (413) 717-4244

Website: http://berkshirehumane.org/contact-us/

Greyhound Options, Inc.

Address: 43 Sygiel Rd., Ware, MA. 01082

Telephone: 413-967-9088

Website: greyhoundadoptions.org



Animal Rescue League of Boston

Address: 10 Chandler Street, Boston, MA 02116

Telephone: (617) 426-9170

Fax: (617) 426-3028

Website: adoption@arlboston.org

Worcester Animal Rescue League

Address: 139 Holden St., Worcester, MA 01606

Telephone: (508) 853-0030

Hours: Open 7 days a week from noon to 4 p.m.

Website: www.worcesterarl.org


SPRINGFIELD -- MGM Springfield could soon announce changes to its plan to bring 54 market-rate residential units to the city's downtown, according to city and casino officials.

Kevin Kennedy, Springfield's chief development officer, said the city is currently in the later stages of negotiating with MGM Springfield over redeveloping a long-vacant building located near the casino site at 31 Elm St.

"We are negotiating and I have said publicly that we are negotiating to incorporate that commitment into redevelopment of 31 Elm St," he said in an interview. "Currently, we're in the latter stages of that discussion and lawyers are going back and forth about an (memorandum of understanding) to put that whole project, which is critical to downtown, into a stage that we can hopefully announce at some point soon."

Kennedy added that while the discussions are focused on the Court Square property, officials are "not ignoring" the old School Department Headquarters located at 195 State St., which MGM Springfield bought from the city in 2016 for $600,000 and had announced plans to redevelop into around 30 apartments.

Kennedy, however, remained vague about the nature of negotiations regarding the building's redevelopment.

"We expect significant market-rate improvements in both of the buildings that we're negotiating," he said.

The city's chief development officer added that officials are "expecting significant market-rate apartments in both buildings." He would not say whether the residential portion of the casino project is expected to include any low-income rental units.

MGM Springfield President Mike Mathis, at a recent Casino Oversight Committee meeting of the City Council, acknowledged that 54 market-rate units may not be the final number included in the project. The amount ultimately developed, however, will be within "the spirit of the agreement" between the city and MGM, he reportedly said.

Officials for MGM Springfield would not elaborate on Mathis' April 24 remarks.

"MGM continues to work with the city on the most optimal residential opportunities for downtown Springfield," project spokeswoman Carole Brennan said in a statement. "We hope to be part of an announcement about a new housing development in the coming months."

In March, Mathis told the Massachusetts Gaming Commission that MGM Springfield's priority is to build market-rate housing on at 31 Elm Street and redevelop the old School Department Headquarters if it needs more housing than can be built at Court Square.

MGM Springfield's host community agreement with the city calls for the company to develop 54 market rate apartments, as part of an effort to bring more full-time residents downtown.

The casino project had initially planned to build apartments at Main and Howard streets as part of its 14.5-acre campus, but moved the residential units when the hotel was redesigned to be lower and not a high-rise tower.

5/10/2017 -Springfield- Construction update at the MGM Springfield casino project. This is a view looking north along Main Street. Under construction on the left is the MGM hotel. (Don Treeger / The Republican)

The long-vacant six-floor building at 31 Elm is owned by the Springfield Redevelopment Authority, which had named Peter Picknelly and his real estate firm, the OPAL Real Estate Group, as the preferred developer at the site.

Picknelly said OPAL is in the final stages of negotiations with the city about redeveloping the property into a mix of residential and commercial units, offering that the offices for his Peter Pan Bus Lines could move to the Court Square location.

"It would be a combination residential-commercial building. Part of the conversations may be to move Peter Pan offices to that building," he said. "We're moving into Union Station, if we repurpose the bus terminal we would need offices -- part of our conversation includes that. It's a likely place for Peter Pan."

Picknelly, who said OPAL has partnered with Boston-based WinnDevelopment on the $40 million renovation, would not speak to MGM's plans, but stressed that "it's in everyone's best interest to make this project a go."

"I'm not prepared to talk about anything with MGM, I can't speak for those guys other than that we've always had conversations about making sure that building is renovated," he said. "It's in everyone's best interest: the city, MGM, local, Peter Pan. It's the one building in Springfield that needs development."
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Ted Williams Tunnel

With funds earmarked for leak sealing and fire suppression efforts, the state plans to spend $39.4 million in the coming fiscal year on the regional tunnel network left behind after the Big Dig, the unprecedented highway construction project that ran from 1991 until 2006.

The spending projection was included in a $2.2 billion capital spending plan for fiscal 2018, which begins July 1. Gov. Charlie Baker released the plan Thursday, saying it will leverage other public and private funds and lead to total investments exceeding $4 billion.

The capital plan includes limited information about the purpose of the tunnel spending, saying it's for "reconstruction and maintenance the regional tunnel network with state and federal funds along with public-private partnerships."

A Baker administration official provided additional information at the News Service's request.

"Please note that this is referencing investments in routine regular maintenance to the tunnel system, vent buildings and associated equipment within the MHS system," Massachusetts Department of Transportation spokesman Patrick Marvin explained in an email. "Projects include fire standpipe and suppression maintenance and upgrades, routine and emergency maintenance contracts, overhead lighting, leak sealing, pump maintenance and upgrades as well as vent building work."

There are seven major tunnels that are part of the larger 250-mile Metropolitan Highway System in, beneath and around the downtown Boston area. The system includes 227 bridges and viaducts, including the Zakim Bridge, and three of its tunnels -- the Ted Williams, Sumner and Callahan -- run under Boston Harbor.

The MHS faces triennial inspections. Here's the 2015 inspection report.
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A family photo of Summer Steele, the 9-year-old student killed on October when she became caught in the door and then dragged by a school bus at Sanderson Academy in Plainfield. The driver of the bus is being charged with negligent motor-vehicle homicide. (Submitted photo)

A bus driver accused of negligent motor-vehicle homicide in the death of a Plainfield elementary school girl pleaded not guilty Friday before being granted conditional release.



Tendzin Parsons, 70, of Hawley, remained silent, only exchanging words with his attorney during the brief arraignment in Northampton District Court on Friday morning.



Various media and a large contingent of onlookers -- some of them presumably friends and family of the late little girl, Summer Steele, 9 -- attended the hearing.





Judge W. Michael Goggins released Parsons ahead of a June 13 pretrial hearing on conditions that he not drive or leave Massachusetts without the permission of the probation department and surrender his passport.



In the Oct. 28 crash, which occurred on South Central Street in Plainfield, Steele's backpack became stuck in the bus doors and Parsons accelerated, not noticing.



A state police report concluded that Parsons "failed to exercise a reasonable level of care and attention" "contrary to the specific and thorough training he had received in order to obtain and maintain his bus driver's license."
Cooley Dickinson Hospital

The Cooley Dickinson Hospital at 30 Locust St. in Northampton

(Mary Serreze photo)

NORTHAMPTON -- The president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson Hospital faces deposition in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Pamela Sampson, a patient who died after giving birth at the hospital more than three years ago.

Joanne Marqusee must submit to questioning under oath before May 24, Hampshire Superior Court Judge Mary-Lou Rup recently ordered. Rup on March 27 denied an emergency defense motion arguing Marqusee should not be deposed because of her "lack of connection to the case," court records show.

Depositions are generally conducted in a law office, and not in an open courtroom. A witness is asked questions by the opposing attorney, and the proceedings are transcribed word for word.

Sampson died Dec. 30, 2013, after she was flown in an unresponsive state from Cooley Dickinson to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. It was determined she died of a massive brain hemorrhage secondary to eclampsia, a rare condition where high blood pressure can lead to seizures, agitation or unconsciousness during pregnancy.

Sampson's family and estate allege that caregivers at Cooley Dickinson failed to identify, treat or communicate about Sampson's pre-eclampsia symptoms, including sudden weight gain, abnormal blood pressure and elevated urine protein levels.

Marqusee assumed the top post at the Northampton hospital on March 31, 2014, three months after Sampson's death. However, Marqusee was at the helm during part of a state investigation into six serious incidents, including three deaths, at the hospital's childbirth center.

The Department of Public Health that year determined the hospital "failed to provide quality of care" in relation to the incidents. Cooley Dickinson subsequently revamped its procedures.

Even though she was not on payroll at the time of Sampson's death, the CEO has "personal and unique knowledge" relevant to the case, plaintiffs argued in calling for her deposition.

Sampson's family in 2015 sued the hospital and named as defendants three medical doctors, two registered nurses and a certified nurse midwife, alleging a failure to identify symptoms of pre-eclampsia prior to the woman's death.

The family is represented by the Northampton law firm of Xanthakos & Malkovich.

Attorney Stella Xanthakos wrote in a court filing that she seeks from Marqusee records of written policies and procedures for the treatment of eclampsia and pre-eclampsia. The lawyer also seeks clarification about the completeness of Sampson's medical records.

The hospital provided plaintiffs with a "large volume of medical records in disarray," Xanthakos wrote. The hospital's keeper of records cited a "technical issue," and Marqusee at one point had said she would "look into it," the lawyer stated.

Xanthakos alleged that plaintiffs had tried to schedule Marqusee's deposition since early December, but that defense counsel "chronically obstructed" the effort, "engaged in a pattern of delay" and "failed to produce discovery throughout this litigation."

Marqusee, during interviews with the press, had referred to "systems, problems and communications issues" present at the time of Sampson's death, Xanthakos wrote.

Lawyers for the hospital asserted that deposing Marqusee would be "wholly inappropriate and will not lead to the discovery of admissible evidence." Precluding her appearance would "prevent the plaintiffs from engaging in harassing and unduly burdensome discovery tactics apparently meant to punish (Marqusee) for not meeting and accepting responsibility."

Various parties to the case have already been deposed, the court docket shows.

A medical tribunal held a year ago found sufficient evidence "to raise a legitimate issue of liability appropriate for judicial injury" as to defendants Dr. Edward Patton, Dr. Barbara Jones, registered nurses Kathleen Crane, Grace Ferrante and Katherine Johnson, and certified nurse midwife Amy Metzger.

Five days after Christmas in 2013, Sampson admitted herself to Cooley Dickinson shortly before 8 a.m. She had telephoned Patton, an on-call provider, around 2:44 a.m. complaining of vomiting, severe gastric pain and headache. Patton did not advise her to go to the hospital immediately, court documents state.

But later she did go. At the hospital, Sampson's condition deteriorated, and around 9 a.m. she was sedated and restrained after "screaming in pain" and becoming "panicked, agitated and combative," the court records state.

After giving birth in a nonresponsive state via emergency cesarean section, Sampson was "pointlessly" transported via life flight to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she was pronounced dead, according to the plaintiffs.

The lawsuit alleges the hospital breached its duty by failing to provide appropriate protocols and training for diagnosing and treating emergency conditions of high blood pressure, stroke, pre-eclampsia and a condition known as HELLP syndrome.

The hospital's public affairs department did not return telephone calls placed Thursday and Friday seeking comment.

Sampson's family and estate seek damages and compensation.
Photos, left to right: Robert Honsch is led into Hampden Superior Court in September 2014; Marcia Honsch; Elizabeth Honsch; a police sketch of the unidentified woman found in Tolland State Forest (Republican file photos)

By BUFFY SPENCER | bspencer@repub.com

SPRINGFIELD  Jury selection began Friday in the Hampden Superior Court murder trial of Robert Honsch for the fatal shooting of wife, Marcia Honsch, in 1995.

The saga began with the discovery of the unidentified remains of a woman  years later identified as Marcia Honsch  in Tolland State Forest.

Robert Honsch faces a murder charge in Connecticut for the fatal shooting of his daughter, Elizabeth Honsch, in 1995. The trial in Hampden Superior Court for Marcia Honsch's murder is being held before the Connecticut trial.

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October 1995: Body found at Tolland State Forest

From the Union-News, Oct. 7, 1995:

TOLLAND  State police said they are investigating a possible homicide after finding the body of a woman in Tolland State Forest.

Troopers at the Russell barracks reported receiving a call from a park ranger at the forest at about 4:30 p.m., notifying them of the discovery of the corpse which they said had been in the forest for several days or perhaps weeks.

Police said the body is believed to be that of an elderly woman. No identification has been made and the cause of death is still being investigated.

District Attorney William Bennett would say little about the event until he had more information.

"Right now we have a body in the woods and we have no information beyond that," he said. "The body will be recovered, there will be an autopsy and an examination."

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State police handout

October 1995: Police release photo of sweatshirt worn by homicide victim

State Police provided this photo of the sweatshirt worn by an unidentified murder victim found in Tolland State Forest. It is described as a grey drawstring hooded type with the word "Trends" in a diamond over the left chest area. Red hood, sleeves and front pouch.

This is a description of the victim from then-Hampden District Attorney William M. Bennett's office:

Physical: The woman was between 30 and 45 years old, of medium build and from 5 feet, 2 inches to about 5 feet, 4 inches tall. She was wearing maroon-rimmed prescription glasses and had an upper bridge with a full set of teeth.

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Police handout

September 1996: Police release sketch of homicide victim found in Tolland State Forest

Police in September 1996 released a sketch of the woman whose body was found in Tolland State Forest in October 1995.

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Police photos

Jan. 20, 2011: Police announce Tolland State Forest body is believed to be the mother of young woman found dead in Connecticut

From the Union-News, Jan. 20, 2011:

TOLLAND  State police investigators announced Wednesday the badly decomposed body of a woman found at Tolland State Forest in October 1995 is believed to be the mother of a young woman found dead behind a New Britain, Conn., shopping plaza in September 1995.

Police also believe the mother and daughter, one aged in her mid-30s to 40 and the other 17 to 20 years old, were residents or spent a lot of time in the Albany, N.Y., area before their deaths.

Police have no suspects.

The new information from the Jane Doe cold cases was released during a press conference involving Connecticut authorities at New Britain Police Headquarters Wednesday afternoon.

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Photos provided by New Britain Police Dept.

July 2014: Marcia Honsch and Elizabeth Honsch identified as victims

The murder victims are identified and photos of Marcia Honsch, 53, and her daughter, Elizabeth Honsch, 17, taken sometime before their murders in 1995 are released by police.

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July 2014: Robert Honsch arrested and held in Ohio

From The Republican:

A man accused of killing his wife and daughter 19 years ago and leaving their bodies in Tolland State Forest and behind a shopping plaza in New Britain, Conn. was ordered held without the right to bail Thursday by an Ohio court.

Robert Honsch, 70, was arraigned in Wayne County Municipal Court on charges that he is a fugitive from justice, according to the office of Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Daniel R. Lutz. He was ordered held at the Wayne County Jail for up to 30 days while Massachusetts prepares a request to have him returned to the state for trial.

Honsch was arrested Wednesday at his home in Dalton, Ohio, where he had been living under the assumed name of Robert Tyree.

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Photo: Robert L. Honsch stands during his arraignment in Westfield District Court (The Republican file photo)

August 2014: Robert Honsch is arraigned for murder in Westfield District Court

From The Republican, Aug. 26, 2014:

WESTFIELD  His face half-obscured by a glass partition, accused double-murderer Robert Honsch was arraigned in Westfield District Court on Monday morning.

After waiving extradition in Ohio, where he was arrested after being found living under the assumed name Robert Tyree, Honsch was transferred here over the weekend. Honsch on Monday pleaded not guilty to murdering his wife, Marcia Honsch, 53, and leaving her body in Tolland State Forest on or around Sept. 28, 1995.

Honsch, 70, was denied bail with no objection from his two court-appointed lawyers.

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The Republican file photo

September 2014: Robert Honsch murder case moves to Hampden Superior Court

On Sept. 17, 2014, Robert L. Honsch pleaded not guilty in Hampden Superior Court to murder in connection with the fatal shooting of his wife Marcia Honsch, 53, in 1995.

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October 2015: Palm prints link Robert Honsch to cold-case murder

From The Republican, Oct. 5, 2015:

When 71-year-old Robert Honsch was arrested last year on charges for the murders of his wife and daughter in 1995, authorities said forensic evidence linked him to the body of his daughter.

A prosecutors motion, filed recently in Hampden Superior Court, now reveals that the forensic evidence includes a series of palm prints found on the plastic trash bags in which his daughters body was found dumped in New Britain, Connecticut, 20 years ago this month.

A motion filed last month by assistant Hampden district attorney Karen J. Bell sought  and received  a judges OK to obtain Honschs palm prints so State Police can compare them to the prints recovered as evidence.

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May 2017: Jury selection begins for Hampden Superior Court murder trial of Robert Honsch

Hampden Superior Court Judge Constance M. Sweeney will preside over Robert Honsch's murder trial in Springfield. The trial is slated to last three to four weeks.

After the jury is selected, they will be taken by bus on two "views." One will be to Tolland State Forest, where Marcia Honsch's body was found, and the other will be to the New Britain, Connecticut, location where Elizabeth Honsch's body was found.

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AMHERST -- When Miguel Paredes talked to his high school guidance counselor about his love for theater five years ago, she said "would you like fries with that," Paredes recalls.

So he applied to the University of Massachusetts for engineering. "I didn't want to be broke, I didn't want to be a deadbeat," he said. "I didn't want to be a starving artist."

But at the UMass engineering open house, "I didn't like the vibe," he said.

So the Amherst Regional High School graduate pursued his dream after all.

On Friday, Paredes will be honored as one of 10 21st Century Leaders at the 2017 UMass Commencement. He is one of about 5,500 graduating at afternoon ceremonies.

The actor, writer, director and rapper (Tuzko is his alter ego) doesn't think he will be a starving artist now.

When people say theater, "people only think of Broadway. People think your pursing theater is a pipe dream," Paredes said.

"(But) theater is a vehicle to talk about anything," The 21-year-old Amherst resident said. And he can use it in myriad ways.

Paredes returned to his high school Thursday to put on a workshop, and this summer he and his friend Meredith Wells will be taking their play "Dysfunctioning Just Fine" to the New York City True Colors Fringe Festival in cooperation with the New York City Pride Parade and LGBT Voices. Wells wrote it and he directed -- his debut in that capacity.

Miguel Paredes in downtown Amherst on Thursday. The Amherst resident will be honored as one of 10 21st Century Leaders at the 2017 UMass Commencement.

Paredes said he wants to learn how he too can use theater "as a vehicle for change."

He talked about how Wells' play raises questions and pursues themes of and misconceptions about disability.

He is also teaching at the Deerfield Academy Summer Arts Camp, and he hopes to to study applied theater in the honors program at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where school begins in January.

He visited that country after his first year at UMass. He said he was blown away seeing how they used theater to fight apartheid.

It brings to theater "a perspective of voices I never thought of before," he said.

Paredes, who was born in the U.S. and whose grandparents are from Mexico, said he wants to tell stories of being "a brown (person or a Chicano)."

He said when he was young, he always liked performing. "I was always very excitable," he said.

He said he can use theater to "show and talk about under-represened voices." And he hopes that will help bring more people of various ethnic backgrounds to shows.

"I never saw myself in the audience," he said.

He loves rap as well as theater, and feels he can say things through his music, too.

"I'm always playing with the idea of duality," he said. He's Mexican and American, a Spanish and English speaker and he was born in California but came to Amherst in 2000.

He believes the current divisive climate in this country comes from fear. People don't know each other, he said. He's hoping theater can bring people together to "understand other people's perspectives."
Nicole White.jpg

Officials identified Nicole White, 44, as the woman shot to death in Lowell on May 11, 2017.

(Facebook photo)

Nicole White, of Lowell, has been identified as the woman shot to death in the city on Thursday as the manhunt for suspect Ross Elliott continues, officials said Friday.

White, 44, was identified by Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan during a news conference on Friday. White was in a domestic relationship with Elliott, who has been on the run since Thursday morning.

Officials said they believe Elliott, 51, is still in the area, according to NBC Boston.

Police continued to search the Highlands neighborhood and had extra police patrols at city schools.

Elliott is a white man, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and was last seen wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, jeans and black and white sneakers.

Anyone with information on Elliott's location or who sees him should not approach him, officials said, but should dial 911 or contact Lowell Police at 978-937-3200 or Massachusetts State Police at 781-897-6600.

White was shot in a Stevens Street apartment in front of family on Thursday morning, including a young child who is now in custody of police and family, Ryan's office said. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.

Friends left messages and memories of White on her Facebook page after her death.

I still cant stop crying knowing you are gone. My heart aches so much for your family right now. You always had that smile the lit up a room. May you rest in peace Nicole M Gamache-White. Posted by Olga Anna on Thursday, May 11, 2017

Feel like I'm going to sleep in a war with all of these helicopters flying around. Very unnerving to say the least.... Posted by Amy K Mannion on Thursday, May 11, 2017
WESTFIELD - Darren McQuade, a 5-year-old from Westfield got his wish for a dinosaur-themed play shed in his backyard on Friday, thanks to The Make-A-Wish Foundation of Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

In addition to the staff and volunteers working with the non-profit, members of the Westfield Fire Department helped finish the interior of the play-shed.

"In the past 30 years, we have granted close to 8,000 wishes for children like Darren. Darren's wish has inspired the community to come together to ensure joy arrives in the form of his very own place to play," said Charlotte Beattie, chief executive officer of Make-A-Wish Massachusetts and Rhode Island. "We are truly grateful to all involved in supporting Darren's wish as it comes to fruition, and for sharing in the true power of our mission."

Peg Wheble, the regional director for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, was also on site.

The Make-A-Wish of Massachusetts and Rhode Island grants wishes for children between the ages of 21/2 and 18 years-old with life-threatening medical conditions. In its 28-year history, the organization has granted nearly 8,000 wishes for children in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

For more information log onto www.massri.wish.org.
Springfield - WGBY hosted a live forum, "The Opioid Crisis" in collaboration with The Berkshire Eagle and CHD. A group of panelists spoke on the crisis.

(Elizabeth Roman/ The Republican)

SPRINGFIELD -- An hour-long discussion during WGBY's live forum "The Opioid Crisis" touched on everything from the stigma associated with drug addiction to the life-saving measures health professionals, legislators and law enforcement in the region have put in place to prevent overdose deaths.

"As we face this opiate crisis -- which is really the most significant public health issue that I believe we face -- the important thing for me is that addiction impacts all aspects of society, and so, the solutions are going to come from all sectors of society," said Dr. Robert Roose, vice president of behavioral health for Mercy Health, and a panelist on the forum.

With more than 1,400 Massachusetts residents dying of opioid-related overdoses in 2016, according to the state Department of Public Health, WGBY partnered with the Center for Human Development and the Berkshire Eagle to host a live televised event to address the issue.

"CHD came to us to ask how we could partner on this subject matter, and it is the function of public television and WGBY in this area to be the convener for important topics," said Lynn Page, interim general manager of WGBY. " There are so many people touched by this epidemic in one way or another and we are just allowing for that conversation and engagement to happen."

Springfield - WGBY hosted a live forum on the Opioid Crisis in collaboration with CHD and The Berkshire Eagle.

Lois Nesci, the CEO of CHD, said opioid addiction in the region is a critical issues and a conversation that has to happen more often.

"This is a very critical issue in our community that impacts every one of our neighborhoods, every one of our towns in Western Massachusetts and around the country. We see so many people every day who have been afflicted with opioid and other substance use issues," she said. "We hope to create more awareness and an opportunity for people to get help if they need it."

Other panelists for the forum, held Thursday night, included Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, Chantal Silloway, adolescent recovery program director, Goodwin House, Danyel Zerella, mother in addiction recovery, Jennifer Kimball, public health program manager for the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and Liz Whynott, of Tapestry.

Audience members included local legislators, health professionals, recovering addicts and families who have been affected by addiction.

The conversation was hosted by Berkshire Eagle reporter Carrie Saldo.

"I think there were a lot of voices that got the opportunity to be heard and I think the audience brought up a wide array of challenges connected to this issue. That's what WGBY was hoping to offer to the community, an opportunity to discuss this," Saldo said.

Panelists answered questions from the live audience as well as questions from viewers at home through social media.

Roose said he was pleased to hear that people have come to see addiction as a disease.

"People are finally seeing this as a disease and not a manifestation of poor choices," he said. "It's important to continue to spread the message that medication- assisted therapy is the most evidence based effective treatment that we have for opiate addiction, and to continue combating some misinformation and myths helps to reduce stigma."

Liz Whynott, director of HIV health and prevention, who oversees needle exchange program in all four counties for Tapestry, said the forum was a good overview of the current crisis.

"It highlighted what Western Massachusetts is doing well and what we still need to do. I do wish there had been a family member to discuss the impact addiction has on them," said Whynott, pointing out that there are programs like Learn to Cope, which work with families.

Saldo said she hopes people will continue the conversation with their family, friends and colleagues.

"An hour is not enough time, so we would encourage people to continue this discussion," she said.

To join the discussion ,or if you missed the live forum, visit www.wgby.org.
Ross Elliot mugshot.jpg

Lowell police are searching for Ross Elliot, 51, who is accused of shooting a woman he was in a domestic relationship with.

(Lowell police)

The manhunt for a suspect accused of shooting a woman in Lowell on Thursday continued Friday morning, as extra police patrols were at city schools, officials said.

Lowell police have been searching for a "very dangerous and armed" suspect Ross Elliott, 51, of Lowell, after a woman was found shot to death on Thursday morning.

The woman, who has not been identified but is in her 40s, was in a domestic relationship with Elliott, Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan said Thursday.

On Friday morning, Lowell police said that the search for Elliott continued. A manhunt for him covered the Highlands section of the city on Thursday, as residents were asked to shelter in place.

There will be extra police patrols at city schools on Friday as the search continues, police said.

LPD still looking 4 suspect Ross Elliott, 5'10", white male, last seen wearing blue hoodie, jeans, black & white sneaks 911 w/susp activity pic.twitter.com/FA1qLBmBYJ  Lowell PD (@LowellPD) May 12, 2017

The woman was shot in a Stevens Street apartment in front of family, including a young child who is now in custody of police and family, Ryan's office said. She was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead.

Police on Thursday also searched a Gorham Street residence that officials believe is connected to Elliott.

Elliott is a white man, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and was last seen wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt, jeans and black and white sneakers.

Anyone with information on Elliott's location or who sees him should not approach him, officials said, but should dial 911 or contact Lowell Police at 978-937-3200 or Massachusetts State Police at 781-897-6600.
South Hadley Town Meeting

South Hadley Town Meeting on May 10, 2017. The municipality's legislative body endorsed a ballot proposal, by which voters will decide if the currently elected Board of Health should become Selectboard appointments. The assembly also endorsed a measure that will ask residents if they favor keeping the board at three members, or favor increasing that to five, with one of the members being the town's public health director. The Town Administrator appoints the public health director (JIM RUSSELL PHOTO)

SOUTH HADLEY -- Town Meeting on Wednesday endorsed a proposal for voters to decide if the elected Board of Health should be appointed by the Selectboard.

The assembly also endorsed a measure that will ask residents if they favor keeping the board at three members, or favor increasing it to five, with one of the members being the town's public health director. The town administrator appoints the public health director.

The vote was 43 in favor and 35 opposed. There are a total of 120 elected Town Meeting members in South Hadley, the town clerk said.

Town Meeting member Anne Awad unsuccessfully sought to have the idea referred back to the Selectboard for further review. She said there had been scant discussion of the proposal in the community.

Awad also said the most recent agendas posted for meetings of the town's Bylaw Review Committee, from April and December, did not show any reference to changing the Board of Health selection process.

"It must be recommended or not by the Bylaw Review Committee," she said.

Awad said an appointed Board of Health "might compromise their choice of priorities."

During discussion, a Town Meeting member asked Moderator Edward Ryan what would happen if the electorate approves an increase to five members and retains the board as an elected entity, given that one of the members, according to the proposal, would be the public health director.

"We'll see," Ryan said.

The Massachusetts attorney general must approve the two proposed ballot measures before they can appear on the ballot in a future town election.
verducci.photo.jpg

John C. Verducci III, is shown in this file photo, while working in his mobile food truck on Worthington Street in downtown Springfield. The City Council is considering passage of an ordinance to provide permits and regulations for the food trucks.

(File Photo / The Republican)

SPRINGFIELD - After eight years of on-again, off-again debate, the City Council on Monday will consider final approval of an ordinance to regulate food trucks in downtown Springfield.

The issue traces back to 2009, when John C. Verducci III, of Agawam, a food truck vendor in the downtown for over 30 years, objected to the city's efforts to remove him from his longtime curbside spot on Worthington Street. The dispute led to numerous tickets and fines over a three-year period while the council considered regulations and permit requirements for vendors.

On Monday, the impasse could end as the council considers passage of an ordinance that would allow up to eight food trucks at parking spaces on Lyman Street and Kaynor Street, and up to eight additional food trucks at parking spaces at Riverfront Park.

The ordinance includes rules and regulations, application and permit fees, limits on hours, noise restrictions, inspections, requirements against leaving trucks unattended, and guidelines for fines and permit revocations.

"I think it's important to the city because there is presently no local regulations for this food truck industry," said At-large Councilor Marcus Williams, who is the co-sponsor with Ward 2 Councilor Michael Fenton. "I think the power of working together as a unit to see something completed -- I think this ordinance is a testament to that."

Food trucks on private property must follow rules such as time limits and noise restrictions, but are exempt from the permitting requirements under the ordinance.

The council meeting Monday begins at 7 p.m. at City Hall.

Williams, through the Young Professionals Subcommittee, was among officials pushing for passage of the ordinance in recent months in discussions with councilors, the Police and Law departments, Department of Public Works, Health Department, the Springfield Business Improvement District, and others.

With positive developments occurring downtown including the reopening of Union Station and renovations at Stearns Square, the ordinance allows for a thriving food truck option for downtown workers and visitors at key downtown areas, he said.

"It kind of speaks to a city on the rise," Williams said.

There had been efforts in the past to approve regulations, including a home-rule bill filed with the state Legislature that never passed. Williams said he is optimistic the ordinance will pass Monday.

Springfield street vendors to be subject of discussion again after proposed regulation dies in Massachusetts Legislature

Under the proposed ordinance, interested vendors would apply for a license from the city's Department of Public Works and would pay an annual application fee of $75 and a quarterly permit fee of $150.

Regulations and rules would be enforced by the Police and Health departments.

Other highlights of the ordinance include: no food vendors can serve food and beverages from 1-7 a.m., no vendor can provide dining areas with tables and chairs, and no mobile food truck can be parked on the street overnight or left unattended and unsecured at any time food is kept in the truck.

The ordinance states that its purpose in part is to "encourage greater foot traffic in the downtown area, and would benefit employees and visitors who frequent the downtown/metro area of Springfield by providing a variety of food selections."

Verducci said he has changed careers to become a registered investment adviser but has continued to operate the food truck on weekends on Worthington Street.

He had hoped to keep that site through the summer and fall, but now expects to finish when the ordinance takes effect because it will limit trucks to the two designated areas.

The council considered letting him stay at the current site until Dec. 1, but that proposal failed by an 8-4 vote recently.

Williams said the designated areas made sense in fairness to the established restaurants in the downtown area. In addition, the designated sites will be very active, including Lyman Street adjacent to Union Station. The concentration of the trucks can also be more easily monitored, he said.

The success of food trucks can be seen in many other cities including Boston and Hartford.
Donald Trump

President Donald Trump's past anti-Muslim statements continue to haunt his efforts to pass an immigration travel ban.

(Associated Press)

Federal appeals court judges reviewing the legality of President Donald Trump's revised travel ban want to know if they should consider statements that Trump himself has made, not only while he was a candidate for the presidency, but also since he assumed office.

A simple question provides a fairly straightforward answer: Why wouldn't they?

As a candidate, Trump vowed to implement a complete ban on Muslims entering our nation if he were elected president.

Then, just a week after Trump was inaugurated, the White House issued an order suspending those from seven Muslim-majority nations from entering the United States.

Though the administration maintained that the temporary suspension was somehow not the Muslim ban that candidate Trump had promised, its arguments fell far short in the courts, and the ban was quickly put on hold. A revised ban was rolled out, reducing to six from seven the number of affected nations, and making some largely cosmetic changes. But Travel Ban 2.0 didn't fly, either, and was also blocked in the courts.

Just hours after that ruling, Trump, denouncing the decision at a rally in Nashville, Tennessee, referred to the second travel ban as a "watered down" version of the first ban, and added:

"I think we have to go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place."

Which brings us to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Virginia. Judges there who recently heard an appeal of the ban's suspension asked what they should consider in reviewing the case.

Referring to Trump's frequent anti-Muslim statements, Judge James Wynn asked: "Don't we get to consider what was actually said here?"

You'd like to think so.

To go back to the beginning can make things awfully clear. Candidate Trump's first statement on the matter carried the following headline:

"Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration".

Most anyone could understand that.

And the statement's opening was equally straightforward and misguided:

"Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."

It's impossible to see the two travel bans as anything other than an extension of this un-American notion. We were created as a land that would be free from religious intolerance and discrimination. We would favor no single religion, nor would we disfavor any other.

Trump, who frequently seems willfully ignorant of our nation's history, isn't one to be bothered by such niceties. Thankfully, the men who created our nation's Constitution knew well the horrors that can be brought about by a tyrant.

The government they established would have strong checks and balances, qne separate branches. America would have a bicameral legislature, a chief executive, and the federal courts.

If Trump thinks he can act as a king, he's got the federal judiciary to set him straight. If Trump believes that he can simply do as he pleases, he's got the Constitution to keep him in check.

Perhaps over time, he'll come to learn this.

If Trump really wants to know what makes America great, he need look no further than to our Constitution. He really ought to read it one day.
Trump FBI

In this May 12, 2017, tweet, President Donald Trump, in an apparent warning to his fired FBI director, said that James Comey had better hope there are no "tapes" of their conversations. Trump's tweet came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasn't under FBI investigation. (AP Photo)

(AP)

President Donald Trump warned James Comey against taking his story to the press Friday, saying the former FBI Director better hope no "tapes" of their conversations exist.

The president, who slammed the news media's focus on Comey's firing in a series of tweets, cautioned the former FBI director against "leaking to the press" and cast the agency's reported investigation into alleged ties between his campaign and Russia as a "witch hunt."

"James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!" he tweeted. "When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?"

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

When James Clapper himself, and virtually everyone else with knowledge of the witch hunt, says there is no collusion, when does it end?  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

The tweet came just hours after reports that FBI officials disputed the president's account of a meeting with Comey.

Trump told NBC that the FBI director had requested a dinner with him and asked to stay on as the agency's head. Comey, he added, told him three times that he was not under FBI investigation.

FBI officials, however, told NBC that the White House requested the meeting and that Comey was unlikely to have told Trump he was not under investigation.

Trump, who previously cast the FBI investigation and congressional probes as a "hoax," has denied that his campaign was involved in Russia's reported interference in the 2016 election.
BOSTON - Hanley Ramirez left Wednesday's game in Milwaukee in the fourth inning with a trapezius (upper shoulder/back) strain.

Ramirez, who played in his first game at first base this season that day, hasn't returned to the lineup in two games since, but manager John Farrell is hopeful the slugger can be back on Saturday.

Ramirez reported to Fenway on Friday slightly improved but had yet to be examined again by team doctors before they game.

Farrell said Ramirez's muscle spasms improved gradually over the past two days, but Ramirez felt he needed at least one more day out of the lineup.

--

Follow MassLive.com Red Sox beat reporter @jcmccaffrey on Twitter. She can be reached by email at jmccaffr@masslive.com.
Our mission is to create the largest nature reserve in the continental United States, a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of Americas heritage.

https://www.americanprairie.org/employment

In addition, American Prairie Reserves for-profit company, Montana Prairie Holdings, also is hiring! The ideal candidates would thrive in a dynamic and fast-paced start-up with a unique, mission-driven orientation. Check out their website http://wildskybeef.org/contact/join-our-team to learn more about the Inside Sales Associate and Outside Sales Representative positions.
Its a challenging time to be in the retail business in this "Age of Amazon". Brick and mortar stores are trying to stay afloat as people shop more with their phones than their feet.

By Jill Valley

Video: http://www.kpax.com/story/35407164/montana-businesses-competing-in-the-age-of-amazon
One of the newest food trucks in Billings has generated a lot of discussion, and it hasnt been about the food.

Its about the name of the business, Doner Trump.

When owner Ruslan Saifullin put his first post up on the Billings Food Truck Tracker Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/billingsfoodtrucktracker/ Sunday, he was met by an unusually heavy outpouring of commentsmost of them about that name. Some people said theyd never eat at a truck bearing the name of Trump, while others defended Saifullin.

By: Ed Kemmick

Full Story: http://lastbestnews.com/site/2017/05/name-aside-new-food-truck-and-its-owner-worth-a-look/
Throughout history, ingenious and innovative ideas have been copied, or outright stolen. Guglielmo Marconi is credited with inventing the radio, even though it originated from Nikola Tesla. Nowadays its easy for a business owner to patent a great idea.

Robert Fulton took the idea for the steamboat engine from John Fitch. Lizzie Magie invented the board game "Monopoly" in 1903, but it was patented by Clarence B. Darrow in the 1930s. Even Apple has been accused of stealing ideas from Google, Microsoft, and Samsung.

Full Story: https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/05/patenting-an-idea.html
With all this job growth, the economy should feel like its booming. Unfortunately, details in both the establishment and household reports show otherwise.

BY PETER CRABB

Full Story: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/business/business-insider/article150081232.html
Effects of a proposed new corporate tax on Oregons economy could be minimal but mostly positive when paired with other tweaks to the states tax system, an analysis by the Legislative Revenue Office found.

Legislative Revenue Officer Paul Warner presented the finding Thursday to lawmakers on the Joint Tax Reform Committee. The model showed that a tax of 0.48 percent on companies Oregon sales over $1 million would boost hiring and investment in the state while driving up consumer prices. But in every case, effects of the tax overhaul were slight  increases or decreases of just fractions of a percent.

By Anna Marum [email protected]

Full Story: http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/how_a_new_corporate_tax_plan_c.html#incart_river_index
Now, dont get me wrong. The traditional lecture model worked wonderfully for eons. But it is an outdated idea, something that becomes obvious if you watch even a single episode of The Mechanical Universe.

Rhett Allain

Full Story: https://www.wired.com/2017/05/the-mechanical-universe/
While some hotel owners have been selling out of the Williston market, one is buying in.

Marty Mulder and his family, who have owned and operated the Roosevelt Inn and Suites since 1998 in Watford City, have bought the Marquis, located near the intersection of U.S. Highway 2 and Ninth Avenue West.

The Roosevelt was a fixer-upper at the time, and so is the Marquis today, Mulder said. Nonetheless, the new owners are already attracting a clientele with savvy online media use and a canny understanding of what makes customers repeat their visit.

By Renee Jean [email protected]

Full Story: http://www.willistonherald.com/news/longtime-hotel-operators-from-watford-city-take-a-stake-in/article_672b2110-36ae-11e7-818d-87e31076e4e3.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=user-share
Over thirty students from Lolo Middle School saw coding in action at local Missoula tech companies, thanks to ChickTech: Missoula and the Gifted and Talented Program at Lolo Schools. The 6th, 7th and 8th graders, many of whom have worked with computer applications in their schools technology classes, toured the offices of LumenAd and Submittable in the Florence Building in downtown Missoula. They also had the opportunity to hear from the companies founders and to ask questions about what it is like to work at a technology company.

Full Story: http://missoula.chicktech.org/2017/05/11/lolo-students-get-a-taste-of-tech/
The Crazy Mountains glow snow-clad behind us, and there are so many stars it feels as if we are walking through a meadow of them, or a field of fireflies. Soon the red lip of the sun appears, a small fiery corona surrounded by black. Peacock stares at it. On the small ridge ahead, a trophy white-tailed buck, a king, comes walking down out of the darkness as if summoned by the intensity of Peacocks stare.

"Doug is a real hero to me. He is the complete American renegade hero  outraged, badass, and deeply, unshakably moral. Ive never met anyone quite like him. We should all wage life with a purpose so pure." author Carl Hiaasen

By Rick Bass

Full Story: http://www.mensjournal.com/features/articles/grizzly-mans-last-standdoug-peacock-and-rick-bass-hunting-w481272

Doug Peacock Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/dougpeacockmt
Les membres du gouvernement omt pris note que Environment Protection (Control of Noise) Regulations 2022 et Environment Protection (Environmental Standards for Noise) Regulations 2022 seront promulges, ainsi que lInsurance (Amendment) Regulations 2022

1. Cabinet has agreed to the promulgation of the Environment Protection (Control of Noise) Regulations 2022 and the Environment Protection (Environmental Standards for Noise) Regulations 2022. The Environment Protection (Control of Noise) Regulations 2022 would, inter alia, provide for the following:

(a) additional powers to an authorised officer or the enforcing agency to serve a Fixed Penalty Notice of Rs10,000 on any person for making or causing noise to be made, emanating from a building or premises, including noise nuisances from a vehicle such as playing of loud music or noise caused by exhaust pipe or modified motor engines;

(b) where the person making or causing the noise to be made in a building or premises cannot be ascertained at the material time, an authorised officer or the enforcing agency would be empowered to issue a Fixed Penalty Notice of Rs10,000 on the owner of that building or premises who shall be presumed to have made or caused to be made the noise; and

(c) any person who fails to pay the fixed penalty of Rs10,000 within the prescribed delay, would, upon conviction, be liable to pay a fine not less than thrice the fixed penalty amount.

In the Environment Protection (Environmental Standards for Noise) Regulations 2022, the meaning of neighbourhood noise would be reviewed to also include noise emitted from domestic premises as well as from halls, multipurpose halls and wedding halls, used to accommodate various types of events, places of entertainment, mechanical devices or equipment.

2. Cabinet has taken note that the Insurance (Amendment) Regulations 2022 would be promulgated. Amendments to the Insurance Act, including the introduction of a fifth class of business pertaining to Structured Investment-Linked Insurance Business in the First Schedule to the Act, have already been brought through the Finance (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2022.

The Insurance Regulations 2007 are being amended to exempt the structured investment-linked policies, as is the case for an external insurer, from the provisions in Regulation 7(1), which provides that an insurer:

(a) shall at all times keep invested in Mauritius an amount of at least 50 percent; and

(b) may invest outside Mauritius an amount not exceeding 50 percent, of its technical provisions in respect of insurance business in Mauritius.

3. Cabinet has agreed to the ratification by Mauritius, of the following two Treaties:

(a) Treaty between the Republic of the Mauritius and the Peoples Republic of China on Extradition; and

(b) Treaty between the Republic of the Mauritius and the Peoples Republic of China on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters.

The two Treaties were signed on 02 September 2018 in China and when ratified by both parties would pave the way towards effective cooperation between both countries in respect of extradition and mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, on the basis of mutual respect for sovereignty, equality and mutual benefit.

4. Cabinet has agreed to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Economic Development Board (EDB) Mauritius and the Trade Promotion Organization of Iran. The Memorandum of Understanding would consolidate EDBs market development and diversification strategies and help to collaborate, inter alia, in the following areas:

(a) investment promotion in export-oriented manufacturing, light engineering, agro-processing, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, freeport and logistics, ICT, construction, hospitality, education and film industry, amongst others;

(b) trade promotion with focus on exploring the Islamic Republic of Iran as a potential export market for made in Mauritius products such as textile and apparel, special sugars, processed foods, medical devices and jewellery, amongst others; and

(c) encouraging Iranian companies to use Mauritius for manufacture of consumer goods for exports and benefit from preferential market access, mainly to Southern and Eastern Africa.

5. Cabinet has agreed to the signing of a Memorandum of Cooperation between the Financial Services Commission and the Mauritius Police Force with a view to establishing a framework for cooperation and coordination. The Memorandum of Cooperation provides for the authorities to collaborate, in accordance with their respective legal framework and obligations, with respect to, inter alia, the following forms of mutual assistance:

(a) general cooperation efforts in the investigation of offences falling under their purview;

(b) coordination of their enquiries where there are cross-cutting issues;

(c) the sharing of knowledge in relation to techniques and best practices for information gathering; and

(d) the promotion of awareness and the organisation of educational events in relation to the activities of the authorities.

6. Cabinet has agreed to Mauritius adhering to the Second Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime of the Council of Europe on enhanced co-operation and disclosure of electronic evidence. In November 2021, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted the said Protocol.

The aim of the Protocol is to provide tools for enhanced international co-operation in the field of cybercrime investigations and the collection of evidence in electronic form of a criminal offence for the purpose of specific criminal investigations or proceedings through:

(a) provisions for direct co-operation with private sector entities (with service providers for subscriber information and with registrars for domain name registration information) in other Parties;

(b) expedited co-operation in emergency situations; and

(c) tools for more efficient mutual assistance.

7. Cabinet has agreed on the measures being initiated by the Ministry of Health and Wellness in regard to the introduction of the new National HIV Testing Services and Policy which has been developed with the collaboration of the World Health Organization. The Policy is aligned with the HIV National Action Plan and the UNAIDS Fast Track targets aiming to end AIDS by 2030. The vision encapsulated in the Policy is to ensure an enabling environment where all persons living in the Republic of Mauritius can access quality HIV testing services.

8. Cabinet has taken note that the European Union would provide support to fight online child sexual exploitation through training and capacity building exercises. The support would be given under two ongoing programmes, namely GLACY+ project and OCTOPUS. GLACY is the Global Action on Cybercrime and it is managed by the Council of Europe. The first training sessions would be held towards the end of October 2022.

9. Cabinet has taken note of the Intelligent Information Management for Food Security (INFINITY) project which would be implemented by the Ministry of Agro-Industry and Food Security in collaboration with the University of Mauritius.

The project outcome includes the adoption of information management concepts and techniques like artificial intelligence, automation approaches, and Blockchain Technology, to provide relevant information throughout the food value chain starting from production to sales and including waste management. The project which aims at improving access to information to farmers and Mauritian Agro-Entrepreneurs who are the major stakeholders would be implemented over a four-year period from year 2022 to 2025 and would be funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

10. Cabinet has taken note that the Ministry of Financial Services and Good Governance would issue the Audit Committee Charter which has been prepared by the Office of Public Sector Governance. The Office of Public Sector Governance has reviewed the Audit Committee Charter, in light of the recommendations made by the National Audit Office on the Effectiveness of Internal Control and Audit Committees in Ministries and Departments. The revised Audit Committee Charter would be circulated by the Office of Public Sector Governance to all Ministries and Departments for guidance.

11. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the Regional Technical Committee for the Enhancing Maritime Connectivity Project (EMCP) held in Mauritius recently. The EMCP is funded by the Government of Japan and the participating countries are the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) Member States. The first phase of the project has been completed. It aims at enhancing maritime connectivity amongst the beneficiary countries through:

(a) country-level maritime transport diagnoses;

(b) the development of a Data Service on Shipping and Trade; and

(c) the design of a Maritime Single Window for the South West Indian Ocean region.

The IOC has prepared a medium-term programme which includes a regional trade data service and a regional maritime shipping service which would be led by a Regional Technical Committee.

12. Cabinet has taken note of the holding of the Oil Spill Response/Incident Command System Training Workshop in Mauritius from 22 to 26 August 2022. A team of trainers from the US Africa Command (AFRICOM) having vast experience in oil spill and casualty response would conduct the training workshop on:

(a) oil spill response;

(b) dealing with mass casualty at sea involving a cruise vessel; and

(c) response to hazardous materials incidents, including radioactive materials.

The overall objective of the training programme would be to further strengthen the capacities of all stakeholders in handling future oil spills.

13. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the working session the Minister of Land Transport and Light Rail, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade had with HE Ambassador Xu Jinghu, Special Representative of the Peoples Republic of China for African Affairs. She was recently on official visit to Mauritius as part of an African tour as well as in the context of the celebration of 50 years of diplomatic relations between Mauritius and the Peoples Republic of China.

The working session reviewed the status of the bilateral relations and both sides expressed mutual appreciation for the excellent and friendly ties that exist between the two countries. The Chinese side also renewed its support to Mauritius on the sovereignty of Mauritius on the Chagos Archipelago including at the multilateral and regional levels. The working session was followed by the launch of a commemorative stamp and envelopes as well as a Souvenir Magazine tracing the 50 years of diplomatic history prepared by the Chinese Embassy, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade and other Chinese civil society organisations in Mauritius.

14. Cabinet has taken note that Mauritius would host the 38th Annual General Meeting of the Board of Governors of the Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank Group (TDB), on 24 and 25 August 2022. Mauritius would be assuming the role of Chairperson of the Board of Governors, in line with the Board of Governors Rules of Procedure and the provisions of the TDB Charter.

The inauguration of TDB Group Principle Office in Ebene and the launching of the TDB Captive Insurance Company would also be held during the Meeting. The Finance Ministers of 24 Member countries of the TDB have been invited to participate in the Meeting.

15. Cabinet has taken note that the Ministry of Health and Wellness would organise a Conference on Colorectal Cancer Screening on 12 and 13 September 2022. The Conference would involve the participation of experts from the United Kingdom to guide the health care professionals on the design of a sustainable programme for Colorectal Cancer Screening in Mauritius. The main objectives of the Conference would be to:

(a) design a Colorectal Cancer Screening Programme for Mauritius;

(b) educate the local doctors on the screening of Colorectal Cancer;

(c) develop a large-scale screening strategy;

(d) develop a strategy for encouraging people at risk to be tested and treated; and

(e) develop ties with world experts who would provide the Ministry of Health and Wellness with updated knowledge on Colorectal Cancer.

16. Cabinet has taken note that the Ministry of Health and Wellness, in collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency, would hold a local training programme on Mosquito Mass Production using Sterile Insect Techniques from 22 to 26 August 2022. The purpose of the mission is to equip the national team with relevant knowledge and expertise on standard communication skills applied to mosquito Sterile Insect Technique programmes and how to sensitise the population on the Sterile Release Technique.

The training programme would contribute to a reduction in the incidence of Aedes albopictus mosquito (vector of Dengue and Chikungunya) and an improvement in the quality of life of residents and visiting tourists. The training also aims at producing, radio-sterilising and releasing large numbers of sterile Aedes albopictus male mosquitoes on a sustained basis in a target locality. This measure would eventually lead to the biological reduction of the vector species.

17. Cabinet has taken note that the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Recreation would organise a three-day activity to commemorate the International Youth Day 2022 from 12 to 14 August 2022. The International Youth Day is celebrated each year on 12 August around a theme chosen by the United Nations. The theme for this year is Intergenerational Solidarity: Creating a World for All ages. The Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Recreation would organise a Youth Meet from 12 to 14 August 2022, at the Cote dOr National Sports Complex, to mark the Day.

A Youth Summit would also be held at the VIP Lounge of the Cote dOr National Sports Complex. The Youth Summit is an initiative of the Youth Ambassadors, who operate under the aegis of the Ministry of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Recreation. This Summit would provide a platform for young people to express their views and advocate on live youth matters such as mental health, access to quality education, climate change, environment, and to come up with proposed solutions.

18. Cabinet has taken note of the activities that the Human Rights Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade would organise, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, to mark the World Humanitarian Day 2022 on 19 August 2022, including:

(a) the Ministry of Education, Tertiary Education, Science and Technology has organised an essay competition for students of grades 10 to 13 on the subject;

(b) the Police Department would organise a Social Outreach Programme at Care Homes, visits to elderly persons and Support Programme with fishermen;

(c) the Mauritius Fire and Rescue Service would produce a video to showcase the contribution of its officers during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as assistance provided during cyclones and floods; and

(d) the National Womens Council would carry out a working session on the Emergency Preparedness for the Pandemic, with the participation of the National Human Rights Commission.

19. Cabinet has taken note that HE Ms Louise Mushikiwabo, Secretary-General of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), would be on official visit to Mauritius from 07 to 10 September 2022. The visit would be an opportunity for the Secretary-General to brief Mauritian dignitaries on the full breadth of OIF multilateral cooperation activities and to discuss specific areas of partnership between Mauritius and the OIF. She is also expected to have an exchange on preparations for the incoming Summit of the OIF to be held in Tunisia, in November 2022.

20. Cabinet has taken note of the names of storms and cyclones which would be used in the South-West Indian Ocean during the Cyclone Season 2022  2023. The list of names of cyclones is valid from 01 July 2022 to 30 June 2023.

21. Cabinet has taken note of the visit of the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy and the Hussain Brothers to Mauritius from 14 to 18 August 2022 and from 20 to 23 August 2022, respectively, in the context of the 75th Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between the Republic of Mauritius and the Republic of India. During their visit, the artists of the Jawaharlal Nehru Manipur Dance Academy would give three performances of Raas Lila and Martial Arts of Manipura, on:

(a) Monday 15 August 2022 at the Indira Gandhi Centre for Indian Culture (IGCIC) Auditorium, Phoenix;

(b) Tuesday 16 August 2022 at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute Auditorium, Moka; and

(c) Wednesday 17 August 2022 at the Serge Constantin Theatre, Vacoas.

The Hussain Brothers, namely Ustad Ahmed Hussain and Ustad Mohammed Hussain, two renowned ghazal singers from Jaipur, Rajasthan, would give a unique performance on Sunday 21 August 2022 at the IGCIC Auditorium.

22. Cabinet has taken note of the status regarding the filling of vacancies in Ministries/Departments as well as in the Local Authorities for the financial year 2021/2022 as at 30 June 2022.

23. Cabinet has taken note of the contents of the 2020 Report on Statistics in Mauritius: A Gender Approach, which has been prepared by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family Welfare in collaboration with Statistics Mauritius. It is based on sex-disaggregated data for the year 2020, collected on the demographic characteristics relating to health, education, economic characteristics, public life and decision making, disability, poverty and social welfare, gender-based and family violence, and crime and security, amongst others.

The Report would be disseminated to all stakeholders, including policy makers, researchers, academicians and students

24. Cabinet has taken note of the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic prevailing across the world. Some 592.6 million cases have been reported globally, of which 564.4 million persons have been successfully treated. With regard to Mauritius, as at 10 August 2022, there were 210 active cases of COVID-19, out of which 30 were admitted at the New ENT Hospital. Over the period 04 to 10 August 2022, four deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

25. Cabinet has taken note of the outcome of the participation of the Minister of Youth Empowerment, Sports and Recreation in the 10th Commonwealth Sports Ministers Meeting held recently in the margins of the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, UK. The theme of the meeting was Creating an Inclusive and Resilient Sport Sector: Enhancing the Contribution of Sport to the Sustainable Development Goals. The Meeting focused on how to maximise sports potential and to better bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic. The issues discussed included:

(a) accelerating the Implementation of Key Policies to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs);

(b) Human Rights and Inclusivity in Sports;

(c) promoting Investment in Sports; and

(d) showcasing Innovation in Sports.

The Minister made a statement on the actions undertaken by Government to promote sports and physical activity to combat non-communicable diseases among the population.

As regards the 2022 Commonwealth Games, Mr Richarno Colin won a silver medal in Boxing (Light Welterweight). Mauritius has won, for the first time, a total of five medals.

26. Cabinet has taken note of the reconstitution of the National Womens Council, with Mrs Sangheeta Saulick, as part-time Chairperson

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Using gene sequencing tools, scientists from Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of British Columbia have found a set of genetic mutations in samples from 24 women with benign endometriosis, a painful disorder marked by the growth of uterine tissue outside of the womb. The findings, described in the New England Journal of Medicine, may eventually help scientists develop molecular tests to distinguish between aggressive and clinically "indolent," or non-aggressive, types of endometriosis.

"Our discovery of these mutations is a first step in developing a genetics-based system for classifying endometriosis so that clinicians can sort out which forms of the disorder may need more aggressive treatment and which may not," says Ie-Ming Shih, M.D., Ph.D., the Richard W. TeLinde Distinguished Professor in the Department of Gynecology & Obstetrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and co-director of the Breast and Ovarian Cancer Program at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center.

Endometriosis occurs when tissue lining the uterus forms and grows outside of the organ, most often into the abdomen. The disease occurs in up to 10 percent of women before menopause and half of those with abdominal pain and infertility problems. In the 1920s, Johns Hopkins graduate and trained gynecologist John Sampson first coined the term "endometriosis" and proposed the idea that endometriosis resulted when normal endometrial tissue spilled out through the fallopian tubes into the abdominal cavity during menstruation.

The new study, Shih says, challenges that view. The presence of the unusual set of mutations they found in their tissue samples, he says, suggests that while the origins of endometriosis are rooted in normal endometrial cells, acquired mutations changed their fate.

For reasons the researchers say are not yet clear, the mutations they identified have some links to genetic mutations found in some forms of cancer. They emphasize that although abnormal tissue growth in endometriosis often spreads throughout the abdominal cavity, the tissue rarely becomes cancerous except in a few cases when ovaries are involved.

For the study, Shih and his colleagues sequenced - or figured out the genetic alphabet - a part of the genome known as the exome, which contains all of the genes that can be expressed and make proteins. Specifically, they sequenced the exome of both normal tissue and endometriosis tissue removed during laparoscopic biopsies on 24 women, some with more than one abnormal endometrial growth. All had deep infiltrating endometriosis, the type that typically causes pain and infertility.

Seven of the 24 women were from Japan; the rest were patients at Lenox Hill Hospital-Northwell Health in New York City. The use of samples from Japanese women was selected because endometriosis before menopause occurs more often in Asian women (13-18 percent) than in Caucasian women (6-10 percent), Shih says.

The scientists looked for mutations, or abnormal changes in the DNA, and filtered out normal variations in genes that commonly occur among humans. Of the 24 women, 19 had one or more mutations in their endometriosis tissue that were not present in their normal tissue.

The type and number of mutations varied per endometriosis lesion and between each of the women. The most common mutations, occurring in five of the women, occurred in genes including ARID1A, PIK3CA, KRAS and PPP2R1A, all known for controlling cell growth, cell invasion and DNA damage repair.

Mutations in these genes have been associated with one of the deadliest types of ovarian cancer, called clear cell carcinoma. Nickolas Papadopoulos, Ph.D., professor of oncology and pathology at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center, led the team that completed the first sequencing of the clear cell ovarian cancer genome in 2010.

"We were surprised to find cancer-linked genes in these benign endometriosis samples because these lesions do not typically become cancer," says Papadopoulos, whose Ludwig Center laboratories performed the sequencing. "We don't yet understand why these mutations occur in these tissues, but one possibility is that they could be giving the cells an advantage for growth and spread."

In an additional group of endometriosis samples biopsied from 15 women at the University of British Columbia, the scientists looked specifically for mutations in the KRAS gene, whose expression signals proteins that spur cell growth and replication. They found KRAS mutations in five of the 15 patients.

The scientists make clear that their sequencing studies may have missed mutations in some of the samples. Their data do not at this point reveal the aggressiveness of the lesions.

However, Shih says, he and his team are working on additional studies to determine if the mutations correlate with patients' outcomes. He says a molecular test that sorts lesions as more or less aggressive has the potential to help doctors and patients decide how to treat and monitor the progression and control of the disease. "We may also be able to develop new treatments for endometriosis that use agents that block a gene-related pathway specific to a person's disease," says Shih.

Women with endometriosis are typically prescribed anti-hormonal treatments that block estrogen to shrink lesions. When the disease occurs in the ovaries and forms a large cyst, which increases the risk of developing ovarian cancer, the lesion is usually surgically removed.

Article: Cancer-Associated Mutations in Endometriosis without Cancer, Ie-Ming Shih et al., New England Journal of Medicine, doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1614814, published 11 May 2017.
Ask someone about a redwood tree and they will tell you facts like, it is the tallest tree, or one of the oldest trees in the world; amongst several other interesting things. But, for renowned Chinese sculptor Dengding Rui Yao, the redwood tree is the pivotal source for his megaproject that proudly stands at a Central Chinese city square. If you travel to Wuhan, capital of Hubei, chances are you will definitely come across a giant sculpture of a roaring lion at the Fortune Plaza Times Square.

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Called the Oriental Lion this is not any regular piece of art, its back-story is what makes it truly a work of genius and something thats worth cherishing. This massive figure has been carved out from a single redwood tree trunk and in just 3 short years. Reportedly, Yao initiated the project in Myanmar where the carving was seen through and nearly 20 people assisted him. In 2015, this big cat was completed and transported 3000 miles to Wuhan. Look at this picture, does it not look magnificent?

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Talking about dimensions, it is 47.5 feet long, 16.5 feet high and 13 feet wide. In fact this Oriental Lion is now said to hold the Guinness Record for the worlds largest wood sculpture. Most of this lions body is made of the original texture of the wood, but the head, paws and tail are said to appear chiseled, smooth and polished.

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Lions are said to be introduced from Indian mores especially Buddism and since then has held great significance in Chinese culture. In fact, statues of guardian lions have found a special place at imperial palaces, tombs, temples and even government offices. They were earlier believed to ward off evil spirits and possess powerful mythic protective benefits.

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While we were busy criticizing Chinese products, using our Chinese smartphones or technology; this guy was busy crafting something that the entire world would appreciate him for. No matter how many jokes we crack about China or the people living there, we should cut them some slack when it comes to ingenuity and smartness. The kind of quality their work possesses is unmatched and this enormous beast is a mere glimpse of it.

Source: Bored Panda
Patriarch Theodoros II of Alexandria and All Africa paid a visit to Deputy Foreign Minister Ioannis Amanatidis today, Thursday, 11 May, at the Foreign Ministry.



During the meeting, Patriarch Theodoros briefed the Deputy Foreign Minister on all of the issues and needs of the Patriarchate, which, through its missionary, humanitarian and educational work, is a point of reference for Orthodoxy and Hellenism in the wider region, and he thanked the Greek government for its support.



Mr. Amanatidis underscored the assistance the Alexandrian Church has provided for deepening Greece's bilateral relations with the countries of Africa, and he praised the multifaceted contribution of local dioceses in dealing with the problems the African continent is facing today.
I. AMANATIDIS: "It isn't a virtual success story. It is a true recovery of the Greek economy."



In an interview with journalists Evangelia Tsikrika and Lora Ioannou, on Alpha 989 radio, Deputy Foreign Minister Ioannis Amanatidis talked about the government's roadmap for exiting the crisis.



Mr. Amanatidis referred to the Eurogroup Working Group meeting of 15 May 2017, at which there is to be a discussion of the mid-term measures for the Greek debt, in the government's effort to get the country into the qualitative easing programme, as well as of the European Commission decision on ending the excessive deficit procedure against Greece, stressing that



"these are indications that we have entered real economic dimensions, another era. It isn't a virtual success story. It is a real picture of the recovery of the Greek economy."



Asked to comment on Prime Minister Tsipras' trip to China, Mr. Amanatidis stressed that "this trip the Prime Minister is taking is part of a vast effort the government is making so that the Greek economy can move on  and it is moving on  to the phase of growth. In other words, this trip will help the Greek economy's effort towards recovery as it enters into a period of growth in the way we want it to, so that we can use growth to heal the social wounds suffered over these past years.



He also made the reminder, following the Foreign Ministry's Ancient Civilizations Forum, that "2017 is a Year of Culture between Greece and China, and we are also expecting positive results at the Thessaloniki International Fair."



Asked about Greek-Turkish relations and referring to statements from top Turkish officials, Mr. Amanatidis noted that "yesterday there was a statement from the Turkish Prime Minister, that Turkey wants to continue our good relationship and move ahead with the European Union. There was a similar statement from the Turkish European Affairs Minister in Brussels. I see concern in Turkey, and, due to domestic considerations in Turkey, I don't think the aggressive scenarios can be realised all that much."



Responding to the same question, he added that "Rhetoric is another thing. In each case we respond. Nothing goes unanswered by our political leadership, whether the response comes from the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister. We want to strengthen Turkey's European course. But certain fundamental international rules, the European acquis  which exists  the rules of Democracy have to be satisfied. It is in Turkey's interest to move towards the EU."



The Deputy Foreign Minister announced that "at the next meeting of the National Council on Foreign Policy (NCFP)  while we're on the subject of Turkey  we will be looking at Greek-Turkish and Turkish-EU relations," and he concluded by highlighting that "this is very important, because, beyond briefing the political parties, a national strategy is being charted, as was the case yesterday regarding the framework of our energy policy. There was agreement that this is very important, because it strengthens our country. I believe we will have the same approach at the next meeting of the NCFP, which will look at Greek-Turkish relations. Overall, it is good for our country that, on foreign policy issues  in spite of any internal differences of opinion  a national strategy has now been shaped on everything we are discussing, which greatly increase our country's strength."
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CASEVILLE  The members of the Caseville Historical Society met April 20 at Maccabee Hall, 6733 Prospect St. in Caseville.

There were 13 members and one guest present.

President Rich Bass opened the meeting at 10 a.m. with a hearty welcome for all. The minutes of the previous meeting and the treasurers report were both presented and approved by the group.

Bass updated attendees on several opportunities available in the near future. They include two upcoming History Skills Workshops presented by the Historical Society of Michigan. The first was May 5 and covered digitizing. The second will be held on May 19 and covers fund raising.

Both workshops will be held in Lansing and will also be available as an Internet workshop.

Bass thanked Dan Calabrese for working at the museum many times in March to cover for others not available at that time.

The Membership Committee reported one new member, Suzanne Hayes.

Historical Society members are reminded membership dues were due Jan. 1.

Events committee chairwoman Joyce Miller reviewed upcoming events planned for 2017. The Ice Cream Social will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. May 28.

This event is being coordinated by Tom and Audrey Jesmore and Bud McCormick. The necessary permit has been received.

Tickets for ice cream will be sold at a cost of $4 for adults and $2 for children. The Ladies Luncheon will be held June 8 and is being coordinated by Audrey Jesmore and Sherry Hoelzle.

Forty tickets will be sold for the luncheon and are available now at the museum office. Ticket price is $10.

The luncheon will feature a presentation on quilts. A boat trip to Charity Island is being planned to follow the regular meeting on July 20. The boat will leave Caseville Harbor at noon on that day and will return about 5 p.m.

Tickets are available at a cost of $40 each. Forty-eight tickets will be sold and a picnic lunch will be provided.

The Cheeseburger Museum will be open from noon to 4:30 p.m. Aug. 11-20. The museum will raffle off a cash prize of $400 for first place and $200 for second.

Huron County Museum Weekend is scheduled for Sept. 23 and 24, and Caseville will feature a car show. Dave Vizard will be coordinating the car show, and he is accepting items for display inside the museum during the car show.

The Harvest Dinner and Auction will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. Nov. 12, and it is being coordinated by Harold and Sherry Hoelzle.

Bass said 19 visitors had toured the museum over the past month.

He said items have been donated recently by Jan Prill and Sam Guster.

The new display featuring a Ladies Dry Goods and Millinery shop in the early 1950s is coming along and is in need of shelves or bins, vintage fabric, an old cash register, a ladies house dress, a glass front cabinet, sewing patterns, thread bin, notions, buttons, school dress, ankle socks, and undergarments.

Items may be donated or loaned for this two-year display. Items should be representative of the mid 1900s.

Barb Eimers is available the first Thursday of each month from 1 to 4 p.m. at the museum to assist those interested in researching their family histories.

Eimers has research materials available to help in these searches.

Reporting for the Development Committee, Bass said the construction work is nearing completion.

He offered thanks to D&D Construction, Last Call Drywall, All Pointes Services, Centerline Heating and Cooling, Jim Flock Plumbing, and Caseville True Value Hardware for helping to make this project a success.

The next meeting will be held at 10 a.m. May 18 at Maccabee Hall. All meetings are open to the public, and everyone is invited to attend.

For more information, call 989-856-9090, visit www.thehchs.org/caseville, e-mail the group at chscm@comcast.net or like the group on Facebook.
BAD AXE  Before allowing commercial solar development in county-zoned townships, there are a few things officials need to sort out.

There must be an ordinance, the Huron County Master Plan needs to progress, and the taxation of solar development must be investigated.

The Huron County Planning Commission supported on Wednesday a year-long moratorium that previously was suggested by the Huron County Board of Commissioners.

The planners voted 8-0, with one member absent, to direct the board to enact a one-year moratorium on commercial solar development.

It could be rescinded once an ordinance is in place and will have the option of a one-year extension.

During the public hearing prior to the vote, three of the 20 people in attendance addressed the commission.

One of them was county commissioner Steve Vaughan.

He told the planners that in researching Cypress Creek Renewables, LLC  the company courting local farmers to allow solar development on their land for $800 an acre  there were things that didnt add up.

The company, Vaughan said, has never constructed a solar farm. It is a land acquisition company that has purchased already-built solar farms.

Cypress Creek officials sent an email to Jeff Smith, county building and zoning director, saying that due to a mandatory company meeting, no one was able to attend Wednesdays public hearing.

The planners also discussed the fact that solar development would affect enrollment in PA 116, the states farmland preservation program.

Anything that is developed for commercial solar would have to be pulled from the program and rezoned industrial or commercial.

Smith said Huron County has 452,185.7 acres of agricultural land, 75 percent of which is enrolled in PA 116.

Planner Charles Bumhoffer noted that this leaves 113,000 acres out of the program and potentially available for solar development without penalty.

Special use permits are another option to use to permit solar development.

Spot zoning, which could arise from the use of special use permits, can cause legal problems.

We have always been against spot zoning, planner Mary Babcock said.

Voters do not have a say in the granting of special use permits, as they do in granting overlay districts, which was the procedure followed for wind development.

Smith emphasized that ultimately, planners look to the master plan to decide what kind of development is allowed in the county. Before the vote in support of the yearlong moratorium, planner Robert Oakes moved to endorse a three-month moratorium that would be renewable four times, every three months, if needed by the board of commissioners and planners.

Supporters thought this would speed up the process.

Those against the move said that there is no rush, and the county first needs to focus on its master plan and the moratorium against wind development.

But Smith reminded the planners that voters turned down the countys two proposed wind developments last week.

County commissioner Sami Khoury, who is a liaison between the two boards, said taxation and disclosure of costs for commercial solar must be investigated, as the county awaits decisions by the Michigan Tax Tribunal on hundreds of cases involving wind turbine tax revenue.

Lessons learned in wind energy development were a definite factor in discussing solar development.

I dont want to get caught like we did with the wind turbines, said Robert McLean, planning commission vice chair. I dont want to be pushed into a corner.

Planner Carl Duda said that with the summer growing and vacation seasons coming, it would be best for the commission to take its time.

Oakes said that to cover everything on its plate, more than one monthly meeting may be necessary for the commission.

Bill McPhee of Hume Township spoke during public comment at the end of the meeting.

He said if more than one meeting a month is necessary to do the job, so be it.

It doesnt matter whether its the summer or wintertime. You have a job to do, McPhee said.

The board of commissioners is expected to take action on the solar moratorium at its May 23 meeting, which is scheduled for 9 a.m.
SEBEWAING  The fourth graders of Christ the King School recently traveled to Lansing for an exciting day of learning about history and our state government.

Fifteen students made the trip with 13 adult chaperones. The day included a trip to meet the State Rep. Ned Canfield, a tour of the capitol, a tour of the Michigan Historical Museum, spending time at the Hall of Justice learning center, exploring the Michigan Supreme Courtroom, and a stop at the Michigan State University Dairy Store with a sweet treat to wrap up the day.
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UBLY  The Ubly FFA banquet this year was once again a huge success.

Chapter members enjoyed receiving various awards for their accomplishments. For the degree ceremony, there were 15 students earning the discovery degree, 31 students earning the greenhand degree, and 28 students earning the chapter degree. The honorary members were Ryan and Janet Leppek and Amanda Warchuck.

At the banquet, members that received state awards were also honored. Ubly had seven outstanding juniors and seven state FFA degree recipients at the state convention. There were also three members recognized for their state proficiency.

For leadership, the FFA recognized the 108 members that competed in the district contest, the 61 members that competed in the regionals contest, and the 19 members that competed at the state contest. Also recognized were the three students that competed in the State Arthur Berkey Science Fair. Fourteen members received proficiency awards and three members earned state level proficiency swards. In CDE's, Ubly had 108 members receive awards.

Ubly High School's crop team was the state winner and will compete at nationals in October. Team members include Jaiden Schulte, Rachel Leppek, Ashley Puvalowski, Sabrina Schumacher and Lacey Pionk.

The junior high crop team also earned the title of state winner. Team members are Myah Schulte, Lindsey Gosdzinski, Alivia Bischer, Madison Michalski and Hailey Mausolf.

The star discovery degree was presented to Alex Foote. The star greenhand degree was presented to Grant Geiger. The chapter star farmer award went to Nolan Murray. The chapter star placement award went to Adam Weber. The chapter star research went to Amber Esenmacher. Mikaela VanErp earned the outstanding leadership award and Bekka Foster earned the outstanding service award.

Seven seniors were awarded their graduation sashes including Kaitlynn Foster, Grace Grifka, Jonathan Murray, McKenzie Young, Jesse Schumacher, Allison Romzek and Autumn Loss. Loss and Romzek were also presented an embroidered FFA blanket as a retiring senior officer gift.

Seniors were also awarded scholarships at the banquet. Loss received a $500 Cooperative Elevator Scholarship. Kaitlynn Foster and Loss both received a $500 Ubly FFA Chapter Scholarship. Romzek, Foster, Loss and Grace Grifka each received a scholarship from the Ubly FFA Alumni in varying amounts.

The 2017-18 officers were also announced at banquet. They are Bethany Gornowicz, president; Haili Gusa, vice president; Mikaela VanErp, secretary; Cheyenne Porzondek, treasurer; Kylie Ogryski, reporter; Amber Essenmacher, sentinel; McKenzie Stomack, historian; Sabrina Schumacher, parliamentarian; and Anna Messing, student advisor.

All in all, banquet was a huge success. With 261 people in attendance, Ubly FFA is thankful for all of the supporters, parents and members. The chapter would also like to thank Ubly School Superintendent Joe Candela for being the first administrator in 14 years to attend the banquet.
The national emergency over the Zika virus has been ended announced Brazil.

As per the statement of the Health Ministry,"there was the decrease in cases of Zika throughout the country The World Health Organization lifted its own international emergency in November, even while saying the virus remained a threat."

Before the grand Rio de Janeiro Olympics 2016 the Zika virus was at its height and reported as an increase in infections.

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Sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan and Somalia is under active consideration but will likely await the return of President Donald Trump from his first foreign trip, which begins next week, according to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster.

At a White House briefing Friday, McMaster, the White House national security adviser, said, "The president has not made a decision yet on a course of action" in Afghanistan, where Army Gen. John Nicholson, commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, has requested a "few thousand" more U.S. troops.

Currently, there are about 8,400 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, along with about 4,500 from NATO ally and other coalition nations.

The U.S. needs more time to "figure out with our allies options we can bring to the table" in Afghanistan, and "what more can we ask our allies to do," McMaster said.

On Somalia, Mattis said the U.S. would consider adding to the presence of about 50 U.S. troops on an advise-and-assist mission in Mogadishu if the struggling central government in the Horn of Africa nation makes a formal request.

"That's a decision we'll take if it's broached to us, and we'll decide yes or no," Mattis said after a security conference on Somalia on Thursday in London. Trump has already delegated authority to Mattis to set troop levels in Iraq and Syria, but decisions on Somalia and Afghanistan would have to come from the White House.

At the White House, McMaster sought to focus on Trump's trip, which will take him to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Rome and a meeting with NATO allies in Brussels. In Italy, Trump will also have an audience with Pope Francis and meet with troops at Naval Air Station Sigonella, McMaster said.

When asked whether the trip represents a shift in the isolationist tone exemplified by Trump's "America first" campaign slogan, McMaster said, "America first didn't ever mean America alone, ever. America first didn't mean America not leading."

To the contrary, McMaster said, America first also meant "strengthening alliances and partnerships."

He said Trump had stressed cooperating and partnering with allies while "prioritizing the security and interests of the American people." Allies had responded positively to Trump's outreach "in asking them to do more," McMaster said.

Trump's goal on what McMaster called a "historic" trip is to "broadcast a message of unity to America's friends and to the faithful of three of the world's greatest religions" with his stops in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Rome.

In Saudi Arabia, Trump will urge the Saudis and other Arab leaders attending the meetings to "take bold new steps to promote peace and to confront those from ISIS to al-Qaida to Iran to the Assad regime [in Syria] who perpetuate chaos and violence" in the region, McMaster said.

The lieutenant general, who reportedly has balked at use of the term "radical Islamist terrorism" that Trump favored during the campaign, said the president "expects our Muslim allies to take a strong stand against radical Islamist ideology."

McMaster brushed aside questions on the current furor over Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey and alleged Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, but also said the administration is still seeking areas of accommodation and cooperation with Moscow.

He said Trump had made clear that he would "confront disruptive Russian behavior, but the president's looking for areas of cooperation."

-- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at@Brendan_McGarry.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
ABOARD THE USS GEORGE H.W. BUSH, Persian Gulf -- The hiss and scream of F/A-18 Super Hornets launching from the flight deck is business as usual on this city at sea, where sorties on Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria have been launched a dozen or more times a day since early February.

When aircraft loaded with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and 1,000-pound bombs aren't being catapulted into flight, training and qualification flights commence.

Constant through the action is a sort of deck ballet of positioning, as the 74 aircraft based on the ship are guided onto elevators for maintenance and storage, or moved to make room for the daily C-2 Greyhound delivery of people and Amazon packages.

The routine of life aboard the carrier is perhaps the most conventional element of the unconventional war against ISIS.

American troops on the ground in Iraq and Syria, mostly special operations and advisory elements, operate in relative secrecy, with few opportunities for journalists to observe them up close.

On the carrier, by contrast, public affairs officers host three or four media visits per month, boarding them in comparatively luxurious "distinguished visitor" berthing, complete with monogrammed bathrobes, and offering them interviews with pilots and unit commanding officers.

Aboard the carrier, multiple sailors said they are on their second deployment in support of Operation Inherent Resolve -- the coalition anti-ISIS fight -- and compared the consistency of operations today favorably to the frenetic nature of the campaign when it first began in 2014.

With OIR about to enter its third year next month, the commander of the Bush carrier strike group said he is seeing progress in the fight.

While many strikes continue to target enemy positions in Raqqa, Syria, and Mosul, Iraq, where assaults on ISIS's urban strongholds continue, the carrier's fighter pilots are seeing more missions to the south, along the Euphrates River Valley. The strikes follow the path of retreating ISIS leaders, Rear Adm. Ken Whitesell said.

"Their vision of a geographic caliphate is coming to an end," Whitesell told Military.com. "As they move and that unblinking eye stays on top of them, they will be targeted as they move down the valley."

The number of fighter sorties launched from the carrier daily ranges from 12 to more than 20, plus several EA-18G Growler electronic warfare sorties, said Capt. Will Pennington, commanding officer of the Bush.

Pilots fly punishing eight-hour missions one to three times a week, in addition to daily training and currency flights. But the mission tempo has stayed largely steady since the carrier deployed, and the air wing has yet to be pushed to its limits, he said.

"We're not surging to make this happen; this is a comfortable pace. We could up it and still get comfortable," Pennington said.

The fight is proceeding carefully and deliberately from the air in large part because of the complexity of the urban ground battle. In Iraq, where a little more than half of the air wing's sorties are tasked, the strike mission was simpler before coalition forces arrived in Mosul, he said.

"There were more targets and less complicated aerials," Pennington said. "Now that the effort is moving forward and being successful ... that operation, both from the ground and the air, needs to be carried out with much more prudence, given civilian entanglement."

In both Mosul and Raqqa, the ground fights have been slow-moving. Coalition troops began their first assault on Mosul in October, and began a campaign to retake Raqqa the following month. Whitesell pointed optimistically to the words of Iraqi Army Chief of Staff Othman Al-Ghanmi, who predicted earlier this month that the fall of ISIS in Mosul would be complete in just three weeks.

It's not the first time a top official has predicted victory close at hand. But the changing nature of strike targets also gives Whitesell reason to believe the end is near.

In addition to targets including enemy personnel, vehicles and improvised explosive devices, Whitesell said pilots are being tasked with destroying a key source of the militant group's economic survival: oil wells.

While previously aircraft would target vehicles used to transport the oil, most of those are gone, thanks to the air mission, he said. "Now we get it before it comes out of the ground."

Whitesell contrasts today's operational picture to that of 2014, when the Bush became the first aircraft carrier to launch airstrikes on ISIS.

"ISIS had made the push out of Syria and Raqqa, way down, so they had incredible geography. So this carrier was the first striking on the Iraqi assets to stop ISIS at the gates of Baghdad and start moving them back," he said. "Fast-forward three years to where we are. We've got, essentially, a noose tied around the neck of ISIS."

On a given day, a pilot might be tasked with engaging a specific target over Iraq or Syria, or with flying to a region and remaining "on call," to be assigned a future target, sometimes with scant notice, by a controller on the ground.

While pilots' assignments can change at any time during the mission, they generally know the day's mission set by the time they're walking to their aircraft on the flight deck, said Lt. Cmdr. "Butters" Welles, a pilot with Strike Fighter Squadron 37, the "Ragin' Bulls." The squadron flies the F/A-18C Hornet.

Multiple pilots who spoke with Military.com asked that their full first and last names not be used, a subtle acknowledgment of online threats ISIS militants have made on various occasions against U.S. troops and their families.

Welles, who is on his fourth combat deployment, said he still feels the power of the moment when dropping ordnance on a ground target.

"It's a sense similar to other high-stress moments, whether it's landing on the ship at night or doing something that requires intense attention," he said. "There's a sense of time compression, where everything sort of slows down, but you feel like it's still moving very quickly ... it's definitely a very intense moment."

At that point, a pilot's day is far from done. Still ahead are a series of tanker refueling operations, a flight back to the ship, and hours of debriefs. The workday of a pilot with a strike mission can easily stretch to 12 hours or more, the work continuing long after exiting the cockpit.

But after a day in the fight, they return to the ship, where four meals are served daily, gyms and movie channels are available for free time, and routine keeps chaos at bay.

And pilots are well aware of the contrast between the reality of the island-like carrier and that of coalition troops in the gritty, drawn-out ground battles.

"It's a very different perspective and involvement for us to be up and somewhat detached from what's going on down on the ground," Welles said. "So I would say it's a sense of pride, knowing that we contributed in some way to a very difficult effort on the ground. Because once we're complete, and we either leave to airborne refuel, or need to go home, then the people we're talking with are still there in the fight."

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-- Hope Hodge Seck can be reached at hope.seck@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at@HopeSeck.
An armed Russian fighter jet flew alarmingly close to a U.S. Navy reconnaissance aircraft flying in the Black Sea on Tuesday -- just one day before Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Washington.

The Russian jet came as close as 20 feet to the American aircraft and remained that close for five minutes, a U.S. defense official told Fox News.

The Russian jet was carrying six air-to-air missiles under its wings, making this episode "highly provocative," one official told Fox News.

It is very rare for a Russian jet to intercept a U.S. aircraft while visibly armed, officials said.

"This was a one off," one official said.

Earlier, officials described the encounter as "safe."

"While this one was considered by the flight crew to be safe and professional, this sort of close encounter certainly has the possibility to become dangerous in a hurry," the defense official said.

A Su-27 Russian jet made the close approach to the P-8A Poseidon while the Navy plane was in international airspace.

The Su-27 was scrambled reportedly after the Poseidon appeared to be approaching Russia's border. The Poseidon soon changed its course.

In a statement issued Friday, the Russian officials called the jet's intercept a "greeting" maneuver.

"After approaching a plane at a safe distance the Russian pilot visually identified the flying object as a U.S. surveillance plane P-8A Poseidon," the Russian military said in the statement.

Unlike Russian intercepts in the past, this Russian jet approached the U.S. Navy recon plane "slowly," according to the defense official. The entire encounter lasted about an hour.

"It goes on almost every day of the week," the official said. A separate official said about 60 such incidents have occurred since 2007, RT reported.

The latest Russian incident in the Black Sea comes a month before the U.S. military kicks off a series of military exercises in the region.

In February, Russian fighter jets buzzed a U.S. Navy destroyer in the Black Sea on the same day the U.S. Army unloaded dozens of tanks and hundreds of soldiers in a nearby Romanian port along the Black Sea.

The same destroyer the Russians buzzed in February -- USS Porter -- was one of the warships which launched cruise missiles into Syria last month.

In September, a Russian jet buzzed a Navy spy plane over the Black Sea, the aircrafts coming within 10 feet of each other during that encounter.

When asked about the timing of Tuesday's incident coming a day before Lavrov's visit to Washington to meet President Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the defense official asked, "What were we doing flying that day?"

The latest Russian provocation comes a week after a pair of Russian Bear bombers and fighter jets flew near Alaska on several consecutive nights, prompting the U.S. Air Force to dispatch F-22 stealth fighter jets to intercept the Russian formation.

NBC News was the first to report Tuesday's intercept.

Lucas Tomlinson is the Pentagon and State Department producer for Fox News Channel. You can follow him on Twitter: @LucasFoxNews
Major veterans service organizations have rallied behind proposed legislation to speed up the firing process at the Department of Veterans Affairs, but a government union charges it would be a gross violation of workers' rights.

"Trampling on the rights of honest, hard-working public-sector employees is not the solution to holding bad employees accountable for their actions," American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox said. He said the bill would set up different standards for VA employees and other federal workers.

Earlier Thursday, the 1.7 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars and the 2-million-member American Legion gave strong endorsements to the proposed VA Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, which was introduced by a bipartisan group of senators.

The bill debuted after a federal appeals court overturned the firing of Sharon Helman, the former director of the Phoenix VA hospital that was at the center of the 2014 wait times scandal, forcing the resignation of then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

Helman will now have an opportunity to appeal her dismissal to the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.

VA Secretary David Shulkin said the court ruling underlines the need for Congress to give him more authority to remove incompetent or non-performing employees.

In a statement, Shulkin said that the court's action "underscores yet again the need for swift congressional action to afford the secretary's effective and defensible authority to take timely and meaningful action against VA employees whose conduct or performance undermines veterans' trust in VA care or services."

On Thursday, Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Jon Tester (D-Montana) introduced the bill that would give the VA secretary the authority to reprimand or fire any senior executive in a 21-day internal department grievance process.

Rank-and-file employees would have similar job actions appealed to the Merit Systems Protection Board, with a review process of no more than 180 days.

Isakson said the bill would give Shulkin "the tools necessary to discipline bad employees in a timely manner while protecting whistleblowers from the threat of retaliation and ensuring the quality of care that our veterans receive at the VA."

VFW National Commander Brian Duffy said, "The VFW wants the secretary to weed out the non-performers and those whose personal conduct brings doubt and dishonor upon thousands of dedicated employees. He said that maintaining the status quo doesn't work for those who have borne the battle."

In the past, "Despite multiple verified cases of gross misconduct, the secretary of the VA had little authority to hold employees accountable, and many veterans subsequently lost faith in the system," said American Legion Commander Charles E. Schmidt.

In response to the proposed bill, the AFGE's Cox said, "This legislation is the antithesis of accountability because it would allow corrupt or incompetent managers to get away with firing anyone who challenges them. Real accountability would strengthen, not weaken, protections for the rank-and-file employees who are subjected to mismanagement, abuse, and political corruption."

Cox said the bill would lower the burden of proof required to terminate a VA employee from a preponderance of the evidence to substantial evidence, meaning employees could be fired even if most of the evidence is in their favor.

"All this legislation does is hand more power to the VA executives and political appointees who failed our veterans in the first place by creating fake wait lists and hiding an outbreak of deadly Legionnaires' disease," he said.

In an exchange with Rubio in a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing Thursday, Shulkin thanked the senator "for recognizing that the vast amount of our employees are doing terrific and heroic work and are serving this country's veterans, and we should be proud of them, of the work that they're doing."

Shulkin explained, "We're talking here about a very, very small number of employees who have deviated and drifted away from the ethical [requirements] and the responsibilities that they took on to serve our country's veterans and no longer should have the privilege of serving in our system.

"In those cases, I wish it wasn't true. I wish today I could tell you I have the tools to do the right thing, to be able to remove those employees. I do not," he said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.
I've met two or three military spouses in my time who could not be appreciated enough around the clock, much less on Military Spouse Appreciation Day. I had the feeling I could put diamond tiaras on their heads and roll up a red, white and blue Corvette convertible to take them home and they would sniff, "Is this all?"

This note is not for them. This note is for you.

This note is for all of us who would do just about anything for our service member, but feel a little wary of a day set aside by the president as Military Spouse Appreciation Day.

To us, the stuff other people want to honor seems like normal life.

Just this once, let someone mark Military Spouse Appreciation Day and your everyday awesomeness, would you?

We appreciate your ability to hope.

This year a military spouse reminded me that when it comes to military life, hope is not about everything turning out OK. It is about being OK no matter how things turn out.

No matter what you are struggling with (and you've shown us that everyone has something) we see you holding onto the kind of optimism that allows you to keep trying. That not only makes all the difference in the world for your family, and keeps us moving forward, too.

We appreciate your vision of your family.

I bet you carry this magical vision of your own family in your head.

You see the way you used to be when you were young and in love and thought you could handle anything the military demanded. You see the way you are now juggling more than a dozen years of war.

Yet you still dare to envision a future for your family where everything turns out OK. Where the kids all go to college. Where the right job opens up for you. Where your service member leaves the military and finds new work that satisfies. You are the transition plan the whole country is counting upon.

We appreciate your help blindness.

No one will offer help quicker than a military spouse. If we see someone struggling with a stroller or a couple of screaming toddlers or the three-day flu, we are the first to offer help.

Somehow, when we are the ones with the three-day flu, we become help blind. We cannot possibly think of anyone we could ask for help. While we appreciate this trait so many of us share, we really gotta realize that the help highway goes in both directions.

We appreciate your social courage.

When you are a military spouse, you are always the new kid. It is part of the territory.

But you know from experience that everyone is a stranger only once. We so appreciate your ability to boldly go up to a stranger, introduce yourself and start talking. And if you are the kind of military spouse who doesn't approach strangers, we really appreciate it if you smile when we talk to you first. Woo boy.

We appreciate your lists.

"I don't know how you do what you do!" might be the most annoying phrase spouses hear in the course of a day. It seems to imply that somehow we were stupid to take on a military marriage.

But we really appreciate the way you do what you have to do. It's too much for any one person to do. Yet you do the too much.'

You deal with what is on your plate. You use your constant lists to keep track of what has to be fixed and what has to be done and what has to be turned in and what has to be paid for. You control the uncontrollable. Prodigious.

We appreciate your idea of sexy.

Hate to tell you this, but not everyone thinks of combat boots as sexy. They don't look at someone in cammies or khakis and think, va-va-va-voom. Strangely, you do. And you keep thinking that no matter how long you are together. Marines, Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard -- the uniform doesn't matter. The person inside does.

We appreciate it when you show up in person.

So often we hear from writers who participate in conferences and balls and holiday parties and command picnics because it is "expected."

You know the command can't demand you show up (cuz you don't work for them). But you let yourself have the wisdom of understanding that often the presence of a real person makes all the difference in the world. Thanks for that.

And if you got the job because you showed up at the event, good on ya. You deserve it.

We appreciate your ability to create normal.

Even if your life is decidedly not normal, military spouses have a way of creating normalcy no matter how they are living.

No matter where they live or how crazy their service member's schedule might be, they create rituals around mealtime and bedtime and holidays that make kids feel safe. They set up their household goods and make homes in the plainest places in the world. They become someone worth coming home to.

We appreciate your indignation.

When it comes to your own benefits, spouses like you can be a little complacent. Put it on the list and you will deal with it later.

But don't let anyone give your service member less than what they earned with their own blood, sweat and tears shed for this country.

Insult a service member and expect to deal with the kind of political outrage only a military spouse can muster.

Most of all, on national Military Spouse Appreciation Day, we appreciate your uniqueness.

As you continually remind us, there is no such thing as a "typical" spouse. This is a community in which not fitting in IS, in fact, fitting in.

Spouses come in an infinite variety. We usually have only one thing in common -- that we love someone in uniform and that we would sacrifice what we want in order to make sure they have what they need.

It's a life. It's our life. And on Military Spouse Appreciation Day, we love that we get to share it with you.

Keep Up with the Ins and Outs of Military Life

For the latest military news and tips on military family benefits and more, sign up for a free Military.com membership and have the information you need delivered directly to your inbox.
The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka and will be attending the International Vesak Day celebrations. With Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, he will interact with Buddhist spiritual leaders, scholars and theologians.

On the occasion of International VesakDay, he will address at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH). At Norwood Grounds, he will address the Indian origin Tamil community.

He will also inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital.He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC).

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UK Cigars and Cigarillos Market Research Report 2017  MRH

Albany, New York, May 12, 2017: Market Research Hub (MRH) has recently announced the addition of a fresh report, titled UK Cigars and Cigarillos Market Report 2017 to its report offerings. The report provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the UK market. It covers market size and structure along with per capita and overall consumption. Additionally, it focuses on brand data, retail pricing, prospects and forecasts for sales and consumption to 2025.

Request Free Sample Report: http://www.marketresearchhub.com/enquiry.php?type=S&repid=1068050

Cigars and Cigarillos in the UK, 2017, is an analytical report by GlobalData that provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the UK market. It covers market size and structure along with per capita and overall consumption. Additionally, it focuses on brand data, retail pricing, prospects and forecasts for sales and consumption to 2025.

The UK cigar market is quite sizeable in Western European terms, although the overall market has contracted considerably over the review period and there is no evidence that this trend is coming to a halt. As of 2016 the market stands at 355 tons.

Scope:

 Miniatures accounted for 69.8% of total volume in 2016 to make them by far the largest segment within the market.

 Sales of large cigars have also been falling back but as a share of sales at a much slower rate than for small cigars with stability evident recently.

 UK production is largely geared towards meeting domestic demand, although some output is for export markets.

 The market is increasingly supplied by imports.

 Cigars are subject to two, or in the case of imported cigars of non-EU origin, three taxes in the UK: excise duty, value added tax and import duty. Unlike cigarettes, cigars and cigarillos are subject to a purely weight-based excise duty.

 The market is mainly supplied by two brands: Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) and Gallaher (JTI).

 The prevalence of cigar smoking is low and it is currently estimated that only 1.1% of adults (1.9% of men) smoke cigars.

Reasons to buy

 Get a detailed understanding of consumption to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market.

 Identify the areas of growth and opportunities, which will aid effective marketing planning.

 The differing growth rates in regional product sales drive fundamental shifts in the market.

 This report provides detailed, authoritative data on these changes  prime intelligence for marketers.

 Understand the market dynamics and essential data to benchmark your position and to identify where to compete in the future.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

Executive summary

Definitions

Market context

Tobacco products market, %, 2006 & 2016

Tobacco products market, tons, 2006-2016

Market size and structure

Cigars & Cigarillos Consumption, Pieces, 2006-2016

Per Capita Consumption, Pieces Per Year, 2004-2015

Retail Sales of Cigars & Cigarillos, 2006-2016

Cigars & Cigarillos: Market Segmentation, 2010-2016

Miniatures, Total & Per Capita Consumption, 2006-2016

Small Cigars, Total & Per Capita Consumption, 2006-2016

Large Cigars, Total & Per Capita Consumption, 2006-2016

Tobacco Products: Retail Sales by Sector, 2008-2010

Production and trade

Production of Cigars & Cigarillos, 2003-2010

Imports, tons, 2005-2015

Imports by Country of Origin, Top Countries, % Volume, 2015

Read Full Report with TOC: http://www.marketresearchhub.com/report/cigars-and-cigarillos-in-the-uk-2017-report.html
Aric Almirola

Aric Almirola celebrates in Victory Lane after winning the NASCAR Xfinity series auto race at Talladega Superspeedway, Saturday, May 6, 2017, in Talladega, Ala. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

(AP)

BATTLE CREEK - Aric Almirola held up his forefinger and thumb and held them as close together as possible without touching during Thursday morning's visit to FireKeepers Casino.

The Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series veteran was visiting the Battle Creek-based casino to help promote the June 18 race at Michigan International Speedway - the FireKeepers Casino 400.

But what happened last week quickly came up. Almirola finished fourth in Sunday's Geico 500 at Talladega Superspeedway, however, his No. 43 Smithfield Ford Fusion failed laser inspection by the amount separating his finger and thumb.

While the infraction was tiny, the penalty was huge. Almirola was docked 35 points, and his Richard Petty Motorsports crew chief Drew Blickensderfer was fined $65,000 and suspended for three races.

"It was a great weekend, nonetheless," Almirola said. "We won the Xfinity Series race on Saturday and finished fourth in the Cup race Sunday. Unfortunately, we had some suspension damage from one of the big wrecks earlier in the race, and it bent something in the rear suspension. We didn't make the tolerance at the end of the race inspection by NASCAR.

"It was ten thousandths of an inch, so you are talking about something that is more than half smaller than the size of the thickness of a credit card. You can't hardly see it with the naked eye. But that doesn't matter. NASCAR has rules and they have to enforce their rules. We will take the penalty and try to keep moving forward and build on the momentum we have. We got a top 10 at Richmond two weeks ago and finished ninth, and we had a top-five at Talladega."

Almirola is one of 26 drivers in NASCAR history to win at least one race in all three of the sanctioning body's top three circuits. One of those wins came at the Michigan two-mile superspeedway, capturing the checkered flag in a Camping World Truck Series race there in 2010.

"I've run really well at Michigan in the past," Almirola said. "I know where Victory Lane is having won the Truck Series there. I will try to do that again in the Cup Series.

"The Fords have always been really fast there. It's a great weekend to run well, with Ford's headquarters being right there in Detroit. There is a lot of pride on the line when you are driving the blue oval at the Michigan International Speedway."

Almirola has been racing with Petty since 2012. His lone Cup win came in 2014 at Daytona International Speedway.

"It's awesome," Almirola said. "It really is a dream come true to have this opportunity to drive for Richard Petty and be able to drive that iconic paint scheme and have the No. 43 on the side of my race car. It's something that I never in a million years thought I would get the opportunity to do, and I love every minute of it."

Tickets for the FireKeepers Casino are available at www.mispeedway.com. It will be a doubleheader weekend since NASCAR's Xfinity Series Corrigan Oil 200 we be contested on June 17.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- We all know about Michigan's love for craft beer, and the incredible growth of the industry in the last decade.

Today there are more than 250 breweries, and more are coming on board this year.

But there's another emerging craft industry: Michigan Distilleries.

The Michigan Craft Distillers Association, which formed in October, 2014 as a non-profit organization, represents more than two dozen distilleries with nearly 40 tasting rooms around the state.

It's growing so fast that Michigan already ranks No. 4 in the nation in terms of overall number of distilleries, behind California, Oregon and Washington.

And they're winning awards, too!

Seven Michigan distilleries won 28 individual awards in a variety of categories in April at the American Distilling Institute's 11th Annual Spirits Competition.

"We're excited to see more of our member distilleries participating in and being recognized with medals at these national competitions," said Dianna Stampfler, executive director of the Michigan Craft Distillers Association.

"Last year, six Michigan distilleries received 16 medals and this year we nearly doubled the hardware presented to our members. That's exciting news for Pure Michigan's growing craft spirits industry."

That leads us to ask.....

What are your favorite Michigan Craft Distilleries?

And what are your favorite Michigan cocktails at these distilleries?

The Michigan's Best team will be traveling all over the state in the coming weeks to experience Michigan Spirits. (Yes, we will have a designated driver.)

We need your help. We want to know your favorite tasting rooms, spirits and drinks. Be sure to give us a little detail and tell us why these are your favorites.

Leave a comment on this story or send us an email.

Amy Sherman is at asherma2@mlive.com.

John Gonzalez is at gonzo@mlive.com.

If you have questions about the industry, let us know those, too.

Our goal is to compile all this information into a useful guide.

Want to follow our live coverage?

Here are the social media channels for photos, videos, updates and more:

Amy Sherman on Twitter @amyonthetrail, as well as Facebook and Instagram

John Gonzalez on Twitter @michigangonzo, as well as Facebook and Instagram

Michigan's Best complete coverage at mlive.com/michigansbest.

PHOTOS: Thanks to Garry Boyd of BarFly Ventures for helping us with a little research at Grand Rapids Brewing Company. He took us through a special tasting of Michigan spirits and made a few of his favorite cocktails. Check out his Cocktail Tool Kit.
Conor McGregor

UFC president Dana White wants to finalize the Conor McGregor side of things this weekend.

(John Locher | AP Photo)

If Dana White is frustrated by trying to finalize things with Conor McGregor, just wait until he tries to negotiate with Floyd Mayweather.

But that's if things even get that far.

White, the UFC president, told Jim Rome on Thursday that he's looking to wrap things up soon, at least with his side, or just be done with all of it.

"I plan on having this thing locked up by this Sunday and then moving on to Team Mayweather and starting a negotiation with them," White told Rome. "If we really do get it done in that time frame, then this thing could possibly happen.

"But again, I still need to go negotiate with (Mayweather's team). There's no guarantee that we're going to come to a deal."

Deadlines can often spur action in negotiations, but we'll see.

"I just can't keep messing with this thing," White said. "I need to run my business, and I have to focus on all the other things that are going on around here."

McGregor had said he wasn't going to worry about negotiating his next fight until the birth of his son, which happened last weekend.

Last month, White suggested McGregor could make $75 million off a fight with Mayweather, even though his richest reported UFC purse was $3 million.
US President Donald Trump urges peace between Russia & Ukraine

Donald J. Trump, the president of USA urges Russia and Ukraine to make peace after his meeting with their Foreign Ministers.

Kapil Mishra's mother takes on 'corrupt' Kejriwal

The mother of the expelled leader Kapil Mishra from the Aam Aadmi Party stated on the remark that Mishra is a BJP-Agent.

President Pranab Mukherjee attended National Technology Day Celebrations

New Delhi: The President Pranab Mukherjee yesterday while attending the National Technology Day Celebrations stated that scientific and technological developments are a key to any nation's success.

Pakistan violates ceasefire again

Jammu: In the morning today the Pakistan violated ceasefire as a warning to the Border Security Force (BSF) troops which are deployed in Arnia sector of Jammu and Kashmir.

National Zika Emergency has stopped said Brazil

The national emergency over the Zika virus has been ended announced Brazil.

IPL 10: Kings XI Punjab defeated Mumbai Indians

The 51st match of IPL 10 yesterday was played between Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab. Mumbai won the toss and chose to bowl first. While batting first, Punjab scored 230 runs in the loss three wickets.

Kotak Mahindra Bank to hike $901 million by share offer

Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, the private sector bank of India which comes under the 4th biggest Indian lender by market capitalization, is likely to price a share offering at the height of an indicative range, hiking $901 million.

SBI Life will hire 8 banks for up to $1 billion IPO

SBI Life Insurance Co Ltd will now go to hire 8 banks such as Deutsche Bank, Citigroup and other just to manage its up to $1 billion initial public offering of shares.

How to check out MPBSE 12th Results 2017?

he awaited the result of MP Board HSSC (Class 12) 2017 is declared now on the official websites provided by the board.

Shahrukh Khan at TED talks talk about India and, its spirituality

Shah Rukh Khan at the TED Talks in Vancouver talk about India, its spirituality and its culture of spreading love and compassion.
BRIGHTON, MI - A man shot by police on Tuesday, May 9 in the Brighton area remains hospitalized with significant injuries, according to a family member.

Family identified Ian Little, 36, as the man shot and injured by police after a call for a welfare check about 10 p.m. at his home in the 4800 block of South Old U.S. 23 Highway.

Little is under heavy sedation after suffering seven gunshot wounds, according to his brother, 34-year-old Michael Little, who lives in Tennessee.

It's been a devastating experience for the whole family, but despite the unanswered questions and different accounts family members have heard, Michael Little said if the shooting was justified, the family supports the police.

"The cops out here are good people," Michael Little said. "I can't say it enough - my heart really goes out to those officers."

Michigan State Police, who declined to identify the man shot, say a state police trooper was forced to retreat and call for backup when the subject of the welfare check exited the home and began to walk toward the trooper with a pistol.

After additional personnel from state police, the Livingston County Sheriff's Office and the Brighton Police Department arrived, the individual continued to ignore commands to drop the gun and continued to walk toward officers as they continued to retreat, police said. Eventually the man pointed his gun at police and police fired, striking him.

The shooting remains under investigation by police, but Michigan State Police First Lt. Mike Shaw, who is special enforcement section commander and public information officer at the agency's Second District, said he is hopeful the case will be submitted to the prosecuting attorney's office for review Monday.

Though Michigan State Police declined to comment on which agency's personnel was involved, CBS Detroit reports a state trooper and a Livingston County Sheriff's deputy were involved in the shooting.

Police have said the man suffered non-life threatening injuries, but his brother said that's not the case.

Michael Little described his brother's injuries as critical - noting a bullet struck his liver - and said it was unclear if his brother would survive.

If he does, the family hopes to get Ian Little the help he needs, Michael Little said.

Ian Little has a history of depression and suicide attempts, Michael Little said, but has never been violent toward other people.

To Michael Little's understanding, Ian Little's wife left him in the days preceding the shooting, but called police for a welfare check after Ian Little posted concerning statements on Facebook.

Michael Little said he doesn't know what happened next, and said his brother doesn't own a pistol, but may have had a BB gun.

Michael Little, who noted he served six combat tours in the Marine Corps, said he believes the shooting is justified if his brother raised the BB gun at officers.

"They have just as much right to go home as the rest of us," he said.

Still, Michael Little said he wants answers as to when first aid was delivered and all the steps taken to prevent a shooting, especially given his brother's history.

He said though he'd like more communication ahead of time, he has full confidence in police that he will get answers as soon as their investigation is completed.

"Our hearts go out to the police officers that did what they had to do, because he may have forced their hand," he said. "We're just trying to get through this and figure out what the next step is going to be."
I94 Pittsfield.png

UPDATE: The crash was cleared just after 8 a.m.

PITTSFIELD TOWNSHIP, MI - The left lane of westbound I-94 just after U.S. 23 is blocked because of a crash.

The Michigan Department of Transportation reported the closure just after 7 a.m. Friday, May 12 in Pittsfield Township.

The Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office advises drivers to avoid the area.

Huron Valley Ambulance took two people to the hospital, said spokesman Chad French. One was in stable condition and the other was in serious condition.
BAY CITY, MI -- Wings of justice flew into the Bay County Court Facility Friday morning.

An emerald green eclectus parrot named Zeus visited the chambers of Bay County Circuit Judge Joseph K. Sheeran. Sheeran said the bird belongs to a local attorney who mentioned she owned the bird.

The judge asked her to bring the feathered pet in, and she obliged, setting the bird on the judge's shoulder as he donned his robe.

"He whispered in my ear mighty words of treasure, but I am not at liberty to repeat them," Sheeran joked.

Zeus is 5 years old, and his species can live up to 60. Eclectus parrots are native to the Solomon Islands and other parts of Oceania. They exhibit sexual dimorphism, with the males being vibrant green and the females exhibiting a red, purple, and blue plumage.

Zeus' owner said he has quite the vocabulary and it'll only grow as he ages.
BAY CITY, MI -- A Bay County man who initially faced a felony after he allegedly stole nearly $26,000 in electricity to help grow medical marijuana has pleaded down to a lesser count.

Bryan P. Lauria, 49, on Wednesday, May 10, appeared before Bay County District Judge Mark E. Janer and pleaded no contest to fraudulent use of a public utility less than $500, a 90-day misdemeanor. In exchange, the prosecution agreed to dismiss a four-year felony of fraudulent use of a public utility more than $500.

By pleading no contest, Lauria did not verbally admit to having committed a crime. Janer had to reply on police reports contained in court files to enter a conviction on the record.

Those reports state that on Feb. 23, a Consumers Energy employee contacted the Michigan State Police after inspecting Lauria's home in the 1400 block of North Mackinaw Road in Fraser Township. The employee told a responding trooper he received a tip that Lauria had been stealing power via an illegal connection.

The employee determined a second breaker panel was installed in the house's basement and then hardwired with jumper cables to the electrical panel outside the residence.

A Consumers employee told police that while he was inspecting the residence, Lauria exited his house and was acting nervous, pacing back and forth.

Lauria told police he is a licensed medical marijuana grower with five patients. He provided the necessary documentation and let the trooper inspect his basement grow room.

Including himself as a patient, Lauria could legally grow 72 plants. The trooper wrote in his report that Lauria appeared to be growing no more than that amount and his operation was in accordance with the law.

Lauria denied any knowledge of an illegal power hookup or how a second breaker was being used inside his house. He said his power usage had dropped because he was using more efficient heat bulbs and was no longer using an air conditioner, police reports show.

Consumers determined Lauria's account showed a significant drop starting Dec. 19, 2014. In the months before that, Lauria used 5,000 to 6,000 kilowatt-hours; in subsequent months, that rate dropped to 1,000 to 1,500, according to police records.

In all, Lauria is alleged to have stolen $25,954.64 in electricity. With a security deposit, investigation charges, and the balance before the theft factored in, Lauria's tab jumped to a grand total of $27,123.99.

On Feb. 24, Lauria visited the Saginaw County Consumers office and paid the balance.

Authorities issued a warrant for Lauria on March 9 and he was arraigned on April 24.

Lauria is represented by Bay City attorney Jason P. Gower.

"We thank the Bay County Prosecutor's Office for a very fair and objective review of the facts and circumstances of Mr. Lauria's case and feel this resolution is consistent with justice," Gower said.

Judge Janer is to sentence Lauria at 9 a.m. on Thursday, June 15.
Donald J. Trump, the president of USA urges Russia and Ukraine to make peace after his meeting with their Foreign Ministers.

In a tweet, Trump said, "he had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin"

Both the countries Russia and Ukraine have been in the state of conflict since 2014.

Meanwhile, Russia's annexation of Crimea has been the main concern of contention between Washington and Moscow.

Also Read:

PM Modi will attend International Vesak Day celebration during his Srilanka visit

Two-day Sri Lanka visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to begin today

Uber will be setting up artificial intelligence lab in Toronto
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GlaxoSmithkline Consumer Healthcare Ltd has informed BSE that the Board of Directors of the Company at its meeting held on May 11, 2017, inter alia, has recommended a Dividend at the rate of Rs. 70/- per equity share of Rs. 10 each. The dividend shall be paid to the entitled Members on or before September 08, 2017.Source : BSE
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Pursuant to Regulation 30 of the SEBI (Listing Obligations and Disclosure Requirements) Regulations, 2015, please find enclosed herewith the proceedings of the Extra-Ordinary General Meeting (EGM), of the Company held on May 12th, 2017 at the Surana Udyog Auditorium, Federation of Telangana & Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce & Industry, 11-6-841, Red Hills, Hyderabad-500004 and also, the scrutinizer's report on the voting. Kindly take the same on recordSource : BSE
Job loss | The pandemic has wreaked havoc on the job landscape in India. According the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) about 21 million salaries employees lost their jobs during April-August. There were 86 million salaried jobs in India during 2019-20. In August 2020, the count was down to 65 million after 3.3 million jobs were gone in the particular month, mostly among the industrial workers and white collar workers, as per the CMIE. (Image: Shutterstock)

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Reports of upcoming massive layoffs at Indias biggest IT companies such as Infosys, Cognizant, and Tech Mahindra is adding to the panic among techies in countrys tech hub.

Industry body Nasscoms confirmation that hiring will continue to be slow throughout the year has further added fuel to the fire.

According to Nasscom, over 50,000 techies may find themselves without a job in coming months.

Layoffs in IT and BPO sectors are expected to continue this year with the pace of job creation slowing down, Nasscom cautioned industry in a statement.

The industry body has indicated that more job cuts will follow as companies are gradually moving towards automation and are looking at hiring skilled staff.

This time, the middle management is also getting affected because of automation. My estimate is that in next one year, at least one lakh jobs will become irrelevant, Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of Headhunters said.

According to estimates, Infosys and Wipro are likely to shed about 2,000 jobs, Tech Mahindra is expected to lay off about 1,500 employees, this year.

Deepak an employee of Tech Mahindra is thankful that he has been spared the guillotine of layoffs. But the sense of security is fleeting.

I thought of looking for a new job, but after these layoffs I have no way to shift. My team members are also nervous about these reports, he tells Moneycontrol on condition of last name anonymity.

Bopanna, another Bangalore-based techie working with one of the biggest IT hardware company in the city says we have been getting internal e-mails about layoffs in small tranches.

People in my team are staying put, preparing for the worse. Although no major layoffs have been announced, people who are on bench or on long leaves are being asked to leave, he says.

Industry is going through automation

Why this sudden flux in layoffs in the IT industry? Roydon Gonsalves, Director, CXO Practice, Ray & Berndtson HR practices, is of the view that IT industry is in a stage of transformation.

Big players such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS, and Cognizant have been servicing segments that require human intervention.

They have not been able to keep pace with this change. The transformation to a new skill set should have been a gradual one. But now that automation is a reality, these companies are rushing to hire talent with new skill sets, he said.

Although the process of layoffs is a routine process, the quantum of it this time is huge, even when we compare the massive layoffs undertaken by TCS last year.

How benching is used a pretext to layoffs

Every year, companies conduct performance based appraisals and about 2 percent of the workforce is sacked.

According to industry sources, IT companies are deliberately evaluating employees to the lowest rating, and putting them on bench to cut workforce. This practice portrays layoffs as a routine process inside companies.

A source in the higher management of Wipro also said that the practice of shedding off benchers and contractors is underway. He did not want to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

One can read between the lines in official company statements on layoffs.

We conduct regular performance reviews to ensure we have the right employee skill sets necessary to meet client needs and achieve our goals. This process results in changes, including some employees transitioning out of the company, Cognizant said in an official statement.

Re-skill is the need of the hour

Naresh Krishna, managing an IT project for Ernst & Young says that as an employee, layoffs and hiring freeze is depressing. But as a manager, I can tell you that hiring people with new skill sets is imperative. There is no other way to go, he says.

Organizations are gradually doing away with basic coding jobs and other positions in the low-skilled category that is set to become outdated because of automation.

Employees will have to re-invent themselves with new skill sets to make them useful in an automated work environment. If that doesnt happen people will lose jobs, says Srikanth Srinivasan, regional director at Nasscom.

The change in focus of the IT companies towards new technologies is another reason why IT companies are looking at renewing their workforce.

I am a trained software engineer. But Now I find myself completely at loss because my company wants me to work on AI, BI, or cloud. I will have to go back to the school to acquire these skills, Mohit Wadhwa, a Bangalore-based techie working with Wipro says.

Mohit is instead contemplating changing his line of profession and jump to smartphone engineering or teaching.

In the recent past, big IT companies have faced competition from emerging technologies such as big data, data analytics and so on. IT firms are now investing heavily on developing capabilities around these emerging technologies. This will render a lot of mundane jobs irrelevant and create job opportunities for people with a niche skill set," Gonsalves said.

H-1B troubles to complicate matters

But the reasons behind troubles in IT sector are not all domestic. The tightening of H-1B visa regime in the United States has also forced IT giants to create fundamental changes in their hiring strategy. The restrictions have forced the IT companies to maintain a workforce which is highly skilled.

"Indian IT companies are bound to face disruptions by way of higher costs and even some laying off work force back home, because of US visa rules," industry body Assocham said in a report.

The US visa rules have narrowed the scope of IT firms to export talent for projects bagged overseas. The lottery-based system of awarding H1B Visa was dominated by Indian IT companies with over 80 percent approval rate.

Under the new visa rules spearheaded by President Donald Trump, H-1B will be given to the most skilled and highest-paid applicants.

"Nearly 86 per cent of the H-1B visas are issued to Indian IT workers. This figure will narrow down to about 60 percent or less, Assocham said in a paper. Plus the requirement of paying Indian IT workers in US at par with the American counterparts will further shoot up the cost.

Kris of Headhunters says that IT companies this year have applied 50 percent less H1B visas this year, which reduces their need for workforce. The deal size from US clients has also gone down, he said.

Although the techies in Bangalore we spoke to welcome this move of salary at par, the IT companies will have to streamline their costs to safeguard their revenues.

I went to Germany for a project with Tech Mahindra. The romance of working in a foreign country is overrated if you go on an onsite, because the expenses and allowances are a huge mismatch. If salaries are paid at par, it is good for us, Deepak says.

Kris Lakshmikanth, CEO of Headhunters also says that the IT companies have no choice but to reduce their workforce here because projects abroad are drying up. They are unable to place as many workforce for US projects as they did before, which is eating up their revenues.

Hiring one person abroad would mean firing 4 here, to offset the cost of employing local talent in US. Even if they send someone from here, the cost of acquiring an employee will go up. That will be balanced here via layoffs, he adds.
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India's state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd is revising the formula it uses to price naphtha exports to include the mean prices from Argus Media instead of only relying on S&P Global Platts, a tender document showed.

"BPCL is doing this on an experimental basis," said a source familiar with the matter.

The refiner may extend the formula of using a mean of Platts and Argus prices to other products if the naphtha pricing is well received by traders, said the source, who asked not to be identified.

BPCL regularly exports naphtha and fuel oil due to excess volumes, but only ships diesel on rare ocassions.

BPCL has made the pricing changes in its latest naphtha tender, which closes on May 16. The refiner is looking to sell 33,000 tonnes of naphtha for June 4-6 loading from Mumbai and another 55,000 tonnes for June 10-12 loading from the southwestern port of Kochi.

BPCL did not make immediate comment on the issue.

The company on May 4 sold a cargo from Kochi to PetroChina at premiums of about $16 to $17 to Platts Middle East price formula on a free-on-board (FOB) basis.

BPCL joins Indian Oil Corp, which is also using both Platts and Argus prices in their spot sales.

Other Indian sellers such as Mangalore Refinery Petrochemicals Ltd, Oil & Natural Gas Corp, Reliance Industries and Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd are using only Platts prices.

Three traders said Argus prices are usually slightly higher than those of Platts.

"Buyers will accept the change as the impact is not major as buyers could place a slightly lower bid factoring in that Argus prices may be higher," said a buyer of Indian naphtha cargoes.
Ashwani Gujral of ashwanigujral.com told CNBC-TV18, "Adani Ports is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 355 and target of Rs 372. DCB Bank seems to be breaking out all the smaller banks, City Union Bank, etc. That is a buy with a stop loss of Rs 190 and target of Rs 205."

"Bank of Baroda is also a buy with a stop loss of Rs 183 and target of Rs 197. Interglobe Aviation is a sell with a stop loss of Rs 1,110 and target of Rs 1,065," he said.

"Arvind with those poor results is a sell with a stop loss of Rs 412 and target of Rs 395."

"There are better PSU banks and there are better private banks. So, State Bank of India (SBI) and corporate lenders are underperforming unless there is big action on NPA resolution. Things will be difficult to move forward. The level of Rs 320 is probably a very strong level. Once we get past Rs 320-325 that is when real action starts here. That will probably be taken out once some action happens on NPA and then it opens up the doors towards Rs 450. Till that happens, Rs 300-320 has often acted as a strong resistance in the past."

"United Spirits, United Breweries and other liquor stocks have probably bottomed out because they had this prohibition news which really took the bottom out of these stocks and then they have all turned and reversed sharply. That means the worst is really discounted. I think from here Rs 2,400-2,500 can happen on United Spirits. Similarly, maybe Rs 850-900 on United Breweries," he added.

"The way Godfrey Phillips and ITC , probably now expect some sort of rationalisation of taxes because the way these stocks are going up from the day GST has been passed just shows that there is more expected. I think Rs 1,500-1,550 should easily be expected on Godfrey Phillips ."
Sandeep Wagle of powermywealth.com told CNBC-TV18, "I would go with a buy in Bharat Financial Inclusion with a stop loss of Rs 780 and target Rs 822."

"Sell Asian Paints with a stop loss at Rs 1,158 and target Rs 1,107," he said.
Army officers stand on Indian Army's Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher system during a rehearsal for Republic Day parade in Kolkata, India, January 20, 2017. India celebrates its annual Republic Day on January 26. REUTERS/Rupak De Chowdhuri - RTSWECK

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Engineering conglomerate Larsen and Toubro (L&T) has been awarded a contract to supply 100 self-propelled howitzers to the Indian Army for nearly Rs 4,500 crore.

The first batch of the 155mm/52 calibre tracked self- propelled (SP) gun -- K9 VAJRA-T -- will be delivered later this year and the entire supply will be made within next 42 months.

L&T, supported by its South Korean technology partner Hanwha Tech Win (HTW), had bid for the contract in 2011.

The contract valued at about at Rs 4,500 crore is the largest order placed by the Defence Ministry (MoD) with an Indian private company, Jayant Patil, Head of Defence and Aerospace at L&T, said.

Among the four bidders, L&T emerged as the sole qualified aspirant, after a series of user trials and evaluations, based on the performance of the K9 VAJRA-T self-propelled Howitzer.

The K9 VAJRA-T gun is an enhanced version of HTW's K9 Thunder - a world class self-propelled howitzer, customised and co-developed by L&T and HTW to suit the specific requirements of the Indian Army.

HTW's K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer is among the best in the world with over 1,000 units already in service in South Korea and few other countries.

Patil said the award of the contract affirms L&T's position as India's leading private sector defence company with capabilities to design, develop and manufacture state- of-the-art platforms and systems for the Indian armed forces.

Patil said the contract envisages delivery of the 100 guns in 42 months with associated engineering support package and maintenance throughout their life cycle.

The guns will have over 50 per cent indigenous content and will be delivered from L&T's manufacturing facilities, Patil said.

L&T had inked a deal with Hanwha Techwin (HTW) last month to jointly manufacture the self-propelled howitzers for Indian Army.
Paints manufacturer Asian Paints posted 10 percent rise in Q4 net profit at Rs 479.6 crore against Rs 435.5 crore during the corresponding quarter last year.

The company said that Indias decorative business registered low double-digit growth in Q4, but it saw strong performance in markets such as Nepal, Fiji, Oman, Bahrain and Jamaica. It also saw good demand conditions in auto OEM and general industrial business.

KBS Anand, MD & CEO, Asian Paints said the low double-digit volume growth is likely to be sustainable if the economy grows in a similar manner.

On the margin front, he said they would likely improve due to the two price hikes, which were to the tune of 5.7 percent, but it would also depend on how the rupee plays out and the raw material prices trend.

Talking about the home improvement business that saw a 19 percent growth in Q4, he said they are hopeful of revenue growth for the current fiscal too but it is a very small nascent business. It also correlates to the construction sector and so the extent of growth depends on the growth in the construction business, he said in an interview to CNBC-TV18.

When asked about acquisitions in the home improvement business, he said they are not looking at anything in the very near-term but if something good falls into their lap, they would lap it up. There arent too many players in this business that fits into their scheme of things, he added.

Talking about capacity addition in the paint business, he said the Mysuru Plant of 300,000 KL per annum should come on stream by October 2018.
Glenmark Pharma's profit during January-March quarter increased 23 percent year-on-year to Rs 183.7 crore, largely aided by the exclusivity of generic cholesterol-lowering drug Zetia, but overall earnings were much below Street estimates.

The bottomline growth was impacted by Rs 81 crore exceptional item, high expenses and there was decline in sales across Europe, Latin America, and other markets. The expenses shot up 13.6 percent to Rs 2,152 crore on a sequential basis.

However, Glenn Saldanha, CMD, Glenmark Pharma said FY18 looks to be a strong year despite price erosions in the US on the back of new launches. He said FY18 US sales would be better than FY17.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, he said India business should continue to grow around 15 percent first quarter onwards.

Although the price erosion in the US market would continue, it would be at a lesser rate than seen in FY17. It would continue to be in the range of 10-15 percent, said Saldanha.

The company has completed 3 and half months of the total 6 months of exclusivity period for Zetia. They expect to clock revenue of USD 180-200 million for Zetia.

Below is the verbatim transcript of the interview.

Anuj: What went wrong in Q4, especially with Zetia because the number is much below your guidance?

A: We had guided to something like 200-250 million on Zetia and as of now we are trending a little below the lower end of our guidance. So, a little below 200 million for Zetia. Zetia, it is the six months exclusivity, we have completed about three and a half months, we still have another two and a half months to go. So, I think Q1, some of the sales will go into Q1 and we are expecting a good FY18 overall.

Anuj: 10-15 percent below the lower end is not marginal miss. It is a big miss.

A: Zetia is marketed by our partner Par Pharmaceutical and we have got a market share, Par expected a better market share coming out of it and we have been able to get 57-58 percent market share. So, I think overall we are still making USD 180-200 million out of Zetia which is a reasonably good number; it could be more than that also. So, let us see how things play out in for the next two and a half months as far as Zetia goes.

Latha: You feel confident it could be at least as much as 200 million or is that also a challenge?

A: There is a possibility that we will get closer to the lower end of the guidance which is 200 million.

Sonia: What exactly could the average sales be over the next two and a half months, you did mention that you have sold three and a half months of Zetia but over the next two and a half months what are we looking at as an average?

A: Clearly we are not breaking out Zetia sales from our base business. So, I think overall if you look at the US business, we had something like USD 550 million of sales in FY17 and we are guiding to growing this number in FY18. At a consolidated level we are saying we will grow the topline 12-15 percent in FY18 over FY17. So, I think the business continues to look pretty strong year-on-year (YoY) for the company.

Sonia: The other big issue that the street has had is the way the price erosion has been much higher than expected, at about 10-15 percent. What seems to be happening there and is this something that could be protracted or are we just looking at a one to two quarter issue here?

A: If you see the US generics market, clearly there is a price erosion which is ranging in the range of 10-15 percent. Q4 for us was a little bit closer to the 15 percent number, but I think this year we are anticipating because of the new product launches and adding to the topline sales, the erosion will be lower, closer to I would say between 10-15 percent for the full year.

So, there is a lot of competitive pressure right now in the US market with a number of new generic players particularly out of India, China coming to the market and with the consolidation in the channels, the pricing pressure is clearly visible in the US market.

Latha: When you give us a guidance of 12-15 percent, are you factoring in approvals? How much of new approvals? Can the approvals surprise on the upside?

A: Right now, we are taking about 10-15 launches during the year and some of these launches are very good products, so we have got 3-4 launches in this year in the derm segment. We also have some pretty exciting other product launches coming through in this year. So all-in-all, FY18 looks to be a strong year for us despite the price erosion that you are seeing in the US business. We think, on account of the new product approvals that are likely to come through, we should do well in this business.

Ekta: A couple of questions about the US business in particular. 10-15 percent price erosion is what you are guiding for, but there is a possible change with the Trump regime in terms of medicare, etc. which is going to take place. So are you anticipating 10-15 percent price erosion as a base case scenario right now and maybe there is downside risk to it?

A: I do not think there is any further downside risk to the 10-15 percent number. 10-15 percent also is a pretty large number in terms of potential price erosion, so that is a fair number given where the industry is at and given the number of companies out there.

Ekta: So, what is the average run rate that we can expect for the US because last quarter, you did USD 180 million but that was with Zetia. This quarter, you did USD 150 million, that is with Zetia again and 10-15 percent price erosion and in other quarters, you have generally done USD 115-120 million without any exclusivity opportunities. So, what is the quarterly run rate that we can anticipate from the US?

A: We still have Zetia being sold in the current quarter, so automatically, the current quarter should look good for the US business, but thereafter, there may be a quarter or two where sales could be lower quarter-on-quarter (Q-o-Q), but we are pretty confident with the new product approvals, it will come back in Q3 and Q4. On a full-year basis, as I said before, we should be ahead of FY17 for the US business in terms of topline sales.

Ekta: Just two quick questions. One with regards to debt and one with regards to the India business. I am going to ask you about debt first because the street was anticipating a lower debt versus FY16. Now, is Venezuela completely written off in terms of receivables? Can we expect further write offs in FY18 and hence, though you are not guiding for what debt could be, could it be a sub-3,500 figure by the end of FY18?

A: Currently, if you see the debt, compared to what we were six months ago, we have generated Rs 300-400 crore of cash which we have used pretty much to write off Venezuela, we have taken the Venezuela write off. So, as net debt stands, it is at about Rs 3,600 crore and you can expect  obviously some of the Zetia sales also that happened in Q4, the cash collection will only come in Q1, so you can expect further debt reduction in the current year compared to what you saw in FY17.

Ekta: With regards to India, 6 percent growth for two consecutive quarters now, is there a structural change you are working with in the India business with the pricing issue, with the fixed dose combination (FDC) ban and now some further regulatory headwinds that we can expect? What is the run rate for India in FY18 and structurally what has changed?

A: I feel very good about our India business. I think Q4 was an aberration on two accounts. One is one account of the demonetisation, a little bit of January got impacted and part of February. And then from March onwards, we are preparing for the goods and services tax (GST) coming in, so there was some inventory corrections that we took in Q4. But from Q1 onwards, on a full-year basis, India should continue to grow close to about 15 odd percent for Glenmark. So, we are expecting some strong growth coming out of India in the current year.
Kolkata: Union minister of state (independent charge) for Power, Coal and Renewable Energy, Piyush Goel addresses at a media conference during inauguration of "CII National Council meeting" in Kolkata on Tuesday. PTI Photo (PTI1_3_2017_000149B)

The government will come out with a policy for promotion of electric vehicles this fiscal with an aim to make India a global leader in the segment, Union minister Piyush Goyal said today.

"We will see a very robust policy (for promotion of electric vehicles) in this fiscal," the power and coal minister, who is on a four-day visit to Vienna and London with a business delegation, told PTI in an interview.

"Niti Aayog has drawn up certain ideas but the project is being looked after by the Ministry of Heavy Industries. I am sure that will have all discussions and come up with a robust policy because we want to encourage domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles," Goyal said on the sidelines of the India- Austria Business Forum, jointly organised by Ficci and the Indian Embassy in Vienna and Austrian Economic Chambers.

The government, he said, wants to encourage research and development in the electric mobility sector and aspires to be a leader in the world.

India is looking at having all electric-car fleet by 2030 with an objective of lowering the fuel import bill and running cost of vehicles.

"We have made a policy decision within the three ministries that all the ministerial vehicles and the vehicles used by our PSUs in and around Delhi will be replaced by the electric vehicles," he said.

Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) or some other company will be shortlisted to become an aggregator of these vehicles, Goyal said.

He further said the government is confident that it will be able to come up with such vehicles at a cost not exceeding the current cost of hiring vehicles.

Goyal had earlier said initially the government can handhold the electric vehicle industry for 2-3 years to help it stabilise.

Citing the example of Maruti, which has logged over 30 per cent profit this time, he had explained that the government had supported India's largest car maker initially, which eventually led to development of the big automotive industry in the country.
Tapan Singhel

The recent implementation of the Real Estate Regulation and Development Act (RERA) will change the paradigm for consumers in the real estate sector ushering in transparency and standardization in the real estate sector. RERA seeks to address and resolve major consumer related issues while acquiring property in India like delays, price, quality of construction, title and other changes. While the regulator aims to bring consumers interest in the forefront, the protection of the same property against unforeseen risk, probability of which is starkly high in our country, does not feature in the realm.

Our major cities which are densely populated are not just prone to perils such as fire but are highly prone to natural catastrophes such as earthquakes, flooding and cyclones. Allianz has placed India among the Top-10 countries worldwide on peril ranking for natural catastrophes. India is clubbed with countries such as Philippines and Japan, where the severity of natural disasters is very high. Numerous incidences in the recent past have been a testimony to this.

The floods that ravaged Chennai in November- December 2015 caused massive catastrophic losses. According to a report by Swiss Re, economic losses worth Rs 14,709 were incurred in the Chennai floods of which insured losses were just Rs 5,049 (34%).Moreover, only a small fragment of these insured losses were pertaining to home insurance. At Bajaj Allianz, of the nearly 8000 claims the company paid in the aftermath of the Chennai floods, only 1% was pertaining to insurance covers for home. This showed the dismal penetration of and exposure to home insurance in Chennai and its surrounding areas, just like other parts of the country, which is reflected every time cities experience a natural calamity.

We invest our lifes savings and pay huge EMIs to realize the dream of owning a house yet majority Indians do not feel the need to protect it. In fact, if we look at industry figures of home insurance vis-a-vis the quantum that an individual invests in real estate in the country, it clearly showcase that home or property Insurance does not even figure at the fringes of an individuals financial planning.

Currently in the case of a natural disaster, the heavy pay outs from the Prime Minister Relief funds and National Disaster Management Agency's (NDMA) funds cause a massive economic drain to the exchequer. Interestingly, the NDMA had recommended making disaster insurance mandatory for all residential properties in urban areas. According to a recent United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction report, India had 19 events of natural disasters, including floods, droughts and heat waves, in 2015 and an economic loss to the state exchequer of more than $3 billion from these disasters. It is therefore critical for the government to look at alternative ways of funding these natural disasters especially to ensure that there is a basic security net for all citizens and it brings down the present undefined bill to rebuild lives after the large scale destruction of natural catastrophes.

If RERA partners with insurance companies to address and include the aspect of securing the home in its purview it could be instrumental in changing the landscape. RERA could be one mode of filling this gap, other could be property tax and index based home insurance schemes.

The centre can look at affordable home insurance scheme in association with insurance companies that would cover losses to property due to catastrophic events. It can be like an index based policy similar to the weather based crop insurance schemes, which will compensate for the damage caused by the natural catastrophe where the triggers of the Nat-Cat event will be predefined. This could be enacted state wise, with the states opting for covers that best suit their Nat-Cat exposures.

The schemes can be implemented in association with insurance providers and the premium can be collected along with the property tax. For instance, a pre-decided amount of rainfall in a flood prone area or an earthquake of a certain magnitude in the earthquake prone parts of the country, if crossed, could trigger the property damage claim making the insurance company liable to pay. Having these pre decided terms will ensure transparency and physical survey/inspection will not be required, leading to faster relief to the affected.

Incidentally, after any natural calamity we see a rise in the number of queries related to home insurance. For instance, after the Chennai floods, we witnessed a rise in the uptake of home insurance in the city and its neighbouring areas. Similarly after J&K floods too, we have seen many of those who had availed home insurance covers which were also largely under-insured, opting for enhancing their covers after receiving claim pay out.

Unlike the prevalent misconception, home insurance is not expensive especially when compared to other means that one invests in to secure their home or property. Insurers have taken cognisance of lengthy procedures as well as documentation and have brought in newer products that require minimal data and paperwork, thus making the process of purchase hassle free. The awareness around this subject is dismal in our country and insurers are continuously looking at unique avenues to educate customers. At the same time we strongly feel that the industry, RERA and government can come together to help change this sentiment.

The writer is MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance
Following the RBI directive on bad loans, Yes Bank reported a disclosure in divergence of Rs 4176.7 crore in gross non-performing assets as on March 2016, as per the annual report of the bank.

The divergence in net NPAs stood at Rs 3318.7 crore.

In March 2016, Yes Bank had reported a gross NPA figure at Rs 750 crore as against the RBIs assessment of Rs 4,925.7 crore. In the same period, net NPAs declared by the bank stood at Rs 284.5 crore while the RBI assessment showed a substantially high number of Rs 3603.1 crore.

Explaining the RBI's assessment, Rana Kapoor, Yes Banks MD and CEO mentioned that the gross NPAs increased largely due to one single cement borrower (Jaiprakash Associates), the exposure to which stood at Rs 911 crore (88 percent of gross NPAs).

In a statement Yes Bank said it expects this to be recovered in the near term and it has already made specific provision of Rs 227.9 crore towards the account.

"Therefore, the bank reiterates that there is no carry forward impact of the divergence observed by RBI in FY17-18," the statement added.

On April 18 this year, the RBI directed banks to make disclosures wherever additional gross NPAs identified by the RBI exceeded 15 percent of published incremental gross NPAs for the period by the bank.

The central bank also asked banks to make adequate provisioning towards the same.

The mid-sized private bank set aside provisioning of Rs 858 crore against the divergences. It includes provisions made towards the cement account at Rs 227.9 crore.

This led to an increase in banks gross NPAs for the fiscal year ending March 2017.

For country's largest private lender ICICI bank, the classification of gross NPAs due to divergences stood at Rs 5,105 crore, the bank said in a post results conference call.

As on March 2017, Yes Banks gross NPAs in absolute terms doubled to Rs 2,018.56 crore compared to Rs 1,005.9 crore in the previous quarter. From a year ago, the gross NPA figure jumped 169.51 percent from Rs 748.98 crore.

In percentage terms, the gross NPA figure stood at 1.56 percent of the loan book from 0.85 percent sequentially. Net NPAs for the bank stood at 0.81 percent (Rs 1072.3 crore) compared to 0.29 percent (Rs 342.4 crore) sequentially.

After duly factoring the provision impact of divergences, banks credit cost for FY17 is at 53 basis points (bps or percentage points), the annual report said.

In a note Morgan Stanley has maintained that downside risks still remain to their target price of the bank.
Yogi Adityanath, newly appointed Chief Minister of Indias most populous state of Uttar Pradesh arrives to attend a meeting with government officials at Lok Bhavan in Lucknow, India March 20, 2017. REUTERS/Pawan Kumar - RTX31THW

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanth stressed on using the strong ties between Japan and India for the growth of the state.

Adityanath made these remarks during his meeting with Japanese envoy to India, Kenji Hiramatsu, who called on him here.

"India has had strong relations with Japan and Uttar Pradesh government wants to use them for the growth of the state. We want that these relations gain more momentum," he was quoted as saying during the meeting.

The chief minister said his government was working to provide better facilities to the Buddhist tourists from Japan and other countries coming to India besides seeking the help of that country on projects on the Buddh circuit as before.

The envoy gave an account of the works to be done under partner city agreement between Kyoto and Varanasi, the constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi, which he said will be done soon.
Tamil Nadu government said US car maker Ford had set up manufacturing facilities in Gujarat in 2015, after their first unit in this state, to "avoid logistics cost" and to serve North and Western parts of the country.

Responding to media reports that major investors like Ford had invested outside Tamil Nadu, the state government today said the reason cited by Ford to establish their factory in Gujarat was to provide "better logistics solution" and "service delivery mechanism."

"The approximate cost of logistics alone has been estimated at Rs 70 crore.. Thus, Ford Motor company invested in greenfield project in Gujarat only to avoid additional transport freight cost," a government release said.

The US Car maker, in 2015, had invested over USD 1 billion in two manufacturing facilities in Sanand, Gujarat spread across 460 acre.

The vehicle plant will have annual capacity of 2.40 lakh while engine plant at 2.70 lakh.

Ford had told the state government that 60 per cent of its cars were sold in North and Western parts of the country.

It was due to these reasons, Ford decided to invest in a project in Gujarat to meet the demand, the government said.

Even for the export of Ford cars, the company wanted to have another port apart from Ennore Port (near Chennai) and decided Gujarat port to be "feasible" and "commercially viable" option, the release said.

Last year, Ford had announced that it will invest Rs 1,300 crore to set up a Global Technology and Business Centre at Sholinganallur.

"This is the first and only Research and Development Centre set up (by Ford) outside United States of America," the release said.

"ELCOT (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) has alloted 28 acres for the project, which shall generate employment for over 12,000 persons directly and indirectly," an official release said.

Ford Motors India, which has manufacturing facilities in Maraimalai Nagar near Chennai has so far invested around Rs 4,500 crore with production capacity of two lakh cars and 2.50 lakh car engines.

The company employs about 5,000 people in Tamil Nadu, the release added.
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With India Grid Trusts (IndiGrid) initial offer sale coming up this week, investors will hope that it manages to replicate the successful public offering of IRB Infrastructure, Indias first such infrastructure investment trust.

At first glance, IndiGrid, which is sponsored by Sterlite Power Grid Ventures, might not be an appealing opportunity. To put it in perspective, IndiGrid holds two transmission assets.

Together they have a total network of eight power transmission lines of 1936 circuit kilometers and two substations with a total 6000 MVA (mega volt amp) of transmission capacity. Ideally, being a hybrid product, InvITs yields are supposed to be a notch better than plain-vanilla bond offerings. This is usually the case because unlike equity InvITs are considered safe investment avenues, though they might not necessarily grow your capital.

Based on the expected cash flows from these two transmission assets, IndiGrids indicative yield (or annual returns) works out to be in the neighbourhood of 10.9 percent (at an upper price band of Rs 98-100 a unit).

While the yield is attractive, it may differ or may be lower in the initial three years. Mind you, the investors will be paid an interest for which tax will have to be paid. Lets assume an investor pumps in Rs 10 lakh (minimum size) in an InvIT. If he falls under the tax net of say 20-30 percent it would mean a yield of 7.63-8.72 percent, respectively,  this being quite low given the nature and complexity of the instrument.

Also, it begs the question, why is the company raising funds through the InvIT at an yield of 10.9 percent for retiring its debt which costs around 8 percent?

Silver Lining

On the positive side, the volatility is expected to be far less and cash flows are going to be more secure.

First, these transmission assets generate a fixed amount of tariff which essentially means there is very little risk of volatility in cash flows unlike a road asset or other assets, whose cash flows may differ depending on growth in traffic.

Second, its customer is the government-owned transmission utility Power Grid. So, most likely there wont be any payment delays or defaults.

Third, these assets have a very long life of about 35 years. Any investor who wants to park his money in long-term debt papers will want to favourably look at this InvIT.

Yield Drivers

Since risk profile of its transmission assets is better, it is not all poor pickings for the investors. Investors can enjoy a higher yield in future as and when the company adds more and more projects under the InvIT. Sterlite Power Grid has about 8 more transmission assets in its kitty that are supposed to be generating an EBITDA 3 times the EBITDA generated by the two assets that are now being offered under the InvIT.

Out of the eight assets, three transmission assets are operational and soon will fit the SEBI criteria of one-year minimum lifespan before they can qualify for a public offering through the InvIT route.

Meanwhile, the company is hopeful of adding a few operational assets over the next two years which promise an accretive yield. It essentially means the yields on the new assets will be better than the yield on existing units.

Through the proceeds of the issue (issue size is pegged at Rs 2250 crore), IndiGrid will use about Rs 1600 crore to pare its debt.

Subsequently, the company can actually raise further debt in the IndiGrid at around 8 percent. If the debt is spent well to acquire more such assets which could yield close to 11 percent or even higher, investors could be in for some rich harvesting.
The Nifty at the last day of the trading week managed to hold on to its high of 9400 that it had scaled in the week. All the major indices hit record highs. Positive monsoon forecast, as well as the strong foreign institutional investor (FII) buying, aided market sentiment.

To know the way forward for the market and spaces that one could invest in CNBC-TV18 spoke to Nilesh Shah MD, Kotak Mahindra Asset Management and Ashwani Gujral ashwanigujral.com.

Shah says valuation wise the market is not in an expensive bubble zone yet but the stock selection and stock picking remains key. One needs to build an appropriate scenario.

One could look at opportunities in spaces where the government is spending money from budgetary allocation. Two, could be looking at operating leveraged stories and the third could businesses that are doing well because of the longer term trend of the shift in market share or business from the unorganised sector to the organised sector.

However, he advises caution on penny stocks, leveraged positions in futures and options by inexperienced people.

Talking about the banking issue- the divergence between the NPAs that the banks have reported and what the RBI is saying, he says in many of the private sector banks while the RBIs assessment of NPA is higher than the managements assessment, it is not that everything assessed by RBI will be written off because they could be secured loans and one can enforce security to recovery loans.

On the earnings front, he says most of the numbers that are out tell us that effect of demonetisation is behind, consumer confidence is back and future looks better. However, the rollout of GST and its impact on businesses will need to be looked at.

Below is the transcript of the discussion.

Anuj: Right now what is good for the market, do you think this market needs to correct from here, are you deploying fresh money here because money is just pouring in and you have to do it, what is the call here now at these levels?

Shah: I have just returned from two days trip to Baroda in Ahmedabad and clearly my cousin brothers have started advising me which stocks to buy and how they will increase in value and they are turning out to be right. These are the typical signs where one can believe that markets have started becoming frothy. So, in the penny stocks definitely there is some amount of froth coming in. You have started seeing SMSs coming to you saying buy this stock, it will double by so and so day and so on and so forth.

There is probably also a demand for F&O leverage by inexperienced speculators. So, this is typically again a weak point in the market. So, I will advise caution on penny stocks, I will advise caution on leveraged positions in F&O by inexperienced people.

At the same time, I also returned from about 12 days trip to East Coast in US There I saw for the first time number of attendees in our meetings expanding from one or two to four or five.

Second, I saw higher appetite for a single country fund for India, like it exists for China. It doesnt mean that money will start coming in tomorrow. However people are open and if we work hard, we should be able to get India dedicated money.

Third I saw family offices, endowment funds, fund of funds all gearing towards higher allocation to India provided they can pickup bottom up stocks. So, on a top-down basis on a 5-10 year view basis they all are extremely bullish on India. However, they need to be given appropriate stocks. It is almost like what Warren Buffett commented that

I am interested in India provided I can get a big deal.

So, in the short term there are pockets of markets especially in penny stocks and leveraged positions where there is need to be a little bit cautious.

In the longer end, we do see increased allocation from FII, provided we can provide them bottom-up opportunities.

Reema: How do we find these bottom-up stories now, how does one generate alpha? You told us about the stocks which we should perhaps avoid at these levels  the penny stocks, the leveraged stocks etc. Where does one deploy money then, what should be the approach to generate alpha now?

Shah: First we must accept that this is no longer the first-day batting pitch. It is the fifth-day pitch, so one will have to be cautious. You cant be hitting every ball for four and six. You will have to place out your innings. So, do remember that pitch has changed. We still believe the opportunities there in the space where the government is spending money from budgetary allocation and hence there will be growth. Second, could be operating leveraged stories. Now there is enough liquidity in the banking system but credit growth has come down to a low level. Hence demand to some extent has been impacted. However companies are running their plants at 65-70 percent capacity utilisation, if over a period of time because of the banking liquidity and expanding credit growth demand picks up then the same plants will start running at 70-80 percent capacity utilisation.

The profit margin of 65 percent utilisation is substantially lower than what will be available at 80 percent utilisation. So, go for operating leverage companies.

Third, could be a bigger longer term trend which is visible today in the market and which I had talked earlier also  the shift of business or market share from unorganised sector to organised sector. Clearly brand consciousness of Indian consumers, demonetisation impacting trade payment channels and the likely rollout of GST, these are all factors which are increasing organised sectors market share vis-a-vis unorganised sectors market share.

So, you will have to build a scenario for future and invest. If your scenario building is correct then you can still make money in this market.

This market is similar to 2007 end or 2008 beginning where from 21000 markets indeed corrected substantially. However if you had picked up stocks in IT and pharma sector on a bottom up basis, they all outperformed the fall by a significant margin. So, stock selection is key, stock picking is key and you must now pay for the future by building appropriate scenario.

Anuj: You are sounding alarm bells here because a lot of people think maybe we are in a bit of an over exuberance, but not quite yet in 2007 and 2008 kind of zones, maybe more in 2003-2004 kind of zone.

Shah: Certainly I did not want to convey in terms of valuations. All I want to convey is that even in 2007-2008 high valuation which was substantially higher than today, stock picking delivered returns. The same scenario applies today also. So, I am not at all saying that we are in an expensive bubble zone.

Anuj: What did you make of the news flow on banks on Friday where there is some divergence between the non-performing assets (NPA), as declared by the banks and as recognised by the RBI, your thoughts on that?

Shah: One, servicing of the instrument or a loan vis-a-vis security of the instrumental loan is completely different. A loan can become NPA because it is not getting serviced properly. But it does not mean that it has to be written off provided you have appropriate security in your hand and more importantly you have ability to enforce it. So, my feeling is that in many of the private sector banks, while RBI\'s assessment of NPA is substantially higher than the management\'s assessment, it is not that everything assessed by RBI is going to be written off. These are secured loans and one can definitely enforce security to recover the loans.

I am sure all of you would have led WhatsApp message which is being circulated that the largest ever fire sale is going on in India Inc. and we have seen that once the assets get sold, it moves from weaker hand to stronger hand, then debt servicing does start happening. So, the truth lies somewhere in between what management has projected versus what RBI has assessed.

Reema: How have the earnings been for you so far? Has it been better than what you were anticipating and do the FY18 estimates look optimistic there or not?

Shah: One thing clearly the broad market numbers are getting vitiated by what one bank suddenly decides to provide in terms of NPA. For example, a large consumer durable company suddenly got classified as NPA in one of the banks. Now, this kind of one-off events does impact overall broad market earnings quite significantly.

We are more focused in our portfolios and here, so far, the earnings numbers which have come and the majority of them have already come, the numbers are more or less a little bit ahead of our expectations. The earnings are also pointing out clearly that the effect of demonetisation is now behind. Companies have recovered well. Consumer confidence has bounced bank and clearly, the future looks a little bit better. The management commentary is becoming a little bit positive.

Of course, everyone wants to put a caveat and the caveat for us going forward is the rollout of GST. While the government does mention that it will be revenue neutral, but within revenue neutrality, there could be a significant deviation in company-to-company and sector-to-sector. So, subject to an efficient rollout of GST not impacting businesses, managements have become more positive.

Anuj: The obvious question, is it still a buy on dips market or are you sensing first signs of correction?

Gujral: The question can be answered in many ways. Do I think it is a 500 point Nifty correction? No. Can it be a 100-150 point correction? That is possible. Can it be some sectors correct and others hold up, that is also possible. Like today, if you were in housing finance, it felt like a correction, but otherwise, Nifty was kind of flattish.

So, overall yes, it remains a buy on dips, but buy on dips to what level? 20-day moving average thereabouts, between 20 and 50, is a good place to buy. That is the equilibrium zone. So, if we get there the market would be again ripe for buying. As of today, given that upsides are difficult to come, it looks like we are not willing to go higher till we get back into the equilibrium zone.

Reema: Walk us through a few of your trading ideas that you have for next week.

Gujral: Given that I am not very positive on financials or NBFC and we have a bit of reason to have a sell-off, Yes Bank is a sell with a stop loss of Rs 1,520, target of Rs 1,460. Capital First is a sell with a sell of Rs 772, target of Rs 745. Punjab National Bank (PNB) is a sell with a stop loss of Rs 171, target of Rs 160.

The important thing is these are not long-term sells. So, maybe 3-5 sessions, you should be able to achieve some downside and that is the point of these calls.

Anuj: One more word on real estate because that had a big close on Friday as well. Is it still a buy?

Gujral: Real estate also remains a buy and it has been moving sideways for last 5-8 sessions so that also qualifies as a correction. What today has shown is that if the Nifty dips, this is one of the first places you look at, but obviously these stocks will also correct at some point, so yes they remain a buy. What kind of buy? I would much rather buy them at lower levels rather than once they have rallied 5-6 sessions. So, everything possibly needs to cool off a bit before you enter.

Anuj: What your thoughts on ICICI Bank at Rs 300 per share?

Gujral: Problem is that you are not getting the big money. Otherwise, the stock should have moved higher post its 10 percent type move, so I do not think it is a great stock if you want to make 50 percent. 15 percent maybe in three months, that is possible. So, keep a stop loss of Rs 280 and look for possible targets of about Rs 345 thereabouts. But overall, large stocks are having great difficult in moving because big money is not really coming in.

Reema: What is your view on TVS Motor Company and what would be the right time to enter the market. This week was great for all the two-wheelers. TVS Motors was, in particular, up about 5 percent. It has moved up nearly 75 percent in the last one year. What from here on? It is at levels of Rs 520 thereabout.

Gujral: From a short-term perspective, TVS Motors is great. But when you buy something from a one-year perspective, it better should have corrected maybe 10-15 percent before you enter. So, for the next 15, 20, 30 days, it looks good. Possibly, it can even hit Rs 580-600. Keep a stop loss around Rs 480. But from a one year perspective if you have to buy, stocks must correct to that 50-day moving averages which in the case of TVS Motors is around Rs 460-470. So, if you correct to those levels, then it becomes a longer-term buy.

Anuj: What is your view on Sun Pharmaceuticals at Rs 626?

Gujral: Everybody knows my view that these stocks are not in flavour. If you are that very long-term investor who can wait for the next bull market in Sun Pharma or in pharma, maybe three years down the line or five years down the line, maybe it is worthwhile, but if I were you, I would participate in the movers of today. So, you are not losing a whole lot of money.

If I were you, I would wait for this correction to get over, get long on housing finance and other NBFCs because that is the sector of this bull market. I do not think Sun Pharma will really make you rich. Even a long term which according to me should not be more than 1.5-2 years, so I think you will be better off trying to enter an outperformer.
The S&P BSE Sensex reclaimed mount 30K earlier this week to hit a fresh record high and if earnings recovery happens better than estimates, then Sensex could well hit mount 39K by December 2017, Morgan Stanley said in a report.

Earnings revisions will likely turn positive in the coming six months after six years in negative territory. Valuations are not yet stretched against history, other markets and bonds.

Rising demand for equities from domestic households and potential M&A activity could take multiples higher in coming months, said the report authored by Ridham Desai and Sheela Rathi.

Morgan Stanleys December 2017 target, the BSE Sensex would trade at 16x one-year forward earnings, similar to its historical average. The bull-case multiple would be 17x our bull-case earnings and about 19x our base-case earnings.

There is a 30 percent probability that Sensex could trade at 39K on policy reforms as well as global factors. The much talked about earnings growth accelerates to 19 percent in FY2018 and about 27 percent in FY2019.

Bulls were in charge of D-Street which is evident from the fact that benchmark indices are trading recording highs so far in the month of May.

How does one participate in this market where bottom-up opportunities appear scanty? It is only a problem if one remains anchored to past winners. Morgan Stanley identified five themes to look for winners such as M&A, Capex, under-owned stocks, correlations, and growth at reasonable price.

The investment bank is positive on stocks which include names like IndusInd Bank, RIL, Jubilant Foods, HCL Technologies, Infosys, Bharat Financials, Glenmark Pharma, M&M, and Bajaj Auto.

Morgan Stanley explains that the growth cycle is fast turning and this could be the beginning of a new growth cycle. If you are ready to humour us then we would take this further by saying that earnings could compound at 20 percent over the coming five years (in the 2003 to 2008 cycle, index earnings compounded 40%), said Ridham Desai.

The growth cycles are accompanied by an expansion in multiples and at least under this scenario the Nifty likely triples in five years.

Morgan Stanley does not find valuations to be that rich and it depends more on what you are comparing it with. If one is comparing valuation relative to US equities this is about as attractive as Indian stocks have been in a while, said the note.

India's own P/B is at historical average compared to emerging markets (EMs), India looks rich but then return on equity (ROE) is gapping higher.

The global investment further added that the Sensex is still in buy zone versus local bonds but midcap valuations look stretched. Valuations are useful to make a market call only at extremes which is not the case at the moment.
One cannot begin to emphasise the importance of cheap taxi fare in a city where the streets are swamped with kaali-peelis or the black and yellow taxis. Every morning and evening, during peak hours, if you pause for a look, youll see several hands stretched out to hail a cab to the innumerable destinations. The taxis lend life and convenience to a city, so where their fares stay low, the lives of commuters becomes easier. Lets see some places across the world which have the highest and the lowest taxi fares, according to a study by taxi2airport.com which analysed data collated by Taxi-Calculator.com. (Image: Reuters)

All commercial cars (cabs, aggregator cabs and fleet cabs with yellow number plates) running in Mumbai and its satellite areas will have to be fitted with speed governors limiting their speed up to 80 kmph.

The state transport commissioners office issued a circular yesterday to all the regional transport offices (RTOs) in Mumbai, Thane, Navi, Mumbai, Vasai-Virar and Kalyan to deny them a fitness certificate unless they are equipped with a speed governor.

Around 300 Kali Peeli taxis were turned away on Thursday because the required equipment were not installed. Taxi unions now plan to move the Bombay High Court against the order, stated a report by the Times of India.

Transport experts said the speed governors were justified, considering that nearly 42 percent accidents in the state were due to speeding by commercial vehicles. On the Eastern Freeway, for instance, taxis speed past 80 kmph, an official added, as per the ToI report.

In 2015 the Maharashtra government had made it mandatory for all transport vehicles to fit speed governors as prescribed in Rule 118 of Central Motor Vehicles Rules, 1989. It was also made mandatory for fitment of anti-theft devices in all motor vehicles.
If you are a millennial by now you must have received an SMS from tour operators offering a holiday overseas funded by a pre-approved personal loan. The appeal of running away from the scorching heat without paying a rupee now makes many go for such an offer. Call it aggressive banking or inevitable consumerism, pre-approved loan offers are here to stay.

Everything that comes to you free must be seen with extra care. Go for one if you really need one, only after you go through the fine print and comparing the vital factors such as rate of interest, repayment, terms and conditions with other options available in the market," says Kiran Telang, Founder and Director of Mumbai based Dhanayush Capital Advisors.

Do you really need it?

Many a time, individuals end up availing a pre-approved loan just because they come across one. There is no concrete reason. Just because there is a pre-approved personal loan offer available, one may want to grab an overseas vacation. This may sound cool. But most personal finance experts are vocal about avoiding funding wants with borrowed funds. This can lead to a debt trap.

"Just because there is a personal loan at fingertips, one may want to upgrade his holiday from Himachal to Mauritius," points out Vineet Jain, Founder and CEO of Loanstreet.in, a loan aggregator firm. By opting for a pre-approved personal loan one gets instant gratification but ends up paying a higher rate of interest while repaying such a loan. Never ever go for a personal loan if you do not need one, he adds.

However, there are instances where a pre-approved loan would work for you.

Picking them right

Banks offer you a pre-approved loan after taking into account your cash-flows and other loans repayment track record, explains Rajiv Raj, founder of Mumbai-based CreditVidya.com. A pre-approved loan or credit offer comes with a maximum amount of money on offer and a given rate of interest. You can choose to reduce the tenure of the loan. A point to note is the offer is subject to banks approval and subject to some conditions such as submission of income proof in some cases. If you are stuck with high interest bearing credit card debt, avail a pre-approved personal loan to pay off credit card debt.

Though the bank takes into account the repayment capacity of the individual while offering a pre-approved loan, one may be banking with multiple banks and you may be offered multiple such pre-approved loans at a given moment of time, points out Rajiv Raj. For example, a bank may offer a personal loan offer for a sum of Rs 3 lakh. But if there are three such offers made to an individual, and that individual decides to opt for all three, he may soon land in trouble. Do not over-leverage yourself by opting for multiple offers. This may lead you into a debt trap.

Know the finer details before signing on the dotted line, says Kiran Telang. Many times such offers come with steep foreclosure penalties. If you are not sure about any aspect of the loan, ask for clarification. All these loans can be negotiated further for better terms. If you have a good credit score you can negotiate on the rate of interest and repayment terms. You can also get the processing charges waived.

In case of credit cards analyse the benefits associated with the credit cards on offer. In most cases banks are keen to push cards with high fees and benefits associated with certain brands. In such a case, you should be assessing your needs first. If you are not a frequent traveler, there is no point going for a co-branded card with an airline company. If you eat out more frequently, it makes sense to go for a card offering reward points at fine-dine places.

While the consumer loans  be it credit cards, auto loans, personal loans -- are an area of caution for pre-approved loans, the experts however look at pre-approved home loans in the light of the borrowers profile.

Pre-approved home loans make a lot of sense in case of self-employed individuals. Such individuals get an idea of their loan eligibility if they have a pre-approved home loan, says Vineet Jain. If you are salaried the process of loan approval does not take much time and hence there is no need to go for pre-approval. Some builders offer special loan schemes offering relaxed repayment terms. If you have a pre-approved home loan, you may not get to avail such a project specific special home loan.

Pre-approved home loans may mean easy access to credit. However, prudent use of such offers is the key to better money management.
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Is the US policy on tightening work visa norms for foreign workers having an impact on the India real estate market? The uncertainty created among Indian Information Technology professionals by the recent tightening of the H-1B visa requirements has led to a rise in queries for home purchase by Indian workers in the US who are possibly considering returning back to India.

In Bengaluru, the hub of IT companies, many professionals currently working abroad are investing with seasoned developers. There has been an increase of 20-35 percent from NRIs over the last few months but it is too early to say whether the techies working in the US have pressed the panic button, says Nausheen, a broker active in Bengaluru.

Techies returning to Bengaluru typically look at mid-segment properties in the range of Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 1.75 crore and those who are settled abroad for good scout for units in the range of Rs 3 crore and above. Township model is immensely popular with this segment as it has all the basic amenities in one place, says Nausheen, adding enquiries have almost doubled after 2015.

With the US policy likely to restrict outsourcing, several Indian IT firms are looking to hire local US talent instead of sending Indian employees on work visas. Infosys has already said it will hire 10,000 people in the US over the next two years. There are talks that the likes of Wipro, Cognizant and Tech Mahindra may follow suit.

This may lead to more Indians residing in the US wanting to return and look for a job back home. According to a media report, the number of Indians in the US searching for jobs in India has gone up more than 10-fold between December and March. But will this be a mass exodus and will it lead to increased demand for residential and commercial real estate back home?

Real estate brokers agree that the soundbytes from the US administration have been rather harsh on Indian IT professionals. In Pune, a few IT professionals who are contemplating starting out on their own are scouting for some office spaces, says a broker.

In the last three months there has been an uptick in residential demand and supply across key Indian cities registering a 70 percent increase over the previous quarter. However, it is too early to say if this uptick in demand is due to IT professionals returning home. While there could be demand creation due to this, it depends on whether these professionals already have property in India and are looking to scale up their investment, or if they are looking to invest into fresh projects, says AS Sivaramakrishnan, Head, Residential Services  India, CBRE South Asia.

Assuming that the exodus does start happening, it unlikely that startups will spring up and look for commercial space to set up shop as the start-up story is lost in the wind, say experts. The first priority for most of these techies will be to find themselves a job. IT companies will not be in an expansion mode; they may at best be looking at filling vacancies (post the layoffs) by adjusting or hiring talent that has returned. These people may consider buying houses with either the golden handshake that they may have received. Some may even invest in regular investment yielding income assets or two properties both for self-use and rental income. They may decide to invest either in their hometowns or in areas where they finally land themselves a job in places such as Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai, says Gulam Zia Executive Director - Advisory, Retail & Hospitality, Knight Frank India.

However, a section of real estate experts say that while it is too early to say whether there will be a mass exodus from the US or merely a trickle, their investments in real estate will all depend on whether the IT professional will return with a job in the home turf or will they come back without one.

There will be a fair bit of exodus as many IT professionals are contemplating moving out, coming back to India but that will depend on the ability of IT companies here to hire them and their entrepreneurial streak to start something of their own. Having said that, we will see many IT companies going through a massive change due to the Trump factor. Many will get into newer competencies around machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics, automation etc, says Ronesh Puri, Managing Director of Executive Access.

vandana.ramnani@nw18.com
Moneycontrol News

Snapdeal co-founders Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal are likely to receive USD 30 million in cash each from SoftBank after their exit from the company. The payout is part of the merger of Snapdeal with Flipkart, sources confirmed to Moneycontrol.

SoftBank is likely to invest a large sum in the merged entity, giving the existing stakeholders an exit.

The founders hold less than 6.5 percent stake in Snapdeal, pegging the deal valuation at just about USD 1 billion, almost one-sixth of what it was valued in early 2016.

The companys board has reached a consensus and due diligence is likely to take place from next week. Almost all the deal contours have been finalised, a company official said on condition of anonymity.

The two founders had earned close to Rs 80 crore each from sale of shares during a large funding round led by Ontario Teacher's Pension Plan in 2015.

Moneycontrol on Thursday reported that Snapdeal has agreed to a non-binding letter of intent (LoI) for a merger with rival Flipkart.

The deal, which has been in works for last few months, was stuck due to disagreement amongst stakeholders over final settlement for the company's earliest investors namely Kalaari Capital and Nexus Venture Partners.

Except for few top executives, others are not likely to be retained in the combined entity, said the person quoted above without specifying the exact number. In February, Snapdeal went through a mass retrenchment exercise which saw over 2,300 employees being let go.

Over the last few months, the company has also witnessed massive voluntary attrition.

While the exact number of the employees in the company could not be ascertained, the company's headcount is expected to be below 2,000 people as of now.

There was no immediate clarity on whether or not the existing or former employees who have vested esops in the company would be entitled to any benefit through this deal.

Around 2,500-3,000 current as well as former employees hold close to 5-6 percent stake in Snapdeal in terms of ESOPs.

Since its inception in 2010, the e-commerce firm has raised USD 1.75 billion from investors such as SoftBank, Kalaari Capital, Temasek, Alibaba Group, eBay and others.

It's largest investor SoftBank in a filing this week said that it has incurred a valuation loss of USD 1.4 billion for the financial year 2016-17, mainly on account of its two biggest investments in India  Snapdeal and Ola.
copper_hindustan_44537989

Achiievers Equities' commodity report on Copper

Copper trading range for the day is 353.6-367.6.

Copper gained by 0.24% to settle at 358.85 while prices dropped from day's high as industrial output shows signs of slowing down and inventories rise.

Sentiments remain weak for copper as pressure seen amid ongoing concerns over rising supply and disappointing Chinese import data.

Workers at Cerro Colorado copper mine in Chile will strike for 24 hours in coming protest, the main union said.

SELL COPPER JUN 2017 @ 360.00 SL 363.50 TGT 357.20-355.00.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.

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ICICI Direct's currency report on USDINR

Government bonds ended little changed, as investors awaited the auction of a new 10 - year paper amid lack of major domestic cues The benchmark 6.97 % 202 6 bond yield was unchanged at 6.94%  Yield on US 10 - y ear declined to 2. 39 % from 2. 4 1 % in the previous session

The rupee posted its biggest single - session gain in four weeks against the US$, as normal monsoon forecast by Indian Meterological Department (IMD) lifted sentiments  Major currencies traded on a mixed note yesterday. The British pound fell post BoEs monetary policy meeting. B o Es stance on policy over Brexit being dependent on further policy action weighed on pound. Japanese Yen posted gains against US$ due to a dent to risk sentiment

In the currency futures market, the most traded dollar - rupee May contract on the NSE ended at 64.51.The May contract open interest declined 5.07 % from the previous day  June contract open interest declined 1.95 % in the last session  We expect the US$ to meet resistance at higher levels . Utilise upsides in the pair to go short on the US$INR pair.

Intra-day strategy

US$INR May futures contract (NSE) View: Bearish on US$INR Sell US$INR in the range of 64.70-64.80 Market Lot: US$1000 Target: 64.45/ 64.35 Stop Loss: 64.90 Support Resistance S1/ S2: 64.60 / 64.40 R1/R2:64.85 /64.95

The views and investment tips expressed by investment experts/broking houses/rating agencies on moneycontrol.com are their own, and not that of the website or its management. Moneycontrol.com advises users to check with certified experts before taking any investment decisions.

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Riding high on the growing demand for high-end marble flooring in luxury residential and commercial space, imported marble company, Stonex India is eyeing to double its revenues to Rs 500 crore in the next two years.

It is also planning to launch 10 stores in the next two years to cater to all the five regions of India, including north, south, east, west and central, for selling its products.

"There is a huge demand for imported marble especially in the luxury residential, commercial and office space segments. We hope to double our revenues to nearly Rs 500 crore over the next two years," Stonex Director Gaurav Agarwal told PTI here.

The company imports the natural stones largely from European countries and processes them at Kishangarh in Rajasthan.

Stonex currently supplies its products from Krishnagarh and its distribution outlet in Delhi. "But now we want to have our own stores which will cater to the growing demand across the five regions," he said.

The company is planning to open 10 stores in the next two years.

"In the first phase, we plan to open stores in locations like Ludhiana, Ahmedabad, Indore, Guwahati and Mumbai. We have also identified locations like Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kochi or Coimbatore, Bhubaneshwar for the second phase of this plan," Agarwal said.

He said the company is also eyeing a 10 per cent share in the imported marble market in India, which is around Rs 5,000 crore, and is expected to grow to nearly Rs 25,000 crore in the next 10 years.

"With a revenue target of Rs 500 crore, we hope to achieve a market share of nearly 10 per cent in the next two years," Agarwal added.
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Public sector Vijaya Bank would be raising Rs 1,000 crore capital from the market, though it has adequate capital compared to other banks, a top bank official said today.

"We have adequate capital and not requested the Govermnent to infuse more capital. But the bank is targeting f CRAR (Credit Adequacy Ratio) of 13 plus per cent by close of the fiscal," Vijaya Bank Managing Director and CEO, Kishore Sansi told reporters here.

The board has cleared the proposal to raise the capital and the bank will hit the market by the end of first quarter of this financial year or latest by the beginning of second quarter, Sansi said. The official, who was here to participate in Debt Swap Scheme for the benefit of farmers to clear the loans taken from money lenders, said the profit of the bank has zoomed and NPAs have come down during the 2016-17.

For the entire 2016-17 fiscal, the bank's net profit nearly doubled to Rs 750.45 crore as compared to Rs 381.80 crore in the previous fiscal, he said. The operating profit was at Rs 2,421.15 crore, up by 56. 32 per cent from Rs 1,548.87 crore, he said. The bank continued to focus on Retail and MSME sector and the retail advances increased to Rs 29,235 crore, up by 24.33 per cent, which was 30.29 per cent of gross advances, he said.

Gross NPA was down to 6.59 per cent from 6.64 per cent. The bank also plans to open 100 more branches during this fiscal, Sansi said.
The Uttar Pradesh government has refused to grant sanction for the prosecution of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath in a decade-old communal riots case, the state's top bureaucrat told the Allahabad high court on Friday.

The riots in Gorakhpur in January 2007 were sparked allegedly after a provocative speech by Adityanath, the then local MP, over the killing of a Hindu youth in clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups during a Moharram procession. The BJP MP was arrested and remained in jail for 10 days before getting bail from a court.

An affidavit stating that sanction has been "refused" for prosecuting Yogi Adityanath in the case was filed before the high court by Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar.

The sanction is needed to file a chargesheet against Yogi Adityanath under IPC Section 153-A on the charge of promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and caste. This offence is punishable with imprisonment of up to five years.

A request from the UP police to the state Home Department seeking sanction to prosecute the case where Yogi Adityanath is an accused along with four others including party MLA from Gorakhpur Radhamohan Das Agarwal is hanging fire for two years.

The chief secretary had been asked to appear in person today by a May 7 order by a division bench comprising justices Ramesh Sinha and Umesh Chandra Srivastava.

In his affidavit, Bhatnagar also stated that the CB-CID, which has been investigating the case registered in connection with the riots, has proposed to submit its closure report and it will be submitted before the trial court.

The development came during hearing of a petition seeking an independent probe into the violence.

The petition was filed by Parvez Parwaz, the complainant in the FIR lodged at Cantonment police station of Gorakhpur in connection with the riots and Asad Hayat, a witness in the case.

The petitioners moved the high court seeking an investigation into the case by an independent agency. The petitioners' counsel S F A Naqvi challenged the state government's stand in declining to grant sanction for the prosecution of the chief minister.

"We challenged the state government's stand and submitted before the court that the chief secretary happens to be a subordinate of the chief minister, who is himself an accused.

"The refusal to grant sanction is tantamount to an accused declining to prosecute himself," Naqvi told PTI.

Naqvi said the petitioners sought permission to file an application challenging the state government's order refusing to grant sanction for prosecuting Yogi Adityanath.

The court gave permission to do so by the next date of hearing on July 7, he said.

However, arguing on behalf of the state government, Advocate General Raghavendra Singh told the court that the case filed in Gorakhpur was "politically motivated" and that it was registered 10 months after the communal riots broke out.

He also informed the court that the decision to refuse grant of sanction for prosecuting the accused was taken by the state's Principal Secretary (Home) upon the advice of the law department which gave its opinion "on the basis of report of forensic examination of a CD containing hate speeches allegedly given by some of the accused."

Naqvi said the court was told by the petitioners that Yogi Adityanath has himself, in an interview to a private news channel, which is available on YouTube, "admitted" to having made the alleged incendiary speeches for which he has been named in the FIR lodged at Gorakhpur.

"We requested that the court ask for the video recording to get a first-hand account.

"The court responded to our submission by asking the state government to file an affidavit on the next date of hearing explaining why a recording of the said interview cannot be submitted," he added.
May 12, 2017 / 02:12 PM IST

BJP's Delhi legislator Manjinder Sirsa is making a case for sticking with EVMs:



"So far there have been 37 cases in various courts regarding EVM tampering. The judgements in 30 of those cases have come and all 30 have been in favour of the EVMs being tamper proof,"
Rice paddy field in rural Karnataka, India.

The Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) has approved commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) Mustard. The biotech regulator too has recommended it to the environment ministry. The proposal now needs to be cleared by the Environment Minister Anil Madhav Dave's team.

If approved, Dhara Mustard Hybrid-11 (DMH-11) will become the first GM food crop to be cultivated in Indian farms. In 2010, GEAC had cleared Bt Brinjal, but the proposal was rejected by the then environment ministry.

Currently, only Bt cotton is cultivated commercially.

We have cleared it (GM mustard) for four years subject to certain field conditions, GEAC Chairperson Amita Prasad told The Hindu.

Other than bio-safety concerns, transgenic technology was necessary for India to be scientifically relevant as well as have better seeds to address threats from climate change, Prasad said.

The GM mustard has been developed by a team of scientists at the Delhi University, led by former vice-chancellor Deepak Pental.

Is GM food safe?

Despite the approvals, many analysts still believe that yield of GM mustard is no better than existing varieties. Analysts have based their decision on the publicly available data of GM mustard.

RSS-affiliate Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) has slammed the GEAC for recommending commercial use of GM mustard. According to PTI, SJM does not believed GM mustard could lead to higher productivity.

The issue of genetically modified crops is widely debated across the world. Thirty eight countries, including European Union and Africa, have banned cultivation of GM crops while only twenty eight actually grow these crops.

While many have listed benefits of GM crops like higher yields and reduction in pest attacks, many experts have also argued against it. Here is a frequently used pros and cons in GM debate:

Pros:

> The GM crops give higher yields in comparison to normal crops. With shrinking land, GM crops will generate more crops.> With GM, experts can provide strong built-in resistance, which can reduce use of pesticides. Many studies show that GMO soyabean and corn in United States led to a 13 milllion kilo reduction in pesticides in last 12 years upto 2009.> Crops can be modified for better flavor and quality. The crop can also get longer shelf life if modification is allowed.

> Also, the health quotient in crops can be raised in GM crops.

But, there are many who argue against GM crops. They claim:

>GM crops often create super weeds which are herbicide resistant and are a threat to other crops.> Crops in their natural form taste much better.> GM is like tobacco tobacco and could harm allergy sufferers. They could increase resistance to antibiotics causing more damage than benefit.

> Patent holders will prefer big farmers to cultivate these crops, hurting the smaller farmers

Many organizations such as Greenpeace and Navdanya have blocked introduction of GM crops around the world citing the cons. In 2016, Greenpeace had lobbied against these crops saying that the impact will not only be biological on crops, but it will also have socio-economic impact.

However, nearly 100 Nobel Laureates had written a letter to Greenpeace terming their claim as unscientific and misleading.
The Delhi High Court on Friday cleared way for an Income Tax investigation into Young Indian Private Limited  a company where Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are directors. The company is expected to approach Supreme Court now, according to a report in News18.com.

The Congress leaders have been accused of cheating and misappropriation of funds. The allegation is related to an incident where the directors paid just Rs 50 lakh to obtain rights to recover Rs 90.25 crore from Associate Journals Ltd that it owed to Congress, the report stated.

It is a blow to the Gandhis. They may approach the Supreme Court, but they still need to answer questions, BJP leader Nalin Kohli told CNN-News18.

The case has been filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy. Other accused include names like Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda.

In 2012, Swamy had filed the plea, accusing Sonia, Rahul and others affiliated with Congress of conspiring to cheat in a land deal. He had alleged that the party gave an interest-free loan of Rs 90.25 crore to the AJL, which was either not repaid or repaid in case, which was in violation of Section 269T of the Income Tax Act, 1961. Limited (AJL).

"Neither Sonia nor Rahul has withdrawn any money from it (Young Indian)," Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala told CNN-News18 adding that the company is a trust that manages National Herald

"The Gandhi have the option of approaching the Supreme Court. The I-T (department) cannot open a one-sided investigation. Subramanian Swamy is not inchare of I-T," Surjewala said.

Read the full News18.com report here.
New Delhi: Union Minister for Finance and Corporate Affairs Arun Jaitley addresses a Finance Ministers of South Asia Subregional Economic Cooperation, (SASEC) countries, in New Delhi on Monday. PTI Photo by Kamal Singh(PTI4_3_2017_000061B)

The Shiv Sena today sharpened its attack on the Centre over the absence of a full-time defence minister and accused it of "toying" with national security.

"It has been three months since the change of the defence minister but we do not have anybody handling the ministry full time as yet. A nation as big as India not having a full-time defence minister amounts to toying with national security," the Sena said in an editorial in party mouthpiece 'Saamana'.

"People are responsible for this (of voting BJP-led government to power) and soldiers are now bearing the brunt of this misdeed (people's choice)," it said.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley was given the additional charge of the Defence Ministry in March after Manohar Parrikar resigned to take on his new role of Goa Chief Minister.

The Sena also said it is evident from the "casual" manner in which issues of soldiers and farmers are being handled that the government is hit by a "mental scam".

"People who are today roaming around as saviours of the nation are not able to hear out farmers nor can they lend a ear to the sorrows of family members of soldiers being brutally killed. The slaying of soldiers in the past one year should be treated as culpable homicide by the government," it said.

Sena's criticism of the government comes in the backdrop of the killing of a young Kashmiri Army officer Lt Ummer Fayaz.

Fayaz had gone to attend the wedding of the daughter of his maternal uncle at Batapura, about 74 kms from Srinagar, from where he was abducted by militants on Tuesday. His bullet riddled body was found on Wednesday morning.
Electronic voting machine

The all-party meeting convened by the Election Commission to discuss the reliability of the EVMs -- an issue flagged by opposition parties -- got underway here this morning.

At the meeting, the Commission would also seek views of political parties on the proposed challenge it plans to throw to hack its EVMs.

The date of the proposed challenge would be decided after the all-party meeting.

All the seven national and 35 of the 48 state recognised political parties are attending the meeting.

A detailed presentation on electronic voting machines' security features will be made by the EC top brass to prove that the machines are tamper-proof -- a fear raised by the opposition parties.

Days before the proposed meet, the Aam Admi Party had staged a demonstration on hacking a 'voting machine' in the Delhi Assembly. The party had used an EVM prototype to make the demonstration.

The EC had trashed the AAP's claim, saying the 'machine is a look-alike and not the ECI-EVM'.

Some parties have demanded they be allowed access to the machines used in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

Sixteen opposition parties had recently told the Commission that it should revert to the paper ballot system, claiming that the faith of the people has "eroded" in the machines.

Several parties, including AAP, BSP and Congress had blamed tampered machines for the victory of BJP in the recently-held assembly polls.

Disqualifying candidates named in a charge sheet for bribing voters, making electoral graft a non-bailable offence and easing of rules to order counting of votes through paper trail are some of the other issues Election Commission will discuss with political parties tomorrow.

"The Election Commission has convened a meeting with all recognised national and state political parties on May 12 in New Delhi to discuss issue related to EVM and VVPAT.

"In addition to the EVM/VVPAT, the agenda will also cover making bribery in elections a cognisable offence, disqualification on framing of charges for the offences of bribery in elections and suggestions in VVPAT recount rules," it had said in a statement last week.
Air India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today announced that India's flag carrier Air India would begin direct flights between Colombo and the holy city of Varanasi from August.

Modi, who is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, made the announcement of the beginning of the flights during his address at the inauguration of the International Vesak Day, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

He said the flights will allow "my Tamil brothers and sisters" to visit Varanasi, the land of Kashi Viswanath.

At a distance of 10 kilometres from Varanasi, lies Sarnath, one of the most revered Buddhist pilgrimage centres.

It is believed that after attaining the enlightenment at Bodh Gaya in Bihar, it was in Sarnath that Lord Buddha preached his first sermon, sanctified as Maha Dharm Chakra Parivartan.

The direct flights will aid pilgrims from Sri Lanka, a Buddhist-majority country, to visit Sarnath.

Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh is the parliamentary constituency of the prime minister, from where he contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election.

This is Modi's second visit to Sri Lanka in two years. He arrived yesterday primarily to attend the International Vesak Day celebrations and his vist is aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka.
maoists_soldiers_attack_terrorist_1280x720

Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats.

"These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

"This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

"Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures as he addresses an election campaign rally in Allahabad, India, February 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jitendra Prakash - RTSZHO9

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today cautioned the international community on the growing "arc of violence" and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

"The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion," he said, apparently referring to Pakistan, which is accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks inside India.

"The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

Modi said he believes that "Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world."

Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.

"Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings," he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy."

The themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings; they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected, Modi said.

He said the countries of south, central, south east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

Prime Minister Modi assured India's support to Sri Lanka for the island's nation-building endeavours.

Modi said that he believes that both India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity in its relationship.

"You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours," he said and called on the two countries to uphold ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.

The prime minister lit a lamp - a traditional practice - initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.

Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.

Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event.

"Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said.

"Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said.

Modi arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures as he addresses a gathering during a conference of start-up businesses in New Delhi, India, January 16, 2016. Indian Prime Minister Modi launched a number of initiatives on Saturday to support the country's start-ups, including a 100 billion rupee ($1.5 billion) fund and a string of tax breaks for both the companies and their investors. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi - RTX22ONI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena had a meeting here tonight during which the two leaders are understood to have reviewed the status of the bilateral relations.

"Delighted to meet President @MaithripalaS in Colombo," tweeted Modi, who arrived here earlier on a two-day visit aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.

"It is wonderful to meet this great human being @narendramodi in Colombo again. Thank you for gracing #InternationalVesakDay," tweeted Srisena.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, is here primarily to participate tomorrow in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

He will inaugurate a hospital built with India's assistance of Rs 150 crore.

He will also address the Indian-origin Tamils against the backdrop of India's insistence that Sri Lanka should undertake devolution of power to the ethnic community as part of the reconciliation process.

Prior to his departure from New Delhi, Modi said, "This will be my second bilateral visit there (to Sri Lanka) in two years, a sign of our strong relationship." In a Facebook post, he said, "My visit brings to the fore one of the most abiding links between India and Sri Lanka - the shared heritage of Buddhism.
There was scope for building up stronger relationship between UK and India and new opportunities had come up in the field of academics, British Deputy High Commissioner Dominic McAllister has said.

McAllister, who visited the Manipal University on May 10, during his interaction with students and faculty at the university, spoke at length about the long association between the two countries, a release from the University said today.

"There is the historical relationship, the people relationship and educational relationship. All that means there is the capacity to build on that relationship and make it stronger. We believe that gives a new opportunity for trade between the two countries, and there will also be new opportunities in academics," he said.

He said British Prime Minister Theresa Mays India visit last year was to build on that relationship and make it stronger.

Her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the trip to Bengaluru was to explore new avenues and expand international trade ties, McAllister said.

He spoke of some of the programmes and scholarships the UK universities had and the opportunities on offer, both for individuals and institutions.

McAllister also met Manipal Universitys senior officials, including pro-chancellor H S Ballal and vice-chancellor H Vinod Bhat, to discuss avenues for further collaboration with UK universities and catapult centres.

He told them about the new avenues for institutional partnership and funding available through the UK-India Education and Research Initiative (UKERI) programme.

He said the Manipal University already had partnerships with institutes in Sheffield and Lancaster and he was hopeful of more such partnerships in the future.

McAllister also spoke about the Chevening scholarships and fellowships, being awarded to outstanding emerging leaders to pursue a one-year Masters at any UK university, the release said.
Indias Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures as he addresses a gathering during a conference of start-up businesses in New Delhi, India, January 16, 2016. Indian Prime Minister Modi launched a number of initiatives on Saturday to support the country's start-ups, including a 100 billion rupee ($1.5 billion) fund and a string of tax breaks for both the companies and their investors. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi - RTX22ONI

India and Sri Lanka may have signed deals on economic cooperation before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's arrival in the country, the country's former President Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed.

The two countries were set to sign an agreement to lease out oil tanks to India to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.

But Sri Lanka's opposition parties have objected to the deal, saying the government was selling state assets to India.

"The information I have is that all deals have already been signed. So the Indian prime minister's arrival or non- arrival would be immaterial," Rajapaksa told reporters in the central town of Kandy, hours before Modi touched down in Colombo.

Rajapaksa said he held nothing against Modi's visit.

"The problem will be only if they sign agreements. I understand these have already been signed," he said.

According to the proposed deal, at least 73 of the 99 storage tanks in Trincomalee is to be managed under a new equity arrangement between India and Lanka. In 2002, the Indian Oil Company was given 14 of the 99 tanks to operate.

Modi is primarily in Sri Lanka to participate tomorrow in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists. This is his second visit since Rajapaksa's unexpected defeat in 2015 polls by Maithripala Sirisena.

Rajapaksa said he would attend the Vesak Day celebrations at which Modi would be the chief guest.

"I will take part in the UN Vesak Day, my going there will not mean I have gone to welcome the Indian prime minister," said the Sinhala strongman who ruled the country for a decade.

Rajapaksa's joint opposition has led a resistance to the Sririsena government's plan to enter into economic cooperation pacts with India, more particularly the Trincomalee venture.

The state petroleum workers last month led a crippling work stoppage to protest the deal.

Ahead of Modi's visit, Sirisena had slammed what he termed the opposition's misinformation about the visit. He said Modi's visit was restricted to the Vesak Day celebration hosted by Colombo.
President Donald Trump today said he was going to fire FBI director James Comey regardless of the Justice Departments recommendations, contradicting the White Houses earlier account that he acted on the recommendation of top justice officials.

"I was going to fire him regardless of recommendations. Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey, Trump told NBC News in an interview, the first after he abruptly fired Comey early this week.

The White House previously said Trump only decided to oust Comey after meeting Monday with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who discussed reasons for removing the director.

Trump also said he had personally asked Comey whether he was under FBI investigation.

"I actually asked him, yes. I said, 'If it's possible would you let me know am I under investigation?'" Trump said, noting that he spoke with Comey once over dinner and twice by phone.

"He said, 'you are not under investigation.'" Trump claimed, asserting that he never tried to pressurise or influence Comey.

Trump also attacked the former FBI chief, calling him a showboat and a grandstander who had jeopardised the integrity of the top law enforcement agency.

"He's a showboat, he's grandstander, the FBI has been in turmoil," he said.

"You know that, I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago, it was in virtual turmoil, less than a year ago. It hasn't recovered from that," he said.

Trumps comments came after acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe directly contradicted the White Houses claims that the rank and file agents had lost faith in Comey. "Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day," McCabe said on Thursday during testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Trump strongly refuted the allegations that there was any collusion between him or his campaign with the Russians.

There was no "collusion between me and my campaign and the Russians. Also, the Russians did not affect the vote," he said.
The US State Department has approved the possible sale of 160 missiles to the United Arab Emirates for an estimated USD 2.0 billion, the Pentagon said today.

The UAE government has requested the possible sale of 60 Patriot missiles with canisters and 100 Patriot guidance enhanced missiles, among other military equipment, according to a Department of Defense statement.

"This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of an important ally which has been, and continues to be, a force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East," it said.
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,
"I wasn't for the sale of it in the beginning, we voted against it, and raised our voices and made the calls. It's like anything else, I'm tired of everything going up: heating oil, fuel, food, and now the sewer," said voter Lowell Delp.
Ex-choir director in Bucks County pleads no contest to molesting two students, secretly filming another
Rabbis installation at Keneseth Israel will get a boost of student creativity
May 12, 2017

Syria - "The regime will be there" - U.S. Concedes Raqqa ... And The Syrian East?

There are strong rumors that the U.S. intends to launch an invasion of east-Syria from Jordan with the aim of occupying the whole eastern area. The Syrian army and its allies launched a move towards the east (red) to prevent such an outcome.



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A new Wall Street Journal piece, primarily about the ISIS held city of Raqqa on the Euphrates, casts doubt on long term U.S. plans for such an occupation. Its core quote:

"We wont be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there."

There were already doubts that a big U.S. move in east-Syria was really going to happen. Jordan opposes any such move. While the U.S. and Jordan have trained, equipped and paid Syrian "rebels" to hold a zone of control in south-west Syria, little preparations have been seen for a large move in the south-east. The U.S. has so far vetted and trained at most 2,000 local Arab fighters in the area. Fewer are ready to go. Even with U.S. special forces embedded with them these forces are way too small to take an ISIS defended city or to capture or to hold a significant area. At least ten to twenty thousand troops would be needed (likely more) for such an endeavor. The current force is probably only tasked with taking a few border stations to close down the border between Syria and Iraq. (A move that Syrian and Iraqi forces will try to prevent.)

The upcoming taking of Raqqa by U.S. forces and its Kurdish proxies is now endorsed by the Syrian government and its Russian allies. It seems that an agreement has been made without any public announcement. This agreement may well extend to the other eastern areas south of Raqqa. From the WSJ:

The Kurd-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces captured Tabqa Wednesday, a day after the U.S. pledged to arm the fighters. On Monday, the Damascus government for the first time endorsed the groups battle against Islamic State, with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem complimenting the SDFs fight against Islamic State at a press conference in Damascus, describing the force as legitimate. The SDF is now the only ground force with both U.S. and Syrian government approval in the fight against Islamic State as the offensive on Raqqa draws near. The group has long co-existed with the Syrian government, unlike U.S.- backed factions that Damascus deems terrorists in light of their goal to oust President Bashar al-Assads regime.

...

U.S. President Donald Trump has made clear he opposes the expensive nation-building missions that have historically accompanied U.S. counterterrorism operations to support local governments and prevent insurgents from returning. For these reasons, Western diplomats say the post-capture plan is for the SDF to hand over the administration of Raqqa to a local civilian council friendly to the Syrian regime. That council could eventually transfer control of the city back to the regime, these diplomats said.

...

On Thursday, Russias Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said Moscow supports the formation of local councils to administer territory taken from Islamic State but said they must not circumvent the Syrian governments authority, in comments carried by Interfax news agency. The U.S. military will be going in [to Raqqa] and trying to figure out who the tribal leaders are, said an American official involved in the anti-Islamic State campaign. The regime knows these details. They have a natural home-field advantage and have a way of slowly getting back in. We wont be in Raqqa in 2020, but the regime will be there.

Those are unexpected words under two aspects. First - a U.S. government official acknowledges, for the first time, that control of the area will go back to the Syrian government and second - Syrian and Russian officials are informed of and agree with these U.S. plans.

A member of the currently selected Raqqa civilian council denied that the Syrian government will take charge but I doubt that she would be informed of such a high level issue.

It is likely that this scheme extends to other parts of south-east-Syria and even to the north-eastern Kurdish held areas. U.S. Gulf allies and Israel would like the U.S. to occupy the east and to "block" a "Shia crescent" that reaches from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Hizbullah in Lebanon. But any U.S. position there would be a hostile occupation which would have to fight off Syrian government forces, local Arab resistance, remnants of ISIS and Shia militia from Iraq. The "Shia crescent" is anyway a chimera. Iran was well able to supply Hizbullah in Lebanon even as Iraq was occupied by U.S. forces. At that time the road from Iran to Syria was blocked, the alleged "Shia crescent" was interrupted but supplies to Hizbullah still flowed unhindered. Turkey, a U.S. NATO ally, will never agree to a Kurdish statelet in north-east Syria. Even a somewhat autonomous Kurdish area will only be tolerated if the Syrian government is in supreme control of it. A U.S. occupied zone in the landlocked Syrian east is of no strategic value to the U.S. It is surrounded by potential enemies and it would permanently require significant military resources. A return to Syrian government control is the best alternative.

But despite a likely agreement the Syrian government forces will continue their moves towards the east. The U.S. can not be trusted. In September 2016 a ceasefire and cooperation deal was agreed upon between Secretary of State Kerry and the Russian government. The fight against ISIS would be coordinate between all countries, including Syria. The U.S. military sabotaged the deal by launching air attacks on Syrian government forces in Deir Ezzor which were besieged by ISIS. This enabled ISIS to take a significant part of the government held areas there and to nearly eliminate all those forces. The U.S.-Russian agreement fell apart.

Any agreement with the U.S. that ISIS areas in Syria will fall back to government control, independent of who liberated them, should be welcome. Military hawks in the Trump administration, the sectarian Gulf countries as well as Israel will try to interrupt such a move. The Syrian government and its allies must therefore continue their own operations and liberate as many ares as possible by themselves. They must stay aware that a Trump administration might, at any time, revert to the old plan of establishing a "Salafist principality" in the area - even when such an unruly proxy would make little sense for it.

Posted by b on May 12, 2017 at 14:37 UTC | Permalink

Comments
I decided to write this letter after I had a chance to cool off about the unbelievable attempt by the North Carolina Senate to arbitrarily destroy our most precious environmental resources, our lakes and rivers, by passing SB 434 to benefit the special interests of land developers and real estate agents. This just happens to be the occupation of the Hickory Senator who sponsored this ridiculous legislation.

(I personally do not believe that all developers and real estate agents support this legislation).

Sen. Andy Wells uses as his justification that our state buffer rules (riparian buffers) are an unjust taking of private property without due compensation. He ignores and doesnt even attempt to address the scientific justifications for our riparian buffer rules. If we take Senator Wells logic regarding buffers should we also eliminate local zoning laws that require property line setbacks. Local governments do not compensate property owners for zoning rules that prevent building houses up against adjoining property lines as well as setbacks from roads. His justification just doesnt hold water.

I served as Chairman of the riparian buffer rules committee during my tenure on the Environmental Management Commission. We spent over a year investigating the environmental benefits of riparian buffers. We held public hearings across the state listening to stakeholders including property owners on the impact a 50-foot buffer would have both on the environmental quality of our lakes and rivers and the concerns of property owners of the affect the buffer rule would have on the use of their property.

As a result of this public input we developed a comprehensive rule that not only helped protect water quality but allowed limited uses within the buffer that did not completely eliminate the property owners right to use their land within the buffer.

There is no question that riparian buffers help to reduce the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that enter our waterways from development. Algae growth in our lakes and rivers has been substantially reduced as a result of the implementation of the buffer rule.

My understanding that SB-434 only applies to the Catawba River Basin. We must stop this bill from being enacted. I appreciate State Rep. Hugh Blackwell concerns as well as his efforts to exempt Burke County from this foolish legislation. However, I want to appeal to Rep. Blackwell to go even further and protect our entire basin. The effects of pollution downstream will ultimately affect our water quality at lake James and lake Rhodhiss. If this legislation passes even with an exemption for Burke County it could open the door to make this a Statewide ban. This would be devastating to the entire state.

Riparian buffers have been proven over time to be one of the best filters that nature can provide. We must make sure that they stay in place and be protected.
The market currently trades slightly above fair value, from our perspective, with the market-capitalization-weighted average, uncertainty-adjusted price/air value ratio for stocks in the S&P 500 Index that are under active Morningstar research coverage at 103% as of April 28, which is unchanged from last months ratio.

The S&P 500 improved 0.9% in April, closing at 2,384.19 at the end of the month. Each of the 11 sectors trade at fair value, on an uncertainty-adjusted price/fair value basis. The utilities sector was the most highly valued, trading at over 109% of fair value. Much like the prior month, the real estate sector held the cheapest valuation, trading below 98% of fair value.

Among the stocks trading at less than fair value, are those in the healthcare, financial and consumer discretionary sectors. Technology stocks and energy stocks look fully valued on a sector basis.

3 Undervalued US Stocks Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) Bed Bath & Beyond is one of the better-operated companies in the retail industry. It has a best-in-class decentralized merchandising strategy, an improving omnichannel presence, untapped international growth opportunities, and widely recognised retail brands like the namesake Bed Bath & Beyond and Cost Plus concepts. Management has constructed a unique store layout that groups related product lines into separate areas, creating the appearance and feel of a collection of individual specialty stores. Tesoro (TSO) We see Tesoro's competitive position improving over the next several years as the firm gains greater access to cost-advantaged crude. Given this, combined with operational improvements including increasing distillate yields, integrating the acquired Carson refinery, and leveraging its marketing and retail operations, Tesoro should become one of the better-positioned refiners in the challenging California market. General Motors (GM) We think General Motors' car models are of the best quality and design in decades. The company is already a leader in truck models, so a competitive lineup in all segments, combined with a much smaller cost base says to us that GM is starting to realise the scale to match its size. The head of Consumer Reports automotive testing even said that Toyota and Honda could learn from the Chevrolet Malibu.
Home Capitals present difficulties might be less about the companys failings and more about the fundamental doubts surrounding the current business model for Canadian subprime lending, according to a veteran analyst.



In a recent piece for CBC News, markets observer Don Pittis saidthat the alternative lenders crisis could have been better timed, in the wake of various federal and provincial-level moves to moderate the residential real estate market.



Anyone worrying about whether a soaring market is a bubble waiting to pop must be on the constant lookout for the trigger that could bring the market down. Thats because, historically, markets can continue to climb while containing the seeds of their own destruction, Pittis wrote.



Many of us in the media have been warning of an overheated Canadian property market for so long that homeowners, potential buyers and companies profiting from real estate have every reason to be skeptical, he added. In the case of Home Capital, the OSC announcement in April that it was going to proceed against the company may have been the trigger



In addition, Pittis explained that several other factors came into play, ultimately resulting into a volatile concoction that is now threatening to spread to the rest of the Canadian financial system.



One was that [Home Capital] raised its mortgage funding from depositors through its banking division. The other is the curse of all lenders suffering from a run: fractional-reserve lending, the analyst said. As Home Capital shares began to slide, it was not just shareholders who began to unload. Depositors began to pull their money out.



Underlying Home Capital's decline is its position at the bottom end of the mortgage market, Pittis emphasized. Canadians are notoriously good at paying off their mortgages. However, by definition subprime lenders, who give out mortgages to people the big banks have rejected, would be first to suffer in a property downturn.



Fortunately, not all is lost for the lender, as no signs of a major real estate crash are visible at the moment.



If the Canadian property market continues to rise, the portfolio of mortgages held by Home Capital is as sound as it was two months ago, Pittis stated, noting that the company can begin taking the road to recovery if it can stop the hemorrhaging of its capital.



But if the company continues to weaken and fail, leaving its borrowers without an alternative source of money when their mortgages come due, Home Capital could itself become the trigger of larger real estate decline.





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Agonized Home Capital appoints new director

Bond sales on hold until Home Capital crisis resolves itself
One industry head has voiced his companys confidence in the embattled lender. Dominion Lending Centres is confident Home Trust will bounce back and continue to provide competitive mortgage products to Canadians.Given the recent news that Home Capital Group will be implementing significant policy changes around their lending criteria, Dominion Lending Centres is proud to stand by Home Capital, and will resume recommending their mortgage solutions to our clients, Gary Mauris , president of Dominion Lending Centres, said. We are particularly pleased to see recent changes to the Board of Directors of Home Capital Group Dominion Lending Centres has full confidence that under new leadership, Home Capital Group will develop additional sources of funding and will continue serving Canadians with unique mortgage solutions.Dominion, however, was not always as confident in the channel lender.The developments of the past month around Home Capital Group have been concerning, and as result, we had paused the recommendation of their mortgage solutions to our clients, in order to best protect our customers and their investments, Mauris said.However, with the recent leadership change, the countrys largest network has changed its tune.Home Capital recently appointed a new group of directors following tumbling share prices and fleeing deposits which came as the result of an OSC accusation that the lender misled clients following the dismissal of brokers in 2015 who allegedly submitted fraudulent client documents.For its part, Home Capital released an update on its deposits Thursday.Liquid assets stood at approximately $1.02 billion as of end of day May 10, 2017 and combined with the undrawn amount of $600 million under the Companys $2.0 billion credit facility led by HOOPP, the Companys aggregate available liquidity and credit capacity totaled approximately $1.62 billion, the lender said in a release. Home Trusts High Interest Savings Account (HISA) deposit balances are expected to be approximately $128 million on May 11, 2017 after the settlement of transactions that took place on May 10, 2017.
In partnership with the Ontario Pension Board (OPB), Cadillac Fairview will be conducting an official ground breaking ceremony for the new 32-storey office tower at 16 York Street.Valued at $479 million, the tower will be inaugurated on Wednesday next week (May 17). The tower boasts of 879,000 square feet of office space, along with three underground parking levels comprised of 289 parking stalls.This investment in Torontos prospering south core is another example of [Cadillac Fairviews] leading role in the evolution of the mixed-use district, the company announced.16 York Street is scheduled to open on June 1, 2020.
Mount Pleasant, SC (29464)

Today

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Showers this evening, becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
Posse saddles up to help children Russell Libby describes his golden palomino horse, Sonny, as the calmest, sweetest guy and his best friend for nearly two decades. Sonny is the reason Libby and his wife, Laura,...

Kris Kringle to support library programs The Moorpark Friends of the Library is offering the second annual Letter from Santa fundraiser. For a $25 donation to the Moorpark Friends of the Library, children will receive a...

Oakmont welcomes new executive director Ronda Wilkin, certified dementia practitioner and a senior living executive, joins Oakmont of Moorpark with more than three decades of experience in health and human services. During her 15 years...
Renaming Crockett Elementary for retired Gen. Tommy Franks was not without its snags.

Two board members -- Robert Marquez and James Fuller -- opposed the renaming of the east Midland elementary campus because they thought there was an opportunity to honor a longtime Midland ISD employee -- Crockett custodian Odilon Bretado, who has worked inside the schools halls for nearly four decades.

Midland ISD board members earlier this spring voted to close Crockett because the school was headed toward a seventh straight year as an improvement required campus. After the current school year ends, the campus will be closed, new leadership and mostly new teaching staff will be installed and the name changed.

An 11-person advisory committee offered the board two selections from a list of 43 names that were submitted. Nine committee members picked Franks; two members wanted Bretado. A majority of the board wanted to name the school after Franks, while Marquez wanted to honor someone who remained in the community. Fuller said the culture of the campus should be retained for when the school returns to more of a neighborhood school.

More for you MISD board names campus for Gen. Franks

Making the renaming a little trickier is the student shuffle that is set to take place. Current students at Crockett will be forced to attend either Milam or DeZavala elementaries. The students making up the new Franks Elementary campus will come from the so-called 349 developments -- generally north of Loop 250 near Midland Country Club and east of State Highway 349.

The board voted to make the soon-to-be-former Crockett campus their home after moving them from an overcrowded Fasken Elementary. The plan is to put about 310 students at Franks Elementary. That site will be home to other students from the 349 area as more homes are built. The 349 area is expected to be one of the fastest-growing areas in the city and one day will require its own larger elementary campus. Board members said it might be three, five or seven years before that campus is built (most likely as a result of a voter-approved bond).

When that school is built, the plan is that it be named after Franks, and a future MISD board will vote on yet another name for the current Crockett campus, which is located at 401 E. Parker Ave.

Those voting for the Franks name cited the need to not go against the advisory committees recommendation and because there will be another opportunity to name the former Crockett campus.

Franks is a graduate of Lee High School. According to Franks website, he was promoted to four-star general in 2000 and assigned as commander-in-chief, United States Central Command. Franks led American and coalition troops in two strategically unprecedented campaigns in two years, Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq.

Franks awards include five Distinguished Service Medals, four Legions of Merit, four Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts in addition to numerous foreign awards, according to the website.

Name change, part II: The Midland ISD board also voted to change Washington Math and Science Academy to Washington STEM Academy. That change will take effect in the fall.






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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."
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A group of Daytona Beach homeowners are frustrated over what they call squatters taking up residence in abandoned homes and refusing to leave.

Daytona Beach homeowners protest squatters in abandoned homes

So-called squatter claims adverse posession, says he's fixing property

City trying to find out if there is anything they can legally do

Pattie Houser says the house next door was vacant, until the so-called squatters moved in. Houser says they're bad neighbors too, throwing loud parties.

"Seem to obviously be squatters," Houser said. "We all called the police, everybody and our neighbors. And they produced some document that seemed to indicate they had a right to be there. And the police said we can't do anything."

On Thursday Houser stood on A1A in Daytona Beach, protesting with a bicycle horn in one hand, a mop in the other.

Houser and other beachside homeowners hope to convince city leaders to put teeth in their code enforcement laws to get squatters out of abandoned homes.

A spokesman with the city's code enforcement board says code enforcement deals with code violations and fines, not homeownership. He says the issue is a civil matter which the courts deal with.

"Right now, code enforcement's handcuffed, police are handcuffed, and this has just been a ping pong issue on this house where nobody can do anything," said protester Wade Caldwell.

Tim Tharbs moved into the abandoned home next to Houser 14 months ago to fix it up.

"Everything is legal what I do. Ain't nothing illegal, I wouldn't be here if I couldn't be here, said the 53-year-old.

Asked if he could provide evidence of homeownership, the only documents he produced were a couple of sheriff's office summons, not a title.

"I can't give you that because I don't have that right now," said Tharbs.

He says he's claiming adverse possession of this home.

In Florida, a trespasser can gain legal title over a piece of property and claim adverse possession. Florida Statutes state that a trespasser must meet a number of criteria to take hostile possession of the property, including continuous occupancy over several years.

Also, a person cannot claim adverse possession of property if they already have permission to be on that property.

A spokesperson with Daytona Beach police say they've spoken with Tharbs and are investigating to see if they have the legal authority to evict and arrest the people living in the abandoned home.

"I don't feel comfortable in my own home with them there. I don't have anything to lose at this point," said Houser on her way home after the protest.

We checked the Volusia Property Appraisers website and the home is owned by the Libby Investment Group out of Hallandale, Florida.

We were unable to make contact with anyone representing that company.
A woman who placed a 911 call from a Poinciana home Thursday to report that a man was trying to break in was found shot dead inside after the man killed himself in front of deputies, investigators said.

Woman made 911 call to report familiar man trying to break in

Deputies confronted man, who shot himself, they said

Liberty High senior Larissa Barros found dead inside Poinciana home

Larissa Barros, 18, a senior at Liberty High School, was found dead in the home in the 100 block of Blackpool Way, investigators said. She was set to graduate in just a few weeks.

The Osceola County Sheriff's Office said it received a 911 call just after noon from Barros, who told them a man she knew was trying to break into the home.

As deputies arrived, they spotted a man matching the suspect's description about a block away at Berkshire Road and Brixham Court. When they tried to make contact with him, he shot himself, investigators said. They identified the man as 20-year-old Kai Douglas Williams, who had been in a relationship with Barros.

Inside the home where the 911 call originated, deputies found Barros, who appeared to have died from a gunshot wound.

Williams has been arrested twice in the last year, for violating a restraining order and aggravated stalking for which she was the victim of," Sheriff's Office spokesman Jacob Ruiz said.

Investigators stressed they are not calling this a murder-suicide right now, but the early investigation indicates it may be what it turns into.

Anyone with information on this incident are being asked to call the Sheriffs Office at (407) 348-2222.



Larissa Barros is seen in a Liberty High School yearbook photo. (Courtesy of Osceola County School District)
A prominent pastor in the historic Tamina community is injured and three of his grandchildren are dead after an early morning fire Friday, despite efforts to save them from the burning home near The Woodlands.

Pastor Bobby Johnson Jr., 59, with the Thergood Memorial Church of God in Christ in Willis, and his son, Deacon Jarvis Johnson, 34, were in critical condition. Three children - from 6 to 13 years old - died in the fire, said Scott Spencer, spokesman for the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.

Five other family members were injured - Johnson's wife, Carrie, 56; their son, Deacon Jarvis Johnson, 34; 10-year-old grandson, Adrian Mitchell; and daughter April, 36, who is the mother of the four children, officials said.

The men appeared to have been hurt rescuing the 10-year-old from the burning house, Montgomery County Fire Marshal Jimmy Williams said.

"They risked it all," Williams said.

The men and 10-year-old boy were taken to the hospital in critical condition. They have burns on their face and upper torso, which are typically life-threatening injuries, Williams said. The children who died were identified as Terrance "TJ" Mitchell, 13; Kaila Mitchell, 6; and Kyle Mitchell, 5.

About 40 family members gathered at a home nearby, standing under the shade of a tree to mourn the losses and pray for the recovery of their other family members. They declined to comment, but neighbors said they are shocked.

"My heart immediately sunk for the family," said neighbor Traniqa White. "I've known these kids since they were born. And my heart just aches for the mom."

Johnson is a descendant from an original settler of Tamina and lived on a road named for one of their ancestors. The community - a Freedmen's Town formed after Emancipation - has been fighting for water and sewage service for decades. Fire officials said there was no hydrant in the area.

"We would have had a hydrant right there," said James Leveston Sr., president of the Old Tamina Water Supply Corp, who has negotiated for years over the water issue.

The women at the home did not have life-threatening injuries.Three police officers were also taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, Spencer said.

The blaze started about 4 a.m. in a two-story house at the back of the property. It quickly spread to a second, one-story house where two other family members lived on the same property. Those two escaped uninjured.

The blaze had already spread by the time firefighters arrived and the second floor of the home had collapsed, Williams said.

Firefighters tried to rescue the children, but "there was just too much smoke, heat and flames on the second floor," Williams said.

It appears the children who died were trapped on the second floor of the house. It was not immediately clear if there were smoke detectors, Williams said.

It was not clear how long the fire had been burning before firefighters arrived. A neighbor alerted authorities to the blaze, Williams said.

Williams said there was no interruption in water flowing to the houses or difficulty accessing the houses. Firefighters tapped into a water line about a mile away, at Interstate 45.

Althea Taylor, a relative, said Johnson's son was at the church.

"I don't know how to feel," Taylor said. "The kids were loved by their parents. This was an accident, not negligence."

It took about an hour to put the fire out, Williams said.

By 8:30 a.m., one house had been reduced to a pile of rubble. Only a frame remained on the second home. Firefighters were still putting out mid-morning hot spots on the property.

Authorities were investigating Friday morning what sparked the fire.

The injured officers - two with the Shenandoah Police Department and one with the Oak Ridge Police Department - were hurt as they entered the house, trying to get family members out, Spencer said.

The father of the four children was working out of state, Williams said.

Officials are asking residents to avoid the area. Nearby roads are blocked.

As development booms around Tamina - located just a mile from The Woodlands - the unincorporated community has struggled to address basic needs with its aging infrastructure.

Tamina dates back to the aftermath of the Civil War when freed slaves settled the area, about 30 miles north of Houston. Tamina residents have wanted an updated water system that could include fire hydrants for over a decade.

But, an updated water system was put on hold as residents instead prioritized getting a sewage system.
AUSTIN -- The Senate gave unanimous approval to a measure Thursday intended to improve the treatment of individuals with possible mental health issues in county jails. The bill is named after Sandra Bland, who was found dead in her cell of an apparent suicide after spending three days in jail in July 2015. An interim study by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee found that 26 people committed suicide in Texas county jails in 2016, which led to immediate reforms in the way people are evaluated for mental health when booked into a county jail. Committee chair and Houston Sen. John Whitmire offered a bill Thursday that he believes will continue to improve the response to people facing mental health crises in jail. "When you deny someone their liberty, you have a responsibility to provide for the safety and welfare of that person," he told his colleagues.

Whitmire noted that even people without mental illnesses can often experience severe anxiety and stress when they end up in jail. For people with known issues, the reaction can be even worse. His bill, SB 1849, would improve training for jail officials in de-escalation techniques when dealing with a person who may have a mental illness. If a person appears to have a mental health crisis or other issue upon jail intake, officials must notify the presiding magistrate within 12 hours, rather than the 48 hours required under current law. It would also mandate installation of security cameras, where funding allows, in county jail facilities. The bill would permit cities and counties to develop diversion programs where non-violent offenders with mental health issues or substance abuse problems can go instead of jail. "This is a mental health awareness and prevention piece of legislation that I think will go a long way toward preventing future tragedies due to confinement in our county jails," said Whitmire. Passed with no opposition, the measure now heads to the House.
Bloomberg

An increase in assets under management led to higher revenue and a narrower quarterly loss for U.S. Global Investors, a San Antonio-based investment adviser.

U.S. Global Investors this week reported a net loss of $33,000, or no cents a share, on almost $1.7 million in revenue for the three months ended March 31. By comparison, it lost $350,000, on 2 cents a share, on about $1.3 million in revenue for the same period a year ago.
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Texas lawmakers  embracing the wave of nationalism sweeping across the country  are pushing legislation that would require the state to Buy America steel for most of its infrastructure projects.

Any decision other than buying American iron and steel is a decision to support any foreign governments over American workers, bill sponsor and state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said in an email. He blamed foreign competition  citing China and Turkey specifically  for a decline in Texas steel industry, which in 2016 saw major American steel maker U.S. Steel lay off hundreds at the companys mill in the city of Lone Star as it curtailed production at that facility.

The legislation passed 23-7 in the Senate on May 3 and 114-29 in the House on Thursday. Gov. Greg Abbotts office did not return an email for comment on whether or not he would sign the bill if it came to his desk.

The legislation comes as President Donald Trump has been pledging to boost manufacturing in the U.S. and to slow the loss of jobs to foreign manufacturers. Last month, the president issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to Buy American and Hire American. The directive is intended to boost protections for American-made goods and to save U.S. jobs. The order also calls for a review of the H-1B visa program for skilled foreign workers.

When asked if he was concerned Texans could lose business or jobs due to rising infrastructure costs, Creighton replied that Texans already providing foreign-made steel assumed the risk years ago.

The senate and house bills exclude state water infrastructure projects from the Buy America requirements, and would allow bids to include foreign structural steel if U.S. steel would raise project costs more than 20 percent. Creighton added that cities and counties would not be required to purchase American-made steel or iron for their own infrastructure projects.

In 2016 Texas imported 2.3 million metric tons of steel and iron goods valued at $2.1 trillion according to international trade data from the U.S. Census. In the same year the state exported 990,000 metric tons of steel and iron goods valued at $1.3 trillion.

In March the Department of Commerce determined that three countries  Japan, Taiwan and Turkey  had been selling steel into the U.S. at below market rates. Japan, which according to Census figures exported 1.9 million metric tons of steel and iron goods worth $1.2 trillion into the U.S. in 2016, was said to be selling steel for prices 210 percent below market value.

Buy America is the sledgehammer with which youre going to smash the fly, said J. Tullos Wells, an attorney at the lawfirm Bracewell in San Antonio and Canadas honorary counsel for the city. The rule of court and trade organizations is the appropriate, and I think pretty useful, remedy when you do have clearly predatory practices.

With goods crossing back and forth into the U.S. across the Canadian and Mexican borders  a part of the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA  Wells says distinguishing what is and is not truly American made is becoming harder to determine.

Its hard to get something that is completely, discretely, U.S. made and never touches any other nation, Wells said. Thats just not really how it works.

The legislation, if passed, will have consequences for a lot of Texans who have no idea that theyre in the government purchasing business, he said.

Duffy Shea, the chairman of the San Antonio Manufacturers Association, said the legislation wouldnt have much of an impact on local companies and could even be favorable to Texas steel mills.

It would not be a concern for our business, as I understand it today, said Shea, who is president of San Antonio-based Alamo Iron Works, a 140-year-old local fabricator and distributor of steel and iron owned by Vallen Distribution. And I dont think it would be for anyone else, either.

rdruzin@express-news.net

@druz_journo

John S. Marshall contributed to this report.
In honor of Senior Corps Week on May 15-19, 2017, we salute our many volunteers who give of their time, talents, wisdom and experience. Each of our communities are grateful for the positive difference that you make throughout our region. In one year throughout the nation, 245,000 Senior Corps volunteers served 74 million hours making a difference for generations.

Last year, Texas Senior Corps volunteers provided 4,332,244 hours to improve our communities. The independent sector values volunteer time at the rate of $25.11 per hour. Texas Senior Corps volunteers contributed more than $107,782,646 of service throughout the State of Texas.
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The state Department of Transportation is back again with another proposal to demolish the old parking garage at Stamfords train station and replace it with a new facility. After the embarrassment of the first transit-oriented development (TOD) effort, which languished for more than three years before being killed, lets hope they learned their lessons.

Listen to commuters

Commuters want a new garage where the existing one stands, right across the street from the train station, not a quarter-mile away. But the state DOT insists the land is too valuable and should be developed for public gain.

There was zero public input last time on state DOT proposals. I hope there are many public information sessions this time and that the state DOT will actually listen to its customers, daily commuters who need access to their trains with close-by parking. This land is owned by taxpayers and they should have a voice in its development.

Involve the city

The state DOT thumbed its nose last time at Stamford, telling developers this was state-owned land not subject to city rules. The city responded by rezoning the area around the train station to protect its interests. I hope the state DOT this time works with the city for everyones benefit.

More Information Join the conversation Use #GettingThereCT to chime in on Facebook and Twitter. See More Collapse

Lift the veil of secrecy

In its previous TOD effort, the developers bids and detailed plans were secret. The public never saw the specifics nor were they given a chance to comment. That is just wrong and cannot be repeated.

Devil is in the details

All we know so far is the DOT proposed a 950-1,000-car garage at the corner of South State Street and Washington Boulevard. There are no plans yet on its design, traffic flow or how the old garage across will be demolished while still keeping access to the station  the busiest on the line aside from Grand Central.

The construction and demolition will wreak havoc on traffic for months, probably years. There must be a plan to accomplish both with minimal impact on the thousands of daily Metro-North and Amtrak passengers. But so far, all the DOT says is we dont know how the work will be done.

Avoid corruption

Was it by chance the previous developer  John McClutchy  just happened to donate $30,000 to the Connecticut Democrats days before being chosen for the TOD project? Perhaps, but the later indictment of some of his business partners on corruption charges did not make for good optics.

While the DOT still doesnt know what will be built on the site of the old garage, whatever is designed and whoever is chosen must be above reproach and be seen as selected on merit, not money.

The saga of the Stamford garage began in 1983 when, during its initial construction, cracks were found in beams. The DOT has been hemming and hawing since 2006 about its demolition and replacement. The agency has been secretive and arrogant in its deliberations the entire time.

Lets hope this time planning for the future of the garage is an inclusive, transparent process. Commuters, taxpayers and residents deserve no less.
Charles Bender Performing Arts Center served as the venue for the Humble BizCom meeting on Thursday, May 11, to bring the community into the former high school to learn more about what's happening in the Humble community.

Jennifer Wooden, director of Humble Civic Center and Charles Bender, gave a short presentation about the history of Charles Bender and the future events to be held.

"I feel like for the people, when I talk to them, they don't even know about this place, and they come and they are so excited about it," Wooden said.

Wooden said there will be a number of events held at Charles Bender to invite the community to the facility, starting with a showing of the Disney movie "Moana" on Saturday, May 20, at 6 p.m.

Janna Hoglund, Octavia Field Branch Library manager, spoke on the activities the library plans to hold over the summer break and work toward expanding their teen program.

"Our mission is to serve Humble residents and beyond. We care about our customers," Hoglund said. "We care about our community."

Hoglund said through the partnership of local organizations, community members and businesses they are able to offer the range of programs that they have.

"We truly believe in community engagement, we offered over a thousand programs at no charge to the Humble community," Hoglund said.

Darrell Boeske, city manager of Humble, spoke on Senate Bill 2 and the effects it would have on the Humble community.

Senate Bill 2 is a property tax reform that will require an election to be held if the property taxes to be collected are more than 5 percent than what was in place the previous year.

"Senate Bill 2 is extremely detrimental to small cities, any cities actually. I'm not quite sure what the purpose is," Boeske said.

Boeske urged community members to follow up with their legislators and speak to them about Senate Bill 2 and how this will effect small cities like Humble.

Patrick Mouton, director of facilities for Aldine ISD, also took the time to announce the planning of Townsen Middle School, which is planned to be completed in June 2018 and open for school in the fall of August 2018.
Thieves targeted several Pearland residents and businesses last week, prompting officers to investigate a string of shoplifting reports and motor vehicle burglaries as well as the theft of appliances and a firearm.

THEFT

A woman was scammed out of $3,000 for an online recreational vehicle purchase between April 23-28 in the 4000 block of Spring Meadow Drive, according to a May 1 police report.

Two male suspects stole water and washer fluid May 2 in the 1900 block of Main Street, police said.

A theft occurred between March 21 and April 10 in the 1500 block of Broadway Street, according to a May 2 police report.

A Houston man, 18, and woman, 19, were arrested for shoplifting May 3 in the 1900 block of Main Street, police said.

Shoplifting was reported May 3 in the 2700 block of Pearland Parkway, police said.

A firearm was stolen May 3 in the 2700 block of Leroy Street, police said.

Police filed a shoplifting report May 5 in the 2500 block of Pearland Parkway.

A woman reported her purse stolen May 5 in the 2600 block of Pearland Parkway, police said.

Police arrested a Pearland man, 18, for shoplifting May 5 in the 2700 block of Pearland Parkway.

A Houston woman, 38, was arrested for shoplifting May 6 in the 11200 block of Broadway Street, police said. Police also took a Houston man, 49, into custody for theft.

A theft occurred May 6 in the 11000 block of Shadow Creek Parkway, according to a May 7 police report.

BURGLARY

A vehicle burglary was reported May 1 in the 11000 block of Shadow Creek Parkway, police said.

A vehicle burglary occurred May 2 in the 11000 block of Broadway Street, police said.

Appliances were stolen between May 2 and May 3 from two vacant apartments at 11745 Broadway St., police said.

Police filed a vehicle burglary report May 4 in the 3900 block of Liberty Drive.

A vehicle was burglarized May 4 in the 2800 block of Pearland Parkway, police said.

A vehicle burglary took place between May 4 and May 5 in the 12100 block of Shadow Creek Parkway, police said.

A vehicle's window was reported broken May 5 in the 11200 block of Broadway Street, police said.

A building in the 1900 block of Country Place Parkway was burglarized May 7, police said.

A home burglary occurred May 7 in the 6000 block of Cottonwood Street, police said.

ASSAULT

Police filed a report for assault of a public servant May 3 in the 2000 block of Cullen Parkway after a student caused a disturbance at a Pearland Independent School District campus. The student reportedly was in possession of ecstasy.

Police filed an assault report May 3 in the 2600 block of Mountain Sage Drive.

Police arrested a Pearland man, 21, for assaulting another man May 4 in the 3900 block of Liberty Drive.

A male was assaulted April 8 in the 4100 block of Bailey Road, according to a May 5 police report.

Police filed a report of a possible assault following a vehicle crash May 6 in the 14300 block of Texas 288.

FRAUD, FORGERY

Police filed a report of identity theft May 1 in the 2200 block of Business Center Drive.

Forgery was reported May 2 in the 8300 block of Broadway Street, police said.

An unidentified white male suspect passed counterfeit $20 bills May 6 at a department store in the 3200 block of Broadway Street, police said.

DRIVING WHILE INTOXICATED

A Houston man, 32, was arrested for DWI after a crash May 2 in the 13800 block of Texas 288, police said.

Police took a Missouri City man, 54, into custody for DWI May 2 in the 16000 block of Texas 288.

Police took a 34-year-old Pearland man into custody for DWI May 4 in the 2300 block of Main Street.

A Houston woman, 30, was arrested for DWI May 5 in the 2800 block of Cullen Parkway, police said.

A 27-year-old Pearland man was arrested for DWI May 6 in the 3500 block of East Circle Drive, police said.

Police arrested a Pearland man, 27, for DWI May 6 in the 11600 block of Shadow Creek Parkway.

A 19-year-old Friendswood man was arrested for DWI May 6 in the 8400 block of Broadway Street, police said.

Police arrested a Houston man, 35, for DWI May 6 in the 9700 block of Broadway Street.

NARCOTICS

Police arrested a Pearland man, 26, for possession of a controlled substance after a traffic stop May 3 in the 2200 block of Woody Road.

Police arrested a Baytown woman, 23, for marijuana possession May 3 in the 4100 block of McHard Road.

A 39-year-old man was arrested for a drug offense, a traffic offense and warrants May 5 in the 4500 block of Main Street, police said.

A traffic stop led to a citation for drug paraphernalia May 5 in the 13000 block of Trinity Bay Drive, police said.

A Fresno man, 23, was arrested for possession of a controlled substance and marijuana May 5 in the 12000 block of Broadway Street, police said.

Police arrested a Houston man, 35, and Pearland woman, 35, for drug offenses May 7 in the 3800 block of Dixie Farm Road.

Police arrested a Houston man, 25, on narcotic charges May 7 in the 4100 block of Dixie Farm Road. A League City man, 22, also was arrested on outside agency warrants.

CRIMINAL MISCHIEF

A male suspect damaged property April 19 in the 2700 block of Kingsley Drive, according to a May 1 police report.

A suspect sprayed the inside of a building with fire extinguishers May 1 in the 2200 block of North Washington Avenue, police said.

Criminal mischief was reported May 5 at Jack in the Box, 3426 Main St., police said.

DISORDERLY CONDUCT

Police arrested a Houston woman, 34, for using profane language and making threats May 4 in the 6000 block of Broadway Street.

A 20-year-old Pearland man was arrested for disorderly conduct May 6 in the 12200 block of Shadow Creek Parkway, police said.

Police completed a deadly conduct report May 7 in the 13100 block of Shoalwater Lane. In Texas, deadly conduct involves the reckless use of a weapon.

PROTECTIVE ORDER

A 39-year-old Sugar Land woman was arrested for violation of a protective order May 4 in the 1800 block of Pearland Parkway, police said.

TRAFFIC

Police took a Channelview man, 30, into custody for driving while license invalid on May 1 in the 3800 block of Magnolia Road.

A Houston man, 33, was arrested for no driver's license and no insurance on May 7 in the 2800 block of Business Center Drive, police said.

Police arrested a Pearland man, 27, for driving while license invalid on May 7 in the 6600 block of Broadway Street.

INJURY TO CHILD, ELDERLY

Police arrested a Pearland woman, 45, for injury to an elderly person May 5 in the 3400 block of Randall Street.

Child abuse occurred between May 5 and May 7 in the 2100 block of Kingsley Drive, according to a May 7 police report.

RESISTING ARREST

Police took a Pearland woman, 44, into custody for resisting arrest May 4 in the 6300 block of Broadway Street. A Pearland man, 47, also was arrested for outstanding warrants.

A driver reportedly evaded police in a motor vehicle May 7 in the 3300 block of Dixie Farm Road.

Pearland officers investigated several assault reports recently, including an April 23 altercation at a fast-food restaurant.
Hackers unleashed an attack that disabled computers in dozens of nations Friday using a software flaw that once was part of the National Security Agency's surveillance tool kit.

The resulting wave of online chaos affected tens of thousands of machines worldwide, snarling operations at the Russian Interior Ministry, Spanish telecommunications giant Telefonica and Britain's National Health Services (NHS), where hospitals were hobbled and medical procedures interrupted.

Europe, Latin America and parts of Asia were hit particularly hard, although in the United States, FedEx also reported falling prey to the malware. The attack was the latest in a growing menace of "ransomware," in which hackers deliver files to computers that automatically encrypt their data, making it unusable - until a ransom is paid.

"This is not targeted at the NHS," British Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters. "It's an international attack, and a number of countries and organizations have been affected."

The hack renewed a long-running debate about the dangers of intelligence agencies such as the NSA collecting and using software flaws for espionage, rather than quickly alerting companies to vulnerabilities so they can fix them.

In this case, the NSA found a flaw in Microsoft software that made the hack possible. The agency reported the flaw to company after a security breach was discovered in August, according to former U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.

Microsoft fixed the problem in a patch it released in March, before a group calling itself the "Shadow Brokers" publicly released it online in April.

But system administrators appear to have applied the patch inconsistently, leaving some computers vulnerable. The vulnerability gave the hackers what amounted a lock pick to the Microsoft software on computers that did not receive the update from the company or that used outdated operating systems.

It was not clear who was behind the campaign, which, experts said, was the first known time a hacker group used the NSA tools released by the Shadow Brokers to conduct a large-scale hack.

"These attacks underscore the fact that vulnerabilities will be exploited not just by our security agencies but by hackers and criminals around the world," the American Civil Liberties Union, a frequent NSA critic, said in a statement.

The NSA did not respond to requests for comment, but some experts expressed sympathy for the agency because it had warned Microsoft about the problem.

Peter Eckersley, technology projects director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group that has sharply criticized the NSA for its aggressive surveillance, said: "In this instance, it's a little unfair to blame the NSA. They could have been following the best possible defensive practices, and this probably would have gone down the same way."

Powerful NSA hacking tools have been revealed online

But the speed and scale of the malware spread startled experts. "It's one of the first times we've seen a large international global campaign," said Chris Camacho, chief strategy officer for Flashpoint, a cyber-intelligence company. "It's pretty shocking. This morning people woke up thinking it was only in Europe. Now it's hitting countries around the world. It's global."

Cybersecurity experts said that the malware arrived through "phishing" attacks in which recipients of emails were tricked into opening phony links. Once one computer in a system was infected, the malware spread to other machines on the same network. In some cases, the malware was delivered in spam emails.

The ransomware spread so quickly because it was delivered by a special digital code developed by the NSA to move from one unpatched computer to another, security experts said. They warned that the malware now could move from large networks to individual users.

"This could be the very first instance of the use of a 'ransom worm,' " Camacho said, coining a term that refers to a ransomware file that spreads across networks.

The program is called "Wanna Decrypt0r 2.0" and appears to support 28 languages, underscoring the global ambitions of its creators, said cybersecurity experts.

In a statement Friday, Microsoft said it had taken further steps to protect systems against the malware. "In March, we provided a security update which provides additional protections against this potential attack," the company said. "Those who are running our free anti-virus software and have Windows Update enabled, are protected. We are working with customers to provide additional assistance."

The Moscow-based Internet security company Kaspersky Lab said Friday that its security software - one of several major packages available to users worldwide - had detected "more than 45,000 attacks of the WannaCry ransomware in 74 countries around the world, mostly in Russia," using another name for the program. Kaspersky noted that the actual number of attacks may be far higher.

The program locks computers and then launches a ransom note in a text file, according to researchers at the Avast security software company in the Czech Republic. The note says that "you need to pay service fees for the decryption" and asks for $300 worth of bitcoin, a digital currency that is difficult to track, to be sent electronically to an address. It was not clear who would receive the funds.

A sum of $300 is a fairly low ransom when compared to some previous attacks, such as the one that took place in June at the University of Calgary, which agreed to pay nearly $16,000 in bitcoin to an unknown group of hackers.

The WannaCry ransom note also states, dryly: "Don't worry about decryption. We will decrypt your files surely because nobody will trust us if we cheat users."

The attack in Britain had immediate impacts in hospitals across the country. Operations were canceled, emergency room services were scaled down, and medical personnel went back to using handwritten notes.

Richard Harvey, 50, was just about to undergo surgery Friday afternoon on his leg following a motorcycle accident when a nurse told him that the procedure had been canceled due to a cyberattack.

"I'm a bit of a nervous person and had to get settled about the operation, which I was. Now I had to go through that again," said Harvey, a former hospital porter who had been fasting since the previous evening in preparation for the operation at Royal London Hospital in east London. "A cyberattack? That doesn't happen every day."

Stephen Hirst, a doctor in the northern English town of Preston, told the BBC that the first sign of the infiltration was an error message warning that "we'd have to pay money to unlock the computer, because it's been encrypted."

"It's compromising having to open files and complete prescriptions. It's interfering with day-to-day functioning," Hirst said.

Doctors were using pen and paper as the National Health Service struggled to get computers back online. Routine appointments were being canceled.

The BBC reported that a list of affected locations included London, Blackburn, Nottingham, Cumbria and Hertfordshire.

Health officials offered no indication of when services might return to normal or whether patient records could be permanently lost to the attack.

"The most exploitable industry in the world is the health-care sector," said Tom Kellermann, chief executive of Strategic Cyber Ventures. He said the industry is chronically hobbled by regulation and insufficient investment in computer security.

Cybersecurity has been high on the agenda of many high-level gatherings of Western military and political leaders.

A report issued Wednesday by the European Commission called for greater attention to cyberthreats as the world becomes "more vulnerable to cyberattacks, with security breaches causing significant damage." It said the commission plans a full review of European Union cybersecurity measures by September.

In August, the Shadow Brokers group began to release virtually the NSA's entire library of powerful hacking tools. The releases continued throughout the fall and into the spring.

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Witte reported from London. Todd Frankel in Washington, Karla Adam in London, Andrew Roth in Moscow and Marina Lopes in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.

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Video: Worldwide hack exploits flaw identified in leaked NSA document

A massive cyberattack hit tens of thousands of computers in dozens of nations. Reports of the attack first surfaced in Britain, where the National Health Service described serious problems. (Sarah Parnass / The Washington Post)

Short URL: http://wapo.st/2pGS20w

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Video: Decoding Internet Security: Spear phishing

Here is what you need to know about spear phishing: a targeted attack hackers use to steal your personal information. (Sarah Parnass, Dani Player / The Washington Post)

Short URL: http://wapo.st/2pcOD9n

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On Mothers Day, people across the nation will celebrate this special day, as they always do. Moms will receive flowers and candy or a gift card to their favorite clothing store. Families will have brunch or dinner out or at home. If its warm and nice enough, perhaps there will be a barbecue. Mainly, families will just enjoy getting together to honor mothers and grandmothers who have given so much of themselves.

For my wonderful wife, there have been nearly 47 special days with our older daughter and 43 Mothers Days with our younger daughter, who lives in Michigan with her husband. Over the years, traditional gifts have included a lot of chocolate bars, gift cards to quilting and bookstores and a lot of brunches and dinners. My wife tries to be a good sport, but she really hates all the fuss that goes with the holiday. What she really likes is being told how much she is loved and valued as a person. That means everything.

For our older daughter Stacey, until last year around this time, becoming a mom and feeling the love of a child did not seem to be in the cards. Having tried all the right things after pregnancy eluded her and adoption opportunities werent happening, she was reconciled to remaining on her own.

But a week after Mothers Day in 2016, she told us a wonderful organization, Cradle of Hope, based in Maryland, had contacted her with an opportunity to give a child from China a chance to be hers. Just six weeks later, little Lun Lun, a 5-year-old boy from China walked into her home and into our lives. It was definitely love at first sight.

Lun Lun accompanied a large group of children who only knew that this was a three-week trip to the United States and they would be staying with families. The host families were asked to decide within two weeks if they wanted to adopt their little guest and, for Stacey, it was an instant yes.

We drove to Washington with Stacey and Lun Lun to see him off on his return trip, and it was already painful to know that this adoption process could take months and there were no guarantees. As Lun Luns future grandparents, we were particularly bummed about returning to Connecticut without him, but in our hearts we believed this whole thing was right and would happen.

Fast forward to Mothers Day 2017. As we celebrate my wifes special day this Sunday with the usual gift and a dinner, well be doing so with the knowledge that just over a month from now, our daughter, accompanied by her excited and grateful grandparents, will be returning home with our new grandson, Lun Lun.

Just like many new adopting moms, Stacey is having those very overwhelming feelings of trepidation and excitement that can only come with being over-the-moon about welcoming a child into her life at last. As the time approaches, she asks herself, Will he remember that first night when he arrived so tired and we snuggled in a cozy chair? Will he want to leave the safety of the orphanage? How will he be on the flight home? Will he like his new home? Will he be able to love me as his real mom?

My wife and I will be joining Stacey for what the agency calls Gotcha Day. This the day designated by the Chinese authorities for picking up Lun Lun at the orphanage and beginning the tedious process of visiting magistrates and Chinese and American consulates for clearance. Our understanding is Lun Lun will have only been told of his adoption just before our arrival.

What if he doesnt want to go? a few friends have asked.

We can only hope, after traveling halfway around the world that we wont have to confront that challenge. Besides, weve been sending Lun Lun pictures and gifts throughout this long adoption process and his caretakers have been sending us pictures of him. All of these gestures, as weve been assured by Cradle of Hope, have helped to communicate how much love and joy we are waiting to shower on our special young man.

As this second Mothers Day approaches for my wife and this first, albeit belated, Mothers Day comes for our daughter, we are counting the days until the trip and pinching ourselves about how this all came to be. After Gotcha Day for Lun Lun on June 19, it will be Mothers Day every day for Staceys precious little boy and these soon-to-be doting grandparents.

Steven Gaynes is a Fairfield writer, and his In the Suburbs appears each Friday. He can be reached at stevengaynes44@gmail.com.
Ivanka Trump has donated $200,000 in royalties from her new book to a pair of charities - the National Urban League and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the two charities confirmed.

Trump, the president's eldest daughter and now a White House adviser, recently published the book "Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success." Her advance for the book was set to be paid in four installments: a private spokesperson for Trump said that two of the payments, totaling around $425,000, were made before the election.

She kept those, although she used some to pay a writer, researcher and fact-checker who worked on the book, a spokesperson said.

After Trump took on her White House role, she pledged to give the next two advance payments - also totaling about $425,000--to charity. She has said she will also donate any additional money received in royalties.

This month, the first set of those donation checks was received.

A spokeswoman for the National Urban League said it got Trump's donation on Monday, and that the money would fund a new program for women entrepreneurs in Baltimore.

The spokeswoman, Teresa Candori, said it was too early to say what, exactly, that program might entail. The new program would be attached to an existing Urban League Entrepreneurship Center in Baltimore, which provides advice and mentoring mean to "increase minority entrepreneurs' competitiveness and profitability."

The Boys and Girls Clubs also received its donation on Monday. Its plan is to distribute the money among clubs across the country, for use in science, technology, engineering and math programs. The money will be spent on programs for "girls and underrepresented youth," a spokeswoman said.

Trump announced her plans to make these donations earlier this year, saying she wanted to allay concerns that she might be profiting off her new title in the White House.

"I want to be clear that this book is a personal project. I wrote it at a different time in my life, from the perspective of an executive and an entrepreneur, and the manuscript was completed before the election last November," she said in a news release in April. "Out of an abundance of caution and to avoid the appearance of using my official role to promote the book, I will not publicize the book through a promotional tour or media appearances."

The final advance payment will be made in 2018, Trump's private spokesperson said. The spokesperson said that she has not yet selected the charities that will receive the remainder of the money.
Washington

A federal judge in the nation's capital said Thursday she won't act on a request to block President Donald Trump's revised travel ban because two other judges have already stopped the executive order from going into effect.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said in an order that she is "inclined to agree" that Trump's effort to temporarily bar new visas for citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries is unlawful. But she said the best course of action is to delay proceedings until appeals from the rulings in Maryland and Hawaii are resolved.

Chutkan heard testimony last month from Iranian-American and Muslim groups that say Iranians have faced delays and disruptions in obtaining visas even after the ban was blocked. They had asked for a more sweeping injunction that would restore the normal visa application process.

Organizations challenging the ban in Washington, D.C., include the Iranian American Bar Association and the National Iranian American Council. The lawsuit claims the ban was driven by anti-Muslim sentiment and is harming students, business travelers and families.

Justice Department lawyers insist the ban targets countries that pose terrorism risks and say courts should not second-guess the president's foreign policy decisions.

Chutkan was the first judge to allow witnesses to testify in court about the effects of the travel ban. She appeared sympathetic to the groups last month, and said Thursday that she is prepared to issue a ruling "without delay" if orders from courts in Maryland and Hawaii are overturned. Those judges blocked the vast majority of the ban, which would restrict immigration of people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The Trump administration is appealing both rulings. A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., heard arguments in the Maryland case on Monday, while a federal appeals court in San Francisco will consider the Hawaii ruling next week.

Meanwhile, Chutkan said the litigation on the merits of the case would continue and she ordered the parties to file legal briefs by the end of June.
The efforts of Nonviolent Peaceforces Midland Chapter can be likened to a pebble tossed into a pond, creating ripples, said member Mary Mersereau-Kempf.

We never know how far the ripples will go out, but we want to throw that stone, she said.

Those ripples include fundraising the yearly cost of one unarmed civilian peacekeeper to work in a conflict zone for Nonviolent Peaceforce, an international professional peacekeeping organization.

To share how such peacekeepers are making a positive impact, Nonviolent Peaceforce Executive Director Tiffany Easthom will discuss peacebuilding and conflict resolution in two presentations, titled Transforming the Worlds Response to Conflict.

Hosted by NPs Midland Chapter, Easthom will speak from 7 to 9 p.m. Monday at Creative 360 in Midland, with doors opening at 6:30 p.m. NP members will be available during the half-hour gathering period to chat. Displays and literature about the organization will also be available. After the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session.

The Midland Chapter is the most active in the United States, hosting educational programming in area schools and around the community. The group of about 25 members hosts quarterly business meetings. The Midland Friends of NP, a related secondary group, has more informal gatherings to learn about and celebrate NPs work.

St. Johns Episcopal Church in Midland will also host Easthom at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Last September, the St. Johns Endowment Committee granted NP a quarter of the $45,000 cost of one unarmed civilian peacekeeper for one year. The public is invited to join as the church continues its support and to learn how their contribution is helping nonviolent conflict resolution around the world.

Were really grateful for their support, Anderson said. We really want them to know the impact of their their gifts.

NP, an unarmed civilian force, provides a protective presence and helps foster dialogue between conflicting parties and working with the community. The nonpartisan organization comes only into areas where they are invited, and then teams live and work in the conflict zones. They currently have peacekeepers in South Sudan, Myanmar, the Philippines and Syria. NP also recently established a country program in Iraq.

(An event like this) gives us an opportunity to talk to folks and share stories from the field and let them know whats going on and what works and to hopefully encourage people to take on those causes, said Marna Anderson, director of communications and development for NP in the United States. Anderson spoke during a local NP event at the Midland Country Club in February 2016.

Such events help NP raise awareness not only about the organization, but also about the broader field of unarmed civilian protection, Easthom said.

During the presentation, Easthom will provide information about NP and its field work around the world, how unarmed civilian peacekeeping works and share stories of people in conflict zones helped by its strategies.

We will also talk a little bit about the evolving trends in conflict and things that we need to be paying attention to, including the nexus of climate change and violent conflict, Easthom said.

Climate change causes prolonged droughts, flooding and diverging water sources, which leads to livestock death and the inability to raise crops.

Its triggering population movements, and so youve got groups of people that are being forced to leave their homes, she said. It pushes people from different ethnic, religious or identity groups into closer proximity with one another and it can be a trigger for a conflict.

Easthom said NP tries to develop strategies to predict upcoming conflicts due to population shifts, competition over resources or existing frictions, so that it can work to mitigate the impact.

Its not a guarantee that a climate event will cause violent conflict, but certainly in places that have existing fragilities ... then it increases the risk quite significantly, she said.

NPs work is not limited to war-torn conflict zones; in November 2016, NP sent a team of unarmed civilian peacekeepers to Standing Rock, North Dakota, to provide protection during the disputes regarding the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Our purpose there was to really introduce the concept of unarmed civilian protection and show how it can work in a conflict like that at Standing Rock, and using it as a model to inspire people that conflict can be resolved without violence, Anderson said. We have a lot of examples from our global work, but we want people in the United States to understand that its also useful in our own backyard.

Mersereau-Kempf of Midland said one of her goals of the event is for the attendees to leave with hope.

There is an organization a large one that is making a difference. We hear about violence all over the world and it can really get overwhelming, but there is hope, she said.

Anderson encourages the public to attend the event to learn about international issues from a new perspective, one that challenges the notion that conflicts should be met with violence. NP will also be hosting a supporter trip to Myanmar in October that allows civilians to see how peacekeepers work in the field.

It is a good reminder that were an interconnected world, and we can no longer consider issues of violence and war and poverty as something that happens over there or to somebody elses country, Easthom said. These are issues that affect us all, and the only way that were going to move past them and to effect change is by working together as a global community to address the root causes.

To learn more about NPs Midland Chapter or to RSVP to the event at Creative 360, 1517 Bayliss St., email Judy Timmons at timmonsj45@gmail.com

To RSVP to the event at St. Johns Episcopal Church, 405 N. Saginaw Road, call the church office at 989-631-2260. Coffee and dessert will be served.

To learn more about Nonviolent Peaceforce, visit www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org
The presence of a Russian photographer working for a state-owned news agency during President Donald Trump's meeting Wednesday with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office sparked criticism from media advocates as well as concerns over the risk of a security breach.

White House officials seemed caught off-guard by the controversy, initially saying they had not anticipated that the state news agency Tass would post photographs from the meeting. "They tricked us," one unnamed official was quoted as saying by CNN.

American news organizations were not granted access to the Oval Office meeting; an official White House photographer was present. Officials said they were unaware that photographer Alexandr Scherbak would be shooting for both Tass and the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russian officials have fired back fiercely by taking aim at the U.S. media.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova criticized a Washington Post story about the meeting on the sidelines of Thursday's Arctic Council meeting in Fairbanks, Alaska. The Post story, published soon after the Oval Office meeting, had quoted a number of former intelligence officials who said that White House visitors could hide surveillance equipment such as a listening device in a camera or other equipment.

"Here he is -- the spy!" Zakharova said sarcastically after being approached by a Post reporter, referring to Scherbak, standing nearby. "Your newspaper is making our correspondents feel like Jews in 1933."

In Facebook postings on Thursday, Zakharova also criticized CNN's coverage of the Oval Office meeting, accusing the news network of reaching "rock bottom." The spokeswoman shared a Web page made by the Russian Embassy in Washington that was simply a list of more than 200 tweets by journalists and other public figures discussing the meeting.

Scherbak issued his reply Thursday in a Facebook post written in Russian and later translated to English. Addressing the "U.S. media" directly about the "hysteria surrounding my photo shoot at the White House," Scherbak said he had covered similar meetings around the world before and there was "nothing unusual" about Wednesday's session.

After the Russian foreign minister met with his U.S. counterpart, "I was taken by a U.S. representative to the White House. I was scanned, patted down, and then sniffed by canines," Scherbak wrote. Inside the Oval Office, he was accompanied by an official White House photographer, he said. "I took only two cameras to the photo shoot, I left all my stuff, including my cellphone, in another room as I was told to do."

On Friday, the Russian Journalists' Union issued a statement in support of Scherbak, suggesting that he had "become another target of attacks by CNN journalists."

Wednesday's White House meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, came at a time of renewed scrutiny over ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. Kislyak in particular has featured in one of the new administration's most notable controversies, with national security adviser Michael Flynn forced to resign in February after misleading Vice President Mike Pence about his contacts with the ambassador last year.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded with "high confidence" that Russia tried to affect the outcome of the 2016 election, an allegation Lavrov has denied repeatedly.

The Post reported after the meeting that although all visitors entering the White House were subjected to a security screening, some former intelligence officials suggested that such a screening could not detect a sophisticated device. Todd Morris, founder and chief executive of the countersurveillance advisory company BrickHouse Security, told The Post that a covert device could be as small as a matchbook and that though it might eventually be found, it could transmit its data quickly.

- Anne Gearan contributed to this report.
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In a church hall in northern Virginia, a father of two named Jose sat at a long table and stared at the legal document before him. It was a road map for life without him.

He initialed the clause that said that if he and his wife were arrested or deported, the person they were choosing as a guardian for their girls would make decisions about their schooling.

With his index finger tracing each line, he read how the guardian wouldbring the girls to school and day care, decide who will pick them up, and have the power to book airline tickets on their behalf so the children could reunite with their parents in Central America.

The next line highlighted the power to make decisions if either girl was hospitalized. At this, Jose froze.

"That's when they need me," he said to himself. "What if I'm not there?"

It is a question thousands of undocumented immigrants are asking across the United States, in the apple orchards outside Spokane, Washington, the blueberry fields near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and at churches and community centers in Maryland and Virginia.

On Spanish-language television and online, immigration lawyers and foreign consulates are responding to a widely publicized immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, and urging undocumented parents who could be deported to leave clear instructions for their bank accounts, real estate holdings and - most of all - their children.

About 5.1 million children in this country have a parent who is here illegally, according to estimates from the Migration Policy Institute. Nearly 80 percent of those children are U.S. citizens.

Hector Quiroga, a Spokane immigration lawyer, said that after Trump took office his call volume peaked at 300 calls a day from people seeking to protect their children and assets. He hired three new secretaries, but could not keep up. Then he posted the instructions for selecting a guardian online. The video had been viewed more than 35,000 times.

"People are petrified," Quiroga said. "They're desperately trying to get these documents."

Lawyers caution that custody rules vary by state, and they are urging parents to consult with nonprofits and family lawyers before signing any documents. In Virginia, for instance, immigrants can assign temporary caretakers for their children by signing powers of attorney documents before a licensed notary. But in Maryland, someone designated by the parents would have to go to court to seek guardianship.

Even in states where the laws are complex, lawyers say parents should craft an emergency plan that appoints someone to take charge if they are detained.

"I would definitely say to take the safety precautions," said Michelle Mendez, an attorney with Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., based in Baltimore. "Anybody can get detained and deported right now."

That was clear to Jose and his wife, GG, as they watched news footage of immigration arrests in the weeks after Trump's inauguration, sitting on pushed-together couches in the living room of the tidy northern Virginia colonial they share with their daughters, Jose's parents and his sister and her family.

Jose is a welder from El Salvador. GG, from Honduras, works at McDonald's. The couple asked that their full names not be published, out of fear that such exposure would make it easier for deportation agents to find them.

Although the Obama administration deported record numbers of undocumented immigrants in some years, the former president said he prioritized security threats, not families. Under President Donald Trump, those rules are gone. In February, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos, the mother of two children who were born in the United States and therefore have citizenship. On April 19, the agency deported Maribel Trujillo Diaz, a mother of four U.S. citizens.

Longtime proponents of reducing illegal immigration have applauded the Trump administration's efforts, saying that stepping up deportations will deter others from crossing the border without permission.

Jose and GG deliberated late into the night about how, if the worst happened, they would make sure that their 7-year-old and almost-2-year-old were well taken care of.

Finally, Jose asked a friend, a Panamanian-born woman who is now a U.S. citizen, to become the girls' temporary guardian if needed. The two friends had met years ago, in English class. "She introduces me like I'm her brother," Jose said.

And she agreed to take care of the girls if their parents were taken away. It was settled. All the grown-ups had to do was sign the papers.

On a recent Sunday, sun streamed through the tall windows in the church hall as Jose, GG and a couple dozen other immigrants listened to a lawyer give instructions.

Jose's older daughter nibbled on a muffin. His toddler, wearing a red hoodie that said "I am a giggle monster," bounced in her grandmother's arms.

"It's like temporary custody," Robert Lacy, a Fairfax immigration lawyer explained to the parents before they examined the records. "Like you went on a trip. It's not for tomorrow. I hope it's for never."

But Jose knew that families can splinter at any time.

When he was 5 years old, , his father joined one of the leftist guerrilla movements fighting the U.S.-backed army in El Salvador's brutal civil war.

Five years later, Jose's mother went to fight also, leaving a network of friends to care for Jose and his sisters.

Sometimes his mother visited them. Other times he watched the war from the yard. Bombs lighted the night sky, helicopters fired into the trees, and he wondered if his parents were somewhere down below.

Eight years after the war ended, Jose's father mortgaged their house and bought a bus to start a transport company. Days later, it was stolen. With debt and no livelihood, he joined thousands crossing illegally into the United States. Jose, his mother and one of his four sisters eventually followed. Back home, gang violence soared.

That family history - the loneliness of separation, the relief at being back together - was on Jose's mind that day in the church hall, as he signed the papers.

"We had the luck to find each other," he said. "Many never had that chance. I know what it is like to lose your dad."
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The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that the University of the Incarnate Word is a governmental unit when it comes to law enforcement because it has a campus police force, a potential boost to the universitys defense against a lawsuit stemming from the 2013 killing of a student by a UIW officer.

The wrongful death lawsuit was filed by the family of Cameron Redus, a senior who was shot to death off campus by former UIW police Cpl. Christopher Carter, who suspected Redus of driving drunk and tried to arrest him in an apartment complex parking lot. The two fought and Carter shot Redus multiple times.

In an opinion delivered by Justice John Devine, the court ruled that by allowing the university to commission peace officers, the Legislature has authorized UIW to enforce local and state laws.

Because law enforcement is uniquely governmental, the function the Legislature has authorized UIW to perform and the way the Legislature has authorized UIW to perform it strongly indicate that UIW is a governmental unit as to that function, Devine wrote. We accordingly conclude that UIW is a governmental unit for purposes of law enforcement and that UIW is therefore entitled to pursue an interlocutory appeal.

The lawsuit was filed in 2014 after a Bexar County grand jury declined to indict Carter. The private university did not claim to be a government unit as a whole but argued it should qualify for immunity as a public entity under the Texas Torts Claims Act because it employed police officers licensed by the state.

The states high court heard arguments in December, the day after the three-year anniversary of Redus death. The ruling sends it back to the Fourth Court of Appeals, which had previously ruled against UIW.

Matthew Wymer, an attorney for UIW, said the ruling simply means the university can pursue its claim of immunity, since the decision dealt only with the basic question of how UIW can defend itself in court.

This is truly a threshold matter, even though its taken us so long to get here, Wymer said.

The decision should apply to other private universities in Texas that operate licensed law enforcement agencies, he added.

Attorneys for the Redus family have disagreed, asserting that the university could not simultaneously claim to be both private and a governmental unit.

One of them, Brent Perry, said Fridays decision should be viewed as a straight up procedural ruling, noting that the Supreme Court did not rule on whether the UIW claim of immunity under torts law was correct.

Our position all along is that a private university does not get government immunity, Perry said. This case does not decide that issue.

David Anderson, a professor at the University of Texas Law School who specializes in torts law, said he was initially surprised by the ruling but concluded it was not terribly remarkable.

Theyre just saying if the state authorizes a private police force to enforce state law, then that police department is eligible for governmental immunity, he said.

Anderson said the decision could have implications for other private organizations that operate police forces, such as hospitals.
A police officer was hospitalized Friday morning after a driver crashed into his motorcycle while he was pursuing a vehicle that had allegedly violated the speed limit.

"He'll probably be out for some time," said San Antonio Police Department Sgt. James Perdue.

Perdue said the injured officer and another officer were enforcing the school zone speed limit around 8:30 a.m. at Bellaire Elementary School in the 3700 block of Pleasanton Road on the South Side.

A driver was allegedly clocked over the speed limit, and the officer began pursuing the driver for the traffic violation.

READ ALSO: Man fatally stabbed at Lulu's Cafe overnight; police detain suspect covered in blood blocks away

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Another driver not involved in the pursuit changed lanes into the motorcycle officer near West Formosa Boulevard and Pleasanton Road, causing the officer to flip over.

Perdue said the officer suffered road rash on his hand and some "serious" cuts on his arms, but the injuries were not life threatening. He was transported to a hospital in stable condition.

It is unclear if the driver who hit the officer will face any charges. Police are currently investigating the crash.

"She's pretty shaken up because the incident involved a police officer," he said of the driver, who was not injured in the collision.

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SAN ANTONIO  A 40-year-old man faces possible prison time after he allegedly stole more than $9,000 from a person in a roof repair scheme, according to court documents, and could be additional victims.

John Joseph Swatek faces a state jail felony charge of theft between $2,500 and $30,000.
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South Texas law enforcement officials arrested an Alabama man this week after receiving a tip on a mysterious Facebook account that was "friends" with more than 500 underage girls from the area.

The Atascosa County Sheriff's Office apprehended Sam Oliver Campbell, 40, Thursday in Pleasanton and booked him into jail on a previous theft warrant, according to a news release.
It is distressing to learn that some of our state legislators hope to eliminate Connecticuts highly successful Citizens Election Program (CEP).

CEP makes it possible for qualified candidates to run for state office even if they are neither wealthy nor beholden to special interests. It helps to keep our elections clean and to level the playing field for new and young candidates.

In the 10 years since CEP began, the vast majority of state legislators have relied on CEP funding in every election.

Some legislators argue that CEP has not kept dark money out of our elections. They are conflating Connecticuts CEP with the federal Supreme Court decision in Citizens United, which allows private campaign contributions, including contributions from undisclosed sources, for ads and other tools aimed at persuading voters. They are ignoring the fact that our State Elections Enforcement Commission monitors candidate compliance with CEP.

Similarly, the argument that we cant afford to fund elections is flimsy, considering that CEP constitutes only 0.0001 percent of the state budget, and that it is funded by the sale of unclaimed property  not from taxes.

What we really cant afford is a return to the days of Corrupticut, the pay-to-play climate that landed former Gov. John Rowland in jail.

It is hypocritical for our General Assembly representatives and senators to oppose CEP, considering that 89 percent of them ran on CEP funding. Thanks to CEP, they are able to serve their current terms without owing favors to special interests.

The League of Women Voters advocates for continuation and strengthening of the Citizens Election Program. We hope our legislators will make the right choice: preserve and strengthen CEP to help keep Connecticuts elections free and fair in perpetuity.

League of Women Voters

of Norwalk Steering Committee;

Elsa Peterson Obuchowski,

Treasurer & Membership Coordinator
I live in Enfield and the Senate is set to vote on a plan to build a casino in East Windsor, less than a mile from my town border. State Sen. Bob Duff, the Senate majority leader, and your representative, supports the casino.

Many people in North Central Connecticut do not want this casino. Its bad news. Its going to drain money out of our economy, and increase DUI incidents. It will cost jobs, not create them. It will ruin vulnerable families. East Windsor  to the shock of many its residents  approved this casino without a referendum.
At long last, there is significant momentum for funding charter school facilities this legislative session.

As lifelong San Antonians, we know the importance of quality education, especially education that prepares students for success in high school, college, trade school or community college. This is why we volunteer as board members for KIPP San Antonio Public Schools. Students in San Antonio and across our state deserve our involvement and our communitys support. Teachers and students cant do it on their own.

If we want to build up the educational attainment of our city and ensure a vibrant future, we need to increase access to seats in quality schools.

With more than a decade of results, KIPP San Antonio students regularly outperform their peers in comparable San Antonio schools and exceed Texas state averages. One hundred percent of the KIPP University Prep Class of 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 earned college acceptance, as well as 83 percent of KIPP middle school alumni who attended other high schools, dramatically exceeding local and state averages.

Yet more than 2,000 students are on the KIPP San Antonio waiting list. These students and families have chosen KIPP, yet cant exercise that choice due to a lack of facility funding.

Across Texas, charter school numbers tell a similar story. There are approximately 250,000 students attending a public charter school. The parents of more than 140,000 children on waiting lists stand ready for an opportunity to participate in this innovative form of public education.

We work closely with Mark Larson, the founder and CEO of KIPP San Antonio, and he has said before that school choice has always existed as a privilege of the wealthy. Larson stated, Choice is not a new word in education, but this kind of privilege is out of sync with the evolution of democracy.

Jesus Aleman is a first-generation immigrant, KIPP San Antonio alumnus and college graduate. In early 2003, his family arrived in San Antonio from Mexico with limited resources and without speaking a word of English. That fall, full of hope, his mother enrolled him at KIPP Aspire Academy as a fifth-grader.

Fourteen years later, he is a candidate for a doctorate in osteopathic medicine at the University of North Texas Health Science Center. He is grateful for his KIPP teachers, without whom he would not have graduated from Saint Marys Hall or St. Marys University, nor would he be on track to graduate from medical school in four years.

The lack of access to a quality school with enough space to educate students is a problem. We can solve this problem. The Texas Legislature needs to address equal funding for public school students this year.

Thankfully, state Sen. Donna Campbell, R-New Braunfels, has taken steps this session to improve facility funding for public charter schools. With passage of Senate Bill 457, Campbell and her colleagues in the Senate have led the way toward making equal funding for students in public education a priority that is long overdue.

When she announced SB 457, she stated, Charter school students in Texas are treated as public school students in every regard including accountability and standards, except for their funding. With 141,000 students on charter school waiting lists, it is high time we address this critical funding gap.

Public charter schools currently receive zero dollars in facility funding. Yet charter schools are public schools, and students in these schools are public school students. We thank the Texas House for beginning to address the way the Legislature funds public schools, and we hope House members will move the bill to the House floor for a vote. This bill takes first steps to close an estimated $1,400 funding gap between funding for a student who attends a public charter school and one who attends a traditional public school.

Campbell should be commended for taking this significant step to provide equal funding for all public school students.

Maria Hernandez Ferrier is the founding and president emerita of Texas A&M University-San Antonio. Lionel Sosal is an independent marketing consultant and founder of Sosa, Bromley, Aguilar & Associates. Both are board members for KIPP San Antonio Public Schools.
This weeks events in Washington  President Donald Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey and the surrounding controversy  are reminiscent of President Nixons firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox for too vigorously pursuing an investigation into the Watergate scandal.

And it reminds some of us of links between San Antonio and the death of one of the major reforms generated by Archibald Coxs firing.

Many Democratic members of Congress and a few Republicans are calling for a special prosecutor to investigate possible collusion between members of the Trump campaign and documented efforts by Russian agents to help tarnish the campaign of his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

But even if a special prosecutor is appointed, his or her independence will be questionable. The appointment would be made by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. He is the man who produced the memo used by Trump to justify Comeys firing.

Whats more, Rosenstein would decide how much manpower and funding the special prosecutor would receive. And both Rosenstein and the special prosecutor would, like Comey, serve at the pleasure of the president.

The Watergate reform that cured these problems was a procedure that empowered a three-judge panel to appoint a truly independent prosecutor. The most famous was Ken Starr, who grew up on San Antonios South East Side, attending Sam Houston High School.

Starr was appointed to investigate the Clintons involvement in a corrupt Arkansas land development called Whitewater, but he expanded the investigation to include controversies such as the suicide of White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster and an alleged scandal in the White House travel office.

But his 7-year, $70-million-dollar investigation would wind up only with the finding that Bill Clinton had lied in a deposition about illicit sex. Clinton would be impeached for it, but the Senate declined to convict.

But at least as outrageous as Starrs investigation was the probe of former San Antonio Mayor and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros. Independent prosecutor David Barrett would pursue the Cisneros case for more than a decade, setting a record for independent prosecutors, and spend $22 million.

For that effort he won Cisneros plea to a misdemeanor charge of lying to the FBI about how much he had paid his former mistress, Linda Jones Medlar, to keep her quiet. Ironically, Attorney General Janet Reno had disclosed this much before Barretts appointment.

But even worse than the time and resources was Barretts outrageous abuse of power. In order to squeeze Medlar to get her cooperation, he went after her sister and brother-in-law in Lubbock. In an act of kindness, they helped Medlar get a house for herself and her teenaged daughter. Her relatives had signed mortgage papers saying they were buying a house for themselves when in fact Medlar was buying it with downpayment money secretly provided by Cisneros.

Lying on mortgage loans is illegal, but it is almost never prosecuted when the lender suffers no loss, as was the case with this house. It was sold and the mortgage paid off when Cisneros had stopped sending money to Medlar.

But Barrett not only indicted Medlars relatives, he trumped up conspiracy charges to add to their potential prison time. Then he stretched money laundering laws to cover rent they received from buyers of the house before the sale went through  in order to scare them with sentencing guidelines designed for drug kingpins. It worked. Fearing prison, they pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy and agreed to cooperate.

Barrett kept them on the hook even after Cisneross plea deal, but finally agreed to vacate their guilty plea and drop charges after the federal judge in the case indicated he was going to rule that way anyway.

Between Starr and Barrett, Congress had enough with independent prosecutors. In 1999, they let the law lapse. The taint of abuse remains so strong that, unlike Watergate, even the Russian scandal and Trumps reaction to it have not led to calls to reinstate independent prosecutors.

This column first appeared as the Last Word on KLRNs Texas Week with Rick Casey. The program appears Friday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m.
Re: Legislation tackles teen pregnancy, Gwen Daverth, Another View, Monday:

A warm thank you to Gwen Daverth about our need to curb teen pregnancy. I wholly agree.

Colorado has provided free contraception for five years. Since then, both unwanted pregnancies and abortions are down more than 40 percent. I believe we should encourage the Legislature to provide the same.

Wayne Haymes, Leon Valley

Its the law

Re: Mexico and police chief slam Texas new sanctuary city ban, State, Tuesday:

So the Mexican government expressed regret over the new Texas ban on sanctuary cities, saying the law could step on the rights of its citizens who choose to live across the border.

What do the Mexican government and the liberal American elite not understand about nations, borders and law? Borders are important to national identity and security. Laws matter; without them, we have chaos.

If Mexicans live here without either U.S. citizenship or visas, they are breaking the law.

States, cities, towns and municipalities have a duty to assist federal officials deporting criminal illegal aliens. And before you edit this last sentence, remember, if they are here without the proper passport/visas, they are aliens by definition. And that behavior is illegal. Hence the description illegal alien.

So, Mexican government and Police Chief William McManus, deal with it; its the law! Act accordingly. And thank you, Gov. Greg Abbott, for outlawing sanctuary city behavior.

Brian Bastow

Progressive mindset

Re: Release your taxes, Your Turn, May 6:

The comments of the letter writer are an excellent example of the thought process of many progressives. The writer states, I am not a tax accountant but   Then, in the next sentence, he states: I also must assume 

The writer made an unqualified assumption based on admitted unqualified knowledge of a subject. Thank you.

Don Ripley, Floresville
STAMFORD  Police intercepted a UPS delivery Thursday to a New York man who they say stole the identities of a Springdale couple and charged thousands of dollars worth of merchandise to their accounts.

Lt. Tom Barcello said the couple reported on Tuesday their identities had been stolen and notified their UPS driver that someone had been falsely charging items to them.
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WILTON  A one-teacher school can be funded with a dollar a day in rural parts of India, where no government schools are available.

The $365 covers the teachers honorarium, classroom materials, books for students and a portion of administrative costs.

Knowing this, and that Indias literacy rate is lower in rural areas, Rubin Jha wanted to find a way to help.

I am Indian myself and if my parents hadnt gotten an education, they wouldnt be here and then I wouldnt be here, the seventh grader said. So I thought, Why not just help?

Jha and his older brother Rushil joined the Ekal CT Kids Club last year. The club is a subgroup of the Connecticut chapter of the Ekal Vidyalaya Foundation  a movement dedicated to running one-teacher schools, known as Ekal Vidyalayas, all over India.

The nonprofit organization sponsors 55,159 schools that offer education to more than 1.4 million students.

This summer, the Jha brothers will be able to visit some of the schools in Chittorgarh, the hometown of their father Ashok.

It just helps us feel better in the inside knowing that we helped people in real parts of world, said Rushil Jha, a freshman at Wilton High School. I wanted to help other kids who arent getting a chance to have a schooling, to have a chance to actually achieve things in life and strive to move out of their village and move to the city and get higher paying jobs.

While Ekals efforts are generally well-communicated within the growing Indian community in town, the hope is to involve more of the Wilton community, overall, said Ashok Jha, who is helps manage the Connecticut chapters fundraising events.

The Connecticut chapter has raises between $60,000 to $75,000 every year.

Its all about education, he said. Were trying to raise education in the Wilton town and Fairfeld County to help the less fortunate people.

Artie Rokkam, co-chairperson of the Kids Club, said the youths involved have raised enough money to support five schools last year through bake sales, online fundraising, school presentations and door-to-door donations. The goal for this year is to sponsor 10 schools, she added.

Im impressed by the dedication of the volunteers, including the children, which is why Im happy to be co-chair of the kids coordinating event, Rokkam said. It is very impressive to see the people who have been doing it for years now  the direct impact the fundraising has on the education in India.

Upcoming events include the Mothers Day 5K run and walk on Sunday at Merwin Meadows, 52 Lovers lane, and the Ekal Sur Ekal Taal cultural concert on Saturday, May 27, at Rogers International School in Stamford.

To register for the run, visit www.ekal.org/us/ticket/5-k-run or contact Nita Singhal at 475-200-0198. To buy tickets to the concert, visit https://www.ekal.org/us/event/ekal-sur-ekal-taal-wilton-ct or contact AShok Jha at 203-354-2742.

SKim@hearstmediact.com; 203-354-1044; @stephaniehnkim
1 Pope in Portugal: Pope Francis told tens of thousands of pilgrims to tear down all walls and go to the peripheries to spread peace and justice. He made the appeal Friday after arriving at the Portuguese shrine in Fatima, one of the most important Catholic sanctuaries in the world. Francis is in Fatima to mark the anniversary of the visions of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children 100 years ago. Over the past several days, church groups, families and individuals have made their way to Fatima, about 90 miles north of Lisbon, some completing the final leg of the pilgrimage on their knees in prayer.

2 Taliban attack: Police say Taliban fighters launched an attack on a market in northern Afghanistan, killing four security forces. Ekramuddin Sarih, provincial police chief for Baghlan province, said Taliban fighters launched the attack early Friday morning in the Burka district. Sarih said 15 Taliban fighters were also killed and government forces pushed back the Taliban fighters from the central bazaar.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Jacob Schram, group president of European operations at Alimentation Couche-Tard, has been named the 2017 NACS Insight European Industry Leader of the Year Award. The award, sponsored by Mondelez International, will be presented during the NACS Insight Convenience SummitEurope in London on June 14.

Mondelez International is honored to sponsor the prestigious 2017 NACS Insight European Industry Leader of the Year Award, said Rick Brindle, vice president of industry development at Mondelez International. We both congratulate and thank Jacob and his team for the vision, passion and many contributions they have made to our industry.

Schram, formerly the CEO for Statoil Fuel & Retail, was appointed to his current position at Couche-Tard in June 2012. Schram joined Statoil in 1996 and held various management positions including country manager of Statoil Retail Norway from 1999 to 2004, and senior vice president Statoil Retail Europe from 2004 to 2006.

On September 22, 2015, Couche-Tard announced its plans to bring a refreshed Circle K global convenience brand to the market, replacing existing Circle K, Statoil, Macs and Kangaroo Express branding on stores and service stations across Canada, the United States, Scandinavia and Central and Eastern Europe. Throughout the process, Schrams leadership and passion have been instrumental in leading the companys goal to become the preferred destination for convenience and fuel among consumers worldwide.

I am very honored and humbled by this award, said Schram. This is a result of a collective team effort. Together we have managed to handle an extensive global rebranding process without losing our identity or our customers.

Schram will deliver a keynote address on June 14 at the Convenience Summit-Europe, sharing the companys highly rewarding and emotional rebrand process for Circle K convenience stores worldwide, and the evolution of the Circle K brand. Immediately following the address, Schram will receive the award and participate in an interactive conversation with NACS President and CEO Henry Armour.

Now in its fourth year, the NACS Insight Convenience SummitEurope brings together convenience and fuel retailing industry leaders from around the world to discuss new ideas and gain new commercial connections. This years event kicks off in Zurich, Switzerland, on June 11, and heads to London on June 13. A highlight of the event, the NACS Insight International Convenience Retail Awards ceremony will take place June 15 with winners announced for: International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award, European Convenience Retail Sustainability Award and European Convenience Retail Technology Award.

Join the global convenience retail community at the NACS Insight Convenience SummitEurope, taking place June 11-16 in Zurich and London. Register today at conveniencesummit.com.
YORK, Penn.  Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf stopped by Rutters headquarters this week as part of his Jobs That Pay tour, the Central Penn Business Journal reports. After a circuit of the office, the governor, along with Rutters President and CEO Scott Hartman, met with close to a dozen employees to talk about working for the convenience store chain.

Suzanne Cramer, Rutters director of recruiting and human resources, told Wolf that college might not be for everyone and that there are good jobs for those who choose to forego a college degree. One Rutters employee added that others should hear that these are good-paying jobs, that you're not a failure if you don't go to college.

The governor added that the private sector and the government should do better to spread the message that not all employers require a college education for entry level and advancement opportunities. Wolf supports raising the states minimum wage to $12 an hour.

2016 NACS research found that one in six American adults has worked in a convenience store, gas station or corner store. Of that group, 86% valued their experience.
A rare bit of good news comes via a bill making its way through the Illinois legislature. It seeks to close the carried interest loophole, which is near and dear to private equity and hedge fund kingpins, in that state. The carried interest loophole allows fund managers, who typically have only a 1% to 3% investment in the funds they operate, to treat the prototypical 20% profit share as capital gains income, which is taxed at a lower rate than labor income.

And before you say, This will never happen, consider:

Tax experts reported that there is widespread acceptance in the tax bar that the break is on its last legs, although if Trump gets his 15% tax rate for small businesses that would also happen to enrich super rich fund managers, it would make this effort moot 1 Fund managers can achieve largely similar tax treatment by having a true carried interest, as in borrowing enough so that theyd have a 20% interest in the funds they manage. But that would also entail taking the risk of loss, something they dont bear now The Illinois bill does not become effective until similar legislation becomes law in Connecticut and New Yorkand both state have similar bills moving forward (one has to wonder why the supposed paper of record, the New York Times, has not deigned to take notice) The legislation is among other things meant to embarrass Governor Bruce Rauner, who made his fortune in private equity. The bill will thus get votes from legislators who might otherwise be indifferent but want to put Rauner in a bad light

Notice that one of the sponsors is Daniel Biss, who weve written about previously for proposing another pioneering private-equity-related bill.

Key points from the Chicago Reporter (hat tip DO):

Social service agencies and public universities in Illinois are on the verge of collapse  while super-wealthy hedge fund and private equity managers (including Bruce Rauner and his top donors) evade millions of dollars in state taxes through an archaic loophole. Legislation currently under consideration in Springfield would close that loophole and raise at least $473 million a year  perhaps much more  by effectively requiring the titans of high finance to pay income taxes the same way the rest of us do. At this point it may actually be the most likely prospect for a legislature trying to do something about the states budget crisis. Last year presidential candidate Donald Trump promised to eliminate the carried interest loophole (as did Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush), but with his administration heavily populated by Wall Street bosses, it now looks like another broken promise So reformers have taken the fight to the states. Legislation repatriating revenue lost to the federal loophole has been introduced in six states. Its farthest along in the three states with the largest concentration of hedge funds and private equity firms: New York, Connecticut and Illinois. In those states, bills are sponsored by majority party members in each house, and the bills are getting hearings, Kink said. In Illinois, identical bills sponsored by State Sen. Daniel Biss (D-Evanston) and State Rep. Emanuel Chris Welch (D-Hillside) would charge a privilege tax of 20 percent on partnerships engaged in investment management services until a federal law with an identical effect is enacted. Based solely on public filings, Hedge Clippers estimates the bill would raise $473 million a year. The Illinois Department of Revenue estimates that the tax has the potential to raise $1.7 billion a year  but the department also argues that the tax would incentivize firms to find new ways to evade taxation or to relocate taxable activity so it is beyond the reach of the state. Welch said he considers this argument a scare tactic. This is what they always say, he said. Chicago is a world-class city, and LaSalle Street is a world-class financial center. Global financial firms are located in a small number of cities around the world  places where they have access to the talent, clients and ancillary services they need. Thats the reason they are here, said Welch. Theyre not going anywhere.. Kink points out that other kinds of investment firms dont get this tax break, and they remain in Chicago. I dont think its a credible threat, he said. Academic research  and experience with tax surcharges on millionaires  has demonstrated that marginal tax rates arent a factor in locating business operations, he added. In addition, the bill is fashioned as a compact: The tax wont take effect until New York, New Jersey and Connecticut pass similar measures. You might expect that Gov. Rauner would veto the bill. And well he might. But hes heading into a tough re-election campaign, with precious few accomplishments to which he can point. It kind of puts him on the spot, said Kink. Imagine Rauner taking the moral high ground, calling on his fellow tycoons to pay their fair share  and even to set aside the kind of tax-evasion strategies that arent available to the rest of us. He can afford it, and so can his friends. And soon enough Illinois voters will be deciding whether they can afford Rauner.

Keep your fingers crossed. And if you are in Illinois, Connecticut, or New York, call or e-mail your state representatives and say you expect them to vote for the bill.

____

1 Trumps tax plan is such a napkin doodle that experts of all persuasions have dismissed it. We need to see at least version 2.0 to see what it amounts to. Even so, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin disputed the idea that the 15% rate would be a huge windfall to private equity and hedge fund managers, so it appears they plan to have some curbs to restrict the largesse. But a separate and much bigger issue is that even in its sketchy form, the tax plan would result in major deficits, and that is unacceptable to the austerity fanatics on both sides of the aisle.
The man charged with dangerous driving causing the death of Clonmel-born councillor Willie Crowley has been sentenced to five and a half years in prison, with the final 18 months suspended.

Damien Klasinski was also disqualified from driving for 10 years.

Sitting at the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Melanie Greally also backdated the sentence to July 15, 2016, to give the defendant credit for the time he has spent on remand, pending today's sentencing.

Klasinski, with an address listed as the Oaks, Newbridge, pleaded guilty to the charge.

Cllr Crowley was from Clonmel and worked at The Nationalist for a number of years before first moving to Dublin and then to Kildare where he lived.

He was a member of Kildare County Council at the time of his death.

Passing sentence, Judge Greally said Cllr Crowley's death had "brought incalculable suffering" to his family and friends. She said that he had "bright and bold plans for his future".

Referring to the victim impact statement given at a previous hearing by his widow Clare Doyle, she said the late independent councillor was described as a man who "gave all to his family and community".

She said that the defendant was driving too fast given the conditions at the time, and did not stop following the impact, which she described as "cowardly and reprehensible" and "showing an abject disregard for his life" - although she noted his excuse of "panic" and described it as credible.

She noted his profound remorse for what had happened, the fact that he had a steady employment history, his domestic situation and the fact that he has employed his time in custody thus far wisely.

But the Judge also noted that the defendant had managed to accumulate 13 previous convictions for road traffic matters in 2015 alone, including driving without insurance and driving under the influence of an intoxicant - although he was not disqualified from driving at the time of the offence.

He was bound to the peace for the 18 month suspended section of his sentence.
Distressed Tipperary Town residents are looking for the support of the local community in a bid to keep their housing estate services turned on.

Rossmore Villages Maria OLeary says residents at the estate were recently issued a registered letter from Electric Ireland highlighting their intention to withdraw water pumping and sewerage systems on May 22.

Tipperary County Council are currently in the process of taking over Rossmore Village, but negotiations are proving lengthy.

Rossmore Village residents will hold a public meeting on the matter this Sunday (May 14) in St. Ailbe's School study hall at 6:30pm. Public representatives including Mattie McGrath TD, and councillors Denis Leahy and Michael Fitzgerald are expected to attend.

Some of the houses here have young families and others are occupied by the elderly. We havent had public lighting with five years, and the thought of all our other services getting cut off is unbearable. Its a health and safety issue, Maria says.

Cllr. Denis Leahy highlights Rossmore Village residents anger. People are fed up with the situation and it cant go on, he adds.
(Natural News) Pet food manufacturer Party Animal voluntarily recalled two variants of their Cocolicious brand dog food after it was determined to be contaminated with pentobarbital, a pet euthanasia drug. The implicated products are: Cocolicious Beef & Turkey dog food (Lot #0136E152 04, best by July 2019) and Cocolicious Chicken & Beef dog food (Lot #0134E152 37, best by August 2019). In a public statement released to the FDA.gov, the company said, the safety of pets is and always will be our first priority. We sincerely regret the reports of the discomfort experienced by the pet who consumed this food.

Party Animal was first made aware of these potentially toxic batches after a retailer in Texas reported health abnormalities in a pet after eating samples of the aforementioned products. This was on April 13. Cans of the Cocolicious brand were sent to an independent testing lab where it was proven that the contents did indeed contain pentobarbital. This drug, in large amounts, is used to put animals to sleep. Smaller doses can cause side-effects such as drowsiness, dizziness, loss of balance, or nausea. After receiving the results, Party Animal immediately tracked down the lot numbers and found that these batches were manufactured and distributed in 2015. The company then contacted the two probable retailers who had sold the customer the food and asked them to isolate the remaining cans from these lots. In the same public statement, Party Animal requested all pet owners who have cans with either lot number in their possession to return them to the place of purchase. Owners will receive a full refund.

Retailers are requested to send all contaminated cans back to the company where more independent testing will be conducted. Out of an abundance of caution, we are retrieving the remainder of these two lots nationwide. We are working with our distributors and retailers to determine if any additional beef-flavored products manufactured during this 2015 production period remain on shelves and, if so, to retrieve them from shelves, immediately, as well, the company further stated in their recall notice.

The company ended by stating that they have submitted all their recent batches of dog food for testing for pentobarbital.

Other reports of dog food contamination

Last February, Evangers Dog & Cat voluntarily recalled their Hunk of Beef products after they suspected these items to contain pentobarbital. The company officially recalled cans manufactured between June 6 and June 13 of 2016 with the following lot numbers: 1816E03HB, 1816E04HB, 1816E06HB, 1816E07HB, and 1816E13HB. All of these lots had an expiration date of June 2020. According to the companys statement, five dogs were taken ill from eating their Hunk of Beef brand. One dog had died. Evangers widened their recall recently, including their Against the Grains Pulled Beef and their Braised Beef Chunks brands. Since the initial recall, Evangers has severed ties with its supplier after four decades. Holly Sheer, President and Owner of Evangers told USAToday.com, in spite of this voluntary, expanded recall, our entire Evangers family remains very optimistic for our strong future and serving our customers to the very best of our abilities.

Protecting your pets and your family

Owning a pet is a beautiful experience. Whatever the species, pets provide comfort and offer companionship. We should repay this kindness by ensuring their safety. An article on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website lists a few tips when purchasing, serving, and storing pet food:

Purchasing  Always go to a trusted retailer. While this story does suggest that well-known brands are not invulnerable to contamination, it is still important to choose brands (ideally natural ones) that follow strict guidelines and safety policies in manufacturing their food.

Serving  Always wash your hands before and after handling pet foods and treats. This is the simplest way to prevent illness. The CDC recommends washing hands for at least 20 seconds. As much as possible, avoid washing pet food and water dishes in the kitchen sink to prevent cross-contamination.

Storing  Avoid storing pet food in the same area where human food is stored. Pet food should also be kept in a cool, dry placed under 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

Most importantly, you should keep yourself aware of what is in the pet food you serve. You can learn more when you visit NaturalNewsPets.com.

Sources include:

FDA.gov

USAToday.com

CBSNews.com 1

CBSNews.com 2

FoodSafetyNews.com
(Natural News) Nuclear experts have called it an underground Chernobyl waiting to happen, and now the Hanford Nuclear Reservation 200 miles outside of Seattle has gone into lockdown after a tunnel filled with highly contaminated nuclear waste collapsed. Around 4,800 people working there were instructed to either evacuate or take cover. As the situation intensified, they were advised by a manager to secure the ventilation in their buildings and avoid eating or drinking.

According to officials, a patch of ground above the tunnel collapsed. Initial reports placed the collapsed area at around 16 square feet, but this was later revised to a far more concerning 400 square feet.

The tunnels were originally built during the mid-1990s to hold rail cars filled with radioactive equipment and are made out of wood and concrete. They span hundreds of feet in length and are covered by around eight feet of soil. The area of the collapse is near the junction of two such tunnels. The tunnel where the collapse occurred contains just eight rail cars, while the adjoining one holds 28 rail cars, all loaded with nuclear waste.

The massive plant, which is around half the size of the state of Rhode Island, made plutonium for the U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons for decades. It contains four-fifths of all of the spent nuclear fuel rods in the nation. A private contractor has been cleaning up the site, which contains 56 million gallons of nuclear and chemical waste in hundreds of underground tanks.

Skepticism about safety of site

While officials have said that there are no signs of a radiological release, the facility does contain radiological contamination and has been a cause of concern for years. The fact that robots were sent in to check the contamination on the ground and in the air is only compounding fears. You might recall that in the immediate aftermath of the Fukushima meltdown, the Japanese government told people that there was no need to worry, and look at how that turned out!

Workers are now filling up the hole with soil after crews spent the night creating a gravel road to accommodate heavy equipment. It is believed that it will take around 50 truckloads of soil to stabilize the part of the tunnel in question. A misting machine has been brought in to keep dust down, but workers are donning protective suits and masks, as an extra safety precaution. There are concerns that the wind could suck some of the materials out of the tunnel and bring them out into the environment.

Prior to the collapse, the tanks were leaking radioactive vapors and toxic chemicals that are being blamed for brain and lung damage as well as cancer. In March 2014, 26 plant workers were hospitalized with health problems in just a two-week period. A former truck driver at the site suffered severe injuries after coming into contact with leaked radiation there, and he says officials knew about the spill but did nothing to stop him from going there. He says that while the site has an official policy stating that workers should feel free to present their concerns to management, most are afraid of losing their jobs by speaking out. The firm that was tasked with managing the site at the time, CH2M Hill, was slapped with more than $300,000 in fines from the Department of Energy for a series of nuclear safety violations.

Sources include:

King5.com

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Independent.co.uk

SeattleTimes.com
(Natural News) HPV vaccines like Cervarix and Gardasil have harmed young women and girls across the globe. And yet, many mainstream media sources, like NPR, have continued to perpetuate the myth that these vaccines are totally safe, effective and incapable of causing harm. However, more people and organizations are waking up to the reality that the HPV vaccine is capable of grievous damage.

A new documentary being released by the Alliance For Natural Health  USA (ANH-USA) seeks to change the narrative on HPV vaccines, and highlight the hazardous effects that these inoculations are capable of creating. The documentary will feature a number of medical experts, accomplished doctors and professors in the field who are brave enough to speak out against what they know is wrong. Some of these top authorities include Dr. Sin Hang Lee, who is an expert pathologist whos worked for Yale University and is currently the Director of Milford Molecular Diagnostics, and a former member of Big Pharma, Laurie Powell  who is now using her knowledge to fight back against the industry.

Visit HPVVaxFilm.com for the release of the film, or to view film trailers.

In addition to featuring these leading experts on vaccines and the pharma industry, the documentary will also include people who have had their lives shattered by the effects of the HPV vaccine. Some are young women whove been harmed by the inoculation, while others are family members whove been devastated by the vaccines toll. The HPV vaccine does not discriminate, and its victims span across the globe. One woman, Emily Tarsell, tells the heartbreaking story of how her daughter, Christina, passed away suddenly after receiving her third and final dose of the Gardasil vaccine. Other young women, like Taylor Wickline, have survived receiving the vaccine but are left to suffer with the symptoms of vaccine injury. Taylor and her mother, Theresa, have been dealing with the ramifications of the HPV vaccine for the last decade.

While most of the documentary focuses on the ill effects of the Gardasil vaccine, it is important to note that the Cervarix vaccine has not fared any better. In Japan, over 100 young women and girls have filed lawsuits against the manufacturers of the two HPV vaccines, Merck (Gardasil) and GlaxoSmithKline (Cervarix). One young woman, a 20-year-old named Erina Sonoda explained that she developed horrible menstrual pains after the second round of Cervarix. Upon getting her third and final shot, that pain began traveling across her entire body  making it difficult for her to perform everyday tasks, including walking. Despite her young age, Sonoda says she now needs a cane, or even a wheelchair on especially bad days, in order to get around. She said the pain was so bad, it felt as if someone was squashing [her] internal organs.

While some HPV proponents refuse to acknowledge the suffering of people like Erina Sonoda or Taylor Wickline, and many vaccine believers seem to think that their experiences are incidental  yet so many women have been harmed, it hardly seems to be a coincidence.

As ANH-USA reports, A quick glance at the CDCs website reveals significant side effects. The Center received about 22,000 reports of adverse events following Gardasil HPV vaccination from June 2006 to March 2013, with 8% of these reports considered seriousamong them, 157 deaths and diagnoses of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, encephalitis, brain injury, and seizure (convulsion). This was more side effects reported than for any other vaccine.

ANH-USAs groundbreaking documentary will serve as a testament to the fact that the HPV vaccine is not the safe, cancer-preventing magic serum its been purported to be. [RELATED: Learn more about the dangers of vaccines at Vaccines.news]

Sources:

HPVVaxFilm.com

ANH-USA.org

ANH-USA.org

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) In a scene right out of a science fiction novel, scientists are now growing brains in a dish in an effort to further investigate mental health disorders. The brains are actually small three-dimensional spheroids containing model neural circuits, Independent.ie reports. The spheroids were grown from stem cells and developed through the same process that takes place in the womb.

According to the report, two spheroids were made, each measuring a miniscule 1/16th of an inch across. Each spheroid included a recreation of different areas of the forebrain, including the cerebral cortex, which is considered the most advanced part of the brain. The spheroids enabled scientists to view in real time some of the key events that occur in the brain during late-stage fetal development. In fact, the scientists have already managed to recreate the abnormal brain circuits of a fetus with Timothy syndrome, a rare birth defect that leads to heart problems, autism, epilepsy, and even death in early childhood. Through the spheroids, scientists were able to see where the defect occurred, and correct it with the use of two drugs.

Weve never been able to recapitulate these human brain developmental events in a dish before. The process happens in the second half of pregnancy, so viewing it live is challenging. Our method lets us see the entire movie, not just snapshots, lead scientist Sergiu Pascua said in the report. Our method of assembling and carefully characterizing neuronal circuits in a dish is opening up new windows through which we can view the normal development of the fetal human brain.

These advances could not be more relevant as people move towards a better understanding of mental illness. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 43.8 million adults in the United States experience mental illness in a given year. Of that, one in 25 live with a serious mental illness like bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder.

When it comes to specific diagnoses, schizophrenia is among the most rare, with only 1.1 percent of American adults living with it. Meanwhile, 2.6 percent of American adults live with bipolar disorder, 6.9 percent live with major depression, and significantly more  18.1 percent  live with anxiety disorders.

The numbers reveal that 26 percent of homeless adults in shelters have a serious mental illness, while 24 percent of state prisoners were found to have a recent history of a mental health condition. Many adults who have mental illness also nurse an addiction. Additionally, 90 percent of those who die by suicide were found to have an underlying mental illness. What makes this even more troubling is the fact that suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the country. Mental illness has had great impact not just on the people who suffer and their loved ones, but on the economy as well. An estimated $193.2 billion is lost in earnings by serious mental illness.

With mental health disorders still veiled under a heavy fog of mystery, even the smallest strides in psychiatric research are considered invaluable. If the promising case study done through spheroids is any indication, we can only expect more breakthroughs in the field of mental health research. Advancements such as this could mean that better treatment options for those living with mental illness are right on the horizon.

Read more about mental health issues and breakthroughs on Mind.news.

Sources include:

Independent.ie

NAMI.org
(Natural News) Data mining is not limited to the National Security Agencys (NSA) tracking, storing and analyzing all of our emails, phone calls, bank and financial transactions, health records, and social media posts. But the Deep State is much more keen to uncover what they define as clandestine actions, as opposed to collecting data to sell us shiny new smart refrigerators or Kohler robotic toilets. Collecting personal data for target marketing has developed into a multi-billion dollar enterprise tagging specific population groups to buy what theyre selling. For example, Entrepreneur suggests that when you market to 74 million retiring baby boomers, you should remember that they still like to read. Millennials, on the other hand, are more enticed by todays on-demand minimalist trends.

But baby boomers and millennials are adults with the ability to turn off their computer and make independent decisions. For the millions of children attending public schools, this is not the case. This younger generation is fully immersed into a Big Data collection system while they sit with computers at their desks, reports Pulse.com. This invasive system is part and parcel of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and claims entitlement to constant data from our children, including psychological data, handsomely profiting corporations and government but destroying the privacy and the student-teacher interaction, all without evidence of effectiveness.

The mandate to collect massive amounts of the K-12 student data is light years beyond the old school methods when instructors merely kept track of test scores, after-school activities, progress notes and if one was missing class due to a measles outbreak. In their unabated desire to measure the students personal, physical, psychological, emotional and performance data, the entire classical model of learning  defined as teaching by human beings, plus focus on handwriting, classic literature, standard algorithms, and actual content knowledge, is being destroyed, along with any thought of privacy.

The photograph below shows how an online learning system can gather data from four different modalities used by a student. It originally appeared in a 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Technology (USOT) called Promoting Grit, Tenacity and Perseverance: Critical Factors for Success in the 21st Century. The photograph has since been removed from the website, says Pulse.org, because parents were outraged.

As reported in Truthout.org, education has been betrayed by both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama as they sought to transform schools from a public good to a private enterprise, answerable . . . to the imperatives of the marketplace. The size of this data mining market has been estimated by McKinsey Global, according to MissouriEducationWatchdog.org, and it ranges between $900 billion and $1.2 trillion in global economic value.

Jane Robbins, Esq., and a fellow at the American Principles Project, gave this presentation on the enormity of student data mining. But her greatest concern, found at 14:54, is what she believes to be a much deeper problem:

The government has deemed our children to be as little machines to be programmed or as human capital to be exploited. Progressives have yearned to do this for over a decade and now they have the technology to do it. Common Core standards, which diminish academic knowledge, are the passport to the progressive future.

There has been pushback, however. Indiana voted to replace Common Core in 2014. In January of 2017, Govtech.com reported that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood filed suit against Google for illegally mining the data of Mississippi public-school students. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reports that a bill has been introduced in the Senate called The Protecting Student Privacy Act of 2017. And many parents and teachers seek alternative means of educating the children.

Sources:

Entrepreneur.com

ThePulse.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

TruthOut.org

MissouriEducationWatchdog.com

YouTube.com

GovTech.com

Epic.org

YouTube.com
China wants to become the next space giant. The country is reportedly developing its very own space station. The country's space agency also started testing the space cabin for the scheduled moon mission.

In an experiment, Chinese volunteers will live in a simulated space cabin up to 200 days. The experiment is part of Beijing's plan to send a manned mission to the moon. China plans to execute its lunar mission in the next two decades.

The country has been launching space missions one after the other since President Xi Jinping announced the country's intent to lead global space exploration. Part of China's ambitious goal is to send humans to the moon in 2018 and potentially start a colony by sending astronauts by 2036.

The experiment was conducted to test the astronauts' capability to spend isolation for long period of time and the capability of the life support system. Xinhua, China's official news agency, said that during the testing, astronauts may stay in the simulated cabin for 60 up to 200 days.

"While it remains unclear exactly how long China's first lunar explorers will spend on the surface, the country is already planning for longer stays," the official news agency said.

Yuegong-1 will be used to host the volunteers. It is designed to mimic the environment on the moon. The Bioregenerative Life Support System (BLSS) was installed and will be tested. It will help recycle food and water for the astronauts on board.

"The latest test is vital to the future of China's moon and Mars missions and must be relied upon to guarantee the safety and health of our astronauts," Liu Zhiheng from the Chinese Academy of Sciences said in a statement.

Although expectedly, the Yuegong-1 cabin is innovative and technologically advanced, it is very small in size. Nevertheless, official say that it also houses greenhouses for growing plants.
The Netherlands has recently open one of the largest offshore wind farm in a region of the North Sea that has some of the highest and consistent wind speeds in the world.

The wind farm, dubbed as the Gemini Offshore Wind Park, boasts 150 turbines located 85 kilometers north of the Groningen coast. Capable of producing 2.6 TWh of sustainable energy every year, The Gemini Offshore Wind Park could help in reducing the carbon dioxide emissions of the Netherlands by 1.25 million tons.

"We successfully completed Gemini ahead of schedule, under budget and with an excellent safety record," said Matthais Haag, Managing Director of the Gemini Offshore Wind Park, in a press release. "We are proud to make this contribution to the realization of the Netherlands' sustainability targets."

The Gemini Offshore Wind Farm covers an area of 68 square kilometers and is located in an area in the North Sea that has an average of wind speed of 36 kilometers per hour. Each of the Siemens wind turbines has the capacity of 4.0 MW. Additionally, the Netherlands' new wind farm also has two offshore high-voltage substations connected to the land station in Eemshaven by a 110-kilometer export cable.

The Gemini Offshore Wind Farm is expected to meet the energy needs of 1.5 million citizens of the Netherlands over the next 15 years. The Netherlands aims to generate 14 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources by 2020.

At present, the Gemini Offshore Wind Farm could provide 13 percent of the country's energy need. By 2023, the Netherlands plans to reach 16 percent renewable energy and become carbon neutral by 2050.

The construction of the Gemini Offshore Wind Park costs approximately $3 billion. The Netherlands' wind farm project was financed by 25 banks from Asia, Europe, Australia and North America. It was made possible through the joint efforts of wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Wind Power, waste processing company HVC, renewable energy company Northland Power and Dutch maritime contractor Van Oord.

During Gemini's grand opening event, officials of the wind park unveiled a free, downloadable app that continuously track Gemini's offshore wind speed, the amount of energy produced, and the total carbon dioxide reduction.
As many as 1 million Californians, mostly in the farming communities of the Central Valley, have dangerous levels of an unregulated chemical linked to cancer in their drinking water, according to Californias State Water Board.

State water officials found potentially harmful levels of 1,2,3-TCP, or Trichloropropane, in drinking water sources across the state all the way back in 2001 but are just now considering the implementation of a legal maximum contaminant level.

TCP was present in two widely used soil fumigants marketed for decades by Shell and Dow Chemical beginning in the 1950s. Those fumigants were taken off the market in the 1980s. But because of its widespread use as a pesticide in agricultural areas, the chemical seeped into groundwater in dozens of California counties. State and private water experts say it remains there and is now found in dangerous levels in the drinking water served by 94 different public water systems.

Most Americans are not aware that there are lots of not only regulated, but unregulated contaminants in their drinking water, said Bill Walker, vice president and managing editor of the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting human health and the environment.

Mostly Poor, Rural Communities



Environmental Working Group released a report in April blasting Shell and Dow for failing to pay for cleanup efforts in communities with TCP in their water.



Walker says the impact of TCP in drinking water disproportionately affects mostly poor, rural communities. State data show about two-thirds of the 94 affected water systems are in the Central Valley, although the chemical also has been found at levels experts say is unsafe in parts of the Bay Area, Sacramento and Los Angeles.

Three public systems in San Mateo County, and one each in Santa Cruz and Monterey counties, showed high levels of TCP. Six other wells not connected to public systems in San Mateo County, Solano County and Santa Clara County also had TCP detected in them.

California Water Resources Control Board

A lot of these people in these small, underserved communities in the San Joaquin Valley are farm workers, and theyve been working in the fields all these years and were exposed to pesticides, Walker said. After all these years, they find out that their families are also in danger because of the contamination thats gotten into their water.

Shell and Dow Chemical did not respond to requests from NBC Bay Areas Investigative Unit for comment. The two chemical companies have argued in court they shouldnt be responsible for damages or cleanup costs because the state doesnt have a maximum legal limit set for TCP in drinking water.

According to the Fresno Bee, an attorney for Shell called any purported link of TCP to cancer fear-mongering while fighting a lawsuit filed by the city of Clovis. Attorney Cal Burnton argued during the lawsuit that Clovis science was flawed, that residents had not been harmed by TCP in their water and that TCP has never been declared a human carcinogen.

A jury in that case sided with the city of Clovis, ruling against Shell and Dow and awarding nearly $22 million in damages to Clovis.

Those Priorities Don't Apply Here

Activists and environmental groups argue Shell and Dow should bear cleanup costs where TCP contamination is found because of the chemical's widespread marketing to farmers.

Paying for filters is very expensive, said Amanda Monaco, a policy advocate for Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, a nonprofit that works to advance the interests of low income, rural communities. Paying for a water treatment plant is very expensive. And that cost shouldnt be on the families. It should be on those that are causing it.

Monaco is working with Central Valley communities to test their water for contaminants such as TCP. Shes also bringing their concerns to Sacramento, where she said their voices are often not heard.

Its priorities, Monaco said. Theres money available. Theres political action being taken to make sure that people who live in other places have access to clean drinking water. But those priorities dont apply here.

In Tombstone Territory, a small, unincorporated part of Fresno County, residents had no idea the water they pump from private wells could be contaminated with TCP until Monaco brought it to their attention. The community borders the town of Sanger, where drinking water served by the city's public system is contaminated, according to California Water Board data.

Theres been a lot of people in this neighborhood that have died of cancer, said Ray Cano, 45. My dad included.

Hes not sure why that is but suspects it may have something to do with the water ever since Monaco came knocking.

Although, there havent been studies on TCPs effect on humans, a 2009 EPA report shows scientists determined it causes cancer in lab animals. In 1992, TCP was added to the list of chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.

Across the street from Cano, Carolina Garcia plays with her young daughter in the front yard of her home. She drinks only bottled water but still worries because they use well water to cook and bathe.

I worry that it somehow might affect [my daughter] as she gets older, Garcia said through a translator. She might get sick. Thats what I worry about.

Although there is no legal limit set for TCP anywhere in the country, attorney Todd Robins has settled eight lawsuits filed against Dow and Shell on behalf of small public water systems affected by TCP. The exact terms of those settlements have been sealed and remain confidential.

I think that its a pretty dirty little secret that a state as prosperous as California has so many water quality problems, Robins said.

Robins represents the majority of the 43 individual small water systems who have sued Shell and Dow for cleanup costs and damages related to TCP contamination since 2004. Thirty-three of those lawsuits remain pending in court.

A jury did side with the chemical companies in a case filed by the city of Redlands in 2004. That case was not tried by Robins.

Setting a Legal Limit



This is a classic case of environmental injustice, theres no doubt about it, Robins said. This is another compelling example of the fact that the poorest among us, the people with the voices that are least heard, bear the brunt of the worst environmental burdens.

Although no state in the country has set a maximum contaminant level (MCL) for TCP, California water officials expect to formalize an MCL for the chemical in drinking water soon. Staff at the California Water Resources Control Board recommended setting that MCL limit at five parts per trillion, but the proposed regulation has not yet been finalized. If that happens, officials say public water systems will be required to collect and analyze samples for TCP beginning in January of next year. If the water served to the public exceeds the MCL, the water system will be required to clean it up.

One of the things thats most disturbing is to look at the amount of time it takes to get a legal limit set in California, Walker said. And when you look at the whole nation, California is the gold standard. We do better than anybody else.

But just because the state sets an MCL doesnt mean the cleanup will actually happen. A previous NBC Bay Area investigation found that nearly 700,000 Californians still have drinking water contaminated by chemicals already regulated by the state.
An Alameda County sheriffs deputy was killed Friday when a commuter bus carrying Tesla employees rear-ended his car on eastbound Interstate 580 at the Altamont Pass, according to law enforcement officials.

The deputy was identified by Sheriff Greg Ahearn as Sroeuy Khin, a father-of-four who would have celebrated his 51st birthday tomorrow.

Alameda County Sheriff's Deputy Killed in I-580 Crash with Bus Carrying Tesla Employees

Fifty-one Tesla employees were en route to Stockton in a white 2016 Temsa touring bus contracted by their company, California Highway Patrol spokesman Derek Reed said.

Khin, who joined the sheriff's office in 2007, was heading to his Central Valley home after having worked overtime at the Santa Rita Jail, Ahearn said.

He was driving slowly or had stopped in the No. 2 lane, according to CHP Officer Christopher Sherry. His white 2002 Volkswagen Beetle was crushed when the bus rammed into it, and Khin was pronounced dead at the scene.

"It's a tragic loss for his family," Ahern said. "He was just trying to do his best to earn some extra money to take care of his wife and family."

An Alameda County sheriffs deputy was killed Friday when a commuter bus carrying Tesla employees rear-ended his car on eastbound Interstate 580 at the Altamont Pass, according to law enforcement officials. Michelle Roberts reports.

The bus driver, who has been cooperative with officials, said that the sun's glare was blinding in the moments before the collision. Sherry said that the cause of the crash is still being investigated, but drugs and alcohol do not appear to have contributed.

Sherry estimated that the bus was traveling at around 65 pmh when it slammed into Khin's car. One person on the bus sustained minor injuries. Investigators are also trying to determine whether Khin had, in fact, stopped or slowed down or if he was perhaps trying to move to the shoulder on I-580.

The CHP issued a Sig-alert on I-580 at Altamont Pass, closing the eastbound No. 1 and 2 lanes for hours, prompting vehicles to back up for miles. The entire highway was reopened around 1:45 p.m. but residual delays were expected.

CHP officers who responded to the accident did not know Khin was a sheriff's deputy, but identified him based on his license information, Ahern said.

An Alameda County sheriffs deputy was killed Friday when a commuter bus carrying Tesla employees rear-ended his car on eastbound Interstate 580, according to law enforcement officials. Bob Redell reports.

Footage from the scene showed CHP officers gathering around the body, and saluting and draping it with an American flag. A convoy of law enforcement officials, including CHP officers from Dublin, also escorted Khin's body to the Alameda County Coroner's Office.

Ahern expressed gratitude for the "dignity and respect" afforded to Khin on Friday.

Khin was described by Ahearn as an extremely dedicated and hard-working member of the Alameda County Sheriff's Office. His fellow deputies were with his family after they learned of his death.

"It's too much too soon," Ahern said. "It's heartwrenching."

The CHP on Friday issued a Sig-alert on I-580 at Altamont Pass, closing the eastbound center and left lanes, after a deadly crash involving a bus and a car.

Not only do sheriff's deputies face challenges and risks in their day-to-day work, but the "tight family" now has to "deal with the tragic loss of one of their brothers," he added.

Khin's loss will reverberate through the department and he will be missed by everyone, "from line staff to command staff to myself," Ahern said.

NBC-affiliate KCRA reported that Khin had previously worked for the Stockton and Jackson police departments.



In a statement issued Friday, Tesla described the bus involved in the fatal crash as an "independently-operated shuttle."

"All Tesla employees on the bus are safe and accounted for, however we are deeply saddened by reports that there was a fatality as a result of the accident. We will lend any support that we can to the authorities who are investigating the incident," the statement said.

Sherry said Officers are interviewing witnesses and examining physical evidence at the scene. Criminal charges, if any, will be filed once the investigation is complete.

People with information about the crash are asked to call 925-828-0466.

NBC Bay Area's John Zuchelli contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump lashed out in a series of tweets Friday morning amid a firestorm over the abrupt firing of James Comey, including a warning to the former FBI director that he had better hope there are no "tapes" of their conversations.

That statement raised the question of whether Trump recorded a discussion with Comey, but White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not say Friday afternoon whether Trump did so.

Also in Trump's early morning tweets, which Spicer did little to elaborate on at the daily White House press briefing, Trump defended the shifting narrative and timeline his administration has offered for his decision to dismiss the FBI director. Trump's tweets came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasn't under FBI investigation.

"I said, 'If it's possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation?' He said you are not under investigation," Trump said in an interview Thursday with NBC News. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.

Comey has not confirmed Trump's account. Late Thursday, The New York Times cited two unnamed Comey associates who recounted his version of a January dinner with the president in which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty. Comey declined, instead offering "honest." When Trump then pressed for "honest loyalty," Comey told him, "You will have that," the associates said.

Comey was invited to testify before the Senate Intel Committee next week, but a committee ranking member Mark Warner said Friday that the former FBI director will not be appearing before the committee.



Warner said he is hoping to hear from Comey in the "not-too-distant future."



White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed that report and said the president would "never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty."

Spicer denied that Trump sought a pledge of loyalty. "I think the president wants loyalty to this country and the rule of law," he said.

Trump also challenged the way Comey's termination was reported, questioning in other tweets Friday whether his administration should cancel all future press briefings and, instead, replace them with written responses to questions, "for the sake of accuracy."

The president's advisers said this week that Trump fired Comey on Tuesday in response to a recommendation by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Later, however, they said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless, as Trump asserted in the interview with Holt.

The president tweeted, "As a very active President with lots of things happening, it is not possible for my surrogates to stand at podium with perfect accuracy!"

He added, "Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future 'press briefings' and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???"

Huckabee Sanders insisted the information she and her colleagues offered was consistent. "It was a quick-moving process," she said, in comments echoed by Spicer.

White House press briefings have been held for over 100 years, and the president of the White House Correspondents' Association, Jeff Mason, stated Friday that doing away with them "would reduce accountability, transparency, and the opportunity for Americans to see that, in the U.S. system, no political figure is above being questions."

In a FOX interview with Judge Jeanine Pirro, Trump implies cancellation of the press briefings. "We just don't have them. Unless I have them every two weeks and do it myself. We don't have them," he told Pirro.

The president's morning tweeting again raised the specter of Richard Nixon, whose secretly taped conversations and telephone calls in the White House ultimately led to his downfall in the Watergate scandal. Trump's firing of Comey already has left him with the dubious distinction of being the first president since Nixon to fire a law enforcement official overseeing an investigation tied to the White House.

The ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the statements Trump made "extraordinary" and said that any tapes of conversations with Comey would have been made by Trump.

"For a President who baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him, that Mr. Trump would suggest that he, himself, may have engaged in such conduct is staggering," Schiff said in a statement, adding that Trump should turn the tapes over to Congress or admit he made a deliberately misleading statement.

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Friday that Trump was "dangerous" and that "his credibility has been destroyed."

Durbin, while on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, suggested that the president's move to fire Comey amid an investigation of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election and possible ties to Trump's own campaign was "dangerous because he may be obstructing justice." And he said he feared the world would no longer take Trump at his word.

Even before Trump's provocative tweet, the White House was scrambling to clarify why Comey was fired. Trump told NBC he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation  which he dismissed as a "made-up story"  was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a "showboat" and "grandstander," added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

The White House's explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House's assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file.

"That is not accurate," McCabe said. "Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

Unfazed, Sanders insisted she had heard from "countless" members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trump's version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not "standard practice" to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trump's comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

Comey was invited to the White House to have dinner and felt "uneasy about that" because he didn't want to give the appearance the FBI investigation could be compromised, said James Clapper, a retired general and Barack Obama's director of national intelligence, on MSNBC Friday.

Clapper said he was with Comey on the day of the dinner and added that "you're in a difficult position to refuse to go."

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

"A source close to Comey told me this morning: 'He hopes there are tapes. That would be perfect,'" NBC News' Ken Dilanian tweeted.



Trump and Comey's relationship was strained early on, in part because of the president's explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.

The White House said Trump is weighing options for replacing Comey, a decision that could have broad implications for the future of the Russia investigation. Some senior officials have discussed nominating Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who ran the House committee that investigated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's actions in connection with the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Trump's advisers have repeatedly tried to downplay the Russia-election matter, with Sanders saying Wednesday the FBI was "doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation."

But McCabe characterized the investigation as "highly significant" and assured senators that Comey's firing would not hinder it. He promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein is expected to brief the full Senate next week, according to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer's spokesperson.

Associated Press writers Vivian Salama, Darlene Superville, Deb Riechmann, Eric Tucker and Jonathan Lemire contributed to this report.
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.
In a rare show of unity in the realm of budget talks, Connecticuts Speaker of the House and Republican Minority Leader said theyre ready to look at all ideas to fix the states budget crisis.

Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz said he doesnt think any decision will be an easy one for lawmakers or the governor as they have to fill a combined $5 billion deficit.

A lot of these rescissions and cuts have long term impacts to the state, Aresimowicz told reporters during a briefing in his office. The deficit being as large as it is, its going to be a very difficult process.

Rep. Themis Klarides said she feared the optics of their work to fend off a fiscal crisis could be hindered because of a bond commission meeting scheduled for Friday. The meeting will be the first one in months after the governor refused to meet over budget concerns.

We cant sit here and talk about deficit mitigation and then tomorrow morning we have a bond commission with millions of dollars being bonded and said Wednesday, where do we go from here? Were not looking at things in a holistic way. Were looking at them in a vacuum, said Klarides.

The General Assembly has an adjournment deadline of June 7 to approve a budget without a special session, but the more accurate deadline is July 1, when the next fiscal year begins.
Old Saybrook Police executed two search and seizure warrants for the Old Saybrook Town Hall and Westbrook Town Hall on Friday.

Officers looked for all documents, pay roll records, employee expectations, email communication, among other items related to Fire Marshal Donn Dobson, according to a page of the search warrant for the Old Saybrook Town Hall.

Police also looked for municipal access control system logs from June 18, 2016 to May 3, 2017 related to Dobson and searched his town vehicle, according to that warrant.

The rest of the warrant is sealed.

Dobson stood by Friday afternoon as officers removed several items, including a brief case, from his work vehicle.

Old Saybrook Police Lt. Kevin Roche would not confirm whether officers were specifically looking into Dobson, who serves as a full-time fire marshal for the town.



Additionally, police confirmed Dobson is a part-time fire marshal in the Town of Westbrook. State police aided in the investigation in Westbrook.

NBC Connecticut briefly spoke with Dobson Friday, but he did not want to comment.

Fridays search was a culmination of a months-long investigation, according to Roche, who would not give information on how it started.

All town officials are complying with the investigation, according to police. Old Saybrooks First Selectman Carl P. Fortuna, Jr. agreed that he and his staff are cooperating with officers.

The information officers obtained on Friday will take a while to analyze, Roche said.

It is unknown whether an arrest or charges will come of the investigation.

Wed have to make that determination with consultation with the States Attorneys Office, Roche said.

Dobson has worked for the Town of Old Saybrook since Aug. 31, 1998.

The Town of Madisons Human Resources Department confirmed Dobson is also a per diem assistant fire marshal there, but Madison is not part of the investigation, said Roche.

The Old Saybrook Fire Department released a statement, saying the town fire department and Old Saybrook Office of the Fire Marshal are two separate agencies.
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...
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal is calling for a judiciary committee hearing and an "open, transparent" process to investigate all the facts surrounding President Donald Trump's abrupt firing of FBI Director James Comey.

The firing this week has drawn criticism from Democrats who question why the president removed Comey in the middle of an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

These last 24 hours have raised chilling facts that imply serious questions about improper influence and interference in an ongoing criminal investigation, Blumenthal said during a news conference on Friday afternoon. These chilling fact, smacking of improper interference in an ongoing investigation, must be addressed immediately in a judiciary committee hearing, requiring all of the relevant actors to give testimony under oath and in public.

Hours before Blumenthals news conference, Trump lashed out in a series of tweets Friday morning amid a firestorm over the abrupt firing of Comey, including a warning to the former FBI director that he had better hope there are no "tapes" of their conversations.

Watching Senator Richard Blumenthal speak of Comey is a joke. "Richie" devised one of the greatest military frauds in U.S. history. For....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

years, as a pol in Connecticut, Blumenthal would talk of his great bravery and conquests in Vietnam - except he was never there. When....  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

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.  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 10, 2017

That statement raised the question of whether Trump recorded a discussion with Comey, but White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not say Friday afternoon whether Trump did so.

Blumenthal said he's unsure whether conversations are recorded in the Oval Office. If they are, he said, any conversations between Comey and Trump should be subpoenaed.

President Trump - Your bullying wont silence my calls for an independent prosecutor and investigation.  Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) May 10, 2017

Trump also defended the shifting narrative and timeline his administration has offered for his decision to dismiss the FBI director. His tweets came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasn't under FBI investigation.

On Tuesday the president fired Comey, citing recommendations from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, who criticized the directors handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server.

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Later, however, presidential advisers said that Trump had planned to fire Comey regardless, as Trump asserted in the interview with NBCs Lester Holt.

Blumenthal's call for an investigation also comes days after Trump blasted him on Twitter in response to the senators comments on the dismissal of FBI Director James Comey, Blumenthal will be holding a news conference about the president's ouster of the former director.

.@senjudiciary Trust in administration impossible as long as it refuses to name an independent special prosecutor.  Richard Blumenthal (@SenBlumenthal) May 11, 2017

During his news conference Friday, Blumenthal said the judiciary committee has a very direct and immediate responsibility to oversee the criminal justice system.

This firing, frankly, smacks of obstruction of justice, Blumenthal said.

Also on Friday, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Trump was "dangerous" and that "his credibility has been destroyed."

Durbin, while on "Morning Joe" on MSNBC, suggested that the president's move to fire Comey amid an investigation of Russia's involvement in the 2016 election and possible ties to Trump's own campaign was "dangerous because he may be obstructing justice." And he said he feared the world would no longer take Trump at his word.

Blumenthal mentioned Sessions and Rosenstein as people who should provide public testimony before the judiciary, as well as anyone with knowledge of the relevant issues here related to Jim Comeys firing.

Blumenthal added that he hopes Comey will also appear during a judiciary committee hearing.
Former President Barack Obamas forsaken Supreme Court nominee is now being touted as a good candidate for FBI director by an unlikely advocate  a Republican senator.

Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, tweeted Thursday that President Donald Trump should nominate former prosecutor and one-time Supreme Court nominee Judge Merrick Garland to replace recently ousted FBI leader James Comey, who Trump sacked Comey on Tuesday.

Instead of a special prosecutor, @realDonaldTrump should nominate Merrick Garland to replace James Comey.  Mike Lee (@SenMikeLee) May 11, 2017

Many Senate Republicans refused to consider Garland's nomination, essentially blocking him from confirmation to the staunchly conservative Justice Antonin Scalias seat.

Trumps pick, Judge Neil Gorsuch, was nominated in January and confirmed in April over heavy Democratic opposition.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, also of Utah, reportedly agrees with Lee's appraisal of Garland.

I suggested that [the White House] ought to consider him, Hatch said Thursday, according to The Hill. I didnt say they should just pick him. I know theyve got some really excellent people, but I said put Merrick in the list too.

He added that he thinks Garland is a very fine fellow.

The suggestion also drew support from Democrat Sen. Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, who added that a special prosecutor was also necessary in the wake of Comey's firing.

A tweet on her timeline says Garland becoming the FBI director "isn't going to happen," but she added that she values Republicans considering "consensus FBI candidates."

Good idea @SenMikeLee. Former prosecutor Merrick Garland for FBI Director is great idea. Need special prosecutor toohttps://t.co/HjMdwIGxAq  Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) May 11, 2017

Garland is the chief judge of the D.C. Circuit Court, a position noted by Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin as a strong reason why he would not entertain the position of FBI director.

"After the way the Senate treated Merrick Garland, I hope this isn't some idea of a consolation prize," Durbin said Thursday, according to CNN.



Others, like Sen. Brian Schatz, of Hawaii, described the proposal as "unserious."

On Merrick Garland for FBI head, this seems...unserious. pic.twitter.com/5q3JsFDjUO  Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) May 11, 2017

Obama, while touting Garland as a Supreme Court candidate in Chicago last year, was questioned about adding another white man to the bench of the country's highest courts.

"Yeah, he's a white guy, but he's a really outstanding jurist, sorry," Obama said at the time.

Garland comes from Lincolnwood, a suburb of Obama's adopted hometown of Chicago.
A United flight from Houston to Ecuador was delayed after a scorpion was spotted aboard.



United told KPRC-TV that Flight 1035 returned to the gate Thursday night after a scorpion "reportedly emerged from a customer's clothing." Paramedics examined the man and determined that he hadn't been stung.

Other passengers said no scorpion was found on the plane, according to KPRC.



United said it found a new aircraft for the flight and all passengers were given a meal voucher for the inconvenience.

In a statement to KPRC, United said:

"Houston to Quito flight 1035 returned to the gate after a scorpion reportedly emerged from a customers clothing. Paramedics at the gate immediately examined the customer and determined that he had not been stung. The customer declined further medical treatment and, as a precaution, a new aircraft was arranged. We provided all passengers with a meal voucher due to the delay and the flight, with the customer aboard, has departed for Quito."

The flight eventually got underway 3 1/2 hours late.



United has been under fire since a passenger was violently dragged off an overbooked flight by aviation police in Chicago on April 9.

That same day a scorpion was spotted on another United flight. The small scorpion fell from the airplane's overhead bin onto a man's head and stung him. Richard Bell said the close encounter, which didn't leave him hurt, took place on a flight from Houston to Calgary, Canada, as he and his wife were returning home from a vacation in Mexico.

Back in February, another scorpion caused a scare on an Alaska Airlines flight that had originated from Los Cabos, Mexico. The flight was delayed out of Los Angeles International Airport after a passenger was stung by the scorpion. Flight crew found and killed the arachnid. The passenger was released after being checked out by medics at the gate.
A federal judge repeatedly rebuked former Los Angeles Sheriff Lee Baca for bringing shame on his department as he sentenced him Friday to three years in prison for obstructing an FBI investigation into abuses at the jails he ran.

In exceeding the two-year sentence prosecutors recommended, U.S. District Court Judge Percy Anderson said Baca's fall was tragic, but it was his own doing and that his role atop a corrupt department where deputies brutalized inmates had ruined lives and done lasting damage.

"Your actions are an embarrassment to the thousands of men and women who put their lives on the line every day," Anderson told the longtime lawman. "Blind obedience to a corrupt culture has serious consequences."

Baca was the final and most prominent defendant in a case that blossomed from a civil rights investigation of beatings by guards in the nation's largest jail system into a broader corruption scandal that led to the top of the department. In addition to Baca and his top lieutenant, 19 others were convicted of crimes ranging from assaults to obstructing justice.

Anderson said he would have sentenced Baca to five years in prison except for his nearly half-century of public service and because he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. The judge, however, took exception to a defense contention that Alzheimer's is a sentence of its own.

"As awful as Alzheimer's disease is, it's not a criminal penalty," said Anderson, who said the suggestion was an insult to millions of others suffering from the condition who have not committed federal crimes. "Alzheimer's disease is not a get-out-of-jail card."

The sentence was a blow to the 74-year-old, who had been seeking probation and home confinement.

Baca, dressed in a light blue suit, delivered a scattered address from hand-written notes outside the courthouse after the sentencing in which he thanked the people of Los Angeles, his lawyers and his wife standing by his side, who he couldn't immediately locate.

He declined to comment on the sentence, but as he waited to cross a street, he said he was a man of faith who believed life was precious.

"I love life no matter where I am," Baca said.

He was ordered to surrender to federal prison authorities July 25. He was convicted in March of obstructing justice, conspiring to obstruct justice and lying to federal authorities.

Baca abruptly resigned in 2014 after underlings were charged with plotting to hide an inmate informant from his FBI handler. Deputies had discovered the inmate was a snitch after finding a contraband cellphone the informant was supposed to use to communicate with his handler.

The crimes tarnished Baca's reputation as a soft-spoken, rail-thin, Zen-like reformer who promoted education and rehabilitation behind bars and preached tolerance and understanding between people of different cultures and faiths.

Furious about the learning his department was under investigation, he told the local FBI head and top federal prosecutor he was ready to "gun up" for battle with them and stated: "I'm the goddamn sheriff, these are my goddamn jails."

"Rather than stop the abuses in the jails, he entered into a conspiracy with his subordinates to obstruct a federal civil rights investigation to protect his legacy," acting U.S. Attorney Sandra Brown said. "He made a decision to protect what he called his empire, his jails and then simply to protect himself."

Defense attorney Nathan Hochman said Baca's misdeeds over six weeks in 2011 and four false answers to 400 questions during a voluntary interview with authorities in 2013 must be weighed against an "extraordinary record of public service" over 48 years and along with his condition, which has progressed from mild cognitive impairment to mild dementia.

More than 200 friends and supporters wrote letters of support for Baca, including former Mexican President Vicente Fox, former Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis, former Los Angeles Ram-turned-minister Rosey Grier, former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, Hollywood executives, clergy and former jail inmates.

"For 48 years, he served the people of Los Angeles with all his might, with all his heart," his attorney, Nathan Hochman, said.

Baca plans to appeal, challenging several of Anderson's rulings that Hochman said prevented a fair trial, including a decision not to allow medical experts to testify whether Baca's medical condition impaired his memory when he lied to federal authorities.
Police in La Verne Thursday were warning residents to take precautions after a dog was fatally mauled by bear inside a home's garage.

The male collie was attacked about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday in the 5400 block of Edgewood Drive, according to La Verne police Sgt. Cory Leeper.

The homeowner called authorities to report hearing banging and scratching in her garage, the side door of which she had left open, Leeper said. Officers arrived and found the dog bleeding from the neck.

They put the stricken canine into a patrol car and drove, with the owner following, to an animal hospital, according to Leeper. A veterinarian who tried in vain to save the dog determined the dog had been attacked by a bear, although the animal was never seen, Leeper said.

California Department of Fish and Wildlife officials were informed of the attack, police said. Leeper said bears typically avoid dogs. The dog's owner, Patti Behrens, described the animal as a "rogue bear," who has exhibited brazen behavior.

The station reported that a bear was caught on security video last week taking a daytime dip in another La Verne resident's backyard pool, but it's unclear if that bear is the same as the one that attacked the dog.

A bear-dog encounter was caught on video Tuesday in the backyard of a home in Bradbury. That bear, which had an ear tag, did not harm the dog, before the canine chased the bear off.

A La Verne resident also reported hearing a commotion in a home's kitchen in middle of the night a couple of weeks ago and found a bear eating honey and other food.

"Residents living near the foothills are reminded that it is not uncommon for wildlife to enter residential neighborhoods," according to a police statement. "We ask that you be vigilant and take precautions so as not to attract bears and other wildlife."

The precautions residents can take include keeping their pets indoors and secured from possible attack, ensuring that pet food is not left outside and securing trash containers.


An armed man gunned down a new village police chief on a street on Friday and then killed two employees in a nearby nursing home, where he later was found dead, a sheriff said. No nursing home residents were injured.

The slain police chief, Steven Eric Disario, had headed the Kirkersville Police Department for only about three weeks, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said. Disario was shot on a street near the Pine Kirk Care Center, and the two female employees and the gunman were found dead inside, Thorp said.

Disario, 36, was a father of six children, with a seventh on the way, the sheriff said.

Thorp called it a hard day for all.

"We've lost a police officer. It's just a tragic event," he said. "I guess the only peace of mind is that the threat is over."

Flowers and flags appeared in an impromptu memorial outside the village police hall.

Thorp gave the following timeline of events:

The gunman was in a wooded area behind the nursing home when he encountered two passers-by, whom he temporarily took hostage.

Disario, responding to a report of a man with a gun, apparently encountered the gunman in that area. The chief's last radio communication said he had the man in sight.

When a shot was fired at the chief, the hostages escaped unharmed.

"We don't know the cause or the purpose or what drove this individual to do this," Thorp said, adding that was being investigated.

Responding officers found Disario on the street and then investigated a report of a gunman at the nursing home, Thorp said.

Some nursing home residents barricaded themselves during the shooting, but none of them was injured, he said.

Police weren't immediately able to identify the gunman and were trying to determine what, if any, relationship he had with the nursing home, Thorp said. Although he was not identified by police, family members said the gunman was 43-year-old Thomas Hartless, NBC affiliate WCMH reported.

The facility is secure, and it's unclear how the gunman got in, he said.

The shooting closed down the main street in the village, which was flooded with police officers from several surrounding agencies and with ambulances. The village of about 500 residents is roughly 25 miles (39 kilometers) east of Columbus.

"This is a really small town, and everybody knows everybody," Kirkersville resident Debbie Messer told the Columbus Dispatch. "These things don't happen here."

A woman who works about a block away said she heard gunshots followed by screaming and then sirens.

"You could hear a guy yelling," Kathy Rogers said. "He was yelling and screaming. I'm not really sure what he was saying, it was like a block away. It was just a nightmare."

Pine Kirk is licensed for 24 patients and had 23 as of May 3, according to Ohio Department of Health records. A message was left with the center.

Peter Van Runkle, the head of the state trade association representing nursing homes, told the Dispatch that Pine Kirk caters to "the forgotten members of society."

"They provide them with a small environment that's less institutional than some facilities might be," he said. "They do a good job of taking care of a niche clientele."

The state Bureau of Criminal Investigation is leading the probe into what happened.

Gov. John Kasich ordered flags flown at half-staff in Licking County and the Statehouse and expressed his condolences in a tweet.

"Join me in praying for his family, friends and colleagues, and for the others injured in this tragedy," the Republican governor said.
Florida Power & Light officials say they're increasing security following a series of highly organized'' thefts of tires, wheels and car batteries from the power company's trucks.

Company spokesman Dave McDermitt told the Miami Herald thieves have taken more than $10,000 in property - including 68 tires and 16 batteries - from trucks in four Florida cities.

McDermitt says thieves have cut through fencings to gain access to the company's service centers and power substations. The thefts were first noticed in January in Port St. Lucie. They've also stolen from trucks in Fort Myers, Bonita Springs and Jupiter.

The company is offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

Police have also been notified of the thefts.
Its something many South Florida residents living in single-family homes take for granted  the convenience of having mail delivered to their homes. But more than a dozen homeowners in Miami-Dade County contacted NBC 6 Responds, after moving into their newly constructed homes and learning they wont be receiving curbside mail delivery from USPS.

Weve been going through a circus to be able to get our mail, said Gus Arana.

Arana moved into his new home in unincorporated Miami-Dade County in April 2016. He said the developer told him to install a mailbox, request a change of address and wait for the mail to arrive.

We did that and nothing happened, he said.

No mail for Arana or any of the other six owners of the single-family homes that are part of the same development.

We dont receive packages, he said. Weve had issues with our bank.

One of Aranas neighbors told NBC 6 she even had her license suspended thanks to a red light camera ticket she never received.

Meanwhile, miles away in a different development, a similar situation has played out.

Its an understatement to say frustration, said Cristina Rhodes, a new homeowner in Cutler Bay. It really is way beyond the boiling point.

Rhodes and her neighbors have had similar headaches. Both groups of homeowners contacted their representatives in Congress and one even wrote the president.

What can we do to make it happen, Rhodes said.

I just want to get my mail, said Victor Joa Blanco. Please, somebody help us.

USPS has said they believe cluster mailboxes  instead of individual curbside mailboxes  are the most efficient delivery option. The postal service told us  in both cases  theyve decided these homes will receive centralized delivery, citing a 2012 postal bulletin which gives the postal service autonomy in determining the modes of delivery when adding new deliveries. That same bulletin still requires meetings with builders and developers early in the process to ensure the best choices are made.

But the developers of the homes in question told NBC 6 they didnt know about the policy and postal services decision on the mode of delivery until months after the homes had been built and sold.

We should have been told, said Fernando Martinez, the developer of the project and a resident of the homes in Cutler Bay. The horse has left the stable, theyre trying to close the gate and thats not the solution.

He said he has built other single-family homes in the area after 2012 and has never had this issue come up, even though he didnt do anything differently.

For mail delivery, weve never had to do anything, Martinez said.

The town of Cutler Bay told us they had never seen this policy enforced until now and theyre concerned about how it will impact the community.

Our preference will always be, when it comes to single-family homes,  to have individual mailboxes, said Rafael Casals, Cutler Bay town manager. We want to preserve that neighborhood feel.

The fight for mail delivery, ironically, seems to have reinforced the ties between neighbors.

The only good thing about this, I think, is that its brought us all together, which is pretty cool, said Arana.

For now, both groups of homeowners have to drive to the post office to get their mail. The postal service told us a development across the street from Arana and his neighbors will be installing a cluster box unit and will include them. The developer of the Cutler Bay homes told NBC 6 he filed an appeal with the postal service but never received a response. He is working to install a cluster box for the 10 homes on his street, he said.

The USPS declined requests for an on-camera interview.

If youre buying new construction, make sure youre clear on the mode of delivery from the developer so there arent any surprises.
A man in southwest Florida was arrested after he repeatedly called 911 asking to be deported, authorities said.

Cesar Sanchez, 30, was taken into custody Tuesday on a charge of misuse of 911, the Collier County Sheriff's Office said.

Sanchez made repeated 911 calls as he was biking up and down Bayshore Drive in Naples, telling the operator he wanted to be sent home to Guatemala, NBC 2 reported.

"You called 911. Do you have an emergency?" the operator said in one of the calls.

"Im very sick. It's not an emergency. I just want them to deport me," Sanchez responded in Spanish.

Deputies arrived and took Sanchez into custody. He remained in jail Friday on $2,000 bond, and it's unknown if he'll be handed over to immigration officials.
A Miami billionaire is ready to put his money where his heart is, to fight the Trump Administration's tough deportation policy.

Mike Fernandez, a healthcare mogul who founded the equity group MBF Healthcare Partners who is also a political mega donor from Coral Gables, created a nonprofit organization that will raise money to defend in court unauthorized immigrants who are non-felons.

Its a cause close to his heart, having come from Cuba to live the American dream

Coming across the border illegally, without a single document, is not a felony. Its a civil violation, Fernandez said during an interview with NBC 6 anchor Jackie Nespral. Coming across the border is no different than getting a parking ticket. Why are we treating them like criminals?

Fernandez has been one of the largest donors to the Republican Party in South Florida, but has been an outspoken critic of the President  even endorsing Democrat Hillary Clinton in last years election.

Why is that immigration officials have to go pick up someone who is a real criminal, they dont find him  but they find maybe his mother and a cousin and they take them in only because they are undocumented."

You can watch that entire interview with Fernandez on NBC 6 Impact airing this Sunday at 9:30 a.m.
The nephew of fashion designer Carolina Herrera and his business partner were taken hostage and killed in Venezuela, according to Venezuelan media reports.

The bodies of Reinaldo Herrera, 34, and Fabrizio Mendoza, 31, were found Thursday night on a highway connecting Caracas to the city of La Guaira.

According to Venezuelan media reports, the men were abducted by a group while eating at a restaurant on the eastern part of Caracas Thursday night. Authorities said the group asked for ransom for Herrera and Mendoza.

The ransom was paid but Herrera and Mendoza were still killed, authorities said.

Venezuelan media said Herrera was the son of Luis Felipe Herrera Guevara. Guevara's brother, Reinaldo Herrera, is the husband of 78-year-old Venezuelan fashion icon Carolina Herrera who has been living in New York for several years.

During the past year, homicides in Venezuela reached a rate of 70.1 per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that considerably exceeds the record of 58 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015, according to information from the Public Ministry.


Imagine moving to the United States from Haiti and enrolling in high school in 10th grade. Youre a year behind the other kids already, and they dont have to deal with all that intense culture shock. Not to mention this major handicap: you dont speak a word of English.

"That was really hard, that was really hard, I spent all my nights, all my days learning English, said Bendji Fleuridor, a senior at Deerfield Beach High School.

The Latin phrase "carpe diem" was coined for kids like Bendji. He seized the opportunity of being in this country and excelled. In every class.

I only had straight As, straight As, no Bs, no Cs, straight As, even though I didnt speak English, because I study everything, Bendji said. I started taking honors classes, AP classes, and everything.

The first teacher he had recognized right away that he had a genius-level kid in his class, a student who combined inspiration with perspiration.

He's a rare kid, said Frantz Edouard, the math teacher who saw Bendjis potential. As smart as he is, his work ethic is one reason hes so successful because he will not go into a test, not go into an exam without preparation.

All the intense studying and preparation has paid off. Bendji earned a full academic scholarship to Florida Atlantic University, but hes not content to succeed on his own, hes trying to pull his classmates along, too.

"He always here to empower us, give us more strength to go forward, said Magdaelle Papin, one of many Haitian-immigrant peers who goes to tutoring sessions given by Bendji. He always inspires us to do our best.

Thats how he spends his spare time. Youll find Bendji after school helping classmates understand math and other subjects, and its not just the Creole-speaking kids. Bendji has a global vision to help his immigrant peers.

That is from my heart, because I know when I first came here, that was really hard for me, it was really harsh, Bendji says, laughing as he recalls his sophomore year. You know how long it took me to know one sentence in English? That was really hard!"

So now its on to Spanish?

"Hes trying to learn Spanish just to help the Spanish kids, said Taglionie Valeus, one of Bendjis classmates.

Science is a universal language. On the day we visited, Bendji was with a group of students shooting off water rockets, and Bendji was teaching them how to calculate the height of each launch.

Hes already shooting for the moon, planning on majoring in engineering, while staying grounded in his community.

"I'm really, really satisfied, even when I go off to college Im still gonna come back, Im coming back just to help them, Bendji said.
What to Know Joseph Ponte has worked in corrections for more than 40 years; he became commissioner of the city's DOC in April 2014

Resignation comes after reports from city's Department of Investigation that Ponte violated rules regarding personal use of city vehicles

It also comes after DOI said correction staffers were caught spying on investigators during the vehicle probe

UPDATE: Chief of NYC Jails System Announces Retirement Plans



The head of New York City's embattled Department of Correction will resign amid a series of controversies, the latest of which involved alleged misuse of city resources, sources familiar with the situation tell NBC 4 New York.



Joseph Ponte will resign Friday, a day after Democratic City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito broke with Mayor de Blasio in calling for Ponte to step down. De Blasio has defended Ponte amid the latest allegations. Deputy Commissioner Cynthia Brann will take over. She is accused of misusing her city vehicle.

Staffers were drafting Ponte's resignation speech Thursday evening, the sources said.

Ponte, whose career in corrections has spanned more than four decades, was appointed commissioner in April 2014. The Marine Corps veteran previously led the Maine Department of Corrections, where he instituted substantial reforms. It was to Maine that the city's Department of Investigation, which investigates city agencies, officers or employees for potential corruption, alleged Ponte drove a city-owned vehicle in violation of guidelines.



Other Department of Correction officials were accused of misusing their agency cars as well, including for trips to the Hamptons and Cape Cod, in the report issued by DOI late last month. The report said those personal trips cost the city thousands of dollars in gas and tolls.



On Wednesday, in calling for Ponte's resignation, Mark-Viverito said lower-level city employees have been suspended or even fired for such offenses.



At the time the report came out, a Correction Department spokesman said any rule violation was a misunderstanding and would not recur. De Blasio's office also backed Ponte, saying he had presided over "sweeping reforms" and the mayor wasn't focusing on how often he visited his family on weekends.



A week after the report on vehicle use came out, the DOI issued another report alleging Gregory Kuczinski, the deputy commissioner for the Investigation Division and Correction Intelligence Bureau, directed subordinates to spy on DOI undercover operations. Those orders came "immediately after he and other senior staff were informed that DOI was preparing a report on their improper use of vehicles," the report said.



Kuczinski was relieved of his investigation and call-monitoring responsibilities. DOI Commissioner Mark Peters had called for him to be fired. De Blasio said at the time the allegations were "serious and troubling" and that his office would work with both departments to "determine what happened and what changes must occur to ensure that it doesn't happen again."
What to Know A judge has ordered prosecutors to charge the Amtrak engineer involved in a 2015 derailment that killed eight people and injured about 200

Scientists have identified the cells that cause hair to turn gray and to go bald  findings that could help identify possible treatments

Rap icon Jay Z has signed a $200 million, 10-year deal with tour promoter Live Nation.

Get the top headlines of the day in your morning briefing from NBC 4 New York, Monday through Friday. Sign up for our newsletter here.

Judge Orders DA to Charge Amtrak Engineer in Crash

A Philadelphia judge has ordered prosecutors to charge the speeding Amtrak engineer involved in a 2015 derailment that killed eight people and injured about 200, days after they declined to do so. Municipal Court Judge Marsha Neifield ordered the arrest of engineer Brandon Bostian on involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges. The Philadelphia District Attorney's Office had announced as the two-year deadline to bring charges loomed Friday, that it couldn't prove Bostian acted with "conscious disregard" when he accelerated the train to 106 mph on a 50 mph curve. That judgment call prompted civil lawyers representing the family of a technology executive killed to seek a private citizen's complaint. They believe Bostian should be held accountable.

GOP Senator Suggests Shunned SCOTUS Nominee Replace Comey

Former President Obamas forsaken Supreme Court nominee is now being touted as a good candidate for FBI director by an unlikely advocate  a Republican senator. Sen. Mike Lee, of Utah, tweeted that President Donald Trump should nominate former prosecutor and one-time SCOTUS nominee Judge Merrick Garland to replace recently ousted FBI leader James Comey. Many Senate Republicans refused to consider Garland's nomination, essentially blocking him from confirmation and filling the staunchly conservative Justice Antonin Scalias seat. Trumps pick, Judge Neil Gorsuch, was nominated in January and confirmed in April. Sen. Orrin Hatch, also of Utah, reportedly agrees with Lee's appraisal of Garland.

Majority of Americans Think Comeys Dismissal Was Not Appropriate, Poll Shows

A majority of Americans  54 percent  think President Trump's abrupt dismissal of FBI Director James Comey was not appropriate, while 46 percent think that Comey was fired due to the Russia investigation, according to results from a new NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll. A strong majority of Democrats and Democratic-leaners (84 percent) and Independents who do not lean toward either party (61 percent) say that the firing was not appropriate. Among Republicans and Republican-leaners, 79 percent approve of the move, while 13 percent say it was not appropriate. Overall, 46 percent of Americans think Trump's decision to fire Comey was related to the Russia investigation. About a quarter, 24 percent, believe Comey's removal was due to his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and 22 percent said it was something else.

Study Identifies Root Cause of Gray, Balding Hair

Scientists in North Texas have identified the cells that cause hair to turn gray and to go bald  findings that could one day help identify possible treatments. Researchers from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center accidentally stumbled upon the discovery while studying a rare genetic disease that causes tumors to grow on nerves. The researchers found that a protein called KROX20, more commonly associated with nerve development, switches on in skin cells that become the hair shaft. These hair cells then produce another protein called stem cell factor (SCF). In mice, these two proteins turned out to be important for baldness and graying. When researchers deleted the SCF gene in mice, the animals' hair turned white; when they deleted the cells that produce KROX20, the mice stopped growing hair and eventually went bald, according to the study.

Patients Beg for Pricey Drugs on Facebook Black Market

Desperate patients are swapping pricey pharmaceutical drugs on Facebook, NBC News reported. NBC News searched Facebook and found postings to trade insulins, EpiPens, asthma inhalers and other prescription medications. "If it weren't for the online diabetes community I would be dead," said Amy Leyendecker, a 43-year-old medical transcription student from Kentucky living with Type-1 diabetes who requires daily doses of insulin to stay alive. Doctors say patients like Leyendecker take a big gamble. "Patients can put themselves in grave danger by using insulin 'traded' online," said Dr. Joshua Miller, medical director of diabetes care at Stony Brook Medicine, running the risk of infection, or fluctuating blood sugar levels if the insulin was expired or stored incorrectly.

Jay Z Signs $200M Touring Deal With Live Nation

Jay Z has signed a $200 million, 10-year deal with tour promoter Live Nation. The rap icon announced the deal that continues his relationship with the company, a connection which began in 2008. A person close to the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person was not allowed to publicly talk about the topic, told The Associated Press that Jay Z earned $200 million for the new deal. Live Nation has produced a number of Jay Z's successful live shows, including his recent collaborative tours with Beyonce and Justin Timberlake. Jay Z will be performing live a good amount this year: He's slated to headline a number of music festivals, including Austin City Limits, the Meadows Music and Arts Festival, and his own Made In America festival.

How Charlie Hunnam Talked His Way Into Being King Arthur

Charlie Hunnam says he convinced director Guy Ritchie to cast him as King Arthur after the two bonded over marijuana  talking about it, not indulging in it. "I heard Guy Ritchie's 'King Arthur' and I thought, 'That's a brilliant idea,' and I just sort of saw it right away and wanted to be a part of it," said Hunnam while promoting the film. "And so, we presented that to Guy, my agent, and he just really wasn't interested. And I said, 'That is just unacceptable, my friend.'Hunnam booked a trip to London on a week off from filming "Sons of Anarchy" and landed a meeting with Ritchie. He had a standard pitch raring to go but quickly learned Ritchie didn't want to even talk about the movie. Hunnam seems to be having a moment in Hollywood right now because "The Lost City of Z"  in which he stars as a British explorer  and "King Arthur" are coming out back-to-back. But he says that's just coincidental.
What to Know NYPD Lt. Det. Joseph Petrosino was killed in Sicily on March 1909 while on an undercover mafia-related mission

He was the first member of the NYPD to be killed in the line of duty on foreign soil

The movie, called "The Black Hand," is based on the book by Stephan Talty; it's still in pre-production but is due out next year

Leonardo DiCaprio will star in and executive produce a movie about an NYPD detective killed in the line of duty in Italy more than 100 years ago while on an undercover mission to fight the mafia in America.

Lt. Det. Joseph Petrosino, the first Italian-American of his rank in the NYPD, was also the first member of the department to be killed on duty on foreign soil. He was shot to death in Sicily by the mafia on March 12, 1909, after responding to a message from someone claiming to be a mafia informant.



It wasn't until 2014, during an unrelated investigation by Italian police, that a mob boss' descendant admitted his relative had been responsible for killing Petrosino, thus bringing closure to the more than century-old unsolved slaying.

Petrosino, who died at the age of 48, was a pioneer in combating organized crime in the early 1990s and considered to be the NYPD's "secret weapon" when it came to taking down Italian mafia.

The movie, called "The Black Hand," is based on the book by Stephan Talty. DiCaprio is the executive producer and will star as Petrosino in the film, which is in pre-production and expected out next year.

NYPD officials, relatives of Petrosino and some Italian-American organizations are expected to speak about the movie Friday in Manhattan.
A broken sewer line sent raw sewage flowing out of a basement toilet and bathtub this week in Aberdeen, New Jersey.

Owner Eloise Smart-Loadholt described a "river of feces" flowing non-stop throughout the basement, where she lives in the home.

Smart-Loadholt said when she discovered the messy scene she found a pair of boots and immediately called for help.

I mean feces is pouring out of the toilet, pouring out of the tub like a river. I said, Niagara Falls is coming here? Smart-Loadholt said.

According to workers nearby, a sewer main cracked, and because her basement is below the level of the pipe, the feces from multiple homes literally ran back downhill, flowing out of her toilet and bathtub.

Photos Smart-Loadholt took show murky water covering the floors of her home.

Smart-Loadholt was trying to get the foul odor to go away Thursday. The carpeting was ripped out, most of the furniture was outside, and fans were blowing and windows were open.

The sewage flow was finally stopped but it will take a couple of days to repair the sewer main so that she can start using her toilet again.
The sex offender suspected in the horrific sex attack and robbery of a 31-year-old German tourist as she walked back to her Airbnb in Manhattan last week is in police custody and being questioned, a senior law enforcement official tells NBC 4 New York.

The official says detectives are speaking to 28-year-old Keon Robinson in connection with the 3 a.m. May 4 attack in Harlem. Robinson was found hiding upstate on the second floor of a home in Schenectady around 9 a.m., the official said.

He resisted arrest and fought with law enforcement officers before he was taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals Regional Fugitive Task Force, along with members of the NYPD, New York State Police and local Albany police, officials said. His arrest came after the U.S. Marshals worked several leads.



Authorities expect he will be transferred to the 32nd Precinct in Manhattan for processing. He faces charges of attempted rape, robbery, assault and sex abuse.

Officials had been hunting Robinson in connection with the vicious attack, which was caught on surveillance cameras, for nearly a full week.

Video of the attack shows the suspect snatch the woman's purse, then repeatedly punch her; police say she was hit so hard her teeth fell out. The woman falls to the ground, unconscious, and the suspect gropes her all over her body. (Warning: some may find elements of the above video disturbing.)

Police believe Robinson may be connected to other unsolved sex crimes in New York City.

Robinson is a former parolee who served seven years for first-degree robbery and first-degree sexual abuse. He was released in 2014 and is a registered Level 3 sex offender, meaning authorities believe him to have a high-risk for repeat crimes and consider him an ongoing potential threat to public safety.

Robinson was jailed again, this time on a parole violation, last summer, NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said at a news briefing Monday. He got out in January. The pattern of attacks began several months later, Boyce said.



Detectives had also been looking to question Robinson in connection with at least two other violent attacks, including a similar attack on April 24 in Hamilton Heights and another one April 27.

In the April 24 attack, the suspect walked up to a woman in her 30s on Bradhurst Avenue in Manhattan and told her, "This could be easy. I have a gun. This could be your day," according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. The woman started screaming and the man punched her, then stole her purse, Boyce said.



The April 27 attack involved another robbery, but Boyce said the May 4 attack was the only one of the three to involve a sex crime.
A Texas family had just sat down for dinner when an uninvited guest burst through the front door of their McKinney home.

And it was all caught on camera.

Jeffrey Stubbe, who lives in the Stonebridge Ranch neighborhood, told NBC DFW his family was getting ready to have dinner when a deer bolted through their front door.

"This deer comes crashing through the storm door and right into our living room, leaving blood all over our floor and traumatizing my 11-year-old. Crazy!" Stubbe said in an email to NBC DFW.

After a short stumble, the deer eventually made its way back toward the front door and escaped, leaving behind one startled family and a terrified dog.

Stubbe said a responding police officer told him several other neighbors had recently called animal control. He later learned animal control officers secured the deer. A spokesperson for the city says the deer was taken to a shelter but did not survive.

"We've lived here for 13 years and have never seen a deer," Stubbe said. "We've seen bobcats and coyotes, but never a deer."

"Absolutely the most bizarre occurrence ever!!"


Hate group activity has been on the rise nationwide since President Donald Trump's candidacy and election, according to an assessment by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

And the Philadelphia region has not been immune to the growth. Pennsylvania has the fifth largest concentration of hate groups in the U.S., the SPLC said.

The NBC10 Investigators met face-to-face with leaders of accused hate groups to see how the new administrations policies have changed their membership.



"For many years, there's a lot of black people who didn't realize how deep the racism of white America was, but now that Donald Trump is in office, boy, it's clear now," said Commanding General Yahanna, who leads the Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge.

The ISUPK is labeled as a black separatist organization by the SLPC. Its school is based in Upper Darby, Delaware County and the group holds rallies in Center City Philadelphia.

Yahanna said his group is thriving since Trump's election, but disagreed with the characterization of being a hate group.

NBC10

When asked for membership tallies, Yahanna declined to share numbers.



Daniel Burnside, who leads of the National Socialist Movement in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, did the same.

The NBC10 Investigators traveled to Ulysses, Potter County in north-central Pennsylvania to meet Burnside at his home. He said thanks to Trump, his movement feels like it has a voice.

"I chose not to back him and not to breath his name until he was elected because I didn't want to cause him damage," Burnside said.

"That's how bad I wanted him in there."

A hate group is defined as a collection of people who hate or discriminate another group of people based on race, religion or sex, according to the SLPC.



"I certainly do think that the Trump campaign and the election had an effect," Southern Poverty Law Center Executive Director Mark Potok said. "What the Trump campaign and now the Trump presidency have done in effect is to normalize or legitimize a lot of the views of these groups."

The SPLC reports the number of hate groups operating in the U.S. rose from 892 in 2015 to 917 in 2016. Fifty-nine of those groups are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

The NBC10 Investigators asked the White House to respond to claims that the presidents candidacy and election are to blame for these rising numbers.

A spokesperson referred us to a specific line in the Trump's February address before a joint session of Congress: We are a county that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its very ugly forms, Trump said.



The SPLC reports anti-Muslim groups  in particular  have benefited from some of Trumps rhetoric and policies, but one such groups leader said that is not accurate in his case.

"We dont hate Muslims," Keith Davies said. He's executive director of the Shoebat Foundation. "We hate the ideology that drives Muslims to do what they do."



Davies runs his organization from Bucks County and said its purpose is to expose what he calls hateful and dangerous messages in Islam. Davies contends the foundation is not a hate group.

He said hes glad the president is willing to talk about what he calls "extreme Islam," but theorizes far right supporters now dont think his group goes far enough. He said donations to the Shoebat Foundation are down.

Still, the SPLC has the Shoebat Foundation on its list of hate groups.

"We were within 100 groups of the highest count we have ever had in some 30 years of counting," Potok said.
A 23-year-old man accused of abducting and sexually assaulting a 4-year-old and then dumping her in a Delaware pond, remained behind bars Friday on $1 million bail after waiving a preliminary hearing.

Daniel Santucci Jr. was set for a hearing Friday morning but his attorney asked to waive the hearing. Nicole Magnusson, spokeswoman for Attorney General Matt Denn, said that the case is headed for an arraignment in Superior Court at a yet-to-be determined date.

Santucci was unable to post $1 million bail on the attempted murder, kidnapping, sexual assault and child pornography charges, and remained in jail.



"I share the feeling of relief with the community and our officers now that this predator is off the street," said New Castle County Police Chief Vaughn Bond Jr. said while announcing Santucci's arrest Monday. He called the crime "heinous" and "despicable."

"Our hearts, thoughts and prayers go out to the victim and her family because their lives have been altered forever," Bond said.

Investigators said the 23-year-old suspect lured his 4-year-old victim while she played with friends along the 4800 block of Sugar Plum Court in the Plum Run neighborhood of Pike Creek on April 6 around 7 p.m.

The suspect forced the girl into his car then sped off, causing several children to scream and give chase. A woman heard the cries and called police.

Police identified a man who was arrested and charged in the abduction and sexual assault of a 4-year-old girl in Delaware. NBC10s Tim Furlong has the details.

A Good Samaritan found the young girl nearly two hours later in a wooded section of nearby Banning Park wearing little clothing. The girl was taken to a local hospital where investigators discovered signs of sexual assault. According to their accounts, investigators later found that Santucci tried to kill the girl by throwing her into a large pond in the park.

Police were tipped off to Santucci, who had no previous contact with his victim, on April 11. He matched witness accounts. That same day, police found his black Honda Civic  consistent with the one used in the abduction  abandoned, still running in the middle of a Centerville road with the driver's door open.

On April 20, police arrested Santucci in Tampa, Florida on a probation violation. Investigators said he had boarded a Greyhound bus  a violation of his parole on an earlier charge.

Santucci was sent back to Delaware on May 1. Further investigation revealed he had child pornography, not related to this case, in his possession, police said.
Wissahickon Valley Park, with its gravel trails and lush tree canopy, is a peaceful oasis from the hustle and bustle of city life.

But when an emergency strikes, calling for help can be difficult. That's because the 2,042 acre park has a cell service problem.

Thanks to the very features that make the Northwest Philadelphia park appealing  heavy forest cover and a deep gorge  mobile devices can get spotty connections or none at all.

"It's not the providers fault. It's a fault of geography," said Maura McCarthy, executive director of Friends of the Wissahickon, a nonprofit that helps maintain and preserve the park.



McCarthy said there is a need to fix the dead zones. In 2013, when a father and son became trapped in Devil's Pool, a popular swimming spot in the Wissahickon Creek, family members had to run for a mile to the Valley Green Inn to call for help.

The father and son drowned in the creek before help could arrive.



"The children had cell phones with them and they couldn't get a signal," McCarthy said.

Crime is also a concern. Police do patrol the park and crime is down citywide in the park system, officials said.

Still, more than 1,600 criminal incidents took place at Philadelphia parks so far this year, according to police data. Statistics for only Wissahickon Valley Park were not available.

Recent assaults along the Schuylkill River Trail add to worry.



McCarthy was one of several officials  law enforcement, environmentalists and cell service representatives  to testify Friday before a Philadelphia City Council hearing called by Councilman Curtis Jones, Jr.



The goal: figure out how to improve cell service in Wissahickon and Fairmount parks, both part of the same park system, without becoming a detriment to the environment and park serenity.

"The balance is that we don't want to see the cell towers. We just want to enjoy the benefits of them," McCarthy said.



Jones, Jr. said city council will work with the cell phone companies and environmental advocates to find common ground on the issue.

"As technology improves, so should we," Curtis, Jr. said.

It's too early to project a timeline for improving the cell service, but once it does come to fruition, McCarthy hopes folks won't let technology get in the way of the natural world.



"Once that ability is in place, please turn off your phones and don't use them," McCarthy said.


The Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania has found its new leader in-house.

Dr. Robert Vonderheide, a professor in cancer research at Penns Perelman School of Medicine and a noted expert in immunotherapy, was promoted to the director post after serving as the cancer centers associate director for translational research and executive director of its translational centers of excellence program for more than a decade.

He will begin his new role as director on July 1. He succeeds Dr. Chi Van Dang, who was director of Abramson Cancer Center since 2011. In December he accepted a new job as scientific director of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer research in New York City.

Dr. Vonderheides career at Penn has been marked by continuous innovation in areas that were scarcely a possibility in the field when he arrived here in 2001, said Dr. J. Larry Jameson, dean of the Perelman School of Medicine and executive vice president of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System.

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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 Lebanon, New Jersey, 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. [[421878633, C]]

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.

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. [[419140974, C]]

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.
Philadelphia immigration advocates are calling for the resignation of a community leader seen front row at President Donald Trumps Harrisburg rally last month.

Honduras-born Carolina DiGiorgio, the CEO of Congreso de Latinos Unidos, sat inches away from Trump as he promised to build the infamous wall separating Mexico from the United States.



Year after year, you pleaded for Washington to enforce our laws as illegal immigration surged, refugees flooded in and lax vetting threatened your familys safety and security, Trump said at the April 29 rally. Dont worry, were going to have the wall.

After the Philadelphia Weekly uncovered a photo and reported about DiGiorgio at the Harrisburg rally, advocates started saying that the CEO's politics are incongruous with Congresos work in the Latino community.

I have zero faith that someone who stands front row at a Trump rally while he yells Build that wall can lead an organization whose mission is stated to serve Latinos, said Erika Almiron, executive director of immigrant action group Juntos.

As a leader, you must love your community, believe in them. The behavior shows us none of that. Carolina should be fired immediately.

DiGiorgios political ties are no secret. She is married to Valentino F. DiGiorgio III, chairman of Pennsylvanias Republican Party. He also spoke at the rally and has expressed support for former Hazleton mayor and current U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta as a potential challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey in next years election.

Barletta rose to infamy in 2006 after he introduced legislation many considered to be anti-immigrant. The measures included denying permits to businesses that hire undocumented immigrants and fining landlords who rent to them. Neither were ever enforced. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the measures in 2014 after a lengthy legal battle.

Given those ties, DiGiorgios appearance at Trumps rally ruffled more than a few feathers.

She must be really tone deaf to do this, said Marwan Kreidie, executive director of the Arab American Development Corporation. Someone who runs a nonprofit has to be a little smarter than that. It puts her ability to lead in question.

Kreidie said he will be among the signers of a letter calling for DiGiorgio to step down.

Congreso serves a population in the throes of poverty. More than 90 percent of their members live below the federal poverty line and 53 percent make less than $10,000 per year, according to Congresos website. The majority of their members are Puerto Rican.

By contrast, Congresos former CEO made more than $200,000. DiGiorgios salary has not been disclosed. She and her husband live in Chester County where the median income is more than $85,000, according to the U.S. Census.

She has a lot of experience, but it shows a disconnect with the community that she serves, Emma Restrepo, radio personality at Philadelphias El Zol, said of DiGiorgios ties to Trump.

This is someone who cant feel or understand what the community is going through.

Congreso was founded in 1977 with the stated mission to strengthen Latino communities through social, economic and health services, leadership development and advocacy, according to the organizations website.

But since DiGiorgio was seen at a Trump rally, Restrepo has heard from Congreso members who said they will never return to the center for fear of being reported to immigration officials. Restrepo worries that without a safe place to turn, an already marginalized community might sink further into the shadows.

When I didnt have my papers I lived in fear of the police, she said.

Congresos work for the past 30 years is now in doubt. The only way to make amends with the community is to resign.

But Esperanza Martinez Neu, chair of Congresos executive board, said fear is not warranted. Community members are not in danger of being deported.

Its unfortunate that people are afraid, but they shouldnt be, she said. Its more about whats going on in the country than it is about Carolina.

Neu described DiGiorgio as an innovative and creative leader with the smarts necessary to fulfill Congresos mission. The two joined Congresos board around the same time, and Neu has watched DiGiorgio ascend into leadership while maintaining an eye on inclusivity. She never hid her politics from staff, Neu said.

She demonstrates empathy. Shes very sensitive to other peoples needs, Neu said. Im excited to see her rise.

DiGiorgio did not provide a comment to NBC10.
Flying to Europe this summer just got easier, with two European airlines now offering non-stop flights directly from Germany and Switzerland to San Diego.

Last week, Condor Airlines just started direct flights from Frankfurt, Germany to San Diego. Next month, Edelweiss Airlines will also begin non-stop flights between Zurich, Switzerland and San Diego.

Until now, there was only one non-stop flight available from San Diego to Europe through British Airlines, that went straight to London.

Travelers will enjoy smoother travel experiences, and these new flights may also bring a big boost to the local economy.

"The value of a traveler who is coming overseas can be $4,000 in terms of their per trip spending, and that's compared to a U.S. traveler which is maybe $500," said Kerri Kapich, Chief Operating Officer for the San Diego Tourism Authority.

German travelers are some of the most popular visitors who come to San Diego. The European country is considered San Diego's second largest overseas market for tourism.

Starting in June, Edelweiss Airlines will have non-stop flights from Zurich, Switzerland to San Diego. Along with a tourism boost, this flight will help the local economy to develop new business connections.

"Switzerland is a great community for San Diego. There is a lot of business and commerce that goes back and forth with our biotech industry," said Kapich.

With these direct flights, San Diego's international reach has clearly expanded.

They [Europeans] have been to Los Angeles; they have been to San Francisco. But San Diego is a bit of a newer place for them and when you think of a great beach city like a Miami  San Diego is really that for the West coast, explained Kapich.

Both airlines will offer their direct flights twice a week. Condor Airlines will also offer flights three times a week to San Diego during July and August.

It's a dream come true for San Diegans searching for a more efficient, convenient trip abroad, without any hectic flight exchanges.
An 8-month-old baby and her mother may have been abducted as they headed to a nearby beach for a walk, police in Hampton, Virginia, say.

Police issued an Amber Alert Thursday night for Chloe Johnson and her mother, Keir Johnson, 34. The mother and daughter went missing on April 30, but recent developments in the case led invesitgators to believe they may have been abducted.

Keir Johnson was last seen in the 1900 block of Hastings Drive, driving a black 2013 Kia Optima with Virginia tags VAW-2197. According to WAVY-TV, she was taking her baby to Buckroe Beach for a walk. No one has seen or heard from her since.

On Sunday, police in Newport News found the Kia they believed Johnson was traveling in, nearly 10 miles away from where she was last seen. The Newport News Police Department will now lead the investigation, WAVY-TV reports.

Johnson and her daughter are still missing and considered endangered.

"Keir and Chloes family are concerned due to the length of time that has passed since they last had contact with them. It is out of the norm for Keir to be gone for an extended amount of time and to not make contact with family or friends," the Hampton Police Department said in a release.

Keir Johnson is 4 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 140 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and glasses.

Chloe Johnson is 2 feet 5 inches tall and weighs 20 pounds. She has black hair and brown eyes. A clothing description was not available.

"I need to know where they are, and I need someone to help me find them," Keir Johnson's mother said in a video posted on the police department's Facebook page last week. "I want her to come home now. Right now."



Anyone with information about their whereabouts is asked to call 911, (757)727-6505 or 1 (888) LOCK-U-UP.

Stay with News4 and NBCWashington.com for updates.
Howard University failed to help five students who were raped by fellow students and employees in 2014, 2015 and 2016, a lawsuit filed Wednesday by the women claims.

The five current and former students say the historically black Washington, D.C. institution reacted with "deliberate indifference" to the sexual assault reports and failed to follow its own policy of investigating sex assault claims within 60 days.

In one case, a woman says she was raped in February 2016 by a fellow student who was a resident assistant (RA) in her dormitory. After she reported the alleged attack, the RA still had access to a key to her room. She then learned that another female student had reported to the school in October 2015 that the same male student raped her, the suit says.

"Howard's failure to investigate and effectively resolve [the first alleged victim's] complaint meant the assailant remained on campus as an RA and raped [the second alleged victim] over five months later," the suit says.

The suit, in which all five victims are anonymous, claims that the male attacker transferred to Howard from University of California, Los Angeles, after a student there accused him of "similar sexual misconduct."

Go here to read the entire lawsuit.

The student in the February 2016 case turned to Twitter to write about the alleged rape after she says Howard did not help her. According to the suit, the Dean of Student Affairs criticized her for going public.

"You embarrassed your family by doing that," the administrator allegedly said.

Two of the students said they were suicidal after the alleged attacks.

The suit seeks an undisclosed sum for discrimination in violation of Title IX and retaliation in violation of Title IX.

"The universitys actions have exacerbated and extended, rather than corrected, the resulting interference with the educational opportunities of each woman," the document says.

Howard University gave the following statement to News4:

"Sexual assault is a critical issue on campuses across higher education. Howard University takes very seriously all allegations of sexual assault, sexual harassment, domestic violence, and gender-based discrimination occurring on the Universitys campus or involving the Universitys students. Our commitment is evidenced by our rigorous enforcement of the Universitys Title IX Policy on Prohibited Sexual Harassment and Gender-Based Discrimination in Education Program and Activities. The University has been, and remains, committed to diligently investigating any such allegations to ensure a safe and healthy community for our faculty, staff and students.

"Out of consideration for the privacy of all individuals involved, and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on pending litigation.

Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story.
The man wanted in connection to a fatal shooting on Thursday in Lowell, Massachusetts, has been found dead in the trunk of a car, according to police.

Lowell police had described 51-year-old Ross Elliott as "armed, dangerous and increasingly desperate" at a press conference on Friday morning, noting that he had been on the run for more than 24 hours.

He was found dead in Chelmsford in the trunk of a car parked at a medical facility shortly around 1:45 p.m. Friday after the vehicle's owner told police she noticed a hand sticking out of the trunk.

Manhunt for 'Armed and Dangerous' Suspect in Lowell, Massachusetts Continues

"It is certainly a startling discovery," Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan said.



She said preliminary investigation shows that Elliott died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The woman who owns the car lives in the Highlands section of Lowell, where more than 100 police had converged to search for Elliott on Thursday night. She had driven to Chelmsford on Friday for a doctor's appointment.

Ryan said they don't know when Elliott got into the trunk. The car owner's next door neighbor believes Elliott hid under her deck overnight. She also thinks he went into a garage and hid in the trunk, but she did not hear any gunshots.

The search for Ross Elliott, accused of murdering a woman in Lowell, Massachusetts, ended when he was found dead in a car trunk from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Elliott had last been seen around 4:30 p.m. Thursday by an off-duty firefighter at the intersection of Pine and Stevens streets. He allegedly showed a gun and ran off.

The victim of Thursday's shooting was identified as 44-year-old Nicole White. Elliott is accused of fatally shooting her in the head at an apartment on Stevens Street around 7:30 a.m.

Courtesy

White was shot in front of other family members, including her young daughter. The child was not hurt and police said she is safe.



"All I can say is Nicole was an amazing, kind, funny, loving woman," White's cousin, Lisa Barry, said. "She was just a wonderful woman who loved life and loved making others smile and laugh."



Authorities said White and Elliott knew each other and had previously been in a domestic relationship.

According to court documents, Elliott had been arrested several times, including in February 2005, when he was charged with armed assault to murder after he allegedly held a five-inch knife to his girlfriend's neck. He was also charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in December of 2005.



"This is unfortunately another tragic example of the loss of life in domestic situations," Ryan said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the children of this family as we head into this Mother's Day weekend."

Police and SWAT teams searched Lowell all day on Thursday and into Friday morning, but were unable to locate Elliott. Police officers were stationed at local schools on Friday as a precaution.

Lowell Police Superintendent William Taylor said he was proud of the efforts of his department, Massachusetts State Police and other area departments that assisted in the search.

"It worked exactly as we hoped it would," he said. "We were able to contain the individual in a very tight geographic area. The search had the desired effect to contain him and shorten the duration of the search, and, most importantly, did not lead to additional people being victimized. Unfortunately, one additional life was lost."

"This has been a very stressful period of time, both for the residents and for the families touched by the loss," Ryan added. "We are fortunate that the situation has come to an end."


Churches across Norfolk feed 7000 people a month

New research has revealed that Christian groups and churches across Norfolk feed an incredible 7,000 people every month of the year, following the example and command of Jesus Christ to feed the hungry.

The Norfolk Feeds 5000 survey of Christian organisations and churches right across Norfolk, by the team behind the website Network Norfolk, has shone a light on scores of different groups who are engaged in nightly soup runs, weekly community meals, emergency food parcels and lots of other initiatives.



The well-known foodbank networks, all co-ordinated by churches and Christian groups, supply thousands of emergency three-day food parcels to families and individuals who are in desperate need, usually due to circumstances beyond their control.



The survey has also spotlighted dozens of churches across Norfolk which run cafes or hold weekly or monthly community meals, mostly for free or a nominal donation, bringing together vulnerable and lonely members of their communities for breakfast, lunch or dinner and offering other activities and services alongside them.



The well-known nightly Norwich Soup Run provides hot food and drinks to around 40 people every single night of the year and other similar initiatives, on a smaller scale, are run in Kings Lynn and to Big Issue sellers in Norwich for example.



Messy Churches, aimed at young families and offering different activities and usually a meal of some sort, are run by dozens of churches across Norfolk.



Lunch clubs during the school holidays, youth clubs including free food, schemes to gives surplus food to the homeless and simply taking people to a supermarket and then paying for the food they want to buy are other examples of innovative activities run by Christian groups.



The research project is named after one of the well-known Bible miracles performed by Jesus - the feeding of the 5,000.



Network Norfolk publisher Keith Morris, who helped to co-ordinate the research, said: Christians do not have a monopoly on this kind of activity and there are other non-faith based groups in Norfolk doing similar things, but our research shows that the church is more than pulling its weight.



Collectively, the Christian community has come up with dozens of innovative and inspirational projects to meet the basic needs of vulnerable and sometimes desperate people in our towns and villages, through the simple activity of sharing a free meal with them or providing food for their families.



Of the 90 plus responses to the survey, Christian and church-led projects that involve hundreds of volunteers (some Christian and some not) reported that every month of the year an average total of around 7,020 people are either fed or provided with food to cook for themselves.



You can see the full results and project case studies at www.norfolkfeeds5000.co.uk



Follow a month-long social media campaign about the project at #norfolkfeeds5000 or sign up on Twitter



Pictured above is the Norwich Soup Run, co-ordinated by the Salvation Army Citadel but involving dozens of churches and some other groups, serves 40 people every night of the year.


This contributed piece has been edited and approved by Network World editors

OpenStack has been on a roll, seeing increased adoption across the business world, highlighted by major deployments from leading organizations like Verizon, BBVA, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as well as continued growth in the contributing community. But whats next?

While its nice to see the success of OpenStack in the enterprise, the community cannot rest on its proverbial laurels. Heres what the OpenStack community and ecosystem need to accomplish next:

* Containers, containers and ... containers. OpenStack isnt the hottest open source technology on the block anymore, that title is now owned by Linux containers. An application packaging technology that allows for greater workload flexibility and portability, support for containerized applications will be key to OpenStack moving forward, especially as enterprise interest intersects both Linux containers and OpenStack.

OpenStack services -- like Neutron for networking and Cinder for block storage -- can already be abstracted and made available via docker- (container runtime) and Kubernetes- (container orchestration) based platforms. This is important as container-based infrastructure grows, but its not as critical as the second need: running containers themselves on OpenStack.

While containerized applications are, at their core, applications, they have a different set of needs than the traditional, typical virtual machine-based cloud applications that one would usually see on an OpenStack-based cloud. To make OpenStack more container friendly, we need to better expose the underlying plumbing of OpenStack, the networking, storage and management pieces comprising the framework, to container technologies. Were seeing that happening, highlighted by projects like Kuryr and morerecently KubeVirt, but these efforts need to be expanded and delivered as supported products for the future.

* Playing nice with public cloud. OpenStack is already known for providing a powerful private cloud platform, but moving forward, OpenStack will have to serve as a bridge between private cloud infrastructure and public clouds.

This is easier said than done. OpenStack APIs need to manipulate resources across OpenStack and the public cloud, allowing it to function as a single control point for services within and without of an organization. This means that OpenStack provides the powerful, flexible infrastructure for private clouds while also serving as the cloud management platform for public instances.

Projects like OpenStack Omni exist that drive towards delivering upon this promise, but the community at large needs to understand that OpenStacks future isnt necessarily to supplant the public cloud, but rather to augment it. Acting as a hybrid gatekeeper, it gives organizations more control over how they consume resources, both public and private, and allows for greater adoption of a DevOps-style culture and software as infrastructure, both keys to the future of IT.

* Opening the door to SDX. By and large, one of OpenStacks greatest successes is how the framework integrates with software-defined technologies. OpenStack itself delivers a software-defined integration layer across compute, storage and networking. KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) has become the de facto hypervisor for OpenStack and projects like Manila and Ceph provide common ground for software-defined storage solutions - the last leg of the stool is software-defined networking (SDN), something that remains critical for OpenStacks future.

Software defined networking certainly exists as a space outside of OpenStack, with players like VMware, Cisco, Nokia/Nuage, Big Switch, and Juniper (just to name a few) offering a host of solutions, and community driven projects like OpenDaylight. Its this varied space that is something that the OpenStack community needs to address in 2017, specifically by providing a seamless better together experience with as many SDN providers and choices as possible.

This need for expanded choice also plays into the fact that OpenStack must more tightly tie in with SDN in general. As OpenStack-based clouds expand, its expected that SDN deployments will expand linearly, given the close relationship between the two technologies. Without tighter integration, growing enterprises would be facing two separate islands to manage: one around OpenStack, and one around SDN.

* Sunrise on Day 2. The Day 1 operations of OpenStackthe installation, configuration and deployment -- are largely settled. While complexities remain, OpenStacks setup and initial deployments are documented and codified. With that hurdle cleared, the community now needs to set its collective sights on the Day 2 set of management requirements, such as scaling, monitoring, and troubleshooting, as well as compliance and optimization, especially when it comes to specific deployments outside of vanilla settings.

Look at it this way: All of the components of an OpenStack implementation, from network modules to storage to integrated APIs generate extensive amounts of data in the form of logs, systems checks and other, harder to classify information, all of which require some level of analysis to be useful. As deployments expand to encompass tens to hundreds of thousands of nodes, this data analysis becomes critical. Otherwise, how will an IT department understand what their cloud is doing? Or where theyre wasting resources? Or if they have a vulnerability?

What is needed now is an effort from the OpenStack community to standardize how this data is aggregated and consumed. Beyond being better able to pinpoint and solve problems in OpenStack infrastructure, a standardized data analysis model would also help enterprise IT teams to find the best place for a given workload in their infrastructure, helping to eliminate wasted resources, and leading to improved stability.

* Stable at any size. While scale is critical to an even broader set of OpenStack deployments (and the expansion of existing environments), it cant exist in a vacuum. Along with scalability, OpenStack needs to deliver stability, especially as deployments grow not only in size, but importance to the business.

From a scalability standpoint, the OpenStack community must focus on adding more control. While OpenStack certainly can scale, not every service inherent to a deployment needs to scale at the same time - consumption should dictate what needs to grow with the broader infrastructure.

The community is starting to deliver this functionality with composable services, and soon composable upgrades, which make extensive use of automation technologies like Ansible to help users design scalability based on need. That said, granular control of scaling is an area that continues to require attention from the OpenStack ecosystem. Its closely related to being able to easily identify which components are causing a bottleneck and fixing these problems on the fly.

Another key piece of the stability equation is enhancing security and compliance for mission-critical workloads running on OpenStack infrastructure. The pace of innovation within the community has, at times, led to changing APIs and even protocols between releases, which has made it difficult for risk-averse industries to adopt the technology outside of R&D environments. But if the community can focus in 2017 and stick to a common set of foundational code, the risk attached to OpenStack innovation goes away almost immediately.

By focusing on these five critical areas for the future, the OpenStack community can extend fully-open private and hybrid cloud infrastructure to everyone, even those organizations that are hesitant to add a seemingly complex, rapidly-evolving technology to their operations.
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: As many as 97 per cent Indian businessmen and IT professionals find it difficult to live without apps, a recent survey reveals. India ranks at No 2, behind China, in this category, says Application Intelligence Report, by US-based application delivery controller manufacturer A10 Networks.

The research involved about 2,000 business and IT professionals at companies from various industries around the world. The research was conducted in 10 countries with fastest growing populations of technology adopters Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK and the US.

Nearly 50 per cent of the respondents considered apps to be as important as breathing, eating and drinking. About 13 per cent of the respondents said they had been a victim of identity theft, with the younger generation being more vulnerable to it. One in three felt cyber-attacks were a fact of life and one in five tried not to think about it.

Understanding the dependency on apps in our lives raises questions about the diligence we apply to protecting our personal information. AIRs insight into behavioral tendencies with apps and the impact on personal and business risk is a topic that is not addressed enough, said Neil Wu Becker, vice-president (marketing), A10 Networks.

BENGALURU: As many as 97 per cent Indian businessmen and IT professionals find it difficult to live without apps, a recent survey reveals. India ranks at No 2, behind China, in this category, says Application Intelligence Report, by US-based application delivery controller manufacturer A10 Networks. The research involved about 2,000 business and IT professionals at companies from various industries around the world. The research was conducted in 10 countries with fastest growing populations of technology adopters Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, the UK and the US. Nearly 50 per cent of the respondents considered apps to be as important as breathing, eating and drinking. About 13 per cent of the respondents said they had been a victim of identity theft, with the younger generation being more vulnerable to it. One in three felt cyber-attacks were a fact of life and one in five tried not to think about it. Understanding the dependency on apps in our lives raises questions about the diligence we apply to protecting our personal information. AIRs insight into behavioral tendencies with apps and the impact on personal and business risk is a topic that is not addressed enough, said Neil Wu Becker, vice-president (marketing), A10 Networks.
By Express News Service

MUMBAI: Terming protectionism as a dead-end and one that renders a siren-like appeal, New York Fed chief William C Dudley batted for open markets and expanded trade policies. He also warned that such measures often backfire and drag down growth.

This is a significant departure from the US President Donald Trumps administration, which has been tightening regulations, even restricting people movement.

Efforts to suppress open markets and globalization through protectionism will not work, he said adding, Viewed narrowly, it may be potentially rewarding to particular segments of the economy in the short-term but viewed more broadly, itd almost certainly be destructive to economy overall in the long-term.

Countries need to compete better, not compete less. Trade barriers are a very expensive way to preserve jobs in less competitive or declining industries, he said addressing an event here on Thursday.

According to Dudley, though there are several approaches to deal with globalisation, protectionism is a dead-end as it blunts opportunities in export industries and reduces affordability of goods and services to households. Indeed, such measures often backfire, resulting in harm to workers and diminished growth, he said.

Meanwhile, reeling out numbers, he said trade has grown from nearly 40 per cent of global GDP in 1990 to 57 per cent in 2015, and FDI has increased from roughly 10 per cent of global GDP to 34 per cent. In particular, the Indo-US bilateral trade shot up 10-fold from $11 billion in 1995 to nearly $110 billion in 2015.

MUMBAI: Terming protectionism as a dead-end and one that renders a siren-like appeal, New York Fed chief William C Dudley batted for open markets and expanded trade policies. He also warned that such measures often backfire and drag down growth. This is a significant departure from the US President Donald Trumps administration, which has been tightening regulations, even restricting people movement. Efforts to suppress open markets and globalization through protectionism will not work, he said adding, Viewed narrowly, it may be potentially rewarding to particular segments of the economy in the short-term but viewed more broadly, itd almost certainly be destructive to economy overall in the long-term. Countries need to compete better, not compete less. Trade barriers are a very expensive way to preserve jobs in less competitive or declining industries, he said addressing an event here on Thursday. According to Dudley, though there are several approaches to deal with globalisation, protectionism is a dead-end as it blunts opportunities in export industries and reduces affordability of goods and services to households. Indeed, such measures often backfire, resulting in harm to workers and diminished growth, he said. Meanwhile, reeling out numbers, he said trade has grown from nearly 40 per cent of global GDP in 1990 to 57 per cent in 2015, and FDI has increased from roughly 10 per cent of global GDP to 34 per cent. In particular, the Indo-US bilateral trade shot up 10-fold from $11 billion in 1995 to nearly $110 billion in 2015.
Deepa Venkatesan By

Express News Service

Among many other things, liquor baron Vijay Mallya seems to have mastered the art of misfortune. In yet another major blow to the businessman fighting R 9,000 crore loan default case with Indian banks and investigative agencies, the Supreme Court on Tuesday held Mallya guilty of contempt of court.

The development comes amidst the ongoing process to extradite Mallya from UK, to where he had fled in March 2016 to avoid arrest.

Vijay Mallyathe son of a millionaire, wannabe automobile racer, multibillionaire businessman, owner of several race horses, member of parliament and a party animalcould be described as Richard Branson, Bernie Ecclestone and Hugh Hefnerall rolled into one.

Born into a Goud Saraswat Brahmin family from Bantwal, Karnataka, Vijay Mallya was educated at La Martiniere and at St Xaviers College, Calcutta, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1976.

Mallya took over as the chairman of United Breweries Group in 1983 at the age of 28, following his fathers death. Since then, the group has grown into a multi-national conglomerate of over 60 companies, with an annual turnover which increased by 64 per cent over 15 years to US$11 billion in 19981999. He consolidated the various companies under an umbrella group called the UB Group, and focused on the core business of alcoholic beverages. Over the years, he diversified the business and in the process acquired Berger Paints, Best and Crompton in 1988; Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers in 1990; The Asian Age newspaper in 2001.

Mallya also co-owns the Formula One team Sahara Force India. His companies own Indian Premier League team Royal Challengers Bangalore, the I-League teams Mohun Bagan AC and East Bengal FC. He is also a member of the World Motor Sport Council representing India in the Federation Internationale de lAutomobile. He also launched Kingfisher Airlines, an airline established as a major business venture in 2005. In May 2009, Kingfisher carried more than a million passengers, giving it the highest market share in India. Kingfisher also embarked on its long distance and first international flight to London. It kept adding more and more aircrafts to its fleet, not worrying about prices, fuel or maintenance.

However, one major business decision by Mallya was enough to pull him down from riches to rags. At a time when Captain Gopinaths Air Deccan was running hammer and tongs towards debts and failures, Mallya acquired it in 2009. It was also the same period when the great recession shocked several countries and Indian economy was taking a bad hit already. Adding the math is pretty simple to figure out why Mallyas Kingfisher began to run into debts around the same time. It was a time when Mallya could not put a step wrong. The champagne was flowing and no one asked: whos going to ride these planes?, Rohit Bansal, a former aviation journalist and business consultant was quoted telling the Guardian.

Subsequently in 2010, Mallya, a member of Janta Dal, was nominated for the second term as Rajya Sabha MP. Oblivious to the forthcoming misfortune, the King of Good Times, flew higher and higher until his airlines venture became insolvent and was shut down in 2012, with huge unpaid loans to banks, months of salary arrears to employees and a slow aviation sector growth slimming chances of revival.

As things stand now, a group of 17 Indian banks are trying to collect approximately H9,000 crore (US$1.3 billion) in loans which Mallya has allegedly routed to gain 100 per cent or a partial stake in about 40 companies across the world. The 17 banks in a joint petition to the Supreme Court of India in March 2016 sought a direction to prevent Mallya from leaving the country, but failed. The Enforcement Directorate of India also filed a money laundering case against Mallya in March 2016 for allegedly sending abroad some US$130 million that had been loaned to his airline.

Among many other things, liquor baron Vijay Mallya seems to have mastered the art of misfortune. In yet another major blow to the businessman fighting R 9,000 crore loan default case with Indian banks and investigative agencies, the Supreme Court on Tuesday held Mallya guilty of contempt of court. The development comes amidst the ongoing process to extradite Mallya from UK, to where he had fled in March 2016 to avoid arrest. Vijay Mallyathe son of a millionaire, wannabe automobile racer, multibillionaire businessman, owner of several race horses, member of parliament and a party animalcould be described as Richard Branson, Bernie Ecclestone and Hugh Hefnerall rolled into one. Born into a Goud Saraswat Brahmin family from Bantwal, Karnataka, Vijay Mallya was educated at La Martiniere and at St Xaviers College, Calcutta, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1976. Mallya took over as the chairman of United Breweries Group in 1983 at the age of 28, following his fathers death. Since then, the group has grown into a multi-national conglomerate of over 60 companies, with an annual turnover which increased by 64 per cent over 15 years to US$11 billion in 19981999. He consolidated the various companies under an umbrella group called the UB Group, and focused on the core business of alcoholic beverages. Over the years, he diversified the business and in the process acquired Berger Paints, Best and Crompton in 1988; Mangalore Chemicals and Fertilisers in 1990; The Asian Age newspaper in 2001. Mallya also co-owns the Formula One team Sahara Force India. His companies own Indian Premier League team Royal Challengers Bangalore, the I-League teams Mohun Bagan AC and East Bengal FC. He is also a member of the World Motor Sport Council representing India in the Federation Internationale de lAutomobile. He also launched Kingfisher Airlines, an airline established as a major business venture in 2005. In May 2009, Kingfisher carried more than a million passengers, giving it the highest market share in India. Kingfisher also embarked on its long distance and first international flight to London. It kept adding more and more aircrafts to its fleet, not worrying about prices, fuel or maintenance. However, one major business decision by Mallya was enough to pull him down from riches to rags. At a time when Captain Gopinaths Air Deccan was running hammer and tongs towards debts and failures, Mallya acquired it in 2009. It was also the same period when the great recession shocked several countries and Indian economy was taking a bad hit already. Adding the math is pretty simple to figure out why Mallyas Kingfisher began to run into debts around the same time. It was a time when Mallya could not put a step wrong. The champagne was flowing and no one asked: whos going to ride these planes?, Rohit Bansal, a former aviation journalist and business consultant was quoted telling the Guardian. Subsequently in 2010, Mallya, a member of Janta Dal, was nominated for the second term as Rajya Sabha MP. Oblivious to the forthcoming misfortune, the King of Good Times, flew higher and higher until his airlines venture became insolvent and was shut down in 2012, with huge unpaid loans to banks, months of salary arrears to employees and a slow aviation sector growth slimming chances of revival. As things stand now, a group of 17 Indian banks are trying to collect approximately H9,000 crore (US$1.3 billion) in loans which Mallya has allegedly routed to gain 100 per cent or a partial stake in about 40 companies across the world. The 17 banks in a joint petition to the Supreme Court of India in March 2016 sought a direction to prevent Mallya from leaving the country, but failed. The Enforcement Directorate of India also filed a money laundering case against Mallya in March 2016 for allegedly sending abroad some US$130 million that had been loaned to his airline.
By Express News Service

MUMBAI: For the first time in 10 years, the state-level gross fiscal deficit (GFD) to GDP ratio stood at 3.6 per cent in FY16, breaching the three per cent ceiling of fiscal prudence, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).

For 20 states, the situation worsened with Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh clocking deficits between five per cent and 10 per cent. This was primarily due to significant capital outlays, loans and advances to power projects. A year before, the consolidated debt to GDP ratio was 2.7 per cent, 3 per cent during FY17, but will likely moderate to 2.6 per cent in FY18.

The threshold of three per cent fiscal deficit to state GDP ratio was first recommended by the 12th Finance Commission and later endorsed by both 13th and 14th Finance Commissions. At the consolidated state level, three per cent of GFD-GDP ratio was previously breached in 2004-05.

According to RBIs State Finances 2016-17, released Friday, outlook for revenue receipts is uncertain due to GST, though centre will compensate the revenue loss for five years. State governments are also setting up their pay commissions, which may impact projected deficit indicators, it said adding, On a comparable basis, the revised estimates of the GFD for 2016-17 were higher by 0.4 percentage point over the budgeted ratio  raising concerns about potential fiscal slippage.

As per RBI, 25 states that indicated improvement in fiscal metrics during FY17 may not materialize and are expected to consolidate their fiscal position.

State governments face severe resource constraints as their non-debt receipts are often insufficient for fulfilling developmental obligations, forcing them to resort to market borrowings. Over a period of time, such borrowings may result in the accumulation of debt liabilities, which, if unchecked could pose major challenges, it noted. Notwithstanding the deterioration, empirical evaluation reveals that the current fiscal policies of states are sustainable in the long run. Relaxations in market borrowings provided by the 14th Finance Commission have allowed states to mobilise additional resources.

MUMBAI: For the first time in 10 years, the state-level gross fiscal deficit (GFD) to GDP ratio stood at 3.6 per cent in FY16, breaching the three per cent ceiling of fiscal prudence, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). For 20 states, the situation worsened with Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh clocking deficits between five per cent and 10 per cent. This was primarily due to significant capital outlays, loans and advances to power projects. A year before, the consolidated debt to GDP ratio was 2.7 per cent, 3 per cent during FY17, but will likely moderate to 2.6 per cent in FY18. The threshold of three per cent fiscal deficit to state GDP ratio was first recommended by the 12th Finance Commission and later endorsed by both 13th and 14th Finance Commissions. At the consolidated state level, three per cent of GFD-GDP ratio was previously breached in 2004-05. According to RBIs State Finances 2016-17, released Friday, outlook for revenue receipts is uncertain due to GST, though centre will compensate the revenue loss for five years. State governments are also setting up their pay commissions, which may impact projected deficit indicators, it said adding, On a comparable basis, the revised estimates of the GFD for 2016-17 were higher by 0.4 percentage point over the budgeted ratio  raising concerns about potential fiscal slippage. As per RBI, 25 states that indicated improvement in fiscal metrics during FY17 may not materialize and are expected to consolidate their fiscal position. State governments face severe resource constraints as their non-debt receipts are often insufficient for fulfilling developmental obligations, forcing them to resort to market borrowings. Over a period of time, such borrowings may result in the accumulation of debt liabilities, which, if unchecked could pose major challenges, it noted. Notwithstanding the deterioration, empirical evaluation reveals that the current fiscal policies of states are sustainable in the long run. Relaxations in market borrowings provided by the 14th Finance Commission have allowed states to mobilise additional resources.
C Shivakumar By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Japan is looking to tap the textiles sector in Tamil Nadu and experts from the country are evaluating the two textile labs in the State to ensure they comply with the quality requirement and various compliances for Japanese markets.

On the sidelines of the Capacity Building Programme (CBP), Kei Funaki, regional manager of Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Centre (QTEC) told Express, on Thursday, that the island nation is looking at alternatives since the import of Chinese textile goods has become more expensive due to the high cost of labour.

Japan imports 97% of textiles (worth $38 billion), of which China accounts for 67%, and is focusing on nine of 19 laboratories, of which two are in Tamil Nadu, said K Phanindra Reddy, Principal Secretary, State Handlooms, Handicrafts, Textiles and Khadi Department.

KS Muraleedhara, Joint Director (laboratories), Textiles Committee, Union Ministry of Textiles, said the prime focus under the CBP is to make Indian exporters and manufacturers understand the quality requirement for Japanese markets.

He said Indias share, in comparison to Japanese import, is only 1%. Our countrys overall export is worth $40 billion while the Japanese market alone is worth $38 billion, said Muraleedhara while stressing on the need to tap the Japanese market. Of the 1.2% export to Japan, Tamil Nadu alone accounts for more than half.

Funaki said he is impressed by the garment sector in Tamil Nadu. We did not have any information about the textiles sector in India prior to this visit, he said. The visit by Funaki and Toshiki Tasaka, Director, Overseas Coordination Department of QTEC comes in the wake of the Textiles Committee entering into a memorandum of understanding with Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Centre.

Factfile

Indian textile industry contributes 5% to Indias GDP

The textile industry employs about 45 million people directly and 60 million indirectly

Indias overall textile export stands at $40 billion

Japan imports only 1.2% of textiles from India

Japans textile import is worth $38 billion

CHENNAI: Japan is looking to tap the textiles sector in Tamil Nadu and experts from the country are evaluating the two textile labs in the State to ensure they comply with the quality requirement and various compliances for Japanese markets. On the sidelines of the Capacity Building Programme (CBP), Kei Funaki, regional manager of Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Centre (QTEC) told Express, on Thursday, that the island nation is looking at alternatives since the import of Chinese textile goods has become more expensive due to the high cost of labour. Japan imports 97% of textiles (worth $38 billion), of which China accounts for 67%, and is focusing on nine of 19 laboratories, of which two are in Tamil Nadu, said K Phanindra Reddy, Principal Secretary, State Handlooms, Handicrafts, Textiles and Khadi Department. KS Muraleedhara, Joint Director (laboratories), Textiles Committee, Union Ministry of Textiles, said the prime focus under the CBP is to make Indian exporters and manufacturers understand the quality requirement for Japanese markets. He said Indias share, in comparison to Japanese import, is only 1%. Our countrys overall export is worth $40 billion while the Japanese market alone is worth $38 billion, said Muraleedhara while stressing on the need to tap the Japanese market. Of the 1.2% export to Japan, Tamil Nadu alone accounts for more than half. Funaki said he is impressed by the garment sector in Tamil Nadu. We did not have any information about the textiles sector in India prior to this visit, he said. The visit by Funaki and Toshiki Tasaka, Director, Overseas Coordination Department of QTEC comes in the wake of the Textiles Committee entering into a memorandum of understanding with Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Centre. Factfile Indian textile industry contributes 5% to Indias GDP The textile industry employs about 45 million people directly and 60 million indirectly Indias overall textile export stands at $40 billion Japan imports only 1.2% of textiles from India Japans textile import is worth $38 billion
By Express News Service

CHANDIGARH: A mid-day meal at a Haryana school had an unusual flavor on Thursday when a baby snake was served in a meal to students at Rajkeeya Girls Senior Secondary School in Faridabad district.



The snake was found in the meal which is supplied by the ISKCON Foundation to the 371 schools in the district. As the girls of Class VII were about to start eating, one of them found the dead reptile in her food and raised an alarm.



The students alleged that there was a stale smell emanating from the food. School authorities immediately contacted the district administration, which issued orders to discontinue mid-day meals in all schools in the district.



A sample was sent to a laboratory in Chandigarh for testing. An official said a committee has been formed under a tehsildar, and it will probe the incident and submit its report at the earliest.



Meanwhile, denying the possibility of a snake even entering the kitchen to enter food cooked in 120 degree Celsius, an ISKCON official deemed this impossible.



The government school did not show the foundation the snake flavoured food either.



This incident once again highlights the quality and health hazards attached to mid-day meals in government schools.

CHANDIGARH: A mid-day meal at a Haryana school had an unusual flavor on Thursday when a baby snake was served in a meal to students at Rajkeeya Girls Senior Secondary School in Faridabad district. The snake was found in the meal which is supplied by the ISKCON Foundation to the 371 schools in the district. As the girls of Class VII were about to start eating, one of them found the dead reptile in her food and raised an alarm. The students alleged that there was a stale smell emanating from the food. School authorities immediately contacted the district administration, which issued orders to discontinue mid-day meals in all schools in the district. A sample was sent to a laboratory in Chandigarh for testing. An official said a committee has been formed under a tehsildar, and it will probe the incident and submit its report at the earliest. Meanwhile, denying the possibility of a snake even entering the kitchen to enter food cooked in 120 degree Celsius, an ISKCON official deemed this impossible. The government school did not show the foundation the snake flavoured food either. This incident once again highlights the quality and health hazards attached to mid-day meals in government schools.
Manish Anand By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Seeking to stay ahead of political rivals, the BJP has begun bracing up for the upcoming Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh by paradropping hundreds of senior party leaders from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and other states.

Even while the BJP is ruling Gujarat for more than two decades, the party is not taking any chances in the state by linking a massive win with the prestige of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

More than 400 electoral battle hardened party leaders from Bihar have reached Gujarat. They will camp in the state till the elections get over. People from Bihar have become electorally crucial in Gujarat due to their sheer numbers having been employed in big commercial centres like Surat, Bhavnagar and other places, said a senior BJP functionary.

Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are heading for Assembly elections later this year. The BJP chief Amit Shah has given the party leaders the challenge to substantially improve the victory margin in Gujarat, as the state is directly linked to the prestige of the Prime Minister. Therefore, the party is not taking it easy in the state and will contest the elections with equal intensity as was seen in the UP polls, added the BJP functionary.

Incidentally, the BJP will be heading for the Gujarat polls without Modi as the chief ministerial face after the 2002 elections in the state. The state chief minister Vijay Rupani will be the face of the party in Gujarat, said the BJP leader, who added that Shah has put in the leaders from other states as in-charge for key regions to identify issues, find out weaknesses in the poll preparedness.

The party does not want to take any chances with the voting patterns of the migrant population, after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept the Delhi Assembly elections in 2015, added the BJP functionary.

The BJP has also para-dropped hundreds of party workers in the poll bound Himachal Pradesh where the party is keen to wrest power from the hands of Birbhadra Singh headed Congress government.

NEW DELHI: Seeking to stay ahead of political rivals, the BJP has begun bracing up for the upcoming Assembly elections in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh by paradropping hundreds of senior party leaders from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and other states. Even while the BJP is ruling Gujarat for more than two decades, the party is not taking any chances in the state by linking a massive win with the prestige of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. More than 400 electoral battle hardened party leaders from Bihar have reached Gujarat. They will camp in the state till the elections get over. People from Bihar have become electorally crucial in Gujarat due to their sheer numbers having been employed in big commercial centres like Surat, Bhavnagar and other places, said a senior BJP functionary. Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh are heading for Assembly elections later this year. The BJP chief Amit Shah has given the party leaders the challenge to substantially improve the victory margin in Gujarat, as the state is directly linked to the prestige of the Prime Minister. Therefore, the party is not taking it easy in the state and will contest the elections with equal intensity as was seen in the UP polls, added the BJP functionary. Incidentally, the BJP will be heading for the Gujarat polls without Modi as the chief ministerial face after the 2002 elections in the state. The state chief minister Vijay Rupani will be the face of the party in Gujarat, said the BJP leader, who added that Shah has put in the leaders from other states as in-charge for key regions to identify issues, find out weaknesses in the poll preparedness. The party does not want to take any chances with the voting patterns of the migrant population, after the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept the Delhi Assembly elections in 2015, added the BJP functionary. The BJP has also para-dropped hundreds of party workers in the poll bound Himachal Pradesh where the party is keen to wrest power from the hands of Birbhadra Singh headed Congress government.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Calcutta High Court Judge Justice CS Karnan on Friday again mentioned his plea for early hearing before the five-judge Constitution Bench which was hearing the Triple Talaq case.

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, on behalf of Karnan, told Chief Justice of India JS Khehar that registry is not accepting his plea for suspension of sentence of Justice Karnan.

However, CJI refused to entertain his case and said a conscious decision was taken by seven of its judges for Justice Karnan to six months imprisonment by holding him guilty of contempt.

The CJI told the advocate that the bench was hearing a different matter and he should not make a mention but address his grievances before the registry. We are in a different bench, Justice Khehar said.

CJI shot back Why you are coming here everytime? Go and give it (original copy of petition) to the registry. You are not accepting any one-off procedure.

You are only putting your danda (stick) here. It does not work here. Justice Karnan had on Thursday moved the apex court seeking recall of the order holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to a six-month jail term and had ordered the West Bengal police to take him into custody forthwith.

However, before the apex court had pronounced the order, Justice Karnan had left Kolkata and was reported to be staying in Chennai.

The West Bengal police is yet to arrest him. He is due to retire next month.

NEW DELHI: Calcutta High Court Judge Justice CS Karnan on Friday again mentioned his plea for early hearing before the five-judge Constitution Bench which was hearing the Triple Talaq case. Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, on behalf of Karnan, told Chief Justice of India JS Khehar that registry is not accepting his plea for suspension of sentence of Justice Karnan. However, CJI refused to entertain his case and said a conscious decision was taken by seven of its judges for Justice Karnan to six months imprisonment by holding him guilty of contempt. The CJI told the advocate that the bench was hearing a different matter and he should not make a mention but address his grievances before the registry. We are in a different bench, Justice Khehar said. CJI shot back Why you are coming here everytime? Go and give it (original copy of petition) to the registry. You are not accepting any one-off procedure. You are only putting your danda (stick) here. It does not work here. Justice Karnan had on Thursday moved the apex court seeking recall of the order holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to a six-month jail term and had ordered the West Bengal police to take him into custody forthwith. However, before the apex court had pronounced the order, Justice Karnan had left Kolkata and was reported to be staying in Chennai. The West Bengal police is yet to arrest him. He is due to retire next month.
By Express News Service

The Supreme Court on Monday directed a fresh trial of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, and other accused in a criminal case involving the withdrawal of money and falsification of records from the Deoghar Treasury in connection with the Rs 900 crore fodder scam, by setting aside the Jharkhand High Courts verdict in 2014.

The scama set of 55 cases--involved politicians and bureaucrats belonging to successive administration siphoning of several crores of rupees on the pretext of purchasing livestock feed over a period of 20 years. The corruption scheme involved the fabrication of vast herds of fictitious livestock for which fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured. Although the scandal broke in 1996, the theft had been in progress, and increased in size, for over two decades.

The first FIR in the fodder cases was registered on January 24, 1996, after then West Singhbhum deputy commissioner Amit Khare detected that H37.70 cr had been fraudulently withdrawn from the Chaibasa treasury which now a part of Jharkhand. FIRs in the other cases were subsequently registered in other police stations across Bihar.

As it became evident that Yadav would be engulfed in the scandal and its prosecution, demands for him to be removed from the chief ministership had gained momentum both from other parties, as well as within his own party, the Janata Dal.

On 5 July, Yadav formally parted ways with the Janata Dal and formed his own party, the RJD, taking with him virtually all the Janata Dal legislators in the Bihar State Assembly, and winning a vote of confidence in the Assembly a few days later. However, the RJD continued to support the coalition federal government. With demands for his resignation continuing to mount, on 25 July, Laloo resigned from his position, but was able to install his wife, Rabri Devi as the new chief minister on the same day.

In July 1997, Rabris new government won another vote of confidence in the Bihar legislature by 194110, thanks to the Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha parties voting in alignment with the RJD.

As the CBI discovered further evidence over the following years, it filed additional cases related to fraud and criminal conspiracy based on specific criminal acts of illegal withdrawals from the Bihar treasury.

Most new cases filed after the division of Bihar state (into the new Bihar and Jharkhand states) in November 2000 were filed in the new Jharkhand High Court located in Ranchi, and several cases previously filed in the Patna High Court in Patna were also transferred to Ranchi.

Yadav was named as an accused in six cases  four in Jharkhand and two in Bihar. While three of the Jharkhand cases are pending trial, he has been acquitted in one of the Bihar cases and the trial in the other is pending. So he has four pending cases in all and its in these cases that the Supreme Court wants Yadav to stand trial

The Supreme Court on Monday directed a fresh trial of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Lalu Prasad Yadav, former Bihar chief minister Jagannath Mishra, and other accused in a criminal case involving the withdrawal of money and falsification of records from the Deoghar Treasury in connection with the Rs 900 crore fodder scam, by setting aside the Jharkhand High Courts verdict in 2014. The scama set of 55 cases--involved politicians and bureaucrats belonging to successive administration siphoning of several crores of rupees on the pretext of purchasing livestock feed over a period of 20 years. The corruption scheme involved the fabrication of vast herds of fictitious livestock for which fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly procured. Although the scandal broke in 1996, the theft had been in progress, and increased in size, for over two decades. The first FIR in the fodder cases was registered on January 24, 1996, after then West Singhbhum deputy commissioner Amit Khare detected that H37.70 cr had been fraudulently withdrawn from the Chaibasa treasury which now a part of Jharkhand. FIRs in the other cases were subsequently registered in other police stations across Bihar. As it became evident that Yadav would be engulfed in the scandal and its prosecution, demands for him to be removed from the chief ministership had gained momentum both from other parties, as well as within his own party, the Janata Dal. On 5 July, Yadav formally parted ways with the Janata Dal and formed his own party, the RJD, taking with him virtually all the Janata Dal legislators in the Bihar State Assembly, and winning a vote of confidence in the Assembly a few days later. However, the RJD continued to support the coalition federal government. With demands for his resignation continuing to mount, on 25 July, Laloo resigned from his position, but was able to install his wife, Rabri Devi as the new chief minister on the same day. In July 1997, Rabris new government won another vote of confidence in the Bihar legislature by 194110, thanks to the Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha parties voting in alignment with the RJD. As the CBI discovered further evidence over the following years, it filed additional cases related to fraud and criminal conspiracy based on specific criminal acts of illegal withdrawals from the Bihar treasury. Most new cases filed after the division of Bihar state (into the new Bihar and Jharkhand states) in November 2000 were filed in the new Jharkhand High Court located in Ranchi, and several cases previously filed in the Patna High Court in Patna were also transferred to Ranchi. Yadav was named as an accused in six cases  four in Jharkhand and two in Bihar. While three of the Jharkhand cases are pending trial, he has been acquitted in one of the Bihar cases and the trial in the other is pending. So he has four pending cases in all and its in these cases that the Supreme Court wants Yadav to stand trial
By PTI

WASHINGTON: A 28-year-old Indian national in the US has pleaded guilty for his role in a multi-million dollar scam in which individuals from call centres located in India impersonated US tax and immigration officials to defraud victims across America.

Harsh Patel, who most recently lived in New Jersey, is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty to this scam that targeted hundreds of Americans. Till date, Patel, over 50 other individuals and five India-based call centres have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury last year in October. He pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas. The sentencing is scheduled for August 7, 2017.

According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Patel and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which individuals from call centres located in Ahmedabad impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service or US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice said in a statement.

Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the call centre operators targeted US victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government. Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centres would immediately turn to a network of "runners" based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds.

Since January, 2015, Patel worked as a "runner" operating primarily in New Jersey, California and Illinois. Patel is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty in the call centre scam. Bharat Kumar Patel, 43, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the fraud and money laundering scheme. Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, 28, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in liquidating and laundering victim payments generated through various telephone fraud and money laundering schemes via India-based call centres.

WASHINGTON: A 28-year-old Indian national in the US has pleaded guilty for his role in a multi-million dollar scam in which individuals from call centres located in India impersonated US tax and immigration officials to defraud victims across America. Harsh Patel, who most recently lived in New Jersey, is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty to this scam that targeted hundreds of Americans. Till date, Patel, over 50 other individuals and five India-based call centres have been charged for their roles in the fraud and money laundering scheme in an indictment returned by a federal grand jury last year in October. He pleaded guilty before US District Court Judge David Hittner of the Southern District of Texas. The sentencing is scheduled for August 7, 2017. According to admissions made in connection with the plea, Patel and his co-conspirators perpetrated a complex scheme in which individuals from call centres located in Ahmedabad impersonated officials from the Internal Revenue Service or US Citizenship and Immigration Services in a ruse designed to defraud victims located throughout the United States, the Department of Justice said in a statement. Using information obtained from data brokers and other sources, the call centre operators targeted US victims who were threatened with arrest, imprisonment, fines or deportation if they did not pay alleged monies owed to the government. Victims who agreed to pay the scammers were instructed how to provide payment, including by purchasing stored value cards or wiring money, and upon payment, the call centres would immediately turn to a network of "runners" based in the US to liquidate and launder the fraudulently-obtained funds. Since January, 2015, Patel worked as a "runner" operating primarily in New Jersey, California and Illinois. Patel is the third Indian national to have pleaded guilty in the call centre scam. Bharat Kumar Patel, 43, previously pleaded guilty for his role in the fraud and money laundering scheme. Ashvinbhai Chaudhari, 28, also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering for his role in liquidating and laundering victim payments generated through various telephone fraud and money laundering schemes via India-based call centres.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi is currently on a two-day official visit to Sri Lanka, the Congress party on Friday while drawing upon the ongoing tussle between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu over fishermen being detained said the issues needed to properly handled.

The chronic issues of fishermen being detained by the Sri Lankan authorities, presence of Tamilians in the island and other such issues need to be properly handled. I hope the Prime Minister has been briefed well by the Ministry of External Affairs prior to his meetings with the leaders there, Congress leader Tom Vadakkan told ANI.

He further said the strengthening of bilateral relations between the two countries would be determined by the nature of dialogues taking place, given Chinas strong influence on Sri Lanka.

Upon his arrival in Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Modi met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe, who received him at the airport, and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries.

Prime Minister Modi also met President Sirisena.

Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations.

"The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day.

"Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added.

Prime Minister Modi also met former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, in an unscheduled meeting in Colombo.

Indian High Commisioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu told reporters, while briefing them about the Prime Minister's itinerary over the day, that the meeting was held at Rajapaksa's request.

NEW DELHI: As Prime Minister Narendra Modi is currently on a two-day official visit to Sri Lanka, the Congress party on Friday while drawing upon the ongoing tussle between Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu over fishermen being detained said the issues needed to properly handled. The chronic issues of fishermen being detained by the Sri Lankan authorities, presence of Tamilians in the island and other such issues need to be properly handled. I hope the Prime Minister has been briefed well by the Ministry of External Affairs prior to his meetings with the leaders there, Congress leader Tom Vadakkan told ANI. He further said the strengthening of bilateral relations between the two countries would be determined by the nature of dialogues taking place, given Chinas strong influence on Sri Lanka. Upon his arrival in Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Modi met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe, who received him at the airport, and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries. Prime Minister Modi also met President Sirisena. Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations. "The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day. "Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added. Prime Minister Modi also met former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa, in an unscheduled meeting in Colombo. Indian High Commisioner to Sri Lanka Taranjit Singh Sandhu told reporters, while briefing them about the Prime Minister's itinerary over the day, that the meeting was held at Rajapaksa's request.
Fayaz Wani By

Express News Service

SRINAGAR: In a significant development United Jehad Council (UJC), a Muzaffarabad-based conglomerate of militant groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir, has denied involvement of militants in killing of Lt Umar Faiyaz in south Kashmirs Shopian district while police on Friday released posters of three Hizbul Mujahideen militants involved in killing of young army officer.

In an e-mailed statement, the UJC spokesman, Syed Sadaqat Hussain, quoted conglomerates chief and Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander, Syed Salah-ud-din as saying that militants were not involved in killing of Lt Ummer Faiyaz.

Such a killing is condemnable, Salah-ud-Din said.

He claimed that the officer from a pro-freedom family was murdered by the Indian agencies and militants are being accused of it to shield the real face of the Indian agencies.

The UJC chief said there was no role of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Taliban in Kashmir struggle.

Meanwhile, police today pasted posters of three local Hizbul militants -- Gayas-ul-Islam, Ishfaq Ahmad Thoker and Abbas Ahmad Bhat --- in some parts of Shopian.

The trio, according to police, was involved in kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old army lieutenant Umar Faiyaz on Wednesday.

The young army officer hailing from south Kashmirs Kulgam district had gone to his relatives home at Batagund village in Shopian to attend marriage of his cousin. He was abducted by group of militants on Tuesday evening from his relatives house and his bullet ridden body was recovered on Wednesday morning from Hermain area of the same district.

Superintendent of Police (SP) Shopian A S Dinkar told New Indian Express that the three belonged, whose posters were released today, belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen.

He said according to preliminary investigation, a group of more than three militants were involved in abduction and killing of army officer.

On the basis of inputs available with us, we have issued the hue and cry notice for three Hizb militants, he said.

Dinkar said the person who gives information about the trio will be suitable rewarded. The identity of the person giving information about trio would be kept secret.

Asked since how long have trio been active, he said Ishfaq has been active from 2015 while Gayas and Abbas are active from 2016.

The police officer said they are investigating how militants got information about presence of army officer.

We are investigating how militants came to know that Lt Umar Faiyaz was present at his relatives house, he said.

He said no arrests have taken place yet.

Asked whether police have quizzed the family members and relatives of the slain army officer, SP said, His family members and relatives are still mourning his loss. We will talk to them after the mourning period is over.

According to police sources, there is possibility that somebody had leaked information to militants about presence of Lt Umar Faiyaz at his relatives residence.

The militants had come with a plan to abduct the army officer. It was not an instant reaction but would have needed proper planning, they said.

SRINAGAR: In a significant development United Jehad Council (UJC), a Muzaffarabad-based conglomerate of militant groups operating in Jammu and Kashmir, has denied involvement of militants in killing of Lt Umar Faiyaz in south Kashmirs Shopian district while police on Friday released posters of three Hizbul Mujahideen militants involved in killing of young army officer. In an e-mailed statement, the UJC spokesman, Syed Sadaqat Hussain, quoted conglomerates chief and Hizbul Mujahideen supreme commander, Syed Salah-ud-din as saying that militants were not involved in killing of Lt Ummer Faiyaz. Such a killing is condemnable, Salah-ud-Din said. He claimed that the officer from a pro-freedom family was murdered by the Indian agencies and militants are being accused of it to shield the real face of the Indian agencies. The UJC chief said there was no role of Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Taliban in Kashmir struggle. Meanwhile, police today pasted posters of three local Hizbul militants -- Gayas-ul-Islam, Ishfaq Ahmad Thoker and Abbas Ahmad Bhat --- in some parts of Shopian. The trio, according to police, was involved in kidnapping and murder of 22-year-old army lieutenant Umar Faiyaz on Wednesday. The young army officer hailing from south Kashmirs Kulgam district had gone to his relatives home at Batagund village in Shopian to attend marriage of his cousin. He was abducted by group of militants on Tuesday evening from his relatives house and his bullet ridden body was recovered on Wednesday morning from Hermain area of the same district. Superintendent of Police (SP) Shopian A S Dinkar told New Indian Express that the three belonged, whose posters were released today, belonged to Hizbul Mujahideen. He said according to preliminary investigation, a group of more than three militants were involved in abduction and killing of army officer. On the basis of inputs available with us, we have issued the hue and cry notice for three Hizb militants, he said. Dinkar said the person who gives information about the trio will be suitable rewarded. The identity of the person giving information about trio would be kept secret. Asked since how long have trio been active, he said Ishfaq has been active from 2015 while Gayas and Abbas are active from 2016. The police officer said they are investigating how militants got information about presence of army officer. We are investigating how militants came to know that Lt Umar Faiyaz was present at his relatives house, he said. He said no arrests have taken place yet. Asked whether police have quizzed the family members and relatives of the slain army officer, SP said, His family members and relatives are still mourning his loss. We will talk to them after the mourning period is over. According to police sources, there is possibility that somebody had leaked information to militants about presence of Lt Umar Faiyaz at his relatives residence. The militants had come with a plan to abduct the army officer. It was not an instant reaction but would have needed proper planning, they said.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: In a major boost to indigenous defence sector, the ministry of defence, for the first time, entered into a contract with Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), Indias largest engineering and construction firm for a Rs. 4500 crore order to supply artillery guns to the Indian Army.

Union cabinet in March end had already approved the proposal after being cleared from the ministry of defence.

According to a statement issued by the L&T, contract for 100 units of 155mm/52 calibre tracked self-propelled gun systems is the largest given to a private Indian company by the ministry.

The contract valued at about  4500 crore, is the largest order placed by MoD on an Indian private company. L&T, supported by its South Korean technology partner Hanwha Tech Win (HTW), had bid for this Buy Global acquisition program of MoD in 2011.

Delivery of the 100 guns in 42 months with associated engineering support package and maintenance transfer of technology to support these Howitzer regiments throughout their life cycle.

These guns will have over 50% indigenous content and will be delivered from L&Ts manufacturing facilities, including a new Armoured Systems Complex at Hazira in Gujarat,L&T statement.

L&T later emerged as the sole qualified bidder out of four bidders for the program. The bidders went through a series of user trials and evaluations, based on the performance of the K9 VAJRA-T self-propelled Howitzer, the statement said.

The gun called K9 VAJRA-T is an enhanced version of Hanwha Tech Wins K9 Thunder  a self-propelled Howitzer  and is customised and co-developed by L&T to suit the specific requirements of the Indian Army, including desert operations.

Defence minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday, held discussion with representatives of chambers of commerce and industry on the proposal Strategic partnership model under the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) with an aim to make India a hub for manufacturing weapon systems including ships, artillery guns and aircraft as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis dream agenda of Make In India policy.

NEW DELHI: In a major boost to indigenous defence sector, the ministry of defence, for the first time, entered into a contract with Larsen and Toubro Ltd (L&T), Indias largest engineering and construction firm for a Rs. 4500 crore order to supply artillery guns to the Indian Army. Union cabinet in March end had already approved the proposal after being cleared from the ministry of defence. According to a statement issued by the L&T, contract for 100 units of 155mm/52 calibre tracked self-propelled gun systems is the largest given to a private Indian company by the ministry. The contract valued at about  4500 crore, is the largest order placed by MoD on an Indian private company. L&T, supported by its South Korean technology partner Hanwha Tech Win (HTW), had bid for this Buy Global acquisition program of MoD in 2011. Delivery of the 100 guns in 42 months with associated engineering support package and maintenance transfer of technology to support these Howitzer regiments throughout their life cycle. These guns will have over 50% indigenous content and will be delivered from L&Ts manufacturing facilities, including a new Armoured Systems Complex at Hazira in Gujarat,L&T statement. L&T later emerged as the sole qualified bidder out of four bidders for the program. The bidders went through a series of user trials and evaluations, based on the performance of the K9 VAJRA-T self-propelled Howitzer, the statement said. The gun called K9 VAJRA-T is an enhanced version of Hanwha Tech Wins K9 Thunder  a self-propelled Howitzer  and is customised and co-developed by L&T to suit the specific requirements of the Indian Army, including desert operations. Defence minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday, held discussion with representatives of chambers of commerce and industry on the proposal Strategic partnership model under the Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP) with an aim to make India a hub for manufacturing weapon systems including ships, artillery guns and aircraft as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis dream agenda of Make In India policy.
K Shiva Kumar By

Express News Service

CHAMARAJANAGAR: As you approach the outskirts of Dantahalli village, the stench of rotting carcasses is unbearable. Cattle are having the worst of a cruel drought in this once evergreen region of Chamarajanagar district, 170 km from Bengaluru.

The Cauvery lies dry 4 km from Dantahalli. The crops have long been lost, for the second consecutive year. In the village, people say not a day passes without their cattle dropping dead. Fallow fields have become burial grounds. Who will conduct a funeral for a cow in this drought? The carcasses are dragged to the fields and dumped into dried, disused wells.

A boy holds up the head of his favourite animal

in Dantahalli village in Chamarajanagar district

of Karnataka. | Express photo by S Udayshankar

Everywhere in Kowdahalli hobli of Hanur in Kollegal taluk, fields have come to resemble burial grounds. As our photographer positions himself to capture the scene, a young boy picks up the desiccated carcass of a cow by its horns and holds it up for a poignant frame.

"It was my favourite cow. She died a week ago," says Mahesh.

In K Shettahalli village, a fodder truck rumbled up the dusty path, and villagers rushed to it, thinking it to be the vehicle of government officials and hoping to plead for compensation.

Venkata Shetty (70) begs for a visit to the farther edge of the village where the carcasses of three cows are still in early putrefaction. Last week, some women and a cameraman came by to take pictures of the dead cattle but no one has turned up to pay compensation, he said.

Most of the cattle lost to the drought this summer have been milch cows, the milk from which used to be sold to the dairy at Kowdahalli. One villager said he lost 20 cows in the past two weeks. Ramakka, carrying her granddaughter on her shoulders, insists we write down that she lost four.

She invites us to tea but is apologetic that she can serve only black tea, for there is no milk in K Shettahalli right now. "I can put in some jiggery," she offers.

Most of the households here used to earn around Rs 2,000 a month as a second income from milk and around Rs 10,000 per truckload from selling cow dung once in three months.

The current trend of cow love is not yet applicable to the governments compensation system. Umesh, who still has 70 cows standing, says the state government gives Rs 5,000 as compensation for sheep or goats lost but not cows.

We caught up with Krishna Shetty who was waiting at a government-run goshala hoping to cammandeer a fodder truck. "We take the cattle out to graze in the Dinahalli and Meenyam forest. But the forest is dry. Every day, 8-10 cattle die in the forest, he says.

The district administration has purchased 8,500 tonnes of maize stover to feed the cattle lodged in goshalas. With over 2500 heads of cattle penned in at the 20 cattle-feeding centres, the goshalas require 70-80 tonnes of fodder.

The animal husbandry department estimates the total livestock figure in the state at 2.84 lakh heads, not counting the animals kept by communities living on the forest fringes. Theres no figure for cattle deaths yet.

Deputy director Balasundar clarifies that government orders on compensation for cattle deaths have not been received yet. At the panchayat office, Kumara Naik has come with his mother Gowri Bai seeking compensation for their dead cattle but returns empty-handed. "We are scared that more of our cattle will die if there are wild winds during pre-monsoon showers," he said.

Though the administration has opened more than 20 goshalas across Chamarajanagar district, many farmers don't want to take the risk of sending their cattle 10-12 km away in this scorching heat.

Why villagers miss Veerappan

CHAMARAJANAGAR: It is one of the anomalies of nature that this district is drought-prone despite having a 49 per cent forest cover that includes the Biligiriranga hills, Bandipur, M M Hills and wildlife sancturies straddling Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

But then, the district recorded 375 mm less than its normal rainfall of 760.3 mm. Kollegal and Yalandur taluks fared worse, notching up deficits of 411 mm and 475 mm respectively. The Gundal, Suvaravathi and Chikkahole dams are dry and water holes in the forests have dried up too. Last month, forest fires broke out as well, making things worse.

The drought has been such that the villagerss thoughts turn to Veerappan, the forest bandit who trod the local wilds until he was brought down by the forces of two states. "Never did we face problems or encounter resistance from forest personnel for grazing our cattle in the forest," said one villager.

Following Veerappan's death, forest personnel fenced off the forest boundaries, stepped up vigil and shooed away villagers from bringing their cattle to graze in the forest. "My friends were arrested and sent to jail. They are still fighting the case, remembered villager Shiva of Dantahalli.

Japamallai, a panchayat member from Marathalli, said this has been the worst drought in 50 years. "With eight of out 12 borewells dried up, we are running to officers to sanction new borewells. Private water tanks are making merry as they charge Rs 3,000 for 6,000 litres," he said.

Water only for VVIPS

The acute water scarcity gripping Chamarajanagar district has forced the Male Mahadeshwara Development Authority to stop renting rooms to devotees who come to the local temple. For the Cauvery has dried up and theres no water for the pilgrims. The staff at guest houses say can at best spare a bucket of water for VVIP guests.

Boom time for abattoirs

For slaughterhouses the drought has been a good thing though. Farmers think its the better of two bad option to sell their cattle to a slaughterhouse than see them die. But market forces rule. One villager, Mahadeva of Ramapura said agents who earlier paid Rs 15,000-20,000 per head of cattle now offer less than Rs 5,000. The condemned cattle are secretaly transported to abattoirs in Tamil Nadu and Kerala avoiding the eye of cow vigilantes.

CHAMARAJANAGAR: As you approach the outskirts of Dantahalli village, the stench of rotting carcasses is unbearable. Cattle are having the worst of a cruel drought in this once evergreen region of Chamarajanagar district, 170 km from Bengaluru. The Cauvery lies dry 4 km from Dantahalli. The crops have long been lost, for the second consecutive year. In the village, people say not a day passes without their cattle dropping dead. Fallow fields have become burial grounds. Who will conduct a funeral for a cow in this drought? The carcasses are dragged to the fields and dumped into dried, disused wells. A boy holds up the head of his favouriteanimal inDantahalli village in Chamarajanagar district of Karnataka. | Express photo by S UdayshankarEverywhere in Kowdahalli hobli of Hanur in Kollegal taluk, fields have come to resemble burial grounds. As our photographer positions himself to capture the scene, a young boy picks up the desiccated carcass of a cow by its horns and holds it up for a poignant frame. "It was my favourite cow. She died a week ago," says Mahesh. In K Shettahalli village, a fodder truck rumbled up the dusty path, and villagers rushed to it, thinking it to be the vehicle of government officials and hoping to plead for compensation. Venkata Shetty (70) begs for a visit to the farther edge of the village where the carcasses of three cows are still in early putrefaction. Last week, some women and a cameraman came by to take pictures of the dead cattle but no one has turned up to pay compensation, he said. Most of the cattle lost to the drought this summer have been milch cows, the milk from which used to be sold to the dairy at Kowdahalli. One villager said he lost 20 cows in the past two weeks. Ramakka, carrying her granddaughter on her shoulders, insists we write down that she lost four. She invites us to tea but is apologetic that she can serve only black tea, for there is no milk in K Shettahalli right now. "I can put in some jiggery," she offers. Most of the households here used to earn around Rs 2,000 a month as a second income from milk and around Rs 10,000 per truckload from selling cow dung once in three months. The current trend of cow love is not yet applicable to the governments compensation system. Umesh, who still has 70 cows standing, says the state government gives Rs 5,000 as compensation for sheep or goats lost but not cows. We caught up with Krishna Shetty who was waiting at a government-run goshala hoping to cammandeer a fodder truck. "We take the cattle out to graze in the Dinahalli and Meenyam forest. But the forest is dry. Every day, 8-10 cattle die in the forest, he says. The district administration has purchased 8,500 tonnes of maize stover to feed the cattle lodged in goshalas. With over 2500 heads of cattle penned in at the 20 cattle-feeding centres, the goshalas require 70-80 tonnes of fodder. The animal husbandry department estimates the total livestock figure in the state at 2.84 lakh heads, not counting the animals kept by communities living on the forest fringes. Theres no figure for cattle deaths yet. Deputy director Balasundar clarifies that government orders on compensation for cattle deaths have not been received yet. At the panchayat office, Kumara Naik has come with his mother Gowri Bai seeking compensation for their dead cattle but returns empty-handed. "We are scared that more of our cattle will die if there are wild winds during pre-monsoon showers," he said. Though the administration has opened more than 20 goshalas across Chamarajanagar district, many farmers don't want to take the risk of sending their cattle 10-12 km away in this scorching heat. Why villagers miss Veerappan CHAMARAJANAGAR: It is one of the anomalies of nature that this district is drought-prone despite having a 49 per cent forest cover that includes the Biligiriranga hills, Bandipur, M M Hills and wildlife sancturies straddling Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. But then, the district recorded 375 mm less than its normal rainfall of 760.3 mm. Kollegal and Yalandur taluks fared worse, notching up deficits of 411 mm and 475 mm respectively. The Gundal, Suvaravathi and Chikkahole dams are dry and water holes in the forests have dried up too. Last month, forest fires broke out as well, making things worse. The drought has been such that the villagerss thoughts turn to Veerappan, the forest bandit who trod the local wilds until he was brought down by the forces of two states. "Never did we face problems or encounter resistance from forest personnel for grazing our cattle in the forest," said one villager. Following Veerappan's death, forest personnel fenced off the forest boundaries, stepped up vigil and shooed away villagers from bringing their cattle to graze in the forest. "My friends were arrested and sent to jail. They are still fighting the case, remembered villager Shiva of Dantahalli. Japamallai, a panchayat member from Marathalli, said this has been the worst drought in 50 years. "With eight of out 12 borewells dried up, we are running to officers to sanction new borewells. Private water tanks are making merry as they charge Rs 3,000 for 6,000 litres," he said. Water only for VVIPS The acute water scarcity gripping Chamarajanagar district has forced the Male Mahadeshwara Development Authority to stop renting rooms to devotees who come to the local temple. For the Cauvery has dried up and theres no water for the pilgrims. The staff at guest houses say can at best spare a bucket of water for VVIP guests. Boom time for abattoirs For slaughterhouses the drought has been a good thing though. Farmers think its the better of two bad option to sell their cattle to a slaughterhouse than see them die. But market forces rule. One villager, Mahadeva of Ramapura said agents who earlier paid Rs 15,000-20,000 per head of cattle now offer less than Rs 5,000. The condemned cattle are secretaly transported to abattoirs in Tamil Nadu and Kerala avoiding the eye of cow vigilantes.
By AFP

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's government on Thursday declared an end to a national emergency over the Zika virus which was detected in the Latin American country late in 2015 before becoming a global concern.

Brazil has informed the World Health Organization, citing "the decrease in cases of Zika and microcephaly throughout the country," the health ministry said in a statement.

The health ministry said that from January to April this year there had been 7,911 Zika cases, 95.3 percent down on the same period in 2016 when there were 170,535 cases.

In November last year the WHO had lifted its own international health emergency status for Zika, which can cause babies to be born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads.

Brazilian health ministry official Adeilson Cavalcante said "the end of the emergency does not signify the end of being vigilant and providing assistance."

Measures to reduce the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry the Zika virus, as well as dengue and chikungunya, will remain in place.

The Zika scare was at its peak before Rio de Janeiro held the 2016 Olympics, with countries around the world reporting an increase in infections.

Those infected typically suffer mild, flu-like symptoms and get better quickly. In rare cases women infected while pregnant can give birth to children with severe defects.

RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil's government on Thursday declared an end to a national emergency over the Zika virus which was detected in the Latin American country late in 2015 before becoming a global concern. Brazil has informed the World Health Organization, citing "the decrease in cases of Zika and microcephaly throughout the country," the health ministry said in a statement. The health ministry said that from January to April this year there had been 7,911 Zika cases, 95.3 percent down on the same period in 2016 when there were 170,535 cases. In November last year the WHO had lifted its own international health emergency status for Zika, which can cause babies to be born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads. Brazilian health ministry official Adeilson Cavalcante said "the end of the emergency does not signify the end of being vigilant and providing assistance." Measures to reduce the number of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which carry the Zika virus, as well as dengue and chikungunya, will remain in place. The Zika scare was at its peak before Rio de Janeiro held the 2016 Olympics, with countries around the world reporting an increase in infections. Those infected typically suffer mild, flu-like symptoms and get better quickly. In rare cases women infected while pregnant can give birth to children with severe defects.
By AFP

BRUSSELS: The EU is seeking urgent talks with Washington over a possible US ban on carry-on computers on European flights to the United States, an EU source said Friday.

The European Union has not yet received a response from Washington to its request, the source said.

The US Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday it was close to a decision on extending to Europe an existing ban imposed on eight countries, as the busy summer transatlantic travel season looms.

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, the department said.

A spokesman for the European Commission said that "the United States and the European Union have a long-standing and fruitful cooperation on security" and the commission had approached the US "to continue to pursue that cooperation".

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.

BRUSSELS: The EU is seeking urgent talks with Washington over a possible US ban on carry-on computers on European flights to the United States, an EU source said Friday. The European Union has not yet received a response from Washington to its request, the source said. The US Department of Homeland Security said on Tuesday it was close to a decision on extending to Europe an existing ban imposed on eight countries, as the busy summer transatlantic travel season looms. 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, the department said. A spokesman for the European Commission said that "the United States and the European Union have a long-standing and fruitful cooperation on security" and the commission had approached the US "to continue to pursue that cooperation". 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.
By Associated Press

WASHINGTON: A federal judge in the nation's capital says she won't act on a request to block President Donald Trump's revised travel ban because two other judges have already stopped his order from going into effect.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan says in an order today that she's "inclined to agree" with challengers who say the effort to bar new visas for citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries is unlawful.

But the judge says the best course of action for now is to delay proceedings until appeals from the rulings in Maryland and Hawaii are resolved.

Chutkan heard last month from Iranian-American and Muslim groups that say Iranians have faced delays and disruptions in obtaining visas even after the ban was blocked.

WASHINGTON: A federal judge in the nation's capital says she won't act on a request to block President Donald Trump's revised travel ban because two other judges have already stopped his order from going into effect. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan says in an order today that she's "inclined to agree" with challengers who say the effort to bar new visas for citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries is unlawful. But the judge says the best course of action for now is to delay proceedings until appeals from the rulings in Maryland and Hawaii are resolved. Chutkan heard last month from Iranian-American and Muslim groups that say Iranians have faced delays and disruptions in obtaining visas even after the ban was blocked.
By PTI

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has asked the Punjab government to explain the extension of house arrest of Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed without the approval from a judicial review board.

A Lahore High Court division bench headed by Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan held a hearing yesterday on the petition of Saeed and his four aides -- Abdullah Ubaid, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdul Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Hussain -- who have challenged their detention under the anti-terrorism law.

Representing them, counsel A K Dogar told the court that the government had extended the detention of Saeed and four other leaders of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) and the Falah-eInsaniat (FIF) for another 90 days without any legal justification.

He said that the period of the detention was extended through a notification issued by a federal secretary.

"Their detention cannot be extended without approval of a judicial review board," Dogar argued.

The bench then asked the Punjab government's law officer to respond. The officer confirmed that the detainees were not produced before any review board for the extension of the detention period.

The bench expressed concern and directed the law officer to submit a written reply on extending the detention period of the petitioners without the approval of the judicial review board.

The court was then adjourned and the next hearing would take place on May 16.

The government on January 30 had first put Saeed and the four leaders under house arrest in Lahore for their alleged involvement in activities prejudicial to peace and security.

The house arrest was made for a period of 90 days ending on April 30 when it was extended for a further three months.

The JuD, the front group of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its sister organisation Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), had also been put under terror watch on the basis of a report sent by the ministry of foreign affairs.

According to media reports, the Nawaz Sharif government had detained Saeed after the Trump administration, which had just taken over, had told Pakistan that it may face sanctions if it did not act against JuD and its chief.

Saeed and his aides allege in their petition that the government detained them without any legal justification.

Saeed was also put under house arrest after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, but he was freed by a court in 2009.

He has a bounty of USD 10 million on his head for his role in terror activities.

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court has asked the Punjab government to explain the extension of house arrest of Mumbai attack mastermind and Jamaat-ud-Dawah chief Hafiz Saeed without the approval from a judicial review board. A Lahore High Court division bench headed by Justice Sadaqat Ali Khan held a hearing yesterday on the petition of Saeed and his four aides -- Abdullah Ubaid, Malik Zafar Iqbal, Abdul Rehman Abid and Qazi Kashif Hussain -- who have challenged their detention under the anti-terrorism law. Representing them, counsel A K Dogar told the court that the government had extended the detention of Saeed and four other leaders of the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) and the Falah-eInsaniat (FIF) for another 90 days without any legal justification. He said that the period of the detention was extended through a notification issued by a federal secretary. "Their detention cannot be extended without approval of a judicial review board," Dogar argued. The bench then asked the Punjab government's law officer to respond. The officer confirmed that the detainees were not produced before any review board for the extension of the detention period. The bench expressed concern and directed the law officer to submit a written reply on extending the detention period of the petitioners without the approval of the judicial review board. The court was then adjourned and the next hearing would take place on May 16. The government on January 30 had first put Saeed and the four leaders under house arrest in Lahore for their alleged involvement in activities prejudicial to peace and security. The house arrest was made for a period of 90 days ending on April 30 when it was extended for a further three months. The JuD, the front group of the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba, and its sister organisation Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation (FIF), had also been put under terror watch on the basis of a report sent by the ministry of foreign affairs. According to media reports, the Nawaz Sharif government had detained Saeed after the Trump administration, which had just taken over, had told Pakistan that it may face sanctions if it did not act against JuD and its chief. Saeed and his aides allege in their petition that the government detained them without any legal justification. Saeed was also put under house arrest after the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, but he was freed by a court in 2009. He has a bounty of USD 10 million on his head for his role in terror activities.
By PTI

COLOMBO: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, the Prime Minister said that the themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings. "The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he told the audience which included Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world. "It is [rather] from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence," he said, adding that the menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion.

He said Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two-and-a-half millennia ago.

Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy."

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare. The Prime Minister lit a lamp - a traditional practice - initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.

Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event. "Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said. "Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said.

Modi arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.

COLOMBO: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states. Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, the Prime Minister said that the themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings. "The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he told the audience which included Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world. "It is [rather] from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence," he said, adding that the menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion. He said Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two-and-a-half millennia ago. Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy." Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare. The Prime Minister lit a lamp - a traditional practice - initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha. Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded. Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event. "Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said. "Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said. Modi arrived here yesterday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said.

"Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats. "These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States' interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said.

Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told lawmakers. "This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said.

"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

"Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States. Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.

WASHINGTON: Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack both India and Afghanistan, a top US spymaster has said. "Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan," Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on Worldwide threats. "These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States' interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," Coats said. Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use. In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told lawmakers. "This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said. "Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said. "Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States. Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.
By ANI

COLOMBO: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries.

However, no MoUs were signed at the meeting.

Prime Minister Modi also met President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena.

After their meeting, President Sirisena took to Twitter to praise Prime Minister Modi and said it was "wonderful" to meet him.

"It is wonderful to meet this great human being @narendramodi in Colombo again. Thank you for gracing #InternationalVesakDay," he tweeted.

Prime Minister Modi also took to Twitter to post pictures of his meeting with President Sirisena.

Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations.

"The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day.

"Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added.

Throwing light on Prime Minister Modi's schedule over the day, Panda shared that the former was received by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and other senior ministers at the airport.

Upon arrival, Prime Minister Modi went straight to the Gangaramaya temple to light the illuminations.

Following that, President Sirisena hosted a private dinner in his honour.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, Leader of the Opposition, R. Sampanthan, Chief Minister of the Northern Province, C.V. Wigneswaran, Ministers Mangala Samaraweera, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, and others participated in the dinner.

Prime Minister Modi also met former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa who had earlier accused President Sirisena of compromising the country's sovereignty and declared that black flags would be shown to the visiting Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Modi is expected to deliver a celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day today (May 12).

The Prime Minister will then inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital.

Prime Minister Modi will also address the Indian origin Tamil community at Norwood Grounds.

He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC). Thereafter, the Prime Minister will also be holding a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBC).

The Prime Minister will then arrive at the President's Palace for a lunch hosted by the Sri Lankan President.

Prime Minister Modi will also visit Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple (The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), where he will sign the visitor's book and interact with Mahanayaks.

Just before returning to India, the Prime Minister will meet Sri Lankan Leader of Opposition at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo.

The Prime Minister will also visit the hilly regions of Sri Lanka that host tea plantations and is the first Indian PM to do so.

COLOMBO: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday met his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe and discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries. However, no MoUs were signed at the meeting. Prime Minister Modi also met President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena. After their meeting, President Sirisena took to Twitter to praise Prime Minister Modi and said it was "wonderful" to meet him. "It is wonderful to meet this great human being @narendramodi in Colombo again. Thank you for gracing #InternationalVesakDay," he tweeted. Prime Minister Modi also took to Twitter to post pictures of his meeting with President Sirisena. Sanjay Panda, MEA, said there were no MoUs signed between the two neighbouring nations on the opening day of Prime Minister Modi's visit and the focus of the discussions was Buddhism, promotion of tourism, and enhancing the connectivity between the two nations. "The visit assumes importance because of our common Buddhist heritage that spans over centuries," Panda added, while briefing the media about Prime Minister Modi's itinerary over the day. "Space cooperation also featured in the discussions and India assured Sri Lanka of her help," Panda added. Throwing light on Prime Minister Modi's schedule over the day, Panda shared that the former was received by Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and other senior ministers at the airport. Upon arrival, Prime Minister Modi went straight to the Gangaramaya temple to light the illuminations. Following that, President Sirisena hosted a private dinner in his honour. Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, Speaker Karu Jayasuriya, Leader of the Opposition, R. Sampanthan, Chief Minister of the Northern Province, C.V. Wigneswaran, Ministers Mangala Samaraweera, Wijeyadasa Rajapakshe, and others participated in the dinner. Prime Minister Modi also met former Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa who had earlier accused President Sirisena of compromising the country's sovereignty and declared that black flags would be shown to the visiting Prime Minister. Prime Minister Modi is expected to deliver a celebratory address at the Bandarnaike Memorial International Conference Hall (BIMCH) on the occasion of International Vesak Day today (May 12). The Prime Minister will then inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital. Prime Minister Modi will also address the Indian origin Tamil community at Norwood Grounds. He will then meet representatives of the Ceylon Workers' Congress (TBC). Thereafter, the Prime Minister will also be holding a meeting with representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance (TBC). The Prime Minister will then arrive at the President's Palace for a lunch hosted by the Sri Lankan President. Prime Minister Modi will also visit Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple (The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic), where he will sign the visitor's book and interact with Mahanayaks. Just before returning to India, the Prime Minister will meet Sri Lankan Leader of Opposition at the Bandaranaike International Airport in Colombo. The Prime Minister will also visit the hilly regions of Sri Lanka that host tea plantations and is the first Indian PM to do so.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: Russia is likely to be more aggressive in global affairs and more unpredictable towards the US, a top American spymaster has said, a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met President Donald Trump at the White House.

Daniel Coats, the director of the National Intelligence, said that the US intelligence community assess that Russia will also be more authoritarian in its domestic policies.

During the Congressional hearing yesterday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Coats said, "We assess that Russia is likely to be more aggressive in global affairs, more unpredictable in its approach to the US." He said Russia will continue to leverage its military support to the Bashar Al-Assad regime to drive a political settlement process in Syria "on their terms".

Moscow is also likely to use its military intervention in Syria in conjunction with efforts to capitalise on fears of a growing threat from the Islamic State group and other extremists to expand its role in the troubled Middle East, he said.

"We assess at Moscow's strategic objectives in Ukraine, maintaining long-term influence over Kiev and frustrating Ukraine's attempts to integrate into western institutions, will remain unchanged in 2017," Coats said.

His remarks came a day after the Russian foreign minister met Trump at the Oval Office in what was the first face-to- face meeting between the US president and a senior Russian government official.

The remarks were significant as the Trump presidency is battling accusations that his 2016 presidential campaign had links with Russia and that the Russians tried to influence the November polls that brought Trump to the White House.

Immediately before his meeting with Lavrov, Trump fired FBI chief James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia.

Responding to questions from senators about the alleged Russian interference in the polls, Coats said the US will continue to use all the assets it has to collect and analyse the influence that has been and potentially could be.

"Russians have spread this across the globe," he said, adding that the Russian interference in their political system was the main topic of discussion when he met the Prime Minister of Montenegro, which is the latest nation to join. "So it sweeps across Europe and other places. It's clear though, the Russians have upped their game using social media and other opportunities that in ways that we haven't seen before. It's a great threat to our democratic process and our job here is to provide the best intelligence we can to the policy makers as they develop a strategy in terms of how to best reflect a response to this," Coats said.

WASHINGTON: Russia is likely to be more aggressive in global affairs and more unpredictable towards the US, a top American spymaster has said, a day after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met President Donald Trump at the White House. Daniel Coats, the director of the National Intelligence, said that the US intelligence community assess that Russia will also be more authoritarian in its domestic policies. During the Congressional hearing yesterday before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Coats said, "We assess that Russia is likely to be more aggressive in global affairs, more unpredictable in its approach to the US." He said Russia will continue to leverage its military support to the Bashar Al-Assad regime to drive a political settlement process in Syria "on their terms". Moscow is also likely to use its military intervention in Syria in conjunction with efforts to capitalise on fears of a growing threat from the Islamic State group and other extremists to expand its role in the troubled Middle East, he said. "We assess at Moscow's strategic objectives in Ukraine, maintaining long-term influence over Kiev and frustrating Ukraine's attempts to integrate into western institutions, will remain unchanged in 2017," Coats said. His remarks came a day after the Russian foreign minister met Trump at the Oval Office in what was the first face-to- face meeting between the US president and a senior Russian government official. The remarks were significant as the Trump presidency is battling accusations that his 2016 presidential campaign had links with Russia and that the Russians tried to influence the November polls that brought Trump to the White House. Immediately before his meeting with Lavrov, Trump fired FBI chief James Comey, who had been leading an investigation into the Trump campaign's possible collusion with Russia. Responding to questions from senators about the alleged Russian interference in the polls, Coats said the US will continue to use all the assets it has to collect and analyse the influence that has been and potentially could be. "Russians have spread this across the globe," he said, adding that the Russian interference in their political system was the main topic of discussion when he met the Prime Minister of Montenegro, which is the latest nation to join. "So it sweeps across Europe and other places. It's clear though, the Russians have upped their game using social media and other opportunities that in ways that we haven't seen before. It's a great threat to our democratic process and our job here is to provide the best intelligence we can to the policy makers as they develop a strategy in terms of how to best reflect a response to this," Coats said.
By PTI

WASHINGTON: The US has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's JuD group as part of an effort to disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks.

The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu'ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISISKhorasan. Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan and parts of India.

The sanctions in particular have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the Welfare and Development Organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawah for Quran and Sunnah (WDO).

"These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, Director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). "The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities," Smith said.

"The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said. "The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added.

OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISISKhorasan.

Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan. Inayat-ur Rahman has been slapped with sanctions for acting for JDQ and the Taliban, and for providing material and financial support to LeT and the Taliban. A long-time leader of JDQ, he worked directly for Haji Hayatullah. OFAC designated the WDO for being controlled by Inayat-ur Rahman. As of 2015, he was the director, chairman, and president of WDO.

WASHINGTON: The US has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed's JuD group as part of an effort to disrupt their leadership and fund-raising networks. The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu'ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISISKhorasan. Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan and parts of India. The sanctions in particular have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the Welfare and Development Organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawah for Quran and Sunnah (WDO). "These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, Director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). "The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities," Smith said. "The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said. "The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added. OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISISKhorasan. Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan. Inayat-ur Rahman has been slapped with sanctions for acting for JDQ and the Taliban, and for providing material and financial support to LeT and the Taliban. A long-time leader of JDQ, he worked directly for Haji Hayatullah. OFAC designated the WDO for being controlled by Inayat-ur Rahman. As of 2015, he was the director, chairman, and president of WDO.
Food Scene: Newport County options that have Thanksgiving covered

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The low oxygen concentrations that prevail in many tumors enhance their propensity to metastasize to other tissues. Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich led by Professor Heiko Hermeking have now uncovered the molecular mechanism that links the two phenomena.

Many actively growing tumors are poorly supplied with blood, which limits the concentration of oxygen available within the tumor, a condition known as hypoxia. Tumor hypoxia has several significant consequences: The relative lack of oxygen partly accounts for the fact that such solid tumors are comparatively resistant to radiation and chemotherapy, and it also promotes the formation of satellite tumors in other tissues. Now researchers led by LMU professor Heiko Hermeking have dissected the mechanisms responsible for the association between tumor hypoxia and metastasis. Their results reveal how hypoxia leads to inhibition of the synthesis of a short RNA molecule that normally suppresses tumorigenesis. The new findings appear in the journal Gastroenterology.

Cancers can only develop if the biochemical circuits that control cell proliferation and behavior are inactivated. These safe-guarding mechanisms are mediated by so-called tumor-suppressor proteins, one of which is known as p53. The gene encoding p53 is inactivated in more than half of all tumors. In previous studies Hermeking had shown that p53 induces the transcription of a short RNA - referred to as microRNA-34a (miR-34a) - which plays a central role in tumor suppression. "We observed that, in patients with colon carcinomas, the gene for miR-34a is very frequently inactivated in metastasizing tumors, which are often characterized by relative oxygen deficiency," Hermeking says.

He and his colleagues have now shown that, in tumor cells in which the p53 function is compromised, complete loss of miR-34a expression is a direct consequence of hypoxia. In response to low oxygen levels, the tumor cells trigger the synthesis of hypoxia-inducible factor 1a (HIF1a), a protein that directly represses the transcription of miR-34a. Furthermore, this down-regulation of the microRNA is a prerequisite for hypoxia-induced epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). In this process, HIF1a activates a genetic program that results in the transformation of non-invasive cells (which grow in a regulated fashion in epithelial sheets) into invasive, migratory cells that can seed new tumors elsewhere. EMTs play important roles in embryonic development and organogenesis, as well as in wound healing, but must be tightly regulated.

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Among the proteins involved in orchestrating the EMT is PPP1R11. Hermeking's team found that especially high levels of this protein are synthesized in the cells that form the leading edge of an invasive tumor - where the oxygen concentration is expected to be particularly low. In normal cells, on the other hand, the production of PPP1R11 is repressed directly by miR-34a and thus indirectly by the tumor suppressor p53. This ensures that cells divide in a coordinated manner and prevents formation of metastases. "The regulatory antagonism is presumably the reason why metastasizing tumor cells are selected for loss of the p53 gene, which is required for the expression of miR-34a," Hermeking explains.

The new findings also have therapeutic implications, for they suggest that metastasizing colon tumors could perhaps be treated with drugs that inhibit the functions of proteins that promote the EMT. Such inhibitors would also be expected to permit reactivation of the expression of miR-34a. "In fact, molecules that act as functional substitutes for miR-34a are now being tested in clinical trials," says Hermeking. This miRNA is of particular interest as a drug target, because it is involved in the control of many regulatory processes. For instance, reintroduction of miR-34a into tumor cells also activates the patient's immune system to attack the tumor. Hermeking's results suggest that hypoxic tumors might be especially susceptible to this approach.
Boosting a part of the immune system known to have anti-tumor properties may actually help tumors grow in cancers linked to chronic inflammation.

Cancer immunotherapies boost aspects of the body's normal immune system, to help fight tumors. They are part of a fast-evolving field of research and medicine, with several types of immunotherapies currently in clinical trials.

Now, a research team at Imperial College London has found that in a mouse model developing liver cancer, one immunoreceptor - attractive candidate for immunotherapies - promoted rather than delayed tumor growth.

The researchers believe this could have implications for the effectiveness of immunotherapy in combating human cancers caused by inflammation, such as some liver and colon cancers. The study, funded by the Wellcome Trust, was published in Nature Communications earlier this year.

Lead author Dr Nadia Guerra from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial, said: "Immunotherapies have shown unprecedented successes in treating cancer patients with advanced forms of cancer, especially metastatic melanomas. These therapies are now being tested in various type of cancer and novel combination approaches are being developed at a very fast pace.

"Nonetheless, there are still challenges ahead to optimize those therapies and reduce adverse effects. Scientists and clinicians are working at identifying cancer patients that would benefit the most from those therapies to increase success rates and hopefully achieve complete remission."

The part of the immune system involved in the study is called NKG2D (Natural Killer Group 2 member D). NKG2D is a type of immunoreceptor - a molecule present on the surface of the body's immune cells that recognizes signals from normal cells that are distressed.

For example, if a normal cell is infected with a virus, it will display molecules on its surface that the NKG2D immunoreceptor can detect. The immune cell then directs a lethal hit that destroys the infected cell.

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Dr Guerra first showed ten years ago that this mechanism also works against cancerous tumors - demonstrated by the fact that tumors grew faster in mice that had their NKG2D activity suppressed.

However, NKG2D contributes to inflammation and has been found to play a role in chronic inflammatory disorders, such as Crohn's disease. In this case, the NKG2D misfires and attacks normal cells instead of damaged ones.

The team looked into whether NKG2D's roles in chronic inflammation and cancer could help tumors to grow in these types of cancer.

To do this, they used a mouse model of liver cancer driven by inflammation. Human and mouse NKG2D receptors are very similar, so the results are thought to be relevant to human liver cancers.

They found that the tumors actually grew faster in mice with functional NKG2D than in mice that lacked NKG2D. Dr Guerra said: "NKG2D is a potent anti-tumor agent, but we have found that it might actually have the opposite effect in tumors that arise and/or grow from a background of chronic inflammation."

In these environments, the liver tissue undergoes cycles of damage and repair continuously as it is fought by NKG2D, making the cells more at risk of developing genetic mutations.

Dr Guerra said: "The paradoxical effect of NKG2D we discovered exposes the need to selectively target the types of cancer that will benefit from NKG2D-based immunotherapy. What is beneficial in fighting one type of cancer might have the opposite effect in another.

"We need to be more precise when administering a chosen therapy to a particular type of cancer. Our data unravels a conceptual shift that will inform which cancer these new therapies can benefit the most, and help match the best therapy to each patient."
Researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, with collaborators across the nation, have determined that magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) can be an accurate, non-invasive tool to identify liver fibrosis in children. Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now the most common cause of chronic liver disease in children, and scarring of the liver, known as fibrosis, is a major determinant of clinical outcomes.

Results of the multi-center pediatric study were published online in the May 11 edition of Hepatology.

A generation ago, NAFLD was rare in children; it now affects 5 to 8 million children in the U.S. Moreover, NAFLD has become the most common cause of liver transplants in Americans under age 50. Due to the rapid increase in prevalence and severity of the disease, there is a growing interest in emerging imaging technologies that provide doctors with the information needed to care for patients, especially children, in a non-invasive manner.

"One of the challenges we face when evaluating a child with NAFLD is to determine the severity of their disease. A major component of that assessment is the staging of the amount of scar tissue seen from a liver biopsy. In MAGNET, we demonstrated that 2D MRE could be used to estimate hepatic stiffness (scarring) in these children," said Jeffrey Schwimmer, MD, paper's co-author and professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "We also identified a roadmap to help navigate future use of MRE technology. Ultimately, MRE may be most useful for monitoring the progression or improvement in children with NAFLD."

The MAGNET study (MRI Assessment Guiding NAFLD Evaluation and Treatment) was co-led by Schwimmer, director of the Fatty Liver Clinic at Rady Children's Hospital-San Diego, and Claude B. Sirlin, MD, professor of radiology at UC San Diego School of Medicine. MAGNET was the first multi-center study to use non-invasive imaging to assess liver fibrosis in children.

"One of the challenging parts of evaluating liver disease in children is determining the numeric cut-off for a positive diagnosis of fibrosis," said Sirlin, who was the study's senior author. "Radiologists and gastroenterologists using MRE should be aware that the interpretation in children may not be the same as in adults. Getting this right has real-world implications."

MRE is an imaging tool that measures the stiffness and elasticity of soft solid organs. MRE has emerged from being only a research tool to becoming clinically available on a large percentage of MRI scanners in medical centers across the country. Children in MAGNET were imaged at UC San Diego Health and at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston. The MRE images were independently interpreted at UC San Diego Health and Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Investigators used both manual interpretation and a newly developed automated interpretation method.

Schwimmer said that the UC San Diego research team is now exploring the potential of 3D MRE. Further refinement of 2D and 3D MRE, they said, would help close the gap between where each technology is today and where it needs to be to be maximally useful for children.

According to the American Liver Foundation, NAFLD is a spectrum of diseases that begins with excess fat builds up in the cells of the liver. As the disease progresses, fibrosis increases, which may become cirrhosis, a permanent form of scarring that can lead to liver failure and need for transplantation. NAFLD affects nearly 25 percent of adults in the U.S., and 5 to 10 percent of all children. In children, the average age of diagnosis is 12.
Adult stem cells have the ability to transform into many types of cells, but tracing the path individual stem cells follow as they mature and identifying the molecules that trigger these fateful decisions are difficult in a living animal.

University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientists have now combined new techniques for sequencing the RNA in single cells with detailed statistical analysis to more easily track individual stem cells in the nose, uncovering clues that someday could help restore smell to those who have lost it.

The results are published this week in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

"A stem cell's job is twofold: to replace or recreate mature cells that are lost over time, both through normal aging and after injury, and to replace themselves so that the process can continue over the life of the animal," said senior author John Ngai, the Coates Family Professor of Neuroscience and a member of UC Berkeley's Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the Berkeley Stem Cell Center. "We are getting closer to understanding how mature sensory neurons are generated from olfactory stem cells, an understanding that's key for an eventual stem cell therapy to restore function."

Ngai noted that perhaps one-quarter of all people over the age of 50 have some loss of smell, yet doctors have little understanding why, and no treatments for most cases. There's not even a standardized test for loss of smell, as there is for vision or hearing loss, in spite of widespread reports of suffering by patients who have lost their sense of smell.

"Some cases of anosmia -- the loss of the sense of smell -- are due to traumatic injury, and there is generally not a whole lot you can do about that," he said. "But some are age-related, or occur for reasons we don't quite know. In the case of age-related anosmias, it could be because the stem cells are just not doing their job replacing the cells that are naturally lost over time. One idea is that if we could harness the very stem cells that are in the noses of people who are losing smell, maybe we can figure out a way to restore function, by getting them to regenerate the cells that are lost."

Tracking cell fate

Ngai, who directs the Functional Genomics Laboratory in UC Berkeley's California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences, focuses on the cells and regulatory molecules involved in our sense of smell. Olfactory cells in the nose are unusual in that they are part of the body's outer layer, or epithelium, but also part of the nervous system, incorporating neurons that connect directly with the smell centers in the brain.

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His group has been working with adult olfactory stem cells that give rise to the neurons that sense odors and other cells, such as sustentacular cells, that support the neurons. A new technique for sequencing the RNA in a single cell has been revolutionary, Ngai said, allowing researchers to trace which stem cells in a densely packed tissue become specialized, based on the mRNA present in the cell, which indicates which genes are being expressed. Nevertheless, it is difficult to follow stem cells that can potentially differentiate into different types of cells.

Ngai's group teamed up with UC Berkeley statisticians and computer scientists - led by Sandrine Dudoit, a professor of biotstatistics and statistics, Elizabeth Purdom, a professor of statistics, and Nir Yosef, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences - to develop a way to analyze the experimental data and identify cells with similar RNA profiles, indicative of specific cell types and developmental states.

As a result, the team was able to trace the paths that cells take as they turn into sustentacular cells -- which seems to be the default fate for olfactory stem cells -- and into neurons and other types of cells. They also were able to identify a signaling pathway known as "Wnt" that triggers the olfactory stem cell to become a sensory neuron.

Ngai cautions that the immediate implications of the work are limited to animal models, which provide the necessary foundation for eventually addressing human anosmias. "But with this information, we now have a window into what controls the process and therefore a window into manipulating or coopting that process to stimulate regeneration" he said. "There has been a lot of work on Wnt signaling pathways, for example, so there are a lot of small-molecule drugs that could be tested to trigger a stem cell to mature into a neuron."

The sequencing and statistical techniques the team developed can also be used by others studying regulation of stem cells in other tissues, organ systems or organisms, he said.
One of the most difficult skills a neurologist must learn is how to diagnosis brain death and communicate the bad news to family members.

A Loyola Medicine study has found that two simulation techniques dramatically improved the brain death diagnostic and communications skills of neurologists in training. The techniques employ SimMan 3G, a high-tech patient simulator (mannequin) that simulates a brain-dead patient and trained actors who simulate family members having a brain-death discussion with a physician.

The study was presented during the American Academy of Neurology's annual meeting in Boston, where the study received the academy's prestigious 2017 Safety and Quality Award.

Brain death is the irreversible loss of all functions of the brain. Clinically and legally, the patient is dead. (Brain death differs from persistent vegetative state, in which some autonomic functions such as breathing and sleeping persist.) The concept can be difficult to communicate to family members, who, for example, may wish to keep their loved-one on life support.

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Brain death is determined with a procedure that includes a physical exam and an apnea test. In an apnea test, the patient is taken off the ventilator, and if there is no attempt to breathe, the patient is declared dead. Typically, a physician meets with the family to describe the procedure before it is performed. If the procedure confirms the patient is brain dead, the physician meets with the family again to deliver the bad news.

"The physician has only one chance to relay information in a compassionate way that the family can understand," said Preston Douglas, MD, first author of the Loyola study. "The family's whole view of the healthcare system can be enhanced or tainted depending on how well the discussion is conducted."

The Loyola study included 12 neurologists who were beginning their second year of residency training. They were tested before and after they underwent brain death simulation training.

Instructed by senior neurologists, the resident neurologists learned how to diagnose brain death using a patient simulator. The simulator can move and talk and realistically mimic human responses relevant to brain death testing, such as breathing and response to light. Instructed by palliative-care specialists, the resident neurologists learned how to discuss brain death with actors who played the roles of family members. (The actors are specialists from the Gift of Hope Organ & Tissue Donor Network.)

Before the training, the residents scored 46 percent on a test that measured how well they performed a brain death exam on the patient simulator, 48 percent on a test of how well they delivered bad news and 55 percent on an apnea test. After training, their scores improved to 73 percent, 74 percent and 91 percent, respectively.

Previous studies have shown how using patient simulators can help improve brain death diagnosis skills. The Loyola study is the first to show that using actors can help improve physicians' communication skills in brain death discussions.
Bari (Italy): Finance chiefs from many of the world's leading rich nations pressed the United States on Friday not to break a decades-long global consensus in areas such as trade and financial regulation criticised by US President Donald Trump.



Inequality, international tax rules and cyber security headed the official agenda for Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers who kicked off a two-day meeting in the southern Italian port city of Bari.



But Trump's threats to end a multilateral approach to policies from trade to climate change dominated discussions inside the walls of a 12th century Norman castle.



"We need a strong United States to lead the global economy and global politics in a sustainable way," said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble when asked his message for US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.



Later, French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said he and other ministers told Mnuchin not to weaken global policies that had been put together painstakingly over years and had helped the world economy recover from the financial crisis that broke nearly a decade ago.



"It is unthinkable, and it will not happen, that one can destroy these collective achievements that give more stability .. and at the end of the day are truly in everyone's interests," said Sapin, who is likely to lose his job soon following Emmanuel Macron's election as president this month.



European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said he hoped Trump would not abandon multilateralism and free trade. "We can discuss, we can have different appreciations, but we are in the same world and in the same boat," he told reporters.



Several officials at the G7 raised concerns about risks to global growth from the Trump administration's policy proposals, including tax reform, a senior US Treasury official said.



Trump has vowed to revamp the US tax code with major cuts for businesses and ease business regulatory burdens.



At a meeting in March of the larger Group of 20 finance ministers in Germany, ministers dropped their traditional pledge to keep global free trade open, bowing to an increasingly protectionist United States.



Mnuchin, who skipped the opening session in Bari where academics spoke on inequality and growth and arrived long after other ministers, told reporters he was "excited" about the emerging new US trade policy.



"I think you probably saw last night we made an announcement of a 100-day economic plan with the Chinese, so I think we are very happy with how we are proceeding on trade," he said.



In their closing statement on Saturday, the G7 will use the same language on trade, currencies and monetary policy as the G20 did in March, an Italian G7 official said.



The G20's reference to trade said only that they were "working to strengthen the contribution of trade to our economies."



The US president has already pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and wants to re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).



GREEKS FOR BREAKFAST



Before the G7 meeting, several ministers and officials held an early-morning discussion of Greece's long-running debt crisis to prepare for a May 22 meeting of euro zone finance ministers on the disbursement of new loans.



Greece's creditors, including the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are in Bari. The IMF, which insists on debt relief for Athens, complained that the euro zone was still dragging its heels on the issue.



"There is not enough clarity yet," said IMF chief Christine Lagarde after the working breakfast. "Our European partners need to be more specific in terms of debt relief, which is an imperative."



But the priority for most officials in Bari was to get a sense of how far the Trump administration intended to go with its promises of reworking trade agreements, rules to prevent a repeat of the global financial crisis and other key areas.



Asked how pro-active the US delegation had been on the first day of the G7, France's Sapin said they had been "quite discreet in their presence," and he appeared to take a swipe at Trump's frequent use of Twitter.



"You can express yourself with a tweet but you don't debate things with a tweet and you don't take decisions with a tweet. We have to do that in a more profound way ... and I think that is what is going on," he said.
New Delhi: Even as it stated that reforms are not for the courts to bring, the Supreme Court on Friday questioned how can practices like triple talaq be validated by man-made laws when Muslim scholars themselves dub the practice as sinful in the eyes of the God.



On the second day of the hearing on triple talaq, the Chief Justices court not only reverberated with the verses of the Quran from Surah An Nisa, Surah Al Baqarah to Surah At Talaq, but also had Arif Mohammad Khan equating the practice of instant talaq to burying a woman alive with a sudden intervention by an aggrieved woman who called triple talaq to be a result of the bogus supremacy of Darul Qazas and clergymen.



The five judge bench hearing challenges to the practice of instant divorce in Islam on Friday witnessed the last round of submissions by the petitioners.



One thing was clear on Friday  the bench was keen to know what different schools of thought in Islam held about triple talaq. Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman questioned as to what did Imam Abu Hanifa (founder of the Hanafi school of Islam) thought about triple talaq.



Nobody has till now quoted what Abu Hanifa had to say about Triple Talaq since 90% of Indian Sunni Muslims were Hanafis. We know the scholars who have relied on him, but we want to know whether he considered triple talaq to be a valid form of divorce or not? I dont want to know what the British judges had to say about this, said Justice Nariman while replying to a counsel for the respondent, Nithya Ramakrishnan, when she spoke to justify how Talaq-e-Sunnat was the authentic form of Islamic divorce and Talaq-e-Biddat (Triple Talaq) was nothing but a later innovation.



However, Justice Narimans question was soon answered when Mohammad Arif Khan stood to represent the All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board. He said there was no direct statement from Abu Hanifa about triple talaq and also dismissed that the court should not look into different schools of thought as something like this did not exist in Islam.



Imam Abu Hanifa was a very pious soul. He only has 4 pages accredited to him. He hated to obey a wayward government and for this he was imprisoned and beaten for 11 days after which he expired. He left no documented evidence of his sayings or belief. Its only his disciples Imam Youssef and Imam Mohd who wrote about him. There are no schools of thought in Islam and these schools were only invented not for the need of the religion but for the need of the empire, said Khan.



Khan also cited observations by former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Justice Javed Iqbal and said that if anything has to be decided it has to be by the Quran and the holy book is silent, it is only then we look into the prophetic traditions.



Arif Mohammad Khan further stated that a book by AIMPLB on Muslim Personal Law says that even if a divorce is given in jest or when someone is not in senses, even then it is valid. He termed it ridiculous and a distortion of Islam.



The day began with Salman Khurshid making his amicus curiae submissions where he laid what exactly the process of talaq was and how an interval of three months needs to be maintained between the two revocable divorces and only after the passage of the first two periods of three months that the third irrevocable talaq can be pronounced.



The bench questioned Khurshid as to what was the law in Saudi Arabia and said that all the legislations given to it from foreign countries to prove the unconstitutionality of triple talaq do not mention Saudi Arabia. To this, a member advocate from the petitioners side rose and stated that Saudi Arabians are Ahle Hadees people (people who follow the prophetic sayings) and that they have long outlawed instant talaq. The bench has now demanded a documentary proof.



On Nikah Halala, Khurshid stated that after the pronouncement of the irrevocable talaq, the man is not permitted to take the wife back without her having married and divorced some other man.



It was only there so that there is no parody of talaq among the Muslim, said the amicus curiae.



However, in a later submission, Arif Mohammad Khan disagreed with Khurshid and said, There is no concept of Nikah Halala in Islam and there was punishment in the nature of keeping someone with an adulterer if they committed such a crime. The husband and wife can enter into a fresh Nikah after the irrevocable talaq has been pronounced and the period of iddat has also passed, which is like a cooling-off period apart from determining paternity.



The Chief Justice had also posed a question to which there were no answers from any of the counsels. Have customs or usage been made subservient to Muslim Personal Law in the 1937 Shariat Application Act or not? Tell us whether Triple Talaq is custom/usage or fundamental to Islam? Where does it lie, Shariat or customs and usage? asked the CJI.



The amicus curiae also said that its being reported and people feel that your lordship will transform Islam and reform Islamic law, but your Lordships are actually looking at whether Triple Talaq has any validity under Islam. What is being made a problem actually has its solution in Islam.



To this, Justice Kurian Joseph, said, You want us to reinstate what pristine form of Islam talks about? Khurshid answered in the affirmative.



When the amicus curiae took the bench through verses of the Quran and cited various commentaries, Justice Kurian Joseph intervened and asked, Mr Khurshid, what is sinful in the eyes of God, can it be lawful in the eyes of man? If there is something abhorrent in religion can it be a man-made law?



After a pause, Khurshid said that the bench needed to decide whether triple talaq was abhorrent or not. To this, the CJI said, Mr Khurshid, now you are moving in circles (laughs).



At this juncture, Kapil Sibal intervened and said, How can Islam have practices which are antithetical to the very concept of Islam?



Justice Nariman also told the amicus curiae that, Article 25 of the Constitution says that you need to view religion from the point of view of religion only and not your views.



Fridays hearing also witnessed submissions made by the octogenarian senior advocate, Ram Jethmalani, who made submissions on behalf of a triple talaq victim and called the act of unilateral divorce a domain exclusively for men and thereby a violation of Article 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution.



However, CJI Khehar was far from being convinced and said, Khurshid told us about delegatory divorce (Talaq e Tafweez) and in that case there will be no discrimination.



But Jethmalani retorted saying discrimination is very much there. There cannot be bias against a woman just because she is a woman, said Jethmalani who further quoted Article 13, 14, 15 and 21 of the Constitution and bias on the basis of sex.



CJI Khehar made it clear that the court was not dealing with a state law but personal law in this case and hence did not attract Article 13 in particular.



However, Jethmalani said any law enforceable by a court is law and has to be tested whether it infringes constitutional rights or not. The CJI at the end said that the bench cannot agree with Jethmalani as there was no one who said talaq is custom or usage.



Arif Mohammad Khan, who occasionally quoted Arabic verses and translated them in front of the bench, explained the process of talaq according to the Quran and how any other secondary source need not be looked at.



The Quran advises the husband to settle the differences through a mutual conversation as the first step. This step is known as the Faizu Hunna, then there is a step of physical separation, known as the Wahjuru Hunna, and if that fails then husband must attempt to talk to the wife, make peace with her and talk about the gravity of the situation. This third step is known as the Wazribu Hunna. If the third step fails, the fourth step of arbitration must be followed. In this step, there is arbitration by members from the family of both the parties. It is only after all these four steps have failed that a husband pronounces the first talaq. The husband has to compulsorily wait for a wife's iddah to complete before pronouncing another talaq, said Khan.



The drama notched up when the court allowed an aggrieved petitioner, Farah Faiz, to present her case, thought the CJI was unrelenting in the beginning.



Maybe you are hurt but we are not looking into facts but only on pure proposition of law, noted CJI Khehar.



However, when allowed, Faiz blamed the Maulanas and Qazis for discouraging woman from approaching courts to seek judicial remedy and said, They always try to force us to visit the Darul Qazas or Qazi Courts stating that if we dont then we will become Kafirs (non-Muslims). This is the bogus supremacy of these scholars that we are being made a victim of.



She further stated that it was only the Quran that should be relied upon by Muslims and dismissed the notion of various sects. We must realise that these Darul Qazas are running their own high courts and supreme court, she said.



To this, Justice Kurian Joseph said, such courts do not exist and it is only the constitutional courts that exist.
The Election Commission says its open challenge to prove the non-tamperability of its Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) will likely to be held at the end of this month. The poll panel is today meeting the representatives of 55 political parties, 16 of which had urged it to return to ballot papers.

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In the message, Musa said, We will slit the throats of resistance leaders leaders of Hurriyat Conference before the Kafirs (infidels) in Lal Chowk, main hub of Srinagar, if they don't refrain from turning the Kashmir issue into a political from the struggle for Islam.

Hizbul Mujahideen commander Zakir Musa on Friday threatened to slit the throats of Hurriyat leaders if they maintained to call Kashmir struggle a political and not Islamic one.This is for the first time that militants have threatened to execute Hurriyat leaders, though in the past they have been criticized for failure to come to the expectations of the people.This comes in the wake of the kidnapping and killing of Army lieutenant Ummar Fayaz, a Kashmiri, from his house in Kulgam on May 9.The militant commander, who operates mainly from the South Kashmir according to police, said since infancy, they have heard that Azaadi (freedom) means struggle for Islam and Kashmir's relationship with Pakistan was also for the sake of Islam.He asked Hurriyat leaders that if they don't believe that the struggle in Kashmir was for Islam, then they should stop using the mosques for propagating the cause of freedom. He also asked them not to undermine the sacrifices of militants by living a comfortable life.Throwing the gauntlet, he dared them to spend a night with militants to experience the hardships they face. Musa mocked Hurriyat leaders calling them thekedaars (contractors).The threat has created a stir in the separatist circles. Sources close to separatist leaders said it is unclear whether they would give out their response immediately but the development is very serious.Separatist leaders have been killed in the past. Mirwaiz Muhammad Farooq Mirwaiz was killed on May 21,1990, while Abdul Gani Lone was killed on May 21, 2002. Another senior leader, Fazal Haq Qureshi, was seriously injured in a sudden attack.Musa is said to have replaced Burhan Wani after he was killed last July in an encounter with security forces.Meanwhile, militant conglomerate United Jihad Council said its militants have not killed the 22-year-old Kashmiri-born Army officer Lt Ummar Fayaz.In an e-mailed statement issued to a local wire service, the UJC statement said. ''Our militants are not involved in murder of Lt Ummar Fayaz. Such a killing is condemnable. An officer of a pro-freedom family was murdered by Indian agencies and militants are accused of it to shield the real face of the Indian agencies, it said.
New Delhi: In a new provocation by Pakistan, authorities in the Islamabad High Court on Friday seized the mobile phone of the First Secretary at the Indian High Commission for allegedly taking photos of the HC judge.



A report in The Express Tribune identified the diplomat as Piyush Singh. He allegedly clicked a photo of Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani during a hearing involving an Indian woman who had sought refuge at the Indian mission after being forced to marry a Pakistani man at gunpoint. The woman had also alleged sexual abuse.



The judge also ordered the Indian diplomat to submit a written apology after he verbally apologised, The Express Tribune reported. Singh later issued a written apology, the report added.



Pakistan has cited legal issues to delay the womans return to India. "The problem is not related to her travel documents, but stems from legal issues," advisor to Pakistan Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz had said. "She will be sent back to India as soon as the legal problems are resolved."



PTI reported that the woman had on May 8 filed a plea with an Islamabad court against her husband, alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him. She also recorded her statement before magistrate Haider Ali Shah.







She had 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.
Islamabad: Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the country's powerful Army that his meeting with Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal last month was part of a back-channel diplomacy, a media report said on Thursday.



BBC Urdu reported that Sharif has taken Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa into confidence on his meeting with Jindal on April 27 at the hill resort of Murree, BBC Urdu reported.



The civilian leadership informed the military authorities that Sharif's hour-long meeting with Jindal was a part of back-channel diplomacy. And Jindal had the backing of some important Indian officials for the meeting to defuse ongoing tension between the two countries, the report said.



India-Pak ties are strained over a series of cross-border terror attacks in India and over the death sentence to Jadhav.



India has denied Pakistan's allegations and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence agencies.



The report quoting a ruling PML-N leader said Sharif was tightlipped on his meeting with Jindal.

However, the only detail of the meeting he shared with his aides was that Jindal was making efforts to defuse tension between India and Pakistan.



It said the military leadership also took its officers into confidence on the meeting. Gen Bajwa told his officers that the meeting was a part of a back-channel diplomacy.



The Sharif-Jindal meeting had triggered intense speculation with several politicians and analysts suggesting it could be the precursor to a possible meeting between the two premiers in the near future.



Pakistan prime minister's adviser on foreign affairs Adviser Aziz told reporters yesterday that if India shows interest, Pakistan will look into the possibility of a meeting between Sharif and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO summit on June 8-9 at Astana in Kazakhstan.



Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly expressing concern over the "secret" meeting. It had also alleged that Jindal conveyed Modi's "message" to Sharif on the death penalty to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav on spying charges.



Jindal is said to be the man who had arranged a meeting between Modi and Sharif in Lahore on December 25, 2015, on Sharif's birthday and the day when Sharif's granddaughter Mehr-un-Nisa was married.
Pakistan, he rued, is expanding its nuclear arsenal in pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, potentially lowering the threshold for their use, PTI reported.



"Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership," Coats said.

Pakistan-based terrorist groups are planning to attack India and Afghanistan, Daniel Coats, the Director of National Intelligence, has told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a Congressional hearing on worldwide threats."Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan. These groups will present a sustained threat to the United States's interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan," the top US spymaster said.In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.ALSO READ | Taliban Returned to Afghanistan With Pakistan's help: Envoy "This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," he said."Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of India's rising international status including India's expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States."Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," Coats testified before the committee.(With PTI inputs)
"The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states," he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

"Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings," he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in "our governance, culture and philosophy."

"You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours," he said and called on the two countries to uphold ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday cautioned the international community on the growing "arc of violence" and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction."The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion," he said, apparently referring to Pakistan, which is accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks inside India.Modi said he believes that "Buddhism's message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world."Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.The themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddha's teachings; they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected, Modi said.He said the countries of south, central, south east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.Prime Minister Modi assured India's support to Sri Lanka for the island's nation-building endeavours.Modi said that he believes that both India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity in its relationship.Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.The prime minister lit a lamp  a traditional practice  initiating the UN 'Vesak Day' celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event."Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations," Wickremesinghe said. "Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in today's world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice," he said.Modi arrived here on Thursday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
Lucknow: The state government on Friday conducted a meeting with the education department to discuss new rules for private schools in the state.



The education committee, which is headed by the principal secretary (secondary education) Jitendra Kumar, concluded that private schools in the state were not to sell school books or uniform.



Additionally, the schools must declare their fee structure on the official website, which cannot be changed during the year on any grounds.



The government is also working on a move that mandates refund of entire fees, if the parents withdraw their child from the school.



The government has no intention of meddling in the schools day-to-day affairs but then these rules must be followed. They are given a clearance certificate to impart education, not do business, said Kumar, adding that a draft with school regulations from Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana had been shared with the education panel.



The committee will soon hold another meeting in this regard and send its recommendations to the government.



The secondary education department had formed a committee under the proposed UP Schools (Regularisation of Fee Collection) ordinance 2017, comprising of other secretaries across various verticals in the education department.



The nine-member committee was constituted to suggest ways to curb commercialization of education and excessive fee charged by private schools in the state.
Colombo: Sri Lanka's former president Mahinda Rajapaksa on Thursday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and praised bilateral cooperation over the years.



"Rajapaksa's talks with Modi was a very cordial discussion and he was happy with India-Lanka cooperation over the years," Indian High Commissioner Taranjith Singh Sandhu told media.



Modi met Rajapaksa at the latter's request, the High Commissioner said. Earlier, Rajapaksa claimed that India and Sri Lanka may have signed deals on economic cooperation before Prime Minister Modi's arrival in the country.



"The information I have is that all deals have already been signed. So the Indian prime minister's arrival or non- arrival would be immaterial," Rajapaksa told reporters in the central town of Kandy, hours before Modi touched down in Colombo.



The Sinhala strongman who ruled the country for a decade said he held nothing against Modi's visit. "The problem will be only if they sign agreements. I understand these have already been signed," he said.



Briefing media on Modi's engagements in Colombo, Sandhu said the prime minsiter will not be signing any agreements with Sri Lanka during the visit.



He said the prime minister has expressed Indias commitment and support to Sri Lanka and India will be a strong development partner for the island nation's growth and prosperity.



Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, ishere primarily to participate tomorrow in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.



The two countries were set to sign an agreement to lease out oil tanks to India to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.



But Sri Lanka's opposition parties have objected to the deal, saying the government was selling state assets to India Rajapaksa's joint opposition has led a resistance to the Sririsena government's plan to enter into economic cooperation pacts with India, more particularly the Trincomalee venture.
I am very happy. I am arguing that fraud has taken place. These cases will see the light of day.... If the PM doesnt do anything, people will say that he only gives speeches, Swamy told CNN-News18 after the HC ruling.

Young Indian is a trust which manages National Herald. No one can profit from it. Neither Sonia nor Rahul withdrew any money from it, Surjewala said.

'Young Indian' had raised certain fundamental jurisdictional issues challenging authority of IT dept. #NationalHerald  INC India (@INCIndia) May 12, 2017

Young Indian is a 'not for profit' company that only runs the @NH_India paper which contributed to India's freedom struggle. #NationalHerald  INC India (@INCIndia) May 12, 2017

And the fact is no one can withdraw salary, dividend or benefit from it in any manner, as per Companies Act. #NationalHerald  INC India (@INCIndia) May 12, 2017

We're proud to protect this imp symbol of freedom struggle. The witch hunt of the BJP will not deter us from our fight for Truth & Integrity  INC India (@INCIndia) May 12, 2017

In a setback for Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul, the Delhi High Court on Friday cleared the way for an Income Tax investigation into Young Indian Private Limited in which the two Congress leaders are directors.A bench of Justices S Muralidhar and Chander Shekhar asked the company to approach the Income Tax assessing officer, after which the firm withdrew its petition to stay the I-T proceedings. It is now likely to approach the Supreme Court.Young Indian had approached the high court seeking a direction to stay the IT proceedings and quashing of notices against it with regard to the National Herald misappropriation of assets case.The company was issued notices regarding the assessment year 2011-12.The Gandhis have been accused of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds by paying just Rs 50 lakh through which Young Indian Pvt. Ltd obtained the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore which Associate Journals Ltd (AJL) owed to the Congress.It is a blow to the Gandhis. They may approach the Supreme Court, but they still need to answer questions, BJP leader Nalin Kohli told CNN-News18.In the first official reaction from the Congress, party leader Randeep Singh Surjewala told CNN-News18, The Gandhi have the option of approaching the Supreme Court. The I-T (department) cannot open a one-sided investigation. Subramanian Swamy is not inchare of I-T.The party also refuted the charges in a series if tweets.Others accused in the case filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy include Motilal Vora, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda. The court had summoned the accused persons, besides Young Indian on 26 June, 2014. On 19 December, 2015, it had granted bail to Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Vora, Fernandes and Dubey, who had appeared before it pursuant to summons. Pitroda was granted bail on 20 February, 2016 when he had appeared in the court.Earlier, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's counsel had submitted a list of witnesses and other evidences against the accused.The court had dismissed Swamy's plea, seeking documents related to the National Herald case against Sonia and Rahul along with other accused.Swamy had earlier sought documents and ledger books maintained by the Congress Party and Associated Journals Limited (AJL).Swamy had filed an application in 2012, accusing Sonia, Rahul and others associated with Congress of conspiring to cheat in a land deal.
Ram Gopal Varma is back with the third installment of the popular political saga Sarkaar that had kicked off in 2005. Those who have watched the trailer - which was released last month - know that the film deals with the return of Subhash Nagre (Amitabh Bachchan), who lost his sons Vishnu (Kay Kay Menon) and Shankar (Abhishek Bachchan).



While it is interesting to see that the filmmaker decided to keep both the background music and lighting similar to what we had seen in the first two films, he has also introduced several changes.



To begin with, RGV has roped in popular actors Manoj Bajpayee, Ronit Roy, Jackie Shroff, Amit Sadh and Yami Gautam in key roles.



While the film features Manoj as a rebel, Ronit plays Sarkars most trusted ally, which was earlier played by Chander (Ravi Kale).



But what the audience would want to focus on is the angrier role of Amitabh.



Join us as Divya Pal of News18 Movies live tweets the experience.



12:24 PM Subhash Nagre is back! Power for him comes out of respect #Sarkar3



12:26 PM Ab patthar maarogey toh keechad toh udgea: Subhas Nagre aka Big B back with powerful dialogues. #Sarkar3



12:35 PM The ageing Sarkar aka Big B exudes absolute power. There is nobody who can replace the megastar. #Sarkar,3



12:43 PM We are about 30 minutes into #Sarkar3, and @RonitBoseRoy hasnt spoken much. But his ability to show emotions through his eyes is amazing.



12:50 PM Jab take tum puri baat samajh na lo, bahar waley ko pata nahi hona chahiye tum kya soch rahe ho. Strong words continue in #sarkar3



1:21 PM Ganesh Aarti that has been sung by @SrBachchan has been shot wall. But more than that it is about Big B's voice. Soulful. #Sarkar3



1:42 PM It's interval. #Sarkar3 has been gripping, courtesy @SrBachchan's penetrating glances and strong words.



1:48 PM Okay, #Sarkar3 is beginning to get emotional. Is it even needed? Not really.



2:01 PM Yami Gautam's role so far has just been about passing glances. #Sarkar3



2:17 PM There are moments when #Sarkar3 looks stretched, boring and tired.



2:20 PM RGV loves to experiment with camera angles and it is evident in #Sarkar3. But beyond a point it gets too much.



2:21 PM Jackie Shroffs role is totally weird. #sarkar3



2:22 PM The most memorable moments of #Sarkar3 come from none other than @SrBachchan



2:32 PM There are enough twists in the film to sustain your interest. #Sarkar3



2:37 PM The film isn't flawless. It has dull moments too. #Sarkar3



2:39 PM Amitabh Bachchans performance is perfect. It is aptly nuanced, layered and compelling #Sarkar3



2:40 PM The only best thing about #Sarkar3 is @SrBachchan



2:41 PM Thanks for being with us throughout the tweet review of #Sarkar3












Just take a moment to consider this list: Rangeela, Daud, Satya, Kaun, Mast, Jungle, Company, Bhoot, Naach, Sarkar. If theres anything that defined Ramgopal Varmas early directing career it was his unpredictability. No matter how good or bad each film was there was no guessing what he was going to do next. Its what made him one of the most exciting filmmakers in the late 90s up until the mid 2000s.And then its as if he decided to live up to the name of his production banner  Factory. It was all remakes, sequels, and gimmicks. Just like that his tendency to surprise the audience was gone.Watching Sarkar 3, the latest installment in his saga centered on a powerful Mumbai crime family, it is the death of Varmas most marked feature  that very unpredictability  that you mourn more than any of the dozen or so characters whore gruesomely gunned down on screen.Sarkar 3 is set in modern day Mumbai, but it may as well be ten years ago, or fifteen. Barring the sight of a drone, there is nothing  from its plot to its aesthetic  that appears to have been updated since the first Sarkar in 2005.Amitabh Bachchan returns as Subhash Nagre, a figure both respected and feared, based in equal parts on Don Corleone and Bal Thackeray. Its not hard to guess how things will pan out when Nagres now grown-up estranged grandson Shivaji (Amit Sadh) returns home to join the family business and clashes with the old mans long-serving right-hand man Gokul (Ronit Roy).Nagre Sr is pitted against a rogues gallery of disgruntled businessmen, politicians and thugs, including Manoj Bajpai as a voluble neta, and Jackie Shroff as a Dubai-based millionaire whose sexist one-liners directed at his bikini-clad girlfriend are the films guilty pleasure. The story involves the usual double crossing, conspiracies and twistsevery single one of which is entirely predictable. As is Varmas fascination for shooting his characters in silhouette, taking repeated close-ups of entirely pointless props, and placing the camera in the strangest of places, although Im grateful he doesnt move it around as much. Then there is that eardrum-shattering background music, and that incessant Govinda govinda chant.Not everything will make you want to slit your wrists though. There are occasional flashes of the talented filmmaker we once knew. Youll spot it in a handsomely mounted Ganesh aartisequence and the scene that immediately follows. Also Varma and his cameraman Amol Rathod find interesting ways to use the bustling city as a canvas against which the drama unfolds. This is an intrinsically Mumbai film and they exploit the varied landscape shrewdly.Of the cast, Amit Sadh is especially impressive as the hotheaded successor to Sarkars legacy, and expectedly Amitabh Bachchan commands the screen as the imposing protagonist. The actors, however, are saddled with cheesy lines straight out of the gangster-movie playbook.Sarkar 3 is an improvement on many of Varmas recent films, which, quite frankly, were unwatchable to say the least. Yet its steeped in familiarity and an overwhelming sense of repetition and pointlessness. Did we really need another Sarkar film? Sadly, the answer is no.Im going with two out of five.Rating: 2 / 5What's your reaction to Sarkaar 3?Write your review of Sarkaar 3
Suspended Aam Aadmi Party leader Kapil Mishra has promised to make more revelations on Sunday, questioning the silence of party convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on corruption allegations made by him. Mishra, who was fired as water minister, is on a hunger strike, demanding the details of foreign trips undertaken by AAP leaders. The party, meanwhile, is trying to keep the focus on the EVM tampering issue.

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The meeting comes days after the Aam Admi Party staged a demonstration on hacking a 'voting machine' in the Delhi Assembly. The party had used an EMV prototype for the demonstration.

Some parties have demanded they be allowed access to the machines used in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.

As the political tussle over the use of Electronic Voting Machines heats up, the Election Commission will on Friday meet representatives of 55 political parties, 16 of which had urged it to return to ballot papers.The Election Commission has convened the meeting of seven national and 48 state parties to discuss the reliability of EVMs and is also likely to brief them on its planned EVM hacking challenge.The Election Commission had trashed AAP's claim saying the machine is a look-alike and not the ECI-EVM. The date of the proposed challenge would be decided after the all-party meeting.Disqualifying candidates named in a charge sheet for bribing voters, making electoral graft a non-bailable offence and easing of rules to order counting of votes through paper trail are some of the other issues Election Commission will discuss with political parties on Friday."The Election Commission has convened a meeting with all recognised national and state political parties on May 12 in New Delhi to discuss the issue related to EVM and VVPAT. In addition to the EVM/VVPAT, the agenda will also cover making bribery in elections a cognisable offence, disqualification on framing of charges for the offences of bribery in elections and suggestions in VVPAT recount Rules," it had said in a statement last week.(With PTI inputs)
Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon.  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 12, 2017

It will offer opportunity to political parties to prove whether EVMs used in recent elections were tampered with or that EVMs can be tampered with under strict technical and administrative safeguards as applicable during elections, Zaidi said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Friday accused the Election Commission of backing out of their promise of holding an Electronic Voting Machines hackathon, while CEC Nasim Zaidi said the challenge is on.Kejriwal took to Twitter after Zaidi held a meeting with representatives of political parties.His deputy Manish Sisodia, however, was enthused by the ECs challenge and said AAP was up for it.Trying to put the controversy behind them, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said a "challenge" is on the cards.He, however, did not give any date for the proposed challenge which he announced in his opening remarks at the meeting.Zaidi told parties that their "concerns and apprehensions" regarding EVMs have been taken note of and will be addressed through the "forthcoming challenge" and other measures which the EC will take.The EC also decided that all future elections will be held with EVMs that have a paper trail attached.The Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail system keeps record of the candidate and symbol a person voted for.(With PTI inputs)
Thiruvananthapuram: A RSS-BJP worker was hacked to death on Friday in Kerala's Kannur district by unidentified assailants.



The victim, E Biju, was an accused in the murder was a CPM worker named Dhanraj.



According to the police, Biju was attacked by a group who came in an Innova car. As he was accused in the murder case, Biju was granted police security till last week.



Dhanaraj was hacked to death by a group of people inside his house in July 2016.



Recently, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had intervened to stop the blood letting in the district. Kannur district is infamous for the political violence and political killings between CPM and RSS-BJP workers.


Kolkata: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has announced the start of its central margdarshak mandal in Haridwar from May 31. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjees appeasement politics and Triple Talaq issue will be the core topics of discussion during the three-day event, which ends on June 2.



Speaking to News18, Surendra Kumar Jain, International Joint General Secretary of VHP, said, Many saints will be attending this event and Bengal will be one of the key areas of discussion during the Margdarshak Mandal meet.



Bengal government is involved in appeasement politics. Hindus are being forced out of their homes and deprived of their property in some parts of Bengal, Jain said, adding that the number of madrassas was increasing day by day.



The West Bengal government had recently shut more than 125 RSS-affiliated Vivekananda Vidyavikas Parishad (VVP), a move which will be discussed in the meet. Interestingly, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), in March, at their meet in Coimbatore had passed a special resolution titled, Growing jihadi activities in West Bengal is a security concern for the country. The resolution claims that Bengal's Hindu population is down 8% since 1951.



The other topics that will be taken up during the meet include strategy for construction of a grand Ram Temple at the Ram Janambhoomi, All India Muslim Personal Law Board, Uniform Civil Code, Maulana Noor-ur Rehman Barkatis controversial statements on Jihad, cow, unrest in Kashmir etc.



VHP's working president Dr Praveen Togodia and international general secretary Champat Rai, will also be part of the meet. Ramjanamboomi Nyas Committee chairman Mahant Nritya Gopal Das and other Nyas members are also expected to be present.
Mumbai: A Shiv Sena legislator representing Maharashtras drought-hit district of Osmanabad allegedly sent a proxy to his constituency to talk to affected villagers.



Gautam Chabukswar, the Shiv Sena MLA from Osmanabad, sent a former corporator in his place after being directed by party chief Uddhav Thackeray to visit a village in the drought-hit district.



Former corporator Yashodhar Fanse was introduced to unsuspecting villagers as MLA Chabukswar.



CNN-News18 has access to video footage where Fanse is seen being greeted by villagers and even chairing a meeting, while pretending to be their elected representative.



This happened after the Shiv Sena launched the Shiv Sampark Abhiyan in which all party MLAs visited the drought-hit areas of Marathwada and Vidarbha.



According to sources, Thackeray met the MLAs on Thursday and pulled them up for not doing their duty properly.



BJP, which formed the government in the state in alliance with Sena, slammed its ally over the incident. This is shocking. Elected representatives should reach out to the public, BJP leader Shaina NC said.



Former chief Minister and Congress leader Prithviraj Chavan said, I am shocked. The BJP-Shiv Sena government has taken the whole farmer issue very lightly. The Shiv Sena MLa has outsourced his work. This is a farce.



I dont think the Speaker or the CM will take any action. We have become very lenient. Big wigs and VIPs are never punished, he added.



Congress and its MLAs will meet and discuss this issue. There should be an inquiry into the matter, Chavan said.



The NCP said, Shiv Sena has taken the people of the state for a ride...they are rubbing salt to the wounds of the farmers.







Out of 40 Shiv Sena MLAs directed by Thackeray to visit the drought-hit district as many as 27 did not bother to go on tour.



Reacting to the incident, Shiv Sena MP Arvind Sawant said, How can you say our MLA is nakli. If anyone one has done this, it is wrong. If one person has committed the mistake, how can you blame the party? The leadership will take such a person to task.
No doubt an occasion for the civilians to hip beat in joy Prime Minister's success, retrospectively it should be reviewed as to why was there so much hullabaloo. Read this in the light of recent strong worded protest from Iran warning Pakistan that Tehran would hit Sunni Jihadi bases inside Pakistan if the Pakistan government does not control and stop Sunni militants who carry out cross-border attacks as they allegedly did in Iran killing ten Iranian border guards last month.

Much similar to this was the overall perception about Pakistan and its handling of the militants gave birth to the DAWN Leaks that Islamabad faced diplomatic isolation. At the end of the day this diplomatic isolation has ended in a three-front situation. In 2014 Iran had warned that it would send troops to Pakistan to retrieve five Iranian border guards kidnapped by Jaish-al-Adl. Pakistan said at the time that such action would be violation of the international law and warned Iranian forces not to cross the border

There was of course something more than met the eye that the outgoing Army Chief General Raheel Sharif sent his then DG ISI to tour the country and convey the message that both the civilian and military leadership wants to rein in agencies from interfering in action against militant groups in all provinces. It was perhaps just a coincidence that soon after General Qamar Javed Bajwa took over as Army Chief, set in motion transfers and postings of his generals and one of them was DG ISI Lt General Rizwan Akhtar affected by his action.

For the planned attack, light weapons, artillery guns, ammunition and explosives were stored in the houses of the villages opposite the two target villages well before hand. Those houses were used as bunkers from where firing was done and residents were used as human shields to prevent the other side to retaliate with full force. However, Pak forces struck back at Afghan check posts in which the Militia men of Razaq were hiding. To make the situation grimmer, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has declined to visit Pakistan instead of defusing the rapidly deteriorating vicious atmosphere.

All is well that ends well. Dawn Leak controversy that caused an implosive situation between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's government and the military has been defused by a retreat by the army.What had come to be "Tweet-ul-Fissad" has been withdrawn by a glum-faced DG ISPR with an announcement that Pakistan army is totally supportive of and subservient to democracy. That's definitely a good news and adds another feather in the cap of our confrontationist Prime Minister who never hesitates to take on the praetorian institution whenever it challenged the civil authority. However, this is for the first time he forced it to retreat.Head of Iranian army alleged Jaish-al-Adl, a Sunni militant group, had shot its guards, fired from Pakistan in the border area that has been since long festered by unrest from both drug smuggling gangs and separatist militants. "We cannot accept the continuation of this situation," Major General Mohammad Baqeri, the head of the Iranian armed forces was quoted as saying by the news agency IRNA."We expect the Pakistani officials to control the borders, arrest the terrorists and shut down their bases. If the terrorist attacks continue, we will hit their safe havens and cells, wherever they are," he warned. Further to this warning Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif who visited Pakistan recently had asked Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to improve the border security and Pakistan assured Iran that it would deploy additional troops along its border.Jaish-al-Adl is a Sunni militant group that is reputed to have carried out several attacks against Iranian security forces with the aim of highlighting what they say is discrimination against minority Sunni Muslims in Iran, where the majority are Shias. The group claimed responsibility for attacks that killed eight border guards in April 2015 and 14 border guards in October 2013. Pakistan summoned Iranian ambassador in Islamabad to the Foreign Office to lodge a protest against the strong language used by the Iranian army head in warning Pakistan.On October 6 last year Cyril Almeida of DAWN published his controversial 'leak' and indeed it was exclusive since it was based upon what is supposed to have happened inside a meeting of the top civil and military brass. It stated that the government conveyed to the generals that enough was enough and it was time to correct the ways of operations to avert Pakistan from being declared a rogue state.India was already at it. While accelerating its military operations inside Kashmir against what Delhi calls Pakistan backed revolt by the Kashmiri youth, its diplomats had been put in top gear to malign Pakistan with the objective of seeking its diplomatic isolation.While the situation had shown no signs of de-escalation, trouble broke out on our western border. On May 5, 2017, Afghan border security forces carried out unprovoked firing across the Chaman border killing 11 Pakistani civilians including one Frontier Corps (FC) soldier and injuring 50 people. This attack took place when national census teams accompanied by FC troops were busy carrying out national population census in two Pakistani villages in Chaman area that Kabul was already informed of. Kabul had given full assurance of cooperation. As if this attack was not enough, Afghan forces continued the offensive across Torkham border. As a consequence Pakistan had to close the Bab-e-Dosti Chaman border gate as well as Torkham gate. The situation continues to be tense.Naturally Pakistan could not take it lying down. It has responded effectively causing huge loss on the Afghan side among those who had been acting as agent provocateurs. Several border posts were destroyed and around 30 Afghan soldiers killed. Pakistan has reasons to believe that this uncalled provocation from Afghan side had been engineered by NDS-RAW in collusion with drug baron Gen Abdul Razaq Achakzai to undertake a wider disruption plan to destabilise the region.Despite the praise of British generals for Pakistan's successes in war against terrorism and good-goody meetings that our Ambassador Aizaz Choudhry has had recently in Washington, the fact is that one must not be optically eluded and be pragmatic. Pakistan needs to review its foreign policy objectives, take corrective measures internally to have a better and more forceful presentation of the country that has suffered enough for the so-called friends.With our complex population composition and geo-political situation we cannot afford to look sectarian. Our position has already got compromised by our former Army Chief taking lucrative job of heading what is popularly perceived as a Sunni army raised to counter Shia Iran. Pakistan needs to dispel this lethal perception. It should correct its position since there is a big question mark as to what has been wrong with it that out of its four neighbours, three are hostile to it.The writer is a former High Commissioner of Pakistan to UK, Advisor to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and a veteran journalist
ANKARA: President Hassan Rouhani defended his efforts to improve Iran's economy and hit out at his hardline opponents in a final televised debate on Friday against challengers who aim to topple him in an increasingly acrimonious election next week.



Rouhani, swept into office in a landslide four years ago on promises to reduce Iran's international isolation, is seeking a second term after negotiating an agreement with world powers to curb Iran's nuclear programme in return for lifting sanctions.



"If we want a better economy, we should not let groups with security and political backing to get involved in the economy," Rouhani said during the debate, in an unmistakable swipe at the Revolutionary Guards Corps, an elite military force with a vast business empire, which has backed his main hardline opponent Ebrahim Raisi.



Normally measured in his public speeches, Rouhani has become increasingly forceful in recent days, giving voice to the grievances of reformers who say they have been oppressed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution by security forces like the Guards.



"I am surprised. Those of you who talk about freedom of speech these days... (you are) those who cut out tongues and sewed mouths shut," Rouhani told a rally on Monday in a thinly-veiled attack on Raisi, a former jurist involved in mass executions of political prisoners in the 1980s.



"Our people want political and social freedom ... In the election they will not vote for those who knew only executions and prison for 38 years," Rouhani said in a rally on Tuesday.



He faces five challengers, led by two hardliners, cleric Raisi and Tehran Mayor Mohammed Beqar Qalibaf, who both say Rouhani has sold Iran's interests too cheaply to the West and allowed the economy to decay through mismanagement. The first round is on May 19, with a run-off a week later if no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the vote.



Although Iran's political system puts ultimate power in the hands of an unelected supreme leader, and all candidates are vetted by a hardline watchdog body, elections are nevertheless hard-fought contests that can bring dramatic change.



As in two earlier, bruising debates, the main challengers tore into Rouhani's economic record, arguing that he failed to bring Iranians a better life despite the lifting of sanctions.



Raisi described a litany of poor economic performance under Rouhani, saying 250,000 small businesses had shut and cash payments to the poor should be raised: "Unemployment is high. People's purchasing power has dropped dramatically," he said.



Rouhani's biggest worry is that some of the voters who carried him to a single-round victory in 2013 will stay home, disillusioned that the lifting of sanctions has brought few economic benefits and the pace of social change has been slow.



"Rouhani is trying to reach out to voters who guaranteed his election four years ago by hoping to have a freer Iran," said a former official close to Rouhani's government.



Rouhani's deal to lift sanctions won the cautious backing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but Khamenei and his hardline loyalists criticise its failure to boost the economy.



Benefits have been slow to arrive, in part because of unilateral U.S. sanctions still in place over Iran's missile programme, human rights record and allegations it supports terrorism.



Rouhani's allies say the hardliners oppose deeper change and exposure to international competition in part because of the economic interests of the Guards, which gained control of swathes of Iran's industry during its years of isolation.



CROSSING RED LINES



Although Rouhani won more than three times as many votes as his closest challenger four years ago, he only narrowly avoided a second round with just over half the total votes. If he sheds just a bit of that support now, he could face a dangerous second round against a single opponent who unites the hardline faction.



I wanted to boycott this election because I am so disappointed with Rouhani's failure to bring more freedom to Iran," said teacher Reza Mirsadegh in the central city of Yazd.



"But I have changed my mind. I will vote for Rouhani to prevent Raisi's win."



Iran's ultimate authority Khamenei has warned the public against protests like those that broke out after the disputed election of 2009, when reformers disputed the victory of hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.



"Those who deviate from this path will be slapped in the face," Khamenei said in a televised speech on Wednesday.



The Guards, their affiliated volunteer Basij militia and many Friday prayer leaders have thrown their support behind Raisi, a veteran jurist whose name has also been mentioned as a future supreme leader.



Qalibaf, a chisel-jawed former Guards commander, lacks Raisi's backing from the clerical establishment but also has millions of supporters for a hardline message on security and a populist economic platform. He has made a run-off more likely by resisting calls from other hardliners to step aside.



Rouhani, meanwhile, has crossed traditional red lines in his rallies by openly criticising the security forces and judiciary, trying to fire the enthusiasm of reformist voters.



"Those who over the past years only imposed bans ... please dont even breathe the word freedom for it shames freedom," Rouhani said in a rally in the city of Hamedan.
Washington: Donald Trump's administration was left red-faced on Friday after the Moscow surprised them by releasing pictures of a closed-door meeting between the US president and Russia's top diplomat.



The images issued by the Russian state news agency TASS, and subsequently published by much of the global media showed a grinning Trump shaking hands with Sergei Lavrov and the Russian ambassador in Washington, Sergei Kislyak, during an Oval Office meeting.



That Wednesday meeting was already being seen as a major diplomatic coup for the Kremlin, a red carpet welcome just months after being hit with US sanctions for meddling in the 2016 presidential election.



Veteran diplomats questioned why Trump agreed to host the diplomats a rare honor for non-heads of state, much less for those at the center of major US political scandal.



US administrations often treat Oval Office meetings as a type of currency, dangling the prospect of a high-profile sit-down to gain leverage or concessions in negotiations.



But the emergence of photos compounded the perception that Russia had won a diplomatic victory and that the Trump White House was outmaneuvered.



"Congrats Kollegi (colleagues) at getting these photos! Huge coup," said former US ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul. Publicly, the White House put on a brave face. Trump "should be meeting with the foreign minister," said White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders, lambasting critics.



"For them to try to attack him for doing his job, maybe they should spend a little more time doing their jobs and we wouldn't have all the problems that we do."



Privately though White House officials seethed at what they described as a breach of trust. Officials said that Vladimir Putin had requested the meeting, a quid-pro-quo for his recent face-to-face with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in Moscow.



The White House was told an official Russian photographer would be present, implying the images would be for the historical record and not necessarily made public.



"Our official photographer and their official photographer were present, that's it," said one aide shortly after the meeting.



But when the images were published across the world via state media, the White House raged that Moscow had misled them. Two officials admitted they were not told that the images would be made public.



The director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Mike Rogers, was grilled by the Senate Intelligence Committee today about the potential risks of cyber-penetration linked to allowing a Russian camera crew into the Oval Office. Rogers told the hearing he had not been consulted beforehand.



The Oval Office pictures could hardly have come at a worse time for Trump, deepening suspicions that he is too cozy with Putin's government.



His campaign faces a slew of investigations about whether it colluded with the Kremlin to derail Hillary Clinton's presidential bid.



The Lavrov meeting came just hours after Trump fired his FBI director James Comey, the man responsible for investigating the allegations of collusion between his team and Russia.



The embarrassment was compounded by Ambassador Kislyak's presence. He is at the center of a series of questions about contacts between his inner circle and the Russian government.



Michael Flynn's failure to disclose meetings with Kislyak eventually led to his departure as national security advisor and made the Russian diplomat a virtual household name. "I could have done without the attention" Kislyak told AFP recently.
The protest was lodged by the recently revived Foreign Affairs Committee of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly, which said the U.S. House of Representatives was "obsessed" with a sense of disapproval and warned it of dire consequences.

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation this month to tighten sanctions by targeting North Korea's shipping industry and companies that do business it.

Last month, North Korea reconvened the Foreign Affairs Committee, which was abolished in the late 1990s, in what analysts saw as an attempt to improve relations with the outside world amid its deepening isolation.

: North Korea sent a rare letter of protest to the US House of Representatives on Friday warning that a new package of tougher sanctions would only spur its development of nuclear weapons, North Korea's state media reported."The US House of Representatives should think twice," the committee said in its letter, a copy of which was published by the KCNA state news agency.Tension has been high for weeks over North Korea's nuclear and missile development and fears it will conduct a sixth nuclear test or test-launch another ballistic missile in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions.The US legislation was intended to cut off supplies of cash that help fund North Korea's nuclear programme, and increase pressure to stop human rights abuses such as the use of slave labour, the bill's sponsor said.The North's committee said it would fail."As the US House of Representatives enacts more and more of these reckless hostile laws, the DPRK's efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrents will gather greater pace, beyond anyone's imagination," the committee said, referring to North Korea by the initials of its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.The committee is chaired by Ri Su Yong, a close aide to leader Kim Jong Un and a career diplomat.
The sanctions in particular have been imposed against Hayatullah Ghulam Muhammad (Haji Hayatullah), Ali Muhammad Abu Turab, Inayat-ur Rahman, and a purported charity managed by Inayat-ur Rahman, the Welfare and Development Organisation of Jamaat-ud-Dawah for Quran and Sunnah (WDO).

"The US continues to aggressively target extremists in Pakistan and the surrounding region, including charities and other front groups used as vehicles to facilitate illicit terrorist activities," Smith said.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Pakistan-based extremists and an organisation run by 26/11 attacks mastermind Hafiz Saeed's JuD, PTI has reported.The sanctions have been slapped to disrupt the funding of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and its front for charitable activities, the Jamaat-ud-Dawah, the Taliban, Jamaat-ul-Dawa al-Qu'ran (JDQ), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and ISIS Khorasan.Khorasan is a historical region comprising a vast territory covering northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, and northern Afghanistan and parts of India."These sanctions seek to disrupt the financial support networks of terrorists based in Pakistan who have provided support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and LeT for recruitment and funding of suicide bombers and other violent insurgent operations," said John Smith, Director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)."The three individuals and (an) entity we designated have connections with terrorist groups that are a direct threat to the security of both the United States and Pakistan," he said."The individuals are opportunistic and willing to work with extremist organisations, even those ideologically opposed to one another, to help them deepen their foothold in the region," Smith added.OFAC said they designated Hayatullah for acting on behalf of JDQ and LeT, and for providing material and financial support to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, ISIS, and ISIS Khorasan.Abu Turab invited sanctions for providing material and financial support to JDQ. Last year, he facilitated movement of thousands of dollars from the Gulf to Pakistan, PTI reported.(With PTI inputs)
After being bitten by a dog while traveling in India, a Virginia resident has a confirmed case of human rabies, according to the Virginia Department of Health.

VDH declined to share any additional information about the patient to protect their privacy.

Cases of human rabies are extremely rare in the United States. Only 1 to 3 cases are reported annually, and the last time VDH reported a case was in 2009, when another patient was bitten by a dog in India, according to a VDH news release.

VDH is assessing those that had direct contact with the patient  such as family members or healthcare workers  to determine if they have been exposed "out of an abundance of caution," the news release states.

The only time a human-to-human transmission of rabies has occurred was via organ transmission.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website, the symptoms of rabies are very similar to the flu, with general weakness, discomfort, fever and headaches.

Symptoms could progress to anxiety, confusion and agitation, and eventually to delirium, hallucinations and insomnia. The disease is almost always fatal once the clinical signs appear.

Rabies is a vaccine-preventable disease, and VDH encourages anyone traveling outside of the U.S. to check with their healthcare provider to ensure they have received their recommended vaccines.
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
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Venezuelan spared by magistrate

Luis Jose Alonzo Benitez, 34, of Venezuela, pleaded guilty before Magistrate Indira Misir- Gosine, to the charge of entering Trinidad and Tobago at a place other than a port of entry.

The magistrate heard from the police prosecutor Sergeant Krishna Bedassie, that on Friday April 26, Benitez entered the country and has been here since. However, last week Tuesday, police of the South-Western Task Force arrested him in south Trinidad and presented him to the Immigration Enforcement Unit.

The police prosecutor went on to tell Misir-Gosine that their records showed that Benitez had been in the country legally, but until June 8, 2016 when he left.

Through Spanish language interpreter Rachael Gosine, the magistrate asked him why he had opted to get into Trinidad and Tobago through an illegal port and failed to present himself to an immigration officer. Benitez said he is married and he has three daughters whose ages are 16, 15 and four. The interpreter added, He said that he works as an administrator with the social security services in Venezuela.

The situation in my country is very hard. Ninety per cent of the people eat only twice a day. Misir- Gosine reprimanded and discharged Benitez of the charge and told him that no criminal record would be made against his name.
Spiritual exhibition at Museum

At the opening of the exhibition on Wednesday, curator, Keomi Serrette told Newsday: The exhibition brings together senior artists and aspiring artists as myself, and to me, I feel a bit overwhelmed to be the curator of the exhibition, and to have my work alongside those of my mentors. She said the exhibition was initially to celebrate Spiritual Baptist Liberation Day, but unfortunately, there werent much artists working with that theme. She then took the decision to take a spiritual approach and labelled the exhibition Spiritual Integration, which she said worked for her, as she found artists who worked with the theme and produced work with that spiritual intensity.

Serrette said: The exhibition offers multiple points of entry into the diverse ways in which artists explore complex ideas about spirituality, revolution, self-identity, unification, resilience and the aesthetic role of art and the artist in those contexts. As such the exhibition presents itself as a metaphor for the symbolisms and fundamentals associated with our countrys diverse cultural heritage. Serrette added: I found it was necessary to do something that marked that spirituality and being part of it is truly an extraordinary experience. Some 45 pieces dating back from 1985 to the present, from 26 artists with ages ranging from 32 to 78 years are on exhibit.

Among some of the eye-catching pieces are Joseph Bacchus wood carving of Dancing Women, Deron Blackmans Walking in Faith (acrylic on canvas), Brianna McCarthys Mutu Mori (acrylic on canvas), David Thomas Uchechi Okezie (pencil and charcoal on paper), Keith Wards Breaking Dawn (acrylic on paper), Hollister Mark Saviges In Search of God...(ink/mixed media) and the SahFyhr Collection.

There are also other very interesting artwork from Serrette herself, LeRoy Clarke, Makemba Kunle, Turunesh Raymond, Hollister Marcelio Hovell, Althea Bastien, Kenwyn Crichlow, Emheyo Embah Bahabba, Damian Moore, Carlisle Harris and the late Pat Bishop.
Dax da man!

The crowd was just blown away by Cartars performance.

Speaking with Newsday after the April 29 event, Cartar said he was overwhelmed with love and extreme euphoria. I really didnt expect so much love really.

Doing a rock solo in a jazz festival, and especially after seeing sax legend Arturo Tappin destroy the stage! This is an experience that Ill never forget! It gave me a second wind to keep on trying and to work even harder at my craft. Asked about how his music career began he said: Firstly, I always wanted to play the electric guitar but my father saw to it that I learn classical piano first, from the age of eight. I finally got my guitar at 15 and from that point onwards I have been addicted to practise and improving myself. Cartars first band was the rock band Krash which he helped formed, fresh out of school. He said it went as far as LA for a performing arts competition, then he joined the famed Orange Sky, which he said was an invaluable experience. I travelled to the UK with them to record and play gigs, Cartar said, but a bit later he started his family band, the Cartars, with his siblings which was managed by his mother.

After this I began working as a part-time session musician featuring on various artistes recordings/performances, then I joined local rock band Hail The Hatter. It was not long after Carters musical career was about to take a new and positive turn. Its a bit after this point that I got the call from Carl Beaver Henderson.

The rest is history! Of his musical prowess Cartar said: I had an extreme urge to play the electric guitar. I just love it! Combined with the knowledge of my classical piano, I excelled really quickly on my guitar. After completing his A-levels, he said he was supposed to go to Berklee College of Music but that dream died with his late father.

I then realised at this point that music is gonna be my full-time career. Giving it my all to put Trinidad on the map for rock guitar virtuosity. Im getting my own original guitar instrumentals ready for uploading on my YouTube channel. Interested music lovers can check it out by searching Dax Cartar and he is hoping they give him some subscribes, he said with a laugh.

Im looking forward to working again with Beaver and the UTT Project, and the other bands Im in. Most importantly, expanding my talent outside of Trinidad. Thats the ultimate goal  the international platform. Speaking about his new jazz project Beaver he said a lot of thought and planning went into the Turtle Beach production.

With all my productions of this nature, I dont just hire the talent.

I try to be as aware as possible of the content of the talent segments, so in putting together the show, there is a flow and continuity in the presentation. I try to make it as smooth and enjoyable as possible for the patrons.

I also make it as comfortable and eye-pleasing as possible, thus Im surrounded by a team that makes it so easy to do. Also, the technical team made the impossible, possible. Of the performances on the day, and Cartars in particular, he said: I expected a really good crowd response because I know my audience and I know my product, but, this time it was over the top. The reaction to the whole show was amazing.

Every performance did what it was supposed to do, and I thank every performer, either leading up to the next or following the energy of the previous group, delivered to all expectations.

The UTT Project group surprised everyone there as it was their very first time performing publicly. There is so much talent within, that I was only able to highlight a few of the gems. As was heard and seen, Dax Carter and Kay Alleyne thundered at centre stage. All Im doing is giving these talented guys a platform to shine and excel in a space I believe is naturally theirs. On his own feeling being back on stage, Beaver said: I felt really great on stage. It felt very natural, because as you know, that is where I am most comfortable. Beaver said for next years programme there is so much more to feature, but it cant be done in only one performance. He hinted that Atiba Williams is yet to come.

As stated on the Turtle Beach stage, I have a three-to-five-year plan. I have skipped the second year and gone directly to the third year.A lot of surprises! As for the UTT band? Hahahahaha! Stay tuned! I have fulfilled my mandate for this year. I have given the people that feel good moment.
Claims TT oil affecting Venezuela beaches

Papa Bois Conservation published five pictures of oil-slicked beaches, on its Facebook page yesterday, describing them as, The images Petrotrin does not want you to see. The Petrotrin oil spill reached Venezuela.

The photos are dated May 2. Look at the lack of protective clothing for the Venezuelans doing the clean-up. 50 dead turtles reportedly washed up near Guiria. Some of these same pictures were also published via a press release by the FFOS on Tuesday. Corporate Secretary Gary Aboud said the images showed Venezuelas Guiria beaches covered in oil spilled from Petrotrins Tank 70 storage tank, which ruptured on April 23. Venezuelan sources, Aboud said, informed him that 50 marine turtles died as a result of the spill. However, the pictures he attached to the email showed only one dead turtle, covered in oil.

Petrotrin announced on April 30, that its spilled oil had indeed entered Venezuelan waters which prompted the Ministry of Energy to activate the TT/Venezuela Bilateral Oil Spill Plan. The plan places responsibility for clean up on Venezuela after which both countries would decide who would bear costs. Up to press time last evening, the stateowned company did not acknowledge the veracity of the images despite their appearance two days prior.

Aboud again contested Petrotrins claim that a mere 300 barrels of oil were spilled, saying the figure was closer to 10,000 barrels.

He said because oil spills occur almost every three months, an example must be made of this delinquent State entity. Unless negligent officers and companies are held accountable by OSHA and other authorities and agencies, they will continue to drown all of us in an endless sea of oil, he said.

Petrotrin officials yesterday told Newsday that because the oil had entered Venezuelan waters, deliberations were being handled by the Ministry of Energy. Attempts to reach Energy Minister Franklin Khan and officials of the ministrys communications department, for comment were unsuccessful
There Was No Red Wave,

'That's for Darn Sure'
A New Yorker cover generating a lot of buzz likens former FBI director James Comey to somebody else who suffered a very controversial removal: United Airlines passenger David Dao. The cover for the May 22 edition shows Comey being dragged off a plane by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in a police uniform, with President Trump as the pilot looking on, USA Today reports. "It's probably a bit of a leap," artist Barry Blitt says of his cover. At 6-foot-8, Blitt observes in brief comments to the New Yorker, Comey "probably would have been happy to give up his seat in a cramped cabin."

Blitt has provided many New Yorker covers over the years, including the 2008 Obama fist bump one, and the "Ejected" cover is being praised as one of his finest. Plenty of sketches came in, but Blitt "sent this one where, with an easy glide of his pen, he outlined the heart of the issue, giving voice to the outrage we feel on both sides of the aisle," art director Francoise Mouly tells the Washington Post. Mouly calls the artwork an example of how "deep artists can go by embracing nonsense and illogica response on par with Trumps actions." (Here's how late-night hosts reacted to Comey's firing.)
Police in Cincinnati are investigating the heartbreaking circumstances leading up to the suicide of an 8-year-old boy in January. Police say security camera footage from a restroom in Carson Elementary School shows a fellow student knocking the boy to the floor, leaving him unconscious. For another five minutes, other students "step over, point, mock, nudge, kick, etc." the boy before an assistant principal rushes in, homicide detective Eric Karaguleff says in a report to the school, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports. The boy, identified by the Enquirer as Gabriel Taye, hanged himself in his bedroom two days after the Jan. 24 assault, per FOX19. The school system agreed Thursday to release the video after blurring the children's faces.

Lawyer Jennifer Branch, hired by the boy's mother to find out what really happened to her son, says the school told the mother he had fainted. She says the boy vomited the evening of the assault. His mother took him to the hospital, where she was told he'd probably come down with the stomach flu. He didn't go to school the next day and hanged himself after coming home from school on Jan. 26. Branch says the mother would have taken the boy to the hospital immediately and would not have let him return to Carson if she'd known he had been assaulted and was unconscious on the bathroom floor for so long. "Mom is really heartbroken that she didn't know what she needed to know to protect her son," she says. (There's a "disturbingly common" problem in US schools.)
John F. Kennedy the president may have had a Boston accent, but John F. Kennedy the student had an even thicker one. Harvard has a released a 1937 recording of Kennedy as a 20-year-old in a public-speaking class, and the 90-second clip is believed to be the earliest recording of the future president, reports WBUR. "My name is John F. Kennedy," he begins, and then goes on to discuss FDR's appointment of Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. The pick became controversial over allegations that Black had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. "We all know the circumstances surrounding Mr. Black's appointment to the Supreme Court," Kennedy says.

The New York Times offers a critique: Kennedy starts strong but then stumbles and stammers a bit. So maybe not scintillating oratory, but he differentiated himself from the rest of his classmates, who chose more frivolous topics such as baking sourdough bread. "That is what struck us," the university archivist says. "At this point, he was probably thinking of government as a major." The Times adds an interesting footnote: The man who would go on to instruct Americans to ask not what their country could do for them got the course average: C+. (President Trump has a big decision to make regarding secret JFK files.)
After Thomas Pesquet gets off work and completes his exercise routine, he often whiles away his evenings with his camera, taking pictures he thinks others will enjoyand those images recently exposed to the entire world the odd obsession Belgium has with leaving its lights on all night long. Pesquet, as the New York Times explains, is a French astronaut spending six months aboard the International Space Station. The images he's been posting recently to social mediamostly pics of Europe and his home countryhave literally highlighted Belgium, glowing like a nightlight among its darkened Euro counterparts.

One photo posted Tuesday, for instance, shows a sprawled-out Europe, punctuated with the show-stopping aurora borealis, but it's Belgium that also catches the eye in the upper left of the image. Another pic tweeted that day shows London, Paris (at bottom), and Brussels (to its northeast) forming what Pesquet calls a "very European triangle." Belgium's brightness comes courtesy of the country's decision to keep its tightly packed roadways illuminated all through the night, even in the remote countryside. That's about 2.2 million bulbs (or 186 bulbs per square mile) shining until dawn, the Times notes. Phys.org in 2011 noted that most other countries, save for nearby Luxembourg, couldn't afford to do this even if they wanted to. Belgian officials shrug, saying people complain when the lights are turned off. (See an incredible shot of the ISS.)
Police in Britain are asking Harry Potter fans worldwide to be on the lookout for a one-of-a-kind Harry Potter prequel. The untitled 800-word story, handwritten on a card, was stolen during a burglary in Birmingham last month, and police say they are going public in the hope that "the appeal goes far and wide among Harry Potter fans throughout the world," the BBC reports. JK Rowling wrote the story for a 2008 charity auction, where it sold for $49,000.

The story is set three years before the young wizard Potter was born and describes how father James Potter and godfather Sirius Black make their escape after tangling with muggle police officers, the AP reports. Rowling retweeted the police appeal for information, urging fans not to buy the story if they are offered it. She noted its owner helped support writers' freedoms by buying the story at the auction, which benefited the English PEN organization. (Police in Washington state nabbed the "Harry Potter Bandit" last year.)
In an interview on Thursday, President Trump described a dinner with then-FBI chief James Comey soon after he took office. Now the New York Times has a different account, based on people who heard about the January dinner afterward from Comey himself. The big takeaway: Comey said Trump pressed him for a pledge of personal loyalty, and Comey explained that as FBI chief, he couldn't deliver one. What's more, Comey now thinks this foreshadowed his firing months later. By the Times' account, Trump brought up the issue early, asking Comey if he'd pledge his loyalty, but Comey responded that he could instead only promise to be honest with the president. Trump returned to the matter later in the dinner, asking Comey if it would be "honest loyalty," and the FBI chief responded, "You will have that."

The White House is pushing back against this narrative, with a spokesperson saying that Trump "would never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty, only loyalty to our country and its great people. CNN, however, also talks to Comey associates who say that his refusal to pledge personal loyalty is one of two reasons he was fired, the other being the widening Russia investigation. NBC News, meanwhile, reports that Comey did not request the dinner, as the president said. Instead, the White House summoned him. Comey was reportedly leery of going but didn't feel like he could turn down a president. The Times notes that Trump has long insisted on loyalty among his business associates and suggests that as a political novice, he wasn't familiar with the tradition that FBI chiefs eschew that. Congress gave them 10-year terms in order to bolster their independence. (Read more James Comey stories.)
In a tragic ending to a story of courage and fortitude, the Mexican activist who succeeded in solving her daughter's 2012 kidnapping and murder was found dead WednesdayMexicos Mothers Day. Miriam Rodriguez Martinez, known for standing up to the Zetas drug cartel by bringing her girl's killers to justice, was shot in her San Fernando home. The BBC reports a Zetas member who had been convicted of killing her daughter, Karen Alejandra, escaped from jail in March; the New York Times' report states more than one escaped. Whatever the number, Rodriguez began receiving death threats. Tamaulipas Attorney General Irving Barrios tells Reuters police began thrice-daily patrols around her house, but those close to her say she didn't get the protection she needed.

The Times provides some location-based context: The state of Tamaulipas, which borders the southern tip of Texas, is plagued with the highest missing persons rate in the country. Her two-year search for her daughter ended with Rodriguez finding the unmarked grave Karen was buried in; the information and names she passed to police resulted in the arrests and trials of what Barrios says were nine people. Rodriguez went on to become director of Colectivo de Desaparecidos de San Fernando, an organization supporting 600 families searching for disappeared relatives. Tamaulipas' governor addressed the tragedy, tweeting (translated): "The government ... will not allow the death of Miriam Rodriguez to turn into yet another statistic." (Read more Mexico stories.)
President Obama's Chicago-based presidential library will differ in one big way from the 13 other presidential libraries that exist around the country. The Chicago Sun-Times reports the Obama Foundation plans to foot the $675 million startup bill for the center through fundraising, forgoing financial support from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). It was confirmed on Thursday that Obama's library will not be part of the NARA system, which liberates it from NARA requirements related to endowments and architectural design. The move also means the library will not house original documents from the Obama White House, with the Chicago Tribune reporting they'll instead find a home in NARA's facilities. The library will opt for a more modern solution with digital records from the Obama administration.

NARA provides $65 million total in funding yearly to other presidential libraries, and Obama's library will miss out on that, though the Tribune explains that in the long run the Obama Foundation that will amass the funds for the library could come out ahead financially. On the money front, the Obama Foundation on Thursday released an economic impact assessment report that looks at the impact the library, set to open in 2021 in the South Side's Jackson Park, is projected to have. The proposed Obama Presidential Centercomprised of the library, a museum, and forumwill generate over $2.1 billion for South Side businesses during construction and its first 10 years of operation, reports Crains Chicago Business. (Read more Barack Obama stories.)
Keeping with President Trumps promise to focus on law and order, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has told federal prosecutors to resume going after drug offenders with maximum penalties. His two-page memo rolls back the more lenient Obama-era order not to charge defendants that meet certain criteria with drug offenses that would bring long mandatory minimum sentences, reports the Washington Post. According to the Wall Street Journal, Sessions has suggested that lighter sentencing is at the root of Americas opioid epidemic as well as rising violent crime. The memo said prosecutors can allow exceptions to the order if they document their reasoning and gain approval from supervisors.

There will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application of the above charging policy is not warranted, Sessions wrote. While some applaud the tougher sentencing policy, advocates of criminal justice reform are not happy. The ACLU said the move required prosecutors to reverse progress and repeat a failed experimentthe War on Drugsthat has devastated the lives and rights of millions of Americans." Under the overturned guidelines by former Attorney General Eric Holder, prosecutors were told to go easier on nonviolent defendants without a criminal history who were not members of gangs. The new rules are expected to increase the number of inmates in federal prisons, notes the Journal. (Read more Jeff Sessions stories.)
Perhaps hoping to blend into Florida's geriatric population, a 24-year-old man allegedly robbed two banks in the Sunshine State this week while disguised as an old man. Authorities say Abraham Maghen brandished a gun while wearing an old-person mask at a bank in Pembroke Pines on May 2 and made off with $10,000, ABC News reports. A week later, he allegedly stole $1,800 from a Boca Raton bank using a note that stated: "My grandson is sick. I need $40,000 now." According to the Miami Herald, police arrested Maghen after the second robbery. He allegedly said he was fired as a financial adviser and is "not very good at finances." No kidding; police say after the first robbery, Maghen spent $2,755 at a casino in less than an hour then deposited $2,500 into his overdrawn bank account. (Read more bank robbery stories.)
An armed man gunned down a new village police chief on an Ohio street Friday morning and then killed two employees in a nearby nursing home, where he later was found dead, a sheriff said. No nursing home residents were injured. The slain police chief, Steven Eric Disario, had headed the Kirkersville Police Department for only about three weeks, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said. Disario was shot on a street near the Pine Kirk Care Center, and the two employees and the gunman were found dead inside, the AP reports.

Disario, 36, was a father of six children, with a seventh on the way, the sheriff said. Thorp called it a hard day for all. "We've lost a police officer. It's just a tragic event," he said. "I guess the only peace of mind is that the threat is over." Disario was responding to a report of a man with a gun, and his last radio communication said he had the man in sight, Thorp said. Responding officers found Disario on the street and then investigated a report of a gunman at the nursing home, Thorp said. Police weren't immediately able to identify the gunman and were trying to determine what, if any, relationship he had with the nursing home. (Read more shooting stories.)
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WASHINGTON: The No. 2 official at the International Monetary Fund on Saturday pointed to emerging signs of a stronger global economic recovery, but warned that significant risks remained, including the emergence of mutations of the coronavirus.



IMF First Deputy Managing Director Geoffrey Okamoto said that in early April the Fund would update its January forecast for global growth of 5.5% to reflect additional fiscal stimulus spending in the United States, but gave no details.



In a speech to the China Development Forum, Okamoto raised concerns about the growing divergence between advanced economies and emerging markets, with some 90 million people seen falling below the extreme poverty threshold since the pandemic began.



Okamoto said China had already recovered to pre-pandemic growth levels ahead of all large economies, although private consumption was still lagging investment there.



Outside of China, he said, there were worrying signs of a widening gap between advanced economies and emerging markets. The IMF projects that cumulative income per capita in emerging and developing countries, excluding China, between 2020 and 2022 will be 22% lower than it would have been without the pandemic, which will push more people into poverty, he said.



The overall outlook remained exceptionally uncertain, Okamoto said, adding that it was unclear how long the pandemic would last and access to vaccines remained very uneven, across both advanced and emerging economies.



Okamoto said some countries also had little scope to boost spending to fight the pandemic and mitigate its economic impact, especially low-income countries with high debt levels. He said tighter financial conditions could exacerbate vulnerabilities in countries with high public and private debt, citing recent increases in bond yields triggered by market expectations of an earlier withdrawal of monetary stimulus.



He said the crisis could also leave deep scars.



In the past, advanced economies have seen their output reduced almost 5% below pre-recession trends five years after the beginning of a recession, and it could be worse in countries that cannot afford a strong macroeconomic response and/or had large services sectors more affected by the pandemic, he said.Reuters




New Delhi:

Nurses who aspire to join government hospitals in Goa will have to give practical exam, told state Health Minister Vishwajit Rane on Friday.

State-run Institute of Nursing Education will design a module to test the practical knowledge of students and it will be implemented for the selection process. Nurses applying for jobs in government hospitals will have to pass this exam, Rane told reporters in Panaji.

He told that the decision was taken to ensure transparency in the recruitment process. He also added that the test will be held during the next round of recruitment of nurses.

Rane was talking to reporters on the sidelines of a function held in Goa on International Nurses Day, on Friday.

There has been a lot of injustice done while selecting nurses. We will not allow it now, he said.

According to the minister, an aspirant who had applied for government job as nurse complained that she was asked to pay Rs 5 lakh to get the job.

Stating that there are several vacancies for nurses pending in the state, Rane said the government will fill 150 vacancies soon.

He also told the government is working on a process to absorb nurses, who are working on contractual basis in different government hospitals for the last 7-8 years.

Specialisation courses for nurses in neo-natal care and cardiology would be introduced in the coming months, Rane added.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi:

Tamil Nadu HSC results 2017: The Tamil Nadu Directorate of Government Examinations (DGE) has release Tamil Nadu HSC results 2017 for the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) Plus two exams at 10 am on the official website.

This year around 9 lakh students have appeared for the exams held in March.  tnresults.nic.in. As per reports, once declared, the authority will send results via SMS to students.

Candidates can also check Tamil Nadu HSC results 2017 on the following websites:

tnresults.nic.in

dge1.tn.nic.in

dge2.tn.nic.in

Also Read: MPBSE HSC class 10th Results 2017 announced

Steps to download the Tamil Nadu HSC results 2017:

 Go to the official website mentioned above

 On the main page, click on the link flashing Plus Twp results 2017.

 A new page will open.

 Enter your roll number and security code (captcha) in the fields provided.

 Download your results and take a print out of the same for further reference.

Also Read: Odhisa CHSE Plus 2 Science Result 2017 announced at chseodisha.nic.in; check here

Also, The Punjab School Education Board (PBSE) is all set to announce the PSEB Class 12th Results on Friday on The Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) official site pseb.ac.in.

The result link on the official website of Punjab School Education Board is expected to be activated on May 12. Students will be required to enter their examination details on the website to get the display of results. Lakhs of students had appeared for PSEB Class 10th and 12th board exams 2017.
New Delhi:

Shah Rukh Khan has rubbished the reports of AbRam being his eldest son Aryan's love child and stated that his family was indeed disturbed by the rumours. It was reported that SRK's eldest son Aryan was AbRam's father who was born in 2013. According to the media reports, Aryan had a relation with a Romanian girl and AbRam was born during their relationship.



However, Shah Rukh vehemently quashed the reports during his first ever TED talk in Vancouver and said, Four years ago, my lovely wife Gauri and me decided to have a third child. It was claimed on the net that he was the love child of our first child, who was 15 years old. Apparently, he had sown his wild oats with a girl while driving her car in Romania. And yeah, there was a fake video to go with it.



We were so disturbed as a family. My son, who is 19 now, even now when you say hello to him, he just turns around and says, But bro, I didnt even have a European driving license, the superstar added.



Indeed, SRK has made his point pretty clear.



On the work front, Shah Rukh Khan will be seen in Salman Khan's upcoming movie 'Tubelight'. The actor will be seen playing a cameo in the movie. Interestingly, the two Khans will be sharing the screen space after a long hiatus.



A Kabir Khan directorial, 'Tubelight' will also star Sohail Khan and Chinese actor Zhu Zhu in key roles. The movie is scheduled to release on June 23 this year.

For all the Latest Entertainment News, Bollywood News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
New Delhi:

Ahead of the scheduled Election Commission meet with political parties to discuss Electronic Voting Machine issue, Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Friday said that the all-party meet to discuss hacking of EVMs appears to be more of an eyewash looking to the schedule fixed by EC.

Digvijaya said that EC must have total transparency on the issue of hacking and cheating in EVM, they must give access to EVM to Techies to prove their point.

Impartial Election process is the basic fundamental of a healthy Democracy. It is the responsibility of Election Commission to convince every Indian that EVM is 100% fool proof and in no case can be tampered, said Digvijaya Singh.

The Congress leader questioned that why is Election Commission so rigid about EVM that they are going out of their way to stall the Judicial scrutiny in Uttarakhand HC?

To get stock of the situation amid the rising debate over the reliability of EVMs, the Election Commission will meet representatives of 55 political parties on Friday to put forth its stand on the issue.

The Commission has convened the meeting of seven national and 48 state parties to discuss the reliability of EVMs after 16 parties urged it to revert to the ballot paper system claiming faith of people in the machines has eroded.

The Commission is also likely to brief the parties about its planned EVM hacking challenge.

Days before the proposed meet, the Aam Admi Party had staged a demonstration on hacking a voting machine in the Delhi Assembly. The party had used an EMV prototype to make the demonstration.

Also read: Election Commission to meet representatives of 55 political parties to discuss Electronic Voting Machine issue today

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New Delhi:

As soon as the apex court begins hearing on the controversial triple talaq, the vice-president of All India Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Syed Jalaluddin Umari Thursday said banning triple talaq will not benefit Muslim women.

Even if triple talaq is outlawed, those who want to trouble their wives will still continue to do so and stop giving conjugal rights to their wives. This will lead to many complications and jeopardize the womans stature and dignity, PTI quoted him as saying.

Umari, who is also the president of Islamic forum Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) reiterated that the problem of divorced Muslim women has been blown out of proportion and statistics dont support the claim of this problem being endemic within the Muslim community.

Read here: Detailed coverage of SC's hearing on triple talaq issue

The Supreme Court on Thursday made clear that it will not hear polygamy issue in the triple talaq case. The Apex Court began hearing on a batch of pleas challenging the constitutional validity of 'triple talaq' and 'nikah halala'.

The court said that the arguments on Triple Talaq will continue for six days and allotted two-day to each party to submit their arguments while the single day is allotted to both parties to reply questions of either side.

Triple talaq is an instant divorce practice in Muslims and India is among the hand of countries where it still exists. The practice authorizes men to instantly divorce their wives by saying talaq (divorce) thrice in a row.

Prime Minister Modi is also in favor of banning this inhuman practice that destroys lives of many women every day as Muslim men continue to divorce their wives instantly through messages, phone calls and even by Facebook and WhatsApp in some instances.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Jammu:

A BSF jawan passed away on Friday while final field physical efficiency test was taking place at the Subsidiary Training Center (STC) in Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir.

"Today, at about 06:45 hours, constable Anil Kumar of 163 Battalion of BSF, who was undergoing Junior Leadership Course, died during field training test activity at the STC", a senior BSF officer said.

He said the Junior Leadership Course for promotion fromthe post of constable to that of head constable was going onat the STC for the last eight weeks and will end tomorrow.

The final Field Physical Efficiency Test (FPET) of the said course started at 06:15 hours.

The officer said that before the start of 3.2-km run of FPET, the participating troops were asked of their well-being and there was no complain from any of them.

BSF jawan injured as Pak violates ceasefire in Arnia of Jammu and Kashmir Also Read:

He said that at 06:40 hours, when Kumar was just fewmeters short of the end point, he collapsed.

He was put on oxygen by the doctors present there andevacuated to civil hospital in no time but was declared brought dead, he said.

"The individual was medically fit and never complainedduring eight-week period of training," the officer said.

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New Delhi:

The Border Security Force (BSF) Friday seized a Pakistani fishing boat from Pabewari Creek in Kutch district on Indo-Pak border, said officials.

Four fishermen jumped off the boat and ran towards Pakistani side of the border near Sir Creek after noticing BSF patrol party. Search is on to catch them, officials added.

Earlier Thursday, Six Pakistani fishermen were apprehended by the BSF personnel from the Indian side of the Nal Creek which is part of the Sir Creek on the Indo-Pak border.

While Sir Creek is right on the border, Pabewari Creek is well inside Indian territory and falls between Sir Creek and Koteshwar.

Also Read: Pakistan Maritime Security Agency apprehends 23 Indian fishermen, four boats off Gujarat coast

The entire Creek area is highly sensitive and Indian fishermen are not allowed to catch fishes there.

However, Pakistani fishermen often come in the area to catch fishes and then either get caught or sail off to their side.

(With PTI Inputs)

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New Delhi :

The Delhi High Court on Friday paved way for the Income Tax department to probe the National Herald case in which the Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice president Rahul Gandhi are the main stakeholders. Earlier, a Patiala high court had allowed the probe but it was challenged in the Delhi high court.

Swamy has levelled charges against Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi of setting up Young India to buy debt of Associated Journal Limited (AJL).

In his complaint, Swamy had alleged that the Congress granted an interest-free loan of Rs. 90.25 crore to the AJL, owner of the National Herald newspaper, established by Jawaharlal Nehru, which was either not repaid or repaid in case, which was in violation of Section 269T of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

Delhi High Court clears way for Income Tax Department to investigate the National Herald Case. pic.twitter.com/qSO9RivGma  ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

Last month, BJP leader Subramanian Swamy had sought more time to submit fresh list of the witness.

As per reports, the list includes Bhupinder Singh Hooda and ML Bohra, who have been named as accused in similar case and already questioned by Enforcement Directorate (ED) and CBI.

Also Read: Delhi court dismisses Subramanian Swamys plea in National Herald case

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New Delhi:

Disappointed by board exam results, four MP students have committed suicide. Out of the four students, three were girls.

Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education (MPBSE) results of std 10th and 12th examinations were announced on Friday.

Incidents of suicide were reported from Gwalior, Tikamgarh, Bhind and Jabalpur. One attempt to commit suicide was also reported.

Pragya Kushwah (21), a 12th std student, from Gwalior, hanged herself after the results were out.

Another girl, a std 10th student, tried to commit suicide by consuming poison. She was undergoing treatment at a hospital, Gwalior police said.

In Narguda area of Tikamgarh town, Pinki Prajapati (16), std 10th student, hanged herself told local police officer Rajesh Banjare. She did not pass the exam.

In Jabalpur, Kanchan Dubey (17), std 12th student, jumped in front of a train at Gulaua railway crossing, police officer Y S Mishra said.

Tapish Miholiya (17), std 12th student, from Bhind town, hanged himself in his house in Chaturvedi Nagar, additional superintendent of police Rajendra Verma said.

Tapish, son of Bhind Municipality president Kalawati Miholiya, had failed in std 12th.

Also Read: Madhya Pradesh Board of Secondary Education: Girls perform better than boys in both 10th and 12th standard examination

(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi :

In a shocking incident, a snake was found in mid-day meal at a Government Girls Senior Secondary School at National Highway-2 in Faridabad.

The district administration has launched a probe in the incident. A As per media reports, a few girl students were about to begin eating, but one of them spotted the reptile and raised alarm.

The district administration sent the sample for laboratory test in Chandigarh. The administration also stopped other schools to serve the food as the same agency supplies the meal in 371 schools in the district.

Haryana: A small snake found in mid-day meal at a Government Girls Senior Secondary School at NH-2 in Faridabad. (May 11). pic.twitter.com/G99n3tDTv7 a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

In past too, it was witnessed that quality of mid-day meal is always compromised in different states, but this incident shows that how the school staff and authorities were careless which did not put any check before offering the meal to children.

#Visuals: A small snake found in mid-day meal at a government school at NH-2 in Faridabad, Haryana (May 11). pic.twitter.com/PlFqmNQrx3 a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

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New Delhi:

As part of a drive to make quality medicines available to public at low cost, Jan Aushadhi stores will be opened at 1,000 major railway stations across India, government told on Friday.

Plans are also on to open such outlets at bus stands in different states with an aim to take the network to small towns and villages.

Chemicals and Fertilisers Minister Ananth Kumar said efforts are being made to ensure prescription of generic medicines by doctors for the benefit of patients.

I am going to speak to Railways Minister Suresh Prahbu in the coming days to open Jan Aushadhi stores (JAS) in 1,000 main railway stations in the country, Kumar told reporters in Delhi.

He further said that in order to make affordable medicines to poor people in smaller towns and villages, his ministry is looking at setting up JAS at bus stops.

I am going to write to the state chief ministers and later speak to them to open JAS wherever there is a bus stand, the minister added.

He said under the BJP-led government, the number of JAS has been increased to over 1,320 from 88 set up during the previous UPA regime.

By the end of this year, we will have at least 3,000 JAS across India. The turnover of JAS will also touch Rs 60 crore, up from Rs 3 crore, Kumar said.

In order to ensure that good quality medicines are available at JAS, the minister said only those companies which comply with WHO certified good manufacturing practices will be eligible for supplies.

Out of 10,000 pharmaceutical companies in India, only 1,400 are WHO GMP certified and only they will be able to participate in tender process, Kumar added.

The government is also encouraging the youth to participate in opening of JAS, he said, adding that already 30,000 applications have been received which are under process for approval.

The aim is to take JAS to every block level of the country, he said.

Besides expanding the JAS network, the minister said, the government has also expanded the basket of medicines available in the stores.

Today 23 therapeutic areas are covered with 500 medicines and 150 health supplements in JAS, Kumar said, adding that the focus is on drugs for major diseases such as heart ailments, diabetes, respiratory problems, HIV and blood pressure.

When asked about making prescription of generic medicines by doctors mandatory, he said the Medical Council of India has already issued a circular to doctors.

While the health ministry has also asked central government hospitals to make prescription of generic drugs mandatory. All the state governments have also been sent advisories regarding the same, he added.

On whether the government is bringing a legal framework for compulsory prescription of generic medicines, Kumar said at present the Drugs & Cosmetics Act prevents pharmacies to give equivalent of generic medicine and whatever is prescribe has to be given.

A substitute cannot be given therefore we are going to bring in amendments in the Drugs & Cosmetics Act, he said.

The minister said however that the government has no intention of banning branded drugs in the country saying there is also a need to encourage drug development and make business of pharmaceutical firms viable.

Otherwise, we will become what we have in bulk drugs where we are a net importer, that too from only one source (China), Kumar said.

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New Delhi :

Annapoorna Mishra, mother of sacked Aam Aadmi Party leader Kapil Mishra, on Friday wrote an open letter to AAP convener and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal terming her son as an agent of truth and will not bow down in front of corruption.

She addressed Arvind saying that she had never dreamt that the latter would evade questions on transparency who always preferred to embrace it.

Kapils mother slammed the Delhi chief minister for bringing her son in bad light, saying that Kejriwals aides are dubbing him BJP agent and spreading rumours.

She said the pictures were shared on social media showing against Kapil Mishra was a ceremony in an honour of Kumar Vishwas s father , and Kejriwal was also present in the programme.

Also Read: Axed minister Kapil Mishra says attacker was a member of AAP mohalla clinic

Kapil's mother advised Kejriwal to learn to fear from god. She further questioned him on his lyings. " How many lies , Arvind?" she said.

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New Delhi:

The cycle of political violence continues to grip Kerala's Kannur district as another RSS office-bearer, accused in the murder of a CPM worker, has been hacked to death on Friday.



The state BJP leadership has accused CPM activists of the crime and has declared bandh for Saturday.



Thirty-something RSS worker, Biju, was the 12th accused in the murder of CPM worker Dhanaraj, who was hacked to death by a gang near his house on July 11, 2016.

Read | RSS-CPIM tension escalates in Kerala: Offices bombed, set on fire; activists hacked



The retaliation of Dhanaraj's murder was so swift that within hours an RSS worker CK Ramachandran was stabbed to death and crude bombs were hurled on site.



The animosity between CPI-M and RSS has bene intensifying since past few months, resulting in the frequent deaths and attacks on the party workers. The violence reached a crescendo in March this year after an RSS functionary in Madhya Pradesh announced a Rs 1 crore bounty for beheading Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

Read | CPI(M) workers attack RSS workers in Kozhikode, 3 injured



Kundan Chandrawat, Sah Prachar Pramukh of RSS in Madhya Pradeshs Ujjain, announced the reward to avenge the killing of its workers in Kerala, allegedly by CPI-M workers.



The Kerala Chief Minister is killing our RSS workers who want to take this country forward. I will pay Rs one crore to anyone who beheads him even if I have to sell my house, Chandravat was seen saying in a video, which has gone viral.



The RSS, however, distanced itself from Chandravats remarks.

Read | RSS-CPM battle gets dirty in Kerala: 2 DYFI activists hacked at Elappulli; 3 BJP workers booked

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New Delhi:

Pakistan on Friday refused to stay the execution of former Indian Navy officer Kulbhushan Jadhav as directed by International Court of Justice in response to an Indian plea. The neighbouring county has decided to question the jurisdiction of the international court in this matter.



Jadhav, who is an Indian national, has been accused of spying and sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court.



On Tuesday, the court had asked Pakistan to put Jadhav's death sentence on hold. It said it would hear the case on Monday. Senior advocate Harish Salve, who represents India at the International Court, has said its judgment will be binding on Pakistan.



India and Pakistan signed up for the "Optional Protocol to the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations concerning the Compulsory Settlement of Disputes, 1963," which says such disputes are within the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court.



But Pakistani officials are counting on the instance in June 2000, when the International court had agreed with India that it had no jurisdiction to hear a case filed by Pakistan, accusing India of shooting down an unarmed aircraft of the Pakistani navy the year before. India had argued that it was an internal matter, which was accepted by the court.

Read | Pak PM Nawaz Sharif discusses Kulbhushan Jadhav's case with Army chief Bajwa

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New Delhi:

Election Commission on Friday called for an all-party meeting to discuss the reliability of EVMs. The validity of electronic voting machines came under scrutiny after allegations raised by parties which lost Uttar Pradesh assembly elections held earlier this year.A



The Election Commission called for the all-party meet on Friday morning after Aam Aadmi Party demonstrated a EVM hacking method using a dummy in a special assembly session on Tuesday. The EC has maintained that EVMs are 100 per cent safe from hacking.A

At the day-long meeting, which started with the opening remarks of Chief Election Commission Nasim Zaidi, the Commission was expected to seek views of political parties on the proposed challenge it plans to throw to hack its EVMs.



The date of the proposed challenge would be decided after the all-party meeting, it was said.



All the seven national and 35 of the 48 state recognised political parties are attending the meeting. A detailed presentation on electronic voting machinesa security features will be made by the EC top brass to prove that the machines are tamper-proofaa fear raised by the opposition parties.



During the all-party meet convened by EC on Friday, the definition of hacking itself became the debated topic.A



Here are the highlights of the meeting:A

#Arvind Kejriwal expresses disappointment over cancellation of hackathon

Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon. a Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) May 12, 2017

#All future election will be held on VVPAT: CEC Nasim Zaidi

#Speaking to media after the meeting, AAP senior leader Manish Sisodia said that there are doubts that EVMs used in recent elections in all five states could be tempered. "We can prove it by hacking EVMs used in all five elections,"A Sisodia said.

#The meeting on the issue of EVM hacking ended at around 5:35 PM.A



#EC to offer political parties chance to prove that EVMs used in recent polls were tampered with: CEC Nasim Zaidi in all-party meet.A



#EC has no favourites. We maintain equidistance from all parties: Zaidi at all-party meet.



#Amid the raging debate over reliability of electronic voting machines, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today termed the doubts raised by various parties as aunfoundeda.



He also appealed to all parties to deliberate on holding the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha elections simultaneously.



aAll the talk about EVMs is unfounded. When they got 67 seats in the assembly elections in Delhi, they did not raise any questions about its credibility,a Chouhan told PTI in an interview, referring to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party.



Chouhan said BJP, at that time, had not made an issue out of EVMs, despite winning just three seats.



#The AAP, which has been leading the opposition charge on this issue, claimed that its proposal of holding a ahackathona has been arejecteda by the Commission.



#Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who is among the AAP representatives in the meeting, tweeted that the EC arefused to carry out a hackathona.



#The EC will only throw a challenge asking the parties to prove that machines used in the past elections were tampered with, he claimed. However, there was no official word from the EC on Sisodiaas claims so far.



#AAP MLA Saurabh Bhardwaj told reporters on the sidelines of the closed-door meeting that EC shared nothing new so far towards alleviating the fears of the parties. The meeting saw a debate over the definition of ahackinga.

#aThey wonat let us access their machines and then challenge us to prove our charge of hacking. The EC is being very smart,a Bhardwaj said.



#Leaders of other parties like the CPI, RJD and RLD raised related as well as other aspects of the electoral process like corporate funding.



#aThe whole issue is about the ethos and integrity of the election process. Why are advanced countries in the west not using EVMs?a CPI national secretary Atul Anjan asked.



#RJD spokesperson Manoj Jha said by harping on the infallibility of EVMs, the EC was acting as the custodian of just the ainstrumentsa and not the process as a whole.



Allegations of EVM hack



Days before the meet, the Aam Admi Party had staged a demonstration on hacking voting machinea in the Delhi Assembly. The party had used an EVM prototype to make the demonstration.



The EC had trashed the AAPas claim, saying the amachine is a look-alike and not the ECI-EVMa.



Some parties have demanded they be allowed access to the machines used in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls.



Sixteen opposition parties had recently told the Commission that it should revert to the paper ballot system claiming that the faith of the people has aerodeda in the machines.



Several parties, including AAP, BSP and Congress had blamed tampered machines for the victory of BJP in the recently-held assembly polls.



Disqualifying candidates named in a charge sheet for bribing voters, making electoral graft a non-bailable offence and easing of rules to order counting of votes through paper trail are some of the other issues Election Commission will discuss with political parties on Saturday.



aThe Election Commission has convened a meeting with all recognised national and state political parties on May 12 in New Delhi to discuss issue related to EVM and VVPAT.



aIn addition to the EVM/VVPAT, the agenda will also cover making bribery in elections a cognisable offence, disqualification on framing of charges for the offences of bribery in elections and suggestions in VVPAT recount rules,a it had said in a statement last week.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Sad that EC has backed out of hackathon.</p> Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) <a href="https://twitter.com/ArvindKejriwal/status/863016409646776321">May 12, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

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New Delhi :

A BSF jawan was injured on on Friday after Pakistani Army violated ceasefire in Arnia sector of Jammu and Kashmir. The violation took place between 7-7:30 am in the morning. The personnel of Border Security Force have retaliated.

On Thursday, Pakistan had violated the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmirs Nowshera sector in Rajouri district. One woman was killed while her husband had sustained serious injuries in the incident. According to ANI, Pakistan had used 120 mm mortars.

Of late, a bullet-ridden body of an army lieutenant Umar Fayaz was found in Shopian district's Herman area in South Kashmir. Fayaz was abducted by terrorists on Tuesday following which he was shot dead and his body was disposed.

One BSF jawan injured as Pakistan violated ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir's Arnia today  ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

The SDM of Nowshera tehsil had issued an order to close all the schools near the Line of Control after shelling from the Pakistani side of the border.

"All schools close to the LoC were shut in Nowshera tehsil of Rajouri district as a precautionary measure today following the death of a woman and injuries to her husband in shelling by the Pakistan Army", PTI had quoted a senior police officer as saying.

Also Read | Jammu and Kashmir: Government shuts schools along LoC in Rajouri after ceasefire violation by Pakistan

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New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday worked to strengthen Indo-Sri Lankan ties amid growing concerns of Chinese inroads into Indian Ocean nation. While calling for unity through cultural ties, the prime minister hailed the shared Buddhist heritage of the region and cautioned the international community against the growing arc of violence.



Arc of Violence



PM Modi warned the international community against the growing arc of violence and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from the conflict between the nation states.



Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to the notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.



The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion, he said, apparently referring to Pakistan, which is accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks inside India.



The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states, he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.



PM Modi on Buddhist heritage



Making Lord Buddha and his ideals the central theme of his charming address at the inauguration of the International Vesak Day - the biggest Buddhist festival, Modi called on India and Sri Lanka to uphold those ideals and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.



Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, he said, pointing out the significance of the shared heritage between the two peoples.

Read | PM Modi in Sri Lanka: I believe that Buddhism's message of peace is answer to growing arc of violence across world



Modi said he believes that Buddhisms message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world.



Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.



He said the countries of the south, central, south-east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.



Indo-Sri Lankan relations



Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured Sri Lanka of Indias support in its nation-building efforts, saying New Delhi will be a friend and a partner, amid Chinas forays into the important Indian Ocean country.



He reiterated Indias commitment to the economic prosperity of our Sri Lankan brothers and sisters. We will continue to invest in driving positive change and economic growth to deepen our development cooperation.



You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours, he said.



We believe that free flow of trade, investments, technology, and ideas across our borders will be to our mutual benefit. Indias rapid growth can bring dividends for the entire region, especially in Sri Lanka, he said.

Read | PM Modi in Sri Lanka: Happy to announce additional 10,000 houses under Indian housing project in Columbo



India and Sri Lanka are in talks to jointly operate oil tanks at the strategic Trincomalee port. A deal in this regard is yet to be announced and some workers union and opposition parties have protested against any such agreement with India.



Modi, however, said, In infrastructure and connectivity, transport and energy, we are poised to scale up our cooperation.



The prime minister stressed that the social and economic well-being of the Sri Lankan people is linked with that of 1.25 billion Indians. Because, whether it is on land or in the waters of the Indian Ocean, the security of our societies is indivisible.



The Chinese factor in Indo-Sri Lankan relations

PM Modis visit to Sri Lanka and his remarks about the Indian Ocean and security assume significance as the Chinese strive to make inroads into the island-nation. Sri Lanka is finalising a plan to lease 80 per cent of its Hambantota port to China for 99 years.



On Thursday, a top Sri Lankan defence official said that the Chinese had requested to dock its submarine at the Colombo harbour next week but the country refused it permission.



A similar visit by two Chinese submarines in 2014 had invited strong protest from India, which said it undermined its security interests.



Later addressing the Tamil workers of the Lankan tea industry, he said India will fully support active steps of the country to improve living conditions of Tamils of central Lanka.



He said all the people of the two countries needed to strengthen, not separate, the threads of unity and harmony.



Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Sinhala and Tamil people and languages existed harmoniously, he said.



Modi is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka. His trip is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.

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New Delhi:

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to grant urgent hearing on a plea challenging government notification to make Aadhaar mandatory to avail various government schemes.

The five-member constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India JS Khehar agreed to the arguments of senior advocate Shyam Divan that the Aadhaar matter is very important and needed to be heard on an urgent basis.

"Despite the order of this court that Aadhaar will be voluntary and not mandatory, the government has been coming out with a series of notifications making it mandatory to avail benefits of schemes like scholarships, Right to Food and mid-day meal in schools," Divan, appearing for Shanta Sinha said.

Also read: SC to hear plea challenging decision on making Aadhaar mandatory for Income Tax returns, PAN today

Also read: Justin Bieber in India: Fans furious with Canadian pop star for his lip-syncing act



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New Delhi:

Twitter is buzzing with news alerts from India and rest of the world. Here are the latest updates from the micro-blogging site in one scroll.

#10:54 PM

Kulbhushan Jadhav death row: Pakistan refuses to follow ICJ orders

#10:24 PM

You cannot remove poverty unless you have power for all. It improves lives, brings connectivity: Piyush Goyal in London - ANI

#10:05 PM

PM Narendra Modi arrives in Delhi after his two-day visit to Sri Lanka - ANI

#9:49 PM

5 people injured in a cylinder blast in Delhi's Munirka - ANI

#9:42 PM

Chennai: Tharika Banu becomes the first transgender in Tamil Nadu to clear class 12th examinations - ANI

#9:13 PM

Woman burnt alive after her car came in contact with an high tension wire in Rangareddy district of Telangana. 5 ppl managed to escape - ANI

#8:52 PM

Delhi: Fire breaks out in Comesum restaurant in Nizamuddin, 5 fire tenders at the spot - ANI

#8:44 PM

Telangana: Cattle thief arrested by Police in Shamshabad. Rs 9,40,000 rupees and two vehicles seized - ANI

#8:34 PM

I am happy that I have recovered well from the injury and have finished on the podium: Vinesh Phogat - ANI

#8:33 PM

Delhi: Sonia Gandhi has recovered from food poisoning and has been discharged from Sir Ganga Ram Hospital - ANI

#8:21 PM

Delhi: Cylinder blast near a barat ghar in Munirka.2 fire tenders at the spot - ANI

#8:14 PM

Hospital services across England hit by IT failure, believed to be caused by a large-scale cyber attack: UK media - ANI

#8:10 PM

Haryana court issues bailable warrant against yoga guru # Ramdev for his remarks against those refusing to chant 'Bharat mata ki jai' - ANI

#7:59 PM

Rio Olympics bronze medallist Sakshi Malik (women's 60kg) settles for a silver in #AsianWrestlingChampionships. - ANI

#7:28 PM

AI 849 from Delhi to Pune overshoots the runway. An emergency evacuation was carried out

#7:26 PM

Asian Wrestling Championships: India's Vinesh Phogat gets silver after losing 4-8 to Sae Nanjo of Japan in freestyle 55kg finals - ANI

#7:16 PM

Maharashtra: People watched on & clicked pictures of a man who caught fire after his bike met with an accident at a highway in Beed - ANI

#7:06 PM

Post mortem done;hv startd primary investigation:R Baniya,DCP S East on police officer who allegedly shot himself dead in Delhi's CR Park - ANI

#6:50 PM

Two Naxals arrested in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district. - ANI

#6:43 PM

Tejas, a Light Combat Aircraft successfully demonstrated an Air-to-Air Beyond Visual Range missile firing capability in Chandipur - ANI

#6:30 PM

Sri Lanka: Prime Minister Narendra Modi departs for Delhi from Colombo. - ANI

#6:17 PM

India's Ritu Phogat (49kg) wins bronze medal after her Chinese opponent Yanan Sun gives her a walkover in # AsianWrestlingChampionships. - PTI

#6:17 PM

Doubts raised by various parties over # EVMs are "unfounded", says Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan. - PTI

#6:11 PM

# Aadhaar not a must for obtaining PAN cards or filing ITR in Assam, J&K and Meghalaya: revenue department. - PTI

#6:09 PM

Sri Lanka: PM Narendra Modi meets Sri Lankan leader of opposition R.Sampanthan & his party Tamil National Alliance's leaders - ANI

#6:01 PM

Will offer opportunity to parties to demonstrate EVMs in recnt elections wr tampered or EVMs cn be tampered evn with laid dwn safeguards-CEC - ANI

#5:54 PM

All future election will be held on VVPAT: CEC Nasim Zaidi - ANI

#5:34 PM

Chhattisgarh: CRPF jawan Jeevan Lal Kuldeep shot himself with his service rifle, while on duty in Dhamtari. - ANI

#5:19 PM

MP: Fire breaks out at the terrace of Mansarovar Complex in Bhopal; 6 fire tenders at the spot. - ANI

#5:14 PM

Annual rate of inflation, based on monthly WPI, stood at 3.85% (provisional) for the month of April 2017 as compared to 5.29% in March 2017. - ANI

#4:59 PM

Army and Border Roads Organisation opens Srinagar-Leh road after being closed for five months due to heavy snow - ANI

#4:50 PM

Kerala: RSS worker hacked to death near Payyannur in Kannur. He was the 12th accused in CPM worker Dhanraj murder case. Police investigating -ANI

#4:42 PM

Madras High Court grants conditional bail to sand mining baron J Sekhar Reddy and his associates in a money laundering case - ANI

#4:41 PM

Death toll in Mastung( # Balochistan) blast rises to 25: Pak media - ANI

#4:40 PM

BSF lodges protest with Pakistan rangers over ceasefire violation along the International Border in Arnia, J&K - ANI

#4:29 PM

Govt agents and proxies are circulating unsigned notes to media which are false facts from today's hearing: AM Singhvi,Cong - ANI

#4:27 PM

We are proud to be associated with National Herald. Media is misrepresenting facts: AM Singhvi, Congress - ANI

#4:15 PM

Kapil Mishra leaves Satyagrah site for unknown place after bowing down to Mahatma Gandhi's portrait.

#4:11 PM

Sri Lanka: PM Narendra Modi visits Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple in Kandy - ANI

#4:03 PM

BJP MP KC Patel blackmailing & extortion case: Judicial custody of the accused extended till 26 May - ANI

#3:58 PM

Definitely. Those who want to maintain unity of the country, make it greatest nation of world, want to strengthen BJP & vote BJP: V Sarang - ANI

#3:50 PM

6 men, 3 women arrested after an alleged sex racket was busted by police in Noida's sector 12 - ANI

#3:46 PM

HC asks Young India to approach Income Tax assessing officer after which the firm withdraws its petition. # NationalHerald case - PTI

#3:46 PM

Slaughterhouses licenses matter: Allahabad High Court's Lucknow bench directs UP govt to commission new licenses and renew old ones - ANI

#3:41 PM

A pastor in Salvation Army Church sentenced to life imprisonment until death by Thrissur special court for raping a 13-year old girl. - ANI

#3:35 PM

Deputy Chairman of Pakistan's Senate Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri also injured in Mustang (Balochistan) blast: Pak media - ANI

#3:30 PM

Pakistan blast kills at least 10, wounds 'many': police -AFP

#2:59 PM

No interim relief for Gayatri Prajapati & 2 others in rape case;next hearing in the case on May 26 in Lucknow bench of Allahabad HC-ANI

#2:49 PM

J&K: Anil Kumar of 35 battalion of CRPF commits suicide inside a paramilitary force training center in Humhama area of Budgam district-ani

#2:46 PM

Deputy Chief Minister #DineshSharma to be BJP's Leader of House in the #UttarPradesh Legislative Council-PTI

#2:37 PM

Justice Karnan's lawyer told SC that he (Karnan) wanted to tender an unconditional apology,but SC registry was not accepting his application-ANI

#2:33 PM

Justice Karnan's lawyer requests SC to stay arrest order agnst him.SC asks to file application,says,he can be heard whn judges are available-ANI

#2:27 PM

Tamil Nadu: Sri Lankan boat leaves after disembarking 4 ppl at islet near Dhanushkodi;Indian Coast Guard reaching spot to rescue & investigate-ANI

#2:23 PM

Fire breaks out at a showroom in Delhi's Patparganj industrial area. 12 fire tenders at the spot; fire under control-ANI

#2:17 PM

Sri Lanka: PM Narendra Modi met representatives of the Tamil Progressive Alliance in Dickoya. pic.twitter.com/8VYZJHYvbm a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#2:13 PM

#Gasleak: #AIIMS panel suggests shifting of #Tughlaqabad depot-PTI

#1:52 PM

#ChaipeCharcha is mark of deep respect for dignity, integrity of honest labour:PM @narendramodi tells #Tamil workers in Lanka's tea industry-PTI

#1:50 PM

#Waterlevel in 91 major reservoirs in the country has dipped to 24% of their total storage capacity: government.-PTI

#1:47 PM

CJI observed that there is no mutual consent in #TripleTalaq. Art 15 of constitution talks about State law, we are on personal law here-ANI

#1:46 PM

#CRPF jawan found dead inside a training centre of the paramilitary force in Humhama area of central Kashmir's #Budgam district: police-ANI

#1:41 PM

We remember your forefathers. Men & women of strong will & courage, who undertook the journey of their life from India to then Ceylon: PM-ANI

#1:38 PM

Cell phone of an Indian consular officer, who went to Islamabad HC to file writ petition on Uzma matter, seized: Pak media-ANI

#1:37 PM

R Jethmalani told SC that #TripleTalaq is a method of terminating marriage contract which lies only with men but not with women.-ANI

#1:36 PM

Ram Jethmalani appearing for Forum for Awareness of National Security told SC that #TripleTalaq is breach of Article 14, Right to Equality.-ANI

#1:30 PM

PM @narendramodi inaugurates a Rs 150 crore super-speciality hospital in #SriLanka built with India's assistance in #Dickoya-PTI

#1:09 PM

In a first, UPSCA will share online scores of candidates taking competitive exams to boost hiring by the private sector.- PTI

#12:42 PM

Sri Lanka: Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurates the Dickoya Hospital, built with Indian assistance.- ANI

#12:27 PM

Delhi High Court clears way for Income Tax Department to investigate the National Herald Case.- ANI

#11:55 PM

Jet Airways Mumbai to Bangkok flight 9W 70 executed an air turn back to Mumbai on account of a 'suspected' tail strike, landed safely- ANI



#11:39 AM

Himachal Ayurveda Minister #KaranSingh passes away at AIIMS in Delhi after a brief illness.-PTI

#11:29 AM

CBI registers a case on complaint of IFCI Ltd. against the fraud, misrepresentation & cheating by VNR Infrastructures Ltd-ANI

#11:16 AM

TripleTalaq hearing: 5 judge-bench headed by CJI started hearing arguments from Salman Khurshid, who is arguing on his personal capacity-ANI

#11:16 AM

It is from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence: PM Modi-ANI

#11:04 AM

Delhi High Court upholds charges, including tampering of evidence, against Ansal brothers in Uphar tragedy case.-ANI

#11:03 AM

ECI officer made a detailed presentation on EVM security features. a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#11:03 AM

SC agrees to grant urgent hearing on a plea challenging Govt notification to make Aadhaar mandatory to avail various government schemes-ANI

#10:10 AM

Andhra Pradesh: 22 people injured after a bus fell down from Ichchapuram Mandal National Highway in Srikakulam-ANI

#10:08 AM

#WATCH: Man thrashed by locals for allegedly slaughtering a buffalo in Achal Tal area of Aligarh (UP), 5 arrested, investigation on. pic.twitter.com/ENmX7Bd91l a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 12, 2017

#9:46 AM

PM Narendra Modi attends International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka. pic.twitter.com/94CWHzdhT4 a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#9:25 AM

#Delhi Four arrested in a robbery case of a16 Lakh in Sagarpur area by SW Spl staff, a5Lakhs, one pistol & a bike used in crime recovered pic.twitter.com/ojcF31lFJk a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#9:09 AM

Telangana: 5 dead after a car collided with a lorry on NH-44 In Ranga Reddy district.- ANI

#9:03 AM

Pakas failure to curb support to anti-India militants,lack of progress in Pathankot deteriorated bilateral relation:W.wide Threat Assessment-ANI

#8:59 AM

Haryana: A small snake found in mid-day meal at a Government Girls Senior Secondary School at NH-2 in Faridabad. (May 11). pic.twitter.com/G99n3tDTv7 a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#8:58 AM

One BSF jawan injured as Pakistan violated ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir's Arnia today-ANI

#8:54 AM

They might deteriorate further in 2017,especially in case of another highprofile terror attack in India from Pak:Worldwide Threat Assessment-ANI

#8:51 AM

India-Pak relations tense post 2 major attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India: Worldwide Threat Assessment of US Intelligence Comm-ANI

#8:33 AM

UP: Seven people were killed and six injured as a car rammed into a truck near Rampur in the early morning hours. pic.twitter.com/vncvQO9QBB a ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 12, 2017

#8:23 AM

Pakistan violated ceasefire in Jammu & Kashmir's Arnia between 7-7:30 AM today, BSF retaliated-ANI

#7:56 AM

Himachal: Rural women in Shimla being trained as cab drivers at an Institute, for women empowerment and promotion of tourism in the region pic.twitter.com/mBpsGo146p a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#7:45 AM

#Mumbai Deer killed after being hit by an auto-rickshaw at Western Express Highway in Goregaon, late last night. Rickshaw driver injured pic.twitter.com/bMrWAgCyEV a ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

#7:38 AM

PM Narendra Modi will also address Indian origin Tamil community. He will later make a visit to Sri Lanka's Sri Dalada Maligawa Temple-ANI

#7:27 AM

Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take part in Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Sri Lanka; to also address a gathering.- ANI

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New Delhi:

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) on Thursday expressed indignation over the widespread of vector-borne like dengue and chikungunya and termed the steps taken by the authorities to contain the menace as a mere "formality".

10 local commissioners across the three municipal corporations have been asked to inspect different places across the city, and report back to the NGT.

The bench headed by NGT chairperson Swatanter Kumar also refused to agree with submissions made by civic bodies that dengue patients were mostly outsiders and sufficient precautions have been taken to handle the situation.

Read more: Yamuna floodplains damage: NGT pulls up DDA for casting aspersions on panel's findings on AOL event

We appoint local commissioners to inspect areas under the jurisdiction of all the municipal corporations and the Delhi Cantonment Board.They shall submit a complete and comprehensive report to show places of waterlogging and dumping of municipal solid waste, the bench said.

The civic bodies have also been asked to report on the mechanisms adopted for dumping of municipal solid waste in unauthorised colonies, and whether sites for fumigation have been identified or not.

The NGT has also refused to agree with the submissions made by the civic bodies that most dengue patients came from outside Delhi, and that sufficient precautions had been taken to handle the situation.

Read more: Gas leak in Delhi's Tughlaqabad: National Green Tribunal (NGT) issues notice to Centre and Govt

The bench was hearing a plea by former CPCB scientist Mahendra Pandey, calling for setting up of committees to implement precautionary, preventive and curative actions to ensure the citys residents are not exposed to vector-borne diseases.
New Delhi:

Indias first uterine transplant will take place on May 18 as a 26-year-old woman is all set to undergo surgery in Pune, according to The Indian Express. The woman has been through four abortions, has lost two babies after carrying them for the full time and has her uterus scarred.

According to this report in DNA, the womb will be transplanted from recipients mother. Two more uterine transplant procedures has been scheduled Punes Galaxy Care Laprascopy Institute (GLCI), where the surgery will take place. The other two surgeries that have been scheduled, one will take place on May 19 and the other one will be conducted in June.

A 12-member team of gynaecologists, endocrinologists and IVF specialists will conduct the three surgeries for free, as reported by Zee News. Interestingly, in all the three cases, the women will receive wombs from their respective mothers.

The first womb transplant was performed in Sweden in the year 2012. The recipient had her first baby in 2014, with a premature delivery through Caesarean section. In that case, the donor was a family friend according to BBC.

In order to learn about the procedure of transplant, the GCLI surgical team visited Sweden. They later did their practice on human cadavers in Germany and the US.

"Before going ahead in our hospital, we followed a rigorous process while choosing the donor and the recipient of womb," Dr Shailesh Puntambekar, medical director, GCLI, told Hindustan Times.

According to India Today, nearly 25 transplants have been performed in the world so far and out of them 10 cases have been successful.
New Delhi:

Buzz Aldrin, the second man to ever walk on the moon, has claimed that if NASA is really serious about putting a foot on Mars, then the US space agency should ditch the (International Space Station (ISS) at the earliest.

The former Apollo 11 moonwalker has said that the NASA and its partners must retire the ISS as soon as possible as the space station is costing whopping $3.5 billion a year which is not affordable.

"We must retire the ISS as soon as possible. We simply cannot afford $3.5 billion a year of that cost," the former Apollo 11 moonwalker said. He expressed his views during a presentation at the 2017 Humans to Mars conference in Washington, D.C.



Aldrin said NASA should continue to involve private industry partners for activities in low Earth orbit (LEO). NASA has been encouraging this move as it continues to give contracts to companies such as SpaceX, Orbital ATK and Boeing to ferry cargo and crew to and from the ISS.



He said that the other companies such as Bigelow Aerospace, Axiom Space should build and operate LEO space stations that are independent of the ISS.



Aldrin said that ideally the first of these commercial outposts would share key orbital parameters with the station China plans to have operational in early 2020s to encourage cooperation with the Chinese.



According to Aldrins plan for colonisation on Mars, establishment of private outposts in LEO will be just the first step. It heavily depends on on "cyclers", spacecraft that continuously moves between two cosmic destinations, efficiently delivering people and cargo back and forth.



"The foundation of human transportation is the cycler," the 87-year-old former astronaut said. "Very rugged, so it'll last 30 years or so; no external moving parts."



He said that in the second step, the international spaceflight community will come together to develop cyclers that ply cislunar space, taking people on trips to the moon and back. Such spacecraft and the activities they kick off would help in the construction of a crewed lunar base, where humans could learn and test the techniques that are required for Mars colonisation, such as how to manufacture propellant from local resources, Aldrin said.



Earth-Mars cyclers would be the next, which Aldrin described as "an evolutionary development" of the prior cyclers.

ALSO READ | Martian soil turned into bricks stronger than steel-reinforced concrete



According to Adrins vision, these various cycler iterations enable a crewed mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2020 and a Venus flyby by 2024. The first future Mars settlers could launch in the early 2030s if all goes well, he said.



if Aldrin's vision comes to pass, they will be settlers, not just visitors. "Let's be certain that we've developed a sustainable plan to stay on Mars," he said. "No flags and footprints this time."

ALSO READ | NASA's preparations for human Mars mission 2030 includes year-long manned mission to Moon in 2027

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Washington:

Blaming Pakistan for not doing adequate to stop high profile terrorist attacks, the Trump administration on Thursday warned that Indo-Pak relations might worsen further if another such attack takes place in future.

While informing lawmakers during congressional hearing, Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, said, Islamabads failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhis growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistans investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan, Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting Indias pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

Easing of heightened Indo-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation,? Coats said.

Last year, heavily-armed terrorists sneaked in from across the border and attacked the Pathankot Air Force Station in Punjab. The attack had claimed the lives of seven security personnel while four terrorists were killed.

Also Read: Virginia Senator Tim Kaine attacks Donald Trump, claims his Indian investments can negatively affect Indo Pak relations

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against Indias rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

?Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean,? said the top US intelligence official.

In his remarks ahead of the possible release of the Afghanistan policy of the Trump Administration, he said Pakistani-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to the US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

Also Read: Lawsuit filed against US Airlines for calling Pakistan-origin flight attendant terrorist

The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups,? he told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
A booklet explaining keywords of the Belt and Road Initiative was released in 14 languages on May 5, a week ahead of the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.

Titled Keywords to Understand China: The Belt and Road Initiative, the booklet includes 59 entries, covering important concepts of the initiative's building blocks, cooperative mechanism and pilot projects.

The entries explain such questions as wu tong, or five approaches of the initiative; what the spirit of the Silk Road comprises; and how the countries along the Belt and Road are a community of shared interest, shared responsibility and a shared future.

"We want to answer such complex questions in a simple way," says Sun Jingxin, one of the Chinese editors of the book.

There are around 400 published books that touch on the topic, but only three use the question-and-answer format to explain the key concepts of the initiative, according to Sun.

"And this is the only one that targets the overseas audience," he adds.

All the Chinese expressions in the book come from official documents.

Every word and sentence have gone through many revisions, says Xu Mingqiang, one of the translators of the booklet's English version. "The aim is simple - to let foreigners understand the initiative without misunderstanding."

Xu also participated in the translation of the book Xi Jinping: The Governance of China in 2015.

The booklet has 14 editions in different languages, including Arabic, English, French and Spanish. It is a featured supplement of a multilingual series Keywords to Understand China, which offers introductions on China's politics, economy, culture and society in similar format.

Sun Haiyan, director of the information center at the international department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, says that besides scholars who study Chinese politics, more businesspeople and youngsters are watching China closely, and they want to learn about the country quickly.

"What's happening in China? What all new concepts and new theories are about? How to interpret them?" she says. "The series is an authoritative source for such information."

The series was translated and published through joint efforts by the China International Publishing Group, the China Academy of Translation and the Translators Association of China in August.

The Arabic, Korean, Russian and Turkish copyrights for the Belt and Road supplement were sold to international publishers at the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair earlier this month, according to Wang Gangyi, deputy director of the China International Publishing Group.

xingyi@chinadaily.com.cn

Keywords to Understand China informs foreigners about the different aspects of the Belt and Road Initiative.

(China Daily 05/12/2017 page19)
Romano Prodi, a former two-time prime minister of Italy, said the Belt and Road Initiative will change the lives of half the global population in the coming decades.

He urged global leaders to grasp the opportunities the initiative will offer when they meet at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing at the weekend.

Romano Prodi delivers a lecture at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai.Jin Rong / For China Daily

"This is a very important meeting, which will signal a green light from Beijing that the countries that have agreed to participate in the initiative can get down to business," he said, speaking in an exclusive interview with China Daily in Rome.

Up to 30 world leaders will attend the forum to discuss the development of the initiative, which Prodi called "a century-long project" that will improve connectivity between Asia, Europe and Africa.

Prodi, who was president of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, said the thing that has impressed him most is that the initiative will change the lives and fates of people in less-developed countries, especially in Asia.

He said the first and most visible consequence of implementing the initiative will be that many countries in Central Asia will cooperate with China in infrastructure development.

"This will not just be about constructing roads and railways, but also about changing the daily lives of people in those countries. I expect this to be a new page for those countries," he said.

Now, after three years of publicity and promotion, European countries are "competing to seek synergies" with the Belt and Road Initiative, according to Prodi.

Nevertheless, he warned against complacency: "This will be a difficult project, which will last many, many decades. The most important thing is to gain greater political will, endorsement and support from countries along the routes."

Progress and confidence

However, he is confident that progress will be made, because the initiative has been widely accepted in recent years as a result of promotion by the Chinese government, businesspeople and think tanks.

"After three years of preparation, the Beijing forum will be seen as a green light for larger-scale cooperation," said the 77-year-old, who has played his own part in promoting the initiative.

Prodi, who lectures at the University of Tianjin and at Peking University in Beijing, regularly shuttles between China and Italy. After returning to Italy after a week teaching in Beijing, he met with Paolo Gentiloni before the Italian prime minister headed to China to attend the forum.

Although he declined to reveal details of their discussion, the former politician said Gentiloni, who was communications minister in Prodi's cabinet from 2006 to 2008, is a firm supporter of the Belt and Road Initiative.

When President Xi Jinping visited Central and Southeast Asia in September and October 2013, he raised the idea of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, known together as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Prodi said the project is a combination of vision and implementation by land and by sea: "As a European and an Italian, I would say the bulk of goods will still flow via sea routes, and the role of the Mediterranean region is vital in implementing the initiative."

He added that the initiative originated from the concept of the ancient Silk Road, whose European terminus was Italy, while the famous traveler Marco Polo, who brought China to Europe more than 700 years ago, came from Venice.

"So, I propose the next summit should be organized in Venice, which has a symbolic meaning in that President Xi's initiative links the past with the future," he said.


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Chinese customers use the Alipay platform to purchase goods at a store in Rome.Photo By 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.

Italy was the European terminus of the old Silk Road, and therefore a meeting point for China and Europe.

Now, in seeking synergies with the Belt and Road Initiative, which many Europeans are calling the "new Silk Road", the country is determined to seize the opportunity to revive its economy.

Sergio Mattarella, Italy's president, has pledged that his country will actively promote and develop the initiative.

During a six-day visit to China in February, Mattarella said that given Italy's geopolitical advantages in connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, the two countries can "write a new chapter in history" by implementing the initiative.

Paolo Gentiloni, Italy's prime minister, will join about 30 national leaders at the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing at the weekend.

Gentiloni is familiar with China after meetings with Chinese counterparts when he was foreign minister in Matteo Renzi's cabinet from 2014 until December. He was also minister for communications when Romano Prodi served his second term as prime minister from 2006 to 2008.

Development strategies

Last year, Gentiloni, then foreign minister, agreed with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that both sides should promote three major strategies: Exploring the synergies between the Belt and Road Initiative and Italy's development strategy; the links between Made in China 2025 and Italy's Industry 4.0 program; and the relationship between China's Internet Plus strategy and Italy's technological innovation plan.

"The Italian side earnestly expects to be considered a key cooperative partner by China in jointly building the Belt and Road, and hopes that more Italian businesses will participate in the initiative," Gentiloni said, in an official statement.

In November, when President Xi Jinping made a technical stopover on the Italian island of Sardinia en route to South America, he met with Renzi, who promised that Italy will actively participate in the development of the initiative.

"Italy's leaders have shown a strong desire for cooperation. President Mattarella has demonstrated full confidence in the initiative, and Prime Minister Gentiloni has also expressed his strong support on many occasions," said Li Ruiyu, China's ambassador to Italy.

Mutual benefits

Italian businesses have also shown strong interest in exploring the mutual benefits that will accrue from embracing the initiative.

"I have attended many themed promotional activities organized by the Italians to push economic and trade cooperation to a new high," Li said.

Trade between China and Italy was $43 billion last year, while China has invested more than $12 billion in Italy.

"Chinese companies have participated in some heavyweight projects in Italy," he said, adding that China and Italy will soon renew the action plan for cooperation, which expired at the end of last year.

Luigi Gambardella, president of ChinaEU, a business-led international association in Brussels, said the two countries can explore third-party cooperation in the fifth-generation era by improving the digital and telecommunications infrastructure along Belt and Road routes.

One of the main Chinese investors in Italy is ZTE, the telecommunications giant, which last year won a $1 billion contract to upgrade Italy's telecommunications infrastructure.

Hu Kun, ZTE's head of operations in Western Europe, said the company will upgrade Italy's telecommunications infrastructure in preparation for the 5G era: "When the project is finished, Italy will be the European frontrunner in terms of telecommunications infrastructure."

He added that the project will create about 2,500 new jobs in Italy in the next two and a half years, and ZTE will expand its "smart city" business and research facilities in the country.

John Hooper, correspondent for the Economist magazine in London, is a close observer of the benefits Italy could gain from the dynamics of Asia, especially China's development.

He said Italy is traditionally an exporting country and its economy can easily be influenced by external factors, so economic reform will be needed to further unlock its potential: "The country needs outside demand to develop its economy, especially from China," he said.

"However, Italy is still a country dominated by family-owned businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises, which makes it difficult to engage with China's demands and penetrate the Chinese market," he added.

"What I suggest is letting Italian SMEs form alliances region by region to engage Chinese customers and boost their presence in the huge market."

Wang Keju, Zheng Jinqiang and Zhang Zhaoqing contributed to the story.

Contact the writer at fujing@chinadaily.com.cn
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Sorrow and demands at rally for teen shot by police

BRIDGEPORT  There was a brief pursuit, but no high-speed chase.

Police and the suspect in a stolen car had traveled less than a block before the teenage driver was shot dead by police.

James Boulay, 30, who was sworn in as a police officer in the city in September after serving in the military, has been identified as the officer who fatally shot 15-year-old Jayson Negron Tuesday night. He is on administrative leave pending the results of an investigation of the shooting by State Police.

He is devastated, Police Chief Armando Perez said. Boulay had no record of discipline in the department, he said.

Hes a solid, straight-up officer, said Charles Paris, president of the police union.

Meanwhile, an autopsy shows that Negron, died from gunshot wounds to the chest, not the head, as was first reported.

Negron, was shot by Boulay after the 15-year-old struck the officer with a stolen car, police said. He died as a result of gunshot wounds to the torso and upper extremities with injury of the lungs, pulmonary trunk and right pulmonary artery, according to the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner. The death was listed as a homicide.

Tuesday nights shooting began as an attempt by officers to stop a stolen car on Park Avenue.

Negrons passenger, 21-year-old Julian Fyffe, was shot in the shoulder and is expected to make a full recovery at Bridgeport Hospital. Neither he nor Negron had a weapon.

Perez said there were no dash cameras in the police cars at the scene and the officers were not wearing body cameras.

We just dont have the money for them, Perez said.

In addition to examining the stolen car, state police are questioning witnesses and reviewing video from cameras in the area, police sources said.

The investigation is expected to take several months to determine whether Boulays actions violated any state law.

Perez said the citys Office of Internal Affairs is doing its own investigation of the shooting to determine if Boulay violated any police department policies.

Merle Berke-Schlessel, president and chief executive officer of the United Way of Coastal Fairfield County, was one of the representatives from several groups who announced Thursday they are beginning regular meetings to address issue confronting Bridgeports minority youths as well as their relationship with police.

People dont fall through the cracks; dirt falls through cracks, Berke-Schlessel said. People are neglected. We all failed. We all must fix this.

This is the first time a coalition of groups will be working on a set of objectives and goals, said George Mintz, president of the Greater Bridgeport NAACP. How we will facilitate change remains to be seen.

Mintz said one of the major concerns is how long Negrons body remained uncovered on Fairfield Avenue following the shooting.

We hope to have a discussion and introduce legislation that will ensure no family has to experience that again, Mintz said.

Meanwhile, Superintendent of Schools Aresta Johnson said counseling teams were sent to Fairchild Wheeler and the Bridgeport Military Academy to assist students who are having difficulty dealing with Negrons death.

She and Sauda Baraka, the Board of Educations vice president are working on a Boys of Color Forum, which they are planning for June 14.

Following the announcement on the steps of the Margaret Morton Government Center, the groups which also included the citys Initiative for Reentry Affairs, Safe Streets and Save Our Babies, adjourned to the Mount Aery Baptist Church.

Mintz said representatives of the NAACP, You Are Not Alone and CARE have been meeting regularly with Perez.
Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticut Media

Seniors living in Redding will be able have smoke alarms installed for free under a partnership with Redding and the Connecticut American Red Cross.

The program is part of the Red Cross Home Fire Campaign, which is aimed to reduce the number of deaths and injuries from home fires.
MONTREAL, May 11, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ -

Results

For the quarter ended March 31st, 2017, the Company's revenues increased by $7,055,000 to $161,998,000, compared to $154,943,000 recorded in the corresponding 2016 period, a 4.6% increase. Same store revenues grew by 4.1% during the same period. Net earnings for the quarter ended March 31st, 2017, amounted to $57,000 compared to a net loss of ($958,000) for the corresponding 2016 period. Basic net earnings per share amounted to $0.00 compared to a net loss of ($0.02) in 2016.

The effect of the cost of options had no impact on basic net earnings per share for the quarter ended March 31st, 2017 and 2016.

For quarter ended March 31st, 2017, the share repurchase program contributed to an increase in basic net earnings per share of $0.01.

Excluding all these effects, the variation to the adjusted net earnings would have been $945,000 or $0.03 per basic share for the quarter ended March 31st, 2017.

The $945,000 variation in adjusted net earnings for the first quarter of 2017 is as follows:





(Unaudited and $ in thousands)













2017

2016









Net (loss) earnings

57

(958) Variation of cost of options (after-tax)

(30)

40 Adjusted net (loss) earnings

27

(918) Minus: Adjusted net loss for 2016

(918)













Variation

945





This variation in adjusted after-tax income is allocated throughout the quarters as follows:





(Unaudited and $ in thousands)

















Increase

Increase

Increase



(decrease)

(decrease)

(decrease)



retail operating

investment

adjusted



earnings

income

operating earnings













1st quarter 2017

(1 506)

2 451

945

Annual Financial Information

($ in thousands, except for per share amounts)

2016

2015

$

$ Revenue 746 649

717 338 Net Earnings 43 830

41 528 Total Assets 309 483

274 022 Net Earnings Per Share







Basic 1,17

0,99

Diluted 1,17

0,99 Dividends Per Share 0,24

0,24

Financial Position and Dividends

Cash and investments increased by $702,000 during the quarter ended March 31st, 2017. Investments consist primarily of bank notes and common shares, which at the close of the quarter had a market value of $85,619,000 (including cash).

As of March 31st, 2017, the working capital showed a surplus of $12,212,000 a decrease of $1,524,000 compared to December 31st, 2016. The Company's shareholders' equity decreased from $199,681,000 as at December 31st, 2016 to $198,685,000 as at March 31st, 2017. As of March 31st, 2017, the book value per share stood at $5.40, compared to $5.42 as at December 31st, 2016.

Pursuant to the normal course issuer bid put in place on March 14th, 2016, and renewed on March 23rd 2017, accordingly, 82,600 Common Shares were repurchased and cancelled by the Company. As a result of this change, the Company had as of March 31st, 2017, 36,777,400 Common Shares issued and outstanding.

During the quarter ended March 31st, 2017, no options were granted or exercises. As at March 31st, 2017, options for 219,000 Common Shares, representing 0.60% of the Company's outstanding shares remain issued and 5,710,864 authorized share options, representing approximately 15.53% of the Company's outstanding shares, may still be granted pursuant to the Plan. The issued and outstanding options may be exercised at a price of $17.85 per Common Shares.

Quarterly Results

(Unaudited and $ in thousands, except for per share amounts)



March 31st

June 30th

2017

2016

2016

2015

$

$

$

$ Revenue 161 998

154 943

197 043

188 373 Net (Loss) Earnings 57

(958)

12 407

12 196 Net (Loss) Earnings Per Share













Basic -

(0,02)

0,32

0,27

Diluted -

(0,02)

0,32

0,27

















































September 30th

December 31st

2016

2015

2016

2015

$

$

$

$ Revenue 197 612

189 385

197 051

190 300 Net Earnings 14 708

13 037

17 673

16 236 Net Earnings Per Share















Basic 0,31

0,31

0,41

0,41

Diluted 0,31

0,31

0,41

0,41

Operations

BMTC Inc.

The Company has started the restructuration of all of its websites. The first phase of the implementation of a distinct e-commerce platform for its banner Brault & Martineau is now completed and operational since November, 2015. The process of implementation will continue throughout 2017 and 2018 for the following phases as well as the restructuring for all the other banners of the Company. The Company is also reviewing its IT systems in order standardise them throughout the banners, as well as to allow them to be more aligned with our e-commerce strategies. Following this evaluation, the Corporation decided to invest and to modify its existing IT systems, the integration and implementation will continue for a 3 to 5 year period. As at September 30th, 2016, the Company had to re-evaluate its costs related to these modifications, which are now estimated to be $17,000,000. A portion of these costs, $6,500,000 were incurred during 2015 and 2016 and the balance will be recorded in the subsequent years.

Brault & Martineau Division

The Company concluded the purchase of land at the junction of the Highway 15 and route 117, for the construction of the new 80,000 square foot Brault & Martineau prototype store that will replace the Ste-Therese store and set the standard for all remaining stores. The construction of the new Ste-Therese store will begin in the spring of 2017.

Caution regarding forward-looking statements

This Quarterly Management Report contains certain forward-looking statements with respect to the Company. These forward-looking statements are identified by the use of terms and phrases such as "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", expect", "intend", "may", "plan", "predict", "project", "will", "would", as well as the negative of these terms and similar terminology, including references to assumptions.

Forward-looking statements, by their nature, necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Results indicated in forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results for a number of reasons which the Company has identified in the 2015 Annual Information Form under "Narrative Description of the Business - Risk Factors", and other risks detailed from time to time in the Company's continuous disclosure documents.

The reader is cautioned that the factors we refer above are not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of the Company's forward-looking statements. The reader is also cautioned to consider these and other factors carefully and not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

The Company made a number of assumptions in making forward-looking statements in this Quarterly Management Report. The Company considers the assumptions on which these forward-looking statements are based to be reasonable.

These statements reflect current expectations regarding future events and operating performance and speak only as of the date of release of this Quarterly Management Report, and represent the Company's expectations as of that date. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, other than as required by law.

Non International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) financial measures

The Company discloses adjusted net earnings, which includes or excludes certain amounts that are not considered representative of performance measures and financial recurrence of the Company. Management believes that this measure is useful in understanding and analysing the operational performance of the Company and more appropriate to provide additional information.

The Company also discloses same store revenues, which have been realised in stores opened for more than a 12 month period. This measure is used by management and is a similar measures presented by other issuers in our industry.

Adjusted net earnings, adjusted operating earnings, adjusted administrative expenses as well as same store revenues are not an earnings measure recognised by IFRS and does not have a standardised meaning prescribed by IFRS. Therefore, adjusted net earnings and same store revenues as discussed in this MD&A may not be compared to similar measures presented by other issuers. This measure of performance should not be considered as an alternative as an indicator of performance calculated according to IFRS, but rather as additional information.

The Company discloses in this MD&A under the section "Results" a reconciliation between net earnings and adjusted net earnings.

BMTC Group Inc.'s Common Shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and through its subsidiary Ameublements Tanguay Inc., and its two divisions, Brault & Martineau and EconoMax, the Company is a major retailer of furniture, electronic goods and household appliances operating in the province of Quebec.

SOURCE BMTC Group Inc.

For further information: Mr. Yves Des Groseillers, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, BMTC Group Inc., (514) 648-5757

Related Links

www.braultetmartineau.com


(TSX:BUI)

WINNIPEG, May 12, 2017 /CNW/ -

Sales

Revenue for the quarter was $79.5 million, down $1.5 million from the prior year second quarter. Revenue for the first six months of 2017 was $126.7 million, up $9.4 million from 2016. Weak commodity prices continue to contribute to reduced sales levels for the Company. Orders in North America have returned to near historical levels, with the Company seeing an increase in sales to the United States. Sales to Eastern Europe have remained steady.

2nd quarter ending March 31, 2017



Year Ago

6 months ending March 31, 2017

Year Ago Revenue (millions)

$79.5

$81.0

Revenues (millions) $126.7 $117.3 Net profit (millions)

($0.3)

$1.5

Net profit (millions) ($2.7) ($7.2) Net profit/share

($0.01)

$0.06

Net profit/share ($0.11) ($0.29) Shares issued (millions)

25.0

25.0

Shares Issued (millions) 25.0 25.0

Net Earnings

Net loss of ($0.3) million was down from earnings of $1.5 million for the second quarter of 2016. For the year to date, the net loss was ($2.7) million, an improvement from the loss of ($7.2) million in the prior year. In the current year improved margin was offset by the reduced gains on sale that occurred in the prior year.

Looking Forward

Sales for 2017 are expected to be up slightly over 2016 sales. While demand for agricultural equipment continues to be slow resulting from lower commodity prices, the Company has experienced higher levels of demand for equipment in 2017 compared to 2016. Dealer inventory levels for high horsepower tractors are down in the United States from last year which will create opportunities when demand for new equipment increases. The Company continues to pursue increases in market share of agricultural equipment. Profitability from operations is expected to increase during the year resulting from actions taken by the Company to reduce cost. Margin levels are still expected to be weak due to competition for equipment sales and the weaker Canadian dollar that continues to have a significant negative impact on the Company with parts purchased in US dollars.

Complete financial statement: http://www.buhlerindustries.com/investors/reports/buhler-2017-q2.pdf

Trading symbol: BUI

SOURCE Buhler Industries Inc.

For further information: Willy Janzen, Chief Financial Officer, Phone: (204) 654-5718, E-mail: [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.buhler.com


TORONTO, May 11, 2017 /CNW/ - DH Corporation (TSX:DH) ("D+H" or the "Company"), a leading provider of technology solutions to domestic and global financial institutions, reported its financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

First Quarter 2017 Highlights:

Revenues decreased 3.5% in the first quarter to $397.9 million from $412.1 million in the same quarter in the prior year. Revenues decreased primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rate changes and lower revenues in both our Financial Solutions ("FS") and Global Payments Solutions ("GPS") segments. These decreases were partially offset by higher revenues in our Global Lending Solutions segment ("GLS").





from in the same quarter in the prior year. Revenues decreased primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rate changes and lower revenues in both our Financial Solutions ("FS") and Global Payments Solutions ("GPS") segments. These decreases were partially offset by higher revenues in our Global Lending Solutions segment ("GLS"). Adjusted revenues (1) in the first quarter decreased 3.8% to $398.5 million from $414.2 million in the prior year period. By segment, Adjusted revenues decreased 7.8%, to $76.0 million for GPS; increased 0.9%, to $166.9 million for GLS (U.S. lending solutions declined 1.9% while Canada lending solutions increased 3.3%), and; decreased 6.5%, to $155.6 million in FS.





in the first quarter decreased 3.8% to from in the prior year period. By segment, Adjusted revenues decreased 7.8%, to for GPS; increased 0.9%, to for GLS (U.S. lending solutions declined 1.9% while lending solutions increased 3.3%), and; decreased 6.5%, to in FS. Income from operating activities before depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA") (1) in the first quarter decreased 10.5%, to $82.6 million from $92.2 million in the prior year period. The decrease in EBITDA was primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rates, lower revenues in FS (including a decrease in Canadian payments products/solutions as a result of volume declines in our retail solutions business), and lower revenues in GPS. Lower revenues were partially offset by lower expenses in the quarter.





in the first quarter decreased 10.5%, to from in the prior year period. The decrease in EBITDA was primarily due to the impact of foreign exchange rates, lower revenues in FS (including a decrease in Canadian payments products/solutions as a result of volume declines in our retail solutions business), and lower revenues in GPS. Lower revenues were partially offset by lower expenses in the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA (1) in the first quarter decreased 4.8% to $98.1 million (24.6% margin), from $103.0 million (24.9% margin) in the same prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA removes the impacts of acquisition-related and restructuring-related expenses, costs related to our global operations realignment, other costs, and costs related to the Proposed Transaction (see below). The decrease in Adjusted EBITDA margin primarily reflects the decline in Adjusted revenues and a change in our product mix.





in the first quarter decreased 4.8% to (24.6% margin), from (24.9% margin) in the same prior year period. Adjusted EBITDA removes the impacts of acquisition-related and restructuring-related expenses, costs related to our global operations realignment, other costs, and costs related to the Proposed Transaction (see below). The decrease in Adjusted EBITDA margin primarily reflects the decline in Adjusted revenues and a change in our product mix. Consolidated net loss of $2.7 million (loss of $0.03 per share, diluted) in the first quarter decreased from net income of $4.8 million ( $0.04 per share, diluted) in the prior year period, primarily due to a decrease in EBITDA and a decrease in income tax recovery from the prior quarter. These decreases were partially offset by a decrease in amortization expense and finance expense.





(loss of per share, diluted) in the first quarter decreased from net income of ( per share, diluted) in the prior year period, primarily due to a decrease in EBITDA and a decrease in income tax recovery from the prior quarter. These decreases were partially offset by a decrease in amortization expense and finance expense. Adjusted net income (1) decreased to $45.1 million in the first quarter from $45.4 million in the same period in the prior year.





decreased to in the first quarter from in the same period in the prior year. Adjusted net income per share, diluted (1) was $0.42 in the first quarter compared to $0.43 in the same period in the prior year.





was in the first quarter compared to in the same period in the prior year. Net cash from operating activities increased by 24.3% in the first quarter, to $68.1 million from $54.8 million in the same period in prior year. Adjusted net cash from operating activities (1) increased by 23.3% in the first quarter, to $82.9 million from $67.2 million in the same prior year period.





from in the same period in prior year. Adjusted net cash from operating activities increased by 23.3% in the first quarter, to from in the same prior year period. Loans, borrowings and convertible debentures totalled $1.8 billion at March 31, 2017 compared to $1.9 billion at December 31, 2016 . The Company repaid $9.4 million of debt during the first quarter of 2017.





at compared to at . The Company repaid of debt during the first quarter of 2017. The Total Net Funded Debt to EBITDA(1) ratio was 3.257x at March 31, 2017 , compared to 3.276x at December 31, 2016 .

Gerrard Schmid, Chief Executive Officer of DH Corporation said, "Our results were consistent with our planning assumptions for the quarter and reflect continued strength in our Lending business offset by weaker results in our Financial solutions. Global payments performed in line with expectations and we continue to see strong sales momentum pointing toward a strengthening environment."

He went on to add, "Overall, we performed better than the headline results would suggest, as more than half of the decrease in revenues was attributable to unfavorable changes of foreign exchange rates. Furthermore, we achieved these results while supporting the strategic review process initiated by the Board in December which required a significant amount of attention from several key individuals of our organization. In this context, I am particularly pleased with our results and the efforts of all our D+H employees."

First Quarter 2017 Results

The selected financial information included in this press release is qualified in its entirety by and should be read together with the unaudited condensed interim consolidated financial statements and the Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") for the three months ended March 31, 2017, which can be found at dh.com and in the disclosure documents filed by the Company with the securities regulatory authorities at sedar.com.

Selected Consolidated Financial Information 2 Three months ended March 31 (C$ millions unless otherwise indicated, unaudited)

2017

2016 Revenues







Revenues $ 397.9 $ 412.1

Add: Acquisition accounting adjustments 0.6

2.0 Adjusted revenues1 $ 398.5 $ 414.2 EBITDA1







EBITDA1 $ 82.6 $ 92.2

Add: Acquisition accounting adjustments (0.7)

(0.6)

Add: Acquisition-related and other charges 0.3

5.7

Add: Realignment of global operations and related restructuring expenses 2.8

6.8

Add: Costs related to Proposed Transaction 11.7



Add: Foreign exchange loss (gain) 1.4

(1.2) Adjusted EBITDA1 $ 98.1 $ 103.0 Adjusted EBITDA margin1

24.6%

24.9% Net (loss) income







Net (loss) income $ (2.7) $ 4.8

Add: Non-cash items 56.0

56.7

Add: Acquisition-related and other charges 0.3

5.7



Add: Realignment of global operations and related restructuring

expenses, including depreciation and amortization 2.8

6.8

Add: Costs related to Proposed Transaction 11.7



Add: Tax effect of above adjustments (23.0)

(28.5) Adjusted net income1 $ 45.1 $ 45.4 Net (loss) income per share, diluted (C$) $ (0.03) $ 0.04 Adjusted net income per share, diluted1 (C$) $ 0.42 $ 0.43 Liquidity







Net cash from operating activities $ 68.1 $ 54.8

Add: Acquisition-related and other charges 0.3

5.7

Add: Realignment of global operations and related restructuring expenses 2.8

6.8

Add: Costs related to Proposed Transaction 11.7

 Adjusted net cash from operating activities1 $ 82.9 $ 67.2 Uses of Adjusted net cash from operating activities1:





Capital expenditures (26.6)

(21.0)

Cash Dividends (12.8)

(24.8) Adjusted net cash from operating activities after capital expenditures and

cash dividends1 $ 43.4 $ 21.5

Net debt repayment (9.4)

(20.0) Adjusted net cash from (used in) operating activities after capital expenditures,

cash dividends and net debt repayment1 $ 34.0 $ 1.5

Adjusted revenue by type for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016.

Adjusted revenues by type 1, 2

















(In millions of dollars, unless otherwise noted) Three months ended March 31



2017



2016

$ Change % Change SaaS $ 101.9 25% $ 103.8 25% $ (1.9) (1.8)% License (Perpetual and Term) 36.7 8%

37.0 9%

(0.3) (0.8)% Maintenance 57.8 15%

60.7 15%

(2.9) (4.8)% Professional Services 39.5 10%

47.5 11%

(8.0) (16.9)% Transaction Processing Services 81.9 21%

78.3 19%

3.6 4.5% Canadian Payments Products/Solutions 74.3 19%

79.6 19%

(5.3) (6.6)% Other 3 6.3 2%

7.2 2%

(0.9) (12.4)% Total $ 398.5 100% $ 414.2 100% $ (15.7) (3.8)%

1. Non-IFRS measure: see Non-IFRS financial measures and key performance indicators in Section 10.1 for additional information and reconciliation to IFRS measures. 2. The definitions of these revenue types can be found in Section 10.1. 3. Other includes termination fee revenue, delivery income and hardware sales

Resegmentation of the operating segments

Commencing in the first quarter of 2017, the strategic infrastructure and operations of D+H that have historically been aligned with the business segments have been reorganized into three new strategic business units to drive global scale and operating effectiveness. The three strategic business segments are: GPS, GLS and Financial Solutions. In addition, the Company now has a Corporate segment which consists of the corporate overhead costs that are not allocated to operating segments. Further information regarding the resegmentation of business segments is provided in section 2 of the MD&A for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

Results by segment for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016.

(In millions of dollars, unless otherwise noted) Three months ended March 31, 2017













Global Payment

Solutions Global Lending

Solutions Financial

Solutions Corporate Consolidated Revenues $ 76.0 $ 166.5 $ 155.4 $  $ 397.9 Expenses

64.7

108.2

116.3

26.0

315.2 EBITDA 1 $ 11.2 $ 58.2 $ 39.1 $ (26.0) $ 82.6 EBITDA margin 1

14.8%

35.0%

25.2%



20.7%





















Adjusted revenues 1 $ 76.0 $ 166.9 $ 155.6 $  $ 398.5 Adjusted expenses 1 $ 63.8 $ 107.8 $ 116.6 $ 12.2 $ 300.4 Adjusted EBITDA 1 $ 12.2 $ 59.1 $ 39.0 $ (12.2) $ 98.1 Adjusted EBITDA margin 1

16.0%

35.4%

25.1%



24.6%











(In millions of dollars, unless otherwise noted) Three months ended March 31, 2016













Global Payment

Solutions Global Lending

Solutions Financial

Solutions Corporate Consolidated Revenues $ 81.3 $ 164.6 $ 166.2 $  $ 412.1 Expenses

66.9

110.3

123.8

18.9

319.9 EBITDA 1 $ 14.4 $ 54.4 $ 42.4 $ (18.9) $ 92.2 EBITDA margin 1

17.7%

33.0%

25.5%



22.4%





















Adjusted revenues 1 $ 82.4 $ 165.4 $ 166.4 $  $ 414.2 Adjusted expenses 1 $ 62.6 $ 108.7 $ 123.3 $ 16.6 $ 311.2 Adjusted EBITDA 1 $ 19.7 $ 56.7 $ 43.2 $ (16.6) $ 103.0 Adjusted EBITDA margin 1

24.0%

34.3%

25.9%



24.9%

1. Non-IFRS measure. See the "Use of Non-IFRS Financial Information" section of this press release for further details. 2. Totals may not add due to rounding.

Definitive Agreement (Proposed Transaction) to be Acquired by Vista Equity Partners

On March 13, 2017, D+H and Vista Equity Partners ("Vista") announced that they had entered into a definitive arrangement agreement under which Vista will acquire all of the outstanding shares of D+H for $25.50 per share in cash including the assumption, repayment or redemption of all debt obligations, including the issued convertible debentures, for a total enterprise value of approximately $4.8 billion.

In the joint announcement with D+H, Vista announced that it intends to combine D+H with another of its portfolio companies, United Kingdom-based, Misys, a leading global software provider for retail and corporate banking, lending, treasury and capital markets, investment management and enterprise risk.

Proposed Transaction Update

The completion of the Proposed Transaction is subject to court approval and the approval of D+H's shareholders by more than 66 2/3% of the votes cast by the shareholders present in person or by proxy at the special meeting of shareholders to be held on May 16, 2017. The Proposed Transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including receipt of all regulatory approvals.

The board of directors along with two leading independent proxy research and advisory firms, Institutional Shareholder Services, Inc. and Glass, Lewis & Co., both of whom have published reports, recommend that D+H shareholders vote for the Proposed Transaction.

Regulatory approval status as of May 11, 2017 is as follows: An affiliate of Vista Equity Partners (the "Purchaser") has received a no-action letter from the Competition Bureau of Canada in respect of the proposed arrangement (the "Arrangement") and that the applicable waiting periods under the Competition Act (Canada) have expired. In addition, the waiting period applicable to the completion of the Arrangement under the United States Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976 has expired.

Closing of the transaction remains subject to certain customary closing conditions including court approval, shareholder approval and the receipt of the remaining required regulatory approvals including approval under the Investment Canada Act. Assuming the satisfaction of these closing conditions, the transaction is expected to close late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 2017.

In the event the Proposed Transaction does not proceed we will reevaluate the business opportunities and strategies outlined in prior quarters.

Dividend

DH also announced today a cash dividend of $0.12 cents per share, payable on June 30, 2017, to shareholders of record on June 16, 2017. The Proposed Transaction may close prior to the record date on June 16, 2017; as a result, there is no guarantee that public shareholders will receive this dividend.

Termination of Consent Order

Effective May 10, 2017, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) terminated the Consent Order entered into with two of D+H's subsidiaries, specifically Fundtech Corporation and BServ, Inc. ("Fundtech"), which D+H acquired as part of the acquisition of Fundtech in early 2015. Since the acquisition, D+H has made investments and improved practices in risk management in those businesses in order to meet the requirements of the Consent Order.

Outlook

Refer to section 3 of the MD&A for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST

Teleconference:

A conference call to review these financial results, including a presentation, will take place at 8:30 a.m. (EDT) on Friday, May 12, 2017 hosted by Chief Executive Officer Gerrard Schmid and Chief Financial Officer Karen H. Weaver. To access the call, please dial 647-427-7450 (Local/Int'l) or 1-888-231-8191 (toll-free within North America). A replay of the call will also be available until May 19, 2017 by dialing 416-849-0833 (Local/Int'l) or 1-855-859-2056 (toll-free within North America), with Encore Password 5556974.

Webcast:

The conference call will also be webcast at http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1405393&s=1&k=9C73058FC73F1CD6D74DB42A4E385AA9 and will be archived for 90 days after the call. The link to the webcast and an accompanying slide presentation will be posted in the Investors section of the D+H website under Events and Presentations at http://www.dh.com/investors/investor-events.

ABOUT D+H

D+H (TSX: DH) is a leading financial technology provider that the world's financial institutions rely on every day to help them grow and succeed. Our global payments, lending and financial solutions are trusted by nearly 8,000 banks, specialty lenders, community banks, credit unions, governments and corporations. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, D+H has more than 5,500 employees worldwide who are passionate about partnering with clients to create forward-thinking solutions that fit their needs. With annual revenues in excess of $1.5 billion, D+H is recognized as one of the world's top FinTech companies on IDC Financial Insights FinTech Rankings and American Banker's FinTech Forward rankings. For more information, visit dh.com

USE OF NON-IFRS FINANCIAL INFORMATION

D+H's financial results are prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"). D+H reports several non-IFRS financial measures, including "Adjusted revenues", "Bookings", "Adjusted expenses", "Constant Currency", "EBITDA", "EBITDA margin" (EBITDA divided by revenues), "Adjusted EBITDA", "Adjusted EBITDA margin" (Adjusted EBITDA divided by Adjusted revenues), "Adjusted net income", "Adjusted net income per share (diluted)" and "Adjusted net cash from operating activities". D+H also reports "Debt to EBITDA ratio", which is also not a defined term under IFRS. See "Non-IFRS financial measures and key performance indicators" in D+H's MD&A for the three months ended March 31, 2017 for a more complete description of these terms and for reconciliations to their most directly comparable IFRS measure, where applicable. Any non-IFRS financial measures should be considered in context with the IFRS financial statement presentation and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for IFRS revenues, net income or cash flows. Furthermore, D+H's financial measures may be calculated differently from similarly titled financial measures of other companies.

CAUTION CONCERNING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains certain statements that constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws ("forward-looking statements"), including without limitations, the statements contained in section entitled "Objectives, strategy and outlook". Statements concerning D+H's objectives, goals, strategies, priorities, intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations and estimates, and the business, operations, financial performance and condition of D+H are forward-looking statements. The words "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "intend", "may", "will", "would", "could", "should", "continue", "goal", "objective", and similar expressions and the negative of such expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words.

Certain material factors and assumptions were applied in providing these forward-looking statements. Forward-looking information involves numerous assumptions including projections, completion of bookings, successful project implementation, operating expense levels, volumes and values for products and transaction processing services in the Canadian segment and implementation of our global operating realignment. Projections maybe impacted by macroeconomic factors, changes in the value of the Canadian and U.S. dollar relative to other currencies, the timing of client decisioning on technology investments, the pace of implementation of technology by the customer, in addition to other factors not controllable by the Company. D+H has also made certain macroeconomic and general industry assumptions in the preparation of such forward-looking statements. Management believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions; however, Management can give no assurance that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Not all factors which affect our forward-looking information are known, and actual results may vary from the projected results in a material respect, and may be above or below the forward-looking information presented in a material respect.

A comprehensive discussion of the risks that impact D+H can be found on the Company's most recently filed Annual Information Form and the most recently filed annual MD&A for the year ended December 31, 2016, available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

D+H does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements should the factors and assumptions related its plans, estimates, projections, beliefs and opinions, including those listed above, change except as required by applicable securities laws.

All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences to, or effects on, the Company.

REGULATORY FILINGS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

DH Corporation is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol DH. Further information can be found at dh.com and in the disclosure documents filed by DH Corporation with the securities regulatory authorities at sedar.com.

SOURCE DH Corporation

For further information: Anthony Gerstein, Head, Investor Relations, D+H, [email protected] or visit our website at dh.com

Related Links

www.dh.com


- Groups net income in the first quarter was COP 886 billion, which represents an increase of 144% versus the same quarter of 2016.

- The operational excellence of the quarter was reflected on an Ebitda of COP 5.8 trillion, the highest of the last two years, reaching an Ebitda margin of 43.5% and a solid cash position of COP 17. 5 trillion.

- The successful exploratory wells Gorgon-1 and Purple Angel -plus Kronos (2015)- in the Colombian Caribbean Offshore suggest the existence of a new gas province in that zone.

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 12, 2017 /CNW/ -- Ecopetrol S.A. (BVC: ECOPETROL; NYSE: EC) today announced the Business Group's financial results for the first quarter of 2017, prepared and presented in billions of Colombian pesos (COP) in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) applicable in Colombia.

Table 1: Consolidated Financial Results - Ecopetrol Business Group

A

B C D E















COP Billion

1Q 2017* 1Q 2016*  ($)  (%)

Total Sales

13,371 10,485 2,886 27.5%

Operating Profit

3,299 1,599 1,700 106.3%

Net Income Consolidated

1,073 611 462 75.6%

Non-Controlling Interests

(187) (248) 61 (24.6%)

Net Income Attributable to Owners of Ecopetrol

886 363 523 144.1%















EBITDA

5,813 4,137 1,676 40.5%

EBITDA Margin

43.5% 39.5%







* Figures are not audited. They are included for illustrative purposes only.

Figures in this report are not audited. They are expressed in billions of Colombian pesos (COP) or million US dollars (USD); thousands of barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboed) o tons; and are so noted where applicable.

For presentation purposes some figures in this report were rounded to the nearest decimal.

In the opinion of Ecopetrol S.A. CEO Juan Carlos Echeverry G.:

"Ecopetrol had an outstanding first quarter of 2017. We feel confident in our corporate strategy and the results we have obtained. We have overcome challenges to achieve profitable and safe operations as reflected in our financial results.

During the quarter, Ecopetrol had three important achievements in its exploration campaign: the Purple Angel and Gorgon-1 discoveries on the Colombian coast, and Boranda in the Middle Magdalena Valley, all of which demonstrate our commitment to operational excellence.

Operational and financial results were outstanding: our EBITDA margin of 43.5% is one of the highest in the industry, and we have a solid cash position of COP 17.5 trillion. These results reflect: i) greater efficiency and cost reductions through the Transformation Plan, ii) capital discipline, and iii) better crude prices and margins versus Brent.

Average production was 712 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day. During the year, public order situations and operational events have occurred, such as the temporary closure of the Cano Limon - Covenas oil pipeline, which negatively impacted our production. The pipeline returned to normal on April 7. We also note the positive performance of Hocol and Ecopetrol America, which significantly contributed to all the subsidiaries' increasing their production by 23% versus the first quarter of 2016.

Reficar completed tests of four additional plants, for a total of 25 units, 74% of the refinery's 34 units. The Barrancabermeja refinery saw stable operations, establishing itself as an efficient and profitable refinery.

Sales strategy helped capture market opportunities for international sales, generating a significant improvement in Ecopetrol's export basket. For the quarter, the spread of the crude basket versus Brent was -8.30 dollars, 1.80 dollars better than the same period in 2016.

The transport segment has consolidated its business integration. The reversion of the Bicentenario oil pipeline was completed, allowing it to carry crude from the Cano Limon field and thus mitigate the impact of eventual closures of the Cano Limon - Covenas pipeline. During the quarter, successful tests were carried out of the transport of heavy crude at 600 centistokes (a measurement of viscosity), and we will continue with the goal of extending this capacity to other oil pipeline systems.

Structural savings during the quarter totaled COP 150 billion; the savings goal for the year is COP 740 billion. We highlight savings of COP 52 billion from the lower dilution cost for heavy crudes.

Ecopetrol remains focused on being a profitable company, committed to the country's development and care for the environment. We will continue to follow our strategic plan as a road map for delivering remarkable results aimed at value creation and sustainability."

The full report is available at www.ecopetol.com.co

For further information, please contact:

Head of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations

Maria Catalina Escobar

Phone: (+571) 234 5190

E-mail: [email protected]

Media Relations (Colombia)

Jorge Mauricio Tellez

Phone: (+ 571) 234 4329

SOURCE Ecopetrol S.A.

Related Links

http://www.ecopetrol.com.co


Thank you to members, clients and employees for your

generous support, raising over $220,000

LEVIS, QC, May 12, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - Desjardins Group is making a long-term commitment to the communities affected by the floods.

An expression of solidarity

"We can't remain indifferent to the struggles people are facing right now. We know there's a lot to do before the victims can get back to their everyday lives. So, in the spirit of solidarity, we've committed to supporting people and organizing several cleanup operations in the coming weeks with the help of volunteers in the areas where the Red Cross is deployed," said Guy Cormier, Desjardins Group Chair of the Board, President and CEO.

"We'll also be freeing up employees full time to lend a hand to the Red Cross for a month and provide human resources expertise. I strongly encourage Desjardins's employees to be generous with their time and help those in need," he added.

Solutions tailored for Desjardins members

Desjardins will continue offering solutions to help provide financial relief and support to personal and business members who have been affected by this difficult time (payment deferrals, emergency loans, personalized agreements, etc.). For more details, click here.

Generous support

Desjardins members, clients and employees have shown their generosity in helping flood victims. Thank you! As of today, over $220,000 has been raised through the Desjardins caisse network and AccesD to continue supporting the efforts of the Canadian Red Cross. This is in addition to the $100,000 donated by Desjardins earlier this week.

Desjardins continues to encourage members, clients and the general public to use its caisse network in Quebec and Ontario to make a donation to the Red Cross. Click here to find out how you can support flood victims.

About Desjardins Group

Desjardins Group is the leading cooperative financial group in Canada and the sixth largest cooperative financial group in the world, with assets close to $268 billion. It has been rated one of the Best Employers in Canada by Aon Hewitt. To meet the diverse needs of its members and clients, Desjardins offers a full range of products and services to individuals and businesses through its extensive distribution network, online platforms and subsidiaries across Canada. Counted among the world's strongest banks according to The Banker magazine, Desjardins has one of the highest capital ratios and credit ratings in the industry.

SOURCE Desjardins Group

For further information: (media inquiries only): Valerie Lamarre, Public Relations, 514-281-7000, ext. 5553436 or 1-866-866-7000, ext. 5553436, [email protected]

Related Links

https://www.desjardins.com/


VANCOUVER, May 12, 2017 /CNW/ - Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is encouraging residents of the BC interior, especially those in Kelowna, to prepare for potential flash flooding forecast to arrive this weekend.

"We have already seen the devastating effects that flooding can have on communities in the BC interior, and on other parts of the country," said Aaron Sutherland, Vice-President, Pacific, IBC. "Heavy rain, rising temperatures, and melting snow are adding to the already-dangerous conditions around Kelowna. There is a need for everyone to be on alert. That's why we want to help make sure that British Columbians are prepared and ready when severe weather strikes."

Overland flood insurance has become more available across Canada in recent years. When severe weather occurs, it is important for consumers to understand their insurance policies and to know what is covered. If damage occurs, consumers should contact their insurance representatives. IBC is also here to help policyholders if they have any insurance related questions.

Help protect your home from water damage:

Store valuable items in upper floors of your home, away from the basement.

Have large appliances, furnaces, hot water heaters and electrical panels raised up on wood or cement blocks. If you're unable to do so, consider anchoring these items and protecting them with a floodwall or shield.

Anchor fuel tanks to the floor. A fuel tank can tip over or float in a flood, causing fuel to spill or catch fire. Make sure vents and fill-line openings are above flood levels. For propane tanks, contact the propane company on best storage methods.

If flooding is imminent, shut off electricity to areas of the home that may be affected. Use sand bags or install flood shields or built-up barriers for basement windows and doors.

Create an emergency preparedness plan with your family.

Assemble an emergency supply kit.

Prepare a detailed home inventory.

Pay attention to local authorities and monitor weather developments regularly.

Avoid roads covered by water

If you have a claim, this is how to start the claims process:

When safe to do so, assess and document damage.

Call your insurance representative and/or company to report damage or losses.

Be as detailed as possible when providing information.

If you need help getting in touch with your insurer, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 1-844-2ASK-IBC (1-844-227-5422).

About Insurance Bureau of Canada

Insurance Bureau of Canada (IBC) is the national industry association representing Canada's private home, auto and business insurers. Its member companies make up 90% of the property and casualty (P&C) insurance market in Canada. For more than 50 years, IBC has worked with governments across the country to help make affordable home, auto and business insurance available for all Canadians. IBC supports the vision of consumers and governments trusting, valuing and supporting the private P&C insurance industry. It champions key issues and helps educate consumers on how best to protect their homes, cars, businesses and properties.

P&C insurance touches the lives of nearly every Canadian and plays a critical role in keeping businesses safe and the Canadian economy strong. It employs more than 120,000 Canadians, pays $9 billion in taxes and has a total premium base of $49 billion.

For media releases and more information, visit IBC's Media Centre at www.ibc.ca. Follow IBC on Twitter @InsuranceBureau or like us on Facebook. If you have a question about home, auto or business insurance, contact IBC's Consumer Information Centre at 18442ask-IBC.

If you require more information, IBC spokespeople are available to discuss the details in this media release.

SOURCE Insurance Bureau of Canada

For further information: To schedule an interview, please contact: Andrew McGrath, Manager, Media Relations, 416-362-2031 ext. 4312 (office), 416-550-9062 (after hours), [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.ibc.ca


Parliamentary Secretary Sean Casey to make an announcement about upcoming Canada 150 projects taking place in Prince Edward Island

CHARLOTTETOWN, May 11, 2017 /CNW/ - Sean Casey, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, will make an announcement on Friday about upcoming Canada 150 projects taking place in Prince Edward Island. Mr. Casey will make this announcement on behalf of the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Canadian Heritage. Mr. Casey will also be on hand for the lighting ceremony of the 3D Canada 150 sign.

Following the ceremony, Mr. Casey will be available to answer questions from the media.

Please note that all details are subject to change. All times are local.

The details are as follows:

DATE:

Friday, May 12, 2017

TIME:

10:00 a.m.

PLACE:

Confederation Centre of the Arts

145 Richmond Street

Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island

SOURCE Canadian Heritage

For further information: (media only), please contact: Pierre-Olivier Herbert, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Canadian Heritage, 819-997-7788; Media Relations, Canadian Heritage, 819-994-9101, 1-866-569-6155, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.pch.gc.ca


Q1 highlights

Surplus earnings of $383 million , relatively unchanged from 2016

Increase in operating income (1) of $284 million , or 8.2%

Provision for member dividends up 16.7% compared to the same period in 2016

Outstanding residential mortgages increased by $551 million since December 31, 2016

Outstanding business loans increased by close to $1 billion during the quarter

Total capital ratio of 17.6% as at March 31, 2017

Announcement of an agreement to sell Western Financial Group and Western Life Assurance Company to Trimont Financial Ltd., a subsidiary of the Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company

A socially minded and innovative cooperative group

Launch of Alert , a new home insurance program to prevent water damage, available nationwide

Testing of a credit card payment system onboard Laval buses, a first in Canada

Announcement of a second mobile branch to serve Eastern Quebec and a second Desjardins Lab , to open in 2017 in Levis

On Earth Day , named one of Canada's Greenest Employers for a third consecutive year

Launch of the initial suite of seven Exchange Traded Funds, representing the next step in Desjardins's overall investment solution offering

Results for the first quarter

LEVIS, QC, May 12, 2017 /CNW Telbec/ - At the end of the first quarter ended March 31, 2017, Desjardins Group, Canada's largest cooperative financial group, continued to report business growth and posted an 8.2% increase in operating income,(1) to $3,755 million.

Surplus earnings before member dividends stood at $383 million (Q1 2016: $382 million), primarily due to the Personal and Business Services segment as well as life and health insurance activities, which posted strong growth, combined with a favourable claims experience. The Property and Casualty Insurance segment faced a more difficult environment, recording a higher loss ratio for the current year as a result of unfavourable weather conditions this past winter.

The amount returned to members and the community was $61 million (Q1 2016: $53 million), including a $35 million provision for dividends (Q1 2016: $30 million); $17 million in sponsorships, donations and scholarships (Q1 2016: $16 million); and $9 million in Member Advantages (Q1 2016: $7 million).

"We owe much of these good results to strong growth in our business volumes, not only in the caisse network but also in life and health insurance," said Guy Cormier, Chair of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer. "I should also mention the significant increase in our wealth management operations, where our teams are providing sound advice to members and clients. Ultimately, this allows us to increase member dividends and live up to our many community commitments, while continuing to invest in the development of our cooperative financial group, to the benefit of our members and clients."

Net interest income was stable at $1,057 million. A very competitive market continued to exert pressure on interest margins, although this was mitigated by expanding financing activities in mortgages, business loans and point-of-sale financing.

Net premiums were $1,982 million (Q1 2016: $1,721 million), up 15.2%, due to growth in premiums in both life and health insurance and property and casualty insurance.

Other operating income (1) was $716 million, up $20 million from the corresponding period of 2016. Lending fees and credit card service revenues, consisting mainly of income from the various payment solutions offered by Card and Payment Services, totalled $172 million (Q1 2016: $149 million) and came from business growth. Income from brokerage and investment fund services stood at $278 million (Q1 2016: $260 million). This growth was primarily due to greater assets under management arising from the sale of various financial products. Income recorded in the Other category was down $39 million as a result of an increase in the contingent consideration payable as part of the acquisition of State Farm's Canadian operations, completed on January 1, 2015.

Desjardins Group's loan portfolio continued to be of high quality. The gross impaired loans ratio, expressed as a percentage of the total gross loans and acceptances, was 0.32% as at March 31, 2017, unchanged from December 31, 2016. The provision for credit losses totalled $92 million, relatively unchanged from the same period in 2016.

Non-interest expense increased to $1,847 million (Q1 2016: $1,773 million) due to the impact of the reinsurance treaty signed as part of the acquisition of the Canadian operations of State Farm and the costs associated with business growth, in particular credit card and point-of-sale financing activities. Rigorous management of expenses nevertheless limited the increase in non-interest expense.

Total assets of $267.9 billion, an increase of $9.6 billion

As at March 31, 2017, Desjardins Group had total assets of $267.9 billion, up $9.6 billion or 3.7% since December 31, 2016. This sustained growth was largely due to growth in the securities portfolio and the net loans and acceptances portfolio.

Strong capital base

Desjardins Group maintains very good capitalization levels in compliance with Basel III rules. Its Tier 1A and total capital ratios were 17.2% and 17.6%, respectively, as at March 31, 2017, compared to 17.3% and 17.9%, as at December 31, 2016.

Segment results for the first quarter of 2017

Personal and Business Services

For the first quarter of fiscal 2017, the Personal and Business Services segment reported surplus earnings before member dividends of $246 million (Q1 2016: $232 million), mainly due to higher trading income on capital markets.

Wealth Management and Life and Health Insurance

Net surplus earnings generated by the Wealth Management and Life and Health Insurance segment were $143 million at the end of the quarter (Q1 2016: $97 million). This 47.4% increase was mainly due to a more favourable claims experience in individual and group insurance.

Property and Casualty Insurance

The Property and Casualty Insurance segment recorded an $18 million deficit in the first quarter of 2017 (Q1 2016: +$39 million). However, excluding expenses related to the sale of Western Financial Group Inc. and Western Life Assurance Company and expenses incurred as part of the acquisition of the Canadian operations of State Farm, adjusted net surplus earnings were $3 million, compared to $46 million for the same period of 2016.

This difference was essentially due to unfavourable weather conditionswater damage, heavy snowfalls in Quebec, and a wind storm in Ontariowhich increased the year-to-date claims experience.

_________________________________

1 See "Basis of presentation of financial information."

Key Financial Data

FINANCIAL POSITION AND KEY RATIOS (in millions of dollars and as a percentage) As at March 31,

2017

As at December 31,

2016 Assets $ 267,935

$ 258,367 Residential mortgage loans $ 107,246

$ 106,695 Consumer, credit card and other personal loans $ 22,243

$ 22,150 Business and government loans (1) $ 38,672

$ 37,637 Total gross loans (1) $ 168,161

$ 166,482 Equity $ 23,556

$ 23,293 Tier 1A capital ratio

17.2%



17.3% Tier 1 capital ratio

17.2%



17.3% Total capital ratio

17.6%



17.9% Leverage ratio

7.9%



8.1% Gross impaired loans/gross loans and acceptances ratio (2)

0.32%



0.32%

COMBINED INCOME

For the three-month

periods ended (in millions of dollars and as a percentage) March 31,

2017

December 31,

2016

March 31,

2016 Operating income (2) $ 3,755

$ 3,548

$ 3,471 Surplus earnings before member dividends $ 383

$ 509

$ 382 Return on equity (2)

6.8%



8.8%



7.1%

CONTRIBUTION TO COMBINED SURPLUS EARNINGS BY BUSINESS SEGMENT

For the three-month

periods ended (in millions of dollars) March 31,

2017

December 31,

2016

March 31,

2016 Personal and Business Services $ 246

$ 258

$ 232 Wealth Management and Life and Health Insurance

143



114



97 Property and Casualty Insurance

(18)



182



39 Other

12



(45)



14

$ 383

$ 509

$ 382

CREDIT RATINGS OF SECURITIES ISSUED

DBRS

STANDARD &

POOR'S

MOODY'S

FITCH Federation des caisses Desjardins du Quebec















Short-term R-1 (high)

A-1

P-1

F1+

Senior medium- and long-term AA

A+

Aa2

AA- Capital Desjardins inc.















Senior medium- and long-term AA (low)

A

A2

A+

More detailed financial information can be found in Desjardins Group's interim Management's Discussion and Analysis, which will be available on the SEDAR website, under the Capital Desjardins inc. profile .

_________________________________

1 Includes acceptances.

2 See "Basis of presentation of financial information."

About Desjardins Group

Desjardins Group is the leading cooperative financial group in Canada and the sixth largest cooperative financial group in the world, with assets close to $268 billion. It has been rated one of the Best Employers in Canada by Aon Hewitt. To meet the diverse needs of its members and clients, Desjardins offers a full range of products and services to individuals and businesses through its extensive distribution network, online platforms and subsidiaries across Canada. Counted among the world's strongest banks according to The Banker magazine, Desjardins has one of the highest capital ratios and credit ratings in the industry.

Caution concerning forward-looking statements

Certain statements made in this press release may be forward-looking. By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve assumptions, uncertainties and inherent risks, both general and specific. It is therefore possible that, due to many factors, these predictions, forecasts or other forward-looking statements as well as Desjardins Group's objectives and priorities may not materialize or may prove to be inaccurate and that actual results differ materially. Various factors that are beyond Desjardins Group's control, and therefore whose impacts on Desjardins are difficult to predict, could influence the accuracy of the forward-looking statements in this press release. Additional information on these and other factors are available under the risk management section of Desjardins Group's 2016 Management's Discussion and Analysis. Although Desjardins Group believes that the expectations expressed in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee that these expectations will prove to be correct. Desjardins Group cautions readers against placing undue reliance on these forward-looking statements when making decisions. Desjardins Group does not undertake to update any verbal or written forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of Desjardins Group, except as required under applicable securities legislation.

Basis of presentation of financial information

The financial information in this document comes primarily from the 2017 quarterly financial statements. Those statements have been prepared by Desjardins Group's management in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), and the accounting requirements of the Autorite des marches financiers (AMF) in Quebec, which do not differ from IFRS. Unless otherwise indicated, all amounts are in Canadian dollars ($).

To assess its performance, Desjardins Group uses IFRS measures and various non-IFRS financial measures. Non-IFRS financial measures, other than the regulatory ratios, do not have standardized definitions and are not directly comparable to similar measures used by other companies, and may not be directly comparable to any IFRS measures. Investors, among others, may find these non-IFRS measures useful in analyzing financial performance. The measures used are defined as follows:

Adjusted net surplus earnings for the Property and Casualty Insurance segment

The net surplus earnings of the Property and Casualty Insurance segment are adjusted to exclude the expenses, net of income taxes, incurred as part of the sale of Western Financial Group Inc. and Western Life Assurance Company as well as those incurred as part of the acquisition of the Canadian businesses of State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company (State Farm). The latter expenses include the costs related to the transaction and the integration of operations as well as processing expenses.

Gross impaired loans/gross loans and acceptances ratio

The gross impaired loans/gross loans and acceptances ratio is used to measure loan portfolio quality and is equal to gross impaired loans expressed as a percentage of total gross loans and acceptances.

Return on equity

Return on equity is used to measure profitability. Expressed as a percentage, it is equal to surplus earnings before member dividends, excluding the non-controlling interests' share, divided by average equity before

non-controlling interests.

Income

Operating income

The concept of operating income is used to analyze financial results. This concept allows for better structuring of financial data and makes it easier to compare operating activities from one period to the next by excluding investment income. The analysis therefore breaks down Desjardins Group's income into two parts: operating income and investment income, which make up total income. This measure is not directly comparable to similar measures used by other companies.

Operating income includes net interest income, net premiums and other operating income such as deposit and payment service charges, lending fees and credit card service revenues, income from brokerage and investment fund services, management and custodial service fees, foreign exchange income as well as other income. These items, taken individually, correspond to those presented in the Combined Financial Statements.

Investment income

Investment income includes net income on securities at fair value through profit or loss, net income on available-for-sale securities and net other investment income. These items, taken individually, correspond to those presented in the Combined Financial Statements. Investment income also includes income from the insurance subsidiaries' matching activities and from derivative financial instruments not designated as part of a hedging relationship.



For the three-month periods ended (in millions of dollars) March 31, 2017

December 31,

2016



March 31, 2016 Presentation of income in the Combined Financial Statements















Net interest income $ 1,057

$ 1,087

$ 1,054 Net premiums

1,982



1,834



1,721 Other income

















Deposit and payment service charges

120



123



118

Lending fees and credit card service revenues

172



150



149

Brokerage and investment fund services

278



282



260

Management and custodial service fees

101



102



88

Net income (net loss) on securities at fair value

through profit or loss

301



(1,242)



512

Net income on available-for-sale securities

80



111



79

Net other investment income

54



49



50

Foreign exchange income

19



12



16

Other

26



(42)



65 Total income $ 4,190

$ 2,466

$ 4,112

















Presentation of income in Management's Discussion and Analysis















Net interest income $ 1,057

$ 1,087

$ 1,054 Net premiums

1,982



1,834



1,721 Other operating income

















Deposit and payment service charges

120



123



118

Lending fees and credit card service revenues

172



150



149

Brokerage and investment fund services

278



282



260

Management and custodial service fees

101



102



88

Foreign exchange income

19



12



16

Other

26



(42)



65 Operating income $ 3,755

$ 3,548

$ 3,471 Investment income

















Net income (net loss) on securities at fair value through profit or loss

301



(1,242)



512

Net income on available-for-sale securities

80



111



79

Net other investment income

54



49



50



435



(1,082)



641 Total income $ 4,190

$ 2,466

$ 4,112

SOURCE Desjardins Group

For further information: (media inquiries only): Andre Chapleau, Public Relations, 514-281-7229 or 1-866-866-7000, ext. 5557229, [email protected]; Real Bellemare, Executive Vice-President, Finance, Treasury and Administration and Chief Financial Officer of Desjardins Group

Related Links

https://www.desjardins.com/


TORONTO, May 12, 2017 /CNW/ - Unifor is donating a total of $35,000, including $5,000 from its Quebec Council, to Red Cross Quebec flood relief efforts.

"Across Canada, Unifor members have watched with growing concern the natural disaster unfolding in Quebec. We hope these donations will help bring some comfort and assistance to those affected," Unifor National President Jerry Dias said.

The donations will help the Red Cross as it assists flood victims relocate and to feed their families. The donation is in addition to numerous donations from individual Unifor members and their locals.

"In times of need, we must all come together to help one another and to ensure our families and communities get the assistance they need," said Unifor Quebec Director Renaud Gagne.

Unifor represents more than 53,000 workers in Quebec, with about half on them in Montreal, the largest city in Quebec to declare a state of emergency due to the floods. The flooding has affected more than 170 municipalities across Quebec and forced than 3,000 people to leave their homes

Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector, representing more than 310,000 workers. It was formed Labour Day weekend 2013 when the Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers union merged.

SOURCE Unifor

For further information: please contact Unifor Communications National Representative Stuart Laidlaw at [email protected] or (cell) 647-385-4054, or (en francais) Unifor Communications National Representative Marie-Andree L'Heureux at [email protected] or (cell) 514-916-7373.
BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) -- A New York man has admitted to running a used textbook scheme that involved renting textbooks from one website and selling them on another.

Jeffrey Tomasik of the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg pleaded guilty to mail fraud Thursday in federal court.

Prosecutors say he used aliases and at least 20 online accounts to rent textbooks from Amazon and other companies. But instead of returning them when the contracts expired, authorities say he sold them on eBay.

Tomasik also is accused of taking $50,000 from a used textbook business in California for books that were never delivered.

He faces up to 20 years in prison when he's sentenced Sept. 14.
Over 258 Nigerian returnees from Libya have arrived the country yesterday night aboard a chartered Airbus A330-200, with registration mark 5A-LAT operated by Libya Airlines.The aircraft landed about 9:43pm at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos.The voluntary returnees, including four children and one infant, were made up of of 233 males, 25 females.Their return was made possible by the International Organisation for Migration, IOM, and the Nigerian embassy in Libya.They were recieved at the Hajj Camp area of the airport by officers of the Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, the National Agency for the Protection of Trafficking in Persons, NAPTIP, and the Nigerian Police Force, NPF.Addressing newsmen at their reception, Ms Julie Okah-Donli, the newly appointed Director-General of NAPTIP, said the agency was particularly interested in those that were trafficked.After the profiling have been done, for those that have been trafficked, we will take them away to our shelters, she said.She said the agency was working with the international community to clamp down on the trafficking syndicate.They are doing their investigation and very soon we will be able to come out with effective results, she said.Also, Dr Onimode Bandele, Director, Search and Rescue, NEMA, said some of the returnees had medical issues.He said some of them were suffering from depression and malnutrition, while one person sustained gun injury.See video
Tompolo

Justice Ibrahim Buba of a Federal High Court in Lagos on Friday authorized the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to seize some assets belonging to a former Niger Delta militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo, alias Tompolo.

The judge authorized the EFCC to take possession of the concerned assets pending when Tompolo will make himself available to answer the charges of N45.9bn fraud preferred against him and nine others.The judge said if Tompolo failed to appear within three months of the order, the Federal Government may proceed to auction the said assets.The assets of Tompolo which the EFCC was authorized to seize include his house located at No. 1, Chief Agbamu Close DDPA Extension Warri (Effurun), Delta State.Others are a River Crew Change Boat named MUHA -15; Tompolo Dockyard, Tompolo Yard, the Diving School at Kurutie, at Escravos River; Tompolo House at Oporaza Town, opposite the Palace.The judge said the EFCC may also seize any other assets it may later discover and verify to indeed belong to Tompolo.The judge, however, declined to authorize the EFCC to seize four companies, which the EFCC had listed in its application as parts of Tompolos assets, saying one person does not own a company.Justice Buba noted that third parties had already appeared in court to oppose the seizure of the said companies.The said companies are Mieka Dive Ltd.; Mieka Dive Training Institute Ltd.; Global West Vessel Specialist Ltd.; and Muhaabix Global Services Ltd.The EFCC, through its lawyer, Keyamo, had applied through an ex parte application, to the court pursuant to sections 80 and 81 of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act 2015 to seize Tompolos assets.At the hearing on Friday, Tompolos lawyers, Messrs Tayo Oyetibo (SAN) and Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, were not in court.Keyamo, while moving the application, said it would be in the interest of justice to grant it.He said, What is unfolding before our very eyes is something that has never been seen in this country for a very long time, where a citizen disparages the order of the court, briefs lawyers to appear for him but refuses to appear, keeps making disparaging statements against the judiciary.In his ruling Justice Buba said he found the application to be meritorious.The judge held, Sections 80 and 81(ACJA) provide that a judge or a magistrate can at any time, after action has been taken under Section 41 of this Act, for an application made in that regard after summons or warrant has been issued but disobeyed, order the attachment of any property, movable or immovable, or both belonging to a suspect, the subject of public summons or warrant, while Section 81 provides an order under Section 80 of this Act to authorise a public officer to attach any property belonging to the suspect within the area of jurisdiction of the judgeThis court has no doubt that the application has merit.In a five-paragraph affidavit filed in support of the ex parte application, a lawyer from Keyamos chambers, Adah Adah, said he was aware that Tompolo had been invited on several occasions by the EFCC to answer allegations of fraudulent activities.He added that a charge had been filed against him before the court but that Tompolo had persistently refused to honor all the invitations extended to him.Adah said he was aware that Tompolo had already briefed two lawyers, Mr. Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), and Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa, to represent him.Adah said he recalled that a bench warrant was issued against Tompolo by the court on January 14, 2016.That since the issuance of the warrant of arrest, the 1st accused person has absconded and concealed himself from all security forces in the country to frustrate the execution of the warrant of arrest.That rather than present himself to the court, the 1st accused person engaged the services of Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), who filed a motion dated 27th day of January, 2016 to set aside the warrant of arrest. The said motion was dismissed on the 8th day of February, 2016.That since the order for the arrest of the 1st accused person, the combined team of the Nigeria police and the military have been combing the creeks and the entire nation for the arrest of the 1st accused person, but he continues to abscond and conceal himself.Adah said the EFCC operatives had investigated and discovered that the assets it sought to seize indeed belong to Tompolo.He said it would be in the interest of justice for the court to grant the application.The EFCC filed 40 counts against Tompolo and nine others, including the immediate-past Director-General of NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi.The other suspects in the charge are Kime Engozu, Rex Elem, Gregory Mbonu and Capt. Warredi Enisuoh.The suspects were charged along with four companies, namely: Global West Vessel Specialist Limited, Odimiri Electrical Limited, Boloboere Property and Estate Limited and Destre Consult Limited.The suspects were accused of diverting and converting to their personal use a sum of N34bn and N11.9bn belonging to NIMASA.The offence, according to EFCC, is contrary to Section 18 (a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012 and were liable to punishment under Section 15 (3) of the same Act.
Olasupo Ayokunle, the president of the Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN, has called on the federal government to prosecute some Fulani herdsmen arrested in connection with the recent killings in Kaduna and Benue states.

Reverend Ayokunle said it was only when the suspects were prosecuted that tension that had risen in the two states would reduce.

He spoke in Ado Ekiti, the Ekiti State capital, during a special service held at the First Baptist Church (Miracle Cathedral).

The Centenary Estate built by the Ekiti Conference of the Nigerian Baptist Convention was also inaugurated by the Ewi of Ado Ekiti, Oba Adeyemo Adejugbe.

Ayokunle, who is also the President of the Nigerian Baptist Convention, warned that failure to stop the unprovoked killings by suspected herdsmen in some parts of the country could spark off war in the country.

In a sermon entitled, Moving Forward, Exhibiting the Features of a Prevailing Church, Ayokunle said the church had a duty to pray for Nigeria to overcome all its social, economic and political problems.

He said, There is a need to pray more for Nigeria because it is only prayers that can save us. Let us continue to pray for the leadership of this country. But I want to urge the government to check the menace of the herdsmen in some parts of the country.

We are calling on the Federal Government to prosecute the herdsmen arrested in connection with the recent killings in Benue and Southern Kaduna because this will ease tension in the two states.

We also want the Federal Government to investigate, through intelligence gathering, those unpatriotic Nigerians supplying the herdsmen with weapons being used to perpetrate evil.

If the government fails to stop the provocation by the Fulani (herdsmen), they should be prepared for war. No ethnic group has a monopoly of violence and no ethnic group should be a monster to others.

Meanwhile, security operatives on Monday arrested 18 suspects in connection with the unrest in Kabala-West and Ungwan-Muazu in Kaduna-South Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

Governor Nasir el-Rufais Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan, said this in a statement on Monday.

There was commotion in Kabala-West and Kaduna-South Local Government Area on Monday as an angry mob stabbed to death a suspected thief in the area.

It was gathered that the suspect had burgled a house on Kaje Street located along the Nnamdi Azikiwe Expressway of the state.
North Korea on Friday demanded the extradition of the Souths spy chief, a Chinese businessman, and unnamed US CIA agents over a supposed conspiracy to assassinate leader Kim Jong-Un.Last week Pyongyangs powerful ministry of state security said it had foiled a plot by the US and South Korean spy agencies to kill Kim using a biochemical weapon.The accusations came amid tensions over the Norths nuclear and missile programmes and with Washington considering whether to re-designate Pyongyang as a state sponsor of terrorism.That follows the February killing of Kims estranged half-brother Kim Jong-Nam by two women using the banned nerve agent VX  a murder widely blamed on Pyongyang. The Norths Central Public Prosecutors Office said Friday it was opening the prosecution of those responsible for what it called state-sponsored terrorism against Kim Jong-Un.It named South Koreas National Intelligence Service (NIS) director Lee Byung-Ho, an NIS team director surnamed Han, NIS agent Jo Ki-Chol, and Chinese businessman Xu Guanghai as suspects, along with masterminds in CIA.We urge the relevant authorities to immediately detect and arrest and hand over the wanted individuals, who were targets of due heavy punishment, it said in a statement carried by Pyongyangs state media.None of the brutal perpetrators of hideous state-sponsored terrorism aiming at the removal of the DPRK supreme leadership will survive on this planet, it added, using the acronym for the Norths official name.Rights groups accuse the North of widespread abuses, including an absence of fair trials.The North is technically still at war with the South and has no diplomatic relations with the US, but China is its sole major ally.Xu was described as director general of the Qingdao NAZCA Trade Co. Checks by AFP on Chinese databases show a company of that name was founded on March 7 this year, with Xu named as its legal representative.A spokesman for the NIS said the Souths spy agency had no information about the alleged assassination plot.Pyongyang has said a North Korean citizen named only as Kim was bribed and blackmailed to carry out the attack.But any attempt on Kim would be extremely difficult to pull off due to supertight security around him and Pyongyangs extensive surveillance of its own population.
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) yesterday vowed to resist any move to undermine the current administration on account of President Muhammadu Buharis ill health.Besides, the forum backed genuine restructuring of the nation, adding that the north was never at any time opposed to the move.The warning may have been informed by some developments at the seat of power, Aso Rock, which the group described as attempts to exploit the absence of the president to achieve dubious political goals. One of these goals is suspected to be the restructuring of the polity.NEF maintained that the ship of state must keep sailing uninterruptedly until Buhari returns.Rising from its emergency meeting held at the Government House, Kano, the elders noted: We are aware that attempts are being made to exploit the absence of President Muhammadu Buhari to achieve dubious political goals.We, therefore, warn those seeking an undeserved political advantage to desist. The north is conscious of its obligations as well as rights and will discharge and defend same without reservations. Briefing newsmen on the outcome of the meeting, the forums deputy leader, Wantaregh Paul Unongo, applauded the president for transferring power to his lieutenant in line with the dictates of the 1999 constitution (as amended). He urged Nigerians to keep praying for the quick recovery of the nations first citizen.He pledged the forums support for Osinbajos acting presidency, advising him to be wary of enemies in the discharge of his duties. His words:The forum expresses its full support and encouragement for Acting President Osinbajo and urges him to exercise responsibility, as he did in the past with commitment, sensitivity and respect for the constitution. We urge him to ignore mischief makers who seek to pit him against the president or the people whose mandate they both exercise.NEF charged the National Assembly to work with Osinbajo. Lauding government on the release of the 82 Chibok girls, the forum, however, maintained that the administration must not rest on its oars until the rest of the captives regain freedom.Unongo continued: For the record, the forum wishes to state that the north welcomes honest and sincere discussion on all aspects of our existence and remains available to engage any group to discus and advance the nature of our union. We will resist the attempt to create the false impression that the region is hostile to enquiries into the basics of the nations structure and operations.We will also join other Nigerians in resisting any attempt to seek sectional and parochial goals outside the constitution and laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.The forum expects that the task of governing the nation will continue uninterrupted until the return of President Muhammadu Buhari. We, therefore, appeal to Nigerians to be cooperative, focused and committed.But elder statesman, Malam Tanko Yakassai yesterday reiterated his opposition to calls for the restructuring of Nigeria.Speaking to The Guardian, he urged those behind such an agitation to channel their energies towards ensuring good governance in the polity.He particularly accused Nigerians of south west extraction of masterminding the agitation with the ultimate desire to ensure the breakup of the country.Yakassai who was a stalwart of the defunct Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU) and national party of Nigeria (NPN) recalled that key leaders of the south west had never hidden their disdain for the northern part of Nigeria right from their days in the defunct Action Group (AG) in the 60s.According to him:  I have always suspected the motive behind such clamour. The whole idea is to deny the north its God-given advantage of population and landmass which it has effectively used to earn appreciable allocation from the Federal Government. Those behind it are not interested in Nigeria s unity and progress.Can you tell me who among them have come out to tell us how the restructuring will look like? Anybody hiding under such agenda knows that it would not be acceptable to Nigerians. But this is the beauty of democracy. Anybody is free to voice their opinion.He, however, distanced himself from the northern elders who met in Kano, saying they belonged to the defunct Northern Progressive Congress (NPC). They have agenda that is anti-people. I have never related with them all my life. But I understand their concern on the issue of restructuring of Nigeria, Yakassai who is a strident critic of Buhari noted.A former Minister of Information, Prince Tony Momoh warned those trying to create unnecessary division between President Buhari and his deputy under the guise of restructuring or the state of health of the president to desist in the interest of the country, peace and unity.He noted that restructuring should not be used to politicise the state of health of President Buhari.Momoh, who is also a founding member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) while reacting to the development yesterday said the Buhari administration is one and there is nothing like restructuring taking place in his absence .According to him, Restructuring is a constitutional matter and nobody can achieve it behind the scene. In the first instance Nigeria has not agreed on any type of restructuring. I have made a proposal on how we should restructure and others have made theirs. That Buhari is away does not mean some people can pressurize his vice to start restructuring process. He said some Nigerians were just looking for what to comment on. I need to clarify the fact that the president does not envy his vice and neither does the vice envy his bosss position. I therefore do not see the reason for tying the issue of restructuring to the absence of Buhari.Reacting, Second Republic Minority Leader, Dr. Junaid Mohammed described the call for the restructuring of the country as unconstitutional. He accused those behind such an agitation as professional agitators who have no inkling into what they are up to in their demands for the restructuring of the country.Saying the north is ready to confront any group calling for the breakup of the country, he maintained that the north could not be cowed into submission by blackmailers keen on using the restructuring agenda as a bargain tool.
The Association of Resident Doctors (ARD), University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH) Chapter, has commenced a three-day warning strike to protest against deductions in their salaries.Dr Ige Alexander, the Chairman of the association in the hospital, told newsmen on Friday in Ilorin that only a fraction of their salaries had been paid since 2014.Alexander, who said that ARD members in other teaching hospitals in the country were being paid full salaries, alleged that they were being short-changed.He said UITH management told resident doctors that it had to employ additional house officers for the hospital while allocation was inadequate.It is only in this teaching hospital we are seeing this; in others across the country, they are paying full salaries, he said.The chairman said the deductions in salaries were becoming unbearable, noting that the development was affecting their livelihood and families.But Prof. Abdulwaheed Olatinwo, the Chief Medical Director of UITH, said such deductions were not peculiar to the teaching hospital alone.According to him, the ARD must ensure that the lives of patients remain the priority.Olatinwo, who expressed sympathy with the doctors, said government was doing all it could to rectify the problem.He also argued that there were no deductions as it was government that was owing, adding that it would also pay the debts soon.The chief medical director further explained that house officers were critically needed in the UITH, saying this informed the recruitment.The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the doctors sang solidarity songs and carried placards with inscriptions such as ARD says no to incomplete salaries, #Bring back our money and Nothing but full salaries.
In an upmarket suburb of Senegals seaside capital, a branch of Irans Al-Mustafa University teaches Senegalese students Shiite Muslim theology, among other subjects. The branch director is Iranian and a portrait of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei hangs on his office wall.The teaching includes Iranian culture and history, Islamic science and Irans mother tongue, Farsi; students receive free food and financial help. The university is a Shiite outpost in a country where Sufism, a more relaxed, mystical and apolitical form of Sunni Islam, is the norm.Two miles away, the Islamic Preaching Association for Youth (APIJ) teaches the strand of Islam that predominates in Irans great religious, political and military rival, Saudi Arabia.The APIJ funnels cash from donors in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai and Kuwait to mosques run by Salafists  conservative Sunni Muslims who are sworn enemies of Iran. The APIJs shelves are stacked with Salafist theology texts adorned with gold-leaf Arabic inscriptions  texts its imams use to preach in some 200 mosques across Senegal.The two institutions embody a contest for influence in Senegal, and more widely in Africa, between Iran-backed Shiites and Saudi-funded Sunnis. Its one strand of a broad power struggle in which each side is spending millions of dollars to win converts. At stake is huge political influence, on a resource-rich continent that has often served as the theatre for rivalries between world powers.Interviews with teachers and converts on both sides shed light on the depth of the divide and the ways both sides try to gain an edge.The Iranian director of Dakars branch of Al-Mustafa makes no secret of his concerns over his Saudi rivals. The Salafists came to Africa to destroy  Islam, said Chiekh Abbas Motaghedi in February.Up the road, in the APIJ building, the Salafists show equal passion.We cannot accept the Iranian influence in Senegal, and well do everything to fight it, said Chiekh Ibrahima Niang, the imam, sitting legs crossed in a silky white robe. We need to show the world that Shiism is wrong.But for Senegal, either influence would be a disruption. Its a society that has always leaned towards political moderation, thanks largely to a tradition of tolerance espoused by its Sufi orders or brotherhoods.Where the brotherhoods are weak, as in eastern Senegal, is where the threat of radicalisation is highest, said Bakary Sambe, director of the Dakar-based Timbuktu Institute and a coordinator for the Observatory on Religious Radicalism and Conflicts in Africa. Iran has often been a destabilising influence: In 2010, an Iranian arms shipment was intercepted in the Nigerian port of Lagos which Senegal suspected were destined for rebels in its southern Casamance region. Dakar briefly cut ties with Tehran over it.Salafism is the more troubling strand, Sufis say: It is largely free of political interference, but has shared cause with violence that Senegal has so far escaped.Salafists in Senegal are cousins of those making jihad in Mali, Ahmed Khalifa Niasse, son of a deceased powerful Sufi Imam and vocal critic of Gulf Arab religious influence, told Reuters at his palace in Dakar.They see themselves as soldiers of God purifying Islam.Salafists vehemently deny that link. Salafism has nothing to do with terrorism, says Niang. Yes, there are people who want to use force to impose the Salafist way, but we are very much against them. We are against violence.Irans supreme leader Khamenei supervises the activities of Al-Mustafa, which is based in the Iranian city of Qom and has branches in 50 countries. Thousands of students from across Africa receive enough Iranian money to enable them and their families to visit Qom while finishing their studies, said the son of a cleric based there who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.Al-Mustafa in Dakar receives 150 students a year and gives them free tuition, a stipend and breakfast, its director of studies Chiekh Adrame Wane told Reuters. Graduates repay the generosity by promoting Iran online or in books, said a professor based in Qom. In countries like Somalia, Iran pays for weddings and home furniture, including a TV and a fridge, if both couples are Shiite or newly converted to Shiism.Al-Mustafa is now Irans main tool for promoting Shiism, said the professor, who also declined to be named. Its aim is to train people to be loyal to the Islamic Republic and the Supreme Leader.A top official at Al-Mustafa in Qom, also declining to be named, gave a different view. Our goal is purely cultural and educational. We want to promote higher education in Africa, he said.Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and many other countries have built their religious schools in Africa. Alongside them, there are many American and British Christian schools, and even Hindu schools. So there is a rivalry in Africa and if we do not establish our presence there, we would fall behind.Two senior Al-Mustafa officials said students and teachers at Al-Mustafa are routinely vetted by the Ministry of Intelligence or the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Reuters was unable to independently verify this.Motaghedi, the Al-Mustafa director in Dakar, said the university had no involvement with the intelligence services or Iranian politics. Were a private university  Our only mission is to teach, nothing else, he said, adding that Khameni was merely a patron and adopting Shiism was not a requirement for study.In the 2016 Iranian budget, Al-Mustafa received 2,390 billion rials ($74 million). But the university receives more funding from the office of the Supreme Leader and other conglomerates under his command, one official said. Neither Motaghedi nor Wane would comment on financial flows to the Dakar branch.At the APIJ in Dakar, Imam Niang extolled the virtues of Sunni Islam. Salafism  has a simple message, he said as he scanned an ornate Koran through reading glasses. To be a good Muslim, you must follow the practices of the Prophet Mohammed.Niang went to Koranic schools from age 6 until 27 and later studied in Saudi Arabia. Immediately after he returned in 1989, he and fellow conservatives set up the APIJ in Senegal. Since then, hundreds of modest mint-green and sky-blue mosques financed by the APIJ have sprung up in suburbs of Dakar and fishing villages across the country.A success for the Salafists was when they gradually took over worship at the main mosque at Dakars Anta Diop University in the 1990s.Imam Ismaila Ndiaye, coodinator of Senegals Salafist movements and preacher at the university, said his strand of Sunni Islam offered an alternative to Sufism, asserting that Senegals secular state and liberal values were imposed on it by French colonisers. But he said Salafist mosques were not turning Senegalese youth towards jihad.If the Catholics can finance projects in Senegal aimed at evangelising at people, then why shouldnt Saudi Arabia do the same thing? he said.He said Gulf businessmen had committed only small sums to Sunni movements in Senegal  $20 million in total over several decades  but a steady stream of funds continues to what he identified as three main pillars of Salafism: the APIJ, al Falah, which was founded in 1975, and a movement on outskirts of Dakar led by firebrand cleric Ahmed Lo, who spent 17 years in Saudi Arabia.Judging who is winning the contest for influence is tricky. Imam Sherif Mballo, secretary general of the League of AhlulBayt, a pan-African Shiite movement founded last August, says there are between 30,000 and 50,000 Shiites in Senegal, where the population is 15 million.Mballo converted to Shiism after watching the Iranian revolution on TV, then worked with the Iranian embassy for 25 years, making several visits to Iran. But when it came to establishing his own pro-Iran Shiite group, after an initial injection from an Iranian businessman  he declined to say how much  he said he received nothing more.There are no reliable figures on the numbers of Salafists in Senegal, said the Timbuktu Institutes Sambe. However, he said Salafists control several hugely popular mosques.Peter Pham, Africa director of the Atlantic Council in Washington, said traditional Senegalese Sufi brotherhoods have more in common with the conservative Sunni strand prevalent in Saudi Arabia than they do with Shiites, because Sufism is already part of the Sunni religion.Some Senegalese find the Sufi traditions of their ancestors old hat and stifling. The opportunity to adopt other versions of Islam is liberating.Maths teacher Souleymane Sall, 38, converted to Salafism while at school. He liked the pure focus on the prophets acts, and he was weary with what he saw as the lack of intellectual rigour in the Sufi faith he grew up with.But after university, a friend lent him a book on Shiism and, after doing more research, he started to suspect a lot of bad things the Salafists were saying about it were false.Eventually, I concluded that Shiism was the right path for me, he told Reuters. At least for the moment.ByTim Cocks and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin/Reuters
A 74 year-old medical doctor, identified as Dr. Mbakwe has committed suicide after he reportedly shot himself with a gun at house in Aba,...

A 74 year-old medical doctor, identified as Dr. Mbakwe has committed suicide after he reportedly shot himself with a gun at house in Aba, Abia State.Mbakwe, a resident of Abayi in Osisioma Local Government Area of the state was said to have taken his life after being bedridden with an undisclosed illness for thirty years.Information about the suicide, at the time of this report was sketchy but sources attributed the mans action as an act of frustration due to his medical condition.It was learnt Abayi Police Division where the matter was reported by the victims family has taken jurisdiction and its operatives investigating the matter.A source at the division who pleaded anonymity said that operatives of the division were investigating the matter and would not want to preempt the outcome of the investigation.In another development, residents of No. 4 Aguata street off Omuma road in Aba South Local Government Area of the state was on Wednesdaythrown into shock as they wake to discover the lifeless body of a co-tenant, Mr. Obinna Obi.Obi, a butcher as Cemetery market was allegedly said to have been killed by his wife, identified as Onyinyechi.While an account has it that trouble ensued between the couple after his wife turned down several plea for sex which didnt go down wellwith the man, another account has it that they had minor altercations that fateful morning.
Governor Abiola Ajimobi of Oyo State has warned that traders who prefer to display and sell their wares by the roadsides instead of moving into the neighbourhood market stalls freely allocated to them by the state government will soon lose them.Ajimobi while restating the governments decision against street trading during an unscheduled visit to the neighbourhood market at the Scout Camp, Molete, Ibadan, on Thursday lamented the loss of lives and property attributed to street trading in some parts of the state.The governor enjoined the traders to join hands with the government in its determination to end the practice once and for all.The market was built and inaugurated in 2013 by the Ajimobi-led administration, with over 3000 spaces and lock-up shops, which were allocated to traders free of charge.Ajimobi had by then said that the initiative was meant to create a safety net for traders who could not afford to rent a shop and particularly as part of the administrations long-term plan to eradicate street trading.For the market to be self-sustaining in the area of cleaning and security, the governor advised the traders to meet and decide on the modality for the collection of tokens as levies for its development.Im appealing to you to hold on to the spaces allocated to you in this market. Those who were allocated spaces here, but decided to trade by the road will soon lose their allocation. We have preached and sensitized our people enough. We say no more to street trading.Its unimaginable that some traders that were allocated spaces in this market free of charge along with you have decided to abandon them and move to the roadsides. In fact, we shall revoke their allocation. We shall start to enforce the law against street trading.There is nowhere in the whole of this country where government constructed this kind of modern market without collecting money from those allocated spaces. Henceforth, you should find a way of levying yourselves so as to have the financial strength to do things like cleaning of the environment and maintenance of security.He, therefore, called on the leadership of the market to urgently come up with an affordable payment scheme for the sake of keeping the market environment safe and clean.Babaloja of the market, Mr. Kehinde Tewogbade lauded the initiative of the Ajimobi-led administration on the construction the market, which, he said, was completed within the promised six months.Tewogbade said his members would be delighted if the government could go ahead and enforce the laws against street trading, adding that only by strict regulation and enforcement could ensure compliance occur.Ajimobi has always supported us. He promised to construct and complete the market within six months and that came to pass.We will not forget the N20million revolving loan he approved and gave us in 2013. All these are attributes of a good leader that cares for the downtrodden.I can say it openly that the leadership of this market is in agreement with the decision of the governor to enforce the law against those that have continued to trade by the roadside; they deserve it, he said.
 A Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State, has asked the Department of State Services to tender an unreserved apology to the son...

 A Federal High Court sitting in Asaba, Delta State, has asked the Department of State Services to tender an unreserved apology to the son of the South-South Chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria, Mr Tareri Avwomakpa, over his illegal arrest by DSS operatives in February.





Justice T.B. Adegoke gave the ruling on Tuesday in a suit numbered FHC/ASB/CS/14/2017 filed by Tareri, a Warri-based legal practitioner against the Director-General, Department of State Services and the Delta State Director, DSS, following his arrest and detention over a message calling for support for the General Overseer, Omega Fire Ministries, Apostle Johnson Suleman.





Operatives of the DSS had in February arrested and detained Tareri over an alleged message sent through a social media platform, Whatsapp, wherein he called on Christians in the country to support and accompany Suleman to honour the invitation by the DSS at its head office in Abuja.





Justice Adegoke while delivering his ruling on the case, held that Archbishop God-do-well Avwomakpa sons arrest was unlawful and unconstitutional even as he awarded N250,000 damages against the DSS director-general and the Delta state director of the organisation.





According to a copy of the judgment sighted on Thursday in Asaba, the court ordered the DSS authorities to write a formal letter of apology to the claimant for a breach of his constitutional human rights.

Tareri also confirmed the ruling when contacted on Thursday and dedicated the judgment to Nigerians who had been killed, maimed and were currently suffering oppression for being Christians across the country.
82 of the Chibok schoolgirls were on Sunday released, thanks to a prisoner swap between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram. The release...

82 of the Chibok schoolgirls were on Sunday released, thanks to a prisoner swap between the Nigerian government and Boko Haram. The release is the biggest since the armed group stormed a school in northern Nigeria in April 2014, kidnapping 276 girls.





Although the girls have been freed from their captors, their ordeal is not over as according to Peter Joseph, an Uncle of one of the 21 schoolgirls released by Boko Haram in October 2016.



More than six months later, his niece, Sarah, is still in a government rehabilitation camp where the girls rarely see their families.

We were very happy to learn of the news that she was released, he said. But we are not very much impressed with the way the government is handling the whole rehabilitation process.

Since her release, hes only seen his niece once, when he traveled to Chibok last December. Even then, he says there were set time limits on visits, and many topics  like her experience as a prisoner - were off limits. He calls her often, but says she is only allowed to talk for two-three minutes before being cut off. He says his niece has told him that only females can sneak in to see them sometimes but males are not allowed into the compound.

Nobody is allowed to see them, he says. So its like another imprisonment, but this one has to do with the government.

Peter spoke during a programme on Al Jazeera title the stream. Peters sister Elizabeth is still being held by Boko Haram.





During the programme, the dangers of isolation; what rehabilitation means in this situation; and whether the Chibok girls have become too famous to ever truly be free was discussed.

Watch the video below:
The Okun Progressive Alliance has said that Senator Dino Melaye is disgracing the people of Okun in Kogi State with his antics and behav...

The Okun Progressive Alliance has said that Senator Dino Melaye is disgracing the people of Okun in Kogi State with his antics and behaviour in the National Assembly.The group said Melaye, who represents Kogi West, has brought collateral damage to Okunland through his terrible display of middle age delinquency, in the Senate.The group spoke in a statement by its President and Secretary-General, Ben Alege and Adeniyi Oloruntoba, yesterday.They urged Nigerians not to judge them by the behaviour and antics of the senator, and accused the senator and other politicians who rode to power through President Muhammadu Buharis change mantra of becoming the biggest obstacles to genuine change in Nigeria.Indeed, it is appalling enough that many have refused to see how so many clowns, charlatans and people of questionable character rode on the back of Muhammadu Buhari and the sing-song of Change to get into positions where they now remain the biggest, perfidious obstacles to genuine change in Nigeria.Painfully, this distinguished beneficiary of this wholesales gift has now brought collateral damage to Okunland, Kogi State and Nigeria, the statement said.According to the group, Nigerias democracy is suffering from quality representation, adding that it is the responsibility of all constituents to ensure an improvement in coming elections.True, Nigerias democracy is suffering in terms of the quality of representation and it is the responsibility of all constituents to ensure an improvement in coming elections. For us in Okunland, we are victims of this grave error. As a people, we are consoled by the fact that an opportunity to right the wrong is coming.His aggressive and needlessly combative disposition towards our state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, his council chairman and even, the change that his party promises  is beyond description.In due course, such hubris and childish jaunts against the governor, our dear council chairman and we, the people he claims to represent shall be duly rewarded.At the moment, we hereby appeal to Nigerians and more importantly mass media organizations not to judge the good people of Okunland by his antics and theatrics, the statement added
According to a Facebook page dedicated to Pastor Adeboye's of the Redeemed Christian church of God news, the Pastor who is currently on...

According to a Facebook page dedicated to Pastor Adeboye's of the Redeemed Christian church of God news, the Pastor who is currently on an evangelical mission to the Northern states in Nigeria, visited Bauchi State and decided to pay the Emir of Bauchi a courtesy visit at his palace. The man of God was surprisingly turned down by the monarch.





According to Stealth Scouts NG, Pastor Adeboye has only visited Bauchi State twice and that

was in 1999 and 2004. The news site also went further to disclose that while the Governor and deputy Governor of Adamawa State were present to welcome the General Overseer of RCCG when he visited the State, the Governor of Bauchi State was nowhere to be found when he visited.





Here's what was written on the page;

'The Emir of Bauchi Rejects PastorEAAdeboye's courtesy visit to his palace

The General overseer of the Redeemed Christian Church of God in his evangelic mission to the Northern states in Nigeria visited Bauchi state which he as only visited twice before now in 1999 and in 2004.

Unlike his visit to Adamawa where both the governor and his deputy were present at the airport to welcome Daddy G.O. and received his prayers and blessings, the Bauchi State governor wasn't available for prayers.

Also, his request to meet with the Emir of the Bauchi, Rilwanu Suleimanu Adamu was rejected by the palace.

Even Jesus Christ was rejected, so who is PASTOR E. A. ADEBOYE that he can't be rejected in the Emir's palace or by the State governor?

This didn't deter PASTOR E. A. ADEBOYE as he still used the opportunity to touch two churches within the state and even attended a wedding; hopefully the couple didn't meet on Facebook'.
Remember, the South African girl that was murdered and burnt by her boyfriend? (Read here ) Well, he has been arrested and was in court. ...

Remember, the South African girl that was murdered and burnt by her boyfriend? (Read here

Well, he has been arrested and was in court. He revealed that his family helped him clean the house after the act.

The mother of Karabo Mokoena was in a state of despair when she arrived at the Johannesburg Magistrate's Court on Friday, to face Sandile Mantsoe, the man accused of brutally killing her daughter.





The 27-year-old man was arrested on Thursday after the burnt body of his 22-year-old ex-girlfriend was found by police in a veld in Lyndhurst, Johannesburg on April 29 after being reported missing the day before.





Mokoena's distraught mother wept while she made her way around the courthouse surrounded by an entourage of relatives and friends. Mantsoe appeared in court emotionless. He is facing a charge of murder and defeating the ends of justice.

According to reports, Mr. Sandtoe revealed in court that his family 'helped' in cleaning his house after the gruesome act. Karabo's Uncle, Tshepo Mokoena said Sandile's family was seen on CCTV cleaning the apartment and leaving with linen and other things.

The NPA reportedly confirmed that Mr. Sandile Mantsoe "pointed out" scene where he allegedly dumped his said girlfriend. The case has been postponed until May 24th for bail hearing while Mr. Mantsoe will remain to Norwood police cells.
Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Minna Chapter, Taidi Jonathan, has said the controversy surrounding the letter transmitted...

Chairman of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Minna Chapter, Taidi Jonathan, has said the controversy surrounding the letter transmitted by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly is unnecessary.

Recall that there has been outrage over the letter Buhari transmitted to the National Assembly that Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo should coordinate the affairs of the country on his behalf.

Jonathan noted that the phrase asking the Vice-President to coordinate the affairs of the country, should not attract any controversy.

Addressing newsmen in Minna, Niger State he stressed that what mattered was that the letter was transmitted as required by the law.

Jonathan said, The law is very clear about this. When the president is not in, the Vice President steps in. Buhari is not in and Prof. Yemi Osinbajo is the acting President. That is all.

The controversy over the content of the letter or the choice of words is needless.

Efforts should be geared towards supporting Osibanjo and wishing the President quick recovery; Nigerians want good leadership and there is no vacuum.
A 400 level student of Kwara State University has reached out to us to help her post an assault she suffered in the hands a guy identified as Omobolaji Ogundepo aka Bolojay, who apparently, is also a Final Year Student in the same University. .



The said lady revealed to us that a friend of Omobolaji named Idrees Sanusi asked her out, but she declined. Then Omobolaji who had nothing to do with the whole thing confronted her, and battered her for not agreeing to date his Friend, Idrees. .



The Victim, Identified as Mariam, said she reported to the Schools authority, but nothing was done to salvage the situation, as it is said that Omobolaji has some kind of influence in the school. .



Mariam has been querying Idrees for the whereabout of his friend, Omobolaji, but he claims he doesnt know his where about. The incident happened on Monday, 8th of this Month, May, 2017."

As published by Ogashub
To secure lives and property and also meet the United Nations (UN) approved ratio of one officer to 400 citizens, the Police must rec...

To secure lives and property and also meet the United Nations (UN) approved ratio of one officer to 400 citizens, the Police must recruit 155, 000 more officers, Inspector-General (IGP) Ibrahim Idris said yesterday.He spoke at the opening of the yearly National Security Summit in Abuja. The theme is Forging partnerships for effective strategies to curb the menace of kidnapping, recurring farmers- herders clashes and criminality in Nigeria.The participants include: Governors Nasri El-Rufai (Kaduna); Samuel Ortom (Benue) and Ibrahim Dankwabo (Gombe); Interior Minister Abdulraman Dambazau; Sultan of Sokoto Alhaji Saad Abubakar III; Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwunsi; Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Yahaya Abubakar, Emir of Ilorin Ibrahim Gambari, Summit Planning Committee member, Prof Joseph Golwa and representatives of service chiefs and Commissioners of Police from states affected by armed crimes.According to Idris, the police will have to hire 31,000 officers per year for the next five years to bridge the gap. He blamed the shortfall on non-recruitment into the rank and file cadre of the force between 2011 and 2016.Idris said that within the period, the police suffered attrition as a result of retirements, death and resignation of personnel.He said: The absence of recruitment of able bodied Nigerians between 2011 and 2016 has left a huge gap in the manpower need of the force due to attrition as a result of retirements, death and resignation.To bridge this gap and attain the United Nations ratio requirement of one police officer to 400 citizens of a country, the Nigeria Police need to recruit additional 155 thousand officers to police the countrys population of approximately 182 million citizens.If this requirement is taken into consideration, the police need to recruit at least 31,000 police officers yearly for the period of at least five years from now. This recommendation has been forwarded for consideration of the federal government.Idris also lamented the poor funding of the police, restating the call for the passage of the Nigeria Police Region Trust Fund (Establishment) Bill, which has been in the National Assembly (NASS) since 2008.The issue of police funding has been critical to all past reforms panels since 19994, 2002, 2008 and 2015. However, the issue is yet to be critically addressed. So far, the best approach to funding of the police is the Bill which was table before the National Assembly in 2008 and is yet to be passed till date.The force is hereby soliciting the support and understanding of our National Assembly to give accelerated hearing to this bill so as to adequately position the police for better funding to enable the force discharge its statutory responsibilities effectively and efficiently.It would further provide a legal framework that would outline the counterpart funding arrangements between the federal government, states, local government and organised private sector.When the bill is passed, the police would be funded through a first line charge on the Federation Account quarterly from the sources indicated above.The IG said that there has been a lot of improvement in national security since President Muhammadu Buharis assumed office two years ago.Within available resources, the police, in collaboration with other security agencies have been able to stabilise the polity. Huge successes were recorded in the fight against kidnapping and other violent crimes nationwide, Idris said.He spoke of plans to establish more training institutions to boost specialisation within the institution for enhanced operational competence, adding that the police plan to establish training schools for border patrol, close protection and marine police units.The force is in advance stage of establishing a Border Patrol Training School in Kaduna and Imo states and a Marine Training School in Bayelsa State. We believe the establishment of these schools would enhance our capacities to tackle criminalities along out borders and dominate the creeks of the Niger Delta and other regions against saboteurs and oil theft.According to him, the force had established seven Police Mobile Force (PMF) Squadrons in seven states to enhance its capacity for swift response to challenges, adding that 14 Close Protection Units (CPU) bases have also been established in 14 states.This will go a long way to strengthen the PMF Squadrons in their assigned roles and responsibilities to respond professionally to violent crimes where necessary, the IG said.Governor Ortom said that there was no land for herdsmen to graze in Benue state, adding that a bill has been passed to ban open grazing in the Northcentral state.Ortom said: My state is one of the states affected by the challenges of farmers/herdmen and to curb the incessant issue, the House of Assembly passed a bill to ban open grazing.He said: The idea is not to send the herdsmen out but to restrict them from destroying our farm produces because that is the only thing our people rely on for livelihood since we dont have industries.For us in Benue, there are no empty lands for grazing. No matter how the herdsmen feel they would be careful in directing their cattles. If they cant control them in totality because they are animals, they end up destroying farms thereby causing crisis between farmers and the herders. I have not rested since I came on board.He proposed adoption of ranching as obtainable in other climes to enthrone peaceful coexistence.Ortom said: I propose that we practice what is done in other countries. Just the way we embraced democracy, which was not our original idea, I feel we should borrow ranching because it is the global best practice.Ranching cannot be done overnight. The herdsmen need support and they need new orientation. That (ranching) is the only thing that would bring lasting peace. We are not sending the herdsmen out but we do not have land for grazing.He added that the state would provide necessary infrastructure that will help the establishment of ranches.Also speaking, Sultan Abubakar III, who chaired the event, charged security agents, political and traditional leaders on honesty and fairness, noting that the summit was apt, considering the series of challenges in the country.He said: Why is it that we keep talking about the same issues? We are never short of recommending solutions to our problems. If we are committed, honest and patriotic, we wont sit here again, talking about the same issues.It is important to know that we must be honest with ourselves. Lets have this as a forum that would take decisions, go back and implement them. Our problem is implementation either due to insincerity or selfishness.A criminal is a criminal, irrespective of who he is. We must work together with security agencies to arrest and prosecute criminals.It is important to have the fear of God in whatever we do. We must tell ourselves the truth. We hide behind ethnic  religious leanings to do whatever we want.National security must be placed above individual liberty. You cannot claim freedom of expression and insult everybody and cause problem.Security challenges are not only violence we see across the country; there are many. We have the media security challenge with people sending false information out. I am not saying the press should be gagged but the press should have patriotic commitment to say the truth.Intolerance of political leaders when people of the same party cant stand each other, and they have millions of followersthats a security challenge. Its important for political rulers to play according to the rules.Whats the role of the police in being apolitical? We must play by the rules of the book we have. Political leaders should stop seeing critics, criticism as opposition. We must play according to the constitution of this country.Political corruption, hunger and unemployment are also security threats. Some of these issues are worst and are brought about by poor governance. We have millions of youths going about, doing nothing. I request us to be patriotic. We need to identify the problems that cause agitation.This should be the last farmers/herdsmen summit. We dont support anyone going about with arms to harm others, no matter who they are or where they are from.Oba Ogunwunsi called for investing in morals and diversity, blaming most of the security challenges on lack of equity and good morals.He said more attention should be given to building strong values, equity and strength of diversity, adding that once that is done, the menace being faced would not be much.He said: I have a different spin to the security issues in Nigeria. We are all concerned but we should invest in moral value, equity, in the strength of our diversity. If we focus more on these, the menace and security challenges would not be this much.We should ask why people are greedy; why people are not just and fair in their dealings; why are people taking sides. We should look at all these and if we focus on all the fundamental issues, we will not have all the challenges. If we invest in our diversity, which is our strength, then we wont have security issues like it is witnessed presently.The Ooni decried the rising wave of criminality amongst youths.The monarch said: The youths constitute over 70 per cent of the population and the rate of criminality is high amongst youths. There is the need to invest in morals because most of the crimes perpetrated are done by people between the ages of 18 and 50. It is rare for you to find people above 70 committing crimes.
Federal High Court, sitting in Lagos south west Nigeria today declined to compel the Directorate of State Security Service (DSS) to release...

Federal High Court, sitting in Lagos south west Nigeria today declined to compel the Directorate of State Security Service (DSS) to release the oil magnate, Dr. Patrick Ifeanyi Ubah. The court had on may 9, while granting an ex-parte application filed and argued by Ubahs lawyer, Mrs. Ifeoma Esom, ordered the DSS and its Director-General to produce him in court today, or show cause while he should not be produced.





However, at the hearing of the case today, Ubahs lawyer, Mr Ajibola Oluyede, urged the court to order immediate release of his client, Ubah, due to flagrant disobedience of the order of the court made on May 8, 2017 but the court declined to issue order for his release because of another court order from the FCT high court for his remand in prison.





In urging the court for immediate release of Ubah, Oluyede told the court that instead of the DSS to produce him as ordered by the court, the DSS served them with Notice of Preliminary Objection. He also told the court that DSS went to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) High Court, and obtained a remand order of his client despite the fact that a Lagos Federal High court in Lagos has ordered that he should be produced in court today.





Oluyede further told the court that in disobeying the court order, the DSS and its Director-General acted in subversion to the authority and dignity of the court, by utilizing what he termed as abuse of court and power.

Oluyede told the court that during his clients second arrest, he was coerced to sign documents that he owned the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), and to pledge to pay the debt with his assets, whereas, he was being owned by NNPC to the tune of N14. 039, 125, 125 billion.

He submitted that the DSS and its Director-General had not shown cause in compliance with court order while he should not be released. He urged the court to order DSS to release Ubah immediately without further delay

Responding, the lawyer representing DSS and its Director-General, Mr. Peter Okerinmade, urged the court to discountenance the submissions made by Ubahs legal team on the ground that

his agency had filed an application before the court challenging the courts jurisdiction to entertain Ubahs application.





He told the court that Ubah was arrested in Abuja on May 6, 2017, not in Lagos as claimed by his lawyer. He also told the court that the agency secured a remand order of the applicant on May 10, 2017. This, he said, was sequel to a motion ex-parte for his remand filed before an Abuja Federal High Court.





He urged the court to discountenance the submission made by Ubahs lawyer, and hear the agencys notice of preliminary objection challenging the Courts Jurisdiction to the suit.

Ruling on the submissions of the two parties, Justice Idris said though his court had on May 9, 2017 ordered the production of the applicant by the respondents, while DSS also obtained an order from an FCT High Court, Abuja remanding the applicant.





Justice Idris described the situation the court found itself as sad and unfortunate.

On May 9, 2017, upon hearing the applicants ex-parte application, the court directed the fourth and fifth applicants to produce the applicant in court today.

From the record of the court, it shows that the ruling was served on the respondents on May 10, 2015, by 10 am. It was also shown that the respondents on the same day obtained an order remanding the applicant from my learned brother Halilu J of FCT High Court.

Its clear that there is a direct conflict between the order of this court and of my learned brother Halilu J of FCT High Court.

Court of the same jurisdiction have been cautioned on a matter like this. I will in the circumstance of this case act with great caution. I will not make any order that will have effect of neutralizing the effect of the order made by the High Court of FCT.

In line with the order made on May 10, 2017, I will not make an order to produce the applicant since parties in the case have been served and matter adjourned till May 18, 2017, I shall adjourn till May 18, 2017, when all applications and Notice of Preliminary Objection shall be heard.

The matter is hereby adjourned till May 18, 2017.

Dr. Ifeanyi Ubah and his oil firm, Capital Oil and Gas, had instituted a fundamental right suit against the DSS and its Director-General, seeking his unconditional release from the custody of DSS, joined in the suit are the Attorney-General of the Federation (AGF), The Chairman, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), NNPC Retail Limited, and Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON).





Ubah in affidavit in support of the ex-parte application deposed to by the Secretary of Capital Oil and Gas Limited, George Oranuba, claimed that the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) arrested Ubah on account of allegations.





Oranuba said the issue had become a subject of litigation, adding that despite the subsisting suit, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the DSS invited Ubah for questioning.

According to him, Ubah had earlier been detained from March 24 to April 14, 2017.

But the DSS had claimed that it arrested Ubah on alleged indebtedness to NNPC.
The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has declared full support for Yemi Osinbajo as Nigerias Acting President. The forum also also comme...

The Northern Elders Forum (NEF) has declared full support for Yemi Osinbajo as Nigerias Acting President.The forum also also commended President Muhammadu Buhari for his steadfast respect for the constitution in transferring power to Mr. Osinbajo when it became necessary for him to travel to seek for medical treatment.The Deputy leader of the Forum, Paul Unongo, made the commendation while addressing a news conference shortly after a meeting in Kano on Thursday.The Forum expresses its full support and encouragement behind Acting President Osinbajo and urges him to exercise responsibility, as he did in the past, with commitment, sensitivity and respect for the Constitution.We urge him to ignore mischief which seeks to pitch him against the President or the Nigerian people whose mandates they both exercise, Mr. Unongo said.He called on all persons with responsibility to cooperate fully with the Acting President to sustain a united, focused and committed administration to achieve the desired results.President Muhammadu Buhari on Sunday travelled to the UK for medical treatment ensuring he transmitted power to his vice president via letters to the National Assembly.The Northern Elders Forum also commended President Buhari for securing the northern part of the country from the clutches of Boko Haram.Mr. Unongo said the president deserved to be commended for tackling the Boko Haram insurgency especially in the North-East.Buhari has confronted the issue that has been disturbing us by tackling the insurgency which had caused a lot of havoc in the region especially the three states of Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, he said.He also commended the sterling contributions of the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, for providing the necessary leadership to stabilise the polity.We expect that the war against corruption will not suffer a setback, and current investigations and activities will not be stalled due to the absence of President Buhari.Like millions of Nigerians, the Northern Elders Forum prays for the return to full health of President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Unongo added.The forum also advised northern state governors to complete all abandoned projects they inherited from their predecessors for the benefit of the people.I want to use this opportunity to advice our governors in the North to borrow a leaf from the governor of Kano State who is ready to complete projects abandoned over 20 years ago.We are impressed by the style of Kano State governor.While most of the governors are eager to start their own projects, Ganduje completed projects abandoned by late Abubakar Rimi, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau and Rabiu Kwankwaso.He has shown maturity and this is what we feel should be done.If you as governor meet an uncompleted project, complete it if it will improve the living standard of your people, he said.Mr. Unongo stressed the need for governors in the region to ensure prudent management of public funds to provide their respective states with necessary infrastructure.He commended the Borno State government for its effort to improve the living conditions of the people especially those affected by the activities of insurgents.We are going round the states to see what is going on. We went to Borno, Yobe and Adamawa and we are happy the security situation in those states has improved, Mr. Unongo said.
The Oyo State House of Assembly has summoned the state Commissioner of Police Mr. Abiodun Odude, the Special Adviser to Governor Abiola Ajimobi on security Mr. Yomi Bolarinwa and the council chairmen of Ibadan South East and Ibadan South West over the incessant robbery incidents in some parts of Ibadan, the state capital.This was sequel to a motion of urgent public importance moved at the plenary on Thursday by Hon Akeem Ademola Ige (Ibadan South East 1) who drew the attention of his colleagues to various reported and unreported cases of armed robbery attacks, especially in the night in areas such as Odinjo, Idi Aro, Challenge, Eyin Grammar, Adeyemo, Orita Aperin, Odo Oba and Felele, among others.The motion which was supported by other members of the house made the house to resolve and issue an invitation to the police commissioner, the governors aide as well as council chairmen in the affected areas to brief the house on the situation report and provide ways of curbing it as soon as possible.The meeting which will be held behind close door in line with its sensitivity will have other stakeholders in attendance according to the Accord Party lawmaker, Ademola Ige.Ige explained that the invitation of these men became necessary in order to forestall future occurrences.This motion is calling for prevention of prevention of incessant attacks of armed robbery and night robbery in Ibadan, it was also supported by other lawmakers who are not from Ibadan, there have been armed robbery in Idi Aro, Odinjo, in Odinjo where a night guard was killed.Early this morning I received a call from Odinjo of armed robbery, not less than 10 houses were touched. In Felele, Eyin Grammar , Odo Oba, Orita Aperin, that of Orita Aperin, the chairman of the vigilante was killed.Our resolution was to invite the commissioner of police, Special Advisers on security including the chief security officers in these local government areas of Ibadan South East and South West.The meeting will not be open due to its sensitivity, it is security matter.I want to make sure that we put an end to night robbery in Ibadan, he said.The house also declared that the two un-cleared nominee chairmen for Irepo Local Government Area and Asabari Local Council Development Area, Mudasir Agbaje and Taiwo Adeleke, respectively, and the two men claiming the leadership of Lagelu West Local Council Development Area Mr. Akeem Aransi and Abiodun Oladeji remained banned.The house however urged the state to nominate three fresh nominees who should be female.This according to the chairman of the investigative panel set up to look at the discrepancies in the recently appointed council chairmen, Hon. Muideen Olagunju Alatede (Oyo East and Oyo West) was to give the female the opportunity and act in accordance with the 1999 constitution as amended.While submitting his report, Alatede urged the executive to be gender sensitive by appointing women for the three controversial councils.He said fresh nomination should be done for Irepo, Asabari and Lagelu West, saying the governor has the power to nominate but the assembly has the power to clear them.He said that the executive arm of government had run foul of the constitution by swearing in the two un-cleared candidates.The two un-cleared candidates were sworn in; Abiodun Oladeji instead of Akeem Aransi was sworn in, he did not come for the screening, he was appointed overnight, this runs contrary to the constitution and the principle of separation of powers.We actually indicated that the steps taken were in contrary to the constitution, this is why we rejected the nominees.The executive should comply with the 1999 constitution as amended to be gender balanced.That fresh nomination should be made for Asabari LCDA, Irepo LGA and Lagelu West LCDA.The executive should make fresh nomination, the three remain rejected, he stressed.
Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has said his government will try to ensure it does not owe workers their salaries. He expressed hope...

Ondo State Governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, has said his government will try to ensure it does not owe workers their salaries. He expressed hope that the workers would waive the outstanding salary arrears as part of their contributions to development.





If they (workers) meet and say they waived two months, we will be glad but if they insist on having the full arrears, we thank them and will look for ways of paying. The government will continue to try and make sure we dont owe them salaries, he said.

Akeredolu made this promise while receiving report of Committee on Arrears of Salaries of Public Servants in Akure.

The governor also said the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), needed to be increased very soon to tackle the salary arrears.

Before we present our budget and after presentation, I will have to address the workers to let them know that its not possible to use all our money to pay salaries. We have said this many times, we must be prepared to make sacrifices because we dont borrow money to pay salaries, something must be done. I thank the people for their efforts and resilience. I know its not easy, but its also getting increasingly difficult for the government too; but whatever we do, we will try not to owe salaries, he said.

Deputy Governor Agboola Ajayi said the salary arrears owed workers by the previous administration amounted to 38.57 billion.
Australian senator, Larissa Waters, has made history after she became the first politician to breastfeed a baby in the senate chamber. ...





Australian senator, Larissa Waters, has made history after she became the first politician to breastfeed a baby in the senate chamber. Larissa, a co-deputy leader for the Australian Greens party on Tuesday returned to the Senate for the first time since giving birth to her baby girl, Alia Joy, earlier this year.





During a vote in the chamber, the 40-year-old proudly took off her bra and cover her breast with a white towel as she breastfed her baby girl in public.





Taking to her Facebook page, the excited mother wrote: 'I am so proud that my daughter Alia is the first baby to be breastfed in the federal parliament! And we need more family-friendly and flexible workplaces, and affordable childcare, for everyone.'




The Gombe State Agricultural Development Project, ADP, says that the tomato pest, Tuta Absoluta, has seriously affected tomato harvests i...

The Gombe State Agricultural Development Project, ADP, says that the tomato pest, Tuta Absoluta, has seriously affected tomato harvests in three of the states 11 local government areas.Tuta absoluta, a destructive tomato pest, ravaged many tomato farms across Nigeria in 2016 causing an astronomical increase in the market price of tomato.Abba Dreba, the Pest Control Officer of the Gombe ADP, told the News Agency of Nigeria in Gombe on Wednesday that the affected local governments were Akko, Kwami and Yamltu-Deba.The tomato pest started ravaging tomato farms since last year but the ADP was not aware of this until this year; this is because tomato farmers in the affected local government areas were ignorant of the pest.However, when we received the report, we went round the entire local governments of Gombe and discovered that only Akko, Kwami and Yamltu-Deba local government areas were affected.The entire tomato farms in the three areas were devastated. This is a very serious problem because the pest is resistant to all the available chemicals and insecticides in the market, he said.According to him, once the pest affects a tomato farm, it will damage everything in the farm within a week or two.Mr. Dreba called on the state government to initiate proactive measures to ensure that tomato planted in this rainy season would not be affected by the pest.If proactive measures are not taken, tomato farmers will divert their attention to other crops because Tuta Absoluta is very devastating, he said.Also speaking with NAN, Sunday Lah, Director, Gombe ADP Agric Extension Services, advised farmers to wait for the rainy season to be well-established before engaging in crop planting.He said this was the only way to ensure that their efforts would not turn out to be a worthless venture.Besides, Mr. Lah said that the ADP was trying to procure seeds from reputable institutions for farmers in the state.Most at times, a farmer goes to the open market to buy seeds without knowing the source, he said.(NAN)
The Federal Government on Thursday renewed its resolve to negotiate for the release of the over 80 remaining abducted Chibok schoolgirls...

The Federal Government on Thursday renewed its resolve to negotiate for the release of the over 80 remaining abducted Chibok schoolgirls and other captives.The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Aisha Alhassan, said this at a media briefing in Abuja.We cannot say when the girls will be released, if they will release the remaining girls for their members we will gladly do that and we dont regret our actions.If we have our way, the girls will be released tomorrow but negotiation is still ongoing for the remaining abducted girls, she said.Mrs. Alhassan explained that the 82 girls released recently were undergoing medical screening, and would afterwards go for psychosocial therapy and refresher courses to facilitate their quick reintegration into the society.She said pictures of the 82 girls had been sent for their parents to confirm their identification as some have similar names.It is not true that we are not allowing the parents to see their children; we allow them access but not every day.Most of them prefer to be here because they dont want to be reminded of their experiences having to go to their community.Those saying we are not allowing them access are not the direct parents of the girls; we cannot bring anybody to see them apart from their biological parents, allowing visitors everyday will not allow them to heal fast.She said allowing unnecessary visits would jeopardise the release of the remaining girls and other captives.Alhassan said there was need to help the girls forget the trauma they experienced from the bush.She said all the girls would resume the new academic session in September, including the recently released 82 Chibok girls, adding that they will undergo skill acquisition and ICT.The other girls released earlier have been undergoing some teachings in Biology, Civic Education, English, Mathematics and Geography pending the time they will resume school.The 82 girls who will undergo medical screening and psychosocial therapy will also join in the new academic session, Alhassan said.According to her, the first 24 girls released were in bad shape before they underwent two months screening.The minister added that a team of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and a doctor were available to attend to the girls.Mrs. Alhassan said the girls were given adequate care by the Federal Government to enable them live a normal life.(NAN)
HAMMONTON -- Firefighters were still at the scene Friday morning of a massive blaze at a fruit-packing warehouse that engulfed the building overnight and burned several trucks, reports said.

Five fire companies from surrounding communities fought the blaze, which started at about 8:30 p.m. in the 40,000-square-foot warehouse located on Pine Road, according to a report by the Press of Atlantic City.

There were no injuries and the fire remains under investigation, Hammonton Fire Chief Bill Eppler told the Press of Atlantic City.

Spencer Kent may be reached at skent@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerMKent. Find the Find NJ.com on Facebook.
CAMDEN -- The shrinking Camden school district could let go of up to 121 employees.

Among the planned cuts are 38 teachers, 10 for budgetary reasons and 28 for poor performance, the district said in a report posted on its website Thursday.

The district employs 842 teachers, a spokesman said.

The rest of those who would lost their jobs are support staff and employees in the central administration office. Thirty-eight support staff are being let go for poor performance.

Last year, the district announced 154 layoffs but most of those affected were called back to work.

The district's enrollment is expected to decrease from abut 7,000 to 6,000 students in the fall as more students in the city attend charter and Resnasissance schools.

Enrollment in those 16 schools totals more than 7,700 this academic year.

Jeff Goldman may be reached at jeff_goldman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JeffSGoldman. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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Bar Louie is opening their second New Jersey location on May 19 in Iselin. (Joe Atmonavage | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

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ISELIN -- A popular national chain of neighborhood bars is opening this weekend, May 13, with official grand opening celebrations slated for May 19 at The Plaza at Woodbridge, marking the opening of their second New Jersey location .

Bar Louie will have a ribbon cutting ceremony at 11 a.m. on May 19. The bar and eatery serves "signature handcrafted martinis and cocktails" as well as a variety of shareable plates, flatbreads, burgers, salads, sandwiches and signature dishes.

The 6,554-square foot restaurant will sit 232 patrons, spokeswoman Traci Paulk said.

"As Bar Louie's second New Jersey location, we're excited to join the Woodbridge community and offer a gathering place where local friends and neighbors can come together and relax," said Pete Ciaramella, the director of operations of the Woodbridge location.

With over 120 locations nationwide, Bar Louie, which was founded in 1990, advertises that no two locations are alike. The new location will serve local beers such as Jersey Girl Rake Breaker, Rivertowne Jah Mon and Asbury 4:4.

The "Spiked Bulleit Bourbon Burger" is one of the signature items on Bar Louie's menu. The nationwide chain will be opening their second New Jersey location in May. (Bar Louie)

Visitors should not only bring their I.D. to order a drink, but also to try one of Bar Louie's signature food items. The "Spiked Bulleit Bourbon Burger," launched last year, and apparently requires I.D. to order it.

The state's other Bar Louie location is in East Brunswick. This will be the company's 10th in the Tri-state area. Paulk said the opening of the restaurant will likely add an estimated 70 jobs in the Woodbridge area.

Joe Atmonavage may be reached at jatmonavage@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @jatmonavageNJ. Find NJ.com on Facebook
The statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis is separated from its pedestal Thursday morning, May 11, 2017. It is the second of four monuments the city has removed after they were declared public nuisances in December 2015. (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
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 
Five members of a Christian rock band on their way to perform at a concert in Council Bluffs were injured in a rollover accident on Thursday morning on westbound Interstate 80 between Walnut and Avoca in Pottawattamie County.

The crash happened around 8:45 a.m. according to the Pottawattamie County Sheriffs Office.

Four of the five musicians  members of the Ammunition Band family ministry  were taken by emergency crews to Myrtue Hospital in Harlan with non-life-threatening injuries, said Dept. Nick Amdor.

Three of the band members had been released from the hospital by mid-afternoon Thursday.

The group was traveling in a large motor home that was pulling a trailer carrying their instruments, Amdor said. They were traveling to Council Bluffs for a performance, he said. The band is based in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.

He said the driver somehow got into a situation that caused him to over-correct, causing the trailers rear wheels to lose traction and, eventually, the motor home to roll twice.

Two people seemed to have more serious injuries, but they were able to get out of the motor home under their own power, Amdor said. Instruments were scattered along the highway from the accident, he added. There were no other vehicles involved in the accident.

One westbound lane of I-80 was able to remain open, Amdor said. The Iowa State Patrol is investigating the crash.

A statement from the band appeared on the groups Facebook page around 3 p.m. It stated:

As many of you may have already heard, the band was involved in a horrible accident this morning in Harlan, Iowa on their way to a concert in Council Bluffs for tomorrow night. Four band members were injured and taken by ambulance to Myrtue Hospital in Harlan, Iowa. Three band members have been released with minor injuries. We ask for your prayers and continued support for the whole ANY family.
Iowa Rep. Greg Forristall, 67, of Macedonia died Wednesday at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha following his battle with cancer.

The Republican was serving his sixth term representing District 22, which includes the majority of Pottawattamie County, including a portion of eastern Council Bluffs. He was last reelected in November of 2016.

"Greg was a wonderful husband and my best friend. Greg was an amazing person with a truly Renaissance mind  scientific, logical, artistic and musical. He truly loved life," Forristall's wife Carol said in a statement. "I was proud of his life-long dedication to education, the arts, agriculture and public service. Greg cared about our community and has left this world a better place. A noble goal for us all."

Gov. Terry Branstad lamented the loss.

Greg bravely fought cancer for months while going above and beyond to fulfill his legislative duties and serve his constituents in western Iowa, Gov. Terry Branstad said in a statement. He was an outstanding legislator and will be greatly missed.

Forristall was born in Council Bluffs and grew up on his family farm near Macedonia, according to the Iowa House Republicans website. He attended Carson-Macedonia High School, graduating in 1968. He graduated from the University of Iowa in 1972 and earned a masters degree there in 1973.

Forristall was first elected to represent House District 98 in November of 2006. He shifted to representing District 22 when the maps were redrawn in 2010.

He was a great Republican, a great conservative, said Jeff Jorgensen, head of the Pottawattamie County Republican Party. He represented his district very well. They really loved him over there. Its a loss.

Forristalls colleagues in the House described the representative as very intelligent, with a unique perspective on issues and a champion of education.

We didnt always agree, but there was a lot of respect between the both of us, said Rep. Charlie McConkey, a Democrat who represents western Council Bluffs and all of Carter Lake in District 15.

McConkey said the pair worked on several bills together, including legislation on the use of tanning beds by minors and home rule for schools.

Hes going to be missed, McConkey said.

Branstads office said a special election will be held to replace Forristall in the Iowa House. Officials have not yet set a date for the election.

Before his election, Forristall served on the Iowa Western Community College Board and the Iowa State Board of Education. He also served on research committees for the Iowa Corn Promotion Board and chaired committees for the Iowa Farm Bureau, specializing in market information, agricultural technology and conflict resolution.

He was great on several issues, especially education, Jorgensen said. Just a wealth of information on education issues.

Iowa House Speaker Linda Upmeyer, a Republican from Clear Lake, said Forristall was a dedicated public servant to the people he represented and an advocate for the arts and education, two issues that he was incredibly passionate for.

He will be sorely missed, she said in a statement.

Forristall is survived by his wife Carol, who taught music for 35 years. The pair married in 1978, according to the House Republicans website. Carol Forristall served as her husbands clerk in the House for many years.

A visitation is planned for Forristall from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday at Hoy-Kilnoski Funeral Home. A burial service is planned at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday in the Silver City Cemetery.

Memorials are suggested to the Hein Family Foundation, 14216 Franklin St. Omaha, Nebraska 68154. They will disperse memorial contributions to scholarships in Gregs honor, the family said in Forristalls obituary.

 This report includes Nonpareil archive material.
The following editorial was published in the Des Moines Register on May 3:

Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds has yet to assume the duties of Iowas governor, but already she seems intent on pursuing a costly and politically divisive course of action.

With Gov. Terry Branstad expected to leave office soon and become the U.S. ambassador to China, Reynolds is preparing to move into the governors office. While theres no question she will assume the duties and responsibilities of governor, there is a legitimate question as to whether she can appoint her own lieutenant governor.

Its a question of great import because, although weve argued repeatedly that the office of lieutenant governor could  and should  be disposed of, it exists today as an elective office. In other words, its not the sort of job that is handed out by appointment. At least it never has been in Iowa.

As the current situation demonstrates, a lieutenant governor can assume the job of governor without ever having run for that particular job. Whats more, if Reynolds were to resign or be incapacitated after having appointed her own lieutenant governor, Iowa could then be led by a governor who has never run for any sort of statewide office.

Attorney General Tom Miller has issued a formal opinion that says while Reynolds will unquestionably assume the duties of governor once Branstad leaves Iowa, it wont be through the process of leaving her old job to take a new job. Rather, Miller says, the duties of the governor will devolve to Reynolds and she will hold both the office of governor and office of lieutenant governor  which means, he says, there will be no vacancy for her to fill.

If that doesnt sound logical to you, consider the fact that the main reason the office of lieutenant governor was created, as articulated at the 1857 constitutional convention, was to ensure that the first person in the line of succession for the job of governor would be a statewide-elected official, not a political appointee. (The Iowa Constitution of 1846 hadnt even provided for the job of lieutenant governor.)

Subsequently, four Iowa governors left office prematurely. Between 1877 and 1969, three governors resigned and one died while in office. In each of those instances, the lieutenant governor assumed the duties of the governor without appointing a new lieutenant governor.

Has Iowa somehow gotten it wrong over the past 140 years? Should those four previous governors have appointed their own lieutenant governors? To answer those questions, its helpful to look to other states for guidance and, as Miller points out, in other states there is virtually no debate on whether the new governor can appoint a new lieutenant governor. The widely accepted answer to that question is no.

Now, it would have helped if Miller had reached this same conclusion back in December. But at that time, Millers office issued an informal legal review that concurred with Gov. Terry Branstads assertion that in her capacity as governor, Gov. Reynolds will have the authority to appoint a new lieutenant governor.

Not surprisingly, Kim Reynolds agrees with Millers earlier opinion, and she points to a 2009 law that speaks to the manner in which vacancies for elective offices are to be filled. But as Miller points out, the line of succession thats outlined in the Iowa Constitution cant be modified by a state law.

Still, it appears that Reynolds is determined to appoint a lieutenant governor, stating, With the law on our side, we will move forward with (Millers) first conclusion as we examine our options.

Its hard to argue that the law is on your side when the states highest ranking law enforcement official, who is paid to defend the states position in court, says otherwise.

It would be a shame if one of Reynolds first official acts as governor was to defy the attorney general and invite a costly, politically charged court challenge.
Elementary school students from across central Nebraska are learning about train safety at the Golden Spike Tower in North Platte.

On Thursday, a group of third-graders from Elwood not only took a tour of the tower overlooking Bailey Yard, but also learned about Operation Lifesaver.

Sydnee Hansen, group tour director at the Spike, along with other employees and volunteers became Operation Lifesaver certified trainers last fall.

We feel like when kids are coming out here to the Golden Spike to see all these trains, its really important that they understand how to be safe around trains, Hansen said. We teach them they need to Look, Listen and Live, and that railroad property is private property and its not safe to play on or around it.

Generally, schools take field trips in the spring.

Field trips are all about the fun of getting out of the classroom to learn something new and exciting about the world around us, said Kirsten Parker, executive director at the Spike. The view from the eighth floor shows how the Union Pacific keeps the economy going, and a stop on the seventh floor offers a (historical) glimpse of the North Platte Canteen.

Nearly 650 grade school children will receive Operation Lifesaver training this month.

Weve had students from Elwood, Mullen and Cody Lake schools, Hansen said. Wednesday we had kids from Chase County, and next week well have (kids from) Cozad and Hitchcock County.

Touring the tower leaves every child with the message of Stay off, stay away, stay alive.

Parker said they ask students what they learned from the field trip.

Many children comment that they learned to stay away from trains, she said. This is proof that including this educational piece in our tours is vitally

important.
North Platte police have confirmed that one person has died Thursday following a wreck on Newberry Access.

Mike Torres, 73, died after the pickup he was a passenger in collided with a semi-trailer truck just before 3:15 p.m.

On Thursday evening, there were few details about the wreck available. Sgt. Kendall Allison said a preliminary investigation indicated that a semitrailer truck had pulled off Walker Road onto Newberry Access and was struck by a northbound pickup truck.

The pickup clipped the side of the back of the semi and rolled several times, Allison said.

The truck came to a rest on its top on the median near the Flying J Truck Stop.

Torres and the driver of the vehicle were taken to Great Plains Health. On Thursday evening, Allison said he was unsure of the extent of the drivers injuries. The driver of the semi truck was not injured.

The North Platte Police Department, North Platte Fire Department, Lincoln County Sheriffs Office and the Nebraska State Patrol responded to the scene. Following the wreck, a portion of the northbound lanes of Newberry Access was closed off and firefighters cleaned up an apparent fuel spill. The Nebraska State Patrol assisted the North Platte Police Department with reconstructing the wreck.
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HAMMOND  Particle physics, also called high-energy physics, is a complex concept local students and teachers are learning more about as part of the Purdue University Northwest QuarkNet Center.

Think about the smallest particles of dust along your wood floors and how they came to be, or the tiniest objects such as protons or gas particles. Particle physics is the branch of physics that studies the nature of particles that constitute matter and radiation. It looks at the smallest detectable particles and the fundamental forces necessary to explain their behavior.

Purdue's QuarkNet Center was established in 2014 by PNW professor of physics Neeti Parasher, who was part of the Nobel Prize-winning research team in 2013 that contributed to the discovery of the Higgs Boson subatomic particle. Also known as the God particle, it is a vital building block for shaping understanding about the composition and interaction of all matter in the universe.

Parashar and PNW physicist, associate professor Aaron Warren, at the Westville campus, direct the program.

On April 8, local high school teachers and students gathered for a MasterClass workshop. Participants included 33 students from the Hammond Academy of Science and Technology, and Munster and Chesterton high schools. They were joined by high school teachers from HAST, Munster, Chesterton, and Lake Central and Valparaiso High schools.

During the MasterClass, participating students worked in teams to analyze data gathered from the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, called CERN, a multinational research center in Switzerland.

PNWs QuarkNet Center is one of four centers in Indiana where high school students and teachers have the opportunity to learn about and participate in the cutting-edge areas of high-energy physics. These participants get a chance to interact with scientists from all over the world.

The students presented their results in a live video conference to high-energy physicists and other high school students from other QuarkNet centers around the world. The MasterClass represents the culmination of weeks of preparation by participating teachers and PNW faculty.

Hands-on, sophisticated student exposure

Warren said they want students to get out of the exercise an understanding of physics.

"We want them to learn how to take the principles and use them in other environments," he said.

"The core principles you learn in physics really do carry over to more complex experiments. The broader goal is to prepare students for long-term careers. These experiments give them a chance to analyze data, think quantitatively and how to communicate effectively."

Warren said it's all about what scientists do  talk, listen and evaluate, then reassess positions.

"This is something that is becoming more and more common across all career fields," he said.

Munster High School teacher Larry Hautzinger said he had a basic understanding of particle physics, but after working with Parashar at Purdue and attending a six-week summer camp at FermiLab, he learned so much more that "it was ridiculous."

"As teachers, we gain knowledge in particle physics," he said.

"Students get to see that physics isn't a dry, dusty, dead subject that teaches only stuff from hundreds of years ago, but is cutting-edge, looking at the origins of the universe, dark matter and dark energy."

Teachers take the information they learn in summer camps back to the classroom. Hautzinger said he's currently using the material with his honors physics classes but hopes to include his regular physics students as the program grows.

Chesterton High School physics teacher Jack Neuliep said he was just introduced to the program this year and brought along one student last month.

"The ideas that are studied in quantum physics are valuable for future understanding of how the universe works and understanding certain technologies that are up and coming," he said. "I think it will give students a better background in quantum physics and the structure of matter."
MICHIGAN CITY  Police identified the suspect who is still at large following the shooting of a 17-year-old employee Wednesday night outside a Burger King restaurant.

Deiondrai Thompkins, 20, who should be considered armed and dangerous, according to a Michigan City Police news release.

The warrant for the Michigan City resident is for one count of attempted murder, one count of aggravated battery and two counts of criminal recklessness, according to the release.

Michigan City police were called to the Burger King at 3956 Franklin St. about 8:15 p.m. Wednesday for a report of a gunshot victim.

Officers located the 17-year-old, who had been shot in the leg, police said.

The boy was taken to Franciscan St. Anthony Health hospital in Michigan City and later released, police said.

An officer from the Trail Creek Police Department, deputies from the LaPorte County Sheriffs Office, and detectives from the Michigan City Police Department, the LaPorte County Drug Unit and the Fugitive Apprehension Street Team assisted with the investigation.

Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Kay Pliske at 219-874-3221, ext. 1077, or kpliske@emichigancity.com.
GARY  The mayor is prepared to cancel the 2017 Gary Air Show if the city cannot find a major corporate sponsor by Monday.

In a statement released Friday evening, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson said that while the air show is one of the most exciting events in Northwest Indiana and has many benefits, the city couldn't take on the amount of debt needed to put on the show without a major sponsor.

"The risk inherent in incurring a $350,000 debt without having secured all of the sponsors cannot be justified under our current financial conditions," Freeman-Wilson's statement read. "Our first job is to be good stewards and our team has determined that we cannot afford to host the Gary Air Show. We know that a fully sponsored show is attainable and we will begin immediately to work on making that happen."

LaLosa Burns, the city's director of communications, said Monday is the deadline for the city to notify the air teams who would perform.

Burns said the city contributes about $50,000 to the show in public safety support, but cannot afford the remaining $300,000 or more needed to get it off the ground again.

The Gary Air Show has been one of the largest destination events in Northwest Indiana since it began in 2000, but the venue on Gary's Miller beaches makes it difficult to collect admissions from the hundreds of thousands of attendees.

Speros Batistatos, president of the South Shore Convention and Visitor Authority, which sponsored the event for many years, said he can sympathize with Gary's mayor.

"We wrestled with the same thing she is. It is a challenge to find corporate support, especially with the enormity of the footprint of that event," he said.

"The mayor and I, very early on, discussed, 'How do we put a fence around it?' With six miles of public beaches and dozens of access points, it's really difficult to do."

Batistatos said the tourism authority lost $1.4 million during the nine-year period it was involved in the show.

Officials had to cancel the show in 2013, because federal budget cuts that year made military aircraft demonstrations impossible and again in 2014, because the city couldn't afford police, ambulance and park support services for the event.

The show took place last year, although it was in doubt over similar issues.
LAKE STATION  Election officials are looking into whether a high school civics program to encourage voting violated state election laws.

The Lake County elections board asked their lawyers Friday to investigate an incentive program Thomas A. Edison High School offered students whose parents and guardians voted in the May 2 special election.

Christine Pepa, Edison's principal, said Friday school officials never offered students gifts to induce their parents or guardians to vote in favor of a school referendum to raise school taxes.

Last week, voters approved, by a 482 to 399 vote, a referendum to raise about $5.6 million in property taxes over the next seven years to support school operations.

Michelle Fajman, the county elections director, said she received a complaint late this week that an offer to let students watch a movie during their school day might be an illegal inducement of voters.

The complaint includes a message from the school, dated May 1  the day before the election  stating students were given papers to be filled out by parents or guardians verifying they voted in last week's election.

Students returning the signed forms would be eligible for a "movie afternoon" in the school auditorium.

Pepa said this information was on the school's Facebook page. She said there also were alternative incentives for students whose family members aren't eligible to vote.

Justin Murphy, an attorney for the board's Democratic members, said inducing a voter to cast a ballot for or against a referendum question could be a felony. He said it also could be a felony for the person who cast a vote in return for a gift.

The election board voted to name Fajman, a Democrat, and Pat Gabrione, the ranking Republican on the elections board staff, to a committee that must consolidate the county's 523 precincts.

Gov. Eric Holcomb recently signed into law Senate Bill 220, mandating the elimination of almost all precincts with fewer than 600 active voters by June 1.

As many as 283 precincts  about half of the county's total  are in jeopardy of disappearing, primarily in Gary, Hammond and East Chicago.

Gabrione said he was confident they will meet the deadlines since both Democrats and Republicans are operating with the same voter counts. Fajman said she expects discrepancies between the two parties' elimination targets.

Republicans promise consolidation will save taxpayer dollars, as much as $200,000 every election year. Democrats complain fewer polling places farther apart would disadvantage minority voters without transportation.

Gabrione said polling places can be moved to a central location within combined precincts.

The election board also rejected two provisional ballot cases in last week's special election. One person cast an East Chicago ballot, but was registered in Griffith. Another had moved from here from Missouri, but hadn't registered in Indiana in time.
The Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority said Thursday it plans to work with developers to built affordable rental housing in East Chicago and a second to-be-determined location in Lake County.

Two development teams will be selected as part of the Moving Forward 3.0 program to submit rental housing tax credit applications of up to $75,000 each in 2018.

The two housing developments will create "safe, energy-efficient affordable housing and transportation options" for about 80 low- to moderate-income families, according to a news release.

The Moving Forward program was launched in 2015 by the IHCDA and Energy Systems Network, a nonprofit initiative focused on advancing development in the energy technology sector.

Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb in February issued an executive order declaring an emergency in the USS Lead Superfund site in East Chicago's Calumet neighborhood, where U.S. EPA is digging up soil because of lead and arsenic contamination.

The city in August ordered more than 1,000 residents at the West Calumet public housing complex to relocate, saying EPA could not safely remove highly contaminated soil from the area with residents living there.

The complex and the old Carrie Gosch Elementary School comprise one of three residential cleanup areas in the Superfund site, and the highest levels of lead and arsenic were found there. The complex was built in the early 1970s in the footprint of a former lead smelter, possibly without any environmental remediation, city officials said.

Lead contamination of up to 112 times the EPA's residential cleanup standard of 400 parts per million was found in the first 6 inches of soil at one home, and the highest level of 91,100 ppm was found at depths of 18 to 24 inches at another home.

EPA as recently as March said it has conducted many cleanups, and residents could have stayed during excavation. Residents have reported difficulty in finding new homes. About 19 out of more than 333 families remained at the complex as of April 21, according to a progress report.

Holcomb's executive order in part directed the IHCDA to "identify and encourage the financing of new development for affordable rental housing in the East Chicago area."

Interested development teams must submit responses to a request for qualifications by June 12. The state expects to select developers in July and make award recommendations at an IHCDA board meeting in fall 2018.

Construction could begin in spring 2019 with completion slated for winter 2019 or spring 2020, records show.
VALPARAISO  Two water quality experts from Valparaiso University will speak Monday night about the chemical U.S. Steel recently spilled into a Lake Michigan tributary.

Professors Julie Peller, who also serves as vice president of the Hoosier Environmental Council, and Chris Iceman are scheduled to talk about hexavalent chromium starting at 7 p.m. at a Valparaiso Chain of Lakes Watershed Group meeting at the Porter County Administration Center, 155 Indiana Ave., in Valparaiso.

U.S. Steel's Midwest plant in Portage spilled nearly 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium into the Burns Waterway near Lake Michigan between April 11 and 12  584 times the daily maximum limit allowed under state law, Indiana Department of Environmental Management documents show.

Its too early to tell what, if any, actions will be taken against U.S. Steel for the release of the cancer-causing chemical, IDEM said last week.

Peller holds a doctorate in organic chemistry from Notre Dame University and has researched water quality analyses, emerging contaminants and Lake Michigan shoreline challenges. Iceman earned his doctorate from the University of Utah and specializes in physical and environmental chemistry.

Walt Breitinger, president of the watershed group, said the implications of the chemical spill could be complex and the professors will be able to explain and answer questions.

"Unlike the invasive species, pathogens, fertilizers, sediment which we deal with constantly in our local lakes, hexavalent chromium is a far more toxic and dangerous chemical," he said. "It causes cancer, liver damage, reproductive problems, immunity disorders and myriad other health issues."

The Valparaiso Chain of Lakes Watershed Group advisory board will hold a business meeting at 6:30 p.m., just before the professors' talk. Breitinger said he'll deliver pizza for the meeting.
Taking a moment to reflect upon and celebrate successful business leaders does more than make us feel good about the Region.

In the end, it provides a roadmap of success leading to a stronger Northwest Indiana economy.

It's why The Times Northwest Indiana Business and Industry Hall of Fame will induct and celebrate the legacies Tuesday of six individuals and one Region business enterprise.

Consider their stories for both inspiration and potential pathways to business success.

Joseph Mansueto

Mansueto will be inducted as the first Region native who built a legacy in the wider world through both business and charitable acumen.

A Munster native, Mansueto founded Morningstar Inc., which revolutionized the way consumers buy mutual funds with an easy-to-decipher star rating system.

The company has grown into a leading provider of investment research on four continents.

Mansueto also has distinguished himself through charitable giving, including $25 million to help fund a new University of Chicago library and $1 million for merit awards for Munster public school teachers.

Karen Maravilla and Raymundo Garcia

This partnership of 21 years has helped build Hammond's El Taco Real into a legendary Region eatery while showing passion for the Hammond neighborhood the business calls home.

Garcia describes himself as the first employee of the business his parents opened in 1974. Maravilla helps the marketing side of the business and is owner of the vintage shop, It's Just Serendipity, in downtown Hammond.

Every business decision the couple makes revolves around helping revitalize Hammond, not just their own business success.

Craig Dwight

Dwight, of Michigan City, credits his business, Horizon Bank, with his induction honor into this year's Hall of Fame class.

Last July, Horizon Bank rebranded all the remaining LaPorte Savings Bank branches after closing on the $98.9 million acquisition. It was Horizon's fifth acquisition in just a few years.

Horizon has grown its Region footprint greatly in recent years. It now has 59 branches in northern and central Indiana and southwest and centeral Michigan and is one of the largest banks headquartered in Indiana.

Robert E. Johnson III

Johnson founded and oversees Merrillville-based Cimcor, a computer security provider keeping clients' systems safe worldwide.

It's a Silicon Valley-style company calling Northwest Indiana home, with software developed here in the Hoosier heartland.

Cimcor's clients include NASA, the U.S. Air Force and Chicago Stock Exchange.

Johnson graduated from Gary's Horace Mann High School and attended Purdue University Calumet, making his an authentically local business success story from start to finish.

Don Babcock

Aside from his success in Region business, Babcock is known as a perennial cheerleader for Region growth and development.

This year, he's also the Partner in Progress honoree for the Business Hall of Fame.

By day, Babcock is director of economic development for NIPSCO. Outside of the office, he is a consummate participant in development organizations and initiatives.

The Partner in Progress award goes to an individual who has helped Region businesses grow and taken proactive steps to stretching community horizons.

Babcock fits that bill in spades.

Fair Oaks Farms

The well known Jasper County dairy farm and tourism mecca is this year's Enterprise of the Year honoree.

The massive working dairy farm has grown into an agri-tourism attraction, drawing in 600,000 visitors each year through innovative displays and tours.

Fair Oaks was one of the first in the country to transform dairy cattle into a major attraction for tourism.

Meanwhile, it has laid the groundwork for $230 million in future projects.

Follow their examples

We encourage every citizen and aspiring business people to learn more about the stories of this year's Business Hall of Fame class.

We hope their stories inspire greatness in others.
CHESTERTON  Dogs, cats and even miniature horses are common therapy animals. They bring comfort to the elderly in nursing homes, hospitalized children, veterans suffering from PTSD and people grieving loss and experiencing emotional crises.

The calming presence of animals can be key in a journey to physical and emotional wellness, and now, using animals in exercise sessions  particularly yoga  is the one of the latest health and fitness trends.

Yoga Mecca, a yoga studio in Chesterton, offered its first session of Goat Yoga on Sunday morning.

Andrew Morris, who owns Yoga Mecca, said having animals  in this case, a goat  at yoga sessions is very therapeutic for both the humans and the animals.

Its pretty popular all over the nation, said Morris, of Chesterton. It socializes the goat and its fun for the people.

Floyd, a 2-month-old purebred Nubian goat owned by Mike and Jenni Kellstrom, was the star of Morris Goat Yoga class at the Kellstroms hobby farm in Chesterton.

The Kellstroms, who also have a few chickens and pigs, said they brought Floyd home as a companion for their heifer cow, Olive.

Because, you know, they are herd animals, Jenni Kellstrom said.

Through a friend of a friend, the Kellstroms learned Morris wanted to do a Goat Yoga session, and they offered to host it at their farm.

I was never a farm boy, but once I met Floyd, that was it, Morris said. It was a perfect match.

Ten people spread their yoga mats on the grass in the Kellstroms' sun-lit backyard, striking yoga poses with Morris guidance, as Floyd wandered among them, climbing on and under people mid-pose. All the while, from her pasture, Olive kept a watchful eye on her little buddy.

Most of the participants were self-described animal lovers.

We are animal freaks at my house, said Sarah Harth, as she bottle-fed Floyd and let him crawl under her downward goat pose.

Susan Swarner raised goats for 4H several years ago, and Floyd seemed quite drawn to her.

Its awesome, said Swarner, of Valparaiso. They climb all over you.

Others, like Toya Garcia-Bradow, Jennifer Britzke and Tammy Lipscomb, are Yoga Mecca regulars.

Wed follow Andrew anywhere, said Lipscomb, of LaPorte.

He always does something different, said Britzke, of Chesterton.

With the popularity of his first Goat Yoga session, Morris is open to incorporating other animals into his workshops.

I might want to do a dog or cat yoga in the next few months, Morris said.

The normally meditative quality of yoga sessions was difficult to achieve at Sundays Goat Yoga session, as all eyes were on Floyd and his antics as he moved from person to person  making friends, giving goat kisses and instilling laughter.

Today, its less about the yoga and more about the goat, Morris said. It makes people laugh, and thats what its all about.
In a story you'll only see on NY1, a grocery store worker in the Bronx says he was fired because he does not speak Spanish.

Anthony Hyman says he has worked at in the deli department at the supermarket on Pelham Parkway South and White Plains Road for the last four years  until about two weeks ago when it was taken over by new management.

It was a Green Apple Supermarket, but it became a C Town.

The manager says he was fired because he was not doing a good job.

But Hyman says he was told his department was being restructured and he was let go because he does not speak Spanish.

"The customers are complaining that when they come back here, 'You're taking too long to try to understand what they're trying to tell you,'" Hyman said outside the store. "But, sir, this is America, and in this country the number one basic language is English."

"I realized that he wasn't capable of doing his job, just a lot of the things that he was doing. During my time managing him, I saw the way he was working and I didn't like it," Gregory Gonzalez, the supermarket's manager, said through a translator. "I didn't feel like he was properly qualified for the business."

Hyman is working with the National Action Network, and he said has had filed a complaint with the Department of Consumer Affairs.
NEW YORK - The city's embattled correction commissioner, Joseph Ponte, is leaving his post.

Ponte will leave the department sometime next month. He has been under fire for several weeks for misusing his city vehicle for personal purposes.

City investigators found he took his city car out of town for 90 days last year, much of that in Maine.

A separate scandal rocked the department earlier this week.

The city's Department of Investigation accused correction officials of spying on its probe of the agency, including monitoring phone calls it had with confidential informants on Rikers Island.

Both scandals prompted calls for Ponte to resign.

On Wednesday, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito said he should step down.

Ponte joined the de Blasio administration in March, 2014 with a reputation as a reformer.

Shortly thereafter, the department was accused by the U.S. Attorney of harboring a culture of violence.

Ponte tried to shed that characterization.

He eliminated solitary confinement for young adults.

But an uptick in slashings and stabbings dogged the department.

Earlier this week, Ponte told NY1 he wasn't sure if he'd be staying on for a second term if Mayor de Blasio is re-elected.

It is unclear when he'll be leaving his post and who will be his replacement.
After weeks of delays at Penn Station, the head of Amtrak tells a legislative committee that the railroad will make badly needed track repairs beginning next month, disrupting service. This comes as Governors Christie and Cuomo issue a joint letter calling for a private operator to manage the beleaguered station. NY1 Transit Reporter Jose Martinez has the story.

It's become a sad, familiar refrain for weary commuters who ride the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and New Jersey Transit (NJT):

"Problems at Penn Station, expect delays"  that's something they endured again this week.

"It's really bad and it keeps getting worse," a straphanger said at the station.

The weeks of commuting woes at the busy station, highlighted by two derailments within days of each other, had Amtrak officials on the hot seat Thursday at a State Assembly hearing in Manhattan.

"The outrage  the upset  from so many people on what has been happening recently cannot be overstated," State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz of the Bronx said during the hearing.

Amtrak President and CEO Charles Moorman apologized for the string of service outages at the country's busiest train station. He said Penn Station is stretched to the limit.

"Old infrastructure, decades of underinvestment by all of the users at the track and the station concourse levels, and a massive increase in use have created a very fragile state," Moorman said.

He said the problems have prompted Amtrak to undertake extensive track and signal repairs that will affect service.

The work is expected to be done on weekdays during two long stretches this summer: the first from July 7 to July 25, and again from August 4 to August 28.

"If we don't take decisive action now to ensure reliability for long-term, we stand a greater and greater chance of more unplanned disruptions as time goes by," Moorman said.

Railroad officials said the goal to prevent even worse disruptions than what riders have been enduring this spring.

The station serves about 450,000 Amtrak, LIRR, and NJT passengers every work day.

"I'll just say it again: it's the busiest station in America, and it's operating at twice its designed capacity," Moorman said.

Those are problems that could be compounded if the federal government cuts Amtrak's funding.

"The Trump administration has proposed to slash funding for Amtrak next year  projects like building the new tunnels under the Hudson River," said Nicole Gelinas, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. "Under Trump's budget, those would completely go away."

After this summer's weekday work is completed, the pain isn't done yet for commuters at Penn station; officials said Thursday another extended weekday outage will come in 2018.
Mia West

The vanity business is a lucrative one, and its an industry from which other industries can take a cue. Even in the worst economy, the beauty industry thrives, as consumers seek solace in small confidence boosters like a tube of lipstick or a manicure. And while it inherently plays to our ego, todays world of beauty is much more than skin deep. Once you peel back the surface layers, youll discover the industrys recent ongoing success is driven by one precious skill: active listening.

According to Collins Dictionary, active listening is a two-way communication process; to actively listen is not just to hear but to understand, interpret and evaluate what is heard. The beautiful thing about the beauty industry is not that it listens, but that it delivers on insights learned from listening in meaningful ways. For those who havent noticed, gone are the days of peddling glamour alone. While it is still an underlying current, todays beauty brands are known to be empowering, progressive, and mindful.

How was an industry long considered superficial able to flip that notion on its head? By opening its ears. Heres what beauty brands can teach companies in any industry about being better listeners to ensure growth:

Inclusivity

Lets start with a lesson about inclusivity and how it can open new doors, while giving existing fans the fuzzies about a brand. Despite the populations diversity, companies have been slow to recognize this in both product development and marketing. However, when social media gave neglected communities a voice, beauty brands were among the first to court and cater to them.

The move to enlisting transgender and male brand ambassadors is a perfect example of how social media helped propel an industry forward by opening its eyes to an overlooked market. With major players like CoverGirl, Maybelline and LOreal all breaking away from the social norm, it became clear beauty was no longer just for the girls. Other online movements such as #BlackGirlMagic, which Julee Wilson from the Huffington Post described as a way to celebrate the beauty, power and resilience of black women," have spurred brands to expand shade offerings addressing the vast spectrum of skin tones and take an all-encompassing approach to marketing mixes further fueling success.

Paradigm Shifts

Perspectives change. It can take years or it can happen in a flash, so the key is to never stop paying attention. However, its important to not just recognize change when it occurs, but to understand what is at the root of it so the company can choose the right course of action. In the case of beauty, consumers had grown tired of unrealistic standards being dictated to them, so they started making their own rules. We now regularly see themes of self-acceptance and individuality in campaigns rather than the conformity of beautys yesteryears.

Capitalizing on this trend, brands like NYX Cosmetics have jettisoned to the forefront by building a community around artistic expression, with Tribe Dynamics ranking NYX fourth in terms of earned media value and social media growth in January 2017. To put this into perspective, Maybelline rests at ninth. A recent Mintel report, The Millennial Beauty Consumer, U.S. - February 2017, also reveals women prefer a more natural look, which explains why musician Alicia Keys au natural 2016 album cover became a catalyst for the #nomakeup and natural texture movements. Brands who anticipated this movement, such as No. 7 skin care and KEVIN.MURPHY, are just a few enjoying success from marketing platforms centered on healthy skin and hair serving as the foundation for flawless, stripped-back beauty.

Integrity

Consumers are seeking brands with a conscience, as is evident in the backlash towards Jessica Albas Honest Companys not-so-honest ingredient claims. And beauty brands have been quick to act as evident by the 1,700-plus brands that have secured the PETA-approved Beauty Without Bunnies cruelty-free emblem. According to the aforementioned Mintel report, millennials are results-driven, but they also prioritize natural ingredients and ethical claims such as cruelty-free, environmentally friendly and ethically sourced.

Securing verified seals from organizations such as the NON GMO Project might be costly and complicate manufacturing processes, but when the consumer is clamoring for it, why wait and fall behind? Its easier to start the process now than lose out in the end.

Experience Economy

A lot can be discovered about people through their social media habits, and beauty brands were a quick study, learning that above all consumers want bragging rights. As someone who has spent the last 15-plus years in beauty, I can confidently say this new consumer mindset has both revolutionized and bolstered the industry, completely redefining the shopping experience.

While most brick and mortar stores are reeling from the Amazon effect, Sephora and Ulta are experiencing exponential growth due in part to virtual experiences. Theyve found the sweet spot because unique experiences like Charlotte Tilburys in-store virtual magic mirror double as social media currency. There are also hundreds of beauty apps capitalizing on our cell phone addictions. Moral of the story is companies should be looking for ways to effectively tell their story through technology by pulling the consumer into their storyline.

Indie Inspired

Multichannel shopping has turned most industries upside down, making way for indie brands that are agile and more in tune with their consumer because they are social media savvy and engaged. There was no way to quell the uprising of emerging beauty brands, so multinational corporations eventually acquired them.

Thankfully, parent companies have learned to leave a good thing alone and let indie brands do what they do best: innovate through active listening. They are also learning more about their consumers from these more agile, connected brands. The takeaway? Regardless of size, companies can maintain their relevancy by following the lead of the more agile and engaged indie brands who are in lockstep with customers wants and needs.

As with most things, beauty is subjective, so how can a company cater to its audience if they arent listening and learning? Like any relationship, two-way communication is the only way to ensure a long, fruitful love connection that withstands the test of time or, even more challenging, an economic downturn.

***

Mia West is vice president of publicity at Havas Formula.
How Did This Racist Question Pop Up On A New Mexico High School Exam? Elijah C. Watson Elijah Watson serves as Okayplayer's News & Culture Editor. When

A New Mexico high school is in the middle of controversy after having a final exam that included a question with a racial slur.

A biology exam at Roswell High School in Roswell, New Mexico, featured the following question: Why are ni**ers black?

A screenshot of the question was taken by a Roswell High student, with the photo circulating and causing concern throughout the school and the community.

When I first saw it you know, I was just taken back like. You know, this isnt right, Justice Adler, a Roswell High student, said in an interview with KOB 4. Im not reading this right, and then I kept reading it over and over again and I just got so angry.

Minorities arent just words, Adler added. Like we are, we are people. Like, we have feelings.

According to KOB 4, the Roswell Independent School District and the Public Education Department are looking into the situation. Officials say they are currently reviewing a student they believe altered and tampered with an end of course exam. The Public Education Department also said no such question exists on the NM end of course exam and there was no breach of the testing platform.

Its just really ignorant you know, Valarie Flores, a Roswell resident, said. I hope his parents or her parents have a talk with him and juts explain you know, fun and games, you could be hurting a lot of people.

I have black grandchildren, ok, so it just doesnt affect black people, Teresa Roden-Delgado, another Roswell resident, said. I am not black, but my grandchildren are and it affects everybody.
Agricultural News

This Week on SUNUP! Kim Anderson Analyzes the Latest Supply and Demand Report Numbers

This week on SUNUP - OSU's Dr. Kim Anderson joins Dave Deken again, taking a look this episode at the numbers in this year's first World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates report out this week from the USDA.





According to Anderson, US wheat production estimates have come in for this year at 1.82 billion bushel, down significantly from last year's crop of 2.31 billion bushels. That is compared to world production numbers, estimated at 27.1 billion, same as 2015's numbers and down from last year's record of 27.7 billion bushels.





"I think this is good news that there was lower production in the US, Russia, Canada, Australia," Anderson said. "All are HRW competitors - looking good on the production side."





Anderson says good news, too, on ending stocks which USDA reports the US at 914 million bushels down from 1.16 billion. World ending stocks though are up 9.5 billion bushels from 9.4.





"We should have some positive price increase but it's going to be limited by those world stock," Anderson said.





Although this report show we are at least headed in the right direction, Anderson says it will probably not be until the 2018-19 marketing year before we start to see a significant change in wheat prices here in Oklahoma.





You can watch their visit tomorrow or Sunday on SUNUP- but you can hear Kim's comments right now by clicking on the LISTEN BAR below.







Beyond Dr. Anderson's weekly chat - the SUNUP crew has a very full lineup for your viewing this weekend:





This week on SUNUP, David Marburger has an update on the wheat crop as Oklahoma moves full speed toward harvest.







-Next, Brian Arnall offers advice on managing soil fertility after significant rainfall. He also invites viewers to the 125th Harvest of Magruder Plots Field Day on May 19.







-In Cow-Calf Corner, Glenn Selk helps producers decide when it's time to cull an unruly cow.







-Gant Mourer previews the upcoming Animal Science Road Trip, which departs May 31 from Lawton.







-Then, Kim Anderson analyzes the latest supply and demand report.







-In the Mesonet weather report, Al Sutherland looks at recent rainfall totals and soil temperatures.







-Finally, Patricia Rayas-Duarte and Sarah Schobert explain their research on probiotics for poultry.







Join us for SUNUP:

Saturday at 7:30 a.m.

Sunday at 6 a.m. on OETA-TV

























You can watch their visit tomorrow or Sunday on SUNUP- but you can hear Kim's comments right now

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Top Agricultural News
The notion that the University of Nebraska at Omaha could merge with the University of Nebraska Medical Center burst above the surface late last week.

But the concept would be explored not by the NU system, but through a study conducted by State Sen. Merv Riepe and the legislative Health and Human Services Committee that Riepe leads.

This was my idea, Riepe, of Ralston, said Friday. Theres no malice in why Im doing this.

The legislative resolution tackles head on what has been murmured and wondered about ever since NU President Hank Bounds inserted Dr. Jeffrey Gold as not only UNMCs chancellor, but also UNOs interim chancellor.

Bounds told the UNO and UNMC communities through an email Thursday that the legislative study proposal wasnt his idea. But Bounds has stopped just shy of completely ruling out a merger. He has said he hoped Gold could find ways for the two institutions to collaborate more and discover efficiencies.

The state is in a budget crisis, and the NU system, which received about $570 million in state money this fiscal year, expects to make big cuts.

I do think there are some things that should be put together between UNO and UNMC, Bounds told the UNO Faculty Senate last week. His aim isnt to alter UNOs momentum or change its course, he said.

But he again made no promises. No one knows what the future holds, he said.

Then came Riepes legislative resolution to study the feasibility of a merger, and the pros and cons of a merger.

Riepe said he didnt inform Bounds because his deadline to file it was Wednesday and he did so in haste.

UNO is a 15,600-student metropolitan university with colleges that include arts and sciences, business administration, education and others.

About two miles to the east, UNMC enrolls 3,860 students in health sciences, including medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health and other programs.

Riepe said he hasnt developed a firm plan for how to conduct the study, but it might include looking at how the University of Iowa, the University of Michigan and other institutions offer traditional college programs while running medical schools, too.

He said he has a bachelors degree from UNO and has no desire to destroy UNO or UNMC.

I want to see the university thrive, but thats not a matter of just putting more and more money into it, he said.

The matter came up after NU sought a replacement for UNO Chancellor John Christensen, who is retiring from UNOs top job this year. The search failed to produce a successor this spring, and Bounds decided to move UNMC Chancellor Gold into a second role as UNOs interim chancellor, perhaps for two years or more.

State Sen. Mike Groene of North Platte co-signed the legislative resolution. As Education Committee chairman, Groene said, he wont commit his panel to do the study because it already expects to do a couple of studies.

But Riepe and his staff can do the study on their own, Groene said, perhaps with a bit of help from his staff. Groene said he signed on to Riepes legislative resolution because he believes there are too many university administrators and staffers and wants to see efficiencies achieved.

I said, Ill sign because I agree with you. Weve got to cut costs somewhere,  Groene said Friday. Hes not trying to hurt the university.

The chairman of the NU Board of Regents said Friday that he was startled by the legislative proposal.

Lets put it this way  I was surprised to read what the senator has in store, said Regents Chairman Bob Whitehouse of Papillion. The concept of merging UNO with UNMC has never been brought forth by the president (of NU) to any members of the board that Im familiar with.

Bounds said in his email Thursday to UNMC and UNO that he is ready to be a resource to legislators on the study. But UNO and UNMC have distinct and important missions to serve our state, he said.

NU Regent Hal Daub of Omaha said he knew of no intention at NU to merge UNO and UNMC.

But it certainly shouldnt be an idea excluded from the conversation about efficiency and combined resources, Daub said.

He said he wouldnt have expected the proposed study to have come from the Nebraska Legislature. But he commended Riepe for the idea.
Forristall, Rep. Gregory A. Age 67 Representative Gregory A. Forristall, of Macedonia, IA, passed away May 10, 2017 at Nebraska Medicine in Omaha. He was born in Council Bluffs on February 15, 1950 to Gerald and Geraldine (Hopp) Forristall. Greg graduated from Carson Macedonia High School and then attended college at University of Iowa, earning a master's degree in music. He was a farmer for over 25 years and was first elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 2007 and was currently serving in his 6th term. He was preceded in death by his mother, Geraldine Forristall. Greg is survived by his wife of 38 years, Carol Forristall; father, Gerald Forristall; mother-in-law, Jean Goos; sister-in-law, Margaret Hein and her husband Dennis; brother-in-law, Lynn Goos and his wife Jan; niece, Jen Rae Wang and her husband Alan; brothers, Gary Forristall and his wife Diane, Gayle Forristall and his wife Marga; sister, Gerianne Darnell and her husband George; nieces, nephews, cousins and a host of other family and friends. VISITATION is 2-5pm on Saturday at the Hoy-Kilnoski Funeral Home. GRAVESIDE SERVICE is 2:30pm on Sunday in the Silver City (Iowa) Cemetery. Memorials are suggested to the Hein Family Foundation, 14216 Franklin Street, Omaha, NE 68154. They will disperse the memorial contributions to scholarships in Greg's honor. HOY - KILNOSKI FUNERAL HOME AND CREMATORY 1221 N. 16th St., Council Bluffs IA 51501 712-256-9988 www.hoyfuneral.com
Tuesday is now No Meeting Day in Haryana and officers to be with people on Friday

30 per cent down: How Haryana aced the decrease in stubble burning

Haryana panchayat polls: Public holiday in several districts on Nov 9 and 12

Snake found in mid-day meal in Haryana

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Students falling ill after consuming mid-day meal keeps making headlines on a fairly routine basis, but children at a government school in Faridabad, Haryana, were in for shock when they found a small snake their food on Thursday.

The incident took place at Rajkeeya Girls Senior Secondary School in Faridabad's NIT-2 locality.

According to reports, the snakelet was found by teachers while inspecting the food, but some students had already eaten the meal by then. The distribution of food was immediately stopped and students were asked to discard the food they had already taken.

Two teachers and six students reportedly complained of nausea after consuming the food and were rushed to the hospital immediately. They have all been deischarged now.

A sample of the food has been collected and sent to a laboratory for testing in Chandigarh. The district administration ahs also ordered a probe into the matter.

The mid-day meal was said to be supplied by the ISKCON Foundation.

ISKCON Food Relief Foundation aslo supplies food to as many as 371 schools across the city every day which is estimated to be consumed by around 16,000 students.

In April, a dead rat was found in the mid day meal at a government-run primary school in Jamla village in Kalol taluka of Gandhinagar district in Gujarat. The dead rat was however found before the food could be served.

The Midday Meal Scheme is a school meal programme of the Government of India designed to improve the nutritional status of school-age children nationwide.

OneIndia News
Ban upheld: Zakir Naik's NGO a threat to security of India

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The ban on Dr Zakir Naik's NGO, Islamic Research Foundation has been upheld by a special tribunal. The tribunal said that Naik's NGO is involved in activities threatening sovereignty, unity, integrity and security of India.

The entire material placed on record shows that the IRF was involved in activities which not only incite and encourage the youth to under take the unlawful activities with and intent to threaten the sovereignty, unity, integrity and security of India. It also cause disaffection against India, which leaves no doubt that the ingredients of section... of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967 are met and there is every reason to conclude that the IRF be declared as an unlawful association," the order stated.

On March 16, the Delhi High Court had also held that the Centre's decision to ban the IRF was taken to safeguard national security. It had dismissed IRF's plea challenging the ban.

After detailed investigations, the Union Home Ministry had in November 2016 banned the IRF under the anti-terror law for five years for its alleged terror activities.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 7:17 [IST]
In pictures, grandeur of Terminal 2 of Kempegowda International Airport which PM Modi will inaugurate

Bengaluru police app comes to the rescue of techie harassed by another techie in bus

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Bengaluru, May 12: First, let us laud Bengaluru police for coming up with a mobile application called--Know Your Police Station--that came to the rescue of a woman traveller in a city bus after she was molested by a man.

According to reports, a 29-year-old woman techie was molested inside a moving BMTC Volvo bus by another techie, identified as Madhusudhan Rao.

The police told the media that the 47-year-old Rao groped the woman techie inside the bus on Wednesday evening. The victim decided to lodge a complaint with the police against her molester and she did it by sitting inside the bus by using the mobile app.

Immediately, the police answered her SOS and arrested Rao from the bus by the 'Pink' hoysala, a special patrol team of the Bengaluru City Police recently launched for ensuring safety of women and children.

"Immediately after receiving the complaint, we sent a vehicle and intercepted the Volvo bus to arrest the accused. Following this, an FIR was registered and a case was filed against Rao under Section 354 of IPC. On Thursday, he was produced in court and sent to 14-day judicial custody," Bellandur Police Inspector Victor Simon told The News Minute.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 10:12 [IST]
Big setback for Sonia, Rahul Gandhi: Court orders IT probe in National Herald case

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

In a major setback for Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi the Delhi High Court has ordered a probe against the two in connection with the National Herald case. The court ordered an IT probe against the President and vice-President of the Congress party.

The court was hearing a private complaint filed by BJP leader and MP, Subramanian Swamy in 2012. He had accused the Gandhis of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds. He said that an entity called Young Indian Private Ltd in which both Sonia and Rahul have shareholdings paid Rs 50 lakh to acquire the Associated Journals Limited.

A Bench comprising Justices S Murlidhar and Chander Shekhar observed that the company cannot be arrogant and will have to submit its documents to the income tax department. The observation came in the wake of a complaint that the company had not submitted its documents to the IT department.

The Gandhis however have contended that Swamy's plea was in the nature of a fishing enquiry which is not permissible under the law.

OneIndia News
Bird-hit forces Jet Airways flight to return to Mumbai

India

ians-IANS

By Ians English

Mumbai, May 12: A "suspected" bird hit forced a Jet Airways flight to return shortly after it took off from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport here on Friday morning.

The aircraft landed safely and all 180 passengers and eight crew members have also been deplaned, a spokesperson said.

The incident occurred around 8.15 a.m. on the Mumbai-Bangkok flight 9W-70 when the crew executed an air-turn following the suspected hit on the tail of the aircraft.

The aircraft is currently being examined by the Jet Airways engineering team and ground personnel.

Following the strike, the flight has been delayed by over four hours and is rescheduled to depart at 12.45 p.m. to reach Bangkok around 6.25 p.m., the spokesperson said.

In April 12, this year, about 150 passengers of a Jet Airways flight were stranded at the Varanasi airport after a bird hit the flight while taking off. The passengers who had to fly to other countries from New Delhi were also among those stranded at the airport.

IANS
One BSF jawan injured in ceasefire violation by Pak in Arnia

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

One Border Security Force jawan was injured after Pakistani troops violated ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir's Arnia sector on Friday morning.

The BSF, in statement, said that Pakistan Rangers fired a few shots at Indian troops working near the border fence. After this the Indian troops also fired back.

Reports suggest that a few mortar shells were also fired from both sides.

On Thursday, Pakistan had violated cease fire in Jammu and Kashmir's Nowshera sector. One woman was killed in the incident.

One person was also injured in the incident. Pakistan it is learnt have used 120 mm mortars on Thursday's violation.

Reports stated that there was heavy exchange of fire between the two sides. The firing by Pakistan was unprovoked. The Indian army retaliated, sources said, adding that there have been no casualty or damage on the Indian side.

At least two security personnel, including an Army officer, were martyred in a ceasefire violation by Pakistan in Poonch sector of Jammu and Kashmir on Monday.

[730 cease fire violations by Pakistan in 2 years]

In 2015 and 2016, there were 730 instances of cease fire violations by Pakistan. This means that there was at least one violation every single day along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.

OneIndia News
UP: SP leader's car hit by truck, dragged for more than 500 meters in Mainpuri | VIDEO

Cop slapped in Etah: Accused should be prosecuted, says SP leader

India

oi-Gulam Rabbani

Lucknow, May 12: The Samajwadi Party leader and Uttar Pradesh legislative council chairman Ramesh Yadav distanced himself from Mohit Yadav, his nephew who landed in trouble for slapping a sub-inspector in a police station at Etah.

Ramesh Yadav said that he condemned the incident and asked for stern action against his nephew.

Asserting that nothing is above the law, the SP leader issued a letter and agreed that Mohit is his nephew but does not reside with him and his actions on hospital staff and the sub-inspector was condemnable.

#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

"Mohit Yadav who is the son of my brother Narendra Singh Yadav does not live with us nor do we have any relation with what they do. The way he conducted himself is condemnable. His behaviour with the police official and the hospital staff was unpardonable and that he should be punished for his misconduct," said Ramesh Yadav

"Mohit should be prosecuted. Nothing is above law, be it my son or any of my relative. I have nothing to do with the mentioned incident. I never have and never will support such actions," the SP leader added.

On May 10, Mohit Yadav slapped a police sub-inspector inside the police station in Etah.

The incident was caught on camera Mohit slapping the police personnel in the police station.

Over phone speaking about the incident, Ramesh Yadav, had 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 again the issue of Samajwadi Party and criminal nexus.

Gaurav Bhatia, the BJP spokesperson, condemned the incident. This is completely shocking, strictest of actions should be taken against this person,' he had said.

During Uttar Pradesh poll campaign Prime Minister Narendra Modi had lambasted the SP 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 SP office," Modi had said at an election rally.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 13:30 [IST]
Bihar assembly elections 2020: Heres how you can cast your vote using the EVM and VVPAT

EC attempts to convince political parties by giving demo on EVM security features

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, May 12: In order to prove that electronic voting machines are tamper-proof, the Election Commission on Friday made a detailed presentation about the security features of EVMs, in front of various political parties.

On Friday, the EC hosted an all-party meeting regarding EVM issue and other electoral reforms in the national capital.

The EC officials made a detailed presentation on EVM security features, say reports. The issue of tampering of EVMs has been hogging the limelight since the time the results of the five assembly elections were declared in March this year. On Friday, officials of the EC met representatives from 55 political parties from across the country to discuss on the entire row in the national capital.

The meeting came at a time after the Aam Aadmi Party proved in the Delhi Assembly that the machines could be tampered recently. On Thursday, hundreds of AAP workers demonstrated outside the EC headquarters in Delhi demanding that voter-verifiable paper audit trail- equipped EVMs be used in future elections.

The VVPAT-equipped EVMs dispense paper slips which help voters confirm that their vote has indeed gone to the candidate of their choice.

During Friday's meeting, the EC welcomed the VVPAT move by the government. The EC officials said they have received funds for VVPAT. The EC said that VVPAT-enabled EVMs will be implemented by 2019.

Participating in a discussion on the issue during a day-long special session of the Delhi Assembly earlier this week, AAP legislator Saurabh 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.

Right from Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati to AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, several political leaders in recent past have accused that EVMs could be manipulated to favour a particular party or a candidate in any election. However, the EC has denied all these charges and is set to conduct a hackathon where experts could come and check the veracity of EVMs.

OneIndia News
Bihar assembly elections 2020: Heres how you can cast your vote using the EVM and VVPAT

EVM row: EC to meet political parties to discuss on hackathon

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, May 12: The issue of tampering of electronic voting machines has been hogging the limelight since the time the results of the five assembly elections were declared in March this year.

On Friday, officials of the Election Commission are set to meet representatives from 55 political parties from across the country to discuss on the entire row in the national capital, say reports.

Reports add that the EC members will also discuss with political leaders about the upcoming hackathon to prove that the EVMs are tamper-proof in the meeting.

The meeting is coming at a time after the ruling Aam Aadmi Party proved in the Delhi Assembly that the machines could be tampered recently. On Thursday, hundreds of AAP workers demonstrated outside the EC headquarters in Delhi demanding that voter-verifiable paper audit trail- equipped EVMs be used in future elections.

The VVPAT-equipped EVMs dispense paper slips which help voters confirm that their vote has indeed gone to the candidate of their choice.

Participating in a discussion on the issue during a day-long special session of the Delhi Assembly earlier this week, AAP legislator Saurabh 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.

Right from Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati to AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal, several political leaders in recent past have accused that EVMs could be manipulated to favour a particular party or a candidate in any election.

However, the EC has denied all these charges and is set to conduct a hackathon where experts could come and check the veracity of EVMs.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 8:06 [IST]
How BJP will easily elect its candidate as next President of India with ease

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

The BJP is likely not to have any problem in electing its choice of candidate as the next President of India. The numbers are stacking up very well for the BJP with several parties such as the YSR Congress, TRS and the AIADMK coming forward with their support.

Rashtrapathi Bhavan will be occupied by our candidate, a top BJP source informed OneIndia. The Presidential elections are scheduled for July once Pranab Mukherjee's term comes to an end.

While the YSR Congress has said that it would back the BJP's candidate, all eyes would be on the BJD which has been non-comital so far. The AIADMK too in all probability will support the NDA.

The BJP says that their candidate would be an insider. There would be no independent figure as their candidate for the next President of India. BJP sources say that the name of Jharkhand Governor is almost finalised.

BJP sources say that in the electoral college even after the mammoth win in the Uttar Pradesh elections 2017, they were short by around 17,500 votes. However with parties such as the YSR Congress, TRS and even the AIADMK indicating their support, those numbers have been covered with ease.

In the past few days here were the names that did the round to become the next President of India- L K Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi, Rajanikanth, Draupadi Murmu and Uma Bharti. The opposition on the hand has been contemplating making these persons their choice of candidate- Sharad Pawar, Meira Kumar, Gopal Krishna Gandhi and Sharad Yadav.

OneIndia News

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 6:48 [IST]
On way to meet kin of teenager killed in Jharkhand, BJPs Kapil Mishra 'detained' at Ranchi airport

How many lies, Arvind?: Kapil Mishras mother questions corrupt Kejriwal

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, May 12: After Kapil Mishra, the former Aam Aadmi Party leader who has accused Arvind Kejriwal of being involved in corruption cases, his mother, Annapoorna Mishra, on Friday joined her son to target the AAP chief.

In an open letter to Kejriwal, Annapoorna, a former Bharatiya Janata Party politician said, "How many lies, Arvind? How many?... Lies will not help you. Be afraid of god."

"I never thought my son would ask you questions and you would avoid them," she wrote in Hindi, adding that "whenever I met you, you always talked about probity in public life."

"Remember you came to my house and said to me - 'I want to take Kapil in the party and make him contest the election but he is not listening'. He only wanted to be part of a movement, but you came to me saying you need him," she wrote.

"You worked with Kapil but never understood him. He is very stubborn. He hasn't eaten anything for three days. As a mother, I request you to give him what he has asked...a small information. He is not an agent of anybody but of the truth."

Annapoorna was the first mayor of the East Delhi Municipal Corporation after Delhi's civic body was trifurcated.

Currently, Kapil, who was sacked from AAP's primary membership, is on a hunger strike, demanding the details of foreign trips undertaken by AAP leaders.

"Today my son is being accused of being an agent of BJP. I never thought Kejriwal would behave in such a manner. I asked Kejriwal to speak out on the issue related to the alleged tanker scam. Anyway, my son was never interested in joining the AAP and it was Kejriwal who wanted Kapil to join the AAP," Annapoorna told reporters.

"Kapil Mishra has a higher stature than Kejriwal's as there is no corruption allegation against the sacked water minister," she added.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 11:00 [IST]
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Karnataka SSLC results 2017: Udupi district tops, girls better than boys

India

oi-Deepika

By Deepika

Bengaluru, May 12: The Overall pass percentage of the SSLC 2017 exam stood at 67.87 percent. The result percentage was lower this year when compared to last year's 79.16 per cent which is down by 7.24 per cent.

Announcing the results on Friday, Minister for State Primary Education Tanveer Sait said that Udupi district stood first with a pass percentage of 84.23%, followed by Dakshina Kannada, 82.39%, Chikkodi with 80.47%. Bidar stood last with a pass percentage of 62.02%.

Udupi which stood first in Second PU 2017 results announced on Thursday has once again topped the list in the SSLC examinations.

A total 5, 81,134 students have passed in the examination. Girls once again featured better than the boys this year. 2,96,426 girls and 2,84, 708 boys have passed the examinations respectively.

How to check your results:

Here is how to check Karnataka SSLC results 2017

Go to official website kseeb.kar.nic.in

On homepage, click on the notification for the Karnataka SSLC results 2017.

Fill in your roll number and other details.

Once you submit this information, results will be displayed.

Five students have topped the state with cent percent results, while six stood at second place with 624 marks. While 924 Schools have scored 100% results, 60 schools scored zero results.

The candidates have time till 24 May to apply revaluation and recounting of marks with prescribed fee. The Supplementary examinations will be held between June 15 to 22.

The Karnataka SSLC exams 2017 were held between March 21 to April 12 this year in 2,720 centres across the state. As many as 8,77 lakh students appeared.

The Board this year issued separate question papers and answer sheets so that students can take the question papers home. The Board also allowed students coming in 15 minutes late into the exam hall after protests from parents. KSEEB also made sure that exam centres were under CCTV surveillance and 40 cameras were installed at the Board's office to prevent cheating.

Candidates can check the results from the official website: kseeb.kar.nic.in and results.nic.in You can also register and get your results here : examresults.net

Results can be viewed at 3 pm.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 14:07 [IST]
'If I have nominated even one person using authority, I'll resign': Kerala governor on VC row

Kerala: RSS worker, accused of murdering CPI(M) activist, hacked to death

India

oi-Anusha

In yet another incident of political killings in Kerala, an RSS worker was hacked to death. Choorakkattu Biju, an RSS-BJP worker and an accused in the murder case of CPI(M) activist Dhanraj was hacked to death near Payyannur in Kannur on Friday afternoon.

Biju, a worker of the RSS in Kakkampara Mandal was the 12th accused in CPI(M) worker Dhanraj murder case. The CPI(M) activist was killed in July 2016 at his residence. Four RSS workers were arrested for his murder immediately.

The BJP in Kerala was quick to call it an act of 'leftist terror'. Chief of BJP unit in Kerala Kummanam Rajasekharan accused the state government of supporting such murders.

The police have registered a case of murder and investigations are underway in Biju's case. It is suspected to be a case of political murder and retaliatory attack. Kannur has witnessed dozens of political murders with casualties being inflicted on both sides.

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Kolkata's Imam Barkati unapologetic for flouting ban on 'lal batti'

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

Kolkata's Maulana Nurur Rehman Imam Barkati remained unapologetic for using red beacon atop his vehicle even after the blanket ban on 'lal batti' has come into effect from May 1.

'Nobody has the courage to remove the 'lal batti, this is a ploy by RSS' Imam Barkati told media . He said, "I am neither regretful nor afraid of what I have done. " Though FIR was filed against Imam Barkati on Thursday in Topsia for not following Central Government laws, he is still defiant in using red beacon.

Imam Barkati is already infamous for issuing a fatwa against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his decision to demonetise old Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes.

The ban of red beacon

The ban on red beacon doesn't spare even vehicles of the country's top dignitaries such as the President, Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India. However, ambulances and vehicles of the fire service, police, and army will be exempted to use blue flashing beacons to sail through traffic.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has issued notification regarding exemption to the use of colored beacons.

Nitin Gadkari, Road Transport and Highways Minister, became the first minister to remove the red beacon light from his official vehicle soon after the Modi government banned the 'lal batti'.

(With agency inputs)

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 17:45 [IST]
Lashkar-Hizbul combine killed Lt. Ummer Fayaz

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

A manhunt has been launched to nab six persons part of the Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Tayiba which in a joint operation killed 22 year old Lt Ummer Fayaz. The young soldier of the Indian Army was martyred after he was abducted by terrorists at Shopian district.

The autopsy report indicated that Lt Fayaz was shot from a close range. His body was found at a bus stand at the Harmain village on Wednesday morning. The incident comes in the wake of the Hizbul declaring an open threat to local Kashmiris who either join the Army or the police force.

Meanwhile investigations have revealedthat an INSAS rifle snatched from cops could have been used in the crime. A senior police official also said today that Fayaz's body did not bear any torture marks while adding that the post-mortem report is awaited.

Police have found two empty cartridges of an INSAS rifle at the place where Fayaz was shot dead by the militants in Shopian. There were two incidents of weapon-snatching in south Kashmir recently. The doctors and police officers who examined the body did not find any torture marks.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 7:11 [IST]
Left, Right and Centre of Indian politics

India

oi-Prabhpreet

By Prabhpreet

With the rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, shouting matches between panellists from different parties on the TV news debates have become a regular event.

The participants on these shows usually come from parties belonging to opposites sides of the political spectrum. Accusations that end up being hurled in studios or in opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines consist of calling the other side left-wing, right-wing or of having no political ideology at all.

What do they mean?

Such terms such as Right, Left and Centre in terms of political parties is an attempt to categorise them based on their political ideologies, socio-cultural policies as well as the kind of economics a group believes in and follows.

For example, stances that take on policy towards the role of religion and religious groups, position on crime, type of society and importance of culture, impetus on nationalism, and what kind of trade policy etc.

The Right favours the individual and free will to take their own decisions and reap the benefits from them in the case of the economy, and the limited role of the government in all matters. Left on the other hand is on the side of a strong government with it providing welfare measures.

While on issues such as society, religion, culture nationalism the right believes in a strong stance taken by the authority whereas the left believes progressive policy by the government where an approach of universal acceptance should be adopted rather a policy of strict adherence.

Do they exist in India?

But in the case of India, the need to differentiate parties into such groupings mattered very little till the birth of the BJP and the eventual hold at the national and state level that it enjoys today, became a reality.

This was so, as till now, parties that had dominated the politics of the country always had Centrist, Left to Center or totally leftist tendencies. As the BJP continues to grow in power through the country, its political ideology of being towards the Right has for the first time taken centre stage.

And though such a differentiation into the three groupings could be done fairly accurately in the western world in the previous century and most clearly in the cold war era between the Soviet Union (Left) and the US (Right), it barely holds true for the current western world and for a country like India.

The groupings that explain the current scenario, in a more technically accurate manner, would be the Centre, the Right of Centre and the Left of Centre, as nearly all political parties, especially in India, hold a position of compromise between the extremes, in particular holding contradictory positions on socio-cultural and economic issues.

The main reason for this could be the country's history, which has mostly been towards the Centre but tilted towards the left. But for all intents and practical purposes, these can still be classified as the Right, Left and Centre, by taking into account the standing on the core issues that these parties stand for.

The Right

The rise of the BJP has brought with it the first Right party at the national level, though Shiv Sena, which also falls in the same category, did exist before but only at the state level.

With the rise of the BJP, there has come a different approach, which means that it has broken away from the policies, which India had adopted ever since its independence.

And such a change has brought with it a host of critics, from those on the Right, the Left and the centre. The change has also come on all fronts, social, economics and political, though according to critics, a bit more on some and little less on the others.

On issues of religion, the standing of the BJP has been seen as aggressive, as it has as followed what is the norm for political parties on the Right, of not implementing an appeasement policy of religious minorities and wanting an equality of all approach, including the majority group.

The other controversies surrounding the change is in their aggressive stance on issues of nationalism, support and defence of traditional society and culture, through its parent organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, all in line with the traditional school of the Right.

While on the economic front it has been blamed for not being aggressive enough with the government still in the business of doing business through government run and controlled companies, a push for labour reforms notwithstanding.

The Left

This school of thought has a deep history in India, both before and after independence, with many state governments being run by parties on the Left since independence.

The main parties on this side of the spectrum are the Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) headed by the current West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

These parties have had a major presence in the states of Kerala and West Bengal, along with some states in the northeast of India. Also, while the Congress, which is typically seen as being Centre in the political spectrum at the national level, certain state units of the party when in government in places such as Kerala and in the northeast can be termed as leftist.

These parties, again following the definition of the side of the Left, have been opposed to the setup of private industries in these states and have the presence of strong unions in all fields, be it labour, student and others. They have also had strong policies towards the protection of minority groups through appeasement. A surprise, given that Left parties by philosophy do not believe in god and religion.

The left has also enjoyed a brief but successful presence at the national level by winning enough Lok sabha seats in Bengal and Kerala to have an active role in deciding the policy at the centre. But again following the tendencies of parties on the Left to be against friendly relations with the US and against free global trade, both the communist parties withdrew support from the UPA alliance when the Congress refused to agree to its demands of not signing the Indo-US nuclear deal.

And at the state level both these parties have lost out to the former Congress leader and now the chief of TMC, Mamata Banerjee, who ended the communist parties 34 years rule in the Bengal. Leading to the present situation of these parties being in power in only one major state, Kerala.

The Centre and the rest

Though alot other parties fall under this category but the one major party that fits this bill is the grand old party of India, Congress. With the party at the centre of the freedom struggle against the British, it was natural that it came to power not only at the national but also the state level after independence.

It is the Congress, which under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru, which chose the direction India, would take after 1947. And the policies put in can be bracketed into those of Moderates, another term used for the Centre and of those who are left of Centre, depending on which period of the over five-decade rule of the party is looked at.

The path of government companies driving the country's development, secularism being adopted which was separate from that in Europe, where the government recognises no religions, whereas in India all are equally treated and supported, and a position of non-alignment accepted towards global power's. It is a discontinuation with these policies that the current switch of policies under the BJP, comes in sharp contrast with.

Along with the Congress, barring a few exceptions, almost all other parties, both national and state level, such as Samajwadi Part, Bahujan Samajwadi Party, DMK, AIADMK etc., can be put into the bracket of the Centre.

This including the newly formed Aam Aadmi Party, which though started with the policy announcements which were more in line with the left and were even comfortable calling themselves anarchists, yet its functioning since then have put it in between the Centre and the left. As its stand on the economic front which follows that of the left, but the policy on the social, cultural issues stands clearly to the centre.

With the arrival and what can be seen as a presence of the BJP, for the considerable future, the debate between the merits and demerits of policies of the all the political parties on the opposites sides of the political spectrum can be expected for many years to come.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 14:57 [IST]
Madras High Court grants bail to mining baron Sekhar Reddy

India

oi-Anusha

Mining baron Sekhar Reddy was granted bail by the Madras High Court on Friday. Reddy along with two of his accomplices Srinivas and Prem Kumar was granted relief in a money laundering case. The Madras High Court has asked all accused to stay in Delhi and appear before officials of the Enforcement Directorate.

Madras High Court judge S Bhaskaran granted conditional bail to the accused after asking them to pay Rs 10 lakh and produce two sureties of Rs 5 lakh each. They have also been asked to appear in the Enforcement Directorate office at Delhi on a daily basis and sign in the register at 10.30 AM until further orders.

The trio was arrested by the enforcement directorate after Rs 32 crore in new Rs 2,000 notes were found in their possession. The huge stash of money was found during raids conducted by the income tax department on properties belonging to the businessmen post demonetisation. The trio was accused of money laundering.

Following the raids conducted in December last year, income tax officials had seized 127 kg of gold and over Rs 170 crore in cash of which Rs 32 crore was in new Rs 2,000 currency notes. The CBI as well as the Enforcement directorate had registered cases against the trio and arrested them.

OneIndia News
Man beaten up for allegedly slaughtering buffalo in Uttar Pradesh

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

A video of a group of men thrashing a man for allegedly slaughtering a buffalo in Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh has surfaced on Friday.

A group of five men dragged the man out of is home at Achal Tal area Aligarh as police were seen struggling to intervene. Yet police rescued the man and took him into their custody. Five people have been arrested and the investigation is underway.

Reacting to the incident police said that they received information that buffalo was being slaughtered at Kali Baghel's home and arrested all those involved. Police controlled the crowd on time, added police officer.

#WATCH: Man thrashed by locals for allegedly slaughtering a buffalo in Achal Tal area of Aligarh (UP), 5 arrested, investigation on. pic.twitter.com/ENmX7Bd91l  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 12, 2017

After Yogi Adityanath became Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister he launched the drive against illegal slaughterhouses. He had ordered a blanket ban on smuggling of cows and said zero tolerance would be exercised in this regard. Adityanath followed BJP manifesto that said all the illegal slaughter houses would be closed and there would be a blanket ban on all the mechanized slaughter houses.

It may be recalled that, in September 2015, a 60-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched in Uttar Pradesh's Dadri for allegedly possessing beef. However, forensic reports later revealed that he had in fact possessed mutton, not beef.

(With agency inputs)

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 10:51 [IST]
Plunging new depths to promote chess as scuba divers play chess undersea in Chennai

Tamil Nadu to unveil new Startup and Innovation policy soon: CM Stalin

Why is the DMK continuing to oppose the imposition of Hindi? - 50 years of struggle and the truth!

Modi must ensure that Lankan Tamils are treated at par with Sinhalese: DMK

India

oi-Vikas

By Vikas

Asserting that Tamils in Sri Lanka were natives of the land, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure that they are treated equally and impartially in the island nation.

MK leader T.K.S. Elangovan told news agency ANI that only Modi, who is on a two-day visit to India's southern neighbour, can ensure that all ethnic groups in Sri Lanka, including the Tamils, are treated without any discrimination.

Elangovan said Modi's visit will go in vain if this cannot be ensured.

Modi on Thursday left on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka where he will be the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations.

The visit follows the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena. It is Modi's second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister after March 2015.

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.

Modi will also address the Tamil community at Norwood Grounds.

[Modi leaves for 2-day Sri Lanka visit]

Although no bilateral talks are scheduled, the visit is expected to give renewed momentum in India-Sri Lanka ties.

OneIndia News
UPSSSC PET 2022 results to be declared soon: Steps to check scorecard

NITI Aayog to partner UP for holistic development

India

oi-PTI

Lucknow, May 12: Government think-tank NITI Aayog would partner with the Uttar Pradesh government to double the income of farmers and to create more livelihood and investment opportunities in the state, a statement said on Thursday.

It added that a Joint Working Group comprising of three representatives each from the NITI Aayog and the state government would be set up. The JWG will prepare within the next 15 days a road-map and identify action points for the development of the state. Respective departments of the state government will then implement these action points.

"Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath expressed interest in bringing in the spirit of entrepreneurship and improving the investment climate in the state. The state government resolved to host a global investor summit in Uttar Pradesh soon," the statement said.

During the meeting, Panagariya traced India's growth story over the past two decades with focus on Uttar Pradesh. He linked the relation between growth, job opportunities and fall in poverty levels.

NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant made a presentation on where Uttar Pradesh stands today and what steps are needed to transform it.

NITI Aayog Member Agriculture Ramesh Chand shared issues related to the growth of agriculture and possible solutions for doubling farmer income in the state.

He said that "given the different agro-climatic zones in the state, different strategies have to be adopted for maximising the farm yields."

The think-tank said that "the way forward to transform Uttar Pradesh was through transforming key sectors, including industry, agriculture, infrastructure, health and education."

PTI

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 9:24 [IST]
Police from three states hunt for Justice C S Karnan with no luck

India

pti-PTI

Chennai, May 12: Police continued to hunt for Calcutta High Court judge Justice C S Karnan, sentenced to six months jail by the Supreme Court for contempt, for the third day today but without any luck.

The Kolkata police, which has been instructed by the apex court to execute its order, stayed put in Chennai to take him into custody before he could be forwarded to jail for serving the sentence.

The team comprises officials of Kolkata police, including a DGP rank officer, Chennai police sources said, adding the whereabouts of Karnan were not known. Karnan had yesterday moved the Supreme Court seeking recall of its order holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to a six-month imprisonment.

The seven-judge bench of the apex court had passed the order on May 9, a day after he defiantly ordered eight apex court judges, including the Chief Justice of India, to be put behind bars. However, before the apex court pronounced the order, he had left Kolkata for Chennai.

Justice Karnan, who has been on a warpath with the Supreme Court for last several months, is the first sitting judge of a high court to be ordered jailed. He is due to retire next month.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said a "conscious decision" was taken by seven of its judges to sentence Justice Karnan to six months imprisonment. "The seven judges assembled to take a conscious decision," a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said.

The CJI made the remarks while he was sitting with four other judges hearing the issue of triple talaq. He made the statement when advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, on behalf of Justice Karnan, mentioned the plea for recall of the May 9 order when the bench had come to the dais after lunch to hear the triple talaq matter.

PTI
Probe in rationalist M M Kalburgi murder case headed nowhere

India

oi-Anusha

Investigations into the murder of rationalist and educationalist Professor M M Kalburgi is headed nowhere with no new leads. The Criminal Investigation Department of Karnataka that is probing the case has not made a single arrest even almost two years after Professor Kalburgi was shot dead by assailants outside his residence.

"We have no new leads in the case so far but investigations are continuing. There was a suspicion that the weapon used to murder rationalists Govind Pansare and Narendra Dabholkar was the same as the one used in the Kalburgi case. We questioned those arrested in the previous cases but nothing concrete has come out of it," said Karnataka's Home Minister Dr G Parameshwar. The Home Minister added that the delay in concluding investigations did not mean that the probe was ineffective.

Ballistic experts concluded that Prof Kalburgi was shot with a country-made pistol. Samples of the residue were first tested at the forensic laboratory in Karnataka and later the reports were sent to the Scotland Yard police. The Karnataka police requested for similarities to be drawn between the pistols used in the murder of all three rationalists. Despite a reply from the Scotland Yard police, no arrests have been made so far and neither have the police declared that Prof Kalburgi's killers were the same as Dabolkar and Pansare's.

69-year-old Narendra Dabholkar was shot dead in Pune on August 20, 2013. Four bullets from a 7.65 mm countrymade pistol were fired on him. Govind Pansare, an 81-year-old rationalist was shot with five bullets from two 7.65 mm countrymade pistols on February 16, 2015. Prof Kalburgi was killed in Dharwad on August 30, 2015, and two bullets were fired from a 7.65 mm countrymade pistol.

Writers and educationalists across Karnataka have been fuming at the government for not completing probe in the case. Families of the three slain rationalists are extending support to each other and pressing for quick action. In 2016, amid reports of arrests of two people the CID clarified that there were no arrests made in the case. A report had claimed that two people were arrested for murdering prof Kalburgi over a property dispute, a claim that was rejected outrightly by the CID.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 10:14 [IST]
Punjab CM Amarinder demands Centre's help in drug menace issue

India

oi-PTI

Chandigarh, May 12: Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Friday sought help and cooperation from the Centre and neighbouring states in putting an end to smuggling of drugs into the state from across the border.

Addressing the 28th meeting of the Northern Zonal Council in Chandigarh, presided over by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Amarinder referred to the rampant drug menace in Punjab and said the problem needs to be combated in a systematic and organised manner.

The chief minister said the Centre should order security forces to maintain strict vigil on the border to check cross- border smuggling of drugs. He stressed on the importance of inter-state coordination and urged the neighbouring states of Rajasthan, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir to make focused efforts for the destruction of illegal poppy and cannabis cultivations.

Amarinder, according to a state government release in the city, also called for effective plugging of pilferage of narcotic substances from areas where they are being cultivated legally for pharmaceutical and related purposes.

Sharing of information and initiating criminal action against the smugglers involved in the trade should be encouraged, he said. He also called for shifting of poppy husk vends located in Rajasthan along the border villages of Punjab.

Saying that Punjab was a border state, Amarinder demanded central government concessions as compensations for the financial and economic loss already suffered by it. He also called for greater operational freedom to states in choosing and financing their developmental properties, since state governments "are in a much better position to understand, address and solve the problems of their people, at the cutting edge."

PTI

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 16:24 [IST]
Reprieve for Yogi: UP govt refuses sanction to prosecute him

India

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

In a reprieve for Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, the Uttar Pradesh government has refused to grant sanction for prosecution in connection with a ten year old communal riots case.

The riots in Gorakhpur in January 2007 were sparked allegedly after a provocative speech by Adityanath, it has been alleged. He was arrested and remained in jail for 10 days before getting bail from a court. An affidavit stating that sanction has been "refused" for prosecuting Yogi Adityanath in the case was filed before the high court by Chief Secretary Rahul Bhatnagar.

The sanction is needed to file a chargesheet against Yogi Adityanath under IPC Section 153-A on the charge of promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and caste.

The chief secretary had been asked to appear in person today by a May 7 order by a division bench comprising justices Ramesh Sinha and Umesh Chandra Srivastava. In his affidavit, Bhatnagar also stated that the CB-CID, which has been investigating the case registered in connection with the riots, has proposed to submit its closure report and it will be submitted before the trial court.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 6:26 [IST]
TN minister Vijaya Bhaskar's aide blames Income Tax official in suicide note

India

oi-Anusha

A close aide of Tamil Nadu health minister K R Subramaniam has held income tax officials and the 'pressure they exerted' as the reason for his suicide. The government contractor who was found dead in Namakkal has claimed in a note that he was forced to admit that he carried out benami transactions for the minister.

Subramaniam, a close aide of the minister was also raided when raids were conducted at properties belonging to Vijaya Bhaskar. He was also asked to appear in person for questioning. Days after he was questioned by IT sleuths, Subramaniam was found dead at his farmhouse. Initially suspected to be a case of suicide, his family members claimed that he died of a heart attack. The police, however, have now recovered a suicide note.

According to the police, Subramaniam accused a deputy director of Income Tax department for pressurising him and causing mental trauma. He alleged that he was pushed to taking the extreme step after officials forced him to accept that he was the minister's benami. He is also said to have named an IPS officer, an IAS officer and a former AIADMK minister in the suicide note. "I was under severe mental pressure. They wanted me to accept that I am a benami of the minister. I have always stood by the truth and am unable to bear what is happening," the suicide note read.

Subramaniam who has been the contractor for many government projects has also built educational institutions belonging to Vijaya Bhaskar. He was out of the country on April 9 when raids were conducted and he was asked to appear before officials in connection with the documents that were unearthed from his properties. On Monday, he is said to have arrived at his farmhouse in Namakkal and told his staff that his purpose was to 'rest'. The staff soon found him unconscious. Attempts to save his life were futile. Days after his death, the police have found this suicide note.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 12:21 [IST]
Ummer Fayaz killing: Police put 'Wanted' poster of 3 Hizbul Mujahideen suspects

India

oi-Chennabasaveshwar

By Chennabasaveshwar

The Jammu and Kashmir police on Friday launched manhunt for three suspected Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists who abducted and murdered Lieutenant Ummer Fayaz in Shopian, South Kashmir.

The police has identified three terrorists - Ishfaq Ahmed Thoker, Gavas Ul Islam and Abass Ahmed- involved in the horrendous crime against the 22-year-old Rajaputhana rifles officer posted in Akhnoor last December.

The Shopian district police has declared that any information regarding the criminals would be suitably rewarded and the identity of the informer would be kept secret. Ummer Fayaz, a budding officer in the Indian Army, lost his life to the cowardice ploy of terrorists tipped off by locals in Shopian. His bullet-ridden body was recovered at Herman Chowk in Shopian district.

J&K: Posters of 3 terrorists (from LeT& Hizbul Mujahideen), involved in killing of Army officer Lt. Ummer Fayaz, pasted by police in Shopian pic.twitter.com/5q3UhKyT1F  ANI (@ANI_news) May 12, 2017

Following the incident police sounded a red alert and sent advisories to police and security forces units to be on alert.

Son of an apple farmer, the young officer was on leave to attend his cousin sister's wedding when locals shared the details of his whereabouts to the Hizbul-Mujahideen terrorists. It was a bunch of locals who decided to let down the 22 year old soldier. They revealed his details to the terrorists and also told them he was off duty.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 12:37 [IST]
IT dept conducts raids at 40 locations in Rajasthan, 3 businessmen on radar

Wall collapse in Bharatpur: Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje meets the injured

India

oi-PTI

Jaipur, May 12: Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje on Thursday visited Bharatpur and inquired about the health of those injured in the wall collapse incident that left 26 people dead.

Raje told reporters that the government will conduct survey of all the marriage homes across the state to ensure that safety and security measures are being followed properly. It will be also checked that no illegal marriage home is functional.

The chief minister condoled the deaths in the incident and said action against those found guilty will be taken.

Raje said that "Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also condoled the death and the Centre has also announced compensation for the victims, apart from the state government."

Earlier in the day, the Rajasthan government ordered an inquiry into the wall collapse incident while the police registered a case against the hall owner who is absconding.

As many as 26 people died when a nearly 12-foot-high wall of a marriage hall collapsed following a storm accompanied by rains in Bharatpur district on Wednesday night.

The wedding hall was operating without permission from the Bharatpur Municipal Corporation.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 8:56 [IST]
Anand Mahindra's tweet about UPI at country's 'last tea shop' is every Indian's emotion

Mark Zuckerberg says 'sorry' as Meta fires over 11,000 employees in one go | Full statement

Will Modi govt lift ban on social media in Kashmir after UN rap?

India

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

New Delhi, May 12: It has been a while since the residents of Kashmir have no access to internet and several social media sites. The ban has been imposed by the Jammu and Kashmir government in the wake of the ongoing violence and turmoil in the Valley.

Now, the United Nations has taken note of the issue and has asked immediate revocation of the ban as it is a direct attack on the personal rights of the people of Kashmir.

Terming the ban on social media networks in Jammu and Kashmir as "collective punishment", two United Nations human rights experts on Thursday demanded that it be immediately lifted.

In a press release on the official website of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, David Kaye and Michel Forst asserted that "the scope of these restrictions has a significantly disproportionate impact on the fundamental rights of everyone in Kashmir, undermining the government's stated aim of preventing dissemination of information that could lead to violence."

The OHCHR is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

"The Internet and telecommunications bans have the character of collective punishment and fail to meet the standards required under international human rights law to limit freedom of expression," UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression Kaye stressed.

Mobile Internet services were suspended in Kashmir on April 17, following widespread student protests in the Valley against alleged highhandedness of security forces. These were later restored.

On April 26, the Jammu and Kashmir government banned 22 social networking sites and applications including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter in Kashmir on the ground that these were being allegedly misused by anti-national and anti-social elements to fan trouble.

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders Forst said, "Denying such access disrupts the free exchange of ideas and the ability of individuals to connect with one another and associate peacefully on matters of shared concern."

The experts also maintained that 3G and 4G data services for mobile phones and other devices were suspended.

The experts noted that in 2016 the Human Rights Council, the central human rights body in the UN system, condemned such online disruptions and called upon States to avoid such shutdowns.

"We call on the Indian authorities to guarantee freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir and to seek a solution for the social and political conflicts of the region through an open, transparent and democratic dialogue," the experts concluded.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 7:01 [IST]
Cell phone of Indian diplomat seized in Islamabad High Court

International

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By Chennabasaveshwar

In a bizarre development, cell phone of an Indian diplomat, who went to Islamabad High Court to file writ petition, was seized by Pakistani officials on Friday. The Indian diplomat went to file the petition in connection with Uzma marriage matter.

A 20-year-old Indian woman Uzma had approached the Indian High Commission in Islamabad with a request to repatriate her and alleged that she was forced to marry Tahir Ali- Pakistani citizen- on gunpoint. Uzma had also filed a plea with an Islamabad court against her husband Tahir Ali alleging that she was being harassed and intimidated by him. She also recorded her statement before a magistrate.

Government sources in New Delhi ensured Uzma's access to the Indian mission in Islamabad on May 5. The High Commission has been providing necessary consular assistance to her and was in touch with the Pakistan Foreign Office on the matter and the girl's family in India.

Uzma, who hails from New Delhi, and Tahir met in Malaysia and fell in love with each other after which she travelled to Pakistan on May 1 via the Wagah border. The two contracted nikkah (marriage) on May 3.

OneIndia News
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Iraq gets a new government after a year of deadlock

Modi's presence at Vesak Day celebrations show his 'deep reverence for Buddhism': Lankan Minister

International

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By Vikas

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, attended International Vesak Day celebrations, which marks the birth of Gautama Buddha.

The celebrations, being held at Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall in Colombo, is being attended by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe along with other top Sri Lankan leaders.

Each year, on the full moon of the month of Vesakha millions of Buddhists around the world take part in Vesak Day celebrations.

Sri Lanka's Minister for Justice N Buddhashasana said that Modi's presence at the event speaks of his 'deep reverence for Buddhism'.

Modi and Sirisena arrive for Vesak Day celebrations The Sri Lankan President accompanied Modi to the opening ceremony of the International Vesak Day Celebrations at the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference Hall. This isModi's second trip to Sri Lanka as Prime Minister. Modi's arrival Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday where he was recieved by his Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe. Modi and Lankan PM at Seema Malaka Temple Both Prime Ministers arrived at the Seema Malaka Temple, where they were received by the Chief Monk of the Temple, among other dignitaries. Seema Malaka Temple in Colombo The Prime Minister offered flowers at the altar of the Temple. Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Wickramsinghe together pressed a switch for the lamp-lighting ceremony on the eve of Vesak Day, characterised by brilliant multi coloured lights and a fireworks display.

[Modi must ensure that Lankan Tamils are treated at par with Sinhalese: DMK]

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 10:33 [IST]
Congress can never give stable govt to Himachal; it is guarantee of instability, corruption, scam: PM Modi

To gain foothold in TN politics, PM Modi to woo Tamilians in Sri Lanka

International

oi-Oneindia

By Oneindia Staff Writer

Colombo, May 12: At a time when the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is trying its best to gain a foothold in Tamil Nadu politics, the ongoing two-day-long visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the neighbouring Sri Lanka holds great meaning.

On his second day in the island nation, PM Modi is set to address a large numbers of Indian-origin Tamil people in Norwood Grounds on Friday.

"The PM will then inaugurate the 15-bed Dickoya Hospital, a base hospital in the same province which has been built with Indian grant. The Prime Minister will also visit the hilly regions of Sri Lanka that host tea plantations. India will give an aid of $2.6 billion for the hospital. Sri Lanka's hilly regions home Indian Tamil people who work in tea plantains," stated an ANI report.

These meetings by PM Modi with Indian-origin Tamil people in the island nation hold great importance for the BJP's domestic politics in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, say political analysts.

The opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagham on Thursday asked PM Modi to ensure that the Indian-origin Tamils are treated at par with the Sinhalese of Sri Lanka and no disparities emerge between the two ethnic communities.

"I don't think this visit by the PM will do any good to the Tamils living in the island until they are treated at par with the Sri Lankan Sinhalese. Since they are also natives of Sri Lanka, there should not be any disparities between two ethnic communities. Only the Prime Minister can ensure that all entire citizens of Sri Lanka, including Tamils are treated at par," DMK leader TKS Elangovan told ANI.

The DMK has also asked PM Modi to talk on fishermen issue during his Sri Lanka visit with the government of the country.

"Our PM Modi is visiting Sri Lanka. Our leader Stalin has requested, rather demanded, the PM to use this visit and talk about the issues which are plaguing both the countries. Tamil Nadu fishermen have been repeatedly being shot at, killed, and boats being seized. Our leaders want permanent solution on this issue and hence, we request the PM to end this problem," DMK leader Sarvanan told ANI.

India has been pressing Sri Lanka for devolution of power to the Tamils as part of the reconciliation process. On the Tamil issue, Indian government maintains that India is working closely with the Sri Lankan government over it and hopeful that Colombo will fulfil the commitments made regarding devolution of power within the next two years.

During his first day visit to Sri Lanka, PM Modi was received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Ranil Wickremesinghe at the Colombo airport. They discussed various issues that concern with the growing cooperation between the two countries.

However, no MoUs were signed at the meeting.

If PM Modi can highlight the issues of Indian-origin Tamil people staying in the island nation during his Sri Lanka visit, back home he is surely going to win the hearts of many Tamilians in Tamil Nadu, as they share close bond with the Tamil fraternity in Sri Lanka.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 8:55 [IST]
US blames Pakistan for deteriorating ties with India

International

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By Vicky

The Trump administration made it clear that it was Pakistan to blame for the deteriorating relations with India. The US also said that the ties could worsen if the another high-profile attack on India is carried out by Pakistan.

Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," Daniel Coats, director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing.

While testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with top intelligence officials, Coats said the relations between India and Pakistan became more tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Coats said in his testimony before the Senate committee on worldwide threats.

Supporting India's pre-condition for bilateral talks on Islamabad stopping support to cross border terrorism, Coats said increasing numbers of cross-firing along the Line of Control, including the use of artillery and mortars, might aggravate the risk of unintended escalation between the two countries.

Easing of heightened India-Pak tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation, he also said.

Coats said Pakistan is concerned about its international isolation due to its dwindling position against India's rising international status, expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties with the US.

Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean," he also said.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 18:15 [IST]
Why did you discuss Jadhav? Nawaz Sharif gets an earful from Pak Army chief

International

oi-Vicky

By Vicky

As reports emerged that the death sentence awarded to Kulbhushan Jadhav was to stall peace talks with India, Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif has told the army chief that the meeting with Sajjan Jindal was part of back-channel talks. Jindal had met with Sharif and this is said to have angered the Pakistan army chief, General Qamar Bajwa.

The army chief is understood to have told Sharif that during such talks issues relating to Jadhav could not have been discussed. Sharif told the military leadership that Jindal had the backing of Indian authorities for the meeting aimed at reducing bilateral tensions.

General Bajwa made it clear to Sharif that during such talks the case of Jadhav could not have been discussed. It may be recalled that Jadhav was sentenced to death by Pakistan on the ground that he was an Indian spy. The International Court of Justice at The Hague has however stayed the execution.

Last week, it was reported that the Jindal-Sharif meeting was aimed at opening up back-channel talks. When the army in Pakistan realised that Jadhav's issue was discussed, it immediately sped up the process and ordered his hanging. Sharif claimed before the army chief that the talks were not related to Jadhav, but were aimed at reducing tension between the two countries.

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Story first published: Friday, May 12, 2017, 7:27 [IST]
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Global Veterinary Surgical Instruments Market Regional Analysis, Key Players, Industry Segments, Development, Opportunities by Forecast to 2023

Veterinary Surgical Instruments market

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Market Highlights:The global Veterinary Surgical Instruments market has been evaluated as moderately growing market and it is expected that the market will continue to grow similarly in the near future. Veterinary is concerned with prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases in animals. It also deals with the treatment and cure for the injuries. Increasing awareness about animal health is driving the market for veterinary surgical instrument market. Growing number of veterinarian and veterinary clinics are major drivers of the market. Veterinary surgical instruments are used in general care, surgery, and treatment.The global Veterinary Instruments Market was around USD 726.3 million in 2015 and is expected to reach USD 1.28 billion by 2023 at the CAGR of 6.4% during the forecast period.Taste the market data and market information presented through more than 75 market data tables and figures spread over 82 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Veterinary Surgical Instruments MarketGlobal Forecast to 2023.Major Key Players: B. Braun Vet Care GmbH (Germany) Eickemeyer Veterinary Equipment Inc. (Canada) Jorgen KRUUSE A/S (Denmark) MEDICON eG (Germany) MEDTRONIC (Republic of Ireland) Sklar Surgical Instruments (USA) Surgical Holdings. (UK) Whittemore Enterprises. (US)Request a Sample Report @Regional Analysis:Depending on geographic region, Veterinary Surgical Instruments market is segmented into four key regions: Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Considering the global scenario of the market, Europe is believed to be the largest market for Veterinary Surgical Instruments. Moreover the North America market is also growing and second largest market for Veterinary Surgical Instruments. On the other hand, Asia-Pacific market is expected to grow at the fastest pace in the Veterinary Surgical Instruments during the forecasted period. Rest of the World is likely to have a limited but steady growth in the market.Segmentation:Veterinary Surgical Instruments market has been segmented on the basis of type which comprises Scalpel handles, Forceps, Dressing and tissue forceps, Scissors, Needle holders, Retractors, and Others. On the basis of application, the market is segmented into Orthopedic, Sterilization, Ophthalmic, Dental, and others. On the basis of animal market segmented into Canines, Felines, and Large Animals.Browse Full Report Details @Intended Audience: Veterinary Surgical Instruments manufacturers Veterinary Surgical Instruments Suppliers Research and Development (R&D) Companies Independent Research Laboratories Market Research and Consulting Service Providers Medical Research LaboratoriesTable of Contents1. Report Prologue2. Introduction2.1 Definition2.2 Scope of The Study2.2.1 Research Objective2.2.2 Assumptions2.2.3 Limitations2.3 Market Structure2.4. Market SegmentationContinued.List of TablesTable 1 Global Veterinary Surgical Instruments Market, By TypeTable 2 Global Veterinary Surgical Instruments Market, By ApplicationContinued.List of FiguresFigure 1 Research ProcessFigure 2 Porters Five Forces ModelContinued.About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR) and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have the prime objective to provide optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies depending on products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments enables our clients to know more consequently do more, which gives them answer for their each and every important question.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureMarket Research FutureOffice No. 524/528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, HadapsarPune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Bisphenol-based CE Resin Market 2017 : Huntsman, Lonza, TenCate, Cytec, Hexcel

Bisphenol-based CE Resin

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A market study based on the "Bisphenol-based CE Resin Market" across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Bisphenol-based CE Resin Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Bisphenol-based CE Resin industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Bisphenol-based CE Resin market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research ReportHuntsmanLonzaTenCateCytecHexcelTechia CorporationThe report studies the industry for Bisphenol-based CE Resin across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Bisphenol-based CE Resin market & dynamics of demand and supply of Bisphenol-based CE Resin into consideration. The 'Bisphenol-based CE Resin' research study covers each and every aspect of the Bisphenol-based CE Resin market globally, which starts from the definition of the Bisphenol-based CE Resin industry and develops towards Bisphenol-based CE Resin market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Bisphenol-based CE Resin market is classified and analyzed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Bisphenol-based CE Resin market. The geographical segmentation of the Bisphenol-based CE Resin industry has also been covered at length in this report.The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Bisphenol-based CE Resin is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Bisphenol-based CE Resin market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Bisphenol-based CE Resin market worldwide.Enquire Here :The global Bisphenol-based CE Resin market 2017 is also analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Bisphenol-based CE Resin production volume, data regarding demand and Bisphenol-based CE Resin 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 Bisphenol-based CE Resin 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
Craft Beer Market Overview, Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis, Growth Opportunities & Restraints To 2027

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Global Craft Beer Market  Overview:The Global Craft Beer Market is poised to witness an extravagant growth by 2027, registering a significant rate of CAGR during the forecast period 2016-2027. As per MRFR analysis, in the global market, the popularity of craft beer has risen and the consumers interest is shifting towards craft beer due to change in taste and innovation in recipe.Craft beer is the beer produced traditionally; production of craft beer is a part of microbrewery industry. Compared to the large-scale corporate breweries Microbrewery produces brewery in very small quantity. Due traditional brewing methods; Craft beer is expensive. Craft beer industry is one of the ancient industries of its kind. Craft beer market is witnessing a vigorous development due to the increasing interest of people to drink traditionally prepared drinkMarket Research Future, with their unique quality of simplifying the Market Reports, publishes yet another deep diving study Report - Global Craft Beer Market .Request a Sample Copy @Major Key Players The Craft Beer Co., Boston Beer Co., Yuengling & Son Inc, New Belgium Craft Brewery, Gambrinus, Deschutes Brewery, Bell's Brewery, Duvel Moortgat USA, Sweetwater Brewery and others.Global Craft Beer Market report takes you through the full Market Analysis, Opportunities, Price, Growth, Trends and Featuring the market Predictions right up to the years 2027 and helps you to find out: How the market revenue is progressing globally. What are the key driving or affecting factors for the market growth? How the market revenue is progressing in various segments & geographies. What are the current main market trends responsible for shaping up the Market AcquisitionsTaste the market data and market information presented through more than 50 market data tables and figures spread in 110 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content TOC & market synopsis on Global Craft Beer Market Research Report Forecast to 2027Global Craft Beer Market  Synopsis & ScenarioThe global craft beer market predicted to have a strong growth in the coming years. As per MRFR analysis, in the global market, the popularity of craft beer has risen and the consumers interest is shifting towards craft beer due to change in taste and innovation in recipe. Another factor contributing to the growth of global craft beer market is the increasing demand of malt as a raw material in food industry. Malt is one of the major raw material require in the production of craft beer as it helps in good digestion and are good source of sweetness, flavor and colors. Also innovations in enzyme technologies that are being used for manufacturing craft beer have also supported the growth in this market over the past couple of years.Request TOC, Tables, Figures @Global Craft Beer Market  SegmentationThe global craft beer market is segmented into 3 main dynamicsSegmentation On the basis of Types: Comprises - Ale, Lager, beer and othersSegmentation On the basis of raw materials: Comprises - malt (barley, wheat and rice), yeast and enzymes.Segmentation on the basis of Region : Comprises - Geographical RegionsGlobal Craft Beer Market  Reasons To Buy The Report Provides detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the Global Craft Beer Market Offers insights about factors affecting the market growth Enables to Analyze the Global Craft Beer Market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, Porters five force analysis etc. Provides historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW) Offers country-level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective Provides country-level analysis of the market for segment by types, raw materials and region Offers strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market Enables 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 Craft Beer MarketThe reports also cover country level analysis: Americas (North & Latin) Europe Asia  Pacific Middle East & AfricaRelated ReportGlobal Savory Ingredients Market Information- by Product Type, by Ingredient Type, by Wellness Perspective, by Application, by Region - Forecast to 2022.Know more about this report @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine Market Research Report 2017 Industry Growth with CAGR in Forecast - 2022

Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine

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The Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine research report by QY Research represents an inclusive evaluation of the Global Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine 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 Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine market and its corresponding segments that are based on technology, geography, and applications.The examination on value chain of Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine 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 Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine 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 Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine 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 Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine 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 Automatic Wire Nail Making Machine market report is a helpful source which assists manufacturers, distributors, suppliers, customers, and individuals and investors who have interest in this market.Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent market.Important changes in market dynamics.Market segmentation up to the second or third level.Historical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volume.Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments.Market shares and strategies of key players.Emerging niche segments and regional markets.Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeUKAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaLatin AmericaBrazilMiddle East & AfricaAbout 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
China's Power Industry : Market Trends, Analysis, Growth and Status 2017-2030

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ALBANY, NY, May 11, 2017 : This report elaborates China's power market structure and provides historical and forecast numbers for capacity, generation, and consumption up to 2030. Detailed analysis of the Chinese power markets regulatory structure, import and export trends, competitive landscape, and power projects at various stages of the supply chain is provided. The report also gives a snapshot of the power sector in China on broad parameters of macroeconomics, supply security, generation infrastructure, transmission infrastructure, degree of competition, regulatory scenario, and future potential. An analysis of the deals market scenario in the countrys power sector is also included in the report.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Scope- Snapshot of the countrys power sector across parameters - macro economics, supply security, generation infrastructure, transmission infrastructure, degree of competition, regulatory scenario and future potential of the power sector.- Statistics for installed capacity, power generation and consumption from 2000 to 2016, forecast for the next 14 years to 2030.- Break-up by technology, including thermal, hydro, renewable and nuclear- Data on leading current and upcoming projects.- Information on grid interconnectivity, transmission and distribution infrastructure and power exports and imports.- Policy and regulatory framework governing the market.- Detailed analysis of top market participant, including market share analysis and SWOT analysis.Reasons to buy- Identify opportunities and plan strategies by having a strong understanding of the investment opportunities in the countrys power sector- Identification of key factors driving investment opportunities in the countrys power sector- Facilitate decision-making based on strong historic and forecast data- Develop strategies based on the latest regulatory events- Position yourself to gain the maximum advantage of the industrys growth potential- Identify key partners and business development avenues- Identify key strengths and weaknesses of important market participants- Respond to your competitors business structure, strategy and prospects.Table of Contents1 Table of Contents 21.1 List of Tables 41.2 List of Figures 52 Executive Summary 62.1 China, Power Sector Outlook 6Make an Enquiry of this report @3 Introduction 93.1 GlobalData Report Guidance 104 China, Power Market, Snapshot 114.1 Macroeconomic Factors 114.2 Supply Security 134.3 Opportunities 144.4 Challenges 145 China, Power Market, Market Analysis 165.1 China, Power Market, Market Structure 165.2 China, Power Market, Key Market Players 175.3 China, Power Market, Financial Deals 185.3.1 Deal Value and Volume Analysis, 2004-March 2017 185.3.2 Deals by Type, 2016 195.4 China, Power Market, Demand Structure 205.4.1 Power Consumption by Sector, 2016 22ResearchMoz 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
Overview of Fixed Mobile Bundles, M2M/IoT and 5G launch to Support Telecom Growth in Japan Industry : Technology, Applications, Growth and Status 2017

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ALBANY, NY, May 11, 2017 : "Japan: Fixed Mobile Bundles, M2M/IoT and 5G launch to Support Telecom Growth", is a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in Japan today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, and mobile, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.The telecom service revenue in Japan is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 1.7% during 2016-2021, due to growth in mobile data and broadband segments. Mobile data will be the largest revenue-contributing segment through 2021, owing to increased 4G adoption. NTT DoCoMo will continue its dominance, followed by KDDI, during the forecast period. Planned launches of 5G, IoT/M2M and 8K pay-TV services will offer ample opportunities for operators, vendors and investors.Get PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following -- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in Japan compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in Japan.- The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more.- A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data markets.- 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 2016 to 2021.- The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.- In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data 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 Japan's telecommunications markets.Scope- The overall telecom service revenue in Japan will grow at a CAGR of 1.7% during 2016-2021, mainly driven by growth in mobile data and fixed broadband segments.- Mobile revenue will account for 62.4% of total telecom revenue in 2021; mobile data will witness a CAGR of 6.2% during 2016-2021.- The top two operators, NTT DoCoMo and KDDI, accounted for 72.9% share of overall service revenue in 2016. We expect competition to intensify as operators focus on offering services beyond core services and as they conduct 5G trials in a bid to launch 5G by 2020.- Over the next five years, as advanced 5G technology, 8K ultra-HD, IoT/M2M, smartphones and wearable devices take off, operators should seize opportunities in the market via mobile content and applications, OTT services and other value-added services.Make an Enquiry of this report @Reasons to buy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Japan's telecommunications 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 Japan mobile communications, fixed telephony, broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares.- With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality.- The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Japan's telecommunications 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 Japan.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
Commercial Baking Equipment 2017 Global Key Players Doyon Baking Equipment, Hobart, NU-VU, Alto-Shaam, Baker Perkins Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Commercial Baking Equipment

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Commercial Baking EquipmentReport Details:This report focused on global and regional market, major manufacturers, as well as the segment market details on different classifications and applications.Major Key PlayersDoyon Baking EquipmentHobartNU-VUAlto-ShaamBaker PerkinsBlodgettEmpire Bakery EquipmentEurodibGlobe Food Equipment CompanyMiddleby Celfrost InnovationsRobot CoupeVulcanClick here for sample report @By types, the market can be split intoOvensMixersBread SlicersOtherBy Application, the market can be split intoRestaurantsHotelsClubs and PubsOtherBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaSome Major Points from Table of content:Global Commercial Baking Equipment Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Commercial Baking Equipment1.1 Definition and Specifications of Commercial Baking Equipment1.1.1 Definition of Commercial Baking Equipment1.1.2 Specifications of Commercial Baking Equipment1.2 Classification of Commercial Baking Equipment1.2.1 Ovens1.2.2 Mixers1.2.3 Bread Slicers1.2.4 Other1.3 Applications of Commercial Baking Equipment1.3.1 Restaurants1.3.2 Hotels1.3.3 Clubs and Pubs1.3.4 Other1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 IndiaFor Detailed Reading Please visit @8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Commercial Baking Equipment8.1 Channel Manufacturing8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Product A8.1.2.2 Product B8.1.3 Channel Manufacturing 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Channel Manufacturing 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 Doyon Baking Equipment8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Product A8.2.2.2 Product B8.2.3 Doyon Baking Equipment 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 Doyon Baking Equipment 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 Hobart8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Product A8.3.2.2 Product B8.3.3 Hobart 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 Hobart 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 NU-VU8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Product A8.4.2.2 Product B8.4.3 NU-VU 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 NU-VU 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 Alto-Shaam8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.2.1 Product A8.5.2.2 Product B8.5.3 Alto-Shaam 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 Alto-Shaam 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 Baker Perkins8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.2.1 Product A8.6.2.2 Product B8.6.3 Baker Perkins 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 Baker Perkins 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 Blodgett8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.2.1 Product A8.7.2.2 Product B8.7.3 Blodgett 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 Blodgett 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 Empire Bakery Equipment8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.2.1 Product A8.8.2.2 Product B8.8.3 Empire Bakery Equipment 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 Empire Bakery Equipment 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.9 Eurodib8.9.1 Company Profile8.9.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.9.2.1 Product A8.9.2.2 Product B8.9.3 Eurodib 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.9.4 Eurodib 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Business Region Distribution Analysis8.10 Globe Food Equipment Company8.10.1 Company Profile8.10.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.10.2.1 Product A8.10.2.2 Product B8.10.3 Globe Food Equipment Company 2016 Commercial Baking Equipment Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis..ContinuedBuy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone :+91 841 198 5042Mail :info@wiseguyreports.com
Global Bilirubin Blood Test Market - Trends & Forecast, 2013-2027

Bilirubin Blood Test

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Bilirubin Blood Test MarketWiseguyreports.Com Adds Bilirubin Blood Test Market -Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Manufacturers, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Description:The Global Bilirubin blood test market was valued at $ 1,091.1 million in 2016 and expected to reach at $ 1,853.2 million by 2022 at a CAGR of 5.44% during the forecast period. The major factors responsible for the growth of global bilirubin blood test market is the high prevalence of neonatal jaundice in newborns and increasing demand for portable/hand-held diagnostic devices. The critical market restraint is testing performed by non-laboratory personnel, among others.The market is majorly categorized on the basis of test types which is further segmented into total serum bilirubin (TSB), direct/conjugated bilirubin test and indirect/unconjugated bilirubin test. On the basis of product type the market is segmented into analyzers and bilirubinometers. On the basis of applications the market is segmented into Pediatric/Infants and adults. On the basis of end users the market is segmented into hospitals, pediatric clinics and home healthcare and geographic regions. Globally, North America holds the largest market share of global bilirubin blood test market, registering 38.87 % in 2016.The scope of Global Bilirubin Blood Test market study includes the market value, market size and a detailed analysis of vendor products and strategies......Request for Sample Report@Key PlayersThe leading players of the Global Bilirubin Blood Test market are Koninklijke Philips N.V., Beckman Coulter, Inc. (Danaher), Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Randox Laboratories Ltd., F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG and others.Study Objectives of Bilirubin Blood Test Market Development and Demand Forecast to 2022 Market: To provide insights about factors, influencing and affecting the market growth To provide historically and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to regional markets and their countries To provide historically and forecast revenue of the market segments based on type, and sub-segment for Global Bilirubin Blood Test market To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their market share, core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To provide economic factors that influence the Global Bilirubin Blood Test marketEnquiry before Buying @If you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Target Audience: Bilirubin Blood Test companies Hospitals & Clinics Raw Material Suppliers Key executive (CEO and COO) and strategy growth managerKey Findings: On the basis of test types, Total Serum Bilirubin (TSB) accounted for the largest market share of 48.19% in 2016. On the basis of product types, consumables accounted for the largest market share of 55.59 % in 2016. US accounted for the largest market share of 84.46% in 2016, with a market value of USD 358.3 million and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 4.93 % during the forecast period.The reports also cover country level analysis: North America US Canada Europe Western Europe Germany France U.K. Italy Spain Rest of Western Europe Eastern Europe Asia-Pacific China Japan India Republic of Korea Rest of Asia-Pacific Middle East & AfricaContinued...Buy now @Contact US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About Us:Wise Guy Reports Is Part Of The Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. And Offers Premium Progressive Statistical Surveying, Market Research Reports, Analysis & Forecast Data For Industries And Governments Around The Globe. Wise Guy Reports Features An Exhaustive List Of Market Research Reports From Hundreds Of Publishers Worldwide. We Boast A Database Spanning Virtually Every Market Category And An Even More Comprehensive Collection Of Market Research Reports Under These Categories And Sub-Categories.Addres:: Wise Guy Research Consultants Pvt Ltd: Pune  411028: Maharashtra, Global: Ph: +91 841 198 5042
Global Razor Blades Market SWOT Analysis Of Top Key Player Forecasts To 2022

Global Razor Blades

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In this report, the global Razor Blades 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.Global Razor Blades market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer;the top players includingGillette(P&G)EnergizerBICLaser Razor BladesLordDORCOSupermaxHarry's(Feintechnik)FEATHERBenxi JinchengKaili RazorNingbo JialiLiyu RazorShanghai CloudYingjiliGet Sample Report @Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Razor Blades in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoSinglle Edge Razor BladesDouble Edge Razor BladesOn 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 Razor Blades for each application, includingFemaleMaleIf you have any special requirements, please let us know and we will offer you the report as you want.Leave a Query @Table of ContentsGlobal Razor Blades Market Research Report 20171 Razor Blades Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Razor Blades1.2 Razor Blades Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Razor Blades Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Razor Blades Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Singlle Edge Razor Blades1.2.4 Double Edge Razor Blades1.3 Global Razor Blades Segment by Application1.3.1 Razor Blades Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Female1.3.3 Male1.4 Global Razor Blades Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Razor Blades 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 Razor Blades (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Razor Blades Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Razor Blades Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)7 Global Razor Blades Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis7.1 Gillette(P&G)7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.1.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Gillette(P&G) Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Energizer7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.2.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Energizer Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 BIC7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.3.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 BIC Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Laser Razor Blades7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.4.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Laser Razor Blades Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Lord7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.5.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Lord Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 DORCO7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.6.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 DORCO Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Supermax7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.7.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Supermax Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Harry's(Feintechnik)7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.8.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Harry's(Feintechnik) Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 FEATHER7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.9.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 FEATHER Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Benxi Jincheng7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base, Sales Area and Its Competitors7.10.2 Razor Blades Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Benxi Jincheng Razor Blades Capacity, Production, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Kaili Razor7.12 Ningbo Jiali7.13 Liyu Razor7.14 Shanghai Cloud7.15 Yingjili9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers9.1 Razor Blades Industrial Chain Analysis9.2 Upstream Raw Materials Sourcing9.3 Raw Materials Sources of Razor Blades Major Manufacturers in 20159.4 Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders10.1 Marketing Channel10.1.1 Direct Marketing10.1.2 Indirect Marketing10.1.3 Marketing Channel Development Trend10.2 Market Positioning10.2.1 Pricing Strategy10.2.2 Brand Strategy10.2.3 Target Client10.3 Distributors/Traders ListBuy Now@CONTACT US:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)Wise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. 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Xenon Cold Light Sources 2017 Global Key Players Karl Storz, Ackermann Instrumente, MGB Endoskopische Gerate, Geuder AG Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Xenon Cold Light Sources

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Xenon Cold Light SourcesReport Details:This report focused on global and regional market, major manufacturers, as well as the segment market details on different classifications and applications.Major Key PlayersKarl StorzAckermann InstrumenteMGB Endoskopische GerateGeuder AGIsoLuxRfQ-MedizintechnikW.O.M. World of Medicine GmbhProline Electro MedicalClick here for sample report @By types, the market can be split intoLong ArcShort ArcBy Application, the market can be split intoEndoscopic DiagnosisSurgery LightingsOthersBy Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want)North AmericaChinaEuropeSoutheast AsiaJapanIndiaSome Major Points from Table of content:Global Xenon Cold Light Sources Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Xenon Cold Light Sources1.1 Definition and Specifications of Xenon Cold Light Sources1.1.1 Definition of Xenon Cold Light Sources1.1.2 Specifications of Xenon Cold Light Sources1.2 Classification of Xenon Cold Light Sources1.2.1 Long Arc1.2.2 Short Arc1.3 Applications of Xenon Cold Light Sources1.3.1 Endoscopic Diagnosis1.3.2 Surgery Lightings1.3.3 Others1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 IndiaFor Detailed Reading Please visit @8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Xenon Cold Light Sources8.1 Karl Storz8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Product A8.1.2.2 Product B8.1.3 Karl Storz 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Karl Storz 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 Ackermann Instrumente8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Product A8.2.2.2 Product B8.2.3 Ackermann Instrumente 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 Ackermann Instrumente 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 MGB Endoskopische Gerate8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Product A8.3.2.2 Product B8.3.3 MGB Endoskopische Gerate 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 MGB Endoskopische Gerate 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 Geuder AG8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Product A8.4.2.2 Product B8.4.3 Geuder AG 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 Geuder AG 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.5 IsoLux8.5.1 Company Profile8.5.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.5.2.1 Product A8.5.2.2 Product B8.5.3 IsoLux 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.5.4 IsoLux 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.6 RfQ-Medizintechnik8.6.1 Company Profile8.6.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.6.2.1 Product A8.6.2.2 Product B8.6.3 RfQ-Medizintechnik 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.6.4 RfQ-Medizintechnik 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.7 W.O.M. World of Medicine Gmbh8.7.1 Company Profile8.7.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.7.2.1 Product A8.7.2.2 Product B8.7.3 W.O.M. World of Medicine Gmbh 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.7.4 W.O.M. World of Medicine Gmbh 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis8.8 Proline Electro Medical8.8.1 Company Profile8.8.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.8.2.1 Product A8.8.2.2 Product B8.8.3 Proline Electro Medical 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.8.4 Proline Electro Medical 2016 Xenon Cold Light Sources Business Region Distribution Analysis..ContinuedBuy now @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTPartner Relations & Marketing Managersales@wiseguyreports.comPh: +1-646-845-9349 (US)Ph: +44 208 133 9349 (UK)About UsWise Guy Reports is part of the Wise Guy Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and offers premium progressive statistical surveying, market research reports, analysis & forecast data for industries and governments around the globe. Wise Guy Reports understand how essential statistical surveying information is for your organization or association. Therefore, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available.WISEGUY RESEARCH CONSULTANTS PVT LTDOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersPune - 411028Maharashtra, IndiaPhone :+91 841 198 5042Mail :info@wiseguyreports.com
Accounting Software 2017 Global Key Players  Sage, Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, Infor, Epicor, Workday Market Analysis and Forecast to 2022

Accounting Software Market

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Accounting Software Market 2017Report Details:Wiseguyreports.Com Adds Accounting Software Market Market Demand, Growth, Opportunities, Analysis of Top Key Players and Forecast to 2022 To Its Research Database.Acording to the report, global revenue for Accounting Software market was valued at $ 8.94 billion in 2016, and is expected to generate revenue of $ 15.10 billion by end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of slightly above 9.13 % between 2016 and 2022.This report studies Accounting Software in Global market, especially in North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, South America and Middle East & Africa focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with subscribers, average price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer, coveringIntuitSageSAPOracle (NetSuite)MicrosoftInforEpicorWorkdayUnit4XeroYonyouKingdeeAcclivityFreshBooksIntacctAssit cornerstoneAplicorRed wingRequest for Sample report @Market Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with subscibers, revenue, market share and growth rate of Accounting Software in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), likeNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East & AfricaSplit by Product Types, with subscribers, revenue, price, and market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoOnline Solutions Accounting SoftwareDesktop Solutions Accounting SoftwareSplit by applications, this report focuses on consumption, market share and growth rate of Accounting Software in each application, can be divided intoManufacturingServicesRetailComplete report visit@Key Points in Table of Content:Accounting Software Market Overview 11.1 Product Overview and Scope of Accounting Software 11.2 Accounting Software Segment by Types 21.3 Accounting Software Segment by Applications 41.4 Global Accounting Software Market by Regions (2012-2022) 81.4.1 Global Accounting Software Market Size (Value) by Regions (2012-2022) 81.4.2 North America Accounting Software Status and Prospect (2012-2022) 91.4.3 Asia-Pacific Accounting Software Status and Prospect (2012-2022) 101.4.4 Europe Accounting Software Status and Prospect (2012-2022) 111.4.5 South America Accounting Software Status and Prospect (2012-2022) 121.4.6 Africa and Middle East Accounting Software Status and Prospect (2012-2022) 131.5 Global Market Size (Value) of Accounting Software (2012-2022) 14..7 Analysis of Accounting Software Industry Key Players 387.1 Intuit 387.1.1 Company Profile 387.1.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 397.1.3 Intuit SWOT Analysis 407.2 Sage 417.2.1 Company Profile 417.2.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 427.2.3 Sage SWOT Analysis 427.3 SAP 437.3.1 Company Profile 437.3.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 447.3.3 SAP SWOT Analysis 457.4 Oracle (NetSuite) 467.4.1 Company Profile 467.4.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 467.4.3 Oracle (NetSuite) SWOT Analysis 477.5 Microsoft 487.5.1 Company Profile 487.5.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 487.5.3 Microsoft SWOT Analysis 497.6 Infor 507.6.1 Company Profile 507.6.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 517.6.3 Infor SWOT Analysis 527.7 Epicor 527.7.1 Company Profile 527.7.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 537.7.3 Epicor SWOT Analysis 547.8 Workday 557.8.1 Company Profile 557.8.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 557.8.3 Workday SWOT Analysis 567.9 Unit4 577.9.1 Company Profile 577.9.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 577.9.3 Unit4 SWOT Analysis 587.10 Xero 597.10.1 Company Profile 597.10.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 597.10.3 Xero SWOT Analysis 607.11 Yonyou 617.11.1 Company Profile 617.11.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 617.11.3 Yonyou SWOT Analysis 627.12 Kingdee 637.12.1 Company Profile 637.12.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 647.12.3 Kingdee SWOT Analysis 647.13 Acclivity (AccountEdge) 657.13.1 Company Profile 657.13.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 667.13.3 AccountEdge SWOT Analysis 667.14 FreshBooks 677.14.1 Company Profile 677.14.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 687.14.3 FreshBooks SWOT Analysis 697.15 Intacct 707.15.1 Company Profile 707.15.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 717.15.3 Intacct SWOT Analysis 727.16 Assit cornerstone 727.16.1 Company Profile 727.16.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 737.16.3 Assit cornerstone SWOT Analysis 747.17 Aplicor 757.17.1 Company Profile 757.17.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 757.17.3 Aplicor SWOT Analysis 767.18 Red wing 777.18.1 Company Profile 777.18.2 Revenue and Gross Margin 777.18.3 Red wing SWOT Analysis 788 Market Enter Barriers 799 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers 819.1 Equipment Suppliers of Accounting Software with Contact Information 819.1.1 Hardware (Server & Memory System) Suppliers and Price Analysis 819.1.2 Software (Operating System, Database Platform, Development Tools) Suppliers and Website 829.2 Major Suppliers of Accounting Software with Contact Information 839.3 Key Consumers of Accounting Software with Contact Information 849.4 Supply Chain Relationship Analysis of Accounting Software 8510 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders 86Continue..Buy this report @Contact Us:NORAH TRENTSales@Wiseguyreports.ComPh: 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Implantable Medical Devices Market Trends, Growth, Price and Forecasts To 2024

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This report on implantable medical devices studies the current as well as future prospects of Implantable Medical Devices market globally. The stakeholders of this report include companies and intermediaries engaged in the manufacture and commercialization of various implantable medical devices and products as well as new entrants planning to enter Implantable Medical Devices market. This report comprises an elaborate executive summary along with a market snapshot providing overall information of various segments and sub-segments considered within the scope of the study. This section also provides the overall information and data analysis of the global implantable medical devices (IMD) market with respect to the leading market segments based on major products, key materials utilized, end-users, and geographies.This 245 page report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Implantable Medical Devices market Browse through 63 data tables and 94 figures to unlock the hidden opportunities in this market.The global implantable medical devices market has been studied based on major implantable product segments, material segments, their end-users, and regional as well as national markets. Based on product type, the global Implantable Medical Devices market has been categorized into three major segments: orthopedic implants [further categorized into reconstructive joint replacement (knee implants, hip implants, elbow implants, ankle implants, and shoulder implants), and spinal implants (thoracolumbar implants, intervertebral spacers, and non-bone implants)], dental implants, and cardiovascular implants. Based on material, the global Implantable Medical Devices market has been categorized into five major segments: titanium, stainless steel, cobalt-chromium alloy, titanium alloys, and zirconium. Based on end-user, the global market has been categorized into three key segments: hospitals (large, mid-sized, and small), ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), and clinics.Implantable Medical Devices market for these segments has been extensively analyzed based on their utility, effectiveness, sales, and geographic presence. Market revenue in terms of US$ Mn and Implantable Medical Devices market volume in terms of units for the period from 2014 to 2024 along with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR %) from 2016 to 2024 are provided for all segments, considering 2015 as the base year.The Implantable Medical Devices market overview section of the report explores the market dynamics such as drivers, restraints, and opportunities that currently have a strong impact on the global implantable medical devices market and could influence the market in the near future. Market attractiveness analysis has been provided in all the sections of the report in order to explain the intensity of competition in the market across different products/materials/end-users/geographies. The competitive scenario among different market players is evaluated through market share analysis in the competition landscape section of the report. The section also includes completion matrix that analyzes the competition among some of the top global players operating in the market. All these factors would help market players to take strategic decisions in order to strengthen their positions and expand their shares in the global Implantable Medical Devices market.Geographically, the implantable medical devices market has been segmented into seven regions: North America, Western Europe, Asia Pacific Ex. Japan, Eastern Europe, Japan, Middle East & Africa (MEA), and Latin America. Each regional market for implantable medical devices has been further categorized into major product, material, and end-user segments considered within the scope of the study. Key country (U.S., Japan, Germany, France, U.K., Australia, Canada, China, Brazil, Mexico, India, etc.) market revenues have also been provided in different regional sections within the report. Market revenue in terms of US$ Mn and volume in terms of units for the period from 2014 to 2024 along with CAGR % from 2016 to 2024 are provided for all the regions and nations considering 2015 as the base year.The report also profiles key players operating in the implantable medical devices market based on various attributes such as company details, SWOT analysis, strategic overview, financials, and business overview. Major players profiled in this report include Abbott Laboratories, Boston Scientific Corporation, Danaher Corporation, Dentsply Sirona, Institut Straumann AG, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic plc, Smith & Nephew plc, Stryker Corporation, Terumo Corporation, and Zimmer Biomet Holdings.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Implantable Medical Devices market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.The global implantable medical devices market has been segmented as follows:Implantable Medical Devices Market, by Product Type Orthopedic Implantso Spinal Implants Thoracolumbar Implants Intervertebral Spacers Non-bone Implantso Reconstructive Joint Replacement Shoulder Implants Ankle Implants Elbow Implants Hip Implants Knee Implantso Dental Implantso Cardiovascular ImplantsImplantable Medical Devices Market, by Material Stainless Steel Cobalt Chromium (CoCr) Alloy Titanium Titanium Alloy ZirconiumImplantable Medical Devices Market, by End-user Hospitalso +500 Bedso 200-499 Bedso Less than 200 Beds Ambulatory Surgery Centers (ASCs) ClinicsImplantable Medical Devices Market, by Geography North America Western Europe Eastern Europe Asia Pacific Ex. Japan Japan Middle East & Africa Latin AmericaRequest 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:
Market Data Analysis: Global High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017

Global High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017

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In this report, the global High Potential Therapy Devices market is valued at USD XX million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD XX million by the end of 2022, growing at a CAGR of XX% between 2016 and 2022.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, consumption, revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of High Potential Therapy Devices in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeChinaJapanSoutheast AsiaIndiaGlobal High Potential Therapy Devices market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingMedtronicAbbott LaboratoriesOmronRochePanasonicSiemensMAIKONG IndustryHNGOn the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoMultifunctional High Potential Therapy DevicesOtherOn 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 High Potential Therapy Devices for each application, includingHospitalsHome CareAsk a complete & professional report sample, please send message to tinaning@qyresearch.com or visit atTable of contents:1 High Potential Therapy Devices Market Overview2 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Market Competition by Manufacturers3 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)4 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)5 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by Type6 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Market Analysis by Application7 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Manufacturers Profiles/Analysis8 High Potential Therapy Devices Manufacturing Cost Analysis9 Industrial Chain, Sourcing Strategy and Downstream Buyers10 Marketing Strategy Analysis, Distributors/Traders11 Market Effect Factors Analysis12 Global High Potential Therapy Devices Market Forecast (2017-2022)13 Research Findings and Conclusion14 AppendixRelated Reports:Global High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017Europe High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017China High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017India High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017Korea High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017Japan High Potential Therapy Devices Market Research Report 2017USA High Potential Therapy Devices 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
Market Data Analysis: Global Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017

Global Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017

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This report studies Dental Bone Graft Substitutes 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, coveringGeistlichZimmerDePuy SynthesBiometStraumannMedtronicDENTSPLYBotissAAP ImplantateBiomatlanteMaxigen BiotechExactechBy types, the market can be split intoNatural (Xenograft)SyntheticCompositesBy Application, the market can be split intoHospitalDental ClinicBy 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 Dental Bone Graft Substitutes2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Dental Bone Graft Substitutes3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Dental Bone Graft Substitutes4 Global Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Overall Market Overview5 Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Regional Market Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Segment Market Analysis (by Type)7 Global 2012-2017E Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Segment Market Analysis (by Application)8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Dental Bone Graft Substitutes9 Development Trend of Analysis of Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market10 Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Marketing Type Analysis11 Consumers Analysis of Dental Bone Graft Substituteselated Reports:Global Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017Europe Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017China Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017India Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017Korea Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017Japan Dental Bone Graft Substitutes Market Professional Survey Report 2017USA Dental Bone Graft Substitutes 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
Global Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market Forecast 2017 - 2022 - Basf, Inoes, Far Eastern Group, Lingan Technology, Huangma

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In this in-depth Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market report, the Global Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market is valued at USD -- million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD -- million by the end of 2022. Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market is growing at a CAGR of -- % between 2016 and 2022.The worldwide Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market Research Report covers the in-depth research on the present situation of Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers industry. It also covers the market concentration rate on the Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market scenario. Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers consumption, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers in these regions, from 2012.Enquire Here Before Purchasing the Report:Global Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market Competitive Landscape and Key Vendors:1 Lotte Chemical(KR)2 Clariant(DE)3 HAPEC(CN)4 Shijiazhuang Haisen(CN)5 Liaoning Oxiranchem(CN)6 Taijie Chemical(CN)7 Jiahua(CN)8 Liaoning Kelong(CN)9 Xingtai Lantian(CN)10 Dow Chemical Company11 Basf12 Inoes13 Far Eastern Group14 Lingan Technology15 HuangmaPolycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market Analysis: By ProductMPEGAPEGTPEGHPEGPolycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market Analysis: By ApplicationSynthesis of Concrete High Water Reducing Agent (WRA)OtherFirstly, the report includes a primary overview of the Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers industry. Secondly, it includes Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers definitions, classifications, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers industry chain structure and Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market competitive analysis. Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market 2017 report is divided by type, applications, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market revenue, sales, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers industry share status and top 5 competitive players in Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market. In this Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market report, all the segments have been analyzed based on present and Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market future trends and the market is estimated from 2017 to 2022.This Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market study also helps the readers to effectively plan their future strategies. The Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers industry report also provides a set of expert recommendations. It provides the information about the product specification, capacity, price, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market revenue and other contact details. Finally, it includes import/export, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers industry supply and Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers consumption figures, Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers manufacturing process and the cost structure of the industry. Apart from this, Global Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers Market 2017 report also covers gross margin by regions i.e. (United States, China, Japan, and EU). Other regions can be added as per the need.You Can Buy the Complete Report Here (To Get Instant Access):At the end of the Polycarboxylate Superplasticizer Monomers market report, you would get to know about the market research findings and conclusion.About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, PuneMaharashtra, India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Latest News-
Global Polysulfides Market Forecast 2017 - 2022 - Akzo Nobel , Clariant, Ineos Group, BASF

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In this in-depth Polysulfides market report, the Global Polysulfides Market is valued at USD -- million in 2016 and is expected to reach USD -- million by the end of 2022. Polysulfides market is growing at a CAGR of -- % between 2016 and 2022.The worldwide Polysulfides Market Research Report covers the in-depth research on the present situation of Polysulfides industry. It also covers the market concentration rate on the Polysulfides market scenario. Geographically, this report is segmented into several key Regions, with production, Polysulfides consumption, Polysulfides market revenue (million USD), market share and growth rate of Polysulfides in these regions, from 2012.Enquire Here Before Purchasing the Report:Global Polysulfides Market Competitive Landscape and Key Vendors:1 DOW Chemical2 PPG Industries3 JSC Kazan Synthetic Rubber Plant4 Hodgson Sealants5 Hernon Manufacturing6 Flamemaster Corporation7 Akzo Nobel8 Clariant9 Ineos Group10 BASFPolysulfides Market Analysis: By ProductAnions PolysulfidesOrganic PolysulfidesPolysulfides Market Analysis: By ApplicationBuilding & ConstructionMarineAerospaceGlass InsulationPolymer Processing IndustriesPipingIndustrialOthersFirstly, the report includes a primary overview of the Polysulfides industry. Secondly, it includes Polysulfides definitions, classifications, Polysulfides industry chain structure and Polysulfides market competitive analysis. Polysulfides Market 2017 report is divided by type, applications, Polysulfides market revenue, sales, Polysulfides industry share status and top 5 competitive players in Polysulfides market. In this Polysulfides market report, all the segments have been analyzed based on present and Polysulfides market future trends and the market is estimated from 2017 to 2022.This Polysulfides market study also helps the readers to effectively plan their future strategies. The Polysulfides industry report also provides a set of expert recommendations. It provides the information about the product specification, capacity, price, Polysulfides market revenue and other contact details. Finally, it includes import/export, Polysulfides industry supply and Polysulfides consumption figures, Polysulfides manufacturing process and the cost structure of the industry. Apart from this, Global Polysulfides Market 2017 report also covers gross margin by regions i.e. (United States, China, Japan, and EU). Other regions can be added as per the need.You Can Buy the Complete Report Here (To Get Instant Access):At the end of the Polysulfides market report, you would get to know about the market research findings and conclusion.About Us:Market.Biz is designed to provide the best and most penetrating research required to all commercial, industrial and profit-making ventures in any sector of online business. We take pride in our ability to satisfy the market research needs of both domestic and international businesses.Contact Us:James JohnsonS no. 51/14 First Floor,Office Number 4, Vishwa Arcade,Near Navale Lawns, PuneMaharashtra, India 411041Tel: +1(857)2390696Web:Email: inquiry@market.bizBrowse Latest News-
Nanosilver Market - Application of Nanosilver to Considerably Rise in Electrical and Electronics Industry | By 2020

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As electronic producers seek to pace up with the latest technologies, miniaturization will emerge at fore as the latest trend in the industry. This trend is likely to continue in the forthcoming years thus boosting opportunities for the global nanosilver market. As per Transparency Market Research, based on revenue the global nanosilver market is expected to rise at a CAGR of 15.4% between 2014 and 2020. The market was valued at US$682.0 mn in 2013 and is expected to reach US$1.8 bn by the end of 2020.Despite witnessing positive growth, the market has been witnessing challenge from the volatility of nanosilver prices. The higher cost of nanosilver than conventional silver also restrains the markets growth to an extent. Besides these, stringent regulations and controversies surrounding the harmful effect of using nanosilver on environment will create further bottlenecks for the market. Nevertheless, the advent of novel applications of nanosilver is expected to boost prospects for its sales. While the booming consumer electronics industry remains the prime driver of the nanosilver market, its increasing application in the healthcare sector will bolster opportunities for the market in the forthcoming years.Browse Market Research Report @North America Emerges as Most Lucrative Regional Market for NanosilverRegionally, North America has been exhibiting the most lucrative prospects for nanosilver sales. The region emerged dominant in the global market holding a share of 41.8% in 2013. Overall demand for nanosilver in North America stood at 212.8 tons in 2013. TMR expects it to rise to 484.8 tons by the end of 2020, exhibiting a CAGR of 12.9% during the period. The healthcare industry will majorly contribute to the rising demand for nanosilver in North America.The flourishing electrical and electronics industry in Europe has been attracting the most prominent vendors of nanosilver. The rising food and beverages market in the region is also expected to boost sales of nanosilver considerably.Asia Pacific is also expected to exhibit attractive opportunities for vendors in the global nanosilver market. The region as per TMR holds the second-largest share in the overall market and is expected to rise at a CAGR of 13.5% between 2014 and 2020. High production capacities of the consumer electronics industries in South Korea and China have proven extremely profitable for the regional market. Apart from this, the rising willingness of the emerging middle-class population to spend on the latest models of electronics will also boost nanosilver sales in the region.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Nanosilver Market - Rising Electrical and Electronics IndustryThe electrical and electronics industry has emerged as the largest end-use segment for nanosilver. It held a dominant share of 37.8% in the market in 2013. The increasing use of nanosilver in printing electronics equipment such as inkjet and flexographic printers will further boost its sales in the electrical and electronics industry. It is also used in miniature printed circuit boards, capacitors, and printed sensors. The nanosilver market will therefore considerably gain from the expansion of the electronics industry.During the same time, the healthcare industry emerged as the second-largest application segment of nanosilver. It accounted for a share of 27.6% in the market in 2013. Nanosilver is widely used in surgical blazes, bandages, and wound dressing. TMR projects the demand from this segment to rise at a significant pace during the forecast period. The application of nanosilver is also expected to increase in the food and beverages and the textile industry. The rising use of nanosilver in water treatment will open novel prospects for the markets growth.Some of the most prominent companies operating in the market include Bayer MaterialScience, Nano Silver Manufacturing Sdn Bhd, NovaCentrix, Advanced Nano Products Co. Ltd., Ames Goldsmith Corporation, Applied Nanotech Holdings, Inc. and 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 insights for decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, TMR employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us:-Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog:
Soluble Fertilizer Market Outlook 2017- Haifa Chemicals, Yara,Arab Potash Company, Omex, Everris, Bunge, SQM

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1MarketResearch.com, recently published the New Version of Soluble Fertilizer Market Research Report is a core market research report in this current market.This report majorly discuss the global and regional market, major manufacturers and segment market details various classifications and mode of applications.Soluble Fertilizer is means a soluble fertilizer which dissolved in water or diluted by water, it is liquid or solid fertilizer, mainly used in irrigation fertigation, foliar fertilization, soilless cultivation, seed soaking dipping and other related areas.In this report, we focus on water soluble fertilizer.Get Sample Report at:Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHaifa ChemicalsYaraArab Potash CompanyOmexEverrisBungeSQMUralChemICL FertilizersSinclairGrow MoreEuroChem GroupMosaiccoNutriteAries AgroLemagroNVDongbu Farm HannongStanleyHebei MonbangCNAMPGC HoldingHanfengBatianKingentaSichuan Guoguang AgrochemicalBeijing Jinggeng Tianxia Agricultural Science and TechnologyStrongwill groupBrowse Complete Report at:Market Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversNPK Water-solubleHumic Acid Water-solubleAmino Acid Water-solubleOtherMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoHorticultureCropOtherThe detailed analysis of worldwide markets has been provided in the for Soluble Fertilizer from 2011-2016, and extensive market forecasts for (2016-2021) has been provided based on region/country and subsectors. This report covers the volumes, actual growth prices and future perspectives in the Soluble Fertilizer market and the factors influencing the supply/demand for Soluble Fertilizer further lays out in the analysis report which also includes the opportunities and challenges that are faced by industry participants. The report also acts as a vital tool to companies which are active in the value chain and to the new entrants in a way to enable them to be major on the opportunities and develop business strategies.The report gives information about separate comprehensive analytics for North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and Africa and Rest of World. In this sector, global competitive landscape and supplyand demand pattern of Soluble Fertilizer industry has been provided."About Us:1MarkerResearch is a top provider and consulting services and leading marketIntelligence Company that sells reports of top publishers in the technologyindustry.Contact Us:1MarketResearch304, S. Jones Blvd, #3299,Las Vegas, NV - 89107USA : +1 702-425-8599Email : Sales@1MarketResearch.comWeb :
Microfiber Synthetic Leather Industry Worldwide Market Research Report 2017

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The 2017 Market Research Report on Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Industry provides a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the worldwide major industry players in detail.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 Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2017 market research report on Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather 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 Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market report is a noteworthy.Request a sample of this report @The major Key Players:Toray, Kuraray, Asahi Kasei, Ecsaine, Clarino, Daewon, Jeongsan International, FILWEL, SISA, NPC, Duksung, Tongda Island, Huafon Group, Double Elephant, Hexin Group, Zhejiang Key, Huanghe Micro Fibre, Wanhua Micro Fiber, Meisheng Group, Xinlong Tech, Sanling Micro FiberThe Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather 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 Microfiber Synthetic Leather 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 Microfiber Synthetic Leather Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Microfiber Synthetic Leather 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.Buy a report @Finally, the Microfiber Synthetic Leather 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 Microfiber Synthetic Leather 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: Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market OverviewChapter Two: Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter Three: Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Four: Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Five: Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter Six: Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter Seven: Global Microfiber Synthetic Leather Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisAbout 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 Silicon Powder Materials Market Research Report 2017

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The 2017 Market Research Report on Global Silicon Powder Materials Industry prepares a basic overview of the industry including its definition, applications and manufacturing technology. Then, the report explores the worldwide major industry players in detail.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 Silicon Powder Materials Market is confident in meeting their needs and expectations. The 2017 market research report on Global Silicon Powder Materials 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 Silicon Powder Materials Market report is a noteworthy.Request a sample of this report @The major Key Players:Elkem Silicon Materials , CC Metals & Alloys, Dow Corning, Norchem, RW silicium, Tomoe Engineerin, Advanced Cement Technologies, Finnfjord, TOKAI KOGYO, Stanford Materials, VestaSi.The Global Silicon Powder Materials 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 Silicon Powder Materials 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 Silicon Powder Materials Industry. Accurate forecasts and expert opinion from credible sources, and the recent R&D development in the industry is also a mainstay of the Silicon Powder Materials 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.Buy a report @Finally, the Silicon Powder Materials 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 Silicon Powder Materials 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: Silicon Powder Materials Market OverviewChapter Two: Global Silicon Powder Materials Market Competition by ManufacturersChapter Three: Global Silicon Powder Materials Capacity, Production, Revenue (Value) by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Four: Global Silicon Powder Materials Supply (Production), Consumption, Export, Import by Region (2012-2017)Chapter Five: Global Silicon Powder Materials Production, Revenue (Value), Price Trend by TypeChapter Six: Global Silicon Powder Materials Market Analysis by ApplicationChapter Seven: Global Silicon Powder Materials Manufacturers Profiles/AnalysisBrowse 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.
Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market - Industry Analysis, Size, Trend, Overview, Demand, Gross Margin and Forecast To 2017

Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market

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QY Research Groups has announced the addition of the "Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market Report 2017" report to their offering.This in-depth report discusses this industrys market in forms of overview/definition, application, classification, predictions pertaining value and volume, and future predictions. It also prominently attributes the current situation and outlooks with industrial and financial aspect. Furthermore, it comprises of current events, latest market trends, schematic representation of the global companies with their prime developments, mergers & acquisitions, deals and agreements, expansions and investments, etc. Additionally, it talks about the vital prospects such as market restrains, growth drivers, challenges and potential opportunities that may affect the overall Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales market.Request for sample of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market research report @Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar market competition by top manufacturers/players, with Naval Systems Surveillance Radar sales volume, Price (USD/Unit), revenue (Million USD) and market share for each manufacturer/player; the top players includingLockheed Martin CorporationNorthrop Grumman CorporationRaytheon CompanySaab GroupThales GroupAirbus GroupBAE SystemsGeneral Dynamics CorporationIsrael Aerospace Industries (IAI)Finmeccanica SpAThe methodological analysis which is used to approximate and forecast the Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market starts with gathering data on vital vendors with the help of secondary research through various trusted sources that include news articles, presentations, journals and paid database. In addition, information which the vendors provide is also taken into consideration to analyze the segmentation of the market.Detailed TOC and Charts & Tables of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market Research Report available @This extensive professional market research report renders an in-depth study of this markets industry along with growth prospects for the forecast period with exclusive focus on the size and characteristics of the market, major market manufacturers, present trends, growth forecasts, competitive landscape for the predicted frame of time coupled with market restrains and prime success. Besides, this exclusive report cloaks the global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market based on applications, regions, competitive landscape and products. The report enlists profiles of several companies of prime market players, market share, financial metrics, business strategies, and forecasts and predictions.The Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market report wraps: Industry summary with market definition, key elements such as market restrains, drivers, potential opportunities, challenges, trends in the market, etc. Market sectioning depending on product, application, geographical region, competitive market share Market size, approximates, forecasts for the said frame of time Distribution channel assessment Competitive analysis of crucial market manufacturers, trends, company profiles, strategies, etc. Factors accountable for the growth of the market Thorough assessment of prime market geographically Factual information, insights, market date backed by statistics and industryThe report is worth a buy because:The report Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market Report 2017 accentuates the primary dynamics of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales sector. The potency of this sector has been examined deeply along with the important challenges and future growth potential. The report helps in improving the decision making abilities and assists to create an efficient counter strategies in order to gain competitive advantage. Discussions pertaining to present market situation and forecasts of the sector have also been covered in this market report. The report is precisely formulated after a completely reviewing the market study and key challenges. Lastly, the report states several key factors, company review, product listing, sales analysis and revenue generation of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales segment during the forecast period.Check for Discount @Some points from TOC:-Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales Market Report 20171 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar1.2 Classification of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar by Product Category1.2.1 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market Size (Sales) Comparison by Type (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market Size (Sales) Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 X-band & Ku-band1.2.4 L-band & S-band1.2.5 Other1.3 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market by Application/End Users1.3.1 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales (Volume) and Market Share Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Weapon Guidance System1.3.3 Surveillance1.4 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market by Region1.4.1 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Market Size (Value) Comparison by Region (2012-2022)1.4.2 United States Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.3 China Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.4 Europe Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.5 Japan Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.4.7 India Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Status and Prospect (2012-2022)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Naval Systems Surveillance Radar (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales and Growth Rate (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Revenue and Growth Rate (2012-2022)9 Global Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Players/Suppliers Profiles and Sales Data9.1 Lockheed Martin Corporation9.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.1.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.1.2.1 Product A9.1.2.2 Product B9.1.3 Lockheed Martin Corporation Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.2 Northrop Grumman Corporation9.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.2.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.2.2.1 Product A9.2.2.2 Product B9.2.3 Northrop Grumman Corporation Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.3 Raytheon Company9.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.3.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.3.2.1 Product A9.3.2.2 Product B9.3.3 Raytheon Company Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.4 Saab Group9.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.4.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.4.2.1 Product A9.4.2.2 Product B9.4.3 Saab Group Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.5 Thales Group9.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.5.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.5.2.1 Product A9.5.2.2 Product B9.5.3 Thales Group Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.6 Airbus Group9.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.6.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.6.2.1 Product A9.6.2.2 Product B9.6.3 Airbus Group Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.7 BAE Systems9.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.7.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.7.2.1 Product A9.7.2.2 Product B9.7.3 BAE Systems Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.8 General Dynamics Corporation9.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.8.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.8.2.1 Product A9.8.2.2 Product B9.8.3 General Dynamics Corporation Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.9 Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)9.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.9.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.9.2.1 Product A9.9.2.2 Product B9.9.3 Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview9.10 Finmeccanica SpA9.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors9.10.2 Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Product Category, Application and Specification9.10.2.1 Product A9.10.2.2 Product B9.10.3 Finmeccanica SpA Naval Systems Surveillance Radar Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)9.10.4 Main Business/Business OverviewEnquiry before Buying @Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-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 world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.QY Research Groups is your single hotspot for all real looking over prerequisites. With expansive data about the distributers and the associations for which they disperse verifiable checking on reports, we help you in your buy choice by mapping your data needs with our gigantic gathering of reports.Jia WangRoom B1510, ShijiKemao Building, No.66, Zhongguancun East Road,Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, China
Global Impulse Capacitor Market 2017 : New Northeast Electric, TDK, Vishay, L&T, LIFASA

Impulse Capacitor

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Impulse CapacitorA market study based on the " Impulse Capacitor Market " across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Impulse Capacitor Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Impulse Capacitor industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Impulse Capacitor market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research Report1. Nissin Electric2. China XD3. Siyuan4. Guilin Power Capacitor5. Electronicon6. GE Grid Solutions7. Herong Electric8. New Northeast Electric9. TDK10. Vishay11. L&T12. LIFASAThe report studies the industry for Impulse Capacitor across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Impulse Capacitor market & dynamics of demand and supply of Impulse Capacitor into consideration. The ' Impulse Capacitor ' research study covers each and every aspect of the Impulse Capacitor market globally, which starts from the definition of the Impulse Capacitor industry and develops towards Impulse Capacitor market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Impulse Capacitor market is classified and analysed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Impulse Capacitor market. The geographical segmentation of the Impulse Capacitor industry has also been covered at length in this report.Do Inquiry Of Report:The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Impulse Capacitor is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Impulse Capacitor market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Impulse Capacitor market worldwide.The global Impulse Capacitor market 2017 is also analysed on the basis of product pricing, Impulse Capacitor production volume, data regarding demand and Impulse Capacitor 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 Impulse Capacitor across the globe.About Us :Market and Research 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 Market and Research, we believe in building long term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive and Aerospace.Contact Us :Market and ResearchUnited States
Global Active Protection System Market by Manufacturers, Countries, Type and Application, Forecast to 2022

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Full information This report studies the Active Protection System market, Active Protection Systems (APSs) are subsystems integrated into or installed on a combat vehicle to automatically acquire, track, and respond with hard or soft kill capabilities to a variety of threats, including rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). APS technologies are not new, and a number of nations have already employed APS on the battlefield.(GIR-Globalinforesearch) Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Active Protection System in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversRafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd.KBMIsrael Military IndustriesRheinmetall AGRaytheon CompanyArtis, LLCSaab ABAselsan A.S.Safran Electronics & DefenseAirbus Defense and SpaceMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis coversNorth America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, coversSoft Kill SystemHard Kill SystemMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoAir DefenseGround DefenseThere are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global Active Protection System market.Chapter 1, to describe Active Protection System Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of Active Protection System, with sales, revenue, and price of Active Protection System, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of Active Protection System, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, Active Protection System market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe Active Protection System sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceBettySales Director (GIR-GlobalInfoResearch)E-mailjoe@globalinforesearch.comTel: HK:00852-58197708 USA:0013479661888Add: Room 1902 Two International Finance Centre 8 Finance Street, Central Hong KongWebsite:GlobalInfoResearch is a customer interest-based suppliers. Is in the best interests of our clients, they determine our every move. At the same time, we have great respect for the views of customers. With the improvement of the quality of our research, we develop custom interdisciplinary and comprehensive solution. For further development, we will do better and better.GlobalInfoResearch will with excellent professional knowledge and experience to carry out all aspects of our business. At the same time, we will fully look for information, to give a more comprehensive development.GlobalinforesearchRoom 1902 Two Interational Finance Centre 8 Finance Street,Central Hong KongUSA:0013479661888 HK:00852-58197708Email Id: joe@globalinforesearch.comWebsite:
Global Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors Market 2017 : Electronicon, GE Grid Solutions, Herong Electric, New Northeast Electric

Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors

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Inorganic Fixed Power CapacitorsA market study based on the " Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors Market " across the globe, recently added to the repository of Market Research, is titled Global Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors Market 2017. The research report analyses the historical as well as present performance of the worldwide Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors industry, and makes predictions on the future status of Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market on the basis of this analysis.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here :Top Manufacturers Analysis Of This Research Report1. Nissin Electric2. China XD3. Siyuan4. Guilin Power Capacitor5. Electronicon6. GE Grid Solutions7. Herong Electric8. New Northeast Electric9. TDK10. Vishay11. L&T12. LIFASA13. Shreem Electric14. FrakoThe report studies the industry for Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors across the globe taking the existing industry chain, the import and export statistics in Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market & dynamics of demand and supply of Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors into consideration. The ' Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors ' research study covers each and every aspect of the Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market globally, which starts from the definition of the Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors industry and develops towards Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market segmentations. Further, every segment of the Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market is classified and analysed on the basis of product types, application, and the end-use industries of the Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market. The geographical segmentation of the Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors industry has also been covered at length in this report.Do Inquiry Of Report:The competitive landscape of the worldwide market for Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors is determined by evaluating the various industry participants, production capacity, Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market's production chain, and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market worldwide.The global Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors market 2017 is also analysed on the basis of product pricing, Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors production volume, data regarding demand and Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors 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 Inorganic Fixed Power Capacitors across the globe.About Us :Market and Research 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 Market and Research, we believe in building long term relations with our clients. Our services cover a broad spectrum of industries including Energy, Chemicals and Materials, Automotive and Aerospace.Contact Us :Market and ResearchUnited States
Global Organic Fertilizers Market Poised to Hit US$ 10.23 Billion by 2025

Organic Fertilizer Market

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Belgium will continue to be the largest exporter of organic fertilizers, with total exports totalling 1.15 million tonnes in 2015. Netherlands and the U.S. will be the other two key exporters. In terms of imports, France continues to be the largest market globally.Sample of this report is available upon request @Global organic fertilizer demand was pegged at 17 million tonnes in 2016. In terms of value, the market was valued at US$ 5.57 billion. Persistence Market Research projects the market to grow at 7% CAGR through 2025 and reach US$ 10.23 billion.According to Persistence Market Researchs analysis, demand for animal-based organic fertilizers is higher than plant-based variants. While 6.84 million tonnes of plant-origin organic fertilizers were sold in 2016, animal-origin organic fertilizer volume was pegged at 10.15 million tonnes.Use of organic fertilizers remains highest in the farming of cereals and crops. This application segment accounted for over 70% revenue share of the market in 2016. By volume, demand from cereals and crops was estimated at 12.53 million tonnes in 2016.Historically, solid organic fertilizers have remained sought-after, and the trend is expected to remain unchanged during the forecast period 2017-2025. While solid organic fertilizers are projected to grow at 6.2% CAGR, liquid organic fertilizers growth rate is estimated to be 5.1%.Request to view Table of Content @Europe & Asia Pacific Collectively Account for over 60% Revenue ShareEurope is the largest market for organic fertilizers, followed by Asia Pacific. While Europe will continue to be the largest market for organic fertilizers, it will lose 2.3% revenue share to APAC during the forecast period. North America, the third largest market for organic fertilizers, is expected to account for 21.8% revenue share of the market by 2025-end.To Buy Full Report for a Single User @In its report, Persistence has profile key players in the organic fertilizers market, including Italpollina SpA, ILSA S.p.A, BioStar Renewables, Sustane Natural Fertilizer Inc., True Organic Products Inc., California Organic Fertilizers Inc., The Fertell Company, Purely Organics LLC, Pupuk Kaltim, and Qingdao Sonef Chemical Co., Ltd.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 Heavy Trucks Market 2017-2022: By Size and Share, Technology, Drivers & Strains, Future Roadmap, Innovations

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Heavy Trucks 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 also lists the leading competitors and provides the insights strategic industry Analysis of the key factors influencing the market.The Global Heavy Trucks Consumption 2017 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Heavy Trucks market.First, the report provides a basic overview of the Heavy Trucks industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. And development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures.Download Free Sample Report @Secondly, the report states the global Heavy Trucks market size (volume and value), and the segment markets by regions, types, applications and companies are also discussed.Third, the Heavy Trucks market analysis is provided for major regions including USA, Europe, China and Japan, and other regions can be added. For each region, market size and end users are analyzed as well as segment markets by types, applications and companies.Then, the report focuses on global major leading industry players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specifications, sales, market share and contact information. Whats more, the Heavy Trucks industry development trends and marketing channels are analyzed.Access Full Report @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.The Research Methods ProvidesAnalysis of all the Industries WorldwideAnalysis of various regions and the Technologies usedEstimation of percentage share in terms of Type, Industry, Application, Technology and regionAnalysis of the market trends in various regions and countries, supported by the ongoing R&D in these regionsOverall market size finalized by triangulation with supply-side data, including product developments, supply chain, and estimated sales.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 Manager2566, Lincoln StreetPrinceton,New Jersey 08540USAPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
The market continues to build momentum with increasing demand for high yielding crops

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Middle-East and Africa Greenhouse Irrigation Systems Market " research report, published by Market Data Forecast estimates that the market is growing with a CAGR of 10.75% to reach USD 105.65 million by 2021, from USD 63.4 million in 2016.View Report atThe market continues to build momentum with increasing demand for high yielding crops and growing awareness about the benefits for greenhouse irrigation systems among farmers.Greenhouse Irrigation Systems market can be attributed as the market comprising of various types of irrigation systems used in a greenhouse. Greenhouses are usually used to provide favourable climatic conditions to plants. The plants which are cultivated in greenhouse demand adequate quantity of water to maintain high yield and appropriate growth. In a greenhouse, common irrigation techniques used are boom irrigation, drip irrigation etc.Request for free sample report atKey factors which affects and thereby shift the market dynamics are studied intrinsically and are presented in an illustrious way in the report. Some of those factors areNew developments in technologyincrease in greenhouse covered areasfocus on water usage efficiencybetter quality & yield of cropsdemand for varied crops round the yearrising populationlack of technical knowledgehigh maintenance costHuge initial investments.Request Customization atFor granular level understanding the Greenhouse Irrigation Systems Market is segmented based on type and application, each being provided with Market Size Estimations and Y-o-Y Forecasts.By TypeDrip Irrigation SystemMicro Sprinkler Irrigation SystemBoom Irrigation SystemBy ApplicationVegetablesFlowers & OrnamentalsFruit PlantsNursery CropsThe Middle-East and Africa market is also analyzed individually in both the regions, thereby providing a more detailed geographical understanding of the market. Some of the major countries that hold significant place in this market include Egypt, KSA, UAE, Nigeria and Algeria.Enquire before Buying atSome of the key players that operate in the Middle-East and Africa Greenhouse Irrigation Systems Market include Netafim Ltd., Rivulis Irrigation Ltd., Jain Irrigation Systems Ltd., Valmont Industries Inc., The Toro Company, Lindsay Corporation, EPC Industries Limited, Rain Bird Corporation, Irritec S.P.A, Nelson Irrigation Corporation.Buy this report atThe Middle-East and Africa Greenhouse Irrigation Systems Market report offers wide-range of scope:Regional level analysis that provides an individual perspective of Middle-East and Africa region individually and on a wholeKnow more about key areas of industry growth via detailed Segment-level analysis on basis of type, application along with market size forecasts and y-o-y estimationsDetailed explanation of major drivers, restraints, opportunities, and challenges (DROC) that affect the market and impact the ever-shifting market dynamicsStrategic Analyses containing PESTLE and Porters Five Forces Analyses which are obtained by studying the macro & micro environmental factors that affect the market demographicsComprehensive listing of key market players along with Company overview, product portfolios, financials (subjected to availability), SWOT analysis and analyst overviewCompetitive landscape analysis listing out the mergers, acquisitions, collaborations in the field along with new product launches, comparative financial studies and recent developments in the market by the major companiesMarket Outlook - Investment opportunities devised by stand in experts to provide both individuals and organizations a strong financial foothold in the marketFor more reports related to the Agricultural Machinery Market:Wheeled tractor machinery Market:Center pivot irrigation systems Market:Micro irrigation systems Market:Center pivot irrigation systems Market:Drip Irrigation system Market:About Market Data Forecast:Market Data Forecast is a firm working in the area of market research and business intelligence. With rich experience in research across various business domains, they cater to the needs of both individual and corporate clients. From all-encompassing umbrella markets to extremely specific niche markets covering all the major regions across the globe as part of the research scope, their research services offer one of a kind specialities with competitive pricing options. For more info kindly visit,Contact:Abhishek ShuklaSales Manager (International Business Development)Market Data ForecastDirect Line: +1-888-702-9626Mobile: +91 998 555 0206Mail: abhishek@marketdataforecast.comVisit MarketDataForecast Blog @View latest Press Releases of MDF @
Assisted Reproduction Technology Devices Market : 2024 Edition With Leading Players

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Global Assisted Reproduction Technology Devices Market: SnapshotAssisted reproduction technology (ART) devices have been designed and developed to solve issues pertaining to fertility. Ever since the initial introduction of IVF (in-vitro fertilization) in 1978, technique to resolve pregnancy related issues have come a long way. The advent of assisted reproductive technology offer solutions such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF), gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT), intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT), intrauterine insemination (IUI), and surrogacy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that 208,604 ART cycles were conducted at 458 clinics in the U.S., of which 57,323 were live births and 70,354 were live born infants in 2014. Though the usage of ART is not significant, its demand has still soared in the recent past.The research report by Transparency Market Research provides a comprehensive outlook of the global assisted reproduction technology devices market. The publication is aimed at providing a detailed analysis of the segments in the market, the competitive landscape, financial outlook of the companies operating in the market, and the supply chain analysis.Obtain Report Details @Global Assisted Reproduction Technology Devices Market: Drivers and TrendsThe global assisted reproduction technology devices market is expected to witness a significant boost in the coming years due to the growing support by governments for research and development. The rise in funding for developing efficient and safe assisted reproduction technology devices is expected to make a positive impact on the global market.The high prevalence of male and female infertility due to poor lifestyle choices, deferred pregnancies, and health conditions have collectively boosted the demand for assisted reproduction technology devices. Infertility in males is observed due to poor sperm count, blocked sperm ducts, and poor sperm movement. On the other hand, female infertility is usually a result of dysfunctional fallopian tubes along with issues related to cervix or uterus.The growth of medical tourism and the possibility of surrogacy in emerging economies has been crucial to the growth of this market in recent years. The high cost of using these technologies and devices in developed countries has dissuaded several patients and made them migrate to developing countries, where seeking medical treatment is relatively cheaper.Global Assisted Reproduction Technology Devices Market: Regional OutlookThe global assisted reproduction technology devices market is segmented into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. Of these, North America is expected to lead the global market in the coming years. The high rate of awareness amongst people about assisted reproduction technology devices market is expected to drive the regional market. Furthermore, incredible governmental support to the overall market in North America for in-vitro fertilization and high infertility rates are projected to boost the markets growth.Europe also expected to steady growth in the overall assisted reproduction technology devices market in the coming years. The rising rate of medical tourism and acceptance of IVF are expected to propel the regional market in the coming years. Asia Pacific is also projected to emerge as a significant market for the assisted reproduction technology devices due to the emergence of medical tourism industry. The rising disposable incomes, late pregnancies, and rising women employment are expected to fuel the growth of this regional market in the near future.Fill The Form To Gain Deeper Insights On This Market @Key Players Mentioned in this Report are:Some of the key players operating in the global assisted reproduction technology devices market are Microm UK Limited, Irvine Scientific, Parallabs, Cryolab Ltd., European Sperm Bank Cosmos Biomedical Limited, and Origio.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Vacuum Assist Biopsy System Market 2016 : Evolving Technology, Trends And Industry Analysis  2024

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In a Biopsy procedure tissue samples are taken for study and diagnosis of the suspicious lesions in the for cytology or histopathology studies. Breast biopsies are done through various techniques like Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy, Core Needle Biopsy and Surgical Biopsies. Among which Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsies are the conventional ones. In case of Core Needle Biopsies tissue samples are collected through the core of the needle, this technique is currently used at many places. Vacuum Assist Biopsy is a type of core needle biopsy which uses Vacuum for collection of tissue sample. In Vacuum Assisted Biopsy the needle is introduced percutaneous to the lesion sight either by stereotactic or image assisted (Ultrasound or MRI) approach. Due to the clinical advantages of this technique for the sampling of nodular lesions, better samples combined with least procedure time, non-invasive, less scaring for patient Vacuum Assist Biopsy is gaining acceptance among the physicians. In this procedure the probe / core needle is inserted through skin under image assistance or stereotactic guidance to the lesion.Obtain Report Details @One it reaches the lesion vacuum is applied which draws the lesion / tissue inside the core, after which the cutting device cuts it from the breast tissue by rotation. By repeating these steps multiple tissue samples could be collected. On required sample collection, radiologist / physician can take out the probe/needle and a small bandage can be placed on the insertion site. This procedure doesnt need a sterile setup and is performed under local anesthesia. Due to the availability of large core probes/needles these systems are finding the place in removal of small benign lumps and resection of palpable or non-palpable breast lesions.Global Market for Vacuum Assist Biopsy Systems can be segmented based on the technique used for Guiding or Positioning Technique, End User and Geography:Segmentation based on Guiding Technique Stereotactic Vacuum Assist Biopsy System Image Guided Vacuum Assist Biopsy SystemSegmentation Based on End User Hospitals Clinics Diagnostic CentersPositioning and guiding of the probe / needle is the critical stage in any biopsy technique and for Vacuum Assist Biopsy it needs a skillful user. Based on the guiding technique these can be categorized into Stereotactic Vacuum Assist Biopsy Systems and Image Guided Vacuum Assist Biopsy System. For Stereotactic systems mammography is used as a reference for positioning the probe whereas image guided systems could be based on Ultrasound imaging or MRI. Among them Ultrasound guided systems are getting widely used and are having large acceptance in future. Due to some limitations like short availability of the procedure period window, difficulty in accessing the far lesions MRI guided systems got set back but with new developments they are getting acceptance for specialized procedures which are not possible with stereotactic and US guided techniques.As this procedure is non-invasive and is undertaken with local anesthesia, it doesnt need a complete sterile environment and so can be done in mini operating rooms or physicians office where the MRI Guided Vacuum Assist Biopsy System is a limitation. Due to the shorter procedure time and less complications involved these procedures are done on day care basis also. Based on the End Users the market can be segmented into Hospitals, Clinics and Diagnostic Centers.Fill The Form To Gain Deeper Insights On This Market @On the basis of regional presence, global Vacuum Assist Biopsy Systems market is segmented into five key regions viz. North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa. Breast Cancer counts 25% of the lethal cancers female population face and overall it contributes to around 12% of the cancer cases in a year globally. In America it is estimated that around 12% of the female population with have the breast cancer in their lifetime. In UK and Belgium around 15% of breast cancer cased are diagnosed every year. As per studies females of age more than 45 Years are susceptible to breast cancer or some breast disease. Asia Pacific region comprising countries like Indian and Chine are among the most potential markets after North America and Europe due to growing population with mid or old age and rising awareness for healthcare.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact us:Transparency Market Research90 State Street,Suite 700,AlbanyNY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Synthetic Leather Market Projected to Reach 208.81 Billion USD by 2026

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The report "Synthetic Leather Market by Type (Polyurethane, Polyvinyl Chloride, Bio-based), End-Use Industry (Footwear, Furnishing, Automotive, Clothing, Bags, Purses & Wallets) - Global Forecast to 2026",The global synthetic leather market was valued at USD 51.81 Billion in 2015, and is projected to reach USD 208.81 Billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 13.4% from 2016 to 2026.Browse 109 market data tables and 63 figures spread through 150 pages and in-depth TOC on Synthetic Leather Market - Global Forecast to 2026Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report.The growing demand for synthetic leather in the footwear industry, and concerns regarding the killing of animals for the production of pure leather, is expected to drive the market in the future.PU synthetic leather accounts for the largest share in the synthetic leather marketThe global synthetic leather market is segmented based on type, into PU-based, PVC-based, and bio-based. In 2015, PU-based synthetic leather captured the maximum share of the overall market; it is also expected to witness the highest CAGR during the forecast period. PU leather is considered more environment friendly as compared to vinyl based leather, as it does not create dioxins. PU-based based leather is more expensive than PVC-based leather, due to the extensive manufacturing process that is required. Companies are also manufacturing microfiber PU leather, which is high quality leather, and has properties that are better than pure leather.Download PDF Brochure @Growing demand from the footwear industry to boost the synthetic leather marketThe major end-use industries of synthetic leather are footwear, furnishing, automotive, clothing, bags, purses & wallets, and others. The demand for synthetic leather in the footwear industry is projected to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. The growth in this industry is driven by the growing incomes, and economic growth. Another major driver for the growth in demand for synthetic leather in various countries is the variation in climatic conditions, which requires different kinds of footwear.Asia-Pacific: The largest market in synthetic leatherThe global synthetic leather market is segmented into five regions, namely, North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East & Africa, and South America. The Asia-Pacific region is the largest synthetic leather market, closely followed by Europe, in terms of value. The growing end-use industries such as, automotive, footwear, and furnishing, coupled with regulations regarding animal welfare is driving the demand for synthetic leather in the Asia-Pacific region. The presence of many international fashion brands in Europe is driving the demand for synthetic leather in the region.For more Info:Currently, market players such as, Kuraray Co. Ltd. (Japan), San Fang Chemical industry Co. Ltd (Taiwan), Teijin Limited (Japan), Mayur Uniquoters Ltd. (India), Nan Ya Plastics Co. Ltd. (Taiwan), Filwel Co. Ltd. (Japan), Zhejiang Hexin Industry Group Co., Ltd. (China), Alfatex (Italy), H.R. Polycoats Pvt. Ltd. (India), and Yantai Wanhua Synthetic Leather Group Co. Ltd. (China) are leading the global synthetic leather market.About MarketsandMarketsMarketsandMarkets is the largest market research firm worldwide in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to a multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model  GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors.M&Ms flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers.We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository.Mr. RohanMarketsandMarkets701 Pike StreetSuite 2175, Seattle,WA 98101, United StatesTel: +1-888-600-6441Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.comVisit MarketsandMarkets Blog @Visit MarketsandMarkets @
Biodegradable Mulch Films Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 7.6 % by 2022

Biodegradable Mulch Films Market

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Market Research Future published a half cooked research report on Global Biodegradable Mulch Films Market. The global biodegradable mulch films market is expected to grow around 7.6 % CAGR during the period 2016 to 2022.Market Highlights:The major factors driving the global biodegradable mulch film market are the increasing population resulting in shrinking arable land and government regulations promoting the usage of bio-based products. Also, biodegradable mulch films do not produce any harmful waste having lower environmental impact with easy disposal.Despite the market having significant potential in developing nations, the high initial cost has become a major concern, thus restricting the implementation of biodegradable mulch films. Furthermore, the usage of machines to level and shape the soil for applying the biodegradable mulch films, adds to the cost.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Biodegradable Mulch Films Market: BASF SE (Germany) RKW SE (Germany) AL-PACK Enterprises Ltd. (Canada) British Polythene Industries PLC (U.K.) Kingfa Science & Tech Co. Ltd. (China) BioBag International AS (Norway) AEP Industries Inc. (U.S.) Armando Alvarez (Spain) Novamont S.P.A. (Italy) AB Rani Plast OY (Finland)Market Research AnalysisBased on biodegradable plastic, the market is segmented as Thermoplastic Starch (TPS), Aliphatic-Aromatic Copolyesters (AAC) and Controlled Degradation Masterbatch, out of which, thermoplastic starch (TPS) is expected to account for majority of the share. With the rising environmental issues related to the use of conventional synthetic polymers, farmers have shifted focus towards materials produced from renewable sources.On the basis of composition, the market is bifurcated as Starch, Starch Blended with Polylactic Acid (PLA) and Starch Blended with Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA). Starch segment is expected to dominate the market as it is abundant and an inexpensive natural polymer that can produce a film structure.Asia-Pacific is expected to dominate the global biodegradable mulch films market with highest CAGR, owing to the government regulations promoting the usage of bio-based products.Scope of the Report:This study provides an overview of the global biodegradable mulch films market, tracking three market segments across four geographic regions. The report studies key players, providing a five-year annual trend analysis that highlights market size, volume and share for Asia-Pacific, North America, Europe and Rest of the World (ROW). The report also provides a forecast, focusing on the market opportunities for the next five years for each region. The scope of the study segments the global biodegradable mulch films market by biodegradable plastic, composition and region.By Biodegradable Plastic Thermoplastic Starch (TPS) Aliphatic-Aromatic Copolyesters (AAC) Controlled Degradation MasterbatchesBy Composition Starch Starch Blended With Polylactic Acid (PLA) Starch Blended With Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA)By Region Asia Pacific North America Europe Rest of WorldBrief TOC for Biodegradable Mulch Films Market:1 Executive Summary2 Research Methodology2.1 Scope of the Study2.1.1 Definition2.1.2 Research Objective2.1.3 Assumptions2.1.4 Limitations2.2 Research Process2.2.1 Primary Research2.2.2 Secondary Research2.3 Market size Estimation2.4 Forecast Model3 Market Dynamics3.1 Market Drivers3.2 Market Inhibitors3.3 Supply/Value Chain Analysis3.4 Porters Five Forces Analysis4 Global Biodegradable Mulch Film Market, By Biodegradable Plastic4.1 Introduction4.2 Thermoplastic Starch (TPS)4.3 Aliphatic-Aromatic Copolyesters (AAC)4.4 Controlled Degradation Masterbatches5 Global Biodegradable Mulch Film Market, By Composition5.1 Introduction5.2 Starch5.3 Starch Blended With Polylactic Acid (PLA)5.4 Starch Blended With Polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA)ContinueAccess Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Global Pain Drug Delivery Market is Anticipated to Record Highest Growth Rate by 2022

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Pain drug delivery system is an effective therapy for managing pain, whether it be a chronic nonmalignant pain, a cancer pain, or a spasticity. Medications usually circulate throughout the body in bloodstream, whereas pain drug delivery systems releases medication directly into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord, which leads to fewer drug side effects. Pain drug delivery systems help lessen chronic pain caused by failed back surgery syndrome, cancer pain, reflex sympathetic dystrophy, causalgia, arachnoiditis, and chronic pancreatitis. Such drug delivery systems used for pain management also helps reduce the spasticity caused by cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, stroke, brain injury and spinal cord injury among others. Pain drug delivery systems do not eliminate the source of pain or cure any underlying disease, but help to manage the pain.A sample of this report is available upon request @According to the British journal of anesthesia, prevalence of chronic pain is higher for instance, 10.1%-55.2% of the population in 2010. In U.S., about 30% of the population is suffering from chronic or recurring pain. Approximately, two-third of the population experience chronic pain for more than 5 years. In U.S., the cost of chronic pain is approximately US$100 billion a year. Growing prevalence of various types of cancers is a major factor driving the market. For instance, there were an estimated 14.1 million cancer cases around the world in 2012. As per WHO statistics, this number is expected to increase to 24 million by 2035. Also rising geriatric population, increasing prevalence of diseases such as osteoarthritis, diabetic neuropathy and chronic arthritis, moreover increasing healthcare expenditure and disposable income are some of the key factors driving the growth for the global pain drug delivery market.The opportunities for the market growth includes agreements and collaborations of drug delivery system manufacturers with pharmaceutical companies. This will help in the growth of the drug delivery manufacturers, by assisting the pharmaceutical companies with their manufacturing processes, innovative technologies, new drug development, and regulatory procedures. However, product recalls of drug delivery systems is one of the major restraint for this market which will in-turn affect the R&D expenditure for development of such products. Considering the technological trends, targeted drug delivery technologies based on loaded nano-carriers (nano-shells or nanoparticles) are also attracting interest, which will ultimately lead to the growth of the market.The global pain drug delivery market is segmented based on technology, application and geography. By technology the global, market of pain drug delivery is segmented into transdermal drug delivery system and intrathecal drug delivery systems among others. By application, the global pain drug delivery market is categorized into oncology, neurological disorders, pulmonary diseases, and hormonal disorders among others. Oncology projected a higher growth rate. For instance, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), the incidence of cancer based on projections, will be greater than15 million in 2020.By geography, the global pain drug delivery market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), the Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Latin America. North America dominated the global pain drug delivery market due to growing geriatric population and regulatory and healthcare reforms like the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. For instance, the population aged 65 and over is projected to be 83.7 million in 2050, which is twice that estimated in 2012. Moreover, presence of advanced healthcare infrastructures, reimbursement policies and adoption of innovative products are also driving the market in North America. Asia Pacific is expected to expand in the coming years due to the large patient pool, increasing R&D investment, rising healthcare expenditure along with government funding and initiatives, increase in disposable income, and the rising prevalence of chronic diseases.To view TOC of this report is available upon request @Some of the key players in the global pain drug delivery market are Medtronic, Flowonix Medical Inc., Aveva Drug Delivery Systems, Prosolus Pharmaceuticals, 3M, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd.About UsPersistence Market Research (PMR) is a third-platform research firm. Our research model is a unique collaboration of data analytics and market research methodology to help businesses achieve optimal performance.To support companies in overcoming complex business challenges, we follow a multi-disciplinary approach. At PMR, we unite various data streams from multi-dimensional sources. By deploying real-time data collection, big data, and customer experience analytics, we deliver business intelligence for organizations of all sizes.Contact UsPersistence Market Research305 Broadway7th Floor, New York City,NY 10007, United States,USA - Canada Toll Free: 800-961-0353Email: sales@persistencemarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Incontinence Products Market to Register Steady Growth During 2016 - 2022

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Incontinence or Incontinent may refer to the involuntary excretion of bowel contents or urine. Difficulties with using the toilet, accidents and incontinence, can all be problems for people with dementia, particularly as the condition progresses. According to a report published by WHO, 5% to 7% of the worlds population is suffering from incontinence. These problems can be upsetting for people and for those around them. Today a variety of products are available in the market, which can provide practical solutions to those people suffering from such ailments. Some of these are Protective Underwear & Briefs, Pads & Liners, Overnight diapers, Tab Style Diapers, skin care products to name a few.A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @Incontinence products are a part of personal care segment, which is growing at a faster pace. This is due to the rise in aging population, increasing awareness and acceptance of incontinence products. Product innovations to customize the products is also driving the incontinence care industry. The WHO report projects that in almost every country the proportion of people aged over 60 years is growing faster than any other age group, as a result of both longer life expectancy and declining fertility rates. Also the rise in the population of diabetic Mellitus patients worldwide provides a good platform for this market. However, there are some bigger challenges faced by this industry like the threat of alternates and substitutes and the threat from low-cost manufacturers.The incontinence products market can be segmented based on product type, into, external & internal. External products include; absorbent products, hand wash, gloves, body wash, barrier cream, repair cream, hand held urinals, bed pads, shampoo caps, whereas, internal products include; tampons, disposable urethral Inserts, pessaries. Based on raw material used- plastic, cotton fabric, super absorbents, cotton fiber, latex, others (water proof materials).In terms distributional channel, the market is segmented into institutional & homecare and retail trade. Out of which institutional & homecare is estimated to be the major end-users, accounting approximately 60% of the global market for incontinence products and the retail market owns remaining 40% of the market.Geographically, the incontinence products market is segmented into seven regions which are ; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA) and Japan. Among all the regions, Western Europe is the highest contributor in term of revenue in global incontinence products market followed by Asia Pacific, North America & it is expected that in near future, Asia Pacific is going to lead this market.Japan, having the highest proportion of elderly citizens could be a big market for this segment. The ever growing population of China will drive the demand for healthcare products, consequently resulting in the growth of the incontinence market in country. Saudi Arab, Kiribati, Kuwait, Bahrain are worlds leading diabetic prevalent nation. These countries also have a good market potential for incontinence products.Request to View Tables of Content @Some of the key players across the value chain dominating this market are Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA, Unicharm Corporation, HARTMANN GROUP, ONTEX International N.V., Hypermarcas SA, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, First Quality Enterprises Inc., Pro Descart Industria e Comercio Ltd, Coloplast A/S, C. R. Bard Inc., B. Braun Melsungen AG, Covidien plc and Medline Industries Inc, etc.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 Cosmeceuticals Market to Incur Rapid Extension During 2016  2022

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Owing to the increasing consumer consciousness regarding the appearance, the cosmeceuticals market is expected to witness a surge across the globe. Cosmeceuticals segment is expected to experience the fastest growth in personal care industry. Increasing demand from middle age and growing urban population are expected to drive the global cosmeceuticals market. Global cosmeceuticals market is further supported by various factors such as the presence of superior quality and premium priced cosmeceuticals products. Cosmeceuticals products are used for varied applications such as skin irritation, skin lightening, tooth whitening and others. Cosmeceuticals market is growing rapidly and expected to witness double-digit growth in the next four to five years. Although demand for cosmeceuticals is increasing significantly but various other treatment options are entering the market. These treatment alternatives are expected to increase the completion in the cosmeceuticals market and expected to hinder the growth of cosmeceuticals market to some extent.A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @Global Cosmeceuticals Market is segmented on the basis of product type, ingredient and region. Based on the product type segmentation includes hair care, skincare, lip care, tooth whitening, injectable and others. Of which skincare is expected to be the dominating segment, followed by hair care in the forecasted period. Among skincare, anti-ageing sub-segment is expected to contribute maximum revenue over the forecasted period. However, the injectable segment is expected to witness the fastest growth in the next four to five years due to the various advantages such as weight treatment and wrinkle reducer associated with it. Based on the ingredient used, cosmeceuticals market is segmented into antioxidants, proteins, peptides, botanicals, moisturizers and others. Of which antioxidant segment is the leading segment which is expected to contribute the highest revenue during the forecasted period. Global cosmeceuticals market is segmented on the basis of a region into North America, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific excluding Japan, Middle East and Africa, and Japan.The Global Cosmeceuticals market is expected to witness robust growth over the forecasted period due to the rising consumer awareness regarding the benefits of cosmeceuticals coupled with increasing number of premium quality cosmeceuticals products. Globally, among all regions, North America is expected to contribute the highest market share, followed by Europe over the forecasted period. However, Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness the highest growth owing to the rising disposable income of consumers in various countries. In Asia Pacific, Japan is anticipated to contribute highest market share and expected to grow with highest CAGR, followed by China.Major factors that fuel the growth of cosmeceuticals market includes increasing consumer consciousness regarding the appearance and increasing number of urban population coupled with rising consumer awareness related to benefits of cosmeceuticals. Another factor that is driving the growth of cosmeceuticals market is increasing the affordability of consumers in the emerging markets such as China and India. A major factor that restraints the growth of cosmeceuticals market is growing consumer awareness related to harmful effects of ingredients used in cosmeceuticals.A Sample of this Report is Available Upon Request @Major companies operating in cosmeceuticals market are Procter and Gamble, LOreal SA, Unilever, Active Organics, Allergan, Arch Chemicals, Inc., BASF SE, Bayer AG, Symrise AG. Companies operating in cosmeceuticals market are adopting a strategy by investing the huge amount in research and development (R&D) activities in order to launch new products and penetrate into emerging markets. Companies are developing new ingredients such as peptides and stem cells for cosmeceuticals products.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:
Optical Test Equipment Market to 2025-Industry Analysis, Applications, Opportunities and Trends |The Insight Partners

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Latest market study on Optical Test Equipment Market to 2025 - Global Analysis and Forecasts by Product Types, Form Factor, Application and End-User Vertical, the report include key understanding on the driving factors of this growth and also highlights the prominent players in the market and their developments.Browse market data tables and in-depth TOC of the Optical Test Equipment Market to 2025 @The optical test equipment are tools used to perform inspection, cleaning and several other function along with analysis of existing cabling. Optics cabling is the lifeline of modern data communication networks. In order to make the installation and integration of fiber optic systems smooth and to ensure the proper passage of light, optical test equipment are used.The report aims to provide an overview of Global optical test equipment market with detailed market segmentation by types, form factor, application, end-user vertical, and geography. The global optical test equipment market is expected to witness decent growth during the forecast period due to enhanced connectivity and rise in automation applications. The demand for higher capacity in communication network is driving the need for optical test equipment in the market.Request Sample Copy @The objectives of Optical Test Equipment Market report is as follows: To provide overview of the global optical test equipment market To analyze and forecast the global optical test equipment market on the basis of product type, form factor, and application and end user To provide market size and forecast till 2025 for overall optical test equipment market with respect to five major regions, namely; North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific (APAC), Middle East and Africa (MEA) and South America (SAM), which is later sub-segmented by respective countries To evaluate market dynamics effecting the market during the forecast period i.e., drivers, restraints, opportunities, and future trend To provide exhaustive PEST analysis for all five regions To profiles key optical test equipment players influencing the market along with their SWOT analysis and market strategiesInquire about discount on this report @Segmentations Covered in the Optical Test Equipment Market Product Types: Optical Power Meter, Optical Test Source and Optical Loss Test Sets, Optical Time Domain Reflectometer, Optical Continuous Wave Reflectometer, Optical Spectrum Analyzer, Other Equipment Form Factor: Bench Top, Hand Held, Rack Mount Application: R&D, Manufacturing, Installation & Maintenance End-User Verticals: Broadband and Telecommunication, TV Network, Military and Aerospace, Data Centers, Semiconductors And Electronics, Others Geographical Analysis: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific (APAC), Middle East & Africa (MEA), South America (SAM)Some of the leading players in Optical Test Equipment Market Report Anritsu Corporation AFL Telecommunications LLC Corning Incorporated EXFO Inc. Fluke Networks JDS Uniphase Corporation Kingfisher International Keysight Technologies Tektronix Inc. Viavi Solutions Inc., and Yokogawa Electric CorporationWhy Buy Optical Test Equipment Market Report? Highlights widely used product offerings thereby allowing organizations to gain revenues by focusing majorly on select products The key findings and recommendations highlight crucial progressive industry trends in the Optical Test Equipment market, thereby allowing players across the value chain to develop effective long term strategies Get reliable information about the strategies manufacturers in this market use to drive revenue Gain insights into the competitive landscape, to strengthen market competitiveness and positioning Highlights key business priorities in order to assist companies to realign their business strategies Develop/modify business expansion plans by using substantial growth offering developed and emerging markets Scrutinize in-depth global market trends and outlook coupled with the factors driving the market, as well as the those hindering it Enhance the decision-making process by understanding the strategies that underpin commercial interest with respect to client products, segmentation, pricing and distribution Examine the current and future impact of the five forces namely: bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of substitutes, threat of new entrants and degree of competitionAccess Full Report @About The Insight Partners:The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We are a specialist in Technology, Media, and Telecommunication industries.Contact Us:Call: +1-646-491-9876Email: sales@theinsightpartners.com505, 6th floor, Amanora Township,Amanora Chambers, East Block,Kharadi Road, Hadapsar, Pune-411028
Global Painite Market Forecast 2017-2022 Industry Cleopatra, Topminerals, KSC Crystals, Adams Minerals

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According to Painite Market Report by Market.Biz: China Painite market sales revenue and India Painite market sales revenue is expected to register CAGRs of --.-- % and --.--% respectively over the forecast period. Painite consumption in the ASEAN region's growth rate of --.--% outperforming many countries in the Europe and Americas on Painite scinario. Middle East Painite market and Africa Painite market, followed by Europe are the other attractive regions with an estimated revenue share of --.--% and --.--% of the global Painite market by 2017 end.The Global Painite Market Report 2017 primarily focuses on the inclusive research study on the prevailing scenario of the Painite market worldwide. This study improves the business productivity and Painite market forecast of the industry. It gives the information about the Painite market size for each category during the forecasting period from 2017 to 2022.Request for Report Sample Click Here:Global Painite Market 2017: Competitive Study and Key Sellers1 Cleopatra2 Topminerals3 KSC Crystals4 Adams MineralsPainite Market Analysis: By ProductNaturalSynthesisPainite Market Analysis: By ApplicationElectronicsConsumer GoodsOthersThe report basically includes the overview of Painite market, along with Painite definitions, classification, Painite industry chain structure and a certain area of applications. Painite report also includes the scope of the Painite market, market share and promising users. It also gives the development study of the Painite industry, price structures, Painite competitive analysis of the industry and competitive players from various regions including United States Painite market, EU Painite market, Japan as well as China Painite market.The Painite report provides information about the company profiles, description of the product, product specification, Painite sale, price of the product. Additionally, it also gives information about the Painite production, cost, Painite market revenue, gross margin, capacity as well as import/export details, Painite industry supply and usage figures. Growth rate and Painite development processes of each category of product are also mentioned in the Painite report. The Painite market study gives a clear idea to the individuals regarding the major statistics on the status of Painite industry.You can Purchase the Full Report Here:Further, the Painite industry research report determines the usefulness of investment, investment return analysis and gives the complete idea of Painite market development scope followed by various business strategies of Painite industry. Lastly, the report contains essential outcome help could boost the interest level of the individuals in Global Painite 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-
Global Urinary Catheters Market is Expected to Expand US$ 1,755.0 Million by 2021

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According to a new market report published by Persistence Market Research titled Global Market Study on Urinary Catheters: Intermittent Catheters Segment to Witness Highest Growth by 2021, the urinary catheters market is expected to be valued at US$1,377.5 Mn by the end of 2015. It is anticipated to expand at a CAGR of4.1% from 2015 to 2021, to reach US$1,755.0Mn by 2021.Presently, the urinary catheter market is mainly driven by factors such as growing ageing population, favorable reimbursement policies and increasing demand for advanced urinary catheters. However, factors such as growing incidence of urinary tract infections and the threat from substitutes are expected to hamper market growth. The urinary catheter market is segmented on the basis of product type and application.The global catheter market was valued at around US$ 25,895.6Mn 2014. The urinary catheter market accounted for 5.1% of global catheter market in 2014 and was valued at US$ 1,326.0 million. Revenue contribution by urinary catheter market to the global catheter market is expected to increase to US$ 1,755.0 by the end of 2021, expanding at a CAGR of 4.1% between 2015 and 2021. The increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and growing ageing population are factors expected to positively affect the growth of the urinary catheter market across the globe.By region, North America dominated the market with over 30% market share and is expected to remain dominant throughout the forecast period. The urinary catheter market in Asia and Latin America are expected to expand at a CAGRs of 4.7% and 4.6% respectively during the forecast period.A Sample of this report is available upon request @Key players covered in this report include B. Braun Melsungen AG, Coloplast A/S., CR Bard Inc., Teleflex Incorporation, Boston Scientific Corporation, Covidien Plc, Hollister Incorporated, and Cook Medical.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:
Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes Market Outlook to 2023: Market Size, Development, and Forecasts

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"The Report Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes Market Outlook to 2023 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz"GlobalDatas new report, "Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes Market Outlook to 2023", provides key market data on the Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes market. The report provides value, in millions of US dollars, volume (in units) and and average prices (USD) within market segments - Flexible Video Esophagoscopes and Flexible Gastroscopes.The report also provides company shares and distribution shares data for each of these market segments, and global corporate-level profiles of the key market participants. Based on the availability of data for the particular market and country, information related to pipeline products, news and deals is available in the report.Extensive interviews are conducted with key opinion leaders (KOLs), physicians and industry experts to validate the market size, company share and distribution share data and analysis.View Report @Scope- Market size and company share data for Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes market segments Flexible Video Esophagoscopes and Flexible Gastroscopes.- Annualized market revenues (USD million) and volume (units) data for each of the market segments. Data is provided from 2009 to 2016 and forecast to 2023.- 2016 company shares and distribution shares data for each of the market segments.- Global corporate-level profiles of key companies operating within the Italy Esophagoscopes & Gastroscopes market.- Key players covered include Olympus Corporation, KARL STORZ GmbH & Co KG, PENTAX Medical Company and Others.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @Reasons to buy- Develop business strategies by identifying the key market segments poised for strong growth in the future.- Develop market-entry and market expansion strategies.- Design competition strategies by identifying who-stands-where in the market.- Develop investment strategies by identifying the key market segments expected to register strong growth in the near future.- What are the key distribution channels and whats the most preferred mode of product distribution - Identify, understand and capitalize.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Industrial PC Market: Resistive Screens to Continue their Dominance over Capacitive Alternatives

Global Industrial PC Market Top Trends, Market Share, Market Size and Growth Forecast 2022

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A recent report published by Beige Market Intelligence titled Global Industrial PC Market  Strategic Assessment and Forecast 20172022 focuses on the latest trends in the global Industrial PC market. The report not only outlines several trends, drivers, and restraints but also provides a holistic view of the market. It provides the market size and growth forecast of each type of the industrial PC market segment and discusses the growth of the end-user segments.Analysts at Beige Market Intelligence say that resistive screens are adopted by the panel industrial PC devices, which contribute a major portion of revenue to the global industrial PC market. Hence, the dominance of resistive screens over the other touch modes is the newest trend, which is likely to drive the industrial PC market during the forecast period 20172022.Introduced in the 1960s, touchscreens have undergone many iterations to evolve into what they are today with inevitable use in smartphones, tablets, ATM machines, navigation systems, point-of-sale terminals, and laptop touchpads. They have not only redefined the ease of use of various modern electronic devices but also have given a new dimension to the users experience.View Report Details Here:Resistive screens, which usually consist of a glass panel and a film screen with a thin metallic coating stacked on each other, stand to be the most widely adopted touch technology. Resistive screens are widely used in industrial PC as they help to interact with the interface without compromising performance as long as sufficient pressure is applied as a trigger. Panel industrial PCs continue to adopt resistive screens in abundance in lieu of their versatility.Resistive touch screen technology is expected to retain its dominance over other touch modes driven by its versatility of use and sheer economies of scale it has gathered in panel Industrial PC market. The Panel Industrial PC market segment is going be the largest segment of the global industrial PC market, growing at a CAGR of 8.4% during 20162022.Order a Free Sample Here:Source link:About Beige Market IntelligenceBeige Market Intelligence provides competitive and insightful business intelligence across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the analysis provided is comprehensive, detailed, and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations to make insightful decisions and devise marketing strategies for their businesses. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis at every level of market segmentation in the industry.Our team of experts ensure the analysis is not just analyzed and presented but also can be customized depending upon the clients requirement. When it comes to competitive intelligence, we ensure our clients do not look beyond us.Our employment base is spread across the globe. Our analysts come with numerous quality reports and a wide industry experience, which ensures understanding of the client's requirement and delivering high-quality research reports.Beige Market IntelligenceChinnapannahalli Main Road, Bangalore-560037Mail: contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473
Cooling Fabrics Market - Global Trends, Market Share, Industry Size, Growth, Opportunities, and Market Forecast 2017

Cooling Fabrics Market

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A new and latest research report proposed by QYResearch Groups renders a market summary of the Cooling Fabrics 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.The major players in global and United States Cooling Fabrics market, includingCoolcore LLC, Invista, Ahlstrom, Nilit, Polartec, Nan Ya Plastics, Tex-Ray Industrial Co, Ventex Inc, Formosa Taffeta Co., Ltd, Hexarmor, Silver Eagle, Cool Core, Technical Adsorbents, Sportingtex, Garmatex Technologies.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 Cooling Fabrics 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.Detailed TOC and Charts & Tables of Cooling Fabrics Market Research Report available @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 Cooling Fabrics 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 Cooling Fabrics 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 Cooling Fabrics Market.Request for sample of Cooling Fabrics Market research report @Market Scope:Various aspects are considered in this all-inclusive market research report and it inspects the global Cooling Fabrics 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 Cooling Fabrics 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 developments technologically in the Cooling Fabrics MarketThe research report comprises of markets comprehensive analysis geographically on several important regions such as:This report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share (%) and growth Rate (%) of Cooling Fabrics in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringUnited StatesNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East and AfricaThe 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 Cooling Fabrics 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 Cooling Fabrics Market manufacturers. The report can function as an assistive reference point for helping individuals as well as businesses from this segment.Check for Discount @Some points from TOC:-2017-2022 Cooling Fabrics Report on Global and United States Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications1 Methodology and Data Source1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation1.2 Data Source2.1.1 Secondary Sources2.1.2 Primary Sources1.3 Disclaimer7 Cooling Fabrics Players/Manufacturers Profiles and Sales Data7.1 Coolcore LLC7.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.1.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.1.2.1 Product A7.1.2.2 Product B7.1.3 Coolcore LLC Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.2 Invista7.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.2.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.2.2.1 Product A7.2.2.2 Product B7.2.3 Invista Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.3 Ahlstrom7.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.3.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.3.2.1 Product A7.3.2.2 Product B7.3.3 Ahlstrom Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.3.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.4 Nilit7.4.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.4.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.4.2.1 Product A7.4.2.2 Product B7.4.3 Nilit Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.4.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.5 Polartec7.5.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.5.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.5.2.1 Product A7.5.2.2 Product B7.5.3 Polartec Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.5.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.6 Nan Ya Plastics7.6.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.6.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.6.2.1 Product A7.6.2.2 Product B7.6.3 Nan Ya Plastics Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.6.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.7 Tex-Ray Industrial Co7.7.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.7.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.7.2.1 Product A7.7.2.2 Product B7.7.3 Tex-Ray Industrial Co Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.7.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.8 Ventex Inc7.8.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.8.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.8.2.1 Product A7.8.2.2 Product B7.8.3 Ventex Inc Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.8.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.9 Formosa Taffeta Co., Ltd7.9.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.9.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.9.2.1 Product A7.9.2.2 Product B7.9.3 Formosa Taffeta Co., Ltd Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.9.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.10 Hexarmor7.10.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors7.10.2 Cooling Fabrics Product Category, Application and Specification7.10.2.1 Product A7.10.2.2 Product B7.10.3 Hexarmor Cooling Fabrics Sales (K Metric Tons), Revenue (Million USD), Price (Metric Tons) and Gross Margin (%) (2012-2017)7.10.4 Main Business/Business Overview7.11 Silver Eagle7.12 Cool Core7.13 Technical Adsorbents7.14 Sportingtex7.15 Garmatex TechnologiesEnquiry before Buying @Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-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 world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Jia WangRoom B1510, ShijiKemao Building, No.66, Zhongguancun East Road,Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, China
The Current and Future Market Trends in The Baby Food Market in France 2017

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"The Report The Baby Food Market in France 2017 provides information on pricing, market analysis, shares, forecast, and company profiles for key industry participants. - MarketResearchReports.biz""The Baby Food Market in France 2017", is an analytical report by GlobalData which provides extensive and highly detailed current and future market trends in the French market.The number of births has been relentlessly downwards. The vast majority of families are able to afford commercially prepared baby food, but the financial crisis of 2008 has put incomes under pressure, fueling a trend towards home-made food. Although it remains the largest market in Western Europe and is highly sophisticated and segmented, the depressed economic situation has seen consumption of baby food drop by 14% between 2010 and 2016, and prices have fallen in real terms. The market is expected to continue performing better from 2017, but consumption is expected to increase by only 2.9% by 2022, as the number of births is likely to continue to fall. Retail sales may show some growth. Small increases in volumes of all sectors except baby drinks are expected.View Report @What else does this report offer?- Consumption data based upon a unique combination of industry research, fieldwork, market sizing work and our in-house expertise to offer extensive data about the trends and dynamics affecting the industry.- Detailed profile of the companies operating and new companies considering entry in the industry along with their key focus product sectors.- Market profile of the various product sectors with the key features & developments, segmentation, per capita trends and the various manufacturers & brands.- Overview of baby food retailing with a mention of the major retailers in the country along with the distribution channel.- Future projections considering various trends which are likely to affect the industry.Get Sample Copy Of this Report @Scope- In terms of volume, wet meals constitute the bulk of the French market, accounting for 56% of consumption in 2016. However, in terms of value, milks dominate, with 53% of retail sales.- France is a major producer of baby milks, and has strengthened its position in recent years, following the elimination of milk quotas and strong and growing demand from China.- Bldina (Danone) and Nestl control the majority of baby food sales. Bldina leads, taking a 41% share of total value sales in 2016, while Nestl accounted for 29%.- Retail trends in the French baby food market changed dramatically in the early 1990s. Until the late 1980s, pharmacies played an important role in the supply of baby food, over which they enjoyed a near monopoly.- The market is expected to continue performing better from 2017 onwards, building on the slightly more positive results of 2015 and 2016. However, during the period up to 2022, consumption is expected to increase by only 2.9%, as the number of births is likely to continue to fall, limiting the potential market for baby food.Reasons to buy- Evaluate important changes in consumer behavior and identify profitable markets and areas for product innovation.- Analyse current and forecast behavior trends in each category to identify the best opportunities to exploit.- Detailed understanding of consumption by individual product categories in order to align your sales and marketing efforts with the latest trends in the market.- Investigates which categories are performing the best and how this is changing market dynamics.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.ContactMr. NachiketState Tower90 Sate Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Medical Superabsorbent Polymers Market - Emerge Dominant Owing to Growing Use of Incontinence and Hygiene Products By 2020

Medical Superabsorbent Polymers (SAP) Market 2020

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The global superabsorbent polymers (SAP) market is highly concentrated as the top six companies accounted for a share of over 90.4% in 2013, states Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new report. The leading players are focusing on enhancing production capacities to meet the growing demand for superabsorbent polymers across the world. Key players such as Nippon Shokubai, BASF SE, Evonik Industries, Sumito Seika Chemicals Co., San-Dia Polymer, and LG Chem are striving to gain a competitive edge over each other by focusing on the production of bio-based polymers due to the implementation of strict regulations regarding the use of petroleum-based polymers. The support from environmental regulatory bodies for the use of bio-based polymers is likely to open a plethora of opportunities for new entrants in the global superabsorbent polymers market.The global superabsorbent polymers market is expected to expand at a 5.5% CAGR between 2014 and 2020. The market was worth US$6.71 bn in 2015 and is expected to rise to a valuation of US$8.78 bn by the end of 2020. In terms of application, the baby diapers segment emerged as the leading consumer of superabsorbent polymer in 2013 with a share of 74.7% in the global superabsorbent polymers market. It is expected to account for a share of 75.1% in 2020. Superabsorbent polymers are used in the manufacturing of baby diapers due their high absorption characteristic. Europe will considerably contribute to the demand for SAPs thanks to the high consumption of baby diapers here.Browse Market Research Report @Medical superabsorbent polymers are segmented based on applications that include woven and nonwoven fabrics for wound care products. Woven wound care products include sponges and gauzes, while nonwoven products comprise wound dressing, bandages, and surgical tapes. Demand for woven and nonwoven fabrics has increased due to growing demand for wound dressings owing to rising number of accidents and diseases. This, in turn, has boosted demand for medical superabsorbent polymers globally. Woven fabrics accounted for over 25% share of the global medical superabsorbent polymers market in 2013. The segment is anticipated to expand steadily during the forecast period.Medical superabsorbent polymers have wide scope for growth in medical and other applications (including surgical pads, healing patches and drapes). The wound care segment is further bifurcated into traditional and advanced wound care. Traditional wound care products include gauze dressings, sponges and medical tapes, while advanced wound care dressings comprise burn wound dressings and chronic wound dressings. Advanced wound care is likely to gain market share due to rising demand for these products in developing regions such as Asia Pacific and the Middle East. The others segment (including surgical pads and healing patches) is also anticipated to boost demand for medical superabsorbent polymers during the forecast period. Advanced wound care accounted for more than 35% share of the global medical superabsorbent polymers market in 2013. The segment is projected to gain market share in the near future.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Developing regions are expected to contribute to the growth of the global medical superabsorbent polymers market. Asia Pacific is anticipated to be the fastest growing market during the forecast period. Europe accounted for approximately 40% of the global medical superabsorbent polymers market in 2013. North America is estimated to gain market share during the forecast period, due to rising demand from various end-user industries in the region. Demand for medical superabsorbent polymers is also projected to increase in Rest of the World (RoW), including the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and Latin America, during the forecast period.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insights for decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, TMR employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us:-Transparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog:
Revenue Growth Potential Likely to Attract Vendors Towards Baby Monitors Market During the Forecast Period 20172002

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Flir Lorex, Mattel, Motorola, Philips, Samsung, and Summer Infant are major vendors in the global baby monitors marketBeige Market Intelligence announces the publication of its latest research report Global Baby Monitors Market  Strategic Assessment and Forecast 20172022. The research report provides a detailed analysis of each segment of the global baby monitors market. It profiles all major vendors that operate in the baby monitors market across all geographical regions.View Report Details:Baby Monitors Market Likely to Witness Consolidation During the Forecast Period 20162022As the global baby monitors market present a lucrative revenue growth potential, many vendors are expected to enter the market during the forecast period, which is expected to make it highly consolidated, says the analysts team at Beige Market Intelligence.Vendors in the baby monitors market are increasingly indulging in the distribution and forming conglomerates to cash on the opportunities. The profitability potential is driving vendors to invest in the market. The competition among vendors is on the basis of the product portfolio, product differentiation, and pricing. The product extension is going to intensify the competition during the forecast period.View Report Details:The present scenario is driving vendors to alter and refine their unique value propositions to achieve a strong market presence. The six major leaders in the baby monitors market are Flir Lorex, Mattel, Motorola, Philips, Samsung, and Summer Infant. Some of the popular baby alarm devices that are dominating the market are as following:Lorex Baby Video MonitorsFlir Lorex offers baby video baby monitors in the market. These monitors use Lorexs digital wireless technology and offer a two-way talk system. It provides both video and audio monitor devices.Mattel MonitorsThe company offers baby monitors in the market via Fisher-Price and Sproutling. Mattel, in collaboration with Silk Labs, Qualcomm, and Microsofts Cognitive Service and Cortana Intelligence, developed the worlds first voice-controlled smart baby monitor, Aristotle. Aristotle is a Wi-Fi enabled monitor with a camera capable of object recognition and motion detection.Motorola Baby MonitorsMotorola Mobility was a global leader in the baby monitors market in 2016. Major products offered by the company are connected baby monitors, smart nursery, video monitor, and audio monitors.Philips AVENT MonitorsThe company caters to the baby care market through Philips AVENT. Major products offered by Philips AVENT are smart monitors, video monitors, and audio monitors.Samsung MonitorsSamsung offers both audio monitors and video monitors. In 2016, the company launched a new baby monitor, SEW3043 BrightVIEW. This monitor is an upgrade of the previous SEW-3037 model.Summer Infant Baby MonitorsSummer Infant is an infant and juvenile products company. Its baby monitors were introduced in 2001. The company offers audio, video, and internet-connected monitors. It has also launched a new wearable audio monitor, Babble Band under Summer Infant brand.Order a Free Sample Here:The report also provides key strengths, strategies, opportunities of the major vendors. It also provides the prominent vendors in the audio and audio and video format. BabyPing, Dorel, Dropcam, ShenZhen Foscam, Graco, VTech, WiFi Baby, and Withings are among the other prominent vendors in the audio and audio and video format. It outlines the prominent vendors in the baby movement monitor format which include Angelcare, Hisense, Mayborn Group, Snuza International, Exmovere, iBaby Guard, Jablotron, MonDevices, Owlet Baby Care, Respisense, Rest Devices, Safetosleep, Tomy International.Source Link:About Beige Market IntelligenceBeige Market Intelligence provides competitive and insightful business intelligence across various industry verticals. Our expertise and knowledge ensures that the analysis provided is comprehensive, detailed, and complete. The analysis helps our client organizations to make insightful decisions and devise marketing strategies for their businesses. The actionable insights delivered through our market research provide a comprehensive market analysis at every level of market segmentation in the industry.Our team of experts ensure the analysis is not just analyzed and presented but also can be customized depending upon the clients requirement. When it comes to competitive intelligence, we ensure our clients do not look beyond us.Our employment base is spread across the globe. Our analysts come with numerous quality reports and wide industry experience, which ensures understanding of the client's requirement and delivering high-quality research reports.Beige Market IntelligenceChinnapannahalli Main Road, Bangalore - 560037Mail: contactus@beigemarketintelligence.comUS: +1 347 903 9949UK: +44 20 323 99499APAC: +91 99 012 75473
Global Fertility Services Market 2016-2020 - Features Key Companies ( Carefertility, Coopersurgical, Ferring Pharmaceuticals, Merck, MonashIVF, Vitrolife )

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Albany, NY, May 12, 2017: Couples with fertility issues are unable to conceive even after regular unprotected coitus. Infertility complications are widespread, with either female or male infertility factors accounting for one-third of the cases. In the rest of the cases, the cause is either unknown or a combination of both male and female infertility factors. Low sperm production, abnormal sperm function, or blockages that prevent the delivery of sperm are some of the factors that can lead to infertility in males. Hormonal changes, fallopian tube damage, endometriosis, and cervical abnormalities are factors that can lead to infertility in women. Diagnosing the cause of infertility can be difficult, but people with fertility issues can choose from a variety of treatment options, depending on the underlying problem.The global fertility services market to grow at a CAGR of 8.72% during the period 2016-2020. The report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global fertility services market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the revenue generated from the sales and use of infertility drugs and assisted reproductive technology (ART).The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:- Americas- APAC- EMEAGet a Sample Research PDF with TOC:Technavio's report, Global Fertility Services Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendors- Carefertility- Coopersurgical- Ferring Pharmaceuticals- Merck- MonashIVF- VitrolifeOther prominent vendors- Abbott Laboratories- AbbVie- Actavis- Apricus Biosciences- AstraZeneca- Auxogyn- Bristol-Myers Squibb- Cell Cura- Dong-A Socio- Elelixis Diagnostics- Eli Lilly- EMD Serono- Fertility Focus- Halotech- HRA Pharma- IKS InternationalEnquiry at:Key questions answered in this report- What will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?- What are the key market trends?- What is driving this market?- What are the challenges to market growth?- Who are the key vendors in this market space?- What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?- What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse more details 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:
Hand Tools Market to Grow at a CAGR of 3.9% Through 2027

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Competitive advantage of adopting power tools has lowered the adoption of hand tools. Multiple industrial operations are being equipped with power tools to benefit from their cost-effectiveness, lesser labour-induced work and higher efficiency. Furthermore, advancements in existing power tools are swiftly outpacing the upgrades done on conventional hand tools. In the long run, there is a possibility that hand tools might lose their applicability to power tools. Future Market Insights projects that during the forecast period 2017-2027, the global market for hand tools will showcase a moderate growth, registering a CAGR of 3.9%.Future Market Insights recently published report, titled Hand Tools Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2017-2027, estimates the global hand tools market to reach US$ 15.6 Bn value by end of 2017. In the ten-year forecast period, the global demand for hand tools is likely to witness a downtrend, bringing in just over US$ 22.3 Bn in revenues towards the end of 2027. Factors impacting the growth of global hand tools market are compiled in the report, which include:Request For Sample@There has been a rise in the number of major manufacturing plants and industries in the world, wherein hand tools are widely used for maintenance purposesAutomotive repair & maintenance sector is presently a lucrative industrial vertical for application of hand toolsAlthough, the global demand for hand tools is predicted to decline due to rising prices of raw materials such as iron ore and aluminiumIncreasing prevalence of DIY activities and rising employment opportunities for technical jobs are observed as key trends of the global hand tools market. The report further reveals that a majority of hand tools sold in the world will be used for industrial purposes. In 2017, industrial application of hand tools is expected to net global revenues worth over US$ 9.3 Bn. Key findings in the report also indicate that metal cutting tools will be observed as top-selling products, registering a steady revenue growth at 4.9% CAGR. Also, throughout the forecast period, over 40% of global hand tool sales will be accounted by retail distribution channels. Online distribution of hand tools is also expected to gain traction towards the latter half of forecast period.Send An Enquiry@North America is estimated to remain as the most-lucrative region for growth of hand tools market. Consistently procuring one-third share on global revenues, North America will remain the dominant region in the global hand tools market through 2027. On the other hand, the hand tools market in Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region will register fastest revenue growth, exhibiting 6% CAGR over the forecast period. Companies such as Channellock, Inc., Akar Tools, Ltd., Apex Tools Group, Wera Tools, Snap-On, Stanley Back Decker, Kennametal Inc., Klein Tools, and JK Files (India) Limited are profiled in the report as key manufacturers of hand tools in the world.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Automotive Wiring Harness Market expanding at a CAGR of 8.7% throughout 2025

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Future Market Insights (FMI) recently announced the release of its report titled Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2015-2025. According to the report, the global automotive wiring harness market was valued at US$ 36.82 Bn in 2014 and is anticipated to reach US$ 91.53 Bn by 2025, expanding at a CAGR of 8.7% throughout the forecast period.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Drivers and RestraintsThe global automobile industry registered an annual growth rate of over 5.5% from 2010 to 2015, and is estimated to be valued at US$ 5.1 trillion by end of 2015. Consistent growth in the parent industry is expected to fuel demand for automotive wiring harness in the near future.Request For Sample@Currently, increasing fuel costs and stringent government regulations regarding CO2 emissions are boosting demand for electric vehicles in regions such as North America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific.Governments across various geographies have mandated use of certain electronic safety features such as Anti-Lock Braking System (ABS), Electronic Stability Program (ESP) and other features in both passenger and commercial vehicles. Furthermore, rise in demand for high-end electronics and safety features in vehicles, particularly passenger cars, along with cost reduction and enhanced reliability is leading to increase in global demand for automotive wiring harnesses.Automotive Wiring Harness Market TrendsUse of automotive Ethernet by automotive OEMs represents a new trend in the external as well as internal electronics devices connectivity in an automobile. These automotive Ethernets minimise the use of complex wiring harness structures to a great extent and, thereby, may act as a restraint for growth of the global automotive wiring harness market in the coming years.Rise in technological developments is expected to create favourable growth opportunities in the market in the near future. Growing demand for connectivity and car digitisation, which not only helps establish connectivity within the integral parts of a vehicle but also enables communication with other vehicles through improved and intelligent roadway infrastructure, is an emerging trend in the market.Send An Enquiry@Automotive Wiring Harness Market SegmentationRegion-wise, APEJ (Asia Pacific Excluding Japan) dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014, accounting for 38.3% value share of the overall market. Furthermore, APEJ is foreseen to expand at a relatively high CAGR of 10.4% during the forecast period and is expected to maintain its revenue share dominance till 2025 end. Rise in automotive production and sustained economic growth are some of the factors driving the APEJ automotive wiring harness market currently.North America and Western Europe are expected to register high Y-o-Y growth during the forecast period, owing to increasing demand for e-vehicles and e-bikes in these regions. Growth of the connected car market has resulted in rise in demand for multiple electronic devices in vehicles in North America and Western Europe.Japan is currently witnessing moderate growth in demand for e-bikes, and the trend is expected to continue during the forecast period as well. The Japan automotive wiring harness market is expected to register a sluggish CAGR of 4.0% during the forecast period, due to the matured automotive industry in the country.On the basis of vehicle type, the passenger vehicles segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, and is foreseen to expand at a CAGR of 8.6% during the forecast period. In terms of revenue, the hybrid vehicles and electric vehicles segments are expected to register significant CAGR between 2015 and 2025, in view of the stringent government regulations and growing fuel prices globally.On the basis of application type, the chassis & safety segment dominated the global automotive wiring harness market in 2014 in terms of revenue, accounting for 40.8% share of the overall market. This segment is expected to lose its market share to the HVAC segment, which is projected to expand at a significant CAGR of 10.1% during the forecast period. Furthermore, HVAC manufacturers are designing new eco-friendly devices in order to follow the environment standards along with introducing new innovating designs.Automotive Wiring Harness Market: Key CompaniesKey market players covered in the report include YAZAKI Corporation, Aisin Seiki Co., Samvardhana Motherson Group (SMG), Delphi Automotive PLC, Fujikura Ltd., Sumitomo electric Industries, Ltd., Lear Corporation, LEONI AG, Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. and PKC Group PLC.Most players in the market are engaged in various activities, such as mergers and acquisitions, increasing investments in technological and product developments, geographical expansion and brand building via strong marketing strategies, in order to sustain their position in the competitive market.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Saudi Arabia Medical Devices Market is Expected to Grow at a CAGR of 9.5% by 2023

Saudi Arabia Medical Devices Market

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Market research future published a half-cooked research report on Saudi Arabia Medical Devices market. The Saudi Arabia Medical Devices market is expected to grow at a CAGR of ~9.5% during the period 2017 to 2023.Test the market data and market information presented through more than 30 market data tables and figures spread over 45 numbers of pages of the project report. Avail the in-depth table of content (TOC) & market synopsis on Saudi Arabia Medical Devices Market Research Report - Forecast to 2023.Market Highlights:A medical device is any instrument, appliance including any software, biologic or non-biologic material, to be used for the diagnostic or therapeutic use for management of diseases and disorders.The medical device industry witnessed one of the fastest growth propelled by innovation and rapid uptake of technologies. The medical devices industry has also resulted in the successful fusion of information technology and healthcare. Technology and product development remain the main pillars for the growing market for medical devices. The market involves two segments one high-tech devices with extreme sophistication and another is the low tech improved devices. The high tech segment such as diagnostic imaging devices is witnessing higher rates of growth. The low tech segment is also growing at a good rate but has witnessed growth in developing regions as the market for these in developed regions is stagnant. The other market driving factors are rising public healthcare expenditure in Saudi Arabia, development of large hospitals such as King Faisal hospital in Riyadh, demand for noninvasive therapy etc.Request a Sample Copy @The market constraints are strict and ambiguous regulatory framework, growing concern for security especially data security, differential availability between developed and developing regions, connectivity issues in Saudi Arabia, the interference Sharia courts etc.The future developments will include cloud integration, connected healthcare devices and growing demand for personalized medical wearable devices. Healthcare mobile applications will also lead the market.Saudi Arabia Medical Devices Market:The Saudi Arabia Medical Devices market has been evaluated as a growing market and it is expected that the market will touch high growth figures in future. The Saudi Arabia medical devices market is expected to grow with CAGR of ~9.5 % during the forecast period. The growth will be primary channeled by the rising public healthcare expenditure. The falling crude oil revenues will be a future threat to the market.The major participants of this market are: Johnson & Johnson, General Electric, Medtronic, Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV., Baxter Internationa, Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co., Cardinal Health, Al-Salehiya Medical Estableshment, Saudi Pharmaceutical Industries & Medical Appliances Corporation (SPIMACO), Al Amin Medical Instruments Company (AMICO), Al Faisaliah Medical Systems (FMS), Siemens Ltd and others.Segmentation:Saudi Arabia medical devices market has been segmented on the basis of product type which comprises monitoring devices, diagnostic devices, diagnostic molecular devices, drug delivery devices, surgical devices, bio implants and stimulation devices, automation and robotics and others. On the basis of therapeutic application; market is segmented into general surgery, diagnostic imaging, respiratory, orthopedics, cardiovascular, dental, neurology, ophthalmology, ear-nose-throat (ENT), nephrology and urology, and others. On the basis of end users; market is segmented hospitals, ambulatory, home and others.Regional Analysis:The healthcare sector of Saudi Arabia is divided between private and state. The public healthcare expenditure accounts for approximately 75% of total health expenditure in 2014. Local manufacturing represents a poor outlook which is limited to consumables and ordinary articles. The government has established some of the best hospitals in the region such as King Faisal specialist hospital and research center, Riyadh military hospital, Saudi Arabias National Guard health affairs hospital etc. Saudi Arabia is extremely dependent on imports for medical devices and imports account for approximately 92% of total market for medical devices. U.S. medical device suppliers dominate the scenario with European vendors in the second position. Among the regions of Saudi Arabia Riyadh tops the healthcare expenditure list followed by Tabuk, Makkah and Madina.Access Report Details @About Market Research Future:At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for Middle East and Africa, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Iron Oxide Market will Reach at a CAGR of 4.3% from 2015 to 2025

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Future Market Insights (FMI) delivers key insights on the global iron oxide market in its latest report titled, Iron Oxide Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment, 2015-2025. In terms of value, the global iron oxide market is projected to increase at a CAGR of 4.3% during the forecast period, owing to various factors, regarding which FMI offers vital insights in detail in this report.Iron oxides are chemical compounds that, apart from iron ores, find wide application as pigments, catalysts, etc. Construction and paints & coatings are the major end-use industries for iron oxides.Request For Sample@Growth in construction industry, supported by rising urbanization, is expected to be among the major drivers for global iron oxide market. Major application of iron oxides in the construction industry is to colour concrete blocks and pavement bricks. Iron oxide pigments are being widely used in paints and coatings industry for their use as primers for automobiles and steel structures.Stringent government regulations are expected to adversely impact global iron oxide market significantly. This is especially the case in China, where, over the last two years, various small- and medium-scale companies have exited the iron oxide market due to high costs involved in ensuring regulatory compliance. The same trend is expected to continue over the near future.The iron oxide market is segmented on the basis of product type, application and region. On the basis of product type, the global iron oxide market is segmented into red iron oxide, yellow iron oxide, black iron oxide, orange iron oxide, brown iron oxide, green iron oxide and other blends. On the basis of application, the global iron oxide market is segmented into construction, paints & coatings, plastics, chemicals, paper & pulp manufacturing, textile, ceramics, leather and others (fertilizers, cosmetics and rubber). Regionally, the global iron oxide market is segmented into Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa and Japan.Send An Enquiry@Among product types, red iron oxide was the largest revenue contributor to the global iron oxide market in 2014. Wide application of red iron oxide across various industries is expected to support growth of the segment over the forecast period.In 2014, the construction industry segment dominated the global market, accounting for around 50% revenue share. Growth of the construction industry is in turn expected to drive growth of the iron oxide market over forecast period. In order to enhance their market share, iron oxide producers are focusing on development of new applications for iron oxides.In 2014, Asia pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) was the largest market for iron oxide, both in terms of production and consumption. In terms of consumption, APEJ was followed by Western Europe and North America, respectively.Key players profiled in this study of the global iron oxide market include LANXESS AG, Huntsman International Inc. Cathay Industries, Alabama Pigments Company LLC, Shenghua Group Deqing Huayuan Pigment Co LTD, TODA KOGYO CORPORATION, Jiangsu Yuxing Industry and Trade Co., Ltd., Hunan Three-ring Pigments Co., Ltd., Yaroslavsky Pigment Company and Tata Pigments Company. LANXESS AG has been estimated to account for the largest share in the global iron oxide market in 2015.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Hair Extension Market | Industry Outlook Research Report 2016-2023 By DecisionDatabases

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DecisionDatabases.com offers Hair Extension Market Research Report. This Report covers the complete Industry Outlook, Growth, Size, Share and Forecast Till 2023. The report on global hair extension 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 major market drivers are High disposable income and Changing lifestyle. The market growth might be restricted due Complexity involved in the manufacturing process under the study period.Get FREE Sample Report Copy With FULL Segmentations and TOC @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 product type. These segments are studied in detail incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country level. The segment analysis is useful in understanding the growth areas and probable opportunities of the market.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as Anhui Jinruixiang Hair Products Co., Ltd., Beyonce Hair Extensions, Diva Divine South Africa, Godrej Consumer Products Limited, Great Lengths, Hritik Exim, International Hair Extensions, Mides Mane, Mike and Liz Hairpieces, Rebecca Fashion, Ruimei Hair Products Co., Ltd., Strands of Love, Xuchang Dragon Proof Fashion Co., Ltd. and Xuchang Haoyuan Hair Products Co., Ltd. In terms of geography, the hair extension 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.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.Table Of Contents - Overview1. Introduction2. Executive Summary3. Market Analysis4. Hair Extension Market Analysis By Product Type5. Hair Extension Market Analysis By Geography6. Competitive Landscape Of The Hair Extension Companies7. Company Profiles Of The Hair Extension IndustryPurchase Complete Global Hair Extension Market Research Report At:METHODOLOGY: A combination of primary and secondary research has been used to determine the market estimates and forecasts. Sources used for secondary research include (but not limited to) Paid Data Sources, Company Websites, Technical Journals, Annual Reports, SEC Filings and various other industry publications. Specific details on methodology used for this report can be provided on demand.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:
Smart Vending Machines Market 2016-2023 Outlook Research Report Latest Release By DecisionDatabases

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The new research report on Smart Vending Machines Market offered by DecisionDatabases.com provides Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast Till 2023. The report on global smart vending machines 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 (Thousand 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 Developing preference of cashless payments and Rising demand of energy efficient vending machines. The market growth might be restricted due Stringent government regulations under the study period.Get FREE Sample Report Copy With FULL Segmentations and TOC @The comprehensive value chain analysis of the market will assist in attaining better product differentiation, along with detailed understanding of the core competency of each activity involved. The market attractiveness analysis provided in the report aptly measures the potential value of the market providing business strategists with the latest growth opportunities. The report classifies the market into different segments based on type and application. These segments are studied in detail incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country level. The segment analysis is useful in understanding the growth areas and probable opportunities of the market.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as Azkoyen Group, Bianchi Vending Group S.p.A, Crane Co., FAS International S.p A, Jofemar, N&W Global Vending S.p.A., Rhea Vendors Group, Royal Vendors, Sanden Corp, Seaga and Westomatic Vending Services Ltd. In terms of geography, the smart vending machines 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.Table Of Contents - Overview1. Introduction2. Executive Summary3. Market Analysis4. Smart Vending Machines Market Analysis By Type5. Smart Vending Machines Market Analysis By Application6. Smart Vending Machines Market Analysis By Geography7. Competitive Landscape Of The Smart Vending Machines Companies8. Company Profiles Of The Smart Vending Machines IndustryPurchase Complete Global Smart Vending Machines Market Research 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:
Radiation Dose Management Market | Industry Outlook Research Report 2015-2022 Release By DecisionDatabases

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DecisionDatabases.com offers Radiation Dose Management Market Research Report. This Report covers the complete Industry Outlook, Growth, Size, Share and Forecast Till 2022. The report on global radiation dose 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 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).The Excessive use of imaging technologies, like CT, etc. and Favorable government policies are the major factors pushing the market uphill. But Lack of standard protocol might restraint the growth in the coming years.Get FREE Sample Report Copy With FULL Segmentations and TOC @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 component, application and product. These segments are studied in detail incorporating the market estimates and forecasts at regional and country level. The segment analysis is useful in understanding the growth areas and probable opportunities of the market.The report also covers the complete competitive landscape of the worldwide market with company profiles of key players such as Bayer AG, GE Healthcare INFINITT Healthcare Co. Ltd., Landauer, Inc., Medic Vision Imaging Solutions, Ltd., Mirion Technologies, Inc., Novarad Corporation, Philips Healthcare, Sectra, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. and Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation (TMSC). In terms of geography, the radiation dose 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.Table Of Contents - Overview1. Introduction2. Executive Summary3. Market Analysis4. Radiation Dose Management Market Analysis By Component5. Radiation Dose Management Market Analysis By Application6. Radiation Dose Management Market Analysis By Product7. Radiation Dose Management Market Analysis By Geography8. Competitive Landscape Of The Radiation Dose Management Companies9. Company Profiles Of The Radiation Dose Management IndustryPurchase Complete Global Radiation Dose Management Market Research 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:
New French property conveyancing"Fast-track" contract-checking service

French law

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Fabien Cordiez, a dual-qualified Franco-British lawyer, has created an innovative legal service for English-speaking clients who buy or sell property in France.Mr Cordiez, a bilingual French lawyer and UK solicitor who has been helping clients buy or sell French property over 15 years, has developed a new service which aims at ensuring that clients who buy or sell property in France are being given the opportunity to rapidly understand the contract, obtain a thorough review with feedback to improve terms.The "Fast-track" contract-checking service is a fast, affordable, innovative solution available to English-speakers who need legal help before signing the French conveyancing paperwork.What makes the service unique is that the fast turnaround time: French property buyers or sellers who do not speak fluent French get the legal paperwork carefully checked and explained to them, in English, by a qualified French lawyer, in a timely manner.The French property conveyancing"Fast-track" contract-checking service offers professional, fast French law advice, in English.Mr. Fabien Cordiez is a registered French lawyer or 'Avocat' (Attorney / Barrister) who qualified in France in 1994 and re-qualified as solicitor of England & Wales in 2000.Cordiez French Property SolicitorsAvocat12 rue de l'Ancienne Madeleine13100 Aix-en-ProvenceFrance+33 486 688 968 / UK 0203-445-0720 -IRL 01-431-1301
Global Oral Antiplatelets Sales Market Report 2016 - Bayer AG, Pfizer Inc, Merck, Sanofi

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Qyresearchreports include new market research report "Global Oral Antiplatelets Sales Market Report 2016" to its huge collection of research reports.The Oral Antiplatelets has been expressively dissected in this statistical surveying that has been added to our frequently growing industry knowledge arrangement. The archive takes after an arrangement that gives a careful and scientific diagram of the Oral Antiplatelets and moreover inspects the main sections, compelling components, and market components that administer the development rate of the market and its competitive and regional scenes.The report offers to its clients an all-encompassing 360-degree point of view of the Oral Antiplatelets from the back to front, starting with the core values of the mechanical components, then proceeding onward to the examination of information on the different perspectives including as industry chain structure, groupings, industry diagram, arrangements, applications, and late advancements.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @The data offered in the report has been accumulated through the assistance of various essential and auxiliary research strategies. Quantitative and subjective information appraisal for key market sections on the regional and the aggregate worldwide front have also been given in the report. The gigantic archives of information that have been sifted through by industry-best investigative techniques will give to the user the points of interest that matter the most.The report also gives a portrayal of the administrative situation of the Oral Antiplatelets and gives points of interest relating to the more prominent arrangements, approaches, controls, and decides in that effect the numerous business related choices in the market. A point by point outline of the competitive scene of the Oral Antiplatelets has additionally been given in the report, wherein itemized business profiles, SWOT examination, and numerous different insights about a portion of the real sellers in the market are incorporated.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Table of ContentsGlobal Oral Antiplatelets Sales Market Report 20161 Oral Antiplatelets Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Oral Antiplatelets1.2 Classification of Oral Antiplatelets1.2.1 Type I1.2.2 Type II1.2.3 Type III1.3 Application of Oral Antiplatelets1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 31.4 Oral Antiplatelets Market by Regions1.4.1 USA Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.2 China Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.3 Europe Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.4 Japan Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.5 India Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.4.6 Southeast Asia Status and Prospect (2011-2021)1.5 Global Market Size (Value and Volume) of Oral Antiplatelets (2011-2021)1.5.1 Global Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2021)1.5.2 Global Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2021)2 Global Oral Antiplatelets Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Oral Antiplatelets Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2011-2016)2.1.2 Global Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2011-2016)2.2 Global Oral Antiplatelets (Volume and Value) by Type2.2.1 Global Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)2.2.2 Global Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Market Share by Type (2011-2016)2.3 Global Oral Antiplatelets (Volume and Value) by Regions2.3.1 Global Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Regions (2011-2016)2.3.2 Global Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Market Share by Regions (2011-2016)2.4 Global Oral Antiplatelets (Volume) by Application3 USA Oral Antiplatelets (Volume, Value and Sales Price)3.1 USA Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Value (2011-2016)3.1.1 USA Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2016)3.1.2 USA Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2016)3.1.3 USA Oral Antiplatelets Sales Price Trend (2011-2016)3.2 USA Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers3.3 USA Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Type3.4 USA Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Application4 China Oral Antiplatelets (Volume, Value and Sales Price)4.1 China Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Value (2011-2016)4.1.1 China Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2016)4.1.2 China Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2016)4.1.3 China Oral Antiplatelets Sales Price Trend (2011-2016)4.2 China Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers4.3 China Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Type4.4 China Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Application5 Europe Oral Antiplatelets (Volume, Value and Sales Price)5.1 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Value (2011-2016)5.1.1 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2016)5.1.2 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2016)5.1.3 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Sales Price Trend (2011-2016)5.2 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers5.3 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Type5.4 Europe Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Application6 Japan Oral Antiplatelets (Volume, Value and Sales Price)6.1 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Value (2011-2016)6.1.1 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Growth Rate (2011-2016)6.1.2 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Revenue and Growth Rate (2011-2016)6.1.3 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Sales Price Trend (2011-2016)6.2 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Manufacturers6.3 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by Type6.4 Japan Oral Antiplatelets Sales and Market Share by ApplicationAbout UsQYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.Contact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Global Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022

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This report studies the global Warehouse Management System (WMS) market, analyzes and researches the Warehouse Management System (WMS) development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia. This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeHighJump SoftwareManhattan AssociatesOracleRedPrairieSAPRedPrairieReplyAsgard SoftwareAdvanced Systems ConsultantsCadre TechnologiesDeposcoAGI WolrdwideLogititySofteonBFC SoftwareHAL SystemsCamelot 3PL SoftwareArgos SoftwareInforJDA Software GroupTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Market segment by Regions/Countries, this report coversUnited StatesEUJapanChinaIndiaSoutheast AsiaMarket segment by Type, Warehouse Management System (WMS) can be split intoLabor Management SystemsAnalytics and Optimization Management SystemsOther (3PL Billing,Yard Management)Market segment by Application, Warehouse Management System (WMS) can be split intoManufacturing Industry (Automotive,Heavy Industry,Clothing,etc)Retail (Retail,Medical,etc)Logistics IndustryOtherTable of ContentsGlobal Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Warehouse Management System (WMS)1.1 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Overview1.1.1 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast AsiaBrowse Complete Report with TOC @1.3 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market by Type1.2.2 Labor Management Systems1.2.3 Analytics and Optimization Management Systems1.2.4 Other (3PL Billing,Yard Management)1.4 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Manufacturing Industry (Automotive,Heavy Industry,Clothing,etc)1.4.2 Retail (Retail,Medical,etc)1.4.3 Logistics Industry1.4.4 Other2 Global Warehouse Management System (WMS) Competition Analysis by Players2.1 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size (Value) by Players (2015-2016)2.2 Competitive Status and Trend2.2.1 Market Concentration Rate2.2.2 Product/Service Differences2.2.3 New Entrants2.2.4 The Technology Trends in Future3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 HighJump Software3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Manhattan Associates3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Oracle3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 RedPrairie3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Warehouse Management System (WMS) Revenue (Value) (2011-2016)3.4.5 Recent Developments4 Global Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size by Type and Application (2011-2016)4.1 Global Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size by Type (2011-2016)4.2 Global Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size by Application (2011-2016)4.3 Potential Application of Warehouse Management System (WMS) in Future4.4 Top Consumer/End Users of Warehouse Management System (WMS)5 United States Warehouse Management System (WMS) Development Status and Outlook5.1 United States Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size (2011-2016)5.2 United States Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)6 EU Warehouse Management System (WMS) Development Status and Outlook6.1 EU Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size (2011-2016)6.2 EU Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)7 Japan Warehouse Management System (WMS) Development Status and Outlook7.1 Japan Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size (2011-2016)7.2 Japan Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)8 China Warehouse Management System (WMS) Development Status and Outlook8.1 China Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size (2011-2016)8.2 China Warehouse Management System (WMS) Market Size and Market Share by Players (2015-2016)QYReseachReports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.QYResearchreportsContact Us1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Business Email Market Forecast By End-use Industry 2016-2026

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Electronic mail solution or preferably called email solution, specializes in the day-to-day management of your email services which allows users to remain focused on more critical operations of business. Email solution providers make it simple for organizations and enterprises to communicate across as well as get tasks implemented by offering a reliable, business suited email software to meet such needs. The business email solution offers multiple layers of premium virus and spam protection and keep hosted email advertisement free. Business organizations across the globe are now steadily adopting the strategy of migrating their email to cloud to reduce costs. The enumeration of organizations migrating to cloud-based email and collaboration services has continued to build over the past few years, where previously small and medium business (SMB) were the key end-users of business email solutions, now larger organizations are aggressively moving to the cloud. The current number of email users worldwide in 2015 is recognized to be about 2.6 billion, and this figure is expected to grow at a healthy CAGR till 2026. While total worldwide email traffic estimated to about 200 billion email per day in 2015, the corporate emails represent the major share of this total value.Business Email Market: SegmentationBusiness email market is segmented on the basis of deployment model, end-user and region. According to deployment model, business email market can be segmented into on-premise and cloud-based deployment. On the basis of end-user, business email market can be segmented into small business, medium business and large enterprises. Regionally, business email market can be segmented into North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa (MEA), Asia Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) and Japan.Request For Report Sample@Business Email Market: Regional OutlookBusiness email market is witnessing stable growth and is expected to grow steadily during the projected period. North America is the dominating region in business email market and is expected to remain dominant followed by Western Europe during the forecast period. Asia-Pacific is expected to exhibit highest CAGR due to rapid progress in enterprise sector across evolving economies of countries like India, China and Philippines.Business Email Market: DriversBusiness email market is being primarily driven by organizations need for a formal communication platform. Growing influx of SOHO (Small Office/Home Office) and SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) across the globe is driving the growth of business email market. Furthermore, increasing popularity of cloud-based business email solutions is expected to fuel the growth of business email market during the projected period. However, security concerns regarding cloud-based email solutions coupled with need for dedicated internet connection are expected to restrain the growth of business email market amidst the forecast period 2016-2026.Visit For TOC@Business Email Market: Key PlayersThe key vendors in the Business email market include Google Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo Inc., Rediff.com India Ltd., Rackspace Hostings Inc., GoDaddy Inc., IBM Corporation, Intermedia.net Inc., Fastmail, Zoho Corporation and others. Major players in the business email market boost their market share by mergers & acquisitions with other players in the market. Furthermore, long-term collaboration with cloud-based storage providers is another strategy followed by major business email providers to gain competitive edge.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market 2017: Forecast, News & Growth

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The Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market report is an in-depth analysis of the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market for the forecast period, 2017-2022. The report offers valuable insights such as market share, size and growth related to the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market. The past and the current trends are included in the market research study.Request for Sample Report @The report gives a basic overview of the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market and includes, definitions, classifications, and applications. Investment feasibility analysis and investment return analysis is included in the market research report. Import-export statistics, industry chain and consumption analysis in the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market is pinpointed in the presented study. Statistics reveal the demand and the supply of the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market industry along with tables and figures to offer a clear understanding of the same. The report covers all the important parameters of the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market. Further, the report segments the market by type, application, end-use and geography. The pricing strategy, branding strategy and data such as product specification of key vendors operating in the Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Market industry is accurately included in the report.Know more about Report @Split by application, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Clinical Reference Laboratory Services in each application, can be divided into Clinical Chemistry Clinical Blood, Fluidology Clinical Immunology Clinical MicrobiologyTable of Content:10 Europe Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Manufacturers Analysis10.1 SCTC10.1.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.1.2 Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Product Type, Application and Specification10.1.2.1 Product A10.1.2.2 Product B10.1.3 SCTC Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.1.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.2 Kingmed10.2.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.2.2 Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Product Type, Application and Specification10.2.2.1 Product A10.2.2.2 Product B10.2.3 Kingmed Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.2.4 Main Business/Business Overview10.3 Adicon10.3.1 Company Basic Information, Manufacturing Base and Competitors10.3.2 Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Product Type, Application and Specification10.3.2.1 Product A10.3.2.2 Product B10.3.3 Adicon Clinical Reference Laboratory Services Sales, Revenue, Price and Gross Margin (2012-2017)10.3.4 Main Business/Business OverviewDo Report Purchase Enquiry @About Company: Big Market ResearchWith the arsenal of different search reports, we help you here to look and buy research reports that will be helpful to you and your organization. Big Market Research reports have the capability and authenticity to support your organization for growth and consistency.With the window of opportunity getting open and shut at a speed of light, it has become very important to survive in the market and only the fittest and competent enough can do so. So, we try and provide with latest changes in the market that can suit your needs and help you take decision accordingly.Contact Us:5933 NE Win Sivers Drive,#205, Portland, OR 97220United StatesDirect :+ 1-503-894-6022Toll Free : + 1-800-910-6452Email: help@bigmarketresearch.comWeb:
Synthetic Biology Market Forecast Research Reports Offers Key Insights

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Synthetic Biology is one of the breakthrough technologies developed by mankind from chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering which ultimately changed the approach towards therapeutics. It has a varied areas of applications in biofuels, industrial enzymes, vaccine and antibody production, bio-based chemicals and synthetic biology life science research. Synthetic biologists develop such biological systems using by molding the core components (genetic circuits, part of enzymes and metabolic pathways) and understanding their performance while using these smaller parts or devices into the specific integrated systems. The production of new medicines is now done by using synthetic biology on a cellular, molecular and genetic level to address the emerging health issues.Synthetic Biology Market: Drivers & RestraintsInternationally, companies have started investing in Synthetic biology as many governmental bodies are turning towards biomass and climate change. In past few years synthetic biology has gained industrial interest which has a large scale applications and potential of new gene editing techniques are some of the drivers for this market. Traditional medicines are being replaced by genetically engineered products, DNA sequencing and DNA synthesis technologies. This market though has a potential there with any advances there are risks and hindrance like government regulations and policies, biosafety and biosecurity issues, bio-war but these issues are being addressed by the regulatory bodies and research institutions. The synthetic biology market has changed the complete approach towards traditional ways of combating with newer diseases and genetic challenges with the advanced computing and design systems.Request For Report Sample@Synthetic Biology Market: SegmentationSynthetic Biology market is basically can be classified into products, technology and applications.The Synthetic Biology market based on product can be subdivided into following:Core Products.Synthetic DNASynthetic GenesSynthetic cellsDNA & RNA Purification KitsRecombinant ProteinsThe Synthetic Biology market based on technology can be subdivided into following:MutagenesisDNA sequencingGenome engineeringThe Synthetic Biology market based on applications can be subdivided into following:Pharmaceutical CompaniesResearch OrganizationsChemical IndustriesUniversitiesSynthetic Biology Market: Market OverviewSynthetic biology market is a technology which has now a massive demand in the biotechnology sector, chemical and biofuel industries and their products will outstrip the products of the other industries in the near future. There is progress towards making this technology useful in the therapeutic areas from which the society can be directly benefited. The success of synthetic biology in DNA sequencing and synthetic microbes in vaccines, faster and efficient modular DNA assembly methods has proved to be a potential market and thus there is a significant investment done by the pharmaceutical and healthcare companies.Synthetic Biology Market: Region-wise OutlookDepending on geographic regions, global radiofrequency ablation system market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa.Europe is a leading market followed by North America, Europe has invested in developing synthesis of biologically based or biologically inspired systems. In North America Defense is a major contributor in the investment done in the past years. In Asia, India and China are said to progress in developments over future to be a part of the Synthetic biology market. The success of this market will depend upon the conversion from basic research to applications which will rise the future opportunities to understand the natural biological systems. Thus the market for synthetic biology is showing no sign for slowing down but managing the future social, ethical and legal responsibilities will lead to innovation.Visit For TOC@Synthetic Biology Market: Key PlayersThe major key players in the synthetic biology market are Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Agilent Technologies, GEN9, Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC., Amyris Biotechnologies, Epoch Life Science Inc., Gevo Inc., Intrexon Corporation, Sangamo Biosciences and Gingko Bioworks.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:
Halal Pharmaceuticals Market Intelligence Report Offers Growth Prospects

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Halal pharmaceuticals are those medicines that stringently adhere to Shariah law. More specifically, halal pharmaceuticals refer to medicines that should not contain any parts of animals (dogs, pigs and ones particularly with pointed teeth), insects (bees), alcohol and other substances prohibited as haram under the Shariah law. Competent religious local regulatory bodies in countries generally provide a better segregation regarding the classification of drugs as halal or haram (unlawful) across the world. Halal pharmaceuticals are subject to normal pre-marketing and post-marketing controls by the relevant national pharmaceutical regulators such as the National Pharmaceutical Control Bureau in case of Malaysia. Halal medicines market has vast potential globally in terms of revenue generation supported by growing demand for faith-compliant medicines from an expanding Muslim population. Drugs approved by halal drug certifiying agencies such as Lembaga Pengkajian Pangan Obatobatan dan Kosmetika Majelis Ulama Indonesia (LPPOM MUI) of Indonesia and Jabatan Kemajuan Islam Malaysia are expected to witness rising consumption globally. Currently, halal medicines are estimated to have contributed close to one-third of the total revenue from the global halal market, posing an extremely attractive opportunity for Shariah compliant drugs. This is supported by the fact that demand outstrips supply of halal medicines by a significant margin, creating potential for future economic value added in the industry.Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: Drivers and RestraintsDrivers of the halal pharmaceuticals market include a growing Muslim population. Given that Muslims have been estimated to account for close to 25% of the global population in 2015~1.6 billion people (PewResearch)  the annual growth rate of the Muslim population has been estimated to be ~1.6%, which is higher than the growth rate of the world population (1.1% per annum). Increasing awareness among Muslims regarding wellness and medicines is propagating mainly through increased education. This is another prime factor contributing to growth of the halal medicine market. Other socio-economic factors driving the need and uptake of halal medicines include rising purchasing power parity, increasing access to critical medicines in resource-constrained nations supported by public organizations such as World Health Organization, safety of consumption, assurance of product efficacy and hygienic processing among others. Increasing need to get medicines certified from an approved regulatory body is driving regulatory convergence in the halal medicines market among countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, Turkey, France and others.Request For Report Sample@Key restraints include lack of adequate infrastructure in non-Islamic countries to avoid cross-contamination between halal and non-halal production lines, and lack of sufficient halal advisory and certification agencies to approve medical products. Other restraints include dearth of sufficient R&D for halal medicines globally and omission of critical medicine classes such as vaccines and biologics as they do not comply with Shariah norms. Ban on use of forbidden components such as porcine excipients also limit the number of drugs that can be produced. Industry experts have noted that formation of a proper, well-regulated and harmonized accreditation and halal management system could serve a long way in raising demand for halal medicines.Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: SegmentationHalal pharmaceuticals market can be segmented as indicated below:Segmentation by drug classesRespiratory drugsCardiovascular drugsEndocrine drugsPain medicationsAllergies (cough &cold)OthersSegmentation by product typeTabletsSyrupsCapsulesOthersSegmentation by source materialPlant and plant derivativesAnimals (compliant under religious laws)Synthetic and semi-synthetic sourcesRecombinant DNASegmentation by regionsHalal Pharmaceuticals Market: OverviewUptake of Halal medicines is gaining major traction globally, primarily due to two reasons. Firstly, these medicines are fully compliant with faith and so are readily acceptable under religious laws. Secondly, these medicines are very well assessed for quality and certification before being released into the market and are mostly made using herbal and synthetic materials. The market for halal pharmaceuticals is expected to register a significant CAGR as well as annual growth rates over the forecast period. Regulatory harmonization and regional regulatory convergence is expected to emerge as the key market trends in the near future.Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: Region-wise OutlookOn the basis of geographic regions, halal drug market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan and Middle East & Africa.In terms of geography, Asia Pacific region is the main region exhibiting development and uptake of halal medicines, particularly in countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. However, R&D activities related to halal medicines are gaining traction in the European and North American regions. Discussion on formation of halal medicine certification agencies and guidelines are key features found in the traditionally pharmaceutically developed markets. Companies producing halal medicines are expected to enter Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Turkey, Iran, Qatar, Russia, France, Libya, Algeria and Singapore as well as the UAE to cater to the high demand base for better revenue generation, either through distributor route or via tie-ups with established players.Visit For TOC@Halal Pharmaceuticals Market: Key PlayersSome key accredited players in the halal medicine market include Chemical Company of Malaysia Berhad (CCM Pharmaceuticals Sdn Bhd), Pharmaniaga Bhd, Simpor Pharma Sdn Bhd, EMBIL Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, Nutramedica Incorporated, etc. 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:
Harmonic Drive Market 2017 Growth Opportunities, Key Players, Outlook and Forecasts 2022

Harmonic Drive

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Big Market Research Add New Harmonic Drive Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Trends and Forecast, 2017 - 2022 Market Research Report to Its a Database.Harmonic Drive is a compact, high performance, precision reduction gear. It is one of the key components used in robotic products such as collaborative work robots. The gear consists of only 3 basic parts (Wave Generator, Flex spline, and Circular Spline). It provides excellent features not found in other speed reducers.Do Enquiry for Sample Report:Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the Harmonic Drive Market, especially in China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, India and Australia. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, countries/Regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report coversHDSILeaderdriveBeijing CTKM Harmonic DriveMarket Segment by Type, coversCup StyleHat StylePancake StyleMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided intoIndustry Robot IndustrySemiconductor Production Equipment IndustryFlat Panel Display IndustryMachine Tools IndustryComplete Report Here @There are 19 Chapters to deeply display the Asia-Pacific Harmonic Drive market.Chapter 1, to describe Harmonic Drive Introduction, product type and application, market overview, market analysis by countries, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the manufacturers of Harmonic Drive, with profile, main business, news, sales, price, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the Asia-Pacific market by countries, covering China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, India and Australia, with sales, price, revenue and market share of Harmonic Drive, for each country, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5 and 6, to show the market by type and application, with sales, price, revenue, market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 to analyze the key countries by manufacturers, Type and Application, covering China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Taiwan, India and Australia, with sales, revenue and market share by manufacturers, types and application;Chapter 14, Harmonic Drive market forecast, by countries, type and application, with sales, price, revenue and growth rate forecast, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 15, to analyze the manufacturing cost, key raw materials and manufacturing process etc.Chapter 16, to analyze the industrial chain, sourcing strategy and downstream end users (buyers);Chapter 17, to describe sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers etc.Chapter 18 and 19, to describe the research findings and conclusion, appendix, methodology and data source.Do Enquiry for Discount:About Big Market Research:Big Market Research uniqueness lies in its highly ethical reports at economical rates because we value your relationship and growth more than money. Your growth is our aim.Our strength is in our research analysts who with their proactive approach can source best and correct information which can be detrimental in organizations success. We follow six sigma standards leaving no scope for error.Contact Big Market Research:Direct Contact: + 1-503-894-6022Toll Free: + 1-800-910-6452Email: help@bigmarketresearch.comWeb:
Global Personal Accessories Market 2016 Industry, Analysis, Research, Share, Growth, Sales, Trends, Supply, Forecast to 2021

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The Global Personal Accessories Industry 2016 Market Research Report is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Personal Accessories industry.Firstly, the report provides a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Personal Accessories 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 Personal Accessories 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.Browse Complete Report with TOC @Table of Contents1 Industry Overview of Personal Accessories1.1 Definition and Specifications of Personal Accessories1.1.1 Definition of Personal Accessories1.1.2 Specifications of Personal Accessories1.2 Classification of Personal Accessories1.3 Applications of Personal Accessories1.4 Industry Chain Structure of Personal Accessories1.5 Industry Overview and Major Regions Status of Personal Accessories1.5.1 Industry Overview of Personal Accessories1.5.2 Global Major Regions Status of Personal Accessories1.6 Industry Policy Analysis of Personal Accessories1.7 Industry News Analysis of Personal Accessories2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Personal Accessories2.1 Raw Material Suppliers and Price Analysis of Personal Accessories2.2 Equipment Suppliers and Price Analysis of Personal Accessories2.3 Labor Cost Analysis of Personal Accessories2.4 Other Costs Analysis of Personal Accessories2.5 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Personal Accessories2.6 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Personal Accessories3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Personal Accessories3.1 Capacity and Commercial Production Date of Global Personal Accessories Major Manufacturers in 20153.2 Manufacturing Plants Distribution of Global Personal Accessories Major Manufacturers in 20153.3 R&D Status and Technology Source of Global Personal Accessories Major Manufacturers in 20153.4 Raw Materials Sources Analysis of Global Personal Accessories Major Manufacturers in 20154 Capacity, Production and Revenue Analysis of Personal Accessories by Regions, Types and Manufacturers4.1 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Personal Accessories by Regions 2011-20164.2 Global and Major Regions Capacity, Production, Revenue and Growth Rate of Personal Accessories 2011-20164.3 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Personal Accessories by Types 2011-20164.4 Global Capacity, Production and Revenue of Personal Accessories by Manufacturers 2011-20165 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Personal Accessories by Regions, Types and Manufacturers5.1 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Personal Accessories by Regions 2011-20165.2 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Personal Accessories by Types 2011-20165.3 Price, Cost, Gross and Gross Margin Analysis of Personal Accessories by Manufacturers 2011-20166 Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Sale Price Analysis of Personal Accessories by Regions, Types and Applications6.1 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Personal Accessories by Regions 2011-20166.2 Global and Major Regions Consumption Volume, Consumption Value and Growth Rate of Personal Accessories 2011-20166.3 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Personal Accessories by Types 2011-20166.4 Global Consumption Volume and Consumption Value of Personal Accessories by Applications 2011-20166.5 Sale Price of Personal Accessories by Regions 2011-20166.6 Sale Price of Personal Accessories by Types 2011-20166.7 Sale Price of Personal Accessories by Applications 2011-20166.8 Market Share Analysis of Personal Accessories by Different Sale Price LevelsQYReseachReports.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
Pet Food Market Research, Global Scenario, Trends, Industry Analysis, Size, Share And Forecast, 2011 - 2017

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This report is an effort to identify factors, which will be the driving force behind the pet food market and sub-markets in the next few years. The report provides extensive analysis of the industry, current market trends, industry drivers and challenges for better understanding of market structure. The report has segregated the pet food industry in terms of product and geography. We have used a combination of primary and secondary research to arrive at the market estimates, market shares and trends. We have adopted bottom up model to derive market size of the global pet food industry and further validated numbers with the key market participants and C-level executives. This report highlights the industry with the following points:Definition, estimates & forecast of pet food product market from 2011 to 2017Analysis of product segments for pet food product market with historical data and forecastTrends and forecast based on major geographical markets, namely U.S, Europe, Asia-Pacific and RoW based on segments of pet food product marketProfiles of major market participants for better understanding of their contributionsRequest To Get The Sample Copy Of This Report :This research is specially designed to estimate and analyze the demand and performance of pet foods in global scenario. This research provides in-depth analysis of pet food manufacturers, product sales, trend analysis by segments and demand by geography. The report covers all the major product segments of the global pet food industry and provides in-depth analysis, historical data and statistically refined forecast for the segments covered. The study presents a comprehensive assessment of the stakeholder strategies and winning imperatives for them by segmenting the global pet food industry as below:1. Pet Food Market by Pet TypeDog FoodCat FoodOthers2. Pet Food Market by Food TypeDry FoodWet/ Canned FoodNutritious FoodSnacks/ Treats3. Pet Food Market by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaEuropeUKFranceGermanyItalyAsia-PacificJapanAustraliaRest of the world (RoW)The in-depth research and high level analysis will allow pet food manufacturers, lawmakers, large retailers, medical companies and research and development agencies to make informed decisions about e-discovery products manufacturing, designing marketing, growth strategies and gaining competitive advantage.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Fucoxanthin Market 2017 - 3W Botanical, Naturalin, Beijing Ginko Group, Xian Rongsheng, Beijing Leili

Fucoxanthin Market

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MarketReports.biz, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Fucoxanthin Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Fucoxanthin 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 Fucoxanthin industry, and estimates the future trend of Fucoxanthin market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Fucoxanthin Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report1. Oryza2. AGROCHEMI3. Amicogen4. Herim Fucoidan5. PoliNat6. Nutraceuticals International7. Xian Sinuote8. Changsha Vigorous-Tech9. Beijing Lantian dadi10. Shaanxi Sciphar11. 3W Botanical12. NaturalinThe market research report explores the Fucoxanthin market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Fucoxanthin 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 Fucoxanthin market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Fucoxanthin. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Fucoxanthin 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 Fucoxanthin is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Fucoxanthin market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Fucoxanthin market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Fucoxanthin market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Fucoxanthin production volume, data pertaining to demand and Fucoxanthin supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Fucoxanthin 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 Fucoxanthin 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
Global Pet Food Market Size, Shares, Rising Growth, Key Drivers, Trends And Forecasts (2016-2020)

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The report titled Global Pet Food Market: Size, Trends and Forecasts (2016-2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the global pet food market with detailed analysis of market size on the basis of value along with the comprehensive examination of each of the major segments of the market, namely, dog food and cat food.The report provides detailed regional analysis of the United States, UK, Germany, France and Canada. The regional analysis of the markets includes market size by value along with the analysis of the dog food and cat food market, in terms of the value.The report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global pet food market has also been forecasted for the period 2016-2020, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends. The competition in the global pet food market is stiff and dominated by the big players like Nestle Purina PetCare Company. Further, key players of the market Hills Pet Nutrition Company and Mars, Incorporated., are also profiled with their financial information and respective business strategies.Get The Sample Copy of This Report :Regional CoverageUnited StatesUKGermanyFranceCanadaCompany CoverageNestle Purina PetCare CompanyHills Pet Nutrition CompanyMars, IncorporatedExecutive SummaryThe global pet food market witnessed an upsurge at a significant CAGR during the span of 5 years, i.e., 2010-2015 and projections are made that the market would rise in the next five years i.e. 2016-2020 tremendously. The market is spread across North America, Europe and Asia. Among these regions, the North America held the largest share, followed by the Europe and Asia-Pacific region.The pet food market can be segmented on the basis of pet type, product type, ingredients and price. On the basis of pet type, market can be segmented into dog food, cat food and other pet food, while on the basis of product type, the market can be classified into wet food, dry food and treats & mixers. The market can be distinguished into natural and non-natural food, on the basis of ingredients. However, on the basis of price, the food market can be segmented into economy pet food, mid-priced pet food and premium pet food. Among all the classifications, segmentation on the basis of pet type is most popular, with dog food dominating the market.The major growth drivers for the global pet food market are: an increase in the pet population, pet humanization, health conscious consumers, upsurge in urbanization and personal disposable income. Despite the market is governed by various growth drivers, there are certain challenges faced by the market such as pet obesity, grinding challenge, supply chain challenge and nutritional sustainability. Some of the recent trends in the market include the rise in social awareness among consumers, sustainable packaging, cooked pet food and exotic ingredientsMarketResearchReports.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
North America is anticipated to lead the Thrombin Market, due to Increase in the Number of Surgeries and Developed Healthcare Infrastructure

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Hemostasis is a medical condition, wherein blood vessel, platelets, and coagulation factors act together to arrest bleeding. It occurs by coagulation process, wherein blood is transformed from liquid to gel state through sequential enzymatic steps. During hemostasis process, thrombin plays a role of key enzyme. Thrombin is an enzyme called serine protease, which is synthesized from a precursor glycoprotein called prothrombin. During the clotting process, proteolytic cleavage of prothrombin produces thrombin. Insoluble fibrin is produced from soluble fibrinogen through a series of reactions catalyzed by thrombin. The production of thrombin in body is highly regulated, as the overproduction of thrombin may result in the blockage of normal blood flow a state called thrombosis. Under such condition, tissues may die due to unavailability of oxygen.Browse through Thrombin Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:Prothrombin is produced in liver and is passed into blood stream in an inactive form. Whenever a vascular injury occurs, collagen and tissue factor lead to activation of coagulation pathways. These pathways lead to activation of factor X, which, in conjugation with other factors, forms a complex. This complex cleaves the prothrombin protein into a thrombin molecule. Once thrombin is produced, it cleaves fibrinogen into fibrin. This result in platelet aggregation and thrombus formation, which help in the stoppage of bleeding.Thrombin acts on different cell types. On smooth muscle cells, it causes vasoconstriction. It activates platelets to promote their aggregation at the site of injury. In activated state, thrombin plays a role of chemo-attractant and mitogen for neutrophils and fibroblasts. Thrombin also plays a role in regulating the endothelial cell functions. It also plays a role in the anticoagulant system, wherein it activates protein C upon interaction with thrombomodulin. This helps in improving circulation as an anticoagulant effect during the vascular injury. Thrombin are produced naturally in body and is also available in commercialized forms. In both the forms, it has two important functions. It helps in the process of coagulation wherein fibrinogen is converted into fibrin. This promotes platelet aggregation, which helps in clotting of blood at the site of injury. Secondly, it acts in the anticoagulation process by activating the protein C. Commercially produced thrombin is available in concentrated form, which, upon application, is capable of converting fibrinogen into fibrin. This helps in thrombus formation at the site of injury. The concentration of thrombin is directly promotional to the rate of clot formation. Types of commercially available thrombin differ in terms of dosage form and concentration. This factor is considered while selecting the product, as higher concentration speeds up the process of hemostasis.The global thrombin market can be segmented on the basis of product type, dosage form, end-user, and geographical region. Based on product type, the market has been segmented into bovine thrombin, human thrombin, and recombinant thrombin. The human thrombin segment is sub-segmented into alpha, beta, and gamma thrombin. The use of bovine thrombin generates antibodies, which cross-react with human coagulation proteins. This has been observed to result in severe complications and life-threatening bleeding. Hence, human thrombin was introduced, as an alternative to bovine thrombin. However, human thrombin is associated with the risk of transmission of viruses. The recombinant thrombin segment is anticipated to lead the market, as recombinant thrombin is free of risks associated with viral infection and it has potential efficacy.Based on dosage form, the global thrombin market has been segmented into powder form, solution form, pad form, spray kits, and others. Based on end-user, it can be segmented into hospitals, diagnostics & clinics, and academic and research institutes. The hospitals segment is anticipated to lead the market, due to increase in the number of surgeries.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Thrombin Market by 2024:Based on geography, the global thrombin market has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is anticipated to lead the global market, due to increase in the number of surgeries and developed health care infrastructure.Key players operating in the global thrombin market are Baxter, Bayer, CSL, Grifols, GE Healthcare, Hualan Biological, Haematologic Technologies Inc., Pfizer, Octapharma, Omrix Biopharmaceuticals Ltd., and Shanghai RAAS.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:
Europe Pet Food Market Analysis, Size, Share, Overview, Growth, Trends And Forecast 2015 - 2021

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This market research study analyzes the Pet Food Market in Europe, and provides estimates in terms of revenue (USD million) from 2015 to 2021 as well as volume in terms of kg million from 2015 to 2021. It recognizes the current market trends affecting the pet food market and analyzes their impact over the forecast period. Moreover, it also analyses the Average Selling Price (ASP) in various product segments across various countries.The pet food market has been segmented by pet type into dog food, cat food and others. The others segment includes fish food, bird food, reptiles and other small animals. The cat food segment held the largest market share in Europe. Increasing trend for nuclear families coupled with demand for small pets is one of the major factors boosting the demand for cat food in Europe. In terms of food type the pet food market has been segmented into wet/canned food, dry food, nutritious food, snacks/treats and others. Raw meat and other household products are covered within the scope of others segment. However, the others segment including reptile food, bird food, fish food and other small pets is the fastest growing segment in pet food market in Europe.Download Sample Copy Of This Report :The dry food segment held the largest market share in pet food market in Europe. Ease of handling and lower prices compared to other segments is one of the major factors boosting the demand in the dry food segment. Apart from this, added nutritional value in the dry food segment is also expected to boost the demand for dry food in Europe. However, the nutritional food segment is the fastest growing segment in Europe. Increasing awareness about pet health is one of the major factors boosting the demand in the nutritional food segment. In the coming years, with increasing concern the demand for nutritional food is expected to reach considerably.The pet food market in Europe has been segmented by country into, U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and rest of Europe. U.K. is the largest market for pet food in Europe. Increasing demand for pet specific products is one of the major factors boosting the demand in U.K.. Apart from this, nutritional food segment is the fastest growing segment in U.K.. Increasing awareness about pet health among the pet owners is one of the major factors boosting the demand for nutritional food in U.K.. However, Spain is the fastest growing market in Europe. Increasing trend for nuclear family is one of the major factors boosting the demand for pet food in Spain. Apart from this, increasing awareness about pet health is also boosting the demand for pet food in Spain.The report also analyzes macro economic factors influencing and inhibiting the growth of pet food market in Europe. In addition, the report also provides Average Selling Price (ASP) across all the product segments in countries analyzed in the course of research. The report will help manufacturers, suppliers and distributors to understand the present and future trends in this market and formulate their strategies accordingly.This report provides strategic analysis of the Europe pet food market, and the growth forecast for the period 2015 to 2021. The span of the report includes competitive analysis of various market segments based on the pet type, food type and in-depth cross sectional analysis of the pet food market across different countries.In the report, the market has been segmented by food type, pet type and by country. The study highlights current market trends and provides the forecast from 2015 to 2021. We have also covered the current market scenario for the pet food market and highlighted future trends that will affect demand. By country, the market has been segmented into U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and rest of Europe. The present market size and forecast until 2021 have been provided in the report. In addition, the report also provides brand share of the major brands in the countries covered within the scope of research.The Europe Pet Food Market has been segmented as:Europe Pet Food Market: By CountryU.K.GermanyFranceItalySpainNetherlandsRest of EuropeThe report provides a cross-sectional analysis of all the above segments with respect to the below mentioned countries.Europe Pet Food Market: By Pet TypeDog FoodCat FoodOthersEurope Pet Food Market: By Food TypeDry FoodWet Food/ Canned FoodNutritious FoodSnacks/TreatsOthersMarketResearchReports.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
Increase in Use of Hormone Therapies to Drive the Global Urological Cancer Market

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Urological cancer is the growth of abnormal tissues in bladder, prostate, penile, testicular, and kidney. These abnormal tissues are referred to as tumor, which even spread in the surrounding tissues or muscles. As people get older, bladder cancer is more common in men than women. Signs and symptoms of a urological cancer depend on the type and stage of the cancer. In U.S., bladder cancer is the fourth most common cancer among men and the ninth most common among women. According to UCSF Medical Center, more than 50,000 new cases of bladder cancer are diagnosed each year. Testicular cancer is the most common among men aged 15 to 44 years in the U.S. According to American Cancer Society, each year about 6,900 cases of testicular cancer are diagnosed and about 300 men die from it annually in the country. The diagnosis of urological cancers depends on the types of cancer and severity of the patient.Browse through Urological Cancer Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:Factors such as aging population, advanced health care services, rise in obesity incidence, increase in use of hormone therapies, and spike in tobacco usage, smoking behavior, and heritable cancer syndromes are projected to drive the global urological cancer market. Other factors such as new product innovation and research and development activities are likely to fuel the market. Increase in number of collaborations, partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions for the availability of urological cancer treatment drugs are some of the latest trends that have been observed in the market. However, asymptomatic nature of the disease and strict environmental regulations are expected to hinder the growth of the urological cancer market.The urological cancer market has been segmented by cancer type, treatment type, end-user, and geography. In terms of cancer type, the market is classified into bladder cancer, prostate cancer, penile cancer, testicular cancer, and kidney cancer. In terms of treatment type, the market is classified into chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, and surgery & radiation therapy. In terms of end-user, the market is classified into hospitals, urological centers, oncology centers, and specialty clinics.Geographically, the market is classified into North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Middle East & Africa.Geographically, North America dominates the urological cancer market due to growing number of geriatric population, availability of advanced health care solutions, new product innovation, developed health care infrastructure, and technological advancement, which in turn are likely to drive the market. Prostate cancer, for example, is the most common cancer among men in the U.S. One out of every 10 men is likely to develop the disease at some time in life  most often after age 50. Europe follows North America in the market share due to increase in research and development activities as well as rise in consumption of alcohol and smoking behavior. According to NHS, prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the U.K., with over 40,000 new cases diagnosed every year. Asia Pacific is expected to grow at a higher rate owing to increase in population growth, rise in awareness among people, growth in health care expenditure, availability of treatment option, and research and development activities. Latin America and Middle East & Africa are further expected to create huge opportunities for the market due to high per capita expenditure, increase in private health insurance coverage, growth in awareness among people, and government initiatives.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Urological Cancer Market by 2024:Major players operating in this market include Pfizer Inc., Novartis International AG, Johnson & Johnson Private Limited, Astellas Pharma Inc., AstraZeneca Plc., GlaxoSmithKline plc, Sanofi S.A., Celgene Corporation, Eli Lilly and Company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, and F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG.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:
Bioprocess Technology Market is Majorly Gaining from the Growth Witnessed in the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industries

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Global Bioprocess Technology Market: OverviewThe global bioprocess technology market is forecast to report a strong growth between 2016 and 2024. Besides the expansion of pharmaceutical industries across emerging nations, the market is seemingly gaining from the higher research and development funding. Furthermore, as pharmaceutical giants focus on their core competencies they are more likely to outsource a few crucial operations to vendors with expertise. This would further give impetus to the global bioprocess technology market.Browse through Bioprocess Technology Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:The report provides a detailed assessment of the market covering growth drivers, major restraints, and opportunities. It has segmented the market based on various parameters for the purpose of the study. The effect of Porters five forces on the overall market is studied in detail as well.Global Bioprocess Technology Market: Trends and OpportunitiesThe bioprocess technology market is majorly gaining from the growth witnessed in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Given the scenario, the industry now witnesses rising research funding, novel drug launches, and increasing government support. These, coupled with the increasing incidence of chronic ailments, will keep the demand for bioprocess technologies high through the reports forecast period.Besides this, the market is also looking forward to the rapid growth in pharmaceutical and biotechnologies industries to gain more business. Rising R&D activities supported by favorable government policies are direct results of expansion witnessed in the pharmaceutical industry. Launch of novel therapeutics will ensue the trend. These factors will have a positive impact on the overall market thus helping it gain higher. Also the market will gain from the increasing pharmaceutical outsourcing to vendors operating in the bioprocess technology market.Global Bioprocess Technology Market: Regional OutlookRegionally, Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World constitute the key segments in the global bioprocess technology market. Among these, North America exhibited highly lucrative opportunities till 2016 and the trend is likely to continue through the reports forecast period. As the region exhibits increasing demand for high quality biologics and the top players domiciled therein increase research funding, the bioprocess technology market in North America will continue showing steep rise.Likewise in Asia Pacific the market is expected to witness highly lucrative opportunities. Benefiting from the growing pharmaceutical industry and investments by key market players, the demand for bioprocess technologies will rise in Asia Pacific. Besides this, the market players in the region are also gaining from the rising outsourcing to Asian countries and easy availability of academic excellence in Asia Pacific.Global Bioprocess Technology Market: Vendor LandscapePolicies adopted by prominent companies have a significant impact on the overall market. The report therefore profiles some of the leading enterprises and studies the impact of their latest marketing strategies, mergers and acquisitions, and product launches. For the purpose of the study, a detailed overview of their product portfolio is mentioned as well. The strengths and weaknesses of the companies profiled are analyzed using SWOT analysis, which also presents insights into opportunities and threats these companies could face during the forecast period.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Bioprocess Technology Market by 2024:Some of the companies included in this list are Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., GE Healthcare, Danaher Corporation, Merck Millipore, Dickinson and Company, Becton, Lonza Group AG, Bio-Rad Laboratories, Sartorius Stedim Biotech S.A, Corning, Inc., and Charles River Laboratories.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Our data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts, so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in developing distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) Market 2017-2021

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MarketResearchReports.Biz presents this most up-to-date research on "Global Content Delivery Network (CDN) Market 2017-2021"DescriptionCDN is a large distributed system of servers deployed in multiple data centers across the Internet. CDN aims to make contents easily available to end-users with a high performance of websites. CDNs serve a large fraction of the Internet content, which includes web objects like text, graphics, URLs, scripts, and downloadable objects such as media files, software, and documents. It is also used for e-commerce, portals, live streaming media, on-demand streaming media, and social networks. For instance, a website can be hosted in the US, but some of the heavy files can be hosted elsewhere so that the main server serving the content is not slowed down. In addition, these files may be hosted on a different country or even continent as well, so the visitors from those regions experience faster site loading times.Technavios analysts forecast the global content delivery network market to grow at a CAGR of 29.66% during the period 2017-2021.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global content delivery network market for 2017-2021. To calculate the market size, the report presents a detailed picture of the market by way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEATechnavio's report, Global Content Delivery Network Market 2017-2021, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsAkamai TechnologiesCDNetworksCloudFlareLevel 3 CommunicationLimelightMaxCDNRequest Sample Copy of This Report at:Other prominent vendorsAbacastAcceliaAlcatel-LucentAmazon Web ServicesAT&TBharti AirtelBitTorrentBroadmediaBT GroupCacheFlyCisco SystemsConvivaDeutsche TelekomEdgeCast NetworksHighwinds Network GroupInternap Network ServicesInterroute CommunicationsNTT CommunicationsPacNet ServicesReliance GlobalcomSingapore TelecommunicationsTata CommunicationsTelecom Italia SparkleTelstraMarket driverHigh server availability.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeHigh price of CDN solutions.For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendIncreasing development of content delivery clouds.For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2021 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?Browse Latest Industry Press Release at:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.bizFollow us on LinkedIn:
Narcotics Scanner Market 2017 - FLIR Systems, OSI Systems, Safran, Smiths, Bruker, B&W Tek

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MarketReports.biz, recently published a detailed market research study focused on the "Narcotics Scanner Market" across the global, regional and country level. The report provides 360 analysis of "Narcotics Scanner 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 Narcotics Scanner industry, and estimates the future trend of Narcotics Scanner market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares "Narcotics Scanner Market" performance both in terms of volume and revenue.Get Free Sample Copy of Report Here:Top Manufacturers Analysis of This Report1. FLIR Systems2. OSI Systems3. Safran4. Smiths5. Aventura Technologies6. Bruker7. B&W Tek8. CDex9. Chemring Group10. DetectachemThe market research report explores the Narcotics Scanner market across the globe along with major regions and countries. The research report provides a detailed study on each and every aspect of "Narcotics Scanner 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 Narcotics Scanner market based on major product types, application and end users industries of Narcotics Scanner. Besides, the report also covers geographical segmentation for Narcotics Scanner 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 Narcotics Scanner is determined by assessing the major industry participants, production capacity, production capacity utilization rate, Narcotics Scanner market's production chain, pricing by each manufacturer and the revenue generated by each manufacturer in the Narcotics Scanner market globally.Enquire Before Buying @The worldwide Narcotics Scanner market 2017 is further analyzed on the basis of product pricing, Narcotics Scanner production volume, data pertaining to demand and Narcotics Scanner supply, and the revenue garnered by the product. The report provides upstream and downstream analysis covering major raw material used in manufacturing of Narcotics Scanner 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 Narcotics Scanner 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
Increased Awareness Among the Consumers Related to Advanced Medical Technologies is Expected to have a Positive Influence on Medical Holography Market

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Biomedical imaging technology is bringing in numerous innovations in the medical technology field. Medical imaging has become one of the fastest growing industries. Medical holography is one such technical advancement in medical science that is expected to answer the most complicated diagnostic issues. A medical hologram produces three dimension (3D) images of the human body in real time images or in the form of video stream. The real time images produced by the medical hologram are of high resolution and would help to reveal the complexities in the diagnosed body. Some of the medical holograms are interactive in nature that also provide most effective user interface for better understanding.Browse through Medical Holography Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2026:There is a high demand for advanced medical imaging from the healthcare sector. As the innovations in medical education are growing, medical holography market is expected to benefit from these innovations due to increased technology integration. Increased awareness among the consumers related to advanced medical technologies is expected to have a positive influence on medical holography market. Medical holography facilitates the real-time viewing of the diagnosed body, further improving the analysis process. The medical holography system provides an advanced diagnostic methodology to the doctors. These systems offer doctors a better understanding about the anatomy of the patients body, driving the demand for medical holography market. Medical holography helps the doctors to view complex displacement of bones or tissues that had occurred. The medical holography system is also expected to help the doctors to understand the medical complications more easily and quickly. Hologram guided heart surgeries are expected to gain more importance during the forecast period. With the help of holograms doctors can easily examine patients heart conditions or detect a colon cancer without breaking the skin. It will result in the quick diagnosis of any disease and the doctor can start with his treatment. Furthermore, there are numerous companies across the world investing in medical holography technologies. Introduction of augmented reality in the field of medical holography could be one of the greatest opportunities to the producers of medical holograms. Limited adoption of medical holograms despite its numerous advantages could prove to be a restraining factor for the market. The pricing of such medical holography technology is also higher which could affect its adoption among customers. However, with increasing technology adoption in medical and healthcare sectors this hurdle is expected to be tackled.The medical holography market can be segmented on the basis of medical hologram types and the technology adopted in medical holography. Volumetric displays, planar/HUD interactive display, segmented displays, static digital holograms are a few of the types of medical holograms. Some of the common technologies viewed in medical holography market are plasma, touchable, electro holographic, semi-transparency, and laser technology.Some of the key players engaged in medical holography market are Dongguan Linbiao hologram manufacturer, Eon Reality Inc., EchoPixel, Inc., Zebra Imaging, General Electric Company, Microsoft Inc, Provision Holdings Inc., RealView Imaging Ltd., Holographic 3d solutions, Holography Industry JV, Ne&Ro Invest SRL., Arnold Herzig GmbH, DPL Industri A/S Denmark and Olomagic.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Medical Holography Market by 2026:The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.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:
International Wholesale Carriers - New Business Models & Growth Drivers in the Digital Transformation Era

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MarketResearchReports.Biz presents this most up-to-date research on "International Wholesale Carriers - New Business Models & Growth Drivers in the Digital Transformation Era"Description"International Wholesale Carriers - New Business Models & Growth Drivers in the Digital Transformation Era", a thematic research report by GlobalData, examines the changing dynamics, the new growth drivers and business models of the global international wholesale industry. It lays out, for international carriers, the critical considerations and strategic options for taking the journey to the wholesaler of the future, from the business model drivers to the necessary portolio evolution requirements.Data and insights are derived through a mix of secondary research, qualitative primary research and GlobalDatas industry databases and expert analysis.The report is structured as follows -- Market Context: Winds of Change in the Global Telecoms Industry. This section provides an analysis of the current and future dynamics shaping the telecom industry, from data traffic explosion to IoT, cloud and virtualized networks.- The Evolving Global Wholesale Market. Here we examine the impact of the changing telecom industry dynamics on the global wholesale market, in terms of revenues, margins, traffic and growth drivers. We also look at the evolving nature of demand for wholesale services.- Positioning for a Wholesale Future: An Assessment of Strategic Options. This section defines the different wholesale carrier strategic groups - based on their portfolio breadth, network depth and business purpose - then assesses and lays down the different strategic options - in terms of business models and strategic actions- available to each group to position itself successfully for a wholesale future.- The Changing Nature of Wholesale Service Portfolios. Along with the strategic positioning options detailed in section 3, here, we give an overview of how wholesale portfolios should evolve and expand to meet the new demand dynamics coming from traditional and new customers.- Case studies: Telco approaches to digital transformation. We continue with a review of the strategies, positioning and product portfolio of a number of carriers that have started their journey to the wholesaler of the future, along with others that urgently need to.- Key findings and recommendations. We conclude the report with a set of key findings and recommendations on the international wholesale industrys evolving dynamics, new growth drivers and business models, and we also provide strategic recommendations for international carriers to position themselves for growth.Request Sample Copy of This Report at:Scope- The global telecoms industry is in a state of transition, retail telco providers are seeing their models disrupted by a series of systemic threats and new digital opportunities. These winds of change are impacting global wholesale providers, as traffic fundamentals and traditional economics get upended and as the nature of the wholesale demand changes. Global wholesalers need to evolve towards new business models and service portfolio in order to unlock the new wholesale growth drivers in the digital transformation era.- Traditional wholesale voice traffic margins have been in persistent decline over the past three years, this has put substantial pressure on carriers to accelerate their rollout of new services. The explosion of data traffic, by contrast, is breathing new life into the wholesale business. Network services and managed services segments have become strategically vital to the outlook of many players.- Wholesale providers face sustained demand from traditional customers whose requirements are rising in complexity (e.g. pay-as-you go billing, dynamic bandwidth allocation). There is also the emergence of new demand channels from retail providers of various stripes (Cloud providers, MVNOs, OTTs, MNCs).- As they seek to transform, the strategic options available to wholesale providers are a function of each individual players strategic position in the wholesale market, the depth of their product portfolio, the reach and depth of their network - and most critically, their overall business purpose.- Depending on the wholesale carrier group, the strategic options may include actions such as portfolio expansion, M&As, reducing exposure to voice, targeted investments, units combination, new pricing structures. These are thoroughly detailed in the report.Reasons to buy- The report examines the changing dynamics, the new growth drivers and business models of the global international wholesale industry.- The report provides valuable insights and recommendations for international carriers on the critical considerations and strategic options for taking the journey to the wholesaler of the future and position for growth.- The reports case studies provide real examples of market approaches, postitionning, product portfolios and strategies being employed by a number of carriers that have started their journey to the wholesaler of the future, along with others that urgently need to.Browse Latest Industry Press Release at:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.bizFollow us on LinkedIn:
Scale Supports Non-Blocking Network Inside Mega Data Center Building and More Efficient Processing

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MarketResearchReports.Biz presents this most up-to-date research on "Scale Supports Non-Blocking Network Inside Mega Data Center Building and More Efficient Processing"DescriptionNext generation mega data center technology is able to leverage scale to implement cloud computing that is better than most of what is out there now.View Full Report at:Scale is a vital part of the technology used to support next generation data centers. The study is targeted to C-level executives that need to move quickly and surely to improve IT. Automation of IT depends on understanding the business market opportunity from an independent perspective. Vendors are smart but they are committed to the technology they are pushing, the Sea Change Series from WinterGreen Research is able to provide a perspective not available anywhere else.Extreme scale is what brings enough pathways inside a Mega data center to create a non-blocking (CLOS) networked server architecture. Non-blocking network architecture benefits the business because it permits launching thousands of virtual severs on demand at the application layer. In this manner, innovation can be made to happen quickly.Using a mega data center, DevOps and/or automated processes can request and deploy additional resource without backing the Dell truck up to the data center every week to provide on-demand capacity. Automated deprovisioning handles freeing of surplus resources, while being virtual means not having stacks of surplus hardware to dispose of as underutilized capital assets.Modern data centers are organized into processing nodes that manage different applications at a layer above infrastructure. Data is stored permanently and operated on in place. These are the two technologies to check for when choosing a data center. These architectural features provide economies of scale that greatly reduce the IT spend while offering better quality IT.Once scale is in place, then the economies of scale kick in. When negotiating for cloud capability, managers need to check to see that sufficient multiple pathways are available to reach any node in a non-blocking manner. Non-blocking architecture is more efficient than other IT infrastructure and supports better innovation for apps and smart digitization. Not all cloud architectures offer this business benefit.The Cloud 2.0 mega data center platform fabric technologies support the digital economy by creating scale with a network internal to the mega data center system image. Without scale, there are not enough pathways inside the data center to enable elimination of bottlenecks. Access to every node in the fabric, and multiple duplicate pathways to every node are needed to enable real time application connectivity. With sufficient scale, if one pathway is blocked, there are enough other pathways to get to the desired node resources.The theme of this study is that scale matters.Scale can be implemented by IT, but the executive needs to understand that there is a difference between different technologies. In a mega data center, the system is implemented as a fabric: servers are linked to top of rack switches, which are made from merchant silicon chips, mostly Broadcom, some switch ASICs. A pod of server racks are linked to each other through an edge aggregation switch. A pod of server racks is based on the same ASICs as in the top of rack switches.The importance of nonblocking architecture is compelling. Aggregation switches are lashed together through a set of non-blocking spine switches. All switches are based on the same chip. This is precisely the way Facebook is building its own Wedge and 6-pack open switches nine years after Google did it. The amazing thing is that Facebook had not done this already.Request Sample Copy of This Report at:The four superstar companies that are able to leverage IT to achieve growth, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and the leader AWS all use Clos architecture. What is significant is that systems have to hit a certain scale before Clos networks work Clos networks are what work now for flexibility and supporting innovation in an affordable manner. There is no dipping your toe in to try the system to see if it will work, it will not and then the IT says, We tried that, we failed, but what the executive needs to understand is that scale matters. A little mega data center does not exist. Only scale works.Maybe scale is not the only answer, maybe in 20 years, Quantum computing will bring a new data center system, but for now, Clos architecture and scale dominate those IT centers that have the strongest growth engine.Business leaders are challenged to move their enterprises to the next level of competition. An effective digital business player, transformer, and disruptor position depends on the effectiveness of employing digital technologies and leveraging connected digital systems. Organizational, operational, and business model innovation are needed to create ways of operating and growing the business using mega data center cloud technologies, systems are evolving. It is a journey to achieve the connected enterprise, ultimately connecting all employees and a trillion connected devices.Many companies are using digital technology to create market disruption. Amazon, Uber, Google, IBM, and Microsoft represent companies using effective disruptive strategic positioning. As entire industries shift to the digital world, once buoyant companies are threatened with disappearing. A digital transformation represents an approach that enables organizations to drive changes in their business models and ecosystems leveraging cloud computing, and not just hyperscale systems but leveraging mega data centers. Just as robots make work more automated, so also cloud based communications systems implement the IoT digital connectivity transformation.Disruption in the business markets represents major opportunity for vendors with cloud offerings. This is part of a larger digital transformation, a digital approach to interconnecting everything that enables organizations to drive changes in their business models and ecosystems.Disruptive cloud systems are provided by Amazon (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Data centers are in a class by themselves, they have functioning fully automatic, self-healing, networked mega datacenters that operate at fiber optic speeds to create a fabric that can access any node in any particular data center because there are multiple pathways to every node. In this manner, they automate applications integration for any data in the mega data center.By leveraging digital competencies, businesses can grow faster than they would otherwise. A digital strategy, in conjunction with the appropriate unified communications solution permits the implementation of innovative communications services. Digital connectivity with combined voice, video and file transfer can help organizations and their end users innovate and compete more effectively. It is imperative that organizations have a digital communications strategy in place.This is an era where the distinction between the technologies and processes that businesses deploy is tightly linked. Digital technology directly impacts customers and markets. The boundary between internal operations of the enterprise and its external ecosystem is rapidly disappearing. Customers, markets, competitors, partners, and regulators are inextricably linked.Mega data centers need to be understood by all senior executives whether they move in that direction or not. These are the IT used by the fastest growing organizations Google, AWS, Microsoft, and Facebook. There are 25 Sea Change Data Center study modules describing different aspects of the move to mega data centers. The Scale module describes that it is not sufficient just to try certain cloud techniques.Scale is an essential aspect of the data center positioning for these leading companies. These companies use Clos networks as their data center implementations. This module addresses how and why scale in the mega data center is important. The market shift to non-blocking network inside data center building means companies have to hit a certain scale before Clos networks work.Companies ProfiledAmazonMicrosoftGoogleFacebookBrowse Latest Industry Press Release at:About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and typesof companies spanning across various industries.ContactState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-621-2074Website:E: sales@marketresearchreports.bizFollow us on LinkedIn:
China: 4G and Fiber Network Expansion Coupled with 5G Investments to Support Telecom Growth

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"China: 4G and Fiber Network Expansion Coupled with 5G Investments to Support Telecom Growth", is a new Country Intelligence Report by GlobalData, provides an executive-level overview of the telecommunications market in China today, with detailed forecasts of key indicators up to 2021. Published annually, the report provides detailed analysis of the near-term opportunities, competitive dynamics and evolution of demand by service type and technology/platform across the fixed telephony, broadband, and mobile, as well as a review of key regulatory trends.Telecom services revenue in China is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 5.8% during 2016-2021, primarily driven by growth in mobile data and fixed Internet revenue. Mobile data will be the largest revenue-contributing segment until 2021. Fixed VoIP will be the fastest-growing segment in the telecom market and is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 31.7% during 2016-2021. Going forward, operators look to expand 4G and invest in 5G network trials and fiber-optic network deployments to improve and extend Internet connectivity in the country, which will provide significant opportunities for vendors and investors.The Country Intelligence Report provides in-depth analysis of the following -- Regional context: telecom market size and trends in China compared with other countries in the region.- Economic, demographic and political context in China.- The regulatory environment and trends: a review of the regulatory setting and agenda for the next 18-24 months as well as relevant developments pertaining to spectrum licensing, national broadband plans, number portability and more.- A demand profile: analysis as well as historical figures and forecasts of service revenue from the fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data markets.- 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 2016 to 2021.- The competitive landscape: an examination of key trends in competition and in the performance, revenue market shares and expected moves of service providers over the next 18-24 months.- In-depth sector analysis of fixed telephony, broadband, mobile voice, and mobile data 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 China's telecommunications markets.Scope- The overall telecom service revenue in China will grow at a CAGR of 5.8% during 2016-2021, mainly driven by growth in the mobile data and fixed Internet segment.- Mobile revenue will account for 60.5% of the total telecom revenue in 2021, with mobile data accounting for 65.8% of mobile revenue in 2021.- 4G will be the most adopted mobile technology through 2021. Moreover, its share of the overall mobile subscriber base will continue to increase over the 2016-2021 forecast period, owing to rising adoption of 4G services over the coming years.- The top three operators, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, accounted for 89.2% share of overall service revenue in 2016. We expect competition to intensify further as operators focus on 4G expansion, fiber deployment and commercializing 5G to further increase their market share.- Operators will continue to focus on investments in 4G network expansion and launch of 5G services, fiber deployments to increase connectivity and on catering to the rising data demand.Request Sample Copy of This Report at:Reasons to buy- This Country Intelligence Report offers a thorough, forward-looking analysis of Chinas telecommunications 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 Chinas mobile communications, fixed telephony, broadband markets, including the evolution of service provider market shares.- With more than 20 charts and tables, the report is designed for an executive-level audience, boasting presentation quality.- The report provides an easily digestible market assessment for decision-makers built around in-depth information gathered from local market players, which enables executives to quickly get up to speed with the current and emerging trends in Chinas telecommunications 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 China.About usMarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports.MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients.We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated researchreports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. 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Metal Aerosol Cans Market 2017: Production, Sales, Supply, Demand, Analysis & Forecast to 2024

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Metal Aerosol Cans Market  OverviewThe metal aerosol cans are thin walled pressure vessels, pressurized with the propellants and desire products. The metal aerosol cans have various advantages such as ease of use, UV protection, moisture and air protection as well as protection from contamination with the foreign particles due to proper sealing. The demand for the aerosol metal cans is rising due to its environmental benefits, superior performance and convenience over the plastic cans. The customization of the cans in terms of size and shapes, also attracts the end users of the personal care and cosmetic industry resulted to the growing demand for the metal aerosol cans.Fill the form to gain deeper insights on this market @Metal Aerosol Cans Market  Drivers and RestraintsThe global metal aerosol cans market is anticipated to register a significant CAGR over the forecast period as the demand of the metal aerosol is increasing in response to the growth of the pharmaceutical and deodorant industry. The metal cans possess the properties compatible for aerosols such as UV protection, pressure packaging and pressurized dosage form lead to the demand for the metal aerosol cans from personal care, pharmaceutical and food and beverages industries, which drives the growth of the global metal aerosol cans market. The increasing use of metal cans for the personal care products as they protect the content from leakage and extend the life of the products as compared to plastic cans, propel the demand for the metal aerosol cans and drives the global metal aerosol cans market.However, the metal aerosol cans are more prone to an explosion while comes in contact with fire and high temperature, which may hamper the demand for the metal aerosol cans and restrain the growth of the global metal aerosol cans market.Metal Aerosol Cans Market  SegmentationThe global metal aerosol cans market is segmented on the basis of metal, usage, propellant and end user.Browse Market Research Report @On the basis of metal, the global metal aerosol cans market is segmented into:AluminiumSteelStainless steelBrasOthersOn the basis of usage, the global metal aerosol cans market is segmented into:Refillable cansDisposable cansOn the basis of Propellants, the global metal aerosol cans market is segmented into:Liquefied gasesCompressed gasesOn the basis of the end user, the global metal aerosol cans market is segmented into:Personal care industryPharmaceutical industryFood and beverages industryAgriculture industryChemical and Paint industryOthersMetal Aerosol Cans Market  Region Wise OutlookThe global metal aerosol cans market is segmented into the seven regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), Japan and the Middle East and Africa (MEA). The APEJ is dominating the global metal aerosol cans market by contributing the leading shares in terms of revenue and volume. The demand for the metal aerosol cans is increasing in the APEJ due to the rapidly growing population and rising industrialization. The North America is also contributing the significant shares to the global metal aerosol cans market, followed by APEJ due to the demand of metal aerosol cans from pharmaceutical and personal care industry. Western Europe and Japan are expected to register the moderate growth rate to the global metal aerosol cans market over the forecast period. MEA and Latin America are at a nascent stage to the global metal aerosol cans market as the lower urbanization and industrialization led to the less demand for the metal aerosol cans and expected to register the moderate growth rate to the global metal aerosol cans market.Metal Aerosol Cans Market  Key PlayersCrown Holdings, Inc.Arnest GroupAlltub Italia S.R.L.Plastipak Holdings, Inc.Redalluminio Snc di Redaelli P. e C.Ball CorporationPerfektup Amb.San.ve Tic.A.S.Nussbaum Matzingen AGTUBEX Holding GmbHAbout TMRTMR is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Healthcare Cloud Computing Market - Detailed Analysis of Restrain and Growth Factors

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North America Healthcare Cloud Computing Market: OverviewCloud computing is an internet-based computing model that provides and sources information technology services, such as servers, applications, and storage, on a pay-per-use basis. Cloud services are renowned for their flexible nature - they can be easily configured, scaled, and adapted - and require lower capitals investment and ongoing maintenance and operating expenses as compared to traditional IT models.Cloud computing boasts of an infrastructure capable of enabling all crucial verticals of the healthcare industry to incorporate computing resources in everyday operations and processes at lower costs and at a high level of agility. In the past few years, these has been a huge surge of interest among healthcare companies in North America about the potential of cloud computing in improving operational efficiency of a variety of healthcare processes. It is estimated that the North America market for healthcare cloud computing will exhibit growth at a significant pace in the next few years and in a matter of few years, all healthcare systems in the regions will come under the umbrella of pure or hybrid healthcare cloud computing models.Request Sample Copy of the Report @This report on the North America healthcare cloud computing market presents a detailed overview of the present growth dynamics of the market and includes vast forward-looking statements predicting the future growth prospects of the market and its segments over the period between 2016 and 2024.North America Healthcare Cloud Computing Market: Key Driving ForcesThe key factors expected to drive the North America healthcare cloud computing market include the flexibility and cost-competitiveness offered by the cloud technology and the significant improvements in security and reliability of cloud services. Healthcare reforms across key countries in the region are making it mandatory for the healthcare industry to be digitally modernized; adoption of electronic medical records, smart medical devices, and proliferation of mobile devices has become an integral aspect of the modern-day healthcare industry in the region.Request TOC of the Report @The industry is rapidly adopting an information-centric patient-care and data sharing models, facilitated in part by collaborative workflows and open standards that support cooperation. Healthcare cloud computing is increasingly gaining prominence as a technology that is at the core of this transformation.North America Healthcare Cloud Computing Market: Regional and Competitive AnalysisFrom a geographic perspective, the report examines the North America healthcare cloud computing market across the U.S. and Canada. Of these, the U.S. market accounted for a lions share in the revenue of the North America healthcare cloud computing market and is expected to remain the leading contributor to the market over the forecast period as well. The market is expected to benefit from the increasing adoption of healthcare cloud computing solutions across the insurance sector.Over 150,000 physicians and healthcare practitioners across all the 50 states of the U.S. have already adopted cloud based electronic health record services and the consumer-base of cloud-based healthcare services continues to rise at a remarkable pace in other countries in the region as well. Owing to the increased demand, several small-, medium-, and large-scale companies are foraying into the healthcare cloud computing arena in the region and the market is becoming intensely competitive.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@To strengthen their foothold in the market, companies are relying upon strategic collaborations, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships, and introduction of innovative service offerings. Large international IT firms such as Microsoft, Philips, Qualcomm Life, ORACLE Corporation, IBM, and AT&T are launching increasingly sophisticated healthcare cloud solutions. Other leading vendors in the market include GNAX Health, ClearData Networks, Inc., VMware, Inc., and CareCloud Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todayas supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clientsa conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer Market Analysis- Regional Outlook, Segments And Forecast To 2022

X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer

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X-ray fluorescence spectrometer is an x-ray instrument used for routine, relatively non-destructive chemical analyses of rocks, minerals, sediments and fluids. It works on wavelength-dispersive spectroscopic principles that are similar to an electron microprobe (EPMA). However, an XRF cannot generally make analyses at the small spot sizes typical of EPMA work (2-5 microns), so it is typically used for bulk analyses of larger fractions of geological materials. The relative ease and low cost of sample preparation, and the stability and ease of use of x-ray spectrometers make this one of the most widely used methods for analysis of major and trace elements in rocks, minerals, and sediment.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers:SPECTROShimadzuBRUKERThermo FisherHORIBAOlympus Innov-XSkyrayHitachi High -TechOxford-InstrumentsBSIMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America, Middle East and AfricaMarket Segment by Type, covers:Handheld X-ray Fluorescence SpectrometerPortable X-ray Fluorescence SpectrometerLab X-ray Fluorescence SpectrometerMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Mining IndustryMetallurgical IndustryPetroleum IndustryCement IndustryOthersBrowse full report with Table of Content @There are 13 Chapters to deeply display the global X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer market.Chapter 1, to describe X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, with sales, revenue, and price of X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2015 and 2016;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, for each region, from 2011 to 2016;Chapter 5, 6, 7 and 8, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 9 and 10, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2011 to 2016;Chapter 11, X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2016 to 2021;Chapter 12 and 13, to describe X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, appendix and data source.Check for discount @Some points from TOC:-1 Market Overview1.1 X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Handheld X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer1.2.2 Portable X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer1.2.3 Lab X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometer1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Mining Industry1.3.2 Metallurgical Industry1.3.3 Petroleum Industry1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA1.4.1.2 Canada1.4.1.3 Mexico1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Enquiry Before Buying@About Us:GIR Market Research 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. GIR Market Research 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+1-888-376-9998 (US)Email- sales@globalinforeports.com
Healthcare IT Market 2017 Comprehensive Analysis, Industry Survey, Growth and Major Policies Report 2025

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Global Healthcare IT Market: OverviewHealthcare IT solutions are being increasingly acknowledged for their ability to provide better data management, reduce medical errors, and cut down the healthcare costs. The advent of the cloud technology has further facilitated the exchange of data and real-time communication. Owing to their benefits, several governments worldwide are showing green lights to regulatory acts focusing on the adoption of advanced healthcare IT solutions. Thus, the global healthcare IT market is expected to tread along a phenomenal growth track with the rising awareness regarding their benefits.The common modes of delivery of these solutions are cloud-premises, on-premises, and web-premises. The components used in healthcare IT are software, services, and hardware. There is a massive demand for software solutions such as hospital information systems, ambulatory care management systems, electronic health and medical record systems, and patient management systems from clinics and hospitals to deliver better patient care.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The research report is compiled using data from various paid and unpaid sources such as journals, presentations, and white papers. It presents an in-depth analysis of all the important parameters of the global healthcare IT market, including its dynamics, vendor landscape, and region-wise outlook.Global Healthcare IT Market: Drivers and RestraintsGlobally, governments are allocating large funds for the advancement of healthcare infrastructure. They, along with several private organizations, are emphasizing on improving the quality of care and clinical outcomes. This, in turn, is promoting the adoption of healthcare IT solutions worldwide. Moreover, the soaring need for managing regulatory compliance is working in favor of the global healthcare IT market.Request TOC of the Report @Despite the cost-effectiveness, the high installation and maintenance costs of these solutions are hampering the growth of the market. Furthermore, the uneven regulatory environment in developed and developing countries is hindering the growth of the market. The dearth of skilled IT professionals in the healthcare sector is also keeping the market from realizing its utmost potential.Global Healthcare IT Market: Geographical SegmentationThe key regions studied in the report are Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. The domicile of a large number of IT giants along with the high adoption of smart technologies across healthcare infrastructure is making North America a prominent destination for key players in the global market. Strict legislative and accreditation requirements regarding healthcare coupled with stringent regulatory requirements regarding patient safety are propelling the growth of the region.Asia Pacific is expected to rise at a tremendous CAGR during the review period. The growth of the region can be attributed to the rising consumer spending on healthcare, expanding medical tourism sector, and increasing government initiatives to create eHealth platforms. The growing adoption of healthcare IT solutions and increasing number of private hospitals in rural areas in countries such as India, China, and Taiwan are contributing to the growth of the region. Healthcare setups in the region are vigorously moving towards digitization to streamline workflow systems and ensure patient safety and care.Global Healthcare IT Market: Competitive LandscapeWith the immense growth prospects of the global healthcare IT market, a large number of new players are anticipated to venture into this market. Their participation and the presence of many established players is rendering the market highly competitive. Key players in the market are investing sizeable amounts in research and development of innovative products and services to consolidate their presence in the market. Several players are also focusing towards customization to cater to the specific needs of customers.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Some of the prominent global participants in the healthcare IT market are Athenahealth Inc., Epic Systems, GE Healthcare, McKesson Corporation, Philips, Siemens Healthcare, NextGen Healthcare Information System LLC, Allscripts, Cerner Corporation, Hewlett-Packard, Carestream Health Inc., and Medical Information Technology Inc.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todayas supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clientsa conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Global Automobile Market by Type, Technology, Regions, Application and Forecast to 2022

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ReportsWeb.com has announced the addition of the Global Automobile Market Professional Survey Report 2017 The report focuses on global major leading players with information such as company profiles, product picture and specification.This report studies Automobile 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, covering Volkswagen, Toyota, Hyundai, G.M., Honda, Nissan, Ford, Peugeot, Suzuki, Renault, SAIC, FAW Group Corporation, Dongfeng Motor, BAIC, Changan, GAGC, Huachen Auto Group, Great Wall Motors, BYD, GM, Benz, BMW, Fiat Group, GEELY, Mazda, Mitsubishi, PSA, Subaru and Tata Growp.Request For Free Sample Copy atBy types, the market can be split into Passenger Car and Commercial Car. By Application, the market can be split into Private Automobile and Commercial Automobile. By Regions, this report covers (we can add the regions/countries as you want) North America, China, Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan and India.For More Information About This Report atTable of Content1 Industry Overview of Automobile2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Automobile3 Technical Data and Manufacturing Plants Analysis of Automobile4 Global Automobile Overall Market Overview5 Automobile Regional Market Analysis6 Global 2012-2017E Automobile Segment Market Analysis (by Type)6.1 Global 2012-2017E Automobile Sales by Type6.2 Different Types of Automobile Product Interview Price Analysis6.3 Different Types of Automobile Product Driving Factors Analysis6.3.1 Passenger Car of Automobile Growth Driving Factor Analysis6.3.2 Commercial Car of Automobile Growth Driving Factor Analysis7 Global 2012-2017E Automobile Segment Market Analysis (by Application)7.1 Global 2012-2017E Automobile Consumption by Application7.2 Different Application of Automobile Product Interview Price Analysis7.3 Different Application of Automobile Product Driving Factors Analysis7.3.1 Private Automobile of Automobile Growth Driving Factor Analysis7.3.2 Commercial Automobile of Automobile Growth Driving Factor Analysis8 Major Manufacturers Analysis of Automobile8.1 Volkswagen8.1.1 Company Profile8.1.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.1.2.1 Product A8.1.2.2 Product B8.1.3 Volkswagen 2016 Automobile Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.1.4 Volkswagen 2016 Automobile Business Region Distribution Analysis8.2 Toyota8.2.1 Company Profile8.2.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.2.2.1 Product A8.2.2.2 Product B8.2.3 Toyota 2016 Automobile Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.2.4 Toyota 2016 Automobile Business Region Distribution Analysis8.3 Hyundai8.3.1 Company Profile8.3.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.3.2.1 Product A8.3.2.2 Product B8.3.3 Hyundai 2016 Automobile Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.3.4 Hyundai 2016 Automobile Business Region Distribution Analysis8.4 G.M.8.4.1 Company Profile8.4.2 Product Picture and Specifications8.4.2.1 Product A8.4.2.2 Product B8.4.3 G.M. 2016 Automobile Sales, Ex-factory Price, Revenue, Gross Margin Analysis8.4.4 G.M. 2016 Automobile Business Region Distribution Analysis9 Development Trend of Analysis of Automobile Market10 Automobile Marketing Type Analysis11 Consumers Analysis of AutomobilePurchase This Report -And Get,Discount on Report Purchase -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
Stents Market - Detailed Study Analysis and Forecast by 2025

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Global Stents Market: OverviewStents are tiny tubes that doctors can insert into a blocked passage to keep it open, so as to facilitate the flow of fluids such as blood. Made of plastic, fabric, or metal, stents are needed when plaque, a substance made of cholesterol, attaches itself to the walls of a blood vessel. An emergency procedure may also require a stent if an artery of the heart is blocked. Apart from blood vessels, stents also aid in the opening of bile ducts, airways of the lungs, and tubes that carry urine to the bladder from the kidney.Global Stents Market: Key TrendsIncreasing incidence of cardiovascular diseases, high levels of cholesterol, and growing prevalence of respiratory disorders are some of the prominent growth drivers of the global stents market. Growing adoption of unhealthy lifestyles and eating habits, along with harmful practices such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and lack of physical activity have been the major reasons for increased prevalence of cardiovascular disorders. Obesity and hypertension are some other health conditions associated with the blockage of the arteries.Obtain Report Details @On the other hand, the growth of the global market for stents might be restricted on account of the risks associated with the inserting of stents, such as soreness, blood clots, allergic reactions, infection of the vessel, re-narrowing of an artery, and development of kidney stones on using a stent in the ureters. However, the risks of not using a stent outweigh the risks of getting one, because blocked blood vessels and limited blood supply can have life-threatening consequences. The coronary stents segment is likely to present considerable opportunities, with the bioabsorbable or bioresorbable stents commanding maximum share.Global Stents Market: Market PotentialThe increasing number of approvals of new stents worldwide is expected to result in better patient outcomes, thereby raising the demand for stents. For instance, in March 2017, CeloNova BioSciences, Inc. achieved the approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its nano-coated coronary stent system, COBRA PzF.The Health Ministry of India approved the nations premier locally made naturally dissolving stent, MeRes100, developed by Meril Life Science, a Gujarat-based company. Also known as bioresorbable cardiac scaffold, these stents are made from a material that gets absorbed by the body and disappears gradually over a period of three years. Before Meril Life Science, Abbot India came up with its Absorb stents in 2012.Request for TOC of the Report @In India, the price of coronary stents has been reduced by almost 85% by the government. A drug eluting stent, which was previously priced between Rs.40000  Rs.170000, will now be made available at Rs.29600. This development will boost the deployment of previously expensive stents such as bioabsorbable vascular stents (BVS) in India to a significant degree.Global Stents Market: Regional OutlookBased on geography, the global market for stents can be segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and the Rest of the World (RoW). The rising geriatric population worldwide has led to a rising frequency of various diseases that require stents for their treatment. As a result, the demand for stents will rise substantially.The countries in North America and Europe are expected to represent a significant share in the global stents market owing to the rising awareness about the benefits of bioresorbable stents. The stents markets in India, Japan, Australia, and China are likely to expand steadily as rising healthcare infrastructure, beneficial government regulations and policies, and rising incidence of cardiovascular diseases are accelerating the demand in these regions.Make an Enquiry @Global Stents Market: Competitive AnalysisSome of the major companies operating in the global stents market are Medtronic, Inc., OrbusNeich, Eurocor GmbH, Cordis Corporation, Sahajanand Medical Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Micell Technologies, Inc., MIV Therapeutics, Inc., Bioring SA, Abbott Laboratories, and Boston Scientific Corporation.The global stents market appears to be highly fragmented in terms of competition. Several leading companies at the global as well as regional levels have been adopting business strategies such as mergers, partnerships, and acquisitions to make a mark in the market.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
2017-2022 Power Cords & Extension Cords Report on United States and Global Market, Status and Forecast, by Players, Types and Applications

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This report studies the Power Cords & Extension Cords on United States and global market, focuses on the top players in US market and also the market status and outlook by type and application.Geographically, this report is segmented into several key regions, with sales, revenue, market share (%)and growth Rate (%)of Power Cords & Extension Cords in these regions, from 2012 to 2022 (forecast), coveringNorth AmericaEuropeAsia-PacificSouth AmericaMiddle East and AfricaThe major players in United States Power Cords & Extension Cords market include Volex, Longwell, Electri-Cord, Feller, QuailElectronics, HL TECHNOLOGY, Hongchang Electronics, Americord, CHING CHENG, Prime Wire & Cable, AURICH, I-SHENG, Queenpuo, CEP, Yunhuan Electronics, Coleman Cable, HUASHENG ELECTRICAL, StayOnline, Yung Li, MEGA.The On the basis of product, the Power Cords & Extension Cords market is primarily split intoPVC & Rubber MaterialsHalogen-free MaterialsOthersOn the basis on the end users/applications, this report coversHousehold UseCommercial UseIndustrial UseOthersTo Get Free Sample Copy of Report visit @Table of Contents1 Methodology and Data Source1.1 Methodology/Research Approach1.1.1 Research Programs/Design1.1.2 Market Size Estimation1.1.3 Market Breakdown and Data Triangulation2 Power Cords & Extension Cords Market Overview2.1 Power Cords & Extension Cords Product Overview2.2 Power Cords & Extension Cords Segment by Types (Product Category)2.2.1 United States Power Cords & Extension Cords Sales and Growth (%)Comparison by Types (Product Category)(2012-2022)2.2.2 United States Power Cords & Extension Cords Sales Market Share (%)by Types (Product Category)in 20162.2.3 PVC & Rubber Materials2.2.4 Halogen-free Materials2.2.5 Others2.3 United States Power Cords & Extension Cords Segment by Applications2.3.1 United States Power Cords & Extension Cords Sales (K Meters)Comparison by Applications (2012-2022)2.3.2 Household Use2.3.3 Commercial Use2.3.4 Industrial Use2.3.5 Others2.4 Global Power Cords & Extension Cords Market Comparison by Regions (2012-2022)2.4.1 Global Power Cords & Extension Cords Market Size and Growth (%)Comparison by Regions (2012-2022)2.4.2 North America Power Cords & Extension Cords Status and Prospect (2012-2022)2.4.3 Asia-Pacific Power Cords & Extension Cords Status and Prospect (2012-2022)2.4.4 Europe Power Cords & Extension Cords Status and Prospect (2012-2022)2.4.5 South America Power Cords & Extension Cords Status and Prospect (2012-2022)2.4.6 Middle East and Africa Power Cords & Extension Cords Status and Prospect (2012-2022)QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations.QYResearchReports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com
Telecom Technologies Market studies Research Report 2025

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Telecom technologies have been evolving beyond our imagination. The development of three areas  devices, applications, and networks  has led to the present technological progress in the telecommunication technologies market, promising significant growth. The telecommunication technologies industry is concerned with the delivery of electronic communication in addition to a multitude of products and services such as text-based communication and cell phone audio, Internet access, online video streaming, and the likes. Wired subscriber lines and wireless connections that use satellites to transmit data are the key delivery modes.Global Telecom Technologies Market: Key TrendsIncreasing efforts to deploy 4G and 5G networks, the emergence of IoT (Internet of Things), and increased penetration of technology worldwide have been fuelling the growth of the global telecom technologies market. Increased deployment of over-the-top (OTT) services has also been a major growth driver due to rising demand for non-linear media consumption.Obtain Report Details @The markets growth might face restriction from high costs of deployment, upgrading, and maintenance of telecommunication technology devices. Privacy and security issues arising on account of the widespread use of cloud-based systems might also affect market expansion. However, significant opportunities will arise with the emergence of big data.Global Telecom Technologies Market: Market PotentialA rising number of network reconfiguration plans are being announced by several leading market players. This trend is expected to guide the growth of the global telecom technologies market. Over the last few years, Japan-based NTT, U.S.-based AT&T and Verizon, and German company Deutsche Telekom have witnessed the adoption of upgraded reconfiguration, emphasizing the need for telecom technology.Another instance is the launch of the premier carrier-grade rack scale NFV (Network Function Virtualization) solution at the Mobile World Congress 2017, in collaboration with China Telecom and Intel announced by Inspur. This hyperscale infrastructure leverages open source technology. Besides securing this joint venture, Inspur has established strong partnerships with leading companies such as Cisco, Nokia, and Siemens.Request for TOC of the Report @A large volume of investments have been pouring in for internal R&D activities. For instance, Australian company Telstra has been investing in video platforms via Ooyala, and in digital signatures via Docusign. Several operators are forced to enhance their connectivity and network capacity as the demand from a towering number of businesses and consumers is constantly increasing.Global Telecom Technologies Market: Regional OutlookBased on geography, Asia Pacific, North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa, and Europe are the key segments. The rising level of deployment of telecom technologies in countries such as China and India is contributing towards the expansion of the market in Asia Pacific. The growth in this region can be attributed to the phenomenal growth in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector, which covers wireless communication, satellites, landlines, private networks, and the Internet. The high technological development and presence of numerous leading market players in several countries of Europe and North America have contributed towards the growth of these regional markets.Make an Enquiry @Global Telecom Technologies Market: Competitive AnalysisSome of the major companies operating in the global market for telecom technologies are Cisco Systems, AT&T, HP, Comcast, IBM, Oracle, Intel, and Qualcomm.A variety of new services and products are being launched by several market players, apart from attaining strategic partnerships and acquisitions. For instance, Spanish company Telefonica has launched an IoT product named Thinking Things. Through this product, individuals can create programs that can change the climate and lighting in settings such as offices. U.K.-based firm Orange has collaborated with Coca-Cola and Nespresso to develop a machine-to-machine (M2M) communications system. India-based Bharti Airtel, in a joint venture with the State Bank of India, has come up with mobile apps that provide access to local bank branches.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Top 10 Cloud Technology Market Professional Survey Research Report 2025

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Global Cloud Technology Market: OverviewIn general terms, cloud computing is the delivery of hosted services over the Internet. Rather than maintaining and building an in-house computing infrastructure, cloud computing enables companies to use resources of compute, such as machines, storage or an application. Pay-per use, self-service provisioning, and elasticity are the key benefits of cloud computing that can be availed by businesses and end users. Cloud migration, cloud analytics hybrid cloud, cloud orchestration, cloud storage, Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS), multi cloud management, Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS), Video-as-a-Service (VaaS), and Wi-Fi-as-a-Service are the major cloud technologies.Global Cloud Technology Market: Key TrendsThrough a massive shift to cloud, organizations and businesses are able to move their computing resources such as databases, infrastructure, applications, platforms, and email onto the cloud. It assists in lowering the costs, aids in recovering files, speeds operations, and manages other mission-critical tasks. It also enables business continuity while shifting workload to the virtual environment from the data center. Faster deployment, agility, mobility, scalability, lower total cost of ownership, and business continuity are the major drivers of cloud migration.Obtain Report Details @The exponential growth of digital services and their applications, along with the increasing need of business enterprises for greater scalability and flexibility, has augmented the implementation of hybrid cloud services and solutions, thereby driving the demand for cloud technology.Global Cloud Technology Market: Market PotentialMore and more organizations and end-use industries are resorting to cloud computing. Several health organizations digitize their abundant data and are on a constant lookout for cloud providers to help them understand the scalability of cloud environments without foregoing compliance and security controls. As per a report by SADA Systems  a premier business and technology consulting firm and cloud partner, 58% of healthcare organizations globally that are not using cloud today are likely to do so in the next two years, while 95% of healthcare organizations using cloud today propose to increase their cloud usage.Request for TOC of the Report @Recently it was announced that by late 2018, Belarusian government agencies will start using beClouds cloud computing platform. After signing relevant documents, all government agencies have to migrate to the beCloud platform. Over 60 government organizations and agencies are required to make the switch.However, many federal agencies are not in sync with the given cloud computing advantage and find that such migration has little or no impact on functionality. It is causing newer applications to load slowly, become non-intuitive, and above all, difficult to work with. According to the findings of Deloitte and the Government Business Council (GBC), many employees from major government, defense, and civilian agencies have reported that cloud computing had no obvious influence or any impact on their organization.Global Cloud Technology Market: Regional OutlookNorth America, especially the U.S., accounted for a large share in the f cloud technology market in 2015. Collaborations, content and communications along with customer relationship management are the key drivers for the growth of the regional market during the forecast period. However, as the market in North America is nearing maturity, various industry players are venturing into the emerging markets of the Middle East, hence boosting the market for cloud technology.Make an Enquiry @The Middle East is fast becoming a lucrative market for cloud technology. Under the paid-subscription category, numerous organizations have started implementing cloud-based applications that do not require any downloading or upgrading nor is there any need to maintain any servers. To be at par with IT developed nations, governments in the Middle East have largely invested in the development of IT skills to help solution providers to tackle the dearth of skilled professionals in the region.Global Cloud Technology Market: Competitive AnalysisSome of the prominent players operating in the global cloud technology market are IBM Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., VMware, Inc., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Corporation, Oracle Corporation, HP Enterprise, Rackspace Hosting, Inc., Google, Inc., and SAP SE.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Global Personal Thermal Protective Clothing Market 2017 Industry Growth with CAGR in Forecast-2022

Personal Thermal Protective Clothing Market

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The latest report Personal Thermal Protective Clothing Market by QY Research added to it's database and brings to light the comprehensive study and factual information of global market. The report also provides the global market segmentation based on applications, end-users, technology, and geography. The Personal Thermal Protective Clothing research report offers a comprehensive assessment of the Personal Thermal Protective Clothing market and consists of historical data, scope, significant approaches and statistical data of the global market. Besides these, it also includes anticipated facts that are assessed with the aid of an appropriate set of postulations and techniques.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 Personal Thermal Protective Clothing market.Request for FREE SAMPLE Report @The report includes rigorous data, in-depth analysis in two ways, namely, quantitative and qualitative, industry professionals inputs and data given by the industry members and industry analysts involved in the complete value cycle. The report features thorough study of important market and their current trends, coupled with respective market segments. Information about the numerous factors and their influence on the global market and its segments is also mentioned in the Personal Thermal Protective Clothing report.The study report evaluates the range of factors of the Personal Thermal Protective Clothing industry, such as definition, demands, share, analysis, supply, sales, size, specification, forecast trends, production, classification, industry policy, news, and application. The global Personal Thermal Protective Clothing market report will provide significant and reliable information on the market clearly in structured format. The report will offers you a key manufacturer of the products, applications, DROS and others.The Personal Thermal Protective Clothing report covers the precisely studied and evaluated data of the global market players and their scope in the market using a number of analytical tools. The analytical tools such as investment return analysies, SWOT analysis and feasibility studyare used to analyze the key global market playersgrowth in the Personal Thermal Protective Clothing industry.Browse Complete report With TOC available @Moreover, the report assessed key market features, including price, revenue, capacity utilization rate, growth rate, capacity, production, gross, supply, consumption, cost, market share, demand, import, gross margin, export, and much more.The Personal Thermal Protective Clothing report is a useful documentation that aids distributors, manufacturers, suppliers, customers, investors & individuals who are interested in this market.Highlights of the report:A complete backdrop analysis, which includes an assessment of the parent market.Important changes in market dynamics.Market segmentation up to the second or third level.Historical, current, and projected size of the market from the standpoint of both value and volume.Reporting and evaluation of recent industry developments.Market shares and strategies of key players.Emerging niche segments and regional markets.Regional Segment AnalysisNorth AmericaU.S.EuropeGermanyUKFranceAsia PacificDo Enquiry Before Buying This Report @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.Joel John3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442United StatesToll Free : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com
Asia - Mobile Network Operators And MVNOs Market Growth and Forecast Report

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The focus of this report is on the operators within their individual national markets. In addition to these individual operators there are those companies such as SingTel, Vodafone, and Axiata (formerly Telekom Malaysia International) that have built a substantial presence around the Asian region beyond their own domestic market through their shareholdings in operators in multiple other markets. While this aspect of the regional operations is not discussed in any detail, it is mentioned in passing in the relevant country reviews.The telecom market across Asia has an estimated total of 4 billion mobile subscribers by end 2016. This sector of the overall market continues to experience moderate growth; however, in the more developed markets, growth is shifting away from a focus on subscriber numbers towards the expansion of new generation platforms and increased data usage driven by value-added services and increased ARPUs.Whilst there are still developing markets continuing to grow their mobile subscriber base at high annual rates, total market growth has eased considerably in the last few years. This is not surprising given that a significant number of markets have well and truly saturated over the last year or so.Get The Sample Copy of This Report :Macau is the leading country in Asia in terms of overall mobile penetration with a penetration of 326% in 2016. Hong Kong takes second place with mobile penetration of 227% in 2016. Maldives in third place has penetration of 220% followed by Kazakhstan in fourth spot with 180%. Singapore has the fifth largest market in terms of mobile penetration with penetration reaching 149% in 2016.Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing rapidly. While mobile and fixed will always exist in parallel, there is no doubt that with a faltering fixed network and an excellent mobile network, mobile will give fixed a run for its money.However the reality for the success of mobile broadband is that the network will rely more and more on fibre. In the end most mobile stations will have to be connected to a fibre optic network in order to cope with the volume of traffic.Key highlights of the mobile operator market in Asia in 2016 include:China leads the market in terms of total number of subscribers, with its mobile market reaching 1.32 billion subscribers by 2016.India follows not far behind with 1.03 billion subscribers followed a lot further back by Indonesia (338 million), Japan (159 million) and Vietnam (145 million).China has three of the four top mobile operators in Asia by number of subscribers: China Mobile (850 million), China Unicom (262 million) and China Telecom (215 million).India is also very active in the market with five of the top ten operators. The top three of which are: Bharti (265 million), Vodafone Essar (198 million) and Idea Cellular (175 million).Indonesia and Thailand are the only other Asian counties with operators in the top 10 operators with Telkomsel of Indonesia having 154 million subscribers. And AIS of Thailand having 39 million subscribers.The countries covered in this report include: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and VietnamMarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Smart Thermostat Market size and forecast, 2015-2025

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Smart thermostat is the type of device used for controlling the heating and air conditioning in residential as well as commercial buildings. Smart thermostat allows user to control the temperature of the room throughout the day using a schedule, for example setting different temperature during the day time and night time. Smart thermostats are connected to with internet which enables its user to control the heating setting using different internet connected devices, like smartphones, tablets etc. It also allows user to easily switch on/off the heating or air conditioning of room even when they are not inside home or office.Smart Thermostat Market: Drivers and RestraintThe smart thermostat market is expected to grow rapidly over the period of forecast. Factors which are responsible for the growth of global smart thermostat market are increasing awareness among consumers about the various advantages of smart thermostats, technological developments, growing urbanization, rising demand of connected homes or smart homes, growing demand of energy efficient devices and availability of configurable and reconfigurable thermostats.Request Report Sample@On the other hand, factors which are restraining the growth of global smart thermostat market are incorrect triggering of switches by sensors and incongruity issues in wireless networks. However, demand for self-learning automated devices are expected to create great growth opportunity for the growth of smart thermostat market over the forecast period.Smart Thermostat Market: SegmentationThe global smart thermostat market can be segmented on the basis of component, network technology and application. On the basis of component, the global smart thermostat market can be segmented into display, motion sensor, humidity sensor, temperature sensor and others.On the basis of network technology, the global smart thermostat market can be segmented into wired technology and wireless technology. Wireless technology is expected to create great growth opportunity for the growth of global smart thermostat sensor market. Wireless network technology can be further sub segmented into Wi-Fi, Z-Wave, Zigbee and Bluetooth.On the basis of application, the global smart thermostat market can be segmented into residential, commercial, Industrial and others. Commercial application segment includes office building, healthcare and retail etc. Other Segment includes educational buildings such as school and colleges. Among all these application, residential applications are expected to grow significantly over forecast period because of advancement in home automation technology, growing demand of connected homes or smart homes and increasing awareness about energy saving devices among consumers.Request For TOC@Smart Thermostat Market: Region wise outlookOn the basis of region, the global smart thermostat market can be segmented into seven regions which includes, North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), Eastern Europe, Japan and Middle East & Africa region. Further the market is sub-segmented as per the major countries of each region in order to provide better regional analysis of the smart thermostat market. Developed regions such as North America and Western Europe are expected to dominate the market as demand of home and office automation is high in these regions. However, Asia-Pacific region is expected to grow rapidly over forecast period.Smart Thermostat Market: Key PlayersThe major players in the global smart thermostat market are Nest Labs, Inc., Emerson Electric Co., ecobee inc., tado GmbH, Schneider Electric, Honeywell International Inc. and Carrier Corporation. Key players are focusing on product innovations to provide advanced solutions to consumers. For example, In September 2015, Nest Labs, Inc., announced the third generation of Next Learning Thermostat which is slimmer in size, has a larger & high resolution screen and updated user interface which makes it easy to read temperatures, messages and alerts.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:
Africa - Mobile Network Operators And MVNOs Market Advances, Evolution

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Mobile telephony is by far the dominant telecom platform across Africa, accounting for more than 90% of all telephone lines in the region. As a consequence, mobile internet also accounts for a similar proportion of all internet connections. Given the size and range of markets on the continent, market penetration is varied between countries. By the end of 2016 the highest mobile penetration was found in countries including Libya (155%), Botswana (176%) and Gabon (190%), which reflects the popularity of consumers having multiple SIM cards. By contrast, a number of countries have a penetration rate less than half of this level.In many countries the recorded number of subscribers has fallen since 2015 as regulators step up efforts to compel mobile network operators to enforce provisions by which dormant SIM cards are taken off their books, and services are ended for non-registered SIM cards. The latter is intended to address fears that crime and civil disturbances can be facilitated or orchestrated via mobile phones.The introduction of prepaid services was a catalyst for strong mobile subscriber growth across Africa. By late 2016 the prepaid sector accounted for up to 99% of the overall subscriber base in many markets. The steady decline in tariffs, encouraged by competitive pressure, has meant that a greater proportion of the continents estimated population of 1.34 billion can afford a mobile phone, and so make use of voice and data services which are in many areas cannot be accessed via fixed-line networks.Download Sample Copy Of This Report :Mobile services are also increasingly contributing to the growth of national economies, stimulated by productivity and efficiency gained brought about by the increased take-up of a range of services, as also by tax revenue.Although there are a large number of network operators across the continent, as also smaller niche MVNO players, there are also a small number of pan-regional network operators. These include Millicom, Orange Group, Vodacom and Bharti Airtel. Some rationalisation of their operations continues as these players adjust their strategies to fit in with market positions and expectations. Thus Orange Group in late 2015 sold its entire 70% stake in Telkom Kenya, having sold its local Ugandan unit in the previous year, when it became clear that it was unlikely to gain market share and become at least the number two player. Focussing on core markets was also the reason Millicom exited Botswana in mid-2016.Although ARPU remains relatively low for operators, considering the level of disposable income in the region, Africa remains a key area for investment among players. In coming years much investment will be geared towards securing licences and spectrum as well as to upgrading networks to take better advantage of the capabilities of LTE infrastructure as LTE coverage expands.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Latin America - Mobile Network Operators And MVNOs

Latin Americas mobile market is dominated by four multinational operators, which together account for about 75% of the regions subscribers. This proportion has been stable for a number of years but is being slowly eroded as regulatory measures facilitate the entry of MVNOs. In part this has been made possible by regulators setting aside auctioned spectrum for new market entrants, and by auction rules which oblige licensees of some spectrum bands to host MVNOs.Mexicos America Movil is the largest player in the region, operating in a large number of countries. The company also has a significant presence in the US via its MVNO Tracfone, and has made greater inroads into Europe where it has a presence in Austria and the Netherlands via its interest in the respective incumbent operators. These investments were intended as a launching pad for ventures elsewhere in the region, with varying success. America Movil during 2015 expressed further interest in expanding into Eastern European markets, which are considered ripe for further development and more likely to return dividends on investments made.The second largest operator in Latin America remains Telefonica, operating under the Movistar brand in all markets except Brazil, where it operates under the Vivo brand. Brazil is Telefonicas key market in the region, where it has over 81 million mobile subscribers and generated revenue of some 7.6 billion in 2014.In Mexico, a new regulatory regime was recently introduced aimed at curbing the dominance of America Movil, which controls 70% of the wireless market and 80% of landlines. The operator is obliged to reduce its market share to below 50%, and to this end it has made moves to sell its local assets regionally. The process has made room for other operators both locally and from AT&T, which acquired Nextel Mexico in April 2015. During 2015 there were moves to facilitate access to services between the Mexico and the US, with Telcel having launched its Sin Fronteras Plan (No Borders Plan) under which customers can make calls from Mexico to the US charged as a local call. In the US, customers can use the minutes, SMS and data on their plans as if they were in Mexico, with no roaming charges.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
IP Camera Markeat Analysis, Market Size, Application Analysis, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecasts, 2022

IP Camera Markeat

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Internet protocol camera, or IP camera, is a type of digital video camera commonly employed for surveillance, and which, unlike analog closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras, can send and receive data via a computer network and the Internet. Although most cameras that do this are webcams, the term "IP camera" or "netcam" is usually applied only to those used for surveillance. The first centralized IP camera was Axis Neteye 200, released in 1996 by Axis Communications.Get Free Sample Copy of this Report @Scope of the Report:This report focuses on the IP Camera in Global market, especially in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, South America, Middle East and Africa. This report categorizes the market based on manufacturers, regions, type and application.Market Segment by Manufacturers, this report covers:HikvisionAxis CommunicationsPanasonicDahuaBosch Security SystemsSonySamsungAvigilonPelco by Schneider ElectricMarket Segment by Regions, regional analysis covers:North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)South America (Brazil, Argentina, Columbia etc.)Middle East and Africa (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa)Market Segment by Type, covers:Centralized IP CamerasDecentralized IP CamerasMarket Segment by Applications, can be divided into:Residential UseCommercial UsePublic & Government InfrastructureBrowse full report with Table of Content @There are 15 Chapters to deeply display the global IP Camera market.Chapter 1, to describe IP Camera Introduction, product scope, market overview, market opportunities, market risk, market driving force;Chapter 2, to analyze the top manufacturers of IP Camera, with sales, revenue, and price of IP Camera, in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 3, to display the competitive situation among the top manufacturers, with sales, revenue and market share in 2016 and 2017;Chapter 4, to show the global market by regions, with sales, revenue and market share of IP Camera, for each region, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, to analyze the key regions, with sales, revenue and market share by key countries in these regions;Chapter 10 and 11, to show the market by type and application, with sales market share and growth rate by type, application, from 2012 to 2017;Chapter 12, IP Camera market forecast, by regions, type and application, with sales and revenue, from 2017 to 2022;Chapter 13, 14 and 15, to describe IP Camera sales channel, distributors, traders, dealers, Research Findings and Conclusion, appendix and data sourceCheck for discount @Some points from TOC:-1 Market Overview1.1 IP Camera Introduction1.2 Market Analysis by Type1.2.1 Centralized IP Cameras1.2.2 Decentralized IP Cameras1.3 Market Analysis by Applications1.3.1 Residential Use1.3.2 Commercial Use1.3.3 Public & Government Infrastructure1.4 Market Analysis by Regions1.4.1 North America (USA, Canada and Mexico)1.4.1.1 USA Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.2 Canada Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.1.3 Mexico Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2 Europe (Germany, France, UK, Russia and Italy)1.4.2.1 Germany Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.2 France Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.3 UK Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.4 Russia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.2.5 Italy Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3 Asia-Pacific (China, Japan, Korea, India and Southeast Asia)1.4.3.1 China Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.2 Japan Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.3 Korea Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.4 India Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.3.5 Southeast Asia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4 South America, Middle East and Africa1.4.4.1 Brazil Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.2 Egypt Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.3 Saudi Arabia Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.4 South Africa Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.4.4.5 Nigeria Market States and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5 Market DynamicsEnquiry Before Buying@GIR Market Research 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. GIR Market Research 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+1-888-376-9998 (US)Email- sales@globalinforeports.com
FPSO Market - Detailed Study Analysis and Forecast by 2025

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Global FPSO Market: OverviewA floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) unit could be a newly constructed vessel or converted oil tanker which is equipped with oil and gas processing and production facilities. An FPSO is able to carry out all the activities for which the term stands for. It is a commodious vessel which resembles the shape of a ship and finds extensive usage in extracting raw hydrocarbons from sea beds. With processing facilities provided onboard, it can also transport processed oil and gas to desired onshore locations using a shuttle tanker.With more number of countries producing their own FPSOs and higher sales achieved by manufacturers, the world FPSO market is anticipated to rack up a staggering amount of revenue until the end of the forecast period.Global FPSO Market: Key TrendsThe substantial degree of growth witnessed in the FPSO market is predicted to be augmented by the soaring demand for enhanced productivity and controlled capital spending. With a view to achieve this, companies are looking to convert tank vessels into FPSOs. The very nature of FPSO to be able to operate at any depth, relocate to any location, and offer high return on investment is deemed to be a strong reason for its incrementing demand.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@The redeployed FPSO market is prognosticated to rise above freshly converted or newly built vessels with the capability to minimize project execution timeline. Suitable for operation in medium and small offshore fields, converted FPSO poses a lesser capital cost compared to new built products.The rising exploration activities in ultra-deep offshore fields led by maturing onshore oil and gas reserves are expected to provide an aggressive boost to the global FPSO market. More opportunities are envisaged to take birth as the need to counter difficult conditions in ultra-deep and deep sea reserves surges the demand for integrated compact systems.Global FPSO Market: Market PotentialIran is all set to install its first ever FPSO named FPSO Cyrus near South Pars in the Persian Gulf. The vessel is expected to employ pipelines to draw hydrocarbons from subsea wells. On an average, the Iranian FPSO holds the capacity to extract 30,000 barrels per day in the first production phase, which could be increased to a whopping 55,000 to 60,000 barrels per day in the second production phase.Request TOC of the Report @On similar lines, Keppel Offshore & Marine will be delivering its first FPSO unit named John Agyekum Kufuor to Yinson Production (West Africa) Pte. Ltd. in 2017. The vessel will be engaged by ENI Ghana Exploration & Production Limited for oil and gas processing at the Offshore Cape Three Points (OCTP) positioned in Offshore Ghana. The unit is studied to boast a 58,000 barrels per day processing capacity and 1.7 million barrel storage capacity. With an approximate 15,000 ton topside weight, it has the potential to be moored in a standard 1,000 meter water depth.Global FPSO Market: Regional OutlookWith ample of support furnished by the government of Brazil, the country is predicted to stand out as a chief FPSO market in the South America region. The prominence of the Brazilian market could also be accredited to the elevating number of oil and gas activities. The oil field discoveries in deep water and latest offshore exploration and production developments of East Africa and South America are envisaged to help the regions register growth at a significant rate.However, regions such as Europe and North America of the FPSO market are foretold to grow at a stagnant rate but secure a valuable share on account of their mature oil and gas reserves.Request Sample Copy of the Report @In order to curb its dependence on imports of energy resources, China is forecasted to offer profit-making opportunities for vendors in the FPSO market. Besides this, the development of offloading technologies, production advancement, surging area of ultra-deep and deep sea reserves, and maturing shallow water and inland oil and gas fields are envisioned to help China take precedence in the global market.Global FPSO Market: Competitive LandscapeWith mergers and acquisitions and fast building of product portfolio, key players in the international FPSO market are foreseen to take charge of a leading share. Some of the tough competitors in the global market are Sembcorp Marine Ltd., COSCO Shipyard Group Co. Ltd., PetroleoBrasileiro S.A., MODEC, Inc., TOTAL S.A., SBM Offshore N.V., and Samsung Heavy Industries Ltd.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting services to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact :Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Rising Awareness about the Utilization of Self-Detecting Pregnancy Kits will Boost the Global Pregnancy Detection Kits Market

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Global Pregnancy Detection Kits Market: OverviewPregnancy test kits are used for an early indication of pregnancy. Home pregnancy tests are easy to use, inexpensive, and provide results in a few minutes. Most at-home pregnancy test provide 97% to 99% accurate results when used as per instructions.Browse through Pregnancy Detection Kits Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:A urine pregnancy kit is used to detect human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) hormone, a special hormone that is produced only in a pregnant womans body. hCG production increases in the early days of pregnancy with its level doubling every 2 to 3 days in the blood. The presence of hCG above a particular range confirms pregnancy.The global pregnancy detection kits can be divided by product type, end-user, type of test, and region.The publication on the global pregnancy detection kits market makes for an interesting read due to its many offerings. This includes projections of the various segments and sub-segments based on their past and current performance. With the help of standard industry tools such as SWOT analysis and Porters Five Forces, the report provides a value chain analysis and market attractiveness analysis until the end of the forecast perioid in 2024.Global Pregnancy Detection Kits Market: Trends and OpportunitiesIncreasing awareness about the availability of pregnancy detection kits, rising awareness about the utilization of self-detecting pregnancy kits and their benefits, and the increasing demand for self-detecting pregnancy kits are the major factors boosting the global market for pregnancy detection kits. Moreover, the rising adolescent pregnancy rate, promotional campaigns undertaken by manufacturers that engage celebrities to influence rural population for the utilization of pregnancy testing devices, technological advancements in pregnancy kits, and expansion of distribution network of product manufacturers for widespread availability of kits.However, high cost of pregnancy detection kits, which makes it unaffordable in undeveloped and developing countries is a major constraint to the markets growth. In addition, the chances of inaccurate test result is also hampering the markets growth.Global Pregnancy Detection Kits Market: Regional OutlookThe report broadly divides the global pregnancy detection kits market into: North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East and Africa. Of these, North America is the largest market for pregnancy detection kits due to high government spending for quality healthcare and increased awareness for the utilization of pregnancy detection devices. The region is followed by Europe due to the high adoption of digital pregnancy test kits along with rising disposable incomes.Asia Pacific is expected to emerge as a significant regional market due to the rising adoption of pregnancy detection kits in rural areas, increasing awareness about the benefits of early detection of pregnancy, growing population, and rising disposable income.Latin America is emerging as a significant regional market due to the increasing awareness about the benefits of early detection of pregnancy and the availability of pregnancy testing kits at affordable prices. The Middle East and Africa regional segment will display a sluggish growth due to low awareness about the usage of pregnancy testing kit and its associated benefits.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Pregnancy Detection Kits Market by 2024:Global Pregnancy Detection Kits Market: Competitive ScenarioSome top players in the global pregnancy detection kits market include Alere Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., Church & Dwight, SPD Swiss Precision Diagnostics, Germaine Laboratories, Piramal Enterprises, Cardinal Health, Abbott Laboratories, DCC plc, Prestige Brands Holdings, Quidel Corporation, Kent Pharmaceuticals, Nantong egens bio Technology Company, and Confirm Biosciences.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:
Well done, Canada! The way this story is written, the author suggests that none of the munitions should have malfunctioned or hit civilians. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. If you're in a war zone, sh!t will happen. That includes collateral damage to civilians. Malfunctions. Or hitting buildings adjacent to targets. BOOM! and the bldg next door gets hit. C'est dommage!As well, 606 bombs were dropped. 17 malfunctioned. That's a failure rate of 2.8%. Less than half of what is deemed acceptable by bean counters and the military. So, to the manufacturers and the wpns techs that built them up, a big thumbs up!In interview with watchdog, former Canadian commander wouldn't rule out possible civilian casualties in IraqCanadian bombs missed their targets 17 times during the air campaign in Iraq, according to new figures released by the Department of National Defence.CBC News has obtained details of one of those missions, and the documents raise troubling questions about not only the Royal Canadian Air Force's guided munitions but how forthcoming DND is prepared to be about the sensitive issue.Strikes on ISIS in Iraq sparing civilians: Canadian commanderIraqi security forces were fighting a pitched battle with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) fighters outside of the war-weary city of Kirkuk in mid-November 2015.Extremists had them pinned down with heavy machine gun fire when a pair of Canadian CF-18s roared overhead and dropped a smart bomb that missed the target.Weapon 'malfunctioned'The weapon "malfunctioned," according to heavily redacted after-action reports obtained by CBC News.It plunged into an open field and exploded.It was not the only one.Of the 606 precision-guided bombs released during the 16-month Canadian air campaign in Iraq (including a small number in Syria), a total of 17 went off course, according to the DND figures.The air force said it has "no information" that any of its airstrikes, on-target or otherwise, killed or wounded civilians.No timeline releasedIt did not release a timeline for all of the misfires and refuses to say what may have caused them."No weapons system, is 100 percent accurate," Maj. Isabelle Bresse, a spokesperson for the overseas command, told CBC News in a recent email. "On rare occasions, weapons systems are affected by meteorological conditions or experience malfunctions."The rest here. Off-target airstrikes in Iraq buried behind wall of secrecy - Politics - CBC News
Good Growth Opportunities in Global Solid State Relay Market Till 2025

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Solid state relay market: Introduction & OverviewPower or electricity is the vital component of the society. Considering the amount of power used for completing the day-to-day activities and industrial operations, power outage can bring all the regular operations to standstill. Strong industrial growth across the globe is also leading to increasing usage and congestion of electricity. Solid state relays are invented to resolve these issues.Solid state relay is an ON-OFF semiconductor device which is used to switch electricity to the load when an external voltage is applied across its terminals. In solid state relay there is no movable part alike mechanical relays. Some of the examples of solid state relays are given as; an SCR, power transistor & TRIAC. Solid state relays are often more energy efficient switches as it consumes less energy in triggering from ON condition to OFF or vice versa. Solid state relays are often used in electrical industries because of the advantages provided as; low switching time, higher breakdown voltage & low switching loss in order to make electric current system more efficient.Request Report Sample@Solid state relay market: DynamicsNow a days, Research and development is more oriented towards automated, compact and low maintenance products. The solid state relay market acquires a great potential across various applications. The key drivers responsible in the growth of solid state relay market include the demand of upgrading aging power of infrastructure in developed regions, increment in the establishment of offshore Wind farm, also the more number of startup companies providing solutions along with the advantages provided by sold state relay as more flexible &/or higher performance nature, small in size & less maintenance are some of them. On the contrary side higher cost factor, higher level of expenditure, higher thermal dissipation of solid state relay are proving to be the key restraints for solid state relay market.Solid state relay market: SegmentationSegmentation of solid state relay market is done on the basis of packaging type, output type, power rating type, applications & by Geography. On the basis of packaging type solid state relay market is segmented into three segments Panel mount, Din rail mount & PCB mount.On the basis of output type, segmentation of solid state relay market is done as; AC solid state relay, DC solid state relay & AC/DC output relay. By power rating the market of solid state relay is segmented as; low power (0-20A), medium power (20A-50A) & high power (50A & above).Request For TOC@By solid state relay applications, its market is segmented into following segments; consumer application as to control power distribution, handling electrical devices, access control, elevator control & others, in food & beverages sector; in cooking appliances like microwave oven, automatic coffee machines & others, in medical & health sector care; in diagnosis & analysis devices, incubators & others, in automotive and transportation sector as in electric vehicles, train control systems, I/O interfaces & others.On the basis of Geography, segmentation of solid state relay market is done as; North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Japan, Asia Pacific Excluding Japan (APEJ), and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Among which Asia pacific is having largest market share of Solid state relay & Western Europe is the second largest Market of solid state relay & in the forecasting duration Asia Pacific is going maintain its leadership in market of solid state relay.Solid state relay market: Key playersThe key players of the Solid state relay market are Crydom Inc., ABB Ltd., International Rectifier, Infineon Technologies AG, Carlo Gavazzi Holding AG, Vishay Intertechnology (Siliconix), Fairchild Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments Incorporated, Rockwell Automation, Inc., Linear Technology & others.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comPress: press@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Breast Pumps Market to Reach US$2.6 bn by 2020, Rising Awareness Regarding Benefits of Breastfeeding to Drive Growth

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According to the research report, the increasing preference for breastfeeding, coupled with the increasing availability of highly advanced medical and healthcare facilities, has propelled the global breast pump market significantly in the recent times. In addition to this, analysts at TMR project the favorable reimbursement scenario to boost the demand for breast pumps in the coming years.The report analyzes the worldwide breast pumps market on the basis of product and the regional spread of this market. By product, the market has been segmented into manual pumps, hospital-grade pumps, single electric pumps, and double electric pumps.Browse Research Report -The single electric breast pumps segment led the global market in 2013. The cost efficiency of single electric breast pumps is considered as the major factor behind the growth of this segment. However, the double electric breast pumps segment is expected to post the fastest growth during the forecast period. Apart from this, the demand for manual breast pumps is also projected to register remarkable growth in the coming years driven by their easy handling, states the research study.Regionally, the report segments the global breast pumps market into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Rest of the World. North America dominated the worldwide market in terms of both volume and revenue in 2013. The rising preference for breastfeeding among people in this region has propelled the North America breast pumps market substantially over the past few years. Analysts at TMR expect this trend to continue in the coming years, owing to which North America is expected to maintain its leading position during the forecast period, notes the study.The breast pumps market in Asia Pacific, Europe, and the Rest of the World has also been anticipated to exhibit healthy growth in the near future, owing to the growing awareness pertaining to the benefits of breastfeeding, states the report.The report also evaluates the competitive landscape of the global breast pumps market by analyzing the company profiles of major market participants. According to the report, the worldwide market for breast pumps is oligopolistic in nature, with the top three players collectively occupying more than 75% of the overall market.NUK USA LLC, Hygeia Medical Group II, Ameda AG, Mayborn Group Ltd., ARDO Medical AG, Pigeon Corp., Lansinoh Laboratories IncGet a Sample Copy of Report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Cell Culture Market: Growing Demand for Artificial Organs to Pave Way for Markets Growth

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The vendor landscape in the global cell culture market includes players such as VWR International LLC, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., GE Healthcare, Lonza Group Ltd., Becton, Dickinson & Co., Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC., Corning Life Sciences B.V., EMD Millipore, PromoCell GmbH, and Wheaton Industries Inc. According to a TMR analyst, mergers and acquisitions among the key players are expected to strengthen the market in the coming years.Browse Research Report -Cell Culture Consumables Register Higher Demand than Serums and ReagentsThe market players are registering increased demand for cell culture across the medical research sector. Cell cultures are being increasingly applied across drug screening and monitoring, disease diagnosis, biologic manufacturing, IVF technology, cancer research, and stem cell research. Increased investments by private medical organizations and government organizations have supported the growth of the global cell culture market. TMR states that among the cell culture consumables, cell culture media register the highest demand compared to serums and reagents. This is due to the key importance of the nature of the culture medium to the health of the cells.3D Cell Culture to Define Future of Global Cell Culture MarketThe growing demand for biopharmaceuticals and artificial organs, coupled with the emerging trend towards serum-free, customized and specialty media solutions is the primary factor contributing towards the growth of the global cell culture market. The increasing focus on stem cell research would further expand the scope of the market in future. TMR recommends that the focus on backward integration to conduct in-house research and sustaining pricing pressures amid a weak global economic scenario will open up significant opportunities for the market players.However, ethical concern over the usage of animal sources in cell culture is one of the major restraints in the growth of the market. The usage of transgenic plants and animals, and stringent process controls will also impede the growth of the market in the years to come. 3D cell culture has the potential to serve as the future growth opportunity for the market and in vitro analysis. a TMR analyst predicts.Asia Pacific to Register Highest Demand for Cell CultureTMR predicts that among the key regions in the global cell culture market, Asia Pacific will register the fastest growth during the period between 2014 and 2022. The improvement in economic conditions of the developing countries in the Asia Pacific region such as China and India is anticipated to support the markets growth, the analyst states. In 2013, North America was the leading region in the market.Get a Sample Copy of Report -About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Growing Demand For Car Air Fresheners Market In North America - Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2014 - 2020

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Growing Demand For Car Air Fresheners Market In North America - Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2014 - 2020" to its huge collection of research reports.Demand for car fresheners in North America is projected to increase due to rise in consumer confidence, result of economic recovery, and strategic marketing efforts by key market players. Car freshener has now become an important product in the automotive after-market in North America. Spending on discretionary consumer goods increased in the region between 2012 and 2013 due to recovery of the economy in the U.S. and Canada. This trend is likely to continue in these markets over the next six years, which would drive impulse buying of car fresheners in North American consumers. Furthermore, growth in the car air freshener market will be supported by constant product innovations and innovative marketing strategies by key players across North America. Demand for organic/natural car-freshener products would drive the innovations in product offerings by large players in this market. Furthermore, longer hours spent in cars and trucks have created a need for attractive and chemical-free car freshener products among consumers in North America.The car air fresheners market in North America is likely to expand at a healthy CAGR over the next six years, thanks to consistent innovations and product updates in car air fresheners by key market players. Furthermore, The U.S. would remain the largest consumer of car-fresheners in this region followed by Mexico by 2020, due to large consumer base in these markets. Rapid growth in the middle class population and changing lifestyles of the immigrant population in North America will boost consumption of car-freshener products in the region during the forecast period. Currently, domestic companies such as American Covers, Inc., dba Handstands, CAR-FRESHNER Corporation along with multinational companies such as Procter & Gamble Co. and S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc. account for significant market shares in the car air fresheners market in North America. Expanding mass merchandise channels and developments in digital marketing will further boost growth of these companies in the near future.Car air fresheners are sold through a variety of retail channels. Companies with strong distribution networks will dominate the North American car fresheners market and enjoy market leadership. Mass-market channels such as supermarkets/hypermarkets, auto repair/ auto wash shops, and carwash stations and automotive shops are among the most preferred retail channels for the sale of car-freshener products. The car air fresheners market in North America is expected to experience significant shift from synthetic car air fresheners to organic car air fresheners during the forecast period.This report segments the market by types and countries. It includes major drivers, restraints, and opportunities (DROs), along with the value chain of the car air fresheners market. The value chain analysis helps suppliers, manufacturers, and distributors to understand the focus areas in the supply chain. The study highlights current market trends of the car freshener product segment in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. In addition, it provides market size forecast for these markets from 2014 to 2020. The market dynamics chapter in this report provides insights about the existing trends and future prospects in the industry.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The study covers the analysis of countries such as the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in North America. The current market size and forecast until 2020 is also provided in the report, in terms of value (USD million).The report also analyzes macroeconomic factors both driving and hampering growth of the car air fresheners market. Porters five forces analysis is also included, which helps in analyzing the rivalry among existing market players in North America, as well as analyzing the competition for new entrants. The market attractiveness analysis included in the report highlights key investment areas (product/region) in the industry. The report will help manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors to understand the present and future trends in this market and to formulate strategies accordingly.The report includes detailed profiles of major players in this market under pointers such as product portfolio, business strategy, SWOT analysis, and recent news/developments. Major market players of car air fresheners in North America include American Covers, Inc., dba Handstands, CAR-FRESHNERS Corporation, Procter & Gamble Co., The Yankee Candle Company, Inc., Auto Expressions, LLC., ABRO Industries, Inc., and S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.The car-fresheners market in the report refers to the market by product type and by geography/country.The market is categorized into the following segments:North America Car Air Fresheners Market by TypeDifferent types of car air freshener products covered under this research study are:Gels and cansSprays/aerosolsPaper car freshenersVents and clipsOthersNorth America Car Air Fresheners Market by GeographyCountries covered under this research study are:The U.S.CanadaMexicoMake 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 @
Analysis of Metal Working Machinery Market Development in Asian Countries Forecasted till 2021

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In manufacturing industries, metals have been playing an important role in the production of different consumer products. With the ability to operate on the heavy work piece with greater speed and productivity, metalworking machines are widely accepted in manufacturing sector across the world. A new study, focusing on the market development trends has been recently broadcasted to the wide database of Market Research Hubs research offerings section. The study is titled as Metal Working Machinery Market in Asia to 2021 - Market Size, Development, and Forecasts which offers the most up-to-date market data on the actual market situation, trends and future outlook for metal working machinery in Asia, with a prime focus on some major countries.Request Free Sample Report:Metal working machines include manufacturing machinery & machine tools which are used to cut or shape the metals and other hard materials to produce industrial tools. Metalworking machines offer higher accuracy and efficiency to several manufacturing processes in the production of metal components and products. A limb in economic growth tempting more industrial activities is considered as a favorable thing for the expansion of the machinery industry. Because metal working encompasses a broad variety of goals, it includes a wide range of skills and tools used to practice the trade. Generally, there are three categories in the metal working process. These categories are forming, cutting and joining.Firstly, the report starts by defining the overall market scenario of metal working machinery. For the better understanding, the market has been segmented by types which include unit construction machines, multi-station transfer machines, metal tapping & threading, grinding, sharpening, drilling, boring & milling, lapping and honing, metal slotting and shaping, metal forging, die-stamping and bending machines, metal cold saws, sheet metal curving rolls, section ring rolling machines, pipe and tube benders etc. In this section, growth rates and shares of the overall metal working machinery market and different product segments are given for the estimated period of 2010-2021.Browse Full Report With TOC:Secondly, a brief discussion on the prospects of the machinery industry in different Asia nations has been provided. Bangladesh, Nepal, Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Oman, Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam are the major countries highlighted in the report, which describes the market forecasts and future outlook. The research also includes historic data from the period 2010 to 2016 and forecasts until 2021 which makes the reports an invaluable resource for industry executives, marketing, sales and product managers, consultants and analysts. With the above major informations, the buyers will able to track industry developments techniques and identify market opportunities.About Market Research Hub:Market Research Hub (MRH) is a next-generation reseller of research reports and analysis. MRHs expansive collection of market research reports has been carefully curated to help key personnel and decision makers across industry verticals to clearly visualize their operating environment and take strategic steps.MRH functions as an integrated platform for the following products and services: Objective and sound market forecasts, qualitative and quantitative analysis, incisive insight into defining industry trends, and market share estimates. Our reputation lies in delivering value and world-class capabilities to our clients.Contact Us90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (US-Canada)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Email: press@marketresearchhub.comFollow us on:Twitter: twitter.com/MktResearchHubLinkedIn:Facebook:
Healthcare Industry For Polycystic Kidney Disease - Pipeline Review, H1 2017

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Healthcare Industry For Polycystic Kidney Disease - Pipeline Review, H1 2017" to its huge collection of research reports.Global Markets Direct's latest Pharmaceutical and Healthcare disease pipeline guide Polycystic Kidney Disease - Pipeline Review, H1 2017, provides an overview of the Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) pipeline landscape.Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is a disorder in which clusters of cysts develop primarily within kidneys. Polycystic kidney disease symptoms may include high blood pressure, back or side pain, headache, blood in urine, frequent urination and kidney failure. The predisposing factors include age and family history. Treatment includes antihypertensive drugs and diuretics.Report HighlightsGlobal Markets Direct's Pharmaceutical and Healthcare latest pipeline guide Polycystic Kidney Disease - Pipeline Review, H1 2017, provides comprehensive information on the therapeutics under development for Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders), complete with analysis by stage of development, drug target, mechanism of action (MoA), route of administration (RoA) and molecule type. The guide covers the descriptive pharmacological action of the therapeutics, its complete research and development history and latest news and press releases.The Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) pipeline guide also reviews of key players involved in therapeutic development for Polycystic Kidney Disease and features dormant and discontinued projects. The guide covers therapeutics under Development by Companies /Universities /Institutes, the molecules developed by Companies in Pre-Registration, Phase III, Phase II, Preclinical and Discovery stages are 1, 1, 2, 14 and 4 respectively. Similarly, the Universities portfolio in Preclinical stages comprises 2 molecules, respectively.Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) pipeline guide helps in identifying and tracking emerging players in the market and their portfolios, enhances decision making capabilities and helps to create effective counter strategies to gain competitive advantage. The guide is built using data and information sourced from Global Markets Directs proprietary databases, company/university websites, clinical trial registries, conferences, SEC filings, investor presentations and featured press releases from company/university sites and industry-specific third party sources. Additionally, various dynamic tracking processes ensure that the most recent developments are captured on a real time basis.Note: Certain content / sections in the pipeline guide may be removed or altered based on the availability and relevance of data.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @Scope- The pipeline guide provides a snapshot of the global therapeutic landscape of Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders).- The pipeline guide reviews pipeline therapeutics for Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) by companies and universities/research institutes based on information derived from company and industry-specific sources.- The pipeline guide covers pipeline products based on several stages of development ranging from pre-registration till discovery and undisclosed stages.- The pipeline guide features descriptive drug profiles for the pipeline products which comprise, product description, descriptive licensing and collaboration details, R&D brief, MoA & other developmental activities.- The pipeline guide reviews key companies involved in Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) therapeutics and enlists all their major and minor projects.- The pipeline guide evaluates Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) therapeutics based on mechanism of action (MoA), drug target, route of administration (RoA) and molecule type.- The pipeline guide encapsulates all the dormant and discontinued pipeline projects.- The pipeline guide reviews latest news related to pipeline therapeutics for Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders)Reasons to buy- Procure strategically important competitor information, analysis, and insights to formulate effective R&D strategies.- Recognize emerging players with potentially strong product portfolio and create effective counter-strategies to gain competitive advantage.- Find and recognize significant and varied types of therapeutics under development for Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders).- Classify potential new clients or partners in the target demographic.- Develop tactical initiatives by understanding the focus areas of leading companies.- Plan mergers and acquisitions meritoriously by identifying key players and its most promising pipeline therapeutics.- Formulate corrective measures for pipeline projects by understanding Polycystic Kidney Disease (Genetic Disorders) pipeline depth and focus of Indication therapeutics.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 @
Product Overview And Scope Of Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Sales Market

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Product Overview And Scope Of Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Sales Market" to its huge collection of research reports.This report studies sales (consumption) of Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment in Global market, especially in USA, China, Europe, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, focuses on top players in these regions/countries, with sales, price, revenue and market share for each player in these regions, coveringHandy Tech Elektronik GmbHBAUM RetecEurobrailleNippon TelesoftPerkinsPapenmeierHumanwareMarket Segment by Regions, this report splits Global into several key Regions, with sales (consumption), revenue, market share and growth rate of Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment in these regions, from 2011 to 2021 (forecast), likeUSAChinaEuropeJapanKoreaTaiwanSplit by product Types, with sales, revenue, price and gross margin, market share and growth rate of each type, can be divided intoType IType IIType IIIMake an Enquiry of this report @Split by applications, this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment in each application, can be divided intoApplication 1Application 2Application 3Table of ContentsGlobal Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Sales Market Report 20161 Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment1.2 Classification of Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment1.2.1 Type I1.2.2 Type II1.2.3 Type III1.3 Application of Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment1.3.1 Application 11.3.2 Application 21.3.3 Application 31.4 Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Market by Regions2 Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Competition by Manufacturers, Type and Application2.1 Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Market Competition by Manufacturers2.1.1 Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Sales and Market Share of Key Manufacturers (2011-2016)2.1.2 Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment Revenue and Share by Manufacturers (2011-2016)2.2 Global Assistive Technologies for Visual Impairment (Volume and Value) by TypeTo Get Sample Copy of Report visit @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Comprehensive Analysis Of Cards and Payments Industry in Indonesia: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "Comprehensive Analysis Of Cards and Payments Industry in Indonesia: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019" to its huge collection of research reports.Timetrics 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Indonesia: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides top-level market analysis, information and insights into Indonesia's cards and payments industry, including:Current and forecast values for each market in Indonesia's cards and payments industry, including debit, credit and charge cards. It also includes detailed analysis of the prepaid cards market.Detailed insights into payment instruments including check payments, credit transfers, payment cards and cash transactions. It also, includes an overview of the country's key alternative payment instruments.Analysis of various market drivers and regulations governing Indonesia's cards and payments industry.Detailed analysis of strategies adopted by banks and other institutions to market debit, credit and charge cards.Comprehensive analysis of consumer attitudes and buying preferences for cards.The competitive landscape of Indonesia's cards and payments industry.Executive summaryTimetrics 'The Cards and Payments Industry in Indonesia: Emerging Trends and Opportunities to 2019' report provides detailed analysis of market trends in Indonesia's cards and payments industry. It provides values and volumes for a number of key performance indicators in the industry, including check payments, credit transfers, payment cards and cash transactions during the review period (20102014).The report also analyzes various payment card markets operating in the industry and provides detailed information on the number of cards in circulation, and transaction values and volumes during the review period and over the forecast period (20152019). It also offers information on the country's competitive landscape, including market shares of issuers and schemes.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling, and analysis expertise to allow banks and card issuers to identify segment dynamics and competitive advantages. The report also covers detailed regulatory policies, recent changes in regulatory structure, card fraud statistics, and profiles of card issuers operating in the country.Make an Enquiry of this report @ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of Indonesia's cards and payments industry.It provides current values for Indonesia's cards and payments industry for 2014, and forecast figures to 2019.It details the different economic, infrastructural and business drivers affecting Indonesia's cards and payments industry.It outlines the current regulatory framework in the industry.It details marketing strategies used by various banks and other institutions.It profiles major banks in Indonesia's cards and payments industry.Key highlightsDuring the review period, Indonesias payment cards market grew in terms of transaction value and volume, registering respective compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) of 11.95% and 19.89%. Owing to government efforts to increase awareness levels with regards to payment cards, bolstered consumer confidence, middle-class population growth and urbanization contributed to their review-period growth.Banks are migrating to EMV standards in order to enhance security. In October 2011, the central bank mandated banks to replace their magnetic strip ATM and debit cards with EMV cards. A deadline was set for December 31, 2015. From January 2015, the central bank also made six-digit PINs compulsory when authenticating credit card transactions at POS terminals.The prepaid cards market recorded a strong performance both in terms of the number of cards in circulation and transaction value, registering respective review-period CAGRs of 60.29% and 46.16%; a situation which is anticipated to continue over the forecast period.Reasons to buyMake strategic business decisions, using top-level historic and forecast market data, related to Indonesia's cards and payments industry and each market within it.Understand the key market trends and growth opportunities in Indonesia's cards and payments industry.Assess the competitive dynamics in Indonesia's cards and payments industry.Gain insights into marketing strategies used for various card types in Indonesia.Gain insights into key regulations governing Indonesia's cards and payments industry.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
ResearchMoz: South African Insurance Industry - Governance, Risk and Compliance

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Researchmoz added Most up-to-date research on "ResearchMoz: South African Insurance Industry - Governance, Risk and Compliance" to its huge collection of research reports.SynopsisTimetric's 'Governance, Risk and Compliance  The South African Insurance Industry' report provides insights into the governance, risk and compliance framework pertaining to the insurance industry in South Africa, including:An overview of the insurance regulatory framework in South Africa.The latest key and expected changes in the South African insurance regulatory framework.Key regulations and market practices related to different types of insurance product in the country.Regulations pertaining to key classes of compulsory insurance, and the scope of non-admitted insurance in South Africa.Key GRC parameters including licensing requirements, permitted foreign direct investment, minimum capital requirements, solvency requirements, reserve requirements, and investment regulations.Details of the country's tax and legal systems.Executive summaryTimetrics 'Governance, Risk and Compliance - The South African Insurance Industry' report is the result of extensive research into the insurance regulatory framework in South Africa. It provides detailed analysis of the insurance regulations for life, property, motor, liability, personal accident and health, and marine, aviation and transit insurance. The report specifies various requirements for the establishment and operations of insurance and reinsurance companies and intermediaries.The report brings together Timetrics research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on prevailing insurance regulations, recent and upcoming changes in regulatory framework, taxation and legal system in the country. The report also includes the scope of non-admitted insurance.Make an Enquiry of this report @ScopeThis report covers details of the insurance regulatory framework in South Africa.The report contains details of rules and regulations governing insurance products and insurance entities.The report lists and analyzes key trends and developments pertaining to the South African insurance regulatory framework.The repot analyzes rules and regulations pertaining to the establishment and operation of insurance business in the country.The report provides details of taxation imposed on insurance products and companies.Key highlightsThe South African insurance industry is supervised and regulated by the FSB.The placement of non-admitted insurance is permitted only with an approval from the FSB, provided no other insurer is providing such insurance at equitable terms.A new risk-based solvency regime will be implemented effective from January 1, 2016.The key classes of compulsory insurance include motor third-party liability insurance, aviation third-party liability insurance and public liability insurance.FSB is in the process of implementing Treating Customers Fairly approach to deliver fair outcome to the customers throughout the lifecycle of the financial product.Reasons to buyGain insight into the insurance regulatory framework in South Africa.Track the latest regulatory and expected changes impacting the South African insurance industry.Gain detailed information about key regulations governing the establishment and operation of insurance entities in the country.Understand key regulations and market practices relating to various types of insurance product.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @About ResearchMozResearchMoz is the one stop online destination to find and buy market research reports & Industry Analysis. We fulfill all your research needs spanning across industry verticals with our huge collection of market research reports. We provide our services to all sizes of organizations and across all industry verticals and markets. Our Research Coordinators have in-depth knowledge of reports as well as publishers and will assist you in making an informed decision by giving you unbiased and deep insights on which reports will satisfy your needs at the best price.Mr. NachiketState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesEmail: sales@researchmoz.usWebsite @Tel: 866-997-4948 (Us-Canada Toll Free)Tel: +1-518-621-2074Follow us on LinkedIn @
Global Earring Market 2017 Top Players - TIFFANY, Cartier, Two Tone Jewelry, Stauer, JamesViana

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Report studies Earring in Global market that focuses on the top Manufacturers, Market Segment by Countries, Split by Product Types (with sales, revenue, price, market share of each type), Split by applications this report focuses on sales, market share and growth rate of Earring in each application.Download Free Sample Report @This report studies Earring 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 2017, and forecast to 2022.This report focuses on top manufacturers in global market, with production, price, revenue and market share for each manufacturer,Covering ManufacturersCartierTJCTIFFANYErnest JonesTwo Tone JewelryTraxNYCWanderlust LifeStauerGLAMIRABulgariJamesVianaWest & Co. JewelersGemporiaBy types, the market can be split intoCrystal & Diamond EarringsSilver EarringsGold EarringsPlatinum EarringsOthersAccess Full Report @By Application, the market can be split intoCollectionsWeddingFestive BlessingFashionOthersTable of ContentsGlobal Earring Market Professional Survey Report 20171 Industry Overview of Earring1.1 Definition and Specifications of Earring1.1.1 Definition of Earring1.1.2 Specifications of Earring1.2 Classification of Earring1.2.1 Crystal & Diamond Earrings1.2.2 Silver Earrings1.2.3 Gold Earrings1.2.4 Platinum Earrings1.2.5 Others1.3 Applications of Earring1.3.1 Collections1.3.2 Wedding1.3.3 Festive Blessing1.3.4 Fashion1.3.5 Others1.4 Market Segment by Regions1.4.1 North America1.4.2 China1.4.3 Europe1.4.4 Southeast Asia1.4.5 Japan1.4.6 India2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Earring2.1 Raw Material and Suppliers2.2 Manufacturing Cost Structure Analysis of Earring2.3 Manufacturing Process Analysis of Earring2.4 Industry Chain Structure of EarringAbout Fior MarketsFior Markets is a leading market intelligence company that sells reports of top publishers in the technology industry.Our extensive research reports cover detailed market assessments that include major technological improvements in the industry. Fior Markets also specializes in analyzing hi-tech systems and current processing systems in its expertise.We have a team of experts that compile precise research reports and actively advise top companies to improve their existing processes. Our experts have extensive experience in the topics that they cover.Fior Markets provides you the full spectrum of services related to market research, and corroborate with the clients to increase the revenue stream, and address process gaps.Contact UsMark StoneSales Manager2566, Lincoln StreetPrinceton,New Jersey 08540USAPhone: (201) 465-4211Email: sales@fiormarkets.comWeb:Blog:
A state lawmaker says theres no malice intended in his plan to study a possible merger of Omahas two University of Nebraska campuses.

Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston proposed the study this week without consulting or notifying university President Hank Bounds or members of the NU Board of Regents.

The move prompted Bounds to email faculty, staff and students at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and University of Nebraska Medical Center on Thursday to inform them the study wasnt brought at the universitys request.

I didnt intend to stir the beehive quite as much as I guess I have, Riepe said Friday. This is not intended to be a hostile thing.

The proposal was prompted by Bounds decision last month to put Dr. Jeff Gold in charge of both Omaha campuses, Riepe said. Gold, chancellor at UNMC since 2014, is expected to lead UNO as its interim chancellor for the next two years.

This years budget talks have nothing to do with it, Riepe said, although merging the campuses would almost certainly provide cost savings.

Lawmakers struggled with a billion-dollar budget shortfall this year, and the two-year budget they adopted this week includes about $13 million in cuts for the university system. Gov. Pete Ricketts could make additional cuts in the coming days through line-item vetoes.

Riepe, a retired hospital administrator who earned his undergraduate degree at UNO, said hes considered the possibility of a merger for years and years since attending graduate school at the University of Iowa, where the medical school and other programs share the same campus.

Any decision on merging the two NU campuses should ultimately be made by the Board of Regents, Riepe said.
Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market - Recent Industry Developments And Growth Strategies By 2017 - 2025

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Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: OverviewAnti-corrosion coatings protect various metal components from oxidation, exposure to industrial and environmental chemicals, moisture, and salt sprays. Preventing contact between corrosive materials and chemical compounds, these coatings might also feature nonstick properties. As rust and corrosion prevention is a key concern of a number of industries that have high humidity, salt, water, and mist, the global market for anti-corrosion coatings market is expected to soar.Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Key TrendsWidespread usage in oil and gas equipment such as drill pipes and oil storage tanks is fuelling the demand for anti-corrosion coatings. As these equipment are exposed to underground water and marshy land, they need to be protected from corrosion from moisture. Moreover, the increasing demand for energy generation via oil sands, tar sands, shale gas, and oil shale is likely to further provide an impetus to the market.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The polyurethane coatings segment has been exhibiting significant growth thanks to the availability of a wide range of colors and glossy finish that attracts consumers. These products can endure temperatures up to 110 degrees Celsius. By application, the solvent based coatings might emerge at the fore due to government regulations emphasizing the use of low volatile organic compounds in products.Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Market PotentialIn February 2017, NEI Corporation announced that the patent and trademark regulatory body of the U.S. has issued allowance for two patent applications of the firm. These two products possess hydrophobic coatings, displaying high corrosion resistance, apart from their excellent adhesive properties.In the same month, Guntner launched a new coil protector designed for the food industry. The product possesses powder coating that is highly resistant to corrosion apart from being food safe.Request TOC of the Report @U.S.-based manufacturer of grapheme, Applied Graphene Materials (AGM) has been aiding James Briggs Ltd, a paints manufacturer, in the development of anti-corrosion grapheme coatings.A group of engineers and scientists has developed a hexagonal boron nitride monolayer that exhibits exceptional resistance to corrosion. Although this product needs to be developed further for it to be introduced in the commercial market, the future potential for it is immense, experts believe. Both anodic and cathodic currents were found to be unsuccessful at penetrating the automatically thin layer coating.Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Regional OutlookNorth America dominates the anti-corrosion coatings market, which is supported by rising volume of military investment. The U.S., flaunting one of the worlds largest fleet bases, is likely to represent maximum share of the anti-corrosion coatings market in North America.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Asia Pacific is likely to emerge as a leading regional market owing to the foreign investments that have been pouring in. The extensive growth of the end-use industries such as oil and gas, power and energy, marine, tanks and pipes, and construction are responsible for increasing demand for anti-corrosion coatings in the developing countries of this region such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Australia, and China. China is slated to emerge at the fore, as a vast population, immense production base, and growing volume of foreign investments propel its expansion.Global Anti-Corrosion Coatings Market: Competitive AnalysisSome of the leading companies operating in the global anti-corrosion coatings market are Hempel, The Sherwin-Williams Company, BASF, RPM International, PPG Industries, Chugoku Marine Paints, AICA Kogyo, Jotun, Axalta Coating, Kansai Paints, Ashland, Tnemec, Akzonobel, Sokema, Valspar, Nippon Paints, and AnCatt.Japan-based Kansai Paint is planning to acquire Sadolin Tanzania, Sadolin Kenya, and Sadolin Uganda, with a view to tap the vast potential of the market in this region.Several companies are also making sure that they improve their production capabilities. For example, PPG Industries completed a new production line at Wuhu, China. The plant produces highly efficient high solids and waterborne coatings.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Higher Visualization Resulting in Easy and Precise Operation with Less Tissue Sparing Practice Drives Lateral Lumbar Interbody Fusion Market

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Lateral lumbar interbody fusion (LLIF) is a minimally invasive technique and is in demand for surgical spinal fusion procedure. LLIF is an effective and safe surgical procedure that makes post-operative recovery quicker and less painful. The incision is made from the side through psoas muscle that allows surgeons to access more surface area with less damage to the tissue and reduced blood loss. Lateral lumbar interbody fusion is a surgical procedure used to treat specific types of disorders of lumbar spine, such as degenerative disc disease, low grade spondylolisthesis, degenerative scoliosis (asymmetric disc degeneration) and deformity, and some recurrent lumbar herniated disc and lumbar stenosis. Developments in magnification and illumination associated with surgical instrumentation have led to increased applicability of minimally invasive technique for spinal fusion. High device cost and various procedure levels are likely to boost the growth of the market.Browse through Lateral Lumbar Interbody Fusion Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:The minimally invasive lateral lumbar interbody fusion has certain advantages such as enhanced spine alignment and easier spine access in several cases such as degenerative diseases and correction in sagittal and coronal deformities. Large number of surgeons prefer this procedure, as it results in less blood loss and lower damage to the tissues around the surgical area. Reduced time for operation and length of hospital stay, greater fusion, and lesser infection rates are the other advantages of this procedure. Increased incidence of degenerative diseases and rising prevalence of lower back pain in the population above 45 years drive the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market. Higher visualization resulting in easy and precise operation with less tissue sparing practice are other factors that propel the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market. However, high cost of operation and risks associated with lateral lumbar interbody fusion such as psoas muscles or neural network injury and bone graft fusion complication restrain the market.The global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market has been segmented based on product type, end-user, and region. In terms of product type, the market has been classified into instruments or systems, implants, and supporting devices. The instruments or systems are based on extreme lateral lumbar interbody fusion or direct lateral lumbar interbody fusion (XLLIF/ DLLIF). Based on end-user, the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market has been segmented into hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers (ASC).Superior technological advancements present significant opportunity in the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market. Major market players are coming up with cutting edge technology. Amedica Corporation has introduced silicon nitride implants instead of PEEK and titanium that have superior osteointegration and artifact-free imaging. Several system and implant manufacturing companies for lateral lumbar interbody fusion procedure are offering pre-operative and post-operative care for patients, thereby extending their business as health solution providers. Furthermore, complications associated with traditional open surgery techniques of midline spinal fusion have led to increase in preference for interbody fusion technique, which in turn augments the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market. Increasing focus on discovery of new techniques in instruments, advanced research in generating durable implants with lower likelihood of rejection, and invention of effective means for supporting devices are expected to steer the growth of the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market.In terms of region, the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market has been segmented into five regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America dominates the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market owing to factors such as new and technologically advanced products being introduced in the market, significant investments in research and development of advanced products, and increasing demand from patients for better health care facilities.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Lateral Lumbar Interbody Fusion Market by 2024:Key players in the global lateral lumbar interbody fusion market are DePuy Synthes, NuVasive, Inc., Stryker Corporation, Smith & Nephew, Medtronic, Paradigm Spine, and Alphatec Spine.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:
Direct Drive Wind Turbine Market Global Market Opportunity Assessment Study 2024.

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Direct drive wind turbines, also known as gearless wind turbines, are wind turbines without a gearbox. The rotor shaft is directly connected to a synchronous or permanent magnet generator for power generation. Direct drive wind turbines usually use either permanent-magnet excited direct drive generator system or electrically excited direct drive synchronous generator system depending upon cost, location, and other constraints. Direct drive wind turbines are better alternatives for offshore applications, as they require less preventive and break down maintenance vis-a-vis geared wind turbines. Furthermore, most direct drive wind turbines are contactless and contain fewer parts. Operation and maintenance is also more expensive for offshore farms as compared to their onshore counterparts. This ultimately increases the overall reliability of turbines and wind farms.Obtain Report Details @:Increase in demand for energy, especially renewable energy, across the globe is one of the major factors driving the direct drive wind turbine market. Direct drive wind turbines are viable alternatives for offshore wind farms due to high reliability and lower maintenance costs. Furthermore, offshore winds farms eliminate several severe problems caused by windmills such as noise pollution and ecosystem damage. The overall weight of direct drive wind turbines is substantially low as compared to that of its geared counterparts. Gearless wind turbines are also noticeably efficient. This further reduces operating costs and increases the energy output. However, the cost of setting up direct drive wind turbines is relatively high due to the substantial usage of rare neodymium magnets, technology costs, and large size of generators. The average energy yield per unit cost of direct drive wind turbines is also low. However, the cost of manufacturing and setting up direct drive wind turbines is anticipated to decline in the near future, led by the rise in demand for these turbines and economies of scale.Based on application, the direct drive wind turbine market can be segmented into onshore direct drive wind turbine and offshore direct drive wind turbine. The offshore application exhibits significant growth opportunities due to the various advantages offered by direct drive wind turbines compared to geared wind turbines. Based on the capacity of turbine, the direct drive wind turbine market can be classified into less than 1 MW, 1 to 4 MW, and 4 MW and above segments. In terms of generator, the market can be segregated into permanent-magnet excited direct drive generator system and electrically excited direct drive synchronous generator system. Both these technologies carry certain advantages; however, electrically excited direct drive synchronous generator systems are relatively expensive.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @:In terms of geography, the direct drive wind turbine market can be divided into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Asia Pacific is a major market for direct drive wind turbines; China is one of the leading countries in terms of installation of direct drive wind turbines. Increase in demand for energy and need for environmental protection are boosting the demand for wind farms across the globe. Europe and North America are also lucrative markets for direct drive wind turbines, as these regions are investing significantly in harnessing renewable energy. Countries such as Germany, Italy, and France have invested in direct drive wind turbines to meet their demand for energy.Key players operating in the global direct drive wind turbine market are Siemens, General Electric, ENERCON GmbH, Argosy Wind Power Ltd, and Goldwind Science & Technology Co., Ltd.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207
Latest Research report on Bio-pharma Market predicts favorable growth and forecast till 2022

Bio-pharma Market

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QY Research Groups has published its new and latest market report based on thorough research on the Bio-pharma Market. This detailed, all-inclusive report renders an integrated approach to growth of the market along with an elaborate and accurate analysis of the complete competitive situation of this market on a global level with the key market trends and newest technologies, being a major part in the markets growth during the estimated period. Besides the current analytical and statistical account, the report cloaks the trends, market drivers, challenges, potential opportunities, which have an effect on the market. This market report discusses the present situation to predicted trends and aspects of the Bio-pharma Market. Furthermore, it gives a dynamic overview and insights related to the market at both global as well as regional scale.Request for sample of Bio-pharma Market research report @Globally, the healthcare industry is garnering more attention in the last few years with new and latest technologies emerging. The prevalence of increasing diseases and rising awareness and concerns pertaining to the health are elements being contributive factors to revenue generation and overall growth of the healthcare sector and its associated industries. Escalated use of new inventions, and enhanced technologies along with ascending rate of investments in R&D, are encouraging the scope of the market and revenue growth of the global market.Global Bio-pharma market competition by top manufacturers, with production, price, revenue (value) and market share for each manufacturer; the top players includingPfizer, F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG, Johnson & Johnson Services, Sanofi, Amgen, AbbVie, Merck & Co., Inc, Biogen Idec, Bayer AG, Eli Lilly and Company, Novartis AG GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, AstraZeneca PLC, Abbott LaboratoriesDetailed TOC and Charts & Tables of Bio-pharma Market Research Report available @On the basis of product, this report displays the production, revenue, price, market share and growth rate of each type, primarily split intoMonoclonal Antibodies, Recombinant Proteins, Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor (G-CSF), Interferons, Recombinant Human Insulin, Erythropoietin, Vaccines, Growth Hormones, Purified Proteins, OthersOn 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 Bio-pharma for each application, includingMetabolic Disorders, Oncology, Neurological Disorders, Cardiovascular Diseases, Inflammatory and Infectious DiseasesOthers Prime countries, regions, and sub-sectors have been studied for giving improved knowledge of the market scope across the globe. The market report classifies the market by assessing the manufacturing chain, market manufacturers and their contribution in the industry, dominant policies and revenue structure, and regulatory aspects. The geographical markets of the Bio-pharma Market are thoroughly examined by assessing the profits garnered, product pricing, demand, logistics, production capacity, and supply, along with past performance of the market in the said region.The report renders penetrates into the competitive landscape of the global market industry along with major manufacturers profiled in the report. The Bio-pharma Market is extremely competitive and regulated. Lastly, trends, plans, company profiles, business strategies, M&As, financial metrics and strategical business planning of the leading market players in the global market of this industry have been analyzed in this study.Check for Discount @Some points from TOC:-Global Bio-pharma Market Research Report 20171 Bio-pharma Market Overview1.1 Product Overview and Scope of Bio-pharma1.2 Bio-pharma Segment by Type (Product Category)1.2.1 Global Bio-pharma Production and CAGR (%) Comparison by Type (Product Category) (2012-2022)1.2.2 Global Bio-pharma Production Market Share by Type (Product Category) in 20161.2.3 Monoclonal Antibodies1.2.4 Recombinant Proteins1.2.5 Granulocyte-Colony Stimulating Factor (G-CSF)1.2.6 Interferons1.2.7 Recombinant Human Insulin1.2.8 Erythropoietin1.2.9 Vaccines1.2.10 Growth Hormones1.2.11 Purified Proteins1.2.12 Others1.3 Global Bio-pharma Segment by Application1.3.1 Bio-pharma Consumption (Sales) Comparison by Application (2012-2022)1.3.2 Metabolic Disorders1.3.3 Oncology1.3.4 Neurological Disorders1.3.5 Cardiovascular Diseases1.3.6 Inflammatory and Infectious Diseases1.3.7 Others1.4 Global Bio-pharma Market by Region (2012-2022)1.4.1 Global Bio-pharma 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 Bio-pharma (2012-2022)1.5.1 Global Bio-pharma Revenue Status and Outlook (2012-2022)1.5.2 Global Bio-pharma Capacity, Production Status and Outlook (2012-2022)Enquiry before Buying @Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-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 world's most complete and current database of expert insights on global industries, companies, products, and trends.Jia WangRoom B1510, ShijiKemao Building, No.66, Zhongguancun East Road,Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, China
Electric Enclosures Market Global Industry Analysis Forecast 2016 - 2024

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An electrical enclosure is a cabinet which contains various electrical and electronic components. It serves two purposes: protecting the user from electrical shock and safeguarding the parts it covers from external damage. Electrical enclosures are designed to be functional as well as provide aesthetic value. They may also need to exhibit favorable properties with regards to electromagnetic interference, power dissipation, and electrical breakdown. The requirements of electrical enclosures are governed by various national regulatory standards. Stringent regulations are applicable to those used in hazardous areas facing fire or explosion risks, particularly applicable to locations such as coal mines and chemical plants where potential risks include flammable gases, combustible dust, and other volatile vapors or particles. Areas prone to lightning strikes or floods may also warrant use of special types of electrical enclosures.Browse Market Research Report @:Electrical enclosures protect electrical equipment such as power generators, transformers, and various telecommunication devices and contain electrical components such as knobs, switches, and displays. They are available in various sizes; although broadly, those used for industrial applications are larger than those used in residential areas. This market can be segmented into two groups: enclosures used in the power generation process and those used for transmission & distribution (T&D). This market can also be segmented by the type of material used to manufacture the enclosure into the following categories: plastics, plastic composites, metals, and metal alloys. Plastics typically used for electrical enclosures include acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), polycarbonate, and styrenic polymers, which can also be reinforced with glass or carbon fibers to increase their mechanical and temperature resistance. PVC was commonly employed for this purpose but its usage has been discouraged as it does not meet modern standards. Among metals and alloys, stainless steel, carbon steel, and aluminum find wide usage. Metal enclosures are sturdier, durable, and offer better protection to environmental elements but are also costlier and difficult to mold compared to plastic enclosures.Increasing demand for energy and electricity is driving the global electrical enclosures market. China is likely to be a lucrative market due to the rapid industrialization in this country. Expansion of the electrical enclosures market in developed countries in Europe & North America is projected to be moderate (as power infrastructure is already well-developed in these regions) and driven by the installation of power stations running on renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind energy. The need to upgrade the power infrastructure in emerging countries is likely to propel the market for electrical enclosures in the near future. India, Indonesia, and Nigeria are estimated to invest substantially in the utilities sector in the next decade as several parts in these countries do not have access to reliable sources of electricity. The use of better quality materials to manufacture electrical enclosures is also anticipated to become prevalent in these countries with low-cost materials such as PVC expected to be phased out. Demand for good quality electrical enclosures is high in the oil & gas industry. Other major end-users of this market include the power generation, water & wastewater, and mining industries.The global electrical enclosures market is highly competitive and fragmented with the presence of a few prominent companies and a high number of smaller players in the unorganized sector. Key players in this market are Eaton Corporation, ABB Ltd, Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, Schneider Electric SE, Hubbell, Inc., Emerson Electric Company, Legrand, Eldon Holding AB, Pentair Plc., and AZZ Inc.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @:The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information for every facet of the market, including but not limited to: Regional markets, technology, types, and applications.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a 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
Microcontroller Embedded Systems Market: Industry Analysis, Trend, Demand and Global Forecast to 2027

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Market Scenario:Microcontrollers are the small computer which is integrated on a single circuit and includes a core processor, memory, and some programmable input and output peripherals. This market has seen tremendous opportunities as consumption percentage of electronic goods are increasing. Automotive is the biggest market for microcontroller embedded systems and as this industry has grown in last decade, demand for microcontroller embedded systems has been boosted up.Market Segmentation:For the better understanding of the report, microcontroller embedded systems has been segmented on the basis of scale, type and applications. By scale, the market has been segmented as small scale embedded system, medium scale embedded system and large scale embedded system. By type includes- software and hardware. By application market has been segmented as automotive, healthcare, telecommunication, consumer electronics, aerospace and defense and others.Request a Sample Copy @Key Players of Microcontroller Embedded Systems Market: Altera Corporation (US) Atmel Corporation (US) ARM Holdings (UK) Infineon Technologies (Germany) Freescale Semiconductor (US) Intel Corporation (US) Microsoft Corporation (US) Microchip Technology (US) Renesas Electronics Corporation (Japan) NXP Semiconductors (Netherlands)Study Objective of Microcontroller Embedded Systems: To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast of the various segments and sub-segments of the global microcontroller embedded systems market. To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth. To analyze the Microcontroller Embedded market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, and Rest of the World (ROW). To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective. To provide country level analysis of the market for segment, by scale, by type and by applications and sub-segments. To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market. To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the global microcontroller embedded systems market.Access Report Details @Industry News:In March 2016, Altera Corporation unveiled the Trans receiver technology which will help in data exchange up to 56 Gbps.In June 2016, Intel Corporation introduced the Xeon Phi processor for fast and efficient work in data processing.In February 2016, Atmel Corporation launches worlds highest performing low power 8-bit MCUs.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 Components, Application, Logistics and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Contact:Akash AnandMarket Research FutureOffice No. 528, Amanora ChambersMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Next-generation Cancer Diagnostics Market: Global Analysis, Opportunities and Forecast To 2024

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The cancer diagnostics industry is projected to witness lucrative growth in the next few years due to the increasing number of technologically advanced products providing accurate test results in the field of diagnostics. Additionally, they also help with therapeutic monitoring and early diagnosis of cancer. Significant improvements observed in the shift from traditional laboratory testing to rapid point of care testing (POC) drive this market. Commercialization of products such as diagnostic kits, instruments, reagents, and consumables plays a role as well. The decreasing cost of genetic sequencing, rising incidence of cancer, increasing interest in the microfluidic hip technology, and the use of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer management have also aided the development of the next-generation cancer diagnostics market.Browse through Next-generation Cancer Diagnostics Market report to know what factors will shape the market by 2024:Government measures taken by developed and developing countries to increase the number of research projects in accordance with oncology and preventative diagnosis are anticipated to propel the next-generation cancer diagnostics market over the next few years. The application of tumor diagnostics in the epigenetic analysis and CTC enumeration sectors to monitor tumorigenesis is predicted to make a difference as well. However, the market may be limited by the high laboratory infrastructure costs involved. Insufficient reimbursement policies for innovative technologies and the stringent regulatory procedures and guidelines followed by the government are other factors affecting the global next-generation cancer diagnostics market.This market is segmented by technology into the following categories: qPCR & multiplexing, protein microarrays, next-generation sequencing (NSG), DNA microarrays, lab-on-a-chip, and reverse transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR), of which microarrays and PCR are expected to dominate the market due to their rising usage in invitro diagnostics by hospitals and private diagnostics clinics.Based on application, the next-generation cancer diagnostics market is classified into the following groups: genetic analysis, biomarker development, epigenetic analysis, and CTC analysis & proteomic analysis, of which biomarkers and CTC analysis are likely to drive the market as these techniques are widely used in drug discovery and development.The market, in terms of cancer type, is divided into the cervical, breast, colorectal, lung, and other varieties. Its function-based divisions are cancer screening, companion diagnostics, therapeutic monitoring, prognostics, and risk analysis, of which diagnostics and therapeutic monitoring are projected to be the leading segments.Geographically the next-generation cancer diagnostics market is distributed over North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is anticipated to dominate the market due to favorable government initiatives (such as the 80% by 2018 movement for colon cancer detection), healthy R&D investments, personalized medicine, development of next-generation sequencing, and availability of a technologically advanced health care research framework. The market in Asia Pacific is projected to register a prominent growth rate owing to the development of health care infrastructure, significantly large untapped market base, and economic development in the region.Request a sample of this report to know what opportunities will emerge in the rapidly evolving Next-generation Cancer Diagnostics Market by 2024:Prominent players in the next-generation cancer diagnostics market include Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc; Opko Health, Inc; Myriad Genetics, Inc.; Agilent Technologies; GE Healthcare Cepheid; Koninklijke Philips N.V; F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd; Qiagen; Novartis AG; Abbott; PerkinElmer, Inc.; Genomic Health, Inc.; Illumina, Inc; and Sysmex Corporation.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:
Bio-Electronic Market Analysis, Market Size, Application Analysis, Regional Outlook, Competitive Strategies And Forecasts, 2022

Bio-Electronic Market

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This report studies the global Bio-Electronic market, analyzes and researches the Bio-Electronic development status and forecast in United States, EU, Japan, China, India and Southeast Asia.This report focuses on the top players in global market, likeBioelectronics Corporation, Avago, Honeywell International, Danaher Corporations, Omnivision Technologies, Sensirion, Medtronics, BodyMedia, Sotera Wireless, Siemens, Roche, Universal Biosensors, Abbott, Beckman Coulter, Life SensorsTo Know More About This Report, Click Here:The Report Cloaks:The report Bio-Electronic Market Size, Status and Forecast 2022 accentuates the primary dynamics of Bio-Electronic sector. The potency of this sector has been examined deeply along with the important challenges and future growth potential. The report helps in improving the decision making abilities and assists to create an efficient counter strategies in order to gain competitive advantage. Discussions pertaining to present market situation and forecasts of the sector have also been covered in this market report. The report is precisely formulated after a completely reviewing the market study and key challenges. Lastly, the report states several key factors, company review, product listing, sales analysis and revenue generation of Bio-Electronic segment during the forecast period.Market segment by Type, Bio-Electronic can be split intoBio-Electronic Technology, Bio-Electronic Devices, Bio-Electronic MedicineMarket segment by Application, Bio-Electronic can be split intoDisease Prevention, Disease Diagnose and Treatment, Prosthetics and therapeutics, Biomedical ResearchFor Requesting a Sample Copy of This Report, Please Visit:Table of ContentsGlobal Bio-Electronic Market Size, Status and Forecast 20221 Industry Overview of Bio-Electronic1.1 Bio-Electronic Market Overview1.1.1 Bio-Electronic Product Scope1.1.2 Market Status and Outlook1.2 Global Bio-Electronic Market Size and Analysis by Regions1.2.1 United States1.2.2 EU1.2.3 Japan1.2.4 China1.2.5 India1.2.6 Southeast Asia1.3 Bio-Electronic Market by Type1.3.1 Bio-Electronic Technology1.3.2 Bio-Electronic Devices1.3.3 Bio-Electronic Medicine1.4 Bio-Electronic Market by End Users/Application1.4.1 Disease Prevention1.4.2 Disease Diagnose and Treatment1.4.3 Prosthetics and therapeutics1.4.4 Biomedical Research3 Company (Top Players) Profiles3.1 Bioelectronics Corporation3.1.1 Company Profile3.1.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.1.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.1.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.1.5 Recent Developments3.2 Avago3.2.1 Company Profile3.2.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.2.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.2.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.2.5 Recent Developments3.3 Honeywell International3.3.1 Company Profile3.3.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.3.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.3.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.3.5 Recent Developments3.4 Danaher Corporations3.4.1 Company Profile3.4.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.4.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.4.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.4.5 Recent Developments3.5 Omnivision Technologies3.5.1 Company Profile3.5.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.5.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.5.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.5.5 Recent Developments3.6 Sensirion3.6.1 Company Profile3.6.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.6.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.6.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.6.5 Recent Developments3.7 Medtronics3.7.1 Company Profile3.7.2 Main Business/Business Overview3.7.3 Products, Services and Solutions3.7.4 Bio-Electronic Revenue (Value) (2012-2017)3.7.5 Recent Developments3.8 BodyMedia3.8.1 Company ProfileEnquiry before Buying @Email- sales@qyresearchgroups.comWeb-Follow Us:LinkedIn | Twitter| FacebookQY 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.Jia WangRoom B1510, ShijiKemao Building, No.66, Zhongguancun East Road,Haidian District, Beijing, 100190, China
Alpha Mannosidosis Global Market Research Report and Industry Analysis Report - 2024

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Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) announces the addition of a new report titled Alpha Mannosidosis Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2017 - 2024, With increase in the incidence of alpha mannosidosis worldwide the market for treatment is expected to grow in coming years. Alpha Mannosidosis is a rare inherited condition that leads to problems in organs and tissues of the body.Request For Sample Report:Global Alpha Mannosidosis Market: OverviewThe disease is of three types such as Type I, Type II and Type III. Type I is a mild form, type II is moderate form of disease and most commonly observed, whereas, type III is the severe form of disease. Alpha Mannosidosis affects 1 in every 10, 00,000 people worldwide. Alpha-mannosidosis affects men and women equally across the globe. Bone marrow transplant (BMT) and Enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) are the two treatment options for alpha mannosidosis. Bone marrow transplant (BMT) has been conventionally used universally to treat patients suffering from alpha mannosidosis.Some of the factors driving this market include market exclusivity of orphan drugs, fee reductions and tax credits, increasing investment in the rare disease treatment etc. However, the factors such as high cost of orphan drugs and lack of awareness are expected to hamper the market demand.Make an Enquiry:Global Alpha Mannosidosis Market: SegmentationThe alpha mannosidosis market has been segmented based on treatment, indication, end-user and geography. Based on treatment, the market has been segmented into bone marrow transplant (BMT) and enzyme replacement therapy (ERT). Enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) is expected to dominate the market with a considerable share in 2017. With the expected increase in the incidence of alpha mannosidosis the market is expected to grow at a high rate in the next few years. BMT is expected to grow steadily due to the morbidity issues connected with the treatment. In terms of indication, the market has been categorized into type I, type II and type III. The market for type III segment is projected to expand at the maximum rate during the forecast period. Type II accounts for a considerable market share at present. Based on end-user, the market has been segmented into hospitals and specialty clinics. The hospitals segment dominated the market and the trend is likely to continue driven by increasing patient burden due to rise in patient burden.Global Alpha Mannosidosis Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the market has been segmented into five regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa. Asia Pacific is expected to dominate the market in 2017 with a considerable market share. North America and Europe also account for substantial portion of the market. The report identifies and explains key market drivers, restraints and opportunities. The report also provides Porters five forces analysis for comprehensive market understanding. Furthermore, market attractiveness analysis provides insights to most attractive regional markets to invest in the future.Browse Full Report With TOC:Key Players Mentioned in this Research Report are:Zymenex, a company focused on R&D on biologics designed to fight rare and life-threatening genetic diseases has developed recombinant enzyme indicated for patients with alpha-Mannosidosis known as Lamazym (velmanase alfa). Zymenex has been acquired by Chiesi Farmaceutici S.p.A. Lamazym has received orphan drug designation is Europe and the U.S.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 StatesTelephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Google+:Linked in:Twitter:
Metalworking Fluids Market : Dynamics, Forecast, Analysis and Supply Demand 2017 - 2025

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Global Metalworking Fluids Market: OverviewMetalworking fluids is a term used for a range of fluids such as oils that are used for reducing fiction and heat, apart from removing metal particles in industrial processes. Primarily used as lubricity bases in formulation of water-soluble grinding and cutting fluids, metalworking fluids are deployed in forming operations such as rolling, stamping, and drawing. These fluids can be mixtures of anti-weld agents, oils, corrosion inhibitors, emulsifiers, biocides, extreme pressure additives and buffers.Global Metalworking Fluid s Market: Key TrendsThe usage of metalworking fluids in several end-use industries such as appliances, aerospace, machinery and automotive are likely to result in increased demand. Presently, there has been a rising preference for synthetic fluids. As against conventional fluids, synthetic fluids possess advanced functions and forms, providing precise concentration measurements and reducing the chances of oil contamination. The growing demand for these metalworking fluids is expected to accelerate the market expansion.Request Sample Copy of the Report @On the other hand, the occupational and environmental hazards posed by these fluids are considered key factors restricting the growth of the market. Workers who are exposed to these fluids might develop respiratory disorders such as asthma, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, and chronic bronchitis apart from skin related conditions.However, the negative impact of these deterrents can be counterbalanced by the introduction of bio-based metalworking fluids. These are obtained from natural materials such as plant oil and animal fats. As bio-based metalworking fluids are not only cost-efficient, but also environment friendly and safe for workers, this segment is slated for stupendous growth.Request TOC of the Report @Global Metalworking Fluids Market: Market PotentialA number of product innovations in the field of metalworking fluids have cropped up over the last few years. For example, in February 2017, TRIM MicroSol 590XT, a new metalworking fluid launched by Master Chemical Corporation, received the approval of Boeing, a leading aerospace company. The product is to be used in the making of aircraft families such as 767, 737, and 777.In the same month, a nitrate-free acid mixture possessing extraordinary resistance to ferrous corrosion was launched by Verdezyne Inc., in partnership with Aceto Corporation. This product can be used in the production of metalworking fluids.Similarly, Milacron Holdings Corp. announced the launch of CIMPERIAL 35-880, a highly efficient emulsion fluid designed for heavy-duty machine operations, in early February 2017. Aimed at catering to the needs of aerospace sector, the product can also be used in automotive and industrial applications. The product claims to have high resistance to corrosion, apart from boasting CimShield technology.Global Metalworking Fluids Market: Regional OutlookThe metalworking fluids market in North America is expected to display tremendous growth. Benefitted by the increasing opportunities in the U.S., this region is likely to emerge at the fore of the global landscape. Steady recovery of the automotive manufacturing and original equipment manufacturers (OEM) from economic downturn is likely to aid expansion. Europe might also witness considerable growth, driven by the presence of leading automotive manufacturers in Germany.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Asia Pacific promises great potential for further expansion owing to the flourishing automotive sector, large scale industrialization, growing infrastructural development, and beneficial policies of the governments. The Asian countries such as India, China, Indonesia, and Japan are likely to emerge as the key contributors.Global Metalworking Fluids Market: Competitive AnalysisIn terms of competition, the market appears to be highly fragmented, with smaller players catering to a majority of end users. Some of the major companies operating in the global market for metalworking fluids are Castrol Limited, FUCHS, The Lubrizol Corporation, Apar Industries Ltd, Idemitsu Kosan Co. Ltd, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Lukoil Oil Company, Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP, Total S.A., and Chem Arrow Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Ultra Hard Material Cutting Machines Global Market Research Report and Industry Analysis Report - 2024

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Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) announces the addition of a new report titled Ultra Hard Material Cutting Machines Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024, Ultra hard material cutting machines are efficient tools that are used to cut, drill and groove various industrial super hard materials which include cubic boron nitride (CBN), polycrystalline diamond (PCD) and materials produced through chemical vapor deposition (CVD) among others.Request For Sample Report:Global Ultra Hard Material Cutting Machines Market: OverviewPCD falls under a cutting material type where the diamonds could be sintered to metal matrix. Each of this individual grains itself forms a mono crystalline. Only industrial ultra hard materials are considered under the scope of the report.Global Ultra Hard Material Cutting Machines Market: Market DynamicsLatest technology is one of the key factor driving the ultra hard cutting machine market globally. Latest technologies include new fiber laser technology in cutting ultra-hard materials. The fiber laser technology is 30 times faster than electrical discharge machines (EDM) and can cut ultra material like cubic boron nitride (CBN) and polycrystalline diamond (PCD).Growing application for synthetic-diamond semiconductor substrates is another factor driving the growth of the global ultra hard material cutting machines market. The growth in demand for synthetic-diamond semiconductor substrates is directly proportional to rise in demand for ultra hard cutting machines as they are required for cutting this material and giving them shape.Make an Enquiry:In addition, curving of complex shapes is easily achieved by ultra hard material cutting machines like the EDM as compared to using traditional used cutting machines. High precision rate can be achieved using the ultra hard material cutting machines, as it requires minimal space and does not damage the part with excess cutting tool pressure. Thus, the conjoint effect of all these drivers is set to bolster the growth of the global ultra hard material cutting machines market in the coming years. This factor is hindering the growth of the market at the global level, particularly in the developing countries.Rise in application of CBN as a substitute for diamond is key driver for the growth in demand for CBN cutting machines over the forecast period. The chemical vapor deposition (CVD) finds a wide range of application with the end industries which involves enhancement and modification of substrate. Other end use industries which require CVD technologies involve cutting tools, microelectronics, medical and decorative coatings. CVD finds application in machining and cutting tools, thermal conductors, electronics and gemstones. Polycrystalline diamond (PCD) tipped tools are used in cutting and hard rock mining applications.Global Ultra Hard Material Cutting Machines Market: Regional AnalysisBased on type, the global market has been segmented into Electrical Discharge Machines (EDM), Laser Cutting and Others. The Others segment mainly includes grinding machines among others By geography, the ultra hard material cutting machines market has been segregated into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin America. Country level cross sectional data have also been incorporated in the report. Therefore, the global ultra hard material cutting machines market report offers extensive study of the market along with providing the forecast of the market in terms of revenue (USD Million) and volume (Units) from 2016  2024.Browse Full Report With TOC:Global Ultra Hard Material Cutting Machines Market: Competitive LandscapeThe key players in the global ultra hard material cutting machines market have been competitively profiled across the five broad geographic regions. This competitive landscape is inclusive of the various business strategies adopted by these major players and their recent developments in the field of ultra hard material cutting machines. Further, the report includes the market attractiveness analysis of the electrical discharge machines (EDM), laser cutting machines and others. Ultra hard materials used for only industrial application have been covered under the scope of the report An exhaustive analysis of the market dynamics of the global market that is inclusive of the market drivers, restraints and opportunities is covered under the purview of the study.Some of the major players operating in the ultra hard material cutting machines market are: DMG Mori(Japan), GF Machining Solutions (Switzerland), Bystronic, Incorporation (The U.S.), Coherent Incorporation (The U.S.), OGI Systems Ltd.( Israel), Coborn Engineering Company Limited(U.K.), Rollomatic Inc.(The U.S), United Grinding GmbH(Germany), Kennametal, Inc.(The U.S) and ANCA(Australia) among others.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 StatesTelephone: +1-518-730-0559Email: sales@mrrse.comWebsite:Google+:Linked in:Twitter:
Hydrazine Hydrate Market demand will increase by 2017 - 2025

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Global Hydrazine Hydrate Market: OverviewDue to wide-ranging chemical properties, hydrazine hydrate finds application in numerous end-use industries. It is an inorganic compound that is manufactured commercially by using three production processes such as Bayer-Ketazine process, Olin-Raschig process, and Peroxide process. Hydrazine hydrate is used as a key blowing agent in the polymer industry. It has an odor similar to ammonia and is typically colorless. The exposure to hydrazine hydrate is restricted to some extent due to its toxic nature.Global Hydrazine Hydrate Market: Key TrendsThe global hydrazine hydrate market is primarily driven by the growing demand for polymer foams in the polymer industry and is expected to have a great impact on the market during the forecast period. Food containers, vinyl sheets, structural foam wood grain furniture, and foamed core pipes find extensive usage of hydrazine hydrate, thus propelling the market growth.The need for better quality agricultural food products will raise the demand for agrochemicals. Due to its chemical nature, hydrazine hydrate is widely used in the manufacturing of several insecticides, pesticides, and fungicides, thereby positively impacting the market growth.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Various environmental and industry usage norms have put a restriction on the usage of hydrazine hydrate due to its toxic nature. Carcinogenic properties of hydrazine hydrate will exacerbate the demand further.Global Hydrazine Hydrate Market: Market PotentialHydrazine hydrate finds extensive application in the agriculture industry due to its extensive range of chemical properties. Agro-chemicals worth US$4.1 billion may go off patent by 2020, thereby opening doors for many industry players. Several Indian agro-chemical companies are preparing to introduce new products in the market that will double up the profits of the agro-chemicals market, in turn aiding the growth of the hydrazine hydrate market.Hydrazine hydrates seamless characteristics can also be applied in satellites. Though toxic in nature, hydrazine hydrate was recently used in the Sentinel-2B satellite. In a particularly delicate operation, one of the most recent tasks was to fuel the satellite with hydrazine. Being extremely toxic, only a few specialists wearing scape suits remain in the cleanroom to fill 133 kg of hydrazine and the task was successfully carried out.Request TOC of the Report @Global Hydrazine Hydrate Market: Regional OutlookGeographically, the Asia Pacific region is expected to hold a significant share in the global market, and will be leading during the forecast period as well. Its dominance over the said market can be mainly attributed to the escalating demand for hydrazine hydrate in polymer and agrochemical industries, especially in China, India, and certain Southeast Asian countries.Until the late 1990s, the global market for hydrazine hydrate was led by North America, but strict regulation norms were implemented due to health hazards and experimental trials on rodents, which invariably had a negative impact on the regional market.Global Hydrazine Hydrate Market: Competitive AnalysisThe prominent players in the global hydrazine hydrate market include Otsuka-MGC Chemical Company, Japan Fine Chemical Inc., Arkema SA, Weifang and LANXESS, Yibin Tianyuan Group Co. Ltd., Tanshang Chen Hong Industrial Co., Ltd., Nippon Carbide Industries Co. Inc., Lonza Group Limited, YAXING Chemical Co Ltd., and Hunan Zhuzhou Chemical Industry Group Company Ltd.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@The global hydrazine hydrate market is moderately consolidated with leading players accounting for more than 50% of the global market in 2015. The market is expected to score healthy growth during the forecast period due to heavy demand for polymer products and corporate mergers.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Building Automation Systems Market : Commercial segment to Reach US$ 63 Bn by 2026

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The global market for building automation systems is crowded with several players. The Rheem Manufacturing Company, United Technologies, General Electric, Lennox International, Philips Lighting Holding B.V., Ingersoll-Rand Plc. Honeywell International Inc., Johnson Controls are some of the major players contributing to the growth of the market. They are establishing smart IT backed platforms to provide advanced building automation systems to their customers.In reference to a new report published by Persistence Market Research, the global building automation systems market will showcase significant growth between 2016 and 2026. Manufacturers of building automation systems are rapidly adopting new regulations set across the globe and they are also lining up new products to meet rising market demand. The Persistence Market Research report titled, Building Automation Systems Market: Global Industry Analysis & Forecast, 2016-2026, talks in detail about the market psyche and also scrutinizes the market drifts which are expected to impact the future of the global building automation systems market. The global building automation systems market was valued more than US$ 43 Bn in 2015 and is expected to mint better revenue by the end of 2016, reaching approximately US$ 48 Bn. The market will continue its journey towards expansion and the market worth will reach US$ 141.1 Bn towards the end of 2026. The global building automation systems market will record a CAGR of 11.1% during the projected period.A sample of this report is available upon request @Governments around the globe are rolling out different precautionary measures to cut down the wastage of energy. Different new regulatory methods are adopted to reduce the consumption of energy. This is a massive booster for the global building automation systems market. Several big economies around the globe such as Europe, US and Japan have already curated some restrictive methods to revise the previous trends. This opens a new window of opportunity for the global building automation systems market. A slew of new technologies that are eroding this market are actively affecting the global canvas of the market. Better and more advanced technologies are enhancing the end-user experience and also increasing market outreach. The introduction of smart web-based, cloud-based control networks backed by the Internet of Things (IOT), mobile technologies, integrated building systems and facility management solutions are expanding the periphery of the global building automation systems market. Last but not the least, the urgent need for consolidated security solutions is also pushing ahead the market growth of the global building automation systems market. These key factors will complement the all-round development of the market within the forecast period but there are also certain key factors that might barricade the normal development of the market within the period of forecast. Building automation systems come with a high price tag and this is expected to impact their widespread adoption. The absence of skilled manpower is another market growth deterrent.Request to view table of content @The rising incidences of security violations across the globe are likely to impact the growth of the security and surveillance segment in the global building automation systems market. The security and surveillance segment will exhibit a robust growth in terms of revenue and will overshadow the market within the forecast period. The commercial segment will contribute notably to the global building automation systems market. Towards the end of the projected period, the commercial segment will touch a market worth of more than US$ 63 Bn and will record a CAGR of 10.9%. Apart from this the government and residential segments will also project promising growth trends by 2026 end. North America will lure maximum investors, as the building automation systems market in this region will exceed a whopping value of US$ 55 Bn by the close of 2026.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:
Restless Legs Syndrome Treatment Market: Advanced Technologies & Growth Opportunities in Global Industry by 2024

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Restless legs syndrome, also called Willis-Ekbom disease, is a neurological disorder. It triggers an urge in patients to move their legs. Because the syndrome usually occurs during sleep, it is also considered a type of sleep disorder. People suffering from restless legs syndrome often feel an overwhelming desire to rigorously move their legs, the intensity and frequency of which leads to unpleasant pain in their limbs. This also disturbs their sleep patterns, affecting their health adversely. The condition usually aggravates at night.Obtain Report Details @Higher prevalence of restless legs syndrome is noted in women than in men. RLS can affect people of all ages but is mostly observed in middle-aged and elderly people. The most common symptoms of RLS include uncomfortable itching and pain in the legs that may cause a disruption in the sleep pattern and ultimately affect a patients quality of life. Despite its increasing prevalence, the precise cause of RLS is not yet known. Nevertheless, with extensive investigations being conducted in the field, the RLS market is expected to gain momentum in the near future. As of now, experts attribute the increasing incidence of the disease to genetic factors and instabilities in the dopaminergic balance.While researchers are yet to discover a specific cure for the disorder, drugs presently available in the market ensure symptomatic treatment. They help in relieving the uneasiness commonly experienced in the disorder. The report studies the prospects for the global restless legs syndrome treatment market in the forthcoming years. The impact of research and development activities on the markets future outlook is examined in the report in detail. It also presents insights into the various social and economic factors that will influence the markets growth trajectory between 2016 and 2024.Restless legs syndrome causes uneasiness in patients and is also associated with other health issues such as dizziness, headaches, drowsiness, flatulence, dry mouth, and nausea. Patients suffering from restless legs syndrome may also suffer from psychiatric disorders such as depression and a decreased libido. Apart from these, labyrinthitis and other ear disorders, fatigue, irritability, peripheral edema, and nutritional and metabolism disorders indicated by weight gain or increased appetite are also related to the syndrome.The treatment of restless legs syndrome is still a relatively untapped space. The market is projected to exhibit growth at an increased rate with the development of new drugs, which promise higher efficiency and minimum side effects.Make an Enquiry @Based on product type, the global restless legs syndrome treatment market can be segmented into Neupro/Leganto, Mirapex/Sifrol/Mirapexin, HORIZANT/Regnite, and Requip. Restless legs syndrome treatment can be segmented into pharmacological and nonpharmacological.In order to study the competitive landscape prevailing in the market, the report profiles companies such as GlaxoSmithKline plc., Kyowa Hakko Kirin Co., Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH, Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Manhattan Pharmaceuticals. The strengths and weaknesses of the companies are weighed out in the report using SWOT analysis. The analysis also helps the report gauge the threats and opportunities that these companies could face in the near future.The report offers a complete databank about the global restless legs syndrome treatment market by providing in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions. By doing so, the research report serves as a repository of analysis and information regarding every facet of the market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Research report covers the Bulk Container Packaging Market Forecasts and Growth, 2017 - 2025

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Bulk Container Packaging Market: OverviewBulk container packaging refers to products that are used for storing and transporting beverages, non-hazardous chemicals, oils & fat, pharmaceuticals, and food products in high volumes. Worldwide, bulk container liners, flexitanks, and flexible intermediate bulk containers are predominantly used for bulk container packaging solutions.Bulk Container Packaging Market: Key TrendsIncreasing adoption of flexitank for the transportation of non-hazardous chemicals and food ingredients is the major factor driving the global bulk container packaging market. Flexitanks offer value added advantages over other bulk container products such as barrels or drums, ISO containers, and intermediate bulk containers. Other advantages of flexitanks include low filling time, high capacity that ranges from 14,000 liters to 24,000 liters, and less number of operators. Moreover, flexitanks require much less installation and loading time as compared to other bulk container packaging products.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Flexitanks are suitable for the transportation of a range of beverages, food additives, and other liquids. These products offer other advantages such as high payloads, more space, low weight, low contamination risk, and eco-friendliness that will have a positive influence on the growth of the bulk container packaging market.Bulk container liners, flexible intermediate bulk container, and flexitanks are mostly manufactured using petrochemicals derivatives such as polyethylene and polypropylene. Thus, fluctuating oil prices are having a negative effect on the growth of the bulk container packaging market.Nevertheless, the increasing demand for a range of beverages and non-hazardous chemicals from BRIC nations is expected to substantially stimulate the bulk container packaging market in the near future.Bulk Container Packaging Market: Market PotentialThe bulk container packaging market features the presence of key players at several stages across the value chain. In this context, J F Hillebrand, the Germany-based leading freight services giant has forayed into flexitank production technology. The J F Hillebrand group has purchased Trans Ocean Distribution, the leading name in flexitank production and technology. Following this deal, J F Hillebrand has acquired three factories in Malaysia, China, and South Africa and a dedicated R&D team that continues to develop enhanced flexitank products including tailor-made products.Request TOC of the Report @Bulk Container Packaging Market: Regional OutlookNorth America stood as the leading regional market in the recent past. The growth of the regional market is driven by increasing exports of corn, grain, oilseeds, and animal feed from the U.S. For example, in the U.S., one-third of the total agricultural land is cultivated for export of agricultural produce. Moreover, the region also accounts for export of large volumes of beverage across the globe. These factors are collectively propelling the growth of the regional market.Asia Pacific market for bulk container packaging is expected to display substantial growth in the near future. The growing population in India and China has led to an exponential rise in imports of food and beverage. This, along with changing lifestyles and rising disposable income has led to the increased consumption of fruit juices, beer, wine, etc. that requires safe packaging for long distance transportation. These factors are expected to favor the growth of the Asia Pacific market for bulk container packaging in the coming years.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Bulk Container Packaging Market: Competitive OutlookSome of the key companies operating in the global bulk container packaging market include BLT Flexitank Industrial Co, Ltd., Braid Logistics, Environmental Packaging Technologies, Qingdao LAF Packaging, SIA Flexitanks, Trust Flexitanks, Shandong Anthente New Materials Technology, KriCon, Buscherhoff Spezialverpackung, K Tank Supply Limited, MY Flexitank, and Trust Flexitanks.Key players have s presence across several stages of the industry value chain, which enhances their presence globally. Moreover, various product manufacturers are engaged in high-quality product packaging, which allows safe product transportation without damage or spillage.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Learn details of the Advances in Food Sorting Machines Market Forecast and Segments, 2015-2025

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Automation is becoming more of a requirement than an option in the food processing industry. The rigorous quality and cost controls required in the food industry is making it more critical. Production of high grade food requires capable and efficient inspection and sorting systems, in the operations and production line. The food is sorted by color, size, shape, specific gravity prior to inspection and other criteria depending upon the raw material and application.Global interest is increasing towards the quality of food consumed along with the stringent legislations on product quality and operating procedures. In the food industry, the product specification is extremely important, and is one of those area where new developments are crossing the boundaries. The food industry is under immense pressure of meeting the demands of growing world population.The global population is becoming urbanized and there is heavy industrialization seen in the emerging economies. This leads to an upward trend towards convenience foods that are healthy, nutritious and easy to prepare. Food security is an emerging challenge for policy makers and companies in the food supply chain. Over the period food production will be under threat from climate change, competing land uses, erosion and diminishing supplies of clean water. One of the solutions to this dilemma is increased efficiency and waste reduction in the food supply chain. Food sorting machines offer increase in efficiency by selectively filtering out the undesired materials from the main food. The main purpose is separation of foreign seeds and bodies, such as unhealthy or spotted grains. The insertion of optical sorter into strategic positions of the milling process facilitates and optimizes the whole cleaning process. Worldwide the optical sorters are being used in the food industry. Its highly adopted in the processing of harvested foods such as fruits, potatoes, vegetables and nuts where it achieves non-destructive,100% inspection on full production volume. Since manual sorting is subjective and inconsistent, its not preferred. Optical sorting helps to improve the product quality, increase yields, maximize throughput while reducing labor costs. Since few years the trend is of integration of the traditional mechanical cleaning process with optical sorting machines.Request For Report Sample@Food Sorting Machines Market: Drivers & RestraintsGrowing population, rising urbanization, growing technological awareness, industrialization of emerging economies and increasing per capita income are some of the key factors driving the growth of the food sorting machines market.Environmental Protection Agency regulations on disposal of food waste, changing consumption patterns and smaller households are few of the probable factors restraining the growth of the food sorting machines market.Food Sorting Machines Market: SegmentationThe global food sorting machines market is broadly classified on the basis of product type, technology and geographies.Based on product type, the global food sorting machines market is segmented into:Channel SortersFreefall SortersBelt SortersADR SystemsBased on technology, the global food sorting machines market is segmented into:LaserCameraLEDX-rayFood Sorting Machines Market: OverviewThough food sorting machines is a new technology for emerging economies like India, but in the developed economies like North America and Europe the same technology is in use for years.With growing global population and increasing pressure on food industry to meet the customer demands, the acceptance of food sorting machines is gaining popularity. The global food sorting machines market is expected to expand at a promising CAGR during the forecast period (2015-2025).Request For TOC@Food Sorting Machines Market: Region-wise OutlookThe global food sorting machines market is expected to register a double-digit CAGR for the forecast period. Depending on geographic regions, global food sorting machines market is segmented into seven key regions: North America, South America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Asia Pacific, Japan, and Middle East & Africa. As of 2015, North America dominated the global food sorting machines market in terms of market revenue followed by Europe. Asia Pacific & Japan are projected to expand at a substantial growth and will contribute to the global food sorting machines market value exhibiting a robust CAGR during the forecast period, 2015?2025.Food Sorting Machines Market: Key PlayersSome of the key market participants in global food sorting machines market are Tomra Systems ASA, Sesotec GmbH, Buhler AG, Key Technology, BarcoVision, Satake USA Inc.ABOUT US:Future Market Insights (FMI) is a leading market intelligence and consulting firm. We deliver syndicated research reports, custom research reports and consulting services, which are personalized in nature. FMI delivers a complete packaged solution, which combines current market intelligence, statistical anecdotes, technology inputs, valuable growth insights, an aerial view of the competitive framework, and future market trends.CONTACT:Future Market Insights616 Corporate Way, Suite 2-9018,Valley Cottage, NY 10989,United StatesT: +1-347-918-3531F: +1-845-579-5705Email: sales@futuremarketinsights.comWebsite:
Global Smart Watch Market to Expand at a CAGR of 53.60% from 2014 to 2020 due to Changing Product Perception

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ResearchMoz added Latest Research Report titled " Smart watch Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020 " to it's Large Report database.The growing demand for Smart Wearable technology and the entry of significant number of established players offering consumer electronics is expected to drive the Smart Watch Market. However, limited battery life is expected to be a one of the factors constraining the market growth, with a tradeoff between the overall performance and the battery life. Concern over privacy of the users may also hamper the acceptance of these watches; owing to the availability of user-related statistics on the cloud. Additionally, the existing high costs of the smart watches create an unwillingness for buyer. The smart watch market is currently overrun with companies offering high end products at premium prices. However, with technological advances, increasing commercialization and research and development activities, the market is expected to witness low end products over the forecast period. Moreover, with increasing number of the new entrants, the average selling price of the smart watch is further expected to decline in near future. Recent additions to the smart watch market such as the Android Wear platform by Google, Samsung Gear Live, LG G Watch and Moto 360 are further projected to fuel the growth of the smart watch market in near future.Request for Sample PDF of Premium Research Report with TOC:A smart watch is an automated wristwatch with enhanced functions such as GPS, e-mail alerts and mp3 players along with timings, and functions in similarity with personal digital assistant (PDA). Basic smart watch offers platform for enabling features such as game-playing, translations, and calculations. However modern advanced smart watch is moreover an efficient wearable computer that allows functioning of mobile apps, mobile operating systems and even act as portable media players which plays audio and video files through the Bluetooth technology. Some smart watches feature complete mobile phone capability including calling features. They can be also paired with smart phones through near-field communications (NFC).Smart watch has caught the interest of health conscious users that aim towards fitness tracking and health related issues. Growth traction in sales of smart phone is driving the smart watch market. There are numerous features introduced in smart watches however fitness remains the crucial point of development. For instance Google announced its smart watch that is targeted to deliver real-time distance, time and speed information whenever the user is on a walk.Read All ICT Market Research Reports @Health and fitness are expected to remain the key smart watch applications through the forecast period. Therefore the market is anticipated to witness increase in percentage sales of smart watch by health-conscious consumers which majorly focuses on real-time tracking and feedback of their daily activities.Android is currently dominating the market in terms of the operating system. Google has also introduced Android Wear; an operating system developed for wearable devices and is already working with companies such as LG Corporation, Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics, ASUSTeK Computer Inc. and HTC Corporation. For instance, Google Inc. along with LG Corporation has developed an android based smart watch called the G-watch.Europe and North America currently dominate the overall smart watch market. Increase in [purchasing power and awareness among users are the factors boosting the market in this region. The Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at the fastest rate, on account of high smart phone penetration in the regions. Additionally, strong purchasing power index in this region will decide the growth of the regional industry over the forecast period. The regional market is also anticipated to grow due to the increased product proliferation in India, Singapore and Japan. Companies such as HTC Corporation, ZTE Corporation and Huawei Technologies Co. have been focusing on development of smart watches. For instance HTC has announced the launch of HTC its smart watch, known as the HTC One Wear, in early September. Similarly, Huawei has unveiled its first smart watch, known as the Huawei TalkBand B1, with fitness tracking functions and a pop-out earpiece for voice calls.Some of the major players in smart watch market comprise of Apple Inc., Acer Inc., BlackBerry Ltd, Hon Hai/ Foxconn Technology Group, Google, Inc., LG Electronics, Microsoft Corporation, Qualcomm Telecommunications Company, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sony Mobile Telecommunications, and Toshiba Corporation. Smart phone manufacturers such as Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics are expected to benefit from the growing adoption. Since smart watches are paired with smart phones, the increasing adoption of smart phones is anticipated to fuel the growth of smart watch market.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:
Global Patient Warming Devices Market: Rising Incidence of Chronic Ailments Requiring Surgeries to Fuel Demand

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The global patient warming devices market will continue witnessing high competitive rivalry between the leading companies, says Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new study. Despite its consolidated vendor landscape, the leading market players are looking to consolidate their share via mergers and acquisitions. Acquiring smaller yet established companies will not only help companies expand their regional footprint, it will also add to their existing product portfolio. Also the companies attach much importance to product differentiation, which fosters high marketability to their product. Given the scenario, it is unlikely for the players to expect dwindling competitive forces in the near future.Obtain Report Details @The top three companies, comprising 3M Company, ZOLL Medical Corporation, and Smiths Medical held an estimated 50% of the global patient warming devices market in 2015. 3M being the dominant company, boasts a diverse product portfolio and extensive geographic presence. Strategies adopted by the leading market have considerable influence on the demand and supply forces in the market.As per TMR, the global patient warming devices market will exhibit a CAGR of 5.3% between 2016 and 2024. At this pace, the markets valuation of US$1.73 bn in 2015, will reach US$2.78 bn by the end of 2024.North America and Europe to Showcase Most Lucrative OpportunitiesAccording to the report, the demand for patient warming devices is highest in perioperative care. Given the rising surgeries conducted worldwide for treating various chronic ailments, the demand for patient warming devices during perioperative care will continue increasing through the forecast period.Regionally, North America and Europe emerged as the leading markets for patient warming devices around the world. North America emerged dominant in 2015 with a share of 45.7% based on value, trailed by Europe closely. While there wont be a drastic change in the standing of these regional markets, Asia Pacific will emerge as an important pocket, exhibiting highly lucrative opportunities in the coming years.Rising Number of Surgeries to Fuel Demand for Patient Warming DevicesSurgical processes involve the use of anesthesia, which causes a drastic drop in body temperature of patients, requiring urgent temperature management. The demand for patient warming devices will thus continue remaining high especially in perioperative care. Considering this, the rise in chronic ailments will act in favor of the global patient warming devices market. The rising incidence of cardiovascular and oncological conditions have led to increasing need of surgical interventions worldwide. This will in turn boost the uptake of various patient warming devices in the coming years, said a lead TMR analyst.Besides chronic ailments requiring surgeries, neonates and the rising rate of premature babies will continue keeping the demand for advanced patient warming devices high. Besides this, aging is potentially a leading factor associated with chronic ailments and disorders. Effect of diseases become worse with age hence an individual may take more time to recover. Patient warming devices become highly necessary to such patient. In addition, factors such as the growing adoption of sedentary lifestyle and the increasing incidence of work-related musculoskeletal disorders will have a positive impact on the overall market.Fill the Form for an Exclusive Sample of this Report @Side Effects Associated with Using Patient Warming Devices to Negatively Impact MarketOn the downside, being invasive in nature, the risk of severe side-effects due to the use of patient warming devices cannot be eliminated. Also high excise duties imposed on medical device manufacturers may act as a major restraint. Nevertheless, with the advent of technological advanced products such as targeted temperature management devices, the market is expected to witness a spike in demand in the coming years. In addition, economic development and improving healthcare infrastructure especially in emerging nations are expected to enable growth of the global patient warming devices market in the near future.Information included in the report is based on a TMR report, titled Patient Warming Devices Market (Products - Surface Warming Systems, Intravascular Warming Systems, and Patient Warming Accessories; Applications - Acute Care, Perioperative Care, and New Born Care; End User - Hospitals, Clinics, and Nursing Facilities) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, & Forecast, 2016 - 2024.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Contact UsTransparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Ferroalloy Market : Reports on Manufacturers, Key Vendors, Suppliers 2017 - 2025

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Global Ferroalloy Market: OverviewFerroalloys are studied to hold a high fraction of one or more types of substances such as silicon, manganese, and aluminum and form a wide range of iron alloys. These alloys are used for the eradication of oxygen during the manufacture of iron and steel. They could also be employed for the manufacture of watch bodies, hand railings, dairy equipment, cutlery, automobile bodies, and road rails. Electric arc and blast furnace are the two key methods utilized for producing ferroalloys. Out of the principal sorts of ferroalloy, ferromanganese, ferrosilicon, and ferrochrome are prominently used.Global Ferroalloy Market: Key TrendsFerroalloy is involved in the manufacture of various steel grades, including stainless steel and carbon steel. In the years to come, the demand in the world ferroalloy market is prognosticated to thrive significantly as it looks to ride on the availability of abundant iron ore and need for practicable substitutes in the steel sector. It is estimated that the production volume of the worldwide steel industry could rise considerably. Some of the other important factors of growth are anticipated to take birth from other sectors such as construction, shipbuilding, and automotive.Request Sample Copy of the Report @The demand for ferromanganese alloy is prophesied to gain strength, owing to its easy availability, low cost, and application in foundry sectors for the purpose of improving physical properties. The ferrochrome alloy market could rake in a handsome revenue growth in respect of its ability to enhance physical properties, offer rust-proof features, and provide stainless characteristic to steel.Global Ferroalloy Market: Market PotentialThe ferroalloy market in India is engaged in a close combat with the Malaysia and Indonesia markets as they allow for cheap imports into the Indian land. While an additional capacity of 180,000 tons of ferroalloy is scheduled to hit the market in 2017, a whopping 365,000 tons was brought in the previous year. Besides this, the power tariff in India is extortionate compared to that of the other markets producing ferroalloy. This is likely to put the non-captive producers in a challenging position. There is an upward pressure expected on the part of ferroalloy production because of the anti-dumping duty on phos coke in China. The challenge is anticipated to aggravate with the less availability of low phos coke in India.Request TOC of the Report @Howbeit, the growth in the stainless steel sector displaying a decent percentage is predicted to cover up for the losses. On the backs of India and China alone, the stainless steel market is forecasted to be backed by a telling advancement. Moreover, a differentiating increase in the supply of silico manganese is envisaged to raise the hopes of the global ferroalloy market players.Global Ferroalloy Market: Regional OutlookThroughout the span of the forecast period, Asia Pacific is envisioned to not lose hope in the light of aggressive construction and industrialization activities. The demand in this ferroalloy market could be catapulted as shipbuilding and automobile sectors see a rise and pave way for pronounced infrastructural developments. All of these factors are expected to help Asia Pacific gain a higher share in the world market.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@The Europe ferroalloy market is foreseen to witness a steady growth because of the significant presence of automobile manufacturing firms and strong industrial population in countries such as France, the U.K., and Germany.Global Ferroalloy Market: Competitive LandscapeThe top five companies slated to make a difference in the international ferroalloy market could be Shanghai Shenjia, China Minmetals, S.C. Feral, Sinosteel Jilin, and Eurasian Natural Resources Corp. Due to the presence of a multitude of small, medium, and large scale manufacturers, the global market is projected to possess a highly fragmented nature.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Market : Technological Advancements and Evolving Industry Trends

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Global High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Market: OverviewHigh density polyethylene (HDPE) is a largely versatile type of polymer and one of the most popular classes of plastic. From flexible and light films and bags to new construction heavy-duty damp proof membranes, HDPE finds application in a range of sectors. The demand for mineralized water and advancing electrical and electronics industry are envisioned to set the tone for the global HDPE market as these applications make use of the blow molding and injection molding grades respectively. Other grades such as profile extrusion and sheet and film extrusion are prognosticated to attract some demand.Global High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Market: Key TrendsIn comparison with low density polyethylene (LDPE), HDPE offers better mechanical features and extraordinary strength to density ratio. This has attracted a host of opportunities for the HDPE manufacturers in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, and personal care industries. The enhanced standard of living of the younger population has augmented the demand for packaged foods and beverages. The fast-moving lifestyle of metro cities has flourished the adoption of ready-to-mix and ready-to-eat packed foods.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Medicine bottles and other medical packaging materials used in the pharmaceutical industry essentially utilize HDPE, owing to its greater working temperature and opacity. The household goods and fireworks markets are at their peak in China and India. This is envisaged to increase the demand for HDPE since it is used in the preparation of such products.Global High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Market: Market PotentialThe world HDPE market is expected to possess a strong potential to upgrade itself in the face of challenges while exploiting a massive amount of demand and introducing new grades in the industry.Making its mark amongst the prominent profile, tubing, and pipe producers in North America, Armtec has made a colossal investment of US$8.0 million for the manufacture of large-diameter HDPE pipes. The pipes will be sold under the name BOSS 3000 as an improved replacement for conventional municipal storm sewer pipes across Canada. This investment is anticipated to be quite rewarding for the Quebec and Ontario agricultural markets. The company has spent more funds for the purchase of laboratory, testing, and production equipment so as to enhance the pipes with gasket and bell joints to meet the standards of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA).Request TOC of the Report @Global High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Market: Regional OutlookThe product segment of the U.S. HDPE market is predicted to gain strength on the back of a wealth of opportunities birthed for producing improvised forms with the help of extensive research and development. The ever-growing infrastructural sector could also boost the growth in the country, especially in regions such as Latin America and North America.As a result of the thriving telecommunication, electronic, and automobile sectors, there is a blooming acceptance of blow molding technology witnessed in Europe. The employment opportunities generated through the development in these sectors are foretold to boost residential construction projects, thereby contributing to the demand in the Europe HDPE market.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@The HDPE market in Asia Pacific is foreseen to be impacted positively on account of a gradual increase in construction activities. Securing a higher share under its name, Asia Pacific could fuel the demand for HDPE with the rising production of crude oil.Global High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) Market: Competitive LandscapeThe marketing strategy of most players in the world HDPE market is to offer different grades of the product. However, there could be other strategies in place to give voice to their presence in the industry. Some of the top-tier companies prevailing in the global market are Abu Dhabi Polymers Company Ltd., PetroChina Company Limited, Borealis AG, The Dow Chemical Company, and Honam Petrochemical Corporation.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Industrial Safety Gloves Market : Industry Analysis, Future Growth, Business Prospects Forecast to 2025

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Global Industrial Safety Gloves Market: OverviewThe global market for industrial safety gloves is predicted to grow at a healthy pace in the next few years. The rising awareness among workers concerning their safety while at workplace is estimated to fuel the growth of the overall market in the next few years. In addition, the strict rules and regulations for the use of safety devices are likely to create promising opportunities for key players operating in the global industrial safety gloves market in the coming years. The rising demand from diverse industries is anticipated to bolster the global market.Global Industrial Safety Gloves Market: Key TrendsThe rising technological advancements in order to offer safety devices for workers and the increasing rate of industrialization are estimated to encourage the growth of the global industrial safety gloves market in the next few years. In addition, the rising awareness regarding the safety and security of workers and the occupational safety regulations are predicted to accelerate the growth of the overall market in the coming few years. On the flip side, the increasing issues to the skin allergies owing to the use of latex is likely to restrict the growth of the market in the near future.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Industrial Safety Gloves Market: Market PotentialThe global market for industrial safety gloves is anticipated to grow significantly in the coming years, with the introduction of non-latex alternatives. The rising concern of infections related to the use of gloves is being focused, which is expected to accelerate the growth of the overall market in the coming years. The expansion of the application base is another major factor projected to supplement the growth of the market in the near future.The use of safety gloves helps in avoiding injuries to workers as well as contamination of products. As a result, industries and manufacturing units across the globe are anticipated to rise the demand for industrial safety gloves across the globe.Request TOC of the Report @Global Industrial Safety Gloves Market: Regional OutlookAccording to the research study, North America is estimated to experience a strong growth throughout the forecast period. The high growth of this region can be attributed to the rising construction sector in the U.S. In addition, the increasing rate of industrialization and the growing focus on health awareness in industries are estimated to encourage the growth of the North America industrial safety gloves market in the next few years.Furthermore, strict regulatory framework for the use of industrial safety gloves is projected to fuel the growth of the Europe market in the coming years. On the other hand, Asia Pacific is likely to register a substantial growth rate throughout the forecast period, thanks to the increasing contribution from China, India, Japan, and South Korea.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Global Industrial Safety Gloves Market: Competitive AnalysisThe global market for industrial safety gloves is anticipated to witness a increasing level of competition throughout the forecast period. At present, the market is consolidated in nature with a few players accounting for a key share of the overall market. In order to maintain a leading position in the global market, the key players in the market are making remarkable efforts to create an awareness regarding the importance of using industrial safety gloves.Some of the prominent players operating in the industrial safety gloves market across the globe are Riverstone Holdings, Honeywell International, Latexx Partners, Towa Corporation, Rubberex, Dipped Products, Supermax Corporation, Longcane Industries, Top Gloves, RFB, Acme Safety, Kossan, Showa, Ansell, MCR Safety, and Hartalega. The research study offers a detailed overview of the competitive scenario of the market, emphasizing on the key aspects that are encouraging the growth of the market.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Lignosulfonates Market : Revenue, Sales Volume, Price by Regions and Consumption 2017 - 2025

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Global Lignosulfonates Market: OverviewLignosulfonates is one of the most abundantly available wood chemicals across the globe. Lignosulfonates is majorly obtained as a by-product from a sulfite processing of wood pulp. The rising emphasis of key players on the expansion of the application base is anticipated to encourage the growth of the global lignosulfonates market throughout the forecast period. Some of the key industries boosting the demand for lignosulfonates, such as oil and gas, chemicals, construction, animal feed additives, and ceramics.Global Lignosulfonates Market: Key TrendsThe rising demand from the animal feed industry is one of the key factors expected to encourage the growth of the global lignosulfonates market in the next few years. In addition, the rapid growth of the construction industry is anticipated to accelerate the growth of the overall market in the forecast period. On the other hand, the potential threat from product substitution is anticipated to restrict the growth of the global lignosulfonates market in the coming years. Nevertheless, the rising demand for animal feed binder, especially from developing economies is projected to generate promising opportunities for key players operating in the market across the globe.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Global Lignosulfonates Market: Market PotentialThe growing demand for oil well additives, especially in the Middle East and Africa is expected to create promising opportunities for the prominent players operating in the global lignosulfonates market. Furthermore, the commercialization of key products of lignosulfonates is projected to fuel the growth of the overall market in the next few years. The increasing competition in the market is estimated to enhance the product portfolio and attract a large number of consumers in the near future.Global Lignosulfonates Market: Regional OutlookIn the last few years, North America held a massive share of the global lignosulfonates market and is projected to maintain its topmost position throughout the forecast period. The high growth of this region can be attributed to the presence of a large number of animal feed mills in the U.S. As a result, the production of the finished animal feed is anticipated to increase tremendously, which is likely to encourage the growth of the North America market in the near future.Request TOC of the Report @On the other hand, the Asia Pacific market for lignosulfonates is likely to witness a substantial growth in the next few years. The rising contribution from Japan and India is estimated to augment Asia Pacific market in the forecast period. Moreover, the rising demand for animal feed from China is predicted to accelerate the growth of the market in the near future.Global Lignosulfonates Market: Competitive AnalysisThe global lignosulfonate market is characterized by a high level of consolidation, owing to a few prominent players who are accounting for a key share of the global market. These players are making remarkable efforts to maintain their position in the global market and expand the application base across diverse industries. In addition, the enhancement of their distribution channels so as to reach a large scale of audience is projected to encourage the growth of the overall market in the next few years.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@Some of the leading players operating in the lignosulfonate market across the globe are Domsjo Fabriker AB, Shenyang Xingzhenghe Chemical Co., Ltd., Green Agrochem, Flambeau River Papers LLC, Tembec Inc., Burgo Group S.p.A., Sappi Limited, Borregaard LignoTech, Nippon Paper Industries Co., Ltd., and Qingdao New World Material Co. Ltd. A rise in the number of players in the coming years is expected to increase the competition among the leading players across the globe.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Silver Nanoparticles Market to show Impressive Growth Rate between 2017 - 2025

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Silver Nanoparticles Market: OverviewSilver nanoparticles exhibit distinct electrical, thermal, and optical properties and are amongst the most widely used nanoparticles for consumer products. They find application in a wide range of products such as chemical and biological sensors and photovoltaics. For instance, silver nanoparticles are used in photonic devices and molecular diagnostics, which make use of novel optical properties of these materials. Additionally, they are extensively used in cosmetics, healthcare, chemical industries, electronics, nonlinear optical gadgets, food and feed, textiles, electronics, and electrochemical applications.Silver Nanoparticles Market: Key TrendsThe rising application scope of silver nanoparticles in healthcare and food and beverages due to its antimicrobial properties is expected to drive the global silver nanoparticles market. Silver nanoparticles improves product shelf life and prevents pathogens from infesting them.Request Sample Copy of the Report @Silver nanoparticles are the most used commercially amongst all nanoparticles and accounted for more than half of the consumption of overall nanoparticles in the recent past. The advanced catalytic and optic properties of silver nanoparticles make them highly suitable for electronic goods. Silver nanoparticles are preferred in various applications including food packaging, wound healing, and plastic bags owing to its ability to destroy bacterial cells and weaken the cell membrane.Top beauty products companies around the world are using silver nanoparticles in their products for added offerings. For instance, Dior has introduced a nano-based product Diorskin Forever for improved skin. The roll out of differentiator products gives a competitive edge for product manufacturers over their peers, which is leading to the increased demand for silver nanoparticles.Strict regulations pertaining to the use of silver nanoparticles, particularly in North America and Europe is countering the growth of this market. However, research is underway to find out if silver nanoparticles have a detrimental effect on the environment.Request TOC of the Report @Silver Nanoparticles Market: Market PotentialNanoparticles are at the forefront of biological research is well established in a recent industry development. Researchers at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University have reported the design and development of the most complex crystal made from nanoparticles.The work demonstrates that nanotechnology can bring together materials in new ways, forging new design capabilities. For instance, crystals made of nanoparticles, such as the newly developed ones, can be used to control light  this is because nanoparticles display coordinated interaction with light waves due to their similar sizes.Silver Nanoparticles Market: Regional OutlookNorth America, led by the U.S. is a major regional market for silver nanoparticles. The flourishing food and beverage industry along with regulations to adhere to food safety standards has positively impacted the growth of the regional market. Moreover, clothes sterilization is increasingly being adopted due to the increasing health safety considerations among workers.Read Comprehensive Overview of Report@In Europe, Germany contributes significant revenue to the regional market due to the growth of the healthcare industry. Moreover, increasing healthcare expenditures combined with regulatory compliances for safe healthcare practices is contributing to the growth of this regional market.China and South Korea are key contributors to the growth of the Asia Pacific silver nanoparticles market. The presence of some of the top electronic goods manufacturing companies along with favorable FDI policies are the major factors supporting the industrys growth in the region.The Middle East and Africa is expected to exhibit significant growth in healthcare and life sciences segment.Silver Nanoparticles Market: Competitive LandscapeKey participants in the global silver nanoparticles market include Emfutur Technologies, Nanocs, Cima Nanotech, American Elements, NanoHorizons, Nanoshel, Cline scientific, and Applied Nanotech. Some other prominent companies in the market are Bayer, Ames Goldsmith, Meliorum Technologies, and Advanced Nano products.R&D initiatives and mergers and acquisitions for strong presence across the value chain and for strong distribution networks is among the key growth strategies.About TMR ResearchTMR Research is a premier provider of customized market research and consulting ser-vices to business entities keen on succeeding in todays supercharged economic climate. Armed with an experienced, dedicated, and dynamic team of analysts, we are redefining the way our clients conduct business by providing them with authoritative and trusted research studies in tune with the latest methodologies and market trends.Our savvy custom-built reports span a gamut of industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals and metals, food and beverages, and technology and media, among others. With actionable insights uncovered through in-depth research of the market, we try to bring about game-changing success for our clients.Contact:Rohit BhiseyHead - Internet MarketingTel: +1-415-520-1050Email: sales@tmrresearch.com
Demand of Construction in the Netherlands Industry : Market Development, Analysis and Overview 2017

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ALBANY, NY, May 12, 2017 : ResearchMoz presents professional and in-depth study of "Construction in the Netherlands - Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019".Timetrics Construction in the Netherlands  Key Trends and Opportunities to 2019 report provides detailed market analysis, information and insights relating to the Dutch construction industry, including:The Dutch construction industry's growth prospects by market, project type, and type of construction activityAnalysis of equipment, material and service costs for each project type in the NetherlandsCritical insight into the impact of industry trends and issues, and the risks and opportunities they present to participants in the Dutch construction industryProfiles of the leading operators in the Dutch construction industryData highlights of the largest construction projects in the NetherlandsGet PDF for more Professional and Technical insights @Executive summaryIn real terms, the Dutch construction industrys output registered a review-period (20102014) compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of -1.42%.The decline was mainly due to a large budget deficit, weak business confidence and consumer demand, high unemployment and depressed economic conditions in the eurozone, which affected demand for construction activity during the review period (20102014).The industry is expected to register positive growth over the forecast period (20152019), due to government and private sector investments in the energy and utilities, infrastructure, commercial and residential construction markets.ScopeThis report provides a comprehensive analysis of the construction industry in the Netherlands. It provides:Historical (20102014) and forecast (20152019) valuations of the construction industry in the Netherlands using construction output and value-add methodsSegmentation by sector (commercial, industrial, infrastructure, energy and utilities, institutional and residential) and by project typeA breakdown of values for each project type by type of activity (new construction, repair and maintenance, refurbishment and demolition) and by type of cost (materials, equipment and services)Analysis of key construction industry issues, including regulation, cost management, funding and pricingDetailed profiles of the leading construction companies in the NetherlandsReasons to buyIdentify and evaluate market opportunities using Timetric's standardized valuation and forecasting methodologies.Assess market growth potential at a micro-level with over 600 time-series data forecasts.Understand the latest industry and market trends.Formulate and validate business strategy using Timetric's critical and actionable insight.Assess business risks, including cost, regulatory and competitive pressures.Evaluate competitive risk and success factors.Make an Enquiry of this report @Key highlightsThe Netherlands is a leading logistics location, primarily due to its location in Europe and its well-developed transport infrastructure. The government plans to invest in transport facilities to retain this leading position. In 2012, Schiphol Group announced plans to invest EUR1.0 billion (US$1.3 billion) to expand Amsterdam Airport Schiphol by 2017. The European Investment Bank will offer financial support, and has agreed to an investment of EUR200.0 million (US$265.2 million). In 2014, the Schiphol Group announced plans to expand Lelystad airport.The Dutch government is encouraging private companies to invest in renewable energy, in an aim to generate 16.0% of its total electricity needs through renewable sources by 2023. Accordingly, a 600MW Gemini offshore wind farm project is to be developed in the North Sea, 85km from Groningen. The Gemini consortium is 60.0% owned by Canadian firm Northland Power, while Siemens Financial Services owns 20.0%, Dutch offshore engineering firm Van Oord holds a 10.0% stake, and HVC, a joint venture of over 50 Dutch municipalities and water authorities, holds the remaining 10.0%. The government is also focusing on innovative projects to meet the countrys renewable energy targets. For example, in June 2015, Tocardo Tidal Turbines announced plans to install the worlds largest tidal energy project. The 1.2MW project comprises five tidal turbines in the Oosterschelde barrier in Zeeland.A total of 30 hotels with a capacity of more than 6,500 rooms are being constructed to accommodate the growing number of tourists. German group Maritim Hotels has announced plans to build Amsterdam's tallest hotel, with 34 floors, scheduled to open in 2018. In 2014, Portugese hotel chain Group Pestana announced plans to construct Pestana Amsterdam. The project will comprise 157 rooms and 32 suites, and is scheduled for completion in 2016.To improve railway infrastructure, Utrecht Regional Authority, also known as Bestuur Regio Utrecht (BRU), is constructing a light-rail project, Uithof Line, to connect the central station with the Utrecht university campus. The project includes the construction of an 8km railway line with nine stations. Infrastructure work of the railway line will be carried out by Dutch construction firm Royal BAM Group, and includes the installation of track and the construction of nine stations. During the first quarter of 2015, BRU also signed a contract with Spanish train manufacturer Construction and Auxiliary of Railways (CAF) to provide trams for the new Uithof Line. CAF is expected to deliver 27 trams.In 2013, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and Environment announced plans to modernize the 21km long A1/A6 motorway in Greater Amsterdam by 2020. The project aims to improve traffic on the SchipholAmsterdamAlmere (SAA) corridor by widening and maintaining the highway. A consortium has been formed consisting of Hochtief, VolkerWessels, Boskalis and the Dutch Infrastructure Fund; work will be carried out as a joint venture between Hochtief, Boskalis and VolkerWessels.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 priceResearchMoz90 State Street,Albany, NY 12207,United States
Australia, New Zealand, and India Building Information Modeling (BIM) Market: India to Surge at 23.9% CAGR 20162024

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The Australia, New Zealand, and India building information modelling (BIM) market features a low degree of competition owing to a low number of players, observes Transparency Market Research in a recent report. The market features a mix of large as well as mid-level companies, but regional players dominate, accounting for nearly 60% of the overall market. Some of the notable international firms operating in the market, such as Dassault Systemes SA, Autodesk Inc., Bentley Systems, Inc., and Tekla Corporation, collectively accounted for a nearly 42% of the market in 2015.Leading players are currently focusing on providing cloud-based building information modelling (BIM) solutions. The rapidly rising demand for cloud-based software products is owing to their advantages such as instantaneous connection to multiple infrastructure development sites, management of information in real-time across the flow of supply chain, and efficient demand planning. Moreover, the companies are entering into strategic collaborations with real estate builders and firms to promote the benefits of BIM and henceforth increase its adoption level.Obtain Report Details @Cloud-based BIM Solutions to See Significant Rise in AdoptionOn the basis of solutions, the market is segmented into software, and professional and consultancy services. The software segment is further divided into on-premise and cloud based building information modelling (BIM). In 2015, the on-premise building information modelling segment accounted for maximum share of around 87% of the revenue of the overall building information modelling (BIM) software.However, cloud-based building information modelling software is expected to show sustainable growth during the forecast period due to technological advancements and cost effectiveness as compared to on-premise BIM software solutions. In terms of geography, India accounted for around 42.6% of the Australia, New Zealand, and India building information modelling markets revenue in 2015. The country is expected to remain the dominant consumer of building information modelling solutions over the forecast period as well, exhibiting an exponential 24% CAGR over the period between 2016 and 2024.Government Initiatives Aimed at Lifting BIM Adoption Rate to Remain Key to Market GrowthThe continuous growth in BIM market during the forecasted period can be largely attributed to the strong government initiatives to lift BIM adoption rate and rise in construction activities across all the end-use industries in these regions. In Australia, for instance, the Australian Federal Governments Infrastructure, Transport and Cities Parliamentary Committee suggested in March 2016 that the use of BIM should be made compulsory for all government funded infrastructure development projects valuing over $50 mn. In New Zealand, the government formed the BIM Acceleration Committee in 2014 to encourage the adoption of BIM through alliances between the government and various stakeholders in the construction sector.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @High Initial Cost of BIM Software to Hinder GrowthIt is estimated that the initial cost of BIM software can go anywhere between US$6,000 to US$10,000, with additional expenses involved for installation and maintenance of the software. Such high costs incurred in implementing BIM software are the key factor why the rate of adoption of BIM among low-scale contractors or developers is low. Apart from this factor, the belief that the returns on investment for BIM are low and can lead to a reduction in the overall profit margins of a construction project is also hindering the widespread adoption of BIM software in New Zealand, India, and Australia.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Global Radiation Detection Products Market Growth, Key Opportunity and Forecast 2016-2020 : Mirion Technologies, Landauer, Thermo Fisher Scientific

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Radiation monitoring involves the measurement of radionuclide contamination or radiation dose. The reason for radiations in the atmosphere or environment can be radiation leakage from a nuclear plant or a nuclear disaster. Thus, apart from just assessment or control of exposure to radiation or radioactive substances, the interpretation of the results is also a very important aspect of radiation monitoring.Technavios analysts forecast the global radiation detection products market to grow at a CAGR of 5.54% during the period 2016-2020.Covered in this reportThe report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the global radiation detection products market for 2016-2020. To calculate the market size, the report considers the radiation detection equipment used for the various application segments such as healthcare and medicine, industrial and scientific application, and domestic security and military use.The market is divided into the following segments based on geography:AmericasAPACEMEADownload Sample Copy Of This Report :Technavio's report, Global Radiation Detection Products Market 2016-2020, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years. The report also includes a discussion of the key vendors operating in this market.Key vendorsMirion TechnologiesLandauerThermo Fisher ScientificOther prominent vendorsCarestream HealthFujiFilm HoldingsEsaoteFLIR SystemsFlukeGE HealthcareHitachi HealthcareHologicJames Fisher and SonsToshiba Medical SystemsShimadzuPhilips HealthcareSiemens HealthcareMarket driverIncreasing energy consumptionFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challengeHigh initial cost of investmentFor a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket trendAvailability of integrated radiation monitoring solutionFor a full, detailed list, view our reportKey questions answered in this reportWhat will the market size be in 2020 and what will the growth rate be?What are the key market trends?What is driving this market?What are the challenges to market growth?Who are the key vendors in this market space?What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the key vendors?What are the strengths and weaknesses of the key vendors?You can request one free hour of our analysts time when you purchase this market report. Details are provided within the report.MarketResearchReports.biz supports your business intelligence needs with over 100,000 market research reports, company profiles, data books, and regional market data sheets in its repository. Our document database is updated by the hour, which means that you always have access to fresh data spanning over 300 industries and their sub-segments.State Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948(USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-621-2074E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz
Split Air Conditioning Systems Market: Rising Demand in Asia Pacific to Present Highly Lucrative Opportunities for Market Players

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The highly dynamic and intensely competitive global split air conditioner systems market features some of the worlds dominant electronics and technology companies. The need to conform to strict government policies and regulations in different countries regarding the emission and control of greenhouse gases and consumption of electricity are the key factors influencing the development of the market. These factors have increased the focus of key players on increasing product power and operating efficiency, observes a recent report by Transparency Market Research. Companies are also looking at prospects of enhancing their businesses through partnerships and optimizing overseas business networks.A recent instance is the joint venture of Midea Group with Lihom Cuchen, a renowned appliances manufacturer from South Korea in February 2016 with the aim of pursuing unique benefits in research and development, technology, manufacturing, patent sharing, and expanding its global presence. Some of the key players in the market are Daikin Industries Ltd., Electrolux AB, The Midea Group., Carrier Corporation, Haier Electronics Group Co., Ltd., and Hisense International Co. Ltd.Obtain Report Details @Mono-split Systems to Comprise Dominant Share in Market RevenueTransparency Market Research states that the global split air conditioning systems market was valued at US$79.72 bn in 2015 and will expand at a CAGR of 5.1% from 2016 to 2014, reaching a market size of US$127.27 bn in 2024. In terms of equipment type, the segment of mono-split systems accounted for almost 70% of the market share in terms of revenue in 2015. Based on geography, the Asia-Pacific region emerged as the dominant segment in the split air conditioning systems and the trend is expected to continue over the forecast period as well.Rising Demand for Energy-efficient Air Conditioning Systems to be Key to Market GrowthIn mature markets such as North America and Europe, energy efficiency has been a major concern with the use of conventional air conditioning systems. Growing awareness among consumers regarding energy efficient models is, hence, emerging as the key force boosting the growth prospects of the split air conditioning systems market. Additionally, the growth in the commercial and residential segment in Asia-Pacific has resulted in a vast rise in demand for split air conditioning systems in the region.Besides this, the concern regarding the emission of greenhouse gases and other harmful gases through conventional air conditioners is also a key driver of the market. This is owing to the strict government regulations imposed to stabilize the greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. Initiatives such as government support for LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certified projects and mandatory SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) ratings (SEER of 13.0 and above in the U.S.) for heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems are also helping boost the global consumption of split air conditioners.Intense Cost Competition to Have Negative Impact on Market DevelopmentHowever, the intense price competition in the market is resulting in decreased profit margins of a number of players. Crunched profit margins have a direct negative impact on investments made for research and other activities, which can have a diminishing effect on the overall growth of the market in the long run. In addition to the presence of a large number of companies in the global split air conditioner systems market, the condition has worsened due to the abundance of domestic manufacturers in China who sell their products at lower costs as compared to the products of global brands.Fill the form for an exclusive sample of this report @Moreover, the rising concerns regarding the vast amount of electricity consumed to power air conditioning systems of all kinds could emerge as a key challenge for the global split air conditioning systems market. The concern regarding the vast electricity bills associated with the use of air conditioners could also compel consumers to look for natural air conditioning solutions. These factors are expected to slow down the growth of air conditioning systems market globally in the next few years.About Us :Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact Us :Transparency Market ResearchState Tower,90 State Street,Suite 700,Albany NY - 12207United StatesTel: +1-518-618-1030Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Anti-Microbial Packaging Market Companies, Application Research Report 2025

Anti-Microbial Packaging

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An antimicrobial agent helps kill microbes or inhibits their growth, Antimicrobial packaging includes terms such as active packaging and intelligent packaging. The latter refers to packaging systems used with foods and pharmaceuticals and numerous other types of products. This type of packaging helps improve shelf life, monitor freshness, display information on quality, and improve safety and convenience. (Anti-Microbial Packaging companies market)Global antimicrobial packaging market is predicted to grow at CAGR of 5.8% from 2017 to 2025.Request Sample:Market dynamicsDrivers: Rise in concerns about food wastage Abundant availability of antimicrobial packaging material and technology around the world Demand from developing countries towards antimicrobial packagingRestraint: High R&D cost for development of advanced antimicrobial packaging solutionsThe top plyers in antimicrobial packaging market includes LINPAC Group Limited, Mondi plc, Polyone Polymers India Pvt. Ltd, BioCote, BASF SF, Dunmore Corporation, Microban international, Sealed Air, Oplon Pure Science Ltd, and Takex Labo Co. Ltd. (Anti-Microbial Packaging application market)Market landscapeBy material Plastico Polyethyleneo Polyethylene Terephthalateo Polyvinyl Chlorideo Low and High Density Polyethylene Biopolymer Glass Tin Paper &Paperboard OthersRequest for Customization:Key Point from Table of Content9. Company profiles9.1. Linpac Group Limited9.1.1. Overview9.1.2. Financials and business segments9.1.3. Recent developments9.2. Mondi plc9.2.1. Overview9.2.2. Financials and business segments9.2.3. Recent developments9.3. Polyone polymers india Pvt. Ltd,9.3.1. Overview9.3.2. Financials and business segments9.3.3. Recent developments9.4. Biocote9.4.1. overview9.4.2. Financials and business segmentsBy technology Controlled Release Packaging Active PackagingBy antimicrobial agents Organic Acid Bacteriocins Essential Oils Enzymes Metal ion and Oxidizers OthersDiscount on report: OthersBy end user industry Food and Beverage Personal Care HealthcareAbout us:Progressive Markets is the answer to every possible business query. It is a market research and business consulting firm, headquartered in India with an aim to deliver up-to-date executive support to foster overall growth of an organization in its domain.Contact us:Antviews 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
Surfactants Market to Observe Strong Development worldwide by 2021

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The global surfactants market has seen a tremendous growth over the past decade due to its huge demand in the industrial applications and it has been anticipated that the global market will retain this position during the forecast period. This market is mainly driven by the increasing demand coming from its application industries. The other major key driver could be considered as availability of broad range of surfactants at lower price, huge demand from household segment, increasing demand for personal care products. Geographically, Asia-Pacific is expected to be the largest market in terms of consumption followed by North America and Europe.Make an Enquiry @Key Players BASF, KAO CORPORATION, CLARIANT, P&G Chemicals, LION Corporation, Evonik Industries, Dow Chemical, Stepan Company, Huntsman Corporation, Akzo Nobel N.V.Study Objectives of Surfactants Market To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 5 years of various segments and sub-segments of the global surfactants market To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth To analyze the global surfactants market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc. To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, APAC, and Rest of the World (ROW) To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by types and applications. To provide strategic profiling of the key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, new product developments, and research and developments in the Global Surfactants MarketAccess report Details @SegmentationAs per MRFR analysis, the global surfactants market has been segmented into:By Types: anionic surfactants, nonionic surfactants, cationic surfactants and amphoteric surfactants. By Applications: food processing, personal & household, textiles, agriculture and others.The report for Global Surfactants Market of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value and volume, technological advancement, macro economical and governing factors in the market. The report provides details information and strategies of the top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study of the different market segments and regions.ContinueWe are thankful for the support and assistance from Global Surfactants Market Research Report - Forecast to 2021 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
Deep Learning Systems Market Technological breakthroughs, Value chain and stakeholder analysis by 2025

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Deep learning is one of the machine learning algorithms which use many layers of nonlinear processing units primarily for the data extraction and transformation. The deep learning algorithms are basically based on distributed representations.The increasing demand for improved system and human interaction acts as driving factor for the market. As the deep learning algorithms offers expert assistance and it primarily helps humans to extend their capabilities.The market has been segmented into by application which includes signal recognition and processing, data mining, machine vision, satellite and medical imaging recognition, robotics among others.Obtain Report Details:The market for deep learning systems by region has been segmented into, Europe, Asia Pacific, MEA(Middle East and Africa), North America and South America.Deep learning systems primarily develop a deep domain insight and transfer the required information to the end-users in usable way. For example, deep learning system has its huge applications in the banking and financial sector as it primarily helps bank employees to extend their work capabilities and allow banking institutions to focus more on customer interaction than the conventional transaction-based approach.Moreover, the deep learning software offers solutions on the basis on analyzing clients background and history and provides evidence and contextual based reasoning for any problems.With the increasing research and development activities the end use area of deep learning systems are expanding which includes defense and aerospace, healthcare, oil and gas, telecommunication and information technology, retail, banking and financial sector, automotive, industrial among others.The deep learning system has huge potential applications in medical domain for image processing drug discovery and diagnosis and identification of chronic diseases.There are few more major applications for the deep learning systems which include autonomous car, cyber security, data analytics, and fraud detection among others. Rising technological advancement in the field of media and advertisement is also fueling the growth of the deep learning systems market.Application and usage of complex algorithms for the deep learning technology is one of the prime restraints for the market which may inhibit the growth of the market.However, advanced analytical tools which primarily deals with a massive volume of data of wide variety are enabling engineers and geoscientists in understanding the nature and extent of oil reservoirs.Increasing research activities in the field of data analytics software, the deep learning systems has huge potential opportunities in the consumer electronics field, research laboratory systems.In 2016, North America accounted for the highest share of the deep learning systems market, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Robust growth in the data mining and increasing development in the data generation across end use industry verticals which include the financial services, banking and insurance (BFSI), retail, healthcare, is stimulating the growth of deep learning systems market across North America.The U.S. is dominating the market for deep learning systems across North America. In Europe, Germany, The U.K., Italy, Russia and France is contributing in the positive growth of the market. Increasing research activities and demand for high end algorithms for data processing is pushing the growth of the market.Make an Enquiry:I n Asia Pacific, China, India, Australia among others is holding a prominent position in the deep learning systems market. Huge development in the information technology and telecommunication sector is considered as one of the key drivers for the market across Asia Pacific region.Brazil and Argentina both are prime contributors in the deep learning systems market in South America. Growing retail sector, advancement in the different industrial fields which include oil and gas and mining along with development in the financial sector is also boosting the market for deep learning systems in UAE, South Africa across Africa and Middle East.Intel Corporation (The U.S.), Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company (The U.S.), Google Inc. (The U.S.), Microsoft Corporation (The U.S.) and International Business Machines Corporation (The U.S.) among others are some of the key companies operating in the deep learning systems market globally.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Embedded Display Market Technological breakthroughs, Value chain and stakeholder analysis by 2025

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An embedded system is basically a computer system having a dedicated function within an electrical or mechanical system after considering the real time computing constraints.This embedded or computer system is part of a device that includes hardware and mechanical parts. It is a combination of both hardware and software designed for a specified function within a larger system and can be both fixed and flexible on the basis of programmability.These systems may or may not have any interfaces. Embedded display is an application of embedded systems that allows implementation of color display interface.Obtain Report Details:Embedded display is normally analyzed on the basis of pixels per inch that provides high-resolution images and can be further used at low power consumption providing better coverage along with improving chip integration for enabling light weight designs.Embedded display ports also helps in providing a standardized display panel interface especially useful for internal connections. The global market for embedded display has been segmented on the basis of type, end use industry and geography.Based on type the global market has been segmented into LCD, LED, TFT and OLED among others. Automotive, industrial automation, fitness equipment, consumer electronics and wearables among others form the major application areas on the basis of which the global market has been segmented.Global embedded display market on the basis of geography has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.The low power consumption associated with the implementation of this technology forms a major driver for this market globally. In addition to this, it is the reduction of signal wires for high data rate along with compatibility with submicron chips further acts as a major driver for this market globally.The added flexibility, reduced interference with the specified wireless services along with the ability for adoption of new features also acts as some major reasons that has positively impacted this market and pushed its overall growth.With all these factors that drivers the market growth there are certain factors as well that restricts the market growth and poses challenges for the market. One such factor being the costs associated with advanced embedded display systems that has been a major restraint for this market.Moreover, it is also seen that compressing of images along with continuous monitoring of backlight control in specific regions has been some other major restraints for this market.With all these drivers and restraints it is the advancement in system on chip or System on Chip (SoC) and GPU that is expected to provide huge growth opportunities for this market in the coming years.Geographically, North America formed one of the major region that is contributing to the growth of this market followed by Europe. Growing application of this technology across different industry verticals such as medical, automotive and wearables has been a major driver for this market in these regions.Make an Enquiry:Presence of large number of manufacturers in this region further boosts the market growth in this region. Asia Pacific forms another major region contributing to the growth also being one of the fastest growing market globally.China, India and Japan are some major countries in APAC that is boosting the market growth. Rise in government grants to boost the medical sector where embedded display has numerous applications forms a major reason that has positively impacted the market growth of embedded display in this region.Some of the key players that are operating in the global embedded display market include Intel Corporation (The U.S.), ENEA AB (Sweden), Microsoft Corporation (The U.S.), Avnet Inc. (The U.S.), Multitouch Ltd. (Finland), AndersDX (The UK), Esterel Technologies SA (France), Green Hills Software (The U.S.) and Planar Systems Inc. (The U.S.) among others.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Hardware Encryption Market Technological breakthroughs, Value chain and stakeholder analysis by 2025

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Encryption is the process of scrambling sensitive information that is only readable by the intended recipient. Encryption is mainly performed by hardware or software devices using a series of algorithm or mathematical operations for generating the cypher text or the encrypted data.The recipient for whom the message is encrypted must have an electronic key for decrypting the data using a similar device further converting the data to its original readable form known as the clear text. This process of hardware encryption involves file being written in the drive that is further encrypted automatically using specialized software.After this as the file is read from the drive, there is a special software that automatically decrypts it further making it understandable by the recipient and functioning as any other normal computer.Obtain Report Details:Hardware encryption as a technology prevents data from being accessed by unauthorized persons thereby providing an extra layer of security against hackers or from online threats. The global market for hardware encryption has been segmented into circuit design, product, application and geography.The global market on the basis of circuit design has been segmented into FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit).On the basis of product the global market for hardware encryption has been segmented into USB flash drives, external hard disks, solid state drives and internal hard disks among others. Consumer electronics, healthcare, IT & telecom and aerospace & defense forms the major application areas for this market globally.Global hardware encryption market on the basis of geography has been segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.It is the optimization of the encryption feature with the rest of the drive that forms one of the major drivers aiding in the growth of this market. Use of software encryption involves lot of steps that is avoided in case hardware encryption further making the whole process faster leading to its rising applications globally.Another major factor pushing the growth of this market includes the all-time activation of these hardware encryption making it easier for the driver to meet the various government standards especially in applications across service sectors such as banking and financial institutions among others.This system further requires minimum configuration and interaction with users without effecting the overall performance of the system. This is especially helpful in case of protecting sensitive data without being worried about the data getting stolen or compromised by the hackers.After considering all these drivers, there are also certain restraints that has a negative impact on the overall market. One such factor is the high costs associated with its implementation while another factor being this hardware encryption tied to only one device rather than a complete system.Moreover, the updates in case of hardware encryption is also possible through device substitution further making it difficult for implementation. It is the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) technology and cloud services that is expected to provide numerous growth opportunities for this market in the coming years.Geographically, it is North America followed by Europe that forms some of the major regions contributing to the overall growth of this market. Advent of cloud based services along with growth in IoT technology has also contributed to being some important factors contributing to the growth.Asia Pacific is another major region along with being one of the fastest one to grow globally with China, Korea, India and Japan being some of the key countries contributing to the growth.Make an Enquiry:Growing internet penetration along with rise in demand for smartphones and tablets has also been some important factors contributing to the growth.Some of the key players that are operating in the global hardware encryption market include Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (South Korea), Toshiba Corporation (Japan), Maxim Integrated Products Inc. (The U.S.), Micron Technology Inc. (The U.S.), IBM (The U.S.), Kingston Technology Corporation (The U.S.), Seagate Technology PLC (Ireland) and Western Digital Corporation (The U.S.) among others.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Automotive Catalytic Converter Market Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecasts To 2024

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This market research study analyzes the automotive catalytic converter market on global basis and provides estimates in terms of revenue (USD billion) from 2015 to 2021. It 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 six years.With the advancements in technology, there has been a considerable growth in the automotive catalytic converter market globally. Stringent emission norms such as Euro V and Euro VI have put a restriction to the use of exhaust systems that are harmful to the environment. This has made automobile manufacturers improvise on their exhaust systems and bring in application of advanced technology and innovation to their products in order to reduce automobile emission in the environment. Innovative catalytic converters such as two-way and three-way catalytic converters are extensively being used and largely demanded by automobile manufacturers because of their greater performance and reduced emission quality. Four-way catalytic converters are still in the testing phase and are expected to be much more efficient and environment friendly as compared to the other existing automotive catalytic converters.This 122 page report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Automotive Catalytic Converter market Browse through 39 data tables and 57 figures to unlock the hidden opportunities in this market.The growth in the global automotive catalytic converter market is directly related to the growth of the global automobiles market. Therefore, with the increasing sales of automobiles globally, the demand for automotive catalytic converter is set to grow. In regions such as Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America; an immense rise in the usage of passenger vehicles is expected over the forecast period, which is set to bolster the growth of the automotive catalytic converter market.Increasing stringent emission norms across the globe is the major reason driving the growth of the global automotive catalytic converters market. Catalytic converters emit hazardous particles that are harmful to the environment. Due to the rising pollution and global warming effects, the governments of various countries have laid down strict guidelines relating to automobile emission. Therefore, the stringent emission guidelines have forced the automotive component manufacturers to manufacture environment friendly catalytic converters for domestic and international markets. Two-way oxidation catalytic converter, three-way oxidation-reduction catalytic converter and diesel oxidation catalyst are heavily in demand due to their reduced emission property.In the coming years, hybrid and electric vehicles market are expected to gain momentum. This is going to have an adverse effect on the global automotive catalytic converters market. Electric vehicles do not come equipped with catalytic converters as there are no means of emission in such vehicles. Therefore, the gaining popularity and rising demand for electric vehicles are set to inhibit the catalytic converters market during the forecast period from 2015 to 2021.The market is segmented on the basis of geography into Europe, North America, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America. These segments have been estimated in terms of revenue (USD billion). In addition, the report has been segmented based on type, which includes, two-way oxidation catalytic converter, three-way oxidation-reduction catalytic converter and diesel oxidation catalyst. In addition, the report is also segmented by material that includes platinum, palladium and rhodium.For better understanding of the automotive catalytic converter market, the study comprises market attractiveness analysis, where the types are benchmarked based on their market scope, growth rate and market attractiveness.The report also provides company market share analysis of the various industry participants. Key players have been profiled and their company overview, financial overview, business strategies and recent developments have been covered in the report. Major market participants profiled in this report include: Magneti Marelli S.P.A., Faurecia SA, Tenneco Inc., Benteler International AG, Eberspaecher GmbH Holding & Co. KG, BASF Catalysts LLC, Calsonic Kansei Corporation and Clean Diesel Technologies, Inc. among othersGet accurate market forecast and analysis on the Automotive Catalytic Converter market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.The automotive catalytic converter market has been segmented as:Global Automotive Catalytic Converter Market: By Type Two-way oxidation catalytic converter Three-way oxidation-reduction catalytic converter Diesel oxidation catalystGlobal Automotive Catalytic Converter Market: By Material Platinum Palladium RhodiumGlobal Automotive Catalytic Converter Market: By Geography North Americao USo Canadao Mexico Europeo UKo Italyo Spaino Franceo Germanyo Rest of Europe Asia Pacifico APEJ China India Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) Rest of APEJo Japan Middle East and Africa (MEA)o Saudi Arabiao UAEo Egypto South Africao Rest of MEA Latin Americao Brazilo Argentinao OthersRequest 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:
Atomic Emission Spectrometry Market Research Report- Global Forecast to 2023

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Use of intensity of light emitted from plasma, flame, spark or arc at a specific wavelength for chemical analysis of the sample is referred as atomic emission spectrometry (AES). Atomic emission spectrometry is used for quantitative analysis of an element in the chemical sample. Identity of the element depends on the wavelength of the atomic spectral line and quantity of the detected element depends upon intensity of the light emitted. Atomic emission spectrometry (AES) is widely used in life science, food and drug safety, petrochemical and forensic science industry for analysis of the samples for quality.View Report @Development in the technology is resulting in increased availability of the portable and user friendly atomic spectroscopy instruments. In addition, technology advancement is also resulting in expansion of the application area of the atomic emission spectrometry (AES) market into biotechnology, pharmaceutical chemistry, environmental testing, and clinical applications including proteomics, tissue analysis and toxicology. Thus, technology advancement is observed to be the prime driver for the growth of the global atomic emission spectrometry market. While on the other hand, stringent regulatory norms and requirement of skilled personnel are some of the factors that are observed to be limiting the growth of the global atomic emission spectrometry market. Based on the type, the global atomic emission spectrometry market has been segmented as follows:Flame Emission Spectroscopy (FES)Spark Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (SAES)Arc Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (AES)Inductively Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES)OthersGeographically, the global atomic emission spectrometry market has been segmented into four major geographies namely, North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). North America comprises cumulative atomic emission spectrometry market for the U.S and Canada. Europe comprises cumulative market of atomic emission spectrometry in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and Rest of Europe (RoE). Asia Pacific comprises cumulative market of atomic emission spectrometry in China, India, Australia, New Zealand and rest of Asia Pacific (RoAPAC). Rest of the World (RoW) comprises atomic emission spectrometry market in Latin America, Middle East and Russia. Currently, Europe and North America are leading the global atomic emission spectrometry market. Highly developed research infrastructure, higher healthcare spending, availability of government funding and skilled professionals to perform the analytical process are some of the factors that are driving the atomic emission spectrometry market in Europe and North America. Asia Pacific atomic emission spectrometry market is anticipated to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period 2014 to 2020.Rapidly developing research and development (R&D) infrastructure, government support to boost the growth of the medical, biotechnology and pharmaceutical sectors in the respective country and increasing spending capacity are some of the factors that are anticipated to drive the growth of the atomic emission spectrometry market in Asia Pacific. China, India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are the most attractive market for atomic emission spectrometry in the Asia Pacific owing to relatively developed regulatory framework, availability of skilled personnel and high awareness about the technique. Latin American countries including Mexico, Brazil and Argentina are anticipated to show significant growth compared to other economies in the RoW region. Some of the key players contributing to the global atomic emission spectrometry market include, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Perkin Elmer, Inc., Agilent Technologies, Inc., Bruker Corporation, Waters Corporation, Shimadzu Corporation, AB Sciex and others.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Atomic Emission Spectrometry Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Resectoscopes Market Research Report and Industry Analysis Report - 2023

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Resectoscopes are surgical instruments used in procedures of uterus, prostate, bladder, or urethra. Resectoscopes are primarily used for tissue extraction and removal of masses or growths (fibroids) and damaged tissues. Resectoscopes comprise a camera (such as a wide angle microscope) and extraction instrument (wire loop) which enables surgeons to visualize surgical site and perform surgery through the same incision. Use of resectoscopes in urogenital procedures decrease healing time, reduces surgical trauma, and provides minimally invasive treatment options for the patient.View Report @Increasing prevalence of urinary/urogenital diseases such as benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), urinary incontinence, urinary tract infection and hematuria have created immense demand for resection procedures and consequently for sophisticated resectoscopes. As per the U.S National Library of Medicine, 60% of men over the age of sixty and 80% of men over the age of 80 have been diagnosed as BPH patients who require transurethral resection of the prostate (TURP). Resectoscopes have been demonstrated to be efficient, cost-effective and, most importantly have a low rate of post surgical infections. Current technical advancements such as bipolar, roller ball, roller barrel and cutting loop electrodes, along with video-capabilities have substantially increased the acceptance of resectoscopes in surgical procedures. Visual, hands-on access to the surgical sites and immediate removal of excess tissue is some of the technical advancement of resectoscopes over other available equipment for visualization and removal of tissues. However, recent technological advances to reduce the invasive aspect of surgical treatments of urogenital diseases such as lasers, microwave, radio waves, Photoselective laser vaporization of the prostate (PVP) and ultrasound would restrain the resectoscopes market to some extent.One perspective of analyzing the market is based on type of electrode used in resectoscopes. Monopolar, bipolar, grooved roller, roller ball, roller barrel and straight cutting loop are some major electrodes that are widely used in resectoscopes.Based on geography, the resectoscopes market has been analyzed for North America, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and the Rest of the World (RoW). North America and Europe held the largest shares in terms of market revenue of the global resectoscopes market in 2013. The primary reasons for North America and Europe holding the leading positions in the global resectoscopes market are high prevalence of urogenital diseases such as BPH and benign prostatic obstruction (BPO), and well established healthcare infrastructure in both the regions. According to the American Urological Association, 15 million men in the United States are symptomatic to BPH and in the approximately 150,000 people have TURPs performed each year. However, Asia-Pacific is expected to witness highest growth rate during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020. A number of factors such as increasing prevalence of urinary tract infections, aging population, increasing focus on research and development would be fuelling the growth of resectoscopes market in Asia-Pacific in coming years. According to the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations, 23 million individuals aged 80 years or over were living in China in 2013. The Department of Economic and Social Affairs further states that nearly 10 million and 9 million individuals aged 80 years or over were living in India and Japan, respectively in 2013.Some of the major players in resectoscopes market include Olympus Corporation, Richard Wolf, Stryker Corporation and KARL STORZ GmbH & Co. KG.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Resectoscopes Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Dental Imaging Market - Detailed Study Analysis and Forecast by 2023

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The global dental imaging market has seen a paradigm shift from analog film to digital technologies. Periodontal diseases, dentofacial anomalies and dental caries are among the major global oral health problems. The 21st century has brought revolutionary changes in the quality of the life, including the oral healthcare. As the future of the dentistry depends largely on the ability to incorporate new, better diagnostic and treatment modalities into clinical practice demand for novel dental imaging techniques are growing at a rapid pace. 3D intraoral scanner, 3 D printing and CAD - CAM technology have proven to be an alternative to the conventional imaging methods such as film or analog based imaging modalities. In the United Kingdom approximately 21 million radiographs are taken in primary dental care centers each year. With the advent of dental implants demand for cross sectional imaging has become a necessity in dental clinics and dental hospitals pertaining to accurate measurement for implant placement and circumventing damages to fragile anatomical structures.View Report @Although the first line of dental disease diagnosis relies mostly on the X-ray imaging yet modalities such as Magnetic resonance Imaging (MRI) and computer tomography (CT) are also growing at a rapid pace owing to its accuracy, clarity and ease of handling. Devices such as intraoral periapical and occlusal radiography are mostly used during initial phase of patient evaluation to detect the presence of pathosis and approximate location of anatomic structures such as maxillary sinus. Direct digital intraoral imaging is emerging as an alternative to film based radiography pertaining to its advantages such as rapid acquisition of images, storage, and transmission to remote sites. Furthermore lateral and oblique cephalometric radiography have proven to be a preferable option among dentists for obtaining images of maxilla and mandibular sites in the mid sagittal plane.Three dimensional imaging techniques such as CT scan, tuned aperture CT (TACT), Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT) and MRI provide additional benefits over conventional imaging techniques. These benefits encompasses low exposure to radiation, increased patient convenience, reduced operational cost and provides better control over implant diagnosis and treatment planning. 3D computed tomography is an advanced imaging technique wherein the images are digitally acquired and can be subsequently reformatted into any plane, such as axial, sagittal or coronal. Owing to such features demand for such novel devices is continuously growing across the globe especially in the developed economic regions such as the United States and Europe. Moreover tuned aperture CT (TACT) is mostly employed for dentoalveolar imaging. Benefits of TACT include ability to calculate projection geometry, use of low radiation dose and less damage to quality of image due to patient movement. Cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) technology yields images with isotropic submillimeter spatial resolution as a result; its use is perfectly suited for dental and maxillofacial cases. CBCT not only reduces the size and cost of CT scanners but also improves the resolution of the image with lesser amount of radiation dose than that used in CT scans. Key end users to the aforementioned instruments include dental clinics, dental laboratories, academic institutes, and forensic laboratories.North America dominates the dental imaging market with the U.S. accounting for a major market share. The U.S. market is currently undergoing a rapid penetration of digital sensor technology which is cannibalizing market for intraoral X-ray analog film. Exclusive distribution agreement between digital sensor manufacturers and major distributors are also boosting the market for digital dental imaging instruments market in the United States. In contrast to the United States market, the European dental practices have much stricter regulations concerning X-ray radiation exposure to patients owing to which countries like the France, Britain and Germany already has an established installed base of digital scanners and imaging devices as compared to the United States. Asia Pacific and Rest of the World market is expected to have the fastest growth rate pertaining to rising awareness about oral health care, increasing disposable income and growing focus of prominent players on emerging market.Some of the prominent players in the Dental Imaging market include Danaher Corporation, Midmark Corporation, LED Medical Diagnostic, Inc., Flow Dental Corporation, Planmeca Oy, Carestream Health, Sirona Dental Systems and others.This research report analyzes this market on the basis of its market segments, major geographies, and current market trends. Geographies analyzed under this research report includeNorth AmericaAsia PacificEuropeRest of the WorldThis report provides comprehensive analysis ofMarket growth driversFactors limiting market growthCurrent market trendsMarket structureMarket projections for upcoming yearsGet accurate market forecast and analysis on the Dental Imaging Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Nuclear Medicine Market Research Report 2024

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Global Nuclear Medicine Market: OverviewNuclear medicine uses radioactive substances to diagnose and treat diseases. Nuclear medicine helps uncover medical information that is not easily available, or requires surgery or expensive and invasive diagnostic tests. It aids in unearthing symptoms at a very early stage of a disease. Nuclear medicine helps treat different types of diseases such as various forms of cancers, heart disease, gastrointestinal, endocrine, neurological disorders, and other abnormalities within the body.View Report @A report by Transparency Market Research studies the global market for nuclear medicine in-depth by factoring in historic and current data. It also presents a qualitative analysis of the factors stoking growth in the market or hindering its progress. The report profiles the prominent names operating in the market and their growth strategies. It leverages market-leading analytical tools to understand the opportunities and threats awaiting them.Global Nuclear Medicine Market: Trends and OpportunitiesAt the forefront of driving growth in the global market for nuclear medicine is the rising instances of different diseases and a thriving healthcare industry trying to meet the pressing demands for accurate and efficient medicinal scans. The increasing occurrence of cancer and cardiovascular diseases and the consequent demand for photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) as well radiopharmaceuticals has been propelling the market too.On the flip side, expensiveness of the process, regulatory bottlenecks, and inadequate stock of nuclear medicine has been deterring growth in the market. Some of the noticeable trends in the market are partnerships for formulating nuclear medicine, increasing investment in research and development, and production based on cyclotron. All these factors will help in overcoming the myriad roadblocks to the markets growth.Depending upon the types of products available, the global market for nuclear medicine can be segmented into radiopharmaceuticals, nuclear medicine equipment, single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), and positron emission tomography (PET). Among them, the radiopharmaceuticals dominate in terms of demand and going forward too is predicted to retain their leading position due to increasing use of radioactive pharmaceutical drugs as nuclear imaging agents.Depending upon application, the global market for nuclear medicine can be classified into neurology, oncology, and cardiology. Depending upon end user again, it can be segmented into diagnostic centers, hospitals, and research centers.Global Nuclear Medicine Market: Regional OutlookFrom a geographical standpoint, North America is considered the most attractive market because of a highly developed healthcare infrastructure and swift uptake of cutting-edge technology. Europe is another key region that follows North America in terms of demand. However, vis-a-vis growth in demand, Asia Pacific is predicted to outshine all other regions in the upcoming years, powered primarily by Japan, China, Australia, and India  nations where a lot of funds are being funneled into research and development. The massive population, growing instances of neurological and cardiovascular diseases as well as cancer, is also contributing to the growth in the market in Asia Pacific.Companies Mentioned in the ReportTo assess the competition prevailing in the global market for nuclear medicine, the report profiles companies such as Lantheus Medical Imaging, Inc., Cardinal Health Inc., Eczacibasi-Monrol Nuclear Products, Bayer AG, Mallinckrodt plc, GE Healthcare, Nordion, Inc., IBA Molecular Imaging, Advanced Accelerator Applications S.A., and Bracco Imaging S.p.A.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Global Nuclear Medicine Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Clinical Chemistry Analyzers Competitive Landscape and Growth Opportunities | Reports 2023

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Global Clinical Chemistry Analyzer Market: OverviewClinical chemistry analyzers refer to automated devices that are utilized to measure and analyze the levels of proteins, sugars, and other products in the blood. Clinical chemistry analyzers help in determine the conditions such as liver function, kidney function, nutritional state, and other conditions in the human body. The technologically advanced and sophisticated devices are highly accurate as well as time efficient. Currently, clinical chemistry analyzers are used for the analysis of several conditions such as diabetes, hyperlipidemia, and arteriosclerosis along with other regular health check-up. With the growing number of diabetic cases across the world, coupled with various kidney diseases and other diseases pertaining to nutritional deficiencies, the global market for clinical chemistry analyzer is projected to expand at a healthy growth rate during the forecast period of 2015 to 2023.View Report @Global Clinical Chemistry Analyzer Market: Trends and OpportunitiesSeveral factors are favoring the future of the global market for clinical chemistry analyzer, including technological advancements which has led to innovative devices such as StaRRsedInversa Automated ESR analyzer and the growing awareness about personal health and the availability of diagnostic tests among the vast populations across the globe. Increase in the number of in-vitro diagnostic tests and prevalence of various chronic diseases are also expected to augment the demand for clinical chemistry analyzers. Moreover, rising geriatric population is another primary factor for the escalation of the demand as people aged over 65 are more prone to several organ diseases, and thus need regular check-ups. Other factors driving the demand in the global market for clinical chemistry analyzer include increased focus on reduction of healthcare expenditure, rising number of point of care testing capabilities, and growing number of crime because chemistry analyzers play pivotal role in the investigations. Conversely, high cost, the requirement of qualified and trained professionals, and risk of result uncertainty are some of the factors that may hinder the growth rate during the forecast period.The global market for clinical chemistry analyzers can be segmented on the basis of test, product, sector, end users, and geography. Based on types of test, the market can be segmented into liver panels, electrolyte panels, thyroid function panels, lipid profiles, basic metabolic panels, and renal profiles. By product, the market can be divided into analyzers, reagents, and other products. On the basis of sector, the global clinical chemistry analyzer market is divided into mid and small, large, and ultra-large sector clinical chemistry analyzers. By end-users, the market can be segmented into diagnostic laboratories, hospitals, and academic research institutes.Global Clinical Chemistry Analyzer Market: Region-wise OutlookGeographically, the global market can be segmented into the regions of North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and rest of the world. Currently, North America serves most of the demand for clinical chemistry analyzer due to robust healthcare infrastructure and high affordability of the consumers. However, Asia Pacific is projected for the most robust growth rate as several emerging economies in the region, such as China, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia are aggressively investing in the healthcare sector.Companies mentioned in the research reportThe global market for clinical chemistry analyzer is highly fragmented with the presence of several International and domestic players, and new version of devices is expected to determine the leader during the forecast period. Some of the key players are Beckman Coulter, Inc., Siemens AG, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Nova Biomedical Corporation, Abbott Diagnostics, Elitech Group, Mindray Medical International Limited, Jhonson and Jhonson, Horiba, Ltd., Sysmex Corporation, and Ortho-Clinical Diagnostics, Inc.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Clinical Chemistry Analyzers Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Wireless Health Market 2016 Research Report

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The e-health monitoring system with wireless sensor network is used for patient telemonitoring and telemedicine. A 2012 article titled In-home health monitoring to leap six-fold by 2017 illustrated that Wireless remote monitoring devices will be used by more than 1.8 million people worldwide in the next four years. Of the billions of dollars spent on health care each year, 75% - 80% of it accountsfor patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease, asthma and Alzheimers disease. Over a decade, healthcare industry has taken a measured approach pertaining tointegrationof information technology (IT). Recent federal legislation and emerging trends, however, are changing the landscape and driving the need to accelerate the adoption of health IT in healthcare especially in medical devices.View Report @Among wireless health products wearable medical devices is expected to be the fastest growing segment. Information delivered by modern wearable medical devices is easy to interpret and hence popularity is expected to increase rapidly within non-medical personnel. With these devices, peoplecan quickly modify their lifestyle to better improve their physical stature. Devices that measure temperature, heart rate and other parameters can be of paramount importance while determining physical fitness of a person.Over 65% of technologies are wrist held devices shaped like watches and the rest are wearable on other areas of the body such as arms, torso and waist. Along with the aesthetics, several other features for durability of the device are included such as waterproofing and weatherproofing. The latest in developments is telecommunication, wireless connectivity and improved user interface. The advent of smartphones has resulted in multi-fold increase of growth in applications that can now extend to storage and retrieval of history for the individual for long term mapping and improvement of fitness.Some of the major factors driving this market are the decreasing costs of electronics that has now made these devices available to middle and even low income groups over the world, and increased use of internet globally. According to the World Bank, number of internet users per 100 people increased from 15.8 in 2005 to 38.1 in 2013. The global wireless health market by products encompasses ECG monitors, insulin monitors, neuromonitors such as EEG and EMG devices.There are several devices which have in-build capability to diagnose, detect and send patient records to a centralized servers which can be easily accessed by healthcare providers. Advantages of wireless health devices encompasses patient comfort, accurate detection and analysis, access to stored patient data for a considerable longer period of time i.e. weekly or monthly. Recently Engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Northwestern University have demonstrated stick-on patches which can be used on a daily basis to monitor patients ECG. Additionally, the patient record can be easily accessed through a cell phone or computer wirelessly.Geographically the market can be studied for four geographical regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the Word. Currently, North America in terms of revenue accounts for the largest share owing to burgeoning population of cardiovascular diseases, diabetic patients. Moreover government initiatives such as the Affordable Care Act and favorable reimbursement scenario also promotes the sales and adoption of innovative wireless health monitoring and diagnostic products. Followed by the U.S., Europe holds the second leading position in the current scenario. Historically, the major EU countries have always been at the forefront of developing innovative healthcare technologies.In November 2013, Belgium-based research center Imec showcased its ideas for wearable sensor technologies for remote healthcare and personal health applications. The company introduced a body patch that integrates an ultra-low power electrocardiogram (ECG) chip and a Bluetooth low-energy radio. The company has also developed a prototype of a patient-friendly wireless EEG headset together with Holst Centre and Panasonic. Asia Pacific and Rest of the World market are among the fastest growing and largely untapped market. High cost of devices and lack of awareness about these devices are among the major restraint to the current adoption of the products in emerging market.Some of the key players operating in this market encompasses Omron Corporation, GE Healthcare, Koninklijke Philips N.V., Polar Electro, Nihon Kohden, Siemens A.G., Mckesson Corporation,and Cerner Corporation.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Wireless Health Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Guidewires Market Research Report: Growth, Trends, Forecast 2023

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A guidewire is a thin and flexible tube used to guide a catheter for placement in the diseased artery. The catheter is advanced through a guidewire into the blood vessel, then guided to aorta and finally, the guidewire is removed. The most frequent insertion point for the guidewire and catheter is the femoral artery at the groin. Apart from this, other possible insertion points for guidewires include brachial artery and coronary arteries. With the increase in the number of minimally invasive procedures, the demand for guidewires is expected to increase in the next few years. Most guidewires are manufactured from low cost stainless steel with an elastic coil tip to avoid damage to the blood vessels. These guidewires are reusable in nature; hence most manufacturers prefer low cost stainless steel as the choice of raw material. A number of companies offer a robust range of tip shapes and wire configurations making it possible for healthcare experts to choose the right tool for surgical procedures. The usage of guidewiresis growing rapidly in the medical device industry due to its biomechanical properties. Additionally, the demand for guidewires is being fueled by rising patient awareness about the benefits of minimally invasive procedures such as less traumatic surgical experience, reduced hospital stay, and faster recovery.View Report @Based on types, the guidewires market has been segmented into the following:Peripheral guidewireCoronary guidewireNeurovascular guidewireUrology guidewireGeographically, the guidewires market can be segmented into four major regions: North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Rest of the World (RoW). North America holds a leading position in the guidewires market followed by Europe. The major driving factors for the growth of the guidewires market in these regions arerise in geriatric population, and growing lifestyle diseases. Additionally, increasing demand for minimally invasive surgeries, unique biomechanical properties of guidewires, and growing inclination of healthcare professionals toward the usage of efficient medical devices are some of the factors expected to drive the market growth during the forecast period. Hence, all these factors are collectively driving the demand for medical guidewires. Asia Pacific is one of the most lucrative markets for the growth of guidewires market and is developing at a rapid rate. The factors which would accentuate the growth this market in Asia Pacific are presence of a large pool of patients suffering from peripheral vascular diseases which would consequently lead to an increase in the volume of endovascular procedures in densely populated countries such as India and China. Furthermore, economic development, improving healthcare facilitiesrising disposable incomes, and government initiatives in countries such as China and Indiaprovide a large base of patient population with access to healthcare facilities at an affordable rate.Various medical devices companies are constantly trying to come up with novel guidewires for different medical procedures. Technological innovation and advancements across various type of guidewires, in terms of flexibility, construction, and tip retention are few of the factors to be considered while manufacturing medical guidewires. Some of the top major players operating in the guidewires market are Boston Scientific Corporation, Cordis Corporation, C.R. Bard, Inc., ASAHI INTECC, Terumo Corporation, Covidienplc, Medtronic, Inc., Abbott Laboratories, B. Braun Melsungen AG, and Cook Medical.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Guidewires Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Sleeping Aids Market - Global Industry Analysis 2023

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Sleeping aids are medicines and medical devices that are solutions to an individuals sleeping disorder. Seeping aids ensure the treatment and diagnosis for sleep disturbances and disorders. The symptoms of sleep disorders include daytime sleepiness, irregular breathing and abnormal sleeping behaviors and increasing movements during sleep. Sleep disorders has an adverse effect to human health. It can cause neural problems that may lead to accidents, lower the productivity of work done by the individual and can cause stress and depression. Moreover, sleep disorder can lead to major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, obesity and diabetes.View Report @In todays market, alternative and traditional sleeping aids are of great demand. Medical advice through prescriptions and over the counter medication has increased considerably. Therefore, the availability and accessibility of sleeping aids has grown over the past decade. In addition to sleeping pills, accessories such herbal supplements, sound machines and aromatherapy candles are also considered as major sleeping aids. Pillows and mattresses form the largest sleeping aid market but their growth rate is not as significant compared to sleep laboratories. Sleep laboratories carry out sleep testing of individuals suffering from sleep disorders. In such laboratories, sleep disturbances, movements during sleep and sleeping behaviors are ascertained through one or more sessions or therapy.Sleeping aids market is witnessing significant growth and is expected to grow further in the coming years. With the rising aging population, stressful working conditions, inconsistent sleeping hours and change in lifestyle are all major reasons disturbing the sleeping habits in humans and thereby, driving the demands for sleeping aids. On the other hand, the major restraints inhibiting the growth of sleeping aids market globally are the side effects related to the use of sleeping pills and devices. Patent expiration of a number of sleeping drugs is the other reason that can result in the reduction in use of sleeping aids. The global sleep aids market is classified on the basis of four segments such as product, sleep disorder, medication and geography. The product segment has been segregated into sleep laboratories, mattresses and pillows, sleep apnea devices and medications.North America dominates the global sleeping aids market, where U.S. is the largest market in terms of revenue. Stressful modern lifestyle and work life coupled with increasing demand for sleeping pills and rising awareness by numerous health organizations are all driving the growth of the North American sleeping aids market. North America sleep aids market is followed by Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America and Middle East and Africa (MEA). Asia Pacific is the largest prospective region for the sleeping aids market. The growing demands for sleeping pills and medical devices from an enormous population of India and China is set to bolster the growth of sleeping aids market in the Asia Pacific region.Some of the key players in the sleeping aids market are Merck & Co., Sanofi, Pfizer, Koninklijke Philips N.V. (Philips), Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited, GlaxoSmithKline Plc, Care Fusion Corporation, SleepMed, Inc, Cadwell, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, Natus Medical Incorporated, Compumedics Limited. and DeVilbiss Healthcare LLC.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Sleeping Aids Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a market intelligence company, providing global business information reports and services. Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants, use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather, and analyze information. Our business offerings represent the latest and the most reliable information indispensable for businesses to sustain a competitive edge.Each TMR syndicated research report covers a different sector - such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, energy, food & beverages, semiconductors, med-devices, consumer goods and technology. These reports provide in-depth analysis and deep segmentation to possible micro levels. With wider scope and stratified research methodology, TMRs syndicated reports strive to provide clients to serve their overall research requirement.US Office Contact90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Ad Blue Market Research Report - Global Forecast to 2027

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Global Ad Blue Market, by Type (Packaging, Equipment, Can, Tank, Drums, Pistol, Container, Pump), by Application (Railway, Commercial Vehicle), by Method (SCR, EGR, Post combustion) - Global Forecast 2027Growing consumer demand for better fuel efficiency is encouraging automobile buyers to do more investment in diesel engine vehicles. Unlike petrol engines where normal catalyst reduces CO, NOx and Hydrocarbon can be reduced by a SCR catalyst which involves usage of Ad Blue.Ad Blue is a kind of Urea having high quality solution and thus is easy to use and manufactured according to ISO 22241. It is used with Selective Catalytic Reduction system (SCR) to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide from the exhaust of vehicles. It is a colorless clear liquid which has no harmful effect on environment as well as on health. Ad Blue is the composition of more than 30% of Urea and rest 60 % of deionized water. It is available in various forms such as drums, pumps, Cans and other forms.The average usage of Ad Blue is depends on the type of vehicle a consumer is using. The time duration of the journey through vehicle also drives how much quantity of Ad Blue is required by the Vehicle. Some characteristics of Ad Blue include suspensions, corrosiveness, crystallization and Not ADR classified.Get a sample report atIt is widely used for applications such as Commercial vehicle, cars, and passenger vehicles. For instance, if a commercial vehicle is equipped with SCR technology, Ad blue is needed. In SCR technology Ad Blue is injected into the exhaust system which releases ammonia and the SCR catalytic converter reduces harmful nitrous oxides into harmless nitrogen and water. It is also used in heavy vehicles such as trucks, busses and Railways.Global Ad Blue Market by Types: Packaging (Packets, containers, Cans and Drums) Equipment (Filling equipment, Tanks, Pumps, Pistols, and Adaptors) OthersGlobal Ad Blue Market by Usage method: Pre combustion (Inter cooling, Swirl and reduction of oil consumption) Post combustion (SCR, Particulates filters, EGR) OthersGlobal Ad Blue Market by Applications: Commercial vehicles Non-road mobile machines Cars and passenger vehicles Railways OthersEurope:The Europe is dominating the Global Ad Blue market followed by Asia-pacific due to increase in consumption from the on-road heavy, medium and light duty vehicles, passenger cars segments as well as non-road mobile machinery sectors such as agricultural, construction, forestry and mining equipment. Also, improvement required in air quality for the benefit of public health and environment is also driving the usage of Ad Blue in the vehicles in the region.Complete Report Available atAsia-Pacific:Asia-Pacific is the emerging region in Global Ad Blue market due to growing urbanization, increasing awareness about harmful effects of fuel combustion for the environment, and government initiatives to support the growth of automotive sectors. China and Japan are the emerging countries in Asia-Pacific region because China is changing and developing its technical expertise with the help of new and emerging techniques and strict regulations imposed by the Government.Global Ad Blue Market Report: Major PlayerSome of the major players in Global Ad Blue Market include Shell, BASF, Bosch, Daimler AG, Fiat group automobiles, Nissan chemical, Komatsu, Kruse Automotive, Alchem AG, Mitsui Chemical, and Yara among others.Global Ad Blue Market Report: Latest NewsBosch one of the renowned automobile industry introduces intelligent sensor systems to reduce the cost of equipment and to support research projects with the help of robust multi-sensor technology. It is also planning to expand in North America due its growing economy in automotive sectors.The reports also covers brief analysis of Geographical Region includes:Americas -North America -US -CanadaEurope -Western Europe -Germany -France -Italy -Spain -U.K -Rest of Western Europe -Eastern Europe -Poland -RussiaAsia Pacific -Asia -China -India -Japan -Rest of Asia -Pacific Countries -Australia -New Zealand -The Middle East& AfricaThe report on Ad Blue Market comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance.This report will provide the clear picture of current market scenario of Ad Blue Market globally as well as the country level markets. The report also provides the information about various methods which are used to provide solutions for the exhaustive of vehicles and its also deliver details information about its various applications. It will also depict detailed information about companies with their market dynamics involved in Ad Blue market.At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services.MRFR team have supreme objective to provide the optimum quality market research and intelligence services to our clients. Our market research studies by products, services, technologies, applications, end users, and market players for global, regional, and country level market segments, enable our clients to see more, know more, and do more, which help to answer all their most important questions.In order to stay updated with technology and work process of the industry, MRFR often plans & conducts meet with the industry experts and industrial visits for its research analyst members.Akash AnandMarket Research FutureMagarpatta Road, Hadapsar,Pune - 411028Maharashtra, India+1 646 845 9312Email: Akash.Anand@Marketresearchfuture.ComWeb:
Global Substation Batteries Market Supply Chain Relationship, Development Trends, Key Companies Profile and Forecast to 2027

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Global Substation Batteries Market Research Report by Type (Lead Acid Batteries (Vented Batteries, Sealed Batteries) and Nickel Cadmium Batteries) and by Region -Forecast to 2021Study Objectives of Substation Batteries-To provide detailed analysis of the market structure along with forecast for the next 10 years of the various segments and sub-segments of the global Substation Batteries market-To provide insights about factors affecting the market growth-To Analyze the Substation Batteries market based on various factors- price analysis, supply chain analysis, porters five force analysis etc.-To provide historical and forecast revenue of the market segments and sub-segments with respect to four main geographies and their countries- North America, Europe, Asia, South America, Middle East-To provide country level analysis of the market with respect to the current market size and future prospective-To provide country level analysis of the market for segment by Type, and Region-To provide strategic profiling of key players in the market, comprehensively analyzing their core competencies, and drawing a competitive landscape for the market-To track and analyze competitive developments such as joint ventures, strategic alliances, mergers and acquisitions, and new product developments in the global Substation Batteries marketGet a Sample Report @Market Synopsis of Substation BatteriesMarket ScenarioSubstation batteries maintain a steady supply of electricity for essential equipment incase of loss of electric supply. Ever increasing need electricity is a major factor driving the need for substation batteries. Additionally, rising industrialization in developing nations also boost the demand for substation batteries.Market SegmentsThe Substation Batteries Market can be categorized on the basis of Type: Lead Acid Batteries (Vented Batteries, Sealed Batteries) and Nickel Cadmium Batteries.Regional Analysis of Substation BatteriesAsia Pacific region held a major share within the substation battery market in 2014. North America and Europe also held a considerable share within this market. Middle East and Africa region is expected to exhibit a profound growth in the market.Key PlayersKey players in this market include Johnson Controls Inc. (U.S.), Exide Technologies (U.S.), GS Yuasa (Japan), Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany), and Saft Groupe S.A. (France).Get a Browse Report @AmericaNorth Americao USo Canadao Mexicoo Rest Of North AmericaSouth Americao Brazilo Argentinao Venezuelao Rest Of South AmericaEuropeGermanyFranceItalySpainU.KNetherlandsRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaIndiaJapanSouth KoreaAustraliaRest of Asia PacificMiddle EastSaudiUAEKuwaitQatarRest Of Middle EastAfricaNigeriaAlgeriaSouth AmericaRest of AfricaThe report on Substation Batteries of Market Research Future comprises of extensive primary research along with the detailed analysis of qualitative as well as quantitative aspects by various industry experts, key opinion leaders to gain the deeper insight of the market and industry performance. The report gives the clear picture of current market scenario which includes historical and projected market size in terms of value, Furthermore technological advancement, and macro-economic factors in the market have also been discussed in detail in the report. The report provides detailed information and strategies of the key players in the industry. The report also provides a broad study of the different market segments and regions.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.Contact:Akash Anand,Market Research Future+1 646 845 9312Email: akash.anand@marketresearchfuture.com
Photovoltaic Device Market Technological breakthroughs, Value chain and stakeholder analysis by 2024

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The main function of a photovoltaic device is the conversion of sunlight into electricity. There are end numbers of benefits associated with these devices which have made their adoption on a large scale across various industries.The solar panels used in photovoltaic devices are comprised of solar cells which result in the generation of electrical power. The various materials used for photovoltaics include polycrystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, monocrystalline silicon and amorphous silicon among others.Photovoltaic installations can be mounted either on rooftop, ground or wall. Initially, the application of photovoltaics was limited to spacecrafts and orbiting satellites, but nowadays its application has been mostly for grid connected power generation.Obtain Report Details:The popularity of photovoltaic device has been on the rise as a result of technological advancements coupled with large scale manufacturing which has led to the reduction in its cost and at the same time increased the efficiency and reliability of these devices.The photovoltaic device market is expected to grow as a result of increasing focus on the part of the governments of various countries towards the issue of climate change and at the same time develop and expand the alternate sources of energy.The governments are more willing to provide funds than ever before for the adoption of solar energy, which is further propelling the demand for photovoltaic devices market.Moreover, factors such as reliability, safety, cost effective and ease of installation have led to the increasing adoption of these devices. Low maintenance cost is another important factor contributing to the growth the photovoltaic devices market.As no fuel costs are associated with these devices, the adoption of photovoltaic devices is considered to be a cost effective option in lieu of the high diesel and electricity prices.The increasing application of photovoltaic devices across segments such as military, power plants, and defense and space among others are further resulting in the increased demand for these devices. Considering these factors the photovoltaic device market is likely to register a healthy growth rate during the forecast period from 2016 to 2024.However, the material availability, production cost and toxicity are some of the major restraints that are hindering the deployment of solar photovoltaic (PV) cells across different industries.As per recent trends it has been observed that, Perovskite, which is a very inexpensive material, is replacing crystalline silicon due to it being expensive. Crystalline silicon forms a part of photovoltaic cell build.The photovoltaic device market can be categorized on the basis of types, components, application and geography. On the basis of type, the market can be segmented into two types; organic PV and inorganic PV.Based on components, the photovoltaic device market can be segmented into two categories; thin film PV cells and crystalline silicon PV cells. Thin film PV is comparatively a newer technology as compared to crystalline silicon PV.The semiconducting layers are comprised of materials such as copper indium diselenide (CIS), amorphous silicon (a-Si), cadmium telluride (CdTe) and copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS).The application segments of the photovoltaic device market will include military, power plants, industrial, defense and space, residential and non residential among others.Make an Enquiry:Geographically, the market has been categorized into five broad regions; North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa and Latin AmericaSome of the key players operating in the photovoltaic device market are Kyocera Corporation (Japan), Panasonic Corporation (Japan), Kaneka Corporation (Japan), JA solar Co. Ltd (China), Sharp Corporation (Japan), , Jinko Solar (China), Trina Solar (China), Suntech Power Holdings Co. Ltd (China), Canadian Solar (Canada), Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (Japan), ReneSola Co. Ltd (China) and Yingli Green (China) among others.The report offers a comprehensive evaluation of the market. It does so via in-depth qualitative insights, historical data, and verifiable projections about market size. The projections featured in the report have been derived using proven research methodologies and assumptions.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Semiconductor IP Market Technological breakthroughs, Value chain and stakeholder analysis by 2024

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The demand for advanced semiconductor IP from the consumer sector has resulted in the semiconductor IP industry to flourish across the globe. It is expected that this industry will benefit from increasing funds from governments and investors.Moreover, growing popularity of miniaturization, emerging IoT ecosystem, and the bouncing back of automotive sector will ensure a healthy growth of the global semiconductor IP market.The global semiconductor IP market is segmented on the basis of type, end user, application, and geography. The report presents a detailed study of the global semiconductor IP market, majorly including its growth drivers, restraining factors or challenges, current market trends, future opportunities.Obtain Report Details:The study aims to meet the research needs of investors and companies wishing to gain profit in the industry, and directing them towards making strategic decisions.Written by seasoned analysts, this research report delves into the semiconductor market and gives information such as bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, threat of new entrants, degree of competition, and threat of substitutes.Automobiles Top of Formare currently undergoing a digital makeover as manufacturers are looking for automation as a trend in the coming years. This trend is expected to boost the global semiconductor IP market.Automobile manufacturers such as Mercedes, Toyota, and Audi are investing extensive amount of time and money for the research and development of automobile automation and such initiatives are creating huge opportunities for the growth of the semiconductor IP market, as semiconductors play a vital role in automobile automation, including features such as IC-integrated LED front lighting, speech recognition, and image and video compatibilities. All these features give optimal driving experience and thus, are in demand by customers across the globe.Another key factor, which is creating a positive market outlook for the semiconductor IP industry is, the large consumption of consumer electronics such as mobiles, Smartphone, TV, home appliances, tablets, and digital cameras.Of these, the sales of mobiles and Smartphone are higher and thus, responsible to boost the markets growth. However, the design complexity is expected to be one of the key restraints of this market as manufacturers face difficulty in integrating semiconductor IP on system on chip or SOC.In terms of future opportunities, Asia Pacific is expected to contribute to the industry, with countries such as China and India implementing new technologies as part of their urbanization plan.By geography, the market is segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and the Rest of the World. Of these, the market will experience stagnancy in North America as the semiconductor technology has been put to use since a long time.The demand for semiconductor IP will be stable in Europe with rising demand for upgradation in their transport network from consumers. Implementation of smart transportation in countries such as Germany and the U.K. is also behind the growth of the market.Make an Enquiry:Asia Pacific is anticipated to witness the fastest growth in the coming years owing to robust industrialization and industrialization in developing nations such as India.Owing to cheap labor these developing nations are a base for many manufacturing companies. Favorable government policies and stable economies are expected to encourage the markets growth.Some of the leading manufacturers of semiconductor IP mentioned in this report are: Mentor Graphics, Renesas Electronic Corporation, Lattice Semiconductor, Imagination Technologies, ARM Holdings, PLC, Cava, Inc., Vivante Corporation, Sonics, Inc., and Atmel Corporation.About TMRTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact TMR90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email:sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:
Controlled Release Fertilizers Market Size, Share | Industry Trends Analysis Report, 2023

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Intense competition among players is the key characteristic of the business landscape of the Asia Pacific controlled release fertilizers market. The top two players, namely, Kingenta Ecological Engineering and Shandong Shikefeng Chemical, collectively held nearly 50% of this market in 2014, demonstrating a moderately consolidated market structure, finds Transparency Market Research (TMR).Fertilizer manufacturers in Asia Pacific are making use of advanced technologies and economies of scale to produce low-cost specialty fertilizers, of which controlled release fertilizer is one of the fastest-growing segment. In the near future, these companies will be focusing on increasing their production capacities and constructing new business facilities in emerging markets to expand their reach.This 155 page report gives readers a comprehensive overview of the Controlled Release Fertilizers market. Browse Market Research Report @Increasing Need for Food Boosts Adoption of Controlled Release FertilizersThe population in Asia Pacific has been reporting an exponential rise since the last few years. According to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific (UN ESCAP), the region is home to more than 4.4 billion people, accounting for almost 60% of the worlds population.With this robust population base, the need for food is growing unprecedentedly in this region. On top of it, the need for shelter is also increasing extensively, leading to the dwindling of arable land. Hence, farmers are increasingly using controlled release fertilizers to enhance their agricultural output from the limited available land.Besides this, agriculturalists in Asia Pacific are focusing on upgrading their farming methods to boost their crop yield in order to meet the growing demand for food. As controlled release fertilizers possess eco-friendly properties and are more efficient than conventional fertilizers, their application will be increased significantly in this region over the forecast period.Controlled Release Fertilizers find Highest Adoption in China and IndiaThe Asia Pacific controlled release fertilizers market is likely to expand at a CAGR of 7.20% during the period from 2015 to 2023, estimates TMR. The markets opportunity will rise from US$1.1 bn in 2014 to US$2.1 bn by the end of the forecast period.China and India are the most attractive markets for controlled release fertilizers in Asia Pacific. In 2014, China emerged as the dominant consumer of these fertilizers, holding a share of over 75% in terms of volume. Other regional markets exhibit moderate attractiveness due to the low adoption of these fertilizers in the agriculture and horticulture sectors.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Controlled Release Fertilizers market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market@Most of the demand for these fertilizers arises from cereals and grain crops. Analysts expect this demand to increase substantially over the forecast period. Sulfur coated urea or polymer sulfur coated urea is the highest consumed controlled release fertilizer in Asia Pacific. This segment contributed a share of over 45% of the total consumption of these fertilizers in 2014.The study presented here is based on a report by Transparency Market Research (TMR) titled Controlled Release Fertilizers Market - Asia Pacific Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2015 - 2023.The report segments the controlled release fertilizers market in Asia Pacific into:By ProductPolymer sulfur coated urea/sulfur coated ureaPolymer coated ureaPolymer coated NPK fertilizerOthers (including coated micronutrients, etc.)By ApplicationCereals & grainsOilseeds & pulsesFruits & vegetablesOthers (including turf, ornamental plants, etc.)About UsTransparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The companys exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMRs experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information.TMRs data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports.Contact UsTransparency Market Research90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA - Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453Email: sales@transparencymarketresearch.comWebsite:Visit Blog :
Global Closed Loop Stepper Motor Market Size, Share, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2023

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Market OverviewThe global closed loop stepper motor market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.3% during 2017 - 2023. Traditional stepper motors are considered as open-loop steppers, owing to the absence of a feedback mechanism. These systems do not have the capability to corroborate that the target position has been achieved. Unlike traditional steppers, closed loop systems, with inherent encoders constantly communicate back to the controller and also make the required adjustments to achieve the target position.To Browse Full Report Visit Here:Market DynamicsGlobal closed loop stepper motor market is expected to show steady growth through 2023. Major factors propelling the growth of the global closed loop stepper motor market include rapid growth in automation, standardization of energy efficiency, integration of motion control components and low pricing as compared to servo motors. However, it is difficult to operate closed loop stepper systems at higher speed, which is a major factor restraining the growth of its market across the globe.TrendsA major trend observed in closed loop stepper motors is the integration of wireless communication technology. Wireless technology is a portion of automation that has been cultivated over the last decade. Although it was not contemplated convenient for control initially, wireless technology has briskly emerged from sensor-only applications to closed-loop control.Closed loop steppers can exhibit mechanical resonances at higher speed and at certain step rates, consequently, they can lose torque and synchronization. Evolution of micro-stepping technique has been observed as another major trend in the global closed loop stepper motor market. Micro-stepping technique helps the motor to operate smoothly, as well as to overcome several cogging and resonance related issues. This technique offers low cost privilege to closed loop steppers in order to improve their performance.Growth DriversClosed loop stepper motors are widely used in several aspects, for the purpose of providing automation. Packaging and labelling, industrial machineries, medical equipment and semiconductors are some of the major end-users of closed loop stepper systems. Technology advancement and brisk growth in automation are likely to propel the global closed loop stepper motor market growth, over next few years. Moreover, internet of things (IoT), engineering services and system integration are likely to accompany expansion of automation into other markets as well. The global closed loop stepper motor market is expected to register a steady growth owing to the evolution of fourth industrial revolution (also termed as industry 4.0) and the surge in demand of automation.Browse For Related Research Visit Here:OpportunitiesIndustrial revolution 4.0 is expected to create ample opportunities for the closed loop stepper motor market. Industry 4.0 is likely to bring computers and automation together to revolutionize industry production. Various end-users including industrial machineries, medical equipment, packaging and labelling, robotics, textile, factories and semiconductors are utilizing closed loop steppers for various purposes. Emergence of industry 4.0 is expected to generate higher demand for closed loop steppers.ChallengesClosed loop stepper motors offer unique capabilities as compared to the other motor designs. However, they are not imperatively the ideal preference for every application. Some of the disadvantages associated with these steppers include loss of synchronization while operating at higher speeds, owing to the reoccurrence of mechanical or electrical issues on a regular basis. These steppers may require a feedback sensor to identify stall-and-stop conditions. Moreover, they tend to chatter and vibrate, as a sort of cogging action. These factors are likely to restrain the growth of global closed loop stepper motor market.About P&S Market ResearchP&S Market Research is a market research company, which offers market research and consulting services for various geographies around the globe. We provide market research reports, industry forecasting reports, business intelligence, and research based consulting services across different industry/business verticals.As one of the top growing market research agency, were keen upon providing market landscape and accurate forecasting. Our analysts and consultants are proficient with business intelligence and market analysis, through their interaction with leading companies of the concerned domain. We help our clients with B2B market research and assist them in identifying various windows of opportunity, and framing informed and customized business expansion strategies in different regions.Contact:AbhishekExecutive  Client Partner347, 5th Ave. #1402New York City, NY - 10016Toll-free: +1-888-778-7886 (USA/Canada)Email: enquiry@psmarketresearch.comWeb:
Contact Lens Market Market - Global Industry Analysis 2024

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The global market for contact lenses features a consolidated competitive landscape, with the top four companies, including Johnson & Johnson, The Cooper Companies, Alcona Inc. and Bausch and Lomb, accounting for a share of nearly 68% in the global market in 2015, states Transparency Market Research (TMR) in a new report. Johnson & Johnson, the largest vendor in the market, held nearly 31% share in the global market in the same year.Volume-wise, the market is expected to rise to 2,135.0 mn units by 2024. TMR also estimates that the global contact lens market, which had a valuation of US$9.74 bn in 2015 in terms of revenue, is expected to expand at a 7.6% CAGR from 2016 through 2024, and rise to US$18.70 bn by 2024. Of the key technologies used for manufacturing contact lenses, the cast molding technology is presently the most preferred, accounting for a share of over 80% of the markets overall revenues in 2015.View Report @Rising Prevalence of Ophthalmic Disorders and Rising Popularity as Fashion Accessory Boost Global Sales of Contact LensesThe vast rise in the worlds population that suffers from a variety of ophthalmic disorders has emerged as the primary growth driver of the global contact lens market lately. The rise in younger population with issues such as refractory errors and weakened eyesight have especially increased the global consumption of contact lenses, which are being increasingly preferred for their comfort, convenience, and aesthetics.The easy availability of colored, disposable, and affordable varieties of contact lenses have also led to the vast rise in their usage as fashion accessories globally. Attempts made by contact lens manufacturers to educate masses about the proper and safe use of contact lenses and the availability of vast product varieties across distant corners of the globe have also helped stimulate the growth of the global contact lens market in the past few years.Concerns Regarding Damage from Careless Usage Continue to Limit Large-scale AdoptionOwing to the fact that contact lenses are worn directly on the cornea of the eye, they are required to be handled with exceptional care to prevent eye infections, ulcerations and other eye diseases. It is thus a widely known fact that careless handling or storage of contact lenses, or sleeping with the lenses on can have severe implications after the lenses are worn and remains a key challenge hindering the large-scale usage of contact lenses among skeptical consumers.Along with this, the fact that practitioners are not well equipped to prescribe contact lenses in certain developing economies across regions such as Asia Pacific and Middle East also threatens to limit the overall growth prospects of the global contact lens market to a certain extent.Emerging Economies to Present Excellent Growth OpportunitiesNevertheless, the vast untapped opportunities in developing regions can allow vendors in the market to gain substantial traction in the next few years. Expansion across these regions will require innovative marketing strategies and ways of educating the masses about the proper usage of contact lenses will have to be adopted. Over the period between 2016 and 2024, the market for contact lenses in Asia Pacific is expected to expand at a considerable CAGR. The APAC market is expected to reach US$4.76 bn by 2024.Prominent vendors in the market, including Novartis International AG, Menicon Group, STAAR Surgical, Carl Zeiss AG, SynergEyes Inc., Abbott Medical Optics, Inc., Essilor International S.A., Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Bausch and Lomb have strengthened their hold in regional markets with these approaches. Strategies such as innovation and new product development, high investments in research and development, and exploitation of novel marketing and sales channels have also helped key companies hold sway in the market in the past years. Incorporation of new technologies for upgradation of products and strategic acquisitions entered-in with the aim of expanding product portfolios and market position across regional markets will help companies in beating competition in the next few years.This review of the global contact lens market is based on a recent market research report published by Transparency Market Research, titled Contact Lens Market -Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2016 - 2024.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Contact Lens Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.For this report, the market has been segmented as follows:Global Contact Lens Market, by Product TypeSoft LensGas Permeable (GP)Global Contact Lens Market, by Design TypeSphericalToricMultifocalOthersGlobal Contact Lens Market, by Technology TypeSpin CastingCast MoldingLathe CuttingGlobal Contact Lens Market, by GeographyNorth AmericaU.S.Rest of North AmericaEuropeU.K.GermanyFranceRussiaItalyRest of EuropeAsia PacificChinaJapanIndiaRest of APACLatin AmericaBrazilRest of Latin AmericaMiddle East and AfricaGCCSouth 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:
Global Prefilled Syringes Market Analysis, Development, Growth and Demand Forecast to 2024

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Becton Dickinson and Company Group plc., Baxter International Inc., Terumo Medical Corporation, and Medtronic are the top four players that dominate over half the prefilled syringes market. Transparency Market Research has noted that the global prefilled syringes market is highly dynamic and competitive and while the nature of the market is consolidated in developed regions owing to the presence of large players, it remains fragmented in most of the emerging markets with many small regional players.The global sales of prefilled syringes amounted to US$3.5 bn in 2015 and is projected to reach US$7.9 bn, expanding at a CAGR of 9.3% over the period of 2016 to 2024. In terms of prefilled syringes consumption, the market is expected to expand at a CAGR of 9.0% during the forecast period.View Report @Ambulatory Surgical Centers to Show Promising Growth over Forecast PeriodBy application, the vaccines segment dominated the global prefilled syringes market, accounting for a collective share of 34.3% in 2015. The segment is also projected to exhibit a strong growth rate from 2016 to 2024. In terms of percentage share contribution, the polymer-based prefilled syringes segment is expected to continue its lead in the global market through 2024. It will also register the highest growth in the coming years. By distribution channel, the hospitals segment is projected to account for the major share by the end of the forecast period. On the other hand, ambulatory surgical centers are likely to register a high growth rate by 2024.North America dominates the global market, while Asia Pacific is expected to witness strong growth. The U.S. is the largest market for prefilled syringes, accounting for around 35.5% share of the global marketImproving Safety Standards Driving Innovation among Product ManufacturersThe incidence of needle stick injuries has been a cause for concern over the years. According to the World Health Organization, almost two million healthcare professionals suffer from infectious diseases resulting from needle stick injuries each year.Various needle safety devices  such as passive needle guarding caps with a polymer shield and a retractable needle system  as well as advanced technologies  such as advanced barrel technology and multi-chamber syringes  are being developed to cope with this problem, the author of the study finds. Therefore, improving safety standards and technological advancements have been primarily driving the global prefilled syringes market.High Costs Associated with Prefilled Syringes Inhibiting widespread AdoptionThere are several factors that pose a severe challenge to the growth of the global prefilled syringes market, the primary one being the high costs associated with temperature controlled packaging required for temperature-sensitive drugs. In order to maintain specified temperatures and conditions throughout the shelf life of a drug, drug manufacturing companies require several complex machineries that need to be maintained regularly, the TMR analyst states. This is a costly affair and as a result, restricts companies from manufacturing prefilled syringes.Other factors inhibiting the market include product recalls due to breakages and leachables, the potential risk of interaction between prefilled syringes and drugs, and the availability of alternative drug delivery methods.This review is based on the findings of a TMR report titled Prefilled Syringes Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast, 2016 - 2024.Get accurate market forecast and analysis on the Prefilled Syringes Market. Request a sample to stay abreast on the key trends impacting this market.Global Prefilled Syringes Market  By MaterialGlass based prefilled syringesPolymer based prefilled syringesGlobal Prefilled Syringes Market  By ApplicationMonoclonal AntibodiesVaccinesOthersGlobal Prefilled Syringes Market  By Distribution ChannelHospitalsAmbulatory Surgical CentersMail order pharmaciesGlobal Prefilled Syringes Market  By RegionNorth AmericaU.S.CanadaLatin AmericaBrazilMexicoRest of Latin AmericaEuropeGermanyU.KFranceItalySpainRest of EuropeAsia Pacific (APAC)ChinaIndiaJapanAustraliaNew ZealandRest of Asia PacificMiddle East and Africa (MEA)Saudi ArabiaUAERSARest of MEAAbout 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:
NEWPORT  The billion-dollar behemoth known as Pacific Seafood Group has thoroughly shaken up this bustling commercial fishing town with an expansion blitz designed to build on its already dominant market position.

To get there, Pacific engaged in a high-stakes negotiation with a longtime adversary: the Oregon Department of Justice. In effect, Pacific sought immunity from antitrust laws, from the very agency that two years earlier had sided with the fishermen who'd accused the company of abusing its market power.

Friday, Pacific declared victory and pledged to operate a hulking Trident Seafoods processing plant in the heart of Newport's Bayfront for a minimum of three years and hire nearly 150 seasonal employees.

It appeared at first that Pacific had overplayed its hand. In a blistering response to the company late Thursday afternoon, the Department of Justice threatened to take enforcement action unless the company agreed to put the Trident plant on the market for a year and, short of a sale, operate it for at least three years.

It also accused the company of concealing an earlier purchase of another Trident facility, of misrepresenting the department's position in its talks with lawmakers, and of asking for a kind of guarantee it can't give.

The story took another twist Friday when Pacific said it would comply with most of the state's terms and open the plant. But the company unilaterally changed some of the conditions laid down by Justice Department lawyers; for instance, it said it would keep the surimi plant on the market for six months rather than 12.

It was not immediately clear Friday whether the Department of Justice was satisfied by Pacific's terms.

At the center of the drama on the Bayfront is Frank Dulcich, the fiercely ambitious chief executive who built Pacific into the largest seafood processor and distributor in the western United States. The company's growing presence elicits a mix of gratitude and resentment from commercial fishermen who have watched warily as Pacific has become the dominant processor in virtually every commercial fishing port in Oregon and Washington.

Once Pacific completes the Trident acquisition, it will leave just two major seafood processors in the state's busiest commercial fishing port. "It's amazing to walk down the Bayfront," said Bob Eder, a Newport commercial fisherman for 45 years. "It appears that Newport is becoming a company town."

Pacific applied a political full-court press in Salem, where lawmakers representing coastal districts pushed the Department of Justice to find a compromise. Time is of the essence, the company repeatedly said. The commercial season for Pacific whiting, the kind of fish the Trident plant in Newport is equipped to process, opens Monday.

Rep. David Gomberg, D-Central Oregon Coast, said he's well aware of the fishermen's gripes about Pacific's tactics. "For the fishermen, I know it's better to have options," Gomberg said. "But we're looking to preserve jobs and protect the local economy."

From the waterfront to the courtroom

Seven years ago, another Pacific expansion move was causing heartburn in the Northwest commercial fishing industry. Pacific had entered into an exclusive marketing agreement with Ocean Gold, a large Westport, Washington, processor, to sell its fish. Dulcich personally owned a minority share in Ocean Gold and eventually moved ahead with plans to buy the company outright.

Today, a related case is still dragging through the courts. The litigation has not always gone well for the fishermen. Their first complaint was settled with no money changing hands.

But the litigation prompted the Department of Justice to launch two antitrust investigations of Pacific. The state never filed its own case against the seafood giant but in 2015 it intervened on behalf of the fishermen's lawsuit. "Fishermen face both the threat of reduced purchase prices from the merger and reduced choice due to elimination of future competition whereas Pacific Seafood will not be prejudiced," the state wrote.

The litigation outraged Pacific and many of its supporters. No company had paid more to commercial fishermen than Pacific, they argued, nor had done more to build and expand markets for Northwest seafood. From their vantage point, the state was harassing the company and endangering rural Oregon jobs with a years-long antitrust investigation.

"I don't think people appreciate the fragility of the West Coast processing industry," said John Sackton, a market analyst with Seafood.com in Boston. "It's become increasingly difficult for companies to make money. It takes volume to earn profits. So there's been a lot of consolidation. In a lot of places in the world there is just one or maybe two companies that do all the processing."

Back in expansion mode

The legal morass stymied Pacific's expansion drive, until 2015.

That was the year Pacific paid more than $1 million for just over half an acre of dilapidated Newport Bayfront property. It bought the parcel from California Shellfish, parent company of a competing processor, Hallmark Fisheries, which runs a fish-buying station at the site.

Pacific is planning a new, state-of-the-art processing plant as well as a commercial development that would lease space to small marine and tourist-related businesses. It even is considering a larger attraction described as the seafood industry equivalent of the famed Tillamook Cheese Factory.

Then, Trident decided to exit Oregon. It dismissed other suitors interested in the properties and went to Pacific. In early April, Pacific closed its acquisition of the Trident fish meal plant, which converts fish waste to fish food.

Days later, Pacific went public with its possible purchase of the larger Trident processing plant. The Trident plant converts whiting into surimi, an odorless, tasteless fish protein that is the main ingredient in imitation crab and imitation lobster.

A processing plant specializing in whiting is a vital asset to Oregon commercial fishermen. While there are other whiting processors on the coast -- four just in the Warrenton-Astoria area -- there is a massive number of whiting off the northwest coast and federal fisheries regulators have set huge catch limits.

Pacific first went to the whiting fleet to see if they approved. They gave their unanimous assent, said Heather Mann, of the Midwater Trawlers Cooperative in Newport. Even Todd Whaley approved, Mann said. The Brookings fisherman was a lead plaintiff in the first antitrust lawsuit against Pacific.

Pacific then turned to Salem, saying it would not go through with the Trident deal without a clear signal of support. Specifically, it asked for a "no-action" letter from the Department of Justice.

The agency said it would need time -- eights weeks or so -- to review the Pacific-Trident deal. "Your request is extraordinary as DOJ has never granted prospective immunity of this type and the Oregon antitrust act provides us with no express authority to grant it," wrote Tim Nord, the department's lead antitrust attorney.

Pacific argued it couldn't wait that long. The whiting season opens May 15.

While negotiations continued, some Newport residents lamented the loss of Trident. Sara Skamser, whose company, Foulweather Trawl, makes commercial fishing nets, said Trident was a sort of neutral sanctuary. Unlike Pacific, which tends to cater to

the fishermen it buys from, Trident would sell ice or bait to all-comers.

More importantly, she said, Trident offered an alternative. "Fishermen like choices," Skamser said. "And they increasingly don't have choices. It's kind of hard to see these monopolies."

Ice has emerged as a major concern. If Pacific buys the Trident plant or it closes, Pacific will be the only company in Newport able to produce major volumes of ice. Fishermen can't fish without ice. Jeff Boardman, a shrimper from Depoe Bay, said when he goes to sea, he's got 8 to 9 tons of ice on board. "You get one company with all the ice in town, they can control who fishes and when," he said.

The Department of Justice's response to Pacific may give heart to the company's critics. It laid out a laundry list of requirements Pacific must meet to avoid enforcement actions.

On Friday, Dan Occhipinti, Pacific's general counsel, trumpeted the news that Pacific accepted the state's terms and would go ahead with its purchase. He thanked Gov. Kate Brown and Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum for their leadership.

The company pledged to reengineer the plant's manufacturing technology, fix its wastewater treatment system, and replace the accounting and production computer systems.

Occhipinti added that Pacific knows that it can't survive without the fishermen. "If fishermen don't sell to us, we're out of business," he said. "Our job is to create better markets. If we succeed, we increase the value of the resource and we can pay fishermen more. Are there disagreements on price? Of course, sometimes there are. But at end of the day, we are all in this together."

-- Jeff Manning

503-294-7606,jmanning@oregonian.com
The Oregonian/OregonLive's database of PERS retirees has been updated with information about 2016 retirements.

The Oregonian originally had requested the information from the Public Employees Retirement System in 2011. The state agency had routinely provided the information but had stopped, arguing it was not subject to public disclosure. The attorney general then ordered PERS to release the data to The Oregonian and the Statesman-Journal, which joined in the request. PERS instead hired an outside attorney to fight disclosure.

The news organizations and PERS reached a legal settlement under which the agency would release the names and monthly benefits of retirees -- just as public employees' names and salaries long have been a matter of public record.

The Oregonian had sought the information as part of its reporting on the retirement system's costs and financial difficulties. Several other states release similar retiree data that is now online. The Oregonian/OregonLive updates the database yearly after PERS processes the previous year's retirements. It is now current as of Jan. 1, 2017.

-- The Oregonian/OregonLive
21813756-mmmain.jpg

(Oregonian file photo)

A veteran Clackamas County sheriff's detective ignored allegations of rape, sexual abuse of young children and multiple thefts and fraud dating to 2009, a pattern extensively documented by a supervisor yet largely dismissed by command staff.

Detective Jeff Green retired on April 17, 2015, after his supervisor, Sgt. Matt Swanson, tried unsuccessfully to initiate an internal affairs investigation into Green's history of failing to investigate serious crimes. Swanson worried that rapists and other criminals were going free.

It took a year for the Sheriff's Office to ask in February 2016 for an outside agency to do a criminal investigation into Green. The results of that review, done by the Milwaukie Police Department, led the Clackamas County District Attorney's Office to charge him in March with five counts of second-degree official misconduct, a misdemeanor. The case is pending.

Reached Thursday at his home in La Grande, Green, 59, declined to comment. He worked for the Sheriff's Office for 26 years. The Oregon Public Employees Retirement System lists his final annual salary as $88,797.

The case represents a significant embarrassment for an agency led by a sheriff, Craig Roberts, who has long touted his commitment to fighting child abuse and family violence. The Sheriff's Office organizes an annual child abuse summit that draws hundreds of people from across the nation. It is unclear when Roberts first learned of problems that Swanson identified with Green's police work.

Roberts issued a statement saying "public accountability is a cornerstone value of my office, and I take allegations of employee misconduct seriously." The Sheriff's Office has reviewed 154 of Green's cases dating to 2009 and found 40 required additional work, officials said.

This week, in response to a request from The Oregonian/OregonLive, the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office released emails, internal memos and performance evaluations that not only shed light on Green's work history, but also detail the lengths to which Swanson went to launch an internal investigation into the detective's questionable work.

The records show multiple supervisors were well-aware of Green's performance problems. Yet they never placed Green on leave.

Swanson said he was discouraged from pursuing an internal affairs complaint. While Green was honored by agency brass who took him out to lunch to celebrate his retirement, Swanson said he was harassed and mocked.

"I saw that he had not investigated sexual assault cases for years, not followed-up with rape victims, not submitted evidence, not written reports for work done years ago, misrepresented information and displayed a callous and cavalier behavior toward women, minorities and other vulnerable people," Swanson wrote in a memo to Capt. Kevin Poppen. "I believed victims had not received justice and I believed perpetrators were left to roam the community and preventable crimes likely occurred because sex offenders that should have been in jail were left to continue their criminal conduct. I believed the reputation of our agency and profession was at stake."

"I don't know why nobody did anything before me," Swanson continued. "But I did my duty and suffered negatively as a result. I was pressured to change my complaint. I received a harassing phone call; misinformation about me was used to mock me.

"My conduct was called into question as if I was out of line to question how my superiors were handling this," he wrote.

The Sheriff's Office has given contradictory accounts of Green's status at the time of his retirement. On Thursday, it acknowledged that it did not do an internal review of Green - in contrast to a statement in March by sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Brian Jensen. In an email then to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Jensen said Green retired while the subject of "an active internal affairs investigation."

Swanson first raised alarms about Green in early 2015 when he was assigned to Wilsonville as a supervisor. He quickly grew alarmed by Green's failure to do meaningful follow-up on a staggering number of cases assigned to him, including crimes against children and teens, according to multiple memos he wrote to his superiors.

Swanson did his own review of Green's cases and identified many with incomplete work. Among them, he said:

-- The case of a 2-year-old whose mother repeatedly told police the child had been raped by the mother's boyfriend. Green failed to submit the rape kit to the crime lab and suspended the case without follow-up.

-- A case of a woman who alleged she had been raped at work by a coworker. The woman delivered a letter to Green about the case and thanked him for his work. Swanson could find no documentation that Green had ever contacted the woman.

-- A case of an alleged rape of a 14-year-old by an older teen. Green talked to the girl, who said she didn't want to pursue charges. Green dropped it.

-- A case in which a woman reported her suspicion that her sister stole from their mother. Green asked for her bank records, which she produced. He entered them into evidence and did nothing else.

-- Another rape case involving a juvenile victim. Green concluded that the suspect was in Peru and suspended the investigation. Swanson later determined the suspect was living in Tualatin.

-- A sexual assault case in which the rape kit sat in the property room for years. "Just last week," Swanson wrote to Poppen in October 2015, "we contacted that victim for what appears to be the first time since she attempted to report being sexually assaulted in 2013."

-- A case in which a girl reported being raped while walking in public. "This is a 'stranger in the bushes' type case," Swanson wrote in an email to Lt. William Behan. Green suspended the case without contacting the victim or the girl's family.

-- Two sexual assault cases that Green "attempted to suspend ... as unsolvable," but Swanson reassigned them to patrol deputies who found the suspects and witnesses within days.

Swanson made his concerns known to Sgt. Dan Kraus and Lt. Jeff Smith shortly after he started in Wilsonville, his emails indicate.

"Taken at face value," Swanson wrote to Smith in February 2015, "this appears to be gross misconduct -- which should be thoroughly investigated. I have concerns with Det. Green continuing in his current position given what is known at this point. Please contact me so we can discuss how best to proceed."

At one point soon after becoming Green's supervisor, Swanson emailed Kraus, saying "I'm not comfortable with him doing any work at this point."

Kraus's response: "This is a sensation that everyone has had out here for some time."

Green's problems had been documented in his 2013 evaluation, which found he did not meet standards and noted that he failed to complete investigations in a timely manner and that several cases exceeded the statute of limitations, which meant "offenders were not held accountable for their actions."

Swanson also reached out to Smith, who has since been promoted to captain and now oversees investigations. Swanson wanted to talk to Smith about his concerns, but Smith put him off until the following week.

"I believe next week is too long to wait," Swanson wrote. "There are victims of sexual assault and those cases have not been investigated for years. I cannot with good conscience go another day without reporting this to (internal affairs).

In another conversation with Smith, Swanson said he felt other managers wanted him to revise his complaint because it would reflect poorly on them.

"I told him I was not comfortable doing that," Swanson wrote. "Smith said that was a dick thing to do and I asked why? And he said because I was going to use it to 'shove it up his ass' and we had a contentious conversation about that."

Swanson pushed back. "You guys should receive my complaint as is," he wrote in a memo documenting the meeting.

Swanson repeatedly noted that he felt he was under more scrutiny that Green. At one point, he said Lt. Will Behan commented that Swanson "just didn't like" Green. His emails and memos document how he was asked to investigate his own complaint against Green. Swanson said in one memo that he did not think Green had ever been notified of the complaint.

"I attempted to report my concerns and get assistance in investigating the cases Det. Green never investigated," he wrote in an October 2015 memo. "In the end, I was left to hold Detective Green accountable on my own which ultimately led me to writing him a counseling memo, putting restrictions on his work, reassigning his cases to patrol deputies and writing an oral reprimand."

Swanson in one email said "the most prudent move" would have been placing Green on leave while the agency looked into his work "to prevent destruction of evidence which I do believe may have actually happened while he was allowed to stay at the agency."

Green is scheduled to appear in Clackamas County Circuit Court on May 31 on the misconduct charges.

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie
Portland State University

The campus of Portland State University, Oct. 26, 2016.

(Mike Zacchino/Staff)

Updated at 6:24 p.m.

A state board rejected steep tuition increases sought by the University of Oregon and Portland State University on Thursday, prompting PSU officials to say, "there are no good options here."

The rebuke came a month after Gov. Kate Brown ordered the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission to "rigorously apply" oversight before approving tuition increases greater than 5 percent. Under state law, the panel is required to sign off on increases past that threshold.

Though the panel approved tuition increases at the Oregon Institute of Technology (7.4 percent), Southern Oregon University (11.4 percent) and Western Oregon University (7.5 percent) after hearing two hours of testimony, it rejected the 8.4 percent jump requested by PSU, and the 11.5 percent sought by the University of Oregon.

At Portland State, that increase would have raised tuition for in-state undergrads by several hundred dollars a year, to about $9,000.

Ben Cannon, who serves as executive director for the commission and is not a voting member, said members of the panel had expressed concern the schools had not sufficiently taken student feedback into account, and that the proposals failed to protect low-income and minority students.

In an April letter, Brown told the commission she was "deeply concerned" about proposed tuition increases and urged members to reject those from schools that failed to give "serious consideration to alternatives."

She also said school leaders needed to demonstrate how they are managing costs and ensure they consult students, faculty and staff in the process. And, she said, the schools needed to show how low-income and minority students might benefit from the higher tuition levels.

"There were doubts on the part of some of our commissioners about whether the institutions had met those parts of the criteria," Cannon said.

It's up to the schools to determine how to respond to the rejection.

Portland State officials said the decision would mean finding another $5 million in cuts from its budget, on top of the $9 million already applied. The school was looking at a $20 million shortfall.

"Details of those cuts are not yet determined, but the size of the cuts will likely mean that programs and need-based scholarships will be affected," the school said in a statement. "There are no good options here, and we are asking the HECC to reconsider today's vote."

Thursday's meeting marked the first time the commission has had to weigh in on annual tuition increases since it was established in 2011, though it previously approved other cost increases that affected a small subset of students.

"This was an unprecedented scenario for our Commission," board Chair Neil Bryant said in a written statement, "as Oregon faces stark challenges in higher education funding."

Public university leaders have asked for $767.3 million in public support for the upcoming biennium, which is $100 million more than Brown recommended in the budget plan released Dec. 1. Lawmakers also are grappling with a $1.6 billion budget shortfall.

-- Elliot Njus

enjus@oregonian.com

503-294-5034

@enjus
All but the two newest schools within Portland Public Schools contain hundreds of square feet of dangerous lead paint, a neurotoxin that poses a greater threat to children's health than lead in drinking water.

More than a half-dozen Portland elementary schools have far higher quantities of deteriorated lead paint than is typical across the district's run-down schools, an analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.

In all, the district has 474,000 square feet of degraded lead paint inside its schools -- enough to cover all floors of Powell's City of Books, which takes up an entire city block, seven times.

Children can unknowingly touch lead dust and ingest it, health experts say. More than 527 handrails at 79 schools have degraded lead paint, the analysis found.

Two elementary schools -- James John and Grout -- each have been found to have more than 17,000 square feet of dangerously damaged paint inside classrooms, hallways, gyms and other interior spaces where children spend time.

Ten of the schools with the highest concentrations of peeling, chipped or otherwise damaged lead paint serve children as young as kindergartners or preschoolers, who face a greater risk from lead exposure.

Those schools lie in every quadrant of the city, serving neighborhoods of tremendous poverty, substantial wealth and points in between. They include Duniway Elementary; Irvington, King, Sabin and Skyline K-8 schools, the Odyssey and Metropolitan Learning Center magnet programs and the Applegate Head Start center, along with James John and Grout.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reviewed lead inspection reports commissioned by the district over the past nine months at all 85 schools. The district launched those inspections after last summer's lead in drinking water scandal.

The district and its contractor assumed that all paint and varnish inside schools built before the 1980s contains some degree of lead. The analysis by The Oregonian/OregonLive excluded boiler rooms, utility rooms and storage rooms students do not have access to.

District officials say if voters pass the school bond on Tuesday's ballot, they will cover over all hazardous lead paint with clean lead-free paint. That is not a permanent solution, however.

Before the district pivoted last year to get all schools' paint inspected in a uniform manner, interim chief operating officer Courtney Wilton says, the district lacked a methodical approach to finding problem paint, let alone addressing it.

"It's something we've ignored for quite a while and we can't any longer," said Wilton, who was tapped last July to help get the district on track. "Out of sight and out of mind, almost willful ignorance in my opinion."

The new mission is to ferret out problems and make them public.

"Clearly the past didn't work," Wilton said. "I think fundamentally they didn't think we had a big problem, and clearly we do."

For parent and school board candidate Virginia La Forte, who for years has advocated that lead paint be taken seriously, the district has changed "night and day" in its approach.

"The attitude when I first brought (lead paint) to the district's attention? I was told point blank over the phone that they would not address it," La Forte said. "I was told that before anyone did any research to see how much it would cost."

Uproar over high lead levels in schools' drinking water last May presented a chance to get lead paint taken seriously, she said. Although district officials were still slow to respond even after that embarrassment, eventually they answered the call to action.

The district had repainted the outside of wood-sided Alameda Elementary in summer 2014 after La Forte called attention to alarming, peeling lead paint all around the school. But they didn't paint an old cement wing of the school or clear up abundant lead paint chips on an Alameda playcourt -- until La Forte harnessed outrage over tainted drinking water to get the district to address the paint problem too.

The district painted more during the summer of 2016 than it had in years. The school board also made room on its long-planned ballot measure to tackle lead in paint and water.

Voters will be asked to pass a $790 million bond on May 16, $17 million of which would go toward addressing lead paint. That will allow the district to tackle all peeling and flaking paint in every school, Wilton says.

If voters approve the bond, owners of a typical Portland home, appraised at $240,000, will pay an additional $336 a year. The tax rate for school construction debt, already $1.10 per $1,000 of assessed value, would rise by $1.40 per $1,000.

"If you told me three years ago I would be standing in a room talking about a bond that has 100 percent lead paint stabilization in it, I would have told you you were crazy," said La Forte, who is on the bond advisory stakeholder committee. "I couldn't even get a letter of support from my PTA" to urge that Alameda be repainted "because it was too controversial."

What Portland Public Schools has found after digging into the issue is unsettling, Wilton said. Reports on each school that have come back from PBS Engineering + Environmental, which the district hired to find problem paint, look scary. Maps mark trouble spots, which at many schools number in the hundreds. In total, the contractor inventoried 844,000 square feet of problem paint in more than 68,000 spots inside and outside schools.

The district expects to pay $165,000 when all the inspection bills come in, Wilton said.

How worried parents should be is tough to say, Wilton said, in part because of the insidious nature of lead exposure.

Symptoms often don't show in a way that is apparent, said Perry Cabot, who oversees the Multnomah County lead poisoning prevention program. For example, a child could be constipated because of lead exposure, but how would you know it was lead? You wouldn't because constipation can be caused by all sorts of things, he said.

More sinisterly, it could mean an IQ point or two is lost from many young children's brains.

"Is it likely they are going to be exposed? No," Cabot said. "Is it possible? Yes.

"We don't want to dispute that lead is poisonous," he continued. "Just because we can't see someone turn green and froth at the mouth that doesn't mean it's not causing harm to our body because it can and will."

The children at greatest risk are toddlers, because they tend to put everything in their mouths and their brains are rapidly developing, Cabot said. Detrimental exposures tend to be found in children who have had chronic exposure to lead, he said.

Portland Public Schools' plan of attack has so far has been to amass data and beef up its paint crew. Previously, one person was charged with painting all schools, some of which are leased to private or charter schools. He got a counterpart this year, and in the summer, a team of five is also supposed to also get to work, Wilton said.

Priority areas for the district will be spaces where kindergarteners through second-graders spend time, said Steve Effros, a senior facilities project manager. Another focus will be interior spaces, he said, as there is "no question" there is more exposure inside than out.

The district used to care more, with a team of roughly 20 painters, said Herb Wagner, Portland Public Schools' safety hazmat coordinator who has worked for the district since the 1980s. Those were less lean times, before the passage of Measure 5 in 1990.

"Cracking paint around little kid areas is not good," Wagner said, noting that had been permitted by previous management. "If you want to maintain a hazard-free environment, I think you need to do maintenance painting on some level each year at each school."

That means that while the bond will bail the district out of the problem it let pile up, it isn't a long-term solution that will keep them in the clear, Wilton said.

Sometime down the line, Wilton said, the district will have to either increase the operational budget or designate money for paint work in future bonds.

Without money from this month's bond, the district won't be able to tackle the "sheer magnitude" of the lead paint threat, he said.

"Bottom line is we are going to be able to deal with the most critical needs (without the bond)," he said. "How far down the list we get until the money runs out I'm not sure."

Should voters approve the biggest bond in state history, the board's stakeholder advisory committee has advised them to develop a long-term plan by December to handle hazards.

The run-up to the crucial vote has seen some of the district's darkest days, the nadir of which may have been May 4. That day's news included the resignation of the human resources director, a $1 million jury verdict against the district for racial harassment, an apology for a math error that caused a lucrative contract to be erroneously awarded, and the implosion of the superintendent search.

Board members have stressed that strong, stable leadership remains in the district despite its lack of a permanent superintendent, chief of staff, general counsel, human resources director, chief information officer and assistant superintendent of teaching and learning.

Their confidence lies in Yousef Awwad, whose ability to shoulder responsibility has caused him to rise in the ranks in Portland Public Schools from chief finance officer to deputy executive officer. Awwad is expected to step up and helm the district, at least for a time, when interim superintendent Bob McKean's contract ends at the end of June. Board members also spotlight the performance and reliability of Jerry Vincent, chief of school modernization, for his implementation of construction projects under the 2012 bond.

Vincent also stands poised to take on more responsibility. McKean's proposed budget for the coming school year eliminates Wilton's position. The move means the district doesn't have to hire a permanent operating officer, but also puts Vincent atop a plethora of additional departments. He would not only have to implement the 2012 and the 2017 bond projects under this budget proposal, but also oversee facilities and asset management, nutrition services, security services, student transportation, enrollment and transfer.

Much remains unknown, but some people see signs of real change amid the public turmoil.

"I generally feel like the signals that I'm getting and the signs that I'm seeing out of (Portland Public Schools)  despite obvious ongoing issues and challenges  is they're interested in doing the right thing," Cabot, of the health department, said. "Doing the right thing when you have a portfolio of structures like they do is a pretty monumental challenge, but I'm fairly confident in what I'm seeing that they are making a good faith effort to do that."

An example? The district now regularly meets with a team of people at Multnomah County's public health department.

"That's something that never happened before and that's something that happens now," Cabot said. "That willingness to engage is somewhat new  and appreciated."

Concerned about lead? Access Multnomah County's lead poisoning resources here.



 Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com

@betsbarnes
The Elliott State Forest is for sale, and few people are pleased

The Elliott State Forest, Oregon's oldest state forest, will stay in public hands. But major questions still remain about what becomes of the land instead.

(Courtesy of Department of State Lands)

An existential question was resolved this week: The Elliott State Forest, the 82,500-acre tract in Coos and Douglas counties, won't be sold to a timber company. It will stay public.

But what happens instead with the forest remains a loose collection of big ideas.

Gov. Kate Brown wants to borrow $100 million to lift restrictions requiring the most sensitive parts of the land to produce revenue for schools and to create a blueprint outlining what areas could be logged.

Treasurer Tobias Read wants Oregon State University to pick up the rest of the tab ($120 million) and use the forest for research.

Secretary of State Dennis Richardson says the state shouldn't borrow a dime and instead should swap the Elliott for federal land.

Here's what you need to know about the next steps.

1. The state would essentially buy land from itself. (Which isn't that weird.)

It sounds like an unusual arrangement: Oregon taxpayers buying public land that the state already owns.

But it's not unprecedented.

Washington state, which has similar trust lands, has invested for decades in decoupling them from their school funding obligations. Since 1989, Washington has spent nearly $900 million to create state parks, conservation areas and preserves from more than 123,000 acres of trust lands the state deemed too important to log.

Oregon has no such program. The state Legislature is currently debating whether to create one.

2. Brown's $100 million plan will cost far more than $100 million.

Borrowing money isn't free.

If the Legislature approves a plan to issue $100 million in bonds to decouple part of the Elliott from its school funding obligations, taxpayers would end up paying between $180 million and $195 million, according to estimates from Brown's office.

That price tag drew criticism from Richardson, who said taxpayers' money would be better spent equipping schools for earthquakes.

"I do not support a plan that relies on borrowing $100 million to buy a forest we already own," he said in a statement.

But with Read backing Brown and legislators pledging to help, it's not clear that Richardson's opinion will matter.

3. No one knows how much land the $100 million would protect.

The governor has called for the $100 million to be invested in the state's school fund to replace timber earnings from the Elliott State Forest's most sensitive land. It would end the state's mandate to make money for schools from the forest's steep slopes, old growth and riparian areas.

Brown has not yet said how many acres would be protected with the money. A spokesman said it was too early to give a rough estimate.

4. Brown's plan has a good chance of succeeding.

A key part of Brown's strategy is what's called a habitat conservation plan. That's a blueprint to say what could be logged and where threatened species  the marbled murrelet seabird, the northern spotted owl and coastal coho salmon  should be protected.

In 2011, after years of work, Oregon abandoned its most recent effort to get an Elliott blueprint approved by the federal government.

The problem? Oregon proposed such aggressive logging on the Elliott that federal biologists didn't think the coho would be protected. Cutting would've been allowed far too close to salmon-bearing streams, said Michael Milstein, a spokesman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which would have to approve the plan.

The governor's new plan envisions less cutting  roughly 20 million board feet a year  than earlier plans.

"We're optimistic this time around," Milstein said.

Having a $100 million investment to protect sensitive areas, "pays for the protections necessary to unequivocally provide for the species from our perspective," said Paul Henson, Oregon state supervisor for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which would also need to approve the plan.

5. Richardson's idea is dead on arrival.

Richardson said his land transfer idea would be modeled on similar efforts in California, Minnesota and Utah.

It would hand over control of the Elliott to the federal government in exchange for less controversial land that could be logged.

But his concept doesn't have Brown or Read's support. Neither have signaled any willingness to give the Elliott to the federal government.

6. Oregon State University is a wild card, if perhaps a long shot.

Read proposed having Oregon State University invest $120 million to decouple the rest of the Elliott from its school funding obligations.

University President Ed Ray told The Oregonian/OregonLive the school is "all-in on trying to be helpful to the state."

"We are committed to doing our honest best to help the state figure out what's the best way to go forward," Ray said. "What that ultimately turns into, we don't know."

Read's plan, which hasn't been adopted, would give the school until 2023 to decide whether to buy the Elliott.

7. For $120 million, the Elliott would be one expensive research project.

If Oregon State bought the Elliott, the university would have to find either a very generous donor or a way to use logging revenues from the land to pay for it. Ray said the school does not have the money  it's currently looking for funding to expand its campus in Bend.

Before Oregon State would invest, Ray said the habitat blueprint would need to be approved. That would determine how much timber could be cut (and how much logging revenue the land would produce annually).

Thomas Maness, dean of Oregon State's forestry school, enthusiastically backed the idea. He told Brown, Read and Richardson the Elliott would provide Oregon State with a place to conduct long-term research to understand how active timber harvesting affects the coho, spotted owl and marbled murrelet.

"We've learned nothing about managing with spotted owls," he told the leaders at a Tuesday meeting in Salem.

Yet Eric Forsman, a retired Oregon State ecology professor who spent decades researching the spotted owl, dispelled the dean's assertion. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive there's a wide body of research on how timber harvests affect owls.

"We probably know more about how management affects the spotted owl than any other species of owl in the world," he said. Conducting research on how logging impacts the spotted owl is a huge challenge, he said, because the barred owl is pushing spotted owls out of their habitat.

"Unless you can remove the barred owl, you're kidding yourself if you think you can do a research project and think it won't be confused by the barred owl," Forsman said.

Maness later clarified his public remarks in an interview.

He acknowledged the breadth of scientific research and said the kinds of questions that the Elliott could answer include how restorative logging could aid the owl's recovery.

"We haven't learned what to do to help them other than to shoot barred owls," Maness said. "What can we do that's good for them? How can we help them? That's what we want to figure out."

Owning the land would allow the school to deploy long-term monitors that could gather data for decades, something that wouldn't be feasible elsewhere, Maness said.

Oregon State already owns 15,000 acres of timberland, but it includes no old growth. The Elliott does.

 Rob Davis

rdavis@oregonian.com

503.294.7657; @robwdavis
Portland May Day Rally 2017

(Stephanie Yao Long/Staff)

The police response on May Day was completely inappropriate and dangerous. If there is a faction that is disruptive, deal with that in an isolated and appropriate way. There is NO need for full body armor and weaponry. Militarized police presence raises the possibility of harm and incites violence, and there is no place for it in our city.

We need to be able to participate in our communities as granted by our constitutional rights. We need to be able to bring our children, our elders, our differently-abled community members to stand together without fear of being gassed or harassed.

Rebecca Stuebe, North Portland

Portland police were too harsh. Showing up in riot gear with guns and anti-personnel armament is too harsh. I don't see how a relationship can be salvaged between our communities and police until they make a sincere effort to demilitarize.

C.J. Alicandro, Southeast Portland

I was part of the May Day march. I never saw evidence of the projectiles police claim had been thrown at them except the occasional brightly colored and innocuous smoke bomb on the pavement. I quickly became part of a large crowd that, having had no real chance to disperse, had flash bangs lobbed in its direction despite obeying police commands to clear the street.

Police should be arresting troublemakers, not using flashbangs and threats of violence on peaceful protesters.

Isaac Sachs, Northeast Portland

I was horrified to see a militarized army of riot police armed with tasers, chemical weapons, guns and truncheons, running in formation.

A well-trained force that was prepared to serve and protect, like those in the United Kingdom, could respond to a few cans of Pepsi, a few smoke bombs and a broken window or two, with skillful de-escalation techniques and no need for storm trooper outfits.

The police terrorized a whole generation of children, not to mention the rest of us.

K. Kendall, Ph.D., Northwest Portland

I arrived at Shemanski Park two hours before the rally, and there were already dozens of police officers present, clearly indicating that the Portland Police Bureau considered May Day a threat long before it began.

Just like the Climate March, May Day was permitted. Yet I had not been confronted at the Climate March by officers who claimed that the poles in our Buddhist Peace Fellowship banner were a "bludgeoning risk." Why the difference? Whatever the reason, the police set the tone for the day, using tactics that were unnecessary and dangerous, and they violated our constitutional rights.

Citing a few thrown bottles and cans, police justified sending a crowd of over a thousand people into mass chaos and fear. Hundreds of innocent marchers, many with mobility issues, tried desperately to find a way to safety. I then found my asthmatic self trapped between a line of officers and clouds of smoke and tear gas, huddled against a building and unable to escape. It was terrifying and unjustified.

The police bureau is in dire need of a policy overhaul to implement safe, evidence-based tactics that will not incite the crowd or violate rights, and they need to do it before an officer or a protester is seriously injured.

Chelsea Penning, Southeast Portland

My husband and I brought my 64-year-old mother to the May Day Rally. Had we not run away we would have been pepper-sprayed; as it was, we inhaled it. It felt like a war zone when they were marching towards us firing flash bangs. It was truly frightening. The police totally overreacted and endangered the well-being of peaceful protesters.



Jennifer Nickolaus, Southeast Portland
buehler.jpeg

Knute Buehler and his wife, Patty

(Steve Duin)

In strategic positioning for a 2018 gubernatorial run, Rep. Knute Buehler, R-Bend, has vividly communicated his disdain for Gov. Kate Brown.

Buehler has dinged the Democratic incumbent on Twitter and Facebook for "faux" cost control, "political theatre" and "misplaced priorities."

When the state of Oregon agreed last month to pay a $1.3 million settlement to Carolyn Lawson, late of the Oregon Health Authority, Buehler tweeted, "More cover up and pay offs from @OregonGovBrown for Cover Oregon fiasco."

Fair enough, as campaign shots go, and consistent with the good doctor's long-term diagnosis of Brown's inability to lead or govern.

But Buehler, an orthopedic surgeon and former Rhodes Scholar, has been far less vocal this spring in challenging Donald Trump.

He isn't running against Trump in 2018, you say?

Oh, yes he is. An energized Oregon electorate is desperate to express its alarm - on Medicaid cuts, the environment, immigrant sanctuaries and FBI investigations - at the next available town hall ... and ballot.

And if Buehler has any hope of becoming this state's first Republican governor in 30-plus years, he must convince thousands of Democrats that he will moderate their pain.

Back in October, when the Access Hollywood video was all the rage, Buehler called Trump "a disgrace to the Republican Party and to our democracy. Last year, I condemned Donald Trump because I felt he was a sexist, narcissist and intolerant of people of color and ethnic minorities. The past year he has proven himself all that and more."

Knute Buehler's October 2016 Facebook post

But since he arrived in Salem for his second legislative session, Buehler has taken a more cautious, old-school approach. He's teed off on the Democratic leadership on any attempt to balance the budget with new tax revenue.

He has expressed more outrage over mandating life jackets on the Deschutes than the campaign to dismantle the Affordable Care Act by Greg Walden and House Republicans.

That's curious, given the strong opposition to repeal of Obamacare by the American Medical Association and major doctors' groups.

Buehler now says, "As approved by the House, the American Health Care Act remains a bad plan for Oregon, because it would eliminate the Medicaid safety net for tens of thousands, blow a bigger hole in our state budget and strip away coverage for essential opioid addiction."

He argues, Cover Oregon and escalating premiums aside, that Obamacare worked here because the delivery system for health care was "very much a bipartisan effort. I don't see how you can restructure such a large part of the economy and not get the other party on board."

But Buehler conceded Thursday that he sees no reason to blast Walden for savaging that safety net: "As a national Republican leader, Greg has to balance a lot of competing interests. As a friend and constituent, I'm not going to join the chorus of national criticism."

Dang. If you're making an issue of leadership, you might want to get out in front of the band.

When Buehler and I sat down at Bend Brewing 20 months ago, he argued Trump was a pox on the GOP: "The Republican Party is seen as meaner, smaller and louder. It needs to be bigger, better and bolder."

That message still resonates. That argument challenges those on the frayed edge of rural Oregon and the Portland liberals who still aren't sure what Kate Brown has to offer their school district, the nearest river, or their morning commute.

"I think there's a lot of uncertainty and unhappiness on both sides of the political aisle," Buehler says. "We saw that with Trump's election. Now, we're seeing that with the Indivisibles.

"People are deeply unhappy with the status quo. People are unhappy with their lot in life. Our middle class has been hollowed out. That great American escalator to a higher quality of life has stopped. You might even say that it's running in reverse."

Especially when the Republicans who lord over life inside the Beltway are using an $839 billion cut in Medicaid funding to provide tax cuts for the One Percent.

Especially when Trump is tweeting from the penthouse.

As a Republican legislator from Bend, Buehler frequently asks voters to "stand with me" on taxes, accountability and "politically motivated attacks."

To win statewide election, he must convince many who are singing the blues about the escalating catastrophe in the White House that he stands with them.

-- Steve Duin

stephen.b.duin@gmail.com
camerabarpolice.jpg

A 40-year-old Grants Pass man, who has 13 prior felony convictions, was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. (The Oregonian File Photo)

(The Oregonian/File)

A 40-year-old Grants Pass man was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison for a felon-in-possession-of-a-firearm offense.

Michael Lee Souza sold methamphetamine to a federal informant and also offered to sell the informant a .45-caliber handgun with accessories, according to prosecutors.

The sale occurred on Oct. 15, 2014.

Souza has 13 prior felony convictions and was on probation for delivery of methamphetamine at the time.

The informant working with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Souza talked openly about collecting guns and recent gun sales.

Grants Pass officers arrested Souza during a traffic stop on Oct. 16, 2014. During the stop, Souza tried to conceal a switchblade knife while sitting in the car atop two bags of methamphetamine, according to court records.

The ATF, Oregon State Police and the Grants Pass Department of Public Safety investigated the case. U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane sentenced Souza in U.S. District Court in Medford.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian
kuhn.sign.jpg

Khrizma Kuhn stands in front of the "For Sale" sign that her parents posted in front of their Keizer house in 2015. The Kuhns decided to move after the McNary Estates Homeowners Association announced its intention to get a court to order the Kuhns to remove their motorhome from their driveway. (Submitted photo)

The parents of a disabled woman who say they were forced to move from their Marion County neighborhood after the homeowners association barred them from parking an RV in their driveway have settled their lawsuit for $300,000.

The parents of Khrizma Kuhn had argued that their disabled 34-year-old daughter needed the RV to travel to medical appointments and other places. She suffered from a condition that caused frequent bouts of diarrhea and had to be near a toilet and a shower, they said.

Gary and Renee Kuhn bought their Keizer home in 2005 and got the RV in 2015 after their daughter's incontinence worsened. She has Down syndrome, autism and an IQ of 36.

But the McNary Estates homeowners association wouldnt budge, saying the 25-foot RV was too big to park at their home and violated the neighborhoods covenants.

Seeing no other choice, the Kuhns sold their home in August 2015 and moved to Woodburn, where the homeowners association immediately approved the parking of their RV.

The Kuhns filed suit in U.S. District Court in January 2016, alleging that McNary Estates and a sub-homeowners association violated their daughter's civil rights under federal and Oregon fair housing acts by failing to make a "reasonable accommodation" of her request, as required by law.

In January, federal Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Kuhns were right that their daughter had faced discrimination. All that was left to decide, Aiken said, was how much the homeowners association had to pay as compensation.

On Thursday, attorneys for the case announced the $300,000 settlement, which is being paid by the McNary Estates' insurer.

The settlement will cover the Kuhns economic losses -- including $2,400 for lodging for the month they had to stay at a motel during their move and the $76,000 difference between the selling price of their old home and the money they paid for their new house. The Kuhns will pay their attorneys fees from the $300,000.

Greg Lusby, an attorney for McNary Estates, couldnt be reached for comment Thursday.

In Aikens written ruling, she noted that a next-door neighbor was upset that the RV blocked her line of sight as she left her driveway. The Kuhns offered her a parabolic mirror to help with that, but she rejected it, writing in an email to the Kuhns that I have left your parabolic mirror on our porch. Please pick it up today as we do not wish to use it.

The judge wrote that it appears the parabolic mirror would reduce or eliminate the neighbors problem with sight lines.

Dennis Steinman, the Portland attorney who represented the Kuhn family, described the judges January ruling as powerful and said it could be used as precedent for other cases in which disabled people are fighting for reasonable accommodation in their housing.

I think its a terrific vindication for disability rights, Steinman said. I think this opinion will go a long way in helping other disabled people in the future.

The Kuhns wanted only to meet their daughters need to be out in public so she could engage with the world and not be isolated in her room, he said. But they found extreme resistance from neighbors and the (homeowners) board for really no legitimate reason.

Steinman said he hopes this sends a message to McNary Estates, as well as other homeowners associations with steadfast rules.

Many people who live in HOAs are often frustrated with the amount of power HOAs have over the way they live in their community, Steinman said. This is an instance where the HOA perhaps took their power too far.

-- Aimee Green
A Medford man who pleaded guilty to making online threats to kill former President Barack Obama and shoot FBI agents was sentenced Friday to five years and three months in federal prison.

"Threats of violence directed at public officials and law enforcement are a serious matter,'' said Billy J. Williams, Oregon's U.S. attorney. "Violent social media posts are every bit as serious as those made in other venues.''

John Martin Roos

The investigation into John Martin Roos, 62, began in February 2016 when a concerned individual forwarded screenshots of Roos' Twitter and Facebook posts, which contained racially offensive language and threats to kill Obama and shoot FBI agents.

Roos was arrested two months later while parking his truck outside the Veterans Affairs Southern Oregon Rehabilitation Center and Clinic in White City, where he was a patient, according to a federal complaint.

An FBI agent seized a loaded .45-caliber pistol from his driver's side floor mat. During a search of his apartment, FBI agents found a rifle and shotgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his bedroom, as well as four pipe bombs in the living room next to his computer station, according to an FBI agent's affidavit.

Document: Roos' plea agreement

He admitted in court that he wrote a Twitter post, threatening to kill Obama, then-first lady Michelle Obama and their children. In a Facebook post, he threatened to "snipe" FBI agents with "hunting rifles,'' according to prosecutors.

Some of Roos' online posts also made references to the Jan. 26, 2016, fatal state police shooting of Robert "LaVoy'' Finicum, who had evaded a police stop as he was driving from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to a community meeting in John Day. Finicum was a spokesman for the occupiers of the federal wildlife refuge.

During an interview with federal authorities in March, Roos said "the catalyst for the threats he made against FBI agents'' was Finicum's death.

In one Facebook post on Jan. 31, 2016, Roos wrote that the "FBI acts like they are something to be feared after ambushing American patriots in Oregon ... We will snipe them with hunting rifles everywhere."

"Roos described his social media postings as a means by which he 'blows off steam.' Roos advised that he did not intend to harm anyone but then added that given the chance he would 'punch Obama in the nose' because Obama 'pisses' him off,'' FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Gray wrote in the affidavit.

Roos had faced a 14-count federal indictment, which charged him with eight counts of threatening to kill the president, two counts of threats against federal law enforcement officers and four counts of possession of an unregistered destructive device.

Roos entered the guilty pleas about a week before he was set to go to trial. U.S. District Judge Michael J. McShane sentenced Roos in federal court in Medford.

-- Maxine Bernstein

503-221-8212
Oregon officials knew in July 2016 that tap water in juvenile prisons had excessive levels of lead but took eight months to test the entire system and shut down bad faucets.

Full-scale testing of youth prisons in February and March came nearly six months after the state finished lead inspections on 40 other buildings where state employees lived or worked, including the governor's mansion and the Oregon Capitol.

A spokesman for the Oregon Youth Authority blamed unforeseen contracting problems for testing delays.

"We have tried to be very conscientious and focus on the health of our youth and staff," Benjamin Chambers said. "We didn't want it to take this long."

Agency officials in April pointed only to recent test results when announcing they'd taken immediate steps to close taps and distribute bottled water. But buried in a document on the state's website was a one-line reference to testing in 2016. The agency didn't acknowledge the existence of high samples or the delays in comprehensive testing until questioned by The Oregonian/OregonLive.

As a result of testing delays, faucets spewing extraordinary levels of lead went unchecked for months, staying open to unsuspecting inmates and workers. Water from one faucet ultimately tested nearly 40 times the federal "action level."

The episode has particular resonance in an era when government authorities from Flint, Michigan, to Portland have faced huge repercussions for their handling of lead exposure in drinking water. Carole Smith, the Portland Public Schools superintendent, resigned last year amid outcry over how the district dealt with lead in school water fountains.

The state's testing this year found high lead at more than 150 taps in nine of 11 juvenile facilities across the state. At the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, the state's largest with 130 offenders, high lead poured from the taps of intervention cells, a kitchen drinking fountain and sinks serving restrooms.

Chambers couldn't say whether the state's delay jeopardized the health of inmates or workers. The state began offering free blood tests last month. Of 40 youth screened, all had less than 1.9 micrograms of lead per deciliter about a month after exposure, he said.

David Rogers, executive director for the ACLU of Oregon, said it's the state's responsibility to protect vulnerable people.

"It's particularly troubling because we're talking about incarcerated youth who have no choice about where they get their drinking water," he said.

Bob Joondeph, executive director for Disability Rights Oregon, said it's telling that the state took longer to test facilities for incarcerated teenagers than at the governor's mansion and the Capitol.

"It shouldn't be a lower priority for political reasons," said Joondeph, whose organization advocates on behalf of youth in custody.

Initial clues

Oregon's Youth Authority is the state's prison system for juveniles ages 12 and up. About 600 youth live across 11 state facilities from the Coast to Eastern Oregon.

Like scores of other government officials, agency leaders decided to sample water last year to determine if lead posed a problem in their buildings. Lead is a toxic metal that can leach into drinking water from faucets and pipes. No amount of lead exposure is considered safe, and it's particularly harmful for children younger than 6 and pregnant women.

Last June, employees collected a limited number of water samples and sent them to a lab that was already under contract.

Of 33 samples, four exceeded the federal "action level" of 15 parts per billion, including one at MacLaren. In response, officials shut down or posted warnings for those four taps but didn't take other action, such as providing bottled water at MacLaren, Chambers said.

The results were troubling enough to convince officials to launch comprehensive testing, Chambers added. Delays ensued.

Officials spent much of July considering how to move forward. "We knew we were going to get one shot to do this and get credible results," said Rex Emery, the agency's manager of facilities.

Under state rules, officials had the authority to immediately hire a consultant. For contracts up to $100,000, no competitive bid is necessary.

On July 29, state officials decided to work exclusively with consulting firm CH2M and asked for a proposal. "We knew that they would just knock it out of the park," Emery said, citing past work by the firm.

CH2M proposed swift action. In its proposal, the firm wanted test results no later than Oct. 1, records show.

But instead, state officials spent August, September, October and November reviewing the company's proposal and attempting to negotiate a contract. Problems cropped up.

Chambers said CH2M wanted to change terms of the proposed contract to limit the company's liability for testing results. Lawyers for Oregon's Department of Justice wouldn't sign off. A spokesman for CH2M declined to discuss the contracting dispute.

Negotiations fell through Nov. 21, four months after they began. Because officials contacted only one firm, the state had no backup plan.

Two weeks later, officials declared a contracting emergency.

On Dec. 7, the Oregon Youth Authority's director, Fariborz Pakseresht, exempted the agency from competitive bidding for any lead-testing contract, including those above $100,000. As justification, he cited "our immediate need to mitigate the level of lead in tap water."

Then, more time passed.

Officials on Dec. 9 asked two new companies to submit proposals. One was PBS Engineering and Environmental Inc., the same firm hired by the state's administrative division to successfully complete testing of dozens of building in October. The other was TRC Consulting.

But before state officials could pick a company, they first needed to bring consultants up to speed and share documents, Emery said. Proposals weren't submitted until the first week of January, after the holidays.

"We weren't sitting on our hands," Emery said.

Then, another month passed.

On Feb. 1, state officials finally signed a contract with TRC Consulting for about $56,000.

Testing began Feb. 10. It took five weeks  finishing eight full months after officials first had evidence of high lead samples.

Emery said officials didn't want to move forward with testing until hiring a contractor and devising a plan for fixing problems. Officials tested taps with the potential to be used for drinking, cooking and brushing teeth, going out of their way to take a "health-protective approach," he stressed.

"I think this story is about the little agency that could," Emery said.

Testing confirms problem

The results were jarring.

Comprehensive testing found at least one tap with high lead levels at facilities in Florence, where youth already drank bottled water, and in Albany, Grants Pass, La Grande, Salem, Warrenton, Woodburn and two facilities in Tillamook.

Of 903 tested taps systemwide, 154 exceeded the lead action level. Officials also tested for excessive levels of copper. They found 15 faucets tested positive.

Most problems were at MacLaren. Of 283 outlets tested at the Woodburn facility, 97 had high lead levels, while seven exceeded copper standards. Emery said about one-third of faucets saw little to no use, one-third were for handwashing and one-third were for drinking or cooking.

At a restroom sink, where agency officials said young offenders may have brushed their teeth, lead samples registered 38 parts per billion  more than double the federal action level, according to an inspector's March report.

At a drinking fountain in the treatment wing, lead was 27 times the federal standard.

And at a tap inside a cell used to hold youth in need of intervention, lead levels registered almost 40 times the federal standard.

Those long-awaited test results prompted the Oregon Youth Authority to shut down access to bad taps, post warnings or provide bottled water at MacLaren and other facilities. Repairs are now in the works, Emery said, including faucet replacements. At MacLaren, agency officials hope to have most fixes complete before prisoners from a Salem facility move in later this month.

"We don't want them coming over and moving into a place where they feel like the water's not safe," Emery said.

The youth authority has not conducted any formal examination of actions it took that prompted delays. Chambers said officials have begun taking stock informally, recognizing internal deadlines should have been set that would have prompted officials to hire a contractor sooner.

The state's delays didn't end with water testing.

Officials didn't provide blood testing for agency employees or young offenders until April 17, 20 days after shutting off access to tainted water at MacLaren. Lead disappears from the blood stream fairly quickly, with levels dropping by half within 30 to 60 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Youth released between February and April were eligible for testing. But officials conceded they were unable to notify everyone.

Testing wasn't available sooner, Chambers said, because agency officials failed to plan ahead by inking a contract.

"In retrospect, that is absolutely one of the lessons," he said. "We should have had that in place."

-- Brad Schmidt

503-294-7628

@_brad_schmidt
Effects of a proposed new corporate tax on Oregon's economy could be minimal but mostly positive when paired with other tweaks to the state's tax system, an analysis by the Legislative Revenue Office found.

Legislative Revenue Officer Paul Warner presented the finding Thursday to lawmakers on the Joint Tax Reform Committee. The model showed that a tax of 0.48 percent on companies' Oregon sales over $1 million would boost hiring and investment in the state while driving up consumer prices. But in every case, effects of the tax overhaul were slight  increases or decreases of just fractions of a percent.

The finding that consumer prices would rise less than one-sixth of 1 percent casts lawmakers' proposal to institute a so-called gross receipts tax  which taxes companies on all their in-state sales over a certain limit, not just their profits  in a different light than the Measure 97 corporate tax.

Opponents of that tax proposal launched a successful campaign against it by hammering on the fact it would be a "sales tax in disguise" that would be passed onto consumers at the cash register. Voters strongly rejected the measure.

If enacted at the level Warner described, a gross receipts tax, along with the elimination of the current corporate income tax and a slight lowering of personal income tax levels, would combine to raise $637 million of net revenue for the state in the next budget cycle.

Such a tax plan is one of several ways lawmakers are looking to close the state's $1.6 billion budget shortfall for the coming two years. They're also considering spending cuts and taxes on health care providers.

"This is a significant increase in revenue," Warner told the committee Thursday. "Yet the impacts on the economy (would be) positive in terms of investment and employment. So that's telling you that taxes are not always necessarily bad in terms of overall economic activity."

The corporate tax rate used in the analysis released Thursday's wasn't based on a particular proposal from the legislature. Committee Co-chair Sen. Mark Hass, D-Beaverton, said the rate the revenue office chose to study is the average of the myriad rates Washington uses in its gross receipts tax system.

A rough framework for a gross receipts tax in Oregon, released by the committee earlier this month, called for taxing Oregon companies' sales over $1 million at a rate between 0.25 and 1 percent. These rates would raise between $288 million and $3.1 billion for the upcoming biennium, without factoring in lost revenue from personal income tax cuts.

A plan from House Democrats offered a more targeted proposal to tax Oregon companies' sales over $5 million at 0.95 percent. Their proposal would raise a net of $2.2 billion for the upcoming budget cycle.

Thursday's presentation gave lawmakers and the public the first in-depth glimpse of how this year's corporate tax plans  with lower rates and broader bases than the one proposed in the voter-rejected Measure 97  would affect households and the economy.

Warner said the effects of the proposal would be minor: A larger labor market would drive down prices for employers, boosting hiring and investment. While wages would drop slightly, the personal income tax cuts would result in larger take-home paychecks for workers. But because part of the gross receipts tax would be passed on to consumers, this increase in income would be eaten by higher prices.

According to the analysis, the average household making less than $20,587 per year would ultimately have $112 less to spend. The typical household with annual income of between $68,623 and $102,934 would take a hit of $214 per year, and the average household bringing in more than $205,869 would have $403 less.

Though this plan is mildly regressive because it has lower-income Oregonians shouldering a larger cost burden as a share of their incomes, Democrats were quick to point out that those people would reap the benefits of the added tax revenue.

"My assumption would be that the kinds of investments that we largely make in government in terms of education and health care, as two of our big expenditures, are ones that really disproportionately probably benefit our lower-income families and individuals," said Rep. Pam Marsh, D-Ashland.

"You're exactly right," Warner said. "Taxes, by definition, you're extracting resources out of the economy, but then you're putting them in in a different way that benefits different income groups."

Warner said future tax reform meetings will feature detailed models of the impact of taxes at other rates, including the one proposed by House Democrats. But Hass said he's leery of raising the rate much more.

"You can only ride this so far," he said after the meeting. "You start getting too high and you lose any economic benefit. ... Some people might be fine with that, but I'm not."

-- Anna Marum

amarum@oregonian.com

503-294-5911

@annamarum
SALEM -- Gov. Kate Brown, lawmakers and the health care industry could be nearing a deal to avert cuts to Oregon's Medicaid program in the next two-year budget.

"Everybody's been working super hard on this," the governor's health policy advisor Jeremy Vandehey said in an interview Thursday.

Lawmakers, the health care industry and governor's office "have made a significant amount of progress" recently negotiating "towards a framework that will likely start coming out here in the next couple weeks," Vandehey said.

The governor also sounded optimistic in a statement Thursday. "While there is still work to be done, I am optimistic about the progress we've made in the last few weeks with legislative leaders and stakeholders to find a solution that ensures quality health care continues across our state," Brown said.

Solving the $882 million shortfall in the Oregon Health Authority budget is key to closing the $1.6 billion hole in the next two-year general fund budget. In April, top Democrat budget writers warned they would have to throw 350,000 low-income Oregonians off Medicaid and cut a number of other vital programs unless the Legislature raises $575 million in new revenue.

Republicans panned the threat to cut Medicaid as a scare tactic, pointing out the state only has to find $256 million to preserve the current coverage level. Democrats are a couple seats shy of the three-fifths supermajorities they would need to pass a bill raising revenue in the House and Senate, so they would need at least one Republican vote in each chamber.

House Republican Leader Mike McLane, R-Powell Butte, said Republicans recognize the need for some additional revenue for health care but disagree with Democrats on the amount.

"Now we're darn close to having agreement we can put in a bill and pass, which would help with the budget," McLane said on Wednesday. "But we're not there yet."

The state needs more money to pay for Medicaid because the federal government plans to cover a lower share of the costs of the state's health care program for the poor. Much of that decrease was anticipated as part of the Affordable Care Act, which initially paid for 100 percent of states' Medicaid expansions but then asked states to begin paying part of the tab.

Brown and lawmakers are seeking a tax increase on hospital services and a new tax on insurance premiums to shore up the Oregon Health Authority budget. The 28 largest hospitals in Oregon already pay a 5.5 percent tax that helps fund Medicaid.

Hospitals benefit from the tax because it's returned to them in the form of Medicaid payments, and a representative of the Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems said the group is committed to finding a solution to the Medicaid shortfall.

"Hospitals have repeatedly partnered with the state in solving Medicaid budget issues over the past 10 years," Philip Schmidt, associate vice president for public affairs for the group, wrote in a statement. "This biennium is no different, even as hospital financials have deteriorated substantially. Hospitals believe a solid, sustainable Medicaid budget is in the best interests of the patients they serve as well as all Oregonians."

At the same time, Brown and some lawmakers want to raise $55 million to extend Medicaid coverage to 13,000 to 15,000 low-income children who lack proof of U.S. citizenship, including immigrants in the country illegally. The federal Medicaid program does not cover these kids, so Oregon would have to pay the full cost.

Brown plans to speak Friday at a Capitol rally in support of the expansion. In a press release for the event, the Oregon Latino Health Coalition described the program as one Brown wants lawmakers to pass before they go home.

Linda Roman, director of policy and government relations of the Oregon Latino Health Coalition, said six other states including Washington and California already provide Medicaid coverage to children who cannot prove they're U.S. citizens. Roman said there's a human cost to leaving these children without insurance, and also a cost borne by the broader health care system.

"Every time a person goes to the ER, it costs the system much more than if they were able to prevent it," Roman said.

However, any attempt to use new hospital or insurance premium taxes to pay for such a Medicaid expansion could face opposition from Republicans.

McLane said such a Medicaid expansion should "probably not" be included in a deal to raise health care revenue, "because this is just a plan to deal with the current Medicaid structure."

-- Hillary Borrud

503-294-4034; @hborrud
Confederate debate.jpg

A protest at Everyday Deals on Southeast 146th and Stark culminated in an argument over slavery and the Confederate flag. The demonstration was organized to demand the firing of two employees who shouted expletives at a woman who had objected to the business selling Confederate rugs.

(Eder Campuzano/Staff)

The parking lot of a Southeast Portland grocery liquidator served as a stage Thursday for two dozen protesters and half as many "antifa watchers," who bickered about the meaning of the Confederate flag, then debated the causes of the Civil War and race relations.

The groups gathered there after a Portland woman's video account of a tense exchange with two employees at Everyday Deals over a Confederate flag rug went viral earlier in the week. The footage shows the men, neither of whom have been named, shouting expletives at 33-year-old Heather Franklin and following her out to the store parking lot.

Maralana Milne was one of several protesters at Everyday Deals to voice concern over the employees' conduct.

"To me, the Confederate flag has a lot of meaning behind it," she told The Oregonian/OregonLive after leaving the scrum. "And there are a lot of people that are dismissing the meaning behind it, like after the Civil War was over, we were all on the same scale and there was no more racism."

A member of the antifa watch, organized by a Vancouver-based group called Patriot Prayer, had moments earlier argued that slavery was "only a part" of the Civil War. And a bystander had repeatedly told protesters, "you wanted civil rights and you got it."

"I would like to see racism dismantled," Milne said. "But racism has not gone away. And people are going to hear about it over and over and over again because it's not going away."

Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson told The Oregonian/OregonLive that Danny, the man with whom Milne was discussing the Civil War, was pushing back against the "North versus South" narrative.

"In the end, she got to say her part. Danny got to say his part and neither of them agreed with each other," Gibson said. "What else could you ask for?"

The Patriot Prayer leader and his group were there to watch the protest and, he said, report any property damage to the police. Gibson also said he attends these demonstrations to start conversations.

"A lot of these protesters  some of then know me, some of them don't  I'd just like to find common ground," he said.

Local activists, many of whom have marched with Don't Shoot PDX and Portland's Resistance, comprised the bulk of the group that gathered to protest the Confederate rug debacle.

Portlander Taizz Medalia was there to lobby for the firing of the two Everyday Deals employees who shouted expletives at Franklin.

Steve Cheseborough, another demonstrator, said he was also there to support Franklin.

"We want to show our brotherhood and sisterhood with anyone who wants to speak up like that," he said.

The pair also wanted some assurance that the rest of the business' staff would undergo customer service training.

Everyday Deals CEO Andrew Toolson told KGW that the men had been suspended. Toolson also said his rug supplier was asked to stop delivering product with Confederate flag patterns.

He could not be reached for comment Thursday evening. The store's voicemail box was also full when reached by a reporter.

Not everyone in the Everyday Deals parking lot Thursday afternoon was upset about the rug.

The antifa watchers through a Facebook page had claimed to support demonstrators "as long as they broke no laws." Antifa is a group that opposes "fascist organizing in physical, cultural, and political spaces" and whose members often attend demonstrations in the Portland area, according to the organization's website.

James Salazar of Portland wasn't there with either group. He said he just wanted to support the business.

"People are here to make a mountain out of a molehill," Salazar said.

Still, Salazar said the store's employees could have handled Franklin's complaint differently.

"In a way, she started the fight," Salazar said. "But the boys should have been more professional."

--Eder Campuzano | 503.221.4344

@edercampuzano

ecampuzano@oregonian.com
A Portland judge has opened the door for a lawyer to pursue a felony perjury charge against prominent developer and philanthropist Jordan Schnitzer.

Schnitzer is embroiled in a legal fight with ex-girlfriend Cory Sause over his 16-month-old son. The boy was delivered December 2015 by a surrogate hired by Schnitzer after an in vitro fertilization using his sperm and Sause's egg.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Amy Holmes Hehn on Thursday ruled that a key document in the battle isn't protected by medical confidentiality -- and as a result, Sauses lawyer is free to use the document as evidence in his argument that Schnitzer lied on the stand during a hearing last June.

Thomas McDermott, Sause's attorney, said Schnitzer committed perjury by testifying that he hadn't signed the document -- essentially a contract that spells out the rights that Schnitzer and Sause have over embryos created or children born from the fertilization process.



For reasons that are unclear, a copy of the contact with both Schnitzers and Sauses signatures on it recently emerged in a file at Oregon Health & Science University, which harvested Sauses eggs.

Days after the birth and without telling Sause, Schnitzer asked a judge to declare him the sole parent of the boy and the judge agreed. Schnitzer has said the plan was that he would be the boys only parent if his relationship with Sause didnt work out. Sause has said the agreement was that she would always be a part of the boys life and that her son would know he had a mother.

McDermott said in court last week and reiterated Thursday that he knows Schnitzer and his lawyers don't like it, but as "an officer of the court" he must present his case that Schnitzer was dishonest.

McDermott said he plans to contact the Multnomah County District Attorneys Office and Judge Katherine Tennyson, who presided over last Junes hearing.

Schnitzers credibility, McDermott said, has gone in the toilet. McDermott also took the opportunity to get in a dig about Schnitzer's defense that he doesn't remember signing the contract.

I dont know if theyre going to say he had amnesia or that he was astral-projected into the universe at that time, McDermott said.

Schnitzers attorneys didn't say much during Thursday's hearing to directly address the accusations. But one of Schnitzer's lawyers, John DiLorenzo, told the judge that McDermotts remarks were gratuitous and inflammatory.

Schnitzers side isnt denying that his signature is on the bottom of the contract. But he and his lawyers have said he didn't lie. In a written statement Friday to The Oregonian/OregonLive, Schnitzer said:

As I have said, I dont have any recollection of signing this document, but I am delighted it was found in OHSUs files and wish it had been found much sooner."

The release of the signed document only helps his case, he said.

"This case is about Cory wanting to be on the birth certificate yet nowhere in the signed document released today  or any document  is there mention of Cory being on the birth certificate," Schnitzer wrote. "What this document does confirm, along with the OHSU donor forms, is that Cory relinquished any parental rights to my son. I am hopeful that this development opens a path to resolution.

Sause's lawyers believe that the document helps her case. It states that Sause "may have in (sic) active role in the life of the child" if its determined to be in the child's best interests.

The judge said it wasnt her role to decide if the perjury claim has any merit.

But she said she was ruling that the document in the OHSU file isnt protected by a medical privacy order because the information it contains is already public.

Thats because an unsigned version of the document was placed on poster boards and discussed extensively during last June's court hearing, she said.

This document, absent Schnitzers signature, has already been in the public domain, Holmes Hehn said.

-- Aimee Green
A 38-year-old driver who wasnt intoxicated -- as far as police can tell -- when he struck and killed a pedestrian in Southeast Portland pleaded no contest Thursday to felony criminally negligent homicide.

As part of his sentence, William Matthew Rugg was banned from driving for the rest of his life.

Ruggs case is unusual because most drivers prosecuted for killing others were drunk or high at the time of their crashes.

But Deputy District Attorney Elisabeth Waner said Rugg was criminally negligent for the death of 75-year-old Tony Joy because he didnt heed flashing amber lights warning him to stop before a marked crosswalk at Southeast 160th Avenue and Stark Street.

Rugg then drove past other cars that had stopped for Joy, striking the elderly man with his Ford F-150 pickup, Waner said.

A probable cause affidavit states that Joy also was wearing light clothing -- a tan jacket with a yellow stripe across it -- and the area was illuminated with street lights at the time of the 5:40 p.m. crash last Nov. 25.

Police investigated to see if Rugg was impaired. Rugg told police he smoked recreational marijuana daily and that hed last smoked some homegrown marijuana the day before, according to the affidavit.

Waner said a blood test showed Rugg had a significant amount of THC in his system, but a drug recognition expert determined that it didn't appear Rugg was impaired by marijuana at the time of the crash.

Waner said its unclear why Rugg didnt stop for Joy. He simply might not have been paying attention, she said.

Multnomah County Circuit Judge Angel Lopez followed the terms of a plea agreement by sentencing Rugg to five years of probation, 80 hours of community service and the lifetime drivers license revocation. If Rugg stays out of trouble, he can try to persuade a judge to restore his driving privileges after a decade has passed.

If you had been under the influence of marijuana at the time of this accident, I never would have agreed to this outcome. But I dont believe that you were, the judge said.

The judge acknowledged Ruggs habitual use. Rugg told authorities at the time of his arrest that he was treated for marijuana use when he was 13 years old.

Waner said that since the crash, Rugg has taken some steps to change his life: He is no longer using marijuana urine tests show.

The victims family didn't attend the sentencing hearing. But Waner said the victims son told her that his father believed in second chances and would have likely supported Ruggs sentence, given Ruggs efforts to change his life for the better.

At the time of Rugg's arrest, he told authorities he was a self-employed artist living with his wife and mother-in-law in Camas.

Rugg didnt make any statements during the hearing.

Ruggs attorney, Sean OHalloran, said his client had been driving the speed limit.

The judge said he wouldnt order Rugg to pay any fines or fees.

I think youre going to suffer enough for the rest of your life with the memory of that horrible night, Lopez said.

-- Aimee Green
President Donald Trump's shock firing of James Comey has brought the topic of impeachment to the fore.

The possibility of the president being impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the U.S. Senate seems unlikely, seeing as Trump's fellow Republicans hold majorities in both chambers and Trump's popularity remains high among GOP voters.

But the sacking of Comey, who as FBI director was leading the most serious official investigation into possible collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian hackers seeking to influence the election, has changed the calculus for bettors.

"In the past 24 hours alone we've seen money for Trump to be impeached in his first term, resulting in us cutting the odds from 10/11 into 4/6," Irish bookmaking firm Paddy Power said in The Independent on Thursday. "We can attribute this to the news of Comey's sacking. [That] is the shortest we've been for Trump to be impeached in his first term."

Those odds put the possibility of a Trump impeachment at about 60 percent.

Why would Trump's removal of the FBI director -- who serves at the pleasure of the president -- shift the odds so dramatically? Because Trump's actions raise questions about obstruction of justice, a charge that played a featured role in the articles of impeachment that President Richard Nixon faced 40 years ago. Nixon's efforts to head off the Watergate scandal, the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment resolution stated, led to him "interfering or endeavoring to interfere with the conduct of investigations by the Department of Justice of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the office of Watergate Special Prosecution Force, and Congressional Committees."

Nixon resigned in 1974 after senators from his own party told him he had lost their support.

In the days since the Tuesday firing of Comey, Trump has continued to act in ways that are being widely interpreted as attempts to influence the Trump-Russia investigation.

In a Friday morning tweet, the president appeared to threaten Comey. Trump has claimed that the former FBI director had told him that he, Trump, personally wasn't under investigation, a claim Comey has not backed. Trump's tweet, perhaps inadvertently, offers echoes of the Watergate scandal, which ultimately turned on secret tapes made of Oval Office conversations.

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

Of course, impeachment isn't the only possible way Trump might leave office early. British bookmaker Bet365 has 11/4 odds that Trump will be removed in his first term through the invocation of the 25th amendment.

The amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for a majority of the administration's cabinet "or of such other body" created by Congress to remove the president if they determine he is unable to properly discharge his duties.

-- Douglas Perry
19783257-mmmain.jpg

University of Oregon president Michael H. Schill in 2016. Dave Killen/Staff

The University of Oregon building formerly known as Dunn Hall could be named after one of four black people with strong connections to the UO, a panel has recommended after taking suggestions from the public.

The committee received 66 name suggestions, according to UO documents, and selected the final four from 19 candidates who met the UO's criteria. The university sought a new name for the four-story residence hall because of the racist history of its former namesake, professor Frederick Dunn. After the controversy over Dunn Hall erupted, the UO temporarily changed the name to Cedar Hall.

The selection of name candidates "was not an easy task, nor one we took lightly," the committee wrote to UO President Michael Schill in a memo Wednesday.

The four finalists are:

Derrick Bell, former UO School of Law dean.

Nellie Franklin, the first black woman to graduate from the UO.

DeNorval Unthank Jr., the first black man to graduate from the UO's architecture school.

DeNorval Unthank Sr., a Portland doctor and civil rights activist.

The UO Board of Trustees last September stripped Dunn's name from a wing of the Hamilton Housing Complex, a dormitory. The Black Student Task Force asked the UO in fall 2015 to rename buildings whose namesakes had racist histories, which put a focus on Dunn Hall and Deady Hall, the oldest building on campus.

Dunn was a UO classics professor in the early 1900s and a local leader of the Ku Klux Klan, holding the title of "exalted cyclops." That fact led to the university's removal of his name from the dorm. UO founder Matthew Deady, the namesake for Deady Hall, spoke in favor of slavery before the Civil War but later supported anti-discrimination laws. His reversal led UO leaders to decide to keep his name on Deady Hall.

The UO primarily collected name suggestions through an online form. At least 20 people suggested the hall be named in honor of Edwin Coleman, a UO English professor who died at age 84 earlier this year. A black leader on campus, he joined the debate about the name of Deady Hall. He argued in favor of preserving the name.

UO spokesman Tobin Klinger explained why Coleman was not a finalist.

"We cannot lose sight of the policy, which suggests that honorees should be deceased for more than one year, and Dr. Coleman passed away in January," he said. "But the fact is that he was also a critic of building de-naming."

Since September, the UO has referred to the former Dunn Hall as Cedar Hall. By early June, Schill will take his name pick to the board of trustees.

The naming committee consisted of Eugene City Councilor Greg Evans, UO Assistant Vice President Carlyn Schreck, College of Education professor Charles Martinez, incoming UO professor Curtis Austin, Hamilton West Housing Life Coordinator Nedzer Erilus, and university students Courtney Ford, Jaria Martin, Brianna Hayes and Kena Gomalo.

The renaming process happens rarely at the UO, with most new buildings on campus being named after or by a donor, Klinger said.

"The circumstances are pretty rare these days for a name to be placed on a building without some degree of conversation with a benefactor," he said.

The UO's criteria for the new namesake of former Dunn Hall include someone who advanced justice for blacks in Oregon, overcame discrimination and helped black students succeed in higher education.

The university asked the committee to look for someone who was black, dead and had a direct relationship with Oregon or the UO.

The committee ruled out 34 names for not meeting guidelines, including UO running legend Steve Prefontaine, President Obama and civil rights activist Rosa Parks.

Two people each suggested keeping the name Cedar Hall or reinstating Dunn Hall.

--The Associated Press
As reports and rumors fly that a "Downton Movie" is in the works, fans of the deliciously witty and melodramatic British TV series are positively clutching their pearls in giddy anticipation.

The rumors started swirling Thursday, as the British tabloid The Sun reported that filming on a "Downton Abbey" movie is supposedly set to begin in September, citing an unnamed source who claimed: "Film bosses have requested the services of crew members and accountants to work on the picture."

But that's not all! According to The Sun, this same gabby source also said, "A budget has been set and now it's a case of getting everything in place to start shooting. It would take something big to stop the project from happening now."

Much as fans would love to see more of the series that ran from 2011 to 2015 on PBS' "Masterpiece," we might want to hold off on asking Mrs. Patmore to whip up a celebratory feast.

The Sun's report sounds a bit dodgy, since most movies don't go into production based on "film bosses" requesting the services of cast and crew.

Julian Fellowes, creator and writer of "Downton Abbey," has said he'd be open to a movie that continues the story of the Earl of Grantham's family, including Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), Lady Edith (Laura Carmichael) and the loyal household staff, such as Mr. Carson (Jim Carter), Mrs. Hughes -- excuse us, Mrs. Carson (Phyllis Logan) -- and the rest.

But the show's cast members have been busy with other projects. And then there's that troublesome lump of undissolved sugar in the tea, namely, the question of whether Maggie Smith would be willing to return as the Dowager Countess.

"They talk about there being a film but who knows," Smith said at a recent appearance in London, as BBC America recounts. "I just think it's squeezing it dry, do you know what I mean? I don't know what it could possibly be. It's too meandering."

But it also sounds like Smith might be joking, since she added, regarding potential movie plotlines, "I was firmly convinced it would start with the funeral" of the Dowager Countess. "I could croak it, and it would just start with the body."

Dame Maggie was just kidding about that. Right?

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com

503-221-8227

@Kristiturnquist
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A dark musical takes the stage today at the Midland Center for the Arts. Center Stage Theatres Assassins examines nine peoples deliberate actions.

Michael J. Wisniewski, director of the production, explained the story line.

Assassins takes the audience on a musical journey giving them a look into the minds of each assassin from John Wilkes Booth to John Hinckley, who were either successful or unsuccessful in assassinating an American president, he said.

Wisniewski revealed that the plot doesnt focus so much on how the events took place, but on what led to those choices.

What I love most about this musical is the way that it doesnt glorify violence or support it but cleverly gives the audience that look into the minds of each assassin, he said. The show is really about storytelling. All the scenes and musical numbers are cleverly written and even pairs the most unlikely characters to take the audience on this musical journey.

Not strictly a drama or a comedy, the musical offers a hint of both.

The musical really is a great balance of rich, dark and twisted humor and serious dramatic parts, Wisniewski said. I think the book of the musical is brilliant in the way that it cleverly weaves both, taking the audience on a musical rollercoaster ride.

The Tony Award-winning musical is based on the book by John Weidman with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.

Assassins of various time periods have discussions throughout the play. The weighty subject matter, applied to music and lyrics, is something that Sondheim has not shied away from in other musicals as well.

The creative team for Center Stage Theatres Assassins includes assistant director Dexter Brigham, music director Matt Travis and stage manager Katy Gaertner.

Wisniewski has directed several shows in the Great Lakes Bay region including the Bay City Players performance of Les Miserables and Pit and Balconys Blithe Spirit. He also appeared in Center Stage Theatres The Drowsy Chaperone.

Assassins contains adult language and content.

Cast members are Melissa Bornemann of Auburn; Lauren Klett of Bay City; Andy Harrington and David Ryan of Essexville; Aaron Baker, Matt Fox, Steven Hackbarth, Steven Holty, Leah Markowitz, Matt Schramm, Natalie Schwartz and Bill Stokes of Midland; Kendall Day, Patrick Kemmerling, Nick Pettengill and Natalie Pettengill of Mount Pleasant and Alex Stroebel of Wheeler.

I could go on forever about this musical, Wisniewski said. It is one of my favorite musicals and I hope the audience enjoys it as much as I do.

Assassins will run at 7:30 p.m. on May 12-13, 18-20 and at 3 p.m. on May 14 and 21. For more information, mcfta.org
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A group of students from Calvary Baptist Academy used their spring break to compete in the American Association of Christian School National Fine Arts Festival.

To earn this opportunity, the students had to place first at the Michigan Association of Christian Schools Fine Arts Festival held March 10 at Calvary Baptist Academy.
Thirteen students from H. H. Dow High School joined thousands of marketing students from around the world to represent Michigan at DECAs annual International Career Development Conference in Anaheim, California.

With more than 20,000 DECA members and advisors gathering for the final competition of the year, this group of students ended their experience with success.
To the editor:

Im writing in response to the letter to the editor published in the Midland Daily News on May 1, which called into question where Bill Schuette stands on sexual assault.

His work as Michigans attorney general has left no question: he stands with the victims.

Since taking office, Schuette has dedicated the utmost time, resources and talent to bringing justice for the many women who have been victimized by sexual assault. When others were unwilling to talk about it, Schuette broke the silence and created the first Michigan Human Trafficking Commission in March 2013.

Whether through legislation, training or public awareness, Schuettes mission has been consistent in making innocent victims be seen and treated for what they are: victims. Hes also committed himself to walking with the victim even after justice has been served, working with service providers to ensure that victims receive the care they need to become independent and reintegrate into society.

And remember when, in 2009, nearly 11,300 untested rape kits dating back 25 years were discovered in a Detroit Police Department storage facility? That was also your attorney general, Bill Schuette, who secured $4 million in appropriations to test the remaining rape kits. When these victims of heinous crimes were shoved into the darkest corners of the justice system and forgotten, Schuette remembered them and gave thousands of women the voice  the hope  they never thought they would have.

If, then, you hope to turn women against Bill Schuette by tying him to words he neither said nor accepted, youve picked the wrong man. Even more, it is a discredit to the cause in which you argue.

Attorney General Bill Schuette stands with women victims, not because he demands power, but because he demands justice as a father, as a husband, and as a public servant to all our citizens.

Cathy Leikhim

Chairman of the Midland County Republican Party

Midland
BLOOMINGTON  A request by the local Black Lives Matter chapter to create a community board to review public complaints about interactions with Bloomington police officers is garnering support.

Four community organizations  Not In Our Town, YWCA McLean County, NAACP Bloomington-Normal and the Central Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union  support Black Lives Matter Bloomington-Normal in calling for a civilian review board.

In a joint statement issued Thursday, the five groups said many residents, particularly people of color, lack confidence in the process for filing complaints about police officers and in investigations conducted solely by police.

The Bloomington City Council plans to discuss on Monday options to improve relations between police and the community and to increase diversity in the city's public safety departments, said Mayor Tari Renner.

It's part of a broader discussion about what the overall concerns are, what the issues are, what does our current process look like and what our options are," said Renner. "One, obviously, is a review board and that certainly will be discussed.

The council will meet at 5:30 p.m. Monday for a committee-of-the-whole work session at City Hall. No action will be taken at that time.

I am glad that the City Council is willing to entertain the possibility of a civilian review board, said Ky Ajayi, a member of the local BLM chapter.

"Black Lives Matter has shared some principles it would like to see shape the board, and hopefully at the committee-of-the-whole meeting the City Council will agree that these are good ideas and should form the basis for a board, said Ajayi.

The local BLM chapter sought input about the proposed review board from the four other organizations.

"We believe that a civilian review board working to encourage citizens to complain by providing assurances of followup with the complaint process would be a good starting point as we continue to work to improve police and community relations," said the organizations in their joint statement.

Few public complaints are formally submitted to Bloomington police, the groups say, but that fact may be misleading.

"We believe it is dangerous to assume that the low number of complaints filed against officers are a measure of public satisfaction, when it may instead be an indication of public distrust with our current complaint process," according to the groups' statement.

The organizations suggest that "in order to maintain public trust," the review board consist solely of volunteer members of the public to remain an impartial body.

The community groups also recommend expanding the avenues for filing complaints by allowing people to file them directly with the review board, with the city's human resources department or through the current process at the police department.

While the police department would investigate the complaints and make determinations, a review board could provide an avenue for people to appeal department findings they dispute, said the organizations' statement.

"We recommend that BPD make all investigative material related to the complaint available to (the review board)," the groups said.

The board could make nonbinding recommendations to the police chief or city manager to consider, according to the groups.

NIOT member Mike Matejka said people may feel more comfortable taking complaints to a review board, and the review process would be more productive than having people just raise these issues in public forums.

"People constantly voice complaints when we have these large public forums," said Matejka. It's really not fair to the police because they can't answer an individual situation in front of a crowd."
NORMAL Gary Cole praised the talent he found among students and faculty when he attended Illinois State University from 1974 to 1977, which he described as a critical time in his becoming an actor.

His comments came Thursday after his induction into the ISU College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame.

Although he noted, truth be told, I didn't graduate, Cole said he learned a lot at ISU and returning to campus brings back a lot of memories.

What I remember is the extraordinary talent from both the faculty and the students, he said.

Dean Jean Miller said Cole's selection as the 34th alumnus in the Hall of Fame reflects his tremendous achievements ... and continued commitment to ISU.

Cole has appeared on stage, television and film with credits including The West Wing, The Good Wife and Midnight Caller on TV and Talladega Nights, The Brady Bunch and the cult classic, Office Space, in film. He was nominated for an Emmy for his current role in the HBO series, Veep.

Cole said Office Space wasn't a big hit on the big screen but took on a life of its own after its release on DVD, prompting strangers on the street to shout lines at him from the movie.

I never worked in an office because I had no discernible office skills, he said. But I understand that culture is huge.

Cole got his start in Chicago theater in 1978 with the Steppenwolf Theater Co., founded a few years before by other ISU alumni.

His television career began in the 1985 NBC miniseries Fatal Vision, in which he played a doctor convicted of murdering his pregnant wife and two children.

Cole said he was sure he got the role after many other turned it down but, I really seized it.

Working with Karl Malden, Andy Griffith and Eva Marie Saint, Cole said, I learned a great deal in a short period of time.

When it comes to acting, the most compelling things about that to me is this, Cole said as he rubbed his fingers together, "the electricity between two people.

When I was locked in with somebody and all this (the audience) went away, that's what I remember, he said.

Cole is teaching a master class to acting majors while on campus and will be the commencement speaker for the College of Fine Arts at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Bone Student Center's Braden Auditorium.
Cheers

... to Fresh Thyme Farmers Market and Green Top Grocery on the official openings of their new stores.

Fresh Thyme, located along Veterans Parkway in the former Cub Foods location, is part of a small chain that promotes healthy foods in a "farmers market" atmosphere.

Green Top, located near Beer Nuts along Washington Street in a new development called The Foundry, is a cooperative store that offers locally grown and organic foods and products.

Pundits may say the Twin Cities are not growing like they should be, but there's no doubt businesses are interested in Bloomington-Normal when two groceries open within the same week.

Cheers

... to Midwest Food Bank and other providers for helping victims of the Midwest and southern floods by providing food and other essentials.

Cheers

... to the Bloomington Kiwanis Club for once again hosting its annual Mother's Day flower sale fundraiser, which continues through Saturday at the Shoppes at College Hills in Normal.

Not only does the fundraiser help with good deeds (proceeds help with Camp Limberlost), but the flowers and plants help families spend Mother's Day together, choosing and planting annuals that will brighten their homes and their mom's spirits.

Cheers

... to Illinois Wesleyan students who participated in the college's recent senior service day. The graduating seniors helped with landscaping at YouthBuild's Stoneman Corners Apartments while another group helped the West Bloomington Revitalization Project's Tool Library move to a larger location.

The "bookend experience" mirrors the Turning Titan freshman orientation program.

Cheers

... to Mark Brodl, newly named provost at Illinois Wesleyan University, who takes office July 17. He succeeds Jonathan Green, who is leaving to become president of Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania.

Brodel is associate vice president for academic affairs for budget and research at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas.

Welcome!

Help if you can

.... Money and volunteers are needed to help McLean County get rid of household hazardous waste this fall.

Ecology Action Center of Normal needs to raise $35,000 in donations for a one-day event for disposal of items that include liquid pesticides, paint and aerosol products.

Mark your calendar

.... for May 18, if you're interested in community mental health issues.

A forum sponsored by the McLean County Behavioral Health Coordinating Council will be 1 to 6:30 p.m. at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts. The afternoon includes free afternoon breakout sessions and a keynote speech at 5:30 p.m.

Cheers

... to Illinois State University for a special program to help high school-age youth in foster care prepare for college.

The First Star Academy will be funded by grants from the Department of Children and Family Services and a private donor.
Few people know and even fewer seem to remember that Poland's WWII forces fighting alongside the Allies, known as the Anders Army, contributed to the formation of Israel by, among others, letting its Jewish-descended soldiers desert to the then-emerging country.

Named after its commander General Wladyslaw Anders (whose 47th death anniversary is celebrated today - PAP) the Anders Army was formed in 1941 in the Soviet Union. In March 1942 the force made its way through Iran to Palestine under a British-Soviet-Polish understanding. In Palestine the force passed under British command and provided the bulk of the Polish II Corps (a member of the Polish Armed Forces in the West), which fought in the Italian Campaign.





In Palestine the force's commanders were ordered by Andres to turn a blind eye to thousands of desertions by the army's Jewish conscripts, who left the force armed, to join Jewish military organisations fighting for the independence of Israel. Among the soldiers granted an official release from the formation was Menachem Begin (Poland-born Mieczyslaw Biegun) - the founder of Israel's Likud party and the 6th Israeli prime minister.





In line with the Polish government in-exile, the Anders Army also helped civilians of Jewish descent, including soldier families, groups of Jewish children and war orphans, to escape Soviet repressions and travel safely to Palestine against a British ban.





Polish authorities circumvented the interdict by loading fellow citizens of Jewish descent on ships and navigating them around the Arabian Peninsula. Jewish children, on the other hand, are said to have been clad in Catholic school uniforms and transported to Palestine through Iraqi deserts by trucks.





In 1944 the Anders Army's II Corps played a crucial role in defeating the Germans in what came to be known as "the biggest inland battle in Europe" - the famous battle of Monte Cassino. This exceptionally hard-fought victory, which cost much Polish blood, allowed the Allied forces to capture Rome and later, the whole of southern Europe. Another Italian-theatre decisive battle fought by Anders Army's II Corps, actually becoming its only independent operation, was the Battle of Ancona, in which Polish troops took over a strategic Adriatic port. The operation contributed to breaking of the Gothic Line and subsequent surrender of the Axis forces in Italy. (PAP)

mb/
Georgia-Pacific Investing $400 Million to Grow Consumer Products Business

May 10, 2017 (Press Release) - Georgia-Pacific today announced significant investments, which total more than $400 million, for its GP Consumer (retail) tissue and towel business. The investments support further growth for key customers' private label brand products.

The company has approved funding for a paper machine using through-air-dried (TAD) technology, associated converting equipment and infrastructure work. A final decision on the location of the new operations, which will be in the eastern United States, is expected to be announced soon with startup projected for 2019. Approximately 80 jobs would be created to support operations.

"This investment demonstrates our commitment to GP Consumer's current and potential customers who plan to grow their premium private label towel brands, as well as to expand Georgia-Pacific's own Brawny premium paper towel brand," said Fernando Gonzalez, president - GP Consumer business.

Kathy Walters, group president - GP Consumer Products Group, added, "This investment will help GP Consumer further leverage the many advantages we have  including our breadth of offerings and many others  to create products consumers value while meeting the changing needs of our customers."

SOURCE: Georgia-Pacific
While we are certainly aware of the effect cinema can have on the way we understand the world, there are very few films that not only remain relevant decades after their release, but are so powerful they set international relations alight. Midnight Express, the story of Billy Hayes' escape from a Turkish prison after he attempted to smuggle four pounds of hashish out of Turkey at the height of the war on drugs, was one of those films.

Billy Hayes became an international celebrity when he returned to America, quickly garnering the attention of Hollywood with his memoirs about his time spent incarcerated. Oliver Stone adapted Hayes' writing for a screenplay, 70s heartthrob Brad Davis was cast as the lead, and Midnight Express was made. The film's instant reverberation around the world was unprecedented, and it won six Oscars at the 1979 Academy Awards. A warrant was immediately issued for Billy Hayes' arrest by Interpol, and Turkey was so incensed by the film's portrayal of their culture that there were nationwide protests. Tourism to the country dropped significantly as Billy Hayes simultaneously became an American hero and a Turkish enemy.

Midnight Return, a documentary over 10 years in the making written, directed and produced by Sally Sussman, has Hayes visit Turkey for the first time since his escape. We spoke to both Sussman and Hayes to discover the discrepancies between Billy's story and Stone's, how one film could do so much damage and who Billy Hayes really is. (Note: Both Midnight Return and Midnight Express can be viewed on Sundance Now).

I'll be honest, it's been a long time since I've seen Midnight Express, but I remember the film having such a profound impact on me and I was so struck by the concept of this documentary. How did it come to be?

Sally: Like you, I saw the film as a youngster and it stayed with me for years and years and years. Then I met Billy through my husband, and he happened to mention to me about Turkey and his interest going back there and I thought, "Hmmm." This film had a life beyond the theater; it had a life in pop culture.

Absolutely, it transcends time.

Billy: Imagine how bizarre that makes me feel.

Billy, I had no idea that you became such a fixture in American culture at the time. You were so celebrated as the anti-hero--both the bad boy and America's sweetheart.

Sally: That's what's so ironic about the story. At the time Billy was really celebrated because he had pulled off this unbelievable escape, then becoming one of the first celebrity types to be created from a news story.

Billy: Everything was quite wonderful because prison sets a very low bar. I had made three successful trips before I was caught, none of which I could write about in my first book, because it was 1975 and the height of the drug war.

That's so interesting, considering your portrayal in the film was so different, Billy Hayes was the naive American tourist who made one bad call and was unfairly punished.

Billy: They seemed to think they needed to do that.

Sally: The Billy Hayes in the movie was a very passive character and was portrayed as much more of a victim than the real Billy Hayes.

Everyone loves a victim.

Sally: Right. They had to sell this movie to Columbia Pictures who were reluctant to make a film that glorified a drug smuggler.

Billy: They didn't mind a failed drug smuggler, but they cared about a successful one.

Sally: They wanted something palatable where you would be rooting for the wronged hero. Then again, had Turkey not given Billy a life sentence for smuggling hash, none of this would have happened. So in many ways he was a real life victim of the Turkish legal system, but the mandate for the filmmakers was to stack the deck against Turkey and in favor of this kid. I honestly think we would have rooted for the character more had we seen his real escape.

Billy: Thank you.

Sally: There were choices made in the movie that veered the story further and further away from Billy.

Billy: I understand, as a filmmaker, why you wouldn't want to spend all this money showing someone rowing and running away from Turkey, but there were other choices I wasn't as happy with. I had a relationship with someone in jail and they couldn't have that.

That's unbelievable, I had no idea. Wow, that would have contributed so much to the story.

Billy: Of course! But they were afraid of that. They would allow their main character to bite someone's tongue out but not touch another human being. That says a lot about the producers, but that's a whole other can we don't need to get into. The biggest thing for me was the courtroom scene, where Oliver Stone wrote: "You're a nation of pigs, I fuck your sons, I fuck your daughters." In truth I said, all "I can I do is forgive you."

Which is surprising because for me that whole scene felt anti-American, the language chosen was almost barbaric. It also totally contrasted to the film's depiction of you as the humble victim.

Billy: It bothered me.

Did you spend time with Brad Davis, Billy?

Billy: Oh yeah, I met Brad and we had an instant connection. We were friends until the day he died, he had read Midnight Express multiple times. He had folded pages, underlined sentences--he had created the character in his mind. Brad put his heart and soul into it and I love what he did.

You didn't see Billy Hayes on screen and think, this is false?

Billy: No, I understand why things have to be changed. I was looking for a sense of truth and Brad so had that. Everyone in the film had that. I have my reasons to not be happy with it, but it's a brilliant movie and if it hadn't been so good, we wouldn't be talking about it. It was very, very powerful. That's why the Turks were so unhappy with it.

I know Oliver Stone appears in the film, does he address the story's impact on Turkish-US relations?

Sally: He does. He felt that this story was his own story. He had been busted for drugs and spent time in prison too, in San Diego. So this was a little of Oliver raging on the war on drugs and the hypocrisy. It was him saying, Turkey is punishing this guy for smuggling four pounds of hash and they're letting murderers get away. He says he regretted the misunderstanding he created, but he felt that Billy had the right to condemn them. But it was still Billy Hayes.

Billy: It was also my name on the Interpol warrant, not when I escaped or when my book came out, but when the movie Midnight Express came out. I had a warrant for my arrest that stood for the next 20 years, that was not a warrant for Oliver Stone. There are consequences.

Exactly, for this attractive, very famous actor to get up and say "fuck your people" that's hugely-

Billy: Incendiary.

Right! But also incredibly sad for them. I had no idea how detrimental the film was to the relationship, but I can absolutely understand it. As a foreigner, I know the esteem that the United States is held in around the world and having a country like that, whose culture you are so invested in, denounce your own nation. I can't even imagine what that must have been like for the Turkish.

Sally: That's what's interesting for us. I remember that Turkey had protested the film and that was always in the back of my mind. When we started talking to the Turkish people, we found that it had affected their psyche. It had stayed with them for many years. That's not the normal way films affect people's consciousness.

So is the objective of the documentary then to heal those wounds with Turkey? You don't worry it will dredge up old baggage?

Sally: This was 10 years ago, but the Turks were so happy to see him. It had an enormous impact, he made all the front pages, it was huge news. However, because of the political situation now, it didn't serve as quite the tonic as we hoped it would. Journalists are getting arrested, they have way bigger problems to deal with right now.

Billy: The documentary goes way beyond my little story, it discusses the way a film can affect us, can affect countries. Personally, I needed to return to Turkey, I was a hated man for things that weren't valid. I didn't kill the guard, I didn't say "you're a nation of pigs." So the ability to go back and say those words, that was an experience of a lifetime for me.





[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPsLDjPEcsk&feature=youtu.be expand=1]

Image supplied.


Patna: With a murder in Gaya involving a Janata Dal  U MLC and another in Siwan involving a journalist with fingers pointing to jailed former MP Mohammed Shahabuddin, even Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leaders, the supposed allies of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, have started to question the CM's leadership while asking for his resignation.

RJD MP Mohammed Taslimuddin, in view of the rising crime in the state, on Friday, asked Kumar to admit he had failed in his endeavor to keep crime under check and resign from his position on moral grounds.

"The Chief Minister is ultimately responsible for the safety and security of the citizens. Nitish Kumar should realize his failure and resign from his post," Taslimuddin said following a meeting of the party leaders at the residence of Rabri Devi on Friday.

Another RJD leader, Prabhunath Singh, while not asking for the CM's resignation, held him accountable for allowing jailed Siwan don Shahabuddin to hold 'durbar' in his prison cell.

"That he (Shahabuddin) was able to hold a durbar in the jail is an example of administrative failure. What were the officials doing at the time when all this was happening," Singh asked. He, however, urged everyone not to hold a media trial of the imprisoned Siwan don saying the law would take its own course and guilty would ultimately be punished.

Meanwhile, at the meeting of the RJD Parliamentary Committee, party members authorized party President Lalu Prasad Yadav to pick candidates for the upcoming Bihar Legislative Council elections at seven seats on June 10 and five Rajya Sabha seats for June 11 polls.
Patna: Authorities in Patna on Thursday raided the home of a builder in Agam Kuan and recovered Rs. 30 lakh in banned notes of Rs. 1000 denomination.

Speaking at a press conference, Patna Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Manu Maharaj said that the raid was conducted at the home of Vinod Vishwas, a builder, living in a flat in Ganesh Tower, following a tip-off from an anonymous source.

As recalled, the NDA government banned Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000 last November making it illegal to store large sum of these bills under the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Act of 2017.

"The police carried out the raid after confirming the tip was credible. During the search, the cops stumbled upon cash and took Vinod and four of his associates in custody," the SSP said.
Patna: After being told by Chief Minister Nitish Kumar to step on anti-alcohol drive in the state, police in Patna carried out raids at a number of places in the district and seized over 1000 liters of country and foreign liquors in 1800 bottles leading to the arrests of 157 people involved in bootlegging and illegal sale of liquor.

Authorities also seized a Chevrolet, a Nano, a Bolero, a pick-up van, a motorcycle, and an auto-rickshaw during the daylong raid in Patna district.

The biggest breakthrough, however, came in Khagaul where police seized 441 liters of alcohol. This was followed by Bihta where authorities confiscated 220 liters of foreign liquors, ASP Rakesh Kumar Dubey said.

"The smugglers are using high-priced luxury cars to transport liquor because the police constables are afraid of stopping them during road-blocks believing someone influential could be driving or sitting in the car. Once the car reaches its destination, bottles are supplied by motorcycle riders to avoid suspicion," SSP said.

Fatuha DSP Anoj Kumar said that the police stopped a Chevrolet and and found four cartons of Royal Stag in it. The police seized the bottles and also arrested the driver of the Chevrolet who was identified as one Pawan Sah.

Manu Maharaj sought the help of the people of Bihar in reporting liquor sellers and smugglers by calling 100 or sending a message on Whatsapp number 993-991-9191 assuring the name of the caller will not be revealed.
Patna: Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in Patna on Thursday inaugurated a Business Process Service (BPS) Center launched by the Information and Technology wing of the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

Prasad, at the inaugural event at Hotel Maurya, said that this is the first of its kind in Bihar and has 1000 seats capable of providing employment to 3000 qualified men and women.

"The NDA government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has sanctioned 46,000 BPSs across the country. Out of this, 4600 seats are in Bihar," Prasad said crediting the Prime Minister for launching the ambitious Digital India program that promises to usher the nation in the 21st century.

The Minister touted the Digital India program saying the nation was saving Rs. 50,000 crore annually by linking benefit payment under 84 schemes through Aadhaar-ready bank accounts.

Prasad, however, criticized Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for 'his apathy towards IT sector' saying the government was reluctant to provide land for setting up infrastructure that, in turn, was denying job opportunities to millions of youths of Bihar.

"When it comes to development, there should be no politics. The state government must act proactively by providing land to those who wish to invest in Bihar," he said.

Tata Consultancy Service CEO Rajesh Gopinathan, BJP leaders Nand Kishore Yadav, Nitin Navin and others were present on the occasion.
Several Reformist Candidates Disqualified at Last Minute From Tehran City Council Election

05/12/17

Source: Center for Human Rights in Iran

A number of prominent reformist politicians have been disqualified from running in Tehran's City Council election despite being previously approved by the election monitoring committee.



Tehran's City Council



The list of candidates who were not included on the committee's official list, issued on May 10-nine days before the vote-include Abdollah Momeni, Ali Tajernia, and Nasrin Vaziri, who was imprisoned for supporting the widespread, peaceful protests against the 2009 election's vote count.

The monitoring committee also disqualified the only Sunni Muslim candidate running in Tehran. Kurdish-Iranian reformist politician Marouf Samadi served two terms in Parliament representing the people of Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan Province.

Just before the final list was announced, Momeni, a former student activist who spent two years in prison for supporting the 2009 protests said: "Based on reports, it appears that in recent days certain security and military forces expressed concern that if I received votes in Tehran, that would send a (wrong) political message," he said in a statement on May 10.

"And therefore they pressured the council elections' central monitoring board and the monitoring board in Tehran to disqualify me and other legitimate candidates without regard for the law," he added.

Momeni also posted an image of a document showing he was initially approved to run and called on President Hassan Rouhani to investigate his dismissal as a "blatant violation of the law."

Article 17 of the Charter on Citizens' Rights, signed by Rouhani in December 2016, states, "Decisions, measures or statements of governmental officials, administrative and supervisory authorities of elections, military, police, and security officials, prior to election, in the course of considering the qualifications of election candidates, and after elections shall be completely transparent, unbiased and in compliance with the law, in such manner that even the suspicion of electoral fraud or violation, or support for certain candidate(s) cannot arise."

The head of the prosecutor's office in Tehran, Gholamhossein Esmaili, explained in an interview with the judiciary's official news agency, Mizan, on May 10 why he opposed some of the candidates.

"We were informed that some candidates had been approved despite having prior convictions, including those who had received heavy sentences for security crimes. This would damage the integrity of the councils," he said.

The disqualified candidates he was referring to were prosecuted for their political views without access to due process.

Vaziri was a journalist for the semi-official Iranian Labor News Agency (ILNA) when she was arrested in December 2009 for reporting on the protests that year.

Tajernia, who served as a reformist member of Parliament from 2000-04, was arrested in June 2009 and sentenced to five years in prison and 74 lashes for disputing the legitimacy of that year's presidential election, but was granted conditional release in January 2011.

"As the official in charge of the legal department, I have been coordinating with my colleagues and we will not permit those who have a history of corruption and sedition to participate in the elections," said Farhad Tajarri, a conservative spokesman for the Council Elections' Central Monitoring Board, on May 6.

Iranian officials have consistently referred to the widespread, peaceful protests that followed the disputed 2009 presidential election as the "sedition."

According to the head of the board in Tehran, Ali Asghar Ahmadi, about 14,500 people who had registered to become candidates in the council elections were disqualified by the election boards.

On May 19, more than 280,000 people, including nearly 18,000 women, will be running for seats in local councils in 1,245 cities, 1,057 counties and 2,589 villages.
Who needs E3 anyway? Certainly not Paradox, which is currently in Stockholm hosting its first-ever PDXConor at least the first ever open to the public. For the next few days fans will have the opportunity to go hands-on with many of Paradoxs upcoming games.

But before that, well, itd help to know whats on-hand to be played. Paradox held a press conference Friday to show off some games we already knew about (Cities: Skylines, more Europa Universalis) and revealed some new ones for good measurelike a space game from the Tropico developers.

Tropico in space

Thats right, Tropico developers Haemimont Games have abandoned the faux-Caribbean and headed to space for Surviving Mars. Heres the blurb:

The time has come to stake your claim on the Red Planet and build the first functioning human colonies on Mars! All you need are supplies, oxygen, decades of training, experience with sandstorms, and a can-do attitude to discover the purpose of those weird black cubes that appeared out of nowhere.

I was first tempted to compare it to RimWorld, but judging by screenshots Surviving Mars is apparently more of a traditional city-builder than a Prison Architect-style building-builder type of game. Still focused on colonization, but more on the logistics of survival than the human side of the endeavor.

Surviving Mars

Solike, Tropico in space. Im looking forward to seeing what the team can do, set free from retreading Tropico again, and well have more in-depth impressions sometime next week.

Third Rome

The slow and steady march of Paradox expansions continues, with Europa Universalis IV: Third Rome the first to be shown at Paradox Con 2017. Billed as the first immersion pack for EUIV, the expansion focuses on building a deeper experience for Russia and its cultural brothers, introducing new means to wield spiritual, political, and military control in the Russian empire.

How that differs from a standard EUIV expansion Im not sure, but there should be more information soonthe expansion is playable over the weekend.

BattleTech

This is not a new game, though its new to Paradox. Harebrained Schemes did a Kickstarter for BattleTech back in 2015, trying to bring the turn-based mech combat of the tabletop game to a video game. Apparently Paradox is now publishing BattleTech, once again fulfilling the role of Stepping in to help push Kickstarter games over the finish line. See also: Pillars of Eternity.
Trade and Industry Minister, Alan John Kwadwo Kyerematen, has said that aside the one district one factory policy, the government is looking forward to establishing a new vehicle assembly and automotive industry.

This industry, among others, is captured under an industrial expansion initiative dubbed, Strategic Anchor Industries.



Apart from the one district one factory initiative, we are also embarking on what we call Strategic Anchor Industries. So hopefully, within the next five years, we will be diversifying our economy away from cocoa and gold and we will be looking at the petrochemical industry and integrated iron and steel industry, aluminium and bauxite industry which then leads us on to a new vehicle assembly and automotive industry, he said.



He said all these at the National Single Window Conference held yesterday at Kempinski hotel, Accra.



The minister dropped his original speech and ceased the opportunity to market the arrangements and policies of the government for which the UNCTAD must consider and support.



He further indicated that the government will rekindle the garment and textile industry.



We are bringing back the garment and textile industry, creating Ghana as a pharmaceutical hub particularly to exploit the African market and many other things which then provides the basis for us to take trade facilitation seriously, he stated.



The minister revealed governments intention to establish industrial parks in each of the 10 regions, citing that as a reason for the progress made in China and Asia.



Ghana has been working on the National Single Window for some time, and the minister believes it the time has come for it to be elevated to another level by making it a national priority.

Source: GNA









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Ms Eva Mends, a Chief Economics Officer has been appointed by the Government as the Acting Director of Budget at the Ministry of Finance.



Her appointment has made her the first Ghanaian female to be appointed to the position.



Ms Mends is an alumni of the University of Ghana, where she studied Political Science with Economics and also holds an Executive Masters in Public Administration from the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).



A statement issued by the Public Relations Unit of the Ministry on behalf of the Sector Minister and copied to the Ghana News Agency, on Thursday, said Ms Mends takes over from Mr Sampson Asare Fianko, who reverts back to his former position as a Deputy Controller and Accountant General.



Ms Mends has undertaken short courses at the Harvard and Duke Universities.



Before her appointment, she was the Group Head of the Public Financial Management Reforms and was instrumental in leading major reforms including; gender responsive budgeting, programme-based budgeting and the development of the new Public Financial Management Act.



She has held other positions including; Head of the Americas Desk in 1998, Head of Budget Development in 2006 and Group Head of Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms in 2013.



Ms Mends first joined the Ministry as a National Service Person in 1991.



Other appointments announced by the Government included; Mr Eugene Asante Ofosuhene, as the Acting Controller and Accountant General.



He comes to this position with a wealth of experience as a former Deputy Controller and Accountant General responsible for management of the government treasury.



He acted creditably on several occasions as the Controller and Accountant General in the absence of the substantive Controller.



He is a Public Finance Expert and has consulted for the World Bank on the assignment, Strengthening the role of Public Private Partnerships in the Local Government Assemblies.



He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (United Kingdom and Ireland) and Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA), Ghana.



He also has a Masters degree in Business Administration (Finance option) from the University of Ghana. He is a graduate of the London School of Accountancy.



Mr Ofosuhene takes over from Mr Seidu Kotomah, Controller and Accountant General, who has been re-assigned to the Ministry of Finance.



Meanwhile, Mr David Klotey Collison, a Chief Budget Analyst and Mr Sampson Akligoh, a Technical Advisor to the Minister of Finance, have also been appointed Director of Public Investment Division and Financial Sector Division of the Ministry respectively.



Mr Collison joined the Civil Service as an Assistant Budget Analyst at the Ministry of Finance in December, 1995. Until his recent appointment as Director in charge of Public Investment, he was the Group Head, Budget Development and responsible for Compensations Management and Coordination of the National Budget Development Process from February, 2015.



He graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Agriculture, majoring in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ghana in 1993 and also has a Masters in Business Administration (Finance option) from the same university in 2001.



Mr Akligoh, on the other hand, has over 10 years working experience in the financial services industry working in advisory, asset management and as an economist.



Until his appointment to the Ministry, he was the Managing Director of InvestCorp, a financial services firm in Accra, Ghana. He served as a Vice President at Databank where he was Head of Research and a Fixed Income Strategist.



He also worked at SIC Financial Services Limited and with ADC African Development Corporation AG in Frankfurt which was acquired by Atlas Mara in 2014. 13.



Mr Akligoh also served as an Adjunct Lecturer in International Economics at Ashesi University College in 2014.



He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Law from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and a Masters degree in Economics Policy and Corporate Strategy from the Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands.

Source: GNA









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The Ministry of Finance has appointed new officers to key positions in the Ministry in a bid to help push the reforms the government intends to pursue.



Overall four persons have been appointed to augment the work at the ministry, including Ms Eva Mends, Eugene Asante Ofosuhene, Sampson Akligoh and David Klotey Collison to respective positions.



According to a press statement copied to the B&FT, the appointment of Ms. Eva Mends, a Chief Economics Officer as the Acting Director of Budget, is the first time a female has been appointed to the position.



Eugene Asante Ofosuhene, on the other hand is the new Acting Controller and Accountant General.



In addition, Mr. David Klotey Collison, a Chief Budget Analyst and Mr. Sampson Akligoh, a Technical Advisor to the Minister of Finance have also been appointed Director of Public Investment Division and Financial Sector Division of the Ministry respectively.



Ms. Eva Mends, the Group Head of the Public Financial Management Reforms, joined the ministry as a National Service Person in 1991. Positions she has held include, Head of The Americas Desk in 1998, Head of Budget Development in 2006 and Group Head of Public Financial Management (PFM) reforms in 2013.



As Group Head, she was instrumental in leading major reforms that include gender responsive budgeting, Programme Based Budgeting and lately the development of the new Public Financial Management Act.



She is an alumnus of University of Ghana, where she studied Political Science with Economics and also has an Executive Masters in Public Administration from GIMPA. She has undertaken short courses at the Harvard and Duke Universities. She takes over from Mr. Sampson Asare Fianko, who reverts to his former position as a Deputy Controller and Accountant General.



Mr. Ofosuhene comes to this position with a wealth of experience. As a former Deputy Controller and Accountant General, he was responsible for management of the Government Treasury.



He acted creditably on several occasions as the Controller and Accountant General in the absence of the substantive Controller. He is a Public Finance Expert and has Consulted for the World Bank on the assignment, Strengthening the role of Public Private Partnerships in the Local Government Assemblies.



Mr. Ofosuhene is a Fellow of The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (U.K. & Ireland) F.C.C.A and Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA) Ghana. He has a Masters degree in Business Administration (Finance option) from the University of Ghana. He is also a graduate of the London School of Accountancy. He takes over from Mr. Seidu Kotomah, Controller and Accountant General, who has been reassigned to the Ministry of Finance.



Mr. David Klotey Collison joined the Civil Service as an Assistant Budget Analyst at the Ministry of Finance in December 1995. Until his recent appointment as Director in charge of Public Investment, he was the Group Head, Budget Development and was responsible for Compensations Management and Coordination of the National Budget Development Process from February 2015.



Mr. Collison graduated with a BSc (Hons) degree in Agriculture, majoring in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ghana in 1993 and also has a Masters in Business Administration (Finance option) from the same university in 2001.



Mr. Sampson Akligoh, has over 10 years working experience in the financial services industry working in advisory, asset management and as an economist.



Until his appointment to the Ministry, he was the Managing Director of InvestCorp, a financial services firm in Accra, Ghana. He served as a Vice President at Databank where he was Head of Research and a Fixed Income Strategist.



He also worked at SIC Financial Services Limited and with ADC African Development Corporation AG in Frankfurt which was acquired by Atlas Mara in 2014. 13. Mr. Akligoh also served as an Adjunct Lecturer in International Economics at Ashesi University College in 2014.



He holds a BA in Economics and Law (First Class Honours) from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in Ghana, and a Masters degree in Economic Policy and Corporate Strategy from the Maastricht School of Management in the Netherlands.

Source: thebftonline.com









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Mr John Mensah and Mrs Emelia Mensah, founders of the much-acclaimed and well-known establishment Uncle Johns Bakery, will receive the honour of being the recipients of the 2017 GUBA Black Star Award for Enterprising Business at the 2017 GUBA Awards, on Saturday 3rd of June 2017 at the Intercontinental Hotel, O2, London.



The Enterprising Business award centres on the recognition of resourceful businesses that are cornerstones within the British-Ghanaian community.



Uncle Johns bakerys consistency in business, qualifies them for a GUBA Black Star Award, honouring a total of thirteen outstanding members of the Ghanaian, UK and African community.



Mr and Mrs Mensah established Uncle Johns Bakery more than 20 years ago, taking the initiative to venture into the baking industry having been underwhelmed at what was on offer when they first arrived in the United Kingdom in 1982.



A combination of the techniques passed on by Mrs Mensahs mother Mary Fofia Arthur, and the familys sweet bread recipe from Mr Mensahs mother Nana Mary, fused to produce a quintessentially Ghanaian sweet bread experience that has now become synonymous with Uncle Johns Bakery.



Their enterprising nature and audacious fortitude have been the foundations which have allowed Uncle Johns Bakery to grow into an established success story in the Ghanaian community, consistently triggering positive testimonials from a wide and varied base of satisfied customers who have fallen in love with the product of their traditional baking methods.



The Bakery offers a variety of freshly baked varieties of bread and baked goods sourced from the North London bakery to distributors, independent stores and supermarkets.



Mr and Mrs Mensahs business has now found its home in a larger facility which will allow the stocking of more products and the fulfilment of orders to a larger scale.



This accolade comes as a testament of invaluable services of Uncle Johns bakery in providing a necessary service for the Ghanaian community in the UK.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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GLICO HEALTHCARE, a leading private health insurance provider and the brand of choice in Ghanas healthcare services, has partnered with Vodafone Ghana to bring holistic healthcare insurance to Ghanaians on the Vodafone Medical Call-centre Health line 255.



The partnership is forged to enhance the Vodafone call centre (health line 255) increased access to free medical consultation, effectiveness in providing expert medical advice to people in need of quality healthcare at just a touch of the button.



The centre operates a daily schedule from 4pm to 10pm; and has so far provided medical advice, information and guidance to over 350,000 Ghanaians.



Commenting on the objective of this partnership, the Group Head, Corporate Affairs & Marketing of GLICO GROUP, Nana Efua Rockson, stated that GLICO HEALTHCARE is passionate about supporting all Ghanaians live a healthy-wealthy life.



This partnership with Vodafone affords us the platform to provide expert and preventative medical advice to all. In so doing, we are bringing health insurance to the ears of every Ghanaian in fulfilling our commitment of cushioning for Life.



We are excited about this partnership with Vodafone Ghana and we urge all Ghanaians to patronize the call centre and seek expert advice.



Speaking on the partnership also, Gayheart Mensah, Director of External Affairs and Legal at Vodafone Ghana noted that the call facility has played a critical role in healthcare delivery in Ghana over the past five years.



This partnership is a confirmation of Vodafones commitment to the total wellbeing of Ghanaians. As a caring brand, we are challenged to always take our services a step further and we hope that Ghanaians will continue to access and enjoy the quality advice the centre offers on a daily basis. Our commitment is to touch all lives irrespective of geographic location or socio-economic backgrounds.



The Vodafone medical call-centre is the first of its kind in Ghana and the partnership between GLICO HEALTHCARE and Vodafone Ghana is also a collaborative efforts between two lovable brands to offer Ghanaians value.



The call-centre is run by expert clinical staff and has become the reference point for awareness creation on several health misconceptions, self-medication and early diagnosis treatment.



As the first private health insurance company in Ghana, GLICO HEALTHCARE is committed to providing bespoke healthcare services to its cherished clients.



It recently was awarded with the prestigious International Arch of Europe Award for quality and technology, Gold category.



An award conferred for their immeasurable contribution to the business world and for high standards and professionalism demonstrated in their business performance.



GLICO HEALTHCARE is a member of GLICO GROUP Ltd, a group with six subsidiaries specializing in insurance and financial services delivery for the past three decades.







Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









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Acting Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Freddie Blay has been appointed Board Chairman of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC).



Other members of the newly constituted board are Dr K. K. Sarpong, Managing Director of GNPC, and Mr Kwabena Kwakye, a radio show host at Oman FM.



Mr Kwakye is the main anchor of the political talk show programme, Boiling Point aired on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He is also the Director of Programmes for the Madina-based private radio station and is well vested in petroleum and gas related issues.



The other members are Naa Prof J. S. Nabilla, former president of the National House of Chiefs and Wulugu Naba, Mr Yaw Kyei, Nana Adwoa Hackman, and Ogyeahoho Yaw Gyebi II, Paramount Chief of Sefwi Anhwiaso and President of the Western Regional House of Chiefs.



A letter signed by the Chief Of Staff, Madam Akosua Osei Opare and addressed to the Minister of Energy made this known.



The letter advised the Minister to make arrangements and swear the board members in.

Source: graphic.com.gh









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A Justice of the Supreme Court of Ghana, Ms Justice Sophia Akuffo, has been nominated for appointment as the new Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana.



She will take over from the sitting Chief Justice, Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, who retires on June 9, 2017.



Ms Justice Akuffo, who has a masters degree in Law (LLM) from the University of Harvard in the United States of America (USA), has been a justice of the Supreme Court since 1995.



Deep-throat sources told the Daily Graphic that the Council of State has approved her nomination.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will officially announce Ms Justice Akuffos nomination at a press briefing at the Flagstaff House today.



The sources said she had since received her letter nominating her to the office of the fourth most powerful person in Ghana.



Her nomination will be forwarded to Parliament for approval when the house resumes by the end of this month.



The appointment



Article 144 (1) of the 1992 Constitution provides that the Chief Justice shall be appointed by the President, acting in consultation with the Council of State and with the approval of Parliament.



Article 144 (2) provides that the other Supreme Court justices shall be appointed by the President, acting on the advice of the Judicial Council, in consultation with the Council of State and with the approval of Parliament.



The race



The Daily Graphic gathered last Tuesday that Ms Justice Akuffo was the top on the list, followed by Justices Jones Dotse and Anin Yeboah.



All the three justices have served creditably on the Bench and been part of or led judgements in landmark cases.



Lawyers and members of the Bench who spoke to the Daily Graphic on condition of anonymity spoke highly of all the contenders and were unanimous in their views that they all deserved the position.



Profile of Ms Justice Akuffo



Ms Justice Akuffo has served as a justice of the Supreme Court for the past two decades.



She has been a member of the Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Task Force.



In January 2006, she was elected as one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and was re-elected until 2014 when she served as the Vice-President. She is the immediate past President of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights.



She is on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and has held membership of several organisations, including the Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute.



Her publications include The Application of Information & Communication Technology in the Judicial Process - The Ghanaian Experience, presented to the African Judicial Network Ghana (2002).



Retirement



Justice Sophia Akuffo is the second most senior judge on the highest court of the land after Mr Justice William Atuguba, who is billed to retire next year.



The Daily Graphic also gathered that the President was confronted with making a choice from senior justices and the lot fell on Justice Akuffo and Justice Atuguba.



Although Justice Atuguba is the most senior, if appointed the new Chief Justice, he will serve only for about a year and retire.



Consequently, President Akufo-Addo, upon consultation with the Council of State, settled on Justice Akuffo who has more than two years to her retiring age and has a high international experience.



The office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana will become vacant with effect from June 9, 2017, when Mrs Justice Wood leaves office after 40 years of service to the nation.

Source: Daily Graphic









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has settled on Ms Justice Sophia A.B. Akuffo, as his choice for the position of Chief Justice, to take over from Mrs Justice Georgina Theodora Wood, who retires on June 8, 2017.



Graphic gathered that President Akufo-Addo will today [Friday] announce and present her name to Parliament for approval.



The Council of State has already approved her nomination, and Ms Justice Akuffo has also been presented with her nomination letter.



Ms Akuffo, is the next most senior on the highest court of the land after Mr Justice William Atuguba, who is billed to retire soon.



Many had tipped Mr Justice Jones Victor Mawulom Dotse as the front runner in the race for the position of the fourth most powerful person in Ghana but Ms Justice Akuffo, described as a dark horse sprang a surprise.



She has been at the Supreme Court for the past two decades and has a masters degree in Law (LL.M) from the Harvard University in the United States of America (USA).



She has been a member of the Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Task Force.



In January 2006, she was elected one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and was re-elected until 2014 when she served as the Vice-President. She is the immediate past President of the court.



She is on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and has held membership of many organisations.



Her publications include: The Application of Information & Communications Technology in the Judicial Process - The Ghanaian Experience, presented to the African Judicial Network Ghana (2002).

Profile of New Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo

Ms Justice Akuffo, who has a masters degree in Law (LLM) from the University of Harvard in the United States of America (USA), has been a justice of the Supreme Court since 1995.



Deep-throat sources told the Daily Graphic that the Council of State has approved her nomination.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo will officially announce Ms Justice Akuffos nomination at a press briefing at the Flagstaff House today.



The sources said she had since received her letter nominating her to the office of the fourth most powerful person in Ghana.



Her nomination will be forwarded to Parliament for approval when the house resumes by the end of this month.



The appointment



Article 144 (1) of the 1992 Constitution provides that the Chief Justice shall be appointed by the President, acting in consultation with the Council of State and with the approval of Parliament.



Article 144 (2) provides that the other Supreme Court justices shall be appointed by the President, acting on the advice of the Judicial Council, in consultation with the Council of State and with the approval of Parliament.



The race



The Daily Graphic gathered last Tuesday that Ms Justice Akuffo was the top on the list, followed by Justices Jones Dotse and Anin Yeboah.



All the three justices have served creditably on the Bench and been part of or led judgements in landmark cases.



Lawyers and members of the Bench who spoke to the Daily Graphic on condition of anonymity spoke highly of all the contenders and were unanimous in their views that they all deserved the position.



Profile of Ms Justice Akuffo



Ms Justice Akuffo has served as a justice of the Supreme Court for the past two decades.



She has been a member of the Governing Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute and Chairperson of the Alternative Dispute Resolution Task Force.



In January 2006, she was elected as one of the first judges of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights and was re-elected until 2014 when she served as the Vice-President. She is the immediate past President of the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights.



She is on the Disciplinary Committee of the General Legal Council and has held membership of several organisations, including the Committee of the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute.



Her publications include The Application of Information & Communication Technology in the Judicial Process - The Ghanaian Experience, presented to the African Judicial Network Ghana (2002).



Retirement



Justice Sophia Akuffo is the second most senior judge on the highest court of the land after Mr Justice William Atuguba, who is billed to retire next year.



The Daily Graphic also gathered that the President was confronted with making a choice from senior justices and the lot fell on Justice Akuffo and Justice Atuguba.



Although Justice Atuguba is the most senior, if appointed the new Chief Justice, he will serve only for about a year and retire.



Consequently, President Akufo-Addo, upon consultation with the Council of State, settled on Justice Akuffo who has more than two years to her retiring age and has a high international experience.



The office of the Chief Justice of the Republic of Ghana will become vacant with effect from June 9, 2017, when Mrs Justice Wood leaves office after 40 years of service to the nation.











Source: Graphic









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Former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyemang Rawlings has expressed optimism in the leadership of President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to transform the country.



She told Joy FM Thursday that the President has started on a positive note with his decisions and appointments since his swearing in on January 7.



"I am happy there is a change...I am very happy...because you can't have a situation where we claim to be doing well, calling ourselves lower middle income group, and [live] in a miserable situation," she said.



The 2016 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Party (NDP) said the country's economy was destroyed by the previous National Democratic Congress (NDC) government through bad policies.



"I went round the country and I saw poverty staring at me...the likes of poverty that I hadn't seen since 1982(3) and it gripped my heart and touched every part of my body that this has to change."



The former First Lady who has been on a war path with the party her husband, former President Jerry John Rawlings founded in 1992 said the country could have been completely crippled had there not been a regime change.



Mrs Rawlings founded the National Democratic Party (NDC) after she defected from the NDC following some misunderstanding over what she said was principles.



"I am tired of the noise [because] at the final analysis I am somebody who believe in honesty and hardwork. As things started changing I advised myself," she said. She disclosed her husband was himself displeased with the way some party members treated him because he insisted on probity and accountability.



Mrs Rawlings said the insanity grew to the point that people who were not in the NDC had the temerity to insult the former President. "We reached that level where the respect for the founder was not there," she lamented.



Being the only woman on the country's presidential ballot in 2016, she had one objective, either she wins the election or then Presidential Candidate of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. She believed the only two people who could lead the country to the coveted Promised Land were herself and Mr Akufo-Addo.



At the end of the poll, Mr Akufo-Addo won the election by 53.3 percent based on figures released by the Electoral Commission (EC).



Mrs Rawlings said the best thing that has happened to the country after the 2016 polls is the change of government because things were getting gloomier by the day.



"You leave Accra and the situation is miserable...no capital city in Africa have I seen this kind of filth like it is in Accra," she said. "We steal everything and we can't even clean our city."



She entreated persons who are claiming the new government has underperformed since taking over the reign of government to exercise patience since it has been given a four-year term.



"A party has taken eight years to destroy us and you expect somebody to use 100 days to fix it?" she quizzed, adding the President Akufo-Addo government should be allowed to change the country for the better.

Source: Joy News









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Names of new board members for the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) were on Thursday announced and according to the General Secretary of the Peoples National Convention (PNC), Mohammed Atik, there were square pegs in round holes, on the board.



The board is to be chaired by the New Patriotic Partys (NPP) acting National Chairman, Mr Freddie Blay with other members as Mr K.K. Sarpong, Managing Director of GNPC and Mr Kwabena Kwakye, host of the popular Boiling Point political talk programme aired on Accra based Oman FM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.



Mr Kwakye is also a panel member on the Oman FM morning show programme and occasionally holds the fort when the regular anchor, Fiifi Boafo was not available.



The other members of the GNPC board are Naa Prof J. S. Nabilla, former president of the National House of Chiefs and Wulugu Naba, Mr Yaw Kyei, Nana Adwoa Hackman, and Ogyeahoho Yaw Gyebi II, Paramount Chief of Sefwi Anhwiaso and President of the Western Regional House of Chiefs.



Appearing as a panel member on the Ekosii Sen political talk show programme on Asempa FM on Thursday, Atik Mohammed queried when the name of Kwabena Kwakye was mentioned as a member of the board.



The host of the Ekosii Sen programme, KABA during Thursdays broadcast announced the new board members based on a letter the Chief of Staff, Madam Frema Osei Opare had written to the Energy Minister,for him to make arrangements and swear in the new board.



And when it got to the turn of Kwakye, Atik asked for clarification and said ehh!, which Kwabena Kwakye,



When KABA explained his information was that it was the host of Boiling Point, Atik said government is a serious business, and suggested there were square pegs in round holes on the board.



Before he made his submissions, Atik asked the host to play Kofi Kinaatas popular Confession song for him and said Ewurade begye steer no to wit God should take control of the wheel.



Kwakyes responds



Responding Thursday evening on the Boiling Point programme, Mr Kwakye said he has requested for the recording to enable him respond appropriately and insisted he was not going to brag, but said he had knowledge and competencies in petroleum issues.



Kwakye who has worked as Parliamentary and Presidential correspondent quoted Professor Kofi Agyekum of Legon, Professor Kwesi Yankah, Mr Kwabena Agyapong and Mr K.T. Hammond among other people as his referees if anybody wanted to assess his competencies.



He expressed gratitude to President Akufo-Addo for nominating him to the board.

Source: Daily Graphic









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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A former Minister of Environment, Science Technology & Innovation and Member of Parliament for Bawku Central Constituency, Mahama Ayariga has dismissed claims that he is the male actor in a sex video circulating on social media purportedly showing him engaging in a sexual intercourse with Aisha Hung aka the Galamsey Queen, a lady of Asian origin.



Writing on hiss facebook wall Friday morning, the Bawku Central MP said those involved in this dastardly and barbaric act seem to suggest that he provided the lady and her company with a licence to engage in "galamsey" mining during his tenure as the Minister of Environment, Science Technology and Innovation in exchange for sexual favors.



"I categorically deny the mindless suggestion that I am the male actor in the video and all the inferences it draws. Those who orchestrated this agenda and promoted it has only succeeded in giving us a glimpse of the crude and the unfulfilled lifes they live," the post read.





Read his full post on facebook



I have become aware of the circulation of a video on social media purportedly showing me engaged in a sexual intercourse with a lady of Asian origin.



Those involved in this dastardly and barbaric act seem to suggest that I provided the lady and her company with a licence to engage in "galamsay" mining during my tenure as the Minister of Environment, Science Technology and Innovation in exchange for sexual favors.



I categorically deny the mindless suggestion that I am the male actor in the video and all the inferences it draws. Those who orchestrated this agenda and promoted it has only succeeded in giving us a glimpse of the crude and the unfulfilled lifes they live.



I want to assure the people Bawku and Ghanaians that I am grateful and respect the opportunity they have given me to serve as their Member of Parliament and the different portfolios I was privileged to work. The thought that I serve at the behest of the people never departs me, it is what informs and drives every decision I make; this will not change.



In accordance with my Islamic faith I forgive the architects of this video and agenda, I see these orchestrations as negative campaigning against targeted opponents and an evidence of our debased politics.



Thank you.





Background

Secret video recordings and photos purported to be of the sexual encounters between the Chinese galamsey queen, and some top security officers and politicians in the country have popped up.



The release of the sex tapes and photos follows the locking up of the galamsey kingpin, Aisha Huang (a Chinese) and four of her assigns in custody, awaiting trial, by an Accra High Court on Tuesday



The Chinese woman is perceived untouchable, having built a network of influence in high places in the country with her woman power. She and her gang of illegal miners (galamseyers) purportedly rely on that for protection whilst engaging in illegal gold mining activities, popularly known as galamsey.



Despite governments moratorium on galamsey operations across the country, the lady continuously carried on her illegal gold mining activities with impunity because she was said to be holding secret sexual video tapes of some power brokers in the security services and some politicians which she was using for blackmailing.



Veteran journalist, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako Jnr of New Crusading Guide newspaper, had revealed on Joy FMs News File programme last Saturday that three women of Chinese extraction were involved in the supposed sex tape.



In the said sex videos  which are in circulation on social media  a woman purported to be among the Chinese illegal miners  is seen being bonked in different positions by a man whose face has been buried.

Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

Featured Video
Audio Attachment: Listen to Kwesi Pratt Jnr. on Peace Fm's 'kokrokoo' progamme.

Managing editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt is calling for the dismissal of the Gender Minister, Otiko Djaba, following the recent animosity between her and the NPP Northern Regional Chairman, Bugri Naabu.



Mr. Pratt, speaking on Peace FM's Kokrokoo, was displeased that Madam Otiko Djaba still remains in office after misconducting herself as a Minister.



According to him, if the ruling party leadership has admitted that she indeed was wrong in her confrontation with the Regional Chairman, then she has no business staying in her offfice.



Can this person still be a Minister? Someone whose own party has heard her utterances and found her guilty of misconduct and the use of inappropriate language, and so has been sanctioned forever not to commit such slip of tongue again? And this is a major sanction. Its a major sanction that the NPP Council of Elders has placed on her. How can she continue to be a Minister?



To him, "it will be disturbing if she continues to be a Minister".



He also called on the security agencies to launch an investigation into the allegations by the Regional Chairman, Bugri Naabu adding that he shouldn't be left off the hook.





Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The National Youth Organizer of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Sammy Awuku has commended the leadership of the party for giving Gender Minister, Madam Otiko Djaba and the party's Northern Regional Chairman, Bugri Naabu a chance to be of good conduct.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo', Sammy Awuku addressed the concerns of the opposition NDC who has asked for the resignation of the Gender Minister and an investigation into the allegations by Bugri Naabu.



According to him, the two leaders appeared before the National Executive Council of the party and rendered an unqualified apology for their public gaffe and so he believes it is only fair for them to be pardoned by the government.



He noted that though the two misconducted themselves, the party leadership was of the view that this is the first time they have misbehaved and so found it prudent to place them on a bond of conduct.



They were asked to render an apology in public domain, Mr. Awuku added.



To him, so far as the NPP is concerned, the "matter is closed" but however asked any dissatisfied party to go to appropriate authorities to address their misgivings.



It takes the greatest person on earth to apologize when he/she commits a wrongdoing. And I will salute Chairman Bugri and my dear sister, Madam Afisa. Sometimes, because of just rendering an apology, someone would become adamant and eventually fall. But when the person says I have regretted my actions and so forgive me, in all fairness, everybody deserves another chance, he stressed.









Source: Ameyaw Adu Gyamfi/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Introduction Of Nominee For The Position Of Chief Justice By The President Of The Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, At A Media Briefing, On Friday, 12th May, 2017, At The Presidency, Accra.



In three and a half weeks time, on 8th June this year to be precise, a remarkable chapter in Ghanas legal and judicial history will come to a close. On that day, Her Lordship the Chief Justice, Georgina Theodora Wood, will step down from office into retirement.



The twelfth occupant of that office in independent Ghana, she is the first female to head the Judiciary, and its longest serving leader, who will have been in office for three days short of ten years.



Her career has been extraordinary, and I pay warm tribute to her distinguished service to our nation, and wish her a well-earned retirement, even though her public service will not be over as her place on the Council of State awaits her.



In order to ensure a smooth succession to the office and preserve the integrity of the judicial branch of government, I have decided to initiate the constitutional processes for the appointment of her successor, so as to preclude any undue vacuum in the office.



I have, thus, today, sought, by letter, consultation with the Council of State, in accordance with Article 144 (1) of the Constitution of the Republic, in order to nominate for the approval of Parliament the appointment of Justice Sophia Akuffo, a Justice of the Supreme Court and a senior member of the Court, as the new Chief Justice of the Republic.



If the constitutional processes conclude in a satisfactory manner, and I have every expectation that they will, she will be the thirteenth person to hold that important office of State.



I have known Justice Sophia Akuffo well, for over forty years. Indeed, she was my first junior in practice, as barristers call their work. She impressed me considerably with her hard work, her capacity for detailed research, her independence of mind and spirit, her honesty and integrity, her deep-seated respect for the rule of law, and her abiding belief in the sovereignty of Almighty God.



I believe these are the qualities which sustained her brilliant career as a lawyer that propelled her to the notice of the 1st President of the 4th Republic, His Excellency Jerry John Rawlings, who appointed her to the Supreme Court on 30th November, 1995, some 22 years ago.



She has been one of the leading lights of the Court since her appointment, and her contribution to the Courts work and the growth of our nations jurisprudence has been extensive.



She has enriched her judicial experience by serving with credit on continental judicial bodies such as the African Court on Human and Peoples Rights, where she ended up as President of the Court.



I have no doubt that Justice Akuffo will be a worthy successor to Chief Justice Wood and uphold jealously the independence of the Judiciary. I expect discipline, fairness, integrity and the continuing modernisation of judicial activities to be the hallmarks of her tenure as Chief Justice, if she is so endorsed by the constitutional bodies.



It is important for the development of our nation that we have a Judiciary that commands the respect of the nation by the quality of its justice delivery, as well as by the comportment of its judges.



We are all witnesses to the stormy winds that have buffeted the Judiciary in recent years and to the efforts Chief Justice Wood has been making to restore public confidence in the institution.



I expect Justice Akuffo to continue and intensify that work. The Judiciary has the onerous responsibility of being the bulwark of the defence of the liberties and the rights of our people. It can only discharge that responsibility effectively if it has the unalloyed respect of the people.









We are determined to build a new Ghanaian civilisation, where the rule of law is not a slogan, but an operating principle for the development of our State, where the separation of powers is real and meaningful, where the liberties and rights of our people are fully protected, and where law and order provide a firm basis for our social and economic development, so that the dreams of prosperity that animated the great patriots, who are the founders of our nation, can find expression in our generation.



I will be a genuine and trusted partner of the Judiciary so that, together, the Executive and Judiciary can co-operate in a spirit of mutual respect to attain this goal for the benefit and welfare of our people.



I am confident that, in Justice Sophia Akuffo, I will find a worthy collaborator in this noble endeavour. I commend her to the constitutional bodies, the Council of State and Parliament, for appointment as Chief Justice of Ghana.



Thank you. May God bless our homeland Ghana, and make her great and strong.

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.

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Accused cocaine smuggler Cassie Sainsbury has spoken directly to the Australian media for the first time since being arrested, telling News Corp she foresees her safety being at risk within Colombias El Buen Pastor prison.

22-year-old Sainsbury, who was detained last month after 5.8kg of cocaine was allegedly found stashed within her luggage, said theres a lot of chaos within the facility. The South Australian added quite a few of the inmates here are very pushy with me.



They push past me. They start abusing me in Spanish because they know I dont understand it and I havent actually done anything wrong.

When asked if she was worried about outright violence from other inmates, she said not yet, but I feel like its not very far away because there was a photo leaked of me here.

The interview comes after footage was obtained of Sainsbury waving at a camera crew from behind bars.

Colombian Police are investigating CCTV footage of the man Cassie Sainsbury says framed her. #sun7 pic.twitter.com/A8fM8wcjHM  Sunrise (@sunriseon7) May 10, 2017

News Corp reports her quotes form part of a larger interview, which will be published tomorrow.

Source: news.com.au.

Photo: Facebook.
The identity of the man charged with a horrific assault on two backpackers on a South Australian beach last year has been revealed, following the lifting of a Supreme Court suppression order.

It can now be reported that 61-year-old Roman Heinze, the man found guilty of sexually assaulting a Brazilian tourist and violently attacking her German travel partner at Salt Creek in February 2016, also perpetrated a similar incident in 2014.

At that time, Heinze groped a young traveller hed met on Gumtree, and forced her onto a bed. The court heard the assault only ended when the woman kicked and screamed at Heinze. He plead guilty to those charges earlier this month.

The court also heard further testimony from the women involved in the 2016 Wolf Creek-style attack.

The Brazilian woman, who was found naked and in great distress after the assault, described the lingering psychological and physical impact of Heinzes offences by saying after the sexual assault, I was waking up in the middle of the night, scared someone was breaking in.

She told the court every day I see where the rope he used cut into my ankles and wrists. My legs are full of scars and I do not feel comfortable showing this skin.

The German tourist, who Heinze viciously attacked with a hammer and attempted to run over, maintained that he could not defeat her. She said you could not break me. You could not win, even when you tried so hard.

You could not make me into a victim because Im a survivor. This only has made me stronger than I have ever been.

Heinze will be sentenced next week for a gut-wrenching series of charges relating to the Salt Creek incident, including rape, indecent and aggravated assault, and endangering life. Its believed he will attempt to appeal those charges.

Source: The Age / The Australian.

Photo: Facebook.
Remember when those Ask For Angela bathroom signs  the ones that offered help to women caught in sticky situations  went viral last year, and a bunch of venues across Australia recreated it? Its a bloody sick idea, and real quick shout-out to the Courty in Newtown here:

The Courthouse in Newtown has these in the bathroom, hell yeah pic.twitter.com/qAzp90X2rM  Alex Bruce-Smith (@alexbrucesmith) January 13, 2017

Well, this is how not to do it.

A pub in Newcastle has removed its signs from the mens bathroom after copping complaints on social media.

Pictures of the sign, from The Crown & Anchor in Newcastles CBD, circulated on social media. It offers to help out blokes who found themselves in situations where their date looked nothing like her photo or wouldnt stop talking about herself by ordering an Uber or calling the police.

The pub said the signs had been up for around a month, but theyd only received complaints in the last few days after the sign went low-key viral.

When contacted by PEDESTRIAN.TV, a spokesperson referred us to a report in the Newcastle Herald, in which they said the signs were not intended to be disrespectful in any way towards campaigns that promote sexual violence awareness and personal safety.



The spokesperson also said it was disappointing that the focus on social media had been on the male signs, when nobody appeared to be aware of the signs in the womens bathroom.

The signs in the womens bathroom.

Heres the thing about these signs: they dont just provide a safe option for women to escape potentially violent situations. They send a message that those patrons are valued more highly than some lecherous dickhead whos making them feel unsafe  which sadly is outside the norm for venues in Australia.

And FWIW, this isnt to say that men dont also find themselves in dangerous situations. Its statistically lower, but it happens. Any pub that wants to advocate for the safety of its male patrons is fine by us, but the Crown & Anchors sign was absolutely not that.

The pub confirmed to P.TV that theyve since removed all signs.



Its a shame as there has been two occasions where those signs have helped women in circumstances where they were not feeling comfortable, a spokesperson told P.TV. To avoid upsetting more people though, we thought it safe to remove all signs of this nature.

When we pointed out that the signs in the womens bathrooms were great, and unlikely to cause offence, the spokesperson replied:

Parts of the mens signs were poorly worded. We take full responsibility for that. We are hoping to reword all signs and reinstate as we believe it is a really great initiative

Essentially: props to these guys and any other venue advocating for women and non-binary folk. Just dont undermine your good intentions with some troglodyte-level humour at the same time.

Photo: Reddit / marszau.
Theres probably few among us who havent dreamed of starting a new life on a tropical island, free from the shackles of taxes, television and the 9 to 5.

But uh, most of us dont go so far as to actually attempt to found an entire new micronation on an as-yet-undecided tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef. Especially not via questionable classifieds site Gumtree.

Has that deterred David from NSW? No, of course it hasnt.

Davids Gumtree ad, titled INTERESTED PARTIES SOUGHT FOR PURCHASE OF TROPICAL ISLAND, is a masterpiece of threadbare libertarian logic spurred on by what I can only deduce from the desperation glimmering between the lines is a fairly taxing divorce battle.

Accompanied by some misc tropical island shots from around Australia, the text reads in full:

Interested parties sought for purchase of a tropical island in the Great Barrier Reef system of north Queensland to escape the extreme taxation slavery, debt slavery & unfair divorce laws we are currently suffering on the Australian main land / the concept being of seceding from Australia to form our own fairer government on the island to be called The Peoples Republic of Fair and Workable Laws and Taxation Interested parties and in vestors are sought for the purchase of the island the forming of a government and council and then the seceding from the main land government to form a separate state free from the unworkable laws of the main land government / supportive and interested parties are sought to get the ball rolling with a committee being formed to make this new island state happen / all positive supportive suggestions welcome cheers

Except its all in caps because duh.

Theres a lot to unpack here! Most significantly, that reference to unfair divorce laws suggests that David is a member of the small but vocal demographic of Family Court Dads, who tend to have significant crossover with Conspiracy Theory Dads and Dont Want To Pay Child Support Dads.

Combined with the references to tax and debt slavery (the realms of Libertarian Dads and Unqualified DIY Dads), I think Davids trying to start Disgruntled Dad Island. And considering the roaring success that is the Principality of Hutt River, who can blame him. Maybe soon Prince Graeme of the Hutt River Province will be joined by Prince David of the Dads.

There are a couple islands for sale, after all.

Source & image: Gumtree.
Heres a quick guide to donating your pre-loved goods to charity: dont send them your holey socks, smashed crockery, or high-explosive ordinance. This goes doubly for anyone considering palming off their wares to the Hornsby Fusion Op Shop. God knows they receive far too much of all three.

We can say that with authority after the op shop was evacuated yesterday afternoon, owing to the discovery of an actual artillery shell within a donation bin. Not even one of those ramshackle home-made jobbies, either  a bona fide, military-grade artillery shell, lovingly wrapped in a knitted cosy.

via The Hornsby Advocate.

The Hornsby Advocate reports staff called police, with the bomb squad rocking up some time after to cordon off the scene. They took the shell from the premises. No word on what they did with its fuzzy cover.

via The Hornsby Advocate.





via The Hornsby Advocate.





Volunteer Phyl Ladd said she was convinced someone has been using the bomb as a doorstopper. Amazingly, Fusion Australias Myf Webster also put out the call to avoid donating unexploded artillery shells after the incident.

Its not known how long it had even been there, meaning op shop staff could have been pottering around the joint in the presence of serious weaponry for yonks. Theres every likelihood the shells fuse and explosive content had been removed beforehand, but still. Dont scare your local op shop attendants like that.

Source: The Daily Telegraph / The Hornsby Advocate.

Photo: Fusion Op Shop Hornsby / Facebook.
U.S. President Donald Trump has been labelled many things during his tumultuous tenure in the top job, but good God, theres now a growing belief that the man may actually be an undercover Reddit lurker.



Its okay. You can take a moment.

This morning, Trump retweeted an old post from longtime nemesis Rosie ODonnell, in which she called for FBI Director James Comey to be fired.

The original message was posted after Comeys questionable handling of the Hillary Clinton email scandal, but after Trump booted the director for an entirely different set of reasons, the retweet served as a retrospective put-down of a staunch opponent.

We finally agree on something Rosie. https://t.co/BSP5F3PgbZ  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2017

Were left with two realistic possibilities as to why the President of the United States of America chose to badmouth his least-favourite sitcom star, and neither of them are great. Either he or someone on his team has an encyclopaedic memory for every perceived slight against him or they were monitoring the Donald-centric subreddit.

Buzzfeeds Brandon Wall posits that the ODonnell tweet was actually shared to /r/The_Donald less than an hour before Trumps tweet, with user /u/Matterak telling the forums rabid userbase these people act like act like the internet forgets. It doesnt.

One commenter on that post asks /u/Matterak how does it feel to know that you had a big hand in getting Rosie ODonnell BTFO? Even the subreddit is claiming responsibility for this one, and Politico reporter Ben Schreckinger has taken notice.

Earlier this year, Schreckinger directly asked the Trump campaign if they were active on the site. They said they definitely werent. The latest tweet has Schreckinger perplexed, to say the least.

Hm I reported in January that Trump campaign actively monitored and coordinated w/ Trump subreddit. WH denied it. https://t.co/s3lQk3fRaL https://t.co/JoUSpEMbYW  Ben Schreckinger (@SchreckReports) May 11, 2017

Honestly, considering his predilection for Twitter and his previous AMA on the platform, its not such a reach to imagine Trump getting shirty about posts on his cheerleading subreddit. Watch this space for more shitposts from POTUS.

Source: The Atlantic / Brandon Wall.

Photo: Alex Wong / Getty.
Of all the plot points on Rick and Morty, Ricks obsession with a 1998 limited edition McDonalds Szechuan dipping sauce speaks to me on a deep, near-spiritual level. If you like spice, Szechuan food might be Chinas best export, bar those episodes of If You Are The One where people fail to get a date.

And theres a whole world of Szechuan (also spelt Sichuan, if youre getting confused) food outside of Mulan tie-ins. As the cornerstone of Szechuan cooking, Szechuan peppercorns (which are actually the berries from a prickly ash tree) have a frenzied fan base who froth over its unique mouth-numbing spice.

Rather than create that classic chilli burn, Szechuan pepper makes your lips and mouth tingle with heat long after you stop eating. Known as parethesia, the sensation is addictive as all hell, and a welcome alternative to feelin the burn without need for a glass of milk on hand. Here are three classic, simple ways to spice up your life.

Szechuan was always my favourite. (Photo: BBC.com)

You probably have most of the spices and base ingredients already. If not, you should find Szechuan pepper and the missing links in your supermarkets Asian aisle, though Harris Farm and, obviously, Asian grocers will be well stocked. The ingredients are pretty similar, so stock up and break these recipes out over the next few weeks.

One thing: Szechuan peppers need to be ground in all of these recipes. It can be tough to find pre-ground, but breaking out the mortar and pestle makes you feel like a powerful chef.

SZECHUAN-BRAISED EGGPLANT

(Photo: appetiteforchina.com)

What youll need:

Two Asian eggplants

1/2 teaspoon ground Szechuan peppercorns

2 tablespoons Chicken/vege stock

Soy sauce

Peanut/vegetable oil

2 teaspoons sugar

2 tablespoons Chinese black vinegar (balsamic works too)

2 tablespoons Chilli bean paste

1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine/Red wine

3 garlic cloves

Minced ginger

Spring onions

Sour-sweet with a bit of bite: no Chinese meal is complete without braised eggplant. The sticky sauce is the most important part: prep the sauce by mixing together your stock and vinegar of choice, chilli bean pasta, two teaspoons soy sauce, rice wine and sugar. Slice the eggplant into bite-sized cubes, then break our your wok.

Add a bit of oil once the woks hot, swirling it around to coat the wok. Stir-fry the eggplants for two or so minutes until theyre a little soft, but not quite mushy. Add three cloves of garlic, a tablespoon of ginger and the Szechuan pepper. When its smelling fragrant, add in the sauce, and simmer it until its all thick and sticky. Top it with diced spring onions, and voila.

KUNG PAO CHICKEN





Szechuan charm. (Photo: Goodhousekeeping.com)

What youll need:

400gms chicken breast

1 tablespoon ground Szechuan peppercorns

4 cloves garlic

50gms peanuts (please get unsalted, its worth it)

Fresh ginger, paste if youre lazy

Spring onions

Long red chillies

Soy sauce

Rice

Shaoxing wine

This quick stir-fry gets its name for its one-two punch of sweet-spicy flavours. First up, the sweet: cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces, then marinate em with two tablespoons Shaoxing wine and one tablespoon soy sauce. Start to cook the rice too, and the timing should match up.

Heat up your wok and start with chillies by themselves, dry-fried for a smoky flavour. Take them out after a minute, then add oil and stir-fry the peppercorns before adding chicken and ginger in: best to do this in two batches. Once thats done, add everything bar the peanuts, chillies and rice in. Bring it to the boil while giving it a good stir. Serve it with rice, add the peanuts and chillies on top.

MAPO DOUFU





(Photo: chinasichuanfood.com)

What youll need:

450gms tofu

100gms mince (pork/beef/lamb all work)

Sesame oil

Black beans

1 tablespoon ground Szechuan peppercorns

Minced ginger and garlic

Fermented black beans (in the Asian aisle!)

Chilli bean paste

Spring onion

Half a cup Chicken/vege stock

Steamed rice

Dont like tofu? You havent had this Szechuan classic. Vego? Swap out the mince for green beans. For the sauce, mix together half a cup chicken stock, two teaspoons soy sauce and one of sugar in a bowl. Threes a trend  this one calls for a wok too. Add enough sesame oil to coat the wok, two teaspoons ginger and garlic, chopped spring onions, then when its fragrant, chuck in a tablespoon of black beans and Szechuan pepper.

Add the mince  when its cooked, add in the chilli bean paste, tofu, and toss the wok to mix. If you stir it, the tofu becomes a blerg-inducing blob. When its sizzlin along, add in the sauce, and let it boil until its all thick and sticky. Serve on rice.

There you have it. But youre still craving that McDonalds sauce, huh? If you missed out on your chance to pay $56,000 USD for a 19 year old dipping sauce, Youtuber Babish has made his own recipe, and it looks pretty legit. No-one tell Rick  I want nine seasons. And a movie.

Photo: Adult Swim
PEDESTRIAN.TV have partnered with Disneys Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales because Aussie Brenton Thwaites is the lead and sorry, but praise given where praise due.

Tooth pic, pic of me hanging in NYC circa 2015 for @interviewmag // Pre Birdie, pre lock-chop, pre historic. ??: @sebkimstudio A post shared by Brenton Thwaites (@brentonthwaites) on Feb 7, 2017 at 10:13pm PST

Why? Because homeboy landed the bloody lead role in one of the most recognisable film franchises going around alongside Orlando Bloom, Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Kiera Knightley and Geoffrey Rush. Think Margot Robbie when Wolf Of Wall Street came out just like, less nudity. And by less nudity we mean none at all. Which is fine. Its fine.

This isnt Brentons first feature film rodeo but its easily his biggest role yet. From humble beginnings in Aussie dramas SLiDE (Aussie attempt at Skins, basically) and as Stu Henderson on Home & Away, Brenton has scored roles in Ruben Guthrie, Maleficent, The Giver and Gods of Egypt.



Oh THAT GUY

We spoke to Brenton ahead of the release about how much of a big deal being in the Pirates franchise is, who has been patiently waiting in anticipation for the film to come out. Fair enough. It did start filming a whopping two years ago back in 2015 on Australias very own GC.

I feel like I know whats coming, he told PEDESTRIAN.TV. It has a very specific worldwide fanbase that are very verbal in letting you know their excitement.

But while hes mentally (and probably physically) preparing himself for the imminent fans about to make his life er, different to what he knew it to be, Brenton admits that he himself was a fan on set. I was absolutely a fan of the movies. I definitely fan girled out, he admitted about working with some of the worlds biggest names on set.

Earlier this year he also mentioned that he wigged out on his first scene with co-star Johnny.

I remember that I was really terrified, as if I had never played in my life before shooting this scene I remember saying to me, How Im going to stand and talk to Johnny Depp for 3 minutes, face a character with whom I grew up? It will not be possible, he said.

Check out what that looks like for yourself below, as well as him giving a red-hot go at accents other than his own. Are they good? Up to you.

Full disclosure: Ive seen the film and strongly believe that he is about to do to young viewers everywhere what Jeremy Sumpter did to me in Peter Pan. Unlike Jeremy though, we reckon Brentons only just getting started.



Photo: Instagram / @brentonthwaites.
A Lancaster County company is expanding. Ames Reese Inc. plans to construct an 86,600-square-foot, two-story building on its site in East Lampeter Township.

Ames Reese has committed to making an investment of several million dollars in the project, and retaining 60 jobs and creating an additional 30 full-time positions, Gov. Tom Wolf announced in a press release.

The new building will be situated adjacent to its existing building. This expansion will allow Ames Reese, a manufacturer of powdered metal component parts, to install larger and higher efficiency furnaces and presses with higher tonnage, giving the capacity to manufacture much larger parts, the press release said.

Ames Reese received a funding proposal from the Department of Community and Economic Development that includes a $150,000 Pennsylvania First Program grant and $90,000 in Job Creation Tax Credits to be distributed upon the creation of the new jobs. The project was coordinated by the Governor's Action Team in collaboration with the Economic Development Company of Lancaster County.

As part of the expansion project, Harrisburg Area Community is offering a new Apprenticeship Training Program supported by the Lancaster County Workforce Development Board that will provide both existing and new employees with the higher-level skills needed in powdered metals parts production, the press release said.

Ames Reese is located at 2575 Old Philadelphia Pike. Ames Reese Inc. was founded in 1996 when its parent company Ames Group purchased the former Reese Metal Products Corporation. Ames Reese serves as the logistics center for the company's North American market, and also as the North American Headquarters for Ames Group. The Ames Group is based in Spain.
NEW YORK (AP) -- Melissa McCarthy has gone into the streets of Manhattan to lampoon White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

The comedian was captured on video Friday morning riding a motorized podium in midtown while dressed as Spicer, presumably a sequence that will air when McCarthy hosts the next "Saturday Night Live."

In the video, McCarthy is seen gliding in the middle of traffic in front of the Time Warner Center, not far from Rockefeller Center, the longtime home of NBC's "Saturday Night Live."

NBC would not comment on the video.

Spicer has been a frequent target of McCarthy, who has mocked him in the past in skits where she fires a water gun at the press corps and uses a lectern to ram a journalist.

The things you see in New York City. Melissa McCarthy riding Sean Spicer's podium through Midtown #SNL pic.twitter.com/BEorGZ15yS  Donie O'Sullivan (@donie) May 12, 2017
A police chief and two nursing home employees have died in a shooting Friday morning in Kirkersville, Ohio, according to several reports. Kirkersville is east of Columbus.

ABC News reports:

The gunman is also believed to be dead, Licking County Sheriff Randy Thorp said at a news conference.

Kirkersville police Chief Steven Eric Disario, 36, died after responding to a call regarding a man with a gun, Thorp said. Deputies came for back up and found him outside the

, Thorp said.

WBNS TV reports that the gunman first shot the officer, then went into the nursing home and shot two more people before turning the gun on himself.

The police chief reportedly had been on the job for just three weeks and had six children.

From the Newark Advocate:

The names of the employees who were killed and the suspected shooter have not been released.

Friday's events have shaken the community of Kirkersville, located off Interstate 70 in southern Licking County and home to fewer than 600 people.

Thorp said the day is especially tough for law enforcement, saying the deputies who assisted DiSario on the scene were struggling to deal with the morning's events. A crisis team was on the scene to help assist those officers, as well as the residents in the facility and other employees.

BREAKING: Kirkersville Police Chief Steven Eric Disario - a father of 5, with one on the way - killed after responding... Posted by WTTE FOX 28 on Friday, May 12, 2017

New police chief, two nursing home employees, suspect killed in Ohio shooting https://t.co/Urjc92UQib  NBC 10 WJAR (@NBC10) May 12, 2017
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Ceisha Martin

(Submitted)

Update: She's been found safe

State police are searching for a 13-year-old Millersburg Middle School student last seen by her mother at 3 p.m. Thursday.

Ceisha R. Martin is 5 feet tall and weighs about 115 pounds. She has long brown hair and brown eyes and sometimes wears glasses, police said. She was last seen wearing a black hat with a tiger and jeans and was carrying a book bag, blue blanket and possibly has a purple purse and black watch.

The seventh-grader has a cell phone but it is deactivated and can only be used with wi-fi.

Police said she is believed to have run away from home after being grounded.

Anyone who sees her or has information on her whereabouts should contact the Pennsylvania State Police Lykens Station at 717-362-8700.
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A man who told three police officers he was carrying marijuana can't prevent the evidence from being used against him in court.

(Shutterstock.com )

A man who told three police officers he was carrying "two bags of weed" can't prevent prosecutors from using that marijuana as evidence against him, a state appeals court panel has found.



In reaching that conclusion this week, the Superior Court judges overturned a Philadelphia County judge's ruling that suppressed the drug evidence against 26-year-old Edward Young.



According to court records, three plainclothes officers were patrolling in a known drug-dealing area on Erie Avenue in October 2015 when they saw Young standing in front of a Chinese restaurant in the rain. He was still there an hour later when the officers pulled over to talk to him.



When they asked Young what he was doing, Young said he was waiting for a bus. One of the cops observed that several busses had already passed through the area.



Then an officer asked Young if he had anything on his person that could harm the officers. According to the police, Young replied, "No...All I have is two bags of weed."



Police said they recovered the pot, plus a loaded pistol, from Young's coat pocket.



Young's admission that he was carrying illegal drugs justified the police search that followed, Judge Alice Beck Dubow found in the Superior Court opinion voiding the county judge's suppression order.



Young "voluntarily told officers that he had marijuana on his person," Dubow wrote. "As soon as (Young) volunteered that information, police had probable cause to arrest (him) for possession of a controlled substance."
Disney Cruise Line will be coming to Quebec in 2018. The Port of Quebec is celebrating and looking forward to this commercial success, which will showcase our city to families from around the world.

"The fact that the Disney Magic is coming to Quebec is a historic development for the Quebec and eastern Canadian cruise industry. This prestigious new product will certainly be a hit with a brand new clientele of families and young adventurers. We are very proud to welcome the famous Disney Cruise Line, which will shine a spotlight on the city and the Port at the international level," said Mario Girard, President and CEO of the Quebec Port Authority (QPA).

Quebec City, Canada, a new port for Disney Cruise Line, will be featured on two new itineraries sailing between New York and Quebec City in September 2018. Both of these sailings include two full days in the capital, giving visitors multiple days to experience the city. As part of these two sailings, the 2,713passenger Disney Magic will also stop at other Canadian ports new to Disney Cruise Line  Saguenay and Baie-Comeau.

To achieve the goal of welcoming Disney Cruise Line to Quebec, the Port is proud to have been able to count on such major partners as the City of Quebec, Quebec City Tourism, the Secretariat de la capitale nationale, the Chambre de commerce et d'industrie de Quebec, members of the cruise forum, the Cruise the Saint Lawrence Association, the Ministere du Tourisme, the Secretariat aux affaires maritimes and, of course, Saguenay and Baie-Comeau, which will also welcome calls in 2018.

"We are proud to work with Disney Cruise Line and showcase Quebec as an attractive and vibrant option for their clientele. We have been looking forward to the arrival of Disney, and today it became a reality. It is a real vote of confidence from this world-class company, and we will do all we can to live up to its expectations," said Mario Girard, President and CEO of the QPA.
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Pennsylvania State Police.

(File photo)

An Amish bishop in Dauphin County has been charged with failing to report two cases of child sexual abuse.

Christ M. Stoltzfus, 69, of Roller Road in Mifflin Township, told investigators that he was informed that one of the incidents "wasn't really that bad" during an interview in February, according to state police.

State police said that under the law clergymen are required to inform law enforcement about cases of child sexual abuse.

In January, a member of Stoltzfus' church told troopers he informed the bishop of the cases of child sexual abuse that occurred in 2011.

Both cases involved Daniel Ray Fisher, 44, of Weaver Road in Mifflin Township, records state.

Fisher was charged in a separate case in November and again January with inappropriately touching a then 5-year-old girl and a then-10-year-old girl, records state.

In one case, Fisher offered to adjust the girl's dress and assaulted her; in the other he asked to see a girl's snow pants and then assaulted her, records state.

During an interview in November, troopers said Fisher began to "sweat profusely" and eventually told the investigators, "You got me," records state.

Fisher has been charged with aggravated indecent assault, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of a minor and indecent assault in each case.

Fisher is currently free on $50,000 bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for June 8.

During their interview with Stoltzfus in February, troopers told him it appeared as though he was covering up the cases of sexual abuse, police said.

Stoltzfus responded by saying "Well that's what happened in that case...I didn't know everything," records state.

On May 9, Stoltzfus was charged with with two counts of failing to report suspected child abuse. A preliminary hearing has been scheduled for June 14.

Court records indicate Stoltzfus has not yet been arraigned on the charges.
Old Main on the campus of Penn State University

An aerial view of Old Main on the campus of Penn State University.JOE HERMITT, The Patriot-News

(JOE HERMITT)

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- A former Penn State student who sued the school over hazing says he wept when he heard news of a fraternity pledge's death, and says the school is to blame.

James Vivenzio tells philly.com the death of 19-year-old Tim Piazza was "completely preventable."

The 23-year-old Virginia native says he thinks the university should do more to change its Greek culture.

Piazza died after drinking and suffering a critical brain injury during a pledging ritual at the Beta Theta Pi fraternity in February. Eighteen fraternity members have been charged.

Vivenzio's 2015 lawsuit claimed Penn State ignored his report of hazing. Penn State has disputed Vivenzio's account.

A judge has dismissed all but one claim in the suit.

A university spokeswoman says the school is hopeful that claim also will be dismissed.
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The reimbursement grant awards announced Thursday can be used on existing traffic signals to installing light-emitting diode (LED) technology, performing regional operations such as retiming, developing special event plans and monitoring traffic signals, as well as upgrading traffic signals to the latest technologies.

(PennLive archives)

Gov. Tom Wolf announced Thursday that 94 municipalities will receive $33 million to support the costs of upgrading traffic signals under the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's "Green Light-Go" program.

"This is the third round of funding disbursed to support increased safety and mobility across more Pennsylvania towns," Governor Wolf said in a press release. "The Green Light-Go program addresses a fundamental trigger for congestion, deficient traffic signals, and the results will mean better traffic flow."

These reimbursement grant awards can be used on existing traffic signals to installing light-emitting diode (LED) technology, performing regional operations such as retiming, developing special event plans and monitoring traffic signals, as well as upgrading traffic signals to the latest technologies.

Act 101 of 2016 recently provided updates to the program by reducing the applicant match to 20 percent, expanding eligible applicants to planning partners and counties, and allowing all projects to be led by applicants. Green Light-Go was made possible by Act 89, the far-reaching transportation plan adopted in November 2013.

Following is a list of funding recipients, the amount of state funding, and a brief description of the projects. Note the state funding represents only part of the total project funding:

Adams County:

Straban Township -- $26,034 for LED upgrades along the Route 30 Corridor.

Allegheny County:

Bethel Park -- $57,995 for Pedestrian and Vehicle LED Replacement along State Route 88 at Corrigan Drive and Traffic Signal Retiming along Bethel Church Road at Highland Avenue.

Bridgeville -- $213,282 for the installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along Washington Avenue at Station Street, Bower Hill Road and Prestley Road.

East Deer Township -- $83,200 for LED upgrades along Freeport Road at Third Street.

Greentree -- $243,360 for upgrading the overhead lane control systems to LED along Greentree Road.

Monroeville -- $198,370 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Northern Pike at Patty Lane.

Moon Township -- $296,206 for Traffic Signal Improvements along University Boulevard.

Mt Lebanon Township -- $152,489 for Intersection Improvements along Castle Shannon Boulevard at Anawanda Street.

Mt Lebanon Township -- $363,520 for Traffic Signal Upgrades at thirty (30) intersections within Mt Lebanon Township.

Mt Lebanon Township -- $178,760 for Intersection Improvements along Cedar Boulevard at Greenhurst Drive.

Mt Lebanon Township -- $231,032 for Intersection Improvements along Bower Hill Road at Kelso Road.

South Fayette Township -- $77,484 for installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along Washington Pike at Bursca Drive and at Twin Ponds Lane.

Springdale -- $173,064 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Pittsburgh Street at Colfax Street.

Upper St Clair Township -- $461,289 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along McMurray Road at Johnson Road and along McLaughlin Run Road at US Route 19 Southbound Ramps.

Berks County:

Fleetwood -- $132,000 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along Franklin Street at Main Street.

Reading -- $148,000 for the Removal of the Unwarranted Traffic Signal along Sixth Street at Laurel Street.

St. Lawrence -- $251,107 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along St. Lawrence Avenue and Perkiomen Avenue Corridors.

West Reading -- $134,536 for LED Replacement along Penn Avenue at Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Avenues.

Wyomissing -- $233,561 for LED Replacement along Penn Avenue, State Hill Road, Park Road and Paper Mill Road Corridors.

Bucks County:

Bensalem Township -- $501,102 for installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the Hulmeville Road Corridor from Street Road to Bristol Road.

Bristol Township -- $252,184 for Traffic Signal Modernization along State Road at Cedar Avenue.

Bristol Township -- $191,255 for Traffic Signal Modernization along Radcliffe Street at Randall Avenue.

Bristol Township -- $226,194 for Traffic Signal Modernization along Mill Creek Parkway at Haines Road.

Upper Southampton Township -- $1,079,069 for installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the Second Street Pike Corridor.

Yardley -- $212,960 for Intersection Improvements along Main Street at Afton Avenue.

Butler County:

Connoquenessing Township - $160,000 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along State Route 68 at Kriess Road and Eagle Mill Road.

Cranberry Township -- $138,240 for Installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the State Route 19 Corridor.

Cranberry Township -- $612,050 for Traffic Signal Upgrade along State Route 19 at St. Francis Way.

Centre County:

College Township -- $200,083 for Installation of Pedestrian Signals and Upgrades along East College Ave at Elmwood Street.

Ferguson Township -- $80,000 for Vehicle Detection Upgrades along West College Avenue at Bristol Avenue and Whitehall Road, along Blue Course Drive at Old Gatesburg Road and along Whitehall Road at Research Drive.

Patton Township -- $198,082 for Installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the Valley Vista Drive Corridor.

Spring Township -- $31,279 for Signal Equipment Replacement along East College Ave at Harrison Road and at Main Street.

Chester County:

East Vincent Township -- $263,799 for Intersection Improvements along Schuylkill Road at New Street.

Phoenixville -- $31,420 for LED Replacement along Church Street at Gay Street and Main St, along Franklin Street at High Street and along Washington Avenue at Gay Street.

Uwchlan Township -- $53,829 for Installation of Battery Back-Up System along Dorlan Mill Road at Moore Road.

Westtown Township -- $180,000 for the Study and Removal of the Unwarranted Traffic Signal along West Chester Pike at Chester Road.

Crawford County:

Meadville -- $798,341 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Water Street at Chestnut Street, Center Street and Arch Street.

Cumberland County:

North Middleton Township -- $219,462 for Traffic Signal Modernization along Spring Road at Cavalry Road.

Silver Spring Township -- $45,273 for Auxiliary Cabinet and Controller Upgrades along the Route 11 Corridor.

South Middleton Township -- $62,574 for Installation of Emergency Pre-emption along the Walnut Bottom Road Corridor.

South Middleton Township -- $44,696 for Installation of Emergency Pre-emption along the York Road Corridor.

South Middleton Township -- $13,680 for Traffic Signal Retiming along the Walnut Bottom Road Corridor.

Dauphin County:

Harrisburg -- $357,150 for Traffic Signal Upgrades and Signal Performance along the Forester Street Corridor.

Delaware County

Concord Township -- $144,000 for Installation of Battery Backup Systems along Baltimore Pike, Wilmington Pike, Naamans Creek Road, Conchester Highway and Smithbridge Road Corridors.

Concord Township -- $56,000 for Installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the Baltimore Pike at Concord Road.

Marple Township -- $440,000 for Traffic Signal Improvements along the Sproul Road Corridor.

Middletown Township -- $108,00 for Implementation of Low Cost Safety Improvements along New Middletown Road at Glen Riddle Road and along Edgmont Avenue at Knowlton Road.

Springfield Township -- $284,000 for Traffic Signal Improvements along the Sproul Road Corridor.

Erie County:

Erie -- $244,505 for Traffic Signal Replacement and Installation of Pedestrian Signals along Sixth Street at Bacon Street.

Summit Township -- $43,584 for Traffic Signal Improvements along Peach Street and Douglas Parkway Corridors.

Fayette County:

Connellsville -- $53,075 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along Pittsburgh Street at Fairview Avenue and Apple Street, along Crawford Avenue at Arch Street and Pittsburgh Street and along Snyder Street at Fairview Avenue.

Franklin County:

Fannett Township -- $57,840 for Installation of Solar Powered Flashing Warning Devices along Path Valley Road at Spring Run Road.

Greencastle Borough - $43,677 for Installation of Rectangular Rapid Flashing Beacon System along Baltimore Pike at Linden Avenue and along Baltimore Pike at Allison Street.

Indiana County:

White Township -- $172,545 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along Ben Franklin Road at Warren Road.

Lackawanna County:

Clarks Green Borough -- $39,755 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along East Grove Street at South Abington Road.

Scranton -- $135,200 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Green Ridge Street at Wyoming Avenue.

Lancaster County:

East Donegal Township -- $147,200 for Intersection Safety Upgrades along River Road at Mount Joy Road.

East Lampeter Township -- $54,400 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along the Old Philadelphia Pike, Greenfield Road, and Witmer Road Corridors.

East Lampeter Township -- $44,000 for Traffic Signal Improvements along Lincoln Highway at Strasburg Pike.

East Lampeter Township -- $44,000 for Traffic Signal Improvements along Old Philadelphia Pike at Horseshoe Road.

Elizabethtown Borough -- $18,000 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along the Market Street Corridor.

Ephrata Borough -- $113,278 for Traffic Signal Detection Upgrades along South Reading Road at Meadow Valley Road and at South Academy Drive.

Lancaster -- $1,401,714 for Traffic Signal Controller Upgrades at 91 Intersections throughout the City of Lancaster.

Lititz Borough -- $64,800 for Pedestrian Signal Upgrades along the Broad Street and Main Street Corridors.

Manheim Borough -- $72,000 for Installation of Battery Backup Systems along the Main Street Corridor.

Warwick Township -- $127,600 for Traffic Signal Detection System Upgrades along Rothsville Road at Newport Road and along Main Street at Church Street and Rothsville Road.

West Hempfield Township -- $13,269 for Installation of Battery Backup and Preemption along Stony Battery Road at Route 30 East Bound Ramp and Route 30 West Bound Ramp.

Lehigh County:

Allentown -- $774,378 for Traffic Signal Coordination along the Lehigh Street Corridor.

Luzerne County:

Hanover Township -- $96,528 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along Sans Souci Parkway at St. Mary's Road and Willow Street.

Plains Township -- $61,848 for LED Signal Replacement along River Street at Maffett Street, along Carey Avenue at Main Street and along Route 315 at Laird Street.

Lycoming County:

Loyalsock Township -- $129,500 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Northway Road at Sheridan Street.

McKean County:

Foster Township -- $62,500 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Main Street at Bolivar Drive.

Mercer County:

Greenville Borough -- $188,200 for Traffic Signal Replacement along Main Street (SR 0018) at Prairie Street.

West Middlesex Borough -- $42,160 for Detection System Upgrade along New Castle Road at Main Street.

Montgomery County:

Abington Township -- $298,480 for Traffic Signal Upgrades along Fitzwatertown Road at North Hills Avenue.

East Norriton Township -- $329,750 for Installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the Germantown Pike Corridor.

East Norriton Township -- $108,300 for Installation of Video Detection System along the Germantown Pike Corridor.

Hatboro Borough -- $1,330,508 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along Montgomery Avenue at Jacksonville Road.

Jenkintown Borough -- $89,784 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades and LED Replacement at 8 intersections along the York Road Corridor.

Lower Frederick Township -- $1,474 for LED Replacement along the Route 29 Corridor.

Lower Moreland Township -- $148,080 for Traffic Signal Equipment and Safety Upgrades along Byberry Road at Pine Road.

Lower Salford Township -- $54,200 for Preventative Maintenance at 13 Intersections throughout Lower Salford Township.

Upper Dublin Township -- $2,200,000 for Installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the West Moreland Road and Easton Road Corridors.

Upper Merion Township -- $107,968 for LED Replacement at 24 Intersections along the Dakalb Pike, Gulph Road, Henderson Road, Valley Forge Road and Swedesford Road Corridors.

Upper Pottsgrove Township -- $21,186 for Installation of Emergency Pre-emption Systems along Pottstown Pike at State Street and Moyer Road.

Upper Providence Township -- $239,230 for Installation of Adaptive Traffic Signal Equipment and Software along the Egypt Road Corridor.

Whitpain Township -- $79,578 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades at the intersection of Skippack Pike and Pennlyn-Blue Bell Pike.

Worcester Township -- $141,700 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along Valley Forge Road at Skippack Pike and Township Line Road.

Worcester Township -- $80,240 for Fiber Optic Traffic Signal Interconnection along Germantown Pike at Park Avenue and Trooper Road.

Montour County:

Danville Borough -- $55,440 for Traffic Signal Retiming and Synchronization at 10 Intersections along Walnut Street, Mill Street and Northumberland Road Corridor.

Northampton County:

Tatamy Borough -- $10,008 for Installation of Emergency Pre-emption Systems along Eighth Street at Main Street and Commerce Lane.

Northumberland County:

Sunbury -- $354,332 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades at the Intersection of Fourth Strreet and Arch Street.

Philadelphia:

$2,800,000 for Traffic Signal Modernization at 12 Intersections along the Castor Avenue Corridor.

$7,100,000 for Traffic Signal Modernization and Equipment Upgrades at 24 Intersections along the Cheltenham Avenue Corridor.

Schuylkill County:

Cass Township -- $133,544 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along Highridge Park Road at Keystone Boulevard and at the I-81 Northbound Ramps.

Foster Township -- $48,088 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along State Route 901 at Keystone Boulevard.

Minersville Borough -- $181,920 for Traffic Signal Retiming and Coordination at 8 Intersections along the Sunbury Street Corridor.

Minersville Borough -- $308,270 for Pedestrian Improvements and Installation or Overspeed Warning System at 8 Intersection along the Sunbury Street Corridor.

Pottsville -- $314,313 for Traffic Signal and Intersection Upgrades at the Intersection of Market Street and Twentieth Street.

Saint Clair Borough -- $229,600 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along Claude Lord Boulevard at Hancock Street, Russell Street, Terry Rich Boulevard and Ann Street.

Union County:

Mifflinburg Borough -- $53,331 for Traffic Signal Retiming along Chestnut Street at Third Street and Fourth Street.

Union County -- $53,331 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades at the Intersection of East Chestnut Street at Mabel Street.

Washington County:

Cecil Township -- $416,850 for Traffic Signal System Upgrades at 7 Intersections along the Southpointe Boulevard Corridor.

Peters Township -- $382,950 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades at the Intersection of McMurray Road at Valleybrook Road.

Westmoreland County:

Washington Township -- $16,000 for Township Traffic Signal Activities.

York County:

Dillsburg Borough -- $44,620 for LED Replacement at 7 Intersections along the State Route 15 Corridor.

Wrightsville Borough -- $37,054 for Traffic Signal Equipment Upgrades along Hellam Street at 9th Street and 6th Street.

York Township -- $182,035 for Traffic Signal Modernization along Queen Street at Country Club Road.

A list of recipients, project descriptions, and the amount of state investment is also available at www.penndot.gov on the "Traffic Signals, Management" page under "Travel In PA." Follow PennDOT on Twitter at www.twitter.com/PennDOTNews or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/PennsylvaniaDepartmentofTransportation.
No charges will be filed in the stabbing death of a 20-year-old Lancaster man last year, the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office said Friday.

Hiram Calderon was fatally stabbed on Sept. 7, 2016, after a confrontation with another man. The DA's office through its investigation determined that Calderon initiated the incident that led to his death and that the man who stabbed him was acting in self-defense.

After meeting with Calderon's parents, the DA's office released a detailed account of what investigators say happened before the stabbing. It delayed releasing the information because of wanting to meet with the Calderon family and its lawyers to answer questions and review video footage of the incident, the news release says. That meeting occurred May 10.

The DA's office gives this account:

"Police responded to a reported stabbing at approximately 9:38 p.m. at Beaver Street and Conestoga Street, Lancaster. Upon arrival, officers found Calderon with a stab wound to his left side and laceration on his left arm. Calderon, stabbed twice, was declared dead about two hours later at Lancaster General Hospital.

"A second individual (Male #2 for purposes of this release) was immediately identified as being involved in the stabbing incident, which happened during a verbal conflict over a female who was present during the entire altercation and stabbing.

"Both males were well known by the female and they knew of each other but had never met each other.

"Police interviews of witnesses established the following:

"Earlier that night, the female requested Male #2 via text messaging to walk her home after her shift at a nearby grocery store. The female asked Male #2 to escort her because she felt Calderon had been following/stalking her. Calderon had text-messaged/called her about 15 times that day. Forensic review of her cell phone corroborate that.

"Male #2 responded to walk her home and they left the store at approximately 9:30 p.m. As the two were leaving, Calderon appeared on his bike. Calderon put his bike on the ground and began to confront Male #2, telling Male #2 he needed to leave and that the female was his girlfriend.

"Male #2 and the female repeatedly tried to walk away from Calderon but he continued to block Male #2's path and placed his body in very close proximity to Male #2. This went on for approximately five minutes as Male #2 continued to try and avoid Calderon but each time he changed directions, Calderon would do the same to block his path.

"While Male #2 and the female attempted to get away from Calderon, Calderon made verbal threats of hurting Male #2 and that he would get someone to hurt the female.

"Calderon repeatedly continued to block Male #2 as he tried to walk away from him, and, at one point, tried to hold Male #2 in front of traffic while threatening Male #2 and the female.

At least four independent eyewitnesses, none of whom knew any of the parties, were interviewed during the investigation and provided similar accounts of what happened. One witness observed Calderon pushing and shoving Male #2 and heard Calderon cursing and yelling at the woman. Another witness observed Calderon gripping Male #2's shirt and Male #2 trying to get free from Calderon, prior to the stabbing.

"The witnesses did not see punches and indicated the male - later identified as Calderon - was clearly the aggressor. One witness described him (Calderon) as 'amped up' and felt bad for the other male because he did not want to fight. Another witness said the male identified as Calderon was "all over" the other male and would not let him walk away. In fact, these witnesses said they stopped the vehicle they were riding in because they were concerned for Male #2.

"Male #2, who had called 911 and remained at the scene, provided a lengthy statement to police after the incident. He reported that Calderon, whom he had never met previously, kept telling Male #2 to "fight me or I'll stab you." Male #2 stated he made numerous efforts to get away from Calderon but Calderon stayed right in his face, pushing him, shoving him, and threatening him.

"Male #2 said he only stabbed Calderon when Calderon got "really close" with a hand in his (Calderon's) pocket and after Calderon had made repeated threats to stab him. Male #2 said he did not pull or show his own knife prior to that point because he feared Calderon would pull his knife as well. It should be noted that Calderon is considerably taller than Male #2.

"Male #2 stated he believed Calderon was going to get his knife from his pocket and that he was going to be stabbed and that he could not leave the female because Calderon had threatened her as well and indicated he was armed with a knife.

"Calderon was stabbed twice. After the first stab, Male #2 made no effort to approach Calderon and simply stood there. After being stabbed once, Calderon hesitates, then approaches and re-engages Male #2. Male #2 then stabs Calderon a second time. This time, Calderon breaks away from Male #2 and collapses shortly thereafter.

"Calderon was in fact armed with a knife. When emergency responders arrived, the knife was on the street, out of his pocket, right next to Calderon.

"Video surveillance footage, from different cameras, corroborated statements provided by witnesses. Specifically, video footage shows Calderon walking in front of Male #2 and Male #2 trying to move in different directions to avoid him. Prior to the stabbing, Calderon shoves Male #2 at least twice with enough force that caused Male #2 to stumble a few steps.

"The applicable surveillance footage was disjointed due to the cameras rotating on a cycle. Video of the final confrontation was shot from a distance, but it does generally corroborate the above description.

"Our office, having received numerous reports and pieces of information from Lancaster city police, to include review of the text messages, as well as video surveillance footage of the incident, has determined no criminal charges are to be filed. The evidence to establish any criminal actions on the part of Male #2, under the law, simply does not exist.

Despite announcing today that charges would not be filed, the DA's Office said it is "reserve[ing} the option of exploring the case further should pertinent information surface."

"It should be noted this has been a thorough investigation and our determination was not reached due to lack of information/evidence," the DA's office said in the statement. "The determination was made after careful review of the law and meticulous consideration of the circumstances.
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Ryan Batra

(Provided photo)

A student was jailed for "destroying" the inside of his school and assaulting two cops Northern Lancaster County Regional Police said Friday.

Police said they were called to the Fairland School, which is part of Intermediate Unit 13, on Tuesday for a student who was running amok.

That student, Ryan J. Batra, 19, of Lebanon, caused significant damage to the school and attacked two officers, police said. One cop suffered minor injuries to his face,

Batra was charged with aggravated assault, resisting arrest and institutional vandalism.
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Lower Paxton Township police are looking for the woman pictured who robbed a Santander Bank May 11.

(Lower Paxton Township police)

Lower Paxton Township police are looking for a woman who robbed a bank Thursday afternoon.

The incident happened at around 4:30 p.m. May 11 at Santander Bank on the 6000 block of Allentown Boulevard in the township. When police arrived about five minutes after the robbery occurred, bank staff told the officers a light-skinned African American woman entered the bank and demanded money.



The woman didn't display a weapon, but told employees she was armed with a bomb. She fled the scene with an undisclosed amount of cash heading south on South Mountain Road, police said.

Anyone with information about the incident is asked to contact police at 717-657-5656
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Harrisburg mayoral candidate Gloria Martin-Roberts (PennLive file)

By Deborah Robinson

The May 16 primary election presents us with an opportunity to strengthen and bring unity to the City of Harrisburg. This is an opportunity to vote for a trusted and qualified person for that office. We humbly ask that you vote for Gloria Martin-Roberts for Mayor.

Gloria Martin-Roberts is Harrisburg.

Raised in both the Uptown and Allison Hill neighborhoods, she graduated from John Harris High School. She furthered her education at Lincoln University earning her Master's Degree.

Martin-Roberts spent 28 years in state government directing statewide public health programs. She went on to be Chief Operating Officer for the Capital Region Health System.

She also was a senior health consultant providing technical assistance to state governments in the Northeast Region of the United States, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

Never shying away from public service, Gloria served on the Harrisburg City School Board and later on Harrisburg City Council. She concluded her tenure on City Council as President.

Today, Martin-Roberts is a member of the Police-Community Advisory Council, Board of Directors of Impact Harrisburg, and Board of Directors of Dixon University, just to name a few.

Over the years she has served on many boards and councils working to fortify and enhance our community.

Martin-Roberts' major priorities as Mayor will be: public safety (which includes community policing), economic development and infrastructure, neighborhood blight (home ownership), and an aging in place initiative (support for our senior citizens).

You will see Martin-Roberts throughout the city, visiting and listening to all the residents. She does not have a favorite neighborhood.

Gloria Martin-Roberts has the vision and the determination to strengthen and unite Harrisburg.

She has the right temperament to sit at the table with current and future stakeholders to work out a plan to move the entire city forward. From improving public safety and public works to improving our parks and housing,

She will build a stronger Harrisburg, a city of unity.

Because of her dedication and commitment to our city we, her supporters, believe that Gloria Martin-Roberts has earned and will respect your vote of confidence.

Please vote for Gloria Martin-Roberts on Tuesday, May 16, 2017.

Deborah Robinson is campaign manager for Gloria Martin-Roberts. She writes from Harrisburg.
James Comey

FBI Director James Comey testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, May 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)

Well if he was trying to kill the whole Nixon thing, this probably wasn't the best way to do it.

The Washington Post and other outlets are reporting this morning that President Donald Trump is suggesting that there may be "tapes" of his private conversations with fired FBI Director James B. Comey.

The Post says the Tweet that the Republican president posted Friday is "an apparent attempt to threaten Comey about 'leaking to the press.'"

James Comey better hope that there are no "tapes" of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017

More from The Post:

"In his tweet, Trump appears to suggest that he may have recordings of his communications with Comey. It is unclear if such tapes exist, however.

White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump had in fact taped his conversations with Comey.

Trump put the word tapes in quotation marks, indicating that perhaps there may be a record of some kind if not an actual audio or video recording.

He used a similar construct in two of his March 4 tweets accusing President Barack Obama, without any evidence, of wiretapping his campaign offices. Trump put the words "wires tapped" in quotation marks, which White House press secretary Sean Spicer later argued meant surveillance activities more broadly as opposed to physical wiretapping.

Trump's tweet about Comey was likely a reaction to a New York Times report, published Thursday night, detailing a one-on-one dinner Trump had with Comey shortly after the inauguration. The report said that Comey has told associates that Trump twice asked Comey during their conversation to pledge his loyalty to him, something the FBI director declined to do."
James Conner

Pittsburgh Steelers and then-Pitt running back James Conner, who signed with the Steelers on Thursday, carries a football during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Villanova in Pittsburgh, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

(Gene J. Puskar)

PITTSBURGH -- Half of the Pittsburgh Steelers' 2017 draft class is on the books.

James Conner became the fourth of the team's eight picks to sign their rookie contracts, the team announced Thursday evening. His inking comes shortly after sixth-round long snapper pick Colin Holba's and follows Keion Adams and Brian Allen officially joining the team.

The Pitt running back was the Steelers' compensatory third-round pick, taken 105th overall.

Following his selection Mike Tomlin called the Erie native jokingly told him to drive down to Pittsburgh and said the team would not be compensating him for the gas mileage.

Watch and read about the full exchange here, if you're so inclined

A timeline of Conner's life in the football and life spotlights

Conner was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in 2015, vowed to beat the cancer and did in time to return for the 2016 season.

As of Thursday's update of the NFLPA's roster and salary cap database - preceding Holba's and Conner's signing - the Steelers had 80 players on their 90-man offseason roster.

Pittsburgh had $15,716,718 in space under the salary cap. None of Conner's or any other rookie's $465,000 base salary will count against the cap as long as they're not among the 51 highest on the team, though their signing bonuses will.

Rookie selections' signing bonuses are determined by a formula based on a player's place in the draft. Conner's is projected to be around $700,000.

All draft picks are eligible to participate in rookie minicamp, which runs Friday May 12 through Sunday May 14, regardless of their having signed a contract or not.

Steelers 2017 NFL Draft picks

1st round: No. 30 overall - T.J. Watt, OLB, Wisconsin

2nd round: No. 62 overall - JuJu Smith-Schuster, WR, USC

3rd round: No. 94 overall - Cameron Sutton, CB, Tennessee

No. 105 overall - James Conner, RB, Pitt (signed)

4th round: No. 135 overall - Josh Dobbs, QB, Tennessee

5th round: No. 173 overall - Brian Allen, CB, Utah (signed)

6th round: No. 213 overall - Colin Holba, LS, Louisville (signed)

7th round: No. 248 overall - Keion Adams, OLB, Western Michigan (signed)
The Malaysian Ministry of Tourism and Culture and ITB Berlin have announced that the South East Asian nation will be the shows Official Partner Country in 2019.

Announcing the reasoning behind the countrys choice of year, YB Dato' Seri Mohamed Nazri bin Abdul Aziz, Minister of Tourism and Culture for Malaysia explained, Our long-term target is to achieve 36 million tourist arrivals and RM168 billion (Euro 37.1 billion) in receipts by the year 2020, based on the Malaysia Tourism Transformation Plan. Building up to this year will be very much like a crescendo, which is why we wanted to plan a major partnership with ITB Berlin in 2019.

The Minister signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) solidifying the partnership during an informal ceremony at ITB Berlin 2017. Then, along with Head of ITB Berlin, David Ruetz, at a ceremony at ITB China on 11 May 2017, the signing of the official contract took place at 11am.

Malaysia has had a very serious presence at ITB Berlin for many years, and we have been very impressed by the development of this nations tourism offering. While negotiations are still under way with several suitors for the 2018 edition  and the partner will be announced shortly, we are happy to work on this longer-term plan with our Malaysian friends, said David Ruetz, Head of ITB Berlin from Messe Berlin.

YB Dato' Seri Mohamed Nazri bin Abdul Aziz, Minister of Tourism and Culture for Malaysia added, ITB Berlin is truly a global platform from which we can give our message to the world like no other. This will strongly underline our sustainable tourism strategy, which we believe will be key to the future of our nation, its people and our economy in the long term. This partnership also serves to underline the strong ties between Malaysia and Europe, and our firm will to take this wonderful relationship to an even higher level.

The 2019 Official Partner Country project is part of a much broader plan by Malaysia to increase awareness of the natural and human assets of the country over the next years. Kinabalu National Park and Gunung Mulu National Park in Malaysian Borneo and George Town cities and the archaeological heritage of the Lenggong Valley are four of the UNESCO designated World Heritage sites in Malaysia that will be highlighted. By the same token, the incredible variety of cultures and peoples that one encounters while travelling from one part of Malaysia to another are a key to the attractiveness of the destination.

As the partner country of ITB Berlin 2019 Malaysia will organise the opening ceremony on 6 March 2019 in the CityCube Berlin. From 7 to 11 March 2019 at ITB Berlin, Malaysia will fascinate visitors with a colourful programme of events.
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Greg Spooner holds a sign during a protest outside of the offices of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Wednesday, May 10, 2017, in San Francisco. Dozens of protesters chanted slogans outside of Feinstein's office in protest of President Donald Trump's firing of FBI director James Comey. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Madrid, Spain, hosted the 105th meeting of the Executive Council of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) between 11 and 12 May. The Executive Council, attended by some 250 representatives from 59 countries, focused on current trends and challenges facing the tourism sector and on the three priorities of the Organization - safe, secure and seamless travel; the impact of technology in the tourism sector and sustainability.

The Executive Council focused on these priorities as well as on the UNWTO programme of work for 2018-2019 and the agenda of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017.

The 105th session of the UNWTO Executive Council also recommended Zurab Pololikashvili, from Georgia, as the nominee for the post of Secretary-General for the four-year-period starting January 2018. This recommendation will be submitted to the 22nd UNWTO General Assembly for ratification (11-16 September 2017, Chengu, China).

We predict that 1.8 billion international tourists will travel across borders by 2030. We must ensure that such growth goes hand-in-hand with sustainability. We must embrace the opportunities created by innovation and new technologies. We must continue to make travel safer, but also more seamless and accessible for all. And we must ensure that our sector serves the planet as well as its people said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, opening the meeting.

UNWTO is a privileged forum where all countries discuss the main challenges facing our sector, share experiences and build common solutions. Tourism is about building bridges said the Secretary of State of Tourism of Spain, Matilde Asian.

The Chair of the Council, the Minister of Culture and Tourism of Azerbaijan, Abulfas Garayev, recalled the importance of the declaration by the United Nations General Assembly of 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development This is a unique opportunity to raise awareness of the contribution of sustainable tourism to development among public and private sector decision makers and the public, while mobilizing all stakeholders to work together in making tourism a catalyst for positive change, he said.

The 106th and 107th sessions of the UNWTO Executive Council will take place in September 2017 in Chengdu, China in the framework of the 22nd UNWTO General Assembly.
FILE - In this Dec. 6, 2016 file photo, from left, CJ Group Chairman Sohn Kyung-shik, LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo, Hanhwa Group Chairman Kim Seung-youn, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-Won, Samsung Electronics Co. Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin, Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho and Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo take an oath during a parliamentary probe into a scandal engulfing President Park Geun-hye at the National Assembly in Seoul. South KoreaAos newly elected president, Moon Jae-in says jobs top his agenda for AsiaAos fourth largest economy, but a larger challenge awaits him in reforming the powerful family conglomerates, called chaebol, that dominate the economy. (Jung Yeon-je/Pool Photo via AP, File)
Global DMC Partners, the largest global network of Destination Management Companies (DMCs), announces two promotions within their U.S. Sales and Marketing Divisions.

Riley Sharp, Director of Sales, has been named Vice President of Sales, and Erin Dugan, Manager of Marketing and Database Management, has been named Director of Marketing and Database Management.

President of Global DMC Partners, Catherine Chaulet, attributes the companys exponential growth to the result of the terrific talent within the company. Chaulet states, Such success does not happen overnight. It is the result of Riley and Erins tremendous dedication to their work and the clients we serve. I am very proud of them for all that they have accomplished, and look forward to everything they will achieve in 2017 and beyond.

Sharp, based in Chicago, IL, will continue to spearhead sales efforts and provide top quality service to meeting and incentive planners in the Southwest and Western regions of the U.S. She serves as a liaison between clients and Global DMC Partners hand-selected DMCs, also providing destination selection expertise and DMC reporting to help clients capture, analyze and optimize their global DMC spend.

Based out of Washington, D.C., Dugan will continue to drive all of Global DMC Partners marketing initiatives, including the companys internal and external communications, tradeshow management, brand strategy, and digital marketing.

Prior to joining Global DMC Partners in December 2013, Sharp was a Sales Coordinator for a DMC sales organization for three years. Dugan began working for Global DMC Partners in December 2014 after working for Cvent, the cloud-based enterprise event management company, starting in 2010.
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.
The 105th session of the UNWTO Executive Council, meeting in Madrid, Spain, on 12 May 2017, recommended Zurab Pololikashvili, Ambassador of Georgia in Spain, as a nominee for the post of Secretary-General for the four-year-period starting January 2018.

The candidature of Zurab Pololikashvili was presented by his country, Georgia, in accordance with the UNWTO statutes.

The recommendation of the UNWTO Executive Council will be submitted to the upcoming 22nd UNWTO General Assembly for ratification (11-16 September 2017, Chengdu, China).

Mr. Pololikashvili is Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Georgia to the Kingdom of Spain, the Principality of Andorra, the Peoples Democratic Republic of Algeria and the Kingdom of Morocco.

He has broad experience of working in both private and public sectors at high-profile positions. He has extensive diplomatic experience, having represented Georgia to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), as well as serving as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Kingdom of Spain. He also held a position of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2005 to 2006.

During Ambassador Pololikashvilis tenure as the Minister of Economic Development, through key policy reforms, marketing activities, improvement of infrastructure and visa liberalization initiatives, Georgia managed to nearly double the annual number of international arrivals, from 1.5 million ( in 2009) to exceeding the 2.8 million mark by 2011. Those reforms paved the way for sustainable tourism practices in Georgia and poverty alleviation initiatives, placing Georgia among top tourist destinations in the region.
Oil prices edge up Friday, on track for biggest gain in five weeks





LONDON

Petroleumworld 05 11 2017

Oil prices rose slightly on Friday, on track for their biggest weekly gain in five weeks, helped by expectations of an extension of OPEC-led output cuts and buoyed by falling U.S. crude inventories.

Benchmark Brent LCOc1 was trading 20 cents higher at $50.97 per barrel at 1329 GMT, on target for a 3.6 percent rise on the week. U.S. light crude oil CLc1 was up 7 cents at $47.90.

A larger-than-expected fall last week in U.S. crude inventories C-STK-T-EIA, which dropped 5.3 million barrels, suggested cuts by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and other producers were tightening the market, analysts said.

OPEC members and other producers including Russia pledged to reduce their output by almost 1.8 million barrels per day (bpd) in the first half of the year, but the impact of the initiative has been slow to show up in global inventory data.

"The (U.S. crude) inventories turned the heads of market participants towards the more positive side of things," said Eugen Weinberg, Commerzbank head of commodities research.

"But nevertheless the problem remains that the oil supplies are still there, the overcapacity is still there, the stocks are still quite high," he added.

OPEC and other producers meet on May 25 to decide whether to extend cuts. Saudi Arabia, OPEC's de-facto leader, has said it expects an extension to the end of 2017 or possibly beyond.

Commerzbank said in a note it was sceptical about OPEC's ability to support prices in the long term.

"Owing to the rapid recovery in U.S. oil production OPEC obviously only has limited influence on prices via supply curbs," it said, adding an extension "is unlikely to be more successful than the cuts implemented so far in the longer-term."

U.S. crude production C-OUT-T-EIA has risen more than 10 percent since its mid-2016 trough to more than 9.3 million bpd, close to the levels of top producers Russia and Saudi Arabia.

A weekly report by Baker Hughes ( BHI.N ) monitoring U.S. rigs drilling for new production is due on Friday. RIG-OL-USA-BHI

Norwegian consultancy Rystad Energy said U.S. output had gained "significant momentum". Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, it said output from the other 48 states would expand by 390,000 bpd from May 2017 to December 2017 assuming a U.S. light crude price of $50.









Story by Stephen Eisenhammer; Additional reporting by Henning Gloystein in Singapore; Editing by Edmund Blair and Elaine Hardcastle from Reuters .



reuters.com May 12, 2017
Mexico to Trump: uphold NAFTA for good of both nations





MEXICO CITY

Petroleumworld 05 11 2017

Mexico made a pitch to U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday to uphold the NAFTA trade deal, arguing that unwinding economic integration would hurt both nations, damaging U.S. exports, risking American jobs and hitting consumers north of the border.

Responding to a March 31 executive order by Trump for a review of the U.S. trade deficit, Mexico said its trade surplus with the United States was misunderstood and that the real hit to U.S. manufacturing jobs came with China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.

Last year's U.S. deficit with Mexico of $63.2 billion also reflected a weak peso after it was battered by uncertainty over the future of bilateral trade relations, according to a document published by the Mexican Embassy in Washington.

"The increasing integration of our economies makes Mexico critically important to the U.S. economy, not only as an export market, but also as a partner in production," the director of the embassy's trade and NAFTA office, Kenneth Smith, wrote.

Mexico was responding to the U.S. Commerce Department's request for public input as it prepares a report for Trump on the United States' $500 billion annual trade deficit. The report and public comments will be sent to Trump in June.

Mexico said that, without NAFTA, the average tariff on Mexican exports to the United States would be 3.5 percent, or about half the average tariff on U.S. exports to Mexico, because of the "most favored nation" clause that would apply under WTO rules.

U.S.-Mexican trade relations have been strained by Trump's repeated vow to scrap the North American Free Trade Agreement if he cannot secure better terms for U.S. workers and industry.

Trump has cited the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico as proof that the United States was the loser in the relationship, saying the Americans would be better off if the two nations did not trade at all.

However, Mexico said 75 percent of its exports to the United States are inputs in U.S. production processes and that the United States has an $8 billion surplus in services.

"Workers on both sides of the border work together in the production of goods to successfully compete in global markets," Smith said.

The U.S. energy industry also relies on exports to Mexico, which is now the biggest export market for U.S. refined oil products and natural gas, Smith said.







Reporting By Frank Jack Daniel, Writing by Dave Graham and Mitra Taj from Reuters .



reuters.com May 11, 2017
Exxon Nigeria workers go on strike -union





LAGOS

Petroleumworld 05 11 2017

Nigerian workers at U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil Corp have gone on strike in protest over the sacking of workers, oil labour union officials said on Thursday.

Nigerian labour unions have criticised oil companies for sacking workers in the last few months and held a number of strikes.

Abel Agarin, who chairs the Lagos zone of the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN), said members of his union were on strike in protest at the sacking of 150 workers in December. He said 82 were PENGASSAN members.

"We want them to be brought back and if that is not possible we want a proper severance package for them," said Agarin, who led around 50 protesters in the commercial capital.

PENGASSAN said strikes were being held in Lagos, Bonny, Akwa Ibom and Port Harcourt.

A spokesman for Exxon Mobil said by email that there were "no impacts" on oil production.

Two oil traders said it was too early to say whether the strikes would have an impact on production.

Strikes by Exxon workers in Nigeria at the end of 2016 did impact output, leading to weeks-long loading delays.







Reporting by Tife Owolabi, Libby George and Alexis Akwagyiram; writing by Ulf Laessing; editing by Jason Neely from Reuters .



reuters.com May 11, 2017
Venezuelans seeks Latin American support for 'democratic agenda'

LIMA

Petroleumworld 05 11 2017

Venezuela's opposition is asking other Latin American countries to pressure President Nicolas Maduro's government into implementing a "democratic agenda," opposition leader Julio Borges said on Thursday.

Borges, the president of Venezuela's opposition-led National Assembly, traveled to Lima to meet with Peruvian legislators and President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who has been one of Maduro's most vocal critics among Latin American leaders.

He said the humanitarian crisis and strong protests against Maduro's socialist government had crossed Venezuela's borders because of a wave of refugees across the region.

"It's important - fundamental - that we get several governments in the region to unite in the short term to make sure in Venezuela there exists nothing other than a popular and democratic agenda," Borges told Reuters.

Venezuela has suffered through more than five weeks of violent anti-government protests in which 39 people have died. The opposition has decried Maduro as an autocrat who has wrecked the OPEC member's economy, and demanded elections to resolve the political crisis.

Peru recalled its ambassador to Caracas in late March.

Appearing together with Borges in the Presidential Palace later on Thursday, Kuczynski said he had "no desire to interfere in the internal matters of other countries" but that countries in the region must support the wellbeing of Venezuela's people and provide "humanitarian assistance."

Kuczynski said he told Borges that "we're prepared to help with this, to help as part of a group of American countries that are worried about an important neighbor. Venezuela is the number one issue in America."

Borges said the aim of the strategy of street protests and calls for international pressure was to "break the conscience of the armed forces and the political groups" that still support Maduro, and to avoid more deaths.

He told Peruvian reporters after his speech to Peru's congress that he would travel to Brazil next week to convene a summit with congressional leaders from across the region to push for a "democratic transition" in Venezuela.

Socialist Venezuela has lost many regional allies as several Latin American countries have moved to the right in recent years.

"There's a new map in Latin America that I'm sure will strongly support this democratic agenda for Venezuela," Borges said.

Last week, Borges met with U.S. President Donald Trump's national security advisor H.R. McMaster, where they agreed on the need to bring Venezuela's crisis to a quick and peaceful conclusion.





Reporting by Reuters TV and Marco Aquino; Writing by Luc Cohen; Editing by Alistair Bell and Grant McCool from Reuters .



reuters.com May 11, 2017
U.S. gives nod at Arctic meet to climate change action - Tillerson

FAIRBANKS, Alaska

Petroleumworld 05 11 2017

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson signed an agreement recognizing the landmark Paris climate accord at a meeting of Arctic nations in Alaska on Thursday, but said President Donald Trump was not rushing to decide whether to leave or weaken U.S. commitments to the pact.

Trump's efforts to dilute U.S. climate policies have made the country an outlier on the issue and put Tillerson in an awkward position at a meeting of the Arctic Council.

The council meets every two years to tackle climate change and other problems facing the North. The Arctic is warming at a faster pace than any other part of the world, forcing native villagers on coasts and rivers in the region to move to higher ground as permafrost and glaciers melt and seas rise.

Global warming also puts stress on wildlife such as walruses and polar bears as they lose their habitat areas.

The Arctic agreement Tillerson signed with foreign ministers from the other seven nations of the council, including Russia, Canada and Norway, made only a passing reference to the Paris pact. It noted "entry into force" of the pact and its implementation and called for global action to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.

Still, Tillerson's signing of the document surprised a source close to the State Department. "We'd heard ... that there would likely be a significant U.S. effort to redline or even remove entirely the Paris and climate language," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the talks.

Tillerson came around to the agreement after hours of debate following a dinner the council members ate together on Wednesday night, Denmark's Foreign Minister Anders Samuelsen told Reuters. The ministers stressed to Tillerson the business benefits, as well as the advantages to the environment and Arctic natives, of taking action on climate, Samuelsen said. Tillerson, a former chief executive of Exxon Mobil is one of Trump's advisers who supports staying in the agreement.

"He was happy about it; he seemed to be satisfied. We all were because it's a big step," Samuelsen said.

A local tribal leader also pressured Tillerson to act at a celebration of the council on Wednesday. "We the tribes ask you to listen to our land. It's telling us to implement promises to slow the change," Chairman Victor Joseph of the Tanana Chief Conference said before Tillerson was introduced at the celebration.

It was unclear how much influence the Arctic agreement, signed late on Wednesday and made public on Thursday, would influence Trump's decision.

Tillerson told the council the Trump administration was reviewing how it will approach climate change but was not going to rush to make a decision on Paris. "We are appreciative that each of you has an important point of view," said Tillerson. "We are going to make the right decision for the United States," said Tillerson.

Trump is expected to make a decision on Paris after a Group of Seven summit at the end of May.

Finland's Foreign Minister Timo Soini, whose country will chair the council for the next two years, praised U.S. leadership in the Arctic Council, but added that the Paris pact is an important tool in fighting climate change.

Arctic warming is thawing permafrost and melting sea ice, causing damage to infrastructure but also opening up new oil reserves, shipping routes and access to fisheries - intensifying a decades-long race for Arctic resources.

Adding pressure on Trump, scientists from the United States and other Arctic nations issued a report ahead of the meeting warning that the warming could lead to trillions of dollars worth of damage to buildings, roads and other infrastructure this century..

The council also signed an agreement on sharing science and data on the Arctic, an effort led by Russia and the United States, and addressed Arctic search and rescue and communications.

Trump's administration has already reversed Obama-era bans on offshore drilling in certain parts of the Arctic, a turn that could intensify competition for resources in the region with major oil producer Russia.

Russia has beefed up its military presence in the Arctic to levels not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union, as global interest in the region's oil, gas and rare earth metals heats up.







Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici in Washington; Editing by Tom Brown and James Dalgleish from Reuters .



reuters.com May 11, 2017
PDVSA's main refineries operating at record lows: sources, data



The current processing levels at the main refineries are similar to 2012, when a severe explosion that killed more than 40 people at Amuay significantly reduced operations at PDVSA's main facilities, forcing the company to import fuels.

HOUSTON/PUNTO FIJO

Petroleumworld 05 12 2017

Three of Venezuela's four refineries are working at record lows due to equipment malfunctioning and lack of crude and spare parts, according to PDVSA internal reports seen by Reuters on Wednesday and workers from the facilities.

The Paraguana Refining Center, which includes Venezuela's Cardon and Amuay refineries, was processing 409,000 barrels per day (bpd) as of Monday, or 43 percent of its installed capacity of 955,000 bpd, according to the data.

Venezuela's third largest refinery, the 187,000-barrel-per-day Puerto la Cruz, is operating at minimum levels due to problems at two of its three distillation units, said union leader Jose Bodas and a worker who asked not to be identified.

State oil company PDVSA did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The current processing levels at the main refineries are similar to 2012, when a severe explosion that killed more than 40 people at Amuay significantly reduced operations at PDVSA's main facilities, forcing the company to import fuels.

Even though PDVSA is not dealing with an accident this time, its refineries have slowly cut production rates due to a combination of lack of light crudes to process, delays to import spare parts and long maintenance work, the workers said.

The problems have particularly affected crude units as oil has been diverted away from some PDVSA's refineries to pay foreign debts, the workers said, leaving insufficient feedstock for distillation.

PDVSA's supply program for May confirmed that operational issues at Puerto la Cruz' distillation plants have forced the company to cancel its jet fuel exports from that facility this month.

Several key operational units such as Puerto la Cruz's fluid catalytic cracker and Cardon's hydrotreating, hydrodesulfurization and lubricants units are also inactive, according to the data and the workers.

Lack of spare parts to repair plants receiving maintenance and malfunctioning of industrial services such as steam supply have contributed to the problems, Bodas said.

Only Venezuela's smallest refinery, El Palito, has its main units working. Its catalytic cracker and an alkylation plant resumed operations in April.

PDVSA's refining woes have increased its need for fuel imports in recent months. The company last week launched tenders on the open market to import at least 1.88 million barrels of refined products for Venezuela's domestic market in May.

The purchases includes gasoline blend stock and MTBE (methyl tertiary butyl ether), an additive for gasoline. It also requested four cargoes of U.S. crude for May.






France Total's plans for Brazil's new oil frontier snagged on Amazon reef

Reuters/Ricardo Moraes



Birds fly over the mouth of the Araguari River on the coast of Amapa state, near Amapa city, northern Brazil, March 31, 2017.

OIAPOQUE, Brazil

Petroleumworld 05 12 2017

Deep beneath the waters of the Atlantic off Brazil's most northern coast, French major Total SA is hunting for what it hopes will be Latin America's next big oil discovery.

Metal drill bits, pipes and containers filled with equipment sit in the tropical port of Belem, near the mouth of the vast Amazon River, ready to sink the first exploratory wells 120 km (75 miles) offshore.

Some geologists say the area, known as the Foz do Amazonas Basin, may contain as many as 14 billion barrels of petroleum, more than the entire proven reserves of Mexico.

But another underwater discovery threatens to derail Total's plans: a massive system of coral reefs just 28 kilometers from where the French firm and its partners, Britain's BP PLC and Brazilian state oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA, plan to drill.

Brazilian scientists had suspected since the 1970s that the area might be home to a sizeable reef. But the unusual depth of this formation - reaching more than 100 meters (400 ft) - coupled with the Amazon silt clouding the waters, delayed that confirmation until just five years ago, just as the government was putting drilling leases out for tender.

Environmentalists, led by campaigner Greenpeace, are now pressuring regulators to block oil exploration in the area. They believe the thriving reef system, which is more 1,000 kilometers long and dotted with brightly colored coral and giant sponges, may be home to new marine species.

Scientists fear an oil spill could damage this treasure before it has even been studied. Leaked crude from Foz do Amazonas wells could also potentially wreak havoc on Brazil's far north Amapa state, home to the world's largest belt of mangroves and thousands of square miles of virgin rainforest, says environmental scientist Valdenira Ferreira.

"In terms of environmentally sensitive environments, this is the biggest in Brazil," said Ferreira, a researcher at the Institute for Scientific Research of Amapa, who is helping prepare a study for the nation's Environment Ministry.

Total says it is scrupulously complying with all requirements by Brazilian authorities and is taking every precaution to ensure that drilling would be safe.

The dispute highlights pressures facing Brazil to protect its unique environmental patrimony as its tries to foment jobs and economic growth for its citizens.

It is also reviving concerns that Brazil, which ranks among the Western hemisphere's least open economies, remains a difficult place to do business despite a new conservative government's efforts to cut red tape and woo foreign investment as it seeks to drag the economy out of the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

Four years after Total and its partners paid 622 million reais ($196 million) for five exploration blocks, they are still waiting for the go-ahead from Brazil's environmental regulator, Ibama.

The agency has given no indication as to when it will make a ruling.

"It's an area that is very sensitive. We're concerned about everything there," said Alexandre Souza, environmental analyst for Ibama.

The delay has Total's Chief Executive in Brazil, Maxime Rabilloud, suggesting the company might sit out three offshore oil license rounds that Brazil has scheduled for this year.

He said Total had already invested some 200 million reais ($64 million) in developing its fields in Foz do Amazonas, with no guarantee yet that it will be able to proceed.

"It's complicated to ask for more money to enter into more exploration blocks without clarity about when the earlier blocks can be evaluated to see if they have any oil," he said in his office in Rio de Janeiro in March.

Such uncertainty could prove damaging for Brazil in a year when oil companies have 25 auctions to choose from around the world, says Antonio Guimaraes, executive secretary of exploration and production at the Brazilian Petroleum Institute (IBP), an industry group.

He has urged President Michel Temer's government to speed passage of legislation currently pending in Congress that would make it easier for companies to win environmental licenses, an effort that has alarmed environmentalists.

DEEPSEA DRILLING

Deep-water discoveries during the 2000s off the coast of Rio de Janeiro in an area known as the pre-salt made Brazil one of the oil sector's hottest destinations, prompting then-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to declare "God is Brazilian".

The announcement of the massive Libra offshore prospect in 2010  the world's biggest in decades - heightened the excitement around the area.

Today, the pre-salt region accounts for almost half of Brazil's oil production, and is rising fast. Success there has piqued interest in other offshore regions of Brazil, including Foz de Amazonas.

The basin was the most hotly disputed area of Brazil's 2013 oil auction. In addition to Total and BP, Brazil's OGX and Queiroz Galvao Exploration and Production (QGEP) secured blocks in the area.

Helping fuel optimism was a May 2015 offshore discovery by ExxonMobil in nearby Guyana in an area with similar geology.

"I would say in terms of the opening of a new frontier in Brazil, the Amazon Basin is a strong candidate," said geologist Pedro Zalan, who did exploration work for Petrobras in the area.

Total, which said it hopes to receive a decision from Ibama this year, plans to drill nine exploratory wells at water depths of more than 1,900 meters.

Environmentalists say such extreme depths bring greater risks, making it harder to plug and contain any spill. BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the worst in U.S. waters, was from a deep-water well of similar depth.

In a 64-page document submitted to Ibama, reviewed by Reuters, Total said the environmental risks were fully understood.

"We are very aware of the sensitivity of the ecosystems," Rabilloud said. He said the company was using a well design that has been used in similar conditions in French Guiana without any incidents.

In the event of an accident, Rabilloud said an emergency response could be activated within two hours.

In contrast to findings by Ferreira, the environmental researcher in Amapa, Total has concluded that ocean currents would carry any pollution away from the coast of Brazil.

Rabilloud expressed confidence in receiving a green light from Ibama but said the uncertainty over the delay made operations difficult.

"Right now, Total is ready to invest," he said. "Now, if you ask me when I will get the license, I can't tell you."

FISHING AND UNEMPLOYMENT

President Temer's government has proposed plans to simplify environmental licensing and hand companies a greater say in a bid to avoid lengthy delays.

The Ibama environmental agency has also seen its budget slashed as the government scrambles to curb a massive deficit.

Packed with members of the farming and business lobby, the government has been accused of downplaying environmental damage, including rising levels of deforestation.

The government denies neglecting environmental rules or planning to dilute them. It says, however, its top priority is creating jobs and bringing an end to Brazil's harshest recession in decades.

In Amapa, the Brazilian state with the highest rate of unemployment last year, many residents are eager for potential benefits from the oil industry.

However, in the remote town of Oiapoque near the border of French Guiana, many suspect that will pass them by.

Fishermen in the poor town fear the oil industry may instead hurt their livelihoods.

"If we have an oil spill here, the fish will die and what will the fisherman do," said Rodolfo Antonio Ferreira da Silva, 63, who has fished for nearly 50 years, casting his net into the river.

For Adair Jeanjaque, a member of the Kalina indigenous people, the oil venture smacks of colonialism.

"It will be the same as when the Portuguese came here and took everything without any benefit," Jeanjaque said in his village on the outskirts of Oiapoque.

Graphic: Brazil's Amazon reef - tmsnrt.rs/2p9XdWw





















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.
Head brewer and co-founder Drew Perry of Double Nickel Brewing Co. serves guests at the Inquirer's first Taste of the Brewvitational event at Reading Terminal Market Thursday night. Perry's beer, Vienna Style Lager, took first place in the popular vote. Brian Larrabee Read more

The Vienna Style Lager from Double Nickel Brewing Co. in Pennsauken  a beer I've described before as a thinking man's Yuengling  took home first place in the popular vote for flagship beers at the first public event for the Inquirer's Brewvitational competition for local brewers.

Over 250 people attended the evening celebration at the market, sipping flagship brews (those year-round signature brands) from 37 local breweries. That followed a full day of judging in private by a panel of experts who also blind-tasted through nearly 80 other brews, and named the year's best new beers and winners in this year's focused style category: lagers.

In that regard, the public was on point in choosing this malty but balanced lager from Double Nickel, which, showing consistency, happened to have taken home third prize from the judges in last year's Brewvitational competition.

"It's meant to be a great Tuesday-night beer with lower alcohol," says Double Nickel's head brewer and co-founder, Drew Perry. "It's a mass market-style beer  but better, with no shortcuts and the best malts and German hops out there you can buy. We're trying to appeal to the beer geeks, but also make a gateway beer to bring that mass-market drinker into the craft world."

Close behind in the public vote, two other breweries tied for second as runners-up: Conshocken Brewing Co.'s Type A IPA and the decadent Double Chocolate Milk Stout from Lancaster Brewing Co., a variation on the brewery's milk stout made with chocolate nibs, cocoa, and chocolate essence. (Chocolate in the beer? Sort of sounds like cheating to me, but --.)

Here are the winners in two other categories, chosen earlier in the day by expert judges in the blind tasting.

Best new beer:

1. (tie) Franklin's Abbey Dubbel, Belgian Dubbel, 6.5 percent alcohol, Saint Benjamin Brewing Co.

Judges' comments: "Complex, malty, rummy, raisiny, dates and dried fruit"; "Such a well-made dubbel, a style you just don't see done often"; "Beautiful."

Antebellum, Saison, 6 percent., Forest & Main Brewing Co.

Judges: "Funky, fruity, and pleasantly sour"; "Herbal"; "Nice! Bright apricot, orange zest, and a lingering dry finish."

3. Refreshing Double IPA, 8 percent., Tired Hands Brewing Co.

Judges: "A cloudy New England-style juice bomb  but balanced"; "Wow! Like a milkshake"; "Dank."

Best lager style:

1. Pilsner Prosim, Czech-style Pilsner, 4.2 percent alcohol, Saint Benjamin Brewing Co.

Judges' comments: "Bright hoppy-liciousnness"; "Clean and malt-forward"; "Light and crushable."

2. The Weekender, Hoppy Pilsner, 5.8% percent., Manayunk Brewing Co.

Judges: "American hop profile with some spicy flavors  grapey"; "Not lager-like."

3. It's Raining Cats & Dogs! FALSE, Indian Pale Lager, 6.5 percent., Evil Genius.

Judges: "Hazy, rich and hoppy"; "Haze craze, grassy. Sweet."
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is directing federal prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against the vast majority of criminal suspects, a reversal of Obama-era policies that is sure to send more people to prison and for much longer terms.

"They're going to have to build more prisons," said L. George Parry, a former federal prosecutor who works at a Philadelphia law firm.

The move had long been expected from Sessions, a former federal prosecutor who cut his teeth during the height of the crack cocaine epidemic and who has promised to make combating violence and drugs the Justice Department's top priority.

"This policy affirms our responsibility to enforce the law, is moral and just, and produces consistency," Sessions wrote in a memo to U.S. attorneys made public Friday.

The memo concedes there will be cases in which "good judgment" will warrant a prosecutor's not going for the most serious charges. And Sessions said it gives prosecutors "discretion to avoid sentences that would result in an injustice."

"It's still going to boil down to the discretion of the prosecutor," said Peter Vaira, a former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia. "Sometimes the most serious offense doesn't really fit the facts."

Advocates quickly criticized the move as a revival of the worst aspects of the drug war, which they say subjected nonviolent, lower-level offenders to unfairly harsh sentences that disproportionately hurt minority communities.

"It looks like we're going to fill the prisons back up after finally getting the federal prison population down," said Kevin Ring, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums. "But the social and human costs will be much higher."

Mary Catherine Roper, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, said federal prisons have had far too many people locked up for too long.

"Doubling down on a failed policy does not double your chances of success," she said. "It doubles your chances of failure."

U.S. Sen. Cory A. Booker (D., N.J.) also slammed Sessions' policy.

"Being tough on crime means being smart on crime, and the attorney general's orders to federal prosecutors are neither," Booker said in a statement Friday. "In fact, they set back efforts to reform our criminal justice system and won't make our streets any safer."

The announcement is an unmistakable undoing of Obama administration criminal justice policies that aimed to ease overcrowding in federal prisons and contributed to a national rethinking of how drug criminals were prosecuted and sentenced.

Sessions contends a spike in violence in some big cities and the nation's opioid epidemic show the need for a return to tougher tactics. He foreshadowed the plan early in his tenure, when he signaled his strong support for the federal government's continued use of private prisons, reversing another Obama directive to phase out their use.

"We know that drugs and crime go hand in hand," Sessions said Friday. "Drug trafficking is an inherently violent business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you can't file a lawsuit in court. You collect it by the barrel of a gun."

The policy memo says prosecutors should "charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense"  something more likely to trigger mandatory minimum sentences. Those rules limit a judge's discretion and are typically dictated, for example, by the quantity of drugs involved in a crime.

In cases in which prosecutors decide to veer from the new rules, the exception will need to be approved by top supervisors and the reasons must be documented, allowing the Justice Department to track the handling of such cases by its 94 U.S. attorney's offices.

And even if they opt not to pursue the most serious charges, prosecutors are still required to provide judges with all the details of a case when defendants are sentenced, which could lengthen prison terms.

The directive rescinds guidance by Sessions' Democratic predecessor, Eric Holder, who told prosecutors they could in some cases leave drug quantities out of charging documents so as not to charge suspects with crimes that trigger long sentences. Holder's 2013 initiative, known as "Smart on Crime," was aimed at encouraging shorter sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and preserving Justice Department resources for more serious and violent criminals.

In a statement Friday, Holder called the reversal "dumb on crime," saying it would be "financially ruinous" for the department to focus its spending on incarceration rather than preventing and investigating crime.

"It is an ideologically cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety," Holder said.

The Obama policy shift coincided with U.S. Sentencing Commission changes that made tens of thousands of federal drug prisoners eligible for early release, and a clemency initiative that freed convicts deemed deserving of a second chance. Combined, those changes led to a steep decline in a federal prison population that now stands at just under 190,000, down from nearly 220,000 in 2013. Nearly half of those inmates are in custody for drug crimes, records show.

Obama officials cited that decline and a drop in the overall number of drug prosecutions as evidence that policies were working as intended. They argued prosecutors were getting pickier about the cases they were bringing and were seeking mandatory minimum sentences less often.

Still, some prosecutors felt constrained by the Holder directive and expressed concern that they'd lose plea bargaining leverage  and a key inducement for cooperation  without the ability to more freely pursue mandatory minimum sentences.

Sessions argues Holder's approach sidestepped federal laws that impose such sentences and created inconsistency across the country in the way defendants are punished.

"I trust our prosecutors in the field to make good judgments," Sessions said. "They deserve to be unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington. Rather, they must be permitted to apply the law to the facts of each investigation."

The reversal gives prosecutors better tools to go after drug traffickers and gangs, said Lawrence Leiser, head of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys.

Defense attorneys disagreed.

Barry Pollack, head of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said the new policy "marks a return to the failed policies of past administrations that caused mass incarceration, devastated families and communities, wasted untold millions of dollars and failed to make us any safer."

Staff writer Michael Boren contributed to this article.
As Americans celebrate Mother's Day, few are aware that the holiday's critical epicenter was in Philadelphia. This city hosted one of the first official and broader Mother's Day ceremonies, which stemmed from a great campaign of religiously motivated social reform and political action.

Moreover, some issues raised at that time remain relevant to current political disputes.

In the second half of the 19th century, maternal and infant mortality rates were falling in Western Europe. In America, however, they were nearly twice as high. Health authorities in Europe cleaned up water supplies, improved general sanitation, and experimented with publicly backed prenatal care. In America, meanwhile, diphtheria and typhoid were particularly deadly in rural areas. Prenatal care for those mothers, as well as education in simple hygiene, was largely nonexistent.

An early crusader on these issues was Anna Jarvis. In time, her work impressed a prominent Philadelphia businessman, John Wanamaker. Together, they helped fuel what we now know as Mother's Day.

Anna's mother, Ann, was the daughter of a Methodist minister in Virginia, and she married another "preacher's kid" in 1850. While he became a successful small-town merchant, Ann's life  according to the West Virginia State Archive  "revolved around her church." She emerged as a leader in an aggressive Sunday school movement, which, at the time, was new.

Ann also knew personal tragedy: Of her 12 children, only four survived to adulthood.

She resolved to make things better. In 1858, while pregnant with her sixth child, she launched Mother's Day Work Clubs in five towns to reduce infant mortality. These clubs raised money to buy medicines and hire mothers' helpers for those suffering from tuberculosis. The clubs inspected food and milk for contamination  long before governments took on such tasks  and they visited homes to teach mothers how to improve sanitation. Ann became a popular speaker, addressing subjects ranging from "Great Mothers of the Bible" to "Great Value of Hygiene for Women and Children."

While Ann and her friends focused on more rural locales, the Settlement House movement  associated with Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams  did similar work among immigrants in the cities. Their collective efforts swelled into a vast movement involving well over 10 million American women, now labeled by historians as the Maternalist campaign.

Backed by women's groups ranging from the Women's Trade Union League to the Daughters of the American Revolution, this coalition became one of the strongest lobbies ever seen in Washington.

Their worked helped:

Establish a federal bureau that published books on prenatal and infant care, which sold more than 1.5 million copies over the next decade.

Launch a National Baby Week, where more than 4,200 communities took part through lectures, baby-care seminars, and parades. As historian Molly Ladd-Taylor reports, "Like military heroes, mothers with infants in arms paraded down Main Street to the applause of flag-waving townspeople."

Provide funds for state-level programs that focused on maternal and infant hygiene, prenatal health clinics, and visiting nurses for pregnant and new mothers. This represented the first federal health-care entitlement.

The American Medical Association fiercely opposed the state funds as socialistic and "sob stuff." However, a nervous, all-male Congress  now facing fully enfranchised female voters for the first time  resolved in good bipartisan fashion to give the women what they wanted.

Over the next 10 years, the state funds helped nurses fan out across the land, holding 183,000 prenatal- and child-care conferences, building nearly 3,000 permanent maternity clinics, and visiting more than three million homes. These women were the professionalized, 20th-century version of Ann Reeves Jarvis. Their work contributed to a 10 percent decline in the overall infant mortality rate and a 45 percent drop in deaths by gastrointestinal disease, the ones most preventable though education.

Today, Mother's Day stems from the work of this powerful group. In 1876, Anna had heard her mother pray that "someone, sometime" might create a commemorative day honoring the service of mothers. More than 25 years later, Anna and a brother talked their mother into joining them in Philadelphia. Ann died on May 9, 1905, and in 1907, Anna organized a modest "Mother's Day" ceremony at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, W.Va., which her parents had helped to found.

In 1908, Wanamaker stepped in. A devout Christian, he taught a huge Sunday school class and devoted his Sundays to religious work. Like Ann Jarvis, he also knew personal tragedy. Two of his children had died.

Wanamaker financed Anna Jarvis' campaign to honor motherhood. The first official and broader Mother's Day ceremonies convened that year in Grafton and Philadelphia. Wanamaker knew his store's auditorium would be too small, so he arranged a gathering at the plaza in front of City Hall.

It drew a crowd of 15,000.

After intense lobbying by Anna Jarvis and Wanamaker, President Woodrow Wilson signed a resolution in 1914 declaring the second Sunday of May as Mother's Day. A very personal triumph for Anna Jarvis, the resolution was also part of the broader Maternalist ascendancy.

These matters remain relevant. Notably, the question of whether to require health-insurance policies to include prenatal and maternal coverage is again before Congress. The Maternalists, I suspect, would have given a clear answer.

Allan Carlson is a scholar adviser to the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, which is being built on Independence Mall; president emeritus of the Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society; and editor of The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy. acarlson@profam.org
An American picks up a newspaper and reads of a new national crisis: Is it a foreign plot against America? Domestic unrest or violence in the streets of the capital? Is Congress stymied by party politics? Perhaps it's the threat of involvement in another world war?

This is, of course, daily news in 2017; but it was also the daily fare in the 1790s. And in those fraught years, the United States was not a world power; it was a fledgling nation whose survival was in doubt.

It was the task of that decade's two Federalist presidents, George Washington and John Adams, both to win the loyalty of Americans to the new national government and to gain an acknowledgment from European powers that the United States was indeed an independent, sovereign nation.

During his first administration, Washington faced a rebellion of angry western farmers who denied the federal Congress any right to tax them. He had to engage in a delicate negotiation with Great Britain to prevent a second war between the former Mother Country and its colonies. And he had to deal with a French minister who ran amok, ignoring Washington's explicit declaration of neutrality in the war raging in Europe.

As Washington's successor, Adams faced equally dire crises, including threats of secession that came as a response to his administration's repressive laws intended to silence newspaper opposition to federal policies and deliver a crushing blow to Thomas Jefferson's opposition party.

If unanswered, any of these challenges might have been fatal to an untested and still highly contested new Constitution and to the experiment in a national representative government that it established. Yet a mishandling of the response could be equally disastrous. For example, a failure to put down the western farmers' "whiskey rebellion" could lead other citizens to resist  or ignore  congressional laws they disliked.

But too abrupt a suppression of the rebellion was certain to conjure up images of a central government as tyrannical and abusive as the government of George III. Washington had to move cautiously and exhaust all legal, judicial, and political means to enforce the law before ordering military action. Adams moved with equal delicacy when he found himself confronting new existential threats to his young nation.

The Federalists made many mistakes and they frequently acted in bald self-interest. Yet during the 11 years they dominated the federal government they managed not only to sustain a fragile experiment in representative government but also to nurture a critically important sense of national identity in American citizens.

The arc of this essential and positive nationalism can be followed with each crisis. American support for Washington's military action against the whiskey rebels was based on the people's love and respect for a single man, George Washington. But by the time Edmund Genet was recalled to France, that support had been institutionalized; it was the office of the Executive, not the man who held it, that Americans would henceforth rely on to direct the nation's foreign policies.

Under Adams, the attachment to the nation's government grew. The French insults to American sovereignty during the XYZ Affair made Americans more firmly conscious that they were not simply Virginians, or Pennsylvanians, or New Yorkers; they were united as Americans.

Finally in their response to the repressive Alien and Sedition Acts, the legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky forced an examination of the relative sovereignty of the federal government and the state governments. Yet where once any legitimacy of a national government was challenged, these Southern legislators only challenged the extent of the federal government's power, not its source. They defended the rights of the states, but they did not deny the authority of the Constitution or its government. When Jefferson and his Republican Party unseated the Federalists in the election of 1800, the work of the Federalists was done: the American nationalism they had fostered would survive until it was threatened by Civil War.

In the 1790s, the Federalists nurtured a nationalism based on the people's commitment to their government and their sense of shared responsibility for its actions and its reputation in the wider world. Today, nationalism has taken on a more restrictive and negative character and it divides us rather than unites us. We can only hope that, like Washington and Adams, the men and women we elect will appreciate the complexities of governance and the value of a shared pride in the policies our nation embraces and the paths it pursues.

Carol Berkin, professor of history at City University of New York, will discuss her new book, "A Sovereign People," on Thursday at noon at the National Constitution Center. For information, visit www.constitutioncenter.org/debate or call 215-409-6700.
Opposition to rigged elections is growing in Pennsylvania, where advocates have secured 101 co-sponsors on House and Senate bills aimed at redrawing the state's preposterous legislative and congressional districts.

The clearest result of Pennsylvania gerrymandering is poor representation, and few regions are more hobbled by that than Philadelphia. The city's schools are historically underfunded and the city can't get traction in the legislature on curbing illegal guns.

For some reason, six Philadelphia lawmakers don't seem to understand that if legislative districts were drawn less lopsided, the city would have a better chance to resolve its issues. Under the current arrangement, Harrisburg doesn't even have to listen because legislative leaders are able to pick their voters and ensure eternal job security.

Republicans controlled the maps the last time boundaries were drawn and sketched pockets of Republican voters, which gave them 13 congressional seats to Democrats' five. In the legislature, Republicans hold a 122-80 advantage in the House and 34-16 edge in the Senate. That's cheating because the state has 4.2 million Democrats to 3.3 million Republicans. Democrats might have more seats if their leaders had not cut backroom deals to save their own seats.

Maybe that's why six city legislators aren't enthusiastic about creating an independent citizens commission that would draw new legislative boundary lines. The diehards apparently want to keep their seats the old-fashioned way, through political machines uninterested in playing fair.

The naysayers to progress include State Sen. Sharif Street, the son of former Mayor John Street, who was bequeathed the seat by former Sen. Shirley Kitchen; State Sen. Christine Tartaglione who holds office by virtue of her birth within a politically active family; State Sen. John Sabatina, son of a Philadelphia ward leader; and State Sen. Vincent Hughes, who has long complained about Philadelphia's underfunded schools. Now is Hughes' chance to fix that for future generations. He and the royal three should sign on to the bill and lobby for it with their colleagues.

Democrats in the city's House delegation are well represented among the bill's supporters, and Republican State Rep. John Taylor is a co-sponsor. But it's hard to understand why State Rep. Kevin Boyle, who says he favors good government, isn't a co-sponsor too. Republican State Rep. Martina White, who seems to want her party to keep a grip on its stolen majority, also is missing in action.

The political party with the most seats has routinely sat on bills that would give the public more control over its representation, and sadly the public has let it slide.

But this time feels different. The advocacy group, Fair Districts PA, reports that 9,000 people have learned about gerrymandering and fair representation at meetings around the state. More are scheduled in Jenkintown, Doylestown, Philadelphia, Malvern, and elsewhere, including Robesonia. You can learn more at www.fairdistrictspa.com.

GOP leaders in the statehouse shouldn't be allowed to block fair representation. Any legislator with the slightest concern for voters should support this bill and make it impossible for it to be ignored.
When entangled elements make it hard to reach sound analyses, conspiracy theories appear to be a useful tool to explain the unexplained. The same applies perfectly to the situation in the Middle East. Many observers are not yet ready to cede their de facto approach, albeit every single regional development shows the evident marks of a crucial role for foreign powers (either super or regional) not only in what has been taking place but for a debacle that has been erupting in the region for decades, perhaps centuries. Such indicators lead to a strong understanding that dramatic changes might be within striking distance.

For a start, the unity of the Arabs cant be benign for foreign powers who have interests in the region. If they were united, they would be a power that wont let others use them or have imperialist dreams in such a geostrategically important region. Irans growing role in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon is the starkest example of how division, failed-state scenarios and weak governments are nothing but a stepping stone for other powers to sneak in, penetrate and then dominate.

This hypothesis is not limited to the old definition of powers in the form of states; it also includes those novel trans-border actors such as terrorist groups. That said, it should not be surprising to see Al-Qaeda  and then Daesh  appear and flourish in Iraq, following the chaos resulting from the US invasion and occupation. The same concept of chaos and failed-state-scenario applies to Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen.

History is a good starting point to prove how major powers intervened in this region to secure their strategic interests. The examples are numerous, but perhaps the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement was the most obvious case of major powers agreeing to divide the Arab world into competing states. Although the Arabs have never lived in one single state, they have lived in particularly large, interconnected regions such as the Levant (covering what is now occupied Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan) and the Kingdom of Egypt and Sudan (now divided into two states).

Foreign intervention and the fragmentation of the Arabs took a sharper line with the US occupation of Iraq. This occupation not only meant the fall of a state, a president and a dictatorship, or even an end to the Arab nationalism that Saddam Hussein was one of the last Arab leaders to embrace; it also meant a geopolitical earthquake in the whole regional order, with a far-reaching change in the balance of power that prevailed in the Middle East at large.

Intriguingly, the collapse of Saddams regime meant that Iraq would become prey to Iran. It also meant the stirring up of sectarian strife between the majority of Iraqis who are Shia living for decades under a Sunni ruler, and the minority of Sunnis who were privileged under the Baath regime of Saddam. This ignited the separatist tendencies of the Kurds in the north. The possible repercussions were worthy of much more consideration before the US occupied and then withdrew from Iraq.

History aside, these developments take us to the emergence (or creation by certain powers, if we want to be honest) of a new regional actor known as Daesh. This so-called Islamic State presents a bizarre manifestation of a highly radical interpretation of Sunni Islam.

Noteworthy in this context is that Daesh did not exist before the US occupation of Iraq and its roots can be traced to Al-Qaeda affiliated Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in 2004. In response to the chasm of mistrust between the various sects and the immense danger that this group posed, the other sects became more anxious to protect themselves, and at times retaliate.

As a result, the role of sectarian militias increased and, to add insult to injury, the separatist tendencies have been justified more than at any time in the past. The calls by Iraqi Kurds for independence have resonated in other countries and encouraged the Kurds in Syria and Turkey to follow suit; we are likely to see another call from Kurds in Iran sooner or later.

Apparently, like their predecessors in the Sykes-Picot era, the superpowers have found that re-fragmenting and re-dividing the region further would better serve their strategic interests. The Kurdish element is critical in the Middle East regional equation, particularly because the separatist tendencies by Kurds in one country have led to others in neighbouring states. In a surprising move, Washington has put its strategic relationship with Turkey at stake with the Trump Administration striking a novel partnership deal with a number of Kurdish groups in Syria.

Walid Faris, who served as Middle East affairs adviser during the Trump election campaign, told Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that Damascus fully acknowledges that the US administration would not allow the regime to move its forces to the east of Syria, neither toward Al-Hasaka nor toward the anti-Daesh combat zones. This, according to Faris, explains why the US dispatched additional US Marines to north-east Syria. In other words, Washington is yearning to become the backbone of the forces that will advance and liberate the swathes of territory controlled by Daesh, the areas over which Washington would not allow the regime to regain control.

Movements in the field lead to a similar conclusion. In fact, with the mounting presence of major powers in the Syrian conflict, these developments show that the role of other actors (militias like Hezbollah, Daesh and Al-Nusra, or states like Iran and Turkey) will come to an end. In other words, such transformations (especially the growing role of the Russian forces) may usher in the end of the Iranian presence in Syria.

The departure of the other militias appears to be just around the corner, at least in areas controlled by the Syrian regime. The deployment of the Russian forces near the Lebanese border is a case in point, where Hezbollahs role has ended, mainly after achieving a demographic change and consolidating a sectarian structure for the various regions inside Syria.

Similarly, the remarkable presence of the US and growing numbers of its troops on the ground has led to parallel scenarios within Sunni areas (currently occupied by Daesh) or Kurdish zones. It looks as if an agreement was reached between the two major powers to divide Syria into spheres of influence based on sectarian or ethnic parameters.

Although Syria was previously an exclusively Russian domain, the significant role and interests of Iran were not always well-received in Moscow. Dividing Syria between Moscow and Washington and eliminating the role of other actors appears to be a win-win situation for the Americans and the Russians.

Lest there be any misunderstanding about this outcome, since the outbreak of Arab revolts in 2011, Syria and Bashar Al-Assad himself were not the sole cards held by Russia in the Middle East. Moscow has been developing strategic relations and forging broader interests in several other Middle East states, including Israel, Egypt and even Turkey. On the other hand, it is obvious that the new US administration has a clearer vision of what can be done in Syria when compared to Obama.

In this context, Dr Faris says that despite the political quarrels, a meeting between President Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin could happen soon. Their publicly agreed upon solution in Syria passes through one gate: the withdrawal of all foreign armed forces and militias, namely Hezbollah, the Iraqi militias, Al-Basdaran, Al-Qaeda, Daesh, Al-Nusra and all of those who reached Syria with the assistance of the Iranian regime. Faris adds that Washington and its NATO allies on the one hand and Russia and its international partners such as China on the other can agree on this solution.

Furthermore, all of those parties also agree that the first stage that can lead to a solution in Syria begins with the disappearance of Daesh. Following this, a moderate Arab Sunni authority must assume power in the areas currently controlled by the militants.

The logic behind such a step is that if Daesh is replaced by the Syrian regime  like what is happening in Iraq  this may create a sectarian problem in those areas. Hence, according to Faris, the role of a number of moderate Sunni Arab countries would be important because there is a need for an alliance on the ground, as the US is not ready for a major troop deployment.

We might argue that Syria is thus heading toward a tripartite division: a Russian sphere of influence, wherein the Syrian regime and its Alawi (Shia) Arab sect lives; a US sphere of influence, with the Sunni Arab opposition and its groups; and another US sphere of influence, for the Kurds. Needless to say, we can easily see a mirror image in Iraq, which is mired with sectarian and ethnic traps and a horde of uncertainties, and its divisions are clearer than ever before.

As such, it wont be outlandish to see the end of the Syrian war soon, and in a similar way the disappearance of Daesh, especially after it has almost fulfilled its sinister mandate and purpose for which it was established; that is, the cementing of regional sectarian strife. Daesh cant have any future in the agreed upon scenario, and thus its disappearance becomes inevitable.
Black Lives Matter activist Greg Akili was part of a group of people who were tossed out of a Los Angeles Police Commission meeting on Feb. 9, 2016 for shouting at commissioners. Akili was told to shut up or get out. He didn't quiet down, so two officers escorted him outside. Commission executive director Richard Tefank followed and, according to Akili, ordered his arrest after he had been released.

Akili was charged with battery on a police officer.

The city's case didn't go well. The jury deadlocked, and the City Attorney's Office moved to dismiss the case. Now Akili is suing the city, the commission and the Los Angeles Police Department in federal court, alleging violations of his civil rights.

The suit, filed this week, alleges that Akili was falsely imprisoned, unjustly assaulted, arrested without probable cause and subject to lies "concocted" by police at the highest levels of the department, and "outrageous conduct" that caused him emotional distress. The filing asks for $4 million in damages, attorney's fees and individual damages from those involved, the LA Weekly reports.
A Columbus, OH, deputy chief has found the actions of an officer shown on video kicking a restrained man as unreasonable, according to a statement released Wednesday afternoon.

Witnesses to the April 8 incident posted a video on YouTube of Demarko Anderson, 26 lying on his chest on a concrete driveway. Anderson appears to be restrained by Officer Darren Stephens with his hands behind his back when Officer Zachary Rosen darts in and strikes him once in the head with his left foot.

Officers were responding to a report of a man with a gun near a residence in Linden. Stephens watched Anderson walking away from a Maize Road residence and tried to handcuff him, according to a police report. Anderson pulled away, then elbowed Stephens in the face and ran south. Stephens was able to catch Anderson and handcuff him.

Rosen, 32, a Columbus Division of Police officer since December 2010, told investigators that he was fearful Anderson still had a gun, so he ran at full speed and stomped once on Andersons left shoulder.

If the fear of a weapon and threat of death were real, it makes no sense that Officer Rosen stood around after the apprehension and did not search Mr. Anderson for weapons, Deputy Chief Thomas Quinlan wrote in a report.

Quinlan overruled other supervisors in the chain of command with his decision, which recommended Rosen be disciplined, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Police in suburban Cleveland say a half-naked man intentionally crashed his car into a closed convenience store to get beer, injuring himself and a store employee.

Rocky River, OH, police say the 45-year-old driver was wearing nothing from the waist down when he crashed through a store wall early Sunday and told the worker he needed beer.

Police say the man barricaded himself in a beer cooler and told police to shoot him, but they subdued him with a stun device, Cincinnati.com reports.
Massachusetts officers arrest a suspect who reportedly stole a patrol vehicle and led them on a pursuit. (Photo: WCVB Screen Shot)

Hanson, MA, police said that a man who led them on a chase overnight was able to get into an officer's cruiser and prolong his crime spree.

The series of events began at 1 a.m. Thursday when officers said they saw a 2010 Chevy Malibu speeding and failing to stop at a stop sign. The driver, identified as Daniel Egan, refused to pull over and a pursuit ensued, WCVB TV reports.

The Malibu's tires were punctured and Egan brought it to a stop and fled into the woods, police say.

"Officers attempted to take Mr. Egan into custody but he managed to escape," police said. "Egan then got into and fled in a marked (Halifax PD) cruiser."

Egan was apprehended after another 20-minute pursuit, police say.
Brandon Carpenter is charged with attempted murder. Police say three officers were injured when he opened fire on them. (Photo: Louisiana State Police)

A Louisiana man who opened fire on law enforcement officers Thursday afternoon and injured three has been charged with attempted first-degree murder.

A trooper with Louisiana State Police, a Marksville police officer and a Simmesport police officer were injured during the shooting in Avoyelles Parish, a spokesperson with the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff's Office told WAFB TV Thursday.

The Simmesport officer was treated on the scene while the other two were transported to a hospital. LSP said it is still unknown if the Simmesport officer was shot or hit by flying debris. Officials reported the injuries the trooper and Marksville officer suffered are not considered life-threatening.

According to the Avoyelles Parish Sheriffs Office, the shooting happened in Moreauville after a car chase that began in Hessmer. LSP officials said they were attempting to serve a warrant on Brandon Carpenter, 35, when he led officers on a chase through parts of the Parish before barricading himself inside a home in the Longbridge area.

A standoff then took place between responding officers and the suspect. A SWAT team was called out to assist in apprehending Carpenter. He was taken into custody around 7:30 p.m.
A gunman ambushed a police officer in central Ohio Friday morning and then shot two more people inside a nursing home, authorities say. The officer, who has not been identified, has died from his wounds.

According to WBNS, an active shooter was reported in Kirkersville around 7:45 a.m. at Pine Kirk Care Center. The gunman shot the officer and then went into the nursing home where he shot two more people.

The gunman then turned the gun on himself. Local police said there was no longer an active threat to the community, Fox 59 reports.
A shooting that left four people dead, including the village's just-hired police chief, has left Kirkersville, OH, shaken.

Kirkersville Chief Steven Eric Disario, 36, and two employees at the Pine Kirk Care Center nursing home in Kirkersville were shot and killed early Friday. The suspected shooter also is dead, the Newark Advocate reports.

Kirkersville is normally a quiet  some would call it sleepy  village with a listed population of 590. Only one stop light, at the intersection of Main Street and Outville Road, stops traffic flowing east and west through the village.

Chief Disario had only accepted the office a few weeks ago. He was the father of six and his wife is pregnant, WOSU reports.
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Malcolm Nances words should send a shiver down the spine of those who are involved in the Trump Russia conspiracy plot as well as those Republicans who are enabling it.

To anyone who may have been part of the plot? Theyre (the FBI) going to find out and they (the people who colluded with Russia) are going to regret it, counterterrorism analyst and intelligence expert Malcolm Nance said on MSNBCs Deadline Whitehouse with Nicole Wallace.

Malcolm Nance @MalcolmNance on the future of the FBI Trump/Russia investigation "these are people who hunt America's enemies within the U.S. pic.twitter.com/XPAQP3xVUx  This Is Not Normal (@NetworkJunkyz) May 11, 2017

Its the spy hunters of the United States who are investigating this case, the intelligence expert told Wallace.

Wallace asked Nance if Trump firing Comey affects the FBIs morale and if it would impact the investigation. Nance said, Nothing happens to their investigation.

This particular division of the FBI these are people who hunt Americas enemies within the United States, the counterterrorism expert explained. This is not a normal investigation of the FBI by any stretch of the imagination. They are looking for Americans or foreign espionage officers who have had communications and affected this cyber warfare operations against the United States. Theyre not going to let this up.

Asked if they will double down in response to the interference with their investigation, Nance answered, Oh, yeah, thats exactly whats going to happen. These guys are bloodhounds Any kind of obstruction of justice, thats felony for them.

I think this is only going to deepen their determination to get to the truth, Nance continued. The President could have been absolved of all of this we dont know, but when they get to the bottom of it, whoever is in the way, anyone whos had any contact with any foreign intelligence, anyone that may be a part of a plot, theyre going to find out and theyre going to regret it.

Boom. Thats a warning shot to the worms waiting to turn and to Republicans who are enabling and shielding the people behind this attack on the United States.

The FBI has got this, no matter how often Donald Trump and his people try to interfere with the Russia investigation. This faction of the FBI is tasked with finding enemies within America.

The President of the United States is being investigated by the faction of the FBI that searches for enemies within.

Republicans need to stop aiding and abetting Donald Trumps obstruction of justice.
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Just a week into his presidency, Donald Trump asked then-FBI Director James Comey to a private dinner at the White House where he demanded Comeys loyalty, according to a rather jaw-dropping report in The New York Times.

According to the Times, Comey declined to give him loyalty  only promising the president honesty  and the former FBI director believes it was that moment which set in motion a chain of events that led to his firing this week.

More from the report:

The conversation that night in January, Mr. Comey now believes, was a harbinger of his downfall this week as head of the F.B.I., according to two people who have heard his account of the dinner. As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trumps rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him. Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not reliable in the conventional political sense.

Like just about every damning detail in this scandalous saga, the Trump people are flatly denying it  though, if the past is prologue, it will soon be revealed as truth.

More from the report:

The White House on Wednesday said this account is not correct. And Mr. Trump, in an interview on Thursday with NBC, described a far different dinner conversation with Mr. Comey in which the director asked to have the meeting and the question of loyalty never came up. It was not clear whether he was talking about the same meal, but they are believed to have had only one dinner together. By Mr. Comeys account, his answer to Mr. Trumps initial question apparently did not satisfy the president, the associates said. Later in the dinner, Mr. Trump again said to Mr. Comey that he needed his loyalty. Mr. Comey again replied that he would give him honesty and did not pledge his loyalty, according to the account of the conversation.

The reported private dinner between Comey and the president is alarming for several major reasons.

First and foremost, as The New York Times noted in its story, it suggests that Trump has no idea what the relationship traditionally is between the president and the FBI. A president asking a sitting FBI director  a person supposed to be apolitical  to pledge his loyalty undercuts the

Even more troubling than Trumps ignorance is that this suggests Trump is fearful of what the FBI may find, so he is asking not for fairness or independence, but loyalty. Comey declined to do so, and he paid the price.

The firing appears to be the first step in Trumps long-term goal of turning the FBI into an extension of his own political operation  and a short-term effort to put a stop to the runaway train known as the Russia investigation.
RICEVILLE | For the past 36 years, Bob Noble has seen many changes in cattle feeding and the beef industry as a whole.

The industry, he believes, is a "noble" profession.

Not every morning, but doing chores on Christmas morning is almost a religious experience, because you know you are taking care of nature and providing for humans," he said.

Bob, his wife, Jayne, and their three children live on the farm where Bob was raised west of Riceville.

Nobles have fed cattle on the farmstead for the past 36 years. My dad, Harlan, was a general farmer with different types of livestock including milk cows," Noble said. "The last 20 years Dad fed cattle."

Prior to returning to his home farm, Noble, who graduated from Oklahoma State, worked at one of the huge Monfort cattle feeding facilities near Greely, Colorado, which finished out about a 100,000 head of fat cattle a year.

In 1981, he returned home and began farming near Riceville. He is District 5 director of the Iowa Cattlemen's Association and is a voting delegate for the Iowa Cattlemen's Association on the marketing committee for the National Cattlemen Beef Association.

Over the years, he said obvious changes of technology includes feeding with implants, additives and distiller products from ethanol plants.

In the 1960s, Noble said Iowa was the top cattle feeding state in the country, until the Russian corn deal in the 1970s.

Cattle feeding operations then moved to the higher plains and southwest, where Noble said producers used milo and sorghum to fatten their beef.

During that period, Noble said Iowa fell to 11th in the nation in beef production, but now its coming back, because of the distillers' byproduct. Iowa is now ranked fourth or fifth in the nation, according to Noble.

Distillers' grain has brought cattle feeding back to Iowa, and packing plants are moving back, too, he said.

In the Corn Belt, Noble said one of the biggest problems for the cattle industry is public industry.

He feels livestock producers have been demonized because of some reports of animal abuse.

Most people do a very good job of taking care of livestock, he said.

To offset that, Noble said producers need to get their stories to consumers.

Noble once participated with a small packing company that labeled each carcass so customers could pull up an app to see the story of the cattle farmers who produced the beef. A restaurant owner told Noble the unique service impressed his clientele.

Marketing beef and buying replacement cattle has also changed, Noble said.

Packing company buyers used to travel from farm to farm looking for cattle to purchase, but today Noble uses a marketing service. When Noble is ready to sell cattle, the service is contacted and the representative works with various packing companies, striking the deal between the producer and the company.

When Noble looks for replacement feeders, he uses the same service. The marketing agent, who is in contact with cow-calf operations, will find the size and condition of cattle Noble requests and sets up delivery dates and times. Though the marketing service costs, Noble said it saves lots of time and travel.

Due to modern record keeping, The Beef Quality Assurance Program can visit farms to verify drug records, evaluate how cattle is handled, observe pen conditions and check for good animal husbandry.

"It links the producer with the public, and puts a face to the steak they consume, he said.

While current U.S. trade talks with China seem promising, Noble cautioned China is resistant to using a non-hormone growth promoter, which is common in U.S. beef production. Noble said that is a major problem in exporting beef to China.

Noble said he is also concerned whether the government will continue to allocate funding for the Foreign Animal Disease Program. Bio-security is a big issue, Noble said.
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In a letter to Trumps White House counsel, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform requested that all tapes and correspondence between Trump and former FBI Director James Comey be turned over to congressional investigators.

In a letter, aa provided to Politicususa, to White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn II, House Democrats wrote:

President Trump took to Twitter earlier today to threaten former FBI Director James Comey, stating that he better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Under Section 1512 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, it is a crime to intimidate or threaten any potential witness with the intent to influence, delay, or prevent their official testimony.

The Presidents actions this morningas well as his admission yesterday on national television that he fired Director Comey because he was investigating Trump campaign officials and their connections to the Russian governmentraise the specter of possible intimidation and obstruction of justice. The Presidents actions also risk undermining the ongoing criminal and counter-intelligence investigations and the independence of federal law enforcement agencies.

We believe Congress should immediately seek the testimony of Director Comey to better understand the circumstances surrounding these events, although no House Committee Chairman has yet agreed to any such hearings.

Under normal circumstances, we would not consider credible any claims that the White House may have taped conversations of meetings with the President. However, because of the many false statements made by White House officials this week, we are compelled to ask whether any such recordings do in fact exist. If so, we request copies of all recordings in possession of the White House regarding this matter.

We also request all documents, memoranda, analyses, emails, and other communications relating to the Presidents decision to dismiss Director Comeya decision which the President declared yesterday he planned to make regardless of [the Deputy Attorney Generals] recommendationand all discussions with Director Comey.

We would ask that you respond to this letter as promptly as possible, but in any event no later than the close of business of Thursday, May 25, 2017.

The letter sent by the Democrats is the first formal step towards obtaining any White House tapes, transcripts, and/or documents related to the Comey firing. If the White House doesnt comply and lets be honest, they probably wont; Democrats will then escalate possibly going as far as suing the president and the White House for access to the tapes and documents.

Trump created this situation with his heavy-handed attempt to intimidate James Comey. No one would even be thinking about the possibility of tapes existing if it wasnt for Trumps tweet.

The letter from Rep. John Conyers, Jr., the Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary and Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is a reminder of what is at stake in the 2018 midterm elections. If you are a concerned American who wants a real investigation into Donald Trump, the best way for that to happen is to elect a Democratically controlled Congress in 2018.

The Democrats are doing everything that they can, and they are putting the wheels in motion to force Trump to turn over all Comey related materials.

It is time to figure out exactly what Donald Trump is hiding.
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Former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean dropped a profound truth when he stated that it is Trump, not Comey, who needs to worry about secret tapes.

Obviously, President Trump is confused. He is the one who must hope there are no tapes. Honest people don't have problems being taped. https://t.co/wTy1oLPo9d  John Dean (@JohnWDean) May 12, 2017

John Dean was right.

CNN reported that Comey isnt sweating any tapes:

Former FBI Director James Comey is not worried about any tapes of conversations between him and President Donald Trump, a source familiar with the matter told CNN Friday, adding that if there is a tape, theres nothing he is worried about that could be on it.

Innocent people dont need to worry about tapes. James Comey knows what he said, and he seems very confident that if there is a tape, theres nothing on it for him to worried about. The person who needs to be worried about the existence of tapes is Trump.

Trump cant stop with the references and parallels to Richard Nixon. As the Access Hollywood tape demonstrated, Trump already has a bad history with tapes. James Comey would likely welcome any tapes or evidence that would debunk the White Houses smear campaign against him.

John Dean has first-hand experience when it comes to tapes. When Mr. Dean speaks, it would be wise for the president and his administration to listen.
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Rep. Adam Schiff demanded that Trump turn over any secret recordings that he made in the White House to Congress, as the Russia scandal has taken another bad turn for Trump.

In a statement provided to PoliticusUSA, Rep. Schiff (D-CA) said:

Today, the President made two extraordinary statements, one intended to threaten the FBI Director he just fired in the middle of the Russia investigation  and who may now be a witness  and the other to justify the misleading and conflicting explanations that he and his staff have given for that firing.

If the President has tapes of his conversations with Director Comey, it is because the President himself made them. For a President who baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him, that Mr. Trump would suggest that he, himself, may have engaged in such conduct is staggering. The President should immediately provide any such recordings to Congress or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading  and in this case threatening  statement.

Finally, and with respect to the Presidents suggestion that as a very busy person, he doesnt have time to ensure that his spokespeople are accurately portraying his actions  it is difficult to know how to respond  except to say, being truthful with the American people is a core responsibility of the job. If he did not want to willingly undertake even the minimal requirements of the Presidency, it would have been far better for him to have considered that before he chose to run for the highest office in the land.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicers refusal to comment on whether or not Trump is taping conversations in the White House was virtually a confirmation that secret White House recordings exist. Congressional investigators could end up taking Trump to court if they find out that secret tapes do exist.

There was zero conversation about secret White House tapes until Trump brought up the possibility of secret recordings on Twitter. Trumps comments did not go unnoticed, and now one of the top congressional investigators looking into the Russia scandal wants to know more.

Things just went from really bad to a whole lot worse for Donald Trump.
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Donald Trumps attorney made a big mistake on Friday when he claimed that the President Of The United States has no income from Russia, with few exceptions.

Here it is from the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP)  Trump lawyer: Tax returns from past 10 years show no "income of any type from Russian sources," with few exceptions.  Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 12, 2017

Those exceptions are an admission that Trump did have income from Russia over the past decade. They also likely explain at least part of the reason why the President will not release his tax returns.

It was just three days ago that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer claimed that Trump has no business in Russia:

Spicer said, So the president obviously was aware of Sen. Grahamss suggestion after he made it today, and hes fine with that. He has no business in Russia. He has no connections to Russia, so he welcomes that. In fact, he has already charged a leading law firm in Washington, D.C. to send a certified letter to Sen. Graham to that point that he has no connections to Russia, so that should be a really easy look.

On Tuesday the White House said that Trump had no business dealings with Russia. By Friday, Trumps lawyer changes the story to he had no income from Russia with exceptions.

It is all falling apart for Trump. Firing Comey was his big mistake. The dominoes are starting to fall, and it is just a matter of time before all of this presidents secrets are revealed.
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Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Showers this evening becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Showers this evening becoming a steady rain overnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.
BRITT  Kaylee Hudspeth lay motionless on the ground. Nick Lemmon and David Wade sat dazed in a damaged car. Natalie Lemmon climbed out of another damaged vehicle and ran over to Hudspeth to start chest compressions.

The scene wasn't real as it was part of a mock prom accident staged late last month in the high school parking lot.

The event was a training opportunity for West Hancock Ambulance Service, Britt fire and police, Hancock County Health System and Mercy Air Med.

The scene may not have been real, but the West Hancock High School students brought it to life for their fellow students and teachers to show the dangers of impaired driving.

"It hit home," Wade said.

Wade and Nick Lemmon started arguing over who was to blame while being joined by Josh Kreitlow. Lemmon yelled at Wade, saying he shouldn't have been drinking, as Anna Chizek leaned outside of the pickup's window.

"None of that was rehearsed," Lemmon said.

Soon, West Hancock Ambulance Service and Britt Police Department personnel arrived on the scene.

WHAS members took over tending to Hudspeth while a police officer had Wade go through a sobriety test. Britt Fire Department personnel worked at tearing the doors off of the damaged vehicle to free Zamago.

A Mercy Air Med helicopter soon landed in the nearby ballfield. WHAS and fire department members transported mock accident victims Sydney Zamago and Hudspeth to the waiting helicopter and ambulance.

Action then moved to the inside of the school where Hancock County Health System employees lifted Hudspeth off a gurney to an emergency room table.

She was then pronounced dead as her parents for the disaster training, Brian Peterson and Karie Terhark, broke down in the waiting room.

"You never want it to happen to someone you know, but it does," Terhark said.

She runs the Allies for Substance Abuse Prevention. Terhark said she hoped the mock accident helped students "take the message and bring it home."

Keith Duenow, the Public Resources Manager for the Iowa State Patrol, said that message was for the students to think about their actions before driving.

"We want you to see that there are dire consequences when you make bad decisions," he said.

Those decisions could be drinking before driving, or even texting while driving.

Duenow encouraged the students to change their thought process before making those decisions.

"We want to give you as much as we can to help you make better choices," he said. "We want you to be safe."
MASON CITY | A man allegedly assaulted a Mercy Medical Center-North Iowa employee and caused damage to the building Wednesday.

Brian L. Hahn, 47, Kensett, has been charged with felony second-degree criminal mischief and misdemeanor assault causing bodily injury.

Hahn was at the hospital at around 8 a.m. waiting to see a doctor when he got upset and began to intentionally slam the door of the room into a wall, causing about $3,000 in damage, according to a Mason City Police Department criminal complaint.

Hahn allegedly yelled at a hospital employee and then charged and grabbed the employee, causing both of them to fall.

The employee's left arm was injured, according to the police.

Hahn was booked into the Cerro Gordo County Jail and was released after a $5,000 surety bond was posted.

He made his initial court appearance on Friday. He has submitted a written plea of not guilty through his attorney.

Mary Pieper
Virgo the Virgin is one of only three constellations representing women that we can see over the course of the year. Andromeda the Princess and Cassiopeia the Queen are the only other ladies of the sky.

I know you've seen Cassiopeia before, although you may not have known what you were stargazing at. Cassiopeia is that bright "W" that you see in the northern sky every single night as it makes a tight circle around Polaris, the North Star, every 24 hours.

This time of year look for the "W" in the very low northern sky. You can't miss it. It's as bright as the Big Dipper. The "W" outlines the throne that Queen Cassiopeia is tied into because she boasted that she was more beautiful than Hera, the queen of all the gods.

As she spins around the North Star, sometimes she's lying on her back as she is now, but in the early winter when the "W" is upside down she's hanging by the ropes! It's not a good idea to tick off the queen of the gods.

Unfortunately, Virgo the Virgin is not so prominent. It's a large but faint constellation. You need really dark skies and lot of patience to see Virgo. It's what I call a stargazing "deep track."

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How this faint collection of stars about halfway up in the southern sky is supposed to be the goddess of fertility is a mystery to me. It usually only has one bright star, Spica, but this year the constellation is hosting the really bright planet Jupiter, shining above Spica. Since Virgo is one of the 13 zodiac constellations, it does host the moon and planets from time to time.

The best way to find Virgo this spring, at least to start with, is to find Jupiter. Then go to Spica and do the best you can. Admittedly it's not only faint, but not all that well defined, either.

Spica itself is a fascinating star. It's a blue giant star about 263 light-years, or about 1,519 trillion miles, away from Earth. It's 10 times as massive and over five times larger than our sun, with a girth of almost 5 million miles. Spica is a lot hotter than our sun, with a surface temperature well over 30,000 degrees. Spica is also moving away from us at a speed of 2,200 mph, although no farewell parties are planned for Spica anytime soon. Despite its tremendous fleeing speed, it will still adorn our spring and summer heavens for many evenings to come.

If you have a larger telescope, and you're really out in the boonies, you have a chance of seeing at least a few of the many galaxies that are about 60 million light-years from Earth. As you can see on the diagram, these galaxies are located a little to the right of Virgo. Since Virgo is such a faint constellation, it's easier to use Jupiter as a bearing. The Virgo cluster will be 20 degrees, or about two fist-widths at arm's length, above and little to the right of Jupiter.

You are going to need a moderate to larger telescope to see these galaxies, but even at with that you might be less than overwhelmed visually. At best they will mainly be fuzzy patches, but those fuzzy patches are made up of whole islands of stars, each one of them with billions and billions of stars. By the way, if you flew to the Virgo cluster of galaxies in a jet airliner that flew at an average speed of 500 miles per hour, it would only take you 70,000 trillion years to get there. That flight better have a movie!

To many cultures, including the Greeks and Egyptians, Virgo the Virgin represents the goddess of fertility. She holds in her hand a shaft of wheat. In fact, farmers took the first sighting of Virgo with Spica as a cue to start their spring planting.

When she leaves the evening sky four to five months later, the growing season is over. According to the mythology, that's when Virgo leaves the land of the living and starts her annual search in the underworld for her slain husband Tammuz. At last report she hasn't found him yet, but after every growing season she resumes her search. The grand lady of the night sky is truly a loyal lover.
Two people are behind bars today after a traffic stop in northwest Rochester recovered a loaded handgun and drugs, officials said.

Members of the Criminal Interdiction Unit , composed of members of the street crimes, narcotics and criminal intelligence units, were doing surveillance in the area of the 4600 block of 15th Avenue Northwest when they spotted a vehicle they believed held a suspect who had two warrants, said Capt. John Sherwin.

A traffic stop was initiated, and three people inside were detained. Officers saw drug paraphernalia in plain view inside the vehicle, Sherwin said; a further search of the car recovered the gun and more drugs.

Jacob Alan Davidson, 26, was the original suspect with the warrants, the report says.

He was arrested, as was the driver, Jacy Ann Mlenar, 25, of Rochester. She could be charged as early as today with fifth-degree controlled substance crime for possession of some marijuana, Sherwin said, as well as charges related to the handgun. She also allegedly had a set of brass knuckles in her purse.

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Kenneth Staffon, 37, of Rochester, also was in the car; he had a small amount of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia in his possession, Sherwin said.
AUSTIN  Questions about the president's firing of the FBI director and Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election dominated 1st District Rep. Tim Walz's town hall Thursday night in Austin.

The DFL congressman was asked to weigh in on President Donald Trump's decision earlier this week to fire FBI Director James Comey. Walz told a crowd of about 60 at the Hormel Institute that he had previously expressed concerns about Comey after attending a classified briefing. That is something that Trump seized on, recently sending out an Instagram post that highlighted a comment from Walz in January in which he said he no longer had confidence in Comey.

The Mankato Democrat said he does have concerns about the timing of Trump's decision to fire Comey as the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election was underway.

"President Trump and I were on the same point. Director Comey was not doing a very good job. In my opinion, he was not doing enough to look at the Russia stuff and apparently in President Trump's mind he was doing too much to look at that," Walz said.

Trump initially said he fired Comey over concerns about how he handled the investigation into 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's private email server. In a recent interview, he called Comey a "showboat" and a "grandstander." He also mentioned the Russia investigation, telling NBC News it is a "made-up story" and being used as an excuse from Democrats who lost the election.

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Russian collusion?

An audience member asked Walz how much he believes Russia interfered with last fall's election. Walz said there is no evidence that Russia changed the actual vote tally. At this point, he said he cannot say whether Trump or members of his campaign colluded with the Russians because the investigation has not been completed. However, Walz said he has no doubt that the Russians did try to influence America's election. And he said voters  no matter what their partisan leanings  should want to get to the bottom of what happened.

"If we can't rally around this issue as a country, that concerns me," Walz said.

He said he supports Congress setting up an independent commission to investigate Russia's interference or the deputy attorney general appointing a special prosecutor.

Bob Ashley of Austin said he is concerned about Trump's firing of the FBI director, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions' involvement in that decision despite saying he would recuse himself from anything to do with the Russia investigation.

"What can one do  anyone do  to protect us from what appears to be abuses of power? It feels like we're helpless. It feels like you're helpless," Ashley said.

Walz said that as a member of the minority party he can influence his Republican colleagues by being fair and only raising concerns when issues rise to a certain level. He noted that he voted to censure Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder because he had concerns with him  something that upset fellow Democrats.

"If everything is a five-alarm fire, nothing is. I try to be very judicious where to push this," he said.

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Immigration issue

Walz's town hall was his fifth so far this year. For the most part, the crowd was friendly toward the congressman. When someone asked about him running for governor in 2018, most of the audience clapped. However, there was a heated exchange between Walz and one member of the audience over immigration policies. The man told Walz he wants to see people in the country illegally deported.

"You are trying to make excuses for people who came here illegally, shouldn't be here who have somehow stayed here because politicians like you keep making excuses for it. Get them out and make them use a legal system," the man said.

Walz said he supports deporting people who are in the country illegally and commit crimes, but he supports creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who are simply trying to build a better life in America.

"How about these people go through the system, pay a fine? We make sure they've been paying their taxes and we give them the opportunity to stay," Walz said.

The congressman was also asked several times about marijuana. He said he supports the use of medical marijuana. He was also asked whether as governor he would be willing to support allowing recreational use of marijuana in Minnesota. Walz replied, "I'm certainly open to looking at it."
MASON CITY | Cody Ware of Premier Cleaning Services in Mason City is looking to give back to the community.

It just occurred to me one day, Ware said. I see the police and fire out all the time, and I decided maybe I should be an encouragement for other businesses to do the same thing.

Ware is offering free auto detailing for official Mason City police and fire department vehicles.

I am here to do this for them if its something they want to do, Ware said.

He has worked on contacting officials at the fire and police departments to make them aware of the free detailing he is offering.

When chatting with police officers, he found out that officers clean their own vehicles.

With the way that I detail, I think they would look a lot better, Ware said. I dont know if they buff and wax their cars a lot, but I think having a full service detail on their cars would make them look a lot nicer and most likely make them stand out more.

Ware started the cleaning service in early 2016 and has been in operation for just over a year. He moved to Mason City in 2015 and grew up in Cedar Falls.

I got into detailing; I started out with Rev Auto, he said. Thats been the majority of my business  its auto detailing.

When Ware needs a little help, his family pitches in. Working out of his home as well as Auto Wash on Sixth Street Southwest, the majority of the business is in detailing.

Pretty much looking at every detail where dirt and stuff can get into that shouldnt be there, Ware said.

Premier Cleaning Services offers a variety of services with varying prices based on size and scope of the job, including detailing for boats and watercraft, carpet cleaning, pressure washing, move-in ready cleaning, clean-up for construction and yard, as well as commercial and residential cleaning.

The auto detail is a full-service detail on both the interior and exterior, including undercarriage and motor cleaning as well as buff, wax, showroom shine and more, Ware said.

Just a lot of little places a lot of people dont think of, he said.

To get the grime off of a car, Ware starts with a power wash, including under the hood.

Most people forget to clean in between the motor and firewall, Ware said.
Democrats have persistently called for a special congressional investigation of all matters at the intersection of Russia and the 2016 presidential campaign. The firing of James Comey has renewed such calls and made them more vociferous. But has it created momentum for such an investigation?

As of now, the answer appears to be: no.

Dont take my word for it. Amber Phillip of the Washington Post writes:

President Trump just cut off the head [note: hyperbole alert] of Washingtons most apolitical investigation of his presidential 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 as though thats not going to happen.

Phillip reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has basically flat-out said he wouldnt support a special investigation. McConnell explained that the various committees in Congress already looking into Russian meddling in the election will suffice. Today well no doubt hear calls for a new investigation, which could only serve to impede the current work being done, he added.

Thats the Leaders view. What about the rank-and-file?

Among Republicans, only Sen. John McCain has called for a special investigaton. But McCain called for that months ago. Comeys sacking, though criticized by some Republican Senators, hasnt caused a single one to say we need a special investigation.

One the House side, according to Phillip, several moderate Republicans want a special investigation, but almost all of them already thought there should be one. She concludes:

No one in Washingtons mind has been changed by Comeys firing, it seems. People who were calling for a special investigator before are still calling for one now. People who werent still arent.

This might change if President Trump botches the appointment of a new director  e.g. by appointing Chris Christie. Dont expect that to happen.
There are lots of rumors about who will succeed James Comey as director of the FBI. Perhaps the most intriguing rumor involves Judge Merrick Garland. Sen. Mike Lee tweeted: Instead of a special prosecutor, @realDonaldTrump should nominate Merrick Garland to replace James Comey. Phillip Wegmann of the Washington Examiner makes the case for selecting Judge Garland here.

Judge Garland is a fine man. Hes qualified to direct the FBI. If he took the job, it would free up a seat on the D.C. Circuit for President Trump to fill.

However, Garland may be the most aggrieved man in America. But for Republican partisanship, he would be a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

I supported the treatment of Garland by Senate Republicans, and have no doubt that Democrats would have done the same thing if the circumstances were reversed. Still, Judge Garland has good reason to be angry with Republicans. I dont want an FBI director who has good reason to be angry with Republicans.

My friend Bill Otis suggests a different court of appeals judge  Julie Carnes of the Eleventh Circuit. Judge Carnes was nominated for the court of appeals by former president Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate (apparently this was some sort of package deal).

Previously, Judge Carnes had been a federal district court judge, having been nominated by former president G.H.W. Bush. Thus, she has strong bipartisan credentials, though Im told that her rulings on the appeals court have been consistently conservative.

If selected and confirmed, Judge Carnes would be the first female FBI director.

Trump reportedly is considering Mike Rogers for the post. Rogers, a former FBI agent, served seven terms in Congress. He was chairman of the intelligence committee.

Rogers came under attack from some conservatives over his handling, as intel committee chairman, of Benghazi. They criticized him for working with committee Democrats and for discounting the claim by CIA contractors who fought in Benghazi that they had been instructed by a CIA man, initially and for a brief amount of time, to stand down.

The House Intelligence Committee was long a bastion of bipartisanship, although that tradition appears to have died since Rogers departed. Rogers willingness to work with committee Democrats gives him credibility for the FBI job, and I dont think it should be held against him.

As for the CIA contractors, the problem, as I understand it, was that their sworn deposition testimony to committee lawyers didnt match what they later said on television and in their book (and what was depicted in a movie based on their book).

I think Rogers rates serious consideration.

Other names being floated include John Pistole, a former FBI official who led the Transportation Security Administration under President Obama; Fran Townsend, who was George W. Bushs counter terrorism adviser; and Bill Bratton, former New York City Police Chief.

In evaluating candidates, it is important to remember that the FBI director has many responsibilities other than overseeing the investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Foremost among them, in my view, is leading the charge against domestic terrorism. The Trump administration should evaluate potential candidates through that lens more than any other.

UPDATE: I believe Julie Carnes is (or at least was) a Democrat (as I stated in the original version of this post). Im told she comes from a line of conservative Georgia Democrats.

Given this, as well as her unanimous approval by the Senate as court of appeals judge, the Dems would be hard-pressed to object to her. What could they say?
Last night, I noted what I thought was Team Trumps change of tune on the Comey firing. Originally portrayed as a bottom-up decision triggered by the new Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, the administration later acknowledged the presidents role, saying that he was furious with Comeys investigation and had been considering sacking the director before receiving Rosensteins memo.

This report in the Wall Street Journal, if accurate, helps explain the change:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein pressed White House counsel Don McGahn to correct what he felt was an inaccurate White House depiction of the events surrounding FBI Director James Comeys firing, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Mr. Rosenstein left the impression that he couldnt work in an environment where facts werent accurately reported, the person said. The deputy attorney general objected to statements by White House aides citing Mr. Rosensteins critical assessment of Mr.Comeys job performance to justify the firing.

According to the WSJ report:

Rosenstein, who had been confirmed by the Senate just two weeks earlier, met with Mr. Trump on Monday, where they discussed Mr. Comeys job performance. At the White Houses prompting, Mr. Rosenstein Tuesday wrote a memo to the president detailing his concerns about the directors conduct.

The letter does not recommend that Comey be fired. However, it was highly critical of Comey, concluding that the FBI had lost the publics trust and that the director cannot be expected to implement corrective action.

It would make perfect sense for a chief executive receiving such a report to fire the official in question.

But that doesnt preclude the possibility that the chief executive, in this case President Trump, fired the official, in this case Comey, for other reasons. It does not mean that Trump fired Comey in response to Rosensteins letter.

According to the Journal, Rosenstein doesnt believe that the decision to fire Comey was the result of his recommendation. He thus objected to statements to the media by Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and Vice President Pence that the letter triggered, or explains, the discharge.

Therefore, according to the Journal, Rosenstein called McGahn and urged that the White House correct the record. After that, at a Wednesday afternoon news briefing, Sanders started to shift the White House narrative.

Asked about the tipping point in Mr. Trumps decision to dismiss Mr. Comey, she responded: Hed lost confidence in Director Comey, and, frankly, hed been considering letting Director Comey go since the day he was elected. Later that evening, the White House circulated a timeline of events leading up to Mr. Comeys dismissal that had been authored by the Justice Department. The timeline didnt mention Mr. Rosensteins letter until the fourth bullet point, and said Mr. Trump had been strongly inclined to remove Mr. Comey after watching his testimony in front of a Senate panel last week. Subsequently, administration officials said Mr. Trump had been growing increasingly frustrated by the former directors demonstrative performances in a series of congressional hearings, combined with his refusal to clear Mr. Trumps campaign of any wrongdoing, put the president over the edge.

Eventually, the president himself acknowledged that Rosensteins letter was irrelevant. Today, as the Journal notes, he told NBC News, Regardless of [the] recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.

Why, then, did the White House originally try to pin the firing on Rosenstein? Maybe it was incompetence; more likely it was misdirection.

Would the true version of what happened have come to light had Rosenstein not objected? I have little confidence that the White House would have corrected the record.

The one good thing to come out of this mess is that Rosensteins reputation for integrity remains unblemished. That reputation will stand the administration in good stead. It should make sure there is no repeat performance in which Rosenstein is used as he was here.
Democrats are threatening to slow the Senate to a crawl in response to President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey. On Wednesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (remember him?) objected to the Republicans routine request to allow 13 committee hearings to take place.

Durbin gave the firing of Comey as his reason. His leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, is demanding the appointment of a special prosecutor for the Russia investigation. Democrats also want a special congressional committee to investigate.

The Democrats procedural objection doesnt prevent Senate committees from meeting. However, under the Senates two-hour rule, committees are limited to meeting during the first two hours after the Senate convenes. Thus, several committee hearings were shut down.

For an encore, maybe the Senate Dems can flee to Illinois.

I think President Trump fired Comey due to unhappiness with his handling of the FBIs Russia investigation. The White House basically admits as much.

This doesnt mean that Trump has anything to hide. If he were afraid of the results of an honest investigation, he probably would have fired Comey  who had been a thorn in the side of both the Bush and the Obama administration  months ago, when he could more easily have replaced him with someone he trusts.

If Im right that the Comey firing had to do with the Russia investigation, the specific motive was likely the fact that the investigation is dominating the news cycle and will drag on interminably. Trump appears to attribute these realities at least in part to Comeys grandstanding. He may well have thought, naively, that since he did nothing wrong, the investigation would quickly clear him. When this didnt happen, and the medias obsession with the story didnt wane, he blamed Comey.

Unfortunately, firing Comey now may well have compounded, rather than remedied, the mistake Trump made in not firing him months ago. The increasingly vociferous calls for a special prosecutor support this claim.

Those calls should be resisted, as Im sure they will be. There should be a very strong presumption against using special prosecutor. As Quin Hilyer says, such prosecutors operate at least somewhat outside the usual chain of command, without the usual prosecutorial constraints, and with a perverse incentive to get a scalp (a conviction) to justify their existence. The risk of abusive behavior is manifest.

If there were good reason to believe that President Trump violated the law, then the extraordinary measure of appointing a special counsel might be justified now that Comey, who was nothing if not independent, has been sacked.

But despite nearly a year of digging, beginning with electronic surveillance of folks associated with the Trump campaign, there appears to be no evidence that Trump violated the law or acted improperly regarding Russia. Indeed, Comey apparently informed Sens. Chuck Grassley and Dianne Feinstein that the president is not a target, though this isnt entirely clear (see Byron Yorks parsing of the statements of Grassley and Feinstein).

The FBI is investigating certain individuals associated at one time or another with the Trump campaign. In my view, thats not reason enough to appoint a special prosecutor.

My view would change if Trump tried to shutdown, hamstring, or influence the course of the investigation. But firing Comey accomplishes none of these things.

Trump may be tempted to do one or more of them in the future. If he does, the case for a special prosecutor would become substantial. As things stand now, it is weak.

Finally, I see no reason to establish a special congressional committee. Theres no reason to suspect that the current committee investigations will be insufficient. Sen. Richard Burr, head of the Senate panel investigating the matter, showed his independence when he criticized the firing of Comey.

Special congressional committees are no less partisan than regular committees. They do attract more attention. That, I imagine, is why the Democrats want a special committee here. Its not a sound reason for establishing one.
The children of Olusegun Obasanjo, former Nigerian president, and Kessington Adebutu, owner of Premier Lotto, on Thursdayhad their traditional wedding.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the ceremony took place despite the controversy surrounding the date of the marriage.

Taiwo Obasanjo, the grooms mother, had in a letter to The Methodist Church of Nigeria, said the dates chosen for the wedding of Abraham Obasanjo to Tope Adebutu  May 11 and 13  would precipitate untold misery for the country.

The two dates were chosen and compelled by Satan for them to lure unsuspecting numerous souls to a banquet of death, that will result in strange holocaust in our nation, Mrs. Obasanjo had said.

After the wedding, you will be hearing and seeing incidents of plane crashes, fire incidents, multiple road accidents, tankers and trailer killing people, cancers, diseases of kidney, liver, prostrate, eyes issues and diverse health problem causing strange death in people and the economy situation will worsen.

Earlier, Mrs. Obasanjo had filed a suit at an Ikeja High Court, seeking to stop the wedding but Lateefat Okunnu, the presiding judge, dismissed the suit on the grounds that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear it because the groom, 33, is an adult.

PREMIUM TIMES gathered that the ceremony, which held at the Balmoral Hall of Federal Palace Hotel in Lagos, was attended by prominent Nigerians including politicians, business moguls, and traditional rulers.

The white wedding is expected to take place on Saturday.

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Crude oil production in Nigeria rose by 274,000 barrels per day in April, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, said on Thursday.

The increase, OPEC said, represents the biggest increase among countries within the oil producers group.

According to OPECs latest Monthly Oil Market Report for May released on Thursday, Nigerias output was put at 1.484 million bpd for April, from 1.21 million bpd in March, which was based on direct communication.

Meanwhile, Angola saw its oil output decrease to 1.651 million bpd in April, from 1.652 million bpd in the previous month.

But the country still retained its status as Africas top oil producer, after taking over from Nigeria recently.

The report showed that Saudi Arabia, the biggest producer in the group, recorded the second largest increase in April as it produced 9.946 million bpd, after recording a slide from 9.9 million bpd in March.

Kuwait, on its part, saw its production output rise by 10,000 bpd to 2.710 million bpd.

The United Arab Emirates production increased by 15,000 bpd to 2.988 million bpd in April.

OPEC crude oil production decreased by 18,000 bpd, from the previous month to average 31.73 million bpd in April, sources said.

In the report, the oil producers group noted that, Crude oil production declined in the UAE, Libya, Iraq and Iran, but increased in Angola and Saudi Arabia.

OPEC also raised its forecast for oil supply growth from non-members in 2017 but kept its outlook for global crude demand unchanged at 96.4 million bpd.

The cartel is billed to meet in Vienna later this month, to discuss possible extension of output cut.

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The Supreme Court on Friday described as baseless the case which led to the June 27 decision of the Federal High Court to nullify the election of Abia State Governor, Okezie Ikpeazu, for alleged tax evasion.

Justice Okon Abang had in a ruling on an application filled by an Abia State businessman, and member of the Peoples Democratic Party, Samson Ogah, described the emergence of Mr. Ikpeazu as governor of Abia State under the platform of the PDP as null and void.

Mr. Abang based his decision on the fact that his court found the state governor guilty of tax evasion.

In a unanimous ruling, however, the Appeal Court on August 18 reversed that decision for lacking in merit.

A five-member panel of Supreme Court justices led by the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Walter Onnoghen, on Friday upheld the August 18 decision of the Appeal Court, stressing that the allegation of tax evasion is baseless, since taxes were usually supposed to be deducted by the state and the certificates for payment of tax presented in court would have come from the state government.

Im a government employee and it is also common knowledge that tax is deducted at source, said Mr. Onnoghen.

They give you a tax clearance certificate, you are not the person who produced the tax certificate. If they say bring your tax clearance, I have my file and my pay slip, if you ask I will say this is my pay slip.

If they dont send it on time I will ask for my tax clearance because I may need it. When they send it to me and there is anything wrong with it, why should I be held responsible? The long and short of it was that this case was a no case.

Mr. Ogah who emerged runner up to Mr. Ikpeazu in the PDP primaries ahead of the 2014 election had challenged the emergence of Mr. Ikpeazu as flagbearer of the party for about two years. The Supreme Court ruling now puts to rest Mr. Ogahs challenge and validates Mr. Ikpeazus election.

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The Acting President, Yemi Osinbajo, on Thursday disclosed that President Muhammadu Buhari treats him like a son.

Mr. Osinbajo, 60, said this at the palace of the Emir of Katsina, Abdulmumin Usman, during a visit to the state for the inauguration of the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Clinic.

Laolu Akande, the spokesperson to the Acting President, made this known in a series of tweets posted on his verified Twitter handle, @akandeoj.

Mr. Akande quoted the Acting President as saying, I feel very much at home in Katsina . More so , because this is the state of the President who has taken me as a brother.

In fact, the President has taken me as a son in the way he treats me.

Mr. Buhari, 74, had on Sunday travelled to the United Kingdom in furtherance of his medical treatment.

According to Mr. Akande, the acting president also commended Mr. Buhari for giving him opportunities to serve, with the amount of responsibilities assigned to him.

The amount of responsibilities President Buhari has given me shows he seriously believes we can live together as brothers, Mr. Osinbajo said.

I pray the Lord will preserve our President to continue to lead as the nation has voted him to do . He seriously believes in Nigerian unity, he added.

Mr. Osinbajo also restated the Nigerian governments commitment to ensuring that it facilitates conducive business environment across the country, adding that on Thursday, the Corporate Affairs Commission succeeded in registering three companies within two hours.

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The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has submitted to the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court details of alleged telephone conversations and text messages between Nigerian lawyer, Rickey Tarfa and a High Court judge in an ongoing bribery case.

At the resumed hearing Thursday, Danladi Daniel, a detective with the anti-graft office, informed the court of details of several calls and text messages traced to Mr. Tarfa, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, and Mohammed Yinusa and H.A. Ngajiwa, both of the Federal High Court in Lagos.

Mr. Daniel, while under cross-examination by Mr. Tarfas counsel, Abiodun Owonikoko, said the lawyer and the judges exchanged bank account details over the phone in an alleged attempt to pervert the course of justice.

On January 2, 2014, there were three text messages between the defendant and a member of his staff stating that they were in court for a case to be assigned before Justice Yinusa.

There are biometrics captured by MTN communications of the defendant and Justice Yinusa, the voice communications were from Tarfas MTN, number- 08034600777 and Justice Yinusas MTN number-08035967291, Mr. Daniel said.

But Mr. Tarfas lawyer countered the allegations against his client, saying the EFCC had no case because it allegedly obtained some of its evidence by deceit.

The defendants phones were retrieved by deceit by the operatives of the EFCC; they told Tarfas driver that his boss was requesting for his phones and when he brought the phones, they were seized, Mr. Owonikoko said.

He further stated that the EFCC obtained the call logs after it had already charged Mr. Tarfa to court, adding that anti-graft officials also allegedly failed to prepare a citation of his client prior to his arraignment.

The phones did not become an exhibit of the EFCC until Feb. 9, after the defendant was charged, Mr. Owonikoko said. You did not try during the course of your investigation to profile Rickey Tarfa and his law firm.

But Mr. Daniel read aloud details of alleged voice communications including late night calls between Mr. Tarfa and Mr. Yunusa.

Esther Agu, a staff of the defendant, made a payment of N2.5 million into the bank account of Justice Yinusa.

Based on the account records, the payments were made on May 15, 2015.

The payments were made when there were three EFCC cases in which Tarfa was the counsel for the opposing parties before Justice Yinusa.

The communications started sometime in February 2015 and ended sometime in September 2015 after judgments were delivered in those cases.

He also said Mr. Ngajiwa also avail Mr. Tarfa details of his bank account for alleged gratification.

There were some text messages between Justice Ngajiwa and the defendant on October 16, 2014, in which Justice Ngajiwa sent his Guaranty Trust Bank details to the defendant.

The defendant also sent another person a text message on that day to pay $5, 000 into the bank account of the judge, Mr. Daniel said.

But Mr. Owonikoko played down any serious links between his client and the judges.

The EFCC has no evidence directly linking Rickey Tarfas chambers to the bank accounts of the judges.

Our findings revealed that the alleged UBA bank account which belonged to Justice Mohammed Yinusa, belonged to someone who bears the same name, one Mr Mohammed Auwal Yinusa, he said.

Mr. Owonikoko tendered an affidavit sworn by Justice Yinusas alleged namesake that claimed ownership of the said account, but said his client was in touch with the judges as acquaintances.

Justice Yinusa was one year junior to Rickey Tarfa when he was studying law at the University of Maiduguri from 1982-1986 and they are friends.

Justice Ngajiwa worked at the chambers of Rickey Tarfa for over 17 years.

Ever since Ngajiwa became a judge, Rickey Tarfa has never had a case before him.

Before Ngajiwa became a judge, he had over 300 cases he was handling at the Rickey Tarfa chambers some of which are still pending in court, Mr. Owonikoko said.

The presiding judge, Aishat Opesanwo, adjourned the case to July 7 for continuation of trial.

Mr. Tarfa was first arraigned by the EFCC on February 16, 2016, on two-count charge of obstruction of justice and attempting to pervert the course of justice.

In July 2016, the National Judicial Council dismissed Mr. Yinusa on multiple grounds of official misconduct in a matter not entirely related to the ongoing case of allegedly receiving bribes from Mr. Tarfa.

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The Federal Government has suspended the Vice Chancellor of Federal University of Technology, Akure, over allegations of fraud.

The government acted after various unions within the university, including the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities, called for the VCs suspension.

A letter signed by the acting permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Hussaini Adamu, said the vice chancellor was suspended in connection with his ongoing prosecution by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

He was instructed to hand over to the most senior staff of the university.

The spokesman of FUTA, Adebanjo Adegbenro, said he could not confirm or deny the development.

The decision followed a similar suspension of the embattled vice chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Olusola Oyewole, who is currently facing a criminal charge in court.

The suspension order was also conveyed by the acting permanent secretary, Mr. Adamu.

The EFCC charged Mr. Oyewole alongside the former pro chancellor of the school, Adeseye Ogunewe, the bursar, Moses Ilesanmi, to court for alleged abuse of office and misappropriation of funds.

They were investigated after whistleblowers tipped off the anti-graft agency and accused the trio of suspicious dealings totaling N800 million.

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The Akwa Ibom Police Command has confirmed the release of Idongesit Udom, former staff of Exxon Mobil and founder of Sure Polytechnic in Ukanafun Local Government Area of the state.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Chukwu Okechukwu, told the News Agency of Nigeria on Thursday in Uyo that Mr. Udom was released on Wednesday night.

He said that the kidnappers chopped-off one the mans finger while in incarceration.

He was released on Wednesday night and receiving treatment at an undisclosed hospital.

The Police command is working tirelessly to ensure that the hoodlums do not go unpunished, Okechukwu said.

Ndianabasi Udom, the victims son, also confirmed the release of his father.

He said that his father was released on Wednesday with severe health condition due to the trauma he experienced during over one month of incarceration.

He thanked God and the security agencies for ensuring the release of his father.

Mr. Udom was kidnapped on April 9 at his country home in Ukanafun by four masked gunmen on his way to church.

(NAN)

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Nigerias ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has commended Senate President Bukola Saraki and House of Representatives Speaker Yakubu Dogara for making the budget of the National Assembly public.

The lawmakers on Thursday provided details of the budget after much public pressure.

Read the APCs statement below:

The All Progressives Congress, APC, commends the decision of the Senate President and Chairman of the 8th National Assembly, Bukola Saraki and the Speaker of House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, to release details of the 2017 National Assembly budget, for the first time in our recent democratic history.

It will be recalled that the Senate President had earlier in the year promised that the National Assembly budget details would be made available to the public following clamour from Nigerians for an open budget.

By breaking from the tradition of secrecy that had shrouded the finances of the legislative institution, the APC-led National Assembly under Saraki has demonstrated their commitment to an open and accountable National Assembly, in line our Partys resolve to run a more transparent government based on manifest probity.

Perhaps, more importantly, by this action, the leadership of the National Assembly has demonstrated that they are in tune with the yearnings of Nigerians for a transparent and open government. We are confident that by this unprecedented action, the National Assembly has taken a major step forward in improving its estimation in the eyes of all citizens.

The party calls on the National Assembly to continue to stand firm in its support for the President Muhammadu Buhari administration as it strives to deliver to Nigerians the positive change that our party promised.

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The State Security Service (SSS) has approached a Federal High Court, Abuja, to detain the chairman of Capital Oil and Gas Ltd, Ifeanyi Ubah, for another 14 days pending the completion of its investigation, counsel to the businessman told a federal court in Lagos on Friday.

The Lagos division of the Federal High Court had, on Tuesday, ordered the secret police to produce Mr. Ubah in court on Friday.

But at the resumed hearing, Mr. Ubahs lawyer told the court that the applicant has not been produced, rather we were served this morning with a notice of preliminary objection and a counter affidavit to the application itself being filed yesterday.

After your lordships order on the 9th of May, 2017, the 4th and 5th respondents went before the FCT High Court on the 10th of May and obtained an order to detain him for 14 days in other to complete their purported investigation, he said.

Delivering his ruling, Justice Mohammed Idris said he would act with great caution in the matter.

I will not make an order for the release of the applicant pending the completion of the 14 days, he added.

The judge adjourned till May 18 for continuation of the matter.

The SSS had arrested Mr. Ubah over allegations of economic sabotage and diversion of petroleum products to the tune of N11 billion, a claim the business mogul denies.

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A Federal Capital Territory High Court on Friday granted bail to a former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Bala Mohammed, with a bond of N500 million.

Mr. Bala is accused of fraudulently receiving over N800 million as gratification while in office as minister.

He is also accused of failing to declare his assets.

He was remanded in Kuje Maximum Prison on Wednesday pending the determination of his bail application.

Delivering the ruling, the judge, Abubakar Talba, said Mr. Mohammed should produce two sureties with an equivalent sum as indicated in his bail bond.

The two sureties must have landed properties in Abuja, and must also show evidence of tax payments in the last three years for their properties.

The court also ruled that the sureties must comprise one senator and a federal civil servant of directorate cadre.

The case was adjourned till July 4, for trial.

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A Federal High Court, Abuja, has granted a request by the State Security Service, SSS, to keep the chairman, Capital Oil and Gas Ltd, Ifeanyi Ubah, in custody for another 14 days pending the completion of its investigation of the charges against him.

Efforts by Mr. Ubahs counsel to have the Lagos division of the court to vacate the order also failed on Friday as the court said it would not make an order in the face of a conflict situation.

Justice Y. Halilu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, gave the order for Mr. Ubahs continued detention following a motion exparte filed on May 10 together with an affidavit in support and deposed to by one G.O.A Agbadua, a senior legal officer with the SSS.

The Lagos division of the Federal High Court had on Tuesday ordered the secret police to produce Mr. Ubah in court on Friday.

The SSS on Friday took Mr. Ubah into custody on allegations of economic sabotage and diversion of petroleum products to the tune of N11 billion.

The petroleum products were stored by NNPC Retail in Capital Oils tank farm in Lagos under a throughput agreement but went missing under controversial circumstances.

PREMIUM TIMES had exclusively reported the diversion which eventually led to the sack of the head of NNPC Retail, Esther Nnamdi-Ogbue, and some other officials of the corporation.

At the resumed hearing, Mr. Ubahs lawyer, Richard Oluyede, reminded the court in Lagos of its order for Mr. Ubah to be brought to court.

The applicant has not been produced. Rather we were served this morning with a notice of preliminary objection and a counter affidavit to the application itself being filed yesterday.

It will appear from the document that after the original processes were served on the 28th of April, the only reaction to that was to arrest the applicant from his house on the 5th of May.

But after we had approached the court for an order for his production with Your Lordships order on the 9th of May, the 4th and 5th respondents went before the FCT High Court not for the purpose of preferring charges against the applicant, but merely to frustrate Your Lordships order for his production, said Mr. Oluyede.

According to Mr. Oluyede, they did this by obtaining on the 10th of May an order from the FCT High Court to detain him for 14 days in order to complete their purported investigation. And I submit that the 4thand 5th respondent have acted in a manner thats in subversion of the dignity of the court.

Mr. Oluyede further stated that the proceedings taken to the FCT is an abuse of process and also an abuse of power.

The counsel referred the court to the affidavit, obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, where he stated that as soon as the order to produce the 1st applicant, was served on the 4th and 5threspondents, he was placed under additional strictures and began to receive threats that unless he withdrew his action he would rot in the detention and members of his family including his children and wife would be arrested and detained.

According to the document, he was told that the courts order would not be obeyed and it was in his best interest to withdraw the action.

After being in custody for over a month, he was coerced to sign some documents. First to sign a document for discontinuance upon threat to family and himself, he was then coerced into signing documents of indebtedness to NNPC and pledging some of his assets to the Asset Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON.

In his reaction, counsel to the SSS, Peter Okerinmode, told the court that the alleged arrest and detention of the 1st applicant occurred in Abuja on the 5th of May and that no infringement of the 1st applicants right occurred in Lagos State.

The relief sought by the 4th and 5th respondents, challenges the jurisdiction of this court to hear and determine this case and that the court in Lagos State lacks the jurisdiction to hear and determine any alleged infringement of the fundamental human right of anybody in Abuja, said Mr. Okerinmode.

In response on point of order, Mr. Oluyede said: My learned friend fails to realize that the order made by this court to produce the 1st applicant is extrinsic and their failure itself is a separate proceedings. They have subverted this court order and saying the court lacks jurisdiction but have failed to comply with the order of this court.

The dignity of the court is paramount than jurisdiction and I urge this court to release the 1st applicant unconditionally, Mr. Oluyede said.

Delivering his ruling, Justice Mohammed Idris said he would act with great caution in the matter.

From the record of this court, it is clear that the 4th and 5th respondents were served with the order of this court on the 10th day of May, 2017 at 10:00hours.

It appears that on the same date, that is, 10th of May, 2017, 4th and 5th respondents obtained from an FCT High Court an order made by Justice Halilu to have them detain the 1st applicant in the custody of the 4th and 5th respondents for an initial period of 14 days pending the completion of the investigation.

A conflict situation has been created. I will not make an order for the release of the applicant pending the completion of the 14 days, he added.

The judge adjourned till May 18 for continuation of the matter.

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After several months of preparation, the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board, JAMB, will commence the 2017 Unified Tertiary Matriculations Examination, UTME, on Saturday.

Many applicants said this years registration was one of the most hectic they experienced. Across the country, candidates laboured for hours and days to register.

The process begins with purchase of electronically-generated personal identification number (PIN), and ends with obtaining a print-out after registering personal details.

Following complaints, JAMB extended the closing date for registration to May 5, and by midnight that day, 1.7 million candidates had been registered  more than 1.2 million registered in 2016, JAMB said.

The exams will take place at 633 centres, but there are concerns about how prepared JAMB is, and whether the board has developed sufficient information technology capacity to make computer-based test mandatory for all candidates.

JAMBs registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, said each test centre will have a supervisor, a technical officer, a verification officer, three proctors as well as security agents.

Each state will be supervised by a head of a tertiary institution (Vice-Chancellor, Rector or Provost).

PREMIUM TIMES visited some accredited CBT centres in Abuja and Lagos to assess their level of preparedness for the examinations starting Saturday.

At Digital Bridge Institute in Utako, Abuja, candidates were busy trying to resolve some last-minute hitches.

A candidate, Chioma Anyanwu, told this paper that she could not print her exam slip and date of birth was incorrect.

The centres JAMB administrator, Enobong Bassey, told PREMIUM TIMES that the centre would take 750 candidates per day for the duration of the exam.

JAMB has been conducting their CBT exams at this center since 2013 when the use of CBT for UTME started, he said. This years exams is divided into three sessions per day, morning afternoon and evening session. Two hundred and fifty candidates will be sitting at each of the sessions making it a total of 750 candidates sitting for the exams per day.

He said the centre would not deploy Eight Keys, a device used as an alternative by candidates who are not familiar with computer mouse.

The eight keys are for the rural areas and even when the candidates experience hitches, we have standby support unit to attend to them, he said.

Chamcity Institute, located at Maitama, will cater for 1,500 candidates each day. The institute, located within Sascon International School, has two centres.

Agbalede Adesua, the centre administrator, told PREMIUM TIMES that candidates who were experiencing challenges were the ones who did not provide correct registration information.

During the registration, there are no issues before now except in cases where candidates were not properly registered. Example, if their emails are not well spelt, it will affect them, she said. We usually advise them to go back and correct their profile.

Ms. Adesua said the centre would run on power generator, not public electricity, to avoid disruption. Security will be provided by the civil defense, mobile police and the army.

There were no students at the two centres at the time of the visit. But the computer room was well organised.

Lagos centres

At the WAEC office centre at Agidingbi, Ikeja, Lagos, students were on ground to confirm their centres. Students were also busy printing their exam slips. One student, Abayomi Alade, said they were being charged N200 for each, against JAMBs directive that candidates should not be charged above N100.

At Yaba College of Technology centres I and II, the facilities were in good condition. The centres were well air-conditioned.

Olayinka Ojo, the manager of the networking section at the college, explained that the college made provisions for alternative power supply.

She said the computers were reliable, and they were using intranet, not internet.

For this JAMB exam, the board has their own internet, they have done it in such a way that they dont rely on the internet of their centres, the students wrote the mock exam, they had it smooth, she said.

At Career Builders Academy at Agbara-Badagry expressway, the centre coordinator, Raki Rotimi, said while they were required by JAMB to provide 250 computers, they had 30 backups too.

Students react

Not all complaints could be resolved before the exams.

Idris Abah, a candidate in Abuja, told PREMIUM TIMES that the registration took a toll on him, leaving him with little time to prepare for his papers.

Another candidate, Chioma Edeh, said she could not correct a mistake in the subjects she selected for the exams before the expiration of the process. She said she was ready nonetheless.

It was not all bad news. At Ikeja centre, a candidate, Felicia James, said she had prepared well for the exam, and was anxious to be tested.

This is my first attempt and I am excited. I have prepared well and I think I will do well, she said.

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The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has given assurances that the federal government and its agencies would work with Nigerian public relations consultants in the execution of its communication projects.

Receiving a delegation of the Public Relations Consultants Association of Nigeria, PRCAN, on an advocacy visit to his office in Abuja, the minister said that he understood the importance of public relations consultancy having been a public relations professional all his professional life.

Mr. Mohammed said, As for your request that government should involve your members in planning and executing PR campaigns, you are preaching to the converted. Discussions are ongoing on the need to patronise Nigerian PR

consultants when planning government campaigns. So, rest assured on that.

The minister added that the Federal Government would not but do the right thing.

The foreign consultants got to where they are today because they were given opportunities. We will ensure that PRCAN agencies are given the first right of refusal on any campaign by Ministries, Department and Agencies.

The minister also appealed to PRCAN member-firms sense of volunteerism at the moment as there were still some process hurdles to be crossed, just as he expressed the hope for a robust long-term relationship with PRCAN. He pleaded with the association to ensure the relationship between both parties did not end with the visit.

Earlier, PRCAN President, John Ehiguese, had expressed the readiness of its member-firms to assist the Federal Government of Nigeria with its numerous policy communication programmes and campaigns.

Mr. Ehiguese explained that the primary objective of the visit was to seek how the PRCAN member-firms could contribute their quota to the success of the numerous policy communications programmes and campaigns of the federal government.

His words: There is no doubt that our country is beset by several challenges. But Im sure you will agree with me that a large chunk of these challenges can be effectively tackled if there is proper and effective communication. That reality alone underscores the importance and centrality of your cabinet portfolio as Honourable Minister of Information and

Culture.

The PRCAN president assured the minister that the association has opted to offer its hands of solidarity and support to the minister in helping to craft and execute communications campaign to support government policies and programmes.

He requested that that henceforth Nigerian PR firms should be seriously considered for communication assignments and be given the opportunity to make inputs at the conception stage of such programmes.

Mr. Ehiguese explained that, asides the patriotic imperative, we do indeed possess the relevant competences, both as individual consultancy firms and as a collective, to provide strategic communication support for governments programmes. Many of our members are already working for global Fortune 500 companies and successfully executing their briefs. In addition, some of our members belong to global PR networks, and therefore have direct access to the competences, resources and tools domiciled in such networks.

He further assured the minister that it was the patriotic duty of PRCAN member-firms to make those resources available for the use and benefit of Nigeria. He however assured the minister that even where the competences appear absent or in short supply, PRCAN member-firms would be willing to outsource or go into collaboration with external third parties in order to deliver, saying, at the end of the day, what is important is that Nigerian PR professionals should begin to take the lead in executing Nigerian projects.

That is how we will grow, garner the necessary skills and experience, as well as create jobs for our people. I should like to mention that this is consistent with widely applauded, Buy Nigeria posture of the current government, Mr. Ehiguese added.

The PRCAN president also appealed to the minister to help convey the promise to other Ministries, Departments and Agencies of government so they could tap into the reservoir of professional help that are available in Nigeria to support their communication programmes.

Also in the PRCAN delegation were the Vice President, Muyiwa Akintunde; Secretary General, Adetola Odusote; Publicity Secretary, Israel Jaiye Opayemi; and the immediate past president, Chido Nwakanma.

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The Federal Government has banned Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) from transacting business with companies and other corporate bodies that are not duly registered by the Corporate Affairs Commission.

Salisu Dambatta, the Director of information, Federal Ministry of Finance, said in a statement on Friday in Abuja that the directive to this effect had been issued to MDAs in a circular by the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.

He said that the directive was aimed at protecting MDAs from entering contractual obligations with fake or unregistered companies.

Mr. Dambatta said that the minister of finance would not honour payments for contracts by companies that did not comply with the requirements.

For companies and other corporate bodies to qualify for business transactions with MDAs, their letterhead must bear the Registration Number (RC) as issued by the Corporate Affairs Commission.

The letter head must also have contact telephone numbers, valid e-mail address and official company address as well as the names and nationalities of the directors of the company at the bottom of the page.

This is to ensure transparency in the dealings of government with corporate entities and to ensure compliance with the provisions of the Companies and Allied Matters Act, he said.

Mr. Dambatta said to strengthen the enforcement, the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, had directed the Accountant-General of the Federation to ensure that all Directors of Finance and Accounts in Federal MDAs adhered strictly to the directive.

He said the minister also urged those wishing to engage in transactions with government entities to comply with the requirements to avoid delay in payment.

Each year, the federal government spends trillions of naira on contracts to procure goods and services.

The procurement process is one of the focus areas of the Efficiency Unit set up by President Buhari to check and reduce government recurrent expenditure.

According to the Public Procurement Act, 2007, for a contract below N50 million, an MDA is allowed to procure on their own, but above that, they are mandated to utilise the services of contractors through a qualified bidding process.

(NAN)

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The Minister of Interior, Abdulrahman Dambazau, on Friday said that the Federal Government was confident that the extremist group, Boko Haram, would release more Chibok school girls soon.

Mr. Danbazau stated this in Minna where he attended the wedding of Halima Babangida, daughter of former head of state, Ibrahim Babangida.

By the grace of God, I believe more of the girls will be released as promised by President Muhammadu Buhari.

Before this administration came on board not a single girl was released, but now over 100 have been freed, he said.

Mr. Danbazau called on Nigerians to have confidence in the ability of the government to secure the release of the remaining school girls being held captive by the insurgents.



The minister also said the federal government was doing its best to ensure security of lives and property across the country.

We are trying our best to ensure maximum security of the country, he said.

Just yesterday I met with the police chief and prominent traditional rulers across the country to discuss the way forward as regards security, he said.

(NAN)

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The Adamawa Police Command has confirmed the arrest of two suspects over a clash at the Mubi International Cattle Market which led to the death of two people.

The commands Public Relations Officer, Othman Abubakar, told journalists on Friday in Yola that the suspects had been taken to the state Criminal Investigation Department, CID, where the case was being handled.

He did not give detail of the arrest.

The News Agency of Nigeria gathered that the clash resulted from an argument between a cattle buyer and a seller on Wednesday over balance of money.

One of them, the cattle owner, brought out a dagger and stabbed the other, who bled to dead.

The development led to a mob attack on the killer, who later died in the hospital, a cattle dealer, who identified himself simply as Bappa, said.

(NAN)

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Residents of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, have turned ongoing voter registration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) into money-making activity, selling positions on queues to persons wishing to register fast.

Some of the residents told the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN, on Friday at the Karu centre in Abuja Municipal Area Council that they paid to some people to get positions in the queue before they were registered.

Due to large turnout of people for registration, INEC officials at the centres devised the method of giving numbers to the people on first-come, first-serve basis.

However, it was discovered that some persons devised smart activities of arriving at the registration centres early to collect numbers from INEC officials and hung around to sell them to persons in a hurry to register.

Mary Johnson, a teacher, said that she bought a place on the queue to register on time.

Ms. Johnson said she paid N500 for the space, adding that she was asked to pay N1,000 but had to bargain for N500.

It takes a whole day to register and I have to go to work, so when I learnt that I could buy a space, I was happy.

I do not think the officials are aware of what is happening, but we have found it as an easy way out since you can never come early to register because you will always meet people here.

This is more so when some people come as early as 4 a.m. yet they dont get to register until evening; so, to avoid that stress I preferred to buy the space, she said.

Grace Benjamin, a nursing mother, said that because she could not afford to stay out for long, it was convenient for her to buy a number to register early and return to her baby.

Ms. Benjamin explained that she opted to buy a space on the queue after queuing for three days but could not register because the queue was unusually long and the registration process was also slow.

She appealed to INEC to look inwards and proffer solutions to the slow process of registration by engaging more staff and equipment.

Andy Chuka, a trader, said that he had been regular at the registration centre for some days but had been unable to register because some people always come earlier than me to take number.

Here, INEC officials give numbers to people on the basis of first-come, first-serve; I was here yesterday morning at 6 a.m. I was number 96 but I ended up not registering.

It was later I realised that they were selling queue numbers, so what that means is that if you want to register fast, you buy a number.

I want the INEC staff to be mindful of the people they give numbers because some people collect numbers and sell them; somebody will come very early and get numbers, then they later sell them.

Udoh Sunday said that to get registered was more than a days job, adding that someone needed to leave other engagements and give the whole day to the exercise.

I have been coming here for two days now but I have not been able to register. Today, I came here as early as 4 a.m.

I am number 44 yet it is about 12.30 p.m. and I have not been able to register. Is it fair?

The officials are supposed to come at 9 a.m. but they dont come early yet they close before 3 p.m. So, I am appealing to INEC to look into these issues, he said.

Similarly, Gabriel Eze said he arrived at the centre at 5.30 a.m. but had not been registered as at 1 p.m.

It is like one can never come early for this registration because whenever you come there will always be someone ahead of you.

I am beginning to wonder if some people sleep here. For instance, I came here at 5 a.m. and I was given number 45 but yet I have not registered after nine hours.

Mr. Eze said that he went to Bwari Area Council first but could not register there and had to come to Karo yet registering has remained a challenge.

One of the INEC officials at the centre told NAN but on condition of anonymity that they were not aware of spaces on the queue being sold.

When we arrive here, we register the people as they come. Initially, the turnout was low but gradually it started improving and when more people started coming, we resorted to giving them number.

The idea of the number was to avert commotion, which we noticed was beginning to arise over who came first. So, if they take number and sell it, we are not aware, the source said.

(NAN)

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A ghastly accident involving an articulated vehicle along the Tsamiya-Bagudo road in Kebbi, has resulted in the death of no fewer than 12 persons.

The Sole Administrator of the Bagudo Local Government Area, Abubakar Zagga, told the News Agency of Nigeria in a telephone interview that the accident occurred on Thursday night.

Although, information on the incident was still scanty as at the time of this report, Mr. Zagga said that the accident involved some people, who were mostly traders from Tsamiya, a border town with Benin Republic.

The Sole Administrator said the traders were on their way to Lagos, saying that 12 victims reportedly died on the spot.

He said 12 seriously injured victims were also admitted at the Koko/Besse Local Government Area hospital and six others at the Bagudo Council hospital, stressing that rescue operation was in place to save other victims.

Although, effort to speak with security officials on the accident was ongoing, a witness, Abubakar Magaji, also told journalists that more than 24 persons died in the accident. That number was not confirmed by the council official.

(NAN)

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Polish President Andrzej Duda and French President-elect Emmanuel Macron in a Friday telephone conversation agreed that the new French president would chair the next summit of the Weimar Triangle comprising France, Germany and Poland.

Minister Krzysztof Szczerski, head of the Polish president's political cabinet told PAP that the two presidents stressed it was "significant that the Weimar Triangle starts as quickly as possible to operate in its new composition at the level of heads of government and state". The minister added that the date of the meeting was still to be set. First it has to be arranged with German Chancellor Angela Merkel who is currently engaged in her country's election campaign. "Most important seems to be the consent that we have reached, namely, a Polish-French initiative to hold a Weimar Triangle summit at the earliest possible time", said Szczerski. The minister added the two presidents had also discussed plans of political cooperation. Asked whether they referred to ideas of strengthening the integration of euro zone countries, Minister Szczerski said that both, Duda and Macron wanted to hold a discussion on Europe's future during a separate two-way meeting. "President Macron clearly stressed that trade and the European industry were those fields of the European policy where Polish-French partnership should especially thrive", said Szczerski. (PAP)
A 43-year-old Rockford, Ill. man was arrested May 5 after police responded to a disorderly intoxicated person call at the John D. Dingell Transit Center, 21201 Michigan Ave.

Police arrived just after 8:30 a.m. on a report of a man who was acting disorderly and was possibly intoxicated.

The man seemed confused and was mumbling while talking to police, a report said.

A background check revealed the man had a warrant for his arrest out of Detroit for kidnapping, and Detroit police were called to take custody of the man.
When 12-year-old Dayanara Villanueva received the email from Joffrey Ballet Schools Summer Intensive program in New York City that said congratulations, she had to text her dance instructor, Kelly Harris, just to be sure.

I said, Dayanara, it means you got accepted! Harris said.

The Atlantic City girl, who studies with Harris at Cygnus Creative Arts Centre in Egg Harbor Township, said she started jumping around. Her grandmother, who was visiting from Mexico, began to cry.

I was so excited, because I didnt think I was going to make it, but I made it, she said.

The Sovereign Avenue School seventh-grader has been dancing for only three years. She was accepted to several of the schools programs across the country, including San Francisco, Miami and Los Angeles. Villanueva chose New York City, where she has family and will stay in the city for a week.

The ballet school has taught famous dancers such as Misty Copeland, the first black principal ballerina for the American Ballet Theatre.

For many young dancers, the program is a stepping stone toward breaking into the professional world of dance, Harris said.

Even if they dont want to be a dancer, its an amazing experience, because theyre exposed to the top professionals in the field and receive training from them, Harris said. From there, theyll get spotted by ballet companies and teachers.

Although shes young, Villanueva is dedicated to dance. Watching her strike a pose before practice recently at Cygnus, she stares intently ahead as she glides up onto her toes, kicking a tambourine from the ballet La Esmeralda.

Her mother and two younger brothers wait outside the studio.

You dont have to ask her to practice or try it again. Shes very self-motivated on her own, Harris said.

Villanueva, who is soft-spoken, said she became more social through dance because she found out she had something special. Although Harris said shes sometimes shy, the young dancers focus and passion shines through.

She loves it so much. Shes a very sweet little girl and not at all a show-off, Harris said. She doesnt act like shes better than anybody. I actually have to pull that out of her to not look at the floor and to try to feel confident and keep her head up. Her leg is way up in the air  beautiful  and shes hitting all the turns, but that shyness sometimes comes across in the dancing, so I tell her when shes performing, she has to play like a character.

Other Cygnus students were accepted and often are accepted to Joffrey and other summer programs, but those dancers tend to be older than Villanueva.

I usually dont send them that young, but I said, You know what? I think shes really got a shot, Harris said.

Villanueva, who has been dancing since she was 9, is considered a late starter in the world of classical ballet training. Many girls start at a much younger age.

Thats one reason why the school is so proud of her, said Cynthia Domino, founder and artistic director of Cygnus.

She has only (taken lessons) twice a week, and when she started she was once a week, she said. So shes only picked up twice a week the last year and a half, so she really hasnt had that much training. Maybe three hours a week, max.

While there are students her age who are more accomplished, because theyve been training longer, a student like Villanueva can catch up.

For instance, Misty Copeland started at a late age, but the concentration of classes and time she put it into it builds your body, Domino said. Ballet is repetition. The better the teacher, the more concentration and classes you have will excel you to wherever you want to be in ballet or dance.

Villanueva didnt always plan to become a ballerina. She thought about being a gymnast.

I decided not to, because I was afraid to fall and have a serious injury, so I decided to go with dance, she said. When I got there, I really liked it, and I stayed there.

Being a ballerina isnt without its challenges.

The hardest part about being a ballerina is that you have to maintain balance and be able to be flexible and strong, mentally and physically, so you dont give up, Villanueva said.

Villanueva credits her success to her teacher, Harris, for helping her push herself in dance as well as encouraging her to go to the audition for Joffrey in New York City.

Everything Ive done so far in dance is all thanks to my teacher. She has been really helpful to me, and shes showed me how to do all the steps and been there for me, she said. Without her, I wouldnt have gone to the audition.

When Villanueva came to Harris three years ago, Harris put her into a class with students who had been training for a few years already.

She had her feet going all the wrong way, she laughed.

After class, Harris told Villanuevas father to keep bringing her. Seeing how badly the girl wanted to be a ballerina, she said Villanueva would figure it out.

By the end of the first year, Harris said, she was one of the top students.

Outside of dancing, Villanuevas favorite subject is math. She hopes to become a dancer and a doctor, because shed like to help others.

Although she likes hanging out at the park with friends, she said, she always finishes her homework before she does anything else. Then she helps her brothers with their homework.

In New York City, she might go to Times Square, but she said she mostly hopes to make new friends and improve in dance.

To all the girls and all the boys: If anyone tries to put you down and say you have nothing special, there is always something for you, she said.
ATLANTIC CITY  Nearly 1,400 students walked across the stage at Boardwalk Hall on Friday as part of Stockton University's spring graduation.

As students walked across the stage their names appeared on two 30-foot television monitors.

Huge Stockton banners hung in Boardwalk Hall on Thursday as event staff and college personnel ran through a program they are committed to completing in less than three hours.

Weve got it down to about 3.5 to 4 seconds per name, said Craig Stambaugh, Stockton associate dean of students.

The move to the city, announced last year by Stockton President Harvey Kesselman, reflects two goals. First was to find a location large enough to allow the college to have one, not two graduation ceremonies. The second goal was to demonstrate the colleges commitment to the still-struggling resort and promote its own satellite campus under construction a few blocks away.

There are signs that others are taking the colleges lead.

The Hard Rock Cafe will send a tram car to Boardwalk Hall Friday afternoon to transport families from the Stockton University graduation to their post-commencement lunch.

We have gotten a lot of reservations, and we talked to Stockton about the timing so we can prepare, said Hard Rock sales and marketing manager Becky Woods. Were excited to be part of this with Stockton.

Each student received six tickets and could request two more, making for an audience that should comfortably fit into the hall, which seats about 10,500.

Brian Jackson, chief operating officer for the Atlantic City campus, contacted some area restaurants and hotels for discounts but said they want to see how this first event goes before making future plans.

We do want this to have an economic impact on the city, he said. But this year, we are just testing the waters to see what works.

Stockton posted information about discounted hotel rooms and meal specials on its website.

Several hotels offered specially discounted rooms for Thursday, though none was sold out. Since most students are from South Jersey, and almost all live in the state, a hotel stay wasnt a necessity. Room rates for Thursday ranged from $69 to $89, and some offered a slightly higher rate for Friday night.

Anik Rabbeni at the Marriott Courtyard said they did book a couple rooms, and while the discounted deadline has expired, they will still honor the rate.

It wasnt a big success, but people can still book rooms, Rabbeni said.

The Hard Rock Cafe is offering a free meal to graduates with the purchase of two adult entrees. Mortons The Steakhouse at Resorts is offering a special three-course menu for $63.99. Jackson said he knows one family that booked a room at Mortons for after graduation.

LandShark Bar and Grill and Margaritaville are offering Stockton graduates $5 off a $25 purchase. Other restaurants, including Breadsticks Cafe and Grill, Capriccio, Eastwind Chinese and Gallaghers Steakhouse are offering 15 percent discounts to families that show their graduation ticket stub.

The good thing is were done early, so it wont interfere with typical Friday night customers, Jackson said.

John Smith, assistant to the provost at Stockton, has been coordinating the ceremony since September and is excited about the use of the famous Boardwalk Hall organ, and the color-coded tents that will be installed on the Boardwalk where students can meet for photos with classmates.

I hear we are expecting at least one marriage proposal, he said.

Smith said this year is also a trial run for next year, when there are expected to be about 1,800 graduates because there will be no December graduation ceremony.

Its going to be very big, he said.
Shawn Patrick Rose Jr., 20, of Woodbine, was arrested Thursday morning on a charge that he uploaded images and video of child pornography online, according to the Attorney Generals Office.

Rose also faces first-degree charges in South Carolina of soliciting a 13-year-old girl to engage in sexually explicit conduct on a webcam, Attorney General Christopher S. Porrino said.

Division of Criminal Justice detectives executed a search warrant at Roses home and arrested him with assistance from the Cape May County Prosecutors Office, Porrinos office said.

Investigators said they found numerous files of child pornography during a preliminary examination of computers seized from the home, Porrinos office said.

Seized computers and electronic devices were taken to the Division of Criminal Justice Computer Forensic Laboratory for a full examination, Porrinos office said.

Rose was being held in the Cape May County jail in Cape May Court House pending a detention hearing.

Rose was charged in New Jersey with third-degree possession of child pornography, Porrinos office said.

The two South Carolina charges of sexual exploitation of a minor were filed by the Dorchester County Sheriffs Office, Porrinos office said.

The state Division of Criminal Justice Financial and Computer Crimes Bureau worked with the Dorchester County Sheriffs Office and First Circuit Office in South Carolina in the investigation that lead to charges in both states, Porrinos office said.
Five years after the unsolved killing, the Atlantic County Prosecutors Office has filed a court motion to get a sample of Jim Kauffmans DNA in connection with the death of his wife, April Kauffman.

The motion is scheduled to be heard May 26 in Atlantic County Superior Court, according to an email Thursday from the office of Atlantic County Prosecutor Damon Tyner.

I do not know Mr. Tyner, but I am certainly supportive of his effort to take another look at the case again, Kim Pack, daughter of April Kauffman, told The Press of Atlantic City. The fact that my mothers case is going to be looked at again, that they still care and that it is not a cold case is very much appreciated.

The body of April Kauffman, 47, a radio host, was found May 10, 2012, in the Woodstock Avenue home in Linwood she shared with her husband. An autopsy revealed she had been shot to death, and the investigation was labeled a homicide probe.

Tyner was out of the office Thursday and unavailable for comment. However, according to published reports, Tyner  sworn in to office March 15  requested a list of all open homicides dating to 1970.

Jim Kauffmans lawyer, Edwin Jacobs, said he could not comment Thursday but previously has said his client is innocent.

Pack said the last five years are still very fresh in her mind.

Not that you can ever forget, but it really hit me like a ton of bricks that it is five years, Pack said in a telephone interview.

Pack said the unsolved killing has never allowed her to have any closure over her mothers death.

She said she was unaware of the DNA motion, which was filed two weeks ago, until she heard about it on the news.

It was surreal to hear him; to have an authoritative figure say the case is still open and still active, Pack said. I think this was what I was waiting to hear for all these years.

Pack said she remains optimistic and hopeful.

Pack said Tyners opening of all the unsolved murder cases in the county will help many people, not just her family.

I want nothing more than to see closure and peace come to the other people who are living this same horrific scenario as me, Pack said.

Pack recalled sitting at a table with her mother and telling her how, at age 29, Pack felt she had a good marriage, great job and two wonderful kids.

My mom teared up just a little and told me that if she died tomorrow, that she would feel like she had done a good job as a mother. That was our last real conversation about life. I had no idea a few months later she would be taken from me. Other people are living that same thing; when a loved one is just snatched from your life, Pack said.

Sometimes you will remember something. It will jog peoples memory  that the case is being re-examined. Maybe time has passed and people will remember a little detail that they did not think was important before, but it just might be that one missing piece. I will always remain hopeful, she said.
The executive director of the Stockton Aviation Research and Technology Park has resigned just days before Atlantic County is set to break ground on the project, officials said Thursday.

Joseph Sheairs will step down to explore other opportunities after three years of work to start construction on the first building and fill it with tenants, among other responsibilities. A groundbreaking for the project adjacent to the William J. Hughes Technical Center in Egg Harbor Township is scheduled for Monday.

Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson and Chief of Staff Howard Kyle confirmed the move Thursday night, saying they knew it was coming, because Sheairs made a three-year commitment when he took over the park in 2014.

John Wiley and Joe Salvatore will take over as interim executive directors of the park in a new team approach the county is using as the park moves into its next phase, Kyle said.

Wiley is the former acting director of the Hughes Technical Center and the president of JLW Consulting LLC in Berlin, Camden County. He has held high positions at the tech center and is on the board of the tech park.

Salvatore has held several management and executive positions in the Federal Aviation Administration and the Transportation Security Administration.

Sheairs played a pivotal role in getting the project off the ground after its years of legal issues and delays.

Joe has been the best, Levinson said. He has been an integral part of getting the tech oark going.

Ed Salmon, director of the board of trustees for the park, called Sheairs an extremely talented and capable person who served the park well.

When Joe came on board he committed to working with us until construction of the first building was underway, Salmon wrote in a statement. Although we regret seeing him move on, hes leaving us in great shape and well positioned to take development of the park to the next level.

Stockton University President Harvey Kesselman praised Sheairs for fulfilling commitments to the park.

I have nothing but admiration and praise for his long term commitment to this project, Kesselman wrote in a statement.

A national search for a permanent executive director will begin soon, according to the county.
The annual state Taxpayers Guide to Education Spending is out, and as usual, its a tale of woe for many local residents.

Teachers dont like having their lavish salaries publicized, and the taxpayers paying them remain upset and frustrated that each year the excessive bill just gets higher.

This year, though, theres actually a chance the self-rewarding collusion between elected officials and the teachers union might start to come under enough pressure to bring about change.

The headline numbers would be jaw-dropping if they werent so familiar and dispiriting. Of the 10 New Jersey school districts that pay teachers the most, four are in South Jersey. And in several others, teacher pay isnt that far behind those four.

Margate teachers get $91,045 for 10 months of work, and since thats the median, half of them get more than that. Thats the fourth-highest teacher pay rate in the state.

Behind them in the states 10 highest are Brigantine at $89,900, Ocean City at $89,036 and Atlantic City at $88,318. Pay in several other area districts is right behind them, and even Buena and Lower Cape May regional schools are paying north of $81,000.

Odd that many South Jersey residents, whose incomes are so much lower than their counterparts in North Jersey, are paying their teachers more than in so many districts in the wealthier north. Its not as if the people in this region have a lot of money to spare and might as well throw it at the school systems.

Nor would anyone claim that paying some of the highest teacher salaries in the state results in some of the best-performing schools in the state. Schools in North Jersey routinely outperform schools in South Jersey.

The education establishment, as usual, offers some explanations. A favorite is that area teachers are so highly paid because theyve had the job for so long  an average of 20 years, one superintendent said.

This must grate on taxpayers even more, since it reminds them of how the deal between politicians and unions results in overpaid teachers. Unlike private sector workers, government workers such as teachers get negotiated raises and automatic step increases whether theyre doing a good job or not. In some districts, teachers also get longevity increases on top of that, just for staying on in a job they dont even have to do well to keep.

Even in the rare instance where a nearly bankrupt municipality must cut some staff, the union bars administrators from laying off the worst teachers and requires keeping those with the most longevity and pay.

Of the 20 lowest-paying districts in the state, all but one are charter schools, which operate with less money. They are nonunion, and salaries range from $42,000 to $48,000, closer to what the market would pay for good teachers without elected officials and their public union allies pushing up the cost.

This being another Legislature election year, the teachers union will again provide the money and campaign muscle to ensure the election of officials who will keep excessively rewarding them (and remember, lavish benefits and pensions are on top of the high salaries).

But trouble for this cozy conspiracy might be brewing at the national level.

Higher-income taxpayers dont feel the full brunt of teacher costs in New Jersey. They deduct the property taxes funding schools from their federal income tax, in effect getting a rebate on their school bills.

The Trump administration has proposed, as a key part of its tax-reform package, to end the deduction for state taxes on federal income tax returns. It sees the deduction as encouraging states to spend too much and pass some of the cost onto taxpayers nationwide.

If the wealthier taxpayers filing Schedule A with their federal returns start to feel the pain as directly as the average taxpayer, support for school reform could get a lot stronger.
Hamilton traffic advice

Regarding the April 29 letter, Hamilton Township traffic woes:

Opening Volunteer Way straight through from Wrangleboro Road will only relieve congestion at Cates Road and the Black Horse Pike if left turns are prohibited from Volunteer Way onto Cates Road. Otherwise the backup at Cates Road and the pike will only be exacerbated for the residents of Eaglesmere, Stonecrest, the Fairways and other residential communities along Cates Road.

Dwight and Nancy Neglia

Mays Landing

Schultz charitable work should be investigated

Regarding the April 18 story, Former A.C. councilman sentenced to prison in tax-fraud scheme:

I was outraged to read this about John Schultz, who is well-known for his charitable work in the community. Reading how Schultz kept two sets of books in order to conceal money and avoid paying taxes makes me very suspicious of his charitable organizations.

Schultz, along with his partner, Gary Hill, are founders of the MBCA (Metropolitan Business & Citizens Association) and the Schultz-Hill Foundation, both groups known for their aggressive fundraising. The tax evasion makes me wonder about their true objectives, and whether they creatively disguised organizations to help enable them to live a lifestyle of the rich and famous.

The judge who presided over the case even remarked about his lavish penthouse and saw the tax evasion as greed. His deceptive behavior waves a red flag. Their charitable organizations need to be investigated.

A thorough and complete audit should be done by the proper authorities to insure that all monies donated and contributed are being recorded and spent appropriately.

Marie DiPietro

Atlantic City

Offshore energy drilling could help N.J. finances

Regarding the May 2 story, South Jersey prepares for a battle to prevent offshore drilling:

Oil, oil everywhere, but we are too dumb to take it. The story only shows the fears that the left and the environmentalists want to bestow on people.

I visited my brother in Santa Barbara, California, and saw drilling wells 5 miles offshore, with people enjoying clean beaches marred only by some seaweed. The proposal for the New Jersey area is for drilling 50 miles offshore. I have taken enough fishing trips that I know that after 5 miles on a clear day, the oil rigs wouldnt even be visible.

Its a real solution to New Jerseys high tax rate. Wake up and drill. I might even be able to stay in New Jersey instead of fleeing south to lower taxes.

Walt Bielecki

Little Egg Harbor Township
This past year, Iowa was short $230 million in revenue to cover budget expenses. $110 million of the shortfall was covered by cutting expenses in part by cutting funding for local schools, community colleges and state universities. Law enforcement also received cuts. Another $120 million of the shortfall was covered by using Iowas rainy day fund, money that by law, must be replaced.

By law, spending cannot supersede income, creating a deficit. Since deficit spending is not an option, Iowa is left with two choices: cut spending or raise revenues.

Corporate America and the super-rich favor additional cuts to spending: cut additional educational funding; cut health care; cut beds for mental health; cut monies for economic development; and cut vital infrastructure. With these cuts, we lose opportunities to attract good paying jobs to Iowa, to boost the finances of what was once the middle class. Following in these footsteps, Iowa will look like Kansas; the super-rich gain once again, while 90 percent of Iowans take another financial hit.

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Horton explained, That is where the money is.

Iowa can be prosperous. Iowa can provide opportunities for all Iowans. The super-rich need to pay their fair share of taxes: raise income taxes on those making more than $1 million in income; collect sales taxes from those who legally are scamming the system; and revisit the tax breaks provided to Corporate America under Iowas commercial tax reduction law. The super-rich have gamed the system for their own benefit long enough. We as Iowans need to explain Enough is enough, and demand an Iowa that benefits all of us, not just a small segment of Iowas population, while making it more difficult for the majority of Iowans to maintain an adequate life style!

Stan Walk, St. Ansgar
The Best Practices Awards are presented each year to companies that are predicted to encourage significant growth in their industries, have identified emerging trends before they became the standard in the marketplace, and have created advanced technologies that will catalyze and transform industries in the near future.

"Our Awards program has now been in existence for more than fifteen years," said Jeff Frigstad, Global Sr. Vice President, Best Practices, Frost & Sullivan. "These Awards come from the rigor used by our talented team of 2,000 thought leaders from over 45 global offices working with over 200,000 clients, to locate the best."

Awarded companies included:

A10 Networks, Inc. - 2016 Latin American Application Delivery Controllers Enabling Technology Leadership Award

Algar Tech - 2016 Brazilian Contact Center Outsourcing Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award

Atento Mexico - 2016 Mexican Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market Leadership Award

Avaya - 2017 Latin American Enterprise Communications Platforms & Endpoints Product Line Strategy Leadership Award

CIPHER - 2016 Brazilian Managed Security Services Market Leadership Award

Comarch SA - 2016 Latin American Telecommunications Network Solutions and Services Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award

Deelo Contact Center & BPO - 2016 Argentinean Contact Center Outsourcing Services Customer Value Leadership Award

Embratel - 2017 Brazilian Data Center Services Provided by Telecommunication Companies Market Leadership Award

GlobeNet - 2017 Latin American Carrier of Carriers Services Company of the Year Award

inConcert - 2016 Latin American Contact Center Applications Enabling Technology Leadership Award

Level 3 Communications - 2016 Latin American Enterprise Services Provider Company of the Year Award

Omnize - 2017 Brazilian Cloud Contact Center Technology Innovation Award

Polycom Inc. - 2017 Latin American Enterprise Communications Endpoints Company of the Year Award

Teleperformance - 2016 Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Nearshoring Services Market Leadership Award

Verint - 2016 Latin American Robotics New Product Innovation Award

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices.

For further information about the Awards Ceremony, please contact a member of the Best Practices Team.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, collaborates with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that could make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, Frost & Sullivan has been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector, and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Claudia Toscano

P: 210.477.8417

F: 210.348.1003

E: claudia.toscano@frost.com

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SOURCE Frost & Sullivan
"Both Merck and Stelis bring technological expertise and an extensive bioprocess development and manufacturing portfolio that will help customers accelerate development of biopharmaceuticals for clinical trials and manufacturing with greater reliability and cost effectiveness," said Udit Batra, Member of the Merck Executive Board and CEO, Life Science .

The collaboration reinforces Merck's position as the premier supplier of process development and clinical state manufacturing solutions, materials and services needed for biologics production.

"In the biopharma space, where the process is the product, our Process Scale-Up Lab fulfils a critical need by offering clients a reliable process bridge between R&D and commercial scales," said Joe Thomas, CEO of Stelis Biopharma. "The collaboration with Merck completes the value proposition for CDMO customers by providing an end-to-end solution from process development and scale-up through to manufacturing for pre-clinical, clinical and commercial supply."

The lab is a center of excellence for process scale-up and manufacturing services. The collaboration brings together Stelis' end-to-end capabilities in high-yield bioprocess development from cell line to commercial manufacturing scale and Merck's industry leading technological expertise in bioprocessing.

The Process Scale-Up Lab and a soon-to-be-completed cGMP manufacturing facility will house Merck's portfolio of Mobius bioprocessing equipment and single-use manufacturing components. Merck will provide process know-how and application knowledge to help establish the single-use platform technologies at Stelis as part of the collaboration.

All Merck news releases are distributed by email at the same time they become available on the Merck website. Please go to www.merckgroup.com/subscribe to register online, change your selection or discontinue this service.

About Merck

Merck is a leading science and technology company in healthcare, life science and performance materials. Around 50,000 employees work to further develop technologies that improve and enhance life  from biopharmaceutical therapies to treat cancer or multiple sclerosis, cutting-edge systems for scientific research and production, to liquid crystals for smartphones and LCD televisions. In 2016, Merck generated sales of 15.0 billion in 66 countries.

Founded in 1668, Merck is the world's oldest pharmaceutical and chemical company. The founding family remains the majority owner of the publicly listed corporate group. Merck holds the global rights to the Merck name and brand. The only exceptions are the United States and Canada, where the company operates as EMD Serono, MilliporeSigma and EMD Performance Materials.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/511010/Merck_Process_Scale_Up_Lab.jpg

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SOURCE Merck
SYDNEY, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Audeamus Risk, the world's first Business Interruption Insurance trading platform, has been recognised by an independent panel, led by major Australian Bank Westpac, among the top 200 Australian Businesses of Tomorrow.

"We're thrilled with this news - to be part of the top 200 businesses' shaping the future is a great privilege," said Audeamus Risk founder and CEO Aleksandar Kovacevic.

"We're focusing on developing broader and deeper markets, consisting of Insurance, Reinsurance participants and new alternative providers. Receiving this recognition reinforces Audeamus Risk's business model", continues Kovacevic, 25 year international banking veteran and former adviser to the Australian Federal Government and the World Bank.

Security compromises, cyber-related incidents, natural hazards, fraud, product recalls, supply chain disruptions, cause billions of dollars of losses across industry, posing challenges for societal security in general.

While some of these losses are preventable, lack of detailed risk data results in higher premium costs which cause a barrier for organisations seeking comprehensive Business Interruption insurance cover.

Audeamus Risk, a pioneer InsurTech start-up transforming an industry that currently relies on static information into an ecosystem that will utilise real-time, dynamic information from the Business Continuity Management domain for customised insurance policies.

Aleksandar Kovacevic explains: "The industry focus until now has been on mathematical modelling and algorithms. The absence of consistent and reliable data from the risk source can render some of these models inaccurate, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics for resilience purposes. We provide the industry with an important missing element: actual, non-modelled data from the risk source, in a meaningful format that can be used for pricing purposes. For the very first time this data will have a clear audit trail too".

Audeamus Risk is also assessing the quality and consistency of aggregate financial data collected through the platform, and how it can be used in global markets of Insurance Linked Securities (ILS) and similar instruments used for alternative reinsurance purposes.

"Audeamus Risk provides updates similar to a continuous data feed from commonly used wearable devices. However, in Audeamus Risk case we monitor the behaviour and resilience of the organisation expressed in dollar value, it's breaking new ground", adds Kovacevic.

For more information please contact:

Aleksandar Kovacevic

Audeamus Risk

+61 418 119 851

www.audeamusrisk.com

Sydney, Australia

SOURCE PRN Asia Hong Kong
NEW YORK, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Seeger Weiss LLP and Milberg LLP today announced that the U.S. Department of Justice, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and several state Attorneys' General Medicaid Fraud Units, have reached a $54 million settlement in a newly-unsealed healthcare fraud whistleblower action against CareCore National LLC. The company, headquartered in Blufton, SC, provides pre-authorization/pre-certification services for diagnostic testing to ensure that only medically reasonable and necessary tests are performed on patients and paid for by insurers. Of the $54 million recovery, $45 million will go to the federal government and $9 million will go to various participating states.

CareCore merged with MedSolutions, Inc. in December of 2014 and now operates as eviCore healthcare. CareCore provided these services around the country to managed care organizations and other providers, touting their services as cost control and reduction measures.

Seeger Weiss LLP and Milberg LLP represented the whistleblower, or "relator," in the lawsuit, which was filed under seal on February 21, 2013 in federal court in the Southern District of New York. The Relator, a Licensed Practical Nurse, alleged that CareCore trained its nurse employees to violate its own protocols that were supposed to ensure that its customers pay only for diagnostic testing that is medically reasonable and necessary.

Specifically, under CareCore's stated protocol, nurses were required to refer pre-authorization requests that failed to meet certain criteria to medical doctors for their review so the doctors could issue or deny the pre-authorization requests. These requests were required by CareCore's customers  managed care organizations and other health insurers that provide services to the beneficiaries of government programs through Medicare Part C and Medicaid Managed Care.

Instead, due to critical time constraints required by its customers, CareCore directed its nursing staff to "Process As Directed" or to "PAD" certain of those cases that had been sent for a doctor's review. For these "padded" cases, nurses were instructed to issue pre-authorizations for diagnostic testing even though the set criteria had not been met and the doctors had not conducted the required review. Thus, the managed care organizations and other providers, including those with which the government contracts, paid for diagnostic tests, like costly MRIs and PET scans, that were not properly authorized as being medically reasonable or necessary.

"Our client was deeply troubled by the wrongdoing that he witnessed and after a lot of soul-searching decided to come forward in order to end a practice that was not only wrong, but cost the U.S. taxpayers many tens of millions of dollars," says his attorney, Stephen A. Weiss of Seeger Weiss. "It's never an easy decision, but it's a courageous and correct decision."

Weiss' co-counsel, partner Anna C. Dover of Milberg LLP added: "The brazenness of this company's actionseven using the acronym "PAD" is appalling. At a time when healthcare costs are spiraling out of control, it is vital that whistleblowers like our client come forward to prevent this type of abuse." Pursuant to False Claims Act provisions, the Relator will be awarded approximately $10.5 million plus interestor 20%--from the Government's combined federal and state recovery.

The settlement was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorney Arastu K. Chaudhury of the U.S. Attorney's office of the Southern District of New York and Kathleen Von Hoene of the Florida Office of the Attorney General (on behalf of the states); Seeger Weiss partners Stephen A. Weiss and TerriAnne Benedetto; and Matthew Gluck, Anna C. Dover, and Rolando G. Marquez of Milberg LLP.

Note: Seeger Weiss LLP is a national leader in qui tam "whistleblower" litigation, successfully representing relators in a myriad of qui tam proceedings. The firm was relator's counsel in United States ex rel. Alexander, et al. v. Warner Chilcott plc, et al., No. 11-cv-10545-RGS (D. Mass.), in which the Government recovered $125 million in connection with a sprawling healthcare fraud orchestrated by pharmaceutical company Warner-Chilcott, and was counsel to the whistleblower in People of the State of New York, ex rel. Vijay Tharwani v. Mohanbhai Ramchandani and Mohan's Custom Tailors, Inc., Index No. 103744/2012, which resulted in the recovery of $5.5 million by the State of New York in connection with a decade-long tax evasion scheme perpetrated by "tailor to the stars" Mohanbhai "Mohan" Ramchandani. The firm, with offices in New York, Philadelphia and New Jersey, represents plaintiffs in a variety of practice areas, including qui tam, pharmaceutical injury, securities and investment fraud, consumer protection, environmental and asbestos exposures, personal injury and medical malpractice, product defect, antitrust, and commercial disputes. For more information, please go to www.seegerweiss.com or contact Stephen A. Weiss at 212-584-0700 or toll-free at 877-912-2668.

Milberg LLP is widely recognized as a leading class action and complex litigation firm, representing individual and institutional investors, unions, consumers, and whistleblowers. In addition to having litigated landmark cases resulting in groundbreaking legal precedents and corporate governance reforms benefitting shareholders, Milberg also maintains an active whistleblower, or "qui tam," practice. Milberg has returned hundreds of millions of dollars to federal and state treasuries in both intervened and non-intervened qui tam cases, including United States ex rel. Mortgage Now, Inc. v. Bank of America Corp. (WD NC 3:12cv360-MOC-DSC) (Relator's action alleging that Bank of America had improperly recouped insurance proceeds from HUD to which it was not entitled was settled as part of the $16.65 billion global settlement regarding Bank of America's mortgage practices  the largest civil settlement with a single entity in American history) and Mason v. Medline Industries, Inc., et al., No. 07-cv-5615 (N.D. Ill.) (Government declined to intervene in Relator's action alleging unlawful kickbacks, bribes, and other illegal remuneration to induce health care providers to continue to purchase defendant's medical supplies and yet the case settled for $85 million  one of the largest settlements of a non-intervened FCA case to date). If you would like more information about Milberg and our practice areas, please visit www.milberg.com or contact Anna C. Dover at 212-594-5300.

SOURCE Seeger Weiss LLP

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MIDVALE, Utah, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) today announced the launch of Ally Invest, its brokerage and wealth management offering that now exists alongside its award-winning online banking products in a single, convenient customer experience. The combination of Ally's competitive deposit products together with low-cost investing gives customers a powerful new value proposition for managing their financial well-being.

Ally's entry into the brokerage and wealth management space was accelerated through the acquisition of TradeKing in June 2016. The launch of Ally Invest represents further progress in the company's mission to offer customers more choices in managing their financial lives through an exceptional, digitally-oriented experience at a compelling value. With the integration of Ally Invest, customers can access the brokerage and advisory products using the same user-friendly web and mobile platforms as Ally's deposit and credit card products.

"On the heels of our Ally Cash Back Credit Card and competitive Ally Home loan products, Ally Invest is a continuation of our commitment to 'Do It Right' by our customers by providing more options to make their money work harder," said Diane Morais, president of Consumer & Commercial Banking Products at Ally Bank. "The convenience of these value-driven digital offerings all in one place presents the best possible alternative for busy consumers looking for simple, straightforward solutions to their financial needs."

The Ally Invest offerings consist of a low-cost trading platform for self-directed investors, as well as a suite of affordable, automatically managed investment portfolios, both delivered through a fully-transparent online process. With Ally Invest, customers can:

Access all of their online banking, brokerage and wealth management accounts via ally.com

Leverage a robust streaming and fully-customizable trading platform with research and trading tools for equities and options traders of all experience levels

Quickly and easily open and fund managed investment portfolios online based on their specified investment goals

Receive 24/7 customer support

Enjoy upgraded brokerage and wealth management mobile apps with biometrics and enhancements for iOS and Android tablets

Transfer their money between their various Ally accounts

Click here to preview a video of the new integrated platform.

Investing for Premium Value

Customers of Ally Invest will enjoy one of the industry's most competitive flat per trade price offerings at $4.95 per trade and $0.65 per options contract with no minimums or hidden fees. Active investors who place 30 or more trades per quarter or carry a balance of $100,000 or more will pay just $3.95 per equity trade and $0.50 per options contract. Ally Invest Advisors' array of managed portfolios are available to new customers at a .30% annual fee with an account minimum of $2,500, with no commissions or transaction fees.

"Ten years ago, TradeKing set the standard for low, fair pricing in online brokerage, a standard some brokerages are just coming around to today," said Rich Hagen, the former president of TradeKing and now president of Brokerage & Wealth Management at Ally. "Now Ally aims to set a new standard by combining low-cost investing alongside great savings rates and other highly competitive financial offerings, and deliver this powerful set of financial services through an extraordinarily simple and convenient customer experience. We believe customer experience will be a clear differentiator for us in our space moving forward."

About Ally Financial Inc.

Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a leading digital financial services company and a top 25 U.S. financial holding company offering financial products for consumers, businesses, automotive dealers and corporate clients. Ally's legacy dates back to 1919, and the company was redesigned in 2009 with a distinctive brand, innovative approach and relentless focus on its customers. Ally has an award-winning online bank (Ally Bank Member FDIC), one of the largest full service auto finance operations in the country, a complementary auto-focused insurance business, a growing wealth management and online brokerage platform, and a trusted corporate finance business offering capital for equity sponsors and middle-market companies.

The company had approximately $162.1 billion in assets as of Mar. 31, 2017. For more information, visit the Ally press room at http://media.ally.com or follow Ally on Twitter: @AllyFinancial.

Securities products and services are offered through Ally Invest Securities LLC, member FINRA and SIPC. Investment advisory services are offered through Ally Invest Advisors Inc., an SEC registered investment adviser. Ally Invest Advisors Inc. and Ally Invest Securities LLC are wholly owned subsidiaries of Ally Invest Group Inc. Investments are NOT FDIC INSURED, NOT BANK GUARANTEED and MAY LOSE VALUE.

Deposit products are offered by Ally Bank, Member FDIC. In addition, mortgage products are offered by Ally Bank, Equal Housing Lender, NMLS ID 181005. Credit and collateral are subject to approval and additional terms and conditions apply. Programs, rates and terms and conditions are subject to change at any time without notice.

The Ally CashBack Credit Card is issued by TD Bank, N.A.

Ally Invest Group Inc. and Ally Bank are wholly owned subsidiaries of Ally Financial, Inc.

Contacts:

Andrea Puchalsky, Ally Financial Inc.

313-656-3798

[email protected]

Sue Parente, Tier One Partners

781-642-7788

[email protected]

SOURCE Ally Financial

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(under IFRS and all amounts in US dollars unless otherwise stated)

VANCOUVER, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Alterra Power Corp. (TSX: AXY) ("Alterra" or the "Company") is pleased to report its financial and operating results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017. For further information on these results please see Alterra's Condensed Consolidated Interim Financial Statements and Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A").

At March 31, 2017, Alterra consolidated 100% of the results of operations from its Icelandic subsidiary HS Orka, while Alterra's interests in the Toba Montrose, Dokie 1, Shannon, Jimmie Creek, and Kokomo renewable power projects were accounted for as equity investments. In certain statements in this news release, Alterra's results are disclosed as Alterra's "net interest", by which the Company means the effective portion of operating results that the Company would have reported if each of HS Orka (66.6%), Toba Montrose (40%), Dokie 1 (25.5%), Shannon (50% sponsor equity interest), Jimmie Creek (51%), and Kokomo (90% sponsor equity interest). Management believes that net interest reporting, although a non-IFRS measure, provides the clearest view of Alterra's performance. Refer to our MD&A for further information on non-IFRS measures. The Company also has disclosed information below regarding Adjusted EBITDA, another non-IFRS measure. Please refer to the Company's definition of Adjusted EBITDA and further commentary thereto, which is incorporated in the Financial Results table below.

Highlights for the quarter and subsequent period include:

Revenue and Adjusted EBITDA: Consolidated revenue increased by 22% to $18.2 million in 2017, and net interest revenue increased by 19% to $16.6 million , predominantly due to increased retail sales and an increase in aluminum prices during the quarter at HS Orka (21% of sales at HS Orka are linked to the price of aluminum), and increased unit pricing received at Shannon under its power hedge. Adjusted EBITDA increased over 2% on a consolidated and net interest basis to $6.6 million and $4.4 million , respectively, primarily due to increased unit pricing at Shannon .





Consolidated revenue increased by 22% to in 2017, and net interest revenue increased by 19% to , predominantly due to increased retail sales and an increase in aluminum prices during the quarter at HS Orka (21% of sales at HS Orka are linked to the price of aluminum), and increased unit pricing received at under its power hedge. Adjusted EBITDA increased over 2% on a consolidated and net interest basis to and , respectively, primarily due to increased unit pricing at . Fleet generation: The Company achieved fleet-wide generation of 97.0% of its budgeted generation (net interest) for the current quarter.





The Company achieved fleet-wide generation of 97.0% of its budgeted generation (net interest) for the current quarter. Geothermal field improvement at Reykjanes: Field enhancement efforts (including well venting and turbine pressure adjustments) have achieved positive results, arresting the previous generation decline and resulting in increased generation compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. The Company expects further field and plant output improvement from the drilling of planned new wells, well work-overs, and potentially from the recent deep drilling project well drilled in Iceland .





Field enhancement efforts (including well venting and turbine pressure adjustments) have achieved positive results, arresting the previous generation decline and resulting in increased generation compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. The Company expects further field and plant output improvement from the drilling of planned new wells, well work-overs, and potentially from the recent deep drilling project well drilled in . Completion of potential high output well at Reykjanes field: A deep drilling program at Reykjanes was completed in January 2017 ("IDDP 2"), reaching a depth of 4,650 meters, making it the deepest well drilled in Iceland . Initial well readings (427 o C temperature, 340 bars pressure) indicate supercritical conditions at the base of the well. Based on these early readings, if IDDP 2 is able to be utilized for electric production, it may produce as much as 30-50 MW of electrical output at the Reykjanes plant. The final production potential for the well will not be known until late 2018 after further tests and research are completed.





A deep drilling program at Reykjanes was completed in ("IDDP 2"), reaching a depth of 4,650 meters, making it the deepest well drilled in . Initial well readings (427 C temperature, 340 bars pressure) indicate supercritical conditions at the base of the well. Based on these early readings, if IDDP 2 is able to be utilized for electric production, it may produce as much as 30-50 MW of electrical output at the Reykjanes plant. The final production potential for the well will not be known until late 2018 after further tests and research are completed. 200 MW Flat Top wind project:





Offtake: The Company is currently negotiating a power hedge as Flat Top's primary revenue contract and anticipates the agreement to be finalized in the second quarter of 2017.





The Company is currently negotiating a power hedge as Flat Top's primary revenue contract and anticipates the agreement to be finalized in the second quarter of 2017.

Project financing: The Company has agreed to terms and entered exclusivity with lenders and tax equity providers to provide 100% of the Flat Top project financing, and the drafting of definitive documents for the financing is nearly complete. The Company also plans on selling a 49% project partnership interest in conjunction with closing project financing, and has advanced to late-stage negotiations with select parties.





The Company has agreed to terms and entered exclusivity with lenders and tax equity providers to provide 100% of the Flat Top project financing, and the drafting of definitive documents for the financing is nearly complete. The Company also plans on selling a 49% project partnership interest in conjunction with closing project financing, and has advanced to late-stage negotiations with select parties. Acquisition of Boswell Springs:





In April, the Company acquired a 320 MW portfolio of wind development projects located in Albany County, Wyoming . The Company expects the project to achieve commercial operations in 2020, selling 100% of its output under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Rocky Mountain Power. The Company commenced construction of the project's main power transformers in 2016 in anticipation of closing the acquisition in 2017, and the project is expected to qualify for production tax credits at the full rate.





. The Company expects the project to achieve commercial operations in 2020, selling 100% of its output under a 20-year power purchase agreement with Rocky Mountain Power. The Company commenced construction of the project's main power transformers in 2016 in anticipation of closing the acquisition in 2017, and the project is expected to qualify for production tax credits at the full rate.

The Company anticipates capital costs to be in-line with current industry standard for a project of this size and will be advancing the project in the normal course, with permitting, transmission and other customary project development-related work still to be completed. The Company expects that the project will generate approximately $20.0 million of Adjusted EBITDA per year over the first five full years of operations. This estimate of Adjusted EBITDA constitutes a "forward-looking statement" and "forward-looking financial information", subject to the cautionary notes discussed herein. Readers are cautioned that actual results may vary materially from this forward-looking financial information.





of Adjusted EBITDA per year over the first five full years of operations. This estimate of Adjusted EBITDA constitutes a "forward-looking statement" and "forward-looking financial information", subject to the cautionary notes discussed herein. Readers are cautioned that actual results may vary materially from this forward-looking financial information. Advancement of other USA wind projects: The Company continued advancement of several other wind projects in its USA development portfolio (comprised of projects that are owned and projects subject to cooperation with other developers), including resource and transmission studies, submissions into offtake requests for proposals and other development activities.





The Company continued advancement of several other wind projects in its development portfolio (comprised of projects that are owned and projects subject to cooperation with other developers), including resource and transmission studies, submissions into offtake requests for proposals and other development activities. Spartan: Preliminary construction for the 13.5MW DC solar project in East Lansing, Michigan ("Spartan") commenced in March 2017 , and commercial operations are expected to commence in the fourth quarter. The project will sell 100% of its power to Michigan State University for 25 years. Alterra will co-own the project with Inovateus Solar, LLC on completion of project financing, which is expected in mid-2017. The Company anticipates owning at least 85% of the project at closing.





Preliminary construction for the 13.5MW solar project in ("Spartan") commenced in , and commercial operations are expected to commence in the fourth quarter. The project will sell 100% of its power to for 25 years. Alterra will co-own the project with Inovateus Solar, LLC on completion of project financing, which is expected in mid-2017. The Company anticipates owning at least 85% of the project at closing. Distributions: The Company received distributions during the quarter from equity investments of $1.7 million and another $0.2 million subsequent to quarter-end. HS Orka declared a dividend of which the Company's share is $2.5 million and is expected to be paid in 2017.





The Company received distributions during the quarter from equity investments of and another subsequent to quarter-end. HS Orka declared a dividend of which the Company's share is and is expected to be paid in 2017. Shareholder dividends: A quarterly cash dividend of C$0.0125 per common share was paid on March 15 , 2017. Subsequent to March 31, 2017 , the Company approved a quarterly dividend in the amount of C$0.0125 per common share. The cash dividend will be distributed on or about June 15, 2017 , to holders of record of common shares as of the close of business on May 31, 2017 .

Financial Results

The following table shows Alterra's net interest in select operating and financial results for the quarter, in addition to key financial information extracted from the consolidated results.





















For the three

months ended

March 31, 2017(a) HS Orka Toba

Montrose Dokie 1 Shannon Jimmie

Creek Kokomo(c) Development

and head

office Net interest

total Consolidated

Results (66.6)% (40%) (25.5%) (50%) (51%) (90%) Generation (MWh) 180,683 3,708 19,818 104,266 724 1,390  310,589 271,296 Total revenue(b) 12,119 341 1,956 1,982 98 113  16,609 18,196 Gross profit (loss) 2,226 (1,104) 1,235 (195) (824) (5)  1,333 3,343 Adjusted EBITDA(d) 4,395 (543) 1,525 962 (252) 58 (1,784) 4,361 6,563

















For the three

months ended

March 31, 2016(a) HS Orka Toba

Montrose Dokie 1 Shannon Development

and head

office Net interest

total Consolidated

Results (66.6%) (40%) (25.5%) (50%) Generation (MWh) 205,386 10,167 20,139 102,106  337,798 308,387 Total revenue 9,943 882 1,824 1,255  13,904 14,930 Gross profit 2,567 (558) 993 (854)  2,148 3,854 Adjusted EBITDA(d) 4,281 (75) 1,314 162 (1,413) 4,269 6,417

(a) Here and elsewhere, all tabular amounts (except generation) are expressed in thousands of US dollars.



(b) Revenue for Shannon above excludes power hedge accounting adjustments.



(c) On March 3, 2017, the Company's ownership in Kokomo decreased from 93.8% to 90%.



(d) Here and elsewhere, adjusted EBITDA ("Adjusted EBITDA") is defined by the Company as earnings before interest, taxes, foreign exchange, depreciation and amortization, as well as adjustments for changes in the fair value of holding company bonds (Sweden) and derivatives, write-offs of development costs, other income (expense) except business interruption insurance proceeds, amortization of below market contracts, value assigned to options granted, share of results of equity investments, the Company's proportionate interest in Adjusted EBITDA of its equity investments, research and development costs for deep drilling program and non-recurring items (insurance deductibles, litigation and arbitration costs). Adjusted EBITDA has been calculated on a consistent basis with the comparative year. The Company discloses Adjusted EBITDA as it is a measure used by analysts and by management to evaluate the Company's performance. As Adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS measure, it may not be comparable to Adjusted EBITDA calculated by others. In addition, Adjusted EBITDA is not a substitute for net earnings. Readers should consider net earnings in evaluating the Company's performance. For a reconciliation of consolidated Adjusted EBITDA to Alterra's consolidated financial statements refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2017 available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Consolidated Results

Revenue was $18.2 million for the quarter, up 22% from the comparative quarter predominantly due to increased retail sales, an increase in aluminum prices during the quarter at HS Orka and favourable exchange rate movements.

The Company recorded a net loss of $0.3 million (comparative quarter $2.0 million loss), primarily due to non-cash changes including changes in the fair value of derivatives and bonds payable, and income tax expense along with finance costs.

Consolidated cash and cash equivalents at March 31, 2017 were $21.5 million of which $1.4 million is held in the Company's Icelandic subsidiary ($31.6 million and $0.3 million, respectively at December 31, 2016). The decrease in consolidated cash is primarily a result of development and construction activities.

The Company's consolidated working capital deficit at March 31, 2017 was $77.5 million compared to a working capital deficit of $62.3 million at December 31, 2016. Excluding HS Orka, the Company's consolidated working capital deficit at March 31, 2017 was $55.4 million compared to a working capital deficit of $43.3 million at December 31, 2016, resulting primarily from one of the holding company bonds (Sweden) valued at $64.7 million being classified as current at March 31, 2017 ($60.0 million at December 31, 2016) and the Flat Top contingent developer fee of $9.9 million, which is expected to be paid at financial close with proceeds from project financing. Excluding the impact of these items, the Company would have had a positive working capital balance of $19.2 million at March 31, 2017.

Net Interest Results

Alterra's net interest revenue increased by $2.7 million to $16.6 million and net interest Adjusted EBITDA increased 2.2% to $4.4 million primarily due to increased retail sales and an increase in aluminum prices during the quarter, and increased unit pricing received at Shannon under its power hedge (the comparative quarter output received merchant pricing which was exceptionally low due to historically low natural gas prices) partially offset by the low generation at Toba Montrose.

The net interest cash position at March 31, 2017 was $28.0 million.

Operating Results

The Company achieved fleet-wide generation of 97.0% of its budgeted generation (net interest) for the current quarter.









Q1 2017 Generation (MWh)



Total Net Interest

Facility Budget

Actual

Budget

Actual

% of Budget Reykjanes 140,646

142,449

93,670

94,871

101.3 % Svartsengi 132,842

128,847

88,473

85,812

97.0 % Toba Montrose 24,361

9,270

9,744

3,708

38.1 % Jimmie Creek 1,376

1,420

702

724

103.1 % Dokie 1 90,872

77,718

23,172

19,818

85.5 % Shannon 205,346

208,531

102,673

104,266

101.6 % Kokomo 2,042

1,544

1,838

1,390

75.6 % TOTAL 597,485

569,779

320,272

310,589

97.0 %

Budgeted amounts include planned maintenance outages.

"While generation was down against the comparative quarter, resource utilization from our operating assets remained strong," said Lynda Freeman, CFO of Alterra. "2017 continues to be a year of growth, and we are looking forward to the next phase with Flat Top and Spartan expected to close project financing shortly"

Results of Annual General and Special Meeting

Alterra is also pleased to announce that, at its annual general and special meeting of shareholders held on May 11, 2017 (the "Meeting"), all nominees listed in the management information circular dated March 29, 2017, were re-elected as directors of the Company. The report of the vote by ballot is as follows:

Name of Nominee Votes in Favour

Votes Withheld

Ross J. Beaty 25,170,284 99.6% 92,908 0.4% David W. Cornhill 25,096,739 99.3% 166,453 0.7% Donald Shumka 25,061,885 99.2% 201,307 0.8% Donald A. McInnes 25,071,495 99.2% 191,697 0.8% James M.I. Bruce 25,058,782 99.2% 204,410 0.8% John B. Carson 24,998,185 99.0% 265,007 1.0% Kerri L. Fox 25,064,029 99.2% 199,163 0.8%

By a majority vote, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP was also re-appointed as the Company's auditors at the Meeting.

By a majority vote, the shareholders approved changes to the Company's stock option plan, all as more particularly described in the Company's management information circular dated March 29, 2017.

A formal report on voting results from the Meeting will be filed on Alterra's public profile at www.sedar.com in due course.

Alterra will host a conference call to discuss financial and operating results on Friday, May 12, 2017 at 11:30 am ET (8:30 am PT). North American participants dial 1-888-390-0605 and International participants dial 1-416-764-8609; the conference ID is 55243946 The call will also be broadcast live on the Internet at http://event.on24.com/r.htm?e=1417017&s=1&k=93DA09B14A80295307177CBF13464A93 The call will be available for replay for one week after the call by dialing 1-416-764-8677 and entering replay PIN 243946#

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements and Information

Certain of the statements and information included in this news release constitute forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements or information. This information may involve known and unknown risks, assumptions and uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the Company's actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from the future results, performance or achievements implied by such statements or information. Specifically, forward-looking statements within this news release relate to, among other things: successful development, financing (including construction debt, tax equity and sponsor interest sales) and construction of our pre-operational projects and properties, Alterra's successful acquisition from or partnership with the owners of projects currently owned by other developers, marketing of power and ability to secure power purchase or offtake agreements in respect of the same and the expected timing to implement such agreements; successful development, construction and financing of the Flat Top wind project, the Spartan solar project and the Boswell Springs wind project, and the timing of each of the same, potential to increase production resulting from deep drilling, programs to upgrade and develop the Company's geothermal resources, including expectations for further field and plant output improvements and the continued success thereof, estimates of recoverable geothermal energy resources or power generation capacities, the success of Alterra's project acquisition, development and expansion programs and greenfield development efforts, all statements regarding the Company's plans and expectations for the declaration of future dividends, including the timing and amount thereof, whether the wind development projects actually or ultimately qualify for all, or a portion of, the production tax credits, the number of projects and generation capacity that may ultimately achieve commercial operations, Alterra's successful acquisition from or partnership with the owners of projects currently owned by other developers, the success of Alterra's project acquisition and greenfield development efforts, prospective generation, and management's assumptions related to, and all instances of, forward-looking financial information.

These statements and information reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events and are necessarily based upon a number of assumptions that, while considered reasonable by the Company, are inherently subject to significant operational, business, economic and regulatory uncertainties and contingencies. These assumptions include, among others, the expected power generation from our operations, the success and timely completion of financing efforts, the success and timely completion of planned development, expansion and construction programs, and modeling and budgeting based on historical trends, whether Alterra's on-site and off-site early-stage construction activities will be sufficient to qualify the wind development projects for the full value of the PTCs; rules, regulation or other guidance may be promulgated pursuant to the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (as the same may be amended, updated or otherwise modified from time to time) that could jeopardize or otherwise impede the effectiveness of such on-site and off-site early-stage construction activities qualifying such projects for the full value of the PTCs and securing tax equity financing on such basis, our use of proceeds from any equity financings is as currently forecasted, that third party transmission infrastructure will be operational within projected timelines, the expected timing for realizing the output capacity of the well, if any, due to the conceptual nature of the deep drilling preliminary output potential, the risk that there has been insufficient testing to define geothermal resource, assumptions concerning temperature and underground fluids, current conditions and expected future developments. Forward-looking statements and information also involve known and unknown risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed by such statements or information, and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. These risks include volatility of renewable energy resources, inherent risks in operating and constructing power plants and development programs related to the same, contractual risks related to credit facilities, partnership and power purchase agreements, prospective power, currency and commodity price fluctuations, the implementation of lower corporate tax rates may impede our ability to obtain sufficient amounts of tax equity investment or achieve desired economic returns, successful closing of the acquisition of certain of the wind development projects including without limitation successful completion of due diligence on such projects, negotiation of definitive purchase agreements, satisfaction or waiver of all conditions precedent thereto and the approval of Alterra's Board of Directors, future issuances of equity securities, health, safety, social and environmental risks and risks related to reliance on third parties (including with respect to transmission). Additional risks, assumptions and influential factors are set out in the Company's management discussion analysis and Alterra's most recent annual information form, copies of which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, given the inherent uncertainties in such forward-looking statements and information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, described or intended. Investors are cautioned against undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements or information, which apply only as of their dates. Other than as specifically required by law, Alterra undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or information to reflect new information.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Financial Information

Certain information provided in this press release constitutes forward-looking financial information within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Management has provided this information as of the date of this document in order to assist readers to better understand the expected results and impact of Alterra's operating, construction and development projects. Readers are cautioned that this information may not be appropriate for any other purpose, including investment purposes, and consequently, should not place undue reliance on this information. Readers are further cautioned to review the full description of risks, uncertainties and management's assumption in the Company's most recent Management's Discussion and Analysis available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Forward-looking financial information also constitutes forward-looking statements within the context of applicable securities laws and as such, is subject to the same risks, uncertainties and assumptions as are set out in the cautionary note above.

SOURCE Alterra Power Corp.

Related Links

www.alterrapower.ca/


ARLINGTON, Va., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The members of the American Waterways Operators, the national trade association representing the U.S. tugboat, towboat and barge industry, elected a new slate of leaders during AWO's Spring Convention held recently in Washington, D.C.

Edward J. "Ted" Tregurtha, President  Moran Towing Corporation, was elected Chairman. Tom Marian, General Counsel at Buffalo Marine Service, Inc., was elected Vice Chairman. Mr. Tregurtha succeeds outgoing Chairman James F. Farley, Vice President  Industry Relations, Kirby Corporation.

Edward J. "Ted" Tregurtha, Chairman, The American Waterways Operators.

AWO President & CEO Tom Allegretti welcomed and thanked the newly-constituted Board of Directors, stating: "You will hold your seat in a pivotal time in AWO's history. We will call on you repeatedly to lend us your intellect and to make sound judgments as we confront the challenges of this age and seize the opportunities of this time. You all are part of the annual process of our organizational renewal and sustainability."

Recognizing that AWO member companies face significant economic and policy challenges in the year ahead, Mr. Tregurtha characterized the coming year as a time of great opportunity for the tugboat, towboat and barge industry.

"Most of the economic indicators from the stock market to consumer confidence, unemployment rates, and trade have all moved in a favorable direction for quite some time. These developments bode well for maritime commerce," Mr. Tregurtha said. "We also have a new Administration that is sending encouraging signals for our industry. The Trump Administration has indicated its intent to execute policies in the best interests of American industry and the American labor force. There is a renewed emphasis on strengthening national defense and homeland security, and several key appointees have specifically discussed the indispensability of the Jones Act to the achievement of those goals. And our most important government partner, the United States Coast Guard, has explicitly recognized the criticality of maritime commerce to the U.S. economy"

"Let's seize the opportunity to achieve advocacy results for our industry, specifically by passing [the Commercial Vessel Incidental Discharge Act], safeguarding the Jones Act from any attempts to weaken it, and ensuring that the efficient operation of maritime commerce  an interstate industry by definition  is not infringed upon by state governments," Mr. Tregurtha said. "And let's seize the opportunity to forge and strengthen critical relationships, within and outside government, to create a public policy environment that's conducive to helping this vital industry continue to thrive." Mr. Tregurtha added that Charting the Future, the AWO Strategic Plan for 2017-2022, will serve as the organization's "roadmap" for achieving these objectives.

About the American Waterways Operators

The American Waterways Operators is the national trade association representing the tugboat, towboat and barge industry, which operates on the rivers, the Great Lakes, and along the coasts and in the harbors of the United States. Barge transportation serves the nation as the safest, most environmentally friendly and most economical mode of freight transportation.

SOURCE American Waterways Operators

Related Links

http://www.americanwaterways.com


REDWOOD CITY, Calif., May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Available today, "Mole Mama: A Memoir of Love, Cooking and Loss," by Diana Silva, shares the intimate journey of her mother's final thirteen months in this heartfelt love story. She cooks her mother's heirloom Mexican recipes every weekend while Rose presides from her nearby hospice bed and completes taste tests to ensure that Diana has perfected her favorite dishes.

Rose also uses this precious time to help Diana understand the secrets to a good life, forgiveness, love, faith, and gratitude for every moment.

Author - Diana Silva

Diana hopes that her story will inspire readers to be courageous, present, authentic and vulnerable during their farewell journeys.

Throughout the e-book version, a reader can link to Mole Mama Recipes' YouTube channel to see Diana re-creating some of her sweet Mama Rose's recipes including guacamole, crunchy tacos, mole, Spanish rice, Sonora enchiladas and so much more. Diana wanted to give her readers an interactive media experience that would help them perfect her mother's recipes.

About Diana Silva:

Diana Silva is a San Francisco-based home chef, video blogger and radio host. Her Mole Mama Recipes YouTube channel celebrates family recipes, cooking delicious meals at home and adding love to every recipe. Diving into her Latina roots, she uses her magical molcajete, and other tools and techniques that make her food taste like grandma used to make back in Mexico. Along with her guest chefs, Diana explores recipes and traditions from all over the world and the stories that keep them alive.

Before becoming a radio show host and video blogger, Diana grew up on a farm on California's fertile Central Coast and is no stranger to high-quality produce, meats and dairy products. As a result, her recipes encourage the use of organic and local ingredients, whenever possible.

Contact:

Diana Silva

[email protected]

www.molemama.com

www.youtube.com/c/molemamarecipes

Related Links

molemama.com

SOURCE Mole Mama

Related Links

http://www.molemama.com


WASHINGTON, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Beyond20 has been named winner of two Stevie Awards in the 15th Annual American Business Awards. The IT Service Management Consulting firm won in the Best Tradeshow or Convention category for Beyond20 SIXTEEN, the company's ITSM DevOps Conference in Washington, DC and in the Best Business-to-Business Services category for its Service Catalog Workshop.

More than 3,600 nominations were submitted this year for consideration in a wide range of categories, and over 190 professionals participated in the judging process to select this year's Stevie Award winners, making it the largest field in the award's history.

"We are excited to be recognized for two of our offerings, namely, our Service Catalog Workshop which helps IT organizations quickly (and in a fun, interactive way) solve a common challenge and provide a better level of service to their customers. Second, our annual conference has been a labor of love for us over the years. We are thrilled to be able to host an event that promotes thought leadership and knowledge sharing in DC with the ITSM, Agile, and DevOps community."

In considering Beyond20's Service Catalog Workshop for Best Business-to-Business Services category, a judge noted it was a, "Very useful tool for IT companies. Cataloging has truly never been easy for IT but now, looks like with this product might not be difficult at all." Another judge commented in evaluation of Beyond20 SIXTEEN for Best Tradeshow or Convention nomination, "This is a great example of a company understanding what's important for folks who attend their events. Love the holistic thinking behind the design top to bottom."

ABOUT BEYOND20

Beyond20 is a technology-enabled services firm focused on transformative Project Management and IT Service Management solutions to support the practical implementation of Best Practice. Beyond20 is a Cherwell Preferred partner, with several of the world's largest and most complex Cherwell Service Management implementations to its credit. The company's experienced team has developed numerous customer solutions leveraging Cherwell's Codeless Business Application Platform, and was awarded "Most Innovative Use of Cherwell" at the 2014 Cherwell Global Conference. Additionally, the firm is a Microsoft PPM Gold Certified Partner, Bomgar Gold Partner, and Solarwinds Authorized Partner. All of the company's consultants and trainers are ITIL, Scrum, and ISO 20k certified and have extensive practical experience. Beyond20's clients include over 30% of the Fortune500, along with numerous Universities and Government Agencies. Follow @beyond20 or visit http://www.beyond20.com to learn more.

SOURCE Beyond20

Related Links

http://www.beyond20.com


MCLEAN, Va., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Last night, ACG National Capital, the Washington, D.C. region's preeminent association for corporate professionals involved in middle-market corporate growth, corporate development and M&A, recognized the business leaders and companies most responsible for the region's corporate growth and deal activity.

Nominees and award winners were celebrated at a black tie gala at the Ritz Carlton Tysons Corner. This exclusive event brought together more than 400 of the National Capital region's leading corporate executives and dealmakers in recognition of the accomplishments of a carefully vetted group of growth professionals and companies.

"ACG National Capital Corporate Growth Award winners represent the very best in middle-market business management and innovation," said Shooter Starr, Client Advisor at Brown Advisory and the chair of the 2017 Corporate Growth Awards Committee. "The companies and business leaders selected for these prestigious awards are chosen specifically for their accomplishment and creativity in growing their businesses and in driving corporate growth."

The 2017 Corporate Growth Awards winners include members of the greater Washington, D.C. metro area's business community that have exhibited excellence in corporate growth and dealmaking over the past year.

The 2017 Corporate Growth Award Winners are:

Emerging Growth Company of the Year (Under $25M ): Spear

Spear Growth Company of the Year ( $25M-$75M ): VariQ

VariQ Growth Company of the Year ( $75M- $250M ): MAG Aerospace

MAG Aerospace Growth Company of the Year (Over $250M ): CoStar Group

CoStar Group Deal Team of the Year (Private Company): Preferred Systems Solutions, Inc.

Preferred Systems Solutions, Inc. Deal Team of the Year (Public Company): Leidos Holdings, Inc.

Leidos Holdings, Inc. Deal Team Of The Year (Private Equity/Venture Capital): Arlington Capital Partners

Arlington Capital Partners Deal Of The Year (Under $50M ): Mainsail Partners' Investment in Nexus Systems

Mainsail Partners' Investment in Nexus Systems Deal Of The Year ( $50M - $250M ): ASRC Federal's Acquisition of Vistronix Intelligence and Technology Solutions

ASRC Federal's Acquisition of Vistronix Intelligence and Technology Solutions Deal Of The Year (Over $250M ): Vista Equity Partners' Acquisition of Cvent

Vista Equity Partners' Acquisition of Cvent Regional Impact Award: CIT GAP Funds

About ACG National Capital

ACG National Capital, a chapter of the international association, ACG (Association for Corporate Growth) that serves Washington, D.C., northern Virginia and southern Maryland, drives middle-market growth and increases deal flow. It provides unparalleled opportunities for networking, deal making and professional development for individuals involved in building corporate value through M&A, strategic partnerships, organic growth and capital funding.

ACG National Capital's veteran leadership and its membership have participated in nearly every M&A transaction completed recently in the D.C. metro region with over 400 members. For more information, visit www.acgcapital.org or the ACG online publication at www.acgcapitalblog.com.

SOURCE ACG National Capital

Related Links

http://www.acgcapital.org


NEW YORK, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Just as burgundy wine can uplift the soul, burgundy hair color can give your hairstyle a lift. Which could explain why this intoxicating hue is trending in salons coast to coast! How do you know if burgundy color is a good fit? The hair color experts at Matrix offer these insights and tips!

https://www.matrix.com/blog/is-burgundy-hair-color-right-for-you

The Burgundy Range

When it comes to hair color, the notion of burgundy covers a wide range of gorgeous colors including:

Cabernet deep and slightly redder than burgundy

deep and slightly redder than burgundy Merlot slightly lighter and a bit redder than burgundy

slightly lighter and a bit redder than burgundy Cranberry slightly pinker than burgundy

slightly pinker than burgundy Cordovan slightly browner than burgundy

slightly browner than burgundy Maroon red chestnut-y

red chestnut-y Claretreddish with a faint touch of brown

Choose the Right Shade of Burgundy for Your Skin Tone

With so many pretty shades of burgundy to choose from, it's possible to find one that's perfect for every skin tone. As a rule of thumb, cooler burgundy shades that contain lots of red and violet look best on people with pink, olive or ebony skin tones. Warmer burgundy shades that contain more brown tones are beautiful on complexions that are peachy or golden. In general, burgundy hair color can be adjusted to flatter nearly everyone.

See a Pro

Burgundies can be tricky shades to achieve, so it's best not to try them at home. Hair has to be carefully prepared, and the color has to be painstakingly applied, to get an even, vivid result. What's more, formulation is critical to achieve the ideal shade for an individual's complexion. A hair color professional might mix several different colors to achieve the target hue, and she may also apply various shades in different sections of the hair (at the roots, toward the ends, etc.) in order to create a modern hair color design.

Pictures Are Essential

Because there are so many different hair color choices in the burgundy range, and the differences between each are subtle and nuanced, it's important to show the hair stylist actual photos of the desired shade. That will be the starting point, and from there the client and stylist can decide together if the finished product should be a bit more violet or red or brown. For resources, clients can check out the red inspirations on https://www.matrix.com/color/red.

A Little or A Lot?

When it comes to burgundy hair color, there are several ways to go. Salon clients can opt for an allover colortop to bottom. Or, it's possible to add burgundy balayage highlights to a brunette base shade, or even a few peek-a-boo burgundy panels.

Blonde to Burgundy

The good news for blondes who want to be burgundy is that this color will look amazing, rich and vivid over blonde color. The not-so-good news is that if a burgundy hair color design isn't applied properly, the result could end up being a not-so-burgundy pink. If hair is super pale, a professional colorist will have to actually darken it a bit before applying the final burgundy tone. Another reason not to try burgundy at home!

Brown or Black to Burgundy

Depending on how dark the natural color is, a stylist may actually have to lighten the hair before applying the final burgundy tone so that it will be vivid. Too-dark hair can swallow up a lighter color if it isn't prepped properly. Many stylists will add a hair color bonder like Matrix Bond Ultim8 to the color formulas, to prevent damage during the color service and repair existing damage.

The Burgundy Commitment

Burgundy colors tend to stay put. Once they're in, they're not easy to remove. So it's a good idea to be pretty well committed to the hue. And when it's time to return to the natural color, or to try something else, a stylist will be able to remove the burgundy hair color without damaging the hairalthough it may take two or three visits to the salon. They'll also suggest a deep conditioning mask--like the new Biolage R.A.W. Re-Hab Clay Mask for stressed, sensitive hair--for use at home to keep freshly-colored hair as strong and healthy as possible.

MATRIX, the leading professional haircare and haircolor company in the United States, is part of L'Oreal USA's Professional Products Division. Founded in 1980, MATRIX is committed to the development of the salon professional and offers a wide range of products including: Biolage, Biolage Advanced, Biolage Cleansing Conditioner, Biolage ExquisiteOil, Biolage Styling, COLORGRAPHICS, COLORINSIDER, Color Sync, Logics, Oil Wonders, SOBOOST, SOCOLOR, Style Link, and Total Results (MATRIX professional products are available only in salons and can be guaranteed authentic when purchased from authorized retailers.) Visit Matrix.com for hairstyle and haircolor inspiration as well as MATRIX trends and tips! Professionals visit www.matrixprofessional.com for techniques, formulas, salon resources and much more!

To connect and chat with MATRIX go to http://www.facebook.com/matrix; http://www.instagram.com/matrix; http://www.youtube.com/matrix; http://www.twitter.com/matrixfamily; http://www.pinterest.com/matrixfamily

SOURCE Matrix

Related Links

http://www.matrixprofessional.com


HAIKOU CITY, China, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- China Pharma Holdings, Inc. (NYSE MKT: CPHI) ("China Pharma," the "Company" or "We"), an NYSE MKT listed corporation with its fully-integrated specialty pharmaceuticals subsidiary based in China, today announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017.

First Quarter Highlights

Revenue decreased 9.8% to $3.3 million in first quarter 2017 from $3.6 million in the same period of 2016;

Gross profit margin was 21.9% in first quarter 2017, compared to 17.6% in the same period of 2016.

Loss from operations was $0.8 million in first quarter 2017 compared to $1.3 million in the same period of 2016, a decrease of $0.5 million ;

Net loss was $1.0 million in first quarter 2017 compared to $1.6 million in the same period of 2016. Loss per common share was $(0.02) per basic and diluted share in first quarter 2017 compared with $(0.04) per basic and diluted share in the same period of 2016.

"We experienced a slight revenue decrease in the first quarter of 2017 compared to the same period last year, which was mainly due to a more significant impact from an earlier Spring Festival holiday in 2017. However, we believed that our overall financial performance has improved, taking into consideration the increased gross profit margin and decreased net loss," said Ms. Zhilin Li, China Pharma's Chairman and CEO. Ms. Li continued, "Nevertheless, increasing sales remains our top priority. Management will continue to vigorously promote sales by actively participating in the recent opening of the new provincial drug tender offer and further exploring basic medical market. We continue to believe that demand for pharmaceutical products is huge and steady in China. The ongoing generic drug consistency evaluations and reform of China's drug production registration and review policies will have a major impact on the future development of our industry and may change its business patterns. We will continue to actively adapt to state policy guidance and further evaluate market conditions for our current existing products, pipeline products, and competition in the market in order to optimize our development strategy."

First Quarter Results

Revenue decreased by 9.8% to $3.3 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017, as compared to $3.6 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016. This decrease was primarily due to the impact from Chinese Spring Festival on purchase and logistic activities.

Gross profit for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $0.7 million, compared to $0.6 million in the same period last year. Our gross profit margin in the three months ended March 31, 2017 was 21.9% compared to 17.6% in the same period last year. This increase was primarily due to the increase in gross profit margins of our major products in this period.

Our selling expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2017 were $0.7 million, a decrease of $0.3 million, compared to $1.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2016. Selling expenses accounted for 21.8% of the total revenue in the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to 26.6% in the same period last year. Because of adjustments in our sales practices resulting from health-care reform policies, despite the overall decrease in sales, we may require additional personnel and expenses to support our sales and the collection of accounts receivable.

Our general and administrative expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2017 were $0.4 million, which represented an increase of $0.1 million compared to $0.3 million in the same period last year. General and administrative expenses accounted for 12.7% and 8.7% of our total revenues in three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. This increase was primarily due to several major payments for listing maintenance happened in the three months ended March 31, 2017.

Our bad debt expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2017 was $0.4 million, which represented a decrease of $0.2 million compared to $0.6 million in the same period last year. The decline in our bad debt expenses was mainly the result of the decline in our revenues in recent years, which also led to the corresponding decline in the net amount of accounts receivable aging over one year (according to our current accounting policy, we are required to recognize a 70% bad debt allowance).

Our income tax expense was $0.03 million and $0.02 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively. The expense arose as a result of certain deferred tax liabilities recognized in prior years. We renewed our "National High-Tech Enterprise" status with the Chinese government in the third quarter of 2013. With this designation, for the years ending December 31, 2015 and 2016, we enjoy a preferential tax rate of 15%, which is notably lower than the statutory income tax rate of 25%. However, our recent net loss results have put the Company in an unfavorable position for the potential renewal of "National High-Tech Enterprise" status in 2017, and after evaluating the feasibility of such a renewal, the Company has decided not to renew this status. As a result, our tax rate for 2017 and the foreseeable future will be 25%.

Net loss for the first quarter 2017 was $1.0 million, or $(0.02) per basic and diluted share, compared to net loss of $1.6 million, or $(0.04) per basic and diluted share for the same period of 2016. The decrease in net loss was mainly a result of the increase in gross profit margin and decrease in bad debt expenses.

Financial Condition

As of March 31, 2017, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $2.5 million compared to $2.7 million as of December 31, 2016. Working capital decreased to $6.9 million as of March 31, 2017 from $7.1 million as of December 31, 2016; and the current ratio was 1.7 times in both March 31, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively.

Our accounts receivable balance decreased to $3.7 million as of March 31, 2017 from $4.0 million as of December 31, 2016.

Conference Call

The Company will hold a conference call at 8:30 am E.T. on May 12, 2017 to discuss the results of first quarter 2017. Listeners may access the call by dialing 1-866-519-4004 or 65-671-350-90 for international callers, Conference ID # 20452439. A replay of the call will be accessible through May 20, 2017 by dialing 1-855-452-5696 or 61-281-990-299 for international callers, Conference ID # 20452439.

About China Pharma Holdings, Inc.

China Pharma Holdings, Inc. is a specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and markets a diversified portfolio of products focused on conditions with a high incidence and high mortality rates in China, including cardiovascular, CNS, infectious, and digestive diseases. The Company's cost-effective, high-margin business model is driven by market demand and supported by new GMP-certified product lines covering the major dosage forms. In addition, the Company has a broad and expanding nationwide distribution network across all major cities and provinces in China. The Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Hainan Helpson Medical & Biotechnology Co., Ltd., is located in Haikou City, Hainan Province. For more information about China Pharma Holdings, Inc., please visit www.chinapharmaholdings.com. The Company routinely posts important information on its website.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain statements in this press release constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements set forth above that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements, which may include, but are not limited to, such factors as the achievability of financial guidance, success of new product development, unanticipated changes in product demand, increased competition, downturns in the Chinese economy, uncompetitive levels of research and development, and other information detailed from time to time in the Company's filings and future filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the Company's expectations except as required by applicable law or regulation.

Contact:

China Pharma Holdings, Inc.

Ms. Diana Na Huang

Phone: +86-898-6681-1730 (China)

Email: [email protected]

- FINANCIAL TABLES FOLLOW -

CHINA PHARMA HOLDINGS, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS













March 31,

December 31,



2017

2016



(Unaudited)



ASSETS







Current Assets:







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 2,523,541

$ 2,665,802 Restricted cash

1,718,823

1,088,879 Banker's acceptances

14,513

- Trade accounts receivable, less allowance for doubtful







accounts of $16,161,252 and $15,664,496, respectively

3,703,593

3,999,809 Other receivables, less allowance for doubtful







accounts of $56,157 and $71,548, respectively

272,097

224,373 Advances to suppliers

2,036,758

2,003,792 Inventory

6,985,965

7,310,939 Prepaid expenses

205,293

226,357 Total Current Assets

17,460,583

17,519,951









Advances for purchases of intangible assets

35,771,976

35,498,059 Property and equipment, net

24,422,373

24,967,448 Intangible assets, net

488,044

534,682 TOTAL ASSETS

$ 78,142,976

$ 78,520,140









LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY







Current Liabilities:







Trade accounts payable

$ 2,877,412

$ 3,060,374 Accrued expenses

90,232

139,830 Other payables

2,355,365

2,502,694 Advances from customers

703,915

811,232 Other payables - related parties

1,354,567

1,354,567 Current portion of construction loan facility

1,440,154

1,440,154 Bankers' acceptance notes payable

1,718,823

1,088,879 Total Current Liabilities

10,540,468

10,397,730 Non-current Liabilities:







Construction loan facility

8,573,590

8,640,927 Deferred tax liability

607,090

572,349 Total Liabilities

19,721,148

19,611,006 Stockholders' Equity:







Preferred stock, $0.001 par value; 5,000,000 shares authorized;







no shares issued or outstanding

-

- Common stock, $0.001 par value; 95,000,000 shares authorized;







43,579,557 shares and 43,579,557 shares outstanding, respectively

43,580

43,580 Additional paid-in capital

23,590,204

23,590,204 Retained earnings

23,790,476

24,757,374 Accumulated other comprehensive income

10,997,568

10,517,976 Total Stockholders' Equity

58,421,828

58,909,134 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY

$ 78,142,976

$ 78,520,140





















CHINA PHARMA HOLDINGS, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS) (Unaudited)













For the Three Months



Ended March 31,



2017

2016 Revenue

$ 3,285,203

$ 3,640,494 Cost of revenue

2,567,350

2,999,675









Gross profit

717,853

640,819









Operating expenses:







Selling expenses

717,637

968,507 General and administrative expenses

416,726

318,930 Research and development expenses

26,060

93,433 Bad debt expense

360,063

581,300 Total operating expenses

1,520,486

1,962,170









Loss from operations

(802,633)

(1,321,351)









Other income (expense):







Interest income

5,033

33,592 Interest expense

(138,964)

(242,309) Net other expense

(133,931)

(208,717)









Loss before income taxes

(936,564)

(1,530,068) Income tax expense

(30,334)

(22,828) Net loss

(966,898)

(1,552,896) Other comprehensive income - foreign currency







translation adjustment

479,592

480,430 Comprehensive loss

$ (487,306)

$ (1,072,466) Loss per share:







Basic and diluted

$ (0.02)

$ (0.04) Weighted average shares outstanding

43,579,557

43,579,557











CHINA PHARMA HOLDINGS, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited)













For the Three Months



Ended March 31,



2017

2016 Cash Flows from Operating Activities:







Net loss

$ (966,898)

$ (1,552,896) Depreciation and amortization

815,394

857,195 Bad debt expense

360,063

581,300 Deferred income taxes

30,334

22,828 Changes in assets and liabilities:







Trade accounts and other receivables

(261,377)

(61,069) Advances to suppliers

(17,509)

(92,039) Inventory

549,500

215,496 Trade accounts payable

(206,599)

888,212 Accrued taxes payable

(71,575)

(53,955) Other payables and accrued expenses

(130,772)

25,514 Advances from customers

(113,615)

328,354 Prepaid expenses

22,818

144,262 Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities

9,764

1,303,202









Cash Flows from Investing Activities:







Purchases of property and equipment

(26,628)

(39,248) Net Cash Used in Investing Activities

(26,628)

(39,248)









Cash Flows from Financing Activities:







Payments of construction term loan

(145,176)

(305,835) Net Cash Used in Financing Activity

(145,176)

(305,835)









Effect of Exchange Rate Changes on Cash

19,779

54,898 Net (Decrease) Increase in Cash and Cash Equivalents

(142,261)

1,013,017 Cash and Cash Equivalents at Beginning of Period

2,665,802

6,248,760 Cash and Cash Equivalents at End of Period

$ 2,523,541

$ 7,261,777









Supplemental Cash Flow Information:







Cash paid for interest

$ 138,964

$ 242,309









Supplemental Noncash Investing and Financing Activities:







Issuance of banker's acceptances

$ 621,753

$ - Accounts receivable collected with banker's acceptances

182,499

517,770 Inventory purchased with banker's acceptances

$ 167,981

$ 403,081





















SOURCE China Pharma Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.chinapharmaholdings.com


SAO PAULO, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Itau Unibanco Holding S.A. (B3: ITUB4 and ITUB3 andNYSE: ITUB) is pleased to invite you to participate in our conference calls about the acquisition of a minority interest in XP Investimentos.

To join the event on the internet, please visit: www.itau.com.br/investor-relations. The audio webcast works with Internet Explorer 9 or above and the new versions of Chrome, Firefox and mobile devices (IOS 8, or superior, and Android 3.0, or superior).

Follow our conference call Acquisition of a minority interest in XP Investimentos



May 12, 2017

Access code: Itau Unibanco





Time

English Portuguese 10:30 AM (EDT) 11:15 AM (EDT) 11:30 AM (Brasilia Time) 12:15 PM (Brasilia Time)



(1-866) 262-4553 (toll free from the USA) (55-11) 2820-4001 (55-11) 2820-4001 or (55-11) 3193-1001 (55-11) 3193-1001 (in Brazil)

(1-412) 317-6029 (other countries)





Presentation Candido Bracher Executive President and CEO (Chief Executive Officer)

Caio Ibrahim David Executive Vice President, CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and CRO (Chief Risk Officer)

Marcelo Kopel Investor Relations Officer

The conference calls will also be archived in audio format on the same website. To access an audio replay of the conference calls, which will be available until May 19, 2017, dial (55 11) 3193-1012 or (55 11) 2820-4012. Access codes: 1872483# (call in Portuguese) and 3081217# (call in English). On the morning of the conference call, the slide presentation will be available for viewing and downloading.

If you have any questions, please contact Mrs. Doris Pompeu at GlobalRI, at (55 11) 5042-6700 or [email protected].

www.itau.com.br/investor-relations

www.facebook.com/itauunibancori

Twitter: @itauunibanco_ri

SOURCE Itau Unibanco Holding S.A.

Related Links

http://www.itau.com.br/investor-relations


REDWOOD SHORES, Calif., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Oracle today announced that Oracle's Identity-based, Security Operations Center (SOC) cloud services portfolio is experiencing exceptional growth, well surpassing 1 million users since its launch just six months ago. Oracle's Identity SOC framework provides next-generation, integrated and intelligent security monitoring, threat detection, analytics and remediation across heterogeneous, hybrid clouds  powered by comprehensive identity context and enforcement. Edgile, Levi Strauss & Company, Marlette Funding, New Mexico Human Services Department, Nomis Solutions, Ooyala, Pragmatyxs and UBI Banca are among the many organizations around the world who have chosen Oracle's comprehensive security cloud services portfolio to address complex security and management challenges across their hybrid IT environments.

"As organizations continue their journey to the cloud, they are looking for an integrated, intelligent and comprehensive security platform that can manage, better secure and automate processes across hybrid IT environments," said Rohit Gupta, group vice president, Cloud Security products at Oracle. "Customers agree that Oracle's Identity SOC approach offers a critical controls framework to help enhance their security posture for applications and data  both in the cloud and the datacenter."

"At Levi's, my primary job is to protect the company brands and reduce our overall risk. From an IT perspective we have moved quickly into the cloud and have upgraded our SOC intelligence capability as a result. Levi's invested in Oracle CASB Cloud Service to help give us visibility and better protection for our IaaS investments," said Steve Zalewski, Chief Security Architect, Levi Strauss & Company.

"Ooyala's cloud first posture meant that our security coverage just got broader, but I can't afford to throw more bodies at the problem," said Bill Billings, Chief Information Security Officer, Ooyala, a subsidiary of Telstra. "We needed a modern approach to security and to take advantage of new automation tools to allow me to 'trust but verify' what my vendors, service providers, and employees were doing in our cloud environment. With Oracle CASB Cloud Service, we now monitor user behavior across cloud properties as well as automatically detect configuration drift. This gives us consistent, detailed and clear visibility into user and application activity."

"To support our company business toward multichannel, physical and digital transformation requires the best in class security levels," said Fabio Gianotti, Chief Security Officer, UBI Banca. "We are enabling a hybrid SOC strategy based on cloud technologies and this approach must have innovative security solutions. We have invested in Oracle Security Cloud Services to enhance our ability to detect and respond not only to potential threats but also data leakage and to better meet our regulatory requirements."

Context-Aware, Comprehensive SOC Solution Uses Machine Learning to Reduce Threats

The world's first Identity SOC security framework, Oracle's portfolio provides consistent security controls across cloud and on-premises environments that help organizations better detect and respond to advanced threats and more effectively predict paths of escalation. Oracle's Identity SOC portfolio also unifies threat, user and operational data from traditionally separate sources and uses machine learning to empower these critical operation centers with an identity-centric, context-aware intelligence solution. This extensive portfolio of security features makes Oracle's Identity SOC ideal for companies in a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, banking and finance, utilities, technology, retail, government and healthcare.

In addition, Oracle was recently recognized as a leader in Gartner's February 2017 "Magic Quadrant for Identity Governance and Administration" report.

Oracle's Identity SOC combines Oracle CASB Cloud Service, Oracle Identity Cloud Service, Oracle Security and Monitoring Analytics Cloud Service, and Oracle Configuration and Compliance Cloud Service into an integrated offering that delivers bi-directional controls, actionable intelligence and automated remediation built around machine learning with advanced analytics.

Oracle's Security Cloud Services at Upcoming Events

Join Oracle at Infosecurity Europe 2017  Booth P60 and at Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit to learn more about Oracle's Identity SOC and its integrated offerings.

Gartner Disclaimer

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Oracle

The Oracle Cloud delivers hundreds of SaaS applications and enterprise-class PaaS and IaaS services to customers in more than 195 countries while processing 55 billion transactions a day. For more information about Oracle (NYSE:ORCL), please visit us at http://cloud.oracle.com.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Oracle

Related Links

http://www.oracle.com


"I'm incredibly honored to be recognized by a distinguished and dedicated artist such as David Yurman," says Lila Reynolds. "During my tenure at Otis College I have worked hard to develop my skills and craft. Winning this award has truly inspired me to further continue developing my techniques as an artist and designer."

Aimilios Lo from The Cooper Union has been awarded runner-up and will receive $10,000 in scholarship funds.

The winner was chosen by a panel of notable judges in addition to David and Sybil Yurman. Jury members included Paul Greenhalgh, Director and Professor of Art History of the Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia, UK; Tara Donovan, an artist whose work is included in the collections of major institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, among many others; and Hans Van de Bovenkamp, a world renowned sculptor.

About David Yurman Young Artist Prize

David Yurman, one of America's premier jewelry brands, launched the inaugural David Yurman Young Artist Prize in 2017. As a brand founded on artistic roots and a passion for artistry and innovation, this initiative supports one of the key missions of the Company to encourage young creatives in the arts and in education.

The overarching theme of the first inaugural competition was Pure Form, inspired by David Yurman's collection of the same namea striking yet visually minimalist capsule of pieces that explores the sculptural, essential, pure qualities of metal. It is both a highly artistic and deeply personal collection, recalling Yurman's origins as a sculptor. Prior to founding his jewelry company, David Yurman was trained as a sculptorhe studied under renowned artists including Ernesto Gonzalez, Jacques Lipschitz and Theodore Roszak. He is constantly inspired by those early working days.

"The competition aims to support and encourage emerging young artists with an audience and platform to showcase their work," says David Yurman. "I want to give the students confidence to continue to study art and consider a creative career. I learned so much from my mentors about fine tuning my artistic language, and I continue to this today to reflect on their inspiration."

Participating schools included Purchase College (State University of New York); Rhode Island School of Design; Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design (University of Michigan); The Cooper Union; Otis College of Art and Design; Savannah College of Art and Design and School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

About David Yurman

David Yurman is the premier American luxury jewelry brand with a mission to share in life's exceptional moments. Founded by two artists, David and Sybil Yurman, in New York in 1980, artistic inspiration, craftsmanship and unconventional yet elegant designs are at the core of the brand. The marriage of David's background in sculpture with Sybil's natural understanding of color and art yields signature jewelry designs; diamond, pearl, and gemstone jewelry and Swiss-crafted timepieces that are renowned for capturing the essence of relaxed American luxury. David Yurman collections are available at 47 retail and concession locations throughout the United States, Canada, France, the Middle East and at over 350 locations worldwide, through their exclusive authorized fine jewelry and timepiece network of retailers.

CONTACT : Jennifer Noel

David Yurman

[email protected]

646-264-7353





Alexis Wulf

HL Group

[email protected]

646-460-8931

SOURCE David Yurman
Probiodrug AG reports First Quarter 2017 Business Update

HALLE (SAALE), Germany, 12 May 2017 - Probiodrug AG (Euronext Amsterdam: PBD), a biopharmaceutical company developing novel therapeutic solutions to treat Alzheimer's disease (AD), today announces its first quarter business update for the period ending 31 March 2017, in the form of an interim management report.

The interim management report for the first quarter 2017 is available for download on the company website (http://www.probiodrug.de/investors/reports-and-presentations/).

OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

New, promising results from pharmacological studies with PQ912 and PBD-C06 in AD animal models and an evaluation of new biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from AD patients presented

Expenditures and corresponding cash position in line with management expectations

As of 31 March 2017, Probiodrug held EUR 18.7 million in cash and cash equivalents

POST PERIOD HIGHLIGHTS

Last Patient Last Visit (LPLV) reached in the SAPHIR Study

The Glutaminyl Cyclase (QC) inhibitor PQ912 demonstrates beneficial effects in a preclinical Huntington`s disease model

Commenting on the first quarter, Dr Konrad Glund, Chief Executive Officer of Probiodrug, said:

"In the first quarter of 2017 we successfully continued to execute on our corporate strategy. The Last Patient Last Visit (LPLV) represents an important step towards the conclusion of our first patient trial with PQ912. The promising data obtained with PQ912 and PBD-C06 in AD animal models further demonstrates the potential of the pGlu-Abeta treatment concept. Positive treatment results with PQ912 in a Huntington's disease animal model provide support for evaluating PQ912 in patients with Huntington`s disease (HD) in the future, another neurological disease based on misfolded proteins."

OPERATIONAL REVIEW

Pipeline update

Probiodrug`s therapeutic approach targets pyroglutamate-Abeta (pGlu-Abeta, also called N3pG Abeta) as a therapeutic strategy to fight Alzheimer's disease. This modified Abeta is considered to be linked with disease initiation and progression by seeding the formation of soluble neurotoxic amyloid oligomers. Probiodrug is developing proprietary product candidates to target toxic pGlu-Abeta via two modes of action: by (i) inhibiting the production of pGlu-Abeta; and (ii) clearing existing pGlu-Abeta from the brain.

Probiodrug's innovative approach is based on the development of specific inhibitors for the enzyme Glutaminyl Cyclase (QC), which is instrumental in the creation of pGlu-Abeta. In addition, the company is developing a monoclonal antibody targeting pGlu-Abeta to enhance its clearance.

To date, Probiodrug's pipeline consists of two small molecule inhibitors of the QC-enzyme, PQ912 and PQ1565, and a monoclonal antibody, PBD-C06, targeting pGlu-Abeta.

PQ912

Probiodrug is running a Phase 2a trial, the "SAPHIR" study, of its lead product candidate PQ912. In a preceding Phase 1 study with healthy young and elderly volunteers, PQ912 was shown to be safe and well tolerated and revealed high QC-inhibition.

PQ912 is the first QC-inhibitor being tested in patients. The Phase 2a study is a randomized, double-blind multi-center study which plans to enrol a total of 110 patients with early stage Alzheimer's disease. The study is led by internationally renowned experts in AD in seven European countries at 21 sites, with the Alzheimer Center, VU Medical Center (VUmc), Amsterdam being the lead center. The primary endpoint of the trial is the safety and tolerability of PQ912 compared with placebo over a three-month treatment period. Additionally, a set of exploratory read-outs comprising cognitive tests, functional assessments by EEG and functional MRI and new molecular biomarkers in CSF will be used to evaluate the compound's effect on the pathology of the disease.

In this study Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) and the Cogstate neuro-psychological test battery (NTB) are monitored blindly every 30 patients to ensure consistency and reliability of ratings. First blinded results at baseline show that the mean MMSE scores from the 120 randomised patients is 25.3, the mean age is 73 years and gender distribution is 64 female and 56 male. Current results indicate a low variability and therefore the high quality of the assessments being used.

Recruitment has been completed in mid-December 2016. A total of 120 patients have been randomised, surpassing the 110 patients planned in the study protocol. Full unblinded results of the SAPHIR study are expected in the second quarter of 2017.

PBD-C06

PBD-C06 is a monoclonal antibody, currently in preclinical stage. PBD-C06 targets pGlu-Abeta, aiming to selectively clear the brain of pGlu-Abeta while leaving non-toxic forms of Abeta untouched. PBD-C06 has been successfully humanized and also de-immunized to avoid detection by the patient's endogenous immune system. For the first time for an anti-pGlu-Abeta approach PBD-C06 has not only shown the ability to reduce Abeta/plaques but also to significantly improve cognitive deficits in aged Alzheimer's mice. Moreover, no evidence was found of increased microhemorrhages after treatment with PBD-C06.

The development of the manufacturing process of this molecule is running.

PQ1565

PQ1565 is a QC-inhibitor, currently in preclinical stage. The product candidate has shown attractive drug-like properties in preclinical studies. The GMP process for this molecule is being implemented.

The next development steps are in preparation and respective decisions would be made in connection with the readout of the SAPHIR trial.

Operational Update

New promising results from pharmacological studies with PQ912 and PBD-C06 in AD animal models and an evaluation of new biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from AD patients presented

Three updates on the advancement of its product candidates and the results of a Biomarker research collaboration have been presented at the 13th International Conference on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases (AD/PDTM 2017), Vienna, Austria. The conference took place from 29th March to 2nd April 2017.

Program Presentations QC- enzyme/CSF Biomarker

Collaborator:

VUmed Center Amsterdam, The Netherlands Cerebrospinal fluid glutaminyl cyclase (QC) activity correlates with Alzheimer's disease biomarkers and inflammation molecules in AD patients

In CSF from AD patients a high correlation of QC activity with AD related biomarkers and inflammatory molecules was found QC-Inhibitor PQ912

Collaborator:

Fraunhofer Institute, Halle (Saale), Germany Glutaminyl cyclase inhibition by PQ912 in transgenic mice with Alzheimer-like pathology-translation to clinics

Based on PKPD analysis in animal studies, a 50% inhibition of QC activity in the brain leads to a robust effect - an important translational guidance for therapeutic dosing in clinical studies Anti-pGlu-Abeta MAB/QC-I

Collaborator:

Harvard, BWH, Boston, USA Murine anti-pyroglutamate-3 Abeta MAB, 07/2a, spares cognition, reduces plaques, and, in combination with glutaminyl cyclase inhibitor PQ912, further improves efficacy

Selective targeting of pGlu-Abeta with an IgG2a isotype of an anti-pyroglutamate-3-Abeta Antibody in tg mice is effective in lowering plaque pathology and improving cognition. A combination of a QC-inhibitor and a pGlu-Abeta specific antibody showed superior efficacy compared to the single entities

CORPORATE REVIEW

Financials

The first quarter of 2017 showed an increase of research and development expenses to EUR 2,268k compared to EUR 1,974k in the first quarter of 2016, reflecting mainly the costs for the Phase 2 trial (SAPHIR Study) of PQ912. General and administrative expenses amounted to EUR 507k compared to EUR 597k in the first quarter of 2016, reflecting more intrayear shifts than actual savings. In the first quarter 2017 the Company has not generated any revenues, also in line with the corporate planning. Correspondingly, the comprehensive loss of the reporting period was EUR 2,798k, compared to EUR 2,596k in the first quarter of 2016.

All results are in line with management expectations.

Probiodrug held EUR 18.7 million in cash and cash equivalents as of 31 March 2017.

POST PERIOD UPDATE

Last Patient Last Visit (LPLV) accomplished in the SAPHIR Study

On 07 April 2017 Probiodrug announced that the Last Patient's Last Visit (LPLV) occurred on 05 April 2017 in the currently running Phase 2a SAPHIR study investigating the QC-inhibitor PQ912.

PQ912 demonstrates beneficial effects in a preclinical Huntington`s disease model

On 10 April 2017 Probiodrug announced results of a preclinical study targeting Glutaminyl Cyclases (QCs) in Huntington`s disease (HD). The results have been presented at the 12th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference of the CHDI Foundation on 23rd of April in St. Julian's, Malta. HD is the most common inherited neurodegenerative disorder where, due to a mutation, the poly-glutamine amino acid sequence is expanded in a protein called huntingtin (HTT). There is currently no disease modifying therapy for this condition.

PQ912 clearly improved several signs of the disease in a well characterized BACHD mouse model of HD. BACHD mice carry the human gene for mutant HTT (mHTT). At six weeks old, parallel to the onset of first behavioral, metabolic and neuropathological signs of the disease, the BACHD mice were treated for 18 weeks with food pellets containing PQ912. PQ912 treatment for 18 weeks caused a significant reduction (approximately 30%) in brain mHTT levels. These lowered mHTT levels were associated with reduced levels of the inflammation/gliosis marker GFAP-protein, a striking normalization of the abnormal body weight gain and energy metabolism as well as a normalization of several mRNA levels coding for HSPs in BACHD mice at 24 weeks of age.

Data were generated in collaboration with Stephan von Horsten of the University Hospital Erlangen, part of Friedrich-Alexander-University (FAU), Erlangen, Germany.

Invitation to Probiodrug`s Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders on 13 June 2017

On 03 May 2017 Probiodrug invited its shareholders to its ordinary general meeting of shareholders to be held on Tuesday, 13 June 2017 at 11:00 am (CEST), at the Mercure Hotel MOA Berlin, Stephanstrae 41, 10559 Berlin, Germany. The relevant documents can be found at http://www.probiodrug.de/investors/annual-shareholders-meeting-2017/.

###

For more information, please contact:

Probiodrug

Dr Konrad Glund, CEO

Email: contact@probiodrug.de

Hume Brophy

Conor Griffin, Jonothan Blackbourn, Alexander Protsenko

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7862 6381

Email: probiodrug@humebrophy.com

The Trout Group

Tricia Truehart

Tel: +1 (646) 378-2953

Email: ttruehart@troutgroup.com

MC Services AG

Anne Hennecke, Caroline Bergmann

Tel: +49 (0) 211 529 252 20

Email: probiodrug@mc-services.eu

Notes to Editors:

About Probiodrug AG

Headquartered in Halle (Saale), Germany, Probiodrug AG (Euronext Amsterdam: PBD) is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new therapeutic products for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

Founded in 1997, the company successfully developed a novel therapeutic concept for diabetes - the DP4 inhibitors - which provided the basis for a novel class of antidiabetics - the gliptins. Its core capabilities are based on its long-standing expertise in the elucidation of the structure and function of enzymes involved in the modification of proteins and peptides, which play a central role in pathological conditions.

Today Probiodrug's aim is to become a leading company in the development of Alzheimer's disease treatments and to thereby provide a better life for Alzheimer's disease patients. It has identified a new therapeutic concept linked to disease initiation and progression. The development approaches are targeting pyroglutamate-Abeta (pGlu-Abeta) as a therapeutic strategy to fight Alzheimer's disease. The Company has medical use and composition of matter patents related to the inhibition of Glutaminyl Cyclase (QC) and anti-pGlu-Abeta- specific monoclonal antibodies, providing it, in the Company's view, with a leading position in this field of research.

Probiodrug's lead product candidate, PQ912, is a highly specific and potent inhibitor of Glutaminyl Cyclase (QC), which has shown therapeutic effects in Alzheimer's animal models. PQ912 is currently in a Phase 2a study, the SAPHIR trial. In a preceding Phase 1 study with healthy young and elderly volunteers, PQ912 has shown to be safe and well tolerated and also revealed high QC-inhibition.

www.probiodrug.de

About Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease is a neurological disorder, which is the most common form of dementia, and ultimately leads to death. Because Alzheimer's disease cannot be cured and is degenerative, the affected patients must increasingly rely on others for assistance. . Today, 47 million people live with dementia worldwide, and this number is projected to treble to more than 131 million by 2050, as populations age. Dementia also has a huge economic impact. Alzheimer's has an estimated, global societal cost of US$ 818 billion, and it will become a trillion dollar disease by 2018. (World Alzheimer Report 2016).

Forward Looking Statements

Information set forth in this press release contains forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained herein represent the judgment of Probiodrug AG as of the date of this press release. Such forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, and which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in our expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.
- Groups net income in the first quarter was COP 886 billion, which represents an increase of 144% versus the same quarter of 2016.

- The operational excellence of the quarter was reflected on an Ebitda of COP 5.8 trillion, the highest of the last two years, reaching an Ebitda margin of 43.5% and a solid cash position of COP 17. 5 trillion.

- The successful exploratory wells Gorgon-1 and Purple Angel -plus Kronos (2015)- in the Colombian Caribbean Offshore suggest the existence of a new gas province in that zone.

BOGOTA, Colombia, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Ecopetrol S.A. (BVC: ECOPETROL; NYSE: EC) today announced the Business Group's financial results for the first quarter of 2017, prepared and presented in billions of Colombian pesos (COP) in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) applicable in Colombia.

Table 1: Consolidated Financial Results - Ecopetrol Business Group

A

B C D E















COP Billion

1Q 2017* 1Q 2016*  ($)  (%)

Total Sales

13,371 10,485 2,886 27.5%

Operating Profit

3,299 1,599 1,700 106.3%

Net Income Consolidated

1,073 611 462 75.6%

Non-Controlling Interests

(187) (248) 61 (24.6%)

Net Income Attributable to Owners of Ecopetrol

886 363 523 144.1%















EBITDA

5,813 4,137 1,676 40.5%

EBITDA Margin

43.5% 39.5%







* Figures are not audited. They are included for illustrative purposes only.

Figures in this report are not audited. They are expressed in billions of Colombian pesos (COP) or million US dollars (USD); thousands of barrels of oil equivalent per day (mboed) o tons; and are so noted where applicable.

For presentation purposes some figures in this report were rounded to the nearest decimal.

In the opinion of Ecopetrol S.A. CEO Juan Carlos Echeverry G.:

"Ecopetrol had an outstanding first quarter of 2017. We feel confident in our corporate strategy and the results we have obtained. We have overcome challenges to achieve profitable and safe operations as reflected in our financial results.

During the quarter, Ecopetrol had three important achievements in its exploration campaign: the Purple Angel and Gorgon-1 discoveries on the Colombian coast, and Boranda in the Middle Magdalena Valley, all of which demonstrate our commitment to operational excellence.

Operational and financial results were outstanding: our EBITDA margin of 43.5% is one of the highest in the industry, and we have a solid cash position of COP 17.5 trillion. These results reflect: i) greater efficiency and cost reductions through the Transformation Plan, ii) capital discipline, and iii) better crude prices and margins versus Brent.

Average production was 712 thousand barrels of oil equivalent per day. During the year, public order situations and operational events have occurred, such as the temporary closure of the Cano Limon - Covenas oil pipeline, which negatively impacted our production. The pipeline returned to normal on April 7. We also note the positive performance of Hocol and Ecopetrol America, which significantly contributed to all the subsidiaries' increasing their production by 23% versus the first quarter of 2016.

Reficar completed tests of four additional plants, for a total of 25 units, 74% of the refinery's 34 units. The Barrancabermeja refinery saw stable operations, establishing itself as an efficient and profitable refinery.

Sales strategy helped capture market opportunities for international sales, generating a significant improvement in Ecopetrol's export basket. For the quarter, the spread of the crude basket versus Brent was -8.30 dollars, 1.80 dollars better than the same period in 2016.

The transport segment has consolidated its business integration. The reversion of the Bicentenario oil pipeline was completed, allowing it to carry crude from the Cano Limon field and thus mitigate the impact of eventual closures of the Cano Limon - Covenas pipeline. During the quarter, successful tests were carried out of the transport of heavy crude at 600 centistokes (a measurement of viscosity), and we will continue with the goal of extending this capacity to other oil pipeline systems.

Structural savings during the quarter totaled COP 150 billion; the savings goal for the year is COP 740 billion. We highlight savings of COP 52 billion from the lower dilution cost for heavy crudes.

Ecopetrol remains focused on being a profitable company, committed to the country's development and care for the environment. We will continue to follow our strategic plan as a road map for delivering remarkable results aimed at value creation and sustainability."

The full report is available at www.ecopetol.com.co

For further information, please contact:

Head of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations

Maria Catalina Escobar

Phone: (+571) 234 5190

E-mail: [email protected]

Media Relations (Colombia)

Jorge Mauricio Tellez

Phone: (+ 571) 234 4329

SOURCE Ecopetrol S.A.

Related Links

http://www.ecopetrol.com.co


PHILADELPHIA, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- American Law Institute Continuing Legal Education (ALI CLE) has announced that Current Developments in Employment Law will be held on July 27-29, 2017, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Featuring top practitioners and federal judges, this nationally recognized conference will cover the latest employment law issues.

Current Developments in Employment Law is reformulated each year to focus on the most important topics and issues confronting employment lawyers. New for this year are the impacts of the Trump administration on employment law and emerging issues such as implicit bias, damages, and LGBT issues in the workplace. In addition, Planning Co-Chair Robert Fitzpatrick will lead a review and discussion by a panel of federal judges on the Supreme Court's 2016-2017 term that includes decisions McLane v. EEOC and NLRB v. SW General.

Other current topics to be addressed at the conference include:

Recent NLRB precedent changes: which ones could be reversed and how will the courts react?

Emerging ADA and FMLA developments

Current discovery and evidentiary issues

Arbitration in the employment setting

FLSA developments: DOL and the courts

Whistleblower law and retaliation

Settlement of employment cases: the hot button issues

"Since the era in which I started in this field, the law has grown from a few laws like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to a veritable alphabet soup of statutes at both the federal, state, and local level. Hence, to remain competent in this field, an employment lawyer needs to be constantly learning the tsunami of recent developments," said Planning Co-Chair, Robert Fitzpatrick.

Fitzpatrick added, "Twenty-four years ago, in recognition of that reality, I recommended to then ALI-ABA, now ALI CLE, that a course be created for the specific purpose of offering to employment lawyers the opportunity to learn from their colleagues and federal judges the most recent developments in this area of law. Every year we receive accolades from registrants that the first day back at work, they are applying the practice tips learned from our faculty." The program gives employment lawyers the unique opportunity to interact with federal judges and top-notch practicing lawyers on our faculty. The faculty is available informally in a host of settings over the two-and-a-half day program."

To learn more about this program and to register for the in-person course or webcast, click here.

About American Law Institute Continuing Legal Education

American Law Institute CLE is the continuing legal education division of the American Law Institute. American Law Institute CLE, a non-profit organization, is committed to the work of promoting continuing professional education for lawyers throughout the United States and to creating standards to ensure quality and relevance in CLE programs. American Law Institute CLE is constantly evolving to meet the needs of the legal profession, furthering a tradition of unparalleled service to lawyers. Follow the latest announcements and news at https://www.ali-cle.org/Press-Releases and on Twitter @ALI_CLE.

For press and media related inquiries, please send us an email at [email protected].

CONTACT: Ian Shumard, ALI CLE, (215) 243-1662

SOURCE American Law Institute Continuing Legal Education

Related Links

http://www.ali-cle.org


WORCESTER, Mass., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (NYSE: THG) today announced it was named to Forbes' list of "America's Best Employers" for 2017, placing it among other highly reputable companies across the U.S. This is the third consecutive year the company was named to the list.

"It's an honor to receive this recognition," said Christine Bilotti-Peterson, chief human resources officer at The Hanover. "It's a great testament to the values and culture of our company. Our employees' skills, efforts and passion are the foundation for our company's success, and we're proud that our employees view The Hanover as an employer of choice."

Forbes partnered with Statista.com to conduct an independent survey of 30,000 U.S. workers employed by companies with more than 1,000 employees. To create the list of top midsize companies, survey participants were asked a variety of questions, including being asked to rate the likelihood they would recommend their employer to potential employees. Employees were asked to assess companies on the basis of image, development opportunities, working conditions, compensation, workplace and diversity.

With more than 40 offices around the country and five international offices, The Hanover is committed to delivering exceptional insurance solutions to its agent partners and customers, and superior returns to its shareholders. The Hanover offers an excellent benefits package, including wellness programs, education reimbursement and paid time-off. Career paths include claims, underwriting, actuarial, finance, operations, technology, sales, marketing and more.

To find out more about employment opportunities at The Hanover, please visit jobs.hanover.com or visit the company on LinkedIn.

ABOUT THE HANOVER

The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. is the holding company for several property and casualty insurance companies, which together constitute one of the largest insurance businesses in the United States. The company provides exceptional insurance solutions in a dynamic world. The Hanover distributes its products through a select group of independent agents and brokers. Together with its agents, The Hanover offers standard and specialized insurance protection for small and mid-sized businesses, as well as for homes, automobiles, and other personal items. Through its international member company, Chaucer, The Hanover also underwrites business at Lloyd's of London in several major insurance and reinsurance classes, including marine, property and energy. For more information, please visit hanover.com.

2017 The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCE The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.hanover.com


SAN DIEGO and BURLINGAME, Calif., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- GenomeDx Biosciences, a leader in the field of urologic cancer genomics, today announced a collaboration with Color to offer its Color Test, a hereditary cancer risk genetic test that analyzes 30 genes. The collaboration further expands GenomeDx's broad product offering across prostate cancer. The Color Test is intended to help patients diagnosed with prostate cancer understand the hereditary factors of their disease and the possible implications for their family members. In addition, the Color Test is intended to enable men who have a relative diagnosed with hereditary prostate cancer to determine if they are at higher risk for developing certain types of prostate cancer in the future.

Doug Dolginow, M.D., chief executive officer of GenomeDx, commented, "The collaboration with Color is consistent with GenomeDx's goal to provide the best genomic and genetic solutions for patients afflicted with prostate cancer. Expanding our product offering with this hereditary cancer risk genetic test makes it easier for patients to access information about inherited risk for their families. In addition, data from the Color Test will be added to GenomeDx's Decipher GRID research platform  aiding our research activities to discover and develop future cancer solutions."

Othman Laraki, chief executive officer and co-founder of Color, added, "GenomeDx's Decipher tests are an important tool for physicians and patients in the prostate cancer market, and we look forward to partnering with one of the scientific leaders in the field."

About Color

Color is a health technology service that offers physician-ordered genetic testing for hereditary cancer risk. The Color Test analyzes 30 genes that impact the most common hereditary cancers, including prostate, breast, ovarian, colorectal, pancreatic, uterine, melanoma, and stomach cancers. To learn more about Color, follow Color on Twitter @Color or Facebook at facebook.com/Color and visit color.com.

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://genomedx.com


"Our Awards program has now been in existence for more than fifteen years," said Jeff Frigstad, Global Sr. Vice President, Best Practices, Frost & Sullivan. "These Awards come from the rigor used by our talented team of 2,000 thought leaders from over 45 global offices working with over 200,000 clients, to locate the best."

Awarded companies included:

A10 Networks, Inc. - 2016 Latin American Application Delivery Controllers Enabling Technology Leadership Award

Algar Tech - 2016 Brazilian Contact Center Outsourcing Competitive Strategy Innovation and Leadership Award

Atento Mexico - 2016 Mexican Contact Center Outsourcing Services Market Leadership Award

Avaya - 2017 Latin American Enterprise Communications Platforms & Endpoints Product Line Strategy Leadership Award

CIPHER - 2016 Brazilian Managed Security Services Market Leadership Award

Comarch SA - 2016 Latin American Telecommunications Network Solutions and Services Entrepreneurial Company of the Year Award

Deelo Contact Center & BPO - 2016 Argentinean Contact Center Outsourcing Services Customer Value Leadership Award

Embratel - 2017 Brazilian Data Center Services Provided by Telecommunication Companies Market Leadership Award

GlobeNet - 2017 Latin American Carrier of Carriers Services Company of the Year Award

inConcert - 2016 Latin American Contact Center Applications Enabling Technology Leadership Award

Level 3 Communications - 2016 Latin American Enterprise Services Provider Company of the Year Award

Omnize - 2017 Brazilian Cloud Contact Center Technology Innovation Award

Polycom Inc. - 2017 Latin American Enterprise Communications Endpoints Company of the Year Award

Teleperformance - 2016 Latin American Contact Center Outsourcing Nearshoring Services Market Leadership Award

Verint - 2016 Latin American Robotics New Product Innovation Award

Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices.

For further information about the Awards Ceremony, please contact a member of the Best Practices Team.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, collaborates with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that could make or break today's market participants. For more than 50 years, Frost & Sullivan has been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector, and the investment community. Contact us: Start the discussion.

Contact:

Claudia Toscano

P: 210.477.8417

F: 210.348.1003

E: [email protected]

SOURCE Frost & Sullivan

Related Links

http://www.frost.com


HOUSTON, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Group 1 Automotive, Inc. (NYSE: GPI), ("Group 1" or the "Company"), an international, Fortune 500 automotive retailer, today announced that Stephen D. Quinn has been elected by its Board to serve as non-executive Chairman of its Board of Directors. Mr. Quinn has served as a director of the Company since May 2002, and currently serves on the Board of Directors, the Audit Committee, and the Risk Oversight Committee of Zions Bancorporation. He has replaced John L. Adams, whose incumbency spanned twelve years. Mr. Adams will continue as a Director and now serve as Chairman of the Company's Finance/Risk Management (FRM) Committee. Mr. Adams has been as a director of the Company since November 1999.

Stephen Quinn

"We would like to thank John for serving as non-executive chairman for the past decade, and for continuing on with our board as FRM Committee chair. John's insight and experience with capital allocation has been integral to the Company for the past 18 years," said Earl Hesterberg, Group 1's president and chief executive officer. "We now welcome Steve to the role of non-executive Chairman and believe his extensive background in corporate finance and tremendous experience in assessing business strategies and risks, make him a great asset as the new chairman."

About Group 1 Automotive, Inc.

Group 1 owns and operates 159 automotive dealerships, 210 franchises, and 45 collision centers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Brazil that offer 30 brands of automobiles. Through its dealerships, the Company sells new and used cars and light trucks; arranges related vehicle financing; sells service contracts; provides automotive maintenance and repair services; and sells vehicle parts.

Investors please visit www.group1corp.com, www.group1auto.com, www.group1collision.com, www.facebook.com/group1auto, and www.twitter.com/group1auto, where Group 1 discloses additional information about the Company, its business, and its results of operations.

Investor contacts:

Sheila Roth

Manager, Investor Relations

Group 1 Automotive, Inc.

713-647-5741 | [email protected]

Media contacts:

Pete DeLongchamps

V.P. Manufacturer Relations, Financial Services and Public Affairs

Group 1 Automotive, Inc.

713-647-5770 | [email protected]

or

Clint Woods

Pierpont Communications, Inc.

713-627-2223 | [email protected]

SOURCE Group 1 Automotive, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.group1auto.com


NORTH RIDGEVILLE, Ohio, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- After nearly four decades of operation, North Ridgeville-based Heat Exchange Hearth & Patio Shoppe has changed ownership  and the veteran business is showing no signs of slowing down.

Boasting the largest showroom display of barbecue appliances in the state of Ohio, Heat Exchange Hearth & Patio Shoppe is packed full of high-end gear, and over 80 models are set up for viewing by interested customers. The shop offers plenty of appeal for both avid barbecue fanatics and blossoming cooks alike, with a diverse stock of culinary gear that includes pellet, gas, electric and charcoal grills, along with a vast range of barbecue accessories, including more than 130 dry rubs, delicious marinades, smoking woods and more.

The Ohio business is an exercise in diversity  its expansive inventory includes much more than just cooking equipment alone. Visitors can also browse an array of fireplaces and fireplace-related accessories  like doors and inserts  as well as cozy patio furniture and umbrellas. To top things off, the shop offers gas and wood stoves to keep homes and businesses as comfortable as can be when temperatures plummet. In addition to offering such an extensive assortment of products, Heat Exchange Hearth & Patio Shoppe offers assembly, delivery, and service solutions for fireplaces, grills, or patio furniture.

To learn more about all that Heat Exchange Hearth & Patio Shoppe has to offer and familiarize yourself with the shop's new owners, be sure to stop into the showroom  located at 34205 Lorain Road, North Ridgeville Ohio, which is open Monday through Saturday  visit their website at www.heatexchangeonline.com and like its official Facebook page.

SOURCE Heat Exchange Hearth & Patio Shoppe

Related Links

http://www.heatexchangeonline.com


NEWPORT BEACH, Calif., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Orange County Hispanic Education Endowment Fund (HEEF) is pleased to announce that it will receive a $25,000 gift from Northgate Gonzalez Market, a family-owned chain of 40 supermarkets that caters to the Latino community. The $25,000 will be added to HEEF's existing scholarship funds, which provide educational assistance to Latino students in Orange County, California.

Shelley Hoss, president of the Orange County Community Foundation which stewards the HEEF endowment, says, "We are extremely pleased that Northgate Gonzalez Markets has selected HEEF as one of its recipients. HEEF has a strong record of assisting promising Hispanic youth through its scholarship efforts. The Northgate Gonzalez Market gift will bolster and widen that impact."

In a prepared statement from Northgate Gonzalez Market, the company says, "The Northgate donation to HEEF was one of five $25,000 contributions announced on May 1. The gifts are designed to assist immigrants known as the Dreamers, young immigrants who were brought to the United States as infants or children, and who could be deported because of that status." For more information about the company, visit https://www.northgatemarkets.com/en-us.

About the Orange County Hispanic Education Endowment Fund

The Hispanic Educational Endowment Fund was founded in 1993 by a group of business and community leaders in Orange County who saw the need to support deserving students to reach their education goals. The focus of HEEF is to provide scholarships, mentoring, and support to Hispanic youth in Orange County, California. Funds are dedicated to students in early learning and pre-college stages, and on scholarships for those that are college bound. Since its inception, the organization has awarded more than $2.7 million to thousands of students. For more information, visit www.heef.org.

Media Contact:

Beth Binger

BCIpr

619-987-6658

[email protected]

SOURCE Orange County Hispanic Education Endowment Fund

Related Links

http://www.heef.org


RESTON, Va., May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- iGov, provider of C4I systems and support programs, announced today that the Tactical Local Area Network (TACLAN) Family of System (FoS) Field Computing Device-Wearable (FCD-W) has successfully completed Operational Utility Assessment (OUA) during Digitally-Aided Close Air Support (DACAS) testing at a Department of Defense test range in Nevada. Variable Message Format (VMF) and Situation Awareness Data Link (SADL) was tested with various aircraft during the week-long event. CAS 9-lines, Air on Station reports, and other digital information was passed between FCD-W system and the aircraft. In addition, ground forces successfully tested video down links from the aircraft which dramatically improved situational awareness and improved their ability to process targets.

"This marks another significant milestone in the successful demonstration and verification of the FCD-W performance and capability as we move towards final system certification and fielding," stated iGov's Vice President of Programs.

The FCD-W solution supports a standard operator configuration for "shooters" and a Joint Terminal Air Controllers (JTAC). For the first time, special operation forces now have a wearable system optimized for combat operations that allows an end user device to connect to multiple C4I devices. This greatly enhances their ability to conduct targeting missions, Situational Awareness (SA), and navigation.

"The FCD-W is designed for the dismounted warrior and incorporates a suite of SA and DACAS applications, including ATAK, mobileJECL and ATRAX supporting VMF, Link 16, SADL and ANW2," says Greg Kaighin, iGov's TACLAN FCD-W Project Engineer. "The system is designed for multiple tactical mission sets using a NIAP-approved CSfC compliant end user device while using data and power from multiple sources."

The FCD-W kit will be available to view in iGov's booth at SOFIC 2017 from 15-18 May 2017 at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, FL (Booth # 1526).

About iGov

iGov is an employee owned systems integrator and Value Added Reseller, specializing in delivering mission-centric C4I solutions to its government customers. iGov deploys its people, expertise, and processes to execute full lifecycle enterprise and tactical programs in the following areas: Tactical Networking, Software Development, Systems Engineering, Communications Systems, and C4I Platform Integration. For more information, visit www.igov.com.

Contact: Dana Stanton, 760-822-9491

SOURCE iGov

Related Links

http://www.igov.com


English Dutch

TiGenix

Naamloze vennootschap

die een openbaar beroep doet of heeft gedaan op het spaarwezen

Romeinse straat 12 box 2

3001 Leuven

VAT BE 0471.340.123

RLE Leuven

CONVENING NOTICE TO the EXTRAORDINARY shareholders' meeting

to be held on 1 June 2017

The board of directors of TiGenix NV (the "Company") is pleased to invite you to the extraordinary shareholders' meeting of TiGenix NV that will be held at the registered office of TiGenix NV (Romeinse straat 12 box 2, 3001 Leuven) on 1 June 2017 at 15:00 CET, in the presence of a notary, with the agenda and proposed resolutions set out below.

This meeting can validly discuss and resolve on the items on the agenda irrespective of the number of shares present or represented. A first extraordinary shareholders' meeting, held on 9 May 2017 at 13:00 CET, could not validly discuss these agenda items because the legally required attendance quorum was not reached.

Agenda and proposed resolutions

Acknowledgement of the special report of the board of directors pursuant to Article 604 of the Companies Code with respect to the renewal of the authorisation in respect of the authorised capital. Renewal of the authorisation in respect of the authorised capital.

Proposed resolution : The shareholders' meeting resolves to authorise the board of directors to increase the Company's registered capital in one or more transactions by a (cumulated) amount equal to the current amount of the registered capital of the Company, i.e. twenty-five million nine hundred ninety-five thousand six hundred thirty-six euro fifty eurocent (EUR 25,995,636.50). To this effect, the shareholders' meeting resolves to entirely replace Article 6 of the articles of association by the following text:

"Article 6: Authorised capital

6.1. By virtue of the resolution of the extraordinary shareholders' meeting held on [DATE] 2017, the board of directors has been expressly authorised to increase the registered capital in one or more transactions with a (cumulated) amount equal to the registered capital, being twenty-five million nine hundred ninety-five thousand six hundred thirty-six euro fifty eurocent (EUR 25,995,636.50). This authorisation may be renewed in accordance with the relevant legal provisions.

The board of directors can exercise this power for a period of five (5) years as of the publication of the authorisation in the annexes to the Belgian State Gazette.

6.2. The capital increases to which can be decided pursuant to this authorisation, take place in accordance with the modalities to be determined by the board of directors, by means of a contribution in cash or in kind or through conversion of reserves and issuance premiums, with or without issuance of new shares, with or without voting rights. The board of directors can also use this authorisation for the issuance of convertible bonds, subordinated or not subordinated, warrants, bonds to which warrants or other tangible values are connected, or other securities.

When exercising its authorisation within the framework of the authorised capital, the board of directors can limit or cancel the preferential subscription right of the shareholders in the interest of the company, subject to the limitations and in accordance with the conditions provided for by the Companies Code. This limitation or cancellation can also occur to the benefit of the employees of the company or its subsidiaries, and to the benefit of one or more specific persons even if these are not employees of the company or its subsidiaries.

If, pursuant to a capital increase that has been decided within the framework of the authorised capital, an issuance premium is paid, this shall be automatically booked on the account "Issuance Premiums", that shall serve as guarantee for third parties in the same manner as the company's registered capital and which, apart from the possibility to convert this reserve into registered capital, can only be disposed off in accordance with the conditions provided for by the Companies Code in respect of amendments to the articles of association.

The board of directors is authorised, with power of substitution, to amend the articles of association after each capital increase realised within the framework of the authorised capital, in order to bring them in line with the new situation of the registered capital and the shares."

Furthermore, the shareholders' meeting clarifies that, effective as from the entry into force of the aforementioned new authorisation, the existing authorisation regarding the authorised capital, as was granted to the board of directors pursuant to a resolution of the extraordinary shareholders' meeting of 8 September 2014, shall expire.

Delegation of powers for the coordination of the articles of association.

Proposed resolution : The shareholders' meeting resolves to grant to each director of the Company, acting alone, with power to substitute, the power to draw up the coordinated text of the articles of association to reflect the modifications in accordance with the preceding resolutions.

Admission conditions

In order to be admitted to the shareholders' meeting, the holders of securities issued by the Company must comply with Article 536 of the Companies Code and Article 30 of the articles of association, and fulfil the formalities and make the notifications described below.

In accordance with Article 537 of the Companies Code, the holders of bonds or warrants issued by the Company can only attend the shareholders' meeting with a consultative vote.

Holders of registered shares and warrants

The holders of registered shares and warrants are entitled to participate in and, in the case of shares, to vote at the shareholders' meeting, provided that:

Registration: their shares or warrants are recorded in their name in the register of registered shares or warrants at midnight (24:00) (CET) on 18 May 2017 (the "record date") and this irrespective of the number of shares or warrants that they own on the date of the shareholders' meeting; and Confirmation of participation : they notify the Company in writing of (i) their intention to participate in the shareholders' meeting, and (ii) the number of securities for which they wish to participate in the shareholders' meeting, by means of a signed form that must be received by the Company at the Company's registered office at the latest on 26 May 2017; a model of this form is available at the Company's registered office and on the Company's website under the tab "Investors / Shareholder meeting" (www.tigenix.com). Holders of dematerialized shares and bonds

The holders of dematerialized shares and bonds are entitled to participate in and, in the case of shares, to vote at the shareholders' meeting, provided that:

Registration : their shares or bonds are recorded in their name in the accounts of a recognized account holder or a settlement institution at midnight (24:00) (CET) on 18 May 2017 (the " record date ") and this irrespective of the number of shares or bonds that they own on the date of the shareholders' meeting; and

Confirmation of participation : at the latest on 26 May 2017, they deliver or have delivered at an office of ING Belgium (before closing time) or by e-mail (BE-LFM.COA.SPA@ing.be) a certificate issued by the recognized account holder or the settlement institution certifying the number of dematerialized shares or bonds recorded in the shareholder's or bondholder's accounts on the record date in respect of which the shareholder or bondholder has indicated his intention to participate in the shareholders' meeting.

Only persons who are a shareholder, a bondholder or a warrant holder of the Company on the record date (18 May 2017) and who have indicated at the latest on 26 May 2017 their intention to participate in the shareholders' meeting as set out above will be admitted to the shareholders' meeting.

The shares and bonds are not blocked as a result of the above-mentioned process. As a result, the shareholders and bondholders are free to dispose of their shares and bonds after the record date.

Right to ask questions

In accordance with Article 540 of the Companies Code and Article 35 of the articles of association, all shareholders are entitled, whether during the meeting or in writing before the meeting, to ask questions to the directors with respect to their report or the agenda items and to the auditor with respect to its report.

Questions asked in writing will only be answered if the relevant shareholder has fulfilled the formalities set out above to be admitted to the shareholders' meeting and if the written question has been received by the Company at the latest on 26 May 2017.

Written questions may be sent to the Company by mail to the Company's registered office for the attention of Ms. An Moonen or by e-mail to an.moonen@tigenix.com.

Proxy

In accordance with Article 547bis of the Companies Code and Article 31 of the articles of association, each shareholder may be represented at the shareholders' meeting by a proxy holder, who does not need to be a shareholder. Except in cases provided for in the law, a shareholder may only appoint one person as proxy holder for a particular shareholders' meeting.

Shareholders who so wish to be represented by proxy, are requested to use the model of proxy form (with voting instructions) that is available at the Company's registered office and on the Company's website under the tab "Investor / Shareholder meeting" (www.tigenix.com).

The signed proxy form must be received by the Company at the Company's registered office at the latest on 26 May 2017.

Shareholders who wish to be represented by proxy, must comply with the above-mentioned admission conditions.

Availability of documents

In accordance with Article 535 of the Companies Code, the shareholders, bondholders and warrant holders of the Company can, upon presentation of their security or of a certificate issued by a recognized account holder or a settlement institution certifying the number of dematerialized securities recorded in the name of the shareholder, obtain at the Company's registered office (Romeinse straat 12, 3001 Leuven), free of charge, a copy of the documents and reports that relate to this meeting or that must be made available to them pursuant to law.

These documents and reports, as well as the total number of shares and voting rights at the date of the convening notice, are also available on the Company's website (www.tigenix.com).

Miscellaneous

In order to facilitate an expedient registration, the participants are requested to be present at least half an hour prior to the start of the shareholders' meeting.

In order to be admitted to the shareholders' meeting, the shareholders, bondholders, warrant holders and proxy holders must be able to prove their identity (ID card / passport).

Please contact Ms. An Moonen at the following telephone number +32 (0)16 39 79 37 or e-mail address an.moonen@tigenix.com for more information. Correspondence may be sent to TiGenix NV, for the attention of Ms. An Moonen, Romeinse straat 12 box 2, 3001 Leuven.

The board of directors.
ST. LOUIS, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- America has named Susan Brocksmith (Vincennes, Ind.) as the national winner of the 2017 America's Farmers Mom of the Year program, sponsored by Monsanto. The program honors the significant contributions farm moms make in their communities and beyond, and is designed to help some of the most outstanding farm moms make an even bigger difference in their communities. Susan, a farmer, agribusiness professor, mother and active agriculture advocate, garnered the most online votes to capture the national title.

Susan was one of five women who were recognized at the end of April as regional winners in the program. All of them, including Becca Ferry (Brigham City, Utah), Shari Sell-Bakker (Dike, Iowa), Cala Tabb (Eupora, Miss.), Nancy Kirkholm (Homer, Neb.), and Susan were selected by a panel of American Agri-Women and Monsanto judges for their dedication and commitment to their families, farms, communities and the agriculture industry.

America voted online at AmericasFarmers.com from April 28 through May 10 for one of the five regional winners to be named the national winner. All five women won $2,000 to direct to an eligible nonprofit organization of her choice in her community, as well as $3,000 for her personal use. Susan will receive another $2,000 to direct to an eligible nonprofit for securing the most online votes to be named the national "America's Farmers Mom of the Year." She has decided to divide her $4,000 among three organizations: Helping His Hands, a local disaster relief organization and food pantry, and both the North Knox and South Knox FFA chapters.

"These women are truly the backbone of rural America, and we are so excited to share their stories and honor them for their great contributions," said Jessica Lane Rommel, Monsanto's Business Communications Manager. "Susan exudes so much passion for her family and community, and she is a great example of how women are making an impact on the agriculture industry at large. Through her work with Helping His Hands and FFA, she is making a difference in her community and inspiring all of us."

About Susan Brocksmith

Susan was nominated for the America's Farmers Mom of the Year program by her daughters Victoria and Casandra. In their nomination, they noted that Susan is a problem-solver on the family farm, an advocate of agriculture in the community, a role model for her daughters and a professor who goes the extra mile for her students.

"I am humbled and blessed to be named the 2017 America's Farmers Mom of the Year," said Susan. "I was raised on a family farm and was able to raise my daughters on our family farm. I have strived to instill the core values of faith, family and agriculture into my daughters, as well as my college students. Thanks to the support I received from family, friends and community, I was able to receive this award. This outpouring of support proves anything is possible. Thank you Monsanto for providing this outreach opportunity."

In addition to playing an active role on the family farm, Susan serves on the county hospital board and is a church trustee. Additionally, she is an Agribusiness Professor and Department Chair at Vincennes University, where she holds some classes on the family farm and hosts meals with her students several times a year.

To learn more about Susan, her fellow 2017 regional Mom of the Year winners or winners from years past, visit AmericasFarmers.com.

About America's Farmers

The America's Farmers campaign highlights the importance of modern U.S. Agriculture through communications and community outreach programs that partner with farmers to impact rural America. To learn more, visit America's Farmers at www.AmericasFarmers.com .

About American Agri-Women

AAW is the nation's largest coalition of farm, ranch and agribusiness women and includes members from more than 50 state, commodity and agribusiness affiliates. Since 1974, AAW members have worked together to educate consumers; advocate for agriculture; and offer networking and professional development opportunities. Go to the AAW web site for more information and to join, http://www.americanagriwomen.org/ . Find AAW on social media at: Facebook.com/AgriWomen/ and Twitter.com/Women4Ag/ (@Women4Ag).

About Monsanto Company

Monsanto Company is a leading global provider of technology-based solutions and agricultural products that improve farm productivity and food quality. Monsanto remains focused on enabling both small-holder and large-scale farmers to produce more from their land while conserving more of our world's natural resources such as water and energy. To learn more about our business and our commitments, please visit: www.monsanto.com. Follow our business on Twitter at www.twitter.com/MonsantoCo, on the company blog, Beyond the Rows at www.monsantoblog.com, or subscribe to our News Release RSS Feed.



CONTACTS Jeff Neu, Monsanto, 314-694-4690





Eric White, Weber Shandwick, 312-988-2237

SOURCE Monsanto Company

Related Links

http://www.americasfarmers.com/


NEW YORK, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- INVISTA, owners of the LYCRA brand, along with Cone Denim and its parent company, International Textile Group (ITG), announced today that INVISTA has purchased Cone Denim's and ITG's dual core patent portfolio. The patent estate covers a broad variety of dual core yarns, fabrics, and garments made from those fabrics, which are sold in the U.S., China, and most recently, Europe. The purchase is effective immediately.

"Given the growth of dual core technology in recent years, we are excited to add this technology to the INVISTA patent estate," said Jean Hegedus, director of INVISTA's denim business, who says that INVISTA sees this move as a logical expansion of its dual core portfolio. "We look forward to working with our customers and licensees to expand the LYCRA dualFX fabric business."

INVISTA was a pioneer in the development of dual core technology with its LYCRA dualFX fabric concept, first introduced commercially in 2010. LYCRA dualFX technology encompasses stretch fabrics made with two stretch fibers  LYCRA and LYCRA T400 fibers  in a single yarn.

"This year marks the 10th anniversary of Cone Denim's development of its dual core patented innovation, trademarked as SGENE technology," says Steve Maggard, Cone Denim's senior vice president of operations. "Cone's SGENE technology integrates a stretch fiber, such as LYCRA fiber, with an inelastic control filament. Cone is pleased to collaborate with INVISTA to provide a global platform to take this technology to the next level and will continue to produce yarns and fabrics made with the SGENE technology under a license from INVISTA."

Last month, Cone Denim's dual core patent was granted in Europe and is now part of the INVISTA patent estate. "The granting of the EU patent marks another milestone in dual core technology and should provide new opportunities for INVISTA's customers," Hegedus said. Over the next several months INVISTA will be meeting with its customers and other fabric producers to discuss its expanded dual core patent estate and license requirements.

About INVISTA

With leading brands including LYCRA, COOLMAX, CORDURA, STAINMASTER and ANTRON, INVISTA is one of the world's largest integrated producers of chemical intermediates, polymers and fibers. The company's advantaged technologies for nylon, spandex and polyester are used to produce clothing, carpet, car parts and countless other everyday products. Headquartered in the United States, INVISTA operates in more than 20 countries and has about 10,000 employees. For more information, visit www.INVISTA.com, Facebook.com/INVISTAglobal and Twitter.com/INVISTA.

About CONE DENIM

A leading denim innovator for more than 125 years, Cone Denim delivers unparalleled expertise and advanced denim capabilities that service and inspire the global market. From performance denims and superior SGENE technology to vintage re-creations of CONE Deeptone Denim reaching back to the early 1900s, Cone offers unique collections of SELVAGE, PERFORMANCE, STRETCH and NATURAL INDIGO denims crafted out of the Cone3D R&D incubator. Cone Denim operates as part of International Textile Group, Inc. (ITG) with manufacturing capabilities in the U.S., China, and Mexico, including the iconic White Oak mill in Greensboro. Learn more at www.conedenim.com, instagram.com/conedenim, and facebook.com/conedenimitg.

LYCRA and T400 are trademarks of INVISTA.

SGENE is a trademark of Cone Denim.

SOURCE INVISTA

Related Links

http://www.INVISTA.com


Often referencing historical imagery and found objects, Koons based Seated Ballerina on a small porcelain figurine. The sculpture acts as a contemporary iteration of the goddess Venus, and symbolizes notions of beauty and connectivity. Its reflective surface mirrors its immediate environment and engages with each viewer. The work aims to bring awareness to National Missing Children's Month this May, in an effort to support organizations like the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) that work tirelessly to create a safer world for children.

"It's a pleasure to work with Kiehl's and Art Production Fund on this charitable project. This partnership will increase awareness and help the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children make the world a safer place for children," said Jeff Koons. "I hope the installation of Seated Ballerina at Rockefeller Center offers a sense of affirmation and excitement to the viewer to reach their potential. The aspect of reflectivity emulates life's energy; it's about contemplation and what it means to be a human being. It's a very hopeful piece."

"We have enjoyed a great relationship with Jeff Koons, starting with Puppy and recently with Split-Rocker, which were both a tremendous success," said Tishman Speyer President and CEO Rob Speyer. "It's an honor to work with the Art Production Fund and Kiehl's and bring Jeff's art back to Rockefeller Center. Seated Ballerina promises to offer one of those unforgettable New York experiences that will be remembered for years to come."

"We are honored to work with Jeff Koons, Kiehl's and Tishman Speyer to present Seated Ballerina at Rockefeller Center," said Casey Fremont, Executive Director of Art Production Fund. "We believe in the power of collaboration, and we are thrilled to present a public art project that raises awareness of the urgent need to protect children worldwide."

In honor of National Missing Children's Month, Koons has also created a limited edition Seated Ballerina tin for the Midnight Recovery Collection. Throughout May, Kiehl's will donate 100% of its net profits from the collection, up to $100,000, to directly benefit ICMEC. A fervent advocate for protecting children, Koons worked with ICMEC to co-found The Koons Family Institute on International Law & Policy in 2007 to combat child abduction and exploitation. He also serves on ICMEC's Board of Directors. The installation highlights the longstanding relationship Kiehl's has forged with Jeff Koons and ICMEC since 2011. Art Production Fund has also worked on a number of projects with Koons since 2009, donating a portion of sales from its Works on Whatever Collection to ICMEC.

"We're thrilled to continue what's become a Kiehl's tradition of partnering with Jeff Koons," says Chris Salgardo, President, Kiehl's USA."With more than 465,000 reports of missing children last year in the United States alone, it's gratifying to know that via this fourth partnership with Koons and the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children, we are able to make a difference in the lives of our children."

"ICMEC is proud and honored to partner with our long-term friend and Board member  the great American artist Jeff Koons  and with the iconic Kiehl's Since 1851, in a campaign that raises awareness and supports our efforts to make the world a safer place for all children," says Maura Harty, President & CEO ICMEC.

About Jeff Koons:

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art; the latter from where he received his BFA. He currently lives and works in New York City. One of the foremost internationally recognized contemporary artists of our time, Jeff Koons earned renown for his iconic sculptures such as Rabbit (1986), Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988) and his public sculptures, such as the monumental floral sculptures Puppy (1992) and Split-Rocker (2000), both of which were previously installed at Rockefeller Center.

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.

About Art Production Fund:

Art Production Fund is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to commissioning and producing ambitious public art projects, reaching new audiences and expanding awareness through contemporary art. Projects include: Rudolf Stingel, "Plan B," NYC, 2004; Elmgreen & Dragset,"Prada Marfa," Valentine, TX, 2005, permanent; Noble & Webster, "Electric Fountain," Rockefeller Plaza, NYC, 2008; Yoshitomo Nara, "White Ghost," Park Avenue, NYC, 2010; Chuck Close & Kehinde Wiley, "ART ADDS 2," NYC, 2011; "After Hours: Murals on the Bowery," NYC, 2011; Josephine Meckseper, "Manhattan Oil Project," NYC, 2012; Yoko Ono, "Imagine Peace Times Square," NYC, 2012; Yvette Mattern, "Global Rainbow After The Storm," NYC, 2012; Ryan McGinley, "Taxi TV," NYC, 2013; FriendsWithYou, "Light Cave," NYC, 2014; Hanna Liden, "Everything," NYC, 2015; Gerard & Kelly, "Modern Living," Los Angeles & New Canaan, 2016; Ugo Rondinone, "Seven Magic Mountains," Las Vegas, 2016-2018. Co-Founders: Yvonne Force Villareal & Doreen Remen; Executive Director: Casey Fremont; Director of Operations: Kathleen Lynch. For more information, please visit artproductionfund.org

About Tishman Speyer:

About Tishman Speyer (tishmanspeyer.com) Tishman Speyer is a leading owner, developer, operator and fund manager of first-class real estate around the world. Founded in 1978 and led by President & CEO Rob Speyer, Tishman Speyer is active across the United States, Europe, Latin America and Asia, building and managing premier office, residential and retail space in 30 key global markets for industry-leading tenants. The firm has acquired, developed and operated a portfolio approximately 164.7 million square feet with a total value of approximately US$81.9 billion spread over 402 assets. Signature assets include New York City's Rockefeller Center and Chrysler Center, Sao Paulo's Torre Norte, The Springs in Shanghai and OpernTurm in Frankfurt. Tishman Speyer currently has projects at different stages of development in Atlanta, Boston, Brasilia, Chengdu, Frankfurt, Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Washington, DC.

About the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children:

The International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children is a private 501(c)(3) non-governmental, nonprofit organization. For almost 20 years, ICMEC has been a leader in identifying gaps in the global community's ability to protect children from abduction, sexual abuse and exploitation, and expertly assembling the people, resources and tools needed to fill those gaps. ICMEC focuses on programs that have an impact on addressing the issues surrounding missing children, child abduction, child sexual abuse and exploitation. Through The Koons Family Institute on International Law & Policy, ICMEC conducts and commissions original research into the status of child protection legislation around the world to help make children safer.

SOURCE Tishman Speyer; Kiehls
RESTON, Va., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Leidos Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: LDOS) today announced that its Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.32 per outstanding share of common stock. The cash dividend is payable on June 30, 2017 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on June 15, 2017.

About Leidos

Leidos is a global science and technology solutions and services leader working to solve the world's toughest challenges in the defense, intelligence, homeland security, civil, and health markets. The company's 32,000 employees support vital missions for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, Leidos reported annual revenues of approximately $7.04 billion for the fiscal year ended December 30, 2016. For more information, visit www.Leidos.com.



Media contact:

Melissa Koskovich

571.526.6850

[email protected]

Investor Relations:

Kelly P. Hernandez

571.526.6404

[email protected]

SOURCE Leidos Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.leidos.com


WASHINGTON, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) will conduct its 25nd annual national food drive this Saturday, May 13.

The Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive, the country's largest single-day food drive, provides residents with an easy way to donate food to those in need.

Customers simply leave their donation of non-perishable goods next to their mailbox before the delivery of the mail on Saturday. Letter carriers will collect these food donations on that day as they deliver mail along their postal routes and distribute them to local food agencies. Visit stampouthungerfooddrive.us to learn more.

The Letter Carriers' food drive is held annually on the second Saturday in May in 10,000 cities and towns in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam. It remains as important as ever, with many people facing economic struggles. Hunger affects about 50 million people around the country, including millions of children, senior citizens and veterans.

Letter carriers see these struggles in the communities they serve, and believe it's important to do what they can to help.

"It's an honor to be able to help people in need by leading an effort that brings out the best in so many Americans," NALC President Fredric Rolando said. "All of our food drives have been special. The fact that this year marks the 25th anniversary makes this one a bit more special."

The timing is important, with food banks, pantries and shelters running low on donations from the winter-holidays and with summer looming, when most school meal programs are suspended.

Last year, letter carriers collected a record 80.1 million pounds of food donations along their postal routes. That brought the total since the NALC's food drive began in 1993 to 1.5 billion pounds.

On Saturday, as they deliver mail, the nation's 175,000 letter carriers will collect the donations that residents leave near their mail boxes. People are encouraged to leave a sturdy bag containing non-perishable foods, such as canned soup, canned vegetables, canned meats and fish, pasta, rice or cereal next to their mailbox before the regular mail delivery on Saturday.

Carriers will bring the food to local food banks, pantries or shelters. Several national partners are assisting the NALC in the food drive: the U.S. Postal Service, United Food & Commercial Workers International Union, National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, United Way Worldwide, AARP Foundation, AFL-CIO, Valpak and Valassis.

This year's effort includes a public service announcement with actor and director Edward James Olmos.

People who have questions about the drive in their area should ask their letter carrier, contact their local post office, or go to nalc.org/food, facebook.com/StampOutHunger or twitter.com/StampOutHunger.

The 280,000-member National Association of Letter Carriers represents letter carriers across the country employed by the U.S. Postal Service, along with retired letter carriers. Founded by Civil War veterans in 1889, the NALC is among the country's oldest labor unions.

www.nalc.org

SOURCE National Association of Letter Carriers

Related Links

http://www.nalc.org


NORTHRIDGE, Calif., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- While the country hears about national cases of cancer diagnosis from the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) talcum powder cases, a Northridge woman hopes to make it to one last Mother's Day.

Cristina Assatourians, a former special education teacher and mother of three, is fighting for every last breath she takes. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer after using talcum powder her whole life.

"Cristina believed the talcum powder she used was safe  all the while, J&J ignored warnings that it could lead to ovarian cancer," said her attorney Joshua Haffner of Haffner Law.

In her videotaped deposition while lying in a hospital bed, Assatourians said she was angry a company could mislead people into believing their products are safe in order to make money.

"Now this is not only affecting me, it's affecting the whole family. I feel like I can't help them. I can't do anything for them. This is not life. This is not good."

According to Bloomberg Business Week, there are more than 3,000 lawsuits accusing the world's largest health-care company and Imery's Talc America, which provided talc to J&J, of ignoring studies linking its baby powder and Shower to Shower talc products to ovarian cancer and failing to warn customers about the risk.

As for Assatourians, she said she would have never used the product if she had any idea this could be the result. She said she's devastated.

"I'm sick already. I'm going to die any moment. But I would like something to happen so no more people get sick," she said.

SOURCE Haffner Law

Related Links

http://www.haffnerlawyers.com


SAN DIEGO, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Medical Marijuana, Inc. (MJNA), the first publicly traded cannabis company in the United States, today announced that its subsidiary HempMeds Mexico and its cannabidiol (CBD) oil product Real Scientific Hemp Oil-X (RSHO-X) garnered national news headlines across Mexico after news of the Mexican Congress passing legislation April 28 to legalize the use of marijuana and cannabis for medical and scientific needs in Mexico.

An article from Mexico newspaper Reforma "Proyectan oportunidad con mariguana," or "They project an opportunity with marijuana," and other news articles from major national Mexico outlets discuss how the therapeutic decriminalization of marijuana in Mexico will enable HempMeds to reach more patients suffering from debilitating medical conditions.

"We are extremely pleased that the therapeutic benefits of RSHO-X, including the mention of a recent study by renowned Mexican physician Dr. Saul Garza Morales that found RSHO-X to be effective in treating 39 children, have been highlighted in numerous articles discussing the recent cannabis reform in Mexico," said Medical Marijuana, Inc. CEO Dr. Stuart Titus. "Since becoming the first company to provide Mexico citizens with access to a medical product based on cannabis (THC-free hemp CBD), we've been at the forefront of the discussion on cannabis reform in the country and are always thankful when news outlets share the story of HempMeds and RSHO-X, because as more news spreads, the more citizens we can help that suffer from debilitating medical conditions."

Additional coverage from national Mexico outlets include:

Medical Marijuana, Inc., started exporting to Mexico to help families gain access to THC-free CBD hemp oil RSHO-X after the Health Department of Mexico, COFEPRIS, issued the country's first-ever government permits on February 2, 2016, to two families, including the Maldonado family whose daughter suffered from a severe form of epilepsy.

Medical Marijuana, Inc. created its subsidiary HempMeds Mexico after RSHO-X product became the first and only cannabis product allowed for import into the country. HempMeds Mexico works side by side with doctors, patients, and policy makers in Mexico to ensure those in need of CBD have access to it.

Follow the link here for more information on HempMeds Mexico and here for its historic first-year milestones.

About Medical Marijuana, Inc.

Our mission is to be the premier cannabis and hemp industry innovators, leveraging our team of professionals to source, evaluate and purchase value-added companies and products, while allowing them to keep their integrity and entrepreneurial spirit. We strive to create awareness within our industry, develop environmentally-friendly, economically sustainable businesses, while increasing shareholder value. For details on Medical Marijuana, Inc.'s portfolio and investment companies, visit www.medicalmarijuanainc.com .

To see Medical Marijuana, Inc.'s video statement, click here. Shareholders are also encouraged to visit the Medical Marijuana, Inc. Shop for discounted products.

About HempMeds

HempMeds is a corporate portfolio company of Medical Marijuana, Inc. (OTC PINK: MJNA) and the Company's exclusive master distributor and contracted marketing company, handling sales and distribution.

FORWARD-LOOKING DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURES

This press release may contain certain forward-looking statements and information, as defined within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and is subject to the Safe Harbor created by those sections. This material contains statements about expected future events and/or financial results that are forward-looking in nature and subject to risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements by definition involve risks, uncertainties. The statements in this press release have not been evaluated by the FDA and are not intended to diagnose, treat or cure any disease. The Company does not sell or distribute any products that are in violation of the United States Controlled Substances Act. The Company does sell and distribute hemp-based products.

CONTACT:

Public Relations Contact:

Andrew Hard

Chief Executive Officer

CMW Media

P: 888-829- 0070

[email protected]

www.cmwmedia.com

SOURCE Medical Marijuana, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.medicalmarijuanainc.com


MIAMI, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Mi9 Retail, a leading global supplier of omni-channel retail software, is pleased to announce that it has signed a new partnership with DataByte, a retail systems integrator based in Sydney, Australia.

DataByte was founded in 2002 to form a fully rounded IT support and development team. Over the past 15 years, the company has developed deep domain expertise in retail systems, having implemented hundreds of retail solutions for leading commercial brands across the country.

"DataByte has successfully implemented and supported many retailers with their ongoing software needs," said James Noonan, Director at DataByte. "Retailing remains a dynamic business sector and at DataByte, we continually strive to deliver on time and on budget solutions for our customers." He added, "We are excited with the new partnership between DataByte and Mi9 Retail as this will allow both companies to deliver a strong and effective product to the Australian retail sector, and ensure top level support."

Mi9 Retail has existing customers in the region that span retail industries including footwear, fashion and apparel, jewelry, and specialty.

"Australian retailers have faced limited technology options as they seek to modernize their core retail platforms and expand their capabilities to support omni-channel commerce and market growth," said Tim Lai, Regional Director for Australia, Mi9 Retail. "We are committed to serving this market with local personnel who can work directly with our customers to address their unique issues and to explore new opportunities. The team at DataByte have built an outstanding reputation for their knowledge of retail systems and their ability to implement them quickly and efficiently."

About DataByte

DataByte is an Australian owned and operated company that was founded in 2002. DataByte has consistently delivered on time and on budget solutions to our clients. Presently, we support many of Australia's top retailers. We pride ourselves on excellence when advising, supporting and developing solutions to our clients. Some of our current retail clients include Gazal, General Pants, Specialty Fashion Group, Billabong, Noni B, Marcs, David Lawrence, Quicksilver and many other top retailers in the Australian retail market.

About Mi9 Retail

Mi9 Retail is passionate about helping retailers create great experiences for their customers  online, in-store, and on any device. We know that great retail experiences happen when optimized inventory management intersects perfectly with well-executed customer engagement strategies to deliver higher customer loyalty, better margins, and a more engaged workforce. Our solutions for merchandise management, digital commerce, and store operations are used by leading retailers across the globe. The company is headquartered in Miami, FL, with operations in North America, Europe and Asia. Visit www.mi9retail.com to learn more.

Contact:

Charles Kaplan

Mi9 Retail

[email protected]

SOURCE Mi9 Retail

Related Links

http://www.mi9retail.com


During the reception, Michael Steinhardt joined Sy Syms Foundation President and founding member Marcy Syms. "I was anxious to have the Sy Syms Humanitarian Award given to Michael Steinhardt. His journey as a religious Jew to a cultural and ethical Jew has driven him to use his success in the material world to attain an even greater level of achievement as a moral and ethical humanitarian.

"He is truly a person who will leave the world a better place for having been here. The Talmud gives us a standard of morality and ethics that becomes one stop shopping for a moral life. This doesn't require going to temple but does require knowledge of the 10 Commandments which I believe is the foundation for all religious teachings on how we should treat our fellow human beings. What is uniquely Jewish is the Torah's concept of 'social justice' as Tzedakah, the responsibility for providing for society's weakest members."

"Michael Steinhardt is the embodiment of business excellence and humanitarian calling that exemplifies the realization of the Sy Syms Humanitarian Award and the ideals of its namesake, the renowned entrepreneur and community leader Sy Syms," said Marcy Syms. "Our students will be thrilled to hear him share insights and wisdom, and I know my Dad will be listening too. Michael Steinhardt is an exemplary role model for all Sy Syms graduates."

"Yeshiva University is the only top-tier institution of higher education in the United States that combines the study of Torah with secular studies. That model is important for our future," said Marcy Syms, daughter of the late Sy Syms.

About her father Ms. Syms said, "his guiding core value was education which is very much at the center of our Jewish values. Legacy creation requires vision. It is in that spirit that we created the Sy Syms Humanitarian Award, to recognize an individual who has navigated through all the obstacles to create material wealth and then used that success to pursue, righteous action. Like the inaugural recipient Mort Zuckerman, and 2015 honoree Harold Grinspoon. Michael Steinhardt is a leader in business and philanthropy and has shared his good fortune providing a strong return for the Jewish and other communities."

Steinhardt lives in New York and is active in both business and the world of Jewish philanthropy. A 2014 article by Bloomberg described him as "Wall Street's greatest trader." Together with Charles Bronfman, he founded the Taglit-Birthright project.

Michael Steinhardt and his family also run the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. The Foundation focuses on Jewish, Hebrew and Israel education through The Areivim Philanthropic Group.

The Sy Syms Foundation was established in 1985 by retail entrepreneur and humanitarian Sy Syms, the late father of Marcy Syms, President and founding trustee. The foundation has been instrumental in the growth of non profit organizations that support advancement in education, scientific research and artistic expression for a better life for all

Visit the Foundation website at http://www.sysymsfoundation.org

SOURCE Sy Syms Foundation

Related Links

http://www.sysymsfoundation.org


CLERMONT-FERRAND, France and MONTREAL, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Michelin, a global leader in sustainable mobility and innovation, today published the three-day schedule for Movin'On 2017, the world's preeminent international summit on urban mobility and sustainable transportation, which takes place June 1315 in Montreal. Tickets are available online at movinon.michelin.com.

To view the schedule of speakers, panels, workshops and master classes for Movin'On 2017, follow this link.

Jean-Dominique Senard, CEO of Michelin, will open Movin'On 2017 at Montreal's Arsenal under the event's "Michelin 360 Big Top," a high-capacity, immersive, state-of-the-art performance and interactive platform that enables speakers and participants to transcend traditional one-dimensional business symposiums.

Joining Mr. Senard under the Michelin 360 Big Top, and participating in collaborative sessions throughout the event, will be nearly 50 global leaders and visionaries in sustainable urban mobility.

The expanded roster of speakers now includes:

Pauline d'Amboise , Secretary General and Vice President, Governance and Sustainable Development, Mouvement des Caisses Desjardins

, Secretary General and Vice President, Governance and Sustainable Development, Mouvement des Caisses Desjardins Olivier Biancarelli , Managing Director Decentralized Solutions for Cities and Regions, ENGIE

, Managing Director Decentralized Solutions for Cities and Regions, ENGIE Mark Boyajian , President, Canada operations, CGI

, President, Canada operations, CGI Jim Bruce , Senior Vice President Global Public Affairs and Chief Energy Policy Officer, UPS

, Senior Vice President Global Public Affairs and Chief Energy Policy Officer, UPS Denis Coderre , Mayor of Montreal

Mayor of Joachim Damasky , Managing Director, German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA)

Managing Director, German Association of the Automotive Industry (VDA) Ian Drew , Chairman, Tantalum Corporation

, Chairman, Tantalum Corporation Gregory Duconge , CEO, Vulog

, CEO, Vulog Barry Einsig , Global Automotive and Transportation Executive, Cisco Systems

Global Automotive and Transportation Executive, Cisco Systems Jack Endo , Senior Staff, Development of Artificial Intelligence into Automated Driving System and Connected Vehicle System, Toyota Research Institute

Senior Staff, Development of Artificial Intelligence into Automated Driving System and Connected Vehicle System, Toyota Research Institute Dan Galves , Senior Vice President, Chief Communications Officer, Mobileye

Senior Vice President, Chief Communications Officer, Mobileye The Honourable Marc Garneau , Minister of Transport (Canada)

, Minister of Transport (Canada) Guillaume Gerondeau, Senior Director Transportation & Mobility Asia, Dassault Systemes

Senior Director Transportation & Mobility Asia, Dassault Systemes Henrik Hololei , Director-General for Mobility and Transport, European Commission

, Director-General for Mobility and Transport, European Commission Dr. Karl Iagnemma , Co-founder and CEO, nuTonomy

, Co-founder and CEO, nuTonomy Shigemoto Kajihara , Vice Minister for Global Environmental Affairs of Japan

, Vice Minister for Global Environmental Affairs of Kiran Kapila , Chairman, International Road Federation (IRF)

, Chairman, International Road Federation (IRF) Steven Kiefer , Senior Vice President Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, General Motors

, Senior Vice President Global Purchasing and Supply Chain, General Motors Zoe Knight , Head, Climate Change Centre for Excellence, HSBC

, Head, Climate Change Centre for Excellence, HSBC Roger C. Lanctot , Director, Automotive Connected Mobility, Global Automotive Practice

, Director, Automotive Connected Mobility, Global Automotive Practice Rob Lloyd , CEO, Hyperloop One

, CEO, Hyperloop One Rodin Lyasoff , CEO, A 3 by Airbus Group

, CEO, A by Airbus Group Dr. Suvit Maesincee , Minister Attached to the Prime Minister's Office of Thailand

Minister Attached to the Prime Minister's Office of Ursula Mathar , Vice President of Sustainability and Environmental Protection, BMW Group

Vice President of Sustainability and Environmental Protection, BMW Group Cedric Mathieu , Director, Turo Canada

, Director, Chris Miller , CEO, Invoke

, CEO, Invoke Mark Moore , Engineering Director, Uber Elevate

, Engineering Director, Matt Muta , Vice President, Information Technologies Innovation & Commercial Technology, Delta Air Lines

Vice President, Information Technologies Innovation & Commercial Technology, Delta Air Lines Patrick Oliva , Co-founder, Paris Process for Mobility and Climate (PPMC)

, Co-founder, Paris Process for Mobility and Climate (PPMC) Gregoire Olivier, Director of Mobility Services, PSA Group

Director of Mobility Services, PSA Group Igor Pasternak , Founder and CEO, Worldwide Aeros

, Founder and CEO, Worldwide Aeros Michael Pcolinski , Vice President Advanced Materials and Systems Research, BASF

, Vice President Advanced Materials and Systems Research, BASF Joanna Pena-Bickley , Chief Experience Officer, thinxmachine

, Chief Experience Officer, thinxmachine Bertrand Piccard , Explorer and President of Solar Impulse Foundation

Explorer and President of Solar Impulse Foundation Frank Rinderknecht , CEO, Rinspeed

CEO, Rinspeed Don Romano , President and CEO, Hyundai Canada

, President and CEO, Hyundai Canada Michael Sabia , President and CEO, Caisse de depot du Quebec

, President and CEO, Caisse de depot du Quebec Jean-Dominique Senard , CEO, Michelin Group

CEO, David L. Strickland , Partner, Venable LLP; Counsel, Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets; and former Administrator, U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)

, Partner, Venable LLP; Counsel, Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets; and former Administrator, U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Alexandre Taillefer , Associate Principal, XPND Capital

, Associate Principal, XPND Capital Jean Todt , President, Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) & UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Road Safety, United Nations

President, Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) & UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for Road Safety, United Nations Jose Viegas , Secretary-General, International Transport Forum (ITF) at EOCD

, Secretary-General, International Transport Forum (ITF) at EOCD Dan Wenk , Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park

, Superintendent, Dirk Wollschlaeger , General Manager Global Automotive, Aerospace and Defense Industry, IBM

, General Manager Global Automotive, Aerospace and Defense Industry, IBM Jun Yu , General Manager, GAC Motor

Adding to the multi-sensory speaker experience in the Michelin 360 Big Top, Movin'On 2017 will also feature high-energy, innovative workshops and master classes to address the world's most pressing urban mobility themes, such as the circular economy, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, multimodal transportation experiences, IoT in manufacturing, regulatory and policy incentives, and dozens more.

Movin'On, presented by Michelin in association with C2, continues the 20-year tradition established by Michelin Challenge Bibendum as the world's premier and longest-running forum for sustainable mobility. Announced in December 2016, Movin'On 2017 in Montreal invites more than 3,000 participants from 35 countries to engage in a range of dynamic forums and sustainable vehicle demonstrations. See movinon.michelin.com for more information. Movin'On is also open to the general public to attend. For pricing and ticket information, follow this link.

About Movin'On

Presented by Michelin in association with C2, Movin'On is the international summit for action in sustainable mobility. Movin'On 2017 will be held at the Arsenal in Montreal, Quebec, June 1315. The symposium experience will feature inspiring keynote presentations, hands-on collaborative sessions, networking opportunities and technology exhibitions. Participants from business, government and academics will collaborate and explore new actions to resolve global challenges that will define the future of mobility. For tickets or more information, please see movinon.michelin.com.

About Michelin Group

Michelin, the leading tire company, is dedicated to enhancing its clients' mobility, sustainably; designing and distributing the most suitable tires, services and solutions for its clients' needs; providing digital services, maps and guides to help enrich trips and travels and make them unique experiences; and developing high-technology materials that serve the mobility industry. Headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Michelin is present in 170 countries, has 111,700 employees and operates 68 production facilities in 17 countries which together produced 184 million tires in 2015. (www.michelin.com)

About C2

C2 is a global convener on a mission to transform executives and organizations that are ripe for change  whether they know it or not. In a collaborative context specifically designed to provoke collisions and spark new ideas, C2 gets leaders to challenge their biases, shift their perspectives and explore completely new ways of doing business. C2's reinvention of the international conference experience started with the annual C2 Montreal event, which has been described as "challenging conventions" by The Economist and "a business conference unlike any other" by the Harvard Business Review. After Zurich, Milan, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Rome and San Francisco, C2 is now expanding its reach across all continents. See c2.biz for more information.

SOURCE Michelin

Related Links

http://www.MichelinMedia.com


Lithuanian English

Vilnius, Lithuania, 2017-05-12 08:13 CEST (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- INVL Asset Management, one of Lithuanias leading asset management companies, completed the initial offer of the INVL Baltic Forests Fund I for informed investors. The maximum of EUR 5 million was raised during the offer.

Were pleased that an asset class which until now was hard to access has captured investors attention. Due to the strong interest, investors subscriptions were only partially satisfied, said Asta Muraskaite, the head of financial brokerage firm INVL Finasta which executed the offer.

A total of 47 investors invested in the INVL Baltic Forests Fund I in the initial offer. Seeking to align the interests of investors and the management company, INVL Asset Management itself invested EUR 0.5 million of its own money.

Investments in the Baltic regions forests offer a chance to broaden an investment portfolio with an asset class thats characterised by stability and attractive returns with little correlation to global markets, and that additionally stands out for natural annual increment, said Sigita Bizuliene, the manager of the INVL Baltic Forests Fund I.

Having completed the initial offer, the managers of the INVL Baltic Forests Fund I continue the purchasing of forests, aiming to consolidate a significant parcel of forest land plots. The fund invests in forests suited to forestry activities in the Baltics, first of all Lithuania, buying forests of varied ages and conditions in all the countrys regions.

Once weve invested most of the money thats been raised, we plan to announce another offering. The investors who took part in the initial offer will have a pre-emptive right to acquire fund units, Bizuliene said.

INVL Asset Managements closed-end INVL Alternative Assets Umbrella Fund for informed investors and its INVL Baltic Forests Fund I subfund began operations on 13 February 2017. The INVL Baltic Forests Fund I will have 5-year investment period; the subfund itself will operate for up to 8 years with possible extension for 2 more years.

INVL Asset Management was authorised by the Bank of Lithuania to manage investment funds intended for informed investors in October 2016. The company is part of the Invalda INVL group. Companies in the group manage pension and mutual funds, alternative investments, private equity assets, individual portfolios and other financial instruments. As of the end of 2016, they had been entrusted with over EUR 500 million of assets by more than 170 000 clients in Lithuania and Latvia and international investors.
Linna and her husband, Heriberto, of Austintown, Ohio, embraced the challenges that would come both with her pregnancy and the boys after birth.

"It was hard for us," said Linna. "But when we heard the diagnosis, my family and friends came together. We knew we had to do whatever it takes to give the boys the best quality of life possible."

Under the direction of Drs. Melissa Mancuso and Katherine Wolfe, perinatologists with Akron Children's Hospital's Maternal Fetal Medicine, every possible detail of the birth, delivery and postnatal care were prepared. Linna also met with neurosurgeons Drs. Tsulee Chen and Gwyneth Hughes to prepare for the babies' surgeries that would need to take place as quickly as possible to prevent infection.

Born on May 4 at 31-weeks gestation Micah weighed 2 lbs., 11 oz., and Cairo weighed 3 lbs., 13 oz. Because of their open neural tube defects, Linna wasn't able to hold her boys right away. Both were taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Akron Children's, where doctors performed surgery to repair their spines.

Today, the boys are recovering well from their surgeries. While Linna and her family know there's a long road ahead, she's grateful for her boys. Micah is already showing improvement, and much to Linna's delight, she was able to cuddle with him for the first time on May 10.

"They may be identical twins, but each of my boys have an individual path in life, and are going to be amazing people in their own right," said Linna. "Having a disability certainly isn't going to keep them from changing the world in their own way. God has a plan for each of my boys and we're going to support them in every way possible all along the way."

About Akron Children's Hospital

Akron Children's Hospital is ranked among the best pediatric hospitals by U.S. News & World Report, but it's our compassionate approach that makes us truly exceptional. To ensure families have convenient access to care, we have two hospital campuses in northeast Ohio and 60+ primary, specialty and urgent care locations. We collaborate with many community partners to bring our neonatal and pediatric expertise to patients in their healthcare facilities, and our home care and school health nurses treat kids in their homes and schools. With more than 1 million patient visits in 2016, we've been leading the way to healthier futures for children through quality patient care, education, advocacy, community service and medical discovery since 1890. Learn more at akronchildrens.org.

SOURCE Akron Children's Hospital

Related Links

http://www.akronchildrens.org


ARLINGTON, Va., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The National Defense Industrial Association's (NDIA) Tactical Wheeled Vehicle (TWV) Division today announced the Industry and Government recipients of the 2017 Red Ball Express Award. This year's honorees are Dani Ziv, chief executive officer of Plasan Sasa, Ltd., and the Strategic Acquisition Programs Directorate of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) Land and Maritime primary-level field activity.

NDIA presents the award annually to persons and government institutions that make significant contributions toward strengthening our national security through the introduction, support and development of tactical wheeled vehicles. This year the NDIA TWV division has begun awarding the Red Ball Express Award in two categories, Industry and Government.

Thanks to Mr. Ziv's leadership, Plasan Sasa provides the U.S. military with exceptional vehicle armor that has saved countless lives of American service members, and continues to protect them to this day.

Based in Israel, Plasan Sasa is an industry leader in incorporation of critical survivability technologies, which range from simple "add-on" armor to implementation of integrated survivability systems. Plasan Sasa's innovations include vehicular cabin, chassis and hull armor kits, which are protecting personnel and equipment on MaxxPro, MRAP (Mine Resistant and Ambush Protected) and M-ATV (all-terrain) vehicles.

Since its inception in 2010, DLA's Strategic Acquisition Programs Directorate (SAPD) has worked tirelessly to improve supply-chain operations and foster productive relationships with the industrial base.

The directorate showed its mettle in 2015, when it joined together with the Marine Corps Logistics Base in Albany, Ga., to define a clear DLA role in support of the MTVR system program. In less than a year, the joint effort resulted in transferal to SAPD of roughly 3,400 National Stock Number (NSNs) parts for the MTVR. In turn, SAPD also took on the ability to order those parts and provide them directly to the Marine Corps customers who need them; achieving a 10-percent cost reduction within the first year.

"We are pleased to present Mr. Ziv of Plasan Sasa and the DLA Land and Maritime Strategic Acquisition Programs Directorate with the 2017 Red Ball Express Award in the respective categories of Industry and Government," said Eddie I. Garcia, Chairman of NDIA Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Division. "These tremendous organizations have provided the leadership and can-do performance exemplifying the spirit of the Red Ball Express Award."

The formal Red Ball Express presentation to Mr. Ziv and DLA's Strategic Acquisition Programs Directorate will take place on Tuesday, May 16, 2017 at 5 p.m., during the 2017 Tactical Wheeled Vehicles Conference at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, Va.

The latest conference agenda and registration information can be found here.

About NDIA

The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is America's leading defense industry association promoting national security. NDIA provides a legal and ethical forum for the exchange of information between industry and government on national security issues. NDIA and its members foster the development of the most innovative and superior equipment, as well as training and support for warfighters and first-responders, through its divisions, local chapters, affiliated associations and events.

SOURCE NDIA

Related Links

http://www.ndia.org


The strategic acquisition will see NELSON taking on all development, production, sales, distribution and marketing of the McGraw-Hill Ryerson K-12 portfolio in Canada, including the publishing and distribution of educational materials in both print and digital formats.

"At NELSON, we are constantly evolving to drive change by innovating and expanding our offerings to meet the needs of our Canadian teachers and students now and into the future," explained Steve Brown, NELSON President and CEO. "As the only remaining all-Canadian-operated educational publisher and leading content provider in the K-12 classroom, the addition of the McGraw-Hill Ryerson portfolio enables us to pursue our commitment to providing the best possible educational resources and content across the nation."

Added product offerings include textbooks, online resources, study tools, assessment, professional development support and monitoring solutions. The deal encompasses McGraw-Hill Ryerson's K-12 subjects in Mathematics and Science, English, Fine Arts, Music, Social Sciences and Technology.

"Over the past several years, McGraw-Hill Ryerson has established a quality portfolio of K-12 educational materials in the Canadian marketplace," said Aaron Yaverski, Manager Director, Americas, McGraw-Hill Education. "Under this agreement, we are confident that NELSON will continue to develop and evolve our trusted learning resources to further serve K-12 schools in Canada. Looking ahead for McGraw-Hill Education, we will continue to seek long-term growth opportunities in Canada by focusing our resources and investments on offering innovative new products and services in the higher education market."

Over the course of the next few months, the two organizations will work to transition the business and determine operational efficiencies that enable NELSON to provide a seamless delivery of enhanced educational resources to Canadian classrooms.

"Over our 103 years in business we have earned a strong degree of confidence from Canadian teachers and students at all stages within the educational journey," stated Brown. "We have a vision to grow and evolve our contribution to the education industry to help drive and strengthen the changing user experience."

"It is through acquisitions of quality products like these and the building of solid innovative partnerships with organizations like Microsoft, Dreambox and others, that NELSON ensures the students of today have the unparalleled access to the educational resources they need, to become the vibrant adults of tomorrow."

This acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of the requirements of the Investment Canada Act.

About NELSON:

NELSON is Canada's largest and leading educational publisher. NELSON believes in the evolution of life-long education and dedicates its business efforts to the creation of quality, innovative solutions that support the needs of every student, teacher and instructor to empower learning success.

For more information, please visit: www.nelson.com

Like us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/nelsoneducation

Follow us on Twitter: @NelsonSchoolK12

About McGraw-Hill Education:

McGraw-Hill Education is a learning science company that delivers personalized learning experiences that help students, parents, educators and professionals drive results. McGraw-Hill Education has offices across North America, India, China, Europe, the Middle East and South America and makes its learning solutions available in more than 60 languages. Visit us at mheducation.com or find us on Facebook or Twitter.

SOURCE Nelson
CHICAGO, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- A new study found that dementia rates increase with delays in starting anticoagulation treatment for atrial fibrillation (AF). The large study included more than 76,230 AF patients with no prior history of dementia that were treated with an antiplatelet or warfarin. The results were presented today at Heart Rhythm 2017, the Heart Rhythm Society's 38th Annual Scientific Sessions, and show that warfarin, in particular, can increase the risk of dementia long-term.

AF, the most common heart arrhythmia, affects more than 2.7 million American adults and has been known to increase a person's risk of stroke and death. Anticoagulants, or blood thinners, like antiplatelets and warfarin are powerful stroke prevention interventions and are now being prescribed to millions worldwide[1]. However, there is often a delay in starting anticoagulants after the initial AF diagnosis due to a variety of reasons, including low risk of stroke, exploration of other treatment options like aspirin, older age, multiple comorbidities, and more.

The study included 76,230 AF patients who had no prior history of dementia or prior use of an anticoagulation treatment. 26,189 patients were ultimately treated with an antiplatelet (n=21,781) or warfarin anticoagulation (n=4,408). Time from AF diagnosis to the use of an antiplatelet agent or anticoagulation was studied at immediate start (less than 30 days from diagnosis), and delayed (after one year). The authors note that CHADS2 Vasc score can be used to identify those at highest risk of cognitive decline with a delay in therapy.

The risk of dementia with a delay in low risk CHADS2 Vasc patients was 30 percent but increased significantly to 136 percent in high risk CHADS2 Vasc patients. The authors also found that when the time period of delays were analyzed as a spectrum from less than 30 days, 31 days to one year, one to three years and longer than three years, there was a linear risk of dementia risk with the delays in warfarin initiation.

"Our results reinforce the importance of starting anticoagulation treatment as early as possible after being diagnosed with atrial fibrillation. We saw for the first time that waiting even just 30 days to initiate anticoagulation treatment can increase a patient's long-term risk of developing dementia," said T. Jared Bunch, MD, Director of Heart Rhythm Research at Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute and Medical Director for Heart Rhythm Services for the Intermountain Healthcare system. "We want to ensure we're doing everything possible to limit the risk of brain injury for our patients and our study not only shows the importance of early therapy but also shows the very limited role, if any, of aspirin for stroke prevention. In this study, the benefit was derived from using warfarin and we hope that newer anticoagulants that perform better than warfarin and are easier to start and use will further improve dementia risk."

The authors of the study call for additional studies to fully understand how the risk of dementia increases over a longer period of time. They have recently launched a prospective study using dabigatran versus warfarin that will closely study cognitive changes over a two-year period. The growing use of these newer treatments like direct oral anticoagulants such as dabigatran, apixaban and rivaroxaban, are providing patients with more effective options and should also be studied to determine the risk of dementia.

Sessions details:

"Anticoagulation for Atrial Fibrillation: Current Strategies and Device-Based Approaches: Dementia Rates Increase With Delays In Initiation of Anticoagulation Treatment for Atrial Fibrillation" [May 12, 2017, 1:30 p.m.  3:00 p.m., Room 184C]

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.

[1] "Ensuring medication adherence with direct oral anticoagulant drugs. Lessons from adherence with vitamin K antagonists (VKAs)," A. Di Minno, G. Spadarella, T. Antonella, G. Di Minno, 2014, Thrombosis Research, 133(5). DOI: 10.1016/j.thromres.2014.01.016

Contact:

Allison Kassel: (904) 728-2145

SOURCE Heart Rhythm Society

Related Links

http://www.hrsonline.org


Pebble Project restored to normal course permitting under Clean Water Act

VANCOUVER, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ - Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. (TSX: NDM; NYSE MKT: NAK) ("Northern Dynasty" or the "Company") announces that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Alaska-based Pebble Limited Partnership ("Pebble Partnership" or "PLP"), and the US Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") have reached a settlement agreement with respect to the parties' longstanding legal dispute over the federal agency's pre-emptive regulatory action under Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act.

Under the terms of the settlement agreement, EPA has agreed the Pebble Project can proceed into normal course permitting under the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act. In particular, EPA has agreed it will not file a Recommended Determination under CWA 404(c) until a final Environmental Impact Statement ("EIS") for the Pebble Project has been completed by the US Army Corps of Engineers (the "Corps")  so long as that occurs within a period of four years following the settlement agreement and PLP files permit applications within 30 months of the date of the settlement agreement. EPA has further agreed to initiate a process to propose to withdraw the Proposed Determination it issued under CWA 404(c) in July 2014. In return, the Pebble Partnership has agreed to terminate permanently and with prejudice two lawsuits it brought against EPA: an action under the Federal Advisory Committee Act and an action under the Freedom of Information Act.

"From the outset of this unfortunate saga, we've asked for nothing more than fairness and due process under the law  the right to propose a development plan for Pebble and have it assessed against the robust environmental regulations and rigorous permitting requirements enforced in Alaska and the United States," said Ron Thiessen, President & CEO. "Today's settlement gives us precisely that, the same treatment every developer and investor in a stable, first world country should expect."

Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Partnership expressed their gratitude to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and President Trump for their commitment to the rule of law, and the fair and equal treatment of those who would invest in job-creating industries in America. The Company also thanked members of US Congress and the Alaska State Legislature who helped in achieving the goal of due process for Pebble  in particular, members of the House Committee on Science, Space & Technology, House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform and Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works.

"The Pebble Partnership will advance a progressive mine plan, including mitigation, to be assessed by objective, expert regulators at the US Army Corps of Engineers and a raft of other federal and state agencies  including EPA", Thiessen said.

"Not only are we no longer facing extraordinary development restrictions at Pebble, we will also be assured a fair and predictable permitting review of our proposed development plan. The Corps-led EIS will be prepared by independent, third party experts to ensure that decisions are based on objective science, and that public and stakeholder participation is comprehensive and meaningful."

Thiessen said the Pebble Partnership has been advancing planning for a smaller project design at Pebble than previously considered, and one that incorporates significant environmental safeguards.

"It will be a busy and exciting year for Pebble and Alaska," confirmed Pebble Partnership CEO Tom Collier. "Not only will we be rolling out a project that is smaller, with demonstrable environmental protections, we will also be announcing a number of new initiatives to ensure our project is more responsive to the priorities and concerns of Alaskans.

"We know the Pebble Project must not only protect the world-class fisheries of Bristol Bay, it must also benefit the people of the region and the state in a meaningful way. It is our intent to demonstrate how we will meet those goals in the period ahead."

Collier said a return to an objective, science-based and predictable permitting process at Pebble will bode well for future resource investment in Alaska and the US.

"Resource investors do not have an expectation that we will always receive development permits or always receive them on the terms we would prefer, but we do have an expectation of fair treatment under the law, and that science, not politics, should guide permitting decisions," Collier said.

Investor Conference Call Details

Northern Dynasty will host a conference call today, May 12, 2017, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time to discuss the EPA settlement and the Pebble Project.

Investors can participate in the conference call by:

Webcast: http://event.on24.com/wcc/r/1427716-1/555FD3FD583595BBA5220FB0C9D12EF6

Telephone: (877) 245-7303 in Canada and the USA or (478) 219-0731 international.

Passcode for the call is 22904301.

A presentation will also be available by going to the Northern Dynasty's corporate website at www.northerndynastyminerals.com.

Please go to the website at least 15 minutes prior to the call to register, download and install any necessary audio software.

A replay of the webcast will be available on the Investors page of Northern Dynasty's website beginning at 2:00 PM Eastern Time on May 12, 2017, through 11:59 PM Eastern Time on June 12, 2017.

About Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

Northern Dynasty is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, Canada. Northern Dynasty's principal asset, owned through its wholly-owned Alaska-based US subsidiary Pebble Limited Partnership and other wholly-owned subsidiaries, is a 100% interest in a contiguous block of 2,402 mineral claims in southwest Alaska, including the Pebble deposit. The Pebble Partnership is the proponent of the Pebble Project, an initiative to develop one of the world's most important mineral resources.

For further details on Northern Dynasty and the Pebble Project, please visit the Company's website at www.northerndynasty.com or contact Investor services at (604) 684-6365 or within North America at 1-800-667-2114. Review Canadian public filings at www.sedar.com and US public filings at www.sec.gov.

Ronald W. Thiessen

President & CEO

Forward Looking Information and other Cautionary Factors

This release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address exploration drilling, exploitation activities and events or developments that the Company expects are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in its forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements should not be in any way construed as guarantees of the ultimate size, quality or commercial feasibility of the Pebble Project or of the Company's future performance or the outcome of litigation. Assumptions used by the Company to develop forward-looking statements include the following: the Pebble Project will obtain all required environmental and other permits and all land use and other licenses, studies and development of the Pebble Project will continue to be positive, and no geological or technical problems will occur. The likelihood of future mining at the Pebble Project is subject to a large number of risks and will require achievement of a number of technical, economic and legal objectives, including obtaining necessary mining and construction permits, approvals, licenses and title on a timely basis and delays due to third party opposition, changes in government policies regarding mining and natural resource exploration and exploitation, the final outcome of any litigation, completion of pre-feasibility and final feasibility studies, preparation of all necessary engineering for surface or underground mining and processing facilities as well as receipt of significant additional financing to fund these objectives as well as funding mine construction. Such funding may not be available to the Company on acceptable terms or on any terms at all. There is no known ore at the Pebble Project and there is no assurance that the mineralization at the Pebble Project will ever be classified as ore. The need for compliance with extensive environmental and socio-economic rules and practices and the requirement for the Company to obtain government permitting can cause a delay or even abandonment of a mineral project. The Company is also subject to the specific risks inherent in the mining business as well as general economic and business conditions. For more information on the Company, Investors should review the Company's filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and its home jurisdiction filings that are available at www.sedar.com.

SOURCE Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.
DUBLIN, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "Roadmap of California Medical Leaves - Ultimate Guide to PDL, FMLA, FEHA, SDI, CFRA, PFL, ADA and Workers Compensation and Handling Performance Management Challenges: One and a Half Day In-Person Seminar" conference to their offering.

This comprehensive interactive training workshop will help clarify California specific leaves, how they interact with the Federal medical leaves and how to apply leaves accurately and consistently. The first day will focus specifically on the latter while a full  day will be focused on how to handle performance management issues when managing employees on Intermittent or Ongoing Medical Leaves.

This interactive training workshop will provide you real life strategies from an in-the-trenches medical leave management and HR Expert Witness. You will learn best practices for controlling medical absences and understand when and how you can have the confidence to terminate employees who have violated company policy or are not meeting performance expectations in the midst of their medical accommodations.

The seminar will focus on how California leaves such as FEHA and CFRA interact with Federal medical leaves, such as the FMLA and ADA. Learn which leaves can run concurrently, how to make the transition from one leave to the next and what you need to document to protect yourself and your organization.

Drawing from real life scenarios, this workshop will allow you to confidently cure medical certificates, ask for second opinions, and terminate with confidence in cases of poor performance and failure to respond. This workshop will provide you with exposure to detailed documentation processes that can easily take you through your Medical Leave travels in California and explicitly document your activities in confidence.



Areas Covered:



- Overview of CA Specific leave laws - PDL, CFRA, FMLA, ADA, FEHA and PFL.

- Explanation of their interaction with Federal leave laws - FMLA, ADA and Workers' Compensation.

- How to apply leaves that run concurrently.

- How to document the transition from one leave type to the next.

- Specific rights you have as an employer to deny leave for employees who use more leave than the certificate allows.

- Method for curing medical certificate or getting second and third opinions.

- Simple strategies to manage the medical leaves in a consistent manner to avoid expensive litigation and preserve the employer-employee relationship.

- Integrating you own company's leave policies and union contracts or MOU's with state and federal regulations and how vacation, sick and PTO can be utilized concurrently.

- Gain the confidence to deny leave and terminate the employee if they do not comply with your medical certification requests.

- Exposure to the various forms, letters and documentation that Ms. De Lima has perfected over 20 years of consulting in the ADA, FMLA, and Workers' Compensation arena.

- Guidance from an in-the-trenches HR Expert Witness on how to maintain pristine documentation in an efficient and effective way to avoid costly litigation.

- Understand specific situations that allow you to terminate employees for performance management issued even if protected by state or federal ADA, FMLA and Workers' Compensation regulations.

- Take home suggestions on how to integrate your leave policies to assure you are maximizing leave time that can run concurrently for your employees.

- Obtain money saving strategies that help HR show a positive impact on the bottom line.

- Real life scenarios designed for you to walk away with the skills and tools needed to immediately apply the strategies presented so you can start controlling the Medical Absence in your own workplace.



For more information about this conference visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/2l5ml2/roadmap_of

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


"Our goal in every country where we work is to ensure that every citizen with a cleft has access to care. We are thrilled to say we have achieved this goal in Honduras with support from incredible public and private partners, donors, and volunteers," said Dr. Magee, who founded the international organization in 1982 with his wife Kathy.

Since 1997, Operation Smile Honduras has made significant strides towards increasing access to safe surgery and tackling the backlog of untreated patients through medical missions in cities across the country. It is recommended that babies born with cleft receive corrective surgery within the first two years of life for the best recovery results. However, many low- and middle-income countries, like Honduras, have a backlog mostly due to the lack of access to safe, affordable and timely surgery leaving children to suffer with their cleft condition for much longer.

In 2014, Operation Smile Honduras set out to eradicate the backlog of an estimated 1,000 untreated cleft patients in Honduras. Today, the median age of patients that Operation Smile sees are within target age ranges for well-timed cleft surgery. As a result of the eradication strategy and innovative patient advocacy programs, any child born with a cleft in Honduras can be connected to Operation Smile immediately to receive timely surgical care.

At the event, the president and first lady announced their support for Operation Smile's global UNTIL WE HEAL campaign that aims to mobilize new partners in government and civil society, to join in creating long-term solutions to increase access to safe surgery and eradicate cleft. Operation Smile Honduras has joined the campaign along with other Operation Smile Foundation countries that are engaging their ministries of health and collecting thousands of signatures from supporters throughout the year. This year the Operation Smile care center in Tegucigalpa will be renovated, enabling local medical volunteers to offer year-round comprehensive cleft care including surgery, post-operative care, dental and orthodontics care, pediatrics care, speech therapy, audiology, and psychology consultations.

"Operation Smile won't stop until we heal every child with cleft and we are extremely proud of what has been accomplished in Honduras," said Kathy Magee, President and Co-Founder of Operation Smile, Inc. "It is through the cleft child that the access to safe surgery can be advanced around the world."

To learn more, sign the pledge, or get involved, visit www.UntilWeHeal.org

MEDIA CONTACT:

Brianne Chai-Onn

[email protected]

212.715.1526

SOURCE Operation Smile

Related Links

http://www.operationsmile.org


SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- With 2016 sales volume of $10.15 billion, Pacific Union International, Inc. continued its climb in 2017, posting sales volume growth of 42.1 percent for year to date April 2017 and units sold growth of 27.5 percent over the same period in 2016. This remarkable momentum was propelled by historic sales from John Aaroe Group, Pacific Union's Southern California brand. With recent new developments and business wins from The Mark Company, Pacific Union now projects its 2017 sales volume to exceed $13 billion, which would make it the largest independent residential real estate firm in California.

Residential real estate industry leaders Pacific Union's Mark A. McLaughlin and John Aaroe of the John Aaroe Group report record breaking sales for the first quarter of 2017.

On the heels of its December 2016 merger with Pacific Union, Los Angeles-based luxury brokerage John Aaroe Group reported seven significant closings over $10 million in the first quarter, including the Danny Thomas Estate ($65 million, the second highest in the history of Beverly Hills), an estate in Holmby Hills ($40 million), and the highest reported sale in the history of Malibu's famed Carbon Beach ($48 million). These remarkable sales results exceed any first quarter in the firm's history.

John Aaroe Group's year to date performance in Southern California combined with Pacific Union's and The Mark Company's results in Northern California produced a 27.5 percent gain in the number of units sold year over year, while the average sales price increased by more than 11 percent.

"The spectacular leadership displayed by John Aaroe and his extraordinary team is setting the pace for the entire organization," Pacific Union CEO Mark A. McLaughlin says. "We are thrilled to enjoy synergies with John's amazing team, and we firmly believe that we have created the ultimate California real estate company."

The Mark Company, Pacific Union's sales and marketing firm for new urban residential developments, launched the first quarter by announcing an exclusive new contract to drive sales and marketing for the highly anticipated Oceanwide Plaza residences near downtown Los Angeles' Staples Center and L.A. LIVE. The three-tower project includes 504 ultra-luxury condominiums and boasts one of the country's most luxurious urban rooftop parks.

To enhance direct international exposure, on Jan. 1, 2017, Pacific Union and John Aaroe Group dramatically increased investments in global digital advertising campaigns in Brazil, India, China, and the U.K. The first-quarter campaign results delivered more than 60 million global impressions and 245,000 international unique site visits to http://www.pacificunion.com/. The dynamic campaign exceeds past initiatives or exposure created for Pacific Union through its affiliation with Christies International Real Estate.

On March 31, The San Francisco-based brokerage earned industry accolades as the eighth-largest residential real estate firm in the U.S. by industry publications RisMedia and REAL Trends.

About Pacific Union

Founded in San Francisco in 1975, Pacific Union International, Inc. is the West Coast's premier luxury real estate brand. With sales volume of $10.15 billion, real estate industry leaders RISMedia and REAL Trends rank Pacific Union as the eighth-largest brokerage in the U. S. Through its 2015 acquisition of The Mark Company, the nation's leading sales and marketing firm for new urban luxury developments, Pacific Union expanded its brand to development projects from San Diego to Seattle. In 2016 Pacific Union merged with Los Angeles-based brokerage John Aaroe Group, extending the Pacific Union brand to become the ultimate California real estate company. The strategic alliance of these three powerhouses creates combined 2016 production of $10.15 billion supporting over 1,100 elite real estate professionals in 38 offices throughout the Pacific coast. Extending Pacific Union's international reach, in 2013 the brokerage established an award-winning Beijing-based China Concierge program that fully supports its Chinese investors on the mainland. Additionally Pacific Union offers a full range of personal and commercial real estate services, including buying, selling, and relocation in addition to operating joint-venture businesses that provide rental and commercial property management and insurance services. Locally owned, Pacific Union executes with a vision for the future, an entrepreneurial mindset and unwavering commitment to deliver exceptional service and expertise. For more information, please visit us at www.PacificUnion.com.

SOURCE Pacific Union

Related Links

http://www.pacificunion.com


PARIS, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Pharmacology research conducted in conjunction with The Vision Institute, Paris

Pharmaleads, an emerging pharmaceutical company developing innovative products for the management of acute and chronic severe pain, today announced positive efficacy and safety results of PL265, a novel Dual ENKephalinase Inhibitor (DENKI), in a preclinical study for ocular pain. This study was conducted in collaboration with The Vision Institute in Paris, France, and assessed the anti-nociceptive effect of PL265 in experimental models of ocular pain / dry-eye syndrome.

This preclinical study evaluated both mechanical and chemical cornea sensitivities of experimental models in response to corneal injury and inflammatory pain after being treated twice a day with a drop of either PL265 (at a 10 mM concentration) or of phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) in the right eye for five days.

The results, which were presented at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 2017 Annual Meeting in Baltimore on May 11, 2017, showed that topical instillation of PL265 significantly increased the corneal mechanical threshold on day 5 compared to PBS-treated in corneal injury models (49.00  4.58 mg vs 29.60  4.43). In inflammatory pain models, topical PL265 showed potent anti-nociceptive effects and models treated with PL265 exhibited an increased mechanical threshold at day 5 (61.00  14.70 mg vs 24.00  4.00 mg).

In addition, the palpebral closure time induced by topical capsaicin (100 M) was significantly decreased after PL265 treatment, in both corneal (97 vs 201 seconds) and inflammatory pain (70 vs 170 seconds) models. In non-operated models (without corneal injury), topical instillation of PL265 for 5 days did not alter the ocular surface or corneal mechanical sensitivity compared to PBS-treated models.

Christophe Baudouin, Professor of Ophthalmology, Head of Department at the National Ophthalmology Hospital of Quinze-Vingts, Paris, Co-Director of the Research Unit S12 at The Vision Institute in Paris, Co-Author of the poster presented at the ARVO meeting stated, "These results are very encouraging as currently there are no topical ocular pain analgesics available for acute or chronic pain. Confirming these results in humans will be an important step in the development of PL265 for the treatment of Ocular Pain."

The results of this study provide the first evidence that PL265 is highly effective in decreasing ocular pain after various experimental corneal lesions and also brings to light novel anti-inflammatory properties of the drug. It also proves that the drug has no anaesthetic properties in the absence of corneal injury.

Pharmaleads is a world leader in the understanding of the role of enkephalins in the management of severe pain relief. Enkephalins are degraded by two enzymes, the enkephalinases NEP and APN, from the zinc-metallopeptidase family. Pharmaleads medicinal chemistry expertise has allowed the Company to develop drugs called DENKIs that inhibit these two enzymes enabling the reduction of pain by increasing the local concentrations of enkephalins.

Thierry Bourbie, CEO of Pharmaleads, comments,"These results represent an important step in our understanding of the potential of PL265 and its broad utility to treat different types of chronic and acute pain and clearly support the potential of DENKIs in the treatment of ophthalmic eye diseases. Acute or chronic ocular pain affects millions of patients and there currently are no alternative treatments to anaesthetics which have many shortcomings. We believe that PL265, the only drug candidate that targets the two enzymes responsible for the degradation of enkephalins, could be the first safe and effective topical ocular analgesic with the potential to alleviate ocular pain and inflammation."

Pharmaleads is looking for a partner to support the development of PL265 in the ophthalmology field.

Pharmaleads is also developing an oral formulation of PL265 for the treatment of neuropathic pain. PL265 has completed Phase I single ascending dose (SAD) clinical trials and demonstrated good safety and tolerability. Pharmaleads anticipates to start a Phase I/IIa clinical trial with PL265 in ocular pain in 2018.

About Pharmaleads

Pharmaleads is an emerging pharmaceutical company developing innovative products for the management of acute and chronic severe pain, a growing market with significant unmet medical need. Pharmaleads' drugs are based on its deep knowledge and understanding of enkephalins, a key element of the body's natural pain management system.

Pharmaleads' products, (Dual ENKephalinase inhibitors) DENKIs, aim to protect enkephalins, hence increasing their local concentrations and thereby inducing a physiological analgesia which improves pain management.

Pharmaleads has two products in clinical development which are targeting four multi-billion markets:

PL265 is being developed for the treatment of neuropathic pain (oral) and ocular pain/dry eye syndrome (eye drops). PL37 is being developed for the treatment of post-surgical /breakthrough cancer pain as a substitute of injectable opiates (IV) and acute migraine pain (oral route)

Pharmaleads was founded in 2000. It is headquartered in Paris, France, and is funded by Private investors.

For more information about Pharmaleads please visit www.Pharmaleads.com

For more information, please contact:

Pharmaleads

Michel Wurm, MD, Director, Corporate Development

[email protected]

+33-(0)-1-44-06-70-04

+33-(0)-6-09-97-81-04



Media Relations

Citigate Dewe Rogerson

David Dible, Sylvie Berrebi, Marine Perrier

[email protected]

Tel: +44-(0)-20-7638-9571



SOURCE Pharmaleads
SINGAPORE, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- QT Vascular Ltd., (the "Company" or "QT Vascular", and together with its subsidiaries, the "Group"), a global company engaged in the design, assembly and distribution of advanced therapeutic solutions for the minimally invasive treatment of vascular disease, announced today that it has entered into an asset purchase option agreement ("Option Agreement") with Medtronic, for the acquisition of the Group's non-drug coated Chocolate PTA. The option is exercisable upon achievement of certain milestones.

"We are excited that Medtronic, the world's leading medical device company has taken an interest in our non-drug coated peripheral products," stated Eitan Konstantino, PhD, CEO of QT Vascular. "This is a validation of the intrinsic value of our internally developed products and progress made to date. Management will continue to focus on achieving milestones related to this product line and our coronary and drug coated product portfolio."

Independently, QT Vascular will continue to develop and market its other products including a drug coated version of Chocolate PTA (Chocolate Touch), which has received IDE approval from the FDA and its coronary products portfolio of both drug and non-drug coated products.

The Company will convene an EGM to seek the approval of shareholders for the Option Agreement. A circular containing further details on the Option Agreement and enclosing the notice of EGM will be dispatched by the Company to shareholders in due course.

The Company will continue to keep shareholders updated of any material developments as and when appropriate. In the meantime, shareholders and potential investors should exercise caution when trading in the shares of the Company.

About QT Vascular Ltd. (SGX Stock code: 5I0)

QT Vascular Ltd. together with its subsidiaries ("QT Vascular" or the "Group"), is an emerging leader in the development and commercialization of next generation minimally invasive products for the treatment of complex vascular disease. QT Vascular works closely with leading physicians and scientists from around the world to create differentiated devices that improve procedural and clinical outcomes. QT Vascular is based in Singapore with a US subsidiary, TriReme Medical LLC ("TriReme Medical"), based in Pleasanton, California.

For more information, please visit the company website at www.qtvascular.com

SOURCE QT Vascular Ltd.

Related Links

http://www.qtvascular.com


Oslo, Norway, May 12th, 2017: Photocure ASA (Photocure, PHO:OSE), today announced that a Phase 3 trial investigating Blue Light Flexible Cystoscopy (BLFC(TM)) with Cysview/Hexvix in the surveillance setting met the study primary end point. Results from the study showed a highly statistically significant improvement (p <0.0001) in the detection of patients with recurrence of bladder cancer using BLFC with Cysview compared to white light (WL) alone in patients with non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) undergoing surveillance cystoscopy. Detailed data from the study will be presented during a late-breaking plenary abstract session on May 14th at the American Urological Association, 2017 meeting.

"We are very pleased with the strong results of this Phase 3 study and we appreciate the work from investigators and patients who participated in the study. There are approximately 1.4 million surveillance cystoscopies performed in the US annually. These results represent an important milestone for the potential improvement in the management of patients. Later this year we intend to submit the data to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek a label expansion for the indication of BLFC with Cysview in the surveillance setting." said Kjetil Hestdal, M.D., Ph.D., President and CEO, Photocure ASA."





The Phase 3 study was a prospective, open, comparative, within-patient controlled study, including 304 patients enrolled at 17 academic institutions in the US.

About Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer is the fifth most commonly diagnosed cancer in the US and is the fourth most common cancer found in men in the US1, 2, 3. In 2016, it is estimated that 76,960 new cases of bladder cancer will occur along with 16,390 deaths due to bladder cancer. Risk factors for bladder cancer include advancing age, cigarette smoking, occupational exposure to dyes, tar, rubber and solvent, chronic bladder irritation and infections, and prior diagnosis of bladder cancer. Bladder cancer is one of the most expensive cancers to manage, accounting for approximately $3.7 billion in direct costs each year4, 5. Bladder cancer is classified into two types, non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), depending on the depth of invasion in the bladder wall6. NMIBC is still in the inner layer of cells. These cancers are the most common (75%) of all BC cases and include the subtypes Ta, carcinoma in situ (CIS) and T1 lesions. MIBC is when the cancer has grown into deeper layers of the bladder wall. These cancers, including subtypes T2, T3 and T4, are more likely to spread and are harder to treat7. About Hexvix/Cysview

Hexvix is a drug that is taken up selectively by cancer cells in the bladder making them glow bright pink during Blue Light Cystoscopy (BLC). BLC with Hexvix improves the detection of tumors and leads to more complete resection, less residual tumors and better management decisions (US)/ reduced risk of recurrence and progression (Nordic). Hexvix is the tradename in Europe, Cysview in the US and Canada. Hexvix is marketed and sold by Photocure in the Nordic countries and in the US with the trade name Cysview. Photocure has a strategic partnership with Ipsen for the commercialization of Hexvix in Europe, excluding the Nordic region. Please refer to https://www.photocure.com/Partnering-with-Photocure/Our-partners for further information on our commercial partners. About Photocure ASA

Photocure, headquartered in Oslo Norway, is a specialty pharmaceutical company focusing on urology. Based on its unique proprietary Photocure Technology platform, Photocure is committed to developing and commercializing highly selective and minimally invasive solutions to improve health outcomes for patients worldwide. The company is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE: PHO). Information about Photocure is available at www.photocure.com. For more information, please contact:

Kjetil Hestdal

President and CEO, Photocure ASA

Tel: + 47 91319535

Email: kh@photocure.no Erik Dahl

Chief Financial Officer

Tel: +47 450 55 000

Email: ed@photocure.no Emily Dell

Media contact

MCS Healthcare public relations

Tel: +1 732 589-0757

Email: emilyd@mcspr.com 1 SEER Cancer Statistics Factsheets: Bladder Cancer. National Cancer Institute. Bethesda, MD. http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/urinb.html. Accessed April 2016.

2 Bladder Cancer. American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003085-pdf.pdf. Accessed April 2016.

3 Hall M, Chang S, Dalbagni G et al. Guideline for the Management of Nonmuscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (Stages Ta, T1, and Tis): 2007 Update. J Urol. 2007;178 (6):2314-2330.

4 Avritscher EB et al., Clinical model of lifetime cost of treating bladder cancer and associated complications. Urology. 2006; 68:549-553.

5 Botteman et al. Clinical model of lifetime costs of treating bladder cancer: a comprehensive review of the published literature. Pharmacoeconomics. 2003; 21:315-1330.

6 Bladder Cancer. American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003085-pdf.pdf. Accessed April 2016.

7 Bladder Cancer. American Cancer Society. http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/cid/documents/webcontent/003085-pdf.pdf. Accessed April 2016.
SAN DIEGO, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Claery and Hammond will be a sponsor for San Diego's 2017 LGBTQ+ Pride, "Allied in Action, United for Justice," and its many events and festivities occurring July 14th - July 17th. Claery & Hammond is the only law firm, and the only organization in the legal community, to sponsor this enormous event that brings together hundreds of thousands of people each year to support the LGBTQ+ community and profoundly enhances San Diego's local economy. Last year, San Diego Pride had 1,200 volunteers, approximately 40,000 people attend the music festival, and more than 100,000 parade attendees from across the world. San Diego's 2017 LGBTQ+ Pride sponsors will help support the organization's events, festival, parade, and ongoing philanthropy.

About San Diego LGBTQ+ Pride and its Renown Parade: The annual San Diego Pride Parade is among the largest parades in the United States, gaining both international media coverage and the adoration of more than one hundred thousand street spectators. The specific purposes of this event are to promote community awareness, as well as, produce civic, cultural, health, and educational programs that support and encourage pride within San Diego's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and other communities. Forty-two years ago, the first San Diego Pride Parade started as a small grass-roots celebration of the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion on New York's Christopher Street, and it has grown to become one of the world's largest annual parades.

San Diego Pride has an extensive 42-year history of philanthropic efforts and events, and was officially formed in 1974. The organization uses a famous five-pronged approach to giving back to the community, which includes contributions to the LGBTQ Center, support given directly to individual community members and families, funding relevant grants, partnering with community-level businesses or groups, and offering backing to other pride and progression groups, such as those fighting for equal women's rights. In 1994, San Diego Pride became a nonprofit organization and has given more than $1 million each year to a wide variety of LGBTQ organizations as it continues to be a strong source of both pride and respect for all LGBTQ+ communities, both around San Diego and the world. San Diego's Pride funding primarily comes from participating associations, charges related to admissions and concessions for events, fees paid by entrants in the annual parade, and large corporate or small business sponsorships. Organizations like Claery & Hammond, LLP that sponsor San Diego LGBTQ+ Pride play an essential role in ensuring its events come together successfully, year after year.

For San Diego LGBTQ+ Pride 2017, "Allied in Action, United for Justice," Claery & Hammond stands among a variety of supporters including the 1990s pop sensation En Vogue, who will be reuniting and performing this year at the event's festival. Orlando's Pulse resident DJ, hero, and survivor, Ray Rivera, will also be performing. This year's San Diego Pride theme will be "Allied in Action, United for Justice," and nothing could represent that sentiment more than world-renowned DJ Ray Rivera because of his heroic efforts during the Orlando Pulse tragedy. Many other well-known artists and celebrity advocates for equal rights for the LGBTQ+ community will also be attending the San Diego 2017 Pride "Allied in Action, United for Justice" festival. Other sponsors include large organizations ranging from Wells Fargo and Sony, to UCSD Health and the Human Dignity Foundation, among many others.

Claery and Green, LLP, has a long history of supporting many social and philanthropic causes, ranging from advocating for equal rights for all to facilitating multiple merit-based college scholarships. Attorneys Lance Claery and Eli Hammond hope that other law firms will consider sponsoring future San Diego LGBTQ Prides. In particular, Eli Hammond, one of the firm's two partners and a Certified Family Law Specialist (CFLS), is regarded in the community as a highly altruistic individual who truly enjoys helping others in any way he can. It is his hope that a larger, even more diversified group of event sponsors will grow each year and continue to expand and spread awareness of the multitude of important causes San Diego Pride furthers. Additional information about Claery & Hammond, LLP can be found on http://www.claerygreen.com/.

SAN DIEGO PRIDE 2017 Event information:

Event Dates: Friday, July 14th, 2017 to Monday, July 17th, 2017

Spirit of Stonewall Event: July 14, 2017

Parade Time: Begins officially at 11:00 AM PST on July 15th 2017

Parade Starting location: Hillcrest Pride Flag (University Avenue and Normal Street), San Diego

Pride Block Party: July 15, 2017

Music Festival: JULY 15  16, 2017

Interested parties can visit https://sdpride.org/parade/ for more information about the San Diego LGBTQ Pride 2017 parade. Additional information about Claery & Hammond, LLP can be found on http://www.claerygreen.com/.

For more information, contact Skyler Samp, [email protected].

SOURCE Claery & Hammond, LLP

Related Links

http://www.claerygreen.com/


Seabrook House programs provide individual, group and family counseling. For the convenience of those it serves, transportation is offered for day, evening and weekend schedules.

The facility offers a large lecture hall space for local community health events and will be working supportingly with the addiction recovery community.

Seabrook House is staffed with highly educated, credentialed and licensed staff. Our Director of Outpatient Services, Larena Wilde, MS, LCADC, supervises all programs. Wilde also oversees Seabrook House's additional four outpatient locations in Cherry Hill, Northfield, Morristown, and Bridgeton, NJ and has extensive experience working with a diverse clinical population.

The addition of Seabrook House in Shrewsbury will allow more patients to get the help they need. For more information please visit www.Seabrook.org, or call the 24-hour help line at 1-800-761-7575.

Seabrook House is a nonprofit, recognized, CARF-accredited addiction and co-occurring mental health treatment center, with treatment locations in Bridgeton, NJ, Cherry Hill, NJ, Northfield, NJ, Morristown, NJ and Shrewsbury, NJ. Founded by Jerry and Peg Diehl in 1974, Seabrook House has been helping families find the courage to recover from addiction and co-occurring mental health for over 43 years. For more information on Seabrook House, visit the company website at www.Seabrook.org.

SOURCE Seabrook House

Related Links

http://www.seabrookhouse.org


Net revenue increased by 42% to $7.89 million as loans facilitated through our platform grew 39% to RMB 1.63 billion in the first quarter

SHANGHAI, May 11, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sino Fortune Holding Corporation (OTCQB: SFHD) ("Sino Fortune" or the "Company"), a leading online financial credit facility solution provider servicing SME and individual borrowers in China, today announced its financial results for the three months ended March 31, 2017.

Bodang Liu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sino Fortune, commented, "The momentum we saw through our platform toward the end of last year carried into the first quarter, resulting in significantly better overall performance than a year ago. On the back of a 39% increase of loan volume, our net revenues and net income grew 42% and 36%, respectively, and both reached a record high since our inception, highlighting favorable trends and continuing momentum in our business."

First Quarter 2017 Financial Results



For the Three Months Ended March 31, ($ millions, except per share data) 2017

2016

% Change Revenue $7.89

$5.56

41.8% Service Fee $5.18

$4.06

27.5% Management fee $2.71

$1.50

80.6% Operating income $2.61

$1.58

65.2% Other income (expenses) $0.03

$0.01

203.2% Net income $1.99

$1.47

36.0% EPS - basic and diluted $0.0055

$0.0043

26.9%

Total net revenue for the first quarter of 2017 increased by $2.33 million, or 41.8%, to $7.89 million from $5.56 million for the same period of last year. The increase of total net revenue was mainly attributable to the increase in the volume of loans facilitated through our platform which increased by 39.3% to RMB 1.63 billion for the first quarter of 2017 from RMB 1.17 billion for the same period of last year.

The service fee increased by $1.12 million, or 27.5%, to $5.18 million for the first quarter of 2017 from $4.06 million for the same period of last year. The management fee increased by $1.21 million, or 80.6%, to $2.71 million for the first quarter of 2017 from $1.50 million for the same period of last year. The service fee and management fee accounted for 65.6% and 34.4%, respectively, of total net revenue for the first quarter of 2017, compared to 73.0% and 27.0%, respectively, for the same period of last year.

Operating expenses increased by $1.30 million, or 32.6%, to $5.28 million for the first quarter of 2017 from $3.98 million for the same period of last year. The increase in operating expenses was mainly due to increases in sales and marketing expenses and partially offset by a decrease in general and administrative expenses. Sales and marketing expenses increased by $1.48 million, or 52.8%, to $4.27 million for the first quarter of 2017 from $2.80 million for the same period of last year. The increase in sales and marketing expenses was associated with heightened sales and marketing efforts and higher volume of loans facilitated through our platform. Our general and administrative expenses decreased $0.19 million, or 17.0%, to $0.93 million for the first quarter of 2017 from $1.13 million for the same period of last year, primarily due to the layoff of more than 1,000 off-line sales related personnel in April 2016 to comply with new industry regulatory measures.

Operating income increased by $1.03 million, or 65.2%, to $2.61 million for the first quarter of 2017 from $1.58 million for the same period of last year. The increase in operating income was primarily driven by increase in total net revenue. Operating profit margin was 33.1% for the first quarter of 2017, compared to 28.4% for the same period of last year.

Provision for income taxes was $0.64 million for the first quarter of 2017, compared to $0.12 million for the same period of last year.

Net income increased by $0.53 million, or 36.0%, to $1.99 million for the first quarter of 2017, from $1.47 million for the same period of last year.

Earnings per share increased by 26.9% to $0.0055 for the first quarter of 2017 from $0.0043 for the same period of last year.

Financial Condition

As of March 31, 2017, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $12.18 million, compared to $8.56 million at the end of 2016. The cash balance included cash held in private loan risk reserve accounts of $8.89 million and $7.30 million as of March 31, 2017 and December 31, 2016, respectively. Short term investments were $8.44 million as of March 31, 2017, compared to $8.27 million at the end of 2016. As of March 31, 2017, we had $23.67 million in total current assets and $10.78 million in total current liabilities, representing a current ratio of 2.19. As of December 31, 2016, we had $19.99 million in total current assets and $9.05 million in total current liabilities, with a current ratio of 2.21.

Net cash provided by operating activities $3.79 million for the first quarter of 2017, compared to $1.28 million for the same period of last year. Net cash used in investing activities was $0.24 million for the first quarter of 2017, compared to $0.27 million for the same period of last year. Net cash provided by financing activities was $nil for the first quarter of 2017 and 2016.

Recent Developments

In March 2017, we engaged Jiangxi Bank to provide fund depository services for our marketplace, pursuant to which Jiangxi Bank will set up separate accounts for borrowers and investors, and assume fund depository functions including settlement, accounting and safeguarding online lending capital. Third-party payment agents operate as the payment channels and only transfer funds to and from fund depository accounts. Relevant Chinese regulations require us to enter into fund depository agreement with only one commercial bank to provide fund depository services.

About Sino Fortune Holding Corporation

Founded in 2013, Sino Fortune Holding Corporation ("Sino Fortune") is a leading online financial credit facility solution provider servicing under-served SME and individual borrowers in China. Through operating an electronic online financial platform, www.hyjf.com, the Company matches investors with SME and individual borrowers in China. The Company also sets aside risk reserve funds with the aim of limiting losses to investors from borrower defaults. In addition, the company provides investors with access to a liquid secondary market, giving them an opportunity to exit their investments before the underlying loans become due. For more information, please visit: www.hyjf.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or our future financial performance. All statements other than present and historical facts and conditions contained in this release, including any statements regarding our future results of operations and financial positions, business strategy, plans and our objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements (within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended). These statements are only predictions and reflect our current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risk and uncertainties and subject to change at any time. We operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements in this release are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

For investors and media inquiries please contact:

At the Company:

Lexi Li

Email: [email protected]

Investor Relations:

Tony Tian, CFA

Weitian Group LLC

Email: [email protected]

Phone: +1-732-910-9692

SINO FORTUNE HOLDING CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS



March 31, 2017

December 31, 2016

(Unaudited)





ASSETS







Current assets









Cash and cash equivalents $ 12,176,944

$ 8,561,695 Short-term investments

8,440,659



8,274,306 Accounts receivable

131,196



281,038 Prepayments

2,143,443



2,078,926 Deposits and other receivables

776,944



792,849 Total current assets

23,669,186



19,988,814 Property and equipment - net

494,574



279,408 Intangible assets

16,093



17,745 Total assets $ 24,179,853

$ 20,285,967 LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY









Current liabilities









Accounts payable and accrued liabilities $ 16,172

$ 227,895 Taxes payable

1,570,572



1,285,160 Deferred tax liability

42,297



16,673 Other payable

9,154,388



7,517,034 Total current liabilities

10,783,429



9,046,762











Total liabilities

10,783,429



9,046,762











Stockholders' equity









Common stock, $0.001 par value, 2,990,000,000 shares authorized, 361,820,246 and

361,820,246 shares issued and outstanding, respectively

361,820



361,820 Preferred stock, $0.001 par value, 10,000,000 shares authorized, none issued

-



- Additional paid-in capital

9,237,870



9,237,870 Retained earnings

4,303,769



2,310,480 Accumulated other comprehensive loss

(507,035)



(670,965) Total stockholders' equity

13,396,424



11,239,205 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 24,179,853

$ 20,285,967























The accompanying notes are an integral part of these unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements.

SINO FORTUNE HOLDING CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME AND OTHER COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (Unaudited)













For The Three Months Ended March 31, 2017

2016 Revenues $ 7,886,899

$ 5,560,142











Operating expenses









Selling, general and administrative expenses

5,204,851



3,920,716 Business and related taxes

44,217



26,739 Depreciation

29,695



34,362 Total operating expenses

5,278,763



3,981,817 Income from Operations

2,608,136



1,578,325











Other income (expenses)









Interest income

30,852



32,684 Interest expense and bank charges

(1,747)



(4,826) Other

(2,225)



(18,994) Total other income

26,880



8,864 Income before provision for income taxes

2,635,016



1,587,189 Provision for income taxes

(641,728)



(121,489) Net income

1,993,288



1,465,700











Other comprehensive income









Net unrealized gain on investments (net of tax effect)

76,872



- Foreign currency translation adjustment

87,058



27,368 Total comprehensive income $ 2,157,218

$ 1,493,068











Net income per common share - basic and diluted $ 0.01

$ 0.00











Weighted average number of common shares outstanding - basic and diluted

361,820,246



337,500,000























The accompanying notes are an integral part of these unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements.

SINO FORTUNE HOLDING CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited)













For The Three Months Ended March 31, 2017

2016 Cash flows from operating activities:









Net income $ 1,993,288

$ 1,465,700 Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by

operating activities:









Depreciation and amortization

29,695



34,362 Changes in operating assets and liabilities:









Accounts receivable

152,074



- Prepayments

(48,357)



58,549 Deposit and other receivables

22,080



(1,270,142) Accounts payable and accrued liabilities

(212,965)



803,546 Taxes payable

275,494



171,716 Other payable

1,579,337



15,990 Net cash provided by operating activities

3,790,646



1,279,721











Cash flows from investing activities:









Purchases of property and equipment

(240,959)



(268,221) Net cash used in investing activities

(240,959)



(268,221)











Cash flows from financing activities:

-



- Effect of exchange rate change

65,562



54,460











Cash and cash equivalents:









Net increase

3,615,249



1,065,960 Balance at beginning of period

8,561,695



5,712,741 Balance at end of period $ 12,176,944

$ 6,778,701











Supplemental Disclosures of Cash flow Information:









Cash received for interest income $ 30,852

$ 32,780 Cash paid for interest $ -

$ - Cash paid for income taxes $ 170,144

$ -























The accompanying notes are an integral part of these unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements.

SOURCE SINO FORTUNE HOLDING CORPORATIN
SPARKS, Nev., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Embraer Defense & Security, together with its partner, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), has been invited to participate in the U.S. Air Force's (USAF) Capability Assessment of Non-Developmental Light Attack Platforms, known as OA-X. SNC and Embraer will take part in the experiment with the A-29 Super Tucano, which is the only light air support (LAS) aircraft in the world with a USAF Military Type Certificate. The OA-X assessment begins in July at New Mexico's Holloman Air Force Base.

"SNC is proud to participate in the USAF's effort to enhance warfighter support and bring greater value and affordability to the American taxpayer," said Taco Gilbert, senior vice president for SNCs Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) business area. "Partnering with Embraer, we're proud to present the U.S.-made, combat-proven A-29 as part of this experiment."

The OA-X experiment is part of the USAF's effort to explore the benefits of acquiring a new, low-cost, non-developmental light attack aircraft to provide close air support and other missions in permissive and semi-permissive environments, reduce fighter pilot training costs, and accelerate pilot seasoning. The OA-X will accomplish those objectives while preserving and extending the service lives of other jet fleets.

"The A-29 is uniquely suited for training and seasoning fighter pilots," said Jackson Schneider, president and CEO of Embraer Defense & Security. "This means more highly-trained pilots more quickly and less expensively, while allowing other platforms to do the work they do best."

Manufactured in Florida and in use by a dozen air forces worldwide, the A-29 is a durable, versatile and powerful turboprop aircraft capable of carrying out a wide range of fighter and ISR missions. The USAF-certified A-29 is combat-proven in Afghanistan and in theaters around the globe.

Follow us on Twitter: @Embraer

About Embraer Defense & Security

Leader in the aerospace and defense industry of Latin America, Embraer Defense & Security offers a complete line of integrated solutions such as C4I (Command, Control, Communication, Computers and Intelligence Center) applications, leading edge technologies in the production of radars, advanced information, air traffic control and communication systems, integrated systems for border monitoring and surveillance, as well as military and government transportation aircraft. With a growing presence on the global market, Embraer Defense & Security products are present in more than 60 countries.

Follow us on Twitter: @EmbraerSA

About Sierra Nevada Corporation

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) provides customer-focused technology solutions in the areas of aerospace, aviation, electronics and systems integration. SNC has been honored as one of "The World's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Space," and one of America's fastest growing companies. SNC's diverse technologies are used in applications including telemedicine, navigation and guidance systems, threat detection and security, commercial aviation, scientific research and infrastructure protection. Founded in 1963 and headquartered in Sparks, Nevada, SNC operates under the leadership of owners, CEO Fatih Ozmen and President Eren Ozmen, with a workforce of nearly 3,000 personnel in 34 locations in 19 U.S. states, England, Germany and Turkey providing global support to customers.

For more information on SNC visit www.sncorp.com and follow us at Facebook.com/SierraNevCorp and Twitter @SierraNevCorp. Sierra Nevada Corporation and SNC are trademarks of Sierra Nevada Corporation.

North America

Alyssa Ten Eyck

[email protected]

Cell: +1 954 383 0460

Tel.: +1 954 359 3847

SOURCE Embraer S.A.
BOSTON, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Active surveillance in men under 60, use of telemedicine in the management of prostate cancer and physicians' personal prostate cancer screening preferences will be highlighted today in a special press conference during the 112th Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. This press session will be moderated by Stacy Loeb, MD, assistant professor of urology and population health at New York University and AUA spokesperson.

Studies presented during the session include:

Study Details

Publication #: PD55-03

Active Surveillance for Low-Risk Prostate Cancer in Men Under 60 Years of Age: In men with low-risk prostate cancer, the use of active surveillance (AS) is increasing; however, outcomes data relative to the use of AS in men under 60 years of age is limited. New data from researchers in Boston and Toronto indicate that AS may be a reasonable option in carefully selected younger men. Using AS data from Massachusetts General Hospital and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, researchers analyzed clinical outcomes for 432 men on AS protocols. Of this group, 131 patients were ultimately treated (the majority due to pathological progression, PSA progression, volume progression or patient preference). Five patients developed metastasis. Metastasis-free survival was 99.7 percent at five years and 97.5 at 10 years. There were no prostate-cancer specific deaths.

Study Details

Publication #: PD09-01

Patient Satisfaction with the Use of Telemedicine in the Management of Prostate Cancer: The use of telemedicine to evaluate prostate cancer patients may be a viable option for some types of encounters, according to researchers in the Department of Urology at Sidney Kimmel Medical College in Philadelphia. Using data from patient satisfaction surveys administered following video-conferenced appointments, researchers found high levels of satisfaction from patients for both biopsy discussion encounters and follow-up appointments carried out as part of active surveillance protocols. There was no significant difference in satisfaction among the appointment types.

Study Details

Publication #: PD07-07

Personal PSA Screening and Treatment Choices for Localized Prostate Cancer Among Expert Physicians: Physicians who routinely treat prostate cancer are more likely to undergo prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening or recommend it to their immediate family, according to data from Australian and Canadian researchers. Researchers surveyed nearly 900 urologists, radiation oncologists and medical oncologists to assess screening preferences and treatment recommendations. Of the 869 respondents, 90 percent (784) endorsed past or future screening for themselves or for relatives, with 61 percent (494) having undergone screening previously. Researchers also assessed urologists and radiation oncologists relative to recommended treatments for family members diagnosed with prostate cancer, finding a significant correlation between medical specialty and treatment selection.

"Through these studies, we can see that the doctors who manage prostate cancer really do practice what they preach, and choose PSA screening for themselves. These studies also show how new technology and treatment options are providing today's patients with a wider variety of options and increasing patient satisfaction," said Dr. Loeb. "We have made significant progress in the way that we screen and manage prostate cancer, and these advances will help the next generation of patients and physicians."

NOTE TO REPORTERS: Expert spokespeople are available to discuss this story. Please contact the Communications Office at 410-689-3932 or email [email protected].

About the American Urological Association: The 112th Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA) takes place May 12-16 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in Boston, MA.

Founded in 1902 and headquartered near Baltimore, Maryland, the AUA is a leading advocate for the specialty of urology, and has more than 21,000 members throughout the world.

Contact: Christine Frey, AUA

410-689-3731, [email protected]

SOURCE American Urological Association

Related Links

http://www.AUAnet.org


SAN DIEGO, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- SunPower by Stellar Solar, San Diego's oldest SunPower dealer and one of two Master Dealers in San Diego County, has teamed up with marketing agency Artichoke Creative to create an innovative series called Solar Cribs that recently launched on its dedicated YouTube channel with plans for further distribution. The series will tell the stories of the people who made the decision to power their homes and businesses with solar and the unique attributes that make their story worth telling. It will cover a wide demographic range of home and business owners to showcase the diversity of solar converts. The first episode features the Frank Lloyd Wright style home of Peder and Julie Norby in Carlsbad whose solar system powers not only their home, but their vineyard and fleet of electric vehicles. On tap for future episodes are homes that include coastal, suburban, rural and urban settings. The same variety will apply to the featured businesses as well.

Episode 1 features the Norby home in Carlsbad, CA

Kent Harle, co-founder and CEO of SunPower by Stellar Solar felt the series will provide a new way to show homeowners why their peers went solar that goes beyond the typical customer testimonial. "We intend to showcase as much variety as possible with this series and with thousands of residential and business customers to choose from, compelling content will not be an issue. We've debated for years who our "typical" customers are for years and what we discovered was there are no typical customers. From tree-huggers to CEO's, accountants to professional athletes, nuns and pastors to bikersyou get my point, it's a wide, eclectic mix of folks." David Boylan, Creative Director at Artichoke Creative, the agency that conceptualized and produced Solar Cribs added, "The home and business owners who have gone solar over the past 10 years have recognized early on the financial and environmental benefits of going solar. A lot of people in that group of early adopters have some great stories to tell. Our primary objective of this series through the variety of the content, is to expose the significant population of home and business owners who have not gone solar to people like themselves and compel them to take a look at solar as well."

SunPower by Stellar Solar offers quick, no-pressure solar quotes to home and business owners throughout Southern California.

About SunPower by Stellar Solar

SunPower by Stellar Solar is a leading California residential and commercial PV solar design and installation company, based in San Diego since 1998 with over 6,000+ installations across Southern California including notable commercial installations on The Salk Institute, US Foods, Cedars Sinai Hospital and more. Readers of the Union Tribune have voted them best solar panel company again in 2015 marking the third year in a row and fourth time in 5 years winning the award. Their 5 Star Reviews on Yelp, A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and high customer ratings on Angie's list are further testament to their standing as the leading solar provider to homes, businesses and faith based organizations in San Diego County. Learn more at www.stellarsolar.net

About Artichoke Creative

Artichoke Creative is an integrated marketing agency founded in 2003 with locations in San Diego and Detroit. They are storytellers well versed in the art of creating a marketing mix that makes sense for their clients, tells their story and helps them sell more stuff. More at www.artichoke-creative.com

Media Contact:

David Boylan

858.395.6905

[email protected]

SOURCE SunPower by Stellar Solar

Related Links

http://www.stellarsolar.net


COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NetJets aircraft technicians and related employees represented by the Teamsters Airline Division and Teamsters Local 284 have launched a multi-location informational picketing campaign to publicize their dispute over the company's refusal to pay industry standard wages and massive levels of subcontracting of aircraft maintenance. Informational picketing began today at Don Scott Airport at Ohio State University in Columbus.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Teamsters Airline Division and Local 284 represent aircraft mechanics, maintenance control, aircraft fuelers, aircraft cleaners and stock clerks. The Columbus-based business jet operator is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A and BRK.B).

NetJets Aviation, Inc. and NetJets Sales, Inc. only employ 111 aircraft mechanics to work on its fleet of approximately 400 aircraft. By comparison, major airlines often employ up to 10 mechanics for every one aircraft. Workers accuse NetJets of trying to drive away qualified mechanics and support workers in favor of subcontracting critical repair work on NetJets aircraft despite customer expectations and workers' job security.

"With the shortage of qualified aircraft mechanics likely to get much worse, NetJets needs to get ahead of the curve rather than short-staffing in favor of subcontractors," said Chris Moore, Chairman of the Teamsters Aviation Mechanics Coalition. "Unfortunately, NetJets management refuses to pay the type of wages it takes to attract and retain highly skilled aircraft technicians. Unless something changes quickly, we see even more problems at NetJets in the future and a very difficult recovery."

"Buffett has spoken publicly about the worsening income gap in American society. However, NetJets is contributing to the problem that Buffett criticizes," said Mark Vandak, President of Teamsters Local 284. "For example, Berkshire Hathaway Energy Chairman and CEO Greg Abel received $17.5 million in compensation in 2016. That translates into more than $8,400 per hour. At the same time, NetJets refuses to pay workers who clean Berkshire Hathaway private jets $15 per hour, the minimum wage in some cities. No matter how you cut it, that's bad for working families and our society."

Founded in 1903, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. For more information, please visit www.teamster.org.

Contact:

Kara Deniz, (202) 624-6911

[email protected]

SOURCE Teamsters Local 284

Related Links

http://www.teamster.org


NEW YORK, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Saturday marks the official first day of the XVII International Workshop on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (iwCLL) biennial meeting at the Times Square Marriott in New York City. For more than 30 years, the iwCLL meetings have focused on bringing together international leaders in the understanding and treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), which is the most common type of leukemia in adults. As the world's leading member-driven organization dedicated to the field of CLL and related lymphoproliferative disorders, iwCLL assembles speakers from scientific research, clinical medicine, and pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries to advance the science and care of people with CLL and lymphoprolferative disorders.

"iwCLL 2017 provides an opportunity for the community to come together in a focused way and discuss the current thinking and discoveries in the field," said Nicholas Chiorazzi, MD, Meeting and Program Chair. "For those of us committed to understanding and treating CLL and related lymphoproliferative disorders, the promising advances that have made their way from the lab and the clinic in the past few years have reignited our enthusiasm and dedication to finding a cure for this disease. Science is not carried out alone. It requires the sharing of ideas, the thoughtful input from peers, and collaborations among disciplines to bring forward new approaches to reach even longer survival for more patients living with this disease."

The 2017 iwCLL program and special sessions are organized around the following themes: current understanding of factors that contribute to the development of CLL; emerging evidence regarding the diagnosis, prognosis, and initial treatment of CLL; parameters contributing to disease evolution and progression; and emerging research in treating advanced disease. This year, more than 200 abstracts were accepted for presentation at the meeting. The titles for these abstracts are publicly posted on iwCLL2017.org and abstracts will be available for meeting attendees via the conference app.

For more information on registration or to view the full list of abstract titles, visit the iwCLL website at www.iwCLL2017.org; email [email protected] or connect with us on Twitter (@iwCLL), Facebook, or LinkedIn.

About Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, also called CLL, is a blood and bone marrow disease that usually gets worse slowly. CLL is the most common type of leukemia in adults. It often occurs during or after middle age. The average age at the time of diagnosis is around 71 years and it is rarely seen in people under age 40. CLL accounts for about one-quarter of the new cases of leukemia. The average person's lifetime risk of getting CLL is about 1 in 200. The risk is slightly higher in men than in women. CLL mainly affects older adults.

About International Workshop on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia

The International Workshop on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, or iwCLL, is a biennial meeting focused solely on advancing the understanding and treatment of CLL and related lymphoproliferative disorders. Founded in 1979, iwCLL is now the largest international meeting dedicated to advancing state-of-the-art and emerging concepts  from laboratory-based research to the clinic  in the pathobiology and treatment of these blood cancers. The meeting is intended to provide a forum that promotes the exchange of information and encourages collaboration among international leaders and scientists interested in CLL and lymphoproliferative disorders.

For Media Inquiries Contact:

[email protected]

SOURCE International Workshop on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
WINDSOR, Colo. and LINCOLNSHIRE, Ill., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- TOLMAR Inc., the innovator, developer, and global manufacturer of ELIGARD (leuprolide acetate for injectable suspension), has announced plans to expand manufacturing capacity for its portfolio of products.

TOLMAR, a specialty pharmaceutical company, is adding a 225,000-square-foot manufacturing and administrative site in Windsor, CO, to its approximately 110,000-square-foot R&D and production facilities in Fort Collins, CO.

"ELIGARD is marketed in 85 countries by TOLMAR and its partners, and the global supply is manufactured here in the United States, at our Colorado facilities. We are excited to announce plans to expand our manufacturing capacity to meet the growing demand for the TOLMAR portfolio of products," said TOLMAR Pharmaceuticals CEO Susan Rodriguez.

Please visit us in Boston at the American Urological Association Meeting, Booth 2415.

About TOLMAR

TOLMAR is a fully integrated pharmaceutical company focused on the development, approval, manufacturing, and commercialization of specialty pharmaceutical products. TOLMAR Pharmaceuticals is based in Lincolnshire, Illinois, with TOLMAR global headquarters, product development, and manufacturing facilities based in Northern Colorado. TOLMAR Pharmaceuticals has the exclusive distribution rights for ELIGARD in the US and Puerto Rico. ELIGARD is a gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist indicated for the palliative treatment of advanced prostate cancer, developed and manufactured by TOLMAR Inc. "TOLMAR" refers to TOLMAR Holding Inc. and its wholly owned operating subsidiaries, TOLMAR Inc., TOLMAR Therapeutics, Inc., and TOLMAR Pharmaceuticals, Inc. For more information about the company, please visit www.tolmar.com. Information about ELIGARD is available at http://www.eligard.com.

Important Safety Information for ELIGARD (leuprolide acetate for injectable suspension)

ELIGARD is a medicine for managing advanced prostate cancer. It is not a cure for advanced prostate cancer.

ELIGARD should not be used by anyone who is allergic to any drug that is in the same class as ELIGARD, or anyone who is allergic to any of the ingredients in ELIGARD.

A severe and possibly life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis has been known to happen when people receive ELIGARD and other drugs in its class. Women who are pregnant or may become pregnant should not use ELIGARD. ELIGARD can cause pregnancy loss or harm an unborn baby when used by a pregnant woman.

Elevated blood sugar and an increased risk of developing diabetes have been reported in men receiving ELIGARD and other drugs in its class. Your doctor will monitor your blood sugar levels. Increased risk of heart attack, sudden death due to heart attack, and stroke also has been reported in men using drugs in ELIGARD's class. Your doctor will monitor you for heart disease. ELIGARD may also prolong the QT/QTc interval, which can cause a certain type of irregular heartbeat. Your doctor will talk to you about the risks and benefits of taking ELIGARD.

The most common injection site adverse events are temporary burning and stinging, pain, bruising, and redness. The most common systemic adverse events include mild to severe hot flashes/sweats, fatigue, weakness, muscle pain, dizziness, clamminess, testicular shrinkage, and enlarged breasts. Other adverse reactions have been reported with drugs in ELIGARD's class. These include reduced bone density and rare but serious problems involving the pituitary gland.

Please see full Prescribing Information for additional important safety information, at www.eligard.com.

SOURCE TOLMAR Inc.

Related Links

http://www.tolmar.com


LS Retail, world-leading provider of management software solutions for retail and hospitality, has opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The office space is located in the Oasis Corporate Park housing development, a modern business hub featuring offices and retail spaces.

Representatives from Microsoft APAC and from LS Retail partner companies were present at the opening ceremony, which took place on May 8, 2017. Magnus Norddahl, CEO and President of LS Retail, and Qiping Sun, Vice President of LS Retail in APAC, officiated the event.

LS Retail's earliest presence in the Asia-Pacific region dates back to 2009, when the tech company opened an office in Singapore. The opening of the new facilities in Kuala Lumpur represents the next step in the firm's expansion in the region. The new office is expected to become LS Retail's main hub in APAC, offering advanced support and services to customers and partners located in the region.

"The new office marks the next stage in our development in Asia-Pacific, and we look forward to continuing to growth even faster from our new base," says Norddahl. "The office in Kuala Lumpur will offer local support and services, while also acting as a development center for our global products, in close cooperation with our development center located in LS Retail's headquarters in Iceland," Norddahl adds.

LS Retail prides itself on its global outreach supported by local thinking. With over 4,000 businesses in more than 120 countries using LS Retail software, the tech firm is a global player in retail and hospitality IT. At the same time, LS Retail makes a point of employing local people in support to regional partners in the countries where it operates.

In the second half of 2017, LS Retail will open an office in Brisbane, Australia, in order to support the growing number of LS Retail partners and customers in Australasia.

About LS Retail

For more than two decades, LS Retail has been developing easy and practical software solutions to make the shopping and dining experience a pleasure worldwide. LS Retail products and solutions are sold through a global partner network and have been installed in more than 66,000 stores in over 120 countries.

Contact Information

LS Retail, ehf.

Eloise Freygang

+354 660-7088

Eloise@LSRetail.com

Attachments:

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/ebba3265-59e0-4f80-86c0-1c193e85c241
DALLAS, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Universite Paris-Dauphine and BARBRI International have announced the launch of continental Europe's first U.S. bar exam preparation course. The course is designed for European graduates and legal professionals specialized in civil law, who wish to sit the New York and California state bar exams. The Paris program, following on BARBRI's existing alliances in London, Dubai and Sydney, is run under the joint leadership of Duncan Fairgrieve and Arnaud Raynouard, professors of law at Universite Paris-Dauphine, and Rob Dudley, BARBRI International London.

Program participants can choose between a 6-month and a 10-month course, compatible with their professional obligations. This joint initiative combines BARBRI's proven expertise in training non-U.S. legal professionals with Dauphine's academic excellence, in a program tailored to meet candidates' individual needs:

On-line lectures taught by qualified attorneys and top American law school professors

Original textbooks and course material

Mock exams

One-on-one tutoring from experienced bar preparation professionals

New York State and California State bar application assistance

The program also offers a course in Legal English to candidates who need to reinforce their knowledge of U.S. and common law terminology, written and spoken English.

The Dauphine/BARBRI Bar Exam Preparation course is the perfect choice for both recent law graduates and practicing professionals who plan to pursue an international career and need in-depth knowledge of U.S. law.

"More and more legal professionals around the world are seeking licensure in the global commerce and business hubs of New York and California," said Rob Dudley, director of BARBRI International. "We're privileged to be able to assist attorneys in that endeavor through partnerships with institutions such as Universite Paris-Dauphine, which enjoys an excellent reputation across France for its educational offerings for students and professionals. We're very excited about the opportunity to jointly expand the availability of our U.S. bar review materials."

About Universite Paris-Dauphine

Universite Paris-Dauphine is specialized in the Organization and Decision Sciences. One of Europe's leading academic and research institutions in its field, Dauphine offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, post-doctoral and executive education programs and undertakes cutting-edge research in all of its core disciplines: management, economics, law, the social sciences, journalism, mathematics and information technologies. The university counts 569 permanent faculty members and 8,800 full-time students. Paris-Dauhpine has been EQUIS-accredited since 2009.

In the 49 years since its foundation in 1968, Paris-Dauphine has become an institution of reference for the French business community, and has established long-term partnerships with 8 international corporations: Atalian, BNP Paribas, Caisse des Depots, Carrefour, Credit Agricole, Mazars, Natixis, and the Societe Generale. Paris-Dauphine is recognized for:

The quality and selectivity of its undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate programs

Excellence in research, the quality and breath of the research carried out by the university's 6 research centers: CR2D - Law, DRM - Management, Lamsade -IT, Ceremade  Applied Mathematics, LEDa - Economics, IRISSO  Social Sciences

Its 80,000-strong alumni network, spanning the 5 continents, among whom numerous prominent entrepreneurs and corporate leaders.

Universite Paris-Dauphine occupies a unique position in French higher education. Recognized both by its domestic and international peers, Paris-Dauphine is a member of France's Conference des Grandes Ecoles, the only EQUIS-accredited French university, and ranks among the world's top 50 universities for mathematics. Paris-Dauphine has significantly increased its international footprint by opening campuses abroad (Casablanca, London, Madrid, Mannheim, Shanghai, and Tunis), and by founding The Alliance, a distinctive institutional cooperative platform, that brings Dauphine together with other major players in the world of Management Universities: the Copenhagen Business School - Denmark, Fundacao Getulio Vargas  Brazil, Singapore Management University, University of St. Gallen - Switzerland, Esade Barcelona  Spain, and Wirtschaftsuniversitat Wien - Austria. Paris-Dauphine is also a founding member of PSL - Paris Sciences & Lettres Research University, a Community of 27 of France's finest Paris-based academic and research institutions, including the Ecole Normale Superieure, Mines ParisTech, several art schools, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Today PSL represents 19,000 students, 4,600 faculty and researchers, and 178 research centers.

Paris-Dauphine graduates are well prepared for their future careers and highly sought after by employers for management positions in key strategic functions: globalization, sustainable development, finance, human resources, and marketing.

For more information about Paris-Dauphine, visit our website: www.dauphine.fr

About The BARBRI Group

The BARBRI Group companies are devoted to meeting the legal education needs of law students and attorneys throughout their careers. At the core of BARBRI Group companies is BARBRI Bar Review, which has helped over 1.3 million law students pass their bar exam. The company also provides specialized legal practice courses in areas such as financial skills, certification in financial crimes and eDiscovery, training in tax compliance, cyber awareness, security and protection. BARBRI Group affiliates work to improve legal and professional learning in the United States and around the world by providing superior opportunities for law schools and law firms as well as law and finance-related businesses to prosper. Founded in 1967, The BARBRI Group is headquartered in Dallas with offices throughout the United States and around the world. More information: www.thebarbrigroup.com

Contact:

Cindy Parks

913-526-6912

[email protected]

SOURCE BARBRI

Related Links

http://www.thebarbrigroup.com


SALT LAKE CITY, May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- The Utah Education Network (UEN) today announces the recognition of Utah's American Graduate Champions working with Youth in Care (YIC). These educators have been nominated by their peers for their dedication to helping youth overcome challenging circumstances and reach academic milestones: Abe Kimball, Cindy Willis, Danelle Black, Jacqueline Bode, Jared Tucker, Jim Hawkes, Jodie Horgan, Leona Schexnayder, Marvin Hull, Marv Luddington, Melanie Bliss, Mitch Peterson, Nikki Sorensen, Rebecca Jackson, Sharon Hall, Sheri Bradshaw, Sombryn Williams, Spencer Robinson, Tim Marriott and Virginia Parry. Individual profiles of Utah's 2017 American Graduate Champions can be viewed here.

With more than one in four Utah children encountering the Juvenile Justice System before their eighteenth birthday, too many youth face difficult circumstances that disrupt their education. To bring awareness to the issues, UEN will air the documentary "The One That Got Away" by Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmakers John Block and Steve McCarthy on UEN-TV Tuesday, May 16 at 9 p.m. MT and Saturday, June 10 at 8 p.m. MT. To view UEN-TV's complete programming schedule visit http://www.uen.org/tv/.

"The One That Got Away" explores challenges faced by at-risk youth through the story of a bright-eyed, promising junior high school student, Tourrie Moses. Eager to learn and the kind of student every teacher wants, Tourrie was considered by his teachers to be destined for a top college. Moses' life however, takes a radically different path. Unfolding through interviews with Tourrie himself, his family, teachers, and classmates, each interview reveals how the intertwined forces of home life, school life and street life can negatively impact a child, particularly one living in impoverished conditions. To view the documentary trailer, click here.

UEN is also screening the documentary on May 11th and 12th during the 38th Annual Conference of Agencies and Organizations Serving Promising Youth in Snowbird, Utah, at which certificates of recognition will be presented to the new American Graduate Champions.

"Recognizing these educators is important," says Steven Kaelin, Education Specialist for Alternative, Adult Education and GED Testing Services for the Utah State Board of Education. "The level of dedication, commitment and concern of these educators for students that struggle with overwhelming obstacles in their lives is truly inspirational and exemplary. For many of our students, YIC teachers provide the everyday hope that helps these youth rise above dire and defeating circumstances in life."

Funding for The One That Got Away is provided by the JPB Foundation and the Ford Foundation as part of Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America; and the John and Rose Cali Family Foundation; New Jersey Education Association; Silver Family Foundation, Montclair, N.J.; and others. The film is part of WNET's initiative Chasing the Dream: Poverty and Opportunity in America, which provides critical programming on poverty, income equality, and opportunity.

The Utah Education Network

The Utah Education Network (UEN) is part of the Utah Education and Telehealth Network (UETN), a nationally recognized innovator in broadband and broadcast delivery of educational and telehealth resources to students and educators, patients and clinicians statewide. UETN provides network, application and support services to more than 1,000 schools, colleges and libraries. It also serves more than 70 hospitals, clinics and health departments in urban, suburban and rural areas of the state.

Media Contact: Rich Finlinson, (801) 864-1074

SOURCE Utah Education Network

Related Links

http://www.uen.org/tv


HUNTSVILLE, Ala., May 12, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- For the first time in four years, a new team has won NASA's Student Launch, the agency's high-powered rocketry challenge, hosted by and held near NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, April 5-8. The River City Rocketry team from the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky, captured top honors. They've proven hard work and determination pays off, literally, taking home a cash prize of $5,000, offered by Orbital ATK of Promontory, Utah, longtime corporate sponsor of the challenge. No stranger to success, this team from the bluegrass state placed second last year. Since 2011, they've earned 10 awards, including Best Vehicle Design, Safety Award, Project Award and more.

In second place, after a record-setting "four-peat" as champions, is Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. They earned a cash prize of $2,500, offered by new sponsor, the National Space Club  Huntsville. For 10 straight years, Vanderbilt soared to success with innovative rocket designs and payloads, and this year was no exception. Having earned more than 20 awards the past decade, the Commodores of Vanderbilt added the 2017 Payload Design, Rocket Fair Display and Education Engagement awards.

Rounding out the top five is Cornell University of Ithaca, in New York; the University of Alabama in Huntsville; and the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, in third through fifth place, respectively. The 2017 Rookie of the Year award goes to the University of Evansville, in Evansville, Indiana.



Cornell University, having placed third in back-to-back years, also cracked the top five in 2015, making them a perennial power. The same is true for the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, earning top five finishes in both 2017 and 2015.

While veteran teams prove consistent participation in Student launch helps  especially since this year's top three teams repeated (though, in a different order)  the novice and rookie teams continue to excel. For example, the University of Huntsville  Alabama team was made up of all-rookie members, yet launched their way to fourth place.

Finishing first may be fun, but it's not the most important aspect. Student Launch is a real-world outlet for young people to apply lessons learned in class toward relevant and cost-effective research into propulsion and recovery systems.

Nearly 50 student teams from middle and high schools, colleges and universities in 22 states demonstrated advanced rocketry and engineering skills. Teams spent eight months building and testing rockets designed to fly to an altitude of one mile, deploy an automated parachute system, and safely land for reuse, each carrying a scientific payload for data collection during flight.

"It's exciting to see team designs and enable them to conduct meaningful research into NASA's journey to Mars and beyond," said Katie Wallace of Marshall's Academic Affairs Office. "Working through the NASA design process, students gain a broader understanding of current projects, like the Space Launch System , NASA's next deep-space exploration rocket."

On April 8, preliminary awards for additional achievements such as best vehicle design, safety, best team website and more were announced during an awards ceremony at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, hosted by Orbital ATK. View the full list of preliminary award winners here.

The Academic Affairs Office at Marshall manages Student Launch to further NASA's education goal of attracting and encouraging students to pursue degrees and careers in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. NASA's Office of Education and Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, as well as Orbital ATK's Propulsion Systems Division and the National Space Club - Huntsville, provide funding and leadership.

As the high-pitched whistle of rocket launches have faded, next year's teams are on deck, ready to solve thrust-to-weight ratios and kinetic energy predictions. After all, it IS rocket science.



To view behind-the-scene photos of this year's Student Launch, visit the Marshall Center's education album on Flickr: https://go.nasa.gov/2qYJovj

Archived launch-day footage is available on the Marshall Center's Ustream account: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-msfc

SOURCE NASA

Related Links

http://www.nasa.gov


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Fedora Update Notification

FEDORA-2017-2643ef1cad

2017-05-12 04:05:28.497241

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Name : mediawiki

Product : Fedora 25

Version : 1.27.3

Release : 1.fc25

URL : http://www.mediawiki.org/

Summary : A wiki engine

Description :

MediaWiki is the software used for Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia

Foundation websites. Compared to other wikis, it has an excellent

range of features and support for high-traffic websites using multiple

servers



This package supports wiki farms. Read the instructions for creating wiki

instances under /usr/share/doc/mediawiki/README.RPM.

Remember to remove the config dir after completing the configuration.



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Update Information:



Due to a mistake in packaging, the releases 1.27.2 and 1.28.1 did not contain

the fix for SyntaxHighlight_GeSHi. This new release does contain that fix.

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References:



[ 1 ] Bug #1448111 - CVE-2017-0372 mediawiki: SyntaxHighlight extension

allows injection of arbitrary Pygments options [fedora-all]

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1448111

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This update can be installed with the "dnf" update program. Use

su -c 'dnf upgrade mediawiki' at the command line.

For more information, refer to the dnf documentation available at

http://dnf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/command_ref.html#upgrade-command-label



All packages are signed with the Fedora Project GPG key. More details on the

GPG keys used by the Fedora Project can be found at

https://fedoraproject.org/keys

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package-announce mailing list -- package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org

To unsubscribe send an email to package-announce-leave@lists.fedoraproject.org


English French

Laurent Burelle to leave Wendel's Supervisory Board after the May 18, 2017 Shareholders' Meeting

As a result of his election as president of AFEP (French association of private enterprises) on May 9, 2017, Laurent Burelle will leave Wendel's Supervisory Board as of the end of the May 18, 2017 Annual Shareholders' Meeting.

Mr. Burelle has decided to step down from several positions, including his membership of Wendel's Supervisory Board, so as to devote the time necessary to Compagnie Plastic Omnium, of which he is Chairman & CEO, as well as to his new position as President of AFEP.

Consequently, the seventh resolution of Wendel's May 18 Shareholders' Meeting, regarding the renewal of Mr. Burelle's appointment, has become null and void and will not be submitted to a vote.

Wendel wishes to express its appreciation to Mr. Burelle for his commitment and considerable contribution to Wendel's Supervisory Board.

After Wendel's Shareholders' Meeting, and subject to the approval of the resolutions for appointment and renewal of Board members, Wendel's Supervisory Board will be composed of 12 members, including five women, five independent members and one member representing employees, as in 2016.

The proportion of women on the Supervisory Board in 2017 will be 45%, already exceeding in 2017 the 40% objective set by law. The proportion of independent members on the Board (45%) will also exceed the recommendations of the AFEP-MEDEF code (33.33%).

Calendar

05/18/2017

Shareholders' Meeting / Publication of NAV and trading update (before Shareholders' Meeting)

In Paris

09/07/2017

H1 2017 earnings / Publication of NAV (pre-market release)

By conference call

11/30/2017

2017 Investor Day / Publication of NAV and trading update (pre-market release)

About Wendel

Wendel is one of Europe's leading listed investment firms. The Group invests in Europe, North America and Africa in companies that are leaders in their field, such as Bureau Veritas, Saint-Gobain, Cromology, Stahl, IHS, Constantia Flexibles and Allied Universal. Wendel plays an active role as industry shareholder in these companies. It implements long-term development strategies, which involve boosting growth and margins of companies so as to enhance their leading market positions. Through Oranje-Nassau Developpement, which brings together opportunities for investment in growth, diversification and innovation, Wendel is also a shareholder of exceet in Germany, Mecatherm in France, Nippon Oil Pump in Japan, Saham Group, SGI Africa and Tsebo in Africa and CSP Technologies in the United States.

Wendel is listed on Eurolist by Euronext Paris.

Standard & Poor's ratings: Long-term: BBB-, stable outlook - Short-term: A-3 since July 7, 2014. Wendel is the Founding Sponsor of Centre Pompidou-Metz. In recognition of its long-term patronage of the arts, Wendel received the distinction of "Grand Mecene de la Culture" in 2012.



For more information: www.wendelgroup.com

Follow us on Twitter @WendelGroup and @_FLemoine_
English Finnish

ROBIT PLC COMPANY RELEASE 12 MAY 2017 AT 12.20 P.M.

ROBIT PLC'S IFRS FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR 2016 PUBLISHED

Robit Plc has previously announced that it will start applying IFRS in its financial reporting as of financial year 2017. The company publishes the audited IFRS financial statements for the financial year 2016, which are available on the Robit website at http://www.robit.fi/investors/financial-information/.

Future Prospects and Profit Forecast

In connection with the approval of the IFRS financial statements, the company has confirmed the prospects and the profit forecast for the year 2017. The net sales of the company are expected to continue to grow. The company believes that the weak market environment is starting to pick up after a flat period of several years and the company aims to take advantage of that expected positive market change with the platform of the company's 21 sales and service points together with the six manufacturing plants. The company believes that the new supplemented offering gives good opportunities to increase the market share in the drilling consumables business segment.

Robit has started applying IFRS in its financial reporting in 2017. Calculated on a basis of the financial statements for the financial year ended on 31 December 2016 prepared in accordance with IFRS, the company's EBITA as percentage of net sales (without items affecting comparability) was 11.7 %. The management of the company estimates that the company's EBITA as percentage of net sales will be maintained at the same level, i.e. at the level of the year 2016, provided that the market demand stays at the current level and there are no other market disruptions.

IFRS financial statements

The following tables present a summary of the company's income statement, balance sheet, and key figures for the financial years ended on 31 December 2016, 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2014. The information presented below is based on the company's audited consolidated financial statements for the financial years ended on 31 December 2016, 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2014. In addition, the summary of the company's income statement and balance sheet for the first and second half of the financial year 2016 are presented below.

In addition to the half-yearly reports and financial statements release, the company will continue reporting its net sales for the first and third quarter. The net sales for the three-month period ended on 31 March 2017 were EUR 20,049 thousand.

CONSOLIDATED INCOME STATEMENT 1.1.-31.12. EUR 1,000 2016



(IFRS) 2015



(IFRS) 2015



(FAS) 2014



(FAS) (audited) (unaudited) (audited) (unaudited) Net sales 64,050 45,573 45,588 38,272 Changes in inventories of finished goods and work in progress -67 1,138 1,103 2,468 Work performed by the Group and capitalized 201 232 232 94 Other operating income 241 163 169 175 Materials and services -32,651 -27,789 -27,789 -24,746 Employee benefit expense -11,113 -7,643 -7,339 -5,753 Depreciation, amortization and impairment -3,233 -1,145 -1,676 -1,005 Other operating expenses -13,167 -7,770 -6,899 -5,745 Operating profit 4,262 2,758 3,389 3,761 Finance income 3,316 494 444 438 Finance cost -2,411 -853 -851 -522 Finance income and costs net 906 -359 -406 -84 Profit before income tax 5,168 2,399 2,983 3,677 Income taxes -1,128 -695 -7391 -7692 Profit for the year 4,040 1,704 2,244 2,925 Attributable to: Owners of the parent 4,040 1,704 - - Other comprehensive income Items that may be reclassified to profit or loss in subsequent periods: Translation differences 43 101 - - Other comprehensive income, net of tax 43 101 Total comprehensive income 4,083 1,804 2,244 2,925 Attributable to: Owners of the parent 4,083 1,804 - - Earnings per share attributable to the owners of the parent during the year: 64,050 45,573 45,588 38,272 Basic and diluted earnings per share -67 1,138 1,103 2,468

1) Unaudited. The figure includes changes in deferred income taxes (EUR 12 thousand).

2) Unaudited. The figure includes changes in deferred income taxes (EUR 9 thousand).

CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEET 31.12. EUR 1,000 2016 2015 2015 2014 (IFRS)



(audited) (IFRS)



(unaudited) (FAS)



(audited) (FAS)



(audited) ASSETS Non-current assets Goodwill 25,469 88 29 88 Other intangible assets 8,333 1,297 3,6911 6542 Property, plant and equipment 16,611 7,752 7,047 4,970 Loan receivables 720 744 7173 7434 Other receivables 157 150 2415 2456 Deferred tax assets 720 339 -7 -7 Total non-current assets 52,011 10,369 11,7258 6,7009 Current assets Inventories 30,176 11,873 11,679 11,838 Account and other receivables 21,248 10,431 10,55710 7,53011 Loan receivables 48 26 21 31 Income tax receivable - 10 15912 7812 Cash and cash equivalents 10,519 33,310 33,38413 1,58914 Total current asset 61,991 55,650 55,80015 21,06616, Total assets 114,002 66,019 67,525 27,767 EQUITY AND LIABILITIES Equity attributable to owners of the parent Share capital 705 705 705 705 Share premium 202 202 202 202 Reserve for invested unrestricted equity 32,368 32,322 33,693 599 Cumulative translation difference 144 101 -267 15 Retained earnings 12,597 11,526 11,348 8,530 Profit for the year 4,040 1,704 2,244 2,925 Total equity 50,056 46,559 47,924 12,976 Liabilities Non-current liabilities Borrowings 36,601 5,262 7,058 5,207 Deferred tax liabilities 2,093 - -17 -17 Derivative financial instruments - 49 - - Employee benefit obligations 947 430 43021 34922 Total non-current liabilities 39,641 5,741 7,48823 5,55624 Current liabilities Borrowings 10,828 6,224 4,257 3,248 Derivative financial instruments 38 - - - Advances received 282 132 132 289 Income tax liabilities 736 103 22418 13118 Account payables and other liabilities 12,421 7,260 7,50019 5,56720 Total current liabilities 24,305 13,720 12,113 9,235 Total liabilities 63,946 19,460 19,601 14,791 Total equity and liabilities 114,002 66,019 67,525 27,767

1) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: intangible rights (EUR 165 thousand) and other capitalised long-term expenses (EUR 3,527 thousand).

2) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: intangible rights (EUR 69 thousand) and other capitalised long-term expenses (EUR 585 thousand).

3) Unaudited. The figure consists of long term receivables disclosed as current assets under FAS balance sheet and including accrued income (EUR 0 thousand) and loan receivables (EUR 717 thousand).

4) Unaudited. The figure consists of long term receivables disclosed as current assets under FAS balance sheet and including accrued income (EUR 5 thousand) and loan receivables (EUR 738 thousand).

5) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: other receivables (EUR 238 thousand) and other shares and similar rights of ownership (EUR 3 thousand).

6) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: other receivables (EUR 241 thousand) and other shares and similar rights of ownership (EUR 4 thousand).

7) Deferred tax assets is disclosed as short term assets under FAS balance sheet.

8) Unaudited. The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: Non-current assets total (EUR 11 008 thousand) and long-term receivables (EUR 717 thousand).

9) Unaudited. The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: Non-current assets total (EUR 5 957 thousand) and long-term receivables (EUR 743 thousand).

10) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: trade receivables (EUR 9 219 thousand), receivables from group companies (EUR 0 thousand), other receivables (EUR 809 thousand) and accrued income (EUR 528 thousand).

11) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: trade receivables (EUR 6 335 thousand), receivables from group companies (EUR 0 thousand), other receivables (EUR 598 thousand) and accrued income (EUR 597 thousand).

12) Income tax receivable is disclosed as calculated tax claim under FAS balance sheet.

13) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: cash in hand and at banks (EUR 33 353 thousand) and funding papers (EUR 31 thousand).

14) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: cash in hand and at banks (EUR 1 559 thousand) and funding papers (EUR 30 thousand).

15) Unaudited. The figure consists of the FAS balance sheet item current assets total (EUR 56 517 thousand) less long-term receivables (EUR 717 thousand).

16) Unaudited. The figure consists of the FAS balance sheet item current assets total (EUR 21 809 thousand) less long-term receivables (EUR 743 thousand).

17) Deferred tax liabilities are disclosed as short-term liabilities under FAS balance sheet.

18) Income tax liabilities are disclosed as item calculated tax debt.

19) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: accounts payable (EUR 5 609 thousand), payables to group companies (EUR 0 thousand), other liabilities (EUR 574 thousand) and accrued liabilities (EUR 1 318 thousand).

20) The figure consists of the following items disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet: accounts payable (EUR 3 984 thousand), payables to group companies (EUR 22 thousand), other liabilities (EUR 346 thousand) and accrued liabilities (EUR 1 215 thousand).

21) Employee benefit obligations are disclosed as mandatory reserves under FAS balance sheet.

22) Employee benefit obligations are disclosed as mandatory reserves under FAS balance sheet.

23) Unaudited. The figure includes mandatory reserves (EUR 430 thousand) disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet.

24) Unaudited. The figure includes mandatory reserves (EUR 349 thousand) disclosed separately under FAS balance sheet.

Key Figures

The company tracks several indicators to measure the development of its business performance. The following table sets forth key figures of the company for the financial years ended on 31 December 2016, 31 December 2015 and 31 December 2014 as well as for the first and second half of the financial year 2016.

CONSOLIDATED KEY FIGURES 1.7.-31.12. 1.1.-30.6. 1.1.-31.12. 2016



(IFRS) 2016



(IFRS) 2016



(IFRS) 2015



(IFRS) 2015



(FAS) 2014



(FAS) (unaudited) Net sales, EUR 1,000 42,974 21,076 64,050* 45,573 45,588* 38,272* Net sales growth, per cent - - 40.5 19.1 19.1 12.7 Gross profit, EUR 1,000 17,405 7,747 25,152 14,683 14,683 11,337 Gross profit, per cent of net sales 6.6 32.7 39.3 32.2 32.2 29.6 EBITDA, EUR 1,000 5,308 2,187 7,495 3,903 5,066 4,765 EBITDA, per cent of net sales 12.4 10.4 11.7 11.1 11.1 12.5 Adjusted EBITDA, EUR 1,000 8,064 2,187 10,251 4,793 5,066 4,765 Adjusted EBITDA, per cent of net sales 18.8 10.4 16.0 10.5 11.1 12.5 EBITA, EUR 1,000 3,213 1,508 4,721 2,758 3,448 3,819 EBITA, per cent of net sales 7.5 7.2 7.4 6.7 7.6 10.0 Adjusted EBITA, EUR 1,000 5,960 1,508 7,468 3,648 3,448 3,819 Adjusted EBITA, per cent of net sales 13.9 7.2 11.7 8.0 7.6 10.0 Operating profit, EUR 1,000 2,754 1,508 4,262* 2,758 3,389* 3,761* Operating profit, per cent of net sales 6.4 7.2 6.7 6.1 7.4 9.8 Net income of review period, EUR 1,000 2,581 1,502 4,083* 1,804 2,244* 2,925* Net income of review period, per cent of net sales 6.0 7.1 6.4 4.0 4.9 7.6 Earnings per share (EPS), EUR - - 0.26* 0.13 0.17 0.29 Return on equity, per cent - - 9.9 7.4 7.4 25.4 Return on capital employed (ROCE), per cent - - 4.7 5.3 9.5 21.2 Net interest-bearing debt, EUR 1,000 36,910 11,042 36,910 -21,824 -22,070 6,866 Equity ratio, per cent 43.9 42.5 43.9 70.5 71.1 47.4 Gearing, per cent 73.7 23.3 73.7 -46.9 -46.1 52.9 Gross investments, EUR 1,000 24,755 33,272 58,027 3,926 7,732 1,731 Gross investments, per cent of net sales - - 90.6 8.6 17.0 4.5 Gross investments, excl. acquisition, EUR 1,000 - - 2,641 3,926 7,732 1,731 Research and development costs, EUR 1,000 1,062 444 1,505 1,367 1,368 804 Research and development costs, per cent of net sales 2.5 2.1 2.3 3.0 3.0 2.1 Average number of employees 239 129 199 124 124 109 Employees at end of period 263 134 263 134 134 109 *Audited

Business Units

Currently, the company's business is divided into three strategic business units, which are Top Hammer (TH), Down the Hole (DTH) and Digital Services.

The table below indicates the allocation of the company's net sales across the strategic business units. The business units were established in early 2016. The allocation of net sales prior to this has been indicated in relation to the TH product category and the DTH product category.

IFRS



(unaudited) FAS



(unaudited) Million euros 1.1. - 31.12.2016 1.1. - 31.12.2015 1.1. - 31.12.2015 1.1. - 31.12.2014 Top Hammer (TH) 33.7 29.9 29.9 21.9 Down the Hole (DTH) 30.4 15.7 15.7 16.3 Digital Services - - - - Total 64.1* 45.6 45.6* 38.3*

*Audited

The TH and DTH business units were nearly of the same size in terms of net sales: Top Hammer at 33.7 million euros and Down the Hole at 30.4 million euros in 2016. The third business unit, Digital Services, did not yet generate any net sales in 2016, its year of establishment.

Geographic sales areas

In 2016, the percentage of Europe, Africa and the Middle East out of the company's overall net sales amounted to 45.5 per cent. As a result of a corporate acquisition carried out in Australia, the percentage of Asia and Oceania out of the aggregate group net sales amounted to 36.1 per cent. The percentage of Russia and the CIS countries out of the aggregate group net sales amounted to 5.1 per cent. The percentage of the area of North and South America amounted to 13.3 per cent out of the aggregate group net sales.

The table below illustrates the geographic allocation of the company's net sales. As a result of the corporate acquisitions that took place in 2016, the net sales have become more centralised in the area of Asia and Oceania, as well as Europe, Africa and Middle East. It should be noted that DTA's net sales has been recorded in the company's net sales as of 30 June 2016, and Bulroc's net sales as of 5 July 2016.

IFRS FAS Million euros 2016 2015* 2015* 2014* North and South America 8,5 13 % 8,5 19 % 8,5 19 % 5,8 15 % Europe, Africa and Middle East 29,1 45 % 25,0 55 % 25,0 55 % 22,0 57% Russia and the CIS countries 3,3 5 % 3,1 7 % 3,1 7 % 3,2 8 % Asia and Oceania 23,1 36 % 9,0 20 % 9,0 20 % 7,3 19 % Total 64,1 45,6 45,6 38,3

*The figures are unaudited, with the exception of the aggregate amount

ROBIT PLC

Board of Directors

Further information

Robit Plc

Harri Sjoholm, Chairman of the Board of Directors

+358 400 622 092

harri.sjoholm@robit.fi

Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (publ) Helsinki Branch acts as the company's certified advisor

Tel. +358 9 616 28 101

Robit is a strongly internationalized growth company selling and servicing global customers in drilling consumables for applications in mining, construction and contracting, tunneling and well drilling. The company's offering is divided into three product and service range: Top Hammer and Down-the-Hole products as well as Digital Services. Robit has 21 own sales and service points as well as active sales networks in 115 countries. The manufacturing units are located in Finland, South Korea, Australia, UK and USA.

Distribution:

Nasdaq Helsinki Ltd

Key media

www.robitgroup.com

Attachment: Robit Plc IFRS Consolidated Financial Statements 2016
Canberra, May 8 : Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Monday said the country was open to the possibility of the return of children of militants who are fighting with the Islamic State (IS) in the Middle East.

Turnbull made the remarks at a press conference here and said these children will remain under strict supervision, Efe news reported.

Turnbull made these statements when asked about Australian militant Khaled Sharrouf's six-year-old son, who was photographed with a human body hanging from a cross to promote IS.

The photo, released on Sunday night, shows a poster hanging from the victim's neck that reads "The Crime: Collaborating with Christians. The Punishment: Execution".

The leader called the photo disgusting and a show of "the depths of barbarity, of cruelty, of savagery, that (Islamic State) have sunk to".

It is not the first time that Sharrouf used his children for an IS campaign since he went to Syria in 2013 where his wife Tara Nettleton, who died of appendicitis in 2016, and his five children later joined him.

One of his children appeared with a belt of explosives, making threats against Australia in a video intercepted two weeks ago by intelligence services, while in another photo from the year 2014 he was seen holding a decapitated head.

The children's grandfather, Karen Nettleton, sought their return to Australia.

"All of the children that are being exploited in this way, if they are Australian citizens, of course, would be able to return to Australia, but under the closest possible supervision and observation," said Turnbull.

"I can assure you that we will leave no stone unturned in protecting Australians from those people who return from that conflict zone," he added.

Australia raised the terror alert for the country to high in September 2014 and has implemented several anti-terror laws to prevent terror attacks on its territory. Since then the country has witnessed four violent acts and has foiled other 12 attack plans.
Thiruvananthapuram, May 8 : The Kerala government has failed to submit the utilisation certificate for the first instalments of funds it received under various central schemes, said a top Kerala BJP leader on Monday.

State Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Kummanem Rajasekheran said this after holding a meeting of lawmakers of the party from Kerala.

The BJP's two Members of Parliament from the state -- Suresh Gopi and Richard Hey, the Anglo-Indian nominee -- attended the meeting convened by Rajasekheran. Besides, Kerala Assembly legislator O. Rajagopal and Rajeev Chandrasekher, a Keralite who is a Rajya Sabha member from Karnataka, were also present.

"After collecting the first instalments in various centrally-sponsored schemes, the state government has failed to submit the utilisation certificate and hence the second instalment is not being issued. Without doing it (submitting the certificate), there is no use blaming the Centre," said Rajasekheran.

The meeting also decided to ensure that from now on, a team of experts conducted detailed studies in various fields here and submitted report to the Centre to seek their help in moving forward.

"The traditional industries in Kerala are in a bad shape and we have already brought it to the attention of Union Textiles Minister Smriti Irani, who has promised to visit Kerala and look into the issue," said the state BJP chief.

The meeting also decided to form a cell in Delhi that would take up all issues concerning Kerala with the Centre.

The meeting was called to take stock of the various issues that need to be presented before BJP National President Amit Shah, who will be in the state for three days in the first week of June.
New Delhi, May 9 : The Supreme Court on Tuesday held Calcutta High Court's Justice C.S. Karnan guilty of contempt and ordered that he be jailed for six months.

The court ordered the Director General of West Bengal Police to constitute a team for the implementation of its order "forthwith".

Holding Karnan guilty of contempt for his utterances against the Chief Justice of India and other judges of the apex court and the Madras High Court, a seven-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar had barred the electronic and print media from carrying any of his statements.

"We are of the unanimous view that Justice C.S. Karnan is guilty of contempt of court and interfered with judicial process of grievous nature," the court said in its order.

The bench also said it was satisfied in punishing him and sending him to jail for six months.

Karnan had written a series of letters making allegations against the judges of the apex court and the high court.

In the course of the hearing, the bench said that Karnan was medically fit as it noted that Karnan did not co-operate with the medical team that was set-up on the court's order on May 4 to examine him.

It also said that the medical team too has not given any statement against Karnan.

In its last hearing, the apex court had directed the medical examination, which Karnan refused to undergo.
Taipei, May 10 : A senior military official who once headed Taiwan's Air Defence Missile Command has been arrested for spying for China, the Defence Ministry said on Wednesday.

Major General Hsieh Chia-kang, Deputy Chief of the Army's command for Matsu, a small island off the coast of China's Fujian Province, has been taken into custody, Efe news reported.

Hsieh headed the missile command, which consists of several important battalions and missiles -- Patriot III, Sky Bow II and III and HAWK as well as strategic counterattack missiles (ground-to-ground) and Hsiung Feng missiles.

Investigation Bureau agents on Tuesday searched Hsieh's residence in Pingtung and arrested him.

Taiwan's Defence Ministry said it suspected that Hsieh had been hired by China not only to spy but also to create a spy network.

In recent years, several Taiwanese military and security agents have been accused of spying for China but most were retired.
Kolkata, May 10 : Five central trade unions of Coal India Ltd have called a three-day strike from June 19 to demand an early settlement of wage negotiations and to denounce the merger of coal miners Provident Fund with the EPFO, a union leader said on Wednesday.

The strike decision was taken after the failure of third National Wage Board meeting held on May 8 and 9 in New Delhi.

The five unions -- Centre of Indian Trade Unions, Indian National Trade Union Congress, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, Hind Mazdoor Sabha and All India Trade Union Congress -- represent almost 90 per cent of the workmen in the industry.

"We are demanding no merger of Coal Mines Provident Fund Organisation (CMPF) with the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO)," Indian National Mine workers Federation (INTUC) Secretary General S.Q. Zama said.

"The proposed merger is not in favour of coal workers. In fact, the CMPF Act, 1948, is totally different from the EPF law. The government, without taking operating unions into confidence, is trying to merge these against our wishes," he said.

They also demanded early settlement of wage negotiation.

"The rule suggests that wages of workmen at Coal India have to be negotiated with the management every five years. The National Coal Wage Agreement (NCWA) IX expired in June last year and the NCWA X is overdue," Zama said.

The unions also demanded equal wages for equal work for workmen under contract with different contractors and working at Coal India Ltd mines.
Mumbai, May 11 : Oscar-winning composer A.R. Rahman, who has been a part of the music industry for over 25 years, feels honoured that people of todays generation still sing his tracks.

Rahman appeared on children singing reality show "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li'l Champs Season 6" to promote the upcoming film "Mom".

He became nostalgic when he heard 11-year-old Shreyan Bhattacharya sing his popular single "Maa Tujhe Salaam".

"Your singing took me back to 1997 when I had sung this composition. There is something going on with this generation, they sing like 'ustaads' at such a young age," Rahman said in a statement.

"I'm honoured to be here on the sets of 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li'l Champs' and furthermore honoured that the current generation is still singing my songs. I thoroughly enjoyed all the performances and must say that these kids are phenomenally talented and have a long way to go," he added.

The episode of "Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Li'l Champs Season 6" featuring Rahman will be aired on Saturday on Zee TV.

-*-Shamin Mannan to play chauffeur next Actress Shamin Mannan has been roped in to play a chauffeur in the upcoming episode of "MTV Big F".

The story of the episode will revolve around a girl named Gayatri (Shamin), who is passionate about her job as a female chauffeur. Trying to carve a space for herself, she meets an entrepreneur Ishan Bajaj (Gaurav S Bajaj) as she drives him down to Pune.

Ishan's ideology about women and their capabilities are mildly tainted by his pre-conceived notions that they can never excel in certain fields. As Gayatri and Ishan meet, they fall for each other, but Ishan voices his embarrassment about letting the world know about their relationship due to Gayatri's profession.

"It's really amazing to see how things are changing for good for female cabbies. Around 10 years ago, nobody knew female cabbies would ever exist. But it's encouraging to see so many of them nowadays," Shamin said in a statement.

"Through this particular episode we have tried to show that women can also dominate an industry supposedly ruled by men. I would request the audience to change their perception towards these women.

"People usually underestimate women drivers in general too so its high time people stop stereotyping. And I had super fun driving around in this episode," she added.

The episode will be aired on Saturday.

-*-Bohemia reminisces old days with new single 'Purana wala'

Rapper Bohemia has come up with a new single titled "Purana wala", through which he has reminisced his old days in the rap genre.

The track will be featured on "MTV Spoken Word".

"The rap songs that we have composed till date are a reflection of who we are as a person. When we thought about composing a rap for 'MTV Spoken Word', we knew it had to mirror our real emotions," Bohemia said in a statement.

"It had to be all about our stint with rapping and the things which have distinguished us from other 'desi' artists. The song 'Purana wala' reiterates the fact that certain things are forever and over the years become classics," he added.
Lucknow, May 11 : Japanese Ambassador to India Kenji Hiramatsu called on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday and held discussions on, among other issues, cooperation in state industrial and tourism sectors.

He discussed the opportunities for higher education in his country for students from Uttar Pradesh, an official said.

The Japanese envoy pointed out how India and his county shared longstanding cultural and historic relations.

The Chief Minister said Uttar Pradesh wished to use these ties for the development of the state.

Ambassador Hiramitsu said the upcoming Convention Centre in Varanasi, announced by Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe during his visit to the Uttar Pradesh city along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be completed soon.

Varanasi and Qyoto have signed a 'partner city' agreement under which modernisation of water supply, sewerage, and waste management will be taken up.

Japan has given financial assistance for regeneration of Ganga river in Varanasi, waste disposal and setting up of the Fatima Hospital in Gorakhpur and a school in Ambedkarnagar.

Hiramatsu assured of similar assistance and cooperation by his country in future too.

The Japanese envoy also informed that Official Development Assistance (ODA), an arm of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, also provides loans to minimise pollution from thermal power plants and expressed Japan's desire to make these power plants modern by use of new techniques.

The Chief Minister said his government was working to develop the Buddhist circuit encompassing Varanasi, Sarnath, Kushinagar, Kapilvastu and Shrawasti and other areas for the benefit of pilgrims from Japan and other countries.

The Ambassador said his country's government will be willing to chip in for training of state's teachers in teaching of Japanese language.

The facility for learning Japanese has been made in Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, Banaras Hindu University and Amity University, Hiramatsu added.

Similar to educational exchanges between IIT-Kanpur and Tokyo University, other similar pacts can be inked with state universities for research, the envoy added.

The Ambassador expressed the desire to bring a delegation of industrialists and investors from Japan to Uttar Pradesh, which was welcomed by the Chief Minister.
Jammu, May 12 : Pakistan Rangers violated ceasefire on Friday in Jammu and Kashmir's Arnia sector of the International Border (IB) after which the Indian troops retaliated, sources said.

"Pakistan Rangers resorted to unprovoked firing at our troops in Jammu district at 7 a.m.," Border Security Force (BSF) sources told IANS.

"BSF troops retaliated. The exchanges between the two sides continued till 7.30 a.m.," they said.

Pakistan on Thursday had resorted to heavy firing and shelling on the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district.

One woman was killed in the shelling while two others, including her husband were injured.
For immediate release

12 May 2017

Serabi Gold plc

("Serabi" or the "Company")

Notice of Annual General Meeting and Special Meeting(1)

The Company announces that its Annual General Meeting will be held on Thursday 15 June 2017, at the offices of Farrer & Co. LLP, 20/23 Lincoln's Inn Fields London WC2A 3LH England at 3.00 pm. The Company has published the formal notice of the meeting (the "Notice") on its website which can be accessed using the following link http://bit.ly/2q5f1Dd. Proxy voting forms are being posted to all shareholders providing details of how to access the Notice and instructions for voting. A copy of the Notice together with proxy voting forms and a copy of the 2016 Annual Report is being posted to all shareholders who are required to receive or have formally requested to receive these documents.

Copies of the 2016 Annual Report are available from the Company's website at www.serabigold.com.

The Notice contains a letter from the Chairman of the Company, Mr Sean Harvey, which is set out below in the Appendix.

(1) Certain resolutions to be proposed at the meeting will be special resolutions requiring approval of more than 75% of the votes cast. Under Canadian National Instrument 54-101, the meeting therefore also constitutes a Special Meeting.

Enquiries:

Serabi Gold plc Michael Hodgson Tel: +44 (0)20 7246 6830 Chief Executive Mobile: +44 (0)7799 473621 Clive Line Tel: +44 (0)20 7246 6830 Finance Director Mobile: +44 (0)7710 151692 Email: contact@serabigold.com Website: www.serabigold.com Beaumont Cornish Limited

Nominated Adviser Roland Cornish Tel: +44 (0)20 7628 3396 Michael Cornish Tel: +44 (0)20 7628 3396 Peel Hunt LLP

UK Broker Matthew Armitt Tel: +44 (0)20 7418 9000 Ross Allister Tel: +44 (0)20 7418 9000 Blytheweigh

Public Relations Tim Blythe Tel: +44 (0)20 7138 3204 Camilla Horsfall Tel: +44 (0)20 7138 3224

Copies of this announcement are available from the Company's website at www.serabigold.com.

Neither the Toronto Stock Exchange, nor any other securities regulatory authority, has approved or disapproved of the contents of this announcement.

Appendix

The letter from the Chairman of the Company included in the Notice is reproduced below (without material adjustment):

Dear Shareholder

This document provides the formal notice (the "Notice") of the 2017 Annual General Meeting and Special Meeting of the Company to be held at the offices of Farrer & Co LLP, 20/23 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LH, England on 15 June 2017 at 3:00 pm (London time) (the "Meeting"). This document also includes additional information that the Company as a "reporting issuer" in Canada is required to make available pursuant to the requirements of National Instrument 51-102 - Continuous Disclosure Obligations ("NI 51-102") of the Canadian Securities Administrators.

Background

The matters being considered at the 2017 Annual General Meeting and Special Meeting set out in the Notice are, for the most part, items that are routinely considered at such meetings. Both the Palito and Sao Chico Gold Mines are now in a steady state and the Board is eager now to capitalise on this and grow the production base through a combination of organic growth and, where good opportunities become available, acquisition. The Board believes that opportunities to develop the Company may arise over the next twelve months and for this reason is requesting Shareholders to authorise the Board to issue new shares to allow the Company to pursue and commit to these opportunities quickly as and when they arise.

Recommendation

The Directors consider that the resolutions set out in the Notice being put to the Annual General Meeting and Special Meeting are in the best interests of the Company and its Shareholders and are most likely to promote the success of the Company for the benefit of the Shareholders as a whole.

Accordingly, the Directors unanimously recommend that Shareholders vote in favour of the proposed resolutions as they intend to do in respect of their own holdings, where relevant, amounting to an aggregate of 25,246,920 Ordinary Shares, representing approximately 3.61 per cent. of the Company's Ordinary Shares.

Yours faithfully

T Sean Harvey

Non-executive Chairman

ENDS
Jammu, May 12 : One Border Security Force (BSF) trooper was injured on Friday in ceasefire violation by Pakistan on the International Border (IB) in Jammu and Kashmir's Arnia sector, sources said.

The trooper was injured in unprovoked firing by the Pakistan Rangers here when he was cutting tall grass on the Indian side of the IB, a BSF source told IANS.

"After the BSF retaliated, firing from Pakistani side stopped," the source added.

The firing went on for 30 minutes.

Pakistan on Thursday had resorted to heavy firing and shelling on the Line of Control (LoC) in Rajouri district.

One woman was killed in the shelling while two others, including her husband were injured.
Dublin, May 12 : The European Union's Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier has pledged the 27-member bloc's full support for Ireland's negotiations.

"Today (Thursday), in front of these two houses, I want to reassure the Irish people: in this negotiation Ireland's interest will be the Union's interest," said Barnier, while delivering a speech to a joint sitting of the upper and lower houses of Irish parliament.

"We are in this negotiation together and a united EU will be here for you," he said.

Because of its historical, geographical and economic ties with the UK, Ireland is in a unique position, Xinhua news agency reported.

"With the depreciation of the sterling, Brexit is already having an impact on the value of Irish exports to the UK. In particular, the agri-food sector," he said.

"If the conditions are right, a close partnership with the UK is in everybody's interest. And in Ireland's interest in particular," he added.

Barnier said the UK has been a member of the EU for 44 years and that it should remain a close partner with the bloc.

At a summit held in Brussels on April 29, the leaders of the 27 remaining EU countries adopted unanimously the Brexit guidelines.

According to the guidelines, the EU, throughout the negotiations, will maintain unity and act as one with the aim of reaching a result that is "fair and equitable for all member states and in the interest of its citizens".

The two year timeframe of Brexit negotiations ends on March 29, 2019.
Washington, May 12 : A new trade deal will allow US beef and natural gas exports to flow into China while opening up the American market for cooked poultry and Chinese banks, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced here.

Under the agreement issued on Thursday, China will allow US beef exports to flow directly to the country for the first time since 2003, while Washington will take steps to authorise Chinese imports of cooked poultry into the country by July 16, CNN reported.

The US and China also agreed to open up US exports of liquefied natural gas to China, which could be a boon for both countries.

Commerce Secretary Ross said the initial agreement, which would also open up the Chinese market to US electronic payment services companies and help Chinese banks gain broader access to the American financial market, would help "bring down" Washington's trade deficit with Beijing, though he did not provide a precise estimate.

Ross called the agreement a "herculean accomplishment" and argued the deal represented the biggest accomplishment in Washington-Beijing trade negotiations "in the whole history of US-China relations".

Trump railed against that deficit during his campaign and vowed to reduce it as President.

While he floated drastic measures like imposing a tariff on Chinese imports, Trump has instead favoured bilateral negotiations thus far.
New Delhi, May 12 : In the wake of the recent Maoist attack on a CRPF contingent that claimed the lives of 25 troopers, the SSB, a specialised force meant to guard key areas of the border with China but which now has seven units deployed in the Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar, has asked its personnel to undergo regular "counter-attack training" and "avoid unnecessary movement".

Archana Ramasundaram, Director General of the Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), issued the instructions on May 5, just 11 days after the deadly Maoist attack on the 74 Battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district.

The four-point instructions to the seven units (over 8,000 troopers) -- two each in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, and three in Bihar -- included regular counter-attack training for personnel, avoiding unnecessary movement of vehicles carrying its troopers, intelligence-gathering and civic action programmes.

"Security precautions as per prescribed SOP (standard operating procedure) be adhered to while making movement in Maoist areas. The troopers should be imparted regular training on field tactics such as attacks and counter-attacks. All kinds of unnecessary movement should be stopped and administrative movement should be regulated," Ramasundaram's instructions, accessed by IANS, state.

"Intelligence network be geared up, sources be cultivated and coordination with all sister agencies be maintained for obtaining or sharing of valuable intelligence inputs.

"Troops should be imparted regular training on field tactics such as attacks, counter-attacks, Cordon and Search Operation, raid, Search and Destroy Operation, and Road Opening Party so that they are able to professionally respond in case of any eventuality," the instructions say.

These further say that civic action programmes should be organised as per the requirement and need of the local population so that they actually benefit.

A day after the instructions were issued, sources said, the SSB halted the unnecessary movement of its vehicles used to ferrying rations from markets.

"The movement of vehicles for the medical examination of troopers has also been minimised. The troopers have also been told to take leave in groups so that they get security during their travel," the source added.

An SSB commandant, requesting anonymity, said that the force was lucky not to face any big leftist rebel attack like the April 24 Sukma massacre in which a 99-member CRPF contingent, providing security cover to road construction workers, was attacked by over 300 heavily armed Maoists between Burkapal and Chintagufa villages.

"The basic motive of our chief's security review instructions are to save the lives of our personnel and make them more vigilant," the officer said.

In one of the biggest Maoist attacks on the SSB, the officer said, three troopers were killed when a powerful Improvised Explosive Device (IED) exploded on National Highway 16 in Chhattisgarh's troubled Dantewada district in October 2011.

A total of 3,136 people -- including civilians, security personnel and police informers -- were killed in 7,781 incidents of Maoist-related violence between January 2011 and April 15, 2017, in the 10 states, including Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtraa and Uttar Pradesh, where the ultras are active.

(Rajnish Singh can be contacted at rajnish.s@ians.in)
Seoul, May 12 : The South Korean government on Friday ordered car makers Hyundai and Kia Motors to recall about 240,000 cars, after a tip off from a whistleblower, the media reported.

It is the first time the country's government has issued a compulsory vehicle recall, reports the BBC.

Initially, Hyundai and Kia had refused to accept the forced recall but later announced they would comply.

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has ordered the recall across 12 models, including Hyundai Motor's luxury Gensis and Equus sedans and best-selling Avante compact sedans due to faulty auto parts and manufacturing defects, The Korea Herald reported.

The move by the ministry came after a former Hyundai employee raised concerns about defects which affected 12 different car models.

The planned recalls will add to the 1.5 million cars which Hyundai and Kia offered to fix last month in South Korea and the US over possible engine stalling.
New Delhi : The Ajmer Shatabdi pulls into the New Delhi station every night at around 11 pm. During the six-hour journey from Ajmer, the train serves tea, snacks, soup, dinner and dessert -- more food than an average person can eat in that time.

As soon as passengers start getting off the train, ragpickers jump in and start scrounging for waste material and leftovers --samosas, biscuits, plastic bottle, wraps and so on. They are a part of India's massive reserve of ragpickers -- their numbers are estimated between 1.5 million and 4 million; Delhi itself has over 500,000.

Ragpickers sustain themselves by collecting, sorting and segregating waste and then trading it. In doing so, they help clean up a significant proportion of the 62 million tonnes of waste generated annually in India.

Given that rag-picking is a totally informal sector it is hard to quantify how much waste is collected in this manner, but there are rough indicators: Only 75-80 per cent of the waste generated is collected by municipal bodies. And more than 90 per cent of India does not have a proper waste disposal system.

A lot of garbage clearing thus is the done informally, by ragpickers who work without any job security, salary or dignity. Not just that, they are regularly exposed to cuts, infections, respiratory diseases and tuberculosis -- apart from poverty, humiliation, harassment, and sexual abuse on the streets.

"This informal sector has saved the country. They are doing a good job and I have decided to recognise their efforts. We will grant (a) national award," former Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar had declared in 2015 at an event on waste management in New Delhi.

It was declared that a cash prize of Rs 150,000 ($2,330) would be given to three ragpickers and three associations involved in innovative waste management. More than a year later there is no information available about the scheme.

Javadekar has stated that India will, in another couple of decades, generate nearly thrice the waste it currently does -- "165 million tonnes by 2030 and 450 million tonnes by 2050". Only 22-28 per cent of the waste now collected is processed or treated.

Ragpickers actually complement the work of civic bodies, Shashi Bhushan Pandit, who runs the All India Kabadi Mazdoor Mahasangh, pointed out in a March 2016 interview.

"According to the law under which a municipality is set up, it places dustbins according to the size of the population. It is assumed that the generator of the waste will drop it in the bin. After that, it is the responsibility of the municipality to collect it from there (the transfer station) and treat it at the landfill," Pandit said. "However, it is not the responsibility of the municipality to pick up the garbage from the source. That's why the informal sector has filled this gap."

Papiya Sarkar, Senior Programme Officer (Chemicals and Health), Toxics Link, a New-Delhi based NGO, classifies waste pickers into four categories: Those who carry sacks and collect anything of resale value from open drains and bins; the kabadi or bhangar men on bicycles who collect from households and then segregate glass, paper, and bottles from plastics; those who ride tricycles and collect almost 50 kg of waste each day and travel long distances to sell them, and finally, those who work for scrap dealers.

Darkness Under the Lamps was a study undertaken by Harsh Mander and V. Manikandan in 2011 at the Centre for Equity Studies in Madanpur Khadar, an urban village in south Delhi where many ragpickers live. They complained that they were treated "with suspicion and derision, because of their extreme poverty, vocation of rag-picking, minority faith and suspicions that they are from Bangladesh by the middle-class community living around (sic)". The children of ragpickers often carry on with the same occupation and are rarely educated.

The government treats them no differently. Pandit has demanded inclusive rights, health benefits, safety gear and social security for ragpickers because they provide services that benefit the environment. "In Bogota, Columbia, every ragpicker is paid $2 per day by the municipality. In Brazil, they have made sure that only the ragpicker can pick the waste (from the source). Why can't India do it?" he asked.

In September 2016, with the support of the Kachra Kamgar Union, we visited a ragpickers' colony near Vasant Kunj, close to the Delhi airport. More than 250 families here depend on rag-picking to earn a living.

The men leave their homes early morning with their waste carts. A few of them work where the municipal corporation deposits waste, some scour the roads and others go to specific neighbourhoods looking for kabadi from homes.

Each ragpicker has a different story to tell, but they all suffered acute destitution once. Ranjit is a landless labourer from Bihar who came to Delhi seeking employment. Kundan once grazed cattle for a Chhatarpur farm in south Delhi. Another man washed toilets at the Delhi airport before settling down at the ragpickers' colony.

Most ragpickers in this colony, however, work independently. Several men we spoke to agreed that they had tried their hand at other things but came back to rag-picking because it paid better. Migrants here also help their kin to move to Delhi and join the trade. This meant that most people in the basti (neighbourhood) came from two states: Bihar and West Bengal.

The women we met do not go out for picking, but are expected to sort waste at home. Even eight- or 10-year-old children join their parents in sorting waste.

"If you work 12-14 hours a day, you can make a living. But rates have gone down significantly. A sack of rag that fetched us Rs 300 five years ago now gets us no more than Rs 175-200. See how much rice and vegetables cost now -- it is impossible to survive," complained Kundan.

Police harassment is a common complaint. Young boys are picked up on false allegations and beaten up in police stations, said the residents. Sometimes they pick up mobile phones or other lost or stolen goods and then get arrested for committing a crime. However, in this colony, residents said the union ensures that they are not harassed much.

Hair and plastic fetch the best rates but sorting waste is a difficult and hazardous job. "We open sacks and there are soiled sanitary napkins in newspapers, human excreta in polythene, shards of glass, syringes or nails. We cut ourselves, develop rashes and infection. Rotten food makes us sick. But we have no pension, no recognition, no medical facilities," said a ragpicker.

We asked a few women hailing from Uttar Pradesh for the one thing they would ask from the government. Disposal bins for the waste leftover from sorting, they said. Without bins, this waste simply piles up in their homes and lanes.

"Give us that and access to water. We buy two buckets of water every other day and pay Rs 1,000-2,000 a month to the one person who has a hand pump. If we can get a tanker, we could bathe properly. Yes we deal with garbage, but we want to be able to live in a space that is clean," the women said.

(In arrangement with IndiaSpend.org, a data-driven, non-profit, public interest journalism platform. Rajanya Bose and Anirban Bhattacharya are senior researchers with Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi. The views expressed are those of IndiaSpend. Feedback at respond@indiaspend.org)
Washington, May 12 : The US will send delegates to attend the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing scheduled for May 14-15, an official said.

The US "recognises the importance" of the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative and it will send delegates to attend the forum, a statement issued by the US Commerce Department on Thursday night said.

At the upcoming forum, all parties will identify major cooperative projects, set up working groups and establish an investment cooperation centre, Xinhua news agency reported.

They will also sign financing agreements to support their cooperative projects.

During a meeting at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last month, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his US counterpart Donald Trump that Beijing welcomes Washington's participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.

Currently, more than 100 countries and international organisations have voiced their support for the Belt and Road Initiative, among which more than 40 have signed cooperation agreements with China.

The Belt and Road Initiative, proposed by China in 2013 and comprising the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, aims to build a trade and infrastructure network connecting Asia with Europe and Africa along, and beyond, the ancient Silk Road trade routes.
New Delhi, May 12 : A US Congresswoman of Indian origin has cautioned the Donald Trump administration against hasty changes in the H1-B visa regime, saying this should be done via the legislative route rather than through a presidential executive order.

Representative Pramila Jayapal (Democrat, Washington), now in India as part of a US Congressional delegation headed by Leader of the Democrats in the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, believes that there is bipartisan support for continuing the H1-B visa programme "perhaps with some changes".

She is also hopeful that the Trump administration will continue to prioritise India though there are concerns about the growing process between the US and China and US and Russia but she feels that India "should be right in there".

"You can't just stop processing when people have been waiting in line for three years to get those H1-Bs and then put a barrier there and then say you are not going to get these...," Jayapal told IANS in an interview.

"There has to be a thoughtful roll-out to any changes we might want to make to the H1-B programme and really it should come from Congressional authority, not from the President's executive orders," she said.

Her comments come after President Trump signed the "Buy American, Hire American" executive order last month to bring in major changes regarding the H1-B visa programme, including closing loopholes for immigration fraud and a shift from the current lottery system to a mechanism that favours higher-paid and higher-skilled workers.

Indian IT companies are likely to be badly affected if the rules are brought in.

Stating that every country has to make sure that it is taking care of its workers, Jayapal, however, said that the H1-B visa programme "is incredibly valuable". She said that there has been some abuse of H1-B visas and that needed to be addressed.

"But I really do believe that there is a lot of bipartisan support for continuing the H1-B visa programme, perhaps with come changes," the Chennai-born former pro-immigration advocacy activist.

Stating that she is on the immigration sub-committee that is chaired by Jim Sensenbrenner (Republican, Wisconsin), who is also a part of the visiting delegation, she said: "He (Sensenbrenner) raised the issue of H1-Bs in an internal meeting and you know, I think again that there is a lot of support for an H1-B programme that provides opportunities for Indians to come to the United States, provides opportunities for them to stay and also benefits India and Indian companies."

Regarding India-US ties following the transition from the Democrats to the Republicans in the White House, the Congresswoman said she hoped that the Trump administration would continue to prioritise India.

"We were so proud of President (Barack) Obama at many levels but certainly the fact that he prioritised US-India relations was a huge benefit I think to the United States and to the world and I think probably those relations between India and the United States were never better in the last few years," she said.

"We very much want this administration to continue to prioritise this relationship. We hope that they appoint an excellent ambassador (to India) very soon."

Jayapal said that apart from diplomatic ties, "there are independent economic relationships that have been established regardless of which administration is in office".

Asked about Trump's policies on South Asia and Indian Americans, she said that there are now five Indian-origin members in the US Congress -- Senator Kamala Harris and Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi, Ro Khanna and Ami Bera, apart from her.

Stating that there is an increased interest in South Asia, she said: "I don't think that the President himself is going to determine whether or not there are ties with South Asia. We are going to make sure that we continue to lift up the region and the importance of the region and the importance of the contributions of the South Asian Americans to the United States."

Regarding Trump's comments last month that countries like India, China and Russia have done nothing on climate change, she said that during the visiting delegation's meeting with Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, the latter said that this was not just a negotiation, it was a deep belief that India has that it must address climate change and the effects of climate change.

"I don't think that India will back away from that, from taking on the climate question," she said.

Asked about China's criticism of the Congressional delegation's meeting with the Dalai Lama, she said that "we know that China would not be happy".

"It has not changed our resolve to really make sure that we address the issue of an autonomous Tibet and the United States I think in a bipartisan way continues to be deeply committed to speaking for autonomy for Tibet and the ability to practise their religion and their culture and their philosophies freely."

Asked about Washington's position on Beijing's One Belt One Road initiative, Jayapal said that Foreign Secretary Jaishankar informed the delegation that while it was seen as an investment, many of the Chinese investments were actually in the form of loans to governments and not grants.

"So we are looking to see how that rolls out," she stated.

(Aroonim Bhuyan can be contacted at aroonim.b@ians.in)
Chennai, May 12 : The All India Insurance Employees Association (AIIEA), one of the major unions in the government-owned general insurance companies, is demanding the merger of all four companies into one for faster growth, said a top leader on Friday.

"The central government is planning to merge three non-life insurance companies -- United India Insurance, Oriental Insurance and National Insurance -- barring New India Assurance," Sanjay Jha, Secretary Standing committee (General Insurance, AIIEA), told IANS.

He said the government is planning to merge the three companies mainly to list and divest its holdings.

According to Jha, the union welcomes the merger idea but it should also include New India Assurance as well.

"The merger of all the four companies would prevent unhealthy competition amongst them, reduce marketing expenses. That apart, the risk retention capacity will increase for the merged entity thereby saving foreign exchange in terms of reinsurance premium outgo," Jha added.

At a time when unions in the banking sector are against consolidation of government-owned banks, this is a diametrically opposite demand from the general insurance company union in the public sector.

According to the business figures released by the insurance regulator, the four government-owned companies had earned a premium of Rs 59,357.92 crore last fiscal commanding a market share of 46.66 per cent.

For 2015-16, the four companies had earned a total premium income of Rs 47,690.68 crore.

As to the other financial numbers, Jha said that at the end of 2015-16 the total investments of the four companies stood at Rs 110,182.41 crore; total assets Rs 145,178 crore and reserves and surplus Rs 23,779 crore.

Queried about the possible reduction in the number of branches and the staff post-merger, Jha said initially the number of branches may go down and the staff may be redeployed.

"But that will be for a short term. Post-merger, the business will grow necessitating opening new branches and adding staff strength. Look at the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) which is opening new offices every year," Jha replied.

At the end of 2015-16, the total number of branches of all the four companies stood at 8,331 and extension counters at 4,200 and the total number of staff stood at over 67,000, Jha added.
New Delhi, May 12 : Questioning the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs), the Trinamool Congress on Friday demanded that the Election Commission revert to using paper ballots for ensuring fair polls.

"We have said that EVMs are not at all reliable and strongly demanded (that) the EC start using paper ballots in all future polls," Trinamool Vice President Mukul Roy said after attending an all-party meeting here convened by the Election Commission.

"Our party chief Mamata Banerjee had in 2004 raised questions about reliability of EVMS. Even most advanced countries now have gone back to using ballot papers. We must also go back to the old system of using ballot papers," said Roy.

He said the party has also advocated state funding of elections.

"The only way to ensure transparency and free and fair polls is state funding of elections. Our party has been demanding this for long and we today raised this with the EC," added Roy.
TORONTO, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mandalay Resources Corporation ("Mandalay" or the "Company") (TSX:MND) announced today that Gold Exchange Limited (GEL), an unaffiliated special purpose vehicle incorporated in Jersey, has issued the announcement attached as Schedule A to this press release (the Announcement) in respect of GELs repurchase offer (the Repurchase) and consent solicitation (the Consent Solicitation) in respect of its U.S.$60,000,000 principal amount 5.875% secured exchangeable bonds due 2019 (the Bonds) that was launched on April 19, 2017.



As indicated in the Announcement, Mandalay understands that:

the meeting of Bondholders in respect of the proposed amendments to the Bonds that were the subject of the Consent Solicitation has been adjourned indefinitely;



the Repurchase has been withdrawn; and



GEL has entered into discussions with Bondholders with respect to implementing alternative arrangements in respect of the Bonds which are substantially similar to those that were originally proposed pursuant to the Repurchase and Consent Solicitation (the Alternative Arrangements).

Mandalay has been advised that to date GEL has received unanimous support from Bondholders in respect of the Alternative Arrangements. Mandalay will provide a further update on the Alternative Arrangements once GEL has determined whether or not they will be implemented.

For Further Information:

Mark Sander

President and Chief Executive Officer

Greg DiTomaso

Director of Investor Relations

About Mandalay Resources Corporation:

Mandalay Resources is a Canadian-based natural resource company with producing assets in Australia, Sweden and producing and exploration projects in Chile. The Company is focused on executing a roll-up strategy, creating critical mass by aggregating advanced or in-production gold, copper, silver and antimony projects in Australia, the Americas and Europe to generate near-term cash flow and shareholder value.

Forward-Looking Statements:

This news release contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements regarding the Companys production of gold, silver and antimony for the 2017 fiscal year. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements depending on, among other things, changes in commodity prices and general market and economic conditions. The factors identified above are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect Mandalay. A description of additional risks that could result in actual results and developments differing from those contemplated by forward-looking statements in this news release can be found under the heading Risk Factors in Mandalays annual information form dated March 31, 2017, a copy of which is available under Mandalays profile at www.sedar.com. In addition, there can be no assurance that any inferred resources that are discovered as a result of additional drilling will ever be upgraded to proven or probable reserves. Although Mandalay has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

Schedule A

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN OR INTO THE UNITED STATES, ITS TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS, ANY STATE OF THE UNITED STATES OR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA (THE UNITED STATES)

12 May 2017

GOLD EXCHANGEABLE LIMITED ANNOUNCES ADJOURNMENT OF MEETING AND WITHDRAWAL OF REPURCHASE OFFER

Notice is hereby given that the Meeting of the Bondholders convened by Gold Exchangeable Limited (the Issuer) in relation to its U.S.$60,000,000 5.875 per cent. Secured Exchangeable Bonds due 2019 (the Bonds) (ISIN: XS1061459381) by the notice dated 19 April 2017 as notified through the clearing systems to holders of the Bonds (Bondholders) was adjourned indefinitely at the request of the Issuer.

Notice is also hereby given that the repurchase offer made by the Issuer in relation to the Bonds, which was made on the terms, and subject to the conditions, contained in the repurchase and consent solicitation memorandum dated 19 April 2017 (as amended on 27 April 2017) (the Repurchase and Consent Solicitation Memorandum), has been withdrawn by the Issuer. Capitalised terms used in this announcement have the same meaning ascribed to them in the Repurchase and Consent Solicitation Memorandum.

The Issuer has entered into discussions with Bondholders on alternative arrangements in respect of the Bonds which are substantially similar to those contained in the Proposal. The Issuer intends to implement these arrangements as soon as possible, and to date has received unanimous indicative support in respect of these arrangements from the Bondholders (subject to completion of the necessary documentation).

Given the intention to amend the Conditions in a manner similar to those contained in the Proposal, the Issuer will not comply with the requirements of Condition 3.2 of the Bonds to register Gold Shares (as defined in the Conditions) in the Custody Accounts (as defined in the Conditions) on 14 May 2017.

To the extent a Bondholder had submitted an Electronic Instruction prior to the Expiration Deadline, it may request the relevant clearing system to unblock the Bonds from its account.
Dickoya (Sri Lanka), May 12 : In the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to the Tamil-dominated tea plantation area in Sri Lanka, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said there is no better sight than a multilingual society living in peace and harmony and exhorted that threads of unity should be strengthened and not separated.

With Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe by his side, he said diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation. Modi was addressing a strong gathering of Tamils of Indian origin, largely plantation labour.

Modi had visited Sri Lanka two years ago and had undertaken a trip to Jaffna in the north at that time. He pointedly mentioned that he is the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the hill areas of "this beautiful region".

The plantation Tamils are distinct from the Tamils of North and East in the island nation, which has for over three decades faced a violent struggle in the two areas by Tamils for their rights.

In a 30-minute speech peppered with quotes from the works of Tamil saints and scholars, he also announced India's assistance in the construction of 10,000 additional houses in upcountry areas, where 4,000 have already been built under ownership basis for the beneficiaries.

He said that India has decided to extend the 1990 emergency ambulance service, currently operating in Western and Southern provinces, to all other provinces.

Modi expressed India's continued commitment to the people of Sri Lanka in their journey of economic progress of the Tamils and others in Sri Lanka.

Recalling the tremendous difficulties and challenges faced by their forefathers when they came from India to settle down here about 200 years ago, he said, "Those men and women were of strong will and courage, who undertook the journey of their life from India to the then Ceylon."

"Their journey may have been uphill and their struggles hard but they never gave up. Today, we remember and salute that spirit," he said.

The Prime Minister told the Tamils that being the children of Tamil mother, it was a matter of pride that they also speak Sinhala.

"And language is much more than a tool for communication. It defines a culture, forges relationships, joints communities and acts as a strong unifying force. There is no better sight than a multilingual society living in peace and harmony. Diversity calls for celebration and not confrontation," he told them.

Recalling the links between Tamils and Sinhalese, Modi said they are historically intertwined. Several Buddhist texts including Jataka tales mention Saint Agastya, whom many consider to be the father of Tamil language.

The Sinhalese Nayak Kings of Kandy had matrimonial alliances with the Nayak Kings of Madurai and Tanjore and Sinhala and Tamil were court languages, Modi recalled.

"Hindu and Buddhist shrines were both respected and revered. We need to strengthen, not separate, these threads of unity and harmony," he said.

"We are for strengthening the spirit of unity and harmony and you must be a force in this," he said, while addressing the Indian-origin Tamils.

He heaped praise on the contribution by Soumiamurthy Thondaman, the founder of the Ceylon Workers Congress, and recalled the troubles that the Indian-origin people would have encountered when their ancestors came from India.

Modi said that the Tamils had encountered hardship in establishing their identity in a newly independent country through peaceful struggles. In this context, he referred to the late Thondaman, who had worked hard for the prosperity of the plantation Tamils and in their campaign for economic progress.

He recalled that Mahatma Gandhi had made a single visit to the plantation areas of Kandy, Nuwara Eliya and other places and in commemoration of the historic visit the Mahatma Gandhi Centre was set up with Indian assistance in 2015 in Matale.

The Prime Minister said that the plantation Tamils would be completing shortly 200 years of their migration to the hill areas, and as a mark of this milestone "we will continue to participate in the journey for economic prosperity and progress".

"We see you as a seamless part of our continuum. We want to nurture this relationship between Sri Lanka and India and establish ties in which my government's priority is to work for the progress of all Indians and all Sri Lankans," he said.

He said the Indian government had from 1947 undertaken programmes in education, health and community development centres in cooperation with the Sri Lankan government.

Under this 700 scholarships are available to students either in Sri Lanka or in India.

Praising the hard work of the plantation Tamils, he said Ceylon tea is famous the world over but it is less known that the sweat and toil of the Tamils are behind it. Sri Lanka is the third largest exporter of tea globally and earns USD 1.5 billion as foreign exchange for the country.
Hyderabad, May 12 : BJP national President Amit Shah will visit Telangana for three days from May 22, a party leader said on Friday.

BJP Telangana unit President K. Laxman said Shah will visit Munugudu in Nalgonda district on May 22, and tour Nagarjunasagar and Miryalguda on May 23.

He will address party meetings in Nakrekal, Bhongir and Hyderabad on May 24.

Shah will also meet party district unit chiefs, other office-bearers and leaders during his visit to gear up the cadres for the 2019 general and state elections.

Laxman said the party will prepare a road map for the 2019 elections.

Addressing a meeting of BJP leaders from Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency will be top on the BJP chief's tour programme.

Shah was scheduled to address BJP's booth-level workers in the constituency last month but his visit was put off.

The BJP is determined to make a serious bid to wrest the Hyderabad seat from All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), which has been winning this seat since 1984.

Laxman said the party will try to win the support of poor Muslims in Hyderabad to defeat the AIMIM.
Hyderabad, May 12 : All opposition parties in Telangana on Friday came together for another round of protest over the shifting of 'Dharna Chowk', a popular venue for staging protests in Hyderabad.

Leaders of all opposition parties and mass organisations participated in a silent protest at Telangana Martyrs' Memorial at Gun Park, organised by Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC).

TJAC chairman Kodandaram, a bitter critic of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, led the protest and warned the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government that if it failed to withdraw the move, a march to 'Dharna Chowk' will be organised on May 15.

Kodandaram, who had played a key role in Telangana movement along with Chandrasekhar Rao, alleged that the government was trying to snatch democratic and constitutional rights of the people.

TJAC leader said that for over a month the opposition parties had been raising their voice over the issue but the government was bent on shifting 'Dharna Chowk'.

Main opposition Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) declared their support to the proposed march.

State Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy said people had hoped that there will be greater freedom and liberty in Telangana state but the government was curbing people's right to dissent.

The TDP's Telangana unit President L. Ramna said the party would extend full support to TJAC on the issue.

'Dharna Chowk' has been the venue of thousands of protests by political parties, people's organisations, students' groups, employees' unions and others for over two decades.

Chief Minister Chandrasekhar Rao had last month defended the police move to shift 'Dharna Chowk' to the city outskirts saying that some parties were deliberately creating problems in the name of protests.

In March, leaders of all opposition parties had come together to meet Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan Rao and submit a memorandum protesting the government's move.
Chennai, May 12 : Kuchipudi dancer Sandhya Raju's debut Malayalam thriller "Careful" has been slated for release on May 18.

Directed by V.K. Prakash, the film also features Vijay Babu, Jomol, Parvathy Nambiar and Aju Varghese in prominent roles.

Sandhya will be seen as a journalist in the movie alongside Vineeth Kumar.

"May 18 will mark the beginning of my journey as a Malayalam actor and I am hopeful that the audience will love my character as much as 'Careful' team and the movie will thrill everyone in theatres," Sandhya said in a statement.

"Every scene in the film gave me an opportunity put to test my acting abilities. I am thankful to the director who let me approach the role with confidence and as a result get the best out of me.

"It is a pure family entertainer and everyone will enjoy this film because of its universal appeal and the way the story pans out from beginning to end. There is a lot of thrill in the film that will keep the audience enthralled and I am hopeful that the audience will appreciate my role as a journalist," she added.

"Careful" has been produced by Suresh Balaji and George Pius of Wide Angle Creations.
New York, May 12 : Even as US President Donald Trumps daughter Ivanka Trumps book about women in the workforce is being brutally thrashed by critics across the United States, the book has made the cut for New York Times bestseller list for May 21, 2017.

"Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules For Success," which was released May 2, will debut at No. 4 on the "Advice, How-To and Misc. and Monthly Best Sellers" list for the New York Times, CNN Money reported.

The book is essentially an advisory ce manual for women in the workforce in which Ivanka Trump prescribes the methods of productivity that have worked for her over the years. She also incorporates anecdotes from her upbringing and inspirational quotes and stories from a range of influential figures like Sheryl Sandberg, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Jane Goodall.

Trump's book, according to Fortune.com, sold 10,445 print copies in the first five days after its release. By comparison, Sheryl Sandberg's 2013 book about women in the workforce, "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead," sold 74,176 print copies in its first week on the market.

However, book critics across the United States have criticised the book for its narrow approach and elitist outlook. The Washington Post, in its review, said that Ivanka Trump's privileged life undermines the message of her book.

The New York Times, too, was not impressed by its contents. Calling it a "strawberry milkshake of inspirational quotes," the review raised a number of questions on the contents of the book.

Furthermore, several prominent personalities who find mention in the book have also taken a dig at Ivanka Trump. "Don't use my story in #WomenWhoWork unless you are going to stop being #complicit," Reshmi Saujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code, whose career has been featured in the book, wrote on Twitter.

Conservationist and primatologist Jane Goodall, who has also been included in the book, told CNN Money that she wasn't aware Trump would include her. "I sincerely hope she will take the full import of my words to heart. She is in a position to do much good or terrible harm," Goodall told the website.

From Buzzfeed to Huffington Post and Business Insider, the list of publications which have brutally thrashed this new book goes on and on. On the other hand, the book is doing well commercially.
Kandy, May 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday visited the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic here which houses the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha.

"An architectural wonder housing shared religious heritage. PM @narendramodi arrives at the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay tweeted.

Modi made his way to the historic temple accompanied by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena amid heavy rain and offered floral tribute.

Completed in 1595, the temple is located within the royal palace complex of the former kingdom of Kandy.

Kandy is a Unesco World Heritage site mainly on account of the temple.

Earlier in the day, Modi was the chief guest at the inauguration in Colombo of the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

Thereafter, he inaugurated a multi-specialty hospital built with Indian aid at Dickoya in the central Sri Lankan hill district of Nuwara Eliya.

He also addressed a public rally attended by Indian-origin Tamil tea plantation workers in Dickoya.

Modi will unveil a plaque commemorating the foundation laying of the Faculty of Kandyan Dance at the Sri Lankan International Buddhist Academy in Pallekelle, that will be constructed with India's grant assistance.

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

This is his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.
Tokyo, May 12 : Twenty immigrants, detained in Japan, have begun a hunger strike to protest against inhuman conditions in the country's detention centres, the non-profit Provisional Release Association said on Friday.

The detainees, aged between 22 and 25, from 12 countries including Peru, China, India, Bangladesh, Iran, Nigeria and Cameroon, began the hunger strike at the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau on Tuesday protesting against multiple detentions and human rights violations at the centre, Efe news reported.

The protestors were also demanding an improvement in conditions at other detention centres, following the death of a Vietnamese citizen from heart attack in March in another detention centre, where he was allegedly not provided with timely medical help, said the Association.

The detainees, who handed over their grievances in a letter to the director of the Regional Immigration office, also said they have been intimidated and threatened during interrogation at their centre.

A spokesperson of the immigration office, under the Japanese Ministry of Justice, told Efe news that 20 people were on hunger strike and they have been given a complaint box to register their grievances.

The spokesperson said the detention centre is managed according to Japanese law, and added there was a provision for third party audits to review its conditions.

The protestors are expected to continue their hunger strike until their demands are met.

Nearly 570 irregular migrants remain detained at the regional centre.

Some human rights organisations and national media have criticised the poor conditions in which these people are being held -- in particular, harsh interrogations or insufficient medical facilities -- along with Japan's strict immigration policy.

In 2016, Japan accepted 28 refugees, representing 0.25 per cent of the total of 10,901 applications, a record number of asylum seekers for the Asian country, according to the Japanese Ministry of Justice.
Ronald Ross, the British doctor who established how malaria is spread, by his research in India at the end of the 19th century Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi : Affecting humans across all continents for centuries, this debilitating disease was long believed to be caused by unhealthy vapours, which gave its name - malaria (from Latin for bad air). While several scientists in the 19th century began zeroing in on its actual cause, the definitive proof was obtained by a British doctor in India who paid a volunteer eight annas for being bitten the same number of times by the suspected vector.

And Ronald Ross, who would be knighted and win the second Noble Prize for Medicine (not without controversy), celebrated his discovery by writing a poem to his wife - ending "I know this little thing/A myriad men will save/O Death, where is thy sting? Thy victory, O Grave?" (the last lines a reworking of the hymn "Abide With Me").

Though the discovery in August 1897 was built on work of many scientists around the world since the beginning of the century, Ross (1857-1932), whose 160th birth anniversary is on Saturday (May 13), was also a mathematician, novelist, dramatist, poet, amateur musician, composer and artist though it is as a persistent -- and impulsive medical researcher he is most famous.

Born in Almora in the family of a British general, he studied in Britain where he proved to be exceptionally good in mathematics and wanted to be a writer but was admitted to St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College by his father in 1874.

Though he spent most of his time writing poems and plays, he did pass his examinations to become a surgeon in 1880. He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1881 and was posted to various areas including Madras, Bangalore (where in 1883 he noticed mosquitoes could be controlled by limiting their access to water and suffered from malaria himself), Baluchistan and even the Andaman Islands.

His interest in malaria was sparked by a meeting with Sir Patrick Manson, the "father of tropical medicine", during a spell of leave in London in 1894 and they discussed findings of Charles Laveran, a French army surgeon in Algeria who had discovered parasitical cells in the blood of a patient.

It was in Secundrabad, where he was posted in 1895, that Ross began his research to ascertain whether mosquitoes transmitted malaria parasites, but for years, made no headway.

"Eventually in July 1897 he reared 20 adult 'brown' mosquitoes from collected larvae. Following identification of a volunteer (Husein Khan) infected with crescents of malignant tertian malaria and the expenditure of 8 annas (one anna per blood-fed mosquito!), Ross embarked on a four-day study of the resultant engorged insects. This 'compact' study was written up and submitted for publication.

"Imagine today sending an article to a leading medical journal 'in which you describe observations on novel objects found on the midguts of just two 'brown' mosquitoes, obtained from larvae of natural origin, that you had previously fed on a naturally infected patient - with no appropriate controls and no replicates! What hope would it have of getting past the editor and reviewers," asked Robert Sinden in an article on Ross and his discovery in the January 2014 bulletin of the World Health Organisation.

Sinden, of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in London's Imperial College, however goes on to say that despite the "perceived inadequacies of the study design, it is difficult to overstate the importance of Ross's paper: the award of a Nobel Prize hardly does justice to the subsequent impact of his conclusions", especially in identifying the most vulnerable stage in the parasite's lifecycle for effective intervention.

But that was not the limit of Ross' contribution to fighting this -- or other dreaded diseases.

Before resigning from the IMS in 1899 after trying unsuccessfully to find the cause of kala azar in eastern India, he subsequently joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and continued to work on prevention of malaria in different parts of the world. He also developed mathematical models for the study of malaria epidemiology.

Ross, who won the Nobel in 1902 (after a tussle with Italian researchers who had also identified the cause in 1897), went on to set up the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases in 1926 which he headed till his death.

But despite his path-breaking work, malaria, which due to its high mortality and morbidity levels, has had the greatest selective pressure on the human genome in recent history, still exerts its malignant effect across some of the world's poorest regions -- though some hope lies in a vaccine due to be tested in Africa the next year.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in )
New Delhi, May 12 : The US intelligence chief has slammed Pakistan for its failure to curb support to anti-India militants and warned Islamabad that ties between the two countries would deteriorate if there is another "high-profile terrorist attack in India".

"They might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan," Director of National Intelligence Daniel R. Coats said during a Congressional hearing on Thursday.

Coats also sought progress into the 2016 Pathankot attack probe as he presented the intelligence community's 2017 assessment of threats to US national security.

"Islamabad's failure to curb support to anti-India militants and New Delhi's growing intolerance of this policy, coupled with a perceived lack of progress in Pakistan's investigations into the January 2016 Pathankot cross-border attack, set the stage for a deterioration of bilateral relations in 2016," he said.

Last year, Jaish-e-Mohamed militants attacked the Indian airbase in Pathankot on January 2 and killed seven security personnel.

Coats said easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in Pathankot air base attack investigation.

Testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence along with key intelligence officials, Coats said that New Delhi-Islamabad relations remain tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by militants crossing into India from Pakistan.

"Increasing numbers of firefights along the Line of Control (LoC), including the use of artillery and mortars, might exacerbate the risk of unintended escalation between these nuclear-armed neighbours," he added.

On Pakistan's pursuit of tactical nuclear weapons, Coats said it "potentially lowers the threshold for their use".

Islamabad has developed short range tactical nuclear missiles to counter India's Cold Start doctrine.

According to the statement, the smaller and more mobile nuclear weapons were more prone to falling in the hands of non-state actors during any crisis situation as they would be outside the relative security of a storage site.

Coats said that Pakistan-based terrorist groups present a sustained threat to US interests in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

"The threat to the US and the West from Pakistani-based terrorist groups will be persistent but diffuse. Plotting against the US homeland will be conducted on a more opportunistic basis or driven by individual members within these groups," he said.

Noting that Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, Coats said anti-Pakistan groups will probably focus more on soft targets.

"The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistan's internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ul-Ahrar, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, ISIS-K, Laskhar-e-Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi al-Alami," he said.

Coats said that the emerging China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will probably offer militants and terrorists additional targets.

Talking about Afghanistan, Coats in his statement said: "The overall situation in Afghanistan will very likely continue to deteriorate, even if international support is sustained."

"Endemic state weaknesses, the government's political fragility, deficiencies of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), Taliban persistence and regional interference will remain key impediments to improvement," he said.

Coats expected Taliban to make gains in 2017 and worsening of the ANSF "due to a combination of Taliban operations, ANSF combat casualties, desertions, poor logistics support, and weak leadership."
Srinagar, May 12 : Clashes broke out between protesters and security forces at many places here post Friday's congregational prayers.

Slogan shouting youths took to the streets after the Friday prayers in Nowhatta area of the old city in Srinagar, police said.

"The protesting youth pelted stones at the deployed security men who used tear smoke shells to disperse them," a police officer said.

Similar clashes broke out in Hajin town of Bandipora district, Sopore town of Baramulla district and in south Kashmir's Shopian town.
Earnings driven by high prices and operational improvements

Highlights

 Net Q1 operating revenues of 35.1m (Q1 2016: 29.1m)

 EBIT/kg before fair value adjustment of 1.67 (Q1 2016: 0.30)

 5,685 tonnes harvested (Q1 2016: 6,741 tonnes)

 Market prices expected to remain robust

 Guiding of 25,000 tonnes in 2017 maintained

Key financials

Q1 2017 Q1 2016 FY 2016 Net operating revenues 35,134 29,105 109,921 EBITDA 11,460 4,213 8,939 EBIT before fair value adjustments 9,496 2,039 672 Equity ratio 60% 55% 55% NIBD 43,711 40,797 42,904 Harvested volume 5,685 6,741 24,342 EBIT/kg before fair value adjustments 1.67 0.30 0.03

Status and outlook

Revenues for the first quarter 2017 were 35.1m (Q1 2016: 29.1m) on harvested volumes of 5,685 tonnes (Q1 2016: 6,741 tonnes). Increased revenue has been driven by further development of the export market, increased contract prices with a focus on customer partnerships together with consistently higher market prices.

Also driven by operational improvements, EBIT/kg was 1.67 (Q1 2016: 0.30), the best result in the history of The Scottish Salmon Company. However, industry wide biological challenges remain a challenge and had an impact on costs in 2016 and which followed through into the first quarter 2017.

The Scottish Salmon Company remains focused on biological improvements, introducing a number of proactive and reactive strategies including: the lease of an additional well boat to ensure operational flexibility and the commissioning of a dedicated hydrolicer and targeted feed regime and the further introduction of cleaner fish throughout marine sites.

During the quarter The Scottish Salmon Company received a positive decision notice for a site at Portree on the Isle of Skye with an additional 2,000 tonnes of consent. This brings the operations in that location to over 4,000 tonnes capacity. Smolt release will commence in September 2018, with first harvests anticipated to start in late 2019.

In Q1 2017, export sales accounted for 47% of value, compared to 43% in Q1 2016. The Scottish Salmon Company continues to target overseas markets, leveraging the value of its provenance and the continued demand for quality Scottish produce. Together with our sales of Label Rouge salmon, Native Hebridean salmon is a key driver of export growth. Developed through a unique native brood stock programme offering 100% traceable Hebridean heritage.

The outlook is for a continued strong demand and with limited global supply growth this paves the way for continued firm prices throughout 2017 and into 2018.

The Scottish Salmon Company expects to harvest about 25,000 tonnes in 2017.

CEO comment

Craig Anderson, Chief Executive Officer at The Scottish Salmon Company, said:

"We remain firmly focused on our long term growth strategy and new site development is an integral part of this strategy. The development of the site at Portree demonstrates this and complements our existing Hebridean operations."

"We have made positive steps to address the biological challenges introducing new initiatives including the commissioning of a hydrolicer and an additional well boat to increase operational efficiencies and increase flexibility."

"The global salmon market remains strong and prices are forecast to remain firm. Demand at home and overseas for Scottish salmon as a premium food product continues. Our aim remains to capitalise on this with our continued drive on exports together with a focus on developing long term customer partnerships. Our Native Hebridean development complements the increasing trend of food provenance which is core to our marketing drive for overseas sales."

Financial calendar

On 23 May, the Company will host an investor presentation in Oslo, providing an update on strategic development and operational and financial status. See http://www.scottishsalmon.je/investor-presentation/ for registration.

The Company will release its first half 2017 results on 30 August 2017. There will be a webcast and telephone conference followed by a Q&A session.

For more information, please contact:

Su Cox, Investor Relations

e-mail: su.cox@scottishsalmon.je

Notes:

The Scottish Salmon Company is the leading producer of premium salmon with operations only in Scotland. The Company is engaged in all stages of the value chain from smolt production through freshwater and marine farming to harvesting and processing, as well as sales and marketing activity. It is dedicated to producing the highest quality Scottish salmon.

All of The Scottish Salmon Company's farms and processing facilities are audited and approved by the internationally acclaimed GlobalG.A.P. accreditation scheme, which includes excellence in fish husbandry and animal welfare.

The Scottish Salmon Company supports the development of health and wellbeing in the local communities in which staff work and live. Around 500 people are employed by the Company, approximately 230 of whom are in the Hebrides with its head office in Edinburgh.

The Scottish Salmon Company Limited is a subsidiary of The Scottish Salmon Company PLC, which is listed on the Oslo Brs stock exchange.

This information is subject of the disclosure requirements acc. to 5-12 vphl (Norwegian Securities Trading Act)
Islamabad, May 12 : At least 25 persons were killed while over 30 others, including the Senate's Deputy Chairman, were injured in an explosion in Pakistan's Balochistan region on Friday.

The bombing took place near a convoy carrying Abdul Ghafoor Haideri as it left a mosque in Mastung, some 90 km from Quetta. At least 35 persons were injured in the blast, Geo News reported.

Mastung police officer Ghazanfar Ali said that Haideri's vehicle got completely damaged in the bombing and his driver and personal assistant were killed.

Haideri was shifted to the Combined Military Hospital in Quetta, said police officials.

"Twenty-five bodies have been shifted to two hospitals in Quetta," said a district health officer in Mastung.

The blast was very powerful, said Haideri, adding that he was deeply saddened by the deaths.

The area was cordoned off by security forces and investigations were underway.

Haideri represents the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) party and most of those injured or killed were JUI-F workers, media reports said.

JUI-F leader Maulana Abdul Malik, condemning the attack, said that Haideri had asked for a bulletproof vehicle which was not provided to him.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif strongly condemned the bombing and expressed his concern for the well-being of Haideri.

Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani and Interior Minister Chaudhary Nisar Ali Khan also condemned the attack. Rabbani said that "terrorists cannot deter [the] nation's resolve against militancy through such coward attacks".

According to the Radio Pakistan website, Rabbani termed the incident a "suicide attack".

It was not confirmed by either the police or rescue personnel whether the explosion was a roadside bomb or a suicide attack.

President Mamnoon Hussain also condemned the attack and expressed the state's resolve to protect the public by completely eradicating terrorism from the country.
Kolkata, May 12 : Aiming to increase India's textiles exports to Japan, the Textiles Committee has invited Japanese experts to evaluate its eight laboratories to ensure that they comply with quality requirements and various compliances for their markets, an official said here on Friday.

"The experts from Japan Textile Products Quality and Technology Centre (QTEC) are currently evaluating eight laboratories of the Textiles Committee. They have already evaluated four laboratories located in Bengaluru, Coimbatore, Chennai and Kolkata. The rest four laboratories which are situated at Ahmedabad, Ludhiana, New Delhi and Mumbai will be evaluated soon," Textile Committee' Joint Director K.S. Muralidhara told IANS.

"Experts are requested to assess the laboratories of the committee and provide suggestions to upgrade the testing facilities so that they can meet the requirement of the Japanese market," he said on the sidelines of the industry capacity building programme here.

Noting Japan imports 97 percent of its textiles requirements, Murlidhara said that out of this, China supplies 65-70 per cent of the market share while Bangladesh caters to 7 per cent.

"India's textiles exports volume to Japan was $0.37 billion in 2015-16 and our market share was less than one per cent," he said, adding that Japanese markets offer huge potential because they import more than what was India's textiles exports of $35 billion.

Japan imported worth $38 billion of textiles last year, he said.

In a bid to promote export of Indian textiles conforming to the requirements of textiles and clothing market of Japan, the committee, a statutory body under the Textiles Ministry, has entered into this MoU with QTEC.

Muralidhara said the experts would also assist the committee to prepare testing reports in Japanese.

As part of industry capacity building objective for export of textiles and clothing in compliance to the Japanese market, the Textiles Committee is organising such programmes at nine major textile clusters of India.

Toshiki Tasaka, Director of QTEC's Overseas Coordination Department and Kei Funaki, its ASEAN & South Asia Regional Manager, who evaluated Committee's Kolkata laboratory on Fiday, were present at the capacity building meet here.

"Laboratories of the committee focus on chemical testing. But Japanese buyers are conscious about colour fastness," said Funaki.
Mumbai, May 12 : Budding actor Herry Tangri finds veterans Gulshan Grover and Ranjeet great teachers of acting.

Herry will feature in the forthcoming film "Behen Hogi Teri" along with the two actors, mostly known for playing negative characters.

"Both are very encouraging and great teachers of acting. I feel glad that I got to learn something from them. Helped me to polish my acting," Herry said in a statement.

Talking about working on the film, he said: "It was a great experience. It was my first visit to Lucknow. I had awesome food... famous kebabs. The set had great, positive and friendly atmosphere. We had a blast shooting it."

He says he plays a positive character, Bhura, who is "innocent and lovable".

"He is one of the most important characters in the story."
Srinagar, May 12 : Doctors in Jammu and Kashmir have decided to seek a new law to prevent police or the armed forces from "interfering" in the treatment of youths being treated for pellet gun injuries.

According to trauma experts here, they have been facing "extreme interference" by the police and armed forces while treating patients of pellet-gun injuries.

"Doctors from the state will present a memorandum to the central and state governments to come up with or amend the existing law to stop the interference of police and armed forces while treating patients affected by pellet guns," said Showkat Ali Mufti, head of emergency medicine at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences.

He was speaking at a panel discussion on medical trauma on the sidelines of the 2nd Annual Jammu and Kashmir Sciences Congress and the 1st Conference of MPCOS society here.

Mufti said the doctors will consult with the medical fraternity of the state and prepare the memorandum.

Most of the doctors said the state of affairs was such that pellet-gun victims approaching hospital for treatment were being chased by the state police or the army.

Another senior doctor from Jammu and Kashmir declining to be named told IANS that the new law was basically to prevent pellet-gun victims from being hounded by the police.

"Normally what happens is that pellet-gun victims do not want to come to hospital for treatment as they are afraid of arrest," said the doctor, and added that it was extremely important to bring in some law to prevent this.

"Many a time these pellet-gun victims do not even tell their original name to evade arrest," the doctor said.

During last year's unrest, hundreds of people sought treatment in hospitals for serious injuries, including to the eye, caused by pellet guns, used by the forces to quell protests that erupted following the killing of militant leader Burhan Wani.
Beijing, May 12 : Bollywood superstar Aamir Khan's "Dangal" has grossed over Rs 200 crore in China within the first week of its release, becoming the first Indian film to achieve the feat in the country.

The movie, released in around 7,000 screens in China as "Shuai Jiao Baba" ("Let's Wrestle, Dad"), had raked up 216 million yuan (over Rs 201 crore) by Friday evening.

The movie, which is about a gritty wrestler from small town training his daughters to become world-class wrestlers, has already broken the record of "PK" which earned Rs 100 crore in China.

China is still viewed to be a patriarchal society but the masses have connected with "Dangal".

Aamir is among the most popular Indian actors for the Chinese who also are fans of South Koreans artistes.

"All those issues touched on in his works also exist in China, but no Chinese has ever made that type of film," Wu Qian (pseudonym), a 29-year-old fan of Aamir, was quoted as saying by Global Times.
Beijing, May 12 : India is yet to confirm its participation, even as most major countries, including the US, France, Japan and South Korea, have said they are attending the two-day Belt and Road conference beginning on Sunday.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday said it was yet to hear from New Delhi, but informed about Indian scholars attending the mega conference.

"As far as India's participation is concerned, there are Indian scholars coming to China for relevant activities," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang said at a press conference.

Geng said representatives from the US, France, South Korea and Japan were the latest to have conveyed their attendance.

The forum, to be attended by 29 Heads of State including Russian President Vladimir Putin, will see the participation of over 100 countries.

Besides, Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Sri Lankan Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe will be in attendance.

Indian has kept mum about attending the event and any minister or official showing up could be part of a last-minute decision.

The $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) could keep India away from the event.

New Delhi firmly opposes the key corridor of Beijing's One Belt One Road project because it passes through the Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India lays claim to the disputed region.

The general view is that India attending the forum may amount to surrendering its claim over the region.

However, Beijing has repeatedly sought to allay New Delhi's fears, saying China will not change its position on the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan.

Beijing terms the dispute as bilateral.

Besides inviting India to the forum, Beijing has also rallied experts and academicians to coax India into attending the event.
Kandy, May 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday announced the gifting of 16,000 handcrafted candles from India to Sri Lanka on the auspicious occasion of International Vesak Day.

The first consignment of candles will be handed over by the Indian High Commission in Colombo to the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic here that houses the relic of the tooth of Lord Buddha.

According to an Indian External Affairs Ministry statement here, the candles have been specially handcrafted from the paraffin wax produced at the world's oldest operating refinery in Digboi in the Indian state of Assam.

The Digboi refinery, commissioned in 1901, is considered the birth place of the Indian oil industry. It is operated by Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) which has a subsidiary in Sri Lanka, Lanka IOC.

Modi on Friday visited the historic Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic accompanied by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena and offered floral tributes.

Earlier in the day, Modi was the chief guest at the inauguration in Colombo of the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of President Sirisena.

This is his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.
Colombo, May 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday made a veiled reference to the terrorism sponsored from across the border in India and said the proponents of hate are not open to dialogue.

Without taking any names, he said the menace of terrorism "in our region is a concrete manifestation of destructive emotion".

The Prime Minister was addressing the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day celebrations to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

"Sadly, these ideologies of hate and their proponents in our region are not open to dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction," he said in his speech as chief guest at the function to which he was invited by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

Modi said he firmly believed that Buddhism's message of peace was the answer to growing violence all over the world.

He said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today was not necessarily from conflict between the nation states but from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.
Colombo, May 12 : Leader of Opposition in Sri Lanka R. Sampathan and Tamil National Alliance leaders called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Friday.

"Leader of Opposition Mr. R. Sampathan and TNA leaders call on PM @narendramodi," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay tweeted.

Earlier in the day, Modi was the chief guest at the inauguration of the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

He also addressed a public rally attended by Indian-origin Tamil tea plantation workers in Dickoya.

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka at the invitation of Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena.

This is his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.
Panaji, May 12 : The Congress in Goa on Friday accused the Manohar Parrikar-led state government of trying to use "draconian rules" to deny journalists access to the state Secretariat.

Far from its motto of "zero tolerance to corruption", the BJP-led coalition government was apparently gearing towards "zero tolerance to transparency", said All India Congress Committee (AICC) Secretary Girish Chodankar in a press conference here.

"If his claim of being a clean Chief Minister is true and he has nothing to hide, then why is he so paranoid about the media? In fact, this move is aimed at sending signals to police and bureaucracy to keep away from the media," Chodankar said.

The Congress leader's comments came soon after the Goa Union of Journalists (GUJ), an apex welfare body of media persons in the state, on Friday demanded that the Chief Minister drop his plans of restricting media access to the Secretariat and holding selective media briefings.

"Sir, over the last few days, many journalists have expressed their concern with us about your government's move. We as GUJ are also completely against such a plan, because it will create hurdles in our duty. No government in the past has attempted to put restrictions," the Union's President Sadguru Patil said in a letter to Parrikar earlier in the day.

Parrikar had informed a section of the journalist fraternity on Thursday that he was planning to bar journalists from entering the state Secretariat on Wednesdays -- a day when Cabinet meetings are mostly held -- and regulate media access to the Secretariat by allowing their entry by appointment only.

Nearly a month ago, Parrikar had also discussed the plan to restrict entry of media persons to the state Secretariat with some members of the journalist union.

Chodankar said Parrikar, who is heading an alliance government with a wafer-thin majority, was now trying to "hide acts of commission and omission of his government by trying to put restrictions on the media by denying them access to the state Secretariat".

"It is the duty of the media to expose wrong-doings in the government and nowhere in the country are such restrictions imposed on the press," Chodankar said.

Sources close to Parrikar, however, said media access to the Secretariat was being regulated in view of the disruption caused by camera-wielding media persons walking in and out of important government offices.

"It is disturbing when media persons walk around the Secretariat with live cameras. These are sensitive offices where critical business of the government is conducted," a source close to the Chief Minister said.
The Annual General Meeting of Schibsted ASA was held on 12 May 2017 in the Company's premises at Apotekergata 10 in Oslo.

All proposals on the agenda, except item 7, were adopted, ref. the notice of the Annual General Meeting that was published 19 April 2017, including the following:

The Annual General Meeting approved the Board's proposal to distribute a dividend of NOK 1.75 per share. The Schibsted shares will trade exclusive of dividend as from 15 May 2017. The dividend will be paid out on or around 24 May 2017.



The Annual General Meeting resolved to grant the Board authority to increase the share capital. The authority is limited to 10% of the share capital within the B-share class. The authority includes the right to set aside the pre-emptive rights of existing shareholders.



The Annual General Meeting resolved to elect Orla Noonan as a new member of the Board of Directors. Tanya Cordrey will not stand for reelection. The Annual General Meeting resolved to reelect the remaining shareholder-elected board members.



The proposal for an authority to acquire own shares, item 7 on the agenda, did not receive the required majority and was therefore not approved.

The minutes from the Annual General Meeting is attached and available on www.schibsted.com.

Oslo, 12 May 2017

SCHIBSTED ASA

Espen Risholm

Investor Relations Officer
New Delhi/Shimla, May 12 : Himachal Pradesh Cabinet Minister Karan Singh died early on Friday while undergoing treatment at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in New Delhi, his family said. He was 60.

He is survived by his wife and a son.

The mortal remains of the three-time legislator and Ayurveda and Cooperation Minister in the Virbhadra Singh Cabinet were consigned to flames at his native place in Kullu later in the day.

The Congress Minister was suffering from liver and throat ailments.

A member of the erstwhile Kullu royal family, Karan Singh was the younger brother of Bharatiya Janata Party legislator Maheshwar Singh.

He was inducted into the Cabinet in August 2015. He was Education Minister in the BJP government from 1998-2003.

Governor Acharya Devvrat and Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh expressed grief over Karan Singh's demise.

The Chief Minister said Karan Singh dedicated his life for public welfare, especially in Kullu district.

Karan Singh represented Banjar constituency three times and joined the Congress in 2009 after remaining in the BJP for nearly 27 years.
Thiruvananthapuram, May 12 : Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah will lay the foundation stone for a state-of-the-art Rs 10-crore building housing the party's state unit headquarters here on June 4, a BJP leader said on Friday.

State BJP President Kummanem Rajasekheran told reporters here that the 46,000 sq.ft. building would come up on the party's land in the heart of the state capital.

"We expect to finish construction of the building at the earliest and would tap funds from public as well. Apart from housing the state headquarters, there would also be space for a research centre," said Rajasekheran.

Subsequently, the present building housing the state headquarters will be demolished.

He said Shah would be in the state for three days from June 2, arriving in Kochi and then staying in the state capital for days.

"His visit is part of his ongoing all-India trip and once here, he would attend 21 meetings. He will hold meetings with booth-level workers, and with state and district party leaders. He will also meet about 2,000 representatives from the best civil societies in the state," Rajasekheran said.

The three-day visit of Shah is expected to enthuse the rank and file of the party and strengthen its organisational set-up. It is part of the exercise to ready the cadres for the next general elections in 2019.

The BJP, which is yet to open its account in parliamentary polls from Kerala, in the 2016 assembly polls saw former Union Minister O. Rajagopal win from the Nemom assembly seat in the state capital district.
Beijing, May 12 : China on Friday evaded commenting on Sri Lanka reportedly not allowing its submarine to dock at Colombo.

"I have just read the relevant information. I suggest you raise it with the Defence Ministry for more details," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said when asked about the development.

"What I can tell you is that China and Sri Lanka enjoy traditional friendship. The two sides maintain sound cooperation in the fields of politics, economy, culture and military to military exchanges," he added.

The development coincides with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's two-day visit to Sri Lanka.

In 2014, a Chinese submarine had docked in Colombo and India had conveyed its displeasure to Sri Lanka.

(Gaurav Sharma is the IANS Beijing-based correspondent. He can be contacted at sharmagaurav71@gmail.com and gauravians@yahoo.com)
Lucknow, May 12 : The Allahabad High Court on Friday said the government cannot take away the right of people to eat non-vegetarian food and asked the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in the state to find a solution to the slaughter house issue before July 17.

The court was hearing a petition against the closure of slaughter houses in the state after the Yogi Adityanath government ascended to power in the state on March 19.

The high court also directed the departments concerned of the state government to renew the licences of slaughter houses and also issue licences based on the prescribed guidelines.

The court also observed that the responsibility of constructing slaughter houses was of the local municipal corporations.

The court has also asked all departments relevant to the issue to come before it with information on the matter on July 17.

There has been a lot of furore ever since the state government ordered a crackdown on slaughter houses. In its state assembly election manifesto, the BJP had promised to close all illegal slaughter houses in the state.

However, when the crackdown began, the authorities began targeting anybody and everybody selling meat. Many small-time vendors of mutton and chicken were forced to close down, following which non-vegetarian food lovers have been facing a lot of inconvenience.
Colombo, May 12 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday departed from Sri Lanka after the conclusion of his two-day visit.

"Thank you Sri Lanka! This was a memorable visit, in which I got to take part in various programmes including Vesak Day celebrations," Modi tweeted.

In a separate tweet, he thanked Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the government and "warm-hearted citizens of Sri Lanka" for their hospitality.

Earlier in the day, Modi was the chief guest at the inauguration of the UN-recognised 14th International Vesak Day meant to mark the birth, enlightenment and passing away of Lord Buddha.

He also addressed a public rally attended by Indian-origin Tamil tea plantation workers in Dickoya in Sri Lanka's central hill district.

He inaugurated a multi-speciality India-funded hospital at Dickoya and unveiled a plaque commemorating the foundation laying of the Faculty of Kandyan Dance at the Sri Lankan International Buddhist Academy in Kandy.

He also visited the historic Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy.

Modi arrived in Sri Lanka at the invitation of President Sirisena. This was his second visit to the Indian Ocean island nation as Prime Minister after his visit in March 2015.
New Delhi, May 12 : The External Affairs Ministry will host the 'India-Pacific Islands Sustainable Development Conference in Suva, Fiji, on May 25-26, it was announced on Friday.

The conference would be held under the framework of the Forum for India Pacific Islands Cooperation (Fipic) with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) as the key knowledge partner.

"Minister of State for External Affairs V.K. Singh will host ministers from the 14 Pacific Island countries at the conference," the ministry said in a statement.

"Two Presidents and three Prime Ministers from Pacific island countries have confirmed their participation in the conference," it said, adding business leaders, academics, civil society members and youths from the region would also participate.

The two-day conference will focus on issues such as the blue economy, adaptation-mitigation practices for climate change, disaster preparedness, health, the India-initiated International Solar Alliance as well as finding practical solutions to Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) implementation.

"The conference is expected to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and experience, and initiate public-private partnerships and collaborations for the benefit of all participating countries," the statement said.

Other key partners at the conference include ]industry organisations Ficci and CII, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), and the Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF).

Fipic was formed in November 2014 to strengthen India's relationship with the Pacific island nations.

The first Fipic summit was held at the level of Heads of Government in November 2014 in Suva, Fiji, and the second one in August 2015 in Jaipur, India.
New Delhi, May 12 : Nestle India on Friday reported a surge of 6.7 per cent in its net profit after tax for the first quarter (Q1) of 2017.

The company's net profit for the January-March quarter stood at Rs 306.76 crore -- up 6.7 per cent from Rs 287.32 crore in the same period in 2016.

For the quarter ended March 31, 2017, the total income from operations of the company rose by 9.48 per cent to Rs 2,591.94 crore from Rs 2,367.53 crore reported during the same period last year.

"Total sales for the quarter increased by 9.1 per cent. Domestic sales increased by 9.7 per cent mainly due to increase in volumes across product groups, including rebuild of Maggi noodles, supplemented by marginally better realisations mostly from carry-over pricing," the company said in a statement.

The statement pointed out that the growth of 0.6 per cent in exports was largely impacted by lower sales to Nepal and Bhutan.

"Innovation and renovation, as also volume-based growth, are core business strategies outlined by Nestle India almost 18 months back and I am pleased that this strategy is now playing an important role," said Suresh Narayanan, Chairman and Managing Director of Nestle India.

"Building Nestle India for the next 100 years, we will continue to deliver on our purpose of 'Enhancing Quality of Life and Contributing to a Healthier Future' through our proven competencies in areas of nutrition, food quality and safety.

"In doing so, we will leverage our expertise and strengths in science-based nutrition and explore the areas of micronutrient fortification for our mass consumption products," Narayanan said.

The statement said the company had adopted Ind AS (Indian Accounting Standards) with effect from January 1, 2017, with a transition date of January 1, 2016. The company follows the calendar year in reporting financial results.

"The Board of Directors have declared an interim dividend for 2017 of Rs 15 per equity share (face value Rs 10 per equity share) amounting to Rs 1,446.2 million, which will be paid on and from 2nd June, 2017," the statement added.

The company scrip on BSE slipped by 0.48 per cent to Rs 6,819.55 per share on Friday.
Singapore, May 12 : Indian Naval Ships Sahyadri, Shivalik, Jyoti and Kamorta, on overseas deployment to Southeast Asia and the Southern Indian Ocean, arrived here on Friday, a navy statement said.

The ships, under the command of Eastern Fleet commander Rear Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta, will be in Singapore till May 21, the statement said .

During their stay in Singapore, the ships will participate in the International Maritime Review and Maritime Defence Exhibition & Conference IMDEX-17.

Indian Navy chief, Admiral Sunil Lanba will also be attending the events ashore.

During the port visit, various calls by the visiting Fleet would be organised in addition to those scheduled as part of IMR and IMDEX-17. Various other activities such as official calls, formal reception on board ships, tours for visitors, and professional interaction between naval personnel of both the nations have been planned.

After this, the four Indian ships and an Indian navy long-range maritime patrol and anti-submarine warfare aircraft P-8l would exercise with the Republic of Singapore Navy (RSN) and Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) as part of bilateral exercise SIMBEX-17.

Held since 1994, this year would be the 24th edition of the annual maritime bilateral exercise, which aims to further cement their defence cooperation.

"The visit of the Indian Naval Ships seeks to underscore India's peaceful presence and solidarity with friendly and harmonious countries towards ensuring good order in the maritime domain," the statement said.

Indian Naval assets have been increasingly deployed in recent times to address the main maritime concerns of the region. Also, as part of the Indian Government's vision of SAGAR (Security and Growth for All in the Region), the Navy has also been involved in assisting countries in the Indian Ocean Region with EEZ Surveillance, Search and Rescue, and other capacity-building and capability-enhancement activities.

Of the ships that have been deployed, INS Sahyadri, a multi-role stealth frigate, is commanded by Captain Anil Jaggi while INS Kamorta, an anti-submarine warfare corvette is commanded by Commander Vipin Gupta. Both ships are indigenously designed and built.

The last visit by an Indian Naval Ship to Singapore was by INS Satpura in September 2016.
Rohtak (Haryana), May 12 : A court here on Friday issued a bailable warrant against Baba Ramdev in a case filed against him for remarks made against those who refused to say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'.

The warrant was issued by additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Harish Goyal after Ramdev failed to appear before the court despite summons issued to him.

The court had summoned Ramdev under Section 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke the breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) following a speech made in April last year during a 'Sadbhavna Sammelan' held here.

During the speech, Ramdev said that but for the Constitution, thousands would have been beheaded for opposing the chanting of 'Bharat Mata ki Jai'.

Congress leader and former Haryana minister Subhash Batra had approached the court after the police refused to register a case against Ramdev.

The yoga guru is considered close to the BJP government in Haryana, which has been in power in Haryana since October 2014. The BJP government has also named Ramdev as the brand ambassador of Haryana.
New Delhi, May 12 : Indian engineering major Larsen and Tubro on Friday announced bagging an order to supply the Indian Army with 155 mm/52 calibre tracked mobile artillery guns.

"This win affirms L&T's position as India's leading private sector defence company with capabilities to design, develop and manufacture state-of-the-art platforms and systems for the Indian armed forces," the company said in a statement.

L&T, supported by its South Korean technology partner Hanwha Tech Win (HTW), had bid for this 'Buy Global' acquisition programme of the Ministry of Defence in 2011.

After successful completion of the trials for the programme, L&T was declared the sole qualified bidder based on the performance of its K9 VAJRA-T.

The gun is an enhanced version of HTW's K9 Thunder with modifications for desert operations.

On April 21, L&T and HTW signed a contract for this programme here.

Generally, artillery guns are towed by trucks but self-propelled guns are either mounted on a wheeled or tracked chasis, allowing them to move on their own.

As per the contract requirements, L&T is expected to deliver 100 guns in 42 months.

In addition to the guns, the contract also includes engineering support package and maintenance transfer of technology to support gun regiments throughout their life cycle.

"These guns will have over 50 per cent indigenous content and will be delivered from L&T's manufacturing facilities, including a new Armoured Systems Complex at Hazira," it added.

First ten systems will be imported from South Korea and rest 90 will be manufactured in India.

After last year's deal of the Ministry of Defence with BAE systems for procurement of 145 M777 ultra-light artillery guns, this is the second artillery gun purchase agreement that will boost the Indian Army's fire power.

The company's scrip price at the BSE increased by 0.19 per cent or more than Rs 3 to Rs 1,739.50 from its previous close of Rs 1,736.25.
French English

LONGUEUIL, Quebec, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Stornoway Diamond Corporation (TSX:SWY) (the Corporation or Stornoway) is pleased to announce the inaugural sale of Quebec-mined diamonds at a launch event hosted yesterday evening by Birks at their iconic Montreal flagship store.



In the presence of Birks Group President and CEO, Mr. Jean-Christophe Bedos, and Matt Manson, President and CEO of Stornoway, invited guests had the opportunity to view a collection of polished diamonds up to 10 carats in size, mined during the initial ramp-up period of Stornoways Renard Mine in Northern Quebec and set in Birks signature designs.

Matt Manson, President and CEO, commented: We are honoured to be able to partner with Birks in the presentation of Quebecs first diamonds to the retail market. It is fitting that these first beautiful, Quebec diamonds derived from Quebecs first diamond mine should premier for sale at Maison Birks, Quebecs most storied diamond jeweler. Yesterday evenings event marked another step in the long journey to bring the Renard Mine and Renard diamonds to the global market.

Birks will be presenting the first Quebec diamonds for sale at their Montreal flagship store at 1240 Philips Square, Montreal, Quebec, in Ottawa, Ontario between May 25th  May 31st and in Ste. Foy, Quebec between June 5th  June 19th.

About the Renard Diamond Mine

The Renard Diamond Mine is Quebecs first producing diamond mine and Canadas sixth. It is located approximately 250 km north of the Cree community of Mistissini and 350 km north of Chibougamau in the James Bay region of north-central Quebec. Construction on the project commenced on July 10, 2014, and commercial production was declared on January 1, 2017. Average annual diamond production is forecast at 1.8 million carats per annum over the first 10 years of mining. Readers are referred to the technical report dated January 11, 2016, in respect of the September 2015 Mineral Resource estimate, and the technical report dated March 30, 2016, in respect of the March 2016 Updated Mine Plan and Mineral Reserve Estimate for further details and assumptions relating to the project.

About Stornoway Diamond Corporation

Stornoway is a leading Canadian diamond exploration and development company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol SWY and headquartered in Montreal. Our flagship asset is the 100% owned Renard Diamond Project, Quebecs first diamond mine. Stornoway is a growth oriented company with a world-class asset, in one of the worlds best mining jurisdictions, in one of the worlds great mining businesses.

On behalf of the Board

STORNOWAY DIAMOND CORPORATION

/s/ Matt Manson

Matt Manson

President and Chief Executive

For more information, please contact Matt Manson (President and CEO) at 416-304-1026 x2101

or Orin Baranowsky (Interim CFO, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Development) at 416-304-1026 x2103

or toll free at 1-877-331-2232

Pour plus dinformation, veuillez contacter M. Ghislain Poirier, Vice-president Affaires publiques de Stornoway au 418-254-6550, gpoirier@stornowaydiamonds.com

** Website: www.stornowaydiamonds.com Email: info@stornowaydiamonds.com **

This document contains forward-looking information (as defined in National Instrument 51 102  Continuous Disclosure Obligations) and forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation and the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively referred to herein as forward-looking information or forward-looking statements). These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this document and, the Corporation does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law.

These forward-looking statements relate to future events or future performance and include, among others, statements with respect to Stornoways objectives for the ensuing year, our medium and long-term goals, and strategies to achieve those objectives and goals, as well as statements with respect to our managements beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, estimates, intentions and future outlook and anticipated events or results. Although management considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect.

Forward-looking statements made in this document include, but are not limited to, statements with respect to: (i) the amount of Mineral Reserves, Mineral Resources and exploration targets; (ii) the amount of future production over any period; (iii) net present value and internal rates of return of the mining operation; (iv) assumptions relating to recovered grade, size distribution and quality of diamonds, average ore recovery, internal dilution, mining dilution and other mining parameters set out in the 2016 Technical Report as well as levels of diamond breakage; (v) assumptions relating to gross revenues, cost of sales, cash cost of production, gross margins estimates, planned and projected capital expenditure, liquidity and working capital requirements; (vi) mine expansion potential and expected mine life; (vii) expected time frames for completion of permitting and regulatory approvals related to ongoing construction activities at the Renard Diamond Mine; (viii) the expected time frames for the completion of the open pit and underground mine at the Renard Diamond Mine; (ix) the expected time frames for the ramp-up and achievement of plant nameplate capacity of the Renard Diamond Mine (x) the expected financial obligations or costs incurred by Stornoway in connection with the ongoing development of the Renard Diamond Mine; (xi) future exploration plans; (xii) future market prices for rough diamonds; (xiii) the economic benefits of using liquefied natural gas rather than diesel for power generation; (xiv) sources of and anticipated financing requirements; (xv) the effectiveness, funding or availability, as the case may require, of the Senior Secured Loan and the remaining Equipment Facility and the use of proceeds therefrom; (xvi) the Corporations ability to meet its Subject Diamonds Interest delivery obligations under the Purchase and Sale Agreement; (xvii) the impact of the Financing Transactions on the Corporations operations, infrastructure, opportunities, financial condition, access to capital and overall strategy; (xviii) the foreign exchange rate between the US dollar and the Canadian dollar; and (xix) the availability of excess funding for the operation of the Renard Diamond Mine. Any statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as expects, anticipates, plans, projects, estimates, assumes, intends, strategy, goals, objectives, schedule or variations thereof or stating that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved, or the negative of any of these terms and similar expressions) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements are made based upon certain assumptions by Stornoway or its consultants and other important factors that, if untrue, could cause the actual results, performances or achievements of Stornoway to be materially different from future results, performances or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. Such statements and information are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business prospects and strategies and the environment in which Stornoway will operate in the future, including the recovered grade, size distribution and quality of diamonds, average ore recovery, internal dilution, and levels of diamond breakage, the price of diamonds, anticipated costs and Stornoways ability to achieve its goals, anticipated financial performance, regulatory developments, development plans, exploration, development and mining activities and commitments, and the foreign exchange rate between the US and Canadian dollars. Although management considers its assumptions on such matters to be reasonable based on information currently available to it, they may prove to be incorrect. Certain important assumptions by Stornoway or its consultants in making forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: (i) required capital investment and estimated workforce requirements; (ii) estimates of net present value and internal rates of return; (iii) recovered grade, size distribution and quality of diamonds, average ore recovery, internal dilution, mining dilution and other mining parameters set out in the 2016 Technical Report as well as levels of diamond breakage, (iv) receipt of regulatory approvals on acceptable terms within commonly experienced time frames; (v) anticipated timelines for ramp-up and achievement of nameplate capacity at the Renard Diamond Mine, (vi) anticipated timelines for the development of an open pit and underground mine at the Renard Diamond Mine; (vii) anticipated geological formations; (viii) market prices for rough diamonds and their potential impact on the Renard Diamond Mine; (ix) the satisfaction or waiver of all conditions under the Senior Secured Loan and the remaining Equipment Facility to allow the Corporation to draw on the funding available under those financing elements; (x) Stornoways interpretation of the geological drill data collected and its potential impact on stated Mineral Resources and mine life; (xi) future exploration plans and objectives; (xii) the Corporations ability to meet its Subject Diamonds Interest delivery obligations under the Purchase and Sale Agreement; and (xiii) the continued strength of the US dollar against the Canadian dollar.

By their very nature, forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties, both general and specific, and risks exist that estimates, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not be achieved or that assumptions do not reflect future experience. We caution readers not to place undue reliance on these forward- looking statements as a number of important risk factors could cause the actual outcomes to differ materially from the beliefs, plans, objectives, expectations, anticipations, estimates, assumptions and intentions expressed in such forward-looking statements. These risk factors may be generally stated as the risk that the assumptions and estimates expressed above do not occur, including the assumption in many forward-looking statements that other forward-looking statements will be correct, but specifically include, without limitation: (i) risks relating to variations in the grade, size distribution and quality of diamonds, kimberlite lithologies and country rock content within the material identified as Mineral Resources from that predicted; (ii) variations in rates of recovery and levels of diamond breakage; (iii) the uncertainty as to whether further exploration of exploration targets will result in the targets being delineated as Mineral Resources; (iv) developments in world diamond markets; (v) slower increases in diamond valuations than assumed; (vi) risks relating to fluctuations in the Canadian dollar and other currencies relative to the US dollar; (vii) increases in the costs of proposed capital, operating and sustainable capital expenditures; (viii) increases in financing costs or adverse changes to the terms of available financing, if any; (ix) tax rates or royalties being greater than assumed; (x) uncertainty of results of exploration in areas of potential expansion of resources; (xi) changes in development or mining plans due to changes in other factors or exploration results; (xii) risks relating to the receipt of regulatory approvals or the implementation of the existing Impact and Benefits Agreement with aboriginal communities; (xiii) the effects of competition in the markets in which Stornoway operates; (xiv) operational and infrastructure risks; (xv) execution risk relating to the development of an operating mine at the Renard Diamond Mine; (xvi) failure to satisfy the conditions to the funding or availability, as the case may require, of the Senior Secured Loan and the Equipment Facility; (xvii) changes in the terms of the Forward Sale of Diamonds, the Senior Secured Loan or the Equipment Facility; (xviii) the funds of the Senior Secured Loan or the Equipment Facility not being available to the Corporation; (xix) the Corporation being unable to meet its Subject Diamonds Interest delivery obligations under the Purchase and Sale Agreement; (xx) future sales or issuances of Common Shares lowering the Common Share price and diluting the interest of existing shareholders; and (xxi) the additional risk factors described herein and in Stornoways annual and interim MD&As, most recently filed AIF, its other disclosure documents and Stornoways anticipation of and success in managing the foregoing risks. Stornoway cautions that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive and new, unforeseeable risks may arise from time to time, and (xxi) the additional risk factors described herein and in Stornoways annual and interim MD&As, most recently filed AIF, its other disclosure documents and Stornoways anticipation of and success in managing the foregoing risks. Stornoway cautions that the foregoing list of factors that may affect future results is not exhaustive and new, unforeseeable risks may arise from time to time.
Washington, May 12 : A United Airlines flight from Houston to Ecuador was delayed for more than three hours at George Bush Intercontinental Airport after a scorpion was spotted on board the plane.

It's the second time in less than a month that one of the stinging stowaway has been reported on a United aircraft, USA Today reported on Friday.

According to United, a scorpion reportedly crawled out of a passenger's clothing on Thursday on Flight 1035 as the flight was preparing to take off from Bush airport and travel to Quito, Ecuador.

Paramedics examined the passenger and determined that he had not been stung.

Flight 1035 eventually took off, three and a half hours late, to Ecuador.

United issued a statement saying: "Houston to Quito Flight 1035 returned to the gate after a scorpion reportedly emerged from a customer's clothing. Paramedics at the gate immediately examined the customer and determined that he had not been stung."

"The customer declined further medical treatment and, as a precaution, a new aircraft was arranged. We provided all passengers with a meal voucher due to the delay and the flight, with the customer aboard, has departed for Quito," the statement said.

On April 14, a man was stung by a scorpion on a United flight from Houston to Calgary.

United has been under increased scrutiny after a passenger was physically dragged by aviation police off a United Express flight April 9, leaving him with a concussion and two broken teeth.
Accra, May 12 : The Community Water and Sanitation Agency (CWSA) in Ghana over the past two years has constructed 1,705 boreholes fitted with hand pumps and 70 piped schemes to boost the nation's drinking water supply coverage.

Worlanyo Kwadjo Siabe, Chief Executive of the agency, during a five-day review said 12,756 washrooms were also built.

The meeting was held under the theme: "Rural water and sanitation services provision: Current role of CWSA, gaps and the way forward for effective and sustainable delivery".

Siabe expressed a deep concern about the poor management of the water facilities, according to the report on Friday.

"Many of these facilities, being run under the community ownership and management system, had to be rehabilitated only to go through another cycle of mismanagement," he said.

Siabe also complained about high staff attrition, poor working conditions and inadequate logistics and pledged to lead reforms to strengthen the performance of the agency.
Abu Dhabi, May 12 : Rebecca Kadaga, Ugandan Parliament Speaker and the President of the African Geopolitical Group in the Inter-Parliamentary Union, has praised the UAE's fast-paced development.

"The UAE encourages all sectors to excel through competition for the lead in development, something which Zayed University represents," Kadaga said during a visit to Zayed University in Abu Dhabi.

She expressed admiration for the university's academic programmes, advanced research facilities and initiatives.

Kadaga invited the university's officials to visit Uganda to build academic and research tie-ups between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and her country.

Reyadh Al Mehaideb, Vice President of Zayed University, stressed that the Emirati institution matches international prestigious universities in terms of services for students.

Some 500 faculty members from prestigious international universities work at Zayed University, which plays a significant role in achieving the goals sets by the UAE Vision 2021 National Agenda, said Al Mehaideb.
Jammu, May 12 : Fourteen families in villages close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Naushera area of Jammu and Kashmir's Rajouri district on Friday left their homes following indiscriminate shelling from Pakistan, officials said.

Authorities said the families have been accommodated in a makeshift shelter set up in a higher secondary school away from the LoC.

Indiscriminate shelling by Pakistan army on Thursday killed a woman and injured two others including her husband.

Meanwhile, schools in villages close to the LoC in Naushera sector remained closed for the second day on Friday.

These educational institutions were shut by the authorities as a precautionary measure on Thursday.
New Delhi, May 12 : The standards for the rollout of 5G network in the country are likely to be ready by 2018, an official said on Friday.

"India is getting future ready and has started serious work on identifying and formalising the standards for the rollout of 5G. The standards are likely to be ready by 2018," said D.P. De, Senior Deputy Director General of Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), at the 5G India 2017 Conference here.

"5G will be an overarching umbrella of networks rather than a replacement technology and will usher in significant economic, political and environmental benefits," observed Adrian Scrase, Chief Technical Officer, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and Head of 3GPP MCC (Mobile Competence Core).

According to industry representatives and sectoral experts, the key drivers for 5G rollout and adoption will be a massively anticipated increase in data consumption, fast increasing digitalised life and services, growth of smart cities and the need to have an all encompassing network architecture which can utilise all available spectrum band rather than replace the existing networks, said an official statement.

"Connected devices, digitised lifestyle where almost every aspect of human life will be consumed digitally calls for a new paradigm shift in telecommunication eco-system," said Shyam P. Mardikar, Chief Technical Officer (Mobile Networks), Bharti Airtel.

"We have moved from the voice phase to video consumption and the next phase will be virtuality which will demand humongous data availability and networks have to evolve to keep pace. This will be a real challenge."

Rajan S. Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said: "Consumers side demand, resource deployment and commercial viability will be the main drivers for the operators for 5G rollout."

"It may be easy to rollout 5G in a country like Japan or South Korea, but India is a fundamentally different market with diverse needs. There would be huge financial and structural challenges. We have to make India specific case for 5G," advised Mathews.

The statement said experts across the board agreed that the telecommunication services will migrate to 5G architecture sooner or later, and time has come to start serious preparation for standardisation and network upgradation.

"Making 5G India 2017 a truly global platform to conduct business, global players such as Huawei, VMWare, Keysight Technologies, Juniper, RedHat, Rohde & Schwarz, RV Solutions and TrustinSoft showcased and presented their innovative and cutting edge technologies to 500 plus industry audience at the event," the statement added.

TEC is the nodal agency of the Department of Telecommunications in the Ministry of Communications, and is responsible for drawing up of standards, generic requirements, interface requirements, service requirements and specifications for telecom products, services and networks.
Gurugram, May 12 : A 58-year-old Pakistani national, who came to India to attend a marriage ceremony in Mewat district of Haryana, died due to sudden illness and was buried in his forefather's village in the district, police said on Friday.

Sher Mohammad's father had shifted to Pakistan in 1947 leaving his cousins in Mewat.

Sher Mohammad came to India this month along with his 52-year-old wife Praveen and 5-year-old son Usmaan to attend the marriage ceremony of one of his relatives' grandson in Mewat's Hathgaon village.

Mohammad fell ill and his conditioned deteriorated for unknown reasons after he complained of chest pain, said Station House Officer Naveen Kumar of Bichore Police Station.

He was rushed to a private hospital and was later shifted to Shaheed Hasan Khan Medical College where he died during treatment.

He was buried in his forefather's village Hathgaon after getting permission from the administration.
New Delhi, May 12 : A day after the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee (GEAC) gave a positive recommendation to genetically modified mustard, activists urged Union Environment Minister Anil Dave against the crop, claiming that the tests performed were rigged.

GEAC, the country's regulator for transgenic crops, in its meeting on Thursday gave positive feedback to the GM Mustard, calling it safe and fit for commercial release.

The approval is now due with the Environment Minister and of approved GM Mustard could be the first genetically modified food crop to be cultivated in India.

Saying that the crop is a herbicide tolerant (HT) and would have direct adverse impacts on Indian farmers and consumers, activists dub the GEAC as "anti-environment" which used a "farcical processes" of public feedback.

Deepak Pental, a geneticist at Delhi University who has dedicated 30 years of his life to research and led the team that developed the product as -- Dhara Mustard Hybrid (DMH)-11, has been saying that the crop is safe, need of the hour and that the whole uproar against it has gone too far.

However, claiming to have quantified certain facts, the activists also claimed that even 25 per cent cultivation of GM mustard would impact the livelihood of millions of farmers by reducing 4.25 crore employment days.

"We note with deep disappointment and shock the regulatory green signal from the GEAC for the commercial cultivation of GM Mustard. By clearing this crop GEAC has failed the very mandate and purpose of its creation -- to protect citizens from risks of genetically modified organisms. By clearing GM mustard, GEAC has shown itself to be anti-science, anti-farmers, anti-environment and anti-consumers," Sridhar Radhakrishnan, Coalition for a GM-Free India said in a letter to Dave.

Radhakrishnana also added that it had been proved through rigorous analysis of all available material how it will increase chemicals in the food and farms since the crop is a HT GMO.

"The appraisal was shoddy while the tests were rigged and many tests not taken up. The need for GM mustard was never questioned and answered. GEAC has ignored all the many valid questions raised by scientists and others and chose to function in an unscientific and biased fashion," he said adding that when the rest of the world is shunning GM crops, we would be foolish to rush into GM mustard commercialisation.

Kavita Kuruganti from Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA) who has been cautioning againat the GM crop said that India should rather focus on the procurement issues, import policy and subsidising the oil seed cultivation.

"Even if 25 per cent of mustard land grows GM mustard, about 4.25 crore employment days will be lost for millions of hard working poor women," Kuruganti said.

She added that India already has hybrid crop and does'nt need GM mustard.

"The main objection is because its HT, which means farmers will be using more chemicals," she added.

The activists also pointed out that the BJP in its election manifesto has promised that it will not subject Indians to GM food crops without proper long term scientific evaluation.

"We appeal to you, in your capacity as the Minister for Forests, Environment and Climate Change to summarily reject the application for approval of GM-Mustard," Radhakrishnan said.
London, May 12 : Hospitals across England have been hit by a large-scale cyber-attack, the National Health Service (NHS) said, which has locked staff out of their computers and forced many trusts to divert emergency patients.

The IT systems of NHS sites across the country on Friday appear to have been simultaneously hit, with a pop-up message demanding a ransom in exchange for access to the PCs, the Guardian reported.

NHS England said it was aware of the problem and would release more details soon.

Affected hospitals include those run by East and North Hertfordshire NHS trust, Barts Health in London, Essex Partnership university NHS trusts, the university hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS foundation trust, Southport and Ormskirk hospital NHS trust and Blackpool teaching hospital NHS foundation trust.

One NHS IT worker told the Guardian: "At approximately 12.30 p.m. we experienced a problem with our email servers crashing. Following this a lot of our clinical systems and patient systems were reported to have gone down."

"A bitcoin virus pop-up message had been introduced on to the network asking users to pay $300 to be able to access their PCs. You cannot get past this screen.

"This followed with an internal major incident being declared and advised all trust staff to shut down all PCs in the trust and await further instructions," the worker said.

The worker said that the hack was affecting the east of England and number of other trusts.

"This is the largest outage of this nature I've seen in the six years I've been employed with the NHS," the worker said.

GP surgeries across Liverpool and parts of Greater Manchester also appeared to have been affected by the cyber-attack.

Doctors have been posting on Twitter about what has been happening to their systems.

A screengrab of a instant message conversation circulated by one doctor says: "So our hospital is down A We got a message saying your computers are now under their control and pay a certain amount of money. And now everything is gone."

IT specialists were working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible, a statement from the NHS Trust said.
New Delhi, May 12 : The Election Commission on Friday ruled out any possibility of the EVMs being tampered with in elections even as it announced that all future elections will be held with VVPAT slips to prevent any doubts while the AAP demanded 'hackathon', a view others were not apparently enthusiastic about at an all-party meeting convened to discuss worries over the machines.

At the end of the day-long meeting, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi that the poll panel will hold a "challenge" for political parties to prove their allegations that the machines were or could be tampered with.

"All future elections will be mandatorily held with VVPAT (Voter-verifiable paper audit trail)," he said.

"The Commission will hold a challenge and offer an opportunity to political parties to demonstrate that the EVMs used in the recently-concluded assembly elections were tampered or the EVMs can be tampered with even under the laid down technical and administrative safeguards," he added.

The meeting, which lasted over seven hours, was attended by representatives of seven political parties and 35 state parties.

Zaidi said the commission has taken note of all the views of the parties and assured that their concerns and apprehensions regarding EVMs would be duly considered and addressed through the challenge and further necessary action.

At the meeting, the ruling Aam Aadmi Party in Delhi, which had sought to demonstrate in the assembly earlier this week that EVMs can be manipulated to rig results in favour of party, made a demand that the commission should provide them the EVMs used in the recent assembly elections in five states so that they could prove their point.

"Provide us the EVMs, we will show that these can be hacked. We have shown it in the assembly," Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said and demanded a hackathon.

Congress demanded "more steps" to ensure trustworthiness of EVMs, the CPI-M said that all EVMs should have paper trail and BJP said that the machines were reliable.

National Conference leader Devender Singh Rana said after the meeting that except for BJP, almost all parties raised concerns about reliability of EVMs.

Trinamool Vice President Mukul Roy said: "EVMs are not at all reliable and strongly demanded (that) the EC start using paper ballots in all future polls."

Janata Dal-Secular and Jammu and Kashmir National Panthers Party also supported going back to the ballot papers.

At the meeting, the poll panel also made a presentation on EVMs explaining its secured design feature and highlighted "technical, administrative protocol and procedural safeguards that fortify the EVMs and VVPATs against any sort of manipulation or tampering".

It also referred to queries raised by some political parties about the incidents of alleged EVM manipulation at Bhind and Dholpur during the recently concluded bye-elections and said that "baseless perceptions were generated about these incidents."

The meeting also discussed electoral reforms like making bribery in elections a cognisable offence and disqualification on being chargesheeted for bribery in elections.

Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Nilotpal Basu said later that candidates should be disqualified only when the legal process is exhausted and the accused is convicted.

Amid concerns raised by the opposition, the Union Cabinet had last month cleared the Election Commission's proposal to buy VVPAT machines for the EVMs to ensure transparency in the voting process.

The proposal involves getting 16,15,000 VVPAT units for EVMs at a cost of Rs 3,173.47 crore.

The EC also referred to queries raised by some political parties about the incidents of alleged EVM manipulation at Bhind and Dholpur during the recently concluded bye-elections, reiterating that baseless perceptions were generated about these incidents.
New Delhi, May 12 : Innovation is fundamental for India to become a successful digital economy, a top executive from Intel said here on Friday.

He was speaking at an event organised by Intel India, in association with the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF) to felicitate 29 Student Innovators who are set to represent India at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2017 -- the world's largest pre-college Science and Engineering Fair -- in Los Angeles, US.

"As we stand today, we look at how the world is changing in terms of innovation. Skills of yesterday and skills of tomorrow are very different. The question is do we want our future generations to be mere users of the technology or become innovators?" Kishore Balaji, Director of Corporate Affairs Intel South Asia, told IANS on the sidelines of the event.

"At Intel we have been engaged in trying to see how we can bridge this innovation skill gap among youth with various initiatives because we believe that innovation is fundamental for the country in its efforts towards realising its vision of becoming a successful digital economy," Balaji added.

The students and their 20 projects were shortlisted from the Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science (IRIS) National Fair 2016, and will compete at the ISEF beginning May 14-19.

"ISEF is a really good platform for us to showcase our talent and our research work in order to convey our message and idea to the world," said a student from Bengaluru.

"Intel ISEF is lots of fun, science. The best minds from all over the world will come and we will get lots of opportunities," said a student from Raipur.

This group of young innovators will represent India to compete against approximately 1,750 finalists from over 70 countries for approximately $4 million in awards and scholarships.

Till 2016, a total of 91 Indian students have won 121 awards and accolades at Intel ISEF competing against more than 6 million high school students from across the world.

From 1999-2016, 19 students from India also have had the unique honour of having minor planets named after them.

"The children from India have done incredibly well and made us feel proud and they would continue to do so," Balaji said.
PRESS RELEASE

Abbas Hussain Joins the Board of Immunocore as Non-Executive Director

Ian T. Clark also appointed as special adviser to the Board

(Oxford, UK and Conshohocken, US, 12 May 2017) Immunocore Limited, the world's leading TCR company developing biological drugs to treat cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases, announced today that Abbas Hussain has joined the Board of Directors as a Non-Executive Director. Ian T. Clark has also joined as a special adviser to the Board of Immunocore.

Abbas Hussain was most recently President of Global Pharmaceuticals at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), where he had overall responsibility for the Company's sales business, and led operations supporting commercial infrastructure including medical, finance, human resources, IT, legal and communications. Abbas chaired GSK's pharmaceutical operations committee, driving key decisions on commercial strategy, and was on the Board of ViiV Healthcare Ltd., GSK's HIV-specialised business unit.

Abbas previously served as GSK's President of Emerging Markets, where he was responsible for building the world's leading emerging markets pharmaceuticals business by volume, and for driving the implementation of a new commercial operating model across more than 100 countries, helping to improve the transparency of GSK's work with healthcare professionals. Prior to joining GSK, Abbas served in a number of roles at Eli Lilly & Company, eventually as head of European operations.

Ian T. Clark, former Chief Executive Officer, Head of North American Commercial Operations and member of the Board of Directors for Genentech, Inc., part of Roche Holding AG, is supporting the Board of Immunocore as a special adviser. Ian Clark joined Genentech in 2003 and has served in a number of senior roles, including as Head of Global Product Strategy and Chief Marketing Officer for Roche. Ian currently serves on the Board of Kite Pharma Inc.

These new appointments bolster an already experienced Board of Directors and support Immunocore as it builds out its ambitious global business strategy. Immunocore is building out the world's leading TCR company by advancing its internal pipeline of proprietary products in areas of significant unmet medical need. The Company is focused on expanding its international clinical, regulatory and commercial infrastructure.

Commenting on the appointments, Dr Jonathan Knowles, Chairman of Immunocore, said: "Abbas Hussain brings decades of commercial, operational and strategic experience and know-how from his time at two of the world's largest and most important pharmaceutical groups. He joins the Board of Immunocore as we advance our world-leading TCR ImmTAC technology towards key data inflection points, further develop our footprint in oncology, auto-immune and infectious disease products, and build out our global commercial infrastructure. We're also delighted that Ian Clark has joined us as a special adviser to the Board as we focus on building out the world's leading independent TCR company."

Abbas Hussain commented: "I have followed Immunocore's progress with great interest and I am very excited to have joined the Board of a company with such a compelling TCR technology, excellent and ambitious leadership team and dynamic culture. I look forward to working with the Board to help move Immunocore into the next phase of its growth."

Ian Clark added: "I am proud to become a senior adviser to the Board of Immunocore, a company that has the potential to change the practice of medicine through its unique ImmTAC platform technology."

- Ends -

For more information, please contact:

Immunocore

Eliot Forster, Chief Executive Officer/ Eva-Lotta Allan, Chief Business Officer

T: +44 (0)1235 438600

E: info@immunocore.com

Consilium Strategic Communications

Mary-Jane Elliott/Jessica Hodgson/Chris Welsh/Laura Thornton

T: +44 (0)203 709 5700

E: Immunocore@consilium-comms.com

Notes for editors

About Immunocore

Immunocore is the world's leading T cell receptor (TCR) company, a global biotech striving to change medical practice in the most challenging disease areas. Immunocore is focused on delivering first-in-class biological therapies for patients, deploying its pioneering product platform, the soluble TCR ImmTAC technology. This is a novel class of biologic drugs with the potential to treat multiple major indications including cancer, infectious diseases and autoimmune diseases. Unlike most biological treatment modalities, ImmTAC molecules can address both extra and intracellular disease targets. Immunocore is advancing towards its goal of becoming a fully-integrated company.

Across the oncology pipeline, Immunocore has collaborations with Genentech, GlaxoSmithKline, MedImmune (the biologics division of AstraZeneca) and a co-discovery and co-development partnership with Lilly across a range of solid tumours. Immunocore's wholly-owned lead programme, IMCgp100, is in a pivotal monotherapy trial in patients with metastatic uveal melanoma. This study builds on the first ever demonstration of compelling single agent efficacy in a solid, 'cold', low mutation tumour - which is challenging for the majority of currently available immuno-oncology agents to address. The Company has also entered into combination trials with IMCgp100 in metastatic cutaneous melanoma, with MedImmune and Lilly.

Immunocore, headquartered near Oxford, UK with offices near Philadelphia, US, employs more than 340 staff, raised $320 million in a Series A round in 2015, and has a broad international investor base including Woodford Investment Management, Malin Corporation, Eli Lilly and Company, RTW Investments, Baker Brothers, Fidelity Management & Research Company as well as other private shareholders. For more information, please visit www.immunocore.com
New Delhi, May 12 : Delhi Daredevils rode on Karun Nair's brilliant half century to post 168/8 against Rising Pune Supergiant in an Indian Premier League (IPL) contest at the Ferozeshah Kotla here on Friday.

Nair's 45-ball 64, laced with nine hits to the fence, helped Delhi recover from a precarious position after the visitors had reduced the home side to 9/2 after three overs.

Electing to bat after calling the toss correctly, Daredevils were off to a disastrous start, losing the key wickets of opener Sanju Samson (2) and one down Shreyas Iyer (3) cheaply.

Nair and wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant (36) then steadied the ship with a 74-run third wicket stand as the right-left combo took the attack to the opposition in no time.

The first three overs yielded only 11 runs for Delhi before Nair started the onslaught slamming Washington Sundar and Ben Stokes for five boundaries in two overs.

Pant wasn't left too far behind, slapping Sundar for a flat six over midwicket before milking Shardul Thaur for three boundaries as Delhi got back the momentum to yield 62 runs in the next five overs.

The strategic time-out once again brought smiles back to the Pune camp, but not before Pant had smacked leg-spinner Adam Zampa for a four and six.

Zampa, however, got the southpaw the very next ball with a flatter delivery which Pant after facing 22 balls and hitting four boundaries and two sixes, failed to connect properly to be caught by Daniel Christian at long-on.

The fall of Pant brought in West Indian Marlon Samuels (27 off 21), who looked good during his 21-ball stay at the crease.

Samuels slammed two consecutive maximums of pacer Shardul Thakur to add 34 runs for the fifth wicket with Nair before stumper Mahendra Singh Dhoni plucked off a stunning catch off Christian to pack back the Caribbean batsman.

Comfortably placed at 117/4 after 14 overs, the stage was set for Nair and New Zealander Corey Anderson (3) to step up the gas after the second time out.

But Dhoni's brilliance behind the stumps foiled Delhi's plans, when the former India skipper effected a perfect stumping to end Anderson's five-ball stay.

Despite losing his partners at the other end, Nair, who had faced 37 balls by then completed his half century and was joined briefly by Pat Cummins (11), before Stokes packed back the Australian.

Towards the end, veteran leggie Amit Mishra (11 not out) joined Nair to add a quickfire 22-run stand for the seventh wicket before the Karnataka batsman got a top edge off Stokes to be caught by Jaydev Unadkat at midwicket.

Unadkat bowled a brilliant final over, leaking five runs and taking the wicket of tailender Mohammed Shami (2) as the home side failed to get the push.

Brief Scores: Delhi Daredevils 168/8 (Karun Nair 64, Rishabh Pant 36, Marlon Samuels 27, Ben Stokes 2/31) vs Rising Pune Supergiant.
Trieste (Italy), May 12 : The centre-left Governor of Italy's northeast Friuli-Venezia Giulia region has sparked controversy with comments suggesting that rape committed by an asylum-seeker was "more unacceptable".

"Sexual violence is always a hateful and disgusting act but it is even more unacceptable socially and morally when committed by someone who seeks and obtains shelter in our country," Deborah Serracchiani wrote in a statement on the region's website.

"In such cases, I can understand why people can want to reject individuals who commit such sordid crimes," he continued on the May 10 statement, which has been trending on social media in Italy.

Serracchiani, who is from the Democratic Party, went on to say she believed that refugees convicted of crimes like rape should be tried, jailed and expelled from Italy once they served their sentences.

The Governor's comments came after the attempted rape of a nine-year-old girl in Trieste on Sunday by an Iraqi asylum-seeker and unleashed a critical backlash on Twitter.

Twitter users accused Serracchiani of creating "First Division and Second Division" rape and of bowing to Italy's populist anti-immigrant Northern League party.

"According to Serracchiani, the gravity of the sexual violence depends on the perpetrator's nationality. This is unacceptable," read a tweet from Stefy.

"Serracchiani is giving the nod to the Northern League electorate and losing those few voters who still thought the Democratic Party was leftwing," tweeted Francesco.
New Delhi, May 12 : The Congress said on Friday that the opposition was committed to field "the most credible and winning face" in the presidential elections due in July.

Congress spokesperson Abhishek Manu Singhvi told reporters that the opposition would contest to win the election and every possible effort is underway "without fear, favour or restriction and ego" to select a credible face.

"All synergies of the wider opposition are being constructively pooled for that endeavour and result. We are fighting to win," he said.

Singhvi said many meetings had taken place and there will be more such meetings.

"A widest consultative process alone can generate that degree of consensus where everybody's private individual predilection and ego is submerged for the larger common good.

"The widest spectrum of the opposition is committed to ensuring the most credible and winning face in the presidential election to give a befitting reply and to fight to win the election against the NDA nominee," Singhvi said.

His remarks came even as the ruling National Democratic Alliance has not declared a candidate nor given any indications about the nominee.

President Pranab Mukherjee's term will come to end in July.

Congress sources admitted that the BJP-led NDA has an advantage in the electoral calculations for the presidential elections but insisted that a nominee with "high moral authority" can tip the scales.

They said that the presidential election is not fought on the basis of numbers alone and the candidate's name and personality matters and a candidate acceptable to large section can also get votes of fence-sitters.

The sources admitted that among the names being considered was that of former Governor Rajmohan Gandhi as he has an "all-India appeal".

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has taken the initiative to build consensus on on fielding a common opposition candidate in the presidential elections. She has already met several opposition leaders and is slated to meet West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee next week.
Vijayawada, May 12 : A former Central Reserve Police Force trooper, who had butchered seven people including his two children in 2010, was Friday found murdered in Andhra Pradesh's Srikakulam district.

Unknown persons murdered Metta Shankar Rao, 43, and threw his body in a river in Mettapeta village in Julumuru 'mandal' (block), police said.

Police recovered the body and sent it for autopsy.

Rao had had gone on a murder spree in the same village on November 30, 2010, butchering seven people, including his two children. In a gory act, he beheaded the children - Mahesh, 9, and Manasa, 6 - and placed the children's heads in the nearby temple and the bodies in his house.

Later, Rao went to the village and killed two women and three men with knives. He also hurled crude bombs at the houses of victims to terrorise them.

The trooper, who had murdered his wife in 2005, nursed a grouse against the villagers as they had deposed against him in the case.

He was sentenced to seven years in jail for killing his wife. He was on bail when he went on a murder spree.

The jawan had surrendered to the police and told them that he killed the kids as none would look after them once he was jailed.

Rao was released on bail in 2014.
New Delhi, May 12 : A 26-year-old woman committed suicide on Friday after a heated argument with her husband on a "trivial issue", police said.

Police said they came to know about the incident in north Delhi when the woman's husband, Santosh informed the local police.

Santosh, who works with an American company in Pune from where the couple had returned last week, told police that he had a heated argument with Kanchan over a trivial issue and she went inside her room in their house in Swatantra Nagar Extension in Narela area of Rohini.

"When she did not come out after half an hour, he said he peered inside the room from a window and saw her hanging," the officer said.

The two were married 11 months ago, he said, adding that a magisterial inquiry has been initiated in the case.
Bengaluru, May 12 : Questioning the veracity of a survey by a think-tank that Karnataka was the "most corrupt state" in the country, a livid Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday dubbed it "politically motivated".

"The person who organised the survey is a beneficiary of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. How can a survey of about 2,000 people reflect the opinion of six crore population in the state," Siddaramaiah said at a media interaction here.

The survey conducted by the Delhi-based think tank Centre for Media Studies (CMS) ranked Karnataka as the most corrupt state in India.

Findings of the survey 'CMS-India Corruption Study', released on April 28 said over 33 per cent of the households in the state believe the state government was not at all committed to reducing graft.

"Among the households surveyed, 77 per cent said they had to pay bribes for public services, signalling an increase of corruption in the state," it had said.

Asserting that the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party had no moral right to level charges against him or his government, Siddaramaiah said its leaders themselves were facing graft charges.

"These people, who were charged with corruption, are releasing a charge sheet against my government. There is no criminal complaint against me in the last four years," he said.

The BJP's state unit on Thursday released a 69-page political charge-sheet, listing 29 failures of the Congress government on the eve of it completing four years of rule in the southern state.

The charge sheet accused the government of failing on all fronts, including law and order, which was not conducive for the people to live in peace.

Terming the charge-sheet against his government a bundle of lies, Siddaramaiah said it was BJP's state unit President B.S. Yeddyurappa who was facing corruption cases and was also jailed during its tenure in the state on graft charges.

Claiming that his government had fulfilled 155 of the 165 promises, made in the party's election manifesto in April 2013, during the last four years, the Chief Minister said the remaining (promises) would be kept in the fifth year of the rule.

The Congress returned to power on its own in May 2013 assembly elections after a decade.
Bengaluru, May 12 : A local court on Friday remanded former corporator V. Nagaraj and his two sons Shastry and Gandhi to 10 day police custody for interrogation in the money-laundering case registered against them.

Although police sought 15-day custody of the accused, 11th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court Judge Jyothishree also remanded them to its custody till May 22.

A police team arrested the trio on Thursday from Arcot village in Tamil Nadu's Vellore district and were brought to the city earlier on Friday.

A civil court had issued an arrest warrant against the accused last month after police seized demonetised currency notes with the face value of Rs 14.8 crore from Nagaraj's house during a pre-dawn surprise raid on April 14.

The money-laundering case was registered against the accused under Section 7 of the Specified Bank Notes (Cessation of Liabilities) Act. 2017.

Meanwhile Bengaluru Commissioner of Police Praveen Sood announced Rs 2 lakh reward to the team for nabbing the accused who were on the run for 27 days to evade arrest.

A local court on May 5 also rejected Nagaraj's anticipatory bail application he filed through his lawyer on April 17, fearing arrest for allegedly exchanging the demonetised notes with new notes on a hefty commission.

Nagaraj, 54, was an independent corporator of the Bengaluru City Corporation from the Prakashnagar civic ward in the city's western suburb from 2002 to 2007.

Police also registered a case under Sections 189 (threat of injury to public servant) and 501 (printing or engraving matter known to be defamatory) of the Indian Penal Code against him.

Latest updates on Gandhi Jayanti 2019
ROCKLEDGE, Fla., May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Elev8 Brands, Inc. (OTC Pink:VATE), a holding company focused on the commercial development of hemp and CBD-based products including hemp coffee, tea, and E-juices which target the health and wellness markets, announces the retirement of 275 million (275,000,000) shares of common stock.



The company successfully negotiated through a private transaction the retirement of these shares which will improve the capital structure and overall health of the company. The effective date of the transaction is May 18th, 2017.

Chief Executive Ryan Medico stated, The return of these shares to the treasury instantly adds value to shareholders and demonstrates our desire to maintain a strong and healthy capital structure. Our upcoming quarterly report will reflect the retired shares, as well as update the current share structure.

The Company is also excited to announce that the newly formulated hemp coffee flavors Hazelnut Creme and French Vanilla are now available for purchase on Amazon.com.

Medico concluded, Elev8 Brands, Inc. continues to hit milestones set in our aggressive growth plans and we look forward to the next growth phase. After very successful meetings with Mr. Shuman and Mr. Silverstein this week in Colorado, we are set to expand our product line to enter into various vertical markets as well as continue to acquire synergistic companies. Elev8 is set to become a conglomerate in the Hemp industry, focusing on various product lines that will help increase value for our shareholders.

Elev8 recently announced that Tom Shuman joined Elev8 Brands, Inc. as a senior consultant. Tom Shuman is an ex-professional athlete that has parlayed his competitive nature into a tremendously successful Senior Level Sales & Marketing Executive with experience and expertise in Building Corporate Value. Whether challenged to accelerate growth within a mature business market, orchestrate an aggressive turnaround, or launch a new brand or product, Tom and his Sales & Marketing teams have consistently delivered strong operating and financial results.

About Elev8 Brands, Inc.:

Elev8 Brands, Inc. specializes in the development and marketing of products for the fitness and wellness markets. The company is founded on the basis of creating high-quality, sustainable, products for health conscious consumers.

About Elev8 Hemp LLC:

Elev8 Hemp LLC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elev8 Brands, Inc. which focuses on the development and marketing of hemp-based food, beverage, and health care products including hemp coffee, hemp water, and hemp-based skin care products.

About 02 Breathe LLC:

02 Breathe is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Elev8 Brands, Inc. which focuses on their oxygen bar while bringing in an array of CBD products. O2 Breathe carries CBD tinctures, CBD vape, CBD lotions and message products. 02 Breathe is currently looking to offer CBD at their oxygen bar.

Please visit,www.elev8hemp.com for more information

Safe Harbor Statement:

The information posted in this release may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "project," "intend," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technological advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, and various other factors beyond the Company's control.
Bali has been named TripAdvisor's #1 destination for 2017. ...its a surprise the fabled Island of the Gods didnt top the list sooner.

Bali has the honour of being named TripAdvisors top destination for 2017, stealing the title from evergreen favourite, London, and passing other beloved destinations including Paris, Marrakech, and Siem Reap. Though perhaps its a surprise the fabled Island of the Gods didnt top the list sooner. In one of the worlds most affordable destinations, A Bali vacation invites travellers to immerse themselves in luxury at a bargain price. It also surrounds them with a Hindu culture unique in Muslim-majority Indonesia, creating a tropical corner of Asia unlike any other.

For Goways Asia division, Bali has been a favourite destination for years. Right now until June 30, Globetrotters booking Goways Luxury Bali Vacation will save US $500 per couple, and receive a complimentary 60-minute massage, just to ease the transition into holiday mode. This 10-day package includes international flights from North America, private transfers, seven nights luxury accommodation at two different Bali resorts showcasing different parts of the island, daily breakfast, and some day touring. Prices start at just $1899 US from Los Angeles, or $2699 CA from Vancouver, with highly competitive rates from other major cities including New York, Calgary, and Toronto. The offer is valid for travel until the end of May 2017, or between November 1, 2017 and March 31, 2018.

Globetrotters who just want to hit the beach with plenty of free time may wish to book a Bali Beach Escape. A 5-night stay at the Kayana Seminyak Villas includes a complimentary night, plus a 45-minute massage. This deal is one of a wide range of value added extras Goway travellers can enjoy when booking a Bali vacation in 2017.

Since 1970, Goway has been providing unforgettable travel experiences to Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Central & South America, Idyllic Island destinations and Europe. Today Goway is recognized as one of North America's leading travel companies for individuals, families and groups to select exotic destinations around the globe. Goway has offices in Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, and Sydney, Australia.

For reservations and information, visit http://www.goway.com, or call 1-800-387-8850.
Air Force Winner Announced at Military Spouse of the Year 10-Year Celebration We are so proud of Brittanys drive, leadership and personal accomplishments, along with those of all Branch Winners during this special 10-year anniversary of the Military Spouse of the Year program.

Recognizing her outstanding commitment to the military community and work on behalf of military families with special needs members, Brittany Boccher was named as the 2017 Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year  presented by Military Spouse magazine. Currently serving alongside her husband at Little Rock Air Force Base, Brittany has been a military spouse for 11 years and a tireless advocate, volunteer and mentor for military families. The tenth annual awards ceremony, which took place in conjunction with national Military Spouse Appreciation Day, was livestreamed on Facebook, and video will be posted to the Military Spouse of the Year  (MSOY) website (http://www.msoy.militaryspouse.com).

A mother of a four-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son with Downs syndrome, Brittany Boccher (pronounced "Bocker") became the founder and director of the Down Syndrome Advancement Coalitions Tank Filled Life project, partnering with organizations across Arkansas to educate the community about Down Syndrome and advocate for families with special needs family members. Brittany is also owner of Brittany Boccher Photography and co-owner of Mason Chix apparel; both companies directly support the advancement of Down syndrome treatment, research and neurodevelopmental therapies, as well as other military spouse entrepreneurs.

As the 2017 Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year Brittany plans to pursue ADA-accessible playground options for military children with special needs; continue her work to raise awareness and funding for services to include and engage individuals of all ages with special needs; and continue to serve as president of the Little Rock Spouses Club, among other volunteer positions.

Her full bio can be found at: http://msoy.militaryspouse.com/contestants/brittany-boccher/.

"We are so proud of Brittanys drive, leadership and personal accomplishments, along with those of all Branch Winners during this special 10-year anniversary of the Military Spouse of the Year program, remarked Garry L. Parks, Lieutenant General, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), Chairman of Armed Forces Insurance, MSOY Title Sponsor. In this time I have observed the program grow the awareness, participation and recognition of our military spouse community. Armed Forces Insurance is honored to share this day with the military community, and we applaud Brittanys dedication and contributions like the thousands of military spouses who are, each in their own way, a force multiplier to Americas armed forces and an incredible asset to their communities. On behalf of Armed Forces Insurance, I salute each of you!"

Prior to announcing Brittany Boccher as the overall 2017 Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year, the Branch finalists and over 170 Base SOYs were honored at an awards luncheon held at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and attended by military and civilian VIPs. Awards were presented by Military Spouse Magazine along with title sponsor, Armed Forces Insurance, as well as Gold sponsors Allstate, Starbucks, Capital One and Home Depot. The 2017 Branch Winners, who emerged from a pool of more than 1,500 nominees, are:

ArmyCassaundra Martinez, Fort Belvoir

Marine CorpsJessica Rudd, MCAGCC Twentynine Palms

NavyJoy Goodrich, NS Newport

Air ForceBrittany Boccher, Little Rock AFB

Coast GuardMary Nelson, District 7

National GuardRhiannon Knutson, Minnesota

"Its hard to believe it has been ten years since the MSOY Award began, yet we have had the privilege and honor to recognize hundreds of dedicated spouses for their inspiring work and commitment said Suzie Schwartz, President of Military Spouse Programs, spouse of former Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz and recipient of the 2017 Military Spouse Award for Service. We couldnt be happier to welcome Brittany into this family and look forward to highlighting how she is working to make life better for military spouses and their families.

The Military Spouse of the Year program represents millions of past and present military spouses who dedicate their lives and families to the service of a grateful nation and give back to their communities. For more information, please visit http://www.msoy.militaryspouse.com.

# # #

About Military Spouse:

Military Spouse is the leading destination and brand for the nation's 1.1 million military spouses, who contribute to their communities, the military and each other every day. Military Spouse provides online and print resources for military families on PCS, careers, education opportunities and family life. Follow us at militaryspouse.com, or on Facebook and Twitter.

About Armed Forces Insurance:

Armed Forces Insurance (AFI) is the insurance company of choice for current and retired members of the uniformed services, their children, and Department of Defense civilians. Founded in 1887 by military leaders with a single mission: to protect the property of those who protect our nation, providing premium quality, competitively priced property and casualty insurance to military professionals throughout the Armed Forces. We know our members have unique circumstances and insurance needs, and we offer a level of personalized service that is unequaled in the industry-because Our Mission is YOU - and your peace of mind. The company also furthers our strong commitment to give back to military and local communities through important programs and sponsorships including the Great American Patriot Award at the Armed Forces Bowl, the Armed Forces Insurance Military Spouse of the Year Award, the Vetrepreneur of the Year Award, and the Military Warriors Support Foundation. In early 2015, AFI established the Armed Forces Insurance Foundation to assist in educating the military community on a wide array of key personal financial topics to help them succeed. For more information, visit the website at http://www.afi.org or call 1-800-495-8234, and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

For more information or to arrange interviews, contact Gordon C. James PR:

Suzanne Trevino (602-618-7857, strevino(at)gcjpr(dot)com) or Brian OMalley (602-274-1988, bomalley(at)gcjpr(dot)com).
Having spent over 30 years in the Ohio market, I believe Britton Gallaghers passion and entrepreneurial spirit will establish the organization as a regional platform for other agency partners.

Britton Gallagher announced today it has entered into an investment partnership with Acrisure, a rapidly growing U.S. consulting and insurance broker. The partnership will support Britton Gallagher's growth-oriented focus, perpetuating its 75-year tradition of innovative risk management and hands-on client service.

As Acrisure's first Ohio platform investment, Britton Gallagher will continue to operate with its current Cleveland-based employee team enabling the firm to maintain its local presence and its client relationships. Through the Acrisure partnership, Britton Gallagher will have access to support enhancements including capital funding, extensive industry resources and a deep network of expert agency partners.

"We are thrilled to enter into this partnership with Acrisure as it enables Britton Gallagher to continue our tradition of delivering outstanding client service while fueling organic growth," Jeremy Bryant, President of Britton Gallagher stated. "Through Acrisure, we will now have access to a global network along with expanded resources to serve as a greater client advocate.

"Identifying and partnering with growth-oriented agencies has been a key component of Acrisure's success as one of the top 15 brokers in the United States," stated Greg Williams, Chief Executive Officer of Acrisure. "Britton Gallagher is a definite leader in providing, delivering and generating creative and cost-effective solutions for its clients.

D. Michael Sherman, President of Acrisure, said of the partnership, Having spent over 30 years in the Ohio market, I believe Britton Gallaghers passion and entrepreneurial spirit will establish the organization as a regional platform for other agency partners. I am excited to see where this agency's expertise and talents take us in Ohio and beyond.

About Britton Gallagher

Founded in 1942, Britton Gallagher is a privately held, Cleveland-based insurance brokerage firm that has been providing liability and risk management solutions for a diverse scope of industries. The service-based client model has established Britton Gallagher as an employee benefits and commercial insurance leader in unique arenas including pyrotechnics, life sciences, and executive risk.

About Acrisure

Based in Caledonia, MI, Acrisure is a leading retail consulting and insurance brokerage offering comprehensive property & casualty, employee benefits, human resource outsourcing, loss & claims management, surety bonding and personal lines solutions. The Company has 123 platform locations in 29 states and approximately 3,300 employees throughout the United States. For more information, please visit http://www.Acrisure.com.

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DCW Media (Dougherty, Clifford, and Wadsworth), a 44-year old media buying agency, officially announced the launch of its new website today. The freshly redesigned website touts DCW Media as both an online and offline media buying leader with digital capabilities complementing an already dominant offline media buying, planning and negotiating company. DCW Media brings award-winning online marketing and cross-channel media talent to DCWs extensive portfolio of clients. Long known for its propensity and clout in the world of traditional media buying, DCW continues to foster traditional media relationships while embracing and implementing online and mobile-based advertising strategies.



DCW focuses on providing our clients tried and tested traditional solutions as well as challenging them with innovative new media solutions to help them set the trend in a constantly evolving and challenging media landscape. The new website serves as a portal where prospective clients can get a high-level overview of what DCW is all about and to discover the scope of services we provide on a day in and day out basis. Our web presence and identity is vital to making first impressions that will open the door to conversation and to overall growth, said Ken Bove, President and CEO.



The revamped website along with DCWs social media gateways will continue to act as a hub for those seeking relevant and contemporary information, insights, and references for those invested in the advertising industry. DCW Media believes that media buying, whether traditional or digital, is a craft. Craftsmanship in a commoditized world references media as an asset; one in which requires a high level of expertise to be implemented effectively, efficiently, and with foresight that only experience can offer. To check out the newly redesigned site, visit DCW Media at http://www.dcwmedia.com.



About DCW Media

DCW Media is the premier, privately held media buying agency headquartered in Ronkonkoma, New York with satellite offices in Manhattan and Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1973, the corporation serves both direct clients and agencies, offering media research, planning, and buying for all online and offline media channels. DCW Media is the media architect behind the ad campaigns that have helped build such brands as ShurTech (Duck Tape, Frog Tape, T-Rex Tape), PC Richard & Son, Skype, Mercy College, LIU, Pomi, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Bausch & Lomb, Varian Medical Systems, and Fortunoff Back Yard Store.
Novant Health has been granted special consultative status by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Consultative status for an organization enables it to actively engage with ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies, as well as with the U.N. Secretariat, programs, funds and agencies in a number of ways. This gives Novant Health a platform on the international stage to contribute to work in the areas of womens and childrens health and wellness and population health, as well as poverty and food security.

Novant Health womens health and wellness will continue to provide exceptional care to the women in our local communities, said Chere Gregory, senior vice president of Novant Healths womens health and wellness service. With this collaboration, we will be able to increase the work we do abroad. It will give us the ability to identify host countries where we can work to improve health care and disease prevention for women and children.

Novant Health has built a multidisciplinary approach in caring for women, said Ashleigh Hargrave, director of Novant Healths womens health and wellness. The womens health and wellness service line strives to treat women as whole individuals, looking beyond the common areas of health which for many years focused only on obstetrics and gynecology. While obstetrics and gynecology is of paramount importance, we also look at gender-specific areas of care in every medical specialty.

These programs include womens heart health, domestic and intimate partner violence education and prevention, weight management, normal social and physical adolescent development, womens midlife programs, caregiver support and resilience and overall disease prevention.

The consultative status builds on a global initiative launched in 2014 when Novant Health entered into a collaborative agreement with Kybele Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to improving childbirth safety worldwide through educational partnerships. The agreement enabled increased collaboration between Novant Health womens services to reach beyond the boundaries of the United States and identify host country partnerships.

Through the Kybele partnership, we have hosted country collaborations to provide clinical care and maternal/infant death-prevention programs. Our team members have been able to participate in global medical work to provide maternal-fetal education and support in Ghana, Gregory said. Working with both government and nongovernment agencies, we have been able to identify gender health care discrepancies and increase awareness about the care gaps that exist in North Carolina, across the United States and abroad.

Consultative Status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council is the highest status granted by the United Nations to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), allowing them to participate in the work of the United Nations. Consultative Status, depending on level, gives the organizations a number of rights to participate in the work of the U.N., to present their views and deliver testimony.

The United Nations Economic and Social Council addresses a vast number of economic and social topics through worldwide activities. The Novant Health special consultative status indicates the U.N.s recognition of Novant Healths global expertise in women's health, and is truly a significant honor given the fact that there are an estimated 3.7 million nongovernmental organizations worldwide.

As of January 2017, there were 143 organizations in general consultative status, 3,544 in special consultative status and 978 on the roster.

The role of the Economic and Social Council is to promote higher standards of living, full employment, social progress and development; solutions for economic, social and health problems; international cooperation and universal respect for human rights and freedoms. The council relies on NGOs to provide expertise and technical knowledge to support their work.

Special status is given to NGOs that have a special competence in, and are concerned specifically with, only a few of the fields of activity covered by the ECOSOC, according to the U.N. Novant Healths womens health and wellness falls into this category.

About Novant Health

Novant Health is an integrated network of physician clinics, outpatient facilities and hospitals that delivers a seamless and convenient healthcare experience to communities in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Named in 2016 by Beckers Hospital Review as one of the nations 150 best places to work in healthcare, Novant Health network consists of more than 1,500 physicians and over 25,000 employees that provide care at over 470 locations, including 14 medical centers and hundreds of outpatient facilities and physician clinics. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the health system serves more than 4.4 million patients annually and in 2016 provided more than $725.5 million in community benefit, including charity care and services. Diversity MBA has recognized the organization as one of the 50 best places for women and managers of diverse background to work and SK&A ranks Novant Health among the top 25 integrated health systems in the nation. Novant Health provides care in Virginia under the joint operating company, Novant Health UVA Health System.

For more information, please visit our website at NovantHealth.org. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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Chef Works, a global leader in culinary uniform design and development, heads to Chicago for the National Restaurant Association Show to debut their highly anticipated expansion of their Urban Collection, a fashion-forward line of apparel and accessories. Focused on front-of-house and waitstaff offerings including shirts, aprons, vests, and ties, Chef Works continues to lead the culinary uniform industry by example, providing fashion forward uniforms to over 70 countries through a variety of global partners and distribution channels.

URBAN COLLECTION: FRONT OF HOUSE & WAITSTAFF EXPANSION

Chef Works debuted their groundbreaking Urban Collection in 2013 to instant acclaim. In a time when culinary professionals were looking to infuse personal style and fashion trends into their uniforms, Chef Works unrolled a contemporary collection that immediately garnered support from top chefs including Rick Bayless and Dominique Crenn. With small-batch additions released each year, 2017 marks the largest product expansion of the Urban Collection, with nearly 250 new products set to debut at the National Restaurant Association Show. While chefs and kitchen staff have been well represented in recent years, designers chose to focus on front-of-house staff this year, who have previously been relegated to ill-fitting shapes, drab colors, and limited options. New products include slim-fit shirts, shortened aprons, and fashion-forward pants, creating a trend-setting wardrobe for culinarians across multiple fields.

Giving chefs the freedom to express themselves in the kitchen with a uniform choice that matches their personality, Chef Works is rolling out the Berkeley Apron collection, a fully customizable apron that includes snap on suspenders in a range of on-trend colors and patterns. This innovative design removes the traditional neck strap in favor of a cross back strap, redistributing weight and increasing comfort, workability and longevity. Chef Works continues to push the boundaries in wardrobe development, launching ten new coat styles in addition to the new aprons and work wear that expands upon and introduces new colors and fits into their already substantial lineup.

CHEF WORKS AT THE NATIONAL RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION SHOW

As one of the most influential uniform exhibitors, Chef Works is returning to the show for the 22nd consecutive year, cementing their status as a dynamic, solution-based entity in the culinary industry. The pop-up shop-style set allows visitors to interact with new products, test firsthand the innovations and advancements made over the past year, and network with Chef Works senior leadership. Hosting multiple events and an invite-only after party, Chef Works has become one of the most sought after participants at the show, using the conference as a vital time to engage with culinary professionals, industry partners and visitors alike consistently moving the brand forward while promoting new products and announcing exciting developments.

Visitors can get their first look at this years product launch and visit Chef Works at booth #1119.

ABOUT CHEF WORKS

Established in 1964 when Joseph Gross founded a small uniform company in South Africa, Chef Works has evolved into a global force as a solutions based company, supplying culinary apparel to over seventy countries. Chef Works dresses back of house and front of house staffs for a diverse range of customers including, international hotel chains, award-winning restaurants and bars, culinary schools, food service companies, laundries, and assisted living facilities. Headquartered in San Diego, California, the family-operated corporation has helped pave the way for the current culinary uniform movement by working directly with chefs and culinary personnel to develop innovative, fashion-forward garments. For more information, visit chefworks.com, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
We are relentlessly focused on developing innovative ways to promote advancement and leadership opportunities for our franchise owners and their teams. That focus allows us to create an environment where the employees and clients can thrive.

Forbes third annual Americas Best Employers list has named Home Instead Senior Care one of its best employers for 2017. Home Instead ranks 78 on the list, which was generated using anonymous feedback from employees at the nations top employers.

Companies on the Best Employers list range across 25 different industry sectors  from government services to retail to healthcare. While the 2017 list featured a variety of healthcare companies, Home Instead is the only provider of home care services for seniors.

We are delighted to be recognized as one of the nations best employers, said Jeff Huber, president and CEO of Home Instead, Inc. For more than twenty years, our goal has been to provide excellent care to senior clients and their families. In order to reach that goal, we are relentlessly focused on developing innovative ways to promote advancement and leadership opportunities for our franchise owners and their teams. That focus allows us to create an environment where the employees and clients can thrive.

Home Instead has more than 150 employees at its corporate headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and franchisees employ more than 65,000 professional CAREGivers. CAREGivers, provide basic support services that allow seniors to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible  from companionship and personal care to specialized Alzheimers care. CAREGivers provide more than 60 million hours of care annually across more than 1,000 independently owned and operated franchises throughout the United States and 11 other countries.

To compile the annual list, Forbes conducts an independent survey from a sample of 30,000 full- and part-time American employees working for large or midsize companies. Participants were asked 35 questions about work-related topics, including whether employees would recommend their employer  with additional weight given to this particular question.

The Best Employers list launched online today at http://www.forbes.com/best-employers.

For more information about the Home Instead network, visit http://www.homeinstead.com.

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ABOUT HOME INSTEAD SENIOR CARE

Founded in 1994 in Omaha, Nebraska, by Lori and Paul Hogan, the Home Instead Senior Care network provides personalized care, support and education to help enhance the lives of aging adults and their families. Today this network is the world's leading provider of in-home care services for seniors, with more than 1,000 independently owned and operated franchises that provide more than 60 million hours of care throughout the United States and 11 other countries. Local Home Instead Senior Care offices employ more than 65,000 CAREGiversSM worldwide who provide basic support services that enable seniors to live safely and comfortably in their own homes for as long as possible. The Home Instead Senior Care network strives to partner with each client and his or her family members to help meet that individuals needs. Services span the care continuum from providing companionship and personal care to specialized Alzheimers care and hospice support. Also available are family caregiver education and support resources.
EVO Payments International, a leading payments service provider operating throughout North America and Europe, announced today that it has acquired the remaining ownership interest from long-time partner Zenith Merchant Services, a Montreal-based provider of payment processing solutions to small- and medium-sized businesses located throughout the United States and Canada.

We are excited to welcome the Zenith team into the EVO family, said Brendan Tansill, EVO President, North America. We have worked with Zenith for nearly eight years and have been impressed by their ability to grow their organization into a leading provider of payment solutions to the merchant market.

Zenith partners David Goldfarb, Eric Tavernier, and Diego Vazquez are eager to work with EVO on the continued expansion of their existing business. We are thankful for the support we have received from EVO over the years, said Vazquez, managing partner. Our partnership will provide us with significant growth opportunities throughout North America.

Zeniths existing team will remain in place as the combined companies work to increase penetration in both U.S. and Canadian markets. We recognize the tremendous accomplishments achieved by Zenith in developing proven sales distribution strategies that meet the needs of our merchants, said Tansill. We are excited to have the Zenith team help us with our continued North American expansion initiatives.

The transaction is effective immediately; financial terms were not disclosed.

About EVO Payments International

EVO Payments International is a leading payments service provider of merchant acquiring and processing solutions for merchants, Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), financial institutions, Independent Sales Organizations (ISOs), government organizations and multinational corporations located throughout North America and Europe. A principal member of Visa and MasterCard, EVO offers an array of innovative, reliable and secure payments solutions and merchant services, backed by an uncompromising commitment to exceed the expectations of our customers and partners. For more information, please visit http://www.evopayments.us.
Home page, new Indiana Limestone Company website. It brings a sharp focus to our continuing development as a company.

A comprehensive website upgrade from the Indiana Limestone Company combines eye-catching design, user-friendly navigation, exceptional photography, indispensable technical material through the companys online library, and easy access to premier customer service.

The new site launched May 1, 2017. The web address remains unchanged: http://www.indianalimestonecompany.com.

User-friendly features include special tabs that direct architects, dealers, homeowners, and fabricators to pages full of information and assistance provided specifically for them. Visitors can access a wide range of product guides, along with instructional materials and detailed architectural specifications. Highly specific guidance is included for builders/remodelers on how they may partner with Indiana Limestone Company.

A Featured Project section introduces a wide range of design and construction solutions featuring the companys natural stone. Useful detail is provided on the companys exciting, well-received Urban Hardscapes line, which has brought the beauty and permanence of limestone to many new landscape/hardscape applications since its introduction last year.

Visitors to our site are going to find that theres more for architects, more for dealers, more for end-use consumers, said Ben Wojcikiewicz, Indiana Limestone Company product manager. Anyone who sees it will recognize an excellent tool for quickly acquiring critical information and communicating with the nations leading provider of natural limestone.

Were very excited about the launch of this website upgrade, said Tom Quigley, Indiana Limestone CEO. It brings a sharp focus to our continuing development as a company, with extra attention to the needs of developers, architects, fabricators, and other significant players in the stone industry. With its strong emphasis on the Urban Hardscapes line, indianalimestonecompany.com will be an indispensable tool as our company moves more strongly into the building-products space.

About Indiana Limestone Company

Indiana Limestone Company is unmatched as the premier supplier of Indiana Limestone in a range of beautiful and lasting building products. Founded in 1926 (with predecessor firms that had been quarrying limestone since the mid-1800s), ILCO today remains the provider of choice for this internationally renowned natural stone. Throughout an illustrious history in which its stone has made such iconic structures as the Empire State Building, National Cathedral, and the Pentagon, ILCO has reliably provided the highest quality products and services carefully tailored to the needs of the market with an environmental, natural focus.
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Vallourec Shareholders' Meeting, 12 May 2017

Adoption of all resolutions

Appointment of Mr.Yuki Iriyama as new member of the Supervisory Board

Amendment of bylaws to enable the Group Works Council to appoint an employee representative on the Supervisory Board

Boulogne-Billancourt (France), 12 May 2017 - Vallourec, world leader in premium tubular solutions, has announced that the combined annual Shareholders' Meeting held today, chaired by Ms. Vivienne Cox with a quorum of 62.90% adopted all the resolutions put to the vote.

The Shareholders' Meeting approved the appointment of Mr. Yuki Iriyama as member of the Supervisory Board for a period of four years ending after the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders called to approve the accounts of the financial year ending 31 December 2020.

The Supervisory Board consists of 12 members, of whom 5 are women. The proportion of independent members amounts to 83%.

The Shareholders' Meeting adopted the proposed bylaws amendment in relation to the composition of the Supervisory Board and enabling the Group Works Council to appoint an employee representative on the Supervisory Board. The latter will be appointed within six months of the Shareholders' Meeting held on 12 May 2017.

The Shareholders' Meeting also approved the two resolutions relating to the compensation of the Management Board in 2016 ( Say on Pay ) as well as the resolutions relating to the principles and criteria for determining, distributing and allocating the fixed, variable and exceptional items comprising the total compensation, and benefits of any kind attributable to the Chairman of the Management Board, the members of the Management Board, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board and the members of the Supervisory Board due to their offices, and constituting the compensation policy for them in fiscal year 2017.

Finally, the Shareholders' Meeting approved the financial statements of 2016 and decided not to pay a dividend in respect of the 2016 results.

The webcast of the Shareholders' Meeting held on 12 May 2017 and the results of voting on all resolutions submitted to shareholders will be available on Vallourec's website in the coming days: www.vallourec.com

Mr. Yuki Iriyama

A Japan national born on 19 November 1947, Mr Yuki Iriyama graduated from the University of Tokyo (Faculty of Law, 1970) and College of Europe at Bruges in Belgium (Advanced European Study in Law, 1977). He began his career in 1970 in the legal department of Nippon Steel Corporation (currently Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corporation - NSSMC) and assumed different operational and managerial positions in Japan and internationally for NSSMC until 2009. He managed the Electronics & Information Business Division from 1990 to 1993 and then became General Manager of Overseas Business Development Division. He was appointed Director, Member of the Board in 2002 and Managing Executive Officer in 2006. Then, he assisted NSSMC as Executive Advisor until 2014. Mr Yuki Iriyama is admitted in Japan as an attorney-at-law and is currently Of Counsel of Kajitani Law Offices in Tokyo.



About Vallourec

Vallourec is a world leader in premium tubular solutions for the energy markets and for demanding industrial applications such as oil & gas wells in harsh environments, new generation power plants, challenging architectural projects, and high-performance mechanical equipment. Vallourec's pioneering spirit and cutting edge R&D open new technological frontiers. With close to 19,000 dedicated and passionate employees in more than 20 countries, Vallourec works hand-in-hand with its customers to offer more than just tubes: Vallourec delivers innovative, safe, competitive and smart tubular solutions, to make every project possible.

Listed on Euronext in Paris (ISIN code: FR0000120354, Ticker VK) and eligible for the Deferred Settlement System (SRD), Vallourec is included in the following indices: SBF 120 and Next 150.

In the United States, Vallourec has established a sponsored Level 1 American Depositary Receipt (ADR) program (ISIN code: US92023R2094, Ticker: VLOWY). Parity between ADR and a Vallourec ordinary share has been set at 5:1.

www.vallourec.com

Follow us on Twitter @Vallourec

Calendar

26 July 2017 Release of second quarter and first half 2017 results

For further information, please contact:
On May 4th, the Detroit Fulfillment Initiative hosted their first "Pitch It" Event. The event was produced by Pure Michigan Business Connect with MEDC and hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber. 10 e-commerce companies were selected from Metro Detroit to compete for $20,000 in services to support their business growth. Prize package included services from Evans Distribution Systems, UPS, Developrise, and Vision Computer Solutions.

The following 10 companies were selected from over 50 applicants.



Reed Wilson Design

Scarlet Crane

Detroit ENTO

iKURLY LLC

Detroit Denim Co.

Nirvana Tea

The Natural Market

Mutual Adoration

Natural Red Essentials

Sfumato Fragrances

Each company had 10 minutes to present their business idea to a panel of judges  Dennis Archer Jr. of Ignition Media, Kate Nadaskay of Fathead and Jennifer Koffman from UPS.

Natural Red was selected as the winner of the event after a compelling pitch was delivered by founder Karen Guilmette, a former Detroit Public School teacher. Her company manufactures and sells natural care products including deodorant, lip balm and hand creams. The prize will provide fulfillment resources that will help Natural Red expand and grow.

For more information about the Detroit Fulfillment Initiative please visit http://www.detroitfulfillment.com

About Detroit Fulfillment Initiative: Detroit Fulfillment Initiative is a business incubator that helps local fulfillment companies to scale. DeFI was started in 2014 by Derek Byrd and Sean Mueller from Evans Distribution Systems. Over the three years, other partners such as UPS, Developrise, and Vision Computer Solutions have joined in. All four companies have teamed together to bring local fulfillment companies the tools and resources needed through events, educational workshops, and networking.
Before taking the reins as ViSalus CEO in January, Nick Sarnicola poured his thoughts into a passionate memo entitled, Project Catalyst, which outlines his strategic vision and the changes he believes are necessary to make Vi the worlds leading vehicle for entrepreneurship.

I wrote Project Catalyst with a focus on the next 1,000 days, said Sarnicola. I knew not every point in the plan would be possible right away, but I wanted to capture and communicate my vision to my partners before making this defining personal, professional, and financial investment.

Challenge Pro Platform

A key untapped opportunity in North America identified by Sarnicola in his strategic plan is the booming health and fitness industry. Seeing a void in the marketplace to support Fitness Professionals with a suite of business tools, Sarnicola developed the idea of Challenge Pro, a new platform launching in June.

In its final stages of development, Challenge Pro aims to provide much-needed business solutions for Fitness Professionals. If youre in the fitness industry today, this platform will help you build your brand, get better results for your clients, and grow your income. Theres nothing else like this on the planet that provides all of these benefits in one place, added Sarnicola.

Challenge Pro recently announced a partnership with Dolvett Quince, a celebrity trainer and star of the hit reality TV series, The Biggest Loser. Quince, as a leading voice in the development of this platform, is excited to see Challenge Pro tackle some of the biggest challenges faced by fitness professionals today. I feel the pain of people in the industry right now. You want to spend time with and focus on your clients, but you dont have access to the right tools to run a business. You want to have a great brand, but dont know how to build a website. You spend all your time chasing low-paying sponsorships, with limited results. Challenge Pro removes those obstacles and puts you back doing what you do best, Quince explained.

Italy Growth

While shoring up the domestic Vi opportunity, leadership has also been supporting a booming business in Italy, where independent Promoters held the countrys first National Success Training (NST) in Rimini in April. Vi Co-Founder and President, Blake Mallen, who traveled to the event with Sarnicola, had high praise for the way Italians have rallied around the Vi opportunity. To see the team in Italy come together and build to such a huge event with hundreds in the room leading the way and topping many of our production categories, is an inspiring example of whats possible when a small group comes together with the desire to do great things, remarked Mallen.

Mexico Expansion

Seeing the power of Vi in new markets sparked another of Sarnicolas strategic objectives, announcing Vis expansion into Mexico in the next 12 months. The opportunity in Mexico is tremendous. Youre talking about a country of 130 million, where 7 out of 10 adults are overweight. We know we can make a difference there, but theres a big impact we can have right now with Latinos in the U.S. and Canada as we prepare for our launch, said Mallen.

To help champion this cause among Latino and Mexican-American field leaders, Mallen brought on industry expert, Mili Mourino, to lead this initiative. We have 57 million Latinos right now in the U.S. and Canada who need our products, and have the opportunity to lead the way as we prepare to expand into Mexico. Knowing what is possible, I cant wait to see the amazing success we create for the people who get involved during this Pre-Launch phase, added Mourino.

Incentive Enhancements

Vi Promoters have already seen the impact of Sarnicolas presence at the helm, with Vi enjoying sales growth in the first three consecutive months of a year for the first time since 2012. The fuel on this fire was added in March, at the companys National Success Training (NST) in Atlanta, where Sarnicola rolled out enhancements to the Vi Incentives Plan.

As Sarnicola explained, My commitment was to roll out intentional compensation drivers, to strengthen our incentives so that our Promoters are rewarded for the behaviors that drive the business as they help people transform their health with Vi products.

Co-Founder and former Vi CEO, Ryan Blair, recognized Sarnicolas impact on the business inside the walls as well, highlighting changes in the first half of the year.

Nick has taken the important steps to right-size the cost structure of the business while I am spending my time laser-focused on new strategic partnerships that will power our next generation of Vi innovation, said Blair.

Sarnicola added, Im proud of what we have been able to accomplish as a community and as a company in a short time, but what excites me most is knowing that this is just the beginning. Having tackled large strategic priorities as well as other key moves inside the walls to strengthen the business and operations side, the biggest announcement is yet to come. We recently met with 30 of our top income earners in Los Angeles to preview our biggest idea yet. It will be the most inspiring opportunity we have ever offered, and something that I have been personally passionate about my entire life. To be able to put my full energy behind this new direction in locked arms with the incredible leadership team we have assembled, all I have to say is get on board and come along for the ride.

About Vi

Vi is a healthy lifestyle company committed to transforming life, health and prosperity around the world by creating meaningful connections, supporting physical transformations, and promoting entrepreneurial freedom. Through its flagship program, The Challenge, Vi has developed a leading platform for achieving weight-loss, health and fitness results. Founded in 2005, Vi develops innovative weight-management products, functional foods, energy drinks and nutritional supplements that it markets and sells direct-to-consumers through an international sales force of independent Promoters. Vi is headquartered in Troy, Michigan, with offices in Los Angeles, California and Amsterdam, the Netherlands. For more information about Vi, please visit Vi.com and follow the Vi-Community on Facebook (Facebook.com/Vi), Instagram and Twitter (@ViSalus).
Construct-A-Lead is an online construction lead service that helps contractors, service providers, manufacturers and suppliers gain information on all large scale construction projects. The service features apartment construction, hotel construction, retail construction, medical construction, school renovations & more, including those hard-to-find private project leads, to help bid on construction, from planning stage- completion.

Construct-A-Lead, the industrys most comprehensive construction lead service, announces the following multi-family projects will go forward. Construct-A-Leads newly implemented advanced search feature allows the user to find their leads or key contacts by project type, location, bid stage, dollar value, company, or keyword.

Users are able to track projects status, save searches, put personalized notes on projects, email a project to a colleague or customer, reach out directly to the decision maker and download construction leads with a one-touch feature.

Interested parties are invited to visit Construct-A-Lead.com and sign up for a no obligation test drive, where they will be able to experience these newly integrated features. Users will be able to receive regular alerts on new and updated construction projects, in accordance with the individuals preference.

An example of the medical projects available within the database is listed below. Reference the Project ID to utilize the new site features and to obtain direct contact information for each construction lead:

Orlando, FL  Creative Village Student Housing - Plans call for the new construction of a 600 bed student housing development serving students at UCF and Valencia College. Construction start: Fall, 2017, $90,000,000. Project ID: 1391875

Alexandria, VA  Pickett Place  Plans call for the new construction of a 3,100,000 SF mixed use development on 24 acres to include 2,400 residential units, a 150-key hotel, 300,000 square feet of restaurant / retail and office space. Construction start: Q3, Q4, 2018, $750,000,000 Project ID: 1391756

Brooklyn, NY  2848 West 15th Street  Plans call for the new construction of a 35,667 SF, six-story, 20-unit mixed-use building with a 1,721-square-foot daycare center on the ground floor, Plans also call for a 17-car parking garage. Existing structure to be demolished. Construction start: Q4, 2017, Q1, 2018. $12,000,000 Project ID: 1391888

Duluth, GA  The Meadow - Plans call for building a new three-building, 186-unit senior-living facility. Construction start: Q4, 2017, Q1, 2018. $30,000,000 Project ID: 1391826

Los Angeles, CA  West Wilshire Apartments  Plans call for building a new mixed-use development featuring a 50-unit apartment complex and 5,730 square feet of commercial space. Construction start: Q4, 2017. $10,000,000. Project ID: 1391673

Fort Collins, CO - Timberline and Zephyr roads Plans call for the new construction of a mixed use development to include 152 single-family homes, 64 townhomes, multifamily and commercial space on 46.4 acres. Construction start: Q3, Q4, 2017, $85,000,000. Project ID: 1391616

Construct-A-Lead is an online database that connects users to large-scale commercial construction projects, including those hidden, private project leads.

The service features hotel construction, office buildings, retail construction, medical facilities, school renovations and much more, to help bid on construction including those hard-to-find private project leads, from planning stage through completion. Construct-A-Leads daily updates of commercial construction project leads are an ideal solution for those who want to put their product or service into commercial, government and religious structures.

For more information, visit Construct-A-Lead.com online or call 855-874-1491.
Reese Cooper/FlintKids Hoodie REESE COOPER launches WATER IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD in conjunction with FlintKids.org to remind Americans of the ongoing effects of the Flint Water crisis.

Millennial creative, Reese Cooper, today launches a community project in conjunction with his brand, Reese Cooper Spoiled Children, to benefit the Flint Child Health & Development Fund (better known as FlintKids.org) in order to keep the Flint, Michigan water crisis top of mind.

WATER IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD is a project designed to remind Americans that although it has been more than three years since the Flint water crisis began, residents and their children are still denied access to clean drinking water.

On May 14, 2017, REESE COOPER will release a hoodie to benefit the Flint Child Health & Development Fund, served by the Community Foundation of Greater Flint. The aim of FlintKids.org is to provide medical resources and other support programs to fight the effects of lead poisoning of the children of the city of Flint, Michigan. The profits of this special project go directly to the Flint Child Health & Development Fund.

When asked why he created this project just months after his debut collection, Reese said, "Im a kid who makes clothes, and I thought in some way I could help or at least let the families of Flint know they are not forgotten and I carea lot of us care. Not once growing up did I hesitate to drink a glass of water in my own home. Not once did my mom have to decide if she could afford to buy bottled water rather than run the tap. My hoodie project is small. I know thatI hope to do much more. I admire those who can create big change. But for now, this is how I can contribute and I know I can help in Flint, Michigan. Every kid deserves safe waterits their right.

Imagery for WATER IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN GOLD was shot by Kai Z Feng. The hoodies are available for sale at http://www.reese-cooper.com/ from May 14, 2017.

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About Reese Cooper

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Reese Cooper grew up in Southwest London. At only 19 he is already known as a social media influencer, event curator, and fashion designer. Reese is highly regarded within the fashion industry by many worldwide brands and publications. In late 2016 he released his namesake brand and debut collection, Spoiled Children. Reese has a strong sense of community and is passionate about bringing young, influential creatives together and seeing what new and inspiring things can be born out of those interactionsthereby fostering a greater sense of community. Reese currently resides between London and Los Angeles.

About Flint Child Health & Development Fund

The Flint Child Health & Development Fund serves the long-term health and development needs of Flint children exposed to lead as a result of the Flint Water Crisis. The Fund will complement state and federal funding to support children and their families with interventions that ensure stronger likelihood of positive developmental outcomes, such as: early childhood education, continuous access to a pediatric medical home, nutrition education and improved access to healthy food, access to infant and child behavioral health services, integrated social services, safe and healthy home environments, and assessments of interventions. Priority is given to proposals that benefit the most developmentally vulnerable ages of 0  6.
Cambridge Automotive Group (CAG) has acquired an existing Maaco location in Austin, TX. With this transaction, CAG now owns more than 30 Maaco shops across the country.

Maaco Austin plans on offering several specials throughout the year on customer auto body repair and paint needs. Maaco Austin fixes routine dents and dings, and provides structural repairs, as well, by its expertly trained technicians. Plus, all structural repairs are backed by a lifetime warranty. The Maaco store also provides superb painting services, offering several different packages with varying price points and warranties.

Maaco Austin is located at 10200 N. Lamar Blvd., Austin, Texas 78753. The stores hours are Monday-Friday, 8 a.m.-6 p.m., and Saturday, 9 a.m.- 1 p.m. Please visit the shops Website for more information.

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About Cambridge Automotive Group

Cambridge Automotive Group (CAG) was formed in 2015 to pursue a growth strategy in the car care industry. CAG is the largest Maaco franchisee in the world. The company has attracted a best-in-class management team and continues to invest significant capital to grow in the Macco system through remodels and new center development. The group is seeking to open additional Maaco locations with growth targeted in California, Texas, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington.

About Maaco

Maaco Auto Painting & Collision Repair -- a part of the Driven Brands, Inc. family of automotive aftermarket franchise brands based in Charlotte, NC -- is America's #1 Bodyshop. Maaco provides automotive paint and cosmetic repair services for nearly 500,000 drivers annually. With more than 500 independently owned and operated franchises across the United States and Canada, Maaco has restored the safety and appearance of more than 20 million vehicles over 45 years. Maaco ranked #106 on Entrepreneur Magazine's 2015 Franchise 500 Rankings, and is currently #1 in the automotive appearance services category. For more information, visit Maaco.com. For more information about franchising opportunities, visit MaacoFranchise.com.
Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLPs Leslie R. Katz spoke at the 2017 Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs Festival (SVEF) in Santa Clara, May 2. She participated on the Global Female Entrepreneurship and Leadership panel, addressing the importance of womens leadership in todays business world.

Co-hosted by Hanhai Holdings Group, Silicon Valley Ding Ding TV, and China-US Enterprises Summit, the 2017 SVEF brought more than 1,000 industry leaders, venture capitalists, startup founders, incubators, and Chinese government officials together to exchange ideas about global entrepreneurship and to foster collaboration. The panels covered everything from AR/VR, IoT, new energy, and new materials to US-China business opportunities, cross-border investment, cloud computing, and big data. More information about the event and the full agenda can be seen here.

Katz, a shareholder in the firms San-Francisco office, focuses on government law and policy, including energy, telecommunications, healthcare, emerging technology, land use, construction, infrastructure, development, and public-private partnerships. Her ability to provide strategic counsel, for startups to Fortune 500 companies and public entities, comes from her diverse experience in the public and private sectors. Katz is also very involved in the local Bay Area community and was recently recognized among the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business by the San Francisco Business Times

A former member of the Board of Supervisors for the City and County of San Francisco, Katz served as chair and/or vice chair of numerous committees, drafting and helping pass significant legislation related to technology, the environment, economic development, labor, and human rights. She was also elected to the San Francisco Community College Board of Trustees and has served on the Port Commission of San Francisco. Katz earned her J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

About Greenberg Traurig, LLP

Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GTLaw) has more than 2,000 attorneys in 38 offices in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East and is celebrating its 50th anniversary. One firm worldwide, GTLaw has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, was named the second largest firm in the U.S. by Law360 in 2016, and among the Top 20 on the 2016 Am Law Global 100. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com Twitter: @GT_Law.
I am excited to address these growing needs for the customers we are acquiring and to provide them with a great cloud experience. - RapidScale CEO Randy Jeter

RapidScale announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the hosted infrastructure services portion of Vonages business. Under the terms of the agreement, RapidScale will acquire the employees of this Vonage business unit and the following services: Infrastructure as a Service, Hosted Exchange, Virtual Desktop, IT Services, Hosted Firewall, Backup Service and Microsoft Skype for Business. This acquisition further expands RapidScales footprint on the East Coast with the opening of an office in Tysons, Va., increasing its client base and revenue, and provides a robust managed cloud services offering to the Vonage customers being acquired.

RapidScale CEO Randy Jeter says, IT teams of all sizes today are looking for a partnership focused on best-in-class managed cloud services, delivered on a global cloud platform, with managed and hybrid support. Additionally, I see an increasing need for advanced self-service capabilities, reporting, compliance, security and automation, which all help streamline IT. I am excited to address these growing needs for the customers we are acquiring and to provide them with a great cloud experience.

As these customers are migrated to RapidScales dynamic platforms, the main benefit that will be visible is the self-service provisioning portals. Clients will be able to create new users, new servers, and even new desktops within seconds via the RapidScale portal. Password resets, usage reporting, event monitoring, and more will all be available with the click of a button. Beyond the portal, RapidScales enterprise infrastructure is second to none, providing everything from all flash, all-encrypted storage, to a global core network. Customers can expect unrivaled security and performance.

This change allows us to focus on the growth of our robust suite of Unified Communications as-a-Service (UCaaS) and Communications Platform as-a-Service (CPaaS) offerings, a space in which we have proven to provide customers with the innovative tools they need to keep their employees connected to each other, and their customers, to drive better business outcomes, says Alan Masarek, CEO of Vonage. I am confident that we are putting our customers business in the right hands with RapidScale, and that this move will enhance the experience for these customers and improve the way they do business.

Vonage is a global, leading provider of cloud communications services for business. Through its robust portfolio of UCaaS solutions that enable enhanced productivity and collaboration among employees, Vonage transforms the way people work and businesses operate. The Vonage API Platform, Nexmo, also helps companies create more meaningful connections with their customers - across any mode of communication, on any device - by enabling developers to embed contextual, programmable communications into mobile apps, websites and business systems, for deeper and more meaningful customer connections.

About RapidScale

RapidScale, a managed cloud services provider, delivers world-class, secure, and reliable cloud computing solutions to companies of all sizes across the globe. Its state-of-the-art managed CloudDesktop platform and market-leading cloud solutions are the reasons why RapidScale is the provider of choice for leading MSOs, VARs, MSPs, Carriers and Master Agents throughout the United States. RapidScale is not only delivering a service but also innovating advanced solutions and applications for the cloud computing space. RapidScales innovative solutions include CloudServer, CloudDesktop, CloudOffice, CloudMail, CloudRecovery, CloudApps, and more. For more information on RapidScale, visit http://www.rapidscale.net.

Media Contact

Sommer Figone | Marketing Manager

Marketing(at)rapidscale(dot)net
Bobbie Collins

The Kirtland Spouses Club announced it has awarded a new educational scholarship honoring local attorney Bobbie Collins of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP. The scholarship recognizes Collins pro bono legal services benefiting military spouses.

Collins is a military spouse and recently earned a Master of Laws in Taxation (LL.M.), making her a fitting namesake for the scholarship which will support other military spouses educational goals, according to leaders of the Kirtland Spouses Club.

The Ms. Bobbie Collins Spouse Scholarship was awarded to Central New Mexico Community College Health Information Technologies student and military spouse Jessica Rodriguez. The annual scholarship is funded with proceeds raised by the thrift shop operated by the Kirtland Spouses Welfare Club, a Section 501(c)(3) non-profit private organization.

Located on Kirtland Air Force Base, the Kirtland Spouses Club thrift shop raises funds to support grants and scholarship programs benefiting military dependents and spouses.

Collins has supported the Kirtland Spouses Club for a number of years by providing pro bono legal work and acting as its general counsel in a variety of matters.

Its very rewarding, especially since my husband, Capt. Chris Collins, was an active duty Air Force member for seven years and has also been in the Reserves for the past two years with the Air Force Research Lab, said Collins. I know the thrift shop and social activities run by military spouses are incredibly important resources for families at Kirtland AFB.

Bobbie has enabled us to more confidently operate the Kirtland Spouses Club. As military spouses we know how to address the challenges of the military lifestyle and support other military spouses. As volunteers we are not knowledgeable about the law, and a lack of knowledge is always an opportunity for trouble. We are very grateful for all of Bobbies advice to help us avoid any issues, said Kirtland Spouses Club President Frank Capuano.

Collins has taken her support to a national level as well, as a member of the Military Spouse JD Network (MSJDN), a network of military spouse attorneys.

She will be working with the MSJDN Foundation to help set up a group of military spouse attorneys to serve as pro bono general counsel for other military spouse organizations at military installations across the U.S., and to create a guide for military spouse organizations on nonprofit governance and running private organizations in accordance with military rules and regulations for on-base activities.

She was also recently appointed as the American Bar Association Young Lawyers Division Liaison to the Committee on Legal Assistance to Military Personnel, effective in September 2017.

I am truly so honored to be recognized with this scholarship. It was a wonderful surprise and Im happy that it will help pay it forward for other military spouses to continue their education, said Collins. Im also thankful to be at a firm which places such a high value on pro bono work!

Two of the other partners in the Albuquerque office of Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie, Dennis Jontz and Jeff Albright, are former military and supported Collins pro bono efforts with the Kirtland Spouses Club.

Collins law practice at Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie focuses on complex civil litigation, real estate and taxation law. She is also chair of the New Mexico State Bar Taxation Section, a director for the New Mexico Womens Bar Association and United Way of Central New Mexico, and a member of the New Mexico Chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW).

About Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP

Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie LLP is an Am Law 200 commercial law firm for handling complex matters in litigation, intellectual property, business transactions, gaming, government relations and other practice areas. Lewis Roca Rothgerber Christie offices are located in Albuquerque, Colorado Springs, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Irvine, Phoenix, Reno, Silicon Valley and Tucson. For more information, visit lrrc.com.
The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) today delivered to the Treasury Department a comprehensive white paper to bolster economic and job growth through tiered and proportionate community banking regulations. Community Bank Regulatory Relief: A Roadmap to Economic Growth and Prosperity outlines ICBAs plan to modernize regulations on community banks so they can continue fostering economic recovery in communities of all sizes across the country.

Community banks operate in a suffocating regulatory environment that prevents them from reaching their full potential as catalysts for local economic growth and job creation, ICBA wrote in the white paper. ICBA urges the Department of the Treasury and Congress to champion and enact meaningful regulatory relief that will allow community banks to do what they do best  serve the unique borrowing needs of their customers.

ICBAs white paper, which complements its Plan for Prosperity regulatory relief platform, lays out the economic benefits of community banks and the challenge of overregulation that exacerbates industry consolidation and limits access to critical banking services for many consumers. The paper offers solutions to the following policy areas to spur community-based growth and investment:



Strengthening community bank mortgage lending by reforming the qualified mortgage rule, unnecessary escrow requirements, costly appraisal and application mandates, and more,

Easing commercial lending rules, such as data-collection and rural-credit mandates, to mitigate the negative impact on small businesses and farms,

Reforming punitive Basel III capital rules and refocusing them on the largest financial firms,

Addressing growth-inhibiting burdens stemming from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Bank Secrecy Act, quarterly call report and examination environment, and

Reviewing the credit union industrys tax and regulatory exemptions to promote a level playing field in the financial services industry.

ICBA community bankers from around the country met with Treasury officials on April 5 to detail many of these recommendations in response to President Trumps recent executive order to review financial regulations. ICBAs Community Bank Regulatory Relief: A Roadmap to Economic Growth and Prosperity white paper is available on the ICBA website.

About ICBA

The Independent Community Bankers of America, the nations voice for more than 5,800 community banks of all sizes and charter types, is dedicated exclusively to representing the interests of the community banking industry and its membership through effective advocacy, best-in-class education and high-quality products and services. For more information, visit ICBAs website at http://www.icba.org.

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TollFreeMarket.com was founded in May 1993 and acquires vanity toll-free numbers and Internet domains for start-ups, small businesses, and large consumer brands. We Bring Big Dreams to Life!

An FCC order issued on April 21, 2017 requires that all the best, top-tier 833 numbers be set-aside on May 17, 2017 for an auction or lottery to thwart automated, high-frequency reservations.

833 numbers follow in the footsteps of 800, 888, and other toll-free numbers. Numbers like 833-333-3333, 833-Flowers, and 833-Lawyers will all be forced into an off-line auction pool, unless theres just one request for them. TollFreeMarket.com has come up with a plan: Be Unique.

Popular toll-free websites had been taking 833 pre-orders for $1,000 for each automated reservations  and still are despite the fact that automation is no longer a factor. Loren Stocker, Chief Innovator, at TollFreeMarket.com says, You can now order 833 numbers for free, but even thats a shot in the dark. What matters now is Intelligence. The FCC requires that any number, requested by two or more parties, be deemed mutually exclusive and placed into the auction pool.

Mr. Stocker says We guarantee your hybrid 833 numbers will be unique within the ATFP, or well advise you to make adjustments. 833 numbers requests that are unique, will be pre-assigned for immediate use after the May 17, 2017 deadline.

The Association of Toll Free Professionals (ATFP) is a select group of independent RespOrgs that specialize in vanity hybrid numbers, of which Mr. Stocker is a founding member. He noted, We know this market better than anyone and provide professional guidance for free.

Hybrid 833 numbers combine universal appeal with business texting, voice transcription, and un-blockable Caller ID for direct communication with prospects, customers and clients. They evolved from traditional toll-free numbers and work across North America, including Canada and parts of the Caribbean.

Pre-assignment orders are due by Wednesday, May 17, 2017 and theres an overview video at https://tollfreemarket.com/toll-free-833-numbers/?utm_source=prwebvideo For more details, visit TollFreeMarket.com or call Loren Stocker at 800-Get-Vanity (858-792-5000).

About TollFreeMarket.com

TollFreeMarket.com was founded at the dawn of toll-free numbers portability, in May 1993. Since then, the consultancy has acquired vanity toll-free numbers and Internet domains for Micosofts Bing, Mercedes Smart, Tickets.com, GSKs Excedrin, Sunpower Solar, Aspen Dental, and many other consumer brands. Mr. Stocker holds an engineering degree from Wisconsin and has a Masters in Marketing from Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern.
WOODBRIDGE, N.J., May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- EMRISE CORPORATION (formerly traded on OTCQB under the symbol EMRI) (EMRISE or the Company), today announced that the Company expects to make a fourth liquidation dividend distribution to its stockholders totaling approximately $980,000, or $0.09 per share, during the week of June 5, 2017 (the Distribution). When paid, the Distribution will bring the aggregate total of the four liquidation dividends paid to EMRISE stockholders to date to approximately $14.35 million, or $1.32 per share of common stock.



Liquidation dividend distributions are only being made to stockholders of record as of the close of business on July 7, 2015, in connection with the Companys previously announced voluntary Plan of Dissolution (Plan) that was approved by its stockholders at a special meeting held on June 25, 2015.

The Distribution consists of funds from the sale of the Companys assets after distributing the prior three liquidation dividends to stockholders; the payment of all obligations to date associated with the Plan; and after deducting the amount the Company believes will be required to pay State and Federal taxes and any remaining costs or liabilities incurred in connection with the dissolution of the Company.

Final Distribution

At this time, EMRISE cannot determine if it can make another liquidation dividend distribution to its stockholders. If made, the amount of any such distribution would depend on a variety of factors including the payment of State and Federal taxes and other costs and liabilities associated with the dissolution of the Company. If EMRISE can make another liquidation dividend distribution to its stockholders, it would be the final such distribution, the amount would be minimal and it would only be made upon completion of the dissolution of the Company, which is currently scheduled to occur in July 2018.

In the future, EMRISE intends to only make public disclosures that are necessary to provide its stockholders with essential information about the status of the Plan.

Other Information

For a detailed description of the Plan and the matters relating to it, stockholders are encouraged to read carefully the Companys news release dated June 30, 2015, its Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on July 1, 2015, and the Proxy Statement it mailed to stockholders beginning May 11, 2015.

Details of the sale of the Companys wholly owned Electronic Devices subsidiary in England, EMRISE Electronics Ltd. (EEL), are contained in the Companys news releases disseminated on June 30, 2015 and March 23, 2015, in its Proxy Statement mailed to stockholders beginning May 11, 2015 and in Forms 8-K filed with the SEC. Details of the sale of CXR-AJ are contained in the Companys news releases disseminated on February 18, 2016 and December 28, 2015, and in Forms 8-K filed with the (SEC).

Forward Looking Statements

Certain statements in this press release and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of EMRISE regarding the Transaction and the dissolution and liquidation of the Company, the liabilities of EMRISE, the net proceeds anticipated to be available for distribution to the Companys stockholders, the distribution of funds to stockholders and other matters, all of which are based on information currently available to the Companys management as well as managements assumptions and beliefs, are forward-looking statements (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. For this purpose, any such statements that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, without limitation, statements regarding the Companys expectations, beliefs, or intentions that are signified by terminology such as subject to, believes, anticipates, plans, expects, intends, estimates, may, will, should, can, the negatives thereof, variations thereon and similar expressions. Such forward-looking statements reflect the Companys current views with respect to future events, based on what the Company believes are reasonable assumptions; however, such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Certain of these risks and uncertainties are described in greater detail in EMRISEs filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or review any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The Company undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third-parties in respect of the Company, the Distribution or the Companys dissolution and related transactions pursuant to the Plan.
Attorney Kevin Flesch Unfortunately, car accidents are very common, and many of us will be involved in one at some point in our lives. Past News Releases RSS Attorney Kevin Flesch Educates...

Attorney Kevin Flesch Educates...

According to the Association for Safe International Road Travel, approximately 1.3 million people die in road crashes each year, on average 3,287 deaths a day. Furthermore, an additional 20-50 million people are injured or disabled as a result of car accidents. Unfortunately, car accidents are very common, and many of us will be involved in one at some point in our lives, said personal injury attorney Kevin Flesch, founder of Flesch Law.

For those who have been involved in a car accident, Flesch lists the following ten tips:

No. 1: Call the appropriate police agency to document the accident. Dont move your vehicle unless instructed to by the police, added Flesch.

No. 2: Tend to any injuries. This includes yours as well as the occupants of your vehicle, noted Flesch. Make sure there are no life-threatening injuries.

No. 3: Get witness information. Make sure to get telephone numbers, addresses and take a picture (if able) of the witnesses to the accident.

No. 4: Get insurance information from all vehicles involved. This includes the information for the driver and owner of the other vehicles, if they are different.

No. 5: Make sure to get policy information. This should always include the agents contact information and drivers license information, stressed Flesch. If the police suggest they are going to get all of the information, review it before everyone is released.

No. 6: Take as many pictures of the accident scene as possible from various angles. If the accident is in an intersection, get pictures of the signal lights and other signage in the area.

No. 7: Get medical treatment right away. Explain to your treating physician all of your aches and pains, said Flesch. Dont leave anything out and make sure you follow the doctors orders.

No. 8: File claims with all of the appropriate car insurance carriers. Confirm coverages relating to liability, medical pay, underinsured motorist insurance and uninsured motorist.

No. 9: Get competent legal representation that handles these matters regularly.

No. 10: Keep a diary of daily life after the accident. Take notes about how you are feeling and how your treatment is going, concluded Flesch. Also keep track of lost wages and document other expenses and losses.

About Kevin Flesch, Flesch Law

Kevin Flesch is admitted to practice in all Colorado state courts and the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He is a member of the Arapahoe County, Colorado and American Bar Associations and the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association. Flesch Law specializes in personal injury and criminal defense. For more information, please call (720) 689-0322, or visit http://www.fleschlawfirm.com. Flesch Law has offices in Denver, 999 18th Street, Suite 3000; and Englewood, CO, 333 W. Hampden Avenue, Suite 710.

About the NALA

The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers through new media. As a single-agency source, the NALA helps businesses flourish in their local community. The NALAs mission is to promote a business relevant and newsworthy events and achievements, both online and through traditional media. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361.
Nance will bring his understanding of the characteristics and habits of high reliability organizations (HROs), through his experience in aviation and healthcare, to explain how HRO principles can apply to the cash industry.

The Secure Cash & Transport Association (SCTA) announces the selection of ABC News Aviation Analyst, Patient Safety Advocate, and Licensed Attorney, John Nance, as the keynote speaker for its 2017 conference. A pioneer and well-known advocate of using the lessons from the recent revolution in aviation safety to equally revolutionize the patient safety performance of hospitals and all of healthcare, John Nance will deliver lessons to the cash industry on becoming a high reliability industry.

The SCTA is a nonprofit group representing professionals in ATM servicing, cash handling and processing, transportation, and safekeeping of cash and coin throughout North America. The SCTA Conference takes place September 27-29, 2017 at the Hyatt Chicago Magnificent Mile.

Society and the economy depend on the entire cash lifecycle and its constituents to remain highly reliable, explains SCTA President, Mark Lowers. The gravity of failure is simply too great. We sought a speaker for this years conference that would help our attendees, each of whom plays a vital role in the transport, servicing, and management of cash here in the United States, improve the reliability of their operations and the industry as a whole.

Nance will bring his understanding of the characteristics and habits of high reliability organizations (HROs), through his experience in aviation and healthcare, to explain how HRO principles can apply to the cash industry. He will describe the shared characteristics and practices of HROs and provide clear insight attendees can bring back to their organizations to keep them working well when faced with high risks and unexpected situations.

The SCTAs 2017 conference will feature informative sessions, networking opportunities, and exhibits. A preliminary agenda includes sessions on AML program management, FinCEN enforcement, truck driver shortages, law enforcement cooperation, emergency scenario planning, and other important topics.

The conference is designed to support the Secure Cash & Transport Associations mission to protect, strengthen, and unite the cash-in-transit and cash servicing industries. Details about the event, registration information, and association membership details can be found at the event website at scta.securetransportassociation.org.

ABOUT THE SECURE CASH & TRANSPORT ASSOCIATION (SCTA)

The Secure Cash & Transport Association (SCTA) is a non-profit association established in 2013 to represent the shared interests of professionals and stakeholders in ATM servicing, cash handling/processing, transportation, and safekeeping of cash and coin throughout North America. Active founding members and current board representation include Cash Connect-ATM Solutions by WSFS Bank, Davis Bancorp, Garda Cash Logistics, Great American Insurance Group Fidelity/Crime Division, Griffin Incorporated, Loomis, Lowers Risk Group, Marshall & Sterling, Rochester Armored Car Company, Inc., Elan, and Willis Fine Art, Jewelry & Specie USA. Industry groups represented by the association include armored operators, insurance providers, truck builders, financial institutions, ATM cash providers, coin wrappers, security surveys and compliance providers, and loss adjustors. Learn more at http://www.securetransportassociation.org.
THIS NEWS RELEASE IS INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION IN CANADA ONLY AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MGX Minerals Inc. (MGX or the Company) (CSE:XMG) (FKT:1MG) (OTC:MGXMF) is pleased to announce the closing of the Companys previously announced private placement financing (the Offering) through the distribution of 3,555,556 special warrants of the Company (Special Warrants) at a price of CAD$0.90 per Special Warrant (the Issue Price) for gross proceeds of CAD$3.2 million. Each Special Warrant is exercisable, for no additional consideration, into one unit (Unit) of the Company. Each Unit shall be comprised of one common share (Common Share) and one common share purchase warrant (Warrant), with each Warrant entitling the holder to purchase one additional Common Share at a price of CAD$1.15 until May 12, 2019, subject to acceleration at any time prior to the expiry of the Warrants the ten day volume-weighted average trading price of the Common Shares exceeds CAD$2.00 then the Company may provide notice to the holders of the Warrants that the Warrants will expire 30 days after the date of the notice.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering to reduce indebtedness (including trade payables and up to CAD$500,000 in repayment of a loan made to MGX by an officer of MGX) and for development and exploration of its Alberta Lithium Claims, Sturgeon Lake Property and Driftwood Property (each as described in the Companys Annual Information Form, dated March 31, 2017) and for general working capital purposes.

In accordance with the terms of an agency agreement (the Agency Agreement) entered into by the Company and Mackie Research Capital Corp. (the Agent), the Agent received a cash commission equal to 8.5% of the aggregate gross proceeds from the Offering as well as rights to receive compensation options (Compensation Options) in an amount equal to 8.5% of the number of Special Warrants sold under the Offering. The Compensation Options are exercisable at any time until May 12, 2019 at an exercise price equal to the Issue Price. Each Compensation Option entitles the holder to purchase one Unit. In the event that the Company does not satisfy the Qualification Condition (as defined below) on or before the Qualification Deadline (as defined below) the Compensation Options will be exercisable for 1.1 Units.

Pursuant to the terms of the Agency Agreement, the Company has agreed to use its best efforts to obtain a receipt for a final short form prospectus qualifying the distribution of the Units upon exercise of the Special Warrants (the Qualification Condition) on or before June 26, 2017 (the Qualification Deadline). If the Qualification Condition is not satisfied before the Qualification Deadline, each Special Warrant shall become exercisable, without any action on the part of the holders of the Special Warrants, and for no additional consideration, to receive 1.1 Units. Prior to the satisfaction of the Qualification Condition, the Special Warrants and the Common Shares and Warrants comprising the Units will be subject to a statutory hold period until September 13, 2017.

The Company may close additional tranches of under the Offering prior to the earlier of the satisfaction of the Qualification Condition and the Qualification Deadline. For more information on the Offering, please refer to the Companys news release, dated March 1, 2017 available on the Companys profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and at www.mgxminerals.com.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act) or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

About MGX Minerals

MGX Minerals is a diversified Canadian mining company engaged in the development of large-scale industrial mineral portfolios in western Canada and the United States. The Company operates lithium, magnesium and silicon projects throughout British Columbia and Alberta as well as petrolithium exploration in Utah.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

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Lemony Snickets latest picture book begins with the end of a pets life, following its ghost into the afterlife as it figures out what to do next. Inspired by a series of unfortunate pet events in their own family, the story is illustrated by Lisa Brown, who calls her husband by his real name, Daniel Handler. The couple has been touring for two weeks in support of the book while the Netflix crew shooting next seasons episodes of Snickets series about the Baudelaire orphans tries to keep the child actors from growing

Is this your first picture book collaboration?

Lisa Brown: Its our first from a major publisher but we have published two or threedepending on how you count themwith McSweeneys. One of those I did under a pseudonym.

Daniel Handler: All of them I wrote under a pseudonym.

Okay, so I was going to ask next if there was any chance this would be your last collaboration but it looks like youre going to survive this.

Handler: We still love each other very much but its sweet of Publishers Weekly to worry about us.

Did an editor or agent suggest Lisa would be the perfect choice for this manuscript or did the writer say, Can you pass the salt and illustrate my next book?

Handler: Our collaborations usually begin when we are lying around on the sofa cracking each other up, but in this case I believe Lisa Brown thought up the idea of a goldfish ghost when we were away at a conference, eating at a Thai restaurant. She started drawing the upside-down goldfish.

Brown: All I need is a title and a character to get me started.

Handler: Hardly a week goes by that we dont come up with an idea for a picture book but usually it is a truly terrible idea for a picture book.

Given your history of writing about unfortunate events, Mr. Snicket, I am surprised to learn that you are not the source of this idea.

Handler: Im more publically macabre but my wife is more actually macabre.

Brown: I have illustrated a young adult novel written by Adele Griffin about ghosts during the Civil War (Picture the Dead), a book about a little vampire (Vampire Boys Good Night), and one about a mummified cat (Mummy Cat by Marcus Ewert). I cover the waterfront.

Did any real goldfish die in the making of this book?

Handler: Between Lisas childhood and mine, and our early days as a family, it is safe to say that we are responsible for the slaughter of a small school of goldfish. And now we have a dog. He has not died. But any time it seems like there is anything wrong with him, there is a great deal of consultation and anxiety.

Brown: A goldfish is a perfect starter death but the dog is a member of the family. We had some very exciting funerals for our goldfish.

Exciting?

Brown: Oh, yes. Otto (the couples 13-year-old son) insisted that they all be buried in jewelry boxes in the backyard. He took to calling jewelry boxes goldfish coffins. We figure when our son is going to propose to someone he will probably say, Please accept this goldfish coffin as a token of my love.

Youre on tour for the book now. Are you reading it aloud at bookstores?

Handler: Yes, we are.

Has any sensitive little person cried at the death on the opening page?

Handler: Not yet.

Brown: Although we do have a great story. We read it to a class of third graders and their class cockatiel died the next day. The kids were kind of excited imagining that he was now a ghost, out looking for company.

Thats a really beautiful line in the book, one that maybe has even more resonance for adults than kids: It can be hard to find the company you are looking for.

Handler: I think there are a lot of elementary school students who know that feeling very well at the start of every school year, or maybe even every lunch period. I wouldnt be a fourth grader again for all the tea in China.

Brown: We tell kids when we do events that the book is about loneliness and observation and ask them, Do any of you like being alone? and so many kids raise their hands. A lot of them like not just being alone but being alone with their thoughts. I do.

Finally, I must ask you, Mr. Snicket, how the Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events is going?

Handler: They are shooting season two right now and I am writing season three. Were in a bit of a hurry because these child actors are aging quickly. Weve got to get it done before they look like theyre in their mid-30s and people wonder, Why dont these orphans just go get jobs?

Sunny may no longer be a baby by the time we see her again. Is Sunny one baby or is she twins?

Handler: In the Paramount movie, Sunny was played by twins, who were a replacement for the triplets who were initially cast but who had to be replaced because they developed separation anxiety. But the Netflix Sunny is one extremely good-natured baby.

Is it gratifying that this latest version has been so well received?

Handler: Im not a big reader of reaction to my work but I have gathered that people enjoyed the first season. Its a huge challenge to collaborate on something like this.

So what you are saying is that you prefer to collaborate with Lisa?

Handler: For sure. Neil Patrick Harris and I have never once curled up on the couch. Im completely spoiled in terms of working with my wife.

Goldfish Ghost. Lemony Snicket and Lisa Brown. Roaring Brook/Porter, $17.99, May ISBN 9781626725072
Twenty years ago, a boy wizard with a lightning-shaped scar took the childrens book world by storm. In honor of the anniversary of J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone (first published in the U.K.), a New York City-based tour company called e.t.c. has launched Griffins, Goblets and Gold: A Wizarding Tour in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The interactive tour leads fans of all ages through the Met, locating artifacts with ties to the Harry Potter stories and symbols.

E.t.c. president and founder Evan Levy, who previously worked in the Mets education department, has had experience developing custom tours and events for children. After leaving the museum, she found herself wondering, Is there a wider way of using kids books to explore museums and the city? She soon began offering childrens book and fairy tale-themed tours in Central Park. As a fan of the Harry Potter series, Levy thought a Potter-themed tour would be a natural fit for the program, and a nice tie-in for the books anniversary. I thought this was the year to do it, she said.

The tour took on a more concrete form while Levy was out for a walk on New Yorks Upper East Side, where she lives. I was walking down Madison between 95th and 96th, part of Hunter College High Schooland it looks like a castle. On the next block, there was an antique store that had an eccentric window display with a white owl in a cage. I stopped and I thought, Its Harry Potter. Its here,  she said. As she continued walking towards the Met, the tour route began to take shape.

Levywho is currently the sole tour guideleads tourgoers in an exploration of spaces and art objects at the Met that have parallels in the Harry Potter books, from unicorn tapestries to Roman statues. The tour also includes a visual scavenger hunt for Horcrux-like objects, as well as writing and drawing exercises, and giveaways. Levy aims to make her tours interactive, particularly for children. Its almost like making them a character in the books.

One stop along the tour is the Henry R. Luce Centeran open storage repository for American art and decorative objects not on view in the museums gallerieswhich Potter fans will recognize as a sort of Room of Requirement. Laura Sanzel, who recently took a private tour with her husband and eight-year-old daughter, described the room as a memorable highlight. Evan took us to this area I never wouldve found in the museum, down a hallway that looks administrative. The room was chockablock with stuff behind glass cases, just like in the book. Levy also uses the room to illustrate one of the storys themes: ordinary objects infused with magical powers. I try to make connections as much as possible between the real life use and the fictional use of objectsto see how they overlap, she said.

Tours typically last between 90 minutes and two hours and are limited to 10 people. Levy adapts the content depending on the age range and interests of the group. It was done at a level that an eight-year-old old could understand. And I got a lot out of it, too, Sanzel said. Many of the tourgoers come with a love of the series, and an eagerness to discover more. Michelle Schleck accompanied her 10-year-old son, who has read all of the Harry Potter books twice, on a recent outing. It taught us to look for Harry Potter inspiration everywhere, she said. At the end of the tour, guests are presented with a letter of acceptance to the Metropolitan School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Participants also receive a resource list with recommended books, websites, and other information.

Levys Potter tour is part of a larger initiative exploring connections between childrens books and museums. In June, e.t.c. will premiere Mixed-Up at the Met, in honor of the 50th anniversary of E.L. Konigsburgs From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which takes place at the iconic museum. In August, Levy will launch Here There Be Dragons, a tour inspired by both Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The tour will be held in the Met, with an optional add-on in the American Museum of Natural History.

When asked how long she expects the museum tours to run, Levy said, Theyll run until people arent interested in Harry Potter anymorewhich is never.
The New England Book Show celebrated two major anniversaries at Symphony Hall in Boston on May 9. The annual award gala, which recognizes excellence in book design and manufacturing in New England, turned 60, while its host, Bookbuilders of Boston is now in its 80th year.

Over 250 attendees were present to view the winning titles and recognize Tom Plain, recipient of the organization's W.A. Dwiggins Award. Plain, who is v-p of book publishing sales at King Printing Company, Inc., in Lowell, Mass., was honored for his contributions to the book community in New England.

Accepting the award, he called on publishers to remain committed to printing physical books while embracing new technologies to produce them. Many of us have fond memories of the old ways of book making, but that doesnt mean we ought to sentimentally cling to them, said Plain, who is past president of Bookbuilders of Boston. To do so can only make print books unaffordable and less available.

This years winning titles included the childrens illustrated book Du Iz Tak? (Candlewick), the reflowable e-book The Red Rooster Cookbook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), the professional/non-illustrated title Lean Logic: A Dictionary for the Future and How to Survive It (Chelsea Green), and Mosaik (Vista Higher Learning) in the El-Hi category.

Standing among the displays, author Kurt Ankeny held a copy of his graphic novel, In Pieces: Someplace Which I Call Home. Ankeny designed his book himself, despite having no background in book design. As a self-published comic artist, he said, you have to learn the ropes. The title won first place in the Graphic Novels category.

Bookbuilders of Boston was founded in 1937 to bring members of the regional book publishing and manufacturing industries together. As part of that effort, the organization created the New England Book Show in 1957. Current Bookbuilders president Iris Amelia Febres spoke about her ongoing mission to bring new faces into the group.

Eight decades of institutional knowledge and history have helped the effort to recruit new members. "Theres a lot of legacy to work with in this organization," said Febres, noting that member dues increased 23% from 2015 to 2016. The group currently includes over 115 individual and 75 corporate members.

Plain says the growth is visible. This organization was for many years mostly printing, production, and manufacturing people. The group has [now] expanded into more editorial and marketing people, more content-focused stuff. Thats what publishing is really about.
English Latvian

On 9 May 2017, during an extraordinary general meeting of Baltic Dairy Board Ltd. members, the following decisions were taken:

1. Audit Committee election

Elected an audit committee, composed of three members of the audit, for 3 years:

Ingura Doble  elected with 100% of the member votes

Ivo Lidums - elected with 100% of the member votes

Edgars Cimermanis - elected with 100% of the member votes

Ingura Doble, independent audit committee member, LR sworn auditor since 2008 with vast experience in preparation, control and audit of annual reports and consolidated annual reports for companies with various profile, such as producers, traders and innovation performers and different sector, including food industry, companies. Practical experience is regularly updated with theoretical knowledge, also passing it to other industry professionals  accountants- through seminars and publications.

Ivo Lidums, independent audit committee member. Member of the Baltic Dairy Board Council, since 28 April 2016. The experience of Ivo Lidums in the last 4 years is related to management, budget planning and follow-up activities of Riela Latvia Ltd. and ILM Ltd. facilitating long-term cooperation with the existing and potential foreign cooperation partners. His duties included preparation of overviews and reports on the sales results, preparation of proposals, and technical specifications, concluding contracts, managing projects, cooperating with the existing and potential clients.

In cooperation with Vides Bioenergetikas un biotehnologijas kompetences centrs Ltd., he has successfully participated in scientific activities, in the group that developed an innovative product, he has managed communication between the client and scientists, organised reporting during meetings, as well as participation in the international exhibitions and conferences.

Currently, he is studying at the Doctoral Study Programme Food Science at the Faculty of Food Technology of the Latvia University of Agriculture.

Edgars Cimermanis, independent audit committee member. Currently, holds Investment Director position in ZGI Capital Ltd. and ZGI Real Estate Ltd., where he monitors the venture capital and real estate investments made, as well as explores new investment opportunities, research and marketing. Currently, holds also the CFO position in JSC Marupes Metalmeistars, where he monitors financial control, budgeting, and follows its progress, as well as deals with other financial and strategic issues. Previously gained five-year work experience in an international audit and business consulting company KPMG Baltics Ltd., where he provided financial advising for companies from various industries, including food industry.

Graduated Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. Currently, acquires the international CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) degree in financial analysis.

2. Sworn auditor election for the audit of 2017 Annual Report

Sworn auditor company Orients Audit & Finance Ltd., Reg. No. 50003597621, LZRA with license No. 28, was elected for the audit of 2017 Annual Report with 100% of the member votes.
It is by any measure extraordinary: an independent publishing company, founded by a young married couple in a kitchen in Cyprus some 30 years ago, which began releasing fiction only in 2009, has won the past two Man Booker Prizes. Its a bit freaky, conceded Juliet Mabey, Oneworlds editorial director and cofounder. The [fiction] list was very young and considered quite experimental. Its just really lucky to have judges that have similar tastes to ones own, twice running.

Luck is always a factorpublishing is inevitably a gamblebut so is conviction. Marlon Jamess A Brief History of Seven Killings (which took the 2015 Man Booker) and Paul Beattys The Sellout (the 2016 winner) might not have been in contention at all for the Booker but for Mabeys passionate desire to acquire fiction that not only opened windows on other cultures but tackled some really rather serious issues. She did so as the world economy was crashing and the tendency of the conglomerates was to play safe while retrenching.

At the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair, the mood was dark and uncertain. Claire Roberts of Trident Media had found no one to take on Jamess The Book of Night Women, his second novel, set on a slave plantation and written in Jamaican patois. Riverhead had U.S. rights, but everyone [in Britain] had turned it down, recalled Mabey. I fell in love with it.

Oneworld published the novel the following year as Jamess U.K. debut. Beautifully packaged and supported by a buyer at the WHSmith chain, it sold 12,000 copies, setting the stage for Seven Killings, which has now sold 400,000 copies in the U.K.

It and Beattys The Sellout deal with uncomfortable issues, tackling subjects with which Oneworlds nonfiction list has always engaged. Weve published books on racism before, but theyre bought by somebody already interested in the subject, whereas The Sellout will be bought by someone who just wants a good read, Mabey said. But it will take them into the heart of American race segregation and the psychology and history of slavery that African-Americans carry with them.

Fiction, she observed, offered the opportunity to tell the story in a different way, first to adults and then to kids. Rock the Boat, Oneworlds newish YA list, aims to open young eyes. In eight years of publishing fiction, Oneworld has released works from 40 countries by authors writing in 26 languages.

Oneworld: the name is a clue about the companys approach. Mabey and her husband, Novin Doostdar, managing director, have looked outward from the beginning, buying world rightsoften from American authorsand cultivating the American market, attending what was then ABA and using NBN for distribution (and now PGW/Ingram). For its first 15 years, the U.S. was Oneworlds biggest market. It now represents about 20% of overall sales, but Mabey expects that to grow as the publisher acquires world English rights to more titles that will permit it to increase the number of books it releases in the U.S. Mabey also noted that Oneworld is taking a serious look at acquiring an independent American publisher, which would allow it to consolidate it position in the U.S. and grow its brand.

Mabey and Doostdar met as students at Edinburgh University. Both had grown up in southern England, Doostdar coming to the country at 15 when his Bahai family fled Iran. They married straight out of college, remaining in Edinburgh. When he qualified as an accountant, they relocated to Cyprus, which I thought would be anthropologically interesting, Mabey said. But with no childcare and no family support system, she felt isolated. Thoughts turned to publishing, which had been a shared student ambition.

There aim was to publish books that explained the world to the general reader, to make knowledge look more attractive, said Mabey. By the time the first titlespoetry and drawings by Bernard Leach, a modern take on Adlerian psychology that would lead to new translations of all Alfred Adlers work, a book on peaceappeared in 19861987, the family had returned to Britain. For many years, the couple worked shifts, one parent looking after their four children, the other the business. Drawing on their own areas of interest and expertise, Mabey and Doostdar began commissioning across the humanities and social sciences, approaching academics and (unusually for the market at that time) offering advances and royalties.

An early author was theologian Keith Ward: Novin spotted that one of his big books was out of print and offered to reissue it, and after that Keith gave Novin all his books, which meant a lot of people on the liberal side of Christianity came to us, Mabey said. They added Islamic authors long before 9/11 made that a fashionable area of publishing.

Gradually series evolved: the Beginners Guides, featuring big subjects in small booksalmost 150 today, now a fixture on many first-year college students reading lists, particularly in the U.S.and Makers of the Muslim World. A new series, Radical Histories of the Middle East, launches in 2018. Its all part of the same thing: taking a subject you didnt get on with at school and trying to find funky ways of making it accessible, Mabey explained. Mainstream publishers have followed suit, and Oneworld now finds itself competing in a market for brief, authoritative, appealing works that it helped create.

Growth has been slow but sure; the couple used only their own money, reinvesting profits as they continued to create books from scratch. Only recently have they begun to work closely with agents. As output increased, so did personnel numbers. Today, around 24 staff work in a Bloomsbury townhouse with a boardroom in which authors gather for lunch, its shelves displaying a range of publishing awards (in 2015 alone Oneworlds books won or were nominated for 15 prizes) and the books that won them.

Success has given Oneworld visibility and confidence: it is everywhere in contention, beating out competitors to buy The Panama Papers (translated, published, and on sale within seven weeks) and Justin Trudeaus Common Ground, and snapping up Gloria Steinems memoirs. Revenue is now around 4.5 million per year, generated by some 120 titles annually, roughly two-thirds of them new.

Retirement and exit are not in Doostdar and Mabeys lexicon, and while they would like Oneworld to grow, perhaps by judicious acquisition, the preference is for bigger books rather than a larger company. We might be regretful that we didnt build the company quicker, but the journey itself was great fun and we tremendously enjoyed it, Mabey said.
Wells Fargo & Co. on Thursday laid out plans to close additional branches and offer more digital tools  all part of a push to trim $2 billion in costs while trying to keep customers and attract new ones.

Speaking to investment analysts at the bank's investor day conference in San Francisco, executives said they plan to close 450 branches by the end of 2018  50 more than the bank had announced earlier this year  with the potential for more in 2019.

Wells Fargo has 14 area facilities in Rock Island, Moline, Davenport, Bettendorf, Geneseo, Atkinson and Woodhull.

"We continue to evaluate our branch network, and base our physical distribution strategy on customer behavior, market factors, economic trends and competitor actions," said Staci Schiller, a spokesperson for Wells Fargo. "While branches continue to be important in serving our customers needs, our investment in digital capabilities has enabled us to seamlessly serve our customers across channels and provide choice in how they bank with us.

"Through April of this year, weve closed 48 branches and are on pace to close 200 by year-end," she said. "Next year, we expect the pace of branch closures to increase to around 250.

"At this time, we cannot provide details on specific locations; however, many of the closures this year will be in close proximity to another branch," Ms. Schiller said. "Therefore, we dont expect a significant revenue or team member impact."

Many U.S. banks have been closing branches in recent years as fewer customers visit and conduct more banking online and on their mobile phones. Wells Fargo estimates its latest branch consolidations and other moves should result in $4 billion in annual cost cuts, twice as much as previously announced.

The bank's expenses have climbed recently, driven in part by hiring more workers and increasing pay, as well as costs related to the accounts scandal.

Branches have long been central to Wells Fargo's business, serving as conduits for sales of mortgages, credit cards and other products. In 2015, 75 percent of new Wells Fargo credit card accounts were opened through a branch and 12 percent were opened through the bank's website.

In this year's first quarter, card openings through branches were down to 50 percent, while openings through the bank's website were up to 22 percent. What's more, 8 percent of new card accounts in the first quarter were opened through websites other than Wells Fargo's, such as creditcards.com. That's up from 2 percent last year.
* SUNDAY: Time for collaborative growth

The nightmare of Illinois having no budget and the issues that radiate from that has created a unique economic development opportunity. The Quad-Cities Chamber is working hard to capture lightning in a bottle. National Economic Development Week is a good time to reflect on how we are doing.

Since Quad-Cities First was created even before the merger of the Chambers, a lot of work has been done to change the message about the area. People are more excited because weve been successful, said Ray Forsythe, Molines director of planning and development who also assists with Chamber projects. This is a really happening place.

While the Illinois business climate is challenging, that is not the case in the Quad-Cities, which for more than 10 years has been on its own quest without relying on either state. In most areas of Illinois, where there is a two-state influence, it is a city in one state and the hinterlands in another. Not true here, where a population of 400,000 is equally split.

Were like our own little state, explained Tara Barney, Chamber president and CEO, in an editorial board meeting this week. People can work in Illinois and live 10 minutes away in Iowa, or visa versa. As a result, problems in Illinois dont impact this region as much as you might think, said Ms. Barney. Its an advantage the Q-Cs has right now over other Illinois communities.

Even with the unresolved issues in Springfield, growth here has continued and huge investments have been made with the construction of Western Illinois University Quad-Cities, the new Interstate 74 bridge, the multi-modal facility in Moline and the reconstruction of John Deere Road. Were going strong and when Illinois gets its act together our trend will be straight up, said Ms. Barney.

Mr. Forsythe stressed that a key to the ongoing success is a culture throughout the Quad-Cities that whats good for one community benefits all. When Davenport gets Sterilite, we know hundreds of people in Moline are going to work there, he said.

Liz Tallman, chief economic development officer of the Chamber, said there are currently 55 projects in the pipeline and about 20 are active. It can take two to three years to close a deal and you might get one big project every 10 years, so landing both Kraft Heinz and Sterilite in one year was unusual.

The Chamber tries to focus on attracting what the area is good at and can provide a workforce for. That includes advanced manufacturing, defense/logistics, agriculture and food processing, metals and materials, and finance/insurance/real estate.

We try to go after jobs we know were good at, said John DeDoncker, CEO of Triumph Community Bank and chamber board treasurer.

While the momentum seems to be building in the right direction, there are things the community can do in support. Perhaps there is some way you or your company can join the fight. How?

One thing limiting the Chambers success in luring companies is the lack of move-in-ready spec buildings. Mr. DeDoncker said the Chamber is putting together a task force to address the issue. Seventy-five percent want to go into an existing building and we dont have it.

Also, ongoing is an effort to lure more millennials to the Q-Cs. There is a lot happening here and our downtowns are all in a good place, said Mr. DeDoncker. There are dozens of reasons to be downtown. Many millennials dont think they will ever own a home so providing apartments for them is important, Mr. DeDonker added.

So is spreading the word about what the area has to offer and helping to fill the pipeline with business contacts and ideas. Spread the word with friends, family and business partners about what the Quad-Cities has to offer. If your business could add jobs through expansion, the Chamber can help. Since 2010, it has helped 60 companies add over 7,200 jobs and just over $1 billion in new capital investment.

There is no question the Illinois side has taken some lumps, but the Chamber is cautiously optimistic that will change and the economic trend will continue upward. Were respecting the past but looking forward, said Ms. Barney. Were trying to elbow our way into a global economy. When youre in the middle of the Midwest in a global economy, we need to move forward every day or we will be challenged.
CAMBRIDGE  Henry County Sheriff Jim Padilla announced his retirement at Thursdays board meeting, at one point holding a granddaughter as reason for his decision.

The sheriff said he had taken his oath of office as a deputy on May 27, 1984, and May 28, 2017, would be his last day in office.

Its been 33 long years, he said. Ive never been sorry about my job. I love my job.

He said he had too much going for him to remain on the job.

All of you have been tremendous not only to me but for my staff, he said Everybody does their job well. I cant speak highly enough of the members of the sheriffs department. I have all the faith in the world in everybody who works there.

And my family, he added. Theyve supported me all along. I dont know where Id be without my family.

Board chairman Roger Gradert will send letters to the two party chairmen, appointing a Republican to the vacancy within 60 days of the boards June meeting when the vacancy will be officially announced. A Republican must be appointed because Sheriff Padilla is a Republican.

The board also accepted the resignation of public defender Ed Woller who has served the county for 25 years. He is appointed to cases where the regular public defender, James Cosby, would have a conflict. Board member Jerry Thompson made a motion to send Mr. Woller a letter of appreciation.

Thats a thankless job, agreed Mr. Gradert.

A presentation on the tax process was presented by supervisor of assessments Lindi Kernan, county clerk Barb Link and treasurer Tim Wells. Mr. Wells said on Monday, the day that tax bills were first mailed, his office took in $19,000 before people even received their tax bills. He speculated people must have been going for an award for being first to pay.

The county collects taxes for 125 taxing districts, receiving no pay for administrative work. Board chairman Roger Gradert said 20 years ago the county was able to keep accrued interest for its general fund, but no longer.

The rate-setting equalized assessed valuation of the county is $865 million. The county collects a total of $79 million. About 20 percent of what is collected goes to the countys general fund.
French English

A 355 million contract in Canada

Alstom receives order for 61 Citadis Spirit light rail vehicles

for Greater Toronto and Hamilton area

12 May 2017 - Alstom has been awarded a firm order for the supply of 61 Citadis Spirit light rail vehicles for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area (GTHA) by Metrolinx, an agency of the Government of Ontario. The value of the contract is over 355 million (CA$529 million). The vehicle supply contract includes an option for additional vehicles.

Alstom will supply Metrolinx a 48-metre Citadis Spirit, which has a passenger capacity of 321. The Citadis Spirit is a 100% low-floor vehicle that offers easy accessibility from the street or the curb, and an interior layout featuring a wide central aisle and interior circulation that provide a safer and more enjoyable experience.

"We are proud to continue our collaboration with Metrolinx as it seeks to link communities and deliver advanced public transit solutions to the greater Toronto area, and we are honoured by their renewed confidence in our products, solutions and teams," said Angelo Guercioni, Managing Director of Alstom Canada.

The Citadis Spirit has been designed for the Canadian market, capable of operating in winter conditions up to -38C. The vehicle is fitted with winterized solutions to ensure vehicle operational performance, as well as preserve passenger comfort and experience, such as reinforced insulation, powerful HVAC, and snow and ice management solutions. All materials used on the vehicles are selected and tested in order to ensure performances in extreme cold conditions.

Alstom is currently supplying 34 Citadis Spirit vehicles as per a 2013 contract for the City of Ottawa's O-Train Confederation Line. Alstom has already assembled one third of the fleet, which are in various stages of dynamic and static testing, from the Belfast Yard Maintenance and Storage facility in Ottawa, Ontario. In March 2017, the Citadis Spirit vehicle achieved and surpassed commercial speed during dynamic tests along the Confederation Line alignment.

This latest contract with Metrolinx illustrates the success of Alstom's strategy of customer proximity. Alstom is also supplying Metrolinx with a new Iconis control centre to integrate the GO Transit network into a single, centralized facility, and a new signalling system for the Union Station Rail corridor. Furthermore, Alstom is providing a complete Communication-Based Train Control system for Toronto Transit Commission's Line 1 subway line, including the Toronto-York Spadina Subway Extension (TYSSE).

Alstom's Citadis range of light rail vehicles is a proven technology based on a return of experience after selling more than 2,300 Citadis trains to more than 50 cities in 20 countries worldwide, including Barcelona (Spain), Sydney and Melbourne (Australia), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Dubai (United Arab Emirates), Algiers and Oran (Algeria).

About Alstom

As a promoter of sustainable mobility, Alstom develops and markets systems, equipment and services for the transport sector. Alstom offers a complete range of solutions (from high-speed trains to metros, tramways and e-buses), passenger solutions, customised services (maintenance, modernisation), infrastructure, signalling and digital mobility solutions. Alstom is a world leader in integrated transport systems. The company recorded sales of 7.3 billion and booked 10.0 billion of orders in the 2016/17 fiscal year. Headquartered in France, Alstom is present in over 60 countries and employs 32,800 people.

www.alstom.com

Press contacts

Christopher English - + 33 1 57 06 36 90

christopher.a.english@alstom.com

Justine Rohee - Tel. + 33 1 57 06 18 81

justine.rohee@alstom.com

Michelle Stein - Tel. +1 514 770 5083

michelle.stein@transport.alstom.com

Investor Relations

Selma Bekhechi - Tel. + 33 1 57 06 95 39

Selma.bekhechi@alstom.com

Julien Minot - Tel. + 33 1 57 06 64 84

Julien.minot@alstom.com
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  An emaciated boy whose father later killed him and fed his remains to the family's pigs told Missouri authorities two years before his death that his dad and stepmother were abusing him, state records show.

Adrian Jones was 5 in July 2013 when he told a Missouri Children's Division worker and a police officer that his father would kick him so hard on the back of his head that a "little bone come out," according to agency records released this week to media outlets in response to an open records request. The boy's remains were found in November 2015 on the family's Kansas City, Kansas, rental property after officers responding to a report of domestic abuse learned the then-7-year-old boy was missing.

The boy's father, Michael Jones, a 46-year-old bail bondsman, was sentenced Monday to life in prison for killing Adrian. Adrian's stepmother, 31-year-old Heather Jones, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty last year. Neither is eligible for parole for at least 25 years.

An attorney and spokeswoman for the Missouri Department of Social Services didn't immediately return phone and email messages left by The Associated Press on Thursday seeking comment about the state records that show Adrian had reported being abused.

Adrian told a Missouri child-welfare case worker who went in mid-2013 to the family's home in Plattsburg, near Kansas City, that "daddy kicks me," the records show. The boy added that his dad "keeps hitting me in the head and punches me in the stomach and mom keeps pulling on my ears and it really hurts."

The Joneses "always lock me in my room. I have to sleep without a pillow and blanket," the records quote Adrian as saying. He added that his stepmother "keeps being mean to me."

The nearly 460 pages of documents released by the Department of Social Services, which includes the Missouri Children's Division, show that while the Joneses denied abusing Adrian or other children in their care, state welfare officials found in 2013 that "a preponderance of evidence" suggested the boy had been neglected by being locked in his bedroom. Investigators and medical staff found no visible signs of physical abuse, the records show. A county juvenile officer suggested the family be provided more services, but the family then moved to Kansas.

Judy Conway, Adrian's maternal grandmother, credited Missouri authorities Thursday for releasing the records but found them damning. "I just knew somehow that the system has failed Adrian," she added.

"He even said it at times in his own words that he was being abused, and I don't even know at this point how much they helped him and why the kids weren't taken away," Conway said. "I don't care what child it is, if he says someone is hurting me I think someone should listen. At this time, I don't know. I'm just so totally confused."

Conway's daughter, Dainna Pearce, lost custody of Adrian and two of his siblings years ago. Judy Conway has said she's seen videos and digital photos from the Jones' home that showed the abuse Adrian suffered in his life's waning months, much of it chronicled by more than 30 security cameras set up throughout the home.

Conway has said the Joneses kept Adrian naked in a shower stall and modified it so he couldn't get out. She said they sometimes strapped her grandson to an inversion table and that they made him stand in a swimming pool overnight, up to his neck in stagnant water. Conway said Heather Jones sometimes beat Adrian with the end of a broom handle and kept alarms on the family's food so that he couldn't take any when he was hungry.

The Kansas Department for Children and Families' chief, Phyllis Gilmore, said last week that her agency last had contact with the family in early 2012. The department's records involving Adrian remain under court-ordered seal.

Gilmore said that the family's frequently alternating residency between Kansas and Missouri "greatly disrupted continuity of services and evaluation," but she insisted Kansas child-welfare officials often shared information about Adrian "when known" with their Missouri counterparts.

Gilmore said her agency "thoroughly investigated" each reported incident of alleged abuse or neglect involving Adrian, though she did not divulge the number of cases or their context.

Messages seeking comment from that agency also were left Thursday by the AP.
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!
TORONTO, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Over 300 free events will take place across Canada for the most ambitious edition of Science Rendezvous to date on Saturday, May 13, 2017.



Science Rendezvous is Canadas largest nation-wide science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) festival. This years festival will celebrate 10 years of Science Rendezvous and 150 years of Canadian science. It will launch Science Odyssey, a ten-day showcase of Canadian innovation that is put on by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).

Were excited to once again take the lab to the streets  and introduce some bold, new activities across the country, says Science Rendezvous Executive Director Katie Miller.

Each explosion and experiment helps spark the curiosity of the next generation of great Canadian innovators.

Science Rendezvous is taking over the country from St. Johns to Vancouver, Yonge-Dundas Square and five city blocks of downtown Toronto, and most research institutions in Canada. The festival specializes in giving the public one-of-kind experiences with STEM including: edible liquid capsule creations, augmented reality, robotics, solar-powered race cars, exploding fruit, and Science Chase  an Amazing Race-style competition.

In addition to the hands on activities, Science Rendezvous will host NSERC's Innovation Showcase at festival sites across Canada in an effort to bring current Canadian innovation to the public, and demonstrate what can be achieved by collaboration between industry leaders and top Canadian researchers.

NSERC is the largest investor in science and engineering research and innovation in Canada. As a convener, they connect universities and colleges with industry partners to enable innovation-driven activities  allowing scientists and engineers across the country to develop world-leading discoveries and work with companies to turn these discoveries into inventions and products that will benefit Canadians.

The NSERC Innovation Showcase will be presented by the researchers involved and will be at selected Science Rendezvous event sites across the country. They are free and open to the public, with most taking place between 10 a.m.  4 p.m. on Saturday, May 13, 2017.

For more information about Science Rendezvous events and the NSERC Innovation Showcase in your city visit:

http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/eventsites/

http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/category/nserc/



Science Rendezvous is an annual nationwide science festival dedicated to science outreach. Founded in 2008, it has grown to include over 300 simultaneous events in partnership with 40 of Canadas top research institutions, 6,000 innovators and 122 community organizations across the country. www.sciencerendezvous.ca

This years Science Rendezvous activities will launch the ten-day Science Odyssey series in partnership with the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). http://www.sciod.ca/

Science Rendezvous is an annual nationwide science festival dedicated to science outreach. Founded in 2008, it has grown to include over 300 simultaneous events in partnership with 40 of Canadas top research institutions and 122 community organizations across 30 cities. www.sciencerendezvous.ca

EVENT HIGHLIGHTS

This is only a sample of participating venues. See http://www.sciencerendezvous.ca/eventsites/ for more details

ALBERTA

Cybermentor - Telus Spark (Science Centre) (10am  3pm)

Enjoy a fun engineering design activity, guest speakers, industry panel, planetarium live show and reception lunch. Last year, participants designed and built LED thunder cloud umbrellas. This year there is an outer space theme. Take a look at the future solution to our fresh water requirements and desalinate water with bicycle power.

BRITISH COLUMBIA

Kwantlen Polytechnic University  Langley Campus (11am  3pm)

KPU Langley will be transformed into a family-friendly science festival where the public will get a chance to participate in hands-on experiments, magic shows, tour high-tech patient simulator nursing labs and the state-of-the-art craft brewing lab (19+). Check out the robots, dancing fire display, face painting and walk the campus labyrinth as part of World Labyrinth Day.

Simon Fraser University  Burnaby campus (11am  3pm)

Discover the seemingly bizarre behaviour of gases and how they fit in our natural world at the science magic shows. Celebrate International Astronomy Day with tours of Trottier Observatory, astronomy presentations and astronaut photo shoots. Come get your hands on hundreds of other exciting activities including Lets Talk Sciences game show, Science Chase, liquid nitrogen ice cream making, molecular viewers and more.

Lets Talk Science with the University of British Columbia  The Old Barn Community Centre (10am  2pm)

Join UBCs Lets Talk Science for a hands-on day of science discovery. Make edible DNA and DNA bracelets, and finish the day off with slime. Discover the future of touch screens, the foldable technology, and a glimpse into the future.

INUVIK

Aurora Research Institute at East Three Schools (11am  3pm)

Meet with researchers and conduct hands-on experiments while discovering science in a whole new way. Learn about greenhouse composting and build your own flashlight! Check out harpoon-throwing, 3D printing, flying drones, fish dissections and meet visiting scientists at Science Rendezvous northernmost participating site. Complete the Science Chase passport to enter for a chance to win one of our exciting prizes.

MANITOBA

University of Manitoba, Fort Garry Campus, Science and Engineering Bldg (11am  4pm)

Sprint across a vat of corn starch and water to experience a non-Newtonian fluid, take home a balloon sculpture of all your favourite biomolecules and micro-organisms, scream as you test out the bed of nails, then scream some more for instant ice-cream (with just a touch of liquid nitrogen), jam out with a keyboard made of fruit, or play the piano with your feet as you run up and down a flight of stairs. The University of Manitoba is partnering with the Universite de Saint-Boniface, Science First, and H2O CREATE to reveal the science all around us.

University of Winnipeg (11pm  3pm)

Watch the Chemistry Magic Show, walk on non-Newtonian fluid and spot critters with your high powered scopes. Meet Batmen and Batwomen on campus as they try to save their species. The Prairie Climate Center will explore climate science with all.

NEWFOUNDLAND

Memorial University (11pm  3pm)

Discover glow-in-the-dark crystals, explore microscopic pond life, make slime, and solve puzzles. There might even be an explosion or two. Participants will get a chance to do fun and safe hands-on science activities. Plus, therell be a marine animal touch tank. Come and see what scientists are up to at Memorial University.



ONTARIO

Ryerson University at Yonge-Dundas Square (10am  4pm)

Come celebrate Science Rendezvous' 10th event in the heart of downtown Toronto. Ryersons Science Rendezvous event takes place in Yonge-Dundas Square, on the south-east corner of Yonge and Dundas in downtown Toronto, one of Canadas liveliest public areas. Our event offers hands-on activities, demonstrations and stage shows in robotics, water science, energy, engineering, architectural science, and many other scientific areas. This year Ryerson's Faculty of Science is launching the first North American Soapbox Science. The award-winning science outreach platform, created in the UK in 2011, promotes women in science. We have activities for young children, teens and adults. Spend the day with Canadian scientists and innovators and get connected with science.

University of Toronto St. George campus (11am  5pm)

Science Rendezvous at the University of Toronto (St. George Campus) will feature numerous exhibits that integrate science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and human ingenuity. Shutting down large sections of St. George St, this event offers visitors of all ages and backgrounds a chance to interact with world-class researchers, witness awe-inspiring demonstrations, partake in hands-on experiments and, above all, have fun while discovering science in a whole new way. Come and see robots, solar cars, and 3D worlds, build bridges and arches, solve math tricks, identify Earths minerals, observe tabletop river bedforms, make slime, extract DNA, meet with zebrafish, leeches, and hissing cockroaches. Get in your time machine and conquer the ultimate Science Chase to be crowned the Science Rendezvous Time Travelling Hero of 2017.

Science Odyssey Funfest (10am-4pm)

Science Odyssey Funfest in Ottawa is a celebration and learning experience to spark youths interest in science and technology. Join us for family-friendly fun with hands-on science and research activities led by federal government departments, universities and external partners. The event will take place right across the street from Dows Lake, which is also where the Canadian Tulip Festival will be held.

Queens University at Rogers K-ROCK Centre (10am  3pm)

The Rogers K-Rock Centre becomes a giant Science Discovery Centre with something for everyone. Participate in the Math Midway, make a kaleidoscope, be a mathemagical sculpture, explore space inside a Planetarium, see Canada's first Green Chemistry Magic Show, and meet the real Batman! There will be special presentations throughout the day inside the Rogers K-Rock Centre and outside on The Tragically Hip Way. The first 1000 families will receive a booklet filled with experiments that can be done at home and passes to local museums.

University of Guelph-Humber (10am  3pm)

The Science of YOU: Learn about your body from the inside out. Begin with a peek inside our cells, basic anatomy and the science behind our brains. Explore the science of fitness, health and how the mind and body are connected.

University of Ontario Institute of Technology & Durham College (10am  3pm)

Come learn how to make an indicator out of cabbage in our colorful chemistry lab. Explore the rainbow with an exciting dry ice experiment. Discover the magnetic properties of cereal. Uncover visually what is really in those tasty treats you love to eat. Hands-on workshops will allow you to experience being a real scientist. Solve a CSI Oshawa mystery using forensic techniques, play biodiversity bingo, create soap sculptures, flaming gummy bears and much more. GRAND FINALE CELEBRATION (2:30-3pm): music, cake and prizes in celebration of Science Rendezvous' 10th anniversary, Durham College's 50th anniversary and Canada's 150th Birthday.

University of Toronto Mississauga and Lets Talk Science at the Central Library (11am  4pm)

Join Let's Talk Science and scientists from the University of Toronto Mississauga at the Central Library for a day of fun science experiments for all ages. Learn about and get your hands on the innovative research happening in your city.

University of Waterloo and Lets Talk Science (9am  4pm)

Come celebrate Canadian innovation at the St. Jacobs Farmers Market, and get your hands on science with fun activities for the whole family. Waterloo Public Library, Main Branch is also hosting activities from 11  11:45am.

Western University (2pm  11pm)

Activities include making slime, panning for gold, programming mini-robots with color coded lines, solar observing, building Mars rovers to traverse the Martian landscape, and measuring action potentials in muscles. Take part in an action packed Science Chase and be dazzled by the Science stage show that will showcase engaging demonstrations from various science disciplines!

University of Windsor Campus and Lets Talk Science (10am  4pm)

The Science Carnival will once again feature many exciting demonstrations and hands-on activities, including: astronomy demos, Science Photo Booth, robots, Chemistry Magic Show, Phunky Physics Show and much more.

York University at Main Street Markham Farmers Market (10am  3pm)

Science Rendezvous will be combined with the grand opening of the annual Farmers Market (starting at 8am). Activities include squishy circuits, constellation tattoos, vortex smoke cannon, Art of Bubblology, DNA jewelry and so much more.

QUEBEC

24 heures de science

24 Hours of Science is Science Rendezvous French sister festival  a full day of activities related to science and technology for audiences of all ages starting on Friday at noon, ending at noon on Saturday. Multiple events across Quebec in French and English (http://www.science24heures.com/programme/index.php).

SASKATCHEWAN

University of Saskatchewan and Lets Talk Science (10am  3pm)

Take a walk with the dinosaurs, explore the science of dark matter, design your own rockets and Lego robots. Tours of the Natural Science Museum and Rayners Dairy Barn will be available.

University of Regina (11am  3pm)

The University of Regina is hosting the Canada-Wide Science Fair on May 15  20, 2017 and will be open to the public May 20, 2017 from 9am-12pm.
The $US 140m project is claimed to be the first public-private partnership deal to be funded by private businesses and philanthropic organisations, in partnership with local, state and federal governments.

Supporters of the project include Bank of America, Detroit Downtown Development Authority, Detroit Medical Center, Ford Foundation, Ford Motor Company Fund, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, JPMorgan Chase, Michigan Department of Transportation, Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and the United States Department of Transportation.

The project was also supported by the federal government through a $US 25m grant from the Transport Investment Generating Economic Recovery (Tiger) programme.

In 2007 the projects backers formed M-1 Rail, a non-profit organisation, to lead the design, construction and operation of the 20-station line. Stacy & Witbeck was subsequently awardedthe contract to build the line and major construction began in July 2014.

Services are operated by a fleet of six bidirectional Liberty LRVs supplied by Brookville Equipment Corporation.

The 20.3m-long three-section bidirectional vehicles will operate without catenary on 60% of the line, drawing power from an onboard energy storage system which utilises 750V lithium-ion batteries. The 70% low-floor vehicles will also operate in catenary-free mode around the line's depot.

Each vehicle accommodates up to 125 passengers, 32 of them seated.
With Washington lawmakers setting spending levels through September, elected leaders are now turning to healthcare and tax legislation. Congress will reportedly work on a tax plan in concert with the White House, likely incorporating elements of the Trump administrations recently released principles, which include reducing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent. Time will tell if legislation ultimately reflects that rate, or perhaps one a bit higher.

This is an historic opportunity: an overhaul of our outdated, complex and uncompetitive business tax system  rooted in a statutory tax rate of 35%  is sorely needed. If enacted, tax reform that makes the business rate more competitive globally would bolster the economic performance of railroads, their customers, and the entire economy.

Readers here understand and likely agree with economic experts such as Steve Forbes who say, A healthy rail system spurs growth in all economic sectors. The U.S. economy and the railroad industry are mutually dependent, with U.S. economic growth helping the railroads thrive and quality rail service supporting that economic growth.

The tax code was last revamped in 1986, and now features the highest statutory corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. The uncompetitive U.S. statutory rate correlates with low growth, less productivity gains than in previous eras, underinvestment in American enterprise, and more companies doing business elsewhere. This uncompetitive tax rate drains cash and deters innovation, leaving rail customers less competitive in the global market. Railroad output and income are unable to reach their full potential if rail customers are less able to compete with their global rivals, or if American businesses relocate overseas.

As the nonpartisan Tax Foundation concludes, The corporate tax rate is, in effect, a tax on corporate investment; a high corporate tax rate discourages investment, whereas a low corporate tax rate encourages investment The increase in investment from a corporate tax rate cut would lead to a larger economy. Economic growth would likely spur greater consumer confidence and spending  great news for a business tied to consumer purchasing behaviors. Not to mention that a more competitive rate will help reestablish and broaden a necessary tax base in the U.S.

Some may choose to focus on total cash taxes paid, arguing todays tax code suffices. We strongly disagree and believe the simplicity and certainty of a lower rate should be the primary goal of corporate tax reform. Tax leaders from the Class I railroads believe a once-in-a-generation chance for major tax reform is too important and beneficial to the entire American economy to pass up. Businesses, including railroads, may well lose certain positives within the current system. But the broader impact for the entire rail network and its customers of a simpler and fairer tax code that includes a more competitive business rate will be a stronger economy. Supporting this is common sense.

OMalley is Vice President, Taxes and General Tax Counsel, at Union Pacific and Chairman of the Association of American Railroads Tax Policy Committee.

Editors note: Click here for an in-depth analysis of the Trump Administrations tax proposal.

Explore the Challenges, Issues, and Trends Affecting the North American Rail Market. REGISTER NOW for Railway Ages 3rd Annual RAIL INSIGHTS June 7 & 8, 2017, Chicago.

Photo of Donald Trump by Michael Vadon via Flickr, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC by 2.0)

Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)
I came to The Great Railroad War: United States Railway Operations During World War I, Prof. Rudolph L. Daniels book on the history of American railroads during World War I from a different perspective.

During my 40-year career in railroad public relations which began less than two years before the Penn Central bankruptcy  I had frequent occasion to compare the operations of U.S. railroads during World War II with their operations during World War I. And that comparison showed that during World War II railroads moved more personnel and more war supplies than they did during World War I and they did so with greater efficiency and less port and track congestion and fewer freight cars, passenger cars and locomotives. The big difference was that during World War II rails remained in private hands while they were taken over by the government during World War I.

Comes now Prof. Daniels, with  in the words of the late broadcaster Paul Harvey  the rest of the story. As he makes clear, government control came at the behest of the railroads themselves because they could not overcome all of the problems they faced in mobilizing for their wartime role. Shortly after war was declared, railroads established the Railroads War Board, which had the task of guiding the managers of all the nations railroads in carrying out government requirements for the war effort.

But they couldnt keep up with the steep increases the war brought. Regulations hampered efficiency, leading to congestion and equipment shortages. Federal regulations prohibited one possible solution, pooling. So the War Board sought assurances from Attorney General Gregory Watt that he wouldnt prosecute railroads if they engaged in the practice. Not so fast, said the AG. So long as the law remained on the books, he vowed to uphold it.

If everything is prioritized, then nothing really is, as was demonstrated by a placard system for moving priority freight that led to as much as 85% of freight in some regions receiving priority status. Coordination between train schedules and port shipping schedules was virtually non-existent. Freight cars became prime storage facilities.

So at the end of 1917, the Railroads War Board and railroad managers in general appealed to the federal government to run American railroads as one large system. On December 26 President Wilson issued a proclamation giving control to the federal government.

Prof. Daniels traces the history of the new United States Railroad Administration through the end of the war and beyond. In fact, it remained in existence until 1926, long after the railroads were returned to their pre-war owners in 1920. Although it faced multiple challenges, and Professor Daniels shines considerable light on them, USRAs accomplishments were many in contributing to the successful conclusion of the war effort.

But U.S. rail involvement in World War I went beyond just the challenge of moving hundreds of millions of tons of supplies and millions of soldiers domestically. U.S. railroaders also took their expertise overseas.

American railroaders were recruited to operate trains supplying the American Expeditionary Force in France. They applied American technology and operating practices along a French system that was at times ill-suited for those practices. But they succeeded admirably. As Daniels writes, There is no doubt that the United States Army railroad soldiers met and accomplished their immense tasks which directly contributed to Allied victory.

Even farther afield was their journey to Russia where Americans were involved in keeping railroads running in both the North of Russia and the Far East along the Trans-Siberian Railway. Ostensibly they were deployed to aid in the movement of battle-hardened Czech soldiers to the Western Front, a mission that was perhaps a cover for British schemes to thwart the Russian Revolution. The last American railroad forces didnt leave until 1920, well after the 1918 armistice ended the war to end all wars.

The War ended rather abruptly, with no firm plans on when or how to restore the control of the railroads to their private owners. But no one, according to Daniels, expected or wanted a return to the prewar railroad situation. All wanted government control to some degree. He also details some of the financial issues that dogged this return to private ownership.

Daniels successfully explores how conflicting views on the way railroads should operate in the future led to passage of the Transportation Act of 1920. Daniels writes that the Acts motivation was to create a more unified system. One way it attempted to do that was by giving the Interstate Commerce Commission more authority over railroads, covering everything from finances to new construction to freight car usage and movement. Of course, the system which emerged proved woefully inadequate in the years following World War II when new, subsidized competition and outdated regulations combined to bring the industry to its knees.

All of this is placed in an historical context that is necessary to fully understand some of the later developments in American railroading.

(The Great Railroad War: United States Railway Operations During World War I by Rudolph L. Daniels, Ph.D. 152 pages (April, 2017), The Garbely Publishing Company; ISBN: 978-0-9966963-3-3.)

Tom White retired from the Association of American Railroads in 2009 after more than 40 years in public relations, most of that time with the AAR. While at the AAR he worked with the news media and wrote speeches, articles and testimony. Before succumbing to the dark side, he worked as a newspaper reporter and radio announcer. In retirement, he lives in the old railroad town of Brunswick, Md.
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commentary

For security cooperation to work, allies may need access to details of U.S. military plans and activities. But does the need for a clearly defined U.S. advantage prevent sharing information that may be broadly in the U.S. interest? Who should evaluate this advantage, and at what level?

Lawfare

Andrew Radin @andrewmradin
Momentum is building toward resumption of the dormant Middle East peace process. The efforts by presidential envoy Jason Greenblatt, the successful visit of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the White House last week, and President Trump's upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank all signal that for now the Trump administration is serious about promoting peace. Can it succeed where others have previously failed?

The remainder of this commentary is available on jewishjournal.com

Shira Efron is a policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation, a special advisor on Israel with RAND's Center for Middle East Public Policy and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

This commentary originally appeared on The Jewish Journal on May 11, 2017. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis.
French English

NEWS RELEASE

ABSTRACT #PD07-04

IRVINE, CA, and HERSTAL, BELGIUM - 16:00 CEST, May 12, 2017 - MDxHealth SA (Euronext: MDXH.BR) today announced that results from a retrospective study demonstrated that its ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer test improved the identification of African American men at risk for aggressive cancer missed by a prostate biopsy. The study findings were presented in a podium session at the 2017 American Urological Association (AUA) Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts in the US.

In the study of 211 African American men, the test successfully identified men with false-negative biopsy results, meaning cancer was missed in a previous prostate biopsy. Upon repeat biopsy, 38% of patients were diagnosed with prostate cancer, of which 33% were diagnosed with clinically significant disease (Gleason Score >7). Importantly, when the test was negative, it yielded a powerful 96% negative predictive value for aggressive prostate cancer, confirming the test's strong performance as previously reported.

"African American men have a greater risk of clinically significant prostate cancer than the general population; however, because their cancer behaves differently on a molecular level, we do not yet have a tool to safeguard against potentially fatal false-negative results," said Dr. Robert Waterhouse, study investigator and urologist at Carolina Urology Partners, North Carolina, US. "The findings from this study are critical because they demonstrate that we finally have a test that can help urologists accurately identify men at increased risk for aggressive disease in this population. It's reassuring that ConfirmMDx provides consistently accurate results across ethic groups."

African American men have the highest incidence of prostate cancer and are roughly 1.6 times more likely to develop the disease than Caucasians and 2.7 times more likely than Asian Americans.2

"Our mission is to deliver molecular diagnostic solutions for patients with urologic cancers, so it is fulfilling to see that our lead product, ConfirmMDx serves African American men, who have a greater risk for potentially lethal disease," said Dr. Jan Groen, CEO of MDxHealth. "The data demonstrate that the test performance is consistent with our previous validation studies, and can therefore provide physicians and their patients with greater peace of mind when making decisions on the need for a biopsy."

Additional data on the clinical utility of ConfirmMDx will be presented in a moderated poster session on 13 May, abstract #MP33-10.

About ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer

ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer is the first epigenetic, and only tissue-based test in the 2016 NCCN Guidelines for early detection of prostate cancer which addresses false negative biopsy concerns. It is the only molecular diagnostic test that provides a very high negative predictive value (NPV) of 96% for clinically significant prostate cancers, and 90% NPV for all prostate cancers, as well as prostate mapping of the test results to help guide repeat biopsies. Each year, more than 1 million American men undergo an invasive prostate biopsy with a negative result, however approximately 30% of those men have prostate cancer. The current standard of care for prostate biopsy procedures samples less than 1% of the prostate, leaving men at risk for undetected cancer and leading to a high rate of repeat biopsies, even on cancer-free men. ConfirmMDx for Prostate Cancer helps urologists identify low-risk men who may forego an unnecessary repeat biopsy and high-risk men who may benefit from intervention. ConfirmMDx has qualified for Medicare reimbursement and covered by numerous private health insurance plans.

About MDxHealth

MDxHealth is a multinational healthcare company that provides actionable molecular diagnostic information to personalize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The company's tests are based on proprietary genetic, epigenetic (methylation) and other molecular technologies and assist physicians with the diagnosis of urologic cancers, prognosis of recurrence risk, and prediction of response to a specific therapy. The Company's European headquarters are in Herstal, Belgium, with laboratory operations in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and US headquarters and laboratory operations based in Irvine, California. For more information, visit mdxhealth.com and follow us on Twitter at: twitter.com/mdxhealth.

For more information:

Shalon Roth, EVP Corporate Communications

MDxHealth

UK: +44 (0)7393 906278

@ShalonRoth

info@mdxhealth.com

References:

van Neste L, et al. (2017) Clinical Performance of an Epigenetic Assay to Identify Occult High-Grade Prostate Cancer in African American Men. American Urological Association (EAU) Annual Meeting. Abstract # PD07-04. 12 May 2017. Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database, 2000-2013, National Cancer Institute.

This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates with respect to the anticipated future performance of MDxHealth and the market in which it operates. Such statements and estimates are based on assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which were deemed reasonable but may not prove to be correct. Actual events are difficult to predict, may depend upon factors that are beyond the company's control, and may turn out to be materially different. MDxHealth expressly disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements in this release to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based unless required by law or regulation. This press release does not constitute an offer or invitation for the sale or purchase of securities or assets of MDxHealth in any jurisdiction. No securities of MDxHealth may be offered or sold within the United States without registration under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or in compliance with an exemption therefrom, and in accordance with any applicable U.S. securities laws.

NOTE: The MDxHealth logo, MDxHealth, ConfirmMDx, SelectMDx, AssureMDx and PredictMDx are trademarks or registered trademarks of MDxHealth SA. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.
Russias Hermitage Museum recognized as victim in embezzlement case

MOSCOW, May 12 (RAPSI, Yevgeniya Sokolova) - The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg has been recognized as victim in a case over large scale embezzlement during construction and restoration of the museums facilities, attorney Natalya Shitikhina told RAPSI.

According to the museums lawyer, damages caused to the State Hermitage have been covered in part.

In late March, the Federal Security Services (FSB) officers conducted searches in the State Hermitage Museum.

Searches in the engineering departments buildings were related to a criminal case earlier launched against several individuals allegedly involved in embezzling money during construction of new facilities for the museums use, the State Hermitage announced on its website. Museum officials provided law enforcement authorities all information required including documents on two construction contracts, according to the statement.

Earlier, Moscows Lefortovsky District Court placed deputy director of the Hermitage Museum Mikhail Novikov under house arrest. His arrest was reportedly connected with the so-called case of restorers opened against ex-Deputy Minister of Culture Grigory Pirumov and several other officials.

Investigators believe that defendants have stolen over 100 million rubles ($1.5 million) of public funds allocated for restoration of cultural heritage objects.

Investigation has presumably started basing on a report by the Audit Chamber on restoration of the Izborsk Fortress in the Pskov region presented yet in 2013; however, it may also involve such cultural heritage sites as the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg and the Novodevichy Convent in Moscow, as well as works carried out at the Ivanovsky Convent in Moscow, a theater in Pskov and several other objects, as previously reported.
Criminal case against Rusnano ex-head Melamed reaches court

MOSCOW, May 12 (RAPSI)  A criminal case against Leonid Melamed, former chief of the Russian nanotechnology corporation Rusnano who stands charged with embezzlement, has reached the Cheremushkinsky District Court, the courts database reads on Friday.

Melamed and organizations former financial director Svyatoslav Ponurov are charged with embezzling 220 million rubles (about $3.8 million at the current exchange rate). They could face ten years in prison if convicted.

On Thursday morning, lawyer Ruslan Kozhura told RAPSI that Leonid Melamed, former chief of Rusnano, who stands charged with embezzlement, had been released from house arrest. Former financial director Svyatoslav Ponurov was released from detention. Moreover, prosecutors refused to approve indictment in the case, the attorney added.

The Prosecutor Generals Office announced later that gross violations of criminal procedure legislations provisions preventing the approval of indictment had been revealed.

Later in the evening, Prosecutor General Yury Chaika a ruling of his deputy Viktor Grin to send the case back to the Investigative Committee for additional investigation and forwarded it to court.

The Investigative Committee claims that between 2007 and 2009, Melamed along with ex- corporation managers Andrey Malyshev and Svyatoslav Ponurov illegally transferred over 220 million rubles ($2.9 million) from Rusnano to Alemar Co. controlled by Melamed. The defendants pled not guilty.

According to the information available, the case was opened after the check of the corporations finance indicators by the Audit Chamber. The defendants have been charged with large-scale embezzlement of public funds.
Chinese citizen convicted of stealing brilliant appeals sentence

ST. PETERSBURG, May 12 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov)  Chinese citizen Liu Limay has appealed her 3-year prison sentence for stealing a brilliant worth 6 million rubles ($106,000) from a jewellery exhibition, RAPSI learnt on Friday from the united press service of St. Petersburg courts.

Liu Limay seeks to change the sentence to one not involving incarceration.

The Chinese citizen was sentenced on April 28. The woman pleaded guilty and paid full damages to an injured party.

Prosecutor demanded a 3.5-year prison term for Liu Limay while her defense and victim in the case asked the court to fine her.

According to case papers, on February 1, the brilliant weighing 3.1 carat was stolen from the International Jewellery Exhibition JUNWEX held in St. Petersburg.

Investigators claim the jewel was stolen by three Chinese nationals specializing in such thefts. Liu Limay allegedly replaced the brilliant with a fake and gave it to her accomplice, who hid the jewel in his mouth. Initially, police officers suspected that the he had swallowed the brilliant. Later, Liu Limay confessed that they had given the brilliant to a third accomplice, who took it away and left for China. According to police, that woman has been arrested in Hong Kong.
Final part of a five-part series. Continued from Part I, Part II, Part III and Part IV.

The first two serious Union attempts at penetration of the Texan coastal defenses did not involve cavalry actions; they emerged predictably on the sea. Once the United States captured New Orleans in 1862, and given the Confederacy's naval inadequacy, the proximate Texan coastline became a natural target for amphibious invasion by armadas of gunships and troop carriers. This development corresponded with an intermittent blockade of the Texan coast in an attempt to deprive the region of seaborne commerce.

On October 4, 1862, the U.S. Navy attacked the Island of Galveston. After a brief cannonade, the Confederate garrison withdrew, depriving Texas of a critical commercial port. Five hundred volunteer soldiers from Massachusetts then occupied the coastal town, while the Union command in New Orleans prepared to dispatch a reinforcement brigade of several regiments. Another strategically consequential coastal town, Corpus Christi, endured a short bombardment soon afterwards. Despite the attack, this valuable port remained occupied by stubborn Texan forces. Francis Lubbock, Governor of Texas, declared of the developing coastal emergency with dramatic flair as he sought to galvanize resistance: The crisis of this war seems to be at hand in Texas, and we must prepare to defend our homes, or be driven from them with insult and degradation, and all the horrors of rapine and violence. Capturing the state's historical reliance on rapid citizen mobilization, the governor called for 5,000 volunteers to immediately defend the coast.

On New Years Day of 1863 Texan forces counterattacked with a dual gunboat and ground offensive to repossess Galveston. A small fleet of brown-water vessels first engaged the unsuspecting Union squadron with a lightning attack in the dark of night. With diversion in effect, a Rebel ground force, comprised of veterans from the New Mexico campaign and local militia, assaulted the island. The coordinated attack proved successful and the Texans captured three Union ships and over 350 prisoners. The Confederates inflicted an additional 650 enemy casualties, marking the operation as a stunning victory. This expedition adeptly employed the element of surprise, a fundamental aspect of successful warfare since ancient times, to defeat a numerically superior force.

The next significant Union attempt at invasion occurred in September 1863. Called the Second Battle of Sabine Pass, the day belonged to a single Lone Star artillery battery stationed at Fort Griffin, which guarded the mouth of the Sabine River. The Texans first waited until a large seaborne invasion of 15,000 Union infantry, cavalry, and artillery, approached to within 1,200 yards of the fort. The Rebels then opened with a sudden, rapid-fire cannonade. After sinking one ship and severely damaging another, the Confederate company of just forty-four men, under the command of a lieutenant named Dick Dowling, forced the armada of fifteen ships to retreat. The battle resulted in an astounding economy-of-force victory for the Confederacy, and prevented a large-scale occupation of southeastern Texas. The Texas State Gazette subsequently boasted with poetic appeal after the fight: The ball is again opened in Texas. We have met the enemy and they are again ours.

The third major confrontation in Texas occurred in May 1865 as the Union Army launched a final offensive intended to seize territory in the Lone Star State. Unlike the previous two invasions, the Battle of Palmetto Ranch developed as a decisive land engagement by opposing army regiments. It also allowed frontier legend and veteran soldier John Ford to once again rise to prominence as a popular military leader. Though the Texans won a resounding victory over the invading Union regiment, it proved strategically inconsequential. The Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered four weeks prior and the collapse of the Confederacy was imminent.

The Palmetto Ranch Campaign began on May 11 when Theodore Barrett, commander of the Federal regiment occupying the island of Brazos Santiago near Brownsville, ordered an incursion onto the Texan mainland. Despite that tacit ceasefire that had existed between Texan and Union opponents for several months, the commander ordered an attack for reasons only known to him. It has been speculated that he sought to requisition material, such as horses for his dismounted cavalry, or more likely, that he hoped to end the war with a victorious and career-enhancing engagement. Barrett later called it a foraging expedition at his court martial hearing over the matter.

The Federal attack comprised eight companies from the 62nd U.S. Colored Troops and two from the 2nd Texas Cavalry Battalion (U.S.), which was largely populated by Unionist Texans. The improvised assault battalion totaled at approximately 300 soldiers. Additionally, the two cavalry companies did not possess horses, functionally making the corps a purely infantry formation. On the Rebel side, Ford commanded the lower Rio Grande defense with the 2nd Texas Cavalry and several understrength battalions of mounted volunteers. At the time of the attack, the Confederates maintained a volunteer cavalry battalion at Palmetto Ranch, near Fort Brown. The disparity in mobile capacity between the Southern and Northern opponents would prove decisive in the days to come.

On the night of May 11 the Union task force crossed to the Texan mainland under concealment of darkness. They then proceeded to march against a suspected enemy outpost at White's Ranch, near the Rio Grande. When they found the station abandoned, the Federals spent the night under cover, and in the morning moved against the now confirmed enemy battalion stationed at Palmetto Ranch. After initially skirmishing with 190 local cavalrymen, both sides withdrew. Barrett then reinforced his expedition with 200 additional infantrymen from the island base and assumed personal command of the offensive.

The next day, on May 12, the Federal force, now 500-strong, attacked and dislodged the Palmetto Ranch defenders. Barrett pursued one mile west of the ranch and established a temporary camp. Though the massed infantry rifles prevailed in the skirmish, the maneuver subsequently suffered from the expedition's lack of horses and the resulting inability to conduct reconnaissance or pursuit actions.

That afternoon Ford arrived to the scene of battle and assumed command of the Confederate counterattack. In addition to leading his own cavalry regiment, the legacy structure of the 2nd Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, the forces of several volunteer horse units augmented his counterattack. When combined with the original Palmetto Ranch garrison, he now commanded approximately 400 men, nearly all horsemen. In addition to the mounted companies, the Texans brought a horse-drawn battery consisting of six field guns.

Skirmishing had re-commenced between the Palmetto garrison and the Union regiment while Ford deployed his force from Fort Brown. According to the veteran Indian Fighter, upon arrival he first made reconnaissance and determined to attack. Barrett had let himself be caught in open and flat terrain that suited cavalry warfare, and Ford accordingly chose to maximize his superiority in mobility. The aging ranger intended to accomplish this by utilizing his artillery in advance of the line, while enveloping the Union formation with enfilading fire on the right, and finally using dispatching another cavalry wing to turn the enemies right flank. Despite the audacious nature of the plan, it held great risk for the Texans as they would be charging against massed infantry who had conceivably achieved some measure of entrenchment.

Contrary to his outward confidence, Ford worried about the size of the opposing force, which he grossly overestimated. The Texan mentioned of the risk of attacking ranks of foot soldiers when he wrote that, this may be the last fight of the war and from the number of Union men I see before me, I am going to be whipped. Regardless of his private concerns, Ford initiated the assault with cannon fire along his center-front. He then followed the barrage with the 2nd Texas in the center, while simultaneously double-enveloping the Federal left and right with detachments of volunteer horse. The colonel described the action by his larger corps on the left, which he intended to deliver the decisive blow: Very soon Captain Robinson charged with impetuosity. As was expected the Yankee skirmishers were captured and the enemy troops were retreating at a run.

The intensity of the artillery and flank assaults placed the Union battalion in an untenable position, and the attack soon forced Barrett to retreat back to the coast. The Texans pursued at the gallop and harassed the Federal retrograde, which proved so unorganized that two marching Union columns physically crashed into each other, causing further chaos. The defeated commander eventually deployed a detachment from the 62nd U.S.C.T. to screen his main force's movement to safety. By the day's end, the bluecoats lost approximately 30 soldiers dead, over 100 soldiers captured, and suffered the disgraceful loss of two battle flags belonging to the 34th Indiana Volunteer Regiment.

Texan maneuvers during final battle of the Civil War offered a veritable display of the advantages of well armed cavalry when used properly on the 19 th century battlefield. This demonstration first manifested when Ford exploited the increased movement pace offered by mounted soldiers to mobilize and reinforce the Texan garrison at Palmetto Ranch with a rapid march. He next utilized the speed unique to cavalry organizations to envelop the Federal position, though risky due to the potential degradation by of massed infantry rifles. In the culmination of the battle, the same mobility facilitated a rapid charge of the Union line, which, along with mobile artillery effects, compelled the Federal retreat. He finally utilized mounted pursuit and harassment to complete his victory, leading to the capturing several Union companies and additional casualties.

These qualities exemplified the most effective aspects, as pertains to tactical manifestations, of Texas's predilection for mounted warfare during the Civil War. It also revealed that the historical Lone Star strength of rapid mobilization by interested volunteers still retained relevancy. Ford, as veteran of the Texian Army, the Mexican War, and numerous Texas Ranger assignments, had absorbed these lessons throughout thirty years of fighting on the Texas frontier. As demonstrated by the fight at Palmetto Ranch, this combat experience had uniquely prepared him to counter the Union threat with superior versatility. Since the Lone Star State had begun the war with the mobilization of Mounted Rifles under one Texas Ranger icon, Ben McCulloch, it was only fitting that the state would finish the war with Texas Cavalry under another, John Salmon Ford.

The defense of the Texan homeland against both Amerindian and Union incursion, even as the state deployed thousands of soldiers to fight in far flung theaters, revealed structural challenges in their reliance on both militia and active forces for coordinated defense. Traditional Texan inadequacies with logistical support and sustained recruitment again plagued their attempts to establish a long-term and robust mounted presence on the frontier. The expanded use of citizen conscription for specialized ranger service also diluted the defenders' specialized capabilities. Yet in contrast to the struggling northwestern defense, the cavalry responses to the Union incursions along the Gulf coast, specifically at Brownsville, proved successful as they relied upon historical Texan strengths: rapid and limited duration mobilization, aggressive strikes, and mobile superiority.

Ultimately, when the Union Army deployed to conquer Texas as the Mexico had attempted in decades past, Lone Star society responded with an unprecedented cavalry mobilization that reflected its historical predilection for mounted warfare. Whether fighting as Napoleonic light cavalry abroad or as irregular rangers at home, the rebel horsemen of Texas sought to of emulate their forbearers who had won fame at San Jacinto and across the Comanche frontier. This movement, which captured the imagination of the entire state, revealed a deeply engrained societal ethos that associated masculinity with armed horsemanship. The resulting quantity of Texan cavalrymen who served in grey remained unmatched throughout the Civil War by any contemporary state, Confederate or Union, marking the depth of the frontier society's commitment to mounted warfare.

Despite this epic mobilization, there would be no victory for the Lone Star State. The scale of the resulting defeat for both Texas and the South proved epic in both material and human destruction. The Confederacy lost over 200,000 soldier dead, and the Lone Star people suffered the death or incapacitation of a quarter of their productive manpower. While the eastern focus of the war spared Texas the direct territorial devastation experienced by states such as Virginia and Georgia, four years of frontier defense, massive force projection, agricultural atrophy, naval blockades, and financial indebtedness wrecked the state socially and economically.

Yet despite the tectonic experience that destroyed the lives of thousands of Texas soldiers and families, and shattered entire states, a silver lining emerged from the unprecedented scope of cavalry mobilization. Mounted fighting from New Mexico to Georgia and across Texas's Indian Frontier, by tens of thousands of volunteer horsemen, produced an unanticipated benefit for the broken state. Four years of concentrated and constant combat, across a wide variance of combat theaters and environments, trained a new generation horsemen in the hard lessons of warfare. As the rebellion ended, and stalwarts like Ford retired from their final commands, new leaders prepared to assume leadership of Texas's martial tradition.

This revitalization would center on the reemergence of the Texas Rangers as the Lone Star State's most effective security force as the U.S. Army failed to pacify the volatile Indian Frontier and the troubled Rio Grande Valley. Personified by Civil War veterans who later rose as frontier captains, these cavalrymen employed the tactical expertise they gained as Confederate officers to command highly effective, and controversially brutal, mounted constabulary companies against Anglo outlaws, Hispanic raiders, and Amerindian foes on the Great Plains. Under these leaders, the legacy of cavalry mobilization during the War of Rebellion transitioned and flourished as the premier law enforcement order of the American West. The explosion of Texan mounted arms for the Civil War was over, but the reign of the iconic Texas Ranger had only begun.

Nathan Jennings is a Cavalry officer serving as a history instructor at the United States Military Academy, West Point, N.Y. He holds a Master of Arts in American History from the University of Texas at Austin with a focus on warfare in 19th century Texas.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) --

Media Advisory

Editors note: The Balloon Council will release a statement during the event related to the proposed bill AB1091. In short, this proposal clarifies the current California law, making it clear that releasing foil balloons is a ticket-able infraction.



All media are invited to attend the event. If you would like additional information please contact:

Prior to event: Stacey Ehling, stacey@princetonscgroup.com, cell: 609-408-2461

Event day: Jeff Coleman, jeff@princetonscgroup.com, cell: 717-574-7043

What: The Balloon Council, a national organization of responsible retailers, distributors, and manufacturers of balloons, will hold an Education Action Day event and press availability on the grounds of the California State Capital Building. The event will kick-off the Meet Faraday Smart Balloon Practices public education campaign. Faraday, a life-sized costumed mascot, will be introduced as the organizations SpokesBalloon accompanied by dozens of local California retailers representing balloon and party stores to promote the use of Smart Balloon Practice. Faraday will be available for photographs with legislators and the public.

Date: Tuesday, May 30, 2017

Time: 10:30 a.m.  1:30 p.m.

Location: California State Capitol Grounds (Area 22), 1315 10th St, Sacramento, CA, 95814

Background: This event is the first stop in a multi-state educational tour focused on teaching the wonders of balloons and the proper handling of them. The Smart Balloon Practices Meet Faraday campaign focuses on providing simple steps to help mitigate issues that threaten to impact the use and enjoyment of balloons in California and across the country.
Miscalculations and outright blunders abound in U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War. Some mistakes are obvious in retrospect and should have been at the time, most notably Washingtons elective war in Iraq and its devastating impact on Middle East stability. Only the Dick Cheneys of the world still contend that the Bush administrations regime-change crusade was anything other than a calamity.

However, there have been other, less apparent, mistakes that produced highly negative outcomes. One of those blunders was U.S. policy toward the civil war in Bosnia during the mid-1990s. Americas entanglement in the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia was unfortunate on two levels. It was a missed opportunity in the vastly changed postCold War security environment for the United States to off-load responsibility for a subregional problem onto the European members of NATO. The way Washington ultimately handled the Bosnia conflict also created an unhealthy precedent. It transformed NATO from a purely defensive alliance designed to deter or repel an attack on its members into an organization with an offensive orientation. Specifically, in Bosnia the alliance projected military power against an insurgent movement and secessionist government that had not attacked or even threatened a NATO member.

As Yugoslavia began to unravel in the early 1990s, George H. W. Bushs administration seemed inclined to let the leading European powers manage the situation. And those powers, especially Britain, France and Germany, did take some initiative, including working to get the feuding ethnic factions in the newly minted country of Bosnia-Herzegovina to work out a peaceful political solution. The centerpiece of that effort, orchestrated by the European Union, was the Vance-Owen plan, named for former British foreign secretary David Owen and former U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Yet even at that early stage, U.S. officials found it difficult to resist the temptation to meddle. The new Clinton administration spurned the Vance-Owen plan, and it sent subtle signals to Bosnias presidentand the leader of the countrys Muslim factionAlija IzetbegoviA? to resist provisions of that plan. Emboldened, Izetbegovic then spurned the initiative, and the three-sided armed struggle among Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs intensified.

When their mediation effort faltered, European leaders soon looked to Washington to take the lead in addressing the growing turbulence in Bosnia. U.S. leaders professed reluctance to do so, but that was little more than a pro forma objection. Their activist response was fast in coming and it reflected an underlying assumption (along with barely concealed contempt) that the Europeans were incapable of handling security challenges without robust American leadership. An anonymous, high-ranking Bush administration official epitomized that attitude when he sneered: These people could not organize a three-car motorcade if their lives depended on it.

The Clinton administration not only took the policy lead, it soon dominated the process. Washington insisted that Bosnia remain intact, and U.S. policy focused on suppressing the Croat and Serb secessionist campaigns. Clinton administration officials were especially determined to thwart the bid for independence by the Republika Srpska, the Serb entity that had gained control of nearly half of Bosnias territory and whose forces besieged the Muslim-controlled nominal national capital, Sarajevo.

Washington prodded its allies to adopt stronger anti-Serb measures, and that led eventually to the first use of military force in NATOs history with the launching of air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces. That action produced a largely dictated peace agreement, the Dayton Accords, negotiated by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke in November 1995. Although the agreement ended the bloodshed, it did not make Bosnia anything more than a pretend country ruled by a succession of international viceroys ruling primarily through arbitrary edicts. Bosnia was, and is, an economic basket case heavily dependent on international financial inputs. Worse, the deep ethnic divisions continued unabated, making effective political cooperation nearly impossible. Two decades after the civil war, Bosnia remains a dysfunctional, poverty-stricken ward of the international community.

The Bosnia conflict was a huge missed opportunity for the United States to set new, more rational, priorities for itself in the postCold War world. A far better policy would have been to inform the Europeans that a petty conflict in the Balkans did not reach the threshold of a serious security threat to the transatlantic community warranting direct U.S. involvement, much less requiring Washingtons leadership. NATOs European members had no more right to expect a dominant U.S. role in dampening a Bosnian civil war than Americans would have had the right to expect European countries to take the lead in addressing a similar conflict in the Caribbean or Central America.

By usurping the leadership role, Washington perpetuated an unhealthy European dependenceand sometimes outright free ridingon U.S. security exertions. NATO burden-sharing controversies in both the Obama and Trump administration demonstrate that the problem continues to plague U.S. foreign policy. Moreover, the end product of the U.S.-designed policy in Bosnia has been a festering political and economic mess. In nearly every respect, the Bosnia intervention was Washingtons first major foreign-policy blunder of the postCold War era. It would, however, definitely not be the last.
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DENVER, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Resolute Energy Corporation (Resolute or the Company) (NYSE:REN) announced today that it has closed its previously announced private offering of $125 million in aggregate principal amount of its 8.50% senior notes due 2020 (the Senior Notes). The Senior Notes have identical terms, other than the issue date, the issue price and the first interest payment date, and constitute part of the same series as the $400 million aggregate principal amount of the Companys 8.50% Senior Notes due 2020 previously issued (the Existing 8.50% Senior Notes). The Company intends to launch an exchange offer for the Senior Notes. After consummation of that exchange offer, but not before, the Senior Notes will be fungible with, and have the same CUSIP or ISIN numbers as, the Existing 8.50% Senior Notes. The Senior Notes are general unsecured obligations of the Company and guaranteed on a senior unsecured basis by the Companys existing subsidiaries.



The net proceeds of the offering, after reflecting initial purchaser discounts and commissions, and estimated offering expenses, were approximately $125.9 million. Resolute intends to use the net proceeds from the Senior Notes offering and borrowings under its senior credit facility to finance the previously announced acquisition of certain producing and undeveloped oil and gas properties in the Delaware Basin in Reeves County, Texas (the Delaware Basin Bronco Acquisition). However, the Senior Notes offering is not conditioned on the consummation of the Delaware Basin Bronco Acquisition. As a result, if the Delaware Basin Bronco Acquisition is not consummated, Resolute intends to use the net proceeds of the Senior Notes offering to repay outstanding borrowings under its senior credit facility and the remaining portion for general corporate purposes, including capital expenditures.

The Senior Notes and the related guarantees were offered only to persons reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers in reliance on the exemption from registration set forth in Rule 144A under the Securities Act, and outside the United States to non-U.S. persons in reliance on the exemption from registration set forth in Regulation S under the Securities Act. The Senior Notes and the related guarantees have not been registered under the Securities Act or the securities laws of any state or other jurisdiction, and the Senior Notes may not be offered or sold in the United States without registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities or blue sky laws and foreign securities laws.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell, or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sales of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. This notice is being issued pursuant to and in accordance with Rule 135(c) under the Securities Act.

Cautionary Statements

The statements in this press release relating to the use of proceeds from the offering are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Resolute undertakes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

About Resolute Energy Corporation

Resolute is an independent oil and gas company focused on the acquisition and development of unconventional oil and gas properties in the Delaware Basin portion of the Permian Basin of west Texas. Resolute also operates Aneth Field, located in the Paradox Basin in Utah. The Company's common stock is traded on the NYSE under the ticker symbol REN.
Nepal on Friday inked a deal with China to join Chinese President Xi Jinpings ambitious One Belt One Road initiative to link Asia with Europe, a move that may worry India.

The decision to sign the agreement comes ahead the OBOR forum in Beijing on May 14 and 15.

Chinese Ambassador to Nepal Yu Hong and Nepals Foreign Secretary Shankar Bairagi signed a memorandum of understanding at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Singhadurbar, Kathmandu.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Krishna Bahadur Mahara and Minister for Foreign Affairs Prakash Sharan Mahat were present during the signing ceremony.

The MoU is an important moment in the bilateral relation between the two countries. Roads and railways connectivity is important for us and we want investment in this sector, Mahat said.

Yu said that the Belt and Road initiative will bring new opportunities for China-Nepal cooperation and South Asias development.

To promote Belt and Road initiative, we are committed to the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. Openness, inclusiveness and mutual benefit are the defining features of the initiative. The Initiative is not only open to the countries in the region, but also open to the countries outside the region who are interested in it, said Yu.

The OBOR aims to enhance connectivity and cooperation among countries, primarily between China and the rest of Asia and Europe through land as well as maritime routes.

China had sent a draft proposal on OBOR to Nepal late last year. After a month-long consultation, the Nepalese side had sent back the draft to Beijing with some changes.

Nepal signing the deal with China may cause concerns in India, which has opposed Beijings initiative. India has reservations over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of the OBOR, as it is proposed to pass through the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

India, which has traditionally enjoyed great economic and political ties with Nepal, has faced increasing competition from China in recent years.

Landlocked Nepal relies heavily on imports from India and completely on Indian ports for sea access.

IMAGE: Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, with Nepalese Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal at a meeting in Beijing in March, 2017. Photograph: Lintao Zhang/pool/Reuters
'I have been managing people since I was very young. I really enjoy it.'

'For me, age is only a proxy for experience,' Nitin Prasad, Shell's 40-year-old chairman, tells Jyoti Mukul.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

I am late and apologise profusely as I enter The Grill at the Taj Mahal Hotel, Delhi. Nitin Prasad, chairman, Shell group of companies in India, is sitting patiently, with a glass of sparkling water. "No issues," he says softly. "We are here now."

This is my first meeting with the 40-year-old Prasad, who was placed among the Fortune 40 under 40 last year, and considers turning around the company's lubricant business in India as his defining assignment.

Before we realise, we are discussing Shell's new strategy in India.

That was in late 2011, and he started out by changing every aspect of the lubricant business systematically.

There was a portfolio shift away from low-grade products to products that added more value to the chain.

A considerable amount of time was spent on distribution channels, focussing on OEM partnerships and building the business' technological capability.

"We worked at the topline to generate more sales and volume. The big thing was building a strong team, we put together a robust HR strategy."

"So you got the chairmanship as reward," I hazard. "Obviously, they wouldn't have considered me if I had failed."

He smiles, and adds, "You have to be a high performer, but the way we work at Shell is a lot about building capabilities and skills. I have worked on strategy, portfolio, commercial, operations, chemicals, lubricants... you name it..."

Prasad joined Shell in 2004, working with the strategy and portfolio vertical. Twelve-and-a-half years later, he became the youngest India chairman of the oil major, which had in 2016 taken over British Gas in a global deal.

I am curious to find out what is that quality that catapulted this soft-spoken guy to the helm of the oil major.

But before the discussion gets more serious we decide to order the food. We wave at the server. Prasad settles for a steamed sole with golden garlic vegetable fried rice and steamed vegetables on the side. I ask for a tofu. Our attendant suggests we share the rice.

"Everything is probably too much," he says and I can see Prasad is not a prolific eater.

Shell is not Prasad's first job. He was previously with Altera, a semiconductor firm in Silicon Valley. "I had a lot of fun there."

In 2003, Prasad, an engineer by training, felt he needed some excitement, a bigger challenge. "Having been through the boom and bust, I saw I needed to understand economics and business. So I decided to pursue an MBA from INSEAD."

Did his decision have something do with the bust? "I still had a job. The company was, in fact, starting a new business," he says matter-of-factly.

So how did he get into Shell?

"I had not even planned to attend a Shell presentation at the campus, but it so happened that I had a Dutch and a French roommate. The Dutch roommate wanted to go for the presentation and spoke very highly of Shell, a British-Dutch multinational."

All three went for the presentation. "The irony is that the French guy and I got selected, but the Dutch guy did not get the job. But he's still a good friend."

Prasad chose to join in Singapore since it was a business hub for China, Indonesia, Malaysia and India.

His first project was to come up with a strategy to turn around the China lubricant business. The company was not performing as per expectation, though it was No 2 among the foreign companies based there.

"We took a look at what needed to be done both organically and inorganically for a period of six months. We then came up with a strategy that proved quite successful. We became No 1 and today we are the largest international oil company in China with a highly profitable business. It is now starting to rival all of the European business and has become the second largest globally, next only to the US."

The team on the ground did a fantastic job, he adds emphatically.

The turnaround was just one piece. Soon he had to work on several country exits. Which is more difficult -- turning around a business or exiting a country, I ask.

They both have different flavours, he says. Take exiting. There are six to seven businesses that are tied to and draw synergies from each other.

The questions when you think of moving out of a country are: Should you shut down, sell off or license them out? Who are the possible partners and where all could we do asset swap?

A turnaround, on the other hand, is intensive and has more to do with cultural change.

"It is not simply about the right idea and vision. The ways of working have to change also. A turnaround to me is a lot about culture change," he says as we dig into the clear vegetable soup.

Shell has 600 people in India, which makes the country the third largest in the Shell group in terms of employees.

"That's a significant talent base," he says. How difficult or easy is it to deal with older colleagues?

"I have been managing people since I was very young. I really enjoy it. It's probably right that for the better part of my life I had people older than me reporting to me. For me, age is only a proxy for experience."

"The main thing is what you bring to the table, the depth of knowledge. Do you add value to the people and can you mentor them? I am lucky to have deep experience in a number of areas."

"When Mr Mehta (Vikram Singh Mehta, the ex-chairman of the Shell Group of Companies in India who retired in 2012) was there, we were establishing ourselves. It was an entry into a heavily regulated market."

"Then Yasmine (Hilton, his immediate predecessor) brought in a lot of focus on the market and launched the IT hub. It was the growth and expansion phase."

"I hope I am the right person for the job entrusted to me.

Shell, which has two strong business -- retail and lubricants -- is looking to bring more businesses into the country.

The main course arrives. My tofu dish is nicely done with vegetables in mild flavour. He seems to like the sole. I notice that the adjoining tables have some known faces.

I ask Prasad whether Shell prefers a country head to be from the same country. "Shell takes into consideration the ability of a person to work with the society," he tells me.

"In countries like those in Africa, it is important to have the same nationality especially if there is a partnership with national oil companies. In West Asia, countries are very relationship-oriented. It is good to have an individual who can speak Arabic. It is important for them to understand the cultural sensitivities," he elaborates.

Globally, the company is conscious of the energy transition taking place.

Shell is already the largest biofuel manufacturer in the world, thanks to its Brazil joint venture with Cosan. It is now moving towards solar and wind opportunities available in India.

Another new track is the company's involvement with start-ups.

It recently launched the Make the Future Accelerator in India programme, which, according to the company Web site, 'aims to support anyone with a bright energy idea in action... the programme will help the businesses to build a strong value proposition and enable them to access funding to scale.'

Prasad took over as chairman of Shell in October 2016, almost two months after entering a new phase in his life, becoming a father to twins Myra and Neel. "I value my time with my family. Weekends are sacrosanct."

His wife is a partner with Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, an equally demanding job. "It was intense for a few months, but my family is here. My wife and I took turns in the night, but I am still trying to learn how to change a diaper with one hand and respond to an email with the other."

He keeps a straight face for a minute before letting loose with a loud guffaw as we wrap up the lunch with rose tea.
Tales By Light is devoted to the kind of nature photography that appears on the pages of Nat Geo, but it exposes viewers to fascinating vistas that have only partly to do with photography, says Vikram Johri.

Tales By Light, a joint venture of Canon and National Geographic, is a photography show that has just debuted its second season on Netflix.

The first season -- all of six episodes -- was devoted to the kind of nature photography that appears on the pages of Nat Geo: High-quality pictures from some of the most unreachable corners of the planet.

Season 2, by contrast, takes a more anthropological approach.

IMAGE: In episodes 1 and 2 of Tales By Light Season 2, Jonathan and Angela Scott takes us into the man-wildlife conflict in Kenya's Masai Mara. Photograph: Jonathan and Angela Scott/Tales By Light/Netlix.

Jonathan and Angela Scott get episodes 1 and 2.

For many decades now, the husband-wife duo have been capturing the sights and soaking in the sounds of Kenya's Maasai Mara, a game reserve contiguous with the Serengeti in Tanzania. Called Sacred Nature, these episodes present the dual nature of their mission: To photograph for the world the magnificent beauty of the African outdoors and, emerging from this, to get people to care about the continent's rapidly depleting wildlife.

The Scotts are big cat people, since their journeys into the Maasai have given them rich pickings, shooting for the camera Masai lions, African leopards and Tanzanian cheetahs.

Nature programming of this sort -- deriving its vicarious thrill from the very real job the Scotts are up to -- adds a frisson to the already majestic task at hand.

With civilisation closing in on the Maasai, the battle between man and beast has heated up. Local tribes raise cattle that frequently become the target of predators, unleashing a cycle of retribution that, if not checked, is in danger of eliminating the big cats.

While keenly aware of this conflict, the Scotts know it is not their place to evangelise. The tribes, who have lived in harmony with the wildlife for centuries, share a sacred relationship with it.

IMAGE: With the next two episodes, titled Misunderstood Predators, Eric Chang goes looking for tiger sharks in the Bahamas and the green anaconda in Brazil . Photograph: Tales By Light/Netlix.

Episodes 3 and 4 are focused on Eric Cheng, whose goal is to, if not humanise, correct misperceptions about supposedly dangerous wildlife.

He goes looking for the green anaconda in Brazil and tiger sharks in the Bahamas, mythical creatures that have attracted opprobrium because of Hollywood's portrayal of them as mindless killing machines. Steven Spielberg's Jaws, for instance, single-handedly turned an entire generation of Americans off sharks.

The reality is altogether different.

Both the green anaconda and the tiger shark come across as gentle, almost benign creatures that could not care less about an ungainly man in full underwater gear lugging heavy photographic equipment in their vicinity. The graceful motion of the anaconda is in stark contrast to its image as a voluptuous beast intent on crushing anything in its sight. But it is the shark that truly surprises.

Cheng is aided in his effort by Jim Abernethy, a local who has worked with the marine creatures for many years. His crew shares an intimacy with the shark that is both unbelievable and endearing. Sharks allow Mr Abernethy's crew to pat, rub, and even nuzzle them as if they were a pliable pet. Apart from showering them with affection, the crew also administers to their needs such as by removing hooks from their teeth or plastic stuck around body parts.

It is impossible to remain untouched by the sheer scale of these ecosystems, on land or under water, imparting a measure of urgency to an exercise that must have essentially begun, for the Scotts and Cheng, as an aesthetic experience.

These episodes end with pleas to reach out and support their efforts to stop rampant fishing and encroachment upon the living spaces of the wild -- an aim that their evocative photographs abundantly aid.

IMAGE: In the last 2 episodes of Season 2 Stephen Dupont photographs death in Varanasi and among the Kalahari in Namibia. Photograph: Stephen Dupont/Tales By Light/Netflix.

The last two episodes are dedicated to another kind of photography.

In his own words, Stephen Dupont is a photographer of death. He has covered conflicts throughout his career and Episode 5 begins with a montage of his photographs of the Rwandan genocide. This is stomach-churning stuff; one wonders about the effects such proximity to bloodshed would have had on him.

Even so, Dupont approaches the subject with remarkable equanimity. His quest to capture death in its natural habitat, as a celebration of a life lived well, brings him to Varanasi. He wanders the ghats where dead bodies arrive in quick succession to go through the paces enshrined in Hindu belief: A quick dip in the Ganga, a final photograph, and then the march to the heavens on a bed of burning wood.

Dupont merges into the background as scenes of the final journey fill the screen, its clockwork efficiency both fascinating and disturbing.

On the one hand, here are rituals that tie every Hindu to his religion, an inescapable part of his destiny in these secular times. On the other, the almost mechanised stirring, the to-ing and fro-ing bespeaks a troubling lack of individual detail, as if death were just another cog in the ever-churning wheel of life.

The final episode takes Dupont to the Kalahari in Namibia whose inhabitants, like the Masai in Kenya, maintain a way of life that is both pre-modern and rousingly self-sufficient.

Dipping into cultures far removed from his own gives Dupont a measure of reconciliation: Death might be benumbing, but it is not unwelcome.

Over its two seasons, Tales By Light has exposed viewers to fascinating vistas that have only partly to do with photography.

The show's real achievement is its distillation of the greater truths and lessons that an engagement with the camera can afford us.

Also meet: India's best upcoming nature photographers
French English





RESS RELEASE

Bollore

First quarter 2017 financial information May 12, 2017

Turnover for the 1st quarter of 2017: 2,581 million euros, up 7.2% as reported (up 7.3% at constant scope and exchange rates) compared to the first quarter of 2016 Finalization of the agreements with Blue Solutions

1. First quarter 2017 turnover

The Bollore Group's first quarter 2017 turnover stood at 2,581 million euros as reported, up 7.2%.

At constant scope and exchange rates, it was up 7.3%. This change included growth in the transportation and logistics business (4%), an increase in the oil logistics business (26%), which benefited from the rise in the prices of oil products in the first quarter of 2017, and an increase in the communications (0.4%) and electricity storage (6%) businesses.

Change in turnover by business

(in millions of euros) 2017 2016(1) 2016 Reported Organic growth growth Transportation and logistics 1,387 1,336 1,352 2.6% 3.8% Oil logistics 584 464 463 26.3% 26.0% Communications (Havas, media, telecoms) 531 529 516 2.8% 0.4% Electricity storage and solutions 73 69 69 6.2% 5.6% Others (agricultural assets, holdings) 6 7 7 (13.5%) (13.6%) Total turnover Bollore Group 2,581 2,405 2,407 7.2% 7.3%

(1) at constant scope and exchange rates.

At constant scope and exchange rates, compared to the first quarter of 2016, the major business lines changed as follows:

Transportation & logistics, Oil logistics:

The turnover of the transportation & logistics business increased by 4% due to the higher turnover in freight forwarding and logistics, which benefited from the rise in freight rates. The turnover from operations in Africa was up 1%. It includes the increase in the logistics and handling businesses driven by the recovery of operations and new projects in certain countries (Angola, Mozambique, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, etc.), despite a sluggish economic environment linked to the weakness of the oil segment, which is still impacting significantly on the Congo and Cameroon. This increase was partially offset by a slight decrease in port terminal activity due to the volume decline in the Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria, and by the reduction in rail operations, which continued to be penalized by the decline in passenger and freight traffic.

The turnover from oil logistics (up 26%) benefited from higher prices for oil products, which offset the decline in volumes due to a less favorable climate than in the first quarter of 2016.



Communications (Havas, media, telecoms): The turnover from communications businesses was up 0.4%. The organic growth reported by Havas was up 0.1%, due to the satisfactory performances in the major regions, with the exception of certain countries in Europe and Asia Pacific, which recorded a slowdown in business mainly due to lower investment by some customers. The increase in turnover from the communications business was mainly due to the strong growth in the telecom business (Wifirst), where the number of rooms and campsites in service continues to grow at a strong pace.



Electricity storage and solutions: The turnover from industrial activities (electricity storage, plastic films, dedicated terminals and systems) increased by 6% compared to the first quarter of 2016, due to the strong growth in the dedicated terminals division (terminals and airlocks for stations and airports) and buoyant activity in plastic films. The quarter was marked by a fall in sales at Bluecar, partly offset by the car-sharing activity, which continued its steady growth, with a fleet of 4,900 electric vehicles and 1,500 stations equipped with 7,900 charging terminals. The number of active annual premium subscribers in Bollore Group's car-sharing services in France (Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux), the United States (Indianapolis) and Italy (start of service in Turin in October 2016) increased by 7% and stood at 117,000 at the end of March 2017 (109,000 at the end of March 2016). The car-sharing business operated by the Bollore Group currently represents approximately

6 million rentals per year.

2. Finalization of the agreements with Blue Solutions, confirmation of the filing of the simplified tender offer made by Bollore to the shareholders of Blue Solutions at a price of 17 per share, appointment of an independent expert

On March 23, 2017, Blue Solutions' Board of Directors made the decision not to exercise its call options on the scope of Blue Applications until their expiry date, i.e. June 30, 2018, considering that the investments remaining to be made in this company are still very significant and preferring to concentrate Blue Solutions' efforts on improving battery technology.

As a result of this decision, the Boards of Directors of companies Bollore and Blue Solutions have decided to come together to jointly work on the following objectives:

to implement a new window for exercising options;

to review the terms of the battery supply contract as provided for in the contract;

to draw up a new agreement for the financing of Blue Solutions by Bollore, the previous undertaking having ended in June 2016.

The Boards of Directors of Bollore, Blue Solutions, Compagnie du Cambodge and Societe Industrielle et Financiere de l'Artois met on May 11 and 12 and approved the agreements arising from these discussions. These agreements provide for:

the implementation of a new window for exercising the seven call options available to Blue Solutions, which can now be exercised between January 1, 2020 and June 30, 2020;

Bollore's commitment to finance Blue Solutions until June 30, 2020;

the termination of the existing battery supply contract between Blue Solutions and Bluecar;

the implementation of a new longer contract for the supply of Blue Solutions batteries to Bluecar (until December 31, 2025), extended to Blue Storage and Bluebus, including staggered volumes and a revision of contract prices to follow the forecast developments in the market.

The firm Sorgem has validated the balanced nature of this renegotiation.

In this context and as announced on March 23, 2017, Bollore's Board of Directors, which met on May 11, 2017, confirmed the filing of a simplified tender offer for Blue Solutions' shares by mid June 2017, at a price of 17 euros per share. The Board of Directors of Blue Solutions, which met on May 12, 2017, mandated an independent expert in the firm Associes en Finance to decide on the fairness of the offer made by Bollore to the shareholders of Blue Solutions.

The shareholders, who decide not to tender their shares to this offer and to continue supporting Blue Solutions, will be offered a second exit window after the publication of the 2019 financial statements, if the average price of the Blue Solutions share, during a reference period, is less than 17 euros. In such a case, Bollore will file a new tender offer under the same pricing conditions as the first one. This commitment will be set out in the information notice of the first public offer.

3. Significant events:

Electricity storage:

In January 2017, the Group signed a contract with the Singapore authorities for electric vehicle car-sharing services in Singapore.

Communications:

Vivendi's General Meeting of April 25, 2017 renewed Vincent Bollore's term of office for a period of four years and ratified the co-optation of Yannick Bollore as members of the Supervisory Board. At the end of this meeting, Vivendi's Supervisory Board reappointed Vincent Bollore as its Chairman. In addition, in a press release on April 25, 2017, the European Commission announced that it had authorized the notified operation of Bollore's proposed concentration relating to Vivendi. In view of these factors, Bollore has decided to consolidate Vivendi in its financial statements as of April 26, 2017.

Shareholdings:

Bollore, which holds approximately 10% of Gaumont's capital, has noted the announcement of a public share buyback offer at 75 euros per share. As a long-term shareholder of Gaumont, in which it invested in 2001, Bollore decided to support the proposal made to Gaumont's shareholders and will therefore submit its shares in the offer. The sale of its stake at the price of 75 euros would represent an amount of 31 million euros for Bollore, a consolidated capital gain of more than 100% compared to its initial investment, and more than 130% taking into account dividends received.

Financing:

In January 2017, Bollore issued a five-year bond in the amount of 500 million euros, bearing interest at 2%. This new issue enables the Bollore Group to continue to diversify its financing sources and extend the average duration of its debt.
'The best way to face cancer is to get it diagnosed, staged and identify the best which line of management.'

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.

Part 3 of the must-read interview with Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.

How cutting edge is cancer treatment in India? What is your assessment?

We are practically there, actually.

The treatment which we are giving here at the Asian Cancer Institute is almost at par with whatever is being given in Europe or in Japan.

Except for certain things. For example, neurosurgery is fairly advanced in the US.

They have better equipment. Probably a little more experience than what we have. The overall set-ups (systems) which are there, they hang together much better abroad.

But as far as the top doctors are concerned here, they are practically at par with any of the best doctors anywhere else.

Anywhere?

Everywhere. Indian centres are as good.

Japan is one place which is very good. Singapore is basically a combination of the US and Japan.

China is basically a kind of unknown entity, we don't really know much about China, to be very honest. We get a lot of Russians here, in fact, as patients.

The US, of course, has certain nodal centres which are really world known.

And in your specific field of lung cancer?

We practically do the same thing that they are able to do. We have robotic surgery included here in this same hospital. We are world class. Absolutely.

So only for neuro cancers, maybe India is a bit behind?

Yes. And certain very, very critical areas (of other types of cancer), there are there even today, where people actually specialise in treating that abroad.

People once talked about cancer only in two ways: Cured. Or uncured.

When I first heard you speak at a recent press conference, you were instead talking in terms of adding years to life.

But what would be the quality of life of someone cured from a debilitating cancer? Also, they do live in fear of remission.

On remission: Once you get a cancer -- of any kind, say a lung cancer or breast cancer or anything -- there is a three to five per cent chance, during your lifetime, to get another cancer.

That practically (puts you in the same probability/odds bracket) as another person getting cancer, who never had cancer before.

But it can occur... Though that particular cancer may get cured, it can come in some other location, something else may happen.

On quality of life: Suppose (a patient has) a large tumour. There are targetted therapies which can make the tumour smaller. It may not disappear.

Once it becomes smaller, the pain related to that goes, obstruction related to that goes. Any other difficulty, like sense of heaviness, will disappear. So that improves the quality of life up to some level.

Making it quite decent?

It is much better than what it used to be. You can't make a person 100 per cent normal, but it is definitely near normal I would say.

When people get cancer they always wonder: 'Why me?' That's the first thought.

'Am I doing something wrong?'

'Is it something in my family?'

'Am I eating too much non-vegetarian food?'

Can you shed some light on that?

This sense of 'why me' is there in any kind of sudden occurrence in life.

Be it a diagnosis of cancer. Or tuberculosis. Or having an accident. Or some kind of disaster in the family.

That reaction is a human reaction to any sudden kind of problem which is faced in life. You can't really eliminate that thing at all.

But if you really analyse sometimes... For example if a chronic smoker says, 'Why me? Why should I get lung cancer?' the answer is staring in his face.

But by and large, many of these cancers are sheer accidents. You may not really drink and drive, but that does not mean you may never get into an accident.

What do you mean by sheer accident? Something that went wrong?

Yes, something could go wrong in your system and then you can develop a tumour. So that is a possibility.

More than 70 to 80 per cent cancers are like that.

If there is a genetic abnormality, it is a different matter. You know why it has occurred.

If there is a habit, or if there is a causative kind of irritating stimulus, like tobacco, you know why it has happened.

But almost more than 60 to 70 per cent cancers don't have an origin like this.

They have no known cause?

Yes. We don't know. As of today we don't know what may be the cause.

Ultimately, 30 years back, no one knew about this BRCA business, okay.

That time, many of these cancers that didn't have a cause. Today we know they had a cause which we did not know.

Eventually a time may come, 20-30-40 years later, when those 60 to 70 per cent (origin-less cancers) will also maybe get a kind of actionable prevention we may have.

The best way to face cancer is to get it diagnosed, staged and identify the best which line of management.

Instead of being philosophical?

Emotional reactions are bound to be there. They are part of life.

If we don't react, we won't be human, right?

But don't lose valuable time in that reaction.

In India people want to treat cancer through alternative medicine like Ayurveda.

We see a lot of people becoming inoperable because of this.

Sometimes they do it after everything else has failed.

If they do it after everything has failed, or alongside the conventional treatment, I think it is still acceptable.

There are certain areas where they could probably be useful. For example, reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. Or maybe recovery from anaesthesia. They could probably be helping.

But they are not a primary treatment for malignancy.

They have some value, but not necessarily?

But not as curative value in malignancy.

So never to replace the regular treatment?

No, no. The conventional pathway should not be (tampered with)...

But many Indian have faith in it?

Just show how people have suffered because of this.

Because they delayed seeking conventional treatment?

So many. So many.

You are not happy with the allopathic doctor -- what is the worst thing that can happen? He gets sued.

Have you ever heard of any alternative line of medicine consultant being sued because the patient became inoperable? Nobody gets sued.

They are the ones who are actually creating the biggest destruction.

If you treat a patient in an early stage, your results are better, complications are less, outcome is much more in line with the desirable one.

Whereas somebody who neglects for nine months or a year, comes in the third or fourth stage, expects miracles from a consultant and blames the consultant because of that.

Actually they are destroying and vitiating the whole system of healthcare.

You were talking about the overuse of Google. But there are many who don't like to Google or educate themselves when it comes to medical situations. They just go into treatment blind.

What do you think an average person needs to know, especially about cancer? What does he need to read up on? What does he need to equip himself with?

There are certain basic books, even matter which is available on the Net. Basic principles of treatment. Principles of what cancer is. The fact that it can be cured.

The American Cancer Society publishes a lot. For example, you asked about bras with metal straps, deodorants -- all the answers are actually available there...

When a cancer society publishes something -- be it the Indian Cancer Society or the American Cancer Society or the Asian Cancer Foundation -- all of these have authenticity associated with them.

I think some amount of awareness should be there. It is always easier to explain things to a person who is at least a little read and who is ready to communicate. It is better that patients also read up a little bit.

A lot of patients are ignorant.

Even those from well-educated backgrounds?

Yes. (Because of) Fear of it. They don't want to know about it.

You said India does not have a high incidence of cancer. Should people budget for cancer when they make a calculation on how much to medically insure themselves for, given that hospitalisation costs are so high?

I am not saying that India doesn't have a high incidence or anything. We don't have as high an incidence as the developed countries.

But medical insurance is like being in a rainy season and the care that you take, by bringing an umbrella (along), whether it rains or not, is in front of your own eyes.

Without insurance today every family is at risk. Because anything you do today is fairly expensive. Somebody slips on a banana peel, breaks one bone, in a decent hospital it costs you 4 or 5 lakh rupees.

So a decent amount of floating insurance for a family should be anything between Rs 5 and Rs 10 lakhs, is absolutely mandatory...

That will take care of any sudden cancer treatment cost?

Yes, it will...

If you ever faced a personal cancer experience, would you like to be treated in India? As a cancer surgeon do you feel confident of our centres?

One of the greatest surgeons of cancer, Dr Ernest Borges -- who has roads named after him; he was the person who brought Tata (Memorial Centre) its name -- was operated for gastric cancer.

Where was he operated at? In Tata Hospital, by his own junior.

(Tata Memorial Centre's) Plastic surgeon Dr (N M) Kavrana got bladder cancer. He was operated at Tata Hospital by (uro-oncologist) Dr Murali Kamat.

There are so many people like that. I don't see any necessity today to go abroad.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi goes abroad, reportedly for cancer treatment...

Sonia Gandhi is going abroad not because treatment is not available here. She is going for some other reason. She wants to secure the fact that she is being treated.

So many of my patients go abroad. They say I don't want other people to know I have cancer...

A very prominent person getting operated in any of the hospitals (and people get to know)... the nosiness of Indians is to be blamed. Abroad nobody will actually poke their noses.

It is probably for discretion that she is going rather than (anything else).

IMAGE: In this photograph shot on March 4, 2013, Raj Kishore Kumar, a 12-year-old cancer patient, rests with his mother inside his pavement dwelling outside the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
'India's nationalism has always been an exceptional and great experiment.'

'We said you don't have to give up your language, your lifestyle or your religion in order to be an Indian national.'

'Nowhere in the world could you find on such a large scale such a democratic experiment of nation building based on diversity.'

'That is the greatness of India's nationalism and we are on the verge of losing that greatness.'

IMAGE: Wearing his love for the prime minister on his head! A Narendra Modi fan displays his love for the PM. Photograph: Amit Dave/Reuters

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will complete his third year in power next fortnight, May 26, and it seems nothing will stop the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party juggernaut.

Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf spoke to the well-known political scientist Suhas Palshikar -- professor of political science at Pune's Savitribai Phule University and the chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics about Indian politics three years after the BJP's triumph in the 2014 general election.

Allegations of corruption are directed against leaders of parties other than the BJP. What is the meaning of this?

This is possible because there is always a possibility that many political leaders are involved in some scam or scandal.

At the same time, it is the old story of the ruling party using corruption charges against its Opposition to browbeat them.

So one is not sure whether it is a genuine cleaning up of the system or simply political vendetta.

What does it mean to Indian democracy if the Opposition parties are in such a bad state?

In principle, when Opposition parties are weak, it is not good news for democracy.

We expect a vibrant and strong Opposition in a democracy -- strong in terms of possibility of coming to power and strong in terms of their agenda.

Currently on both these counts, the Opposition is extremely weak and disintegrated.

Will India in the near future end up like Turkey where the Opposition or dissenting voices won't matter?

A comparison of India with Turkey is misplaced simply because of the scale issue.

Look at the existing political parties in power and the number of Opposition parties at the state level.

Secondly, the reason I feel the comparison is misplaced is because India's democracy of the last seven decades is much more vibrant than what we believe it to be.

There is a possibility of people and political parties bouncing back. I think it would be misplaced to compare India with Turkey. Though I don't at the same time believe everything is well and good as of now.

Opposition parties are weak. We should be cautious though and not panic.

Could you, for the sake of our younger readers, explain the difference in the Narendra Modi regime as compared to the Indira Gandhi regime?

In the case of Indira Gandhi, she had to resort to a Constitutional mechanism to impose her personal authority.

The current regime probably might not have to do that because even without doing that they would be able to assert and do what they want, which is called vigilantism.

Through vigilantism and through creating a sentiment in favour of certain attitudes and certain modes of behaviour, the current regime can achieve what Indira Gandhi could achieve only through the imposition of the Emergency.

The other difference is that the current regime also has a specific political agenda -- that of creating a particular kind of homogenised nationalism, which is deeply problematic and different from Indira Gandhi's agenda of simply imposing her personal rule.

That is what makes the current regime and the portents of current authoritarianism much more serious than what existed during Indira Gandhi's time.

What is wrong with homogenisation? One nation, one law?

It is not a question of law. It is a question of what is the basis of nationalism.

When India became a nation, the idea was that we can be one without being similar.

Everyone does not need to be the same person.

Every community doesn't need to be the same.

Every person does not need to speak the same language and that is why diversity and plurality are the basis of India's nationalism.

I don't have to give up my individual difference in order to be an Indian national. This was the founding principle of India's nationalism and now that is being challenged.

There is an attempt to change the idea -- that because we are one nation we have to adopt the same modes of behaviour, same belief and same lifestyle which cuts at the roots of diversity and that is what I say is problematic.

Many people don't understand that by adopting homogeneity we cause harm to others.

India's nationalism has always been an exceptional and great experiment.

We said you don't have to give up your language, your lifestyle or your religion in order to be an Indian national. That was the understanding.

Nowhere in the world could you find on such a large scale such a democratic experiment of nation building based on diversity.

That is the greatness of India's nationalism and we are on the verge of losing that greatness.

Why is there no democratic anger in the public when the Kashmir situation has worsened and so has Maoist terror?

Why do people still believe in Narendra Modi's government?

At the moment, one must admit that Narendra Modi, both as a leader and prime minister, has been able to convince people that he is out there to do something very exceptional and very different.

This belief even after three years of his government is still there. That is the success story of Narendra Modi's leadership and one has to accept it.

There may be criticism, but people still believe Modi personally at least is trying to do certain things and they are waiting and they are ready to wait.

That is why in spite of various roadblocks, various difficulties, the people's trust in Modi remains unharmed.

How long will people trust Modi? When will they start questioning him for not delivering?

In the long run, that will happen. I don't see a challenge arising in the near future for Narendra Modi.

The problem for Modi would be the longer the people believe in him, the greater would be the disappointment at a later stage.

IMAGE: In recent times, there's a belief that the Hindus have been become second class citizens because of alleged Muslim 'appeasement'. Photograph: Pawan Kumar/Reuters

There is a belief among Modi's supporters that Hindus have been reduced to being second-class citizens in India, and hence Modi is the need of the hour.

Many who voted for the BJP and many people in India do think that Hindus have become second class citizens in India. I think that is a misconception. I don't subscribe to that view.

I wouldn't say there has been any great special treatment of Hindus because India's Constitution actually believes that no person or group must be treated differently.

But since the '90s, the BJP has been able to create this impression that there has been injustice or unfair treatment to the majority community.

This is historically not something exceptional as in many countries like in Sri Lanka, this sentiment can be created through a political project and that sentiment can remain politically active for some time.

Currently, India is going through that moment as some Hindus do believe that as the majority they should have received better treatment which they aren't, so the system is unfair. That is the belief.

Is it true that India's secular politics made some Hindus feel they are second class citizens?

All I am saying is that the BJP's communal propaganda convinced some Hindus. The Congress' secular politics never did anything good for the Muslims either.

So in that sense, the Congress' secular politics did not do anything good for the Muslims nor for the Hindus.

Why do you think the Opposition parties are unable to set the narrative against the Modi government?

This is partly because they are all disintegrated.

Secondly when they are in power, they are unable to record reasonably good governance.

Thirdly, they are trapped in the entire language of the 1990s and Modi is trying to go beyond that language.

He talks of development along with Hindutva so there will have to be a new kind of politics which the Opposition parties will have to engage in. Currently, I don't see any political party prepared for that ideologically.

What plank can the Opposition use to take on Modi?

That is not the job of an analyst. It is the job of a creative politician. He has to create a new narrative, which will include the aspirations of the people and also try to assuage the communal sensibilities and communal feelings among the people.

That is something a great leader alone can build. The Opposition parties lack both -- they do not have the leadership or the ideological edge over the BJP and Modi currently.

IMAGE: 'The Congress is demoralised and have lost their entire social base.'

'It hasn't sorted out its leadership issue and they do not know which social sections to address immediately.'

'Removing Rahul Gandhi won't be the solution.' Photograph: Jayanta Dey/Reuters

The Congress seems to have lost the plot. One gets the feeling they do not want to take on the BJP.

I don't think they don't want to take on Modi and his government, but I think they don't know how to go about it.

It is because they are demoralised. Secondly, they have lost their entire social base.

As a result of that, even after three years, they do not have a game plan on how they will take on the BJP.

Politics does not wait for anyone and time is running out for the Congress.

We are already talking of the 2019 elections and the Congress is in bad shape.

It hasn't sorted out its leadership issue and they do not know which social sections to address immediately.

Are the BJP, and its president Amit Shah in particular, always in election mode?

As a party, I think there is nothing wrong if the BJP is always in election mode, given the election cycle in different states.

A party has to be always prepared for elections if it is an all-India party like the BJP.

As far as the prime minister is concerned, I think it is a bit odd that he doesn't behave like the leader of the country and is constantly making partisan statements.

As far as Amit Shah and the BJP are concerned, I think he is doing a good job from their point of view as they are always prepared electorally.

As far as Modi is concerned, I think he is being too partisan and acts more as a party leader rather than the prime minister.

Do you think if Rahul Gandhi steps down, the Congress can revive itself?

I think it is a very simplistic view that simply by setting aside Rahul Gandhi, everything would be good for the Congress.

The problem with the Congress is not Rahul Gandhi, but it is bigger than that.

They do not have an organisational network anywhere in India.

Just by setting aside the leadership of Rahul Gandhi you cannot sort out the problem.

The BJP today rules 60 per cent of India. It is very powerful at the Centre. Do you feel Modi can become a dictator in the future?

As I said in the beginning, it is not a question of dictatorship. In India, even during the times of Indira Gandhi, the Constitutional framework was used.

Even today there will be competition to Modi, criticism of Modi and a challenge to Modi. I think the scenario of Modi being a dictator is far fetched.

Only recently, a scholar used the term 'democratic authoritarianism.' Kanchan Chandra, a political scientist, used this term where the boundaries of democracy and authoritarianism intermesh.

So we might go in that direction where the democratic fabric becomes somewhat weaker and authoritarian tendencies become stronger.

This tussle between democratic and authoritarian practices would continue for the next few years. I wouldn't use the term dictatorship.
Police continued to hunt for Calcutta high court judge Justice C S Karnan, sentenced to six-month jail by the Supreme Court for contempt, for the third day on Friday but without any luck.

The Kolkata police, which has been instructed by the apex court to execute its order, stayed put in Chennai to take him into custody before he could be forwarded to jail for serving the sentence.

The team comprises officials of Kolkata police, including a director general of police rank officer, Chennai police sources said, adding the whereabouts of Justice Karnan were not known.

Justice Karnan had on Thursday moved the Supreme Court seeking recall of its order holding him guilty of contempt of court and sentencing him to a six-month imprisonment.

The seven-judge bench of the apex court had passed the order on May 9, a day after he defiantly ordered eight apex court judges, including the Chief Justice of India, to be put behind bars.

However, before the apex court pronounced the order, he had left Kolkata for Chennai.

Justice Karnan, who has been on a warpath with the Supreme Court for last several months, is the first sitting judge of a high court to be ordered jailed. He is due to retire next month.

Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said a conscious decision was taken by seven of its judges to sentence Justice Karnan to jail.

The seven judges assembled to take a conscious decision, a bench headed by Chief Justice J S Khehar said.

The CJI made the remarks while he was sitting with four other judges hearing the issue of triple talaq.

He made the statement when advocate Mathews J Nedumpara, on behalf of Justice Karnan, mentioned the plea for recall of the May 9 order when the bench had come to the dais after lunch to hear the triple talaq matter.
Kannada actor and former MP Ramya has been selected to lead the partys social media outreach, reports Amit Agnihotri

Film actor and former Lok Sabha member from Mandya in Karnataka, Ramya will lead the Congresss social media charge to counter an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of polls in the southern state.

Going ahead with his plans to revamp the grand old party, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, 46, has decided to appoint Ramya, 34, as head of national social media department.

Ramya, who has acted in several Kannada films before she became a lawmaker in 2013, will replace Lok Sabha member Deepender Hooda, who had been doing the job for the past few years. Deepender, a second-term lawmaker from Rohtak, is the son of former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and has been working closely with Rahul Gandhi.

Though Ramya has not been part of either the national or the state social media team, she was chosen for the job after it was found that she was active on Twitter and often took on the BJP over various issues.

For instance, on April 24 she attacked Home Minister Rajnath Singh after the Sukma Naxal attack in which 25 Central Reserve Police Force jawans were killed. Does the home ministry have a job or not? Intel failure. No one is safe with this govt. Not the army not the civilians nor our Aadhar details, she had tweeted.

She had also taken on PM Modi over his tweets in Kannada saying he talked of protecting diversity but pushed Hindi on the sly.

After the 2014 Lok Sabha poll loss, Congress strategists realised that the party could not attract the crucial first-time voters, who sided with Modi.

Though the partys social media outreach has expanded since then, a review of the recent assembly polls in five states, showed the Congress was not getting the desired impact. In contrast, the BJPs social media campaigns, whether during the 2014 national polls or subsequently, has remained very aggressive.

Rahul wants the Congresss social media response to counter the BJPs aggression through a polite but firm narrative as he readies a new team to take on the BJP in Karnataka, where assembly polls will be held in April 2018, and later for the Lok Sabha elections in 2019. Scaling up the effort with limited resources is going to be a challenge for her, said sources.

In August 2013, Ramya was fielded in the Mandya bypoll following the resignation of N Cheluvarayaswamy who had become an MLA in May when the Congress swept to power.

She defeated Janata Dal-Secular candidate CS Puttaraju who was backed by the BJP. The bypoll had become a prestigious contest for the Congress in the Mandya area considered to the heartland of powerful Vokkaliga community.

Delivering her maiden speech on the last day of the 15th Lok Sabha, the house applauded Ramya, who highlighted the usefulness of the green fuel like ethanol, a byproduct of sugarcane.
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has told the countrys powerful army that his meeting with Indian steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal last month was part of a back-channel diplomacy, a media report said.

BBC Urdu reported that Sarif has taken Pakistan Army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa into confidence on his meeting with Jindal on April 27 at the hill resort of Murree, BBC Urdu reported.

The civilian leadership informed the military authorities that Sharifs hour-long meeting with Jindal was a part of back-channel diplomacy. And Jindal had the backing of some important Indian officials for the meeting to defuse ongoing tension between the two countries, the report said.

India-Pak ties are strained over a series of cross-border terror attacks in India and over the death sentence to Kulbhushan Jadhav. India has denied Pakistans allegations and maintained that Jadhav was kidnapped by Pakistani intelligence agencies.

The report quoting a ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader said Sharif was tight-lipped on his meeting with Jindal.

However, the only detail of the meeting he shared with his aides was that Jindal was making efforts to defuse tension between India and Pakistan.

It said the military leadership also took its officers into confidence on the meeting. Gen Bajwa told his officers that the meeting was a part of a back-channel diplomacy.

The Sharif-Jindal meeting had triggered intense speculation with several politicians and analysts suggesting it could be the precursor to a possible meeting between the two premiers in the near future.

Pakistan prime ministers adviser on foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz told reporters that if India shows interest, Pakistan will look into the possibility of a meeting between Sharif and Modi on the sidelines of the SCO summit on June 8-9 at Astana in Kazakhstan.

Imran Khans Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf had moved a resolution in the Punjab Assembly expressing concern over the secret meeting. It had also alleged that Jindal conveyed Modis message to Sharif on the death penalty to Indian national Kulbhushan Jadhav on spying charges.

Jindal is said to be the man who had arranged a meeting between Modi and Sharif in Lahore on December 25 in 2015 on Sharifs birthday and the day when Sharifs granddaughter Mehr-un-Nisa was married.
Marvin Gaye sang There aint no mountain high enough and James Sissom, 35, and Ashley Schmieder, 32, from California took the song quite literally when they decided to trek through the snow for three weeks to tie the knot on Mount Everest.

The adventurous couples photographer Charleton Churchill documented the entire journey -- braving freezing temperatures, tough terrain and altitude sickness to capture them exchanging vows at one of the base camps at 17,600 sq feet above sea level. (See his other works here)

And the photographs below give us #relationshipgoals!

All photographs courtesy Charleton Churchill

James and Ashley flying from Kathmandu to the base of the mountain to prepare for the wedding adventure.

Ashley, the bride, explaining her choice for the wedding said, After much deliberation, we decided a traditional wedding was not the right fit for us. As much as we would have loved to share our special day with our family and friends, we were both drawn to the idea of eloping during an incredible vacation.

We both are avid lovers of the outdoors and had experience at altitude up to 14,000 feet, but we knew the three week Everest Base Camp trek would be far more physically and mentally demanding than anything weve experienced.

The couple and the photographer trained for the year before they set out on their journey just to acclimatise themselves with the harsh conditions. Frigid temperatures, altitude sickness and the tough terrain is what they had to battle.

The happy couple on their way during the arduous trek. The photographer in his blog wrote, Ashley is a tough girl who crushed it on the mountain trail and maintained a great pace. James is a great man who took care of Ashley, always looking after her needs. Plus hes a comedian who made us laugh often. It can be difficult after a few days on a long mountain trek with all the pressure and lack of resources to maintain a smile, but we did well.

Theres no gain without pain. Heres an accurate image of how the couple felt after hiking for 4-8 hours.

Theres the groom! Despite the wedding being adventurous, a dash of traditionalism was infused with the groom wearing a tuxedo and the bride wearing a beautiful white gown.

Here comes the bride. Doesnt she look radiant? The sherpas helped Ashley get into her gown.

The couple chose to wear their beanie and glasses for the wedding. Quaint, we think, but we like it.

The look of love. James is all smiles as he catches sight of his to-be wife.

A moment to enjoy the view of Mount Everest together and where they have been.

Radiant in her wedding gown, Ashley takes a moment to look out across the beautiful landscape.

The bride in white against the backdrop of the white snow-capped mountains leaves us speechless. We are surely getting green with envy!

The couple hold each other in a loving embrace as they celebrate their marriage in the clouds .

Could there be anything prettier than this? The wedding was simple, no minister, no pomp. Just two people crazy in love with each other, their vows and a photographer. Feeling inspired anyone?

Ashley and James stand in their wedding finery, surrounded by the rugged majesty of the mountains.

A couple that climbs together, stays together!

Ashley signing the rock which is customary after arriving at the Mt Everest base camp, but with their wedding date and wedding.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday cautioned the international community against the growing arc of violence and said the biggest challenge to sustainable world peace is from mindsets rooted in hate and violence, and not necessarily from conflict between the nation states.

IMAGE: Modi visits the Seema Malaka Temple, in Colombo. Photograph: PTI Photo

Speaking as the chief guest at the International Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo, Modi said the ideologies of hate and their proponents in the region are closed to notion of dialogue and hence only open to causing death and destruction.

The menace of terrorism in our region is a concrete manifestation of this destructive emotion, he said, apparently referring to Pakistan, which is accused of aiding and training terrorists who carry out attacks inside India.

The biggest challenge to sustainable world peace today is not necessarily from conflict between the nation states, he said, adding it was from the mindsets, thought streams, entities and instruments rooted in the idea of hate and violence.

IMAGE: Modi said Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago. Photograph: @PMOIndia/Twitter

Modi said he believes that Buddhisms message of peace is the answer to growing arc of violence all over the world.

Lord Buddhas message is as relevant in the 21st century as it was two and a half millennia ago, Modi told the audience which included Sri Lankan President Maithripala Srisena, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, diplomats, politicians and several Buddhist leaders from across the world.

Our region is blessed to have given to the world the invaluable gift of Buddha and his teachings, he said, adding that Buddhism and its various strands are deep seated in our governance, culture and philosophy.

The themes of social justice and sustainable world peace, chosen for the Vesak day, resonate deeply with Buddhas teachings; they are both deeply interdependent and interconnected, Modi said.

He said the countries of south, central, south east and east Asia are proud of their Buddhist links traced to the land of Buddha.

IMAGE: Modi arrives to attend the inaugural session of the 14th International Vesak Day celebrations. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

Prime Minister Modi assured Indias support to Sri Lanka for the islands nation-building endeavours.

Modi said that he believes that both India and Sri Lanka are at a moment of great opportunity in its relationship.

You will find in India a friend and partner that will support your nation-building endeavours, he said and called on the two countries to uphold ideals of Lord Buddha and promote values of peace, inclusiveness and compassion in policies and conduct.

Modi, on his second visit to Sri Lanka in two years, was earlier received by his Sri Lankan counterpart Wickremesinghe at the venue amid traditional fanfare.

The prime minister lit a lamp -- a traditional practice -- initiating the UN Vesak Day celebrations, which commemorates the birth, enlightenment, and death of Buddha.

IMAGE: Modi along with the President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena and the Prime Minister of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Ranil Wickremesinghe attends the inaugural session of the 14th International Vesak Day celebrations. Photograph: Press Information Bureau

Several Buddhist monks chanted prayers during which Modi closed his eyes and kept his hands folded.

Speaking at the event, Wickremesinghe thanked Modi for being the chief guest at the event.

Proud to host Vesak Day celebrations in Colombo. I want to thank Prime Minister Modi for being the chief guest during the celebrations, Wickremesinghe said.

Teachings of Buddhism are relevant in todays world. Buddhism shows a moderate path and need to consolidate social justice, he said.

Modi arrived in Colombo on Thursday on a two-day visit which is mainly aimed at reinforcing the traditional connect between India and Sri Lanka at a time when China is seeking to make inroads in the island nation.
IMAGE: An army officer pays tribute to Lt Ummer Fayaz during his funeral. Photograph: Umar Ganie/Rediff.com

Police on Friday put up posters of three Hizbul Mujahideen terrorists wanted for the killing of Kashmiri army officer Lt Ummer Fayaz in Shopian district even as the outfit sought to distance itself from the crime.

In the posters carrying photographs of gun-wielding local terrorists Ishfaq Ahmad Thoker, Gayas-ul-Islam and Abass Ahmad Bhat, the police offered reward for those giving information about them.

The posters read: The above criminals who are involved in many terrorist acts including the murder of Umar Fayaz Parray s/o Fayaz Ahmad Parray R/o Sarsona Kulgam....

Any person providing information regarding the above criminals will be suitably rewarded and his identity will be kept secret, it read.

Inspector General of Police (Kashmir Range) S J M Gillani had on Thursday said that a Hizbul Mujahideen module was behind the killing and an INSAS rifle snatched from police personnel recently could have been used in the crime.

Defence authorities in Delhi had on Thursday identified six terrorists belonging to Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, saying they were involved in the abduction and killing of the 22-year-old Army officer in Shopian district of Kashmir.

Lt Fayaz, on leave and unarmed, was abducted on Tuesday by three armed men from the house of a relative in Shopian where he was attending a wedding. His bullet-riddled body was found the next morning.

With the killing triggering an outrage in the Valley, Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin, a Kashmiri operating from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, issued a statement alleging that the Indian agencies were responsible for the killing.

On Thursday, the IGP had said, We have conducted preliminary investigation... it does point to (the involvement of) a module of Hizbul Mujahideen active in Shopian.

Police has found two empty cartridges of an INSAS rifle at the place where Lt Fayaz was shot dead.

We had two incidents of weapons snatching in south Kashmir recently. We have leads that the Kulgam weapon snatching was carried out by Lashkar militants while Hizb militants were involved in weapon snatching at Shopian court complex (on May 2). So it could be one of those weapons. We are looking at it, Gillani had said.
The accusation comes at a time when Chief Minister E K Palaniswami's government is is battling charges against its health minister.

A woman officer in the Tamil Nadu government has filed a complaint with the police against state Social Welfare Minister V Saroja, alleging that she demanded a bribe to facilitate the officer's transfer.

Dharmapuri district Child Welfare Officer J Raja Meenakshi filed a complaint with the Chennai police alleging that the minister had demanded Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2 million) to transfer her to Chennai.

The complainant said she was appointed during the late chief minister J Jayalalithaa's tenure.

Subsequently, the minister, she claimed, made a demand of Rs 10 lakh (Rs 1 million) to allow her to 'continue in her job.'

She alleged she was intimidated and so had to pay the said amount to the minister.

Minister Saroja, left, reportedly told her that others were ready to pay the amount for the same job.

After that, when Raja Meenakshi applied for a transfer to Chennai, the minister, she said, called her to her house and told her she could be transferred on payment of Rs 20 lakh, failing which she would be sacked.

The district revenue officer had ordered an inquiry against Raja Meenakshi on April 21, 2017, for allegedly submitting inflated bills for food and stationery provided to children during programmes organised by her.

After the inquiry was ordered, the officer went on medical leave, after which she sought a transfer to Chennai.

Speaking to this correspondent on the telephone, Raja Meenakshi said, "She has already taken Rs 10 lakh from me. I did not expect another demand just for my transfer and therefore I complained to the police."

She did not comment on the pending inquiry against her, and restricted her replies to the minister's alleged demand.

Meenakshi claimed she had audio and video evidence against the minister, which she would submit to the police.

PTI reports that she claimed she has forwarded her complaint to Chief Minister E K Palaniswami's office, Director General of Police T K Rajendran, Leader of Opposition and DMK Working President M K Stalin.

Meenakshi's allegation has been denied by the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Amma.

However, it can only add to the woes of Chief Minister Palaniswami whose government is already facing an income tax probe against Health Minister C Vijayabaskar and the prosecution of its leader T T V Dinakaran for attempting to bribe the Election Commission.

While Minister Saroja is yet to react to the allegation against her, her supporters told PTI that the allegation by Meenakshi against her was 'false, and made with an ulterior motive.'

Top government officials have remained tight-lipped over the issue, but ruling party sources said the minister was expected to make a statement soon after 'concluding discussions' with senior leaders, according to PTI.
Director of US National Intelligence said that Islamabads failure to curb terrorists and the rise in number of cross-firing incidents was the cause for increasing tensions.

Islamabad has failed to curb militants and terrorists in Pakistan.

It wasnt a statement made by an India, but Daniel Coats, Director of National Intelligence who told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a congressional hearing on worldwide threats.

Coats added that the Pakistan-based terrorist groups will present a sustained threat to Americas interest in the region and continue to plan and conduct attacks in India and Afghanistan.

Pakistan is concerned about international isolation and sees its position of Indias rising international status including Indias expanded foreign outreach and deepening ties to the United States.

Pakistan will likely turn to China to offset its isolation, empowering a relationship that will help Beijing to project influence into the Indian Ocean, Coats testified before the committee.

Coats told members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that relations between India and Pakistan remain tense following two major terrorist attacks in 2016 by terrorists crossing into India from Pakistan and might deteriorate further in 2017, especially in the event of another high-profile terrorist attack in India that New Delhi attributes to originating in or receiving assistance from Pakistan.

Easing of heightened Indo-Pakistani tension, including negotiations to renew official dialogue, will probably hinge in 2017 on a sharp and sustained reduction of cross-border attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan and progress in the Pathankot investigation, he further stated.

In South Asia, the intelligence community assesses that the political and security situation in Afghanistan will almost certainly deteriorate through 2018 even with a modest increase in military assistance by the United States and its partners, he told the lawmakers.

This deterioration is undermined by its dire economic situation. Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban, he said.

Meanwhile, we assess that Taliban is likely to continue to make gains especially in rural areas. Afghan Security Forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertion, poor logistic support and weak leadership, Coats said.

-- With inputs from Agencies
KINGSTON, Ontario, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TECTA-PDS, a drinking water technology company, is pleased to announce its new status as an entirely Canadian-owned company, as well as the opening of its new business headquarters in downtown Kingston.



TECTA-PDS makes the worlds first automated, EPA-approved microbiological water quality water system, making it easier, faster and less expensive to do on-site water testing for E. coli bacteria. Formerly known as Pathogen Detection Systems, the company was purchased by the European multinational Veolia Environment in 2009 and renamed Endetec. That purchase enabled the company to fully commercialize its water testing products, making them more widely available around the world.

The company recently regained its independence as an entirely Canadian-owned company, adopting the name TECTA-PDS. The companys head office, engineering facility and manufacturing facility are now located in Kingston, Ontario. The companys entire supply chain is now exclusively based in Canada and the United States.

It means a great deal to us to be once again an entirely Canadian-owned company, and to be based in downtown Kingston, a great city for work and play, says CEO Doug Wilton, a Queens University graduate who has raised a family in the city. We are proud to be part of the economic fabric of this community and of this country.

TECTA-PDS unique fibre optic sensory technology was first developed at Queens University to address concerns arising from the Walkerton water tragedy of May 2000, when seven people died and many thousands became ill because of an E. coli outbreak in the communitys water supply.

Were proud of the fact that our technology is now being used in more than 25 countries and that were expanding rapidly internationally, says Tim Adams, EVP with TECTA-PDS. Our units have now become the go-to method for testing for E. coli in every region around the world.

It is significant for us to see a home grown company  one that developed its expertise under the umbrella of a European multinational  be repatriated to Ontario. TECTA-PDS is a true Ontario success story, says Sophie Kiwala, MPP for Kingston and the Islands. By creating the Water Technology Acceleration Project, and by investing in initiatives such as Showcasing Water Innovation, our government is supporting the scale-up of innovative businesses like TECTA-PDS in Ontarios water technology sector.

I want to congratulate TECTA-PDS on their new status as a wholly Canadian-owned company, says Mark Gerretsen, MP for Kingston and the Islands. Its exciting to see an innovative start-up make its mark internationally and then return to its roots in Kingston, bringing back jobs in the process. I look forward to seeing TECTA-PDS continue to thrive.
Sri Lanka has rejected Chinas request for its submarine to dock at Colombo next week after a similar visit in 2014 triggered strong protest from India, a senior defence official said, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his two-day visit to the country.

They asked for permission for May 14 and 15 to dock in the submarine. We refused, a top defence official said on the condition of anonymity.

The move came as Prime Minister Modi arrived on Thursday to be the chief guest at Friday's International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists.

The docking of two Chinese submarines at the Colombo harbour in 2014 had angered India, which said it undermined its security interests.

The government sources said that such requests would be turned down in the future too.

The Chinese embassy has so far not responded to the development.

India has raised concerns with Sri Lanka over the growing Chinese influence in the island nation.

During the former regime of Mahinda Rajapaksa, China funded Rajapaksas massive infrastructure development projects with commercial loans for the construction of highways, air and sea ports.

His successor Maithripala Sirisenas plan to handover equity to China as part of the loan settlement have met with resistance.

Sri Lanka is currently finalising a plan to lease 80 per cent of its Hambantotata port to China for 99 years. However, the plan has been delayed due to opposition from trade unions.

Image: Prime Minister Narendra Modi gestures as he arrives for the United Nations Vesak Day celebrations in Katunayake, Sri Lanka. Photograph: Dinuka Liyanawatte/Reuters
CRPF troopers confront loneliness, poor network connectivity, poor work conditions, dismal work-life balance, and immense psychological stress.

Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore and Uttam Ghosh report on the challenges CRPF jawans face while battling the Maoists.

Photographs: Uttam Ghosh. Video: Prasanna D Zore

Part 1 in the series: Why did 25 CRPF jawans die in Sukma?

IMAGE: A CRPF party moves into the jungles between Dornapal and Jagargonda on an area domination exercise.

25 jawans of the CRPF's 74th battalion were killed by Maoists in an ambush near Burkapal village on April 24.

Imagine this:

You are a CRPF jawan deployed for patrolling in a densely Maoist-affected area. As part of your duty, your job is to go into the forests and dominate the area.

While doing so, you stand for hours with nobody to talk to; staring at trees that you feel could have Maoists atop, around, behind them.

After a few hours, you realise there is nobody out there, just you and your fellow jawans further away from you.

What do you do at such times?

Talk to the trees around you?

Talk to your colleagues?

Or talk to yourself?

Of course, the best way not to draw attention of your adversary (real or perceived) is to stand silently.

Then your thoughts begin rolling... you begin thinking aloud...

'Will I get leave to go home and meet my family? It's months since I saw my loved ones.'

'Why was my leave cancelled?'

'Why can't I get leave when I most need it?'

'Forget leave, why can't I even get to talk to my family on the phone?'

'Why is the network here so poor that I have to wander aimlessly in search of those three vertical lines on my phone?'

'Is there a Maoist hiding there atop that tree? Is he waiting to hit me with an arrow or a bullet?'

'How will my family react if I die now? How will they cope with life?'

All your thoughts are broken by the voice of your party leader. He orders the team to get ready to leave for their camp. There is slight relief. But only that.

Once inside the camp, which again is in the middle of a forest, you are faced with problems of sanitation, potable water, mosquitoes waiting to sting you with malaria-causing viruses and, of course, the chain of thoughts you had burdened yourself with while on patrol duty.

Imagine your mental condition if you were a part of an area domination exercise or road opening party that had met with an ambush -- like the jawans of the 74th battalion who lost 25 men at Burkapal on April 24 in a Maoist ambush -- but are still alive unlike others who are not.

***

IMAGE: A CRPF jawan speaks with his family on the phone; mobile network connectivity in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district is erratic and it becomes an ordeal for these jawans to get in touch with their loved ones.

"Pata nahi peechle janam main kaunse paap kiye the ki is janam main hame bhari dopahar main patrolling ke liye jana pad raha hai? (What sins must I have committed in my past birth that in this birth I have to go for patrolling an area that has a dense presence of Maoists in the hot afternoon?)," a tired jawan says loudly.

He wants to strike a conversation; he knows we are from the media; the pen, the notebook, the camera are all there on display; there was no way he could have mistaken us for somebody else.

The jawan was part of a team that had just completed one round of patrolling and after a brief while, was slated to head out again.

He isn't completely demoralised after the death of his fellow jawans in the Burkapal ambush, but wants to convey he is not happy about what he is doing.

"Yes, Burkapal was a setback for us, but our men fought bravely. They are not demoralised at all and will not shun away from their responsibilities," says a CRPF officer at one of the many camps along the Dornapal-Jagargonda stretch. All CRPF personnel spoke to Rediff.com on the assurance that they would not be identified by name for this report.

"They are battle ready and have been trained to do their jobs," he asserts when asked about the reaction of the jawan who is headed for patrol duty.

The officer admits that the CRPF needs more man management techniques, counselling sessions that will help the jawans steady their nerves after such bloodshed.

"We need man management techniques to avoid violation of standard operating procedures (SOPs). After every ambush these jawans should undertake counselling sessions," says Dr Varnika Sharma, a military psychologist and researcher who has stayed with CRPF battalions and conducted surveys to help improve the jawans' well-being.

"Just imagine the psyche of the jawans who came back from the Burkapal massacre," adds Dr Sharma. "They feel completely demoralised. If at such times they undergo cognitive behaviour counselling, then it can go a long way in helping them overcome the horrors they face."

Lack of proper leave rotation, a hostile geographical and social environment, lack of proper communication infrastructure like mobile network connectivity, sensitisation about their area of operation, Dr Sharma feels, will go a long way in preparing CRPF jawans mentally for nerve-sapping roles in the conflict zone that Chhattisgarh's Bastar division has become.

For the CRPF jawans coming from different parts of India there is no difference between Rajnandgaon ('least' Maoist impact) or Sukma ('densely' Maoist affected). It's only when they spend some time here that they understand the ground situation.

Dr Sharma has categorised Bastar into 'densely-', 'medium-' and 'least-' affected regions.

In a survey she conducted among CRPF jawans, 37 per cent respondents had no clue about the goings-on in their area of operation.

***

IMAGE: When Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore and Uttam Ghosh visited Gangaloor camp in Bijapur district on May 6, they discovered jawans of the CoBRA (Combat Battalion for Resistive Action, a specially trained force of the CRPF) battalion hooked onto their mobile phones along the gates of the Gangaloor police station.

The jawans said it was the only location around the entire CRPF camp that had some network connectivity.

It is not that the CRPF jawans face a tough time only during operations or patrolling. Once inside their camps, other factors come into play that sap their morale.

Most of it relates to their families, their being alien to the area of operation, poor living conditions (like 3 toilets for 300 jawans).

"The work-life balance of the jawans who get posted in Naxal-affected regions is very dismal," says Dr Alka Vashisht (name changed on request), a psychologist who studies the Maoist-government conflict.

"One entire battalion (name of the battalion withheld on request) was sick with malaria. There is hardly any mobile connectivity where the CRPF camps are located. Given their work conditions, they remain mostly frustrated," Dr Vashisht says.

"To overcome their loneliness they often go out in big groups and that is the main reason why the casualties rise," Dr Vashisht explains.

Dr Sharma offers a glimpse into how the CRPF jawans think and why they prefer moving out in groups and why they are always keen on an area domination exercise or be part of a road opening party.

"Their situation is such that they stand for hours and there is nobody to talk to them. When they get a chance to be part of a road opening party, they do not hesitate. I was not able to keep myself occupied and happy for even three hours (in a CRPF camp) and these jawans have to spend almost three months at a stretch in such conditions."

Dr Sharma talks about a CRPF jawan who reached his village three days after his father's death because he could not get out of his area of operation.

"He took almost three days to get out of his area of operation by when his father had been cremated. And when he comes back he is directly sent into the field," she says.

"In these circumstances, can anybody be fully prepared to handle the operation assigned to him? Somewhere, such people will loathe the lives they lead."

Dr Sharma had suggested that such jawans should not be directly sent on operation when they resume work or after visiting their homes.

Pointing out an increasing trend of CRPF jawans turning suicidal or fighting among themselves, she says, "This happens because of mental fatigue."

To help jawans get out of this mental fatigue, Dr Sharma had recommended man-management techniques in which the jawans should do yoga when they are idle or even on the move and requested that books should be made available for them to read in their leisure time.

"There is nobody to talk to them," Dr Sharma says. "At such times they think about their families and the tensions at home. That's when they get demoralised and lose themselves to depression."

"When they come back to their stations after patrolling they become very irritable," she explains. "We have to take care of their psychological well-being; after all, they are there for our security."

***

The most dreaded bridge over a nallah en route to Gangaloor: A favoured ambush spot for the Maoists.

IEDs -- improvised explosive devices -- are discovered here regularly.

The Maoists choose this spot to attack CRPF jawans as the road ahead takes a sharp turn, making the extremists invisible to troops approaching this bridge.

A CRPF officer confesses that the villagers don't trust them at all.

"We run a lot of welfare measures for them under the civic action programme (every CRPF camp is assigned 10 villages for this purpose, says Dr Vashisht), but the cillagers only help the Maoists," he says.

Steel and aluminum utensils distributed by the CRPF, he reveals, found their way to the Maoists, who used it to make utensil bombs.

"The villagers consider these jawans alien," says Dr Sharma.

The villagers and human rights activists, she alleges, spread propaganada about the jawans raping Adivasi women when the CRPF launch operations against the Maoists.

"It's not just human rights activists who make these allegations, the entire village alleges rape. Cases of rape under Section 376 is like white propaganda. Well-educated, well-heeled human rights activist go to these areas and spread white propaganda," Dr Sharma alleges.

Two or three per cent of such allegations, Dr Sharma admits, could be true.

As a result of all these tensions the jawans do not enjoy their stay when they go home.

"They don't behave well with their families when they visit them after a few months or years' stint in such conflict zones," Dr Sharma adds.

***

And then there is Maoism, the main reason, why Bastar teems with CRPF camps.

It is not just hostile locals, but the region's geography and the Maoists' guerilla tactics that make this conflict zone such a horror for the CRPF.

While there are CRPF camps every 5 ot 7 kilometres in Bastar, what lies between these camps are villages and thick jungles.

"Do you realise that right now you are sitting in a Naxal 'liberated zone'?" a CRPF officer asks. Pointing towards a tree-lined pond, he adds, "You are right now within the target range of Naxals who could be hiding behind that tree!"

"You won't even know you are hit by an explosive-laced arrow or a bullet that could come flying from anywhere," he says.

"I am not kidding," he adds. "This has happened to us many times before."

"Welcome to Sukma," he says ominously.

IMAGE: This arrow seriously injured a policeman attached to the Gangaloor police station. Abdul Sameer, the policeman in charge, says the policeman who was struck would not have survived the attack had the arrow struck him a little lower his upper chest.

In Gangaloor, a Maoist-affected village in Bijapur district, we meet Abdul Sameer, who is in charge of the local police station. In his mid-30s, Abdul is tall and well-built.

Inside the heavily-fenced police station, he shows us the crude, yet innovative, weaponry used by the Maoists to attack the police and the CRPF.

While bows and arrows and IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) are regularly used by the Maoist militia not trained to handle guns, Abdul shows us a three-nailed spike raised on a wooden base that has caused grievous injuries to security personnel.

"It's a simple trick," the policeman says. "They dig small pits in the ground and keep this spike in it. They cover this pit with dry leaves and small twigs; on the top they cover it with green leaves so that it is camouflaged."

"No sooner do you step on such a trap you hardly get any time to react," Abdul says. "Before you realise, one or all the nails have penetrated your legs inside out."

IMAGE: A lethal contraption devised by the Maoists: A three-nailed spike

Abdul shows us the scar left behind by such a spike on his left leg. "I was wearing heavy shoes, yet it penetrated my foot," he adds.

VIDEO: Accompanying a CRPF party into the jungle on an area domination exercise was an ordeal.

A 10 minute walk into the woods under the scorching sun left us panting for breath.

The jawans, always on their toes, kept looking for hidden adversaries every few feet.

On May 5, a day before we met Abdul Sameer, and after our conversation with the officer who welcomed us to Sukma, we accompanied a patrol party of CRPF jawans into the jungle.

The assistant commandant, who led the troop, had covered his face with a black cloth. Heavily armed with rifles, guns, grenade launchers, bulletproof vests and thick, heavy, shoes, the patrol party took us inside the forest.

"You must join them," a commandant encouraged us earlier inside his camp. "Experience what our jawans experience every single day, here in the jungle, surrounded by Maoists."

100 to 150 metres into the jungle, we realise the crushing of dry leaves under our feet is noisy, but the CRPF jawans move with stealth, halting every few steps to check the surrounding trees and the earth beneath their feet with taut faces.
French English

GENFIT: CONVENING NOTICE TO THE ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY SHAREHOLDERS MEETING ON JUNE 16, 2017

Lille (France), Cambridge (Massachusetts, United States), May 12, 2017 - GENFIT (Euronext: GNFT - ISIN: FR0004163111), a biopharmaceutical company at the forefront of developing therapeutic and diagnostic solutions in metabolic and inflammatory diseases, that notably affect the liver or the gastrointestinal system, today announced that it has published today in today's French legal announcements bulletin (Bulletin des Annonces Legales Obligatoires) its convening notice to the Ordinary and Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting to be held on Friday, June 16, 2017 at 10:30 am at the University of Lille College of Pharmaceutical and Biological Science located at Parc Eurasante, 3, rue du Professeur Laguesse in Lille (59000), France.

As indicated in its press release on April 24, the shareholders will be invited to vote on the change in the type of administration of the Company, moving from a two-tiered board (Supervisory Board and Executive Board) to a single board structure (Board of Directors). The Company considers that this change will allow it to be closer to international standards and to welcome the expert board members whom it wishes to recruit to accompany its development in the years to come.

The Ordinary and Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting will also be the occasion to implement the provisions of the "Cope-Zimmermann" law (relating to the balanced representation of men and women on corporate boards), and the shareholders will vote on the proposed nomination of Ms. Catherine Larue and Ms. Anne-Helene Monsellato as directors of the Company. Additional biographical information, including the experience and expertise of these candidates in included below.

As also indicated in the April 24, 2017 press release, and subject to the approval of the shareholders of the change in the type of administration of the Company and the composition of the new Board of Directors, the current Chairman of the Executive Board is proposed to be appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer of the Company.

In addition to the usual items on the agenda related to the review of the financial statements and the different reports of the Executive and Supervisory Boards and the Statutory Auditors for the 2016 fiscal year, the Executive Board is proposing a certain number of alternative draft resolutions that differ depending on the decision of the shareholders with respect to the change in type of administration of the Company. Depending on this decision, only those draft resolutions relating to the specific type of administration chosen will be submitted to a vote of the shareholders.

The resolutions submitted to the shareholders are grouped together in the following manner:

Resolutions coming under the authority of the Annual Shareholders' Meeting, which must be submitted to a vote before the choice of type of administration (Resolutions nos 1-7),

Resolution coming under the authority of the Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting regarding the type of administration and adoption of the corresponding articles of association (Resolution no 8),

Resolutions coming under the authority of the Extraordinary (financial authorizations) and Ordinary (share buybacks, appointment of directors, compensation) Shareholders' Meeting applicable to a company with a board of directors, that will only be submitted to a vote if Resolution no 8 is approved (Resolutions nos 9-35), and

Resolutions coming under the authority of the Extraordinary (change to the articles of association to allow for electronic voting, financial authorizations) and Ordinary (share buyback, appointment of directors, compensation) Shareholders' Meeting, applicable to a company with a supervisory board and executive board, and which will only be submitted to a vote if Resolution no 8 is not adopted (Resolutions 36-60).

Additional information is available in the convening notice dated May 12, 2017, which is available on the Company's website. All of the documentation concerning the Ordinary and Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting (including the Say on Pay report pursuant to the Sapin II Law) will be made available to shareholders in accordance with current regulations and also available on the Company's website by May 19, 2017.

About Dr. Catherine Larue

Dr. Catherine Larue has been CEO ad interim of Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH), a biomedical research institute, since January 2016.

From 2012 to end 2015, she was CEO of the Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg (IBBL), where she led the development of the biobanking strategy and new initiatives in the field of personalized medicine. Prior to joining the IBBL, Dr. Larue piloted the biomarker program at Genfit until 2012.

Dr. Catherine Larue began her career as team leader at Sanofi at the Montpellier, France based R&D center in the cardiovascular research department. She later joined Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur Inc., in Minnesota, United States, where she ran the immunology department for three years, developing tests and instruments. She thereafter returned to Paris, France as Director at Sanofi Diagnostics Pasteur, and then spent 11 years at the Bio-Rad group, holding different management positions. She participated in the discovery of several innovative biomarkers and the commercialization of dozens of diagnostic products.

Dr. Catherine Larue is the author of 85 articles and has filed 13 patents. She holds a doctorate in experimental biology and an accreditation to direct research (Habilitation a Diriger la Recherche or HDR) from the University of Rouen, a degree in clinical oncology from the University of Paris VI and an executive MBA from St John's University (New York). In 2014, she was voted Luxembourg's most inspiring woman of the year in the "Science, Technology and Research" category.

About Anne-Helene Monsellato

Anne-Helene Monsellato is a Certified Public Accountant in France since 2008 and graduated from EM Lyon in 1990 with a degree in Business Management.

Since May 2015, she has been an independent director, the Chairman of the Audit and Risk Committee and a member of the Corporate Governance and Nomination Committee of Euronav, a Belgian crude oil tanker company listed on NYSE and Euronext Brussels. In addition, she serves as the Vice President and Treasurer of the Mona Bismarck American Center for Art and Culture, a U.S. public foundation based in New York.

From 2005 until 2013, Mrs. Monsellato served as a Partner with Ernst & Young (now EY), Paris, after having served as Auditor/Senior, Manager and Senior Manager for the firm starting in 1990. During her time at EY, she gained extensive experience in cross border listing transactions, in particular with the U.S., internal control and risk management, and was involved with several companies in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sector.

Mrs. Monsellato is an active member of the French Association of Directors (IFA) and of the selection committee of Femmes Business Angels since 2013.

About GENFIT

GENFIT is a biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery and development of drug candidates in areas of high unmet medical needs corresponding to a lack of suitable treatment and an increasing number of patients worldwide. GENFIT's R&D efforts are focused on bringing new medicines to market for patients with metabolic, inflammatory, autoimmune and fibrotic diseases, that affect the liver (such as NASH - Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis) and more generally the gastro-intestinal arena. GENFIT's approach combines novel treatments and biomarkers. Its lead proprietary compound, elafibranor, is currently in a Phase 3 study. With facilities in Lille and Paris, France, and Cambridge, MA (USA), the Company has approximately 130 employees. GENFIT is a public company listed in compartment B of Euronext's regulated market in Paris (Euronext: GNFT - ISIN: FR0004163111). www.genfit.com

Forward Looking Statement / Disclaimer

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes its expectations are based on reasonable assumptions, these forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including related to biomarkers, progression of, and results of clinical data from, the RESOLVE-IT trial, review and approvals by regulatory authorities, such as the FDA or the EMA, regarding in particular, elafibranor in NASH and PBC, as well as other indications, and biomarkers, the success of any inlicensing strategies, the Company's continued ability to raise capital to fund its development, as well as those discussed or identified in the Company's public filings with the AMF, including those listed under Section 4 "Main Risks and Uncertainties" of the Company's 2016 Registration Document registered with the French Autorite des marches financiers on April 28, 2017 under n R.17-034, which is available on GENFIT's website (www.genfit.com) and on the website of the AMF (www.amf-france.org). Other than as required by applicable law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements.

This press release and the information contained herein do not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy or subscribe to shares in GENFIT in any country. This press release has been prepared in both French and English. In the event of any differences between the two texts, the French language version shall supersede.

CONTACT

GENFIT | Jean-Francois Mouney - Chairman & CEO | +333 2016 4000

MILESTONES - Press Relations | Bruno Arabian | +331 8362 3484 / +336 8788 4726 - barabian@milestones.fr
Aleppo slowly progresses along road to recovery

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author Dima Al-Naeb Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Aleppo slowly progresses along road to recovery, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591560134.html [accessed 9 November 2022]

Six months on from the east Aleppo evacuations - when civilians first saw a glimmer of hope after many months of miserable existence and enormous suffering - life for some is slowly restarting. But the road to recovery will be a long one. There is catastrophic damage to infrastructure, destroyed homes and shops and questions over how those returning to their former lives can earn a living.

Amin Awad is the Middle East and North Africa Director of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, as well as the Regional Refugee Coordinator for the Syria crisis. He visited Homs and Aleppo earlier this month to see at first-hand not only the scale of the challenges ahead, but how people are coping and struggling to resume normal life.

"Some people are restarting life against all odds and amidst immense challenges. A demonstration of their admirable resilience," said Amin Awad. "I know this city well and have visited it several times before the crisis, I feel so sad at the scale of devastation," he added.

Filippo Grandi - UN High Commissioner for Refugees - visited Aleppo in January and expressed shock at the immensity of the destruction he witnessed. Awad's follow-up visit comes at a time of continued uncertainty over Syria's future and amid growing humanitarian needs - with over 6.7 million Syrians internally displaced from their homes, five million refugees abroad, and nearly 13.5 million, who never managed to leave their homes, in need of humanitarian assistance.

While visiting both Homs and Aleppo, Awad met Syrians who - despite all the odds and the risks to their lives - had refused to leave their homes even during the most difficult of times. Um Kinan, an 83-year-old Aleppo resident told Awad: "I will never leave my home. Life is good now, I can't complain, but I need better health care." In Aleppo's Sulieman Al Halabi neighborhood, two ladies who had just returned to their home told Awad, "we are fixing our house with our bare hands, but the feeling of being home is great."

Signs of recovery across Aleppo are growing - debris is being removed, streets are being cleared and people continue to return to their ruined homes and shops. In Aleppo's Seif Al Dawala district, Awad visited two schools UNHCR is quickly rehabilitating - to get them ready for the start of the school year in September. The challenges ahead however, cannot be underestimated. "Thousands returned to emptied and gutted towns, facing immense challenges while millions remain displaced," said Awad.

In Jibreen, the industrial zone where tens of thousands of displaced Syrians now live, rehabilitation work continues to help improve housing conditions. Recently-installed solar-powered street lights are also transforming the city. "We do not feel safe at night, we can go out after sunset", said an Aleppo resident. In east Aleppo - similar UNHCR-backed programmes have brought street lights to dozens of streets - a glimmer of hope for many who endured months of living in darkness.

The potential return of over 12 million refugees and IDPs also poses an immense challenge - with any returns being subject to political and security developments and to protection thresholds being met. So far, overall conditions cannot at all be described as conducive to return - and needs are overwhelming. "Human beings cannot live on bread alone," Awad stressed.

Additional reporting and editing by Firas Al-Khateeb in Damascus
HOUSTON, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Willbros Group, Inc. (NYSE:WG) today announced that the Company will be attending the Houlihan Lokey 2017 Global Industrial Conference to be held in New York City on May 18, 2017.



Michael Fournier, President and Chief Executive Officer, is scheduled to present on Thursday, May 18 at 2:20 p.m. Eastern Time (1:20 p.m. Central Time). A live broadcast of the presentation will be available in the Investor Relations section of the Companys website at www.willbros.com.

Willbros is a specialty energy infrastructure contractor serving the oil and gas and power industries with offerings that primarily include construction, maintenance and facilities development services. For more information on Willbros, please visit our web site at www.willbros.com.
Mexico: Killing of activist in Tamaulipas highlights government negligence

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Mexico: Killing of activist in Tamaulipas highlights government negligence, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591561344.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 killing of an activist leading the search for her daughter and thousands of others in Tamaulipas, Mexico, reveals the danger which those searching for the more than 30,000 disappeared persons in the country face every day, said Amnesty International.

Miriam Elizabeth Rodriguez Martinez was killed on the night of 10 May in the state of Tamaulipas in northern Mexico. Miriam was known for her work with groups searching for the disappeared, organizations made up primarily of relatives of victims of enforced disappearance and disappearance at the hands of non-state actors.

"Mexico has become a very dangerous place for those who are bravely dedicating their lives to the search for the disappeared. The violent killing of Miriam Rodriguez must be independently, impartially and comprehensively investigated. Serious measures must be taken to defend those searching for their loved ones. The nightmare which they face not knowing the fate or whereabouts of their relatives and the dangers they face while carrying out their work, which they undertake due to the negligent response from the authorities, are alarming," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Russia: Pokemon Go Blogger Convicted

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Russia: Pokemon Go Blogger Convicted, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591563ba4.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 Russian court on May 11, 2017, convicted a 22-year-old blogger on criminal charges of incitement of hatred and insult to the religious feelings of believers, Human Rights Watch said today. The court gave the blogger, Ruslan Sokolovsky, a three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.

Sokolovsky had posted to YouTube a prank video in which he plays Pokemon Go in a church. The authorities should take steps to have the conviction vacated or set aside, and stop prosecuting individuals for peaceful exercise of their right to free speech.

"It's a relief that Sokolovsky is not behind bars, but the fact that he was prosecuted and convicted remains a prime example of the Russian authorities using vague and broad anti-extremist laws to stifle free speech and promote self-censorship," said Yulia Gorbunova, Russia researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Sokolovsky's actions may have offended some or indeed many, but they present no public danger and criminal sanctions against him are groundless incursions on the right to free expression."

The charges against Sokolovsky stem from an August 11, 2016 prank video Sokolovsky uploaded to his YouTube channel. In the video, Sokolovsky is seen playing Pokemon Go, the popular location-based reality game, on his phone in the Russian Orthodox Church of All Saints in Yekaterinburg. At the end of the video, Sokolovsky says: "I regret not catching the rarest of Pokemons: Jesus. They say he does not exist."

The video was widely shared online and reported in the media, including by pro-Kremlin Russia 24, which reported that the video insulted the feelings of religious believers, and called Sokolovsky "mentally ill."

Also in August, Sokolovsky posted another video mocking Russian Orthodox recommendations about marriage and family. Citing the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo as his personal inspiration, Sokolovsky also wrote several other satirical or critical blog posts about the Orthodox Church.

In September, authorities searched Sokolovsky's apartment and arrested him on charges of incitement to hatred and insult to the religious feelings of believers, criminal offenses under articles 282 and 148 of Russia's criminal code. In January 2017, authorities initiated a new criminal investigation against Sokolovsky on charges of "trafficking in special technical devices [designed] for surreptitious obtainment of information" under article 138 of the criminal code, for having a pen with a video camera, which police officials seized from his apartment during the search. He was found guilty of all offenses at trial.

Following his arrest, a court ordered Sokolovsky held in pretrial custody, initially for two months. Although he was released to house arrest following an appeal, he was returned to custody on October 28, 2016, after the court found that he had violated his bail terms.

In January 2017, Sokolovsky's pretrial custody was extended, and he was again released to house arrest pending the criminal trial.

On May 11, the court ordered him to remove nine videos from the YouTube channel, and banned him from attending mass gatherings for the three-and-a-half years of his suspended sentence. Sokolovsky was then released on his own recognizance. Sokolovsky's lawyer, Alexey Bushmakov, speaking after the verdict, said that the case against Sokolovsky was meant to "frighten and intimidate" bloggers and other internet users in Russia and to prevent them from speaking freely online.

The offense of "insult," one of the crimes of which Sokolovsky was convicted, was added to Russia's criminal code in 2013, a year after several members of the feminist protest punk group Pussy Riot were convicted of criminal "hooliganism" in retaliation for their anti-Putin performance in a Moscow cathedral. Parliament adopted a law amending article 148 of the criminal code to criminalize "a public action expressing clear disrespect for society and committed in order to insult the religious feelings of believers." The law provides no definition of "religious feelings" and sets no threshold for "offending" them, allowing prosecutors and courts tremendous discretion to target critical speech. Sanctions include fines and up to a one-year jail sentence.

Between 2012 and 2016, the Russian government gained tighter control over freedom of expression through a raft of disturbingly regressive laws, Human Rights Watch said. The laws provide the government with tools to restrict access to information, carry out unchecked surveillance, and censor information that the government deems "extremist," "separatist," or otherwise illegal and harmful to the public.

In recent years, those sentenced to or facing prison terms or hefty fines for "extremist activities" have increasingly included bloggers, journalists, political opposition activists, ethnic minority activists, and other critics of the government, as well as people who mock the Russian Orthodox Church.

"Criminal prosecution of bloggers and others for peacefully expressing their views shrinks the already limited space for public debate," Gorbunova said. "Sokolovsky's conviction once again shines a spotlight on the downward spiral of freedom of expression in Russia."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Kyrgyzstan: President Targets Critics

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Kyrgyzstan: President Targets Critics, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915640f4.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 Prosecutor General's Office in Kyrgyzstan has brought an unjustified lawsuit against a human rights defender, a news outlet, and two journalists, on behalf of President Almazbek Atambaev, Human Rights Watch said today.

The prosecutor general should drop the lawsuit against Cholpon Djakupova, the rights defender, Zanoza news outlet, and the journalists Dina Maslova and Narynbek Idinov, and take immediate steps to lift travel bans imposed on the three individuals.

"Penalizing people who express or publish critical comments about the president violates free speech protections, and creates a broader chilling effect on expression in Kyrgyzstan," saidMihra Rittmann, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The restrictions imposed on Djakupova, Maslova, and Idinov should be lifted immediately so that they are free to continue their important work without interference."

During March and April, 2017, the prosecutor general brought five lawsuits targeting media outlets that have been critical of the government for allegedly discrediting the honor and dignity of the president and spreading false information. The Zanoza news agency, of which Maslova is editor-in-chief and Idinov its founder, was one. Radio Azattyk, the Kyrgyz branch of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, like Zanoza, has also been accused of "biased coverage of unchecked, false information that deliberately affected the honor and dignity of the head of state."

The most recent suit, on April 20, was against Djakupova, head of the Adilet Legal Clinic and former member of Kyrgyzstan's parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh. The suit alleged that during a March 30 roundtable on The Right to Peaceful Assembly and Freedom of Speech, organized by the human rights ombudsman's office, Djakupova made "unjustified attacks on the president, alleging his ignorance and of breaking laws, while also accusing him of abuse of power for personal gain, and of putting pressure on free speech by selectively applying laws."

A linguistic analysis conducted by the State Center for Forensic Expertise under the Justice Ministry concluded that "the stylistic construction of [Djakupova's] speech contains emotional-expressive elements, irony, and sarcasm; the lexical-semantic and contextual analysis of [her] words and expressions showed that they contain negative information."

The lawsuit claimed that Djakupova's speech at the March 30 roundtable contained false information that defames the honor and dignity of the president, and that an article by Zanoza about the roundtable, quoting Djakupova, is also false and defamatory of the president. The suit requested damages from Zanoza, as well as Djakupova, Maslova, and Idinov of 3 million som each, a total of 12 million som (US$177,435).

The Prosecutor General's Office on April 20 also asked the court to block access to the Zanoza article, to seize Djakupova's property as collateral against a potential award for damages, and to impose a travel ban on the three until the conclusion of all proceedings.

On April 26, a court accepted the suit for consideration and granted its requests. Djakupova told Human Rights Watch that she was not informed of the lawsuit and only learned about it when local journalists began to call her for comment.

Djakupova appealed to the courts on April 28, and Maslova and Idinov on May 4, to lift the travel restrictions. No court date has been set to consider their complaints.

On May 10, Djakupova wrote an open letter to President Atambaev contesting the prosecutor's claims and requesting his response to 10 questions related to the suit.

Separately, Klara Sooronkulova, a former member of the constitutional chamber, Rita Karasatova, a human rights lawyer, Idinov, and others, filed a joint complaint in mid-April with the Constitutional Chamber of Kyrgyzstan challenging the legality of the lawsuits on the president's behalf.

Sooronkulova told Human Rights Watch that the law permitting the Prosecutor General's Office to sue in defense of the president's honor and dignity is incompatible with Kyrgyzstan's constitution. About 150 other citizens signed on to the collective complaint, Sooronkulova said. Sooronkulova reported to the media on May 6 that the courts had accepted the complaint for consideration.

Laws that provide for offenses and penalties for those who criticize public figures, including figures such as the president, on the basis that it is considered insulting, are not compatible with freedom of expression standards under international law, and in particular with article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Kyrgyzstan is a party, Human Rights Watch said.

The UN Human Rights Committee, which interprets ICCPR, has stated that "The penalization of a media outlet, publishers or journalist solely for being critical of the government or the political social system espoused by the government can never be considered to be a necessary restriction of freedom of expression." The committee has also made clear that "in circumstances of public debate concerning public figures in the political domain and public institutions, the value placed by the Covenant upon uninhibited expression is particularly high [and] the mere fact that forms of expression are considered to be insulting to a public figure is not sufficient to justify the imposition of penalties."

"The Prosecutor's Office should end its repeat attempts to muzzle voices critical of Kyrgyzstan's top leader," Rittmann said. "Kyrgyz authorities should guarantee the right to freedom of expression, which means protecting - not prosecuting - journalists and rights defenders for expressing or publishing critical views."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
Venezuela: A Blueprint for Strife

Publisher International Crisis Group (ICG) Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as International Crisis Group (ICG), Venezuela: A Blueprint for Strife, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591564e94.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.

Amid the tumult on the streets of Venezuela, which has cost dozens of lives in the past six weeks, two crucially important, and related, events threaten to spur even greater violence and eclipse all possibility of international engagement aimed at redressing the country's plight.

One was the announcement on 23 April by Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez that the country would withdraw from the Organization of American States (OAS) in response to what the government of Nicolas Maduro sees as "interference" in Venezuela's internal affairs. The other move, which immediately incensed protesters and brought widespread foreign repudiation, was a presidential decree of 1 May convening an assembly to rewrite the country's constitution.

According to Maduro's blueprint, half of the assembly's members are to be elected by organisations, such as trade unions and peasant groups, which in all likelihood will be satellites of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The other half would be elected at the municipal level, under a system (yet to be fully explained, and perhaps even decided) that seems designed to over-represent pro-government forces. Political parties will be excluded, although the precise design of the election system for the assembly is in the hands of the government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE). It is worth noting that the combination between sector-based and municipal representatives is identical to that in the National Assembly of Cuba.

Taken together, these two decisions mark the crossing of a threshold in Venezuela, and the formal abandonment by the "revolutionary" regime in Caracas of representative democracy. They came in response to pressure, both external and domestic, on the Maduro government to hold elections, restore the separation of powers, free political prisoners, and open a "humanitarian channel" to ease the country's critical shortages of food, medicines and other basic goods. Rather than accede to demands for genuine negotiations with the opposition Democratic Unity (MUD) alliance - which controls a legislature shorn of power by the Supreme Court (TSJ) - the government has made good on its threat to "deepen the revolution" by creating a so-called "communal state". What is proposed is similar to the constitutional reform Maduro's predecessor and mentor Hugo Chavez put to a referendum in 2007, which was rejected by the electorate - Chavez's sole national electoral defeat in his 14 years in power.

Meanwhile, in response to almost daily demonstrations by the MUD, security forces have clearly been given orders to intensify the repression. By 10 May, six weeks of violence had killed 39 people, according to the PROVEA human rights organisation. At least two demonstrators have been killed and many more injured by riot squads repeatedly firing tear-gas grenades directly into crowds. Police use them to disperse static crowds, often firing in front of and behind protesters, trapping them. Retreating protesters are pursued with volleys of tear gas, which is now frequently being fired into residential or commercial premises, and has even affected schoolchildren and hospital patients. Shotguns firing plastic pellets are also often used at almost point-blank range, and demonstrators caught alone can expect to be severely beaten. Over seven hundred injuries are reported, along with 2,000 arrests, according to legal aid group Foro Penal. Once again, civilian parapolice gangs, armed with pistols, have been deployed to intimidate protesters, some of whom have died of gunshot wounds, often to the head.

In several parts of the country, including the capital, nightfall has brought episodes of looting, which in one particularly violent night in Caracas led to the deaths of at least a dozen people. In Venezuela's third city, Valencia, looting also took place in broad daylight, with around 100 warehouses, shops and supermarkets systematically ransacked as police and national guard troops looked on.

If greater violence is to be averted, the government will need to abandon its self-serving plan to rewrite the constitution and its use of excessive force against peaceful demonstrators. In turn, opposition forces, together with Venezuela's regional neighbours, should devise a plan to encourage more pragmatic elements of the regime to negotiate a return to democracy, while offering a potential exit strategy for those in power who can have no future political role and fear imprisonment - or worse - if they are ousted.

A new "communal" constitution

The central demand of the opposition is that a free election be held to allow Venezuelans to determine the way out of the conflict. But the government, whose support in the polls hovers around 20-25 per cent, fears that submitting to a vote would be political suicide. The proposed constituent assembly is a way of evading democratic accountability. It would have supra-constitutional powers that would allow it to dissolve parliament, restructure the state and even govern the country indefinitely, if it so chose, without any need to hold fresh elections. OAS Secretary-General Luis Almagro called the move "a fresh coup d'etat" aimed at "consolidating this authoritarian regime".

A number of Latin American countries have rewritten their constitutions in recent years, with varying results. Colombia's 1991 constitution, which sprang from a citizens' movement seeking greater participation, is often cited as a success. More recently, in Bolivia and Ecuador, the process began in the wake of electoral victories for major new political forces - most significantly, an indigenous peoples' movement led by Evo Morales - but was extremely contentious, with opposition forces steamrollered or excluded at crucial points. In both countries, a majority of voters approved the new constitutions at the polls.

Venezuela's 1999 constituent assembly was 95 per cent composed of supporters of President Chavez, despite their having won only a little over half the vote. But after Chavez's failed attempt to reform it in 2007, and the government's increasing violation of its key provisions, the 1999 constitution came to be seen as a potentially unifying element between the opposition and moderate chavistas. Most constitutional scholars argue that only at times of broad national consensus can a successful constitution be drafted; the alternative is a document that enshrines the victory of one side over another. The present constitution furnishes a "road map" with broad support that would be perilous to abandon at this point of extreme polarisation.

Maduro is gambling that a new, "communal" constitution will consolidate the revolution. But preservation of the 1999 constitution could well become a rallying cry for hitherto loyal government supporters who revere Chavez but repudiate his successor. Already the Attorney General (fiscal general) Luisa Ortega Diaz, who recently distanced herself from the regime by saying the "constitutional thread" had been broken following a Supreme Court ruling to strip parliament of its powers, has weighed in. In a 3 May interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ortega said the 1999 constitution could not be improved. Her words were echoed by a pro-government legislator. But aside from these and other cases, so far there is no firm indication of mass defection from the regime, nor has this dissent gone unpunished. Now that the public prosecution service (ministerio publico), which Ortega heads, is no longer regarded by the regime as trustworthy, arrested demonstrators are increasingly being arraigned before military tribunals. Dozens have been indicted, and sent to a jail far from their place of residence.

Marching out of the OAS

Maduro's explicit abandonment of democratic rule has, however, clarified matters abroad. It is increasingly difficult even for the country's allies in the region - all of which, except Cuba, adhere to democratic norms - to defend its posture, and the group of nations pushing for a restoration of democracy seems bound to grow. At the same time, the Venezuelan government seems prepared to become ever more isolated in the region.

The decision by the OAS Permanent Council on 23 April to convene a consultative meeting of the region's foreign ministers to discuss the Venezuelan conflict prompted the Maduro government to storm out of the organisation - although the process of disengagement, under OAS rules, takes two years. In a clear sign of the regime's increasing estrangement, its bid to have the issue debated instead by foreign ministers of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC - a body that includes Venezuela's ally Cuba but excludes the United States and Canada) fell flat. Only four of 33 CELAC foreign ministers showed up to the meeting on 2 May and it concluded with no resolution. Seven countries boycotted the meeting, and on 4 May Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and Paraguay issued a sternly-worded statement to "condemn the excessive use of force on the part of the Venezuelan authorities" against protesters in the streets.

The date and venue for the OAS foreign ministers' meeting, agreed by the OAS Permanent Council on 26 April, has yet to be decided, and Venezuela has announced it will boycott it. The imminence of the organisation's regular, scheduled General Assembly - in Mexico in late June - means the Venezuelan issue will almost certainly have to be dealt with there, although the gravity of the crisis merits greater urgency.

A way forward

Maduro's decision to close off the limited democratic space that still exists - on the streets and, potentially, at the ballot box - guarantees that there will be more violent unrest. The opposition is convinced that to abandon street protests at this point would be to permit the consolidation of a dictatorship; it senses that it has nothing left to lose. It will not desist from its mobilisation until, at the very least, there is a binding commitment from the government to hold free and fair elections.

Perhaps the greatest potential danger is posed by a chaotic fragmentation of the regime. In the event that the armed forces were to split into roughly equal parts, Venezuela could face civil war. At the very least, there could be a period of violent anarchy on the streets, with armed, pro-government groups and criminal gangs spreading mayhem. The civilian population, already facing hunger and a breakdown of the country's basic infrastructure, would suffer even greater hardship, and the task of reconstructing Venezuela would become far more taxing. In contrast, a decision by the bulk of the armed forces not to obey government orders to use violence against demonstrators - and to take action against armed civilians acting as parapolice groups - could galvanise both sides into seeking a peaceful and negotiated solution. Already there have been signs of internal dissent, with dozens of officers, including two generals, reportedly under investigation by military intelligence (DGCIM).

International pressure is vital, but needs to be carefully calibrated, with carrots as well as sticks, so as to offer a way out to those members of the regime who may be inclined to negotiate a return to democracy. In this spirit, the National Assembly should consider legislation offering partial, conditional, amnesty to both military and civilian regime members, thereby signalling their intent to seek reconciliation and to avoid witch-hunts in the event of a transition. While the Supreme Court almost certainly would veto this, the bill would send a message that could isolate those, relatively few, who are unlikely to benefit from amnesty due to their involvement in activities such as drug-trafficking or grave human rights abuses. Individual sanctions, already imposed by the United States against certain regime leaders, could be widened to target figures associated with egregious human rights violations, as a bipartisan proposal tabled in the U.S. Senate last week seeks to do.

Genuine negotiations - as opposed to the interminable "dialogues" the government prefers - are essential, and should ideally lead to elections and to an interim government of national unity in which some current officials (perhaps including Attorney General Ortega) could play a part. Any such outcome should include in the short term recognition of the current National Assembly, and respect for its powers. There is no longer any future for the mediation effort led by former Spanish Premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, although some of its elements might be incorporated into a stricter and more effective negotiating structure. This ought to be a primary focus of the OAS initiative, which will require setting up a "group of friends", including at least one country sympathetic to the Maduro government.

The government itself recently invited the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Nicaragua, St Vincent and Uruguay to "accompany" its proposed dialogue. The role of the group of friends - which might usefully be expanded under the aegis of the Secretary-General of the United Nations - could include devising a viable asylum plan for those high-ranking regime members who have reason to fear future prosecution, and convincing them to accept it. Another priority for the group would be to adopt immediate measures to address the humanitarian and security crisis.

If not limited to the OAS, the initiative might eventually benefit from the assistance - formal or otherwise - of other governments that have influence with Caracas. This is particularly the case for Cuba, which is not a full OAS member and has a conflict-prone relationship with the organisation, and China. Both these countries would want to see their interests safeguarded in the event of a change of government.

Ultimately, of course, Venezuelans will decide how their country should be run. But with a president who seems determined to deny them the right to do so, they need outside help to produce a negotiated solution and avert a catastrophe.
Syria: Agreement on 'de-escalation zones' could lift UN-facilitated political talks

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Syria: Agreement on 'de-escalation zones' could lift UN-facilitated political talks, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591566794.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 Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said today that next week's UN-facilitated talks in Geneva will benefit from the dynamics of the negotiations which began in Astana, Kazakhstan, earlier this month, which saw an agreement between Russia, Iran and Turkey on 'de-escalation zones' in war-torn Syria.

"It is necessary to beat the iron while it is hot," Mr. de Mistura told reporters Thursday in Geneva, where he confirmed that a new round of intra-Syrian talks is set to run from 16 to 19 May. The idea is also to bring together the Syrian belligerents before the beginning of the month of Ramadan, which begins at the end of May.

He said the new round "will be a rather business-like, rather short comparing to other meetings" and "with more intimate meetings in smaller rooms, in which we can look each other in the eyes."

The UN mediator admitted that under current conditions, "one can advance more with discussions of proximity than with a formal meeting with all the parties in the same room. Of course, we intend to find a time when we can return to this format," he said.

In any case, "the priority now is to consolidate a cessation of hostilities." According to the Mr. de Mistura, the agreement reached in Astana is a step in the right direction as it pushes towards "a concrete de-escalation in four zones, in addition to the ceasefire."

He went on to say the UN is in discussions with Iran, Russia and Turkey over the control of safe areas in Syria. He recalled that the UN has "a lot of experience" in monitoring, referring to the implementation of the de-escalation zones. He added that it was important that de-escalation in the four zones be followed by much greater humanitarian access.

In accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 on these inter-Syrian discussions, the parties will continue to negotiate on four issues, including governance (political transition), a new constitution, Elections and the fight against terrorism.
Panama's financial reform agenda must prioritize combating tax evasion  UN expert

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Panama's financial reform agenda must prioritize combating tax evasion  UN expert, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591567434.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.

Following last year's leak of confidential financial documents from a Panama law firm, a United Nations rights expert yesterday called on the countries' authorities to continue to impose greater due diligence on financial and banking institutions.

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky said that such reforms would enable parties to prevent and denounce tax fraud, rather than facilitating or taking advantage of them.

"The main component of illicit cash flows at the global level is tax fraud. These funds, which circulate and are deposited in the shadows of the financial and corporate systems, consolidate poverty and inequality in the world," the UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights stressed.

Asked by UN News if this lack of regulations on taxes is what made Panama appear to some as a "fiscal paradise," Mr. Bohoslavsky noted that the tax component is the most important when companies and wealthy people choose to do business in one country or another, or when simply transferring their funds between countries.

Previously revealed documents, which popularly have been associated with the 'Panama Papers,' have shown how corporations, wealthy individuals and politically exposed persons have systematically hidden assets in more than 21 offshore jurisdictions.

While the expert said the focus of the Panamanian authorities should be on the fight against tax evasion, he also acknowledged their efforts to promote financial and corporate transparency and to strengthen the financial regulatory system, adding that Panama now has a more robust system than it did a few years ago.

As for his eight-day Panama visit, he said: "The most onerous tax evasions must be severely punished within the framework of a comprehensive strategy covering all dimensions of tax fraud." He added that financial and non-financial intermediaries have the 'duty of knowing the client' and should have the obligation to report suspicious transactions.

In the briefing the expert further advocated for the adoption of clear legislation "to prevent conflicts of interest of public officials and to ensure the autonomy of regulatory agencies."

He added that such evasion consolidate poverty and inequality because it deprives social programs and services of resources, and does not allow public investment in productive infrastructures that drive development.

In this regard Mr. Bohoslavsky recalled that reducing illicit financial flows is clearly linked to reducing poverty and social inequality and will advance the 2030 Agenda and the corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Curbing such flows was also agreed to at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development held in July 2015 in Addis Ababa. The outcome, referred to as the Addis Ababa Action Agenda calls for strengthening support for the work of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters to improve its effectiveness and operational capacity, and engagement with the UN Economic and Social Council.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
The 'cycle of revenge' in South Sudan will hurt everyone  UN envoy

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, The 'cycle of revenge' in South Sudan will hurt everyone  UN envoy, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915678f4.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.

Deteriorating security in parts of South Sudan coupled with increased displacement could worsen the humanitarian suffering in the country through outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhoea and even cholera, the United Nations envoy for the country has warned.

The situation in Bor-Pibor area is particularly concerning with fears of violent clashes between youths from the Dinka Bor and Murle communities, David Shearer, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan, told journalists at a press conference today.

"We are worried that might spark more widespread fighting between those two communities [and] hence the reason we are providing support to the peace efforts on the ground," he added, noting also the work that is being done with the Government to ease the situation.

"The important thing is that we de-escalate tensions and provide an opportunity to talk rather than to fight because fighting only will result in a greater cycle of revenge [that] will be of no benefit to [anyone]."

In his remarks, Mr. Shearer, also the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), spoke of violence in various regions of the country, including attacks on peacekeepers and relief personnel, which have severely constricted the humanitarian operating space, and underscored the Mission's resolve to do everything it can to ensure that assistance reaches those in need.

"The attacks have a direct consequence on humanitarian activities and the assistance that can be provided to people who desperately need it," he said, terming such violence as an "extraordinarily selfish thing to do".

SEE ALSO: UN appalled at killing of aid workers in South Sudan

The senior UN official also praised the work of journalists in the country as well as humanitarian actors on the ground who, despite considerable challenges, are reaching thousands across the country with much needed assistance.

"I think we owe them a real debt of gratitude," he expressed.
Security Council welcomes commitment of Colombian Government and FARC-EP to peace process

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Security Council welcomes commitment of Colombian Government and FARC-EP to peace process, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591569174.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 opposition in Colombia has begun to lay down arms, a move welcomed today by the United Nations Security Council which recently visited the country to see the peace efforts first-hand.

In a statement to the press, the 15-member Council today welcomed "the peaceful arrival of almost 7,000 members of the FARC-EP [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army] in the agreed zones and points." The Council welcomed also the "continued commitment of the parties to work together to enable FARC to lay down their individual weapons" by 29 May, which marks 180 days after the final peace agreement came into force.

Observers from the UN Mission in Colombia, are actively involved in the process of laying down arms by registering and identifying all the weapons present in FARC-EP camps within all 26 war zones, storing and then neutralizing and extracting the arms. The weapons include munition, mines and explosives.

The Council visited Colombia from 3 to 5 May, to witness first-hand implementation of the peace agreement between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP, and to observe the progress as well as the challenges to the agreement that ended the 50-year old conflict. The visit included meetings with President Juan Manuel Santos and senior representatives from the Government, as well as leaders of the FARC-EP and members of various representatives in Congress.

The Council Members, led by Ambassador Elbio Rosselli of Uruguay - which holds the Council's presidency during the month of May - also met with members of civil society and local communities.

In today's press statement, the Council also paid tribute to the courage of Colombians who have embarked on "the path of peace." They noted that violence is at its lowest level in over 40 years and underlined the significant benefits that a lasting peace could bring to the entire country.

Colombia's peace process has the potential "to be a positive example to the rest of the world," the Council said.

In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the FARC-EP. That deal was the culmination of four years of talks hosted in Havana, Cuba, between the parties, and which led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November 2016.
UN releases new funding to support critical aid operations in Central African Republic

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN releases new funding to support critical aid operations in Central African Republic, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915696f4.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 opposition in Colombia has begun to lay down arms, a move welcomed today by the United Nations Security Council which recently visited the country to see the peace efforts first-hand.

In a statement to the press, the 15-member Council today welcomed "the peaceful arrival of almost 7,000 members of the FARC-EP [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army] in the agreed zones and points." The Council welcomed also the "continued commitment of the parties to work together to enable FARC to lay down their individual weapons" by 29 May, which marks 180 days after the final peace agreement came into force.

Observers from the UN Mission in Colombia, are actively involved in the process of laying down arms by registering and identifying all the weapons present in FARC-EP camps within all 26 war zones, storing and then neutralizing and extracting the arms. The weapons include munition, mines and explosives.

The Council visited Colombia from 3 to 5 May, to witness first-hand implementation of the peace agreement between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP, and to observe the progress as well as the challenges to the agreement that ended the 50-year old conflict. The visit included meetings with President Juan Manuel Santos and senior representatives from the Government, as well as leaders of the FARC-EP and members of various representatives in Congress.

The Council Members, led by Ambassador Elbio Rosselli of Uruguay - which holds the Council's presidency during the month of May - also met with members of civil society and local communities.

In today's press statement, the Council also paid tribute to the courage of Colombians who have embarked on "the path of peace." They noted that violence is at its lowest level in over 40 years and underlined the significant benefits that a lasting peace could bring to the entire country.

Colombia's peace process has the potential "to be a positive example to the rest of the world," the Council said.

In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the FARC-EP. That deal was the culmination of four years of talks hosted in Havana, Cuba, between the parties, and which led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November 2016.
Uzbekistan: UN human rights office to work more closely with 'country at a crossroads'

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Uzbekistan: UN human rights office to work more closely with 'country at a crossroads', 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591569fe4.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 human rights chief today announced that the Central Asian branch of his Office will extend its coverage to Uzbekistan now that an agreement is in place, highlighting that the country is "at a crossroads."

"After my meeting with the President yesterday, we have a clear agreement that our Regional Office will from now on work closely with all five Central Asian Republics," the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, told a press conference in Tashkent, the country's capital.

"I am extremely happy that I myself, my Office and my staff are now set to play an active role in trying to secure a future where every citizen and resident of Uzbekistan has their human rights observed, and state-sponsored violations become a distant memory," Mr. Zeid added.

He recalled that when the Regional Office was established in Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek, in 2008, Uzbekistan made it clear that the office covered four countries, not five.

Citing a series of recent Government initiatives, Mr. Zeid said that human rights figure prominently across the five sets of priorities laid out in President Shavkat Mirziyoyev's 2017-21 Action Strategy.

The five priorities are: improving the public administration system; ensuring rule of law, and reform of the justice system; developing and liberalizing the economy; developing the social sector; and security, religious tolerance and inter-ethnic harmony, and constructive foreign policy.

"The successful implementation of those reforms could have a transformational impact on the country's future," Mr. Zeid said. "It is going to be a long and difficult road to get near that point, with obstructions and setbacks, but I do believe the journey has begun."

He said he encouraged the Government to monitor actual human rights results as part of the High Level Government monitoring of the implementation of the Action Strategy.

"Needless to say, frameworks and plans are one thing, and results are another - especially when it comes to human rights, when States often make fine promises but fail to back them up with real change," Mr. Zeid said.

He also said he has raised with the authorities the need to continue with the release of more political prisoners, and suggested the Government ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, as it would greatly enhance and accelerate the effort to end torture, one of the issues that has been most damaging to Uzbekistan's international reputation over the years.

He is also recommending - and the Government itself is proposing - closer cooperation with the other parts of the UN human rights system, including the treaty bodies and special procedures, welcoming an intention to invite the Special Rapporteur on the freedom of religion or belief to visit the country.

This was the first-ever visit to Uzbekistan by any of the six UN High Commissioners for Human Rights, since the Office of the High Commissioner was established in 1993.

"Uzbekistan is, in my view, at a crossroads," Mr. Zeid said.
LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) today announced that Rich Daly, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Edings Thibault, Head of Investor Relations, will participate in the J.P. Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom Investor Conference in Boston. The companys presentation is scheduled for Wednesday, May 24, 2017, at 11:20am ET. The company's presentation will be webcast live, and will be available at the Broadridge Investor Relations website at www.broadridge-ir.com. A replay of the webcast will be available for one week following the conference.



About Broadridge

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International support for Somalia must focus on rebuilding security, averting famine  UN chief

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, International support for Somalia must focus on rebuilding security, averting famine  UN chief, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59156a804.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.

Opening a major conference on Somalia, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres today urged the international community to support security efforts in the country battling Al-Shabaab and aid the more than six million Somalis affected by the violence and a deadly drought.

"We are here to listen to Somalia's leadership - and to agree on a framework for cooperation," Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the heads of State and Government from across East Africa and other key partners at the London Somalia Conference 2017.

Mr. Guterres noted that Somalia is at a moment which is both "tragic and hopeful" and "can be in the near future the kind of good news that we badly need" in the world.

A legitimate Federal Government was established in 2012 in Somalia, and Al-Shabaab was pushed out of several key cities by the UN Security Council-mandated African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

Fighting continues to devastate the country, however, with violations of human rights and international humanitarian law occurring with impunity, Mr. Guterres noted.

He highlighted the need for predictable funding for AMISOM, and suggested the possibility of assessed contributions. The AU force was created 2012 and began fighting before it had helicopters, night vision systems or armoured vehicles.

"This is something that we need to solve to give AMISOM the capacity to really create the conditions to allow the Government and the new security institutions of Somalia to then be able to assume the responsibility of the security of their own country," he said.

Mr. Guterres also called for greater coordination in support of the Somali Government to build up the Somali National Army and the Somali Police to create the conditions for a unified national army and a unified police front.

UN chief calls for $900M to fight drought

Somalia is facing prolonged drought which has left more than half the population of the country in need of humanitarian assistance. The situation continues to deteriorate and the possibility of famine in 2017 remains very real, despite an already massive scale-up of assistance since the beginning of the year.

The ongoing conflict is exacerbating the drought, leading to what could be one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II.

In his opening remarks, Mr. Guterres called for an additional $900 million to aid the 6.2 million people whose crops have withered, livestock has died and waterholes have dried up.

Some 275,000 malnourished Somali children are currently at risk of starvation, according to UN figures.

"If there is an image that I will never forgetin my life it is [the one] of children dying already, where they could [have been] assisted because they just arrived too late," Mr. Guterres said speaking at an event on a response to the humanitarian crisis.

RELATED: 'The world must act now to stop this,' UN chief Guterres says on visit to drought-hit Somalia

The UN chief had travelled two months ago to the capital, Mogadishu, and Baidoa, in the south-western Bay region, to ask the people in Somalia if they were receiving aid and to appeal for more support from the international community.

"Somalia now hangs in the balance between peril and potential. Here in London, we can tip the scales from danger to safety," said Mr. Guterres.

At the end of the day, Mr. Guterres spoke alongside Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, and Mohamed Somali President Abdullahi Mohamed Farmajo.

"This conference was an unmitigated success," Mr. Guterres said.

He reiterated that the international community needs to massively support Somalia by responding to its humanitarian appeal, fully support the Government in building up national institutions and AMISOM, and support the new National Development Plan of Somalia.
UN experts urge India to restore internet and social media services in Jammu and Kashmir

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN experts urge India to restore internet and social media services in Jammu and Kashmir, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59156ec34.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.

Raising alarm over the impact of internet and social media restrictions imposed by authorities in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, United Nations human rights experts have called on the Government to protect the right to freedom of expression and to pursue an open and democratic dialogue to address the region's social and political conflicts.

In a news release issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), David Kaye, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression and Michel Forst, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders stressed that the scope of the restrictions also undermined the Government's stated aim of preventing dissemination of information that could lead to violence.

The internet and telecommunications bans have the character of collective punishment [and] fail to meet the standards required under international human rights law to limit freedom of expression, said Mr. Kaye in the news release.

Denying such access disrupts the free exchange of ideas and the ability of individuals to connect with one another and associate peacefully on matters of shared concern, added Mr. Forst.

The ban was imposed on 17 April following widespread student demonstrations.

According to information from the media and individuals in Kashmir, the Government blocked access to 22 websites and applications, including the messaging service WhatsApp, and social media Facebook and Twitter, noted the news release.

Denying such access disrupts the free exchange of ideas and the ability of individuals to connect with one another and associate peacefully on matters of shared concern Special Rapporetur Michel Forst

3G and 4G internet data services for mobile phones and other devices have also been suspended.

The news release also noted that since 2012, there have been an estimated 31 reported cases of social media and internet bans in the Indian state and such developments seemed to be a worrying pattern aimed at curbing protests and social unrest in the region.

We call on the Indian authorities to guarantee freedom of expression in Jammu and Kashmir and to seek a solution for the social and political conflicts of the region through an open, transparent and democratic dialogue, the experts said.

Further in the release, the human rights experts also recalled the concerns raised by the UN Human Rights Council  the central inter-governmental body within the UN system responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe  over online disruptions and the call upon UN Member States to avoid such shutdowns.

Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.
UN condemns deadly attack on peacekeepers in Central African Republic

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 10 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN condemns deadly attack on peacekeepers in Central African Republic, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591570994.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.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has strongly condemned an attack against a convoy of the UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic (CAR) that left four dead, one missing and 10 others evacuated.

Attacks against United Nations peacekeepers may constitute a war crime, Mr. Guterres said through his spokesperson yesterday on the attack perpetrated by suspected anti-Balaka elements against a convoy of the UN Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission (MINUSCA) on 8 May.

He called on the CAR authorities to investigate the attack  executed on the Rafai-Bangassou axis, in the country's south east  in order to swiftly bring those responsible to justice.

Mr. Guterres offered his deepest condolences to the bereaved families and the Governments of the concerned troop contributing countries, and wished a swift recovery to the wounded.

The Secretary-General also reiterated his support to the actions of MINUSCA to protect civilians and stabilise the Central African Republic, and called on all parties to heed President Faustin Archange Touadera's call to cease violence and work together towards the stability of the country.

Later in the day, the members of the UN Security Council also condemned the attack and also expressed their deepest condolences and sympathy to the families of the victims, and their deepest sympathy to the families of the peacekeepers injured and the peacekeeper missing, as well as to Cambodia, Morocco, and to MINUSCA. They wished the injured a speedy recovery.

In a press statement, the Council urged the Central African Republic authorities to continue the search for the missing peacekeeper from MINUSCA. Strongly condemning all attacks and provocations against MINUSCA by armed groups, the Council also reiterated that such attacks may constitute war crimes.

Clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, plunged the country of 4.5 million people into civil conflict in 2013.

Also today, President of the UN General Assembly Peter Thomson arrived in CAR to show solidarity with our United Nations people on the ground, particularly our peacekeepers.

Accompanied by the President of the National Assembly, Karim Meckassoua, the Prime Minister, Simplice Sarandji and the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of MINUSCA, Parfait Onanga-Anyanga, Mr. Thomson went to MINUSCA's military hospital to visit the bedside of the UN peacekeepers that were wounded during the attack on their convoy.

According to the Mission, Mr. Thomson, on behalf of the Organization, took the opportunity to salute the dedication of peacekeepers engaged in all theatres of operation in the name of peace.

He went on to not that he is in CAR to spread the word on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but I'm also here I think you will hear from me those strong messages on sustainable development and on the solidarity that we have with what the UN mission is here.
Amid spreading cholera outbreak, UN migration agency aids South Sudanese

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 10 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Amid spreading cholera outbreak, UN migration agency aids South Sudanese, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591571074.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.

United Nations humanitarian workers are responding to a growing cholera outbreak in Ayod, the Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan, one of multiple counties throughout the country where the disease has spread since June 2016.

The UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) said it deployed a rapid response team to Jonglei late last month, to support local health partners and try to contain the outbreak.

Conditions are extremely difficult for families in Jiech, said Carol Kipsang, an IOM health officer and nurse, referring to a town in Ayad County. More than 230 people are affected there.

We met one mother who was caring for her new born and her sister's child, after her sister died from cholera two weeks ago in her community. The young mother walked one hour to the IOM clinic to receive treatment for the children and seek nutritional support for her malnourished daughter.

The UN agency launched its response after 140 suspected cases of cholera were reported in Ayod during the first weeks of April, threatening the population of some 175,000 people.

Access to Ayod is difficult during the rainy season, and its proximity to the Nile River increases its vulnerability to outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera, IOM said, noting also the ongoing crisis in Jonglei and the lack of health workers and medical supplies.

The majority of suspected cholera cases in Ayod come from communities living in cattle camps along the river.

Since the cholera outbreak was declared in June 2016, more than 7,200 cases of cholera have been reported, including 229 deaths, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) and the South Sudan Ministry of Health.

The disease is also reportedly spreading through swamp water, with millions of people displaced and moving through the swamps to avoid fighters.

WHO has provided response kits, medication and equipment for oral rehydration points and cholera treatment units.
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Leaving Islamism Aside: The Gambia Under Adama Barrow

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Publication Date 5 May 2017 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Leaving Islamism Aside: The Gambia Under Adama Barrow, 5 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591576494.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

The inauguration of Adama Barrow as president in the Gambia in January 2017 heralded a new era for the country, ruled previously for 22 years by strongman Yahya Jammeh. Among Barrow's first actions in office was to reverse Jammeh's declaration that the Gambia was an Islamic Republic, a return to the separation of state and religion that the Gambia had maintained at independence from Britain in 1965 (Africa News, January 28). The move restored the five-day working week and made Friday a working day.

Given that Barrow and his party won an absolute majority in parliamentary elections in April, it appears there is little substantial opposition to the decision (Punch Ng, April 7). It may, however, have security implications, riling Salafists inside the country and attracting unwanted attention from Islamist militants abroad at a time when Barrow is attempting to rebuild the security services that were for years closely linked to the country's former leader.

Islam for Political Ends

Throughout his presidency, Jammeh sought to use Islamism to his political advantage, constructing a mosque on the grounds of State House, cultivating ties with a new generation of Gambian Muslims who had studied in Saudi Arabia and politicizing the Gambia's Supreme Islamic Council, which had previously been a moral but strictly non-political authority.

When Jammeh eventually decreed the Gambia - where 95 percent of the population is Muslim - an Islamic Republic in 2015, it was to win favor with donors in the Middle East at a time when the Gambia was struggling to maintain good relations with the West. He had signed legislation in 2014 that saw homosexuals sentenced to life imprisonment and later withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth), declaring the organization to be a colonial institution (African Arguments, January 28, 2016). In an effort to attract new funding, he turned to the Middle East, where wealthy Gulf States were less concerned by his government's human rights record and anti-Western rhetoric. Proclaiming his country an Islamic Republic was part of a charm offensive that included offering to host the Organization of Islamic Conference in 2018, which is still scheduled to be held in the Gambia under Barrow.

While the Gambia became an Islamic Republic seemingly overnight, Jammeh also decreed that people would continue to be able to practice their respective religions without any obstruction (al-Jazeera, December 12, 2015). He announced there would be no alterations to dress codes for women as a result of the new status of the country - although he later changed his mind on this aspect, before revoking the dress code once again a week later (African Arguments, January 28, 2016). Meanwhile, the country continued to be a holiday destination for Western tourists who drank alcohol and sunbathed on the beach with little interference.

In practice, Jammeh's declaration had little real bearing on Gambians' lives, although for the country's minority Christians and others there was a real sense of unease. There was a threat that - combined with the absence of employment opportunities and extreme poverty - the move could create an attractive base for Islamist militants. They pointed to Jammeh's apparently ambivalent comments on Islamic State (IS) and made exaggerated claims that the Gambia could find itself hosting training bases for Islamist terrorists (Freedom Newspaper, March 31, 2016).

Weakened Security Environment

Barrow's reversal of Jammeh's declaration indicates that he expects to have better relations with the West and the countries in the Gambia's immediate vicinity, rather than relying on the Gulf States for assistance. The new president has already established significantly better ties with Senegal, which surrounds the Gambia, as well as European nations such as France, and announced his intention to rejoin the Commonwealth (Africa News, February 15).

No immediate fallout has arisen from Barrow's decision to change the status of the Gambia from an Islamic Republic. There have been no reported arrests of Islamic militants, and the country has avoided the Islamist attacks that have struck neighboring countries. Next-door Senegal has reported numerous arrests of militants linked to Boko Haram, Islamic State and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), but the Gambia has thus far been left untouched (Jeune Afrique, April 12).

Barrow's pledges to open-up his country and increase political liberty and freedom of speech have been met with support by NGOs and Western governments alike. However, while such reforms are laudable, they will take time to implement and there are potential dangers for the Gambia's weakened security environment.

The president plans to upgrade the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), a secret police force accused of serious human rights abuses during Jammeh's tenure, and his plans will see the force become a less repressive, more functional organization (Africa News, January 28). He also plans to reform the military, which played a key role in Jammeh's government but which remains heavily fragmented and of whose loyalty he is not yet certain (Africa Daily, January 19). Barrow's decision in February to replace the head of the security forces, whose fidelity was questionable, will not immediately result in a more effective military. It will take several years to build trust and loyalty in such institutions.

In the meantime, the Gambia lacks a stable, reliable security agency making it more vulnerable to both Islamist terrorism and retaliatory violence from Jammeh loyalists. Barrow appears to have recognized this, requesting a Senegalese military unit be stationed in the country for the foreseeable future to ensure security (RFI, March 16).

Changing Outlook

Simultaneously, the Gambia's decision to leave its "Islamic Republic" moniker behind and turn back toward the West and long-time Western ally Senegal could make the country a potential target for regional Islamic militant groups.

In March 2017, the Gambia announced that it had signed a security agreement with Senegal, aimed at augmenting security in the region as well as preventing trafficking of illegal contraband between the two countries (RFI, March 16). This kind of cooperation has been lacking for some time. The move is a positive sign for regional development, though it could also attract the attention of militants. Previous alliances in the region that have aimed to prevent Islamic militancy have prompted militant threats of retaliation. For example, AQIM claimed the 2016 attack on Cote d'Ivoire was revenge for the country's close ties to France, while Senegal has tightened security in response to the same posturing by insurgents (Africa News, March 15, 2016). Meanwhile, the arrest in Dakar in April of three Islamist insurgents with links to Boko Haram and IS underscores the potential threat (Jeune Afrique, April 12).

The Gambia presents an enticing target for Islamic radicals. The country has long attracted vast numbers of Western tourists, with annual tourist numbers regularly higher than 100,000. [1] While the Gambia's security apparatus is weakened, its popular beachfront bars and hotels make an obvious soft target for a militant attack, as was the case in the Grand Bassam attack in Cote d'Ivoire (l'express, March 14, 2016).

Added to this, those angered by Jammeh's removal - including his former security entourage, now marginalized by Barrow - could attempt to assist jihadists for their own ends. A comparable situation could be events in nearby Burkina Faso, where it emerged in local media in March, that the former presidential guard, the Regiment de Securite Presidentielle (RSP), were cooperating with Ansar ul-Islam in the country's north (NordSud Journal, March 14, 2017).

In Burkina Faso, the RSP launched a failed coup against the transitional government in September 2015. The unit had been the crutch of former ruler Blaise Compaore, who, like Jammeh, was forced from power after more than 20 years in power. Jammeh currently resides in Equatorial Guinea, which is not a signatory to the International Criminal Court, and where he may continue to have the ability to orchestrate violence in the Gambia.

Barrow's attempts to start a new era of governance, wherein repression is replaced with political and economic freedom, is admirable but cannot be achieved overnight. In the meantime, the restructuring that must take place within the security services will leave the country potentially vulnerable to Islamist violence and retaliatory attacks from Jammeh loyalists. The country's move away from its "Islamic" title and efforts to foment closer ties with the West and neighboring countries will exacerbate this vulnerability. These moves have undoubtedly already attracted the attention of Islamist radicals, who are likely to see the Gambia as an increasingly relevant target in West Africa.

NOTES:

[1] Figures from Access Gambia

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Ten Years of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Evolution and Prospects

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Dario Cristiani Publication Date 5 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 9 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Ten Years of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb: Evolution and Prospects, 5 May 2017, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 9, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591577334.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

In the past few months, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) hit the headlines again as it carried out a massive attack in Gao, northern Mali, killing 77 people and injuring dozens more. Al-Mourabitoun, the group of Mokhtar Belmokhtar  so far, the "most-killed" terrorist in the world, having been proclaimed dead several times since the '90s  claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was punishment for Malians working with France (Jeune Afrique, January 18; see MLM, August 2015 ).

From a strictly operational perspective, the attack is significant as it signals a return to large-scale terrorist operations in an area where AQIM has historically been well established. Although there has been no return to large-scale attacks in Algeria, the initial core target of AQIM operations, at the same time it signals AQIM's greater capacity for operations in an area where it has been progressively dislocated by the French military operations "Serval" and "Barkhane."

In addition, a few weeks later, AQIM announced a merger of a number of local jihadist groups into a new alliance, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM). This partnership includes: the Islamist Tuareg organization Ansar Al-Dine; al-Mourabitoun, the group led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar; AQIM's Sahara division; and the Katiba Macina Liberation Front of Ansar al-Dine. This new alliance will be led by Iyad ag Ghali, the historical leader of Ansar al-dine. These developments are significant since, as Islamic State (IS) loses ground in Iraq and Syria and its regional offshoots weaken, al-Qaeda's groups are trying to capitalize on the situation. For AQIM itself, these developments have occurred as the organization marks 10 years since its official creation (Jeune Afrique, March 10; LEconomiste Maghrebin, March 6).

Local Strikes, Global Resonance

These developments alone are significant, but they are even more relevant as the group marks 10 years since it officially joined al-Qaeda and rebranded itself. Previously it was the Salafist Group for Preachment and Combatant, mostly known as GSPC (Groupe Salafiste pour la Predication et le Combat), itself an offshoot of the GIA, the Armed Islamic Group (Groupe Islamique Arme), the most influential terrorist organization that fought in the Algerian civil war of the 1990s.

This shift was not only a change of brand  although the symbolic dimension and the impact of publicly using the name al-Qaeda played a major role in this decision  it was a broadening of the priorities of the former GSPC, which had suffered a number of setbacks and was on a declining path, operationally and in terms of its local popularity.

This trend had already started by the end of the 1990s, and the GSPC itself was an attempt to address it. The GSPC's founders wanted to distance themselves from the GIA, whose indiscriminate killings had alienated many Algerians who had been sympathetic at the beginning of the Algerian civil war. However, the GSPC did not manage to reverse this trend, and the emergence of Abdelmalek Droukdel as its leader  instead of Hassan Hattab, the leader who had orchestrated the split  engendered a return to the targeting of civilians.

The GSPC's localized agenda was one of the most significant issues in negotiations between the group and al-Qaeda. It took more than two years of negotiations between Droukdel and al-Qaeda leaders Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to bring GSPC into AQIM, with al-Qaeda leaders concerned the merger would be incompatible their wider strategic goals. For al-Qaeda, its primary targets were the "far enemies" of the United States, Europe and Israel, rather than the governments of the territories in which its offshoots were operating, the so-called "near enemies."

Algerian extremists likewise feared external influences, concerned that foreign groups would impose their own agenda over local priorities. Indeed, even after it joined al-Qaeda, the group continued to operate primarily in Algeria, but imported tactics deployed in other theatres such as Iraq and Afghanistan. While it employed a rising rhetorical focus on the far enemies, its operational center remained Algeria. Thus the core interest of the organization was somehow safeguarded, despite its internationalization and affiliation with the al-Qaeda franchise. This helps explain the skepticism with which Droukdel, Belmokhtar and the entire AQIM command-chain have approached the emergence of Islamic State (IS). Although global in its ambition, the IS agenda is very much characterized by the dominance of the organization's interests in the Syrian-Iraqi theatre and a more vertical and less flexible approach  compared to that of al-Qaeda  to local offshoots.

The merger between al-Qaeda central and the Algerian terrorists in 2006 and 2007 and the progressive convergence of interests was very much the result of al-Qaeda's increasing weakness. It was considered a way for the al-Qaeda to gain leverage in an area of strategic importance, at the doors of Europe, while for the GSPC the merger was aimed at strengthening its jihadist appeal, bolstering its legitimacy and reversing the declining that had characterized the organisation since the end of the 1990s.

Losing Algeria: The Rise of the Southern Katibas

Despite its ambition to maintain its primary operational focus on Algeria, changing strategic circumstances forced AQIM to shift its geographical core progressively southward. Over the past ten years, this gradual geographic shift of AQIM has represented one of the most significant developments in the organization's evolution. Algerian jihadism has always had a presence in the Sahel/Sahara region, both before and after the Algerian civil war. However, the area was never a center of its activities but more a geographical appendix.

Back in 2003, when AQIM was still the GSPC, the spectacular kidnapping of 32 European tourists represented the first visible sign of the increasing importance of this area for the group. Since then, the focus on the Saharan/Sahelian area has increased exponentially, and after the end of the first period of Qaedist adaptation in 2007/2008, it started to represent the main center of AQIM's operations.

The rising focus of the organization on the Sahara/Sahel was not the product of a particular strategic choice  for instance of targeting local governments for their international alliance or internal ethno-confessional balances  nor was it the result of its al-Qaeda membership. It was the tactical outcome of the changing geostrategic circumstances that characterized the local operational environment, which reduced AQIM's freedom of action in Algeria while presenting a number of significant jihadist "business opportunities" in these territories. As such, it was more of an utilitarian and pragmatic move dictated by circumstance.

The strengthening of Algeria's counter-terrorism capacity and its speedy adaptation to the AQIM's imported tactics in 2007/2008, as well as rising oil prices that gave additional financial resources to the Algerian state and the loss of public support for jihadists, made Algeria an increasingly challenging environment in which to operate.

In addition, the internal balance within the organization was changing. Belmokhtar's Katiba al-Moulathimin was growing increasingly independent, reflecting the substantial freedom of action that he was enjoying and Belmokhtar's characteristic resentment of tight hierarchical control.

As local militants became better financed, they grew operationally more independent and the chain of command around Droukdel progressively weakened. The emergence of a local Katiba headed by a close ally of Droukdel, Abou Zeid  a type of "smuggler turned Jihadist" whose original task was to keep Belmokhtar in check  also contributed to shifting the geographic focus of the organization(see Militant Leadership Monitor, October 2011 ).

From the Sahel to West Africa

As the group moved southward, its ranks also swelled as local Sahelian militants joined the organization. However, despite this ethnic diversification, the chain of command remained firmly in the hands of Algerian militants and did not reflect the increasing diversity of the group.

This created a number of tensions, and in addition, the new militants were more focused on spreading jihad in other parts of West Africa. This led to the creation of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MOJWA) in 2011, a splinter group of AQIM that nevertheless remained in the orbit of the organization.

Later, having been dismissed as head of his katiba following an internal re-organization of AQIM, Belmokhtar also left the group, and with the support of Abderrahmane Ould el-Amar (aka Ahmed al-Tilemsi), one of the key leaders of MOJWA, he created al-Mourabitoun.

The name of this new group was a sort of political manifesto, recalling the dynasty of the Almoravides who ruled in the 11th and 12th century over a unified Sahelian-Maghrebi empire stretching all the way to Andalusia (modern day southern Spain). As such, the ambition was to unify the groups and the peoples of the region, as the Almoravides had done (see Terrorism Monitor, October 17, 2013). Despite the split, Belmokhtar also remained in the orbit of AQIM, and enjoyed a rather fluid relationship with the organization, before re-joining formally in December 2015.

That was also the period in which AQIM became an increasingly hybrid organization, as the diversification of its activities became more significant. Its focus on minor jihad  armed attacks against those perceived as infidels  was balanced by the presence of more mundane illicit activities, such as kidnappings, smuggling and so forth.

The local environment was conducive to these opportunities. The Sahara has been historically home to traffickers of all kinds, and the leaders of the southern katibas had a comparative advantage given their in-depth knowledge of the territory. As a consequence, kidnappings flourished as European tourists visiting the Sahara were considered easy targets, while the increasing centrality of Africa in the global narco-trafficking routes provided new opportunities to make money. AQIM's presence in northern Mali favored this dynamic (see Terrorism Monitor, January 28, 2010).

This hybridization, however, should not be seen in rigid terms. These illicit activities were still consistent with AQIM's jihadist ambitions  kidnapping Westerners and eventually killing them or receiving a ransom, or inundating the European markets with drugs, were just other ways to harm the heathen Western countries. In addition, these activities provided greater revenues and strengthened ties with the local population. This was seen as part of a long-term strategy to co-opt local groups. Indeed, these activities all still enabled AQIM to further its core aim of waging jihad.

Exploiting the Arab Spring

The Arab Spring had a number of unintended consequences, and AQIM's increased local presence put the group in a good position to exploit the chaos that struck the region in its wake.

The collapse of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in Libya created the conditions for the spread of Tuareg fighters and weapons in in the region (see Terrorism Monitor, April 14, 2011). Many of these fighters moved to Northern Mali where they encountered the local grievances of Tuaregs there who felt discriminated and marginalized by the government in Bamako. The constellation of local radical jihadist organizations  formed by AQIM, Bemolkhtar's katiba, MOJWA and the Malian Ansar al-Dine soon allied with the secular Tuareg of the National Liberation of the Azawad and took control of territory in Northern Mali, with the ambition to create an Islamic state and use it as a platform to move southwards.

Only when these groups were heading toward Bamako did external countries intervene. The French military operation "Serval" disbanded the proto-Salafi state created in Northern Mali and disrupted the networks that the organizations had set up (MaliActu.Net, August 7, 2015).

However, the Libyan chaos also allowed AQIM to deepen its presence in the country, and many fighters started using Libya as a new logistic platform. This also enabled AQIM to finally carry out a new powerful attack in Algeria  the attack in InAmenas, allegedly organized by Bemolkhtar. This attack, which targeted international oil companies and their employees, was a return to AQIM's focus on striking locally with a global impact.

The IS Challenge

The InAmenas attack was nevertheless an exception, as the new operational trends of the organization were increasingly focused on West Africa. Indeed, between the end of 2015 and early 2016, the group carried out massive terrorist attacks targeting hotels and holiday resorts in Bamako (Mali), Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast (Abidjan.net, March 14, 2016; Sidwaya [Ouagadougou], January 16; Jeune Afrique, November 20, 2015). This further Africanization of the operational profile of AQIM and its affiliate is the result of its emerging rivalry with IS.

The emergence of IS in the wider jihadist world was another unintended consequence of the Arab Spring. The group evolved from an off-shoot of the al-Qaeda presence in Syria. Members of this group severed their ties with al-Qaeda Central and created a group characterized by a further radicalization and an even more violent approach to jihad.

IS immediately showed its ambition to build up a Salafi state, intended as a catalyst for the creation of a new caliphate. While for AQIM the ultimate goal (in keeping with al-Qaeda's philosophy) was to eventually revive the caliphate, the group's methodology was different. The al-Qaeda view is that (re-)building a Caliphate is a long-term process.

IS also represented a threat to AQIM in operational terms, including the recruitment of the youth from the region  Tunisians and Moroccans accounted for a very significant part of the foreign fighters ranks of IS  and its presence in a number of strategic regional theatres, such as Libya and Tunisia. It also became a magnet for local, minor leaders who saw a pledge of loyalty to IS as a way to boost their status, something that created a number of problems for Belmokhtar's organization. Finally, IS' aggressive use of the media and a powerful brand fueled a sort of competition, forcing AQIM to adapt some of its media strategies to those of its jihadist rival.

Prospects for the Years to Come

Ten years on, AQIM is a very different organization from what it was in early 2007. Although its leadership remains Algerian, Algeria no longer represents AQIM's main focus.

While this does not mean that the organization will not mount attacks in Algeria, it is no longer the systemic threat that the GIA represented in the 1990s and AQIM itself posed in the first months after its rebranding.

The group is now more of a regional franchise. It is the center of gravity for a number of local groups, and itself part of the wider al-Qaeda global project. Moreover, it represents a regional counterbalance to IS, and the rivalry between the two organizations has been a significant feature of the regional geostrategic environment.

However, as IS declines, it is possible that many IS fighters will move closer to al-Qaeda-linked groups once again. In addition, as IS weakens, AQIM is likely to return to many regional theatres, among them Libya.

In Mali, the establishment of JNIM shows that AQIM intends to capitalize on IS' increasing weakness and bring together in a systemic way those organization that have gravitated to it over the last few years. While many previously collaborated on a tactical level with AQIM, they did not always follow its directives and priorities. AQIM's operational return to Northern Mali now shows the group intends to reassert itself in those territories where it had an established presence prior to the French-led military operation in 2013.

That said, while AQIM does not appear to have the capacity to establish a salafi-jihadist state in the region, it will continue to represent a significant asymmetrical and hybrid threat, mixing minor jihadist operations with criminal activities to bolster its finances and further its ultimate goals of fighting near enemies such as regional governments and actors such as Libya's General Haftar, and its traditional far enemies in the West.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Kenya: On Alert as al-Shabaab Factions Clash

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Sehmer Publication Date 5 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 9 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Kenya: On Alert as al-Shabaab Factions Clash, 5 May 2017, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 9, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591578274.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Kenyan security forces are on alert following reports of bloody clashes between al-Shabaab factions, which are said to have pushed fleeing militants across the border.

The fighting is thought to have been prompted by the group's execution of two high-ranking commanders who had sworn allegiance to Islamic State (IS). Kenyan security forces are also said to have intercepted an audio message from another al-Shabaab militant criticizing the executions, pledging allegiance to IS and calling on other fighters to do the same (Daily Nation, April 23). Reports say the recording urged recruits to join a new group called "Dini ya Kiislamu Super Power" (DKSP).

Al-Shabaab's leadership takes a hard line on dissent. At the end of 2015, it ordered a ruthless crackdown on the pro-IS faction led by Abdulkadir Mumin, sending fighters to the Bari region in northeastern Somalia to hunt down members of the jihadist's group (Garowe Online, December 24, 2015).

Mumin's faction remains relatively feeble. It reported a fleeting and largely symbolic victory in the coastal town of Qandala in Puntland last year, but poses little threat to al-Shabaab overall (Garowe Online, October 26, 2016). Since DKSP appears to also be led Mumin, the recent executions suggest only that his small band of followers has gained a little more traction, rather than indicating that a new divide is opening up within al-Shabaab.

Nonetheless, al-Shabaab is wary. In April 2016, a group calling itself Jabha East Africa  also thought to be linked to Mumin  criticized its "stubborn" and "confused" al-Shabaab "brothers" for being unwilling to accept the IS caliphate (Tuko, April 8, 2016). Since then, however, Jabha East Africa has had no impact on the region's jihadist landscape, and DKSP will likely go the same way.

While al-Shabaab's intolerance of fighters who lean toward IS is not new, the killings do seem to indicate that there are rising tensions within the group. Recent reports say the group executed at least six Kenyan recruits last month, accusing them of being government spies (Daily Nation, May 1; Tuko, May 2). The Kenyans were said to be from Lamu county on the northern coast, an area scarred by al-Shabaab violence.

While al-Shabaab turns on its own members, African Union forces in Somalia may hope to take advantage. Kenyan warplanes have scored some successes, with a number of air strikes on an al-Shabaab bases in the southern Gedo region (Garowe Online, April 25). Officials in Lamu, meanwhile, have played up the reports of the executions in the hope they will dissuade potential recruits (Daily Star [Kenya], May 3). But any reprieve from cross-border attacks as a result of the recent inter-factional fighting is likely to be short-lived.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Mali: al-Qaeda Alliance Steps Up Attacks

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Mali: al-Qaeda Alliance Steps Up Attacks, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591578a74.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Militants in northern and central Mali have stepped up attacks on Malian and international forces over the last month in what appears to be a concerted campaign by the new al-Qaeda alliance Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen (JNIM).

An attack on a UN Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) base in Timbuktu on May 3 killed a Liberian peacekeeper and injured nine other UN soldiers (RFI, May 4). Within hours, JNIM announced it was behind the attack (Journal du Mali, May 4).

In the last few weeks, the group has claimed to have carried out an attack on a Malian military camp at Gourma Rhraous, about 120 kilometers (km) east of Timbuktu, in which four soldiers were killed; a bomb attack in Douentza in Mopti region on April 5, in which a French soldier was killed; and an attack against Malian police in Tene on April 13 (Mali Actu, April 18; Mali Actu, April 26).

The JNIM alliance, which is made up of a range of al-Qaeda-linked groups in northern Mali under the leadership of Ansar Dine chief Iyad ag Ghali, consolidates and extends the influence of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) at a time when Islamic State is losing ground (a state of affairs explored by Dario Cristiani in this issue of Terrorism Monitor).

Ag Ghali made clear the group's intentions in an interview published in April, saying JNIM plans to expand al-Qaeda's operations into a "wider area," and listing 11 "enemy" countries: the United States, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Chad, Guinea, Cote dIvoire, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Niger (Alakhbar, April 3; Mali Actu, 15 April). The recent attacks suggest that campaign is now under way.

The violence is also further endangering the faltering peace process in Mali's north. According to government reports, five members of the Congress for Justice in Azawad, an armed Tuareg-led group involved in the process, were killed by suspected AQIM fighters in Gargando in central Mali on April 8 (RFI, April 8).

The jihadists stand to benefit from the government's failure to implement a peace agreement with such groups, a state of affairs that JNIM will likely exploit.

In the current climate, the Malian government has once again extended its state of emergency powers for another six months (Africa News, April 30). The move is no surprise, and there are likely more attacks on Malian and international troops to come. Mali has already proved to be one of the most deadly arenas for UN personnel in recent years. The JNIM campaign appears set to try to keep it that way.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Caught Between Russians and Tatars: Can the Bashkirs Save Bashkortostan?

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Paul Goble Publication Date 10 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 62 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Caught Between Russians and Tatars: Can the Bashkirs Save Bashkortostan?, 10 May 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 62, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591579084.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Outnumbered in their republic by ethnic Russians and nearly equaled by ethnic Tatars, the Bashkirs of Bashkortostan, the product of Joseph Stalin's first great act of ethnic engineering, have responded to their increasingly desperate situation by creating a new national organization, "Saving the Nation Together." Whether they will succeed is an open question. But their detailed description of the problems they face is unprecedented, and their obvious conviction that they cannot count on anyone but themselves to solve them sets the stage for new conflicts within that republic and between it and Moscow in the future.

On April 2930, more than 50 former senior officials and activists met in Ufa to establish a Congress of the Bashkir People of the Republic of Bashkortostan. They declared they were taking this action because existing Bashkir organizations are either focused on members of that nation who live beyond the borders of Bashkortostan or are totally controlled by the authorities. And those latter groups refuse to challenge the government even when the problems the Bashkirs face further worsen. The new group says it will focus on the Bashkirs of Bashkortostan and will mobilize people to solve their problems with Moscow and the republican leadership if possible, but against them if necessary. Moreover, the Congress participants insisted, "life shows that no one will solve [Bashkir] problems besides the Bashkirs themselves" (Proufu.ru, May 3).

Speaker after speaker provided a description of a nation and a republic in trouble, one in which the Bashkirs are losing ground not only to the ethnic Russiansas is the case in many non-Russian peoples in the Russian Federationbut also to the Tatars, who have their own republic next door. Furthermore, the Bashkirs are under threat from various all-Russian measures of economics, education, employment and demography.

Since 2011, they said, most of the economic indicators had gone negative and are now threatening the stability of the region, with Bashkortostan shifting from a donor region to one that needs subsidies from Moscow. Officials in Ufa fail to tell the population or Moscow the truth. Instead, they routinely put out figures that "do not coincide with reality, according to Firgat Bayramgulov, a senior medical official and one of the organizers of the meeting.

Unemployment is much higher than officials acknowledge, wages are 26 percent lower than the all-Russian average, and Bashkirs are being forced to move to other regions to find worka trend that makes their minority status in their own republic even worse. In the 2010 census, Bashkirs formed 29.5 percent of the population of the republic, down slightly from 2002. Ethnic Russians made up 36.1 percent, about the same as eight years earlier; and the proportion of Tatars was 25.4 percent, a slight increase.

According to Bayramgulov, the republic's authorities have been pursuing "an intentional anti-Bashkir policy" in recent years. As a result, Tatars occupy 47 percent of the top posts in the republic, Bashkirs 28 percent, and ethnic Russians 15 percent. He notes that while Bashkirs suffer the most because it is their republicthey have no otherethnic Russians are being subject to discrimination as well. Yet, other speakers noted that Russians, in fact, dominate federal agency offices in the republic, so they are not as harmed as Bayramgulov's statistics might suggest.

Ilgiz Sultanmuratov, a sociologist, asserted that Bashkirs are suffering from a demographic crisis. Last year, the number of births in percentage terms fell twice as fast in the republic as in Russia as a whole. More than 5,000 Bashkirs left Bashkortostan, and the burden of children and pensioners on each Bashkir worker is increasing rapidly. Those figures both reflect and have given rise to ever greater pessimism among the population. And Ildar Itkulov, a former deputy education minister, says that the school system is collapsing, especially in rural areas. He also added that "the status of the second state languageBashkiris not so firm": Bashkirs do not learn their own language, while Russians and Tatars are also not learning it despite Bashkir being an official language of the republic.

Historian Salavat Khamidullin said that all of these negative phenomena are being intensified by the increasing actions of "nationalist Tatar organizations," which continue to suggest that Bashkirs are not a separate nation and that parts of what is now Bashkortostan should be absorbed by Tatarstan. He pointed to the statements at the recent All-Tatar Social Center (VTOTs) and the writings of Rafael Khakimov, a leading Tatar historian and advisor to the Tatarstan Republic government, as evidence of what he described as the negative and dismissive attitudes of Kazan to the Bashkirs.

Fanil Fayzullin, an academician of the Bashkortostan Academy of Sciences, summed up the feelings of the session. He said that "the words sometime spoken by Zaki Validi [Togan, the great leader of the Bashkir national movement in the 1920s who was forced into emigration by Stalin] can be rendered this way: we are not Russians, we are not Tatars, we are Bashkirs."

On the one hand, the April Congress simply shows that the tensions between the Bashkirs and Tatars, two closely related Turkic peoples that Stalin divided at the dawn of Soviet power to weaken the Tatars and allow Moscow to control both, continue to simmer. But on the other, such an open declaration of hostility to the Tatars and also to the Russians is unusual for the Bashkirs. It suggests that a nation typically assumed to be one of most passive is now about to become far more assertive, something that will cause problems not only for Kazan but for Moscow as well.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
English Swedish

Toronto, May 12, 2017 (TSX: LUN; OMX: LUMI) Lundin Mining Corporation ("Lundin Mining or the Corporation") today announced the voting results from its 2017 Annual and Special Meeting (the Meeting) held May 12, 2017, in Toronto, Ontario.

A total of 556,437,283 common shares were voted at the Meeting, representing 76.57% of the votes attached to all outstanding common shares. Shareholders voted in favour of all items of business before the Meeting, as follows:

% of Votes For % of Votes Withheld Director Nominees Donald K. Charter 93.85 6.15 Paul K. Conibear 99.04 0.96 John H. Craig 92.81 7.19 Peter C. Jones 94.91 5.09 Lukas H. Lundin 91.94 8.06 Dale C. Peniuk 99.29 0.71 William A. Rand 90.67 9.33 Catherine J. G. Stefan 99.40 0.60 % In Favour % Against Advisory Vote on the Corporations approach to Executive Compensation 94.84

5.16 Amendments to the Corporations 2006 Incentive Stock Option Plan 61.49

38.51

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP were re-appointed as the Corporations auditors for the ensuing year by 99.40% of the votes cast.

Detailed voting results for the 2017 Meeting are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

This is information that Lundin Mining is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation and the Swedish Securities Markets Act. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact persons set out below on May 12, 2017 at 5:30 p.m. Eastern Time.

About Lundin Mining

Lundin Mining is a diversified Canadian base metals mining company with operations in Chile, the United States of America, Portugal, and Sweden, primarily producing copper, nickel and zinc. In addition, Lundin Mining holds an indirect 24% equity stake in the Freeport Cobalt Oy business, which includes a cobalt refinery located in Kokkola, Finland.

On Behalf of the Board,

Paul Conibear

President and CEO
What is Known and Unknown about Changes to the PLA's Ground Combat Units

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Dennis J. Blasko Publication Date 11 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 7 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, What is Known and Unknown about Changes to the PLA's Ground Combat Units, 11 May 2017, China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157aba4.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

The long-awaited changes in the operational and tactical units of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) have begun with a formal announcement by President Xi Jinping in April 2017. After initiating major reforms in late 2015 and throughout 2016, the Central Military Commission (CMC), service headquarters, and military regions (now theater commands) have been reorganized resulting in the reallocation of many personnel and the demobilization of an unknown number of active duty personnel. But, as part of the ongoing 300,000 man reduction, even larger cuts in personnel will follow as headquarters and units at corps/army-level and below are eliminated, re-subordinated, or restructured.

By 2020, when the structural changes now underway are scheduled for completion, the PLA should number two million active duty personnel. Though the reforms since 2015 are the most significant set of changes for the PLA since the 1950s, they are but an intermediate step, the 2020 milestone, in the PLA's "three-step development strategy" initially announced in 2006. The strategy's final goal was modified in 2008 and defined as "reach[ing] the goal of modernization of national defense and armed forces by the mid-21st century." [1] As such, more adjustments to the PLA's structure and capabilities can be expected over the next three decades as technology improves and China's domestic and the international situations change. Throughout this process the reforms will be evaluated to determine if they meet the objectives of building a strong military to defend China's core security requirements, capable of deterring and winning informationized wars, and accomplishing a variety of military operations other than war such as anti-terrorism, internal stability maintenance, disaster relief, and international peacekeeping and humanitarian relief operations (MOD, May 26, 2015).

After a general introduction to the recently announced reforms, reported developments to in the Marines and Airborne forces will be addressed.

The Announcement of "84 Corps-level Units"

In April 2017, President Xi Jinping made the first general reference to a new set of operational restructurings when he spoke of the adjustment and establishment of "84 corps-level units" (ChinaMil, April 18). However, he provided no further details and did not define what a "corps-level unit" is, nor did he indicate how these units are distributed among the four services, Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force, and the newly established Strategic Support Force and Joint Logistics Support Force.

Previously, foreign analysts considered "corps-level units" to include the Army's 18 group armies, the Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing Garrison commands, and most of the provincial Military Districts (MD), except for the Beijing Garrison and the Tibet and Xinjiang MDs. [2] In the Navy, these units included the three fleet Naval Aviation Headquarters and multiple commands, such as the Yulin, Fujian, Lushun, and two submarine bases. For the Air Force, they included the 15th Airborne Corps, the Shanghai, Nanning, Urumqi, and Dalian Air Force Bases, and several regional command posts. In the Rocket Force, they included the six numbered bases (51-56) that command launch brigades and an engineering command. [3] The new Strategic Support Force also likely commands multiple bases involved with space launch and tracking and cyber and information operations formerly under the control of the four General Departments.

Shortly after Xi's announcement, the Hong Kong-based Ming Pao newspaper estimated the new 84 "corps-level units" will include 15 Army organizations (including 13 group armies and two experimental bases) and 28 provincial Military Districts; 10 naval headquarters including three fleet Naval Aviation Headquarters, five bases, an experimental base and a new Marine headquarters; 12 Air Force units including 10 bases, an experimental base, and the 15th Airborne; seven launch brigades and two additional bases in the Rocket Force; and seven space-affiliated and three cyber and information bases in the Strategic Support Force (Ming Pao, April 20). To date, the official Chinese media has been slow in providing details about Xi's announcement (though new developments are mentioned almost daily). For the past few months presumably as the changes to the 84 "corps-level units" were beginning, official PLA press reports referred only to "a unit [or type of unit] of a certain Theater Command" in contrast to the practice since 2013 of frequently identifying the group army to which the unit belongs.

Theater Command Service Headquarters

When the seven military regions were abolished and five new joint theater commands (TC) established, another set of new organizations was also created: in each of the TCs a Theater Command Army headquarters was established, as well as TC Navy and TC Air Force headquarters. No TC Rocket Force headquarters were formed. The new TC Army headquarters largely perform the same functions as the Navy's three fleets and the Air Force's military region air forces did under the previous structure. [4] Under the principle that the "CMC takes charge of the overall administration, Theater Commands focus on combat, military services focus on construction," the TC Service headquarters operate under a dual chain-of-command, reporting in parallel to both their joint regional TC headquarters and their service headquarters in Beijing.

TC Service headquarters, not the TCs themselves, perform direct command over the operational units of their service located in the area of responsibility of the TC. In that manner, operational units have only a single chain-of-command directly to their TC Service headquarters. The TC Service headquarters are responsible for passing orders down to units from both their TC and service headquarters and likewise keeping both higher headquarters informed of the status and operations of their units. Having operated under a similar structure in the former military region system, TC Navy and Air Force headquarters should be accustomed to working under such a dual chain-of-command, but this setup is new for the Army, where previously units reported to military region headquarters because there was no national-level Army headquarters. It is likely that it will take some time for the new system to be perfected among the joint TC headquarters, TC Army headquarters, and Army headquarters as all organizations must learn how to interact with each other and train their staffs to perform their tasks efficiently.

Additionally, TC Army headquarters have responsibilities that are not obvious from the initial announcement of their formation.

The Army

During personnel reductions and structural reforms in the mid-1980s, 24 group armies were formed. These combined arms formations usually consisted of several infantry and armored divisions supported by artillery, anti-aircraft, engineer, communications, and other support elements and were distributed unevenly among the seven military regions. Prior to the force reduction of 1997, Army mobile combat units included over 100 infantry and armored divisions, but only approximately 20 infantry and armored brigades and only about seven each Army Aviation and Special Operations Force (SOF) units. [5] By the end of the 2003 reduction, the number of group army headquarters had been cut by six to 18, a number that remained constant until 2017. In the course of these reductions, many divisions were eliminated or transformed into brigades (at first one brigade per division, then in recent years two brigades per division), 14 were transferred to the People's Armed Police, one was re-subordinated to the Navy to become the second Marine brigade, and several were sent to the reserve force. [6] Some units from disbanded group armies were reassigned to new headquarters.

As a result, only two (the 40th and 47th) of the 18 group armies had similar compositions of infantry and armored units. [7] All others were uniquely configured, as were the independent combat units assigned to the Beijing Garrison Command, Xinjiang MD, and Tibet MD. In early 2017, the number of operational maneuver Army units assigned to group armies, along with independent units, was estimated to include a total of approximately 21 divisions (20 infantry of various types and one armored), 65 brigades (48 infantry and 17 armored), 12 Army Aviation units (seven brigades and five regiments), and 11 SOF units (nine brigades and two regiments; additionally, some divisions and brigades command smaller SOF units at battalion-level or below). About half the infantry divisions and brigades were classified as mechanized, either heavy or light, while the remainder of infantry units were considered motorized, with about four or five classified as mountain infantry brigades. Only six group armies and the Xinjiang and Tibet MDs had both an Army Aviation unit and an SOF unit. The decline in divisions over these two decades was as dramatic as was the rise in the number of brigades and Army Aviation and SOF units.

In late April 2017, the Ministry of National Defense spokesman confirmed that the former 18 group armies would be reduced to 13 and renumbered from 71 to 83 (ChinaMil, April 28). [8] This numbering scheme was selected to make a break from past designations, as from 1927 until now the PLA had assigned the numbers 1 through 70 to its corps/armies. Many personnel from the four disestablished group army headquarters probably will be demobilized or retired, while others reassigned to remaining headquarters.

The Ming Pao newspaper made the following associations between old and new designators and grouped them according to TCs as seen in the table below (Ming Pao April 11). So far, this schema has proven accurate, though many details of the leadership, location, and composition of the units assigned to the new group armies have not been made public. The only Theater Command not to have any of its group armies eliminated is the Eastern TC opposite Taiwan.

According to the author's understanding of the pre-reform ground order-of-battle, the five disbanded group armies were comprised of the following infantry and armored units:

14th GA: one mechanized infantry brigade, one motorized infantry brigade, one or two mountain infantry brigades, and one armored brigade

47th GA: one mechanized infantry brigade, two motorized infantry brigades, and one armored brigade

40th GA: one mechanized infantry brigade, two motorized infantry brigades, and one armored brigade

20th GA: two mechanized infantry brigades and one armored brigade

27th GA: two mechanized infantry brigades, two motorized infantry brigades, and one armored brigade

In total, approximately 16 infantry brigades of all types and five armored brigades are affected by the reductions, along with an artillery brigade, air defense brigade, and a variety of engineer, communication, chemical defense, and logistics units for each group army. Some of these units may be dissolved completely (most likely those with older equipment and any newer equipment transferred to other units to replace their old weaponry), others may be reassigned to other headquarters, some may be transformed into different types of units, assigned to the reserve force, and some are likely to be transferred the other services. Additionally, personnel billets from the Army could be cut and applied to the other services to better balance the proportion of personnel among the services.

Significantly, none of the disbanded group armies were assigned either an Army Aviation or SOF unit and the only two group armies with the same composition of infantry and armored units were disbanded. We do not know if the Chinese intend to standardize the organization of group armies during this period of reform. To do so would require the elimination of all remaining divisions or the transfer of several divisions from one group army to another. It seems likely, however, that all group armies eventually will be assigned both an Army Aviation and an SOF brigade and additional support units.

Military Districts

Under the former military region structure, the provincial MDs were under the command of the military region headquarters and commanded Military Sub-districts (MSD)/garrisons and county and grassroots People's Armed Force Departments (PAFD). The MD headquarters themselves commanded reserve units in their provinces, while the MSDs/garrisons commanded border and coastal defense units. PAFDs commanded militia units. As part of the CMC organizational reform, the CMC National Defense Mobilization Department was given the responsibility for "leading and managing the provincial military commands" (81.cn, February 4, 2016). Because their organization grade level was one step above the other provincial MDs, the Beijing Garrison and the Tibet and Xinjiang MDs were placed under the "management" of the national-level Army headquarters (ChinaMil, January 12, 2016; Pengpai, August 16, 2016). Pending clarification from official PLA sources, this arrangement probably means that these three headquarters report first to the TC Army headquarters in the area where they are assigned before reporting to Army headquarters in Beijing. However, MD headquarters are no longer commanded only by Army officers: an Air Force major general was reported to have taken command of Henan MD in April (Pengpai, April 12).

Moreover, a few isolated but important reports suggest that the MDs have been removed from the chain-of-command for border and coastal defense units. A report from Heilongjiang states that border defense units are being transferred to Army command and a separate report indicates that coastal defense units in Shantou have been transferred to Army command (Guangming, April 1; Pengpai, April 1). Both Army headquarters in Beijing and TC Army headquarters have a "Border and Coastal Defense Bureau/Division" within their respective Staff Departments, which would provide command to the many dozens of border and coastal defense units. One other report has noted a Guangdong Reserve Division also being transferred to the Army, but no mobilization staff organizations have been identified (yet) in either Army headquarters or TC Army headquarters to oversee reserve unit activities (Pengpai, April 7).

Changes to the responsibilities of the MD chain-of-command will probably result in MD and MSD headquarters having their staff structures modified and the number of officers assigned to these organizations reduced significantly. These headquarters and units are composed of a large number of personnel and could be greatly cut potentially reaping efficiencies brought about by better communications and transportation within the provinces.

Marines

Prior to the current organizational reforms, the Navy had two Marine brigades estimated with approximately 6,000 personnel each, based only in the South Sea Fleet. In recent weeks there have been many reports predicting a massive expansion of the Marine force, potentially up to 100,000 or more. One Army brigade, the 77th Motorized Infantry Brigade, stationed in Shandong in the Northern TC, already has been reported as being transferred to the Marines (but has not been confirmed by official Chinese sources) (China Topix, March 16). If true, this development suggests the creation of a Marine organization in the North Sea Fleet.

Some of this reporting is dubious as it refers to six brigades comprising the 100,000 person force. That would equate to over 16,000 personnel per brigade, 10,000 more than the current strength of a Marine brigade, and larger than an Army division. Other suspicious details include that this will "boost [the Navy's] strength to 270,000 personnel from the existing 235,000." This obviously could not include a 100,000-man Marine expansion, though increasing the size of the Navy (not only the Marines) is expected.

A more sober recommendation for the Marine force was written by Army Major General An Weiping who suggested forming a Marine formation in each of the three fleets composed of a Marine brigade, aviation brigade, support brigade, and SOF brigade (China Information Security, January 7). The three additional brigades would likely be much smaller than the Marine brigade and would most efficiently come from the Army. Such a structure would probably number around 40,000 personnel, which would be approximately the size of a corps, and require a headquarters (such as is mentioned in the May 20th Ming Pao article).

Another option for increasing the size of the Marines would be to transfer one or both of the two designated Army Amphibious Infantry Divisions to the Navy and convert them to brigades. Regardless of how it is done, the Marines are likely to increase in size. This will require the Navy to concurrently build a much larger force of sea-going amphibious ships, such as the Type 071 LPD or other large ships capable of handling Marines, landing and/or air-cushion vessels, and helicopters, such as the reported Type 075 under construction (Global Times, May 9).

The only official word from the Ministry of National Defense about the Marines has been: "At present, the relevant reform measures including the adjustment of the Marine Corps are pressing ahead steadily according to plan" (ChinaMil, March 31).

Airborne

There have been unconfirmed reports of expanding the 15th Airborne Corps by converting its three divisions to two brigades each and adding an organic aviation brigade, support brigade, and SOF brigade (a support structure much like An Weiping's suggestion for the Marines) (China Defense Blog, April 29). While that specific structure has yet to be seen, there have been multiple reports of unspecified types of Airborne brigades in recent weeks (for example see 81.cn, April 28; CNTV, April 29). Similarly, an expanded Airborne force will require many more long-distance heavy-lift transports-like the Y-20-than are currently in the Air Force's inventory.

Implications

Changes to the orders-of-battle for the Army, Marines, and Airborne as mentioned above have many implications for future PLA capabilities and operations. First, none of these changes will happen overnight. People and units will be transferred to different locations and units will have to learn to work with headquarters and units they have never worked with before. This will certainly cause anxiety and tension for many soldiers and leaders. Modifications to what seemed like good ideas on paper are inevitable.

Fewer Army units will allow for increased levels of field training, such as seen in the trans-regional exercises of the past decade. The fewer troops spread further apart would be expected to be trained and ready to move long distances to reinforce units in other regions. All units must be prepared to operate on short notice in new locales and coordinate with unfamiliar headquarters and units. In addition to Navy and Air Force units training outside China's borders, additional Army exercises in foreign countries are likely. More training with more advanced equipment also means more wear and tear on equipment and more time and expense for maintenance. But a smaller number of units requires less new equipment than the larger Army of previous generations. Newer, higher-technology equipment requires more highly educated, trained, and motivated personnel, who remain in service for longer periods of time, than in decades past. The PLA's professional military education system will also undergo many changes to prepare officers and NCOs for their more advanced and complex assignments.

A smaller Army means that its proportion of the defense budget will probably decrease, even as levels of funding continue to rise. Currently, the relative personnel strength of the services to each other is unknown as is the distribution of funding among the services. Nonetheless, even as the Army gets smaller, it will likely be the largest of the services. But breaking the "Big Army" concept is an essential requirement in transforming the PLA to conduct maritime operations farther from China and aerospace operations in support of all PLA campaigns.

If the expansion of the Marines and Airborne comes to fruition, the PLA's potential for expeditionary operations will increase significantly (pending the construction of the sea- and air-lift to move them beyond China's borders). Expeditionary missions will strain existing PLA logistics capabilities, a problem that the Joint Logistics Support Force, in part, is intended to resolve. But new operating concepts will be necessary, such as logistics bases outside of China. Likewise, these operations demand levels of command and control, intelligence, space, and mapping support that now, to some extent, are consolidated in the new Strategic Support Force. More developments in these fields will undoubtedly occur and the PLA's tooth-to-tail ratio will change as additional support is necessary for distant operations.

Conclusion

No matter how functionally proficient these organizational changes and increased levels of training make the PLA's operational and tactical units, the quality of its joint TC, service headquarters, and unit staffs will be crucial for the planning, command, and control of campaigns. Success boils down to leadership in units and headquarters at all levels. Therefore, even as more changes to PLA organization are announced, it is likely there will be many more official references to the critical self-evaluation first published in 2015: Some commanders 1) cannot judge the situation, 2) cannot understand the intention of higher authorities, 3) cannot make operational decisions, 4) cannot deploy troops, and 5) cannot deal with unexpected situations (81.cn, January 22). As the PLA continues its modernization and reform, the greatest unknown is whether its leadership is ready for the new challenges ahead.

Dennis J. Blasko, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Retired), is a former U.S. army attache to Beijing and Hong Kong and author of The Chinese Army Today (Routledge, 2006).

Notes

The State Council Information Office of the People's Republic of China, "China's National Defense in 2008," January 2009 http://eng.mod.gov.cn/publications/2017-04/11/content_4778231.htm. In 2006, the final goal was stated as "being capable of winning informationized wars"; however, in the following two years, the PLA leadership probably realized that by 2049 warfare would have changed substantially in nature from "informationized wars" and thus left undefined the precise form of war the PLA must be able to fight. When speaking of "corps-level units," Xi probably was referring to organizations of both corps leader-grade and corps deputy-leader grade. United States Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency, Directory of PRC Military Personalities, Washington DC, 2016, pp. xxxv, xxxvi, and 177. The three fleets, the North, East, and South Sea Fleets, remain functional as the TC Navy headquarters for their respective TCs. The spokesman called these formations "corps," previously the Chinese used the term "combined corps." Dennis J. Blasko, "The PLA Army/Ground Forces" in The PLA as Organization Reference Volume v2.0, Kevin Pollpeter and Ken W. Allen, Defense Group Inc., 2015 p. 263. Not all units, however, were manned and equipped at full strength and were therefore grouped into three levels of readiness categories. In addition to mobile combat units, the PLA posted scores of static border and coastal defense units along China's periphery. The remaining divisions also were reduced in size from their former Soviet organization model of four maneuver regiments to three maneuver regiments per division. The order-of-battle details in this and following paragraphs are based on the author's analysis of open Chinese sources; they are close to, but not exactly the same as, the numbers found in the 2016 DOD report to Congress, The Military Balance 2017, and the 2016 Directory of PRC Military Personalities.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
China's Global Power Projection Hit With "Strategic Overdraft"

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Willy Wo-Lap Lam Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, China's Global Power Projection Hit With "Strategic Overdraft", 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157d6f4.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Despite the tough challenges facing the Chinese economy, President and "core leader" Xi Jinping is going ahead with ambitious plans to project Chinese power worldwide including the landmark One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. Xi is expected to announce a new series of projects linking China with Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa at an OBOR international forum scheduled for mid-May Beijing. Xi, who is personally supervising the scheme in via the Central Leading Group on OBOR Construction Work, apparently hopes to boost China's agenda-setting capacity in global economic discourse. Xi and his colleagues have taken advantage of U.S. President Donald Trump's nationalist and anti-globalization stance to emphasize Beijing's eagerness to provide leadership in combatting protectionism and promoting free trade.

While OBOR is being given top billing across the gamut of state media, a small number of relatively liberal Chinese academics are raising misgivings about the viability and sustainability of Xi's global undertaking. Foremost among these critics is Renmin University international affairs specialist Shi Yinhong (), who is also a counselor or advisor to the State Council. In a late 2016 article entitled "China Must Guard Against Strategic Overdraft," Shi pointed out that the Chinese Communist Party leadership must exercise caution regarding "strategic military" (sabre rattling by the People's Liberation Army) and "strategic economics" (projecting power through economic means such has underwriting projects along the OBOR). He argued that China must "prevent excessive expansionism, which will result in 'strategic overdraft'" () (Phoenix TV, October 4, 2016; Lianhe Zaobao [Singapore], September 21, 2016). [1]

While Professor Shi is referring to President Xi's overall foreign policy, which ranges from building air and naval bases on reclaimed land in the South China Sea to improving relations with developing countries by forgiving $60 billion of debt, the OBOR game plan could be the best example of what Western critics call "imperial overreach" (The American Interest, March 1). The OBOR consists of the Silk Road Economic Belt, which stretches from China through Central Asia to Eastern Europe; and the 21st Central Maritime Silk-Road, which extends from Southeast Asia through the Indian Subcontinent to Eastern Africa. Under the "big is better" principle, however, there is a tendency for the Xi leadership to subsume economic and infrastructure cooperation with countries throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Africa under the OBOR umbrella. As of early this year, 80 Chinese state-owned enterprise conglomerates are negotiating infrastructure and related items with government officials in over 65 countries (Sohu.com, April 10; HKTDC.com [Hong Kong], May 23, 2016).

There is no official estimate as to the funds involved in this gargantuan venture. However, experts at McKinsey, a consultancy, estimate that comprehensive improvement of infrastructure in Asia and Africa alone could cost $2-3 trillion-roughly 12 times the financial outlay of the Marshall Plan for rebuilding Europe after WWII (Channel NewsAsia, April 22; Fortune, December 12, 2016). So far, a number of massive projects are already underway, including the $50 billion undertaking for building and improving port and railway facilities in eastern Pakistan, have been underwritten by Chinese financial institutions. Given that the so-called Chinese Economic Miracle came to an end early this decade, questions have been asked about whether Beijing has the means to sustain its ambitious programs. China's foreign-exchange reserves, which peaked at $4 trillion in mid-2014, has dropped to $3 trillion early this year. With China's state-owned banks already laden with non-performing loans, the Fitch credit rating agency warned that these institutions' investments in OBOR could "create new asset-quality risks for [China's] banking system" (CNBC, January 16).

There is also the question of whether, in return for its magnanimous commitment to helping developing countries in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Central Asia, China will garner a commensurate level of good will. As Professor Shi noted, supposed beneficiaries of Chinese largesse all have their "long-term interests in areas of sovereignty, self-reliance, and security." He warned that if OBOR strategies do not take full consideration of these sensitive matters, Beijing investments could "ignite nationalism-oriented political controversies in the internal politics of [beneficiary] countries." It is notable that countries such as Sri Lanka and Myanmar have requested renegotiations of Chinese infrastructure investments largely due to opposition raised by nationalists in each two country (Times of India, February 16; Transnational Institute [Amsterdam], July 18, 2016).

Apart from using economic means to bond China with a host of developed and developing countries, Beijing is also confident that OBOR would showcase not only Chinese technology but also Chinese companies' compliance with global standards. However, quite a few of China-financed projects could suffer from similar problems that have adversely affected previous mega-investments made by SOE conglomerates in Southeast Asia and Africa, namely that these projects are built on guanxi ("political connections") rather than globally accepted terms in fields including fair competition, open bidding, Western-style auditing and overall transparency.

Early this year, the European Commission announced that it was investigating the 350-kilometer high-speed railway connecting the Serbian capital of Belgrade to Budapest in Hungary. The state-owned giant, China Railway Corporation will be the main contractor and provider of technology. The Commission is looking into the long-term financial viability of the $2.89 billion railway, and more importantly, whether this project had gone through public tenders stipulated by EU laws (Asia Times, April 4; First Financial News (Shanghai), March 1; Ming Pao (Hong Kong), February 2). The Belgrade-Budapest railroad is part of an ambitious China-Europe Land-Sea Fast Transport Route that will link western Chinese cities all the way to the Greek port of Piraeus, which is partly owned by Chinese interests (English.Gov.cn, February 8; China Daily, February 8). Cui Hongjian, a Europe expert at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs-administered China Institute of International Studies, has indirectly attributed the investigation to Brussel's political distrust of China. Cui argued that the European Commission "harbors a relatively contradictory mentality regarding Chinese participation" in large-scale infrastructure projects in the EU (Ta Kung Pao [Hong Kong], February 22; Global Times, February 21).

According to a People's Daily commentary By Zhou Hanmin (), the OBOR is not only an effort to "tell the China story well and spread China's message properly" but also an attempt to build up a "community of destiny" with nations, particularly those in the developing world. The commentator also noted that the OBOR was intimately connected with President Xi's Chinese Dream, one of whose key goals is that the country would emerge as a superpower by 2049, the centenary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China (People's Daily, April 6). There is no denying, however, the fact that the overarching ambition evinced by the OBOR scheme has raised the suspicion of rich and poor countries alike that it is primarily a Chinese exercise in self-aggrandizement of unprecedented proportions. Moscow is said to be unhappy that thanks to Beijing's generous financial and technological aid to Central Asia, China is about to displace Russia as the dominant influence among several former client states of the Soviet Union. In the eyes of New Delhi, Beijing's investments in civilian and military ports in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and the Maldives constitute a "string of pearls" containment policy against India (South China Morning Post, March 6; Asia Times, February 2, The Asan Forum [Korea], December 16). Western Europe politicians have expressed misgivings about China's apparent "divide and rule" tactics toward the EU, which could be accomplished through its tight embrace of the 16 Central and Eastern European countries (European Council on Foreign Relations, December 14, 2016; European Institute for Asian Affairs, January 2014).

Security Overstretch

Apart from OBOR, the most obvious area where Beijing may have gone overboard in power projection is its pugilistic posture in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. The construction of air and naval bases on reclaimed South China Sea islets whose sovereignty is contested by several ASEAN members has raised the possibility of at least small-scale skirmishes between the Chinese armed forces on the one hand, and those of the U.S. and its Asian allies on the other. According to Shi Yinhong, a balance must be struck between upholding sovereign rights and maintaining stability. The respected academic argued that from 2012 to late 2014, Beijing successfully focused on projecting military power in regional flashpoints. "If [the PLA] did a lot in upholding [sovereign] rights in the earlier period, we should in the forthcoming period do more in maintaining stability," Shi noted. "[Beijing] needs to prevent the rapid development of strategic competition and confrontation between China and the U.S.," he warned, adding that the Chinese leadership should continue to improve relations with ASEAN members that have oceanic interests.

There are, however, no indication that the CCP leadership will tone down its aggressive military posture. While meeting the commanders of 84 newly reconstructed PLA units in mid-April, Xi, who is Chairman of the policy-setting Central Military Commission, called upon officers and soldiers to "prepare for warfare at any time" and to "uphold [high] standards of combat power." That commander-in-chief Xi is determined to use military means to buttress the country's global geopolitical putsch was demonstrated when he went in late April on an inspection trip to a Dalian shipyard that was building China's second aircraft carrier (Ming Pao, April 23; Ministry of Defense, April 18).

Conclusion

That China's reliance on the no-holds-barred flexing of military and economic muscle might not go down well with established powers particularly in the Western world is demonstrated by the fact that only one government leader from Europe -Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni-will be attending the OBOR international forum. This is despite the fact that Beijing has issued invitations to the leaders of more than 100 countries to attend what Chinese media call China's biggest show for 2017 (Zhejiang Economic Net, April 19; VOA news, April 18). Since coming to power in late 2012, Xi has repeatedly spun out bold and all-encompassing visions and schemes such as the Chinese Dream, the OBOR game plan, as well as a 65- point directive on "comprehensively deepening reforms." While these grand strategies have enabled Xi to amass power at unprecedented speed, the onus is on the "core leader" to prove that he can actually deliver on both his domestic and international pledges. After all, "strategic overdraft" could mean not only more indebtedness for government coffers and banks but also result in stoking the flames of the "China threat" theory in countries ranging from India and Japan to ASEAN members with territorial rows with China.

Dr. Willy Wo-Lap Lam is a Senior Fellow at The Jamestown Foundation. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Center for China Studies, the History Department and the Program of Master's in Global Political Economy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is the author of five books on China, including "Chinese Politics in the Hu Jintao Era: New Leaders, New Challenges."

Notes

See also Shi Yinhong, "Prudence Crucial for the One-Belt-One-Road Initiative," in Shao Binhong, ed. Looking for a Road: China Debates Its and the World's Future, Brill Books, 2016, pp 203-210.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Update: Over 20,000 DRC refugees in Angola

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Update: Over 20,000 DRC refugees in Angola, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157e0e4.html [accessed 9 November 2022]

Some 20,563 refugees have now arrived in Angola, fleeing insecurity and violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region since early April. A steady stream of refugees continue to cross into Dundo in Lunda Norte Province. More than 3,000 have arrived in the last few days

The Angolan army is transporting the new arrivals from border points to the two receptions centres in Cacanda and Moussunge.

The recent arrivals included people with severe wounds and burn injuries, who have been transferred to a local hospital to receive urgent medical attention. A local hospital is already assisting some 70 persons with serious wounds and burn injuries.

Refugee reception centres in Angola are already over-crowded and struggling to accommodate daily arrivals. UNHCR is currently assisting the Angolan authorities to identify a suitable site for the relocation of refugees from the temporary reception centres.

UNHCR continues to provide food and relief items to new arrivals. UNHCR partners are pitching tents and distributing plastic sheeting to provide adequate shelter, prioritizing the most vulnerable people.

UNHCR and partners, in support of the Angolan authorities, have pre-registered so far over 11,000 persons, 70 per cent women and children. UNHCR, in coordination with UNICEF, is responding to an increasing number of unaccompanied and separated children who require immediate attention.

Aid from a second UNHCR airlift arrived in Dundo on 8 May with 1,200 family tents, 1,500 plastic sheeting, 500 plastic rolls, and 3,000 solar lanterns are currently being unloaded in preparation for distribution.

UNHCR is currently assisting the Angolan authorities to identify a suitable site for the relocation of refugees from the temporary reception centres. We are advocating for a site at least 50 kilometres from the border.

UNHCR is appealing for USD 6.5 million to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, including food, nutrition, health and relief items for refugees.
The CMC General Office: Recentralizing Power in the PLA

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Joel Wuthnow Publication Date 11 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 7 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, The CMC General Office: Recentralizing Power in the PLA, 11 May 2017, China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157e684.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

One of the key themes of Xi Jinping's attempts to reform the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is the need to recentralize power under the Central Military Commission (CMC), the PLA's highest-level decision-making organ which Xi has led since November 2012. The thinking is that PLA modernization previously stalled (and corruption flourished) because too much authority had been ceded to the four general departments, seven military regions, and other power centers in the PLA that were more interested in protecting their own "vested interests" than in reform. Over the last few years, Xi has tried to restore power to the center in several ways: abolishing the general departments, increasing the autonomy of supervisory organs such as the Audit Office and the military legal system, and overseeing a major anti-corruption campaign in the PLA. [1]

Yet all these changes leave open a question: how does an 11-member CMC (not to mention Xi personally) exercise oversight over a 2.3 million-person organization? An important part of the answer lies in the CMC General Office (CMC-GO), which has provided staff support to CMC members since 1949. Though long a key administrative agent, the responsibility, and influence of the CMC-GO has grown as Xi has sought to revitalize the CMC's authority and assert his position as CMC chairman. Available evidence indicates that that the CMC-GO has supported these goals in three ways: managing an enlarged CMC bureaucracy, providing trusted counsel to Xi, and carrying out new legal and propaganda roles. Its ability to carry out these missions is thus key to Xi's ability to implement his larger reform program.

Managing an Expanded Bureaucracy

As with other general offices across the Party and state apparatus, the CMC-GO's essential role is to provide staff support for senior leaders. Its official mission, according to the Ministry of National Defense, is to process "all CMC communications and documents, coordinate meetings, and convey orders and directives to other CMC subordinate sections." [2] These are such indispensable functions that the CMC-GO was largely unaffected by historical events that disrupted other parts of the PLA, such as the Cultural Revolution and the large-scale military restructurings of the 1950s and 1980s. [3] Led by a director and several deputy directors, the CMC-GO originally carried out its duties from an office adjacent to the Zhongnanhai leadership compound before moving to the top floors of the Bayi (August 1st) building in 2000.

Under Xi, the CMC-GO continues to serve as a liaison between the CMC, the four services, and the five new theater commands (TCs). Yet changes to the internal CMC structure under Xi's leadership have placed new demands on the general office. In January 2016, Xi announced a new CMC organization composed of 15 departments, commissions, and offices. [4] These included the successor organizations of the four general departments, as well as separate training, administration, and national defense mobilization departments (previously under the General Staff Department). Supervisory organs like the Discipline Inspection Commission (previously under the General Political Department, GPD), and smaller offices responsible for niche areas such as strategic planning and foreign military exchanges also appeared.

Although these organizations are under nominal CMC oversight, in practice there is a need for a bureaucratic interface to provide coordination between the CMC members and subordinate departments. This is not only a practical requirement, given constraints on CMC members' time and attention, but also helps to align the new CMC bureaucracy with the PLA's existing grade structure. In particular, several of the new CMC offices (such as the Audit Office and the Office of International Military Cooperation) are two or more grade levels below the CMC and normally would be expected to report via an intermediary like the CMC-GO. [5] Serving this role gives the general office a significant ability to influence the relationship between CMC department directors and CMC members and to decide when and how information will be transmitted to and from senior leaders. Yet it also creates the responsibility of ensuring that CMC directives are being implemented by subordinate organizations.

To increase the CMC-GO's ability to control the bureaucracy, Xi has increased the status of its current director, Lieutenant General Qin Shengxiang (). Two recent changes are worth noting. First, Qin has been dual-hatted as director of the CMC Reform and Organization Office, which helps develop and execute reform plans for the PLA (Pengpai, August 28, 2016). Second, Qin has been elevated in grade from TC Deputy Leader to TC Leader (Pengpai, February 25, 2017). This is significant both because it places Qin on the same or higher grade as all but four of the 15 CMC department directors, and because it raises the bureaucratic status of the CMC-GO itself to an unprecedented level. [6] These changes have led some to compare Qin's influence to that of former CMC Secretary General Yang Baibing (Sing Tao Daily, January 12, 2016). More symbolically, the CMC-GO is also listed first in protocol order, even ahead of the successors to the four general departments, which underscores its role in managing the new CMC organization (ChinaMil, January 11, 2016).

Xi's Eyes and Ears

Another key function that the CMC-GO has played is providing trusted advice and information to senior leaders. Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin both placed long-time personal secretaries () in the CMC-GO to serve as their "eyes and ears" in the PLA. [7] Xi Jinping himself served as a secretary to then-Defense Minister Geng Biao in the CMC-GO between 1979 and 1982. Although only in his 20s, Xi was likely deemed suitable because of the close relationship between Geng and Xi's father, Xi Zhongxun, during the anti-Japanese war. Later, Geng's daughter recalled that "my father thought that Jinping was a very reliable young man, who studied hard" (People's Daily, December 23, 2012). The experience also likely demonstrated to Xi the critical roles played by the general office.

As a CMC leader, Xi followed Deng and Jiang's example by appointing a close associate to a key CMC-GO post. Specifically, Zhong Shaojun (), who currently serves as one of the CMC-GO deputy directors and head of Xi's personal CMC office, was formerly a civilian official who aided Xi when he was Zhejiang Party Secretary, and later as Shanghai Party Secretary (New York Times, September 30, 2015). After Xi was appointed CMC vice chairman in 2010, Zhong was given a military rank of senior colonel and placed in the CMC-GO; he was later promoted to Major General. Although Zhong maintains an extremely low public profile, rarely appearing in Chinese media reports, he is an important gatekeeper and confidante to Xi on military matters.

New Missions

The CMC-GO also plays a role in a variety of other functional areas. Its policy research bureau () gained attention from 1987 to 1992 when its then director, Li Jijun, published a number of influential papers on local war strategy. [8] That bureau remains a source of military advice; in 2016, Major General Cai Hongshuo, a senior researcher, was appointed deputy director of the experts' committee of the CMC Leading Small Group on reform, chaired by Xi (Pengpai, July 28, 2016). The CMC-GO also oversees the PLA's secrecy commission () that supervises the PLA's system of maintaining classified information. [9] Perhaps its most sensitive role is overseeing the Central Guards Bureau (), which provides bodyguards for top Chinese Communist Party and PLA officials and provides security for key sites.

Over the last few years, the general office has assumed two additional roles designed to support the larger goal of recentralizing authority under the CMC. First is issuing military regulations, which was a responsibility of the former General Political Department (GPD). [10] One PRC legal affairs expert explains that the CMC-GO has the responsibility for "implementing the CMC chairman's instructions," meaning that the documents it issues "should have the power of military regulations" (Legal Daily, January 28, 2016). For instance, a 2015 instruction, distributed "with the approval of CMC chairman Xi Jinping," outlined new auditing procedures for the PLA, while a 2016 instruction required units to fulfill CMC-mandated training objectives (Jiefangjun Bao, February 10, 2015, Xinhua, December 28, 2016).

A second new mission for the CMC-GO is in the area of propaganda. In the past, the CMC-GO did not play a notable propaganda role, ceding this function to the former GPD. Under Xi, however, the general office has issued a variety of circulars, most of them enjoining soldiers to carefully study Xi's remarks on select topics. One 2016 circular, for instance, drew attention to Xi's remarks on the 80th anniversary of the Long March, while another encouraged PLA personnel to study Xi's speech to cadres on the spirit of the 6th Plenum of the 18th Party Congress, which called on Party members, among other things, to "defend the core" (referring to Xi himself) (Xinhua, October 24, 2016, Xinhua, February 26, 2017). [11]

The common link in the CMC-GO's recent activities in the legal and political arenas is the imperative to buttress Xi's influence in the PLA. Major General Tian Yixiang, another CMC-GO deputy director, explained that the "number one work responsibility" of the general office is to "defend and implement the CMC chairman responsibility system" (Jiefangjun Bao, April 28, 2016). The "CMC chairman responsibility system" is a phrase popularized over the last few years that implies that ultimate authority over PLA affairs rests with Xi, rather than the CMC vice chairmen (who were granted significant autonomy under the Jiang and Hu administrations). [12] Issuing instructions under Xi's name and publicizing Xi's remarks on military topics is thus a way for the CMC-GO to carry out its duty to promote the role of the CMC chairman.

Constraints

Although the CMC-GO has played a significant role in returning authority to the CMC, and elevating Xi's status as CMC chairman in particular, there are a few key constraints on its influence. First, its expanded authority is largely contingent on its relationship with Xi. This has two implications: the general office's influence could ebb if Xi's successor decides to move power back to the former general departments or elsewhere in the PLA; and Xi could reduce the authority bestowed on the office's leadership if he feels that they are no longer serving his interests (just as Deng Xiaoping removed Yang Baibing as head of the now-defunct CMC Secretariat in 1992). [13]

Second, Xi's ability to rely on confidantes in the CMC-GO to better understand developments in the PLA is limited. Zhong Shaojun himself is only one individual; it is unclear who Xi's other trusted advisers in the general office are (though he certainly employs a cadre of lower-level personal secretaries). Xi does not, for instance, appear to have a longstanding personal relationship with Qin Shengxiang, who previously oversaw the GPD's Organization Department. Moreover, Zhong himself does not have a long pedigree of service in the PLA, which could limit his ability to grasp internal developments and transmit them to Xi.

Third, attempts by the CMC-GO leadership to enforce compliance by subsidiary organizations could encounter bureaucratic resistance. There is already evidence of an effort by individuals who claim to be affiliated with the former GPD to undercut Qin Shengxiang's influence by tying him to disgraced former CMC vice chairmen Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou (Boxun, April 2014; Boxun, March 2017). This could indicate frustration with Qin's expanded authority or the ways in which he has sought to use it. More broadly, any of the new CMC organizations could use common tactics, such as withholding embarrassing details on their performance, to circumvent the CMC-GO.

Conclusion

An important test of the CMC-GO's ability to manage the CMC bureaucracy will come over the next few years as PLA reform deepens, including through a planned 300,000-person downsizing, force structure adjustments, and a major PLA leadership turnover. Those changes will place added burdens on Xi and his fellow CMC members not only to effectively communicate with the larger PLA, but also to understand and break through any bureaucratic logjams. The CMC-GO will place a key role in this respect by providing advice, reinforcing Xi's status as CMC chairman, and managing the enlarged CMC bureaucracy. However, given its constraints, it is unclear that the office has the ability to fight and win battles against committed bureaucratic foes.

Dr. Joel Wuthnow is a Research Fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Institute for National Strategic Studies, at the National Defense University (NDU). Prior to joining NDU, he was a China analyst at the Center for Naval Analyses, a post-doctoral fellow in the China and the World Program at Princeton University, and a pre-doctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Notes

Joel Wuthnow and Phillip C. Saunders, Chinese Military Reform in the Age of Xi Jinping (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 2017), pp. 32-5. PRC Ministry of National Defense, http://eng.mod.gov.cn/cmc/index.htm For an insider's account of the CMC-GO from the 1950s-1980s, see Bo Xuezheng, "My Days in the CMC General Office" (), Party History World (), January 2006, pp. 8-16. Wuthnow and Saunders, pp. 10-13. Thanks to Ken Allen for this insight. Historically, the CMC-GO was an MR Deputy Leader-grade organization. The directors of successor organizations of the four general departments (namely Joint Staff, Political Work, Logistics Support, and Equipment Development) remain CMC members-one grade above TC Leader. It is unclear whether those departments will remain at that grade after the 19th Party Congress, when a major PLA leadership turnover is expected. Deng appointed Wang Ruilin as a CMC-GO deputy director in the early 1980s, while Jiang appointed Jia Ting'an as general office director in the 1990s. See: Cheng Li, "The New Military Elite: Generational Profile and Contradictory Trends" in David Finkelstein and Kristen Gunness, Civil-Military Relations in Today's China: Swimming in a New Sea (New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 67-8. Michael D. Swaine, The Military & Political Succession in China (Arlington, VA: RAND, 1992), 70. Li later served as president of the PLA Academy of Military Science. The CMC-GO also played a significant role in drafting the Hu Jintao-era "new historic missions." Isaac B. Kardon and Phillip C. Saunders, "Reconsidering the PLA as an Interest Group," in Phillip C. Saunders and Andrew Scobell, PLA Influence on China's National Security Policymaking (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), p. 42. Kenneth W. Allen, "Introduction to the PLA's Organizational Reforms: 2000-2012," in Kevin Pollpeter and Kenneth W. Allen, The PLA as Organization v2.0 (Vienna, VA: DGI, 2015), pp. 38-9. The CMC-GO has had a Legal Affairs Bureau () for years, though in practice military regulations were issued by the GPD. In charge of this propaganda effort is CMC-GO Political Work Bureau () director Major General Wang Anlong, who previously served in the Nanjing MR. This is potentially important due to the links between Xi and former senior officers from that command. See: "Xi Jinping Consolidates Power By Promoting Alumni of the Nanjing Military Region," China Brief, January 9, 2015. The phraseology is derived from the 1982 PRC Constitution, which states that the "Chairman assumes overall responsibility for the work of the Central Military Commission." Swaine, p. 70.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Thinking the Unthinkable: Are American Organizations in China Ready for a Serious Crisis?

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Matthew Brazil Publication Date 11 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 7 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Thinking the Unthinkable: Are American Organizations in China Ready for a Serious Crisis?, 11 May 2017, China Brief Volume: 17 Issue: 7, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157f074.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.

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Since the 2016 General Election, American relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) have followed a rollercoaster-like trajectory. Days before his inauguration, President Trump briefly reversed decades of predictable American conduct in a telephone conversation with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and hinted a departure from the "one China policy," (CNA.com.tw, December 3, 2016; Reuters, January 12). During his confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson proposed blocking access to China's artificial islands in the South China Sea and triggered an outraged response from Beijing (C-SPAN, January 11, Global Times, January 13).

Then came the public reversals. With little explanation, Trump endorsed "One China" during his call with Chinese President Xi Jinping in early February (Xinhuanet, February 10). PRC Prime Minister Li Keqiang subsequently expressed optimism about the U.S.-China relationship in the lead up to the Xi-Trump meeting in early April (XinhuaNet and New York Times, March 15). During Secretary of State Tillerson's visit to Beijing a week later, he adopted Chinese phraseology to describe the bilateral relationship, something that previous U.S. administrations had carefully avoided (Xinhuanet and Washington Post, March 19).

If this was solace for some who seek signs of stability in this important bilateral relationship, the events that followed betrayed potential for future instability . The new American president appears committed to punishing China for its trade surplus, and the U.S. Navy plans to enhance "freedom of navigation operations" near China's artificial islands in the South China Sea (Navy Times, February 12). Meanwhile, early Chinese objections to American THAAD anti-missile defenses in South Korea became a hotter topic with their rushed deployment in March, and April brought disquiet to Chinese policymakers in the form of the U.S. missile strike against Syria and the deployment of the USS Carl Vinson strike group to Northeast Asia (Hangzhou Military television, July 11; China Daily, March 15; Navy Times, April 9). Trump now views Chinese assistance with North Korea as essential.

As if to underline the potential for instability, a recent speech by the popular military commentator Jin Yinan indicates that Chinese military planners view the Trump presidency as a less than serious threat to their plans for changing the balance of power in the Western Pacific. [1]

This dizzying ride comes at the end of an extended downturn in Sino-American ties and escalating risk to foreign organizations in the PRC (China Brief, October 5, 2012, and May 11). If a serious bilateral crisis develops between China and the U.S. or with a number of other potential antagonistsnotably Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Britain, Australia, and Canadatheir nationals in China may become unacceptably vulnerable to expulsion or detention.

This article focuses mainly on foreign businesspeople in China, due to their large number and the legal "duty of care" shouldered by corporate employers (SHRM.org, 2010; InternationalSOS.com, 2016). However, roughly half the foreigners in China are students, who along with tourists, missionaries, employees of non-government organizations (NGOs), and diplomats, would face similar risks based on nationality (Institute of International Education, 2016).

The Chinese Communist Factor in the "Big Emerging Market" [2]

Ninety percent of American businesses recently surveyed still report profitability in China, though 80 percent reported feeling unwelcomed (U.S.-China Business Council 2016 Membership Survey). Moreover, American business leaders are less optimistic overall, citing animosity of the host government, slower growth, and investment barriers (Bloomberg, April 18). Since companies are in business to make money, most invested in China will likely react to uncertainty by choosing a standard "wait and see" approach in 2017: stay put but slow expansion, control hiring and travel, and reexamine security. These are all familiar steps for business anywhere when risk escalates.

However, unlike most other nations that attract multinational corporate investment and offer a growing consumer market, the PRC is ruled by a huge, 88 million member entity the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). It has the dominant role in the economy, assists "national champions" to compete against foreign firms with the help of government regulators, wields an intrusive and powerful security apparatus, lavishly funds programs to covertly acquire foreign high technology, is engaged in a widespread purge against corruption within, and has successfully cultivated a widespread popular suspicion of the U.S., Japan and certain other nations. Despite China's relatively low crime rate, the CCP's program presents an atypically high-risk profile for resident and visiting foreigners, be they tourists, business people, students, missionaries, diplomats, or others.

American people and assets in the China may be more in at risk this year than at any time since 1989 (China Brief, May 11, 2016). Official and popular suspicion of foreigners is also reflected in China's continuing anti-spy campaign that urges citizens to report suspected espionage activity in exchange for large potential rewards (Beijing Ribao and BBC, April 10; Chinese State Security video via SCMP, April 12). Though these and other signs of a declining U.S.-China relationship are easy to observe in the headlines, some American organizations with exposure there remain less than prepared for a real crisis and may overestimate the ability of the U.S. Government to assist them in an emergency.

Lack of Preparedness

Major demonstrations and anti-foreign violence are assumed risks in international business, but the history of the People's Republic since 1949 carries many examples of mass action being purposely driven or encouraged by the central government. Demonstrations and mob violence, not to mention arbitrary detention, remain part of the CCP's toolbox. If foreigners became endangered in a deteriorating scenario and their home country agencies were called upon to assist a mass evacuation of stranded citizens, such a mission would likely prove impossible without generous, and rapid, host government (read CCP and military) cooperation.

Interviews with security experts with extensive China experience and broad knowledge of industry trends indicate that some foreign firms in China have extensive plans in place to remove their non-Chinese employees and dependents in an emergency. The most prepared have a clear and rehearsed emergency evacuation plan, briefings to employees, and seats reserved in advance, via "evacuation insurance," on chartered aircraft.

However, these same experts say that many or most firms do not go beyond an ad hoc, incident-by-incident approach and eschew detailed preparations. In the words of one well-informed security executive, if a mass evacuation were needed, foreign companies mostly intend "to throw money at it" without much pre-planning. A contributing factor to this problem, according to a professor of business strategy at IESE, is the widespread inability of modern business leaders to understand signs of geopolitical risk (IESE, [accessed April 20]; Stratfor, April 14).

The numbers of foreigners in China make this low level of readiness a serious issue. The last time a major evacuation occurred was after the June Fourth 1989 Tian'anmen Incident, when there were probably less than 100,000 foreigners living in the PRC. But their numbers increased at more than three percent per annum in the intervening 24 years. Official statistics show that there were 848,500 foreigners resident in China in 2013, and approximately 12 percent, or 101,000, were Americans, with over 127,000 Japanese in 2009 (Guangming Daily, April 8, 2015; China Daily, March 9, 2015; Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2009). Should a situation of high risk to foreign residents arise today, hundreds of thousands might try to depart China all at once, clogging ordinary means of transport. Larry Wortzel of the U.S.-China Commission, who was a key figure in the evacuation in 1989, noted that the operations by the American and Japanese embassies to remove a few thousand citizens from Beijing and nearby Tianjin were only possible with the assistance of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). He noted that "without their cooperation, it would have been the Boxer Rebellion all over again."[3]

"Riding out" a political crisis or widespread civil disturbance is by far the easiest and least expensive business contingency plan, as long as the CCP and its subordinate government remain committed to protecting foreign businesses on their soil. But history shows circumstances under which this situation might quickly change.

Hostage Taking and Expulsions: Part of the Chinese Playbook

Taking hostages is a fixture in Chinese history and modern practice. It was a formal part of Chinese statecraft until the 17th Century, including taking "external hostages" to control barbarian states during ordinary times, and during hostilities to facilitate negotiations for armistice or surrender. [4]

In modern times, extrajudicial hostage taking over business disputes, often condoned by local authorities, has become common. A few of many examples: American senior executives confined for days to weeks in separate incidents during 2007 and 2013 in Beijing, when Chinese staff feared layoffs; the bankrupt consumer products company whose Chinese suppliers stormed their representative office and took American employees hostage for about a week (Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2013) [5] Hostage taking is even a strategy of choice in a Chinese business publication: if a debt becomes uncollectable, enlist the help of the local Public Security Bureau to temporarily hold the debtor (China Law Blog, May 2016).

As illustrated in the comparisons below, private disputes are different than a state-sponsored detention, but the lesson to absorb is that use of detained people as pawns is more acceptable in China than elsewhere, which raises the risk to resident foreigners of all stripes. If the current leadership wished to make a list of precedents for holding foreigners without conventional criminal charges, it might look like this:

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Russian 'Cyber Troops': A Weapon of Aggression

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Sergey Sukhankin Publication Date 11 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 63 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russian 'Cyber Troops': A Weapon of Aggression, 11 May 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 63, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157f824.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Speaking to the Russian parliament (Duma) last February, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu announced the creation of "information operations troops" ("cyber troops") within the Armed Forces. He emphasized that state "propaganda should be smart, accurate and effective" and that that these new formations "will be much more efficient than the 'counter-propaganda' department that operated during the Soviet period" (TASS, February 22). It is dubious, however, that the responsibilities of "cyber troops" will be reduced solely to "propaganda." Rather, it seems that this unit is to become the main tool of Russia's offensive cyber operations as a part of "information warfare."

The official history of the Russian cyber troops goes back to 2012, when Dmitry Rogozin (at the time heading the Russian Foundation for Advanced Research Projects in the Defense Industry) addressed the issue publicly for the first time. In 2013, an anonymous source confided that formations of this kind had been established under the umbrella of the Russian Armed Forces (RBC, February 22), but at the time there was no solid evidence available. Then, in April 2015, the official state news agency TASS reported that a unit of Russian "information operations forces" were deployed to the territory of the Crimean Peninsula (TASS, April 17, 2015). Nonetheless, in the meantime, the Russian side continued to deny the existence of cyber troops. For instance, in January 2017, the first deputy director of the Russian Duma Defense Committee, Alexander Sherin, claimed that "Russia does not have such formations." Similar statements were made by top-ranking Russian officials related to security and mass communications, such as Viktor Ozerov and Alexey Volin (Interfax, January 16). This silence was interrupted only by Defense Minister Shoigu's official announcement in February.

Commenting on the main tasks of the cyber troops, Franz Klintsevych, a high-ranking member of the Russian Federation Council (upper house of parliament), identified the disclosure of subversive activities by foreign intelligence services in electronic, paper and TV media outlets. He suggested that the cyber troops would deal with such hacker attacks as their main responsibility. But this assessment fails to fully reflect the true essence and tasks of the new unit. According to Yaakov Kedmi-who used to head Nativ, the former Israeli intelligence service charged with facilitating the immigration of Jews from the Soviet Bloc-"cyber troops" exist in "all serious armies" and are subordinated to their respective defense ministries. Their main tasks are "propagandist" (propaganda and counter-propaganda) and "operational" (activities designed to distract the adversary by providing false information). Yet, he also highlighted that so-called "political propaganda" falls outside the range of responsibilities for such formations (Kommersant, February 22).

Another revealing bit of information on the secretive cyber troops can be found in research conducted by Zecurion Analytics, a Russian software company established in 2001. According to a report the firm published several months ago, Russia may be placed in the top five countries with the "most powerful" cyber troop units, in terms of the number of personnel employed (which Zecurion Analytics estimates at approximately 1,000) and financial expenditures (around $300 million per annum). The company's head, Vladimir Ylianov, has stated that the main tasks of Russian "cyber troops" include espionage, cyber attacks, and informational warfare (Kommersant, January 1). This assessment, however, also may underestimate the real capabilities of these cyber forces. Thanks to introduction of so-called "research units," Russian cyber defense is inseparable from the Armed Forces and its resources, which exponentially increases its offensive potential (see EDM, November 30, 2016).

A somewhat different opinion was expressed by pro-Kremlin cyber security specialist Igor Panarin. He hopes that the creation of the cyber troops will allow Russia to overcome its inferiority in the cyber domain compared to other countries, like the United States, and beef up its offensive capabilities. According to the expert, the 2008 Russian-Georgian War in fact demonstrated that Russian failed to act efficiently when it came to offense, and it instead relied on "defense and containment" in its cyber operations. Panarin suggested that unlike the Department of Information and Mass Communication, which was created under the umbrella of the Ministry of Defense in 2016 and tasked with defensive activities, the cyber troops-which could and should act in concert with the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR)-will be specifically charged with conducting offensive operations in the "cyber sphere" (kiber prostranstvo) (Militarynews.ru, February 22). If accurate, this demonstrates Russia's continuing development of offensive cyber capabilities and a delineation between "cyber" and "information" operations.

Panarin also outlined a number of supplementary steps Russia needs to take, which included the following elements (Vz.ru, February 28, 2017):

The establishment of a State Council (that is to include various governmental structures, public diplomacy organizations, media sources, representatives of business, political parties and non-governmental organizations) tasked with issues related to "information confrontation" (informatsionnoye protivoborstvo-understood as a struggle in the information sphere with the broad aim of achieving information dominance over one's opponent); The establishment of a position of a "Presidential Advisor" on information operations, tasked with the coordination of informational-analytical units connected with the "cyber troops," the Ministry of Defense, FSB, Federal Protective Service (FSO), SVR and other key ministries; The creation of a media holding-based on existing media resources of Russian TV Channel One, All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK), RT and others-subordinated to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. It is imperative to copy the US experience while implementing this initiative, Panarin alleged; and finally The formation of separate centers of information operations pertaining to the FSB, FSO and SVR.

Panarin's suggested program should be seen as an extremely ambitious and far-reaching strategy, fully complying with the steps and activities already conducted by the Russian side in the domain of cyber security and information operations. Within this development of the country's cyber capabilities, the Russian cyber troops should be seen mainly as an offensive operations force, and not as a defensive mechanism.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Proposed Georgian Constitutional Amendments Lack Support of President, Opposition

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Giorgi Menabde Publication Date 12 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 63 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Proposed Georgian Constitutional Amendments Lack Support of President, Opposition, 12 May 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 63, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59157ff24.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

A public discussion of the draft amendments to Georgia's constitution, initiated by the ruling Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia (GDDG) party, has begun (Civil Georgia, May 3). The proposed constitutional reforms are profound. According to many experts, if the package of amendments is adopted, it will effectively result in a new constitution that radically changes the principle of separation of powers in Georgia and vastly alters the functioning of the major state institutions.

"The first democratic constitution of Georgia was adopted on August 24, 1995, after long discussions in the parliament. It was based on the so-called 'American model' of separation of powers, whereby the president directly heads the cabinet of ministers and does not have the authority to dissolve the parliament," Nika Imnaishvili, an expert with the independent information and analytical agency GHN, told this author. According to Imnaishvili, "The 1995 constitution continued to operate until the Rose Revolution (2003); but in early 2004, [then-president] Mikheil Saakashvili initiated important amendments that strengthened the powers of the president: the head of the state was empowered to dissolve the parliament. Furthermore, the amendments provided for the introduction of the post of the prime minister" The expert said that the next stage of constitutional reform began in 2009, when Saakashvili proposed to once again change the basic law of the country-to significantly enhance the role of the prime minister and the government, thus weakening the powers of the president (Author's interview, May 7).

Saakashvili's successor, Giorgi Margvelashvili, elected president in late 2013, soon broke with his party-Georgian Dream-and GDDG has been able to use its parliamentary majority to drastically reduce the already modest opportunities of the head of the state to exert influence on the political and social processes in the country. Under Georgia's current mixed parliamentary-presidential system, real power is exercised by the prime minister. Nonetheless, the Georgian president has still been able to make decisions that do not correspond with the interests of the ruling party (see EDM, March 30).

"The president was popularly elected, which considerably raises his political role [domestically]. Besides, he is still the supreme commander-in-chief-he directs the army and can convene meetings of the National Security Council," the former chairman of the Constitutional Court, Avtandil Demetrashvili, explained (Author's interview, May 7).

After overwhelmingly winning the parliamentary elections in 2016, GDDG is currently trying to take advantage of its constitutional super-majority (it controls more than three fourths of the deputies in the legislature) to reshape Georgia from a mixed presidential-parliamentary republic to a classic political model adopted in Germany and many European countries. According to the new proposed amendments, the president will henceforth be elected by a special assembly consisting of parliamentary deputies and members of municipal representative bodies. The powers of the head of the state will be further reduced, essentially turning the president into a symbolic figure.

One of the authors of this initiative, the constitutionalist Vakhtang Khmaladze, explained to the author the necessity of abolishing direct presidential elections: "In a parliamentary republic, the president should perform the duties of a neutral arbiter and enter the political stage only in crisis situations. But in those parliamentary republics where the president is elected by the public, he becomes a political figure. He gains huge political ambitions; he refers to his high legitimacy and cannot perform the duties of a neutral arbiter" (Author's interview, May 7).

However, aside from the ruling party, no other political faction in Georgia agrees with such logic. The opposition insists on maintaining direct presidential elections as the only guarantee preserving a healthy "balance of powers." "The ruling party and its informal leader, Bidzina Ivanishvili, are trying to usurp power in the country by subordinating to themselves the president as well," alleged Sergo Ratiani, one of the leaders of the opposition party European Georgia (Author's interview, May 7).

In protest against GDDG's "attempts to usurp power," the opposition parties have left the "Constitutional Commission" (see below). This was a political blow to Georgian Dream, as the adoption of a new constitution with input solely from the ruling party will be negatively perceived by Georgia's Western partners.

In order to give the constitutional process a more democratic character, the government of Georgi Kvirikashvili and GDDG leaders agreed to postpone the adoption of indirect presidential elections until 2023. In addition, they proposed an important compromise to the opposition: the cancelation of majoritarian electoral districts and a move to fully proportional party-list elections. Fully proportional parliamentary elections have long been insisted on by almost all political parties in the country. Nonetheless, in the interest of securing its overwhelming parliamentary majority going forward, GDDG continues to insist that "unallocated mandates"-that is, votes cast for parties that fail to break the 5 percent threshold to enter the parliament-should be reassigned to the first-place winner in the election. In addition, GDDG wants to ban the right to form electoral blocs and flatly refuses to reduce the parliamentary threshold from 5 percent to 3 percent, which would create a more pluralistic and multi-party legislative body (Civil Georgia, May 3).

Considering these acute disagreements, the public debate over the constitution has been marked by mutual accusations and stormy rhetoric from the president, the parliamentary chair, GDDG representatives, as well as members of the two main opposition parties: United National Movement and European Georgia (Civil Georgia, May 5).

President Margvelashvili remains the main figure resisting the ruling party. Speaking at his "Constitution Belongs to Everyone" campaign meeting, in Akhaltsikhe, on April 28, he accused the parliamentary chairperson, Irakli Kobakhidze, of "horse trading" over the constitution and of "attaching internal [party] interests to the document." The president also called it "regrettable" that the draft constitution was tabled "without consensus": "all political parties in the reform Commission quit, and the document is being approved by a single political force" (Civil Georgia, April 29).

Parliamentary chair Kobakhidze, in turn, declared, "The president [] met [with opposition] political party representatives and agreed with them on how to challenge the Parliament of Georgia" (Civil Georgia, April 29).

Nothing about the proposed constitutional changes are yet set in stone. In the near future, Georgia's Constitutional Commission will consider the package of constitutional amendments and publish its recommendations. The opposition hopes, that the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and other European institutions will convince the ruling party to take into account proposals on creating a more balanced and pluralistic political system.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Mattis Goes to the Baltics

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Glen E. Howard Publication Date 10 May 2017 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Mattis Goes to the Baltics, 10 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591580ec4.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

This piece originally appeared on Real Clear Defense on May 10, 2017.

Jim Mattis will visit the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius this week, marking his first ever visit to the Baltics in his new capacity as U.S. Secretary of Defense. Joining Mattis in Lithuania will be the Defense Ministers of all three Baltic states who will converge on the Lithuanian capital for a highly symbolic two-day meeting. The Mattis visit underscores the importance of the region to U.S. and NATO security interests and reaffirms U.S. support for Baltic security. It will also go a long way in calming the nerves of the leaders of the Baltic states and reassure our Baltic allies over U.S. defense commitments to their security.

Since 2014, NATO has become more cognizant about the weakness of its ability to defend the Baltics and has been taking steps to bolster its capacity to defend the region. To some critics, NATO's feeble efforts to deter a Russian attack in the Baltic have remained modest and could very well be another Dunkirk in the making. Last year the RAND Corporation concluded in an assessment that U.S. and NATO forces in the Baltics were severely outnumbered, outranged and outgunned. In the neighboring Russia Cold War enclave of Kaliningrad, for example, there are over 30,000 Russian forces, which is larger than the military forces of all three Baltic states combined. Next door to Latvia, the Russian base in Pskov can field 30,000 Russian men with two days notice. To counter this threat, the U.S. military in Europe has a grand total of only 50,000 American ground forces to defend NATO's widely exposed eastern flank that extends from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

NATO has tried to fill the gap in the Baltic by asking Germany, Canada, and the United Kingdom to deploy brigade-sized forces of 1,000 men to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia on a rotational basis as part of NATO's Enhanced Forward Presence, or EFP. NATO's use of rotational forces rather than permanently basing troops in the Baltic is related to the Russia-NATO Founding Act, which prevents the long-term deployment of NATO forces in Eastern Europe. The addition of these NATO brigades will augment the existing U.S. company sized units of 150 men currently stationed in each Baltic capital. Together these forces will serve as a form of Baltic tripwire force similar to the Cold War grouping based in Berlin known as the "Berlin Brigade."

Earlier this year the U.S. went a step further by using money from the European Reassurance Initiative (ERI) to deploy an additional 4,000 men from the 3rd armored brigade of the 4thinfantry division to Zagan, Poland to further reinforce its eastern presence. This deployment, however, masks the major logistical challenges the United States faces in meeting the Russian threat in the Baltic. Pre-positioned supplies for NATO forces are 1,600 kilometers from the front lines in the Baltics. During the Cold War NATO, pre-positioned supplies were only 300 kilometers from the front lines of the Fulda Gap. Recently, it took the U.S. 4th infantry division over 62 days just to get from the German port of Bremerhaven to its new base in Poland.

From Poland to the Baltic states, the U.S. has another major geographical challenge to overcome that is known as the Suwalki Gap, a narrow 60-mile sliver of territory that is the only overland link between NATO member state Poland and the Baltics. The Suwalki Gap today is what the Fulda Gap was to NATO during the Cold War, a narrow gap and future attack route for Russian tank forces into Poland and the Baltic. Russia-leaning Belarus is only 32 kilometers from the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and any loss of control over Suwalki to the Russians would sever Lithuania and the rest of the Baltic states from NATO member Poland and force NATO to fight its way into the Baltic by sea past the A2/AD bastion in Kaliningrad.

Referred to as Russia's "Gibraltar" of the Baltic, Kaliningrad, is the anchor of Moscow's strategy in the region known in Pentagon language as A2/AD or Anti-Access/Air Denial whereby layers of anti-air and coastal defense missiles create an impenetrable defense corridor to prevent NATO in accessing the Baltic. A veritable gauntlet of weaponry is deployed in Kaliningrad, including the S-400 ground to air missiles, Bastion land-based batteries equipped with supersonic Yakhonts anti-shipping missiles and nuclear-capable Iskander missiles.

Before becoming Secretary of Defense Mattis used to say: "I do not write policy, I just execute the last 600 meters of it". Secretary Mattis now finds himself in the position of being able to write that strategy for American and NATO policy planners. Foremost on his agenda in Vilnius will be deciding how NATO and the U.S. should react to or even counter the large-scale Zapad 2017 Russian military exercises in neighboring Belarus in September that will involve over 75,000 men and the elite Russian tank force known as the Tamanskaia Division. One means at Mattis' disposal would be to consider a test deployment of NATO's Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF). Created during the 2014 Wales summit, NATO decided to enhance the already existing NATO Response Force by creating a spearhead force known as the VJTF that consists of a multi-national brigade of 5,000 men. At the disposal of the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) General Curtis Scaparrotti, this force has never been tested or forward deployed to the Baltic.

With the Zapad 2017 military exercises on the horizon for September, neighboring Belarus will be high on the minds of the leaders of the Baltic states when they meet with Mattis in Vilnius. It is high time for NATO to consider changing its existing strategy of enhanced forward presence in the Baltic to one of enhanced deterrence. Deploying NATO's VJTF to the Baltic for the first time in reaction to Zapad 2017 could demonstrate to Moscow that NATO is prepared to move beyond the modest notion of tripwire forces to a more enhanced and credible form of deterrence.

Glen E. Howard is the President of The Jamestown Foundation.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
Realists Winning Tug of War Over Belarus

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Grigory Ioffe Publication Date 8 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 61 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Realists Winning Tug of War Over Belarus, 8 May 2017, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 14 Issue: 61, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915813c4.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

After the crackdown on the March 25 rally in Minsk, the main Belarusian daily Belarus Segodnya published an extensive report devoted to the White Legion, a group of young vigilantes under the guidance of Sergei Chislov, a graduate of Minsk Higher Engineering Anti-Aircraft Missile School (Belarus Segodnya, April 12). Reportedly, Chislov organized quasi-military training camps for volunteers with the aim to use them to stage a coup d'etat. Chislov currently resides in Ukraine and maintains ties with Nikolai Statkevich, a former instructor at the Minsk Anti-Aircraft Missile School and the most intransigent opposition figure in Belarus at present. At the time of the publication of the aforementioned report, 17 people were indicted for instigating mass disorder.

On the same day this report was published, Belarusian TV aired the documentary White Legion of Black Souls, devoted to the same subject (TVR, April 12). Later on, the government-friendly political commentator Alexei Dzermant published a supportive piece under the pompous title "What does the defeat of the nationalist underground in Belarus mean?" His article insinuates a hypothetical link between the White Legion and the "Euro-Atlantic model of geopolitical tug of war"; moreover, he writes in familiar Cold War-style language such as, "Washington never concealed its interests in Europe" (Eurasia-Expert, April 26). The gist of the matter is the same: external puppet masters are purportedly steering the situation in Belarus toward a "Ukrainian Maidan" scenario.

It remains to be seen what, if anything, the official inquiry into the instigation of public disorder will yield. However, certain signs are not particularly promising in this regard. First, nobody has been charged with stashing weapons, an obvious prerequisite for any serious subversive activity. Second, the aforementioned documentary combined video sequences of the alleged subversive activity, like training camps in southern Belarus, with footage of public protests against the construction of a business center in Kurapaty (northern Minsk). Multiple collective graves of victims to Stalinist purges were found in Kurapaty in the late 1980s, and the area was turned into a commemorative site. Construction of the business center on this land was ultimately canceled in late February (Tut.by, February 27). Belarusian officialdom seems to have decided to seize the initiative by commemorating the victims of the purges this year (Svaboda.org, April 30). Third, instead of strengthening its sanctions against Belarus, the United States suspended them for the second time, which casts doubt on Washington's alleged involvement in anti-government activity in Belarus. Sanctions were suspended despite democracy promoters' avid pleas that "if ever Washington were going to get tougher on Minsk and let the sanctions stand, it seemed like it might be now" (Foreign Policy, May 1). Moreover, in late April, Belarusian opposition media wrote about the Donald Trump administration's suggestion to terminate funding to the USAID's Belarus programs altogether (Tut.by, April 25). Some commentators reasoned that this termination would make the Belarusian opposition entirely dependent on European sources of financial support. But because, these days, the European Union is more friendly to the Belarusian leadership than ever before, the opposition will become further marginalized, and its most "ideational" members will grow even more radicalized (Eurasia-Expert, May 2).

It looks like this radicalization has already occurred: notably, Vladimir Neklyaev and Nikolai Statkevich entirely declined to seek permission from the authorities to organize new demonstrations, and they even publicly referred to the EU as President Alyaksandr Lukashenka's "helpers" (Svaboda.org, May 2). Apparently, however, such radicalization has occurred on both flanks of the Belarusian political scene. Indeed, the aforementioned publications in the Belarusian media may be attributed to a desire to fuel passions on the part of the security apparatus; or perhaps a certain faction of the leadership is waging a tug of war with its more forward-looking and realist faction.

Be that as it may, on April 29, Statkevich was put under "administrative arrest" for five days, apparently to prevent his participation in the May 1 rally that he had long announced (see EDM, April 10). This time, unlike during the run-up to the March 25 rally, Statkevich's detention was officially announced. Prior to his arrest, the opposition leader had appealed to his supporters to appear at October Square in downtown Minsk. Some of his supporters and allies, including Vladimir Neklyaev, Pavel Severinets and Statkevich's wife, Marina Adamovich, did arrive downtown with white-red-white flags and anti-government slogans. The police asked them to leave but did not resort to force. Denis Melyantsov, of the Belarusian Institute for Strategic Studies, gave a rundown of the various published estimates of the crowd size at October Square, on May 1. These range from 800, as reported by Charter97, which is invariably given to wild-eyed exaggerations, to 100-200, according to Euroradio and Tut.by (Facebook.com/melyantsou, May 1). Only opposition activists came to the square. Lukashenka had recently suspended his decree on social parasites, which presumably drove the drastic decline in individuals among the general public willing to come out to protest (Svaboda.org, April 30). This course of events points to realists wining the tug of war with idealists, both in the government and in the opposition.

As author Robert Kaplan has noted, realism tells the bitterest truths that not everyone wants to hear. The realists' set of beliefs includes notions such as a) order comes before freedom; b) one must work with the material at hand; c) one should think tragically in order to avoid tragedies; and c) interests come before values (Stratfor, November 19, 2014).

In the United States, the ascendance of such realism reveals itself in the new administration's tangible loss of interest in democracy promotion and regime change across the globe. Whereas, in Belarus, this kind of ascending realism can be seen in the growing understanding domestically that a) so-called Eurasian integration is no universal master key, but rejecting it altogether, as Ukraine tried, is harmful and unrealistic; and b) improving relations with both the EU and the US is vital because the sources of technological progress and healthy economic strategies are in the West. At the same time, more and more people in the Belarusian opposition are now realizing that working toward regime change from within through activists accountable exclusively to foreign sponsors is coming to a dead end.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
What to Expect in Iraq After the Liberation of Mosul

Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author C. Alexander Ohlers Publication Date 5 May 2017 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 9 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, What to Expect in Iraq After the Liberation of Mosul, 5 May 2017, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 9, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591581e34.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.

Link to original story on Jamestown website

Within a period of four years, Islamic State (IS) has risen from near defeat in 2010 to become one of the most successful modern insurgencies. At its height in 2014, it controlled 40 percent of Iraq. Three years later, soon to be eradicated from its last Iraqi territory in Mosul, the threat is far from over. Local insurgent groups, which fell into decline under IS, could resurface in the post-IS vacuum, al-Qaeda could rebuild itself in Iraq and IS itself will likely return to its roots as a non-territorial guerrilla insurgency.

Iraq's Insurgent Groups

The Iraqi militant landscape is composed of a complex network of movements that may reemerge after IS' eradication from Mosul. The origins of these groups sometimes pre-date the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK), for example, was founded in the 1980s by the Muslim Brotherhood's Sheik Uthman Abdul Aziz, while Ansar al-Islam (AI) - formed in 2001 by IMK splinter groups - incorporated Sunni Arabs and establish ties to al-Qaeda.

Following the U.S.-led invasion, a number of Sunni militant groups emerged largely for the purpose of opposing the occupation: Jaysh Rijal al-Tariq al-Naqshbandia; the 1920s Revolution Brigades (1920s RB), named after the historic Iraqi revolt against occupying British forces; the Islamic Army in Iraq (IAI); the Mujahideen Army (MA); Ansar al-Sunna Sharia (AS Shariah); and Hamas Iraq. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Jamaat al-Tawhid waal-Jihad, which would later formally affiliate with al-Qaeda and eventually become IS, also took root. With the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, these militant Sunni groups did not diminish but instead reoriented their focus to challenge the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and oppose Iranian influence in Iraq.

Many Sunni insurgent groups denounced IS' targeting and exploitation of Iraqis and even fought against the group. Both the Jihad and Reform Front (RJF) - which was formed with MA, IAI, AI and AS Sharia - and the Political Council for the Iraqi Resistance (IRPC) - which was formed with Hamas in Iraq and parts of the Islamic Army in Iraq, the Mujahideen Army, AS Shariah, the Fatiheen Army and the Islamic Front for the Iraqi Resistance (JAAMI) - were established in opposition to IS (Terrorism Monitor, December 3, 2008). Others, such as the 1920s RB and JRTN, denounced IS' targeting of Iraqi civilians but nevertheless cooperated with the group.

IS' unprecedented expansion and territorial gains from 2011 to 2014 generated extensive resources and attracted fighters. As a result, it overshadowed Iraq's other Sunni militant groups, absorbing or defeating competing organizations and forcing others into hiding. As IS' star now wanes, these groups may reconstitute themselves. Some could also offer a less extreme alternative to IS in Sunni areas, taking up the mantle of challenging Iranian influence, Shia militia groups and the perceived political marginalization of Sunnis.

JRTN, for example, was the second largest insurgent group in Iraq at its peak. It provided organization, funds and intelligence to other militant groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq, the 1920s RB and AI, to carry out attacks. It also formed the General Military Council for Iraqi Revolutionaries (GMCIR) with the 1920s RB and other groups (Terrorism Monitor, June 26, 2014). Although JRTN condemned IS' targeting of Iraqis, it still provided critical support to IS in its capture of Fallujah and Mosul in 2014. After Mosul, IS and JRTN fell out, and IS eventually forced JRTN into hiding. In late 2016, however, JRTN issued a call to resist IS in Mosul, suggesting it may now be plotting a return to a more prominent position (Niqash, November 1, 2016).

Guerrilla Tactics

Having lost its territorial hold in Iraq, it is likely that IS will return to its roots as a non-territorial guerrilla insurgency. This tactical shift has been seen in numerous recent attacks in Iraq, including a series of nighttime attacks in Tikrit in which 34 people were killed (al-Jazeera, April 5). These offensives are designed in part to divert resources from the battle in Mosul, but also signal a shift toward guerrilla tactics. A top Kurdish counterterrorism and intelligence official also warned that IS will probably move out of cities into deserts and mountains, likely using the Hamrim Mountains as a base of operations (Iraqi News, February 16, 2016). Hundreds of IS fighters have also reportedly relocated from Mosul to the Makhoul Mountains near Baiji (Niqash, March 15). According to Iraqi MP Zaher Taher, intelligence reports show that over 1,100 IS fighters arrived in Diyala province, a likely location for an IS guerrilla front (Iraqi News, April 11).

Territorial losses incurred by IS have created space for al-Qaeda which, in line with other militant groups in Iraq, may be planning a comeback. Like many Iraqi groups, al-Qaeda disagreed with IS' targeting of Iraqis (favoring "external" enemies, such as the United States, over Iraqis) even when the two groups were affiliated. As such, it may seek alliances with local insurgencies, such as JRTN or other groups that may either emerge or re-assert themselves. Although al-Qaeda and IS have been adversaries since their formal split in 2014, it is possible that they may again cooperate in the wake of IS' territorial losses. Iraqi Vice President Ayad Allawi has indicated that these kinds of discussions are already underway between al-Qaeda and IS (ARA News, April 18).

Drivers of Extremism Remain

The rise of IS was due predominantly to drivers that cultivated the political terrain for a Sunni resistance. The dismantling of IS' supposed caliphate in Iraq has done little to remove these roots of insurrection; instead, they may have become more pronounced. Former Prime Minister Maliki, whose divisive government stoked Sunni upheaval, was nominated in April as a candidate to for the presidency of the Iraqi National Alliance, Iraq's largest political party, and could re-ascend to the premiership (Iraqi News, April 14).

Iranian influence in Iraqi politics remains strong, and Shia-dominated Popular Mobilization Front (PMF) militias (Hashd al-Shaabi) now exceed over 100,000 fighters, some of which are directed by Iran and responsible for human rights violations against Sunnis. In addition, large parts of Sunni, as well as Kurdish, areas of Iraq have been destroyed and over three million Iraqis have been displaced, creating turmoil that may further kindle extremism.

As IS' territorial dominance in Iraq comes to an end, the future of Sunni militant groups largely depends on the extent to which Iraq's political and security systems integrate Sunnis and other groups, or decentralize control to provinces and regions. If this is not accomplished, the next wave of guerrilla warfare will be determined by the ability of militant Sunni groups to reconstitute and expand their networks and the capacity of Iraq's security forces to engage in counterinsurgency operations.

Copyright notice:  2010 The Jamestown Foundation
NEW YORK, May 12, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pomerantz LLP announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against Citizens, Inc. (Citizens or the Company) (NYSE:CIA) and certain of its officers. The class action, filed in United States District Court, Western District of Texas, is on behalf of a class consisting of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Citizens securities, seeking to recover compensable damages caused by defendants violations of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.



If you are a shareholder who purchased Citizens securities between March 11, 2015 and March 8, 2017, both dates inclusive, you have until May 15, 2017 to ask the Court to appoint you as Lead Plaintiff for the class. A copy of the Complaint can be obtained at www.pomerantzlaw.com. To discuss this action, contact Robert S. Willoughby at rswilloughby@pomlaw.com or 888.476.6529 (or 888.4-POMLAW), toll free, ext. 9980. Those who inquire by e-mail are encouraged to include their mailing address, telephone number, and number of shares purchased.

[Click here to join this class action]

Citizens, Inc. operates primarily as an insurance holding company. The Company, through its subsidiaries, offers a wide range of insurance products and services, including life and health and property and casualty insurance.

The Complaint alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Companys business, operational and compliance policies. Specifically, Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) the Companys brokers and pitchbooks falsely claim that most of the funds from its insurance policies are directly invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds; (ii) funds from the Companys insurance policies are funneled into continuous open market purchases that have inflated the Companys stock price; and (iii) as a result of the foregoing, Citizens public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.

On March 8, 2017, Seeking Alpha published a report alleging that despite Citizens promises of outsized guaranteed returns backed by U.S. Treasury bonds, the Companys funds are not invested in U.S. Treasuries and [Citizens] policies appear designed to prop up Citizens stock price. The Seeking Alpha report further stated that [b]ecause most of the [Companys] returns to existing policyholders are driven by funds contributed by new policyholders, Citizens displays some characteristics that appear analogous to a Ponzi scheme.

On this news, Citizens share price fell $0.45, or over 5% over the next two trading days, to close at $8.00 on March 9, 2017.

The Pomerantz Firm, with offices in New York, Chicago, Florida, and Los Angeles, is acknowledged as one of the premier firms in the areas of corporate, securities, and antitrust class litigation. Founded by the late Abraham L. Pomerantz, known as the dean of the class action bar, the Pomerantz Firm pioneered the field of securities class actions. Today, more than 80 years later, the Pomerantz Firm continues in the tradition he established, fighting for the rights of the victims of securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duty, and corporate misconduct. The Firm has recovered numerous multimillion-dollar damages awards on behalf of class members. See www.pomerantzlaw.com.




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.
Detaining asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention centres subject to international obligations, despite High Court decision

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author UNHCR Regional Representation in Canberra Publication Date 5 February 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Detaining asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention centres subject to international obligations, despite High Court decision, 5 February 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915949d4.html [accessed 9 November 2022]

Following the decision handed down by the High Court of Australia this week in M68/2015, UNHCR affirms its long-standing position that Australia maintains responsibility for the protection of asylum seekers and refugees transferred to offshore processing centres under the existing bilateral arrangements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea respectively, and that any such arrangements must meet the respective countries' international obligations.

While the Court's decision upholds the Australian government's authority under Australian national law to enter into agreements with the Government of Nauru and service providers in relation to the detention of asylum seekers transferred from Australia to Nauru, it does not change Australia's obligations under the 1951 Refugee Convention and other international human rights instruments which set out the international standards of treatment which apply to asylum seekers and refugees.

While UNHCR understands the determination of Australia to respond robustly to people smuggling and to dissuade people from undertaking dangerous travel by sea, those responses must not neglect the compelling protection needs of the individuals affected. UNHCR is working to support governments to end the detention of children, ensure that alternatives to detention are available and that, where detention is used, which should only be as a measure of last resort, conditions meet international standards.

UNHCR welcomed Nauru's decision in October 2015 to end the detention of asylum seekers and to expedite their claims for protection, but remains deeply concerned for the welfare of individuals who have been transferred to Nauru. UNHCR has witnessed firsthand the severe impact on the mental and physical health of the asylum seekers and refugees as a result of long-term detention, conditions at the centre, past delays in processing and the absence of timely solutions for anything other than a small number of refugees.

In the case of individuals who may be subject to return to Nauru, UNHCR calls on Australia to undertake individualised assessments of the needs of individual asylum seekers, especially children.

UNHCR also calls on Australia to renew its search for solutions for the individuals affected, as well as its efforts to develop regional cooperative approaches with other States in the region which provide viable alternatives to potentially dangerous journeys by sea for asylum seekers, refugees and stateless persons.
UNHCR to endorse Australia-United States relocations as "offshore processing" arrangements fail refugees

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author UNHCR Regional Representation in Canberra Publication Date 13 November 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR to endorse Australia-United States relocations as "offshore processing" arrangements fail refugees, 13 November 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915968d4.html [accessed 9 November 2022]

The approach taken by Australia in transferring refugees and asylum-seekers to open-ended detention in Papua New Guinea and Nauru has caused immense harm to vulnerable people who have sought asylum since 2013. In this context, UNHCR welcomes the announcement today that refugees currently held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea will be relocated under a bilateral arrangement between Australia and the United States.

The arrangement reflects a much-needed, long-term solution for some refugees who have been held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea for over three years and who remain in a precarious situation. It is on this basis that UNHCR will endorse referrals made from Australia to the United States, on a one-off, good offices, humanitarian basis, in light of the acute humanitarian situation. The full details of the agreement are not yet known, and UNHCR is not a party to it.

UNHCR remains gravely concerned about the fate of all vulnerable individuals in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Appropriate solutions must be found for all of them. UNHCR's endorsement of these referrals under the humanitarian imperative does not alter Australia's obligations under international law, including the right to seek asylum irrespective of the mode of arrival.

Australia must be part of the solution for refugees and asylum seekers who have sought its protection, and particularly those who have family ties to Australia or special needs. The current policy has failed refugees and asylum seekers who need and deserve safety and care.
UNHCR: Immediate solutions needed for Nauru

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author UNHCR Regional Representation in Canberra Publication Date 10 August 2016 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR: Immediate solutions needed for Nauru, 10 August 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915a56e4.html [accessed 9 November 2022]

UNHCR is gravely concerned about allegations raised in 'The Nauru Files' published today by The Guardian Australia.

Although UNHCR is not able to verify the individual incidents raised by the reports, the documents released are broadly consistent with UNHCR's longstanding and continuing concerns regarding mental health, as well as overall conditions for refugees and asylum-seekers on Nauru.

UNHCR has observed and reported a progressive deterioration of the situation of refugees and asylum-seekers on Nauru through its regular visits since 2012.

Solutions are now urgently needed.

Delays in immediate action to rectify the current situation are exacerbating human suffering and causing ongoing deterioration.

UNHCR renews its call for refugees and asylum-seekers to be immediately moved off Nauru to humane conditions with adequate support and services.
UNHCR Statement

Publisher UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Author UNHCR Regional Representation in Canberra Publication Date 3 February 2017 Cite as UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), UNHCR Statement, 3 February 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915a7c94.html [accessed 9 November 2022]

UNHCR is gravely concerned by the forced return of an Iranian refugee from Fiji to Papua New Guinea today.

The UN Refugee Agency had sought assurances from the Government of Fiji this week that he would have access to Fiji's national asylum procedures, given his stated intention to seek asylum.

All asylum-seekers are entitled to have their claims for refugee status considered fairly and in accordance with the 1951 Refugee Convention, to which Fiji is signatory.

UNHCR deeply regrets that interventions to prevent the refugee's forced return were not successful, and is profoundly concerned for his welfare. Further information is being sought from the Governments of both Fiji and Papua New Guinea at this time.

UNHCR has long called for refugees and asylum-seekers currently in Papua New Guinea to be moved to humane conditions outside of the country. Equally, UNHCR has urged that no refugees or asylum-seekers should be returned there.

We urge the Government of Papua New Guinea to ensure that the refugee is treated in accordance with international human rights law and standards.
Comments

This chapter supersedes and replaces the corresponding chapter of the 2003 Procedural Standards for Refugee Status Determination Under UNHCR's Mandate.
Title Joint Statement of the ECOWAS Ministers responsible for nationality matters on the Ministerial Meeting for the Validation and Adoption of the Banjul Plan of Action to Eradicate Statelessness in the ECOWAS Region

Publication Date 9 May 2017

Topics Statelessness

Other Languages / Attachments French | Portuguese

Cite as Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Joint Statement of the ECOWAS Ministers responsible for nationality matters on the Ministerial Meeting for the Validation and Adoption of the Banjul Plan of Action to Eradicate Statelessness in the ECOWAS Region, 9 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915c7004.html [accessed 9 November 2022]
Russia: Further arrest for Muslim study groups

Publisher Forum 18 Author Victoria Arnold Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Forum 18, Russia: Further arrest for Muslim study groups, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915cef64.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 mid-April arrest in Dagestan of Ilgar Aliyev brings to twelve the number of Muslims known to be on trial or under criminal investigation for meeting to study Turkish theologian Said Nursi's writings. The "extremism"-related criminal trial of two Jehovah's Witnesses continues.
Russia: Knee-jerk repression as LGBTI activists arrested over Chechnya petition

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 11 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Russia: Knee-jerk repression as LGBTI activists arrested over Chechnya petition, 11 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915de124.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 response to today's detention of five LGBTI activists as they were trying to deliver a petition to the Office of Russia's Prosecutor General on Chechnya, Denis Krivosheev, Deputy Director for Europe and Central Asia at Amnesty International, said:



"While the activists were released shortly after their arrest, this knee-jerk detention follows a familiar pattern of the Russian authorities crushing activism, and is a multiple violation of the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and liberty of person. It is aggravated by the fact that the detainees merely wanted to support gay men in Chechnya, one of the country's most marginalized groups, and call for their protection."

"The LGBTI activists should be allowed to deliver their petition. And crucially, the authorities must respond to the petition itself and investigate the allegations of horrific human rights violations against gay people in Chechnya which have rightly sparked a global outcry."

Amnesty International has raised concerns about the reports of mass abductions and torture of gay men in Chechnya as well as the threats faced by the journalists in Russia who broke the story and called on the Russian authorities to investigate these reports, prosecute suspected perpetrators and ensure that the rights of gay people in Chechnya are protected.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Malaysia: Extradition puts three Turkish men at risk of torture

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Malaysia: Extradition puts three Turkish men at risk of torture, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915de904.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 the extradition of three Turkish men suspected of links to Turkey's Gulen movement, who had been arbitrarily detained under SOSMA, Malaysia's draconian security law, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Josef Benedict, said:

"By sending these three men suspected of links to Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey, the Malaysian authorities have put their liberty and well-being at risk. They have already suffered a harrowing ordeal, being arbitrarily detained and held incommunicado. Now, they have been extradited to Turkey, where they could face arbitrary detention, unfair trial and a real risk of torture."

Background

Turgay Karaman, Ismet Ozcelik and Ihsan Aslan had been arrested and detained under the Security Offences (Special Measures) Act (SOSMA). The Malaysian authorities said they were being investigated under Section 130J of the Penal Code (read together with SOSMA) for allegedly soliciting, giving support to terrorist groups or for the commission of terrorist acts.

In 2016, the Turkish government is reported to have pressured its allies to take legal action against suspected supporters of Fethullah Gulen, whom Turkish authorities accuse of masterminding a coup attempt against them.

Fethullah Gulen denies the accusations. There is credible evidence of arbitrary detention and torture of detainees suspected of belonging to the Gulen movement, which Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have documented.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Iran: Release of prominent human rights defender after a decade in prison

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Iran: Release of prominent human rights defender after a decade in prison, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915ded64.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 response to today's release of Iranian Kurdish human rights defender and journalist Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Magdalena Mughrabi said:

"The release of Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand today, after a decade-long ordeal in prison, is long overdue. He was wrongfully imprisoned on trumped up charges and it is utterly deplorable that he was forced to spend the past 10 years of his life behind bars. His case is yet another illustration of the extreme lengths to which the Iranian authorities will go to criminalize the legitimate work of human rights defenders and journalists."

Throughout his time in prison, Mohammad Sadiq Kabduvand's health sharply deteriorated. He suffered from heart and kidney problems and rarely received adequate medical treatment.

"The Iranian authorities have a decade of appalling injustice against Mohamed Sadiq Kabduvand to make up for. They can make a start by quashing his conviction and ensuring that he is free to continue his peaceful human rights and journalistic activities," said Magdalena Mughrabi.

"Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand's release must also pave the way for the Iranian authorities to end their relentless targeting of human rights defenders and journalists. As a first step, they should immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience."

He was first imprisoned in 2007 and sentenced to 10 and a half years' imprisonment for his human rights work as the founder and Chair of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan and as editor of the weekly Iranian newspaper Payam-e Mardom-e Kurdistan.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Turkey: Detention of Cumhuriyet editor another dark day for country's media

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Turkey: Detention of Cumhuriyet editor another dark day for country's media, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915df814.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 response to today's release of Iranian Kurdish human rights defender and journalist Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand, Amnesty International's Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa Magdalena Mughrabi said:

"The release of Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand today, after a decade-long ordeal in prison, is long overdue. He was wrongfully imprisoned on trumped up charges and it is utterly deplorable that he was forced to spend the past 10 years of his life behind bars. His case is yet another illustration of the extreme lengths to which the Iranian authorities will go to criminalize the legitimate work of human rights defenders and journalists."

Throughout his time in prison, Mohammad Sadiq Kabduvand's health sharply deteriorated. He suffered from heart and kidney problems and rarely received adequate medical treatment.

"The Iranian authorities have a decade of appalling injustice against Mohamed Sadiq Kabduvand to make up for. They can make a start by quashing his conviction and ensuring that he is free to continue his peaceful human rights and journalistic activities," said Magdalena Mughrabi.

"Mohammad Sadiq Kabudvand's release must also pave the way for the Iranian authorities to end their relentless targeting of human rights defenders and journalists. As a first step, they should immediately and unconditionally release all prisoners of conscience."

He was first imprisoned in 2007 and sentenced to 10 and a half years' imprisonment for his human rights work as the founder and Chair of the Human Rights Organization of Kurdistan and as editor of the weekly Iranian newspaper Payam-e Mardom-e Kurdistan.

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Russian Federation: Ban on Jehovah's Witnesses is an assault on Freedom of Assembly and Conscience

Publisher Amnesty International Publication Date 12 May 2017 Reference EUR 46/6229/2017 Cite as Amnesty International, Russian Federation: Ban on Jehovah's Witnesses is an assault on Freedom of Assembly and Conscience , 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915e0624.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 20 April the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation banned Jehovah's Witnesses in

Russia on the grounds that they are an extremist organization. This means that the

Administrative Centre and all 395 regional organisations of Jehovah's Witnesses are

subject to liquidation, and their property can now be seized by the state. Those who

continue to manifest their faith as Jehovah's Witnesses including participating in worship, leading religious activities, recruiting others or fundraising despite the ban will be liable to criminal prosecution and can face imprisonment for up to 12 years.

The Supreme Court Decision is a regrettable step backwards towards the repressive religious policy of the past. Amnesty International will consider any Jehovah's Witnesses who are imprisoned for continuing to practice their faith to be prisoners of conscience and will call for their immediate and unconditional release.

Within hours of the Supreme Court decision a wave of attacks against the property of

Jehovah's Witnesses began. On 20 April, a group of men blocked the entrance to the main place of worship in Saint Petersburg, and one of them pelted the facade with paving stones while shouting insults and threatening violence against members of the religious group. On 22 April in Gukovo in Rostov region, unknown individuals vandalized a property that had been used for religious services by Jehovah's Witnesses. They destroyed the letter box, threw dirt on the door and damaged the fence. On 30 April, there were at least four attacks against the property of Jehovah's Witnesses. A local resident in Achinsk in Krasnoyarsk district, who was known to be antagonistic to Jehovah's Witnesses broke the window of a property used by them, and when confronted refused to stop. A building used by Jehovah's Witnesses was vandalized in Penza, and in Lutsino in the Moscow region two families lost their homes, when a neighbour threw a Molotov cocktail at their houses destroying both houses and their cars. The culprit has been arrested and charged. On 2 May, somebody threw a stone breaking the window in the home of a family of Jehovah's Witnesses, and on 5 May in Novomoskovsk in Tula region vandals left threatening graffiti1 on the door of a building used for religious services.

Jehovah's Witnesses base their beliefs on the Bible and do not use or advocate violence of any kind. In fact, Jehovah's Witnesses have faced reprisals in many countries for their conscientious objection to military service because of their pacifist views.

Amnesty International calls on the Russian authorities to send a clear message that

attacks against Jehovah's Witnesses will be promptly, impartially and thoroughly investigated and that anyone suspected to be responsible will be brought to justice. There should be no impunity for such attacks.

Violation of the Right to Freedom of Religion and the right to freedom of association

Both the Constitution of the Russian Federation and the Law on Freedom of Religion and Religious Organizations guarantee the right to freedom of religion.

The right to freedom of religion is also inextricably linked to the right to freedom of association. The European Court has drawn attention to this link between the two basic rights in its judgment on the case of Jehovah's Witnesses of Moscow and others v. Russia: "While religious freedom is primarily a matter of individual conscience, it also implies, inter alia, freedom to "manifest [one's] religion" alone and in private or in community with others, in public and within the circle of those whose faith one shares. Since religious communities traditionally exist in the form of organised structures, Article 9 must be interpreted in the light of Article 11 of the Convention, which safeguards associative life against unjustified State interference. Seen in that perspective, the right of believers to freedom of religion, which includes the right to manifest one's religion in community with others, encompasses the expectation that believers will be allowed to associate freely, without arbitrary State intervention."(2)

The right to freedom of association is guaranteed by the Russian Constitution. The

liquidation of the Administrative Centre and regional organizations of the Jehovah's

Witnesses in Russia, is a violation of the rights to religion and freedom of association guaranteed in Russian legislation. It is also a violation of Russia's obligations as a state party to the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. There are approximately 170,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia with 395 registered local organizations. The liquidation of the Administrative Centre will therefore violate the right to freedom of religion and association of a significant number of people in Russia.

Misuse of anti-extremism legislation

Amnesty International has documented the misuse of anti-extremism legislation to

prosecute people for the legitimate exercise of their right to freedom of expression.(3) In this case Amnesty International is concerned that anti-extremism legislation is being incorrectly used to prevent people in Russia from exercising their right to freedom of religion.

Amnesty International calls on the Russian authorities to ensure respect for the rights to Freedom of Assembly and Conscience.

Background

The Supreme Court decision is the culmination of a campaign that has been waged by the Russian authorities against communities of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia. According to Forum 18, a religious freedom monitoring organization, from 2007 to 2012 there were eight warnings and one liquidation, whereas in 2013 - 2016 there were 31 warnings and nine liquidations. (4)

On 27 February 2017 the Ministry of Justice completed an inspection of the activities of the Administrative Centre and found that "the structural subdivisions of the [Administrative Centre] engage in extremist activity, which violates the rights and freedoms of man and citizen and inflicts harm on persons, public order and public security". On 2 March 2017, the Prosecutor General's Office issued a warning to the Administrative Centre that it was engaging in extremist activity. On March 15, the Ministry of Justice filed a claim with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation requesting that the Administrative Centre of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia be designated an extremist organization and requiring its liquidation.

(1) - The graffiti stated: "We will come for you all"

(2) - CASE OF JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES OF MOSCOW AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA (Application no. 302/02),

(3) - See "Freedom under Threat", 2013, https://exdocs.amnesty.org/Documents/12000/eur460112013en.pdf#search=ALL%28Freedom%20of%20expression%20extremism%29%20Russia,

case,https://exdocs.amnesty.orgDocumentsEUR4650092016ENGLISH.pdf#search=ALL%28Freedom%20of%20expression%20extremism%29%20Russia,

Russian Federation: Contemporary art - an issue of freedom of expression, not extremism, (2008) https://exdocs.amnesty.org/Documents/56000/eur460232008eng.pdf#search=ALL%28Freedom%20of%20expr

ession%20extremism%29

(4) - F18News 24 October 2016 http://forum18.org/archive.php?article_id=2228

Copyright notice:  Copyright Amnesty International
Judges must speed investigations into crimes against French journalists abroad

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Judges must speed investigations into crimes against French journalists abroad, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915e4754.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.

Three years have gone by since photo-journalist Camille Lepage died in an ambush in the Central African Republic. But the justice system still has failed to reveal how and why she died. Hers is not the only case. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands that the French justice system do its utmost to pursue investigations of the killings and disappearances of French journalists. Impunity, a heavy burden for the journalists' families, must no longer shield the criminals.

Are resources - or political will - lacking to pursue investigations of the killing, wounding and disappearances of journalists? On May 12, three years will have passed since Camille Lepage was killed in the Central African Republic. Three years during which her family has been trying to learn the truth about what happened on a dirt road 150 km from Bouar in the country's western region.





Since then, and despite a strong pledge by President Francois Hollande to "shine the brightest light" on the case, the investigation has stalled. A formal legal request for information was sent to prosecution authorities in the Central African Republic in late 2014, but it rests unanswered.





A second group of French investigators was sent in late January 2017 to the Central African Republic, but was restricted to Bangui. The official reason is concern for security. However, United Nations troops are deployed in Bouar, on a mission that includes facilitating humanitarian access and investigations of human rights-related issues.





"The most difficult thing is not knowing exactly what happened that day," said Maryvonne Lepage, Camille's mother. "I would like to know which group bears the responsibility for my daughter's death, that the guilty parties are at least identified. The investigators' mission is two years late, based on the announced schedule, and nothing has been set up to allow them to reach the scene. We are waiting impatiently for another hearing, in order to speak to the judge about the case."





Political interference





The Lepage case is unfortunately not the only pending for years in French courts. Investigation into the murder in northern Mali of RFI journalists Ghislaine Dupont and Claude Verlon has come up against political considerations. The most serious involves military secrecy, which limits access to necessary documents by civil parties, including RSF, and the judge.





Unexpected recent developments have revived the case and pointed toward new leads. These were revealed last January by a documentary "Otage d'Etat," (Government Hostage) on the French TV channel France2. But this investigation received no help from French, Malian or Nigerian authorities. On the contrary, the journalists revealed that some witnesses, even in France, have been threatened, and have changed their minds about testifying. In addition, the number of potential instigators and perpetrators of the double murder that are still alive, has been greatly reduced by the French Army anti-terrorist operations in Mali.





"We are happy that there has been progress in the investigation, thanks to new elements put forward by the documentary," said Clea Kahn-Sriber, head of the RSF Africa desk. "However, we regret that these breakthroughs were not a result of official investigations. We are waiting for more cooperation from French authorities in response to requests by the investigating judge. We hope that a hearing before the judge scheduled in June will allow us to learn more about progress in the investigation."





In another case from Africa, the 2004 disappearance of French-Canadian journalist Guy-Andre Kieffer remains unsolved after more than 13 years. Kieffer was reporting on the Ivory Coast cacao industry, which is vital to the government - and to part of the country's elite. An industry fraught with influence-peddling.





A French judge sent a formal legal information request to Ivory Coast in early 2015, but has still not received a response. The judge, for his part, has not travelled to the scene since he was nominated. He announced that he would be visiting the Ivory Coast minister of justice in April, but there has been no follow-through as of now.





The possibilities of solving the case of Kieffer's disappearance are dwindling. One heavy blow was the September 2016 death of the main witness, Michel Legre, brother-in-law of the first lady during the relevant time, Simone Gbagbo. Kieffer had an appointment with him on the day he disappeared.





In this case as well, President Hollande in 2014 and 2015 and Prime Minister Manuel Valls in 2016 assured RSF that the French government was determined to see that justice was done in the case. Despites these promises, which were echoed by the Ivory Coast president, it still seems impossible, 13 years later, to bring the killers and their backers to justice. Kieffer was a seasoned journalist with deep experience in reporting on sensitive topics. "Let the Guy-Andre Kieffer case go; we will never know what happened," a French diplomat told RSF in 2014, on a not-for-attribution basis.





"RSF has the impression that this case is not a priority for the French and Ivory Coast justice systems," Sophie Busson, head of Advocacy for RSF. "This is very disappointing. We call on French authorities to turn words into deeds and facilitate progress in this case, which they regularly assure us they are pursuing. We hope that the French judge will travel to Ivory Coast as soon as possible in order to hold hearings with witnesses whom he has identified."









Ending arbitrary treatment





Time is of the essence. The longer an investigation takes, the greater the temptation to shut it down - this is especially so in complicated cases, linked to civil conflicts, with guilty parties located abroad, in countries that often don't cooperate with French investigations, due to lack of resources or political will.





However, beyond the possible identification and conviction of those directly responsible, bringing justice in these types of cases also demands establishing historical truth, and identifying moral responsibilities of groups and leaders implicated in attacks on journalists, thereby ending arbitrary actions and impunity.





William Roguelon was gravely wounded in a mortar attack in the Sloviansk region of eastern Ukraine. Two of his colleagues, Andrea Rochelli of Italy and Andrei Mironov of Russia, were killed. The Bordeaux court was assigned the case in September 2014, but did not show great involvement.The court, according to Roguelon, seemed to take the view that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, that he knew the risks, and that he had in the end survived.





The Italian judicial system's investigation into this case has made a lot of progress but the French probe seems to have ground to a halt even if the investigating judge has said he does not want to close the case.





The French and Italian judicial authorities need to work closely together, pooling the findings of the investigations so far conducted in order to move ahead more quickly and effectively, each country mobilizing its own resources.





Lucas Dolega, a French-German photographer, died in March 2011 of wounds sustained from a direct hit by a tear-gas grenade fired by Tunisian police. He was covering a demonstration in Tunis during the Arab Spring. Clearly identified as a professional journalist, he was with a group of colleagues.

A formal legal request for information sent by a French judge did receive a response in Tunisia. Witnesses were interviewed, but the investigators came up against contradictory testimony from two police commanders. The Tunisian judge did not visit police offices to examine the files of police who were present during the demonstration. Meanwhile, the French judge seemed satisfied with the Tunisian report - which was, to say the least, incomplete - and dismissed the case, without traveling to Tunis himself.













The means exist





The obstacles encountered are even less acceptable given that some cases do receive the attention they deserve, as a result of the political climate that prevailed when they began.





One telling example is the judicial investigation opened in France in 2013 by the war crimes and crimes against humanity unit for "second-degree murder" of freelance journalist Remi Ochlik and "attempted murder" of freelance journalist Edith Bouvier. At the time, the French government was strongly opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The journalists were victims of an airstrike that targeted the press centre in Homs.





Though the on-going conflict has made the investigation difficult, the special attention given the matter has ensured that the investigating judge has the resources necessary to follow all leads and to keep up the pressure on all those involved.





RSF, a civil party in the case, hopes that the investigation will remain active and that all testimony from identified witnesses can be taken as soon as possible.





RSF encourages the next minister of justice, who will be appointed in the next few days, to support cooperation with justice institutions of the countries involved in these cases. Where possible, French embassies may efficiently furnish material assistance to local investigations in progress.





France, has an important role to play at the international level in the fight against impunity. These investigations also underline the fundamental role that journalists play as messengers of democratic values. Those who have been killed, wounded or have disappeared were precisely carrying out their mission of reporting the truth. To not uncover the circumstances behind what happened to them amounts to denying their commitment to serve the public.





Accordingly, RSF has launched a campaign at the United Nations for appointment of a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for the safety of journalists. The aim is to put in place a specific mechanism for applying international law. This will allow the carrying out of numerous UN resolutions on the protection of journalists, and the fight against impunity. All too often, these have gone unfulfilled.





Over the past five years alone, RSF has registered 388 journalists killed worldwide in connection with their work.
Press freedom violations recounted in real time January 2017

Publisher Reporters Without Borders Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as Reporters Without Borders, Press freedom violations recounted in real time January 2017, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/5915e4b34.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.

12.05.2017 - Journalist freed after ten years in prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is pleased to learn that Mohammad Sedegh Kabodvand, the editor of Payam-e mardom-e Kurdestan (a regional newspaper closed by the authorities in 2004), was granted a conditional release today on completing ten years in prison.





Held since July 2007 in Tehran's Evin prison, Kabodvand was sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison in connection with his journalistic activities and his creation of a human rights organization in Iranian Kurdistan, the northern region where he lived.





He has been freed provisionally pending a judicial decision on the application of article 134 for the new Islamic criminal code to the rest of his sentence. Under a 2013 amendment to the code, a person convicted on several charges should serve only the most important sentence. By this token, he should have been freed four years ago.

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27.04.2017 - Two journalists freed conditionally

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that two imprisoned journalists, Kaivan Karimi and Issa Saharkhiz, have been released conditionally in the past week.





Karimi, a young documentary filmmaker, was freed on 20 April after completing half of the one-year sentence he received in November 2016 . Saharkhiz, the editor of several reformist newspapers was released on 25 April. His lawyer, Mahmoud Alizadeh-Tabatabaie, said he had completed his sentence.





One of the victims of a wave of arrests in early November 2015, Saharkhiz was sentenced by a Tehran revolutionary court in August 2016 to three years in prison on charges of anti-government propaganda and insulting Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. While held, he staged several hunger strikes in protest against his imprisonment and had been hospitalized since March 2016. The sentence was reduced last September.

Ranked 165th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2017 World Press

Freedom Index, Iran is one of the world's five biggest prisons for

media personnel, with a total of 28 journalists and citizen journalists

detained.



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19.04.2017 - Narges Mohammadi begins serving second jail term

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is outraged by the continuing persecution of journalist and leading human rights defender Narges Mohammadi, who has just started serving a ten-year prison sentence on completing a six-year one. She received the ten-year sentence a year after her most recent arrest, on 5 May 2015.





Mohammadi has a long history of persecution by the judicial authorities and has been arrested several times. During her spells out of prison, she has worked closely with Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi at the Centre for Human Rights Defenders.





The six-year sentence followed her arrest at her home on the evening of 10 June 2010. She was convicted two months later on charges of "meeting and plotting against the Islamic Republic," "anti-government publicity:" and "collaborating with the Centre for Human Rights Defenders" and was given an 11-year jail term that was reduced to six years on appeal in March 2011.

Mohammadi suffered muscular paralysis as a consequence of the heavy-handed interrogation sessions to which she was subjected after her arrest in 2010. As a result, she was paroled in July 2012.

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17.03.2017 - More journalists arrested

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) yet again condemns the persecution of journalists in Iran after at least three more were arrested in the past week.





The latest victims include Morad Saghafi, the editor of the magazine Goft o Gu ("Dialogue" in Persian), who was arrested at his Tehran home yesterday and was taken to an unknown location. His lawyer, Hamed Zargar, said neither he nor Saghafi's family have been told why he was arrested.





Meanwhile, Ali Motahari, the deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, yesterday asked the minister of intelligence to explain why a military unit recently arrested 12 editors of pro-reform information pages on the instant messaging service Telegram.

Motahari also criticized the detention of Ehssan Mazandarani, the former editor of the newspaper Farhikhteghan, on 12 March (see RSF's 13 March release). His wife, Malieh Hossieni, a journalist with the newspaper Farhikhteghana, was fired the day after his arrest.





Although banned, apps and social networks such as Telegram, Facebook and Twitter nowadays play an important role in providing Iranians with news and information. Telegram says it has more than 15 million users in Iran.

According to the Kalameh news website, Ali Ahmadinia, the administrator of the Eslahat News (Reform News) channel on Telegram, was arrested on 14 March and was taken to an unknown location.





RSF is currently very concerned about the health of two journalists who have been on hunger strike since their arrest. One is Mazandarani, who was arrested on 12 March (see above). The other Henghameh Shahidi, who was arrested on 9 March.

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15.03.2017 - Former editor gets six-month jail term

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the six-month prison sentence that has been passed on Hossein Karoubi, the former editor of Etemad Meli (a newspaper closed since August 2009) for circulating the open letter that his father, Mehdi Karoubi, wrote to President Hassan Rohani.

In the April 2016 letter, published in mostly foreign-based media outlets and on social networks, Mehdi Karoubi asks to be tried before a public court "in order to present the evidence I possess about massive fraud during the 2005 and 2009 presidential elections and to show what has happened to young Iranians in the country's legal and illegal detention centres."





Etemad Melli's owner and a former parliamentary speaker, Mehdi Karoubi has been under house arrest since February 2011, a fate he has shared with former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi (the owner of the closed newspaper Kalameh Sabaz) and Mousavi's wife, the writer Zahra Rahnavard. Mousavi and Mehdi Karoubi, who are both former presidential candidates, are being held illegally and are being denied their rights. Their state of health is very worrying.





RSF has meanwhile learned that Samna Safari, a journalist with the monthly Andisher Poya, was released on 11 March after the authorities determined that he had served his two-year jail sentence. Detained along with three other journalists in a wave of arrests in November 2015, he was sentenced by a revolutionary court in March 2016 to five years in prison for "anti-government propaganda activities." This was reduced to two years on appeal.

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28.02.2017 - City of Qom suspends newspaper

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns the decision by the city of Qom's public prosecutor to suspend the newspaper Shakheh Sabz on 26 February, a day after it ran a story criticizing the level of violence in one of its poorest districts, which it likened to a "jungle." The suspension was ordered after 136 parliamentarians supported a resolution accusing the daily of "insulting the population of the Holy City of Qom." The newspaper's name means "Green Branch."

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22.02.2017 - Ahmad Montazeri returned to prison

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) firmly condemns progressive cleric Ahmad Montazeri's arrest yesterday. The editor of the website of his late father, Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, he was returned to prison after being summoned before a special court for clerics.

Tried behind closed doors and without a defence lawyer on 20 October, Montazeri was sentenced on 27 November to ten years in prison for endangering state security, ten years for publishing a "classified audio recording" and another year for anti-government "propaganda."

He was prosecuted for posting an old recording on the website on 9 August 2016 in which his father could be heard criticizing the wave of executions of political prisoners in the 1980s.

For more information: Ahmad Montazeri gets 21-year jail term as part of bid to suppress history





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17.02.2017 - Editor freed on completing jail term

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that Ehssan Mazndarani - the editor of the newspaper Farhikhteghan and one of the victims of a wave of arrests in November 2015 - was released on 9 February. He had been given a seven-year jail sentence that was reduced to two years on appeal, His lawyer said he was freed as a result of a decision that he had completed his sentence. While in prison, he was hospitalized several times with heart and chest problems after a three-week hunger strike.

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10.01.2017 - Website reporter flogged for getting facts wrong

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is appalled to learn that Hossien Movahedi, a local news website reporter, was flogged last week in Najafabad, a city 450 km south of Tehran, for getting one of his facts wrong in a story about the confiscation of mopeds from female students at a technological secondary school in the city.





Movahedi reported on the Najafabad News website on 14 June 2016 that the police seized 35 mopeds when, according to the police, it was only eight. Although he apologized for his mistake and although the police were allowed to publish their version on the website, the police pressed charges against him and a Najafabad court sentenced him to 40 lashes for "publishing false information." This inhuman and medieval sentence was carried out on 4 January.





Iran has yet to ratify the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment.

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06.01.2016 - Woman journalist freed on completing one-year jail term

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has learned that Rihaneh Tabatabai, a journalist who has worked for several reformist newspapers, was released yesterday on completing a one-year jail term on charges of endangering national security and anti-government publicity. She was arrested on 12 January 2016 to begin serving the sentence, which was originally imposed in November 2014 and was confirmed by a Tehran appeal court a year later. The sentence also includes two-year ban on political and journalistic activity in the media and online following her release. In all, Tabatabai has been jailed four times since 2010 in connection with her journalistic activities.





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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January -December 2016)



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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January -December 2015)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time ( January-December 2014)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time ( January-December 2013)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January-December 2012)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January-December 2011)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (July-December 2010)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (January-July 2010)

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Press freedom violations recounted in real time (June-December 2009)
Iraq: UN refugee camp opens twelfth camp as displacement escalates in West Mosul

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Iraq: UN refugee camp opens twelfth camp as displacement escalates in West Mosul, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591600014.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.

Less than four weeks after opening its last camp, the United Nations refugee agency welcomed families fleeing the fighting in western Mosul this week with its twelfth camp set up deal with the ongoing emergency in and around the Iraqi city.

"The risk to people fleeing Mosul is now very great, with people having to move being in grave danger. People speak of conditions that are desperate and worsening. Families arriving from West Mosul report heavy bombing and fighting," said a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Andrej Mahecic, today at the regular bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva.

"They also tell UNHCR that there are no basic services in the city, no food, no water and no fuel. Some families have told us they have been living on one meal a day; often just bread, or flour and water, sometimes supplemented with tomato paste," he continued.

The newest camp was built in response to the ongoing Mosul emergency - less than four weeks since UNHCR opened the Hammam al-Alil 2 camp, with a capacity for 30,000 people, which is now almost full.

Located approximately 60 kilometres west of Mosul along the highway to Erbil, first buses with newly displaced Iraqi families arrived at Hasansham U2 on Tuesday. As of this morning, 96 families, including some 500 children, are being sheltered in the new site.

Each displaced family arriving at Hasansham U2 receives a tent and other basic aid items including blankets, a cooker and a kitchen set. As of today, more than 1,000 tents are ready, enough to shelter over 6,000 people. At full occupancy, it can accommodate more than 9,000 people.

A child walks through the rubble of a building which was destroyed in an airstrike, during fighting between Iraqi security forces and ISIL in western Mosul. 11 March 2017. Photo: UNICEF/Alessio Romenzi

"UNHCR reiterates its call to all parties in the fighting to ensure civilians are not prevented from leaving areas of active conflict and are provided access to safe areas, including those currently trapped in Mosul. Equally, civilians must not be forced to return to unsafe areas," underscored Mr. Mahecic.

Six months into the Iraqi offensive to oust terrorists from Mosul, UNHCR remains concerned about the continuing massive displacement. Despite enormous risks, the number of people fleeing West Mosul shows no sign of slowing down.

"We expect more large outflows of people from the west of the city. This is why we and our partners continue to prepare new camps, ready to receive those fleeing Mosul who are desperately in need of assistance," continued the spokesperson. "The first phase of another camp, al Salamiya 2, with capacity for 30,000 people, is under construction. When completed, the camp will have a capacity for up to 60,000 people."

The UN refugee agency noted that its current humanitarian efforts to shelter and assist displaced Iraqi families and refugees who fled to Iraq were seriously challenged by waning funding support.

"Our programmes in support of refugees and internally displaced in Iraq are currently only 18 per cent funded [$105.1 million received out of $578 million]," Mr. Mahecic pointed out. "This situation now threatens our ability to effectively respond to the immediate and mounting humanitarian needs in Iraq this year," he added.

According to Iraqi authorities more than 630,000 people have been displaced from Mosul and surrounding areas since October 2016, when the military operation began. This includes more than 434,000 displaced from western Mosul since mid-February. Meanwhile, an estimated 141,000 people have since returned to their areas of origin.
Guinea Bissau: Security Council 'ready to act' if political crisis worsens

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Guinea Bissau: Security Council 'ready to act' if political crisis worsens, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591600634.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.

Expressing deep concern over the protracted political and institutional crisis in Guinea Bissau, the United Nations Security Council has said it is ready to take necessary measures if the situation further deteriorates.

"The members of the Security Council reiterated their commitment to continue to monitor the current political crisis and expressed their readiness to take necessary measures to respond to further worsening of the situation in Guinea Bissau," said a statement to the press issued yesterday by the 15-member body after a closed-door briefing on the situation.

In the statement, the Council reaffirmed that the Conakry Agreement of 14 October 2016, which was brokered by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), is a primary framework for resolving the political crisis, calling upon the Bissau-Guinean stakeholders to strictly comply with the accord and the ECOWAS road map in addressing their differences and the country's challenges.

Regarding the planned withdrawal of the regional body's 500-strong force that has been deployed to the country since the April 2012 coup, the Council urged the international community to give all necessary support to ensure a complete and seamless transition of security architecture to the national defence and security forces.

The Council also expressed concern about the situation of the civilian population in the country, and urged all political actors to put the interest of the people of Guinea Bissau above all other considerations.

The Council welcomed the active engagement of the UN Peacebuilding Commission with relevant stakeholders on the ground as well as with regional organizations to support efforts towards a political solution.
DR Congo: UN agency appeals for support as 'steady stream' of refugees crosses into Angola

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, DR Congo: UN agency appeals for support as 'steady stream' of refugees crosses into Angola, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591600d84.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 and insecurity continuing to force people to flee Democratic Republic of Congo's Kasai region and seek refuge in neighbouring Angola, the United Nations refugee agency has called for a suitable place to shelter them as well as additional resources to support those in urgent need.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 20,000 new arrivals have been recorded since early April, with nearly 3,000 over the past few days.

"[We] continue provide food and relief items to those arriving [and our] partners are pitching tents and distributing plastic sheeting to provide adequate shelter, prioritizing the most vulnerable people," Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the UN agency, told journalists today at a regular media briefing at UN Office at Geneva (UNOG).

UNHCR is also supporting Angolan authorities identify a suitable site to relocate refugees from temporary reception centres that have become overcrowded as the number of arrivals increase.

However, there are particular concerns for women and girls - who form about 70 per cent of new arrivals - as well as for a number of children who arrived unaccompanied and separated.

Furthermore, many people the recent arrivals included those with severe wounds and burn injuries, who had been transferred to a local hospital to receive urgent medical attention. About 70 are receiving treatment at local hospitals.

However, detailed information on the injuries was difficult to ascertain as the situation was unfolding in a very remote area, the north-eastern part of Angola, with people fleeing from the Kasai region also from a very remote area, explained Mr. Mahecic.

Also in its response to the situation, the UN agency has airlifted first-aid kits, solar lanterns, tents, and plastic sheets and rolls.

However, as the influx continues, more resources are needed to cope with the demand. In particular, UNHCR has made an appeal for $6.5 million to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, including food, nutrition, health and relief items for refugees.
Amid widening needs for displaced Somalis, UN refugee agency revises funding appeal

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Amid widening needs for displaced Somalis, UN refugee agency revises funding appeal, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591601974.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 refugee agency has increased its funding appeal by $91 million to meet the humanitarian needs of Somali refugees in the region and the people displaced inside the Horn of Africa country.

"We are seeking some $488 million to provide continued support to displaced Somalis in 2017," said Andrej Mahecic, spokesperson of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at the regular bi-weekly press briefing in Geneva.

The update includes an additional requirement of $91 million for Somali refugees in Ethiopia, Kenya, Yemen and those displaced inside Somalia, he added.

"Insecurity, capacity of Government institutions, curtailed humanitarian access, limited livelihood opportunities, lack of basic services and poor infrastructure are some of the key challenges in Somalia," added Mr. Mahecic, and the current risk of famine with reports of deaths and illnesses caused by drought-related factors is further complicating daily lives of Somalis.

More than two million Somalis are currently displaced by conflict, which has lasted for more than two decades. Some 1.5 million people are internally displaced and nearly 900,000 have crossed the national borders to Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia and Djibouti.

The ongoing drought also increases risk of famine-induced displacement in the region. Since November 2016, more than 683,000 people in Somalia have been internally displaced by drought, including more than 377,000 displaced during the first quarter of 2017.

UNHCR also needs resources to address return and reintegration of 50,000 returnees from Kenya and 10,000 from Yemen.
Attack on Yemeni city could overwhelm humanitarian capacity, warns UN migration agency

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, Attack on Yemeni city could overwhelm humanitarian capacity, warns UN migration agency, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591601fb4.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.

Warning of the disastrous impact of an imminent attack on a western city and port and Yemen, the United Nations migration agency has called on all actors to use dialogue and talks rather than military force, which will put more civilians in danger.

According to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are grave fears that humanitarian capacity would be overwhelmed once Al Hudaydah port and city are attacked and relief agencies could be forced into a situation to prioritize their efforts in the war-torn country where every single person should be a priority.

A minimum of 400,000 people will flee the city eastwards, once Al Hudaydah is under attack [adding to] the already desperate situation of more than two million displaced people and their conflict-affected host communities, said Mohammed Abdiker, the Director of Operations and Emergencies at IOM, in a news release today.

In addition to that number, the attack will also severely hamper the UN agency's efforts to evacuate vulnerable migrants through Al Hudaydah Port.

Even without the attack, emergency response in Yemen has been facing immense challenges relating to access, financial resources and the sheer scale of humanitarian need  nearly 19 million people require assistance, more than half of them depend on it for their lives.

The conflict, now into its third year, has pushed the country to the brink of famine with more than eight million facing acute shortages of clean water and sanitation. Healthcare system has virtually collapsed over half of the health facilities not functioning.

Underscoring that humanitarian action, by itself, can never bring peace, IOM has been advocating that violence will only deepen the suffering of Yemeni people.

If all parties to the conflict do not come around the negotiation table to prevent further military escalation and end violence, humanitarian workers will not be able to continue to respond to increased needs, while helping those already greatly affected by the conflict, noted Mr. Abdiker.

No contingency plan will ever be able to fully respond to the scale of needs  IOM

The news release also noted the worsening humanitarian situation across the country, coupled with the unending ground fighting and air strikes, are causing major issues in reaching the most vulnerable people.

Expressing concern that with the scarce resources it has received so far to help the two million displaced people and hundreds of thousands of stranded migrants, IOM warned that no contingency plan will ever be able to fully respond to the scale of needs induced by escalated and even continued fighting.

At the same time, additional financial support is needed to cope with the current and projected needs.

At the recent High-Level Pledging Event on Yemen, the international community pledged $1.1 billion to support the humanitarian response. But this just over half of the $2.1 billion needed for 2017.
UN rights office urges protection for Salvadoran trans activist and transgender people

Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 12 May 2017 Cite as UN News Service, UN rights office urges protection for Salvadoran trans activist and transgender people, 12 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591602f94.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 human rights office today urged the Government of El Salvador to take urgent measures to protect a prominent transgender human rights defender, Karla Avelar, and other activists and individuals working on similar issues.

The vulnerability of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in El Salvador is of deep concern, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters in Geneva.

She noted that since the beginning of this year, at least seven transgender people were killed in El Salvador.

Ms. Avelar, who has been shot and seriously wounded multiple times, was most recently threatened at the end of April and forced to flee her home for a sixth time in two years.

We urge the Government of El Salvador to take urgent measures to ensure the protection of Ms. Avelar and other LGBTI activists and individuals who are under threat, Ms. Shamdasani said, including by establishing an effective protection mechanism for human rights defenders working on sexual and reproductive rights and LGBTI activists.

More than half of transwomen surveyed in an annual 2016 report in El Salvador have received death threats, according to the Ombudsman's Office in that country.

OHCHR linked the high rate with a lack of prompt and effective investigations into LGBTI-related crimes.

Ms. Shamdasani said the UN office, which is closely following the situation from its Central American office, calls on the Government to conduct prompt, thorough and effective investigations into hate crimes against the LGBTI community.
Venezuela: Information on Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) political party, including objectives and ideology, organisational structure, key positions and leaders, conditions to become a member; description of membership cards; treatment by authorities (2014-August 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 22 August 2016 Citation / Document Symbol VEN105602.E Related Document(s) Venezuela : information sur le parti politique Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT), y compris ses objectifs et son ideologie, sa structure organisationnelle, ses principaux postes et dirigeants, et les conditions pour devenir membre; la description des cartes de membre; le traitement que reservent les autorites aux membres de ce parti (2014-aout 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Venezuela: Information on Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) political party, including objectives and ideology, organisational structure, key positions and leaders, conditions to become a member; description of membership cards; treatment by authorities (2014-August 2016), 22 August 2016, VEN105602.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591610f74.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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources indicate that Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) is a Zulia-based political party founded in 1999 by Manuel Rosales (UNT n.d.a; PHW 2015, 1623) and "regional dissidents from the Democratic Action Party (ibid.). Rosales was governor of the state of Zulia from 2000 to 2008, and mayor of Maracaibo, the capital of the state of Zulia, between 2008 and 2009 (UNT n.d.b); he was considered an "outspoken" critic of former president Hugo Chavez (PHW 2015, 1623; Telegraph 22 Apr. 2009). The website of the UNT indicates that that political party won the 2000, 2004, and 2008 gubernatorial elections for the state of Zulia, as well as the Maracaibo mayoralty elections of 2000 and 2008 (UNT n.d.a).

According to sources, during the 2006 presidential election campaign, the UNT rallied around Rosales to challenge then president Chavez (Lecturer 25 July 2016; PHW 2015, 1623) and led a coalition of 44 other opposition groups (ibid.). The Political Handbook of the World (PHW) indicates that Chavez won the presidency "by a 62-37 percent margin voting that was internationally judged to be free and fair" (ibid., 1618). In a telephone interview with the Research Directorate, a lecturer of Latin American politics at the University of Toronto, whose research focuses on contemporary Venezuelan politics, stated that Rosales recognized Chavez' victory (25 July 2016).

The PHW notes that following the 2006 election, "the UNT ceased to play a formal leadership role in the opposition, as the coalition's member parties remained autonomous" (2015, 1623). However, sources indicate that in 2007, the Democratic Pole (Polo Democratico) (Noticias24 7 Mar. 2014; UNT n.d.a) and Democratic Left (Izquierda Democratica) political parties joined the UNT (ibid.; PHW 2015, 1623). Several members of the Only One People (Un Solo Pueblo) political party also joined the UNT in 2007 (Noticias24 7 Mar. 2014; UNT n.d.a).

2. Objectives and Ideology

A UNT document that outlines its ideological position states that the party "identifies itself with the concept of Social Democracy  [and its] purpose, which is to further democracy and extend it, from the liberal and political field to one that also covers the economic and social spheres thus building a solid basis for human liberty" (UNT n.d.c). A further publication on the UNT website notes that the party stands behind the following "programmatic proposals": division and autonomy of all branches of government; universal social security; mixed economy that combines public and private investment; respect for private property and stimulus of national and international private investment; support for national agriculture as a national interest policy; gender equality; social and economic justice for indigenous people; and de-politicization of the oil industry (ibid. n.d.d). The Lecturer indicated that the UNT's objectives also include the decentralization of the state apparatus, and the protection of basic rights and freedoms (Lecturer 25 July 2016). According to the same source, the UNT is more concerned with power than ideology, and has programmatic priorities focused on the referendum against President Nicolas Maduro, freeing Rosales, and the prospects of a presidential election in the coming months (ibid.). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted within the time constraints of this Response.

According to the Lecturer, the UNT's policies "resemble social-liberalism" and propose classic liberal economic policies that aim at "putting money in the pockets of consumers;" such ideals were exemplified during the 2006 presidential campaign in which Rosales proposed "Mi Negra," an initiative that would provide citizens a cash payment of US$200 per month (25 July 2016) [1].

3. Structure

The website of the UNT provides the following positions and names:

Manuel Rosales Guerrero, Founding leader (Lider Fundador) (UNT n.d.b);

Pablo Perez Alvarez, governor of the state of Zulia (n.d.e);

Omar Barbosa, Executive President (Presidente Ejecutivo) (ibid. n.d.f);

Evelin Trejo de Rosales, wife of Rosales and a leader of the party (ibid. n.d.g);

Enrique Marquez, Vice-president of Electoral and Organizational Affairs (n.d.h);

Timoteo Zambrano, Director of the International Political Committee (Director del Comite de Politica Internacional) (ibid. n.d.i);

Yenny De Freitas, Political Secretary (Secretario Politico) (ibid. n.d.j);

Liliana Hernandez, Political Secretary (ibid., n.d.k); and

Diego Scharifker, Director of Youth National Wing (Dirigente Juvenil Nacional) (n.d.l).

According to the Lecturer, since Rosales has been in jail, the two most prominent party members are Evelin Trejo de Rosales and Pablo Perez Alvarez, the latter whom he described as a "protege" of Rosales (Lecturer 25 July 2016). Sources report that Rosales was being sought by Venezuelan authorities for corruption charges (Telegraph 22 Apr. 2009; BBC 16 Oct. 2015) during his time as governor of the state of Zulia between 2000 and 2008 (ibid.). Rosales went into self-imposed exile in Peru in 2009 (ibid.; Telegraph 22 Apr. 2009), remaining outside of Venezuela until October 2015, when he returned and was immediately arrested at the Maracaibo airport (BBC 16 Oct. 2015). The Lecturer explained that

most political parties in Venezuela kind of operate as electoral vehicles for presidential aspirations of particular people and/or patron-client networks to have access to state revenues and power. These parties are focused on a particular figure-head. The UNT is really organized around Rosales. (ibid.)

Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Membership

The website of the UNT contains an electronic registration that individual's complete in order to become a member of the party (UNT n.d.m). A copy of the electronic registration form is attached to this Response. Additional information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

5. Treatment by Authorities

Information on the treatment of UNT members by authorities was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this response.

According to the Lecturer,

Rosales had signed and publicly declared support for the Carmona decree while he was president during the short coup when Chavez was retained. The decree nullified the 1999 constitution, declared a state of emergency, declared martial law, banned protests, and put an end to the Bolivarian revolution. That is the dominant image of Rosales and the UNT: [] those who support the UNT are seen as a golpistas [participants in a coup d'etat], corrupt, separatists, [and] are treated like the enemy. (Lecturer 25 July 2016)

Without providing further detail, sources report that German Mavare, a leader of the UNT, was shot dead in the state of Lara on 6 May 2016 (Agencia EFE 7 May 2016; Noticias24 6 May 2016). Additional information on the killing of Mavare could not be found by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Note

[1] The Princeton University's Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera contains a flyer of Rosales' presidential campaign which proposed that Mi Negra, a "social debit card," would grant families between 600,000 and one million Venezuelan Bolivar [or between US$280 and US$466 at the 1 January 2006 exchange rate]: 30 percent for "personal expenses" and 70 percent for housing, business ownership, and education (Princeton University n.d.).

References

Agencia EFE. 7 May 2016. "Leader of Opposition Party in Venezuela Assassinated." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). 16 October 2015. Mark Rivett-Carnac. "Venezuelan opposition Leader Manuel Rosales Arrested After Six Years in Exile." [Accessed 15 Aug. 2016]

Lecturer, University of Toronto. 25 July 2016. Telephone interview with the Research Directorate.

Noticias24. 6 May 2016. "Dirigente de Un Nuevo Tiempo German Mavare fue asesinado en Lara." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Noticias24. 7 March 2014. "Especial Ns4: Conflictos en UNT evidencian que 'en los ultimos anos ha venido en franco deterioro'." [Accessed 16 Aug. 2016]

Political Handbook of the World (PHW). 2015. "Venezuela." Edited by Thomas Lansford. Washington, DC: CQ Press. [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Princeton University. N.d. Digital Archive of Latin American and Caribbean Ephemera. "Mi Negra: Una oportunidad para salir de abajo. La tarjeta de debito social. Manuel Rosales Presidente." [Accessed 16 Aug. 2016]

Telegraph. 22 April 2009. "Venezuelan Opposition Leader Seeks Asylum in Peru." [Accessed 15 Aug. 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.a. "Nuestro partido." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.b. "Manuel Rosales Guerrero." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.c. Un Nuevo Tiempo Es Democracia Social: Definicion ideologica y lineamientos programaticos. [Accessed 20 july 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.d. Propuestas programaticas para la discussion.[Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.e. "Pablo Perez Alvarez." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.f. "Omar Barboza." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.g. "Evelin Trejo de Rosales." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.h. "Enrique Marquez." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.i. "Timoteo Zambrano." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.j. "Yenny De Freitas." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.k. "Liliana Hernandez." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.l. "Diego Scharifker." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). N.d.m. "Registro de militancia." [Accessed 20 July 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: A professor of political science at the University of Toronto; Un Nuevo Tiempo.

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; ContraPunto.com; ecoi.net; El Diario de Guayana; El Sol de Margarita; Factiva; Freedom House; Globovision; Human Rights Watch; La Patilla; Notisemana; United Nations  ReliefWeb; United States  Department of State, Embassy in Caracas; Venezuela  Ministerio del Poder Popular para Relaciones Interiores, Justicia y Paz; Zulia por Dentro.

Attachment

Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). "Registro de militancia." [Accessed 20 July 2016]
Venezuela: information on the political party Justice First (Primero Justicia), including membership procedures, structure and leadership at the national level and in Maracaibo (2014-May 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 11 May 2016 Citation / Document Symbol VEN105518.E Related Document(s) Venezuela : information sur le parti politique Justice d'abord (Primero Justicia), y compris les procedures d'adhesion, la structure et les dirigeants a l'echelle nationale et a Maracaibo (2014-mai 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Venezuela: information on the political party Justice First (Primero Justicia), including membership procedures, structure and leadership at the national level and in Maracaibo (2014-May 2016), 11 May 2016, VEN105518.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591612444.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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources indicate that Justice First started as a civil society organization focused on legal reform (lecturer 28 Apr. 2016; PHW 2015, 1623), and became a political party in 2000 (ibid.). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a PhD candidate in politics and international relations at the Australian National University, who focuses on the politics of Venezuela and Latin America, stated that Justice First positions itself as a centrist party, "committed to social liberalism and Christian-democrat principles" (PhD candidate 3 May 2016). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, an associate professor of political science and law at Montclair State University in New Jersey, who focuses on Venezuelan and comparative politics, stated that, although in Venezuela Justice First is considered a centre-right party, he would characterize it as a social democratic party, adding that it has been "consistently anti-Chavista" (Associate Professor 28 Apr. 2016). In a telephone interview with the Research Directorate, a lecturer at the Department of Political Science of the University of Toronto, who specializes in Venezuelan politics, similarly indicated that supporters of the government see Justice First as a "right-wing group" or "coup-mongers" (golpistas) and an "enemy of the government" (lecturer 28 Apr. 2016).

Sources indicate that Justice First is a member of the Democratic Unity Table (Mesa de la Unidad Democratica, MUD), a group of opposition parties (International Crisis Group 23 Sept. 2014; PhD candidate 3 May 2016). The PhD candidate noted that Justice First is the main political party within this alliance (ibid.). For information on treatment of members of Justice First by authorities, see Response to Information Request VEN105385.

2. Membership Procedures

The Justice First party statutes indicate that those who

are Venezuelan,

are legally allowed to vote,

identify with the objectives and values of Justice First,

do not belong to another party,

[translation] "have not been expulsed from any party for acts against public morality nor have been convicted  for the perpetration of crimes against persons, property or public assets" 

declare in writing  that they want to be members, through the appropriate registration systems

can become members of Justice First, "without discrimination based on religious belief, race, sex or social condition" (Primero Justicia 18 Apr. 2012, Art. 7). The statutes further indicate that the [translation] "competent authorities" of the party have 30 days to reject membership applications, and if this does not happen, the applicant will be entered on the National Registry for Members and Supporters (Registro Nacional de Militantes y Simpatizantes) of the Electoral Organization and Registration System (Sistema de Organizacion y Registro Electoral, SORE) (ibid.). For further information on membership applications and membership cards, see Response to Information Request VEN105043. Article 12 of the Justice First party statutes further notes that supporters, defined as [translation] "those citizens who identify with the party and want to help carry out its programs, plans, workshops and community work," may register with the National Registry for Members and Supporters (ibid., Art. 12). Further information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

Information on specific membership procedures for Maracaibo and the state of Zulia could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Structure

According to the lecturer, "[r]egardless of what it says on paper about their structure, the opposition parties are usually dominated by a key figure, and they are not internally democratic," which is the case of Justice First (lecturer 28 Apr. 2016). The same source noted that "[t]here is strict discipline within [the] ranks [of Justice First]" and that the party overall is "very focused on national politics" (ibid.).

The PhD candidate provided the information in the following paragraph regarding the structure of Justice First.

At the national level, a "very broad" National Political Committee, consisting of current and former party leaders and elected politicians, "names the key party positions" and appoints the National Board of Directors (Junta de Direccion Nacional), which in turn "self-selects a smaller coordinating or executive committee," led by the National Coordinator and the General Secretary. This structure of political committee, board, and executive committee is "more or less repeated at the regional or state level," where the Political Coordinator and the General Secretary seem to be the "most prominent" roles, with other key positions being the Executive Coordinator and the Organizing Secretary. At the local level, a resident "with community leadership" is designated as the Municipal Coordinator. This coordinator, together with a local Organizing Secretary, works to organize volunteers at the parish level for party activities and advocacy work. The local volunteers are "often referred to as 'justicieros.'" Local level party leaders regularly meet with regional party directors to discuss strategy. A "stated aim" of Justice First is to have a party presence in every region, municipality and parish, but the regional and municipal party bodies "have little autonomy" when it comes to organizational or political matters. Such decisions are taken by the political committee at the national level (PhD candidate 3 May 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.1 National, State, Municipal and Parish Bodies

According to the Justice First party statutes, the main bodies at the national level include: the National Political Committee and the National Board of Directors, both headed by the National Coordinator; the Operating Committee; the General Secretariat, headed by the General Secretary; and the Organizing Secretariat, headed by the Organizing Secretary (Primero Justicia 18 Apr. 2012, Art. 19, 23, 26, 30, 34). A translation of the statutes articles related to the structure of the party is attached to this Response.

The statutes indicate that at the state level, the party structure is comprised of a State Political Committee, a State Board of Directors and a State Coordinator (ibid., Art. 45, 47, 49). At the municipal level, there is a Municipal Political Committee, a Municipal Board of Directors and a Municipal Coordinator (ibid., Art. 53, 55, 57). At the parish level, there is a Parish Board of Directors, a Parish Coordinator and Volunteer Committees (Comites Justicieros) (ibid., Arts. 61, 63, 67).

3.2 Secretariats

According to the Justice First statutes, the party is organized into different secretariats, which are in charge of the implementation of political and social programs and projects of the party (ibid., Art. 37). Secretariats [translation] "must create chapters" at the national, state, municipal and parochial levels (ibid.). The Justice First website indicates that the party has the following national secretariats:

Education - to bring together teachers (ibid. n.d.e);

Family Justice - to promote family values and respect for the human being (ibid. n.d.g);

Farming Justice - to execute Justice First's agricultural policies and to promote the wellbeing of farming families and improve food sovereignty in Venezuela (ibid. n.d.d);

Labour Justice - to support the creation of strong unions (ibid. n.d.j);

Justice for Professionals - to bring together professionals and technical workers in the party (ibid. n.d.h);

translation] "justice on the street" - to carry out social work, and form networks, as well as to develop grass roots leaders (ibid. n.d.f);

Security - to monitor crime and generate proposals to improve citizen security in Venezuela (ibid. n.d.b);

Youth Justice - to bring together members between the ages of 18 and 28, in order to promote youth participation (ibid. n.d.i).

4. National Leaders

Sources mention the following leaders and positions in Justice First at the national level:

Julio Borges, National Coordinator (PHW 2015, 1623; PhD candidate; Primero Justicia n.d.a) and head of the MUD's parliamentary faction (International Crisis Group 1 Feb. 2016, 22);

Carlos Arocha, National Organizing Secretary (Primero Justicia n.d.a) or "former" national organization secretary (PhD candidate 3 May 2016);

Henrique Capriles Radonski, governor of the state of Miranda (PhD candidate 3 May 2016; Teaching fellow 25 Apr. 2016). Sources also report that he is a two time presidential candidate (ibid; PHW 2015, 1623);

Edinson Ferrer, Organizing Secretary (El Mundo 4 Apr. 2016; El Universal 14 Mar. 2014; PhD candidate 3 May 2016);

Hernando Garzon, National Youth Secretary (El Universal 27 Apr. 2014);

Tomas Guanipa, National General Secretary (Primero Justicia n.d.a; PhD candidate 3 May 2016). Member of the National Assembly for Zulia (El Nacional 18 Apr. 2016);

Eliud Kovach, National Activism Secretary (PhD candidate 3 May 2016; El Universal 1 Jan. 2016)

Richard Mardo, Deputy Secretary General (Primero Justicia, n.d.a) or member of the "national directory" (PhD candidate 3 May 2016);

Gustavo Padron, National Education Secretary (PhD candidate 3 May 2016; Primero Justicia 5 Apr. 2016);

5. Structure and Leaders in Zulia and Maracaibo

Sources mention the following leaders and positions of Justice First in the state of Zulia:

Soraly Arteaga, Regional Secretary for Family Justice (PhD candidate 3 May 2016; Primero Justicia 12 Mar. 2015)

Rafael Ramirez Colina, member elect to the National Assembly for the state of Zulia (El Universal 1 Jan. 2016);

David de la Cruz, Regional Organization Secretary for the state of Zulia (PhD candidate 3 May 2016; El Universal 1 Jan. 2016);

Juan Pablo Guanipa, State Coordinator for Zulia (Primero Justicia n.d.c; Diario La Verdad 21 Jan. 2016) and member of the National Assembly (ibid.);

Roberto Matos, Regional Coordinator for Universities (PhD candidate 3 May 2016); or University Coordinator in the University of Zulia (ZPD 19 June 2015);

Cecilia Leonardi, Coordinator for Training and Regional Coordinator for Justice and Democracy in Zulia (Primero Justicia 25 Jan. 2016) or Regional Coordinator for Political Training (PhD candidate 3 May 2016);

Nerio Romero, leader in Zulia (Primero Justicia 6 Oct. 2015) or member of the Regional Board (PhD candidate 3 May 2016);

Joaquin Salas, Regional Youth Coordinator (Primero Justicia 13 Feb. 2016);

Avilio Troconiz, member of the National Assembly for Zulia (Primero Justicia n.d.; PhD candidate 3 May 2016).

Sources mention the following leaders and positions of Justice First in Maracaibo, the capital city of the state of Zulia:

Jose Camargo, Coordinator of the Municipal Education Secretariat in Maracaibo (Primero Justicia 15 Jan. 2016);

Italo Cuervo, Municipal Youth Coordinator in Maracaibo (Primero Justicia 13 Feb. 2016);

Romer Rubio, Municipal Coordinator for Maracaibo (Primero Justicia 29 Jan. 2016; ZPD 4 Sept. 2015).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Associate Professor, Montclair State University. 28 April 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Diario La Verdad. 21 January 2016. "Dos concejales de Lagunillas se pasan a Primero Justicia." [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]

El Mundo. 4 April 2016. Genesis Carrero Soto. "Primero Justicia: la unica forma de salir de la crisis es el referendum." [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]

El Nacional.18 April.2016. "Tomas Guanipa: este miercoles terminaremos de aprobar la Ley de Referendo." [Accessed: 22 Apr. 2016]

El Universal. 1 January 2016. Maria Teresa Luengo. "Dirigentes de PJ: hay que acompanar al pueblo en lo que viene para el pais." [Accessed 5 May 2016]

El Universal. 27 April 2014. "Designan a Hernando Garzon como secretario juvenil de Primero Justicia." [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]

El Universal. 14 March 2014. "Miguel Pizarro e Ismael Garcia se unen a las filas de Primero Justicia." [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]

International Crisis Group. 1 February 2016. CrisisWatch. No. 150. [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016]

International Crisis Group. 23 September 2014. Venezuela: Dangerous Inertia. Latin America Briefing No. 31. [Accessed 13 April 2016]

Lecturer, University of Toronto. 28 April 2016. Telephone interview.

PhD candidate, Australian National University. 3 May 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Political Handbook of the World 2015 (PHW). 2015. "Venezuela." Edited by Thomas Lansford. Washington, DC: CQ Press. [Accessed 13 Apr. 2016]

Primero Justicia. 5 April 2016. "Gustavo Padron: el aumento de salario fraccionado no cubre las necesidades de los docentes." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. 13 February 2016. Primero Justicia Zulia. "Primero Justicia Zulia: 'Sabemos que Venezuela tiene futuro y vale la pena quedarse a luchar por ella." [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]

Primero Justicia. 29 January 2016. Primero Justicia Zulia. "Romer Rubio: 'Ley de propiedad de viviendas honra el compromiso que hicimos el 6D ante el pueblo'." [Accessed 3 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. 25 January 2016. Primero Justicia Zulia. "Primero Justicia realizo taller de formacion para dirigentes zulianos." Primero Justicia Zulia Blog. [Accessed 6 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. 15 January 2016. Primero Justicia Zulia. "Primero Justicia: 'En vez de celebrar, docentes debemos estar en protesta nacional'." Primero Justicia Zulia Blog. [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. 6 October 2015. Primero Justicia Zulia. "Primero Justicia Zulia beneficia a los mas pobres con el plan 'PJ Llena tu Pipa.'" [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. 12 March 2015. Primero Justicia Zulia. "Primero Justicia Zulia: la persecucion nos impulsa a seguir en pie de lucha." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. 18 April 2012. Estatutos del Movimiento Primero Justicia. [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.a. "Dirigentes." [Accessed 19 Apr. 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.b. "Secretaria de Seguridad." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.c. "Juan Pablo Guanipa." [Accessed 22 Apr. 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.d. "Justicia Campesina." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.e. "Secretaria de Educacion." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.f. "Justicia en la Calle." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.g. "Justicia Familiar." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.h. "Secretaria de Justicia Gremial." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.i. "Justicia Juvenil." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Primero Justicia. N.d.j. "Justicia Obrera." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Teaching fellow, University of London. 25 April 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Zulia por Dentro (ZPD). 4 September 2015. "Romer Rubio: 'Los venezolanos viven un viacrucis para conseguir los alimentos'." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Zulia por Dentro (ZPD). 19 June 2015. "Roberto Matos: 'una lata de atun cuesta un dia de salario minimo'." [Accessed 4 May 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Lecturer, Australian National University; Professor, Tulane University; Professor, Universidad Catolica Andres Bello.

Internet sites, including: Agencia Venezolana de Noticias; Amnesty International; Biendateao.com; BBC; Carter Center; Diario 2001; DiarioRepublica.com; ecoi.net; The Economist; Factiva; Friedrich Ebert Stiftung; Globovision; Human Rights Watch; International Federation for Human Rights; IRIN; LatinNews; Minority Rights Group International; Noticias24; NoticiasCol.com; Notitarde; Radio France internationale; Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Transparency International; Ultimas Noticias; United Nations  Development Program, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Refworld, ReliefWeb; United States  Congressional Research Service, Department of State; Venevision; venezuelanalysis.com.

Attachment

Primero Justicia. 18 April 2012. Estatutos del Movimiento Primero Justicia (Statutes of the Justice First Movement). Excerpts translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Services and Procurement Canada. [Accessed 18 Apr. 2016]
South Sudan: Treatment of failed refugee claimants returned to South Sudan (2013 - November 2016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 19 December 2016 Citation / Document Symbol SSD105665.E Related Document(s) Soudan du Sud : information sur le traitement reserve aux demandeurs d'asile deboutes renvoyes au Soudan du Sud (2013-novembre 2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, South Sudan: Treatment of failed refugee claimants returned to South Sudan (2013 - November 2016) , 19 December 2016, SSD105665.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591613114.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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a former research specialist on Sudan who has worked for the Congressional Research Service [1] stated that over the past few decades, more than one million South Sudanese people were internally displaced or refugees (Former specialist 7 Nov. 2016). The same source noted that after the signing of the peace agreement, many South Sudanese refugees returned to South Sudan from neighbouring countries, such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda and others returned to join the government (ibid.). The UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) news agency reported in July 2013 that, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), since the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 to end a decades-long civil war between Khartoum and southern rebels, at least 2.5 million people returned from Sudan to South Sudan (UN 15 July 2013). The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) [2] cites the IOM as stating that between 2007 and July 2014, approximately 2 million South Sudanese people returned to their country of origin, most of which were voluntary returns (IDMC 9 July 2014, 9).

Sources report that a civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 (IDMC 9 July 2014, 1; RI 12 Mar. 2015, 4), leading to the displacement of about 2 million people, as reported in March 2015 (ibid., 3). According to UNHCR figures, as of 15 October 2016, there were 1.61 million South Sudanese IDPs and approximately 1.18 million South Sudanese people who became refugees in other countries (UN 15 Oct. 2016, 1).

Refugees International (RI), an independent Washington-based advocacy organization that "accept[s] no government or UN funding" and that "advocates for lifesaving protection and assistance for displaced people and promotes solutions to displacement crises" (RI n.d.), states in a field report from March 2015 that populations of South Sudanese in the north "have been pushed to the brink of starvation" (ibid. 12 Mar. 2015, 3). According to an April 2015 report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 2.5 million people in South Sudan were reported to be "facing crisis [or] emergency levels of food insecurity" since January 2015 (UN 3 Apr. 2015). A nutrition analysis included in the UN's South Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan 2015 states that the malnutrition situation is classified as critical or very critical in over half the country (UN 1 Dec. 2014, 17). According to a report by South Sudan submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in August 2016, some of the areas most affected by food gaps as a result of the civil war are Jonglei state (595,000 IDPs), Unity state (437,600 IDPs), and Upper Nile state (244,900 IDPs), among others (South Sudan 23 Aug. 2016, para. 62).

The UNHCR's 14 April 2015 Position on Returns to South Sudan document states that "[t]he security, rule of law and human rights situation pertaining today in South Sudan  stands in the way of safe and dignified return for any person originating from South Sudan," and for these reasons, the UNHCR recommends that states "suspend forcible returns" to the country (United Nations 14 April 2015, para. 9).

2. Treatment of Failed Refugee Claimants

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a Senior Fellow at Harvard University's Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, who is also a professor of English at Smith College, has written books and articles about Darfur and Sudan, and describes himself as being involved in "research, analysis, and advocacy" on Sudan, indicated that he did not know of any cases of returns to South Sudan; however, he gave the opinion that the manner in which South Sudanese authorities would treat a person who was known or suspected of being a failed refugee claimant in the West upon return to Sudan "depends almost entirely on the political profile of the person returning; merely seeking asylum is unlikely to be known or a cause in itself for persecution or punishment" (Senior Fellow 30 Oct. 2016). The same source further stated that the factors affecting treatment would be whether the person has political affiliations with the government in Juba or the opposition (primarily the Sudan People's Liberation Army in Opposition) (ibid.). However, he also noted that the treatment of a person who returns to South Sudan from abroad is "contingent upon conditions" in the country, which is "highly unstable" and subject to change (ibid.).

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, the Director of the Nairobi office of Crisis Action [3], who provided his individual viewpoint and not necessarily the viewpoint of Crisis Action, gave the opinion, concerning returnees, that "[n]ot everyone would be monitored and detained, but activists, human rights defenders, politicians, etc. would be heavily scrutinized" (Director 14 Nov. 2016). The same source did not have knowledge of specific cases, however, he stated that people who are known or suspected of being failed refugee claimants who return to South Sudan

might face some harassment from authorities depending on who they are, and the nature of the asylum claim . . . If they are alleging risk of being tortured by the South Sudanese government, for example, there is a high risk that would carry repercussions if the authorities in South Sudan were made aware. (ibid.).

Concerning factors that influence the treatment of returnees, the Director indicated that men tend to be scrutinized more than women, and that "there are huge ethnic tensions at the moment. Nuer would be scrutinized more than most upon return, as well as [people from] some areas that are perceived to be harboring SPLM-IO [Sudan People's Liberation Movement - In Opposition] sympathizers" (ibid.).

Examples of specific cases of individuals who were failed refugee claimants who were returned to South Sudan could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The former specialist knew of a case in which a spokesperson of the rebel faction of the SPLM-IO, who had refugee status in Kenya and a US Green Card, was deported to South Sudan because the Kenyan authorities stated that they "do not want to allow people to use their country for violent purposes" (Former specialist 7 Nov. 2016). Without providing details, the same source indicated that security forces questioned the spokesperson and "it is possible he might be freed" (ibid.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3. Situation of Returnees

According to sources, South Sudan's transitional constitution includes rights to freedom of movement (Freedom House 2016; US 13 Apr. 2016, 25) and repatriation (ibid.). The US Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015 states that

[t]he 2012 Cooperation Agreements signed by the governments of Sudan and South Sudan cover security, economic, and other matters, including an agreement to protect freedoms of residence, movement, economic activity, and property ownership for citizens of both countries residing in Sudan or South Sudan. Although the negotiating parties made progress in October in Addis Ababa on border issues, the governments failed to make substantial progress during the year on aspects of the agreement relating to each other's nationals. (ibid.)

IRIN reports that some returnees who returned to their home areas in 2013 found new owners had taken over their farms and some others lacked the required documentation to resettle on their land (UN 15 July 2013). IRIN also quotes the South Sudan Country Director for the International Rescue Committee, which lobbies the government to improve the situation of returnees, as stating that South Sudan lacks a legal framework to resolve land allocation issues; resentment between returnees and host communities over resources in South Sudan has caused tensions and "'increase[s] the likelihood of conflict'" (ibid.). Freedom House similarly indicates that South Sudan has "unclear or non-existent laws" related to land use and ownership, and that land issues are "frequent causes of conflict in South Sudan, and returning refugees have exacerbated the problem" (Freedom House 2016).

IRIN cites a representative of the IOM as indicating that the Upper Nile region hosts some of the largest populations of returnees, refugees and IDPs (UN 2 May 2013). The same article indicates that the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) stated that South Sudanese returnees from Sudan "often lack [] skills, experience and social networks" and that food security is poor due to demands on "social services, poverty, unemployment and a lack of productive assets" (ibid.).

According to the IDMC, returnees' choices of places to return is restricted, as urban land is expensive and rural land offered by the government to encourage returns is sometimes in unfamiliar areas where returnees do not have social networks, service provision, adequate transportation or communications infrastructure (IDMC 9 July 2014, 9). Sudan Tribune reports that approximately 3,750 people returned to Pibor, but faced "widespread" hunger in the area (Sudan Tribune 4 Aug. 2014).

3.1 Attacks Against Returnees

According to Sudan Tribune, armed youth attacked a boat carrying returnees from Juba to Bor, which killed 2 people and injured four others; the targets were primarily pastoralists returning to Bor from Jubek state (Sudan Tribune 2 Apr. 2016). The same source notes that there have been other attacks and that "lack of protection for returnees has been the main concern for pastoralists" (ibid.).

Sudan Tribune also reports that in Khartoum-Jadid, a new residential area on the outskirts of Rumbek town in the Lake State that was given to returnees from Khartoum, female returnees have been targeted and subjected to rape and looting of property by armed gunmen at night (ibid.6 Dec. 2015).

On 9 September 2016, Radio Dabanga reported that about 74,000 residents of Abyei, a border area between Sudan and South Sudan, returned to the eastern areas of Abyei due to improved security, education, health, water and services (Radio Dabanga 9 Sept. 2016). The same source indicates that there is "relative stability" in the area but that "there remain small armed groups that storm markets and terrorise citizens" (ibid.).

Corroborating information for these examples could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. Support Services

According to the IDMC, South Sudanese authorities "made efforts to provide relief and engagement in the return process before the current crisis, but a lack of comprehensive data and understanding of displacement hampered an effective response" (IDMC 9 July 2014, 9). Freedom House states that South Sudanese authorities have encouraged the return of displaced people but "has largely failed to provide them with even the most basic assistance" (Freedom House 2016). IRIN similarly reports that returnees face "poor or non-existent services and a variety of reintegration challenges" (UN 15 July 2013).

According to the field report by RI, the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has bases which have been approached by civilians seeking protection since December 2013 (RI 12 Mar. 2015, 7). The same 2015 publication reports that about 110,000 IDPs were receiving temporary shelter on 6 UNMISS bases, mainly located in Bentiu (52,000 IDPs), Juba (34,000), and Malakal (21,000) (ibid.). Country Reports 2015 noted that IDPs remained on the UNMISS sites "due to fear of retaliatory and ethnically targeted violence by armed groups, both government and opposition affiliated" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 25).

In an August 2016 report to the UN Human Rights Council, South Sudanese authorities indicate that they have taken short-term and long-term measures to address food security (South Sudan 23 Aug. 2016, para. 62). In the short-term, the government of South Sudan has distributed 11,000 metric tons of sorghum (dura) to areas particularly affected by the civil war (ibid.). In the long-term, they have provided farming equipment, supplies and training to farmers (ibid., para. 65). However, South Sudanese authorities note that despite these efforts, the majority of the population lives below the poverty line due to draught, insecurity and high levels of youth unemployment (ibid., para. 64). According to the same source, women and children from conflict-affected areas and returnees are the groups most affected by food insecurity (ibid.).

In a 2016 report on the mental health impact of South Sudan's conflict, Amnesty International (AI) states that "[d]espite significant and widespread needs, the availability and accessibility of mental health and psychosocial support services in South Sudan is extremely limited," noting that there are only two practising psychiatrists in South Sudan and only one public hospital that provides psychiatric care, all of which are located in Juba (AI Jan. 2016, 8). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

RI explains that there is a joint humanitarian air operation that delivers aid to remote areas through the "rapid response mechanism (RRM)," comprised of approximately 30 organizations including UNICEF, WFP and other UN agencies and NGOs (RI 12 Mar. 2015, 5). The same source notes that some populations receive aid monthly, others less frequently, and some not at all (ibid.). According to the UNHCR's Regional Emergency Update on South Sudan, as of 15 October 2016, the UNHCR had received 24 percent of the 649 million dollars funding that they requested for their programs in South Sudan (UN 15 Oct. 2016, 1).

Country Reports 2015 states that South Sudanese authorities "sometimes obstructed the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and other humanitarian organizations seeking to provide protection and assistance to IDPs and refugees" (US 13 Apr. 2016, 25).

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] This source formerly worked as a Specialist on African Affairs for the Congressional Research Service between 1989 and 2012, where he wrote numerous reports on Sudan and South Sudan (Former specialist 7 Nov. 2016). He also worked as the UN Senior Adviser to the President of South Sudan between 2012 and 2013, lived in South Sudan from January 2012 to June 2013, and travels to South Sudan regularly (ibid.). The source is further the Founder and CEO of the non-profit foundation African Refugees and Victims Relief Fund (ibid.).

[2] IDMC is a global monitoring and analysis organization that seeks to "inform and influence policy and action;" it is part of the Norwegian Refugee Council, an independent, non-governmental humanitarian NGO (IDMC n.d.).

[3] Crisis Action is an international organization with offices in Brussels, Johannesburg, London, MENA, Nairobi, New York, Paris and Washington, DC that "works with individuals and organisations from global civil society to protect civilians from armed conflict" (Crisis Action n.d.). It describes itself as a "catalyst and convenor of joint action whose work behind the scenes enables coalitions to work quickly and effectively" and that the organization's "only agenda is the protection of civilians" (ibid.). The Director of the Nairobi office has conducted research and advocacy activities to promote human rights and rule of law in South Sudan (Director 14 Nov. 2016).

References

Amnesty International (AI). January 2016. 'Our Hearts Have Gone Dark.' The Mental Health Impact of South Sudan's Conflict. [Accessed 18 Nov. 2016]

Crisis Action. N.d. "About." [Accessed 5 Dec. 2016]

Director of the Nairobi Office, Crisis Action. 14 November 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Former specialist. 7 November 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

Freedom House. 2016. "South Sudan." Freedom in the World 2016. [Accessed 17 Nov. 2016]

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). 9 July 2014. "South Sudan: Greater Humanitarian and Development Efforts Needed to Meet IDPs' Growing Needs." [Accessed 2 Nov. 2016]

Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). N.d. "About IDMC." [Accessed 16 Nov. 2016]

Radio Dabanga. 9 September 2016. "74,000 Residents Return to Secure Abyei Areas - South Sudan." (Factiva)

Refugees International (RI). 12 March 2015. Michael Boyce and Mark Yarnell. Field Report - South Sudan: A Nation Uprooted. [Accessed 4 Nov. 2016]

Refugees International (RI). N.d. "Our Work." [Accessed 16 Nov. 2016]

Senior Fellow, Harvard University's Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. 30 October 2016. Correspondence with the Research Directorate.

South Sudan. 23 August 2016. United Nations Human Rights Council. National Report Submitted in Accordance with Paragraph 5 of the Annex to Human Rights Council Resolution 16/21. (A/HRC/WG.6/26/SSD/1) [Accessed 4 Nov. 2016]

Sudan Tribune. 2 April 2016. "Two Killed, 4 Injured on Another Juba-Bor Boat Attack." (Factiva)

Sudan Tribune. 6 December 2015. "Returnees from Khartoum Live in Fear of Rape in Rumbek." (Factiva)

Sudan Tribune. 4 August 2014. "Pibor Returnees Facing Critical Food Shortages Across Region." (Factiva)

United Nations (UN). 15 October 2016. UNHCR. South Sudan Situation: Regional Emergency Update. 1-15 October 2016. [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 14 April 2015. UNHCR. UNHCR Position on Returns to South Sudan - Update I. [Accessed 10 Nov. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 3 April 2015. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). South Sudan: Crisis - Situation Report No. 81 (as of April 2015). [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 1 December 2014. Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). South Sudan 2015 Humanitarian Response Plan. [Accessed 6 Dec. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 15 July 2013. Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN). "New Returnees in South Sudan Living on the Margins." [Accessed 3 Nov. 2016]

United Nations (UN). 2 May 2013. Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN). "Conflict and Returnees Strain South Sudan Food Security." [Accessed 3 Nov. 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. "South Sudan." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 4 Nov. 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral Sources: African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies; Canada  Canadian Border Services Agency, Embassy of Canada in Nairobi, Global Affairs Canada; Center for Civilians in Conflict; Feinstein International Center, Tufts University; Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre; International Organization for Migration  South Sudan; Professor, Fletcher School of International Affairs, Tufts University; United Nations  Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees.

Internet sites, including: African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies; Center for Civilians in Conflict; ecoi.net; Factiva; Human Rights Watch; Institute for War and Peace Reporting; International Crisis Group; International Organization for Migration  South Sudan; UN  Refworld.
Colombia: Domestic violence, including legislation; state protection and support services available to victims in Bogota, Santiago de Cali, and Medellin (2014-April 2017)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 21 April 2017 Citation / Document Symbol COL105771.E Related Document(s) Colombie : information sur la violence familiale, y compris les lois; la protection offerte par l'Etat et les services de soutien offerts aux victimes a Bogota, a Santiago de Cali et a Medellin (2014-avril 2017) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Colombia: Domestic violence, including legislation; state protection and support services available to victims in Bogota, Santiago de Cali, and Medellin (2014-April 2017), 21 April 2017, COL105771.E, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591615304.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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

Sources indicate that violence against women has become [translation] "normalized" to the point that it is invisible to authorities and society in general (Santiago de Cali 28 Mar. 2017; Sisma Mujer 25 Nov. 2016, 9). Corporacion Sisma Mujer, a Colombian NGO that advocates for women's rights (Sisma Mujer n.d.), indicates that, in many cases, women prefer not to report domestic violence out of fear of being stigmatized or revictimized by state institutions (Sisma Mujer 25 Nov. 2016, 9). According to the website of the US Embassy in Bogota, "[d]omestic violence, including spousal abuse, remains a serious problem in Colombia" (US n.d.). According to the US Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2016, "[a]lthough prohibited by law, rape, including spousal rape, remained a serious problem" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 37).

According to Country Reports 2016, the Attorney General's Office reported that, in July 2016, 62,186 new investigations were opened for cases of domestic violence, of which 53,596 victims were women and 2,607 cases involved minors (US 3 Mar. 2017, 38). According to the 2015 annual report by the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences (Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses, INMLCF), 47,248 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2015 (Colombia July 2016, 295). In 40,943 of these cases the victims were women, with 62.66 percent of these women between the ages of 20 and 34 (Colombia July 2016, 295). The same report indicates that in 47.27 percent of the cases, the male partner was the perpetrator, while in 29.33 percent it was the ex-partner (Colombia July 2016, 297). The departments with the highest number of cases of domestic violence were Bogota (11,259 cases), Antioquia (4,809), Cundinamarca (3,590), Valle del Cauca (3,487), and Santander (2,379) (Colombia July 2016, 293). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative of UN Women in Colombia indicated that, according to statistics by the INMLCF, 41,802 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2014, 40,943 in 2015, and 43,083 in 2016 (UN 27 Mar. 2017).

The 2015 National Survey on Demographics and Health (Encuesta nacional de demografia y salud, ENDS Colombia 2015) indicates that 64.1 percent of women and 74.4 percent of men reported having suffered some form of psychological violence by their partner, 31.9 percent of women and 22.4 percent of men reported having experienced physical violence from their partner, 31.1 percent of women and 25.2 percent of men reported having experienced economic violence, and 7.6 percent of women reported having experienced sexual violence from their partner (Colombia 2015, 78-80).

2. Legislation

In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative from Profamilia, a Colombian non-profit organization that promotes sexual and reproductive rights (Profamilia n.d.), indicated that the following legislation addresses intra-family violence [1]" in Colombia:

The Constitution, Articles 11 to 14, and 42 and 43;

Law 82 of 1993, which enacted norms to support women heads of households, and which was amended by Law 1232 of 2008;

Law 294 of 1996, which enacted measures to prevent, remediate and punish intra-family violence, and which was modified by Law 1257 of 2008;

Law 599 of 2000, which established crimes against the family in Articles 299 to 238 of the Penal Code;

Law 823 of 2003, which enacted norms about equal opportunities for women;

Law 1098 of 2006, which enacted the law on children and adolescents;

Law 1257 of 2008;

Law 1639 of 2013, which provides protection measures for victims of attacks with acidic substances;

Law 1719 of 2014, which seeks to guarantee access to justice for victims of sexual violence (Profamilia 7 Apr. 2017).

The representative of UN Women in Colombia stated that Law 294 of 1996 deals with intra-family violence, and Law 1257 of 2008 with violence against women (UN 27 Mar. 2017). Similarly, in correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative of Taller Abierto, a Cali-based NGO focused on promoting gender equality (Taller Abierto n.d.), indicated that Law 1257 of 2008 is [translation] "one of the important laws that seeks to protect women from violence" (Taller Abierto 27 Mar. 2017). The UN Women representative in Colombia source added that Colombia is part of the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women, also known as the Convention of Belem Do Para (UN Women 27 Mar. 2017).

According to Country Reports 2016,

[t]he law provides for sentences ranging from eight to 30 years' imprisonment for violent sexual assault. For acts of spousal sexual violence, the law mandates prison sentences of six months to two years and denies probation or bail to offenders who disobey restraining orders. (US 3 Mar. 2017, 37)

According to the same source, "[t]he law allows authorities to prosecute domestic violence offenders when the victim does not testify, if there is another witness," and that "[t]he law augments both jail time and fines if the crime causes 'transitory or permanent physical disfigurement,' such as acid attacks, in which an attacker throws acid onto the victim's face" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 38). A translation of Law 1257 of 2008 by the Translation Bureau of Public Works and Government Services Canada is attached to this Response.

2.1 Implementation and Effectiveness of Legislation

According to the website of the US Embassy in Bogota, "[t]he Human Rights Ombudsman's Office conducts regional training workshops to promote the application of domestic violence statutes" (US n.d.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

The Taller Abierto representative noted that Law 1257 of 2008 is "still in the process of being implemented, the process is slow due to lack of political will" (Taller Abierto 27 Mar. 2017). According to Country Reports 2016, "[j]udicial authorities may remove an abuser from a household and require the abuser to undergo therapy. The law provides for both fines and prison time if an abuser causes grave harm or the abuse is recurrent, but authorities reportedly did not impose fines" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 38).

3. State Protection and Support Services

3.1 Reporting Domestic Violence

According to Country Reports 2016, "[t]he law requires the government to provide victims of domestic violence immediate protection from further physical or psychological abuse" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 38). An article in El Tiempo, a Bogota-based newspaper, cites the President's High Commissioner for Women's Equality (Consejera Presidencial para la Equidad de la Mujer) as explaining that women who have been assaulted should follow the following steps to ensure that they are assisted and protected by the authorities:

Step one: request immediate protection for themselves and their children at Family Commissaries (Comisarias de Familia), if the aggressor is part of the family, or at the Attorney General's Office (Fiscalia General de la Nacion, FGN), if the aggressor is from outside the family unit. The Colombian National Police (Policia Nacional de Colombia, PNC) can also be called to provide protection. Authorities will determine whether the victim should be send to a shelter.

Step two: file a police report with the authorities at the Comprehensive Assistance Centre for Intrafamily Violence (Centro de Atencion Integral contra la Violencia Intrafamiliar, CAVIF), the Comprehensive Assistance Centre for Victims of Sexual Crimes (Centro de Atencion Integral de Victimas de Delitos Sexuales, CAIVAS), or the Immediate Response Units (Unidades de Reaccion Inmediata, URI) of the FGN; Family Commissaries; or the PNC (El Tiempo 19 Oct. 2016).

The website of the FGN indicates that intra-family violence can also be reported at the FGN's Centre for Comprehensive Assistance for Criminal Cases (Centro de Atencion Integral Penal, CAPIV), municipal courts (Juzgados municipales) (Colombia 18 June 2015), and the Pre-trial Conciliation Unit (Unidad de Conciliacion Preprocesal, UPI) (Colombia n.d.). A document posted on the FGN website further indicates that the CAPIVs can be found in Bogota, Barranquilla, Barrancabermeja, Villavicencio, and Tumaco, and that there are 32 CAFIVs in the country (Colombia n.d.).

According to the website of the US Embassy in Bogota, Family Ombudspersons (Defensores de Familia) of the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, ICBF) also handle domestic violence cases (US n.d.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.2 State Response

According to the 2015 National Survey on Demographics and Health, 76.4 percent of women never sought help in cases of violence committed against them (Colombia 2015, 84). The same source indicates that, in cases where the violence was reported, 40.3 percent were reported at a police station, 37.2 percent at the FGR, 19 percent at a Family Commissary, 7.1 percent at "another institution," and 2.4 percent at a court (Colombia 2015, 83-84). Of all reported cases by women victims of violence, the aggressor was penalized in 21.1 percent of the cases, the victim was summoned to conciliation in 29.5 percent of the cases, the aggressor was not penalized or did not appear in 28.2 percent of the cases, the aggressor was ordered not to go near the victim in 22.1 percent of the cases, and in 5.7 percent the aggressor was prohibited from going back into the home (Colombia 2015, 84). In 4.7 percent of the cases that were reported, the violence did not stop, and in 2.3 percent it got worse (Colombia 2015, 84).

A report sent to Congress by the President's High Commissioner for Women's Equality, regarding the implementation of Law 1257 of 2008, states that, in 2014, the FGN received 74,899 cases of intra-family violence, with charges laid in 10 percent of the cases and a conviction rate of 23 percent (Colombia 26 Jan. 2017). In 2015 the number of cases received was 85,040, with charges laid in 12 percent of the cases and a conviction rate of 24 percent (Colombia 26 Jan. 2017). The same report states that, despite the increase in the rate of charges being laid, that rate remains "very low," and the investigation and prosecution of intra-family violence cases remains "insufficient" and the conviction rate "deficient" (Colombia 26 Jan. 2017).

Country Reports 2016 states that, according to women's groups such as Sisma Mujer, law enforcement response is "generally ineffective" (US 3 Mar. 2017, 37).

The UN Women representative in Colombia stated that the PNC have a protocol for dealing with female victims of domestic violence, but that given the high levels of domestic violence in the country, even with this protocol, the institutional capacity of the PNC to respond to domestic violence is [translation] "insufficient" (UN 27 Mar. 2017). The source added that this is not only the case for the PNC, but more generally for institutions that deal with cases of domestic violence (UN 27 Mar. 2017). Access to justice for victims of domestic violence is "one of the major bottlenecks" which results in high levels of impunity (UN 27 Mar. 2017).

On 24 February 2016, Caracol Radio, a news station based in Bogota, reported that, in a domestic violence-related ruling, the Constitutional Court instructed the FGN and judges to provide immediate protection measures to women who report partner violence (Caracol 24 Feb. 2016). The plaintiff in this case was revictimized by her partner after she tried unsuccessfully obtaining protection measures from the FGN three times for domestic-related violence (Caracol 24 Feb. 2016). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.2.1 PNC

The website of the US Embassy in Bogota indicates that domestic violence can be reported at local police stations (US n.d.). In correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative of the Human Rights Office of the PNC's Metropolitan Police of Santiago de Cali, indicated that the PNC provides assistance to women victims of violence by accompanying the victim to the relevant institution so she can receive support (Colombia 31 Mar. 2017). The UN Women representative in Colombia indicated that the PNC does not have the mandate to receive complaints related to domestic violence, but it offers protection to women at risk of domestic violence (UN 27 Mar. 2017). Similarly, in correspondence with the Research Directorate, a representative from the Under-Secretary of Gender Equality of the Municipality of Santiago de Cali stated that, in accordance with Law 1257 of 2008, the FGN is responsible for receiving and processing domestic violence-related complaints, while the PNC is mandated to support protection measures ordered by the Family Commissaries and the FGN (Santiago de Cali 28 Mar. 2017).

3.2.2 Family Commissaries

The website of the District Secretariat for Women (Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer) of the City of Bogota indicates that the Family Commissaries receive cases of intra-family violence, provide legal advice, issue protection measures, and provide referrals to health-care institutions in [translation] "urgent cases" (Bogota n.d.a). According to the website of the Ministry of Justice, 70 percent of the cases of violence against women are dealt with in the first instance by Family Commissaries (Colombia 9 Mar. 2015). The same source indicates that there are [translation] "more than 1,300" Family Commissaries in 1,101 municipalities (Colombia 9 Mar. 2015).

3.2.3 Helpline 155

On 16 November 2013, Noticias RCN, a news source based in Bogota, reported that the President's High Commissioner for Women's Equality and the PNC created the Helpline 155 to [translation] "counter the high levels of aggressions and crimes against women reported [in October 2013]" (Noticias RCN 16 Nov. 2013). The website of the President's High Commissioner for Women's Equality indicates that Helpline 155 has country wide, free coverage, operates 24/7, and provides, under confidentiality, guidance on issues related to gender violence and institutional programs available (Colombia 18 Feb. 2015). The same source further indicates that the helpline receives an average of 760 calls per day, and that in 2014 a total of 280,148 calls were received (Colombia 18 Feb. 2015). The largest numbers of calls come from Bogota and the departments of Atlantico, Valle del Cauca, and Antioquia (Colombia 18 Feb. 2015). On 19 October 2016, El Tiempo cited the Inspector General of the PNC as stating that "during this year," the helpline has received 184,776 calls, 349 of which were emergencies that required immediate intervention by the PNC (El Tiempo 19 Oct. 2016).

3.2.4 Protection Measures

Chapter V of Law 1257 provides the following,

[translation]

Article 16.  Anyone who, in their family environment, is a victim of physical or mental harm, whose sexual integrity us harmed, or who is threatened, assaulted or suffers any other form of aggression from another member of the family, may without prejudice to the recourses provided by the criminal law ask the family commissioner of the place where the offences occurred or, if there is no such commissioner, the municipal civil or joint civil-criminal judge, for an immediate protection measure to end the violence, mistreatment or aggression or to prevent it if it is imminent. (Colombia 2008, Art. 16)



Article 17.  If the competent authority determines that the petitioner or a member of a family group has been a victim of violence, it will order a permanent protection measure, stating that the aggressor shall refrain from the conduct mentioned in the complaint and from any similar action against the victim and other members of the family group. The official may also impose the following measures, 

Order the aggressor to leave the home; Order the aggressor to refrain from entering any place where the victim is found; Forbid the aggressor to conceal or move the children and defencless disabled persons in the family group,; Require the aggressor to undergo re-education and treatment; If necessary, order the aggressor to pay the costs of counseling and the legal, medical, psychological and psychiatric care that the victim requires; If the violence or mistreatment is serious and recurrence thereof is feared, the competent authority will order the police to provide special temporary protection for the victim both at home and at work (if she works outside the home); Order the police, at the victim's request, to accompany her when she returns home if she had to leave for her safety; Provisionally decide the regime of child visiting, care and custody, if there are any children,; Suspend the aggressor's right to own, carry and use weapons; if he must do so for his work or profession, this suspension must be justified Provisionally decide the use and enjoyment of the family home; Forbid the aggressor to do anything to sell or encumber his goods that are subject to registration, if his property is owned jointly with the victim; Order the aggressor to immediately return items of personal use, identity documents and any other document or item that the victim owns or that is in her care; Any other measure necessary for the fulfilment of the objectives hereof. (Colombia 2008)

Sources indicate that protection measures can be issued by the FGN, a Family Commissary (Bogota n.d.b; Colombia 31 Mar. 2017; Profamilia 7 Apr. 2017), or a municipal judge (Profamilia 7 Apr. 2017; Colombia 31 Mar. 2017). The representative of the Metropolitan Police of Cali indicated that protection measures are also issued by the ICBF (Colombia 31 Mar. 2017). According to the website of Bogota's District Secretariat for Women, when violence against the women takes place outside the family, a supervisory judge can issue such protection measures (Bogota n.d.b).

3.2.5 Shelters

According to Country Reports 2016,

[t]he ICBF provided safe houses and counseling for some women and children who were victims of domestic violence, but its services could not meet total demand. In addition to fulfilling traditional family counseling functions, the ICBF family ombudsmen handled domestic violence cases. (US 3 Mar. 2017, 38)

The website of the US Embassy in Bogota states that the ICBF's services regarding safe houses and counselling for victims "are dwarfed by the magnitude of the problem" (US n.d.). Further and corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

3.2.6 Socio-economic Support

Information on socio-economic support programs for survivors of domestic violence could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4. State Protection and Support Services in Bogota, Medellin and Santiago de Cali

Without providing further detail, the UN Women representative in Colombia stated that Bogota and Medellin have programs and mechanisms for the prevention, support and protection of victims in domestic violence-related cases, but that they are "still insufficient to respond to the magnitude of the problem" (UN 27 Mar. 2017). She stated that Bogota and Medellin have better availability of safe houses to protect women from physical domestic violence in comparison to Santiago de Cali where services are more limited (UN 27 Mar. 2017).

4.1 Bogota

The website of Bogota's District Secretariat for Women indicates that women who experience violence have the right to receive information, report the violence, and request protection measures and medical assistance (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016a). The same source further states that information can be obtained from women's organizations, community networks, and local authorities (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016b). Regarding reporting, the District Secretariat for Women indicates that domestic violence can be reported at institutions including the FGN, Client Support Centres (Salas de Atencion al Usuario, SAU), CAVIFs, the PNC, and Family Commissaries (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016c). Protection measures can be requested at the nearest Family Commissary, or, if the violence originates outside the family unit, at the FGN or a supervisory judge (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016d). El Espectador, a Bogota-based newspaper, reports that Family Commissaries in Bogota issued 486 protection measures in January 2015, while in January 2016 they issued 1,376 (El Espectador 8 Mar. 2016).

Regarding medical assistance, the website of Bogota's District Secretariat for Women states that a female victim of violence can seek medical help at the nearest hospital or at any Centre for Comprehensive Medical Assistance (Centro de Atencion Medica Integral, CAMI) (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016e). The same source further indicates that if the victim has experienced physical or psychological violence, the victim and her children or other dependents have the right to receive temporary housing, food and transportation, provided that clinical documents show that the health of the victim has been affected and the PNC recommends the relocation (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016e).

4.1.1 Bogota Social Services and Shelters

El Espectador reports that in Bogota there are 34 Family Commissaries and two mobile units (El Espectador 8 Mar. 2016). A press release on the website of the City of Bogota indicates that Bogota has an online Family Commissary which provides guidance regarding [translation] "abuse; family disputes; custody, child support and visitation; divorce; and violence" (Bogota 1 July 2015). The same source indicates that formal complaints cannot be initiated through the online Family Commissary and an appointment must be made with the nearest Family Commissary (Bogota 1 July 2015).

The website of Bogota's District Secretariat for Women lists the following phone numbers for support for victims of domestic violence:

Helpline 155; and

018000-112137 - the [translation] "District's Purple Helpline 'Women Listening to Women'" (Bogota n.d.c).

The website also indicates that lawyers from the District Secretariat for Women are present at Justice Houses (Casas de Justicia)[2] to provide orientation and legal advice to women at risk, or victims of, violence, and to promote women's rights (Bogota n.d.d).

The website of Bogota's District Secretariat for Women indicates that there are four shelters in Bogota: three for victims of domestic violence and one for victims of the armed conflict (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016f). However, the same website indicates on another page that there were 120 spaces and six shelters in Bogota; four for female victims of family violence, one for female victims of the armed conflict, and one for women involved, or at risk of being involved, in sex work (Bogota 20 May 2016). The same article indicates that the women and their dependents receive housing, food, orientation and counselling from nutritionists, psychologists, social workers, education specialists, nurses and lawyers in order to ensure [translation] "comprehensive support" (Bogota 20 May 2016). In order to access shelter services, women need to be referred by either a Family Commissary or the FGN, and have, be in the process of obtaining, or willing to request, a protection measure (Bogota 2 Jan. 2016f). The duration of stay is three months, which can be extended depending on the woman's situation (Bogota 20 May 2016).

The website of Bogota's District Secretariat for Women further states that the Houses for Equal Opportunities for Women (Casas de Igualdad de Oportunidades para las Mujeres) offer services including legal advice, psychological support, and information on institutional programs for women victims of violence (Bogota n.d.e).

Information about the effectiveness of these services and protection provided in Bogota could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

4.2 Medellin

Information on state protection and support services available for survivors of domestic violence in Medellin was scarce among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

A document posted on the website of the Municipality of Medellin regarding the Family Commissaries indicates that they receive reports of intra-family violence and process requests for protection measures (Medellin n.d.). The source lists the contact information of Family Commissaries present in 16 neighbourhoods (comunas), 5 townships (corregimientos), and a [translation] "night support" Commissary (Medellin n.d.). However, El Mundo, a Medellin-based newspaper, reports that Family Commissaries lack personnel which hinders their ability to provide a [translation] "good service" (El Mundo 4 Mar. 2015). The same source cites a Family Commissary as stating that

[translation]

"there are Family Commissaries that work with one secretary, in neighbourhoods with more than 100,000 inhabitants. In those conditions, it is impossible to provide appropriate, effective and comprehensive assistance to victims of intra-family violence" (El Mundo 4 Mar. 2015).

4.3 Santiago de Cali

An information leaflet posted on the website of the Municipality of Santiago de Cali entitled [translation] "[a]ssistance in Three Steps for Girls and Women Who are Victims of Violence" indicates that victims of violence can obtain assistance from Family Commissaries, the FGN, health care institutions, and the ICBF (for girls or adolescents) (Santiago de Cali 9 Dec. 2016). For support and advice, victims can go to the city's shelter or the PNC, and if their cases are not being resolved they can go to the Prosecutor's Office (Procuraduria General de la Nacion, PGN), the Municipal Ombudsperson's Office (Personeria), or the National Ombudsperson's Office (Defensoria del Pueblo) (Santiago de Cali 9 Dec. 2016). The same source further indicates that women can also find support and orientation at women's organizations and university legal clinics (Santiago de Cali 9 Dec. 2016).

The representative of the Metropolitan Police of Cali listed the following competent authorities as providing services to victims of domestic violence in Cali:

[translation]

Immediate Response Unit (Unidad de Reaccion Inmediata, URI), for anyone who wants to report a crime; it is comprised of the Attorney General's Office, the SIJIN, the National Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, and the Public Ministry.

Comprehensive Assistance Centre for Intrafamily Violence (Centro de Atencion Integral Contra la Violencia Intrafamiliar, CAVIF)  comprised of the Attorney General's Office, the National Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, [and] Medical and Psychological Assistance.

Comprehensive Assistance Centre for Victims of Sexual Crimes (Centro de Atencion Integral de Victimas de Delitos Sexuales, CAIVAS), for minors who are sexually assaulted by an adult. CAIVAS are comprised of the Attorney General's Office, the National Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, [and] Medical and Psychological Support.

Specialized Centre for Adolescents (Centro Especializado para la Adolescensia, CESPA), for minors who are sexually assaulted by another minor.

Ombudsperson's Office (Defensoria del Pueblo), which is responsible for defending human rights, channeling popular demands, and protecting the interests of the community.

National Institute for Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, for anyone who has been sexually or physically assaulted. Office hours are Monday to Saturday 7am to 7pm.

Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF), for minors who have been sexually, physically or psychologically assaulted. 

Attorney General's Office 

Automatic Dispatch Centre (Centro Automatico de Despacho, CAD), for anyone who has been sexually, physically or psychologically assaulted. It receives information through helpline 123.

Family Commissaries 

Justice Houses 

Local Police Stations (Inspecciones de Policia) 

Notaries (Notarias), which can provide reconciliation services in civil, commercial and family matters.

Legal clinics (Consultorios Juridicos), which are located within universities' law schools and whose services are free of charge.



Municipal Ombudsman's Offices (Personerias Municipales)  (Colombia 31 Mar. 2017)

The representative of the Municipality of Santiago de Cali indicated that the Under-Secretary of Gender Equality of their municipality has eight teams with the following objectives: economic empowerment, political and social empowerment, psychological and legal support for victims of gender-based violence, shelter support for victims of gender-based violence, prevention of gender-based violence, gender mainstreaming and awareness, international cooperation, and management (Santiago de Cali 28 Mar. 2017). According to the same source, there are also NGOs in Cali that work on issues related to violence against women (Santiago de Cali 28 Mar. 2017).

The representative of the Metropolitan Police of Santiago de Cali listed the following numbers as helplines for that city:

Emotional Support Helpline of the Secretary of Health: 01800011048;

Helpline 155;

Helpline 123;

Helpline 143 (Municipal Ombudsperson of Bogota) for cases of intra-family violence, abandonment of underage children, and protection of human rights; and

National Helpline for the Prevention of Sexual Abuse of the ICBF: 01 8000 11 24 40 (Colombia 31 Mar. 2017).

The report of the President's High Commissioner for Women's Equality to Congress regarding the implementation of Law 1257 of 2008, states that the eleven Family Commissaries in Santiago de Cali assisted 1,025 and 2,083 women in 2015 and 2016, respectively (Colombia 26 Jan. 2017).

The information in the following paragraph was provided by the representative of the Municipality of Santiago de Cali.

In Cali, women can only report domestic violence to the FGN's Office located in La Plazoleta de San Francisco, during office hours. Personnel at the PNC, the FGN, the INMLCF and Family Commissaries are not properly trained to deal with domestic violence complaints, and the processes for dealing with domestic violence complaints are slow and lack effectiveness. Women are "revictimized" at state institutions, as they are the object of offensive or inconsiderate comments by officials who lay the blame on these women for the violence they experience. Conciliation is often considered in domestic violence situations, which, [translation] "in practice, makes women vulnerable because it means they have to accept the violence from their partner and leaves them in an even more dire position." The infrastructure and personnel, especially at Family Commissaries, is insufficient (Santiago de Cali 28 Mar. 2017). Corroborating information could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints of this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

Notes

[1] Intrafamily violence is [translation] "any type of physical or psychological violence that occurs in the family, whether it be child abuse, abuse of an adult, or of another family member" (Colombia n.d.)

[2] Justice Houses [translation] "are interinstitutional centers for information, orientation, referrals and provision of services, where informal and formal justice mechanisms are applied and implemented" (Bogota n.d.d).

References

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Bogota. 2 January 2016a. Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer. "Rutas de atencion a mujeres victimas de volencias." [Accessed 7 Apr. 2017]

Bogota. 2 January 2016b. Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer. "Informarse." [Accessed 7 Apr. 2017]

Bogota. 2 January 2016c. Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer. "Denunciar." [Accessed 7 Apr. 2017]

Bogota. 2 January 2016d. Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer. "Solicitar medidas de proteccion." [Accessed 7 Apr. 2017]

Bogota. 2 January 2016e. Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer. "Solicitar atencion en salud." [Accessed 7 Apr. 2017]

Bogota. 2 January 2016f. Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer. "Casas Refugio: una respuesta de la Bogota Humana a la eliminacion de la violencia contra las mujeres." [Accessed 27 Mar. 2017]

Bogota. 1 July 2015. "Conoce arcerca de la Comisaria de Familia en Linea." [Accessed 27 Mar. 2017]

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Sisma Mujer. 25 November 2016. La erradicacion de las violencias contras las mujeres: un paso definitivo hacia la paz. Boletin No. 11. Informe Especial. [Accessed 15 Mar. 2017]

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Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Bogota  Alcaldia de Bogota, Instituto Distrital de la Participacion y Accion Comunal, Secretaria Distrital de la Mujer; Casa de la Mujer; Colombia  Consejeria Presidencial para la Equidad de la Mujer, Defensoria del Pueblo, Fiscalia General de la Nacion, Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, Instituto Nacional de Medicina Legal y Ciencias Forenses, Policia Metropolitana de Bogota, Policia Metropolitana de Medellin; Corporacion de Apoyo a Comunidades Populares; Corporacion para la Vida Mujeres que Crean; Liga Internacional de Mujeres por la Paz y la Libertad; Medellin  Alcaldia de Medellin, Secretaria de las Mujeres; Professor of gender studies, Universidad del Valle; Sisma Mujer.

Internet sites, including: Amnesty International; BBC; Colombia  Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar, Policia Nacional; ecoi.net; Factiva; Humanas Colombia; Human Rights Watch; Red Nacional de Mujeres; UN  Refworld; Vamos Mujer.

Attachment

Colombia. 2008. Ley 1257 de 2008 (Law 1257 of 2008). Translated by the Translation Bureau, Public Works and Government Services Canada. [Accessed 21 Apr. 2017]
Republic of the Congo: The political party United for Congo (Unis pour le Congo, UPC), including its structure and membership card; treatment of its leaders and members by the authorities (20142016)

Publisher Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada Publication Date 25 May 2016 Citation / Document Symbol COG105527.FE Related Document(s) Republique du Congo : information sur le parti politique Unis pour le Congo (UPC), y compris sur sa structure et sa carte de membre; information sur le traitement reserve a ses dirigeants et a ses membres par les autorites (2014-2016) Cite as Canada: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Republic of the Congo: The political party United for Congo (Unis pour le Congo, UPC), including its structure and membership card; treatment of its leaders and members by the authorities (20142016), 25 May 2016, COG105527.FE, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/591615f44.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.

Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Ottawa

1. Overview

According to sources, the UPC is an opposition party in the Republic of the Congo (US 13 Apr. 2016, 17; RFI 23 Jan. 2016; RPDH 16 Oct. 2015). On its website, the UPC describes itself as [translation] "a collective" and "a registered political organization [] that includes Congolese leaders, intellectuals and patriots from political parties, associations and NGOs, as well as individuals" (UPC 3 Dec. 2013).

According to the testimony of a person described as the founding member of the UPC-testimony given in 2008 in an appeal assessed by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal of the United Kingdom (UK)-the UPC was formed in 2007 (UK 1 Sept. 2008, para. 24).

2. Leaders of the UPC

Sources indicate that Paulin Makaya is the leader of the UPC (AI 21 Apr. 2016; US 13 Apr. 2016, 17; UPC 3 Dec. 2013). According to the UPC, he is [translation] "the Coordinator Chair responsible for political activities, orientation and contacts with the international community" (UPC 3 Dec. 2013).

Sources also present Paulin Makaya as the president of the Republican and Democratic Forces (Forces republicaines et democratiques, FRD) (RFI 25 Nov. 2015; OCDH Feb. 2016, 41). The Congolese Observatory of Human Rights (Observatoire congolais des droits de l'homme, OCDH), a human rights NGO created in 1994 (Irenees.net Mar. 2011), describes the FRD as [translation] "a political alliance" (OCDH Feb. 2016, 41). According to Radio France internationale (RFI), [translation] "Paulin Makaya was a main opponent of the constitutional referendum on October 25 [2015]" (RFI 25 Nov. 2015). In January 2016, RFI added that he was to be a candidate in the country's presidential elections, scheduled for 20 March 2016 (RFI 25 Nov. 2015 23 Jan. 2016).

Some sources explain that Paulin Makaya was actively involved in the opposition group Congolese Movement for Democracy and Integral Development (Mouvement congolais pour la democratie et le developpement integral, MCDDI) and a close collaborator of Bernard Kolelas, founder of that party (La Semaine africaine 28 Nov. 2015; UPC 3 Dec. 2013). For information about the MCDDI, consult Response to Information Request COG105351 of November 2015.

In his autobiography, Paulin Makaya describes himself as having been a member of the MCDDI for a number of years and occupying various positions within the MCDDI (UPC 3 Dec. 2013). According to the same source, Paulin Makaya resigned from the MCDDI in 2007, following a rapprochement of that party and the Congolese Labour Party (Parti congolais du travail, PCT), the party of the President of the Congo, Denis Sassou-Nguesso (UPC 3 Dec. 2013). According to Les Echos du Congo Brazzaville, a website covering the country's current affairs, Paulin Makaya returned to the Congo in July 2014, after approximately 17 years in exile (Les Echos du Congo Brazzaville 2 Feb. 2016).

According to La Semaine africaine, a Congolese weekly magazine, Paulin Makaya [translation] "embodied a radical line" within the MCDDI and, in 2016, as leader of the UPC, "he stood out in a radical speech advocating the departure of President Sassou-Nguesso from power" (La Semaine africaine 28 Nov. 2015).

RFI describes Eloi Destaing Sikoula as [translation] "one of [Paulin Makaya's] friends" (RFI 23 Jan. 2016). In a column that can be read on the debates and discussion portal of Opinion internationale, which describes itself as a [translation] "committed" medium and "the medium of freedoms and the dialogue of cultures" (Opinion internationale n.d.), the author notes that Athel Bayoundoula is a [translation] "spokesperson of the UPC party" (Opinion internationale 18 Feb. 2016).

Further and corroborating information on UPC leaders or personalities associated with the party could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints for this Response.

3. Objectives

According to the Projet politique UPC [UPC political project], which can be accessed on the party's website, [translation] "the UPC is committed to working toward a regime based essentially on the notions of freedom, democracy, human rights and good governance" (UPC 27 July 2014). The Projet politique UPC proposes [translation] "12 priority actions to lift the Congo out of chaos and make it a united and prosperous state" (UPC 27 July 2014).The Projet politique UPC is attached to this Response (Attachment 1).

4. Structure

The autobiography of Paulin Makaya, posted on the UPC website, states the following:

[translation]

The UPC collective has a real popular foundation and an active membership base within Congolese borders. However, owing to threats from the dictatorial regime of Denis Sassou Nguesso [] the operational management of the structure is fragmented and scattered between the United Kingdom, France, Benelux, Switzerland, West Africa and the Congo (UPC 3 Dec. 2013).

The UPC statutes set out the structure and organs of the party, as well as how it operates and is financed (UPC 18 June 2011). The articles on these topics are attached to this Response (Attachment 2).

5. UPC Membership and Membership Card

According to the UPC statutes, party membership [translation] "is open to all persons who are at least 18 years of age, regardless of race, gender, religion and philosophy" (UPC 18 June 2011, art. 9). A membership application [translation] "shall be filed with the constituency of the federation in which the applicant resides" (UPC 18 June 2011, art. 10). The statutes provide that [translation] "membership in the UPC-United for the Congo-Collective shall be cancelled by resignation, exclusion or death. The cancellation is pronounced by the Executive Board" (UPC 18 June 2011, art. 13).

Article 11 of the UPC statutes states, without providing details, that [translation] "membership in the UPC-United for the Congo-Collective is established with a membership card" (UPC 18 June 2011, art. 11). Information on the content and format of the membership card could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints for this Response.

6. Treatment of UPC Leaders and Members by the Authorities

According to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015, published by the United States Department of State, on 29 August 2015, armed police officers prevented Paulin Makaya from holding a rally in the southern province of Bouenza (US 13 Apr. 2016, 17).

Sources indicate that, on 11 October 2015, Henri Kabanabanza, a UPC member, was arrested in Pointe-Noire and detained at the military headquarters (RPDH 16 Oct. 2015; OCDH Feb. 2016, 42). The OCDH states that Mr. Kabanabanza is the chair of the UPC Pointe-Noire section and that he was arrested with the vicechairperson of that same section, Jean Pierre Mouanda Moudouma (OCDH Feb. 2016). According to the OCDH, the two men [translation] "were arbitrarily arrested and detained at the military headquarters on 11 October 2015," and then released on 31 October 2015, "without any kind of trial or compensation" (OCDH Feb. 2016). According to an article published on the website of Engagement for Peace and Human Rights (Rencontre pour la paix et les droits de l'homme, RPDH), a human rights NGO from the Republic of the Congo (RPDH n.d.), [translation] "that arrest was carried out by military police officers after they had searched [Mr. Kabanabanza's] residence in the Vindoulou district without a warrant from the judge and in violation of the relevant legal provisions" (RPDH 16 Oct. 2015).

Sources indicate that on 20 October 2015, Paulin Makaya participated in an unauthorized demonstration (Les Echos du Congo Brazzaville 2 Feb. 2016; RFI 23 Jan. 2016; AI 21 Apr. 2016) against holding a referendum on the amendment of the constitution (AI 21 Apr. 2016; RFI 23 Jan. 2016). Sources indicate that the outcome of the referendum of 25 October 2015 enabled President Denis Sassou-Nguesso to run in the next presidential election (RFI 25 Nov. 2015; AI 21 Apr. 2016).

Amnesty International (AI) indicates that [AI English version] "Paulin Makaya had taken part in that demonstration as an opposition political leader and president of the opposition party UPC" (AI 21 Apr. 2016). The same source states that [AI English version] "Congo's security forces used excessive force against protesters and fired live ammunition at protesters who had gathered in Brazzaville  Clashes between security forces and protesters led to the death of at least six protesters and left several injured" (AI 21 Apr. 2016).

Sources indicate that toward the end of October 2015, Paulin Makaya's home was [translation] "ransacked" by police (OCDH Feb. 2016, 41; US 13 Apr. 2016, 25). According to AI, his residence [AI English version] "was surrounded and ransacked by unknown individuals and security forces" (AI 21 Apr. 2016). According to the OCDH, Paulin Makaya was the subject of [translation] "an attempted arrest at his residence by a squad of heavily armed policemen. In [Mr. Makaya's] absence, his residence was looted and ransacked. The police authorities justified the operation by invoking a search" (OCDH Feb. 2016, 41). According to the US Country Reports 2015, the police were attempting to deliver a "summons" to Paulin Makaya, who went into hiding for several days (US 13 Apr. 2016, 25). RFI notes that, according to the police spokesperson, the police operation was carried out [translation] "accordingly" and that it seized weapons "of war" and "seditious" documents (RFI 25 Nov. 2015). However, according to the OCDH, [translation] "the fact that the 'search' on 30 October that resulted in the looting of his residence occurred not only in his absence but also in the absence of his family members, is manifestly unlawful" (OCDH Feb. 2016, 42).

Sources note that Paulin Makaya filed a complaint following that police operation (OCDH Feb. 2016, 41; AI 21 Apr. 2016), [AI English version] "for trespassing and attempted murder" (AI 21 Apr. 2016). Several sources indicate that Paulin Makaya was arrested on 23 November 2015 when he went to a prosecutor's office to discuss his complaint (AI 21 Apr. 2016; US 13 Apr. 2016, 25; OCDH Feb. 2016, 41).

According to sources, Paulin Makaya is accused of being one of the organizers of the demonstration held on 20 October 2015 (RFI 23 Jan. 2016; Les Echos du Congo Brazzaville 2 Feb. 2016). Some sources note that he is also accused of possessing [translation] "weapons of war" and being complicit in the burning of public buildings (Les Echos du Congo Brazzaville 2 Feb. 2016; AI 21 Apr. 2016; OCDH Feb. 2016, 42).

According to RFI, counsel for Paulin Makaya stated that his presence at the hearing was denied and [translation] "that the only thing his client was being officially accused of was having participated in a prohibited demonstration" (RFI 25 Nov. 2015). Amnesty International states that Paulin Makaya [AI English version] "was questioned several times in the absence of his lawyer" after he was arrested (AI 21 Apr. 2016).

In April 2016, AI noted that Paulin Makaya had been held at the central prison of Brazzaville for more than four months, in violation of Congolese law (AI 21 Apr. 2016). According to the same source, Paulin Makaya is [AI English version] "a prisoner of conscience who is detained simply for peacefully exercising his right to express his political views" (AI 21 Apr. 2016). The OCDH also considers him to be [translation] "a political prisoner who is being detained arbitrarily" (OCDH Feb. 2016, 42).

Additional information on the treatment of UPC members could not be found among the sources consulted by the Research Directorate within the time constraints for this Response.

This Response was prepared after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the Research Directorate within time constraints. This Response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim for refugee protection. Please find below the list of sources consulted in researching this Information Request.

References

Amnesty International (AI). 21 April 2016. Congo. Un membre de l'opposition detenu dans l'attente de son proces. [Accessed 16 May 2016]

Les Echos du Congo Brazzaville. 2 February 2016. Aurelie Issimba. "Amnesty appelle a la liberation 'sans conditions' de Paulin Makaya." [Accessed 9 May 2016]

Irenees.net. March 2011. "Observatoire congolais des droits de l'homme (OCDH)." [Accessed 19 May 2016]

Observatoire congolais des droits de l'homme (OCDH). February 2016. "Les droits de l'homme en souffrance" : rapport annuel sur les droits humains en Republique du Congo, 2015. [Accessed 9 May 2016]

Opinion internationale. 18 February 2016. Jean-Claude Miangouayila. "Au Congo, l'opposition au tapis va-t-elle se redresser? La tribune de Jean-Claude Miangouayila." [Accessed 19 May 2016]

Opinion internationale. N.d. "Le projet." [Accessed 25 May 2016]

Radio France internationale (RFI). 23 January 2016. "Congo : Les militants de l'UPC exigent la liberation de Paulin Makaya." [Accessed 9 May 2016]

Radio France internationale (RFI). 25 November 2015. "Congo : detention de l'opposant Paulin Makaya." [Accessed 9 May 2016]

Rencontre pour la paix et les droits de l'homme (RPDH). 16 October 2015. "Referendum constitutionnel : campagne sous fond de menaces, harcelements, intimidations, arrestations et detentions arbitraires en Republique du Congo." [Accessed 13 May 2016]

Rencontre pour la paix et les droits de l'homme (RPDH). N.d. "Depliant." [Accessed 13 May 2016]

La Semaine africaine. 28 November 2015. "Paulin Makaya en garde a vue au commissariat central de police." [Accessed 16 May 2016]

Unis pour le Congo (UPC). 27 July 2014. Projet politique UPC. [Accessed 16 May 2016]

Unis pour le Congo (UPC). 3 December 2013. "Biographie de Paulin Makaya." [Accessed 16 May 2016]

Unis pour le Congo (UPC). 18 June 2011. Statuts du Collectif UPC - Unis pour le Congo. [Accessed 16 May 2016]

United Kingdom (UK). 1 September 2008. Asylum and Immigration Tribunal. LM (Risks on Return) Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department. CG [2008] UKAIT 00064, 4 August 2008. [Accessed 17 May 2016]

United States (US). 13 April 2016. Department of State. "Republic of the Congo." Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2015. [Accessed 9 May 2016]

Additional Sources Consulted

Oral sources: Association pour les droits de l'homme et l'univers carceral; Observatoire congolais des droits de l'homme; Rencontre pour la paix et les droits de l'homme; Reseau des defenseurs des droits humains en Afrique centrale; Unis pour le Congo.

Internet sites, including: Agence d'information d'Afrique centrale; Agir ensemble pour les droits de l'homme; AllAfrica; BBC; Commission africaine des droits de l'homme et des peuples; congo.cg; Courrier international; Les Depeches de Brazzaville; ecoi.net; ElectionGuide; Factiva; Federation internationale des ligues des droits de l'homme; France24; Freedom House; Human Rights Watch; Jeune Afrique; Le Monde; Parline; Le Point international; Political Handbook of the World; Portail242.info; United Nations - Refworld; World Organization Against Torture.

Attachments
Uzbekistan: UN Official Calls for Rights Reforms

Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 13 May 2017 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Uzbekistan: UN Official Calls for Rights Reforms, 13 May 2017, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/59161f3f4.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 high commissioner for human rights called on President Shavkat Mirziyoyev of Uzbekistan on May 10 and 11, 2017, to turn his government's pledges for reform into concrete human rights improvements and fulfill its obligations under human rights law, eight human rights groups said today. The rights groups endorsed the high commissioner's recommendations, calling on Mirziyoyev to end ongoing abuses and deliver on Uzbekistan's human rights commitments in full.

UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein met with the president, government officials, and representatives of nongovernmental groups in Tashkent and Samarkand. He urged the government to release political prisoners, cooperate with UN rights monitors, and work to end systematic torture, among other issues. He emphasized that the "successful implementation" of human rights reforms could have a "transformational impact" on Uzbekistan's future.

"While welcoming President Mirziyoyev's indicated willingness to engage on Uzbekistan's abysmal rights record, the UN high commissioner rightly called on him to turn positive rhetoric into concrete action," said Steve Swerdlow, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The burden of proof now lies with the Uzbek government to make good on its promises for reform."

The rights groups are the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia, Civil Rights Defenders, the Cotton Campaign, Human Rights Watch, International Partnership for Human Rights, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Reporters Sans Frontieres, and the Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights.

Hussein's visit was the first by a UN high commissioner for human rights to Uzbekistan. It came on the heels of Tashkent's recent efforts to step up engagement with various intergovernmental organizations and financial institutions, such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

Hussein acknowledged certain positive developments, such as Mirziyoyev's newly adopted Action Strategy, which includes pledges to improve public administration, strengthen protections for vulnerable segments of the population, and liberalize the economy, as well as new legislation to strengthen the independence of the judiciary. But the high commissioner stressed that "frameworks and plans are one thing, and results are another."

"In recent months President Mirziyoyev may have directed the government to pass laws and regulations that, at face value, carry great potential," said Brigitte Dufour, director of International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR). "But the proof of change is when we start seeing all wrongfully imprisoned activists released from prison, UN human rights monitors and human rights organizations able to visit the country, an end to forced labor, and independent civil society and media able to function without harassment."

In his remarks, the high commissioner urged authorities to allow a strong, vibrant, and dynamic civil society and media to operate without fear of repression or reprisal, and to release political prisoners as soon as possible. The rights groups have documented the imprisonment of thousands of people on politically motivated charges in Uzbekistan, including dozens of human rights defenders, journalists, and political activists.

He cited torture as "one of the issues that has been most damaging to Uzbekistan's international reputation." And he said the government should allow independent monitoring of Uzbekistan's prisons and other places of detention with the aim of eradicating torture and other forms of ill-treatment and urged it to ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. The protocol creates a monitoring system and requires that independent entities responsible for such monitoring be able to enter detention facilities at any time, unannounced. In 2013, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) halted its monitoring of Uzbekistan's prison facilities, citing interference by authorities.

"The high commissioner's visit brings hope for positive change," said Ivar Dale, senior adviser at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, "but will only have lasting significance for Uzbekistan's 32 million citizens if President Mirziyoyev opens the country to the credible scrutiny of rights activists, journalists, and international monitors who have been unable to do their critical work for so many years."

Hussein also recommended that Uzbekistan cooperate with UN human rights bodies, noting that none of the 14 human rights monitors who have asked to visit the country had been allowed to visit since 2002. The high commissioner announced that an invitation has been extended to the UN special rapporteur on the freedom of religion or belief.

The visit came just before the anniversary of the May 13, 2005, Andijan massacre, when government forces shot and killed hundreds of largely unarmed protesters in the city of Andijan. In his public remarks, he underlined the importance of ensuring justice and accountability for the "terrible events" in Andijan that day. "While it is important to look forward, it is also important to come to terms with past events and ensure that victims are not forgotten and their grievances are addressed," he said.

Before dawn on May 13, 2005, armed men broke into the prison in Andijan, a city in the Fergana Valley in eastern Uzbekistan. The gunmen freed 23 local businessmen who had been sentenced for "religious extremism" and took over local government buildings. Throughout the day, thousands of unarmed peaceful protesters flocked to the town's central square to speak out against poverty, unemployment, and government repression. Government forces in armored vehicles and snipers fired indiscriminately on the crowd, blocking off the square as people attempted to flee, killing hundreds. Government troops then moved through the square and executed wounded people where they lay.

"There is no statute of limitations for the mass killings of hundreds of innocent civilians 12 years ago in Andijan," said Nadejda Atayeva, president of the Association for Human Rights in Central Asia. "We fully support the high commissioner's call that the Uzbek government ensure accountability for these terrible events, which should include a review of the criminal sentences of the hundreds imprisoned in the aftermath of the massacre, an end to harassment of witnesses to the killings, and access for human rights organizations to investigate."

Copyright notice:  Copyright, Human Rights Watch
From 2-7 to sectional champs, Monrovia has one question: 'Why not us?'
Dozens of parents who lost children in the devastating Sichuan earthquake of 2008 staged a rally on the ninth anniversary of the disaster on Friday over unpaid compensation, while others remained under close surveillance or house arrest.



Bereaved parents whose children died in the collapse of the Fuxin No. 2 Elementary School in worst-hit Mianzhu gathered outside the offices of the township government to repeat their calls for an investigation into allegations of shoddy construction at schools across the province.



"I think there are more than 100 people here," a parent surnamed Li told RFA from the scene. "We are all waiting to speak with our leaders outside the gates of the government offices."



Bereaved parents were permitted to have a second child after the disaster, in a special dispensation under draconian family planning rules, but they say the government also promised to fund the children's education: a promise that has yet to be kept.



"Our child is growing up now, and we have to try to resolve this issue," Li said, indicating that his phone is likely being monitored by the authorities.



"It's not convenient for me to speak right now," he said.



More than 80,000 people, thousands of them schoolchildren, died in the May 12, 2008 earthquake that devastated mountainous regions, and especially school buildings, in the southwestern province.



But years-long campaigning for compensation and for financial assistance promised as part of the reconstruction program have yielded nothing.



In nearby Dujiangyan, bereaved parents said they had been forced to stay home.



"A lot of us here in Dujiangyan who used to petition together are now being followed or accompanied everywhere by local security officials from our local residential compounds," a parent surnamed Wu told RFA on Friday.



"Most of us are now under effective house arrest; there are people with us at all times," he said. "They have told us we mustn't get involved in any kind of activities, and we're not allowed to go anywhere."



"There has been a huge stability maintenance operation here in the past few days," he said.

Pressure from authorities

Security is particularly tight this year ahead of a forum on President Xi Jinping's new Silk Road initiative in Beijing this weekend, he added.

Sichuan-based activist and writer Tan Zuoren, who was jailed for five years in May 2009 for "incitement to subvert state power" after he investigated claims that corruption had led to substandard buildings, said he had been summoned for two days of "chats" with his local branch of the state security police.



"I drank two days' worth of tea with them, and they told me I had said enough on the matter, and that I shouldn't contact the parents again," Tan said. "Then they contacted all of the parents as well, so they don't dare get in contact with me."



"They told me that if I speak to the foreign media, I'll be fraternizing with hostile forces to incite subversion," he said. "The state security police told me I mustn't leave the house."



He said the security measures were much tougher this year compared with those at last year's anniversary.



In the provincial capital Chengdu, long-time political activist Huang Xiaomin said the "pressure" from the authorities is intense.



"Intense pressure has become the new normal here in Chengdu, and in Sichuan generally," Huang said. "They had already started to put defensive measures and controls into place 10 days ago, ahead of the Belt and Road Forum."



"[The state security police] called me yesterday," he said. "They said it's because I have a complicated background. It's actually hard to tell whether it's ... Belt and Road or the anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake."



Nationwide crackdown



The Sichuan police operation comes amid a nationwide security crackdown ahead of the new Silk Road forum, when leaders of 29 countries and senior officials from many more gather in Beijing on Sunday.



Ordinary people with complaints against the government have been told to stay home, while People's Liberation Army (PLA) veterans said they have been subject to following and monitoring by state security police.



"I think the amount of petitioning we have seen in recent years has put a huge amount of pressure on the [ruling] Chinese Communist Party," Guangdong-based rights activist Chen Fengqiang told RFA.



"The authorities are now deploying all manner of high technology to track and monitor everyone, using their cell phones to track their positions," Chen said.



"They can also establish someone's position using their ID card, because there is now a real-name registration system on China's long-distance bus services, so the police know if you have bought a ticket," he said.



The U.S. and South Korea said on Friday that they will be sending delegations to discuss Xi's initiative to expand trade links between Asia, Africa, and Europe through billions of dollars in infrastructure investment.



Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines will attend the forum, which is widely seen as a prestige project aimed at boosting Xi's profile as the "core" of the Chinese leadership ahead of a key party congress later in the year.



The most prominent attendee from the West will be Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, Agence France-Presse reported.



Reported by Xin Lin and Gao Shan for RFA's Mandarin Service, and by Wong Siu-san, Wong Lok-to and Goh Fung for the Cantonese Service. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Furniture, appliances and electronics retailer Conns HomePlus has opened its first store in Virginia  in the new Eastgate Town Center in eastern Henrico County.

The store is the Texas-based, publicly traded companys 116th in the 14 states where it operates.

We had just had a very wide and large expansion over the last year in North Carolina, and it made very good sense to keep moving north, said Coleman R. Gaines, president and chief operating officer for Conns retail division.

As we looked at the demographic, it was very aligned with our core customer, Gaines said.

Conns, an anchor tenant in the new Eastgate shopping complex, is about 44,000 square feet. It also sells computers, mattresses and seasonal merchandise such as outdoor cooking grills.

The store will finance purchases for customers, including those who dont have optimal credit records.

Our go-to-market strategy is we primarily serve the customers of the subprime market, folks that dont have a lot of financing options elsewhere, Gaines said.

With the contraction of credit from the banks, its hard to find financing for major purchases. So we have a 127-year history, and we have over 50 years of offering in-house financing. Thats been the driver. We are good at retailing, and we are good at financing, Gaines said.

In addition to in-house financing, the store offers third-party financing and third-party lease-to-own payment plans.

The Eastgate store is the only new store the company plans to open this year. The local store has hired 20 employees, including manager Sheldon Hayes, who transferred from a Conns in North Carolina.

The stores operations manager, David Jordan, joined the company last month, hired just days after being laid off from Hhgregg, the Indianapolis-based electronics, appliances and furniture retailer that is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The chain has closed its three Richmond-area stores.

Hhgregg, founded in 1955, offered a similar mix of merchandise as Conns HomePlus. Hhgregg expects to shutter all 220 of its stores by the end of the month.

Conns has put the brakes on its expansion for now as it undergoes a transformation this year to turn around the companys finances. The chain posted a loss of $25.6 million and had a 1 percent decline in sales for the fiscal year that ended Jan. 31.

While we are not opening up any more stores as a company this year, we certainly are interested in more opportunities within the commonwealth of Virginia, Gaines said. Richmond certainly offers a prime opportunity for Conns.

Eastgate Town Center is being developed at Nine Mile Road and Laburnum Avenue on the site of the former Fairfield Commons mall.

Other stores that have opened in the shopping center include Dunkin Donuts, Hibbett Sports, Citi Trends and Planet Fitness.
A businessman and father of five with no prior criminal record was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for helping buy a half-dozen airplanes used to transport tons of cocaine from Venezuela to Central America.

Luis Garcia-Orellana, 48, a Guatemalan national and legal U.S. resident living in California, pleaded guilty in February in federal court in Richmond to conspiracy to commit international money laundering.

Four of the airplanes were purchased in Virginia and one in Oklahoma from undisclosed sellers.

The government sought a 20-year term, while Garcia-Orellanas lawyers asked for 10 years. In pleading for mercy, Garcia-Orellana apologized to U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson, saying, I have never in my life been involved in any kind of illegal activity. ... My life revolves around my family.

Hudson told the defendant that he recognized there would be collateral damage to his family. But you went into this (operation) with your eyes wide open.

Earlier, Hudson told his lawyer, Patrick McLaughlin, My goodness, this is a well-educated man. ... Wouldnt a man this bright realize he was putting his family in jeopardy?

Your client is in a league by himself, said the judge, adding: He was dealing with some of the biggest drug traffickers in the world.

Erik S. Siebert, an assistant U.S. attorney, told Hudson, I cant stress how major the drug trafficking organizations were. One Honduran organization, since dismantled, was estimated to be worth $1 billion, he said.

These cocaine loads destroyed peoples lives, said Siebert. Aside from the damage of illegal drug abuse, the trafficking contributes to violence in this country and elsewhere.

In pleading guilty, Garcia-Orellana admitted that from November 2012 to March 2014, he and co-conspirators used money from outside the U.S. to buy the six airplanes for resale in Central America and that he knew would be used to transport cocaine.

Using bag men, he received cash from traffickers in Guatemala, deposited it in banks, and used international business accounts to transfer the money to the U.S. and into the aircraft sellers accounts. The purchases were made under the guise of shell companies created by Garcia-Orellana to conceal the true identity of the buyers.

The aircraft included four Beechcraft King Airs, a Piper Navajo and a Cessna 210.

By negotiating the purchase price, wiring money, structuring cash deposits, and insuring the arrival of the aircraft in Guatemala, Garcia facilitated the operations of large-scale international drug traffickers, wrote Siebert in a sentencing memorandum. With each aircraft flight capable of carrying 1,000 kilograms of cocaine, worth tens of millions of dollars, Garcia facilitated the highest levels of the cocaine trade, he added.

Not all of the flights were successful, but Siebert said at least 2,000 kilograms  more than two tons  were transported in some of the airplanes.

After he was sentenced, Garcia-Orellana was immediately taken into custody and started removing his tie and other personal belongings.

In an apparently related case last August, Fernando Chang Monroy, 37, was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Chang Monroy, also a Guatemalan and father of three with no prior criminal record, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess with the intent to distribute 5 kilograms or more of cocaine on board an aircraft registered in the U.S.

At the time, Siebert told Hudson, he believed it was the biggest drug case that had ever come before federal court in Richmond.

Authorities said the large used aircraft market in the U.S. plays a key role in international drug trafficking by providing an inexpensive and relatively safe way for large trafficking organizations to move drugs.
The battle of words over the budget vetoes escalated again today, when Gov. Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order telling state agencies to honor his vetoes that the General Assembly has refused to recognize.

McAuliffe cited "dangerous legislative overreach" in telling agencies to ignore the decision by the House of Delegates to ignore two of his vetoes, including one that would strip the budget prohibition that prevents the governor from accepting federal money to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Brian Coy, the governor's spokesman, said there has been "no conclusion" by the administration whether to test his constitutional position by seeking to appropriate federal money to expand Virginia's Medicaid program without the legislature's express approval, as required under the "Stanley Amendment," sponsored by William M. Stanley Jr., R-Franklin, and adopted in 2014 after a bitter budget standoff between McAuliffe and Republican leaders.

"This about protecting the governor's prerogative against dangerous legislative overreach," Coy said.

House Republicans, in turn, laughed off the executive order to require state agencies to recognize budget vetoes that House Clerk G. Paul Nardo, as keeper of the rolls, refused to publish because he said they were constitutionally invalid.

"This isn't Washington, D.C. - it doesn't quite work that way in Virginia," House Appropriations Chairman S. Chris Jones said. "This is pure politics."

McAuliffe says House Republicans are the ones playing politics, first by using the budget to block expansion of Medicaid, as well as to prevent the state from awarding contracts for public-private transportation projects that require use of project labor agreements with unions - which the state doesn't do unless the project involves union-friendly Maryland.

This is the third year that House Republicans, led by Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, have refused to recognize his veto of the Stanley Amendment, noting that he would have to also veto the associated appropriation - in this case, the entire $107 billion budget.

But McAuliffe said Nardo's refusal to publish the two vetoes as part of the final budget act represents "a profound abuse of authority, purporting to endow an unelected ministerial officer with some extraconstitutional power to override the governor's vetoes based on his own legal opinions."

"This is entirely improper," the governor states in the order, "and it must be addressed in a manner reflective of the seriousness of the issues involved - keeping Virginia's fiscal house in order."

Howell brushed off the governor's order with a bristling response.

"The idea that an executive order can supersede the Constitution, decades of Supreme Court precedent, and longstanding legislative practice is nonsensical," the speaker said in a statement. "This is the culmination of four years of executive overreach, disregard for the law, and contempt for a duly elected branch of government by this governor."

McAuliffe also challenged Nardo's decision to publish a budget provision adopted by the General Assembly that would require the Virginia Economic Development Partnership - a quasi-independent authority that reports to the secretary of commerce and trade - to get final approval of legislative leaders before the state can release $1.5 million appropriated last year before a scathing report about the partnership prompted major reforms.

The governor didn't veto the provision, but called it unconstitutional for giving a legislative group final say over an executive branch appropriation. He has instructed the comptroller to ignore it, although he previously said he would work with the assembly's budget committees to ensure that the partnership produces plans for reforms before receiving the funds.

Howell said McAuliffe has no legal way to expand Medicaid without General Assembly approval and vowed, The General Assembly not only will vigorously defend its prerogatives and closely scrutinize any gubernatorial actions, we will take any and all actions necessary to ensure that the budget law is enforced as passed, signed, and printed by the Keeper of the Rolls of the Commonwealth.
Glenn Davis, the underdog Republican candidate for lieutenant governor traveling the state in a recreational vehicle, spent weeks attacking GOP rival Jill Holtzman Vogel over taxes.

Vogel, a well-funded state senator, mostly ignored the delegate from Virginia Beach.

But the attacks finally provoked a response.

Vogel authorized a counterattack on Davis in advertisements on Facebook. Glenn Davis has supported 10 separate tax hikes & the largest tax hike in Virginias history, one ad says.

Now, Davis is asking the State Board of Elections to investigate whether Vogels Facebook ads violate state law requiring disclosure. And one of the ads created the false implication that a newspaper is attacking him.

Vogel, of Fauquier County, is in a contentious race with Davis and state Sen. Bryce E. Reeves of Spotsylvania County.

A headline in one of her ads says, Glenn Davis has launched a series of false and negative attacks that seem desperate ... and it lists the website www.pilotonline.com, which is The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. The ad falsely gives the appearance that the newspaper posted the content as a story.

Davis said he clicked the link and it went to a column he wrote for the Pilot in 2014 about Medicaid.

At no place, he said, was there any disclosure about who paid for the ad. But when he clicked a Facebook link to find more information, he was directed to the Vogel campaign.

One reason youre seeing this ad is that Jill Vogel wants to reach people interested in Ed Gillespie, based on activity such as liking pages or clicking on ads, a Facebook pop-up read. Gillespie is the front-runner for the GOP nomination for governor.

Virginia law requires campaign advertising to state who paid for or authorized an ad. For online ads, state law says:

Any print media advertisement appearing in electronic format shall display the disclosure statement in a minimum font size of seven point; however, if the advertisement lacks sufficient space for a disclosure statement in a minimum font size of seven point, the advertisement may meet disclosure requirements if, by clicking on the print media advertisement appearing in electronic format, the viewer is taken to a landing page or a home page that displays the disclosure statement in a conspicuous manner.

Davis readily admitted he has been attacking Vogel, but said he has not hidden it.

One of her ads makes it look like the Pilot is the one writing the negative article about me and attacking me, he said.

He also questioned why Vogel, at a candidate forum Saturday in Isle of Wight County, said: Im the only candidate in this race who has never attacked my opponents. Ive never run one negative ad. And I promise you people appreciate that.

Vogel campaign manager Pat Trueman said by email Thursday that the ads comply with state law and were very clearly from Jill Vogels campaign and any recipient could determine that easily.

The Vogel campaign has pulled the ad with the misleading link to the Pilots website. That issue will be corrected, Trueman wrote.

And what about Vogels claim that shes the only candidate not running negative ads? Heres Trueman with the campaign spin:

Responding to false attacks is not negative campaigning and Jill Vogel will continue to be the only candidate in this race running a positive campaign  while defending herself when necessary.

Vogel has been the recipient of attacks in the campaign. It remains unclear who funded an advertising campaign that compares her to Hillary Clinton.

But Davis complaint is not the first time Vogel has been accused of impropriety.

Reeves has a pending defamation lawsuit in Stafford County. Its not against Vogel, but he is seeking to depose her and her husband about an email someone sent last fall to some of his supporters alleging he had an affair with an aide.

Reeves has denied the allegation, said it is defamatory, and issued subpoenas yielding information he says can prove Vogel and her husband were behind the attack.

Vogel is the managing partner of the law firm Holtzman Vogel Josefiak Torchinsky PLLC, which specializes in campaign finance and election law. She is also the chairwoman of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee.

The three-member State Board of Elections determines whether a candidate has violated state election law on disclosure requirements. Candidates can receive a civil penalty of up to $1,000, or $2,500 if a violation is within 14 days of an election.

If the board finds the violation is willful, it can find a candidate guilty of a criminal misdemeanor.
After nearly 8 years, Mark Warner likes his day job.

In a place where I was pretty frustrated, Im not bored; its pretty wild, Virginias senior U.S. senator  and vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, one of the congressional panels investigating Russian hacking of the 2016 election  said at the close of a week during which The Donald, rather than jump the shark, trumped it.

Against the backdrop of the FBI criminal investigation into the Kremlins meddling, the beneficiary of such dark arts  President Donald Trump  on Tuesday fired the agencys director, Jim Comey, a William & Mary-educated lawyer whom Virginians got to know as a Richmond-based federal prosecutor and a partner at one of the citys muscular firms.

By Friday, Trump  pushing back against suggestions that he is attempting, as Richard Nixon did during the Watergate scandal 43 years ago, to quash an inquiry that could crush his presidency  floated a Nixonian notion: there could be a secret recording of conversations with Comey during which Comey may have told the president he is not under scrutiny.

For an administration that says theres no there there, theyre not acting that way, Warner said. You couldnt make this stuff up. If it were a movie, it wouldnt be believable.

Speaking from Washington, Warner said his committees investigation is uncovering what Americans should understand is nothing short of a new form of warfare  one in which the weapons required to inflict massive damage on the U.S. political system cost Russia relatively little to develop and implement.

Add up what the Russians spent on our election, what they spent on the French election, the Dutch election and the German election thats coming up, its less than 2 percent of the cost of a new aircraft carrier, said Warner, noting that Newport News Shipbuilding  the only U.S. builder of nuclear-powered flattops  charges about $12 billion a copy.

With Virginia choosing a new governor in November  its election and New Jerseys, as the only statewide contests this year, are considered mini-referendums on Washington  Warner worries that Russia will have fresh targets for its torrent of bots, burgled email and fake news.

The Russians are not slowing down their intervention, said Warner. How can we make sure our voter files are safe? Can a local registrar have the resources and knowledge to prevent a Russian phishing campaign? Were going to need a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach.

The Democratic orthodoxy  and its shared by some Republicans  is that Trump will prove a huge drag on the GOPs statewide ticket as well as its legislative candidates in the suburban vote troves that tipped Virginia to Hillary Clinton. It was the third consecutive time Democrats carried Virginia for the presidency.

Warner, mindful that his committees investigation  to be credible  cannot be seen as partisan, is circumspect on Trumps impact on the Virginia campaign: I dont know. Can you federalize a state election? Can you nationalize a state election? I know theres energy out there. I think its too early to tell.

Nor is Warner prepared to offer an assessment of the presidents competence or state of mind: Im not going there.

The seeming beatification by Democrats of the Trump-fired Comey stands in contrast with their fiery rage over his pre-election pronouncements on the FBIs Clinton-email investigation to which the candidate attributes her unexpected defeat. Warner, asked to reconcile the then and now, said only that Comey was  and is  a straight shooter.

The Clinton connection is emerging again  this time, with a Virginia angle, and because of Comeys interim successor, Andrew McCabe. He contradicted Trumps claims that Comey had little support within the FBI and pledged to Warner that he would alert the committee if the White House interfered in the agencys Russia investigation.

Within Trump world, McCabe is suspect because his wife, Jill, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate in 2015 for a Loudoun County-anchored seat in the Virginia Senate, received more than $450,000 in campaign contributions from a political-action committee controlled by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton intimate.

Describing McCabes testimony as rock solid, Warner said that Republican attacks on the career FBI man are nothing more than throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

The Intelligence Committee, Warner said, has already completed 30 interviews and is preparing to question Trump allies, including Roger Stone, the dapper political provocateur. Comey signaled Friday that he would not testify next week, presumably on his abrupt dismissal by the president.

And the committee, which Warner said is certain to miss its initial deadline of August for a report to the Senate, has rejected a testimony-for-immunity proposal by the fired national security adviser, Mike Flynn, whose Russia ties date to at least 2015. As Warner said, An innocent person doesnt ask for immunity.

Warner came to the Senate in 2009 as the multimillionaire info-tech guy who envisioned  but was thwarted on  a grand plan, fashioned with Republicans, to repair the nations shredded finances. Hed done that with Virginias budget as governor, pulling off the seemingly impossible: breaking a promise not to raise taxes, getting Republicans to go along with it  and briefly entering presidential orbit as a model of bipartisanship.

Warner, on record in support of an independent counsel to investigate the Russia issue, said two-party cooperation is essential in the Intelligence Committees findings; that only the nations adversaries would be helped should it fall prey to partisan tribalism.

The continuation of the bitter partisanship and the chaos it creates is exactly what Putin wants.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
A 2015 civil suit brought by a Roanoke College student against a woman who accused him of sexual assault is moving forward in Salem Circuit Court and now has an August court date.

The suit was filed by Ezra Zigarwi, 20, who as a freshman was charged with rape and aggravated sexual battery following a March 2015 incident at a dormitory.

In November of that year, following a daylong trial, Zigarwi was acquitted of the charges by a jury that deliberated for less than half an hour.

The following month, he also was cleared at an on-campus sexual misconduct hearing and he has since re-enrolled at the school. That same month he filed suit against the woman.

Zigarwis suit alleges that after his acquittal, his accuser intentionally published false statements about him on social media and in an online petition.

In an amended complaint filed Tuesday in Salem Circuit Court, his suit claims defamation and negligence and asks for $500,000 in damages.

It also seeks to restrict the defendant from making statements about her allegations, and it asks that she be forced to remove any online statements or posts about it that might exist.

Roanoke Colleges student directory says Zigarwi, who is from Zimbabwe, is registered as a sophomore. His accuser is not listed as a student on the website. The Roanoke Times does not name people who file sexual assault reports.

Zigarwis attorney, Stephen Kennedy, could not immediately be reached Friday. Matthew Schottmiller, who represents the defendant, said he wasnt able to comment about the pending case.

In March, nine months after the previous filing, Schottmiller entered a request to have the case dismissed, but that was answered this week by the amended complaint.

The next hearing in the civil case is set for Aug. 29.

During the criminal trial, the accuser testified that on the night of March 15, 2015, she had been drinking on campus for several hours. She invited a male friend over to her room but he declined. Soon after that, she said, Zigarwi contacted her, and she invited him into her second-floor dorm room.

A sexual encounter occurred, but she and Zigarwi gave different accounts of whether she had consented. After he left, she called the male friend from earlier and told him she had been assaulted, and they notified campus security.

In her cross-examination of the accuser, Zigarwis defense attorney, Deborah Caldwell-Bono, brought forward apparent contradictions between statements the woman gave to police and her courtroom testimony, specifically about her level of intoxication that night and her relationship to the friend she had called for help.
By Ed Reynolds

Reynolds is retired from a global engineering and technology company. He lives in Roanoke.

Will The Virginia Way, that shameless, slippery, insider relationship between Gov. Terry McAuliffe, his administration, a host of our General Assembly members, and several special-interest corporate powerhouses in Virginia, including Dominion Power, live in perpetuity? Or will bold, honorable citizens of the commonwealth decide one day that they have endured enough of this slippery mess.

Thank God for solid investigative work performed by vigilant groups and citizen organizations that power disclosure of timely bombshell environmental information, such as conveyed in the comprehensive new document titled NEW BRIEFING: Atlantic Coast Pipeline Would Require Extensive Mountaintop Removal, to be found on the Chesapeake Climate Action Network website at Chesapeakeclimate.org.

Any Virginian, who has a vested interest in the beauty, environment, and ecological welfare of the Commonwealth of Virginia and citizenry, should be stunned, appalled and alarmed at the now-disclosed thirty-eight mile mountaintop deep-scalping that will occur from the proposed, unneeded, and climate-damaging fracked-gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

And yes, perhaps more troubling disclosures will be forthcoming from construction details of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, also. The Mountain Valley Pipeline is not a good fit for the Livable Roanoke Plan, an attractive, comprehensive regional plan which was developed by several Southwestern Virginia Commissions, including the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, and the RVARC, who seem vitally interested in rightfully promoting our Roanoke Valley as a Green, Healthy, Outdoors Destination venue.

However, and to that point, the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce, Roanoke Gas Company, and other Roanoke business power-brokers have done a masterful job of wordsmithing the benefits and purported need of this third for private profit and climate-damaging fracked gas pipeline in our area  a pipeline project that is dramatically and legitimately opposed by both local citizen/landowners, and a host of southwestern Virginia municipalities and civic organizations.

On April 29, 2016, several environmental groups in our state, including Chesapeake Climate Action Network, issued a report card on the McAuliffe administrations efforts regarding carbon pollution and clean power in Virginia. The grade for the governor and his administrations effort was a barely passing D+. Some defended the governors work, and others including this writer did not, primarily because of his ongoing supporting positions with regard to fracked-gas pipelines, coal ash, and off-shore drilling. With this stinging, disastrous pipeline report that emerged in the last several days, comes yet another opportunity to grade the good governor on his environmental efforts and record.

The governor has options available to him regarding these climate-damaging fracked gas pipelines. Ill be waiting to see if the governor will Do The Right Thing to considerably improve his performance grade or if he will completely fail the course. An F on a high-profile Governors Report Card is not a pretty thing!

By copy of this letter to Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his administration, Im demanding that based on the comprehensive, disqualifying information released recently concerning the construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, that he and his administration suspend and rescind all support of both the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines in Virginia.
Salem is staring at a monstrous expense: It may cost $53 million or more to refurbish an aging Salem High School.

How can a city of 25,000 afford to pay a bill of that size?

The answer starts on Main Street, in downtown.

Last November, Ridenhour Music closed its store, ending a run that began when the familys first store opened in 1945 in Roanoke. That seemed a sad note to strike and, goodness knows, Salem sure didnt need another empty storefront.

That might have been the end of one song, but also marked the beginning of another. The property was purchased by Faisal Khan, the same developer who has turned the old Crystal Tower building and the old Roanoke YMCA into downtown living spaces called the Ponce De Leon and Locker Room Lofts.

He plans to do the same with Ridenhour Music, just on a smaller  some might say, more Salem  scale.

Now another prominent Roanoke developer  perhaps the most prominent developer  has bought the old Peacock-Salem dry cleaners building on the edge of downtown, and is in the process of acquiring the old West Salem Body Shop in the middle of downtown. Ed Walker, famous for converting one prominent Roanoke structure after another into living space, plans to do the same with both those buildings in Salem. (The dazzling list of Walkers Roanoke projects includes the Hotel Patrick Henry, the Colonial American Bank building, the old Grand Piano building, the Cotton Mill and the River House in Wasena.)

Hes also bought the old Valleydale Foods plant off Indiana Street and hopes to convert into . . . well, something. Ideally, he says, something that creates employment, so probably not housing. Well come back to that.

So what does any of this have to do with paying for renovations at Salem High School? Well, everything. Salem could either tax its residents, or the city could try to grow its economy and expand the tax base. Its chosen the latter  always a good thing, but especially when the city is looking at a big bill coming due.

Step one is to create housing downtown and get in on the same trend that has helped revitalize downtown Roanoke. With the Walker and Khan projects and some others underway, Salem Mayor Randy Foley expects 80-100 new apartments in or near downtown. Keep in mind Salem hasnt had any new apartments anywhere in a long time.

Whether you figure one person per unit or two, what would all those new people mean? City officials hope they mean a livelier downtown and more customers for businesses there. People spend money, and that money gets taxed. Salem has big plans: The Virginia Department of Transportation is about to spend $6 million on road improvements on Main Street. Its set up a grant program to help downtown property owners fix up their facades, which not only helps them but makes downtown as a whole look more inviting. There also are plans for new street lights.

Nothing happens without some controversy and there is, of course, some here. Salem issued a request for proposals for the city-owned property where the Salem Farmers Market now operates. Basically, it asked: What could we do with this and still preserve a farmers market?

From Salems point of view: Downtown needs more parking. There are actually 2,019 parking spaces downtown, but theyre scattered and not necessarily functional. Foley points out how his software company might like to move downtown, but cant if theres not enough readily available parking for the firms 25 employees. Maybe Salem needs a parking garage?

Maybe thats not all Salem needs. Theres interest in attracting a hotel to downtown to cater to people attending events at Roanoke College, especially with the opening of the Cregger Center. In downtown Roanoke, theres now a hotel atop a parking garage. Could Salem do the same on Main and Broad, but still keep the Farmers Market there?

Some have trouble visualizing that, but Walker and partner Brent Cochran say it may be possible to come up with a creative solution. Theyre looking at other projects around the country and world to see if theres one that might work.

Or  and city officials raise this point gently  the Farmers Market has only been around since 1992. Its not as if its in a historic location the way Roanokes is. Maybe theres actually a better location for the Farmers Market in downtown?

Walkers partner, Cochran, is the founder of Local Environmental Agriculture Project, which has started farmers markets. Salemites shouldnt worry about its market being shut down, although people might want to be open-minded about where it is.

Given their track record, there seems little doubt that Walker, Cochran and Faisal can make something happen in downtown Salem. The big question is: Can Walker make something out of the rusted hulk of the Valleydale plant?

The meat-packing plant closed in 2006 and, from the outside, looks terrible. However, Walker points out, it has a clean environmental record  and lots and lots of plumbing. To him, that cries out brewery, especially given the valleys recent success of late in that market niche. If you go to salembrewery.com, youll see thats how hes marketing it. At 120,000 square feet, Valleydale is about half the size of the Ballast Point brewery under construction in Botetourt County, but many orders of magnitude bigger than your typical craft brewer.

Walker likens the prospect of landing a large brewer for Valleydale as akin to elephant hunting. Or perhaps he could persuade several smaller ones to share space? Either way, Walker started the hunt by attending the recent Craft Brewers Conference in Washington and handing out thousands of fliers pitching the site.

Hes gotten some nibbles, but says it likely will take years to land a tenant  and invest $20 million in outfitting the site.

His background is in converting old buildings into residential and office or retail space; putting an old industrial building back into business as a new industrial building is a completely new challenge.

If youre Salem, though, that Valleydale project is part of how youll pay for that high school without taxing citizens until they squeal like the pigs that were once turned into bacon there.
Business News New Ranking The Best Business Colleges In Pennsylvania For Undergrads | RobinsPost News & Noticias

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Consumer News Huge Ransomware Attack Unfolding Worldwide | RobinsPost News & Noticias

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Health News Virginia Health Officials Investigating Rare Case Of Human Rabies | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Four people in Virginia ... for rabies, officials said. The four people who were bitten have started rabies prevention treatments, the health department said. This is very rare, Jay Duell ... Read More Health officials have confirmed a skunk tested positive for rabies in Botetourt County on Friday.The Virginia Department of Health confirmed the case in the area of the Breezekrest Lane in Fincastle. Read More Virginia health officials have confirmed the presence of rabies in the area of Northside Road, in Craig County. Read More Two men are fighting for their lives and one man has non-life-threatening injuries after being shot at the Carolina Express convenience store Thursday night. Richmond Police officers responded to ... Read More 1 and BQ.1.1, accounted for 11% of new cases this past week. Now, Virginia health officials are watching to see how the new strains will impact us. It really hit me. I had every single symptom ... Read More Gunshots fired into a crowd at an outdoor gathering in Virginia early Sunday left eight people wounded, officials said ... Harrisonburg police are investigating whether there was more than ... Read More RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Earlier this year, the office of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares handed off its jurisdiction in a long-running investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct ... Read More As of Tuesday evening, department officials reported 6,274 active cases of coronavirus among patients connected to 135 VA medical facilities across America. Long COVID symptoms could mean major ... Read More A health worker administers a dose of COVID-19 vaccine during a vaccination clinic in Reading, Pa., in September 2021. (Matt Rourke/AP) Veterans Affairs health officials said Wednesday they are ... Read More BEAVER, W.Va. (AP)  Federal officials are investigating complaints about conditions at a West Virginia jail, according to a published report. The Register-Herald reports the West Virginia ... Read More
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Donald Trump's popularity in Iowa dipped by seven points over a month in a new poll as Democrats and Republicans gear up for the midterm elections next month. Read More At least fourteen of Donald Trump's handpicked candidates are projected to have lost their election bids, leaving the former president "fuming," sources say. Read More It is still up in the air which political party will control the U.S. Congress, but on Wednesday a media narrative of Election Day appeared to solidify: Good night for ... Read More
Elections News Watch What Indian Tv Channels Can Learn From South Korea S Over The Top Coverage Of Its Elections | RobinsPost News & Noticias

South Koreas military said Tuesday its capable of detecting and intercepting the variety of missiles North Korea launched in a barrage of recent simulated nuclear attacks on its rivals ... Read More So, you may be wondering what are midterm elections ... s four-year term. Hence the name midterm election. How many House and Senate seats are voted on? Not all Senate members turn over ... Read More Theyre school board elections ... at other times of the year. Thats especially concerning at a time when parents are demanding greater control over their kids education. Read More South Korea -- South Korea says North Korea has launched a ballistic missile toward its eastern waters. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events ... Read More North Korea has added to its recent barrage of weapons demonstrations by launching four ballistic missiles into the sea while the United States sent two supersonic bombers over South Korea in a duelin ... Read More The 2022 midterm elections will take ... paid time off to vote? There's no federal law, but these states allow it Contact your local election officials to learn more. If you're unsure where ... Read More North Korea's military said its coastal ... on a South Korean border island, Cheong said. UN Security Council to hold emergency meeting after North Korean missile test over Japan 08:32 South ... Read More North Korea said Monday its two weeks of firing drills involved nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, warplanes and other assets to practice possible strikes on South Korean and U.S. targets. Read More South Korea's military says its capable of detecting and intercepting the variety of missiles that North Korea has launched in a barrage of recent simulated nuclear attacks on its rivals SEOUL ... Read More North Korea said Monday its two weeks of firing drills involved nuclear-capable ballistic missiles, warplanes and other assets to practice possible strikes on South Korean and U.S. targets. Read More
Elections News Croatia Pm Aims To Get Support For New Ministers After Local Elections | RobinsPost News & Noticias

The 2022 midterm elections will take ... in addition to key state and local elected offices across the country, including numerous governorships. Do you get paid time off to vote? Read More Election officials say don't wait to request a ballot because you'll want to get them ... senior CBS News political correspondent, Major Garrett, about the upcoming midterm elections, and how ... Read More "After that ... 260,000 households sent incorrect info by Elections N.B. This is sad, but not surprising, said Bernard, who sat on the New Maryland local service district advisory committee ... Read More You can't understand this election without understanding them. On the issues, they've told us they don't believe Biden won in 2020; want the Republican party and its candidates to support the ... Read More But there are thousands of other elections next month in addition to those 470. All of them matter for some people, and a lot of them are important well beyond their jurisdictions. Get the full ... Read More Malaysia's prime minister dissolved parliament Monday to clear the way for snap elections in ... less than two years after he took office, and Ismail was named Malaysia's new leader. Read More To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here. A ballot measure in Arizona would add new identification ... which represents the local officials charged with overseeing elections in the state ... Read More ALGIERS/GAZA, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Rival Palestinian factions signed an agreement in Algiers on Thursday aimed at resolving 15 years of discord by holding elections within a year after months of ... Read More Malaysia's prime minister dissolved parliament Monday to clear the way for snap elections in ... less than two years after he took office, and Ismail was named Malaysia's new leader. Read More A Federal Police vehicle moves former lawmaker Roberto Jefferson after he was detained ... to arrest him in for insulting supreme court ministers, according to Brazils federal police. Read More of the Brazilian Democratic Movement Party and third-place finisher in the first round of Brazil's presidential elections, participates in a walk to support former president Luiz Inacio Lula da ... Read More
Elections News Presidential Elections Will Seriously Shape Iran S Foreign Policy | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Iran held state-sponsored annual rallies on Friday marking the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, as the clerical establishment that has ruled since then struggles to suppress nationwide ... Read More A return to power for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to complicate Israels relationship with its neighbors and the United States. Read More Iran on Friday marked the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran as its theocracy faces nationwide protests after the September death of a 22-year-old woman who was arrested by the countrys ... Read More In the waning days of his most recent stint as Israels prime minister  just over a year ago  Benjamin Netanyahu made no secret of his ... Read More
Elections News Austria S Kurz Seeks Early Elections As Kern S Coalition Teeters | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Kurz was not directly implicated, however, and his Peoples Party won a subsequent election, forming a new government with the Greens. The young Austrian premier, who many in Europe regarded as a ... Read More Austria's president on Thursday called for wide-ranging reforms of the country's political culture following fresh revelations over a graft scandal, which led then-chancellor Sebastian Kurz to ... Read More Schmid's allegations are also putting strain on the current coalition, which consists of the Green Party and Kurz's centre-right Austrian ... the opposition for fresh elections. Read More A separate projection by ARGE Wahlen for news agency APA produced nearly identical results to SORA's ... at his election party on the day of the presidential election, in Vienna, Austria, October ... Read More Former Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz said Thursday he is launching ... bg/anb/er/bp/jj The Barron's news department was not involved in the creation of the content above. Read More STORY: Austrias president is set to stay in office for ... Neither of the main centrist parties fielded candidates in this election. 78-year-old Van der Bellen is a former leader of the Greens ... Read More Early voting is surging in Georgia. With high profile, crucial and competitive races for U.S. Senate and governor, nearly 400,000 people cast ballots from the start of early voting on Monday ... Read More With 15 days to go to Election Day, early voting is already underway in 34 states and the District of Columbia, and more than 7.5 million people have already voted, either in person or by mail. Read More To really understand an election ... of interviews in our CBS News polling over the year where people have expressed themselves and how they see politics. Here's what we learned from it all ... Read More The midterms are elections that occur halfway through a president's four-year term. All 435 seats in the U.S. House are up for election, as well as 35 seats in the Senate. Thirty-six states and 3 ... Read More This is documented in Midterm Elections Stock Market Surge  An Unintentional Gift From US Politicians from researchers at the New Zealands University of Canterbury, as published in ... Read More Austrian politics has been rocked by a series of corruption scandals with Kurz's resignation in 2021 marking ... According to Van der Bellen, new legislative elections are not justified at the ... Read More
Elections News Low Turnout In Last Week S Algerian Elections Is A Major Blow To The Government | RobinsPost News & Noticias

More than 660,000 Georgians have voted early in historic 2022 midterms Early voters in Georgia face obstacles under state's new election law (The Guardian) Meantime, CBS News has confirmed that ... Read More Local voter turnout for this years midterm general election dropped compared to the last midterm in 2018. Turnout hit 39.2% for the 2022 general election in Johnson County, with a total of 45,389 ... Read More Voters, on Saturday, trickled out to cast their votes to elect new local government ... of the election. According to him, this was an indication that the nations democracy was thriving and ... Read More Few could have predicted that America would have the highest midterm turnout ... from election officials, Edison Research and Catalist. Lets start with the polling data. Last week, the CNN ... Read More The elections are about more than just politics. Veuers Tony Spitz ... Voter turnout can be impacted by a variety of factors, such as noncompetitive or low-profile races and disillusionment ... Read More Low voter turnout in the council elections has fuelled calls for an overhaul of the entire local government ... think that's a bit of a stumbling block," he said. Ofsoske said the last-minute ... Read More The November midterm elections are just a week out, and some of the first early voter turnout numbers are in. I just walked in and voted and was out in like four minutes, said Carol Listvan, an ... Read More SANTA FE  Turnout is off to a strong start as New Mexico heads into the final three weeks ... s unclear whether the increased participation is a sign of heavy turnout that will last through ... Read More Malaysia will head to the polls on November 19, the countrys election commission announced last ... government is likely seeking to benefit from divisions among opposition parties and a low ... Read More
Potus News Trump Says He Wants Russia Investigation Done Properly Was Going To Fire Comey Regardless Of Recommendation | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied having any intentions of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine but described the conflict there as part of alleged efforts by the West to secure ... Read More
Potus News When Trump Decided To Fire Comey He Said Russia Is A Made Up Story | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied having any intentions of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine but described the conflict there as part of alleged efforts by the West to secure ... Read More
Potus News Supporters Of Maine Monument Want Trump Lepage To Back Off | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Democratic Gov. Janet Mills defeated Republican Paul LePage in Maine's gubernatorial race. The state has voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election cycle since 1992. Mills, ... Read More
Product Reviews Uber And Greyball Under Fire From Portland | RobinsPost News & Noticias

the Uber name has come under fire yet again. Allegations have been made by Uber Eats couriers claiming that the companys racist facial recognition software resulted in their engagement being ... Read More Uber's chief product officer ... and shuttles onto the platform. "Under Sundeep's leadership the product team has shipped more products to more users than ever before," a spokesperson told ... Read More Ride-hailing company Uber Technologies is pouring more money into defeating Portlands minimum wage referendum ahead of the November election. The San Francisco-based company registered a new ... Read More The next time you take an Uber, you might start seeing ads ... said Alex Bauer, head of product and market strategy at advertising technology company Branch. First-party data, or the type of ... Read More The resignation came after a series of costly missteps under Kalanick ... performance reviews to hold leaders accountable. Also, Kalanick lost his temper in an argument with an Uber driver who ... Read More An envelope. It indicates the ability to send an email. An curved arrow pointing right. Uber Eats offers its users a lot of chances to tip their drivers. And considering that nearly everyone who ... Read More Uber Eats will become the first major ... to initiate the administrative process to expeditiously review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Marijuana is currently classified as ... Read More
Product Reviews Facebook Gets Legal Threats From Thailand Over E Censorship | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Google updated the documentation on how to write product reviews to add examples of kinds of product reviewers and to tighten the focus of the documentation with more precise wording. Overall ... Read More Hard to tell whether the line on this Nicolas Cage pillow caseSee you in my dreamsis meant to be a threat or a comfort ... I would argue constantly over who had to cut the day ... Read More YOUR SIDE TEAM TOLD YOU ABOUT LEGAL THREAT SCAMS IN THE PAST ... MEANS OF ELECTRONIC FUND TRANSFER OVER THE PHONE FOR FAILURE TO FOR JURY DUTY. IF YOU DO GET A PHONE CALL LIKE THIS, DO NOT ... Read More WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is ... Read More Google's Danny Sullivan told us that the Google product reviews update primarily evaluates product review content on a page-level basis, but not always. Danny added "for sites that have a ... Read More This algorithm was designed to look at sites that offer product reviews, not necessarily e-commerce sites that have ... by a Google product reviews update over maybe another type of Google ... Read More Why keep the guys who drove Twitter to the state in which Musk felt compelled to take over in the first place? But it's the third now-former executive that everyone is talking about. Vijaya Gadde, ... Read More Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl claimed Facebook is blocking her campaign ads. Facebooks parent company said Ganahls campaign failed to complete basic steps and offered ... Read More AN UPSTATE WOMAN SAYS SHE IS GETTING DEATH THREATS ... GET SOME SENSE OF MENTAL THINGS ON HER ACCOUNT BACK. AND THE CHIEF HAS SAID HE HAS TRIED TO ALSO GO THROUGH THE LAW ENFORCEMENT PORTAL ON ... Read More Read our Ethics Policy to learn more. Trying to figure out what you need in terms of equipment for unboxing videos and product reviews on YouTube? Weve got you covered. As other YouTube trends ... Read More WASHINGTON  President Biden on Tuesday received his fifth COVID-19 vaccine shot while warning Americans that the virus was still a threat  despite calling the pandemic over more than a ... Read More In the months and years that followed, more than 80 different women eventually accused the Hollywood bigwig (and now convicted and jailed rapist) of a litany of crimes over many years. Kantor and ... Read More
Product Reviews South Korea S Naver Launches Voice Assistant To Rival Alexa | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Shares of South ... Naver also briefly faced limited disruptions as the data center also hosts servers for the company, but resumed most of its operations on Sunday. The data center's operator ... Read More A fire at a suburban data centre south of Seoul damaged servers of South Korea's major tech companies, Kakao and Naver on Saturday (Oct 15), causing extensive disruption to the country's dominant ... Read More Tweaks to subsidies for new electric vehicles, however, are causing some ripples for U.S. foreign relations. South Korean automakers may be hurt by the legislation. But its battery makers ... Read More Kim Jun-rak, a spokesperson at South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that a missile launch from a reservoir was seen as a desperate attempt by North Korea to escape South Korean ... Read More First diplomatic mission on Metaverse platform in celebration of 60 years of ties between two countries The Israeli Embassy in South Korea recently launched what they claim is the world's first ... Read More South Korean officials said the country is able to intercept the missiles that North Korea has launched over the past couple weeks but that the developing nuclear program is still a threat. Read More North Korea on Friday claimed its latest ballistic missile launch was a countermeasure to the South Korean military's "provocative action" in the frontline area, issuing a warning against what it ... Read More SEOUL, Oct 15 (Reuters) - A fire at a suburban data centre south of Seoul damaged servers of South Korea's major tech companies, Kakao Corp. (035720.KS) and Naver Corp. (035420.KS) on Saturday ... Read More Kim Jun-rak, a spokesperson at South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters that a missile launch from a reservoir was seen as a desperate attempt by North Korea to escape South Korean ... Read More Naver SEOUL (Reuters) - A fire at a suburban data centre south of Seoul damaged servers of South Korea's major tech companies, Kakao Corp. and Naver Corp. on Saturday, causing extensive disruption ... Read More SEOUL, South ... Korea said the drills were meant to issue a warning to Seoul and Washington, which staged provocative joint naval drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier. The North Korean ... Read More
Technology News Observers Point To Lack Of Technology In Election | RobinsPost News & Noticias

Reducing news to hard lines and side-taking leaves a lot of the story untold. Progress comes from challenging what we hear and considering different views. Read More The 2020 presidential contest ushered in a new elections crisis, fueled by supporters of former president Donald Trump who spread conspiracy theories about the integrity of voting systems and bogus ... Read More Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad: Oct. 27 The Washington Post on the election system's upcoming stress test: This years midterms are not shaping up to be normal ... Read More The accommodation company on Tuesday forecast revenues between $1.8bn and $1.88bn in its current quarter. Even though the low end of that range would represent an increase from last year, it would be ... Read More
Us News North Korea Sends Protest To Us Congress Over Sanctions | RobinsPost News & Noticias

The Department of the Treasury said it had delisted and simultaneously redesignated Tornado Cash for activities which ultimately support the DPRKs WMD program. ... Read More Washington might be looking for a course correction on engagement with North Korea, but dont expect any change to sanctions policy. Read More (photo credit: REUTERS/KIM HONG-JI/FILE PHOTO) A South Korean soldiers walks past a TV broadcasting a news report on North Korea ... Party congress, which begins on Oct. 16. The US Indo-Pacific ... Read More The National Security Strategy is a legally mandated annual report sent by the White House to Congress ... after North Korea flew the IRBM over Japan, the U.S. Treasury issued new sanctions ... Read More The Biden administration is expanding sanctions against the aviation and defense sectors of North Korea and Myanmar as it continues to punish the two countries for ... Read More The United States on Wednesday imposed a slew of new sanctions against Iranian ... government in the face of widespread protests over Aminis death, the US government took a step meant to ... Read More WASHINGTON: The United States on Wednesday (Oct 26) targeted Iranian officials, including those overseeing Tehran's Evin prison, and others in new sanctions on Iran over internet censorship and a ... Read More
Us News Us Justice Department To Investigate Police Shooting Of Black Texas Teen | RobinsPost News & Noticias

The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into a fired, white Dallas-area police officer who killed a young black man ... of the shooting. It is very difficult in the United States, let ... Read More The San Antonio police department ... shooting of an unarmed teenager by a then San Antonio police officer remains under investigation, the facts and evidence we have received so far led us ... Read More KILLEEN, Texas ... Police Department is asking for the publics help as detectives investigate the murder of a teen Sunday morning. Officers responded at 6:10 a.m. on Oct. 9 to a call about a ... Read More The Texas police officer who shot a 17-year-old man while he was eating a meal in a McDonalds parking lot last week has been named, as the teen remains in critical condition, Bexar County ... Read More Police told ABC News ... Texas Department of Public Safety investigators located and arrested the juvenile last night," the email reads. The threat came just shy of 5 months after the school ... Read More Police in Texas are investigating ... The shooting happened around 7 p.m. Friday in the 1200 block of E. Jessamine Street in Fort Worth, the Fort Worth Police Department said. Read More A Black teenager in Mississippi has died days after police ... given the investigation. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is examining the shooting, the Public Safety Department said in ... Read More In a statement, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice said, "There was not an indication that Hernandez would act out violently in a hospital." ... Read More Two people died in a shooting on Tuesday at the Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office, including an employee ... Read More A now-former San Antonio police officer was charged Tuesday with two counts of aggravated assault by a peace officer for shooting and gravely wounding a teen eating a hamburger in his car in a ... Read More Frederick Police Department said in a news release on Monday. The shooting happened inside an apartment at 90 Waverley Drive, police said. Police are conducting a death investigation. Police found ... Read More The US Department of Justice is reportedly already investigating claims of voter ... ballot boxes ahead of the midterm elections. Fox News is no longer Fox News, Mr Trump said on Gab.com. Read More
World News The World Needs To Watch Iran S Election | RobinsPost News & Noticias

The world is waiting to assess the impact of the next wild turn in the politics of the United States, a power that sought to guarantee global stability for decades but whose internal politics make it ... Read More Irans intelligence minister says the London-based Iran International news channel has been designated as a "terrorist" organization and that employees and those "related" to the outlet will be ... Read More Israels election ... Iran Nuclear Deal, which he called a policy aimed at "containing a nuclear Iran" rather than one that could "prevent" a nuclear Iran. "That is a tragic mistake for the ... Read More In a stark closing argument ahead of the US midterm elections, President Joe Biden on Monday had warned that a Republican victory could weaken the country's democratic institutions and undo much of ... Read More We want the whole world to know that we dont want ... Amini had been brutally beaten by police. UK-based Iran International news channel claims to have obtained the CT scans of Amini ... Read More Benjamin Netanyahu has served as prime minister twice, during which he worked with four different U.S. presidents: Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Read More Election watchdogs reported routine issues in key battleground states Tuesday but no major problems as ballots were cast across the U.S. Live updates. Read More A year after Raisi's election marked the ... of political prisoners in 1988. Iran has never acknowledged the killings. Asked about the deaths at a June 2021 news conference, Raisi replied that ... Read More During the speed-dating forum, McGuire warned that the number of Peters-like election deniers running for local auditors in the state may mean the Legislature there needs to adopt a similar ... Read More Iranian judiciary says those killed died of smoke inhalation Iran says calm returns to Evin ... supplier of oil and gas for as long as the world needs, its President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed ... Read More 24, 2022, to protest the death of Masha Amini, who had fallen into a coma for three days after being detained by the morality police in Tehran, Iran. (Hawre Khalid/AP) Growing up under a ... Read More The former prime minister is expected to head the country's most right-wing government in history when he takes power, likely in the coming weeks. Netanyahu's victory ends Israel's political ... Read More
World News Caterpillar To Power The World S Largest Split Hopper Dredger | RobinsPost News & Noticias

CNET freelancer Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well ... Read More This past August, President Biden signed a sweeping climate bill into law, making wind power a priority ... blades roughly the length of the world's largest passenger jet. Each blade weights ... Read More The South Asian country of Bangladesh experienced a massive power outage Tuesday, the largest ever in the world. According to ... by 8 p.m. in the nations capital city of Dhaka, where some ... Read More How about the size of the entire United States? The worlds largest machine is actually the U.S. power grid and how it became one giant machine is an amazing story. Read More THE worlds largest flawless diamond is set to sell for at least 13million. The pear-shaped Golden Canary, which weighs more than 300 carats, went on display in Dubai yesterday. Discovered in ... Read More Meet Crimson Storage, the worlds largest single-phase battery ... Residential homes are usually served by a single-phase power supply, and this project, on average, is expected to store ... Read More Will Powers was inside the surgical suite at his medical practice when his cat Fenrir opened the door ... Bylines include CNN, BBC News, Woman's World, Inside Your Dog's Mind and many other ... Read More Heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar Inc on Thursday topped Wall Street estimates for profit and revenue in the third quarter due to price increases and strong order activity from energy and mining ... Read More He led production on CNET's ... TV news producer, earning a local Emmy award and multiple Emmy nominations. Scientists in Northern California are putting finishing touches on the world's largest ... Read More The remaining land is mostly split into seven ... and India which are worlds two most populous countries. Following Asia, Africa holds the title for the second largest continent in the world. Read More From fast food to rapid COVID tests, the world has an unrelenting need ... laptops and being able to harness all of that power, Chandrasekaran said. But then in comes exascale  thats a 1 followed ... 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
BECs, egg tarts, croissants, avocado toasts and many of the other myriad ways New Yorkers celebrate the first meal of the day come to Industry City in June for the 2nd BreakFestival. Put on by the breakfast-focused website Extra Crispy, the event promises a reason to rise early on a weekendbut not too early: the event doesn't begin until noon.

There'll be pastries including Dough Doughnuts and treats from Colson Patisserie, toast-type things from Avocaderia and Claus Meyer's Great Northern Food Hall, breakfast pizza from Gristmill and Speedy Romeo, and Chinese breakfast items including Jianbing Company and Nom Wah. Other vendors include Atlantic Social, Seviche, White Moustache yogurt and charcuterie from Ends Meats. The full lineup isn't out just yet, but you can see other vendors here.

Breakfast adjacent drinks are also part of the program, including coffee and Bloody Marys. Like many of our morning routines, a DJ will be on hand for appetite-encouraging dancing. The festival, taking place on Saturday, June 10th, is free to attend (items are sold a la carte) and you can register here.
Botswanas rough diamond exports rose 2.5 percent to about $850 million in the first quarter, according to data released by the countrys central bank.

The country accrued $243.1 million from exports in January, as well as $254.2 million in February and $352.3 million in March.

Rapaport reports that the increase in rough diamond exports during the first quarter was attributed to higher sales at De Beers.

De Beers rough sales increased by about 2 percent to $1.86 billion in the three sights that took place during the quarter.

Debswana, a joint venture between De Beers and Botswana accounted for 75 percent of the companys rough production in 2016, according to Anglo American, the parent company of De Beers.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Stellar Diamonds said it secured a two-month extension to the longstop dates with the noteholders of its two outstanding convertible loan notes.

Company chief executive Karl Smithson said in a statement that the company was undergoing a transformation from an explorer to a mine developer.

I would like to thank the noteholders for their continued support as we progress towards the commercial development of the 4.5-million-carat Tongo-Tonguma underground kimberlite diamond mine, in Sierra Leone, he said.

Key advances have been made in recent weeks in terms of signing the binding tribute mining agreement and signing the contract for the front-end engineering design (FEED) for the initial mine development.

Smithson said with a low capital expenditure requirement of $32-million, the proposed Tongo-Tonguma mine had the potential to be the second-largest kimberlite diamond mine in West Africa, with forecast production levels of 200 000 ct/y, generating revenues of over $45-million a year over a minimum life-of-mine of 21 years.



Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished




Camping Quelle region privilegier pour des campings calmes ? Combien coute en moyenne une location de mobil home pour une semaine dans le Sud ? Quel camping conseillez-vous a Argeles ? Quels pays sont les mieux equipes en campings ? Connaissez-vous des campings avec plage privee ? Dans quelles zones le camping sauvage est il autorise ? La communaute repond a vos questions. 381

Camping-car Comment laver au mieux son camping-car? Quel camping-car pour voyager a deux ? Quelle assurance pour voyager a letranger avec un camping-car ? Quels accessoires sont indispensables pour voyager en camping-car ? Est-il possible de trouver des bouteilles gaz dans toute lEurope ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 5876

Croisieres 1390

Expatriation

Envie de partir Est-il facile de sinstaller au Portugal ? Quel pays anglophone choisir pour apprendre langlais ? Quel pays pour un travail de fille au pair ? La communaute repond a vos questions !Envie de partir vivre a letranger , en expatriation, en Erasmus, au pair ou en volontariat international ? La redaction vous donne toutes les formules et astuces de financement. 674

Le Guide du Routard Est-il possible davoir des reductions grace au guide du routard ? Est-il necessaire davoir le guide de lannee en cours ? Comment trouver les derniers guides ? Existe-t-il une version en ligne des guides ? Quelles sont les prochaines destinations choisies par le guide du Routard ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 419

Moto Quels documents sont necessaires pour louer un scooter ou une moto en Thailande ? Quelle agence choisir pour faire un road trip en moto aux Etats Unis ? Est-il facile dacheter une moto en Australie ? Connaissez-vous un bon garage au Vietnam ? Quel permis est necessaire pour louer une moto en Espagne ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 241

Routard.com Comment supprimer mes messages ? Comment creer un carnet de voyage sur le site ? Comment participer aux differents concours ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 48

Ou et quand partir ?



Ou partir en ete a moindre cout ? Ou faire un road trip ou un citytrip ? Quelles sont les destinations les plus festives ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! Ou et quand partir en vacances pour trouver du soleil ? La redaction de routard.com vous indique les meilleures destinations pour chaque mois. 1259

Photo Quels sont les meilleurs blogs de voyage ? Routard.com a-t-il un concours photo ? Quel appareil photo conseillez-vous pour un safari ? Quelle camera choisir pour immortaliser une plongee ? Quels sont les plus beaux comptes Instagram de voyage ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 190

Plongee



Tous les conseils pratiques de la redaction pour la Quels sont les plus beaux spots de plongee au monde ? Quelles palmes utiliser pour une plongee dans les Caraibes ? Ou faire un bapteme de plongee ?Tous les conseils pratiques de la redaction pour la plongee sous -marine , et notre selection des plus beaux spots de plongee et de surf dans le monde. 145

Reveillons

, pour Noel et/ou pour le Nouvel An ? Lumiere sur les plus beaux marches de Noel en France et en Europe, et cap sur les reveillons les plus fous de la planete. Ou faire le reveillon a letranger a moindre cout ? Quel restaurant choisir a Barcelone ? Quelle est lambiance a Budapest pour le reveillon ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! Ou partir en decembre , pour Noel et/ou pour le Nouvel An ? Lumiere sur les plus beaux marches de Noel en France et en Europe, et cap sur les reveillons les plus fous de la planete. 219

Ski

et aux sports dhiver ? On vous donne nos idees de destinations sports dhiver, et nos conseils pratiques pour les amateurs de glisse. Tout schuss ! Quelles sont les stations les plus enneigees ? Ou faire du ski a moindre cout ? Quelle station de ski familiale dans les Alpes ? Ou faire du ski de fond ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! Ou partir au ski et aux sports dhiver ? On vous donne nos idees de destinations sports dhiver, et nos conseils pratiques pour les amateurs de glisse. Tout schuss ! 266

Tour du monde

Retrouvez aussi les Existe-t-il un circuit a privilegier pour un tour du monde ? Existe-t-il un visa multi-destinations ? Conseillez-vous un tour du monde en camping car ? La communaute repond a vos questions !Retrouvez aussi les conseils et infos pratiques de la redaction : bons plans billets tour du monde, et idees de voyages inoubliables. 892

Trek

Tout savoir sur la Quels sont les meilleurs spots de treks du monde ? Quelles agences specialisees pour faire des treks a letranger ? La communaute repond a vos questions !Tout savoir sur la randonnee en France et les plus beaux treks du monde : conseils pratiques, materiel et accessoires, et idees de circuits. En route ! 569

Velo

La redaction a teste pour vous Quel equipement choisir pour son velo ? Comment transporter son velo par avion ? La communaute repond a vos questions !La redaction a teste pour vous les plus belles pistes cyclables, veloroutes, randos a velo et itineraires cyclotouristiques en France et en Europe. Tous en selle ! 450

Voile Comment sorganiser pour faire un tour du monde en voilier ? Y a-t-il un club de voile a La Reunion ? Ou louer un catamaran en Grece ? Quels sont vos conseils pour acheter un voilier ? Est-il possible de faire une excursion en voilier en Polynesie ? Quels sont les meilleurs spots de voile en Amerique du Sud ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 112

Voyager avec son animal Comment voyager en avion avec son animal de compagnie ? Faut-il payer un supplement lorsquon voyage en avion avec son chien ? Est-ce prudent de voyager avec son animal a letranger ? Quels sont les hotels autorisant les animaux ? Comment faire du backpacking avec son chat ? Est-il possible demmener son chien en Thailande ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 108

Voyage de noces



Faites le plein d Quelle destination choisir pour un voyage de noces ? Y a-t-il des agences de voyage specialisees ? Quels sont les plus beaux hotels du monde ? La communaute repond a vos questions !Faites le plein d idees de destinations romantiques ou roucouler a deux, en lune de miel ou en week-end en amoureux. 108

Voyage en famille

Vous partez en Quelles compagnies aeriennes ont les tarifs les plus avantageux pour les enfants ? Voyager en Asie avec des enfants en bas age ? La communaute repond a vos questions !Vous partez en vacances en famille ? La redaction vous donne des idees de voyages en famille, et des conseils pratiques pour voyager avec les enfants. 878

Voyage en solo Comment trouver des compagnons de voyage ? Quelle assurance de voyage conseillez-vous pour voyager seul ? Est-il prudent de faire un road trip seul en Amerique du Sud ? Avez-vous des astuces pour un voyage en total itinerance ? Quel itineraire conseillez-vous pour un voyage seul en Europe ? Est-il prudent quune femme voyage seule en Asie du Sud-Est ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 611

France Vous preparez un voyage en France ? La communaute Routard repond a vos questions. 16

Albanie Un road-trip en Albanie ? Navette centre-ville - aeroport de Tirana ? Circuler en bus ou voiture ? Les plus belles plages de la rivieira albanaise ? Rejoindre la Grece depuis lAlbanie ? Changer euros contre leks ? Comment visiter le Teth ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 489

Allemagne Quel est le plus beau marche de Noel ? Que faire a Munich et Francfort en un week-end ? Visite des chateaux de Baviere : ou loger ? Ou trouver un logement pratique et pas cher pour Oktoberfest ? LAllemagne a velo, ou et comment ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 658

Andorre 87

Angleterre 869

Armenie Ou faire de la randonnee en Armenie ? Location de voiture ? Hebergement ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 235

Autriche Quelle station de ski dans le Tyrol ? Quel itineraire choisir pour du camping-car ? Quels conseils pour de la randonnee en Autriche ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 442

Belgique Combien coute le parking de laeroport de Charleroi ? Quels sont les meilleurs restaurants et bars de Belgique ? Que visiter a Bruges ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 703

Bielorussie Comment se loger en Bielorussie ? Quel itineraire emprunter de Vilnius a Minsk ? Ou obtenir des renseignements sur le visa ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 71

Bulgarie Que visiter a Sofia ? Comment aller aux Sept lacs du Rila ? Ou trouver des aires de camping-car en Bulgarie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 435

Chypre Quel est le meilleur itineraire pour voyager du Nord au Sud de Chypre ? Quelles sont les plus belles plages de Chypre ? Les lieux incontournables a visiter ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 311

Croatie Visiter lile de Brac ou lile de Korcula ? Quelle agence de location de voiture choisir ? Ou loger dans Dubrovnik ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2778

Danemark Le meilleur circuit dans Copenhague ? Quel budget pour un road trip au Danemark ? Quel ferry pour aller aux iles Feroe ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 284

Ecosse Est-il possible de faire du bivouac sur lile de Skye ? Que visiter a Edimbourg ? Faut-il partir avec un passeport en Ecosse ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2315

Espagne Quelle destination choisir en Espagne ? Les bonnes adresses de Barcelone ? Les plus beaux parcs de Madrid ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1814

Estonie Quelle est la meilleure periode pour aller en Estonie ? Comment aller dHelsinki a Tallinn ? Les meilleures compagnies pour une croisiere ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 68

Finlande Trouver une bonne station de ski ? Le meilleur spot pour voir les aurores boreales ? Quels vetements porter en Finlande ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 569

Georgie Quelles activites faire a Tbilisi ? Le meilleur passage frontiere Russie-Georgie ? Ou se loger en Georgie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 252

Grece Quel ferry prendre pour aller sur lile de Santorin ? Quelles iles des Cyclades choisir ? Ou se baigner a Athenes ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 9584

Hongrie Quel est le cout de la vie a Budapest ? Ou obtenir des billets pour un tour du lac Balaton en train ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 157

Irlande Quelle agence de voiture choisir ? Faut-il un visa pour entrer en Irlande ? Que voir a Dublin en une journee ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2559

Islande Quand partir en Islande ? Ou voir des baleines ? Se baigner au Blue Lagoon ? Dans quel sens faire le tour de lile ? Quand voir des aurores boreales ? Quelle voiture louer ? 2899

Italie Quelle agence choisir pour visiter Milan ? Quel itineraire dans la region des Pouilles ? Ou loger dans les Cinque Terre ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 4153

Lettonie Que voir a Riga ? Les meilleures plages de la Baltique ? Un road trip a travers la Lettonie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 111

Lituanie Quels sont les specialites de Lituanie ? Trajet Klaipedia - Vilnius en bus ? Quel itineraire dans les pays baltes ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 100

Luxembourg Travailler au Luxembourg ? Les meilleures adresses de restos et dhebergements ? Un weekend a Luxembourg-Ville ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 68

Macedoine Comment organiser un voyage en Macedoine ? Quel avion prendre ? Que faire a Skopje ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 41

Malte Ou loger a Gozo ? Est-ce interessant de faire un sejour linguistique a Malte ? Ou se procurer un plan de transports ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 727

Montenegro 377

Norvege Quelle periode pour voir des aurores boreales ? Changer ses euros en couronnes norvegiennes avant de partir ? Que voir a Bergen ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2347

Pays-Bas Comment aller aux Pays-Bas ? Faire une randonnee a velo en Hollande? Visiter Amsterdam ou Rotterdam ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 313

Pays de Galles Transport pour Cardiff ? Quelques jours dans le Sud du Pays de Galles ? Randonnee dans Snowdonia et Pembrokeshire ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 59

Pologne Comment aller en Pologne ? Quelles activites a Varsovie ? Quel transport de Cracovie a Auschwitz ? Visiter les mines de sel ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 852

Portugal Visiter le Douro ou lAlgarve ? Trouver une location ou un camping au Portugal ? Ou faire du canyoning, du surf ? Les peages electroniques ? Quoi voir a Porto ? Quelle location de voiture ? 2425

Republique tcheque Que faire en Republique tcheque ? Trouver un logement a Prague ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 144

Roumanie Louer une voiture en Roumanie ? Quels sites pour un logement sur Bucarest ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 667

Russie Itineraire pour aller a Saint-Petersbourg ? Billet de train pour Moscou ? Vetements dhiver en Russie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1305

Serbie 109

Slovaquie Les incontournables de Bratislava ? Trajet France-Slovaquie ? Quelles activites faire ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 89

Slovenie Ou observer les ours en Slovenie ? Comment acceder au parc national du Triglav ? Randonnee ou road trip? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 326

Suede Est-il possible de faire du camping sauvage en Suede ? Faut-il changer ses euros en France ou sur place ? Que voir a Goteborg ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 398

Suisse Vivre en Suisse ? Quels cantons choisir ? Trouver un logement et sinstaller ? Que faire au Lac Leman ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 732

Turquie Quel visa pour la Turquie ? Visiter la Cappadoce ? Quel circuit suivre ? Quelle est la monnaie utilisee ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1682

Ukraine Visiter Kiev ou Odessa ? Visa pour voyager en Ukraine ? Quel itineraire en Ukraine ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 500

Afghanistan 11

Azerbaidjan 24

Bangladesh Est-il possible de voyager au Bangladesh avec des enfants ? Existe-t-il un train de nuit pour faire Katmandu-Dhaka ? Fau-il un guide pour visiter le pays ? La Communaute repond a vos questions 37

Bhoutan Comment organiser son voyage au Bhoutan, quelle compagnie aerienne pour y aller, quelle est la meilleure periode pour visiter le Bhoutan, pour quel budget ? 35

Birmanie Faire son e-visa pour la Birmanie, choisir son agence de voyage, organiser ses activites sur le lac Inle, a Bagan, au Rocher dOr, changer sa monnaie 2665

Brunei Organiser son sejour au Brunei, combien de temps y rester, comment sy rendre par voie terrestre 13

Cambodge Une, deux ou trois semaines au Cambodge ? Posez vos questions sur votre itineraire et vos trajets au Cambodge, les meilleurs periodes pour visiter Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, les temples dAngkor, les plages de sable blanc ou encore les iles ! 3179

Chine Acheter ses billets de train en Chine, aller a la Grande Muraille, quel itineraire au Yunnan, visiter Xian, trouver un bon restaurant a Pekin 2300

Coree du Sud Comment sexpatrier en Coree du Sud ? Quel budget prevoir pour un voyage de 1 mois ? Faut-il louer une voiture pour visiter lile de Jeju ? La Communaute repond a vos questions 893

Inde Quelle agence choisir pour visiter le Rajasthan ? La foire de Pushkar est-elle interessante ? Quel climat au mois daout ? Quelles sont les etapes necessaires pour obtenir un visa en Inde ? La Communaute repond a vos questions. 6501

Indonesie Ou loger a Gili Air ? Que faire a Flores ? Est-il possible de visiter 3 iles en 15 jours en Indonesie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions. 2919

Japon Est-il interessant dacheter le JR Pass pour se deplacer dans le pays ? Quel itineraire pour 15 jours au Japon ? Que visiter a Osaka ? Existe-t-il un un moyen de voyager en shinkansen pour faire Tokyo, Kyoto et Mont Fuji ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 4514

Kazakhstan 44

Kirghizistan 152

Laos Quel climat au Laos ? Faut-il payer en Bath ou US dollars ? Combien coute le visa on arrival ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1578

Malaisie Ou aller pour un premier voyage en Malaisie ? Les iles Perhentian valent-elles le detour ? Que faire a Kuala Lumpur ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2307

Maldives Ou sejourner aux Maldives ? Quel spot choisir pour faire du snorkelling ? Que faire a Male ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1274

Mongolie Ou acheter un velo en Mongolie ? Faut-il un visa pour voyager en Mongolie ? Quelle agence de voyage choisir ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 471

Nepal Quel equipement prendre pour faire le tour de lAnnapurna ? Quelle agence de trek choisir ? Que visiter a Katmandou ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1701

Ouzbekistan Obtenir soin visa pour lOuzbekistan, faire la Route de la Soie, choisir une agence locale pour voyager en Ouzbekistan, visiter Samarcande, Boukhara et Khiva 450

Pakistan 31

Philippines Quel transport privilegier entre Manille et Palawan ? Que faire a Cebu Island ? Quel itineraire choisir pour 15 jours de voyage aux Philippines ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2052

Singapour Quand visiter lUniversal Studio Singapore ? Ou trouver un logement pas cher dans la ville ? Prix du transfert entre laeroport de Singapour-Changi et le centre-ville ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 353

Sri Lanka Obtenir lETA pour le Sri Lanka ? Comment trouver un chauffeur-guide ? Quel itineraire ? Ou voir des elephants ? Quelles sont les plus belles plages ? Voyager en famille au Sri Lanka ? 4592

Tadjikistan 36

Taiwan Comment assister au festival des lumieres a Taipei ? Quelle plage privilegier a Taiwan ? Quelle agence de location de voiture choisir ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 191

Thailande Quelles sont les plus belles plages de Thailande ? Ou trouver un hotel les pieds dans leau ? Un visa est-il necessaire ? Quel trek a Chiang Mai ? Quel budget ? 14836

Tibet Quel budget prevoir pour un voyage au Tibet ? Est-il obligatoire de voyager avec un guide ou une agence ? Quelles sont les formalites pour rentrer au Tibet ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 114

Turkmenistan 10

Vietnam Vietnam nord ou sud ? Quand visiter la Baie dAlong ? Louer une moto ? Quel trek a Sapa ? Partir seule au Vietnam ? Quoi visiter a Hanoi ? 6941

Antigua-et-Barbuda Quelles formalites pour visiter Antigua ? Quelles activites et excursions sont recommandees ? Presence dalgues sargasses ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 4

Argentine Quel budget prevoir pour 1 mois en Argentine ? Faut-il privilegier les voyages en bus ou en avion ? Est-il possible de reserver a lavance un hotel a Salta ? Comment sorganiser pour sexpatrier en Argentine ? Quelle agence pour visiter la Patagonie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions. 2109

Bahamas Comment se deplacer entre les iles ? Comment rejoindre Miami depuis les Bahamas ? Voyage de noces : ou sejourner ? Les plus belles plages des Bahamas ? Ou se loger a Nassau ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 156

Barbade Comment circuler a la Barbade ? Quel budget prevoir ? Comment rejoindre les Antilles depuis la Barbade ? Ou faire de lapnee ? Ou se loger ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 22

Belize Combien de temps rester au Belize ? Autotour ou chauffeur-guide ? Les meilleurs spots pour faire du surf, de la plongee ou du snorkeling ? Quel itineraire et excursions prevoir ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 200

Bolivie Quel itineraire pour 1 mois en Bolivie ? Existe-t-il un bus direct pour faire Uyuni-Copacabana ? Quelle agence choisir pour louer un 4x4 ? Quelles iles du Lac Titicaca privilegier ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 980

Bresil Comment se rendre a Ilha Grande depuis Rio de Janeiro ? Quel guide pour faire un trek a Lencois Maranhenses ? Est-il possible de voyager seul(e) ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 3027

Canada Quelles sont les formalites pour entrer sur le territoire canadien ? Comment organiser la visite des chutes Victoria ? Que voir a Vancouver ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2776

Chili Quelle agence pour visiter le Chili ? Quel transport pour aller de laeroport de Santiago a Valparaiso ? Quels sont les prix pour les campings a Pan de Azucar ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1368

Colombie Des infos sur le carnaval de Baranquilla ? Preparer un trek en Amazonie ? Se deplacer entre Cartagena, Cali, Medellin et Bogota ? Bus ou taxi en Colombie ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 1752

Costa Rica La cote caraibe ou la cote pacifique au Costa Rica ? Faut-il louer un 4x4 ? Comment visiter le Costa Rica hors des sentiers battus ? Ou voir des aras et des tortues ? Quel budget ? 2101

Cuba Reserver une casa particular a La Havane ? Rapporter des cigares de Cuba ? Faut-il prendre un guide ? Comment obtenir la carte touristique ? Quel cayo visiter ? 6053

Dominique Ou faire de la randonnee, trek et plongee en Dominique ? Se deplacer sans voiture de location ? Ou est la plus belle plage de lile ? Quelle formalite pour entrer ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 113

Equateur Faut-il prendre de la malarone pour visiter lAmazonie ? Quelle est la meilleure periode pour visiter lEquateur ? Quand voir les baleines a Puerto Lopez ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 846

Etats-Unis Quelles formalites pour entrer sur le territoire des Etats-Unis ? Ou aller pour feter Thanksgiving ? Quelle voiture louer pour faire un road trip ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 5412

Grenade Visiter les Grenadines ? Quelle croisiere choisir ? Algues sargasses a Grenade ? Activites faire en famille ? Le meilleur spot de plongee ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 19

Guadeloupe Aller sur les iles des Saintes ou sur lile de Marie-Galante ? Ou loger pour visiter la Guadeloupe ? Y a-t-il des sargasses en Guadeloupe ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 3992

Guatemala Des questions securite au Guatemala ? Shuttle aeroport et bus : ou et comment reserver ? Ou retirer de largent ? Organiser un trek dans la jungle ? Besoin dun guide pour lac Atitlan, volcan San Pedro et de Fuego ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 595

Guyana Quel visa pour Guyana ? Quels sont les risques niveau securite ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2

Guyane 407

Haiti Quelle agence locale choisir a Haiti ? Bus ou voiture de location ? Faire sa demande de visa ? Loger a Port-au-Prince ? Expatriation : que prevoir ? Des questions securite ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 74

Honduras Loger a Roatan et Utila ? Quoi visiter a Tegucigalpa ? Combien de temps pour visiter le Honduras ? Ou faire de la plongee ou du surf ? Quel transport pour traverser le pays ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 50

Iles Vierges Quelle croisiere choisir pour les Iles Vierges ? Ou louer un catamaran? Quelles sont les liaisons avec Saint Barth ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 6

Jamaique Trouver un guide local francophone en Jamaique ? Navette aeroport vers les grandes villes ? Combien de jours pour visiter Ocho Rios, Kingston et Montego Bay ? Monnaie locale ou dollars ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 246

Martinique Quelle agence choisir pour louer une voiture en Martinique ? Quel temps fait-il en septembre ? Ou loger a Sainte-Luce ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2564

Mexique Quel itineraire dans le Yucatan ? Louer une voiture ou prendre les transports en commun pour visiter le Mexique ? Quen est-il de la securite au Mexique ? Ou loger a Cancun ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 4111

Nicaragua Des questions securite ? Ou voir des tortues ? Liaisons Nicaragua  Costa Rica ? Masaya ou Granada ? Corn Islands : passage oblige ? San Juan del Sura ou Leon ? Ou surfer ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 371

Panama Que voir sur les iles San Blas ? Possibilite de sexpatrier au Panama ? Que visiter dans la province de Bocas del Toro ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 478

Paraguay Combien de temps pour tout visiter au Paraguay ? Que voir et ou sortir a Asuncion ? Expatriation : comment sorganiser ? Comment se rendre a Iguazu ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 47

Perou Que visiter a Arequipa ? Comment sorganiser pour visiter le Machu Picchu ? Ou loger a Lima ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 3419

Porto Rico Ou sortir et prendre des cours de salsa a Porto Rico ? Quelles sont les activites a faire a San Juan ? Foret tropicale : El Yunque ou Toro Negro ? Ou faire son shopping ? Ou se loger pas cher ? Sy installer ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 51

Republique Dominicaine Quelles sont les plus belles plages a Punta Cana ? Quel budget prevoir pour 1 semaine a Bayahibe ? Quel tarif pour un voyage entre laeroport Santo Domingo et Puerto Plata ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 2388

Saint-Barthelemy Comment sexpatrier a Saint-Barthelemy ? Possibilite de partir avec un bebe ? Quelles formalites pour aller a Saint-Barthelemy ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 54

Sainte-Lucie Ou loger a Sainte-Lucie ? Faire une randonnee avec un guide francophone ? Changer ses euros en dollars sur place ou en France ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 70

Saint-Martin Ou faire de la plongee a Saint-Martin ? Quelle agence choisir pour louer une voiture ? Excursion sur lile de Saba ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 175

Saint-Vincent-et-les-Grenadines Quelle agence choisir pour faire une croisiere en catamaran dans les iles Grenadines ? Quel budget pour 2 semaines ? Ou manger a Kingston ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 98

Salvador Taxe de sortie a laeroport de Salvador ? Ou se loger pas cher ? Ou changer ses euros ? Itineraire pour un road trip ? Se deplacer en bus ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 12

Surinam Ou et quand faire sa demande de visa ? Que faire et voir a Paramaribo ? Faire un raid en kayak ? Rejoindre Guyana, Cuaracao ou le Mexique depuis le Surinam ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 9

Trinite-et-Tobago Des conseils pour preparer le carnaval ? Trouver un logement pas cher a Trinite-et-Tobago ? Location de voiture ou scooter ? Rejoindre le Venezuela depuis Port of Spain ? Des questions securite ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 27

Uruguay Sexpatrier et travailler en Uruguay ? Ou changer et retirer de largent ? Combien de temps rester a Montevideo ? Organiser un road trip en bus ? Quelles sont les villes incontournables ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 72

Venezuela Taux de change officiel ou officieux ? Quelle est la situation actuelle du Venezuela niveau securite ? Que voir a Merida ou Margarita ? Avec quelle agence partir ? La Communaute repond a vos questions ! 224

Afrique du Sud Est-il possible de conduire avec un permis international en Afrique du Sud ? Quel est le prix du billet dentree au Parc Kruger ? Est il possible de faire un safari self drive ? Quels sont les incontournables a Johannesburg ou au Cap ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 5309

Algerie Quel est le niveau de securite a Djanet et Sahara ? Que voir a Tlemcen et a Alger ? Ou changer des euros ? Quelle agence pour visite du desert algerien ? 699

Benin 341

Botswana Quel itineraire privilegier ? Ou et quand reserver un safari pour le Botswana ? Auto tour ou guide ? Ou dormir dans le parc Moremi ? A quelle periode partir ? Quels vaccins prevoir ? 263

Burkina Faso Quel est le niveau de securite au Burkina Faso? Faire du tourisme humanitaire ? A la recherche dun chauffeur-guide ? Quel vaccin et visa prevoir ? Quelle compagnie aerienne choisir ? Ou se loger ? 276

Cameroun 284

Cap-Vert Quelles iles visiter au Cap-Vert ? Ou trouver un bon guide ? Quelle est la meilleure saison ? Les meilleures randonnees de Santo Antao ? Quels spots de plongee ? 1354

Congo 70

Djibouti 40

Ethiopie Comment trouver une bonne agence locale en Ethiopie ? Comment trouver un guide pour un trek dans les montagnes de Lalibela ? Quelles visites interessantes a Addis Abeba ? Quel logement choisir a Bahar Dar ? Comment voir les hyenes dHarar ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 463

Gabon Quel visa pour le Gabon ? Ou et comment obtenir le e-visa touristique ? Vivre et travailler a Libreville ? Comment se rendre au Parc National de Loango ? Quels sont les incontournables et quelle ville choisir ? 117

Gambie Le visa est-il gratuit pour les courts sejours ? Quel guide choisir pour la Gambie ? Peut-on voyager en toute securite en Gambie ? Acheter une voiture en Gambie ? Dans quelles villes sejourner ? 32

Ghana Quel visa et quel vaccin pour le Ghana ? Quel est le cout de la vie ? Ou loger a Accra ? Quels sont les bons plans a voir et a faire ? Ou retirer et changer de largent ? Des idees de circuits ? 60

Guinee Quel est le cout de la vie a Conakry ? Ou changer de largent ? Quel est le niveau de securite ? A la recherche dun guide ? 121

Ile Maurice, Rodrigues Quelle est la plus belle plage pour faire du snorkeling ? Quelles sont les excursions a faire ? Comment trouver un taxi a lile Maurice ? Quelle est la randonnee incontournable ? Le meilleur logement est il les maisons dhotes a Rodrigues ? Quelle cote choisir ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 2726

Kenya Quelle agence choisir pour un safari au Kenya ? Ou peut-on observer des lycaons ? Comment trouver un super guide ? A-t-on besoin dun visa ? Que visiter a Nairobi ou Mombasa ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 993

Lesotho Quel itineraire choisir ? Ou faire du trek et de la randonnee ? Quel guide choisir pour le Lesotho ? Quel est letat des routes ? Quel climat prevoir ? 39

Liberia 7

Libye 8

Madagascar Est-il dangereux daller a Madagascar actuellement ? Quel moyen de transport utiliser ? Comment trouver un bon chauffeur guide a Antananarivo ? Ou faire une mission humanitaire ? Quel itineraire est conseille ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 2672

Mali Quel est le niveau de securite ? Quel visa et quelles formalites pour aller au Mali ? Ou se loger a Bamako ? Sinstaller au Mali ? Traverser le pays en voiture ? Comment voyager en securite ? 131

Maroc Comment trouver un guide pour faire un trek dans lAtlas ? Quel itineraire est conseille pour visiter les villes imperiales du Maroc ? Comment visiter Fes ? A quel climat sattendre a Agadir en hiver ? Est-il possible de louer un 4X4 pour aller dans le desert ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 4957

Mauritanie Quel visa pour la Mauritanie et quel prix ? Quel est le niveau de securite ? Quel itineraire pour traverser le pays depuis le Maroc ou le Senegal ? 228

Mayotte Est-il facile de sexpatrier a Mayotte ? Comment trouver un bon guide de randonnee ? Quel est le cout de la vie a Mayotte ? Est-il necessaire de faire un traitement antipaludeen ? Quelles sont les plus belles plages ? Ou se loger, gites ou maison dhote ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 237

Mozambique Quel est le meilleur spot pour faire du surf a Maputo ? Est-il possible de rejoindre le parc Kruger en voiture ? Ou plonger au Mozambique pour voir des requins ? Bilene - Inhambane ou Vilanculo ? Quel est le cout du visa ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 132

Namibie Est-il necessaire de passer par une agence pour un voyage en Namibie ? Comment acceder aux Victoria Falls ? Quels sont les temps de trajet ? Est-il preferable de louer une voiture ? Quelles sont les taxes dentree dans le Parc Etosha ? Quel itineraire pour acceder au desert du Namib ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 3676

Niger Quel est le niveau de securite ? Quel visa pour le Niger ? Quel budget prevoir pour un voyage au Niger ? Ou se loger a Niamey ? Quelle compagnie aerienne choisir ? 16

Nigeria 14

Ouganda A la recherche dun guide en Ouganda ? Quel tour operateur pour faire un trek safari ? Ou louer un 4x4 ? Ou observer des gorilles ? Quels vaccins sont recommandes ? 126

Reunion Quelles sont les randonnees incontournables a La Reunion ? Quel est le bon plan pour louer une voiture ? Quel gite choisir ? Lascension du Piton de la Fournaise est-elle exigeante ? Quels spots pour la plongee ? Ou faire du canyoning ? Comment trouver un bon guide pour aller au Piton des neiges ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 2497

Rwanda Des idees ditineraires ? Ou observer les gorilles ? Ou faire sa demande de visa ? Besoin dinfos pratiques pour votre voyage au Rwanda ? Comment se rendre au parc des volcans ? Conseils pour visiter le Nyungwe ? 97

Sao Tome et Principe Quelles sont les excursions a faire a Sao Tome et Principe ? Quelles sont les plus belles plages ? Est-il possible de louer une voiture sur les iles ? Est-il preferable dopter pour un chauffeur ou un guide ? Y a-t-il des vaccins obligatoires ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 129

Senegal Quel est le meilleur moyen de se rendre en Casamance ? Quel transport utiliser depuis laeroport de Dakar ? Trouver un bon guide ? Comment trouver un logement pas cher au Senegal ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 2095

Seychelles Est-il possible de trouver un hebergement chez lhabitant aux Seychelles ? Quelle est la meilleure periode pour partir ? Quel hotel choisir pour un voyage de noces ? Quelle croisiere choisir ? Quel est le meilleur club de plongee ? Quelles sont les plus belles plages ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1329

Swaziland Ou dormir dans la reserve du Hlane ? Quelles sont les visites incontournables ? Quels parcs visiter ? Peut-on traverser le Swaziland sur une journee ? Quel est letat des routes ? Par quels postes frontieres passer ? 68

Tanzanie Comment trouver un bon chauffeur guide en Tanzanie ? Quelles sont les agences conseillees pour un safari ? Est-il possible de faire un safari en bivouac ? Quel itineraire est conseille pour acceder au Kilimandjaro ? Comment aller a Zanzibar depuis la Tanzanie ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1529

Tchad Quel est le niveau de securite au Tchad ? Circuit et trek en toute securite ? Quel visa pour le Tchad ? Que faire et ou se loger a Ndjamena ? Comment rejoindre le Soudan depuis le Tchad ? 14

Togo Ou obtenir un visa pour le Togo ? Que faire a Lome ? Comment se deplacer au Togo ? Ou se loger ? Quelle association pour faire du tourisme humanitaire / solidaire ? Location de voiture ou chauffeur-guide ? 293

Tunisie Quel est le meilleur moyen de transport pour un transfert de laeroport de Tunis a Hammamet ? Comment trouver un guide a Djerba ? Quelle temperature fait-il en Tunisie en hiver ? La carte didentite est elle suffisante pour aller en Tunisie ? Que visiter a Monastir ou a Sousse ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1812

Zambie Quels parcs visiter en Zambie ? Voir les chutes Victoria cote Zambie ? Quelles formalites pour passage frontiere Zambie  Zimbabwe ? Ou changer des devises ? 47

Zimbabwe Est-il possible de visiter le parc Hwange en louant une voiture ? Quel moyen de transport utiliser entre lAfrique du Sud et le Zimbabwe ? Quelle est la meilleure periode pour visiter les Victoria Falls ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 83

Egypte Quelle agence propose une excursion Hurghada - Louxor ? Comment trouver un guide pour une visite du Caire ? Est-il possible de reserver une croisiere sur le Nil a la derniere minute ? Combien coute une excursion pour les pyramides depuis Le Caire ? Quel horaire est le plus propice pour visiter les temples dAbu Simbel ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 2811

Emirats arabes unis Est-il aise de sexpatrier a Dubai ? Le Dubai city pass est-il rentable ? Dans quel quartier loger ? Quelle monnaie est acceptee ? Est-il necessaire de reserver ses billets pour le Louvre Abu Dhabi ? Ou louer une voiture ? Quels sont les horaires pour visiter la tour Burj Khalifa ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 252

Iran Quels sont les delais pour obtenir un visa touristique pour lIran ? Quelles tenues sont appropriees pour des touristes en Iran ? Quels sont les bons plans hebergements pour Shiraz ? Quelles sont les possibilites de transferts a laeroport de Teheran ? Quel est le meilleur quartier pour lachat de turquoise a Kashan ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1111

Israel, Palestine Comment circuler dans Jerusalem ? Ou loger a Tel Aviv ? Y a-t-il des bus entre Nazareth et Jenine ? Y a-t-il des transports en commun efficaces en Israel ? Quelles sont les difficultes pour aller en Palestine ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 925

Jordanie Quel chauffeur choisir en Jordanie ? Quel itineraire est optimal pour une semaine en Jordanie ? Est-il necessaire de prendre un guide pour visiter Petra ? Quelle agence choisir pour une excursion a Wadi Rum ? Quels sont les incontournables a Amman ? Y a-t-il des problemes de securite en Jordanie ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1133

Liban Le visa pour le Liban est-il gratuit ? Combien de jours sont necessaires pour visiter Beyrouth ? Quelles langues sont parlees au Liban ? Ou loger a Tripoli ? Est-il facile de sexpatrier au Liban ? Quelles sont les plus belles randonnees ? Quel est le climat en Hiver ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! La communaute repond a vos questions ! 174

Oman Quel visa est necessaire pour aller au sultanat dOman ? Est-il facile de louer un 4x4 a Oman ? Ou faire de la plongee ? Quel moyen de transport utiliser pour un transfert depuis laeroport de Mascate ? Comment trouver un guide francophone ? Quelle agence choisir pour une excursion dans le desert de Wahiba ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 684

Qatar Quel transfert choisir depuis laeroport de Doha ? Est-il facile de sexpatrier au Qatar administrativement ? Laeroport de Doha est-il agreable pour une longue escale ? Quel est le souk le plus traditionnel du Qatar ? Etes-vous satisfait de la compagnie Qatar Airways ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 101

Syrie 22

Yemen 19

Australie Quel est le meilleur moyen de transport pour faire un roadtrip en Australie ? Comment optimiser mon itineraire sur la cote ouest ? Quel hebergement a Sydney ? Est-il facile dacheter une voiture en Australie ? Le visa est-il payant ? Combien de jours pour visiter Melbourne ? Comment aller en Tasmanie ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 2066

Iles Fidji Quel est le meilleur spot de plongee aux Fidji ? Quel sont les transports pour aller aux Fidji depuis la Nouvelle-Caledonie ? Quel vol choisir pour aller aux Fidji ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 29

Nouvelle-Caledonie Est-il facile de sexpatrier en Nouvelle-Caledonie ? Quelle compagnie aerienne choisir ? Quel transfert a laeroport de Tontouta ? Quel budget prevoir pour un sejour de 3 semaines ? Suffit-il dune journee pour visiter lile des Pins en bateau ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! La communaute repond a vos questions ! 475

Nouvelle-Zelande Quelles sont les plus belles randonnees en Nouvelle-Zelande ? Le permis international est-il indispensable ? Quelle agence locale utiliser ? Quand reserver ses billets pour voir un match des All Blacks ? Quels sont les incontournables a Christchurch et Auckland ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1081

Polynesie francaise Quelle agence choisir pour faire une excursion en voilier en Polynesie francaise ? Est-il possible de sinstaller facilement en Polynesie ? Est-il preferable de loger a Moorea ou a Papeete ? Ou observer au mieux les baleines ? Quelle est la meilleure agence de plongee ? La communaute repond a vos questions ! 1835
It's National Apple Pie Day on Saturday and the viral milkshake makers at Black Tap are at it again, partnering with the pie-makers at Four & Twenty Blackbirds on a brand new shake. Available only on Saturday at all Black Tap locations: the Apple Pie Shake. The $19 shake is described as a "caramel apple shake with a vanilla frosted crushed graham cracker rim, a slice of Four & Twenty Blackbirds salted caramel apple pie, scoop of vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and caramel drizzle."

Celebrate one year of Bushwick's Sea Wolf at the Sea Wolf Goes South event on Saturday to mark the surf shack's first anniversary. From noon to 4 p.m. the restaurant is hosting a crawfish boil with all-you-can-eat mudbugs and bottomless Old Blue Last beer for $35 a head.

The Woolworth Building's snazzy new bar The Wooly Public debuts Prohibition Saturdays this weekend featuring DJs, burlesque, chorus gals and the promise of free beginnings swing dancing lessons. They'll have drink and food specials, too, including frogs legs, chicken live mousse and a "Private Burger" with dry-aged beef, applewood smoked cheddar, and house bread and butter pickles on a sesame seed bun.

Take in some K-BBQ and kittehs on Saturday at Manhattan's Koneko cat cafe, which is throwing a Spring Picnic on the "Catio"even if the forecast looks kinda gloomy. Owner Benjamin Kalb says he'll be manning the grill cooking up a Korean barbecue feast rain or shine (most of the cafe is indoors anyway) and those who brave the rain to get to the Lower East Side will be rewarded with unlimited eats, all-you-can-drink beer, and two hours cuddling with the resident cats (all of whom are available for adoption, hint hint). Tickets cost $50 for either the 1 p.m. or 4 p.m. session.

Indulge in some afternoon sweets with Mom (or not) on Sunday with a craft chocolate tasting at DUMBO's brand-new West Elm shop adjacent to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Chocolate expert Megan Giller will lead the group through a tasting of her favorite bean-to-bar chocolates while regaling the group with the origin stories of these companies. Attendees get to taste the chocolate, drink cacao tea, and will take home a recipe from Giller's forthcoming book Bean-to-Bar Chocolate: Americas Craft Chocolate Revolution. Tickets $10.
City of Calgary

The city of Calgary Administration released its recommendation for construction of Stage 1 of the Green Line Light Rail Project on May 11.

The first stage, estimated to cost CA$4.65 billion (US$3.39 billion), will be the longest LRT line the city has constructed in a single go. The recommendation includes building the 20-km (12.4-mile), 14-station core of the line from 16 Avenue N to 126 Avenue S.E. The line is slated to open in 2026 with planned extensions to be added once funding is secured.

Building the core of the Green Line LRT is essential to supporting Calgarys growth, said Mac Logan, general manager of Transportation for the city of Calgary. We have a unique opportunity now to apply for a significant amount of funding. In building the most technically complex piece of the project first, we will be well positioned to expand the line in affordable, incremental pieces as more funding becomes available.

Construction is anticipated to begin in 2020. A formal construction schedule will be developed once funding commitments from all three levels of government are in place, but stakeholders note that the provincial and federal governments have demonstrated their support.

This staging recommendation is the right approach for Calgary, today and in the long-term, said Logan. Stage 1 is ready for construction, demand for the line will only continue to grow and with the economic down-turn, this is the right time to invest in jobs and make this project a reality.

For more information on rail project in Canada and around the world, visit IRJ Pro.
CEMEX USAis expanding its Southern California network with plans for a rail-served distribution terminal in Los Angeles and a new aggregate loading system at its quarry in Victorville, Calif.

CEMEX USA says the state-of-the-art terminal will bring high-quality aggregates to metro Los Angeles and surrounding communities. The terminal is designed to accommodate the increase in construction projects across the region.

The Los Angeles metro area continues to grow, and CEMEX USA continues to be a major part of that growth, CEMEX USAs West Region President Eric Wittmann said. With our Victorville Cement Plant and our integrated network of more than 20 strategically-located Southern California ready mix plants and five aggregate quarries, this planned addition to our capability demonstrates our commitment to building a better future in the communities we operate.

The new terminal in Bell, Calif., approximately seven miles south of downtown Los Angeles, is designed to receive aggregates transported by rail from the CEMEX White Mountain quarry in Victorville, Calif., approximately 100 miles away. With an expected completion in late 2017, the distribution terminal will be centrally located near several of the areas main freeways, decreasing customer travel time and costs and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from trucking. An automated load-out system is planned for the 14-acre terminal to further expedite the delivery process. Additionally, CEMEX has planned updates to the rail lines infrastructure and several other enhancements to the quarry in Victorville, including a new aggregate loading system, in an effort to increase the quarrys efficiency in delivering aggregates across the region.
The New Zealand dollar weakened against the other major currencies in the Asian session on Friday.

The NZ dollar fell to a 9-day low of 1.0804 against the Australian dollar, from yesterday's closing value of 1.0770.

Against the euro, the U.S. dollar and the yen, the aussie dropped to 1.5912, 0.6827 and 77.69 from yesterday's closing quotes of 1.5851, 0.6849 and 77.99, respectively.

If the kiwi extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.09 against the aussie, 1.60 against the euro, 0.67 against the greenback and 76.00 against the yen.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Forex News
The U.S. dollar dropped against its major counterparts in the European session on Friday, along with treasury yields, following the release of a data showing smaller than expected increase in U.S. retail sales in April, which indicates a slowdown in at the start of the second quarter.

Data from the Commerce Department showed that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in April compared to economist estimates for 0.6 percent growth.

However, the report also said retail sales inched up by a revised 0.1 percent in March versus the 0.2 percent drop originally reported.

Excluding a rebound in auto sales, retail sales rose by 0.3 percent in April, matching the increase seen in the previous month as well as economist estimates.

A separate report from the Labor Department showed that consumer prices rebounded in line with economist estimates in the month of April.

The Labor Department said its consumer price index rose by 0.2 percent in April after falling by 0.3 percent in March.

Excluding food and energy prices, core consumer prices inched up by 0.1 percent in April after dipping by 0.1 percent in March. Core prices had been expected to rise by 0.2 percent.

The treasury yields declined after the data, with the benchmark yield on 10-year treasuries falling by 2.36 percent, while that of 2-year equivalent was lower by 1.31 percent. Yields move inversely to bond prices.

Investors await the University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index for May and inventories for March to assess the strength of the economy.

The greenback held steady against its major counterparts in the Asian session.

Pulling away from an early high of 113.95 against the yen, the greenback edged down to 113.52. The greenback is likely to find support around the 112.00 zone.

Data from the Bank of Japan showed that Japan's M2 money stock rose 4.3 percent on year in April, coming in at 975.5 trillion yen.

That was in line with expectations and up from 4.2 percent in March following a downward revision from 4.3 percent.

The greenback retreated to 1.2888 against the pound, from an 8-day high of 1.2844 hit at 8:15 am ET. On the downside, 1.30 is possibly seen as the next support level for the greenback.

The greenback reversed from an early high of 1.0086 against the Swiss franc, edging lower to a 2-day low of 1.0055. Continuation of the greenback-franc's downtrend may see it challenging support around 0.99 the mark.

The greenback weakened to a 3-day low of 1.0912 against the euro, after having advanced to 1.0856 at 3:00 am ET. If the greenback extends slide, 1.12 is possibly seen as its next support level.

Figures from Eurostat showed that Eurozone industrial production decreased for the second straight month in March on weak energy output.

Industrial output slid unexpectedly by 0.1 percent month-on-month in March, the same pace of growth as seen in February. Production was forecast to climb 0.3 percent.

The greenback pared gains to 1.3682 against the loonie and 0.6868 against the kiwi, from its early highs of 1.3742 and 0.6827, respectively. On the downside, 1.35 and 0.70 are likely seen as the next support levels for the greenback against the loonie and the kiwi, respectively.

The greenback that ended Thursday's trading at 0.7379 against the aussie declined to a 4-day low of 0.7417. The greenback is poised to target support around the 0.76 mark.

Looking ahead, U.S. business inventories for March and University of Michigan's preliminary consumer sentiment index for May are set for release shortly.

Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker speaks about the economic outlook at Drexel University, in Philadelphia at 12:30 pm ET.

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Business News
The United States, which has been at odds with China for its trade practices, reached a 10-point trade deal that opens the Chinese market to US credit rating agencies and credit card companies, and allows imports of U.S. beef to China.

The Plan that would increase access to Chinese for beef producers, electronic-payments providers and natural-gas exporters was finalized as part of a new economic dialogue launched during Chinese President Xi Jinping's meeting with his American counterpart Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Florida resort home last month.

The two leaders agreed to advance economic cooperation with a 100-day action plan under the framework of the U.S. - China Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.

A month following the Presidential Summit, the two sides reached consensus on addressing issues in areas including agricultural trade, financial services, investment, and energy. Both sides also identified other issues that will require significant effort to resolve and achieve progress on within the 100-day period, the US Department of Commerce said in a statement.

Unveiling the 10-point plan at the White House Thursday, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said "U.S.-China relationships are now hitting a new high especially in trade."

The main points of the trade deal:

The outstanding issues for the import of China origin cooked poultry to the United States will be resolved as soon as possible.

China's National Biosafety Committee (NBC) will conduct science-based evaluations of all eight pending U.S. biotechnology product applications to assess the safety of the products.

Chinese companies can import LNG from the United States.

By July 16, China is to allow wholly foreign-owned financial services firms in China to provide credit rating services, and to begin the licensing process for credit investigation.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) will extend the current no-action relief to Shanghai Clearing House for six months.

The US Government said it welcomes direct investment by Chinese entrepreneurs, and welcomed China to participate in the SelectUSA Investment Summit that Washington hosts in June.

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Business News
Fyre Media founder Billy McFarland has reportedly informed employees that the company's payroll has been indefinitely suspended.

According to a audio clip obtained by Vice News, in a meeting between Billy McFarland, Ja Rule, and employees, McFarland said that the company's is unable to proceed with the payroll.

"After conferring with our counsel and all financial people, unfortunately we are not able to proceed with payroll. We're not firing anyone, we're just letting you know that there will be no payroll in the short term," McFarland said.

"We're not firing anybody. We're just letting you know that there will be no payroll in the short term. That said, if you want to stick with us, we'd love to have you and we'd love to work together and hunker down and get back to a place where everything resumes to as usual as usual," he added.

When an employee asked during the call that why aren't the company firing them so that they could collect unemployment. McFarland replied, "If that impacts you, you can email me."

Fyre Media recently became infamous for organizing the promotional Fyre Festival that was promoted by McFarland and rapper Ja Rule. The festival turned out to be a disaster, which media dubbed as the Hunger Games for rich. Promoted as a luxury event in the Bahamas, organizers provided substandard food and accommodation in repurposed disaster relief tents, which infuriated rich attendees, some of whom paid up to $12,000 to attend the program.

For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com

Business 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.
Affecting humans across all continents for centuries, this debilitating disease was long believed to be caused by unhealthy vapours, which gave its name  malaria (from Latin for bad air). While several scientists in the 19th century began zeroing in on its actual cause, the definitive proof was obtained by a British doctor in India who paid a volunteer eight annas for being bitten the same number of times by the suspected vector.

And Ronald Ross, who would be knighted and win the second Noble Prize for Medicine (not without controversy), celebrated his discovery by writing a poem to his wife  ending I know this little thing/A myriad men will save/O Death, where is thy sting Thy victory, O Grave' (the last lines a reworking of the hymn Abide With Me).

Though the discovery in August 1897 was built on work of many scientists around the world since the beginning of the century, Ross (1857-1932), whose 160th birth anniversary is on Saturday (May 13), was also a mathematician, novelist, dramatist, poet, amateur musician, composer and artist though it is as a persistent  and impulsive medical researcher he is most famous.

Born in Almora in the family of a British general, he studied in Britain where he proved to be exceptionally good in mathematics and wanted to be a writer but was admitted to St Bartholomews Hospital Medical College by his father in 1874.

Though he spent most of his time writing poems and plays, he did pass his examinations to become a surgeon in 1880. He entered the Indian Medical Service in 1881 and was posted to various areas including Madras, Bangalore (where in 1883 he noticed mosquitoes could be controlled by limiting their access to water and suffered from malaria himself), Baluchistan and even the Andaman Islands.

His interest in malaria was sparked by a meeting with Sir Patrick Manson, the father of tropical medicine, during a spell of leave in London in 1894 and they discussed findings of Charles Laveran, a French army surgeon in Algeria who had discovered parasitical cells in the blood of a patient.

It was in Secundrabad, where he was posted in 1895, that Ross began his research to ascertain whether mosquitoes transmitted malaria parasites, but for years, made no headway.

Eventually in July 1897 he reared 20 adult brown mosquitoes from collected larvae. Following identification of a volunteer (Husein Khan) infected with crescents of malignant tertian malaria and the expenditure of 8 annas (one anna per blood-fed mosquito!), Ross embarked on a four-day study of the resultant engorged insects. This compact study was written up and submitted for publication.

Imagine today sending an article to a leading medical journal in which you describe observations on novel objects found on the midguts of just two brown mosquitoes, obtained from larvae of natural origin, that you had previously fed on a naturally infected patient  with no appropriate controls and no replicates! What hope would it have of getting past the editor and reviewers, asked Robert Sinden in an article on Ross and his discovery in the January 2014 bulletin of the World Health Organisation.

Sinden, of the Faculty of Natural Sciences in Londons Imperial College, however goes on to say that despite the perceived inadequacies of the study design, it is difficult to overstate the importance of Rosss paper: the award of a Nobel Prize hardly does justice to the subsequent impact of his conclusions, especially in identifying the most vulnerable stage in the parasites lifecycle for effective intervention.

But that was not the limit of Ross contribution to fighting this  or other dreaded diseases.

Before resigning from the IMS in 1899 after trying unsuccessfully to find the cause of kala azar in eastern India, he subsequently joined the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and continued to work on prevention of malaria in different parts of the world. He also developed mathematical models for the study of malaria epidemiology.

Ross, who won the Nobel in 1902 (after a tussle with Italian researchers who had also identified the cause in 1897), went on to set up the Ross Institute and Hospital for Tropical Diseases in 1926 which he headed till his death.

But despite his path-breaking work, malaria, which due to its high mortality and morbidity levels, has had the greatest selective pressure on the human genome in recent history, still exerts its malignant effect across some of the worlds poorest regions  though some hope lies in a vaccine due to be tested in Africa the next year.

(Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in )

By Vikas Datta
Turnout for general election less than expected for Saline County

Ballots are still being counted as of Wednesday, but it seems the turnout for the 2022 general election was lower than expected by the county clerk.
Every mother deserves to be celebrated this Mothers Day.

And although there were many heart warming submissions for the Samoa Observers Picture your Mum on Mothers Day promotion, there could only be five winners.

Yesterday the lucky winners were drawn at the Samoa Observer headquarters at Vaitele.

The winners are: Maiava Ruta Vaepule, Perelini Taulima Vaeao, Charity Alisi, Levaea Fuatimu Posese, and Edith Meredith.

The winners will be treated to something a little extra special.

Courtesy of sponsors from the Orator Hotel, Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel and Bungalows, Taumeasina Island Resort, Apia Traders, and Treasure Box, the winners will all be celebrating Mothers Day tomorrow in style.

The conclusion of the promotion ended in a live draw held at the Samoa Observers Headquarters in Vaitele.

Led by Marketing and Sales Manager, Helen Papalii and flanked by sponsors from the Orator Hotel, Charlotte Chan Mow Brunt, Sheratons Sherriyln Charles, Taumeasinas Lisa Wilson, the winners were chosen at random.

Maiava Ruta Vaepule Perelini, will receive a 42 Flat Screen T.V. courtesy of Apia Traders.

Edith Meredith will receive a complementary two-night stay at the fabulous Orator Hotel.

Taulima Vaeao will enjoy a relaxing Sunday toonai for six poolside at the Taumeasina Island Resort.

Levaea Fuatimu Posese is set to enjoy a two night stay and the spa at the Sheraton Samoa Aggie Greys Hotel and Bungalows.

And Charity Alisi will receive a $200 tala voucher to buy something that glitters at Treasure Box.

This is what the winners wrote about their mothers:

KJ Perelini:

My beautiful mothers name is Maiva Ruta Vaepule Perelini.

She is sun that shines e

Effortlessly thought the day and last to sleep when the moon appears.

Leilana Meredith

Mothers name- Edith Meredith

Mama teaches us seven children everyday faith in God, humility in life, strength in family and love for all. #PhenomenalWoman

Grettel Vaeao:

Mothers Name: Taulima Vaeao

Our mother Taulima Vaeao stood as an icon to be admired, so much shes done but yet never tired.

Shes a person with value and is respected by all, the one who is never afraid to share it all.

Grace Chris:

Grandmothers Name: Levaea Fuatimu Posese

Happy Mothers Day Nana.

I love you very much nana forever Thank you for take care of me as a princess nana.

Charity Alisi: She struggles everyday because of her children and always hiders her tears behind the most beautiful smile. I wish to make her happy.
In the search for finding a place to move the 3.55 million pounds of nuclear waste from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS), one question always comes up: Sure, it would be great to send all that spent fuel as far away from the beach as possible, but who would ever be willing to accept it?

On Thursday night, those attending the quarterly meeting of the SONGS Community Engagement Panel heard directly from representatives from a private entity looking to do just that.

One persons waste is another persons most valuable possession, said John Heaton, who is leading a group called the Eddy-Lea Energy Alliance that wants to build a massive nuclear storage facility in the desert of southeast New Mexico.

We think its an important project for us in terms of jobs and capital investment in our part of the state, said Heaton during a break in Thursday nights meeting in Laguna Hills.

The facility has yet to be built but its ambitions are big. The New Mexico group has partnered with Holtec International, an energy company with extensive experience in the nuclear storage industry, to build a facility that would hold roughly 120,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel.

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To put that figure in perspective, the now-suspended Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada was legislatively directed to accept 70,000 metric tons. And the total waste from nuclear plants across the country is estimated at 78,590 metric tons.

Last month, Holtec filed an application with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to get the facility licensed, part of a series of bureaucratic hurdles that need to be cleared for the site to become a reality.

Pierre Oneid, senior vice president and chief nuclear officer at Holtec, said after Thursdays meeting the entire process could move at a much faster rate than typical government-approved projects.

We would commence construction immediately once the project gets the OK, Oneid said. We could be ready, if all the stars are aligned, by 2022.

However, even if such a facility were built, it does not mean that waste at SONGS would be at the front of the line.

Spent fuel has been piling up for decades at nuclear plants across the country. The U.S. Department of Energy will determine the order of waste shipments but it is unclear how the agency will implement its policy when the time comes.

The property for the New Mexico facility is in a sparsely-populated area, some 35 miles from the nearest town, on a flat site that supporters say is geologically conducive for underground storage of high-level waste.

Heaton, who served in the New Mexico Legislature for 14 years as a Democrat in the states House of Representatives, said the project has the backing of elected officials in the area.

New Mexicos governor, Susana Martinez, wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Energy and state lawmakers passed a memorial supporting the facility.

Another potential site for whats called consolidated interim storage facilities, which are designed to house at least part of the waste accumulated at nuclear plants across the country, is in West Texas, not far from the proposed New Mexico facility.

Located outside of Andrews, Texas, the facility would be run by a company called Waste Control Specialists and could store about 5,000 metric tons of waste but with a footprint of 14,000 acres the site could be expanded. Like the New Mexico site, the company has filed a license application with the federal government.

Officials at Waste Control Specialists were invited to take part in Thursdays meeting but David Victor, the Community Engagement Panel chairman, said the company is involved in a complex mergers and acquisitions process and postponed an appearance.

In attendance was Karen Hadden, the executive director of the SEED Coalition, an environmental group in Austin, Texas, who spoke out against both sites.

Most people (in Texas and New Mexico) either dont know whats going on or the people on the street would tell you, no they dont want it, said Hadden, who flew in to attend the meeting. When people do learn whats happening they are alarmed and they want to take action to stop it.

Another nuclear storage site in New Mexico  unaffiliated with the proposed Eddy-Lea facility  recently reopened after a radiation leak in 2014. The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) was shut down for almost three years after a waste drum of plutonium-contaminated debris ruptured.

WIPP does not take waste from nuclear power plants. Rather, it is the nations only repository for the disposal of transuranic waste from the nations network of nuclear weapons labs and development facilities.

Things go wrong, said Gary Headrick, co-founder of the advocacy group San Clemente Green, during the public comment period. Things went wrong at WIPP  We gotta get this right.

Thursday nights meeting comes as discussion is heating up over nuclear waste. .

Last month, Southern California Edison  the operator of SONGS  announced it would start negotiations aimed at moving the waste stored at the now-shuttered plant to another location.

Edison officials are talking to representatives of Citizens Oversight, an East County-based civic group whose attorney, Michael Aguirre, has proposed moving SONGS waste to the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station in Arizona, located about 50 miles from Phoenix. .

In Washington D.C., Rep. John Shimkus, R-Illinois, has a draft bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that aims to clear the way to return funding to Yucca Mountain and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, has introduced legislation to pave the way for consolidated interim storage sites.

The Trump administration, in a budget blueprint released in March, called for the Department of Energy to receive $120 million to start looking at possible solutions, specifically interim storage site and possibly resurrecting Yucca.

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rob.nikolewski@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1251 Twitter: @robnikolewski
An earthquake fault has been discovered below Seaport Village, according to preliminary results from a geotechnical study, and that could force a redesign of the redevelopment plan for the 37-year-old specialty retail center.

Yehudi Gaf Gaffen, CEO of Protea Waterfront Development, proposes to build whats being called Seaport San Diego  a series of hotels, offices, an aquarium, maritime academy and new shops and restaurants. He said it should be known by the end of this month if the fault is active enough to require a major reworking of the development plan by AVRP Studios, the projects architects.

It could affect the timing, depending on its impact on our design, Gaffen said earlier this week. We may have to move certain things around. But were still committed to do all the elements of our play, but it may mean a relooking at where things are placed and where our open space is placed.

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The revelation came to light as the San Diego Unified Port District scheduled action Tuesday to authorize an exclusive negotiation agreement with Gaffen and his principal partners, developers Jeff Essakow and Jeff Jacobs, owners of the Rancho Valencia Hotel. The agreement, which would be worked out over the next few weeks, would lead to a final development plan, environmental analysis, ground lease and ultimate approval by the California Coastal Commission.

Gaffen said the team still aims to start construction by 2020 with various elements of the master plan rolled out over the next few years, depending on market conditions.

Opened in 1980, Seaport Village is located on tidelands originally used as the San Diego-Coronado ferry landing until the San Diego Coronado Bridge opened in 1969.

TRC, a private Newport Beach-based real estate operating company formerly known as Terramar Retail Centers, holds a lease of the property that expires in September 2018. Gaffens group won the competition last year to redevelop the village, next to the Chesapeake fish market, Tuna Harbor and part of G Street Mole in what is called the Central Embarcadero occupying 70 acres of land and water.

Not included is TRCs adjacent Headquarters specialty retail center, which is the former home of the San Diego Police Department, and the Fish Market Restaurant on the G Street Mole.

The $1.2 billion master plan envisions 1,075 hotel rooms; 390,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space; 19,000 square feet of marine-oriented business offices; a 65,000-square-foot maritime academy for high school and college students; a 480-foot observation tower; 151,000-square-foot aquarium; and 21 acres of parks, including Embarcadero Marina Park North.

Active recreation elements could include rental kayaks and other watercraft, a man-made beach and floating swimming pool; a floating barge for outdoor movies and concerts; a new mega yacht marina; and an expanded commercial fishing docks and processing plant.

Port program manager Lucy Contreras said she was aware of the earthquake fault finding but would await the final report from Ninyo & Moore, due later this month, to determine the implications. But she said Gaffens group was making steady due diligence in answering questions about the project and will be completing market and feasibility studies, refining the development program, submitting a financial strategy and working out the future of Ruocco Park, which occupies part of the development site.

Gaffen said if the fault, which is located beneath the old police station and Seaport Village buildings, is determined to be younger than 11,000 years old, then it is considered active and building restrictions would kick in. The land on top of the fault could be used as open space, he said, and buildings could be built to cantelever over part of it. Several hundred holes were bored around the site, but this is was the only finding that posed a potential problem, he said.

On other aspects of the proposal, Gaffen said he hopes to reach agreement with commercial fishermen in a few weeks on what improvements to make in Tuna Harbor. Ideas include increasing the number of slips from approximately 50 today to as many as 90. Mega yachts and pleasure boats might be docked at a new marina that Gaffen called the knuckle, where Embarcadero Marina Park North extends into the bay.

The port asked Gaffen to determine if the maritime academy complies with State Lands Commission limitations on what can be located on tidelands. He said he has the green light, so far, to develop what might end up with as an academy for up to 600 students from the ninth grade through two years of community college. The Scripps Institution of Oceanography is being looked at to run the academy in collaboration with the San Diego Unified School District and San Diego Community College District.

Gaffens group has several partners already signed up to fund the early stages of the newly formed development entity, called 1Hwy1, including the aquarium (OdySea of Scottsdale, Arizona) and observation tower operators (ThrillCorp of Orlando, Florida) and RCI Group, a Miami marina developer and operator. Actual construction and permanent financing would come later. Gaffen said several institutional investors are very interested but it is too early to seek a binding commitment.

One other element in discussion is the transition from TRCs operation of Seaport Village. The companys lease requires it to remove the buildings and leave the site as it was originally set in the late-1970s, the port says. But Gaffen said he hopes he can reach an agreement to take over the village and accommodate as many existing tenants as possible in temporary facilities when demolition begins.

The port board is expected to discuss the TRC lease in a closed-door session Tuesday and may instruct staff in open session how to proceed.

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roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley
Sunroad Marina Partners struck out a third time Thursday to gain approval for a hotel project on Harbor Island.

The California Coastal Commission, as it has before, turned down the plan because it did not include low-cost accommodations, such as hostels or campsites. The vote was 11-1 with only San Diego County Supervisor Greg Cox backing Sunroad.

Sunroad and the San Diego Unified Port District proposed a last-minute compromise that would have allowed the company to pay a $5.3 million fee in lieu of building affordable hotel units.

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Its a big nut to swallow, said Sunroads Uri Feldman.

But the commissioners balked at the proposal, saying it would not result in producing actual units.

Commissioner Mark Vargas called the ports current 3 percent count of all hotel units on port tidelands as low-cost  all at a Chula Vista recreational vehicle park  abysmal and shameful.

As a trustee of public trust lands, its embarrassing, Vargas said. We should not be rewarding that behavior and we should be holding their feet to the fire to give the people of California more low-cost visitor accommodations.

Cox sympathized with Feldman for being caught between two behemoths, public agencies that had not yet adopted policies aimed at producing low-cost places to stay in the coastal zone.

They (Sunroad) are trying to move forward to create jobs, build a nice project, Cox said.

He won a port attorneys commitment to include such language in its coming master plan. But that promise died with the rejection of the Sunroad project.

Rick Bates, representing the Unite Here Local 30 hotel workers union, spoke against the Sunroad plan calling the presence of low-cost accommodations on port land exceedingly rare.

The site on east Harbor Island is one of the last remaining larger undeveloped parcels for visitor-serving uses in San Diego, Bates said. If approved, we stand to miss yet another opportunity for provision of lower-cost, visitor-serving accommodations.

The port, which was seeking a master plan amendment to allow three hotels by Sunroad with a total of 500 rooms, said prior to the vote that it might return to court.

The port earlier this year prevailed against the commissions setting a $106 upper limit on what a low-cost hotel room should charge on San Diego Bay.

Sunroad has been seeking to add a four-story, 175-room hotel next to its marina since 2009.

The port was seeking approval as well for Sunroad to build two other hotels with a total 325 rooms that would be located on the 9-acre elbow linking the man-made peninsula with Harbor Drive.

Feldman said he would have committed to including a suite hotel with kitchenettes where a family could save money over renting two hotel rooms.

Following a 2011 lawsuit challenging an environmental impact report, Sunroad and the port appeared before the commission in 2014 to get the marina hotel approved, but withdrew the project when it appeared they would lose over the low-cost-room issue. The commission then rejected the project in 2015 on the same grounds.

Last year the port picked OliverMcMillan, another local developer, to build more hotels on Harbor Islands former rental car lots. The coastal commission will eventually have to approve that plan. That company proposed some low-cost units in its original submission, which is being revised.

On the same agenda, the port picked Sunroad to build hotels on the elbow parcel. Those would have been authorized had Thursdays action gone the other way.

The commission has been wrestling for years with how to offset pricey hotels with low-cost overnight accommodations, such as hostels, campsites and recreational vehicle parks. It has allowed developers to pay $19 million statewide as an in-lieu fee, but $10 million has yet to be spent to build affordable places to stay.

The port says of the 8,035 overnight accommodations on its tidelands, just 237 units at the Chula Vista RV park fall within the low-cost category. At least one coastal commission has said the ratio should be 25 percent.

The state coastal act calls for protecting, encouraging and where feasible, providing for low-cost lodging. But the commission is barred from setting a particular price ceiling and cannot modify the ports master plan as a condition of approval.

The port also has been wrestling with how and where to include a low-cost hostel on its tidelands.

One location considered was on Solar Turbines parking lot at Grape Street and Pacific Highway.

One or or more sites may be set aside in the ports new master plan, due out in draft form this summer, although the ports deputy general counsel, Rebecca Harrington, spoke of visitor-serving facilities not accommodations before committing to including those as well in the compromise that was defeated.

It seemed clear that if the port does not include specific sites in its plan for low-cost hotels, hostels or campgrounds in various parts of the bay, the coastal commissioners may not approve it.

Two developers besides OliverMcMillan have proposed including low-cost units in their projects  at the Fifth Avenue Landing hotel behind the San Diego Convention Center and in the redevelopment of Seaport Village.

With the turndown by the commission, port spokeswoman Brianne Mundy Page said port staff will continue discussing options on the Sunroad hotel with its coastal counterparts.

We will review any adverse action taken by the commission and determine whether further legal proceedings are appropriate, she said.

Business

roger.showley@sduniontribune.com; (619) 293-1286; Twitter: @rogershowley
Department of Homeland Security officials met with airline industry representatives Thursday to discuss the possibility of expanding a ban on laptop computers and other large electronic devices as carry-ons on planes flying to the U.S. from Europe.

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly ended the meeting with no decision to adopt an expansion but promised to continue to study the idea.

We are continually evaluating threats and if a determination is made that a change to our layers of seen and unseen aviation security measures should be made, as we have done in the past, we will work closely with our private sector and public sector partners to ultimately do what is best for the safety of the travelling public, the agency said in a statement.

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The potential move would expand restrictions imposed in March by the U.S. and Britain on electronic devices larger than a smartphone in passenger cabins of flights from eight Middle Eastern and African countries.

Earlier in the day, the European Union called for urgent meetings with U.S. officials to discuss any potential expansion.

We propose that meetings are held as a matter of urgency, both at political and technical level, to jointly assess the risk and review possible common measures, according to a letter written by Violeta Bulc, EU transport commissioner, and Dimitris Avramopoulos, commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship. The letter, seen by Reuters, was addressed to Kelly and Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

The U.S. ban already in place requires passengers on international flights from 10 airports in the Middle East and Africa to put all laptop computers, electronic tablets and other devices larger than a smartphone into luggage checked into the cargo compartment.

Senior U.S. administration officials have declined to elaborate on any threats that may have prompted the ban, saying only that commercial airlines are still a target of terrorists who are trying to smuggle explosives in electronic devices.

CNN has reported that U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies believe that the Islamic State group and other terrorist organizations have developed new ways to plant explosives in electronic devices that could evade some common airport security screening methods.

CNN cited unnamed intelligence officials saying that terrorists would have a more difficult time detonating an explosive remotely and that placing laptops and other devices in the cargo bay might reduce damage even if a bomb were to explode.

But safety experts have raised questions about the potential for batteries in electronic devices to catch fire in the hold.

The current ban by the U.S. imposes the restrictions on flights from Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Morocco. Los Angeles International Airport gets direct flights from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

Discussion of expanding the ban to flights from Europe comes as the summer travel season approaches and at a time when the travel industry has reported strong demand for international travel.

Travel industry experts had previously worried that President Trumps proposal to temporarily ban travel from several Middle Eastern countries would send a message that the U.S. is not welcoming to foreign visitors.

Travel data so far has not shown a significant drop in international travel to the U.S., but industry officials remain worried.

Jonathan Grella, executive vice president for the U.S. Travel Assn., said travel industry officials want to protect travelers from terrorist threats but also want to be informed by government officials on why new security measures are imposed.

It is critical that the U.S. government clearly communicate the details of this new policy and the reasons why its needed, continually reassess it to ensure it remains relevant and effective, and actively seek protocols that neutralize threats while minimizing disruption for legitimate business and leisure travelers, he said in a statement released Thursday.

hugo.martin@latimes.com

Twitter: @hugomartin.

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UPDATES:

3:30 p.m.: This article was updated to show that no decision was made during the meeting to expand the electronics ban.

2:40 p.m.: This article was updated with a statement from the European Union.

12:15 p.m.: This article was updated to include statements from the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Travel Assn. as well as previous expressions of concern from safety experts.

This article was originally published at 10:40 a.m.
Padre Dam Municipal Water District has gotten approval from the state to continue its water purification project and a $116 million grant.

The state grant is part of the money made available by Proposition 1, which passed in 2014. The bill authorizes $7.5 billion in bonds for water projects, including $625 million for recycled water projects.

Padre Dams facility opened in 2015 at the Ray Stoyer Water Reclamation Facility at Santee Lakes to demonstrate free chlorine capabilities to state regulators. Conceptual approval by the California Water Resources Control Board was announced this week.

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(The grant) helps move the project forward to the next step, said Padre Dam spokeswoman Melissa McChesney.

The East County Advanced Water Purification Program is a partnership between Padre Dam, Helix Water District, San Diego County and the city of El Cajon.

Allen Carlisle, CEO and general manager of Padre Dam, the district will use the Prop. 1 funds to construct its first phase of building a full-fledged facility at an estimated cost of $170 million.

These approvals are significant steps in making this important water purification program a reality, Carlisle said. East County will be creating a new, local, reliable and sustainable drinking water supply as soon as 2021.

When the full-scale project is built, the purified water will either be pumped into Lake Jennings or injected into the Santee groundwater basin before it is withdrawn and treated again prior to distribution as drinking water.

Lake Jennings is run by the Helix Water District and is in Lakeside. The basin is in Santee, adjacent to the San Diego River, bordered by Cuyamaca Street, Riverwalk Drive, Magnolia Avenue and the Riverview Office Park.

Carlisle said the water purification program will ultimately produce up to 30 percent of East Countys drinking water and help reduce our reliance on imported water.

Padre Dam provides water, sewer, recycled water and recreation services to nearly 100,000 residents in Santee, El Cajon, Lakeside, Alpine and other unincorporated areas in East County.
If youre shopping this month at Flower Hill Promenade and a friendly man with a South African accent and a Starbucks card approaches, just go with it.

Thats mall managing partner Jeffrey Essakow, whose company is reinventing the Del Mar shopping center as an interactive, art-filled destination that emphasizes the human touch.

As part of his near-daily customer service encounters, Essakow enjoys surprising shoppers and children at play with free coffee, frozen yogurts and Sees candies as a way to make a memory.

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In these days of online shopping, Essakow said malls need to up the magic factor to get customers off their couches and back in the store aisles.

Its no secret that five years ago, you could shoot a cannonball through here and you wouldnt hit anybody, Essakow said, during a tour of the bustling center on Tuesday. What we need to do is create an experience you cant get with Amazon. I always say heart share equals market share. 

Over the past several years, Essakows company Protea Properties has been transforming the center with new tenants, services, landscaping, art installations, whimsical pop-up shops and a playground.

Now, hes inviting the community in for a look with InBloom, a monthlong celebration with more than 100 free and ticketed events through May 28. They include live music every day, fashion shows, yoga classes, flower arranging demonstrations, cheese and cocktail tastings, childrens workshops and more (schedule at experienceinbloom.com).

1 / 7 Jeffrey Essakow, whose company owns Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar, helps Remy Gunn, 3, operate a toy VW bus available for children to drive at the center. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune) 2 / 7 Joah Claudio, 3, and Griffin Van Hoose, 4, play in a playhouse created by Lusardi Construction at the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar. Five playhouses have been installed around the center this month and will be auctioned for charity in July. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune) 3 / 7 Hayoung Park, 16, points out a bird to her friend Megan Tran, 16, in an aviary at the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune) 4 / 7 InBloom banners decorate some of the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar Tuesday. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune) 5 / 7 Owner of the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar, Jeffrey Essakow, shows off the In Bloom theme prominent throughout the center. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune) 6 / 7 Owen Dinh, 4, plays in a Legoland-themed playhouse at the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune) 7 / 7 Managing partner of the Flower Hill Promenade shopping center in Del Mar, Jeffrey Essakow, in front of the center where hes created a pop-up flower shop out of a restored 1968 Volkswagen van. (Bill Wechter / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Essakow grew up in Durban, South Africa, and moved to San Diego with his wife, Jill, and their children in 1986. He ran a clothing company that was sold to Reebok in 1992 and then transitioned into real estate.

Protea Properties  which Essakow owns with several partners  develops, invests in and owns resorts in in Rancho Santa Fe, Poway and Colorado; home, apartment and office projects in La Jolla, downtown San Diego and Solana Beach; and shopping centers in Pacific Beach and Del Mar.

Flower Hill, at the northeast corner of Via de la Valle and Interstate 5, was purchased in 2002 for $32 million. Over the past five years, it has undergone a major renovation that includes the construction of a parking garage, a Whole Food supermarket and several new restaurants.

Essakow said Protea is responding to a paradigm shift in the industry, where shoppers  particularly millennials  go to malls more for the experience than to buy something.

People now shop because they want to, not because they need to. My goal is to create an experience that touches all the sensory points, he said.

During InBloom, Essakow is testing out a planned concierge program. For the month of May he has hired two young women who spend their days wandering the center making people happy.

This includes buying the occasional free cup of yogurt, help with directions and offering to take family photos with shoppers cellphones. Down the road, he envisions a full-service concierge desk that can wash and detail your car while you shop, deliver your purchases to your car trunk and make restaurant dinner reservations.

Expanding services for families with small children is another goal for Essakow, a grandfather in his early 60s. During May, theres a live butterfly enclosure at the mall that will host 1,500 schoolchildren by the months end.

Theres also a temporary hands-on exhibit called Playhouse Palooza. Five new play structures, designed and built by teams of builders and architects, are set up around the center. Theyll be auctioned in July to benefit local charities.

To make the center more inviting for parents with toddlers, Essakow has created pods of play areas with seating and easy access to shops and food vendors. Family central is the lower center court, which has a new grass lawn, a childrens play tepee, a corn hole game and a colorful hanging display of cloth parasols that resemble huge floral blooms.

This summer, Essakow plans to screen family movies on the grass, which is next to The Row Collective, a recently installed lineup of lifestyle shops run by business owners in their 20s and 30s.

Hes hoping to add a service where shoppers resting in seating areas around the mall can have food delivered from one of the center restaurants. Hes also considering a request from moms whod like to sip wine while watching their kids on the playground.

Essakow spends three to four hours a day, five to seven days a week at Flower Hill asking customers what they love and hate about the center.

The biggest complaint over the years has been parking, a problem mostly alleviated by the free garage, which drivers can find by following a freshly painted green line that snakes along the ground from the malls main entrance.

Once drivers are parked, Essakow said he plans to lift their spirits by painting words of encouragement  Breathe, Celebrate!  at the foot of each parking space. To reward frequent shoppers and welcome senior citizens, hes also planning some VIP spaces in the front parking lot.

These days, Essakow said he hears a lot more love than hate when he talks to shoppers, and he said it feels good.

The other day I sat down with these ladies who told me that theyd been there three days in a row, he said. That tells me I did my job.

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
Encinitas plan to build the Cardiff section of the Coastal Rail Trail to the west of the citys railroad tracks was rejected this week by the California Coastal Commission, another twist in a long-running debate over the project.

In a meeting Thursday in San Diego, the commission said the 1.3-mile trail along Coast Highway 101 should go east of the tracks along San Elijo Avenue from Chesterfield Drive north to Santa Fe Drive

That leaves the city without approval it needs for either route and the direction ahead unclear, officials said.

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Im shocked, said Encinitas Mayor Catherine Blakespear, who had spoken in favor of placing the bicycle and pedestrian paths along Coast Highway 101 west of the railroad tracks.

Weve been working on this for the last year, she added. I dont know what else we could have done.

Coastal Commission staffers said the eastern route provided a much-needed new transportation corridor in the Cardiff neighborhood, and that it was more consistent with the regional plan for the entire trail.

Commissioner Greg Cox, a San Diego County supervisor, made a motion to support the western plan, saying it was a more logical solution, but his motion failed, and then the commission voted to support the route along San Elijo Avenue.

Dozens of people attended the commissions meeting in San Diego to speak about the issue. However, the rail trail came up late in the day and by then some people had left, and others were allowed limited time to speak.

Its a travesty, said Sandy Coventry, a Cardiff resident. We were not represented.

Only a few residents supported building the trail along San Elijo Avenue.

We need new infrastructure, and we need it on the east side where it belongs, said former Encinitas Councilwoman Lisa Shaffer.

For several years, the city and the San Diego Association of Governments had pushed for the eastern route on what is now a rough dirt pathway in the Cardiff neighborhood.

But once SANDAG released its four-year, $410,000 design for the eastern route in 2015, city officials decided it was not what they wanted. Critics called the proposed 10-foot-wide concrete bike path a highway for bicycles, saying it was ugly, unsafe, and not what they wanted along that section of the tracks.

Instead, the Encinitas City Council switched its support to an alternate route  the western alignment along Coast Highway 101. That route now has the unanimous support of the City Council, Blakespear told the commission Thursday in her prepared remarks before the vote.

A bike highway like this should be placed in an area that is already paved, not in a natural, wild environment with a functioning informal dirt trail system, Blakespear said.

SANDAG has the money, plus a $1 million grant from Caltrans, she said. It could begin in less than a year and be in use by the public in 2019. None of that can be said for the east-side alignment.

The eastern route would cost an additional $4 million for drainage improvements, retaining walls and bluff stabilization work, Blakespear said. It would develop an area of natural lands and wildlife that the city wants to preserve.

Another objection to the eastern route was that it would include a fence that would stop people from illegally crossing the tracks toward Coast Highway and the beach. However, North County Transit District has said the fence will be built no matter where the Rail Trail goes.

The western route along Coast Highway 101 would follow and expand on existing bicycle and pedestrian paths on both sides of the highway, and would reduce vehicle travel lanes to accommodate the paths.

Its for riders of all ages and all sorts of trips, said Linda Culp, a principal planner for SANDAG, said of the Coast Highway bike paths.

SANDAG officials also were disappointed by the commissions decision, Charles Muggs Stoll, director of land use and planning for the agency, said Friday.

We feel like the western alignment was superior to any along the eastern side, Stoll said. It would have provided a great facility for both the community and the region.

Much more work needs to be done to build the facility along San Elijo Avenue, he said, and that will cost more money and take more time. Also, the agency will have to forfeit its $1 million grant because it will miss the construction deadline.

What happens next is up to SANDAGs board of directors, Stoll said.

Planned since 1989, the Rail Trail will eventually stretch about 44 miles from San Diego through Oceanside. About one-third of the overall trail has been completed so far, and only Solana Beach, Encinitas neighbor to the south, has completed its entire 1.7-mile segment.

The Cardiff segment in Encinitas is a little over half of the citys entire 2.2 miles of the trail.

philip.diehl@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @phildiehl
Back in 2007, B.J. Ganem found himself struggling in a big way.

A rocket-propelled grenade struck B.J. during his service in Iraq, resulting in the amputation of his left leg below the knee. He also suffered from multiple shrapnel wounds and traumatic brain injury. Whats more, the Georgian was divorced, bankrupt, facing drunk-driving charges and completely lost.

At this low point, B.J. decided to finally come to terms with his transition to civilian life. Despite his life-altering injury, he got a job as a veteran service officer. Then, he went to work for the Semper Fi Fund, where he helped launch its Veteran-to-Veteran program.

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He also went back to college, earning a psychology degree. He then earned a Masters of Social Work from the University of Southern California, with an emphasis on military life.

My military career ended not the way I wanted it to, B.J. said. So, I was angry.

GUEST VOICES: Authoritative views on the military and veterans issues

He knew, though, he couldnt fear failure. He had to try something. He couldnt just sit and wallow. Weve got to be leaders, he thought. We have to do our part and help carry the load and keep moving forward.

B.J., fortunately, did keep moving forward. But he was not alone in his struggles.

In our work with post-9/11 veterans at the George W. Bush Institute, we have heard plenty of veterans say that they feel alone and unprepared after leaving the military. Or that they miss the camaraderie, sense of purpose, and clearly defined values from their time of service. Even more, they dont know how to translate their skills from the battlefield.

The disconnection stems in part from the culture, training and experiences that are essential to prevailing on the battlefield. For some like B.J., so are the wounds they incurred in war.

Thriving in the civilian world will bring honor to the military and set the example in their companies and communities.  Retired U.S. Army Col. Miguel Howe

This is exacerbated by a public perception that the veteran is either a hero or a victim to be pitied. Both of those perceptions overlook the fact that the actual strength of veterans rests in their skills and abilities to adapt to difficult circumstances.

The government plays a critical role in bridging this divide. However, the majority of transition services come through companies, schools, nonprofits and communities. In providing those services, they bring our civilian and military populations closer together.

But this is not just a job for organizations. All Americans can create a community of support and bring our populations together. Here are a few simple ways to do so.

The best way to know and understand veterans is to meet and interact with them. Nonprofits that serve veterans, student veteran groups, veteran employee resource groups and military recruiting centers can make these connections.

Young service members particularly can benefit from a civilian guide as they exit the military. Mentors help them translate their skills, acquire new ones and develop a career path.

Organizations such as American Corporate Partners, Veteratia and WisePrime can provide qualified Americans the opportunity to mentor transitioning service members and veterans, too.

The fact is, American employers have a talent pool awaiting them. To spotlight this reality, the Bush Institute has worked with coalitions such as the U.S. Chambers Hiring Our Heroes, the Veteran Jobs Mission and the Blackstone-led Private Equity Veteran Consortium to help companies find, hire and retain veterans.

Of course, the primary responsibility to bridge this divide rests with service members and veterans. They must own their transitions, just like B.J. and many others have done.

The first step starts with understanding the challenge, then planning a strategy, and finally executing it well. This type of approach to a trying situation should be familiar to everyone who has worn the uniform, along with knowing how to use the resources at hand.

Another element should be familiar, too: Warriors must adapt to their new environment, just as they had to adapt upon deployment. To expect the 99 percent to adapt to the 1 percent is naive.

Veterans especially need to eschew a sense of entitlement or the temptation to see themselves as victims. Instead, they must find a new sense of identity and belonging. This includes learning the language and culture of their civilian environment.

Out-of-uniform veterans still have a role to play in providing for our nations security. They just play this role differently. It starts with their leadership skills, whether that is at the top of an organization or making sure transportation and logistics operations work efficiently.

By applying those leadership skills in civilian life, they will help attract young Americans into military service. They also will inspire civilians to work with them in bridging the divide. And they will help stabilize our economy and society, which enhances our security.

Thriving in the civilian world will bring honor to the military and set the example in their companies and communities.

In fact, those who have worn the uniform have a responsibility to reconnect and communicate with those who have not worn the uniform. Living a life of service and telling the story of their military experience is an important way to do that.

The civilian-military divide does not have to lead to a negative result. In fact, successful transitions that enable veterans to use their leadership and skills bring warriors closer to the civilian population.

In turn, this helps sustain the all-volunteer force. Those who join the military will know that the skills and abilities they will hone will benefit them, their communities and the nation.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Miguel Howe is director of the George W. Bush Institutes Military Service Initiative. You can read a longer version of his piece, titled A Pipeline of Leaders, at the Bush Center website.
A new Marine Corps recruiting commercial stars a woman -- a real-life Marine captain -- in an appeal to female candidates that comes amid a sexual harassment scandal.

The Battle Up ad starts with a young girl stepping in to stop bullying in the school hallway. It goes to a young woman scoring on the rugby field; muscling through an officer training course; and firing a rifle on the battlefield. It ends with that woman extending a hand to a homeless man.

Its the first time a woman has featured so prominently as a protagonist in a recruiting commercial, a Marine Corps Recruiting Command spokesman said Friday.

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However, he said the commercial was months in production and is not a direct response to the Marines United scandal in which active-duty Marines are now being punished for sharing nude photos of female troops on secret websites.

The commercial is an extension of the new brand idea we launched earlier this year, which was years in the making, Gunnery Sgt. Justin Kronenberg said in an email to the Union-Tribune.

Welcome to The Intel, a blog examining the hot military news of the day

Battle Up took months to complete and was unrelated to the efforts underway to recommit ourselves to making sure all Marines are treated and valued equally.

The uniformed Marine in the ad is Capt. Erin Demchko, a logistics officer from Hackensack, New Jersey, who is serving as deputy camp commander at Camp Courtney in Okinawa, Japan.

The voice-over message in the commercial is gender neutral: No one knows where it comes from. Why some have it. And some dont. Its the fighting spirit, and it needs to be fed.

The Marine Corps has proven to be pretty good at promoting its brand. Its The Few. The Proud and A Few Good Men commercials are icons of military advertising.

As for appealing to women, the Corps recruiting research shows that its not as simple as just putting females in commercials.

Female prospects respond more favorably to USMC advertising that features women among men, or advertising that features only men, over advertising that exclusively features females, Kronenberg said.

When asked, the majority of recruits said that they preferred to think of themselves as a Marine, who happens to be female.

The commercial will debut on television channels later this month.

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jen.steele@sduniontribune.com

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Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, once a towering, respected figure in policing, was sentenced Friday to three years in federal prison for his role in a scheme to obstruct an FBI investigation of abuses in county jails, marking an end to a corruption scandal that has roiled the Sheriffs Department for several years.

U.S. District Judge Percy Anderson announced Bacas fate in a downtown courtroom filled with loyal supporters on one side and the FBI agents and prosecutors who ensnared him on the other. Baca, 74 and suffering from the early stages of Alzheimers disease, showed no emotion as the decision was read.

Before issuing the sentence, Anderson, who has dealt unsparingly with the former sheriff throughout his legal battle and last year threw out a plea deal that would have sent Baca to prison for no more than six months, unleashed a scathing rebuke of the man who ran one of the nations largest law enforcement agencies for 15 years.

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Excoriating Bacas refusal to accept responsibility for having overseen and condoned the obstruction ploy carried out by subordinates, the judge portrayed him as a man driven by his desire to protect his own reputation and maintain control over the Sheriffs Department.

Your actions embarrass the thousands of men and women [in the department] who put their lives on the line every day, Anderson said to Baca. They were a gross abuse of the trust the public placed in you.

The prison term, Anderson added, should serve as a deterrent to other public servants. Blind obedience to a corrupt culture has serious consequences, he said. No person, no matter how powerful, no matter his or her title, is above the law.

Baca was ordered to surrender to federal prison officials by July 25. Although he is expected to ask to remain free on bail while he pursues an appeal, it is an open question whether he will be allowed to do so. Anderson denied the same request from Bacas second in command, former Undersheriff Paul Tanaka, who was forced to begin his five-year sentence.

No decision has been made on where Baca will serve his sentence. His defense attorney requested that he be assigned to a camp in Taft, Calif., or barring that, a camp in Oregon. After serving his time behind bars, Baca must also spend a year under supervised release. He was also fined $7,500.

In going after Baca, a team of prosecutors headed by Assistant U.S. Atty. Brandon Fox meticulously worked its way up the departments ranks, charging lower-level figures and members of Bacas command staff before bringing charges of obstruction of justice, conspiracy and lying against the sheriff himself.

He is the ninth person to be convicted and sentenced to prison as part of what Fox convinced several juries was a cunning conspiracy to interfere with FBI agents as they worked to gather evidence for a grand jury investigation into allegations of widespread abuse by deputies working in county jails run by the sheriffs department.

A 10th conspirator, former sheriffs Capt. William Tom Carey, pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors and testified against Baca. Carey is scheduled to be sentenced later this month. Several other deputies were convicted in a series of trials for beating inmates or helping to cover up the abuse.

The obstruction plan played out over six weeks in August and September 2011, after sheriffs officials discovered FBI agents had used a corrupt deputy to smuggle a cellphone to a jail inmate who was working as an informant.

The audacious move was part of an investigation opened the year before into the Mens Central Jail, the main facility in the countys enormous detention system. For years, the Sheriffs Department had been dogged by reports of a place run amok, in which deputies routinely beat inmates without provocation and covered up the abuse, often with the knowledge of supervisors. Other corruption, including deputies who took bribes to bring contraband in to inmates, was said to be rampant as well.

Former Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, center, escorted by his wife, Carol Chiang, right, and his attorney, Nathan Hochman, center left, walks out of the federal courthouse after Bacas first obstruction trial ends in a mistrial on December 22, 2016. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times)

Prosecutors argued that word of the smuggled phone and the FBI investigation angered Baca and Tanaka, who viewed it as an unwarranted incursion into their territory by an outside agency.

With Bacas knowledge and, at times, his involvement, Tanaka oversaw a group of deputies and mid-level commanders who worked to derail the FBI investigation. They moved the informant under fake names to conceal his whereabouts from his handlers, pressured deputies and the informant not to cooperate with federal authorities and brazenly tried to intimidate the lead FBI agent on the case by threatening her with arrest.

Anderson on Friday checked off examples of Bacas complicity in the scheme, recalling testimony that Baca signed off on the idea of threatening the agent with arrest by telling deputies they could do everything but put handcuffs her. His greatest failure, the judge said, was eagerly promoting Tanaka through the ranks until he was running the departments day-to-day operations.

Rather than fulfill his sworn duty to uphold the law and protect the public, Lee Baca made a decision to protect what he viewed as his empire, and then he took actions in an effort to simply protect himself, said acting U.S. Atty. Sandra R. Brown. He wore the badge, but ultimately, he failed the department and the publics trust.

Bacas attorney, Nathan Hochman, nearly won Baca an acquittal at a trial late last year by hammering the government for the scarcity of hard evidence tying Baca directly to the obstruction plan. That proceeding ended in a mistrial when the jury deadlocked with all but one juror voting to acquit Baca.

For the second trial, however, Fox revamped his case and Anderson issued a string of rulings that hamstrung Hochman. All along, Hochman argued that while Baca was upset by the FBI investigation, he never authorized anything illegal. Tanaka, he said, was the ringleader who carried out the obstruction without Bacas knowledge.

In giving Baca three years in prison, Anderson struck a middle ground of sorts.

Federal sentencing guidelines called for a term of 41 to 51 months. Under normal circumstances, the government would have urged Anderson to come down within that range, Fox wrote in court filings.

But Bacas age, his diagnosis last year with Alzheimers and medical experts expectation that his mind will have deteriorated badly within a few years were legitimate mitigating factors in determining his punishment, Fox said.

The interests of justice will not be served by defendant spending many years behind bars in a severely impaired state, the prosecutor wrote. He recommended that Baca be sentenced to two years in prison.

Hochman, meanwhile, urged Anderson in court papers and again on Friday to spare Baca any time in prison, saying he should instead be confined to his home for a period of time and perform community service. In a lengthy last-ditch bid for leniency, Hochman reviewed Bacas nearly five decades of service in the sheriffs department, saying he served with distinction and honor.

The true measure of the man, Hochman insisted, was seen in the the education programs he started as sheriff for inmates and at-risk youth. Hochman submitted to Anderson letters from a few hundred of Bacas supporters, including former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and several local religious leaders.

The inevitable toll from Alzheimers was another reason to spare him prison, Hochman said.

This diagnosis is a sentence of its own. It is a sentence that will leave him a mere shell of his former self and one that will rob him of the memories of his life, he wrote in a court filing.

Anderson rejected out of hand the idea that Baca should avoid time in prison. He acknowledged Bacas lengthy record as a public servant, but said it made his crimes more perplexing.

Mr. Bacas criminal conduct is so at odds with the public image he carefully crafted, Anderson said. Like old B-movies, you seem to have your own version of the good cop/bad cop routine  that allowed you to keep your hands clean but did not make you any less culpable.

While the two-year sentence suggested by the government was not enough in Andersons eyes, the judge said he did take Bacas failing health and career into account. Absent those factors, he said he would have imposed on Baca the same five-year sentence he gave Tanaka.

The sentence deepens the stain already imprinted on Bacas legacy and the reputation he enjoyed as one of the nations most visible and respected reformers in law enforcement. While quirky to the point of being enigmatic, Baca was seen as a champion of progressive ideas, including the need for police to build strong ties to minority communities. He stepped down in 2014 with the department engulfed in the jail scandal.

When I stand tall, I stand right with what I think is right, Baca said in his trademark elliptical style following the hearing. There is right and wrong, that Im clear with. Final comment, I will never accept a cellphone in a county jail, given to a career criminal. I dont care who puts it in.

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Follow @joelrubin on Twitter

Times staff writer Victoria Kim contributed to this report.

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UPDATES:

2:10 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details from the sentencing hearing and comments from Judge Perry Anderson, former Sheriff Lee Baca, his defense attorney and prosecutors.

10:50 a.m.: This article was updated with additional information about Bacas sentence and comments from Anderson.

This article was originally published at 10:05 a.m.
Federal criminal immigration charges were filed Friday against a Mexican man suspected of injuring a 6-year-old San Ysidro boy in a DUI hit-and-run crash last weekend.

Authorities have said that Constantino Banda-Acosta, 38, has been removed from the U.S. at least 15 times since 2002 for being in the country illegally.

Based on federal court records, this appears to be the first time he has been criminally charged.

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The complaint, filed in San Diego federal court, charges Banda-Acosta with being a deported unauthorized immigrant found in the United States.

According to the complaint, Banda-Acosta was first removed from the U.S. to Mexico via the Tecate Port of Entry on Nov. 12, 2002. He was most recently removed on Jan. 17 at the San Luis Port of Entry in Arizona.

The injured boys father, Benjamin Lake, spoke to reporters Friday outside Rady Childrens Hospital where his son Lennox is recovering. He said the background of the case is upsetting.

Were just really focused on Lennox right now, he said. Were praying that the justice system does what they need to do.

Banda-Acosta is currently in a San Diego County jail on 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, plus a misdemeanor charge of driving without a license. If convicted, he faces a possible sentence of seven years and eight months in prison.

If convicted of the federal immigration charge, Banda-Acosta could face additional time in custody.

On May 6, Banda-Acosta is suspected of speeding through a stop sign on Camino de la Plaza at Dairy Mart Road in San Ysidro and striking a Honda Accord.

The Lake family had been returning home from a trip to Disneyland. Lennox suffered a skull fracture and other injuries and is recovering well enough to be moved out of the hospitals intensive care unit, his father said.

Banda-Acosta was arrested about a mile away by Border Patrol in his damaged pickup. He has pleaded not guilty.

He has been arrested in San Diego County before  on charges of domestic violence, DUI and driving on a suspended license, according to court records. They resulted in misdemeanor convictions.

Further details about Banda-Acostas deportations cannot be released due to privacy rules, said Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Lauren Mack.

Mack could not speak specifically about this case, but said, On a regular basis ICE files charges against people whove illegally entered the U.S. after being deported. We have also increased our efforts to seek criminal prosecution against egregious immigration violators.

A Mexican citizen who has been removed from the U.S. 15 times was arrested in a hit-and-run crash that left a boy, 6, badly hurt over the weekend.

Banda-Acostas federal case can proceed a few ways. He will be notified of the federal charge and be given an opportunity to decide whether to give up his right to a speedy trial. If he doesnt want to give up that right, his case must be tried within 180 days, the U.S. Attorneys Office said.

If he decides to waive that right, then federal prosecutors can wait to try his case once his DUI case is finished, or, if convicted, even wait until he has completed a prison sentence on the state case, officials said.

Standing outside the hospital, Lake thanked the public for their support and well wishes, and the hospital staff for their commitment to Lennoxs recovery.

Lake also praised his wife for rushing to Lennoxs car seat after the crash and giving authorities a description of the hit-and-run drivers pickup.

Shes my better half, Lake said of his wife, who has not left her sons side at the hospital.

Upon regaining consciousness, Lennoxs first question was if mom was OK, Lake said. The boy didnt remember the crash, but his parents were honest about about what had happened.

As days at the hospital go by, Lake said, Lennox misses his dog, older brothers and video games.

Lake declined to address Bandas immigration legal troubles. He did, however, speak out against driving under the influence of alcohol, calling it irresponsible in this day and age, given that ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft exist as alternatives.

It seems senseless to me, he said.

kristina.davis@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @kristinadavis

UPDATES:

5 p.m.: This story was updated with details from the victims family.

This story was originally published at 1:30 p.m.
A San Diego judge has ordered a man found to be legally insane when he fatally shot his younger brother to be sent to a state mental hospital where he could remain for the rest of his life.

Jason Douglas Paris, 45, was tried in San Diego Superior Court in March in connection with the death of Cedric Paris, 42, who was gunned down in front of his home in Grantville.

The defendant pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

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After hearing the evidence in the case, a jury found that Jason Paris was legally insane at the time of the crime, meaning in part that he was unable to distinguish right from wrong because of his mental illness.

The verdict meant Paris was not legally responsible for the killing, but it did not mean he would be released back into society.

On Friday, after reviewing another psychiatric evaluation of the defendant, Judge Jeffrey Fraser ordered Paris to be sent to Patton State Hospital in San Bernardino County, where he will be held until doctors determine his sanity is restored.

For that to happen, Paris doctors and the court would have to find he is no longer a danger to himself or to others.

There is no question, the judge said to members of the victims family in court. He is a threat to you. He is a threat to his family. Unfortunately, he is mentally ill.

On Jan. 17, 2015, Paris shot his brother multiple times outside the younger brothers home on Clara Lee Avenue near Zion Avenue.

He told investigators his brother was a demonic figure, and that he could hear the voices of his family members in his head and the voices of celebrities, according to previous testimony.

Janeth Paris, the victims wife, spoke lovingly of her husband, and said she is surprised that her life was spared that day. She was inside the home when her husband went outside to meet his brother.

We trusted him, she said. He was family.

Fraser acknowledged that some family members do not believe Paris was legally insane at the time of the killing, but he urged them to respect the jurys verdict and trust the process. He will not get out until medical professionals are absolutely certain that he poses not threat to you or your family, the judge said.

Paris is allowed to file his first petition for release from the hospital into outpatient care after being at the hospital at least 180 days. He could remain in the locked facility for the rest of his life.

dana.littlefield@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @danalittlefield
The scourge of ransomware grew to an unparalleled level Friday as hackers hit businesses, agencies and infrastructure systems in more than 70 countries, using software previously stolen from the U.S. National Security Agency to disrupt everything from hospital service to cellphone calls.

The unidentified hackers relied on email to distribute malicious software that encrypted data on peoples computers. Users then got a message saying they could regain control if they paid ransom of $300 or more  or lose all their data if they refused to pay up.

Its a form of extortion that gained hackers about $1 billion worldwide in 2016  a figure that could double this year, according to the FBI.

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Cybersecurity experts said Fridays digital assault was believed to be the largest ransomware attack to date, with tens of thousands of computers affected across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. They didnt have a way to calculate how many people paid a ransom, how many were able to eventually overcome the encryption and how many actually lost content after refusing to comply with the hackers demands.

This is the fastest-growing ransomware attack that we have ever seen, said Stephen Cobb, a senior researcher in the San Diego office of the international security firm ESET.

He and other cyber specialists expressed alarm because part of Fridays offensive was aimed at critical institutions and major corporations.

For example, the ransomware  known as WannaCry  forced Englands National Health Service to move patients out of some hospitals and reroute incoming ambulances. The hackers had locked the systems physicians from accessing patients files in at least 36 hospitals, medical offices and ambulance companies across the country.

The criminals also hit Spains Telefonica and Russias MegaFon, two large telecommunications companies, as well as Iberdrola, a big electric utility in Spain. Also affected was the computer system for shipping giant FedEx.

The partial shutdown of Englands National Health Service represents a much larger version of the ransomware assaults that have occurred at hospitals and health-care systems across the United States in recent years.

So far, the incidents in the U.S. have mostly happened at smaller hospitals who pay the ransomware, and it doesnt make it into the mainstream media coverage, said Paul Calatayud, chief technology officer at the company FireMon in Overland Park, Kansas.

The victims have included Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, which paid $17,000 in ransom last year to regain control of its computer systems.

Its plausible that it could happen at larger, corporate health care systems, Calatayud said. The health-care industry is being forced to adopt digital records to reduce costs, and they havent been moving at the same pace as some other industries in terms of bolstering their digital security measures.

Hackers typically chose a ransom figure that they believe their victims can pay, and they try to project professionalism right alongside with foreboding control. The ransomware propogated Friday in part warned victims not to debug the infected computers on their own because hackers would then delete data, but it also said: Dont worry about decryption. We will decrypt your files surely because nobody will trust us if we cheat users.

As victims scrambled to regain access to their computer systems, cyber experts focused on the scary prospect that even powerful entities like the National Security Agency could be penetrated and have their own weapons turned into major headaches for consumers worldwide.

The ransomware was leaked by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers, which has been dumping stolen N.S.A. hacking tools online since last year. Microsoft rolled out a patch for the vulnerability in March, but hackers apparently took advantage of the fact that vulnerable targets  particularly hospitals  had yet to update their systems or had ignored advisories from Microsoft to do so.

The malware was circulated by email. Targets were sent an encrypted, compressed file that, once loaded, allowed the ransomware to infiltrate its targets.

Reuters reported that employees of Britains National Health Service had been warned about the ransomware threat earlier on Friday.

Theres a lesson to be drawn from the digital chaos caused by the attack, said Mark Weatherford, chief cybersecurity strategist at vArmour in Mountain View.

Microsoft released a patch for this vulnerability in March, Weatherford said. Not everyone uploaded it, maybe even some of the people who operate critical infrastructure.

It doesnt matter whether youre a mom and pop operation, or major infrastructure. You need good cyber hygiene.

The attacks on Friday appeared to be the first time a cyberweapon developed by the N.S.A., funded by American taxpayers and stolen by an adversary had been unleashed by cybercriminals against patients, hospitals, businesses, governments and ordinary citizens.

Something similar occurred with remnants of the Stuxnet worm that the United States and Israel used against Irans nuclear program nearly seven years ago. Elements of those tools frequently appear in other, less ambitious attacks.

The United States has never confirmed that the tools posted by the Shadow Brokers belonged to the N.S.A. or other intelligence agencies, but former intelligence officials have said the tools appeared to come from the agencys Tailored Access Operations unit, which infiltrates foreign computer networks.

The New York Times contributed to this story.

Cybersecurity Playlist  On Now Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) slams Equifax On Now LA 90: Yahoo data breach worse than originally reported On Now Lifelock offers to protect you from the Equifax breach  by selling you services provided by Equifax 1:02 On Now California beer maker thrives in Germany On Now Cyberattacks on Hollywood On Now Hackers gain access to OneLogin On Now What is WannaCry? On Now Senate overturns privacy rules for Internet providers On Now Online pirates claim to hold Disney's latest 'Pirates of the Caribbean' movie hostage, demand ransom On Now Yahoo warns users of malicious activity

Twitter: @grobbins

gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com
Trustees in the San Diego Unified School District unanimously voted Thursday night to rescind about half the layoff notices it had planned to send to teachers, but some said the action didnt go far enough.

The board agreed to bring back 485 teachers of the 952 teachers who were notified earlier this year that they could have been laid off. The decision was made because 528 teaches had agree to take an early retirement, offsetting the need for most of the staff reduction, according to the district.

A complete list of which jobs would be saved was not available Thursday night, but the district did announce that the positions included physical education teachers at Birney Elementary and Crawford High and a music teacher at Pacific Beach Middle School. Students and many others had appealed to the board to retain those positions.

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In related action, the trustees voted 4-1 to follow through with layoff notices that will be sent to 96 teachers.

Trustee Kevin Beiser cast the only dissenting vote, which was cheered by many teachers in the auditorium.

Beiser left immediately after the meeting and could not be reached to discuss his vote.

While he did not say in advance that he would be voting against the layoff, Beiser did grill Chief Human Resources Officer Tim Asfazadour about why some teachers had been hired during a hiring freeze. Asfazadour said in some cases they were needed to urgently fill vacancies.

Lindsay Burningham, president of the San Diego Education Association and SDEA Executive Director Carlos Mejia said the board should have brought back all cut teacher positions because the governors revised budget, which had been released earlier Thursday, allocated another $661 million for public schools.

With 528 people taking early retirements, we believe every single person should be called back, Burningham said.

Board President Richard Barrera said that San Diego Unified would only receive about $7 million of the additional money in the governors budget, and the district is trying to balance a budget with a projected $124 million shortfall.

State law required the district to notify by March 15 teachers and other certificated employees of possible layoffs, while actual layoff notices cannot be sent after May 15.

If we miss that deadline, we might put our budget in jeopardy, he said

Barrera said as the early retirement numbers and the governors budget are analyzed more, additional district jobs may be saved.

Superintendent Cindy Marten also has said that the district should look at trimming staff positions as a long-term solution to balancing its budget, and should not be tempted to call back jobs if the state provides more money.

Also on Thursday, the board decided to shelve a plan to eliminate 40 library technician and 16 mental health clinician jobs as a budget solution. Instead, the district has reached a memorandum of understand with the California School Employees Association to reduce the work-year calendar by 13 days for those employees.

The district still is going forward with layoffs to 65 out of 372 bus driving jobs.

The districts supplemental early retirement plan will save $3 million next year and $4 million the following year.

The savings decrease after that, and over the lifetime of the program, the plan will cost the district $600,000 of the districts $1.3 billion operations budget.

gary.warth@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @GaryWarthUT

760-529-4939
Southern Californias ocean waters are warming up and its coastline is teeming with marine life  including great white sharks.

From northern San Diego County to Long Beach, recent sightings of juvenile sharks are capturing attention on television programs, in newspapers and on social media.

At least 25 sharks were spotted in the region during the past few days, including about 15 that swam around folks having fun off Capistrano Beach in Orange County one day.

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Officials in Long Beach have warned residents that as many as 20 young sharks a day hunt off beaches in the area, often just 50 feet from shore.

What does all this mean for beachgoers? Heres a quick guide to swimming, surfing, kayaking and such in Southern Californias waters:

Are northern San Diego County and the surrounding areas really a nursery for great whites?

They sure are. Researchers have found that juvenile sharks like Southern Californias mild ocean temperatures, especially between late spring and early fall. Afterward, they head back down to Baja California.

Nobody knows exactly where mother sharks give birth, but right afterward, the offspring permanently leave their mothers and head to shore to feed. Younger sharks like munching on smaller fish, often hunting just outside of the surf break  although its not unheard of for juveniles to venture into waist-deep waters.

Mature great white sharks in the region  which regularly can grow up to 18 feet long  largely keep away from the shore and stick to the open ocean and islands, such as Catalina, Channel and Farallon. Those islands are rookeries for seals and sea lions, some of the sharks favorite meals.

What are the chances of getting attacked by a shark while swimming at local beaches?

While a woman was recently bitten by a great white shark off the coast of San Onofre State Beach, highlighting the grim possibility of a shark attack, such events are extremely uncommon.

Since 1950, there have been less than two dozen confirmed shark attacks in San Diego County  and only two fatalities among those incidents.

Because juvenile sharks dont hunt larger marine mammals, theyre much less likely to mistake a swimmer for their typical prey. Until a white shark is about 10 feet long, it feeds largely on small fish such as halibut, rays and sometimes smaller sharks.

Even if adult white sharks swim near the shore  which they do from time to time  theyre not particularly interested in humans. If a grown shark bites a person, it usually realizes its mistake and quickly retreats. Researchers believe great whites prefer a blubbery seal to a person, who is filled with hard-to-digest bones.

Whats up with all the recent shark sightings?

Those sightings are mostly likely the result of rebounding populations of seals and sea lions. With more prey come more predators, and the number of sharks being reported this year by officials seems to be on par with last year.

In the past five years, there seems to be a trend of increased shark sights, according to experts. Still, its unclear if this is due to more sharks or more smartphones capturing video  or most likely both.

El Nino conditions last year created warmer temperatures that enticed white sharks to linger along the Southern California shoreline into the winter and then return quickly again early this spring.

Whats the best way to keep safe while swimming in waters where sharks roam?

When swimming at the beach, its best to pay attention to lifeguards. Theyre continuously scanning the waters for sharks and can quickly warn people if theres a sighting.

Its also recommended that people stick to populated beaches and avoid remote locations, especially where rivers empty into the sea. These areas often have smaller fish and decaying animals that attract sharks.

If you find yourself surrounded by a massive school of bait fish, maybe its time to paddle in or find a new surfing spot.

Twitter: @jemersmith

Phone: (619) 293-2234

Email: joshua.smith@sduniontribune.com
San Diego city government, the airport, and the chamber of commerce have joined a program that helps qualified immigrant workers become American citizens, adding a seal of approval from well-known institutions.

The organizations on Friday announced a partnership with the New American Workforce, an organization that helps eligible green card holders pursue U.S. citizenship. The project, an initiative under the National Immigration Forum, is active in eight cities and includes some 250 partnerships, including about 55 in San Diego. San Diego International Airport and the city are the first local public-sector organizations to enroll.

New American Workforce provides businesses and government employers with information about how their workers can complete the naturalization process to become U.S. citizens. Then the Unitarian Universalists Refugee and Immigration Services and Education assists workers through the process, including help with studying for their citizenship exam.

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With this program we will be proud to call them our fellow Americans, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer said.

The chamber will connect San Diego businesses with New American Workforce, and the airport and city will provide services onsite for their employees and their families

We all know there are a lot of benefits in that for employers, said Jerry Sanders, the president and CEO of the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

The collaboration is another effort to encourage eligible immigrants to seek U.S. citizenship. The Mexican consulate network, including the consulate in San Diego, is assisting Mexican nationals who live in the United States to seek U.S. citizenship if they are eligible, while also launching an education effort to tell its citizens living abroad of their rights.

Citizenship can insulate people from changing federal immigration policies, as citizens cannot be subject to travel bans and visas are no longer a necessity to enter the country.

While President Donald Trump has signed executive orders that put pressure on immigrants, including green card holders, Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said that people choose to become citizens out of their own and their familys interest, not for protection from fast-moving changes in public policy.

Every administration sees spikes, peaks and valleys in interest in naturalization, Noorani said.

New American Workforce has helped about 1,000 people locally become citizens.

Twitter: @jptstewart

joshua.stewart@sduniontribune.com

(619) 293-1841
A bill in Sacramento that would make it possible to overhaul San Diego County elections in a way that likely would favor Democrats is headed to the Assembly floor.

The measure, which was introduced by Assemblyman Todd Gloria, D-San Diego, would allow the San Diego Board of Supervisors or a voter initiative to require all county races to go to a November runoff between the top two primary election candidates. That would be a departure from the current rules that allow a candidate to win the seat outright in the primary if they gain more than 50 percent of the vote.

We believe that it will increase voter turnout and help ensure the largest number of people are given a voice in how their county is run, Gloria said.

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The bill cleared the Assemblys Committee on Elections and Redistricting on Wednesday on a 5-2 party-line vote. In its original form the legislation only addressed county supervisor elections, but was later amended to include all county elected offices, such as sheriff and district attorney.

San Diego County supervisors  all five are Republicans  oppose the bill, so its unlikely that they would introduce a measure to change local elections even if they could. Four of the supervisors, however, will be forced out of office by the end of 2020 by term limits.

We think that if a candidate receives over 50 percent of the vote at the primary, they should be able to win the election outright, said county lobbyist Jonathan Clay said at the committee hearing. It raised the question of, if you have candidates that win by significantly large margins and then are forced into having a costly election in November, to have the same outcome.

In a letter to state legislators, Clay wrote that the bill is also superfluous since the elections could be changed without approval from Sacramento. Gloria disagreed and said court rulings show that charter counties like San Diego have generally not been permitted to deviate from state election law.

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, said the bill will increase turnout for county elections and make elected officials more reflective of their constituents, while fostering a better public knowledge of who is serving in office.

On the most basic level, most voters will at least know the name of their elected official, she said.

If it becomes the new way the county conducts its elections, Democratic candidates could benefit since that partys voter turnout is historically higher in the general election.

It varies by election and race, but turnout in general elections can be twice as high  or more  as the primary. That does not always benefit Democrats, however. In 2012, 37.4 percent of county voters participated in the primary, while 77 percent cast ballots in the general.

The bill would create county election law similar to the one San Diego city voters approved with Measure K in November, and would make the process consistent in races for governor and state constitutional offices, Legislature and Congress.

Though Democrats have had a voter registration advantage for nearly a decade, Republicans control virtually every county office, including the entire Board of Supervisors, the district attorney, and sheriff. As of the beginning of May, 36.7 percent of county voters were Democrats, while 30.1 percent are Republicans and another 28 percent do not belong to a party.

County offices are officially non-partisan, but party politics can play a role in elections. A candidates party membership, if any, does not appear on ballots.

At a hearing in March, Supervisor Ron Roberts said that this type of legislation should be debated and decided locally. Board Chairwoman Dianne Jacob, said county officials were not consulted before the legislation was introduced.

It was also was opposed by the California State Association of Counties and Urban Counties of California.

Assemblyman Matthew Harper, R-Huntington Beach, questioned why different legislation to increase participation wasnt introduced.

Why not elect all five during the presidential election, he asked.

Voters have historically been more likely to cast a ballot when they can decide on their next president.

If the bill becomes law and enacted by supervisors or local voters, it would be the latest change in how San Diego County elections are run.

In 2010, voters approved Proposition B, a ballot measure limits supervisors to two, four-year terms. Consequently, that will force two supervisors out of office in 2018 and two more in 2020. That measure was backed by organized labor, including Service Employees International Local 221, a group that represents about 10,000 county employees. SEIUs state organization also supports the new election bill.

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An Ocean Beach pharmacist who killed his roommates boyfriend last summer was sentenced Thursday to 16 years in prison.

Thomas Francis Burke IV said he shot Jess Matthew Robles in self-defense after the Pacific Beach man showed up at his door. Prosecutors argued Burke was jealous over Robles relationship with his roommate  who Burke had feelings for  and executed him.

San Diego Superior Court Judge Melinda Lasater said both men appeared to be kind, caring and successful in their own pursuits, and they both made poor choices that June night.

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And now one is dead, and the others life is in shambles, she said.

Burke, 33, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter with a gun allegation in April. The jury acquitted him of murder.

Prosecutors said Burke disliked 34-year-old Robles, who was dating his roommate Larae Clark. He felt Robles had disrespected him in his home, including calling him names and going into his room when he wasnt around, according to testimony.

The antagonistic relationship between the men peaked the night of June 22, when Robles sent text messages to Burke from Clarks phone indicating he knew Burke was trying to break the couple up.

Then he sent a text that read, Lets meet up, bro. I got you covered, (expletive).

Later, Clark went to the home on Catalina Boulevard near Voltaire Street to retrieve some of her belongings. Robles, who had been waiting in a car outside, came to the door and knocked.

Lawyers argued over who opened the door, but once it was ajar, Burke reached through it and fired two shots from a Glock 17 handgun, prosecutors said.

Robles died before he could be taken to a hospital.

The sentencing, attended by family and friends of both men, was an emotional one.

Those who knew Robles described him as a charming extrovert with a vivacious attitude toward life, one friend said. He worked at a number of high-end restaurants, with an insatiable passion for surfing.

Our family was left with 35 years of memories, pictures, and a big hole in our hearts, said Joy Garcia, Robles aunt.

Many expressed frustration that Burke wasnt found guilty of murder and pleaded for the maximum sentence.

We both know what happened that night  it was not self-defense, Clark, Robles girlfriend, said tearfully. ...Jess didnt deserve to die that way. If there is any justice in this world, you will spend the rest of your life in prison torturing yourself, the way that I have been tortured, the way his family and friends have been tortured.

Those close to Burke pleaded the judge for leniency.

I hope the court will show mercy on him and see him the way that I do  as an asset to society, said Paula Mia Campos, Burkes mother. People do make mistakes, however, I hope he can be forgiven and given the opportunity to prove himself.

In addition to the handful of people who spoke on his behalf, 50 letters attesting to his good character were submitted to the court for review, defense lawyers said.

Burke himself tearfully apologized to the Robles family.

My reaction took away a son, a brother, from the Robles family, he said. If I could take it back, I would. If I could erase the pain, I would. And everyday it haunts me, knowing that I cant. And Im sorry.

He also told the judge that his actions that June night werent a reflection of his character.

That one second doesnt define me, and it isnt the whole me, he said. The person you read about from the letters we submitted, from my neighbors and coworkers and family and friends, and the person you heard about today is what completes the story.

Twitter: @LAWinkley

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Authorities are searching for a 27-year-old prison inmate who walked away from a re-entry program facility in Barrio Logan Thursday.

Israel Hernandez is a second-strike offender convicted of vehicle theft. He was completing a prison sentence of two years eight months at the Male Community Re-Entry Program facility, state prison officials said.

He was moved from a prison to the facility on Boston Avenue near 27th Street in March and was scheduled to be released on probation a year later.

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About 4:20 a.m. Thursday, authorities were notified that his GPS-monitoring device had been tampered with and that staff at the facility had seen him exit a back door, according to officials with California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The GPS device was found in an adjacent parking lot, officials said.

Hernandez is 5 feet 8 inches tall, 207 pounds, with tattoos on his neck and above his left eyebrow. Anyone with information about his whereabouts was asked to call 911 or a local law enforcement agency.

The re-entry program allows eligible inmates to serve the last year or so of their sentences in the Barrio Logan facility and connects offenders with a range of community-based rehabilitative services.

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Phone: (619) 293-1876

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Homicide investigators found gun accessories, including a full magazine, as well as syringes in the apartment of the University City man who shot seven people before San Diego police killed him, court documents show.

A search warrant affidavit also reveals that a sister of gunman Peter Selis rushed to the Judicial Drive apartment complex on April 30, fearing that he might be involved.

Eve Selis told officers that her brother lived there and was extremely distraught and depressed over a recent break-up with his girlfriend, the document says.

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The affidavit by San Diego police homicide Detective David Spitzer set out facts of the case to support the need for a warrant to search Peter Selis apartment. A Vista judge authorized the warrant about 1 a.m. on May 1.

Among the items seized that day from a bedroom were a full gun magazine, found in the pocket of a chair, and a gun-cleaning kit in the closet. A gun lock was on a desk.

Lying on the bed were a box for the lock, a bag containing a holster and gloves, and a cardboard box containing syringes.

A computer tablet lay on the floor. A black bag of miscellaneous pills was in the bathroom.The affidavit did not describe the syringes or their possible purpose.

Selis, a 49-year-old auto mechanic, was deeply in debt after two bankruptcies and had been threatened with jail for an unpaid debt. Late on Sunday afternoon, he went to the pool at the La Jolla Crossroads Apartments with a duffel bag and sat in a lounge chair.

The area was crowded, and many of the people were attending a birthday party.

Selis drank from a beer bottle, then pulled a pistol from the bag, the affidavit says. He started shooting shortly after 6 p.m., and after firing two rounds, he called his ex-girlfriend and told her what he was doing and that police were coming.

One of his victims, Monique Clark, 35, a mother of three, died. The search warrant document said she was shot once in the chest.

Victims were sprawled everywhere, bleeding. Others in the crowd scattered, screaming, and called 911 at 6:06 p.m. A police helicopter got there seven minutes later.

The helicopter crew told the first officers to head to the pool immediately. They did, and when the shooter saw them a gun battle began, the affidavit says.

Sgt. Michael McEwen and officers Jonathan Ferraro and Luke Hammond fired at Selis and he fired back. He was wounded several times and died there. No officers were wounded.

As news reports of the shooting were broadcast, Eve Selis rushed to the complex and described her brother for police, the court record says. Her description matched the shooters. She also gave police his apartment number.

Fearing Selis may have potentially harmed any roommates or his ex-girlfriend, the decision was made to enter his apartment, the affidavit says. Seven officers went in, but found no victims and left right away. Officers guarded the unit overnight until the warrant could be obtained.
US News and World Report ranks UCSD s graduate program in engineering No. 14 in the country, ahead of such schools as UCLA but behind such schools as Purdue and Carnegie Mellon. UCSD (UCSD)

The number of international students enrolled in graduate programs at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering has risen for the past five years and is nearing the 50 percent mark, according to the campus. Last fall, 665 of the program's 1,493 grad students -- or 44.5 percent -- were from countries other than the United States. The greatest number of international students -- 13 percent -- came from China, followed by India, at 9 percent. During five of the past 10 years, international students have earned more doctorates in engineering at UCSD than American-born students. Engineering remains the most popular field of study in the U.S. for international students.

UCSD international graduate enrollment-engineering Year International students-graduate level Percentage of total 2011 665 44.5 2010 636 44.2 2009 579 43.1 2008 448 37.5 2007 436 35.9 2006 416 34.8 2005 423 36.9 2004 412 37.1 2003 415 36.6 2002 386 39.3

Other major American research schools have recorded similar growth. Universities are struggling to attract American students in many areas of science and engineering. The trend is likely to continue locally; UCSD plans to increase graduate enrollment campus-wide in the coming years, and engineering is one of the university's most successful and highest profile programs. The university's new chancellor, engineer Pradeep Khosla, was born in India and later moved to the U.S., earning a doctorate in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, which has the country's seventh highest ranked graduate engineering program in the U.S.

The influx of international students has been on a sharp upswing. The Institute of International Education reported last November, "The number of international students at colleges and universities in the United States increased by five percent to 723,277 during the 2010/11 academic year ...

"This represents a record high number of international students in the United States. This is the fifth consecutive year that figures show growth in the total number of international students, and there are now 32 percent more international students studying at U.S. colleges and universities than there were a decade ago."

International Educator magazine says in story that, "Research shows there is no evidence that U.S. students are not able to attend engineering or other graduate-level programs in the United States due to the presence of international students."
The reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person who tortured and maimed two huskies in Oceanside has doubled to $10,000.

One of the animals had her eye gouged out and the other had been forced to drink some type of caustic liquid in the April 28 attack at the condominium complex on Carino Way. The mother of the family and one of her young sons found the wounded animals inside their home.

The dogs spent days under veterinarian care and have since been returned to their owners, who moved out the day of the crime and were staying with relatives.

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The family suspects a neighbor in the attack who may have wanted them to move out, according to a GoFundMe page set up for them.

Oceanside police Lt. Val Saadat said Thursday that the investigation is ongoing. We are still fielding anonymous calls and sorting through information provided from neighborhood residents.

In a prior interview, she said that there were no eyewitnesses to the abuse but that they have received several calls about a possible suspect. It appears that prior residents of that same home have had problems as well, Saadat said.

The reward, which was increased with the help of an unnamed donor, is being offered by San Diego Animal Advocates. President Jane Cartmill said in an email that she hopes that the substantial increase may encourage someone to come forward with information.

Family friend Eddie Mendoza said the dogs were seen again by a veterinarian this week and they doing much better. Theyre just running around happy, he said.

Mendoza said he plans on posting fliers about the increased reward in the Oceanside neighborhood.

Related links:

Oceanside familys two dogs tortured  one had its eye gouged out, both forced to drink poison

Dogs maimed and tortured in brutal attack back with their family

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When I first came to San Diego, nearly three years ago, I was impressed by the energy and optimism of this city. In downtown San Diego today, construction sites give way to new buildings and cranes dot the skyline as evidence that our downtown is thriving. When talking to a colleague from the Midwest about San Diego, he stated that he saw San Diego as a sterling example of an American city with a tremendously bright future. It is a big part of what drew me to relocate here, and to take on the leadership of the San Diego Symphony.

Essential to all great cities is a vibrant cultural life, and San Diego has a lot to be proud of in its music, theater, visual arts, dance, high school and university arts programs, community music schools and presenting institutions. There are some wonderful examples, such as programs in many of our public schools in which each student plays an instrument as part of their school day, of how much the arts are valued. Recently the San Diego Unified School District adopted a five-year arts plan, committing to including music and art in its daily curriculum.

Related: Why taxpayers should not subsidize the arts

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We are also very fortunate in San Diego to have so many generous individuals who support the arts, making it possible to provide the highest quality and access for all. The arts do not just happen. They take a tremendous amount of support. Every museum, theater, dance company, musical ensemble and cultural center relies on financial support from donors and the community in order to survive. We are proud that the 82 musicians of the San Diego Symphony give back to our community by performing in schools, in hospitals, senior centers and community centers, acknowledging the support we receive. Our colleague arts institutions similarly have programs that are deeply engaged in our community.

Despite this great support from the public, we must always be vigilant to ensure consistent and meaningful support from our government, by which we affirm, as a society, the importance of arts and culture to our shared history and humanity. Although recommendations from the White House have recently called for midyear cuts to National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities funding during fiscal year 2017, and potential elimination of these programs going forward, we were heartened recently to hear that bipartisan support in Congress has led to recommended midyear increases in both of these budgets. Although we do not know what will happen going forward, its extremely encouraging to see our elected leaders in Washington recognize the value that the arts and humanities have in society, and we encourage elected officials on the state, county and local levels to take a similarly strong position in supporting public funding for the arts.

As the San Diego City Council considers the initial fiscal year 2018 budget from Mayor Kevin Faulconer, which includes drastic cuts to arts funding, I am concerned yet hopeful that a way can be found to restore critical funding in upcoming budget revisions. When the Commission for Arts and Culture was founded, one penny for every dollar spent in a hotel within the city was dedicated to arts and culture programs. Over time this penny decreased considerably, and in 2012 then-City Councilman Kevin Faulconer voted in favor of a five-year blueprint that would restore Penny for the Arts, ensuring that by 2017 the city would provide 9.5 percent of transient occupancy tax (TOT) revenue to the Commission for Arts and Culture. Mayor Faulconers first draft of the 2018 budget assigns only 4.5 percent of TOT revenue to the commission, which is an all-time low in recent memory.

We in the arts community encourage the mayor and City Council to work together on 2018 budget revisions to shift arts funding back up toward the 9.5 percent goal in order to restore the original Penny for the Arts once and for all. The arts can, should and do play a critical role in the fabric of this city. Like all great cities, we must support culture and the artists, musicians, dancers, poets, actors, directors and support personnel who create the art that makes us laugh, cry, reflect, respond and create meaning in an increasingly complex, confusing and disturbing world.

San Diego city leadership must continue to support the arts as part of its commitment to the ongoing growth and success of this dynamic and creative city. The public benefits tremendously from the myriad of artistic opportunities in San Diego, and public funding from the city helps ensure continuity and success in the arts and culture sector. It is vital that the city of San Diego step up and take seriously its role as an arts leader, alongside the individual philanthropists, corporate donors and foundations who do what they can to help ensure that arts and culture thrive in our communities.

Gilmer is CEO of the San Diego Symphony Orchestra.
The Supreme Court gets it right

The Chicago Tribune

Modern DNA analysis has been a godsend to the criminal justice system. By making it possible to identify individuals who leave behind biological material at crime scenes, it allows police and prosecutors to accurately implicate the guilty, particularly in murders and rapes. It has also exonerated hundreds of people who were wrongly convicted because of misleading evidence or false claims.

The potential of this tool is only starting to be realized fully. Thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision June 3, that progress can proceed under sensible rules but no undue impediment.

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Under Maryland law, anyone arrested for a serious crime is subject to a cheek swab for DNA, which is checked against a database of samples. In 2009, Alonzo King, arrested for brandishing a shotgun, was matched to DNA recovered from a 2003 rape victim. He was convicted of rape and sentenced to life without parole.

King appealed, arguing that taking his DNA was an unconstitutional search, since the police had no basis to suspect him of the rape. The Maryland Court of Appeals agreed, concluding that because he had not been convicted, King had a weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches  making the sampling invalid.

But in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said that taking DNA from felony arrestees is permissible. It took the view that such material is valuable in establishing the identity of the person arrested, which helps in assessing if he should be granted bail. Someone implicated in a murder, for example, would warrant different treatment from someone whose DNA doesnt match any in the database.

The dissenting justices argued that the real purpose of the swab is to let law enforcement get evidence of crimes for which suspects have not been arrested. That may be true  but it is also true of fingerprints, which police have been taking from suspects for decades without any objection from the Supreme Court.

As for the alleged invasion of privacy, keep in mind we are talking about people who have been arrested  and who may be strip-searched to make sure they are not carrying weapons or contraband. The expectation of privacy in a jail cell is minimal. Taking a DNA sample is not appreciably more intrusive than taking a fingerprint and is even more useful. Its hard to think of a good reason fingerprinting should be allowed but DNA swabs should be forbidden. The dissenting justices seem to be more suspicious of the latter only because its new and relatively unfamiliar.

There are protections for privacy written into the Maryland law. It applies only to those arrested for crimes involving violence or burglary. Police are not allowed to put the samples into the database unless and until the suspect has been arraigned. If the defendant is not convicted, the sample is destroyed. And the DNA may not be used for any other purpose.

Illinois law allows for the collection of DNA after an indictment. Bills to broaden it to include those arrested for serious crimes have been introduced over the years. The courts verdict should spark interest in making greater use of a tool that helps only the innocent and endangers only the guilty.

During the oral arguments for this case, Justice Samuel Alito called this perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this court has heard in decades. At stake, he noted, were lots of murders, lots of rapes that can be solved using this new technology that involves a very minimal intrusion on personal privacy.

Thanks to the court, that vital interest won out.

This editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on June 5.

Secure in their persons no more

Michael P. Orsi

The Supreme Courts ruling in Maryland v. King, which permits police to take a DNA swab of anyone they arrest who is suspected of a serious crime, is the latest infringement on our civil liberties.

The five-justice majority based the decision on a non-historical and shallow interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. The amendment was written to protect individuals against unjustified searches and incursions on the privacy of person and property by law enforcement.

The Fourth Amendment has its roots in English Common Law. Its most memorable expression comes from Sir Edward Coke in Semaynes Case (1604), when he stated, The house of everyone is to him as his castle and fortress, as well as his defense against injury and violence as for his repose.

Violations of this right to privacy were inflicted on the American colonists in order to expedite British revenue-gathering. The Excise Tax of 1754 allowed searches of the homes of colonists and seizures of prohibited and un-customed goods without a warrant.

Any breach of the Fourth Amendment privacy has always required a warrant based on probable cause. In Katz v. U.S. (1967), the Supreme Court determined that a search occurs when a person expects privacy in the thing searched and believes that the expectation is reasonable. By extension, the court ruled in Kyllo v. U.S. (2001) that authorities scanning a home with an infrared camera without a warrant constituted an unreasonable search, which is barred by the Fourth Amendment.

In Mondays ruling, the Supreme Court violated all of the above. The rationale that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy used whereby he equates the swabbing of a suspects cheek without a warrant to fingerprinting is pernicious.

First, the opening of the oral cavity to collect DNA is a violation of a persons bodily integrity. In taking a DNA sample, the most intimate details of a person can be discovered. Second, to place DNA into a national database without a conviction, since a suspect may indeed not be guilty, places at risk a persons most intimate genetic and medical history. How safe is this information when even the nations national security secrets were compromised by WikiLeaks? Certainly, such an invasion of privacy by DNA retrieval without a warrant can ruin the life of an innocent person.

Of course, there are those who contend that DNA collection with a shared federal database can solve some horrific crimes and put some dangerous criminals in jail. While this is true, it must be asked: Is the potential for better law enforcement worth the diminution of our constitutional rights? Is it worth the violation of an innocent persons human rights? As Justice Antonin Scalia stated in his dissent, The Fourth Amendment lists persons first among the entities protected against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The answer is a resounding no.

In Robert Bolts play, A Man for All Seasons, there is a poignant scene in which Will Roper says he would cut down every law in England to get at the devil (a criminal). To which Sir Thomas More responds, When the last law was down, and the devil turned around on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat? Do you really think that you could stand upright in the weeds that would blow then?

American civil liberties are under attack as never before. The Obama administrations spying on Fox News reporter James Rosen, the attempt by government to take away the right to bear arms, the forced purchase of health care, and the Health and Human Services mandate obliging religious institutions to violate their moral code are indicative of the precarious state of our constitutional rights.

It is imperative that our civil and religious leaders speak out before our hard-fought freedoms are no more.

Orsi is chaplain and research fellow in law and religion at Ave Maria School of Law in Naples, Fla. This commentary was originally published in The Washington Times.
The belief that someone is innocent until proven guilty is supposed to be a sacred principle of American life. But a 1984 federal law passed at the height of enthusiasm for the war on drugs  the Comprehensive Crime Control Act  has undermined this principle to dramatic and unfortunate effect. The law became a blueprint for authorities to seize the assets of individuals without having to prove wrongdoing  without ever even having to step into court.

Because law enforcement agencies can use seized assets to boost their budgets, this has created gross incentives for abuse. A 2014 story in The New York Times detailed how police officials attended seminars to learn how to maximize how much they could make from these seizures: Dont bother with jewelry (too hard to dispose of) and computers (everybodys got one already), the experts counseled. Do go after flat screen TVs, cash and cars. Especially nice cars.

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Given this sordid backdrop, District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis decision to not appeal a judges order that her office must return more than $100,000 seized from medical marijuana business owner James Slatic and his family  who have not been charged with a crime  is the right decision. But it doesnt deserve applause. The concept of innocent until proven guilty should have prevented the seizure of the funds in the first place.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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After the jaw-dropping developments of the past week, critics of President Donald Trump may be reluctant to engage in any introspection. Trumps decision to fire FBI Director James Comey because he was frustrated that Comey continued his high-profile investigation into allegations that Russia sought to interfere with the 2016 presidential election is an appalling assault on American democratic norms. The bizarre fact that the Russian foreign minister visited the White House the day after Comeys ouster  reportedly at the request of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin  gave a sinister whiff to events that will boost the theory that Trump and Putin colluded to defeat their fellow nemesis Hillary Clinton and that Trump is Putins puppet.

But theres a basic problem with that theory  and a reason for Trump critics to worry it could haunt them. While U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously agree Russian agents hacked and released a raft of embarrassing Democratic Party emails to help Trump, his presidency is nearly four months old, and there is no evidence of any substantive change in U.S. policies that benefit Moscow. Instead, in two crucial areas, the opposite is true.

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The first: Russias economy is extraordinarily dependent on oil and natural gas, which provide nearly half the nations revenue. The Trump administrations determination to make it much easier for oil and natural gas drillers to use fracking on federal land  part of his pledge to unleash Americas $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil and natural gas reserves  is expected to make oil and natural gas cheap commodities for years to come. This move is akin to defunding Moscows treasury.

The second: Trumps anti-NATO, pro-Russia campaign rhetoric is long gone. Instead, he is seeking a sharp increase in U.S. military spending while the several former generals in his inner circle extol NATOs virtues and continue to identify Russia as Americas ultimate nemesis. Generally, Trumps foreign policy appears to be in sync with most modern Republican presidents. And specifically, theres this: Trump ordered a U.S. attack on a Syrian government airbase in April after it was linked to a poison-gas attack that killed more than 80 people in a rebel-held town. Russia is Syrias most important ally. Then on Wednesday, Trump offered assurances of support to Ukraines foreign minister as Russia continues its meddling in that country.

When will Trump critics realize accusing him of being a Russian dupe with no proof helps him by boosting his fake news narrative? Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi  with a liberal pedigree and a disdain for Trump  made a similar point in February: both the Democratic Party and many leading media outlets are making a dangerous gamble, betting their professional and political capital on the promise of future disclosures that may not come.

As last weeks turmoil shows, Trump is great at making some Americans distrust him. Yes, there may conceivably be blunders so big he is forced from office. But the relentless depictions of Trump as a Putin patsy create what amounts to job insurance for him by damaging the credibility of his critics.

Donald Trump gives critics plenty of ammunition. But he hasnt given them a smoking gun yet.

Twitter: @sdutIdeas

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For the second time in 10 weeks, California Sen. Kamala Harris is calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to resign. This time, though, she did it in on national television instead of only in a tweet.

It was her first nationally televised interview as a U.S. senator.

Harris was being interviewed by CNN anchor Jake Tapper on Thursday about the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the series of events leading up to it, including a letter from Sessions to President Donald Trump which recommended Comey be removed.

White House representatives first pinned the firing on recommendations from Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, but Trump said on Thursday he had made the decision to fire Comey long before that.

Either way, Harris  a former attorney general of California  said theres nothing about any of this that is normal.

When asked about the recommendations coming from the Justice Department officials about Comey, Harris recalled her own experience as attorney general and said if someone gave me that memo as a basis for firing the chief investigator of a case, I would send it back and start again.

She said the written recommendations needed to cite more facts, laws and regulations and that the memo looked like it was written by somebody who is a publicist.

Since the announcement, many have taken issue with the fact that Sessions was involved at all with the firing, since Comey was overseeing an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Sessions recused himself in March from overseeing any Russia-related investigations due to his own prior contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Harris called for Sessions to recuse himself ahead of it actually happening back then  and for his immediate resignation.

Now shes doing it again.

That he would sign off on firing the person whos investigating the case hes recused from calls into question his objectivity and his ability to keep his word, Harris said.

Harris isnt alone in that suggestion. Oregon Senator Ron Wyden , also a Democrat, says the same.

People watching reacted quickly on social media.

Others commented on her CNN appearance in general.

Do you agree with Harris? Disagree? Send us a tweet to @sdutideas or post a comment below.

Email: abby.hamblin@sduniontribune.com

Twitter: @abbyhamblin
Toyotas cars accelerated accidentally. Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests. Coke changed its formula. Apples phones bent, while Samsungs exploded.

With the exception of Samsung, these debacles have all been largely forgotten, thanks to time and supplemented marketing budgets.

Stocks and sales have all recovered nicely. While we hope theyve learned something, business at these companies has largely gone back to normal.

Joining this select group recently was United.

Their invitation for the Chicago Police to be their public relations representatives on an overbooked flight didnt go unnoticed.

The video of Dr. David Dao being dragged off the flight was seen by millions around the world.

The airline did give him an upgrade, though, with a free broken nose, concussion, and removal of two teeth that this passenger hadnt even requested.

What  no peanuts?

Dao was one of four customers who were voluntold to give up their seat after refusing an offer of $800 apiece.

He obviously wanted to be on that flight, and the criteria for choosing him is unclear.

However, it could have legitimately included him purchasing a discounted seat or not having enough frequent flier miles.

Those four seats were given to crewmembers needed in Louisville (325 miles away) for another flight. Apparently renting a car wasnt an option for those employees.

The airlines since settled with Dr. Dao, rather than getting dragged into court. Theyll also now offer up to $10,000 for volunteers relinquishing their seats.

But their reputation as The Friendly Skies airline is shot.

Meanwhile, Southwest has stopped overbooking their flights, learning from Uniteds mistakes.

On April 9 United clearly broadcast that their employees matter more than paying customers do.

They simultaneously provided these lessons for the rest of us:

<bullet> With video cameras everyplace, nothing is secret anymore.

<bullet> Your reputation can be damaged in an instant.

<bullet> Customers dont care what your problems are.

Anyone with a business can adopt these lessons to improve service, sales, and profits by not promising more than can be delivered.

If you do over-promise, handle it delicately.

Finally, trying to shift your problems to customers guarantees youll lose business and reputation.

The immediate issue may go away, but is sure to be replaced by bigger headaches.

United has (hopefully) learned that. You should also learn from their screw-up.

With that said, I wish you a week of profitable marketing.

Make your marketing more customer-friendly at www.askmrmarketing.com.
The crew piloting a doomed Air France jet over the Atlantic did not realize the plane was in a stall, were insufficiently trained in flying manually, and never informed the passengers that anything was wrong before they plunged into the sea, according to new findings released Friday.

Based on newly discovered cockpit recordings from the 2009 crash, the French air accident investigation agency is recommending mandatory training for all pilots to help them fly planes manually and handle a high-altitude stall.

The findings show that the two co-pilots were facing faulty speed readings from unreliable sensors and repeated alarm signals, but fail to explain why the pilots responded the way they did.

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All 228 people were killed when the Airbus 330, en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed as thunderstorms hit over the Atlantic on June 1, 2009. It was the worst accident in Air Frances history.

The pilots were in a situation they didnt understand, investigator Alain Bouillard told a news conference.

Questions emerged about the relations among the three pilots and how they shared responsibilities in the crucial final moments of the flight.

The French aviation investigation agency, known by its French acronym BEA, is forming a special group, including aviation experts and physiologists and psychologists, to study the pilots possible responses to help determine why they did what they did.

The passengers were never told what was happening as Flight 447 went into an aerodynamic stall and then fell for 3 1/2 minutes into the ocean, according to the BEA.

From what weve been told, nobody realized what was going on. On that level, for my mental and moral comfort I am very pleased to hear this, when you know you had two people on board who were dear to you, said Corinne Soulas, whose 24-year-old daughter Caroline and son-in-law were aboard the flight.

The BEA released a 117-report Friday, based on cockpit voice and data recordings retrieved from the ocean depths in May in an exceptionally long and costly search operation. A final report is expected in early 2012.

We understood how the accident came about. Now we must learn why it came about, Bouillard said.

The report confirms that external speed sensors obstructed by ice crystals produced irregular speed readings on the plane. Since the accident, Air France has replaced the speed monitors on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.

The BEA says neither of the co-pilots at the controls had received recent training for manual aircraft handling, or had any high-altitude schooling in case of unreliable air speed readings.

A stall warning sounded numerous times, and once for a full 54 seconds, but the crew made no reference to it in cockpit exchanges before the jet crashed, according to the BEA.

Aircraft have become so reliable that pilots rarely fly the airplane without all the automation helping them. Then when they get into unusual circumstances, the pilots are really in unfamiliar, unknown territory, said John Goglia, a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board member and an expert on airline safety.

Pilots are required to fly with autopilot above 24,000 feet.

In a statement, Air France said there was currently no reason to question the crews technical skills. The airline said the report showed that a series of unlikely failures led up to the stall and crash.

The airline also suggested the aircrafts systems and alarms may have hindered the crews understanding of the situation during the stall, in comments possibly intended to shift some blame for the crash away from its pilots and onto the Airbus jet itself.

Bill Voss, head of the Flight Safety Foundation, an independent aviation safety advocate, said it would be a tragic mistake to blame this only on Air France and its training procedures.

This is an industry problem, this accident could have happened as easily in other airlines, he said. A whole new generation of pilots have never had the chance to train on the real scenarios that will affect them in the real world.

Another recommendation is to make division of labor clearer when the captain is out of the cockpit.

The captain was on a rest break when the warnings began. Its unclear why the co-pilot at the controls, flying manually in what became the final minutes of the flight, maintained a nose-up input - contrary to the normal procedure to come out of an aerodynamic stall. Normally, the nose should be pointed slightly downward to regain lift in such a stall, often caused because the plane is traveling too slowly.

A basic maneuver for stall recovery, which pilots are taught at the outset of their flight training, is to push the yoke forward and apply full throttle to lower the nose of the plane and build up speed.

This procedure, which can cause the aircraft to quickly lose several thousand feet of altitude, can be dangerous if the plane is near the ground. But with AF447 flying at over 35,000 feet, the risk of that would have been negligible.

The pilots may have been misled by erroneous stall warnings, the SNPL French pilots union said.

In a statement focusing the blame on the equipment and not on the pilots, the union said: Each time they reacted appropriately, the alarm triggered inside the cockpit, as though they were reacting wrongly. Conversely, each time the pilots pitched the plane up, the alarm shut off, preventing a proper diagnosis of the situation.

The BEAs full report noted that Airbus warned pilots in 2008 that incorrect speed readings from the Pitot tubes could cause erroneous stall warnings.

The BEAs Bouillard maintained that the pilots should have paid attention to the stall warnings. One must always respect a stall alarm, he said.

At 2 hours, 10 minutes and 5 seconds into the overnight flight, the autopilot and then auto-thrust disengaged when the stall warning sounded twice. The co-pilot at the controls nosed the plane up.

A minute and a half later, the captain arrived, and seconds later, all the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped, the summary says.

The recordings end 4 minutes, 23 seconds after the first stall warning.

No announcement was ever made to passengers.

---

Slobodan Lekic in Brussels, Joan Lowy in Washington, Masha MacPherson at Le Bourget, and Greg Keller and Cecile Brisson in Paris contributed to this report.
Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/11/2017 -- Latest research report 'Life Insurance in Spain, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides a detailed outlook by product category for the Spanish life insurance segment, and a comparison of the Spanish insurance industry with its regional counterparts.



It provides key performance indicators such as written premium, incurred loss, loss ratio, commissions and expenses, total assets, total investment income and retentions during the review period (20112015) and forecast period (20152020).



The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of the Spanish 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.



Download Sample Copy Of This Report : http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/1068471



Summary



Timetrics 'Life Insurance in Spain, Key Trends and Opportunities to 2020' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into the Spanish life insurance segment, including:



An overview of the Spanish life insurance segment



The Spanish life insurance segments growth prospects by category



A comprehensive overview of the Spanish economy and demographics



A comparison of the Spanish life insurance segment with its regional counterparts



The various distribution channels in the Spanish life insurance segment



Details of the competitive landscape in the life insurance segment in Spain



Details of regulatory policy applicable to the Spanish insurance industry



Scope

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the life insurance segment in Spain:



It provides historical values for the Spanish life insurance segment for the reports 20112015 review period, and projected figures for the 20152020 forecast period.



It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in the Spanish life insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2020.



It provides a comparison of the Spanish life insurance segment with its regional counterparts



It analyzes the various distribution channels for life insurance products in Spain.



It profiles the top life insurance companies in Spain and outlines the key regulations affecting them.



Reasons To Buy

Make strategic business decisions using in-depth historic and forecast market data related to the Spanish life insurance segment, and each category within it.



Understand the demand-side dynamics, key market trends and growth opportunities in the Spanish life insurance segment.



Assess the competitive dynamics in the life insurance segment.



Identify growth opportunities and market dynamics in key product categories.



Gain insights into key regulations governing the Spanish insurance industry, and their impact on companies and the industry's future.



Key Highlights

The Spanish public pension system consists of two different programs: non-contributory (Beveridgean), and contributory (Bismarckian).



The life segment is better developed than the non-life and personal accident and health segments, and posted a penetration rate of 2.4% in 2015.



The life segment recorded a review-period growth in investment income, primarily due to a strong investment portfolio and a mix of equities and bonds.



The countrys weak economic conditions affected the sale of life products particularly endowment, individual life and group superannuation causing a decline in the written premium.



To order report Call Toll Free: 866-997-4948 or send an email on sales@marketresearchreports.biz
River Heights, UT -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/12/2017 -- 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 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.



River Heights, UTAH General Society of Mayflower Descendant, Adam Paul Green (Ancestor Stephen Hopkins / Gen.No. 86,723) Introduces New Geneology Resource Website for Local Enthusiasts http://www.g3-development.co/



Women of Early Plymouth: Governor William Bradford reported that the Pilgrims were worried that the "weak bodies of women" would not be able to withstand the rigors of a trans-Atlantic voyage and the construction of a colony. Prior to the Mayflower, very few English women had made the voyage across the ocean.



Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke colony arrived in Virginia in 1587, and amongst those 120 colonists there were 17 women: a baby girl, Virginia Dare, was born after arrival. When re-supply ships came from England, they could not relocate the people. The colony had mysteriously disappeared, and was never seen again. The Jamestown Colony was founded in 1607, but relatively few women had yet made the voyage and taken up residence there.



The Pilgrim husband, as head of the household, had an important and difficult decision to make. Building a colony would be hard on a woman's "weaker body." It might be safer and healthier to leave her behind, and have her come later once the houses were built, and the general safety and successfulness of the colony were better established. But that could be several years. Could he live several years without his wife? How strong was his wife anyway, could she really handle it? Was it right to put your wife's life in danger in this manner?



As the Mayflower left England for America, there were 18 adult women on-board. Three of them, Elizabeth Hopkins, Susanna White, and Mary Allerton, were actually in their last trimester of a pregnancy. All the adult women on the Mayflower were married; there were no single women--although there were a few teenage girls nearing marriageable age.



While no women would die during the Mayflower's voyage, life after arrival proved extremely difficult. In fact, 78% of the women would die the first winter, a far higher percentage than for men or children. Dorothy Bradford was the first woman to die, and the only woman who died in the month of December. While many of the men, including her husband, were out exploring on Cape Cod, she accidentally fell off the Mayflower into the bitter cold waters of Provincetown Harbor. Most of the women's death dates were not recorded, but we do know that Rose Standish died on January 29, Mary Allerton died on February 25, and Elizabeth Winslow died on March 24. Most of the women died in February and March.



The extremely high mortality rate among women is probably explainable by the fact the men were out in the fresh air, felling trees, building structures and drinking fresh New England water; while the women were confined to the damp, filthy and crowded quarters offered by the Mayflower, where disease would have spread much more quickly. The two-month voyage was long enough; the women, however, remained living on the ship for an additional four months while the men built storehouses and living quarters on shore. Many of the sick were no doubt cared for on-board the ship by the women, increasing their exposure to colds and pneumonias. William Mullins died on February 21, apparently on-board the Mayflower since his will was witnessed by the ship's captain and ship's surgeon. His wife Alice and son Joseph had not yet died, but it wasn't too long before they did, orphaning their teenage daughter Priscilla in the New World.



Only five women survived the first winter. One of the five survivors, Mrs. Katherine Carver, died in May of a "broken heart," her husband John having died of sunstroke a month earlier. Weak bodies or not, by the time of the famous "Thanksgiving," there were only four women left to care for the Colony's fifty surviving men and children. The four women were Eleanor Billington, Elizabeth Hopkins, Mary Brewster, and Susanna (White) Winslow.



http://mayflowerhistory.com/women



Adam Paul Green was born to a multi-talented beauty queen Mother and a Father who, in addition to being a US Army Spy and a Counter-Intelligence Special Agent, was also a highly accomplished entrepreneur. Adam was taught at a young age that, in both life and business, loyalty is a requirement for success. He's had the honor of working directly with his father in several of the family businesses. In fact, this is where he learned crucial entrepreneurial skills and honed his talents with international business strategies and venture capitalism. http://www.AdamPaulGreen.com , http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



Adam earned his Bachelors of Science Degree in International Business and Marketing from the University of Utah. He was hand-picked by the President of the University's renowned School of Business to compete with dozens of other ambitious nationwide-graduates for the opportunity to secure a lucrative job within a prestigious Fortune 100 company. http://www.Twitter.com/AdamPaulGreen



Adam's hard work and creativity helped him land this job of a lifetime. He obtained incredible business experience there and spent years innovating, improving processes and setting sales records. Although this dream job in Traditional Corporate America was a fun challenge for him, and something he truly enjoyed mastering, Adam's natural entrepreneurial spirit kept nudging him to do something more significant with his time and talents. http://www.MyChocolatePod.com , http://www.Facebook.com/AdamPaulGreen



Since 2001, Adam has been involved in the Health and Wellness Industry as a successful Entrepreneur, Broker, Product Developer and Manufacturer of Cosmeceutical products. During his career, he has worked with some of the most recognizable Fortune 500 businesses along with many top international Network Marketing companies. Adam has consistently proven his unique ability to help his clients achieve their goals through creative Distribution-Channel Placement, innovative Product Development and custom Manufacturing. Adam currently owns three profitable businesses.



Admittedly, Adam was not initially a fan of Network Marketing. He did not understand the business model because it was new to him. However, once he learned that the REAL focus of Direct Sales is to help average people get a taste of entrepreneurialism --- with minimal risk and at a low cost --- Adam was absolutely convinced of the potential with Multi-Level Marketing.



http://www.ImAdamGreen.com



About MayflowerHistory.com

MayflowerHistory.com, the Internet's most complete and accurate website dealing with the Mayflower passengers and the history of the Pilgrims and early Plymouth Colony. The website was first created back in 1994 (when the web was still mostly text!) as a simple, but complete, passenger list of the Mayflower. It has grown over the past twenty years as the author, historian Caleb Johnson, has researched and compiled material.



http://mayflowerhistory.com
"Global warming" is currently the biggest problem in the world. Scientists are saying that the Earth will be lifeless in near future because of excessive warmth in the atmosphere. Recently, glaciologist, Hamish Pritchard from Cambridge University has introduced a new study about Asia's glaciers.

Here one question may arise that how they might be impacted by "Global Warming", in this following discussion impact of Global Warming on Asia glaciers will be discussed. Hamish Pritchard describes, the nature of the glaciers of different mountains in Asia, which include the Kunlun Shan, Pamir, Karakoram, Hindu Kush and Tian Shan mountains and of course, the Himalayas.

According to him, Asia's mountains have the highest concentration of glacier in the world and around 800 million people living in this area. But now they are affected by water runoff that occurs due to glacier melt during the warmer month, reported by National Geographic. He also attempts to figure out the impacts of "Global Warming" on approximately 136 million people living in countries such as Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Pakistan to changes the amount of melt water.

When the planet warms due to "Global Warming", then the glacier areas will increase. As a result water runoff will also increase as more ice melts each year. After glacier shrink, it will eventually produce less runoff. It also removes the buffer against droughts in dry regions, reported by Phys.Org.



But still one confusion there, on the other regions it will have less impact and reduce water runoff because they have a monsoon season every summer. It is still unclear to the scientist what actually the impact of "Global Warming" will have to the monsoon season.

However, to overcome this problem, many of those countries in the region have already built reservoirs to hold the glacial melt. These reservoirs provide water for drinking and energy production during the winter month. Finally, the scientist has found that meltwater has the greatest impact on the Aral Sea and Indus River catchments. It provided a basic structure for predicting "Global Warming" impacts on the area as a number of meltwater changes.
The change in climate has seen the effect of the Glacier National Park's historic glaciers disappearing so fast that only 26 remains out of the 150 in the 19th century. The rise of temperature in the climate change monitor measures at 1.5 degrees F since 1895. The past 50 years saw the merciless shrinking of 39 glaciers. Some left with just stubs and patches of ice.

According to Daniel Fagre, the scientist who is leading the US Geological Survey, Glacier National Park's glaciers condition is irreversible and won't last soon. The next generation won't be able to witness the beauty and splendor of their sceneries. The effect of the glaciers' loss will disrupt not only tourism but also the biological ecosystem that depends on the water cascading from the melted glacier.

Glacier National Park sits on a one million acre vicinity along the Montana-Canadian border. Heat trapped by greenhouse gasses caused the retreat of the pristine glaciers to up to 85 percent less than what it use to be. Because of its smaller size and short peaks, the glaciers in the parks are easily melted and leads the overall global effect in melting.

Fagre's team digitalized the mapping and poster scenes that compare the previous and present state of the melted glaciers at Glacier National Park. The researchers have on record of the glaciers had shrunk to 39 percent back in 1966. Tracking the meltdown of these glaciers are instrumental in measuring the effects of climate change, reports Climate Central.

The effect of climate change can be most felt on the Glacier National Park where drought and wildfire is a possibility any time, says Andrew Fountain, co-author of the USGS study. He further stated that warming trends are 1.8 times the global average, reports Inside Climate News.

The impact of the loss of glaciers at the Glacier National Park will alter the landscape of bio diversified ecological balance that depends on the water released by the melting glaciers along the riverbanks it is contributing upon.
Some water wells in Pennsylvania become the sources of the high levels of radon. This colorless, odorless radioactive gas is a leading cause of the lung cancer.

The existence of high-level radon was found in 14 percent water wells in Pennsylvania that were tested between 1985 and 2015. A study from the federal government unveils this fact. Most of the times, this colorless radioactive gas enters the home through soil and rock that are surrounding the key foundation. But, radon becomes airborne when someone cleans clothes, dishes or takes the shower with the water that contains this cancer-causing element.

Phys.org reported that radon is regarded as the second key cause of the lung cancer. Currently, it is a serious cause of major threat and panic in Pennsylvania. Almost 40 percent of the existing households in the state are experiencing high levels of indoor radon. The crucial fact is this radioactive gas can't be seen or smelled.

The U.S. Geological Survey has examined the samples of more than 1000 water wells and noticed the existence of radon in some specific areas. According to the report, an acute threat is visible from indoor air and groundwater in Lancaster, Chester, and York counties in Pennsylvania. The state Department of Environmental Protection utters that residents need to test their air first.

If they notice the elevated level of radon, then they should test the water of the wells. A specific system that includes the use of the charcoal or the aeration can remove radon from the water. Without proper testing, it is difficult to get rid of the harmful effects of this colorless, odorless radioactive gas. So it is necessary to take some concrete precautions for the safety of the citizens of Pennsylvania.

Almost twenty-one thousand people who died every year from lung cancer are attributed to radon. The National Research Council says a small portion of these people is affected due to the presence of radon in the water. An estimate of 1998 revealed 160 people could face lung cancer after breathing radon and another 20 could experience stomach cancer after drinking radon-laced water. That means Pennsylvania is currently facing an acute situation that need to be addressed properly.

Now Pennsylvania is not the only place where the presence of radon is surfaced. According to Global News, Calgary in Canada is also facing high levels of this radon gas. A new study that examined 2,300 homes in Calgary and near areas discovered the existence of this dangerous gas.

Radon is truly very fatal to human health. The recent report about the water wells in Pennsylvania surely increases a lot of concerns. Though, it is also true that precautions are also prescribed by the state Department of Environmental Protection.
A newly discovered dinosaur species has been named Zuul after a dog-like monster from the Hollywood movie Ghostbusters. The Zuul crurivastator, meaning destroyer of shins, roamed on Earth around 75 million years ago.

According to Canadas Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Zuul belonged to the ankylosaurid species. It was an armored dinosaur with a spiky 10-foot-long tail. The description may sound scary but the 5,500-pound (2,495-kilogram) dinosaur was most probably an herbivore.

"I had really wanted to use that for a long time and I was saving it for a specimen with a really well preserved tail," study lead author Dr. Victoria Arbour said, referring to the name Zuul, as reported by CNN. "I was not going to get a better choice than with this fellow."

Dr. Arbour also added that the spikes running down Zuuls tail were unlike anything seen in a North American ankylosaur. The shape and size of the tail spikes and tail clubs, along with the shape of the horns and ornaments on the skull, confirmed that the skeleton discovered in the U.S. state of Montana was a new species of ankylosaur.

The Atlantic reported that this particular Zuul was partially mummified after its death. Therefore, the skeleton has retained many features that are truly rare in dinosaur fossils. These include impressions of the dinosaurs skins, bony scales called osteoderms and even some dark films that could have represent traces of keratin. The research team feels that such features will help them understand what Zuul looked like when it was living and breathing.

Meanwhile, who did they call on discovering a dinosaur that resembled a "Ghostbusters" monster? Obviously, the writer and actor of the movie -- Dan Aykroyd -- who also stopped by ROM to meet the real-life Zuul.
A new study indicates that the thawing of Alaska's soils also known as permafrost release the high level of carbon dioxide into the air. The northern soils thaw in summer and fail to refreeze as they once did.

The findings of the study were printed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study was led by Roisin Commane, a Harvard atmospheric scientist, and other colleagues.

Commane said that in a large region, they saw substantial increases in the amount of carbon dioxide that is coming out in the fall. She explained that the soils are warmer deeper, and as they freeze in the fall, the temperature has become zero before they hard freeze. She further explained that the temperature has to come to zero and equilibrate for the soils to freeze hard through. With this, there will be emissions due to microbes that are active, according to The Washington Post.

The carbon dioxide releases into the air as the northern soils thaw because Alaska has warmed up and the ground is not refreezing fast. In the study, the researchers discovered that from 2012 to 2014, the state released about 220 million tons of carbon dioxide gas into the atmosphere from biological sources. This is based on the aircraft measurements of carbon dioxide and methane and tower measurements from Barrow in Alaska, as pointed out by Science Alert.

Alaska's soils are thawing fast. Commane said that they did not anticipate that this happens quickly. They thought that the thawing could occur 50 to 100 years. This resulted in the expulsion of carbon dioxide, which is the Earth's planet gas.

The Guardian reports that the Arctic is warming at around twice the rate than the other regions in the world. Alaska had three record warm years in a row, and in 2016, its average temperature was 5.9F, which was warmer than the long-term average. Donatella Zona of San Diego State University in California said that the whole Alaska region is responding to climate change.
Pilbara, Western Australia - Fossil evidence of early life found in the old hot spring deposits of Pilbara may shed light to how life evolved on Earth. Researchers made fresh analysis of fossils found several decades ago and found that the fossil dated almost 3.48 billion years.

In 1970, when the fossilized stromatolites were found in Pilbara, researchers estimated the structures to be built by microorganisms. This held true, but they also discovered that the fossils were actually part of a prehistoric volcano.

However, according to Perf Science, a new study by a team of researchers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory found that electrical energy naturally generated at the seafloor may have been the start of evolution as science knows it. Lead researcher Michael Russel said in a statement, "Life takes advantage of unbalanced states on the planet." He also added that such unbalance could have been the case billions of years ago, and it is thus a process that resolves the lack of stability on the planet or its "disequilibria."

If proven right, Scientific American noted that this study will have proven Charles Darwin's theory to be close to the truth. In the scientists' views on the origin of life, he spoke of a "warm little pond" where the first molecules may have formed on Earth.

Frances Westall of France's National Center for Scientific Research said that the paper has been thorough in its findings. Although not involved in the study, Westall is working with the European Space Agency's mission to look for life-related gases in the atmosphere of Mars. She noted that the study regarding the evolution of life on Earth could provide context regarding what evidence to look out for of ancient life on the Red Planet.

However, as noted by the Smithsonian, to determine whether or not certain rock features were produced by living organisms will be hard to determine. "Such samples should be returned to Earth for detailed analysis," she explained.
Helenas second annual Craft Beer Week will kick off Saturday with a trail run followed by brunch at Lewis and Clark Brewing.

The week of events will be coordinated among the three breweries in Helena, Gulch Distillers, several businesses in the community and a host of nonprofits to celebrate craft beer and donate the profits.

Last year was a trial run, and coordinators say theyre more organized this year after getting advice from people who run similar events in Missoula and Bozeman. The lineup includes a mix of family friendly and 21-plus events.

Ours is so in its infancy, Heidi OBrien, executive director of Visit Helena, Montana, said. I can only see that growing.

OBrien is helping the three breweries coordinate Craft Beer Week and hopes it will be a draw for tourists. The community already sees an influx of people from out of town who come to mountain bike and end their day at a brewery. A majority of the money raised during the week will benefit the biking community.

A main part of the Helena draw is biking and breweries, Ethan Kohoutek, one of the owners of Ten Mile Creek Brewery, said. They help our business immensely and I think vice versa.

Despite a natural competition among the three breweries, Kohoutek said theyve all been working together to promote each others events and make sure they are represented equally.

Its a showcase of what Helena has to offer, he said.

On Saturday, May 13, people can run a 5K, 5K dog walk, 12K or 30K trail run hosted by the Prickly Pear Land Trust. Participants can register for all races except for the 30K as late as Saturday. The first race starts at 10 a.m. An after party starts at 12:30 at Blackfoot River Brewing.

From 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Lewis and Clark Brewing is hosting Bacon, Eggs and Kegs to benefit Bike Helena Trail Rider and the YWCA. The event is new to the Craft Beer Week Lineup. Jena Sabatini, owner of the promotional company Fun Events, said brunch at Lewis and Clark will give hungry runners a place to eat and the rest of the community an afternoon of food, beer, a silent auction and live music.

The 21+ event costs $30. At 11 a.m., people can bring a dish inspired by bacon to a bacon lovers contest. The winner will receive a pound of bacon from Saco for every month of the year.

Brunch will be served from 11 a.m. to 1:30. Catered by Chili OBriens, and the buffet includes bacon, eggs and beer, french toast, potatoes and fruit. Participants will have a chance to win a keg of Lewis and Clark Beer by identifying IPAs in a blind challenge. In a doughnut and beer tasting, people will get three pastries from Hub Coffee paired with three beers from Montana breweries. A dunk tank will be set up to raise money for the YWCA and proceeds from the silent auction will benefit Bike Helena Trail Rider, a free shuttle running May through October taking hikers, mountain bikers and trail runners to three destinations in Helena.

Swing Crew, an acoustic band from Colorado, will play from 6 to 9 p.m. on Friday night at the Rialto before playing at Bacon, Kegs and Eggs at 11 a.m. on Saturday. Tickets are for sale online and at the brewery.

The week will end with a lecture on beer history by Steve Lozar at Ten Mile Creek Brewery with food from Bad Bettys Barbecue, who Kohoutek calls a living legend.

Everyone in the brewing community knows who he is, he said. Its the coolest event of the week.

Last year Lozar spoke about the history of beer in Helena, while wearing a brewing lab coat. Kohoutek said he doesnt know what this years lecture will focus on, but expects Ten Mile to be packed.

The 21-plus Ales for Trails brewfest on Friday, May 19, will donate all proceeds to the Peaks to Creeks trail, which will connect Centennial Trail to Fort Harrison. The VIP pre-event starts at 3:30 and regular admission begins at 5 p.m. There are 15 breweries, a cidery and one winery participating. VIP tickets cost $50 and regular tickets cost $25 and can be purchased at any of the three breweries or online. Each ticket includes a 16 ounce English pub glass, and three tokens for a 6 ounce pour. Additional tokens can be purchased for $1 each.

The full lineup of events can be found on the Helena Craft Beer Week Facebook page or website.
For eight years, I had the privilege of serving in the Crow Legislative Branch with six of those years as chairman of the Natural Resources Committee. In 2016, I served as the Crow Nations energy advisor and legislative liaison and it has also been my honor to serve on the Montana Coal Board and most recently on then-Congressman Zinkes Natural Resources Advisory Committee. These leadership roles have given me a firsthand understanding of just how important our natural resources are to our state and to the Crow people. Serving in these positions has also shown me how vital it is that Montanas Indian nations have a strong relationship with our elected officials in Congress.

The Crow Tribe has been blessed with an abundance of coal resources: 9 billion tons, to be exact. Our coal has provided high-wage jobs and put food on the table for many of our families. While our reservation still holds record unemployment rates  at somewhere between 25 percent and 47 percent  joblessness on the reservation would be significantly higher without coal mining jobs.

Meanwhile, the federal government has insisted on preventing the Crow Tribe from harnessing these resources and no one has been more frustrated with the assault on our coal industry than me. This attack on our way of life has prevented Crow Nation from taking control of our destiny and creating a brighter future for our people.

I am working tirelessly to ensure our tribe has the right to develop our natural resources and pursue economic prosperity, but I cannot do it alone. Crow Nation needs a U.S. representative whos a fighter and who understands how important these issues are to our tribe and our state.

Im supporting Greg Gianforte for Congress because he is committed to fighting for the Crow people. I know he will go to bat for Crow families who will reap the benefits of natural resource development and empower us to decide whats best for our tribe. He understands our way of life and I believe with all my heart that he will make a true difference in our lives.

I urge my fellow Montanans and tribal members to join me in supporting Greg Gianforte for Congress.

Conrad "C.J." Stewart is a former Crow Nation legislative senator.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is planning stops in four Montana cities on May 20-21 to support the campaign of Democrat Rob Quist for Montana's lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.

On Saturday, Sanders will be at the Wilma Theater in Missoula from 11 a.m. to noon, at the Butte Civic Center from 3 to 4 p.m., and at the Billings Depot from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m.

On Sunday, he will appear at the Union Building Ballroom in Bozeman from 11 a.m. to noon.

Quist, a musician from the Flathead Valley, is running against Greg Gianforte, a Republican businessman from Bozeman, and Mark Wicks, a Libertarian farmer from Inverness.

They are campaigning to replace former U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke, who was tapped by President Trump to be Interior Secretary earlier this year.

Sanders is an Independent from Vermont. He won Montana's Democratic primary election last year, defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton with a populist message that he brought to Missoula for a rally that drew thousands to Caras Park.
The contract for the two 2,525-teu ships also has options for two additional vessels. No contract value was announced.

The vessels designed for the US domestic trade, or so-called Jones Act ships, will have a fully laden capacity of 500 45-foot containers, 400 refrigerated containers, and 300 40-foot dry containers, and a service speed of 23 knots.

Delivery of the first vessel is expected in the first quarter of 2020, with delivery of the second vessel in the third quarter.

Keppel O&Ms technical expertise in LNG propulsion and commitment to customer service were two very important factors in our selection decision, said Pasha Hawaii president and ceo George Pasha, IV.

From the start, they went above and beyond and worked closely with us in customizing a vessel design that matched our requirements. Their experience in LNG vessel conversions will also prove to be very valuable as we build LNG dual-fueled vessels for the Hawaii trade, he added.

The new vessels will operate fully on LNG from the start of service, dramatically reducing environmental impact and increasing fuel efficiency.

As with the construction of our Jean Anne and Marjorie C, we look forward to working with an extremely qualified shipyard, based in the United States, added Pasha, IV.
LAS VEGAS  A 55-year-old man was declared unfit Friday to face criminal charges in the killing of a tourist from Montana and the wounding of another man in a March shooting on a double-decker bus on the Las Vegas Strip that prompted an hours-long standoff.

Rolando Cardenas said nothing in court as a Nevada judge ruled him mentally incompetent and suspended his prosecution on murder, attempted murder, weapon and other charges.

The judge ordered him sent to a state mental health facility in Las Vegas for treatment that could lead to a competency finding and prosecution later.

Cardenas' lawyer, Will Ewing, declined to comment after the court hearing.

Authorities have said Cardenas showed signs of mental problems before and after his arrest March 25.

The shooting killed Gary Breitling, 57, of Sidney, Montana, and wounded Jason Ellis, 39, of Las Vegas.

Police said Cardenas threw a SWAT team robot from the second level of the bus during the standoff, saying later he thought it was a bomb. He also shot twice at a camera that police affixed to a bus window.

Cardenas finally tossed a .40-caliber handgun out a window and surrendered.

Cardenas told investigators he was unemployed and homeless and opened fire because he felt threatened and wanted to scare a man who sat near him.
In an unusual legal maneuver, a Contra Costa grand jury in a Thursday filing said that the countys district attorney who spent more than $66,000 in campaign funds on himself should be removed from office, alleging willful misconduct in his handling of the matter.

Though the grand jury, which consists of 19 county residents, has the ability to issue a criminal indictment, jurors did not do so for District Attorney Mark Peterson, said foreman Jim Mellander.

This is a process thats somewhere in this murky area between civil and criminal, Mellander said.

Since Peterson in December admitted to inappropriately spending the $66,000 on personal expenses  including meals, clothes, phone bills and movie tickets  there have been growing calls for his resignation. Peterson spent the funds, which later were reimbursed in full, and in part after an audit was announced, while serving as treasurer of his own re-election campaign from 2011 to 2015.

The district attorney was fined $45,000 by Californias Fair Political Practices Commission in December. A spokeswoman for Peterson declined to comment Thursday.

I am humbled and embarrassed by my mistakes, for which I take full responsibility, and I apologize for my regrettable errors, Peterson told The Chronicle in a December statement.

The grand jurys findings next go before a Contra Costa Superior Court judge, who can either appoint a special prosecutor or turn the case over to a district attorney from a nearby county. If Peterson is found guilty in a trial, he would be removed from office.

Aron DeFerrari, the president of the union for the district attorneys office, declined to comment Thursday night. DeFerrari said he scheduled an emergency meeting of the unions board to discuss the associations next steps at 8 a.m. Friday.

Its quite rare for a grand jury to recommend the removal of an elected official from office, which in Petersons case was done under a California law that requires a determination of willful or corrupt misconduct while in office.

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The jurys report specifically cited the 600 instances, or transactions, that Peterson admitted to making from his campaign funds over the four-year period, referring to them as malfeasance.

Though Mellander could not specify the number of jurors in favor of recommending Petersons removal, legally at least 12 of the 19 jurors must concur to bring such an accusation forward.

The jury outlines three civil charges to make their case against the district attorney. Criminal charges could be brought by another grand jury at a later date  but that would require members of Petersons office to indict their own boss.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @michael_bodley
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Joel Perkins thought he was doing the safe thing when he decided to transport his grandmothers ashes by car from northern Washington to San Diego rather than risk sending them by mail.

On Tuesday night, it became clear that he was wrong, when someone broke into his car in the Mission District and stole his bike and a box containing his grandmothers ashes  the second such crime in about a month in San Francisco.

Perkins, 23, and his family needed to move the remains and couldnt fly with them, because they no longer had a certificate of death or cremation.

My grandpa said, I dont really feel comfortable mailing my deceased wife across the nation. So the only avenue left was for me to drive them down, and I was pretty happy to do it, Perkins said.

The theft occurred almost exactly a month since ashes of another familys relative were stolen from a rental car parked near Fishermans Wharf.

Perkins said that until recently, the remains of his grandmother, Sophie Perkins, had rested under a plaque beneath towering trees on a remote and verdant piece of land in Spokane, Wash.

Perkins grandfather, who is raising two grandchildren, needed to sell the land, making it necessary to move the ashes.

Thats how Perkins found himself at the memorial for his grandmother two weeks ago. When he arrived, he was startled to learn it was her birthday.

I was so young when she died  the more minute details of her life were lost to me, he said.

In Perkins clearest memory of his grandmother, theyre drinking tea and eating strawberries in her kitchen in San Diego. He buried a teapot under the tree where the memorial had been.

On the drive south with his grandmothers remains, Perkins stopped in San Francisco to visit a friend at Mission and 14th streets, leaving his bike in the car.

When he left his friends building and discovered the break-in, it was obvious his bike had been stolen. It was only after he began vacuuming glass off the floor that he noticed the ashes, too, were missing.

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For Perkins, the theft brought back the feeling of his grandmother being taken away from him when she died of cancer 20 years ago.

He filed a police report and spent days combing the streets around the site of the theft, buying cigarettes to offer people on the street to start conversations and following a trail of tips through the citys seedier underbelly, looking for traces of his bicycle in the hope that it might lead to the ashes.

I went to all these different dead-end alleys, some of them kind of scary places, talking to all kinds of people, giving away cigarettes to see if I can start a conversation, feeling driven to go out there on this false maniacal hope that I might find her, he said.

He has tried to comfort himself with the thought that maybe this is his grandmothers way of making a break for freedom. He still holds out hope that the remains will be found.

I almost start crying thinking about (what it would be like) if somebody turned them in, he said. That would just be a miracle.

Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi
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Reports that U.S. security officials are considering banning laptops from the cabins of flights from Europe is spurring concern among business travelers and industry groups.

The proposed carry-on ban, currently under consideration by the Department of Homeland Security, would expand a similar policy the agency implemented in March that keeps electronic devices larger than phones out of carry-ons in flights from 10 airports in Africa and the Middle East. The agency cited intelligence indicating that terrorist groups could try to smuggle explosive devices in various consumer items as the reason for that ban.

Widening the ban to flights from Europe to the U.S.  at the cusp of the major summer travel season  has prompted travel industry organizations to urge federal officials to leaven their concern for security with flexibility in order to minimize disruptions to travelers.

For business travelers making regular treks between the U.S. and Europe, the ban would be a huge inconvenience, said Andy McLoughlin, a partner at SoftTech VC in Palo Alto. Previously, while running a company with offices in the U.S. and Britain, McLoughlin said he sometimes flew to and from Europe every three or four weeks.

There are tens of thousands of entrepreneurs coming from all over the world to do business, and this would make their life really tough, he said. Youre coming in to do business. The fact that you cant do anything on that plane ride is kind of ridiculous.

The ban could also directly conflict with rules that companies and other organizations put in place for business travel. Some employers specify that laptops and other devices containing sensitive information be kept as carry-on luggage at all times.

Companies that have those policies are just going to have to change them, because theres no way around this, said Brian Kelly, the founder of the Points Guy, an online travel news and advice website.

Stephen Hirschfeld crisscrosses the globe frequently for his work as an employment attorney. He said he uses his iPad Pro continuously to keep up with work on long flights. Having to go without it would be a nightmare, he said. Tablets, e-readers and other devices are included in the current electronics ban.

The idea of being out of pocket for that long in todays world is ridiculous. I have clients who need my help, he said.

Kelly said that at some Middle Eastern airports where the device ban is already in place, security officials have set up separate lines for passengers traveling with electronics, where the devices are inspected and packaged separately from the rest of a flights cargo.

Shortly after the original ban was announced, the Flight Safety Foundation, an aviation safety group, warned that it could create risks by shifting more devices powered by lithium batteries to cargo holds. Lithium batteries, commonly used in almost all modern electronics, have been linked to fires.

Ronan De Renesse, a consumer technology analyst with Ovum, a research and consulting firm, said the ban wont have much effect on laptop sales but could cause frequent business travelers like himself to cut back on other expenses, like buying inflight Internet access or booking premium seats.

The main point for a lot of business travelers to fly business class is to be able to work on the plane, De Renesse said. If they cant have their laptops with them, they wont be able to work on the plane. You might move to economy.

Moreover, without a laptop, theres less incentive to pay for Internet access, so everything associated with productivity on a plane as a business traveler is just going to disappear, he said. Maybe business travelers will just have to take a notepad and pencil with them. And a calculator.

Raymond Gorman, a spokesman for computer maker Lenovo, declined to comment on whether sales would be affected.

Until we know exactly what (if anything) is being newly implemented regarding flights from Europe to the U.S., we prefer not to speculate, Gorman said in an email.

Apple declined to comment. HP Inc. and Dell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

De Renesse, who said he travels about once a month from San Francisco to Europe or Asia, said the ban could increase sales of hard-shell luggage to better protect laptops from the bump and grind of baggage handling.

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But that wont help if luggage is delayed or lost. One time I came home to San Francisco from London and my suitcase was open, and they lost one of my shoes, he said. What if you dont have your work laptop for one day or one week?

Ive got about 10 of my colleagues coming from London next week, De Renesse said. Thank God the ban is not applied yet.

Although the ban would only directly affect travelers, the move potentially affects a large segment of consumers. About 72.3 percent of U.S. consumers owned or had access to a laptop, according to a survey Ovum conducted last year.

More than 3,000 flights are expected to arrive in the U.S. from the European Union each week this summer. The U.S. is the worlds second-largest market for spending on business travel, after China, according to the Global Business Travel Association. Global spending for business travel topped $1.3 trillion and is projected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2020, the group said.

Bloomberg News

contributed to this report.

Dominic Fracassa and Benny Evangelista are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com, bevangelista@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa, @ChronicleBenny
After a long delay, President Trump on Thursday ordered federal agencies to review how vulnerable they might be to cyberattacks and how they can limit the dangers.

The executive order left unclear precisely how much input technology businesses and security consultants would have in the review process. This is a notable omission, said Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, adding that some of the best minds in cybersecurity exist in the private sector.

As a Republican administration, you would think it would lean more on the private sector, he said. It used to be that people would say I want military-grade security  but now you want to say Im using what Google is using.

The order instructs many federal agency heads  including the secretary of commerce, the Department of Defense and the attorney general  to review the state of their departments cybersecurity capabilities and vulnerabilities.

The government should use all its resources to secure its information technology and data, the order said. The executive branch has for too long accepted antiquated and difficult-to-defend IT.

The office will lean heavily on the recently created American Technology Council, which was created to oversee the federal governments modernization efforts by pulling in practices from the private sector. The Office of American Innovation, led by senior Trump adviser Jared Kushner, will play a significant role in the federal IT modernization effort, according to Politico, citing people tracking the efforts.

That office has been criticized for potentially duplicating the work of other government agencies created under the Obama administration, like 18F and the United States Digital Service. Grant Schneider, the acting chief information security officer for the Office of Management and Budget, said in March that those agencies should continue to support government security efforts.

Michael Sulmeyer, director of the Cyber Security Project at Harvards Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said one provision may indicate that the administration isnt closing the door on private cybersecurity companies.

The order instructs the Department of Commerce to help identify ways to reduce the threats posed by botnets, swarms of compromised computers or smartphones acting on the instructions of a hacker.

And the Commerce Departments natural proximity to the private sector, Sulmeyer said, suggests that the administration intends to involve commercial companies in the review process. But, he added, just how much involvement the private sector will have will be known only when the reports are completed.

You dont generally think about Commerce as sitting at the top table on these kinds of threats, Sulmeyer said. I think where theyre going, and rightly so, is they see a compelling role that private sector companies have in working this problem.

If they decide to run an inclusive process with private sector input, then hats off. If they dont, then Im sure the private sector will feel cut out.

Other key components of the order include:

Studying the feasibility of standardizing and consolidating the shared IT services across the government. Within 90 days, the director of the American Technology Council must submit a report

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Assessing how ready the government is to deal with a significant power outages.

Assessing the efforts in place to educate and train the cybersecurity workforce.

The final version of the order closely resembles a draft leaked in January. It remains unclear why the administration put the order on hold for as long as it did.

But Brian Finch, a cybersecurity attorney at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in Washington, speculated that releasing a final version of an executive order involving so many federal agencies would have been premature in the midst of the Trump administrations transition into the White House.

Since this was being done at the start of the administration, there werent a lot of people who could work on it and weigh in and vet it effectively, Finch said. Theyre still unpacking boxes in a lot of Cabinet agencies.

Trisha Thadani and Dominic Fracassa are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com, dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani, @DominicFracassa
Can we still have art without politics? Or is a strict focus on beauty  art for arts sake, as the evergreen phrase goes  its own form of politics?

This is an evergreen debate in the art world, but its been fired up lately.

There was no discussion of this springs Whitney Biennial, in New York, that didnt include the controversy over a painting by Dana Schutz, who is white, of the mutilated body of Emmett Till, a 15-year-old African American boy who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, and the protests by a group of black artists over its presence in the biennial.

This years Venice Biennale opened this week promising art and the state of the artist rather than politics  a stand that critics have met with a different kind of disbelief.

Lynn Hershman Leeson/Anglim Gilbert Gallery

Over all of it, theres President Trump, and Brexit, and a question about whether art should try to bring social harmony in a deeply divided time.

The Bay Area is uniquely positioned to have a strong voice in this debate: The Bay Areas art community has been doing social practice art longer than the terms been in existence.

Decade by decade, project by project, Bay Area artists have proved that this tired old debate is an irrelevant one. Of course all art has politics, acknowledged or not.

The question for artists should be, how do you create around your politics?

I was thinking about this on a recent trip to Oakland. I stopped by Anti Lab, a resource center for creative resistance at Gallery 2301 that was conceived by Sarah Burke, a 25-year-old curator and art critic, and Holly Meadows-Smith, a 24-year-old business development manager who is also a founder of a small independent zine press.

These two young women, both of whom live in Oakland, told me they were inspired by the current political situation to organize in the way they knew best  through culture.

I noticed a lot of artists and activists launching open-source projects and resources, and I thought it would be nice to create a place to house them, Burke said. In its own way, providing a meeting place for people with whom to create aesthetic or educational disruptions can be a creative act.

It sure is. Since creating space for art is a political act in the Bay Area in 2017, creating space for socially engaged art is practically a radical statement. Anti Lab, which opened in April and has its closing party Saturday, May 13, at 5 p.m., features artwork and installations along with a library and screen-printing stations for posters and T-shirts.

The space is clean, cozy, cheerful and well supplied. Anyone can come in and use the pin-back button maker for your favorite political slogan, or sew a banner, or sip a cup of free coffee and learn how to, say, organize your student workers union. (A group of dining-hall student workers at UC Berkeley did just that.)

Burke and Meadows-Smith organized a series of talks and activities from local writers, artists and curators, all of which have been well-attended. The entire thing has been such a success that no one would know Burke and Meadows-Smith put it together with little money and even fewer expectations.

The biggest surprise for me was how much people were willing to give, Meadows-Smith said. We had no budget for this project, just an idea. We received a small grant from the Awesome Foundation, but everything else has been donated from friends, community members and local people who sought us out because they wanted to make a difference.

Their next plan is to create a how-to organizational booklet so anyone, anywhere, can create her or his own Anti Lab.

We want the idea to be replicable, Meadows-Smith said. Motivating and connecting people to different opportunities is its own creative work these days.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

In the 1970s, another Bay Area artist created a project she conceived as a seed for others.

That artist is Lynn Hershman Leeson, whose remarkable retrospective will be up at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts until May 21, and that project was called the Floating Museum.

On Wednesday night, she spoke at Kadist Gallery in San Francisco about one of the Floating Museums most famous projects: a 1976 wall mural in San Quentin Prison, which she created with the inmates. Its still there.

If you could do a mural in San Quentin, you could do it anywhere, and I meant to create something for others to take inspiration from, said Leeson, 74.

Leeson launched all of the Floating Museums projects with little more than the donations and resources of other volunteers. The projects she created have had a lasting impact on young artists  many of whom packed the room at Kadist to ask her how she did it.

Her response was simple and perfect: Stop worrying about what kind of aesthetics museums and galleries want (art for arts sake!) and start worrying about what you can do with what you have, right now.

Every artistic breakthrough has been when artists take things into their own hands and be autonomous and react directly to the situation of their time through art, Leeson said. Thats how it was and thats how it will be.

Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner
As commuters rushed by, I tried not to get in their way. In between meetings in New York last week, I decided to visit the Second Avenue subway, which opened with fanfare on New Years Eve. I walked slowly along the dazzling mosaics and tiles in each station, snapping photos of the $4.5 million public art installation, the largest in the states history.

The subway is the first phase of an expansion proposed almost a century ago, and the delays of the troubled infrastructure project became a long running joke. At the 63rd Street Station, I marveled at Jean Shins Elevated mosaics that draw upon archival photos to pay homage to the since-demolished elevated tracks at that location. I loved the trio of women in black, gray and white tile, reading newspapers. Even in this era of smartphones and tablets, newspapers carry on.

Vik Munizs Perfect Strangers are life-size mosaic portraits, brilliant and bursting with life, who look as if they could step off the walls to join us on the subway train: a father with a bunch of balloons passing one to his daughter, a laborer loaded down with his tools, an African American man peering over his book, a businessman in a turban, a police officer with a Popsicle. One of my favorites is a South Asian woman in a gold-and-burgundy sari, checking her phone  just like everyone else hurrying by.

Many passing through the station were checking their phones, and their headphones and earbuds sealed them off from their surroundings. It reminded me of the social experiment conducted by the Washington Post for a Pulitzer Prize-winning story: Famed violinist Joshua Bell played for change in the Metro during rush hour. Of the 1,070 commuters who went by, only 27 stopped to listen. Everyone else had been in a hurry, lost in their thoughts.

Subway riders might have been dazzled when the stations opened, and what they had once marveled at was now routine, a part of the scenery. But oh, what scenery! At the 86th Street Station, Chuck Closes dozen 9-foot-tall Subway Portraits gaze out at us, including images of artist Kara Walker and musician Lou Reed. At 96th Street, Sarah Szes porcelain tile Blueprint for a Landscape captures the feeling of motion, the gusts of wind that blow up and down the subway platform.

Even if most commuters on most days didnt pay much attention to the mosaics, I still deeply believe it matters  to all of us encountering the museum-quality installations for the first time, and for all those passing by on their umpteenth trip on the line, who might be caught up in worries and their hopes and their heartaches until the glitter of the mosaic catches their eye, a glitter that pulls them into the present moment, a glitter that might help them consider lives outside their own. Closer to home, Im excited to see the public art installations planned for the Central Subway in San Francisco, slated to open in 2019.

Such art feels like a gift. Though in truth, isnt such art, paid for out of public funds, our due?

President Trump wanted to eliminate the National Endowment of the Arts, but thankfully, Congress recently approved a spending bill to fund the agency another year, boosting its $148 million annual budget by nearly $2 million, to pay for community arts programs and public art  all of which help foster community and culture, preserve heritage and provide educational opportunities.

The stations have stayed bright and clean, with nary a trace of the grit and funk found elsewhere. A friend who lives in New York and I agreed  the extension reminded us of the orderly, well-maintained subways in other countries. Later on my trip, I rode older sections of the subway, dank and dirty and yet with a charm all its own, filled with masses of people on the go, the kind of place where a rat could go viral on the Internet after it dragged a slice of pizza down a flight of stairs. The pizza rat symbolized the determination, the moxie it takes to succeed in New York.

The last time I was in New York, the day after the presidential election, the mood in the city was dark and fearful. Six months later, on a beautiful spring day, people were gathering to protest Trumps first trip to his hometown since he became president, in a resistance that has persisted and grown.

At the Second Avenue Subway, the motto of America, e pluribus unum  out of many, one  and of New York, excelsior  ever upward  marked beams above the platform. Mottos we must hold onto now and in the future.

Vanessa Huas column appears Fridays in Datebook. Email: datebook@sfchronicle.com
Ron Chapple/Getty Image

Six people were arrested Tuesday night in the Silver Terrace neighborhood after taking out guns during a candlelight vigil and shooting at a passing car, officials said.

A 23-year-old man was driving past a crowd at Silver and Palou avenues when people started shooting at him, firing multiple rounds that hit the vehicle, although the driver was not struck, according to the San Francisco Police Department.
Natalie Ruiz hears this a lot from people: I dont know how you do it.

To grasp why they ask, we have to go back nearly four years. Ruiz had just moved into her dorm at UC Berkeley, a transfer student from Solano Community College who worked hard to get into the No. 1-ranked public university in the United States.

And the pregnancy test she was looking at was positive.

She didnt know it then, but going through the pregnancy, giving birth and caring for a newborn would be the least of her worries as a UC Berkeley student. A frightening medical diagnosis and life-saving surgery would soon top that.

So, as Ruiz prepares to walk across the graduation stage in her cap and gown this weekend, people wonder.

They dont know how Ruiz raised a daughter while completing a double major in sociology and social welfare.

They dont know how Ruiz survived the rigor of UC Berkeley, even as she recovered from surgery, for acute necrotizing pancreatitis, that required her to walk around with a portable feeding tube for six months.

They dont know how she found time to work as a legislative intern for state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, to volunteer as a GED tutor at San Quentin State Prison, and to be an undergraduate research assistant in the sociology department.

And they dont know how she still had the drive to raise $50,000 as the food donation program director for the Student Parent Association, an organization that picks up and delivers grocery donations to more than 100 student parent households.

So the amazement  I dont know how you do it  is a familiar one to her.

People say that to me all the time, looking at me like Im this Wonder Woman, she said while zipping the sleeves of her leather jacket.

Yes, I checked her wrists to see if she was wearing metal bracelets like Wonder Woman.

Heres the secret to Ruizs success: fear.

You do it afraid, but you dont do it alone, she told me as we sat at Philz Coffee on Shattuck Avenue.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

Shes had help from her partner and high school sweetheart, Luke Blanchard, the father of their daughter, Clara. Both of their families have provided support, as did the Student Parent Center at UC Berkeley.

I often receive a lot of the credit, but getting myself through to graduation, accomplishing everything I have while still making sure my daughter is growing up in a healthy, stimulating and happy environment  that is not something I could ever do alone, she said.

When I arrived at Philz, Ruiz was hunched over a folded piece of printer paper. On one side she was making a guest list for the three graduation ceremonies shes attending. There was a stack of tickets for one on the table near her mint mojito drink.

On the other side was a laundry list of to-do items that included washing and steaming Blanchards work shirts so they could save money by tossing the dry cleaning bill. At the bottom was a reminder to practice her commencement speech for the sociology graduation ceremony.

Ruiz, 25, knows how to juggle, but the Vacaville natives story is one of perseverance and success, a story about how fear can be used as fuel. She was rejected by UC Berkeley as a high school senior, and she feared shed never get in. So she went to Solano Community College before applying again.

Three weeks after moving into her dorm on the Berkeley campus in August 2013, Ruiz, who was away from home for the first time, sent Blanchard to a Walgreens on Telegraph Avenue to buy the pregnancy test.

To help understand their different but similar reactions, Ill share that Ruiz told me Blanchard always takes a calculated approach to solving problems while she feels her way through to a solution.

Blanchard sat down for a few minutes to quietly think  and then called his parents as Ruiz yelled at him not to. She hyperventilated  and then called her mother. They were both 21.

It was an emotional blow for her, because it wasnt something we had in the cards, said Blanchard, 25.

We got to know each other a lot better in the way that we handle things, Ruiz said. It wasnt always pretty.

Clara, a chatterbox who likes Pokemon, turns 3 on Monday. Shell walk alongside her mom at the three graduation ceremonies  in her own cap and gown.

Ruiz, the youngest of three daughters, was afraid to tell her dad. Hes the oldest of nine children, and he came to United States from Mexico at 18. When he graduated from California State University Sacramento, he became the first in his family to get a college degree.

Paul Chinn/The Chronicle

The very first time that I ended up speaking to her father, after Nat and I had been together for, I guess, five years, was the time that he found out that Nat was pregnant, Blanchard said.

Her father said Blanchard wasnt welcome in the house until he married Ruiz.

He has made it clear throughout my whole life that education is a huge privilege, and the opportunities that I had were not ones that he had, Ruiz recalled. He wants to see me take advantage of it. It took me a long time to realize where the hurt and grief came from.

He was afraid she was throwing away an opportunity, but the stroke he suffered that December helped soften his stance. And when he held his grandchild for the first time, Ruizs father, who had grown up around men who came around but never stuck around, saw that Blanchard wasnt budging.

Everything was starting to get better. Then, two months after Claras birth in May 2014, doctors diagnosed Ruiz with acute necrotizing pancreatitis and informed her she would need surgery to have her gall bladder, spleen and much of her pancreas removed.

As Ruiz was wheeled into surgery, Blanchard was scared he was saying goodbye to the girl he started dating his junior year of high school.

I remember kissing her before she went back and being concerned that was the last (time) I was going to see her, said Blanchard, also a UC Berkeley graduate, who now works in the insurance industry. I remember my mom driving me back to Vacaville to sleep that night (and I) was sobbing the whole car ride and truly scared that I wouldnt see her again.

To help care for Clara, a family breast milk brigade formed. The supply chain included Blanchards aunt, who got milk from a choir member. Theyd make the exchange in parking lots off the highway in Davis.

Ruiz is graduating with a 3.9 GPA, and she earned the Chancellors Award for Civic Engagement and the Presidents Award for Outstanding Student Leadership. How did she do it?

People ask me that without even knowing the half of it, Ruiz said, laughing, as she twirled the pen she was using to write her laundry list.

The red polish on her fingernails was chipped, but a manicure wasnt on her list of things to do. Even if it wasnt written down, finding a job is at the top.

Ruiz, who lives in an apartment in Albany with Clara and Blanchard, would like to do social policy research because she wants to continue helping others.

I want to help poor families who are trying to navigate systems like Medi-Cal, she said, referring to Californias low-income health coverage. I want to be talking to families who are impacted by these kinds of systems.

Before Ruiz left to go scratch items off her list, I asked her what she feared now. She thought about it for several hours before sending me a text.

I fear the day that my daughter stops thinking of me as a person who can do no wrong and knows all the answers, she wrote. I fear what it will be like the day that she grows up to learn that Im only human, and I dont always know if Im making the right decisions.

Happy Mothers Day.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr
At least four people with law enforcement experience are under consideration by President Donald Trump to replace James Comey at the helm of the FBI, according to a White House official, including the congressman who led a two-year investigation of Hillary Clinton.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor who led the Benghazi investigation, and Alice Fisher, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's criminal division for President George W. Bush are under consideration. Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman from Michigan who led the House Intelligence panel, and former New York City police Commissioner Ray Kelly also are on the list, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

That list is likely to grow, the official said.

Trump fired Comey on Tuesday after what White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders described as months of rising frustration with the FBI director, dating back to Trump's election. Comey was leading the FBI investigation into potential collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russian government agents who sought to manipulate the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. Comey also publicly dismissed Trump's claim that former President Barack Obama spied on him.

Trump disparaged Comey as "a showboat" and "a grandstander" in an interview with NBC News aired Thursday.

The firing has plunged the Trump White House into another political crisis, as Democrats have roundly castigated the decision, and some Republicans have expressed unease.

Trump once called Gowdy's Benghazi hearings a "disaster," suggesting they fell short of producing enough damaging evidence against Clinton for her tenure as secretary of state during a 2012 attack in Libya that led to four American deaths. Gowdy supported Sen. Marco Rubio in the 2016 Republican primary elections before ultimately supporting Trump as the nominee.

Fisher, the former Bush administration lawyer, is a partner with Latham & Watkins in Washington and focuses on white-collar and international criminal cases, according to the firm's website.

Rogers retired from Congress in 2015 after seven terms to pursue a career in talk radio. He advised the Trump presidential transition team on national security issues but was asked to leave at about the same time New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was removed as head of the transition.

Rogers, who declined to comment, had criticized Trump's unsubstantiated claim in March that Obama spied on him, saying on CNN that the president had "put another quarter in the conspiracy parking meter."

"It makes no sense to me whatsoever," he said at the time. "The only winner in this whole thing is Vladimir Putin."

But Rogers has also said that government officials who leak information to news media should be more aggressively pursued. That stance that may be attractive to Trump, who has frequently complained about leaks from his administration.

Two days after Comey's firing, there is still shock within the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said a former senior agent with contacts within the bureau. Rank-and-file agents regard Trump's decision on Comey's replacement as a tipping point in the question over whether the FBI remains independent or becomes politicized under the new president, said the former agent.

Rogers is respected in foreign-policy and intelligence communities and he would likely be well received by Republican leaders in Congress, but Democrats would regard him as too political a choice. FBI agents also would prefer a director who is less political than Rogers, said the former agent, who asked not to be identified to protect his relationships within the bureau.

Rogers was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Obama fired former Defense Intelligence Agency director Michael Flynn in 2014. After Mike Pence replaced Christie as the head of the Trump transition effort toward the end of 2016, Flynn -- by then one of Trump's closest advisers -- assumed control of national security issues. Rogers abruptly exited within days of that power shift.

Trump fired Flynn, his first national security adviser, in February for misleading Pence about the extent of his conversations with a Russian envoy before Trump's inauguration.

Kelly, 75, is the first person from Trump's native New York to rise from beat patrolman to police commissioner and was the longest-serving head of the nation's largest police force, holding the post a total of 13 years.

He was appointed commissioner by Democratic Mayor David Dinkins and again by Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is also the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP. In between, he gained experience leading federal law enforcement agencies under President Bill Clinton as commissioner of the U.S. Customs Service and as undersecretary of enforcement at the U.S. Treasury Department. He is now vice chairman of K2 Intelligence.

Jim Pasco, a Trump ally and executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, said Kelly would be an FBI director "right out of central casting."

Other people floated as possible picks also include Dana Boente, a U.S. attorney who briefly filled in as acting attorney general after Trump fired Sally Yates in January; John Pistole, a former director of the Transportation Security Administration and a former FBI deputy director; and Michael Mason, a senior vice president at Verizon Inc. and a former FBI executive assistant director.

Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, asked White House officials on Wednesday to consider U.S. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland as a replacement for Comey, Lee spokesman Conn Carroll said. Obama nominated Garland for the U.S. Supreme Court last year, but Senate Republicans refused to consider him.

Garland was previously a federal prosecutor who oversaw the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing investigation. Lee publicly suggested replacing Comey with Garland,, "instead of a special prosecutor" for the Russia investigation, in a Twitter post on Thursday.

Twenty Democratic state attorneys general, meanwhile, sent a letter to Deputy U.S. Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Thursday calling on him to appoint a special counsel to investigate Russian allegations of interference in the election. Rosenstein, who has been in office for about two weeks, wrote a letter recommending Comey's dismissal -- at Trump's request -- that the White House has used as justification for the firing.

"As prosecutors committed to the rule of law, we urge you to consider the damage to our democratic system of any attempts by the administration to derail and delegitimize the investigation," the attorneys general wrote. They included New York's Eric Schneiderman, Maryland's Brian Frosh and Maura Healey of Massachusetts.

---

Bloomberg's Andrew Harris, Larry Liebert and Sahil Kapur contributed.
With angry legislators all but reaching for their torches and pitchforks, University of California officials have taken pains to signal a serious response to the latest damning state audit of the system. The UC Board of Regents, which voted last week to hire a consultant to look into one of the audits most troubling findings, plans to hear directly from the auditor this week and is considering further measures to strengthen oversight. UC President Janet Napolitano noted in a Chronicle Open Forum piece Thursday that her straightforward management style dictates that, When problems surface, you fix them.

But university officials have yet to accept the sort of significant financial consequences that the revelations warrant. Since the audit found that the presidents office accumulated as much as $175 million in a secret slush fund, more disturbing details have trickled out of State Auditor Elaine Howles office. UC can preclude the unappealing but increasingly likely prospect of further legislative encroachment on its invaluable independence  and show students and the public its willingness to take responsibility  by rescinding its planned 3 percent hike in tuition and fees.

The tuition increase, approved by the regents in January, is expected to produce about $74 million in new revenue, according to a legislative analysis. Even by Napolitanos account of university finances, which differs markedly from Howles, her office already has more than half that much in reserves. By the auditors reckoning, the offices undisclosed stash is worth more than twice the tuition hike.

While the university and the auditor have bitterly disputed the size and purpose of the fiscal cushion, its clear that the presidents office repeatedly requested more than it needed from the regents and the systems 10 campuses  and therefore from students and taxpayers  accumulating funds that could be spent out of the boards view and the publics.

The audit also found that the system spends, pays and employs more than other state agencies and comparable systems do. Gov. Jerry Brown, whose newly revised state budget withholds $50 million from the university to force compliance with the audit, concurred last week that university administrators salaries are way too high.

Moreover, Napolitanos office managed to make a major controversy out of what otherwise would have been a minor aspect of the audit. University officials mounted a heavy-handed intervention in an auditors survey of campuses meant to rate the central offices services, prompting three of the campuses to offer significantly rosier assessments. Napolitano eventually apologized for the blunder and explained that her staff was merely trying to organize the campuses responses, but emails among administrators detailed by The Chronicle point to a deliberate whitewash. The consultant authorized by the regents last week will focus on the allegations of interference with the audit.

The Chronicle also reported last week that the presidents office spent some of its off-the-books budget on a variety of social events, including a $13,000 dinner for two departing regents. That hardly tempers concerns about UCs hidden surplus or the boards capacity to provide arms-length oversight.

Board of Regents Chairwoman Monica Lozano noted in an interview that beyond accepting the auditors 33 recommendations, she is proposing that the board hire an independent expert to validate compliance and commission an outside audit of the presidents office. We are committed to ensuring that proper oversight of the office of the president is in place, Lozano said. We are being very responsive to what the auditor is recommending.

At the same time, Lozano described the universitys reserves as standard, called the tuition increase relatively modest after six years without one, and defended Napolitano as leading the university with determination and resolve. Thats her style, she said. This is a woman that acts with conviction.

But as long as students are being asked to assume another financial burden and university officials are not, that conviction can be reasonably questioned.
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In collective bargaining between governments and their employees, elected officials are supposed to represent the public. Unfortunately, too many California politicians appear determined to hide such negotiations from the taxpayers theyre elected to serve.

The latest attempted stonewall comes in the form of a bill to exempt information on cities and counties labor negotiations from disclosure under the states open-records law. Sponsored by Assemblyman Raul Bocanegra, D-Los Angeles, and recently cleared by the Assembly Judiciary Committee, the legislation would add information about local governments collective bargaining to the California Public Records Acts already long list of exceptions.
Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

On Cinco de Mayo, there was pesticide drift that stopped farmworkers from harvesting southwest of Bakersfield in Kern County. The workers were in the process of harvesting cabbage when they began to get sick. According to a television news report, the pesticide odor came in from a mandarin orchard west of the cabbage field that was sprayed the night previous with Vulcan, an organophosphate-based chemical. About 12 people reported symptoms of vomiting, nausea and one person fainted. In the end, more than 50 farmworkers were exposed.

The shocking and sad part is that the active ingredient in the insecticide the workers were exposed to is chlorpyrifos, which was slated to be banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Obama administration. However, in March that ban was canceled. The EPA said there wasnt enough solid evidence. Chlorpyrifos is reported to cause severe neurotoxic symptoms in humans if touched, inhaled, or eaten.
Not even the president is above the law.

This seems like such an ironclad principle, one upon which both Democrats and Republicans would readily agree, regardless of which party holds the Oval Office. But that principle is being tested in a way that we have rarely experienced in our nations history. President Trumps firing of FBI Director James Comey  and the patently transparent ruse that the action was in response to the Hillary Clinton email investigation  shocked many across the political spectrum. Not since the days of Watergate have we experienced such corruption at the highest levels of government, and I am profoundly concerned for the future of our democracy.

This is far from the first instance of President Trump considering himself exempt from the law. Since his inauguration, the president and his Republican enablers have ignored the fact that he stands in violation of the Constitutions Emoluments Clause, intended by the framers to prevent foreign influence of our elected officials. This is, of course, the very charge that has ensnared the presidents former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and threatens still others within his inner circle. Lets also not forget the presidents firing of acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she refused to implement his illegal Muslim ban, even though Yates decision was entirely within her authority and subsequently reaffirmed by federal courts.

The presidents pattern is clear: When provoked, he lashes out.

During a congressional hearing March 20, Comey directly contradicted the presidents wild and irresponsible tweets about wiretapping. So the president responded by manipulating Chairman Devin Nunes into spreading baseless propaganda that supposedly supported the presidents claims. This time, the FBI issued subpoenas to associates of Flynn and requested a significant increase in resources for the Russia investigation. So the president responded by unceremoniously firing the head of the investigation that was following a trail of evidence to the Oval Office.

Make no mistake: Many Democrats, including myself, disagreed with Comeys handling of the investigation into Clintons private email server. But its utterly ridiculous to think that the president and the attorney general would suddenly, in May 2017, lose confidence in Comey for his actions taken in July 2016.

As a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I have had several opportunities to hear from and question Comey on the progress of his Russia investigation. Though a smoking gun has yet to be discovered, the director left me with no doubt that he was leading the investigation with the utmost seriousness, and would direct the FBI to go wherever the evidence led them.

This, of course, is what most terrified the president.

I am deeply skeptical that the president will nominate an impartial and independent FBI director who would charge ahead from where Comeys Russia investigation left off. The attorney general and his deputy are also tainted with this farce of a dismissal. The appointment of an independent special counsel is the only clear way to ensure a comprehensive investigation that the American people expect and deserve.

Those in public service, including elected officials, swear an oath upon assuming the responsibilities of office to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. Our allegiance is not to any individual, but to the founding principles of our nation and the laws that safeguard them. The Constitution is under siege, and all who love it  Democrats and Republicans alike  must join forces to defend it.

Jackie Speier represents the 14th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She serves on the House Permanent Selection Committee on Intelligence and is ranking member of the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee.
With nearly all of his restaurant experience concentrated in San Francisco, Joe Hargrave wasnt necessarily looking to venture south to Silicon Valley to open a branch of his fun-loving Tacolicious.

At least not until his investors, most of them involved in the tech industry, floated the suggestion to him. Whether they reside in Silicon Valley or just spend most of their working hours here, they were tired of having to drive to San Francisco to get their fix of his albacore tostadas and achiote-braised chicken tacos.

The idea first came from my investors who work on Sand Hill Road, says Hargrave, founder of Tacolicious, who counts 58 of his 88 investors as from the tech world. I was totally open to it. I think it was a smart idea.

So much so that Hargrave ended up opening a Tacolicious not just in downtown Palo Alto in 2013, but also in San Joses Santana Row in 2016.

The tech industrys appetite for good food and its wealth of discretionary income has been a major driving force in the past few years in invigorating the restaurant scene in Silicon Valley.

Not long ago, the valleys worldly workforce was left largely wanting in its hunger for distinctive dining. Just consider that when the Michelin Guide released its first Bay Area edition in 2006, only two Silicon Valley restaurants were honored with star ratings: Manresa in Los Gatos and Chez T.J. in Mountain View. Now, there are 10 Silicon Valley restaurants in that rarefied group, including Adega, the intimate, family-run Portuguese restaurant that just garnered the first Michelin star in San Jose. Moreover, when Taiwanese dumpling darling Din Tai Fung finally opened its first Northern California outpost last year, it did so not in San Francisco, but in Santa Clara.

Angel investor and serial Internet entrepreneur Oren Dobronsky saw the need in 2011, when he opened his first Orens Hummus in Palo Alto, where he lives. The Tel Aviv native had not been able to find decent hummus in the valley. He now has three locations in Silicon Valley and is considering opening one in San Francisco.

Chef Robbie Wilson, who trained under such illustrious chefs as Michel Troisgros, Tom Colicchio and Thomas Keller, opened his critically acclaimed Bird Dog restaurant in downtown Palo Alto in 2015 for one reason: Chamath Palihapitiya, venture capitalist, part owner of the Warriors and former Facebook executive, and his wife, Brigette Lau, also a venture capitalist and former Navio Systems engineer, agreed to be his investment partners only if the restaurant was in Palo Alto, where the couple lives with their kids.

Many of the investors in Protege, the hotly anticipated restaurant by two French Laundry alums expected to open this fall in Palo Alto, also hail from Silicon Valleys tech sector. Co-owners Dennis Kelly, a master sommelier, and Executive Chef Anthony Secviar are seeking to fill a void in this region for their style of dining  finessed, yet informal, New American cuisine driven by French techniques, seasonal ingredients and Spanish flair.

We have a lot of friends in the area who go to San Francisco for this kind of food, says Secviar, who lives in Mountain View. Silicon Valley is ready for the restaurant scene to catch up with the rest of the Bay Area. The movement has already begun, and I think we will see tremendous growth in owner-operated restaurant openings in the next few years.

That includes a Nobu restaurant coming in June to downtown Palo Altos Ephiphany Hotel, which is owned by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. Additionally, Tim Stannard, founder of the Bacchus Management Group, which includes Spruce in San Francisco, the Saratoga in San Francisco, Mayfield Bakery & Cafe in Palo Alto, the Village Pub in Woodside, and the Bay Areas Pizza Antica locales, will open the Village Bakery in Woodside later this summer. The cafe with a retail bakery, not far from where he lives, will serve breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.

This year, Chef Ray Tang also joined the growing list of San Francisco restaurateurs such as Gotts (which opened in Palo Alto in 2013) and Delfina (which opened in Burlingame in 2013 and in Palo Alto in 2014) to plant stakes in Silicon Valley. In May, he opened the Catamount in downtown Los Gatos to serve his brand of New American classics as personified by his Presidio Social Club in San Francisco.

Tang, whose Hong Kong business partner works in tech, had been looking to open a restaurant in the South Bay for a couple of years, drawn by what he considered a dearth of urbane, moderately priced, farm-to-table establishments here. He also thought opening in the South Bay would be less of a headache.

I wouldnt want to open in San Francisco now because of all the costs, Tang says. There are more hurdles than I want to deal with. Getting a liquor license there alone would be a huge hurdle to overcome.

All of which makes Silicon Valley an attractive area for restaurateurs now, Hargrave says, and well into the foreseeable future.

Bay Area residents like to comment that the end is near, Hargrave says. But the tech economy is just scratching the surface. Were just getting going.

Bay Area freelance writer Carolyn Jung blogs at FoodGal.com and is the author of the San Francisco Chefs Table. Email: food@sfchronicle.com

hottest new restaurants

Adega. Pastry Chef Jessica Carreira and her fiance Chef David Costa were adamant that their first restaurant be in the working-class Little Portugal neighborhood, where she grew up. The result is San Joses first Michelin-starred establishment thats only the second Portuguese restaurant in the country to gain that coveted star. Must order: Bacalhau a Adega, seared codfish fillets served over handmade ravioli. 1629 Alum Rock Ave., San Jose; (408) 926-9075. www.adegarest.com

Bird Dog. These shareable plates are all about chef-driven, contemporary cuisine with inventive touches. The restaurant recently added lunch service, Monday through Friday. Must order: Wood-grilled avocado, its crevice filled with a pool of ponzu, and accented with freshly grated wasabi. 420 Ramona St., Palo Alto; (650) 656-8180. www.birddogpa.com

The Bywater. David Kinch of Manresa pays homage to his New Orleans culinary roots with his second restaurant that serves Creole and Cajun specialties. Must order: Fried oyster poboy. 532 N. Santa Cruz Ave., Los Gatos; (408) 560-9639. www.thebywaterca.com

The Catamount. The 10,000-square-foot restaurant by chef Ray Tang features updated American classics such as roasts, house-made extruded pastas, and soft-serve. Must order: Steam of the Day, featuring fish or shellfish. 50 University Ave., Los Gatos; (408) 442-5533. www.thecatamount.com

Din Tai Fung. Unless you go at an off hour, prepare to wait in a long line to get into Northern Californias only branch of this Taiwanese chain. Thats how legendary the dumplings are. Must order: Xiao long bao, soup dumplings with ethereal wrappers encasing a filling of juicy pork and hot broth. Westfield Valley Fair, 2855 Stevens Creek Blvd., Santa Clara; (408) 248-1688. www.dintaifungusa.com

Pausa Bar & Cookery. Italian-born chef-owner Andrea Giuliani believes in a very hands-on approach, making everything in-house, including salumi, mozzarella, pastas, gelati and the pizza dough crafted from imported Italian flours mixed with a special enzyme. Must order: linguine di grano arso, a briny tangle of manila clams, borlotti beans, Calabrian chile, bottarga and lemon zest. 223 E. Fourth Ave., San Mateo; (650) 375-0818. www.pausasanmateo.com

Sushi Yoshizumi. Place yourself in the hands of chef Akira Yoshi Yoshizumi at his Michelin-star omakase-only restaurant, where the menu changes daily, based on whats available in season. Must order: Yohei Omakase, billed as the ultimate edomae sushi experience. 325 E. Fourth Ave., San Mateo; (650) 437-2282. www.sushiyoshizumi.com

Tacolicious. The Cal-Mex tacos are folded around abundant fillings in this light-filled space in the heart of Santana Row. Must order: Guajillo-braised beef brisket taco. 300 Santana Row, San Jose; (415) 649-6077. www.tacolicious.com
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As the rich strains of Jesus Christ, Yesterday, Today and Forever filled the air, a long train of white-clad clergy members filtered into the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco, where hundreds had gathered Friday to remember the late Archbishop George Niederauer.

Now it is his memory, not his voice, that speaks to us, Cardinal William Levada said of Niederauer, his friend of more than 65 years.

The two met at age 14 while both were attending St. Anthony High School in Long Beach. Levada returned from a business trip to Rome to be with Niederauer in the final weeks of his life.

Niederauer died May 2 at age 80 at the Nazareth House retirement home in San Rafael, several months after being diagnosed with lung disease and only two days after the 55th anniversary of his entry into the priesthood. He was archbishop of San Francisco from 2005 until his retirement in 2012.

Niederauer spent more than half a century in service to the church, so it was fitting that several verses from Romans 14 were read at his memorial: For none of us lives for ourselves alone, and none of us dies for ourselves alone. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

We are here to commend his soul to his creator, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone told the assembled mourners, as the smell of incense wafted across the pews and sunlight transformed the cathedrals long, narrow stained glass windows into ribbons of multicolored light.

Niederauer was remembered as a man of God who served the church for decades and who loved film and teaching.

He earned a doctorate in English literature from the University of Southern California and taught English and a film appreciation course at St. Johns Seminary College.

I once heard one of his former students remark that he never taught a boring class, said Levada.

When Niederauer moved from his home in Menlo Park to Nazareth House after his diagnosis, he remarked almost casually, Well, it looks like this will be my final move, Cardinal Levada recalled at the clerics funeral.

Niederauers death was not unexpected, and Levada recalled the conversations they had in the archbishops final months of life.

Of course, he experienced moments of anxiety about his approaching death, Levada recalled. Once, he asked me, Have the doctors told you how long this will take? he said. They had not.

He liked to know things exactly. But he dealt with the incertitude (with) serenity in the face of imminent death, Levada said.

Niederauer wrote about fear and pain in his 2003 book, Precious as Silver: Imagining Your Life With God.

Perfect love does cast out fear, but it doesnt anesthetize against suffering. Without the paralysis of fear, however, we can walk throughout our lives with Jesus into the Fathers eternal embrace, he wrote.

Niederauers career was not without controversy  in particular, he was widely considered to be instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot measure banning same-sex marriage, helping to secure $20 million in donations to promote the measure. But there was no sign of politics or upheaval at Fridays Mass, only mourning.

Among the long procession into the cathedral were clergy members who had traveled from as far away as Salt Lake City, where Niederauer spent 11 years as bishop, to pay their respects.

The viewing was held Thursday at Mission Dolores Basilica on 16th Street.

Cordileone thanked the sisters of Nazareth House for the care they provided to Niederauer at the end of his life.

It was a great comfort to us to know that he was so well taken care of by you, Cordileone told them.

Niederauer died two days after celebrating his last holy Mass, said Levada. You might say his day was done.

Filipa Ioannou is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: fioannou@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @obioannoukenobi
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Facing declining ridership and rising complaints about conditions in downtown San Francisco stations, BART plans to take aim at what officials see as a possible reason for both  homelessness.

BART officials said Thursday theyll clean up the stations, help homeless people who linger in them find shelter elsewhere and post and enforce its code of conduct.

Ridership on BART has grown to record numbers over the past six years and its trains have become uncomfortably crowded during the morning and evening commutes. But the strain is beginning to show. Ridership has been dropping  on weekends, during nonpeak hours and now, for the first time, during commutes.

Rider dissatisfaction, meanwhile, is on the rise. Crowded trains and unreliable service have frustrated passengers, and Paul Oversier, BARTs assistant general manager for operations, said complaints about the atmosphere in San Franciscos downtown stations  the systems busiest  are rising.

Passengers say they feel uncomfortable with dirty stations, open drug use and debris, homeless people sleeping and lingering in stations and panhandling.

BART has a policy prohibiting lying down or sitting with legs stretched out inside stations. Over the past couple of years, it has stepped up cleaning, including adding a deep-clean team that focuses on the busiest and often grimiest stations. But those efforts havent slowed the problems  or the complaints  as evidenced in BART customer satisfaction surveys.

This is something where we need to do more than were doing now, Oversier said during a budget discussion at a BART Board of Directors meeting.

Oversier outlined what he said would be a collaborative effort. BART will work with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, San Franciscos homeless outreach teams and social service agencies. The strategy, still in its early stages, is planned for inclusion in the budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

In addition, Oversier said, BART plans to increase the number of workers it has cleaning the downtown stations  Embarcadero, Montgomery Street, Powell Street and Civic Center. The agency also plans to increase efforts to get homeless people into services or shelters. And it plans to put up higher barriers around paid areas as part of an effort to prevent people from entering stations unless they pay.

Bevan Dufty, a BART director and former head of San Franciscos homeless services, said he sees the effort as a positive step, and not an effort to just roust people from stations and push them onto the streets.

There is a level of engagement that hasnt existed before at BART, he said.

BART officials participated in a recent homeless roundtable he organized, Dufty said, and the transit agency is working with San Franciscos Public Health Department on a program funded by a $5.9 million grant to steer addicts and mentally ill people into treatment instead of jail.

BART also plans to publicize a little-known customer code of conduct ordinance it passed in 2013  and post signs at stations. Customer conduct ordinances are not unheard of at transit agencies. They typically require patrons to obey a series of rules  pay fares, dont smoke, dont litter, avoid eating and drinking, no panhandling or soliciting  and subject those who dont comply to arrest, fines, refusal of service or being barred from the system.

Additional community service officers, unarmed officers without the power of arrest, would be added to help patrol downtown stations, he said. BART is already working to hire more than two dozen officers to bolster its force.

Rebecca Saltzman, the BART board president, said the agency is trying to take a legal, and humanitarian, approach to dealing with homeless people while keeping its stations safe and nonthreatening for riders.

Weve been focusing on getting people the homeless services they need, she said. But we also need to mitigate the impacts of people spending a huge amount of time in our stations and on our trains.

With BARTs customer satisfaction ratings at a record low and its ridership in decline, the transit system is struggling to do whatever it can to make its riders happier.

BART still carries big crowds  averaging about 423,000 per weekday this fiscal year. Weekday trains are still crowded during commute times, but peak-hour ridership is beginning to slide  by 1 percent compared with the same time last year. Overall ridership is down 3.2 percent.

The ridership decline, which began near the end of last summer, is steepest on the weekends, when 7 percent fewer passengers are boarding BART. On weekdays, outside of the commute, the decline is 5 percent.

BART officials had expected the ridership surge over the past six years to taper off, just not so soon. They dont know the reasons behind the drop. Crowded trains and a decrease in BARTs reliability are likely causes, along with the rise of electronically hailed ride services like Uber and Lyft.

Despite the ridership dip, and a decline in the amount of money BART collects from fares, the transit agency expects to be able to balance its budget for the coming year without significant service cuts or fare increases. Thats because the states recently approved transportation plan included enough money, about $16 million, to help BART fill more than half of its projected budget hole.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
Lawyers suing Wells Fargo on behalf of aggrieved customers say the bank may have opened about 3.5 million unauthorized accounts, far more than the figure that bank and regulators disclosed last year.

In a court filing late Thursday, lawyers representing customers told a federal judge in San Francisco that they believe bank workers created 3.5 million unauthorized accounts over the last 15 years, based on public information, negotiations, and confirmatory discovery. The bank had put the total at about 2 million possibly unauthorized accounts.

Bank spokesman Ruben Pulido said the new claim is unverified and only an estimate.

The unauthorized account numbers reported in the filing are ... based on a hypothetical scenario and have not been verified, Pulido said. The number of unauthorized accounts estimated in the filing do not reflect actual unauthorized accounts.

Pulido declined further comment and the bank has not disclosed its own revised estimation.

Wells Fargo said last month that its review showed bogus accounts being opened as far back as 2002.

The San Francisco bank has seen declines in new accounts and branch traffic, and has been working to restore the trust of its customers since the practices came to light. The biggest scandal in the banks history led to the abrupt retirement of its CEO, John Stumpf. In response to the scandal, Wells has changed its sales practices, ousted other executives and contacted tens of millions of customers to check on whether they truly opened the accounts in question.

The bank initially agreed to pay $110 million to settle claims dating back to 2009. But it agreed to add $32 million to the settlement to include claims starting in May 2002.

The new estimate was based on the expanded time frame and was included as part the customers lawyers request that the judge approve the proposed settlement. A hearing is scheduled for next week.

After paying attorneys fees, the $142 million will first go to cover any customers out-of-pocket losses or fees that they may have incurred due to the unauthorized accounts. All remaining money will be split among the all affected customers.

Paul Elias is an Associated Press writer.
SHELBYVILLE  It was a forgone conclusion that Pana's Claudia Magnussen was going to state in her long distance running events.

Magnussen therefore used the girls Class 1A Shelbyville Sectional as an opportunity to prep for the state finals in Charleston next weekend.

The now four-time state qualifier honed her mental game and tinkered with her form as she easily trotted to first place in the 3,200- and 1,600-meter events by a big margin.

She won by more than 30 seconds in the 3,200 with a respectable time of 11:04.56 and by 25 seconds in the 1,600 at 5:13.53.

It's easy to say, 'Oh man, I'm winning and I can just slack off right now,' Magnussen said. But the hard part is saying, 'No, I got to go and this is time to practice my form because I don't have good form and practice my kick at the end.'

I'm looking forward to next week with people who will be pushing me.

Pretty much all that stands in her way of a state medal is Effingham St. Anthony's defending state champion Anna Sophia Keller. That's about as daunting as it comes.

Last year, Magnussen settled with third place in both her runs at state while Keller went virtually unchallenged for first place  the second triple crown of her career.

But the Pana senior has made up a lot of ground over the past year. She recently shattered the 11-minute mark in the 3,200 at 10:51.11 and is threatening to break the 5-minute barrier with a personal best 5:02.

Everybody's telling me to go beat Anna, Magnussen said. But of course I will try. She is a very strong runner. But we're really good friends and competitors.

Magnussen and Keller are indeed good friends.

They will both join Notre Dame's cross country and track programs next year, after they made a joint visit together in January.

It's a dream come true, Magnussen said. I always kind of dismissed it because I was like, 'They're too fast, they're too smart. I can't go there.' It became a reality and I'm so excited for it.

It wouldn't have been possible without Pana's fledgling cross country program that was initiated just two years ago by Claudia's dad, Mark.

Through cross country, Claudia turned heads and she finished behind Keller for second place at state this past fall.

That's when Notre Dame came around.

Pana's a pretty small school and we've never had it, Magnussen said of the cross country program. Without him (Mark) giving me the opportunity, I wouldn't be going to Notre Dame. That was really cool. I enjoyed every moment of my two seasons in cross country.

Bill's take

Going alone

Windsor/Stewardson-Strasburg junior Whitney Smith has done track and field since sixth grade.

Only this past summer did she first try the triple jump.

She wishes it would've been sooner.

Smith was the only state qualifier for W/SS after winning the tightly-contested triple jump with a mark of 34-2 feet.

Fourth others also earned a state berth in the event.

Everybody thinks it looks really hard, which it is when you're first trying it," Smith said. "But once you learn it, it's like oh my gosh, it's so amazing.

Smith made the switch from long jump and flourished under the direction of Dion Simmons in Decatur during the summer.

I was always kind of good at long jump so we were like, 'Let's try triple,' Smith said. I feel like with triple you have more time to think about everything that you're doing instead of long jump. In long jump, it's so fast."

Pushing through

Both the high jump qualifiers fought through the pain.

St. Teresa's defending state champ DaeLin Switzer prevailed with 5-5 for first place while Arthur-Lovington-Atwood-Hammond's Kenli Nettles took second with 5-3.

Both struggled with pain in their feet.

Switzer returned after skipping the Central Illinois Conference meet in Tuscola last week with a stress reaction in her left jumping foot.

Despite the aches and pains, she also qualified in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles for the first time.

It still hurts a lot actually, Switzer said. But I figured it was sectionals. I had to jump to go to state. I pushed through, I guess.

My first jump, I thought I wasn't going to be able to jump anymore because it was hurting really, really bad. But it was OK.

It's not a new dilemma for the sophomore. She weathered an Achilles injury on the same foot last year that kept her out of state in the hurdles.

I've kind of adapted to having to push through, Switzer said. It's still kind of hard.

The freshman Nettles, who also qualified in the 100-meter hurdles, hurt her foot earlier this season while doing the hurdles and she isn't sure what the problem is after X-rays came up negative.

I could've gotten higher, but I hurt my foot a while back and I could've used better form, Nettles said. But I feel good where I jumped.

Nettles finished state runner-up last year in eighth grade with a jump of 5-6. She ended up breaking the school record with a personal best 5-7 in the high jump and the 100-meter hurdles this past season.

That last one was a surprise.

I didn't think I would do as well as I did in the hurdles, Nettles said. I broke the school record in that and didn't even know it.

What's it like to go up against a seasoned winner like Switzer in her first year?

She intimidates me a lot, Nettles said. It's a transition for sure going up against upperclassmen and being a little bitty freshman. It's a lot different than junior high because I'm running up against a bunch of older people. In junior high, it was just against my age.
Police in Palo Alto Thursday said they were searching for a man who exposed himself to a woman and her toddler as they walked on a trail in a nature preserve.

The victim, a woman in her 30s, was hiking Wednesday afternoon around 3:30 through the Palo Alto Baylands Nature Preserve at 2775 Embarcadero Road when she came across a naked man lurking in bushes alongside the trail, police said.
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SACRAMENTO  Gov. Jerry Brown, responding to a scathing audit of the University of California headquarters, withheld $50 million from the university in his revised budget plan Thursday, saying the money would be released only when UC makes progress in fixing the financial problems identified in the audit and meets other conditions set by his office.

Brown revealed his disappointment in UC President Janet Napolitanos office in the pages of the latest version of his budget proposal for Californias 2017-18 fiscal year, which he presented during a news conference at the Capitol.

The governor was asked if he still had confidence that Napolitano is the right person to lead UC in the wake of the April 25 report by state Auditor Elaine Howle and his decision to hold back the $50 million.

Most people think shes doing a good job, Brown said, adding that the regents were among her supporters. He added, I think salaries are way too high, and said that UC employees earn far more than other state employees, including the states finance department workers. I put the $50 million (aside) in there to hold their feet to the fire when it comes to trimming costs.

Browns budget includes nearly $3.7 billion for UC, $4.3 million more than the state allocated this year.

The UC president oversees an office with nearly 1,700 employees and a $686 million budget funded largely by contributions from the 10 UC campuses. State lawmakers requested the audit last summer to determine whether the money was well spent and whether services provided to the campuses were necessary.

The main findings of Howles audit were that the presidents office had squirreled away $175 million in secret reserves  including $32 million that could have been spent on students  that Howle said should have been disclosed to the public and the regents. Howle found that the presidents staff also earned more than their counterparts in state government, and relied on tangled budgeting practices that obscured expenditures.

Howle made 33 recommendations she said were required to repair the problems.

We fully intend to meet the requirements for the release of these funds, said Napolitanos spokeswoman, Dianne Klein.

To collect the $50 million in state funds, UC would have to make progress by May 1, 2018, on the auditors recommendations and on cost-containment strategies  such as adding more transfer students  that Brown said UC was too slow in implementing:

We will continue to demonstrate our commitment to cost containment, Klein said.

Also Thursday, the UC regents authorized Regents Chairwoman Monica Lozano to hire an independent consultant to investigate the state auditors claim that Napolitanos staff interfered with campus responses to a confidential audit survey.

Documents obtained by The Chronicle show that surveys were changed at the direction of Napolitanos staff.

Howle  and the state lawmakers who held a hearing May 2 on the audit  expressed particular alarm at evidence that Napolitanos staff meddled with the campus surveys to ensure they offered a rosier, less accurate picture of her offices services. In one particular survey from UC Santa Cruz, Napolitanos Deputy Chief of Staff Bernie Jones had administrators delete their complaints about the presidents division of Ethics, Compliance and Audit Services.

On Thursday, at a special regents meeting held to authorize the hiring of the consultant, Napolitano reiterated her testimony at the audit hearing that her office should have handled the matter differently.

Assemblyman Jose Medina, D-Riverside, chairman of the Assembly higher education committee, on Thursday praised the governors recommendation to withhold the money from UC.

One of the only ways the Legislature and the governor have the power to influence the (autonomous) university is through the power of the purse string, Medina said. We need to get the attention of UC and show were serious about the audit outcomes  and that they need to change.

Medina added that he is concerned that the regents themselves will select the independent consultant.

The consultants report would be due before the regents mid-July meeting.

Nanette Asimov and John Wildermuth are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: nasimov@sfchronicle.com and jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com

Online: To see all Chronicle stories on the UC audit, visit: www.sfchronicle.com/uc_audit/
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A new commercial airing in suburban Atlanta is using San Francisco stereotypes to attack a Democrat running for Congress.

The commercial, called "Thank You, Georgia," features supposed San Franciscans  two of whom wear pigtails  expressing gratitude to Georgians who plan to vote for Democrat Jon Ossoff in an upcoming special election.

"We already have Nancy Pelosi as our congresswoman, now you're going to give us Jon Ossoff as our congressman," says a long-haired man  a Deadhead, perhaps?  in front of the Fisherman's Wharf sign.

Later, a woman perched atop a steep hill and wearing a "cut the military now" pin says, "Pelosi and Ossoff will weaken the military. ISIS? Pssh, they're overrated."

View the commercial in its entirety below.

Besides serving as a catalogue of San Francisco scenery and stereotypes  trolley cars, peace signs, bridges  what exactly is going on in this commercial?

The Georgia election is special for a reason. Politico projects the election to be the most expensive race ever held for a U.S. House seat, with newcomer Ossoff running against Republican Karen Handel. She served as Georgia's secretary of state and unsuccessfully ran for U.S Senate in 2014. The special election was called after the region's previous congressman, Republican Tom Price, was named by President Trump to be secretary of health and human services

Ossoff raised $8.2 million within three months, according to filings with the Federal Election Committee. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported 95 percent of his donations came from out-of-state donors, including at least $500,000 from California, $400,000 from New York and $160,000 from Massachusetts (all of which are blue states).

What is Ossoff's appeal to those outside Atlanta's northern suburbs? As CNN explains, "Ossoff became a sort of cause celebre for liberal donors trying to send a message to President Donald Trump."

CNN continues: "Both national parties see this race as a must-win because of the impact a loss would have on their national message. For Democrats, an Ossoff win  in a district considered safely Republican for decades  would provide a major momentum boost and help not only with their fundraising but also with their candidate recruitment for 2018. Republicans see a Handel win as evidence that despite the talk of Trump dragging their candidates down, there's no proof he will."

At an April 6 debate, summarized here by Atlanta NBC affiliate 11 Alive, Handel directly references Ossoff's California donors when she tells the Democrat, "You're bankrolled to the tune of $4 million from outside the district. How can people trust you to represent them when people like Nancy Pelosi and George Soros are financing your campaign?"

Conservative super PAC Congressional Leadership Fund likely created the commercial with Handel's quip in-mind.

Read Michelle Robertsons latest stories and send her news tips at mrobertson@sfchronicle.com.
Center fielder Denard Span was supposed to play three rehab games for Class A San Jose, but hey, after he broke up a Rancho Cucamonga no-hitter with a sixth-inning hit Wednesday night, what else did he have to prove?

Even though I wasnt going to play nine innings, at least I could help us get a hit here, Span said, smiling. It was the least I could do.

Span felt no ill effects from the April 22 shoulder injury that landed him on the disabled list. The Giants activated him before Thursday nights game against the Reds along with shortstop Brandon Crawford (groin strain). Span returned to his customary leadoff spot and Crawford batted fourth with catcher Buster Posey getting a planned night off.

Neither Span nor Crawford was hitting before their injuries, but the Giants missed their defense, particularly Crawfords, and understand they need all of their regulars  those coming off the DL and those who built the 12-23 record  to elevate their games for the club to start winning.

Crawford and Span returned to a different team, with Christian Arroyos presence. Eduardo Nunez will need to make the biggest adjustment. He will be the regular left fielder more or less.

Id like to keep this lineup pretty consistent, said manager Bruce Bochy, who had done anything but that over the first 35 games. However, Nunez will get infield time too, starting Saturday, when Bochy plans to give Arroyo his first day off. Brandon Belt could go to left, but Bochy might start Justin Ruggiano or Michael Morse instead.

Bochy was not reluctant to put Span back at leadoff after Joe Panik went 3-for-20 in five games atop the order.

Bochy said he hoped the team would get a psychological boost from seeing Span and Crawford play. The two feel better now that they can help try to make 12-23 a distant memory.

The hardest thing about not being able to play was not being able to grind with these guys, Span said. Hopefully, I can bring some energy and help get this team on track.

The Giants cleared roster space by optioning pitcher Reyes Moronta back to Double-A Richmond, Va., and placing Conor Gillaspie on the disabled list with back spasms that Bochy said had worsened.

Moronta is expected to be promoted to Tripe-A Sacramento soon.

Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

On deck

Friday

vs. Reds

7:15 p.m. NBCSBA

Feldman (2-3) vs. Cueto (4-2)

Saturday

vs. Reds

1:05 p.m. NBCSBA

Bonilla (0-0) vs. Moore (1-4)

Sunday

vs. Reds

1:05 p.m. NBCSBA

Adleman (2-1) vs. Samardzija (0-5)

Leading off

Glove drive: Saturday is the annual Junior Giants glove drive. Donate a glove at the game, get a pin.

 Henry Schulman
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This story originally appeared on Hoodline.

On Wednesday, film crews and actor Steve Carell were spotted shooting the feature film "Beautiful Boy," an adaptation of a memoir by journalist David Sheff, which chronicles his son's drug addiction.

Crews worked on the Haight between Ashbury and Masonic. According to local merchants, the filming lasted "throughout the day until midnight," as expected.

Since film crews spent most of the day outside Love on Haight at 1400 Haight St., we asked Guadalupe Montelongo, the store manager, what the experience was like.

"It was so great that they are filming something like this on Haight Street with the Summer of Love coming around," she told us, "and just showing more emphasis about what the community is trying to do to help people."

Onlookers took to Instagram and Twitter to share their pics.

The film is based on a true story about addiction and homelessness around the Haight, which still plague the area.

More for you Celebrities caught lurking around the Bay Area in recent weeks

According to Montelongo, "No one realized what was going on until they realized it was Steve Carell. Everyone was so excited to see him around here."

Montelongo also mentioned that she had a brief conversation with Carell, cheekily asking him if she could glitter his beard. He laughed and said since it wasn't a part of his role, it probably wasn't a good idea.

Merchants told us that most of the bulk of the filming occurred Wednesday.
WASHINGTON  In a sharp reversal, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has cleared a way for the company seeking to develop a massive copper and gold deposit near the headwaters of a world-class salmon fishery in southwest Alaska to pursue permits.

As part of a court settlement with the Canadian-owned Pebble Limited Partnership, the EPA agreed to begin the process of withdrawing proposed restrictions on development in the Bristol Bay region.

The agreement, signed Thursday but released Friday, comes four months into the Trump administration, which supporters of the proposed Pebble Mine hoped would give it a fairer shake than they believed they got under President Barack Obama.

Critics of the settlement called it a backdoor deal and a slap in the face to residents of the region who petitioned the EPA in hopes of securing protections.

Pebble sued in federal court over what it claimed was EPAs collusion with mine opponents to block the project, which an EPA study concluded could pose significant risk to salmon in the Bristol Bay region. The region produces about half of the worlds sockeye salmon. A review by EPAs inspector general last year found no evidence that the agency predetermined the studys outcome.

We understand how much the community cares about this issue, with passionate advocates on all sides, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said in a release. The agreement will not guarantee or prejudge a particular outcome, but will provide Pebble a fair process for their permit application.

Tom Collier, CEO of the Pebble partnership, said the EPA is different than the agency was under Obama and is committed to due process. And thats all weve been asking for all along here.

Its a day for Pebble Mine to really have a new start, Collier said.

According to court documents, the two sides had been exploring ways to resolve the case since August, when Obama was still in office.

Dennis McLerran, who was a regional EPA administrator under Obama, said terms calling for EPA to initiate a process to withdraw proposed restrictions on development mark a significant departure from the prior administration. He said it is unclear how that process will be carried out and if, for example, the public will be allowed to comment.

The proposed mine for has been hotly debated for years. Environmental activists like actor Robert Redford opposed development and multinational jewelers said they wont use minerals mined from the Alaska prospect.

Becky Bohrer and Michael Biesecker is an Associated Press writer.
Bobby Hughes' family was worried about the food truck. They were used to sit-down wedding dinners with towering cakes. But Hughes and his Colombian bride, Angelica, were opting for a more relaxed approach when they asked the owners of a local food truck to cook up a South American-inspired menu for their Houston wedding.

"My Texas relatives are meat-and-potatoes people," Hughes says. "So there was some concern about the food. I was asked if people should bring their own sandwiches."

No sandwiches required. Hughes says his family and other guests ended up being impressed with the custom menu created by Consumed  a self-billed "Mobile Food Dispensary." Normally purveyors of upscale burgers and fries, the owners worked with the couple to offer Argentine empanadas, goat cheese and pesto-slathered sliders, veggie tacos and Arepa, a traditional Columbian flat cornbread topped with pulled chicken and jicama slaw.

Hughes' brother-in-law, Julian Alvarez, had suggested using the food truck after learning that the couple's wedding venue didn't have a kitchen. Alvarez knew the owners of Consumed from their usual spot outside the Down the Street bar, and he offered to pay for the food as a wedding gift. The couple loved the idea, and appreciated not having to agonize over seating arrangements.

Hughes recommends a food truck to anyone who wants something relaxed and different, but he says couples should manage their expectations.

"It's a food truck," he says. "They're not going to serve everyone at the same time, but in the meantime your guests can have drinks and talk. It really takes the edge off."

Mei Li, owner of a Boston truck called Mei Mei , agrees that trucks add to a casual, fun atmosphere.

"It's fun for guests to walk up and order," she says. "It's a new experience for a lot of people, and adds a level of excitement and options that a traditional caterer can't provide."

Mei Mei, run by three siblings and offering a locally-sourced, Chinese-American menu, has been so successful that it also now has a sit-down location and a shipping container-based lunch counter.

Having done many weddings, Li suggests that couples consider the style of their wedding, the number of guests and the limitations of the venue when selecting a truck for their special day. Also, learn what a food truck can or can't do.

"Food trucks don't usually offer table linens, waitstaff or cleanup after the meal. You may need to negotiate that or hire an outside vendor for those services," Li says.

Chat directly with the chefs, she says, to make sure the menu items make sense for the crowd size.

"Nobody wants to wait a long time to eat at a wedding," Li says. "Be willing to be flexible and creative  the operator will know best what will work."

Li recommends using a truck for either the cocktail hour or the main meal, and limiting menu items to three or four options. Another option is to have chefs serve appetizers directly from the truck and then bring family-style portions to each table, or provide a buffet.

For those who prefer a traditional sit-down dinner but still want the fun of a truck, consider a dessert van.

"Everything is already made, so it's like a dessert buffet that I'm constantly refilling," says Lora Kleinwachter, owner and head chef of The Bumblebee truck in Denver.

The Bumblebee, a curvy, 1962 P-30 van that's even cuter than its name, was rescued and refurbished into its current, Instagram-worthy state and has been traveling to weddings and events ever since.

"People love to take pictures with the Bumblebee, and kids freak out when they see her," Kleinwachter says.

While her menu options include full-scale cakes, she often suggests the most portable treats  like baked doughnut holes or chocolate trifle cups.

"By dessert time, people are often dancing and socializing," she says. "Guests, especially the children, love anything that's easy to eat and carry around."

While many savory food trucks can save couples money compared to a sit-down dinner, dessert trucks can be a splurge. With a $1,000 minimum plus travel and hourly service charges, Kleinwachter knows her truck can cost more than the average cake. Yet she says many couples hire her because they want something special.
1 Police chief killed: A gunman was found dead Friday after fatally shooting the police chief of an Ohio village and two nursing home employees. Steven Eric Disario, 36, had headed the Kirkersville Police Department for only about three weeks, said Sheriff Randy Thorp. The chief was a father of six children, with a seventh on the way. Disario was responding to a report of a man with a gun, and his last radio communication said he had the suspect in sight, Thorp said. Responding officers found Disario on the street and then investigated a report of a gunman in the nearby Pine Kirk Care Center, Thorp said. Two employees of the center and the suspected gunman were found dead inside the nursing home. Police are trying to determine what, if any, relationship the gunman had with the facility.

2 Deputy fatally shot: A man faces capital murder charges in the killing of three people, including a sheriffs deputy, after holding a woman hostage during a five-hour standoff in Arkansas. James Arthur Bowden, 42, surrendered Thursday at a house near Dardanelle, State Police said. Bowden is suspected in the killing of Sheriffs Lt. Kevin Mainhart, who had responded to a call about a disturbance at the home. Mainhart, 46, spotted a car associated with the address, stopped the vehicle and was fatally shot. Investigators did not release the names of the female victims. The bodies of Rita Miller, 61, and Ciera Miller, 17, were found in the yard. Bowden released the hostage before he gave himself up.
Robert Phelps had a distinguished career at the Boston Globe, shaping the modern paper, overseeing the coverage in major series that won Pulitzer Prizes, and serving as the newspapers executive editor for 11 years.

But he may be remembered as much for one story that he missed. In 1972, as news editor in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, he inadvertently let the Watergate scandal slip through his fingers, allowing it to become the Washington Posts enviable scoop.

Mr. Phelps died Wednesday at 97 in Lincoln, Mass.. Thomas Mulvoy Jr., his friend and former Globe colleague, said the cause was complications of colorectal cancer.

Under Mr. Phelps leadership, the Globe won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1975 for its coverage of Bostons tumultuous school desegregation dispute. He headed the Spotlight Team that won a Pulitzer in 1980 for local investigative reporting, for a series on abuses by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.

He played a highly significant role in the formation of the contemporary Boston Globe, said Matthew Storin, one of his successors as executive editor.

Mr. Phelps revealed his part in the Watergate episode in 2009, in a memoir, God and the Editor: My Search for Meaning at the New York Times.

He recalled in the book that on Aug. 16, 1972, a 31-year-old Times reporter, Robert Smith, carrying a notebook and a Dictaphone, rushed into Phelps Washington bureau office to deliver an account of a startling conversation he had just had over lunch at San Souci with L. Patrick Gray III, the new acting director of the FBI.

Smith had asked Gray about the break-in two months earlier at the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, and Gray, for the first time, implicated Donald Segretti, a covert Nixon campaign operative. He also intimated that the wrongdoing went further. As Smith wrote in 2009 in the American Journalism Review:

The attorney general? I asked, referring to John Mitchell, who had left the Justice Department to run the presidents re-election campaign.

He nodded.

The president? I asked.

He looked me in the eye without denial  or any comment. In other words, confirmation.

In his memoir, Phelps wrote, There we were, with leads from the acting director of the FBI that a man named Segretti, former attorney general Mitchell, and the White House, perhaps Nixon himself, were involved in Watergate, long before the Posts revelations.

He added: We never developed Grays tips into publishable stories. Why we failed is a mystery to me.

Mr. Phelps was about to take a months vacation in Alaska and would normally have passed the leak to another editor before leaving, he wrote. But he didnt. He called the lapse his dereliction.

To make matters worse, Smith had quit the Times, effective the next day, to enroll in Yale Law School.

I assumed the paper, for some reason, could not confirm it  even with Segrettis name, Smith wrote. I watched in disappointment as the Washington Post began drubbing the Times on the Watergate saga.

Smith recalled that another Times editor had asked him to return to work on the story that fall. I thought it over for a couple of days, and decided not to, he wrote.

He agreed, though, to phone Gray  but Gray did not return his call.

Years later, Smith wondered why Grays deputy, W. Mark Felt, had begun talking to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Post as the confidential source known as Deep Throat. (Felt publicly unmasked himself as Deep Throat in 2005 and died in 2008.)

Maybe because Gray was going to be so hopelessly inept at media manipulation and covert disclosures that he wasnt the man for the job? Smith speculated. And perhaps  having been inadvertently foiled at the Times  it was time to move on to someone trustworthy at the Post?

Smith became a mediator in California and is writing a book about the episode, titled Suppressed: A Correspondents Confessions.

Though the Times was slow to compete with the Post in its Watergate coverage, it did rally to break subsequent stories, a point Mr. Phelps never tired of making.

He never let go of his position on Watergate, Mulvoy said  that the Times never got due credit for some important findings and insights.

Robert Howard Phelps was born July 19, 1919, in Erie, Pa., the son of Harry Phelps, a union leader, and the former Ruth Fox.

He received a bachelors degree from the University of Michigan and a masters from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. He married the former Elizabeth King, who died in 2003. He is survived by nieces and nephews.

Mr. Phelps began his journalism career at the Ambridge Daily Citizen in Pennsylvania in 1941 and later worked for United Press. After working as a correspondent on Navy combat ships in the Pacific during World War II, he joined the Providence Journal in Rhode Island in 1952 and the Times as a copy editor two years later.

He covered national politics in the early 1960s and was the news editor in Washington from 1965 to 1974, during the frenzied 1968 presidential campaign and the Times publication of the Pentagon Papers, the secret history of the Vietnam War.

He joined the Globe as an assistant managing editor for metropolitan coverage in 1974 and rose to managing editor before being named executive editor and later vice president of Affiliated Publications, the papers parent company.

After retiring in 1985, Mr. Phelps was the editor of Nieman Reports, published by the Nieman Foundation at Harvard, which promotes and supports the highest standards of journalism. He never stopped writing.

A decade ago, he even drafted his own advance obituary. It began:

Robert H. Phelps was a bleary-eyed 86-year-old retired newspaper editor who hobbled around a patch of grass in Lincoln, Mass., trying to raise a few apples, peaches, plums and blueberries. His wife Elizabeth, who died in 2003, said they would have starved if he had been a farmer.

Sam Roberts is an New York Times writer.
WASHINGTON  President Trump on Friday warned James Comey, the former FBI director he fired this week, against leaking anything negative about him, saying that Comey better hope that there are no secret tapes of their conversations that the president could use in retaliation.

The suggestion that the president may be surreptitiously recording his meetings or telephone calls added a sensational new twist at the end of a week that roiled Washington. Trump and his White House aides later refused to say whether the president tapes his visitors, something Trump was suspected of doing when he was in business in New York.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Trump wrote on Twitter.

Trump appeared to be referring to a report in the New York Times that Comey had declined to pledge his loyalty during a dinner at the White House this year, an account the president denied. Asked directly about whether there were tapes of his conversations, Trump refused to say.

That I cant talk about. I wont talk about it, the president told Fox News. All I want is for Comey to be honest.

No president in the past 40 years has been known to regularly tape his phone calls or meetings because, among other reasons, they could be subpoenaed by investigators as they were during the Watergate investigation that ultimately forced President Richard Nixon to resign. Phone calls with foreign leaders, though, are typically transcribed with the knowledge of other participants.

Democrats expressed shock. For a president who baselessly accused his predecessor of illegally wiretapping him, that Mr. Trump would suggest that he, himself, may have engaged in such conduct is staggering, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. The president should immediately provide any such recordings to Congress or admit, once again, to have made a deliberately misleading  and in this case threatening  statement.

Asked if the president records his conversations, White House press secretary Sean Spicer would not say. The president has nothing further to add on that, Spicer said.

The matter arose in a series of early morning Twitter messages in which Trump appeared agitated over news reports Friday that focused on contradictory accounts of his decision to fire Comey at the same time the FBI is investigating ties between Trumps associates and Russia. Among other things, he threatened to cancel future White House briefings.

By Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear are New York Times writers.
A great deal has been said about Donald Trumps violations of democratic norms. I agree with much of it.

But the big problem with violating democratic norms  the unwritten customs and practices even political opponents traditionally abide by  is that once youve done it, everybody else wants to do it, too. This makes everything worse, because when the people most offended by Trumps violations respond in kind, they not only contribute to the problem, they create incentives for Trump and his biggest supporters to keep doing it.

For example, the outgoing Obama administration was horrified by the prospect of being replaced by the Trump administration. The exact details have yet to be revealed, but it seems that some in the old guard may have violated norms about unmasking the identities of certain individuals, and they certainly violated norms by leaking various highly classified details to the press. In response, Trump claimed vindication in his claims that he was wiretapped.

A better example might be Stephen Colbert, host of The Late Show on CBS. He has found a sweet spot in the ratings as a leading voice of the anti-Trump resistance. Thats fine. TV is a niche business these days, even at the broadcast networks.

But Colberts animus toward Trumps crudeness got the better of him. Suffice it to say that if you want to condemn a president for his incivility, you squander some credibility when you describe the president of the United States in a lewd act with a foreign dictator.

The most acute example of the problem, however, is working its way through the courts. During the campaign, Trump outrageously and ridiculously called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States. He justified the ban on the campaign trail with lots of incendiary statements.

One of his first acts as president was to sign an executive order suspending entry into the U.S. by residents of seven countries for 90 days. It empowered government agencies to allow for exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

The order, which was immediately blocked by federal courts and ultimately rescinded, was a sloppy piece of work. But it wasnt a Muslim ban. The vast majority of Muslims live outside of those seven countries and were unaffected by it.

In March, Trump issued a second travel ban executive order to take into account some of the legal and political objections to the first. Iraq was dropped from the list, for example.

That order, too, was blocked by judges. The 4th Circuit in Virginia heard arguments in the case Monday.

Reasonable people can disagree with the policy merits of the ban, legally, morally, politically and strategically. But what I find troubling is the way various judges have taken to acting like pundits weighing in on Trumps campaign rhetoric. For instance, Hawaii Judge Derrick Watson of the 9th Circuit responded to the idea that Trumps past utterances are irrelevant with this preening statement: The court will not crawl into a corner, pull the shutters closed, and pretend it has not seen what it has.

Historically, paying such deference to political rhetoric is highly irregular. The motivations of politicians, real or perceived, are not normally given any weight and virtually never disqualify legal language between the four corners of the page  the text of the executive order itself, in this case.

If youre a student of history, you might have noticed that even before Trump, candidates often promised grandiose, irresponsible or silly things on the campaign trail. Once elected, they discover they cant deliver.

And thats a good thing. This is how democratic norms, formal and informal, are supposed to work.

Barack Obama was once a vocal fan of single-payer health care. Imagine the outrage if judges ignored the text of Obamacare and invalidated it on the grounds that his campaign rhetoric proved his real intent.

In Mondays hearing, a lawyer for the ACLU conceded that if a hypothetical president  Hillary Clinton or someone else  had issued the same executive order, it could be constitutional. But Trump makes it unconstitutional.

Thats nuts.

I dont blame judges or anyone else for being disgusted with Trumps rhetoric. But judges arent comedians or pundits. Their job is to follow the law.

Trump doesnt help by referring to his executive orders as a ban (so as to pretend hes fulfilled a promise he could never keep). But the reality is that he abandoned the ban from the get-go. When judges pretend otherwise to prove their wokeness they undermine democratic norms even further. And they give Trump and his boosters one more reason to screech that the courts are biased against him.
Nazrvan is a village in Armenia not too far - just twenty bus stops - from the capital Yerevan.

On May 9, Victory Day, Yerevan was noisy. In Nazrvan, the silence was such, it seemed as if all were asleep. A soldier lives there, wounded during April 2016 Four Day War in Artsakh.

May 9 didnt come to Nazrvan this year.

Injuries make people behave alike. In all the village houses, where there are injured soldiers, mothers behave the same way. Fathers do the same.

Mothers of injured soldiers struggle and cry alike. Clutching documents, they run to and fro,to assert the rights of their injured sons. Fathers remain quiet for a long time. Mothers demand respect for their sons, while fathers become invisible, disappointed with themselves.

Gevorg Khudoyan, his father, Vazir Khudoyan and mother, Asya Khudoyan, live in a big house, engulfed in lilacs. I dont know why Yezidis seem so beautiful to me, but they are indeed beautiful. Tired, sunburnt, but honest and beautiful.

Asya was in pain when we visited, and she had sent her son for some medicine. Gevorg called, asking the name of the medicine. I saw nothing strange in it, but the mother became emotional. She said he couldnt concentrate after being wounded in the head - he forgets things.

A rocket fragment killed two of the three friends, Aram and Aramayis, while encamped at posts in Jebrayil, and sent Gevorg Khudoyan to the Stepanakert hospital with a severe skull injury.

On that day, April 2, his mother, sitting on a bus, going to the market,was oblivious to what was taking place. Her son called, preparing her for the worst if she heard bad news on TV. He told her not to worry, that he was safe. Asya didnt comprehend all that he said, but hearing her sons voice was enough for her.

Asya says that when she arrived at the market in Ashtarak, she felt something was wrong. From every corner, the word war was being repeated. It was like a scene from an old movie, where, during a performance, someone announces war has broken out. At first nobody hears whats said. They laugh. The noise around them prevents the significance of the word from getting through. Then, when it does reach their ears, life comes to a halt.

Asya says, At that moment, I realized why my son had called. I called him back. He picked up the phone. It was very noisy out there, and when I asked what was going on, he just replied, nothing, we are digging a trench. It was war.

Asya is literate, though without any higher education. She admits that although she had heard the name of Jebrayil, she couldnt really understand what was south-east and what was south-west.

When she received a call at 2 am from Gevorgs number, she was surprised, but replied confidently, How are you, boy? On the other end, there was a question in reply, Are you the mother of Gevorg Khudoyan?

Even the cruelest person shouldnt hear such a thing, Asya says.

The village, all villages, have a specific tradition. Whatever the hour, if a tragedy has befallen someone, everyone gets up and gathers. That night, several men, together with Gevorgs father, set off for Stepanakert. Before arriving, they were informed that Gevorg was being taken to Mouratsan Hospital in Yerevan by helicopter.

In the hospital, mother and father took turns nursing their son; and not only him. They also cared for another boy from Artsakh, whose mother reached the hospital only on the fourth day. There was no difference between their son and someone elses. All parents caring for their kids become part of a larger family.

Gevorgs father says that when his son was shouting at nights, getting up to run away, it was more than he could stand. He would ask the hospital nurses to take his place at his sons bedside and would go for a smoke.

Asya remembers other important facts from those days of the April inferno. For instance, how strangers would come along, offering to do laundry for them, or how they would leave some money without saying their names, or bring food Human beings were being humane.

Gevorg recovered, more or less, and they all returned home.

But hes not in good health. He has headaches and memory lapses. He cannot work. He sleeps a lot, but quickly tires. But hes got a smile on his face. Hes a good boy. In the hospital in Stepanakert, in a semi-conscious state, he got angry with the nurse for telling his mother that he had been wounded. Mother says she heard his voice on the phone and that was the only consolation for her; the fact that he could speak. Gevorg is a good boy.

Due to Gevorgs condition, his mother got operated on for free. Doctors removed her thyroid gland. Stress had its consequences. Months later, when Asya Khudoyan returned for some blood tests, she was told to pay. Each hormone analysis for the thyroid gland costs around 10,000 AMD (US$ 20). They have no money. Nazrvan is not Monaco. Its an almost empty village.

The family roots of Gevorgs mother, whose maiden name is Snjoyan, go back to Kars. Not only Armenians migrated from there in 1915. The Snjoyans were a Yezidi family living in Kars. They came to Amasya (present-day Armenia), and then moved to Nor Gegh.

Asya is a Kars girl at heart. She doesnt like mobile phones. She says people used to talk to each other more in the village, when there were no mobile phones. For every little thing, we would visit each other, to say what we had to say. Now they either dont speak at all, or talk on the phone, without seeing each other for months.

Every family has their own understanding of help. One needs his loans to be closed, the other one needs something else. Asya is only upset for being neglected. The government hasnt awarded her son any medal. Asya wants to see her son, wounded in the head, appreciated. She was and still is waiting for people to come visit them.

During our whole visit, her husband was silent. Silent and very sick, having an issue with cerebral circulation. But after Asyas last words, he intervened, Today you came and made our day. People dont need much to be satisfied. And the day we came was May 9, Victory Day.

We ask for a photo from Gevorgs Facebook page, where he is in a military uniform. I read in his bio that hes graduated from School N114. To double check, I ask him if its true. A guilty smile appears on his face, No, I just wrote it. We smile at each other, and Gevorg admits that girls like it when you say youve graduated from N114.

- Gevorg, dear, you defended our positions. You were a sniper, you were on the front line during the war, you called your mother not to be afraid, you were wounded in the head, and, being wounded, you got angry with the nurse for terrifying your mother, and you still write that youve graduated from N114, as if that would be a big honor? You dont know your own worth, dear.

Our morals and our mottos seem to be antonyms.

- Gevorg, how do you picture your future?

- I might leave for Russia.

- What will you do there?

- Ill do something. Still better than doing nothing.

- But, in Russia, there wont be men like those in your village, who would get together, if needed, to accompany your father in case he needed to reach you.

- Yes, I know, there wont be such things

Nazrvan is located at the foot of Mount Aragats, the tallest in the country. Vazir and Asya built the big house they live in.

Today, their only son, wounded in the head by a rocket fragment, now wants to leave the country. Such a chain of events is not fair.

A door was ajar, and behind that door, one could see rows of white lavash bread. Hundreds of white, pretty lavash flat-breads rising to the ceiling.

Photos: Edik Baghdasaryan
This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Courtesy Radiotopia Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Courtesy Radiotopia Show More Show Less 3 of 3





Radiotopia is a Bay Area media success story. Roman Mars started 99% Invisible at scrappy San Francisco public radio station KALW, ventured out on his own and his team built a podcasting mini-empire supported in large part by its loyal listeners.

Radiotopia is a partnership between PRX and Mars with more than a dozen podcasts (my favorites: Song Exploder and West Wing Weekly), 17 million monthly downloads and now a traveling show.
Were entering the final week of the upfronts, the process by which various providers reveal whats canceled, whats renewed and what new shows are on tap for the fall season. So well pause from offering info on whats on Monday to give you an idea of what will still be on  or not  in the fall season.

ABC has canceled some shows, renewed several others, and there arent really any surprises. Of the cancellations, I cant cry over the departures of Dr. Ken, Imaginary Mary, Secrets and Lies or The Catch, although Dr. Ken was a hit for a minute and The Catch had potential that never quite clicked. Last Man Standing is done after six seasons, which is part of the reason Dr. Ken isnt going forward.

I am sorry about the cancellation of John Ridleys American Crime, an unusually smart, well-written and well-acted anthology series with one of the greatest core casts anyone could ever want in a show: Felicity Huffman, Lili Taylor, Regina King, Connor Jessup, Timothy Hutton and others. King won Emmys for her various roles, and Huffman was nominated, and so deserving.

I never felt that ABC quite knew what to do with this show. There was an odd tentativeness about it when they started it three seasons ago. Personally, I think it was just too sophisticated for them, and it was never given the right time slot.

Also canceled, The Real ONeals, which probably deserved more support from the network. The shows star, Noah Galvin, did a really bratty interview with Vulture in 2016, making disparaging remarks about Colton Haynes coming-out process. Some members of the LGBT audience were pissed off about that interview, and no doubt they were part of the core audience for the show. It deserved a shot, though. Good ensemble cast, and Galvin may be a jerk, but he was an appealing star. Yes, he copped to being a jerk and apologized. Martha Plimpton was, as usual, fantastic.

The bland, chirpy American Housewife got a renewal order, as did  major duh alert  Designated Survivor. Also coming back: Scandal, but its seventh season will be its last; Black-Ish, The Middle, The Goldbergs, Agents of SHIELD, Greys Anatomy, Speechless, Fresh Off the Boat, How to Get Away With Murder, Modern Family, etc.

Still unannounced at this writing: the fate of Quantico which is presumed to be safe for renewal.

CBS has cancelled 2 Broke Girls, but renewed Big Bang Theory, Blue Bloods, Criminal Minds, Hawaii Five-O, Mom, Madam Secretary, Code Black, Life in Pieces, all three NCIS dramas, Scorpion, Zoo, Bull, MacGyver, Kevin Can Wait, Man With a Plan, The Good Fight Elementary, The Amazing Race and Superior Donuts. Among the CBS shows whose fate is still unknown is The Odd Couple. Over the weekend, CBS killed The Great Indoors, after one season. CBS holds its upfront presentation on Wednesday, May 17.

Fox will hold its upfront Monday, May 15, but so far, the network has axed three first-season shows: Making History (which I kind of liked), Zorn (which I kind of detested) and APB (at which I kind of shrugged). Also axed: Rosewood and Sleepy Hollow.

Renewed Fox shows include Gotham, Last Man on Earth, The Simpsons, The Exorcist, Empire, Star, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Mick, Lucifer and Lethal Weapon. New Girl has been renewed for one last season, its seventh. Bones ended after 12 seasons. The fate of the rest of the shows should be known today, including Bobs Burgers, Family Guy, Scream Queens, Wayward Pines, Prison Break, Shots Fired and 24 Legacy.

NBC also has its upfront presentation scheduled for Monday, May 15. The new comedy Great News, starring Andrea Martin, has been picked up for a second season, which is also in the major duh category  not just because its a funny show and Martin kills, but because Tina Fey is among the producers of the show. NBC also OKd a fifth season for The Blacklist, but dumped Blacklist Redemption after one season. Renewed shows so far include three of the Chicago dramas from Dick Wolf, but the jury is still out on the very weak Chicago Justice. Also renewed: Law & Order: SVU, The Night Shift, Blindspot, Shades of Blue, Superstore, The Good Place, Taken and This Is Us.

Canceled so far are Emerald City and Powerless. Timeless was also canceled...for a couple of days, but NBC reversed that decision this weekend and has okayed a second season. Im kind of glad, but its up to the showrunners to pump more life into it. The cast is superb and has great chemistry, but theres a bit of same old, same old from episode to episode.

The Carmichael Show is still awaiting a verdict, but Id be surprised and disappointed if it was canceled.

The CW will bring the 2017 upfronts to a close on Thursday, but much of its plan for the fall is already known. Renewed shows include Arrow, The 100, Supernatural, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Jane the Virgin, iZombie, Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, The Originals and Riverdale. Reign and Vampire Diaries both ended this season.

Canceled CW shows include Frequency and No Tomorrow.

In non-upfront news, The Hollywood Reporter says Jason Bateman has sealed the deal on a long-rumored season 5 of Arrested Development for Netflix.

David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Follow him on Facebook. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV
QUETTA, Pakistan  The Islamic State said it carried out a brazen suicide attack on a Pakistani lawmaker in southwest Baluchistan province Friday that killed 25 people despite a protracted crackdown on the assortment of militant groups operating in Pakistan.

Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, deputy leader of Pakistans Senate or Upper House of Parliament, was only slightly wounded in the attack that occurred as his convoy left a girls-only Islamic seminary, where he had attended a graduation ceremony.

There was a big bang and we couldnt understand what had happened, said Haji Abdul Hadi, a witness who was hit with flying debris.

The attack by Islamic State may have been a warning to Haideris hard-line Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam against participating in the countrys democratically elected government, said Zahid Hussain, an expert on militancy in Pakistan. JUI is a partner in Prime Minister Nawaz Sharifs government.

It is a message to them that anyone who goes with the government will be targeted, he said, adding that it could also be that the Islamic State targeted Haideri because of his partys close alliance with Afghanistans Taliban.

Many of Afghanistans Taliban leaders studied at Islamic seminaries operated by Haideris JUI and in Afghanistan the Islamic State is battling the Taliban, who have warned their followers against joining the group.

Fazl-ur Rahman, the head of JUI, who was twice the target of assassination attempts, did not name the Islamic State but said in the capital Islamabad that the attack was carried out by antistate elements who want to bring their own brand of Islam to Pakistan. ... We have opted for the path of democracy and the constitution and we will stay the course.

Fridays attack on Haideri was the first time that one radical Sunni religious group has waged war on another, said Hussain, warning it does not bode well for peace, particularly in southwest Baluchistan province where state control is the weakest.

Pakistan has been criticized for being selective in the militant groups it chooses to attack, ignoring those who wage war on neighbor India, against whom it has fought three wars and maintains a decades old dispute over the Himalayan state of Kashmir. Pakistan has also been accused of providing sanctuaries to Afghanistans Taliban, a charge it denies.

Kathy Gannon and Abdul Sattar are Associated Press writers.
BEIRUT  A Kurdish-led Syrian force backed by the U.S. expects to advance on the Islamic States de facto capital of Raqqa in northern Syria this summer, a commander said Friday, following a decision by the Trump administration to supply the force with heavier weapons.

The Syrian Democratic Forces have been buoyed by this weeks capture of the key town of Tabqa and its nearby dam. The advance left no significant Islamic State-held urban settlements between SDF lines and Raqqa, about 25 miles to the east.

An SDF commander, identified only as Abdelqader, declined to specify dates at a news conference, citing tactical reasons. He said the battle for Raqqa would begin once the group receives the weapons from the U.S. military, adding that he expects the fighters to storm the city in the coming weeks.

The announcement to equip the SDF with weapons was a snub to Turkey, which doesnt want the Syrian Kurdish-led force to take Raqqa and has offered its own troops instead. Ankara is also enraged by U.S. plans to arm the Syrian Kurds, who they consider terrorists.

But the SDF made clear it is capable enough with the forces and support it already has.

We do not want any other forces to participate with us, said Abdelqader.

They can solve their problems in their own country, he said, in reference to Turkey.

The SDF also announced it would hand over the town to civilian administrators.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration said it would arm the Kurdish elements of the SDF. Ankara said the plan was unacceptable and a threat to its national security.

Turkey says the fighters are an extension of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has promised to convince Trump to reverse his administrations decision in a meeting between the two leaders at the White House next week.

Also Friday, Syrias state-run news agency reported that three journalists were wounded while covering a government offensive against the Islamic State in the central province of Homs.

SANA said a cameraman and a reporter for Irans Arabic-language Al-Alam TV, as well as a cameraman for Lebanons Al-Manar TV of the militant Hezbollah group, were wounded in the Shoumariyeh Mountains east of Homs city.

Philip Issa is an Associated Press writer.
1 Disputed island: The Philippines has started transporting troops and supplies to a disputed island in the South China Sea in preparation for construction work that includes reinforcing and lengthening an airstrip and building a dock, an official said Thursday. China protested the visit last month by the Philippine defense and military chiefs to Pag-asa Island, home to Filipino soldiers and fishermen for decades, but which is also claimed by Beijing.

2 Francos remains: Spanish lawmakers on Thursday voted in favor of moving the remains of dictator Gen. Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen mausoleum in central Spain, a measure that has long been rejected by the conservative governing Popular Party. The 198-1 vote reopened debate relating to one of Spains most painful episodes, the 1936-39 Civil War and its aftermath. The mausoleum, some 30 miles west of Madrid, is seen by many as a relic of Spains dictatorial past. The lawmakers also called for funds to remove remaining dictatorship symbols around Spain and to set up a commission to investigate the estimated 115,000 people still missing since the conflict.
Following his first term as the United States President, George Washington drafted a letter declining another term in office. Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, men with opposing philosophies and political parties, convinced Washington to stay on the job for a second term to help sustain a fledgling democracy. Two hundred and twenty-five years later, President Trump's repeated disregard for pillars of American democracy return our nation to a juncture of instability.

In Washington's "Farewell Address," published at the end of his second term and read throughout America, the first President reminds citizens about the importance of strong checks and balances, the danger of excessive coziness with foreign governments and the value of unity toward sustaining American democratic principles.

In his "Farewell Address" Washington noted, "The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments into one, and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism." He notes the "necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories."

With the firing of FBI Director James Comey amidst a misconduct probe that is gravitating toward the Oval Office, President Trump continues to challenge checks and balances to his power, especially if Trump replaces Comey with a biased investigator. This action comes on top of Trump's continued refusal to dissociate from business interests around the globe or to provide financial transparency (tax records), an unprecedented and direct conflict with the overall interests of the American people whom Trump is supposed to represent.

Additionally, George Washington warns that "the Nation, which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave ... to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest." Straying from duty toward profiteering, or the potential of this tack, is precisely why every American citizen should support an objective FBI review of travel, business, phone, and in-person meeting records of Trump's campaign leaders (e.g. Paul Manafort) and government advisors (e.g. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn) with Russian intelligence officials.

George Washington warns against the dangers of cozy foreign relationships: "It gives to ambitious, corrupted or deluded (who devote themselves to the favorite Nations) facility to betray, or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity." Washington further admonishes, "Free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican Government."

A strong foe of republican government is disunity, according to Washington. "Union is the primary object of Patriotic desire." A threshold degree of unity is vital to peace at home, peace abroad, safety, prosperity, liberty and Constitutional government. In contrast, nearly all of President Trump's rhetoric and action promote divisiveness, be it tax and health inequalities, increased military spending, immigration laws or late-night Twitter rants.

Political parties, according to George Washington, exacerbate divisiveness by creating great obstacles to unity. Political factions that seek to obstruct execution of laws (see: Obamacare) or prevent the enacting of power granted by the Constitution (see: refusal to hear Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland) are fundamental dangers to a democratic state. Washington believes that a true patriot will not ignore these encroachments, and they will respect the nation with a mind and heart that is independent of political party affiliation.

In our modern age, such freedom is challenged by political divisiveness amplified by mass media. George Washington warns that misrepresentation of the opinions and aims of others is one way to acquire and abuse power. "You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heart burnings which spring from these misrepresentations. They tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection."

With greater fraternal affection, Americans should ponder the parting words of George Washington and apply them to the modern Presidency: Is Donald Trump simply an eccentric rule-bender and therefore excusable? Or is Trump a significant threat to the pillars of American democracy?

Lee Miller graduated from Cornell University and has taught writing for 15 years at the secondary and post-secondary levels. This column examines current events through the lens of quality literature.

Santa Fe Reporter
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COLOMBO: India and Sri Lanka may have signed deals on economic cooperation before Prime Minister Narendra Modi's arrival in the country, the country's former President Mahinda Rajapaksa claimed today.



The two countries were set to sign an agreement to lease out oil tanks to India to jointly operate a strategic oil facility in the eastern port district of Trincomalee.



But Sri Lanka's opposition parties have objected to the deal, saying the government was selling state assets to India.



"The information I have is that all deals have already been signed. So the Indian prime minister's arrival or non- arrival would be immaterial," Rajapaksa told reporters in the central town of Kandy, hours before Modi touched down in Colombo.



Rajapaksa said he held nothing against Modi's visit.



"The problem will be only if they sign agreements. I understand these have already been signed," he said.



According to the proposed deal, at least 73 of the 99 storage tanks in Trincomalee is to be managed under a new equity arrangement between India and Lanka. In 2002, the Indian Oil Company was given 14 of the 99 tanks to operate.



Modi is primarily in Sri Lanka to participate tomorrow in the International Vesak Day celebrations, the biggest festival of Buddhists. This is his second visit since Rajapaksa's unexpected defeat in 2015 polls by Maithripala Sirisena.



Rajapaksa said he would attend the Vesak Day celebrations at which Modi would be the chief guest.



"I will take part in the UN Vesak Day, my going there will not mean I have gone to welcome the Indian prime minister," said the Sinhala strongman who ruled the country for a decade.



Rajapaksa's joint opposition has led a resistance to the Sririsena government's plan to enter into economic cooperation pacts with India, more particularly the Trincomalee venture.



The state petroleum workers last month led a crippling work stoppage to protest the deal.



Ahead of Modi's visit, Sirisena had slammed what he termed the opposition's misinformation about the visit. He said Modi's visit was restricted to the Vesak Day celebration hosted by Colombo.

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NEW DELHI: World Trade Centers Association, which has 300 centres in 90 countries, is bullish on Indian market and is looking to expand operations in the country to promote trade and investment.



The association stimulates trade and investment opportunities for commercial property developers, economic development agencies, and global businesses looking to connect globally and prosper locally.



It has given licenses for the development of 21 World Trade Centers in India. At present five World Trade Centers are operational at Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Noida and Kochi.



"We are very excited about growth in India. The government has taken number of initiatives to propel the economic growth. These initiatives have put India amongst top investment destination across the globe," World Trade Center Association (WTCA) CEO Scott Ferguson told reporters here.



"We are very bullish on expansion in India," he said, adding that it would give more licenses.



On Noida World Trade Centre, Ferguson said: "It is the largest facility in the world in terms of acreage".



Viridian Group is developing Noida facility on 44 acres, comprising 4.2 million sq ft of mixed-use development, with an investment of 1,000 crore and the company has licence to 12 other such centres across India. The first phase comprising 7 lakh sq ft is already operational.



With Vivo Mobile taking up the entire 7 lakh sq ft on lease, Viridian group is targeting to develop this centre as mobile open exchange cluster (MOX).



"Looking at the way the Indian telecom market is growing, MOX is an apt solution and will surely prove to be a game changer," said Khair Ull Nissa, Executive Director, WTC Noida.



MOX will help in cutting operational costs and higher profitability for mobile firms on the back of efficient supply chain systems that will evolve due to the proximity of the vendors and suppliers in the cluster, she said, while inviting mobile companies to set up their units in the Noida centre.

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Moore Catholic High School celebrated its senior prom Thursday night at the Richmond County Country Club. The 77 seniors and their guests danced to music provided by Deejay Omar Cruz of Classie Events.

Check out our photo gallery from the festivities! And take a look back at 2016's prom to see how the two compare.



GRAND ENTRANCE

Though based on the famous Vincent van Gogh painting "Starry Night" for the prom's theme "A Starry Night," many of the seniors arrived as if they were "stars" in stretch-limos and one group arrived in what looked like a tour bus.



WHAT THEY WORE

Red gowns were the trend for the evening. Among them were Lauren Ormond's full length strapless gown, Samantha Gavin's shear layered gown with sequined top and Nia Allah's sleek long-sleeved flowered lace gown.



JOIN OUR COVERAGE

As part of our coverage, we invite you to join in on the fun by tagging all prom photos #SILive. Not going to the prom, or just curious as to how much fun everyone is having? You can follow along as we provide live coverage on Instagram and Twitter.

Want to buy a photo print? You can do so by clicking the "Purchase Photo" button in the gallery above.

2017 STATEN ISLAND PROM SCHEDULE

May 5

May 11

Moore Catholic High School

May 17

Monsignor Farrell High School

May 25

McKee High School

Notre Dame Academy

St. John Villa Academy

May 26

New Dorp High School

Petrides High School

June 2

Staten Island Academy

Port Richmond High School

June 3

Curtis High School

June 5

St. Joseph by the Sea

June 7

St. Joseph Hill Academy

Gaynor McCown Expeditionary Learning School

The Hungerford School

Great Kills High School

June 8

College of Staten Island High School for International Studies

Bishop Patrick V. Ahern High School

June 9

Wagner High School

June 10

Tottenville High School

June 15

Staten Island Tech

June 20

New World Preparatory Charter School

Did we leave your school out? Let us know by clicking on the comment box.
The way of the empty hands The Simi Valley Shotokan Karate Dojo recently hosted a two-day seminar at Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District headquarters featuring a trio of karate experts. The Oct. 22 seminar was...

Slide into winter fun at SnowFest The Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District is bringing snow to Simi Valley. SnowFest will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sun., Nov. 6 at Rancho Madera Community...
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It had all the ingredients of a ripper 50th birthday party - the guest of honour arrived in a big red bus, hung out with a posse of close friends all day and posed for Instagram pics.

But unfortunately Bill Shorten spent his milestone 50th birthday in Queanbeyan working, not partying, when he popped over the border on Friday to criticise the proposed Medicare levy increase included in Tuesday night's federal budget.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten in front of the "Bill Bus". Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Mr Shorten held a media conference at Queanbeyan GP Superclinic, where he and Shadow Health Minister Catherine King also slammed the Coalition's freezing of the Medicare benefit schedule.

I wish Mr Shorten's people had spoken to my people. I would have loved to have taken the Opposition Leader on a tour of my home town for his 50th. We could have had spring rolls at the Yass Road Bowling Club, a nice pedicure in Riverside Plaza and finished with Lindbeck's gourmet beef sausages at Walsh's.
A Canberra teenager will spend six months in youth detention for his role in an extortion ring that targeted men through the gay hook-up app Grindr and threatened to expose them as paedophiles.

Chief Magistrate Lorraine Walker said the boy, 17, was driven by greed and a "self-serving sense of vigilantism" when he lured two men and demanded they hand over cash and mobile phones in a "calculated entrapment" that preyed on vulnerable victims.

Victims of the alleged blackmail scam were contacted through Facebook and gay dating apps such as Grindr. Credit:Leon Neal

Police charged four males, including the boy's older brother, in February after they cracked the syndicate and linked it with the suicide in NSW of one of the victims.

The boy pleaded guilty in the ACT Childrens' Court to two blackmail offences, as well as growing and possessing cannabis after police found four plants when they searched his bedroom.
A 10-year-old child was seriously injured in a crash involving an adult on an electric bicycle in Fadden on Thursday morning.

Police are investigating the collision on a shared pathway near a primary school in the area about 8.45am.

A 10-year-old child was injured in Fadden on Thursday. Credit:Georgia Matts

A 46-year-old man was riding the electric bicycle at the time of the accident, police said in a statement on Friday afternoon.

The child cyclist was taken to hospital in Canberra in a serious condition, before being transferred to Sydney for further treatment.
Confusion reigns over how education is being funded in the ACT as parents and principals question why neighbouring schools receive different shares.

Speaking in response to the federal government's new school funding policy, Blue Gum Community School executive director Maureen Hartung questioned the fairness of needs-based funding in the ACT, arguing demographic quirks can hide disadvantage.

Blue Gum Community School executive director Maureen Hartung questions recent education funding changes. Pictured with (from left) Lucy Brown, Ivy Marriott, Max Morley and Nadav Aviram doing a cookery class. Credit:Karleen Minney

"Despite two government funding inquiries identifying our school as being funded unfairly ... we now have to wait another 10 years before our school gets the same funding rate as neighbouring schools," she said of her independent school.

"How do we explain this mathematical logic to our students and their families? Is anyone seriously suggesting this is a fair and equitable school funding model?"
A new bells-and-whistles convention centre would cost $680 million, with costs outweighing benefits, a KPMG analysis for government found last year.

KPMG considered four options - from the futuristic design unveiled in 2015 to sit atop City Hill, to less fancy options, to a "do-minimum" option, which still meant $152 million of upgrading work on the existing convention centre in Constitution Avenue.

The convention centre reference design from Massimiliano Fuksas and Guida Moseley Brown, viewed from Vernon Circle.

All of the options failed the cost-benefit test, although the futuristic Fuksas design comes closest to getting over the line, with a benefit-to-cost ratio of 0.9 (90 cents for every $1). In second place is the "do minimum" option, with a benefit-cost ratio of 0.8.

The picture is more dismal than a 2015 rapid business case, which put costs at $433 million, and the cost benefit ratio at 2.40.
Liberal assembly member Mark Parton took to the air on Friday morning to defend his controversial remarks likening problem gambling to chocolate consumption.

Appearing on ABC Radio Canberra, the Liberals gambling spokesman repeated his view more Canberrans were addicted to chocolate than to poker machines.

Liberal MLA Mark Parton is a critic of a government proposal to ban eftpos cash withdrawals in ACT clubs. Credit:Jamila Toderas

"Now, if you are seriously addicted to chocolate, eventually it will shorten your life," he said. "And everyone has the opportunity to go out and buy copious amounts of chocolate.

"And indeed many people do. One of the biggest problems facing this country in terms of its individuals is obesity and all of the associated diseases.
Melbourne forward Jesse Hogan will miss the Demons' clash with Adelaide on Saturday night, the fourth match he will sit out in 2017.

Hogan failed to train with Melbourne on Thursday and he wasn't spotted at the airport with his team on Friday, sparking fears the key forward would miss the match.

Melbourne confirmed on Friday afternoon that Hogan was suffering from illness and would not take part in the Adelaide Oval match.

Young forward Sam Weideman travelled to Adelaide as part of Melbourne's extended squad and will likely take Hogan's place in the side on Saturday night.
China is one of the few countries in the world today with money to spend, and Xi Jinping is ready to write some cheques.

China's President will host almost 30 world leaders in Beijing on Sunday at the first Belt and Road Forum, the centrepiece of a soft-power push backed by hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure projects. More than 100 countries on five continents have signed up, showing the demand for global economic cooperation despite rising protectionism in the US and Europe.

For Xi, the initiative is designed to solidify his image as one of the world's leading advocates of globalisation while US President Donald Trump cuts overseas funds in the name of "America First". The summit aims to ease concerns about China's rise and boost Xi's profile at home, where he's become the most powerful leader since Deng Xiaoping died in 1997.

The Belt and Road Initiative "will likely be Xi's most lasting legacy", said Trey McArver, the London-based director of China research for TS Lombard, an investment research company. "It has the potential to remake global - particularly Asian - trade and economic patterns."
Labor would require Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan to reveal details of big companies the Tax Office cuts deals with, including the value of those settlements, as part of its plan to recoup $5.4 billion from multinationals over the next decade.

On Thursday evening Opposition Leader Bill Shorten revealed Labor would be taking more steps to tax multinationals and increase transparency of their affairs.

The bulk of that money will still come from Labor's already announced thin capitalisation laws aimed at closing loopholes around debt deductions used by multinationals to lower their tax bills.

Labor would require the ATO to include in its annual report high-level data about the value and number of settlements above a value of $50 million. "This would be broad information; about an estimated eight large settlements per year," Labor's policy states.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the CEOs of the 100 largest companies received average pay raises of 6.8 per cent, more than offsetting cuts many corporate leaders took in 2015.

Donald Trump was elected president in part by promising that he would "drain the swamp" of establishment interests and look out for the millions of ordinary Americans who have lost jobs and futures due to the actions of Wall Street and corporate executives.

The Trump administration now wants to scrap Obama's proposed "ratio" rule to require corporations to publish the ratio of CEO pay to that of the average employee. They say the ratio rule is too complex for companies to develop the formulas to comply while rewarding top managers appropriately.

This is one more instance of a betrayal of the American people. The president has filled his top positions with Wall Street and corporate multimillionaires and billionaires. The 1 per cent is getting the attention promised to the forgotten people.
"Were ironing boards a luxury item 50 years ago? I was reading a copy of the Sun-Herald from just before Mother's Day in 1966. Full page advertisements by large department stores like Anthony Hordens, Farmers and McDowells all pushing ironing boards as ideal Mother's Day presents with lines like, 'Mother has her eye on a new ironing board', but if you really wanted to do the right thing you'd get her a washing machine. One advert said, 'Won't her eyes glisten when she finds a Healing-Thor Trimatic ready and waiting'. That's really thinking of mum". Peter Riley, Penrith.

"Some churches still celebrate Mothering Sunday, with simnel cake and flowers. It remains in England on that fourth Sunday in Lent  though they are now also commercialised and given the American name of 'Mother's Day', rather than the much older and richer designation." John Bunyan, Campbelltown.

"Wondering if Peter Wotton (C8) ever asked his mother whether she preferred the old English customs of Mothering Sunday, especially considering the family meal may well have been one she had to cook herself. As far as I am concerned, you can keep your handpicked posy and shout me brunch. And all gifts (expensive or otherwise) will be gratefully received." Sue Morgan, Menai.

"Thanks Lee Meatchem for the suggestion of the electric saw for Mother's Day, but my husband gave me one years ago for my birthday." Coral Button, North Epping.

"I'm recently divorced and along with my husband went all the tools needed for home maintenance. I would love to receive a nice toolbox complete with electric drill and all the bits and pieces as a Mother's Day gift." Ruth Will, North Strathfield.
The potentially terrifying consequences of Russian interference in Western democratic politics has been laid out before us in two very different ways this past week. Both reveal the distortion of politics and processes that result from this meddling.

If the Russians' aim is to prevent business as usual in Western politics, they should be very pleased with their recent handiwork. In both France and the United States, political processes appear to have been disrupted as a direct consequence of Russian interference.

If their intentions are more sinister, they must be taking heart from what's happening in Washington, where the government  already slow and chaotic since the election of Donald Trump as president  now seems headed for total immobility as the political institutions digest the implications of Trump sacking FBI director James Comey. This firing of the nation's chief law enforcement officer was, according to the Washington Post, "a breathtaking move that thrust a White House already accustomed to chaos to a new level of tumult, one that has legal as well as political consequences".

We now have two clear examples of differing political responses to Russian efforts to suborn electoral politics in other countries. First, the successful resistance by the French and, second, the apparent acquiescence and hence the need for cover up by the Americans.
The "Four Pillars" banks are apparently now the "big five" banks with the "millionaires' factory", Macquarie Bank added to the list. Five pillars? I've always thought of them as the Four Pilferers or Four Pillagers. Can ScoMo (assuming he's still around ) have a crack at the equally amoral big insurance companies next budget? Keith Parsons Newcastle Trickle-down economics? The reality is more like a deluge Thank you to Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison for demonstrating the difference between the real and normal trickle-down effects. Normal: Give tax cuts of $65.4 billion over 10 years to companies; no complaints by companies and nothing trickles down for ordinary taxpayers.

Real: Impose tax of $6.2 billion over four years on banks; banks threaten huge ad campaign and pass on full tax to their customers. More a deluge than trickle down. Will Mrongovius Paddington I have always believed that our present banking problems are the result of the sale of the government-owned Commonwealth Bank, which was the people's bank and therefore the moderating factor in banking. Most employees had their accounts there from school days when Commonwealth Bank officials came to schools to start savings accounts for students and collect deposits. The other banks were for businesses (and a few snobs). And who made this sale? Paul Keating and the Labor Party, while posing as usual as the hope of the people. Without this sale there would be no big four, but certainly a very profitable government-owned business adding to government income.

Jim Henderson Summer Hill Remember the mothers who mourn for lost children On Mother's Day on Sunday please spare a thought for the damanggayirna, the mothers who are in mourning for their child and for whom Mother's Day will be poignantly painful. Thank you to the people of an isolated part of central Australia whose Wambaya language gives us this name. Practically no other language recognises our bereft status by honouring us with a title of loss, akin to widow or widower. Thank you also to David Astle, the super-sleuth wordsmith, for discovering this rare gem. May damanggayirna everywhere find strength this Mother's Day to honour their departed offspring and their once-active role as a mother. Kathryn Bennett East Maitland

On Mother's Day, as you are being pampered by your children, please spare a thought for Australia's 1.6 million dairy cows who are all mothers too. Unlike us, however, most of their babies will have been killed in their first week of life just so their milk can be sold for profit. The "lucky" calves who are allowed to live are retained for herd replacement since most dairy cows are slaughtered at around five years of age when their milk supply declines. Isn't it time for us mothers to take a stand against this heartless abuse of our "sisters" by pledging never again to buy dairy? How would any of us like to be treated this way? Jenny Moxham Monbulk (Vic) Why universities find themselves in the financial crosshairs Why universities find themselves in the financial crosshairs Your editorial notes the proposed funding cuts to universities but does not explain why the Coalition is running with a policy so much at odds with the prime minister's previous calls for a smart and innovative society ("Government prepares for long university battle", May 12). It would be reasonable for the Treasurer to classify university funding as good debt, on the basis that education is the key to growth in modern knowledge-based economies, but unfortunately for the Coalition, polls have shown that the better educated are less likely to vote for right-wing parties.

The ANU's Professor Ian McAllister has reported that Labor and the Greens each outpolled the Coalition among bachelor degree holders under 30, and their majorities increased among those holding postgraduate degrees. The government may have doubts whether enough youthful idealists turn into pragmatic conservatives in middle age, and this could explain why universities are in the financial crosshairs. James Moore Kingsgrove Let's swap lite for full strength So the new school funding plan in the budget may not deliver on its promised funding ("Education chiefs slam PM's school funding plan", May 12). So should Gonski 2.0 now be called, say, Gonski 0.8? We've had much talk of this budget being "Labor lite". But drill down a little into its various measures and we see that quite a number of its policies fall well short of Labor's original offerings, and not just in education. We have Medicare lite, NDIS lite, NBN lite, climate lite, energy lite, VET lite, CSIRO lite, university lite, foreign aid lite, and the list of such shortfalls goes on and on. This government can't claim much credit for tentatively starting down these paths well behind Labor. We need full strength rather than "lite" commitment and funding to properly meet all these needs. Handouts to the big end of town simply don't cut it.

Chris Danckwerts Turramurra Rigour lacking in selection process Eman Sharobeem arrives at ICAC on Friday. Credit:James Alcock I agree with Col Nicholson. That it has taken 10 years for Eman Sharobeem to be exposed does not "say much for the rigour of the initial job selection process" in the Immigrant Women's Health Service. (Letters, May 12). Unfortunately, the same could be said about another sector also receiving public funds, namely local government. After all, audits to verify qualifications of staff are not necessarily done because, unlike all other Australian jurisdictions (except Tasmania), internal audit is not a required function in our councils.

And there does not appear to be any guarantee that the qualifications of job applicants were verified before the appointment in the first place. Anne Wagstaff Oatley Businesses sending powerful message Alan Joyce hit with a pie during an event in Perth on Tuesday. Credit:Channel 7 News David Lloyd believes that Alan Joyce does not have the right to use the money of investors in Qantas to promote marriage equality (Letters, May 12). My guess is that it probably cost the investors of the more than 30 companies whose chief executive officers sent a joint letter to the prime minister asking him to legislate for same-sex marriage not a bean, but if in the unlikely event it could cost each individual investor the price of a cup of coffee for any subsequent expense, I would think it money well spent by these businesses sending a powerful message promoting fairness, equality and dignity for all Australians.

Max Fischer Scarborough I presume "frequent pier points" are out of the question for the gentleman with the predilection for lemon meringue pie for expressing, albeit half-baked, his corporate complaints? Cleveland Rose Dee Why The right to speak out "We live in a democracy. We're allowed to talk, we're allowed to be vocal, we're allowed to say what we believe," the chief executive officer of Qantas, Alan Joyce, said following his pie-in-face encounter (Letters, May 12).

Please, Mr Joyce, tell that to Penny Sharpe, MLC! She intends to introduce a bill in the NSW Parliament that promises fines of up to $12,500 and up to 12 months' jail, for persons who have the audacity to stand outside abortion clinics in protest or prayer, or offer free counselling or pregnancy assistance. Henk Verhoeven Beacon Hill On Thursday in Sydney a vote in the NSW Parliament was taken to reaffirm that abortion was a crime. It was historic because Parliament has not troubled itself with the issue for decades. It should have been front page news that in 2017 a majority of men had decided that no NSW woman had the human right to control her own body. It should have been front page news of the Sydney Morning Herald that NSW will keep punishing women for needing an abortion even though other parts of Australia have decriminalised abortion. Many men and women in NSW express surprise that abortion is a crime in NSW. They would know nothing of this week's debate if they relied on your paper. Sandra Rogers Glebe

Battlefield memorial I was very interested to read in today's In Memoriam section that the family of Temora boy, Private 3007 Victor Thomas Irwin, killed in action on this day at the Second Battle of Bullecourt, took the time to write the commemoration. Like Victor's family, we know the pain of having a young man killed in action with no known grave. In our case, it is Tumut born Private 2995B Harry Wilkinson who was killed on the first day of that awful battle, aged 26. His family may wish to know that there is a way to permanently remember Victor. The community of Bullecourt has erected Cross Memorial which overlooks the battlefield. The memorial commemorates only the missing Diggers who were killed on this battlefield and who have no known grave. The community allows permanent bronze plaques to be placed on the memorial once positive evidence is produced and a suitable plaque is donated. In Harry's case it was attached on Anzac Day a few years back. Geoff Lewis Raglan Jackman's no opera singer, but he does a fair anthem

I agree with John Bullivant (Letters, May 11). The choice of performer is vital for any rendition of the anthem. A croaky-voiced country and western singer strumming a guitar a few years ago at Randwick races delivered a cringe-worthy rendition. However, I do not believe the anthem should only be performed by opera singers or the military, as the two best I have heard have been Julie Anthony and Hugh Jackman. Ray Alexander Moss Vale Anna and the banking

Isn't it beautifully ironic that the former Labor premier of Queensland is now representing the banks, and very passionate and articulate she is. Has she changed sides? Say it ain't so, Anna. Coral Button North Epping Grass is not so greener Friends and relatives in America have discussed with me the possibility of their moving to Australia to avoid the ravages of Donald Trump. In reply, I send them a few articles about the incompetence, hypocrisy, greed and prevarications of our own politicians. That puts an end to any talk about relocating. Richard Keyes Enfield

Testing times required By all means drug test politicians (Letters, May 12). But the very first test should be of their IQs. Jo McGahey Belrose Postscript In Australian media there is a shorthand for two beloved institutions: "Aunty" for the ABC and "Granny" for the Sydney Morning Herald. Both old girls had a difficult week this past week. "Aunty" for the death of one of her beloved sons, broadcaster Mark Colvin who died on Thursday. Even before his final message to his 103,000 Twitter followers was broadcast to the world, as instructed at 1pm on the day of his death, we had received messages of condolence from readers. For many Sydneysiders, the sincere sadness was reminiscent of the death of ABC broadcaster Andrew Olle in 1995. There's something about the intimacy of a voice you hear every day that makes you feel they are part of the family, was the tone from the Fairfax readers who wrote about Colvin. Meanwhile "Granny" had a tough time too. It's likely those of us who love her heard about industrial action here following the announcement of job cuts to our newsroom. This is a worldwide phenomenon: cuts to print newsrooms. We know. But we appreciate the sentiment expressed by rusted-on readers  as most letter writers are  whatever side of the picket line you were on. Perhaps Barbara Butt of Newport said it best: "During the strike by many of the Herald's staff the news still came to us as usual but it was not the same. All the views of the journalists upon whom many Herald readers rely and who almost become our friends, whether we like their particular views or not, were missing. On Thursday when we opened our papers the familiar faces had returned. It was as though our friends had all been away and it was such a pleasure to see them home again."
The men's rights movement is one of the brightest stars in One Nation's constellation of support, right up there with the Polaris of the anti-vaxxers and the Sirius of the anti-Halal brigade. The men's rights activists (MRAs) form a disparate but vocal coalition with strong lobbying power  along with the One Nation connection, they have close links to the LNP's George Christensen and the former Family First party, which is now integrated into the Australian Conservatives, headed by Cory Bernardi. Bernardi was condemned in February for tweeting a link to an article by a prominent American MRA, Daryush Valizadeh, known for proclaiming that rape should be legalised on private property (he later claimed he was being "satirical"). The precise influence of MRAs over the government is difficult to gauge, but given its strong links to the crossbench, and the crossbench's elevated importance in the current parliament, its agenda could easily become a part of any deals cut. And when you dig a little into the fact-free wonderland of the MRAs, where women are both witches who abandon their families, and little bitches who moan when they're punished for it, that prospect is terrifying.

The MRAs hate the Family Court. They believe it is biased against fathers. They despise what they say is the influence of the "domestic violence industry" on the family justice system  the same influence that has just achieved the announced ban on cross-examination of victims (the Women's Legal Service first made this recommendation in 2011). MRAs insist women frequently perjure themselves with false accusations of domestic violence against their ex-partners, and they face no consequences for their perjury. Despite the explicit direction at the heart of the Family Law Act requiring judges to consider shared parenting time when making custody orders, MRAs insist dads are forced into a legal position where they have to beg to see their own children. 'You can't tell me women don't lie' They link the highly emotive issue of male suicide rates to the family court system, and to the child support system.

The high male suicide rate is a national crisis, but it's unlikely the MRAs will ever make a dent in it  chiefly because they do not promote men's rights as much as they seek to abrogate the rights of women. Sue Price, the spokeswoman for a group called the Men's Rights Agency, told me the incidence of women lying to get AVOs against their former partners was growing. "You can't tell me women don't lie, of course they do," she said when contacted by phone this week. "The majority of people who do tell lies are women. That's been confirmed by surveys into the NSW judicial system and also the Queensland magistrate." I requested she send me evidence of these surveys, and Ms Price emailed two men's rights lobbying documents.

A 'weapon of revenge' The first document claimed "Unfortunately, people are being encouraged to complain about the most minor of slights and even encouraged into making false allegations" and that "the domestic violence industry that promotes 'women as victims of male patriarchy' is playing a significant role in separating families". The document also stated: "There is serious speculation from the legal profession that only 5 to 10 per cent of [Apprehended Violence Order] applications are genuine. Other whistleblowers who work in the industry confirm these figures but are unable to come forward for fear of retaliation against their families and losing their employment." Ms Price also emailed documents that focus on the male victims of domestic violence  a common tactic of the movement, despite its insistence that it is the feminist-domestic-violence-complex that claims victimhood. Even the CEO of the more moderate men's rights group, Dads In Distress, claims AVOs are used by women as a "weapon of revenge".
Chilled ramen noodles with cured salmon. Credit:Pat Scala This insulation from discrimination, in a contrary kind of way, was part of the fuel for Kornhauser's reaction to the lunch. She decided to join Rotary and set about changing the culture. Two years after that first lunch she was president of the Albert Park branch and had started Women in Rotary. She sent a 10-page report to every board member arguing that Rotary should take the same approach as ASIC, which had set companies the target of reaching 20 per cent board representation by women. Streat's chickpea tofu. Credit:Pat Scala Later, she heard on the grapevine that one board member dismissed the report with the prediction that "she'll roll over and die soon enough".

In fact Women in Rotary is now Australia-wide (and in many countries around the world) and the number of women members has grown to an average 23 per cent Australia and 28 per cent in Kornhauser's district, up from 17 per cent five years earlier. Kerry Kornhauser lunches at Streat in Collingwood. Credit:Pat Scala She's happy to admit though, that her overnight successes often take a while. When Kornhauser started Rotary's International Women's Day breakfast in 2012, (Martians & Venusians in the work place) about two weeks before the event she thought she would be footing the bill for over 150 tickets, yet to sell. These days, the charity sees the annual breakfast as one of its best marketing tools and key in efforts to shift its image away from a stuffy-old men's club. "I didn't really know about gender diversity. I remember a girlfriend saying she had this job about diversity in the workplace, I had to ask what that meant," she says.

While she says she had some experience of the rougher side of life, she had never seen the kind of disadvantage that she now works with. Recently, she visited a program at Swinburne University for teenage mothers, with classes set up so that the young women can bring their babies. "I walked in there and I'd never seen a 14-year-old with a baby before. You can read about it but it's not the same. My daughter's just had her first baby and she's 30." Kornhauser has a good rapport with her daughter, a social worker specialising in family violence who has worked in Africa, Papua New Guinea and remote parts of Australia. "I use all the wrong language, I use marketing speak and she's continually telling me off. She's very supportive and I run ideas past her, we brainstorm. She's working at the coal face so it's very useful."

Kornhauser enthuses about the Swinburne program, dismissing critics who say the babies will interfere with learning. "If they can't bring their babies, if they have to pay for childcare, they won't come at all. This way, they're getting education, they're meeting peers, supporting each other. This is what we need more of, things that break the cycle." It's her passion for smaller scale charities with a practical focus that informed Kornhauser's decision to eat at Collingwood's Cromwell Street cafe for lunch. The light-filled space in a restored 1860s manor is run by Streat, a charity providing hospitality training for disadvantaged young people. I enjoy chickpea tofu while Kornhauser enthuses over the salmon ramen. Crusty bread from the onsite artisan bakery is wickedly good. Much of Kornhauser's charity work focuses on young women. She is heavily involved with Bridge of Hope, a charity that supports young women coming out of institutionalised care. When they turn 18 and are no longer resident in group homes or foster care, the women are largely left to fend for themselves, with often disastrous results. "They're put up in a hotel for about a week and the sharks start circling straight away."

One of the problems faced by many of the young women is that they come out of care with no documents to prove their identity. Bridge of Hope is working with banks to set up temporary accounts to allow payments from Centrelink and elsewhere. It won't fix everything but it's concrete practical help. It's a good illustration of Kornhauser's approach: to look at big, complex, often tragic situations and break them down into a set of problems with achievable solutions. Last year she went to a World Health Organisation meeting on trachoma and was shocked to learn Australia is the only First World country to still have the blinding disease. She approached Rotary to get involved. "We don't have millions for the surgery and the medical side, but WHO has broken it up into surgery, antibiotics, face and environment. A couple of thousand buys a washing machine, one branch could raise enough for that, the soap and face washing packs are not expensive." She's also on the board of Safe Futures, which runs refuges for survivors of family violence, and a school to help children caught up in this trauma. After talking to the police about some of the challenges involved, the group is fundraising to buy cameras to install outside women's houses. Police don't have the resources to respond quickly enough every time a perpetrator breaches court orders by coming to the house, but they can use video evidence. At 62 and comfortably off, there are no doubt plenty of other things Kornhauser could be doing with her time, something friends and family occasionally point out, despite their support for her various causes.

But she has often strayed from the expected path for a nice middle-class girl. Kornhauser sheepishly says she was "not the ideal student" attending several different schools and getting through to year 12 by the skin of her teeth. She once told her mother she had "civvies day" at school, only to wag and head into Monash University for a demonstration. Unluckily for her she ended up in a front-page photo the next day. And the Gs on her early school reports were not G for good. Leaving school with no great passion for any kind of work she decided a secretary could have a glamorous life and travel the globe. But the reality did not suit. "I was fired from my first job, I deserved to be. I'd been at a party all night, and said that I'd been interstate and the plane was late. The boss checked up." Kornhauser is also on the board of Violence Free Families and is always alert to how she could be helping the various causes she supports. Kornhauser's response to recently being recently awarded an Order of Australia was at first to think it might be a hoax. But having got over the shock she is hopeful it will "open doors". As we finish lunch she talks about how she looks for the various ways people could make a contribution to different projects. "You never know, one day I could be looking for someone who knows how to write." She grins charmingly and it's easy to see why it's hard to refuse Kerry Kornhauser.
As the government and the military community searches for ways to reduce the rate of military suicides  which is up to double the rate of the community average in the case of younger veterans  there are calls for better co-ordination among veterans groups and also between them and the government. The message has evidently been heard in Canberra, which has promised money for pressing needs such as fixing the creaking and much maligned DVA computer system. The generation-old system is blamed for delays in processing claims, adding to the angst of already struggling veterans. The 300,000 DVA clients are covered by three different lots of legislation depending on when they discharged. Some veterans have different injuries that fall under different legislation. The computer system, advocates say, simply can't cope with that, and chaos follows. A client satisfaction survey released this week by the department proudly found that 83 per cent of veterans were satisfied with the DVA overall. But this had actually slipped six points since the last survey in 2014 because the bulk of dissatisfaction was among younger veterans, who are the ones making new claims under the newer legislation. Just 49 per cent of veterans under 45 were satisfied, while 31 per cent were dissatisfied and 20 per cent neither.

"There is a toxic relationship and a distrust between veterans, and especially veterans with mental health issues, and the department of veterans affairs, and the ADF," Camac says. A 2013 review by the Australian Public Service Commission found that "the environment in which DVA operates has changed at a much faster pace than the speed with which the department has allowed itself to change". Delays and knockbacks by the DVA, many of which end up in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, have been blamed for exacerbating mental health conditions and even causing suicides. Camac says one of the issues that put his old comrade on New Year's Day " into a really dark place" was that he was fighting DVA over a claim. It has since been accepted. Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan acknowledges that delays have added to veterans' angst but says he and the department are working to fix it. "There is no doubt that the waiting times for claims has been one of the biggest stressors and one of the key pieces of feedback that I've got as minister as something that needs to be fixed so we are very focussed on doing this," he says.

In the meantime, the government has introduced "non-liability health care", which allows anyone who has served so much as one day in the ADF quick and free treatment for major mental health problems irrespective of whether the illness was caused by their service. This program was expanded to the tune of $33.5 million over four years in this week's budget. Veterans and their families can also get immediate, free counselling around the clock from the Veterans and Veterans Families Counselling Service. Tehan says they have "made inroads" on fixing the IT system. The budget included $13.5 million over the next year to clear the current backlog of claims and improve processing times, and $166 million over four years to improve the IT system and improve business processes  though the latter money will come from within Defence's budget. The government is also working on programs to help veterans find work after military life. A study by the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention has found that veterans who were unemployed or on total and permanent incapacity pensions were 3.3 times more likely to attempt suicide than those in paid work, according to Katelyn Kerr, a psychologist at the institute. But the DVA remains a devilishly complex system. Many veterans turn to specially trained and registered advocates to help them navigate it. Daniel Spain, who medically discharged from the army in 2013 and has had mental health problems and suicide attempts, is one of the few younger ones.

"Somehow the message is not getting across," he says. "I've got two guys going through medical discharge at the moment. They were of the impression they were going to be destitute after discharge." Taking on the DVA But sometimes the DVA simply fights claims to the bitter end. Veterans who've fought and won say it was downright aggressive and adversarial. Andrea Josephs, an Army veteran and mother of four daughters, says she "had to fight step by step" and recently had her case settled ahead of an Administrative Appeals Tribunal. "For the last nine years I've had nearly every doctor including medico-legals [doctors registered with DVA to assess injuries] saying my impairments were totally permanent. There would be no recovery from my conditions."

She served in East Timor and was sexually assaulted by two male soldiers  one of whom was charged and convicted  while in Australia. She first attempted suicide in 2002 and has tried several more times since then, while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental and physical illnesses. Andrea Josephs during her service in East Timor. The DVA argued that Josephs' incapacity was partly due to physical injuries rather than solely mental illness  which, due to a complicated set of rules, would have meant she was paid less money. Documentation provided by Josephs shows that DVA through its lawyers repeatedly quizzed an orthopaedics doctor about the impact of her knee and spinal injuries in a line of questioning she describes as "coercive". "They load their questions to get the response they want. Thank goodness [the doctor] has some kind of integrity."

She says she was lucky to have a highly experienced advocate, Rod Thompson. "You can see how hard the department worked to come up with some reason to have it rejected," Thompson says. "I've probably seen this level of belligerence only once or twice before in more than 30 cases that went to the [tribunal]." Thompson, a Gulf War veteran, says DVA does not have enough coalface staff to effectively process claims. On Friday, he had just resolved a three-month effort to get a Queensland veteran a $100 walking stick. At one point, the supplier offered to deliver half the stick followed by the other half later. Thompson ended up going to the Commonwealth Ombudsman. "Magically the stick arrived right after that," he says.

Tehan says the government had taken action to make DVA "less adversarial" by reducing the claim processing times and making it easier for veterans to appeal DVA decisions. Veterans united How much of the criticism is fair is subject to a wide range of opinions. Some younger veterans including Spain say DVA basically does a good job and it is often the ex-services organisations themselves should stop squabbling and one-upping each other and start focussing on outcomes for veterans. David Jamison, national president of the Defence Force Welfare Association, agrees much of the venom towards the DVA on social media doesn't really help veterans, though he says the department needed to be more understanding that people lashing out were often in serious distress. "They're all trying to do the right thing, but they're a bureaucracy so they close ranks and defend themselves," he says.

Either way, the dissatisfaction clearly plays a role in the generation of grassroots groups and new ex-services organisations. The group Overwatch is perhaps the most powerful demonstration of how the confluence of social media's arrival and waves of veterans from East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq has empowered the ex-service community. Overwatch was formed in 2013 as a private Facebook group by four Army veterans who'd had a spate of suicides in their close circle. Its members now total more than 5000, says Karen Court, who sits on the group's executive committee and is the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and the wife of a current ADF member. Between that network, a 1800 telephone number and Facebook, they keep a lookout for veterans in trouble and send someone around to visit or, if there is no one local, get in touch another way. They've done about 100 such responses in the past six months, Court says. She stresses that they don't take themselves for professionals  though senior co-ordinators all have mental health first aid training  and their policy is to call 000 if there is an imminent threat. The power is in the comfort veterans get from talking to other veterans, she says.
A permanent tax rate of almost 50 per cent for the highest-earning Australians is on the cards as the government looks to negotiate with Labor and the Senate crossbench to fully fund the $22 billion National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Labor's federal budget reply, released on Thursday, would see people earning more than $180,000 permanently face a 49.5 per cent tax rate, including the 0.5 per cent increase in the Medicare levy announced by the Turnbull government and make permanent a 2 per cent "temporary budget repair levy" that the Coalition is determined to expire on June 30.

On Friday, Treasurer Scott Morrison attacked Labor leader Bill Shorten for "failing to come to the middle ground,"as the government looks to shape negotiations with the Senate crossbench.

"It's very disappointing that [he] has chosen to play politics with this. It's not our first preference to do it this way, we tried to do it with savings," Mr Morrison said.
Outgoing Defence boss Dennis Richardson has warned that the jailing of the Christian governor of Jakarta for blasphemy may represent the first signs of Islamic extremist influence in Indonesian politics.

Mr Richardson, who retired on Friday after nearly half a century at centre of Australian foreign and security policy, stressed it was too early to say whether extremism was entering Indonesia's traditionally pluralist politics but said the question was "at the sharp end of what we should be watching".

The Defence Department secretary, who has also served as ASIO chief, Washington Ambassador and Foreign Affairs head, also warned that any shift to electronic voting would force Australia to "invest enormously" to safeguard its elections against state-sponsored hacking.

In his speech to the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Richardson mounted a strong defence of the US alliance in the age of Donald Trump and took a swipe at commentators such as former prime minister Paul Keating who have argued Australia should distance itself from the US as China rises.
The Turnbull government's hopes of overhauling school funding have received a boost with the Greens declaring they intend to seize the "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to create a fairer system.

Greens education spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young also slammed Labor for claiming the government was cutting $22 billion from school funding and defending deals that have benefited the Catholic school sector.

Labor hit back by accusing the left-wing party of preparing to "sell out" public school children by doing a deal with the Coalition.

The government could pass its school funding changes through the Senate and into law with the support of the Greens and just one other senator.
In 2013, a selfie with other political leaders had the then Danish PM accused of childishness. In 2017, she tells Tim Elliott, children really are her focus. In December 2013, then prime minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, was in Johannesburg at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela when she found herself seated between US president Barack Obama and British prime minister David Cameron. Even for a head of state, this is not an everyday occurrence, and so Thorning-Schmidt got Obama and Cameron to pose with her for a selfie. "It was the first selfie I had ever taken," she tells me. "I didn't really think it was such a big deal." Helle Thorning-Schmidt. Credit:Louie Douvis Other people did. The incident, inevitably dubbed SelfieGate, plunged the Twittersphere into a boiling cauldron of umbrage, with thousands expressing their outrage that three heads of state, attending a memorial service for one of the 20th century's towering figures, would behave like a bunch of teenagers. There was even the suggestion that Obama and Cameron had been flirting with Thorning-Schmidt. Leading the charge of the high horses was the New York Post, which described Thorning-Schmidt as a "Danish tart", a "blonde bimbo", and a "hellcat". "It turned out to be a really good thing," Thorning-Schmidt says, when I meet her in the very un-Danish Fairfax Media canteen. "It was a connector to voters. I'd be handing out pamphlets and people would come up wanting a selfie."

Thorning-Schmidt was Denmark's prime minister from 2011 to 2015, the first woman to lead the country, with her centre-left Social Democrats at the head of an unwieldy four-party bloc. Since 2016, however, she has been CEO of Save the Children, an international non-governmental organisation that provides relief and support for children in developing countries. Both jobs are political, the main difference being the amount of time Thorning-Schmidt now spends travelling. The day before we meet she had been in the small town of Ceduna, in South Australia, where she discussed domestic violence and school attendance rates with local Aboriginal women. ("I also ate kangaroo tail," she says. "It looked a bit weird, but it tasted great.") Before Ceduna, she was in Yunan, in China, meeting government officials and visiting rehabilitation facilities. China and Ceduna are a long way apart, both in distance and material need. "The way they live in Yunan is something we haven't seen in many years," she says. "But the thinking is exactly the same. We strongly believe that the first five years is perhaps the most important time in a child's life, because it's when they learn things, when they should be getting good nutritious food, and have access to proper health services." Now 50, Thorning-Schmidt is six feet tall, with high cheekbones and a jawline like a Viking adze. Her hair is long and blonde and elegantly tousled. She has a master's degree in public policy and is fluent in three languages. Her blend of gravitas and glamour is perfect for her Save the Children role, which involves not so much assessing need as spreading the message. "I am there to talk to people, and be witness to the reality on the ground." It helps to bring a little of that reality back home. Last year, Thorning-Schmidt visited the Zaatari Camp in Jordan, home to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees. There she met Suhaib, a 13-year-old boy who was attending a Save the Children "child-friendly space"  a separate tent, essentially, where kids can safely play and relax. When Suhaib first arrived he had been drawing tanks, guns and bombings. Finally, after four months, he drew a heart. In a world "where poverty is often reduced to numbers", Thorning-Schmidt says, Suhaib's drawing was a ray of light.
FLANNERY CHARGED

Quentin Flannery, heir to an $800 million-plus coal fortune, has seen better times in recent months, from marrying his new wife Kim, soaking up the delights of Disneyland and buying a new, designer mansion in the eastern suburbs. But last Friday night things went south when he was searched and arrested by police outside the Tilbury Hotel in Woolloomooloo. He was charged with drug possession, which police will allege comprised of two bags of cocaine totalling 1.53 grams. PS' attempts to contact Flannery, who is the son of Queensland businessman Brian Flannery, have gone unanswered. The matter is due for mention in the Downing Centre on May 23. Flannery junior is listed as a director of his father's property development company KTQ. Late on Thursday night his Facebook and Linkedin profiles vanished. Flannery was caught up in the same police operation that ensnared Cronulla chairman Damien Keogh, who immediately stood down following the charges. As the Herald's Andrew Webster revealed on Thursday, an ABC film crew was shadowing police that night for an upcoming documentary with the working title "Keeping Australia Safe", which will no doubt be compulsory viewing in the Flannery household.

Moses Obeid, Eddie Obeid's middle son. Credit:Rob Homer

LIFE OF MOSES

It's good to know that Moses Obeid's legal travails haven't challenged his and wife Nikki's miraculous financial skills. As a Supreme Court judge once said of the couple, they exemplify the doctrine: "How to live well on nothing a year." Mrs Obeid, the former proprietor of hairdressing salon Hairlarious and now the maker of scented candles, has been spotted zipping around Sydney's eastern suburbs in a flashy, late model Porsche. Meanwhile hubby Moses will be in court next week over 16 counts of lying to the ICAC, while he and father dearest Eddie face a committal hearing later this month in relation to the family's $30 million windfall over a coal deal.
Cupid must have used his diamond-tipped arrows when it came to finding love for three of Sydney's wealthiest chaps of a, ahem, certain vintage.

On Saturday, millionaire car importer and yachtie Neville "Croaky" Crichton, 74, will tie the knot with his glamorous and much younger fiancee Nadi Hasandedic, formerly the "boutique directeur" at Christian Dior.

Amber Symond, Nadi Hasandedic and Marly Boyd. Credit:Belinda Rolland

It will be a lavish affair, kicking off at Sydney University's Quadrangle in the afternoon before moving into the Great Hall for a no-expense spared reception, for which the groom has dropped $20,000 to spruce up the toilets, on top of another couple of hundred thousand dollars on the wedding itself, which could top $1 million.

But he can certainly afford it; Crichton's fortune is estimated to be topping $400 million. He recently downsized from his harbour-front mansion in Point Piper, selling his digs for $60 million and moving to a smaller new pad just along the shoreline.
While faceless men in politics usually cause an unwelcome stir in the corridors of power, the work of one faceless man in the Australian fashion industry evokes such a visceral response he brings people to tears without saying a word.

After more than 25 years in the business, creative director and stylist Mark Vassallo is considered the Martin Scorsese of fashion. In his trademark black outfits and quiet demeanour, he is one of the most sought after creative minds behind the seams and behind the scenes.

Fashion stylist and creative director Mark Vassallo with models Tiphany Million (back left), Verna Reina and Meg Breaker (front). Credit:Simon Lekias for The Sydney Morning Herald

He's also just as crafty as the Canberra types, having gotten his start in fashion by lying about his age.

"I started at Vogue when I was super young but I actually lied about my age because I was so young. For some reason I thought telling them I was 30 when I was actually 23 would help me get the job," he said. "And it did."
Rosie Wallace campaigns for reproductive rights. Rosie says she wasn't influenced by outside pressure and has never regretted her decision, but she felt the social stigma was difficult to bear. "I was ashamed to talk about it for such a long time, I didn't make it known that I'd had an abortion." These days, Rosie is more outspoken about her choice, and is a public supporter of reproductive rights. "Now that I think about it I feel empowered by my choice to have an abortion because I made the decision that I wasn't going to become a mother. I put my education first and I stand by that decision." Stigma aside, the scarcity and resulting prohibitive cost of abortion is putting women's health at risk  particularly in Queensland.

She needed chemotherapy and radiation for her breast cancer. But the hospital wouldn't proceed with that treatment if she remained pregnant because of the effects on the foetus. But nor would they provide her with an abortion. Dr Fiona Mack In November 2016, both the Townsville and Rockhampton Dr Marie clinics were on the verge of ceasing their surgical abortion services due to the unsustainable costs of overheads. They were saved in a last minute reprieve by Queensland Health. Their loss would have meant even fewer options for people, like Rosie, with unplanned pregnancies in regional areas  and no surgical abortions outside the south-east corner of the state. Thanks to Queensland's century-old abortion laws, the fear of prosecution means an abortion is all but impossible to obtain in a public hospital, except for a minority of usually late-term cases due to complications in wanted pregnancies. So women are forced to seek out private providers, which are both costly and scarce  and often booked out. At 13 weeks a surgical termination can cost up to $890 in Rockhampton or Townsville for Medicare card holders. At 15 weeks, the maximum cost skyrockets to $1500. People without Medicare cards can expect to pay double. Having to wait for an appointment can become a matter of being able to afford it or not.

Dr Fiona Mack, a Brisbane GP specialising in women's health, recalled a particularly disturbing case of a 35-year-old woman with a planned pregnancy who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer at a Queensland public hospital. "She needed chemotherapy and radiation for her breast cancer. But the hospital wouldn't proceed with that treatment if she remained pregnant because of the effects on the foetus. But nor would they provide her with an abortion. "Instead, the hospital offered the woman a total mastectomy of her affected breast, and said she could undertake chemotherapy and radiotherapy after she'd carried her pregnancy to term  which Dr Mack says would have been a substandard treatment for her particular cancer. The woman's other option was to seek an abortion privately and then return to hospital to receive a breast-conserving lumpectomy of the tumour, followed by immediate chemotherapy and radiotherapy. But the prohibitive cost of a private abortion almost prevented her from accessing one. "Her gynaecologist called me at a women's health clinic where I offer medical abortion to help her arrange termination of her pregnancy because she did not have the funds required for that treatment through the usual private clinic avenues."

Dr Mack believes Queensland has a long way to go before abortion is accessible and normalised, and that cultural change along with decriminalisation will be key. "A change in the law is a huge start. But it's going to be another generation before it's not an issue at all," she says. The issue is not limited to Queensland. The NSW Legislative Council on Thursday voted down a private member's bill to decriminalise abortion  but most Australian states and territories have significant barriers to accessing terminations that go beyond the law. A complex combination of legality, geographical issues, timing and seesawing costs contribute to the difficulties in obtaining an abortion, especially for women in regional areas. In many states, providers are unable or unwilling to perform abortions after certain (still legal) gestations, due to staff shortages and costs. That means Tasmanians with a pregnancy after 14 weeks must travel to Victoria. For many Queenslanders with pregnancies over 16 weeks, it's cheaper to travel to Sydney for a termination. And people in New South Wales (and other states) with pregnancies post-20 weeks often travel to Victoria, where terminations can be accessed up until 24 weeks.

"Geography is a huge barrier for a lot of pregnant people and it's a huge barrier generally for health services," says Sian Tooker, a counsellor at Children by Choice. In the Northern Territory, where medical abortions have only recently been legalised, women can access surgical abortions at little cost  but only two hospitals are able to provide the procedure  one in Alice Springs and one in Darwin. How women will access medical abortions remains to be seen. In Western Australia, abortion is available through both the public and private systems, but clinics are mostly in Perth. A medical abortion at one private Perth clinic costs $650, while a surgical abortion up to 13 weeks starts at $550. Even in South Australia, where abortion can be accessed at no cost, the availability is mostly limited to hospitals clustered around Adelaide, meaning regional South Australians have to travel. But one service (not available in SA or, at present, NT) is bridging the gap in an attempt to make medical abortions more affordable, and accessible. The Tabbot Foundation, which started in September 2015, offers medical abortions via post for a flat fee of $250 along with a phone consultation with a doctor (and, for legal reasons in NSW and Qld, a psychologist).

Tabbot Foundation Medical Director Dr Paul Hyland says Australia is falling behind the world, with only approximately 20 per cent of abortions performed medically. But he says a medical abortion avoids the need for surgery and can be done in the privacy of a person's home. "It's one of the most appropriate medical services that can be provided by telemedicine because a physical examination is not necessary," Dr Hyland says. Dr Marie also offers a telehealth medical abortion service for around $330. Dr Hyland says the service struggles to market itself, because the Therapeutic Goods Administration has strict limitations on advertising abortifacients. But one day he hopes the foundation may provide free-of-charge medical abortions to women around the country. The Tabbot foundation is ironically named after Tony Abbott, who in his time as Health Minister blocked the import of mifepristone, one of the drugs used in medical abortions (otherwise known as RU486).

"When this drug was developed it was the most significant technological advance in women's reproductive health care since the birth control pill, and yet it was prevented from coming into this country by Tony Abbott," Dr Hyland said. "We want women never to forget." Abortion access around Australia New South Wales: Abortion remains in the criminal code, and there are few abortions carried out in public hospitals. While terminations may be cheaper than other states ($410 in one Sydney clinic for a 12 week surgical termination), regional residents are also impacted by a scarcity of services. One regional clinic quoted $440 for a surgical abortion, but didn't offer the procedure past 12 weeks. Women across the state must travel to Victoria for abortions after 20 weeks. ACT: The only state or territory where abortion is completely decriminalised. But medical abortions must be carried out in an accredited facility and can't technically be done at home. However some make the short trip over the border to Queanbeyan to facilitate this  for instance, to access the Tabbot Foundation's telehealth medical service.

Victoria: Limited public provision of terminations, with a 12 week surgical termination costing around $300-500, and medical abortions available at one clinic for $250. One clinic quoted $1000 for a 15 week termination. But most clinics are based in or near Melbourne, disadvantaging regional and rural women. Tasmania: Abortion technically legal up to 16 weeks, and over 16 weeks with the consent of two doctors who believe that the pregnancy represents a risk to the physical or mental health of the person. But people with pregnancies past 14 weeks are referred to clinics in Melbourne. An abortion up to 14 weeks can cost $500. South Australia: Surgical abortions can be accessed for free in a metro public hospital; medical abortions may cost as little as $15. Availability is mostly clustered around Adelaide. Queensland: Only private providers offer abortions, and they are scarce outside Brisbane. At 13 weeks a surgical termination can cost up to $890 in Rockhampton or Townsville for Medicare card holders. At 15 weeks, the maximum cost skyrockets to $1500. People without Medicare cards can expect to pay double. Western Australia: Abortion is available through both the public and private systems, but clinics are mostly in Perth. A medical abortion at one private Perth clinic costs $650, while a surgical abortion up to 13 weeks starts at $550.
Other women felt differently. Asifa and Ghayda, for example, both said they drew equally from a religious and secular feminist framework. Ghayda confessed that she did not believe that all problems can be solved within an Islamic framework because not all problems are strictly Islamic. Asifa is more circumspect when explaining how and why she switches between approaches depending on her audience.

"If Im speaking to a completely secular feminist audience, Im not going to be making Islamic law, faith-based arguments for general topics like womens education or leadership," she said. "But if Im speaking to audience where I know this might be a stumbling block for them for religious reasons, then I need I take on those religious reasons. So then I would speak from a more pro-faith perspective explicitly."

The vast majority of interviewees believed religion was the most effective tool to challenge and change sexism within Muslim communities. Nahida spoke about feminism being one of the key reasons for divine revelation in Islam, and the need to reclaim religious texts previously used for womens oppression.

"I am definitely of the perspective that religion is the key to liberating women  that feminist purpose was its very objective in revelation," she said. Religion does not belong to men, it simply needs to be reclaimed by women to be employed for the very cause that it was introduced: to free the oppressed and bring peacefulness and goodness."

It was not only non-Muslims who viewed Muslim women fighting sexism with scepticism - other Muslims also viewed it with distrust. There was pressure on participants from Muslims and non-Muslims alike to consider themselves either a proper Muslim or someone who fights actively against sexism, but not both. One interviewee, Amina, said: "We were forced to choose  either Islam or human rights. And of course all the secular feminists went with human rights and said, well do without Islam, and all the Islamists took Islam and said, well do without human rights, and there we were in the middle with no name and no program. And at this point now weve managed to make a program, an agenda, a methodology, an epistemology, written books and the position is: we do not accept either/or at all. We have to have full human rights and Islam and thats what you call pro-faith feminism."
The Lord Howe Island Phasmid was once thought to be extinct. Photo: Wolter Peeters. Credit:Wolter Peeters "Explorations to discover new things have driven museums for centuries," says Flemons. "Humans are driven by exploration. Ball's Pyramid is unexplored, unknown. There are not many places left in the world that have treasures like it has." The small boats stop 50 metres from the sea stack, which is too treacherous to offer safe harbour. The crew swims to shore in wetsuits. Up close, the volcanic rock is surprisingly colourful  blushed in shades of pink and yellow. The cliffs are smeared white with the droppings of petrels, terns and shearwaters. Flemons pumps his fist after clambering up the sharp rocks to a narrow platform. He's been dreaming of his first step on the pyramid. In his mind, it has grown into something surreal: a living creature, a lonely figure lingering in the sea. He stares up at the dark, jagged cliffs. Birds wheel in the bright sky. "Ball's Pyramid is a mountain that came from the sea and is going back to the sea, " he says. "It is like an old man, tired out by the ocean trying to wear him out all the time. He is getting to the end but he is still here, for the birds and the phasmids."

"A lonely crag of hardship, beauty, " read the headline in The Sydney Morning Herald, on Wednesday, February 17, 1965. Climbers first reached the summit of Ball's Pyramid on Valentine's Day. Journalist Ben Sandilands broke the news after swimming through shark-infested waters to a waiting boat  displaying more dedication than this reporter might ever muster. The rock has always boasted that strange brew of beauty and danger. Loose stones rattle off the cliffs without warning. Sunset brings a crescendo of screams and sobs from nesting sea birds, ringing out among the black crags. "At night, you wake to find two or three of the birds perched on you, another one or two tucked into your sides for warmth," says Keith Bell, a retired high school teacher who previously reached the summit in 1970 and 1973. Perhaps only 100 people have set foot on Ball's Pyramid. Fewer still have reached the peak. "Landing here is like being cut off from civilisation," he says. Climbers sort out supplies for their stay on Balls Pyramid. Photo: Wolter Peeters. Credit:Wolter Peeters After his second trip to the top, he was descending the north ridge with a partner when Cyclone Kristy struck. They scrambled to shelter in a small cavity in the cliff, about 75 metres above sea level.

"The mouth of the cave became a waterfall of torrential rain," says Bell. "There was a 500-metre ring around the pyramid of spume and white water. We could see birds being dragged off the cliffs by the wind and thrown down into the sea. The bodies of dead birds were all through the water." They were stuck there for several days, before opting to swim through five metre-surf to a waiting boat, leaving behind everything but their Speedos. Bell has been climbing since the age of 16, when he was in the scouts in Sydney. "It is vertical chess," he says. "You are looking up and figuring how can I protect myself, what is going to be the next hold, where can I move to, which is the best way to go." The mystery of the phasmid has only added to the allure of the rock. The insect was long thought extinct, killed off by rats that snuck onto Lord Howe Island in the flotsam of a shipwreck in 1918. But in 1964, a climber brought back from Ball's Pyramid a photograph of a dead phasmid. In subsequent years, several exoskeletons were retrieved from the rock. The big discovery came in 2001, when climbers found a colony of creatures living in a melaleuca bush. In 2003, two phasmids were taken to Melbourne Zoo to start a breeding program for the critically endangered species. They were called Adam and Eve.

Climbing was banned on the rock in 1986, after Ball's Pyramid and Lord Howe Island were World Heritage-listed. Bell had to wait for this Australian Museum expedition, which has received a special exemption to the ban, for a third ascent. This time, he's part of a team of six climbers and "extreme citizen scientists", who have volunteered to assist museum scientists. Together, they unload from the boats barrels of food, water and supplies, and set up base camp on a narrow ridge near the ocean. The climbers make their own camps high on the glowering cliff face, anchoring themselves to the rock with ropes in case they roll in their sleep. Sunset sends seabirds flying in the climbers' faces, as they scour the pyramid for the nocturnal phasmids. A large black centipede in a cranny sinks its fangs into climber Zane Privbbenow, stinging his hand like a wasp's bite. Rock climber Zane Privbbenow pulls up supplies. Photo: Wolter Peeters Credit:Wolter Peeters

He clings to the cliff at night, guided by helmet light while searching with his hands in the scrub and dirt for stick insects. Darkness offers strange consolation. "We were hanging with sheer vertical drops of 400 metres below us and clambering around the edges of the melaleuca," he says. "In some regards, hanging off a rope in the dark and not being able to see further than your hands was an advantage, because you couldn't see the drop down." The science of Ball's Pyramid Australian Museum scientists have been surveying Lord Howe Island and the waters around it since the 1850s, back when field trips had to rely on illustrations to capture the colour and life of specimens. The 2017 expedition to Lord Howe Island and Ball's Pyramid involves more than 30 scientists, specialising in insects, birds, bats, rats and sea creatures. Over three months, they survey the stocks of native fauna and take samples for genetic analysis  to discover more about life on this "land frozen in time".

The $160,000 expedition  timed before the planned eradication of rats from the island in 2018  has been funded by private donors and a grant from the National Geographic Society in the United States. The trip is part of the museum's move back into conducting scientific expeditions, including a 2016 trip to the Solomon Islands in search of giant rats and monkey-faced bats. Executive director Kim McKay says the museum will embark on a major expedition every year for the next five years, to discover new species and a greater understanding of the natural world. "The museum was built off the back of field expeditions, right across Australia and the Pacific. It is very much in our bones," she says. Among the first scientists to arrive on Lord Howe Island in March is Frank Kohler, who specialises in studying the phylogeny and evolution of snails. The Berlin-born senior research scientist has retreating hair, rectangular glasses and a bone-dry sense of humour. Why snails, I ask him. "Well, I had a passion for frogs," he says. "But when I realised that I had to kill them to study them, I didn't want to do it. So that's how I ended up with snails. I don't mind killing them." Two days before departing for Ball's Pyramid, he climbs the highest peak on Lord Howe Island in search of specimens. Mount Gower is tall enough to boast its own microclimate. It's a tough three-hour trek to the 875 metre-high summit, which seems permanently shrouded in mist. The cloud forest on the peak permits only glimpses of Ball's Pyramid in the distance. Two inquisitive roly-poly woodhens follow us along a narrow bush track. A petrel crash-lands into a tree with a thump. "They are not elegant on their legs," Kohler says.

The mist lifts to reveal the 11 kilometre-long crescent-shaped island far below. The popular tourist destination is home to about 350 people and remains relatively isolated, despite being only a two-hour flight from Sydney. Local children gather at the site where scientists exhume a whale skeleton. Photo: Wolter Peeters Credit:Wolter Peeters/Fairfax Media The island is a constant source of scientific activity. "It really is this laboratory of evolution, just off the coast of NSW," says mammalogist Mark Eldridge, principal research scientist for terrestrial vertebrates at the museum. "If you look at the fauna and flora, you can see it has inputs from Australia, New Zealand, Norfolk Island and New Caledonia. Into this melting pot, all these different animals arrived and formed the ecosystem." His team's focus includes the large forest bat  which is really not that large at all. Early one morning, he retrieves a bat from the bottom of a trap and cradles the small furry female in his hands. "It's a mouse with wings," he says.

Scientists also exhume the skeletons of three dense-beaked whales, which died on the island's outer reef in 2011 and were buried in a paddock, to wait until the museum could retrieve the rare find for its collection. Six years later, the skeletons are huddled so close together in the 2.5 metre-deep dirt pit that Eldridge says they're spooning. "Embracing in death," he says. Whale skeletons smell like wet lawn clippings. The scientists pile the bones into the rear of a rental Toyota hatchback. "This is cool," Eldridge says. "I am stuck at a desk most of the time. Now we have the opportunity to get out in the field and get back to what museums are all about  which is going out in the world and studying biodiversity." One of three dense beaked whales buried on the island. Photo: Wolter Peeters Credit:Wolter Peeters "Everything becomes primal when you're on an expedition," he says. Days move slowly for the scientists. They take turns cooking pasta, kidney beans or couscous. One morning, environmental officer Hank Bower, from the Lord Howe Island Board, catches two kingfish and serves up sashimi.

Between meals, they see squalls blowing in from the horizon. One night, a downpour turns the campsite into a shallow lake. "You are very exposed," says Frank Kohler. "There is no shade when the sun shines. No shelter when it rains." High above, the climbers are having a better time of it. Standing on the summit, they see Lord Howe Island shimmering in the distance. Vanessa Wills becomes only the second woman to reach the peak. Climbing is risky and unpredictable  a little like surgery, she says. "You feel like a very small speck on the side of a very big pinnacle. It makes you feel very alive," she says. On the second night of the expedition, she radios down to base camp with good news. She has spotted their first phasmid. The following days bring sightings of a total 17 stick insects at various heights and locations across the pyramid. Under the terms of the museum's exploration licence, they may keep only one phasmid for every 10 they see, so they don't deplete the population. The count becomes more urgent as the week-long quest nears its end.

Wills is exploring a grassy plateau about 150 metres above sea level, when she spies a female phasmid perched on a wide branch. She gently places the 123 millimetre-long insect in a short PVC pipe and seals her inside, along with some melaleuca. In the end, it's the only phasmid they are allowed to keep  Flemons dubs it "the $100,000 insect". He had hoped to find hundreds more but is sanguine. "We were able to demonstrate that they occur broadly over Ball's Pyramid, which was a great outcome for the project and for phasmids," he says. "It means there is potentially a broader population, which could be used for repopulating Lord Howe Island." The lone phasmid will join Melbourne Zoo's breeding program, which has grown to about 700 stick insects, plus separate colonies the zoo has helped start in Bristol and San Diego. Before leaving Ball's Pyramid, scientists make a promising discovery  the female insect is already pregnant. She is named Vanessa, after the climber who finds her. On their last day, Wills and the others jump from the sea stack and swim to a waiting boat. She looks back with sadness and joy, as the rock recedes behind them. "Every day was a struggle, but sleeping on a little ledge several hundred metres above sea level, looking at the stars and seeing the sunrise made me feel more whole," she says. "There is this world of nature and we are really just part of its endless cycle.
Too many surgeons are performing operations that are likely to do more harm than good, a leading orthopaedic surgeon says.

About half of orthopaedic surgical procedures have no scientific evidence from randomised trials proving they work better than non-operative treatment, Ian Harris told a meeting of 1900 surgeons this week.

Professor Ian Harris says some surgeons are doing unnecessary operations. Credit:UNSW

Research showed another 25 per cent are no better than non-surgical alternatives, he said. Yet many of these are still being performed.

Professor Harris, of the University of NSW, said ineffective and potentially harmful operations included knee arthroscopy for arthritis, some forms of spinal surgery for low back pain, Achilles tendon repairs, some shoulder arthroscopic procedures, and wrist and ankle fracture fixations.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has failed to get special leave to appeal to the High Court against the reduced jail sentence given to Mitchell Barbieri, who murdered NSW police officer Bryson Anderson.

On Friday, the High Court refused special leave, making its decision without even waiting to hear from lawyers representing Barbieri.

Murdered: Inspector Bryson Anderson. Credit:Kylie Pitt, Hawkesbury Gazette

Supporters of Inspector Anderson's family gasped and cried and one person called out "joke" when the decision was announced.

Barbieri, 21, was originally sentenced to a maximum term of 35 years behind bars, with a non-parole period of 26 years for murdering the decorated officer in Sydney's north-west.
Australia's only newspaper for children, Crinkling News, has six days to bridge an $80,000 funding gap to ensure its survival.

The Sydney-based weekly paper has just published its 51st issue, which editor Saffron Howden says could be the last if a $200,000 crowdfunding campaign, launched eight days ago, falls short.

"We financed [the paper] ourselves knowing that there was nothing else like this in Australia, but there were plenty of children's newspapers overseas and we thought we needed one here," Ms Howden said.

"We knew we had a limited amount of seed funding and, throughout the life of the paper, we've sought funding through other sources.
Woollahra Council will have its fight against the government's forced mergers heard before the High Court later this year, in a legal showdown that will decide the council's ability to remain a standalone entity.

The High Court granted the council's special leave application in Canberra on Friday morning, further hindering the government's bid to merged Woollahra with neighbouring councils Waverley and Randwick.

Aerial view of Darling Point and Rushcutters Bay. Credit:Bob Pearce

The decision comes on the one-year anniversary of the government's implementation of its merger policy, which saw 44 councils sacked and instantly replaced with 19 new super councils.

Woollahra mayor Toni Zeltzer championed the council's victory on Friday.
Hunstead, 37, admits she will often "drop the balls" while juggling her business and family life. Lately, though, she has kept a fair few in the air. Harper Collins will publish a new edition of her book A Life. A Finger. A Pea Up A Nose this year. She has expanded the business to train parents through non-profit organisations, as well as in corporate workplaces in every capital city. And last month Westpac announced it had partnered with CPR Kids to develop the Rescue Rashie, an innovative design that puts simple CPR instructions on children's swimwear. It was a baby's drowning that galvanised Hunstead to start CPR Kids, and an earlier close call that got her thinking seriously about the idea. "There was a little boy who came into the emergency department who had essentially drowned in his backyard, in a water feature that filled up during heavy rain," she says. He was out of his mother's sight for less than a minute. She found him face down, blue and not breathing. "So she started CPR. She knew what to do." For over an hour, he had no signs of life. Hospital staff eventually got his heart beating again. "He's had a long recovery but is now a completely healthy child," Hunstead says. "If he hadn't had that immediate CPR, and that oxygen going to his brain, he would have either been brain damaged or he would have died.

"That put this little seed in my head: imagine if everybody knew this." The baby who drowned had slipped under the bathwater. "This time the mum had no idea what to do. It's not the mother's fault that she didn't know." Hunstead remembers thinking: "I need to do something about this. I don't want to patch them up any more, I want to get out there and arm parents with these lifesaving skills." "No parent should bear the burden of thinking, 'I should have known what to do'," she says. Hunstead tested the concept by holding classes for friends. Enthusiastic word of mouth soon had dozens of parents signing up.

Full disclosure: my sister-in-law was among those who took an early class. A few months later, she saved my nephew from choking. The experience had a profound effect on my sister-in-law: she now works for CPR Kids. "The classes are not about scaring you with all the stuff that can go wrong," Hunstead tells me. "It's empowering you to know what to do if it happens." Hunstead, who grew up an only child in the outer Melbourne suburb of Patterson Lakes, says: "It was always innately in me to look after people." From the age of 8, when her parents divorced, she cared for her mother, who was mentally ill and battled addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs. "I was running the house, looking after her, because she just couldn't function. Sometimes my job was literally keeping her alive. I used to make myself responsible for everything so if she wasn't well, it was my fault." Hunstead excelled at school. She started studying biotechnology at university and planned to become a paediatrician. But when her mother's health deteriorated, she switched to a nursing degree at a university closer to home.

She was 22 and had just finished her degree when her mother took her own life. There was, she says, an element of relief. Hunstead no longer spent her days worrying, on constant alert, but her mother's death left her feeling adrift. "She was the centre of my universe," she says. "I never actually envisaged life outside of her. I needed to find out who I was." Landing a graduate position at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne helped. So did moving interstate and joining the emergency department of the Sydney Children's Hospital in Randwick, where she made a close network of friends and met her husband. As newlyweds they spent six months in Kenya, establishing the infrastructure to deliver mobile medical camps now staffed by members of the local communities. 'It won't happen to us'

Hunstead says she always knew she wanted to work with children. "Mum was in and out of hospitals a lot, so from a young age I witnessed ... how adults can react to illness. One of the big things with children is they're just so resilient, they don't feel sorry for themselves. [They] just want to get better and get on with it." Hunstead  who had two girls under 2  acknowledges that raising children can be a tougher prospect than nursing them. She describes parenting as "the hardest thing I've ever done", but says becoming a mother made her more understanding of parents who might be hysterical in the emergency department. "It made me realise how things like sleep deprivation, all of that intense focus on the child, can make you think things and do things perhaps your rational mind wouldn't normally do," she says. While she can forgive overwrought parents, she is frustrated by Australians' "she'll be right" attitude.

"We're very much a push-away society; we've got that whole mentality of 'it'll be right, we'll be right, it won't happen to us'. That's great  until something happens." Hunstead says CPR Kids had a "huge spike" in enrolments after 19 people drowned in NSW between Christmas and the first week of January. "They realise that they aren't immune  they see families just like them experiencing tragedies," she says. "They don't want to be that family on the news; they want to know what to do in an emergency." Hunstead says teaching first aid is not just about equipping people with skills, but also the confidence to know how to use them. One of the most rewarding aspects of her work is helping the clients of organisations such as Wesley Mission and Anglicare. "We may only get through one subject," Hunstead says. "At the end of the class it might be that they're not leaving their babies in the bath alone any more [and] that's a big plus. It's the simple stuff that saves lives."
Fears that tree-lined Sydney suburbs will be replaced by cookie cutter streetscapes are energising the response by the state's councils to the state government's proposed policy on medium-density housing.

The government last year released a proposed medium-density housing code that would, in certain circumstances, remove obstacles to building new terrace houses, dual occupancy dwellings, and so-called manor houses in the suburbs.

Complemented by a new design guide, the proposed change would make medium density housing "complying" development, which would mean that councils and residents would have limited means to object to new projects.

However while some councils support the broad concept of increasing the density of Sydney's suburbs without resorting to high-rise apartment blocks, there are widespread concerns about the implications for the planning system.
The Sydney property market has pushed stamp duty receipts to a record high in the first quarter of 2017 as Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Treasurer Dominic Perrottet prepare to unveil measures to help struggling first home buyers in next month's budget.

Official figures show that $1.98 billion in stamp duty poured into NSW government coffers between January and March  a $315 million increase on the first quarter of last financial year.

Stamp duty from all property transfers has surged by $859 million so far this financial year, compared with the same period in 2015-16.

This represents a 10 per cent increase in stamp duty on residential property to date, easily outpacing the most recent Treasury forecast of a 4.8 per cent rise for 2016-17 in the December half yearly review.
Taxpayers face a potential bill in the tens of millions of dollars to compensate people affected by two major errors made by the state's Land and Property Information office.

The state government will offer to purchase 205 properties potentially affected by an F6 motorway to Sydney's south, whose owners received incorrect information about the motorway's impact.

The owners of 377 properties affected by a new M5 tunnel section of WestConnex will also be offered $5000 each, plus legal costs, because of the errors.

Finance Minister Victor Dominello on Friday released a report into compensation options for those affected by the errors in 2014 and 2016, where the LPI failed to load files detailing the potential impact of the motorway routes into a searchable system.
The discovery of an unknown powder mailed to a Brisbane CBD building caused the evacuation of workers on Friday morning.

Emergency crews from the police and ambulance services, along with scientific officers from Queensland Fire and Emergency Services were on the scene at 444 Queen Street after suspicious powder was found in the mail.

Workers from the 11th floor of Trustee House were evacuated from the building after emergency services were called about 9.30am.

Scientific officers from QFES took the package away to test the powder and the results were yet to be released by Friday evening.
Crocodiles would be shot and eggs harvested if the LNP were to govern Queensland.

The LNP's policy would mean problem crocodiles could be euthanised by authorities when a safe, quick capture was not an option.

The LNP's crocodile policy includes killing problem crocs. Credit:Alamy

It would not include culling  each crocodile with the potential to be euthanised would have its fate decided on a case-by-case basis.

Prescribed officers  police, public service or inspectors under the Fisheries Act  with appropriate training would be authorised to shoot crocodiles.
Queensland's attorney-general has lost an appeal to make disgraced greyhound trainer Tom Noble serve jail time for live baiting.

Noble pleaded guilty to 15 counts of serious animal cruelty, and was in September sentenced to three years' imprisonment, wholly suspended for five years, due to serious health issues and his role as carer for his severely ill wife.

Tom Noble walks out of the Ipswich District Court after his sentencing hearing last year. Credit:Jorge Branco

The state government later launched an appeal, arguing the sentence was "manifestly inadequate" and calling for him to spend actual time behind bars.

But this was dismissed by the Queensland Court of Appeal on Friday.
The Queensland president of an international bikie gang has been charged after a police raid uncovered a cache of drugs, stolen property and a shotgun at a Brisbane home.

The 34-year-old man, president of the La Familia bikie gang, was charged with 15 drug and property offences following the search in Kelvin Grove on Thursday afternoon.

A modified shotgun and ammunition were recovered during Taskforce Maxima's raid at the Kelvin Grove house. Credit:Queensland Police Service

Detective Inspector Bruno Asnicar said police had been monitoring La Familia's burgeoning presence in the state and the arrest prevented the international gang gaining a foothold.

The Kelvin Grove house that was raided had students living on the top floor and the accused along with another woman on the bottom floor.
A woman accused of stabbing five men, killing one of them, told her victims "we are all going to die tonight", according to Police.

Natascha Mielke, 39, appeared in Brisbane Magistrates Court on Saturday charged with one count of murder and three counts of attempted murder following an alleged stabbing spree on Brisbane's inner northside on Friday night.

Four men were stabbed at Pinjarra Lodge in Paddington before another was attacked in nearby Ashgrove on Friday night. Credit:Nine News Queensland - Twitter

Police allege the woman confronted three of the survivors in two separate rooms at Pinjara Lodge on Kennedy Terrace in Paddington and issued the chilling warning.

They allege she then found a fourth man in the yard outside the common room and stabbed him once in the abdomen and three times in the back. That man later died in hospital.
A teenage boy is fighting for his life after allegedly being kicked in the head and knocked unconscious outside a fast-food restaurant north of Brisbane.

The 17-year-old had finished a heated argument with another teenager outside the Redcliffe McDonald's on Friday night when he was struck by an 18-year-old man, police allege.

He fell back and hit his head on the bitumen.

The boy is in a critical condition at Royal Brisbane Hospital.
But she says Labor does not support an extension of the tax cut to big businesses. It also won't back the $300 million in incentives pledged by the government to try to remove red tape for small business. Senator Katy Gallagher says a tax increase for small business is not Labor's position. Credit:Graham Tidy Tax and legal advice Shorten's budget reply included a promise to introduce a $3000 limit on how much people can deduct for managing their tax and legal affairs, in a crackdown that will raise $1.8 billion over a decade. Gallagher says this limit will not affect the "vast majority" of small businesses.

Kate Carnell is "deeply disappointed" with Labor's budget response. Credit:Louie Douvis "I think a cap of $3000 should certainly incorporate most of the small businesses that Im aware of," she says. "This is ensuring that we have a fair taxation system." Vocational training Shorten also pledged to allocate two out of every three dollars raised of public vocational education funding to public TAFE and creating a $100 million TAFE fund. Small Business Minister Michael McCormack says Labor "doesn't get" small business. Credit:Andrew Meares

"We will reverse the trend toward privatisation  because it's time to put public TAFE back at the centre of our national training system," Shorten said. Ombudsman and industry groups Kate Carnell, the small business and family enterprise ombudsman, is critical of Labor's budget response. "I'm really disappointed about no support on tax reduction for small business," she says. "It's deeply disappointing as it impacts on the instant asset write-off as well for small business." Carnell is also critical of the cap on taxation and legal advice.

"It's hard to work out why you'd do it," she says. "Let's be fair that if you need legal or tax advice it often costs more than that. We'd be really encouraging small business to get the necessary advice." However the ombudsman welcomed the support for TAFE and vocational education. "A focus on vocational training is something that is really important and the fact is that the current system isn't working very well," she says. "But unless we make it more cost effective for small business to employ apprentices and trainees having more trainees at TAFE won't solve the problem. Trainees and apprentices in the first year don't add much and often cost businesses money. It's like most things its really a cost benefit issue in those first few years." Peter Strong, head of the Council of Small Business of Australia, also branded the policies "disappointing". "My members are saying they are really concerned that Labor is no longer interested in small business," he says. "They are interested in the employees of small business."
Uber suffered a setback to its global expansion plans Thursday when a senior adviser to Europe's highest court recommended that the ride-hailing company comply with the region's tough transportation rules, potentially hobbling growth of its service across the Continent.

The non-binding opinion comes as Uber faces growing pressure worldwide after a string of missteps by its executives angered regulators and raised questions about the leadership of Travis Kalanick, the company's chief executive.

The European case centres on whether Uber should be considered a transportation service or a digital platform that merely connects independent drivers and potential passengers. By designating Uber a transportation service, Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, said Thursday that the company should comply with European countries' safety rules, as well as with other legislation that applies to the traditional taxi associations that are Uber's main rivals across the region.

"Uber cannot be regarded as a mere intermediary between drivers and passengers," Szpunar wrote in an opinion that will be reviewed by the European Court of Justice, which is expected to make a final ruling by late summer.
A homeless man who beat to death the "wonderful woman" who clothed, fed and sheltered him will spend at least 18 years in jail for her murder.

Mataio Aleluia was 18 when he attacked his girlfriend, Brittany Harvie, in the car they'd been living in near a Clayton South nature reserve in the early hours of June 3, 2015.

Brittany Harvie's boyfriend Mataio Aleluia has been jailed for 23 years for her murder. Credit:Facebook

On Friday Supreme Court Justice James Elliott sentenced him to 23 years' prison , with a minimum non-parole period of 18 years.

Aleluia, suspected the 22-year-old mother of two had been unfaithful to him and grew angry when she denied allegations that she had had an affair.
More than 70 micrograms of smoke particles per cubic metre of air. Credit:AirVisualEarth

More than 170 micrograms of smoke particles per cubic metre of air. Credit:AirVisualEarth

Melbourne's air quality will continue to be so poor over the weekend, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued a warning for asthma sufferers. On Friday morning, air quality tracker AirVisualEarth showed that Melbourne's PM2.5 levels (smoke particles) were higher than those in Shanghai, China.

The EPA issued the warning, saying there would be poor air quality in with a band of haze over parts of Geelong, Melbourne and the Latrobe Valley.

People at risk include those over 65, children 14 years and younger, pregnant women and those with existing heart or lung conditions.

People with asthma should follow their asthma management plan, the EPA said.

It warned those at risk to reduce prolonged or heavy physical activity and, where possible, limit the time spent outdoors.

EPA group manager of applied sciences Dr Anthony Boxshall said the plummet in air quality was a result of combination of factors including current weather conditions and an increase in people sparking up wood fire heaters due to the chilly weather.
Thieves have left a gaping hole in the wall of a Melbourne newsagency, after smashing the bricks with a sledgehammer and making off with a safe.

But their great escape was short-lived when the safe was recovered moments later - unopened - around the corner from the newsagency.

Brazen thieves created left this gaping hole at a newsagency in Warrandyte.

The foiled burglary is one of several in Warrandyte, in Melbourne's east, this week.

The suburb does not have a 24-hour police station, with locals fearing crime will continue to climb in the area.
EDITOR'S NOTE: The High Court overturned Cardinal George Pell's conviction for historic child sex offences in a judgment handed down April 7, 2020. In a unanimous decision all seven High Court judges found Victoria's Court of Appeal should not have upheld Pell's conviction It found the evidence could not support a guilty verdict.

Explosive claims of child sex abuse have been levelled against Australia's highest-ranking Catholic official, Cardinal George Pell.

A soon-to-be-released book about Cardinal Pell contains detailed claims that he sexually abused two choirboys at St Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne in the late 1990s.

The alleged abuse is said to have occurred after the introduction of the Melbourne Response, the compensation scheme for clerical sexual abuse victims established in 1996 by Cardinal Pell, when he was Archbishop of Melbourne.
When the peckish burglar saw the kiwi fruit sitting on the kitchen bench, he didn't realise it would turn out to be the evidence that would bring him down.

Among the arsenal of police investigative tools, DNA testing is an increasingly potent weapon. Particularly when criminals help the police by helping themselves to the contents of the fridge at the crime scene.

One crook was arrested after police found his DNA on a piece of kiwi fruit.

In one case, a 43-year-old Kensington man was undone by a piece of fruit after he went on a burglary spree in the Ivanhoe area.

All four robberies were committed during the middle of the day, when nobody was home. The man stole about $14,000 in electrical goods, cash and jewellery to fund his drug habit.
A male nurse who raped a patient as she was recovering from surgery is likely to be deported to Singapore after he serves his sentence for sexual assaults on three women.

Jefferson Augustine, 34, digitally raped and sexually assaulted one woman, touching and applying cream to her vagina as she recovered from surgery.

Jefferson Augustine sexually assaulted one woman as she recovered from surgery. Credit:Gabriele Charotte

Another woman woke up naked beside Augustine after meeting him via a real estate website and agreeing to move into his spare room.

After drinking with Augustine, she woke the next day in bed with him, naked and with marks on her neck.
A 29-year-old man has died after being pulled from a burning home in Melbourne's east on Friday afternoon.

Neighbours called triple zero after they saw smoke rising from the back of the two-storey house on Raynes Street in Balwyn about midday.

Firefighters arrived to find the weatherboard house engulfed in flames.

Once inside, firefighters found the male resident.
Phoenix Nuclear Labs, Monona, has been saying its technology is cutting-edge. Now, the company can prove it.

Phoenix has signed a long-term contract with Rayton Solar, a Santa Monica, California, company that plans to use Phoenixs proton accelerators to help make solar panels.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In traditional manufacturing of solar panels, Rayton Solar says, diamond wire saws are used to cut thin layers of silicon, leaving wasted silicon sawdust.

Using Phoenixs proton accelerators, high-current ion beams can produce thin silicon slices with no waste, the company says. Thats done by embedding protons into the silicon, heating it at a specific depth. The top layer pulls off the surface, creating a sheet of silicon that is one-twentieth the width of a human hair.

We are capable of making up to 100 times as many solar panels with the same amount of silicon that our competitors use to make just one panel, Rayton Solar CEO Andrew Yakub said. Implementing this new manufacturing process will represent a revolutionary step for the solar industry.

Phoenix is scheduled to deliver the first system by the end of 2017, with several additional units expected in 2018 and 2019, the company said.

The collaboration is an example of the way Phoenix wants its technology to be used  in ways that better humanity, said Evan Sengbusch, vice president of business development.

Using the machines as cutting tools will be a new purpose for Phoenixs proton accelerators.

They already are being contracted for projects such as checking weapons for quality control for the U.S. Army, and for SHINE Medical Technologies  which is building a plant in Janesville  to produce a radioisotope used in common medical tests.

Phoenix Nuclear Labs was founded in 2005 in Middleton. The company has 34 full-time and 14 part-time employees, up from 25 full-time and six part-time employees last August.

Sengbusch said Phoenix hopes to grow to 41 full-time employees by the end of this year and 54 by the end of 2018, and to do that it will need more space. The company is looking for locations in the greater Madison area, he said.

Its been a tremendous last 12 months for Phoenix, Sengbusch said, and there are a lot of exciting things on the horizon, as well.
A 40-year-old West Melbourne man has been charged with multiple offences after a daylight brawl that saw a 28-year-old attacked with a box cutter, shocking shoppers at Melbourne Central.

Police said two men had to be pulled apart after the fight, that began outside a pharmacy in the CBD shopping complex, spilled onto the street about 1.30pm on Friday.

Police arresting a man, after an alleged stabbing at Melbourne Central on Friday. Credit:Twitter/@9NewsMelb

The 28-year-old victim was treated for upper body injuries and taken to The Alfred hospital in a stable condition. He was later discharged.

Victoria Police Detective Senior Constable Andrew White said one man was taken to hospital with a significant cut on his arm.
Black-flanked rock wallabies have been released into Kalbarri National Park in the hope of re-establishing a population of the threatened species in the area.

They were once considered extinct from the park for 20 years, until two wallabies were filmed in a gorge in 2015.

23 radio-collared rock wallabies from three Wheatbelt populations were moved by the Department of Parks and Wildlife, which now brings the total to 46 wallabies released into the park.

DPAW have been culling goats in the park since 2006, with goats causing the initial decline of the species as they competed for food and pushed the wallabies out of the protected gorge areas - leaving them open to foxes and cats.
"I'm not a doctor or anything like that... but I've got a workshop and I want to make a difference."

Perth man Jeremy Marriott has experienced first-hand the effect multiple sclerosis can have on an otherwise healthy person. His wife was diagnosed with the disease just three months before their wedding, and the couple rallied to make sure she could live a healthy and happy life.

The Ford wagon that Mr Marriott has repaired. Credit:Jeremy Marriott.

"She's healthy now, but it made me realise that life is very fragile," he said.

"I was never in a financial position to help people, but I am now."
A Perth stepmum has had a much-needed boost on a difficult day - from none other than Perth's deputy Lord Mayor James Limnios.

Francesca James' partner got custody of his son soon after they began dating, and Ms James took her new role seriously, deferring university studies for a year to bond with three-year-old William.

Once the friends got to the park, they looked at the business card and got a surprise.

Despite her determination, it was not all smooth sailing.

"We have had some challenges," she said frankly.
Corrective Services Minister Fran Logan says he has put private prison operator Sodexo on notice over repeated contract breaches and claims the Melaleuca women's jail is so poorly run that lawyers visiting inmates feel unsafe there.

Legal Aid WA has stopped its lawyers from visiting the prison less than five months after it was opened because of safety fears.

Fran Logan has put the operators of Melaleuca women's jail on notice.

The $24 million prison was opened by the previous Liberal National government last December, with French company Sodexo offered $15,000 bonuses for every inmate who stays out of jail for two years after being released.

Legal Aid's issues relate to what it sees as poor standards and discipline at the 254-bed Melaleuca Women's Remand and Reintegration Facility.
Australian man Stephen Richardson was strangled to death in his Sanur villa, with Bali police suspecting the killer was known to the 63-year-old.

However Denpasar police chief Hadi Purnomo said the witness accounts were yet to lead police to a suspect over the former maritime worker's mysterious death between dawn and midday on Sunday, May 7.

Stephen Richardson, centre, was strangled to death. Credit:Facebook

No money or other items were stolen, which has led police to surmise that Mr Richardson knew the perpetrator.

"We don't know if it is a female or male yet. For the time being we suspect just the one person," Mr Hadi said. "I suppose it was someone close, who the victim knew, if not [then] how did that person enter the room?
Amsterdam: The head of a Dutch fertility clinic is accused of using his own sperm and not that of selected donors to father dozens of children.

Twenty three parents and children of those born through IVF treatment at Bijdorp medical centre, in Rotterdam, have gone to court to ask for DNA tests on Jan Karbaat, who died aged 89 last month. Karbaat, who ran one of the country's largest sperm banks in the Eighties and Nineties, billed himself as "a pioneer in the field of fertilisation".

A lab technician works with sperm. Credit:Wollongong Advertiser

But reports began to emerge last year that suggested he may have been fathering the children he helped to conceive.

Women who used the clinic report being told by Karbaat that he was fetching "fresh seed" from a room next to the insemination area.
Paris: French President-elect Emmanuel Macron's party on Thursday announced a list of legislative candidates that is heavy on political novices, a sign of France's reshaped and unsettled landscape ahead of crucial June parliamentary elections.

The 429 announced candidates, of whom more than half are new to politics and half are women, were a first indication of the direction of Macron's still fluid party, which the President-elect - himself a relative political neophyte - formed just a year ago and which has no representatives in Parliament.

They include 52-year-old Marie Sara, a former bullfighter and goddaughter of film director Jean-Luc Godard , and mathematician Cedric Villani, a 43-year-old winner of the Fields Medal, according to France 24 which said the list was comprised of professionals (93 per cent), retirees (4 per cent), unemployed workers (2 per cent) and students (1 per cent). Fifity-two per cent had never been elected before.

In a measure of the challenge of building a movement from scratch, candidates were still being vetted hours before the announcement, and the party said after the list's release that at least five people were included mistakenly. As many as 147 additional candidates are still being finalised.
Beijing: Globalisation is the word on the street as China's capital prepares for President Xi Jinping's much-hyped trade summit of 29 world leaders, to open on Sunday.

Billboards and bus stands across the city of 22 million are spelling out the benefits of global trade, international cooperation and economic growth.

The Chinese slogan "One Belt, One Road" dominates headlines. State-controlled social media is pumping out rap and rock songs, and even a bedtime children's story, in an attempt to explain what this actually means.

The shorthand version is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xi's grand vision to build a modern-day Silk Road connecting China overland to Europe, and by cargo ship to Asia and beyond.
The presence of a Russian photographer working for a state-owned news agency during President Donald Trump's meeting on Wednesday with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office sparked criticism from media advocates as well as concerns over the risk of a security breach.

White House officials seemed caught off-guard by the controversy, initially saying they had not anticipated that the state news agency Tass would post photographs from the meeting. "They tricked us," one unnamed official was quoted as saying by CNN.

American news organisations were not granted access to the Oval Office meeting; an official White House photographer was present. Officials said they were unaware that photographer Alexandr Scherbak would be shooting for both Tass and the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Russian officials have fired back fiercely by taking aim at the US media.
It was a full house at the Barrymore Theatre on Thursday night as gener8tor showed off its five new graduates -- probably the most diverse group of startups the Madison and Milwaukee accelerator has mentored yet, with products and services that ranged from medical to digital, from fashion to housecleaning.

Veramarx, a Boulder, Colorado, company that says it has developed the first early test to diagnose Lyme disease, drew rapt interest from the crowd of about 600.

Founder Whitney Richards, a former Wall Street trader, said he started the company after enduring his own struggle with the tick-borne disease, which involved seeing more than a dozen doctors -- each with a different diagnosis -- unneeded surgeries and unsuccessful treatments, at a cost of some $1 million. "And they all failed me," he said.

Richards said current Lyme disease tests measure antibodies for the ailment and miss 60 percent of the people who contract it. He said his company's test searches for 10 biomarkers that have been linked to Lyme disease and has a 92 percent sensitivity, which signifies a test's ability to correctly identify someone with a disease. Richards said he plans to launch the test later this year.

The diagnostic product does not need approval of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, gener8tor co-founder Troy Vosseller said later, because a third-party lab will run the tests and physicians will make their own diagnoses based on the results.

Richards' five-minute pitch was strong enough to draw the interest of Dan Thome, founder of Axiom Advisors, in Appleton, who said he knows someone with Lyme disease and might consider investing in Veramarx, after he looks into the company further.

Thome, attending his second gener8tor premiere, was upbeat about the startup presentations. "I usually work with more mature companies," he said, "but I was excited by the energy of some of these younger (companies)."

Only one of the startups was from Madison: Errund, a service that aims to take the guesswork out of finding someone to clean your home or business. Founder and CEO Jacob Ong said more than 1,500 customers have used Errund's background-checked cleaning crews since January 2016. He has plans to expand beyond the Midwest and beyond house-cleaning into other services in the future.

The other gener8tor grads were:

Fertilify, of Toronto, Canada, with supplements for men and women to support fertility.

Ivory Clasp, of Los Angeles, a subscription handbag service.

Vyrill, of Berkeley, California, which analyzes video content on social media for product marketing.

This was the 10th class for gener8tor, whose 12-week program of mentoring startups began five years ago. The latest group was chosen from 691 applicants.

Gener8tor recently expanded to Minneapolis and Beloit.

Of the 49 companies that have completed the gener8tor program, four have been acquired, five have gone out of business, and more than $110 million has been raised by the startups from subsequent investments.
Thai authorities have given Facebook a four-day deadline to remove web pages it deems violate Thai laws, including royal defamation, in a new challenge to the social network giant publishing politically sensitive material in countries restricting freedom of speech.

Authorities have also ordered Thailand's internet providers to block thousands of web pages and content it considers illegal, despite that the UN Human Rights Council has declared access to the internet to be a human right.

Pavin Chachavalpongpun of Kyoto University. Credit:Stanford University

Thailand's National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission says it has identified 131 pages Facebook has failed to remove.

"If even a single illicit page remains we will immediately discuss what legal steps to take against Facebook Thailand," said Takorn Tantasith, the commission's secretary-general.
Sacked: Former FBI director James Comey. Credit:AP He has also repeatedly gotten physical on Trump's behalf, punching a protester outside of Trump Tower, forcibly removing a reporter from a press conference and confronting many who interrupted Trump's rallies. In a young White House that is considered one of the leakiest in history, Schiller has become one of the few people that the president can talk with and know that their conversation will not be repeated to others. White House officials often look to Schiller for tips on the president's mood or how best to approach him. Justice Department officials urged Trump to fire James Comey for "atrocities" committed during the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. Credit:AP "Keith Schiller is not just some bodyguard," said Michael Caputo, a political adviser who worked with Trump between 2013 and 2016. "Nobody knows the score among the advisers better than Keith Schiller ... Keith's always known what's what among the people who are in Donald Trump's orbit."

When Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner traveled to Iraq in April, Schiller came along - getting a seat at the table during talks with the Iraqi government, standing in group photos and hovering in background of photos of Kushner. Iraqi specialists in the government who typically would participate in such trips were not included, being told there wasn't enough room for them on the plane. Schiller turns down most interview requests - including one for this story - although he agreed to be interviewed on New Year's Eve 2015 at Trump Tower by Rich Siegel, a high school friend. The 55-minute conversation was posted on Facebook and provides a rare narrative of Schiller's years-long relationship with Trump. After seeing Maples' bodyguard at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, Schiller reached out to Trump and started working for him part-time in 1999. In 2004, following his retirement from the police department, Schiller became the Trump Organisation's director of security. Schiller followed Trump onto the campaign trail, providing security in the months before the Secret Service took over - and then continuing to provide an added layer of protection, not hesitating to keep reporters away from the candidate or venture into rally crowds to confront protesters, sometimes physically. Some who have worked with Schiller gushed as they described him, painting a softer portrait than the image of the imposing 6-foot-4-inch bodyguard with closed-cropped hair and an often stern demeanor. Eric Trump, one of the president's sons who worked with Schiller for years at the Trump Organisation, described the bodyguard as someone who has "always demonstrated incredible work ethic and loyalty." Lewandowski described Schiller as "the guy you want next to you in the foxhole when things go badly."

In the 2015 conversation with his high school friend, Schiller explained that his pre-Trump years prepared him for a career that has taken him into exclusive night clubs, skyboxes at sporting events, business meetings overseas and all over the United States as Trump campaigned for president. David Chong, who served as Schiller's boss for eight years on a New York City Police Department task force on high intensity drug trafficking areas, said Schiller "loved the aura of being a New York City detective that was attacking the biggest and baddest drug cartels." Schiller - who grew up in New Paltz, NY, and is married with two children - was known among his fellow police officers for his size and strength, Chong recalled. When his unit would raid apartments up many flights of stairs, Schiller would volunteer to carry the 60-pound battering ram. At the top of the stairs, instead of handing it off to men with fresh arms to break through the door, Schiller would slam the ram himself. "He was strong as an ox," said Chong, who now serves as the public safety commissioner in White Plains, NY, adding that above all Schiller was known for "extreme loyalty to his boss." When Schiller went to work for Trump, he was given a Trump Tower office on the same floor as the celebrity and at times spent as much of 90 percent of his time in Trump's presence.

In 2007, Schiller briefly stepped into the spotlight, as his boss took part in a staged WWE event with the wrestling organisation's chief, Vince McMahon. As part of the act, Trump slapped McMahon, who acted stunned and then began to charge at Trump - only to be stopped by Schiller, who stepped forward to block McMahon, pushing the wrestling executive repeatedly backward before throwing him to the ground. In one incident in September 2015, Schiller grabbed a sign from a protester outside Trump Tower. As Schiller marched back toward the building holding the sign, the man rushed at his back. Schiller whirled - and punched the man in the face. Protester Efrain Galicia and other demonstrators from that day are now suing Schiller and Trump over the incident. Schiller testified in a sworn deposition in December that he believe Galicia's sign was creating a safety hazard by impeding access to the sidewalk and that he punched him in self-defense, believing the protester was reaching for a gun hidden under his suit jacket. Schiller acknowledged in the testimony that at the time of the incident, he did not hold a valid New York state security guard license. He said he had allowed his license to lapse, believing that a different federal license that allowed him to carry a gun on private airplanes was sufficient. In another incident a few days earlier, in August 2015, Schiller removed Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a Trump campaign press conference after Ramos repeatedly questioned Trump about immigration.

"Sit down! You haven't been called. Go back to Univision," Trump told Ramos, as the reporter continued to press. Then, video of the incident shows that the presidential candidate turned to his left, appearing to lock his gaze at something in his field of vision. Schiller then immediately appeared, crossing behind Trump and approaching Ramos, quickly grabbing Ramos's shoulder with one hand and placing the other on the reporter's chest before pushing him backwards towards the exit, the video shows. Asked in his December deposition if he had put his hands on Ramos, Schiller responded, "No, I don't believe so." In the New Years Eve conversation with Siegel, Schiller spoke about some of the most difficult moments in his life: the death of his mother when he was 17 and being in Manhattan on September 11, events that he recounted emotionally. Loading
PHILIPSBURG:--- The Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport and the Government of St. Maarten hereby extends sincerest condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of the late Mr. Neville York. Our heart goes out to you in this time of bereavement, as you accept this terrible loss.

In order to ensure that the general public pays their last respect to Mr. York, a memorial table and condolence book has been placed at the reception area of the New Government Administration Building located on Soualiga Boulevard. The general public can sign the book as of today Friday, May 12th, between the hours of 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

The Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport in collaboration with the family of the late Mr. Neville York will host a cultural manifestation/wake on Saturday, May 13th from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in front of the New Government Administration Building. The general public who knew and were fond of Mr. York and his work are invited join us to celebrate his life.

For persons wanting to pay a special tribute or performance at the wake or the funeral service should contact Ms. Natasha Serrant at +1 (721) 5201892 no later than Friday, May 12th by 4 p.m.

Mr. York served as the Head of Culture Department and was a cultural icon in his own right, therefore we must ensure that his initiatives in Culture, as well as his musical legacy, will surely live on.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The Sint Maarten Nature Foundation recently launched its new website. With the support of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance, the new website now includes information on the various activities the Nature Foundation is engaged in both locally and in the region. Visitors to the website can now find information on the Man of War Shoal National Marine Park; diving activities; projects and activities including the 'Save our sharks' project, coral restoration, and sea turtle monitoring; nature, ecosystems, and species of St. Maarten; and the various conservation areas on the island.

The previous website included outdated information and we are very happy that we were able to, with the help of the Dutch Caribbean Nature Alliance, launch our brand new website. Now visitors have easier access to information on the activities of the Nature Foundation as well as nature on Sint Maarten, commented Tadzio Bervoets, Nature Foundation Manager.

The public is encouraged to visit the new Nature Foundation website by going to www.naturefoundationsxm.org. It is also now possible to directly donate through the Nature Foundation website to ensure that Nature is Our Future.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The St. Maarten Tzu Chi Foundation will be hosting its annual Triple Celebration of Mothers Day, Buddhas Birthday and the Global Tzu Chis 51st Anniversary on Sunday, May 21, and it is inviting persons of all faiths to attend this free educational event.

The triple celebration will be held at Tzu Chi Foundation located on the L.B. Scott Road near the Jose Lake Ballpark from 4:00 pm and attendees are asked to wear white, though another attire is also welcomed.

The three-part event will feature the ceremonial washing of the feet of mothers by children. This will be done in an effort to honor mothers and to promote gratitude and respect for the matriarch of families for all that they do.

The Tzu Chi anniversary part of the event will feature the presentation of information about Tzu Chis work internationally as well as the work of the local arm in St. Maarten. This year the foundation is celebrating 51 years since its formation by Taiwanese founder Master Cheng Yen.

A traditional ceremony will also be held to mark Buddhas Birthday.

A presentation will also be made on the practical use of healthy natural enzymes as Tzu Chi's contribution towards protecting our precious environment.

At the end of the event, attendees will be treated to a delectable vegetarian buffet and fresh juices. The vegetarian buffet is aimed at promoting the diversity of volunteer members in promoting a healthy alternative and to highlight Buddha's Dharma of non-violence to animals.

The event is open to the general public and people of all faiths are urged to attend.

Attendees can RSVP at email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call tel. 586-3019 or 580 1488.
Nimbusec Selects Lastline to Bolster Website Security with Advanced Malware Detection

Posted by Publisher Hardware

REDWOOD CITY, CA  (Marketwired)  05/11/17  Inc., the leader in advanced threat protection, today announced a partnership and integration with , an Austria-based provider of advanced website security. Available immediately, Nimbusec now incorporates Lastlines proven advanced threat protection capability to detect malware that easily evades next-generation security tools before a compromised site is used to infect visitors and breach internal systems.

Were enthusiastic about integrating Lastline capabilities into our solution because of the added value it will deliver to our customers, noted Alexander Mitter, Nimbusec CEO. Advanced malware protection is essential to any effective enterprise security stack, and after careful review of available technologies we quickly realized the superiority of Lastlines solution.

Nimbusec customers now can analyze web pages for malicious code and block malware before it infects unsuspecting visitors. The proven integration makes it easy to deploy and supports compliance with European Union cyber security laws and the GDPR data privacy regulations. Its particularly beneficial for large enterprises that must monitor and maintain numerous global websites and have a distributed external hosting infrastructure.

Lastline is already used to provide protection against advanced malware for a wide range of security products, from endpoints and email to firewalls and IPS systems, noted Brian Laing, VP of Products and Business Development at Lastline. Were honored that Nimbusec selected Lastline, reinforcing our reputation as the go-to enterprise threat protection solution.

Lastline Enterprise is a behavior-based technology that uses a unique isolation and inspection environment to detect every action that advanced malware makes, while signature-based sandboxes and other advanced products only see a small portion of the malwares intended behaviors, or miss it altogether. There isnt a behavior that evasive malware can execute that Lastline cant see.

Lastline is innovating the way companies prevent breaches caused by advanced persistent threats, targeted attacks, and evasive malware. Headquartered in Redwood City, California with offices throughout North America, Europe and Asia, Lastlines platform is used by global managed security service providers, Global 5000 enterprises, and leading security technology vendors worldwide.

Nimbusec enables enterprise security teams to protect their organization from security incidents on their own websites. Its scalable technology detects hidden malware distribution, content defacements and blacklisting through high frequency monitoring. Based in Austria, Nimbusec provides its services to the financial industry, government organizations and IT security professionals across the globe.

Noe Sacoco for Lastline

(408) 340-8130

Ingrid Baumgartner for Nimbusec

+43 720 88 49 59
TeraGo Reports 2017 First Quarter Financial Results

TORONTO, ONTARIO  (Marketwired)  05/11/17  TeraGo Inc. (TeraGo or the Company) (TSX: TGO) () today announced financial and operating results for the quarter ended March 31, 2017.

Our goal is to deliver value to our customers, in order to deliver value to our shareholders, commented Tony Ciciretto, President and CEO of TeraGo. We are executing our strategic plan with a relentless focus on our six growth imperatives: Enhancing our Offering, Enhancing our Go-to-Market Effectiveness, Improving Customer Experience, Focus on Talent, Simplifying Systems, and Leveraging Assets  all with a clear objective of achieving sustainable profitable growth.

Mr. Ciciretto added, TeraGo will focus on providing businesses across Canada with Enterprise-class infrastructure solutions, purpose built for their size and needs. We are making key investments in our Product Portfolio, Customer Experience and Marketing & Sales areas to support our growth imperatives.

Financial Highlights

(1)Non-IFRS Measures

This press release contains references to Adjusted EBITDA which is not a measure prescribed by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is useful additional information to management, the Board and investors as it provides an indication of the operational results generated by its business activities prior to taking into consideration how those activities are financed and taxed and also prior to taking into consideration asset depreciation and amortization and it excludes items that could affect the comparability of our operational results and could potentially alter the trends analysis in business performance. Excluding these items does not necessarily imply they are non-recurring, infrequent or unusual. Adjusted EBITDA is also used by some investors and analysts for the purpose of valuing a company. The Company calculates Adjusted EBITDA as earnings before deducting interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, foreign exchange gain or loss, finance costs, finance income, gain or loss on disposal of network assets, property and equipment, stock-based compensation and restructuring, acquisition-related and integration costs. Investors are cautioned that Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to operating earnings (losses) or net earnings (losses) determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of our financial performance or as a measure of our liquidity and cash flows. Adjusted EBITDA does not take into account the impact of working capital changes, capital expenditures, debt principal reductions and other sources and uses of cash, which are disclosed in the consolidated statements of cash flows.

A reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA is found in the MD&A for the three months ended March 31, 2017. Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meaning under IFRS/GAAP. TeraGos method of calculating Adjusted EBITDA may differ from other issuers and, accordingly, Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers.

Conference Call

Management will host a conference call tomorrow, Friday, May 12, 2017, at 9:00 am ET to discuss these results.

To access the conference call, please dial 647-427-2311 or 1-866-521-4909. The unaudited financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and Managements Discussion & Analysis for the same period have been filed on SEDAR at . Alternatively, these documents along with a presentation in connection with the conference call can be accessed online at .

An archived recording of the conference call will be available until May 19, 2017. To listen to the recording, call 416-621-4642 or 1-800-585-8367 and enter passcode 15747379.

About TeraGo

TeraGo provides businesses across Canada and internationally with cloud, colocation and connectivity services. TeraGo manages over 3,000 cloud workloads, nine data centres in the Greater Toronto Area, the Greater Vancouver Area, Ottawa, Kelowna, Winnipeg, St. Louis and Newport, United Kingdom, and owns and manages its own IP network. The Company serves approximately 4,000 business customers in 46 major markets across Canada including Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Winnipeg. TeraGo Networks is a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC) and is recognized as a Canadian Telecommunications Employer of Choice for 2016. TeraGo Networks was also recognized by IDC as a Major Player in MarketScape Cloud Vendor Assessment.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release includes certain forward-looking statements that are made as of the date hereof. Such forward-looking statements may include, but are not limited to, statements relating to TeraGos growth strategy, executing the strategic plan imperatives, Enhancing our Offering, Enhancing our Go-to-Market Effectiveness, Improving Customer Experience, Focus on Talent, Simplifying Systems, Leveraging Assets, making key investments in our Product Portfolio, Customer Experience and Marketing & Sales areas. All such statements are made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under, applicable Canadian securities laws. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements reflect the Companys views with respect to future events and is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including the risk that TeraGos growth strategy, strategic plan, and investments will not generate the result or sustainable growth intended by management, current growth trends in the Companys cloud and data centre business and in the industry may not continue as expected, TeraGo may not meet the growing and complex needs of its customers, and those risks set forth in the Risk Factors section in the annual MD&A of the Company for the year ended December 31, 2016 available on . Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the targets, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed with the forward-looking statements. Except as may be required by applicable Canadian securities laws, TeraGo does not intend, and disclaims any obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether in words, oral or written as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

TERAGO INC.

MANAGEMENTS DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR THE THREE MONTHS ENDED MARCH 31, 2017 AND 2016

The following Managements Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) is intended to help the reader understand the results of operations and financial condition of TeraGo Inc. All references in this MD&A to TeraGo, the Company, we, us, our and our company refer to TeraGo Inc. and its subsidiaries, unless the context requires otherwise. This MD&A is dated May 11, 2017 and should be read in conjunction with our unaudited condensed interim consolidated financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and the notes thereto, our audited consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016, including the notes thereto and our managements discussion and analysis for the year ended December 31, 2016. Additional information relating to TeraGo, including our most recently filed Annual Information Form (AIF), can be found on SEDAR at and our website at . For greater certainty, the information contained on our website is not incorporated by reference or otherwise into this MD&A. All dollar amounts included in this MD&A are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise indicated.

Certain information included herein is forward-looking and based upon assumptions and anticipated results that are subject to uncertainties. Should one or more of these uncertainties materialize or should the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary significantly from those expected. For a description of material factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially, see the Forward-Looking Statements section and the Risk Factors section in this MD&A. This MD&A also contains certain industry-related non-GAAP and additional GAAP measures that management uses to evaluate performance of the Company. These non-GAAP and additional GAAP measures are not standardized and the Companys calculation may differ from other issuers. See Definitions  IFRS, Additional GAAP and Non-GAAP Measures.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This MD&A includes certain forward-looking statements that are made as of the date hereof only and based upon current expectations, which involve risks and uncertainties associated with our business and the economic environment in which the business operates. All such statements are made pursuant to the safe harbour provisions of, and are intended to be forward-looking statements under, applicable Canadian securities laws. Any statements contained herein that are not statements of historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. For example, the words anticipate, believe, plan, estimate, expect, intend, should, may, could, objective and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. This MD&A includes, but is not limited to, forward looking statements regarding TeraGos growth strategy, strategic plan, the growth in TeraGos cloud and data centre businesses, retention campaign and initiatives to improve customer service, additional capital expenditures, investments in data centres, products and other IT services, expansion of network coverage, acquisition and the integration of the hosting business assets acquired from AirVM Inc. into the Company (the Hosting Business). By their nature, forward-looking statements require us to make assumptions and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. We caution readers of this document not to place undue reliance on our forward-looking statements as a number of factors could cause actual future results, conditions, actions or events to differ materially from the targets, expectations, estimates or intentions expressed with the forward-looking statements. When relying on forward-looking statements to make decisions with respect to the Company, you should carefully consider the risks, uncertainties and assumptions, including the risk that TeraGos growth strategy and strategic plan will not generate the result intended by management, cross-selling of TeraGos cloud services may not succeed, retention efforts decreasing profit margins, opportunities for expansion and acquisition not being available or at unfavourable terms, the Company not being able to realize the anticipated benefits and synergies from combining and integrating the Hosting Business into TeraGos existing business and those risks set forth in the Risk Factors section of this MD&A and other uncertainties and potential events. In particular, if any of the risks materialize, the expectations, and the predictions based on them, of the Company may need to be re-evaluated. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements in this MD&A are expressly qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments anticipated by the Company will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected consequences for the Company.

Except as may be required by applicable Canadian securities laws, we do not intend, and disclaim any obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether in words, oral or written as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

OVERVIEW

Quarterly Financial Highlights

Key Developments

TERAGO OVERVIEW

TeraGo provides businesses across Canada and internationally with cloud, colocation and connectivity services, through nine (9) data centres as well as cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) computing and storage solutions. With respect to the Companys connectivity services, it owns and operates a carrier-grade, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) enabled fixed wireless, IP communications network in Canada targeting businesses that require Internet access and data connectivity services.

The Company provides enterprise cloud services nationally and internationally to multiple high value enterprise customers across a variety of verticals, including secondary and post-secondary education, hospitals, federal and provincial governments and non-profit organizations. The Company specializes in managing enterprise cloud services including IaaS and Platform as a Service (PaaS) with network. It currently has strategic relationships with several technology partners that give it access to certain products and solutions to provide enterprise cloud services.

The Companys subscription-based business model generates stable and predictable recurring revenue from cloud, colocation and connectivity services. The Company offers its connectivity services across Canada and its data and cloud services internationally. Once a customer is obtained, TeraGos strategy is to generate incremental recurring revenue from that customer by: adding new customer locations, increasing service capacity supplied to existing locations, increasing data centre cabinet space and power and/or providing additional services, as applicable.

(1) Adjusted EBITDA is a Non-GAAP measure. See Definitions  IFRS, Additional GAAP and Non-GAAP Measures.

(2) See Adjusted EBITDA for a reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA

TERAGOS BUSINESS MODEL

TeraGos subscription-based business model generates stable and predictable recurring revenue from Internet, data, voice services, data centre services and cloud services.

TeraGos customers typically sign one, two or three-year contracts. The majority of new customers sign contracts for three years or more. Services are billed monthly or quarterly over the term of the contract.

With its entry into data centre services and cloud services, TeraGo has built an operating platform to service the IT solutions sector. Cross selling opportunities to the customer base, while leveraging the Companys carrier grade network has augmented and diversified the Companys revenue base.

CLOUD SERVICES

TeraGo provides cloud services that seek to meet the complex and evolving IT needs of our customers. TeraGo provides IaaS for compute, storage, disaster recovery cloud solutions and other offerings either on a direct or indirect basis. These solutions allow the Company to compete in the cloud services market.

TeraGo offers customized cloud storage and compute offerings to customers across Canada. TeraGo cloud can offer a virtualized computing environment whereby customers can access on-demand computing power without the need to acquire and maintain expensive server equipment. TeraGo can also provide offsite cloud storage for key backup and disaster recovery situations, including utilizing partnerships with software and hardware vendors such as Veeam and Solidfire. The Company has strategic relationships and partnerships with technology leaders such as Amazon Web Services, IBM, Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, Mitel and others that gives it early access to intelligence, products and solutions to provide enterprise cloud services.

COLOCATION SERVICES

TeraGo provides data centre colocation services that protect and connect our customers valuable information assets. Customers can provision computing equipment within shared partial cabinets or full, private cabinets, as well as customized caged space designed for their specific needs. TeraGo provides connectivity on redundant routes in and out of the facilities.

Hosting and colocation revenue is derived from set-up fees for new installations and monthly recurring charges based on the number of cabinets and/or the quantity of cage space, power requirements, managed services provided and Internet/data bandwidth requirements. Other services, such as disaster recovery services, are provided under custom contractual arrangements.

TeraGo also offers a variety of managed hosting solutions, which may require us to manage various aspects of a customers hardware, software or operating systems in public or privately accessible environment. TeraGo offers disaster recovery services on a custom basis. This includes back-up office facilities that can be used in case of disaster. These facilities can be provisioned at the data centre location and provide customers with the capability to restore office functionality with direct access to their information located in the data centre.

Our network can provide these customers Internet and/or secure private virtual LAN connections between the data centre facility and the customers office location(s).

Data centre services customers typically include national government agencies, financial services companies, cloud and data storage service providers, content and network service providers, and small and medium businesses which rely on TeraGo to store and manage their critical IT equipment and provide the ability to directly connect to the networks that enable our information-driven economy.

Data Centre Facilities

TeraGos data centres provide data centre solutions, including colocation and disaster recovery, to a roster of small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises, public sector and technology service providers. TeraGo has approximately 60,000 square feet of data centre capacity in seven facilities across Canada:

Mississauga, Ontario

TeraGo operates a 10,000 square foot AT 101 SOC2 Type 2 certified data centre facility in Mississauga, Ontario that was previously managed by BlackBerry Limited and built to a tier 3 standard. This facility predominantly serves the Greater Toronto Area.

Vaughan, Ontario

TeraGo operates a 16,000 square foot AT 101 SOC2 Type 2 certified data centre facility in Vaughan, Ontario, serving the Greater Toronto Area. This data centre and its operations were purchased in May 2013 when the Company acquired Data Centres Canada Inc.

Kelowna, British Columbia

TeraGo operates its 18,000 square feet AT 101 SOC2 Type 2 certified data centre in Kelowna named the GigaCenter. The GigaCenter is built to a tier 3 standard and the location in Kelowna is considered ideal for a data centre as the region is considered a seismically stable geographic location, has a temperate climate and has a lower probability of both natural and man-made events that may be a risk.

Vancouver, British Columbia

TeraGo operates two AT 101 SOC2 Type 2 certified data centre facilities in downtown Vancouver. Its first facility, acquired in December 2013, is 5,000 square feet and is expandable to 7,000 square feet. The facility has redundant fibre facilities between the data centre and the telco hotel, 555 West Hastings, in downtown Vancouver. The second facility which was acquired in April 2014 is 7,000 square feet and is served by TeraGos fiber optic lines. Both facilities are used to service the Greater Vancouver Area.

Winnipeg, Manitoba

TeraGo provides data centre services to its customers in central Canada through a data centre in Winnipeg. Colocation services, via the data centre facility, are provided through an agreement that TeraGo has with a local operator.

Ottawa, Ontario

TeraGo provides data centre services to its customers in Ottawa, Ontario through a Tier III AT 101 SOC 1 Type 2 certified data centre. Colocation services, via the data centre facility, are provided through an agreement that TeraGo has with a local operator.

St. Louis, Missouri, United States

TeraGo provides cloud services to its customers through a SSAE 16 (formerly SAS70) SOC 2 certified data centre in St. Louis, Missouri, United States pursuant to an agreement TeraGo has with a local operator.

Newport, Wales, United Kingdom

TeraGo provides cloud services to its customers through a Tier 3 designed data centre in Newport, Wales, United Kingdom pursuant to an agreement TeraGo has with a local operator.

CONNECTIVITY SERVICES

TeraGo owns and operates a carrier-grade Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) enabled wireline and fixed wireless, Internet Protocol (IP) communications network in Canada, providing businesses with high performance, scalable, and secure access and data connectivity services.

TeraGos carrier grade IP communication network serves an important and growing demand among Canadian businesses for network access diversity by offering wireless services that are redundant to their existing wireline broadband connections.

TeraGos IP network has been designed to eliminate single points of failure and the Company backs its services with customer service level commitments, including 99.9% service availability, industry leading mean time to repair, 24 x 7 telephone and e-mail access to technical support specialists.

TeraGo offers Canadian businesses high performance unlimited and usage-based dedicated Internet access with upload and download speeds from 5 megabits per second (Mbps) up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). Unlike asymmetrical DSL services offered by many of our competitors, TeraGo provides services that are symmetrical, hence customers can have the same high speed broadband performance whether uploading or downloading. TeraGo enhances service performance by minimizing the number of networks between our customers and their audiences, using peering arrangements with multiple tier-one carriers to connect to the Internet.

To deliver its services, the Company has built and operates a carrier-grade, IP network, using licensed and license-exempt spectrum and fibre-optic wireline infrastructure that supports commercially available equipment.

The Company owns and controls a national MPLS distribution network from Vancouver to Montreal that aggregates customer voice and data traffic and interconnects where necessary with carrier diverse leased fiber optic facilities. Major Internet peering and core locations are centralized in Vancouver, Toronto and Seattle, although Internet access is also available in all regional markets for further redundancy.

TeraGo offers a range of diverse Ethernet-based services over a secured wireless connection to customer locations up to 20 kilometres from a hub (provided line of sight or wireline networks exist) or through a fibre optic connection.

Quality of Service Capabilities

TeraGos MPLS network, including key high traffic hub sites, is equipped with Quality of Service (QoS) capabilities to improve performance and traffic management. All of TeraGos major national markets are end-to-end QoS enabled providing the foundation to support voice traffic and other potential future applications.

Radio Spectrum

24-GHz and 38-GHz Wide-area Licences

The Company owns a national spectrum portfolio of 24-GHz and 38-GHz wide-area spectrum licences which covers regions across Canada, including 1,160 MHz in Canadas 6 largest cities. This spectrum is used for: point-to-point and point-to-multipoint microwave radio deployments; connecting core hubs together to create a wireless backbone where appropriate (often in a ring configuration to avoid points of failure); and in the access network or last mile to deliver high capacity (speeds of 10 to 1,000 Mbps) Ethernet-based links for business, government and cellular backhaul.

For further details on licensed spectrums, please refer to the Companys 2016 AIF.

Voice Services

TeraGo provides a number of unified communications services and is approved by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) to offer voice services as a Type IV competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). TeraGo provides businesses with a cost effective, flexible and high quality connection from their private branch exchange (PBX) to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). TeraGos service provides features and capabilities generally consistent with those provided by incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), while offering greater value for our customers

RESULTS OF OPERATIONS

Comparison of the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016

(in thousands of dollars, except with respect to gross profit margin and earnings per share)

Refer to Definitions  IFRS, Additional GAAP and Non-GAAP Measures for a description of the components of relevant line items below.

Revenue

Total revenue decreased 4.4% to $14.3 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to $14.9 million for the same period in 2016.

Cloud and Colocation Revenue

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, cloud and colocation revenue increased 8.5% to $4.8 million compared to $4.4 million for the same period in 2016. The increase was driven by greater provisioning of cloud services from new and existing customers as well as from the acquisition of the Hosting Business.

Connectivity Revenue

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, connectivity revenue decreased 9.8% to $9.5 million compared to $10.5 million for the same period in 2016. Connectivity revenues were impacted by a variety of factors, including competition, certain customers renewing long term contracts at lower current market rates and lower usage revenues as certain customers have shifted to unlimited usage plans.

Cost of services

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, cost of services increased marginally by 0.4% to $3.48 million compared to $3.47 million for the same period in 2016. The increase was primarily driven higher local loops and transit costs related to connectivity revenue, partially offset by savings in software costs related to cloud and colocation revenue.

Salaries and related costs and other operating expenses (SG&A)

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, SG&A decreased to $7.7 million compared to $7.8 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease was primarily driven by a recovery related to stock-based compensation related to the departure of the former CFO, partially offset by increased sales force headcount and marketing costs, and increased restructuring, acquisition-related and integration costs, including those associated with the departure of the former CFO.

Adjusted EBITDA(1)

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, Adjusted EBITDA(1) decreased 20.7% to $3.7 million for the three months ended March 31, 2017 compared to $4.7 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease was primarily driven by the reduction of connectivity revenue, and an increase in sales force headcount and marketing costs related to TeraGos strategic priorities and growth initiatives, partially offset by the growth of cloud and colocation revenue.

The table below reconciles net loss to Adjusted EBITDA(1) for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016.

Finance costs

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, finance costs decreased to $0.5 million compared to $0.6 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease was primarily driven by lower interest expense as a result of lower debt balances in the period ended March 31, 2017.

Income tax expense

For the three months ended March 31, 2017 and the same period in 2016, income tax expense was $nil.

Depreciation and amortization

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, depreciation of network assets, property and equipment and amortization of intangibles decreased by $0.3 million compared to the same period in 2016. The decrease is mainly attributed to certain intangible assets reaching zero net book value after the three months ended March 31, 2016.

Net loss

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, net loss was $1.1 million compared to a net loss of $0.8 million for the same period in 2016. The increase in net loss was primarily driven by increased restructuring, acquisition-related and integration costs and the decline of connectivity revenue, partially offset by lower depreciation and amortization and lower finance costs.

Summary of Quarterly Results

All financial results are in thousands, with the exception of earnings per share

Seasonality

The Companys net customer growth, with respect to its connectivity business, is typically impacted adversely by weather conditions as the majority of new customer locations require the installation of rooftop equipment. Typically, harsher weather in the first quarter of the year results in a reduction of productive installation days.

The Companys cash flow and earnings are typically impacted in the first quarter of the year due to several annual agreements requiring payments in the first quarter including annual rate increases in long-term contracts and the restart on January 1st of payroll taxes and other levies related to employee compensation.

LIQUIDITY AND CAPITAL RESOURCES

TeraGo has historically financed its growth and operations through cash generated by operations, the issuance of equity securities and long-term debt.

The table below is a summary of cash inflows and outflows by activity.

Operating Activities

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, cash used in operating activities was $1.6 million compared to cash generated of $1.8 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease in cash from operating activities is mainly due to unfavourable changes in non-cash working capital, higher severance costs and lower revenues.

Investing Activities

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, cash used from investing activities was $0.6 million compared to cash used of $2.6 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease in cash used from investing activities was due to favourable timing of payments for network assets, property and equipment and intangible assets compared to the same period in 2016.

Financing Activities

For the three months ended March 31, 2017, cash used from financing activities was $1.7 million compared to cash used of $1.8 million for the same period in 2016. The decrease in cash used from financing activities is mainly due to a reduction of the Companys interest expense.

Capital Resources

As at March 31, 2017, the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $9.2 million and access to the $35.0 million undrawn portion of its $85 million credit facilities.

The Company anticipates incurring additional capital expenditures for the purchase and installation of network, colocation and cloud assets and customer premise equipment. As economic conditions warrant, the Company may expand its network coverage into new Canadian markets using wireless or fibre optics and making additional investments in colocation, cloud and other IT services through acquisitions or expansion.

Management believes the Companys current cash, anticipated cash from operations, access to the undrawn portion of debt facilities and its access to additional financing in the form of debt or equity will be sufficient to meet its working capital and capital expenditure requirements for the foreseeable future.

Term Debt Facility

In June 2014, the Company entered into an agreement with a syndicate led by the National Bank of Canada (NBC) to provide a $50.0 million credit facility that is principally secured by a general security agreement over the Companys assets.

In March 2015, the Company entered into an amended agreement with a syndicate led by NBC that increases the credit facility by $35.0 million ($30.0 million increase to the term debt facility and $5.0 million increase to the revolving facility) and extended the term from June 6, 2017 to June 30, 2018. Other terms are substantially consistent with the existing credit facilities.

The total $85.0 million facility that matures June 30, 2018 is made up of the following:

The financing fees have been deferred and amortized using the effective interest method over the term of the facility.

The NBC facility is subject to certain financial and non-financial covenants which the Company is in compliance with at March 31, 2017. Under this facility, the Company is also subject to a cash flow sweep that could accelerate principal repayments based on a detailed calculation outlined by NBC not later than 120 days after the end of each fiscal year.

Equity Offering

On June 11, 2015, the Company completed an equity offering to issue and sell 1,755 common shares for gross proceeds of $10,004 (the Offering). Proceeds net of commissions, legal, accounting and listing fees were $9,210. The Offering was carried out pursuant to an underwriting agreement with a syndicate of underwriters led by National Bank Financial Inc. and TD Securities Inc. and included Cormark Securities Inc., PI Financial Corp. and RBC Capital Markets.

The Company allocated $9,210 of the intended use of net proceeds from the equity offering as follows:

As of March 31, 2017, $3.5 million of the net proceeds from the equity offering were used. The Companys intended use of these proceeds has not changed.

Transactions with Related Parties

Two former Directors of the Company, who retired effective June 23, 2016, also served as Chairman of the Board and a Director of a customer of the Company. Revenue from this customer for the three months ended March 31, 2017 and 2016 was $nil and $20 thousand, respectively. Accounts receivable from this customer as at March 31, 2017 and 2016 was $nil and $6 thousand, respectively.

The terms governing these related party transactions are consistent with those negotiated on an arms length basis with non-related parties.

Share Capital

TeraGos authorized share capital consists of an unlimited number of Common Shares, an unlimited number of Class A Non-Voting Shares and two Class B Shares. A detailed description of the rights, privileges, restrictions and conditions attached to the authorized shares is included in the Companys 2016 Annual Information Form, a copy of which can be found on SEDAR at .

As of May 11, 2017, there were 14,278 Common Shares issued and outstanding and two Class B Shares issued and outstanding. In addition, as of May 11, 2017, there were 653 Common Shares issuable upon exercise of TeraGo stock options.

RISK FACTORS

TeraGo is exposed to a number of risks and uncertainties that are common to other companies engaged in the same or similar businesses. The summary of the material risks that could significantly affect the financial condition, operating results or business of TeraGo, are set out in our managements discussion and analysis for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2016.

UPCOMING ACCOUNTING PRONOUNCEMENTS NOT YET ADOPTED

Certain new standards, interpretations, amendments and improvements to existing standards have been issued by the IASB. The standards impacted that may be applicable to the Company are as follows:

(a) IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers

On May 28, 2014, the IASB issued IFRS 15 which supersedes existing standards and interpretations including IAS 18, Revenue and IFRIC 13, Customer Loyalty Programmes. IFRS 15 introduces a single model for recognizing revenue from contracts with customers with the exception of certain contracts under other IFRSs. The standard requires revenue to be recognized in a manner that depicts the transfer of promised goods or services to a customer and at an amount that reflects the expected consideration receivable in exchange for transferring those goods or services. This is achieved by applying the following five steps:

1. Identify the contract with a customer;

2. Identify the performance obligations in the contract;

3. Determine the transaction price;

4. Allocate the transaction price to the performance obligations in the contract; and

5. Recognize revenue when (or as) the entity satisfies a performance obligation.

IFRS 15 also provides guidance relating to the treatment of contract acquisition and contract fulfillment costs.

The standard is currently effective for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2018. The Company has a team focused on the adoption and compliance with IFRS 15. This team is responsible for determining existing policies, differences between existing policies and IFRS 15, ensuring the Companys data collection is appropriate, and communicating the upcoming changes with various stakeholders. In addition, this team is assisting with the development of processes and policies that will help ensure an effective transition and the related impacts are reliably assessed. As a result, the Company is continuing to assess the impact of this standard on its consolidated financial statements.

(b) IFRS 9 Financial Instruments

On July 24, 2014, the IASB issued the final publication of the IFRS 9 standard, superseding the current IAS 39, Financial Instruments: recognition and measurement (IAS 39) standard. IFRS 9 includes revised guidance on the classification and measurement of financial instruments, including a new expected credit loss model for calculating impairment on financial assets, and the new general hedge accounting requirements. It also carries forward the guidance on recognition and derecognition of financial instruments from IAS 39.

The standard is effective for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2018 with early adoption permitted. The Company is assessing the impact of this standard on the consolidated financial statements. The extent of the impact has not yet been determined.

(c) IFRS 16 Leases

On January 13, 2016, the IASB issued the final publication of the IFRS 16 standard, which will supersede the current IAS 17, Leases standard. Under IFRS 16, a lease will exist when a customer controls the right to use an identified asset as demonstrated by the customer having exclusive use of the asset for a period of time. IFRS 16 introduces a single accounting model for lessees and all leases will require an asset and liability to be recognized on the statement of financial position at inception.

The accounting treatment for lessors will remain largely the same as under IAS 17. The standard is effective for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2019 with early adoption permitted, but only if the entity is also applying IFRS 15. The extent of the impact of the adoption of this standard has not yet been determined.

CRITICAL ACCOUNTING ESTIMATES

The unaudited condensed interim consolidated financial statements are in compliance with International Accounting Standard 34 (IAS 34), Interim Financial Reporting. The preparation of financial statements in accordance with IAS 34 requires the use of certain critical accounting estimates. Estimates and assumptions are continuously evaluated and are based on managements best knowledge of the relevant facts and circumstances, having regard to previous experience. However, actual outcomes may differ from the amounts included in the consolidated financial statements.

The preparation of financial statements in accordance with IAS 34 also requires management to exercise judgement in applying the Companys accounting policies.

The Companys critical accounting estimates have been set out in Note 2 of the Companys 2016 Consolidated Financial Statements.

INTERNAL CONTROL OVER FINANCIAL REPORTING AND DISCLOSURE CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES

Our President and Chief Executive Officer and on an interim basis, Vice President of Finance and Corporate Development, designed or caused to be designed under their supervision, TeraGos disclosure controls and procedures and internal control over financial reporting.

TeraGos disclosure controls and procedures are designed to provide reasonable assurance that material information relating to TeraGo is made known to management by others, particularly during the period in which the interim filings are being prepared and that information required to be disclosed by TeraGo in its annual filings, interim filings or other reports filed or submitted by it under securities legislation is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in securities legislation. TeraGos disclosure controls and procedures includes controls and procedures designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed by TeraGo in its annual filings, interim filings or other reports filed or submitted under securities legislation is accumulated and communicated to management, as appropriate to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.

TeraGos internal control over financial reporting are designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding reliability of financial reporting and the preparation of financial statements for external purposes in accordance with GAAP. TeraGos internal control over financial reporting includes those policies and procedures that: (i) pertain to the maintenance of records that in reasonable detail accurately and fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of TeraGo; (ii) provide reasonable assurance that transactions are recorded as necessary to permit preparation of financial statements in accordance with GAAP, and that receipts and expenditures of TeraGo are being made only in accordance with authorizations of management and directors of TeraGo; and (iii) are designed to provide reasonable assurance regarding prevention or timely detection of unauthorized acquisition, use or disposition of TeraGos assets that could have a material effect on TeraGos financial statements.

The control framework used to design TeraGos internal control over financial reporting is based on the Internal Control  Integrated Framework issued by the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission (COSO 2013).

Due to its inherent limitations, internal control over financial reporting may not prevent or detect all misstatements. Also, projections of any evaluation of effectiveness to future periods are subject to the risk that controls may become inadequate because of changes in conditions, or that the degree of compliance with the policies or procedures may change.

There were no changes in the Companys internal controls over financial reporting for the three months ended March 31, 2017 that have materially affected or are reasonably likely to materially affect internal controls over financial reporting. Management has concluded that there are no material weaknesses relating to the design of TeraGos internal controls over financial reporting as of March 31, 2017.

EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT CHANGES

Effective February 1, 2017, Ron Perrotta joined the Company as Vice President, Marketing and Strategy.

Effective March 16, 2017, Joe Prodan (Chief Financial Officer) was no longer with the Company.

DEFINITIONS  IFRS, ADDITIONAL GAAP AND NON-GAAP MEASURES

IFRS Measures

Cost of services

Cost of services consists of expenses related to delivering service to customers and servicing the operations of our networks. These expenses include costs for the lease of intercity facilities to connect our cities, internet transit and peering costs paid to other carriers, network real estate lease expense, spectrum lease expenses and lease and utility expenses for the data centres and salaries and related costs of staff directly associated with the cost of services.

Gross profit margin %

Gross profit margin % consists of gross profit margin divided by revenue where gross profit margin is revenue less cost of services.

Other operating expenses

Other operating expenses includes sales commission expense, advertising and marketing expenses, travel expenses, administrative expenses including insurance and professional fees, communication expenses, maintenance expenses and rent expenses for office facilities.

Foreign exchange gain (loss)

Foreign exchange gain (loss) relates to the translation of monetary assets and liabilities into Canadian dollars using the exchange rate in effect at that date. The resulting foreign exchange gains and losses are included in net income in the period.

Finance costs

Finance costs consist of interest charged on our short- and long-term debt, amortization of deferred financing costs including expenses associated with closing our long-term debt facility and accretion expense on the Companys decommissioning and restoration obligations. The deferred financing costs are amortized using the effective interest method over the term of the loan.

Finance income

Finance income consists of interest earned on our cash and cash equivalent and short-term investment balances.

Additional GAAP Measures

Earnings (loss) from operations

Earnings (loss) from operations exclude foreign exchange gain (loss), income taxes, finance costs and finance income. We include earnings (loss) from operations as an additional GAAP measure in our consolidated statement of earnings. We consider earnings (loss) from operations to be representative of the activities that would normally be regarded as operating for the Company. We believe this measure provides relevant information that can be used to assess the consolidated performance of the Company and therefore, provides meaningful information to investors.

Non-GAAP Measures

Adjusted EBITDA

The term EBITDA refers to earnings before deducting interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is useful additional information to management, the Board and investors as it provides an indication of the operational results generated by its business activities prior to taking into consideration how those activities are financed and taxed and also prior to taking into consideration asset depreciation and amortization and it excludes items that could affect the comparability of our operational results and could potentially alter the trends analysis in business performance. Excluding these items does not necessarily imply they are non-recurring, infrequent or unusual. Adjusted EBITDA is also used by some investors and analysts for the purpose of valuing a company. The Company calculates Adjusted EBITDA as earnings before deducting interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, foreign exchange gain or loss, finance costs, finance income, gain or loss on disposal of network assets, property and equipment, stock-based compensation and restructuring, acquisition-related and integration costs. Investors are cautioned that Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an alternative to operating earnings or net earnings determined in accordance with IFRS as an indicator of our financial performance or as a measure of our liquidity and cash flows. Adjusted EBITDA does not take into account the impact of working capital changes, capital expenditures, debt principal reductions and other sources and uses of cash, which are disclosed in the consolidated statements of cash flows.

Adjusted EBITDA does not have any standardized meaning under GAAP. TeraGos method of calculating Adjusted EBITDA may differ from other issuers and, accordingly, Adjusted EBITDA may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other issuers. See Results of Operations  Adjusted EBITDA for reconciliation of net loss to Adjusted EBITDA.

Contacts:

TeraGo Investor Relations

1-877-982-3688
Dynamic Spectrum Alliance Global Summit 2017 Successfully Concludes Following Discussion on Investment in Broadband Infrastructure

Cape Town, South Africa, 12 May 2017: Establishing regulatory frameworks for enabling investment in broadband infrastructure across Africa was the key discussion as the fifth annual Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA) Global Summit 2017 concluded yesterday in Cape Town, South Africa.

The three-day event brought together representatives from five continents and 21 countries around the world, including policy makers, regulators, academia, and public and private sector representatives with first-hand experience developing and implementing a range of spectrum sharing regimes.

Research from A4AI notes only half of the world (53%) will be connected by 2020, which leaves almost half of the world unconnected, and the United Nations Broadband Commission says being connected is now a basic human right, commented Professor H Sama Nwana, Emeritus Executive Director, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance, who moderated the panel with senior experts from the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA), the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the National Communications Authority (NCA), Ghana and Ultimate Internetworking Solutions (UltiNetS).

Nwana continued: Investment in infrastructure, unlicensed spectrum and dynamic access technologies remain a barrier to connectivity. It is a challenge of both affordability as well as accessibility, placing the problem squarely with communications policy makers and regulators worldwide. The Global Summit provided a great opportunity to bring together regional policy makers and regulators to share data from their area and explore dynamic spectrum access policies that are already in place and working.

This years Global Summit had high quality presentations resulting in deep discussions on all aspects of spectrum policy, including the challenges around spectrum for Wi-Fi, 5G, the Internet of Things (IoT), closing the digital divide, and satellites. In addition to this, nine regulators came together to share best case practices from around the world.

For the first time this year the DSA formally recognised and celebrated the achievements of its members through an awards ceremony. Dr David Crawford, Head of the Centre for White Space Communications at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, was the recipient of the Award for a Student-Led Initiative or Research on New Opportunities for Dynamic Spectrum Access.

Following the Summit, Crawford commented: It is clear that the dynamic management of spectrum is increasingly being recognized as a key important factor for future wireless connectivity solutions, facilitating more efficient and effective use of spectrum. This will ultimately lead to better and more far-reaching connectivity for a range of applications, including affordable access to the Internet for people in hard-to-reach geographic locations, as well as new IoT and 5G applications and use cases.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance also announced that for the first time it will host the 2018 Global Summit in Europe.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance is focused on encouraging policy changes to enable dynamic spectrum access technologies to help make spectrum available in low-, mid-, and high-band spectrum to satisfy the requirements of densification and coverage, and do so in cost effective ways to enable successful and sustainable network deployments. During my first Global Summit as President of the DSA, Im proud of what we have achieved and look forward to seeing the outcomes and progress in the year ahead until we come together again in Europe in 2018, commented Kalpak Gude, President, Dynamic Spectrum Alliance.

For further information about the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance and the Global Summit 2017, please visit www.dynamicspectrumalliance.org/ or follow @dynamicspectrum and #DSA17GS on Twitter. Alternatively join the Alliance on Facebook or LinkedIn.
Dtex Systems Partners with Fujitsu to Detect and Prevent Insider Threat in Japan with Advanced User Behavior Intelligence

Posted by Publisher Hardware

SAN JOSE, CA  (Marketwired)  05/12/17  , a leading insider threat detection provider, today announced that it has signed a partner agreement with Fujitsu Limited, the leading Japanese information and communication technology (ICT) company. Under the agreement, Fujitsu will offer insider threat detection capabilities through its Global Managed Security Service using the , a lightweight, scalable solution combining endpoint-based user visibility with adaptive analytics.

As the leading Japanese ICT company, Fujitsu defends its internal networks, which connect hundreds of group companies globally. The company accumulates security knowledge and provides this intelligence to customers as a managed security service. Fujitsu is collaborating with Dtex Systems to further strengthen and expand its Global Managed Security Service using the innovative new user behavior analytics technology to detect insider threat risk.

Insider incidents represent a majority of data breaches globally, which makes understanding user behavior critical to preventing data loss, said Christy Wyatt, CEO of Dtex Systems. We are thrilled to partner with Fujitsu, a trusted industry leader, to offer comprehensive and scalable security solutions that provide deep, contextual understanding of user behavior in Japan.

Companies are facing an increasingly difficult challenge with identifying insider related security issues, said Junichi Iijima, Head of Cyber Security Business Strategy Unit, Fujitsu Limited. We are excited that our collaboration with Dtex enables us to quickly detect and mitigate insider risk with user behavior analytics. This capability will help to strengthen our customers overall security.

Recognized as a pioneer in insider threat detection, Dtex understands the wide range of insider threat types  including negligent users, malicious actors, and compromised users  and can pinpoint them with greater accuracy than legacy enterprise security vendors, without compromising user privacy or productivity. The Dtex Advanced User Behavior Intelligence Platform self-tunes by continuously studying and learning user patterns, allowing it to better identify anomalies and address risky or negligent behavior while avoiding the burden of false positives. With the industrys most comprehensive library of thousands of known user threat behavior patterns  enhanced with advanced risk modeling and combined risk scoring  it can identify abnormal user behavior and provide contextual, actionable insights.

To ensure visibility into user activity without impeding user privacy, Dtex provides anonymization capabilities to strip metadata of any identifying information to maintain user privacy, deeming it suitable for use even under the strictest privacy laws.

For more information about Dtex and the companys User Behavior Intelligence Platform, visit . For more information about Fujitsu, visit .

Dtex Systems arms enterprises across the globe with revolutionary technology to protect against user threats, data breaches, and outsider infiltration. As the only solution combining unparalleled endpoint visibility with advanced analytics, Dtex is able to pinpoint threats with greater accuracy than traditional security methods without adversely impacting user productivity. Dtex established itself as a US Company in 2015 after securing its Series A funding from Norwest Venture Partners and Wing Ventures. To learn more, visit .

Erika Kamholz

Bhava Communications for Dtex Systems

949.282.8560
2022 Indiana election results: See the latest updates from St. Joseph County

Vote totals are preliminary until all are counted and certified by the St. Joseph County Election Board.
A Lake Geneva man drowned Thursday night in Geneva Lake while kayaking on the lake.

The Lake Geneva Fire Department said it went to the lakeshore near West Main Street at about 6:30 p.m. after getting reports of a man possibly drowning.

Divers pulled the man's body out of the water about an hour later, the department said. Search teams from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin looked for the victim.

The 22-year-old man was not identified.

The fire department said he had been kayaking with a woman when their kayaks flipped over. The man helped the woman then went under water again, and didn't return to the surface.

The victim was pronounced dead at the scene.
Georgetown, SC (29440)

Today

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low 61F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy this evening with showers after midnight. Low 61F. Winds NNE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
During the peak of the annual Eta Aquarid meteor shower last weekend, skywatchers captured some stunning images of the "shooting stars" as they bolted through the night sky.

Eta Aquarid meteors started raining down on Earth's atmosphere in late April and will continue to spritz through the sky until May 20, according to NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. The most impressive part of this monthlong meteor shower happened during its peak, in the early morning hours of Saturday, May 6.

During the meteor shower's peak, astrophotographer Justin Ng captured an amazing time-lapse video of the meteor shower from Mount Bromo, Indonesia. The bright meteors lit up the night sky like lightning flashes, and one even left a smoke trail as it burned up in Earth's atmosphere. Using a Canon 5D Mark IV digital camera, Ng also captured a shot of the Milky Way and its galactic neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud, in the background.

Photographer Justin Ng of Singapore captured this stunning view of an Eta Aquarid meteor streaking over Mount Bromo in Indonesia during the meteor shower's peak on May 6, 2017. (Image credit: Justin Ng

Down in New Zealand, Harriet Thomas photographed several meteors streaking across star-speckled skies over the Port Hills. She took to the hills early Saturday morning to escape the light pollution from the city of Christchurch and snap a few photos of the Eta Aquarids. [The Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower in Photos]

Eta Aquarid meteors dash over the Port Hills of Christchurch, New Zealand, on May 6, 2017. (Image credit: Harriet Thomas

Thomas mounted her Canon EOS 80D digital camera on a tripod, switched it into continuous shooting (or "burst") mode, and then kicked back and watched the show while her camera snapped away. With the camera set to shoot at 15- to 30-second exposure times, she managed to capture several meteors, some of which were brighter than others.

"The rock managed to get a good cast of light over it from someone pulling into the car park and shining their headlights over it!" Thomas told Space.com in an email. Despite the light pollution from the city below, you can still see a faint part of the Milky Way over the landscape.

Several faint Eta Aquarid meteors streak across the star-speckled sky in this photo taken from the Port Hills of Christchurch, New Zealand, on May 6, 2017. (Image credit: Harriet Thomas

Editor's note: If you snap an amazing night-sky photo that you'd like to share with us and our news partners for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments to us at spacephotos@space.com.

Email Hanneke Weitering at hweitering@space.com or follow her @hannekescience. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
The first launch of NASA's Saturn V moon rocket, 50 years ago this November, did not fly with a crew. There were no astronauts seated atop the giant booster to become the face of the Apollo 4 mission and, as great an accomplishment as it was, there are few, if any people who worked the flight from the ground who rose to the public's attention.

A new television series premiering Sunday (May 14) seeks to correct for that and other space history oversights, some five decades later.

"When you watch a Saturn V launch and realize that you have invested part of your life, when you realize it's really going to work, the gratification level is outstanding," says Jim Odom in the debut episode of Smithsonian Channel's "America's Secret Space Heroes." [America's Secret Space Heroes Trailer: Saturn V Rocket]

The Smithsonian Channel series "America's Secret Space Heroes" premieres on Sunday, May 14 at 9 ET/PT. (Image credit: Smithsonian Channel via collectSPACE.com)

Chances are, most viewers won't have heard of Odom. The chief of the engineering and test operations branch for the second stage of the Saturn V rocket, Odom is among the "secret" engineers that the series seeks to celebrate.

"They really are the unsung heroes of the space age," Tim Evans, executive producer for Smithsonian Channel, told collectSPACE. "They are the pioneers who literally made it possible for humanity to become a spacefaring species."

"We have heard about the astronauts and heard about the policymakers, and even heard a little bit about the people in Mission Control, but no one has talked to the engineers and technicians who actually made that possible," he said.

In its six parts, "America's Secret Space Heroes" explores the history behind some of the greatest space endeavors from the perspectives of the lesser known individuals who made them happen. Starting with the Saturn V, the series then devotes an hour each to the lunar module, space shuttle, International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and the Viking Mars missions.

"Those are the six that are iconic and everyone knows that they were the big steps forward, so that is what we based the episodes on," explained Evans. "NASA pointed us to top engineers for each of the programs and we spoke with the Smithsonian's space history staff, who are some of the best space historians in the world."

Donn Binns, senior project engineer for North American Aviation, as seen in "America's Secret Space Heroes." (Image credit: Smithsonian Channel)

In addition to Odom, the Saturn V-focused first episode also features interviews with propulsion engineer Myron Pessin; Don Brincka, director of test operations at Douglas Aircraft; and North American Aviation senior project engineer Donn Binns.

"It is amazing how long you can hold your breath," states Binns, describing the first launch of the Saturn V. "We had ignition on the second stage, the ignition was good and all our flight parameters were essentially perfect."

"After that, you know, I was able to breathe again," he says.

Not all of those featured on the show are unknown, at least not to those with even a passing interest in space history. Among the more recognizable interviewees are Apollo-era NASA public affairs official Ed Buckbee, who later founded U.S. Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, and F-1 rocket engine project manager Sonny Morea, who was previously featured in the Science Channel series "Moon Machines."

"I do not think they see themselves as overlooked, but this part of the story hasn't been told," said Evans. "So many of the engineers and technicians have not told this story on television before."

Author and historian Andrew Chaikin, whose book "A Man on the Moon" served as the basis for the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon," is also interviewed, offering context to the engineers' stories.

"We are hoping we are going to reach an audience who are already space fans, already people who are aware of the importance of space travel, as well as, hopefully, a new generation of people who don't know much about the first space missions and who are looking toward the next," said Evans.

"America's Secret Space Heroes" premieres Sunday, May 14, 2017 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Smithsonian Channel.

Watch a clip from the first episode of "America's Secret Space Heroes" at collectSPACE.

Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2017 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved.
This recent self-portrait from NASAs Curiosity rover shows the robot shortly after it retrieved a sample of dark sand from shifting dunes along the flank of a Martian hillside. Curiosity is a rover designed to look for evidence of the Red Planets changing habitability over time, but future missions to the Martian surface may instead engage in more direct searches for past and present life.

MESA, ArizonaSince the dawn of the space age NASA and other agencies have spent billions of dollars to reconnoiter Marsassailing it with spacecraft flybys, photo-snapping orbiters and landers nose-diving onto its surface. The odds are good, many scientists say, for the Red Planet being an extraterrestrial address for alien lifegood enough to sustain decades' worth of landing very expensive robots to ping it with radar, zap it with lasers, trundle across its terrain and scoop up its dirt. Yet against all odds (and researchers' hopes for a watershed discovery), Mars remains a poker-faced world that holds its cards tight. No convincing signs of life have emerged. But astrobiologists continue to, quite literally, chip away at finding the truth.

As the search becomes more heated (some would say more desperate), scientists are entertaining an ever-increasing number of possible explanations for Martian biology as a no-show. For example, could there be a "cover up" whereby the harsh Martian environment somehow obliterates all biosignaturesall signs of past or present life? Or perhaps life there is just so alien its biosignatures are simply unrecognizable to us, hidden in plain view.

Of course, the perplexing quest to find life on Mars may have a simple solution: It's not there, and never was. But as the proceedings of this year's Astrobiology Science Conference held here in April made clear, life-seeking scientists are not giving up yet. Instead, they are getting more creative, proposing new strategies and technologies to shape the next generation of Mars exploration.

A Slumbering Biosphere?

Talk about looking for Martians and you inevitably talk about water, the almost-magical liquid that sustains all life on Earth and seems to have served as an indispensable kick-starter for biology in our planet's deepest past. "It all started out with 'follow the water;' not necessarily 'follow the life'but 'follow one of the basic requirements for living systems,'" says Arizona State University geologist Jack Farmer, referring to NASA's oft-repeated mantra for Martian exploration. "There are many indications of water on Mars in the past, perhaps reservoirs of water in the near subsurface as well," he says. "But what is the quality of that water? Is it really saltytoo salty for life?"

Without liquid water, Farmer points out, one would naively think organisms cannot function. The reality may be more complex: on Earth, some resilient organisms such as tardigrades can enter a profound, almost indefinite state of hibernation when deprived of moisture, preserving their desiccated tissues but neither growing nor reproducing. It is possible, Farmer says, that Martian microbes could spend most of their time as inert spores "waiting for something good to happen," only springing to life given the right and very rare conditions. Certain varieties of Earthly "extremophiles"microbes that live at extremes of temperature, pressure, salinity and so onexhibit similar behavior.

Farmer says there is as yet no general consensus about the best way to go about life detection on the Red Planet. This is due in no small part to the runaway pace of progress in biotechnology, which has led to innovations such as chemistry labs shrunken down to fit on a computer chip. These technologies "have been revolutionizing the medical field, and have now started to enter into concepts for life detection on Mars," he explains. Things move so fast that today's best technology for finding Martian biology may be tomorrow's laughably obsolete dead-end.

But no matter how sophisticated a lab on a chip might be, it won't deliver results if it is not sent to the right place. Farmer suspects that seriously seeking traces of life requires deep drilling on Mars. "I basically think we're going to have to gain access to the subsurface and look for the fossil record," he explains. But discovering a clear, unambiguous fossil biosignature on Mars would also raise a red flag. "We probably would approach the future of Mars explorationparticularly accessing habitable zones of liquid water in the deep subsurfacemore cautiously, because life could still be there. So planetary protection would be taken very seriously," he says. ("Planetary protection" is the term scientists commonly use for precautions to minimize the chance of biological contamination between worlds. Think of it not so much in terms of bug-eyed aliens running rampant on Earth but of billion-dollar robots finding "Martians" that prove to only be hardy bacterial hitchhikers imported from our own world).

The Martian Underground

Like-minded about deep diving on Mars is Penelope Boston, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center. "That's my bias," she says. "Given Mars' current state, with all the challenging surface manifestations of dryness, radiation and little atmosphere, the best hope for life still extant on Mars is subsurface." The subsurface, she says, might also offer better chances of preserving past lifethat is, of fossils, even if only of single-celled organisms.

The planet's depths hold the potential for harboring liquid water under certain circumstances, Boston thinks. But how far down might that water be? "I suspect it's pretty farand how we get to it, that's a whole other kettle of fish," she says. Over the years scientists have estimated the average depth of the planet's possible liquid reservoirs as anywhere between tens of meters to kilometers. Then again, recent observations from orbiters have revealed mysterious dark streaks that seasonally flow down the sunlit sides of some Martian hillsides and craters. These "recurring slope lineae" could conceivably be brines of liquid water fed by aquifers very close to the surface, some researchers say.

Such lingering uncertainties emerge from the indirect and scattered nature of our studies of Mars, and ensure that any argument for life there is based solely on circumstantial information, Boston notes. "Each individual piece of evidence is, on its own merits, weak," she says. Only by amassing a diverse suite of independent measurements can a well-built case for life on Mars be made, she says: "In my opinion, we can't make that strong case unless we push to do all of those measurements on exactly the same precise spot. We don't do that because it's very difficult, but it's something to aspire to." Despite decades of sending costly hardware to Mars, Boston believes that what is still missing is a sense of harmony between instruments, allowing them to work together to support a search for alien life. "I think that the precise requirements of a really robust claim of life at the microscopic scale require us to push on further," she notes.

Attendees at the astrobiology meeting in Arizona showcased an assortment of high-tech devices for next-generation exploration, ranging from microfluidic "life analyzers" and integrated nucleic acid extractors for studying "Martian metagenomics" to exquisitely sensitive, miniaturized organic chemistry labs for spotting tantalizing carbon compounds and minerals at microscopic scales. Missing from the mix, however, was any solid consensus on how these and other tools could all work together to provide a slam-dunk detection of life on Mars.

What's the Weather?

Some scientists contend a new kind of focus is sorely needed. Perhaps the pathway to finding any Martians lurking in the planet's nooks and crannies is to learn where exactly on Mars those potentially life-nurturing niches exist, and how they change over the course of days, months and years rather than over eons of geologic time. That is, to find homes for extant life on Mars today, researchers should probably not just be studying the planet's long-term climate but also its day-to-day weather.

"Right now we're sort of shifting gears. Once you've found out that a planet is habitable, then the next question is, 'Was there life?'so it's a completely different ball game," says Nathalie Cabrol, director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute. "On Mars you cannot look for life with the tools that have been looking for habitability of that planet," she argues. "We should be looking for habitats and not habitable environments. You are dealing on Mars with what I call extremophile extreme environments on steroids," she says, "and you don't look for microbial life with telescopes from Mars orbit."

Cabrol advocates making an unprecedentedly robust, high-resolution study of environmental variability on Mars by peppering its surface with weather stations. Sooner or later telltale signs of the possible whereabouts of extant life may emerge from the resulting torrents of data. "Today's environment on that planet is a reflection of something in the past," she says, and planting numbers of automated stations on Mars does not need to be expensive. "This is of interest not only to astrobiology but to human exploration. The first thing you want to know is what the weather is like," she says, adding, "Right now we're not equipped to do this and I'm not saying it's going to be easy to look for extant life. I'm not saying what we're doing now is wrong. Whatever we put on the ground we are learning. But there is variability on Mars. You go up or down one meter, things change. Habitats at a microscopic level can happen at the scale of a slope. It can happen at the scale of a rock!"

Might We Be Martians?

"I think Mars offers us the highest chance of finding life" somewhere beyond Earth, says Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a planetary scientist at Technical University of Berlin in Germany. But, like Boston and others, he maintains confirmation of life will only come from multiple "layers of proof" that have to be consistent with one another. "We really need at least four different kinds of methods," he says. "My point is that there's no slam-dunk. We need several instruments. You have to build a case, and right now we can do betterunless the biosignature through a microscope is waving hello." The trouble, he adds, is that too-stringent planetary protection rules may preclude getting the evidence necessary for that proof. "We have the technology to go to places where there could be life," he says. "But we can't go to certain areas on Mars, like recurring slope lineae orunder patches of ice. It seems to be ridiculous."

Indeed, Schulze-Makuch speculates planetary protection may be a lost cause for Marsor at least a misguided endeavor. It may even be that any Martian microbes are actually Earth's long-lost cousins. Or, conversely, Mars rather than Earth is really the sole site of biogenesis in our solar system. Both scenarios are possible, considering that single-celled organisms can likely survive world-shattering impacts and the subsequent interplanetary voyages if embedded in ejected shards of rock that could fall elsewhere as meteorites. Innumerable impacts of this scale battered the solar system billions of years ago, potentially blasting biological material between neighboring worlds. On balance, Schulze-Makuch says, "the chances are higher that we are Martians."

This article was first published at ScientificAmerican.com.  ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news.
Artists illustration of a crewed outpost on Mars. NASA is working to make such a vision a reality by the late 2030s.

Donald Trump won't be president when NASA launches its first crewed mission to Mars.

During a call with NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) last month, Trump said he'd like the space agency to get people to the Red Planet "during my first term or, at worst, during my second term."

Such a request would seriously accelerate NASA's "Journey to Mars" initiative, which is currently working to get astronauts to the vicinity of the Red Planet in the 2030s. But it now appears that Trump was just engaging in a playful back-and-forth with ISS astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer, not stating a serious policy objective. [NASA and Trump: What Happened in Space in the 1st 100 Days (Video)]

White House officials have "asked us to look at the plan we have today, and see if we can keep going on that plan," NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot told reporters during a teleconference today (May 12). "They have not asked us to go to Mars by 2024."

Lightfoot's comments came during an update about the status of NASA's Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), which will mark the first joint flight of the Orion capsule and huge Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. NASA is developing both Orion and the SLS to send astronauts to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

EM-1 will take Orion on a roughly three-week trip around the moon. The mission, which had been scheduled to take place in late 2018, will actually launch sometime in 2019, Lightfoot and Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's human-spaceflight chief, announced during today's teleconference.

Gerstenmaier cited several reasons for the delay, including difficulty in procuring the large numbers of valves, wiring, avionics and other components needed for the giant rocket.

"We're, frankly, having trouble going from a very small industrial base to now this big base we need," he said.

There also was an act of nature: In February, a tornado damaged NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, where much of the core SLS and Orion infrastructure is built.

"The tornado was really unfortunate to us, and that really set us back in a big way," Gerstenmaier said.

Exactly when in 2019 EM-1 will lift off is unclear at the moment, but a target date should be firmed up in the next few months, Gerstenmaier and Lightfoot said.

The Trump administration had asked NASA to consider putting astronauts aboard EM-1, which was originally envisioned as an uncrewed mission. The space agency has now completed an internal evaluation of the crewed-EM-1 idea and has decided to stick with the original plan, Lightfoot and Gerstenmaier said today.

While the SLS has yet to take flight, Orion has one mission under its belt. In December 2014, the capsule launched atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket on an uncrewed mission to Earth orbit called Exploration Flight Test 1.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
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"Governing means broadening your circle," he told his told his closest advisors following his election victory, as though he were preparing them for the possibility that he would choose a conservative as prime minister. It would be a clever move because it would be a recognition of the fact that many French citizens only voted for him to prevent Marine Le Pen from winning. He has pledged that half of his cabinet will be women.

In one month, it will become clear just how much leeway Emmanuel Macron will have when it comes to implementing his agenda. Parliamentary elections are scheduled for June 11 and 18 and the reforms he envisions -- to the labor market or education system -- can only be realized with a parliamentary majority.

The coming elections, though, highlight yet another novelty: A president who does not come from any of the established parties hoping to achieve a majority with a brand new political movement. En Marche! has to present candidates for 577 electoral districts. And choosing them will also be a tightrope walk: Macron wants to find fresh candidates for half of the seats in the hopes of avoiding a parliament containing the same people as before, just under a different label. His reasoning is clear: The image of professional politicians in France is extremely poor.

Macron's Adversaries and Skeptics

Macron and his credibility are under the microscope, as he well knows. In part, that is because he is a child of the system on which he has now declared war.

Last Wednesday, for example, almost as though he were trying to set an example, he rejected offers from his former boss, ex-Prime Minister Manuel Valls, to campaign on his behalf. Valls is the man who once promoted Macron to the French cabinet -- and he had announced that he intended to run for En Marche! in his electoral district in southern Paris. But Macron rebuffed him, leading some to refer to the newly elected president as "the killer" on Twitter. Macron may stand for reconciliation, but he is also adept at the art of humiliation.

Macron wants parliamentary candidates who are full of fresh ideas. He hopes that the June votes will serve as a legitimation of his election to the presidency by granting him a mandate to do all that he has promised to do. He faces the task of bringing the new and the old together, a coexistence that has to be successful if France wants to truly change and break free of its current stasis and depression.

The project will be made more difficult by the fact that bipartisanship is not generally counted among France's many virtues. Governing coalitions in the country are referred to as "cohabitation" and essentially seen as a way to keep the opposition on a short leash. That, though, is the scenario the center-right is hoping for -- even as they, in their desperate attempts to cling to the benefits political office bestows upon them, seem not unlike those cartoon figures who run off a cliff and don't even notice that there is no longer any ground under their feet. If the conservatives win a majority in the coming parliamentary elections, which cannot be ruled out, many of the young president's plans would likely have to be discarded -- because the center-right would do all they could to thwart him.

And there are others who stand in opposition to Macron as well. The country's labor unions are among them. Even though they don't represent as many workers as they do in Germany, they can still launch damaging general strikes at any time. And Macron represents everything the unions hate: a former banker who wants to reform the country's welfare system, in part by pushing through hated labor market reforms -- by presidential decree if he has to.

The extreme left-wing politician Jean-Luc Melenchon, who received almost 8 million votes in the first round of the election, has likewise called on his supporters to resist Macron's plans.

Throwing Certainties Overboard

And Marine Le Pen, the election runner-up, has spoken darkly of a strong opposition, though she must first turn her attentions to her own party. Just as in the rest of France, nothing in the Front National is as it was just a few weeks ago. The majority of voters in six of the 11 municipalities governed by Front National cast their ballots for Macron. Since then criticism has rained down on Le Pen and, in particular, her deputy Florian Philippot, despite the Front National having achieved its best-ever result in a presidential election.

Making things even worse for Front National, Marine's niece Marion announced this week that she is "temporarily" withdrawing from politics to focus on raising her young daughter. Marion Marechal-Le Pen, 27, was considered among right-wing conservatives as a shining hope for the future.

Such is the situation following this election, in which established certainties were thrown overboard along with much of the erstwhile political system. Whereas before, two parties passed power back and forth among themselves, the country now has four blocks of almost equal size. Plus an additional block of people who didn't vote at all.

On the Monday following the election, Christophe Guilluy was sitting in a cafe on Place de la Republique and offering his analysis of the historical results. Guilluy, an angular man in his early 50s, is a geographer -- and the man who likely exerted considerable influence on the campaign strategies of both Macron and Le Pen. He is the originator of the theory that France is splitting in two. His essay is titled "la France peripherique," and it is a meticulous profile of the country as it stands today. In the piece, Guilluy describes how rural areas have become increasingly alienated from France's urban centers and how they have developed in opposition to one another, such that geographic segregation has ultimately developed into societal rupture.

It is a theory that both Macron and Le Pen agree with, and one reflected in French voting patterns. It is interesting, Guilluy says, how clearly these social, cultural and geographic breaks were exposed in this election. "All of these rifts that run through France are visible politically. Now, politics must be reshaped," he says. Categories such as right and left no longer apply. As if to follow the argument to its logical conclusion, he says that France is more atomized than it is split. He says that Macron's strength is that he was the first to have understood as much.

"This time Macron won, but next time it might be Le Pen or a different populist," Guilluy says. The French, he says, have long moved like tectonic plates, with society constantly shifting from one side to the other. "Everything could capsize at any time," he says. "The middle class, the glue of every society, is in the process of disappearing," which, he says, is a consequence of globalization. That, he believes, is the challenge facing Emmanuel Macron: ensuring that the weak can once again benefit from France's prosperity so that they don't radicalize further.

Making Up for the Failures of His Predecessors

That is something that Macron expects of himself as well. "I will create harmony in France once again," he said during his speech at the Louvre. He also said the same to SPIEGEL in an interview shortly before the election . The cities, he said, have been the winners, but there is also the France on the periphery, which has self-doubts. "We need to bring these two parts back together. Key to this is our middle class -- they form the base of our democracy," he said.

Time is of the essence. He must now make up for the failures of his predecessors. Both Nicolas Sarkozy and Francois Hollande failed to sufficiently follow through on their grand plans. Their penchant for empty words didn't just disappoint the French, it alienated them -- from themselves, from politics and also from Europe.

Macron's predecessors constantly invoked their country's grand past, its historical legacy, but in doing so, they oddly lost sight of the present and its growing problems. Macron has promised that he will do "everything in the next five years so that there is no longer any reason to vote for extremist parties." It is a vastly ambitious challenge.

Even before he strode up to the stage that had been set up for him on the evening of his election victory, and before thanking the cheering crowd for his victory, Macron spoke on the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who offered her congratulations. When he heads for Berlin next week, he will explain to her what he has planned for his country. And they will also discuss how things should proceed in Europe. Sources among his staff say that he intends to work together with her and not in opposition. In contrast to Hollande five years ago, Macron did not pose as an adversary to Germany during the campaign nor did he seek to stoke resentment during the hunt for votes. In this French campaign, it was Macron's opponents who took that route.

"Europe must protect itself better, that is what Macron wants to achieve," says one of his confidants. "But for him, being pro-European doesn't mean just putting his hands in his lap and simply waiting."

It doesn't speak well for Europe that many have already ducked into the trenches and begun firing away at the political newcomer, particularly when the desire for change is an absolute necessity. But it looks as though many in Brussels have already forgotten that this election could have turned out differently. Already, it is being said that Macron is in favor of controversial "Eurobonds," although such a demand can be found nowhere in his policy platforms. "We need instruments that allow us to react to crises within the eurozone," is what one hears from his staff.

A Wary Brussels Establishment

His reform ideas for Europe are likewise just as vague for the time being. When he speaks of a eurozone budget or of a joint finance minister, it sounds less like a proposal than like the results of a brainstorming session over how to prepare European institutions for the future. But even to these ideas, the reaction of the Brussels establishment has been wary.

Macron is well aware of the sensitivities of France's European partners and has repeatedly said that France must first "do its job" before trust between Berlin and Paris can be restored. "It's now our duty to finally follow through with reforms," he told SPIEGEL in the March interview. He has also said he sees adherence to EU budget deficit rules is a "precondition" for France's renewal and for winning back German trust. The problem, though, is that his predecessors have all said the same thing.

What is clear, however, is that Macron looks to Germany with curiosity and interest and that, throughout the brutal campaign and before, he consistently demonstrated support for Europe. Indeed, the generational change that is now taking place in France could be interpreted as an opportunity.

Perhaps a younger political leader is best able to put a stop to the symptoms of fatigue that are currently pervasive in Europe. Because what is true of France, is also true of Brussels: New impulses are badly needed. And for Emmanuel Macron, who was born in 1977, the EU isn't a sputtering experiment, but rather the only reality he has ever known. The same is true for most of those he surrounds himself with -- and with whom he won the election.

With the exception of Jean Pisani-Ferry, the 65-year-old former head of the think tank Bruegel who functions as Macron's chief economic advisor, all those within the new president's inner circle are around 40 years of age at the oldest, with many of them quite a bit younger than that. His chief campaign strategist Ismael Emelien, who was a key figure in the launch of En Marche!, is just 30 years old.

Initially, after he left his advisor post in the Elysee, Macron had intended to found a startup with Emelien and Julien Denormandie, a 36-year-old engineer who is now in charge of party organization for Republique en marche. Macron's appointment to economy minister put an end to those plans. The man in charge of preparing Macron's movement for the parliamentary elections and maintaining contact with representatives and candidates in the electoral districts is Stephane Sejourne, 32. Sylvain Fort, an opera fan who graduated from the Ecole normale superieure, is his communications adviser. He is 45.

Proving Otherwise

All of them share a preference for slim-cut, perfectly tailored suits. Benjamin Griveaux, 39, relates another characteristic they all have in common: "We are all children of the provinces and have gone to good universities. But none of us comes from the Paris upper classes."

A camera team spent half a year following the Macron team -- all the way up to the happy ending last Sunday. The resulting documentary, "Behind the Scenes of a Campaign," was broadcast the very next day. It shows how much fun politics can be away from the established party structures -- and how difficult it is to do such a thing.

In the film, just as in real life, his wife Brigitte is omnipresent. There is likely nobody left who isn't familiar with her story and where she comes from. She was a high school teacher of Macron's in Amiens, 24 years his senior. They got to know each other when they spent weeks rewriting a play together. He was just 17 when he promised to marry her -- later.

He fulfilled his promise in 2007 and now, Brigitte Macron is France's Premiere dame. She is cordial, elegant and funny. Shortly before her husband won the election, she said: "It would be best if Emmanuel became president now. Imagine how I will look in 2022!" With the Macrons, a couple is moving into Elysee Palace that could hardly be tighter -- something that the French are no longer used to. One recalls the stiff facade maintained by the Chiracs, who lived in separate apartments, followed by the divorces and romantic escapades of Sarkozy and Hollande.

When Emmanuel Macron speaks of his wife, he says things like: "Without Brigitte, I wouldn't be me." And: "Brigitte is a bit of me, and vice versa."

The story of Macron's political rise is mirrored by his relationship -- neither is entirely conventional and both his ambitions and his marriage are viewed with some skepticism. Is such a "not entirely normal" -- as he once put it -- relationship seemly? And can it endure? Together, the two answered their skeptics such that ultimately, nobody was surprised any longer by the fact that Brigitte was always at his side straightening his tie or even autographing copies of his book, always with a laugh. "I didn't write it," she would call out when, at some appearance or another, a line of admirers suddenly appeared in front of her.

Emmanuel Macron, who will turn 40 in December, is fond of quoting the French romantic Alfred de Musset: "I came too late into a world too old." Now, walking onto the stage of global politics as the youngest-ever president of France, it is up to Macron to prove otherwise.
SPIEGEL: That's why Macron is demanding that Germany should steer part of its surpluses to Southern Europe. Germany must recognize, he says, that Europe and the common currency cannot survive without becoming a transfer union. Is he right?

Schauble: You cannot form a community of countries of different strength without a certain amount of equilibrium. That is reflected in, for example, the EU budget and the bailout programs. That is why there are net payers and net recipients in Europe. A community cannot exist if the stronger do not take responsibility for the weaker. How far one goes with those transfers and the amount that is to be redistributed is something that voters must decide in a democracy.

SPIEGEL: That's why the new president would like to strengthen the European institutions and, for example, institute a European finance minister. What do you think of that?

Schauble: A lot - I actually once brought this up. But a European finance minister would also have to have the powers of a finance minister. Otherwise the whole thing doesn't make any sense.

SPIEGEL: What powers are you referring to?

Schauble: He or she would need, for example, a budget. The chancellor has even brought up this possibility before. And the person would of course also have to be able to enforce European budget rules so that they are adhered to by all. Such a sweeping change, however, would also require amending the European treaties. There are not many people in Europe right now who consider that to be realistic.

SPIEGEL: What, then, can Europe do to further integrate?

Schauble: I support pursuing every realistic step in joint initiatives in Europe. We need to lead the investment initiative to success and to implement the digital and energy union and push forward the defense union.

SPIEGEL: There's also a proposal for creating a European defense fund.

Schauble: I support it. But there would also have to be a preparedness to jointly plan and carry out the associated procurement projects. I could also imagine further developing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM, the euro backstop fund) that we founded for the euro crisis countries.

SPIEGEL: Will you be forgiving if France fails to meet the provisions of the Stability Pact again in the future?

Schauble: First of all, I have confidence that the new French president will hold to his pledge to reduce new borrowing. France should be able to manage that - after all, it is not far off the 3-percent mark.

SPIEGEL: And if it doesn't?

Schauble: Then it is not my job to be forgiving. Interpreting budget rules is the job of the European Commission. It oversees the Stability Pact and has significant leeway, which it has frequently used in the past years.

SPIEGEL: You have also at times sharply criticized the Brussels authority for doing so.

Schauble: What makes you think that? The German federal government and I have never contradicted a recommendation from the Commission on how to judge the deficits of countries like France.

SPIEGEL: Yet you are held responsible all across Europe for the rigid austerity course. Are you disputing that you insist on strict adherence to European budgetary rules?

Schauble: Treaties exist so that they will be adhered to. It only serves to strengthen euroskepticism when we constantly make promises and reach agreements that we do not adhere to.
STAMFORD  The citys school district could eliminate six teacher positions to absorb a nearly $2 million cut to next years operating budget.

The Board of Educations fiscal committee discussed a draft resolution last week that would reduce spending for staff, health insurance, transportation and other accounts.

The tentative proposal calls for a net reduction of six positions, all of which would come from the districts instructional support and scientific research-based intervention teams.

If the resolution is approved next week, the overall employee count will be reduced to nearly 2,050 positions, which is still above this years 2,034 total. But Superintendent of Schools Earl Kim told the committee hes hopeful those employees would find employment elsewhere in the district.

While were reducing our total head count, we should be able to employ all staff if their certifications match up correctly, he said at Tuesdays committee meeting.

The cuts are among several reductions recommended by the Board of Finance, which last month cut $1.7 million from the districts budget request for 2017-18. The now-$269.7 million operating budget is still 2.2 percent higher than what was allocated for this year.

The board is also considering a $250,000 reduction in health insurance costs. If the Board of Finances estimate is off, Kim said he would ask for a special appropriation.

The school board also plans to cut $250,000 for transportation, as suggested by the Board of Finance.

If we find ourselves in the position where buses are beyond capacity or routes exceed the maximum route length of 50 to 55 minutes, then well be going back to the Board of Finance for a supplemental appropriation, Kim said.

The superintendent said every school has reported bus delays this year and at least one bus is over capacity.

Further cuts are possible later this year if the state reduces education aid to the city. However, the state Legislature is nowhere near approving a budget. It is the first time in three decades the legislative Appropriations Committee has failed to present a budget proposal.

Board of Education member David Mannis told the committee the state budget situation is chaos.

noliveira@ stamfordadvocate.com, 203-964-2265, @olivnelson
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EXCLUSIVE: $10 Course Promo Expires May 27, 2017

Theres always something you can add to your small business repertoire. Whether youve gotten your MBA or built up your entrepreneurial knowledge through the School of Hard Knocks, you (like every entrepreneur) should never stop improving. These 10 Udemy courses (if you're not already familiar with Udemy, it's basically a database of online courses) will help shape you into a better, stronger entrepreneur with no real risk because theyre all $100 or less.

The Essential Guide to Entrepreneurship by Guy Kawasaki

You dont have to be new to entrepreneurship to benefit from a small business guide. In The Essential Guide to Entrepreneurship, world-renowned entrepreneur, advisor and investor Guy Kawasaki lays out his essential steps for starting a company and building a brand identity that keeps customers coming back for more.

The course includes interactive exercises and answers to frequently asked questions like When do you know when you have a winning idea? and How do you stay positive during the lows and stay calm during the highs?

Leadership: Practical Leadership Skills

As an entrepreneur, youre not only leading the employees you take on as your business grows, but youre leading those within your industry and the communities that rally behind you. In Leadership: Practical Leadership Skills, international speaker Chris Croft covers all the bases: how to motivate, delegate, stay confident and more.

Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader

Growth Hacking: Free Tools for Small Business Owners (Free)

You may see the term growth hacking all over the internet, but do you have a good grasp on the topic? For the low, low price of free, Growth Hacking: Free Tools for Small Business Owners will show you how to create sticky headlines and titles, maximize your websites SEO and build better customer relationships to rapidly grow your startup. Its the ideal class for small business owners and new entrepreneurs.

Become a SpeedDemon: Productivity Tricks to Have More Time

Every business owner wishes they had just a bit more time. In Become a SpeedDemon: Productivity Tricks to Have More Time, you can learn a number of tricks to communicate more efficiently with others, complete tedious everyday responsibilities and automate tasks to save time throughout the day. Fans of the course say it helped them find extra time to spend with family or pursue a hobby.

Related: 11 Habits of Truly Happy People

Write Awesome Blog Posts from Scratch

Blogging sounds easy, but only the pros truly benefit from it. That's why Write Awesome Blog Posts from Scratch is a great course -- it can help turn any entrepreneur or content creator into a blogging pro regardless of what platform they use. It focuses on content marketing, different types of blog posts, organizing blog content and crafting the perfect headline. Its a speedy-but-thorough way to master blogging fundamentals so you can capture and engage leads online.

Easy Ways to Increase Traffic Without Google or Linkbuilding (Free)

Google is obviously helpful when it comes to driving traffic to your site, but it isnt the only way to get eyeballs. With Easy Ways to Increase Traffic Without Google or Linkbuilding, you can uncover and utilize online marketing techniques that dont rely on Googles search rankings. The class includes step-by-step videos and supplemental resources so any entrepreneur can take advantage of its curriculum.

Idea Validation: From Idea to Paying Customer in One Day

How do you know if you have a winning business idea? This bestselling Udemy course will tell you. In Idea Validation: From Idea to Paying Customer in One Day, you can develop a product idea, learn how to run assessments with potential customers, confirm customer problems and more. The course even takes you beyond the validation stage and teaches you how to get your first product sale using an interest page.

Related: How to Start a Business With (Almost) No Money

Email List Building: 4 Systems to Grow Your List

Contrary to popular belief, email is still a highly popular and effective marketing method for businesses of all industries. Turn it into a top priority with Email List Building: 4 Systems to Grow Your List, which helps you drive traffic to your site, compel visitors to sign up for your email list and use email management tools to organize your efforts. Former students of this course particularly appreciate how the class only provides straightforward, actionable information.

Social Media Marketing 2017

Social Media Marketing 2017 is known as the most comprehensive social media marketing course on Udemy. Not only does it cover Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest and Google+, but it also offers tips on social media automation, customer service on social platforms and social for public relations. Anyone who completes this course will receive a badge they can add to their company's website to better attract and compel visitors.

Kidpreneurs Academy

Full disclosure: This one's mine. But, what's the use in being a successful entrepreneur if you don't help pass on your knowledge to the next generation? In coordination with our book, Kidpreneurs: Young Entrepreneurs with Big Ideas, my brother and I created Kidpreneurs Academy that teaches small business skills to kids aged seven through 12. The course goes over brainstorming business ideas, building a business plan, creating a budget and more.

With the myriad of courses available online today, it's easier than ever before to round out your entrepreneurial skills. Have you tried any of these Udemy courses? What classes have helped you become a better entrepreneur?

Related:

10 Udemy Courses Under $100 That Could Help You Make $1,000 (or More)

Are Free Online Courses Worth the Time and Effort?

10 Expert Resources for Startups in 2017



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When he first became a business leader, admits Krister Ungerboeck, CEO of Courageous Growth, in St. Louis, Mo., he was a bit of a jerk. I assumed that the CEO should be the smartest person in the room, Ungerboeck told me recently via email.

Related: 22 Qualities That Make a Great Leader

That was a mistake, Ungerboeck now cknowledges. Thanks to that mentality, he says, he tended to lead through criticism, he says. And that in turn led him to doubt the abilities of his team, and created an unproductive work environment.

But after receiving less-than-stellar feedback on an employee survey, Ungerboeck says he realized his leadership style wasnt working. When I finally realized that my leadership style left my employees struggling to feel inspired, I made a major transformation, he wrote. I learned that criticism is lazy leadership that is intended to pump up the ego of the boss by making the employee feel smaller.

Since that epiphany, Ungerboeck has tried to do better by leading through encouragement. In fact, he now refers to himself as a recovering a-hole.

While his employees are now better off for the change, Ungerboeck is hardly the first boss to rethink his or her leadership style. Here are five stories of how other leaders came to realize they needed to do things differently:

Always be learning.

By his mid-20s Glenn Phillips was an award-winning entrepreneur. There was just one little problem: His software company wasnt making money.

While we delivered great systems and support, we were not profitable and I was not addressing the problem well, Phillips told me. I thought that I was smart enough and hard-working enough to figure it out and solve our issues.

Related: 9 Ways to Recognize a Real Leader

Eventually, though, Phillips realized he needed help. I started educating myself about running a business, he said. The education included peers, classes and lots of reading. I studied businesses, cognitive thinking, sales, capital and more.

Soon, his business began to turn around. Today, as the head of Lake Homes Realty in Pelham, Ala., he says he makes continual learning a priority for everyone at his organization. He says he hosts regular lunch-n-learns at the office and leads in-person trainings. The company even has a reading library, and if an employee finishes one of the books, Phillips takes that individual out to lunch to discuss what was learned.

Leadership takeaway: Set a good example for employees by constantly seeking new knowledge. This will ensure that your entire company will always be learning and improving. Tools like Workramp can help your team reach its potential.

Accept your new role.

When Rachel Beider, CEO of Massage Williamsburg + Massage Greenpoint in Brooklyn, N.Y., set out to expand her business, she quickly saw she was spreading herself too thin.

I was trying to do too much, including still seeing massage therapy clients directly, and being involved in the day-to-day tasks, she told me recently through email. I started to feel perpetually stressed and burned out, and I knew I wasn't giving my best to the position.

Thats when Beider set a deadline for herself so she couldnt make excuses and put off the change. Though it was a scary transition, it has allowed me a lot more time to work on important things and see the bigger picture," she wrote. "I had to learn to delegate. Now, I'm a lot more 'present' at work, with less on my plate, and open to more suggestions on improving the company.

Leadership takeaway: First-time CEOs often need time to adjust to their new responsibilities. And it can be hard to give up old tasks that feel comfortable. But, as a leader, its important that you step up and accept the fact that its time to stop spending energy on things others can do, and focus on running the organization.

Be adaptable.

When I had five or six employees, I managed them all the same, Beck Bamberger, founder of Bam Communications, in San Diego, Calif. said in an email.

That worked for a while, he said, but once the company grew to dozens of employees, he saw hed have to adapt. There was one particular client meeting where I noticed a highly independent, quiet but well-liked employee was not taking my feedback as well as a bubbly, vivacious employee, Bamberger went on to say.

What he told her, though, just didnt seem to click. We had this awkward pause in the meeting where we sat in silence for nearly 20 seconds before we started (thankfully) laughing. Then I said, Okay, you're different from her. This was a little a-ha moment for me in terms of leadership that was adaptable for each individual.

Leadership takeaway: Not every employee responds the same way to the same leadership style. Great leaders recognize each individuals needs and adapt accordingly. This ensures that every employee can perform at his or her best.

Think quickly.

A few years ago, when my companies were just starting out, my employees or potential business partners would ask me questions, and I would let them linger for a long time rather than answering them right away, said Tony Jakstis, founder of Casa De Lago Event Centers, in Orange, Calif.

Not wanting to make a bad decision, Jakstis took his time coming up with the best answer. But, sometimes, stalling can mean missing out on big opportunities. A good leader needs to be able to hear any kind of problem or opportunity and make a key decision that will benefit the company, Jakstis said. If it fails and something goes wrong, then at least Ill find out quicker. If Im right, the job will be done.

Leadership takeaway: Dont be afraid to be decisive. Even if a decision doesnt turn out as planned, see that not as a failure, but a chance to learn.

Find support.

Danielle Wiley, CEO of Sway Group, in Corte Madera, Calif., never wanted to be a leader, she says. Nonetheless, she found herself at the helm of a fast-growing company.

With the rocketship success that Sway saw in its first few years, my own personal leadership growth couldn't keep up, she wrote in an email. We were no longer a small company, but one that 35 employees' livelihoods depended on.

The weight of that responsibility led Wiley to isolate herself -- and her team to suffer as a result. I knew I needed to do better, I just didn't know how, she told me.

Around this time,the executive attended a dinner for women executives. She was at the same table as a woman who kept talking about a CEO advisory group that she had joined. Wiley decided to give the group a go.

Related: How to Retain Employees Through 'Servant' Leadership

At my first meeting, I quickly realized this group was exactly what I needed," she said. "I began to see that my concerns and frustrations were the same other CEOs were experiencing. The group gave me a newfound sense of confidence and direction that I was able to bring back to the team.

Leadership takeaway: Being a CEO is an experience unlike anything else. Finding others going through similar situations can provide much needed support and guidance.

Related:



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Unfettered by restrictions on marijuana such as those in the United States, other countries continue to take the lead on researching the potential health benefits of the cannabis plant.

Recently, researchers at Oxford University in the United Kingdom announced a research project into the potential medical value of marijuana. Now, Israel has launched the first clinical trial in the world to determine if cannabis can provide treatment for one specific condition: autism.

Israeli researchers are looking how the non-psychotropic compound found in cannabis  called cannabidiol (CBD)  might treat autistic children better than other medications have so far done.

Israel approved medical marijuana in 1992, before the first state did so in the U.S. (California in 1995), and has government approved-medical marijuana program. Obviously, there are clear differences in Israel and the U.S., where marijuana is still listed as a Schedule I illegal drug by the federal government.

In Israel, the government is helping foster the marijuana boom. The Ministry of Agricultures Volcani Center is building an institute for medical marijuana research. The government has handed out funding for entrepreneurial companies looking to make a start in the business.

The autism research is taking place at the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem. The study, which is expected to last through the end of 2018, involves 120 patients ages five to 29 who have mild to severe autism.

Related: Study Links Medical Marijuana to Fewer Traffic Fatalities

What Is autism?

Autism, once thought to affect a small number of people, is now thought of more as a spectrum condition, meaning that different people are affected differently and to varying degrees. The best definition, given by the Autism Society of America, is a complex developmental disability that affects how a person communicates and interacts with others.

Symptoms typically start at a very young age. The condition affects about one in every 68 children in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Behaviors associated with autism can include:

Delayed learning of language

Difficulty making eye contact

Difficulty holding a conversation

Difficulty with executive functions such as reasoning and planning

Little or no interest in other people

Poor motor skills

Sensory sensitivities

As long as that list is, it is not comprehensive. Autism is sometimes difficult to diagnose, but most patients experience some combination of the above.

Related: Illinois Asks Trump to Let Banks Take Medical Marijuana Business

The Jerusalem Study

The research that started in January in Jerusalem will involve treatment of those with autism using CBD. Adi Aran, the pediatric neurologist leading the research, told USA Today that almost every patient in the study has tried other medications and about half had a negative response.

Parents had requested cannabis to treat their kids, but had been refused because no research exists showing any potential benefit. The current two-year study will seek to provide concrete answers. Aran said some improvement in autistic patients had been seen in observational studies of about 70 patients.

Israel has expanded its movement into medical marijuana in the past several years and now allows more plant growers and uses for medical marijuana than ever before. As a trailblazer among countries that legalized medical marijuana at the federal level, Israeli officials have written a series of rule and regulations called The Green Book.

The book is now in high demand from other countries, Israeli officials told the New York Times.

Follow dispensaries.com on Instagram to stay up to date on the latest cannabis news.

Related:

Israel Studies Potential of Medical Marijuana as a Treatment for Autism

New Jersey Lawmakers Await Next Governor Before Moving to Legalize Marijuana

New Data Shows Medical Marijuana Consumers Far Outspend Recreational Users



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Jobs for the average worker are becoming obsolete at rate much faster than anticipated. While advances in automation are revolutionizing the way many businesses operate, the humans whose jobs once catered to these tasks are being displaced.

Many businesses ushering in this automation have been provided hazy answers as to what will happen to the people who will lose their jobs. The common refrain is that new jobs will take the place of old ones or that people will go back to school to be trained in new areas. None of these solutions, however, have been fully realized or proven at scale.

Related: Why Mark Zuckerberg Is Excited About an Augmented Reality Future

Given this uncertain future, business owners and entrepreneurs may want to explore new approaches of solving this problem to help ease the burden on displaced workers. One such approach may be the use of augmented reality (AR) as an alternative to traditional schooling and careers.

In a world where technology and knowledge are advancing so quickly that even educators are having trouble keeping pace, AR has the potential to provide a workplace dynamic that is unlike anything weve ever seen, and the results could be a net gain for everybody.

AR will help transition displaced workers.

In our lifetimes, weve seen the nature of work change dramatically. Our parents viewed work as a single employer with a pension and a retirement plan. As job security became less of a guarantee, our peers entered the workforce knowing theyd likely have several different careers by the time they were done. Then came the gig economy with flexible schedules and pay scales. Now, automation is displacing workforces with an imminent threat the likes of the industrial revolution.

When it comes to the future of the workplace, AR-powered opportunities may very well represent that next adaptation. Thanks to recent developments in AR, jobs that once required years of training and practice can now be completed without prior knowledge or experience, and workers can do these jobs equipped with as little as their smartphone.

Related: How Augmented Reality Will Shape the Future of Ecommerce

One worker can have many jobs.

Augmented reality can provide workers with digital manuals, complete with 3D renderings that can be superimposed onto the objects they are working on, to follow step-by-step instructions, which can be applied to just about anything: assembling furniture, repairing cars, plumbing, electrical work, pipeline maintenance -- even the most complex of tasks.

This just-in-time knowledge will allow workers in the new economy to jump between different fields, working with clients and customers in a wide variety of industries. Whats more, someone can learn practical skills on the job while being paid to perform them. This means the investments made in time or money to learn new skills can be reduced to near zero -- giving those workers career track potential as they move up to remote support or other roles. In a similar manner, AR can even be used as a powerful tool for training workforces more efficiently -- providing opportunities for certifications and diversifying a job portfolio like never before.

Related: Want to Stay Ahead of the Competition? Get Virtual.

Local services will go global.

Weve seen the world of remote work grow exponentially in the last decade, but the types of work that could be completed remotely have always been fairly limited. AR augmentation will change that, allowing previously local services to compete on a global scale. A plumber in Florida, for example, could be guiding a client directly in Colorado or working with a partnered field agent in Saskatoon.

Conversely, this means that existing markets that have always been dominated by local entrepreneurs will see tremendous competition from an AR-focused workforce and an empowered DIY community.

But, existing local experts shouldnt be too fearful: AR will provide opportunities for the veteran worker, too. Experience means the chance to educate remotely, whether guiding on-site technicians through complex situations or offering similar services to walk customers through the DIY basics.

Related: Will a Robot Take My Job?

Knowledge is no longer a limiting factor.

While this may sound like technology that is in the distant future, technologies like these are already being implemented internally by Fortune 500 companies. Caterpillar, for example, is providing AR maintenance solutions that allow skilled work to be completed by a wide range of parties, even customers themselves. This decreases downtime for users who once had to wait for a technician to arrive on site to perform the same list of steps to get them back up and running.

Training and education, and in ARs case location, will cease to be a roadblock that prevents workers from finding employment. Likewise, educational and practical experience become far less relevant from the perspective of an employer. Rather than gambling on prospective hires, job interviews could cut to the heart of the matter in moments: Can the applicant follow the directions correctly and efficiently on the first try? This virtual task economy may provide its own resume by having a digital record and performance reviews of the tasks a worker has performed that can travel with them from job to job.

Its unlikely that augmented reality will become the majority solution for the employment disruption that automation will cause. But, for those who are in need of income in an era where technological advances outstrip traditional training capabilities, or those looking to increase the size and capability of their workforce with minimal investment, one things for sure: the potential for an AR-powered workforce is an opportunity thats worth exploring. Both for workers and for business owners.

Related:

The Augmented Reality Workforce is Coming -- Here's What You Need to Know

4 Ways Your Website Should Change Over the Next 5 Years

Apple Has NASA Engineers Working On AR Glasses



Copyright 2017 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Classic movie fans may know Hedy Lamarr as the luminous star of films such as Ziegfeld Girl and Samson and Delilah, but Lamarr, whose famous visage was the inspiration for Catwoman and Snow White, wasnt only a silver screen icon or simply a pretty face -- her invention led to the creation of Wi-Fi.

In the 1930s, Lamarr escaped under the cover of night from her home country of Austria and her first husband, who was an ammunitions manufacturer with ties to Nazi Germany. After convincing MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer to take a chance on her after she arrived in Paris, Lamarr uprooted her life again and moved to California.

When the United States entered World War II, she wanted to help the war effort. She and her friend, composer George Antheil, used their knowledge of self-playing pianos and remote control radios to develop a frequency hopping technology that could help the U.S. prevent German submarines from detecting its radio signals and missile trajectories.

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Though Lamarr and Antheil gave the patent to the U.S. Navy, because Lamarr was from Austria, she was considered an enemy alien and the patent was confiscated. But throughout the war, Lamarr didnt waver from her devotion to her adopted country -- despite the fact that both the government and her industry had put her in a box, only seeing her as a glamorous, scandalous woman. At one point she even sold $7 million in war bonds in a single night.

Her technology wasnt implemented until the 1960s, at a point when it was too late for the pair to be paid for their hard work. That work ended up becoming the building blocks for the Bluetooth, GPS and secure Wi-Fi technology that we use today.

When investigative journalist Alexandra Dean learned about Lamarr, she knew she had to dive into her story and share it with others. The only problem was that the movie star, who died in 2000 at 86, had rarely spoken about her life as an inventor.

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There was a moment where I thought I couldn't make this film because I just didn't have her voice anywhere," Dean says. "It didn't exist on the record and I was leaning on this autobiography of hers [Ecstasy and Me by Leo Guild], which I knew she had disowned.

The first-time director had a breakthrough when she finally got in touch, after several false starts, with Fleming Meeks, a journalist that had profiled Lamarr in 1990 and had extensive tapes of her talking about the development of the technology and her patent. It was then that the movie started to come together.

Related: This First-Time Novelist Wrote About Startups, and Learned Some Vital Truths About Entrepreneurs

I would want other people to know that you just sometimes have to keep forging forward and believing that there's something out there for you, Dean says. And in this case it came back tenfold and Hedy's voice took over. I threw out the old movie I was making for six months and started again and based it around her voice, and her story that she wanted to tell.

Following the premiere of Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, I spoke with Dean about innovation, the pursuit of big dreams and breaking down barriers.

Image Credit: Reframed Pictures

This is your directorial debut and its the first film from your production company, Reframed Pictures. What was the experience like for you?

It was a very steep learning curve. I had a huge amount to learn. Luckily, I didn't know how much I had to learn or I think I wouldn't have gone into it so boldly. But I think it's good not to really look too closely. Sometimes you just have to make the leap or you don't create the opportunity for yourself.

So yes, I definitely closed my eyes and jumped, and there was no safety net. There were a lot of dark nights where I didn't think this was the right decision. But I think sometimes the trick is just putting one foot in front of the other until you get to your destination and not worrying too much about how it's going to go.

Related: 12 Female Entrepreneurs You Should Know

What advice do you have for entrepreneurs who are about to take that big leap?

The reputation you built even within your siloed industry may not follow you to your new endeavor. You have to build it again. You have to be ready to start fresh. You have to have faith that your skills will follow you and make that happen for you.

And every day isn't going to be filled with inspiration and glory. I can't explain it, but when you're an entrepreneur those wasted days are really important. You have to let some days just be hard and confused and you just have a headache and stare at a screen. And other days you come in and suddenly there are answers there for you. But it's just because you kept showing up and being there, even if you're alone in the office all day. Just being there makes a huge difference.

Did making this film change how you think about innovation?

What surprised me in the making of the film is that I think the distinctions we make between art and science are perhaps a little bit false. I think that both disciplines really are one. I think invention can be insanely creative. I think art can be actually problem-solving, and I think that when you can bring together the creative mind and the analytical mind, you can start to address some of the more intractable problems of our time.

It's thrilling because real change and real innovation happens when two disparate things that you never thought to combine come into contact with each other. That tends to be the way people describe innovation. So of course we have to break down this wall in order for innovation and invention to happen.

Related: 5 Things Every First Time Founder Needs to Know

What is the biggest lesson you learned from telling Hedys story?

I think one of the aspects of Hedy's story that was so surprising to me was that she was not just an inventor, she was an entrepreneur herself. She was ready to go out and produce when nobody else was producing. Really, Bette Davis was the only other actress who produced her own films, A Stolen Life, in 1946. But Bette produced only one film, while Hedy did three.

I think there is a real value to just ignoring the barriers around you and being incredibly bold. I think you can do things that people think are impossible because you just have a vision and you don't care that there are boundaries. That's what Hedy taught me.

Related: This Founder Shares the Secret to How to Make Your Business Last

What do you hope aspiring entrepreneurs and inventors, especially women in STEM, take away from Hedys life and her contributions?

For me the message of the film is absolutely what [Hedy] says at the end of the film. Do it anyway.

Do it anyway, even when no one's watching. When you feel like it's never going to make a difference or when you don't feel like you're completely misunderstood. You can feel like you're toiling in the darkness for a long time and it doesn't matter what you're doing. But you never know which contributions you make will stick and how much impact they will have. Hedy's life teaches us that it's not necessarily the contributions you think are making a mark that are going to make a difference.

I think that this communication system she came up with was really something that came out of her heart. It's just the pure expression of herself doing something that she loved to do, which was the only way at that time that she thought she could improve the world -- which was going to hell in a handbasket.

I think we don't realize that just sometimes being yourself and doing what little you can to try and help the world is sometimes the way we make our biggest mark.

Related:

The Forgotten Hollywood Icon Whose Genius Made Wi-Fi Possible

Elon Musk Names His First Tunneling Machine After a Classic

Why This Founder Says You Shouldn't Be Afraid to Go Big



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STAMFORD  A New York couple has been accused of trying to fraudulently purchase $2,400 worth of iPhones last week at a High Ridge Road store.

Sgt. Robert Shawinsky said Sprint store employees called police about 8 p.m. Thursday when a man and woman tried to purchase the phones with an account that did not belong to them.
T he City piled into AstraZeneca earlier after the pharma giant revealed a successful trial of one of its lung cancer drugs.

The FTSE 100 drug-maker said research showed its key immunotherapy product durvalumab, which will go under the brand name Imfinzi, has lowered the risk of early-stage lung cancer worsening or causing death.

Sean Bohen, chief medical officer at the firm, said: These are highly encouraging results for patients for whom surgery is not an option.

He added that AstraZeneca is looking forward to working with regulatory authorities around the world to bring Imfinzi to patients as soon as possible.

AstraZeneca was one of the top risers on the blue-chip index after the update.

Shares rose 235.5p, or nearly 5%, to 4983p.

US regulators earlier this month approved durvalumab as a treatment for bladder cancer, marking the first commercial green light for the product. However, one of its largest opportunities lies in previously untreated lung cancer.

The latest trial results are a boost for a product the Cambridge-headquartered firm hopes will become a blockbuster drug with huge sales potential.

Liberum Capital analyst Roger Franklin said: The fact the success was clinically meaningful suggests commercial potential.
I never saw trading in the foreign exchange, money or derivatives markets as a socially useless activity, or something that might be considered as wrong more generally.

However, I never saw it as a means to become rich either. It was just something I had been tremendously interested in for a very long time.

As a child, I was fascinated by the fact that coins from other countries had different people and landscapes on them. Rather early on, though, I learned to accept that the rules of trading did not always apply to the rest of society or vice versa.

Despite this, conventions within the dealing room felt logical and everybody seemed to accept them, so I never thought to question these social norms. In the absence of outside regulation, the banks simply wrote the rules themselves, which were then accepted by the rest of the market as well.

The environment might not have been pleasant, fair or honest all the time, but even so I did not think of trading as immoral.

I was once told by a senior manager to fire a Japanese employee in my team who had served the bank for two decades. The trader in question had done nothing wrong and had generated a stable revenue stream every year. But the trajectory was not steep enough for senior management, and the trader had to go.

I remember expressing unease about the assignment, not least because of the Japanese tradition of lifelong employment.

Dont worry, I was told. We can always suggest a cleaning job in Hokkaido. I understood. Giving the trader the option of moving to another island of Japan would mean that the bank, technically speaking, still required the employees services.

However, given that it would mean being humiliated in front of family and friends, the trader would never exercise that option. I did my duty.

Afterwards, some colleagues jokingly began to call me The Axeman. I hated the nickname but thankfully did not have to perform any more such executions.

Money probably does have a tendency to drive out morality. However, where do you draw the line between the morals of society and the morals of the market? Where do you draw the line between the morals of the bank and the morals you hold yourself? Should any such line be drawn at all?

Extracted from: Barometer of Fear: An Insiders Account of Rogue Trading and the Greatest Banking Scandal in History by Alexis Stenfors
I n my lifetime, the boffins of engineering have created three commercial aeroplanes that captured the worlds imagination.

Concorde, launched in 1976, was the sleek, Mach 2 miracle for the super-rich. The 747 Jumbo Jet took to the skies in 1970 and made long-haul flying affordable for the masses; then, in 2007, the Airbus A380 Superjumbo lumbered into the skies  a gravity-defying miracle machine capable of flying more than 850 passengers.

Sadly, with a maximum of 128 passengers, Concorde proved too small and inefficient to sell fares at anything but astronomical prices. After a glorious, but loss-making, 27 years, economics triumphed over engineering and it was mothballed in 2003.

Now, it looks like the A380 Superjumbo is going the same way but for the polar opposite reasons.

So vast is this cruise ship of the skies that the airlines whove bought it are struggling to fill it. Combined with its gas-guzzling four engines, that makes it hugely inefficient to run.

Not only that, but only a small number of airports in the world are big enough to cope with it.

After an initial flurry of orders, demand from airlines ground to a halt years ago. Singapore Airlines  one of the Superjumbos biggest customers, recently gave one back, unable to make it pay, and placed its next big order with smaller craft from Boeing.

Malaysia Airlines Irish chief executive Peter Bellew is even mulling a plan to cram more seats into his empty A380s and use them to ferry 800 Muslim pilgrims a pop to Mecca.

Emirates, by far the A380s biggest customer, yesterday reported an 82% collapse in profits. Like Malaysia and others, it has suffered from Trumps clampdown on travel from Muslim countries, but also blamed Brexit and European terrorism.

Even without those factors, there is an absurd overcapacity in long-haul that is hurting everybody. Airlines are trying to minimise the damage by flying more, smaller planes like Airbuss twin-engine A350, offering greater flexibility and choice to long-haul passengers.

For many industry experts, that can only lead you to one conclusion: Emirates will soon start cancelling its A380 orders.

And, if that happens, production of this mighty feat of human endeavour would surely come crashing down to ground. Along with the 530 million we taxpayers invested in aid to launch it.

But what of the 747; the plane that single-handedly meant pretty much anyone on an average salary could join the jet set?

The troubles affecting the A380 are also buffeting its rival. Though it may be smaller, it still flies at least 345 passengers. And, also like the A380, it has four hungry engines to feed. Orders have dried up, and gloomsters are suggesting its days are numbered, too.

But unlike the A380, the 747, and even Concorde, had long, illustrious careers. The A380 will barely last a decade. It will go down in history as aviations biggest flying white elephant.
W all Street activist Starboard Value is sitting on a 4 million paper profit after a canny bet to short UK tech group Micro Focus ahead of its shock shares plunge.

Micro, which invests in vintage software, slumped the most in six years on Tuesday after revealing a surprise sales slide at HPE Software, the unit it will acquire this year from US giant Hewlett-Packard Enterprise for $8.8 billion (6.8 billion).

Starboard, headed by investor Jeffrey Smith, disclosed a 0.68% short position in Micro Focus shares on 25 April, according to UK regulatory filings, two weeks before the announcement.

Shorting the stock at the 25 April price of 25.55 and buying it back at Tuesdays low of 22.92 would have delivered a 4.1 million profit. Starboards bearish position on Micro Focus, which is up 60% since last year, could be linked to its stake in HPE, which is selling the software unit to Micro.

The activist investor, which previously led a successful campaign against Yahoo, revealed a $125 million stake in the group last November, leading to speculation it may push for a shake-up.

Investors often hedge long positions with short positions in other stocks to reduce risk. Starboard did not respond to a request for comment.

Micro Focus declined to comment. HPE said it did not comment on trading activities of investors.

The HPE deal was struck last September.
I n a single fortnight there have been 11 knife killings in London. It is a terrifying figure, indicative of the scale and extent of the problem  the incidence of knife crime has gone up by nearly a quarter in a year. This paper reports on these killings as they happen, but today we launch an extended examination of why they are happening. David Cohens sobering report gives an idea of the complex factors behind a pervasive culture of violence.

We await the results of our investigation but the report suggests several areas of concern. One is that in some neighbourhoods, violence is commonplace. As one campaigner puts it, carrying a knife is as normal for some as carrying a mobile phone. Music, social media and computer games have made carrying a knife glamorous.

That cultural aspect of the problem is relatively recent but others are more grimly familiar. One is that this scourge falls heavily on the black community: it often means black teenagers killing other black teenagers. In other words, there is no group with more at stake here than black parents. It is also evident that most black teenagers involved lack male role models. Yet the problem is now far more widespread than before, affecting young people from a range of backgrounds.

We shall be discussing possible solutions over the course of the investigation but it is safe to say education is crucial. If schools educate their pupils about gangs and knife possession from an early age, the message may get out that both are lethal. But police stop-and-search has to be part of the solution too. As one senior officer observes in our news report today: We are in the business of murder suppression. Its sobering, because its true.

Drugs: beyond the fringe

The question of whether to decriminalise soft drugs, let alone legalise their use, has long been regarded as a fringe issue in British politics. The main political parties would not touch it. When the Lib-Dems, or the Greens, debated the issue, it was for critics proof of their loony tendencies. But the times are changing. In the past couple of years a growing number of US States, from Colorado to California, have legalised the recreational use of marijuana, and more are set to follow. The use, but not the sale, of the drug is even legal in Washington DC  although this is, we are sure, not the reason why US politics has taken a whackier turn recently. This means Britons live under more draconian drugs laws than many Americans.

How long can this last? The Liberal Democrats have today set out their plans to create a legal, regulated market for the sale of cannabis in the UK. This would, they say, take back control from criminal gangs and protect users here  especially minors  from the much stronger forms of cannabis now available: skunk. Lord Monson writes movingly here about the suicide of his son seven weeks ago, a tragic consequence of the psychosis he suffered as a result of skunk use. This grieving father believes a legal and regulated market for cannabis would have protected his son. Although this paper is at present sceptical that this is right for Britain, we could be convinced if the evidence stacks up. Its time for an open and informed debate. The legalisation of cannabis is an issue that has moved beyond the fringe.

An Improbable success

People who support our entrepreneurial culture will rejoice at the success of Herman Narula, a north London computer science graduate who has, with his business partner, got 400 million from Japanese investors for their virtual-reality business. Improbable  but wonderful.
R egardless of your views on Brexit, it is not in our interests for the EU to be weak and divided. That especially applies to the eurozone, which contains three G8 countries, plus powerful economies such as the Netherlands. If Germanys Angela Merkel behaves recklessly it will help no one  neither Emmanuel Macron, who desperately needs help to reform France, nor Merkel herself, who needs to show that the EU works in order to see off the anti-EU AfD in Germanys elections in September.

Macrons suggestion that the EU should issue its own bonds, effectively sharing part of its debt, makes perfect sense. Currently, while the eurozone countries enjoy monetary union, any underlying weaknesses in individual countries are cruelly exposed and they have no means of dealing with it except for the disastrous austerity programmes that have crippled Greece and Spain.

They cant even print money or use quantitative easing to the same extent as we have done. Selling bonds on a shared EU debt would benefit from the shared strengths of all countries and mitigate weakness, raising the money for investment in infrastructure, education and jobs that is desperately needed.

A weak EU would not be a good partner for a post-Brexit Britain. Fearful and divided against itself, it will lack confidence and be reluctant to offer compromise or concessions, essential if we are to have a good deal. Our future government, of whatever stripe, should ask Merkel to think again.

Simon Diggins

After the recent critical comments over Brexit from EC Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker and now French President Emmanuel Macron, it seems that any trade deal looks increasingly unlikely without us making some costly concessions.

Macron, as an advocate of the EU, is happy to stick the knife in and twist it, just when we need an ally to help us achieve our Brexit plan. His chief advisor has already suggested he will drive a hard bargain in negotiations with the UK, and I fear Macrons fierce opposition to Brexit could harm future Anglo-French relations.

He would do well to remember that in times of adversity you may need your neighbours, so its best not to antagonise them.

Will Butterworth

Charlotte Rouche [Letters, May 10] speaks of Brexit being an honourable call to sacrifice  that regaining sovereignty was worth the risk of economic damage. It was nothing of the sort. Instead, Leave was sold to the public on the grounds of remarkable trade deals, increased funding for public services and a manufacturing revival. It was not the chance to manage a shrinking economy (and) smaller workforce.

James Harris

Work is so good for our mental health

Team builder: a sketch by Charlotte Reed from her book May the Thoughts Be With You

Everyone here at BCP, a graphic design and print company, has experienced some form of mental health illness  including me and my three directors. Together, we run a successful business with an outreach team who challenge the stigma around this subject.

I firmly believe that everyone has the right to work, regardless of whether they have mental health issues or not. Work can be beneficial for coping with mental health issues because it provides financial stability and structure. What is also needed is mental health first aid training for businesses, and as a subject it should be part of the school curriculum.

Hopefully, our next government will invest more to support the one in four people who will experience some form of mental health illness.

Audrey Clark, managing director, Brentwood Community Print

First past the post is failing the nation

A general election is meant to be the time when parliament is brought up to date with the views of the public  or at least it is for the worlds developed democracies. Parties win seats in proportion to the share of the votes they receive, so the parliament comes to reflect the balance of opinion held by the people.

However, in the UK this is not the case. There is no reason to expect our parliament to better reflect the electorate the day after an election than it did the day before. The reason for this difference is that while most other countries use proportional voting systems, the UK is one of the last developed nations to still use first past the post.

It has been said that this election will bring about unity after the divisive EU referendum but it is hard to imagine how a winner-takes-all election will bring people together when so many voices are not heard.

With the country deeply divided and more politically diverse than ever, we need a parliament that genuinely reflects the views of all voters.

For the sake of our democracy, we call on Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn to back the introduction of a proportional voting system.

Owen Winter, on behalf of Make Votes Matter and 44 other signatories

UK science is more important than ever

It was very welcome to read your leading article earlier this week [The fight is on to save British science, May 10], with its strong message to all parties on the importance of supporting science in the United Kingdom.

UK science is a diverse, cosmopolitan and interdependent mix of funding, skills, people, research areas and infrastructures.

It is part of a global science and innovation landscape in which ideas and people are the drivers of progress. It is also the driver of economic growth and productivity.

I look forward to its central position in the election campaign.

Alex Connor head of policy, Institute of Physics
L ondoners are being offered a once-in-a-lifetime chance to dine with three generations of Britains most influential gastronomic dynasty during London Food Month.

Albert Roux  the first British-based chef to win a Michelin star  his son Michel Roux Jr and his rising star granddaughter Emily will host dinner at the familys Le Gavroche restaurant in Mayfair on June 28.

Emily will prepare a six-course culinary journey through the 50-year history of the first British restaurant to win three Michelin stars. Guests will sit round the table in the chefs library with Albert and Michel Jr.

Just four tickets will go on sale at 10am on Monday priced at 995 a head  with all proceeds going to Michel Jrs charity Victa, which supports blind and partially sighted children.

Michel Jr, who has been a judge on MasterChef: The Professionals, said: It will be quite an occasion. Its not often myself and my father are at the table to talk about the history of food or indeed wherever the conversation takes us.

My daughter will be in the kitchen but she will come in and talk to us as well.

The menu will reflect the changing character of dining in London through the decades from the Sixties. We havent decided on the menu yet, we will do that nearer the time but the dishes will be very Gavroche and inspired by some of the old menus.

It will be a reflection of how food has changed but remain true to our roots and very French and based on the classics.

Two greatest hits dishes likely to appear on the menu include cheese souffle, which has been a favourite with diners since the Sixties, and lobster mousse with caviar and a champagne butter sauce.

The evening starts with a champagne reception at 6pm followed by the meal with matching wines from Michel Jrs private cellar.

The four guests will receive a Le Gavroche 50th anniversary cookbook signed by the three members of the Roux family.

Albert and his brother Michel Snr revolutionised the British restaurant scene with openings such as The Waterside Inn in Bray and Le Gavroche when they arrived during the dark ages of British cooking in the Sixties. Michel Jr told the Standard: We Roux have a lot to answer for.

As well as the Le Gavroche dinner, three London Food Month events are taking place at the Roux familys cookery school in Clapham, Cactus Kitchens.

Michel Jnr and Emily will run a cooking masterclass for 12 guests on June 21, while a baking course will take place with the Luminary charity, which helps train vulnerable women to be bakers. There will also be a supperclub and wine-matching masterclass with sommelier Raul Diaz of Channel Four and Roux executive chef Toby Stuart.
N ursing is more than a profession  it is a passion and a privilege. To have the opportunity to care for people when they are most vulnerable is an incredibly profound experience.

It takes a special type of person to be a nurse and this International Nurses Day, Im sharing what I think are the top qualities that make nurses unsung heroes around the world.

1. Compassion

The ability to relate to people and understand what's happening in their world is very important. Nursing isnt just about healing wounds and treating medical conditions; its also supporting the emotional needs of the patient and their loved ones. Nurses are very compassionate and are able to relate to people from different walks of life as they care for them.

2. Flexibility

No two days are the same in nursing. One day you may be dealing with a broken limb and the next youre helping someone come to terms with a cancer diagnosis. Our nurses are flexible and develop a range of different clinical and emotional skills. Theyre always juggling different tasks, but manage to find the time to make sure their patients are ok.

3. Sense of humour

Although its a rewarding job, nursing can also be emotionally and physically challenging. Sometimes, you just need to have a laugh and our nurses are experts at making each other smile, as well as those they care for. Their sense of humour seems to band them together, mainly because theyre laughing at medical things that other people may find a bit strange.

Great Ormond Street Hospital through the ages 1 /20 Great Ormond Street Hospital through the ages TV puppet Basil Brush entertains children at GOSH in January 1974 Getty/Hulton Archive Staff nurse Rowena Joseph tends to a patient in February 1979 Getty/Hulton Archive Child patients gather on an old balcony at the hospital, weeks after the end of the Second World War in Europe. GOSH was badly damaged during the blitz and relied on philanthropy for a rebuilding project Getty/Hulton Archive Members of the public surround a stall at a fete held in 1909 to raise money for Great Ormond Street Getty/Hulton Archive Young GOSH patients play with presents 10 days before Christmas in 1932 Getty/Hulton Archive British F1 driver James Hunt meets children on February 3, 1977 Getty/Hulton Archive The Hospital for Sick Children, as it was then known, shortly after it opened in 1852 Getty/Hulton Archive One of Great Ormond Street's earliest patients, a young girl pictured in about 1867 Getty/Hulton Archive A young boy has his hearing tested in August 1954. Patients would be checked in a soundproofed room where they were asked to press buttons in response to sounds being broadcast through a loudspeaker Getty/Hulton Archive A GOSH patient is fed honey sent to the hospital as a gift from Buenos Aires in 1943 Getty/Hulton Archive An old ward of the hospital pictured in 1949 Getty/Hulton Archive A young patients opens his stocking early following Blitz air raids 1940 Getty/Hulton Archive A nurse cares for a young girl at the hospital in 1913 Getty/Hulton Archive Well-known '40s dancer Alma Jones gives presents to a young GOSH patients on a Christmas visit in 1945 Getty/Hulton Archive Patients and staff pose for pictures in December 1913 Getty/Hulton Archive

4. Care around the clock

The ability to display these qualities at work throughout the night and give the same care and energy as they would if it were the middle of the day is essential. All our Residents require support 24 hours a day and the team work hard to make sure they get exactly what they need.

GOSH patient, 9 from Hackney who has spent half his life in hospital is set to star in a brand new ad for Great Ormond Street Hospital

5. Professionalism

Patients and their loved ones trust nurses with their lives, which is a big responsibility. They need to have a high level of technical and clinical knowledge on a range of different conditions, injuries and illnesses, but they are able to still to care for people with compassion and dignity.

I have no doubt a nurse has supported you or the loved ones in your life and left a lasting impression. I encourage you to spare a moment to think of her or him today as we celebrate International Nurses Day.
I f you're ready to have a baby, but aren't necessarily able to do so through the traditional means (i.e., being in a heterosexual relationship in which you can readily conceive a child), there's an app for that.

A new app called Just A Baby purports to be just like Tinder, but for, well, baby-making. Instead of matching you up with a potential hookup or a significant other, the app will match you to a sperm donor, surrogate, or even just a co-parent or partner.

The app, developed by Australians Paul Ryan (definitely not that Paul Ryan) and Gerard Edwards, launched in the US and UK on Monday after a soft launch in Sydney, according to NBC. With it, users are able to fill out a "biological profile" that indicates what they need or can provide, whether it be sperm or egg donations, co-parenting, surrogacy, or partnership. Just like Tinder, the app is GPS-enabled, so you can find other users locally. However, you can also zoom out and take in a more global view.

Unlike Tinder and other dating apps, however, the app doesn't ask users to plug in details about their race or body type, Ryan told NBC, in an attempt to keep the app "agnostic."

"Some people request that information, which is fine, but we want to get away from that catalog feeling you get at a sperm bank," he told NBC. "This is warmer, more human. Once you make it to that first stepping stone of going into a community and seeing who is out there, you can find the right person and move forward."

Ryan told NBC that the app has already acquired about 3,000 to 4,000 users over the past few months of the soft launch.

"They're matching up and sharing great stories about starting families," he told NBC.

He also said that the app was catered towards millennials who may want to become parents even if they aren't necessarily ready to settle down with a long-term partner.

Baby carriers - in pictures 1 /8 Baby carriers - in pictures Our pick of the best baby carriers... Shutterstock Rockin Baby Reversible Sling Suitable from birth to toddler, this reversible sling comes in a range of 30 beautiful designs. The breathable cotton fabric is soft and cushy, making it a pleasure to wear and its ultra cosy for baby too. It feels incredibly comfy on the shoulders, even after wearing it for long periods or carrying heavier tots. The built-in storage pocket is large enough to store a nappy, phone, keys and other parenting essentials. 59, Mothercare, Buy it now Baby Bjorn Baby Carrier One This stylish carrier oozes Nordic cool. Available in 5 colour options, it is designed to accommodate your growing tot from birth to three years. It features an easy-to-use waist belt that allows you to support the childs weight on the hips, avoiding achy backs and shoulders. It can be used in several carrying options  newborn position, against the back, plus inward and outward facing. 124.99, Baby Bjorn, Buy it now Wuti Wrap Babies love to feel comfortable and secure  and this wrap, made with super stretchy and breathable fabric, offers just that. The long stretch of fabric can be initially intimidating, but the detailed instructions booklet is fool-proof to follow. This is a perfect option for those wanting to carry a newborn. 49.99, Mothercare, Buy it now Boba 4G Baby Carrier This soft, yet structured carrier is perfect if you dont have the time or patience to faff about with yards of fabric or fiddly straps. The sling comes with straps already secure and waist belt ready to fasten, making it a super easy to wear and a godsend when nipping from the car to shops. Its suitable from birth to 5 years - so you ought to get your moneys worth. 94, Babipur, Buy it now Phil and Teds Escape Back Carrier If youre planning an active holiday or enjoy long hikes, this lightweight back carrier will allow you to take your child out and about with tremendous ease. Perfect for babies aged 3 months to 3 years, the carrier features a flexible head support, so your little one can nap in comfort as well as stirrup-like shoe holders to support little legs. 179, Phil and Teds, Buy it now

"Millennials are often in this space where they're transient, their relationships don't last as long, and they're putting off having kids," he told NBC. "I noticed so much anxiety among my friends, and thought, 'Why not rid the stigma around trying alternative approaches, and make an app?'"

Of course, committing to having a baby with someone you meet over the internet can be a risky venture. Ryan insisted to NBC that users should of course meet each other and go through all the legal and medical channels necessary. The app, however, doesn't provide these services, so users will be left to figure it out on their own.

Given that it's really never "just a baby," the app may well be much more complicated than the name suggests. Still, for LGBTQ couples seeking a surrogate or a sperm donor, Just A Baby could facilitate the process in a much more seamless way than it otherwise would have been. Since it's still early days, there's no telling yet if Just A Baby will become just as ubiquitous as online dating has.

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T here are only a few days a year that your mum really asks for a day off - so it pays to know exactly when each of these occasions are.

Mothers Day comes pretty high on the list for mums, so if youre in the United States or much of Europe, dont forget that its happening this Sunday.

When is Mothers Day in 2017?

In the United States and many destinations around the globe, Mothers Day 2017 is being celebrated on Sunday May 14.

In the UK the special day has been and gone. This year it was celebrated on Sunday March 26.

What is Mothering Sunday?

Mothering Sunday is a celebration held to show our maternal figures just how much we appreciate them.

The day has evolved into an occasion for kids (young and old) to honour and give presents to their hardworking mums.

In the UK, it was originally linked to religion as a day for Christians to visit their mother church.

Domestic servants were given the day off to return to their hometown and worship with their families as part of this celebration, and on their way home, they would pick wild flowers to place in the church  or give to their mums.

But the occasion has since grown to be a global day for celebrating family.

Mother's Day flowers - in pictures 1 /10 Mother's Day flowers - in pictures WaitroseFlorist Peach Melba Bouquet Waitrose Florist offers a stunning range of seasonal bouquets at affordable prices. A treat for the eyes, this exotic assortment features coral Miss Piggy roses, orange Parrot tulips and green bell foliage. You can also complete your order with an additional gift. Flowers last for up to 7 days. 39, WaitroseFlorist, Buy it now Grace & Thorn In Bloom The fashion sets favourite florist, Grace and Thorn, has made its mark on the town with an alternative range of whimsical designs. This arrangement features striking flower combinations, with seasonal blooms in both bold and soft shades. Its available in four different sizes and can be purchased with or without a pickle jar. From 50, Grace & Thorn, Buy it now Phillipa Craddock Avebury Bouquet If youre looking for an affordable luxury bouquet, then Phillipa Craddock has got it covered. The glorious Avebury, a romantic mixture of different-sized blush pink and cream roses, wax flowers and green eucalyptus, makes a stunning table centrepiece. Each arrangement comes presented in a sleek brown and grey gift box and includes a hand-written note card. From 45 for petite size (12 stems), Selfridges, Buy it now Rebel Rebel Im Every Woman Designed for the power mums, this vibrant mix from Londons creative florist, Rebel Rebel  which is known for its bright and unusual arrangements, is made up of heady flowers such as Prince Jardinier roses, Icelandic poppies and Prunus blossom. From 70, Rebel Rebel, Buy it now Appleyard Flowers Lemon Cello Bursting with vibrancy, Appleyards Lemon Cello arrangement, inspired by British garden roses, is a lovely choice for the lady with an eye for colour. Its created with toulouse lautre roses, pink sweet avalanche roses and white veronica. Choose from a standard or extra-large size. Vase not included. From 39.99, Appleyard Flowers, Buy it now McQueens Belvedere For the stylish mama. Londons premier florist, McQueens, has arranged a swoon-worthy bouquet of red roses, tulips and hyacinth, which draws inspiration from the shades of spring. With flowers as extravagant as these, who needs chocolates and slippers. From 65, McQueens, Buy it now Wild at Heart Fleurs De L'eau With a number of high net-worth clients, Wild at Hearts delightfully arranged flowers will impress even the fussiest of mothers. This delicate mix features sumptuous scented roses, waxflower and spray roses. The bouquet is hand-tied with a silky ribbon and comes in four sizes. From 75, Wild at Heart, Buy it now Princess & Ko Signature Mothers Day Bouquet One of Londons most talented florists, Princess & Ko is the go-to duo for contemporary designs. The Mothers Day bouquet has a wistful silhouette, giving a just-foraged feel. The delicate Stock flowers give way to the Eucalyptus, which emanates a heady, honey scent reminiscent of summer days. 50, Princess & Ko, Buy it now

Why is it celebrated on a different day in the US?

Over the pond, the event was launched separately in 1914 by Anna Jarvis, the leader of the mums' groups which were established during the Civil War.

Anna campaigned for a May date in memory of her own mum  who had died that month.

President Wilson then later formalised the occasion and since then, many other countries have adopted America's example.
A senior detective fighting knife crime in London warned today that police are engaged in the business of murder suppression as they battle to contain the rise in the number of stabbings.

Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gallagher said the knife crime issue had become broader than simply gangs and postcodes saying in some cases: We are talking about almost random assaults.

He said: We are in the business of murder suppression, protecting young people and preventing them from killing each other.

However, he also spoke of a new mobilisation of Londoners and communities shocked by the latest round of 11 knife murders in less than a fortnight.

Interview with Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gallagher - London Live

More people were coming forward to tell police about what was happening and who was carrying knives, he said.

DCS Gallagher, the head of the Operation Sceptre knife crime task force, spoke to the Standard after a two week spate of knife murders amid a 24 per cent rise in knife offences in London last year.

Among the shocking toll of recent killings was the death of 17-year-old Mohammed Hasan, killed by masked youths as he cycled home from a party in Battersea and Elijah Dornelly, 17, stabbed to death on Sunday after attending an anti-knife crime rally.

DCS Gallagher said: This is absolutely tragic what is going on here. But I am also encouraged, I think we are at a point where Londoners are feeling we have got to mobilise to try and do something tangible about this issue.

This is about mobilising our community to make a difference and I think we are starting to see that now. We have had massive amounts of contact with communities.

He added: The public are giving us a much clearer picture of where cops should be operating from a geographical perspective and also, crucially, individuals that we should be working against.

Police in Battersea after a teenager was stabbed to death / NIGEL HOWARD

He said officers had seized a record 300 knives in seven days of action against knife crime last week, partly as a result of people telling them where to look.

The Mets long running Sceptre campaign against knife crime is now being expanded with operations being run by borough based officers instead of the Trident gangs command.

The change in direction has been prompted by statistics which show that only a quarter of knife carriers are now linked to gangs.

Police believe more young people are now carrying knives for differing reasons, including status, criminality and increasingly for self-protection.

Mohammed Hasan, who was stabbed to death in Battersea

There is also a growing awareness of the complexity of the knife crime challenge in London as the nature of the threat changes in different areas.

In Croydon attacks are linked to teenagers gathering at transport hubs at the end of the school day but in Lambeth more attacks are linked to the night-time economy and offenders are older.

Senior officers have held talks with officials from YouTube and Google about gangs taunting each other in videos posted on social media, though police accept this is an international issue.

Michael Gallagher, the detective leading the fight against knife crime, was the victim of a horrific attack that nearly cost him his life / Nigel Howard

Police are also collecting data on how young peoples behaviour is affected by issues such as family break-ups, mental health and drug taking.

The Mets response to the crisis has been a mixture of enforcement with a greater emphasis on diversionary tactics, such as engaging with schools - including more schools officers - and encouraging role models to engage with young men with an anti-violence message.

DCS Gallagher says interviews with young people have revealed there is a need for more black role models in society, in particular in politics and policing.

The Met is already engaged in a range of educational measures delivered by officers visiting schools. The first visits by community officers start when children are just five.

The violence has led to calls for more police action, including from families of victims who have urged the Met to increase stop and search activity.

Police seized 300 knives in seven days / Met police

In response, the Met has launched a full time 100-strong task force to tackle outbreaks of violence across the city and expanded the Sceptre campaign which runs actions against knife crime to the rate of one week every month, instead of twice a year.

DCS Gallagher said: We are upping the tempo across London because the public want us to. They recognise there is an issue that needs to be addressed urgently.

He says the enforcement tactics will continue until we absolutely turn the tide on this issue.

Onlookers rush to the aid of a knife victim who was stabbed in Mile End

Activities include weapon sweeps to find knives hidden by gangs, focusing on so-called habitual knife carriers and engaging with schools.

A cohort of known knife suspects - thought to number several hundred - are targeted with what police call an Achilles Heel approach, or Al Capone tactic, which involves using any means possible to prosecute them.

It is about finding their weak spot and exploiting it, says DCS Gallagher. That could be for road traffic offences, an outstanding warrant, anything at all.

The disruptive tactics are also intended to make suspects toxic to be associated with, so other gang members or criminals will shun them.

Police say stop and search is a crucial tactic but say the number is still below what it was five years ago.

Syed Jamanoor Islam, 20, was stabbed to death in the street after a row

In fact, statistics show there was 73 per cent fall in the number of stops and searches carried out in the Met over the last five years, down from 512,278 in 2011/12 to 134,991 in 2016/17. The fall in the rate of Section 60 searches has been even more dramatic.

However, police say the arrest rate has risen from eight per cent to 19 per cent as police make better use of intelligence to target offenders.

Last week the task force focused on eight hotspot knife crime boroughs - Lambeth, Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Brent, Croydon, Waltham Forest and Newham.

DCS Gallagher said: We look at that every 24 hours, refresh it and look at where we should be going. The task force will be operating every day for the forseeable future.

The cohort of regular knife suspects are aged between 15 and 25 but there are exceptions.

Last week a 12-year-old was arrested with a knife in his bag, a 14-year-old was found with a knife in his school bag and a 13-year-old found with a splintered broom handle.

DCS Gallagher says it is clear police cannot solve the underlying issues and they are encouraging role models in communities to push messages and engage with young people.

Investigation: the front page of today's Evening Standard

He said: The group we are trying to influence dont want to hear messages from people like me, it will have far more impact if it comes from a mum or a role model for that group of Londoners.

He added: I think there is a battle with authority going on, they dont want to give evidence, they dont want to engage with the police, or engage with anyone who is in a position of authority.

For a lot of young men respect means being feared. If you are disrespected on the street, you cannot walk away from it, like we might do, you have to retaliate. This is the code of the street. If you receive violence you must give violence in return.

There is also concern about music videos inciting gang violence, children being raised in single families and chaotic environments as well as young people using drugs such as skunk cannabis with the effects on health and young peoples mental well-being.

DCS Gallagher says: There are lots of people out there who are struggling with these issues, including the police, but now its about respecting each other, we are all in this together.

We will continue to arrest people, with our enforcement and stop and search and our quest to make the street of London safe.

"This is one of the safest cities in the world and we want to make it safer, thats our primary function. But to be successful we need to understand the context in which we are operating."
A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a woman was stabbed in broad daylight in south London.

Police were called to Westbridge Road, in Battersea, at about 1.40pm today to reports of a woman suffering stab injuries.

They found the woman, aged in her 40s, who was then rushed to hospital by the London Ambulance Service.

Her injuries are not life threatening.

Armed police at the scene in Battersea / LondonLovesBusiness.com

A man, believed to be aged in his 40s, was arrested at a nearby address on suspicion of attempted murder.

He remains in custody at a west London police station.

Dramatic pictures taken from the scene showed armed police officers swarming a home in the street.

Officers from Wandsworth are investigating.

The stabbing comes the day the Standard launched its investigation into the capitals knife crime epidemic, with 11 Londoners stabbed to death in just 16 days.

The Met has launched a specialist take force to tackle the problem.
 I cant walk where you walking, said Sam, eyes darting nervously. I got to walk in the middle of the road to see everything coming towards me, I got to keep my eyes peeled.

Sams head rotated like a meerkat as he weaved through the pedestrianised shopping centre of Woolwich, nodding and greeting certain passers-by. If you notice, people are keen to say hello to me, he said.

Im a known face. Ive been stabbed, shot, bricked and bottled. Even though I came out of gangs five years ago, there are still people scared of me and others who wanna do me in.

Sam, 28, a former Woolwich gang member, carried a knife from age 10 and has spent a fifth of his life in prison.

Interview with Detective Chief Superintendent Michael Gallagher - London Live

He agreed to show me round his endz  in the wake of the 11th fatal stabbing in London in the past fortnight  to understand knife culture from the point of view of people who carry, or have carried, the blade.

Footage of suspects in a recent fatal stabbing in Walthamstow / Met Police

All around I watched ordinary Londoners just going about their business, but what Sam saw with his highly tuned X-ray vision was altogether different.

That Indian guy in the grey tracksuit usually carries a machete in his bag, he said, indicating a bearded man in his twenties. Everyone knows not to play with him, hell chop you.

We passed five youths outside McDonalds. Those guys are on road in a gang. We call them roadmen. It means they deal drugs. They have blades.

"They are less worried about stop-and-search than being caught slipping [by other gangs].

As we crossed the square, he nudged me. Look! Its happening in front of your face! In my peripheral vision, I saw a taxi stop suddenly as Sam delivered live commentary.

A boy has jumped out with a girl. The girls got the food [drugs] on her and see, hes walking fast, hes seen someone he needs to see, hes doing a bit of business and now, look, theyve gone, melted away, its back to normal  its happening in front of your face and if not for me, you didnt even see it.

Earlier, we talked to Frank, a skinny white 24-year-old in a Nike tracksuit coming out of the gym.

He looked like a regular guy. When Sam, who is black British, asked him if he felt safe, he said: Last year I come out my mums house and I heard a noise.

"I turned round and this boy, we got history, he swung at me so I smacked him, knocked him out. I thought, were done, but his friend jumped me and shanked [stabbed] me in my side.

The Standard today launches an investigation into the rise in knife crime in London / Katie Collins/PA Wire

"I was nine days in hospital. Now I take a cab to go from A to B. I dont feel safe in my own street.

Knife crime, Scotland Yard warns us, is rising sharply again, but why?

Colin James, founder of Gangs Unite, a charity specialising in conflict resolution, believes carrying knives is no longer confined to gangs.

It used to be that young people brought up by single mothers on estates were at risk of carrying knives because they did not want to be victims of other gangs, but these days its young people in double-fronted houses with a mum and a dad at home who carry as well.

Carrying a knife has ingrained itself into wider youth culture through music, social media and hyper-real computer games like Call of Duty.

"Its become glamorous to pack a blade. Normal even. As normal for some as carrying a mobile phone.

But its complicated, he added, because while it has spread, a core group have become hardened. The first time a young person attends the funeral of a friend, its shocking, but after a few funerals they start to get used to death.

Sam, who has knife scars on his ear, lip and arms, is a case in point. My one friend got stabbed here, my other friend got stabbed there, he said, pointing to opposite street corners on the Glyndon estate.

I know this gonna sound bad but when Lee Rigby had his head chopped off outside the army barracks not far from here, us lot thought it was pretty normal.

"Wed seen people hacked with a machete. Set on fire. Its the norm that people you know get killed. After a while you become immune.

Sheldon Thomas, founder of Gangs-line, a charity that helps youngsters like (and including) Sam exit gangs, believes absent fathers are the issue.

There is a correlation between young people involved in this lifestyle and no fathers in the home. We talk about the impact of unemployment and bad housing, but we got to address absent father culture, especially in the black community. Over 80 per cent of murders in London in the last three years are black kids on black kids. We got to be politically incorrect and admit the problem.

Is stop-and-search the answer? The police recently seized 300 knives and 15 guns in a week of action  part of the campaign Operation Sceptre.

It is part of the solution, but it can never be the solution, said Colin James. The problem is how police handle it. They search 100 people and find one knife, which is good, but if they alienate the other 99 because its perceived as racially focused, then its fanning flames.

The best solution, experts agree, is prevention rather than intervention, and that means getting into schools.

Every school across London should have a knife, gun and gang awareness programme, for 11-year-olds up, said James. This is something the Mayor could and should make happen.

Junior Smart, founder of the Special Offender Support (SOS) project at St Giles Trust, is already working in some schools. It needs to be mandatory because schools are scared to get in groups like us because then parents think they have a gang problem, he said.

Recently I took an assembly and asked, Stand up if you know somebody whos been stabbed, and 250 kids stood up.

The interesting thing was the teachers faces. Their mouths literally dropped open. They had been telling us they didnt have a gang problem.

After a two-hour tour of Woolwich, we were back in the centre and Sam resumed his commentary. That guy who just greeted me, hes on the run. That white guy on a pushbike in a hoodie, hes shotting [dealing drugs], we call him a neek.

I indicated another youth striding towards us. That guy, said Sam, is a no-name, an innocent.

Hes not a threat. He dont see whats going on. The only way he gonna see is if he gets caught in the crossfire or if we decide to come for him, but mostly we gonna let him go about his business.

Sam laughed ruefully. There are two different worlds going on  regular society and our world. Society says have one girlfriend, we have 10.

"Society says marry one wife, we have bare [loads of] wifeys. Society says speak normal, we speak in code.

"Society says act normal, we pull out a blade and act wild. Whatever society says, we do the opposite. Mostly you dont see our world, but once you been in it, its all you see. Even though I got out, I cant relax. I got to keep my eyes peeled.

Some names have been changed.
A rapist who attacked two transgender prostitutes in their own homes has been jailed for 14 years.

Spanish national Jorge Gil Jawhar, 24, arranged to meet both women at their homes in 2016, attempting to force himself on them as soon as they opened the door.

His first victim, who lives in Clapham, tried to call the police after he immediately grabbed her and tried to kiss her when he arranged to meet in August 2016.

When she tried to call officers Jawhar threw the 21-year-old prostitutess phone away, pinned her down and attempted to rape her before sexually assaulting her twice.

Jorge Gil Jawhar admitted to two charges of rape, one attempted rape and one charge of theft / Met Police

The following month, he visited a second transgender prostitute in Fulham and similarly forced himself on the woman, aged 35, as she answered the door.

He threatened her and forced his way into the flat, slapping her around the face three times before beginning his assault.

Jawhar then raped the woman, stealing her perfume as he left the flat.

He was handed a 14-year jail sentence at Isleworth Crown Court on Friday, having pleaded guilty to two charges of rape, one attempted rape and one charge of theft at the same court on Monday, March 20.

Jawhar, of Merrington Road, Hammersmith, had originally denied carrying out the assaults when interviewed, but was later charged.

Detectives were able to identify Jawhar following forensic enquiries, and he was arrested on October, 3, 2016.

DI Suzanne Jordan, of the Mets Sexual Offences Exploitation and Child Abuse, led the investigation.

She said: Jawhar is a dangerous sexual predator who used violence against his vulnerable victims for his own gratification and I am pleased that he will now spend a long time behind bars.

He targeted his victims and thought that because of the nature of their work, his offending would go unreported.
P olice want to trace a key witness who may hold vital information in the murder of a young man who was stabbed to death in south west London.

Abdullah Hammia, 24, was stabbed in the heart during an attack near Wandsworth Common on Tuesday, April 25.

A passing Australian nanny performed first aid on him but he was declared dead by paramedics at the scene outside Wandsworth Preparatory School.

Detectives have now released CCTV footage of a man they think could be a significant witness as the murder investigation continues.

Stab victim: Abdullah Hammia / Collect

The man was seen on CCTV walking down Melody Road minutes before the fatal stabbing.

Detective Chief Inspector Sam Price, who is leading the investigation by the Homicide and Major Crime Command, said: "Abdullah was involved in an altercation with a group of males - including at least one who had got out of a black VW Passatt - in Melody Road near the junction with Quarry Road shortly before being stabbed.

Sought: Police believe this man could be a 'significant witness' / Met Police

"We have made arrests in this case, and three men have been charged with offences, but I do wish to identify this man as a potential witness.

"I would appeal for him to please come forward, or for anyone who may know who he is to contact police."

Emergency services: Police and ambulance crews at the scene in Wandsworth

Police said two 21-year-old men have been charged with murder and are currently awaiting trial at the Old Bailey.

A third man, aged, 25, has been charged with perverting the course of justice and will also appear at the Old Bailey.

Emergency services: An ambulance at the scene of the stabbing / NIGEL HOWARD

Mr Hammias mother previously told the Standard her son was going straight after time in prison.

She said the keen boxer was trying to turn his life around when he was killed.

Any witnesses, or anyone with any information, can contact the incident room on 020 8721 4054, or police via 101 or by tweeting @MetCC.

To give information anonymously call Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or visit crimestoppers-uk.org.
P olice are hunting a gang who knifed two 15-year-old boys in an "indiscriminate, very violent attack" in King's Cross.

Detectives today released CCTV images of eight men wanted following the double stabbing in broad daylight.

Police said the attackers, described as young men wearing hoods with their faces covered, approached the teenagers in Seaford Street and asked where they from before knifing them in the legs.

Constable Nick Raczkowiak, of the Mets Trident gang crime squad, said: "The two young victims were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and this was an indiscriminate, very violent attack which could have had graver consequences."

The injured teens staggered to nearby Gray's Inn Road before police and paramedics were called at 3pm on March 21.

They were both taken to a central London hospital and have since been discharged.

The attackers, two riding bikes, left in the direction of Harrison Street following the stabbing.

Police investigating the attack arrested an 18-year-old man yesterday on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm. He was taken to an east London police station and bailed pending further enquiries.

Detectives released the eight images today after studying CCTV footage.

PC Raczkowiak said: "We would urge anyone who recognises the young men in these images to come forward and assist police. Any information would be treated with the strictest confidence."

Anyone with information can contact police by calling 0208 733 4359 or tweeting @MetCC. Information can also be passed anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or at crimestoppers-uk.org.
P olice are hunting three men after an unprovoked attack outside an east London pub left one victim with a broken jaw.

The brawl began in JJ Moons pub in Hornchurch when three men, all aged in their twenties, were set upon by another trio of males.

The fight, which happened at around 10.30pm on Wednesday 22 of February, then spilled out from the Wetherspoon pub onto nearby High Road.

One of the victims had to be taken to hospital with a broken jaw, while the other two also sustained assault-related injuries, police said. The others did not require hospital treatment though.

Police in Havering have today released CCTV images of the three men they want to question over the assault.

The first was wearing a dark hooded top with blue jeans and dark shoes. Another was wearing a long-sleeved cream top with blue jeans and white shoes. The final man was wearing a white shirt with blue jeans and white trainers.

DC Phil Stokes from Romford CID said: "This was a nasty, unprovoked attack which left one of the victim's with injuries requiring immediate surgery. The level of violence used was shocking. I urge anyone with information to come forward."

No arrests have been made yet.

Anyone with information on the attack is asked to call 101 or call police anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. You can also tweet information via @MetCC
A teenager was taken to hospital after being stabbed in Battersea, the first of two knife attacks in the area in just two hours.

Police were called by paramedics to reports of a stabbing at the junction of Wandsworth Road and Thessaly Road just after midday on Friday.

A male, believed to be 18, was rushed to an east London hospital, where his injuries are not life threatening.

No arrests have been made.

Just more than an hour later, a woman in her 40s was taken to hospital having been stabbed in Westbridge Road.

A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.

It comes as the Standard launched a special investigation into knife crime after 11 people were stabbed to death on Londons streets in just 16 days.

The Met have set up a dedicated anti-knife crime taskforce, made up of 100 officers and detectives, to combat knives on the capitals streets.
P olice are hunting a man who dragged a woman into an alleyway in the City in an attempted sex attack.

The 25-year-old woman was walking along Leadenhall Street when she was grabbed from behind by a man and pulled into Fenchurch Buildings alley at at 1.20am on Saturday, April 22.

The man ran away after she fought him off.

City of London Police today released an image of a man they want to speak to in connection with the attempted assault.

Detective Constable Paul Keogh, who is leading the investigation, said: Fortunately the victim was not physically harmed during the incident but is understandably shaken up by what happened.

"She continues to be supported by specially trained officers as we continue with our investigation.

I also want to reassure City residents and those who come into the City to work and socialise, that a full investigation is underway.

Were now asking the public for their help - if anyone was in the area and saw anything please get in touch.

Witnesses are asked to call 0207 601 2930 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
T he growing popularity of sushi could be behind a rise in parasitic infections, doctors have warned.

Fans of the Japanese treat have been told to be wary of the dangers of ingesting parasites from raw and undercooked fish.

It comes after doctors in Portugal treated a 32-year-old man who was found to have larvae from a parasite attached to his gut lining.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, the experts said he had been suffering stomach pain, vomiting and fever for a week.

A blood test showed mild inflammation, and the area below his ribs was found to be tender.

But it was only when the man said he had recently eaten sushi that doctors suspected he might have anisakiasis.

Anisakiasis is a parasitic disease caused by anisakid nematodes (worms) that can invade the stomach wall or intestine of humans. It occurs when infected larvae are ingested from undercooked or raw fish or squid.

Doctors performed an endoscopy on the man, inserting a long tube with a camera into the stomach.

They found the larvae of a worm-like parasite firmly attached to an area of swollen and inflamed gut lining.

A special kind of net was used to remove the larvae "and the patient's symptoms resolved immediately", the team from a central Lisbon hospital said.

They added that most of cases of anisakiasis to date had been reported in Japan but warned: "However, it has been increasingly recognised in Western countries."
T hese are the five biggest stories from the last 24 hours in the capital and across the globe.

Three taken to hospital after acid attack in south east London

A gang squirted acid into a van and attacked two people with a hammer during a robbery in broad daylight in south east London.

The scene of the attack on Wednesday evening / Brenda Dacres

Three people were in a van in Pagnell Street, Deptford, on Wednesday afternoon when the gang of robbers pulled their car in front of their victims, forcing them to stop.

A number of robbers then left the car and squirted a noxious liquid into the van, before attacking two of their victims with a hammer, police said.

A bag was stolen during the attack just before 2.05pm.

Cabaret compere told she 'deserves to be raped' in vile abuse on Tube

A cabaret compere was told she "deserved to be raped" by a group of "disgusting, sexist" yobs after she objected to them catcalling her on the Tube.

Victoria Kemble described the men who abused her as "disgusting, sexist pigs" / Victoria Kemble

Victoria Kember, 30, was sexually harassed by up to 11 men at White City station in west London as she made her way home from work.

Police are investigating the abuse, which was condemned by Transport for London (TfL) as "intimidating, demeaning and totally unacceptable".

Ms Kember, who runs Hooray Cabaret nights in Hackney, was commuting from Acton to her home in Shoreditch when the train called at the station just after 9.35pm on Wednesday.

Donald Trump calls fired FBI director a 'showboat' and 'grandstander'

Donald Trump has dismissed James Comey as a showboat and grandstander in an extraordinary outburst against the fired FBI director.

Trump fired Mr Comey earlier this week / The Washington Post/Getty Images

The US President also claimed that Mr Comey told him he was not under investigation over alleged ties with Russia, despite the former FBI boss leading an inquiry into alleged Russian meddling in the US election

In his first interview since firing the FBI boss, Mr Trump dismissed the probe as a charade.

Mr Trump fired Mr Comey late on Tuesday, claiming he had to restore public trust and confidence in the agency.

Mother and daughter on terror charge asked to lift face veils by judge

A mother and daughter covered their faces with burkas as they appeared in court accused of being part of the UKs first ever all-female terror plot.

A sketch of the accused in court (Elizabeth Cook/PA ) / Elizabeth Cook/PA

Rizlaine Boular, 21, and her mother Mina Dich, 43, are accused of plotting with nursery volunteer Khawla Barghouthi, 20, to carry out a terrorist attack on British soil.

Boular was shot by anti-terror police during a raid on Barghouthis home in Harlesden Road, north London, on April 27, when police swooped on the women.

She and her mother appeared in the dock at Westminster magistrates court on Thursday morning wearing burkas covering their whole faces.

Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot asked them to lift their veils to reveal their eyes when they were identified in the dock.

Police face probe after car carrying Jeremy Corbyn 'runs over BBC cameraman'

Scotland Yard is facing an investigation after a BBC cameraman's foot was run over by one of its cars carrying Jeremy Corbyn to a meeting to agree Labour's General Election manifesto.

Giles Wooltorton's left foot was run over / Getty Images

The Labour leader was being driven to a meeting, the subject of intense media interest after a draft of the manifesto was leaked, by officers from the Metropolitan Police's royalty and specialist protection unit when his vehicle was mobbed by journalists.

In the melee on Thursday, BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton's left foot was run over by the front left wheel of the vehicle carrying Mr Corbyn.

He was taken away in an ambulance with a swollen and bruised foot.
A disgraced south London police officer was sacked for slamming a mans head against a wall and trying to headbutt him during an arrest.

Met PC Gareth Knight, 38, launched into the unprovoked attack on the suspect in Brixton, south London, as he detained him on suspicion of drug offences.

CCTV of the incident showed the plain-clothes cop, who works in Lambeth, punching and attempting to headbutt the suspect on Atlantic Road in the early hours of January 30.

He was convicted in February of common assault and actual bodily harm at Southwark Crown Court.

Knight failed to show up to his police review hearing on Friday but was dismissed without notice for gross misconduct.

The hearing was told Knight lied in his statements about the arrest of the man, who was said to have not resisted and had not been acting in a threatening way at the time.

Assistant commissioner Patricia Gallan, who chaired the hearing, said: "Having carefully considered the documentation and watched the CCTV provided, I find the matter proved as gross misconduct."

An email exchange between Knight and his police federation representative was deemed too rude to be passed to Ms Gallan, it was heard.

James Southgate, of the police federation, said: "I have tried to engage with PC Gareth Knight, we had communications.

"I have received an email which I can submit to yourself, however it does contain swear words which is why we elected not to send it on."

Knight was said to have been on duty tasked with trying to snare drug dealers when he made the arrest shortly after 1.20am earlier this year.

In February, he was fined and given a three-month suspended jail sentence.

He was ordered to pay 1,000 in compensation and costs and serve 150 hours of unpaid work.


T his was the dramatic scene after a car ploughed into a west London roundabout in a late-night crash.

Police were called to Neasden roundabout just after 1am on Friday after a car launched into a barrier and landed into a bush.

A man, 26, was arrested by officers at the scene on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs.

Photos of the aftermath taken by police show the dark blue 4x4 with its wheels detached and bonnet crushed, surrounded by smashed glass and debris.

The busy road, minutes from Wembley Stadium, was temporarily closed by police whilst the fire brigade removed the vehicle.

Collison: Police had to close part of the road whilst they removed the vehicle / @MPSBrent

The London Ambulance Service was called to the collision, near the junctions of Neasden Lane and Dudden Hill Lane, in the early hours of Friday and treated three patients at the scene for injuries.

A Met Police spokesman said: "Police were called to Neasden Roundabout NW10 at 01:05hrs on Friday, 12 May to a report of a car in collision with street furniture.

"The three people in the car suffered minor injuries. They did not require hospital treatment."

"A 26-year-old male was arrested at the scene on suspicion of driving whilst under the influence of drugs, taking and driving away, dangerous driving, driving whilst not in accordance with a licence and driving without insurance.

He was taken to a west London police station where he remains in custody."
P arents were left furious after police were called and pupils turned away from a south-east London school for decorating uniforms on their last day.

The year 11 students at Blackfen School for Girls, in Sidcup, were not allowed inside the gates because they broke school uniform rules.

Up to 100 pupils were reportedly refused entry to the school for their final lessons before GCSE exams, and gathered outside causing massive disruption to traffic.

Alterations to school uniform were said to include the addition of sequins and bows, and parents and pupils alike were left outraged.

One parent, who asked not to be named, told the Standard her daughter decorated her shirt but was not turned away because she covered it with a blazer.

However she added: It is such a shame, I was really upset for them, they work really hard and they just went to let off a bit of steam on their last day and that has been taken away from them.

It was very disappointing and the kids were very disappointed as well.

"I did support my daughter in decorating her shirt and if she had been turned away I would have gone up to the school and told them what I thought.

I was not impressed, its a shame.

A student wrote on Twitter: My school wouldn't let year 11 leavers decorate their uniform, but of course they did, and now they're not letting them in school. Pathetic.

An email had been sent to parents earlier in the week warning that any student wearing incorrect uniform before this date will be sanctioned in the normal way.

The school said in a statement: We are sorry that some of our year 11 students chose to turn up out of uniform today and so were unable to come into school.

The whole year group were asked earlier this week to come in uniform today as usual and they were clearly told that if they didnt they would be asked to return home to change.

Many of the girls that turned up this morning did just that and have since come back into school.

We know that the end of school is a celebration and recognise that the girls have worked hard at Blackfen. To mark this we will be holding a special event after the exams next month.

We hope all the girls will come along and have a great time remembering their school years. We are delighted that many of these students will also be staying with us into 6th form.

A Met Police spokesman added: Police were called at around 8.35am May 12 to Blackfen Road, Sidcup, to a report of school girls in the road disrupting traffic.

Officers attended. There were no offences.
T heresa May made a grab for Labour voters as she unveiled her first General Election manifesto.

The Prime Minister aimed to pitch herself as a unifying figure when she launched the manifesto entitled 'Forward Together'.

It included a major 8 billion funding injection for the NHS for the next two years, as well as a pledge to build a million new homes by 2020.

Here is what you need to know about the Conservatives' General Election manifesto:

Standout policies:

8bn to be spent on the NHS

One million new homes by 2020, with another 500,000 by 2022

Net migration to be reduced to below 100,000 a year

Continue to increase the national living wage to 60 per cent of average earnings by 2020

Put executive pay packages to annual votes by shareholders and force listed companies to publish pay ratios.

Abandon plans for part two of the Leveson inquiry into media standards

Hold a free Commons vote on bringing back fox hunting

Means test the winter fuel allowance, meaning it will be taken away from wealthier pensioners

Include the value of peoples homes in the means test for whether people are liable to contribute to the cost of adult social care

Theresa May has vowed to slash net migration to tens of thousands / PA

Tax and spending:

Personal tax allowance to be increased to 12,500

Higher rate tax threshold to rise from 45,000 to 50,000 by 2020

Corporation tax to fall to 17 per cent from 19 per cent by 2020

Eliminate the budget deficit by 2025

Pensions:

Scrap David Camerons triple lock on pensions after 2020  meaning pensions will rise in line with earnings or inflation, whichever is highest.

Consider a new criminal offence for company directors who "deliberately or recklessly put at risk" a pension scheme's ability to meet its obligations.

The Prime Minister promised a vote in the Houses of Parliament on the terms of Brexit / Virginia Mayo/AP

Brexit:

Exit the European single market and customs union

A vote in both Houses of Parliament on the final agreement for Brexit

Agree terms of future partnership with EU alongside withdrawal, both within the two years allowed under Article 50.

Convert EU law into UK law and later allow parliament to pass legislation to "amend, repeal or improve" any piece of this.

Remain signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights for the next parliament.

Theresa May promised a budget boost for schools / Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Education:

Increase overall schools budget by 4 billion by 2022.

End universal free lunches for infants, but launch free breakfasts for all primary children.

Lifting the ban on grammar schools

Every 11-year-old expected to know their times tables off by heart.

General Election leadership poll

Other policies:
S enior figures from the major political parties are set to appear in a host of TV programmes where they will debate one another and be grilled by voters ahead of the General Election.

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn will face voters in a BBC Question Time special after refusing to take part in a head-to-head TV leaders debate.

Mrs May has repeatedly refused to join TV debates, while Mr Corbyn vowed he would not take part in a televised showdown if it only involved opposition leaders.

Tim Farron and Nicola Sturgeon will also take part in a second BBC Question Time special. Both programmes will be chaired by veteran broadcaster David Dimbleby.

The BBC and ITV are also set to host live TV debates involving senior politicians from all the major political parties - Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Green Party and Ukip politicians - among a host of other shows.

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn will take part in a Question Time Leader Special

There will be more than 10 hours of prime-time viewing on the BBC with programmes taking different formats.

When are the debates?

ITV Leaders Debate, 8pm on Thursday May 18

The ITV Leaders Debate, moderated by Julie Etchingham, with leaders from all seven major political parties invited to attend.

Mr Corbyn and Mrs May could be empty chaired as they have indicated that they will not take part in this debate.

Leaders will have the opportunity to make short statements at the beginning and conclusion of the debate.

They will also answer questions asked directly by members of a studio audience, before the floor is opened up to a period of free flowing debate.

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron and Ukip leader Paull Nuttall hav confirmed they will take part.

The BBC Election Debate live, BBC One at 7.30pm-9pm on Wednesday May 31

The BBC will broadcast this live election debate from Cambridge, involving senior Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat, SNP, Plaid Cymru, Green Party and Ukip politicians. It will be moderated by Mishal Husain.

Question Time Leader Special, BBC One at time TBC on June 2

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn will face voters in a BBC Question Time special hosted by David Dimbleby live from York.

Question Time Leader Special, BBC One at time TBC on June 4

Tim Farron and Nicola Sturgeon will face voters in a BBC Question Time special hosted by David Dimbleby live.

General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures 1 /57 General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures Jeremy Corbyn joins leaders for the BBC's Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA Prime Minister Theresa May samples cheese at the Royal Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet Leon Neal/Pool/Reuters First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during the launch of the SNP General Election manifesto at Perth Concert Hall Jane Barlow/PA Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the launch in central London of a Liberal Democrats campaign poster attacking the Conservatives' school meals policy Victoria Jones/PA Jeremy Corbyn appears on The One Show BBC Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and the party's local candidate Sir Simon Hughes are given a baking lesson at Comptoir Gourmand, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, London Gareth Fuller/PA Prime Minister Theresa May answers questions from the studio audience during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10' at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images Home Secretary Amber Rudd (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 28, 2017. Abbott has said she no longer opposed the security services as she insisted her time as a graduate civil servant would prepare her for becoming home secretary Jeff Overs/BBC/PA A new poster by the Green Party featuring pictures of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary either side US Preseident Donald J Trump Green Party/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott during General Election campaigning in Hull Chris Radburn/PA A man is arrested after protesting against fox hunting as Theresa May arrives at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley launch the Green Party's 'Green Guarantee' of key priorities for the party at a general election campaign event in London AFP/Getty Images Julie Etchingham presents the ITV Leaders' Debate, a live two-hour debate with Caroline Lucas, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood, Paul Nuttall, Nicola Sturgeon ITV/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during her party's general election manifesto launch in Halifax Danny Lawson/PA Demonstrations take place before the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May as she launches the Conservative Party Election Manifesto in Halifax Getty Images Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond listens as Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn launches the party's manifesto at the University of Bradford, in Bradford Nigel Roddis/EPA Prime Minister Theresa May meets Cathy Mohan at Abingdon market in Oxfordshire during an General Election campaign visit Stefan Rousseau/PA Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron leaves the Royal College of Nursing conference at Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre following a General Election campaign visit Gareth Fuller/PA Screengrab taken from Facebook Live broadcast, hosted by ITV News of Prime Minister Theresa May answering questions sent in by users of the social media website, with presenter Robert Peston ITV News Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in Londo David Mirzeoff/PA Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party holds one year old Angelo during a campaign event in Harlow, Essex Neil Hall/Reuters Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol on 21 April 2017 during Labour's election campaign. Steve Parsons/PA Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place. His vehicle hit BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton on the way into the garage entrance Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images British Trade Union leader Len McCluskey falls on the steps outside the Clause 5 Labour meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto in Londo Andy Rain/EPA Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller breaks down after receiving an ovation from the crowd during her speech at the Convention on Brexit in central London Andy Rain/EPA The Liberal Democrat party campaign bus is unveiled at an event at the Harts Boatyard on 01 May 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Co-Leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, speaks during the launch of the Green Party Brexit policy at the Space Studio in London Stefan Rousseau/PA The Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron listens to a speech during an event at the Harts Boatyard on May 1, 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Anti-racism protesters speak to the media after being removed ahead of UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall's speech Jack Taylor/Getty Images UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall gestures as he makes a speech as the party launch their general election campaign at the Marriott County Hall Hotel on 28 April 2017 in London Jack Taylor/Getty Images Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (right), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott Diane leaving Four Millbank in Westminster, London, following her stumbling explanation of how the party would fund its plans for 10,000 extra police in an interview that left her struggling to do the sums live on air. Victoria Jones/PA Philip Hammond and David Davis at a General Election campaign event in Central London Jeremy Selwyn Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey, south-west England Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images Conservative party handout of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a new poster, warning that families face a tax and debt bombshell under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership Conservative Party/PA Nick Clegg delivers a campaign speech on the European Union at the National Liberal Club in London Stefan Rousseau/PA Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (left) eats grapes during a walkabout in Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, with Ukip West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge (right) and Phil Durnell, West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Richard Vernalls/PA Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband retweeted a photo of him mowing a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncaster North constituency Jane Nightingale Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement on 18 April calling for a general election Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Election Questions to UKIP leader Paul Nuttall, BBC One, 10.30-11pm in England (11-11.30pm in Wales) on June 4

Mr Nuttall will answer questions from an audience in Bristol.

Election Questions to Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood, BBC One, 11-11.30pm in England (10-10.30pm in Wales) on June 4

Ms Wood will answer questions from an audience in Swansea.

BBC Newsbeat Youth debate on June 6

Younger voters will be the focus of a Radio 1 Newsbeat debate on June 6, where leading politicians from all parties will address an audience of 16 to 34-year-olds in Manchester.

It will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 1 and the BBC News Channel at 9pm, then on BBC One at 10.40pm.

Other programmes

There will be one-on-one interviews with party leaders conducted by Andrew Neil shown on the BBC in the evenings.

Labour leader Mr Corbyn is expected to appear on BBC's The One Show on a date still to be announced. It follows Mrs Mays appearance with her husband Philip earlier this week.
O ne in two voters back some of the proposals in Labours radical General Election manifesto, a poll has found.

The ComRes survey for the Daily Mirror found 52 per cent backed Labour's proposals - set out in a leaked draft of the manifesto - to renationalise the railways with 22 per cent against.

Nationalising the energy market was supported by 49 per cent with 24 per cent against and 28 per cent, while 50 per cent backed re-nationalisation of the Royal Mail with 25 per cent opposed.

Banning zero hours contracts was supported by 71 per cent with just 16 per cent against, and 65 per cent said they agreed with raising income tax on those earning more than 80,000 a year with 24 per cent opposed.

However just 30 per cent agreed that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn should be given a fair chance at leading the country while 56 per cent said he would be a "disaster" as prime minister.

Experts dubbed the manifesto the most expensive suicide note in history after the leak this week.

General Election polls and projections: May 12

The document was unanimously approved by Labours national executive committee and will ensure nobody is ignored, nobody is forgotten, nobody is left behind", Mr Corbyn said.

ComRes interviewed 1,021 adults online on May 11.
A ctivist Gina Miller appeared to wipe away tears as she launched an impassioned case against Brexit.

The pro-EU campaigner accused Theresa May of being out of step with Britain and "robotically repeating mantras" on leaving the bloc.

Ms Miller, who was behind a successful legal challenge over Article 50, has launched a tactical voting initiative to support General Election candidates opposed to a hard Brexit.

During her opening speech on Friday, she said: "Just because Mrs May has called a snap election does not mean we all have to snap into line and jettison common sense."

She added: "By being inflexible and harsh, close-minded, deaf to others' opinions and concerns about Brexit, Mrs May is preventing the country from healing and recovering.

"As a country we value fairness and reasonableness and compromise for the greater good - Mrs May is out of step with that, robotically repeating mantras of 'Brexit means Brexit', and the words 'strong and stable' being trotted out just rings hollow."

Ms Miller continued that an "extreme Brexit is not a done deal" and called on the public to use their votes in the upcoming election.

"Mrs May seems to want no opposition on Brexit - the official opposition, it seems, is obliging - it is therefore up to us as individuals and a civil society to do so," she added.

Pro-EU campaign: Gina Miller / Getty Images

A number of leading figures from across the political spectrum will take to the stage for the discussion event at The Convention at Central Hall, Westminster.

Tony Blair's former spin doctor Alastair Campbell, a panellist in one of the debates, accused Mrs May of calling the election to try to exploit weakness in the Labour Party.

"This is the most surreal election I have ever, ever been involved in," he said.

"It is being held for reasons which are not being stated - she (Mrs May) had a mandate for Brexit, she didn't have that much trouble getting Article 50 through."

He added: "She's exploiting the weakness of the Labour Party to try to get a huge majority to deliver a hard Brexit and all the other crazy stuff she wants to do like bringing back grammar schools, and we are helping her to do that."

He admitted that few people within Labour think the party will do well when voters go to the polls on June 8.

Mr Campbell continued: "I am incredibly angry that having spent most of my adult life getting to a position of helping the Labour Party go from being a losing organisation to a winning organisation - that we're now going into a General Election where very, very few people inside or outside the Labour Party think we have any chance of winning - that is unsustainable."

Sir Bob Geldof slammed Brexit as "the rise of English nationalism", described Boris Johnson as an "unprincipled oaf" and branded leading Leave campaigner Michael Gove a popularist.

The rocker and long-standing political activist said he fears a European war within a few generations if Britain leaves the EU.

"Will I vote for my children to go to war or potentially my grandchildren - I will not ever," he added.

He said he thinks there is need for reform in the EU and called for Britain to spearhead that change as a member.

"We must engage, engage forcefully and engage with a plan and we will change Europe from within it," he continued.
B ritain's military interventions in Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and Afghanistan have made the country less safe, Jeremy Corbyn argued today.

In a keynote speech on defence and security, he also accused the Government of a regime change war in Syria to topple tyrant Bashar Assad.

Today the world is more unstable than even at the height of the Cold War, he said.

Regime change wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria  and Western interventions in Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen  have failed in their own terms, and made the world a more dangerous place.

Jeremy Corbyn arrives at Chatham House in central London to give his speech on Labour's foreign policy / AFP/Getty Images

The war on terror which has driven these interventions has failed. They have not increased our security at home  just the opposite.

His stance, though, risks a backlash from some military chiefs and families, especially as British forces are currently involved in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are seeking to destroy the Islamic State terror organisation plotting atrocities on the streets of London and other parts of the UK.

However, Mr Corbyn, an opponent of British military action over recent decades, believes its approach to international security since the Nineties has simply not worked and that interventions have caused destabilisation and devastation abroad.

Iraq plunged into a bloody civil war after Saddam Hussein was toppled in 2003 and Libya has also been plagued by violence following the 2011 Anglo-French-led campaign in Libya against Colonel Muammar Gaddafis regime.

General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures 1 /57 General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures Jeremy Corbyn joins leaders for the BBC's Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA Prime Minister Theresa May samples cheese at the Royal Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet Leon Neal/Pool/Reuters First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during the launch of the SNP General Election manifesto at Perth Concert Hall Jane Barlow/PA Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the launch in central London of a Liberal Democrats campaign poster attacking the Conservatives' school meals policy Victoria Jones/PA Jeremy Corbyn appears on The One Show BBC Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and the party's local candidate Sir Simon Hughes are given a baking lesson at Comptoir Gourmand, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, London Gareth Fuller/PA Prime Minister Theresa May answers questions from the studio audience during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10' at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images Home Secretary Amber Rudd (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 28, 2017. Abbott has said she no longer opposed the security services as she insisted her time as a graduate civil servant would prepare her for becoming home secretary Jeff Overs/BBC/PA A new poster by the Green Party featuring pictures of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary either side US Preseident Donald J Trump Green Party/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott during General Election campaigning in Hull Chris Radburn/PA A man is arrested after protesting against fox hunting as Theresa May arrives at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley launch the Green Party's 'Green Guarantee' of key priorities for the party at a general election campaign event in London AFP/Getty Images Julie Etchingham presents the ITV Leaders' Debate, a live two-hour debate with Caroline Lucas, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood, Paul Nuttall, Nicola Sturgeon ITV/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during her party's general election manifesto launch in Halifax Danny Lawson/PA Demonstrations take place before the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May as she launches the Conservative Party Election Manifesto in Halifax Getty Images Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond listens as Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn launches the party's manifesto at the University of Bradford, in Bradford Nigel Roddis/EPA Prime Minister Theresa May meets Cathy Mohan at Abingdon market in Oxfordshire during an General Election campaign visit Stefan Rousseau/PA Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron leaves the Royal College of Nursing conference at Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre following a General Election campaign visit Gareth Fuller/PA Screengrab taken from Facebook Live broadcast, hosted by ITV News of Prime Minister Theresa May answering questions sent in by users of the social media website, with presenter Robert Peston ITV News Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in Londo David Mirzeoff/PA Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party holds one year old Angelo during a campaign event in Harlow, Essex Neil Hall/Reuters Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol on 21 April 2017 during Labour's election campaign. Steve Parsons/PA Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place. His vehicle hit BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton on the way into the garage entrance Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images British Trade Union leader Len McCluskey falls on the steps outside the Clause 5 Labour meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto in Londo Andy Rain/EPA Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller breaks down after receiving an ovation from the crowd during her speech at the Convention on Brexit in central London Andy Rain/EPA The Liberal Democrat party campaign bus is unveiled at an event at the Harts Boatyard on 01 May 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Co-Leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, speaks during the launch of the Green Party Brexit policy at the Space Studio in London Stefan Rousseau/PA The Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron listens to a speech during an event at the Harts Boatyard on May 1, 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Anti-racism protesters speak to the media after being removed ahead of UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall's speech Jack Taylor/Getty Images UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall gestures as he makes a speech as the party launch their general election campaign at the Marriott County Hall Hotel on 28 April 2017 in London Jack Taylor/Getty Images Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (right), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott Diane leaving Four Millbank in Westminster, London, following her stumbling explanation of how the party would fund its plans for 10,000 extra police in an interview that left her struggling to do the sums live on air. Victoria Jones/PA Philip Hammond and David Davis at a General Election campaign event in Central London Jeremy Selwyn Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey, south-west England Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images Conservative party handout of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a new poster, warning that families face a tax and debt bombshell under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership Conservative Party/PA Nick Clegg delivers a campaign speech on the European Union at the National Liberal Club in London Stefan Rousseau/PA Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (left) eats grapes during a walkabout in Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, with Ukip West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge (right) and Phil Durnell, West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Richard Vernalls/PA Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband retweeted a photo of him mowing a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncaster North constituency Jane Nightingale Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement on 18 April calling for a general election Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Mr Corbyn denied he was a pacifist and vowed that his first duty, if Prime Minister, would be to do everything necessary to protect the safety and security of our people and our country.

However, the Labour leader and former chairman of the Stop The War Coalition has clashed with his own party, including shadow defence secretary Nia Griffith, over his opposition to Britains nuclear deterrent.

He has not ruled out an air strike to kill IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi but said he would first want to see the appropriate intelligence and how such action would help end the conflict in Syria.

His stance on security is believed to be putting off some traditional Labour voters and Theresa May today accused him of abandoning patriotic working class people.

General Election 2017: What you need to know

Armed forces minister Mike Penning added: Jeremy Corbyn has spent a lifetime trying to disarm Britain but now hes pretending hes got what it takes to keep us safe. Its nonsense.

We all want peace, but you cant take tea with terrorists who order attacks on innocent civilians on our streets.

Ms Griffith was noticeably absent from this mornings media rounds, with shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner instead appearing on TV and radio. She was said to have been unavailable.

Speaking at Chatham House in central London, Mr Corbyn later laid out a triple commitment for a new foreign policy of defence, development, and diplomacy: The best defence for Britain is a government actively engaged in seeking peaceful solutions to the worlds problems.

He said he accepted that military action under international law and as a genuine last resort is in some circumstances necessary.

But he condemned the alleged bomb first, talk later policies of recent British and US governments and pledged an independent foreign policy made in London. In a swipe at Mrs May, he was set to add that there would be no more hand-holding with Donald Trump.

A Labour government would immediately halt British weapon exports to Saudi Arabia. Labour will re-examine the arms export licensing regulations to ensure that all British arms exports are consistent with our legal and moral obligations, he added.

Mrs May took her campaign into Labours North East heartlands today where she appealed directly to voters to put their trust in her.

Proud and patriotic working class people in towns and cities across Britain have not deserted the Labour Party  Jeremy Corbyn has deserted them, she was expected to say, accusing Mr Corbyn of a return to the disastrous Socialist policies of the 1970s.
J eremy Corbyn supporters have bizarrely claimed a BBC cameraman was intentionally run over in a stunt to discredit the Labour leader.

Giles Wooltorton was struck by a car carrying Mr Corbyn to a meeting on his party's General Election manifesto in central London on Thursday.

He was taken to hospital for treatment and has since been discharged after his foot was run over, leaving him with two broken toes and bruising to his foot.

Supporters of Mr Corbyn have now suggested the incident was an attempt to discredit the left-wing party leader.

BBC cameraman 'run over by car carrying Jeremy Corbyn' - In pictures 1 /17 BBC cameraman 'run over by car carrying Jeremy Corbyn' - In pictures BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton is loaded into an ambulance after the incident Yui Mok/PA Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn arrives by car for a Labour Party meeting to discuss their general election manifesto Ben Cawthra/LNP BBC's Laura Kuenssberg comforts her her colleague, BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton Yui Mok/PA BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton speaks to a paramedic after the incident Yui Mok/PA BBC's Laura Kuenssberg on the phone while her colleague, BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton, sits on the floor after the car carrying Jeremy Corbyn ran over his foot as it arrived at the Institute of Engineering in London Yui Mok/PA BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton is loaded into an ambulance PA BBC's Laura Kuenssberg comforts her her colleague PA BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton is loaded into an ambulance after the incident PA The foot of BBC cameraman Giles Wooltorton after the mishap Yui Mok/PA Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images Cameraman Giles Wooltorton is helped by Ambulance staff after reportedly being hit by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn's vehicle outside Savoy Place Getty Images BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton is helped by Ambulance staff after reportedly being hit by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn's vehicle outside Savoy Place Getty Images BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton is helped by Ambulance staff after reportedly being hit by Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn's vehicle outside Savoy Place Getty Images

BBC political editor Laura Keunssberg, who was seen crouched next to Mr Wooltorton as he received treatment, was also targeted by web trolls after the incident.

One person tweeted: "I think @bbclaurak kicked his foot under the wheel so she could blame Corbyn! #NeverTrustATory #CorruptToTheCore #LauraHatesCameramen".

BBC political editor Laura Keunssberg alongside Mr Wooltorton (Yui Mok/PA ) / Yui Mok/PA

Another Twitter user even went so far as to suggest Mr Wooltorton deliberately put himself in harm's way, posting: "#BBC cameraman sticks his foot under a car wheel and it got a bit sore = #Corbyn is unelectable. Scraping the smear campaign barrel, FFS."

Another added: "Set up. Nothing to do with Corbyn. "Cameraman in road gets knocked over so that Laura Kuenessberg can make up a story and photo opportunity".

Scotland Yard is now facing an investigation after it emerged the car carrying Mr Corbyn was one of the Met's.

Police spoke to journalists who witnessed the incident at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in central London.

A Met Police spokesman said the incident has been referred to the directorate of professional standards, which is responsible for the conduct of officers in the force.

The spokesman said: "At about 11:22hrs on Thursday 11 May officers from the Met's royalty and specialist protection unit were carrying out operational work in Savoy Place WC2R when it is believed a member of public was injured by one of the vehicles.

"London Ambulance Service attended and took the injured man to a south London hospital with non life-threatening or life-changing injuries.

"As is routine, the MPS will refer the incident to the directorate of professional standards."

The Standard has contacted the BBC for comment.
L abour and the Lib Dems are set to pledge for fathers to be entitled to at least a month of paid paternity leave in their manifestos.

The Lib Dems policy has been drawn up by Jo Swinson, who was the MP for East Dunbartonshire before Parliament was dissolved, to encourage greater sharing of parental responsibilities.

She drew up proposals that led to the introduction of rights to shared parental leave when she was a coalition minister.

A pledge in Labours draft manifesto would match that of the Lib Dems. It said it would double paid paternity leave to four weeks and increase paternity pay because fathers are parents too and deserve to spend more time with their new babies.

New dads are currently entitled to two weeks of paid time off.

Shared parental leave was introduced two years ago under the coalition, giving parents the right to split up to 52 weeks off between them, as well as up to 39 weeks of statutory shared parental pay.

Former minister Ms Swinson said: "The Liberal Democrat introduction of Shared Parental Leave was a massive step towards more equal parenting, and recognising the vital role that fathers play.

"Parents across the UK have already benefitted from greater flexibility and freedom in how they share the care for their new baby.

"But more needs to be done in order to encourage men to take leave when they become a dad, to bond with their child during the early weeks and months of their life.

"Research shows that fathers being more involved in their children's lives is good for children's development and good for the health and happiness of the whole family.

"That is why the Liberal Democrats want to give dads across the country the chance to spend more time with their children."

Lib Dem business spokeswoman Baroness Kramer said: "Creating a fair system for parents everywhere not only benefits new mums and dads but also helps our business sector.

"Having a workforce that is both more flexible and more motivated will benefit UK businesses greatly. It is the Liberal Democrats who are standing up for fairness and flexibility for parents. Theresa May has never cared."

The party said funding of the measure would be outlined in the Lib Dem manifesto.
C annabis sales would be legalised for the over 18s in a push to stamp out mental health problems caused by skunk, under Liberal Democrat plans published today.

Their long-held commitment to tackle the impacts of the Class B drug will be made in their General Election manifesto.

The partys candidate for Cambridge and former Home Affairs Select Committee member Julian Huppert said: The current approach is a disaster for young people, whose mental and physical health is being harmed by an increasingly potent product. There are no age checks, and no controls on quality or strength. Skunk is widespread and the only ID you need to buy it is a 20 note.

People in possession of cannabis currently face up to five years in prison for possession and 14 years for supplying it.

General Election polls and projections: May 12

Regulating cannabis sales would ensure it contains more CBD (cannabinoid), which lessens the likelihood of psychosis linked to super-strength skunk, the party claims.

Tax revenues from sales would also be invested in education on the substance and treatment.

Their pledge is welcomed by Lord Monson whose 21-year-old son Rupert killed himself in January after becoming addicted to a potent form of skunk.

General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures 1 /57 General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures Jeremy Corbyn joins leaders for the BBC's Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA Prime Minister Theresa May samples cheese at the Royal Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet Leon Neal/Pool/Reuters First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during the launch of the SNP General Election manifesto at Perth Concert Hall Jane Barlow/PA Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the launch in central London of a Liberal Democrats campaign poster attacking the Conservatives' school meals policy Victoria Jones/PA Jeremy Corbyn appears on The One Show BBC Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and the party's local candidate Sir Simon Hughes are given a baking lesson at Comptoir Gourmand, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, London Gareth Fuller/PA Prime Minister Theresa May answers questions from the studio audience during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10' at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images Home Secretary Amber Rudd (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 28, 2017. Abbott has said she no longer opposed the security services as she insisted her time as a graduate civil servant would prepare her for becoming home secretary Jeff Overs/BBC/PA A new poster by the Green Party featuring pictures of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary either side US Preseident Donald J Trump Green Party/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott during General Election campaigning in Hull Chris Radburn/PA A man is arrested after protesting against fox hunting as Theresa May arrives at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley launch the Green Party's 'Green Guarantee' of key priorities for the party at a general election campaign event in London AFP/Getty Images Julie Etchingham presents the ITV Leaders' Debate, a live two-hour debate with Caroline Lucas, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood, Paul Nuttall, Nicola Sturgeon ITV/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during her party's general election manifesto launch in Halifax Danny Lawson/PA Demonstrations take place before the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May as she launches the Conservative Party Election Manifesto in Halifax Getty Images Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond listens as Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn launches the party's manifesto at the University of Bradford, in Bradford Nigel Roddis/EPA Prime Minister Theresa May meets Cathy Mohan at Abingdon market in Oxfordshire during an General Election campaign visit Stefan Rousseau/PA Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron leaves the Royal College of Nursing conference at Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre following a General Election campaign visit Gareth Fuller/PA Screengrab taken from Facebook Live broadcast, hosted by ITV News of Prime Minister Theresa May answering questions sent in by users of the social media website, with presenter Robert Peston ITV News Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in Londo David Mirzeoff/PA Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party holds one year old Angelo during a campaign event in Harlow, Essex Neil Hall/Reuters Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol on 21 April 2017 during Labour's election campaign. Steve Parsons/PA Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place. His vehicle hit BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton on the way into the garage entrance Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images British Trade Union leader Len McCluskey falls on the steps outside the Clause 5 Labour meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto in Londo Andy Rain/EPA Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller breaks down after receiving an ovation from the crowd during her speech at the Convention on Brexit in central London Andy Rain/EPA The Liberal Democrat party campaign bus is unveiled at an event at the Harts Boatyard on 01 May 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Co-Leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, speaks during the launch of the Green Party Brexit policy at the Space Studio in London Stefan Rousseau/PA The Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron listens to a speech during an event at the Harts Boatyard on May 1, 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Anti-racism protesters speak to the media after being removed ahead of UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall's speech Jack Taylor/Getty Images UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall gestures as he makes a speech as the party launch their general election campaign at the Marriott County Hall Hotel on 28 April 2017 in London Jack Taylor/Getty Images Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (right), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott Diane leaving Four Millbank in Westminster, London, following her stumbling explanation of how the party would fund its plans for 10,000 extra police in an interview that left her struggling to do the sums live on air. Victoria Jones/PA Philip Hammond and David Davis at a General Election campaign event in Central London Jeremy Selwyn Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey, south-west England Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images Conservative party handout of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a new poster, warning that families face a tax and debt bombshell under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership Conservative Party/PA Nick Clegg delivers a campaign speech on the European Union at the National Liberal Club in London Stefan Rousseau/PA Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (left) eats grapes during a walkabout in Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, with Ukip West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge (right) and Phil Durnell, West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Richard Vernalls/PA Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband retweeted a photo of him mowing a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncaster North constituency Jane Nightingale Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement on 18 April calling for a general election Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The peer, of Burton, Lincolnshire, told the Evening Standard today: Seven weeks ago, Rupert took his life in violent fashion. In his last six months, he had become psychotic. Sectioned once, he suffered the full gamut: schizophrenia, false memories, paranoia and visitations. One was from a comedian, the rest of his minds gatecrashers were ghouls. Kill yourself, they commanded. So, he did.

His tragic suicide comes five years after the death of Lord Monsons other son Alexander, who was found with head wounds in a police station in Kenya aged 28.

After initially thinking the cannabis Rupert smoked must have set of underlying mental health problems, he found that the super-strength skunk available in Britain raises the risk of psychosis by five times.

He said: Rupert was never smoking the cannabis I knew - he was ingesting actually a far more potent form, skunk.

Skunks THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) content is 16.5% though in some related strains, it is 35%. Moreover, skunk producers have nearly eradicated the ameliorating CBD (cannabinoid). Why this pharmacological rearrangement? This potent cannabis is quicker to produce, more profitable and easier for gangsters to shift.

He said: In tackling this issue head on in their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats have grasped the nettle where all other parties have manifestly failed. The business model of gangsters would be broken. Our children will be protected.
T ony Blair has warned a hard border between Britain and Ireland after Brexit would be a disaster.

Britain and Ireland should agree a deal on the future of the border with Northern Ireland to limit the impact of Britain leaving the EU, the former Prime Minister said. The Republic of Ireland will remain in the EU after Britain leaves.

"If the UK and the Republic were able to agree a way forward on the border, then we would have the best chance of limiting the damage. It is in the interests of us all, including our European partners, for this to happen," said Mr Blair.

Speaking in Ireland, he said getting consensus on the border will be crucial in the Brexit negotiations.

"Some disruption is inevitable and indeed is already happening. However, it is essential that we do all we possibly can to preserve arrangements which have served both countries well and which command near universal support," Mr Blair said.

"A hard border between the countries would be a disaster and I am sure everyone will and must do all they can to avoid it.

Brexit speech: Tony Blair during a visit to Ireland / PA

The EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier is also attending the European People's Party (EPP) conference in Co Wicklow. That association is the largest group in the European Parliament and includes German Chancellor Angela Merkel's party.

Mr Barnier will then travel to the Republic's border with Northern Ireland where he will hold discussions at a business park in Co Monaghan.

On Thursday he warned that customs controls are part of the EU's border management.

Mr Blair also said he said he was anxious that Brexit does not impair the Good Friday Agreement and that the closest possible relationships between the Republic and Northern Ireland are maintained.

Mr Blair said it was vital that the Common Travel Area between Ireland and the UK was maintained.

"Obviously it's important that though there will be difficult challenges with this that we safeguard that as much as possible and minimise the damage," he said.

Mr Blair said he sees a consensus across the British political system to keep the open border arrangements between the Republic and Northern Ireland "as similar" to now.

"I think there's a real common desire whatever issues there are in relation to Brexit to make Northern Ireland a special case and make sure we do everything we possibly can to protect the Good Friday Agreement and peace process and to protect that strong relationship between the Republic of Ireland and the UK going forward," he said.

Mr Blair also told the meeting that he was delighted Emmanuel Macron had won the French presidency and not Marine Le Pen.

"But the doubling of the far right vote compared to over a decade ago, plus the surge of support for anti-European parties across Europe, should make us all think," Mr Blair told the EPP meeting in Co Wicklow.
T he Greens have stood down in more marginal seats around the country to help Labour beat the Tories in their so-called progressive alliance.

Labours Ruth Cadbury, standing in Brentford & Isleworth, said she would not normally welcome electoral pacts but this election is different.

She is defending a majority of 465 and is hoping the Greens 2000 votes in 2015 will transfer to her so she can beat Tory challenger Mary McLeod.

Ms Cadbury said: Like many in all the main national parties, I would not have previously supported the withdrawal of candidates, but this election is different.

The Greens and I have much in common, we share aims to safeguard and improve our environment.

General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures 1 /57 General Election 2017 Campaign - In pictures Jeremy Corbyn joins leaders for the BBC's Election Debate Stefan Rousseau/PA Prime Minister Theresa May samples cheese at the Royal Bath and West Show in Shepton Mallet Leon Neal/Pool/Reuters First Minister Nicola Sturgeon during the launch of the SNP General Election manifesto at Perth Concert Hall Jane Barlow/PA Former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg at the launch in central London of a Liberal Democrats campaign poster attacking the Conservatives' school meals policy Victoria Jones/PA Jeremy Corbyn appears on The One Show BBC Liberal Democrats leader Tim Farron and the party's local candidate Sir Simon Hughes are given a baking lesson at Comptoir Gourmand, an artisan bakery in Bermondsey, London Gareth Fuller/PA Prime Minister Theresa May answers questions from the studio audience during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme recorded at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is interviewed by Jeremy Paxman during a joint Channel 4 and Sky News general election programme 'May v Corbyn Live: The Battle for Number 10' at Sky studios Stefan Rousseau/WPA Pool/Getty Images Home Secretary Amber Rudd (left) and Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott appearing on the BBC One current affairs programme, The Andrew Marr Show. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Sunday May 28, 2017. Abbott has said she no longer opposed the security services as she insisted her time as a graduate civil servant would prepare her for becoming home secretary Jeff Overs/BBC/PA A new poster by the Green Party featuring pictures of the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary either side US Preseident Donald J Trump Green Party/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott during General Election campaigning in Hull Chris Radburn/PA A man is arrested after protesting against fox hunting as Theresa May arrives at the Welsh Conservative manifesto launch at Gresford Memorial Hall, Gresford, Wrexham Stefan Rousseau/PA Green Party co-leaders Caroline Lucas and Jonathan Bartley launch the Green Party's 'Green Guarantee' of key priorities for the party at a general election campaign event in London AFP/Getty Images Julie Etchingham presents the ITV Leaders' Debate, a live two-hour debate with Caroline Lucas, Tim Farron, Leanne Wood, Paul Nuttall, Nicola Sturgeon ITV/PA Conservative party leader Theresa May during her party's general election manifesto launch in Halifax Danny Lawson/PA Demonstrations take place before the arrival of Prime Minister Theresa May as she launches the Conservative Party Election Manifesto in Halifax Getty Images Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond listens as Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May speaks during an election campaign event in east London Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn launches the party's manifesto at the University of Bradford, in Bradford Nigel Roddis/EPA Prime Minister Theresa May meets Cathy Mohan at Abingdon market in Oxfordshire during an General Election campaign visit Stefan Rousseau/PA Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron leaves the Royal College of Nursing conference at Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre following a General Election campaign visit Gareth Fuller/PA Screengrab taken from Facebook Live broadcast, hosted by ITV News of Prime Minister Theresa May answering questions sent in by users of the social media website, with presenter Robert Peston ITV News Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn speaking about national security and foreign policy at Chatham House in Londo David Mirzeoff/PA Jeremy Corbyn the leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party holds one year old Angelo during a campaign event in Harlow, Essex Neil Hall/Reuters Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reads with children as he visits Brentry Children Centre in Bristol on 21 April 2017 during Labour's election campaign. Steve Parsons/PA Jeremy Corbyn looks around as he arrives at Savoy Place. His vehicle hit BBC Cameraman Giles Wooltorton on the way into the garage entrance Neil P. Mockford/Getty Images British Trade Union leader Len McCluskey falls on the steps outside the Clause 5 Labour meeting to finalise the Labour manifesto in Londo Andy Rain/EPA Pro-EU campaigner Gina Miller breaks down after receiving an ovation from the crowd during her speech at the Convention on Brexit in central London Andy Rain/EPA The Liberal Democrat party campaign bus is unveiled at an event at the Harts Boatyard on 01 May 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Co-Leader of the Green Party, Caroline Lucas, speaks during the launch of the Green Party Brexit policy at the Space Studio in London Stefan Rousseau/PA The Liberal Democrat party leader Tim Farron listens to a speech during an event at the Harts Boatyard on May 1, 2017 in Surbiton Leon Neal/Getty Images Anti-racism protesters speak to the media after being removed ahead of UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall's speech Jack Taylor/Getty Images UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall gestures as he makes a speech as the party launch their general election campaign at the Marriott County Hall Hotel on 28 April 2017 in London Jack Taylor/Getty Images Britain's opposition Labour party Leader Jeremy Corbyn walks past a bus shelter with Alan Whitehead, Labour MP for Southampton, and local councillor Satvir Kaur (right), before meeting local residents Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott Diane leaving Four Millbank in Westminster, London, following her stumbling explanation of how the party would fund its plans for 10,000 extra police in an interview that left her struggling to do the sums live on air. Victoria Jones/PA Philip Hammond and David Davis at a General Election campaign event in Central London Jeremy Selwyn Pensioner Malcolm Baker confronts Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron while he was the election campaign trail in Kidlington, near Oxford Sam Lister/PA Prime Minister Theresa May eats chips as she meets with residents in Mevagissey, south-west England Dylan Martinez/AFP/Getty Images Conservative party handout of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn on a new poster, warning that families face a tax and debt bombshell under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership Conservative Party/PA Nick Clegg delivers a campaign speech on the European Union at the National Liberal Club in London Stefan Rousseau/PA Ukip leader Paul Nuttall (left) eats grapes during a walkabout in Dudley town centre in the West Midlands, with Ukip West Midlands MEP Bill Etheridge (right) and Phil Durnell, West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Richard Vernalls/PA Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband retweeted a photo of him mowing a lawn whilst canvassing in his Doncaster North constituency Jane Nightingale Prime Minister Theresa May makes a statement on 18 April calling for a general election Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

The Greens have also decided to stand down in Derby North, the second most marginal seat in the country held by Labour with just 41 votes.

This follows their decision to stand down in Eltham, Richmond Park, Twickenham and Ealing Central & Acton.

General Election polls and projections: May 12

UKIP are releasing their list of candidates today in the General Election with expectations they will fight 400 of the 650 available seats - far fewer than in 2015.

Their decision not to stand in Carshalton and Wallington where the Lib Dems are in a close run battle with the Tories has led to claims that the Conservatives have morphed into UKIP.
A major cyber attack on dozens of NHS hospitals across England has forced London medics to cancel routine operations and divert ambulances elsewhere.

The IT system hack "crept" across the country on Friday as the NHS declared a major incident.

Medics were unable to access important patients' records and A&E departments were forced to tell people to stay at home except in an emergency.

Prime Minister Theresa May said on Friday evening the attack was part of a large-scale hack across the world and there was no evidence patients' data had been compromised.

Four London hospitals, all under Barts Health NHS Trust in the east of the capital, were hit in Friday's hack.

The trust said they had been targeted with IT problems at The Royal London, St Bartholomew's, Whipps Cross and Newham.

During the attack, members of staff at The Royal London were told not to touch their computers, one employee said.

The NHS' digital team confirmed to the Standard the cyber attack had been carried out for ransom money.

Elsewhere, several A&E departments including Mid Essex CCG and NHS Liverpool told patients not to come to A&E unless it was a "genuine emergency".

Wingate Medical Centre near Liverpool said they cannot treat patients unless it is an "urgent or life-saving matter".

A NHS source told the Standard on Friday the attack seems to be growing as more incidents of hospitals across Britain facing IT problems were reported throughout the afternoon.

As of Friday evening it is thought up to 40 NHS organisations were affected.

East and North Hertfordshire NHS postponed "all non-urgent activity" after confirming they experienced a major IT problem, believed to be caused by a cyber attack".

The trust said it shut down IT systems and telephone lines and asked people in the area not to come to A&E unless it was a life-threatening emergency.

NHS Digital, the branch of the health service dealing with the attack, confirmed that 16 NHS organisations were affected in the ransomware attack.

A screenshot of one of the health trust's website after the IT system went down. / PA

The attack was not specifically targeted at the NHS and is affecting organisations from across a range of sectors, they said.

A statement read: "The investigation is at an early stage but we believe the malware variant is Wanna Decryptor.

"At this stage we do not have any evidence that patient data has been accessed. We will continue to work with affected organisations to confirm this."

Pictures posted on social media showed screens of NHS computers with images demanding payment of 300 US dollars worth of the online currency Bitcoin, saying: "Ooops, your files have been encrypted!"

It adds: "Maybe you are looking for a way to recover your files, but do not waste your time."

A nurse found this file on her desktop following the hack. / PA

It demands payment in three days or the price is doubled, and if none is received in seven days the files will be deleted.

A pharmacist working at a hospital in Essex told the Standard staff were "annoyed" after the internal internet system went down and workers could not access records.

She said: "The intranet is down.

"We can't access pathology and blood results and no emails."

Viruses such as ransomware are normally delivered via emails which trick the recipient into opening attachments and releasing malware onto their system in a technique known as phishing.

Ransomware does not usually aim to steal personal or sensitive information but instead focuses on blocking access and threatening to delete files.

The attack came on the same day as health care professionals mark International Nurses Day.
P rince Charles today spoke of his "real joy" at visiting Ireland.

Charles said he has been "deeply touched" by the extraordinary warmth of the reception he and wife, Camilla, had received during their tour there this week.

He went on: "We have been greatly struck by the strength and vitality of the relationship between our two countries - friends and neighbours, bound together by the myriad of connections between our peoples, actively engaged in the world from these islands that we share."

Speaking at Glencairn, the British Ambassador's residence in Ireland, Charles thanked Irish President Michael Higgins for his kind hospitality.

"Few people have done as much as President Higgins to strengthen the partnership between our countries," Charles added.

The Prince of Wales with Camilla The Duchess of Cornwall. / EPA

Charles joked, "I discovered yesterday, no visit to Kilkenny could be complete without seeing some hurling.

"I thought it's just as well, if the hurling stick is offered to you, to have a go and as I have said to various people since, that if I hadn't hit that ball, I would never have shown my face in Ireland again!

"But I did have the great advantage of being instructed briefly in advance by King Henry," he said.

He said the most memorable moment of our visit came this morning at Glasnevin Cemetery, where my wife and I were deeply moved to join acts of remembrance held both at the Cross of Sacrifice and at the Necrology Wall.

"It is so very important that we are able to come together to honour the memory of so many men and women - from all sides - whose sacrifice shaped our shared history," he said.

He concluded, "We have been so struck by the strength of the connections between our people and between our economies.

"These bonds shape our shared prosperity and security. And they are everywhere you look.

Prince Charles and Camilla, Royal Visit to Florence 1 /8 Prince Charles and Camilla, Royal Visit to Florence Charles and Camilla enjoy their coffee in Florence Arthur Edwards - WPA Pool/Getty Images They ordered a cappuccino each from Caffe Barni Arthur Edwards - WPA Pool/Getty Images Camilla's drink only arrived just as the couple had to leave for a tour of the market Arthur Edwards - WPA Pool/Getty Images Prince Charles got served straight away and enthusiastically sipped his coffee Arthur Edwards - WPA Pool/Getty Images The royal couple are midway through a lengthy trip of Europe, taking in Romania and Austria Arthur Edwards - WPA Pool/Getty Images Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall starts her day with a coffee at a market shop Arthur Edwards - WPA Pool/Getty Images

"The Taoiseach told me earlier today that 1.2 billion Euros worth of trade crosses the Irish Sea every single week.

"I am also told that there are two million people in Britain who claim Irish lineage. I suspect the real number may be even higher still.

"What I do know for certain, Ladies and Gentlemen, is that in the United Kingdom, Irish people make such an extraordinary and essential contribution to so many parts of our society and our economy."

"My wife and I hope so very much that we can return to Ireland again soon, so that we might, in some small way, demonstrate the importance that we - and indeed all of the people of Britain - attach to our friendship with the people of Ireland and also the deep affection in which we hold your beautiful country," he said.


I talian police are investigating after two bombs reportedly exploded in a residential district of Rome.

Firefighters and police were called to the scene in the Italian capital after a blast was heard near a post office on Friday morning.

Police believe it may have been caused by two rudimentary homemade bombs which used flammable liquid, Il Giornale reported.

The devices, controlled remotely, were placed between two cars in a car park in Via Marmorata.

The bombs were placed between two cars near a Post office in Via Marmorata / AFP/Getty Images

Homes and businesses were evacuated following the blast in the citys southern Aventino district.

There were no immediate reports of injuries in Italian media although a car was seriously damaged in the explosion.

Italian police said there were no immediate links to terrorism, with an "act of protest" believed to have been the motive.
T he huge rotting carcass of an unidentified sea creature has washed up at on a beach in Indonesia.

Locals have flocked to glimpse the 15-metre monstrosity, which is so big it was initially mistaken for a stricken fishing boat.

Some believe the decomposing remains are those of a giant squid, but others say the hulking corpse could belong to a humpback whale.

Local man Asrul Tuanakota, 37, first spotted the creature near Hulung village on the shores of Malaku province's Seram Island on Tuesday night.

Video footage shows the rotting corpse turning the waters around it red with blood.

Villagers have called on the government to help remove the tonnes of stinking flesh, according to the Jakarta Globe.

Marine scientists have reportedly been called in to examine the creature's remains, with decomposition making identifying its species difficult without lab tests.

It is not clear how the mystery monster met its demise, but it is thought to hav been dead for at least three days before it was found.
T he final of Eurovision 2017 airs Saturday from Kiev, but Russia will not be taking part.

Russia has competed in the Eurovision final every year since it joined in 1994. It has been a major player in the international song contest, tied with Sweden for the most top-five finishes this century.

However, host nation Ukraine decided to ban Russian pick Yulia Samoylova from the country after it emerged she had previously travelled to Crimea in 2015 to take part in a concert. Travel to Crimea by foreign nationals without prior authorisation from the Ukrainian government has been a crime in the country since Russias 2014 annexation of the region.

Rising tensions

The dispute comes hot on the heels of last years Eurovision controversy. Last year Ukrainian contestant Susana Jamaladynova, who goes by Jamala, won a shock victory with her song 1944. The song took aim at the deportation of the Crimean Tatar population by Soviet authorities over 70 years ago. Jamala, who is from Crimea, has stated the song is also a direct criticism of the 2014 annexation.

Russian officials were distinctly unimpressed with Jamalas win. Konstantin Kosachev, chair of Russias Foreign Affairs Committee, stated that political attitudes prevailed over fair competition.

Many in Russia did not want to even send a representative to Kiev this year in response to Jamalas win. There has been speculation in Kiev that Samoylova was actually chosen to represent Russia because of her previous violation of Ukrainian law. Moscow has rejected Eurovision compromise proposals, including sending a different contestant or having Samoylova appear via video link.

History of Russian Eurovision Controversy

Russia is no stranger to Eurovision scandal. The competition has often been used to air Europes dissatisfaction with their domestic and foreign policies.

2007

The Ukranian entry in 2007, Verka Serdyuchka, caused similar outrage with his song Lasha Tumbai, which sounded suspiciously like Russia, Goodbye. The song was widely seen to be referencing Ukraines 2004 anti-Russian Orange Revolution, which ousted a Kremlin-backed presidential candidate.

Although Serdyuchka has since has since claimed Lasha Tumbai means churned butter in Mongolian, no such words exist in the language.

2014

The Tolmachevy Sisters, Russias 2014 entry, experienced a less than warm welcome at the competition.

Russia had passed its infamous gay propaganda law the year before, designed to protect children from being exposed to homonormativity. The 10,000-strong Eurovision audience, long famed for being proudly pro gay rights, loudly booed the sisters when they were onstage and whenever they were mentioned.

The competition was won that year with LGBT ballad Rise Like a Phoenix, performed by bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst.
T hree Britons have been injured after a helicopter plunged into the sea in a reported botched landing on a 23m superyacht.

One person was said to be in critical condition after the trio were rescued following the chopper crash in a fjord in Norway.

Images show the aircraft being hoisted out of the water near Bergen, on the south-west coast of the Scandinavian country, on Wednesday

According to reports, the helicopter's pilot attempted to land on the luxury Bacarella yacht but lost control when a tarpaulin became entangled in the rotors.

A UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokesman said: "We can confirm that three British people were injured in an incident in Bergen, Norway on May 10.

"We are offering assistance to them and remain in close contact with Norwegian authorities."

Bergen resident Jan Haughland, 48, was taking photographs of a tall ship in the fjord when he heard a "crash and splash in one".

He said: "It was exactly at sunset and I was concentrating on the tall ship when I heard the crash.

"I was slow to realise what had happened at first. There is a lot of shipping and helicopters flying over the harbour normally and I thought maybe someone had dropped something overboard.

"The yacht was around 500 to 700 metres from where I was standing and I noticed all the rescue boats moving really fast towards it."

The computer programmer said up to five boats raced to help, including a passing passenger ferry that diverted from its course.

"It can't have been more than five minutes before they arrived, it all happened very fast," he added.

The casualties began arriving at the quayside about an hour after the crash.

Mr Haughland said: "I think there were three ambulances and the critically injured person received emergency care on the boat before he was taken."

He said it was a "mystery" who the boat was owned by and who was on board.

The were usually "two or three really big luxury yachts" in the harbour at any time and the Bacarella arrived at least three days before the crash, he added.

"It's a popular place to visit for the very, very rich," Mr Haughland said.

The Bacarella was built in the US in 2009 and sold at auction for a reported $30 (23m).

THe 60-metre yacht, which can accommodate up to 12 guests and eight crew, is registered in the Cayman Islands.
Hyderabad: A person who went to deposit money in the Union bank in Siddipet held a dharna in front of the bank when the staff refused to accept Rs 10 coins.K. Ramesh of Dubbaka went to the Siddipet branch of the bank to deposit an amount of Rs 1,12,000 in which there were 12 coins of Rs 10 each, which the cashier refused to accept. He insisted that as per to RBI rules the coins can be accepted, but the bank officials did not oblige.The behaviour of the bank officials irked Mr Ramesh who sat in front of the bank with the coins spread on the floor. It was only after media persons reached the spot and enquired about the issue, the bank officials accepted the amount.
Review at a glance









N ow that grimes stark rowdiness has finally broken into the mainstream its free to go even further.

So weve had Stormzy singing, Kano employing a full horn section and now Momodou J Hus Jallow incorporating everything from bouncy Afrobeat to Jamaican dancehall on his remarkably broadminded debut album.

A Stratford bad boy who was in prison less than a year ago and is banned by the police from putting on concerts in London, here he raps more sweetly than most, piling the Auto-Tune on to his melodic voice on Fisherman  simply a song about his hat.

Hes more serious on Spirit, an anthem for positive thinking backed by a bass rumble. Theres grime fury on the tougher Clartin, but Common Sense offers so much more.

(Black Butter)
S aliha Mahmood-Ahmed has been crowned the winner of this years MasterChef competition.

The tricky final saw amateur chefs Mahmood-Ahmed, Kielty and Ryan pull out all the stops in the hopes of pleasing judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace.

The trio were tasked with making a three-course meal in just three hours for the hosts to sample.

But it was the quietly confident hospital doctor who wowed Torode and Wallace the most, with her expertly-executed menu picking up barely a single word of criticism.

Kicking off with a starter of venison kebab, the judges described her efforts as divine.

Finalists: Saliha saw off the competition to be crowned champion / BBC

Her main of duck breast with cherry chutney and freekeh also went down well, with Torode saying: The duck itself is soft as you like and theres a lovely flavour of aniseed running all the way through it. Im really really blown away by this. I think its delicious.

The cherry on the cake was a dessert of spiced pannacotta with deconstructed baklava. Wallace was a big fan calling it extraordinarily good.

Speaking of her excitement at being crowned the winner, Mahmood-Ahmed said: I feel amazing right now. Im so happy my cheekbones are hurting.

Adding: To be the MasterChef champion is fantastic, wonderful - adjectives are not sufficient. This is most definitely the coolest thing that Ive ever done in my life.

A tight final, fellow contestants Steve and Giovanna were just pipped to the post by Saliha, with Giovanna struggling with the time constraint and admitting to being flustered.

Both were gracious in defeat, sound engineer Kielty said If anyone really deserved it, she did, with musician Ryan agreeing that the best cook won.
M el Giedroyc and Sue Perkins are reportedly being lined up to host the BBCs forthcoming reboot of The Generation Game.

The former Great British Bake Off hosts are rumoured to be attached to the family game show after signing a new deal with the BBC.

According to reports, Mel and Sue are the frontrunners to take on the high-profile presenting role after Miranda Hart turned it down last year.

Mel and Sue are seen as exactly what this classic show needs. They were seen as a perfect replacement, a source told The Sun.

The Generation Game - In pictures 1 /10 The Generation Game - In pictures Bruce Forsyth presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Bruce Forsyth presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Bruce Forsyth presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Larry Grayson presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Larry Grayson and Isla St. Clair presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Jim Davidson with Melanie Stace presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Jim Davidson presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC Bruce Forsyth presenting BBC's The Generation Game BBC

A BBC spokesperson said: This is speculation and we have nothing further to add.

Great British Bake Off line-up stirs up fans

The much-loved duo are thought to have been offered a package by the BBC in a bid to keep them after GBBO moved to Channel 4.

Bruce Forsyth hosted the Generation Game from 1971-77 and then again from 1990-1994.

Larry Grayson stepped into replace Forsyth in the late 1970s and early 1980s, with Jim Davidson taking over in 1995.

Giedroyc is currently gearing up to host Britains coverage of the Eurovision Song Contest from Ukraine this weekend.
SCOTTSBLUFF  Nebraska is nice but Nebraska is also where the good life is and John Ricks, executive director of the Nebraska Tourism Commission, wants to find out what is good about life across the state and share that with the world.

Ricks is traveling the state during Salute to Tourism week to learn about all the interesting things people who visit Nebraska can do. He spent most of Wednesday in Scottsbluff listening to what is needed to make people think of western Nebraska as a destination.

Ricks has worked in ad agencies and in tourism in Wisconsin, Wyoming and Colorado. He has an advantage when discussing western Nebraska that previous directors did not. Hes familiar with the area.

When I took the job, I already knew more about this area than any other place in the state, he said.

Nebraska is known as a challenger brand. It is not in the top 10 of lists for people in terms of likelihood to visit.

Thats OK, he said. Thats a challenge and thats where the fun is.

When asking where people are going on their next vacation and Florida, California, New York, Hawaii and Colorado are typically the top five aspirational destinations. Ricks said its because of the perception those places have created.

Destination marketing is not about a product. Its about perception. The perception today is people either dont even know about Nebraska or if they do, its not on their radar as a vacation destination.

We have to change some perceptions about Nebraska, he said.

Ten days after Ricks took the job, he was in Colorado preparing for his move to Nebraska when his neighbor invited him over. The neighbors family included a man from Lincoln. The man didnt understand why Ricks would take such a job because theres nothing to do in Nebraska, according to Ricks.

While living at the Residence Inn in Lincoln until he found a new place, Ricks heard one man, who was on a work crew, say he wanted to go find the best restaurant in Lincoln. A man from Lincoln told him there werent any good restaurants in Lincoln.

That kind of thinking is counterintuitive to Rick because he hears these things and then he looks at the states Passport Program, filled with 80 places showcasing what makes Nebraska special. After visiting a destination, visitors get a stamp in their Nebraska passport book.

I like stickers. I like stamps, he said. And Im a whole lot older than a six-year-old who should like them.

In the two weeks since this years program began, 24,000 passport booklets have been distributed.

Tourism is big business. Its a $5 billion industry in Nebraska, but it hasnt gotten the recognition it needs, he said. Ricks plans to meet with all the senators in the state. Of the 30 hes met with so far, hes explained the economic impact of the money the state provides to the tourism commission.

For every $1 you give us, were going to put $36 back in the tax coffers, he said. Its a revenue generating industry.

In Ricks experience, he knows that people who request a tourist guide are more likely to visit the state. They also bring those guides with them.

An out-of-state visitor spends twice what an in-state visitor spends, he said.

With that knowledge, Ricks will be focusing on several areas, including Denver, where there are people interested in traveling to Nebraska. Denver viewers will see television ads with the hope it will have an immediate effect on this summers tourist season.

Those guides are a valuable tool for Ricks. It gets a city into places they cant otherwise afford to be in.

Tourism also isnt a single product. Its an aggregate of many different things that need to work together. He plans to work to eliminate the segregation in the tourism industry.

Silos and little boxes dont help anybody, he said. But this industry doesnt work this way.

The challenge to raise awareness of the state as a vacation destination is to increase those levels from the 2012 rate of 4-8 percent. He knows the possible problems  advertising in the wrong markets, reach and frequency was too low or the message didnt work.

We need to be a lot higher, but you dont have to be 100 percent he said. If youre in the low 40s, youre sweet.

People dont go where they dont know about and they dont go where they arent invited.

The invitation is through marketing, he said. Its not that there is nothing to do. Its because we havent told them whats out there.

Whether its restaurants, camping, events or anything else tourism related, Ricks said every place has cool stuff to see and do.

I dont care where it is, theres always something cool to do, he said.

In tomorrows paper: Get to know Nebraska Tourism Commissions executive director John Ricks. Irene North will have a feature on Ricks in tomorrows Star-Herald.
SCOTTSBLUFF  Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse joined John McCain (R, AZ) in opposing the nomination of Trumps pick for United States Trade Representative (USTR) in a letter released Wednesday evening.

In the nearly 900-word correspondence, Sasse and McCain highlighted a number of troubling stances Robert Lighthizer, a lawyer and former deputy trade representative during Ronald Reagans presidency, has taken  namely his unwillingness to back the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

A constant theme throughout your confirmation process has been your failure to grasp the importance of protecting agriculture in trade negotiations, the senators wrote. Your meeting with one of us (Senator Sasse) did nothing to disabuse of us this notion.

America needs a USTR who will effectively defend agriculture during trade negotiations and fight to expand agricultural export markets, not let Americas farmers and ranchers become collateral damage in a trade war.

In the letter, the senators list Canada and Mexico as the top U.S. trade partners, and according to projections from the Nebraska Farm Bureau, a withdrawal from NAFTA could cost Nebraska farmers and ranchers more than $2.6 billion per year in agricultural exports.

Lighthizer also shares the presidents views concerning trade deals. Trump has blamed many of the U.S. trade deals for jobs leaving the country, and promised to scrap NAFTA and renegotiate individual trade deals with the member nations. As one of Trumps first executive orders in office, he withdrew U.S. support for the Obama-brokered Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Another point of contention for the senators is Lighthizers past clients. Lighthizer had previously represented a Chinese Government controlled entity in a trade dispute with the U.S. and also worked on behalf of Brazil in 1995. Under the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act, Lighthizer would have to apply for a waiver from congress in order for him to serve in the Trump cabinet. Congress has included the waiver in a must-pass omnibus spending bill which, according to the letter, has the senators worried.

Beyond your vocal advocacy for protectionist shifts in our trade policies, the Administrations ongoing, incoherent, and inconsistent trade message has compounded our concern, the senators wrote. This is especially troubling because confirming a USTR grants the Administration additional legal authority to negotiate trade deals that Congress must consider under fast track procedures.

Given these circumstances, granting the Trump Administration additional legal powers through your confirmation without understanding how you or the Administration intend to use those powers would be irresponsible.

Congress granted the executive branch the power to negotiate fast track trade agreements when it reauthorized the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) in 2015. In the letter, the senators requested that Lighthizer provide congress with clear trade objectives in regards to NAFTA, a time-line for upcoming negotiations or alternative free trade agreement, and the future trade plans the Trump administration intends to make with other countries.
A Scottsbluff man and woman were arrested following a high-speed pursuit Thursday.

At about 6:38 p.m., a Scottsbluff Police officer attempted to stop the driver of a 2006 Chevrolet Malibu in the 1500 block of East 12th Street. The driver fled from the officer, turning north onto Sugar Factory Road and headed out of town at a high rate of speed. According to scanner traffic, speeds reached as high of 110 mph.

The pursuit ended approximately two miles into Sioux County where the roadway ends and the pursuit ended in a step ravine.

Police took three people into custody. The driver, Ray D. Torres, 23, was arrested on charges of flight to avoid arrest, willful reckless driving, possession of a controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and child abuse.

MaKayla Archibeque, 27, was also arrested on a charge of possession of stolen property.

A 12-year-old boy was released to a relative.

Scottsbluff Police were assisted by the Nebraska State Patrol and the Scottsbluff County Sheriffs Department.
SCOTTSBLUFF  One local organization has made a donation to help the weekend food backpack program in Scottsbluff and Gering.

The Scottsbluff Shriners Baltes Trust Fund donated $4,000 to the local program on Thursday, May 4. The donation was made as part of the Shriners mission to provide support for children who need it.

The Shriners are most well-known for the work they do in hospitals, but as part of the Baltes Trust Fund, funds left over each year can be used in the Scotts Bluff County community for organizations that help children.

Theyve been very supportive and they do a lot to support children, said Missi Iasillo, co-director of the backpack program. They know none of it will go to administration costs and 100 percent goes to the children.

Shriners has been working with the backpack program for several years. The backpack program makes sure the children in the program have food that can sustain them over the weekend.

Its pretty astounding the number of children in our community who really dont have anything to eat or any way to get food from Friday until they return to school on Monday to get breakfast, said Shriner Randy Olson.

Olson said the backpack program was a good fit with their mission and all of the money donated goes to helping children in the community.

Theres no money for administration costs or rent on a place, he said. Its all volunteer help.

The weekend food backpack program began in the spring of 2009 in Scottsbluff as a way to provide meals to schoolchildren who ate free lunches at school during the week. The following year, Gering joined the program. Since the programs inception, more than 7,000 packs have been filled.

The program currently sends about 200 backpacks home with children each weekend.

The funds are the biggest single donation the backpack program receives.

During the year, we spend $32,000-35,000, Iasillo said. Most of our money comes in from people with $20 here and $20 there.

For more information, contact Missi Iasillo at 308-225-2527 for Scottsbluff Schools or Tracy Steele at 308-436-2350 for Gering Schools.
A local psychologist has authored a chapter for a textbook that is now available.

The book, Stress in the Modern World: Understanding Science and Society, is authored by Dr. Serena Wadhwa, assistant professor of addictions studies and behavioral health at Governors State University, University Park, Illinois. The book was published in January, Dr. Gage Stermensky II, said.

Stermensky, a clinical psychologist and alcohol and drug counselor at Community Action Partnership and Midwestern Behavioral Health Services, said he was invited to contribute a chapter to the textbook by Wadhwa as he was completing a fellowship in Chicago, Illinois. Wadhwa had approached local professors, fellows and residents about contributing to the book.

I expressed interest on the cognitive effects of stress based on some previous projects I worked on, he said. I have been collaborating with Dr. Wadhwa for the past three years.

He collorborated with Dr. Robert Moss, a nueropsychologist who developed the clinical biopsychological theory.

Stermensky explains that the chapter provides an anatomical and neurological condition based explanation of the brains stress responses, specifically focusing on the autonomic nervous system, sympathetic-adrenal-medullary and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis. The information serves as a review of the neuroanatomical structures, systems, and chemical responses to aid the student in better understanding the treatment of associated disorders (discussed in later chapters of the text book).

Stermensky has been working with CAPWN since August 205 and also in private practice. He Has also served as a counselor at Valley Hope in ONeal and several agencies in Lincoln, Nebraska, prior to coming to the area.
There are dates and memorials which make up part of the fabric of our nation: July 4 is Independence Day, Dec. 7 is Pearl Harbor Day, Sept. 11 is the day the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked. For me, these dates as well as others hold solemn and reverent places in my heart.
A bench along the greenway in Statesville has a small plaque on it in honor of the late Rick Davis. It says Placed in memory of Rick Davis an
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TORONTO  Shares of Hudson's Bay Co., the owner of luxury department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue, slumped more than 6 percent on Friday after the retailer reported disappointing quarterly same-store sales.

The department store operator joined Macy's Inc., Nordstrom Inc. and other U.S.-based retailers in posting weaker-than-expected same-store sales. The news pushed down department store stocks on Thursday and Friday.

"Despite management efforts to bring excitement back into the stores, traffic continues to shift away from the department store channel at an accelerating pace," Evercore ISI analyst Omar Saad said in a research note.

After markets closed on Thursday, Toronto-based Hudson's Bay said comparable store sales in all its brands fell 2.9 percent during the first quarter ended April 29, hurt by fewer customers shopping in its stores, particularly in the United States.

This fell short of estimates provided by two analysts who, on average, had forecast a decline of 1.2 percent, according to Thomson Reuters data.

Same-store sales at Saks fell 4.8 percent, a steeper decline than reported by Macy's, Nordstrom and J.C. Penney Co. Hudson's Bay's discount operations, Saks Off 5th and online website Gilt.com, fell 6.8 percent, a fifth straight decline.

The stock, which fell more than 8 percent at one point, was down 5.5 percent at C$10.10 at mid morning.
In 1989, Sears Roebuck & Co. ruled America as its biggest retailer. It loomed over rivals from a perch high above Chicago, inside what was once the worlds tallest building  one bearing the companys name.

The fall from that height may finally be nearing an end.

Over the course of almost three decades, the company experienced what industry observers described as one of the most monumental collapses in business history. Despite its union with Kmart  the second-largest retailer from that era  and a stated belief that it can still turn things around, Sears is teetering on the edge of disaster.

The latest bad news was revealed in March, when Sears acknowledged substantial doubt about its future, sending the stock plummeting, its worst decline in more than two years. S&P Global Market Intelligence declared Sears the U.S. retailer most vulnerable to defaulting in the next year. A Fitch Ratings study of retail bankruptcies also listed it as a company with a high risk of failure.

The combined decline of Sears and Kmart, in terms of sales, is unprecedented, said Greg Portell, an analyst at A.T. Kearney. The seeds were planted by poor decision-making in the 1980s, during which time the company made a real estate play instead of focusing on selling. No senior executive over the next 28 years was able to put stops in place to prevent the slide.

The management mistake that Sears made, in retrospect, was that they never got to a spot where they could stop the free fall, Portell said.

It has been a slow, painful fall for these once-dominant brands. Sears, in particular, was synonymous with suburban American consumerism. It dominated the retail industry and changed the way people shopped through its revolutionary catalog business  the Amazon.com of its era. Kmart accomplished a lot as well, rising to a spot right behind Sears by peppering the nation with its Super Center big box shops and luring droves of shoppers with the promise of deep discounts, including, of course, the Blue Light Special.

In 1994, Sears and Kmart raked in a combined $111.4 billion, compared with powerhouse discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc.s haul of $111.9 billion. All three retailers ranked in the top 15 in revenue, among companies in all industries, in 1995. Since then, theyve gone in different directions. Sears and Kmart have watched their customer bases shrink amid a never-ending string of store closures. Wal-Marts sales grew almost fourfold over the next decade, as the behemoth tripled its locations and embarked on mass international expansion. Sears and Kmart each chose to trudge along, with little change in strategy.

In 2002, Kmart filed for bankruptcy protection after years of weak sales and stiff competition from Wal-Mart. The chain and its 2,100 stores were in dire shape, gasping under a pile of debt while unable to get enough shoppers through the doors. At one point, Kmarts biggest food distributor stopped shipments after the retailer was unable to make payments. Kmart would emerge from bankruptcy under the control of hedge fund billionaire Eddie S. Lampert and his firm, ESL Investments.

Then came the merger, then the biggest tie-up in the annals of retail. Since then, Sears and Kmart have been slowly dismantled by Lampert. Implementing a culture of warring tribes, one in which divisions would battle it out for resources, little cash was funneled back into reviving physical stores. Chunks of the business were sold to keep the lights on. In January, the company sold the famous tool brand Craftsman to Stanley Black & Decker Inc. for about $900 million.

He did nothing to maintain the stores  nothing to spiff them up and make them a nice place to go shopping, said Robin Lewis, a longtime industry analyst and chief executive of the Robin Report. Youve got young people today that dont even recognize Sears as a place where they would go. I think people will just forget about it.

On Wednesday, at the Sears Holdings shareholders meeting, Lampert blamed irresponsible media coverage for the companys struggles.

Once, Sears was the disruptor  not the disrupted. When the Sears catalog first appeared on doorsteps in the 1890s, it fundamentally changed how Americans shopped. Back then, much of the population lived in rural areas, and they bought almost everything from little shops at rural junctions. These general stores had limited selection and charged exorbitant prices. They were the only game in town.

The Sears catalog had an even bigger impact in 1900 than Amazon has had today, said Robert Gordon, a professor at Northwestern University and author of The Rise and Fall of American Growth. Like todays e-commerce powerhouse, the Sears catalog provided shoppers more choice than ever, and at lower prices. Sears freed shoppers from the tyranny of the local general merchant and improved their living standards. The cost of living went down the minute Sears became available, Gordon said.

Searching for parallels of Searss fall through business history, Gordon could find none.

There is nothing like the decline of Sears and Kmart, he said.
Analia Pasantino served in Argentina's federal police as a man for 20 years, then she came out as a transgender woman and was forced to resign.

She is smiling these days, though, beaming with pride to be wearing a police badge again. And the sign on her office door reads: "Chief."

Nearly a decade after psychiatric reports said Pasantino suffered from an "irreconcilable" illness that made her unfit to serve, she was welcomed back to the police force this week and appointed deputy police commissioner in the judicial communications department.

"This is a milestone," Pasantino, 49, told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I'm the first transgender police chief in Latin America. It's an unprecedented and important step to show Latin America and the world that we are an open institution."

Argentina became a world leader in transgender rights in 2012 when it gave people the freedom to change their legal and physical gender identity simply because they want to, without having to undergo judicial, psychiatric and medical procedures. The government also legalized gay marriage in 2010.

"The world has changed," Pasantino said. "You can live a life of gender identity and it's no longer necessary to live a double life."
CLAYTON  A man from Arnold was convicted Friday of breaking into a 74-year-old womans home in Wildwood as she slept and tying her up at gunpoint, then ransacking her house of cash, jewelry and other items in 2014.

After a four-day trial in St. Louis County Court, a jury found Forrest Russell Jr., 46, of the first block of Estate Drive, guilty of robbery, burglary, kidnapping, unlawful gun possession and three counts of armed criminal action.

Assistant Prosecutor Marlo Lamb and court records said the woman woke up about 7 p.m. Dec. 20, 2014, and found Russell in her bedroom with a .45-caliber revolver. Lamb said Russell had forced his way into her house through her garage.

Russell, a stranger to the woman, duct-taped her wrists and then looted her home, Lamb said. He loaded goods into his pickup truck.

Russell rummaged through the womans home for a couple of hours, Lamb said. The woman managed to break free and crawl to a neighbors house for help, Lamb said. It wasnt until Russell fell through an exposed ceiling to her bed that he realized she had escaped. The joists and insulation were visible because the woman was having renovations done at the time.

The woman, now 77, was emotionally traumatized but not physically injured during the break-in, Lamb said.

Russells attorney, Steve Lewis, said Russell denied the allegations, and testified at trial that friends had dropped him off in a nearby park about 5 p.m. Russell testified that he had passed out from a mix of heroin, bath salts and ketamine.

Russell was arrested the next day about three miles from the victims home, Lewis said. Russell contends that the victims description of her attacker was different from him and that she picked the wrong man.

Sentencing is set for July 6 before St. Louis County Circuit Judge Nancy Watkins.
Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley has appealed U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs' April ruling in favor of a Planned Parenthood affiliate that challenged the state's laws regulating abortion providers.

Notice of Hawley's appeal was filed in Missouri's Western District Court. The case now goes to the U.S. Court of Appeals Eighth Circuit in St. Louis.

On April 19, Sachs ruled in favor of Comprehensive Health of Planned Parenthood Great Plains in its suit, filed in November 2016. The suit said state laws requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals and clinics where abortions are performed were an overreach. It said holding those doctors to the standards of ambulatory surgical centers served no medical purpose and instead restricted access to legal abortion services.

In a statement released just before filing his appeal, Hawley insisted the regulations exist solely for patient safety reasons.

"I am disappointed the court has struck down important safety measures that protect the health and well-being of those women who choose to undergo an abortion," the statement said.

In Sachs' order, though, he repeatedly referenced a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court from 2016 that declared similar regulations in Texas unconstitutional, saying they placed an undue burden on women seeking legal abortions with no medical benefit.

"The abortion rights of Missouri women, guaranteed by constitutional rulings, are being denied on a daily basis, in irreparable fashion," Sachs wrote in his order.

Further, Sachs said, the lack of clinics that perform abortions in Missouri  there is currently only one, in St. Louis  could be not only burdensome but dangerous.

"A fall-off in professionally-handled abortions in a locale seems almost certain when there is no convenient place to go," he wrote. "In that sense, the hospital affiliation requirement probably creates health hazards for women."

When it filed its lawsuit last year, Planned Parenthood said in the complaint it planned to begin providing abortions in Joplin and Springfield for the first time and to continue performing abortions in Columbia if it was successful in its suit.

After Sachs issued his order last month, Jesse Lawder, vice president of marketing, communications and external relations for Planned Parenthood's St. Louis regional affiliate, said the organization plans to provide medically induced abortion services in Springfield and Joplin "as soon as possible."

"Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri is preparing to apply for licenses for the Springfield and Joplin health centers that would allow us to provide abortion services at those locations," Lawder said in an email Thursday.
ST. LOUIS  A fake nurse who stole the identity of a real nurse spent three months working at a St. Louis hospitals ICU and with elderly psychiatric patients, charging documents filed in federal court claim.

Samantha L. Rivera, 35, has never been licensed as a registered nurse in any state and never graduated from nursing school, a May 10 indictment claims.

Rivera now faces charges of health care fraud and identity theft.

Rivera, who lived in New Mexico and St. Louis and now lives in Illinois, was in court for a brief hearing Friday.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John Bodenhausen told Rivera in court that lawyers didnt yet know if New Mexico authorities wanted her held on charges issued last month there.

No attorney has yet been permanently assigned to Rivera.

Online court records show fraud, forgery and identity theft charges were filed April 21.

Rivera worked at St. Alexius Hospital in St. Louis from Nov. 28, 2016, to Feb. 23, 2017, but the hospital did not extend her contract. The indictment does not say why, and the hospitals CEO did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the case.

Rivera was caught after she applied for another job with a nurse staffing company in Chicago, using some information from a real nurse in New Mexico, court records show.

The company learned that Rivera was not licensed in New Mexico but had been disciplined by the Board of Nursing there and that her case had been referred to the New Mexico attorney general in April 2016. Online records show she received the maximum penalty to (an) unlicensed individual of $1,000.

Investigators also learned that she did not graduate from the University of New Mexico nor work at the hospital there, charging documents show.

Investigators have since learned that Rivera applied to Brown Mackie College in Albuquerque, falsely claiming she had a masters degree in nursing from Georgetown University and had previously taught a pediatric nursing course at the University of New Mexico, the indictment says. Neither of these statements was true. She was hired in September 2015 as a full-time instructor in the college of applied science in nursing with an $80,000 salary. She held the job until December 2015, the indictment says.

The college is no longer accepting new students, its website says. A representative did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

In September 2016, Rivera applied for a job with ATC Healthcare Services, which provides professionals to hospitals and other facilities, the indictment says.

ATC placed her at St. Alexius, where she was assigned to the ICU and Geropsych Unit, the indictment claims, and was responsible for assessing patients, identifying changes in patients conditions, performing medical treatments, and administering medications, including controlled substances.
SCHAUMBURG, IL - Hundreds of machining projects made by Chicago area high school students were on display Thursday night at Mazak Corporation's Midwest Technology Center where the Technology & Manufacturing Association (TMA) held its annual Precision Machining Competition. Parents, instructors and company representatives were on hand as students learned how their work rated in comparison to their peers and explored possible job opportunities with area manufacturers.

"Every society's wealth and success comes from three things: 1) what they mine, 2) what they grow, and 3) what they make. Today, all of you are 'makers,'" TMA President Steve Rauschenberger told the students. "I represent 700 companies from the surrounding seven counties that have opportunities for you if you're interested in pursuing a career in manufacturing."

Manufacturers are eager to find talented young people interested in careers in an industry that is enjoying newfound attention. This year's TMA competition drew the interest of a record-high 19 area high schools with nearly 300 machining projects, up from 89 five years ago.

Area manufacturers volunteered their professional technicians to judge the submissions. Forty-three different winners were awarded for their excellent work in machining projects such as precision vices, depth gauges, CNC turning, CNC milling and CNC programming.

"These students are the future of American manufacturing, and we're delighted that not only is the interest growing in this career, so is the quality of the work these students are submitting. This year we had four submissions that were graded at the highest level - perfect," said Patrick Osborne, Vice President of TMA Training & Education. "That says a lot about the seriousness of the students and their instructors. We congratulate them all."

High schools that participated in this year's competition include: East Leyden, Elk Grove, Hampshire, Harvard, Homewood-Flossmoor, Jefferson, John Hersey, Lake Park, McHenry East & West, Palatine, Rich East, Rolling Meadows, Schaumburg, South Elgin, Streamwood, West Leyden, Wheeling and Woodstock.
Updated at 4:30 p.m.

JEFFERSON CITY  With hours left in the legislative session, the Missouri Senate melted down on Friday as Republicans muscled through a measure that would nullify St. Louis recent minimum wage increase.

Democrats made a series of procedural moves to stall the final deciding vote and the bill's movement, expressing fury that leadership refused to allow debate on the controversial bill.

Were not going to follow the rules if you dont follow the rules, Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, told Republicans on the floor. Nasheed has been a vocal opponent of the change, arguing cities have the right to determine a living wage for their residents.

Even before senators moved to the minimum wage bill, Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a University City Democrat, read from a book in retaliation for the House killing one of her top priorities on Friday.

After a productive morning, the quagmire kept senators from debating or passing other bills for the rest of the day, save for the minimum wage bill they sent to the House for a final vote around 5 p.m.

The session ends on Friday at 6 p.m.

Updated at 3:25 p.m.

The Missouri House is trying one last time to avoid cutting services to 8,000 elderly and disabled residents.

With less than four hours left in the Legislatures spring session, the House voted 127-24 in support of a new plan designed to secure funding for vulnerable seniors.

The measure must be taken up in the Senate by 6 p.m. or the cuts will go into effect later this year.

The maneuver is the latest in a game of legislative chicken between the upper and lower chambers that has been underway for weeks. Although the states $27.8 billion budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 is intact, the cuts to seniors have been a point of contention.

On Thursday, a bipartisan group of Senate leaders issued an ultimatum to the House to come up with a better plan after it refused to take up an earlier proposal.

The standoff raised hackles among House members.

Their plan doesnt work, House Speaker Todd Richardson said of the Senate version.

But, he urged quick action rather than finger pointing.

It doesnt matter how we got into the spot we got in right now, said Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff. This is another attempt to give them a chance to take care of this problem.

But, with time ticking down, Republicans who control the chamber cut off debate and left Democrats unable to comment on the House's latest salvo.

We have something to say on this matter. Shame on you, Rep. Deb Lavender, D-Kirkwood, shouted at GOP leaders.

Under the new plan, rather than require Gov. Eric Greitens to dip into excess funds for $35 million to ensure higher risk seniors remain covered by state health insurance, the proposal gives him the option, said House Budget Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick, R-Shell Knob.

The legislation in Senate Bill 229.

Updated at 3:15 p.m.

JEFFERSON CITY  Travelers craving a cocktail or a glass of wine before flying out of St. Louis Lambert International Airport can get those drinks to-go under a proposal awaiting Gov. Eric Greitens signature.

The measure would allow both Lambert and Kansas City International airport to apply for permits enabling patrons to leave the premises with an alcoholic drink.

So long as the drinks are in containers displaying the retailer's name or logo, travelers could carry them throughout the concourse and drink them at waiting areas near their gates.

The bill has the support of Lambert, with airport officials hopeful that the change will bring in more concession revenue. Those wary of the proposal fear it could lead to more drunken passengers on flights.

But Sen. Jay Wasson, a Nixa Republican who carried the bill in the Senate, argued the change would keep fliers from gulping down booze quickly at a bar or restaurant before boarding their planes.

A similar measure was considered by the Legislature last year, but failed to cross the finish line.

The bill is House Bill 115.

Updated 1:00 p.m.

JEFFERSON CITY  House lawmakers killed a taxpayer-funded buyout of homes near a North County landfill on Friday, a top priority for Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a University City Democrat.

Chappelle-Nadal has long championed efforts to provide relief for families in the St. Louis area who believe exposure to radioactive waste has made them sick.

Watching from the sidelines on the House floor, she left promptly after the House rejected her measure, heading straight to the Senate, where she began filibustering bills in the chamber.

Under the program she proposed, any homeowner who owns a home within the Spanish Village subdivision near the Bridgeton Landfill would have been able to apply to sell their home for a fair market rate to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.

Residents for years have complained of obnoxious smells burning off the Bridgeton Landfill that lies near the subdivision, located north of Interstate 70 and west of Interstate 270.

Nearby is the West Lake Landfill, where uranium used to fuel nuclear weapons in the Manhattan Project was dumped decades ago.

The Senate approved a plan earlier this year that would fund the buyout program with $3 million from the state, though only $1 million was ultimately appropriated in the final spending plan.

But House lawmakers squabbled over how it should be paid for, debating between the funding already earmarked versus profits from state park land sales.

Some Republicans also raised concerns that it was not the Legislatures place to determine whether the homes in the area were uninhabitable, arguing the solution would be better left to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But supporters of the plan said for years, residents looking to the federal government for aid havent been able to find relief.

What were left with at this point is a group of people who are living in an unhealthy nightmare, said Rep. Mark Matthiesen, R-Maryland Heights, who carried the bill in the House.

The House defeated the bill on a 65-79 vote, with 12 voting present.

Chappelle-Nadal's vow to retaliate by obstructing Senate business for the remainder of the day calls into question bills such as a repeal of the prevailing wage in Missouri and a pre-emption of St. Louis minimum wage increase.

Parker Briden, a spokesperson for the governor, didn't rule out a special session to deal with potentially stalled legislation.

"All options are on the table," he said.

After the vote, the House recessed until 1:30 p.m.

Updated 11:40 p.m.

After multiple filibusters, ads accusing Republican senators of failing to support law enforcement and simmering tensions between Gov. Eric Greitens and the state Senate, a bill establishing a Blue Alert system to help catch those who harm police officers is headed to the governors desk for signature.

The bill, a top priority for Greitens, wasnt expected to be controversial. With bipartisan support, it would create an emergency system similar to Amber Alerts for missing children. Twenty-seven other states have similar alerts for police officers.

Its passage was less certain after a nonprofit affiliated with Greitens released digital attack ads accusing Sen. Ron Schaaf, a fellow Republican, for siding with liberals and filibustering the bill, which he voted for on Thursday.

The advertisements contained Schaafs personal cell phone number and inspired lengthy Senate debate, as well as a failed effort to require such nonprofits to disclose their donors, stalling other Senate business in the waning weeks of the legislative session.

But the Blue Alert proposal sailed through this week as part of a broad criminal justice package negotiated by legislators from both chambers.

It includes tougher penalties for crimes committed against police officers, expanding the heightened punishment for crimes such as involuntary manslaughter, stalking and trespassing.

It also creates the crime of illegal reentry, a class C felony charge faced by anyone who has been removed from the United States, later re-enters illegally, and commits a misdemeanor or felony offense in Missouri.

Some Democrats raised concerns over that aspect of the bill, fearing it was an expensive, unconstitutional change that could clog up the states courts and prisons.

This is not the states job. This is the role of the federal government, said Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur.

Additionally, the bill contains a provision pushed by Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, which would make it harder for judges to compel domestic violence victims to reveal their home addresses.

It was inspired by a St. Louis County divorce case in which a circuit court judge ordered a woman to reveal her home address, despite her participation in the states Safe at Home program, which allows victims of violence to shield their home addresses on public documents.

The Missouri Legislature gaveled in on Friday with only hours left to advance some of their top priorities to Gov. Eric Greitens.

Working late into the night on Thursday, they've already sent a REAL ID fix and changes to the state's pension system to the governor's desk.

But key bills remain in limbo, including a long-sought statewide prescription drug monitoring program to help tackle Missouri's opioid epidemic.

In a last-minute attempt to enact her prescription drug monitoring database proposal, Rep. Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, has rejected changes demanded by conservative senators to win back badly needed liberal support in the House.

At issue are amendments requiring patients' medical information be purged after 180 days and restrictions on what kinds of drugs can be tracked. Democrats who voted for Rehder's measure  which kept data for two years and tracked all schedule II through IV drugs  argued the Senate's changes would allow highly addictive drugs such as Adderall to go unpoliced and let anyone relapsing after six months go undetected.

But Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee's Summit, has said six months was enough time to catch "doctor shoppers"  people who visit multiple doctors for the same prescriptions  and that he was deeply uncomfortable allowing private medical information into a state database at all.

Rehder said late Thursday night that she'd asked Kraus to back off his 180-day provision but didn't know whether he would.

The future is also uncertain for seniors and disabled Missourians. A budget deal designed to keep 8,000 elderly and disabled from losing their health insurance later this year is on life support, with dueling House and Senate plans to address the issue.

Neither side has expressed openness to an agreement, with senators even holding a rare Thursday evening, bipartisan press conference to share concerns over the House's approach.

Other issues that could advance include public safety measures, such as an emergency alert system to help catch suspects who harm police officers  a "Blue Alert" bill that's a top priority for Greitens.

Republican lawmakers also have prevailing wage repeal, abortion restrictions and a bill blocking the minimum wage increase in St. Louis to consider, all of which would be met with resistance from Democrats.

Session ends Friday at 6 p.m.
The May 7 Presidential election in France gained the notice of American media far more than any other French election in fifty years. The American press is notorious for its poor coverage of world affairs, so the rare times that the MSM does choose to shine their light on a foreign country, it merits comment.

In this case, the reason is easy to see: the press didnt pay attention to France because of its geopolitical importance, or our shared history with the country, but because they had a chance to design a narrative that matched their politics: they imagined a similarity between the LePen campaign and Donald Trumps, and hoped for a chance to use that election as a vehicle for spreading their bias.

So we all watched the election, and the press certainly cheered when Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen, as we knew they would. While Le Pen has very little in common with Donald Trump outside of three or four key issues, the press insinuated that the French had the sense to defeat their monster and we didnt, so the French indeed ARE better than we are, after all (as the media has always believed).

But all that was to be expected. The interesting thing about the May 7 election wasnt who won, but the story about the ballots.

The Tale of the Ballots

When we were told that France voted down the daughter of a man pilloried as a bigot in the global press for a generation, it was no surprise. Her loss was hardly news by the common definition. They have no tradition of a limited government party in France as we do here, so they may try to pretend that the conservative party lost, but the story has no legs, at least, not with anyone who knows France.

But one offshoot story from the election was indeed fascinating to note:

The French declared that voter disgust  strong enough to lead them to refuse to participate  was four times the standard for a French election.

Now, in the USA, we have three standard ways to symbolize voter disgust with the choices for any office on the ballot: vote for a third party candidate, vote for a write-in candidate, or skip the office and vote the other races on the ballot.

The French have two other ways: turning in a blank ballot (similar to ours) or turning in a spoiled ballot, which can be as simple a method as tearing a corner.

We are told that 25% of the French electorate skipped the Macron/Le Pen runoff, and this should shock us. It probably doesnt, as more than a quarter of our electorate skips elections occasionally too, for a myriad of reasons.

But we are told that 8.6% of those who did vote either sent in a blank ballot or tore their ballot this time. The press reported that these two kinds of objections were four times the usual.

This raised alarm bells in the media  the public is disgusted with the choices  the supporters of the even-more left-wing party were angry about being left behind,  they dont even consider that some in the public may just be tired of having to choose between two big-government leftists all the time, and the nation that produced Bastiat and Revel might actually like a limited-government advocate for once.

But the story raised a different alarm bell to people from Chicago, and St Louis, and New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and everywhere else thats familiar with the American epidemic of rampant vote fraud.

Vote Fraud in America

The American press has always tried to convince the public  and it often succeeds  that there is only one kind of vote fraud: a corrupt precinct captain copying names off the tombstones in a cemetery, registering those names for the vote, and then casting ballots in their names during lulls on election day, when nobodys looking.

And yes indeed, that method is still used, and does still produce results for the Democratic Party.

But election-watchers know that there are dozens of other methods, as well. Illegal aliens, as well as legal immigrants who are not yet citizens, illegally vote in our elections all the time people with multiple addresses vote from each of their homes in the same election corrupt city governments pack buses full of patronage workers and their families, sending them from polling place to polling place all day, each one to vote a different identity every hour. Felons whove lost their voting rights blatantly cast ballots anyway, without consequence

There are dozens of such methods, in use across the country, varying by region, as well as by city size and demographic. And there are prosecutions, and people do occasionally go to jail for it, but not nearly often enough, and its rarely covered in the national news when it happens. So the consumers of news tend not to know about it at all.

Vote Fraud in France

And so we come to the week in France, this time in context.

When American election watchers, particularly those of us in the big cities, where vote fraud has always been most rampant, heard these news stories on Sunday, our eyebrows were raised at this part of the story.

8.6%?

Were supposed to believe that nearly ten percent of voters did take the trouble to participate in the election, but then spoiled the ballot, rendering their participation a waste?

Something about this doesnt ring true.

The French say this has long been a tradition there  and yes, it is  but the numbers this time were amazing.

We must therefore ask, how sure are we that the voters spoiled the ballots? How sure are we that it wasnt the election workers themselves, who might have added their own rips to the corner of the Le Pen ballots (or Macron ballots, for that matter), in order to render them uncountable?

The French rule is that any damage to a ballot voids the ballot. A corrupt election worker might therefore rip some of the other sides ballots, with no fear of being caught if he does it when nobodys watching.

Are we saying that all 8.6% said to be protests perhaps werent? No But maybe, just maybe, some werent. Maybe only half of those protest votes were real, and corrupt election workers swapped out blank paper for real ballots when they could get away with it, or ripped the corner of their opposing candidates ballots when nobody was looking.

Its impossible to believe that  with vote fraud made so easy  at least some percentage wouldnt take advantage of that ease.

Nobody is proposing that Le Pen would have won without fraud the discrepancy between her was too great. He had 20.75 million, and she had 10.64 million in the final count.

But if the alleged quadrupling of the protest ballot ratio is in fact untrue  if the protest percentage was in fact more like the French norm  then her loss wasnt as lopsided as it looks and it would mean that the establishment misread their public, and was nowhere near as confident of a Macron victory as they should have been.

One is reminded of the Committee to Reelect the President back in 1972. The Nixon campaign won in a landslide; there was no need for chicanery whatsoever but they were so nervous that summer, they authorized a minor break-in and a subsequent coverup that brought down the entire administration.

Might the French establishment have been similarly nervous of a loss, nervous enough that they told their election workers to grab every opportunity to spoil the enemys ballots? In a close election, just a small percentage of vote fraud can make the difference.

The Problem with Statistics

And all this brings us to one more, critical, final discovery.

What good are statistics, really, in this context?

They tell us that the incidence of blank and spoiled ballots was four times the norm this year. But for that to be meaningful, we have to know what the norm is, and we have to trust that the norm itself is honest.

In a truly scientific experiment, in a lab environment, there is a control with which the test can be compared. We have no such control in the world of electoral politics. We know our past experience, but that may be suspect as well.

What if 50% of the ballot-spoiling that normally takes place is actually vote fraud? Or perhaps even 75%? Or maybe theres usually no fraud at all, and any fraud this time would indeed stand out as the kind of belt and suspenders precaution taken by a government in unjustified fear of a losing position?

There is no way to know, because a system that voids ballots so easily is just ripe for vote fraud. The temptation for an immoral actor must be irresistible. There must be some fraud there, but whether its a huge percentage or a tiny percentage is impossible for us, an ocean away, to estimate.

We in the United States should learn from this as well. Our elections are compared with past elections. Our exit polls  and indeed all polling  are based on past results, on formulas that take past results and extrapolate from them. If past results were pure, then a scientific poll today can be reasonably accurate but if past results are impure, then even the most scientific poll today is tainted by the bad data of the past.

We look at a 95% Democrat vote in an African-American precinct in Chicago or Cleveland, for example, and we are alerted that this sounds impossible so we check past elections, and we find that theyve voted in these percentages for several cycles, so theres nothing to worry about.

But what if the honest vote is actually 85-15, or 80-20, or even 75-25, but stolen, padded, spoiled or falsified votes have been padding that number all along? Then by just leaving the vote fraud in place at the standard rate, the corrupt politicians responsible are able to slide, confident that the unchanging voting patterns over the years will protect them from their fraud being uncovered.

This is why there is only one solution to the problem of vote fraud: We must remove the temptation.

As long as easy ways to steal remain in place, people capable of covering their tracks may do so, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to catch them all.

But if we eliminate the easy ways to steal  for France to eliminate the blank ballot and the disqualification of ballots that are torn  and for the USA, the concepts of month-long voting opportunities, voting without an ID, mail-in balloting, and similar invitations to fraud  then and only then will we be able to have confidence in our elections.

We in the United States suspect massive fraud, but we can prove little, because in most of our most populous states, the only way to prevent against it would be by sacrificing the concept of a secret ballot.

If we want to retain the sanctity of the secret ballot  and yes, in a country with ever-more powerful government bureaucrats, we must  then the only solution is to remove the invitations to fraud.

Stop inviting people to cheat; stop making it so easy for them and most of the fraud will cease at last.

As indeed it must, if we hope to save our country, the last home on earth for Western Civilization.

Copyright 2017 John F Di Leo

John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based Customs broker and international trade trainer, writer and actor. A former Cook and Lake County precinct captain and Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has now been a recovering politician for twenty years.

Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided the IR URL and byline are included.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump, in an apparent warning to his fired FBI director, said Friday that James Comey had better hope there are no "tapes" of their conversations. Trump's tweet came the morning after he asserted Comey had told him three times that he wasn't under FBI investigation.

"I said, 'If it's possible, would you let me know, am I under investigation?' He said you are not under investigation," Trump said in an interview Thursday with NBC News. He said the discussions happened in two phone calls and at a dinner in which Comey was asking to keep his job.

Comey has not confirmed Trump's account. Late Thursday, The New York Times cited two unnamed Comey associates who recounted his version of a January dinner with the president in which Trump asked for a pledge of loyalty. Comey declined, instead offering "honest." When Trump then pressed for "honest loyalty," Comey told him, "You will have that," the associates said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders disputed the report and said the president would "never even suggest the expectation of personal loyalty." Officials did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump recorded his discussions with the FBI director.

The president's morning Twitter comments again raised the specter of Richard Nixon, who secretly taped conversations and telephone calls in the White House during the Watergate investigation that ultimately led to his downfall. Trump's firing of Comey already has left him with the dubious distinction of being the first president since Nixon to fire a law enforcement official overseeing an investigation tied to the White House.

Even before Trump's provocative tweet, the White House was scrambling to clarify why Comey was fired. Trump told NBC he had planned to fire Comey all along, regardless of whether top Justice Department officials recommended the stunning step.

The White House initially cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey's handling of last year's investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails as the impetus for Trump's decision. But Trump on Thursday acknowledged for the first time that the Russia investigation  which he dismissed as a "made-up story"  was also on his mind as he ousted the man overseeing the probe.

The shifting accounts of the decision to fire Comey, whom Trump derided as a "showboat" and "grandstander," added to a mounting sense of uncertainty and chaos in the West Wing, as aides scrambled to get their stories straight and appease an angry president. Not even Vice President Mike Pence was spared the embarrassment of having told a version of events that was later discredited by Trump.

The White House's explanations continued to crumble throughout the day Thursday. On Capitol Hill, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe strongly disputed the White House's assertion that Comey had been fired in part because he had lost the confidence of the FBI's rank-and-file.

"That is not accurate," McCabe said. "Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day."

Unfazed, Sanders insisted she had heard from "countless" members of the FBI who welcomed the president's decision.

McCabe also pointed out the remarkable nature of Trump's version of his conversations with Comey. McCabe told a Senate panel it was not "standard practice" to tell an individual whether they are or are not under investigation.

Previous presidents have made a public show of staying out of legal matters, so as not to appear to be injecting politics. Trump's comments demonstrated his striking deviation from that practice.

The ousted director himself is said to be confident that his own version of events will come out, possibly in an appearance before Congress, according to an associate who has been in touch with him since his firing Tuesday.

Trump and Comey's relationship was strained early on, in part because of the president's explosive and unsubstantiated claims that Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Comey found the allegations confounding, according to his associate, and wondered what to make of what he described as strange thoughts coming from his new boss.

The president was no kinder to Comey on Thursday, calling him names and saying he'd left the FBI in "virtual turmoil." He said that while he received a scathing assessment of Comey's performance from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Monday, that memo was not a catalyst for his dramatic decision as the White House had said earlier.

"I was going to fire Comey," Trump said. "Regardless of recommendation I was going to fire Comey."

That's far different that the White House's initial account in the hours after Comey's firing. Multiple officials, including Pence, said the president was acting at the behest of Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

But it quickly became clear that the president had been stewing for days over the Russia investigation and Comey's refusal to defend him in appearances before lawmakers. By Wednesday afternoon, the officials, like Trump, were saying he had in fact been considering ousting the FBI director for months because of a lack of confidence in his ability to lead the agency.

And the Russia investigation was still on his mind.

"In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won," he said.

Sanders attributed the disconnect in the week's explanations to the fact that she had not directly asked Trump when he'd made the decision to fire Comey until shortly before Thursday's press briefing.

White House officials and others insisted on anonymity in order to disclose private conversations and internal deliberations.

The White House said Trump is weighing options for replacing Comey, a decision that could have broad implications for the future of the Russia investigation. Some senior officials have discussed nominating Rep. Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina Republican who ran the House committee that investigated Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's actions in connection with the 2012 attack on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya.

Trump's advisers have repeatedly tried to downplay the Russia-election matter, with Sanders saying Wednesday the FBI was "doing a whole lot more than the Russia investigation."

But McCabe characterized the investigation as "highly significant" and assured senators that Comey's firing would not hinder it. He promised he would tolerate no interference from the White House and would not provide the administration with updates on its progress.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he declared. He said there has been no interference so far.

___

Pearson reported from New York. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville, Deb Riechmann and Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.
St. Augustine, Fla.  It was almost dusk on the countrys oldest street.

A bride posed in front of 17th-century house while a man drove over bricks in a pedicab advertising pizza. A strolling pirate talked on his cell phone.

The Spanish Military Hospital Museum was closed, but art galleries still welcomed customers. In front of one, a young couple argued quietly.

They seemed to be the only people unhappy on this spring weekend on Aviles Street in St. Augustine, Fla., bustling with families and other tourists. The town, founded in 1565, is so old its nickname is Ancient City.

Of course its not ancient like Greece or China are, but in the continental United States, this is the oldest continually occupied European settlement. The city proper is small, with less than 10 square miles of land and about 14,000 residents.

But its immense walkability, age and charm make St. Augustine a fabulous place to visit, combining historic sites with nearby beaches. On northern Floridas east coast, its even drivable from St. Louis at 14 hours.

Ancient St. Augustine, though, packs in the attractions. Things are not so much tucked away as they are tucked into it, with its long pedestrian-only promenade, pubs, stores and museums.

On the waterfront is the citys most prominent historic feature, Castillo de San Marcos, a fort built by the Spanish but also occupied at times by British soldiers and then Americans, including Confederates. The oldest masonry fortress in the U.S., the national monument is an excellent place to be introduced to St. Augustine history.

Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a Spanish admiral, named his settlement San Agustin because he had sighted Florida on the feast day of St. Augustine, Aug. 28, 1565. He would be the first governor of the area, although his St. Augustine was not in the exact same location as the present-day one.

Menendezs jobs included keeping the French, who had settled in South Carolina, from invading Florida, and providing a base to protect Spanish treasure-hunting excursions to Mexico and South America. (Dont forget this part: It helps explain why a pirate museum is in St. Augustine.)

Menendez eliminated a lot of his French competition  the nearby Matanzas River is translated as Slaughters River). He also built forts (or his men, slaves and Indians did).

About nine forts made of vulnerable wood were predecessors to the historic Castillo de San Marcos, which was built of limestone on Matanzas Bay about 100 years after Menendezs arrival. Colonial settlers had passed on fatal illnesses to many of the areas original inhabitants  primarily Timucuan Indians, followed by Seminoles  but some did earn 20 cents a day in the Florida sun constructing the fort.

You wont leave St. Augustine without learning about the areas special limestone, called coquina, made of compressed tiny shells. Blocks of coquina, although far softer than stone, proved to be a brilliant choice for the castillo because they didnt so much withstand cannonballs as absorb them. Instead of shattering stone, cannon and musket balls would sink into the coquina like BBs from a Red Ryder would sink into Styrofoam  a description from the forts website. One early observer said the place was like Swiss cheese, and many divots still dot the walls.

On top of the building, a cannon firing is demonstrated about every hour, and from the roofs jutting corners its common to see dolphins in the bay.

High ceilings inside allow heat to rise. Some rooms are outfitted as they would have been when soldiers slept there. As I had entered the fort ($10 per adult; free for those 15 and under), a man was telling his companion, Its pretty neat, eh. And it was.

Across the street is the aforementioned St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum ($13.99 adults; $6.99 for kids 5-12; thepiratemuseum.com). Artifacts include things like gold bars from shipwrecks, swords and daggers, a journal of Captain Kidds last voyage (1699), an 18th-century Jolly Roger flag and wax figures of people such as Sir Francis Drake.

The British consider Drake a great explorer, but for the Spanish settlement he was a pirate, the Dragon, who once burned down the town. As the museum says, Drake frequented the nations oldest city and played a major role in the history of pirates and Colonial America.

Growling docents dressed in dreadlock wigs and ruffly shirts enthrall children with stories, including how pirates did not really walk the plank  it being so much easier for captors to just toss them overboard.

Behind the pirate museum and with an entrance on St. George Street is a historic reconstruction known as the Colonial Quarter, a small place really tucked in  behind the Bull & Crown Pub and a Greek Orthodox shrine.

The Colonial Quarter ($12.99 adults; $6.99 children; colonialquarter.com) consists of an entertaining 45-minute tour that includes a reconstructed blacksmith shop, watchtower, ship project and historic house, originally one room built in the 1740s. A line of flags reminds tourists of how the British, never able to take the town by force, were given St. Augustine through the First Treaty of Paris in 1763. Many Catholic Spaniards, who refused to become Protestants, debarked for Cuba. (Short summary: Florida was returned to Spain in 1783, then in 1821 it went to the U.S. It would become a state in 1845.)

The nearby Greek Orthodox shrine introduces a unique colonial aspect of St. Augustine: the approximately 1,400 indentured servants who came from the Mediterranean  Greeks, Italians, Corsicans and more along with those from the actual island of Minorca. Collectively, these Minorcas were kept almost as slaves in nearby New Smyrna until complaints to the governor allowed them to move to St. Augustine about 1777.

As long as youre on St. George Street, its a convenient place to have lunch. The casual Spanish Bakery & Cafe, with outdoor picnic tables, has an amazing Menendez beef sandwich ($8.95) with manchego cheese, sauteed onion and datil pepper jam (a local specialty) on pressed Cuban bread. Split it with a friend and add a bowl of picadillo ($4.95). Farther down the street, more Mediterranean specialties can be had at the Columbia Restaurant, part of a chain founded in Florida in 1905.

St. George Street is open only to pedestrians, with tourists spending evenings browsing stores and eating ice cream.

Another way to have lunch and see the town is through a walking tour focused on food (there are also pirate, dog-friendly and paranormal pub crawls). On the day I hooked up with St. Augustine Historic Walking Tours, we visited the Spice & Tea Exchange, Ancient Olive company, a restaurant in a former swimming pool (Cafe Alcazar), Irish pub Meehans, Mediterranean La Pentola, the casual, hip Floridian and the Hot Shot Bakery for dessert. Many on the tour favored La Pentolas lobster ravioli and Meehans Reuben rolls, but the Floridians fried green tomatoes with basil aioli was a fresh treat. OK, Id go back to any of them ($59; staugustinehistorictours.com)

I had already tried the Floridians Shrimp and Sausage Pilau ($19) with a locally crafted gin and tonic. But I never made it to visit the gins maker, St. Augustine Distillery, although an Old Town Trolley Tour stops there.

I had seen Cafe Alcazar in the bottom of the Lightner Museum, which, like the glamorous Flagler College, was a former hotel owned by oil industrialist Henry Flagler. Their gilded history is worth several hours, especially for those who like Victorian luxury over colonial sparseness. All were within walking distance of my charming bed-and-breakfast, Casa de Suenos, on Cordova Street. The inn offers not only a generous breakfast but also a social hour, snacks and bedside sherry ($179 a night and up; casadesuenos.com).

By the way, the trolley tour is the most convenient way to get an overview of the city. With on-off privileges for three days with one ticket ($25.86), the trolley stops at 23 places, from the Castillo and Flagler College (real history) to the Fountain of Youth (fake history). Locals warn that Ponce de Leon was never searching for such water.

The small zoo has hundreds of alligators (one of which walked right over to eye me up close), but when it opens, waiting photographers head right to its rookery. Over several months, wild spoonbills, ibis, herons, egrets and wood storks fight over nesting material, lay eggs and take advantage of the alligator swamps security system  the reptiles keep tree-climbing predators away. A fascinating and beautiful scene.

Anastasia Island is also where visitors get the typical Florida experience: gorgeous white sand beaches and a rough Atlantic Ocean. Flags were red when I was there, but families still waded in the water. I stayed in Beachers Lodge (rates start at $99; beacherslodge.com). My small suite needed updating (the refrigerator was even rusted) although it overlooked the pool and Crescent Beach.
Edward Dede, left, as Winston and Mark Springer as John in The Island. Photo Joel Fildes

Georgina Fuller reviews The Island at The Theatre, Chipping Norton, which runs until 20 May

In 1970, a group of inmates, including the legendary Nelson Mandela, staged a Christmas production of Sophocles Antigone in South Africas notorious Robben Island prison. Mandela played the part of Creon, the king who sentences Antigone to death for flouting his orders by giving her brother, Polynices, a dignified burial after Creon had declared him an enemy of the state.

Almost 40 years later, on a small stage in a charming little theatre in the affluent Cotswolds, the play is re-enacted to a very different audience as part of The Island, a production by Athol Fugard, an internationally acclaimed South African playwright.

The play was first performed in secret before an integrated audience at The Space in Cape Town in 1973 with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who had both been prisoners on Robben Island.

Fast forward to today. Mark Springer and Edward Dede are spellbinding as the two central characters, John and Winston, and manage to convey the bleakness and turmoil on The Island with minimal props, stark lighting and very little else.

Neither of them speak for the first few minutes as we watch them work up a sweat in the quarry and see the physical exertion they had to endure every day on Robben Island as part of South Africas apartheid regime.

They soon evolve into people rather than prisoners and we see the intense, brotherly relationship between the two unravel. John is busy preparing for the Antigone production but Winston, due to play the protagonist Antigone, is ambivalent and refuses to take it seriously.

At first I wasnt quite sure about the significance of the famous Greek tragedy, the play within the play, despite having studied it at university many years ago. Then I realised that Antigone did, however, have a striking resonance within the context of apartheid.

As Nelson Mandela later reflected. It was Antigone who symbolised our struggle. She was, in her own way, a freedom fighter, for she defied the law on the grounds that it was unjust.

In the same way that Mandela and the other prisoners had been made criminals for speaking up for what they believed in, Antigone was exiled for honouring humanity and her brother, against the wishes of the king.

The Island, directed by John Terry, who grew up in South Oxfordshire, is an intense and thought provoking play which made me think about freedom and how terrifying oppression is.

Around half way through the play John hears that he will be released within three months. Winston imagines him tasting freedom, putting on his old clothes, reclaiming him belongings, seeing his wife and children and savouring the sweet tang of beer on his tongue. It is almost unbearable for him, trapped in a cell and breaking his back every day in the quarry, to imagine all those things we take for granted every day.

Three former Robben Island prisoners have since gone on to become South African Presidents.

The Island, from 10-20 May, Chipping Norton theatre. Book tickets at www.chippingnortontheatre.com
Alexandrina Podosu receiving her award from Stratford-upon-Avon College Principal and CEO Andrew Cropley

THE exceptional progress of an international student studying at Stratford-upon-Avon College has been recognised at an annual awards ceremony.

Alexandrina Podosu, who lives in Stratford, is originally from Romania and came to the UK with her three sons in July 2016 to join her husband.

She was presented with the International and ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) Student of the Year award during the Student Awards Ceremony which took place on Thursday, 4th May.

Alexandrina had a strong grasp of written English before moving to the UK, using it as part of her job running an accountancy firm. However, after relocating, she was initially frustrated at the problems she had communicating verbally.

She said: I used to communicate with my clients by email and letter in English so when I came to the UK I thought speaking to everyone would be no problem but when I actually tried to speak English with someone it was so difficult and I got really frustrated with myself.

Initially enrolling on the ESOL Entry Level 2 class last September, in a very short time Alexandrina progressed to the Entry 3 qualification and is currently preparing to sit her final writing exam.

She has a clear career path planned, with an aim to set up a new business as an accountant in the area.

Its something huge for me to come here to the UK, start a new course and now to receive this. When I received the letter telling me I was nominated I was so excited. I made sure I spoke to the other mums when waiting to pick my sons up from school. Now I have some English friends and I speak with them all the time, Alexandrina said.
A CRASH for cash gang has been found guilty of fraud offences for deliberately causing a crash in Warwickshire. These convictions bring up the milestone 500th conviction for the Insurance Fraud Bureau (IFB), an organisation that leads the insurance industry's collective fight against insurance fraud.

The trial, which has been ongoing since Monday 8th May, concluded with four individuals convicted of Fraud by False representation for their part in the fraud.

During the trial, the court heard how the group ventured onto public roads with the sole intention of deliberately crashing into innocent and unsuspecting members of the public, putting people at a very real risk of serious injury. The gang were then submitting multiple claims to insurance companies for fake injuries, vehicle damage and solicitor costs.

The main orchestrator of the fraud, Amar Hussain, pleaded guilty before the trial began, with his acquaintances Riaz Wazim and Benjamin Hamula standing trial. The pair were found guilty of making false insurance claims. Another individual Sahood Khan, who was also part of the scam to make fake claims, pleaded guilty before the trial. All four men are from the Birmingham and Oldbury areas of the West Midlands.

IFB were originally contacted by Warwickshire Police with intelligence of suspected induced crashes taking place in and around Warwickshire. Working closely with the police, IFB provided support in reviewing seized letters and documentation that the gang were using to commit the fraud, ensuring Warwickshire Police had a complete understanding of the gangs activity which could be taken forward for prosecution. Sentencing is due to take place on 8th June 2017.

Crash for cash scams cost the insurance industry 336m each year.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, his federal cabinet and the four provincial chief ministers were warmly welcomed in China following their visit to attend Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in Beijing.

The high-level delegation including PM Nawaz Sharif, Punjab CM Shehbaz Sharif, KP CM Pervez Khattak, Balochistan CM Sanaullah Zehri and Sindh CM Murad Ali Shah will attend the two-day One Belt One Road summit in the neighbouring country.

The forum will commence from Sunday as the top leadership from Pakistan will also attend several meetings with global leaders and invite them to invest in the countrys blooming economy.

Close allies of the premier including Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Railways Minister Khawaja Saad Rafique, Foreign Secretary Sartaj Aziz, Federal Minister for Planning & Development Ahsan Iqbal, Minister for Commerce Khurram Dastgir Khan and others are a part of the high-level delegation from Pakistan which is to attend the summit regarding China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

On the second day of the forum, the global leaders, including the Chinese President Xi Jinping, will hold a round table conference to discuss different issues like eradication of poverty and creation of more employment opportunities.

It is also expected that several new agreements between China and Pakistan would be signed during the China visit. PM Nawaz will meet leaders from around to world to encourage them for business opportunities, according to sources.
There was no mention of Indian businessman Sajjan Jindal in meeting between the prime minister and chief of army staff the report that made rounds on Thursday was incorrect, said Minister of State for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb.

"Jindal is a friend of the prime minister and met him in his personal capacity," she stated in a statement issued on Friday.

On May 11, a news report quoted official sources as saying that during a meeting Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had taken Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Bajwa into confidence over Jindal's visit to Pakistan. The news report read that Pakistan's civil leadership had informed high-level officials of the army that the recent meeting between Nawaz and Jindal was a part of back-channel diplomacy.

It further stated that the chief of army staff also informed his officials about the matter.In April, Jindal made an unannounced visit to Pakistan and met Nawaz.

Jindal, who is also said to be accompanied by other businessmen, met the Pakistani prime minister in his personal capacity in Murree, where the premier had gone for a private trip.

The meeting came at a time when India and Pakistan were going through tense times  Indian security forces brutality being at an all time high in Kashmir, along with the contention over the agent of Research and Analysis Wing, Kulbhushan Jadhav.

Nawazs daughter had also tweeted over the matter, writing Jindal is an old friend of the prime minister and that there was nothing 'secret' about the meeting and should not be blown out of proportion.
Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif on Friday left for China from Lahore to attend the One Belt, One Belt (Obor) conference.

Talking to media before leaving for China, the chief minister said that China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will usher in a new era of progress and prosperity in Pakistan. He said that the mega project would change the destiny of the region in real terms.

Shahbaz said that CPEC had opened the door for investments in Pakistan.

He added that his visit would lead to enhanced cooperation between China and the provincial government. He added that the close relations between the two countries were warming with each passing day.During his visit, the chief minister will meet investors, energy companies officials and private sector people in China.

The CM is also scheduled to hold meeting with monetary institutions officials in China.It is to be mentioned here that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is also going to attend the One-Belt, One Road conference in China.

The One Belt, One Road (Obor) is a giant initiative of Chinese president Xi Jinpingm, which he unveiled in 2013. The initiative propose a new economic framework that would connect Chinas Silk Road Economic Belt

project in Central Asia with its Maritime Silk Road through connected bodies of water from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean. In essence, these trade strategies focus on increasing Chinas connection with countries along the historical Silk Road in Eurasia, while creating a new Silk Road through Asia to South Asia and Africa.

One part of the project is centred on the creation of road connections between China and Eurasia, including infrastructure projects such as highways and rail lines. The other part of the project concerns maritime routes that will connect China with South East Asia, South Asia and ports up and down the east coast of Africa.

The scale of this vision, if completed, is the projects greatest selling point and potential challenge. The trade links outlined would cover 65 per cent of the worlds population, one-third of global GDP and a quarter of all the goods and services in the international economy.
Two Frontier Constabulary soldiers were injured in cross-border firing in Kurram Agency from Afghanistan's Khost province on Friday, security sources said.

The attack took place as FC personnel were undertaking construction of a wall along the border on the Pakistani side, the sources said, adding that they returned fire across the border.

This is the second cross-border attack coming from Afghanistan over the past week. At least nine people were killed and over 40 others injured as Afghan border forces opened fire on security personnel guarding a census team in Balochistan's Chaman area last Friday.

On Sunday, Inspector General Frontier Corps Balochistan Maj Gen Nadeem Anjum claimed that 50 Afghan security personnel were killed and another 100 injured as Pakistani forces retaliated to the unprovoked attack.

The claims were, however, denied by Afghanistan's Ambassador to Pakistan Omar Zakhilwal who said that only two Afghan soldiers were slain and seven others injured.

Both sides have called for peace in the aftermath of the attack, with Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz saying that Afghanistan had been asked to use diplomatic channels to resolve issues with Pakistan "instead of bullets".

During hotline contact after the cross-border attack last week, the Afghan director general of military operations admitted his sides mistake in identifying the boundary in the area and acknowledged that the international border lies between the villages and not at a ditch, as perceived by them, according to the army's media wing.

Following confusion over geography, both sides conducted a survey of the Killi Jahangir and Killi Luqman villages to dispel of discrepancies in maps.
Muhammad Iqbal Khan, father of Mashal Khan who was brutally killed on the premises of Mardans Abdul Wali Khan University (AWKU) last month, on Friday, asked the police to question the university management over their alleged negligence.

He was speaking outside the Supreme Court as a three-member bench of the court, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Saqib Nisar, resumed the hearing of Mashal Khans lynching case today.

The management of AWKU is actually responsible for Mashals murder, said Muhammad Iqbal Khan. He complained that the university management did not even register an FIR in the case.

I do not have any faith in Mardan police who are issuing NOCs for staging rallies against Mashal, said the grieved father.

Muhammad Iqbal Khan also demanded that along with the main culprits, the police also arrest facilitators who helped in Mashals killing.

Lauding the SC for taking suo moto notice of his sons case, Iqbal said, My son cannot be brought back. Now I want justice for every Mashal Khan who lives in every house of Pakistan. If justice is served in this case, it will be good for the country.

Mashals father also mentioned having met with Chairman Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan. During the meeting, he said, Imran told him that he would not allow the law of the jungle to prevail in the province. However, the government has not taken any action so far, he added.

Earlier, Mashals father wanted the killers of his son to be tried in a military court.

I respect the notice taken by the chief justice, premier and civil society for the justice for my son, but I believe it was an act of militancy and the killers should be tried in military court, Muhammad Iqbal Khan told media.

Mashal Khan, a student of Journalism and Mass Communication at AWKU, was shot dead on April 13 and then his body was desecrated by a mob of fellow students who accused him of committing blasphemy.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan has on Friday expressed that the inquiry report of Dawn Leaks should be presented to the Parliament. PTI Chairman was addressing a mammoth public gathering at Sargodha.

Imran Khan declared Dawn Leaks as the one of the most important issues in countrys history. He professed that the enemy of this country are trying to weaken Pak Army.

"It was revealed in Dawn Leaks that PM Nawaz wants friendly relations with India however the army does not agree to this," Imran Khan added. He commented that if such sort of situations arose within India, the action would have been taken within 48 hours.

Imran Khan declared that the prime ministers lies have been exposed after the Qatari letter was rejected by the Supreme Court.

PTI Chairman expressed that everybody knows that Qatari letter is a fraud. He paid homage to the people of Kashmir for their firm determination despite the Indian atrocities.

Imran Khan also lambasted the PML-N leaders for their false promises regarding power outages. He professed that the government has failed to fulfill the promises being made with the masses.

PTI Chairman expressed that Shahbaz Sharif name should be changed for failing to end outages.

Imran Khan also alleged that the government is busy in maligning Pak Army when there already is tension along the borders.
In what appears to be an admission of defeat, the head of US intelligence agencies on Thursday expressed that the security situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating. The pessimistic assessment came amid Trump administration plans of sending more troops to the war-torn region that has already seen a huge amount of deployment during the last 16 years.

The political and security situation in Afghanistan will also almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in the military assistance by the US and its partners, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

While presenting an annual assessment of threats to US national security, Coats told lawmakers that Afghanistan would struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban who claim controlling around 34 districts.

On the other hand, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Vincent Stewart, held almost the same opinion expressing his fear that if the situation was not addressed, the US-led alliance risked losing the fragile gains it had made during the protracted conflict.

Unless we change something the situation will continue to deteriorate and well lose all the gains that weve invested in over the last several years, he said.

Stewart maintained that the new beefing-up of efforts would include sending US and NATO advisers at brigade and battalion level to help Afghan commanders coordinate troop movements with artillery, intelligence or close air support.

The Taliban who first rose to power during the 1990s managed to conquer most of the country before its 2001 ouster, with the help of a range of foreign jihadists.

The US spy chief also detailed that the militant group was likely to continue to make gains, especially in rural areas.

Afghan security forces performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertions, poor logistics support, weak leadership, he said.

Army General John Nicholson, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan in February had said that he needed several thousand more international troops to break a stalemate with the Taliban.

Besides all the assessments, the head of the militarys Defense Intelligence Agency divulged how US could help Afghanistan weed out terrorism.

The situation would worsen unless U.S. trainers worked with Afghan soldiers closer to the front line, their numbers increased and there was greater intelligence and surveillance, he said.

A U.S official disclosed that deliberations include giving more authorities to forces on the ground and taking more aggressive action against Taliban fighters.

America has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Most belong to a 13,300-strong NATO mission to train and advise Afghan partner forces fighting the Taliban but with such heavy contingent, the efforts to smash out terrorism seem to shatter. To date, more than 2,300 Americans have been killed and over 17,000 wounded.

But despite the heavy death toll, the tycoon-turned-president Trump is carrying out a review of Afghanistan and conversations are revolving around sending between 3,000 and 5,000 U.S. and coalition troops to Afghanistan.

Although the latest report seems to convey a dark message to Pakistans neighbour but the spy chief has apparently expressed satisfaction regarding Pakistans national security.

Pakistan will probably be able to manage its internal security, says the report refers to the soft targets which can be damaged including the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The groups we judge will pose the greatest threat to Pakistans internal security include Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, Jamaat ui-Ahrar, ai-Qaida in the Indian Subcontinent, iSIS-K, Laskhare Jhangvi, and Lashkar-e Jhangvi ai-Aiami, it says.

The report also contains a paragraph regarding Pak-India relations and surmises that the bilateral ties could become fraught due to cross-border attacks and aggression on the Line of Control.

The Trumps America seems to opt a policy shift regarding Afghanistan. Last month, it dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat in Afghanistan, targeting an Islamic State group complex.

Meanwhile, the Afghan Taliban have also launched their spring offensive Mansouri to target foreign troops. The Afghan great game as detailed above is not over.

The warlord and Butcher of Kabul Gulbuddin Hekmatyar has also stepped into Kabul after two decades.
Brian Rogers

Rogers Rabbits

www.sunlive.co.nz

One of the joys of spending a weekend with the adult children is enjoying a taste of their music preferences.



However nothing could prepare me for Pirate Metal. It is quite disturbing for the delicate ears of us middle-aged, middle of the road toe-tappers.



Pirate Metal is a frenetic thrashing of shipwrecked heavy rock, a sort of 150 per cent proof version of Alice Cooper, with waterlogged wenches thrown in.



Alestorm are among the worlds leading proponents with catchy little ditties such as Keelhauled and Captain Morgans Revenge. And of course it wouldnt be complete without a number called Rum.



Theres even a tortured rendition of the Village Peoples iconic hit, In The Navy.

This is Riverdance gone feral. The Sailors Hornpipe loaded with crack. Far from your stereotype, jovial rum-infused, happy Pirates of the Caribbean attitude.



This is more like Johnny Depp with a hangover and PMS.*



If you think youre having a bad day, just take a swig of some of these leaden lunatics. Its enough to make a bloke walk the plank.



Who the hell is Harvey?



One of my old mates, Wally, was recently enquiring about one of our other old mates, Harvey.



No-one had heard from Harvey for decades, so it was quite a surprise when he turned up this week, in The Weekend Sun.





Who the hell is Harvey, I hear you all ask?



Your mission this week is to find Harveys photo. Theres a reward.



Once youve found Harvey, send me an email to brian@thesun.co.nz with his second name in the subject line.



The right answers will go in a draw for some Sun goodies.



Heres a couple of clues. His last name is not Furnishings. (Although Harvey Furnishings do have some great deals on readymade curtains on page 15.) Last time we saw Harvey, he was humming Take Me To The River.



It is so rare to get a glimpse of Harvey these days, we have to wonder if hes become an endangered species



Endangered species



The Department of Conservation this week launched a new strategy to assist 150 species on its list of threatened critters.



Harvey wasnt listed but it included kiwi, kakapo, Maui dolphin and the great white shark. The Threatened Species Strategy depends on the departments ambitious Predator Free NZ plan, to rid the country of pest predators by 2050.



That includes the eradication of rats, stoats and possums from a million hectares, while protecting 40 per cent more species, all within ten years.



Here at RR we know of a few other varmints that are thin on the ground and could need some special protection



Other Endangered Species:



1. The Tauranga Indicator. They used to operate left, and right, now theyre just left right out.



2. Talented celebrities. We have plenty of so-called celebrities, but seemingly fewer with any talent.



3. The Strand footpath. Slowly being strangled by encroaching furniture, concrete walls, triffod trees and rapidly reproducing sandwich boards.



4. Parking space at the Mount.



5. A dairy that isnt being robbed.



Crimes against fashion



Note to any aspiring robbers: Be selective about your choice of underwear. This free advice from Rogers Rabbits seems necessary, after police released CCTV footage of the hammer-wielding robbers who stormed a Tauranga dairy. One is believed to have been wearing purple underwear.



Not only do such conspicuous undergarments make you more easily identifiable, it also leaves you open to further potential charges, such as crimes against fashion. Purple underwear went out in the 90s and theres no good reason for any self-respecting robber to be seen in public in such a state.



Mr Big



Meanwhile, it seems criminals are getting fatter. Perhaps they should stop robbing dairies? Emergency services are battling increasing costs. Police have just spent $18, 000 on XOS size handcuffs, since some of their fatty detainees have larger wrists.



Blankets and tear-resistant gowns used in police cells are being considered for upsizing. Wrap around gowns are needed to accommodate plus size visitors to the cells.



Even the ambulance services are encountering more big patients, recently spending more than $8m on new vehicles with electric-powered stretchers.



Parting thought:



The word phonetically doesnt even start with an F. What a messed up world we live in. Between this and Pirate Metal, its no wonder the aliens fly straight past us.



*Pirate Madness Syndrome



brian@thesun.co.nz
Clayton Mitchell

New Zealand First MP

I have been speaking in the House about the Fire and Emergency New Zealand Bill  now passed, and coming into effect on July 1.

With calls for reform of our emergency services and their funding models for years, so they can get on with the great work they do, the question we, at New Zealand First are asking is, are all the other parties sleeping on the job?

We were the only party opposed to this clunky legislation, probably because we are the only party who understands the Bill and secondly because we are the only party who has investigated international examples that clearly show this model failing miserably. And finally, because we are the only ones who listened to 96 per cent of the submitters in Select Committee who opposed it.

A temporary levy from 1993 is still there 24 years and 17 reviews later, and now uncapped. We can do much better.

The Fire Service will also now be expected to collect its own money itself. This is completely ludicrous. All of the other parties seem to think it is good use of Fire Service personnels time and resources to be out there, cap in hand, chasing money from people. Shouldnt they be doing something else like, I dont know, tending emergencies? Are we really saying that an important function of the Fire Service now includes collecting money? I thought that was the IRDs job.

Is there anywhere this blue government doesnt want to shove a cash register and Eftpos terminal? The police have them, the hospitals have them, schools have them, and now the Fire Service needs them too?

And what happens if they pay late, or not at all?

New Zealand First believes New Zealands emergency services should be funded out of the general tax pool. A convoluted some-users-pay approach to something so vital makes absolutely no sense at all. And the 96 per cent of submissions strongly opposing this levy and its implementation is yet more evidence that there is only one party actively and consistently listening to New Zealanders.






Waimarino Groups unique glow worm kayaking tour is one of a number of Bay of Plenty tourism attractions at TRENZ 2017.

Running this week, TRENZ is the $35 billion New Zealand tourism industrys premier international trade show, with more than 370 trade and tourism buyers attending this years event in Auckland.

Among the hundreds of stallholders will be Bay of Plenty tourism operators Frontier Helicopters, Mataatua Te Manuka Tutahi, Trinity Wharf Hotel, White Island Tours and Waimarino Group.

Championing the Bay of Plenty during the three-day event will be Waimarino Group director Blair Anderson who has been invited to speak alongside many of New Zealands leading tourism professionals.

A TRENZ attendee for the past seven years, Blair will discuss the companys glow worm kayaking tours (Waimarino Kayak Tours) and the Bay of Plenty as part of a panel promoting New products off the beaten track  under the night sky.

And it is a proposition he is looking forward to - not only in illustrating the concepts sustainability, but helping highlight the huge opportunity for tourism operators in the natural space.

A totally unique attraction, the guided glow worm tour is the only place in New Zealand where glow worms can be found in a concentrated mass. On average 3000 people witness the natural phenomenon per year with people coming from Australia, North America, South America, India and Europe, including Liechtenstein  the sixth smallest country in the world.

Im very excited to speak not only about Waimarino Groups glow worm kayaking tours but help promote the Bay of Plenty to an audience of dedicated tourism buyers, says Blair.

The Bay of Plenty is considered off the beaten track on the international stage. But we are within an hours easy drive from popular attractions of the likes of Hobbiton and the Coromandel and trade show visitors will be made aware of this.

Tourism Bay of Plenty CEO Kristin Dunne says TRENZ is invaluable in boosting the Bay of Plentys tourism appeal and attracting more international visitors.

TRENZ is a showcase event on the tourism calendar and the optimal environment to provide the industry with more than just a snapshot of what the Bay of Plenty can offer," she says.

Leading in to TRENZ, Tourism Bay of Plenty has this week hosted travel agents from Korea and India, with feedback being the Bay of Plenty ticks all their tourism needs. Another group of international travel agents are expected to visit after TRENZ.

Kristin says over the next two days Tourism Bay of Plenty will engage with hundreds of influencers who determine the travel activity for thousands of travellers and it is exciting to be a part of this.

She adds that insights about international travellers and what they are looking for are "extremely valuable" in todays tourism sector.

Attracting people who have the ability to travel anywhere in the world is challenging as well as very competitive," she says.

"Which is why such international exposure is key to increasing the number of international visitors, their length of stay and their spend in our area.
He claims that his website contains 10,000 creations that are complete or still to come. Some of them already form part of the interior landscape of millions of homes and design manuals around the world. Philippe Starck (Paris, 1949) has put a juice extractor in the MoMA gallery in New York and his signature is on bikes, chairs, tables, restaurants and luxury yachts. The designer answered questions put to him by SUR, prior to his visit to Malaga this week.

What will visitors be able to see at the Centre Pompidou in Malaga?

Visitors, through this exhibition, can understand that everybody can be creative. Four thousand private sketches show ideas, but above all they show work, a lifetime of work, a life concentrated on creativity to help the community have a better life. These sketches are interesting because they show that any idea can be expressed in a few sketches on one page. That means creativity comes before anything else in your entire life, created by curiosity, generosity, vision and rigour. And after 30 years, 10 years, 5 years - never less - of cooking, the sketch is just the printing of the finalised concept. These sketches clearly show that there is no aesthetic or cultural process, only logic and functional structure, away from any trend, with only one goal which is to give the right service with the minimum of materiality. These sketches will also show that humour, one of the most beautiful symptoms of human intelligence, is always present, even in the relationship with your team, which, whats more, gives a permanent surrealistic position.

After a career of nearly four decades, how has your approach to designing an article changed?

Four decades of experience have changed strictly nothing: I use the same paper pad, the same pencil, never a computer. My obsessions are always the same: our evolution. Its just that you become more rigorous because you want to be more rigorous and also because you can be more rigorous. When you are young your duty is to work to exist, to survive; when you are less young, your duty is to forget yourself and to serve your community.

What role does the beauty of the object play in its creative process?

Beauty does not interest me because beauty does not exist. Beauty is just a personal opinion which can change with time, weather, mood. Beauty is not a strong enough parameter to build on. Beauty can be beautiful today and ugly tomorrow and beautiful again tomorrow. It is not serious. Only the search of harmony is useful and timeless. I hope we shall understand that in front of a painting we shall replace the Oh my God, it is so beautiful with What perfect harmony!

You have claimed that an object designed by you must provide a functional and emotional service. Is one more important than the other?

If you have the honour and the luck to be visited by something which can be a good idea, you have to follow a rigorous process. First you have to ask yourself if this project is needed and if it deserves to exist. You have to ask yourself if before the product there was a vision and a concept. If that is the case, you have to try to give this service without materiality. If you cannot, you have to do it with less materiality and the right materiality which involves some parameters like ecology, economy, politics and sexuality. If you succeed, you will have a creative and honest product which can be good to live with.

Your work has been exhibited in museums around the world and at the same time is part of millions of homes. Where do you prefer to see it?

Being in a museum is a great honour and it is a global thanks from a global community. It is abstract. Being in the bathroom of the community is the real goal, the real result of your work and it is a personal recognition. I never appreciate that people tell me how what I do is beautiful, it is useless. I am deeply touched when people I meet in the street just say thank you and sometimes thank you for what you do for us. I feel exceptionally proud.

What do you think when you find an imitation of your work?

I am sad for society and sometimes for civilisation. Copying or repeating is a waste of time, a waste of energy and proof of laziness and avidity. Everybody has a duty to work and participate in the beautiful story of our evolution. Someone who copies does not take part, and even causes a regression of creativity which is a shame and a negation of our DNA as creators.

You have a residence in Spain. What does Formentera (Balearics) give you?

The definitive taste, even vocation, for the minimum. I arrived in Formentera when I was 16. There were no cars, no motorcycles, ten bicycles, no electricity, no running water, no fishing boats and nothing to eat. I was living on the beach with half a euro a day and I remember one day for a birthday I wanted to buy five very small cakes at the bakery; the man told me buying five was too much as I had to leave some cakes for other people. Formentera was a permanent lesson of the elegance of minimum.
Three of Britains most talented stand-up comedians are to take part in a one-off show tomorrow night at the Salon Varietes Theatre in Fuengirola.

INFORMATION Where. Salon Varietes Theatre, Fuengirola When. Saturday 13 May, 8pm Tickets. Tickets, 15 euros, available from the booking office or oline. www.salonvarietes.com

The show will be hosted by zany British comedian Dave Thompson and will also feature popular comics Geoff Boyz and Dickie Richards.

The three comedians will perform separately, before coming together for a grand finale of The Oddbods, a hilarious act they recently performed at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal.

I was told there is not much stand-up comedy happening here and I felt someone should plug the hole 

Six hundred people auditioned to be Tinky Winky and they gave the part to me

I believe in freedom of speech, free trade, and equality. I dont know of a political party that represents these views

Geoff Boyz is a natural comic and an excellent impressionist. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are brilliantly portrayed by this popular Scottish humorist.

Dickie Richards is a cockney comedian of Polish descent. As well as having a solo career, Dickie is part of The Two Yuris, an act he describes as Russias answer to The Two Ronnies.

Dave Thompson, a cult hero on the university circuit in Britain, has performed his absurd style of stand-up comedy in over thirty countries.

Known for his bizarre behaviour and quick-fire sense of humour, Dave has also written material for many famous names, including Ronnie Corbett, Bruce Forsyth and Harry Hill.

However, Dave Thompson is perhaps best-known as the actor inside the Tinky Winky costume in the world-famous Teletubbies.

Dave trained as an actor and he is immensely proud to have been in this childrens - and later cult - show.

The audition was on a Friday morning in London, and I had a stand-up gig in Bristol that evening, so I nearly didnt bother to go. Six hundred people auditioned to be Tinky Winky, and they gave the part to me as they wanted quirky individuals who would create unique characters, Dave told SUR in English.

However, several years ago, Tinky Winky found himself at the centre of a controversy because he carried a ladys handbag. The fact that he was also purple and had a triangular antenna protruding from his head led some people to associate the character with the insignia of gay pride.

This aroused the interest of the American born-again preacher, Jerry Fulwell, who warned parents that Tinky Winky was a covert homosexual.

The 57-year-old comedian, described by TimeOut Magazine as the the weirdest dude on the face of the earth, said that the claim that Tinky Winky was gay was totally ridiculous.

Jerry Fulwell missed the point when he projected adult sexuality into Tinky Winky and accused him of being gay. Teletubbies were created for children from the age of zero to five. They have gender, but no genitals, Dave said.

He left the show after the first series and he went on to work with some of Britains top household names including comedian and writer Ben Elton, who described Dave as mad, comic genius.

Daves insane style of stand-up comedy inspired Ben Elton to write a part especially for him in the feature film, Maybe Baby.

He has had several credits as a serious actor, but this quirky comedian is probably at his best when performing stand-up comedy on stage.

Even though he shows little respect for left-wing liberals - tyrants who do not believe in freedom of speech - his show avoids politics because his aim is to unite a room in laughter, not to divide it.

I believe in freedom of speech, free trade, and equality. I dont know of a political party that represents these views, he said with a hint of sarcasm.

The former Teletubbie has affection for the Costa del Sol and visits whenever possible, so Saturdays show in Fuengirola will be like a busmans holiday.

I have orgnaised the show because I love the Costa del Sol and performing here gives me a good excuse to spend time in the area. I was told there is not much stand-up comedy happening here and I felt someone should plug the hole. I am hoping the show will be enough of a success for me to bring more comedy shows to the region, he said enthusiastically.

If one thinks the Teletubbies was wacky, wait until Dave Thompson unleashes what have been described as his lanky eccentricities on the audience of the Salon Varietes theatre on Saturday night.
She was on her way home from a party when her car hit a group of six cyclists. Two of them were killed, and three others seriously injured. The driver tested positive for alcohol and drug consumption.

A STATISTIC 142 per cent is the amount by which the number of people needing help for cannabis addiction has risen in ten years.

That accident occurred last weekend in Valencia and is another example of how the consumption of drugs, especially cocaine and cannabis, has extended in recent years. These substances are no longer only associated with recreation: they have become part of everyday life for more and more people. In fact, the number of people who receive treatment after taking these drugs has greatly increased in Malaga province in recent years. Why is that? Because there has been a reduction in the perception of the risk associated with them.

Figures from the Provincial Drug Dependency Centre (CPD) support this claim. Most patients who need attention of this type have become dependent on alcohol, but in other cases the problem is with illegal substances such as cocaine and cannabis. In 2016 alone, the CPD assisted 1,135 people in the province who had problems because of these two drugs, and that is an increase of 54.6 per cent compared with ten years ago.

One of the worst problems is with cocaine; 675 people were assisted by the CPD last year, and the Proyecto Hombre association reports that 70 per cent of its work last year involved helping people with cocaine dependency. Its director in Malaga, Belen Pardo, says many people do not realise that cocaine cannot be consumed every day.

For example, heroin is highly addictive and within a very short time you feel the need to consume it every day. Cocaine creates a false sense of control, she explains.

Juan Jesus Ruiz, who runs the CPD, agrees and says that cocaine dependency begins little by little. Somebody who starts by taking it at weekends gradually ends up with a serious addiction, because their tolerance increases and they have to keep consuming more and more.

Cocaine is no longer considered an elite drug, and its consumption has increased. Although it costs money to acquire it, these experts warn that they are treating all types of people who have problems because of cocaine.

Some of their patients are professionals who work long hours. When they take cocaine they feel more in control, more able to concentrate, so they often consume it even while they are working, says Belen.

She also says that most of the people who come to the associations for help are men with a solid family and work structure, but they are still leading a double life. They often dont ask for help until something serious happens in their personal or working life, she says.

With regard to cannabis consumption, the figures are alarming. Last year the CPD attended to 460 people, 142 per cent more than ten years ago.

Juan Jesus Ruiz says that in this case the profile of the people is different although, like cocaine, they come from all sectors of society. This drug is becoming more popular and many youngsters are using it. On average, they start taking it when they are about 15 years old. However, many other people smoke cannabis, often at home after work, he says.

In fact, although people may be somewhat wary of consuming cocaine, they think there is hardly any risk at all with cannabis. Experts refute this, and point out that it can have a serious effect on health.

Jose Manuel Burgos, a forensic doctor at the Institute of Legal Medicine in Malaga, explains that there has been an increase in psychotic incidents caused by cannabis.

Knowing that I work on subjects like this, a friend of mine recently asked me to help his 22-year-old son, who is a student in Granada, because he had problems with this substance. He was admitted to an addiction centre just over two months ago, and has been receiving treatment ever since, he says.

Juan Jesus Ruiz confirms that cannabis is an enabling substance in psychotic disorders. If someone has an underlying problem, the drug will affect them more. Most of the time these problems can be overcome, but sometimes the damage remains, he says.

With cocaine, the damage is physical rather than mental and it can be considerable. Forensic scientist Eduardo Ramos says cocaine consumption is linked with cardiovascular problems: when someone takes this drug it produces changes in the cardiovascular system which can lead to irregular heart beat and even sudden death.

It doesnt only affect somebody who has been taking it for years. It can happen at any time, even to people who have only been using it at weekends for a few months. The quantity which has been taken overall has nothing to do with it, he says.
In order to understand the rules that dominate the gastronomic calendar, we need to understand the breeding cycles of the animals and birds destined for the table. The Glorious Twelfth (of August) may be the best known as the opening of the grouse season, and down here we all know that sardines are best when there is no letter r in the month. But why is this the time of year when chivito (baby goat) is at its best? Cochinillo (suckling pig) is eaten year-round, and there is a restaurant in Benahavis that sells industrial quantities, but those who appreciate chivito have to be more patient.

Although goat is apparently a great favourite of the West Indian community, normally stewed and of any age, cabrito is a favourite in Portugal, Italy and Greece, as well as Spain.

Understandably there are people who shy away from eating any animal that has been killed a few weeks after birth, but the reality is that male goats do not give milk so are killed anyway, usually as soon as they are born, so what is the difference? The business of goat milk, yoghurt, et al, has moved into the big time, so a male animals value is only as meat.

Baby goat is not eaten year-round; those who appreciate chivito have to be patient

If queasiness is not a factor (you dont of course eat any meat, do you?) then sit back and enjoy it. The strangely-named La Sociedad restaurant in Canillas de Aceituno, north of Malaga, is the place to which pilgrimages are made, and allegedly hundreds of dishes are served every weekend.

Nearer home Marbellas Alameda Restaurant in the San Cristobal Hotel has a Chivito Week every May, and although shockingly under-promoted, is a sell-out for the five days it runs from 16th to 20th.

The special menu features every sort of goat-sourced dish. Kidneys, cheese, pate, roast leg, stewed shoulder, chops, indeed most parts of the animal are utilised, and all at a price anyone can afford. Be careful though, as from memory the servings are not small, and the house red wine is excellent value.
A home video of a grandmother from Fuengirola opening her Christmas present has unexpectedly gone viral. The footage of Pepa, 82, crying with happiness after receiving a doll from her family, something her parents had been too poor to buy her as a child, has moved people around the world.

My grandmother came from a poor family that had to survive on very little resources during the Civil War, and the priority for them was to eat, explained Pepas 20-year- old granddaughter, Miriam, who uploaded the video to Twitter on 30 April after rediscovering the footage on her mobile. Since then, Pepas reaction to her gift has been retweeted over 12,460 times and received over 25,000 likes.

Miriam never anticipated that the video would receive so much attention. Even people in the US have written to me to say thank you for the video. They dont even speak Spanish but it doesnt matter because my grandmothers reaction transcends language barriers,she said.
Weve found a really thick wall. Ana Arancibia will never forget that statement, made by her colleague Maria del Mar Escalante when she hurtled up from the catacombs of the Buenavista Palace, like somebody possessed, to give her the news. Thick? she asked, hardly daring to mention the word which immediately sprang to mind. Yes... thick! answered her fellow archaeologist, also reluctant to say what they were both thinking.

The word was Phoenician, and they hardly dared to say it because it would mean that they had made one of the most important findings in Malaga in the past two decades: the origins of Malaka in the 7th and 6th centuries B.C. - what Ana refers to as the founding fathers of this city.

This subterranean Malaga can be seen close to the entrance inside the Picasso Museum, and anyone interested in following a route through more than two thousand years of archaeology can continue on to the Roman port of Malaca and the maritime wall of the Nasrid Malaqa which was found at the Aduana, the Customs building, and can be seen below the glass floor of what is now the new Museum of Malaga.

This wall shows precisely the elbow of the third line of defence of the Alcazaba fortress, which changes direction and heads towards the area where the Rectorado building now stands, and where years ago another stretch of the same construction was found.

It is a point at which the wall joined the medina and, although we havent found it, there was also a gateway between the city and the Alcazaba, explains archaeologist Jose Suarez, who has led the excavations and soundings at the Museum of Malaga. He explains that the remains we will be able to contemplate over a cup of coffee or drink - the cafe at the Museum is not open yet - is just the tip of the iceberg of this site, where the first necropolis from the high mediaeval period (9th century) was discovered in the sand in front of the wall, together with some Roman salting troughs which match others found in the area and some valuable imperial thermae.

The glass floors with views of the foundations of our past have multiplied in the historic centre of Malaga in recent years, and they show a change of mentality towards archaeology.

We had our backs turned to this heritage for a long time, but luckily it is now possible to reconcile the city of today with the one of 2,000 years ago, explain Pedro Sanchez Banderas and Alberto Cumpian, of Arqueosur, who are used to fighting with developers and construction companies because the discovery of ancient remains delays their works.

One project which was affected was when the Roman port of Malaga was discovered below the Vincci hotel groups new establishment in the old Posada del Patio. We pass through the door of this new hotel with the archaeologists to visit the remains, which can be seen through the glass floor.

What we have here is unique in Spain because it is not just a jetty; it is a port, designed by the important Roman architect and engineer Vitruvio, explains Alberto Cumpian, pointing out that the breakwater and the wall of the port were remarkably well preserved. It is not difficult to imagine how the ships at this wharf would have been loaded with the garum that was produced in the troughs which have been found in Calle Alcazabilla and at the Rectorado.

Pieces of the same puzzle

Archaeology is like a large jigsaw puzzle in which most of the outside pieces are usually missing. That is why, when one is found, it not only provides information on its own, but also helps the archaeologists to understand the history of a city or an era.

This port shows how commercially important Malaga was in the 4th century, after having declined somewhat during the century before, says Alberto, who also explains that the resurgence was not only in the citys industrial power but also in its strategic location as a safe and alternative route to the piracy in the Straits.

This archaeological site doesnt just make this an unusual hotel. I am convinced that its fifth star is partly due to what lies underneath it, says Pedro Sanchez Bandera, nodding towards the other remains which have been found in the same place - the Moorish wall which can now be seen below the transparent floor of the Vinccis charming bar.

The remains of a skin treating industry were also discovered, although to see some Moorish tanneries it is best to visit the Andres Olivares shop in the Plaza de las Flores.

They are from the caliphal era and show that this was the tanners district of Malaga of that time, says the owner of the shop where, below the clothes hangers and accessory displays, remains can be seen which date back several centuries.

Other private establishments, such as the Tribuna hotel in Calle Carreteria and La Cueva de 1900 restaurant in Alcazabilla, have also incorporated pieces of Moorish wall into their premises, making them an inviting place to rest for those who follow this route through the subterranean Malaga.

It is a trip which shows us how each civilisation which arrived in the city after the Phoenicians superimposed itself upon the foundations of the other. Every time there is a new discovery, it is like looking through the keyhole at our past, as Sanchez Bandera puts it. He says he hopes that a solution will soon be found to the water leaks in the basement of the Carmen Thyssen museum so that other major archaeological evidence which has been discovered in recent years can also be put on view again.

He is referring to the discovery of a Roman villa, whose owner worked in the fish industry and turned his house into a propoganda machine to show off his economic power. With large ashlars, luxury details on the facade and lower-quality materials at the rear part of the property, this was a type of posturing which may have impressed his neighbours but not the archaeologists who are continually finding new profiles of the city.

About 20 years ago, Malaga had a general history of the peoples who have passed through here, but as we make more progress in studying the sites, new signs of the citys identity are being revealed to us, explains Ana Arancibia. Nobody believed us 17 years ago, when we said we had found the Phoenician Malaga, she says.

Once thing is certain: there are plenty more treasures to come. At present we only know about four per cent of what lies below, explains Ana, who is especially keen to find the Roman forum which lies somewhere beneath the city.
Theres quite a dangerous problem here for the boats entering and leaving the port with the silty sand accumulating at the entrance. In some places, like here near the filling station - the captain points to the Puerto Deportivo marina in Marbella- theres only 60 centimetres of water, or in other words, the sand is almost as high as the sea.

Pedro Rodriguez is in charge of the operation to dredge the mouth of the port, near the centre of the old town, that has been going on for over a week under town hall supervision and at a cost of 60,000 euros. Under his control, a dredger named Josefa Perez, 60 metres long and ten metres wide, has been working non stop from seven in the morning until nightfall. This port is small and its difficult to work at night, he explains from the bridge, while moving around the pipe that sucks up the sand and silt like a vacuum cleaner, discharging it into the hold of the vessel through up to six separate outlets.

Pedro controls the buttons calmly. It shows that he was brought up in the world of dredging. His parents also did the same job in Chiclana, Cadiz. He bought the boat in 1993 and travels all over Spain with it.

In some parts of the port, the water is only 60 centimetres deep

Its years since this area of Marbella was dredged and this time there are two distinct goals. On one hand, they aim to put a stop to the problems boats have navigating into the port with the build up of sand and silt. On the other hand, they are setting out to repair the damage caused by this winters storms on the nearby La Fontanilla beach by strategically dumping the dredged sand.

The way of working is quite different to other dredging that normally takes place in Marbella. This time the material dredged up doesnt go straight onto the beaches via the tubes. The sand is deposited out to sea up to 100 metres from the shore so that the movement of the water does the rest. The aim is for the new sand dumped at sea to form a natural bank and protect the sand already on the beach from aggressive tides. Pedro Rodriguez explains that this barrier is important so that the sea doesnt wash away so easily the other sand that is being added directly back onto the beach by coastal authorities. With several trips a day, the job can be repetitive: collect the sand at the mouth of the marina, move to nearby La Fontanilla beach, stop the vessel some 80 metres from the shore and open the hold doors to dump the sand. And back again.

Risk of running aground

The hold can store up to 689 cubic metres and takes up most of the space on the dredger.

Does he fill the hold every time? No, we can only fill it with about 500 cubic metres as the port mouth is so shallow. We could run aground if we take on too much weight, the captain warns. The hull is designed so that the water that is dredged up with the sand can run away, reducing any environmental impact.

Only time will tell if this new way of adding sand to Marbellas beaches can stop the frequent erosion, even by a little bit.
Five years after reforming the electricity sector in Spain, the government is now facing the consequences of new regulations which drastically reduced the benefits obtained by those who invested in renewable energies.

The first bill it will have to face as a result of those changes is 128 million euros, which it has been ordered to pay in damages to the British Eiser investment fund by the International Centre for Resolving Differences regarding Investments (Ciadi).

This arbitration court considers that this is the amount the government should pay the company, which invested nearly one billion euros in three thermosolar plants in Castilla La Mancha and Extremadura in 2007. That was the year when legislation was approved by the then prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, to encourage the use of renewable energies, and as a result this type of energy technology quickly sprang up all over the country.

Eiser had demanded 300 million euros to compensate for what it considers to be a state of legal insecurity, because the change in legislation meant that the conditions from which its investment plans benefited were suddenly modified for others which were much more restrictive.

The decision has been an initial blow for the Energy Ministry, but sources there say they do not expect many more to follow. Two previous cases have been resolved in Spains favour, and a third was closed with the agreement of both parties.

Government plans to appeal

The Energy Ministry plans to appeal against the decision, because it considers that the new regulations only and exclusively affect three plants and under particular circumstances. In other words, it does not believe this type of decision would generally be made in other cases, among other reasons because the reform of the electricity sector in 2011 reduced the immense costs of the electricity system, which faced debts of 26 billion euros which were growing at the rate of 10.5 billion a year.

The government insists that if it had not carried out these reforms, electricity bills would have gone up by more than 42 per cent.
The Vocento media group, of which SUR in English is a part, was given a prestigious award this week in New York.

The 2017 First Amendment prize, awarded by Eisenhower Fellowships Spain, is in recognition of the groups and its journalists work in the defence of a free press. It is the first time that an entire company has won the award.

Speaking at the ceremony, held at the Instituto Cervantes Spanish cultural centre in Manhattan, the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Pedro Morenes, said that Vocento is the sum of many success stories and he highlighted the companys commitment to Spain, and its regions as well as democracy, done with rigour, independence and honesty.

Apart from the SUR titles in Malaga, the Vocento group also includes the national ABC newspaper, ten other Spanish regional newspapers, a news agency and interests in television and radio stations.

Receiving the award, Vocentos regional editorial director, Benjamin Lana, said: The future of journalism depends on excellent morals and not technology. In particular he drew attention to the groups titles in the Basque Country, El Correo and El Diario Vasco, and the high-risk work they did during years of ETAs terrorist activity.

He also added that the papers title in the Castilla y Leon region, El Norte de Castilla, is the oldest newspaper in existence in Spain, first published in 1854.

Representing SUR at the ceremony was Malaga-based editor-in-chief Manuel Castillo.

Two other well-known journalists from Spain, Carlos Herrera and Susanna Griso, also received awards, as well as Mexican-born broadcaster on Americas Spanish-speaking Univision television channel, Jorge Ramos.

Eisenhower Fellowships is a nonprofit organisation formed in 1953 to honour former US president, Dwight Eisenhower, and his contribution to humanity as a soldier and leader.
The Eisenhower Fellows also chose to honour a well-known Malaga writer at this years ceremony. Manuel Alcantara was given the lifetime achievement prize at the First Amendment awards, although, at his 89 years of age, he was too frail to travel to New York. Alcantara has written more than 20,000 articles and hundreds of poems. For many years he has been a columnist in Vocentos Spanish regional newspapers. Receiving the prize on his behalf, Manuel Castillo of SUR said that Alcantara had an intense way of looking at the world, like Cervantes, with drops of scepticism.
New Delhi, May 12(IBNS): Larsen & Toubro, Indiaas multinational engineering conglomerate, has entered into a contract with the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for supply of 100 units of 155mm/ 52 calibre Tracked Self-Propelled Gun systems to the Indian Army.

The contract valued at about a 4500 crore, is the largest order placed by MoD on an Indian private company.

This win affirms L&Ts position as Indias leading private sector defence company with capabilities to design, develop and manufacture state-of-the-art platforms and systems for the Indian armed forces. L&T, supported by its South Korean technology partner Hanwha Tech Win (HTW), had bid for this Buy Global acquisition program of MoD in 2011.

Among 4 bidders to the program RFP, L&T emerged as the sole qualified bidder, after a series of User Trials and Evaluations, based on the performance of the K9 VAJRA-T self-propelled Howitzer.

The K9 VAJRA-T gun is an enhanced version of HTWs K9 Thunder  a world class selfpropelled Howitzer, customised and co-developed by L&T & HTW to suit the specific requirements of the Indian Army including desert operations. HTWs K9 Thunder selfpropelled Howitzer is among the best in the world with over 1,000 units already in service in Korea and few other countries.

"This contract embodies the Governments Make in India initiative. It envisages delivery of the 100 guns in 42 months with associated engineering support package and maintenance transfer of technology to support these Howitzer regiments throughout their life cycle. These guns will have over 50% indigenous content and will be delivered from L&Ts manufacturing facilities, including a new Armoured Systems Complex at Hazira. This program sets new benchmarks in co-development and co-production of defence systems by any Indian defence company in collaboration with an international technology partner," read a statement issued by the company.
The employees of Utility Trailer in Atkins care about the communities they call home. They recognize the contributions senior citizens have made and the promise that children hold for the future, and they want to help these two groups through a new program called Utility Employees Changing Communities (UECC).

In late March, the employees decided to take a company incentive that they earn and give a portion of it away to make a meaningful impact on the communities they live in. Employees working all three shifts had an opportunity to vote and the majority of those employees voted in favor of the plan. The first checks were delivered to three Smyth County schools and District Three Governmental Cooperative on April 26.

Jerry Sheets, plant manager at the Atkins facility, explained that employees are rewarded for their efficiency and productivity with weekly incentives. Rewards can range in value from a snack cake to a catered meal.

The meals go up in substance and quality as performance goes up. This is a genuine thank you to acknowledge the hard work of our employees, Sheets said.

Sheets explained that several years ago Utility Trailer decided it wanted to do something to recognize what our employees do every week. The program was started as a thank you for the productivity and efficiency results for a week, our weeks performance. If they reach a certain level, Utility Trailer will buy all the employees a meal. We will usually have that meal the following Thursday. If performance does not reach a certain level, they may not qualify for any meal, but, if it reaches a minimum level, they get anything from a snack all the way up through what we call a catered meal for higher levels of performance achieved.

Weve been doing this for over 10 years and typically, with our employees performance, we eat a lot around here. Its a genuine thank you, but people dont work hard because they might get a plate of spaghetti next Thursday. They work hard because thats who they are. Thats how theyre made. We just wanted to do something to acknowledge that hard work, Sheets said.

A few weeks ago, the idea to take every fourth week and, instead of providing a meal for that weeks performance results donate the value of that meal to causes the employees believe are important was discussed and overwhelmingly gained the employees support. The money the company would have spent on the meal is given to community organizations to help two groups the employees have identified as causes they wish to assist: children and senior citizens.

Employees will still receive meals their work has earned every three weeks out of four, Sheets added.

The first week of the UECC program, performance in the plant qualified employees for a meal valued at $14,235. That money was distributed to three Smyth County schools with each of those schools receiving $4,000. The Summer Enrichment Program for special needs children received $1,000, and District Three Governmental Cooperative received $1,235 for use in meeting the needs of senior citizens in Smyth County.

Sheets pointed out that while one employee giving up one meal might not result in a noticeable impact, 1,300 employees, the current number of workers at the Utility Trailer Atkins plant, giving up a meal can have a significant impact.

And not just Smyth County will benefit. Employees first decided on the two causes they would like to support and then voted to make contributions based on percentages to each of the counties that Utility Trailer employees live in.

Representative employees from our most senior employees from day and night shifts met four times over two weeks with people from the community who educated us on what the needs were so that we could make decisions about where our employees donations could best be used. Our employees want desperately to be able to help the public schools in our communities and with the needs of senior citizens. At first we probably tossed around eight to 10 different causes before deciding that if we confine our efforts to a couple of causes, we can have a meaningful impact, Sheets said.

Donated money will be left to the discretion of the schools or District Three as to how it can best be put to use, but Sheets said the school principals and teachers promised full transparency with employees knowing what their donations are being used for.

Public schools resonated with all our employees. Their hard work turned into something that could positively impact our children. We couldnt think of a better cause to help than public schools, so the majority of our funds are going to public schools, Sheets said, adding that funds could be used for things like reading materials, food, supplies teachers often purchase themselves and field trips.

The employees care and want to know what the funds are being used for, so they appreciate Dr. Dennis Carter, superintendant of schools, and the principals for offering to be transparent about what the funds are going to be used for. They know their schools best and know what the money could best be used for. We want them to have the ability, working with their teachers, to determine where this money could do the most good, Sheets said.

Since all counties in which employees live will receive funds, the number of employees living in each county will determine the amount of money that community receives. For example, 50 percent of the employees live in Smyth County, so five of every 10 UECC weeks will go to Smyth County causes. Twenty percent live in Wythe County, so two of every 10 UECC weeks will go to Wythe County causes. Communities like Ashe County, North Carolina; Grayson County; Mercer County, West Virginia; Sullivan County, Tennessee; and Washington County, as well as others, will receive smaller percentages.

Its a very neat concept in that all of our employees hard work is translating into funds for every county our employees come from, Sheets said.

Employees decided to distribute funds to benefit senior citizens through District Three Governmental Cooperative because this agency serves many of the counties employees live in.

In coming up with the $4,000 per school amount in Smyth County, Sheets said the employee representatives talked to principals to determine the amount of money that would make a difference.

We want to give enough money each time to have an impact, but we needed to keep the figure low enough to provide a good chance of getting a check in each principals hand in a calendar year. The figure $4,000 serves both of those goals best, Sheets said, adding that each school in Smyth County has been placed on a list. Once each school has received a $4,000 donation, the list starts over. The same procedure will be followed in other counties.

Even though this program is just getting under way, Sheets illustrated the amount of money that could be donated over the course of a year.

While we cant guarantee future performance, had we been doing this program since May 1, 2016, with actual efficiency numbers, doing the UECC program every fourth week would have seen our employees donating $160,000. Thats the combined value of meals the employees ate every fourth week since May 1 of last year. Now thats something that gets your attention. Our employees are very good at what they do, he said.

More and more employees will have an opportunity to be chosen to deliver checks. Employees who have an interest in going to a particular school or to District Three can submit their names to human resources. A random drawing will then determine who will deliver the money.

The four employees who delivered the checks on April 26 were excited to be a part of the initiative.

It was a great feeling just to know that were doing something to put back in our community and to give to our schools and the teachers in our schools, especially since they do so much for our kids, said Jason Warren, who has a 14-year-old son at Northwood Middle School.

Dennis Kell, who has children at Oak Point Elementary School, agreed.

There is just no wrong way that you can go about helping children. You start at the youngest age, and theres just so much that they can use it for -- the teachers, if it helps them not have to buy so many school supplies out of their pockets, for school trips, school equipment for PE. There are numerous things that they can use it for. We gave some money to the special needs teacher, and Ive got two nephews who are autistic. She helps them. My granny works at District Three, and we took a check to where she works. Just all around this has benefited me personally, Kell said.

Eating a meal, you dont really think about how much it costs. A burger meal doesnt really seem like a lot, but when you figure a burger meal for 1,300 people, it makes a big difference, Kell said.

Stuart Kimberlin has a child at Northwood Middle School.

One of the things that went through my mind as we took the money to the schools  there are families in the area that dont have a whole lot. If they can work it around to give some of the money to the students that arent as fortunate to have things, to go on trips and keep them up with the rest of the students, thats a good thing, Kimberlin said, pointing out that while $10 to $15 might not seem like much to some families, to those living with less, it can make a difference to them on something else during the week.

Jenni Jones, human resources administrator, praised the employees and their willingness to give.

This is the employees that work in the plant. Their hard work is what brings this program about. They determined that they would give and their production determines how much we can give, so it really speaks to the character of our employees.Those employees want to give and theyre working hard so that we can, Jones said.

Utility Trailer started production at the Atkins plant in 1989 and is currently the largest employer in Smyth County. Sheets said for the most part employment has increased since the facility opened, with hiring taking place on a continuous basis for the last four-and-a-half to five years.

Sheets had nothing but praise for the hard work and generosity of the employees.

This is a program not of Utility Trailer Company. Its not Jerry Sheets. This is a program owned by the employees of Utility Trailer in Atkins. Only through their good work will monies be available to go out in the community and only through their sacrifice of saying, Dont buy us a meal, give the money to the community, is this program possible, Sheets said.
Geddes, N.Y. -- Corso's Cookies, which makes decorated cookies for some of the nation's biggest retailers, is looking to move to a larger production facility as part of the state's START-UP NY program.

CEO Peter Hess said the company is teaming up with Onondaga Community College but will not be building a new plant on the college's campus.

He said the company is seeking an existing, vacant or underutilized building in the Syracuse area that it could lease and turn into a bakery.

Under the START-UP NY program, companies new to New York or expanding within the state and which affiliate with a SUNY college can operate free of state taxes and property taxes for 10 years.

Corso's Cookies would not be eligible for the property tax credits because it would be leasing, not owning, the plant. But it would be eligible for income tax credits and its new employees, though not its existing ones, would not have to pay state taxes for 10 years under the program.

As part of its affiliation with OCC, the company would operate an internship program that would create jobs for the college's students in graphic design, packaging design, marketing, applied engineering and culinary arts, Hess said.

"We have a unique opportunity to provide students at OCC a real-world experience," he said.

In addition to providing valuable practical experience, the internship program also could lead to full-time jobs for students after graduation, OCC Vice President Anastasia Urtz said.

"We're expecting a steady stream of opportunities each year," she said.

He said the company also would like to sponsor cookie decoration classes, birthday parties and school tours at the facility.

Hess said the company is considering three buildings - one self-standing structure and two that are being divided up to accommodate multiple tenants. But he said he is open to considering other sites that may become available.

Hess said the company needs a minimum of 20,000 square feet of room for the new plant. However, the new location would ideally give the company room to grow to up to 50,000 square feet as sales expand.

In 2014, Corso's considered building an $8 million, 40,000-square-foot bakery on the college's campus. The state offered the company a $1.6 million grant for the project, but Hess said he turned down the grant and decided not to build new because the cost, even with the grant, was too high.

He said the company decided to take a new look at the START-UP NY program this year because it has outgrown its 13,000-square-foot bakery at 314 Lakeside Road in Geddes. Corso's could apply to the state for a grant for up to 20 percent of the $1 million to $1.5 million in new equipment for the larger facility, he said.

The company employees 48 people and could add 20 to 25 more employees within two years with the move to larger quarters, he said. Entry level pay at the company ranges from $10 to $15 an hour.

Hess founded Corso's in 2002 with his wife, Tina Corso-Hess, selling decorated cookies direct to consumers. In 2011, the Hesses formed a wholesale affiliate, The Decorated Cookie Company, to sell to retailers.

The company makes 25,000 to 35,000 cookies a day. Its customers include Target, Walmart, Barnes & Noble, Pro Flowers, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Harry & David, and numerous grocery store chains.

In addition to 71.5 acres of vacant land on its campus in Onondaga, OCC has designated 94,718 square feet of space at the former Cosmopolitan building on West Fayette Street and the former Gear Factory building on South Geddes Street in Syracuse where companies participating in START-UP NY can locate.

Hess said the buildings on West Fayette Street and South Geddes Street would not work for his company because it would need to occupy multiple floors to get the space it needs. OCC has agreed to let him choose a different site as long as it is on a bus line so students without cars can get to it.

With the state's permission, the college can designate up to 200,000 square feet of off-campus space for companies participating in the program. Urtz said the state encourages the re-use of former manufacturing facilities for that off-campus space.

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Contact Rick Moriarty anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
ONEIDA INDIAN NATION -- An Onondaga County man was charged with drunken driving after crashing his car at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino, the New York State Police said.

Around 4 a.m. Thursday Troopers Andrew Maurer and Steven Fountain were dispatched by Oneida County 911 to a car crash in the parking area of the Turning Stone Resort & Casino.

State police said Noble B. Smith Jr. was driving a 2006 Cadillac CTS northwest along a road on the Turning Stone property when he hit a curb, drove across the lawn and hit a tree.

Troopers interviewed Smith and noticed a strong smell of alcohol on his breath, state police said.

Smith told the troopers he had been distracted on his cell phone before losing control of his vehicle, state police said. He was given field sobriety tests and then arrested by troopers.

Troopers were assisted at the scene by Oneida Indian Nation Police.

State police said a breath test at their barracks in the city of Oneida showed Smith had a blood alcohol content of 0.15 percent. His license was also found to have previously been suspended.

Smith, 32, of Syracuse, wad charged with driving while intoxicated, driving with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 percent or greater, third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation, using a cell phone while driving and other traffic charges.

He was issued tickets and is scheduled to appear in Verona Town Court Tuesday.
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McCoy Ricks, left, and Jebron Thomas, right.

(Syracuse Police Department)

SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The tinted windows of a white Mercury Mountaineer caught the attention of two Syracuse officers.

Then, according to the Syracuse Police Department, they smelled marijuana.

A traffic stop Wednesday evening on Syracuse's South Side ended with the discovery of drugs and a stolen, loaded gun, said Sgt. Julie Shulsky, a Syracuse Police Department spokeswoman. Two men were arrested, while a third man was ticketed.

The incident started at 6:42 p.m. Wednesday in the 700 block of South Townsend Street.

Officers Patrick Moore and Jacob Breen saw a Mercury SUV with illegally tinted windows driving south on South Townsend Street, Shulsky said. The officers pulled over the vehicle in the 300 block of East Colvin Street, she said.

Moore approached the SUV. As he got closer, he smelled the scent of marijuana wafting from the vehicle, Shulsky said.

The officer spoke to McCoy Ricks, the driver of the SUV. While he was talking with the driver, Moore spotted knotted and torn plastic baggies -- one of which held marijuana -- in the center console, Shulsky said.

Ricks, 24, of 161 Parkway Drive, Syracuse, admitted the marijuana was his, Shulsky said.

The man riding in the front seat of the SUV identified himself as Ricky Pritchett, 20, of 602 Atlantic Ave., Syracuse. Although he initially gave a fake name, Shulsky said officers identified the backseat passenger as Jebron Thomas, 24, of 151 W. Calthrop Ave., Syracuse.

When officers asked Ricks and Pritchett to get out of the vehicle, both men complied, Shulsky said. But Thomas stepped out of the vehicle and ran away, she said.

Moore, joined by officers Anthony Fiorini and Joel Dorchester, chased Thomas.

Police caught up with Thomas, who fought with the officers and continued to resist his arrest, Shulsky said. Moore saw the man reach for a black-and-silver object in his waistband, she said.

Once Thomas was in custody, officers searched the area.

Police found an SCCY CPX-2 9 mm handgun that was loaded with 10 rounds, Shulsky said. The gun had previously been reported as stolen in Cleveland, Ohio, she said.

Officers also discovered Pritchett had marijuana, while Ricks had oxycodone hydrochloride, Shulsky said.

A mix of charges were filed against the three men:

Thomas was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of a firearm and fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property, all felonies. He was also charged with resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and false personation, all misdemeanors.

Ricks was charged with seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance, a misdemeanor, and unlawful possession of marijuana, a violation. He was also issued traffic tickets.

Pritchett was ticketed for unlawful possession of marijuana. He was given an appearance ticket.

Thomas is being held in the Onondaga County Justice Center in lieu of $5,000 cash or a $10,000 bond.

Ricks is out of custody.

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Geneva, May 12 (IBNS): New Delhi will be the venue for the next WHO Global Forum on Medical Devices, the most prestigious and biggest global congregation on medical devices, reflecting the fast growing acceptance of India as an emerging global hub for medical device manufacturing and development.

The decision to this regard has already been taken by the WHO Global Forum and it will be formally announced on Saturday, 13th May, 2017 at the closing of 3rd WHO Global Forum on Medical Devices.

More than 650 top global medical device representatives and healthcare experts congregated at the 3rd WHO Global Forum on Medical Devices at Geneva to deliberate on ways and means to increase access to priority medical devices under the Universal Health Coverage in compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals and share evidence of best practices in regulation and management of devices.

The global event was flagged off on 9th May 2017 by Dr Suzanne Hill, Director Essential Medicines and Health Products Department, WHO in the presence of dignitaries and industry representatives from across continents. Indian Medical Device Industry was represented by AiMeD led by Rajiv Nath, Forum Coordinator of the Body.

The three day conclave has been deliberating on diverse topics related to medical device and healthcare delivery such as innovation acceleration to implementation of best regulatory practices, mobile health solutions, ICT in healthcare, education, training etc.

The world is looking at India. We have the respect and the attention in building our ability to provide access to high quality affordable medical devices and the evolving ecosystem in India to enable manufacturing here more disciplined and competitive. I have attended all 3 conferences so far and India has the largest contingent ever of delegates and speakers flying the Indian Flag. Said Mr Rajiv Nath, Forum Coordinator, AiMeD.

Dr Jitendra Sharma , CEO of AMTZ spoke about developing the country's road map for Health Technology management based on better Service Delivery, coordinated and prioritised Technology Policy and tweaking the Trade Policy; Dr E Reddy the Jt Drug Controller gave a presentation on ongoing reforms on Medical Devices regulations in India, Dr Madhur Gupta from WHO India office presented the progress on the evolving landscape to manufacture medical devices in India and the ongoing reforms as Make in India enablers and there were others from NHSRC and product developers showcasing their cost effective innovation in home grown medical technology .

The world is looking for cost effective high quality medical devices from India as an alternative global supplier. India has to work hard to become the global hub for medical devices and show other developing Countries what is needed to assist local production. Exciting times indeed - next steps is accelerating reforms of the other Make in India and Ease of Doing business enablers.

Also there was good learning from progress made by other countries like Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and ASEAN those who have already created the robust regulatory framework needed to protect their people and their economies. Added Rajiv Nath.


Joel Anderson

Jerold Young

Syracuse, NY -- Two Syracuse men have been arrested on charges they sexually abused the same girl, who was under the age of 13, on multiple occasions.

Joel Anderson, 50, was indicted in November on a charge of predatory sexual assault against a child.

Another man, Jerald Young, 25, confessed to giving the same girl a sexually-transmitted disease, said defense lawyer Susan Carey.

Young was also arrested in November on a charge of course of sexual conduct, meaning he's accused of repeatedly abusing the same girl over a period of time.

Young abused the girl over a two-year period, from September 2014 to June 2016, police said.

It's not clear if the two men are accused of acting together or at different times.

An analysis of the victim's bedsheets found DNA from multiple men, including a third man other than Anderson and Young, Carey said.

That third man is a sex offender already serving a prison sentence in an unrelated case, Carey said. He has not been charged in connection with this victim.

This week, Carey pointed to the DNA evidence as proof that the case against her client, Anderson, was weak. Anderson's DNA was not scientifically identified.

Carey also noted in court that the victim had once recanted her accusation against Anderson.

But prosecutor Jordan Aiello responded that the girl had since returned to her accusations against Anderson.

County Court Judge Thomas J. Miller agreed that he had concerns about the evidence against Anderson.

He reduced bail from more than $100,000 to $25,000 as the trial date was postponed.

Anderson is due back to court next month. He remains in jail for now.

Editor's note: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Jerald Young's DNA was found on the victim's bedsheets, based on a lawyer's comments. In fact, lawyer Susan Carey said that Young had confessed to abusing the girl, but that the DNA was from a third man, other than Young and Joel Anderson.
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FLX Table, a small but award-winning restaurant at 22 Linden St. in Geneva, NY, is planning to open a small brewery.

(Jacob Pucci )

GENEVA, NY -- The tiny FLX Table restaurant in Geneva took on some pretty large competition this year when it won a national contest as the Best New Restaurant for 2017.

Now it's entering the big world of brewing. True to its nature, it's doing it on a small scale -- and with a special focus.

Owners Christopher Bates and Isabel Bogadtke will open FLX Culture House next door to the restaurant at 22 Linden St. It will make exclusively sour, wild, barrel-aged and blended beers -- styles that have become increasingly popular in the craft beer market.

The FLX Culture House won't be a full-scale brewery. It will buy wort -- that's beer before it's fermented into alcohol -- from nearby breweries. Among them will be Lake Drum Brewing in Geneva.

Then Bates will add various cultures or yeasts (like the souring bacteria lactobacillus and the funky yeast brettanomyces) to make styles like Flemish red ales, Berliner weisses and German goses.

"Ultimately the goal is to make some of the classics like lambic and gueze (two well known Belgian styles)," Bates said. "We wont be too experimental."

Producing sour and aged beers requires patience. Bates' first batch, a version of a sour Flemish red (think Duchesse de Bourgogne or Rodenbach) is already fermenting but will need to age two years before it's released. Other beers may take as long as three years. Some will be blends of different aged beers.

Bates hopes to have two "table beers," perhaps including a Berliner Weisse, available before the end of this year.

The culture house/brewery is the latest venture for Bates and Bogdtke. In addition to FLX Table, they operate FLX Wienery on Seneca Lake in Dundee and Bates is owner of Element Winery in Arkport, Steuben County.

Bates is also a master sommelier (wine expert) and will use his winery experience in the production of his beers. He's aging the beer in used wine barrels from his winery, but may use other barrels or tanks in the future.

Eventually, Bates hopes to have a new beer for release about once a month or so, They will be available at the FLX Table and FLX Wienery, and perhaps a few other selected accounts, possibly including New York City. He plans to packages in both bottles and "sixtel" kegs.

"We're really just getting started on this," Bates said. "So we'll see where it takes us."

Don Cazentre writes about craft beer, wine, spirits and beverages for NYup.com, syracuse.com and The Post-Standard. Reach him at dcazentre@nyup.com, or follow him at NYup.com, on Twitter or Facebook.
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Madeline Pittorf

(Oswego Co. Sheriff)

Oswego, N.Y. -- A Hannibal Central School District board member has resigned after she was charged with aggravated driving while intoxicated following a crash on State Route 104 Monday afternoon, according to media reports.



At about 5 p.m. Monday, a 2014 Toyota Rav 4 driven by Madeline Pittorf, 55, was traveling north on State Route 104 near 104A when it failed to keep right and the front of her vehicle struck a 1994 Ford Ranger truck, said Oswego County Undersheriff Gene Sullivan. The driver of the truck, Christian Hagar, suffered non-life threatening injuries in the crash and was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

Oswego deputies charged Pittorf with failure to keep right, driving while intoxicated and aggravated driving while intoxicated. She had a blood alcohol level of 0.28 percent, Sullivan said. Pittorf was arraigned in the Oswego Town Court and released on her own recognizance. She is scheduled to appear in court on May 15.



Pittorf told deputies that she was traveling from home when the crash occurred, Sullivan said.

Pittorf resigned her position as vice president of the Hannibal Central School District board on Thursday, the district said in a statement issued this afternoon.The district said it does not comment on the personal lives of its staff, board or community members.

Pittorf was one of two candidates up for election to three seats on the board in voting on Tuesday.

Hagar was charged with third-degree aggravated unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle. His license has been revoked since 1997, the undersheriff said.

Hannibal School District statement by The Post-Standard on Scribd

Charley Hannagan covers breaking news, the western suburbs and transportation. Contact her anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-2161.
Will homeowner's insurance policies protect those homes and property ravaged by rising waters on the south shore of Lake Ontario and the upper St. Lawrence River in recent weeks?

"It's important for people to understand that most homeowners' policies don't provide protection from flooding. In most cases, it's important for homeowners to purchase a separate flood insurance policy to protect their homes and belongings from flood losses," according Ron Klug, a spokesman for the state Department of Financial Services.

In a press release last spring, Maria Vullo, superintendent of the Department of Financial Services said persons shouldn't count on government assistance to cover damages to private property caused by flooding.

Federal disaster assistance typically comes in the form of a low-interest loan, only available if the President formally declares a disaster. This kind of loan must be repaid along with any existing mortgage, she said.

Flood insurance may be obtained through the National Flood Insurance Program, or through a local property insurance agent offering coverage through the NFIP program. Such policies are available to homeowners, businesses and renters.

This week, at Gov. Andrew Cuomo's request, a mobile office from Vullo's department is making the rounds at several communities along the lake's south shore that have suffered flood damage. The goal of those staffing the mobile office is to answer questions from residents and business owners about what may, or may not be covered under their insurance policies, and helping them to fill out the proper forms.

Under the NFIP program, flood insurance coverage can be purchased as long as the insured property is located within a community that participates in the NFIP. Most New York State communities do, Vullo said. To find out if your community participates in the National Flood Insurance Program, see the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) website, www.floodsmart.gov.

There is a 30-day waiting period, though, from the time an NFIP policy is purchased until insurance protection goes into effect.

Premiums for flood insurance vary depending on your risk level for a flood loss, the amount of coverage selected and the amount of your deductible. Property owners may also choose whether to insure a home only, in which case structural damage caused by a flood would be covered, or to insure both a home and its contents. The average flood insurance policy costs $700 per year.

According to the state's Department of Financial Services:

"Flood insurance may be purchased covering up to $250,000 of flood damage to your home. A standard policy will cover structural damage, including damage to the furnace, water heater, air conditioner, flood surfaces (carpeting and tile) and debris cleanup.

"The contents of your home are not covered under a standard flood policy, but for an additional premium, one can also buy flood insurance up to $100,000 of damage to your personal property."

Other things not covered, according to floodsmart.gov, include:

*Property and belongings outside of an insured building such as trees, plants, walls, septic systems, walks, decks, patios, fences, seawalls, hot tubs and swimming pools;

*Damage caused by earth movement, even if the earth movement is caused by flood;

*Living expenses such as temporary housing;

*Financial losses cause by business interruption or loss of insured property;

*Most self-propelled vehicles such as cars, including their parts.

Those who are not able to visit the Mobile Command Center can call the Department's Disaster Hotline at 1-800-339-1759 during business hours for help with insurance-related issues.
Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com

Mother's Day 2017: Where to go for brunch with mom around Syracuse

By Jacob Pucci | jpucci@syracuse.com

Mother's Day is Sunday, May 14 and for all your mother has done for you, the least you could do is buy her a nice meal. Restaurants across Central New York are offering special menus--mostly brunch, but some for dinner. Just add flowers and a card for a perfect Mother's Day.

If your favorite restaurant offering a special Mother's Day menu that we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

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Jane Marmaduke

1060 Restaurant (at the Genesee Grande Hotel)

Address: 1060 E. Genesee St., Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $39.95; children ages 6 to 12: $16.95; children ages 5 and under: Free.

The buffet will feature a Belgian waffle station, carving stations with prime rib and bacon-wrapped turkey, eggs benedict, made-to-order omelets, salad bar, dessert table and more. See the full menu.

Reservations: Call (315) 476-0556.

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Bella Domani

Address: 5988 E. Taft Road, North Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $26; children ages 5 to 10: $13; children ages 4 and under: Free.

The buffet will include both breakfast and dinner items, including a carving station and desserts. All moms receive a free mimosa.

Reservations: Call (

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Post-Standard

The Brewster Inn

Address: 6 Ledyard Ave, Cazenovia.

Hours: Dinner served from noon to 8 p.m.

Price: A la carte. Starters range from $9 to $13, entrees range from $24 to $45.

Perfect for the mother who likes to sleep in, The Brewster Inn is hosting a special Mother's Day dinner instead of the usual brunch. Menu offerings include grilled ponzu-marinated halibut and Berkshire pork chop with green peppercorn au poivre cream sauce.

Reservations: Call (315) 655-9232.

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Casowasco Camp & Retreat Center

Address: 158 Casowasco Drive, Moravia.

Hours: Seating at 10:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. seating sold out)

Price: Adults: $24; seniors ages 65+: $21.25; children ages 4 to 12: $17.25; children under 4: Free. Family package (2 adults, 2 children): $76.

The buffet, held at the camp's Emmaus Commons, will feature both breakfast and dinner items, including carving stations, fruit and desserts.

Reservations: (315) 364-8756.

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Don Cazentre

Cathy's Corner Cafe

Address: 929 Avery Ave., Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Price: Adults: $26.95; children ages 10 and under: $12.95.

The buffet includes carved prime rib, turkey and ham, eggplant Parmesan and pasta, French toast, eggs, potatoes, bacon, breakfast strata, sausage, pastries and homemade desserts.

Reservations: (315) 479-6990

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David Lassman

Dinosaur Bar-B-Que

Address: 234 W. Genesee St., Syracuse

Hours: Seatings at noon and 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: . Contact Dinosaur for details on children's pricing.

Held in the upstairs private dining space, the brunch will include

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Jacob Pucci | jpucci@syracuse.com

The Eis House

Address: 144 Academy St., Mexico.

Hours: Brunch served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $21.95; seniors: $19.95; children: $11.95.

Buffet offerings include chicken Marsala, glazed salmon, pork loin, pasta Alfredo, soups, salads and desserts. See the menu.

Reservations: (315) 963-3830

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Jacob Pucci | jpucci@syracuse.com

Elderberry Pond

Address: 728 Center Street Road, Auburn.

Hours: Seatings at noon, 2:30 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Price: Adults: $39; children ages 6 to 12: $18; children ages 5 and under: $6.

Instead of brunch, this farm-to-table restaurant is serving a special three course prix fixe menu. Dinner includes an organic mesclun salad, choice of prime rib, roasted chicken breast, shrimp and aspragus scampi or vegetable pasta or quinoa, dessert and a non-alcoholic beverage. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 252-6025.

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Jacob Pucci | jpucci@syracuse.com

Farmers Market Buffet at del Lago Resort and Casino

Address: 1133 State Route 414, Waterloo.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Price: $19.95. Adults only.

With honey-glazed Steamship spiral ham, roasted lamb shanks and Salmon filet en croute on the menu, plus charcuterie, clams, shrimp, mussels, smoked salmon and made-to-order omelets and waffles, this buffet is the safest bet you'll make at del Lago. Includes one mimosa. See the full menu

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Stephen D. Cannerelli

Flo's Diner

Address: 3223 State Route 31, Canastota.

Hours: Brunch served from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Price: Adults: $13.95; children ages 5 to 10: $7.95; children ages 4 and under: Free.

Breakfast buffet items include biscuits and sausage gravy, pancakes, eggs, homefries, bacon, sausage and fresh fruit. Lunch items include roast turkey and stuffing, baked ziti, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, desserts and more. See the full menu.

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Gary Walts

Inn of the Seasons

Address: 4311 W. Seneca Turnpike, Syracuse.

Hours: Noon to 6 p.m.

Price: A la carte. Appetizers range from $4.95 to $9.50, entrees range from $17.95 to $47.95.

Entree choices on this special Mother's Day menu include bacon-wrapped filet mignon, veal osso buco and a 12-ounce broiled lobster tail. See the full menu

Reservations: (315) 492-4001.

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Kathe Harrington

The Inns of Aurora

Address: 391 Main St., Aurora.

Hours: dinner served from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Price: Adults: $35; children ages 5 to 12: $15; children under 5: Free.

The three-course prix fixe dinners starts with appetizers such as smoked pork belly with cheddar grits or Boston seafood chowder. Entree choices include lobster Benedict, chicken and waffles or homemade fettuccine. For dessert, pick from French toast with dulce de leche ice cream, pancake roulade or an ice cream sundae with homemade cookies and cream ice cream. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 364-8888

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Jane Marmaduke

Justin's Tuscan Grill

Address: 6400 Yorktown Circle, East Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $27.95; Children ages 12 and under: $12.95

The buffet includes waffles, made-to-order omelets, bacon, sausage and other breakfast fare, plus broiled haddock, honey and brown sugar-glazed pork loin, carved turkey and roast beef, caprese stuffed chicken, penne alla vodka side dishes, salads, desserts and more. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 437-1461 or online via Yelp.

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Limestone Grille

Address: 7300 E Genesee St., Fayetteville.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Price: Adults: $29.95; children ages 4 to 12: $10.95; children ages 3 and under: Free.

With oysters and clams on the raw bar, plus crab claws, smoked salmon and garnishes, tempura fried whole grouper, lobster mac and cheese and Atlantic salmon, this will be the brunch to be for seafood lovers. See the full menu

Reservations: ( 315) 637-9999

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Rick Moriarty

Marriott Syracuse Downtown

Address: 110 E. Onondaga St., Syracuse.

Hours: Seatings at 10 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Price: Adults: $49; children ages 6 to 12: $19; children ages 5 and under: Free.

The buffet includes made-to-order eggs and omelets, chicken and waffles, banana bread pudding; a grilled cheese station featuring mini Reubens; carving stations with prime rib and turkey breast; a seafood station with smoked salmon, lump Maryland crab cakes and shrimp; salads, cheeses, fresh fruit and pastries. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 474-2424 or online via Eventbrite.

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Meat You There

Address: 3711 Number 9 Road, Cazenovia.

Hours: Brunch served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $24; children ages 12 and under: $12.

See the full menu. The new restaurant at the Cazenovia Country Club will serve a family-style dinner of roast turkey, baked macaroni and meat sauce, barbecue chicken breast, fried ravioli, shrimp cocktail and other salads, sides and desserts.

Reservations: (315) 655-4915. Reservations required for non-members.

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Micieli's Road House & Comfort Dining Restaurant

Address: 3177 Route 5, Canastota.

Hours: Brunch served from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

Price: Adults: $18.95; children ages 7 to 12: $10; children ages 6 and under: Free.

The buffet includes carved ham and prime rib, turkey breast,

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Jared Paventi

Mohegan Manor

Address: 58 Oswego St., Baldwinsville

Hours: Brunch serves from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Price: Adults: $25; children ages 6 to 15: $15; children ages 5 and under: Free.

Made-to-order omelets, carved meats, pastas, waffles, salads, fruit and pastries highlight the buffet offerings.



Reservations: (315) 857-0079.

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Monirae's Casual Dining & Entertainment

Address: 688 County Route 10, Pennellville,

Hours: Brunch served from noon to 5 p.m.

Price: Adults: $18.95; children ages 10 and under: $10.95.

Buffet offerings include carved roast beef, c

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Jane Marmaduke

Moro's Kitchen

Address: 28 Jordan St., Skaneateles.

Hours: Brunch served from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Price: Adults: $26; children ages 5 to 12: $15; children ages 4 and under: Free.

The buffet menu includes smoked salmon with garnishes, chicken marsala, roast beef sirloin, eggs Benedict, roasted garlic-crusted cod, shrimp and rigatoni primavera and Tuscan green salad, plus other salads, side dishes and desserts. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 685-6116

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916 Riverside

Address: 916 County Route 37, Central Square.

Hours: Brunch served from noon to 5 p.m.

Price: Adults: $25; children ages 10 and under: $12.50



Buffet offerings include prime rib, seafood Newberg, stuffed pork, chicken Parmesan, plus other entrees, side dishes, salads and desserts. See the full menu

Reservations: (315) 668-3434

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Don Cazentre

Pascale Italian Bistro at Drumlins

Address: 800 Nottingham Road, DeWitt.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $27.95; children ages 10 and under: $12.95.

Carving stations will feature turkey, roast beef and baked ham. Breakfast offerings include made-to-order omelets, waffles, French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage and homemade breads, scones, danishes and other pastries. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 446-8511 x 209

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Redfield's

Address: 701 E. Genesee St., Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Price: Adults: $34; children ages 3 to 10: $19; children under 3: Free.

Breakfast offerings include limoncello French toast, made-to-order omelets and pastries from Modern Malt bakeshop. Lunch items include carved prime rib, charcuterie, roasted salmon and pasta prepared inside a wheel of Parmesan cheese. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 703-1900.

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Refinery

Address: 74 State St., Auburn.

Hours: Seatings at 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Price: Adults: $28; children ages 10 and under: $8.

The buffet includes carved roast beef with au jus, grilled salmon, chicken piccata, double-smoked beer bacon, French toast, quiche, salads and more. See the full menu.

Reservations: (

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Stephen D. Cannerelli

Sheraton Syracuse University

Address: 801 University Ave., Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Price: Adults: $35; children ages 5 to 12: $18; children under 5: Free.

The buffet menu includes a carving station, made-to-order omelets, salads, desserts, beverages and other breakfast and lunch fare. See the full menu.

Reservations: (

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Don Cazentre

Salt City Grille

Address: 1333 Buckley Road, Liverpool.

Hours: Brunch served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $27.95; children ages 10 and under: $12.95.

The brunch buffet will include carved meats, pasta, hot entrees, breakfast foods, pastries, baked goods, drinks, desserts and more. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 299-6371

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Don Cazentre

Strada Mia

Address: 313 N. Geddes St., Syracuse.

Hours: Brunch served from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price: Adults: $32; children ages 5 to 12: $16; children 4 and under: Free.

A pancake bar, carved turkey and ham, crab stuffed sole and homemade desserts highlight the buffet offerings. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 883-5995.

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Tailwater Lodge

Address: 52 Pulaski St., Altmar.

Hours: Brunch served from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Price:

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Uriah's

Address: 7990 Oswego Road, Liverpool.

Hours: Brunch starts at 10 a.m.

Price: $18 per person.

Buffet offerings include carved ham, Utica greens, made-to-order omelets, pasta, bacon, sausage, French toast, salads and more. See the full menu.

Reservations: (315) 662-2250

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Katrina Tulloch

At 2017 Salt City BBQ Festival near Syracuse, you can (finally!) eat the meat

If mom likes barbecue, you'll want to check out the Salt City BBQ Festival, where for the first time, attendees can eat the competition barbecue.
ColgateU.JPG

Colgate University campus.

(Andrew Daddio/Colgate University)

HAMILTON, NY - A Colgate University internal review of a May 1 campus lockdown issued Friday found that while protocols were followed by campus security officials, mistakes were made - some significant.

The college was placed on lockdown for four hours that night when two students reported seeing a man running into a building with what appeared to a weapon. Emergency notifications were sent out as police and SWAT teams arrived to search the buildings. It later turned out the student was carrying a glue gun, not a weapon.

The next morning Colgate President Brian Casey said the college was placing its campus security director, Bill Ferguson, on administrative leave while a review of the incident took place. The review's findings were released late Friday afternoon (below).

Colgate University officials would not say Friday afternoon if Ferguson had been reinstated or was still on leave.

"There will be no further updates at this time,'' said Daniel DeVries, a spokesman for the college.

After the lockdown, some Colgate students were upset, believing the college overreacted because the man carrying the weapon was African-American. Initial reports to campus authorities were that students had seen a black man, shirtless, running in the rain and carrying what looked like a weapon.

Casey said at the time the review would look at what role racial bias played in the incident. In an email to the community May 2, he said: "It is important that we understand the role that implicit racial bias had in the initial reporting of and responses to the events of last night.

"More egregiously, perhaps, was the effect profiling had on the response of safety officers and other university offices to these events," he said at the time. "In addition, communication and enforcement steps were taken that, I believe, confused and harmed this campus and our students.

The review, conducted by two Colgate senior administrators, found some major mistakes were made. In the case of whether race played a role, the review said there was no way to assess its impact within the scope and time frame of this investigation.

The review uncovered "mistakes, some significant, which led to misleading and unclear communications being sent," Casey said in a letter Friday to campus staff and students.

Those mistakes "contributed to a real sense of fear and confusion" on the campus, he said.

Categorizing the alleged threat as "an active shooter," rather than a potentially armed person caused unnecessary fear on campus, he said. In particular, students of color feared that an armed response to an active shooter could endanger their safety, the report stated.

The review blamed the "active shooter" alert on user error.

Overall, the college followed correct emergency procedures and took "rapid and visible action,'' Casey said.

Casey said changes will be made to the college's safety and communications procedures.

Colgate University Report on May 1, 2017 Lockdown by The Post-Standard on Scribd
Village Water Chemical

The Hoosic River runs through the village of Hoosick Falls, N.Y.

(Mike Groll | The Associated Press)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) -- Residents of a small community ravaged by water contaminants linked to cancer say they are still waiting for the state to find a solution 500 days after they first learned of the contamination.

Hoosick Falls residents on Thursday petitioned state lawmakers to earmark $25 million of a water funding initiative for a new water supply for the community. They noted the state budget approved last month funnels $2.5 billion to clean-water infrastructure but does not outline any specific money for Hoosick Falls, a village in Rensselaer County.

The state has filtrated water from Hoosick Falls' current supply to "non-detect" levels and installed more than 800 treatment systems in houses since it acknowledged the high levels of PFOA, a toxic chemical long used in the manufacture of Teflon and similar materials, in 2015.

The residents say they remain wary of the filtrated water and what they see as a temporary fix.

Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos said efforts to find a new water supply with sufficient quality and quantity are underway as part of a settlement with the two companies responsible for the contamination. The department said it expects a report of potential water sources to be issued this summer.

Seggos said the department has been able to rely on the settlement agreement and the site's status as a state superfund site for resources to address the contamination. Seggos called it "premature" to seek money from the state's water infrastructure funding now and said he is confident in the state's actions in the area.

"We are effectively leaving no stone unturned for a long-term fix," Seggos said.
Washington, May 12 (IBNS): Supermassive black holes are generally stationary objects, sitting at the centers of most galaxies.

However, using data from NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, astronomers recently hunted down what could be a supermassive black hole that may be on the move.

This possible renegade black hole, which contains about 160 million times the mass of our Sun, is located in an elliptical galaxy about 3.9 billion light years from Earth.

Astronomers are interested in these moving supermassive black holes because they may reveal more about the properties of these enigmatic objects.

This black hole may have recoiled, in the terminology used by scientists, when two smaller supermassive black holes collided and merged to form an even larger one.

At the same time, this collision would have generated gravitational waves that emitted more strongly in one direction than others. This newly formed black hole could have received a kick in the opposite direction of those stronger gravitational waves.

This kick would have pushed the black hole out of the galaxys center, as depicted in the artists illustration.

The strength of the kick depends on the rate and direction of spin of the two smaller black holes before they merge. Therefore, information about these important but elusive properties can be obtained by studying the speed of recoiling black holes.

Astronomers found this recoiling black hole candidate by sifting through X-ray and optical data for thousands of galaxies.

First, they used Chandra observations to select galaxies that contain a bright X-ray source and were observed as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Bright X-ray emission is a common feature of supermassive black holes that are rapidly growing.

Next, the researchers looked to see if Hubble Space Telescope observations of these X-ray bright galaxies revealed two peaks near their center in the optical image. These two peaks might show that a pair of supermassive black holes is present or that a recoiling black hole has moved away from the cluster of stars in the center of the galaxy.

If those criteria were met, then the astronomers examined the SDSS spectra, which show how the amount of optical light varies with wavelength. If the researchers found telltale signatures in the spectra indicative of the presence of a supermassive black hole, they followed up with an even closer examination of those galaxies.

After all of this searching, a good candidate for a recoiling black hole was discovered. The left image in the inset is from the Hubble data, which shows two bright points near the middle of the galaxy.

One of them is located at the center of the galaxy and the other is located about 3,000 light years away from the center. The latter source shows the properties of a growing supermassive black hole and its position matches that of a bright X-ray source detected with Chandra (right image in inset). Using data from the SDSS and the Keck telescope in Hawaii, the team determined that the growing black hole located near, but visibly offset from, the center of the galaxy has a velocity that is different from the galaxy. These properties suggest that this source may be a recoiling supermassive black hole.

The host galaxy of the possible recoiling black hole also shows some evidence of disturbance in its outer regions, which is an indication that a merger between two galaxies occurred in the relatively recent past. Since supermassive black hole mergers are thought to occur when their host galaxies merge, this information supports the idea of a recoiling black hole in the system.

Moreover, stars are forming at a high rate in the galaxy, at several hundred times the mass of the Sun per year. This agrees with computer simulations, which predict that star formation rates may be enhanced for merging galaxies particularly those containing recoiling black holes.

Another possible explanation for the data is that two supermassive black holes are located in the center of the galaxy but one of them is not producing detectable radiation because it is growing too slowly. The researchers favor the recoiling black hole explanation, but more data are needed to strengthen their case.

A paper describing these results was recently accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal and is available online. The first author is Dongchan Kim from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Virginia. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, controls Chandra's science and flight operations.

Image credit: Illustration: CXC/M. Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/NRAO/D.-C. Kim; Optical: NASA/STScI


A few years ago, when Oracle was busy buying companies to fill out its front-office cloud offering, RightNow Technologies developed a day in the life video that has stuck with me. It was shown at RightNows last user meeting as an independent company. In fact, at the conference where it debuted, Oracle announced its acquisition of RightNow.

The videos importance was as a harbinger of things to come in the customer service world. At that point in time, we were struggling with the idea of multichannel support, or the ability to provide service regardless of the channel  social, mobile, email, etc.  used to make a request. We got over that soon enough.

The Future of CX

The video takes a day in the life approach to showing someone using connected technologies to deal with a variety of service encounters  from making and confirming airline reservations to getting an appointment for an oil change.

In the process, some nifty technologies  like machine learning and natural language processing  came into play to make everything work. The video makes it look seamless and very plausible. Its impressive.

One person using a mobile device in the back seat of a car going to the airport does a lot.

Today, much of this has come into view. While only a few companies currently are taking advantage of the possibilities inherent in this technology, from what I see, its the next thing.

What Customers Want

To be sure, every business wont need each capability, and its important to focus on the functions that add the most value to a business or brands outreach.

Whats beyond all this is even more exciting to me. With the advent of the Internet of Things, theres been a tsunami of data that some businesses can collect and analyze to help them do more and better things for customers  things that customers actually want, as opposed to things that the businesses guess they want.

Theres also the idea of people helping people, which might not seem earthshaking, but by this I mean the ability to engage your best customers to offer assistance to their peers. Its appealing, because its certainly cheap  but more fundamentally, because engaged customers have a focus on their expertise and a desire to be of service thats hard to match with even the best employees.

Customers can tell other customers, I get it because Ive been there, in ways that CSRs can only emulate.

Busy Week

This is a busy week. Ive been to the CRM Evolution conference in Washington, D.C., and I am now attending the Oracle Modern Service Experience in Las Vegas.

Both shows have on display many cool, new, and futuristic solutions for the front office  and if past is prologue, the future will be the present before you can blink, so we need to pay attention.

All this travel can be a bear, but its the best way to get fresh insights. Ill have more about all this soon.
Microsoft executives, led by CEO Satya Nadella, introduced a series of enhancements to the companys critical data and cloud services at the kickoff of its annual Build conference on Wednesday, demonstrating new ways to expand adoption of artificial intelligence, personal digital assistants and other innovations.

Nadella told conference attendees that there will be more than 25 billion intelligent devices in the world by 2020, and the role of developers will be to extend new technologies to meet that challenge.

So, whether precision medicine or precision agriculture, whether its digital media or the industrial Internet, the opportunity for us as developers to have broad, deep impact on all parts of society and all parts of the economy has never been greater, he said.

More than 500 million Windows 10 users now can be reached through the Windows Store, Nadella noted, as well as 100 million monthly active users of Office 365, 140 million monthly users of Cortana, and 12 million organizational entities in the Azure Active Directory  including small, medium and large businesses, as well as educational institutions.

Microsoft offered a preview of Azure IoT Edge, a cross-platform runtime that allows cloud functionality to be run remotely on IoT devices. The technology runs on both Windows and Linux, and it can operate on devices smaller than a Raspberry Pi.

Predictive Maintenance

The company demonstrated how one of its clients, Swedish cutting tool manufacturer Sandvik Coromant, is using Azure IoT Edge, along with Cortana Intelligence and Dynamics 365, to predict machine breakdowns on a factory floor more than 100 times faster than traditional models.

In another demonstration, Microsoft showed how Azure Stack, Azure Functions, Cognitive Services and commodity cameras could help manage worker safety on industrial sites. Because the camera can differentiate among industrial tools and workers, it could be used in a scenario to prevent an unauthorized worker from gaining access to a jackhammer or potentially dangerous tools, for example.

In another demonstration, the company showed how Microsoft Graph is used with Office 365 to create Cortana skills that are pushed across devices  for example to send out a meeting reminder, or to push a low fuel warning to your cars new Harman Kordan-developed Invoke smart speaker, which is powered by Cortana.

Microsoft signed new agreements with HP to develop Cortana-based devices, and with Intel to develop Cortana-based reference platforms. Microsoft also has made the Cortana skills kit available for public preview, allowing developers to build skills for Cortana and publish it to the Cortana channel of the Bot framework.

Microsoft demonstrated how multiple products, including Dynamics 365, Office 365, Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Teams, and others will be integrated into Tact, a new sales experience platform that can turn any AI-connected device into an AI-powered virtual sales assistant.

Microsoft introduced Azure Cosmos DB, which it says is the first globally distributed data service that allows you to horizontally scale throughput and storage anywhere, with guaranteed low latency, high availability and consistency. Users can scale hundreds of millions of requests with a single click.

Microsoft announced new MySQL and PostgreSQL-managed services joining the AzureSQL database, and provided an early preview of Microsofts new database migration services.

The company announced general availability of Visual Studio 2017 for Mac.

It also announced general availability of Windows Server Containers support in Azure Service Fabric.

Developers now can publish for Microsoft Teams, its new chat-based workspace in Office 365. The company introduced new Microsoft Graph APIs for developers, including APIs for SharePoint and Planner.

Competitive Landscape

Major cloud computing firms like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are pursuing different strategies to capitalize on emerging market opportunities, said Jeffrey Kaplan, managing director of ThinkStrategies.

The most obvious example is the latest smart devices that each of the companies are rolling out, which combine voice recognition, AI, communications and ambient computing capabilities to provide a widening array of consumer and collaboration applications for the home and office, he told TechNewsWorld.

Microsofts announcements targeted the core developer audience at the Build conference, noted Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Not surprisingly, Azure is particularly strong in its support for Microsofts individual and group applications, which arent high priorities for some other cloud providers, he told TechNewsWorld.

Microsoft is typically ranked second behind AWS in terms of the size of its facilities and business, but there is research showing that Microsoft is gaining share against AWS, King noted.

Gupshup, a bot platform provider, announced an agreement to use Microsoft Cognitive Services on Interbot, its bot-to-bot communications platform, which will be used to develop bots for Microsoft Teams, Skype, Skype for Business, Cortana and other platforms.

There are a wide variety of applications for both B2B and B2C customers that will benefit from bots being able to more intelligently communicate with one another, leveraging Microsoft APIs and accessing Bings knowledge graph, said Beerud Sheth, CEO of Gupshup.

For example, bots will be able to perform news and sentiment mining in real time, as well as review and recognize images and videos and trigger appropriate actions as a result, he told TechNewsWorld.

Customers want Microsoft to make their jobs easier, Sheth said. They want to see advances like support for edge computing, for example, which opens up paths to new projects or business opportunities. They want to see support for emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that enhance or broaden the appeal of their work.
Facebook on Wednesday told its F8 conference audience about two new cutting-edge projects that could change the way humans engage with devices.

Over the next two years, the company will work on a new technology that will allow anyone to type around 100 words per minute  not with fingers, but using a process that would decode neural activity devoted to speech.

What Facebook envisions is a technology that would resemble a neural network, allowing users to share thoughts the way they share photos today.

This technology also could function as a speech prosthetic for people with communication disorders or as a new way to engage in an augmented reality environment, suggested Regina Dugan, vice president of engineering at Facebooks Building8.

The other project announced at F8 would change the way users experience communication input  that is, it would allow them to hear through the skin. The human body has, on average, about two square meters of skin that is packed with sensors. New technologies could use them to enable individuals to receive information via a haptic vocabulary, Facebook said.

Putting the Best Interface Forward

About 60 employees currently are working on the Building8 projects  among them machine learning and neural prosthetic experts. Facebook likely will expand this team, adding experts with experience in brain-computer interfaces and neural imaging.

The plan is to develop noninvasive sensors that can measure brain activity and decode the signals that are associated with language in real time.

The technology would have advance considerably before individuals would be able to share pure thoughts or feelings, but the current effort can be viewed as the first step toward that goal, said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Type With Your Brain

Facebook is not the only company working on technology that could allow a direct brain-computer connection. Elon Musk last month launched Neuralink, a startup dedicated to developing a neural lace technology that could allow the implanting of small electrodes into the brain.

One difference between Facebooks type with your brain concept and Musks neural mesh project is that Facebook wants it to be noninvasive, said futurist Michael Rogers.

Thats a tough one, because the electrical impulses in the brain are very small and the skull is not a great conductor, he told TechNewsWorld.

The nerve signals outside the skull that trigger muscles are much stronger, so reading brain waves noninvasively means filtering a lot of much-stronger noise.

The existing neural cap technologies that allegedly let wearers, say, learn to control computer games with their brains, are actually probably training them to  unconsciously  use their eyebrow and forehead muscles, suggested Rogers. Interesting, but not the same as typing with your brain.

Hearing Through Touch

Just as Braille has allowed the blind to read, Facebooks technology to hear through the skin could be a game changer for those who are deaf.

Sound through the skin sounds more like a tool for the profoundly deaf than for everyday use, observed Rogers  and it might not be the best solution for those with such hearing problems.

Im still a big believer in the potential for bone conduction temples on smart glasses as a really good audio solution that doesnt require earbuds, he added.

Delivering information through this technology may be less challenging than processing it.

It is technically easy to translate the data to a speech pattern, but the hard part is training the human to understand it, said Paul Teich, principal analyst at Tirias Research.

Facebook can simplify the words to codes, but you are still stuck with the training to understand the code, he told TechNewsWorld.

There is no way to immediately understand what is being sent, and this isnt very intuitive as I see it, added Teich. With the right training, however, a coded message could be understood in real time.

Facebooks Timeline

Zuckerberg emphasized that Facebook is taking the first steps toward development of these technologies, and it could be a lot time before they have practical applications.

Having bold visions and making ambitious predictions characterizes some of todays most regarded tech entrepreneurs, said Pascal Kaufmann, founder of Starmind. [*Correction  April 25, 2017]

There seem to be no limits, and one can easily fall prey to the belief that everything is possible, he said.

However, climbing a high tree is not the first step to the moon  actually, it is the end of the journey, Kaufman told TechNewsWorld.

Despite some gradual improvements in speech recognition these days, understanding of context and meaning is still far beyond our technological capabilities. Taking a shortcut through directly interfacing human brains, and circumventing the highly complex translation from nerve signals into speech and back from speech recognition into nerve signals, I consider one of the more creative contributions in the last few months, he said.

It is certainly an alternative to the brute force approaches and the unjustified AI hype that seems like climbing a tree rather than building a space rocket. Zuckerbergs announcement describes a space rocket; it is up to us now to develop the technology to aim for the moon, said Kaufman.

Both of these technologies are well within reach. This kind of brain imaging has been used in academic settings for years, and scientists developed versions of skin hearing devices over 30 years ago,  said Michael Merzenich, designer of BrainHQ, professor emeritus in the UCSF School of Medicine, and winner of the 2016 Kavli Prize.

The real challenge is making this science practical. How can a brain be trained to learn to control these new devices? he asked.

Every new form of communication  from writing to the telephone to the Web  changes human culture and human brains, Merzenich told TechNewsWorld. What impact will using these new devices have on our brains  and our culture?

*ECT News Network editors note  April 25, 2017: Our original published version of this column identified Pascal Kaufmann as CEO of Starmind. Kaufmanns current title is founder, according to spokesperson Joshua Kail. The title change has no impact on his role in the company, which is working internally to give him a new title, Kail told TechNewsWorld.
Many women in America or other western countries are choosing out-of-hospital childbirth, much to the dismay of insurance companies. In less developed countries such as India, out-of-hospital births are usually not a choice but a necessity. But even in that country, some upper-class women are joining the natural birth trend.

Johanna Givens has a soothing way of helping women give birth at home. She counts with them -- barely speaking above a whisper -- as they work through the agonizing pain of each contraction.

"When you get into really active, heavy labor, during the contraction, its like time stops often, and you are wrapped in this moment of discomfort and unsurety. So we have a counting mechanism to help them through, said Givens, who works as a doula, providing physical and emotional support to birthing women.

In her seven years on the job in Columbia, Mo., shes attended the deliveries of more than 50 women who want an alternative to traditional hospital births.

A growing number of American women are taking control of their childbirth by looking for out-of-hospital birthing options, much to the dismay of insurance companies and some medical professionals. In less developed countries such as India, meanwhile, out-of-hospital births are usually not a choice but a necessity -- happening mostly among poor women in remote places who lack access to care. But even in that country, some upper-class women are joining the natural birth trend.

Jessica Henman CPMIn America, out-of-hospital births are clearly on the rise but far from the norm. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the proportion of births happening outside hospitals started to climb in 2004, rising from 1 percent then to 1.5 percent in 2015 -- or 61,000 births.

In India, out-of-hospital births are far more common. UNICEF statistics show 53 percent of women gave birth outside of an institution in 2012.

For women lucky enough to have a choice, experts say many are driven by a desire to make life processes like childbirth more natural instead of treating them like medical conditions.

"A lot of women are talking about it, Givens said. Theyre talking about the breastfeeding movements. Theyre talking about the choice movements, the movements of letting our bodies naturally process.

Johanna Givens Birth and choice in America

In Givens home state of Missouri, out-of-hospital births have roughly doubled in 10 years.

While this includes the occasional surprise delivery in an ambulance, it mostly reflects births at home or in birthing centers.

Option is important and choice is important, Givens said. This is their body in which theyre going to be doing majority of the work and the consequences of what happens during that birth can last her lifetime and the childs lifetime.

Birthing centers, which are generally associated with hospitals, offer a sort of middle ground. One, at the Missouri Womens and Childrens Hospital in Columbia, started as part of the hospitals low-intervention program in 2015. Women decide whether they want care from a certified nurse midwife or an obstetrician, and must meet guidelines showing their pregnancies are low-risk and not expected to need emergency interventions.

Jessica Henman is a certified nurse midwife at a similar but free-standing facility in OFallon, Mo., called the Birth and Wellness Center.

Natalie and Naomie CNMs have collaborative agreements with physicians, and Henmans agreement is with Dr. Jeffrey Mormol at the Missouri Baptist Medical Center, a 25 minute drive away.

Not all women can give birth without medical intervention, so were glad we have the partnership with the hospital, so we can do that when we need to, Henman said. We like that about 90 percent of our moms dont need the hospital, and if you look at research for the right kind of woman, for a low-risk mother with a single baby, head down, no medical history, she might actually be safer outside the hospital than in it.

But some doctors are skeptical about out-of-hospital births, particularly those in homes. Dr. Ravi Johar, an ob/gyn in St. Louis, said when something goes wrong with a pregnancy at home, he knows of instances when midwivessimply dropped birthing moms at the emergency room and left.

Natalie and Naomie ...Or theyre told to drive themselves in and theres usually a we dont want them to know were involved, which is a problem because now you have no history to go with them, he said. Every obstetrician has anecdotal stories of all kinds of things.

Births at home are usually attended by certified nurse midwives, certified professional midwives or doulas. CPMs dont have to have any formal education, although they must be certified by the North American Registry of Midwives. Doulas dont need formal education either, but can get voluntary training and certification.CNMs, on the other hand, must have nursing degrees.

Theres a lot of disagreement on which type of birth is safer. One study in Oregon, which has the nations highest rate of home births, showed that the perinatal mortality for out-of-hospital births was about twice as high as the hospital average.

But American women giving birth in hospitals are more likely to undergo cesarean sections, which come with risks such as infection and blood loss. According to study published in JAMA in 2015, cesarean delivery rates of up to about 19 percent are associated with lower maternal and infant deaths. The U.S. rate that year was 32 percent.

Natalie Mothers-to-be weigh safety considerations while also considering the quality of the birth experience. Jessica Bevans, who has three daughters, has been through it all. Her first child was born at a birthing clinic, the second at Boone Hospital Center and the third at home.

I decided to be home because I wanted to be able to focus on the pain and be able to relax through the pain, Bevans said.

O'Fallon Birthing CenterI guess I just learned things from midwives more than I did in the hospital. They were definitely more educationallike caring about you and yourwell being and making sure you know that everything is OK and safe. Whereas, compared to the hospital, it was just kind of like procedurelike a medical procedurewhere I feel like (giving) birth is not a medical procedure. But I wasnt high-risk, and if I was high-risk, I probably would have chose a hospital.

Insurance companies generally side with hospitals when it comes to safety. Aetnas policy says planned deliveries at home and associated services are not medically appropriate. It references the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which says midwifery presents hazards to both mom and child.

The majority of my clients come to me and they need that happy medium, Givens said. I do home births and hospital births, and the ones that choose the hospital birth but still want to go the more natural route are doing so because of insurance purposes and finances.

Indian Midwife explains birthing to a would be motherBirth and economics in India

In India, home births can be especially dangerous. Thats because so many happen among poor women in rural areas who lack access to care and rely on untrained midwives during delivery. A 2010 study by the Harvard School of Public Health showed 150,000 deaths in India could have been prevented by 2015 if women had better access to care during their pregnancies and deliveries.

Vidhi Beri, a lactation specialist and child nutrition counselor in India, said traditional midwives get informal training handed down through generations, but arent updated about advancements in birthing techniques.

In a small village in central India in the Hoshangabad district in Madhya Pradesh, midwifery is a tradition for Sima Kumari,70, whose mother and grandmother were also midwives.

She took government classes training her in natural treatment, hygiene and health, and accompanied her mother as she worked.

She said the process can sometimes be risky if the pregnancy is complicated and she has to take the mom to a hospital.

In majority times the patient dies while travelling, before even reaching the hospital because the hospitals are very far from the villages, she said.

Samir Chakraborty, a gynecologist from Kolkata, India, said midwives lack of specialization makes home births unsafe. Any medical complications can be deadly.

The risks are much different for Indian women higher on the income scale.

Women among Indias growing middle class are getting more C-sections these days -- and facing the complications that come along with them. Indian health officials claim this is partly because of pressure from doctors at private hospitals, which are paid more for surgical procedures. Women who may not know much about the risks of C-sections tend to take their doctors advice.

But wealthier, more educated women in India are starting to push for more natural deliveries -- both in the hospital and, increasingly, at home.

And those home births benefit from well-trained and paid helpers unavailable to the poor.

Ultimately, theres no clear answer as to the best place to give birth. But mothers and health workers in both India and the United States agree that women should ideally be able to choose-- and get all the support they need to deliver healthy babies.

When everything goes right, Givens said, the experience of pregnancy and childbirth can be amazing for mothers. Its unbelievable to see the body change and grow and blossom, and then all this power be put forth into having this new life.

(Additional contribution and Multimedia by Rachel Thomas)



India Blooms New Service-Trans World Features (IBNS-TWF)

(A University of Missouri and IBNS-TWF Collaboration Series Article)
, a trusted research and analytics company which has operations in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, China, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan - has just released a list of the top five best-selling smartphones globally as of the first quarter of 2017 (or from January to March of this year).According to Mr. Neil Mawston, the company's Executive Director,Without further ado, here are the handset models that led the entire industry in terms of sales and market share across the planet within the said time frame:Although it practically has the same shell and screen as its predecessors from the past two years, Apple iPhone 7 still captured the fancy of many consumers -- thanks to its enhanced front and back cameras, waterproof construction, and the sleek, new Jet Black color option."We estimateshipped 21.5 million units and captured 6 percent marketshare worldwide in Q1 2017. The iPhone 7 is by far the worlds most popular smartphone model, due to a compelling blend of user-friendly design, extensive supporting apps, and widespread retail availability for the device," said, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics.The Apple iPhone 7 Plus is the first model to sport the Cupertino company's Dual Camera module that lets the user zoom in on a subject without losing clarity -- a compelling new feature for most mobile consumers in this age massive content sharing on Facebook and Instagram., with its bigger screen and higher pricing, shipped 17.4 million units for second place and 5 percent market-share worldwide in Q1 2017. Apple today accounts for two of the worlds top five smartphone models," Mr. Winter added.Crafting devices that give consumers great value for money, Chinese handset maker OPPO was able to penetrate the Top Handset Sellers list by focusing their devices' build quality, low light imaging performance, beautification mode for selfies, and intense-3D-game-ready internal hardware all while keeping their releases fairly affordable., Executive Director at Strategy Analytics, shared, "shipped 8.9 million units for third place and 3 percent marketshare worldwide in Q1 2017. OPPO is largely unknown in the Western world, but its brand is wildly popular in China and growing rapidly across India. The R9s is OPPOs flagship 4G device with key features such as dual-SIM connectivity and fingerprint security."The most affordable smartphone model in this list, Samsung Galaxy J3 2016 allowed users to experience some key features of the TouchWiz interface, which is also on far more expensive models, without having to break the bank.According to, Director at Strategy Analytics, "Samsung was still gearing up for the launch of its new Galaxy S8 portfolio, but managed to get two models in the top five during Q1 2017. Thecaptured 2 percent global smartphone market-share and fourth place, whiletook 1 percent global share to become the worlds fifth most popular model. Samsungs J3 and J5 are midrange devices that sell very well across Europe and Asia and they helped to offset Samsungs troubles with the Note 7 battery fiasco in the quarter."This model continues to sell well here in the Philippines thanks to its large display, high-resolution selfie camera in front with Soft LED flash for low light conditions, real metal rim, and decent battery life.Do you own any of these five smartphones? What can you say about your device? Why do you think many users opted to get it over other smartphone options out in the market? Let us know your thoughts via our Facebook comments section below.
The United States is considering whether to expand its ban on most carry-on electronic devices  any gadget that's larger than a smartphone  to include U.S.-bound flights from Europe as well, and possibly even the UK, as reports suggest.

Laptop Ban To Expand

The ban, which is presently in effect for U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in the Middle East and North Africa, is a move to clamp down possible terrorist attacks, and to prevent ill-intent individuals from hiding weapons and bombs inside consumer electronics.

As CBS News reports, Department of Homeland Security officials are currently looking at the pros and cons of expanding the ban. Government officials have been meeting with airlines frequently, and a decision can be expected as early as this week.

DHS continues to evaluate the threat environment and will make changes when necessary to keep air travelers safe. 2/2  David Lapan (@SpoxDHS) May 10, 2017

Since it was announced in March, there have been plans to expand the ban, with the DHS actively discussing the policy.

But discussions around banning laptops had been going on for over a year, according to former TSA officials. This policy is the result of an attack on a Somali airliner last year, in which a man hid a bomb inside a laptop.

Back then, the sense was that a widespread laptop ban would enrage business travelers since they'll be unable to work onboard.

Here's Why The Laptop Ban Makes Sense, And Why It Kind Of Doesn't

For all the disruptions it brings, the laptop ban actually makes sense, if you can try to see it exclusively for its intent to better ascertain airplane security and safety. U.S. airlines at present already employ heavy procedures to make sure nothing gets past security or X-ray checks, but alas, technology sometimes fail.

But why not apply the same philosophy and reasoning for domestic flights? Why only limit the laptop ban to certain airlines of certain countries? Surely terrorist attacks could originate from a diverse array of places, and not just the paltry list presently included in the policy.

It can be argued that the laptop ban doesn't really ensure that terrorist attacks won't happen  it simply ensures that terrorist attacks on "certain flights" won't happen.

The Laptop Ban Poses A Serious Threat

Banning devices larger than a laptop onboard would result to them being checked into the cargo hold of a plane, something the Federal Aviation Administration issues caution about. Placing that many lithium-ion batteries inside the cargo hold could lead to a catastrophic explosion, the FAA said.

For the uninitiated, lithium-ion batteries store a lot of energy in such a tiny package, and they can, though not often, be volatile. Placing them in an area of the plane where fires can go undetected and, more importantly, where they cannot be extinguished, creates another level of potential catastrophe altogether.

In that regard, the laptop ban doesn't really ensure safety  it might even worsen it. But announcements haven't been made. When the DHS talks, expect due coverage, as always.

Thoughts about the potential expansion of the laptop ban to flights from Europe? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!

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NASA disclosed new exciting details about its plan to send astronauts to the red planet in the 2030s at the 2017 Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, which took place this week, May 9-11.

The agency had already announced it intends to achieve this ambitious feat in a two-phase strategy.

Phase 1 involves building a "Deep Space Gateway" (DSG), a small space station orbiting the moon, and assembling a Deep Space Transport (DST) vehicle  a reusable spacecraft capable of carrying astronauts to Mars and back.

Phase 2 requires completing the DST spacecraft and performing a Mars verification mission before the journey to the planet's system and the descent to the Martian surface.

The novelty is NASA is thinking of sending a manned mission ahead as part of Phase 2 to orbit the moon in the late 2020s. The mission is expected to last a year and will probably be launched in 2027.

Phase 1: Deep Space Gateway

Speaking at the summit on May 9, Greg Williams, deputy associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, explained the DSG mini-station would allow astronauts to test the technology they will be using to get to Mars.

This "deep space gateway" would be equipped with a power bus, a small habitat to extend crew time, docking capability, and an airlock, and would be serviced by logistics modules to enable research.

All this hardware is to be sent to the lunar orbit in four separate crewed missions between 2018 and 2026 as part of Phase 1 of the journey to Mars.

The lunar space station would also serve as a launching point for the DST vehicle, which could also be resupplied and refurbished here.

The DSG miniature station orbiting the moon is to be assembled in orbit during the first few missions of the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion spacecraft.

Both the SLS gigantic rocket and the Orion crew capsule were initially scheduled to fly together for the first time toward the end of 2018, but the date of the first mega rocket launch was delayed to 2019. Meanwhile, NASA is still weighing the risks of a crewed SLS mission on its integrated flight with the Orion spacecraft.

Phase 2: Deep Space Transport And Crewed Mission In Lunar Orbit

After sending the four crewed missions to drop off equipment to the DSG station, NASA will prepare for Phase 2 of the Mars plan, scheduled to start in 2027.

This second phase would begin with an unmanned flight of the SLS mega rocket to deliver the last piece of hardware to the lunar mini-station  the very DST spacecraft to undergo the journey to Mars.

Immediately after, NASA has scheduled the yearlong crewed mission around the moon, as well as several other flights that will supply the needed equipment for the 2030s' trip to Mars.

Why Astronauts Might Go Around The Moon For A Year

In a presentation for the summit, Williams details NASA's intention to conduct missions in cislunar space  the region between Earth and the moon, including orbits around the moon itself  within the first phase of the Mars plan.

The newly announced yearlong crewed mission has the same destination, with the goal to test the field before the first exploration mission to the red planet.

In other words, the astronauts' job is to validate the DST vehicle before it undertakes the journey to Mars.

"If we could conduct a yearlong 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," he said.

According to Williams, the U.S. space agency plans to launch spacecraft not only on a single orbit around the moon, but to various locations in cislunar space.

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OnePlus has a history of releasing smartphones described as flagship killers, and with the leaked specs sheet and Geekbench scores of the upcoming OnePlus 5, it seems that the trend will continue.

While the information about the smartphone has not yet been confirmed by OnePlus, the OnePlus 5 looks like it is shaping up to be a legitimate competitor to the Samsung Galaxy S8.

OnePlus 5 Leaked Specs Sheet, Price

A previous leak on the specifications of the OnePlus 5 claims that the smartphone will have 6 GB of RAM, not 8 GB of RAM as speculated, along with a 3,600 mAh battery and 128 GB of internal storage. Leaked sketches of the smartphone, meanwhile, reveal the vertical arrangement of the OnePlus 5 dual rear cameras while also showing other design details such as its tapered sides and ports.

Despite these leaks, there were still many questions surrounding the OnePlus 5. A leaked specs sheet of the smartphone, however, provides the answer for most of them.

Acquired by Slash Leaks, the alleged OnePlus 5 specs sheet provides all the technical details of the upcoming smartphone. Highlights include the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, Android 7.1 Nougat, 23-megapixel rear cameras, 16-megapixel selfie camera, 5.5-inch screen, and 4,000 mAh battery.

Another important detail in the leaked specs sheet is that the OnePlus 5 will indeed have up to 8 GB of RAM. The previous leak did mention that there is the possibility that a version of the smartphone will come with such a specification, so the specs sheet could be that of the high-end version of the OnePlus 5. Of course, there is also the possibility that the previous leak was inaccurate and that all units of the OnePlus 5 will have 8 GB of RAM.

Perhaps even more significant than the specs sheet is another document that reveals the OnePlus 5's price. The sheet states the price of the OnePlus 5 will start at $450, which is significantly cheaper than the $650 price tag of the Galaxy S8.

OnePlus 5 Leaked Geekbench Score

A separate report by GSMArena claims that it has received a screenshot from a credible source that revealed the Geekbench score of the OnePlus 5.

The screenshot shows the OnePlus 5's impressive scores of 1963 for single-core and 6687 for multi-core. The multi-core score of the OnePlus 5 is much higher than the score of 6375 for the Galaxy S8+, but its single-core score lags behind the score of 3473 for the iPhone 7 Plus and only slightly to the score of 1978 for the Galaxy S8+.

If the leaked Geekbench score is true, then that means that OnePlus 5 will be a much faster and more powerful device compared to Samsung's current flagship models.

Should Samsung Worry About The OnePlus 5?

The Samsung Galaxy S8 has several things going for it that the OnePlus 5 will not surpass, including the Infinity Display, Iris scanner, and the Bixby digital assistant.

However, considering the leaked specifications, price, and Geekbench score of the OnePlus 5, Samsung should definitely be concerned that a legitimate challenger to the Galaxy S8 is on its way.

It is unclear when OnePlus will officially unveil the OnePlus 5, but signs are pointing that the announcement is coming soon.

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Not long after it officially released the Windows 10 Creators Update this past April, Microsoft is now gearing up for the follow-up: the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, which the Redmond, Washington-based tech firm plans to launch by September.

Indeed  Microsoft is borrowing the "Creators Update" naming scheme for its next major Windows 10 update, and it will explore a new focus on providing iOS and Android devices Windows experiences.

To that end, Microsoft demonstrated four key new additions to Windows 10 to the Fall Creators Update. Here's everything you need to know,

Windows Experiences On Android And iOS

With the Fall Creators Update, Microsoft is introducing Graph, an "intelligent fabric that helps connect dots between people, conversations, projects, and content within the Microsoft Cloud." Graph ensures seamless transitions and consistency of Windows experiences across different devices. This means that getting things done, even if you jump from one device to another, will be easy.

There are four key components of Graph:

 Timeline - With Timeline, users can jump back in time to look for what they'd been working on. It's exactly akin to what your browser history is  but this time, in addition to internet activity, it'll also show you what you've been doing on your computer, such as which tabs, files, or windows you had open and more.

 Pick Up Where You Left Off - With the help of Microsoft's voice-enabled assistant, Cortana, you can, well  pick up where you left off. Editing a document on your PC? Shut the PC down and jump back into editing once you switch to your phone. Microsoft said it best: "It's like having your PC and your phone finish each other's sentences."

 Clipboard - Clipboard is pretty self-explanatory: it allows users to cut, copy, and paste across devices.

 OneDrive Files On-Demand - Microsoft is also enabling users to access OneDrive files without wasting precious storage space. Users will now be able to sync files and open documents from OneDrive without having to download entire folders.

Fluent Design System

"Today, there are many devices and platforms competing for our attention," said Terry Myerson, Microsoft's executive VP for the Windows and Devices Group. He added that users consume media and perform tasks via a number of devices, from tablets to phones to desktop PCs. These all perform differently, and they fulfill different needs.

"Every day, developers also face the challenge of a multi-device, multi-interaction world, and we are committed to simplifying this world with a modern Microsoft design system."

Microsoft's new Fluent Design System is arguably the most beautiful Windows has ever looked and aims to fix this consistency problem.

From the rigidity of Windows XP to the clunky visual package of Windows Vista to the neutralized design of Windows 7 to the minimalism of Windows 10, the Fluent Design System elevates Microsoft's design mettle to deliver "intuitive, harmonious, responsive, and inclusive cross-device experiences and interactions."

Take a look at a preview of Microsoft's new design system below.

If you want to get a preview of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Microsoft just released the latest preview to Insiders. But because September is still far away, expect the latest build to be buggy. Head over to Microsoft's blog and take a look at the known issues for PC.

Thoughts about the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!

 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Avocados are known for their unique taste and health benefits but there appears to be a downside to eating this fruit. It comes with a potential hazard for people who do not know how to properly prepare and slice this guacamole ingredient.

Avocado Hand

Doctors and surgeons in the United Kingdom have reported a spike in the number of people who cut their own hands while slicing through avocados. The increased incidents of avocado-related injury shows potential dangers for those who do not know how to handle the fruit.

"Avocado hand" has become so common that on Saturday afternoons, some doctors prepare themselves for "post-brunch" increase in injuries linked to slicing avocados. Simon Eccles, a surgeon in London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, claims that he deals with an average of four avocado hands weekly.

Not Just Minor Cuts: Avocado Hand May Lead To Nerve Damage

Among the reasons for the injury include people not knowing that the avocados they bought were very ripe and not knowing how to properly handle the fruit.

Doctors do not just deal with minor cuts either because some people cut their hands bad enough to require surgery. In some instances, the injury has led to serious nerve damage.

"Most come about when someone is preparing guacamole, and [the cuts] can be deep," emergency room physician John Torres said. "Avocado-related injuries are more common than most people think, and the resulting lacerations to the hand can be nerve-damaging."

Avoiding Avocado-Related Injuries

People do not have to necessarily part with avocados though. For one, the fruit is good for the body. Avocados are rich in nutrients and monounsaturated fatty acids. Eating one avocado per day may help reduce bad cholesterol level, which can be helpful for people looking for ways to reduce their level of low-density lipoprotein or LDL cholesterol. Studies also showed the fruit can help satiate hunger. Molecules of the fruit likewise showed promise for treating leukemia.

Warning labels could be an effective way to help prevent avocado-related injuries. Doctors also urge people to learn how to better handle the green fruit. The British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons calls for placing warning labels on the skin of the fruit to give instructions for slicing avocados.

"We don't want to put people off the fruit, but I think warning labels are an effective way of dealing with this. It needs to be recognizable," Eccles said. "Perhaps we could have a cartoon picture of an avocado with a knife, and a big red cross going through it?"

Since accidents tend to happen when people slice very ripe avocados, knowing how to assess the ripeness of the fruit may also help. A simple color chart posted on Reddit has shown three varying shades of an avocado that can help indicate the levels of its ripeness. Overripe avocados tend to turn from a pleasant green color to brown.

Another way to assess the ripeness of the fruit is to softly press it. If there is too much give, the fruit is most possibly overripe.

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Officers aboard the Orange County Sherriff's Department helicopter issued a warning on May 10 to civilians frolicking near the waters of California's Capistrano Beach to calmly head toward shore for their own safety.

The sudden advisory was because of the 15 great white sharks spotted swimming too close to the beach, which could potentially attack beachgoers when provoked or become curious about the activity near the shore.

Shark Advisory

In the video, Deputy Brian Stockbridge communicates with the lifeguard outpost to make the announcement.

"You are paddleboarding next to approximately 15 great white sharks ... Exit the water in a calm manner. The sharks are as close as the surf line," Deputy Stockbridge broadcasts.

According to OC Lifeguards Chief Jason Young, there were similar reports brought to their attention and the advisory had just been dropped on May 9. The OCSD's recent sighting, however, made them decide to put the advisory back up.

"We haven't had any reports of anyone being bumped or charged, just observations of them either swimming or breaching," Young said.

You can watch the footage below.

Shark Attacks

The OCSD sighting is only one of the many reported sightings of great whites in California. In fact, a woman surfing at the San Onofre State Beach on April 29 was attacked by a still-unidentified shark.

While shark attacks don't happen often - at least not when humans are careful and do not swim too near their territories - there still have been near-fatal incidences that strike fear in beachgoers' hearts.

In May 2016, a woman swimming in Boca Raton, Florida was bitten by a nurse shark, which refused to release the woman's arm. The woman was brought to the hospital with the 2-foot dying shark still attached, but the shark did not survive the ordeal.

Also on the same month, a teenage boy surfing with his father on Neptune Beach was attacked by an unidentified shark in waist-deep waters. The boy sustained severe lacerations on his right leg but the shark was not found.

On June 28, an 11-year-old boy surfing at Atlantic Beach in California was bitten on his left leg and sustained multiple deep wounds. Earlier that month, an 18-year old man was also bitten in the same beach and sustained multiple deep wounds on his hands and wrist.

The United States already leads in numbers when it comes to shark attacks reported worldwide. In fact, of the 98 shark attacks recorded in 2015, 59 were from the United States, 30 of which were recorded in Florida.

While not all shark attacks are deadly, it still pays to be prepared and know how to act in such a situation. Read our advice on what to do if a shark attacks you.

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Uber is swimming in troubled waters, as it could face federal charges for allegedly stealing Google's Waymo secrets.

Judge William Alsup, presiding over Waymo's case against Uber, just denied Uber's motion for private arbitration to avoid trial. Moreover, the judge recommended that federal prosecutors handle the matter to determine whether Uber stole Waymo's technology.

Should the U.S. Attorney accept the case and find Uber guilty of theft, Uber could be looking at criminal prosecution.

Waymo vs. Uber

It all started when Anthony Levandowski left Waymo to lead Uber's self-driving car unit, and Waymo accused him of stealing secrets on his way out. Waymo alleges that Levandowski joined Uber with valuable information he obtained illegally, so it took matters to court.

Levandowski tried invoking his Fifth Amendment rights, arguing that submitting the allegedly stolen documents would incriminate him, but the court denied his petition. As the lawsuit intensified, Levandowski stepped down from his position running Uber's self-driving car division, but the legal dispute is not over yet.

Uber pushed for arbitration arguing that a clause in Levandowski's contract stipulated that any disputes between him and Waymo should be settled out of court, in arbitration.

Uber's Motion For Private Arbitration Denied

The judge's decision to deny the motion for private arbitration marks another major setback for Uber. The case will go to trial and the evidence will be mostly public, which Uber desperately tried to avoid.

"This order holds that defendants have not shown the elements necessary to justify application of equitable estoppel," Alsup ruled [PDF].

The judge highlighted that in this case, Waymo was not bound by arbitration. According to Alsup, Uber's claims that Waymo used all sorts of tricks to avoid arbitration by not listing Levandowski as a defendant were groundless.

Waymo did seek arbitration against Levandowski and ex-Googler Lior Ron, accusing them of using secret salary information for poaching employees to Otto, their self-driving truck startup that Uber acquired back in 2016.

Uber Could Face Criminal Prosecution

Alsup also issued a separate order [PDF] referring Waymo's case against Uber to the U.S. Attorney, based on the evidence submitted so far. The judge added that it's not the Court's decision to determine whether prosecution is warranted or not, it's entirely up to the U.S. Attorney.

Other orders justifying the referral remain sealed, so it remains unclear what prompted the judge to recommend the case for federal prosecution. In earlier hearings, however, the judge did acknowledge that Waymo had solid evidence that Levandowski stole thousands of files before leaving the company. Uber did not deny the allegations, and Levandowski's attempt to assert his Fifth Amendment rights added more fuel to the fire.

Lastly, Alsup has yet to decide whether to issue a preliminary injunction against Uber. Should he decide for the injunction, Uber's self-driving car developments could face severe limitations.

All in all, things are not looking too good for Uber as the company keeps facing setback after setback in its legal battle with Waymo. The case is set to go to trial in October.

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Less than a month after we got news that AT&T would be buying Straight Path Communications in an effort to expand its spectrum holdings to prepare for 5G, Verizon has swooped in and taken over, snagging the millimeter wave spectrum holder for more than $3 billion.

Verizons acquisition of Straight Path will involve an all-stock deal valued at $3 billion, or $184 a share. It will also involve Verizon paying AT&T a $38 million termination fee.

Straight Path Communications is interesting to these two tier 1 cellular service providers because it has 735 millimeter wave licenses in the 39 gigaHertz band and 133 licenses in the 28 gigaHertz band. These licenses cover the U.S., including all of the nations top 40 markets.

An April 28 Verizon blog expressed the importance of millimeter wave spectrum to 5G, which is whats next in cellular networking. The next big technological innovations are coming in 5G to serve the future needs of business, education, government, and consumers, Nicola Palmer wrote for the Verizon blog. Enhanced fixed and mobile broadband, low-latency services, and massive IoT scale will thrive on mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum, which is where we are focused for growth.

The blog was Verizons effort to explain why it didnt buy 600MHz spectrum during the recent spectrum auction, in which T-Mobile captured 45 percent of all the low-band spectrum sold. Verizons Palmer said Verizon wasnt interested in that, but rather is more interested in mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum, and already has strong spectrum holdings in the 700, 850, 1900MHz/PCS, AWS 1 and 3 spectrum bands.

5G is a new kind of cellular that will be noteworthy due to its parity with wireline speeds and its ability to address the Internet of Things with such capabilities as ultra reliable low latency communications.

Edited by Alicia Young
Authorities from Santa Cruz, La Paz, Tarija, and Trinidad left the technical meetings arguing that the Arce administration did not accept the census be carried out in 2023. | Read More
Mumbai, May 12 (IBNS): To commemorate the vast diversities of India's cultural industries, GVK MIALas Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, the metropolitanas integrated terminal that hosts Indiaas largest public art program a Jaya He, will organize a weeklong passenger engagement activities at the iconic Terminal 2, starting May 15th, to mark the World International Museum Day.

This is for the first time that such a unique initiative will be taken by any international airport within its premises.

Organized annually on May 18 by the International Council of Museums (ICOM), this initiative is a collective effort by museum communities across the globe to raise awareness about the significant role that museums have played in the shaping and development of societies.

Drawing inspiration from this years theme of "Museums and contested Histories: Saying the unspeakable in Museums, MIAL has planned a host of activities for travelers which will include workshops, tours, and folk/traditional musical performances. Through this initiative, the airport aims to apprise passengers about Indias unheard legacies, narratives, historical background and facilitate cultural exchanges amongst travelers transiting through the city.

In addition to this, with the objective of fostering an interest in Indias multicultural legacy through artistic expression, well-known artists and architects from the city will engage with students to enlighten them about the fusion of art and architecture in the context of Indias rich culture and history. The Jaya He Museum previously conducted an educational outreach programme by hosting 200 school students, in the 12-14 year age group, from across the city.

During the week, the airport has also arranged a museum safari for travelers and passengers, reiterating the airports commitment in this direction.

The program entails a brief 15-minute tour of the various artifacts and installations across four levels at the airport. This initiative will give travellers a chance to get a glimpse of the countrys rich cultural heritage, by giving them an opportunity to view over 7000 artworks, created by 100s artists and artisans from across India. Travellers will also get an opportunity to indulge in some lip smacking regional delicacies from Kerala and Kashmir at select locations, offered free of cost while they get a visual treat of the exquisite artworks.

Under the patronage of the Jaya He art initiative, The Jaya He Museum Store at T2 will provide a platform to Indian artist, craft persons and designers to showcase their creativity and proficiency. On this occasion, the store is bringing to the forefront award winning artists to exhibit their work.

These include renowned names Trilok Soni, Rabindra Behera, Dr. Ismail Khatri, Kalyan Joshi, Kapil Jangid, Kamini Kaushal, D.Vaikuntam, Sukhnandi Vyam & Rajesh Vangad who have been conferred with National/State Award for Pichwai, Pattachitra, Ajrakh printing, Phad painting, Sandal wood carving, Madhubani on Papermache , Cherial scroll painting, wood carving and Warli respectively, to name a few.

The Jaya He Museum was conceptualized as an extension of the uniquely Indian aesthetic of the Terminal 2, where modern technologies fuse seamlessly with traditional knowledge. The many-layered narrative is a multi-disciplinary exhibition of the various facets of Indian arts and crafts, showcasing the techniques of artisans from different regions of the country. The various artifacts and installations were curated with the view to distil and interpret the spirit of India, offering visitors a quintessential reception to Mumbai, and India at large.

In 2016, more than 35,000 museums in close to 145 countries participated in ICOMs International Museum Day.


Netflix talked up its European ambitions this week as it opened a new European customer service hub in Amsterdam which will eventually employ 400 staff.

The customer service hub will initially employ a workforce of 170, growing to 345 by the end of 2017. Netflix says it aims to have 400 employees there by the end of 2018.

Amsterdam is also the location of Netflixs European, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) headquarters.

More than 120 employees from 18 countries work at the EMEA HQ in business development, marketing, PR, public policy and corporate functions such as finance, legal and recruiting.

Netflixs decision to expand its European business from Amsterdam is eyecatching. Most US TV and film businesses have chosen to base their European hubs in London.

The expansion of Netflixs workforce in Europe comes as it invests more in European productions.

Marseille, Netflixs first original series from France, is now in production for a second season, as is Left Bank Pictures The Crown.

Las Chicas del Cable, Netflixs first original series from Spain, launched on 28 April and is in production for a second season.

Dark, Netflixs first original series from Germany, is due to launch late 2017; its second, Dogs of Berlin, will air in 2018.

Subarra, Netflixs first original series from Italy, is due to launch late 2017.

Osmosis, Netflixs second original series from France, is due to begin production in 2018.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said: We are delighted to announce the creation of jobs in Europe and the opening of our new customer service hub in Amsterdam, as well as two new European original series. Europe is a creative centre for great storytelling that resonates around the world and we continue to invest in European content.

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New Delhi, May 12 (IBNS): The 'Great Indian EVM Saga' took a new turn on Friday as the Chief Ministers of Delhi and Madhya Pradesh, Arvind Kejriwal and Shivraj Singh Chouhan respectively, engaged in a mini Twitter battle.

It was Chouhan who took a swipe at the Delhi based political party and asked them to first look within the latter's own turf and set the house in order.

"AAP which has started #savedemocracy campaign should first look within & set its house in order. #EVMsNotTamperable," Chouhan, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), tweeted.

Hitting back, the Delhi Chief Minister, who has gone at lengths and cried foul against the legitimacy of EVM's after almost every elections this year, where his party has fared dismally, said that it was the BJP who had opposed the use of the Electronic Voting Machines till 2014.

"Surprising. It was BJP who opposed EVMs till 2014. Now BJP supports EVMs?," Kejriwal tweeted.
Guwahati, May 12 (IBNS) : Police on Friday arrested seven teenagers, all likely to be minors, on charges of alleged rape and murder of a 20-year old girl in West Karbi Anglong district on Wednesday night.

According to the reports, the accused persons committed the crime when the girl was returning to her home after attending a cultural programme with a male friend in the Tamulguri area under Baithalangso police station.

The next day local people found her body hanging from a tree.

Among those arrested is the victim's male friend.

A top police official said, " we are awaiting the statement of the victim's male friend and investigation is going on."

The accused have denied their involvement in the crime.

The police official said that several injury marks have been found on the victim's body.

A case of rape and murder has been registered at Baithalangso police station.

According to official figures, over 10,000 women were raped in Assam over the past one decade.

According to the reports of Assam police, 1723 rape cases were registered in the state last year.



(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
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East Baton Rouge Mayor-President Kip Holden, center, cuts a cake with the 'Baton Rouge 200' logo commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Baton Rouge's incorporation as a city, for the hardy faithful in attendance after cancellation of the morning's official program raising the North Boulevard Town Square's 'Red Stick' into its ready position for a midnight New Year's drop, Saturday, Dec. 31, 2016. Downtown Development District executive director Davis Rhorer is at left, and Kadajaisha Love, 14, and her brother Jaden Love, 10, watch at right. The 'Baton Rouge 200' logo incorporates an image of the 'Red Stick' located in the Square. Holden was also presented #37 of 200 commemorative 'Baton Rouge 200' paperweights by Visit Baton Rouge President/CEO Paul Arrigo, during one of Holden's last official appearances during his three terms as the city's 37th Mayor-President, which Arrigo noted was 'about six percent of the total time for all of the city's Mayors. Arrigo said the rest of the 200 made will be used as gifts for VIP's visiting the city. The small crowd also sang the traditional 'Auld Lang Syne,' and Dept. of Public Works parish-wide landscape manager Greg Bivin said that despite the cancellation of the evening's concert and fireworks, he was optimistic that the 'Red Stick' could be raised 60 feet into position later, enabling its midnight drop.
Srinagar, May 12 (IBNS) Jammu and Kashmir Police on Friday pasted on walls posters of three militants in Shopian saying they were involved in the killing of young Army officer Ummer Fayaz, reports said.

On Thursday Kashmir Police chief claimed that three militants were involved in the abduction and killing of Ummer Fayaz in Herman village of south Kashmirs Shopian district.

A massive hunt has been launched to nab the militants and police said the involved militants are from Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen.

A resident of Sudsona village in Kulgam district, Ummer was killed in Shopian village where he had gone to attend a relatives marriage ceremony.



(Reporting by Saleem Iqbal Qadri)
Artist Arone Meeks has always been hunting for lost pieces of himself, he says.

A Kukumidiji man of Laura, Far North Queensland, he has always been informed by his indigenous culture, the environment, identity, sexuality, and how those fluid structures have impacted on his life in different places and at different times.

Artist Arone Meeks with some of his prints at Megalo Print Gallery + Studio. Credit:Sitthixay Ditthavong

His mother died when he was 11 and he was raised by an uncle, sharing a bedroom with his grandfather who first fostered his creativity.

In high school and later at art school in Brisbane he struggled with finding his place, and what part art would play in his life, eventually finding direction at the City Art Institute in Sydney. Returning to Queensland he studied with tribal elders including those of the Lardil people of Mornington Island.
Canberra cops will have more sophisticated specialist resources to draw on with a promised expansion of the federal police force.

As part of the 2017 budget, Treasurer Scott Morrison announced the AFP will score 300 more personnel and the largest single funding investment in a decade, equalling $321.4 million.

Canbera politicians and law enforcement have welcomed extra AFP resources that will benefit the ACT.

An AFP spokesman said the Canberra community enjoys a well-supported community policing role with the federal agency.

"The increased funding announced by the Australian government will enhance the capabilities that are available to the ACT," the spokesman said.
The leaders of Canberra's indigenous community have called for deep, systemic change to the justice and child protection systems to address the disproportionately high rate of Aboriginal imprisonment in the ACT.

The ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body (ATSIEB) and ACT Council of Social Services released a report on Thursday based on a forum held earlier this year marking 25 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

The new report urges the government to address systemic problems in the justice system for the indigenous community. Credit:Greg Henderson

It urged the government to address systemic problems in the justice system to address "racism and inherent bias"; invest more in social support and health services to address the underlying causes; properly resources indigenous services in the ACT; and called for leadership from the territory government.

While the government recently announced a long-awaited justice reinvestment program, Yarrabi Bamirr, ATSIEB chairman Ross Fowler said there was more to be done to reduce the disproportionately high indigenous imprisonment rate.
New Delhi, May 12 (IBNS) : As India-Pakistan relationship continued to be tense over Islamabad's plans to execute an Indian, a senior Indian diplomat's phone was seized on Friday in a Pakistani court.

According to an NDTV report, Piyush Singh, who is in charge of visas and consular access, was using his phone within a court-room in Islamabad. Local media said he was seen taking photos.

The cellphone was later returned to him and no charges were pressed. He told the court that he was texting on his phone and not using his camera.

"This is not a big issue. He didn't know the rule, and took his mobile inside by mistake," NDTV quoted its sources as saying.

The diplomat was in court on behalf of Uzma , a 20-year-old Indian woman who claims she was tricked into marrying a Pakistani man and now fears for her life.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has defended his government's plans to drug-test welfare applicants, describing it as a "policy based on love".

Welfare and mental health advocates have slammed the drug-test trial, announced in the budget, arguing it will not help people with addiction and stigmatise those who apply for welfare.

But speaking at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, Mr Turnbull said the policy was about reaching out and helping those with drug and alcohol problems.

"If you love somebody who is addicted to drugs, if you love somebody whose life is being destroyed by drugs, don't you want to get them off drugs?" he said on Friday.
The O'Donohue's building in Little Bourke Street occupied by an EzyMart store has sold for $5.81 million, adding to a slew of strong sales below $10 million in Melbourne's centre.

Gross Waddell's Michael Gross, who marketed the property with Raoul Salter, said the former warehouse at 377-381 Little Bourke Street transacted on a yield of 3.6 per cent.

The O'Donohue building at 377-379 Little Bourke Street sold for $5.81 million.

About 100 onlookers watched seven bidders push up the price before the auctioneer's hammer settled the deal for a local investor.

The three-storey concrete structure was built on the site of the former Racing Club Hotel by James O'Donohue, a bookmaker and importer of marble statuary, after the hotel was delicensed in 1920.
How many deaths or bad accidents have been recorded in the last few years at the intersections of Furneaux Street and Manuka Circle and Telopea Park and Currie Street? Did the accidents that caused these intersections to be labelled "black spots" occur at times of arrivals and departures of attendees to sporting events at the oval? Am I just lucky when I drive through these intersections regularly that I have never considered either to be dangerous? Elizabeth Chisholm, Red Hill Get priority right Re "Canberra Business Chamber continues push for new convention centre" (May 9, p8). If I remember correctly, this project had a 4:1 ratio, which should mean that for every dollar invested, four would be returned to the ACT government. As Infrastructure Australia knows, the tram project showed a return of barely 1:1.

So, which is better value for the ACT government and why are we not going ahead with it yesterday? This ought to be a priority, not the tram. As should a major project for the ACT government to get back into the business of building public housing. Katy told us the tram would cost roughly the same as the Convention Centre. Let's buildit! Russ Morison, Theodore

Yassmin's syndrome No, C. J. Johnston of Duffy (letters, May 12) critics of the behaviour of Ms Abdel-Magied are not, in the main, displaying racism (at least not in The Canberra Times). No, what they dislike is the seeming self-aggrandisement and foot-in-mouth words and actions of a pretentious young woman who seeks to elevate her media profile. Yassmin, I fear, suffers from a disease that afflicts many in the public eye. It's called (being a) media tart. Christina Faulk, Swinger Hill

Promise broken The budget broke the federal government's promise for $50 million funding for the Barton Highway upgrade made by the former Eden Monaro member Peter Hendy, now a staff member of the Prime Minister. He confirmed the government's commitment after the election. The broken promise gives little comfort to the relatives and friends of those who have been injured and killed on this notoriously busy, dangerous road. Ken Helm, Murrumbateman Clumsy ABC baffles

What is the ABC coming to? Not content with recently cutting off the end of the PM's Press Club appearance, last Thursday's edition of The Drum went even lower. Just as journalist Paul Bongiorno was wrapping up a moving personal tribute to one of the ABC's greats, the widely respected Mark Colvin, he was cut off in mid-sentence and the program brought to a rushed conclusion by anchor Julia Baird. And what came next? An earth-shattering breaking news story? Of course not. As with the PM's address, what we got were several promos, followed by old repeats. Can someone at the ABC tell me who takes responsibility for such poor program judgment and, importantly, how do they justify it? Eric Hunter, Cook

Coal a risky venture The (unlimited, free) water used in the Carmichael mine, if it goes ahead, could contaminate the Great Artesian Basin. It would take decades for the aquifer to clean itself. As for the "thousands" or "tens of thousands" of jobs that have been touted, Adani's own economic adviser, Dr Jerome Fahrer of ACIL Allen, has calculated that the mine, rail, and port project would create just 1200 new jobs in central Queensland, and related activities would create an additional 264 new jobs Australia-wide. Richard Keys (Letters, May 11) is right about the mechanisation of mines these days. Most of the machinery  notably trucks and trains  could, and probably will, be operated by computers (robots).

Supporters of the mine say that it will help provide energy to tens or hundreds of millions of people in India (Adani's and Mr Adani's home base). Both the Indian energy minister and the Prime Minister have stated that India will cease importing coal by about2020. Instead of coal, India is investing large sums of money on solar energy farms, already including one of the largest in the world. Most local banks have indicated that they will financially support the coal mine. New coal mines sure looks like risky investments to me. Douglas Mackenzie, Deakin

Hold the centre "Australian values" is a bullying weasel expression much like "Islamophobia". Our former Prime Minister ("Tony Abbott claims 'cultural cowardice' in politics at heart of voter discontent", canberratimes.com.au, May 3) and his conservative cohorts want to hitch ultra-nationalism and Christianity to the shirt tails of much grander enterprises such as democracy, universal human rights, press freedom and judicial independence. In much the same way, the regressive left wield Islamophobia; attaching criticism of Islam with the pernicious evils of racism and bigotry. I suspect that most of us in the centre reject both extremes; we're grateful to be historically free of a Christian yoke and don't want to don an Islamic one.

Peter Robinson, Ainslie Echo of an old bias The Liberal Government's planned funding cuts to ACT Catholic Schools have brought gloating and points scoring (David Jenkins, Letters, May 11). This echoes anti-Catholic bigotry, which I thought I had faded from Australian life in the 1950s. This is a very old debate. Catholic schools point out that they enrol the full range of children and direct funding within the Catholic education system to address local needs within for the ACT and Goulburn. Parents know they get only a fraction of the public funding going to government schools. They also know if all the students in Catholic schools went to public schools, it would cost governments more.

If my children attend the lovely public primary school across the oval, then they would receive higher public funding. Same community, same levels of social advantage, but better public funding today and for the next 10 years. If the Libs' plans are enacted, then Catholic schools throughout the region will receive funding cuts for another decade. Parents of kids at ACT Catholic schools are not asking for a special deal; they are not "bludgers" and "leaners". They want affordable choice for every parent and a fair deal for ACT Catholic schools. Michael Cuddihy, Campbell

No one would agree to subsidised taxi fares for people who refuse to take public transport. No one would agree to subsidies for the use of private/personal transport because it is a personal choice and fundamental right. And, no one should be subsidised with public funding when they choose to send their children to private schools of any description/denomination. Just as BHP doesn't subsidise its competitors in a free market economy, so the government should rethink the entire funding of private education policy. Redirect the funds into the public system and the universities.

W. Book, Hackett To help solve A. V. Peterson's mystery on school funding (Letters, May 12), I will offer some advice. Every one of these children's parents pay taxes. I think all private school parents would agree some of those taxes should go towards educating their children, the same as in government schools. John Hutka, Ngunnawal

Brings back so many old memories to read letters regurgitating all the tired arguments about "state aid" for Catholic schools. If some people would prefer to have Catholic schools close, then say so. Australians must enjoy bringing their bias to the fore. If letter writers want to push a barrow, at least check that the tyre is pumped up. Ray O'Brien, Wavell Heights, Qld Words of the weasel Can we cease using "efficiency dividend" to mean a cut? A "dividend" is a sum of money paid by a company to its shareholders out ofits profits or reserves or, in an older mathematical sense, a number to be divided by another number. The cut to university funding in the new budget is just that  a cut. It is vicious weasel-word mongering for government spokespeople to refer to this as a "dividend".

Nor does it have anything to do with "efficiency"; in fact, the opposite. In my 40years working in Australian universities, it has been abundantly clear that the non-stop funding cuts to these institutions, combined with their ballooning administrative burdens, have made them far less efficient. An "inefficiency debit" would be a more accurate descriptor. Michael Smithson, Charnwood, ACT Muddy-care and murk While currently appearing to "guarantee" Medicare, the Coalition has muddied the special levy funding stream. Although the Medicare Levy did not actually pay for all ofMedicare, at least it didn't pay for anything else. How long before it is a Medicare and Sundry Extras Levy? While saying they're putting Medicare on a pedestal, the identified funding stream has been tossed in the miscellaneous odds and sods basket.

How long before the justification for the levy is utterly discredited? The same applies to superannuation. How long before super ceases to be an objective in itself and becomes nothing more than a convenient accounting sleight of hand by which governments can give tax breaks for any purpose they think expedient at the time? But, hey, why take my opinion seriously? Why not ask an accountant; preferably a trust accountant. S. W. Davey, Torrens

Spare a coffee or two Barrie Smillie's comments on Australia's overseas help ("Prioritise aid", Letters, May 10) can be contrasted with the 900 million people overseas living on $US1.90 each day. That's less than the price of a coffee in Australia. Each day, 17,000 children around our world die from preventable causes such as diarrhoea from drinking dirty water, or tetanus. One dose of the diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis vaccine costs about US20. Australia's aid helps those children to be alive after five.

Poverty does not respect geography and it deserved our attention in the budget. Peter Graves, Curtin Running wild What largesse! The Turnbull government is trumpeting its one-off payment to age pensioners of $75 and proudly leaked the details before the actual budget was handed down. What on earth will age pensioners do with all this money?

We may see age pensioners running wild in the streets as they fritter away their $75. This from a government that is about to give billions in tax cuts to big business. John Davenport, Farrer Heal thyself More feel-good funding for the National Disability Industry.

What happened to "Pick up thy bed and walk"? C. J. Mountifield, Greenway TO THE POINT FAREWELL, MARK COLVIN

Good to hear the plaudits for the late Mark Colvin, especially from the Prime Minister. Turnbull only left out one important detail; that Colvin was a career-long denizen of that rat's nest of leftie, pinko, mind-control, the ABC. S. W. Davey, Torrens I greeted the news of the death of ABC PM's Mark Colvin with profound sadness. Colvin set the highest journalistic standards but it was his voice that was such a joy. And I'm still grieving John Clarke. We can't keep losing the good guys like this. Jenny Goldie, Michelago, NSW Rest in peace Mark Colvin, a reporter of integrity and a charming man over many decades.

Barrie Smillie, Duffy IGNORANT VIEWS What if Yassmin had said, the "Stolen Generation" is a myth? Andrew Bolt maintains that. Imagine if Yassmin said the war in Iraq is won and over? Bolt said that. Imagine if Yassmin said boat people threw their children overboard? Aussie politicians said that. If there was a university degree for gross ignorance, lots of people in this country would get first class honours. Richard Ryan, Summerland Point, NSW ROYALTY A TOUGH JOB
When I arrived at The Age in 1985, the place seemed as mighty as Rome, the editor a Caesar. It had nationally acclaimed talents like Leunig and Spooner and Tandberg; a few short years before, it had been listed as one of the 12 great English-language newspapers in the world.

The newspaper's range of interests was as vast as the spaces it had to accommodate stories. There was nothing you wrote that couldn't find a home somewhere. Art, politics, sport, things that happened in the street ...

The Age's old headquarters on Spencer Street.

In 1990, when my first collection of journalism was published, I said newspapers were like crowded marketplaces, full of different voices all speaking a common language. That was The Age when I joined it.

It was also a doorway through which I could pass into the history of Melbourne, this virtual city-state. The history of The Age goes back to the Eureka Stockade. The Age backed the miners and rode the wave of popular agitation that changed Victoria from a feudal colony run by the governor and the big squatters to something approaching a modern democratic state.
"He wants to change the world. We'll knock that out of him quick smart."

The comment was about me. Uttered with a raspy tone beneath a cigarette-stained moustache, the editor was probably about the same age I am now, although he seemed in hindsight much older than I now feel.

Simon Holt with then-prime minister Julia Gillard.

It was 1989. I was fresh out of university, in my first full time newsroom job.

While it's true to say the older man's cynical outlook was never going to change much at all, it would also be fair to say some of what he had to say held credence.
There are two distinct aspects to the 2017-18 budget. First is its delivery of better services to mainstream Australia through more spending on health, schools and infrastructure. "It's a mainstream budget, where Tony Abbott's budgets were almost entirely ideological," Monash University political psychologist James Walter said. With emphasis on fairness, this is the element designed to appeal to the centre of the electorate, closing off some of Labor's most successful lines of attack. This is the part that contends with the traditional two-party contest. Bill Shorten inadvertently acknowledged the government's success with his line in the budget-in-reply that "we are not you, and you will never be us". It's just that it's now a lot harder to tell the difference. Turnbull has so successfully appropriated the Gonski model of fairer school funding that Shorten's budget-in-reply did not once mention the word that was, until a week ago, a Labor trademark  Gonski. Second is the budget's brazen populism, designed to ward off Hanson's One Nation, Cory Bernardi and his Australian Conservatives and even the former prime minister, Tony Abbott, who edges ever-rightward and now calls for a cut to Australia's overall immigration intake.

All populism, left and right, is essentially an anti-elite project. So Bernie Sanders and Trump both fumed about political insiders, lobbyists, donors, the political class, Wall Street and the big banks. Right-wing populism distinguishes itself by adding a second strand  it blames an "out group" for a society's problems. The out group is usually foreigners including immigrants and, this time around in America, it's Muslims and Mexicans. Both of these elements  the anti-elite and the anti-foreigner  are prominent in the budget. Can you imagine? Turnbull, an economic conservative leading the party of capital, a former businessman and investment banker, is leading an assault on the big banks. Not only a new tax designed to appropriate an estimated 3 to 4 per cent of the banks' annual profits, but a series of intrusions into bank governance as well. The proposed measures "give the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority the power to determine who runs banks and the circumstances in which they run them, to coin a phrase", in the words of independent economist Saul Eslake. Powers "to determine who can be a director or senior executive of a bank, how much they get paid, and the circumstances in which they get fired". And fines of as much as $200 million for a bank executive's malfeasance.

The government hasn't even pretended that this is based on any economic principle. At least Labor's proposed mining tax was a super-profits tax, based on the same principles as the offshore oil and gas taxation regime that quietly has been in operation for over 30 years. Turnbull's bank tax is an arbitrary one, an undisguised money-grab. Challenged, Turnbull gave this justification for this new tax on the biggest five banks: "It's only fair that they pay their share and they can afford it." Which was only a shade more rational than Scott Morrison's rejoinder to the banks: "Nobody likes you." John Howard, the role model whom Turnbull calls the "gold standard" for prime ministers, immediately rejected the bank tax. And so, of course, did the banks. And it is indeed a poor piece of policy. But the banks politically have nowhere to turn  Labor and the Greens would treat them even more harshly. And the banks completely missed the advent of populism. Oblivious, they were under the misapprehension that size, self-importance, regular shoulder-rubbing with politicians and tricky "crisis management" consultants could protect them indefinitely against the consequences of their exploitative oligopoly. Morrison's anticipation of bank complaints was one for the ages: "Cry me a river."

Everywhere in the world, the banks are a central target for anti-elitist urges, squarely in the cross-hairs of populist movements throughout the centuries. The government also addressed the "out-group" element of populism. It's stepped up taxes and charges on foreign home-buyers and on companies hiring foreign workers. This is of a piece with the government's recent toughening of visa conditions for foreign workers and its tighter tests for citizenship. The budget also hit, once again, that permanent Coalition out-group, the unemployed, with a pilot program of drug tests and tougher rules. Labor's response was to promise to go even harder on some of the Coalition's populist measures. Shorten repeated his promise to tear into the banks with a royal commission, and added another category to the pursuit of elites  he would limit to $3000 the amount that a taxpayer can deduct for the cost of arranging their tax affairs. This would hurt the multimillionaires who spend so much on their tax-deductible tax accountants that they manage to reduce their taxable incomes to zero. But it will also hurt their high-end accountants. Neither does Shorten have any sympathy for foreign workers or home buyers. Indeed, he will search for ways to deliver the same populist messages.
Malcolm Turnbull at the Snowy power station. The government wants to expand the scheme's capacity. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It was built by loans raised by the Commonwealth, with the governments of NSW and Victoria explicitly refusing to contribute to its costs. Once the electricity scheme became operational in the late 1950s, the Commonwealth got into a brawl with NSW and Victoria about the price that could be charged for the premium power it produced. Put bluntly, NSW and Victoria didn't want to pay any sort of premium at all, or even pay for at the notional wholesale rates that its own coal-fired power generators charged its distribution systems. Eventually, nearly 60 years ago, Robert Menzies made perhaps the worst financial deal of his years in power. He agreed that the scheme would provide power to NSW and Victoria at a massive discount. Every year, the recurrent costs of running the electricity scheme would be totted up, and the state government (and the ACT) would pay a share according to the percentage of the power they took. The recurrent costs were the annual interest bills on the loan (though not on any repayment of principal), and the cost of running the power systems. The recurrent costs included neither depreciation nor the continuing work on developing the scheme. In those days, of course, state electricity authorities were fully government-owned. NSW and Victoria, and the ACT Electricity Authority, as it then was, got hydro power at a fraction of its real value. Naturally, they charged consumers as much as they could get away with. They were thus profiting handsomely from the start, without any share of the profit going to citizens of other states. But even if NSW and Victorian consumers were paying full freight, they were also benefiting from the effective subsidy provided by electricity authority profits. Citizens of other states were not doing so nicely, and, for a long time, neither getting access to the power nor its special value as peak demand power available, as it were, from a battery. Hydro power is clean, and recyclable, in the sense that baseload generators can, in the early hours of the morning when demand is low, pump hydro water upstream.

When politicians from NSW and Victoria agree, it's time to secure your purse and your wallet, and, probably, your privy parts. But Victoria and NSW also benefited from sums in the billions of dollars by another rip-off arrangement. The Commonwealth agreed with Victoria and NSW that it would regard the Snowy River water turned westward into the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers as a bonus by-product, available for irrigation or town water at no charge from the authority or the Commonwealth. Even South Australians benefit from this deal, although probably not as much as they ought. NSW and Victorian farmers, or shire councils along the rivers, would no doubt indignantly deny that they get this water "free". They would point to expensive volume licences, and per-litre charges. But the sums they pay go to the cost of local reticulation systems, not the engineering, tunnels and dams of the Snowy scheme, and, in any event, the money has been paid to the state governments, not to the Commonwealth or the hydro scheme. The ACT might say it has been extra virtuous in that it has not drawn water from the Murrumbidgee, but only from tributary streams downstream of the scheme. Forty years into the scheme, many of the ground rules changed. But the Commonwealth could hardly have been more perverse about its own interests when the rules were being charged. First, it had given away free water and highly subsidised power, on which NSW and Victoria were making big profits. When it decided that power should be priced at value rather than a ridiculous formula, it decided the states should still be allowed to have the surplus value. Profits of (presently) about $200 million a year have been there for divvying up mostly by NSW and Victoria for 30 years. All too little had been reinvested. When the idea of corporatising Snowy Hydro began, NSW and Victoria argued they should be allocated shares on the basis of their share of consumption of the power generated. They had contributed no capital over the years, and had paid very little, even as consumers. They had had full benefit, at no costs, to the extra water going into irrigation.

I remarked at the time that the moral right of the states to such shares was about as good as a Sydney motorist saying she was entitled to a share of the value of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the basis she had paid tolls every time she crossed. The Commonwealth did not lack for good advice, including from then Snowy boss Charles Halton, father of Jane. But good policy seemed secondary both to pushing macroeconomic reform on the states via incentives, and the politics of Commonwealth-state relations. The amazing thing is that premiers and chief ministers in other states did not kick up a fuss, either for similar largesse or for some sort of recompense for the billions of dollars contributed by their citizens now being hijacked by the two biggest, most powerful and populous states. Even the ACT had a right, of sorts, to complain, given the Commonwealth had appropriated to itself Canberra's share of the unearned booty. All of this occurred, of course, before much of an active politic of climate change, concern about renewable energy, concern over gas supplies, or the social and economic costs of coal pollution. Even leaving aside the ripping-off of non-south-eastern taxpayers, the policy and political give-away decisions of the past 30 years, by Labor and Liberal governments, have been mostly financial disasters for the Commonwealth. It must be recorded that one cannot only blame ideologues and quick-money grabs by the politicians. Serious misjudgments by asset-sales "specialists" in the central federal bureaucracy have also been at fault, if never called to account. One hardly needs add that private bankers, financial consultants and other rent seekers have also extracted millions of dollars from the taxpayer as they have, at various times, advised governments about privatisation and packaging things up for market. Naturally, sale of the Commonwealth's share of the scheme was recommended by the Tony Shephard-led commission of audit. Perhaps he could, under another hat, foresee its potential for an oval, flat and retail-centre development. Malcolm Turnbull, who has been involved as a minister one way or another in the future of the Snowy scheme for more than a decade, now recognises how important the scheme is for meeting future energy needs, particularly as our capacity (and desire) to depend on coal generation declines. He would have far fewer options were the scheme in private hands. He is discovering that his ambitions to increase the hydro capacity of the scheme could fail for want of willingness from Victoria and NSW to make any contribution. Consistent to the last.

On Tuesday night, Scott Morrison described the Snowy scheme as "the benchmark for nation-building infrastructure". One wishes one could say that about the Commonwealth's stewardship of its assets and the public interest. "The Prime Minister has announced our intention to further develop the Snowy Hydro with Snowy 2.0," Morrison said. "Tonight we announce our intention to go further. The Commonwealth is open to acquiring a larger share or outright ownership of Snowy Hydro, from the NSW and Victorian state governments, subject to some sensible conditions. "First, all funds received by the states would need to be reinvested in priority infrastructure projects. "Second, Snowy Hydro's obligations under its water licence would be reaffirmed and we would commit to work together to expedite and streamline environmental and planning processes associated with Snowy 2.0, without compromising any standards or controls. "Third, Snowy Hydro would have to remain in public hands. We have already begun discussions with NSW and invited similar discussions with Victoria."
The Tile tracker will find your lost keys via your phone. (Too bad if you lose your phone as well.) The loss of my keys wasn't quite as drama-laden. Still, you never know what you've got 'til it's gone, as an astute songwriter once noted. A bunch of keys in these security-conscious days, it turns out, very nearly defines your existence. My parents spent most of their lives without owning a key to the door of their home.

It was common when I was young to see cars parked in the street with keys not only dangling from the ignition, but a spare inserted in the lock to the boot, too. For convenience. Post boxes were often nothing more than drums on a post, open to the passing world. But when my set of keys went missing, I found myself despairing. There was the door key to the deadlocked house I inhabit. The place is otherwise all but impossible to enter. I once locked myself out on a balcony while watering pot plants and was saved only because I had a mobile phone and could call for help. There was the key to my car, which, naturally, was locked tight. The key is electronic. A replacement key, I was informed, could be flown in from overseas. The quoted cost was staggering. On the other hand, could someone have found the key and even now be creeping about, pressing its button to discover which car flashed its lights, asking to be stolen?

There was a magnetic fob to a daughter's apartment building and a key to her apartment. It seemed unlikely my daughter would be thrilled to know I'd put her security into public circulation. There was a key to my motorcycle, and another to the sturdy wheel-lock I'd fixed to it. The key to that particular (ageing) model of motorcycle is a very particular thing, just about impossible to copy, and I didn't have the serial number that might have enabled me to send off to the United States to order  at crippling expense  a replacement. The prospect of my Harley sitting locked and unusable was particularly bleak. Oh, yes. And I'd recently decided to rent a box at Australia Post. Would the postal service even replace a post-box key? How many statutory declarations might be required? And how many dollars? I'd turned into some kind of 21st-century paranoid fraidy-cat. I'd locked my life away.

The worst of it was that I couldn't imagine how or where I'd lost the large, jangling bunch of keys that testified to my level of alarm at modern life. The taxi company and Uber couldn't assist. I retraced my steps between home and work. Nope. Searched under desks and beds. About then a daughter reminded me she'd affixed an electronic tracking doo-dad to my key-ring, predicting this very dilemma would visit her old man. The tracker connected via some kind of magic to my iPhone, which had an app that helped identify where the keys ought to be. Fabulous. Except the doo-dad had a range of only about 100 metres. A close inspection of the app informed that it had last detected the keys four days previously, and a little map on the screen showed they had been, at that time, in the street outside. Dropped, I could only assume, while I had my mind on other things, like Collingwood's current form.

It seemed no more than a wild act of desperation, but there was nowhere else to go but the police station. And there in a box on the police station's front desk was an assortment of keys brought in by fine citizens who'd found them floating about without their owners. And there among them was my precious bunch! I undertook a wild jig and the two young constables behind the desk  possibly attuned to disappointed citizenry  pumped the air. Someone had found my keys in the street and had taken the trouble to take them several kilometres to the police station, and hadn't bothered to leave their name.
All my life, truth-telling has been the mast to which I consider myself lashed. Elective suffering, certainly, but my question is; was the strike also thus purposed? I think not, either in its strategy, or its tactics. The rhetoric was murky, cartooning the stoush as a classic jobs-versus-profit. But that's simplistic. It is far from self-evident that striking for jobs will serve the paper, its capacity for truth or, indeed, its employer-status. So selfishness can be argued either way. Meanwhile, Murdoch must be beside himself with glee. I believe deeply in justice and the common good, but have never joined a union because I distrust the easy slippage from collectivism to coercion. Coercion was never a friend of truth and for me, last week's trollage confirms this. I wrote my first Herald piece in 1989. At first, every few years, I'd exhort Fairfax to make an honest woman of me. A job, I thought. A salary, a desk. Holiday pay. Sick pay. A computer even. Taxi fares. But no. None of the above. You're not a journalist, they said. You don't qualify.

Over the years, I've had word cuts and pay cuts. I've had editors deliberately reduce my pay to maintain their own. But I've never once had a murmur from the union; no whiff of invitation or support. Slowly I got used to going it alone. It was a hard gig, especially with kids and mortgages, but it was one I loved  still love  for the opportunity to speak with a clean voice. In Australia, I figured, you pay for doing what you love. So yes, there's personal stuff: hurt, disappointment, defensiveness, fear, perhaps on both sides. There's my feeling that solidarity, if it exists, should work both ways. But behind the emotion  and too often obscured by it - are much bigger issues. I'm not the enemy here. Even the Fairfax executives are not the enemy, much as the impetuous young mind craves a parent to repudiate. With the newspaper industry in a fair approximation of collapse, the real battle is to preserve truth in a post-truth world, countering the terrifying relapse into feudalism. For Fairfax to tear itself apart can only delight the death-eaters that gather as storm clouds on the horizon. As a permanent freelancer, I see now, I've been something of a canary. As news outlets, publishers and universities relentlessly casualise their workforce  reconceiving themselves from altruistic institutions to corporations  the knowledge sector is in danger. Everyone is sackable on a whim; no voice is protected against power; the cost of truth is poverty. Eventually this jeopardises not just jobs, but civilisation itself.

These are global forces. If I thought a Fairfax strike would change them one iota, I'd likely be more supportive. But the winds of corporatism are circling the planet. Yet we small guys also signify. We've become complacent about truth. "I get my news online," say the millennials - as though news sources were interchangeable, god-given, guaranteed. But most online sources pay peanuts, plagiarise rampantly, cut and paste stuff that is hearsay at best. This is unsustainable. If journalists are not paid to discover, scrutinise and articulate truth, copy will come from those who need no payment  the rich, the self-interested, the venal. This is feudalism, and already we teeter on its brink. So I see the Fairfax strike in this context. Jobs matter, of course. But always, for me, the question is, does it help or hinder our capacity to speak truth into the future? This is why I was so shocked by last week's vituperative onslaught. It's one thing to take action, which may or may not nourish truth. Quite another to decide that action must be universal and that dissenters  including those neither signed up nor consulted  should be rounded up and shot.
Kamaia Alexander with her mother Bonny Perry. Credit:Robert Shakespeare When we send people to war, we ask a select group of mostly young Australians to prepare themselves to kill or die to defend the nation. That is at the heart of the challenge of military mental health and suicide. The sense of responsibility, the comradeship, the tough internal culture, the mental preparedness, not to mention the experience of combat, can have lasting effects. A groundswell of concern is being fuelled by revelations that the suicide rate among veterans aged 18 to 24 is double that of their peers in the general community. Among those aged 25 to 29 it is 1.5 times the national average for their age. Those figures, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare from November, are based on a tally of 292 certified suicides between 2001 and 2014. This total is regarded as conservative by most veterans groups, some of which counted between 70 and 80 military suicides last year alone. Grassroots groups are emerging among the 700,000-strong veterans community, especially on social media, demanding greater action. A recent Facebook post by official war artist Ben Quilty about Ashley Meek, a former soldier who killed himself in early March, attracted more than 2500 comments and was shared more than 18,000 times.

Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has successfully pushed for a Senate inquiry into military suicides, which will report in June, and the Turnbull government has commissioned further studies and introduced new measures, including a $350 million package in this week's budget. The research so far is patchy, inconsistent and at times contradictory. Veterans Affairs Minister Dan Tehan says it is not certain, for instance, why younger veterans are particularly prone and this is one reason he has asked the AIHW to do a deeper dive and report back later in the year. Experts say there is also insufficient research on what exactly it is about military life that raises the risk of some mental illnesses. There are defined conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety, all of which which Andrew Perry was diagnosed with six months after he returned from Afghanistan. The manuals define PTSD as characterised by intrusive thoughts, memories and flashbacks about a traumatic experience, hypervigilance, anger, emotional numbing and a feeling the world is not safe.

Perry's widow Bonny describes it as "hell". "You're walking around on eggshells all the time because you don't want to trigger it," she says. "Things would escalate, we'd have a fight and then he'd have another attempt on his life." But the suicide risk is not just about overseas deployment and PTSD. In fact, substance abuse and depression/anxiety are more common than PTSD among veterans. Any of the three raises the risk of suicide. Researchers are paying particular attention to the transition period when people leave Defence but fail to reconnect with civilian life. It is particularly hard for younger people who don't always have the life experience and resilience to adjust. Military service poses risks to mental health but it also confers protections, such as steady employment, ready access to medical services, a strong sense of identity and purpose, and a close network of peers. But after people leave, those protections are stripped away, leaving them only with the risks.

"Obviously young people making the transition from Defence into civilian life seems to be something that we've got to get better at," says Tehan. "We ask these young men and women in many instances to go out and kill on our behalf. Let's not beat around the bush on this. So we do have to make sure that when they transition, we are making sure it is as smooth as possible and the assistance is there if it's required." Kiel Goodman ticked all the boxes. He joined shortly after he turned 18 and served six years which included two tours as an artillery gunner to Afghanistan. His vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb on his first tour in 2008. Something happened on his second tour in 2010 that was so bad he doesn't want to talk about it. With his army mates around him he felt cushioned. But six months after getting back from the second tour he lost interest in army work and returned to his home town of Roma in rural Queensland. He didn't talk about his military experiences with his old school mates. "I sort of felt lost. Being overseas, doing your job, is a great feeling and you have an identity. Normal mundane life getting back from overseas is hard to deal with."

He started drinking and taking drugs. He hadn't thought the traumatic moments in Afghanistan had affected him but in the quiet of home, the memories began to crowd in. At the same time, the practicalities of civilian life, including the freedom, were harder than he'd expected. "When you're out of the military, there's no one telling you what to do  It's just all on you. That was a massive shock to me." It was three years before he sought help. "I didn't give a shit about myself. I thought I'd be one of those typical, screwed-up veterans  that's what I thought of myself." It was his partner who pulled him back from the edge, sending him to the veterans group Mates4Mates, where he now works as a liaison officer. If he'd been a single man, he says, "I wouldn't be sitting here right now." Kiel Goodman, right, with Mates4Mates CEO Simon Sauer.

There is also the lingering problem of stigma. While it's widely felt that Defence has improved, Tehan acknowledges more work is needed  though he stresses this is true across the community. Talissa Papamau served as a combat medic in Afghanistan at a time when seven Australian soldiers were killed. It took her two-and-a-half years to accept that she had PTSD. She even completed the special forces support staff psychological test during that time and wanted to become a doctor. "That's why it took me so long to accept it," said Papamau, who has since founded the popular Modern Soldier web page. "It's scary  you're already losing control of your life and you know by speaking up you are at risk of losing your career. These factors will drive suicide risk as well." Breaking the mould Although serving personnel are less likely to kill themselves than the community average, they are more likely to think about or plan suicide. Usually the aforementioned protective factors kick in, but they don't work for everybody, especially if they don't fit the mould.

Daniel Garforth hanged himself at the age of 21 at Robertson Barracks in late 2014. A suicide note that was found stated he'd had enough of "constantly being demoralised and ridiculed" by one of his corporals. Private Daniel Garforth died at age 21. According to the coroner's report, he confided to another private that he wanted to kill another of his superiors, a sergeant, who he regarded as bullying him. Other privates interviewed by the coroner described the sergeant as "not a good leader" who has hard on everyone but felt he singled out Garforth, though investigations are continuing. The report described as "inappropriate" and "most regrettable" some conduct by the sergeant and other officers. And it charts an obvious mental health deterioration in Garforth. The coroner and a Work Health and Safety inspector investigation deemed it a misjudgement that Garforth had been rated as only a "low" risk of self-harm.

But the most devastating conclusion by the coroner was that the army, faced with a young man who was clearly on his knees, did not lift him up. "One would hope," the coroner wrote, "that a pathway to recognising a purpose [for Garforth] would be provided and it is a significant indictment of the Army that his suffering in that regard was not recognised at a much earlier time. He needed affirmation and love. He did not get it from the army." Garforth's mother, Nikki Jamieson, a social worker who is now doing a PhD on ADF suicide, says an old, one-size-fits-all approach to building robust soldiers did not work in the 21st century and Defence needed more sophisticated, refined and systemic approaches to building and nurturing its workforce. Private Daniel Garforth with his mother Nikki Jamieson. She says after her son died, a senior officer at Robertson Barracks told her: "We don't want to raise a weak workforce. These are people who are going to be defending our country's front line."

She replied: "I absolutely understand that, but you are not supporting the process. These kids have the capacity to be able to do that, given the right tools. But they're not; they're just thrown into an environment unprepared psychologically and pretty much destroyed." That view is shared by Cherene Thomas-Smith, whose son Alex Thomas died while serving at Enoggera Army base in Queensland. Although a coroner found he did not intend to kill himself, the distinction is a fine one  he was depressed, anxious and showing scant regard for his own health when he took an overdose of Beta-phenylethylamine, a stimulant popular with bodybuilders. Alex Thomas and his mother Cherene Thomas-Smith. "The reality of it is nobody can know for sure whether it was an accident or intentional. That is something I'll have to live with for the rest of my life  not really knowing," Thomas-Smith says. Like Garforth, Alex Thomas was not the archetypal soldier. A skinny, quiet redhead, he spent a lot of time on his computer. His mother says he was "bullied, he was humiliated, he was targeted on a daily basis" by a superior officer.

"[Alex] just wanted to join the Army and become a medic so he could help those big guys who get shot up on the battlefield. To treat him like an SAS soldier and expect that mindset is just unrealistic." Tehan said Defence had driven cultural change through the organisation from the top down. "But like any organisation, you will sadly always get incidents of bullying and other types of behaviour," he says. "Where there are incidents, everything that I've seen is that Defence have looked to act and in particular have been prepared to allow independent inquiries to occur." Both Jamieson and Thomas-Smith are awaiting final Defence inquiry reports into their sons' deaths. Turning point

For every suicide there are many more veterans of the Afghanistan, Iraq and East Timor era who have plumbed the depths but managed somehow to climb out of the hole and often gone on to form their own groups to help others. Invariably they describe moments that were, in retrospect, turning points but at the time could have gone the other way. Iraq veteran Dane Christison, after years of suffering chronic post-traumatic stress disorder, was in Bunnings with his fiancee when he saw rope for sale and knew that he was going to kill himself with it. His fiancee smiled at him innocently and he took her back to the car and told her everything, crying like he'd never cried before while she begged him not to leave her alone in the world. Afghanistan veteran Chris May stood on top of a 10-storey building, leant over the edge and thought he could end "all the suffering, all the pain, all the nightmares" before telling himself he had a mother and a father and a partner. Both now are involved in helping troubled veterans get better, Christison through his program Survive to Thrive, and May with a group called Young Veterans. Loading
Chennai, May 12 (IBNS) : The Madras High Court on Friday granted bail to mining baron Sekhar Reddy and two of his accomplices , who were arrested after the Enforcement Directorate recovered Rs. 32 crore in new 2000-rupee notes post demonetisation, reports said.

Reddy, Srinivas and Prem Kumar were asked to pay Rs. ten lakh and produce two sureties of Rs. five lakh each for conditional bail.

The High Court asked them to stay in Delhi and appear before ED officials on daily basis.

The trio was accused of money laundering.

Image: Wikimedia Commons
Australia's most infamous Islamic State fighter Neil Prakash, who helped plot a series of foiled terror attacks, could be extradited to face a Melbourne court within months.

Prakash is being held in a Turkish prison after he was arrested by authorities late last year, more than six months after the federal government announced he had been killed in a drone strike in Iraq.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Friday that the terrorist recruiter and propagandist would be back to face terrorism charges in Australia soon.

"We should be getting him back within months. It is obviously needing to go through the Turkish processes. We do have an extradition treaty," he told Channel Seven's Sunrise.
Former defence minister and ambassador to the United States Kim Beazley says the Turnbull government should grant a request for more troops to be sent to war-torn Afghanistan.

With a resurgent Taliban and strengthened Islamic State, NATO has asked Australia to contribute to a surge of allied forces in the country, where Australian military personnel are already serving in training, support and security.

On Friday, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the government was "actively considering" the request, which forms part of a drive by the multilateral military alliance to find a few thousand more troops for the 16-year-old conflict.

Mr Beazley - who also served as deputy prime minister and opposition leader during his time in Parliament and recently vacated his diplomatic posting in Washington DC - said the request was uncontroversial, given Australia's existing commitment of 270 personnel.
"I've had to build the relationship up from nothing. Our relationship is quite conditional, because we don't have a biological bond that will keep us together through anything. It has to be worked on, it has to be topped up a bit more than the parent/child relationship does. I try to have individual time with each of them. If you spend an hour, it goes a long way. "I do feel sometimes I've got to work a little bit harder [than a biological mother]. In the first few years, I felt that if I pushed too hard, if I nagged too hard, they wouldn't like me. I have felt less insecure as time goes by. It would take a lot now to break that bond, for them to turn around and reject me. We had a wonderful holiday in Fiji as a couple, and then we went back as a family and we all got gastro. I was up with them all vomiting, thinking, 'This is hell, this is not what I had in mind, I want out.' There was one over the bath, one over the sink, one over the toilet vomiting. Welcome to reality, it wasn't cocktails by the pool. "We never use the word stepmum. Even though we're married, I'm still Clare. The girls leave me notes saying: 'I don't know why the fairytales always have evil stepmums, because you're not evil, you're really nice'." ADOPTIVE MUM

Sue Brierley and her husband John adopted Saroo from India when he was seven. Sue Brierley and Saroo, who have had their story made into the movie Lion. Credit:Edwina Pickles "From the age of 12, I knew I wanted to adopt rather than have my own children. I was living a fairly stressful home life and was also becoming more aware of global problems like famine. Then I had a vision of me with a dark-brown child by my side. That seemed to confirm and validate my view. "When I met John at 16, I was quite upfront about the fact that I didn't want to have children. I was quite fortunate that he felt the same. We weren't hippies, but we were global in our outlook, 'be kind to the earth' in our thinking. "We married at 17 and, at 21, we started to explore the option of adopting overseas. The law said adoption was for infertile couples. We had no choice but to swallow it and accept that was just how it was. Sixteen years later, it came to my notice that the law had changed. We applied and they sent our file off very quickly. Seven months later, Saroo came home to us. It was just a window in time; we went in the back door before the bureaucracy could mess up the system.

"I was elated [when I met Saroo]. He was such a darling little boy with those big brown eyes. I felt remarkably calm because I didn't want to frighten him. There was no use squealing. I was right into being a professional mother. "I've taken mothering very seriously. It wasn't just something that happened to me, it was such a longed-for thing. My actions have always been about the greater good of the process of being a mother, rather than accidentally falling pregnant, or having a baby because all your friends are. "The bad thing about [being an adoptive mother] is everyone thinks they've got a say in your decision, how you can become a parent. I'm quite resentful of that. I think you should be as free to adopt a child as you are to give birth to a child, to have fertility treatment, to have an abortion. There should be freedom, not a bureaucratic process imposed on people. "I found the process of adopting very demeaning. Some of the things we had to go through, no parent should have to go through. I found it insulting that we had to declare our income for donkey's years. You had to show your house, how clean you live, your family is talked to, your doctor has to say you're of sound mind. The level of interrogation was offensive to me. "I'm just as good a parent [as a biological parent]. I was brought up as a birth child and the parenting I gave my kids [the Brierleys adopted another boy, Mantosh, from India] was superior to the parenting I received. It's about commitment  I really feel I'm equal to any other parent, and I'm better than a lot of parents who are bad parents. "It doesn't worry me in the least [that my sons wanted to look for their birth mothers]. Those families gave me my children. I'm thankful. Look at what I've got  two very different sons. That was an absolute miracle. "Every day is my reality. I couldn't have wished for anything different."

FOSTER MUM Jenny Araujo and her husband Freddy fostered Yuri when he was five months old. Jenny and Yuri. "We came to Australia from Venezuela in 2000 to have a better future for my family. Here in Australia, you can see your child playing freely on the beach. There are no worries someone is going to kill them or you. "We always wanted to adopt a child, regardless of whether we had [our own] child or not. We wanted to give an opportunity to someone else to have a home, a place to grow up and be happy. We wanted to adopt from Chile or Colombia, because they have a similar cultural background to Venezuela. Because all my family is in Venezuela, I wanted to have my roots [here], to have someone to take care of and share our life with.

'"During the adoption training process one facilitator said if you really want to have a child, you can foster and then eventually you can adopt. We began the process to foster through Barnardos Australia, but then my mum got really sick and we had to fly back to Venezuela. Mum passed away. It was really difficult  my mum always wanted to have a grandchild from my side of the family. Not long after we got back to Australia, I got a call saying, 'We've got a beautiful little four-month-old boy'. It was amazing to know we were going to have this little baby. I think it was a blessing from my mum. Sometimes a soul has to go for another one to come. "It was very unusual to get a foster child so young. We thought we were going to have a three-year-old child. We were not expecting to have so little a boy with us. It was a miracle. "When you have your own child, you don't know how it is going to come, if it will have a disability or something. For us, it didn't matter [how Yuri came], we were going to love this child. "That day we met Yuri, we fell in love with him. I don't know what biological mums feel when they give birth, but my love for that little boy  I cannot explain how big it is. It's amazing how much you can love a baby even though it's not your own blood. The love I feel for him, it's too much. I'm very protective. "Yuri was removed from his parents [by DOCS] when his mother was in hospital and he went into respite foster care. His foster mum trained him very well to sleep, so she got the hard part! "Yuri knows a bit about who and why: we explain, we tell him a story about him and how we met him. He asks, 'Why was I with them and then with you? Why wasn't I in your tummy?' We're happy to answer the questions according to his age. We see his step-siblings.
Ms Channing is now largely confined to bed.

Prolapse  including the kind experienced by Channing, who is not incidentally also the mother of three children  isn't a tiny little thing, nor should the risks of it be downplayed or dismissed when those women affected by it dare to bravely speak up. In fact, pelvic organ prolapse is estimated to affect around half of all people who've had a baby, with around one-fifth of them needing medical help or intervention.

And while some of these prolapses can occur immediately or soon after birth, they are more likely to happen during or after menopause as our hormone levels shift, which means that pelvic floor health is a lifelong goal. Because no matter when a prolapse occurs, the impact it has on a woman's life is devastating. Shame, depression and a sense of isolation are all common, with the prolapse itself affecting any or all of the bladder, the uterus or the bowel. Some women never seek help because of the embarrassment associated, and those who do sometimes need to fight to be taken seriously. (In McLaren's account, albeit one from the UK, she wrote about being palmed off until the point she insisted further investigation be made  it was only after this that her bladder prolapse was discovered.)

Which brings us back to the idea that the trauma of childbirth is somehow reduced solely to a few labour pains and a bit of a sore downstairs. Worse, it's treated like something women should easily bounce back from. I recently began seeing a women's health and fitness specialist who focuses primarily on pelvic floor conditioning. When I told Michelle that I had "just" suffered a second-degree tear during the birth of my child last year, she reminded me that it's hard to think of any other circumstance in which a torn muscle would be downplayed as something minor. And yet, this downplaying seems part and parcel of the cultural expectations that birth be experienced "drug free" and "naturally" in order to somehow imbue it with more meaning and denote a greater maternal strength in the labouring woman. Those people who birth by Caesarean are not infrequently treated as if they cheated  because major abdominal surgery is such a walk in the park, especially when it's immediately followed by the care of a squalling newborn.

This cuts close to the bone for me. I have not suffered a postpartum prolapse (and I hope the pelvic floor conditioning I'm doing now will help to avoid one later on), but I did wear bladder incontinence liners for the first seven months of my child's life. For most of this time, I was too embarrassed to speak out about it. It was only after meeting my trainer, Michelle, that I realised how common these kinds of problems are. Prior to this, (after searching Google for cures and treatments) I read a lot about mesh implants  but nothing about the horrifying risks associated with them.
Catholic education bodies have slammed federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham for sending letters to principals with funding estimates that contained numerical errors, and have joined the NSW government in telling the heads of schools not to rely on the Turnbull government's school funding estimator tool.

Acting executive director of the National Catholic Education Commission Danielle Cronin said both the letters and the estimator tool, which provides a school-by-school breakdown of Commonwealth funding over the next 10 years, "have the potential to mislead and confuse parents and taxpayers in relation to actual funding levels".

"Like [NSW Department of Education secretary] Mark Scott ... Catholic education authorities have warned Catholic schools across the country that the funding allocations outlined on the Government's new School Funding Estimator do not reflect the actual levels of funding [for] individual schools," Ms Cronin said.

The federal Department of Education and Training says the mistakes were due to "a transposition error ... in which a four-year figure was provided for per-student growth rather than the 10-year figure referenced in the text".
Health Minister Brad Hazzard. Credit:Nick Moir "The deceased was provided with no proper care following the obvious falls between 6:38:44am and 6:49:41am  and indeed was treated with complete indifference," the coroner found. "No effort was made to assist in having her attired except by apparently throwing a gown [in] the room," his report read. The footage shows Ms Merten emerging from the seclusion room and "wandering the corridor naked and covered in excrement while the senior nurse is seen to mop the floor apparently oblivious", the coroner said. "The lack of care and compassion shown to the deceased was monumentally disgraceful and appeared to emanate from an 'Oh, it's just Miriam' mentality," the coroner's report read.

"To see a mentally ill person in 2014 at a public hospital in NSW treated in such an appalling manner is really beyond comprehension." The coroner concluded the incident was not a system failure but a "human failure". The senior nurse on duty blamed a lack of adequate staff numbers for the death. But the coroner concluded the senior nurse had deliberately made a decision not to comply with hospital protocols and had "no intention to cease the seclusion during her shift". The two nurses involved - including a junior nurse told to ignore guidelines - were referred to the medical watchdog and sacked over the incident.

The Northern NSW Local Health District launched an internal investigation after Ms Merten's death, and has since increased mandatory training for mental health staff, NWLHD chief executive Wayne Jones said in a statement. Investigation into seclusion across NSW Mr Hazzard and Ms Davies, who said they first saw the footage on Thursday, appointed NSW chief psychiatrist Dr Murray Wright to head an independent investigation into the policy and practice of seclusion, restraints and observations across the entire NSW mental health system. "When I saw it, it was just terrible. It was shocking to think that anybody could be treated the way she was treated. It is beyond disturbing  to think that somebody with any health issue could be so callously ignored," Mr Hazzard said. "This poor woman was treated in a way that none of us could ever really have imagined."

Ms Davies said at one point she closed her eyes because the vision was too horrible. Dr Wright said the staff involved "failed on every level". "I think this is an extraordinary incident ... I have no evidence in front of me that this kind of abhorrent behaviour is systemic," Dr Wright said. The state government will also request the Legislative Council to reopen its submissions for its inquiry into the management of health care delivery in NSW to allow mental health care to be addressed. Seclusion a 'huge problem' in hospitals

Dr Wright said Australian governments have been working to improve seclusion practices -a "treatment of last resort" - for the past decade. "Whilst we've made progress, there is still clearly plenty of room for improvement," he said, stressing the ultimate goal was to eliminate seclusion altogether. Several psychiatrists and mental health experts have spoken out about the systemic issue of seclusion and restraint - both physical and chemical - being overused in NSW hospitals and nationally. "Seclusion is incredibly traumatic.The patients never forget it," a NSW public hospital psychiatrist told Fairfax Media. In 2005, health ministers endorsed the national safety priorities in mental health, including "reducing use of, and where possible eliminating, restraint and seclusion".

The health ministers agreed seclusion and restraint were serious infringements of an individual's rights, and can cause psychological trauma and physical injury to consumers and to health-care staff. Recent national data shows that, on average, NSW patients are secluded just under 8.7 times for every 1000 days in a public health facility in 2015-2016, though the rate has dropped from 10.6 times in 2011-2012. Patient's daughter left in the dark Ms Merten's daughter, Corina Leigh Merten, said she only learned the full extent of her mother's horrific experience when she was recently contacted by a journalist. The 20-year-old told the ABC that hospital nurses initially gave her a different account of the incident and did not know a coronial inquest was underway.
In late December 2014, Eman Sharobeem visited a Peter Warren car dealership in western Sydney with her husband and son.

The former Australian of the Year finalist intended to buy two cars for work - one for the Immigrant Women's Health Services she ran and another for the Non-English Speaking Housing Women's Scheme. She was armed with two cheques - each for about $18,000.

Eman Sharobeem arrives at ICAC on Friday. Credit:James Alcock

But as the ICAC heard on Friday, when her husband Haiman Hammo saw a Mercedes he liked the look of in the dealership, their plans changed.

While they made arrangements for a Honda Civic for NESH, they also made inquiries for Mr Hammo to buy the Mercedes.
Eman Sharobeem took a honeymoon to Surfers Paradise in 2014 from a $9000 personal holiday club membership she bought then billed to the taxpayer as work by a handyman on a Bankstown community centre site, the Independent Commission Against Corruption has heard.

During evidence on her fourth day in the witness box into claims she fraudulently claimed hundreds of thousands of dollars of public money in her role as CEO of the publicly funded not-for-profit Immigrant Womens Health Services, Ms Sharobeem was accused of using public money to buy her husband a Mercedes, receive waxing treatment and for a $9000 holiday club membership.

Counsel assisting the commission, Ramesh Rajalingam, showed the former Australian of the Year finalist a handwritten note from 2012 she had submitted for reimbursement for $8,990 from the IWHS.

"This receipt of $8990 was paid by my personal Visa to the handyman who established the new service for multicultural mix elder group in Bankstown," she wrote to the IWHS bookkeeper, accompanied by part of a credit card receipt showing an $8,990 charge - but which had the details of where it was spent cut off.
A former top dog of the NSW Labor branch has been found guilty of unlawfully using electoral roll information after he passed confidential personal details onto a union boss.

Then general secretary, Jamie Clements, asked two colleagues on separate occasions for protected information, which he wanted to give to now disgraced former union leader Derrick Belan.

Jamie Clements, former NSW state secretary of the Labor Party, was found guilty of one count of unlawfully using enrolment information. Credit:Dallas Kilponen

In the Downing Centre Local Court on Friday, magistrate Beverley Schurr dismissed Clements' claim that he had made an honest mistake when he requested details about a man named Craig Wilson to pass on to Belan.

Political parties are entitled to receive a copy of the rolls maintained by both the Australian and NSW Electoral Commissions but it is illegal to use the information for anything other than election purposes.
Be the first to know. Sign up for our breaking news alert Four people, including a child, are in hospital after a crash on the Federal Highway south of Goulburn in the early hours of Saturday morning. About 5am, emergency services were called to the single car collision near the intersection of Wollogorang Road. Four people were injured in the single car crash near intersection of Wollogorang Road on the Federal Highway. Credit:NSW Police Two men, a woman and a child were taken to Canberra Hospital.

NSW Police said the woman, who sustained head injuries, was the most seriously hurt of the four. An ACT Health spokesman confirmed all four patients were in a stable condition as of 9:45am Saturday. Police at the scene continued to investigate the events leading up to the crash. The Hume Local Area Command Duty Officer Chief Inspector Brendan Bernie warned weather conditions were extremely foggy in the area. "While inquiries into this morning's crash are still in the early stages, I am urging everyone to drive to the prevailing road and weather conditions and slow down," Chief Inspector Bernie said.
Kolkata, May 12 (IBNS): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday asked the police to be spontaneous and timely action.

Banerjee directed the police to remain alert.

"Police must take spontaneous and timely action. They must be alert," Banerjee said.

Banerjee attended an administrative meeting in Howrah on Friday.

Image: Mamata Banerjee Facebook page
Motorists will gain a month-long reprieve from tolls on Sydney's M4 motorway when its widening is completed as part of the $16.8 billion WestConnex project in July.

The reintroduction of tolls on the M4 comes as the NSW government pushes ahead with the sale of at least a 51 per cent stake in WestConnex by mid-next year, which it will use to fund the final stage linking the M4 and M5 motorways.

In defending tolls of up to $4.56 on the M4, Premier Gladys Berejiklian said a range of options were canvassed before the government settled on a one-month grace period.

"We appreciate that people don't like paying tolls but this is a fair distance-based system," she said.
More people in Brisbane are choosing to ride bikes with a little extra push, thanks to the hot weather and hills.

Dr Ronald Schroeter from the Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Accident Research and Road Safety  Queensland said there has been an increase in the number of people in Brisbane using electric bikes.

The popularity of electric bikes has risen in Brisbane.

"Not only are we seeing a greater uptake in the use of electric bikes, we are also seeing a change in the type of riders," he said.

Samantha Willis from Electric Bikes Brisbane said electric bikes  or e-bikes  are attracting a much wider demographic than they used to.
Opponents of three towers planned for the former ABC Brisbane at Toowong have placed their faith in a declining apartment real estate market to prevent their construction.

The developer, Sunland, had a victory in the Planning and Environment Court on Wednesday, when an appeal against the development was dismissed.

An artist impression of the Grace on Coronation project.

Grace on Coronation, which would consist of a 27-storey and two 24-storey towers, was approved on the site, on which Brisbane's city plan allowed for just 15 storeys.

The $430 million three-tower project, designed by renowned architect Zaha Hadid, has been dubbed the "champagne flutes" and would contain 555 units.
Mick Jagger's comment in the visitor book. Credit:Tony Moore "Because naturally enough you would like to see the memories live on in perpetuity." Mr Balkin remembers the night the infamous Rolling Stones front man was on the Kookaburra Queen, because his crew tried to convince him to eat Queensland seafood. The Kookaburra Queen. "This is a sad tale. I had just left and gone home when my maitre d', Charles Solley, called me to say, 'Guess what? Mick Jagger is here," Mr Balkin remembered.

"And I said, 'well make sure you push the Queensland seafood and the mud crabs, because there is nothing better in the world. All the prawns and the barrumundi. Sir Llew Edwards at the Nepalese Pagoda at South Bank in 2008. Credit:Tony Phillips I offered them all this seafood and delicacies and they pulled out the kids' menu and chose pork sausages "Anyway I rang him about hour and half later and said, 'how did it go Charles?'." It seems Queensland seafood was not to Jagger's taste, Mr Balkin remembered.

World Expo chairman Sir Llew Edwards with World Expo mascot Expo Oz and the Expo's millionth visitor, Diane Fraser. Credit:Fairfax Media "Charles said, 'well I did what you asked and I offered them all this seafood and delicacies and they pulled out the kids' menu and chose pork sausages," he said. "And they were all happy with that. The monorail runs through the World Expo 88 at South Bank. Credit:Fairfax Media "They were typical English gents at that time. They liked their simple food."

Jagger was in 1988 touring Australia to promote his second solo album Primitive Cool with a different band, while tensions with the Rolling Stones - who were not in Australia - simmered. Gary Balkin, former owner of Kookaburra Queen during World Expo 88. Credit:Tony Moore What was Expo 88? It was staged on 40 hectares of land at South Brisbane, which became South Bank.

It cost $625 million to stage.

It had 15,760,000 visitors.

It had a monorail and 100 pavilions with 36 from overseas.

It showcased something called 'the internet' in the Swiss pavilion. What they say about it

Mr Balkin said many international and Australian celebrities came to the Kookaburra Queen during Expo 88. "John Farnham was one," he said. He believes World Expo 88 should be celebrated for its impact on Brisbane. "It did make the world more alert to Brisbane as a city in its own right," he said. "And its river, its natural attractions.

"Everybody just loved Brisbane and how easy everyone in Brisbane was to talk to." He said Brisbane still had "a lot of pride in Expo 88". "You just have to bring it up - Expo 88 - and you'll see. "One thing it did was teach Brisbane people to be more patient in queues. There is no doubt. We were terrible before that." Mr Rasey said his people's committee wanted to incorporate the memories into an exhibition at the John Oxley Library and the Queensland Museum.

The Kookaburra Queen visitors book will go to the John Oxley Library, which will put together an Expo 88 Memories exhibition. This will include sketches and plans from architect James Maccormick as the South Brisbane wharves and pubs evolved into World Expo 88, plus designs for sculptures built in Brisbane for Expo 88 He also suggests a statue of Sir Llew Edwards, with Expo Oz, be built to stand near where the new Neville Bonner Bridge will span from William Street across the Brisbane River to South Bank as part of the new casino development. "I think it would be a touchstone for the public," Mr Rasey said. "They see Sir Llew as personifying the success of Expo 88."
Labor's flagship level crossing removal program has blown out by almost $1 billion as the Andrews government ramps up debt to avoid a "skyrail" backlash in some of its most marginal seats.

It has also been revealed other major spending initiatives could face cost increases, including the $5.5 billion Western Distributor toll road, the Metro Rail Project and the school asbestos program.

The Andrews government's flagship transport policy has blown out by almost $1billion Credit:Peter Stoop

In a budget estimates hearing on Friday, Treasurer Tim Pallas for the first time confirmed that the government's pre-election pledge to remove 50 level crossings over two terms is now expected to cost $6.9 billion  well above the original estimate of $5 to $6 billion.

Labor initially promised to fund the project by leasing the Port of Melbourne. Despite raking in a windfall $9.7 billion from the lease deal, this month's state budget revealed an extra $846 million has been borrowed for the program.
Increased use of federal "character laws" to deport non-Australian offenders over the age of 18.

The 30-strong Gang Crime Squad will work with district detectives to identify and arrest gang leaders and young violent offenders. The detectives will also target firearm traffickers as police try to tackle an alarming surge in gun crimes.

Victoria Police has launched a new crime squad to crack down on street gangs, admitting their initial response to the unprecedented wave of violent offending was "not effective".

The moves come as senior police admit the established model of assigning crimes such as home invasions and carjackings solely to local police has failed.

Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton says offending is more violent than in the past.

Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton last month told the Federal Joint Standing Committee on Migration that police had concluded, "There was a need to change our (district) model of enforcement" because the gangs were offending across Melbourne. "It was not an effective model."

After last year's gang-related Moomba riots, police set up Operation Cosmas, which resulted in 460 arrests in six months. Many of the ring leaders are now in custody, with some likely to be deported after serving their sentences.

All identified members of the Apex Gang have been profiled to see if they can be deported. Victoria Police has already referred the files of 18 non-Australian criminals to Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton. Police say that in 12 decided cases six have had their visas cancelled, one has been deported, one is awaiting deportation and four are still serving jail terms.
All remaining youth inmates held in Barwon Prison's Grevillea unit have now been removed, one day after the Supreme Court ruled that holding them there was illegal.

On Thursday, Justice John Dixon blocked the state from detaining children in the Grevillea unit of the maximum security adult prison, saying to do so was incompatible with their human rights.

Some young offenders were transferred from the Parkville centre to Barwon Prison in November. Credit:Pat Scala

This is the third time a Victorian court has ruled against the move.

On Friday the judge made an order that the state must move the children from the unit by 5pm. He also ordered the government to pay the children's legal costs.
A psychiatrist has been charged with indecently assaulting a patient while she was being treated by him at a private hospital in Perth.

The 51-year-old man from Riverton was charged by Sex Assault Squad detectives on Thursday with two counts of Unlawful and Indecent Assault.

A Perth psychiatrist has been charged with indecently assaulting a patient.

It is alleged the offences against the women, aged in her 30s, took place over several occasions in July 2015.

The man will appear in the Perth Magistrates Court on Tuesday, July 4th.
It can be done by text, fax, email, Facebook or Whatsapp. The provocation can be trivial, such as putting on weight, greying or burning the dinner. Last month, the husband of national level netball champion, Shumayala Javed, divorced her by uttering talaq because she gave birth to a baby girl.

Rubina Amin's husband divorced her, declaring she was no longer attractive to him. Credit:Amrit Dhillon

Muslim men in India are allowed to divorce through "triple talaq"  a custom that involves saying the word talaq three times in succession. The divorce is instant and unilateral.

Delhi: Five of India's most senior judges have started a hearing which could end up being a watershed in the way Muslim men relate to their wives.

Given the sensitivity of the subject - the right to practise one's religion vs a woman's human rights as guaranteed under the Indian constitution - the five Supreme Court judges have been chosen carefully. Each one comes from a different faith: a Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Parsi and Sikh.

Muslim woman pray at the Hazratbal Shrine in Srinagar, Kashmir. Credit:Getty Images

The hearing began on Thursday in response to several petitions filed by Muslim women challenging the practice. Instead of ruling on each individual petition, the Supreme Court decided to rule on the intrinsic legality of triple talaq.

No one knows how many Muslim men use triple talaq  it is very far from being the norm  but stories have increasingly appeared in recent years of women whose lives have been destroyed by this arbitrary and cruel way of ending a marriage.

The Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, a Muslim women's rights group which started the campaign to abolish the practice, said in 2015 that more than three quarters of the women who contacted it for help had been divorced in this way.
Guwahati, May 12 (IBNS) : Security agencies has taken adequate security measures in Assam and other parts of the North Eastern India ahead of Prime Minsiter Narendra Modias visit to Assam on May 26 next.

Modi will address the nation from Guwahati on May 26 on the marks of completion of three years of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led NDA government.

During his day-long visit to the state, PM Modi will inaugurate the Dhola-Sadiya bridge and to lay foundation stones of AIIMS and a major institution.

BJP-led Assam government will also celebrate its first anniversary on the same day.

Ahead of PM Modis visit to Assam, a high level security review meeting was held at the Armys 4 corps in Tezpur on Friday.

Assam Special DG Kuladhar Saikia, Assam Chief Secretary VK Pipersenia, principal secretary of state home department LS Changson, top officials of army, paramilitary forces, Assam police were present in the meeting.

Recently, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) alerted the security agencies for probable terror attack in the NE region during PMs visit.

A top official of Union Home ministry said that, following the IB input Union Home Ministry has asked the security agencies and state police to take adequate security measures and to launch massive operation at all suspected areas.

(Reporting by Hemanta Kumar Nath)
Honda Advises Owners of Vehicles Affected by Takata Airbag Inflator Recalls in Hawaii to Seek Repair Immediately







HONOLULU - May 11, 2017: Along with vehicles from multiple automakers, certain Honda and Acura vehicles require free recall repairs to replace defective Takata airbag inflators that could rupture during a crash, potentially injuring or killing vehicle occupants. Honda encourages owners of all affected Honda and Acura vehicles to check their vehicle identification number (VIN) at www.recalls.honda.com and www.recalls.acura.com. If the repairs have not been made, seek the free recall repairs immediately. Replacement parts for all affected models are available at authorized dealers nationwide, including Hawaii.

Additionally, certain 2001-2003 Honda and Acura models originally equipped with the first-recalled Takata driver's front airbag inflators, called "Alpha" inflators, present a particularly high risk to their drivers and passengers with up to a 50 percent chance of an inflator rupture in a crash. Tragically, Honda has confirmed ten deaths in its vehicles due to ruptures of Takata airbag inflators in the United States, and all but two of these involved "Alpha" inflators. Approximately 1,100 Honda and Acura vehicles containing "Alpha" inflators remain unrepaired in Hawaii. Honda continues to recommend that unrepaired "Alpha" vehicles not be driven except to an authorized dealer for repair. A list of the specific 2001-2003 models that may be equipped with recalled Takata PSDI "Alpha" driver airbag inflators can be found here.

While Honda has made significant progress in repairing "Alpha" vehicles, with over 74 percent fixed to date, for a variety of reasons, a significant number of owners of these vehicles have not yet sought the free recall repairs.

There are five key things that Honda wants every owner of an unrepaired "Alpha" vehicle to know.

All recall repairs are free . The only place your "Alpha" vehicle should be driven is to an authorized dealer for repair. If you're uncomfortable or unable to drive your car in for repair, we will pay to tow it (even a non-running vehicle) to the nearest dealer for free . We have plenty of replacement parts, all from alternative suppliers, not Takata. There should be no parts-related delay in the repair of your vehicle. If you need it, Honda will provide you with a free loaner or rental car on the day of your vehicle's repair. Please don't delay. Everyone is busy, and we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience, but this repair could save your life!

Hawaii Takata Airbag Inflator Recall Facts:

Hawaii experiences consistently high levels of heat and humidity, two significant factors in the degradation of Takata's airbag inflator propellant, which can contribute to inflator ruptures. These conditions led the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to designate Hawaii among the highest priority states in relation to the Takata airbag inflator recalls. Thus, it is particularly important that all Hawaii residents determine if their vehicle is affected, and if so, call their local Honda or Acura dealer immediately to schedule a free recall repair.

Approximately 26,000 Honda and Acura vehicles in the state of Hawaii are affected by Takata airbag inflator recalls and remain unrepaired.

are affected by Takata airbag inflator recalls and remain unrepaired. 61.6 percent of affected Honda and Acura vehicles in Hawaii have been repaired so far (79.6 percent of the "Alphas" have been repaired).

Authorized Honda and Acura recall repair centers in Hawaii:
Land Rover Begins Off-Road Driving Competition For Six-Day Peruvian Adventure

 Four U.S. consumers can win a paid trip on an extreme six-day Peruvian off-road adventure in the Land Rover Discovery this Fall

 Trials to win one of four U.S. consumer spots on the Peruvian tour start at Overland Expo West in May 12-14 in Flagstaff, Arizona

 Trials are conducted on a timed off-road course; entrants will be tested on precision and appropriate speed as judged by Land Rover Experience instructors

 In addition to Overland Expo West, three additional winners will be selected from trials conducted at each of the three Land Rover Experience Driving Schools in California, Vermont and North Carolina

 U.S. waves of the Land Rover Experience Tour Peru 2017 run from October 28 through November 3 and November 4 through November 9

MAHWAH, NJ - May 12, 2017: Today, Land Rover begins an off-road competition giving consumers a chance to win one of four spots on the Land Rover Experience Tour Peru 2017 where theyll drive the new Land Rover Discovery on an extreme six-day off-road expedition through the Peruvian mountains, jungles and desert.

Trials will be conducted at four locations across the United States, beginning at Overland Expo West from May 12 -14, where the first of the four winners will be selected. One additional winner will be selected from each of the three Land Rover Experience (LRE) Driving Centers in the United States including the Quail Lodge in Carmel, California; the Equinox Resort in Manchester, Vermont; and the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Trials at all three LRE centers will take place on select weekends between June 1 and August 31.

The competition is free to paying attendees of Overland West and to anyone who wishes to participate at one the three LRE centers. Consumers have the ability to enter the competition by visiting the Land Rover display at Overland Expo West, visiting http://www.landroverusa.com/experiences/index.html or calling their local Land Rover Experience Driving Center for upcoming trial schedules. A participant may enter the trial once at the Overland Expo West and only once at one of the three LRE locations.

During the trials, participants will drive an off-road course designed by Land Rover driving instructors and be judged on both their precision tackling a variety of obstacles and their speed to complete the course in a safe manner. Drivers will be asked to navigate through a series of obstacles marked by wooden canes along the route; these include side tilts, articulation holes, down-hill descents, off-chamber cones, and more. No two trial courses will be the same, however they will all include similar off-road obstacles.

An instructor inside the vehicle and additional instructors observing from outside the vehicle will judge the accuracy at which the driver maneuvers the Discovery through each of the gates and will track the time it takes to complete the entire course. During the trials, emphasis is placed on vehicle preservation and the precision of the person driving on the tight and technical courses. Points will be deducted from the drivers overall score for touching any of the canes or unsafely traversing any of the obstacles. The participant scored to have the best time and the most precise run will win a spot on the Land Rover Experience Tour Peru 2017.

Creating this competition to give consumers the chance to win a trip on the Land Rover Experience Tour taking place in Peru this year, provides an opportunity for us to showcase the unique features of the new Land Rover Discovery and engage with adventure minded individuals at our Experience school locations, said Kim McCullough, Brand VP, Jaguar Land Rover North America, LLC

The four winners, travelling in groups of two, will join separate waves of the Land Rover Experience Tour Peru 2017. One pair of winners will join the program from October 28 to November 3 as the group overlands more than 500 miles from Cusco, through Machu Piccu, Pitchari, Satipo, ending their trip in Huancayo. The second pair of winners will join the program from November 4 to November 9 as the tour leaves Huancayo and drives almost 400 miles over the Peruvian mountains and through the desert to Pisco, Peru.

Participants will drive the Land Rover Discovery on a variety of terrains including sand dunes, rocky riverbeds and mountain roads as they experience places like Machu Picchu, the Peruvian desert and jungle, caves alongside the Pacific Ocean, and local villages. Accommodations will include a mix of hotel stays and natural campsites depending on location.

Beginning June 1, consumers can visit http://www.landroverusa.com/experiences/index.html to sign up for a spot at the trials at one of the LRE centers. For more information on the Land Rover Experience Driving Schools in the U.S. and Canada, please visit LandRoverUSA.com. Information on the 33 Land Rover Experience Centers around the world can be found by visiting LandRoverUSA.com/experiences/find-a-centre/
Kolkata, May 12 (IBNS): A complaint has been registered against Kolkata's Tipu Sultan Mosque's Shahi Imam Maulana Nurur Rehman Barkati after he allegedly refused to give up red beacon from his vehicle, reports said.

According to reports, a local resident, Suraj Kumar Singh, lodged the FIR against Barkati at Topsia Police Station in Kolkata on Friday.

Local media reports said that Imam Barkati is still using 'lal batti' (red beacon) on his SUV when Central government's ban on red beacon has come into effect since May 1.

Days ago when Barkati was asked about this, he told local reporters that he won't remove red beacon as Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has given him permission to use it as he is a religious leader.

"West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee gave me permission to use red beacon on my car and it's a heritage practice as erstwhile British government gave permission to my ancestors to use lal batti," Barkati said.

"I won't accept Central government's ban on lal batti," he added.

Meanwhile, demanding Barkati's arrest, BJP's youth wing on Friday staged demonstration in central Kolkata's M.G. Road area and the party has called for a rally to city police headquarters at Lalbazar on May 25 on the same issue.

Barkati on Friday called a press conference again and claimed that nobody could arrest him.

"I would only remove red beacon from my car when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will give up his all securities," Barkati said.

Barkati also blamed the media for showing up his red beacon issue.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)


Honoring the helpers Awards recognize those who support autism community

Thirteen community members and providers were recognized for their resilience, passion and heart at the 2022 Awesome in Autism Awards ceremony. The 14th annual event, hosted by Autism Society Ventura County, was held Oct. 20 at Wood Ranch Golf Club...

Go purple to support those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer November is the busiest month of the year for cancer awareness campaigns. Im going to focus on one of thempancreatic cancer because its a type weve seen a noticeable rise in over the last few years. And because it remains...

Hospital offers safe option to dispose of meds, narcotics Los Robles Health System is working to crush the opioid drug crisis by raising awareness about the dangers of opioid misuse and the importance of safe and proper disposal of unused or expired medications. Crush the Crisis will take place...

Alzheimers Foundation to host free conference The Alzheimers Foundation of America will host a free virtual educational conference from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tues., Nov. 15. The event is part of the foundations 2022 national Educating America Tour. The conference, which is free and open...
Kolkata, May 12 (IBNS): A fake doctor, who was held by state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) from North Dinajpur district of West Bengal last week, reportedly was associated with a privately-run hospital in Kolkata, officials said.

According to reports, the young fake doctor, Kaiser Alam, had worked at Ruby General Hospital for more than a year.

"The man had worked at Ruby General Hospital as a Residential Medical Officer (RMO) from March, 2010 to September 2011," a senior CID official told IBNS.

"When we searched his room, we seized a certificate which was issued by a senior doctor of Ruby hospital. Kaiser was shown as a talented young doctor in the certificate," the official added.

Meanwhile, a CID team on Friday visited the private hospital in city's E.M. Bypass area and quizzed medical officers about Kaiser Alam's employment.

A CID source said that a show cause notice will be served to Ruby hospital soon.

Week ago, CID arrested two doctors- Kaiser Alam and Khusiinath Haldar, who were associated with government hospitals and practicing outside with all fake medical certificates and documents, from North Dinajpur and Jalpaiguri districts respectively and they both are in the state probe agency's custody.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha, Image: Ruby General Hospital's official website)
May 5-11, 2017

Weve had an almost overwhelming amount of bling here on the blog this week, so Im dividing our best jewels countdown into two categories. This post covers my top daytime jewels of the week; a post will pop up in a few hours with the glittering evening jewels. Dont forget to vote in each poll!

BERIT ROALD/AFP/Getty Images

10. Wednesdays royal birthday festivities in Oslo included lunch on the royal yacht, and Queen Mathilde of the Belgians chose a striking pair of modern silver statement earrings for the event.

KALLESTAD, GORM/AFP/Getty Images

9. Queen Maxima of the Netherlands wore oversized floral earrings and a long beaded necklace for the luncheon on the yacht on Wednesday.

EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images

8. In Luxembourg, Hereditary Grand Duchess Stephanie selected a golden leaf pendant and drop earrings to welcome the Duchess of Cambridge for Thursdays visit. ( More jewels from the visit over here!

Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

7. On Tuesday, Queen Letizia of Spain wore her Bounkit amethyst and green jade earrings to welcome Costa Ricas presidential couple to the palace in Madrid.

JOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images

6. New blue topaz and diamond earrings from Kiki McDonough were the stars of the Duchess of Cambridges ensemble in Luxembourg on Thursday. ( See close-ups of her jewels from the trip here!

Jeff Spicer/Getty Images

5. Grand Duchess Maria Teresa of Luxembourg was elegant in pearls to welcome the Duchess to the grand ducal palace on Thursday. ( More over here!

Liam McBurney  WPA Pool/Getty Images

4. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall visited Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland this week; for Tuesdays engagements in Northern Ireland, Camilla wore her diamond and sapphire dragonfly brooches. ( More jewels from the trip here!

Brian Lawless  WPA Pool/Getty Images

3. On Wednesday, Camilla wore her standard diamond and pearl earrings in Belfast, pairing them with a diamond and turquoise trefoil brooch. She has worn the piece in public before, wearing it for the funeral of the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire in 2014 and during the Irish visit in 2015.

JOHN STILLWELL/AFP/Getty Images

2. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom wore the grand Cullinan V Brooch for lunch with the Duke of Cambridge and Myanmars Aung San Suu Kyi at Buckingham Palace on Friday.

Adrian Dennis  WPA Pool/Getty Images

1. The first brooch that Elizabeth II wore as Queen, the Flame Lily, was her choice for Tuesdays visit to Pangbourne College.
HONG KONGChinese consumers are a finicky bunch. Plenty of American businesses have attempted to break into China, but a mixture of cross-cultural flops, unpredictable and rapid changes in tastes, and tight government regulation has brought down the likes of Home Depot and Best Buy, and thwarted the global domination of tech giants like Facebook and Google.

But when Nicole Meyer, who is a sister of Donald J. Trumps son-in-law Jared Kushner, played up her relationship with her brothera flagrant wink-wink-nudge-nudge using the the cachet of the White Houseshe was tapping into Chinas strange Trump love, and something more.

The connections that Meyer was evoking in front of 100 potential investors and clients in Beijings Ritz-Carlton Hotel were obvious to the well-heeled men and women there. She is the sister of an American princeling, the sort of position that is bestowed on a limited few based on their family connections rather than actual achievementsand should they hand over some money to the Kushner family, successful entry to the U.S. would be guaranteed.

The whole Meyer/Kushner pitch aligns with what the Chinese know about their own ruling partys royalty, where the princelings (and princesslings) have been opting for jobs in the private sector, leveraging family connections as part of the political elite.

Just last year, JP Morgan Chase was fined $264 million by U.S. regulators for hiring Chinese princelings, a move that was meant to bolster the banks business in the Asia-Pacific region, but was also a violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Meyer, as youll recall, touted the property dubbed One Journal Square in New Jersey as something desirable for wealthy Chinese individuals, stating bluntly that they would be awarded with fast-track immigration processing as long as they invested $500,000 in the United States.

The visa program, called EB-5, is an attractive channel for some Chinese citizens who want to divert cashsome might say launder itoutside their homeland. There are multiple reasons for choosing to do thissome are looking for ways to bypass the strict banking controls that are in place in China; others want to live in a place where dirty air, dodgy food, talk of war on their doorstep, dubious confessions, and spy-related paranoia are no longer part of the everyday experience.

Some others, a rare few, are merely after better pre-collegiate education options for their children, going to the lengths of uprooting the entire family to get to the USA.

The Kushner real-estate empire is making a play to profit from those insecurities, in turn exploiting the EB-5 investor visa program.

This particular immigration procedure is, bluntly, a means for rich folks to acquire American residency. While other means of settling in the U.S. might involve a mountain of paperwork, the only kind of paper required under EB-5, to all intents and purposes, is the greenback.

All this is well known to Trump, who re-upped the EB-5 program a few days ago. Indeed, as Bloomberg reported last year, when Kushner Companies (then-CEO: Jared Kushner) were building Trump Bay Street in New Jersey, the firm they hired to attract investors circulated a video touting the EB-5 benefits to be had by buying there.

According to State Department statistics (PDF), 7,516 mainland-born Chinese citizens were allocated EB-5 visas last yearthe lions share. The second-most numerous national group were Vietnam-born persons: They acquired 334 visas under the same program. Here are a few more numbers: In 2005, the program granted only 350 visas in total; in 2007, 700 visas were issued; in 2014, EB-5 reached its quota of 10,000 for the first time ever. The numbers speak for themselves: The program is now skewed heavily to benefit Chinese investors.

For a time, Donald J. Trump was the xenophobes candidate of choice, as cries of Build that wall! reverberated at rallies and claims that the man beat China all the time fueled news cycles. But President Trump has turned the tables.

With Jared Kushners name showing up in Beijing during a shameless sales pitch, drawing a direct line between his name and a problematic visa program that has been riddled with fraud, even bringing potentially corrupt money into America, the first family of America is now stained with another shade of embarrassment.

That Jared Kushner was officially absorbed into the Trump administration as a senior adviserand Middle East peace broker, shadow diplomat, and the person to reinvent government, among other laborsonly makes the Kushner familys wanton cash-grab in China appear even more unprincipled.

No doubt the Kushner family knew before their sales pitch in Beijing that there would be falloutin the Westif only in the form of a tarnished brand image. But a bit of bad press at home is merely the cost of doing business, one that carries negligible impact in hard-currency revenue.

On Sunday, Kushner Companies was quick to issue a statement to The Washington Post saying that it apologizes if that mention of [Meyers] brother was in any way interpreted as an attempt to lure investors. That was not Meyers intention. The firm then went on to emphasize that the real-estate project would provide $180 million in tax revenue in the next 30 years.

Right now, when there are major seismic waves hitting Washington, D.C. With the Russia probe only in its inception, and the termination of FBI Director James Comey leaving many wondering what will come next, one must ask: When will the Trump and Kushner families ties with China be examined in detail?

One might recall that on the day Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-al-Lago, Ivanka Trump secured China trademarks for her clothing, jewelry, and accessories brand.

So far, no one in the Trump-Kushner circuit has been held accountable. But it could hardly be more obvious that the family of a presidential candidate who failed to win a majority vote in America is profiting massively from its position.

The people of the United States might someday focus on this, and might someday care. But the Chinese? They know about princelings and princesslings, and they know working with them is just part of the art of the deal.
The timing of President Donald Trumps dinner with FBI Director James Comey raises the question of whether the president attempted toor did in factinterfere with an ongoing FBI investigation. And thats a federal offense.

The episode in question occurred in the earliest days of the Trump administration. Within days of Trumps start at the White House, the Justice Department had reason to believe that National Security Adviser Michael Flynn may have been compromised by the Russians. Flynn was interviewed by the FBI on January 24.

On January 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates rushed to the White House to tell Trumps top lawyer of the Justice Departments suspicions. She returned, at the White House counsels request, to continue the discussion on January 27.

That same night, the evening of January 27, the president had dinner with Comey, according to James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, who told this to NBC News.

Peter Zeidenberg, a former federal prosecutor who convicted Scooter Libby for leaking a CIA agents name, told The Daily Beast that the context of Trumps dinner is really significant.

So even if hes not obstructing an investigation into himself, he may be obstructing an investigation into Flynn, said Zeidenberg, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

Asking him for his loyalty, I dont know if that would qualify as obstruction of justice in and of itself, Zeidenberg said, adding, That suggests consciousness of guilt.

At the time that the president had dinner with the FBI director, it appears that he was aware of the FBIs interest in Flynn. Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in February, Immediately after the Department of Justice notified the White House Counsel of the situation, the White House Counsel briefed the President and a small group of senior advisors.

In the context of these warnings from the Justice Department about Flynn, Trump reportedly asked Comey at this dinner if he would be loyal to him. According to The New York Times, Comey pledged that he would always be honest, but not politically reliable.

Trump told NBC News that he asked Comey during the dinner if he was under investigation, and claimed the answer was no. Two people who heard Comeys account told the New York Times he did not answer Trumps question.

Despite Flynn being caught in a lieand becoming a potential blackmail target of Russiathe White House did not fire him for 18 days, until shortly after the Washington Post reported Yates warning to the White House.

Trumps firing of Comey may also constitute obstruction of justice, according to Zeidenberg.

I think its much more likely that he admitted yesterday to Lester Holt that the Russia investigation was top of mind [when he fired Comey] creates a real problem, for obstruction of justice. That to me is way more troubling.

Trump tweeted the day before he fired Comey: The Russia-Trump collusion story is a total hoax, when will this taxpayer funded charade end?

That is really close to the line if not over it. Hes aware of an ongoing investigation and hes obviously concerned about it, according to Trump, asking Comey three times if he was under investigation, Zeidenberg said.

Bradley Moss, a national security attorney, said things are looking worse for the president.

The pieces are coming together but they are not there yet, Moss told The Daily Beast. There is certainly circumstantial evidence there is a link between Trumps dinner and his briefing from McGahn that Flynn was being investigated.

The president having the meeting with the specific intent to obstruct and interfere with what might actually become a legal proceeding would have to be proved, Moss said.

As for Trumps firing of Comey, Moss said the reason doesnt matter from a legal standpoint.

Not only would he have to fire Comey, but also take some affirmative step that whoever replaces Comey does not target this particular target of the investigation, Moss said.

The president has unfettered discretion to fire Justice Department officials like Comey.

I dont see Comeys firing in and of itself being something that could serve as the basis for articles of impeachment, Moss told The Daily Beast. For instance, Richard Nixons firing of attorneys general and a special prosecutor ultimately was not included in articles of impeachment drafted by the House.

Zeidenberg said, again, its comes down to context.

You argue inferences as a prosecutor, he said. The fact that he doesnt say Im trying to stop the investigation doesnt mean you dont have a potential case. Hes gone pretty far the way down the road.

A prosecutor doesnt usually get a defendant to explain and admit the reasons for his conduct.

Whatever the reason, Zeidenberg said Trump is panicking.

He seems extremely fearful of what that investigation is going to uncover. If it truly was a nothingburger, theres nothing here, why not open the kimono?

Zeidenberg said Trump could sit down for interviews, tell his staff to be interviewed, and say, I want this all cleared up, as soon as possible.

Instead its just the opposite. Its not the conduct one would expect from someone who doesnt have anything to hide, he said.

Not content with firing Comey, the president threatened him on Friday.

James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!

Because Comey can be called as a witness in future congressional hearings (the Senate Intelligence Committee has asked him to speak next week) or asked to testify before a grand jury means Trumps tweet could be considered witness tampering, legal experts said.

The short version is that it comes awfully close to the letter of the federal witness tampering statute, University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck told The Daily Beast.

The relevant statute cites witnesses in official proceedings, not just criminal ones.

Congressional hearings are certainly official proceedings under the witness intimidating statues, Vladeck said. Forget Comey ever testifying before a grand jury or a criminal case. The federal witness tampering statute would apply to a federal oversight hearing the same way it applies to a criminal prosecution.

Trumps defense might be that he was only trying to encourage Comey to be truthful, Vladeck said, but a reasonable person would think that Trump is trying to cow Comey into silence.

Without more evidence and with Republicans in control of Congress, theres almost no risk Trump is facing prosecution anyway, according to Vladeck.

That the reaction to this churlish and childish behavior to the president should be the opposite he intends, Vladeck said.

Every time President Trump reaches for Twitter, the folks involved in investigating him should reach for some coffee and the rest should reach for something stronger, he added.

The most important and immediate questions are about who will lead the Russia investigation.

The real story now shifts to what Ron Rosenstein does next and who Trump nominates to succeed Comey, Vladeck said.

The pressure will be on the Senate Judiciary Committee to vet Trumps nominee to lead the FBIand the pressure will be most acute on the committees three Republicans up for reelection in 2018.

If Trump nominates a loyalist, Are they going to stand up to or say no? Vladeck asked.

with additional reporting by Tim Mak
A New York man who joined Al Qaeda and then became one of the U.S. governments most valuable informants spent more than eight years in jail, most of it in solitary confinement. Now Bryant Vinas, 34, was finally sentenced this week after having already served the equivalent of a ten-year sentence and pleading guilty in 2009. Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that was almost enough, tacking on another 90 days.

Both prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed that Vinass extensive cooperation with the U.S. government meant he should get a lighter sentence than the guidelines recommended.

Prosecutors told Garaufis that they agreed he should get less than 30 years guidelines recommend, but added that they worried Vinas character had changed in recent years, that he had become more reticent and withdrawn.

Thats because of how the government treated him, Vinas attorney responded. Defense attorney Steven Zissou said Vinas spent almost ten years in a secure facility, in near-constant solitary confinement, and was promised the case would be over next year, next year by prosecutors.

The Long Island native was raised Catholic but converted to Islam in 2001, according to court filings. He briefly joined the army, but was kicked because superiors believed he was suicidal. Instead, he began watching beheading videos and traveled to Pakistan after failed attempts to go to Chechnya and Iraq.

In Lahore, he joined a local extremist group and participated in a mortar attack against U.S. troops, even almost becoming a suicide bomber. In 2008, he joined Al Qaeda and participated in two attempted attacks against U.S. bases. He also fed them ideas for attacking the United States, including plans to attack WalMart and the Long Island Railroad.

Vinas was arrested by Pakistani authorities in November 2008 and transferred to U.S. custody ten days later, where he began cooperating almost immediately.

A heavily redacted government memorandum nonetheless shows the key aid Vinas provided in prosecutions and intelligence gathering.

To say that the defendant provided substantial assistance to the government is an understatement, prosecutors wrote in their memorandum. Indeed, he may have been the single most valuable cooperating witness available to the government and law enforcement agencies with respect to al-Qaeda and associated topics related to the time period in which Vinas travelled to and was operational in Afghanistan and Pakistan between 2007 and 2008.

They said theyd interviewed him 100 times and shown him about 1,000 photographs. His insights and knowledge helped close as more than 30 government investigations.

Vinas testified against aspiring subway bomber Adis Medunjanin, which prosecutors said provided critical context and background information.

Prosecutors acknowledged Vinas was risking his own life by cooperating.

Terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda have publicized the fact that they may target individuals who betray or cooperate against them, they wrote.

Vinas lawyers said that he is set on continuing cooperation with law enforcement, but deserves a chance live the American dream again.

Vinas delivered a short statement apologizing in open court.

To say that I am remorseful would be an understatement, Vinas said. I had the idea of being a counterterrorism expert for many years, but if that doesnt work out, I will go into some kind of construction trade to earn a blue-collar living.

Garaufis agreed that it was time to let Vinas out, albeit with the promise of lifetime supervision. Vinas has to steer clear of terrorists and organized crime, receive mental health treatment, and cooperate with the government on future cases, among other conditions.

Mr. Vinas? the judge asked at the end of the hearing.

Yes, sir?

Good luck.
New York, May 12(Just Earth News): Opening a major conference on Somalia, United Nations Secretary-General AntAnio Guterres on Thursday urged the international community to support security efforts in the country battling Al-Shabaab and aid the more than six million Somalis affected by the violence and a deadly drought.

We are here to listen to Somalias leadership  and to agree on a framework for cooperation, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the heads of State and Government from across East Africa and other key partners at the London Somalia Conference 2017.

Guterres noted that Somalia is at a moment which is both tragic and hopeful and can be in the near future the kind of good news that we badly need in the world.

A legitimate Federal Government was established in 2012 in Somalia, and Al-Shabaab was pushed out of several key cities by the UN Security Council-mandated African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM).

Fighting continues to devastate the country, however, with violations of human rights and international humanitarian law occurring with impunity, Guterres noted.

He highlighted the need for predictable funding for AMISOM, and suggested the possibility of assessed contributions. The AU force was created 2012 and began fighting before it had helicopters, night vision systems or armoured vehicles.

This is something that we need to solve to give AMISOM the capacity to really create the conditions to allow the Government and the new security institutions of Somalia to then be able to assume the responsibility of the security of their own country, he said.

Guterres also called for greater coordination in support of the Somali Government to build up the Somali National Army and the Somali Police to create the conditions for a unified national army and a unified police front.

UN chief calls for $900M to fight drought

Somalia is facing prolonged drought which has left more than half the population of the country in need of humanitarian assistance. The situation continues to deteriorate and the possibility of famine in 2017 remains very real, despite an already massive scale-up of assistance since the beginning of the year.

The ongoing conflict is exacerbating the drought, leading to what could be one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II.

In his opening remarks, Guterres called for an additional $900 million to aid the 6.2 million people whose crops have withered, livestock has died and waterholes have dried up.

Some 275,000 malnourished Somali children are currently at risk of starvation, according to UN figures.

If there is an image that I will never forgetin my life it is [the one] of children dying already, where they could [have been] assisted because they just arrived too late, Guterres said speaking at an event on a response to the humanitarian crisis.

The UN chief had travelled two months ago to the capital, Mogadishu, and Baidoa, in the south-western Bay region, to ask the people in Somalia if they were receiving aid and to appeal for more support from the international community.

Somalia now hangs in the balance between peril and potential. Here in London, we can tip the scales from danger to safety, said Guterres.

Photo: OSSG/Mathias Gillmann

Source: www.justearthnews.com
By Julie Rovner, Kaiser Health News

If theres anything congressional Republicans want to do more than repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, its defund Planned Parenthood, which provides health care to women around the country. But Senate rules could prevent lawmakers from accomplishing both of those goals in the same bill, as they intend to do.

The American Health Care Act, passed by the House earlier this month to overhaul the federal health law, would bar funding under the Medicaid program for one year to any prohibited entity that is primarily engaged in family planning services, reproductive health, and related medical care; and provides for abortions other than those for rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman.

Although Planned Parenthood is not mentioned, it is clearly the target of the provision. On the other hand, the Senate parliamentarian could rule that the language does not qualify to be included in this specific bill.

The provision has mostly flown under the radar in recent debates about the bill. But defunding Planned Parenthood is a top priority for powerful anti-abortion groups counting on its inclusion as a condition to support the bill. Failure to pass the Senate would pose enormous political problems for the measure.

Congress has the votes to get it done. There are no excuses for inaction, warned Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, in a statement aimed at lawmakers in March.

Whether Congress truly has enough votes to pass the bill is unclear. Congress is using the budget reconciliation process for its health law overhaul because reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered in the Senate and require only a simple majority voterather than the typical 60to pass. Republicans control 52 seats in the Senate.

Under Senate rules for reconciliation, any provision in the measure must primarily be aimed at affecting the federal budget, either adding to or subtracting from federal spending. Items for which spending is merely incidental to a broader purpose can be ordered dropped from the bill by the parliamentarian under the Byrd Rule, named for its author, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), a longtime Senate leader who died in 2010.

In the past, policies related to abortion have been singled out as violating that rule. Robert Dove, who served as parliamentarian twice in Republican-controlled U.S. senates, said in a 2010 interview that he ruled an abortion ban out of order in a 1995 reconciliation bill because it was my view that the provision was not there in order to save money. It was there to implement social policy.

Republicans have defended the inclusion of the Planned Parenthood provision in the reconciliation bill. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), when defending the lack of anti-Planned Parenthood language in the spending bill that passed last week to keep the government running, said the measure needs to be in the reconciliation billas it isbecause thats how you get it into law.

Planned Parenthood gets an estimated 75 percent of its government support from the Medicaid program, mostly for birth control, sexually transmitted disease screening and treatment, and well-woman care. The language, if it becomes law, would have a major effect on the organization and its affiliates. The federal Hyde Amendment has for 40 years barred the use of federal funds for most abortions, but the fact that many Planned Parenthood affiliates offer separately funded abortion services has made the organization a longtime target of abortion opponents.

Defenders of the provision point out it is identical to language included in a 2015 budget bill that was vetoed by President Barack Obama.

That same language already has a track record of success, passing Congress in 2015, also under the Senates reconciliation rules, wrote Tony Perkins, president of the anti-abortion Family Research Council, in a blog post for supporters.

But passing parliamentary muster once does not guarantee the same language will be approved again, said Richard Kogan, a budget process expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington-based think tank. A true precedent exists only when a point of order has been raised and the chair has made a ruling, he said.

And while the language has not changed, circumstances around it have. For one thing, since 2015 the Congressional Budget Office has interpreted the language less broadly than it is written. CBO expects that, according to those criteria, only Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates and clinics would be affected, CBO said in its official estimate of the original House bill.

That would not, on its face, rule the language impermissible as part of the reconciliation bill. But supporters of Planned Parenthood said if lawmakers thought there was no potential problem, they would have simply named the organization in the bill, as in separate legislation introduced this year.

The CBO also lowered its estimate of how much the provision would savefrom $235 million for a one-year defunding in 2015 to $156 million in 2017. The bill includes only a one-year ban on funding because CBO has estimated a permanent funding ban would actually cost moneyas women who dont get birth control get pregnant, have babies, and possibly end up qualifying for Medicaid.

In the end it will be up to Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to make the call. Typically, the parliamentarian hears both sides argue their case before making a decision on whether a provision is allowable or not.

Even if MacDonough approves the provision, it is still not smooth sailing in the Senate. At least three GOP senatorsSusan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Dean Heller of Nevadahave said they are uncomfortable with defunding Planned Parenthood.

That is an important issue to me because I dont think that low-income women should be denied their choice of health care providers for family planning, cancer screenings, for well-woman care, Collins said Sunday on ABC.

Those three votes would, if the senators followed through, be enough to force the provision out in the Senate.

And if the bill went back to the House with no Planned Parenthood defunding, it would be problematic, I believe, based on my conversations with my colleagues, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), a leader of the House Freedom Caucus who helped negotiate the final language in the House bill.

Anti-abortion groups like Susan B. Anthony List are counting on the language staying in. We urge the Senate to keep these non-negotiable provisions and quickly advance this bill to the Presidents desk, Dannenfelser, the groups president, said in a statement.

Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Australia has a long, rich tradition of down-and-dirty horror, from 1971s Wake in Fright and 1981s Road Games, to 1984s Razorback and 2005s Wolf Creek, to 2011s The Snowtown Murders and 2014s The Babadook. Now joining that illustrious company is Hounds of Love, Ben Youngs feature directorial debut, which delivers a brand of serial-killer abduction terror thats so bracing, it feels as if it were based on a specific true-crime case. Having premiered to raves at the Venice and Tribeca Film Festivals ahead of its theatrical (and VOD) debut this Friday, its a genre effort of assured control and disquieting suspenseas well as a descent into twisted relationship dynamics that culminates in fearsome feminist fashion.

Women are front and center in Hounds of Love, which is rooted in the thorny bonds shared between mothers and daughters, wives and husbands. Set at Christmas 1987, Youngs film fixates on prep schooler Vicki Maloney (Ashleigh Cummings), whos seething with resentment at her mother Maggie (Susie Porter) for leaving Vickis dad Trevor (Damian de Montemas)a wealthy surgeonand relocating them to a lower-rent neighborhood in Perth. Exacerbating this tension is Trevor, who buys Vicki a puppy and pleads with Maggie to take him back, thus putting the onus for Vickis unhappy situation squarely on her mom. Its an unfair burden for Maggie to bear, given that her pained expressions and staunch refusal to reverse course indicate that shes made her decision because of some (unmentioned, but grave) infraction perpetrated by Trevor.

Despite being told by Maggie that she cant attend a party, Vicki slips out of her bedroom window at night and heads to the shindig. Given what we already know about her environment, this is a terribly unwise decision. Thats because, in a haunting introduction, the director pans across a schoolyard in super slow-motion, gazing at nubile girls at play (their hands, their hips, their thighs), his camera moving ever-so-slightly faster than those figures in the framea sly visual suggestion that the watcher is one step ahead of those being watched. Before long, two people in a car are successfully offering a ride home to one of those schoolgirls. What follows are sights that elucidate the ordeal that befell her: a dildo in a briefcase; bruised wrists chained to a post; a man loading a tarp-wrapped object into a trunk; and a woman cleaning up bloody tissues lying beside a bed, and then pensively hanging laundry outside.

That woman is Evelyn (Emma Booth), and she and her husband John (Stephen Curry) are lunatics who find their next victim in Vicki, pulling up alongside her as she secretly absconds to her evening get-together, and coaxing her back to their place with the promise of selling her weed. Despite Vickis reluctance, she acquiesces, until shes in their living room having a drinkwhich, it turns out, is drugged. As she loses focus, John turns up a radio broadcast of The Moody Blues Nights in White Satin and begins dancing with Evelyn in a scarily sexual way, all groping hands and lustful eyes. Then, the duo grab Vicki and wrestle her into a bedroom, with Youngs camera watching at a distance through doorways, the pedestrian foreground images of a kitchen table and chair amplifying the banality of this evil.

At repeated moments, Hounds of Love visually recedes from a boarded-up window or shut door, the better to imply the ominous crimes being committed right behind everyday facades. Vicki, however, isnt the only one being mistreated in this ranch-style dwelling. As Youngs tale reveals, while John is out dealing with a tattooed cohort to whom he owes money, and Vicki and Evelyn are spending one-on-one time together (at knifepoint), Evelyn is herself a deeply abused, and confused, figure. Participating in her husbands homicidal activitieswhich invariably involve rape, and end with a body buried in the middle of a remote forestbecause she wants his approval and devotion, Evelyn is a battered wife of a most dangerous sort, so loathing the women John brings home (because he wants them) that shes willing to help kill, and yet subconsciously aware that he only loves her the way a master loves a slave.

The key revelation in Hounds of Love is that Evelyn has young kids from a prior affair, and that shes desperate to regain custody of them (which she lost, due to some obliquely mentioned incident that may have involved John). As such, she is, like Maggie, a mother consumed with reuniting with her offspring. For all of the finely tuned details underscoring Evelyns subservience to John, the best being the way she meticulously arranges his two pieces of breakfast toast on a plate in order to curry his favor, its this parent-child bond that truly powers Youngs film, sending it hurtling toward a conclusion in which Evelyns allegiances to various loved ones is put to the test. Booth, for her part, is a mesmerizing presence, expressing the contradictory impulses plaguing Evelyns heart with a volatile intensity that makes her behavior understandable, if still disturbing.

Though Vicki derisively tells her mom she doesnt want to be a strong independent woman like you, Hounds of Love is, ultimately, a film about breaking free of domineering male controlwhich is exerted not only by John, but also by Trevor, who unfairly tells Maggie, Our daughters run away because you put yourself over your family. Both Vicki and Evelyn learn, in time, that theres a virtue to escaping masculine shackles. Young, however, refuses to sermonize. Rather, that commentary emerges naturally from his precise plotting, which is rife with nightmarish touches, such as Evelyn and John demanding that Vicki write her mom comforting letters about how shes run away to carve out a new life, just as Maggie has vis-a-vis her divorce.

Young ramps up the horror by eschewing graphic depictions of torture and murder (the less you see, the more you can imagine). And in shots of wood-paneled walls, pitiful Christmas trees, and the weird animal figurines (a smiling pig, a pair of wolves) decorating their shelves, he captures the hermetic creepiness of Evelyn and Johns residence. Via a late bit of misdirection and his finale, respectively, the director provides shout-outs to two spiritual predecessors that clearly informed this girl-kidnapped-by-fiends tale: The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yet Hounds of Love is a sinister, psychologically screwy thriller that stands on its own merits, radiatingin sleek slow-motion panoramas set to ominous droning and tunes like Joy Divisions Atmospherea dreamy, deviant vision of female subjugation, and empowerment.
One of the most unlikely heroes of All the Presidents Men?, Nicolas Kents arresting and lean verbatim distillation of scenes from the Senate confirmation hearings of President Trumps Cabinet, turned out to be Marco Rubio.

As brilliantly played by Raul Esparza, with all Rubios jerky, off-kilter talking style and tortured body language, the piece illustrated how the junior Florida senator skewered now-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (a glowering, contained Alec Baldwin playing against swaggering Trump type).

Ultimately, Rubio supported Tillersons nominationbut for a moment during the hearings the public saw something spark into lifeprinciple, angerthat rose above blind party allegiance.

As it was when performed in the U.K. last month, All the Presidents Men? played as a one-night engagement in New York on Thursday night at Town Hall, evoking the nomination hearings of Tillerson, Tom Price (David Costabile) as HHS Secretary, Scott Pruitt (Aasif Mandvi) as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Jeff Sessions (Nathan Osgood) as attorney general.

The piece was staged by the U.K.s National Theatre and New Yorks Public Theater, whose artistic director Oskar Eustis took to the stage before the two-and-a-half-hour performance began to explain its gestation, and to say how he proud he was to stage it at Town Hall.

The theater was rooted in the battle for womens suffrage, and built for wide and encompassing public debate and events, Eustis said; birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger had been arrested on stage here in 1921, he added, proudly name-checking the work of Planned Parenthood now threatened by the Trump administration.

Eustis emphasized this was not the full texts of the hearings; and that most of the questions posed during the play were from Democrat senators becauseas the plays editor and director Kent himself put ittheir role is one of trying to pose the sort of questions which elicit the most revealing answersand the function of this play is to try and lay bare as much as possible the philosophy, character, and policy ideals of the new Trump administration.

The audience was, no surprise, audibly anti-Trump, but they listened rapt to the intensely posed questions-and-answers. What was striking was how much felt new, and damning, even if you are bathed in politics and the 24-hour news cycle.

There were no soundbites here, no social-media outrage and snark, but rather a series of fascinating, detailed, charged interviews.

Here you saw, in their own words, how Tillerson, Price, Pruitt, and Sessions sought to dismiss any questions about conflicts of interest, ties to Russia, denial of climate change, and racial and gender prejudice, abortion and opposition to LGBT equality, with bland, folksy deflection.

The men knew they most likely had the votes to carry their nominations through, and though polite kept their answers as neutral as possible. It was up to the questioning senators to explore their outrageous past records and statements.

Playing Elizabeth Warren, the perfectly voiced and coiffed Ellen Burstyn delivered a stinging laceration of Price over his controversial holding of stocksa delightful verbal roasting, even as Price wouldnt accept he had committed any wrongdoing.

David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, turns out to be a natural actor and comedian tooand was excellent as the methodical yet deadly Al Franken.

As rubber-stamping Republicans, Ivan Hernandez as Ted Cruz and Denis OHare as Orrin J. Hatch lavished oily praise on their interviewees: They could be having drinks with buddies, and Hernandez in particular delivered a fire-and-brimstone denunciation of what he characterized as improper Democrat opposition.

The audience gasped at the laissez-faire responses that Tillerson and Co. gave to the committees they faced, with the grilling of well-prepared and indignant senators like Patty Murray (Linda Emond) and Chris Coons (David Costabile).

Pruitt, who had sued the EPA (the agency he now heads) 14 times while attorney general of Oklahoma, had nothing to say to Ron Rifkins quietly furious Bernie Sanders as he questioned Pruitt about his lack of care about Oklahomas propensity for earthquakes, which would be likely to increase if the amount the fracking the state allowed continued at the same rate as it was going.

The committees collective disbelief at the dissemblance they faced was matched by the sighs and hisses of the audience. When the audience laughed, which was often, it was at the blithe disregard for accountability the four men seemed to exhibit, and at the pointed attempts of the senators to reveal the nominees true selves, evasions, deceptions, and beliefs.

All four men emerged as slippery, untrustworthy, and utterly self-interestedand, most insultingly given the office they are charged with holding, as possessing a shocking lack of engagement with and respect for civic responsibility and the body politic.

Their evidence to the committees seemed to suggest they cared more about making money, sticking firm to ideology, and even firmer to President Trump above all else. Their lack of principle and lack of a sense of public duty were the most shocking, unspoken qualities they exhibited.

Sanders, for example, had had enough of Price fudging that everyone should have access to health care. Has access to does not mean that they are guaranteed health care, Sanders shot back. I have access to buying a $10 million home. I dont have the money to do that.

Occasionally, the action of the play was interrupted by demonstratorsas they did the hearingsshouting slogans denouncing Trump and fascism, No KKK, Black Lives Matter, and more at the nominees. They were applauded by the audience, even as their presence right at the beginning seemed all-too-real, as there were demonstrators outside the theatre handing out leaflets, reading In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America. Drive Out the Trump/Pence Regime.

The urgency of the protesters, both at the confirmation hearings and outside on West 43rd Street on Thursday, is now evident in the anger of town halls around the country.

Since the confirmation hearings in January there have been a raft of executive orders, the Muslim travel ban, and now the firing of FBI Director James Comey. Political events and controversies come so thick and fast the confirmation hearings themselves may seem far away, but they are an important record.

The care in the writing and staging All the Presidents Men?in the answers and bearing of the nominees and the anger and questioning of the senatorsshows the day-in, day-out tension of the Trump era, and the ideological shell around it.

The play ultimately interrogates the importance and impotence of accountability. It shows the coalescing of Trumps cadre of poobahs, and their beliefs, or lack of themdepending on your point of view.

If it left many in New York disbelieving, depressed, and in some shock at the endhow fragile democracy seemedit also offered some hope in giving the final speech of the evening to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Regina Taylor), ruminating on Sessions inappropriateness for the job of attorney general.

Feinsteins wasnt the party-political anger of a Democrat having to cede power to a Republican; it was the thrumming anger of someone perceiving that a terrible, corrosive power grab was underway, and with the appointment of Sessions, the necessary check and balances on a presidents power that an attorney general should provide were, for her, not present.

Hers was not just a damning indictment of Sessions, but also a damning indictment on how democracy and its institutions and functions can be attacked and compromised.

With Feinstein's final, measured evaluation of all that Sessions lacked as a public servant, the stage went black.
During an appearance on The View on Friday, Roger Stone (the pinstripe-wearing friend and on-again, off-again adviser for President Donald Trump) endorsed the idea of appointing a special prosecutor to oversee the ongoing investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the presidents 2016 campaign.

I think Jeff Sessions because of his partisanship is the wrong person to pursue this and I would welcome a special prosecutor, Stone said during an appearance intended to promote Get Me Roger Stone, the new documentary about his career of political ratfucking out on Netflix today. He also said he believes Trumps contention that former FBI Director James Comey told him he was not under investigation and reiterated that he would be happy to testify about the investigation on Capitol Hill.

I'm already thinking about what I'm going to wear, Stone quipped.

Stone has previously taken issue with Attorney General Jeff Sessions because of his policy on marijuana. Ironically enough, on Friday, Sessions formally reversed a Justice Department policy that was intended to avoid mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. (It should be noted that Stone has Richard Nixon bongs in his Florida home).

"As a product of the Religious South, it is natural that AG Sessions would take the dimmest view of marijuana, but there is little room left for debate as to the origin of the marijuana prohibition laws and how they were formulated as a tool to bludgeon both the poor and minorities, the largest consumers of the formerly legal plant," Stone wrote on his website in March.

He also seemed to contradict a recent tweet from the president, in which Trump contended that he had not spoken to Roger in a long time.

On The View, Stone said he had spoken to Trump very recently, but would not elaborate on the content of the discussions. He did say, however, that the president clearly knows his position on Comey.

Throughout the whole campaign and since he's been president, I have declined to talk about conversations that I've had with him and I'm not going to correct the President of the United States here today, Stone said. That said, he knows my views on Mr. Comey. I would have fired him five seconds after I took my hand off the Bible.

Stone ended the interview by inviting host Joy Behar to come back to his place later to show her the Nixon tattoo he has on his back.
A week before prom, a Buffalo high schooler is suing his principal for allegedly policing same-sex couples at school dances.

Byshop Elliott says McKinley High School has a history of policies that exclude LGBTQ studentsincluding the principals alleged denial of his and fellow students request for a gay-straight alliance.

In a federal lawsuit, the 18-year-old junior says students buying couples tickets for dances are asked for the names of their dates. Those naming same-sex partners arent permitted to purchase the couples passes, he claims.

The New York Civil Liberties Union filed the complaint against principal Crystal Boling-Barton this week. The Buffalo School District is also a defendant.

Boling-Barton, through her secretary, declined comment and referred a Daily Beast reporter to the school districts legal department.

Nate Kuzma, the districts general counsel, told The Daily Beast he was reviewing Elliotts complaint. We take these allegations very seriously and we are investigating as we speak to get to the bottom of this, Kuzma said.

While Elliott wont attend prom this yearits only for seniorshe wants to stand up for LGBTQ classmates who may be denied a chance to dance with their dates.

Most of all, he says, he wants Boling-Barton to approve his request for a gay-straight alliance (GSA).

We are such a diverse school. We have 1,000 students from all over Buffalo. [But] not everyone feels comfortable, Elliott told The Daily Beast.

The GSA is not just for LGBTQ allies and people who identify, he added. Its a safe space, just to have somewhere to go.

NYCLU attorney Bobby Hodgson said the alleged denials of the GSA dont square with the law, or the districts own policies.

Discrimination coming from the very people who are charged with protecting students and protecting their rights is a pernicious and harmful form of discrimination, Hodgson told The Daily Beast.

Any time that happens, it sends a message to people in the school that not everyone is being treated equally. It creates real harm and real fear.

The lawsuit comes at a time when many students who identify as LGBTQor lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioningmight feel anxious and confused as President Trumps administration has made moves to roll back federal protections, Hodgson said.

In February, the Department of Education and the Department of Justice issued a letter rescinding Obama-era guidance on transgender students.

When there is that type of message coming from our federal government, it is particularly important to remind local administrators and localities that these protections exist and theyre not going anywhere, Hodgson said.

The lawsuit accuses the principal and Buffalo School District of violating Elliotts rights under the Equal Access Act and the First Amendment.

McKinley High School LGBTQ students are reminded every day that they are second-class citizens, the lawsuit states.

According to the complaint, Boling-Barton allegedly imposes policies that discriminate against students who identify as LGBTQ.

The schools loudspeaker announcements allegedly have warned that students werent allowed to bring same-sex dates to prom and that couples tickets are for opposite-sex pairs. If a girl dances with her girlfriend, the complaint claims, the principal separates them.

For years, students have asked for permission to create a GSA, but their applications were allegedly denied or ignored.

The Buffalo School District has been fully aware of the situation since at least August 2016 but failed to take action, court papers allege.

Elliott, who is gay, says he collected 136 signatures from classmates in support of a GSA in March of this year. He added that the clubs application, submitted at the beginning of the school year, remains unapproveddespite, he says, the existence of multiple faculty members willing to supervise the group.

During the 2016-17 school year, at least 20 students asked McKinley staff why the school is still without a GSA, the lawsuit says.

Boling-Barton allegedly made several intercom announcements warning that same-sex couples were not permitted at school dances from 2014 to 2016.

Students buying couples tickets from 2014 to 2016 were asked who their intended dates would be, and those naming a same-sex partner would be denied tickets, the lawsuit says.

Students who were denied tickets felt humiliated and excluded from some of the most prominent and popular school-wide social events of the year, the complaint states.

But buying single tickets didnt work either. According to the lawsuit, Boling-Barton would instruct dancing same-sex couples to separate or face discipline.

Such chaperoning practices led many LGBTQ students to skip McKinley dances and instead attend the Diversity Prom sponsored by Gay & Lesbian Youth Services of Western New York (GLYS), court papers allege.

Indeed, the 2016 Diversity Prom had more students from McKinley High than any other area high school, GLYS reported.

The lawsuit claims that McKinley has also been without a GSA despite repeated interest over the last few yearsand faculty advisers ready to sign up.

The lawsuit contends this is because of a history of school-sponsored exclusion of LGBTQ students.

About 1,000 students in grades 9-12 attend McKinley High School, a vocational school that offers specialized training in seven shop areas. And about 87 percent of the schools enrollees are students of color.

Many clubs, including the Bible Club, Gospel Chorus, the Future Farmers of America, and African Dance Club, arent related to school curriculum, the lawsuit states.

Students interested in forming a GSA during the 2014-15 school year were allegedly denied by Boling-Barton. (The lawsuit does not state why the principal allegedly denied the application, and its unclear if reasons were given.)

In the spring of 2016, Elliott says he again sought approval for his club. An assistant principal allegedly told him it was too late in the school year to submit his application and that Boling-Barton would deny it.

Elliott later learned that a new student group focused on international cultures and cuisines submitted an application around the same time that he spoke to the assistant principal. The other groups application was approved, the lawsuit says.

That summer, Elliott sought help from the New York Civil Liberties Union, which in August 2016 contacted the school districts counsel.

The districts attorney confirmed that the District received and had a clear understanding of this demand for GSA approval, including by confirming that the Superintendent had considered the students request on multiple occasions, the complaint says.

Elliott says he again secured a faculty sponsor and applied for a GSA in the fall of 2016. The faculty member emailed the application to Boling-Barton directly in October but she did not reply, court papers allege.

One month later, the faculty adviser followed up with another email to Boling-Barton, who allegedly ignored it.

During this period, the NYCLU says it sent five emails and left several voicemails for the school districts counsel, saying Boling-Barton still had not approved the GSA.

For its part, the district has noted that it has publicly adopted anti-discrimination policies and procedures to safeguard the rights of transgender students. Buffalo should be proud that every student in our District is protected from discrimination in all forms, one district representative said, according to the lawsuit.

Despite these public promises, LGBTQ students at McKinley continued to suffer overt discrimination with the Districts full knowledge, the complaint alleges.

On Wednesday, one of Elliotts classmates spoke at a press conference announcing the lawsuit against their high school.

Destinee, a junior, said she recently came out as gender-fluid after struggling with anxiety and depression over her identity.

One of the obstacles I have faced in coming outand a reason many other students feel they must hide their identitiesis dealing with the negative attitudes toward LGBTQ issues at my school, Destinee said.

There is an atmosphere of hostility and bullying. That is why, two years ago, a small group of us asked the school if we could form a gay-straight alliance.

Destinee said other area schools fly their GSA flags at the Buffalo Pride march, while McKinley students arent even allowed to attend school dances with their partners.

All we have wanted is a space where LGBTQ students and allies can support each other, but the school has told us no. We want a place where we dont have to hide, but the school has told us no, she said.
Rabyaah Althaibani doesnt need to imagine a future in which immigrants from Muslim-majority countries are banned from entering the United States. In the 18 months since she married her husband, Yemeni journalist Basher Othman, shes only seen him twice.

Their ordeal, detailed in My Family Was in Shock, a new report by Amnesty International and CUNYs CLEAR project, began after Althaibani and Othman married in January 2016. Due to an arduously long visa application process that has been complicated by the Trump administrations attempts to ban citizens of several Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., the couple married in Goa, India, where Othman lived for six months until the Indian government stopped renewing Yemeni visas. Afterward, he moved to Malaysia, where he has been waiting for his visa application to be processed.

Althaibani applied for her husbands visa in March 2016 and had an interview on Nov. 18, she told The Daily Beast. After the interview was approved, Othmans case was moved for processing to the National Visa Center.

As I was preparing the affidavit for support and the other documents we need, Trump signed the Muslim ban in January, Althaibani told The Daily Beast. That put everything up in the air. Everything slowed down. This was supposed to take about 45 days, but its taken about three months so far.

A 12-hour time difference and a two-day-long trip separates Althaibani and her husband, and the pair usually communicate via Skype. Its really difficult. When I get out of work, its already past bedtime there, Althaibani said.

Althaibani and her husband are two of nearly 100,000 people around the world whose lives were turned upside-down by the Trump administrations attempt to bar people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. as refugees, tourists, or otherwise. Next week, a hearing in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will determine whether the second iteration of the travel ban can be implemented.

Althaibani is anxiously awaiting the May 15th hearing. If the judge rules in favor of the Trump administration, her husband may not be able to enter the U.S. even with a visa.

Imagine yourself in a long-distance relationship, you have this plan to be together within six months to a year and now you dont know if youll ever be together, she said. Its so hard. Its really, really hard. And to have your government be a part of it, its inhumane.

These are real lives. These are real human beings. These are children without families, wives without their husbands, Althaibani added. We have the right to have our loved ones with us.

Among other stories in the Amnesty International report, which includes testimonies from several people who were personally affected by the travel ban, is Nadia*, a 29-year-old transgender woman from Iran who was granted refugee status at the beginning of 2017. The good news came after a two-year-long application process that included the kind of extreme vetting Trump claimed didnt exist for refugees.

My life in Iran was like hell, Nadia told Amnesty International, adding that she regularly suffered harassment from strangers and by her own family, including physical abuse and rape. Really, they wanted to kill me, she said of her family. They didnt accept me.

The last thing standing between Nadia and a one-way ticket to San Francisco was a medical examination, but before she could see a doctor, Trump signed the first travel ban in January. Though the executive order was swiftly blocked by federal judgestwiceNadia remains in limbo and outside the United States.

On paper, federal courts have prevented Trumps travel ban from being fully implementedbut refugees and people with pending visa applications like Nadia are still feeling its effects.

The Washington Post reported last week that the Department of Homeland Security has stopped processing refugee applications, forcing people like Nadia to wait even longer than they had planned. In March, Reuters reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson ordered stricter vetting of visa applicants from many of the countries listed in the Muslim ban executive orders.

Really, I dont know what to do, Nadia told interviewers from Amnesty International for a report, released today, detailing the effects the travel bans have had on people trying to enter the U.S. I am always crying because of this awful situation, and unfortunately there is no help.

*Name has been changed.
President Donald Trump this week moved closer to an all-out assault on Raqqa, the self-styled capital of the so-called Islamic State, when he approved the delivery of heavy arms to a Kurdish-led militia operating in northern Syria. NATO ally Turkey vehemently opposes the move because of the militias affiliation with Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists who are at war with Turkey.

Another big issue for Ankara is who will take over in Raqqa, a city that had until recently a population of 200,000, after ISIS is ousted.

Last August, when U.S. air support enabled the Kurds to capture the Arab town of Manbij, the PKK took charge. International reporters have been unable to chronicle whats happened in Manbij, but citizen journalist Muhammad Noor recounts how the PKK, which the U.S. and Turkey view as a terrorist organization, introduced a regime of ethnic discrimination, then opened the way for the Assad regime to return to Manbij and take up key positions of power.

This letter is part of a project that draws on citizen journalists to depict daily life in war zones where much of the world press cannot travel due to threats from the warring parties. The author is writing under a pseudonym for his own protection. The project, based at Stony Brook Universitys Marie Colvin Center for International Reporting, is funded by the Walter and Karla Goldschmidt Foundation. The Daily Beasts Istanbul-based contributor Roy Gutman edited the following text:

MANBIJ, SyriaWhen Islamic State extremists captured Manbij three years ago, they forced the population to pray at mosque, ordered women to wear full chador and they beheaded their opponents in public.

But if you attended their religious courses and agreed to their rules you could get a job and earn enough to sustain your family.

That world turned upside down last August, when a Kurdish-led ground force with U.S. air support ousted ISIS from Manbij. Arabs were among the fighters in the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF, but it was Kurds from outside Syria who suddenly became our new masters.

Local Kurds, who comprise 10 per cent of the population of 100,000, became the privileged class. They now dominate local commerce and they get special treatment from the police. Religious observance shifted 180 degrees. Traditional practice such as covering women is forbiddennot by decree but in practice. Anyone who objects can be arrested and tortured. I know from personal experience.

Since August, all the key positions in the SDF and in the Manbij administration were taken over by Kurds from outside Syriafrom the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK. We called them Qandilians, those trained in Qandil, Iraq, the PKKs mountain stronghold.

You knew them from the cars they drive, festooned with posters of Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the PKK, whos now sitting in a Turkish jail near Istanbul. They didnt use their real names; they operated behind the scenes.

Make no mistake. We were very happy to be rid of ISIS. But the new order became so oppressive that some Arabs spoke openly about the good old days of ISIS. They saw the new Kurdish masters as destroying the social fabric, spoiling centuries of good relations between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens.

It was a nightmarish eight months, and its not fully behind us. In February, when Turkey threatened to seize Manbij, the U.S. acted to block it. Today, the U.S. Army maintains forces north of Manbij, and they regularly visit the town. Russia has based military personnel west of Manbij, located between Kurdish and Turkish forces, and they also pay regular visits.

The Syrian Democratic Forces said they were turning over control of Manbij to the Syrian regime, and Syria then claimed control over the city. Thats not the case. Syrias border guards force consists of Arabs from the SDF who take orders from the Kurdish leadership in Manbij.

But the regime has been present since the summer. After Kurds arrived, the regime took over the schools and paid the salaries of civil servants. And it made extensive use of the PKK security apparatus for its own political aims.

There are no Syrian flags in the streets, only those of the Manbij military council, a front for the PKK. But the Baath Party is back. Anyone wanting to become a school administrator must be a member. Schoolchildren carry identity cards bearing the image of Bashar al Assad. And Corrective Movement day, commemorating the coup that brought the Assad family to power in 1970, is also back. It was celebrated as a national holiday Nov. 16a day off from school and work.

Those are outward signs of regime influence. Security is in the hands of Kurdish intelligence and police units, but so many of their actions directly benefit the regime that they must be taking direction from Damascus.

If I could describe Manbij in a phrase, Id call it the city of dreams. The dream of the Kurds is to dominate the city and establish an independent state along Syrias northern border with Turkey. The Assad regime dreams of bringing the entire country back under its control. And its the dream of the Syrian rebels, who controlled Manbij from July 2012 until ISIS took over in January 2014, to liberate the town once again. All the dreams are directed at one market, and that is the United States, which alone decides what dream will come true.

For the residents, Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmens alike, the dream is for the city to be free of ISIS, the PKK and the Assad dictatorship.

Under ISIS, power was exercised in the name of religion; under the PKK its exercised in the name of ethnicity. Where you stand in the hierarchy of power depends on how close you are to the ruling Kurds.

Under ISIS, government buildings, public facilities and infrastructure were protected because ISIS viewed itself to be the legitimate authority. Manbij is in a major grain-growing region, and ISIS not only operated the flourmills but improved them.

Under the Democratic Union Party or PYD (the political arm of the PKK), the situation is completely different. After the battle of Manbij, 18 silos of flour was transported from the mills of Manbij to Kobani, the Kurdish controlled city north of here on the Turkish border. Electricity generators and other equipment was dismantled and removed. The PYD accused some factory owners of being pro ISIS and dismantled and stole their factories and emptied their warehouses.

Its not just their thefts and abuses that grated on us, but also their method of governance. Any Arab who takes part in government soon realizes their main role is to legitimize the Kurds who came from outside Syria.

Take the two main governing bodies. Manbij has a city council, headed by Faruk Al Mashi, and a military council headed by Shervan Darwish, a Kurd from Manbij. But neither has the power to make decisions. Faruk had fled Manbij along with 500 families when ISIS took over in 2014, and spent two years in Turkey; others fled to rebel or even regime-held areas rather than submit. At least two thirds of those families returned after the Kurdish take-over. But theyve come to realize that Arabs are involved in the governing system only to legitimize the Kurds who came from outside.

Earlier this year, the local council granted permission to Arab volunteers to open an office of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, a semi-governmental relief organization, when a PKK commander from Qandil named Khalil intervened in personand in uniform. Summoning the volunteers to the council, he told them they could open only an office of the Kurdish Red Crescent. If they persisted with their plan, he warned: I will pee on all the members of the local council. Sometimes, the Assad regime was able to curb these excesses. Just before the start of the school year, the branch office of the Ministry of Education in agreement with local Kurds decided to allow private schools to operate. But the Kurdish representative, after consulting Qandil, ruled that they were illegal and sent the Asayish military police to the office to carry out the order. But when regime authorities opened the schools in mid-September it ruled that private schools to operate. The face of the PKK that we encounter daily is the Asayish. They run the checkpoints and they command the units that fight crime and terrorism. About 30 per cent are Arabs, mostly people whod otherwise be jobless. The Asayish traffic police, about half Kurds, half Arabs, are responsible not just for traffic but also for enforcing taxes on vehicles. They have the authority to seize cars from anyone who cant prove hes paid. But theres a double standard: Ive seen Kurdish drivers again and again being allowed to go even if they havent paid.

This applies also to law and order. I know of murders, rapes and robberies of Arabs that go unsolved and arent even investigated. And theres been a brutal suppression of religious freedom.

The real governing force is the Intelligence, which until the arrival of the Americans was headed by a Qandil veteran named Comrade Dalil. He was the most powerful man in Manbij, and his top aides were also from Qandil.

The Kurds are in a state of war, and the aim of the Intelligence is to provide support for the capture of any land now occupied by ISIS or by anti-government rebel forces, whether supported by the CIA or by Turkey.

To assist in this task, Intelligence members recruited unemployed residents, including some whove committed criminal acts, to work with the Democratic Union Party or PYD, the civilian arm of the PKK. The intelligence gathering process consists in large part of questioning residents with friends or relatives in areas controlled by ISIS or by Syrian rebel forces.

The Intelligence, and thats how theyre known, also have a special branch called the combating terrorism task force, which carries out the orders and stages raids against anyone who can be accused of a connection to ISIS.

But some of the people thrown in jail for an ISIS connection had nothing to do with ISIS. Anyone whos a known regime opponent is also subject to arrest; so is anyone who refuses to work with them or with the regime. If they suspect a member of a family to be pro-ISIS, they will order the entire family to leave the city. They even recruit locals for regime intelligence.

Collaboration peaked in mid-December, when the Intelligence began a campaign targeting anyone who had a relative or any contact at all with rebel forces. Dressed in black and wearing masks, they went through the town arrested more than 70 people, many of whom had brothers fighting with the Free Syrian Army north of Aleppo.

The arrival of the American military has brought some improvement. They dont interact with civilians, with one exception, Sheikh Ibrahim al Binnawi, a Free Syrian Army commander who has the respect of the Arab population. His American ties give him political clout, and he also has 700 armed fighters to back him up. Hes interceded more than once to stop the PKK from abusing Arab civilians.

But theres more good news. Shortly after the Americans arrived, the worst of the Qandilians, including Dalil, the head of intelligence, were transferred to the battle for Raqqa.

We do not miss them, for we suffered their wrath in silence.

But when the Americans finish their battles against ISIS in Raqqa, we dont know who there will be to protect us.
PARISSo much for family loyalty.

On the eve of Sundays presidential election, hours before his daughter was roundly defeated by centrist Emmanuel Macron, far-right National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen suggested that his heir wasnt fit to be president.

She has character; she doesnt lack that, Le Pen, 88, told The Sunday Times. But you also need other qualities.

This wasnt the first time the elder Le Pen dissed his daughters Elysee Palace aspirations. Following her victory in the first round of voting two weeks prior, old man Le Pen told French radio station France Inter that Marines campaign efforts were too relaxed, and had he been at the helm, he would have taken a more Trumpian approach.

I think her campaign was too laid-back, he said. If Id been in her place I would have had a Trump-like campaign, a more open one, very aggressive against those responsible for the decadence of our country, whether left or right.

That Marine Le Pen had been an open admirer of Donald Trump even before he reached the White House made the jab all the nastier.

And, again, just hours after her defeat at the polls on Sunday, the octogenarian was at it again, telling radio station RTL that the partys director-general, Florian Philippot, was to blame for her failure, and that the younger Le Pen should have focused less on talk about leaving the European Union and more on Frances real problems like mass immigration.

One might imagine that Marine finds Jean-Marie Le Pens hostility baffling. Or, maybe for her, not so much. Although he has long been known for his abrasive, sometimes incendiary rhetoric, viewed from afar his recent treatment of Marine would appear to take his mean-spiritedness to another level.

But family ties arent always all theyre cracked up to be. (Think of, oh, Game of Thrones.) And in the Le Pen family whatever tensions were boiling beneath the surface emerged two years ago when Marine ousted Jean-Marie from the party he founded.

Having taken the reins from her father in 2011, Marine Le Pen was on a mission to clean up the National Fronts intolerant race-baiting, Jew-baiting image and broaden its appeal. The only problem was that dad wouldnt shut up.

Jean-Marie continued spewing hateful remarks that undermined his daughters mission to bring the National Front into the mainstream and she knew it. So in 2015, after a series of provocative declarations about Nazi gas chambers (which the elder Le Pen likes to refer to as a detail of history) Marine showed him the door.

Indeed, tensions between father and daughter reportedly had been brewing for months. About six months prior to booting him out of the party, Marine moved out of the family estate near Paris because Jean-Maries Doberman ate her cata fitting metaphor for a family feud that was growing increasingly vicious. His very public ousting, coupled with Marines statement to journalists that he should no longer be able to speak in the name of the National Front widened the rift.

Upon hearing the news, Jean-Marie disowned his daughter, calling his expulsion a betrayal, and suggesting that such a move indicated that she lacked the principles to run the country. The elder Le Pen has been stewing about his removal ever since, even likening it to the Greek classic Oedipus Rex, in which the protagonist kills his own father.

Ingratitude is the order of the day, he told The Sunday Times, claiming that Marine had never replied to the congratulatory email he had sent her after her strong second-place finish in the elections first round.

Le Pen also praised his granddaughter (Marines niece), Marion-Marechal Le Pen, 27, a charismatic National Front legislator, seen by many as the person who would take the partys helm. But just a couple of days later, Marion-Marechal Le Pen announced that she was quitting politics, leaving insiders questioning the National Fronts future and angering the prickly former patriarch once again. Jean-Marie called her retirement a desertion.

On Thursday he was quoted in the daily Le Parisien saying his granddaughters departure could cost the National Front crucial seats in the upcoming legislative elections. The loss of its rising star could also hurt his estranged daughter, he said.

It could cost Marine dearly, he told the paper, adding that she made mistakes in her campaign by excluding him. He also said that he had sent his daughter a congratulatory message on the evening of the second round of voting (the same day he had suggested to journalists that she didnt have the chops to run France), but she never replied to that message either.

Could jealousy be a factor in this? Marine may not have won the presidency, but she garnered far more votes for the party than it had ever had before. She was defeated by 65 percent. Jean-Marie, when he got to the second round of the 2002 presidential election by a fluke wound up defeated by 82 percent.

Today, while the National Fronts future is uncertain, the Le Pen feud seems set to continue.
1

Deputy AG Rosenstein Meets With Senate Intel Leaders

WHAT DOES HE KNOW?
New York, May 12(Just Earth News): The United Nations human rights chief on Thursday announced that the Central Asian branch of his Office will extend its coverage to Uzbekistan now that an agreement is in place, highlighting that the country is aat a crossroads.a

After my meeting with the President yesterday, we have a clear agreement that our Regional Office will from now on work closely with all five Central Asian Republics, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, told a press conference in Tashkent, the countrys capital.

I am extremely happy that I myself, my Office and my staff are now set to play an active role in trying to secure a future where every citizen and resident of Uzbekistan has their human rights observed, and state-sponsored violations become a distant memory, Zeid added.

He recalled that when the Regional Office was established in Kyrgyzstans capital, Bishkek, in 2008, Uzbekistan made it clear that the office covered four countries, not five.

Citing a series of recent Government initiatives, Zeid said that human rights figure prominently across the five sets of priorities laid out in President Shavkat Mirziyoyevs 2017-21 Action Strategy.

The five priorities are: improving the public administration system; ensuring rule of law, and reform of the justice system; developing and liberalizing the economy; developing the social sector; and security, religious tolerance and inter-ethnic harmony, and constructive foreign policy.

The successful implementation of those reforms could have a transformational impact on the countrys future, Zeid said. It is going to be a long and difficult road to get near that point, with obstructions and setbacks, but I do believe the journey has begun.

He said he encouraged the Government to monitor actual human rights results as part of the High Level Government monitoring of the implementation of the Action Strategy.

Needless to say, frameworks and plans are one thing, and results are another  especially when it comes to human rights, when States often make fine promises but fail to back them up with real change, Zeid said.

He also said he has raised with the authorities the need to continue with the release of more political prisoners, and suggested the Government ratify the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, as it would greatly enhance and accelerate the effort to end torture, one of the issues that has been most damaging to Uzbekistans international reputation over the years.

He is also recommending  and the Government itself is proposing  closer cooperation with the other parts of the UN human rights system, including the treaty bodies and special procedures, welcoming an intention to invite the Special Rapporteur on the freedom of religion or belief to visit the country.

This was the first-ever visit to Uzbekistan by any of the six UN High Commissioners for Human Rights, since the Office of the High Commissioner was established in 1993.

Uzbekistan is, in my view, at a crossroads, Zeid said.

Photo: World Bank/Matluba Mukhamedova

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, May 12(Just Earth News): Against the backdrop of a continuingly complex humanitarian scenario in the Central African Republic (CAR) a marked by multiplication of hotspots, increased displacement and growing needs a the head of United Nations humanitarian operations in the country on Thursday released $9 million for the most urgent and critical relief operations.

However, even with this new funding, overall resources in the country remains a mere 14 per cent, said the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a news release on Thursday.

An adequate level of funding of humanitarian activities remains an absolute priority, otherwise, CAR risks relapsing into an acute crisis, warned the UN humanitarian wing.

In the news release, Najat Rochdi, the Humanitarian Coordinator for the country, who released the funds thanked the donors who haves supported response and reiterated her call for increased resources.

It is the peace process consolidation which is at stake, she noted.

The latest tranche will support efforts in Basse Kotto, Mbomou, Nana Gribizi, Ouaka and Ouham-Pende provinces, where between September 2016 and March 2017, flare-ups in the situation have resulted in massive displacements and severe challenges, including for protection of civilians.

The projects targeted in the latest release include responses in the education, protection, health, nutrition and water, sanitation and hygiene sectors as well logistics, shelter and non-food items, coordination and site management.

In the Humanitarian Response Plan for CAR, UN and relief partners had appealed for nearly $400 million to support more than half the countrys population who are dependent on humanitarian assistance for their survival.

According to UN figures, between February and March this year, the African nation has seen a nearly 6 per cent increase in the number of newly displaced people from 401,072 to 426,100.

The security situation in the country too has seen a rapid deterioration. On 8 May, eight peacekeepers from the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission, known by its French acronym MINUSCA, were killed when their convoy was attacked by suspected anti-Balaka elements near Bangassou, about 474 kilometres east of the nations capital, Bangui.

Clashes between the mainly Muslim Seleka rebel coalition and anti-Balaka militia, which are mostly Christian, plunged the country of 4.5 million people into civil conflict in 2013.

Photo: OCHA Central African Republic

Source: www.justearthnews.com
With the completion of Thursday's recount, the Hearne school board president has officially been removed from his position in the district.

Trustee James Taylor requested a ballot recount after losing Place 3 to candidate Sheridan Ely by nine votes in Saturday's election. While the Robertson County Elections Department initially reported that Ely won 650 to 641, the recount found that Ely won 653 to 639.

Taylor paid $60 to cover expenses associated with the recount, and with its completion, the race for Place 3 can no longer be contested, said Ray Rodriguez, elections administrator for the county.

The election comes after Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath announced plans in April to replace trustees with a board of managers, citing an investigation into complaints against trustees.

"Given the board of trustees' inability to govern the district, this sanction is necessary to protect the best interests of the district's current and future students," read Morath's letter announcing the news to the district.

The Hearne school district disputed the investigation's findings in December, only to have the TEA affirm its plans to replace the board. Now, the district will have one final review of the decision during a face-to-face meeting with Morath in Austin on Wednesday.

Superintendent Adrain Johnson said Taylor will be among the delegation of Hearne officials who attend the meeting next week.

Saturday's election also determined who will hold Places 4 and 7. Place 4 went to former Hearne Elementary School Principal Brodrick McGrew, who beat out Michael Washington and Donya Moore for incumbent Samantha Salazar's spot. Place 7 went to incumbent Mary Jane Ramirez, who beat out Karen Elliot and Jon Mckay.

No other candidates have filed petitions for a recount. James Taylor could not be reached for comment.
The Bryan/College Station Metropolitan Planning Organization will have a public meeting to discuss the Draft 2050 Major Thoroughfare Concept plan from 5 to 7 p.m. Monday at the Brazos Center.

Staff from the MPO, the cities of Bryan and College Station, Brazos County and the Texas Department of Transportation will be on hand for the meeting, where residents can take a look at revised concept maps detailing a vision for what the county's roadway network could look like by 2050. There will not be a formal presentation at the meeting, but those wishing to discuss the concept will be able to speak with MPO representatives.

The revised concept map incorporates all public comments the MPO has received before May 1.

"We have received over 2,000 public comments and have carefully considered each one," said MPO Executive Director Daniel Rudge in a press release. "While we would like to wrap-up this concept and make it an official MPO document, but we want to make sure we hear every voice so that the citizens of Brazos County buy in to the concept."

If no further significant comments are made, the concept will be presented to the MPO Policy Board on June 7.

The revised version of the map can be viewed at the MPO's website, www.bcsmpo.org. Those who have questions or need special accommodations to attend the meeting may contact Lisa Lyon at 979-260-5298 or llyon@bcsmpo.org.
New York, May 12(Just Earth News): The opposition in Colombia has begun to lay down arms, a move welcomed on Thursday by the United Nations Security Council which recently visited the country to see the peace efforts first-hand.

In a statement to the press, the 15-member Council on Thursday welcomed the peaceful arrival of almost 7,000 members of the FARC-EP [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-Peoples Army] in the agreed zones and points. The Council welcomed also the continued commitment of the parties to work together to enable FARC to lay down their individual weapons by 29 May, which marks 180 days after the final peace agreement came into force.

Observers from the UN Mission in Colombia, are actively involved in the process of laying down arms by registering and identifying all the weapons present in FARC-EP camps within all 26 war zones, storing and then neutralizing and extracting the arThe weapons include munition, mines and explosives.

The Council visited Colombia from 3 to 5 May, to witness first-hand implementation of the peace agreement between the Colombian Government and FARC-EP, and to observe the progress as well as the challenges to the agreement that ended the 50-year old conflict.

The visit included meetings with President Juan Manuel Santos and senior representatives from the Government, as well as leaders of the FARC-EP and members of various representatives in Congress.

The Council Members, led by Ambassador Elbio Rosselli of Uruguay  which holds the Councils presidency during the month of May  also met with members of civil society and local communities.

In on Thursdays press statement, the Council also paid tribute to the courage of Colombians who have embarked on the path of peace. They noted that violence is at its lowest level in over 40 years and underlined the significant benefits that a lasting peace could bring to the entire country.

Colombias peace process has the potential to be a positive example to the rest of the world, the Council said.

In early October 2016, Colombian voters narrowly rejected the historic peace accord between the FARC-EP. That deal was the culmination of four years of talks hosted in Havana, Cuba, between the parties, and which led to a cessation of hostilities and agreements on key issues such as political participation, land rights, illicit drugs and victims' rights and transitional justice. The two sides signed a new agreement in late November 2016.

Photo: UN Mission in Colombia

Source: www.justearthnews.com
According to College Station police, officers were called to a hotel in the 1500 block of George Bush Drive East around 10:20 p.m. on April 9 on the report of a woman roaming the facility who was believed to be on some sort of narcotic. Police found Lori McRoberts, 35, in the parking lot standing near a vehicle. Police say the woman had several of her belongings on the ground and told officers they belonged to her. McRoberts gave police permission to search her things and police said they found two bags that contained methamphetamine, as well as a syringe that was loaded with liquid methamphetamine.
The College Station City Council unanimously moved to amend a section of the city's Unified Development Ordinance on Thursday to close a loophole that previously allowed new replatted lots as small as 5,000 square feet in older neighborhoods.

City staff recently became aware of the loophole after residents of the College Hills neighborhood spoke out against a proposed resubdivision of two lots on Gilchrist Avenue into 10 smaller lots for high-density housing. The replat was withdrawn by the property owner, but staff set about "removing [the section] as quickly as possible," said Molly Hitchcock, assistant director of Planning and Development Services.

The "Platting and Replatting within Older Residential Subdivisions" section of the UDO dates back to 2002, when the city began seeing development pressure and intense infill in older neighborhoods, particularly the Eastgate and Southside areas. The section's intent was to prevent large lots from being subdivided into smaller lots for homes inconsistent with the character of existing neighborhoods, and created protections by requiring new lots to be at least 8,500 square feet in area and have a lot-width of at least the average width of other lots on the block.

Language inserted in 2012 exempted properties that were platted or replatted after 1970 -- when the city started regulating subdivisions -- from the requirements, which inadvertently created the loophole.

If a developer replatted a property in an older neighborhood today, Hitchcock said, they could theoretically apply for a second replat the next day, and the rules would no longer apply. They could then plat according to typical general suburban standards, which allows 5,000-square-foot lots, she said.

As recommended by the Planning and Zoning Commission, the City Council voted Thursday to close the loophole by removing the problematic language and also provide city staff with discretion when calculating the average lot widths. Lots across the street from a property, which may be more indicative of neighborhood character than other lots on the block, could be considered, and dissimilar lots to the rear of the block could also be excluded.

Eight residents of of the College Hills area spoke during the public hearing on the UDO amendment, generally expressing thanks to city staff for correcting the language in an expedited process.

"We've had too many of these incidents that haven't turned out this way, and people have left feeling very bitter and feeling the council hasn't listened to their concerns," said Councilwoman Blanche Brick.

Councilman James Benham added that "so often people bring us problems and no solutions," thanking the residents for their part in bringing the issue to the attention of the city.

A couple of the speakers during the public hearing, including former College Station mayor Gary Halter, said in the future the council needs to consider a better public notice process for major subdivision changes, similar to how residents are notified of nearby zoning changes.

George Dresser, a resident of the Southside area, said Thursday night's discussion was only "part of the issue" being driven by the conversion of single-family homes to so-called stealth dorms -- roughly defined as homes or duplexes rented out to tenants by the bedroom -- which creates "enormous pressure" to subdivide lots to make room for more that type of housing.

Toward the end of what was a largely nonconfrontational discussion, the crowd in the council chambers heckled Councilwoman Julie Schultz for her suggestion that somehow limiting housing of more than two unrelated individuals from single-family neighborhoods would exacerbate the stealth dorm issue by forcing students into even more rental housing.

"You're not sitting here, and I would invite you to take the opportunity to sit here, because it is a hard thing," she responded. "I live here too, I don't want to live in a bad neighborhood. I don't want anybody else to live in a bad neighborhood. We spend a lot of our time trying to figure this out."

Schultz suggested the residents look into pursuing a neighborhood conservation overlay in the area to prevent future unwanted development.

"This isn't gonna stop -- what we're doing tonight -- having someone buy a lot next to you, tear the house down and build a bigger house," Schultz said. "This doesn't stop that."
Texas A&M University unveiled the latest update to its campus master plan this week, giving the community a look at what the future could hold.

The 460-page document includes a detailed vision outlining how campus leaders plan to develop the university's more than 5,500 acres.

The plan specifically lists the campus development plan, mobility and safety, sustainability and wellness, heritage conservation, campus guidelines, and wayfinding and signage as six key areas of focus.

It includes several new housing developments and parking structures, the demolition and reconstruction of Beutel Health Center and the construction of a new facility for student services.

Officials said the process began in 2015 with the help of planning firm Ayres Saint Gross. The long-term plans laid out in the report are expected to be implemented over the next 20 years or more.

To take a look at the full report, visit campusplan.tamu.edu.
BURNT CHIMNEY

Burnt Chimney United Methodist Church will welcome John Cline, the Vice President of Ministries and Operations of Gods Pit Crew on Tuesday, May 16 at 7 p.m. Mr. Cline will talk about his organization. A love offering for Gods Pit Crew will be taken up and refreshments will follow his talk.

HARDY

Nineveh Church of the Brethren will hold its crib ministry on Saturday, May 13. A limited supply of free diapers, wipes, formula and hygiene items for the youngest in our community will be available from 9 a.m. until noon. Breakfast will be served from 9 to 11 a.m. No income verification needed. The church is located at 7060 Hardy Road.

PENHOOK

Franklin Grove Baptist Church will hold spring revival from Tuesday, May 16 through Thursday, May 18 at 7:30 p.m., nightly. Rev. Garrett Harmon will render the service with different choirs joining. A chorus anniversary will be celebrated on Friday, May 19 at 6 p.m.

ROCKY MOUNT

The 11th annual E. J. Smith River Float will be held Saturday, May 13 at 9 a.m. at Germantown Brick Church of the Brethren. The float will be on Grassy Hill and Blue Bend sections of the Blackwater River and will exit at Bill and Angela Corns property for a picnic. This is a Relay for Life fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. For more information, call 343-2077 or 420-6141.

Pleasant Hill United Methodist mens group will hold a yard sale on Saturday, May 13 from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Heavenly Manna Food Bank parking lot on South Main Street.

First Baptist Church will celebrate womens day on Mothers Day, Sunday, May 14 at 11 a.m. Guest minister for the service will be Ivy Ferguson of Greater Mt. Parrish Baptist Church.

Morningside Missionary Baptist Church will hold a Mothers Day Service on Sunday, May 14 at 8 a.m. The speaker will be First Lady Dona Whitfield. Music will be rendered by the young adult choir of Morningside Missionary Baptist Church. There will be no 11 a.m. service.

Brightstar Missionary Baptist Church will celebrate its choir anniversary on Saturday, May 13 at 6 p.m. Various choirs will be performing. Everyone is invited to attend.

Furnace Creek Baptist Church will have an appreciation luncheon honoring county police, town police, state police, firefighters and rescue squads/EMTs on Thursday, May 18 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the churchs fellowship hall.

Faith Temple Church of God in Christ will hold an Unashamed Womens Day Service on Sunday, May 14 at 11 a.m. They will be honoring their Founding Mothers by adorning themselves in hats along with other surprises.
Franklin County Public Safety Director Daryl Hatcher will retire June 30.

Hatcher, 52, has held the position since 2006. His retirement caps a 33-year career of public service. Although technically, Hatcher said, its even longer than that, since he started as a volunteer EMT in Henry County in 1980.

The director said his proudest accomplishment is a simple one: All the lives weve saved.

Hatcher said he shares all achievements with the public safety team, from administrative staff, to paramedics and firefighters, to animal control officers to people working on the countys new radio system.

He worked to pull the various groups together to work cohesively as a team, which he said made the organization I think work a little better, a little stronger, a little harder.

During his tenure, Hatcher said he also worked to establish regional partnerships, such as the technical rescue team and swift water rescue team. The county also implemented a new public safety radio system last year. After doing so, Franklin County partnered with Roanoke and Roanoke County to create a regional radio system to allow seamless communication between the localities. Franklin County recently took on the responsibility of serving as the fiscal agent for a regional incident management team.

The advice Hatcher offers to his replacement is to congregate with good people, take their advice and establish good working relationships within the agency and region.

But, Hatcher said, public safety in Franklin is at a crossroads. As the county prepares to develop a new public safety strategic plan, many decisions that will determine the direction of the department must be made. It prompted Hatcher to push up his retirement, which he originally planned for next year.

The person going out the door shouldnt be the one making decisions about the departments future, Hatcher said. It should be the person coming in.

With the implementation of the new radio system completed, the budget for 2017-18 set for adoption next week and projects like the new animal shelter and Glade Hill fire station in the works, Hatcher feels the department is stable enough to hand off to the next person.

Hatcher said hes ready to leave public service for the private sector. Remaining in his current position wouldnt benefit him financially, he said, or allow him more time with family.

Thirty-three years of public service has a tendency to wear on you. Theres stress, theres the physical toll, theres the hours, theres wear and tear on your family, he said.

Hatcher is headed to work for Memorial Hospital of Martinsville and Henry County, where hell serve as the security supervisor and emergency planner.

Im too young to just sit on the porch and rock, he said.

The director said he feels overwhelmed by the all phone calls, texts and emails he received from people throughout Franklin County, Southwest Virginia and all the way to Richmond upon the announcement of his retirement Wednesday.

You dont realize the number of people that youve touched until you start getting all the well wishes, Hatcher said.
New York, May 12(Just Earth News): Deteriorating security in parts of South Sudan coupled with increased displacement could worsen the humanitarian suffering in the country through outbreaks of diseases such as diarrhoea and even cholera, the United Nations envoy for the country has warned.

The situation in Bor-Pibor area is particularly concerning with fears of violent clashes between youths from the Dinka Bor and Murle communities, David Shearer, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan, told journalists at a press conference on Thursday.

We are worried that might spark more widespread fighting between those two communities [and] hence the reason we are providing support to the peace efforts on the ground, he added, noting also the work that is being done with the Government to ease the situation.

The important thing is that we de-escalate tensions and provide an opportunity to talk rather than to fight because fighting only will result in a greater cycle of revenge [that] will be of no benefit to [anyone].

In his remarks, Shearer, also the head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), spoke of violence in various regions of the country, including attacks on peacekeepers and relief personnel, which have severely constricted the humanitarian operating space, and underscored the Missions resolve to do everything it can to ensure that assistance reaches those in need.

The attacks have a direct consequence on humanitarian activities and the assistance that can be provided to people who desperately need it, he said, terming such violence as an extraordinarily selfish thing to do.

SEE ALSO: UN appalled at killing of aid workers in South Sudan

The senior UN official also praised the work of journalists in the country as well as humanitarian actors on the ground who, despite considerable challenges, are reaching thousands across the country with much needed assistance.

I think we owe them a real debt of gratitude, he expressed.

UNMISS Photo

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, May 12(Just Earth News): Following last yearas leak of confidential financial documents from a Panama law firm, a United Nations rights expert yesterday called on the countriesa authorities to continue to impose greater due diligence on financial and banking institutions.

Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky said that such reforms would enable parties to prevent and denounce tax fraud, rather than facilitating or taking advantage of them.

"The main component of illicit cash flows at the global level is tax fraud. These funds, which circulate and are deposited in the shadows of the financial and corporate systems, consolidate poverty and inequality in the world," the UN Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights stressed.

Asked by UN News if this lack of regulations on taxes is what made Panama appear to some as a fiscal paradise, Bohoslavsky noted that the tax component is the most important when companies and wealthy people choose to do business in one country or another, or when simply transferring their funds between countries.

Previously revealed documents, which popularly have been associated with the Panama Papers, have shown how corporations, wealthy individuals and politically exposed persons have systematically hidden assets in more than 21 offshore jurisdictions.

While the expert said the focus of the Panamanian authorities should be on the fight against tax evasion, he also acknowledged their efforts to promote financial and corporate transparency and to strengthen the financial regulatory system, adding that Panama now has a more robust system than it did a few years ago.

As for his eight-day Panama visit, he said: "The most onerous tax evasions must be severely punished within the framework of a comprehensive strategy covering all dimensions of tax fraud." He added that financial and non-financial intermediaries have the 'duty of knowing the client' and should have the obligation to report suspicious transactions.

In the briefing the expert further advocated for the adoption of clear legislation "to prevent conflicts of interest of public officials and to ensure the autonomy of regulatory agencies."

He added that such evasion consolidate poverty and inequality because it deprives social programs and services of resources, and does not allow public investment in productive infrastructures that drive development.

In this regard Bohoslavsky recalled that reducing illicit financial flows is clearly linked to reducing poverty and social inequality and will advance the 2030 Agenda and the corresponding Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Curbing such flows was also agreed to at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development held in July 2015 in Addis Ababa. The outcome, referred to as the Addis Ababa Action Agenda calls for strengthening support for the work of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters to improve its effectiveness and operational capacity, and engagement with the UN Economic and Social Council.

Independent experts or special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a country situation or a specific human rights theme. The positions are honorary and the experts are not UN staff, nor are they paid for their work.

Photo: World Bank/Gerardo Pesantez

Source: www.justearthnews.com
New York, May 13 (Just Earth News): The United Nations human rights office on Friday urged the Government of El Salvador to take urgent measures to protect a prominent transgender human rights defender, Karla Avelar, and other activists and individuals working on similar issues.

The vulnerability of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in El Salvador is of deep concern, Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters in Geneva.

She noted that since the beginning of this year, at least seven transgender people were killed in El Salvador.

Avelar, who has been shot and seriously wounded multiple times, was most recently threatened at the end of April and forced to flee her home for a sixth time in two years.

We urge the Government of El Salvador to take urgent measures to ensure the protection of Avelar and other LGBTI activists and individuals who are under threat, Shamdasani said, including by establishing an effective protection mechanism for human rights defenders working on sexual and reproductive rights and LGBTI activists.

More than half of transwomen surveyed in an annual 2016 report in El Salvador have received death threats, according to the Ombudsman's Office in that country.

OHCHR linked the high rate with a lack of prompt and effective investigations into LGBTI-related crimes.

Shamdasani said the UN office, which is closely following the situation from its Central American office, calls on the Government to conduct prompt, thorough and effective investigations into hate crimes against the LGBTI community.

Photo: UN Multimedia

Source: www.justearthnews.com
Des Moines County Supervisors to grant conservation funding request

The increase will allow Des Moines County Conservation to restore the full-time naturalist position needed to run summer camps.
New York, May 13(Just Earth News): Warning of the disastrous impact of an imminent attack on a western city and port and Yemen, the United Nations migration agency has called on all actors to use dialogue and talks rather than military force, which will put more civilians in danger.

According to the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are grave fears that humanitarian capacity would be overwhelmed once Al Hudaydah port and city are attacked and relief agencies could be forced into a situation to prioritize their efforts in the war-torn country where every single person should be a priority.

A minimum of 400,000 people will flee the city eastwards, once Al Hudaydah is under attack [adding to] the already desperate situation of more than two million displaced people and their conflict-affected host communities, said Mohammed Abdiker, the Director of Operations and Emergencies at IOM, in a news release on Friday.

In addition to that number, the attack will also severely hamper the UN agency's efforts to evacuate vulnerable migrants through Al Hudaydah Port.

Even without the attack, emergency response in Yemen has been facing immense challenges relating to access, financial resources and the sheer scale of humanitarian need  nearly 19 million people require assistance, more than half of them depend on it for their lives.

The conflict, now into its third year, has pushed the country to the brink of famine with more than eight million facing acute shortages of clean water and sanitation. Healthcare system has virtually collapsed over half of the health facilities not functioning.

Underscoring that humanitarian action, by itself, can never bring peace, IOM has been advocating that violence will only deepen the suffering of Yemeni people.

If all parties to the conflict do not come around the negotiation table to prevent further military escalation and end violence, humanitarian workers will not be able to continue to respond to increased needs, while helping those already greatly affected by the conflict, noted Abdiker.

No contingency plan will ever be able to fully respond to the scale of needs  IOM

The news release also noted the worsening humanitarian situation across the country, coupled with the unending ground fighting and air strikes, are causing major issues in reaching the most vulnerable people.

Expressing concern that with the scarce resources it has received so far to help the two million displaced people and hundreds of thousands of stranded migrants, IOM warned that no contingency plan will ever be able to fully respond to the scale of needs induced by escalated and even continued fighting.

At the same time, additional financial support is needed to cope with the current and projected needs.

At the recent High-Level Pledging Event on Yemen, the international community pledged $1.1 billion to support the humanitarian response. But this just over half of the $2.1 billion needed for 2017.

Photo: Giles Clarke/OCHA

Source: www.justearthnews.com
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STAMFORD  Natalia Castaneda knows her clients well. She tracks who is coming in for a short cut, who is wearing longer hair, who is feeling relaxed and who is stressed and needs more pampering.

The same principles apply to all her four-legged customers.

Castaneda, 26, has used her eight years of dog-grooming experience to strike out on her own. She opened April 26 the Woof to Purrfection salon at 327 Greenwich Ave. The business serves dogs and cats of all breeds.

I felt like I knew what I wanted to do, Castaneda said in an interview Thursday at the salon. I knew I would be pretty good running my own shop. I got experience from other private grooming facilities, and I thought it was time.

Woof to Purrfection operates like a pet spa. Pawed patrons get washed and shampooed in a bath  it has steps for easy access for larger dogs  then go for other amenities, including haircuts, ear-cleanings, toothbrushings and nail-filings. A session including all those features would typically cost $65.

Dogs like Lola, the 7-year-old Maltese whom Castaneda washed and dried during the interview, take easily to their beautification. Other dogs are more tentative and need more coaxing. Castaneda lets those more skeptical customers take their time. If need be, she will let them sniff around the salon so they feel at home.

Its all about having patience and making them feel comfortable, said Casteneda, whose resume includes stints at several area pet salons and a kennel and veterinary practice in Greenwich. Without patience, sometimes they can sense that off you and itll make your job harder. You just have to know how to work with them.

More Information For more information on Woof to Purrfection, visit www.wooftopurrfection.com See More Collapse

Groomings generally take no more than three hours. Castaneda attends to one dog at a time to make sure each one feels calm and relaxed.

Woof to Purrfections other employee is Stephanie Colinet, who worked with Castaneda several years ago at the PetSmart on West Avenue. Like her boss, Colinets earlier experience has given her a keen sense of how to attend to each clients needs.

With some dogs, you have to talk to them and baby them, Colinet said. Theyre like kids.

Woof to Purrfection joins a roster of several pet-grooming businesses in the city. David Yika, who co-owns Canine Coiffures at 264 Hope St., said he welcomes well-run additions to the field.

Were focusing on customer service and customizing services, he said. I believe those new good guys will do the same. I encourage them to always follow the protocols of the town and continue doing business and provide the best possible scenario.

Castaneda spotted the vacancy at 327 Greenwich Ave. last year. The address previously housed a hair salon.

She knows the surrounding Waterside neighborhood well. She lives a couple of blocks away from her business, on Fairfield Avenue, with her husband, 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.

In this intersection, they stop and look by, Castaneda said. Across the street, theyre going to build new condominiums. Down the street, you go to Greenwich. I feel like this is a great location.

pschott@scni.com; 203-964-2236; twitter: @paulschott
NORWALK  Masons, carpenters, electricians and others hoping to help build The SoNo Collection learned about job opportunities at an open house Thursday evening.

More than 50 people attended the open house in the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Office at 149 Water St. in South Norwalk.

Anthony Brown, senior project manager with VCC/KBE, the general contractor chosen by General Growth Properties to build the upscale regional shopping center, encouraged attendees to sign up on paper or on a computer at the back of the room.

Whether you come to work for us direct as a first-tier sub (contractor), or come as a second-tier sub for one of our contractors, you can sign up, Brown said. If youre a carpenter or a mason, whatever trade it is that youre looking for, weve got the individual sheet. Well forward that onto our subs, and then well also be able to forward both lists to General Growth.

The open house was the first such event aimed at connecting people with construction jobs as GGP begins work on the nearly million-square-foot mall off West Avenue and Interstate 95 in South Norwalk.

The Chicago-based mall developer anticipates the project will generate 2,220 full-time construction jobs with an average salary of $76,400.

Eva Beau, who lives in Norwalk, asked VCC/KBE representatives what training opportunities will be available for residents seeking those jobs.

Do you have a program for training for laborers or any of the other trades? Beau asked. Theres a lot of people in the community that would benefit from, lets say, OSHO 10 training.

OSHA 10 training is provided by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the U.S. Department of Labor.

Bob Nelson, another senior project manager with VCC/KBE, said hell meet next week with union representatives to discuss jobs and training. The mall will be built with union and nonunion labor, according to VCC/KBE.

Michael R. Robinson, business representative for the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, encouraged open-house attendees to contact him.

Although June 16 is the deadline for subcontractors to apply, jobs will be available throughout the 29-month construction period as work proceeds from the foundation to vertical construction to retail-space fit- out. That final work is expected to be underway in spring 2019.

If you miss out on an opportunity up front  theres going to be a hundred or so opportunities on the back end that will be starting in 2019, Brown said.

GGP, as part of a commitment to anchor tenants Nordstrom and Bloomindales, has targeted October 2019 as the opening date for The SoNo Collection.

On Wednesday, the Chicago-based mall developer obtained its foundation permit from the citys Building Department to begin excavation work and construction.

VCC/KBE Project Manager Brad Brady outlined to open house attendees how construction will begin.

We have to start on the north end of the property, which is by (Interstate) 95, and we have to dig down and start our foundation work, Brady said.

At some point, North Water Street likely will be closed for several weeks to accommodate construction above. Residents and motorists will be notified well in advance, according to VCC/KBE.

The next construction jobs open house is scheduled for June 6 from 6 to 8 p.m. at Bethel AME Church at 19 Academy St.

Those interested in job opportunities during the construction phase of The SoNo Collection should email their inquiries and contact information to sonobids@vcckbe.com.
Food Bank for the Heartland is partnering with the Salvation Army and Trinity United Methodist Church in Grand Island to host a mobile food pantry Saturday at the church.

Approximately 20,000 to 25,000 pounds of food, the equivalent of 16,600 to 20,800 meals, will be distributed for free to individuals and families in need.

Results of a study supported by the Conagra Brands Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Nielsen Company show approximately 10.5 percent, or 6,380 people, in Hall County are at risk for hunger. That includes 19.1 percent, or 3,140, of the countys children.

Saturdays mobile pantry will be open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Lot B, the northwest parking lot, at Trinity United Methodist Church, 511 N. Elm St.

Individuals and families living in Hall County and surrounding communities are welcome to attend. Those who come to the mobile pantry are asked to bring boxes or bags to assist in carrying the food they receive.

A mobile pantry is a traveling food pantry that delivers food free of charge directly to individuals and families who need assistance, conducting a one-day food distribution. The goal is to provide food where there is a high need but limited resources. Items to be distributed at the mobile pantry Saturday will include spaghetti, tomato sauce, canned pork and beans, cereal, pancake mix and other shelf-stable products along with perishable items, including a variety of fresh produce and bakery items.

This is the fifth year a monthly mobile pantry has been held in Grand Island.

Beginning in June, the Hall County mobile pantry will be open on the fourth Saturday of each month until October. The next mobile pantry will be on June 24. The permanent location is yet to be determined. Visit FoodBankHeartand.org for further details.

Harvey named clergyperson of the year

HASTINGS  The Rev. Larry Harvey of Hastings was named the Clergy-Person of the Year for 2017 May 5 at the American Baptist Regional Conference in Scottsbluff

Harvey was awarded this honor for strong leadership with American Baptist Men of Nebraska and for leadership with the men in his church. He has helped strengthen the men of his church both by mentoring individuals and involvement in mens organizations.

The pastors parents were Salvation Army officers (pastors) in Quincy, Ill., when he was born. He started to school in Hastings, where his parents were pastors and where he has now been pastor of First Baptist Church for 10 years.

Harvey studied at Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada, and is a graduate of the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colo., and Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. Along with pastoring, he has also taught in the junior high, high school and college levels. He most recently taught philosophy, ethics and world religion at McCook Community College in McCook.

He has pastored churches in Greeley, Colo., Norman, Okla., Pasadena, Calif., and in Culbertson and Hastings in Nebraska. He and his wife, Connie, have six children and nine grandchildren.

SPARCC to meet at Wave Pizza

SPARCC (Single People Achieving Real Christian Connections) will be dining May 20 at the Wave Pizza Company.

The group will meet at 6 p.m. at the restaurant,located at 107 N. Walnut St.

SPARCC is a mission sponsored by First-Faith United Methodist Church. This is a group formed by single adults for single adults to have the opportunity to meet other like-minded individuals in a social environment. There are no membership dues or fees.

All single adult Christians are welcome to attend. People planning to participate should notify the First-Faith church office at (308) 384-5620 by the end of business next Thursday to ensure seating. Everyone will pay for their own meal.

Zion Lutheran plans barbecue beef lunch

WORMS  Zion Lutheran Laymens League of Worms will host a barbecue beef lunch immediately after worship at Zion Lutheran Church on May 21.

A freewill offering will go toward the churchs local radio ministry on FM KZ 1000.3 at 9 a.m. every Sunday and the Lutheran Hour ministry of bringing Christ to the nations and the nations to Christ.
America welcomed 24 new citizens during a naturalization ceremony on Thursday at Walnut Middle School.

These new Americans, who have met the requirements to become U.S. citizens, originated in many different countries, including Cuba, Vietnam, South Korea, India, Argentina, Mexico, Guatemala, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia and Myanmar.

One of the new citizens was Leandro Muzzoni of Lincoln. His country of origin is Argentina. He also led the 100 or so people at the ceremony in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Its an honor, Muzzoni said. It was a very welcoming ceremony. It made me feel part of this country.

Muzzoni came to the U.S. in 2003 for graduate school. He is now a soybean breeder for Monsanto.

Another new citizen sworn in at the ceremony was Yuri Morales of Grand Island.

God is good, Morales said about becoming a U.S. citizen. Thats all I can say.

She came to the U.S. in 2000 from Guatemala. She was 14 years old at the time.

Morales, like many of the others who were sworn in Thursday as new citizens, came to America for a better life.

Attending the ceremony with her were her two sons, both of whom were born in this country.

Its all about providing a future for my children, Morales said.

She is employed at McCain Foods.

Morales didnt speak English when she first arrived in the U.S.

It was kind of hard, she said of learning to speak English.

Echoing an earlier speaker, My first sentence was, Can I go to the restroom?

Another new citizen sworn in at the ceremony was the Rev. Antony Thekkekara of the Grand Island Diocese.

I feel happy and proud to be a citizen, Thekkekara said. It was a long process.

He came to the U.S. in 2007.

I came here to do pastoral work, Thekkekara said.

Since arriving in the U.S., he has served the church in a number of Nebraska communities.

Between being a citizen and not being a citizen makes a difference, Thekkekara said.

The keynote address at the ceremony was given by Senior U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf for the U.S. District Court, District of Nebraska.

Kopf said this country became great and remains great today in large part because of our immigrants.

Thats each and every one of you, he said to the new citizens.

He said people born to American citizenship should be thankful to immigrants such as each one of you and to immigrants in our past, in our present and in our future.

Too often those of us born to American citizenship forget that each of us, with the exception of Native Americans, has an immigrant in our history, Kopf said.

He said America is a melting pot of people from many different countries around the world.

But virtually all of us have our forefathers and foremothers to thank for the traumatic task of immigration, said Kopf, who is of German ancestry.

Whether they were dragged here in the terrible confines of a slave ship or whether they booked passage on a luxury liner, our immigrant ancestors took risks and real risks to come to this country, he said. Therefore, most native-born citizens, like me, owe a real debt of gratitude to the immigrants in our past, a debt you should remember today and never forget.

Kopf said many Americans forget what each new generation of immigrants has done for this wonderful country.

Our political system was inspired by immigrants, he said. Our railroads, our coal mines, our cotton fields, our oil wells, our steel mills and our packing plants were built, dug, tended, drilled or stoked by an immigrant. Our space program is a testament to immigrants. Our wars were and are now being fought by immigrants. Virtually everything of value we have in this country, from political freedom to economic progress, was in some positive way influenced by immigrants.

Kopf said the immigrants, by their mere presence, bless us with a diversity that truly enriches our spirit.

What would Boston be without the sound of an Irish brogue? he said. What would Milwaukee be without German food? Could there really be a San Francisco without Chinatown? Could you imagine Chicago without the ethnic neighborhoods of Poles, Czechs and Hungarians? Wouldnt Miami be an a boring expanse of sand without the Cubans? Arent cities with names like San Antonio, Santa Fe and Los Angeles contradictions in terms without the Mexicans?

Our art, our food, our music, our humor, our language, our literature and, indeed, our daily lives are made immensely more interesting because of immigrants, Kopf said.

In summarizing his remarks, Kopf said, Those of us today, who welcome you, would do well to reflect on how lucky we, not you, are. I welcome you today. You will enrich this nation beyond any expectation. It is with these grateful thoughts that I say thank you.

Former state Sen. Mike Gloor and Luis Sotelo, chief diversity officer for Doane University, also spoke. Sotelo is an immigrant from Mexico, and Gloor is a second-generation American.

I am so proud to look out and see all of your faces because I see this hunger to do much for yourself and for your families, Sotelo said. You will become the fabric of America and the story of immigrants that has been a part of the United States since our beginning.

Gloor said what his family went through to become American citizens makes him empathetic for what the new citizens sworn in Thursday have gone through to make America their home.

It gives me a great degree of admiration for you for the fact that you became comfortable enough to become a citizen of this country, part of the melting pot, Gloor said. Thats wonderful. I salute you for it. Im proud of you for it, and I wish you the very best.

Emily Rivera, a U.S. Immigration Service officer, was master of ceremonies for the event. The Grand Island Senior High ROTC posted the colors, and GISH junior Alejandro Rendon sang the national anthem.
New York, May 13(Just Earth News): The latest United Nations report on energy-efficiency technologies shows that low-carbon technologies apparently aid clean air, save water and cut land use, and could reduce 25 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and 17 million tonnes of particulates a year.

We are on the right track. We know that cleaning up the air we breathe gives rise to huge benefits to both human and environmental health, and we know, too, that low-carbon energy efficiency technologies can help us reduce damaging climate change, said Erik Solheim, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in a press release on the new report.

At the same time, the UN Environment chief said: "[We are] also clear on the need for greater action on building a circular economy that cuts waste, and on production innovations that could also create new, green jobs.

Entitled Green Technology Choices: The Environmental and Resource Implications of Low-Carbon Technologies, the report, released on Friday at the Vienna Energy Forum, was compiled by a group of eminent experts in natural resource management hosted by UN Environment.

The panel examined eight energy efficiency technologies and 36 sub-technologies across buildings, industry and transportation and provided a global assessment of the benefits, risks and trade-offs encountered when energy efficiency technologies are deployed alongside low-carbon electricity supply technologies.

Among its findings, the report notes that research confirms that demand-side technologies reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as many other environmental impacts. However, the magnitude of those improvements varies widely among technologies and regions.

Indeed, in some cases, say the experts, demand-side technologies may increase resource consumption and even greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, it is crucial to understand where, when, and with which technology investment should be placed to maximize benefits.

The report compared two scenarios  one for a global temperature rise of 6 degrees Celsius and the other assuming that the global target of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is achieved.

Key findings of the analysis include:

Under the 2-degree scenario, low-carbon energy production and energy efficiency technologies have the potential to cut about 25 billion tonnes a year of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, which is about 34 per cent lower than the emissions under business-as-usual.

under the 2-degree scenario more than 17 million tonnes per year of particulate matter and over 3 billion tonnes of emissions toxic to humans could be avoided through the use of low-carbon energy technologies

Low-carbon energy technologies could save more than 200 billion cubic metres of water a year and nearly 150,000 square kilometres of land occupation by 2050.

Transformation to low-carbon energy technologies will require over 600 million tonnes of metal resources by 2050 for additional infrastructure and wiring needs.

Photo: World Bank/Dana Smillie

Source: www.justearthnews.com
U.S. Senate candidates break records for spending in Pennsylvania

Im not sure that people get persuaded by these ads, said Matthew Jordan, head of Penn State's Department of Film Production and Media Studies.
New York, May 13(Just Earth News): With violence and insecurity continuing to force people to flee Democratic Republic of Congoas Kasai region and seek refuge in neighbouring Angola, the United Nations refugee agency has called for a suitable place to shelter them as well as additional resources to support those in urgent need.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 20,000 new arrivals have been recorded since early April, with nearly 3,000 over the past few days.

[We] continue provide food and relief items to those arriving [and our] partners are pitching tents and distributing plastic sheeting to provide adequate shelter, prioritizing the most vulnerable people, Andrej Mahecic, a spokesperson for the UN agency, told journalists on Friday at a regular media briefing at UN Office at Geneva (UNOG).

UNHCR is also supporting Angolan authorities identify a suitable site to relocate refugees from temporary reception centres that have become overcrowded as the number of arrivals increase.

However, there are particular concerns for women and girls  who form about 70 per cent of new arrivals  as well as for a number of children who arrived unaccompanied and separated.

Furthermore, many people the recent arrivals included those with severe wounds and burn injuries, who had been transferred to a local hospital to receive urgent medical attention. About 70 are receiving treatment at local hospitals.

However, detailed information on the injuries was difficult to ascertain as the situation was unfolding in a very remote area, the north-eastern part of Angola, with people fleeing from the Kasai region also from a very remote area, explained Mahecic.

Also in its response to the situation, the UN agency has airlifted first-aid kits, solar lanterns, tents, and plastic sheets and rolls.

However, as the influx continues, more resources are needed to cope with the demand. In particular, UNHCR has made an appeal for $6.5 million to provide immediate lifesaving assistance, including food, nutrition, health and relief items for refugees.

Photo: UNHCR/Pumla Rulashe

Source: www.justearthnews.com
A Surgeon in the Village: An American Doctor Teaches Brain Surgery in Africa

By Tony Bartelme

Beacon. 274 pp. $27.95

---

In 2006, when American doctor Dilan Ellegala arrived in Haydom, on the edge of Tanzania's Great Rift Valley, he uncovered a shocking reality: This country of more than 40 million people had only three neurosurgeons. All of them were in the capital, Dar es Salaam.

Ellegala, who had recently graduated from Harvard Medical School, was the first brain surgeon at Haydom Lutheran Hospital, a medical center that depended on volunteer doctors from Europe and the United States. The facility lacked the most basic surgical tools. Patients with head injuries or brain tumors healed on their own or died. The operating theater did not have a functional microscope; the light was too dim; patients under anesthesia were ventilated by an assistant squeezing an oxygen bag by hand. Every bed in the hospital was occupied. Some patients slept two to a bed; some slept on floors or benches outside the rooms.

In "A Surgeon in the Village," journalist Tony Bartelme recounts Ellegala's efforts to improve the medical system in Tanzania. Bartelme followed Ellegala for four years, staying at the hospital where he worked, witnessing the dire conditions that made his mission so difficult. The result is a harrowing and important book that captures the tremendous health-care challenges facing East Africa and opens our eyes to a complicated global health problem: lack of access to safe, affordable surgery and anesthesia. Bartelme says an estimated 17 million people die every year from conditions that could have been treated surgically.

Early on, Ellegala was forced to make some difficult decisions. One day, for example, an unconscious man was brought to the hospital; cerebrospinal fluid was leaking from his ear. Ellegala needed a Gigli saw, a $20 instrument used for cutting bones, to open the man's skull and save his life. The only one at the hospital was rusty and broken. Defeated, Ellegala decided to go out for a run to clear his mind. On his way, he came across a farmer who was cutting a tree limb with a wire saw. Ellegala bought the tool and rushed back to the hospital, where he sterilized it and used it to perform the surgery.

Ellegala saved the man's life, but a question haunted him: What happens after visiting doctors leave Haydom?

Ellegala couldn't cure every Tanzanian with his own two hands, so he tried the next best thing: training other surgeons. His first student was a Tanzanian medical assistant, Emmanuel Mayegga, whose education was comparable to that of a high school graduate in America. Over a few weeks, Ellegala taught Mayegga some brain surgery techniques and built his confidence to perform surgeries. It was a risky move, Bartelme admits, but, given "that millions of people had no access to even the most basic forms of neurosurgery," the options were limited. "Was it ethical," he asks, "to wait until a country built a stable of experienced surgeons, a process that might take decades, if it would happen at all?"

After Ellegala left Tanzania a few months later, Mayegga began operating on patients with head wounds. He helped another health-care worker, Emanuel Nuwas, to master the techniques and perform neurosurgery. Nuwas would also, as part of Ellegala's "train-forward" philosophy, teach others.

Ellegala, who also practiced in Portland, Ore., and later in Charleston, S.C., founded a nongovernmental organization called Madaktari Africa. It sends hundreds of doctors around the world to serve as mentors and to create a sustainable model for global health. To address concerns about instructing clinicians to perform complicated brain procedures, Ellegala encouraged Mayegga and Nuwas to attend medical school in Dar es Salaam. Both men returned to Haydom after completing their studies to advocate Ellegala's teach-first philosophy - a testimony that empowering people turns them into agents of change.

"Teaching has the power to change people's internal wiring, help them do things they never thought possible. And teaching is a universal value, as basic as a father teaching a son to tie his shoes, which means it can be a unifying force," Bartelme writes.

Bartelme argues that Ellegala's effort to build a functional health system, even though it means relying on locals who lack credentials required in the West, is more important than the humanitarian aid that has poured into Africa for decades. Such programs are well intentioned but keep low-income countries dependent.

The Ebola crisis in West Africa in 2014 underlined the importance of a health-care system that can stand on its feet. Nearly 95 percent of foreign health-care workers packed their bags after the Ebola outbreak, and the locals were left on their own to fight the deadly virus. "Hospitals and clinics closed; the disease spread to Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, and then the United States and Spain. West Africa's problem became the world's problem," Bartelme writes.

It wasn't until thousands had died that governments and humanitarian aid groups stood together to stop the disease. If African doctors had been empowered to fight it in the first place, Bartelme argues, the scale of the crisis would have been different.

"In a world of trauma and disease," he concludes, "destinies are often shaped by access to healers. And without this access, ripples of suffering can become waves." Training healers can stop that wave.

---

Fathi was a correspondent for the New York Times based in Tehran from 1999 to 2009 and is the author of "The Lonely War: One Woman's Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran."
Quetta, May 12 (IBNS): At least 25 people were killed in a blast that hit Mastung area of Pakistan's Balochistan province on Friday, media reports said.

The incident reportedly left 30 others injured.

The injured include Deputy Chairman Senate of Pakistan Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, local media reports said.

District Health Officer in Mastung Dr Sher Zaman was quoted as saying by Geo News, "25 bodies have been shifted to two hospitals in Quetta."

As per local media reports, the target of the blast was Haideris convoy.

He has been reportedly shifted to the Combined Military Hospital (CMH) in Quetta.

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has condemned the attack.

The area has been cordoned off.

Investigation is currently underway.
The Edwardsville Police Department is likely to get dispatch console upgrades.

As discussed at Mondays Public Safety Committee meeting, the police department proposed the approval of a purchase of two Motorola MCC7500 dispatch consoles, for the total amount of $260,274.05.

Currently, the department uses two aged Gold Elite Motorola computer consoles for dispatch. With the upcoming move to the new public safety facility at the end of the year, the department will need to transition to the new consoles.

Edwardsville Police Chief Jay Keeven said after originally seeking to buy radios from St. Clair County, following previous Council approval, they had already been sold. Now, the department is trying to make the purchase from St. Clair Countys probation department.

Those radios were actually sold before we got it through Council and approved, but they have others that are with the probation department. Its the exact same radio but they are still waiting on Motorola to program the new ones for their probation department so they can give us the old ones. Those were the radios that were going to start us on a digital platform, Keeven said.

My understanding, for the MCC7500  so a lot of the things that we will have at the new station, with our video security cameras, the ability for a dispatcher to open and close sally port doors, the ability for a dispatcher to open and close magnetized locked doors and everything within our booking area  all of those things can be controlled through this new system, he added.

The new consoles will allow the EPD to dispatch on current UHF (Ultra High Frequency) and VHF (Very High Frequency) channels while providing a digital platform for the Motorola StarCom radio network. The network will allow direct communication between other local police agencies, including the Madison County Sheriffs Department and Illinois State Police.

In addition to the purchase of the new consoles, the EPD will also need a System Upgrade Agreement and maintenance services, which raise the cost to a total of $440,191.36.

Keeven said the whole package is necessary to equip the EPD with what is needed.

What we are needing now, which includes all of the equipment, all of the installation, training of our dispatchers on the new systems, basically making everything work, he said.

Our goal would be that we would be totally digital and then we would use VHF as our backup system if our digital system goes down. The reason our fees are so high is because that covers everything. Motorola, its like your cell phone. If theres a problem with your cellphone and you have the replacement package, you bring it back to Verizon and they repair it. Thats how Motorola kind of got into these contracts, he added.

The total price for the new dispatch system will be paid over the course of ten years. If the contract is approved, Keeven said a payment plan has already been discussed.

Once we execute the contract with them, we would have to pay them 20 percent. When the equipment is delivered to Wireless USA, who is their vendor to install, wed have to give them 50.44 percent, and then once we finally accept and move into the building with the systems working as it is supposed to, then we have to pay them the remaining 29.56 percent, he said.

With this resolution, if moved forward, the approval will only be for the two dispatch console upgrades for $260,274.05.

The funds will come out of the public safety facility costs.

Alderman Janet Stack made the motion for approval, seconded by alderman SJ Morrison.

With none opposed, the motion passed unanimously. It will be reviewed once more for approval at next Tuesdays City Council meeting.
On December 1, 2016 Senior Services Plus took over the Long-Term Care Ombudsman program in Area 8 from Land of Lincoln Legal Services after inquiries from Age Smart Community Resources and the Illinois Department on Aging as to our openness to accepting this important and much needed program. After deciding that this program fit into SSPs mission and then receiving approval from our board of directors we accepted the challenge and moved forward with the program.

The IDOA website describes the Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program as:

The Ombudsman program is mandated by the Federal Older Americans Act and the Illinois Act on Aging, the Illinois Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program (LTCOP) is a resident-directed advocacy program which protects and improves the quality of life for residents in a variety of long-term care settings. Ombudsmen work to resolve problems of individual residents and to bring about changes at the local, state and national levels to improve care. Most residents receive good care in long-term care facilities; however, far too many experience violations of their rights including abuse, neglect, poor care, isolation and lack of choices and meaningful activities. Trained community ombudsmen regularly visit long-term care facilities, monitor conditions and care, and provide a voice for those unable to speak for themselves. Long-Term Care Ombudsmen make every reasonable effort to assist, empower, represent and intervene on behalf of the resident. Ombudsman work is directed by the resident.

Executive Director John Becker, Associate Director Theresa Collins, and new Regional Ombudsman Chris Sutton, formerly the FGP director, worked closely with the State Ombudsman, Age Smart, and Land of Lincoln to work out financial agreements, program implementation, staff training, consulting, resident file transfer, and receiving program education and information documents. They also went through the process of hiring those who would become Community Ombudsman. Those selected for these positions were Tracie Ramel-Smith, Iesha Fordson, and Sarah Lantry who all worked in SSPs CCP program, following SSPs goal to promote from within when possible. Also, they were able to procure the services of the former Regional Ombudsman, Brenda Acoff, to serve as a contractual consultant during start-up.

On November 22 and 29 Phase I Ombudsman training was conducted here at SSP by State Ombudsman Jamie Freschi and Brenda Acoff and it was attended by all the new Ombudsman. Ms. Acoff also provided 4 hours of training for each between the training dates as prescribed by the state, thus all new staff completed Phase I training. Requests for certification were sent soon after and all of our staff were certified as Illinois Ombudsman.

The Senior Services Plus Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program covers Bond, Clinton, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, St. Clair, and Washington counties in Illinois. This area has 135 long-term care facilities in which there are 9,242 beds available for residents. Long-term care facilities include Skilled Nursing Facilities, Assisted Living Facilities, Supported Living Facilities, Shelter Care Homes, and facilities and group homes for developmentally disabled residents. Each facility is visited at least once a quarter, although many facilities receive more than one visit depending on the needs of the residents, thus every resident in our area has personal access to an ombudsman at least once every three months. Each facility is also required by law to post the ombudsmans name and telephone number on a poster provided by the State Ombudsmans office so that residents or other interested parties can call to report issues and complaints. We are projected to open and close approximately 400 cases, makes 1,255 facility visits, and perform 1,250 consultations to individuals this fiscal year.

One of our most important duties is to make sure that the constitutional rights of the residents we serve are upheld. During February we assisted a resident who called us and complained that her mail was being opened before she received it and she often received it well after it was delivered to the facility where she lives. When we brought this to the facilitys attention they said that was their policy as they wanted to obtain financial documents before the resident so nothing would happen to it and that every resident was treated the same. We pointed out that this was an invasion of their privacy and not lawful. However, we did suggest that a staff member bring any financial documents to the resident so that they knew it had arrived and let them open it for the staff. Otherwise they should be receiving all other mail when delivered and unmolested. The facility acquiesced and this resident and all the other residents now receive their mail unopened and in a timely fashion.
More than 1.3 million Americans have died while wearing a military uniform for their country.

They will be remembered in a number of area Memorial Day services.

Two of the most well-attended services are in Edwardsville and Glen Carbon on Memorial Day, which is being marked on May 29 this year.

Woodlawn Cemetery will serve as the site of Edwardsville's largest and, at 120 years longest-running, ceremony.

The event will begin at 10 a.m. when the Edwardsville Municipal Band performs a concert of patriotic songs.

Rev. Jorian Stitch from Wesley Chapel A.M.E. Chapel will give the invocation and benediction.

Debrah Ahrens will read the names of the deceased veterans from the area who have died in the past year and Emily Ottwein will sing.

Steve Emerson will serve as the guest speaker.

Woodlawn Cemetery is located at 1400 St. Louis Street in Edwardsville.

Prior to the ceremony at Woodlawn, the Glen Carbon Veterans Monument, located near the Covered Bridge, will host a ceremony at 9 a.m.

Local Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts take part in this ceremony, which is scheduled early in the day to allow members of both the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars to attend events in Edwardsville and Glen Carbon.

Oaklawn Cemetery in Glen Carbon will host its annual Memorial Day ceremony at 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 21.

Illinois State Representative Katie Stuart will be the featured speaker.

Also on Sunday, May 21, a Memorial Day Service will be conducted at Buck Road Cemetery off Route 162 in Maryville.

That event will begin at 2 p.m. and Michael Kovarik, president of Buck Road Cemetery, will be the guest speaker.

There will also be a special presentation at the Henry Ostendorf statue, officiated by Glen Carbon VFW Post 2222 and Glen Carbon American Legion Post 435.

Ostendorf was the first soldier from Madison County to be killed in action World War I in Europe.

This year is also the 150th anniversary of Buck Road Cemetery.

Harris Cemetery in Alhambra will host a Memorial Day ceremony at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 27.

The cemetery is operated by the Harris Cemetery Association and is not affiliated with a church. It is located on Alhambra Road approximately one-half mile south of Illinois Route 140.

The St. James Cemetery Association will conduct Memorial Day Services at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 28, at the cemetery, located on St. James Drive in Edwardsville.

For more information, call 978-0967 or 656-0532.

Sunset Hill Cemetery in Glen Carbon will also host a Memorial Day event.

Hundreds of American flags will be raised on the cemetery grounds.

All of the ceremonies listed are open to the public. Those attending are advised to bring lawn chairs.
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Linkedin EDITORIAL (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 17:02 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a092386 2 Editorial editorial,#Editorial Free

The blasphemy trial and conviction of the now non-active Jakarta governor, Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama, have raised more worries for Indonesias minorities and the majority of moderate Muslims. On the heels of the divisive Jakarta election, which Ahok lost, the confidence of Islamists has risen, although many of their aspirations and actions were alien and hostile to fellow Muslims.



Therefore, it is with mixed feelings that Indonesians greet the governments plan to disband the Hizbut Thahrir Indonesia (HTI), the local branch of a global Islamic khilafah (caliphate movement) long banned in other countries. Compared to those of vigilante groups, HTI members are not known as rabble-rousers, yet their aspirations for a global caliphate, not unlike that of the Islamic State (IS) movement, contradicts the republics basic principles. The HTI has also joined the anti-Ahok cause with its members joining rallies to demand his imprisonment and carrying banners promoting the khilafah.



Many worried members of the public then sent flower boards to the National Police and Indonesian Military headquarters, giving them a subtle message that the republic should not be replaced with sharia-inspired laws.



On Monday, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Wiranto suddenly said the government was moving to ban the HTI, a plan that was swiftly challenged. Former law minister Yusril Isra Mahendra reminded the government that since the HTI is a legal organization, its dissolution must follow procedures in the law on mass organizations; we therefore hail the governments plan to go to court on the issue.



Other groups are distancing themselves from the HTI. The Islam Defenders Front (FPI) rushed to claim it was different from the HTI, maintaining that the FPI was based on Pancasila, even though its leader Rizieq Shihab has reportedly insulted the state ideology.



The revised law on mass organizations is a legacy of the New Order regime and has been used to justify the banning of several organizations. with unclear reasons. Todays authorities show similar inconsistency. Wiranto said the HTI only caused tension, but what about other groups that have long created public disturbances? What these groups have done involving violence and hate speech could have been enough reason for the government to give warnings and, if necessary, decide on their dissolution.



President Joko Jokowi Widodo may be sending a warning to vocal Islamist groups ahead of his 2019 reelection bid, starting with the HTI. But hundreds of thousands of HTI members would simply go underground.



Indonesia needs a democracy that would allow for a pluralism of identities and beliefs, including that of minorities like Shiites and Ahmadis, which the HTI want to see banned. It is tempting to simply ban anyone or any organization campaigning on ideas that contradict our basic principles, ideas like the creation of an Islamic state. However, we would be repeating the mistakes of the past authoritarian regime if we crush legitimate organizations simply because they are not part of the establishment.
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Paris  Fri, May 12, 2017 08:09 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a07cc47 2 Health HIV-AIDS,HIV,health,#health Free

The life expectancy of HIV-infected people in Europe and the United States has been boosted by a decade since anti-AIDS drugs became available in the mid-1990s, researchers said Thursday.

In fact, a 20-year-old who began treatment any time since 2008, now has an expected lifespan, about 78 years, approaching that of an uninfected person, said a study in The Lancet HIV.

Life expectancy in the "general population", excluding people infected with the AIDS-causing virus, is 79 years for men and 85 for women in France, and 78 for men and 82 for women in the United States, said the researchers.

People who started taking antiretroviral treatment (ART) in 2008 or thereafter lived longer, healthier lives than those who started treatment in earlier years, they added.

This was likely because modern drugs have fewer toxic side-effects, there are now more options for people with a drug-resistant HIV strain, and better treatment of other infections and conditions.

"With the perception that HIV-positive people will live into old age, clinicians are screening for and treating comorbidities (diseases on top of HIV) more aggressively," said the paper.

These included heart disease, hepatitis C and cancer.

Read also: HIV/AIDS positive children left out in cold

Conducted in Europe and America, the study included data on more than 88,000 HIV patients.

"Information about life expectancy in people living with HIV and the knowledge that it could be approaching that of the general population is important to motivate at-risk individuals to test for HIV and convince those infected to start ART immediately," said the study.

It could also "decrease stigmatisation of people living with HIV and help them to obtain insurance or employment".

ART, a cocktail of three or more drugs that block the virus from replicating, first became widely used in 1996.

It does not cure the disease, and treatment is lifelong.

The World Health Organization recommends that ART be started in all people as soon as possible after diagnosis.

Many people in poorer nations are diagnosed too late, if at all, and treatment is not always readily available or affordable.
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Linkedin Ni Nyoman Wira (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 09:39 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a080364 1 People worlds-youngest-traveler,james-asquith,Guinness-World-Record,travel,travelers,traveling,youngest-traveler,#travel Free

British-born James Asquith was still 24 years old when he was bestowed as the youngest person to travel to all sovereign countries by Guinness World Records and he has retained the title ever since.

During his journey to break the record, from July 4, 2008 to July 8, 2013, he visited 196 countries, including Indonesia.

It feels amazing to have the Guinness World Records, but very surreal, he told The Jakarta Post via email. Ive been to every country in the world, but what is a country? A man-made border. Theres so much more of the world to discover and I keep on exploring every time I travel which is amazing.

During his visit to Indonesia, Asquith traveled to several provinces, including Bali and Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara. He described his experience in those provinces in his book, Breaking Borders: Travels in Pursuit of an Impossible Records.

James Asquith visited several places in Bali, among them Ku De Ta and Tanah Lot.(instagram.com/jamesasquithtravel/File)

[] after a brief stop through the heaving heavyweight city of Jakarta, it was a complete contrast to visit the Gili Islands, where there were no cars. None at all, he wrote. [] but the destination that really enticed me was Bali. Quite simply paradise, and it was understandable why this has become a top destination for travelers.

He visited several places in Bali, among them Ku De Ta and Tanah Lot. To be honest, I found the atmosphere slightly strange in Kuta, as huge amounts of drink deals were washed down with thumping music in the background of a structurally questionable six-story bar that overlooked the Bali bombing memorial below. Quite sobering, he jotted down on his book.

Read also: Russian nationals account for highest growth of tourist arrivals in Indonesia

I cannot wait to come back to Indonesia, Asquith stated. And Ill be checking out Palawan, Sumatra and Central Java for sure.

Asquith shared that he had been traveling since he was little. My father was a pilot and my mother lived in Hong Kong and Germany for a while, so I always had the traveling bug from a young age, he said, adding that his parents had also inspired him to break the record. My first trip that I can really remember was an overnight boat to Copenhagen in stormy conditions, and this was pretty exciting and new to me.

James Asquith in Afghanistan.(instagram.com/jamesasquithtravel/File)

His passion for traveling did not stop there. After working and saving money from an early age and then investing in stocks when he was 18, Asquith began his real trip. He started with Vietnam where he volunteered to build houses and continued to other Southeast Asian countries.

Some of the countries he visited were North Korea, Iran, Ethiopia and Sierra Leone. He also went to Libya three weeks after the fall of Gaddafi and to Afghanistan two weeks after the bombing in Mazar-i-Sharif, as quoted by The Sun. Yes, my timing always seemed awful with visiting places when they were at war or unrest, he said.

Asquith has advice for people who want to follow his path. Just buy the ticket and go. Embrace it, he said. Life is too short; so enjoy it and create memories to the fullest. (kes)
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Linkedin Gianna Francesca Catolico (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Fri, May 12, 2017 17:10 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a092396 2 Lifestyle Everest,wedding,wedding-ceremony Free

A thrill-seeking American couple and their photographer scaled Mt. Everest for an adventurous wedding thats reaping attention on social media.

Last March, photographer Charleton Churchill traveled with California-based lovebirds Ashley Schmieder, 32, and Jason Sissom, 35, to Nepal for a photo shoot. Braving freezing temperatures and experiencing altitude sickness, the couple safely reached the Everest Base Camp located 17,000 feet above sea level.

After dumping their trekking gear for a wedding gown and tuxedo, Schmieder and Sissom exchanged vows and rings while Churchill captured their big day. (instagram.com/charletonchurchill/ Charleton Churchill)

After dumping their trekking gear for a wedding gown and tuxedo, Schmieder and Sissom exchanged vows and rings while Churchill captured their big day.

Its one of the most epic and beautiful locations in the world thats difficult to get to, and nobodys done it before. So we are thrilled to have finally pulled it off, Churchill wrote in his travel blog.

Read also: Man creates Hollywood-style video ad to sell his old Vitara

Its one of the most epic and beautiful locations in the world thats difficult to get to, and nobodys done it before. So we are thrilled to have finally pulled it off, Churchill wrote in his travel blog. (instagram.com/charletonchurchill/ Charleton Churchill)

Since they were eloping far away from home, we had no minister, but they exchanged vows, exchanged rings, and shared from the heart how much they were going to pursue and love each other, he recounted.

His photos and videos documenting the couples extraordinary trip went viral and spurred international headlines.

The bride and groom, Ashley Schmieder (right), 32, and Jason Sissom (left), 35, got on a helicopter after they married at Base Camp. (instagram.com/charletonchurchill/ Charleton Churchill)

Apparently, Churchill pitched the idea of a Mt. Everest wedding shoot in 2011. He planned the shoot with another pair back in 2015 but was scrapped due to a mountain avalanche after the devastating Nepal earthquake.

Topics :

This article appeared on the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper website, which is a member of Asia News Network and a media partner of The Jakarta Post
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Linkedin Amber Wang (Agence France-Presse) Taipei  Fri, May 12, 2017 16:28 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a091f4a 2 Lifestyle gay-marriage,LGBT,Taiwan,#Taiwan,#LGBT Free

For Chi Chia-wei the imminent court decision that could make Taiwan the first place in Asia to recognise gay marriage is his greatest shot at justice after decades of tireless campaigning.

"It's been so long, my hair has gone grey!" says 59-year-old Chia, who often appears in public draped in rainbow flags.

The celebrated activist, who has led the island's gay rights movement for nearly 30 years, will know on May 24 whether his battle for marriage equality has been won when Taiwan's constitutional court rules on his latest petition.

At the center of the case is a clause in Taiwan's Civil Code which says an agreement to marry should be made between a man and a woman.

Read also: Website offers clothing alterations for LGBT customers

Chi wants the court to rule on whether that part of the Civil Code contravenes elements in Taiwan's constitution which guarantee equality and freedom of marriage.

The decision is binding, so a ruling in his favour would pave the way for same-sex unions to be legalised.

Chi says he is optimistic, but his excitement is tempered by the length of time it has taken to get this far.

"This should have happened long ago. It's belated justice," he told AFP.

Chi is one of two petitioners bringing the case.

The other is the Taipei City government which is seeking clarification as authorities in Taiwan have been rejecting applications for same-sex marriages based on the Civil Code clause.

Chi says this time there is much more public momentum for change -- in December, a pro-gay marriage rally drew 250,000 people according to organisers.

"It was just a one-man campaign when I started -- now I have 250,000 people beside me. I am not alone in doing what is right," Chi said.

Read also: Court: Civil Rights law prohibits discrimination of LGBT

- 'One right thing' -

Raised by liberal-minded parents supportive of his sexual orientation, they encouraged him to fight for his beliefs.

He came out to friends at high school and says he was surprised by how accepting they were.

After starting out as a rights activist for HIV and AIDS sufferers, Chi became a full-time advocate for gay rights after meeting his partner 29 years ago.

But while he may have had support from his family and peers, outspoken Chi has had numerous run-ins with authorities.

In 1986, when Taiwan was still under martial law, Chi says he was imprisoned for five months after submitting his first petition asking for gay marriage to be recognised.

The charges linked him with a robbery and were entirely fabricated, he says.

Since then his appeals for a change in the marriage law have been rejected by government agencies and courts, including a failed petition to the constitutional court in 2001.

"I wasn't discouraged by the setbacks. That's how I have been able to carry on for so long," says Chi.

Read also: The LGBT community: Youngest

"My belief is that if you can do one right thing in this life, it's all worth it."

A lack of support in parliament has also previously meant the gay marriage debate stalled.

However, campaigners were given new hope when Tsai Ing-wen won the presidency last year and openly supported marriage equality.

With her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the majority, parliament passed the first draft of a bill to legalise gay marriage in December and it is due for a second reading later this year.

But while there is more support than ever for gay marriage in Taiwan, recent debate has also exposed deep divisions in society.

Conservative groups say allowing same-sex unions would destroy family values and opponents have staged mass rallies in recent months, including a protest outside the constitutional court hearing in March.

Chi says those who are against him accuse him of "spreading heresy" and attention-seeking. They belittle his relationship with his partner, comparing it to children playing house, he says.

"I am not doing this for my own interests," Chi said.

"My partner and I are an old couple now and getting married is not a priority for us. But other gay couples need legal protection."
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Linkedin Kelly Velasquez and Ella Ide (Agence France-Presse) Venice, Italy  Fri, May 12, 2017 11:01 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a083a64 2 Art & Culture Brexit,art-and-culture,#Brexit,Venice,Venice-art,#ArtsandCulture,art-festival,#art,The-57th-Biennale,exhibition,art-exhibition,#exhibition Free

Weary of the modern-day "global disorder" of politics and conflicts? The 57th Biennale art festival promises to lift the spirits of those frazzled by everything from Brexit to global warming.

"Viva Arte Viva", which opens Saturday in Venice, is "a passionate outcry for art" in a world "full of conflicts and shocks", curator Christine Macel said ahead of the opening.

Macel, chief curator of the Pompidou Center in Paris, has brought together 120 artists from 50 countries -- with the emphasis on rediscovering great artists who may have been overlooked, rather than blowing the trumpets of rising stars.

"The Biennale challenge is to give as global a picture as possible of the artistic situation" across the world, she told AFP.

Among those exhibiting are pioneering US fiber artist Sheila Hicks, West German-born American Kiki Smith and Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, the man behind the vast sun at Britain's Tate Modern in 2003 and the New York waterfalls in 2008.

Music and gold

France's Loris Greaud pays homage to the city's famed glass blowers -- forced by the Venetian Senate in 1291 to settle on Murano island to protect the industry's secrets -- by bringing a disused furnace back to life in "The Unplayed Notes Factory".

Swiss-born Julian Charriere, perhaps best known for dying the feathers of live pigeons in bright colors and releasing them into Venice's Saint Mark's Square in 2015, brings visitors "Future Fossil Spaces" -- towers of salt bricks extracted from deposits in Bolivia.

Read also: Banksy chips away at EU flag in first Brexit mural

Some exhibits are dotted around "La Serenissima", "the most serene" as Venice is known.

Visitors should take to the gondolas for the best view of the glinting "Golden Tour" (1990) by US artist James Lee Byars, which stands proudly on the canal front next to the Peggy Guggenheim museum.

Alongside the contemporary art exhibition, 85 countries are putting on their own national pavilions at the Biennale.

The French one will be a recording studio with classical, baroque, electronic and folk instruments, which will host over 100 professional musicians from different countries during the exposition, with visitors able to drop in on some lively jam sessions.

Several countries will be showing for the first time in the northeastern Italian city, from Antigua and Barbuda to Kazakhstan and Nigeria.

Green lights, disco beat

However it is impossible to escape the modern world's problems altogether, even at the Biennale.

"The Pavilion of Joys and Fears", for example, explores "new feelings of alienation due to forced migrations or mass surveillance" in a world shaken by conflicts, wars, increasing inequality and the rise of populism.

Read also: London retrospective charts 50 years of Pink Floyd

But the topics are approached with humor or warmth, aimed at energizing those suffering from 21st century blues.

At a time of global disorder, art embraces life. Art is the last bastion," Macel says.

"At the heart of her show lies Eliasson's "green light" installation, where refugees and visitors come together in a workshop to assemble lamps designed by the artist and share stories.

As the worst migrant crisis since World War II rocks Europe, it represents the metaphorical green light he urges his homeland and other countries to give to taking in those fleeing conflict and persecution.

In the wake of the US presidential election, American artist Charles Atlas presents the large-screen video work "The Tyranny of Consciousness", in which drag queen Lady Bunny bemoans American politics to a disco beat.

The Golden Lion for lifetime achievement goes to the pioneering US feminist performance artist Carolee Schneemann, famed for using her body to examine the role of female sensuality and the overthrow of oppressive social conventions.

The Venice Biennale is held on odd-numbered years. This year's event will run until November 26.
Photo: Air Canada Facebook

Toronto, May 12 (NITN): Air Canada on Thursday announced its decision to launch its own loyalty program in 2020, upon the expiry of its commercial agreement with Aimia, the operator of Aeroplan, media reports said.

Air Canada is Canada's largest domestic and international airline, serving more than 200 airports in six continents.

Canada's flag carrier is among the 20 largest airlines in the world.

The airlines in a statement released on Thursday declared that effective June 30, 2020, Aeroplan will no longer be the loyalty program for Air Canada.

Aeroplan has been independently owned and operated by Aimia for almost a decade.

"By operating its own loyalty program, Air Canada will be better able to strengthen its customer relationships and deliver a more consistent end-to-end customer experience," the statement read.

Calin Rovinescu, Air Canadas President and CEO in his statement on the new loyalty program said, "Our relationship with our more than 45 million customers sits at the core of Air Canada's ongoing transformation as we continue to grow our business beyond the 200 destinations that we already serve, and work to become a global champion."

He further added that the decision is the right one for Air Canadas customers, their employees and shareholders.

Benjamin Smith, President, Passenger Airlines of Air Canada, said, The new program, launching in 2020 will offer additional for Air Canada customers.

Smith also highlighted that there will be earning and redemption opportunities, more personalised service and a better digital experience in the new program.

"Similar to all of Air Canada's North American peers, by managing our own loyalty program, we will be able to take better care of our customers by making decisions in real time that address specific needs," Smith added.

"We're excited to take this next step that delivers on our promise for continued investments in the customer experience," he said.

The airlines report further stated that in the past decade, Air Canada has invested $10 billion to renew its fleet with the most technologically-capable aircraft, and to elevate its product offering, including all-new seats, Wi-Fi connectivity, expanded and renovated Maple Leaf Lounges, increased digital capabilities and updated branding comprised of a new livery, new uniforms and much more to improve the travel experience.

In the next three years, Air Canada's exclusive contract with Aimia remains in effect until its June 29, 2020 expiration date.

Until then, Air Canada will work closely with Aimia with the objective of providing consistent service for Aeroplan members.

The Aeroplan members during this period will continue to earn and redeem miles in accordance with the Aeroplan program which means, before the launch of new program in June 2020, members will be able to earn and redeem Aeroplan Miles for Aeroplan Rewards, including flights with Air Canada and their Star Alliance partners in accordance with the Aeroplan program.

After June 2020, miles earned from Air Canada and Star Alliance flights will be credited to the new program, with customers able to redeem those miles for rewards including Air Canada and Star Alliance partner flights.

Aeroplan miles earned up to June 2020 will stay in Aeroplan members' accounts, and will continue to be subject to the conditions of their program.

Meanwhile, the airline's most frequent flyers will continue to enjoy Air Canada Altitude status recognition and its associated range of travel privileges, based on their annual flight activities with Air Canada and the Star Alliance member airlines.

The Million Mile program qualification activity and status will also be honoured in the new program, the airline stated.

Air Canada believes there new loyalty program will be focused on improved rewards and recognition for the airline's customers, and will provide Air Canada and its business partners, Star Alliance member and others, with significant growth opportunities.

The airline is expected to provide more at its Investor Day on September 19, 2017, concerning the financial benefits expected to be realized, as well as the transitional costs.

It is also targeting the net present value of the program repatriation over a 15-year period to exceed $2 billion.

(Reporting Suman Das)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 15:00 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a08ef70 1 City #AhokDetention,#ahok,Brimob Free

Barbed wire has been installed in front of the National Police's Mobile Brigade Command (Brimob) detention center in Depok, West Java, where non-active Jakarta governor Basuki "Ahok" Tjahaja Purnama is being detained.

The wire was installed on Thursday evening after Ahok supporters staged a protest at the location.

"The installment aims to prevent supporters from staging protests. This is based on standard operating procedures [SOPs]," Depok Police deputy chief Adj. Sr. Comr. Faizal Ramadhani said as quoted by tribunnews.com.

On Friday, several armed Brimob officers secured the location.

Ahok was detained at the Brimob detention center on Wednesday.

Hundreds of his supporters continue to flock to the center, making speeches and holding candlelit vigils. (wnd)
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Linkedin Prima Wirayani (The Jakarta Post) Seattle  Fri, May 12, 2017 12:02 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a0899b8 1 Business Boeing-787-Dreamliner,Singapore-Airlines,Scoot Free

Singapore-based low-cost carrier Scoot received on Thursday the handover of its 14th Boeing 787 Dreamliner airplane at Boeing Everett Delivery Center in Seattle, the United States, aiming to expand its long-haul services business.

Scoot currently serves 23 destinations in nine countries in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia, Japan and Thailand.

It announced recently a new route flying between Singapore and Athens, which is expected to serve passengers four times a week starting June 20 using the latest aircraft.

(Read also: Singapore Airlines kicks off fuel-efficient flights)

"We think that there is potential [in the route] as many people want to visit Greece as well as people in Europe who want to visit Asia. This is an under-served market," Budget Aviation Holdings (BAH) chief executive officer Lee Lik Hsin told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

BAH is fully owned by Singapore Airlines Group and is managing Scoot as well as low-cost short-haul carrier Tigerair.

Another long-haul route, details of which are still undisclosed, is expected to be announced later this year.

"The 787 Dreamliner [...] enables Scoot to be a game changer in the low-cost carrier industry and profitably open new non-stop routes, such as Singapore to Athens," Boeing commercial airplanes senior vice president for commercial airplanes Asia Pacific and India sales Dinesh Keskar stated. (hwa)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 20:00 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a0990a4 1 City East-Jakarta,fire Free

Another fire broke out in the capital on Friday as a house in Cakung, East Jakarta, was gutted by flames. A preliminary investigation suggested that the fire was caused by an electrical short circuit.

There were no casualties, although the house owner lost all of his belongings, said Gatot Sulaiman of the East Jakarta Fire Department on Friday, as quoted by beritajakarta.id.

He added that the fire started at about 2 p.m.

The fire department deployed two fire engines to extinguish the blaze. The fire was completely put out about 45 minutes later.

The incident was the second of the day as a fire had broken out in a four-story shop house in Kebayoran Baru, South Jakarta, early Friday morning. The earlier fire was also allegedly caused by an electrical short circuit. (kuk)
Indonesia is playing its cards close to its chest in its effort to convince China to sink more money into the archipelago through the ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, by offering limited projects in only two to three regions deemed most suitable for the new Silk Road.

In the OBOR summit, slated for next Sunday through Monday, China will gather 29 countries to upgrade the legendary Silk Road trade route into an advanced global trade network, by investing heavily in infrastructure connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.

Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) chairman Thomas Lembong confirmed that Indonesia would only offer infrastructure projects in a limited number of regions as the government had found that a lack of focus could make Chinese investors hesitant.

While declining to mention the exact regions as the matter still needs to be discussed in a meeting at the office of the Coordinating Maritime Affiars Minister on Friday, he noted that Indonesia would focus on maritime projects encompassing transportation, telecommunications, tourism, industrial estates, energy and power.

We have a vision that during the summit, we will propose integrated projects worth tens of billions of US dollars. However, the government must first pick out two or three priority regions, he said on Wednesday.

Since its establishment in 2013, the OBOR initiative has seen more than US$50 billion of Chinese investment. It could funnel investments, worth between $313 billion and $502 billion, into 62 Belt-Road countries over the next five years, Hong Kong based analyst at Credit Suisse Group AG Shen Hu wrote.

While Indonesia has been a member of the OBOR program since its establishment in 2013, it has so far only reaped $5 billion to $6 billion in infrastructure investment from the initiative. The figure is much smaller compared to its peers; Pakistan has received $62 billion, while Malaysia has received $32 billion, said Thomas.

The government hopes to change this with President Joko Jokowi Widodos attendance next week. He will have to compete with 28 heads of state, including those from six other ASEAN members and 12 European countries.

Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) deputy chairperson of international relations Shinta Widjaja Kamdani urged Indonesia to be more proactive as $359 billion of investment is needed under the 2015-2019 midterm development plan (RPJMN), with state-owned firms only able to fund 63 percent.

We have toll roads, sea ports, airports and power plant projects that are in line with the OBOR program. The government must find a way to offer these projects with enticing investment schemes, she told The Jakarta Post.

Economist Ari Kuncoro from the University of Indonesia agreed with the governments decision to offer only a few regions, but said the country needed to carefully assess the decision. There should be a clear road map on how we want to join. Indonesia needs to offer a conscientious concession for mutual benefits, he added.

The OBOR program is suitable for cities that were covered in the old trade route between China and Indonesia, such as Sabang in Aceh, Medan in North Sumatra, Batam in Riau islands and Pontianak in West Kalimantan.

However, Ari suggested that they not be specifically offered to OBOR, but also to Japan and the United States, all of which have interest to grow as the worlds leading economic hub.

-----

Stefani Ribka contributed to this story
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Washington  Fri, May 12, 2017 18:03 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a09513c 1 World #SusiPudjiastuti,SusiPudjiastuti Free

Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti has been presented a Peter Benchley Ocean Award in the leadership category.

On the official website, peterbenchleyoceanawards.org, the award committee stated that the prestigious award was given to Susi on Thursday night for work that was vital to protecting Indonesias unique marine ecosystem and which provided important economic benefits and sustained the livelihoods of tens of thousands of fishermen, their families and their communities.

Minister Susi has aggressively protected her nations economic and environmental interests by targeting the multi-billion dollar pirate fishing operations of foreign fleets. She has courageously and audaciously led the blowing up and sinking of more than 200 illegal fishing boats caught poaching a strong deterrent to organized crime efforts that have invaded and overfished Indonesias biologically rich waters for years, it said.

Susi said in her acceptance speech that the award was a gift from God that reassured her that Indonesia was on the right path in protecting its marine ecosystem.

Im sure what we have done is right. Moreover, the economic parameters have been amazing. This war against illegal fishing is a favorable war for us, Susi said.

The ministrys policies were studied and calculated thoroughly, The proof is the result achieved, which is amazing, she added.

However, sometimes pressure forces people to compromise, but I hope this never happens. Mr. Jokowi really understands that the policy is good, Susi said. She said in making policies there were times when there was a lot of pressure, but that she would remain firm and consistent in making maritime the nations future. (hol/dan)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 11:16 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a084702 1 City #AhokDetention,#ahok,identity-card Free

The number of copies of ID cards needed to meet a requirement to guarantee the suspension of non-active Jakarta governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama from detention has reached more than 9,000, a coordinator has said.

Slamet, one of the coordinators of the ID collection push, said some 9,000 Indonesians had submitted their IDs as guarantors for the suspension as of Thursday afternoon.

"But it hasn't passed the 10,000 mark," he said as quoted by wartakota.tribunnews.com.

Protests following the announcement of Ahoks prison sentence continue to escalate.

Slamet said people had come to submit their IDs after a booth was opened up at City Hall on Thursday morning.

Approximately 500 Indonesians living abroad also sent pictures of their IDs in support, he said.

People from other cities, including Jefritson Riwu Kore, the mayor-elect of Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara, also directly visited City Hall to offer copies of their IDs.

"Jakartans are not the only ones willing to vouch for Ahok," he said. (dea)
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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Yangon, Myanmar  Fri, May 12, 2017 07:19 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a07afa3 2 World Myanmar,Rakhine,Rakhine-state,Rohingya,Rohingya-people,Buddhist,nationalist,#Myanmar,#MyanmarRohingya Free

Yangon police arrested several Buddhist nationalists Thursday for inciting violence after at least one man was left injured in a confrontation with local Muslims in Myanmar's largest city.

Police issued arrest warrants for seven people including two monks -- among dozens of hardliners who stormed into Mingalar Taung Nyunt township hunting for "illegal" Rohingya Muslims.

Officers fired warning shots to break up the scuffles in the early hours of Wednesday.

The incident comes as nationalists from Myanmar's Buddhist majority have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to the country's hard-pressed Muslims.

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.

Earlier Thursday the nationalists held a press conference defending their actions and demanding the authorities investigate the case.

At least two people have been arrested out of seven who have been charged with incitement to commit violence, which carries a sentence of up to two years in prison.

''About three lay men were arrested by police this evening," a local police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

"Warrants have been issued to arrest seven people altogether, including two monks, U Thu Seitta and U Pyin Nyar Wuntha," he added, using an honorific.

However, local media reported that two people had been arrested.

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 in recent months.

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. (**)
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Linkedin Haeril Halim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 16:02 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a091cde 1 National Jokowi,jokowidodo,Michelle-Bachelet,CEPA Free

President Joko Jokowi Widodo and his Chilean counterpart, President Michelle Bachelet, who is in Jakarta for a two-day state visit, witnessed the signing of two agreements at the Merdeka Palace on Friday.

One of the agreements is on mutual visa exemptions for diplomatic passport holders and the other is a joint ministerial statement on negotiations for a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between the countries. The agreements are seen to strengthen ties between the two countries.

We hope that the negotiations on CEPA, especially in the field of trade and goods, could be concluded this year, said Jokowi. He was speaking during a joint press conference with Bachelet after holding a one-hour bilateral meeting with the Chilean President at the palace.

Jokowi said Fridays bilateral discussion with Bachelet had focused mainly on efforts to improve cooperation on trade and investment between the two countries. He said Bachelets visit came at the right time, because Indonesia was currently stepping up efforts to increase investment cooperation with South American countries, including Chile.

Jokowi said Indonesia and Chile also agreed on bilateral cooperation in the field of fisheries and strategic industries as well as agriculture.

After a two-year delay, Indonesia resumed negotiations with Chile on the CEPA with a view to further penetrate markets of Latin American, which in the past have played a minor role for Indonesian businesses.

Chile and Indonesia are members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC.)

Trade between the two countries amounted to US$227 million in 2016. Exports from Indonesia declined by 2.4 percent to $143.81 million, while Chilean exports decreased by more than 50 percent to $83.34 million. (ebf)
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Linkedin Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 10:52 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a083121 1 Business palm-oil,exports Free

Exports of palm oil products increased by 23.5 percent year-on-year (yoy) to 8.02 million tons in the first quarter of this year, data from the Indonesia Association of Oil Palm Producers (GAPKI) shows.

The figure is due to increases in global palm oil consumption along with the increase in population, GAPKI executive director Fadhil Hasan said in a recent press statement.

Exports in March alone decreased by 5 percent month-on-month (mom) to 2.53 million tons due to slowing global demand, especially from India and China, to which exports dropped by 27 percent and 18 percent, respectively.

(Read also: Indonesia calls EUs ruling on palm oil discriminatory)

Palm oil exports to India and China accounted for 430,030 tons and 322,140 tons, respectively.

India is expected to continue to hold back on buying more palm oil and stock more rapeseed oil instead as import tariffs on the latter were lowered to 10 percent from 30 percent starting on April 1.

Export increases were booked for the United States and the European Union with 52 percent and 27 percent, or to 83,380 tons and 446,920 tons, respectively.

For March alone, production only increased by 10 percent mom to 2.9 million tons, so stocks dropped by 27 percent mom to 1.4 million tons.

Crude palm oil prices, meanwhile, have continued to drop to an average of US$683.90 per ton, moving between $655 and $717.50 throughout April after staying between $685 and $750 the previous month.

GAPKI predicts prices to range between $680 and $720 per ton throughout May. (hwa)
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Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Nusa Dua, Bali  Fri, May 12, 2017 10:00 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a080fd5 1 Business Pelindo,revenue Free

State-owned port operator PT Pelindo II has recorded a surge in its revenue, profit and container traffic in the first quarter of this year, attributing the achievement to the improving economy.

In the January-March period, the company booked Rp 2.3 trillion (US$172.4 million) in revenue, up by 21 percent from Rp 1.9 trillion in the corresponding period last year, while its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased by 3.4 percent to Rp 908 billion.

"It is directly related to the improvement in the Indonesian economy, as well as the trade domestic flow," Pelindo II president director Elvyn G. Masassya told reporters on Thursday.

(Read also: Pelindo II to build new ports, go digital)

Pelindo II operates a dozen ports in western Indonesia, including North Jakartas Tanjung Priok, the countrys busiest.

He said that it is also related to the surge in container traffic volume, which jumped to 1.71 million total equivalent units (TEUs) from 1.44 million TEUs last year.

Meanwhile the surge is also seen in its non-container cargo traffic, which increased by 7.06 percent to 7.88 million tons. (hwa)

Topics : Pelindo revenue
Calgary May 12 (IBNS): The Liberal Party is back to power in the recently concluded provincial election in British Columbia but not as as a single largest party in the legislature and without absolute majority as they had it last time.



Federal liberal government wanted to see Premier Christy Clark's provincial government became victorious.

While keeping that objective on sight, Prime Minister's Office issued a public release during penultimate hour of the election campaign stating that the PM, Trudeau had been seriously considering premier Clark's request to ban American shipment of thermal coal through B.C.

This is a retaliatory measure against Trump Administration's decision of slapping duties on Canadian softwood lumber.

Justin Trudeau called Clark on Wednesday after her provincial liberal party came as a single largest party but fell 1 seat short of absolute majority.

Prime Minister Trudeau, in his message congratulated Premier Clark and said he looked forward to work with her.

Now for Premier Clark the biggest task is to attain absolute majority in the floor of the assembly.

The B.C. Liberal will have the first minority government since 1952, if succeeded in making a deal with Green Party.

However the chance of forming government is equally the same for New Democrats (NDP) led by John Hogan if he becomes successful in cutting deal with Green Party.

Meanwhile, the Federal government's approval for Kinder Morgan's proposed Trans Mountain pipeline and another approval for Site C Hydroelectric dam on Peace River in northeastern B.C. are in danger of being materialized, They were ardently supported by the provincial liberal but were vehemently opposed by both NDP & Green Party as reported by the media.

Now it is interesting to watch how the political permutation combination will take shape for the future of B.C. politics.



(Reporting by Chandan Som,Photo Courtesy BC Assembly Facebook and Christy Clark's Twitter)
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Linkedin N.Adri (The Jakarta Post) Balikpapan, East Kalimantan  Fri, May 12, 2017 14:05 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a08c2fc 1 Business pertamina,Kalimantan,Sepinggan-airport,ramadhan,IdulFitri,Idul-Fitri-2017,Idul-Fitri,#Ramadhan,#RamadhanFastingMonth Free

Pertaminas Marketing Operation Region (MOR) VI Kalimantan Office has said it is preparing to increase the supply of avtur for airports in its working area. Ten percent of the additional supply will be directed to Sepinggan Airport in Balikpapan, East Kalimantan.

The supply increase is part of preparations to add flight schedules for holiday travelers during the upcoming Ramadhan and Idul Fitri festivities, Pertamina Kalimantan spokesperson Alicia Irzanova said in Balikpapan Thursday.

With an additional 10 percent supply, avtur consumption at Sepinggan Airport will amount to 386 kiloliters per day. At the airport, Pertamina operates an aircraft fuel filling station that can serve 88 regular commercial and chartered flights from 32 airline companies every day.

This includes military flights conducted by the Indonesian Air Force, said Irzanova.

The additional avtur stock is being prepared in case other airports in Kalimantan, such as Syamsuddin Noor in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, or Supadio in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, need more fuel.

Ramadhan will fall on May 27. Muslims who want to celebrate Idul Fitri in their home towns will expand the consumption of fuel and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG).

At Sepinggan Airport, commercial airlines such as Garuda Indonesia and Lion Air usually open up two additional flights for certain routes during the holiday season.

For this years Ramadhan and Idul Fitri, Irzanova said Pertamina Kalimantan would expand fuel and LPG supply by 7 percent and 6 percent, respectively. (ebf)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 14:34 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a08e34d 1 City Rizieq-Shihab,FPI,Firza-Husein,pornography,umrah,umrah-pilgrims Free

The Jakarta Police announced on Friday that they would detain the firebrand leader of Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), Rizieq Shihab, as soon as he returned to the country after Rizieq failed to show up twice for questioning as a witness in a pornography case.

We have sent Rizieq an invitation for questioning, but he did not respond nor attend the questioning as scheduled. Therefore, once he returns, we will detain him immediately, Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Argo Yuwono said, adding that the details would be elaborated on later by the investigators.

Rizieqs lawyer, Kapitra Ampera, said on April 27 that Rizieq went on a minor haj (umrah) with his family. He has not returned to Indonesia since.

As a witness, Rizieq has twice evaded a police questioning for a pornography case allegedly involving him and a treason suspect, Firza Husein.

The police first summoned Rizieq, Firza, Rizieqs wife and a friend of Firzas as witnesses on April 25. However, none of them showed up.

According to Argo, the police summoned Rizieq again on May 8 for questioning scheduled on May 10.

Argo confirmed that Rizieq was still abroad, but refused to inform reporters about the latters exact whereabouts.

We are not trying to criminalize him. [We want to question him] because he was reported and we followed up with the report, he said. (dea)
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Linkedin Fedina S. Sundaryani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12 2017

Indonesia is playing its cards close to its chest in its effort to convince China to sink more money into the archipelago through the ambitious One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative, by offering limited projects in only two to three regions deemed most suitable for the new Silk Road.

In the OBOR summit, slated for next Sunday through Monday, China will gather 29 countries to upgrade the legendary Silk Road trade route into an advanced global trade network, by investing heavily in infrastructure connecting Asia, Africa and Europe.

Investment Coordinating Board (BKPM) chairman Thomas Lembong confirmed that Indonesia would only offer infrastructure projects in a limited number of regions as the government had found that a lack of focus could make Chinese investors hesitant.

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Linkedin News Desk (AFP) Washington, United States  Fri, May 12, 2017 06:55 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a078cb2 2 World Afghanistan,Islamic-extremist,Islamic-extremists,Islamic-extremism,US,Taliban Free

The head of US intelligence agencies offered a pessimistic assessment Thursday of the security situation in Afghanistan, where the US government is planning to send more troops to combat resurgent Islamic extremists.

"The political and security situation in Afghanistan will also almost certainly deteriorate through 2018, even with a modest increase in the military assistance by the US and its partners," Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said at a hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban," Coats told lawmakers in presenting an annual assessment of threats to US national security.

US-led forces have been fighting in Afghanistan for almost 16 years, making it America's longest war, yet the situation there remains a stalemate.

General Vincent Stewart, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said if the situation was not addressed, the US-led alliance risked losing the fragile gains it had made during the protracted conflict.

"Unless we change something... the situation will continue to deteriorate and we'll lose all the gains that we've invested in over the last several years," he said.

That new beefing-up of efforts would include sending US and NATO advisers at brigade and battalion level to help Afghan commanders coordinate troop movements with artillery, intelligence or close air support, he said.

The Taliban, which first emerged in the mid-1990s in southern Afghanistan, managed to conquer most of the country before its 2001 ouster, with the help of a range of foreign jihadists, including Pakistanis, Saudis and Chechens.

But it has been on the rebound, Coates said, and continues to gain strength.

"The Taliban is likely to continue to make gains, especially in rural areas," said the US spy chief, adding that efforts to bolster local military have been less fruitful than hoped.

"Afghan security forces' performance will probably worsen due to a combination of Taliban operations, combat casualties, desertions, poor logistics support, weak leadership," he said.

"Afghanistan will struggle to curb its dependence on external support until it contains the insurgency or reaches a peace agreement with the Taliban."

America has about 8,400 troops in Afghanistan. Most belong to a 13,300-strong NATO mission to train and advise Afghan partner forces fighting the Taliban.

Last month, the United States dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb ever deployed in combat in Afghanistan, targeting an Islamic State group complex. (**)
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Linkedin Nethy Dharma Somba (The Jakarta Post) Jayapura, Papua  Fri, May 12, 2017 10:23 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a0827ff 1 National WamenaAirport,Papua,Japanese-citizens,deportations,Deportation,immigration,ImmigrationOffice,Immigration-Office,immigration-violations,immigration-policy Free

Six Japanese citizens have been deported to their home country via Sentani Airport, Jayapura, Papua, over alleged visa misuse, an official has said.

Jayapura Immigration Office head Yopie Watimena said the six Japanese citizens were found to have illegally taken pictures for a documentary film in Wamena. They did not have journalist visas needed to carry out such activities, he added.

They came to Wamena to make a movie about indigenous tribes in Papua. They recorded several scenes in the Korowai and Mamuna tribal communities in the Southeast Papua remote area before they moved to Wamena and got arrested there, said Yopie in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

The six Japanese nationals are identified as Toba Takashi, Kanemmitsu Toshiya, Takezawa Yoshihiro, Konzono Ryo, Tai Kakuma and Sugai Shuichi.

Takashi arrived in Jakarta on May 1 while the five others landed on May 2. They were arrested in Wamena on May 8, said Yopie. They were charged of allegedly violating Article 122 (a) of Law No. 6/2011 on Immigration, he explained. (ebf)
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Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya and Ivany Atina Arbi (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 07:30 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a07bb8a 2 City ahok,#ahok,#Ahok-Djarot,basuki-tjahaja-purnama,blasphemy,megawati-soekarnoputri,PDI-P Free

Non-active Jakarta governor Basuki Ahok Tjahaja Purnama has served two nights behind bars since the North Jakarta District Court declared him guilty of blasphemy and sentenced him to two years in prison.

However, his incarceration has triggered a wave of massive support from sympathizers who lament what they consider an unjust ruling and demand the suspension of the detention of the outgoing governor, who is also filing an appeal against the verdict.

On the very evening after the verdict was announced, thousands of Jakarta residents rallied until late night in front of the Cipinang detention center in East Jakarta, forcing the authorities to transfer Ahok to the polices Mobile Brigade headquarters in Kelapa Dua, Depok, West Java, which houses terrorism and treason suspects, citing public order and security concerns. Unfortunately, the move failed to discourage Ahoks sympathizers from flocking to the complex.

On Thursday, Ahok, through a loudspeaker connected to his detention cell, asked his supporters to leave the complex.

I am safe here. I ask you to disperse, or otherwise I might be transferred elsewhere, such as someplace out of town, Ahok said. Therefore, if bapak and ibu really love me, please go home now.

On Wednesday morning, thousands gathered at City Hall to join a choir led by renowned conductor Addie MS. Footage of the emotional crowd, which included acting governor Djarot Saiful Hidayat, singing national songs dur- ing the event went viral over social media.

Later in the evening, another crowd gathered at Proklamasi Park in Central Jakarta where people held candles aloft, symbolizing their hope for the nation to recover its unity after the deeply divisive election. Rallies not only occurred in the capital. More than 1,000 protesters also staged a candlelight vigil in the area of Yogyakartas Tugu monument and hundreds more were in Imbi Park in Jayapura, Papua.

Reports have also been circulating that those living far beyond Jakarta are planning to hold similar 1,000 candlelight vigils, including in Medan, North Sumatra, on Thursday evening, at KB Park in Semarang, Central Java, and in Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, Canada, on Friday, at the Sir James Mitchell Park, South Perth in Australia and in West Covina, California, US, on Saturday and at Victoria Park in Hong Kong on Sunday.

Commenting on the massive rallies, former president and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle chairwoman Megawati Soekarnoputri said the support simply reflected the peoples love for Ahok, thanks to his stellar performance.

I feel sad. Its unspeakable to see Ahok [being imprisoned] this way, she said during a visit to Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara.

Megawati said she hoped people would learn from Ahoks case to stop thinking in divisive ways and start treating fellow countrymen equally, regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds.

In addition to the rallies, Ahoks supporters also expressed their support by giving copies of their ID cards and signatures to rally organizers, offering to be his guarantors.

Ahoks lawyers earlier sent a letter to the Jakarta High Court demanding it suspend Ahoks detention. In the letter, Jakarta acting governor Djarot, Ahoks wife Veronica Tan, his son Nicholas Sean Purnama and his lawyers also registered to be his guarantors.

One of Ahoks lawyers, I Wayan Sudirta, said that the high court would decide whether to suspend Ahoks sentence once it received the case files from the North Jakarta District Court.

We hope that the district court would immediately deliver the files to the high court, so it could decide whether to grant our request or not, Wayan said, adding that the files comprise the judges verdict, investigation dossiers and evidence.

High court spokesman Johanes Suhadi said on Wednesday evening that as of then the court had not received the files from the district court.

Separately, a day after handing down the verdict, three of the five judges in Ahoks case were promoted by the Supreme Court. Dwiarso and Abdul Rosyad were promoted to be judges in the Denpasar High Court and the Palu High Court, respectively, while Jupriyadi was promoted to be head of the Bandung District Court.

-----

Nethy Dharma Somba, Bambang Muryanto, and Panca Nugraha contributed in the report.
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Linkedin Paul Handley and Andrew Beatty (AFP) Washington, United States  Fri, May 12, 2017 08:15 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a07d141 2 World DonaldTrump,Donald-Trump,FBI,Russia,James-Comey,#DonaldTrump,#Donald-Trump,White-House Free

Donald Trump said Thursday he asked his now-fired FBI director on three occasions whether he was the target of ongoing investigations, stoking allegations of presidential interference.

Trump acknowledged asking James Comey if he was the subject of counter-intelligence probes into Russian influence in the 2016 election, twice in conversations over the phone and once over a White House dinner.

"I actually asked him, yes. I said, 'If it's possible would you let me know, am I under investigation?'"

"He said, 'You are not under investigation,'" Trump recounted, repeating an assertion made when the White House announced Comey's firing Tuesday.

"All I can tell you is, well I know what, I know that I'm not under investigation. Me. Personally. I'm not talking about campaigns. I'm not talking about anything else. I'm not under investigation."

Trump's comments, made in an interview with NBC, raised questions about whether he had acted inappropriately and whether Comey had broken government guidelines.

US presidents are normally at pains to avoid any suggestion of interference or even commenting on ongoing investigations. The FBI typically does not confirm their existence.

Noted legal scholar Laurence Tribe told AFP that if Comey did indeed answer Trump's question, it would violate Department of Justice rules and "would be unthinkably unethical and unprofessional in this situation."

Trump also said that at the dinner, he and Comey discussed whether the US top cop would stay in his role and continue his ten-year term.

Asking such a question "would come close to bribery... or at least obstruction of justice, which Comey would've had to be an idiot to fall for by offering the assurance sought," Tribe said.

The White House rejected the suggestion the exchange was inappropriate. "I don't see it as a conflict of interest," White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.

In the NBC interview, Trump insisted that he always intended to fire Comey, undercutting the initial White House explanation that he acted on the recommendation of top justice officials who criticized the FBI chief's handling of a probe into Hillary Clinton's emails.

"I was going to fire him regardless of recommendations," said the president. "He's a showboat, he's a grandstander."

- What's the reason? -

Opponents have claimed that Comey's shock sacking was a bid to stall an FBI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which is also looking into possible collusion between the Kremlin and Trump's team.

Vice President Mike Pence and a string of White House officials have said Trump acted upon the advice of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his deputy Rod Rosenstein -- although administration officials have also said the president had steadily "lost confidence" in Comey's leadership prior to firing him.

Rosenstein is expected to brief senators on the issue next week.

Trump's interview was released on the same day the interim head of the FBI told the US Congress that Comey's sacking would not derail the Russia investigation.

"There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date," acting director Andrew McCabe told the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a hearing that capped two days of high drama provoked by the dismissal.

"You cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing," he said. "All of the agents involved in the investigation are still in their positions."

In his NBC interview, Trump said that had Russia interfered in the 2016 election, it would have been "horrible."

He repeated denials of links between his campaign and Moscow.

"There's no collusion between me, my campaign and the Russians," he said.

- 'Broad support' -

While Trump told NBC that the outgoing director had left the agency in "turmoil," McCabe rejected any suggestion that Comey had lost the support of the FBI's rank and file.

"Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does today," he told the committee.

Echoing a widely-held view in opposition ranks, the senior Democrat on the Senate committee, John Warner, called the timing of Comey's dismissal "especially troubling."

"He was leading an active counterintelligence investigation into any links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government or its representatives, and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts to interfere in our election."

"For many people, including myself, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the president's decision to remove Director Comey was related to this investigation."

McCabe gave no information on the status of the FBI probe, which dates back to July last year when the agency became aware of alleged Russian hacking of Democratic party computers and communications.

He also pledged not to discuss the Russia investigation with the White House. (**)
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 12, 2017 15:56 2007 4065a5a8898c7cc661d4adf97a0912ef 1 News Tourism-Ministry,Tourism-Ministry-Pesona-Indonesia,tourism-ministry-wonderful-Indonesia,Borobudur-Temple,Vesak-Day Free

Thousands of Buddhists gathered at Borobudur Temple in Central Java this week to celebrate Buddhas birth, known as Vesak day, on Thursday.

The commemoration resulted in an increase of economic activity at Borobudur Temple, where, according to records, some 3,500 merchants and 76 tour guides provided services for visitors from Monday to Wednesday alone.

I sold [goods] to a lot of buyers during this three-day period and saw an increase in my income of about 50 percent, said Sunar, a souvenir seller in the Borobudur area.

Read also: Muaro Jambi Temple Festival to kick off on Waisak Day

Hotels in the area were fully booked with visitors and organizers of the Vesak celebration.

The number of visitors to Borobudur Temple has increased by 5 percent to 7 percent in recent years. In 2015, the iconic tourist attraction welcomed 3.6 million visitors, and in 2016 there were 3.9 million. This years target is set at 4.2 million visitors. (asw)
I am a terrible cynic. A loveless and bitter sort of chap, I find I am seldom enthused by anything except the prospect for schadenfreude, the chance to laugh at other peoples misfortunes. So, paradoxically, I am often in good humour.

draft Labour manifesto was leaked to the press But when the, something peculiar happened. I experienced a brief fit of warmth and fuzziness, and upon reflection was alarmed to conclude that I had just suffered my first relapse into happiness and excitement since well, who can say? January of last year, I think.

(I was so taken in by it that I didnt even stop to chuckle at the news that Jeremy Corbyn had run over a BBC cameraman, something Im sure hes wanted to do for a very long time. Good for him, I thought, and returned to the manifesto.)

The draft is not perfect, of course. Nothing is. I do not much care about the costing (or lack thereof), as political parties, advised as they are by economists, invariably get the economics wrong. New Labour, in 97, had the right idea; their little sheets of vague, pleasant-sounding promises contained no pound signs, yet appealed so much to peoples aspirational sentimentality that huge numbers of voters happily strapped on their gimp masks and spent the next 13 years being royally shafted. Many people do still insist on believing in things.

But I think it unwise to confer greater political power to union bosses. The principle of organised labour is, of course, a good one. But, as the measly turnout at the last Unite election shows (to say nothing of the awful way in which it was conducted), trades unions arent really the manifestation of organised labour anymore. Thatcher did not destroy unions physically, rather she caused them to rot from within. If there is no such thing as society, there is no such thing as collectivism. Ergo the spirit that once bound unions together is dead, or at least dormant. Until that is redressed, there can be no justification for increasing the power and influence granted to the well-paid crypto-politicians like Len McCluskey, feudal barons sitting on these dead thrones of the collective ideal.

nuclear deterrent It looks as though Labour would keep our, which is as absurd as it is expensive and useless, and it was noticeably quiet on one or two other matters. It contains some fantastically woolly language about immigration, proposing to do away with income thresholds and instead telling incomers that they have an obligation to survive without recourse to public funds. (Presumably, if you have need of such recourse you might as well pack up and die.) And, yes, one can have serious doubts about Corbyns suitability, his beliefs, his friends, his record, his allotment

But as for the rest, whats not to like? Scrapping tuition fees, nationalising the railways, a fairly radical rearrangement of our energy policy, 8bn for social care, building more council houses, reserving some for the homeless, reversing NHS privatisation, boosting workers rights, massive infrastructure spending, abandoning austerity, the National Education Service, and much more besides.

That list would be quite remarkable in almost any election, yet it is made to seem particularly grand now because it has been thrust into a context of nothingness. It is a vision and a plan, not a soundbite. It invites you to ask the question: which do you prefer, 40 pages of bold ideas or some robot repeating the phrase strong and stable leadership until you are battered into miserable submission?

As I say, I could get behind it. I want to vote for it. But, alas, I fear I cant.

If life has taught me anything, it is that all good things are tricks. Robert Frost was right, nothing gold can stay. Passions, like loves, excite and tease; they touch your hand, they may brush your lips; you lean on them, heartsick, and believe. Yet, at the crucial moment, as you press forward, they disappear. You trip, your nose explodes against the pavement. You look up and see nothing but stars.

Far better to avoid being enticed. Look upon the good with a weary, wary eye. Scrutinize it. For failure is often etched into the skin, and it is only because passion is blinding that you are wont to overlook it.

I have done this with the draft manifesto, and so I do not think that I should love it.

The flaw is stated plainly: there can be, it says, no no deal in our negotiations with the EU. Labour would, it says, place a strong emphasis on retaining the benefits of the single market and the customs union, and Keir Starmer, the Shadow Secretary of State for Leaving the European Union, has said many times before that he believes we should remain within the single market. A very large number of Labour MPs would be happy to reverse the referendum.

We really must be clear about this: if you are in the single market, you are in the European Union. Treaty obligations, directives and regulations apply. Government is elevated above the level of parliament, and the people of this country denied the chance to offer meaningful consent at the ballot box. I cannot trade democracy for utopian elan.

Single market membership, furthermore, makes Labours proposed spending programme illegal  actually illegal  by constitutional decree. You cannot create a welfare state under EU law, let alone expand one. You cannot nationalise industries, you cannot borrow and spend, you cannot ditch austerity, you cannot reverse privatisation.

Labours whole platform requires that we leave, yet the party seems set on remaining. I think it was W. Somerset Maugham who wrote that the love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned, but the worst kind of love is that which is mutually self-deluding. It only lasts whilst both believe in the impossible. Eventually, someone grows up. Their eyes open. And then bang! Your poor nose explodes.

So I cannot vote for Labour. I cannot, really, vote for anyone. This isnt necessarily such a bad thing  abstention is underrated  except when you wish feverishly that you could. For the first time, I find myself in that unenviable position.

Ideally, nothing much would change this time. A small Tory majority grants power to its Leave faction whilst making it difficult to push through any significant social policy, thereby limiting the damage and, potentially, speeding up the process of exiting the EU. (And no deal is better than a bad deal.)

Labour could do with shedding a large number of its MPs, who do not (or should not) belong in the party. But Id rather not see it suffer a devastating loss, for it seems finally to have developed ideas. An identity is forming. It simply isnt ready yet. And I wonder if there isnt some merit in the suggestion that progressive taxation and other measures proposed in the draft would, at this fragile time, carry exceptional risks. (One way for Macron to succeed in pinching British business would be to make Britain as useless as France.) Perhaps now, to borrow from the MayBot 9000, is not the time.

Ideally it would exceed expectations a little, coming close to or besting Ed Milibands result. This might feasibly allow Corbyn to stay on long enough to reform the NEC and PLP, at which point he should step down and allow someone a little more clean and competent to take his place.

This is not instruction. You will vote as you will. Im not sure it even counts as advice. And the manifesto was only a draft; perhaps the facts will change next Tuesday, and my opinion with them. But I share it now because Well, perhaps theres something of use in it, somewhere.
The Russian LGBT Network says it has helped 40 men escape Chechnyas gay purge by safely evacuating them from the region.

Pictured, Ramzan Kadyrov, Head of the Chechen Republic

Earlier this year it was claimed that gay and bisexual men were being rounded up and tortured in concentration-style prison camps by officials in Chechnya - something which has caused outrage in the international community.

LGBT rights in Chechnya have been a concern among human rights organisations for a long time - same-sex sexual activity is illegal, with laws in place which can allow the death penalty as punishment

However, since March there has been a growing and widespread anti-gay persecution in the region, which has seen men being secretly rounded up and taken away to be tortured for their non-traditional orientation.

Some inmates who have been released from the torture camps have described horrific experiences of violent beatings and being given electric shocks. At least four men are reported to have died in these camps as a result of the extreme beatings and torture inflicted upon them.

Ramzan Kadyrov, Head of the Chechen Republic, has denied any suggestions of a 'gay purge' by claiming no gay people exist in Chechnya.

The communications manager of the Russian LGBT Network - who wishes to remain anonymous for safety reasons - has said a hotline has been set up so Chechen men can seek help.

Speaking to NPR she said: The first thing for us to do is, of course, to evacuate them from Chechnya, like, to other parts of Russia.

But we are also working to evacuate them, to relocate them to  out of Russia because for most of them its just deadly dangerous to stay in Russia because some of them are already hunted by their relatives outside of Chechnya.
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